Seekers mask, p.41
Seeker's Mask, page 41
part #3 of Kencyrath Series
The walk seemed to take hours. Under his bare feet, the green-shot floor was numbing cold, but the wind that blew over it was the sirocco of human breath. Kindrie inhaled as it pushed at him, exhaled as it pulled, deep and slow. In his terror, he ached to breathe faster, but couldn't. The sense of suffocation fed his fears and had to be fought down, as did the gorge continually rising in his throat.
Three steps led up to the hearth. Over the top one hung the flayed paws and snarling masks of Arrin-ken pelts, some a ghostly silver gray, others iridescent as pearl.
That was what I saw, thought Kindrie. I can turn back now.
But he kept walking.
The black vault of the fireplace was full of charred, twisted limbs, fantastic in their deformity. The eye kept trying to make sense of them. They seemed to organized themselves around a pale block of ash and an ashy stick, lying flat as though on a table. A distorted figure as if of a man sat beside them, there one blink, gone the next as Kindrie drew closer and his perspective changed. He remembered that Ishtier had wanted him to learn from Jame's soul-image where she had hidden the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Perhaps the strange, shifting image in the fireplace could have told him, except that, ironically, he had no idea what it meant.
If he found out and dealt with it as the priest had demanded, maybe he could still regain his own soul.
...do it, do it! the banners whispered.
Kindrie started to mount the steps.
A pale shape rose from among the furs and lunged at him. He was knocked back to sprawl in the floor, cringing as the other ravened over him on the end of its chain. It was naked except for a ridge of dark hair which ran from the head, down the curved spine, along the tail curled up between its legs as if for modesty. Its rear legs bent backward. Its dangling hands were half paws. The muzzle and barred teeth were also canine, but in those baleful eyes Kindrie recognized Jame's stray dog of a servant, chained to the hearth and starved by her reluctant acceptance, but grimly on guard as she had bidden him. The man-dog fell back into a crouch on the second step, slackening the chain, panting. Famine-gaunt, his bones seemed about to burst through the taut skin which covered them.
"Liddle man, liddle bassstard!" A thick growl, barely articulate, as few people are on the soul's level. "Go 'way! My hearth. My lady!"
"B-but Graykin, she needs me...."
"No!" Snaggle-teeth bared. "Needs me. No one else. No one needs you, no one wants you, 'cept fed-chi priests. Go back where you b'long, priest-ling!"
The Knorth had called him that at first, with no less scorn. Kindrie hunched over, gut-sick with the remembered sense of his own worthlessness, frantic to escape from it into the garden of his soul. How could he ever have hoped to out-grow Wilden? The priests had had him too long, made him too much their own—he, who had been nothing to begin with.
"Bassstard," the man-dog was crooning, eyes bright with hungry malice. "Worthless Shanir bassstard...."
All this stress on bastardy, by someone more unfortunately bred even than himself.... Kindrie's training pricked him again into observation. The creature was actually salivating. A self-professed sneak and mongrel, Graykin fed on other's weaknesses to...to hide from his own devouring sense of worthlessness.
Understanding slowed Kindrie's panic. With a jot, he realized that Lady Rawneth had played on him much the same way all his childhood, telling him over and over what trash he was, rubbing his nose in his misbirth until he could smell nothing else except in his garden where he had run to hide. From what weakness had she been trying to hide by demeaning him? What a fool he had been, to have let her do it for so long!
Indignant, Kindrie found himself on his feet without remembering having risen. He saw now what the man-dog had been trying both to guard and to hide: A second pale figure laying asleep in a nest of Arrin-ken furs, partly clad in rathorn armor. No, not armor exactly. Mask, gorget, breastplate, gauntlet and greaves all grew out of that slim white body in bands of ivory, as they would have on a young rathorn—and as on so immature a beast, not all the plates properly overlapped. Out of a gap over one cheekbone, thick blood welled. The ivory band across the small breasts rose and fell with the slow rhythm of dwar.
A-ha, thought Kindrie.
Through the halls came echoing a sound from beyond its walls, drawn out, distorted by echoes: "K...k...k..."
The sleeper's breathing changed. She had heard; she was beginning to wake.
The man-dog grinned wolfishly. " 's torn it. Get out while you can, white-hair!"
Louder, closer: "...norrrRRR...."
The quickening breath of wind pushed Kindrie back a step, then dragged him forward almost into Graykin's jaws. Behind him, banners clutched at the wall with thread-bare hands.
Rrrrun! their voices cried, with the sound of ripping cloth.
"Yesss," Kindrie breathed, pushed back again, perforce exhaling. What chance had he, half-trained, against a soul-scape so complex, so malignant?
But if he ran now, he would be running the rest of his life. Where was there a corner so dark that he could hide from himself? He had no garden to escape to now. Ishtier had cut off that retreat. Run, or advance. To do the latter, though, he must master his fears, or lose them.
Bastard, worthless....
No. Look at Graykin, a mongrel in his soul because he accepted that judgment in life. And he, Kindrie? A cringing coward with a belly full of death, disgracing his house, disgracing himself. The thought set his guts roiling, but this time he didn't swallow it back. He retched again and again. No more cossetting of weakness, no more excuses. Purge them all.
With a whine, the man-dog flung himself down the steps in a hunger-frenzy to snap at the seething mess. Kindrie edged past on unsteady legs.
"...THHHHHH...."
Sleeper's breath and the exhalation of sound matched in the wind hissing in his face, tearing at his hair. Arrin-ken fur rippled. Banners flailed. He touched the cool ivory of the cracked mask.
Nothing.
"...HHHhhh...." The sound died with a sigh. Then, somewhere in the distance, it gathered itself again, faster this time, like a wave rushing for the shore: "...k...k...knorrRR..."
Why hadn't his healing power engaged? What was he still doing wrong? Torn banners snickered against the wall: failure, stupid failure....
Why should they be glad?
Then he thought he understood. Tricked again.
"Listen!" he cried, raising his voice against the approaching roar. "These banners aren't part of your soul-scape! Perhaps...perhaps none of this hall is. It's a trap, to make you think that the shadows still own you, but here you are, in armor against them. Fight, d'you hear me? Fight!"
He had to shout, but he must have been heard. Under his hands the ivory was growing together again. Behind him, banners unraveled in the wind, swirling nets swept away even as they cast themselves to ensnare him. Green light laced the dark floor. Just another moment....
"...THHHHH!"
The eyes behind the mask snapped open: mindless silver, the soul's pure reflection. A flash of white. Oh, no. Not again....
CRACK!
Pain. Confusion. The blow of that ivory fist, lashing out by reflex, sent him flying sideways through a forest of charred limbs. No, into the fireplace. No, into a black room where a man with silver eyes looked up, smiling, from a pale book (—welcome to the family, little cousin—). Crashing into the iron fireback. No, through a hidden door into...into....
Green, and white self-heal. Wild heartsease drooping against the night, white herbs abloom, white moths dancing in the moon garden of his soul....
Home. Safe. Sleep now. Sleep.
IV
Jame fought her way out of sleep, crying, "Who calls the Knorth? Who? Brier?"
Cold hands held her down. Over her bent a livid face, leprous with death.
For a moment, she was back before the broken walls of her old home keep, under the dead weight of the haunt about to sink its rotting teeth into her arm.
"Don't," said Ashe.
Against every instinct, Jame sheathed her claws. But she had attacked someone, she thought, still half-dazed with sleep. Who?
Jorin stretched out limp beside her.
Oh, God, surely not.
The ounce twitched and began to snore. She remembered now, how he had tried to follow her into the depths of dwar and been left, crying, in its upper reaches. Obviously, he was still there.
A confusion of legs and hands moved toward the front of the smithy, taking with it a limp form.
She had struck.... Someone had staggered backward....
Over the haunt's shoulder, Jame saw the anvil squat on its ironwood stump. One of the horns glistened darkly.
"Oh hell," she muttered, shaking off Ashe and rising unsteadily.
In the stripped light that fell through the barred window, Kirien bent over Kindrie. "I should never have forced this!" she was saying. "A healer and a nemesis...don't!"
Jame's hand stopped in mid-air.
Index shoved her aside and pressed a clot of cob-webs to the back of the Shanir's skull to staunch the blood.
Kiri was right, Jame thought, sitting back. It would be dangerous for her to touch the Shanir when he was so vulnerable. Damn her poisonous soul-image, anyway!
But someone (Kindrie?) had said something about it being a trap. What had he meant? She groped after the memory as if after a rapidly fading dream. The details were already gone, but the suggestion lingered. It implied a deception on the most intimate level, a deceiver closer to her than her own skin. Just the same, if she could disown any part of that ghastly hall...!
Steady, she warned herself. Whatever the truth is, it won't be simple or perhaps so easily discovered.
But still...!
Ashe stood behind her, a hooded death-mask hovering in the shadows. "Why...did you attack him?"
"I couldn't help it. He was too close."
"Huh," said Kirien. "Remind me to keep my distance. That's dwar breathing, at least."
So it was, deep and slow. Trinity. She had warned Kindrie that the next time she might knock him through a wall, and she had—back into the healing embrace of his soul-image.
Then she remembered: "Did someone call the Knorth?"
As if in answer, they became aware of an approaching disturbance outside. Struggling forms passed the window. The door was flung open and a large, gagged figure was thrown in, almost on top of them. It was Brier Iron-thorn.
"Ancestors be praised," said Jame.
The Kendar lurched to her feet and stood for a moment swaying. Muffled noises came from behind the gag, which she made no effort to remove despite her free hands. Breath smoked from her nostrils in faintly glowing plumes. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. Oblivious to their questions, she set off across the room with a determined if unsteady stride and bounced off the far wall. Slipping up behind her, Ashe whipped off the gag.
"...north!" the cadet was crying. "K-north!" Over and over.
Her voice seemed to come from a considerable distance. Its tone, however, was no less compelling than when it had reached Jame in the depths of dwar sleep. It conveyed no fear, only a grim determination to evoke an answer.
The old shaman called urgently from his corner of the square.
"If she won't shut up," Index translated, "they'll kill her."
Jame grabbed Brier's hand as it groped past her. "Cadet, stop it. I'm Knorth!"
Brier paused, head cocked to listen. "Lady?" she said in her far-away voice. Her glowing breath made Jame's face tingle. "Where are you?"
"At Kithorn. So are you. For pity's sake, look at me!"
The Kendar's eyes opened warily. Luminous mist filled the sockets, throwing into relief her high, strong cheekbones. "All I see is weirding," she said in a tight, slightly louder voice. "The Highlord called me down into it and now I'm lost. So is he."
Jame gave a stifled exclamation, involuntarily tightening her grip.
Brier's hand closed on hers. "I feel...something."
She was half-crushing Jame's fingers. Her voice seemed perhaps two rooms away now instead of half a field.
"Keep calling!" Kirien said.
"I...no. If my brother is lost in the weirding too, he needs help. A guide. Brier Iron-thorn, do you remember how your mother came back under the sand to bring Tori safely across the Dry Salt Sea?"
The Kendar's dark face hardened. "That story. A fever dream. A sop for an orphan."
"Maybe, maybe not. When the salt sea returned yesterday and I nearly drowned in it, I-I think Rose saved me too. It was wrong of me not to have told you before, but I was unsure, and scared."
Brier's face would never be good at showing emotion, whatever she felt. "What do you want me to do?" she asked at last, gruffly, almost in her normal tone.
"Will you go back into the weirding to find Tori? No, don't move." She pushed the Kendar down to sit against the west wall, next to Kindrie and the still sleeping Jorin, and knelt before her. "Just think about doing it. The Senetha can be done purely in the mind, perhaps this too. Will you try?"
Brier had squeezed her eyes shut again, like a child afraid to see. She was afraid. Jame could feel it through her grip. Never before had she been asked to do something so much on faith, for a girl whom she must think half-mad and a house which she had only begun to trust. Then she gave a curt nod and began again to call: "K-north, K-north...!"—each cry more faint than the last, as though she were resolutely walking back into the mist which enveloped her mind.
Kirien shivered. "I wouldn't care to do that, even with an anchor. For God's sake, don't let go!"
She had been stealing sidelong looks at Jame. Now, abruptly, she said, "Forgive the rudeness, but I have to know: would you please take off that mask?"
But Kiri had just seen her face, when she had used it to cut short the scrollswoman's berserker flare. It couldn't be such a treat as all that....
Then Jame remembered. Kindrie had been in her soul-scape.
Not daring to think, much less to hope, she fumbled at the mask with her free hand. It came loose. She took a deep breath and turned to look at Kirien.
The Jaran regarded her critically. "A few minutes more would have been better. Still, not bad. Not bad at all."
Jame touched her cheek. Apprenticeship to the best thief in Tai-tastigon had trained her fingertips to abnormal sensitivity, even when gloved. As Kirien had said, a few moments more had been needed and lost, thanks to Brier's call. There was still a scar. It was so faint, though, that she could hardly feel it. Kindrie had done his work well enough: she was no longer disfigured.
Outside, someone cried in alarm, echoed by Index. Kirien hastily joined him by the front window, Ashe only a step behind her. Red light flared across their startled faces.
"Oh!" said Kirien, staring.
Jame tried to rise, but couldn't break Brier's grip. "What?" she demanded.
"The weeds in the courtyard's cracks...they're bursting into flames from the inner square out. Watch it!" She jerked Index back as lines of fire laced the windowsill, following the mossy cracks. In a moment, they had burned out, without spreading to the interior.
Outside, Sonny's voice rose again.
"Huh," said Index. "The fool acts as if he's never seen a purification before. He claims that the fires show the Burnt Man's disapproval. The chief isn't coming, he says, but someone's got to represent the Burnt Man here tonight, or the entire Riverland may be torn apart. Guess who volunteers."
"He may have a point," said Kirien. "Whatever they're up to, annoying the powers that be can't help. I wonder where that precious chief of theirs is, anyway."
"Four days ago," Jame said slowly, "he was near Falkirr, laying a bone-fire. Then he went on southward."
"Don't be a fool," snapped Index. "I told you: the silly bugger is off defining the Merikit borders for Summer Eve...."
"Right down the Silver," Jame finished, as her wits finally woke. "He's preparing to reclaim the entire Riverland."
Index and Kirien stared at her. "Impossible!" they burst out. "The lords...the priests...! They'd never permit...."
"The lords have been gone all winter," said Jame. "So has most of the Kencyrath. You don't realize how empty and strange the valley has become. And the priests have been...preoccupied. Now they can barely draw in the power they need to maintain contact with their temples. The Merikits' plan only takes things one step farther. They probably haven't had so good an opportunity since they closed these northern hills to us eighty years ago. How did they do that, Index?"
"My God." The old man stared at her. "With bone-fires."
It could have been more thoroughly done, Jame thought. After all, here she and others were. In her travels through Rathillien she had encountered areas such as the Anarchies so strong with native power that they could literally eat an unwary Kencyr alive. These hills were hardly as voracious, but she doubted that her people would ever live here again. And now that might become true for the rest of the Riverland as well? How ironic if the entire Kencyrath was about to become as roofless and rootless as she herself had been made to feel.
She remembered the dinner party at the Cataracts, those self-satisfied lords so sure that they had every right to dispose of her as they wished. The Kencyrath was theirs, wasn't it? Of course, they could do with it whatever they wanted. But what did they know about the blood feud between the Knorth and the Randir, still festering like an abscess after all these years, or the priesthood malignant in its foul hole, or the secret life of their own women? Nothing was as sure as they blandly assumed, not even their suzerainty over this northern land, perhaps about to be snatched away from them forever.
And these were the people who had told her that she could only belong to the Kencyrath if she played the role which they decreed, living in public and private behind the mask of their conventions.
And she had accepted that, even when she had fled Gothregor, just as she had been prepared to live with Kallystine's handiwork as the mark of her failure.
Jame looked at the mask still in her hand. Seeker, seeker...the children's taunt. That damned game of confusion and lost identity.
But the game's object wasn't to find out who you were. Rather, you escaped the eyeless mask by catching someone else and taking her name, which the next seeker might in turn take from you. Well, in trying to play by their rules she had damn near lost herself altogether.
