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Chapter 2
The Hell Hunt

Tagmeth and Kithorn: 6th-7th of Winter

THE HANGING MAN moved restlessly in the breeze under his oak bough, his feet barely clearing the tall weeds sprung up between the River Road's paving stones. His body had been encased in boiled leather, molded to his limbs and sealed with wax. Only his gaping mouth and distended nostrils remained open to the cold night air. He faced northward toward the mountains of his people. Then the wind caught him and he turned east, then south to stare with leather-blinded eyes down the road into the curving valley of the Riverland.

The two men on horseback looked at him.

"A watch-weirdling," said the younger, slighter of the two. "So this is why we had to leave our weapons at Tagmeth. What kind of a noise does this thing make when it smells Kencyr steel?"

"You wouldn't want to hear it." The burly Kendar scowled mistrustfully at the tangled shadows lining the road before them. "This is the edge of our territory, lord. The Riverland may belong to the Kencyrath, but these hills haven't been ours since Kithorn fell to the Merikit nearly eighty years ago. Another step and that thing will scent the iron in our horse gear. Turn back, Lord Torisen. Please."

"Please?" The Highlord looked at him, a glint of amusement in his tired, silver-gray eyes. "You haven't used that word on me since Urakarn. Where would you be now if I'd listened to you then?" He dismounted and tethered Storm, his black quarter-blood Whinno-hir, to a bush. The stallion snorted, his breath white plumes in the sharp air, and tried to back away from the hanging corpse as the wind turned it creaking to face him. Torisen quieted him.

"You forget," he said in the same soothing tone, looking up at Burr. "I'm on an inspection tour of the northern keeps, and Kithorn is the northernmost of the lot, except for a few like my old home up near the Barrier. Stay with the horses, if you like. I shouldn't be long."

He turned and walked up the overgrown road.

Burr shook his head. " 'Stay,' he says. Huh!" He tied his gray horse next to Torisen's black and followed his lord.

Dry leaves crackled underfoot, cold stone rang. This was the gray margin between autumn and winter, with bare branches stark against a full moon and fat snowflakes drifting down from a nearly cloudless sky. In the distance, a fox barked. It was almost midnight, and bitter cold.

Back at Tagmeth, watchfires would be burning in the ruined courtyard while Torisen's Kendar retainers lay rolled in their blankets beside them. Burr remembered the cheerful glow fading behind them as they had slipped out into the night like a pair of thieves. He wondered if Torisen—always so quick to chill—was warm enough now, but knew better than to ask. He himself missed his short sword more than the fire's warmth. If the Highlord should be attacked here, so far from help . . .

* * *

TAGMETH, from which the two had come, had been empty for a long time. Like all the paired keeps that faced each other across the Silver at twenty to twenty-five mile intervals down the length of the Riverland, it had been built nearly a thousand years before to guard the northern frontier between the ancient kingdoms of Bashti and Hathir. Both the Riverland and the keeps had eventually been ceded to the Kencyrath so that it might serve as a buffer state here in the far north. Tagmeth had been claimed once, then abandoned as blood feuds and foreign wars thinned the ranks of the Highborn and the great houses began to gather their strength in keeps farther south. Now frost-blackened brier roses scrambled in and out of Tagmeth's shattered walls and owls roosted in what was left of its rafters.

Its semi-ruined state had intrigued the Highborn boys who had come there with Torisen. They had clambered all over it at the risk of their necks, hunting relics of its past life, disturbing bats and foxes. Then, that evening they had sat around the fire in its solar above the hall, under the open sky, sipping hot mulled wine and trying to sound like seasoned warriors on campaign. They had quite forgotten that the Highlord of the Kencyrath was in the same room. Torisen had withdrawn to a window ledge just beyond the light, where he quietly sat, warming his hands on his wine cup, watching the boys' flushed faces.

Every six months, he summoned nine different Highborn youngsters from various houses of the Kencyrath to serve him. Some, one day, might become the heads of their respective families; others might die in the vicious blood feuds that still wracked the Highborn even after three years of relative calm under Torisen's rule. He wanted these boys to know him, and each other. If the Houses ever became as linked by friendship as they were by blood, perhaps at last the killing would stop. But that was years in the future.

Still, he reminded himself, when this lot first assembled at Gothregor a month ago, he had thought it might take decades, if not centuries. These boys were the Highborn in microcosm. Four came from major houses, five from minor ones; most were only distant or bone kin to each other except for Morien and Brishney, half-brothers; and nearly all had some blood feud festering at home. There was even one of Lord Caineron's numerous grandsons here: Donkerri, a timid, pale-faced boy who had clearly been reared to think of Torisen as Grandpa's greatest enemy, which he probably was. The Highlord had brought the whole troop on this inspection tour largely to keep them from each other's throats. And it had worked. The leisurely two-week trip up the Silver, with its hunting and camping—not to mention visits to all the keeps north of Gothregor—had brought most of them closer than he had dared hope, even if they were still a bit shy of him. Now as they sat around the fire sipping wine and talking, he regarded them one by one, remembering all the good men lost to blood feuds over the years, wondering how long these boys would honor their campfire fellowship.

Their voices began to blur. Torisen jerked his head up, shying away from the ambush of sleep. Burr was watching him. He forced himself to concentrate on the boys' chatter.

"We're close to Kithorn here," Morien was saying.

"Brishney, remember when we went bone hunting on a winter's night like this four years ago and nearly got caught by a Merikit hunting party?"

Brishney laughed. "I remember. It's a good thing we brought back that tibia for the pyre or Father would have finished the Merikits' work for them."

Torisen raised his eyebrows. "Explain," he said quietly to Burr as the Kendar refilled his cup.

The boys started at the sound of his voice and exchanged glances. Burr shook his head.

"He wouldn't know about it, lord," said Brishney. "It's . . . well, it's a kind of open secret among us boys. You see, Kithorn fell through treachery. One night, a Merikit hall-guest opened the gate to his kinsmen, and every Kencyr there, Highborn and Kendar alike, was slaughtered."

"Surely that's no secret."

"No, m'lord, of course not. You've probably heard that most of the bodies were recovered the next spring when word of the massacre filtered south. But some couldn't be found. Boys started slipping into the hills on bone hunts. Our grandfathers started it, and our fathers went, too. Now we go, although there's precious little left to find, and we get beaten at home if we're caught at it; but, well, it's become a sort of ritual, and Trinity help the boy who doesn't visit Kithorn at least once before he turns fifteen."

They began to compare notes. All had their own stories of search if not success and, often, of narrow escape, for the hills were well guarded. Only Donkerri was silent. When at last someone asked him what his luck had been, instead of answering he turned suddenly toward the shadowy figure seated on the window ledge.

"How old were you, Highlord, when you went up into the hills?" he demanded.

The others stared at Donkerri.

"Donkey, you ass . . ." hissed Brishney urgently.

"How old?"

At fifteen, half a life time ago, escaping the nightmare of his father's keep, the terrible trip south through the Haunted Lands, Ardeth's Riverland keep . . . "Sir, I am Ganth Gray Lord's son."

"If you stay here, boy, the other Highborn will kill you. Join the Southern Host under my name. They'll think you're some bastard son of mine I'm trying to get rid of, but never mind. Here's your commission, and a servant, Burr." At fifteen, learning to fight, to command and, at the red ruin of Urakarn, to survive.

The boys were staring at him, Caineron's grandson white-faced, his hands clenched together as though to hold him in his seat.

"I didn't grow up in the Riverland," Torisen said quietly. "Your grandfather must have told you that." Children, he thought, looking at them. They're all children. You can't make them stay up all night just because you're afraid to sleep. He rose and stretched. "That's enough for now. Yes, I know it's still fairly early, but remember that we start back tomorrow at daybreak. Now go to bed."

They filed out, still subdued. Burr collected the wine cups.

"You should send that brat home," he said over his shoulder.

"Donkerri? The boy just didn't want to admit that he'd never been to Kithorn."

The Kendar snorted. "His grandfather's keep is close enough. You could ride from Restormir to Kithorn in four hours."

"Let it rest, Burr." Torisen rubbed his stinging eyes. "We all find our own rites of passage."

"You should rest. It's been four nights now."

"So you've kept count."

Burr froze, his hand inches from a cup.

"And to whom will you pass that information now that Ardeth is no longer your master? Poor Burr, after all those years of spying on me and now no one to accept his reports. Oh hell," said Torisen abruptly, in quite a different tone. "Sorry. Get some sleep yourself. I still have work to do."

The Kendar bowed silently and left the room.

Torisen sat down by the firepit. When he held his cold, scarred hands out to the flames, they shook. You're weak, boy, his father's voice jeered at him out of the past. As weak as your sister. But Jame had never been weak, even as a child. They won't teach me how to fight. Tori, but you will. I'll make you. And she had tried, pouncing on him when he least expected it, learning snatches of the Senethar from his counter moves. Trinity, but he had been furious. How long ago that had been . . . and why was he thinking of it now? Forget the past, he told himself. You have no time for the dead. Now, to work.

He drew a sheaf of papers from his saddlebag. The first was a formal note from Prince Odalian of Karkinor, an ancient princedom far to the south near the Cataracts. The Prince congratulated the Highlord on his third year of successful rule. Torisen snorted. Successful, perhaps, in that he hadn't yet managed to get himself assassinated. But Odalian didn't mean that. His family, the Agontiri, had always had close ties to the Kencyrath because their capital city—in fact, their very palace —was built around a Kencyr temple.

Odd how other people so often seemed drawn to those nine houses on Rathillien of the Three-Faced God. Kencyr preferred to avoid them, partly because they shunned everything connected with their hated god, partly because no one, not even the priests, fully understood the temples. Kencyr hands hadn't even built them. Every time the Three People had been forced to retreat to a new threshold world, the temples had simply been there, waiting for them. Because all the temples on all the worlds bore the same architectural signature, as it were, scrollsmen suggested that their god had bound or at least commissioned a fourth people and sent them ahead to prepare the way. For lack of a proper name, these hypothetical folk were simply called the Builders. Their work was certainly impressive, but also unnerving, at least to Kencyr.

Those Kencyr priests obliged to serve at the Karkinaroth temple were the honored guests of the Agontiri. Odalian had recently gone one step beyond his status as host, though, by marrying the only Highborn lady even permitted to form an alliance outside the Kencyrath. Torisen suspected that the Prince would gladly become a Kencyr himself if that were possible. Well, there was no accounting for taste. He would answer the letter when he got back to Gothregor.

Next came a bundle of documents, claim and counterclaim. This was more serious business. Lord Coman of Kraggen Keep had recently died without designating a successor. It was customary in such instances as this for the oldest son to become the new head of the household. This would have suited Torisen well enough in one sense because Demoth, the son in question, was half an Ardeth and had virtually promised to follow his lead in all High Council votes. But he had his doubts about Demoth's ability to command. So, apparently, did most of the elders of Demoth's own family, who supported a younger son named Korey. Unfortunately, Korey's mother was a Caineron, and to give that family any more influence could prove fatal to the Highlord's own power.

The whole business made Torisen's head ache. How was he supposed to make a fair choice between the Coman's interests and his own, which might be considered those of the Kencyrath as a whole? This was the sort of problem that really needed the impartial judgment of the Arrin-ken; but in the great cats' absence, the other Highborn had accepted him as Highlord so that he might judge such cases and stave off the cataclysmic civil war that had seemed only one more blood feud away. Caineron must really have been desperate to have accepted such a check to his ambition, or maybe he had thought that he could easily dispose of Torisen when the time was right. All the lords must have felt equally endangered to have accepted on his word alone, without ring or sword, that he was Ganth Gray Lord's son. Even Ardeth must have had his doubts at first. Of course, he had wanted reports while Torisen fought under his standard with the Southern Host, and Burr had had to supply them. It was unfair, almost irrational, to hold that against Burr, but he still did.

Torisen recoiled from the thought. That was how it began, the slow slide down into madness. It ran in the Knorth blood. Ganth had died insane, screaming curses at the silent warriors out of Perimal Darkling who had broken into his keep, ravaging, slaughtering. Torisen had gone more than two weeks without a normal night's sleep trying to stave off the horrible dream that had shown him his father's death. That had been just after he came of age three years ago and couldn't decide whether or not to claim the Highlord's seat. His intolerable restlessness had finally driven him from the Southern Host and into the Wastes, where he had taken refuge in one of the vast, ruined cities whose bones littered the desert. But the nightmare had come anyway. They always did. Did he believe them? No, of course not. To far-see, even in dreams, was a Shanir trait and he— ancestors be praised—was no Shanir. But he had believed that dream enough to claim his father's power, and the other Highborn had given it to him.

The flames ran together before his eyes, close, much too close. The papers had caught fire. He threw them into the pit, cursing. Obviously he wasn't going to stay awake if he just sat here thinking. Dwar sleep? Six hours of its healing oblivion would certainly help, but what if this time the dreams followed him even there? To be trapped, unable to awake. . . . He rose and began to pace restlessly about the room.

Burr had stretched out on the landing in front of the upper chamber's door. He woke abruptly as someone stepped over him and, without thinking, grabbed the other's foot.

"Now, Burr," said Torisen's voice softly above him in the darkness. "D'you really want me to fall down these stairs head first?"

Burr let go and sprang up. "My lord, where are you going?"

"Out."

Burr swore under his breath. He knew only too well Torisen's habit of wandering about at night unescorted when he didn't want to sleep. In fact, that was why Burr was here now. "Those wretched boys and their bone-hunting stories . . ."

"Kithorn? Now there's an idea. Much obliged to you, Burr. Now go back to sleep."

"No. I can't stop you, my lord, but if I raise my voice, others will."

"And you will no longer be in my service—which, on the whole, would be a pity. All right, we compromise. How do you fancy a moonlight ride to Kithorn, Burr?"

The Kendar sighed. "I'll get the horses, my lord."

* * *

AND NOW THEY WERE almost there. Above them on its bluff, the fortress hunched sullenly against the mountains' darkness. Its outer ward was surrounded by overgrown cloud-of-thorn bushes whose berries hung like drops of dark blood in a lacework of three-inch spikes. Burr noticed something black on one of the bushes. It was a bat, upside down with its wings spread, impaled on a thorn. There was another on the next bush, and another and another, all with charm beads hung around their necks, all in various stages of decomposition. Burr slowed instinctively, feeling his scalp prickle. What were they doing here? This land no longer belonged to the Kencyrath—if, indeed, it ever really had. It didn't want them here now.

But what was that? He stopped short, straining to hear. Drums? The nearest Merikit village was only half a mile upstream. Then the wind veered, taking the distant throb with it.

If Torisen had also heard, he gave no sign. Burr hurried after him. They had come now to the ruined gatehouse, covered with vines. Wild grape leaves rattled down on them as they passed under its shadow and began to climb the steep road to the outer shell of the keep.

Inside, all was ruin.

They stood in the middle of the inner courtyard beside the well, looking about. The tumbled ruins of the armory, bakehouse, and granary lined the inner wall. Ahead loomed the tower keep. This had been the stronghold of a very old but minor house, already well on its way to extinction when the Merikit had wiped it out.

Torisen could see it all too clearly: the hall-guest creeping out in the dead of night, cutting the guard's throat, opening the main gate, the silent tribesmen pouring into the courtyard. . . . A spark of fire, and there went the hall's thatch, roaring up into the night. The Kendar tried to get out, but the doors were blocked. They threw wet blankets over their children and started to hack at the walls. Some cut their way out, only to die in the open, fighting, with shrieks from the tower echoing around them . . .

Now leafless vines hung over the walls, and saplings grew in the blackened ruins. Torisen shook his head to clear it. For a moment, he had almost plunged into the dream-memory of his own home's fall, had almost thought he heard small bare feet running, running, with fire and death behind them. Jame? No, of course not. She had been driven out of their father's keep long before the end; he should have left too, before the old man's madness had reached out for him.

"So they all died," he said, and hardly knew which keep he meant.

"Not quite all, lord. There was one survivor, a Kendar boy named Marcarn, who was out hunting by himself when all this happened. Afterward, he hunted the Merikit and killed one for each member of his lord's family and his own to pay the blood price. Of course, he only did what he had to, but because of him, the hills have been closed to us ever since."

"He must have been a great warrior," said Torisen rather absently.

"Oh yes, and a thumping big man too, when he was full grown. Like a siege tower walking. But for all that, I don't think he was very fond of bloodshed." Burr smiled. "He used to feign berserker fits in battle to scare off the enemy. It worked so well that some of our own lads went straight up the nearest tree the first time they saw it. I nearly did myself. But that was thirty years ago and more. Good old Marc. I wonder where he is now."

Torisen was no longer listening. He had crossed over to the far wall to look at something. Behind the vines was the crude image of a face, gap-mouthed and eyeless, drawn in dark lines on the pale stone. Beside it was another and another, all down the length of the wall. They were imus, symbols of a power so ancient that all but the name had been lost—or so most civilized men believed. Torisen touched one of the lines. It came away in brown flakes on his fingertips.

"Dried blood," he said, sniffing it. "Human, I think. Burr, you were right: we don't belong here." Suddenly he stiffened. "There, again!"

"Lord?"

"Don't you hear it? The patter of small feet running, running . . . I didn't imagine it!"

Burr wasn't so sure. His own senses weren't as keen as Torisen's, but then sleep-starved men often heard and saw things that weren't there. Then Burr did hear something, all too clearly.

"Drums," he said.

Torisen was already halfway up the crumbling stair that led to the battlement. Moonlight gleamed on the river as it twisted northward through the dark hills into the darker mountains. About half a mile upstream in the Merikit village, a great fire burned. Figures shuffled around it to the beat of a drum, while their chanting, borne southward by a freshening wind, grew louder and louder. Burr leaned forward over the parapet, straining to hear.

" 'Come, Burnt Man. Come, Burning Ones,' " he translated. " 'We mark him and cast him out, now hunt, hunt . . .' Trinity!"

A scream had cut across the chant, shrill as a woman in pain, but from no woman's throat. A dead silence followed. Then, from far up in the hills, came the booming answer, hoarse, wordless, inhuman. The men around the fire scattered. The flames flared up once, then sank, dying away altogether within seconds. In the darkness that followed, a distant yelping began, far, far away, but getting rapidly nearer.

"I take it we picked a bad night to visit."

Burr grunted. "You might say that, lord. The Merikit have driven out a kin-killer—probably a parricide—and called the damned down out of the hills to claim him, if he doesn't outrun them to the border."

"That, I suppose, puts us directly in his path, and theirs. Time to make for home, old friend."

They descended to the inner courtyard. At the foot of the stair, Torisen suddenly caught Burr's arm. "There!" he said. "Running, running . . . look!"

Burr saw the shadow sweep across the flagstones toward the keep and glanced upward for the night-bird that must have cast it. There was none. When he looked back, Torisen was halfway across the courtyard, darting after the shadow. Burr ran after him, shouting.

"Lord, the keep floor is rotten! Don't go—"

But the Highlord had already raced up the steps and through the keep's door. There was a splintering crash. Burr paused on the threshold, blinded by the darkness within.

"Oh God. Tori . . ."

"Mind your step," said Torisen's voice, apparently from under the earth.

Steel struck flint, and a flicker of firelight outlined the jagged hole in the floor from underneath.

"Burr, you'd better come down here. I've found her."

Her?

The Kendar edged cautiously up to the hole, hearing timbers groan underfoot, then jumped down into the keep's still room. The chamber was surprisingly undisturbed, considering the destruction above. Jars of preserves lined the walls, the seals still intact on those that hadn't long since exploded. Under them were jugs, their remaining contents unrecognizable under a five inch fur of dust. The corners of the room were buried as deep.

Torisen had set fire to a heap of wooden utensils on a side table and now crouched by the still's boiler, looking at something on the floor behind it. As Burr peered over his shoulder, he carefully folded back the tattered blanket. Under it was a huddled pile of bones, pathetically small and defenseless without even a scrap of cloth or flesh to cover them.

"There are no bloodstains on this," Burr said, examining the blanket.

"No. She must have fled here on the night of the massacre and died of shock and starvation, in the midst of all these provisions. A child's soul, trapped in these ruins for eighty years. . . . Burr, we've got to take her home."

The Kendar grunted, almost with amusement. "What else? But quickly, my lord. The hell hunt will be snapping at our heels as it is."

Torisen spread the blanket on the floor and hastily piled the bones on it while Burr held up a burning wooden spoon to light the work. Then the Highborn ran his fingers through the dust in a final check, knotted together the corners of the blanket, and rose. By now, the side table was also on fire. The preserves behind it began to explode with the heat.

"Right," said Torisen, ducking a spray of sticky glass. "Now we leave at a dead run before the wine cellar below this goes. Oh lord," he said, seeing Burr's expression. "You mean there actually is one? Climb, man. You first."

The Kendar scrambled up out of the hole, getting splinters under his nails, and turned barely in time to catch the blanket bundle as Torisen tossed it up to him. The Highlord swung himself up. At the keep door, however, he stopped suddenly, a hand thrown back in warning.

A man had come staggering into the courtyard through the main gate. He was dressed in the usual Merikit leathers and furs. His coarse black hair should have been braided, one plait on the right side for each son sired, one on the left for each man killed, but the right hand braids had been hacked off and the ones on the left apparently burned away. He looked wildly about, panting, then lurched toward the tower keep.

"Take the child and run," said Torisen without looking around. "Use the back way." He stepped forward over the threshold.

The Merikit stopped by the well, staring at him. Then he came on, his hands held out as if in supplication, making formless sounds. Torisen saw that his tongue had been cut out.

"Parricide," he said softly.

The yelping was very close now, just beyond the gatehouse. "Wha? Wha? Wha?" belled the pursuers. Where? Where? Where? Here! They were coming up the road to the main gate.

The Merikit turned at bay.

The hunting cry died as the Burning Ones swarmed into the courtyard. They were men, or once had been. Now they ran on all fours, or on wrist bones and knees for those whose hands or feet had dropped off. As they moved, their charred skin cracked open in fissures ember red and glowing like those on a half-burnt log. With them came the stench of burning flesh and a continual sizzling.

They played the Merikit back and forth across the courtyard as he bolted in yammering panic first one way and then another. Where they touched him, his clothes smoldered. Then he tripped. Hissing, they swarmed over his thrashing body and began to feed.

Burr pulled Torisen back inside the tower and slammed the door. "Those are only the hounds. D'you want to meet the Hunt-Master?"

"I told you to leave by the back way."

"There isn't one."

At that moment, the fire at last reached the wine cellar and a pillar of spirit-fed flame came roaring up through the hole in the floor. The two Kencyr backed away, scorched by the heat.

"Climb!" Torisen shouted over the uproar, pointing to a mural stair. They scrambled up to the second level. Even there, the air was rapidly growing hot and a lurid glare came up between the cracks in the floor boards. Torisen went to a south window.

"Too far to jump," he said, eyeing the shell's curtain wall some twenty feet away. "Pry up a plank."

They freed one of the long floor boards, its underside already smoldering, and shoved it out the window. It barely reached to the wall-walk.

Burr regarded it apprehensively. "You first, lord. I weigh half again as much as you do."

"And would rather burn than walk it. I remember how you are about heights. No, you first, Burr, if you don't want me to roast up here, too."

The Kendar swallowed. The very thought of putting a foot on that board made him feel sick. "Some people would be ashamed to take advantage of a man's weakness," he muttered, and stepped up. Eyes screwed shut, he began to edge out over the void.

"After nearly fifteen years, you should know me better than that," said Torisen's voice behind him. "Nothing is sacred but honor. Anyway, why so glum? I got you out of Urakarn. Trinity willing, I'll get you clear of this, too."

"Me glum? You're the one who's only happy when someone's trying to kill you."

The board groaned and sagged under his feet. He froze, gasping.

"In three seconds, I'm coming out there," said Torisen behind him. "One, two . . ."

The Kendar bolted forward, eyes still closed, and almost went over the battlement between two merlons. Behind him, he heard the board crack. Spinning around, he made a wild grab, caught Torisen's arm, and pulled him up onto the wall-walk. The other was still clutching the blanket full of bones.

"So far, so good," he said, rather breathlessly. "Now, how to get down?"

Close by, a black walnut grew just outside the wall, with its branches scraping against the stone. Torisen persuaded Burr to descend by the simple expediency of pushing him through a crenel into its boughs. When the Kendar reached the ground, swearing and sweating, his lord tossed the bundle of bones to him. But then, instead of climbing down, Torisen hesitated. He turned back to the courtyard.

"What is it?" Burr hissed up at him, fairly dancing with impatience.

"The Burnt Man is coming."

Hoofbeats crashed in the hollow shell of the keep, followed by a hoarse, wordless shout and the crack of a whip. A fierce wind sprang up in the enclosed space. Blazing leaves whirled skyward, mixed with flakes of burnt skin like black moths.

Torisen stood looking down. Wind lifted his dark hair. Fire haloed him.

"Lord!" Burr shouted, trying to break the spell. Then he spun around, listening. From the south came a thin, high wail. Even at this distance, it scraped on the nerves, like some small insect trapped in the inner ear.

Torisen had also heard. He vaulted over the parapet and swung down through the bare branches, dropping the last ten feet.

"The watch-weirdling?"

"Yes. Someone has crossed the border carrying weapons. Your guard from Tagmeth, perhaps?"

"If we're lucky. If not, we'd better get out of here before someone cuts us off. This way."

There was a postern in the wall not far away and the vestiges of a path leading down the steep, southern slope from it to the outer ward. They plunged down, first through rocks, then through a dark spinney of pines, into the overgrown meadow. Long, dead grass clutched at their legs as they ran. Behind them, the harsh roar in the courtyard grew. The tower keep roof burst into flames. Firelight sent their shadows leaping before them. The cloud-of-thorn hedges narrowed on either side as they neared the lower end of the ward. Ahead was the barbican, and Torisen's black horse plunging out of its shadow toward them. Burr's gray ran at Storm's heels, both his reins and the black's still tangled in the bush, which they had pulled out by the roots and were dragging after them.

"You have more sense than I do, Storm," Torisen said to his stallion, disentangling the reins and springing up into the saddle. "Here." He reached down for the blanket bundle, which Burr handed up to him.

Storm leaped forward, only to skid to a prancing halt a moment later as Torisen pulled him up sharply. Two riders on heavily lathered horses had emerged from the barbican. Burr's gray drew up level with the black. "Caldane, Lord Caineron," the Kendar said under his breath to Torisen.

"And Donkerri's father, Nusair. But who . . ."

A third horseman rode out of the shadows. Moonlight gleamed on his prematurely white hair.

Torisen stiffened. "Kindrie, Caineron's tame Shanir." He forced himself to relax, although Storm continued to dance nervously. "All right. Easy does it." He rode at a crab-step toward the gate. Burr, following him, saw that the archway behind the three Highborn was full of the lord's Kendar retainers.

"My dear Knorth," said Caineron genially. "What a delightful evening for a ride."

"My dear Caineron. Yes, isn't it, although I'm a bit surprised to see you so far north."

"Oh, I was at a hunting camp just south of Tagmeth when I heard about your little expedition. News travels quickly, even in the wilderness, if one has sharp eyes and ears."

Meaning that he had had spies watching Tagmeth. Damn. Torisen hadn't anticipated that, but then he hadn't thought that Caineron was ready to move against him either. Even if he really wasn't, this situation must be tempting the man to the far edge of his caution.

Behind them, the upper story of the tower caved in. Flames leaped up into the night.

"Ah," said Caineron, watching them. "Nusair tells me that one can always tell where you are by the sound of falling buildings."

"He should know. The last one he pulled down on me himself, oh, purely by accident, of course. At Tiglon, wasn't it?"

Nusair glowered at him.

"Or was it at Mensar? No. That was where that adder somehow got into my boot. I limped for a week, but the poor snake died."

"Accidents will happen," said Caineron blandly. "Especially if people are careless. It strikes me, Knorth, that it wasn't too clever of you to come up here alone on such a night. The Merikit aren't gentle with trespassers. How unfortunate if they should catch you here, so far from all assistance, and you without a single blood kinsman to make them pay the price. Now, if you had given my granddaughter the baby she wanted . . . but we won't dwell on such blighted hopes."

Burr tried to quiet his horse, knowing that it was only reacting to his own tension. Torisen wasn't handling this situation all that well; but then the presence of a Shanir always put him badly off stride, as Caineron well knew. What the rival lord apparently didn't know was that a Merikit hell hunt was about to ride down his throat.

A hollow boom sounded in the keep. The wind shifted, pushing against Burr's back.

". . . and all for nothing," Caineron was saying. "Anyone could have told you that all the Highborn remains were retrieved years ago."

"I see. Then the Kendar don't matter."

A shadow of vexation crossed Caineron's broad face. He wanted the Kendar and Shanir to think of him as their champion, but they were just fools enough to take such a slip to heart.

"Of course they matter," he snapped. "But it's hardly likely that—"

"My lord!" Kindrie suddenly rode forward, pointing. "Look!"

They all looked. There on the ground before Torisen was his shadow, Storm's, and that of a child sitting in front of him on the saddle. His arm tightened involuntarily around the blanket full of bones. On the ground, the shadow child turned to look questioningly up at the shadow lord. Trinity, he thought numbly. Sweet, sweet Trinity.

"Who?" came the yelping cry from Kithorn. "Who? Wha? Tha!"

Dark figures spilled out of the postern, their black skins laced with a glowing fretwork of lines. They disappeared under the pines, reemerged at the top of the ward. There was one more of them than before. They ran shambling on all fours, fire-mouthed, baying, and the dry grass burned in their wake.

"Oh my God," said Caineron, staring.

Torisen gathered Storm, holding him just barely in check.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I'm taking this child back to Tagmeth. I suggest you all follow me. In case you hadn't noticed, Burr and I aren't the only ones on Merikit land."

As Storm sprang forward, Kindrie's mount jumped sideways with a squeal, straight into both the Caineron. While the three horses were still entangled, Torisen and Burr swept past them under the barbican. The Kendar opened a path. In a moment, they were back on the River Road, their horses' steel-shod hooves striking sparks from the ancient stones. The hanged man's shrill wail grew closer, louder. There he was, hovering ghostlike directly in their path. His voice buzzed in their ears, in their heads, like a swarm of trapped mosquitoes. Storm's stride faltered. He started to shy, shaking his head at the maddening sound, then steadied. In a moment they were past the weirdling. It turned with them, but its voice was already fading. The sound died away completely as the last rider crossed the border.

Torisen fought Storm down to a canter. This could still turn nasty if Caineron thought he was running away. Would the man try something anyway? He must be tempted, and they were still at least twenty miles from Tagmeth. But suddenly, around a turn in the road, came more riders thundering northward. It was Torisen's guard, charging to the rescue at last. Caineron gave an ironic salute and fell back. Too late, my dear Caldane, too late . . . this time, at least.

* * *

"GOD'S CLAWS, but those Caineron are a public menace!"

Torisen was again pacing the upper chamber. He had been seething ever since his return half an hour before, but as usual had kept himself well in check while others were present. Now, with only Burr as a witness, it all boiled over.

"Of all the half-witted ambushes. . . . Caineron is the brightest of the lot, and even he can't see beyond his own petty schemes."

"Not so petty," said Burr to the cup he was filling.

"Not really so stupid either. He nearly got me. I'm the one with mashed turnips for brains."

Burr advanced on him. Not liking to be touched, Torisen backed away, straight into the chair that the Kendar had positioned behind him. Burr shoved the cup into his hand.

"Drink, lord, and rest. Names of God, I've seen men three days dead that looked better than you do now."

Torisen sipped the wine, grimacing. "If you want a pretty face, court Nusair."

"Huh! You should challenge that smug toad. How many times has he tried to kill you?"

"Who counts? Most campaigns are too dull anyway. And if I did challenge him, then what? Nusair won't lie, because that would cost him his honor, but Caineron isn't likely to sanction a duel, thereby forfeiting his right to a blood feud if I should win. At any rate, I'm no longer a mere commander of the Southern Host, able to fight as I please, nor am I all that secure as Highlord. It all comes to this: I can't afford to dignify Nusair's bungling with any attention at all, much less pick a fight with his father that, at present, I can't possibly win." He put down the empty cup and rubbed his eyes. "Odd that a Highborn can stab a man in the dark and keep his good name if only he doesn't disown the deed. I used to think that honor meant so much more."

Burr refilled the cup. He didn't know if he could get Torisen drunk, even in his present condition, but it was worth a try. Anything to make him sleep, and dreams be damned. After fifteen years, Burr knew at least in general terms what Torisen was trying to avoid and had little sympathy with the evasion. After all, dreams never hurt anyone, did they?

Turning to put down the ewer, Burr saw first the parcel of bones resting on the edge of the fire pit and then, with a start, the shadow on the wall of a small figure holding out spider thin hands to the blaze. He hadn't meant to say anything more, but this startled him into speech.

"Lord, you should give that child to the pyre as soon as possible, here, near her home. Look. She's reaching out to the flames."

"She's only cold. All those years alone, shivering in the dust. . . . My sister wasn't much older when . . ."

"My lord?"

Torisen shook his head, irritated at the slip. "Never mind. Anyway, we can't raise a pyre without a priest to speak the pyric rune."

"Kindrie was in training for the priesthood before he rebelled. Lord Randir disowned him for that."

"He's Caineron's man now."

"After tonight? Probably not for long. I think he deliberately rammed Caineron's horse to let us pass—why, God knows. Ask him for the rune, lord."

Torisen didn't reply.

Burr opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. The other's head had begun to droop. About time, too, thought Burr, and retrieved the full wine cup before Torisen could drop it. The child would have to wait. It shocked his blunt nature to think of her soul trapped between death and oblivion a moment longer than necessary, but after eighty years, a few hours more would hardly matter. He put another log on the fire and carefully draped a coat over the young man's shoulders, then sat down opposite him. His own bones suddenly began to ache with weariness. Keeping up with Torisen Black Lord was no easy job at the best of times, but it was his job. He looked across at the dark, bowed head, at the touches of white among the black, and remembered the day that Torisen had put aside his commander's collar.

"Well, Burr, that's the end of that. From now on, I will go under my own name and claim my own power. But what about you? What will you do now?"

Burr had swallowed, dry-throated. Here it came at last. "Lord, I had hoped to serve you at Gothregor."

"Indeed? And does my lord Ardeth still need someone to spy on me?"

"Lord, I broke with Ardeth this morning."

A long moment of silence had followed. Burr could still recall vividly how sick and empty he had felt, masterless for the first time in his life.

"I see, "Torisen had finally said, in a gentler tone. "You never were much good at planning for retreats, were you? Well then, I suppose you had better swear to me." And he had held out his beautiful, scarred hands.

The fire in the pit had sunk to embers. Burr groaned and straightened out his stiffened joints, surprised to find that he had slept. It must be almost dawn. But something had awakened him. What? Hoofbeats, down in the courtyard. Burr rose as quietly as he could and went to the window. Below, one of Torisen's Kendars held the reins of a post horse. Steam rose from its flanks. The rider must have already entered the main hall below. Yes, he could hear hushed, urgent voices. Burr slipped past the still sleeping Highlord and went quickly down the stairs.

A few minutes later he came back, making no effort this time to move quietly.

"My lord, wake up! There's news . . ."

The dark head moved. "Burning," murmured Torisen, in a voice Burr had never heard him use before, higher pitched and somehow younger than his own. "Burning, burning . . ." He was still asleep.

A cold wind seemed to blow through the Kendar's heart. He remembered the last time he had heard Torisen speak with a voice not his own, in a bone-white room, in a bleached city, in the heart of the Southern Wastes. He and Harn Grip-Hard, Torisen's randon commander, had tracked Torisen there after his sudden disappearance from the Southern Host. Three years ago, that had been, just before he had claimed the Highlord's power. They had found him raving in a deep, hoarse voice that sounded so like Ganth's and had thought that he was delirious or, worse, mad.

"He has no eyes," said that strange voice, through the flash of Torisen's clenched teeth. "That damned book killed him. They're after me. Run, run, run . . ."

He half rose, would have pitched forward into the glowing embers, if Burr hadn't forced him back into the chair.

"Blood and flies, crawling, crawling. . . . His skin is a tattered cloak . . . rope . . . tied down. C-can't move."

His head whipped back against the chair. The eyes, half open, showed only white.

Burr shook him, now thoroughly alarmed. "My lord!"

"Knives. They have knives . . . no!"

The Kendar seized the wine ewer and dashed its contents into his lord's face. Sputtering, Torisen fought his way out of sleep.

"Blind . . ." he said, almost in his own voice, covering his eyes. Then he forced his hands to drop and stared down at them, blinking. His pupils reappeared. He slumped back in the chair. "A dream, a stupid dream. . . . Why are you staring at me like that? Everyone has them."

"Yes, lord."

Torisen wiped sweat and wine from his face with a shaking hand. "You could at least have used water. Trinity, what a mess. Wait a minute. You said something about news."

"Yes, lord. A post-rider has just arrived from Gothregor . . ."

"Well?"

"The Horde has stopped circling and is moving northward."

"Oh my God. All three million of it?"

"Apparently. The Southern Host has marched out to meet it."

"That damn fool Pereden. What does he think fifteen thousand can do against three million? But then King Krothen probably didn't give him any choice. Where's that messenger now?"

"Below, lord."

"Well, fetch him, man. Hurry."

Burr bowed and left the room.

Torisen found a bucket of water in a corner and plunged his hands into it. Wine stained the water like blood. He washed the stickiness from his face and hair, scrubbing long after both were clean, as though trying to rinse away the last traces of nightmare. But if one bad dream had ended, another was about to begin. He thought of Krothen, King of Kothifir, gross and greedy, but oh so rich. Kencyr troops were hired out all over Rathillien. Only Krothen, however, could afford so many of them that the resulting force could properly be called a host. The Southern Host was his elite guard and the Kencyrath's major source of income, as well as its field training ground for young officers and troops. Krothen had used the Host at Urakarn to lead a hopeless assault against his enemies, but would even he pit it, apparently unsupported, against such an overwhelming foe as the Horde? And what about young Pereden, Ardeth's son, who had taken command after Torisen had left to become Highlord? Why had he consented to such a suicidal use of his troops?

Torisen sighed. The first major threat since he had become Highlord, and it had to be this.

He dried his face and hands on a cloak. Ready? No. The parcel of bones still sat beside the fire. On the wall, shadow lord and shadow child confronted each other. Torisen stood there a moment, biting his lip, then picked up the bones. On the wall, the child put her arms trustingly around the lord's neck. He carried the bones to his pallet and covered them with his cloak.

Footsteps echoed on the stair. Torisen, Lord Knorth, sat down again by the fire and waited.

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