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Chapter 4
First Blood

Tentir: 7th-8th of Winter

BY DAWN on the seventh, Tagmeth seethed with life. Everyone had heard the news of the Horde's march. The packing was already done and the cook fires ready to douse. Torisen had listened to the messenger's full report and sent him down to snatch half an hour's sleep in a corner of the main hall. Now while Brishney tore a spare shirt into squares, Torisen rolled up his sleeve, and Burr carefully nicked his arm. Morien caught the Highlord's blood in a silver bowl. Donkerri, watching, turned a dirty shade of white. He got up, trying to appear unconcerned, and nearly walked into the fire pit before Rion caught him.

"Blood-blind," said Morien scornfully. He began to dip the corner of each cloth square into the bowl.

Torisen regarded Donkerri. When Caineron had spoken of having eyes and ears at Tagmeth, had he meant his grandson? It would be like Caldane to use his own blood-kin, and a child at that, as a spy. Torisen decided that he didn't like spies, whatever their age.

Donkerri huddled by the fire, feeling sick and miserable as he always did at the sight of blood. He felt the Highlord's cold, considering eyes on him and turned paler still.

Torisen's herald entered the room. He gave her the scraps of cloth. "Pass the word down the river to every keep that there will be a High Council meeting at Gothregor on the ninth and a general gathering of the Host no later than the tenth. Give each lord one of these squares and say to him: 'The blood calls. Answer or be foresworn.' "

She bowed and left.

"That should make them jump," said Torisen to Burr. "By tomorrow night, every Highborn in the valley is probably going to wish I'd never been born, if they don't already—and what are you staring at? Is my face still dirty?"

"No, lord." Burr gave him a critical look. "That bit of sleep did you some good. Now you only look as if you've been dead one day instead of three."

"It's nice to know that I improve with age," said the Highborn tartly. "Hello, what's that?"

From the north came a distant rumble. Black clouds were beginning to pile up beyond the white peaks, towering higher and higher.

"A storm is brewing up near the Barrier," said Burr, looking out.

"Yes. With our luck, it will probably chase us all the way to Gothregor. We aren't leaving the north a moment too soon."

They rode out of Tagmeth within the hour, the light already dimming around them and an unseasonably warm wind pushing fitfully at their backs. It was fifty leagues to Gothregor, past five pairs of keeps. Lord Caineron and Nusair joined the cavalcade as it passed Restormir, leaving Sheth Sharp-Tongue, their randon commander, to bring the troops after them. Caldane chatted cozily with Torisen for a way about their lucky escape the night before and then dropped back to ride with his own retinue. The blood summons bound him as it did every other lord in the Riverland; if he had any new schemes in mind, he would probably wait until the Council session to spring them.

At Mount Alban, the scrollsmen's keep, a cheerful historian and a gray-haired singer joined them, one to record the facts of the coming campaign (assuming there was one), and the other to immortalize it in song, using the singer's cherished prerogative of the Lawful Lie.

All day, the storm clouds built up, growing blacker, towering higher, but they didn't burst until dusk. The wind, fitful until now, began to rush past the riders, driving dead leaves with it. Thunder boomed in the near distance. Caineron spurred his mount up to Torisen's.

"This looks bad," he said, uneasily regarding the lightning-shot darkness now rolling down on them. "We had better turn back."

"Tentir isn't much farther away than Mount Alban. Surely you aren't afraid of a little rain, my lord."

"Of course not," said Caineron with a bland, superior smile, buttoning up the collar of his red velvet coat against the blast. "It's simply that no well-bred Highborn rides in all weather like a leather-shirt trooper if he can help it."

Torisen suppressed a smile. In his serviceable riding leathers, allowing for his slighter build, he could easily have passed for one of his own Kendar retainers.

"As you please, my lord. We're going to make a run for Tentir, where supper should be waiting for us. You're more likely to get wet going back anyway."

Storm sprang forward. Torisen heard one of the boys give a whoop and reined in until Morien drew up level with him. Brishney and the others weren't far behind. Then he let Storm go again. The black stretched out in a full gallop, his ears back as he listened to the other horses thundering after him. Lightning was striking the peaks above them now. Its glare briefly gilded bare branches bent in the wind and the ruffled surface of the River Silver running swift beside the road. The boys were shouting, their voices shrill against the tempest's oncoming roar. Torisen laughed. As if they had a chance of catching a quarter-blood Whinno-hir like Storm. There was a blinding flash, a boom like the sundering of worlds, and a forty-foot pine crashed down ahead of them, its tip across the path. Storm shied, then steadied. He took the jump gallantly, his hooves barely skimming the fallen tree's needles. The saddlebag containing the bones thumped against his side as he landed.

"Hold on tight!" Torisen shouted over his shoulder.

Then, there across the river, was Tentir, the randon college, black against the mountains. Lights shone in the guest quarter windows. Torisen galloped across the bridge, up between the training fields, and through the gate house. Raindrops stung his face. The door swung open, and he rode full tilt into the main hall of the old keep. Storm skidded to a halt on the age-slick flagstones. The boys clattered in after him, shouting friendly insults at each other. Burr and the others followed, with Caineron's group last of all. By now, it was pouring outside. Nusair rode in looking like a half-drowned cat, and Caineron, as proud as ever, but with his fancy red coat bleeding dye over his hands.

"He'll find some way to make you pay for this," Burr said in an undertone as a servant led their horses down the corner ramp to the subterranean stables.

"He can try," said Torisen placidly. "Even if he succeeds, it was worth it."

Behind them, the guards struggled against the blast to close the hall's massive oak doors. One of them, glancing up as lightning struck the mountain side, thought he saw something large and white soaring down the wind toward the keep. Then the darkness closed in again with a shout of thunder, and it was gone.

Torisen and Burr went up to the quarters on the second floor of the old keep that were kept in permanent readiness for the Highlord's infrequent visits. A fire blazing in the grate and open ducts to the fire timber hall three levels below heated the three-room suite. Torisen put his saddlebag on the huge bed and crossed over to the fireplace. Perhaps for the first time since coming north, he would actually get warm. Burr's movements caught his attention.

"What have you got there?"

The Kendar had been unpacking a bag. Now he carefully unfolded something dark and lustrous, with flashes of silver at the throat and wrists.

"You brought one of my court coats on a hunting trip?"

"Well, you never know, do you?" said Burr with a touch of guilty belligerence. "And it has come in handy, hasn't it?"

The Highborn smiled at him. "Poor Burr. Caineron caught you on the raw with his talk of leather-shirt troopers, didn't he? Very well. You can dress me to the teeth tonight, and we'll see if I can dazzle him."

Burr held the velvet coat so that his lord could slip into it. "It would be easier if you didn't always wear black and go armed." He transferred Torisen's two throwing knives to their sheaths in the collar of the dress coat.

There was a scratch on the door. A Knorth cadet entered.

"My lord Caineron's compliments," he said, nearly squeaking with nervousness but gamely corning out with his message. "Since he has learned that only his people and yours are still at Tentir, he has arranged for everyone to eat in his hall, as—as his guests."

Burr glowered at the boy, putting the seal on his confusion.

"That man . . . as if he were master here!"

"Never mind. It's just his revenge . . . and I still say it was worth it. Ready?"

Burr eyed him critically, then nodded in grudging approval. They left the room.

* * *

HIGH ABOVE THE KEEP, something balanced awkwardly on the wind on pale skin stretched taut between its body and extenuated limbs. It was naked except for a gray, undulating mass wrapped around its neck. Above that was a face very nearly human, though pinched by the cold and concentration. The creature hovered unsteadily, white hair whipping in the wind, then swooped down toward an open second-story window in Tentir's north wing. At the last moment, a violent down draft caught it. It veered wildly, first toward stone, then into and through the closed shutters of a lower window. A cot broke its fall; likewise, it broke the cot, and ended up tangled in blankets, thrashing about and swearing on the dormitory floor. Suddenly it stopped struggling, one web-fingered hand leaping to its bare throat.

"Beauty?" It called in a husky, distorted voice. "Where are you?"

From under a nearby cot crawled a gray, segmented wyrm, about as thick around as a man's upper arm. Its antennae felt delicately ahead of it, while behind it left a trail of slime. The changer picked it up and stroked it.

"Are you all right, girl? Well, I'm not. I can't . . . change . . . back . . ."

He began to shake with the effort. The webbed skin of one hand subsided into wrinkles like an overstretched glove, but that was all. The changer stopped, panting and sweating.

"It's no use, girl. I need blood, lots of blood . . ."

Out in the hallway, there was the sound of approaching voices.

* * *

TORISEN AND BURR followed their young guide down to the first floor and into the new section of Tentir. Barracks and training halls had been built onto the ancient keep, forming a large, hollow square around an inner ward, which cadets claimed was always solid mud. Although the young Kendar men and women trained together, they slept and ate with others from their home keeps. Caineron's hall was in the north wing. Walking down the long corridor toward it, Torisen heard the heavy floor planks groan as the wind struck the outer wall. The air in the hallway shifted, making their guide's torch flare uncertainly and shadows leap ahead of them.

"So everyone else has gone home," he said.

"Yes, lord, as soon as your message arrived. Lord, will we be fighting soon?"

Torisen smiled at the boy's eagerness. "I'm afraid so. There must be about fifty Knorth cadets here now. How many has Lord Caineron?"

"One hundred and thirty-five, lord."

Torisen was momentarily startled, but then remembered that while his fifty were sworn to him personally, many of Caineron's must in fact belong to his seven established sons.

"And Harn? Will he be joining us?"

"No, lord. Old Grip-Hard . . . I beg your pardon, sir! Keep Commandant Harn never dines in public."

Burr and Torisen exchanged glances. "Doesn't he, by God!" murmured the latter. "That's something new." He stopped suddenly. "I thought you said everyone was gone. Who's that, then, breaking up furniture?"

The cadet stopped too, listening. "These are the Coman's dormitories, lord. No one should be here. I think it's coming from that one down the hall."

By the time they reached the room, all was quiet inside. The cadet threw open the door.

"There," he said, holding up his torch. "The wind must have slammed open that shutter and broken it." He went over to secure what was left of the window's covering.

"Did the wind break that cot, too?" muttered Burr. He drew his short sword, relieved the surprised boy of his torch, and began a methodical search of the room, poking into corners, peering under beds.

Torisen stood in the doorway. He too felt a touch of whatever-it-was that had made Burr instinctively bristle, but he couldn't identify it. The Kendar finished his search.

"Nothing," he said, sounding faintly puzzled.

The Highlord shook himself. They were acting like a pair of Shanir, starting at shadows. "Come along, then," he said, waving the other two out of the room and firmly closing the door after them.

As their footsteps receded down the hall, the changer dropped from the ceiling with the wyrm clinging to his neck.

"Two too many for us, Beauty, but did you see who the third was, there, by the door? We're close, very close . . ."

He slipped out of the room and scuttled silently after the three Kencyr, an avid light in his pale, half-mad eyes.

* * *

TORISEN, BURR, and their escort came at last to Caineron's hall, only to find the door firmly shut against them.

"Full formalities, I see," said Torisen, amused. "This is known as 'Putting the upstart in his place.' You had better announce me."

Burr pushed the cadet aside and struck the door three measured blows that made its panels shake.

"Who knocks?" demanded a voice inside.

"Torisen, Lord Knorth, Highlord of the Kencyrath," roared Burr at the closed door. It swung open.

"Welcome, my lord, to my lord Caineron's hall," said the seneschal, bowing and stepping aside.

The cadets and their few remaining instructors came smoothly to their feet. Caldane at the high table rose in a more leisurely fashion, the torchlight striking sparks of gold and scarlet off his ornate court coat.

"All gates and hands are open to you," he said in formal Kens.

Torisen, in the doorway, gave a half bow. "Honor be to you and to your hall."

Standing there with candlelight on the fine bones of his face and hands, he looked as austere and elegant as heirloom steel in a velvet sheath. Caineron, in contrast, suddenly appeared both overdressed and overweight.

Torisen went up to the high table. Nusair was also there, as well as the two Kendar scrollsmen and Kindrie. The Highlord faltered a second when he saw the Shanir, then steadied and mounted the dais. He and Caineron exchanged another ironic half bow and sat down simultaneously. The cadets resumed their seats. Bowls of thick soup were passed around to the lower tables while Torisen's nine boys waited on the Highborn and their two Kendar guests.

Dust floated down into one cadet's soup. She looked up and thought for a moment that she saw something white move among the high rafters. When it didn't reappear, she shrugged and began to eat, keeping a surreptitious watch, like everyone else in the room, on the high table.

"A pity our host couldn't join us," said Caineron. "I gather he's become something of a recluse, but then considering the circumstances under which he left the Southern Host a year ago, that's hardly surprising. An . . . impetuous man, our Harn, but remarkably good at training randons. He used to be a friend of yours, I believe."

Torisen sipped his wine. So that was how it was going to be. "Harn was second-in-command when I led the Southern Host," he said levelly. "Years before that, he was my immediate superior, when I was a one-hundred captain at the battle of Urakarn. Your eldest son Genjar was in charge then, I believe."

Nusair bristled. He had apparently been drinking since his arrival at Tentir. "What about Genjar, my lord?"

"Oh, nothing. It's—ah—unfortunate, though, that the only time a Caineron ever led the Southern Host, his commission ended with the decimation of his forces. The Karnides are religious fanatics, you know. Those of us they captured, they tried to convert by torture—as if our own damned god had given us any choice in matters of faith."

"Is that what happened to you, my lord?" asked the historian.

Torisen looked down at his hands cupping the wine goblet, at the filigree of fine white scars crisscrossing them, and thought of other scars less visible. "It was a long time ago," he said, suddenly weary. "Perhaps the whole thing is best forgotten."

"As you say, my lord," said Caineron smoothly, overriding his son. "Instead, why don't you tell us about the cause of this remarkable general muster? All I've heard is that the Horde is on the move, although why that should concern us I can't imagine. After all, it's nearly two thousand miles away."

"But apt to get a great deal closer. The Horde isn't striking out at random; our spies report that it's headed straight for the Silver, and that, eventually, will put it on our doorstep here in the Riverland unless we stop it."

"But why should it come after us specifically?" asked the historian, "There are no historical accounts that I know of, or songs," he added, with a nod to his colleague, "that record any previous contact with these folk. Why should they be after our blood now?"

"Perhaps because theirs demands it. Remember, because their endless line of march lies partly beyond the Southern Barrier, everyone of these people has spent part of his life in Perimal Darkling. Many of them must be at least half-blood Darklings by now. Then too, consider that the Horde is really a mixture of tribes, most of whom are blood enemies. Yet now something apparently has united them, causing them, or at least their vanguard, to break out of a pattern centuries old. What could that be but a Darkling influence; and given that, where could they be going but after us, the Shadows' greatest enemy on Rathillien?"

"That makes a certain amount of sense—superficially," said Caineron, playing with his cup. "But can you prove any of this?" Torisen shook his head, frustrated. How could he explain his desperate sense of urgency to someone who had never even seen the Horde? Instinct, not logic, would tell anyone who had ever served with the Southern Host where the danger lay, but not this arrogantly ignorant Riverland lord.

"You see, my boy, it's not enough to cry 'Darkling' and expect people to jump," said Caineron in a patronizing tone. "We aren't even really sure anymore what the term means, what with the historic and poetic records getting so jumbled during the flight to this world. The more enlightened of us now believe that much we once accepted as fact—changers and so forth—is actually some ancient singer's rather—shall we say— fanciful invention. Wouldn't you scholars agree?"

The young historian looked embarrassed, but the singer, a former randon named Ashe, raised her grizzled head with the light of battle in her eyes. "My lord, it's true that we don't know if some of the old records are history or song, but only a fool underestimates Perimal Darkling."

Caineron gave her a long look. Then he turned back to Torisen exactly as if the woman had never spoken.

"It isn't as if we had had any recent contact with anything from beyond the Barrier, you know. We've been left virtually undisturbed since we came to Rathillien over three thousand years ago. No, my lord, it's going to take more than fanciful supposition to convince me that we're about to be attacked now, and you do remember, I hope, that this time a single vote will be enough to keep the Host from marching."

"You're going to look a proper fool," said Nusair, and snickered drunkenly.

Torisen gave him a cold stare. "You know, Nusair, it really is time things were settled between us. Genjar bought his honor back after Urakarn by using a White Knife." He drew a coin from his pocket, deliberately choosing a valuable gold one, and tossed it across the table. "Buy whatever you need and meet me openly. I'm tired of looking for you behind every door."

Nusair picked up the coin. For a moment, he stared at it blankly, and then rising anger drove the wine-flush from his face.

"Why, you . . . you imposter, you changeling! Showing up here without ring or sword and maligning a real lord like my brother . . ."

"Gently, gently," said Torisen. "You're frightening the children."

Nusair gasped, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Then he felt the weight of eyes and turned to find all the cadets staring at him. He made a choking noise and hastily left the hall.

Torisen sipped his wine. "That boy should be trained or put on a leash. Changeling, eh?"

"That 'boy' is older than you are," said Caineron more stiffly than usual. "You'll have to excuse him, though. He was very fond of his brother. So was I."

The meal ended soon after that, to everyone's relief.

Burr had eaten at one of the lower tables. By the time he reached the head of the room, moving against the flow of dismissed cadets, Torisen had disappeared. The Kendar felt a sharp stab of alarm. He thought he knew where his lord was bound; but even so, this was no night for anyone to be wandering around alone. Despite that empty dormitory, Burr felt instinctively that something unnatural was loose in Tentir. He would follow Torisen and . . . what?

Poor Burr, after all those years of spying on me and now no one to accept your report . . .

Burr flinched at the remembered tone. No, he would not follow. Torisen had a right to some privacy and was usually quite capable of looking after himself.

"Burr." Kindrie suddenly appeared at his elbow. "Please light me to my lord's chambers."

"Yes, Highborn."

Why ask him rather than one of Caineron's people, Burr wondered as they walked in silence back toward Old Tentir. He glanced curiously at the young Highborn. Kindrie had Torisen's slight build, but not the Highlord's nervous strength or grace. Stripped, he must be more bone than flesh and nearly as fragile as an old man, an expression heightened by his fine white hair.

"Burr," he said abruptly as they neared Caineron's quarters, "why does Torisen hate the Shanir so much?"

Burr gave him a sharp look. Caineron was quite capable of sending a Highborn to ferret information out of a Kendar, but was it like Kindrie to play such a game, even under orders? Somehow, he didn't think so.

"Sir, I think it's less a hatred than a . . . an involuntary repulsion. He tries to control it."

Not with much success. Burr remembered Torisen once saying bitterly that it was his only legacy from his father—that, and nightmares.

Kindrie walked on in silence for a moment. "Knorth was a great Shanir house once," he said, almost to himself. "Many of us still have a touch of Knorth blood. I do myself and . . . and I would like to come home. You might tell him that, Burr, if he ever seems inclined to listen."

He turned down the hall without another word and entered Caineron's quarters.

* * *

AS THE CADETS DISPERSED to their dormitories, Torisen slipped out of the hall by a side door into the arcade that skirted the muddy ward. Rain mixed with hail thundered on the roof, sweeping in under it in gusts whenever the wind veered. Thoroughly damp and chilled, he reached the east end of the arcade and gratefully entered the relative warmth of the old keep's main hall. Three cadet guards huddled around a small blaze in the enormous fireplace. Unnoticed, Torisen slipped by them and up the stairs, past his own rooms, and up again. He remembered Tentir fairly well from his last visit nearly two years ago, but how difficult its halls seemed now, darkened and echoing, stripped of life. More than once, he thought he heard footsteps behind him, but saw no one. Then, ahead, there was a blazing wall torch beside the door to the northeast tower. Under it stood a cadet on guard. She swung nervously around as Torisen emerged from the shadows and found herself holding the Highlord of the Kencyrath at spear-point.

"Gently, gently," said Torisen, moving the point aside. "If you ruin this coat, Burr will never forgive either of us."

"M-my lord! I beg your pardon. It's this damned storm." She started as hail struck a nearby shuttered window like a volley of flung stones. "I come from one of your border keeps. When the wind blows across the Barrier like this up there . . . well, there's no telling what might come with it."

"You don't have to tell me," said Torisen wryly. "I grew up near the Barrier myself, which is a great cure for skepticism. A pity Lord Caineron can't say the same. Is Commandant Harn in his quarters?"

"Yes, Highlord. Shall I announce you?"

"No. Let's not frighten the poor man more than necessary."

He entered and climbed the spiral stair to the first of two levels. This had originally been a watchtower, but Harn had commandeered it, apparently in another effort to separate himself from his garrison, as if prolonged contact with him might contaminate it. The furnishings were as sparse as those in Torisen's own apartments at Gothregor, but he could never have lived in such a muddle of weapons, discarded clothes, and scattered papers. There was, at least, a roaring fire and, on a table near it, an untouched meal. Torisen sat down, suddenly very hungry. He had barely eaten a mouthful in the hall below and had drunk more than he cared to on an empty stomach. He picked up a bustard wing and began to gnaw on it.

"That's my supper," growled a voice behind him.

"If you mean to eat all this," said Torisen, taking another bite, "you've got too large an appetite anyway."

"Blackie!" Harn sat down abruptly opposite him, a huge, shaggy Kendar in his late sixties, untidily dressed. "I thought you were that scamp of a guard, sneaking in again for a bite. Border brats are all alike: too independent by half."

"So you always told me. I'm glad to hear that someone can still approach you, even if you habitually bite her. Why didn't you eat with the rest of us?"

"With Caineron there? Besides," he said, looking away, "I thought you might prefer not to see me."

"What, not even to compliment you on this year's randons? Even Caineron says that they're good."

"Oh aye, they're all fine youngsters. I should be glad to have accomplished something, I suppose, and it is worthwhile work, but sometimes I can't seem to breathe here. Tentir is a world in itself . . . a small world. I feel . . . caged."

And indeed he looked it in this cluttered room, sitting hunched in his chair like something wild confined in too small a lair. Torisen regarded him with concern.

"I said I would take responsibility for what happened, and I have. The price is paid, Harn. You're free."

The Kendar shook his head like a baited bear. "Not from myself."

"Harn, it's not all that rare a problem. One out of every few hundred Kendar must have a touch of the berserker."

"They aren't high-ranking randon; and with me, it's more than a touch. You weren't there when I killed that boy. I don't even remember it myself; only with him on one side of the room and me on the other, still holding his arm. Caineron's cousin . . ."

"About seven times removed. Just be glad it wasn't that idiot son of his or we really would have been done for."

"The blood price must still have been ruinous."

"Oh, it would have been if I had paid in gold—" Torisen stopped short, silently cursing himself.

Harn looked up sharply. "In what, then?"

"Have a wing," said the Highborn, taking another one himself. "Do you realize that this bird has three?"

"In what, my lord?"

"I gave my word that the next time the Host gathered, the entire High Council would have to consent before it could march out of the Riverland."

"You what?" Harn's chair crashed over as he surged to his feet. "You young idiot!" he roared, looming ominously over Torisen.

"It was either that or order you to use the White Knife instead of forbidding it."

"By God, you should have let me kill myself! Now look at the mess we're in. You think Caineron is tamely going to let you lead out the Host?" Harn bellowed down at him. "Once you've assumed that much real power, he might as well dig a hole for his ambitions and bury them before they begin to stink! And now with the Horde on its way . . . sweet Trinity, this could be the end of us all!"

"I made my choice, and I stand by it," said Torisen quietly, looking up at him. "The Host will march, one way or another. When it does, will you come with me, as my second-in-command?"

Harn stared at him. Just then, the wind worked loose a shutter behind him. He turned mechanically and reached out for it, but then, instead of closing it, stood there blindly staring out into the storm as rain began to darken his broad shoulders.

* * *

CALDANE, LORD CAINERON, returned to his guest quarters after dinner to find Nusair there before him, drinking again. He ignored the young man as servants carefully stripped off his scarlet coat and brought him a white satin dressing gown with jeweled studs. Three full-length mirrors gave back his reflection. He regarded it with less approbation than usual, noting the thinning hair and thickset figure, which no amount of sartorial splendor could entirely disguise. It was exasperating that Torisen with his slim, unconscious elegance should look so thoroughly like one of the Highborn on an ancient death banner, especially when Caineron was trying to start a rumor that the Highlord was actually the result of some long-forgotten indiscretion between Lord Ardeth and one of his Kendar.

His eyes met Nusair's in the mirror.

"That was actually quite an acceptable meal, considering its source," he said, waving the servants out of the room. "However, it amazes me that anyone could swallow so large an insult without choking on it."

Nusair flushed. "What choice did I have? You won't sanction a duel—"

"And you, apparently, can't rid yourself of an enemy in any less public way."

"I'm not the only one," said Nusair sullenly, refilling his cup. "You haven't done so well yourself."

"My dear boy, when I eliminate a rival, I hardly need do it by dropping a building on him. Ah, what have we here?"

Small, bright eyes peered at him around the corner of the mantelpiece. He picked a crumb, which his servants had overlooked, from the sleeve of his scarlet coat and held it out on his palm.

"So far, I've merely played with this little upstart lord—and he is an upstart, you know, even if he really is a Knorth: the strength of that line was broken forever when we exiled Ganth."

The mouse timidly emerged, nose twitching. Half-tamed by some cadet, hunger made it even less cautious. It inched into Caineron's hand.

"My father was his father's dupe and paid for it with his life in the White Hills. For that, I destroyed Ganth Gray Lord. My son, my Genjar, died after Urakarn, his name fouled by Knorth lies. For that, I will destroy Ganth's son."

His fist closed. There was a shrill squeak and the muffled crunch of small bones breaking.

". . . but in my own time, dear boy, and, preferably, in a way so subtle that he won't know he's dead until decomposition begins. To break him over the Council vote is almost too easy, too . . . crude. I would prefer a more lingering end, but fate may have taken that choice out of my hands."

"Just so you get him," said Nusair vehemently.

Caineron tossed what was left of the mouse into the fireplace and turned back to his son with a bland smile.

"And you think that that will increase your worth? Dear boy, what use have you ever been to me? You haven't the courage to fight or the intelligence to intrigue. Since Donkerri's mother died bearing him, to both his discredit and yours, you can't even add to my stock of grandchildren. On the whole, the most constructive thing you could do, short of killing Torisen, would be to let him kill you. Ah, now that would be really useful."

Nusair slammed down his cup, white-faced. "A choice, is it, father? Well, then, I'd better go shove that damn coin down his throat, hadn't I?" He seized a torch and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Caldane picked up the cup and raised it in a mocking salute. "My blessings, dear boy. Either way."

* * *

THE CAINERON QUARTERS were on the third level of the old keep's south side. Nusair expected to reach Knorth's rooms within minutes. Instead, he got lost. Two-thirds drunk as he was, it took him awhile to realize this. Half the time, he scarcely seemed to be in Tentir at all. At first, he put this down to the wine, but as his anger cooled and his senses cleared to some extent, he grew uneasy.

Then the footsteps began behind him. Nusair nearly turned back in hopes of finding a guide, but the scuffling, scraping quality of the sound made him hesitate. It was as if he was being followed by someone who couldn't walk properly. He went on, more and more quickly. The footsteps followed. It seemed to his befuddled senses that sometimes they came from behind, sometimes from a hallway he had just meant to turn down, sometimes from all directions at once, but always they came closer. They were herding him, he thought, beginning to panic. He tried to think where he was, which hall would take him back to the hated but safe presence of his father. His mind wouldn't work. Here was a short corridor and, at its end, a single door. The shuffling sound filled all the empty space behind him, seemed to push him down the hall to the door. He opened it and slipped inside, closing it quietly behind him. It had no lock. Outside, the footsteps were coming closer, closer. He backed away from the door, bumping into dusty furniture, until his foot unexpectedly came down on something soft.

It moved.

Nusair went over backward with a yelp. The torch, flying out of his hand, landed still alight in the far corner. He tried to get up, but couldn't. Something gray and slimy was wrapped around his leg. Even as he started to gag, it bit him, and the world seemed to crumble. He couldn't remember where he was or why he was on the floor. The room swung dizzily around him, filled with leaping shadows.

The door slowly opened. Something white crouched on the threshold. Nusair cast wildly about for a way to make sense of this apparition and could only remember Caineron's satin dressing gown.

"Father?"

The figure shuffled forward, seeming to grow. Nusair could almost make out the rippling cloth and the familiar bland smile.

"Dear boy," it said, so nearly in Caineron's voice. "I had to follow you. I have suddenly realized how badly I have undervalued you all these years. Of all my sons, only you are fit to be my heir. I will announce it when we reach Gothregor and bind myself to it here in private, by blood rite. Dear boy, give me your knife."

It was all wrong. Nusair understood that at some deep, instinctive level, no matter what his poisoned senses told him, but he wanted desperately to believe. After a lifetime of rejection and revilement, to hear this, the ultimate acceptance . . .

"Yes," he said, breathlessly, drawing his knife and holding it out hilt first. "Oh, yes."

It was taken from his grasp and his hand gripped. He braced himself for pain, but it came like a coldness against the skin—too high. Looking down, he saw not the usual palm cut but spurting blood.

"M-my wrist!" he stammered. "You've cut my wrist!"

"It doesn't hurt." The pale eyes held his own brown ones, taking away the pain. "Do you still want this honor?"

"Y-yes . . ."

The changer bent and drank greedily. Nusair felt life flowing out of his veins. It was wrong, all wrong . . .

"No!" he gasped, trying weakly to draw his hand out of the iron grip.

The changer shuddered. The very bones of his bowed shoulders shifted, and muscles crawled under the skin now glistening with sweat. Then he gave a long sigh and raised his head. Nusair found himself looking into his own face, crowned by wild, white hair, framing pale, triumphant eyes.

"Too late, fool. You have given freely, and I have taken what I need. Now I will give you what you want most: a chance to be really useful."

He shoved Nusair back on the floor and opened the young man's coat. Ignoring the feeble attempts to push him away, he carefully positioned the knife and drove it up under Nusair's ribs. When the body had stopped twitching, he stripped it and put on its clothes. In one pocket he found Torisen's coin. The changer put it in Nusair's mouth against the teeth so that its golden glint showed between the bloodless lips.

"There, little Highlord," he said with satisfaction. "Explain that. Now go down to the fire-timber hall, Beauty, and wait until I bring our real quarry to you."

He left the room with a light stride, rejoicing in the strength and suppleness of his stolen form. Behind him, firelight set shadows leaping in a mockery of life around the still, white body on the floor.

* * *

THE STORM RAGED ON. Blasts of wind and rain buffeted Tentir, shaking the windows, making fires dance and smoke in their grates. The cadets tried to sleep. Caineron paced his quarters, composing a speech for the High Council designed (oh, so gracefully) to flay the Highlord alive. Meanwhile, Torisen sat by the fire in the northeast tower, patiently waiting for Harn's answer.

Someone hammered on the door below. Harn swung away from the window, rain dripping unnoticed off the crags of his face. Hasty footsteps sounded on the stair and the guard burst into the room.

"Sir! One of the guard cadets from the main hall wants to see you."

"At this hour? Why?"

"I-I can't make that out, sir. He's nearly in shock. Please, sir . . ."

Harn brushed past her and ran down the steps with the guard and Torisen on his heels. The cadet huddled under the torch. As the commandant appeared, he raised a stricken face and held out his hands. They were covered with blood.

"D-dead," he stammered. "Dead, dead, dead . . ."

Harn shook him. The cadet stopped with a hiccup and began to cry, clinging to the big randon's arm. Harn held him for a moment, then gently pried loose his hands.

"Stay with him," he said tersely to his own guard, and set off at a run down the hall. For so large a man, he moved very quickly. Torisen barely kept up. Then they were on the stair leading down to the main hall with a clear view across it.

The other two cadet guards lay on the flagstones before the meager fire. At first glance, they seemed impossibly close to each other, as if caught in some guilty embrace that had gone much, much too far. Then Torisen saw that they had in fact been smashed together face to face so violently that their very bones interlocked. Blood formed a widening black pool on the floor. Harn knelt in it, trying to disentangle the bodies without causing more damage. He must have realized that it would do no good, but he didn't seem able to stop himself.

Torisen sensed someone behind him. He turned and found Nusair watching him from the shadows.

"We have unfinished business, Highlord."

Torisen heard voices. No alarm had yet been given, but other cadets were coming, drawn perhaps by that special sense that so often alerted them to danger. He also noted that Nusair was wearing one of the dead boy's caps pulled down over his hair. A thrill of warning went through him.

"We can't settle anything here," he said.

The other chuckled. "Now, is that discretion or fear? Follow, and prove which."

The stair leading down to the subterranean levels was behind him. He turned and descended without looking back. Torisen saw that the back of the dead cadet's cap glistened as the pavement had around the two broken bodies. He followed.

Donkerri saw them go through a thinning haze of blood-blindness. Had his father actually worked up the courage to challenge the Highlord? Sick as he still felt after his glimpse of what lay on the flagstones, he must not lose Torisen now or Grandfather would make him feel infinitely worse later. Swallowing his nausea, he rose and again followed.

* * *

MEANWHILE, Caineron had finished polishing his speech and was ready to retire when he suddenly realized that Nusair had not yet returned. How like the wretched boy to get lost and require a search party. It would serve him right to be left wandering until dawn, thought Caineron, getting into bed—but what if he had simply fallen down drunk in some corner? A fine sight that would be to greet the morning's first passerby, and what great credit it would reflect on the family. No, damnit, the imbecile would have to be found. He shouted for Kindrie.

A Kendar servant entered instead. "My lord, there's a disturbance of some sort in the main hall. The Highborn has gone down to investigate."

"Has he indeed?" murmured Caineron.

Kindrie's post was his lord's outer chamber, and there he should have stayed, come what may. That Shanir was getting above himself and had been for some time. Caineron even suspected that Kindrie had deliberately rammed his horse at Kithorn to let Torisen pass. The Shanir would be made to confess that, as soon as Caineron felt secure enough to use the means that suited him best. He licked his lips at the thought.

The Kendar was watching him uneasily. Smoothing out his expression, Caineron sent him to find his son. The man returned almost immediately, white-faced.

"My lord, I-I found him . . ."

Caineron rose at once. The moment he stepped out into the hall, he smelled something burning, and followed his nose as much as his servant around the corner to a small storage room at the end of a short corridor. While the Kendar put out the fire that the dropped torch had started, Caineron stood looking down at his son. Torisen must have gone mad, he thought, to flaunt his kill so brazenly, and what an odd kill it was, too. Why the cut wrist when the heart-strike would do, and why in Perimal's name strip the body afterward? But then madness ran in the Knorth blood. Everyone knew that. The important thing now was to remind the High Council of it before Torisen could tell his side of the story, assuming he was still rational enough to do so. In fact, it might be arranged so that the Highlord wouldn't even have the chance.

Caineron was halfway out the door before he remembered his son's body. "Do something about that," he told his servant, and walked on, considering what one should wear when arresting one's liege lord.

* * *

THE STABLE LAY immediately below the main hall. Only a few horses occupied the maze of wooden partitions now, and they moved uneasily in their boxes as the two passed. Torisen wondered who or what he was following. The other certainly looked like Nusair, but he was behaving entirely out of character. Then too there was the murdered boy's bloody cap on his head and his shadow, dancing behind him as they approached a wall torch. Torisen had never seen one more warped. If it was truly the soul that cast the shadow and not the body, how hideously deformed the creature that he followed must be. He must get it as far from the cadets as possible, Torisen decided, and then deal with it as best he could. Neither of them realized that they were again being followed.

Another stairway led down to the brick floor of the fire-timber hall some fifty feet below. Tentir had fifteen upright ironwood timbers, more than half of which were prime with fire glowing in the deep cracks of their bark. Of the rest, six were still too green to burn properly for another century or so and two, kindled soon after the keep's founding, had at last been reduced to heaps of embers in their deep firebeds. A dusky orange light permeated the chamber. It was stiflingly hot. Torisen faced his guide across one of the glowing pits.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you?"

The other chuckled, his voice a deep, viscous gurgle. "Why, who or what should I be but Caineron's idiot son?"

"I don't know, unless . . ." His eyes widened as the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. "You're a darkling, a changer. One of the fallen."

"The more enlightened of us now believe that changers and what not are only some ancient singer's invention," said the other mockingly, paraphrasing Caineron. It began to circle the pit. Torisen kept on the opposite side, out of that terrible grasp.

"I'm a border brat. I believe all sorts of unlikely things." Even this, that a creature out of legend should be stalking him in the orange glow of Tentir's fire-hall? "But your kind left us alone for so long," he protested, raising one last barrier against belief. "Why has the Master sent you among us now?"

"The Master!"

The other spat into the embers. Its saliva burst into flames on contact. It sprang across the pit. Torisen slipped out of its way in a wind blowing move and threw a knife into its back before it could turn. The knife hilt clattered to the brick floor, its blade burned away by the other's blood. The changer turned, chuckling. Torisen backed into an open space between the timbers, the second knife poised to throw.

"Afraid, little man?"

"Of you? Moderately."

"Now, what would really frighten you, I wonder. Shall we find out? Beauty, now!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Torisen saw something gray near his feet. His knife hand whipped down. The blade buried itself in the wyrm's head just as it fastened on his leg. Someone screamed. The chamber seemed to tilt, throwing Torisen to the floor. The wyrm's venom tugged at his senses. Random nightmare images flickered through his mind, going faster and faster. It was like falling down a steep slope, clutching at things too loathsome to touch. Then for a moment he felt the rough bricks of the floor under his hands and clung to them grimly.

Someone was crying. Torisen thought it might be himself, but then as he fought back to consciousness, he saw the changer kneeling not far away, cradling the wyrm's twitching body in his arms. His cap had fallen off. Wild white hair tumbled over his eyes.

"Shanir!" Torisen gasped. "Y-you were bound to that thing . . ."

The changer's head snapped up, its face grotesquely twisted with grief and rage. It lunged at Torisen. He felt its hands close on his shoulders, felt the terrible strength in them. His velvet coat ripped down the back, the prelude to tearing muscles, splintering bones . . .

Pain came and then, incredibly, faded. He was on the floor again, with Burr bending over him.

"I've ruined my coat," he said to the Kendar.

"Damn your coat."

Beyond them, Harn and the changer reeled back and forth on the lip of the pit, gripping each other in deadly silence. Their shadows grappled on the floor. Then Harn caught the other's arm and twisted. There was a wet, ripping sound and a terrible wailing cry. The changer staggered away. Harn stared at its arm still in his hands, his face white.

"Oh my God, not again, not again . . ."

Kindrie caught his hands and wiped off the changer's blood before it could burn too deeply. There wasn't much of it: the ghastly wound had sealed itself almost immediately. Crouching in the shadows under the stair, Donkerri thought he saw more blood, much, much more—waves, oceans of it, roaring over him. He sank to the floor in a dead faint. Above him, feet pounded on the stairs. There were a dozen Kendar in the chamber now— cadets, instructors, even Ashe, the gray-haired, lame singer— holding the changer at bay with its back to the pit. It looked more like a wild animal now than anything human, all resemblance to Nusair gone.

"Careful," said the singer sharply. "If this is what I think it is, steel won't help."

Burr was still on his knees, holding Torisen. He didn't know what had happened to the Highlord, but the changer's attack alone would hardly account for the young man's clammy skin or a heartbeat so fast that it seemed to shake his entire body. Torisen gripped his arm with surprising strength.

"Slipping . . ." he muttered hoarsely. "Slipping . . ."

The changer heard. Its lips curled back over sharp white teeth, the entire jawline shifting.

"Highlord!" Its voice was a guttural bark. "Hellspawn! Blood will have blood . . ."

It charged. The cadet directly in its path grounded his spear and caught it full in the chest. It fought its way down the splintering, burning shaft, and took off half the cadet's face with a single blow. The others threw themselves on it.

Torisen half rose. "Child of Darkness!" he cried in a harsh voice not his own. "Where is my sword? Where are my—FATHER!" He crumpled to the floor and lay there without moving.

The changer fought free. In the moment before it could gather itself to charge again, the singer's staff caught it with a jolting chin-strike. It stumbled backward. She limped after it, coolly striking again and again, keeping it off balance. The others scrambled out of the way except for one cadet, either slower or cleverer than the rest, who was still on hands and knees at the edge of the pit when the changer reached him. The singer slipped under a vicious swing and pushed the changer backward over the cadet. It fell into the pit. Sparks swirled up from the disturbed embers, lodging in its stolen clothes, igniting them. It tried to climb out, but Kendars now ringed the pit. Its skin began to char.

"Don't think you've won!" it howled from the depths. "We know now what frightens you, little lord, we knoooo . . . !"

The flame had laid bare that searing blood and now kindled it, wrapping the creature in veins of fire. It flailed about, shrieking, as the fire worked inward. Flames burst from every orifice. Then with a roar, it exploded, spraying the pit walls with burning blood and bits of charred flesh. A charnel cloud of greasy black smoke shot with red rolled up toward the ceiling.

Everyone recoiled. Soot settled on their clothing and a foul taste lingered in their mouths, but it was over. The cadets began to pull their shaken wits back together. For most of them, this had been their first serious fight, their blooding, but for none more so than the boy who had stopped the changer's initial charge. Locked in a nightmare of pain, his face ruined, all he wanted was release, the White Knife. Kindrie knelt beside him. Instead of drawing steel, however, the Shanir cupped his hands over the cadet's ravaged face. His own pale features went taut with concentration. After a long moment, the boy slipped from pain's grasp into the healing oblivion of dwar sleep. Then Kindrie turned to the Highlord.

Torisen hadn't moved. Even in the ruddy light of the fire-timbers, he looked gray with shock and scarcely seemed to be breathing. Burr had put his coat over him. Kindrie reached out hesitantly to touch his face, then stopped abruptly.

Caineron and his guards came down the stairs, weapons drawn.

* * *

IMAGES CAME AND WENT in Torisen's mind, swirling, melting into each other:

The dungeons at Urakarn: "Do you recant . . . do you profess . . ." no, no, no (the dead, rotting in piles—don't look) "Then we must convince you, for your own good." . . . gloves of red-hot wire . . . oh God, my hands! Burning, burning, the towers of Tai-tastigon, the Res aB'tyrr

(What? Where?)

. . . trapped, they're all trapped, burning alive . . . Dead. The Southern Wastes black with corpses . . . Squat figures moving among the slain, taking a leg here, a head there

. . . meat, fresh meat . . . Fifteen thousand against three million? Oh, Pereden, you fool, you god-cursed, jealous fool . . .

Burr was bending over him with a worried frown. "My lord? Tori? Hold on to me, just hold on . . ."

. . . slipping . . .

The tower keep's inner door groaned, then burst open, and black-dad warriors swarmed into the great hall, voiceless, shadowless. The defenders fell back before the silent fury of their onslaught. Tables crashed over. Benches splintered against the wall. The captain of the guard grabbed his arm.

"My lord, we can't hold these lower rooms!"

"Betrayed!" The word burst from him in a hoarse bray, and the defenders faltered, "you've all betrayed me again and again and—Can't hold, you say? Then climb, man, all of you, climb!. Make the bastards pay for every step."

And here the Darklings came, silent still, their eyes like those of the dead weary for sleep. For every one of them that fell, two more took his place, and there were so few defenders left. Up the spiral stair, through the second story maze of living quarters, leaving fallen comrades behind in every room, up again to the battlements.

The crystal dome over the solar glowed like a second moon within the hollow crown of the parapet. Dark figures swarmed over it and it cracked. He was driven back against the door of the northeast turret. There the captain fell, fighting at his side, and suddenly he was alone, ringed by still, white faces.

"You're all dead wood!" he shouted at them. "Give me something living to hew!"

"Will I do, Gray Lord?"

A man stepped forward, also black-clad but wearing the rhi-sar and steel armor of a Highborn. He grinned. His face involuntarily shifted into a wolf's leering mask.

"Keral. Oh yes, you'll do nicely."

He brought Kin-Slayer whistling down. The changer tried to counter the blow, but it shattered his blade and drove him down to one knee. Ganth's sword sheered through armor into the changer's flesh. The wound closed around the blade and blood burned it away. Keral rose, laughing.

"Poor Ganth. Can't trust anything, can you?"

The Gray Lord stared at what was left of Kin-Slayer. Then, in a burst of blind rage, he swung up the hilt-shard to strike again. An arrow caught him in the shoulder. He staggered back against the turret door.

"The Master has a question for you, Gray Lord. Answer, and he may spare your life, if not your soul. Now, where is your daughter?"

"I have none!"

Two more arrows jolted him back, nailing him to the door.

"Wrong answer. We'll look for ourselves, if you don't mind."

He bowed mockingly and left. The others followed.

The arrows wouldn't let Ganth fall. He was trapped with the agony that each breath cost him and the ever greater pain of a life finally and utterly come to ruin. They had all betrayed him, again and again and again: his people, his consort, even his son. Pain and light faded together, but into the long darkness of the unburnt dead he took his hatred and spent his last breath whispering it:

"Damn you, boy, for deserting me. Faithless, honorless . . . I curse you and cast you out. Blood and bone, you are no child of mine . . ."

No!

Torisen thought he had shouted the word, but it woke neither echoes off the stone walls nor Burr, dozing uneasily in a chair beside the bed. He was in his own chamber, he saw, lying on the bed under every blanket Burr had apparently been able to find. A fire roared in the grate, branches (fingers?) snapping, black tunnels in the red, twisting, turning, lost . . .

Torisen fought the slow drift back into nightmare. He remembered all too vividly what came next: flight through the labyrinth, sleeping city; Ganth's iron boots crashing in pursuit; "Child of Darkness! Where is my sword? Where are my . . ."

What?

His heart pounded with the dream memory of that chase, but what had it all meant? The nightmare of his father's death was the one he had fled into the Southern Wastes three years ago, the one that had caught him in that ruined city. As far as dreams go, it had made some kind of sense. But as for the other, which had first come nearly two years later . . . a child of darkness was a Shanir, and as for Kin-Slayer, he only wished he did have it, however fickle the luck it was said to bring. In fact, the second dream hardly seemed to be his at all, anymore than the one at Tagmeth had. But he didn't want to think about them, and he wouldn't. Ultimately, none of them meant anything anyway.

Somewhere in the far recesses of the apartment, stone grated on stone. Burr snapped awake and jumped up, his hand automatically going for his short sword. The sheath was empty. He stepped between the noise and his lord, poised to fight. Then abruptly his whole stance changed.

"Sir!"

"Give me a hand with this," said Harn's voice, oddly stifled.

Burr left Torisen's line of sight. He heard the randon grunt, and then the grate of stone.

"Damn near got stuck for good," said Harn's voice. "Blackie was right: I eat too much. How is he?"

Their voices sank.

"If you're discussing me," Torisen called with a touch of petulance, "talk louder."

When Harn and Burr reached the bed, he had pushed back the mound of blankets and was swinging his feet to the floor. The room faded as a wave of dizziness rolled over him. When it came back into focus, Harn was holding his shoulders, apparently to keep him from pitching forward headfirst.

". . . sure you're all right?"

"Well enough, considering. That damned wyrm."

"Wyrm?" The two Kendar exchanged glances. "What wyrm?"

"You didn't see it?" Torisen felt suddenly cold. "It must have crawled away. Damn. I thought I'd killed it."

"There's a darkling crawler loose in Tentir?" Harn straightened. "My cadets . . ."

"They'll all leave tomorrow, and it should have been too badly hurt to attack anyone else tonight."

"So that's what happened to you. We weren't sure."

"Sweet Trinity. You didn't think I threw a fit like that out of sheer boredom, did you?"

"Caineron said you'd gone mad."

The word hung in the air like an obscenity.

"And you weren't sure," said Torisen softly. "Like father, like son, eh?"

Burr flinched.

"Don't be daft," Harn said impatiently, with no apparent sense of incongruity. "You've got trouble enough without trying to tear strips off of us. Nusair is dead, and his father is going to accuse you of his murder. That means a blood feud, you against the entire house of Caineron, unless the High Council takes pity and declares you insane. Either way, we won't march against the Horde, and that, ultimately, may mean the end of us all."

"But, sir, will the Council really take Caineron's word against the Highlord's?" Burr asked.

Torisen gave a bitter laugh. "Most of them will probably be delighted to. When they acknowledged my claim three years ago, they said they wanted a leader, an impartial judge, but every one of them—yes, even Ardeth—thought that justice meant having things his own way. Now Caineron will promise them everything, or seem to. What's the alternative? A mad lord from a mad line who has only kept the peace and satisfied no one."

"So what do we do?"

"If Caineron tells his story first, with me shut up here unable to refute it, my power will be broken forever. Caineron knows that. So I've got to reach Gothregor before he does."

"Ride? Tonight? Are you strong enough?"

Torisen stood up, slowly, carefully, fighting down a fresh surge of dizziness. His face was bleak, as if stripped to the iron core of his will.

"I can do anything I have to."

The randon gave him a hard look, then nodded. "Yes. You always could."

Burr brought his lord's riding coat and the saddlebag full of bones. At the back of the apartment was a counterweighted stone wall through which Harn had squeezed with great difficulty. It was still open only a crack. Torisen stopped short, his hand on it. Somewhere in the passageways beyond the guarded door, a voice had cried out in pain.

"Who . . . ?"

"Kindrie, I think," said the randon. His expression hardened. "Caineron said something in the fire-timber hall about giving him his back pay tonight."

"He pays a Highborn wages?" said Burr, blankly.

"For Kithorn, yes."

The cry came again, wilder, bitten off in midnote.

Burr took an involuntary step toward the door, but Harn caught his arm. "We can't help him now. Besides, he's buying us time, and I think he knows it."

Old Tentir was riddled with secret passageways. Caineron's spies had apparently never discovered this, but Harn had made himself master of their hidden ways within weeks of his arrival. The stone stairway plunged down between dank walls in steps so narrow that they barely offered a foothold. Harn went first, a torch in his hand, his bulk nearly filling the passageway. Some thirty feet down, he put his shoulder to the wall, forced open another concealed panel, and squeezed through. The other two followed him out into the subterranean stable.

Feet rustled on straw, and seven of Caineron's retainers surrounded them, steel drawn.

"We're sorry, my lord," the eldest of them said apologetically, "but our lord insists that you stay."

The shadows moved behind him. Something clipped the man on the side of the head. He dropped without a sound. The others turned, startled, and another one of them went down with a grunt before the singer's iron-shod staff.

"Ashe!" exclaimed Harn, and sprang forward to help.

He nearly collided with a cadet vaulting over one of the wooden partitions. Four more followed, all Knorths, all survivors of the timber hall fight. Torisen sat down on a bale of hay to watch. Let someone else do the fighting for a change, especially since he was in no shape to help.

"Don't let me hinder you," he said politely to Burr.

The Kendar only grunted. Clearly, the cadets didn't need the help of the veteran randon. Harn had indeed trained them well. The battle was over before any of Caineron's people had even thought to give the alarm.

"I'm glad to see you finally remember who I am," said the singer to Harn as they bound and gagged the fallen Kendar. "After that blank stare you gave me in the fire-timber hall, I thought your wits had finally gone missing."

"No, just on a long hike. Ashe and I were cadets and one-hundred captains together with the Southern Host long before you were born," he said to Torisen. "She gave up her commission after an axe blow nearly took off her leg, although I still say a good healer could have lessened the damage. The fool would never see one."

The Highlord rose and gave the scrollswoman a full, ceremonial bow. "Fool or not, singer, I'm still in your debt. How may I repay you?"

"My lord, I don't know what's going on, but there must be a song in it somewhere. I'll ride with you, if you're willing."

"May we too, my lord?" asked a cadet eagerly.

Torisen glanced at the bound Kendar. "After this, you had better."

"Right," said Harn briskly. "Saddle up, then, and two of you go see if you can get the main gate open before we run into it nose first."

"You never answered the question I asked you in the tower," Torisen reminded him.

"Eh? Oh." Harn went down clumsily on one knee in the straw. "I will serve you, my lord, in any way that you require. Now and forever." He looked up under bristling bows. "Besides, any fool who takes on a changer single-handed needs all the friends he can get."

"I reconfirm our bond and seal it with blood," said Torisen formally, repeating the ancient formula. He gave the randon his hands. In the days long before Rathillien, when the Highlord had often been not only a Shanir but a blood-binder, his palms would have been cut across for the full blood rite, which would have bound his liegeman to him body and soul until death, and possibly beyond. "Now, be a good chap and do something really useful, like saddling my horse for me."

Within minutes, they were all ready, with two mounts to spare for the cadets who had gone ahead. Torisen pulled himself up onto Storm.

"Ready? Then come on!"

Storm thundered up the ramp. As he burst into the main hall, Torisen saw first the main gate, still firmly closed, and then a dozen of Caineron's guards running toward him. At least half of them were cadets.

Torisen reined in abruptly, the other horses crashing into him from behind. I can't fight these children, he thought in dismay . . . but can they fight me?

He spurred Storm, giving the rathorn war-cry as the stallion sprang forward. The scream echoed deafeningly off the stone walls. Cadets and veteran retainers alike faltered. Their primary allegiance was to Caineron, but through him they were also bound to his overlord, Torisen. The war-cry reminded them. Their hesitation only lasted a moment, but in that time the horses had swept past them.

Shadows moved by the main gate. The two Knorth cadets darted out of hiding to lift the cross bar and shoulder open the door. The wind whirled wet, dead leaves in around their knees. Then Torisen was past them, plunging out into the night, into the blinding rain.

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Framed