The sun had set, but the lowered clouds still glowed with the sullen rubescence of banked coals. The air had grown very still. Its unseasonal warmth pressed down on the Merikit as they swept Kithorn's courtyard, renewed the imus drawn on its crumbling walls, and placed long-shafted torches in sockets around its inner square. These last hadn't yet been ignited. The shaman-elders continued their preparations under that flaming sky, watched by the three fantastically dressed Merikit squatting behind them and, less stoically, by Jame, through the smithy's barred window. She supposed that the intricate patterns which they had drawn on the four quarters of the square were the sigils of their gods. She also recognized the bone-fire being laid just outside at the square's northern corner. What was the purpose, though, of the box constructed of clay slabs to the east, or the wicker cage to the south, or the basin to the west?
This last had been revealed by the tipping back of a flagstone and appeared to be of great antiquity. Like the hill fort ruins to the south, Kithorn's court must be much older than the surrounding keep. Just look at that well at its center. Who in recent times would have dug so wide a shaft in such a remote place or rimmed it with what looked like serpentine marble? Damage to the stonework suggested that the Kencyr garrison had covered it with a more conventional hood and winch. The elder now straining to draw up a bucket of water must wish that the gear had been left in place. Feet braced, muscles quivering under age-loosened skin, he might be trying to reel in the River Snake itself.
Huh. That monster. Hadn't the cadet Rue said that its head lay under this very well and Cattila, that the Merikit would send down a hero to master it? Maybe they had already done so to stop the weirdingstrom—except that under this angry sky it hardly seemed over. Anyway, did she actually believe in the Snake, much less in the great Chaos Serpent that was said to have spawned it? More likely, such stories were only the Merikit version of a Lawful Lie. Rathillien couldn't be that much stranger than the Kencyrath thought—could it?
The shaman's bucket finally rose, full of shimmering silver. Over one side hung a great tail; over the other, a gap-mouthed head abristle with whiskers. The catfish flopped out onto the marble rim. For a moment, the elder goggled at it. Then he grabbed. Its barbed dorsal slashed his hand. He hastily bound up the cut with a switch of gray hair, but not before a drop of blood had fallen into the well.
From deep underground came a low rumble. The ground shuddered and flagstones ground together like teeth. Jame clutched the bars, feeling once again the terror of the living earth. How did one distinguish between fore- and after-shocks? What if all that had come so far had only been a prelude?
The tremor subsided. A vast sigh breathed up the well shaft, echoed by the catfish, which had crawled on its stubby pectoral fins over to the basin and gratefully plopped into it. The youth cast his mantle of weeds over the fish and hastily backed out of the square.
"Bloop," said the fish, spitting out a frond.
Jame remembered the catfish that had leaped out of the Silver during the last big quake and especially the one in the barge which had prevented her from drowning. This fellow looked not unlike the latter. Odd, how her encounters with the river seemed by turns primordial and personal.
Well, she wasn't on the Silver now and no fish was going to save her from her current predicament. Kirien had insisted that they not fight for fear of calling attention to Ashe, the Merikit having no tolerance at all for haunts. As a result, they had let themselves be made prisoners in this smithy, one of Kithorn's few intact buildings. Kirien, pacing back and forth behind her, clearly chafed at their helplessness even more than Jame did. Kindrie had retreated to a back corner with Jorin to keep out of her way. In the far shadows, Ashe and Index had resumed the discussion of Merikit fertility rites which the tremor had interrupted. The singer had pulled her hood well forward to hide her livid face. Perhaps Kencyr should learn from the Merikit, Jame thought, glowering at her. Why had she been so eager to put both the Book and Knife out of Jame's reach, just before they would have been really useful? Whose idea had it been, anyway, to trust a haunt?
Perhaps, at least, Mount Alban was safely away. But no. Moving to a chink in the western wall, Jame saw the panels which lined its inner wall still hovering ghost-like above the ruined tower, its upper reaches swallowed by low clouds red- lit as though already sullenly smoldering. Perhaps the weirding had already done its strange work there above. Perhaps the most valuable scholars in the college now slept in rooms detached from the fire-trap below. Perhaps. If not, they must be roused and brought down to safety.
Abruptly, her peephole was obscured. She jerked back as a stick was thrust through it. From outside came a hoot of laughter. That damned boy again. Tired of throwing boxes down Mount Alban's stair, he had descended to cause what trouble he could in the courtyard.
So had the large, young man in red, who was now swaggering around the square, trying to browbeat one elder after another, being waved away by each in turn. He looked like someone accustomed to getting his own way, unwilling to believe that this time he might not. The boy followed just out of reach, jeering. The big man stopped at the north corner and tried again.
Jame found Index at her elbow, listening avidly.
"Sonny-boy wants to play the Burnt Man," the old scrollsman said. "That's his father's role, Daddy being Chingetai, the tribal chief, but he's also not back yet from laying bone-fires around the Merikit borders for Summer Eve."
"I take it that there's to be a mummery," said Jame, who had seen such seasonal playlets often in the Old Pantheon section of Tai-tastigon's Temple District. New Pantheon priests sneered at their crudity, but they sometimes had surprising results, such as the year when all within earshot, including the men, had suddenly found themselves pregnant.
She understood now why the elders were so strangely attired. By the four-fold contradiction of male and female, human and animal, age and youth with unbound hair, life and ash-smeared death, they were trying to render themselves invisible to their gods. As important as they might be in the up-coming ceremony, they wished like puppet-masters to draw attention only to their puppets. But one of these, patently, was misbehaving.
"Hasn't . . . er . . . 'Sonny' already got a role? With those red pants, he's certainly dressed up for something."
"I told you she had a brain," said Kirien, coming up behind them.
Index sniffed. "Huh. But no more credit."
Kirien took a deep breath. "Index, I swear, if you withhold information now, with the entire college at hazard, I'll never barter with you again."
"Or I," said Jame. "Of course, if you don't want to be reminded how that precious herb shed of yours is arranged, or why . . . ."
Index glowered at her. "All right! Yes, Sonny has a role. Since last midsummer, he's been the Earth Wife's Favorite, the darling of the hills, although obviously not a very successful one."
"How can you tell?"
Index looked embarrassed. "For one thing, all his braids are on the left."
To signify the men Sonny had killed, Jame remembered. The absent right hand plaits would have been for children sired.
"Disappointing," she agreed solemnly.
"Er . . . yes. Also, it's dangerous. The Favorite's failure weakens the Earth, which consequently is less able to keep quiet the Chaos Serpent and its brood, including the River Snake. Hence this season of tremors. Therefore, the elders aren't waiting for Midsummer's Day, when the Favorite traditionally fights to retain his position. See that nervous fellow in green? That's the Challenger, already in possession of the ivy crown. The elders have told Sonny to lose."
"I can't see him liking that. If he obeys, though, what will happen to him?"
"In a quiet year, not much. To propitiate the River Snake, a goat would be thrown down the well in his place. This year, though, the Merikit believe that a hero has to be reborn in the Snake's belly so as to master it."
"An honor," said Ashe drily, "that most people . . . would rather decline."
"Including Sonny," said Jame, working it out. "Anyway, he'd prefer to play the Burnt Man—who, I gather, is always the chief. Would substituting for his father now give him a claim on the chiefdom afterward?"
"Yes. Which is something else the elders want to avoid. They'll keep the midsummer part of these rites as intact as they can, to please the Earth Wife, to quiet the Snake, and to provide the Burnt Man (that is, the chief) with this year's best choice of an heir."
"One out of three for Sonny," said Jame. "I wouldn't care to be snake-bait, either. Just the same, if we're dealing with real powers here, not just local politics, this is filthy dangerous. Not," she added, with a passing thought to Graykin, "that politics aren't. But with Earth and Fire involved, who knows what a mess Sonny may make of things? The elders must be worried sick."
"Index," said Kirien, looking out the front window, "when you studied the Merikit some eighty years ago, didn't you have a special crony among them? He was a shaman's son, I think."
"All right!" said Index again. "Yes, yes, yes! Tungit. That's the silly bugger out there now, singing to a pile of wood."
"Well, then, talk to him! He's been a guest at Mount Alban, He can't mean to incinerate all his former hosts."
But the old scrollsman was shaking his head. "We went through all that before you arrived. Tungit doesn't want to hurt anyone, but there's a Burnt Man's bone buried under the college as well as one out here. Both will kindle spontaneously if the rite succeeds. I'm telling you, a crisis like this supersedes the rules of hospitality, now, as it did eighty years ago. Bad enough that Sonny is playing the fool and we've stumbled in. Tungit won't even let the rest of the college come down for fear of upsetting things more."
"Wait a minute," said Jame. "Go back a bit. Are you saying that the Kithorn massacre was caused by a situation like this?"
"Very like." Index turned to her, eager to escape Kirien's insistence. "This courtyard has been a ceremonial site for time out of mind. The old lord who held this keep didn't mind. He even got his people out of the way so as to give the Merikit a free hand, so he didn't know about all the goats that'd been pitched down his well over the quiet years. The River Snake got 'em all, you see, so the water never suffered. But then there was a season of bad quakes and the Merikit planned to send down a hero. The lord got wind of it, though, and refused to have a corpse thrown down his only well. The Merikit were desperate. They thought, if they didn't do something, the Snake would destroy the entire Riverland. So they planned to seize Kithorn on Autumn's Eve and hold its garrison captive until their work was done. No one was supposed to be hurt."
"But the Merikit hall-guest who opened the gate cut the throat of the Kendar guarding it," Jame protested, remembering the story as Marc had told it to her.
Index nodded. "So he did. They knew that there would be a blood-price to pay for that, and they panicked. The barracks was sealed and set ablaze; the tower, stormed; the people—men, women, and children, Highborn and Kendar—slaughtered. Tungit wept when he told me, the last time we met before the hills were closed. And then, despite it all, the price fell due, because they'd missed someone."
"Marc."
"That's right." He gave Jame a sharp, surprised look. "A nice boy, that, despite everything. Big for his age."
"He still is."
"That's all ancient history," said Kirien impatiently. "Index, for the last time, will you ask your friend to stop this?"
"No! Dammit, I've done all I can!"
Jame wondered at his tone, at once exasperated and obscurely excited.
Even more, though, she wondered about the Merikits' purpose. There was something more to it than Sonny and the Snake, something that she should be able to guess, based on what she had seen and heard over the past few days. The Merikit were trying to combine two ceremonies this time, the first to quiet the Snake, the second . . . the second . . . .
She groped after the thought though a sudden haze of fatigue. The others' voices grew dim. Too damned long without sleep . . . . But then she was struggling back to the surface, away with a shudder from Ashe's cold, supporting hand.
"Trouble," said the haunt singer.
"You want this ceremony to continue, don't you?" Kirien was saying to Index, almost gently, but with a stir of power that made Jame's scalp crawl and Jorin growl in the corner where Kindrie held him. "You claim to be an authority on the Merikit, but the truth is that you have never before been permitted to witness a major seasonal mystery."
Index sputtered. "One needn't . . . Grindark rituals . . . Nekrien mythology . . . if one draws intelligent comparisons . . . ."
"But that isn't first hand experience, is it? For eighty years, since Kithorn fell and the hills were closed, you've been denied primary research, reduced to cataloging the details of others' work. Now comes this opportunity."
"Nothing happens by accident!" the old man cried. Before, he had sounded as defiant as a child trying to snatch a forbidden treat. Now he was backing away, as if from an assault for which his defences were proving unequal. "A chance like this. . . ."
" 'Chance' implies 'accident.' "
"Knowledge is everything!"
"Certainly, scrollsmen have died for it before, and killed."
So might this inexorable inquisition, slicing away the self-deceptions necessary to the old man's self-respect. At last Jame understood Ashe's concern: Anxiety had pushed the young scrollswoman into the academic equivalent of a berserker flare—a ruthless drive to lay bare the truth, regardless of the cost.
"Kiri . . . ." she said, awkwardly, out of her depth, "this isn't helping."
Cool, unblinking eyes turned on her. Their attention, focusing, drove her back a step. Too late, she realized that here lay the Shanir power not only to demand the truth, but to compel it.
"Helping what? Do you contend that self-knowledge is not of itself a worthy end?"
Jame winced, remembering the awful revelation of her own soul-image. "Perhaps," she said, "we can't endure to know ourselves too well. Perhaps . . . the truth can sometimes destroy."
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be," said that implacable voice. Could any Arrin-ken have spoken with more authority? "Of what would you chose to remain in ignorance?"
Involuntarily, Jame started to answer, but then she stopped herself, swallowing hard. She felt a horrible sinking inside, as though fatigue had eaten out her heart and all was crumbling in toward darkness. Dammit, she would not be forced back into her own shadows. In a curiously detached way, she felt her anger try to spark an answering berserker flare, but exhaustion had dampened the tinder. She didn't even have the energy to argue, leaving . . . what?
"If I had a choice," she said, reaching up, "I would ignore this."
The mask came away in her gloved hands.
Kirien blinked. "Oh," she said, in a small voice.
"Effective," Ashe remarked. "As a point of debate, though . . . ."
"Agreed." Jame resumed the mask with fingers grown suddenly clumsy with fatigue. "It lacks subtlety. But then so did M'lady Kallystine."
Kirien had turned on Kindrie. "Healer, why haven't you done something about this?"
"Because I wouldn't let him," said Jame. "I may be a nemesis, Kiri, but I won't be his. Oh, hell . . . ."
She put a hand on the anvil to steady herself. Her reserves had been almost exhausted before. Resisting the Jaran had nearly finished her. Still, in justice to her cousin she must explain and did so, haltingly.
"When did you last rest?" Kirien demanded. "An injury like that requires dwar sleep. Lots of it."
"Not dwar. It'll set the scar."
"Oh, I suppose you'd rather just drop dead. Fools who won't sleep sometimes do. Listen. Nothing will happen here for . . . how long, Index?"
"An hour," said the old scrollsman sulkily. "Maybe two. If you'll accept a mere, informed guess."
"Very well. Until then, lady, you'll sleep, if I have to hit you over the head with a brick."
Jame laughed. "I have already been hit quite often enough, thank you," she said with careful enunciation. "Wake me when the fun starts."
She lowered herself stiffly to the floor by the west wall, finishing with a thump as her legs gave out. "Oh, my," she said, gathered Jorin in her arms, and tumbled over, fast asleep. The ounce licked her chin, then stretched out beside her with a deep sigh.
Ashe stood over them. " 'Nemesis,' " she repeated softly.
Kirien regarded her with alarm. "We still don't know that for certain, nor yet what kind, if it's true. For pity's sake, Ashe, if you still have tests in mind, postpone them. Haven't we enough trouble as it is?"
The haunt singer didn't reply.
"Ancestors know," said Kirien, after a pause, " she's got trouble enough. That face . . . ! Well, healer, what are you going to do about it?"
Kindrie's white head jerked up. "L-lordan, she told you . . . ."
"And I believe her. She was right to point out the risk. Now it's your decision whether to take it."
If Kindrie could have shrunk farther back into his corner, he would have, loathing himself all the more. After all, the young scrollswoman was only asking what he had already tacitly volunteered to do by coming down after the Knorth. Even then, though, he had doubted his ability to succeed, and been relieved to escape the test. Now it seemed that he hadn't. Dammit, what had happened to his nerves? Maybe he wasn't a hero like his two pure-bred cousins, but neither last winter had he been so very craven. No, just foolish, plunging into one misadventure after another through sheer ignorance, protected by the ability to heal himself of virtually anything. Now he knew where the risks lay, and, thanks to Ishtier, what their true costs were. Without the priest to unlock the way, perhaps he would never know the healing peace of his soul-image again.
If not, then what? Hide in dark corners the rest of your life?
No. Whatever he had lost, he had gained two things which he had never thought to have: a house and a name. He must try never again to be unworthy of either.
Get up, then, Kindrie Soul-Walker, and walk.
As he rose, his joints cracked like an old man's, full of shooting pains. This, too, was the mortality which Ishtier had made him taste. The others made way as he circled the anvil and crouched stiff-kneed by the Knorth. His hand, reaching out, shook. From her slow breath, she was already deep in dwar sleep. All barriers would be down. This was like standing on the edge of a precipice, all darkness below but in it lurking that monstrous house, that cold, blighted hall.
Take the plunge, Knorth. Go.
He touched her face.