Seekers mask, p.6
Seeker's Mask, page 6
part #3 of Kencyrath Series
Jame shivered. So this was what helplessness felt like: a cold draft up the spine, a premonition: Find a way to fight back, soon, or be destroyed. Something is coming.
"What?" she asked the breathing night.
No answer...no defense?
Other ladies would look for that from their kinsmen and guards. She was cut off from her brother's Kendar and her family was dead except for Tori—accidentally wasn't it?
Could she really have other surviving kin within the degree of blood—a first cousin, in fact accidentally a bastard?
Illegitimacy shouldn't exist among the Highborn, whose ladies usually controlled conception at will and grimly honored the terms of any contract to which their lord bound them. She remembered Lyra, Caineron's young daughter, contracted to Prince Odalian of Karkinor and longing for the child she would never dare have without her father's consent. To misbreed as Tieri had was black disgrace, dishonoring both mother and child. Now Kallystine claimed that it also called into doubt the constancy of all Tieri's female blood-kin.
No one had mentioned this last, personal application to Jame before or, she suspected, to Torisen. Either the lords didn't care, or knowledge of Tieri's disgrace was very restricted, perhaps to the matriarchs. Odd. Odder still that they would tell Kallystine, whom no one trusted. Perhaps they hadn't, directly. Everyone knew that when the council had met today, Cattila's Ear had listened in. Jame knew through Jorin's senses that there had been three people in Kallystine's room when they had left it: M'lady herself, her maid, and a stranger with an almost familiar, earthy smell, like the inside of a potting shed. Perhaps that had been the mysterious Ear, who some claimed was not even a Kencyr, admitted only at Cattila's insistence. Whatever she was, though, perhaps she had been carrying tales.
One way or another, a great secret had fallen into enemy hands.
How damaging was it, though, really? Brought up by Kendar, Jame didn't share M'lady's revulsion at illegitimacy. If Tieri's misfortune got her off the breeding books, she didn't care if people expected her to litter kittens. Unfortunately, as long as the issue was legitimate, most lords probably wouldn't care.
Regarding the Highlord, though, when—if—Tori found out about the Knorth Bastard, how would he react? Kendar had raised him too. He was still said to feel more at home among the randon at Kothifir than here in his father's stronghold. Strange to think of the Highlord of the Kencyrath as an outsider. In some ways, she and he were still much alike. Old songs claimed that living or dead, twins occupied corners in each other's soul. Jame could almost believe that, asleep if not awake: all winter she'd had the recurrent dream of seeking her brother up and down Rathillien, as once she had sought him through the bleak rooms of the Haunted Lands keep. On Spring Eve, she had even dreamt that she had tracked him down at last, only to have her dream twist into the nightmares that had haunted her sleep ever since.
Jame hugged herself, shivering. Think of something else.
She turned away from the window to survey the room. Starlight revealed it to be circular, containing two chairs, a worktable, and a fireplace down whose throat the wind whistled off-key. On the mantle was a branched candlestick with wax guttered to the sockets. Behind that stood a pitted, bronze mirror, placed to throw back candlelight and, incidentally, a distorted image of the room. In it, she seemed to be wearing a black coat much like Tori's and almost his thin, handsome face, but so haggard....
...looking like the unburnt dead....
The faint, uncanny echo of her thoughts made her start; however, she was still alone in this cold, tower room.
Rumor said that Tori sometimes stayed awake for weeks on end. Well, if he was losing sleep because of her, it served him right. He should never have stranded her here. She stuck out her tongue at the reflection.
The surrounding walls were lined with shelves full of parchment scrolls. A second door opened off the south wall. Outside was a narrow platform and a catwalk swaying through dizzy space to the southwest tower of the keep which housed sleeping quarters. Now, where had she learned that? Then Jame remembered, and knew why the guard had called these upper reaches "Gothregor": It was customary to identify a lord, his possessions, and his chambers by the name of his fortress.
This was Tori's study.
The ladies of the halls speculated endlessly over the Highlord's refusal to reoccupy the Ghost Walks. Most saw it as a slap at M'lady Kallystine's ambitions, or an evasion of her company. However, faced with this austere bivouac at the very top of her brother's ancestral keep, Jame wondered if in truth he loathed everything that had been his father's. What had his life with Ganth Gray Lord been like after her expulsion and before his own departure, under mysterious circumstances, at the age of fifteen? Twin or not, Tori was no longer the child she remembered. Nameless boy under Lord Ardeth's protection, young commander of the Southern Host, Highlord of the Kencyrath, he had lived a lifetime since their childhood together, and a life uncommonly private for someone born to power. Look at this chamber. There was hardly room here for his servant Burr, much less for the retinue which his position would seem to demand. Knorth poverty only explained part of it. The Caineron guards had been right to respect such determined privacy. So should she.
But at the door she heard M'lady's guards still below.
Damn. She would have to wait them out. The thought of inactivity, however brief, reminded her that, like her brother, she hadn't slept in several nights. His chair, set before the cold fireplace, looked dangerously comfortable. She sat down on the floor, her back to a bookcase. Jorin flopped across her knees.
I need a bigger lap or a smaller cat, she thought, bemused, and, despite herself, fell asleep.
Interim I
Kothifir Encampment: 54th of Spring
"What do you mean," demanded Lord Ardeth: " 'Something is coming'?"
Torisen Black Lord stopped short in his restless pacing, startled and annoyed to find that he had spoken out-loud. What had he meant? The words had simply risen in his mind, out of a formless but growing apprehension. Dammit, lack of sleep was no excuse to lose control.
Turning, he tripped over a footstool.
Damn.
During his tenure as commander of the Southern Host, these lodgings had been sparsely furnished, each piece elegant and useful, with room in between to pace. Pereden, his successor, had redecorated according to his own tastes: gaudy, pretentious, cluttered. Dead as he was, that wretched boy would break Torisen's neck yet—turnabout fair play, perhaps.
The leavings of that other, worthless life seemed suddenly to press in on him. He had to get away, out into the desert dark, to prowl alone through the remaining hours of this interminable night....
Ardeth stood in his way. "My boy, you mustn't."
"Thal's balls, Blackie," Harn Grip-hard growled from the table, crumbling the report which he had been pretending to read. "Your enemies already think you're half crazy. Wander around tonight looking like the unburnt dead and they'll be sure. Remember what day this is: thirty-four years ago your father ran mad as a gelded rathorn and most of us ran after him, all the way to death in the White Hills. No one in the Hosts, north or south, has forgotten that. No one ever will."
"Oh, really!" Ardeth protested—against the expression, not the facts. "Still, your behavior since the Cataracts has cost you much of the credit you gained there. This continued refusal to sleep, merely for fear of dreams...."
"Who told you that? Was it Burr, spying on me again? No."
Torisen ran thin, scarred hands through his dark hair, gripping it briefly to remind himself with pain. Burr had been Ardeth's agent years ago, openly, when he himself had been a nameless boy in the old lord's service. Now Burr served him. After the events leading up to the Cataracts, everyone must know that he often avoided sleep, if not why. His three oldest friends, here in this room, knew full well that the pattern went back years.
"All right," said Ardeth soothingly. "We'll discuss that another time. But as for your refusal to make certain necessary decisions...listen to me: you must form an alliance with some house strong enough to protect your interests. If you're too fastidious to bargain with your own bloodlines, use your sister's. The girl has to be contracted out for the best advantage you can obtain. Oh, if only my son Pereden were alive to offer for her...!
"My boy, what's the matter?"
Torisen had turned sharply away.
He was remembering what it had felt like, in his tent by the Cataracts, to break Pereden's neck. Then he'd had to go into the Wastes with Ardeth to hunt for the bones of his "hero" son, knowing all the time that Harn had reduced them to ashes on a common pyre at Hurlen. Damn Pereden anyway, that vain, spoiled boy who had led the Southern Host against the vastly larger Waster Horde, against orders, in a stupid attempt to prove himself a better commander than Torisen had been. Captured, he had changed sides, seduced by the promise that the Horde would make him Highlord. And all because he thought that Torisen had stolen Ardeth's love.
Fathers and sons. How did any of them manage not to murder each other?
Pereden would have used the shame of his treachery to destroy Ardeth, if Torisen hadn't killed him first.
Right. Try explaining that to a grief-stricken father.
Torisen stepped out onto the balcony and leaned on the rail. The Host's permanent encampment formed a city at the foot of the escarpment, with Kothifir on the cliff-top above. To the south, over the garrison's roofs, he could see the Wastes, a line drawn flat on the horizon, black beneath, star-fretted above—his land, which Ganth had never even seen.
Still, the Gray Lord's shadow fell over him. Maybe he would never escape it as long as he claimed the Highlord's power as he had his father's ring and battle-sword, now hanging from a belt-loop at his side. Songs said that Kin-Slayer made its rightful owner all but invincible. For Torisen, however, it had remained sullenly inert, as if it knew how Ganth had died, cursing his runaway son, disowning him. Ironic, if the only thing he had inherited from Ganth was his insanity. He could feel the tug of it now. Somewhere, something was about to happen.
No. Think of something else.
He turned restlessly back into the room, trying not to chafe under the anxious regard of his friends. An aimless step brought him up short before another of Pereden's prize possessions: a full-length mirror in an ornate golden frame. He stared blankly at the shadow which fell mask-like across the reflection of his face, feeling empty with fatigue. Hounded day after day by the lords, haunted night after night by dreams....
The face in the mirror stuck its tongue out at him.
Torisen recoiled, then controlled himself, furious. She was four hundred leagues away, wasn't she? He had seen to that.
But all winter, the moment his eyes had closed, he had felt her hunting him as relentlessly as she had as a child, playing hide and seek. She had almost caught him too, on Spring's Eve.
It was a dream, he reminded himself, scowling defiantly into the mirror. Only a damn dream—wasn't it?
It had, at least, been seven weeks ago, too long even for him to stay awake. Since then, when the need for sleep had overwhelmed him, he had hidden from her in the one place to which he thought she would never willingly return. In his dreams, reduced again to childhood, he had huddled miserably in the dark, cold hall of the Haunted Lands keep, hearing the tentative rustle in the shadows of dead Kendar returning to what, for a haunt, passed for life, hearing those other slow, dragging footsteps descending the stair from the battlements where his father had died but refused to stay dead, the mad mutter in the stairwell growing closer, more distinct night after night....
He hadn't bolted the stair door. Did he dare rise to do it? Jame would, if she were here. No one stood up to Ganth but her. She was so strong. He could stand anything, if only that door were bolted, but he wouldn't run out to find her. He wouldn't. He would stay here, with Ganth's madness fumbling at the door, mumbling through the cracks:
"It's all her fault, boy. She is strong. She has power. You've got to destroy her, boy, before she destroys you....
"Drink, lord," said Burr.
Torisen looked down at the cup of mulled wine which his servant and old friend had thrust into his hands. His cold fingers curled around it, the lace-work of white scars grateful for its warmth. Had he spoken out-loud again? A fortnight awake, dreams bleeding into reality—he had starved himself of sleep often enough to know the signs. Dammit, why couldn't he master them?
Control. Must keep control....
He raised the cup to drink, then in the mirror saw Ardeth's eyes on him. The wine smelled peculiar. A shudder went through him, followed by rage.
"Traitors!" he heard himself say in a harsh voice not his own. "You eat my bread and yet you conspire to betray me. You, and you, and you...."
Burr's plain face had gone stiff. Without a word, he took back the cup and drank deeply from it, his mud-brown eyes locked on the Highlord's silver-gray. He blinked. Ardeth took the half empty cup from him before he could drop it. Harn threw a burly arm around his sagging frame to swing him around to a seat by the table, growling over his shoulder:
"Blackie, you damn fool."
Torisen Black Lord stared, beginning to tremble. "I...it wasn't...."
The rage had gone as abruptly as it had seized him—but he wasn't a berserker, to flare like that, or to speak those words with that voice. All, all had been Ganth's, born of that obsession with betrayal which had driven some of his loyal followers to suicide and the rest to contrive his son's escape from the Haunted Land's keep. Those Kendar had ransomed Torisen out of darkness with their lives and honor.
Listen: hear them now in the shadows of the hall, bereft of honor and life, rustling, rustling....
"No. I refuse to dream this."
He turned his back and stepped out again onto the balcony, to grip the rail, to master his shaking hands. Even now, she was seeking him, but he wouldn't hide again in the dream of that terrible hall, where madness fumbled at an unlocked door. He would stay awake—for the rest of his life if necessary.
Wait it out, just wait it out....
PART II
Gothregor: 54th – 55th of Spring
I
The dream began as it always did: Jame was searching for Tori.
She was angry with him for letting their father drive her out, but she still had to find him because...because she had something for him. Ganth's ring and sword. The ring was on her finger; the sword, ill-omened Kin-Slayer, in her hand.
The sword worried her. It had broken in their father's hand, but now it was whole again, except for the hilt emblem. Under the cracked crest something moved, dark and wet: fleshless lips that muttered endlessly in their father's voice; sharp teeth that gnawed at her hand. She couldn't let go, though, until Tori took the sword out of her grasp. But when he did, he didn't notice how it had hurt her. He didn't care. So she didn't warn him about the mad, mumbling voice or the hungry teeth.
Then she was searching for Tori again because...he had sent her away, and now he was hiding from her, as if this were some silly game.
On Spring Eve she at last found him, standing at the edge of the Southern Wastes, his back to her. He was holding Kin-Slayer and listening to the voice. Unnoticed, blood ran down the sword's blade from his hand, where the teeth did their silent, malicious work.
She called his name: "Brother."
"I refuse to dream this!" he snapped, and walked rapidly away.
"Come back!" she cried after him. "You can't run away from me forever!"
But he had already disappeared into the blowing sand.
No, not sand but dry leaves, hitting her face with furtive, brittle taps. Before her lay a gray city street, lined with decaying houses. Something dark crawled over the broken cobblestones toward her, its shadowy fingers delicately probing the rubble as it came. Behind shut doors, children were whimpering in terror. The Lower Town Monster, not destroyed after all, whispered a voice on the wind. Her voice, from another place, another dream.
The gibbous moon emerged, white and cold. Not sand or leaves, but snow, hiding the summits of Mounts Timor and Tinnibin as they loomed above her. She was in the Blue Pass of the Ebonbane, facing east toward Tai-tastigon. Something was crawling toward her like a shadow cast on the snow. Then it raised its head, and she recognized Bane's features.
The wrong brother had answered her.
Turn. Flee. If only she could escape back into the waking world, leave him here where he belonged, nightmare creature that he had become....
" You can't run from me forever," whispered the darkness behind her, mockingly. "Blood binds...."
The moon waxed, waned, then waxed again, the snow melting under its pale light. The shadow-thing that pursued her sank into the green of spring, but still it came on, sometimes crawling, sometimes wrapped around some wild creature which it caught and rode until the soul was eaten out of it. One stag lasted a week before falling to pieces before the horrified Grindarks who were hunting it. On it came, down the trade road beside the Ever-Quick, through the Oseen Hills, over the toes of the Snowthorns, into the Riverland, and finally to the gates of Gothregor itself, to break its long fast and then to hunt...
Jame woke with a gasp. Slowly, the tower room redefined itself around her, Jorin's grunt of protest at the sudden tightening of her arms changing back to a drowsy purr. Calm down, calm...
Those damned dreams again. Bad enough that they repeated themselves every time exhaustion forced her to sleep. Worse, that each repetition ended with a new installment, as if the pursuit really was drawing nearer. But, after all, they were only dreams.
All right: she did resent the way that Tori had treated her. It hadn't been easy to restore Ganth's sword and ring to him. Some of the things she had done, some of the places she had been, would have startled him considerably, if he had bothered to ask. He never had. Of course, Marc could tell him, but Tori disliked spies so much that she didn't think he would seek information behind her back. Fine, then: let him stay ignorant...but she really should have told him that Kin-Slayer had been reforged in Perimal Darkling.
