When Jame woke early the next morning, on the floor under a pile of musty blankets, she didn't at first know where she was. At Tentir, of course, but beyond that. . .
She felt Jorin's warmth at her side and reached out to stroke his rich fur. He stretched full length, sighing, and snuggled his head into the crook of her arm. Eyes closed, she let her dwar-bemused memory drift over the previous evening.
The Commandant had taken Torisen's announcement that she was staying with raised eyebrows, but had only said, dryly, "I see. Very well."
Timmon, on the other hand, had gaped at her until she had snapped at him, "What are you staring at?"
"I'm not sure, but I think I like it." Then he had given her such a dazzling smile that she in turn had blinked. Dammit, what was it about that boy?
Tori had waited until Ardeth was resting quietly, one drug having counteracted the other, and then had called for his horse. Shadow Rock, the Danior keep, was a good twenty miles to the south. Neither he nor Storm would have much rest that night, but he was clearly anxious to be on his way before Ardeth woke.
"For Trinity's sake," he had muttered to her on his way out, "don't make fools of us both."
"No more than I can help," she had said, which was honest if hardly reassuring.
Jame considered her situation.
She hadn't known what to expect when she had rejoined her people the previous fall except to be reunited with her twin brother Tori. That he was now at least ten years her senior thanks to the slower passage of time in Perimal Darkling had come as an unpleasant surprise to them both, and would cause considerable complications if anyone found out.
Ever since her sudden appearance at the Cataracts, Tori had been under intense pressure to contract her to either the Caineron or the Ardeth, the two most powerful houses in contention for mastery of the Kencyrath after the Knorth. What she had told Graykin was true: thanks to Jamethiel Dream-weaver's role in the Fall, most lords considered the Highborn women of their houses only good for breeding and political alliances. For Jame, that was apt to mean either one of Caldane's vicious sons or the Ardeth Dari, he with the breath of a rotten eel (according to his father) whom no woman contradicted twice.
She hadn't spent most of her life trying to rejoin her people for that.
Moreover, if either she or Tori had a son by someone from another house, that boy would become the first highlord in Kencyr history not of pure Knorth blood. The balance of power would shift irreparably, perhaps disastrously.
The Kencyrath was already perilously close to losing its identity. Some, like Lord Caineron, professed not even to believe the old stories. Singers' lies, he called them, and it was true that song and history, fiction and fact, had become intertwined over time. Only Kencyr on the Barrier with Perimal Darkling—the Min-drear of High Keep, for example, or Jame and Tori's own people in exile in the Haunted Lands—had no doubt whatsoever that their ancient enemy only bided its time.
Presumably, the Merikit hillmen also understood the danger since they lived closer to the Barrier than any Riverland Kencyr except the Min-drear.
Jame's thoughts drifted back to Summer Eve in the ruins of Kithorn—had it only been the night before last?—when she had found herself thrown into a Merikit rite to placate the vast River Snake whose waking had brought on the earthquakes and the weirdingstrom. Somehow, she had emerged as the Earth Wife's Favorite. So far so good, and no stranger than a dozen other things that had happened in her short but not uneventful life. She still carried Mother Ragga's "favor," the little clay face called the imu, in her pocket. However, the Favorite also played the Earth Wife's lover, to ensure the coming year's fertility. To save face, the Merikit chieftain had declared Jame his son and heir until the next ritual. Then, please God, she could pass on the role to someone better equipped to fulfill the Favorite's duties.
But all of this had given the Jaran Kirien an idea.
" 'Lordan' is an ancient title applied to either the male or female heir of a lord," she had told Lords Ardeth and Caineron, breaking into their interminable wrangle over which house should have the newly discovered Knorth, Jameth. "Nothing in the law forbids a female heir."
Well, she should know. Hers was a house of scholars and she herself was its lordan, no one else having wanted to leave his studies to take on the job. Torisen knew that she was female. The other lords assumed otherwise, not that Kirien had ever deliberately set out to fool them. There would be hell to pay when she came of age and claimed power.
In the meantime, "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."
Jame could see her brother's mind working; that would get them both out of the fire for several years at least.
"There is this, too," the haunt singer Ashe had added in her harsh, halting voice. "Traditionally . . . the Knorth Lordan trains . . . at Tentir to become . . . a randon."
So here she was, against all odds, against everyone's will but her brother's, and he was already beginning to have doubts.
"For Trinity's sake, don't make fools of us both. . . ."
Easier said than done.
At last, Jame opened her eyes.
Over her loomed the dawn-tipped peaks of the western Snowthorns, seen through a ragged hole in the roof where the weirdingstrom had carried off both slates and rafters. Birds flitted in and out. The air was crisp enough to turn her breath into puffs of mist. She was in the attic of the Knorth barracks.
First they had tried to put her back in the Knorth guest quarters in Old Tentir, only to find them charred beyond use. Luckily, the fire hadn't spread. Unluckily, it had also consumed all evidence of the wyrm. Then there had been the third floor apartment in the Knorth barracks, where she had had such bad dreams. Finally, she had come up here, to the top of the world, it had seemed, with only the mountains and star-frosted sky wheeling through the night above her.
In a corner, Graykin stirred fitfully in a nest of moth-eaten blankets. Even his snores resounded with discontent.
Jame, however, felt a surge of excitement. She might be adept at falling on her face, but then just as often she landed on her feet. Either way, nothing had ever stopped her from jumping. She stretched luxuriously, and Jorin stretched with her down the length of her body. The old, defiant chant rose in her mind:
If I want, I will learn.
If I want, I will fight.
If I want, I will live.
And I want.
And I will.
This was going to be fun.
Outside, a horn blared, and birds fled out the hole in the roof. Jame scrambled to her feet, tossing the blankets over a protesting ounce. Across the dusty floor, the windows of a dormer faced eastward towards Old Tentir. As she leaned out to look, in the training square below a sergeant again raised his ram's horn and sounded its raucous note.
"All right, you slug-a-beds," he roared. "It's morning. Up, up, UP!"
In the second story dormitories below, bare feet hit the floor in a garble of dwar-slurred voices. The whole college must have been out cold last night, small wonder after the previous day's events.
Turning, Jame saw that Graykin was awake. He gave her one look, then hastily averted his eyes and began to search for his clothes. He at least had slept in his underwear—a Southron custom, perhaps. She didn't know if all naked bodies upset him or only hers, but that was his problem. Ancestors knew, the rigors of the past two weeks had left hardly enough flesh on her bones to offend anyone.
Suddenly, Jame was ravenous. Nobody had eaten the night before. When had been her own last meal? She couldn't remember.
Think of something else.
Rubbing her sore buttocks, she twisted around as far as she could to look. Yes, those shadows were bruises. Damn all horses anyway.
But Graykin had the right idea: she needed clothes.
Her pants, boots, cap, and gloves were all right, but the jacket would never do. Why could she never arrive anywhere appropriately dressed? The last time it had been a voluminous dress "borrowed" from a Hurlen prostitute. This time, it was a Tastigon flash-blade's d'hen. Sweet Trinity, what if someone last night had recognized it for what it was?
That apartment below—hadn't it been strewn with neglected garments?
A central, square stairwell reached from the attic to the second floor landing. Jame ran down the steps, the chill mountain air raising goose bumps on her bare skin. The third floor was divided between a long common room overlooking the square and the lordan's private suite facing outward and west toward the mountains. Only two rooms of the latter were accessible—a dusty reception chamber and the inner room beyond. Presumably the suite continued to the north and south, but walls of chests, layers thick, blocked it off in both directions.
Jame paused in the second room beside the cold fireplace on its raised hearth, where she had tried to sleep the night before. In her dream, the floor had been covered with rich, soiled clothing, left where a careless hand had dropped them. She remembered fur and silk, velvet and golden thread, all sunk in a miasma of stale sweat, but that hadn't concerned her then. She had been sitting beside a roaring fire, drinking and laughing so hard that wine spurted out her nose like blood onto her white shirt and richly embroidered coat. That had seemed hysterically funny at the time. Sitting opposite her, her companion had also laughed but more softly. She knew he was less drunk than she and in a fuzzy way resented his self control. Damn, superior Randir. She would impress him yet.
"No, truly," she heard herself cry in a hoarse, slurred voice not her own. "Such games we used to play, my brother and I! The things I made him do!"
"Did he enjoy them?"
"Now, if he had, where would have been the fun? Once the poor little fool even tried to tell Father, who called him a liar to his face for his pains."
She was leaning forward now, supporting herself with a thick hand studded with gold rings and coarse, black hair. Her voice dropped conspiratorially. "You don't believe me? Listen. This very minute, he sleeps below in his virtuous cot. Dear little Gangrene, all grown up and come to play soldier. Shall we have him up, eh? See if he remembers our old midnight game?"
If there had been more to the dream, Jame didn't remember it. She spat into the fireplace to clear the foul taste of that voice from her mouth. What in Perimal's name had it all been about anyway? Who was "dear little Gangrene"? Surely Father had never called her brother Torisen a liar, the worst of all possible insults. As for midnight games. . . .
Jame shrugged away the thought. It had only been a dream.
Or perhaps not.
Sprawling on the hearth like the flayed skin of a nightmare was the embroidered coat.
She picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, its entire surface covered with thread in many colors, couched with stitches of tarnished gold. Here and there were stains as if of wine, or of blood.
It also stank.
She remembered now how she had wrapped it about her for warmth the previous night and tried to sleep in its noisome folds. Ugh. No wonder she had had bad dreams.
Jame dropped the coat and turned to the nearest wall of chests. When she dislodged and opened one, the smell was as she remembered it, with an added stale air of must and mold. Several layers down, she found a serviceable shirt and a belted jacket cut cadet style.
"Oh, very stylish," said Graykin from the doorway. "What's that stench?"
"History. Don't ask me whose."
She put on the clothes. Both shirt and coat were much too large for her, but they would do.
Below, the rumpus had subsided.
Good, thought Jame, turning up her sleeves and clinching the belt. She would slip down and keep out of sight until she knew what was expected of her.
"Try to stay out of trouble," she told Graykin as she passed him with Jorin at her heels. "Better yet, hide."
From either side of the second floor landing, stairs led down to the front and to the back halves of the ground floor, which itself was divided by the internal corridor that run all around the three sides of the square, cutting through every house barracks.
Jame bent down to peer below. To the front, nothing. That, as she vaguely remembered from the previous night, was a public area. From the back, however, came a stifled cough and a stealthy shifting of feet. Ten long tables had been set out and ten cadets lined each of them, five to a side, standing at attention. Bowls of porridge cooled before them. At the head table, one empty seat waited. Even as she realized that it was meant for her and that no one could eat until she sat in it, the horn sounded again and everyone bolted toward the square. Descending, Jame saw the Kendar pile through doors that opened onto the common corridor, cross that, stream through their own front hall, and so out into the morning light. She snatched up a hunk of bread, stuffed it into her mouth, and followed, with a wistful backward glance at the rest of the uneaten breakfast.
Cadet candidates were forming up in tens. Jame took a position behind Brier's squad, but hands reached back to draw her forward. She found herself pushed out in front, level with the other ten-commanders, all too conscious of her reeking, over-sized tunic. Timmon, also front and center before his own house, sketched her salute in greeting. Brier stood behind her and Vant parallel, before another squad.
She chewed hastily and swallowed. "What's going on?" she hissed at Rue, a pace behind her to her right, inadvertently spraying the cadet with crumbs.
"Iron-thorn was demoted to Five. You're Ten now, lady."
"The hell I am!" But she hardly needed Vant's sidelong smirk to know that Rue spoke the truth.
"Hut!"
Everyone stiffened. Several cadets, let go by supporting hands, fell over, still lost in dwar sleep.
Flanked by his randon instructors, Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue strolled into the yard from Old Tentir. He moved like an Arrin-ken, thought Jame, powerful, lithe, and subtly dangerous. Morning light caught the hawk lines of his face and cast his deep-set eyes into hooded shadow. He wore the white scarf of command as he did his authority, easily, as by birthright. Here were the makings of a lethal enemy. And he was a Caineron. She felt his eyes sweep over her and sensed Jorin cower at her side.
"Cadet candidates, I bid you welcome to Tentir."
His voice, light but resonant, carried easily to every corner of the square. No sound crossed it but the swish of his long coat and a breath of wind chasing last season's leaves across the tin roof of the arcade. Somewhere in a back row, a fallen cadet began to snore, grunted as a mate kicked him, and again fell silent.
"You come to us in unusual times. Last fall, almost the entire student body marched south with the Host to the Cataracts. Many died there. We honor their memory and will not forget their names. For the most part, those who survived were promoted on the battlefield and now serve with the Southern Host at Kothifir. As a result, we have very few second year cadets and no third years except for those who have returned to assist as master tens in charge of their respective house barracks.
"In addition, you may have noticed that we have several Highborn candidates, including Lord Ardeth's grandson Timmon. The Caineron Lordan is also expected momentarily."
Is he, by God, thought Jame. She wondered whom the prolific but fickle Caldane had picked for an heir this week, and how Sheth meant to introduce her, if at all.
At that moment, the hall door swung open and a burly, travel-stained randon stumped into the square. He stopped, blinked, and swore at the unexpected sight of the drawn up troops, who stared back at him.
"Ah," said the Commandant, smiling slightly. "My esteemed predecessor at the college and the Knorth war-leader, Harn Grip-hard, and Steward Rowan," he added as a scar-faced woman appeared in the doorway, "and Sar Burr"—this last, to a third Kendar, who had stopped at pace behind the other two. "Goodness, nearly the Highlord's entire personal staff. Have you misplaced him again?" Someone in the Caineron ranks snickered. "How may we be of service, rans and sar?"
"We're looking for Blackie," the big randon said gruffly to the yard at large. His blood-shot eyes fell on Jame and widened. "Here, boy, what in Perimal's name are you playing at?"
Jame felt a powerful urge to withdraw into her oversized tunic like a turtle into its shell.
"If I may continue," the Commandant said smoothly, "I was just about to announce the presence among us, for the first time in forty-six years, of the Knorth Lordan . . . ah, Jameth, is it not?"
"Lordan?" Harn blurted out. "Has Blackie gone mad?"
More snickers, louder this time.
"As to that," said the Commandant with a smile, "you would know better than I. Torisen Black Lord rode on last night. You probably passed him in the dark. A moment, please," he said, as the three turned to go. "If you will stay for a bit, Rans Harn and Rowan, you can do the college a great service. Sar Burr, no doubt you will wish to retrieve . . . er . . . rejoin your wandering lord as quickly as possible."
He turned back to the cadets. "Our three lordans, of course, will serve as the master tens of their respective houses. You will also no doubt have noticed—especially those who had to sleep last night two or three to a bed—that there are nearly twice as many candidates here as usual. One thousand three hundred and ninety, to be exact. Death has greatly thinned our ranks. However, the college is only equipped to train some eight hundred cadets at a time. I speak, of course, of those who are still here at this time next summer. Between now and then, there will be three culls rather than the usual two. Over the next three days you will undergo a series of tests to determine who stays and who goes."
Tests.
Jame gulped. No one had said anything about that. She was certain that her brother hadn't known. No wonder Sheth had barely blinked when Tori had presented her as his heir. Neither the Commandant nor anyone else expected her to be here long enough to matter except as proof of the Highlord's lunacy.
"We have summoned every available randon officer, sergeant, and senior cadet to oversee this . . . ah . . . winnowing process. Ran Harn, if you would be so kind as to stay and assist? Thank you. I expected no less.
"Good luck," said Sheth blandly, "to you all," and swept back into the shadows of Old Tentir.
A sergeant stepped forward. "Tens," she cried. "Count off!"
By the end of the first day, the randon were optimistic. There were many good candidates, judging by the first three tests, easily enough to fill the college's depleted ranks. Also, there were some promising young Shanir whose particular talents they would assess later.
As for the rest, those who couldn't wake in a timely fashion from dwar sleep had already been dismissed. Some of the Caineron were clearly hopeless. Caldane had over-filled his quota with every young Kendar he could lay his hands on, half of them still hung-over from their lord's excesses of the week before. Even the Caineron randon glumly agreed, more freely than they might have if the Commandant didn't habitually dine alone in his quarters. The rest, officers, sergeants, and senior cadets, had gathered in the officers' mess in Old Tentir to share dinner and compare notes.
There was no sign yet of the Caineron Lordan. It didn't matter. By unspoken agreement, his place was secure at the college, whenever he deigned to arrive. After all, Sheth could hardly turn away his master's son.
"That Ardeth Timmon is shaping up surprisingly well," remarked a Danior randon, reaching for the salt. "Even if he does slide out of some things."
"Like the punishment run."
"Yes. But he clearly had good teachers at home and enjoys physical challenges. Not quite the spoiled brat we were expecting, eh? A little irresponsible and immature, though."
"I just hope he doesn't have his father's taste for the Kendar," a Coman sergeant muttered to her Jaran counterpart. "That damned Pereden could charm his way into any bed, for the sheer deviltry of it."
"But this is only a boy."
"Not so young as all that, and the Ardeth start early." She raised her voice. "Did your lord get off safely, Aron?"
"Before dawn, ran," replied the Ardeth sergeant. He looked exhausted. It had been a rough night, even without part of the dining hall collapsing into the cellar. "If his guard can keep him quiet with drafts of black nightshade, they hope to get him past Gothregor before he decides to tackle the Highlord again."
"Huh," said a young Coman randon. "More likely, he'll wait to see what happens here. There'll be no hiding it now. You didn't exactly help, Harn. D'you have to call your lord crazy in front of the whole college?"
Harn Grip-hard was morosely gnawing a mutton bone, his broad, stubbly face glistening with its fat. Rowan sat beside him, carefully expressionless as usual; fifteen years after the Karnides had burned the name-rune of their god into her forehead, the scar still hurt.
A Caineron laughed. "Yes. What will your precious Blackie say when he hears about that, eh?"
"Nothing," grunted the former commandant of Tentir. "The boy knows I have a big mouth, and I've known him since he was fifteen, so new to the Southern Wastes that he looked like a flayed tomato."
"What was he like then, ran?" asked a senior cadet. "Besides sun-burnt, I mean."
"Quiet. Wary. Determined. Not like his father Ganth Gray Lord at all, except in certain moods."
"It took Urakarn to unsheathe the steel in him," said Rowan. "I was there. I saw."
Harn thought for a moment, absentmindedly wiping greasy fingers on his jacket. "It's hard to explain. He isn't like most Highborn. Never has been."
"Obviously not," said a Randir, with a sidelong glance at her table-mates. Even in the close-knit world of the randon, the Randir held themselves subtly apart. There were also more female randon in that house than in any other. "To make that freak his heir and then to bring her here. . ."
The other randon stirred uneasily. They knew there was bad blood between the Randir and the Knorth, although not all knew why.
A senior cadet broke in, grinning broadly: "D'you see her this morning trying to wield a long sword? Trinity, I thought she was going to chop off her own toes, or maybe mine. That cadet Vant made a proper fool of her."
"Still," said an Ardeth thoughtfully, "she didn't do so badly with the short sword although I'll wager she'd never had one in her hands before. I've been watching her technique. That girl knows knife-craft, although I've never seen that particular style before. D'you see how she tried to block with her sleeve? The Commandant was watching too. 'I thought so,' he said."
"Thought what?"
"He didn't say. Still, what in Perimal's name are they teaching in the Women's Halls these days?"
"Quiet, wary, determined," repeated a Brandan thoughtfully. "What if there should be steel there too, underneath? We may be surprised yet."
This was met with general laughter and some flung hunks of bread, which the Brandan flicked away with careless, good-natured grace. "Just the same," he said, "talk to Hawthorn when she gets back from escorting M'lady Brenwyr home. I hear she had some odd experiences with the Knorth during the weirdingstrom."
"Yes, but did you see the plan she—the Knorth, that is—submitted for storming the citadel?" Like so many in his house, the Edirr cadet clearly found anything ridiculous irresistible. "I mean, a herd of goats disguised as priests?"
While he elaborated, gleefully, the older randon grumbled among themselves. It was a new idea that cadets should learn how to read and write rather than to depend, as for millennia past, solely on a well-trained memory. Things were changing. Not everyone approved.
". . . ending in a rain of frogs!" crowed the Edirr cadet, "and, you know, it just might work!"
The others exchanged looks and shook their heads.
By the end of the second day, the randon were less easy. The competition was getting ugly, and candidates were beginning to get hurt. Worse, instructors had come across possible evidence of sabotage. A notched bow had snapped at the full draw, nearly taking out a cadet's eye. Swords mysteriously lost their baited points or acquired newly sharpened edges. Horses were found to have burrs under their saddles or cinches hooked by twists of tail hair to their privates.
Practical jokes, said the Randir, shrugging.
Others feared that it was only a matter of time before someone was seriously injured or killed. In the latter case, no blood price could be demanded by the cadet's house, but such things tended to fester, sometimes for generations. Again, some glanced from Randir to Knorth.
They also spoke, with increasing unease, about the Knorth Jameth.
Most had expected that by now she would have burst into tears and retreated to her proper place, namely the Women's Halls at Gothregor. Captain Hawthorn, newly returned from escorting her own matriarch home, rather thought that the Women's World would as soon welcome back a handful of burning coals.
The Highborn girls there had barely settled down and stopped (oh, horrors) asking questions when who should arrive but Lord Caineron's young daughter Lyra Lack-wit, ostensibly to gain some polish in women's ways, actually to get her out of sister Kallystine's sight before the latter killed her. Various ladies had been heard to prophesy the end of the world, if only so that they might at last get some rest.
"However, they're apt to give the Highlord precious little of that," Hawthorn said, amused, pausing to drink from her mug of cider. "Now that his sister has slipped through their hands, I've heard that the Council of Matriarchs means to make a dead set at him for one of their own houses."
"But the Knorth Jameth. What d'you think of her?"
The Brandan captain considered for a moment. "Thoroughly unorthodox," she said, "but weirdly effective. Not unlike her brother."
The Caineron jeered at this. "What do you know? Your matriarch wears riding boots and a divided skirt. We've even heard that she sleeps with a death banner."
Hawthorn merely smiled. "She suits us. Perhaps we Brandan aren't all that orthodox either, anymore."
"What does Sheth intend?" one senior randon asked another quietly undercover of the above exchange. "Can he really mean to let this girl stay?"
"He accepted her into Tentir," said the other. "His honor is bound."
"Even against the will of his lord that she should fail?"
"Even so, unless he bows to that will."
"You speak of Honor's Paradox. Where does honor lie, in obedience to one's lord or in oneself?"
"Just so. The Commandant will have to decide. So will we all. But what d'you think of these sightings of the White Lady? Has the Shame of Tentir come back to haunt us?"
The other stirred uneasily. "With a Knorth Lordan here for the first time in forty-odd years . . . ah, I don't know. Certainly, the Lady has unfinished business with that house, if even half the stories are true."
"As to that, only the Randon Council knows. Maybe it is just a wandering rathorn, swept north by the weirdingstrom. Cam did swear that he saw its horns. Still, a lone rathorn. A rogue. A death's-head. That's bad enough."
The Edirr cadet could no longer contain himself.
"Did you hear about her riding test?" he burst in, claiming the room's reluctant attention. "I'm waiting at the top of the training field when she and a Jaran ten come up. When she sees what's next, she stops dead (both squads piling up behind her, mind you), and says, 'Oh no. Horses.'
"So I get everyone including her mounted and in line. As you know, the test is to ride a circuit of the fortress keeping in formation, starting at a walk, ending in a full charge, over a variety of terrain. Well, from the first the horses are all in a fret, lunging, bucking, and then the Knorth's starts backing up. She's kicking it for all she's worth but it lays its ears flat and keeps going, right into one of those quake fissures, over and down, backward. It hits the bottom and bolts and so, if you please, do both ten commands.
"The next thing I know, we're thundering down the field with the Knorth keeping pace at the bottom of a ditch.
"Then up she comes, both stirrups ripped off, hanging on for dear life, and barges into the front line. Two horses go down, three more bolt off at a tangent straight through a quarter-staff practice—sorry about that, Aron; I hope none of your cadets were trampled.
"Passing the front door, we lose half a dozen more horses when they take bit in teeth and plunge inside, hell-bent for the safety of their stables.
"Then up the southern flank of the college over hill and dale, through wood and water, between archers and their targets, apparently, because suddenly arrows are whizzing past our ears. More horses shy. More riders fall.
"By now, there are only five of us including the Knorth and that big Southron Iron-thorn who's galloping beside her and holding her in the saddle by the scruff of her neck.
"Well, finally we stop and then, if you please, the Knorth falls off."
" 'Oh,' she says, looking up at me. 'Wasn't I supposed to do that? Everyone else did.' "
The Edirr burst into helpless laughter. As he beat his head on the table-top, the two senior randon exchanged glances.
"That's it," said one. "We're doomed."