GOTHREGOR was nearly as far from Tentir as the randon college was from Tagmeth. Of those seventy-odd miles, the first twenty-five were by far the worst, with the trailing edge of the storm pouring down rain occasionally mixed with hail and the River Road nearly washed out. The nine riders were soaked and all of their mounts spent except Torisen's black and Burr's gray when some three hours later they reached Wilden and Shadow Rock Keeps, facing each other across the Silver. Lords Randir and Danior had both already left with their troops, stripping both keeps' stables but luckily not their riverside posting station.
By now, it was about midmorning. The thunderheads rolled on before them, leaving the brilliant but cool sunlight of an autumn day. Wet leaves lay in drifts of crimson and gold across the road. On bare branches above, raindrops hung like sparkling buds.
Harn twisted to look back up the road. "Odd. I thought Caineron would be snapping at our heels by now. We didn't exactly slip out of Tentir unnoticed."
"No well-bred Highborn rides in all weathers like a leather-shirt trooper if he can help it." Torisen quoted. "Now that I've slipped out of his grasp, I suppose Caineron will wait for his troops and descend on Gothregor sometime tomorrow with all their weight behind him."
"Besiege it, d'you mean?"
"Trinity, no, not with all the other lords there, too. The man's not that big an idiot. He will simply want to impress the rest of the Council. A Knorth defeat there will serve him much better than a quiet assassination here on the road. He must be very sure of himself. Knowing Caldane, he's probably convinced himself by now that you carted me off a raving maniac, tied to Storm hand and foot."
"That could still be arranged. You must have gotten that crawler before it could really get you; but just the same, let me know if you decide to fall off."
"I'm resisting the temptation."
Harn looked at him askance, clearly unsure how serious he was. Torisen grinned.
"Now, Harn. I've kept you guessing for the better part of fifteen years. Is this any time to stop?"
The burly randon only growled.
They took the next two stages at an easier pace, changing mounts again at Falkirr, and came within sight of Gothregor in the late afternoon. The fortress was set on the plateau of a mountain spur that jutted out into the Riverland some one hundred and fifty feet above the valley floor. The outer ward and the fields beyond seethed with troops. As the riders approached, they saw the wolf standard of Hollens, Lord Danior, flying from the branch of an apple tree in the orchard just outside the northern barbican. Danior's people, some one thousand of them, were camped under the trees among the windfalls. Torisen reined in.
"Lord Danior . . . Cousin Holly!"
A young man in hunting leathers seated by a campfire turned his head sharply. He rose and came toward them, smiling. "Torisen! You made good time. We weren't expecting you until tomorrow."
"I had some help. Announce me, will you?"
"With pleasure!" He went off shouting for his horse.
"Is this really necessary?" demanded Harn.
"After last night? Yes."
Holly came back riding a skittish bay mare. He galloped up to the barbican and gave a loud blast on his hunting horn. The mare nearly threw him.
"A Knorth entering!" he shouted up at the guard.
"The gate's already open, you fool!" shouted back the Kendar, who apparently had neither understood what Holly had said nor recognized a Highborn in such rustic clothing.
"A Knorth!" bellowed Lord Danior.
"Sweet Trinity," said Torisen in an undertone. "D'you think it's too late to sneak in quietly after all?"
Just then, the guard saw him.
"M-my lord! Gothregor!" he turned and shouted across the inner ward. "Gothregor!"
Danior rode through the outwork with Torisen behind him. The others ranged themselves in the Highlord's wake. The broad inner ward seemed to sway up and toward them as the Kendar came to their feet. There was the leaping flame standard of Brandan and the stooping hawk of Edirr, Jaran's stricken tree, and the Coman's double-edged sword flying over a token force: the rest would be waiting down river at Kraggen Keep, as would be Ardeth's at Omiroth and the Edirr twins' at Kestrie. Even so, counting Torisen's people, there were nearly ten thousand Kencyr here.
"Knorth!" one shouted, and the rest took up the chant:
"K-north! K-north! K-north . . .!"
"Who's trying to impress whom?" muttered Harn under cover of the roar.
"Trying, sir?" said Burr.
The randon nodded to the west, across the river. "There's one lot who aren't buying."
Over the ruins of Chantrie, Gothregor's sister keep, flew the standard of Kenan, Lord Randir: a gauntleted fist grasping the sun. Kenan had brought nearly eight thousand five hundred troops to the gathering of the Host, and of those, watching from the overgrown wards and crumbling battlements, not one raised a cheer for the Highlord's homecoming.
Torisen rode through the roaring crowd to the causeway that led up to the gatehouse. The section passing through the middle ward was so steep that steps had been cut out of the underlying rock. Ahead, the rounded twin fronts of the gatehouse loomed dizzyingly up against the sky. Torisen's own Kendar leaned over the battlements, shouting. Inside was the inner ward, broad, green, surrounded by barracks, armories, and domestic offices, all stacked three stories high and built into the outer wall's thickness.
Torisen swung down, wincing. The leg that the wyrm had bitten had stiffened during the long ride. He hung onto Storm for a moment, feeling lightheaded, cursing softly, then let go as Rowan, his steward, limped across the grass to meet him. She too had been at Urakarn and bore the name-rune of the Karnid god burned into her forehead.
"My lord! We weren't expecting you so soon."
"So I gather. Is everything ready for the Council tomorrow?"
"Yes, lord. Everyone is here except Lord Caineron."
Torisen reclaimed his saddlebag, and grooms led the horses away. Gothregor's subterranean stables were four times the size of Tentir's, but, until winter, the garrison's mounts were stabled in converted ground-level barracks. The Kendar certainly didn't need them all. Torisen and his two thousand retainers rattled around in this huge fortress like dried peas in a helmet even when all of them were home. Now as usual, about five hundred were off serving with the Southern Host and elsewhere, a duty that they all took by rotation to earn Gothregor the money it needed to keep going. He could easily have fielded four times as many yondri-gon and filled Chantrie with men and women willing to rebuild it with their bare hands for half a promise of eventual acceptance among his regular troops. Caineron and his sons had built up their own huge army that way. Ardeth kept urging him to accept yondri; but how could he make promises he might not be able to keep? Even at two thousand, he felt the strain. It was as if every time he bound a Kendar to him, he gave that man or woman a piece of himself. There was simply no more to spare.
"Lord Jaran has been asking for you, my lord," said Rowan as they approached the keep. "Or rather he keeps asking for Ganth Gray Lord."
"He's gone soft?"
"As a rotten peach."
Damnation. At one hundred and sixty, Jaran had been overripe for years, but he had picked an awkward time to go off altogether, as he must well know. If he couldn't hold himself together through tomorrow to support the Highlord, his great-great-grandson would take over, and the boy was half a Randir.
"Poor old Jaran. Make him comfortable, but see that he's kept as far from Lord Ardeth as possible. Adric thinks that senility is contagious."
Rowan gave him a startled look. "Isn't it?"
"Who knows? Just be grateful that a full-blooded Kendar like you never catches it."
"Yes, lord—and by the way, have I begun to lurch more than usual or are you limping, too?"
"The latter. You wouldn't believe how big the vermin are at Tentir this fall. But speaking of Lord Ardeth, where is he?"
"In your quarters, lord, making himself at home as usual. He asked that you attend him as soon as you arrive—his words, you understand," she added sourly, "not mine."
"Indeed. Then I had better go see him at once, hadn't I?"
Rowan and Burr exchanged glances.
"My lord, won't you have some supper first?"
"Burr can bring it up to my quarters." He had already set off with a fast if uneven stride toward the keep, still carrying the saddlebag.
"Me and my big mouth," said Rowan ruefully.
The keep had the same general outline as the larger fortress —rectangular with a drum tower at each corner. Its first floor was windowless and dark. Here the lord of Knorth dispensed domestic justice under flaring torches and the stern death banners of his family. The second floor—brighter, more richly appointed—also was a hall of judgment, but for disputes between other houses. The third floor, as usual, took Torisen's breath away as he stepped out of the spiral stair in the corner. All four walls between their stone arches were stained glass. Here the High Council met, under the emblems of all nine major houses blazing with light, three by three by three. On the fourth wall facing east was a map of Rathillien in colored glass, all Kendar work, of course: the Highborn were about as artistically inept as an intelligent race could be.
Torisen stood gazing at the map for several moments as he got his breath back. Then he turned. On the western wall, catching the last of the day's light, was his own rathorn crest, flanked by Ardeth's full moon and Jaran's stricken tree. They were the two oldest supporters of his house, in more ways than one. If he was about to lose Jaran, it would be suicidal to quarrel with Ardeth, whatever the provocation.
He entered the stair and climbed more slowly, favoring his leg, to the room at the top of the northwest drum tower, which served as his study.
Adric, Lord Ardeth, sat by the fire in the room's only comfortable chair, reading a book. He looked up with a smile as Torisen entered.
"My dear boy, how delightful to see you again."
"And you, my lord."
It was a pleasure, despite everything, made all the more piquant by the old undercurrent of resentment. Then he saw that the book in the old lord's hand was his journal. Ardeth noted his change of expression.
"Memory is safer," he said placidly. "I never could understand the compulsion to write everything down."
Torisen put the saddlebag on the table and lifted the book out of Ardeth's hands. "Hardly everything."
"Oh come. Surely after all these years we two have no secrets from each other."
None, at least, that you haven't tried to sniff out, you old ferret, thought Torisen. "You shouldn't begrudge me some poor scraps of privacy," he said lightly.
"My dear boy, when have I ever begrudged you anything?"
Torisen was startled into a laugh. "I've just realized where Caineron gets those . . . er . . . remarkable manners of his," he said in answer to Ardeth's look of inquiry. "He's trying to imitate you."
An expression of extreme distaste crossed the old lord's face. "Oh really! Caineron. . . ." He became thoughtful. "That man is apt to cause trouble."
"You agree, then, that the Host must march?"
"Of course. You forget that I also served with the Southern Host, back when Krothen's great-grandfather paid its hire, and that my son Pereden commands it now. We have seen the Horde. A pity that Caineron hasn't, and that you gave him that idiotic promise. I said at the time that it was a mistake."
"Perhaps. But if I hadn't, Harn Grip-Hard wouldn't be here now to act as my second-in-command."
"You reinstated him? But the man is a berserker, unreliable on his own in a battle."
"I rely on him."
"Well, you know best. Still, this will stick in Caineron's throat if nothing else does. He sold his consent for a promise once, though; perhaps, for the right price, he will again."
The young man snorted. "And what can I offer him this time, short of the Highlord's seat itself?"
"A grandchild?"
Torisen made an impatient gesture. "We've been through all this before. On your advice, I took Caineron's daughter as a limited term consort, and that did keep her father off my back for nearly a year. Kallystine was sure I would extend the contract to include children. She still is. But if Caineron ever gets his hands on a legitimate Knorth grandchild, I may as well cut my own throat to save him the trouble. Trinity knows, after a night with Kallystine I've often considered doing it on general principles."
"And yet I'm told that she is very beautiful."
"So is a gilded sand viper."
"Yes, well, just the same, you should be forming some permanent alliances. Look at Caineron. He has children and grandchildren with mothers from nearly every house in the Kencyrath."
Torisen gave a snort of laughter. "Don't I know it. That man is prolific enough to sire offspring on a mule."
"I daresay. Caldane's fancy has been known to wander. I could tell you tales of his exploits in Karkinaroth some twenty years ago . . . but never mind. The point is that the bloodlines of his legitimate children form a net of power, one that Caldane may eventually use to entangle and destroy you. Now, if you were to contract to one of my great-granddaughters and I had the right to avenge you if necessary, that might make him hesitate."
"Perhaps," said Torisen dryly, "but it will hardly make him let the Host march the day after tomorrow."
"True," said Ardeth.
He steepled his long, elegant fingers and gazed thoughtfully at them. Firelight woke a spark in the depths of his sapphire signet ring and another in his hooded blue eyes, still keen after nearly fifteen decades.
"I will have to pull a few bloodlines myself. Now, if Caineron should cast the sole dissenting vote, he might be pressured into changing it. He cares what others think of him, or at least will until what they think no longer matters. Randir will be the most difficult. Between them, he and Caineron command more than a third of the Riverland Host. Danior and Jaran are yours as, of course, am I. The Edirr twins will be swayed by their whimsy, and Brandan by his sense of responsibility. As for the Coman, there should be no problem once you've confirmed Demoth as lord."
"I haven't decided about that yet," said Torisen.
Ardeth stared at him. "Of course you will confirm Demoth. His mother was one of my great-granddaughters."
"And for that I should give the Coman a lord who is quite possibly an idiot?"
"An idiot, perhaps, but one who supports you and is of my blood. In case you'd forgotten, the alternative is Korey, whose mother is a Caineron. That would be quite unacceptable. But enough of this useless debate," he said, rising. "The matter is settled. Tomorrow at the Council session you will declare for Demoth."
"No," said Torisen.
It was the first time since becoming Highlord that his instincts had led him flatly to refuse one of Ardeth's more serious "requests." He had expected the old resentment to come boiling up. Instead, all he felt was exhaustion and a dull ache in his leg. He leaned against the mantelpiece, looking down into the flames, feeling the bite of Ardeth's cold eyes.
"I'm Highlord now, Adric, not your field commander," he said, not looking up. "I have to do what I think is right for the Kencyrath, whatever your wishes, whatever mine. The best I can do is promise to protect your interests whenever I can. I owe you that much at least. As for the Coman, I simply don't know Demoth and Korey well enough yet to choose between them."
"You young fool. How much time do you think you have?"
A footstep on the spiral stair made both men turn sharply. Burr stepped into the room, carrying a covered tray.
"Supper, my lord."
"Oh hell," said Ardeth, in quite a different voice, and sat down again abruptly, putting his hands over his face.
"Adric?" Torisen bent over him. "Are you all right?"
"What we don't have time for," said Ardeth in a muffled voice, "is a stupid quarrel." He let his hands drop. Every one of his one hundred and forty nine years seemed etched deep in his face. "Especially not when the Southern Host has already marched. Do you really think Pereden was ready to take command?"
"I hope so," said Torisen carefully. "He did have nearly a year's training as my second-in-command." With Harn doing all the actual work.
Ardeth leaned back in the chair for a moment, his eyes closed. "He is the child of my old age, my last son. All the others died in the White Hills, fighting for your father. Sometimes I wish I had died with them." He stood up again, more carefully this time. "Think about the Coman. Of course, whichever one you chose, the other is apt to come after you with a knife, but you'll find in the end that I'm right—as usual."
He glanced at the far wall and blinked, a startled expression flickering across his face.
"Adric?"
"Nothing, nothing." Ardeth shook his white head as if to clear it. "Just eat something and get some sleep. You don't look as if your northern trip was all that restful." He paused at the top of the stairs. "Pereden thinks very highly of you, you know, but no less than I do."
" 'Highly' my left boot," muttered Burr as the Highborn disappeared down the steps. "That spoiled brat would spit on your shadow if he dared."
Torisen sighed. "I know. See that Ardeth gets safely back to his quarters, won't you?"
"Yes, lord. . . . You didn't tell him what happened at Tentir?"
"Trinity! No, not a word."
Burr grunted. "He'll hear about it soon enough anyway." He went down the stair, shutting the door behind him.
Now why hadn't he said anything about Tentir? It hadn't been a conscious decision at all, more like an instinctive reluctance to tell Ardeth anymore than he had to. Torisen picked up the journal and leafed through it. Names, dates, events . . . Anar, his old tutor, had kept a book like this when he had felt his mind beginning to go. Anar, the keep, Ganth . . . Ardeth believed that the Gray Lord had died before his son's departure.
That he hadn't was one secret that the lord of Omiroth must never even be allowed to suspect.
"Memory is safer," murmured Torisen, and threw the journal into the fire.
As the pages burst into flames, he turned and saw the child's shadow on the wall, sitting on the shadow table, swinging her legs back and forth. So that was what had given Ardeth such a start. What was he going to do about her? What was he doing with her in the first place? The answer lay just beneath the surface of his mind, but he flinched away from laying it bare. Things were complicated enough already. Just this once, he would do as he pleased and ask himself no questions. He picked up the saddlebag and sat down before the fire holding it.
"So what do I do about Caineron?" he asked the air.
No answer. He was too tired to think of anything but grandchildren. Yes, he could promise Caldane one, as a last resort. That would at least launch the Host and—who knows?—he might die fighting the Horde anyway. If he didn't and Kallystine bore his child, Caineron would certainly move against him in the child's name. He might still control events but, if not, he could at least prevent a civil war by killing himself. Then Caineron would be Highlord in all but name and soon, probably, even in that.
"He cares what others think of him, or at least will until what they think no longer matters."
Torisen remembered Kindrie's cry of pain. Was that the sort of cruelty the Three People had in store? Could it possibly be what the Kencyrath's cold, enigmatic deity wanted for them?
Torisen sat staring into the flames, following the same thoughts around and around, until the distant blare of a horn broke the circle. He woke suddenly beside the dead fire, surprised to find that he had been asleep. Who in Perimal's name could be blowing a challenge this late at night? He rose and threw open a shutter. From this height, the outer ward seemed starred with campfires, but they were nothing compared to the river of torches flowing down from the north, grouped in battle formation. The horn sound again, imperious.
"Restormir!" came the guard's hail from the barbican. "Restormir!"
So Caineron had arrived, twelve thousand strong and apparently ready for a fight. It must have surprised him to find the outworks open and the walls unmanned. Would he be stupid enough to rush in on the sleeping camp anyway? Torisen wished he would, since that would turn the other lords against him with a vengeance.
Here came torches under the gate: two, six, twelve; a delegation, then, riding up to Gothregor.
Torisen put on his coat. Carrying the saddlebag, he opened the southern door and stepped out of the tower. Beyond was a narrow platform, then a catwalk suspended between the keep's two front towers. It swayed underfoot as the wind caught it.
Below, Caineron rode up through the gatehouse into the inner ward. Three of his established sons were with him, as well as a small, miserable figure who could only be Donkerri. The herald blew another blast, waking a volley of echoes off the stone walls.
"Quiet!" Torisen shouted down at him. "People are trying to sleep!"
Caineron looked up, and flinched. Torisen remembered with sudden amusement that the lord of Restormir was nearly as squeamish about heights as Burr. He unobtrusively shifted his weight to increase the catwalk's sway.
"Highlord!" Caineron shouted up at him. "My son's blood is on your hands. I will have justice!"
"So will I!" Torisen shouted back. "But in the morning."
The walk swayed back and forth, twenty feet down to the flat roof of the keep, seventy to the flagstones before the door.
"Your rank will not protect you from the consequences of this foul deed!" bellowed Caineron, rather desperately launching into a formal challenge, which he had not expected to deliver at the top of his voice, much less to a moving target. "If you deny your guilt, I say that you lie and . . . and . . . will you stop that?"
"Stop what?" Torisen shouted back. The walk swung him up toward the stars and back again with the wind whipping his black hair in his face. "Caldane, go to bed! Your quarters are ready, and I've moved the Council meeting up to nine tomorrow morning. If you're too excited to sleep, have pity on those of us who aren't. Good night!"
Caineron seemed inclined to argue but, from what Torisen could make out at this distance, he was also beginning to look distinctly unwell. He let his sons persuade him to go inside.
Torisen waited for the walk's swing to slow and then went on to the southwest tower, which housed his sleeping quarters. Good. Someone, probably Burr, had started a large blaze in the fireplace. He stripped by its light and lay down before it. Tomorrow no longer worried him. Caineron had tripped over his own feet before, rushing in for the kill, and somehow, he was about to do it again. Their god might favor a cruel man, but never a fool. He fell asleep almost at once, and dreamed that he was a child again, pushing his sister in a swing back and forth over the edge of a precipice.
THE TRUMPETS SOUNDED, high and sweet. Another procession was coming in under the gatehouse. The morning sunlight blazed on crimson velvet and white fur, on steel and ivory. Brandan's flame banner cracked over his head, its flying shadow throwing the deep lines of his face into even deeper relief. The retinues of the lesser houses—Danir, Edirr, Coman, and Jaran— waiting in the inner ward raised their war-cries in welcome, to be answered by Brandan's troops. Following Brandan would be Randir, Ardeth, and Caineron, in ascending order of importance.
"I still say you should bring up the rear," muttered Burr, giving Torisen's boots a final buff before handing them to his lord.
"You mean sneak out the postern at dawn and come back in by the front door, banging a drum? No, thank you. Let them come to me." He pulled on the boots, trying not to wince as the top of the right one came up over his calf.
"Still sore, eh?"
Torisen gave the Kendar a dirty look. "Nothing to complain about." In fact, the wyrm's bite only looked like a ring of fading bruises this morning.
Burr held out his black dress coat with its full sleeves, and he slipped into it. The high collar felt odd without the throwing knives sheathed in it, but even if they had survived the fight with the changer, it wouldn't have been proper to carry them on such an occasion. A pity that the armorer probably wouldn't be able to replace them before the march south, assuming there was one. There. That was it, except for one item.
"I hope you haven't forgotten the Kenthiar," he said to Burr.
Burr snorted. "I hoped that you had. Here it is."
He opened an iron box. Inside lay a narrow silver collar, ornately inscribed with runes of forgotten meaning, set with a gem of shifting hue. It had been found in the unfinished temple at Kothifir when the Kencyrath first came to Rathillien. Some claimed that it was a parting gift from the mysterious Builders; others, that it had simply been left there by accident. At any rate, in those times of self-doubt just after the Master's fall, the Kenthiar had become both the emblem and test of authority, for supposedly only the true Highlord could wear it in safety. Many questioned that belief now, but admired the nerve of anyone willing to put the thing on.
Burr gingerly lifted it out of its box. Those who carelessly touched the collar's inner surface were apt to lose their fingers, or worse. After Ganth had surrendered it and the title, it had lain on his chair for twenty years, a challenge and a taunt to all would-be successors. Then a drunken Highborn had put it on during a dinner party as a joke. The next minute, his neatly severed head had fallen onto the table and bounced into a soup tureen. No one else had even dared touch the thing until Ganth's son came to claim it ten years later.
Personally, Torisen didn't trust the Kenthiar at all. During its long history, it had also decapitated three Highlords whose claims to power, as far as anyone could tell, had been perfectly legitimate. No wonder so few in recent centuries had been willing to take the risk. If Caineron were to snatch power, he probably could get out of wearing it altogether; but Torisen, coming to claim his father's place with neither Ganth's ring nor sword, had felt that he must make some gesture to prove himself. Now he was about to make it again.
"Ready, lord."
"You're sure you want to risk another good coat? All right, all right . . . go ahead."
Burr put the silver collar around his lord's neck. The hinges on either side of the gem straightened, and the catch closed with a vicious snap. Torisen caught his breath. Nothing.
"All serene," he said to Burr with a smile. "No spilt soup today . . . and just in time."
Up the spiral stair came confused sounds from the Council Chamber below.
The lords of the Kencyrath turned and fell silent as the Highlord entered. They were clustered at the far end of the room, under the map of Rathillien now ablaze with morning light. Torisen thought for a moment that they were all avoiding him, but then he caught a whiff of something rotten nearby. The bundle of furs in the chair to the left of his own raised its head. It was Jedrak, Lord Jaran. Green light from the window mottled his bald pate like mold. His nearly toothless mouth stretched in a lopsided, welcoming smile.
"Ganth!"
Torisen went forward immediately and took the clawlike hands which the old lord held out to him. Someone on the far side of the room gasped.
"No, not Ganth," he said gently. "Torisen. Remember?"
A look of confusion and near-panic flickered through Jaran's cloudy eyes. "Torisen?" His expression sharpened. "Tori! Yes, of course. Stupid of me. My great-great-grandchild, Kirien."
A soberly dressed young man whom Torisen hadn't even noticed stepped forward and gave the Highlord a half bow. His features were unusually delicate and his expression quite unreadable. Torisen returned the bow, then turned to the others. Here it came.
"I expect you all know by now that Nusair was killed the night before last at Tentir, and that my lord Caineron thinks I did it."
Caineron snorted loudly. "Thinks!"
"He has probably also suggested to you that I have finally succumbed to the madness that runs in the Knorth blood."
Ardeth made a small, distressed sound. Madness, like senility, was considered not only hereditary but contagious and unsafe even to mention.
"Obviously, this matter will have to be settled before we can discuss anything more important. To save time, we'll consider the challenge already issued. As for the answer, no, I did not kill Nusair. That leaves it up to you, my lord Caineron: prove me a liar—if you can."
He sat down at the head of the table, folded his hands, and waited.
For a moment, the assembled lords stared at him. By now, they all probably knew something about what had happened at Tentir; but none, least of all Caineron, had expected the Highlord to tackle it so directly. Ardeth took his seat at Torisen's right, casting a look of barely concealed horror across the table at Jaran. Danior also sat down, with an air of defiance; and Demoth of the Coman, hastily; and Brandan, because it was only proper. The Edirr twins exchanged questioning glances and a sudden grin. One sat, one stood, cancelling out each other. That left Caineron with the elegant Randir and Korey of the Comen, glowering from a corner.
"Well, my lord?" Torisen prompted.
Caineron gave him a sour look. He had really convinced himself that the Highlord had gone over the edge and was affronted to find him so calm, so . . . rational. But then even madness had its cunning, and so did he. He began to pace back and forth, hastily reshaping his argument.
"This murder was the culmination of an old quarrel and not altogether unexpected. Lord Knorth never liked my son."
"Who did?" muttered Danior, and was hushed by Ardeth.
"He has even hinted that Nusair tried to assassinate him, once with a snake and once (Ancestors preserve us) with a wall."
"So that was what happened at Tiglon," said Essien, the seated twin, with a solemnity undercut by a flash of pure mischief.
"We always wondered," said the standing Essiar, in the same tone.
Caineron gave them both a furious glare. Then, forcibly composing himself, he went on to describe the argument at Tentir, and the subsequent finding of Nusair's naked, mutilated body with the gold coin jammed into his mouth.
"That certainly sounds like the work of a madman," said Brandan thoughtfully, "or of someone feigning madness to implicate the Highlord—your pardon, Torisen—but in itself it hardly proves anything one way or the other."
"And so perishes your case, my lord," said Danior with a laugh.
"Not yet, not quite yet. I have one final proof, and rather a convincing one at that. You shouldn't have been so quick to stake your honor, my dear Knorth, for now you are foresworn and dishonored. Not only did you slay my son, but you were seen doing it. Ha! Now I've shaken you at last, haven't I?"
"Bewildered is more the word for it. How could anyone see me do something I never did?"
"Seen by whom, Caldane?" interposed Randir. "If not by you, you can only repeat what you are told, not vouch for the truth of it. You had better bring forward your witness."
Caineron demurred at first, then let himself be persuaded. Watching him, Torisen thought: He and Randir have rehearsed this. Whatever Caineron's nasty surprise is, he can hardly wait to spring it.
"Very well," said the lord of Restormir at last, with obviously feigned reluctance. "It would have been kinder to spare the boy, but apparently I can't. Donkerri, come here!"
Donkerri slunk out of the shadows, looking utterly miserable.
"Knorth, I take it you don't question my grandson's truthfulness?"
"I never have had cause to—before."
"Very well, then. Boy, tell them what you saw."
Donkerri gulped. "I-I saw . . ."
"Louder, boy, louder."
"I s-saw Torisen, Lord Knorth, kill my father."
Even Ardeth looked shocked. They all had an instinct for the truth, and this boy seemed to be telling it.
Torisen leaned forward. "Donkerri, how did I kill him?"
"W-with a knife in the back . . ."
Caineron looked up, startled.
"And then Commandant Harn tore his arm off, a-and then I-I fainted."
"This is very odd," said Brandan. "Caldane showed me Nusair's body this morning. I didn't see his back, but the poor lad certainly had both arms."
Torisen fought a terrible desire to burst out laughing. "Caineron, d-do you mean that you set this boy to spy on me and then didn't even listen to his full report?"
Caldane shook his head as if to drive off some buzzing insect. "This is nonsense. The fool is thinking of his cousin. Surely that damned berserker hasn't taken up dismembering Cainerons for a hobby."
"He hasn't."
The voice came from behind Torisen. Kindrie stood in the shadows by the spiral stair, a long slender bundle in his arms.
"What are you doing here?" Caineron barked at him. "I told you to stay at Tentir!"
"The bond between us broke the night before last," said the young Shanir in a completely colorless voice. "You know that."
He came forward into the jeweled light of the windows, moving as if no part of him wanted to bend. As he leaned forward stiffly to put his burden on the table, both Torisen and Ardeth saw lines of blood suddenly appear on the back of his white shirt. Ardeth unwrapped the bundle.
"Is this the limb that you saw torn off?" he asked Donkerri.
"Yes!" said the boy. A look of great uneasiness flickered across his face. "Yes . . ."
Essien, ever curious, lifted the arm at the wrist. It dangled bonelessly in his grasp like a dead snake. He dropped it hastily.
"My God! What is this thing?"
"That, my lords of the Council, is the arm of a changer," said Torisen. "Rather more substantial than the stuff of songs, isn't it, Caldane? I suspect that this is the hand that killed your son. It certainly is the one that I fought in the fire-timber hall at Tentir where the creature lured me in your son's likeness and where Harn ripped its arm off. That must have been the battle that your grandson witnessed. I took part in no other."
"I don't believe—" Caineron burst out angrily, but managed to stop himself just short of offering the Highlord a mortal insult. "Damnit, why didn't you tell me any of this before?"
"When did you give any of us a chance?" Kindrie answered in that same dead voice.
"A changer," said Danior wonderingly. "After all these years. But why? What was it after?"
Torisen stepped away from the table, away from the living Shanir and the arm of the dead one. "It meant to kill me," he said, "or, failing that, to entangle me in a blood feud with Caineron as his son's supposed murderer."
"But again, why?" said Brandan, picking up the question. "And why now?"
"I can only think of one reason: to keep the Host from marching. Laugh if you wish, my lord Caineron, but consider this: For the first time in centuries, the Horde moves north; simultaneously, a changer tries to kill or discredit the one man who can rally the Host to march south. Now, maybe this really is a coincidence. Maybe something else is brewing that we know nothing about . . ." He thought of the changer spitting at the Master's name. ". . . but can we take the chance? Caldane, you asked me at Tentir if I had anything to substantiate my fears. Well, now I've got that." He pointed at the arm.
"And we mustn't forget the Southern Host," said Ardeth, leaning forward with a new ring of urgency in his voice. "It would be madness for King Krothen to order a pitched battle, but he might. We must support our own people, even if—Ancestors forbid—that only means gathering their bones for the pyre."
"Then too," said Randir, examining his nails, "I understand that Prince Odalian of Karkinaroth has asked for help."
Torisen looked at him sharply, surprised. "Not from me he hasn't. Caldane?"
"Yes, yes," said Caineron, giving his sometime ally a nasty look. "A messenger arrived late last night. Odalian asked me as the father of his consort to present his request to the High Council. He says that he's calling in all his troop levies and asks that the Host meet him at Hurlen just above the Cataracts."
"Well, surely that settles it," said Ardeth. "You can't refuse to help your own son-in-law."
"Oh yes, I can," said Caineron, looking mulish. "There was no mutual defense clause in the marriage contract. I told him it wasn't necessary."
"Names of God," Torisen said, disgusted. "To get the best bargain by sleight-of-mouth—is that all honor means now?"
Caineron drew himself up sharply, his lip curling with scorn. "Another lecture, my young lord? You always seem to be telling me where my duty lies, you who weren't even born when I took over my house after your father had reduced it to bloody shambles in the White Hills. You can trust me to safeguard my own honor—"
"And to pay your servants their back wages."
Caineron started at the sound of Kindrie's inflectionless voice. "You damned spook!" he burst out. "Will you get out of here?"
"Perhaps you should leave, Kindrie," said Ardeth in a silken tone. "My lord Caineron seems to find your presence disturbing . . . for some reason." His sharp blue eyes met the Shanir's faded ones. Kindrie gave a ghost of a nod and began to turn, giving Caineron his first glimpse of the Shanir's back.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty," he said with considerable haste. "Stay, man, stay. A broken bond shouldn't break friendship as well."
What about a broken skin, wondered Torisen. If the others saw that bloodstained shirt, Caineron would be explaining his honorable system of "back wages" from now until the coming of the Tyr-ridan.
"My lords," he said, "it seems that you have a choice of three reasons to let the Host march. First, to support the Southern Host. As my lord Ardeth says, these are our people; we can't simply abandon them. Second, to support Prince Odalian who is, after all, the closest thing to an ally that the Kencyrath has left on Rathillien. And third, to support your poor, lunatic of a Highlord, who still believes that the Horde is about to march down our collective throats. Take your choice of reason, but in all the names of God, let's not waste any more time. Now, do we march or don't we? Ardeth?"
"Yes."
"Randir?"
"Yes, regrettably."
"Brandan? Edirr? Danior?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Coman . . . damn, I forgot. Demoth, the Coman is yours, for the time being at least. I'll make a final determination later."
"Yes, lord," said Demoth, sulkily. He had expected full confirmation.
"Jaran?"
A rasping snore answered him.
"Jedrak?" The old lord's great-great-grandson shook him gently, without result. "I'm sorry, my lord. When he drifts off like this, he may be gone for hours or even days." Caineron gave a crack of laughter. "However," said the young man calmly, ignoring the interruption, "I am authorized to speak for him."
"And?"
"I vote 'yes.' What else?"
"Well, Caldane," said Ardeth, "it seems you decide the matter after all; your vote against our eight. What do you say?"
Caineron glowered at him. His plans all awry, he looked ready to bid defiance to them all out of sheer ill-humor. At that moment, Burr entered the hall. Caineron turned on him, snarling, but the Kendar's expression made him hesitate.
"Burr, what is it?" Torisen demanded.
"News, my lord. The Southern Host has engaged the vanguard of the Horde."
"Oh my God. With what result?"
"None as yet, when the messenger was sent out. But he says it looked bad, very bad."
"Pereden," said Ardeth under his breath, almost in a moan. "Damn you, Krothen, God curse and damn you . . ." The next moment he was on his feet, confronting Caineron as fierce and bright as drawn steel. "You will vote now, my lord, and you will vote 'yes,' or it will be war indeed, your house against mine. Well?"
"Yes," said Caineron, going back a step. "Yes, of course. This news changes everything. But sweet Trinity, there are barely fifty thousand of us here ready to march. Even if Odalian sends the troops he has promised, what can we do against an enemy three million strong?"
"There is one place where we can hold them." Torisen went to the far end of the room where the stained-glass map of Rathillien blazed in green and blue and gold. He traced the southward twisting path of the Silver, from the Riverland to a spot where the craftsman had frosted the glass to indicate billowing clouds of spray. "There. The Cataracts. Odalian has the right idea. If the Horde keeps to its present course, it must pass here, up the narrow Mendelin Steps to the top of the falls. There we stop it, or not at all."
"So it's a race to the Cataracts," said Brandan, regarding the map with a practiced eye. "Roughly two thousand miles for us, and about a fourth that for the Horde, which luckily travels at a near crawl. Just the same, this is going to be very close. When do we start?"
"Just as soon as we've given Nusair to the pyre. The marching order to Omiroth will be according to whoever is ready first. We'll sort things out there. Any questions? Then let's get at it."
The lords dispersed, except for Ardeth. Donkerri tried to slip out in his grandfather's shadow, but Caineron turned on him, all his frustrations spilling over.
"You ill-omened brat, get out of my sight! I never want to see you again!"
"Grandfather, please . . ."
Caineron drew himself up to his full height. "I cast you out!" he roared. "Blood and bone, you are no kin of mine." He jerked the hem of his coat out of Donkerri's grasp and stalked away, leaving the boy standing white-faced, staring after him.
". . . damn you, boy, for deserting me. I curse you and cast you out. Blood and bone, you are no kin of mine. . . ."
Torisen flinched at the memory. If a father's dying curse held any power, he was as disowned as Donkerri, or as Kindrie, for that matter. But that had only been a dream. This was real.
"Burr, take the boy up to my quarters and then fetch a doctor. We've got a casualty up here."
"Yes, lord." He dropped his voice. "Lord, there was a second message, this one from Randon Larch."
"My old five-thousand commander. Yes?"
"She says that King Krothen didn't order the attack. He didn't even order the Southern Host to march out. The whole thing was Pereden's idea."
. . . squat figures moving among the slain . . . oh, Pereden, you fool, you god-cursed, jealous fool . . .
"Ardeth isn't to know, not if we can keep it from him. Understood?"
Burr nodded and left the chamber, taking the stunned boy with him.
Ardeth had made Kindrie sit in his chair. The Shanir had his head down on the table and seemed to have fainted, for he didn't even twitch as the lord cut away his ruined shirt.
"I've sent for a physician," said Torisen, coming up to them.
"That won't be necessary. Look."
Ardeth had carefully uncovered the Shanir's back. Kindrie was painfully thin, almost emaciated. His ribs showed quite clearly under white, nearly translucent skin, crisscrossed now with the marks of a Karnid corrector's scourge. But even as the two Highborn watched, the bruises seemed to be fading. Then the more serious cuts, which had broken open when Kindrie bent to put down the changer's arm, suddenly closed, the raw edges knitting together into cicatrices.
Torisen turned abruptly away, feeling sick.
"Wonderful!" Ardeth said behind him. "A pity we can't all do that, eh? But then it's rare, even for a Shanir. You know, my boy, you owe this young man a great deal. How fortunate that he is no longer bound to Caineron. Now you can repay him properly by taking him into your service."
Bind himself to a Shanir? He did owe it to Kindrie, and it would be a shameful thing to refuse, but . . . but. . . . He remembered the changer's arm, still lying on the table behind him. Its fingers had seemed to reach out toward Kindrie, as if to touch his white hair. Another Shanir . . .
"I'm sorry, Adric," he said without turning. "I-I can't. I just can't."
"Very well," said Ardeth coldly. "Then I will, until you can bring yourself to do your duty."
Torisen left the hall without a word, without looking back. At Tentir, he had said to Harn, "I can do anything I have to," and that had always been his creed. Now, for the first time, he had failed.
NUSAIR'S PYRE was set in Gothregor's inner ward, with four priests officiating. Several days before, two other of their number had set off for Tai-tastigon to cope with trouble in the temple there, and a seventh had left even more recently with three acolytes for Karkinaroth on a similar mission. No one knew what was wrong at either temple, only that the balance of power in each had shifted, suddenly, dangerously. But that was priests' business, and no one else paid much attention to it. What they did notice was that at least one of the priests at Gothregor wasn't very adept with the pyric rune because, when it was spoken, not only Nusair burst into flames but also about four hundred chickens being prepared for lunch in the fortress's kitchen. Otherwise, it was a very successful cremation.
By dint of practically getting behind his troops and pushing, Lord Danior got them into second place behind the rathorn banner. He and his guard rode ahead with Torisen. Ardeth's full moon followed Danior's wolf standard, but Adric stayed with his people, Kindrie riding pale and silent beside him. The token forces from Kraggen and Kestrie followed, then Jaran, Randir, Brandan, and finally Caineron. Caldane's troops had already marched nearly one hundred and twenty-five miles over the past forty-eight hours and had arrived the night before in a state of collapse. Several hours of dwar sleep had nearly repaired the damage, but not quite. That night at Omiroth, everyone slept deep, and in the morning the order of march was confirmed. That day the Edirr and Coman forces joined the column. Early that afternoon, on the tenth of Winter, the Host marched out of the Riverland, nearly fifty thousand strong.