AT DUSK on the fourteenth of Winter, the Kencyr Host came to the place where the road bends nearly due east following the curve of the river. That night, it camped beside the ancient paved way. At dawn on the fifteenth, it forded the Silver and marched south through the untrodden grass into the rolling, forbidden land.
At this season, the hills were green and yellow rather than white, and the sky was a clear, eye-aching blue. Tall, coarse grass waved on the summits. Below, the hollows bristled with a kind of brier that grows tinder dry in the fall but no less sharp of thorn. Laced through the barbed branches were white flowers, which looked quite pretty from a distance, but, at closer range, resembled tiny, deformed skulls. At dusk, a billion crickets sang and mist gathered in the hollows.
The first night passed without incident.
The second day they pushed on as quickly as the terrain permitted, but at sundown still found themselves uncomfortably close to the old battlefield. All day, they had been stumbling across bones in the high grass, missed by those who had searched the hills immediately after the fight. These they gathered, in case any of them were Kencyr, for a later pyre. That night, some told stories around the watchfires of the unburnt dead while others remembered the grief and shame of Ganth Gray Lord's fall. Many of the older Kendar were survivors of that last bloody battle. All felt uneasy and unwilling to sleep, despite their exhaustion.
Donkerri did sleep, but poorly. He dreamed that he again stood shivering by the fire in the Highlord's tower quarters after his grandfather had disowned him. "I'm not good at forgiving those who spy on me," said Torisen. "Ask Burr. But I will try if you promise never to do it again."
"But you never went bone hunting at Kithorn, "the other boys jeered at him. "Baby, baby, blood-blind, blood-blind, blood-blind . . ."
Donkerri woke with a gasp to the sound of the taunting chorus. But no, it was only the crickets. He hadn't been cast out, not utterly. Torisen had taken him in, and here he was now, safe in the Highlord's tent. He still belonged somewhere and, somehow, he would still find a way to prove himself. Donkerri wrapped that thought around him and slept again, comforted.
In his own tent, Lord Caineron was commiserating with would-be-lord Korey. No, it wasn't right that the Highlord had put that blockhead Demoth in charge of the Coman. Once the family would never have accepted so deliberate an insult. Wasn't it sad how the standards of honor had fallen.
Randir looked across at Caineron's lighted pavilion and wondered with scorn what stupidity the man was up to now. All that power, in the hands of a fool.
Brandan walked among his own people, exchanging a quiet word here, a tired smile there. For perhaps the hundredth time, he wondered what he was getting them all into, following this young, possibly mad Highlord of a broken house.
The Edirr twins sat beside a brazier in their tent, discussing women and, as usual in private, finishing each other's sentences.
In his own richly appointed tent, Ardeth pored over his maps as if counting the leagues to the Cataracts over and over would somehow lessen the distance.
Holly, Lord Danior, slept.
To Torisen, restlessly walking the northern perimeter alone, came the boy Rion, almost in tears.
"Lord, lord, come quick! Great-great-grandpa Jedrak wants to see you. I-I think he's dying."
The Jaran standard had been raised on a hilltop some distance away, almost outside the eastern perimeter. Everyone had instinctively chosen the summits and upper slopes, leaving the lower reaches to the remount herd so that it might drift from slope to slope, grazing under the watchful eyes of the dozen or so Whinno-hir who had accompanied the Host. Torisen passed rapidly below the herd with Rion trotting beside him. Above, fires dotted the hillsides. Below, mist swelled up in the hollows. Then they were climbing again toward the watchfires through the silent, waiting ranks of the Jaran's people. Torisen noted that many of them were rather old for military service, and then remembered that most of these Kendar, even the former randons, were scrollsmen and scrollswomen first, and warriors second.
Kirien emerged from the main tent carrying a fine linen cloth, which he carefully spread on the ground under the Stricken Tree banner. A long sigh rose from the darkness. He drew a knife, nicked his thumb, and let a drop of blood fall on the center of the cloth. Then he handed the knife to Rion. The boy jabbed vehemently at his hand, producing a spray of blood, most of which he managed to get on the cloth's center. He gave the blade to the nearest Kendar and burst into tears.
"I'm sorry," Torisen said to Kirien. "I came as quickly as I could."
He followed the young man into the large tent's innermost chamber. Jedrak lay on his pallet, his sharp profile visible through the cloth laid over his face.
"Poor old man. He should never have come on an expedition like this."
"So we all told him." Kirien covered the brazier near the old lord's bed, letting the shadows enfold him. "He would have his way, though, always—except this one last time."
"Rion said he wanted to talk to me. Do you know what about?"
"Two things. First, he didn't want to mix his ashes with those already thick on these accursed hills."
"That's easily arranged. We'll be clear of these lands by the day after tomorrow at the latest. His pyre can wait until then."
"Good. Second . . . hush, Rion. What would Grandpa think of you, making a noise like that? Here, lie down and try to sleep. There's a good lad."
He came back into the light, leaving the boy curled up on his pallet in a corner, choking down sobs. Torisen stared at him. Something about his face, about the way he moved . . .
"Have I finally lost my few remaining wits or are you a woman?"
Kirien smiled. "Not quite. I don't come of age for a few more years."
"Well, I'll be damned. But how on earth have you kept it a secret all this time?"
"Who said it was a secret? The Jaran have always known. As for the other houses, my mother died giving birth to me, you see. That made both me and my father suspect as breeding stock, so no one outside our own house has paid much attention to either of us ever since, rather to our relief. Not that Jaran Highborn have ever been considered very good matches. Too eccentric, you know. Lord Randir condescended mightily in letting his niece contract to my father. Then she died. I could have been born a three-legged hermaphrodite for all my esteemed grand-uncle Randir knew or cared."
"And now?"
She smiled. "I still could be, but since Jedrak declared me his heir . . ."
"Randir assumes you're male." He gave her a sharp look. "Was I supposed to confirm you, making the same assumption?"
"Of course not. Jedrak was going to tell you tonight. He wanted your promise before he died that you would support my claim. That was his second request."
Torisen turned away, running a hand distractedly through his hair. "Of all the crack-brained, senile whims, but even if I were to sanction such a thing . . . surely the Law wouldn't. Jedrak must have known that."
Kirien gave him a cool, almost scornful look. "We are a house of scholars. Give us credit at least for having done our research. There's nothing in the Law that prohibits a lady from heading a family instead of a lord. In the case of fraternal twins like the Master and the Mistress, the power even used to be shared. It's only since Jamethiel Dream-Weaver fell that so many restrictions have been put on Highborn women, and most of them are pure Custom, not Law."
"But surely the male Highborn in your house will challenge your claim."
She snorted. "Which one of them would want to? As I said, we're scholars, each one of us wrapped up in his or her own work. My own specialty is the Fall. You might say that the entire house of Jaran flipped a coin for the post of administrator, and I lost. Great-Uncle Kedan will officiate until I come of age, but short of violence you couldn't get him to stay on any longer. The question is: Will you confirm me when the time comes?"
Torisen considered this rather blankly. "I hardly know. The idea will take some getting used to, and then things will depend a good deal on how much power I have when you finally come of age. The High Council is sure to raise a howl audible from here to the Cataracts." He smiled suddenly. "It would almost be worth sponsoring you just to see the others' faces. Trust the Jaran to come up with something so unconventional."
"Unconventional." Kirien glanced back into the shadows toward the bed. When she looked back at Torisen, a tear glinted in her eye. "Jedrak always said that was what he liked best about you, too."
TORISEN PAUSED in the tent's entrance to turn up his collar against the night's chill. The Kendar were still silently paying their respects, a drop of blood each. The border of the mourning cloth was stained nearly black by now. Before the blood dried, the cloth would be folded and placed on Jedrak's chest, to go with him into the flames. In the old days, the blood-bound followers of a Shanir lord would have slain themselves on his pyre. The rite might now be purely symbolic, but it was still a private ceremony in which the Highlord had no part. Torisen withdrew.
The Jaran's main tent was practically at the eastern-most point of the camp. Beyond were a few watchfires on the hilltop, then only the moonlit slopes rolling toward the distant Silver, toward the much nearer battlefield. Torisen walked out beyond the perimeter and sat down on the hillside, looking eastward over the diminishing swell of the hills.
He thought about Kirien. The idea of a lady holding the power of a house still left him thoroughly nonplussed, but then he knew so little about Highborn women in general. Most were kept strictly sequestered and their contracts arranged solely on political lines. He hadn't even met Kallystine before his agreement with her father had been sealed. Ah, Kallystine, so beautiful, so vicious. Would his lost twin sister have grown up into a woman like that? He couldn't imagine. All his life, he had felt haunted by Jame, but in a curiously abstract way, as if by a ghost without a face, without a voice. Only over the past year and a half had his sense of her presence sharpened, especially just before or after a nightmare, so that now sometimes he almost felt as if she were standing behind him. But who or what would he turn to find? The wind teased his hair, breathed down his neck.
Tori, I've come back. I'm coming to find you. Torieeeee . . .
He started violently, waking from a half-doze. This would never do. Last night, he had told himself that it was better to stay awake because any dream here would be particularly vile; but now he suddenly wondered if another of those special nightmares like the one at Tagmeth was creeping up on him. Usually, he had more warning—days or even weeks, depending on the severity of the dream. Surely it was too soon for another one. No, he must only be disturbed because of Jedrak's death and because of where he was. Time to move on.
As Torisen rose, however, his eyes stayed on the rolling land to the east, and he hesitated, puzzled. The shape of those distant hills looked so familiar, but how could that be? He had never been here before. That hill there to the left, nearly out of sight . . . beyond it should be one almost with a peak and beyond that another shaped like a barrow and beyond that . . .
Bemused, Torisen walked down the slope away from camp, limping slightly, toward the beckoning land.
KINDRIE HAD BEEN OFFERED space in one of the large inner chambers of Ardeth's tent where the lord's Highborn kinsmen slept, but instead he had chosen a tiny room on the edge of the pavilion. It was barely large enough for his pallet and had only one opening with an inner gauze flap for good weather and an outer one of canvas for bad, but it was all his. After years in the acolytes' dormitory, such privacy filled him with incredulous delight. On the first days of the march, he often lay awake far into the night just to savor it. When the Host's pace quickened, however, sleep became more precious. Then, in the White Hills, it became almost impossible.
On the second night, Kindrie was dozing uneasily in his canvas-walled cell. He wasn't used to so much riding, and his bones ached with fatigue. Even half an hour of dwar sleep would have given his healer's body a chance to recover itself, but every time he slid down toward it, confused dreams woke him again with a start. Now it seemed to him that the hills had begun to swell beneath the tent, like the restless billows of the sea. Up, down, up . . . no, it wasn't the canvas floor that rocked him, but hands, bone white, bone thin, tugging, tugging.
Wake up, wake up! he thought he heard the faintest thread of a voice cry. Oh please, wake up! He needs you!
"Who?" Kindrie said out loud, half waking. "Who needs me?"
A watchfire had been kindled outside, and golden flickering light flooded into the cubicle through the gauze doorway. Shadows moved on the outer wall. Voices murmured in the night, but none spoke to him. He was alone . . . or was he? On the rear wall of his tiny room was a shadow that hadn't been there before, bending over the shadow of his own recumbent form. Kindrie regarded it bemusedly, convinced he was still asleep. It was very small and painfully thin. Ah, it must belong to the dead child whose bones the Highlord had taken from Kithorn and still carried with him in his saddlebag. Now, what could she want with him, even in a dream? She tugged and tugged. His shadow started to get up.
Kindrie threw back his blanket and hastily rose. Dream or not, he had no intention of letting his shadow go anywhere without him. He rapidly pulled on some clothes and followed it out of the tent. It and the smaller, moon-cast shadow of the dead girl led him through the camp toward the eastern perimeter, keeping to the lower reaches of the slopes. Beyond the Jaran's camp, he followed the shadows up to a hilltop. The hills rolled on eastward before him under a quarter moon, and up one of their slopes went something dark. Another shadow? No. Someone clad all in black. Someone who limped slightly. Torisen.
Kindrie caught his breath. His first, almost unconscious act of healing as a child had been the repair of his own weak eyes, but somehow the improved vision had never carried over into dreams. He could see the hills, the moon, that dark, receding figure all too clearly. This was no dream. He was awake, and that was the Highlord of the Kencyrath going alone, unprotected, toward the field of slaughter that had been his father's ruin, toward the unburnt and possibly vengeful dead.
TORISEN KNEW THESE HILLS. Their curves, the texture of their grass and stones, everything spoke to him of a place and time he had thought safely behind him forever. Ahead, darkness rose like a wall, black on black, blotting out the stars. As a child, he had sometimes lain awake at night staring out the window at it, hardly daring to breathe lest it topple, crushing the keep, the Haunted Lands, all of Rathillien. Now here it was again: the Barrier, with Perimal Darkling pressing against its far side. One more rise and there, impossibly, was the keep itself, his old home, nine hundred miles away from the White Hills.
He walked down the slope toward it in a kind of horror-struck daze. Here was the stone bridge that spanned the encircling ditch, here the main gate, hanging askew. Beyond the gatehouse lay the courtyard, surrounded by the stone barracks, granary, and other domestic offices, tight against the outer wall with the battlements running along their roofs. Ahead rose the squat tower keep. He walked slowly toward it, still numb with disbelief. Grass grew between the flagstones, catching at his feet. Leech vines hung down over the walls. How quiet everything was, how . . . dead.
Before the tower door was a black, tangled mass—the remains, apparently, of a bonfire. Now who would set one there? Father would raise three kinds of hell when he . . . no, not charred branches, but arms, and legs, and faces . . .
Torisen recognized everyone that flame and sword had left recognizable: Lon, who had taught him how to ride; Merri, the cook; Tig, with all his battle scars scorched away. . . . He had dreamed of their deaths in that final assault over and over, but never of this.
It's still a dream, he thought, feeling the cold paralysis of nightmare creep over him. I fell asleep on the hillside, and I'm trapped. I'll never wake up again.
"My lord!"
Footsteps sounded behind him. Hands turned him around. He looked dully into Kindrie's face, barely focusing on it.
"Go away. You don't belong in this dream."
"Dream? No, lord, listen to me: This is real."
"Real?" Torisen blinked at him. "How can it be? This is the keep where I grew up, where my father died cursing me. These are the Haunted Lands."
The Shanir looked about, shivering. "Somehow, I didn't think we were still in the White Hills—although if we were, we'd be just about in the middle of the old battlefield now. Correspondences." He shot Torisen a look. "Why, don't you see, the White Hills must have gone soft. Perimal Darkling is just under the surface there, as it obviously is here too, and when two contaminated areas are so similar in geography, architecture or—or whatever, sometimes in a sense they overlap, as if one were laid on top of the other. That must be how we got from there to here."
" 'We'?" Torisen turned on him, beginning to rouse. "Why did you follow me? What do you want?"
Kindrie fell back a step, flinching. He'd forgotten how much Torisen hated to be followed or spied on. "T-The child brought me, lord. See, here she is now. I-I think this place scares her."
The child's shadow had moved between them on the moon-washed stones when the Highlord had turned. Now it came quickly to his side, so close that he unthinkingly reached down to touch the head that wasn't there. Yes, she was frightened. This place must seem very like Kithorn to her . . . assuming both she and it weren't simply fancies of his sleep-locked mind.
Abruptly, he dropped to one knee and slammed his fist into the pavement. Blood speckled the stones.
"It's not a dream," he said, rising, looking in wonder at his broken knuckles. "It is real. Good. Then I can cope. Now, what in all the names of God happened here?"
Kindrie looked at him, surprised. "Why, I understood that darklings attacked here some fifteen years ago and killed everyone but you. You escaped and came to the Riverland, where you took service in disguise under Lord Ardeth. At least, that's the story people tell."
But then why had Ganth died cursing his son, the Shanir wondered suddenly.
"That's what people say," Torisen agreed, not meeting Kindrie's perturbed look. Of course, he had heard the story often enough before and never contradicted it. It was probably even true, except that the massacre had happened only a few years ago, long after he had fled. If anyone ever learned that he had left while Ganth was still alive, without his permission, the repercussions could be severe. "At any rate, this happened later." He indicated the bodies piled before the door. "Someone has been here since I left."
"It looks like an attempt at a pyre," Kindrie said. "These people were dragged here and set alight by someone—a Kencyr, I would say—who meant well but didn't know the proper pyric rune. Odd." He peered more closely at the charred bodies, curiosity getting the better of repulsion. "They hardly look as if they've been dead fifteen years. My God!" He sprang backward, his face turning as white as his hair. "That woman's hand . . . it moved!"
Torisen also backed away. "Haunts . . . they're all becoming haunts. Nothing stays dead forever in this foul place, not unless it's reduced to ashes and blown away. The fire only set them back. But if they're still here, maybe he is, too."
"My lord?"
"Stay here with the child. I'll be back in a minute."
Torisen edged around the failed pyre and ran up the steps to the keep's first-story entrance. Both sets of doors had been smashed open. He paused just inside the inner one, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the faint light that came in through two deeply recessed windows. Before him lay the circular great hall where the garrison had met to eat and hear justice dispensed— or what had passed for justice in those last days before his flight fifteen years ago.
"Traitors!"
Memory caught the echo of that shrieked word, saw the Kendar freeze, faces turned to the lord's table.
"You eat my bread and yet you conspire to betray me! You, and you, and you—"
"Father, no! These men are my friends and loyal to our house. Everyone here is."
"To my house, perhaps, but to me? No, no, they deceive you, boy, as they did me. But never again! You three, in your hands are knives to cut your meat. Turn them on me, or on yourselves."
"Child, come away. You can't help them."
It was Anar, the scrollsman, tugging at his sleeve, pulling him out of the hall into the private dining chamber on the other side of the open hearth. From behind came the sound of something heavy falling, again and again. The Kendar had made the only choice that honor permitted. Anar quietly closed the door.
"Your father's quite mad, you know," he whispered, and choked down a giggle. "Oh yes, so am I—sometimes. It's this place, this foul, accursed place. . . . You've got to get away, child, before he gets tired of killing your friends and turns on you. Oh yes, he will: The thought is already half in his mind. Who else can take away what little power he has left?"
"But Anar, Ganth isn't just my father he's Lord Knorth, the head of our house. He'll never let me go, and if I leave without his permission, desert him, that will be the death of my honor."
Anar shot a scared look at the door, then leaned close. "Child, there is a way . . ."
And he told him. If every Kendar in the house gave his or her consent, their will overbalanced that of their lord. Anar's brother Ishtiér had tried to gain his release this way, but the Kendar hadn't consented. After all, he was their priest. They needed him. But Ishtiér had left anyway, honorless, for the safety and comfort of Tai-tastigon far to the south. But the Kendar could see what was happening now. They would let Tori go, with their blessings.
"But Anar, how can anything outweigh a lord's authority?"
"Child, this can . . . I think." He gulped. "And if it can't, I-I take responsibility for whatever you decide, on my honor."
The door to the hall crashed open. Ganth loomed black on the threshold. "And what's this, then? Talking behind my back, conspiring . . ."
Torisen faced him. "Sir, we were only discussing honor— and options."
Now the hall lay silent and empty before him, lit only by moonlight streaming in between the bars of the two windows. Something rustled furtively in the shadows by the door. Torisen didn't investigate. Quickly crossing the hall to the spiral stair just off the private dining room, he climbed in utter darkness to the second floor, his feet remembering the height of each irregular step.
Here were the family's living quarters, a maze of interconnected rooms circling the lord's solar over the great hall. Some moonlight filtered into the outer rooms through slit windows. The inner ones lay buried in shadows too deep even for a Kencyr's keen night vision, and not all of them were vacant. These Torisen passed through quickly, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but knowing that he was not alone. Beyond, the stair in the northwest turret began its spiral upward.
After the darkness below, the battlements seemed dazzlingly bright. The cracked crystal dome over the solar shone like a second moon, and the white gravel roof gave back its glow. In the shadow of the northeast turret, Ganth Gray Lord waited.
Torisen stopped, catching his breath.
"Father?"
No answer. How still that grim figure stood, the dead piled high about him like half-burnt kindling. Torisen slowly crossed the roof toward him, poised to fight or run, he hardly knew which. Those shadows on Ganth's chest. . . . He was nailed upright to the turret door by three arrows. The ring finger on the right hand had been snapped off. Of the left hand, which had wielded Kin-Slayer, not one finger was left. Both ring and sword were gone. The corner of something white protruded from the gray coat just above the singe-line of the pyre's flames. Torisen stepped gingerly in among the dead and reached for it. His father's head moved. He snatched the folded cloth and leaped backward. Something grabbed his foot. He fell, rolling, breaking the grip, and fetched up against the crystal dome. Ganth was staring down at him, without eyes.
"Child of darkness. . . ." The words were harsh, croaking, spoken in a voice that both was and was not his father's. "Where is my sword? Where are my fingers?"
Torisen bolted toward the northwest turret. Behind him, the dead around Ganth's feet were moving, slowly, unsteadily, disentangling charred arms and legs. He nearly fell down the spiral stair. At its foot, rustling, scraping sounds came to him from the darkness ahead. All the dead were awakening.
A trap, he thought wildly, I've walked into a trap. . . . Steady, boy, steady. One, two . . . "three!"
He sprinted through the second-story rooms, twisting, turning, into moonlight, into darkness. Here was the stair. He half-threw himself down it and raced across the great hall.
A dark shape lurched into his path from the shadow of the door. Torisen tried to dodge past, but tripped over a shattered bench and fell heavily. Someone bent over him.
". . . wrong . . ." croaked a familiar voice. "I was wrong. . . . Nothing outweighs a lord's authority. Take back the responsibility, child. It burns me . . . it burns . . ."
Torisen stared up horrified into Anar's face. The failed pyre had seared it hideously, laying bare cheekbones and patches of skull. He gave an inarticulate cry, shoved the haunt aside, scrambled to his feet, and bolted out the door. The other's broken voice pursued him:
"Child, set me free . . . free us all . . ."
Kindrie had backed into the middle of the inner ward, away from the pyre, away from the stone barracks now alive with furtive sounds. Torisen grabbed him.
"The rune, man, the pyric rune . . . can you say it?"
The Shanir stared at him, terrified. "I-I don't know . . ."
He stopped with a gasp. The pile of half-burned bodies by the door had begun to seethe sluggishly. Torisen shook him.
"Say it, damn you! Set them free!"
The pale young man gulped and shut his eyes. Torisen very nearly slapped him, thinking he was about to faint, but instead Kindrie took a deep breath and spoke the rune. It fought its way out of his throat like a living thing, and he fell, gagging. Torisen caught him. The mound of twitching bodies burst into flames. Sudden firelight lit the inside of the barracks, and the keep's great hall, roared up above the tower's battlements. Torisen half dragged Kindrie out under the gatehouse and across the stone bridge. On the hillside, he finally let the exhausted Shanir sink down into the tall grass, while he himself stood, breathing hard, watching his old home go up in flames.
Fifteen years ago, he had paused on this same hillside to look back before slipping away southward into the night. If he hadn't left, Ganth would surely have killed him sooner or later. Then the Three People would be without him now, when they needed him the most. But he had left poor Anar to bear his guilt, and that was a shameful thing, however good his reasons. Perhaps his honor was safe in the letter of the Law, but he felt compromised in its spirit and sick at heart.
Torisen shook himself. These thoughts did no one any good except, perhaps, his enemies. Surely, this whole thing had been a trap, but set by whom and, ultimately, for whom? Only the changers, with their affinity to Perimal Darkling and their determination to stop him, could be responsible. First, there had been the Shanir's attack at Tentir, then Grisharki's crude but nearly lethal ambush, then the carefully preserved, barely hidden post pouch. Any Kencyr would know what effect that desperate message would have. Of course, the Host would make for the Cataracts at top speed, by the most direct route. Then came an element of chance. The Highlord might not even notice how like the Haunted Lands those distant White Hills had suddenly become, much less go out to investigate. But he had, and there had been the keep waiting for him, a festering sore ready to burst. Perhaps his very presence had triggered that eruption. Perhaps the changers had counted on that.
Below, red light spilled out of the tower's door and down the steps into the courtyard. More light and then flames poured out of the south window between the bars. The hall must be an inferno by now. The pyric rune only affected dead flesh, but flesh in turn could kindle wood. How many dead there must have been.
Flames, fire, fire-timbers, Tentir . . .
"Now, what would really frighten you, I wonder? Shall we find out?"
"Child of Darkness! Where is my sword? Where are my . . ."
Yes, he had been frightened to hear that dead mouth repeat the words of his nightmare, but not half as scared as the real thief of the sword and ring would have been. But who could have taken them?
Then he remembered the cloth that he had snatched from inside Ganth's coat. It was still in his hand. He unfolded it. It wasn't a proper mourning cloth at all, just a square of fabric ripped out of someone's shirt. In the exact center was one dark stain, the mark of blood kinship. But he was the only surviving member of Ganth's immediate family unless . . . unless . . .
Jame, the Shanir, the Child of Darkness, his sister—she had returned. For a moment, all Torisen felt was numb shock. Then he abruptly sat down on the hillside and began to laugh, helplessly, almost hysterically.
"My lord?" It was Kindrie, sounding scared.
"No, no, I haven't lost my wits—I hope. The fools! All that work, and they set their trap for the wrong twin!" He choked down his laughter. "We've got to get back to camp or I really will come unstuck. But how?"
"Walk, I suppose."
"More than three hundred leagues?"
"Less, I hope," said Kindrie hastily, as if afraid Torisen would start laughing again. "After all, the child couldn't get that far from her physical remains. We've got to follow her back and keep exactly to the path she marks, or I'm afraid it will be a very long walk indeed."
"Yes . . . yes, of course."
Torisen rose and followed the child's shadow as it danced ahead of them. He was still struggling to regain his mental balance and, he suspected, not doing a very good job of it. He knew he had frightened the Shanir badly. Kindrie was still keeping his distance from him, as if from something dangerous and unpredictable, which was just how Torisen felt. He turned suddenly on the young man, who shied violently away.
"Just now, you sounded rather strange. Are you all right?"
"Y-yes, lord. It's just the rune burned my tongue a bit. I'll heal."
"You always do, don't you?" Even to Torisen, that sounded like a sneer. Trinity, what was wrong with him?
Kindrie took the question seriously. "So far, lord, yes. I may not be strong, but I'm apparently tougher than I look—a family trait. My grandmother was a Knorth, you know." He shot a sidelong look at Torisen. "I know that that doesn't give me much claim on the house of Knorth, but some pride does go with it. You shouldn't have sent me away with Donkerri at Wyrden."
"God's teeth and toenails! I saw what Caineron did to you back at Tentir because of me. D'you think I wanted to put you in danger again? But now I have anyway, and you've put me under a deeper obligation than ever."
He spoke with such bitterness that Kindrie flinched. "Oh, please! Don't think of it that way. It's true that you are my natural lord. I can't help that; you can't change it. But if you don't want to acknowledge my claim, I-I'd rather that it was forgotten."
"Very noble, but that hardly discharges the obligation, does it? For someone who says he only wants what I can freely give, you certainly keep finding ways to put me in your debt."
He turned on his heel and went on after the child's shadow, limping a bit more than before, leaving Kindrie to flounder after him. Damn and blast. For years, he had avoided the Shanir and lulled himself into thinking that he had gotten over his irrational aversion to them. Now here he was, deeply obligated to one and paying him back with words savage enough to have come from his mad father. Ganth was glowing ashes behind him. Why in Perimal's name did his shadow still fall across his son's life?
Kindrie gave a sharp cry. Torisen spun around to find the Shanir sprawling on the ground behind him at the edge of a mist-filled hollow. In trying to catch up, he had cut too close to the hidden ground and apparently tripped on something. Mist swelled up around his legs. He couldn't seem to rise.
"Oh, for God's sake," Torisen said in disgust and went back to help.
"My foot!" the young man gasped as Torisen grabbed his arms. "Something has a hold on my foot . . . ah!"
He was jerked back, almost out of the Highlord's grip. Torisen braced himself and heaved, nearly freeing the Shanir. A hand rose out of the mist. Its skin hung about it like a tattered glove, exposing white sinews and a flash of whiter bone. It was clutching Kindrie's ankle. Kindrie gave a bleat of terror. Then both Kencyr fell, as the hand suddenly released its grip and a dark figure surged up out of the mist.
Kindrie sprawled across Torisen's legs. He thrust the Shanir aside, out of the way, barely in time. The thing from the mist blotted out the stars. It fell on him, its cruel fingers fumbling for his eyes, his throat. It stank of death. Somehow he managed to brace his foot against it and flip it over his head. It landed heavily. He went after it before it could recover, caught it in a headlock and, with a quick, lateral twist, broke its neck. It convulsed, throwing him. He rolled nearly into the mist before coming up short in a fighter's crouch. Clearly, however, the brief battle was over.
"That should at least slow it down some," he said unsteadily, and drew a sleeve across his face. The cloth stank from the creature's touch.
Kindrie stared at the twitching body. "B-but it's still alive!"
"Moving, yes; alive, no. You can't kill something that's already dead."
"It's another haunt?"
"Yes. These hills are rotten with them. I used to hunt them occasionally when I was a boy. More often, they hunted me." His head snapped up. "Listen!"
Far away over the hills, a horn sounded, and another and another.
Torisen sprang up. "The camp—it's under attack!"
He raced off toward the sound with Kindrie stumbling after him. Ahead, clouds rolling out of the west cloaked the sky, and distant thunder rumbled. Mist was swelling up even more thickly in the hollows, sending tendrils snaking up the lower slopes. The hills were becoming islands in a dim white sea. The fires of the Jaran's camp crowned the next rise. Torisen scrambled up the steep slope toward them. Suddenly, dark shapes emerged from the grass all round, ringing him with spearpoints.
"Here now, watch that!" he snapped, pulling up short.
"This one talks," said a voice from the shadows. "Maybe it will tell us what it is."
"Gladly! I'm Torisen Black Lord."
"There certainly is a resemblance," said another voice. "Perhaps it's a changer, or maybe an 'uman. Remember, there's a reference in the fourth canto of the Randirean saga to one who changed into a bat."
"No, no—that was only in the aberrant version . . ."
"Kirien, help!"
"What in Perimal's name . . ." said Kirien's voice from above. "Luran, why are you holding the Highlord at spear point?"
"Oh. Sorry, my lord."
The spears swung around to cover Kindrie as he staggered up the slope. Torisen knocked them down. "Sorry. That's not an 'uman either—whatever that is. I've never been the subject of an academic debate before," he said to Kirien as he joined her on the hilltop. "It's a singularly unnerving experience. Now, what in all the names of God is going on?"
"Confusion, primarily."
"That I can see. What are all these horses doing up here? You must be playing host to at least a quarter of the remount herd."
"Under the circumstances, we can hardly begrudge them the room. About ten minutes ago, the lot came stampeding up the hill. Then our guards on the lower slopes shouted up that they were under attack. They were gone by the time we got there—yes, completely. Then these . . . these things started coming up out of the mist. There! Do you see that?"
It was hard to see anything below now that clouds had swallowed the moon. Beyond the circle of fires, beyond the Kendars' double shield-wall, Torisen could just make out a horde of dark figures swarming up the lower slopes. They coalesced into a silent wave that beat and tore at the wall of shields with voracious hands and ignored the bite of spear and sword. The wall swayed but held. As the moon broke free for a moment from the advancing stormclouds, the wave receded as silently as it had come, leaving behind nothing but mist.
From off to the south came a battle cry, rising, falling.
"That's the Coman," said Torisen sharply. "What's that idiot Demoth up to now?"
"Whatever it is, he tried it after the first assault, too."
"Ho, Kirien!" The shout came from the next hilltop, which the Jaran also held. "Are you still there?"
"That's my great-uncle. Ho, Kedan! Where else would I be? Your shield-wall held?"
"Of course. But damnit, how can we fight what we can't even name? 'War with the What's-it'—ha!"
"Not 'ha,' " Torisen shouted across at him. "Haunts!"
"Ancestors preserve us," said Kirien softly. "Our own un-burnt dead from the White Hills . . ."
"Perhaps, perhaps not." Someday, he might tell her about the Haunted Lands, the other possibility, but not tonight.
"But if they're haunts, we can't kill them, we can't even wear them down. Have we lost already?"
"No."
There had to be a way. The pyric rune would ignite every piece of carrion within half a mile, but Kindrie clearly hadn't the strength to speak it again, and the idea apparently hadn't even occurred to the other priests, wherever they were. But did they really need the rune?
"Fire," he said to Kirien. "Get torches."
Below, the double row of Jaran Kendar waited. Singer Ashe limped restlessly back and forth behind the second line. By rights, she shouldn't have been even that close because of her maimed leg, but the battle horns had reminded her that before an axe cut her military career short, she had been a randon, one of the elite. She wondered where Harn was. In their days together, first as cadets and then as one-hundred commanders, she had always covered his back, knowing that he forgot it when the berserker rage seized him. The best way to manage Harn Grip-Hard, she had always maintained, was to give him a good clout on the head before any major battle. Anything to slow the man down a bit.
Then the moon again disappeared, this time for good. The shadow of the storm rack rolled eastward over the hills, dipping, swelling over hollow and crest. Darkness came in its wake, and the nearing rumble of thunder. The front line tensed.
"Here they come again!"
The wall closed, shields locking with a crash. The Kendar leaned into them against the mute fury of the assault. Nails scraped on steel. Hands groped over the top of the shield-wall, clutching at heads and hair. The second line of Kendar opened ranks to slash at them. Their shields were still down when a wave of haunts broke over the first line, swarming on top of each other, rolling over the Kendar. Ashe saw them coming.
" 'Ware their teeth!" she cried, and limped back a pace to gain room for her staff.
A haunt crashed into her. The impact knocked the staff from her hands and her off her feet. Bodies piled on top of her. Their stench, their loathsome touch—it was like being at the bottom of a mass grave, but all the corpses moved. Sharp nails tore at her clothes. Teeth locked in her arm, which she had thrown up to protect her throat. They were all fighting to get at her.
Then light exploded between the chinks of bodies. A great hissing arose, and the limbs about her thrashed wildly, trying to disentangle themselves. She caught a knee in the stomach and was still doubled up, gasping for breath, when the mound of haunts above her broke apart.
"Harry them home, but stay out of the mist!" shouted a familiar voice over Ashe's head. Hands pulled her up. "Well, singer, how goes the song?"
"Highlord?"
She blinked at him with fire dazzled eyes. His face seemed to float ghostlike before her, black clothing and hair melting back into the night. Torches blazed everywhere, and everywhere the haunts were in retreat.
"The song?" Ashe repeated. "At least this time it won't be a dirge."
"Oh well. The night isn't over yet. You stay clear from now on, though, and have a physician look at that arm. Remember, you're the one who's going to immortalize us all."
"Lord!" The hail came from downhill. "My lord, the mist!"
Torisen spun around and plunged off down the slope.
Ashe sat down heavily. "My arm . . . ?" She looked in dull wonder at the shredded, bloody sleeve.
Below, Kendars ringed the hollow, staring at it. They made way for Torisen. Ground fog still seethed in the depression, but now it seemed to be lit from within, its shifting surface fitfully aglow.
"Lord, is it on fire?"
"I don't think so. No, look. It's the brambles."
Now they could all trace the arabesque of stem and skull-shaped flower etched in fire under the white surface of the mist. The mist began to melt away in the growing heat, leaving behind only ashes and hard-packed earth. The door between the White Hills and the Haunted Lands had closed. In a nearby camp, a horn sounded, then another and another, signaling the end of battle. Now it was time to count the cost.
Torisen walked alone through the camp, hollow by hollow. Either his cry for torches had carried or others had come up with the same solution, for every depression had recently been fired, and some were still smoldering. Apparently no encampment had been overrun. Most were now clearing the hilltops and taking down any standards that might attract the lightning flickering closer and closer in the black bellies of the storm-clouds. As he passed under Lord Danior's camp, Holly came down to meet him.
"Only three guards killed and two missing," he said proudly. "That's not bad for my first battle, is it? Lots of people got a bit mauled, though."
"Keep an eye on them. Haunt bites infect easily and make haunts of their victims after death. There's the Coman standard, still up. Now what . . . oh my God."
Ahead lay another smoking hollow, surrounded this time by a four-foot bank. In its midst, rising out of the very earth as if to clutch brambles now reduced to ashes, was a hand.
"Why, someone's been buried alive!" Holly exclaimed.
He jumped down into the hollow before Torisen could stop him and grabbed the hand. It came away in his grasp. There was no arm attached to it, no sign of a body on or beneath the ashes. The earth itself seemed to have sheared it off.
On the lower slopes were many more bodies, some still twitching, others all too still. Many had been gnawed almost beyond recognition. Korey stood among them, rigid with fury, facing Demoth. The upper slopes were dark with silent, watching Kencyr.
"You have no right!" That was Demoth, nearly shrieking. "I lead the Coman! I order attack or retreat, or anything else I damn well please! You're nothing, do you understand? Nothing!"
"What's happened here?"
They both spun at the sound of Torisen's voice.
"He ordered my people back!" raged Demoth. "He fired the hollow, against my express orders!"
"And he sent Kendar down into the mist to fight. Three times."
"Sweet Trinity. How many lost?"
"Over a hundred, and as many killed on the slopes," Korey said angrily. "This is as much your doing as his, Highlord. You insulted the honor of the Coman by appointing this . . . this bungler. You insulted me."
He drew a knife.
Torisen had turned to Demoth. "I was wrong, and your kinsmen were right: You aren't fit to lead."
He turned back and saw first the knife, then Korey's thunderstruck expression. He put his hands on the young man's shoulders. The knife point pricked him through his coat, just under the ribs.
"Korey, you idiot, put that away. I've just given you the Coman."
"Blackie!"
Torisen heard Harn's shout and saw Korey's bewildered gaze shift to something behind him. A footstep, the hiss of descending steel, and Korey shoved him aside. His sore leg failed him. He was already falling when knife and sword met with a crash, inches from his face. The violence of his swing had unbalanced Demoth. He stumbled into Korey, and both fell, catching up Torisen as they rolled down the slope. For a moment, all three were over the bank, in midair. Then they crashed to the floor of the depression, with Torisen underneath. He landed on a rather large rock. Demoth lurched to his feet, still gripping his sword.
"The Coman is mine! You can't take it away from me! I'll kill you first, I'll kill . . ."
He took a shambling step and pitched forward at Torisen's feet. Korey's knife jutted out of his back.
Harn skidded down the bank. "Blackie, are you all right? From where I stood, it looked as if that bastard nearly took your head off!"
He helped the Highlord sit up. Torisen was breathing in great, painful gasps.
"Grindarks . . . haunts . . . homicidal Highborn . . . and I do myself in . . . on a damned rock!"
"Ho, that's it, is it? Serves you right if you've broken half your ribs. Of all stupidities, to turn your back on an angry Coman. Trinity! Here comes Ardeth."
"Ardeth . . ." Torisen dragged himself to his feet, hanging on to Harn. "I've just killed your cousin, or maybe Korey has. As maternal blood-kin, what blood price do you demand?"
Ardeth stood on the edge of the bank, looking down. Torchlight turned his white hair into a glowing nimbus, but left his face in shadow. "What price?" he repeated numbly, then straightened. "Why, none, my boy. I saw everything. It probably was an accident."
"And you?" Torisen turned to Demoth's paternal kinsmen on the slope.
"None, my lord."
"Ancestors be praised. A simple solution for once. All right, everyone settle in for what's left of the night and sleep if you can. The hills should be quiet enough for the time being. By tomorrow night we'll be out of them and able to honor our dead fittingly. None are to stay here. Understood? Then pass the word."
He turned and found himself face to face with a truculent Korey.
"You haven't bought me, you know. I'll never crawl for you the way that worm Demoth would have."
"I wasn't expecting it. Just act for the good of your house; and as for owing me anything, who just prevented whose decapitation? My lord Caineron is going to be furious with you."
"So 'Blackie's luck' is still a proverb," said Harn as he, Torisen, and Ardeth walked back toward the Knorth encampment with several members of Ardeth's war-guard following at a tactful distance. "I always thought you were too lucky for your own good."
"Never mind him," said Torisen to Ardeth. "Eventually, he'll forgive me for not having gotten myself killed. Just the same, Ashe was wrong: The song was a dirge."
Harn snorted. "There could be sadder ones . . . your pardon, my lord."
"No, no," said Ardeth absently. "You're perfectly right. Demoth turned out to be somewhat less than satisfactory. Now, if I can just arrange a contract between Korey and one of my great grandnieces . . ."
At his own campsite, the old Highborn left them.
Torisen looked after him with a wry smile. "I'm beginning to think that Ardeth can survive anything if only there's a deal to be made out of it."
"And when he finds out about Pereden's role in the Southern Host's destruction?"
"I don't know. The best we can hope, I suppose, is that the wretched boy died honorably. We've got to salvage Pereden's reputation if we can, for his father's sake."
Harn stopped short. "Not if it means maligning his officers."
The Highlord turned and stared at him. "Sweet Trinity. Those Kendar were my officers too once, and the only family I knew for nearly half my life. D'you really think I would turn on them now?"
The stiffness went slowly out of Harn's shoulders. "Well, no —of course not. Damn stupid thing to say, really . . ."
"And if you say anything more, it will be even stupider. What the—"
A small figure hurled down the hill from the Knorth camp and threw its arms around Torisen. He recoiled with a hiss of pain.
"All right, Donkerri, all right. I'm glad to see you, too. Just mind the ribs."
Burr came down the slope at a more sedate pace. "We just heard about the fight and Lord Coman's death. Are you all right, my lord?"
"Ribs," Harn repeated sharply. "Here now, why didn't you say you'd really been hurt?"
"Oh, I don't think anything's broken. Cracked a bit, maybe . . ."
With that, they closed in on Torisen and bore him off, a protesting captive, to his own tent.
THE RAINS CAME, pelting the hills, running down in rivulets between the tents, pooling in the hollows. Lightning ripped, thunder boomed. Torisen lay on his pallet listening to the storm, watching the tent's framework stand out in black relief around him with each flash of light. Although his leg felt sore and cramped, he resisted the temptation to stretch it because he didn't want to disturb either Burr or the parcel of bones nestled in the curve of his arm. His side ached too, but he was fairly sure now that it was only bruised. As Harn would say, Blackie's luck still held . . . but for how long? What if, as he half suspected, his sister Jame really was on her way to him?
With the emblems of my power in her hands, boy.
Yes. Torisen was virtually certain that she had taken Ganth's ring and sword. But what of that? She couldn't wield them. She was only a girl.
So is Kirien. "Nothing in the Law prohibits a lady from heading a family instead of a lord." And she has power of her own, boy. Why do you think I named her "Jamethiel"?
But she was his sister.
And your Shanir twin, your darker half. Why do you think I drove her out, boy? Now she returns, to rival, to destroy you.
But h-he loved her. He always had.
Therein lies your damnation.
The storm grumbled off into the distance unnoticed. Torisen lay in the dark, listening to the hoarse, mad voice that was both his dead father's and, somehow, his own, muttering on and on long after he had run out of ways to answer it.