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Interim VI

Gothregor: 60th of Spring

By the dawn of Summer Eve, the worst of the storm had passed. Lances of brilliant sunlight pierced the overcast, impaling wet leaves, sparkling on the Silver, warming the shattered stones of Chantrie and melting the shadowy image that had hung above them as if of the fortress's ancient walls restored.

But the danger had not entirely passed. A river of clouds still flowed northward up the valley, trailing veils of weirding mist. Steward Rowan watched them from the ramparts of Gothregor. Out of one flew a phalanx of swans, ghosting toward the high lakes that were their summer homes. Migratory birds loved weirding weather. Much of the Riverland's wild-life had also been swept southward with the storm, but would soon begin to weird-walk back—something apparently safer for beasts than humans.

Ancestors be praised that this happened in spring, thought Rowan. In midwinter, no one would have returned. As it was, she hoped for some exotic additions to the larder when it was safe to hunt again.

And perhaps a problem. At first light, she had glimpsed something in the woods that might have been a young rathorn, except that it was pure white. There had been none of those beasts of madness in the Riverland since Ganth's disastrous hunt thirty-four years ago. Rowan turned and limped down the stair, shaking her head. An ill-omen even to think that she had seen one now, given rumors of the Highlord's growing instability.

Down in the inner ward, the small Knorth garrison was combing through the grass in front of the old keep for shards of stained glass. In days of greater affluence, it had been imported in panes from the Eastern Lands, to be worked by Kendar artisans into those glorious third story windows, now shattered. More precious than gold, their fragments would be sorted and stored until the Knorth treasury could afford an eastern glass-master to recast them—unless some clever Kendar discovered the trick first. Rowan shook her head again, looking up at the devastation. Blackie would not be pleased.

" 'Ware weirding!" someone called sharply.

A mist veil trailed over the south wall, then dropped like a vaporous curtain to obscure part of it. Some twenty feet wide, it drifted across the inner ward with deceptive speed—as fast, perhaps, as a trotting horse. Kendar moved hastily out of its way.

It left behind a man, hairy, dirty, naked, staring about him in dismay. The weirding had almost reached the north wall. Meanwhile, a second, smaller veil had followed it over the south. Given a choice, the man bolted toward the latter, braids flying. Bemused Kendar let him pass. He stepped on broken glass, hopped howling on one foot, and pitched headfirst into the oncoming mist. It swallowed both him and his clamor like the shutting of a velvet door.

"Obviously," said a familiar voice behind Rowan, "I've been away far too long."

Ever since Urakarn, when the name rune of the Karnid god had been burned into her forehead, Rowan had learned to equate facial expression with pain. Therefore, although her heart had jumped like a startled frog, her face showed no surprise as she turned.

"Welcome home, my lord."

He looked haggard, she thought: travel-stained clothes, unkempt black hair with more white in it than she remembered, and several days' growth of beard; but large as those silver-gray eyes were in that thin face, they looked blessedly clear and, at the moment, clearly amused.

"Who was that naked man, anyway?"

Rowan shrugged. "A Merikit chief, by the braids, with many kills and many children. Beyond that . . . ."

Torisen had stepped forward and caught sight of the damaged keep. "What in Perimal's name . . . ?"

"We had a visit from Old Man Tishooo. That was before the earthquake, which was before the weirding-storm, all of which was after . . . well, never mind for the moment. About all we haven't had is an infestation of foot-eating trogs. But come inside. Rest. Eat."

"I'm not alone, Rowan."

Rowan looked into the darkness of the gatehouse arch. Some twenty or thirty pairs of eyes glowed back at her, some man-height, others only a foot or two above the ground. Grimly trotted out of the shadows, grinning.

"That's right, steward. You're stuck with the whole pack."

"In that case," said Rowan, "we'll cope. Be pleased to enter, Lord Wolver."

Soon afterward, everyone had adjourned to the garrison's main hall, hard by the southern gate. The wolver pack came shyly, unused to so much company. The adults had taken on their most human (if hairy) aspect as a mark of respect, while the adolescents padded in awkwardly with mixed attributes and pups gamboled about underfoot. If any of the Kendar remembered that some Kencyr hunted both wolver and Merikit for sport, they didn't mention it.

"That reminds me," said Torisen. "Your people aren't to start for home until I have an armed escort to send with them. D'you hear me, Grimly?"

"I hear you, Tori."

Rowan, serving her lord wine, noticed that he took it left handed. Torisen was as nearly ambidextrous as long practice could make him; however, unlike most Kencyr, he favored his right. Seeing the question in his steward's eyes, he defiantly held up his right hand. She stared at the splints and swollen fingers.

"Don't ask, Rowan, and don't fuss. They're mending."

She accepted that with a curt nod. In her mind's eye, though, she saw a boy fresh from the tortures of Urakarn, saying over and over, "I'm all right, I'm all right," while his burned hands festered and his mind slid toward fever-fed madness.

Torisen put down his cup with a sigh. "No use putting it off any longer. Where's my sister, Rowan?"

"I don't know, lord."

He frowned. "She did arrive safely. You sent a dispatch saying so."

"Yes, lord. I also told you that the Matriarchs had taken charge of her."

For a moment, Torisen looked confused, trying to remember. That dispatch had arrived after the lords had been at him all day to decide his sister's fate. Exhausted, he had read the first line of Rowan's message and put it aside, never to be picked up again.

"Send word to the Women's Halls, then."

"They may refuse to let you see her, lord. They did me. Odd things have been happening here. The night of the Tishooo, someone in the Halls sounded the alarm. We don't know why. We weren't allowed in. But the next day pyre smoke rose from an inner garden. Do you think . . . ?"

Torisen shook his head. "Wherever she is, she's alive, but where in Perimal's name is that?" He rose. "Time to find out."

Rowan had also risen. "You're going to ask the Matriarchs? Blackie, they won't let you in!"

He grinned at her use of his old nickname, looking suddenly as wolfish as any wolver. "Let them try to stop me."

At the gate, they tried. The guards called their captain, and she called her eight peers, while the Highlord stood outside, polite but implacable. While they were still telling him that he couldn't enter, he put his left hand on the door which everyone had thought safely locked and pushed it open. Rowan went in with him and so did Grimly in his complete furs, determined to miss none of the fun. Inside, ladies stared aghast before bolting out of sight. In a room above the Forecourt, a whole class of little girls ran from window to window crying "Oh look, oh look!" while their distraught teacher chased them.

"Where are we going?" Torisen asked Rowan out of the corner of his mouth.

"The Ardeth compound. If anyone governs the Council, it's Adiraina."

The Matriarchs were waiting for them in Adiraina's room. The blind Ardeth sat very straight in her chair, in her hands a piece of needlework oddly torn and partly eaten away by rust colored stains. The others ranged behind her except for the Jaran Matriarch who, as usual, kept to her writing desk, a tablet full of notes in diverse hands open before her. She was adding a new notation as Torisen walked in.

"My lord," said Adiraina stiffly, in High Kens. "This invasion is inexcusable. Withdraw at once."

"Point of law," Trishien said, looking up. "Torisen Black Lord is master of this place, and our host. He can go anywhere he pleases."

The others clearly felt this contribution to be unhelpful.

Torisen gave them a half bow. "My lady matriarchs, I have come to visit my sister for whom, I understand, you have made yourselves responsible."

"Jameth's training can not be interrupted," said Adiraina, in a tone fit to freeze ice. "Incredibly ignorant as she came to us, she has far too much to learn."

"I bet she's taught you a few things too," muttered Grimly, subsiding with a yelp as Torisen stepped on his paw.

"Nonetheless."

The Ardeth Matriarch twitched, as if something had given her attention an unexpected tug. Her hands closed on the stained sampler. "It's taken you long enough to show an interest," she said, answering, it seemed, almost at random. The Danior Dianthe put a hand on her shoulder. "No Knorth guard or quarters prepared, not even suitable clothes . . . ."

"I . . . see. And no word from you, either, that such things were required. So, if I failed to provide an adequate establishment, into whose was she placed?"

"Why, into the Caineron, of course," said the Coman Karidia, glowering. "Who had a better claim than darling Kallystine, your consort?"

Torisen blinked. In point of law, Karidia was right, but oh lord . . . !

"That contract," he said, without emphasis, "has nearly expired. Be that as it may, I still want to see my sister."

"Well, you can't!" snapped Karidia, discretion (as usual) failing her. "The silly twit is hiding."

"Is she indeed. Why?"

"A-a stupid spat," said Karidia, against the combined wills of all her peers except the one who could have stopped her. But Adiraina still seemed distracted, as if working out some puzzle of her own. "Dear Kallystine was obliged to slap her."

"Oh, was she. And did you sound the alarm six nights ago because of this . . . er . . . spat?"

"That concerns only the Women's World," snapped Dianthe, trying to regain control, her fingers pressing urgently on Adiraina's shoulder.

"I think not. It happened in my house."

Power stirred. They had forgotten, as so many did, that this quiet man came of a bloodline stretching back to the creation of the Kencyrath. They had not seen him below, pushing open a door which for anyone else would have been locked. But now they felt the lordship in his voice, to loose or bind at will within his own domain.

"The next day," he was saying, very quietly, "you gave someone to the pyre. Who?"

Adiraina answered, as if the words had been jerked out of her: "Eleven shadow assassins."

"What was their commission here?"

"We think . . . to kill Jameth. Instead . . . somehow . . . they were killed."

"And then Jame disappeared, presumably with two shadows out of a casting of thirteen still at large. Correct, matriarch?"

"C-correct, Highlord."

"You don't understand!" cried Dianthe. "It wasn't like that!"

"Like what, lady?" The deadly courtesy in his voice made her shrink back, clinging to the Ardeth's shoulder as to a rock. "That you didn't officiously remove my sister from my steward's care? That while in your charge she wasn't mistreated and then wantonly endangered? That my hospitality hasn't therefore been egregiously abused? I think, lady, that I understand very well indeed, all but what matters most: where is my sister now?"

The question hummed in the air, demanding reply, receiving none. Its weight pressed Grimly flat to the floor. In the preternatural silence, he heard a faint sound beside him, as if of a raindrop's fall, but the splash by his paw was red. Torisen's white-knuckled grip on Kin-Slayer's hilt had opened the cut on his left palm.

Trishien had been sitting with pen frozen in mid-air. Now she gave herself a shake and said, unsteadily, "Highlord, you have a right to know: your sister is at Mount Alban. Only you might not find it where it ought to be."

His eyebrows rose, but he acknowledged with a bow. "My thanks, Jaran. For this kindness, however cryptic, perhaps I won't evict the lot of you after all."

Trishien inclined her head. As her gaze dropped, she gave a half-stifled exclamation.

She's seen the blood, thought Grimly, then started, realizing what he himself had just seen: the sword's blade hanging free through its supporting belt loop, behind the scabbard. Kin-Slayer wasn't sheathed. It never had been.

Torisen had widened his salute, now half-ironic, to include the rest of the Council. Then he turned to leave, with Rowan and Grimly hard on his heels. They had almost reached the door when Adiraina suddenly shook off her friend and fell to her knees. She still clutched the stained sampler in one hand. The other swooped unerroringly to the red drops on the floor.

"Twins!" she exclaimed, astonished and triumphant, her puzzle at last solved with the touch of brother's and sister's blood on either hand. "You are twins after all!"

Torisen stared at her. "Mad!" he said, and hastily left.

Trotting to keep up as they turned onto the arcade fronting the Forecourt, Grimly said, "That was quite a trick with the questions. I thought only Shanir had that sort of power."

"What sort? I asked, they answered. That's all."

"Oh, but surely . . . ."

"I said, that's all!"

He had turned sharply on the Wolver, who instinctively crouched.

"Grimly, don't do that," said Torisen, exasperated. "I am not your pack leader."

Rowan touched his shoulder in warning, then stepped quickly aside as a shimmering vision glided down the arcade toward them. Full skirt iridescent with lizard scales; low cut bodice insecurely laced with gold; the white swell of breasts; ivory throat, fluttering mask of gold tissue, perhaps a shade more opaque than usual . . . they had hardly had time to take in her full glory before M'lady Kallystine had flung herself into Torisen's arms, jarring his splinted fingers.

"Oh, my dear lord, you've come home at last!"

Because he had involuntarily recoiled with pain at the impact, the little puff of powder from between her breasts missed Torisen's face. Nonetheless, he staggered, eyes momentarily blank. Tactfully looking out into the Forecourt, Rowan didn't notice. Still crouched on the floor, Grimly did. He growled as Caineron's daughter raised a hand as if to stroke the Highlord's face. Torisen caught her wrist.

"You slapped my sister," he said, as if just remembering. "Why?"

Kallystine drew back with a hiss, hatred stronger than policy. "Jameth, always Jameth . . . ."

He shook his head as if to clear it and put her aside. "Excuse me, lady."

She stared after him, incredulous, as he walked away, unsteady at first, then with growing assurance and speed.

A half-stifled cough made her look up. On the spiral stair to the upper classrooms crouched a little girl—the same Ardeth chit who had seen Jameth's hands bare. The child bolted back up the steps. The sorcery which Kallystine had just tried on Torisen had been expressly forbidden by the matriarchs. If that wretched brat told Adiraina what she had seen this time . . . .

Worse, if Caldane should learn that she had failed . . . .

"Get me a fast horse," Torisen was saying to Rowan as they turned into the Forecourt toward the gate.

"I'll saddle every brute in the stable. You aren't leaving us behind this time, Blackie."

"Or me, or me!" the Wolver cried, capering upright with excitement and trying to clap his paws.

"Or me," said M'lady Kallystine through her pretty, white teeth, watching them go. She hadn't lost. Not yet.

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