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Chapter 1
Fire and Ice

The Ebonbane: 7th of Winter

TAI-TASTIGON BURNED.

"Wake, wake!" shouted city guards under windows barred for the night. Fists pounded on doors. Bells began to shrill. From the roof of the Council Hall came the sudden boom of the warning horn, all five of its mouthpieces manned at once.

The citizens woke. They tumbled bleary-eyed into the streets to find the sky alight overhead. From the north came shrieks and the crash of falling buildings. An unearthly wail rose from the Temple District as the gods, bound in their sanctuaries, felt the stones heat around them. Fiery motes danced in the air. What they touched, burned: roofs, clothes, flesh. Panic spread. Now people were running, some already on fire, down through the twisting streets, toward where the River Tone ran between dark buildings. Quick, the water. The swift, cold current bore them downstream under the soaring bridges to smash against the prow of Ship Island or drown in the white water along its sheer sides.

On the island itself, in the Palace of the Thieves' Guild, an old man sat in a tapestry-hung room. On his lap lay a book bound in white leather with the texture of an infant's skin. His head tilted back. Gaping mouth and empty eye sockets opened only into darkness.

The chamber room door burst open. A man clad in royal blue stood on the threshold, his golden hair shining softly in the gloom. He stared at the old man. An unpleasant smile twisted his handsome features, but when he turned to the dark figures crowding the corridor behind him, they saw only anger and grief in his face.

"The Talisman has done this," he said to them. "Get her."

A low growl answered him. The hallway emptied. Moments later, shadowy forms slipped through the streets, oblivious to fire and ruin, growling still. Swift as they were, rumor outpaced them:

The Lord of the Thieves' Guild is dead, is dead. The Talisman has slain him. Brother thieves, the hunt is up!

The Talisman ran for her life, ran for home. One corner more, and there was the inn, the Res aB'tyrr, blazing. Dark figures came at her, silhouetted by the glare.

"The fire might have spared it, Talisman. We didn't."

They closed in on her. Someone inside the inn began to scream. She fought her captors' sooty hands, shouting the names of her friends: Cleppetty, Ghillie, Taniscent. . . . But here was Tanis now, clinging to her arm.

"A party, Talisman, a lovely party, and you're the guest of honor! See, here's a friend to escort us."

The brigand Bortis shambled out of the darkness, grinning. The blood streaming from the red ruin of his eyes looked black in the light of the burning inn. He took her arm. The streets were lined with silent people, staring at her: Hangrell, Raffing, Scramp with the rope still around his neck, Marplet . . . dead, all dead. Judgment Square. The Mercy Seat.

Dally was sitting on the stone chair. He looked up, smiling, and courteously rose to make room for her. His skin hung in tatters about him.

"I loved you, Talisman. See what your love did to me."

Still smiling, he bound her to the chair with strips of his own skin.

They were all coming for her. Firelight flashed off knives, off short, flaying blades, their edges white hot. She huddled back in the Mercy Seat, but they kept coming, coming . . .

"No!"

Jame woke to her own cry of horror. Stone pressed against her back, but where were the knives? The air here was cold, so cold that it seared her lungs as she drew a deep, shuddering gulp of it. Where was she? The wind keened and snow stung her face, numbing it. No, not in Tai-tastigon at all, but high above it in the storm-locked passes of the Ebonbane. She had fled the city before the thieves could catch her. Now a blizzard had her instead, and she was lost in it. But why was it so dark? She drew back against the rock that sheltered her, fighting the first feather touch of panic.

"Marc, where are you?"

Jorin whimpered in her arms. Blind from birth, the ounce cub saw through her eyes—when she could see anything at all.

"Marc?" Fear sharpened her voice, making her sound even younger than her nineteen-odd years. "Why is it so dark? Did you let me sleep past moonfall? Marc?"

Feet crunched on the snow. "Lass? Softly, softly. Let me look."

She felt the Kendar's big hands gently touch her face.

"H-have I gone snow blind?"

"Ah, no such thing. Your eyelids are only frozen shut."

Tears? thought Jame. But I never cry. Then she remembered the inn.

"They all burned to death," she said unsteadily. "Cleppetty, Tubain, everyone at the Res aB'tyrr except Taniscent, and she was dead already."

"Well now, I suppose it could happen," said Marc slowly. "A good bit of the city was burning when we left, but that was three days ago, after the worst of it, and the inn was safe enough then. Now, if you were a farseer—"

"But I've been spared that at least, haven't I?" Jame's voice sounded strange even to her, as if it belonged to someone else, locked away in the dark, gripped by nightmares and memories. "You needn't remind me that I'm Shanir. The old blood, the old powers—god-spawn, unclean, unclean . . ."

Marc shook her. Gentle as he was, the tremendous strength in his hands shocked her away from the memory of her father shouting those words after her as he had driven her from the keep that had been her home, into the Haunted Lands. But that had been long ago, before the years in Perimal Darkling, which she could no longer remember, before she had returned to Rathillien to lead her double life as the Talisman, apprentice to the greatest thief in Tai-tastigon; and as the B'tyrr, tavern and temple dancer.

Jorin anxiously touched noses with her. Then she felt the rasp of his tongue on her frozen eyelids. There in the dark, still closer to dreams than reality, she tried to sort one from the other.

"So the Res aB'tyrr is probably safe, but Dally and Bane. . . . Is Dally really dead?"

"Yes. Very."

Jame shivered. "And Bane? Is he dead too?"

"We can only hope so."

So, in the end, it came to that. Bane, Dally, Tanis, Scramp. . . . She gave a bitter laugh. "It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly, that I'm rather hard on my friends."

At that moment, the ice sealing her eyelids at last melted away. Jorin rubbed his soft cheek against hers, purring. His whiskers tickled. Marc had let her sleep almost until morning, Jame saw, but in that time the storm had eased. Now more snow seemed to be blowing than falling, and the full moon low in the sky glowed through a thinning cloud cover.

By its light, Jame regarded her friend with concern. The biggest mountaineer's jacket they had been able to find barely fit across his broad shoulders, much less down those powerful arms. The exposed wrists looked blanched. His beard was white too, both with frost and years. At ninety-four, late middle age for a Kendar, surely he was too old for such a desperate adventure.

"Why did you ever let me talk you into this?" she demanded.

"As I recall," he said mildly, "it was more a case of not being able to talk me out of it. We'd pretty well decided even before the uproar that it was time to leave. You have that twin brother of yours to find—name of Tori, wasn't it?—and I've an itch to see old friends in the Riverland. We're going home, you and I. This is just the shortest route."

"Right. Just as jumping out a third story window is the fastest way to the ground."

"Oh, I've tried that too," said the big man placidly.

Jame started to laugh, then drew in her breath sharply. Simultaneously, Jorin's head snapped up. The ounce might see quite well through her eyes, but she had only recently gained a limited use of his nose and ears. Now she heard what he heard, distorted at first, then all too clearly.

"Wolves," she said, and scrambled to her feet.

Marc rose almost as quickly, but his stiffened knees betrayed him and he lurched against a rock. "No, no," he said absently, pushing Jame aside as she reached out to steady him. "Always stand clear or someday I really will fall and smash you flat." He drew himself up to his full seven-foot height, towering over her. "Wolves, you say? If we're lucky."

"Trinity. And if we aren't?"

The howling began again, closer, unexpectedly shrill.

"Wyrsan," said Marc. "An entire ravening of them, from the sound of it, and headed this way. They may be smaller than wolves, but they're faster and fiercer. These rocks won't protect us for long if they catch our scent. There may be better cover up near the Blue Pass."

He stepped out into the open. Leaning into the wind, he trudged stolidly up the nearly invisible path between snowdrifts, his bulk breaking both the ice crust and the wind's force for Jame as she struggled after him with Jorin bounding along behind her in their footsteps. The worst of the storm might be over, but the wind was still savage and the driven snow blinding. Jame could see nothing of Mounts Timor and Tinnibin, which must be looming over them now, or of the Blue Pass, which cut between them, straddling the spine of the Ebonbane.

The situation was bad enough without wyrsan on their trail. Not much was known about these beasts because they usually kept to the deep snow of the heights during the brief travel season when the passes opened. Superstition claimed that they were possessed by the souls of the unavenged dead. Rumor had it, perhaps more accurately, that they were prone to killing frenzies and could tunnel nearly as fast under the ice crust as they could run on top of it.

The two Kencyr had risked this winter crossing largely because they had hoped to find quite a different sort of creature here among the jagged peaks. Long ago—nearly two thousand years, in fact—the first of the Three People had grown disgusted with the rest of the Kencyrath and retreated to the wilds of Rathillien to think things over. They were still at it. One of these catlike, almost immortal Arrin-ken made his home here in the Ebonbane, but Jame had been mentally calling to him for three days now without success. It looked as if she and Marc were on their own.

Abruptly, the Kendar stopped and Jame ran into him. He shouted something, then turned and climbed the snow bank to the right. Jame scrambled after him. A sloping snowfield stretched out before them, wind rilled, sheltered by the flank of Mount Timor. Snow blew over their heads off the mountain's spine. The ice crust here was thick enough first to bear Jame and Jorin's weight, then Marc's.

Jame drew level with him. "What did you say?"

"I thought we might find something useful up here. The top of that mound up ahead might be our best bet for a stand."

Not far away, Jame saw a rectangular pile of rocks about ten feet high with sloping sides and a flattened top. Suddenly, she knew exactly where they were. This was the field where Bortis and his band of brigands had slaughtered last season's first caravan, the one Jame herself would have joined if it hadn't been for Marc's unexpected arrival in Tai-tastigon. That thing ahead was the burial cairn of the victims.

The wind moaned about it, raising ghosts of snow around its black flanks. Subsequent caravans had not only raised this monument, but, to conciliate the dead, had built into its outer walls whatever personal possessions the brigands had overlooked. Here a bride's broken mirror gave back a splintered reflection of the moon, there a wooden doll thrust a stiff arm out between the stone blocks. Jame slowed, staring. Her own people believed that while even a single bone remained unburned, the soul was trapped, but here were hundreds, thousands of bones.

Marc had reached the cairn. "Come on, lass," he said, holding out his hand. "You first. We only have to hold on until dawn."

Jame still hesitated. This was ridiculous. She had dealt with bones before, and with the dead themselves, if it came to that. They simply obeyed their own rules. Once you found those out, you could usually cope, however messy things got. Besides, in a sense, she and Bane had already avenged these poor folk in that before the massacre, he had put out one of Bortis's eyes protecting her; and after it, she had gotten the other one defending Jorin. No one had seen Bortis in Tai-tastigon since. She wondered fleetingly what had become of him, then put him out of her mind and began resolutely to climb the cairn's sloping side.

The stones were slick with ice under her hands. She thought she felt a vibration deep inside the cairn. Then, suddenly, a stone gave way under her weight and her right leg plunged into the mound up to the knee. Something inside grabbed her foot. Her startled yelp turned into a grunt as Marc's arm shot around her waist and jerked her back. Something white furred and slobbering was wrapped around her foot. It let go, plopping back into the hole. Marc swung her down to the base of the cairn where she collapsed breathless in the snow. Her boot hung in shreds.

"What in Perimar's name was that?" she gasped.

"A wyrsan kitling. It looks as if they've converted the entire mound into a ravery."

"But wouldn't it have been pretty solid?"

"Not after they'd eaten the bodies out of it. Jorin!"

The ounce had been warily sniffing the edge of the hole. He jumped back as a shrill, yammering cry came out of the mound, immediately echoed by other voices down wind.

"That's done it," said Marc. "The adults will be all over us in minutes. Run."

They ran. Some distance ahead, the field ended in a steep, rocky slope that, if they were lucky, the wyrsan would not be able to climb. Suddenly Marc floundered. Jame grabbed his arm as the white expanse before them split open, great chunks of it thundering down into darkness. They stared in dismay at the gaping crevasse. Behind, the yipping grew rapidly nearer.

"Now what?" said Jame.

"Too late to turn back. I might be able to catapult you across."

"And leave you here to have all the fun? Forget it."

"As you wish. But for future use, let's make a pact: Whatever you can't outwit, I hit. That should take care of most contingencies."

"It's nice to know you think we still have a future," said Jame, watching as he dropped his pack and unslung his double edged war-axe. "Just the same, I'm more likely to start hitting things than you are."

"Not wyrsan," said the big man firmly.

The howling began again, much closer this time. It was a sound that slid the thin knife edge of panic between thought and action. Hearing it, one only wanted to run and run. Then, in the midst of that shrill chorus, one voice wavered and broke into hysterical laughter.

"That was no wyrsa," said Jame.

"A haunt?"

"This far south of the Barrier? Well, maybe, but I've never met one yet who thought that being dead was funny."

"It's not," said Marc. "Stand behind me."

Jame stepped back nearer to the crevasse and reached for the knife usually sheathed in her right boot. She touched only shredded leather. Damn. The blade must have fallen out during the kitling's attack. She stripped off the remains of the boot so as not to trip over them and stood stocking footed in the snow. Her toes began to ache with the cold.

The outline of the cairn moved as the wyrsan swarmed over it. Then clouds swept over the moon, bringing a fresh flurry of snow, and Jame could no longer see the mound. Jorin pressed against her knee, protesting the loss of their shared sight.

"Too bad there's nothing here to burn," said Marc, peering into the darkness. "A bit of fire, now, that would be useful."

Jame stood still a moment. Then she dropped to her knees and began to rummage frantically through both their packs. In her own, she touched a broken sword with a defaced hilt emblem, a ring, and something warm, but bypassed them all for things more suited to their present need.

"My spare pants weren't exactly what I had in mind," said the Kendar, skeptically regarding the clothes she was hastily laying out in a semicircle around them. "That lot won't burn very long."

"What we need are some ashes. I'm going to try a kindling spell."

"Careful. Remember what happened the last time you tried a piece of Tastigon magic."

Jame grimaced. Early in her stay at the Res aB'tyrr, Cleppetty had tested her culinary skills by presenting her with a lump of unleavened dough and the household book of spells. She had indeed gotten the loaf to rise, but when Cleppetty had sliced into it, they had discovered that its expansion had been due to the growth of rudimentary internal organs. After that, Jame had left Tastigon magic alone. Now, with some trepidation, she called to mind the spell Cleppetty used every morning to start a new kitchen fire from the ashes of the old.

"Listen," said Marc suddenly.

"I don't hear anything."

"They're running silent. It's now or not at all, lass."

Jame hastily set fire to the semicircle with steel and flint. The clothes burned grudgingly. Wondering if she wasn't about to do something profoundly stupid, she recited the charm.

Instantly, a great cloud of fire-shot smoke billowed up around them. Choking, half-blind, Jame heard Marc's shout, then a meaty thunk. A wyrsa shot out of the darkness to land heavily at her feet. Snarling, it gathered its stocky body to spring at her, but then the terrible wound left by Marc's axe opened, spilling blood and bowels into the snow. She stared at the creature. The coarse white fur down its back was smoldering.

Now the smoke seemed full of hurtling bodies. The war-axe sang somewhere ahead of her, parrying what looked like flung torches. The spell circle was apparently kindling anything that passed over it. Jame sidestepped a blazing wyrsa. Were these creatures really so single-minded that they didn't realize they were on fire?

The snow crust in front of her erupted. For half a heartbeat, Jame stared down the throat of the beast springing up at her. Then Jorin met it in midair. Ounce and wyrsa disappeared into the smoke, snapping at each other, rolling over and over. Jame ran after them.

"Down!" roared Marc's voice almost in her ear. She fell flat. Axe and wyrsa met over her head with a crunch and a spray of blood.

"That's nineteen," said the Kendar, scooping her up. "Stand clear." And he pushed her to one side out of his weapon's reach.

She could hear Jorin and the wyrsa still thrashing about somewhere nearby but couldn't find them. The ounce would be fighting blind without her eyes to guide him, but then, despite her excellent Kencyr night vision, she herself could barely see anything in this chaos of smoke, snow, and darkness. Where was the crevasse? Sweet Trinity, to step over the edge of that in the dark . . .

A wyrsa charged her, all the fur down its back ablaze. No time for evasion. She went down backward, caught the beast in mid-spring with her foot and flipped it over her head. Its wailing cry faded in the distance before ending abruptly. So that's where the crevasse was.

Jame was just thinking that for a street fighter she wasn't doing too badly when the snow beside her exploded. She barely saw the wyrsa before it landed on her. Its weight drove her head and shoulders through the weakened ice crust. The powdery snow beneath filled her eyes and mouth. Bent over backward with fifty pounds of maddened wyrsa on her chest, tearing at the heavily padded arm, which she had thrown up to protect her throat, she fought back in mindless terror, slashing, clawing. The night was red, red, and stank of blood.

Only exhaustion finally made her stop. The wyrsa sprawled on top of her, its teeth still locked in the reinforced sleeve of her knife-fighter's d'hen, its face a gory, eyeless mask. It was quite dead. For a moment she lay there gasping, then, with difficulty, heaved the beast off and sat up. Her gloves hung in blood-soaked rags. She stared numbly at her hands, at the fingernails, razor-tipped and edged, still fully extended. Oh God, she had used them again.

No one at her old home in the Haunted Lands had realized what she was until her seventh year. They had thought it odd that she had no fingernails, but no one had been prepared for the retractile claws that suddenly one day had broken through the skin on her fingertips. Then her father had known what to call her when he drove her out:

Shanir, god-spawn, unclean, unclean . . .

There was blood under the nails. She plunged her hands into the snow again and again until common sense stopped her. She could never wash away the taint in her blood that made her what she was.

Something breathed in her ear. Jame started, then turned and threw her arms around Jorin. The ounce nuzzled her face as she ran anxious hands over him, looking for serious wounds, finding none. Ancestors be praised for that, at least.

Then, for the first time, she noticed how quiet everything was. The semicircle still smoldered, but most of the smoke had blown away to reveal a battlefield lit by the burning carcasses of some thirty wyrsan, all in various stages of dismemberment.

Marc might hate killing, but if need be, he was certainly good at it. But where was he?

She scrambled to her feet, cold with sudden fear. Only his footprints remained in the trampled, bloody snow, indicating that he had been driven backward several paces by the fury of his assailants. The trail ended at the edge of the crevasse.

Jame threw herself down on the snow and peered into the abyss. It was too dark for her to see more than a few feet, and her voice woke only echoes, cracking off icy walls farther and farther down. Sweet Trinity, if he had fallen all the way to the bottom . . .

Behind her, beyond the firelight, someone chuckled softly. "Jamethiel!" called a husky, sweet voice from the darkness. "Child, I've come for you."

Jorin backed into Jame, the fur down his spine rising. She felt her own scalp prickle. Whatever was out there, it knew her real name, and she almost felt she knew what to call it, too. Where had she heard that loathsomely familiar voice before? Not in Tai-tastigon, not at the keep . . .

"Dream-Weaver, Snare-of-Souls, Priest's-Bane . . ."

The voice chanted the epithets softly, mockingly. Only the last was one that Jame had ever used. The rest belonged to the first Jamethiel, her namesake, who some three thousand years before had danced out the souls of two-thirds of the Kencyr Host at the bidding of her brother and consort, Gerridon, Master of Knorth.

"Soon the spell-circle will weaken. See, already the fire is dying. Do you remember the Master's House, burning, burning, the night he called you to his bed?"

. . . she was climbing the twisted stair, naked under a cloak of serpent skins sewn together with silver thread. The snake heads thumped on each step at her heels. A man was waiting in an alcove . . . who? His face was like a refleshed skull, his fingers cold, so cold, as he slipped a knife into her hand, and she was climbing, climbing, toward a door barred with red ribbons, toward the darkness beyond . . .

Jame flinched away from that splinter of memory, all that was left of so many lost years. The Master's bed? But it was the first Jamethiel who had been and, for all she knew, still was the arch-traitor's consort. What on earth did all this have to do with her?

But you were in Perimal Darkling yourself. The thought breathed cold on her. She wanted to deny it but You have the Book Bound in Pale Leather, kept in darkness by Gerridon when he fell. There isn't any place you could have gotten it but in his House, under shadows' eaves.

Damn. The spell-circle was weakening. Eyes gleamed across the dying flames, and that soft, gloating chuckle came again. "Soon, Jamethiel, soon."

It was as if her entire lost past waited there in the darkness ready to pounce. What would hold it back? All Jame could think of was fire . . . and the Book. Trinity, that was it. She scrambled for her knapsack and dug into it. Her cold hands closed on something warm. She drew out a package and hastily unwrapped it to reveal the Book Bound in Pale Leather. It throbbed in her grasp as if shaken by a slow heartbeat. Then it seemed to shiver. Goose bumps rose on the soft skin of its binding as the cold air hit it.

There was a sudden movement beyond the still smoldering semicircle. Something pale and curiously lopsided shambled forward, its exact shape hidden by the thickening snow.

"What are you doing?" it demanded, its voice rising sharply. "You little fool, stop!"

Jame wrenched her eyes back to the Book. On the page before her was the rune she wanted. She stared at it with horrified fascination as its power began to unfold in her mind. Lanes of vermilion, lines of gold. . . . Heat grew, and with it, pain. Jame slammed shut the Book, but the rune seemed etched on the inside of her eyelids. The images began to blur, to expand, going out of control. Jame grimly forced the power generated by the rune back into its proper shape. Then, when it felt as if the top of her head was about to blow off, in the language of the Rune-Masters, she said:

"BURN."

The word seared her throat. She fell to her knees, gagging, as waves of heat rolled over her. Looking up, half dazed, she saw a wall of roaring flame just beyond the ash circle, rising, spreading backwards. Fiery motes stung her upturned face. The very sky seemed to be burning. For a moment, Jame believed she had fallen back into her nightmare, but then . . .

Ancestors preserve me, she thought. I've set fire to the blizzard!

Out in the heart of the flames, something screamed. A burning shape hurtled over the now defunct spell-ring. It somersaulted once in the melting snow to extinguish the flames, then came bounding forward. Jorin leaped to meet it. The creature sent him flying with a blow and came on. It looked like some warped parody of a wyrsa, but much larger and furred only in singed patches. Its fire-cast shadow, monstrously distorted, sprang on before it.

Jame leaped to her feet, then went over backward as the thing crashed into her. She found herself sprawling on her back, staring up into a face that seemed to be all eyes, muzzle, and teeth. It was a changer out of Perimal Darkling, she realized, horrified, one of the Master's fallen Kencyr servants. Once this creature must have been as recognizably human as Jame herself, but that had been long, long ago.

It grinned down at her. "Just like old times, eh? I always said Tirandys was a spoilsport for teaching you how to fight back."

"What are you talking about?" She hardly recognized her own voice, breathless, cracking with near panic. "What do you want?"

He laughed again, a half-mad sound. "Want? I? It's our master who wants, and what he wants is you. Naughty girl, to have run away from his house like that, after all the pains we took with you. But it's been a long, lean time up in these mountains, waiting for you to leave that god-ridden city. Master Gerridon can wait. My turn comes now."

She had her hands braced against his shoulders, but that gloating face oozed down the length of her arms, changing shape as it came. Shreds of rotting meat were caught between his teeth. His breath stank.

Then, abruptly, something blotted out the fiery sky behind him. The changer was wrenched away. Jame heard the crunch of bones as he landed a dozen feet away. She saw a huge, dark shape crouching over the changer and smelled the tang of wild musk. The Arrin-ken had arrived at last.

So, Keral, well met again, purred a deep voice in Jame's mind. It's been a long time.

"Not long enough," snarled the changer. "I think you've broken my legs."

Have I? The Arrin-ken patted one of the creature's twisted limbs experimentally. The changer screamed. So I have. How clumsy of me. I meant to break your back.

"You wouldn't dare! I am a favorite of the Master himself! Harm me, and he'll nail your mangy hide to his trophy wall with you still in it!"

Foolish boy. I've already harmed you. The flesh of your kind heals quickly, but what a pity that bones take so much longer.

The purr deepened. Through it ran changing depths, and a sudden sense of many voices plaited together like the currents of the sea.

As for that wall, we remember it well, and the bloody hall where so many of our kind were slain the night Gerridon betrayed us all to Perimal Darkling and shadows swallowed the moon. We even remember how many Arrin-ken you blinded with live coals before your half-brother Tirandys stopped the fun. Indeed, Keral, we have looked forward to this meeting for a long time.

The changer had begun to shake. "You think you're so noble, so wise," he spat. "So I'm the fool, am I, for having chosen the winning side and won immortality? You could rot for all your precious god cares, but I tell you my lord values me, as the Darkness does him, and both will avenge me!"

The Devourer of Worlds values nothing that has outlived its usefulness, and as for your master, we suspect that he too will be glad to see the last of you. Look at yourself, Keral.

The great cat opened wide his luminous eyes. In their depths, the changer saw himself, and flinched.

Mirrors aren't to your liking anymore, are they? We remember when they were, but that was millennia ago. Since then, you say, you have become immortal. The Mistress reaped souls to keep Gerridon of Knorth young; but you have gained your "immortality" by coupling with the foulest shadows that creep in the farthest rooms of the Master's House, across the thresholds of a hundred fallen worlds. Now you crawl back to them whenever lust or severe injury drives you and find renewal in their arms.

But they warp you, Keral, body and soul, more and more each time. Even now you can no longer hold any true shape. Soon you will crawl on your belly like some pallid slug until your very bones liquefy. What price immortality then? It would be more merciful to give you back to these flames, to a quick death.

The changer gave a bleat of terror and tried to drag himself away, but the Arrin-ken pinned him, almost absentmindedly, with one great paw.

Ah, yes, but are we inclined to be merciful? No, we think not. Good-bye, Keral. May you live a long, long time.

With that, the huge beast reared up, black against the flames. As a cat might a mouse, he hooked the changer into the air and batted him into the chasm. Keral's scream faded into the distance, ending suddenly. Then the great cat turned to the fire and, in that silent voice woven of many voices, spoke a word. The flames died. Most of the storm had been consumed, leaving a night sky scattered with stars and lit by a full moon now just peering over the shoulder of Mount Timor. It shone on a mountainous landscape reduced almost to its underlying rocks. Water cascaded down them. Here and there, steam hissed up from heated stones. The Arrin-ken turned back to Jame.

And now, as our friend said, "Your turn, Jamethiel."

Jame tried to speak, but only managed to croak.

Think it, child, said a cool, deep voice in her head. This time it spoke alone. Under it ran the detached murmur of those other voices which, Jame suddenly realized, must belong to the other Arrin-ken in their distant retreats. One had a rustle in it as if of dried leaves, another sparkled with the bright sound of a mountain stream, a third echoed to the sea's boom, and so on and on. They all seemed to be discussing her.

W-we met once, in the hills above Tai-tastigon, she said silently to the great beast before her. You taught Jorin how to hunt and . . . and you at least weren't hostile to me. But now, somehow, I don't think I've been rescued.

Not necessarily. Then, you see, I didn't know your name.

"I'm not—" she began, then stopped, choking. I'm not Jamethiel Dream-Weaver. It may be my misfortune to be named after her, but surely it isn't my fault.

Perhaps. So, not the Mistress, but in possession of the Master's property, or so he would claim, just as he claims the Ivory Knife and the Serpent-Skin Cloak, all kept by him in Perimal Darkling when the elder world fell. And yet here the Book is now. Are you a runaway Darkling?

Jame stared up at him. I have been beyond the Barrier, yes, but I'm not a darkling. Sweet Trinity, can't you tell?

Not easily. You have more than a touch of the Darkling glamour. Did you steal the Book?

This brought Jame up short. The Master certainly hadn't given it to her. In fact, she suspected that everyone at her old home keep had been killed by Gerridon of Knorth when he had come there searching for both it and her. She had been a 'prentice thief in Tai-tastigon with the priest Ishtiér's grudging permission, provided she never stole from one of her own kind. Her honor had depended on that. But had she already forfeited it by stealing from the Master? The past was an abyss into which only the faintest rays of light fell. What had she done in Perimal Darkling, and what had been done to her?

The moon had slipped behind the Pass now. Fingers of shadow from the Ebonbane's ragged spine scrawled over what was left of the snowfield. The Arrin-ken sat watching Jame, his luminous, unblinking eyes a good three feet above her own. His outline had vanished altogether in the sudden gloom of moon-fall, but she felt his presence as one does that of some huge, immovable object in the dark.

I'm on trial, she thought suddenly, with an involuntary shiver, and this is my judge.

Yes, she must have stolen the Book—but was the Master really of the Three People anymore? If he was, he was also still the rightful Highlord of the Kencyrath. But the Arrin-ken had stripped him of that title and given it to Glendar, his younger half-brother, who had then led the flight to Rathillien. So Gerridon of Knorth had indeed been judged a traitor, bereft of rights, and she hadn't stolen the Book at all but only retrieved it.

Agreed.

The silent word made Jame start. The Arrin-ken must have been following her thoughts as easily as if she had shouted them. Anger touched a spark to her already frayed nerves.

If you already knew, why did you ask? Damnit, stop playing games!

Amusement cool as a wind off the heights answered her.

Ah, no. I may tease, but I also test. For those ignorant of the Law, some allowances are made. You are not ignorant, therefore you are responsible.

Trinity! For what?

Perhaps for everything.

Abruptly, Jame felt another mind enter her own. Even though it was shielding itself, she felt as if the entire Ebonbane had just unfolded in her consciousness. Something stalked her through it on velvet paws. It followed the scent of certain memories and tracked them down . . .

She was dancing at the Res aB'tyrr. Her career as the B'tyrr had begun when a rival innkeeper had sent ruffians to destroy the inn that had become her adopted home. To gain time, Cleppetty had told her to dance for the mob. She had, with great trepidation, not even sure that she knew how. But she did. Where had she learned this strange, intoxicating dance that somehow fed on those who watched it? What was it doing to them? To her? That worried her sometimes, but not now as she danced. Now there was only exultation, and growing hunger.

She stood in the temple of her god. The priest Ishtiér, possessed, was booming obscure prophecies while in the outer corridors uncontrolled power ran mad. She must dance it down or they would all die, and she did.

She knelt in the snows of the Ebonbane with the Book open on her knees and said, "BURN."

"No!" Jame gasped, and wrenched her mind and memory free. It was the present again.

The Arrin-ken's silent voice broke over her, implacable as the cold that shatters trees in winter, woven with the sounds of sea, desert, and forest. Child, you have perverted the Great Dance as your namesake did before you. You have also usurped a priest's authority and misused a Master Rune. We conclude that you are indeed a Darkling, in training if not in blood. On the whole, your intentions have been good, but your behavior has been reckless to the point of madness and your nascent powers barely under control. Three days ago, you nearly destroyed a city. Now, shall we let such a one as you loose on our poor, battered people? Answer, child.

Jame stared at the great cat. She must say something—yes, no—but her mind had gone completely blank.

Then there was a sound behind her. A hand came up over the edge of the crevasse and fumbled for a hold. Before the other one could appear, clutching the double headed war-axe, Jame was on her knees grabbing for Marc's sleeve.

"Sorry it took me so long," he said apologetically, hauling himself up. "I heard you call, but I'd just landed on a scrap of a ledge down there and had the breath knocked out of me. Then it rained fire. Then a wyrsa fell on me—or at least I think it was a wyrsa. But what's happened here?"

"Company," Jame croaked, indicating the huge, silent cat.

Marc regarded the Arrin-ken with awe. Like most Kencyr, he had never seen one before. "My lord, your servant," he said formally. "So, everything has come out all right at last."

"Not quite," said Jame, struggling to bring out the words. "I think . . . that he . . . means to kill me."

"Kill you? But why?"

"Because . . . of what I am."

The big Kendar gave her a perplexed look. If he wondered what she meant, however, he didn't ask. Instead, almost absent-mindedly, he picked up his weapon.

"Lord or no, I don't see how I can permit that."

Jame was appalled. It might be pleasant on a winter's night to sit around the hearth discussing what chance a three hundred fifty pound, ninety-four year old axe-man would have against a six hundred pound, nearly immortal cat, but she had no desire to see it put to the test.

"You idiot!" she croaked, stepping between them. "Before I'd . . . let you do that, I'd . . . chuck myself into . . . that damn crevasse."

In an instant, impossibly, she was falling. The reeling darkness closed about her. No sky, no walls of rock, no ledge either. She had missed it. But she didn't miss the steep, rock studded slope below that broke both her fall and several ribs as she tumbled down it. A moment more in the air, and then a smashing blow. She was lying on the floor of the crevasse, face down in half-melted snow. Blood bubbled in her throat. When she tried to move and couldn't, she realized that her back was broken.

Nearby, something stirred. Rocks shifted, grating, as a heavy body dragged itself painfully over them toward her. She couldn't even turn her head. The sound of hoarse breathing echoed off the chasm walls, nearer, nearer, and then came a low, ragged laugh.

"My turn . . . again, Jamethiel."

"That's enough," said a familiar voice sharply, as from a distance. "Stop it."

She found herself huddled at the lip of the crevasse with Marc kneeling beside her, his big hands on her shoulders.

"Did you hear me?" he said again, speaking over her head in an angrier tone than she had ever heard him use before. "I said, 'Stop it!' "

The Arrin-ken sat like a boulder, watching them. This time, she realized, he had drawn not on her memories but on foreknowledge. That was exactly what it would be like to jump, to die down there in the dark, helpless at that creature's mercy.

Your choice, Jamethiel.

Suddenly, Jame was very, very angry. She shook off the Kendar's hands and rose. The mountain air still vibrated with the power set loose by the Master Rune, which the counter-sign had not wholly dispersed. With a sweeping, defiant gesture of the dark dance, she gathered in the errant force to tingle down exhausted nerves like strong wine on an empty stomach.

"My choice." Her voice, stronger now, caught the same purring note as the Arrin-ken's but with an even colder undernote. "My choice! So I can jump or see you fight and probably kill my friend. But what if there's a third alternative? You like games, cat, don't you? Well, perhaps it's your turn to play 'Mouse.'"

"Lass, don't . . ."

Marc touched her arm, then recoiled with a sharp exclamation. His hand shook as if with sudden palsy. Jame hardly noticed. With the abrupt influx of power, the night had seemed to unfold around her. She felt the patterns of force that wove through it: the vipers' knot of energy to the east that was Tai-tastigon, still seething after three days; the changer's hectic heartbeat as he lay in the cold, open grave of the crevasse; but before her sat the Arrin-ken, like some great rock around which all currents must flow. When she probed for the patterns that made up his life, her mind slid off them as if off rimed marble. His aloofness provoked her. She would weave the dance around him. She would lure him out of his inner citadel and . . . and . . . what?

Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of Jame's mind, and a stranger hunger that she remembered as if from some half-forgotten dream. It would be sweet to reap the soul of an Arrin-ken.

But what was that? The very night seemed to shift, as though shockwaves rippled through it. The Arrin-ken's massive head lifted. He had felt it, too. The mountains to the north blotted out much of the sky, but behind their peaks a light grew. It became brighter, brighter, and then its source shot into view, blazing like a comet. Jame thought she saw a figure at its heart, dancing down through the night. She found the Arrin-ken standing at her side.

I was wrong. The Master wants his pet changer back after all. Beware her touch.

Her?

The light shot overhead. It circled the field and came flashing back. For a moment, it hovered over the crevasse, then Jame felt its attention shift. It landed. Gliding toward her like a sleepwalker was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and one whom, surely, she had seen somewhere before. But her mind didn't seem to be working properly. She couldn't think, couldn't even move as the other reached out to her. A slim, ivory hand touched her cheek. The woman was smiling dreamily at her, murmuring . . . something, but all Jame heard was a great buzzing in her ears. Her borrowed power flowed from her like blood from a gaping wound. She felt as if her very soul was about to be ripped away. The woman's eyes were a cool, almost inhuman silver, but their pupils plunged down, down beneath the dreaming face. In their depths, on the edge of black chaos, a white figure danced on and on desperately, as if afraid to stop. Jame plummeted toward her. The woman raised her head . . . and abruptly Jame found herself on the ground with the Arrin-ken crouching between her and the shining woman.

Mistress, take what you came for and go. Nothing else here belongs to you—yet.

The woman's smile shivered, as though about to crack, then froze again. She bowed and, like a falling star, plunged into the crevasse, only to shoot out a moment later with the changer's broken body dark in her arms. He was shrieking, in far more pain than ever the fall had caused him. Scream and light faded into the distance until the darkness of the north swallowed both.

Jame struggled up on one elbow, feeling drained. If not for the buffer of extra power, that woman would have drunk her soul to the very lees with her cold touch, not because she wanted to, but because it was her nature. But what had the Arrin-ken called her?

The great cat sat as before, his unblinking eyes on her.

Yes, that was the Dream-Weaver, although nightmares are more her lot now.

"Trinity," said Jame out loud, almost reverently. But why was she so interested in me?

You don't spend much time in front of a mirror, do you?

With this face? Of course not. But what . . .

A sound interrupted her. Jorin was stumbling toward her, even his blind, moon-opal eyes managing to look unfocused. Jame hugged him joyfully. Marc knelt beside them. His face was pale, but the arms he put around them both were as steady as ever.

"So, everything has worked out after all."

Jame looked at the Arrin-ken. Has it?

That depends. Do you still want to play cat and mouse?

"Oh, hell." Jame felt her face redden. What in Perimal's name had she been thinking of? Of course I won't fight you, lord, and neither will my friend, even if I still have to throw myself over the edge to prevent it. She swallowed, remembering the cold, lonely death that awaited her there below. At least the changer wouldn't be on hand to enliven things.

That is still your choice, as it always was. All the voices were back, purring together. You judged yourself, child. You chose the pit. We expected your power and recklessness, but not that. It seems that you are willing to take what responsibility you can for your actions. An unfallen darkling. We would not have believed that possible. Clearly, there are forces at work here beyond even our understanding.

Marc nudged Jame. "What is Lord Cat saying? All I hear is a rumble."

"I'm not sure, but I think I've just been given a reprieve."

Yes. Only the silent voice of the big cat before them answered. The best part of wisdom is knowing when not to meddle. Besides, someone has to take that accursed Book back to the Kencyrath, and it seems to have chosen you.

For lack of anyone more sensible, Jame thought.

Perhaps. Its tastes were always . . . eccentric, but I gave up quarreling with both them and it millennia ago. The great objects of power choose their own paths, and this one is returning home none too soon. A storm is brewing over the Riverland, over all Rathillien, north and south. I hear thunder, and horns blowing. And I see darkness across your path, child. Tai-tastigon was a sheltered place. Others besides Keral may be waiting for you to break cover. Beware of them, but even more, beware of yourself.

"I don't understand."

No? Then look.

The big cat opened wide his luminous eyes. Jame stared at herself reflected in them, at the high cheekbones, the sharp lines of nose and chin, the large, silver-gray eyes that stared back at her. She looked in mirrors so seldom that her own face was almost that of a stranger to her, but this time it was familiar in an unexpected way. This time, from certain angles, she might almost have thought that the Mistress looked back at her.

"I-I still don't understand."

Then you truly are an innocent . . . but innocence and even good intentions are sometimes poor protection. Take a lesson from your namesake. Jamethiel Dream-Weaver didn't understand the evil that Gerridon asked her to commit until it was too late. She never really consented to it. Nonetheless, her abuse of power opened the deepest reaches of her soul to the void beyond the Chain of Creation where Perimal Darkling itself was spawned. At first, that breach was small, manageable, but over the past few decades it has gaped wider and wider. Now souls fall into it through her as if into a vortex, and she must dance on and on at its brink or be consumed by it herself.

"B-but just now, she smiled at me . . ."

You were probably like a dream to her. All the external world must be, now. Mind and soul, she dances and dares not stop while her body drifts on at her Master's will. Be warned, child. That could happen to you, or worse. The Dream-Weaver acted in ignorance and so bears only partial responsibility for her actions. You may still be innocent, but not ignorant—and you have already played at the very game that doomed the first Jamethiel. If you do eventually fall, it will be as the Master fell, knowing the evil you do, welcoming it. The abuse of power will push you in that direction. On the other hand, its mere use may drive you the other way, toward our god. That is what it means to be a Shanir, to walk the knife's edge.

Jame shuddered. "But I don't want to fall either way!"

A rich, rumbling chuckle answered her. Which one of us does? For us, alas, good is no less terrible than evil. We can only trust our honor and try to keep our balance. I commend you to both. Now I will escort you over the pass and as far down the other side as Peshtar. There you can refit and, who knows, perhaps find a new pair of boots.

"Boots?" repeated Marc, apparently catching this last word if nothing else. For the first time, he noticed that Jame was only half shod. "Here now, how long ago did that happen? You could easily lose a foot to frostbite up here."

Jame wriggled her toes inside the wet sock. "That's odd. They aren't even cold. Are you?"

"No."

Overhead loomed Mount Timor, stripped now of snow but ice-sheathed after the fire-storm thaw. Although a bitter wind blew off it, only traces of it reached the field below. Jame and Marc looked at each other, then at the Arrin-ken. Jorin had tottered over to the big cat and was leaning against him, eyes closed in bliss, as the great beast bent down to lick his head. At their feet, glowing faintly in the first light of dawn, lay a white carpet of star-shaped spring flowers.

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Framed