THEY WANTED her to wake up. Jame could hear them whispering around the bed. Her eyelids felt as if they were glued shut, and her head was pounding. Oh, why didn't they let her sleep? Nimble fingers plucked at her clothes.
Get up, up, up, Chosen of our Lord! Get undressed and dressed. Tonight is the night!
"Oh, go away," she groaned. "I'm sick, I'm . . . what night?"
Giggles answered her. She forced open her eyes. They were crouching all around the bed, peering at her over the counterpane with golden, gleeful eyes. Long fingers like shadows in the coverlet's creases poked at her. Except for their eyes, their bodies seemed no more substantial than those shadows. She struggled up on one elbow, fighting down a wave of dizziness.
"Who are you?"
Forgotten us so soon? Shame, shame, shame! Our lord sent for us, called us from our dim world into his dim rooms, up from the depths of the House. Said, "Teach this child the Great Dance, as you taught the other one. One name will do for both." And so we taught you, the new Dream-Weaver. Years, it's been, all to be consummated tonight. Now get up, up, up . . . or shall we get into bed with you?
"No!"
Jame swung her feet down to the floor and nearly pitched head first out of the bed. How groggy she felt. Some of it might be due to dwar sleep, but as for the rest. . . . This was like one of those leaden nightmares in which one couldn't rouse oneself enough to fend off some ill-defined threat even as it crept closer, closer . . .
The shadowy forms crouched about her feet, staring avidly up at her. She clawed her way up the bedpost and stood, clutching it, swaying.
Ahhhh . . . ! sighed the shadows. They rose about her, tall and lithe, no more distinct than before. Their eyes shone. Now undress and dress, Chosen One. Quick, quick, quick . . . or shall we help you?
Jame fumbled at her clothes, all the Talisman's deftness gone. It was becoming harder and harder to remember that such a person had ever existed. The fire had long since died, and the air was chill on her bare skin. How cold the House always was. She remembered . . . remembered . . . what? Her head seemed full of dust balls. They were offering her something. A garment. It seemed to be nothing but spun shadows, weightless in her hands, but she thought she remembered how to put it on. There. Except for its full sleeves, it clung to her like a shadow, at the same time leaving bare much skin in unexpected places. Wonderingly, she ran her hands down the length of her body.
Ahhhh . . . !
Someone had worn a costume like this before, someone called . . . the B'tyrr? But who had that been? Her head spun again, and she barely kept her balance. Time seemed to be collapsing in on itself, past and present merging, the past swallowing the present. Sweet Trinity, to be a child again, here! To be forced to live through all those lonely, frightening years again . . . They tugged at her with the quicksand grip of nightmares half remembered. She fought them desperately, swaying on her feet, but the poison in her blood pulled, too. The past few years faded away. Tai-tastigon was gone, and the Anarchies and Karkinaroth. This was the Master's House. She was the Chosen, and this was her night. Shadowy hands combed out her long black hair, caressed her, plucked impatiently at her sleeves.
Ah, don't keep him waiting. Come with us, come! Quick, quick, quick! She went.
BURR LED ARDETH AND KINDRIE through the sleeping camp. The Host was strung out nearly two miles in the long strip of meadow that ran at this point between the River Road and the banks of the Silver. Down by the river, witch-weed cast its red glow over the rippling water. In the meadow between the watch fires, fireflies danced. The deep, slow breathing of nearly twenty-five thousand Kendar in dwar sleep made it seem as if the night itself slept. But there would still be watchers and little chance of concealing everything from anyone who really wanted to find out.
"Still, let's not make Caineron a present of any more than we have to," murmured Ardeth, putting a hand on Burr's shoulder. "Walk slower, my friend. Now, who saw you helping the Highlord back to his tent?"
"Luckily, it happened just beyond the Knorth encampment. Only his own people saw, and not all that many of them."
"There, you see? Things aren't so bad. Now slow down."
The Knorth camp was at the far southern end of the camp, and the Highlord's tent was very nearly at the southern perimeter. Sentries patrolled beyond it. Beyond them, a thin crescent moon rode over dark meadows and the silken sheen of the river. Everything seemed peaceful, until a shaggy form rose up in the tent's shadow, growling softly.
"Be quiet, Grimly," Burr hissed. "How is he?"
The Wolver straightened up and stepped out into the firelight. Somehow, he looked less hairy than he had a moment before.
"Worse. We had to gag him."
He held open the flap and they all went in. Torisen's tent was much simpler than those of the other lords; it consisted of only three chambers, one inside the other. Donkerri jumped up as they entered the innermost room. He was clutching a piece of firewood and looked terrified but ready to do battle. When he saw who they were, however, he dropped the wood and burst into tears. Burr took him in charge.
Torisen lay on his cot. His arms had been tied down and a piece of cloth forced between his teeth. His pale face was wet, and the bedding beneath soaked. Apparently Burr had come closer to drowning his lord than waking him with a bucket of water. The Highlord was twisting slowly in his bonds. His eyes, open only a slit, showed nothing but white.
Ardeth sat down beside him and gently pushed the damp hair off his forehead. "My poor boy. Was he this bad, Burr, when you and Harn tracked him down to that city in the Southern Wastes?"
"No, lord," said Burr. "This is much worse: like what happened then combined with Tentir, nightmare on top of poison."
"Before we gagged him, he was raving about shadows with golden eyes," said the Wolver, "and he mentioned venom again. Venom in the wine. Burr has told me about Tentir. Could this have something to do with the wyrm's attack there?"
"It's possible. The old songs say some odd things about the effects of wyrm's venom. Of course, there are some poisons available even here on Rathillien that can tie a Highborn into fancy knots, especially if administered in wine over a sufficient period of time. How long have you been the Highlord's cupbearer, boy?"
Donkerri backed away, blinking, stammering. "I-I didn't do anything, lord. I wouldn't! I belong here."
Ardeth regarded him coolly. "It was just a question. Don't take everything so personally, boy."
Torisen made a stifled noise. His teeth ground into the cloth, and his head began to rock back and forth.
"It's starting again," said Burr hoarsely.
Ardeth steadied the young man's head. He hesitated. Then, obviously consumed with curiosity, he cautiously loosened the gag. Everyone braced himself, hardly knowing what to expect. Torisen surprised them all. In a low, rapid voice, he was muttering one word over and over again:
". . . don't, don't, don't . . ."
THE COLD, GRAY HALLS—no longer entirely empty. Indistinct figures stood in obscure corners, sat in moldering chairs. They were all so terribly thin. Only their eyes moved, following Jame as she passed with her escort of shadows. She stared back at them. Surely she had seen many of their starved faces on death banners in the Master's Great Hall. Then the faint breeze changed, and they all vanished.
Now hangings rippled against the wall, so threadbare that the stones beneath showed plainly through them. The faded carpets, too, scarcely hid the pavement they covered. Jame's feet rang on them as if on naked stone. It seemed to her dazed senses that shapes flitted about her now, casting no shadows on the cold floor. A hiss rose, faint but vehement:
The Dream-Weaver, the Soul-Reaver! Traitor, cursed be . . .
Tattered clothes, haggard faces—they were less distinct even than the motionless figures had been; but Jame could see now that they were the same folk, only younger and less emaciated. Their bone-thin hands were making the ancient Darkwyr sign—against her.
"No!" she cried, trying to clutch at them. "That wasn't me! I never hurt you, I never hurt . . ." but the breeze changed again, and they melted out of her grasp like mist unraveling.
Shadowy fingers pulled at her. Golden eyes gleamed. Why are you dawdling, naughty child? The dead are dead. Come, come, come!
She went, stumbling a bit with shock. The venom in her blood must have opened the abyss of the past to her, to see if not to touch. If so, she was the only true phantom here, a ghost from the future, drifting through the murky shadows of what had been.
More halls, more rooms. They passed a large chamber in which the floor fell sharply away around the walls, leaving a small central island. Something moved sluggishly in the pit. A loathesome stench arose and a sound like the monotonous muttering of curses. Jame hesitated, troubled. She vaguely remembered something about a cage without bars, but was that the bare island or the malodorous pit that surrounded it—and the cage of whom? Her guides plucked impatiently at her again, and she went on.
More rooms, more halls. As the fitful breeze blew, flickers of ghostly life came and went.
They passed another chamber, deep, high-vaulted. At its far end loomed an enormous iron face with flames in its mouth. Fire light glowed red off the ranked weapons that lined the walls. A breath of air, and the armaments were mounds of dust on the floor, the face a noseless, rusting hulk; but on an anvil before its ash-filled mouth lay a sword. The air about it wavered with heat, making the serpentine patterns on its newly reforged blade seem to quicken with uneasy life.
Then they were beyond the room, going down a corridor, around a corner and down a stair into the Great Hall of the Master's House.
Jame hesitated on the threshold. Surely she had just heard a faint thread of music. There it was again, the merest whisper. Wisps of color moved around the edges of the vast dark hall, and something white shimmered in the center of the floor. A woman, dancing? Patterns of force wove about her, reached out, fed. The music faltered, and the bright colors faded.
Then Jame understood. Of all the memories that the House held, this was the oldest, the darkest. "Don't!" she cried, and darted forward to grab the Dream-Weaver's arm. For a moment, she thought her hands had actually closed on something. The faintest glimmer of a face turned toward her, then dissolved in the breeze she herself had brought with her rush across the floor.
"The past cannot be changed."
Jame spun around toward that faint but distinct voice. Someone stood on the stairway. She could see the steps through him, and yet felt his presence more vividly than that of any other object in all that vast hall. He looked very tall and lordly, clad in the splendor of elder days; but shadows fell across him, and she couldn't see his face.
"I go ahead to prepare the way," he said. "Follow soon."
He turned and went up the stairs. With each step, Jame saw his retreating form more clearly, as if he were climbing out of the well of the past, drawing closer to her even as he moved away. The silver glove on his left hand flashed, then the lintel of the doorway hid him. The sound of his footsteps, still climbing, echoed in her head.
Sweet Trinity, Gerridon.
Jame turned to bolt and stumbled into the arms of her golden-eyed guides. They dropped a cloak on her shoulders.
Here, here! A present, child, an heirloom full of life!
It was made of black serpent skins sewn together down two thirds of their length with silver thread. The snakes' tails, coiled together in a knot beneath her chin, twitched. The sense of nightmare rose again, overwhelming her. Surely this had all happened before. They would lead her to the stair, and she would climb after the Master up, up toward red ribbons, beyond . . .
There was another ghost in the hall. Jame saw it indistinctly by the far wall, standing in shadow. It seemed different from the others she had encountered, but her scattered wits couldn't quite grasp in what way. The others had seen it, too. They whispered together with a sound like the wind singing through river reeds. Then a silver ripple of laughter moved among them.
See, child, see, a gift for your betrothed! Now dance with us, dance for us, and gather this wilted flower for your lord!
She didn't want to. It was wrong, wrong, but now one of them had slipped off the cloak again, and the rest were darting around her with avid golden eyes, their shadowy fingers barely touching her skin in phantom caresses. She didn't want that, and yet she did. Her skin glowed. Almost despite herself, she began to move, tracing the first kantirs of a dance that she had never brought to consummation. Its power unfolded in her. To shape the dance, to be the dance! At first shadows glided with her, touching and touched, but then she moved alone, reshaping the very air with her passage.
On the edge of the dance was a presence. The ghost. The dance reached out to him, tantalizing, seducing. It sensed what he wanted most—to belong, finally to have both a place and name of his own. The dance gave no promises, but oh, what hints it made. Sway, turn, the hands moving just so. He couldn't conceive of how thoroughly he could belong. The soul was a small price to pay for such utter acceptance, such intimate satisfaction. What good was a soul anyway? It only weighed one down. She could take it oh, so easily. She hungered for it. But . . . but . . . but it was wrong.
The unbound energies of the dance spun outward to dissipate in the hall. Tapestried faces crumbled at their touch. Jame came back to her senses with a gasp to find Graykin lying in her arms, pale, ready. She dropped him.
"Ancestors preserve me. What did I almost do? Graykin, are you all right? Graykin?"
He blinked up at her for a moment, and then burst into tears.
Jame felt like crying herself. "Oh, hell. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She sat down with a thump beside him, suddenly too dizzy to stand. The immediate past was rushing back in on her, jumbled up with scraps of those now-not-entirely-lost years that she had spent in Perimal Darkling—spent here. The nightmare hadn't let go yet. She felt its cruel pull and tried desperately to anchor herself to the present with questions.
"Graykin, what are you doing here? Has something happened?"
"Happened?" He sat up and glared at her. "Why, what could happen except that the Prince has bolted shut the last palace door on the outside and the whole temple has started to disintegrate, and now there's some farking giant of a man I've never even seen before sneaking around with an overgrown cat while the palace begins to collapse around our ears—and what are you laughing at?"
"It's Marc and Jorin. It has to be. Graykin, men his size don't sneak. They aren't physically equipped for it. So at least he and Jorin are free. Ancestors be praised for that. But you said the palace was sealed off now from the outside. So the Prince has left it. When does his army march to join the Host?"
"Four days ago. It's the twenty-fourth of Winter, you skinny twit. You've been cavorting around in here—wherever 'here' is —for ten days."
Ten days. Was it possible? Between dwar sleep and the slower passage of time here, yes, damnit, it was. And Tirandys, impersonating Prince Odalian, had already marched off to meet her unsuspecting brother. She must warn Tori. She must . . . must . . .
"Hey, stop that!"
"Stop . . . what?"
"Fading, damnit!" Now Graykin looked indignant and more than a bit frightened. He was also beginning to take on some aspects of a rather dirty window.
"You're fading too, Graykin."
Trinity, what was happening? Jame had assumed that whatever images of the past she saw, she herself was still in the House's dusty present as she apparently had been all the years she had been growing up here. But she had been here ten days longer than Graykin this time. Had her present become subtly dislocated from his? Or had she finally learned how to move in the past? Or . . .
The wyrm's venom wrenched at her mind. She couldn't tell any more what made sense and what didn't. Under her panicky efforts to think, the fear grew that she would never leave this place again. Just the same, Tori had to be warned.
"Graykin, listen."
Rapidly, she told him about the changer, Odalian, and the trap set for the Kencyr Highlord. He listened, his sharp features becoming less and less distinct, his expression less readable.
"And that," she concluded breathlessly, "is why you have to carry word of all this to Torisen. Find that giant and tell him what I've told you. He can break you out of the palace if it's humanly possible and help you and Lyra to reach the Host. Well?"
He hesitated. "Are you sure about all this?" His voice sounded thin and distant. "I mean, if you've really been poisoned, you might have dreamed a lot of it. It all sounds so fantastic."
"Sweet Trinity. Is it any more fantastic than this?" She jabbed a finger at his now almost transparent chest. It sank in up to the first joint without hurting either of them. Graykin drew back with a gasp.
"All right, all right, I believe you! But will the Highlord believe me?"
She hadn't thought of that. "Proof. He's got to have proof. But what . . . Graykin, up those stairs over there, left around the corner and down the hall, there's a room with a furnace in the shape of a huge iron face. On an anvil in front of it is Kin-Slayer, the Knorth heirloom sword, reforged. Take that to the Highlord and . . . and tell him his sister Jame sends it. Then he'll believe you."
Graykin stared at her. From his standpoint, it was as if a ghost had spoken those incredible words in a voice as faint as a whisper from the tomb. He could hardly see her at all now.
"Promise me you'll warn my brother, Graykin," she was saying in a desperate tone, holding out phantom hands pleadingly to him. "Promise. . . ." And she was gone.
Graykin jumped up. He didn't like this place. There were things here he could never understand, could never control. That strange girl had promised him . . . what? Something he would almost have given his soul to possess. Almost? But what she had given him was information, and that was power.
All right, my lad, he told himself. Let's not falter now. One, two, three . . . !
He dashed across the hall, up the marble stairs, around the corner, down the hall, and fetched up gasping on the threshold of a room. There was the rusting, iron face and there lay the sword. Even with its hilt emblem smashed, it was beautiful. He touched it almost reverently and snatched back his hand with a gasp. The blade might still be hot, but the hilt was so cold that it almost burned his hand. He dropped his handkerchief over it and picked it up. The pride of the Kencyrath, in a half-breed's hand. He would show them. Oh yes, he would show them all. Now, one, two, three . . . !
He dashed back the way he had come. On the second flight of stairs, he almost thought that he passed someone. A coldness went past, and a glimmer of something white like the profile of a blanched face. Graykin almost followed before he checked himself. No one had ever stood by him. Why should he stand by anyone else? But she had refused to call him by that hated name and had trusted him with her own. Yes, but again, there was no way he could help her now, even if he wanted to.
He ran down the stairs and across the hall. At the far side was the door that opened into the palace's corridor. You couldn't see it from this side, but it was there. He had checked. Graykin paused on the threshold, looking back at the hall. He still didn't know where he had been, but he did know what he had gained: the Highlord's sister had put Kin-Slayer in his hands, and he hadn't given her his promise.
JAME CLIMBED the stairs. They seemed to rise forever, twisting this way and that. Sometimes the uneven stone treads ran up between narrow walls, sometimes one side or the other opened up into echoing depths. A cold wind blew down from above. The serpent skin cloak lay dank and heavy on her shoulders. Every time its trailing heads bumped up another step at her heels, the tails, coiled together under her chin, twitched in protest.
She tried to think what she should do. Was everything going to happen just as it had the first time; or by some cruel twist was this the first time, different only in her foreknowledge of it? Ancestors preserve her, to be trapped in the same round of events, years' worth of them, happening over and over . . .
An alcove by the stair and in it, waiting, the man who had scratched on her door in the palace and later rescued her from the leech vines, whose ravaged face had haunted her dreams for years.
"Bender? Terribend? What's going to happen? What should I do? Please tell me!"
He pressed something cold into her hand. A knife. It was all white and all of a piece, hilt and blade, as if hewn from a single bone. Its pommel was carved with the faces of three women, or perhaps of one woman at three different ages: maiden, lady, hag. It didn't warm to Jame's touch. When she looked up again, the skull-faced man was gone.
She began to climb again, knife in hand, moving slower and slower with each step.
At the top of the stair was a doorway opening into darkness. Red ribbons tumbled about it, plaiting and replaiting in the wind that blew through from the other side. Jame stopped, just out of their reach. Oh God, now what? Was he waiting, just beyond the light, waiting for her to cross his threshold? She had once before, armed as she was now, intent on . . . on . . . what?
Jame sat down abruptly on the steps, on the cloak. The serpent heads rose hissing in protest, but she ignored them. Earlier she had felt this memory rising and in near panic had thrust it back into darkness. Now it lurched to the surface despite her.
The last time she had come here and the Master had reached out from the beribboned bed, had started to draw her in, she had slashed wildly at him, not because she feared him but because she was afraid of herself. She had wanted to go to him. He would have given her power, security, love—all the things she had never had before. Priest, father, lover. There was no wish, no desire he could not have fulfilled, or so it had seemed.
Even now, the lure drew her. Her desire to belong was at least as strong as Graykin's, and her chances of acceptance among her own people perhaps just as slight. They would shun her, she thought, for the very things that the Master would prize: her darkling training, her Shanir blood, herself. What chance did she have among her own people? What chance had they ever given her? But here she was offered acceptance, power, yes, even a red ribboned bed, velvet shadows, the touch of a hand in the dark . . .
She put her own hand to her cheek and felt its flushed warmth even through gloved fingertips. Lost, lost . . . but not perhaps quite yet. This was the way the first Dream-Weaver had gone, taking the pleasure, never counting the cost—to herself or to anyone else. This was the end of innocence, of honor, and perhaps, finally, of the Kencyrath itself. Nothing was worth that.
All right, then, she thought, trying to force her chaotic thoughts into cool, logical patterns. If you're not going to let yourself be seduced, then what?
First option: kill the bastard.
She had tried that before, without success. Could she trust herself to strike the man now, to kill him? No. Not with a mere knife. Especially not with this damn poison slowing her reflexes, muddling her thoughts, yes, perhaps even her loyalties.
Second option: run away.
That too she had tried and bought herself several years of freedom before coming back full circle to this threshold. This time, however, the venom in her blood trapped her in this place, at this time.
Third option: . . .
Her mind scrambled for it, stumbling over half-formed ideas, groping for a solution that refused to take shape. Only one thought remained brutally clear: If she went through those ribbons now, she would be lost forever, knowing the evil she did, welcoming it.
Damnit, it wasn't fair! She hadn't asked to be dealt into this game, much less born into it. Think of all the lives it had shattered over the past three millennia, all the honor and joy lost; and if the Master finally won, so did Perimal Darkling. How did the old song go? Alas for the greed of a man and the deceit of a woman, that we should come to this! Gerridon's greed, the Dream-Weaver's deceit, or rather her willful ignorance that had brought her to such shame. And she was Jame's mother? She thought Tirandys had said so, but that wasn't an idea she felt strong enough to cope with just now. No, better to think of her only as someone else whom Gerridon had used, just as he wanted to use her now. Well, she wouldn't let him, not while a single option remained. But what options were left? Sit here until she turned blue? Find a good book to read? Take up knitting snake cozies?
"Oh hell," said Jame, and put her head in her hands.
The poison's grip was tightening. Soon there wouldn't be a coherent thought in her mind, probably just about the time the Master got tired of waiting and came to look for her. A fine mess she had made of everything, as usual. Tirandys was right: She should never even have been born. But perhaps he was also right about the next best solution.
A stillness came over Jame, as if for a moment her heart forgot to beat. Yes, of course. The final option. It had been there all the time, waiting for her to recognize it.
Your choice, Jamethiel.
In Tai-tastigon, she had chosen to take responsibility for her own actions, whatever the cost. In the Ebonbane she had chosen the pit rather than see Marc fight an Arrin-ken in her defense. Perhaps it wasn't her fault that she had originally been given a role in Gerridon's game; but if she went on, she might soon become responsible for deeds so terrible that nothing would atone for them. Best not to take the chance.
She leaned back against the wall. Poison might flow in her veins, but it was life pounding there that she felt now. How much she had wanted to accomplish with it. So much to do, so much to see; yes, and so many mistakes yet to make—great, thumping big ones, if the past was any guide. Oh well. One couldn't have everything. She didn't have a mountain crevasse or another cup of venom, but what she did have was even better.
Jame looked at the white knife. Her fingers were numb from gripping it, and her hand had begun to shake. But it was very sharp. It would do. She raised it and laid its keen edge carefully against her bare throat.
* * *
"I DON'T LIKE THE LOOKS OF THIS," said Ardeth.
He gently wiped Torisen's forehead with a piece of silk scarcely whiter than the Highlord's face. Torisen lay motionless. One had to look carefully to see that he still breathed at all.
"For a moment, I thought he would wake up," said Burr in a husky voice.
"He came close," growled the Wolver. He padded over and sniffed at his friend. "Now, this is bad, very bad."
"I think," said Ardeth, "that you might try your hand at this, Kindrie. After all, you are a healer."
The Shanir had withdrawn to the far corner of the tent out of the light, out of the circle of friends around the cot. "You need a fully trained healer for this," he said in a stifled voice. "I'm not qualified."
Burr turned on him. "You helped that boy in the fire-timber hall at Tentir."
"That was only first-aid."
"You drew the hemlock out of that glass of wine," murmured Ardeth.
"That was only wine. My God! You don't know what's involved in deep healing. You have no idea how far into his very soul I might have to go and, more to the point, neither do I. My lord, listen! He can't even stand the sight of me! What if I get lost in there? What if his being and mine become so intertwined that we can never be separated? What will that do to his sanity?"
"Lord, I could go for another healer," said Burr. "Lord Brandan has one who could be trusted . . ."
"That would be too late." Ardeth's tone, quiet as it was, made them all turn sharply toward him. "I really think, Kindrie, that you should try something. We're losing him."
The Shanir stood stock still for a moment, then thrust both hands into his white hair. "All right," he said through the bars of his thin forearms. "All right." He stood there a moment more, collecting himself, then dropped his hands. "Where is the child?"
The others looked in surprise at white-faced Donkerri, but Burr immediately went to a pile of clothing and drew out from under it the saddlebag full of bones. He put it on the table. Ardeth started when he saw the child's shadow cast on the tent beside the shadow of Torisen's head. The Wolver growled.
"You bring death to the dying, healer?"
"I'll do whatever I think will help," snapped Kindrie, pushing the shaggy man aside and taking Ardeth's place on the edge of the cot. "She helped me find him once. Perhaps she will again."
There. Everything was set. Kindrie reached out to touch the Highlord's face, and hesitated.
For each act of deep healing, the healer had to reach down to the very roots of his patient's being. At that level, it was possible to do much good, but even greater harm. The safest way was to discover what metaphor each patient was currently using, consciously or unconsciously, for his own soul. For those concerned with growing things, for example, the botanical image of root and branch often worked very well. On the other hand, scrollsmen could often be reached through the metaphor of a book, which must first be unlocked and then deciphered. Hunts, battles, and riddles were other common metaphors. Once the healer sensed which one to use, he could deal with his patient's illness or injury through it in a way that was at least compatible with the other's basic nature. Kindrie had only done this before in practice. He had the innate power—almost too much of it, one instructor had sourly remarked after Kindrie had accidentally almost reanimated the man's sheepskin coat— but the thought of dealing so intimately with Torisen almost paralyzed him.
"Well?" said Ardeth, with an undernote of growing urgency.
Kindrie took a deep breath. Relax, he told himself. Torisen can't hate you any more than he already does. He rested the tips of his long sensitive fingers on the Highlord's eyelids.
A blurred image began to form in his mind: black hills, a sullen sky veined with green lightning. Wind blew, carrying a faint, sweet smell, as if of something long dead. Weeds rattled. Something dark loomed over him. More lightning, briefly illuminating the windowless facade of an enormous house. An archway opened into the dark interior.
Was this a soul-metaphor, or something else? Kindrie had never used one like it before, and somehow it didn't feel right for the Highlord either. Then too, everything was so indistinct. He had probably wandered into the hinterlands of Torisen's nightmare. Damn. Dreams were tricky things, far less stable than some metaphor under the healer's control. Standing on the threshold peering in, Kindrie was haunted by the feeling that this bleak, blasted dwelling had no roots even in Torisen's dream consciousness. It was as if they both had simply stumbled on this nightmare place, here, in the dark of the Highlord's sleep.
Kindrie hesitated. It could be dangerous to meddle at all with something like this. On the other hand, how much worse could things get? More lightning, and a small shadow slipped past him into the house. Well, that settled it. He followed.
Inside, dim corridors, cavernous rooms, decay. Whenever Kindrie tried to focus on anything, it immediately blurred almost out of recognition. It wasn't just his poor dream-vision this time either: he felt subtly out of phase with all his surroundings, as if he didn't quite share the same plane of reality with them. Ancestors be praised that he could still see the child's shadow, however faintly . . . and now he had something else to guide him as well. It registered on his half-trained senses as both a smell and a taste, sharp and metallic. So there was poison here after all. He sensed it faintly all around him, but the farther in he got, the stronger his impression of it became, until he felt as if he were sucking on a copper coin crusted with verdigris. Down interminable corridors, across a great hall lined with what looked like the blur of many faces, up a stair.
An indistinct figure sat on the steps above him on what appeared to be a knot of writhing shadows. It held something white. He had a strong sense that, like the house, it had another existence elsewhere. Everything here, in fact, seemed to be only the shadow of some other reality cast on Torisen's sleeping mind —but if so, that shadow was killing him, for here was the poison's primary source.
Now, what on earth could he do about it?
Kindrie crouched before the ghostlike figure. He didn't think it could see him at all. He could see that it was raising that white object, very, very slowly. Dark hair, gray eyes with a silver sheen—it might almost have been Torisen himself seen through a heavy mist, but with some indefinable difference. The white object was almost at its throat now. The eyes closed. On impulse, Kindrie reached out and touched the shadowy lids . . .
. . . and again saw a mental image of the House. This time it was a true soul-metaphor, but not Torisen's. Kindrie's next move should have been to repair whatever damage this architectural soul image had sustained, but he could barely focus on it because of the shifting levels of dream and reality that separated him from it.
Kindrie felt panic rise in him. Ardeth had been wrong to insist that he try this. He wasn't qualified, and despite the slower temporal flow on this level, time was running out. He could feel it. Torisen would die unless he did something quickly, but what? There was the trick he had used to draw the poison out of Ardeth's wine, but that technique was intended only for use on inanimate objects with neither life nor sanity to lose. No matter. He simply couldn't think of anything else.
But it didn't work quite as Kindrie had intended. When he extended his power to exclude the venom from its victim's blood, the venom resisted. When he tried even harder, it struck back. Too late, Kindrie realized he was dealing with a parasitic poison whose active principle was psychic rather than physical; it took a dim view of being forcibly evicted just when it was getting comfortable. But it would move if necessary, especially when another host so conveniently offered itself.
Kindrie felt the venom surge into him through his fingertips. Too late to raise any barriers. Too late even to draw his hands away. Numbness spread up his arms. He should have been thinking of a way to counteract this latest disaster, but all that ran through his mind like some idiot's chant was
Never say things can't get worse
Never say things can't get worse . . .
Then he saw that the serpentine shadows upon which the other sat had reared up to twine themselves about his arms. Kindrie didn't like snakes. These, however, he could barely see and could not feel at all, at first. Then the numbness began to recede, leaving in its wake sharp, stinging pain. His arms felt as if they had been stuck full of needles. In fact, the snakes had sunk their fangs into them. Just as he came to this not altogether welcome conclusion, the shadowy forms uncoiled themselves and tumbled back to the floor. Kindrie sprang backward. His arms were covered with punctures just beginning to bleed, but the venom was gone. The snakes had sucked it all up. The coppery taste in his mouth faded. By God, he had drawn the poison to a reachable level, and they had gotten rid of it entirely.
But now everything was beginning to fade. Of course. With the venom gone, Torisen was beginning to wake up, and here Kindrie was, still fathoms deep in the other's mind.
Never say things can't get worse
Never say . . .
He could see through the steps underfoot. Somewhere, the real stairs were probably still solid enough; this was only their dream image, and the dream was dissolving. The house began to open up beneath him, walls and ceilings fading like mist in the sun. Beside him was the child's shadow. It darted down the stairs and back, down and back. He could almost feel small, phantom hands tugging at him.
You big dummy, run, run!
He ran. Down the steps, across the great hall, into the labyrinth corridors. The shadow cut through dissolving walls now, and he followed, almost seeing the slight Kendar child who ran ahead of him. The dead know so much, and they never tire. Kindrie was very tired. He had never been strong in anything but his half-controlled healing powers, and now even they were too spent to help him. His breath burned in his chest. Sweat half blinded him. He couldn't see the child's shadow now at all, but a small hand gripped his, urging him on. A dark opening ahead. The front door. He pitched through it headfirst . . . . . . onto the floor of the tent.
Someone was holding him. Strong, steady hands. Burr, probably. Voices ran together around him.
". . . all right!"
"Trinity, look at his arms."
"Tori, my boy, wake up, wake up . . ."
That last was Ardeth. Kindrie tried to focus on the cot and saw the old lord bending over Torisen. The Highlord's eyes flickered open.
"Dreams," he said indistinctly. "Everyone has them." Then, more clearly, "Adric, you look awful. Get some rest." His voice faded again, and his eyes closed. He began to breathe with the deep, slow respiration of dwar sleep. Ardeth pulled the blanket up and sat back with a weary sigh.
"Lord, is he all right?" Burr asked anxiously.
"Yes, now."
"Good," said Kindrie, and fainted.
JAME WOKE on the stair, dazed. Overhead was naked sky seen through charred roof-beams. Sullen clouds scudded across it. Lightning flashed in the belly of one, tingeing it with sulphurous green. Thunder snarled. Of course, Jame thought numbly. The last time she had been here, years ago, she had left the place in flames, hence no roof. But what was she doing here now? She groped for the memory and caught scraps of it. God's teeth and toenails, what a nightmare. Why, she had been about to . . . to . . .
The white knife was still in her hand, numbing her fingers. She dropped it with a gasp. The snakes dodged the falling blade and hissed at it as it vibrated on the step beside her, its point wedged in a crack. Sweet Trinity.
More of the poison nightmare came back to her, and then, with a rush, all of it—but it had been no dream. What in Perimal's name had happened? She should be dead or dying now with these wretched snakes lapping up her blood. Instead, here she was, not only alive but apparently healthy. And the Master?
At the head of the stairs was the doorway, its post and lintel scorched. Two or three singed ribbons fluttered from it. They might have been red as tradition decreed, but in this light they looked black. And beyond? She rose and climbed warily. Another lightning flash, and she saw the room. Its far wall still stood —tall broken windows looking out into darkness—but both the roof and the floor were gone except for the stub of a ledge just beyond the door and a few scorched beams groping out over the void.
Footprints disturbed the ashes on the ledge. Someone had stood just beyond the ribbons, waiting. Gerridon. It had to be. Nothing new ever happens in the past, Jame remembered, staring at those prints. He had come forward in time to get at her, whatever her poisoned senses had told her. If she had crossed the threshold this time, with her mind and motives as confused by the drug as they had been, she would indeed have been lost. Instead, she had chosen the knife; and suddenly, miraculously, been cured. For a moment, she was almost tempted to think that the second aspect of her despised god—Argentiel, That-Which-Preserves—had finally deigned to show his hand, but that hardly seemed likely. In her experience, the best one could hope for from the Three-Faced God was to be left alone.
At least Perimal Darkling in the form of Gerridon had also left her. As lightning flickered again, she saw faint ashy traces of his footsteps going down the stair from the door, fading away before they came to the step where she had sat. Thwarted, he had gone back into the fabric of the House, into the blighted past, which was preferable to its desolate present. Tirandys had said that he still had a few souls left to gnaw on, probably including Bender's. How long before he ran out, before hunger drove him either to try for her again or to accept the tainted gifts that would cost him his remaining humanity? She had no idea. Gerridon had made his pact with darkness and was living to learn its price. He had bred her to serve his need, but found that while he could tempt, only she could damn herself. Very well. That was the game, and those were the rules. They would see who won in the end.
But in the meantime, Gerridon had made his next move by withdrawing. How should she respond to that? Follow? Trinity, no, not even if she could. She had no idea what Shanir powers he still possessed, and no desire to find out. Retreat to Karkinaroth? Fine, if she could find the way and if it hadn't tumbled down yet. Graykin and Marc should already have left to warn her brother about the changer Tirandys, taking Kin-Slayer, Lyra, and Jorin with them. The ring and the Book Bound in Pale Leather were still here in Perimal Darkling. She hated to abandon either, but had no idea where to look for them—or did she? For the ring, no, but the Book . . .
Jame snatched up the knife and ran down the steps. The stairway spiraled down through a series of chambers, all once part of the Master's living quarters. She had barely noticed any of them on the way up. Here, however, was one that she remembered well from former days. She entered.
Shelves stretched up almost out of sight on all sides and wandered off into the murky distance. Books lined them, some charred, some half-devoured with luminous mildew, all crumbling. The smell made Jame sneeze.
This was where someone (Bender?) had taught her in secret how to read the runes, both common and Master. Knowledge is power. Gerridon would not have approved if he had known. This was also where she had first encountered the Book Bound in Pale Leather, and here she had fled in search of it while the flames from the brazier she had accidently upset spread through the upper chambers. The Book had helped her to escape by ripping a hole through to the next threshold world. As far as Jame could remember, she had had to jump out the window to take advantage of that dimensional portal, or perhaps she had simply fallen through it. The latter seemed more in character. Also, she was pretty sure that she had landed on her head.
One more turn, and there was the window through which she had tumbled, still broken. Black hills rolled away beyond it under a lightning veined sky. Before it on a table, as she had half expected, lay something pale. It was the Book. Ganth's ring lay on it, and beneath the table in a dark huddle was her knapsack.
Kin-Slayer had been left in the armory where it had been reforged. What better place to put the Book Bound in Pale Leather than back in the library? Jame thought she saw Tirandys' hand in this. The Master had undoubtedly told him to secure both objects, and after doing so, the changer had simply put each where it belonged. Who found them first, Gerridon or Jame, was another matter. The fact that the ring and knapsack were here too made her suspect that Tirandys had also wanted her to have them back if she survived to come looking for them. At any rate, they were in her hands now, and Gerridon was out of luck again.
So, of all the various lost items she had come in search of here, that left only the Prince. Poor Odalian, chained in the back rooms of the House among all the horrors of the Kencyrath's fallen past.
She knelt and began to rummage determinedly through her knapsack. Oh, good. Here were all her surviving Tastigon clothes, the Peshtar boots, and even the imu medallion. At least she wouldn't arrive back on Rathillien dressed like something out of a traveling show. She let the serpent-skin cloak slip to the floor, then hesitated. It wasn't often that she thought of mirrors, but for a moment she did wish she could see herself. This shadow dancer's costume made her feel so . . . so . . . no, forget it. That belonged to another life. She hastily stripped it off and picked up the familiar street fighter's d'hen.
Dally's d'hen. Jame stood there for a moment looking at the jacket, remembering the dead friend who had given it to her. He had been in love with the Kencyr glamour too, perhaps fatally so.
She put on the coat, then her pants and boots, fumbling a bit because her right hand was still rather numb. Odd that the knife should have had such an effect, especially since she didn't remember gripping it all that tightly. Jame disliked knives in general and this one more than most, but at least it was a weapon. She slipped it into her boot sheath. Now, twist her hair up under her cap, pack up the Book, put on the ring with a glove over it to keep it in place, pocket the medallion and . . . where was that blasted cloak? Halfway out the door, bent on a slithery escape. Jame caught it and put it on again, with some distaste, over the pack. Reduced to a set of matched snakes for company. Oh well. At least they were alive, and she felt in need of companionship where she was bound now.
Perhaps it was because she hadn't been able to save Dally; perhaps, because the shadows still drew her more than she cared to admit; but Jame found she had no intention of leaving this place without Odalian.
The trip back through the House to where Tirandys had found her seemed both long and short. Back in Rathillien, who knew how many days had passed by now? Perhaps her brother's fate had long since been decided. Perhaps Rathillien itself had fallen into the dark of the moon—some twelve nights distant when she had gone into the shadows of Karkinaroth—and had never emerged from it again. The Kencyrath's millennia-long battle might have been lost while she stumbled on here in ignorance. She certainly felt ignorant. The more she learned about herself, about the nature of things in general, the less she seemed to know. "Honor," Tirandys had said. "I used to be as sure as you that I knew what it was." Now Jame wondered if, in fact, she had ever known. The concept was too big, too abstract, like "good" and "evil." Perhaps all one could do was stumble on in ignorance, in shadows, making one decision at a time in the best faith one could manage, hoping for the best.
Jame certainly hoped for the best now. Before her was the archway shaped like a mouth, and beyond, the shifting green light. She took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, keeping a wary eye on the window. The vines outside rustled, and the pale, lip-shaped flowers kissed the bars, but when she edged into the room, the serpent heads rose with a hiss, and the flowers retreated, pouting. Jame went on.
Since her goal was the farthest rooms down the Chain of Creation, she tried to follow the outer wall of the House. It wouldn't do to wander off and lose herself in any of the threshold worlds that the House spanned. But the outer wall hardly ran straight and was frequently windowless. She could often only tell that she was making progress by the changing character of the rooms through which she passed.
Then too, the changes were often subtle. Jame realized this when she came across one of the three Karkinoran guards Tirandys had sent in after Bender. The man had apparently gotten this far back and then made the mistake of sitting down to rest. He seemed oddly sunken into the chair. It was, in fact, consuming him. He watched Jame edge past with glazed eyes in which no humanity remained.
Then came a series of moss-mottled floors, treacherous under foot. The paving stones here felt not only slippery but unstable, as if they might suddenly tip like blocks in an ice floe.
Beyond were walls covered with what looked like murals. In one of them, the second guard fled from something with many eyes across a darkling plain. On closer examination, the picture broke down into different colors of lichen on the stone wall; but when Jame looked back at it from the doorway, the gap between pursued and pursuer had narrowed.
There were occasional windows, some barred, others not. Each one looked out on another threshold world deeper inside the coils of Perimal Darkling, worlds on which the Kencyrath had once lived and fought. The scrollsmen had songs about all of them, from green Lury to golden Krakilleth, and Ch'un, where the very stones sang; but not one world was recognizable now. All lay under shadow's eaves. All had begun the slide toward the ultimate interpenetration of animate and inanimate, of life and death, that was the essence of Perimal Darkling. Nonetheless, many of these worlds still seemed to be inhabited. Jame caught glimpses out windows of strange figures moving across distant landscapes or wheeling against alien skies. Nearer at hand, jewel winged insects the size of her fist crawled on a window ledge and raised tiny, shriveled faces to stare as she passed. One of them had features strangely like the third guard's. It flew after her, crying something in a piping thread of a voice, but the snakes snapped it out of the air and tore it to pieces at her heels. The farther in she went, the stranger and more terrible the "life" forms became, but not all of them were limited to one world or one suite of rooms. By breaking down the barriers, Gerridon had laid the Chain of Creation open practically from one end to the other.
All that remained was to break down the final barrier between Perimal Darkling and Rathillien. Soft areas like the Haunted Lands might serve, but how much more devastating it would be if the Master could create a beachead linked directly with the House and this corridor opening into all the fallen worlds—Trinity, just as Tirandys had done in the palace of Karkinaroth. The priests should have prevented that. Gerridon must have ordered the changer to confine them to their temple so that they could still manage it but not interfere with his plans.
But the priests weren't managing. They were apparently dead or dying, and the temple in consequence was rapidly going out of control.
"Of course!" said Jame out loud and hit the ledge of the window out of which she had been blindly staring.
If the temple went, so would both the palace and Gerridon's primary beachhead on Rathillien. Tirandys must know that. In fact, he had probably arranged it by sealing the priests in without adequate provisions. Such an act might well come within the scope of his orders if Gerridon hadn't been any more explicit than when he had told the changer to put venom in Jame's wine. So Tirandys had again honored his bitter code of obedience and at the same time had done what he could to bring about the downfall of the lord who had betrayed him. Oh, Senethari, clever, unhappy man. Who would ever have dreamed that the paradox of honor could have so many sides?
But if the temple destroyed itself and the palace while she was still here in the shadows, she might never get back to Rathillien. Time to move on. Outside lay a dark, glistening landscape that looked and smelled like raw, spoilt liver. The window ledge had begun to bleed where she had hit it. Clearly, she must be very far into Perimal Darkling. God help her if she had to go much farther.
Somewhere nearby, someone moaned.
Jame moved toward the sound. It came again—low, hoarse, urgent. Something crawled on the floor in the shadows ahead. There seemed to be a tangle of half-seen shapes there, slowly writhing.
"Ahhh . . . !" sighed an all too familiar voice in the darkness. Feral eyes gleamed. "Your . . . turn . . . Jamethiel?"
Jame went back a step, throat suddenly dry. "No, Keral. Not yet. Where is Odalian?"
"The little prince? Stopped crying, has he? Heh! Mother's boy. Doesn't know how to . . . enjoy . . . ah! ah! ah!" Pain and pleasure wove through the changer's panting voice. The shadowy mound heaved. "Ooohhh . . . ! And again, and again, and again. . . . You're still there? Come here or go away."
"The Prince?"
"Oh, that way." She could barely see the doorway he indicated. As she passed hastily through it, his voice came after her: "I'll have my turn with you eventually, Jamethiel. We all will."
The room beyond was even darker. A pale form lay spread-eagle on the floor, surrounded by tittering shadows that poked teasingly at it. It stirred and groaned. Jame drove back the shadows and knelt beside it. Fair hair matted with sweat, a blanched young face, puffy with tears . . .
"Odalian? Your Highness?"
His brown eyes opened, glazed at first, then widening with horror as he focused on her. "No." He tried to twist away, but his bonds held him. "No, no, no . . . !"
What in Perimal's name! Ah, Tirandys had tricked the young man into the blood rites while wearing her twin brother's face.
"Hush." She tried to touch his cheek, but couldn't feel anything there. Trinity, now what? "Hush," she said again as he still flinched away. "I'm not Torisen or the changer. I'm a friend. I've come to take you home."
He repeated the word silently, first in disbelief, then again in wonder, and burst into tears.
She could just barely see him in the gloom, but as far as her sense of touch went, he wasn't there at all, just as with Graykin earlier. Ah. She had been in Perimal Darkling ten days longer than Graykin, but the Prince had been a prisoner here at least sixteen days longer than she, and in farther rooms. She reached for the chains that held him down and touched cold metal. Good. They at least were within her grasp.
Around them, shadows rustled, crept forward. Jame felt the cloak move on her shoulders. The snakes fanned themselves out over both her and the supine prince. Their heads rose in a weaving, hissing fence that struck at every shadowy form that edged too close. Under their cover, Jame picked the locks that held Odalian down.
When she helped him to rise, she found to her surprise that now she could almost feel something. He seemed to be taking on a shaky solidity that grew as she concentrated on it. Was she bringing him forward in time or going back to meet him? Tirandys hadn't said what the trick of time travel was here in the House, only that she had been too young before to learn it. Well, maybe now she was old enough, if just barely.
Complicating matters in escaping was the House itself, which apparently didn't want to let them go. They were followed from room to room by creeping forms and booming inhuman voices calling urgently to each other in remote chambers. The snakes hissed and snapped. Their knotted tails tightened uncomfortably around Jame's neck. They crossed the slippery stones with difficulty and bypassed an empty, inviting chair. Here was the barred window, beyond, the arch. Then through the outer rooms of the House back to the Great Hall.
Jame had long since figured out that it had been stupid of her not to check the door into the palace from this side. Such portals might not be visible from all angles, but they didn't usually just disappear, lock, stock and keyhole. Luckily, this one hadn't either. She and the Prince stumbled through into the palace hall beyond.
Things obviously were not well in Karkinaroth. Tremors ran continually through the floor, and cracks climbed the walls. At the end of the hall, a chandelier swung uneasily, tinkling. Fragments of crystal rained down through a cloud of plaster dust.
Abruptly, the serpent tails relaxed their hold, and the cloak tumbled to the floor with a meaty thump. The snakes hastily sorted themselves out and whipped back into the shadowy corridor, heads stretched out with urgency, long black bodies all moving with the same undulant ripple. Jame started to go after them, but just as they whisked back through the door into the Master's Great Hall, the floor shook again, and the door vanished along with all other shadowy traces of Perimal Darkling, So much for Master Gerridon's new beachhead on Rathillien.
Odalian gave a cry. Chunks of plaster fell around them, and then the roof beams came down with a crash. For a moment, Jame couldn't see anything. Since she couldn't feel anything either, she rather assumed she was dead; but then the dust began to clear. They were standing up to their waists in a pile of rubble. The debris had fallen straight through them as if they weren't there.
Wonderful, thought Jame. More complications.
She hauled the Prince clear, feeling the wreckage drag at them more with each step. At least they seemed to be readjusting. The next piece of plaster to fall hit her shoulder with a painful thump, fair warning not to stand under any more collapsing architecture. She was also beginning to get a more secure grip on Odalian. The chill of his flesh struck her even through her thick d'hen. She stripped off the jacket and draped it over his bare, trembling shoulders, despite his feeble protests.
"Look," she said impatiently, "when I want you to die on my hands, I'll let you know."
He gave her a shy, sidelong look. "You're very strong, aren't you?"
That startled her. "Trinity, no, I'm just too stupid to give up."
He shook his head, haunted eyes focused on something far away or deep inside. "I've never been strong."
"Oh, be quiet. You've done all right so far."
They stumbled on through the quaking palace. Plaster powdered their shoulders and made them sneeze. Hangings rippled on the walls, tapestried princes trying to ride to safety. In distant rooms, mirrors shattered. Jame didn't know which door Marc had (she hoped) broken open to let everyone out. The best she could do, she decided, was to get Odalian to Lyra's quarters and hope the roof didn't fall in on them again on the way.
Rather to her surprise, it didn't, but she was even more amazed when Lyra herself came running out of the inner room to meet them as they staggered into the suite. They put Odalian on a couch and piled every blanket they could find on top of him as well as half the wall hangings. Then Jame turned on the young Highborn.
"Why in Perimal's name are you still here? Didn't Graykin —er, Gricki—tell you to get out?"
"Oh, yes." Lyra fussed around the couch. "But I couldn't leave without my prince, could I? Anyway, that huge Kendar said if Odalian could be found at all, you'd probably be too stubborn to come back without him."
"Marc? He's been here?"
At that moment, the hall door opened and a golden streak shot across the room. Jame went over backward with a grunt as Jorin barreled into her and then pranced up the length of her fallen body in an ecstasy of excitement. She sat up and hugged the ounce while he rubbed his cheek against hers, purring thunderously.
"I'd say off hand that he missed you," said Marc from the doorway.
Jame sprang up and hugged him, too. The big Kendar started to respond, then checked himself. His restraint surprised Jame. She tried to ignore it.
"But where were you two?" she demanded. "I've been looking in the most ungodly places for you!"
"Oh, we've been in some strange parts, too, but I'll tell you about that later. We've just been scouting the area around the temple. The walls are starting to collapse down there, and the destruction is spreading. I'd suggest, my lord and ladies, that we leave."
Ladies. Jame felt the word go through her like a cold wind. "Graykin did find you," she said numbly. "He told you who I am."
Marc gave her a sober look. "Yes . . . my lady."
Just then, Odalian began to laugh. It was a terrible sound, edged with jagged hysteria.
"Don't!" Lyra was saying. "Oh, please, don't, don't . . . !"
The Prince had seized one of his own fingers and was tugging at it. It stretched, long and thin as a worm. "Just like pulling taffy! Just like. . . ." He burst into another horrible laugh.
Oh God, Jame thought. She hadn't gotten to him in time.
The shadows of the House were in his blood and soul now. He had become a changer.
Odalian began to thrash about on the couch, getting more and more tangled up in the blankets. Jame darted over to help Lyra hold him down. He seized the knife from her boot. The next moment, Marc had swept both girls aside and was kneeling by the couch with the Prince half off of it, holding the young man's wrists in a gentle, unbreakable grip.
"There, my lad, softly, softly . . ."
Odalian stopped struggling and dropped the knife. It scratched his arm as it fell. His face turned white.
"Sorry," he whispered. "I never was very strong."
Then he shuddered violently and went limp.
Lyra gave a shriek. "He's dead! Oh, I know he's dead!"
"Fainted, more likely." Marc lifted Odalian back onto the couch. "A good thing too, poor boy."
But Lyra was right.
"I don't understand it." The Kendar stopped trying to find a pulse and sat back, bewildered. "Trinity knows, I've seen more than a few people die in my time, and in some pretty strange ways, but never quite like this. I'd say that peculiar knife was to blame, but it barely touched him."
Jame had scooped up the white knife and was staring at it. She began to swear softly, passionately. All her life, she had known about the three great objects of power lost when Gerridon fell. One of them—the Book Bound in Pale Leather—had actually been in her possession for at least two years now. You'd think that that would have made her realize these objects weren't purely mythical. But up to an hour ago, she had been wearing the Serpent-Skin Cloak, giver of life, without once recognizing it for what it was; and now here was the Ivory Knife, the very tooth of death and the original of every white-hilted suicide knife in the Kencyrath, whose slightest scratch was fatal. She hadn't had it when she climbed to the Master's bed and ended up cutting off his hand. This time Bender had taken no chances. This time, she could have had Gerridon's life.
While all this was going through Jame's mind, Marc was looking from her to Lyra and back again, somewhat at a loss. Here was Caineron's daughter, settling down to serious hysterics, and the Highlord's sister, quietly exercising a vocabulary the scope of which amazed him. But he also heard something else: a series of rumbling crashes, coming closer. The floor trembled underfoot.
Jame had heard it too and broke off in mid-curse. "Old lad, you were right: time to scamper."
"Just a minute." The Kendar composed Odalian's body and drew a gold-figured hanging over it. Then he took several brands from the fire and thrust them under the couch. Flames began to lick at the bullion fringe. "Now we're ready."
Out in the hall, they could see the walls farther down caving in. The palace was collapsing in on itself. The power set loose by the crumbling temple spread both outward like ripples and inward, drawing everything to it. It made Jame's scalp prickle and Jorin's fur stand on end. She had prevented something like this at her god's temple in Tai-tastigon by dancing the rampant power into new channels, but it was too late for that here. Walls sagged and beams crashed down. Plaster dust choked and blinded them. Marc went first, carrying Lyra. Jame followed, hanging onto his jacket with one hand and Jorin with the other.
Here at last was a door, its bolt lock shattered. The big Kendar thrust it open, and they staggered out into a warm, starlit night. Below lay the city of Karkinaroth, sparkling with lights, and beyond that, the midnight plain, now empty, where the army had gathered. There was no sign of the moon. The Dark had fallen.
Behind them, the palace groaned. Deepening cracks laced its high, outer walls. They began to collapse inward slowly, as if in a dream. Towers tumbled. Pinnacles broke and fell, streaming golden banners. The whole vast structure seemed to crouch, lower, lower, drawing in on itself, filling every internal space with rubble and shattered treasures. The rumble went on and on, in the air, in the ground, in one's bones, until at last it slowly died out of each in turn.
Silence.
Then below in the city, shouting began and the howl of dogs.