"We're lost," said Graykin, glowering about the low, dusty corridor. "Three times now, I've trod on the same loose board. Here, you!"—this, to the straw-haired cadet who led them. "Do you even know where you're going?"
The young Kendar named Rue glanced back at them, then quickly away. "Where, yes; how, no. Most of the second and third floors are unused, except for guest quarters and the outermost rooms. We don't like coming up here. Besides, there are stories. . . ."
"Oh?" said Graykin with a nasty grin, baring still raw gaps where m'lord Caldane had knocked out some of his teeth. "More 'singers' fancies'?"
Jame recognized the line that Vant—never her favorite Kendar—had taken with the young border-lander. "What stories?" she asked.
"That something lives up here in a hidden room," Rue burst out defiantly. "That it has the paws of a bear and an axe buried in its head. That it growls and it prowls and it eats cadets who stumble into its lair."
Graykin hooted with laughter. Rue hunched her shoulders, the tips of her ears reddening. Jame considered. Through Jorin's senses, as they wandered, she had caught whiffs of something odd, something rank, something alive.
"The Lawful Lie notwithstanding, most songs have some element of truth in them."
"Hah!" said Graykin. "D'you hear that, brat? Just be careful what door you open. Ugh!" He swatted at the cobweb that he had just walked into and spat out the husk of a fly.
"Poor Gray," said his mistress. "Tentir isn't living up to your expectations, is it?"
"Is it to yours?"
"Oh well. This isn't the college proper. We'll see."
Still, thought Jame, this was not auspicious. Neither had been falling off a horse practically at the Commandant's feet. Then again, it was usually her departure—from anywhere—that caused the most damage. Tai-tastigon in flames, Karkinaroth in ruins, "The Riverland reduced to rubble, and you in the midst of it, looking apologetic. . . ."
What shape would Tentir be in when she left it?
Speaking of shapes, it was odd how every Riverland keep was so different, as if the original builders had made a point of it. Generations of Kencyr had brought their own personalities to the task but less so here, where commandants changed by rotation and no one house had power. From the outside, Old Tentir looked straightforward, even dull. Inside, it was . . . strange. Low halls melting into twilight, right angles that never brought one back to the same place—she was fairly sure that Graykin was wrong about it being the same squeaky board: they all squeaked—someone subtle and secretive had designed this place, disguising its nature behind a bland face.
"Jorin, stay in sight," she called to the ounce who was trotting ahead, eager to explore. Blind from birth, he only saw what she saw and remembered it, but this was all new to her.
Lost.
Would Tori be glad if she disappeared, gone from his life as suddenly as she had reentered it?
Run, she thought, before he tells that alarming randon why he brought you here, before he proves himself as mad as they all fear—or hope—that he is.
Graykin was grumbling again. "This is an insult!" he burst out. "You're the Highlord's sister, his only surviving blood-kin, but he pays more attention to that damned gray mare than to you!"
"Brithany is a Whinno-hir, a matriarch of the herd. She's at least as old as Ardeth, perhaps older than the Fall."
And smart. And brave. Imagine weird-walking all the way from the Southern Wastes to rejoin her chosen master, bringing her grand-colt with her. Storm, a quarter-blood Whinno-hir, was far more intelligent than the average horse, but still a moron compared to his grand-dam.
"Damn it!" Graykin burst out, flailing at more webs. "You don't belong here!"
Jame sighed. "That's the question, isn't it? Where do I belong?"
"If you were a man," said Graykin, regarding her slyly askance, "you would be Highlord. I don't care if your brother is older than you are. You're stronger than he is . . . and why are you fidgeting like that?"
"I'm saddle-sore. Don't laugh." She rubbed her buttocks, wincing. When there was time to check, she would probably find them black and blue. Her knees still felt unstrung. "Highlord, huh? Your ambition is showing, Gray, but I'm not a man and I don't want power, at least not that sort. Just give me a place to stand."
"You're a Highborn lady," said the Southron stubbornly. "Stand on that."
"I tried," she said, hearing the weary exasperation in her voice, trying to curb it. "All last winter, in the Women's Halls at Gothregor, I tried."
Masked, hobbled with a tight underskirt, told over and over what a proper lady did or did not do . . . all to what end? She gingerly touched the scar ridge across her cheek, a parting gift from the Women's World in the person of Kallystine, Caineron's daughter and Tori's erstwhile limited term consort.
"Gray, these days Highborn women are little better than fancy breeding stock, and I'm the last pure-blooded female in the Knorth stable, just as Tori is the last legitimate male. If any house gets a half-Knorth heir out of either one of us, how long d'you think we'll last?"
For that matter, how long could Tori stand up to Ardeth pressure? Why didn't he fight back? She understood that he owed a great deal to his former mentor, without whom he would never have survived to claim his father's seat nor held it during these first, turbulent years. Moreover, he didn't want to hurt the old man. For all his drug-enhanced strength, she could sense how fragile Ardeth was, how deep into his resources he was reaching. For her brother, loyalty—yes, even love—must be at war with resentment.
And he did resent the old lord.
"When I was a boy," he had said to her in the ruins of Kothifir—had it been only the day before?—"I would have given anything to become a cadet at Tentir. But Adric forbade it."
Ardeth had protested. It had been impossible. If anyone had guessed who Tori was before he 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."
Such bitterness, remembered and dismissed, but never forgotten or quite forgiven.
However, if Ardeth was vulnerable now, so was Tori, and not just with exhaustion. Something about that good-looking boy Timmon had hit him hard, something to do with the boy's father, Pereden.
Worse, something deep within Torisen himself was closed off, withdrawn . . . dead? His Kendar felt it. So did she, and it frightened her.
Graykin hunched his thin shoulders as if against a cold wind. If he could have run away from her words, he would have. He wasn't stupid. Far from it. However, bastard and half-Kencyr that he was, his need to belong consumed him like a ravening hunger. At the Cataracts she had accidentally bound him, mind to mind, her needs at that moment matching the strength of his. Now there was no easy way to shake him off, nor should she want to. Ancestors knew, over the past winter he had earned his place in her service with scars that he would bear to his pyre, and he hadn't yet begun to re-grow (assuming he had enough Kencyr blood to do so) his lost teeth. Things were going to be hard enough, though, without him clinging fiercely to her sleeve, measuring his importance by hers every step of the way.
One last try:
"Gray, listen. I can't promise you anything. Not even a crust of bread every other week. Least of all protection. And you're in danger here. M'lord Caineron doesn't give up his playthings easily, much less those he considers he owns by right of blood."
"You are strong," he muttered, not looking at her, repeating his one article of faith as if by itself it would protect him. "I've watched. I know. Nothing stops you."
She could have shaken him.
Jorin sniffed, then dug at the lower edge of a heavy oak door. Whatever he smelled was too faint to reach Jame's senses, but she felt his interest, and his unease.
"The right door at last," said Rue with relief and tried the handle. "Damn. It's locked, and I don't have a key."
"Let me try." Jame slid between the cadet and the door, screening the latter. She extended a claw and probed the ponderous lock.
Her gloves' slit fingertips had been Marc's idea. At first she had rejected it, not wanting to use her hated nails at all, for anything, but many pairs of ruined gloves later she had had to admit that the big Kendar was right.
It still amazed her how casually he took her deformity. When her nails had first emerged, betraying her Shanir blood, her father had cast her out into the Haunted Lands, with no place to go but across the Border. Into Perimal Darkling. Into the Master's House. She had been seven years old at the time.
Then again, pure-blooded Kendar like Marc were never Shanir. Perhaps that made them more tolerant than the vulnerable Highborn.
If only Marc were with her now rather than this opportunistic half-breed—but she wasn't in a position to provide for her old, dear friend any more than for Graykin. Marc was better off with her brother. She wondered if Tori had yet offered the old warrior a place in his household. He had better, and no one deserved it more. But still . . .
Lost, she thought again, with a sudden wave of desolation. I've lost Marc, and Tirandys, and Tai-tastigon, and now here I am where no one wants me.
Then she gave herself a shake. Graykin was right, darkness take him. Nothing stopped her, not despair, not loss, least of all not common sense. This was a new life. She had started over before, many times, and would keep on doing so until she damn well got it right.
Tumbles ground in the lock. "There."
The portal swung slowly inward, grating on its hinges. From the darkness within came a breath of hot air—Haaaaah . . .—and streamers of cobweb floated out into the hall. With them came a sharp, acrid smell, intensified for Jame through Jorin's senses. She only realized that she had backed away when the other side of the hall stopped her. The ounce also retreated, then turned, crouched, and sprang into her arms. Her knees nearly buckled. Almost full grown, he was very heavy.
Rue and Graykin were staring at her.
"That smell . . ." Jame said, and sneezed violently.
"What smell?" asked Rue, too mystified for once to look away.
"The room is musty," said Graykin, impatiently. "That's all. You. Light my lady's chambers."
Rue made a face at him and disappeared inside.
"What's wrong?" hissed Graykin.
"I . . . don't know," said Jame, shifting the ounce's weight, and she didn't . . . quite.
Inside, steel rasped on flint, and candlelight danced out into the corridor. Rue gave a stifled exclamation. Without thinking, Jame dropped an indignant ounce and brushed past Graykin, into the apartment.
The cadet stood in the first room of three, holding a candle, looking about her in amazement. The low-ceilinged chamber was full of heavy furniture indistinct and sulking under filmy shrouds: a massive chair beside the fireplace, a table, a glimpse into the next room of an enormous, shadowy bed, its counterpane disordered and bulging.
" . . . haaahhh . . ." sighed the open vents to the fire timber hall three stories below. As the suite exhaled into the hall, its hot breath stirred walls and ceiling swathed in translucent, faintly glowing white.
"Ugh," said Graykin, peering in. "More spiders."
"I don't think so," said Jame.
She ducked, wary of the filaments that drifted down toward her as if blindly groping for her face. Not all of them were spun in single strands, she saw, but some in the round, like boneless fingers, merging higher up into flaccid sleeves. The walls and ceiling of the suite were festooned with intertwined, insubstantial shapes, afloat in the flickering light. Stirred by the hot breath of the vents and the draft from the door, they seemed languidly to grapple with each other about the room's upper margins.
"Careful," she said, touching Rue's arm to make the cadet hold the candle lower. "Let's only set fire to the keep as a last resort."
Graykin snorted.
They all felt the need to speak softly except for Jorin, who leaned in from the hall anxiously chirping at Jame to come out. When she didn't, he slunk in and crouched at her feet. A moment later Graykin nerved himself to join them in a rush that caused a momentary wake in the sea of ghosts overhead.
Jame loosened her collar, feeling sweat trickle down inside it. She didn't like heat. As for that smell . . . . Although it had faded somewhat with the influx of fresh air, she could still almost taste it in the back of her throat, like the sting of old grief. Then she knew what it was.
"Rue, how long has a darkling crawler been loose in Tentir?"
The cadet gaped at her. "How did you . . . who told you . . ."
Another hot room, another house where monstrous shadows crawled . . .
"Senethari, y-you've poisoned me."
No wonder Tirandys had been in her mind.
"Someone once gave me wine infused with wyrm's venom. I drank it. It had that same sharp smell and taste."
The cadet sighed, almost with relief. "Most don't believe it was ever here at all. How long? Since last fall, when m'lords Caineron and Knorth stopped here on their way to the mustering of the Host at Gothregor. A darkling changer came hunting the Highlord and would have killed him, sure, if Singer Ashe hadn't pushed the changer into a fire-pit down in the fire-timber hall. His blood kindled and he more or less exploded—a proper mess all around, or so I've heard. As for the wyrm, no one saw that but the Highlord, and afterward the Caineron claimed that he'd imagined it."
"The poor, mad Knorth."
"That's it . . . lady," she added, remembering herself and of whose house she spoke. "They tried to say the same about the changer, but too many had seen it including my cousin, who was on duty that night outside Commandant Harn's quarters. We border brats take these things seriously."
She said this so pugnaciously that Jame laughed. "I know. I'm a border brat myself and so is Tori, if he isn't too grand these days to have forgotten."
Her eyes kept drifting back to the ceiling. The figures that floated there were as empty as a spider's egg sack in the spring, but hot air from the vents breathed fitful definition into the flaccid forms. Here a head rose, inflating. For a moment there was the suggestion of a fine-drawn chin and an arched brow that seemed to frown. Then all features swelled grotesquely and the figure turned away with a sigh, deflating. Elsewhere limp gloves of web became elegant lace-work hands, became veined, translucent sausages, vented, and collapsed.
They were like the fitful images of a troubled dream, but whose?
Two figures emerged over and over, interacting at different points in what appeared to be a prolonged conflict. One, better defined than the other, was always turning away.
The other, more nebulous, kept changing as if trying to hold a true shape—any shape—while at the same time unraveling around the edges. Nonetheless it . . . no, he had the sharper presence of the two, a thing fiercely clung to even as errant drafts teased him apart. All over the room, his multitude of heads were turning toward her as if aware of her thoughts. Filaments floated around each like a cloud of wild, white hair.
Jame brushed a tendril of web from her neck. It left a thin, stinging line.
. . . are you the one?
"Careful," she said to the other two. "There's still a trace of venom in these threads."
There was also that ghost of words, echoing faintly with impotent rage.
. . . are you the one who made bitter ash of my life?
No, Jame wanted to say. You did that to yourself and, thanks to Tori, you got what you deserved.
She was stopped, however, by the memory of another pyre, another changer's shape melting into flame, and her eyes stung with remembered tears.
Ah, Tirandys, Senethari. Did you deserve what happened to you? Damn Master Gerridon, honor's paradox, and all three faces of our god, for giving us impossible choices, then damning us when we choose wrong.
"So the changer died," she said, collecting herself, "the wyrm fled, and everyone marched south to fight the Waster Horde which, incidentally, was led by other rebel changers. Meanwhile, the crawler spent the winter at Tentir, maybe in these rooms. Ancestors know, it's hot enough. Well insulated too. A proper nest."
Highborn and Kendar looked at each other.
"We should get out of here, lady."
"Good idea," said Graykin, starting for the outer door.
Jorin sat up, ears pricked. Then he jumped to his feet and trotted purposefully through the opposite door, into the bed-room. When he didn't return at Jame's call, she went after him. As they hesitated, Rue and Graykin heard an exclamation followed by a sharp summons: "Come see this, both of you."
The second room was hotter than the first, its ceiling a floating mass of loose filaments especially thick over the bed. Jame had thrown back the coverlet.
"I want witnesses to this," she said.
They stared at the bed's contents.
"A broken shell?" said Rue. She poked the pearly fragments gingerly. They dissolved with a faint hiss into a pool of viscous fluid.
"More likely a cocoon," said Jame, "or perhaps a molt. What do I know about the life cycle of a wyrm?"
The liquid began to eat its way through the sheets, then through the mattress.
"Ugh," said Graykin. "Whatever was in here must just have broken out—now, of all times. Why does everything always happen to me?"
Rue grinned. "Just lucky, I guess."
His indignant response turned into a stifled cry of alarm. They all stared at the clotted mass above the bed. A shape was emerging from it, as if a giant face was leaning down from the ceiling, itself a mere void but defined by the clinging web. The fading consciousness of the dead changer glared down at Jame through a silken mask already beginning to droop under its own weight.
. . . are you the one who stole my Beauty?
"What beauty?" she demanded out loud. "Whose beauty?"
"Bugger this," muttered Rue, and thrust her lit candle up into the sagging mass.
It ignited from within. In a moment, the threads had become a fiery mask distorted by rage and despair. The jaw blackened and dropped, disintegrating into a rain of ash. The rest followed, feature by feature. Fire spread in red-orange tendrils across the ceiling into the first room. Ghosts tumbled down in flames.
Driven back by the heat, they retreated into the third room. Jorin wasn't with them, but fresh tracks in the dust showed where he had gone, following a shallow groove in the floorboards worn not by use or weight but by the wyrm's corrosive passage. Both disappeared at the back wall. The stones there were slightly ajar, enough for the three to squeeze through one by one into the darkness beyond, Jame last.
Graykin's yelp of surprise receded downward.
"Stairs," said Rue succinctly.
All Jame could see at first was a fire-lit streak of the opposite stone wall, mere inches away. She put her hand on it and waited for her eyes to adjust, gratefully breathing the cool air.
"So this is how the Highlord escaped," said Rue in the dark, several steps down.
"Through a hole in the wall?" Graykin's voice came from much farther down, edged with hysteria. "I think I've broken my ankle," he added resentfully.
"Escaped?"
"Didn't you know, lady? The Caineron locked him in. He was raving." Jame could just make out the cadet's embarrassed wriggle. "Said the wyrm had bitten him."
Jame felt suddenly cold. "It bit him? Oh, sweet Trinity."
She could see the steps now, dimly, and went down them in a precipitous rush, past Rue, over Graykin who was sprawling where he had fallen. Their voices followed her, calling questions, but she didn't answer. What could she have said?
The wyrm bit my brother. My brother is a blood-binder, but he doesn't know it. To be a binder is to be Shanir, and Tori doesn't know that either. Our father taught us both to hate those of the Old Blood beyond reason, as he hated me, as Tori does too when he remembers what I am. If Tori finds out how alike we are, it will destroy him.
No, she couldn't say that, not to anyone.
Venom had hollowed out the lips of the treads, rendering them treacherous. Her foot shot out from under her and she bounced down the last, long stretch on her already bruised tailbone, through a wyrm hole at the bottom eaten through solid stone, into the straw bedding of an empty box stall. Horses stirred nervously all around her, the whites of their eyes flashing at her through the wooden slats of adjacent stalls. Hooves danced.
Out in the aisle, Jame paused. Which way to go? The stable was much larger than she had expected, underlying most of Old Tentir, a maze of moveable wooden partitions between the massive stone arches that supported the fortress above. The air should have been sweet with the breath of horses and ripe with their fresh droppings. Instead, a sharp tang of fear overlaid all. A tickling in her nose told her that Jorin was still on the wyrm's scent somewhere in this restless labyrinth.
Cadets were shouting back and forth: "D'you see anything?"
"Not yet."
"That smell . . . what died in here?"
Following their voices, she came to an open arena under the great hall. Secured to iron rings set in the surrounding pillars, the new arrivals fretted in their full tack. Vant was stalking back and forth behind them, impatiently slapping a brush against his leg.
"I tell you, Iron-thorn," he shouted, "the horses are spooked by that damn cat. That's all! Sweet Trinity, d'you expect me to put up this lot by myself?"
This wasn't quite fair: across the arena another cadet was struggling to hold Storm. The black stallion danced in place, jerking the cadet back and forth in his attempt to follow Brithany as the gray mare trotted from stall to stall, whickering reassurances. The inmates quieted, but began to fret again as soon as the matriarch had passed. Their anxious calls to each other echoed off the low vault of the ceiling.
"What are you doing here, lady?"
Vant's voice next to her made Jame start. He didn't look at her directly, but his hand closed on her wrist as if to secure someone's runaway pet. On the perilous road they had all so recently trodden, he would never have dared to touch her, furious as he had been at her assumption of command. Highborn females didn't behave that way—sane ones, at least. How could he possibly have submitted to her will? How much had that weakness compromised not only his pride but also his honor? Now, however, he was in his proper place again, and all would be right.
"Listen," she said urgently to him. "There's a darkling crawler loose down here and I've got to catch it."
His grip tightened. In another moment, she thought, he would gladly slap her as a cure for hysteria, and she would try very hard not to kill him.
Then she saw Jorin. The ounce was in an empty stall directly across the arena, cautiously circling a big mound of straw. Vant saw him too. He gestured with his free hand for the nearest cadets to close in. Two of them began stealthily to climb the adjacent slat walls. Jorin daubed at the mound with a paw, and jumped back as it rustled. The wyrm's scent carried through his senses was so strong that Jame's eyes began to water.
The ounce crouched, hindquarters twitching.
"Jorin!" she shouted at him. "Don't!"
Vant glanced down at her with a kind of savage satisfaction. "Now, now," he said, grinning through clenched teeth. "No need for tears. Your pet will be returned to you . . . if you behave. Or maybe not."
Jorin pounced.
Something erupted from the stack in an explosion of straw. It hit the back wall and passed straight through it with Jorin in wild pursuit. The horse stabled beyond screamed and tried to jump out of its stall. Wooden slats splintered and fell. More partitions crashed down in a spreading wave of chaos. Cadets were shouting, "Stop them! Stop them!" But Brier's voice roared over theirs:
"Stop them, be damned! Get out of their way!"
Horses spilled into the arena, careening in mindless panic. Vant jumped back between the tethered mounts, dragging Jame with him, but they too had caught the madness and were plunging about in a nightmare of hooves, teeth, and eyes.
The stampede knocked Brithany off her feet, into a wall. As she struggled to rise, her forelegs tangled in the loop of her reins and she fell again. Storm screamed and reared, trying to reach her but cut off by the wild surge.
"Let me go," Jame said to Vant.
He looked at her as if she were mad and twisted her wrist. She reversed the lock on him and drove a nail into the nerve center at the crook of his arm. He swore, as much in astonishment as in pain, and she wrenched free from his suddenly nerveless grasp.
The loose horses wheeled and swerved wildly about the arena, each trying to lose itself in the safety of the herd. Jame dodged between them. Instinctively, she knew that they would trample her without a thought if she got in their way. The size, speed, and power of this living avalanche appalled her.
Here at last was the Whinno-hir, hopelessly entangled and thrashing. Jame ducked a small but lethally flailing hoof and put her hand on Brithany's shoulder. The mare instantly quieted, her large eyes bright with fear but also with that more than equine intelligence that can defy instinct. Jame drew her knife, a parting gift from the Jaran Lordan Kirien, and slashed the leather reins. She noted in passing that the Whinno-hir's bridle had no bit. Here was a creature the equal of any lord, who could only be ridden with her own consent.
Just as Brithany lurched to her feet, Storm came up roaring like his namesake, ready to kill someone. For a moment, Jame was afraid. For all she knew, this towering black stallion saw her as his master's enemy. So, for that matter, might the Whinno-hir.
Then Jorin pelted under the stallion's nose and leaped into Jame's arms, knocking her backward into Brithany and both of them nearly off their feet. Storm snorted, amused. A footstep sounded behind him, and he whirled on his hocks to find himself eye to eye with Brier Iron-thorn. Behind her Vant cradled his numb arm, looking murderous.
"Someone take that wretched cat out and drown it," he said.
The dark Southron turned to look at him. "Why?"
"Why? Why?" He indicated the scene behind him with a jerk of his head. "Just look!"
"I am looking."
So was Jame. The herd had slowed, their terror finally run out of them. Cadets were catching halters, soothing frightened beasts, and leading them back to whatever stalls remained intact.
"If the ounce's presence caused the panic," said Brier, "why are they calming down now? Whatever was here is gone now."
Then Jame remembered. "Sweet Trinity, the wyrm. Brier, I've got to reach Tori, to warn him."
"Not that again," said Vant, sounding thoroughly exasperated. "Haven't we had enough of this nonsense? Cadet, escort the Highborn back to her quarters."
Rue had come up, Graykin lagging warily behind her. "I can't, Five," said the cadet, with a self-conscious wriggle. "They're on fire."
"They're what?"
Brier looked at Jame. "Why am I not surprised."
Jame shrugged. "I didn't like the décor."
She caught a flicker of intense relief on Rue's face. Burning down the Highlord's apartment was not a good way to start anyone's life as a cadet.
"Ten, please. I've got to see my brother. This is deadly important. My word of honor on it."
The big cadet regarded her somberly. Abused by her former Caineron masters, she found it hard to trust any Highborn. They both knew that if she did as Jame asked and the mission turned out to be frivolous, it would be the end of her career.
"Very well, lady," she said. "Come with me."
In the great hall, a Coman cadet tried to stop them. Brier brushed him aside and opened the door to New Tentir, to a blur of runners and the thunder of their passage.
The Coman turned to Jame. Clearly, he didn't know what to make of her. Highborn, female, Knorth . . . for him, she added up to a complete nonsense.
"Lady, d'you want to get yourself killed," he pleaded, "or, worse, me expelled?"
"Relax," said Jame wearily. "You can claim that I bewildered you."
She would have liked nothing better than to sit down, right there in the midst of the quake debris. Every time she stopped moving, her saddle-sore legs threatened to fold under her. Her idea was to stick her head out the door, shout "Rest!" and hope that the running cadets obeyed.
Instead, Brier said, "Now," and plunged out into the storm.
Jame was scrambling to catch up before she had time to think.
They emerged on the arcade between squads, between houses too, as it turned out, and the one hard on their heels was Caineron. Caldane's cadets instantly recognized Brier and surged to catch up. Here was their former comrade, the yondri turn-collar, and they wanted blood.
The Danior squad ahead glanced over their shoulders. Their young lord was a Knorth ally, bone-kin to Torisen and formerly his heir. They slowed and opened their ranks to admit the newcomers. Jame stumbled. Hands caught and bore her along, her feet off the ground, her shins repeatedly kicked to a muttered chorus of "Sorry, sorry, sorry. . ."
Meanwhile, the back rank of the Danior was trying to fend off the Caineron without catching the sergeants' attention. That, luckily, had already been captured by growing ructions between the Ardeth and the Knorth on the other side of the square.
"Keep your order! Keep your order!" came their harried shouts.
"Where to?" grunted the Danior ten-commander to Brier.
"The Highlord."
"The Ardeth, then."
The running battle pounded down the northern side of the square, turned sharp left with the arcade, and thundered on. Just when Jame thought they were going to pull off her arms, Brier grabbed her by the jacket and lunged sideways into a door. It crashed open. Jame, pitched in headlong, rolled to her feet and then off of them again as much abused muscles rebelled. Dammit, if she never rode another horse as long as she lived, she would go to her pyre smiling.
Brier faced the door, which seethed with struggling cadets. Outraged yells to the rear announced the arrival of the Ardeth, who had seen their quarters presumably under attack. Behind them, someone gave the Knorth's rathorn war-cry, shrilly and somewhat wildly, in a voice not yet broken.
"Go," Brier said to Jame. "Now."
They had gate-crashed a lower reception hall, flanked with doors, a stair at its head.
Turning, Jame found herself face to face with Timmon. He gaped at her, then at the boiling mass of fighters at his door. Jorin squeezed between their legs and scuttled through the inner door from which the young Ardeth had emerged and which he still held open.
"Inside," he said to Jame. "Quick."
Beyond was a communal dining room, the long tables laid out for supper but no food on them.
Timmon slammed the door. "God's claws," he said, leaning against it. "Are all your entrances this dramatic?"
He was, she supposed, about her own age, twenty or twenty-one, mid-adolescence for a Highborn whose kind matured more slowly and lived longer than most Kendar. As she had noted in Tentir's great hall, he was also startlingly handsome, if now somewhat disheveled, his elegant jacket open at the throat, his golden hair ruffled. He also held a raw, half-eaten carrot.
"Where is my brother?"
"Up there." He indicated the chamber above their heads. "With my grandfather."
They stared up at the ceiling. Footsteps sounded above, circling, circling, and the floor groaned. Whorls in the wood grain shifted with each step. They might have been looking at the surface of a disturbed pool, from underneath. Timmon's hair bristled. Jame felt her own prickle all over her body.
"What are they doing?" whispered the Ardeth.
"Whatever it is, it's getting worse. Oh Tori," she said to herself, "how can I help you?"
Timmon stared at her. "You don't. You stay out of the way, my girl, and so do I. Sweet Trinity, don't you think I would help Grandfather if I could?"
Jame glanced at the carrot.
"I got hungry," he said defensively, and flicked the vegetable away.
Jame stifled a sneeze. Her nose was tickling with the wyrm smell again, and Jorin was nowhere in sight. Only one door stood open in the hall, leading downward. Of course.
"Now what are you doing?" Timmon called after her as she hastily descended. He followed, catching up at the foot of the stair. "Trinity, you Knorth are peculiar! Your brother tears apart my quarters, and now you want to start on the cellar?"
"Nothing that bad," said Jame, casting about for the scent. "I hope. I'm hunting a darkling crawler."
"Oh. Is that all?"
The basement of New Tentir must be roughly on the same level as Old Tentir's stable, a straight shot for a creature that could pass through wood and stone at will. And they were comfortingly dark. At first, the only light came from thick candles set in wall scones, marked with the hours of the night, newly lit. Here, the cellar was divided into many small rooms—servants' quarters, mostly, all empty.
"Where is everyone?" asked Jame. She found that she was whispering.
"Your brother told all the Kendar to leave. Our Kendar, you'll notice. But the Commandant seconded him and they did."
Of course Tori would try to get the Kendar safely out of the way, never mind whose they were. She would have done the same.
However, instinct told her that her brother stood in greater danger now than anyone else. There was no doubt in her mind that the wyrm would seek him out. His blood called to it, but was he its master now or was that still the dead changer? From what she had seen in the web-images festooning the guest quarters, it was one confused beastie. Of course, Tori might simply kill it, and that would be that. The last thing he needed right now, though, was such a distraction.
Here, down several steps, was the kitchen that served the Ardeth barracks, with the makings of dinner strewn about it—stew, judging by the heaps of raw vegetables and the vast cauldron on the central hearth, just coming to a boil. It all seemed very cheerful and ordinary, except that no one was there.
A loud crunch behind her made Jame jump. Timmon had found another carrot. "I'm still hungry," he said cheerfully. "What's wrong with your cat?"
Jorin stood in rigid silhouette against the flames, his back and tail arched. A singing whine came out of his throat, like a saw cutting live bone. But what did he sense? Jame edged closer, peering at the hearth, the fire, the cauldron, the water . . . nothing. Debris rattled down. She looked up.
"Timmon, your family crest is the full moon, isn't it? Then why is there a serpent rampant over your mantelpiece? Oh."
The wyrm lost its grip on the crumbling stones and fell. Jorin dodged behind Jame. Recoiling, she tripped over him and went down hard, cracking her head on the scoured flagstones. The crawler landed on top of her.
Knocked breathless, she barely had time to throw up an arm to protect her face. The wyrm twisted to right itself. Its sides were fringed not with legs but with fingers covered in a lacework of white scars. Her skin stung where the venom of its touch ate though her clothes; but the full sleeve of the knife-fighter's d'hen was reinforced to turn an attacker's blade, and so it did this creature's assault.
"Are you the one?"
Its features shifted inside the caul that enveloped its entire head except for a round mouth like a lamprey's. The dead changer glared at her and gnashed his ring of teeth.
"Are you the one who stole my Beauty?"
He thought she was Tori, Jame realized, and Beauty . . . Trinity, Beauty was his name for the wyrm.
The face inside the membrane whipped back and forth, changing.
"No, no, no. . . ."
Tori's features emerged, haggard, desperate. "Adric, don't . . . help me, help. . . ."
"How?" cried Jame, lowering her arm. "Oh Tori, let me help!"
His fingers slid over her face, a touch as light as gossamer but it made her skin burn. She felt her body arch under his weight. Oh, touch me again. . .
"No!"
She was with her brother, circling, circling, the old lord's glamour beating against him/her/them like the desert sun, fifteen years' experience of each other all focused on this moment, on this issue: Who would be master?
Oh Adric, I don't want to fight. I'm tired. I hurt. And I don't want to hurt you. . .
Nowhere to hide. Be a rock, a black rock in the Southern Wastes, but what shadow lies behind it?
Adric searching for the bones of his son, which I ordered to be burned in secret on the common pyre at the Cataracts . . . .
(What?)
I promised to protect him, as he once protected me. If he knew what you had done, Peri, it would kill him. I couldn't let you tell him. I keep my promises. But oh Adric, don't!
"Don't what?" said Timmon.
He was wiping her face where Tori—no, where the wyrm had brushed it. Her skin burned as if with too much sun, but no worse. The creature's venom must almost have been spent.
"Nothing." She took a deep breath to collect herself and burst out coughing. The weakened fireplace had collapsed, overturning the cauldron onto the fire. Smoke still seeped out of the ruins, mixed with the gritty dust of stone and mortar. Jorin was sniffing at the mound of debris. Then he began to scratch around it as if trying to bury something. "What happened? Where's the wyrm?"
"Under there. It attacked you, I hit it with a shovel, and the mantel fell on it. I thought the whole wall was going to come down, maybe the whole barracks."
Both his voice and his hand shook slightly; he was not as calm as he wished to appear.
Neither was she. Just now, linked by the wyrm, she had been in that tent by the Cataracts, in her brother's mind and memory, when he had broken Pereden's neck. The feel, the sound of it . . . and here was Pereden's son who had probably just saved her life, trying to laugh off the terror that still quivered in his very bones.
If he knew what you had done . . .
What had Timmon's father done, to be killed in secret, his bones given to the pyre in stealth? She only knew that the sight of Pereden's son had stricken her brother in the great hall, and guilt now kept him from defending himself as he must in order to survive.
From overhead came the scuffle and thud of feet. Dust drifted down between the floorboards. Something fell with a crash.
Jame lurched to her feet, and her sight blurred. She waited for it to clear.
"How long has that been going on?"
"About as long as you were unconscious. A few minutes. Is your life usually like this?"
"More or less, and I still have to help my brother."
"Rest first. Stay with me."
She became aware of his arm around her waist, steadying her. It felt good to lean against someone.
Oh, touch me again . . .
"It's quiet here now," he said, "and safe, as long as the ceiling doesn't fall in. Stay. I've never met anyone like you before."
For a moment, she was tempted. She had never met anyone like him either, nor was she used to flattery. He certainly had a beguiling air, and he was very handsome.
Knorth and Ardeth, Ardeth and Knorth, circling, circling. . .
"No." She pulled free of his embrace. "Stay here if you want. I'm going."
"You can't help," he called after her.
She paused on the stair. "Then I'll hurt. I'm good at that."
Her first impression of the dining hall was of chaos. A mob of cadets had spilled in from the hallway, but no one seemed to be fighting now nor making much noise except for the scrape and shuffle of feet. She scrambled up on a table for a better look, catching her toe in the process and nearly falling flat among the crockery. It had been much too long a day. Knorth and Ardeth, Ardeth and Knorth were circling each other as if in a macabre dance, eyes glazed, faces twitching as if caught in a bad dream. Overhead, the ceiling roiled and groaned in a storm of wood. Jame cursed under her breath. She had seen this sort of thing before, in Restormir's main square during Caldane's epic drinking binge. When a lord let things get out of hand, it went hard on the Kendar bound to him, and these cadets were hardly more than children. She stumbled down the length of the table, jumped to the floor, and slipped out into the hall.
The Ardeth guards were pounding on the front door, whose edges appeared to have grown shut. M'lord Ardeth did not want to be disturbed.
Brier Iron-thorn was half way up the stair, hanging on to the rail. Blood as dark red as her hair ran down her face from a split lip, and someone had ripped the malachite stud out of her ear. She lurched around to block Jame's way, her green eyes murky and half-focused.
"He saved me from the Caineron. Bound me. I am his, although I trust no Highborn fool enough to trust me. I don't trust you. You will only hurt him."
Jame blinked. "Now, listen," she began, then stopped. There wasn't time. She ducked under Brier's arm and went up the stairs.
At the top stood Sheth Sharp-tongue, the commandant of Tentir, waiting.
"So, girl," he said, with a faint smile, "here we are. My Lord Caineron fears you. I begin to see why. Are you always this . . . er . . . disruptive?"
The door was behind him and behind that, her brother fought for his life.
"Do something!" she cried.
"Why?"
Timmon came up behind her. The Commandant ignored him. So did Jame.
"You'd let them destroy each other?"
"Why not?"
For a moment, she saw him as a Caineron, the enemy of both her house and the Ardeth; but something else was at work here too, a cool assessment of power.
"Now, what kind of highlord would need my help?" the tall randon said gently to her. "If he is weak enough to fall, better for the Kencyrath that he should, don't you think?"
For a moment, she saw it: what chance did the Three People have if their highlord wasn't strong enough to lead them? Tori had weaknesses, no question about that. Suppose that in the end he wasn't able to surmount them. So the Kencyrath would fall and so would end their world.
No.
"Lord Caineron is strong," she said, "but strength isn't everything. There is also compassion, justice, and honor."
Behind her, Timmon turned a gasp into a cough.
The Commandant regarded her, eyes hooded and enigmatic. She glowered back. One didn't say such things to such a man as this, but she had, and damned if she would play rabbit to his hawk now.
He inclined his head and stepped aside.
"Let me," said Timmon, pushing past her. "These are my quarters, after all." But the door wouldn't open. "Locked," he said, with ill-concealed relief.
Jame put her hand on the latch. No, it wasn't locked. As below, the wood grain bound door, posts, and lintel together as if they had grown that way, with only a shallow crack between them.
Her fingertips tingled. An image began to form in her mind, intricate and verdant, deep green laced with pale gold on a bronze filigree. It was a master rune. The Book Bound in Pale Leather, that dire compendium of power, was no longer in her hands; Bane guarded it and the Ivory Knife in that pest-hole of a prison in the rock face behind Mount Alban. She had had mixed experiences with it anyway, having once accidentally set fire to a blizzard, and this rune wasn't familiar to her at all. But she could still unmake it. Already she was teasing it apart in her mind, line by line.
"What are you doing?" asked Timmon behind her.
She ignored him. It was harder to ignore the looming presence of the Commandant. Did he know what she was doing? That man had Shanir blood, although what sort she couldn't guess.
From inside came the murmur of Ardeth's voice: ". . . so like my dear son Pereden. Ah, what a lord he would have made. My heart breaks to think of it. You and he would have been like brothers and I a father to you both . . ."
Tori couldn't stand much more of this. In his place, she would long since have flared and brought down the roof, just to shut the old man up.
Jame backed away, then threw herself at the door.
It disintegrated.
She plunged into the room off balance, into a table laden with crystal, past it to the sound of shattering glass, into the folds of a curtain, through that with a mighty ripping of cloth, and onto a bed, which collapsed.
Fighting free, she saw her brother staring at her open-mouthed, as well he might. Behind him, Ardeth put his hand on his shoulder.
"My son . . ."
And, finally, the Highlord turned on him. "NO!"
The room shook. In all its corners, things broke, and the furniture lurched. Jame went over backward into the chasm between the bed and the wall, where she landed on top of something warm and furry that yelped.
As she struggled with whatever-it-was, both of them tangled in a winding sheet of linens, she could hear Ardeth's guard pouring into the lower hall and confused sounds from the dining room below as dazed cadets began to sort themselves out.
Closer at hand, her brother was speaking urgently. "Adric? Can you hear me? Damn, I was afraid of this. It's his heart. Commandant, does the college have a healer in residence?"
"Not at present. The Priest's College claims that we wear them out too quickly."
"Here's Grandfather's box of drugs. Which bottle?"
"The blue one, I think. Yes. Hemlock, in wine. Filthy stuff, but I've seen him drink it many times to calm himself. Damn. You pour it, boy. I'm no good one-handed. There. Is that better, Adric? That's right. Drink some more. Here's your grandson to look after you."
"Highlord, a word."
Torisen and the Commandant moved closer. Jame stopped floundering.
"Under other circumstances," panted the Wolver Grimly beneath her, "this would be fun."
"Quiet!"
She wished she could hide under the covers forever, but what would Ardeth think if he found her and Grimly there in the morning?
"Your pardon, my lord, but it would be best if you were not here when he awakes."
A deep, weary sigh answered him. "Yes. Yes, I see." Jame peeked out. Tori was rubbing his eyes. The dark circles under them looked like bruises, and the high cheekbones sharp enough to cut skin. He stood for a moment collecting his thoughts with an obvious effort. "Very well. I will ride on tonight, at least as far as Shadow Rock. As for my sister . . ."
Jame rose, half-sheepish, half-defiant. Grimly's furry ears pricked up beside her, just clearing the coverlet. Here it came.
". . . she will be staying here as a cadet candidate and—" he paused to gulp "—as my heir, the Knorth Lordan."
From below came a crash and much shouting. The dining hall had just collapsed into the kitchen below.