"My boy, are you quite sure that you're all right?"
"Yes, Adric," Torisen said patiently, for the third or fourth time in as many minutes. He wiped Kin-Slayer on Ardeth's proffered handkerchief and sheathed it, to everyone's ill-concealed relief. "You seem almost disappointed."
Shamelessly eavesdropping with Lyra at her elbow, Cattila chortled at Ardeth's protest. Even from the far side of the well, Jame had heard the wistful note in the old man's voice. A mad Highlord would have been easier to manage than her unpredictable brother, given his family penchant for absurd situations.
This time, though, it seemed to her that the Ardeth had rivaled the Knorth. Adric had been explaining, with a shade less than his usual aplomb, how he had been overtaken in the Southern Wastes by the weirdingstrom. Why he had been there in the first place, he hadn't cared to make quite clear, except that he had apparently expected to find Torisen there before him. Finding Index's herb shed instead had inclined him to question his own sanity, nor was he particularly grateful for the timely shelter which it had provided.
"I don't know how long we were storm-bound in that wretched little shack," he was saying peevishly, while Index sputtered with indignation in the background. "Two days, at least. As well to have been lost at sea in a closed dinghy, all groaning timbers and swaying herbs and seams leaking mist. My Kendar servants were hideously sick. Then we fetched up where Mount Alban should have been and I at last emerged, only to be swept up again by more weirding. Someone in it was calling your name, my boy. Such a forceful voice! I simply followed it here."
That would be Brier Iron-thorn, thought Jame, now with the Wolver on Kithorn's crumbling battlements, keeping watch northward for the Merikits' imminent return.
She wondered if she would ever win back the cadet's trust. After this, Brier would return to Tentir to resume her ten-command and training, no doubt glad to put this whole insane adventure behind her. Perhaps she would eventually become one of the great randon, whose memories live in song for generations. She had the potential. But she was also as much a prisoner of her past as Jame had been of hers—no, more, since Brier only knew how to fight what the Caineron had done to her with its own weapons of cold distrust.
What things we could teach each other, thought Jame.
Then with a jolt she remembered that Bane had once said something similar to her. What wisdom had she to impart less dark than his? The best thing she could do for Brier Iron-thorn, probably, was to leave the Kendar alone.
As for herself, though, what now?
Kirien and Ashe had withdrawn to the edge of the courtyard where Kindrie lay in dwar sleep with Jorin curled snoring in his arms. The scholars' low voices had half-woken the ounce, through whom Jame had overheard a conversation never meant for her.
"So you didn't try a test after all," the Jaran Lordan had said to the haunt singer. When the latter hadn't replied, Kirien had stared hard at her for a moment and then sworn under her breath. "So that was it. According to the old songs, only a Kencyr can destroy a Tyr-ridan. When you pointed Jame out to Sonny, you thought that he would prove she was a false nemeis by killing her. Trinity, Ashe, that's cold-blooded . . . and lame-brained. His failure doesn't establish anything, except that she's damned lucky."
"Next time," the haunt had muttered, "I'll do better."
Even her own people wanted her dead. No wonder she felt safer with the well-mouth between her and any of them.
Seeker, seeker . . . .
She had thought that it was enough to drop the mask, to be only herself. But who was she?
Maybe she should complete her withdrawal, run away to become the "son" that the Merikit Chingetai had proclaimed her, the first Kencyr in eighty years with free license to roam these hills. Jorin would love that.
Yes, but then what would she do about Graykin, now skulking around the edges of the courtyard as if afraid either to draw more attention to himself or to be left behind?
And if she did flee up into the hills, whom might she encounter there? According to Merikit beliefs, she was now also the Burnt Man's son, or was that the Earth Wife's lover, or both? This was getting not only complicated but potentially messy.
Anyway, Mother Ragga must still think of her as a thief. That damn imu. She took the medallion out of her pocket, as always feeling its power tingle unpleasantly through both her gloves and its covering of changer's skin. But this time something had been added to it. Eyes, mouth, ears . . . .
Ears, framing the crude imu face like bits of leathery, dried fruit.
"If I give you Mother Ragga's favor, girl, what will you give me?"
Not Graykin's ears or her own, after all, but the imu's, to be carried into Kencyr houses where the Earth Wife feared to go, to listen for her as she had for Cattila at Gothregor . . . .
"Is that it, Ragga?" Jame whispered into one of the shivelled flaps. "Have I your favor after all?"
The imu's lips moved against her face. She jerked the medallion away, unsure if it had meant to bite or kiss.
"We'll just have to see, then, won't we?" she muttered, slipping it back into her pocket.
A descending cry and a great splash drew all eyes to the basin at the square's western corner. In it floundered a great welter of wet skirts, making angry noises. Out of this confusion emerged Kallystine. Water weeds crowned her straggling hair and inch long catfishlings cascading from her clothes. She clawed a slimy caul from her face. Under it, her wet mask clung to her features with unbecoming fidelity.
Lyra, after a moment's open-mouthed gawk, burst out laughing.
By then, Kallystine had caught sight of Torisen. However, her half-sister's laughter made her pause, furious, to try ineffectually to set herself to rights.
Torisen had also recognized her, with difficulty and dismay.
His expression would have amused Ardeth, except that as the old lord's gaze had swept across the square toward the newcomer, he had for the first time noticed Jame on the other side of the well. Fifteen decades had made his far-sight unusually keen. Still, he hesitated to believe what he saw.
"My dear boy! That can't be . . . but the family resemblance . . . it is!"
"What?" said Torisen, his attention wrenched from the sight of his consort angrily shaking fish out of her bodice. "Oh. Yes, I'm afraid so."
"But . . . but this is appalling! A Highborn lady in this place, bare-faced, in that indecent garb . . . . See here, my boy, this must never become common knowledge! When I think how difficult it was to explain away your eccentric departure from Kothifir . . . ."
"How did you, by the way?"
"During my years as a diplomat, I earned a singer's right to the Lawful Lie. I told the High Council that trouble in the north demanded your immediate attention . . . which seems, after all, to have been no more than the truth. I tell you, though, your reputation won't survive another scandal!"
"But you just said that you successfully concealed my . . . er . . . eccentricity," said Torisen, a glint coming into his eyes which his old friend would have done well to notice. "As for our reputation, everyone knows we Knorth are as mad as a gelded rathorn, to use Harn's elegant phrase."
But Ardeth wasn't listening. The Highlord's affairs had obviously gotten out of hand, as he had always predicted they would, and must be saved by an older, wiser head. If he felt satisfaction that events could finally be turned to his own advantage, he dismissed the thought. After all, it only made sense that Knorth honor should be saved and his young friend's position strengthened by an alliance between their two houses. If his son Pereden wasn't alive to oblige, grandsons were. It only remained to decide which.
Torisen tried to stem this tide of plans, without so much as fully getting the old lord's attention. He himself impatiently brushed aside Kallystine when she swept down on him, her remaining charms in full if dank display.
"Lady, please. Not now."
Kallystine recoiled with a venomous hiss. "Jameth. Always Jameth . . . ."
She swung back her hand to slap him. In her palm, steel flashed.
"No!" Jame cried, starting forward, but she was much too far away.
Lyra caught her sister's back-flung arm, pulling her off-balance and bearing her to the ground. Kallystine's hand, striking the pavement, sprang wide open.
"Why," said Ardeth, staring, "that's a razor-ring."
"You slapped my sister," said Torisen slowly, "with that."
Lyra hastily rolled away. Kallystine was left crouching like a toad in her sodden finery, mask askew, perfect teeth bared behind wrinkled lips. The Highlord stood over her.
"Caineron," he said, in a voice through which the cords of his power ran like steel. "I curse you and cast you out. Never come near me or mine again."
His words drove her backward, yammering, on hands and knees. Then she was on her feet and would have bolted out of the courtyard if Cattila hadn't stood in her way. The Caineron Matriarch opened her voluminous vest, dislodging foxkin, and wrapped her great-great-granddaughter in it.
"There, there," she said as Kallystine buried her face against her ancient bosom and burst into tears. "There, there." Her rheumy eyes met Torisen's over the bowed head, power speaking to power. "A poor, disgraced thing, Highlord, but of my blood. I will care for her."
"That was well done," said Jame softly to Lyra. "You'll need a new title soon: 'Lack-wit' doesn't seem so appropriate anymore."
"Actually, it is," Lyra whispered back. "Tackling Kallystine like that . . . it wasn't exactly on purpose: I . . . sort of tripped."
"Huh. Just the same, in future I'd keep out of M'lady's way if I were you."
"Now what?" Torisen demanded.
They all heard it: another shriek that seemed to plummet out of the sky, although no one saw any falling body. It ended with a crash. At the southern corner of the square, the wicker cage which had held the Tishooo had been smashed flat. On its ruins sprawled a fat, glittering figure. Graykin ducked out of sight as Lord Caineron sat up with a groan. Ardeth went to help him rise under the weight of his golden accouterments which, nonetheless, had not prevented the Tishooo from carrying him off. He rewarded the old lord's assistance with a blurry snarl.
As the two made their way back across the broken pavement, Jame decided that shaken and confused as Caldane undoubtedly was, he would have been much more so if he'd had a clear memory of the past few hours. For him and Kallystine both, their possession respectively by the Falling Man and the Eaten One must now seem like bad dreams, rapidly fading.
Meanwhile, Ardeth was taking this opportunity to inform Caldane about the new alliance, making "Jameth" sound at best a poor bargain. If he hoped to slip this news past the lord of Restormir when he was in no state to protest, however, he underestimated the Caineron will, if not the wits.
"Wha' do you mean, a contract with your house?" Caldane demanded, stopping short. "The young fool's already contracted to my daughter, isn't he? Can't keep his hands off her."
"Not with Torisen. With his sister. Anyway, M'lady Kallystine has . . . er . . . rather badly disgraced herself. She just tried to slash the Highlord with a razor-ring. In front of witnesses. I'm afraid," Ardeth added smoothly, with no evident sorrow, "that he had quite sufficient grounds to cast her off."
"What?" Glaring around him, Caldane caught sight of his daughter cowering in Cattila's arms and advanced on her. "Here, girl, what's all this nonsense . . . and what in Perimal's name has happened to your face?"
"You, boy," said the Caineron Matriarch, stopping her great-grandson in his tracks. "Leave be. This business is mine."
Caldane turned, shaking his head like a bull that had charged a sapling and hit an oak. His blood-shot eyes fell on Lyra. He grabbed her arm. "Then here's younger meat, Knorth, good enough for the likes of you. She even comes to you unbroken. You laughed at me for contracting her to that Karkinorien princeling, but I wasn't fool enough to grant him full rights."
He shoved the terrified girl into the Highlord's arms, jarring the latter's splinted fingers. Torisen swallowed a grunt of pain. Over Lyra's head, his eyes met his sister's. It had come into both their minds simultaneously that Lyra didn't know what being "broken" meant.
"Don't be afraid," he said to the girl gently and put her aside.
"Not the Highlord," Ardeth repeated patiently, "Jameth."
Caldane, following his gaze, flinched. "Oh, my God! Not her." Then, in a surprising act of self-control, he pulled himself together. "That is to say, yes, of course she must be contracted out—to a Caineron. In my house, we know how to keep women in their place . . . ."
"Ha!" said Cattila.
". . . and believe me, that one needs it."
On this, the two lords agreed. Then they fell into a wrangle over Jame's disposition which, from its abbreviated points, must have summarized all their previous arguments.
Torisen rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly exhausted.
Jame wondered why he didn't just tell them to mind their own business. Then she realized that it wasn't this squabble alone but a winter's worth of them which had wore him down and now threatened to grind out the sparks of his authority. Not knowing what to do about her, he couldn't fight them. At stake here was not only her fate but that of the Kencyrath: would its Highlord rule or be ruled by the self-interest of such men as these?
"Listen!" came the Wolver's yelp from the battlements.
His ears, keener than theirs, had caught the sound first, but in a moment they all heard it: a distant, bone-jarring throb of drums. The Merikit were coming.
"What these people do to captives," said Index, "you really don't want to know. Believe me, we need to get out of here."
"Well, I and mine won't," snarled Caineron. "Not without a decision! Knorth, you've danced around this long enough. To whose house do you send your sister?—and if it isn't to mine, be prepared for war!"
"Oh, really," said Ardeth. "Caldane, I keep telling you: It's already decided. My grandson Dari will probably be the best choice," he added, thinking out-loud. "His breath may smell like a rotten eel, but no woman ever contradicts him twice."
With that, they were off again, the chance of an imminent, messy death secondary to their winter-long obsession.
Graykin sidled up behind Jame. "Let them stay," he hissed in her ear. "We can go."
Then he ducked away again as Torisen shot him an annoyed glance.
"Who is that person anyway, and what does he mean, 'we'?"
"Gran?" said Lyra, in a small, frightened voice.
Cattila shook her head. Although she had faced Caldane down in a woman's matter, now they were bound by his word.
"We won't leave you," Torisen said, turning back to them.
Kirien cleared her throat. "Highlord, it sounds to me as if the Ardeth and the Caineron are deadlocked. May I suggest an alternative? 'Lordan' is an ancient title applied to either the male or female heir of a lord. Nothing in the law forbids the latter, as I've told you before. Since then, my research has progressed. By ancient custom, the heir always has the status of a man, and 'he' doesn't form any contracts before coming of age at twenty-seven. Why don't you take a lesson from the Merikit Chingetai? He's made your sister his son; likewise, you can declare her your lordan."
Caineron gaped, then sputtered with laughter.
Ardeth smiled. "You academicians will have your little jokes."
"The joke," Index snapped, "is that we should be debating this now."
Indeed, they were all aware of the approaching uproar. "Boom-wah! Boom-wah!" The Merikit could hardly be accused of stealth.
"There are about two hundred of them," Brier reported, coming up with the Wolver close on her heels. "They're bringing fire. Highlord, this is not a defensible position."
From far above, in Mount Alban's tower, a voice trained to carry floated down: "Will you please stop that racket? People up here are trying to sleep!"
"That does it," said Torisen. "Kiri, I accept your suggestion."
"Mad!" Caldane exclaimed, staring. "D'you hear that? Raving mad!"
"Really, my boy, this farce has gone on long enough . . . ."
"There is this too," said Ashe. "Traditionally, the Knorth Lordan trains at Tentir to become a randon."
Was the haunt singer proposing another test? If so, the only way Jame saw to pass it was to get herself killed by some enraged randon. Or Tori might wring her neck on general principles. Instead, after a moment's blank surprise, he looked thoughtful. Sweet Trinity. Could he actually be considering the idea? It would buy time, and give him an excuse to drop her as his heir if she failed. It took Ardeth, however, to make up his mind.
"My dear, dear boy," said the old lord, with an air of much tried patience, "you simply can not . . . ."
"I can do anything which the law allows and custom approves. This seems to be covered by both. And I'm tired of you or anyone else trying to run my life. Understood?"
He looked at Jame, with a sudden, wry smile. "When I was a boy, serving the Ardeth, I would have given anything to become a cadet at Tentir. But Adric forbade it."
"You know it was impossible!" the old lord protested. "Why, if anyone had so much as suspected who you were before you came of age . . . ."
"So you told me, Adric, when you dismissed my request as if it were a child's whim. So I lost my chance. Now, it seems, my sister is to have hers—if she wants it. Do you?"
"Yes," said Jame. "Very, very much," and burst out laughing at Brier Iron-thorn's expression.
"Right. Then I assume that we can leave. Caldane?"
Caineron glowered at him. What an ugly face that man had when he was thwarted, Jame thought—or anytime else, for that matter. "No doubt, as always, you think you've been very clever. Well, Knorth, if your 'lordan' can enroll at Tentir, so can mine, and it's my war-chief's turn to serve as the college commandant. So we'll just see, won't we?"
Torisen sighed. "I suppose we will. About all sorts of things. In the meantime, if I've understood this correctly, our way home lies above Kithorn's tower. My lords and ladies, will it please you to climb? I shouldn't dawdle about it either, if I were you."
They didn't, taking Kindrie's limp form with them, Graykin skulking behind, with an anxious glance at his mistress as he sidled past her.
At Kithorn's front door, Jorin draped over her shoulder and snoring in her ear, Jame had paused to look northward over the battlements. The Merikit were flowing toward Kithorn between dark hills, torches flaring in the gloom beneath dawn-lit clouds. Drums echoed back from the mountain slopes above:
"BOOM-Wah-wah . . . BOOM-Wah-wah . . . "
It looked more like a procession than an attacking force.
The Merikit would undoubtedly kill any trespassers whom they caught, but Jame didn't think that their chief really wanted to catch anyone. Even someone so flamboyant must feel, as Lyra did, that Summer Eve had already provided enough excitement. If Chingetai had known that the Caineron lord was here as well as his womenfolk, he might have felt differently.
And how did she feel about all the strange things which she had learned concerning the Merikit gods (if that was what one called the Four) and Rathillien itself? If even half of it was true, the Kencyrath had totally misjudged this world and their relationship to it. Two years ago, in Tai-tastigon, the mere suggestion of such a thing would have half-panicked her. Now she felt an old, familiar excitement: There was so much to learn and, thanks to Chingetai, such a wonderful opportunity to do it.
Last up the steps, Torisen stopped beside her. "You can't go back to the Riverland wearing that." He disentangled the ivy crown from her hair and threw it away. "Next Midsummer Day, the Merikit will expect you to return here. Of course, you won't."
Jame didn't answer.
She had wondered what to tell her brother, about not only the Merikit but also the strange things going on among his own people. Nothing, she decided, unless he specifically asked. The scrollsmen were right: Knowledge was power. She would need much more of both to survive, lordan or not, as long as Torisen could reduce her to nothing again with a word if it suited him.
The clouds over Kithorn still simmered red, but they were beginning to lift and disperse. Soon the Tishooo would return to blow them away and Mount Alban southward with them. To the east, over the Snowthorns, a sickle thin crescent moon rose barely before the sun.
Torisen remembered how he and his sister had watched it rise over the trees at the Cataracts, the two of them reunited after so long and such strangers to each other.
"This is going to be hard," he had said. "For both of us. But we'll find a way to make it work. We have to."
That was still true, and no easier than it had been before. He felt as if events had out-paced him, too much happening too fast and he too little in control.
"The moon is waning toward the dark," he said somberly. "I should have known about Caldane's man being in charge of Tentir now. Did you know how our father came to power? His older brother, the Knorth Lordan, was killed in training at Tentir. The college has its own rules. If you're hurt there, I can't even demand your blood-price."
It was on the tip of his tongue to renounce his offer. What was it but madness to think that any Highborn girl could become a randon? At best, she would fail and make them both laughing stocks. At worst . . . . But he had proposed this before his oldest friend and worst enemy. To back down would look like weakness. He couldn't afford that, and his sister knew it. He heard it in her silent refusal to protest or point out the obvious. Her strength frightened him.
Your Shanir twin, boy, your darker half, returned to destroy you . . . .
No. He wouldn't listen. The bolt was shot.
The sun raised a blazing rim over the mountains' spine, striking him momentarily blind.
"The moon may wane," said the darkness beside him that was his sister, "but this is also sunrise on the first day of summer. Warm days and new life. You've earned that, and so have I. Let the bastards take them from us if they can."
Then she laughed and whistled, a clear, soaring note. The wind came as if in answer. Its wings brushed his face as he blinked to clear his tired eyes—or was that her finger-tips in a phantom caress?
"Here's Old Man Tishooo at last. Come on, brother. Let's go home."