Chapter VIII
Autumn’s Eve
High Bashti: Summer 120−Autumn 1
I
“Normally, he’s quite fastidious,” Jame remarked to Graykin who, that morning, had finally presented himself at Campus Kencyrath.
Although the sun shone now, it had rained hard during the night and the part of the training field set aside for pasture was sodden, where grass didn’t actually float under water. Hooves had churned some of these shallow ponds into deep, boot-sucking mud. Death’s-head had found one such puddle and rolled in it. Jame regarded his besmirched form with chagrin. He, in turn, curled his lip at her, over sharp fangs, in a sneer. Like any creature with a white coat, he was attracted to dirt, but usually he also had access to a river or stream in which to bathe.
“Then too,” she added, thumping the rathorn on his shoulder, raising a shower of drying mud chips, “right now he’s bored out of his tiny, little mind.”
Graykin smirked. He himself looked almost dapper, clad in the style of a Bashtiri dandy with an ersatz dab of elegance.
“Sorry I didn’t come to see you earlier,” he said. “I was out of town.”
“What, High Bashti bores you already?”
He made a face. “This city will take years to master—not, mind you, that I haven’t made progress—but it also has relationships with the rest of the Central Lands, on both banks of the Silver. I was in Karkinor.”
“Ah.”
She continued to curry the rathorn’s back and sides, down to where the ivory began, loosening the dirt. He shifted under her touch. There had, of course, been no question of tying him up. A grinning campus urchin scattered fragments of roast chicken before him when his attention wandered and these he snuffled up, bones and all. Jame began to scrape the ivory along the upper edges of its bands.
“What news from the Karkinoran capitol? I promised Timmon that I would ask about Lyra.”
Graykin looked even more sour. He had previously been Lyra’s servant in Karkinaroth and they shared Lord Caineron as a sire. Graykin was a bastard, however, his mother a Karkinoran chambermaid. Lyra never let him forget that.
“She landed on her feet, as usual.” The spoiled brat, said his tone. “Old Prince Uthecon treats her more like a favorite granddaughter than a bride. He’s been unwell, though, and his would-be heirs are starting to swarm. She’ll make a fine prize for one of them, and a validation of his claim to the kingdom.”
Jame paused. “Caldane would do that, just transfer her contract from one Karkinoran princeling to another?”
Of course he would. To him, Highborn women were only bargaining chips and Lyra was the most dispensable of them all, now that her great-great gran Cattila was dead. Once again she would be dangled before one lord after another as she had before Uthecon’s ill-fated predecessor, Prince Odalian. Lyra was probably even less valuable now, having been contracted twice to Karkinor although never bedded, as far as Jame knew.
The rathorn rubbed impatiently against her hand. He wanted to be scratched, there, below the upper edge of the ivory where, day by day, it continued to grow. She had wedged the diamantine panel from the white city in the Anarchies into a tree trunk for him to whet his horns against and he had done so. Rathorns were potentially immortal, their own ivory their ultimate enemy. Hopefully, neither horn would ever grow around to pierce his skull from behind. What did one do about the chest and belly armor, though, which someday might encase him, living, in an ivory tomb? All she could think of was to extend a nail and scratch gingerly along the growth line, trying not to draw blood.
“Who told you that about Lyra?” she asked Graykin.
He shuffled, not meeting her eyes.
“I was in the new palace in Karkinaroth—yes, they’ve rebuilt since your last visit, and a proper mess you left of it, what with our temple imploding.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“Somehow, nothing ever is. Anyway, Commandant Sharp-tongue passed me and paused. I was in deep shadow. I swear he didn’t see me. But he told me, more or less, what I’ve just told you. ‘Inform Jamethiel,’ he said, and walked on, smiling. That man terrifies me. What is he, a Shanir?”
Jame laughed. “Perhaps. He is, at least, always extraordinary. I’m glad that he’s keeping an eye on Lyra. Returning to the subject of High Bashti, what do you make of this?”
She fished the golden regal coin out of her pocket and flipped it to him. He caught it, barely not fumbling.
“Valuable,” he said, examining it. “This is the first one I’ve actually seen, but I hear that the king has melted down as many gold coins as he can get his hands on to gild that new temple of his.”
“I meant, the face on the obverse side, or do I mean the reverse? One, of course, is a young Mordaunt. I would recognize those rodential features anywhere.”
“I’ll have to ask about the other. It must be someone important to the king, from—when? Thirty-some years back? That’s the date, anyway, inscribed on it. Why this interest in ancient history?”
“I swear that I’ve seen that face before. Once at Kithorn. Once on the edge of the White Hills. Once watching me from a balcony in Mordaunt’s palace.”
She didn’t mention that she had also glimpsed that pale figure in dreams out of the corner of her eye, smiling at her, gone when she turned to face him. If he had spoken, she thought she would have known his voice, and what an unnerving thought that was.
She nodded to Snaggles, who in turn gestured to his cohorts. Urchins staggered out into the pasture, a brigade lugging buckets of sun-warmed water. Jame had been combing out the rathorn’s mane and tail with her claws. Now she sloshed him with water and scrubbed.
He moved away. More chicken fragments distracted him. “Huh,” he snorted, munching, then shook himself.
Jame wiped stinging soap out of her eyes.
“There’s this too,” she said over her shoulder. “When I visited Mordaunt, I also met a man who wasn’t there. That is, someone kept tripping me and breathing in my ear, but I couldn’t see who it was until I got annoyed and knocked him backward into an ornamental pond. Even then, he only made a dent in the water before scuttling off.”
“It sounds as if you ran into an assassin of the Bashtiri Shadow Guild.”
“I think so too. It wouldn’t be the first time, either.”
“For most people, it would be both the first and last time. Those folk are scary. There are rumors that Mordaunt uses them for spies, no hard task for people who can use mere tattoos and dye to render themselves invisible, never mind that it tends to drive them insane. There are also cracks in the Guild between traditional members and those aligned with the Deathless, or so I hear.”
The urchins presented more buckets of water. Jame emptied them over the rathorn’s back and scraped off the excess with the edge of her hand. By now her braids hung down in damp loops and her shirt clung to her in wet folds.
“Kinzi, Telarien, Aerulan . . . so many other Knorth ladies. The Shadow Guild slaughtered them all. Then the assassins came back for me, or rather one in particular did—he who killed Aerulan, whom Brenwyr cursed, now a guild master. I ran away.”
“There, you surprise me.”
“But, you see, you were in trouble at Restormir. I knew that because of the bond between us. It drew me.”
“Oh,” said Graykin blankly, for a moment forgetting to be snide. Could it be that he hadn’t heard this story before? Parts of it, perhaps not.
“He caught up with me at Mount Alban. I hadn’t come under the terms of the original contract, he said. That was determined by the number to be killed, although once I thought otherwise. But he missed one: my cousin Tieri.” Who, later, had become Kindrie’s mother, sired by Gerridon. However, Jame didn’t mention that. Let Kindrie keep his own secrets. “Now it was his turn to choose a target. He chose me. To make a clean sweep of the Knorth ladies, he said, although I think he was also being blackmailed by Ishtier. Yes, I know: It was a confusing situation.”
Graykin shook his head. This was more information than Jame had previously given him, and less than he felt he deserved. “That leaves it up in the air, doesn’t it? The Shadow Guild is or isn’t after you now. I would say not, because their agent didn’t try, seriously, to kill you in the palace.”
“It seemed pretty deliberate to me.”
“Still . . .”
Jame sighed. “Yes, I should have thought about all of this before I came south. ‘Ancient history’ is no such thing, is it?”
Snaggles tugged her sleeve. “Here comes His Highness.”
“Scamper,” she told him. “You too.” This, to Graykin. “We’ll talk later.”
Prince Jurik sauntered across the practice field, the sun catching his golden brow band. He was trailed by a clump of his half-brothers, friends, and other assorted hangers-on. Since that day at the palace, Harn had let them return for training at the campus. They were, most of them, able young men, but their ideas of discipline and honor seemed lacking. The randon looked at them askance. Senethar technique, they felt, was not enough. Jame agreed. What was Harn thinking?
“Hello,” said Jurik, leaning on the rail. “Don’t you have servants to do work like that?”
Death’s-head shook himself again and wandered off. Jame was acutely aware of the damp shirt clinging to her slight breasts and of Jurik giving them a dismissive leer.
The rathorn found another mud puddle, sank to his knees in it, and rolled, groaning.
Jame sighed. “I give up.”
“I would say that you spoil that beast, but it’s obviously too late to complain. Still, I want to ride him.”
“Ask his permission first.”
“Seriously? He lets you. How hard can it be?”
The rathorn continued to roll, his hooves flailing the air. Then he lurched to his feet and shook himself again, spraying fresh mud.
“Hard enough, potentially, to be fatal.”
On a higher, dryer patch of the field, two randon ten-commands had begun to practice the kantirs of Senetha earth-moving. One command was Knorth, the other Danior from Nether Bashti. Training had begun for the Transweald games, at which only the best twenty of these two combined houses would compete, against twenty seasoned Brandan. Down came a score of right feet as one. The left swept back for balance. Arms traced patterns in the air. They were moving slowly, ritualistically, which was more of a challenge than the speed of combat Senethar. Jame admired their grace.
Jurik and his cohort wandered over to join their ranks, edging in to make space between them. The Bashtiri had obviously learned the basics, but they were slightly out of step, as if the deliberate pace fretted them. One stumbled, lost patience, and hooked the leg out from under the Kendar beside him. Caught off guard, the man fell, rolled, and neatly regained his feet. The Bashtiri laughed.
“What,” said Jurik, “you can’t deal with surprise?”
It only seemed to occur to him then that both commands had swung to surround his people, poised to attack. His face flushed with anger. For a moment, he reminded Jame of Harn.
“It was only a joke!” he sputtered.
Harn Grip-hard had come out onto his balcony to watch. So had the Lady Anthea on her adjacent porch. He shook his shaggy head and went back inside. She remained, glowering. Perhaps these were no longer her darling boys, now that the professionals had returned.
II
That was morning on the last day of summer. Autumn’s Eve would arrive later that night. Jame had heard that the Bashtiri took this holiday seriously, hence she and Rue went out that afternoon to see the sights, Jorin padding along beside them.
The air buzzed with excitement. Skulls wreathed with evergreen boughs decorated every house. More swags of that greenery stretched across the streets from upper window to window—to signify death and immortality, Jame supposed. She noted, however, that these crania were never actually human skulls. Rather, the poorer dwellings made do with clay or white-washed wood representations while the wealthy favored porcelain or polished stone. Here and there, someone had substituted the skull of a horse or a cow or a swine, but these were rare, even more so those adorned with cosmetics. The idea, apparently, was to laugh at death rather than to fear it.
Children from the apartment blocks were also abroad wearing rags and cheap masks constructed of wood pulp or, in some cases, with mere soot smeared across their features.
“A fig for the feast!” they cried outside the doors of their more affluent neighbors.
Apples, nuts, and, yes, figs were thrown out to them. These they popped into sacks. Rather than eat them, they munched on walnut-sized skulls molded from favored ice.
“Those come down from the mountains wrapped in straw,” said Rue wisely. It seemed that she had been talking to Snaggles, who was a fount of such information. “Everyone fasts until midnight when the dead are invited in, but before that they’re allowed to drink.”
Proof of this came wobbling down the road—Dar, taking a holiday rather than spending his off-shift from the palace asleep.
“Hello!” he cried, throwing an arm around each of them.
All right, thought Jame. Very drunk. She didn’t have the heart, however, to shake him off.
Crowds rushed past them. They came to Thyme Street and Thyme Side, the district that ran beside it with docks to the south and warehouses to the north, the latter dotted with residential mazes. The thoroughfare was already lined with throngs of people leaning out into the road, peering west toward where bands could be heard approaching.
Bang, bang went the drums. Wha, wha went the horns, whee! the pipes.
The musicians came into sight, dressed in gold and purple livery. Acrobats tumbled before them. Guards marched on either side. Following them was a huge wagon, three stories high, drawn by ten paired oxen. The first level encompassed the cart’s bed, which was at least six feet deep. On top of that was a stage. Over all, on a platform to the rear, loomed an effigy. Jame recognized it from the palace—bearded, wooden, moss-encrusted. She had guessed then that this was Floten, who had established Mordaunt’s lineage and his claim to kingship. This, therefore, must be Mordaunt’s wagon.
A trap door opened with a thud and nine actors climbed up from the wagon bed onto the stage, greeted with a blat of trumpets and a cheer from the onlookers. All were elaborately costumed in a rainbow of colors and wore wooden masks. The carven faces struck Jame as caricatures, none too kindly drawn. The actors paced back and forth with their noses in the air, then began to pantomime squabbling. Some pushed. Some pulled. Others made insulting gestures or surreptitiously tripped their fellows. Alliances were made and broken. Duels were fought. Lovers met, betrayed each other, and parted. What ancient stories these skits must represent. The slapstick elements were hard to follow for anyone who didn’t know the history of their relationships, but the audience greeted each jest, broad or cruel, with uproarious laughter.
A tenth actor ascended to the stage. Unlike the others, he was modestly dressed and wore a dignified mask to match that of the effigy looming above him. The others tried to engage him in their petty disputes, but his attention was fixed on the small model of a plow which he had brought with him and continued to carve.
Stagehands dressed in black began to move as if invisible among the quarreling actors. They stripped the finery off one after another, down to the rags which each wore underneath. This, Jame thought, no doubt signified the poverty that had fallen on them unnoticed. At last all were nearly naked and shivering. They held out their hands in appeal to the tenth of their number who must surely represent Floten. He rose and began to mime plowing a circuit around the stage, presumably to signify the founding of the city’s outer wall. As he went, the others resumed their finery and, prosperity restored, bowed to him. Then all saluted their audience and descended to cheers.
The musicians and acrobats limbered up. The white oxen bellowed under the whip and lurched forward. The guards marched off. Another wagon took their place.
Each troop from then on presented its own version of the origin story, with its own hero, its own comic touches, its own family colors. Sometimes Floten was honored. Sometimes he was presented in muddy purple robes without the touch of gold, as a simple-minded bumpkin.
Then, last in line, came something different.
The other wagons had approached with a joyful skirl of pipes. This one also beat its way down the road, but with the measured throb only of drums.
Boom, doom, they went, over and over. Doom, boom.
The oxen who pulled this cart were black. So was the vehicle itself, as if touched with flame. The effigy also was charred and aflutter with flakes of ash. A chorus of mourners paced around its stage, gray clad, beating their breasts and wailing. Their grief seemed too deep for pantomime.
“Don’t tell me,” said Jame. “This one belongs to the Tigganis. Who is the girl?”
A stocky young woman stood at the feet of the statue, dressed in black. She also wore a veil, but this had been thrust back from a defiant, miserable face. Fine eyes under heavy bows swept the audience, seeming to challenge it.
“That’s Pensa, Prestic’s favorite daughter,” said Dar. “She was his brains, some say. She hasn’t taken his death at all well.”
The crowd had fallen quiet. Some looked offended by this breach in decorum. Others appeared to be sympathetic. After all, Prestic had been well-loved and his death suspicious.
The wagon passed without slowing, trailing after the rest of the procession like a dismal period. The street filled with people in its wake.
“Come on,” said Dar. “After that, I need a drink.”
He took them to a tavern in the Thyme Side warehouse district and ordered a round of beers. Jame would have preferred cider. She also wondered about his ability to pay, given Mint’s hint that he was already deeply in debt. Then too, how much drunker did he intend to get? Life in High Bashti was not an unqualified blessing.
Jorin tapped her knee with a paw, begging, but the fast applied here too. Still . . .
“A bowl of milk,” she told their waiter, who gave the ounce a wary look. High Bashti wasn’t used to wild animals prowling its precincts, assuming that that applied to well-behaved Jorin. More than one child had rushed up to him in the street to throw arms around his plush neck, crying, “Kitty-boo! Kitty-boo!”
“I heard about Jurik turning up at the campus this morning,” said Dar, after drinking deep. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
“Why?”
“He’s the crown prince, isn’t he? Mordaunt’s only legitimate heir. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a joke here that the king only sires bastards. But Mordaunt won’t give his son any real responsibility. Here, fathers decide when their children come of age. That’s usually in their early twenties, if not before, especially for girls. Jurik is much older than that. He’s on a generous allowance from his mother, but otherwise at a loose end. His followers are too. Y’see, they can’t come of age before he does, unless they want to leave his service. One did recently, and he’s been in a foul mood ever since.”
“I suppose,” said Jame, “that’s why he’s so avid right now to ride the rathorn.”
Dar blinked at her owlishly. “I suppose so. But then you did, both literally with Death’s-head and figuratively at Tentir. Jurik would give anything to be a true randon, like you. Like us. If we did, why can’t he?”
“‘How hard can it be?’” Rue quoted with a snort. “That’s what Jurik thinks, anyway.” She, apparently, also had heard about the encounter that morning and relished it. No doubt the entire campus did. Pompous Jurik was not popular.
“Huh. Then too, he wants to be a big noise in the Princess cult, like his mother who’s its high priestess. But Jurik can’t do anything until he’s recognized as an adult. That must grate on him too.”
Snaggles had mentioned that cult. Jame knew little more about it, except that the girl’s image appeared all over the city. They were currently drinking in “Amalfia’s Arms.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Oh, that was a long time ago, thousands of years at least. There are lots of stories, some very different, depending on who tells them. Most agree, though, that she was a princess of Hathir, sent to Bashti to marry its crown prince, Bastolov, and seal an alliance between the two banks, just as Vestula was sent to Mordaunt much later. Some say that Bastolov was so enflamed by Amalfia’s beauty that he forced himself on her, and she died of shame. She was so beautiful, though, and so beloved that her admirers couldn’t bear to let her go, so they spirited away her body. To this day, they claim that that their devotion has kept it from decay. If she had been Bashtiri, she would have been nominated as a goddess or a saint. Instead, she became a cult figure. Only her initiates have ever seen her, though, so who knows? My guess is that she’s just another artificially preserved corpse or a wax effigy. Every family has rumors of such shams in the past. A big part of Autumn’s Eve is proving to the people that the gods they worship are real.”
“Er . . .” Rue said.
“Yes,” said Jame. “We’ve seen beings that claim to be gods elsewhere. You did, Dar, in Kothifir, although you may not have recognized them as such. Rue and I also did in Tai-tastigon. Whatever they were, wherever, they were evident. What to believe about these, here?”
“Listen,” said Dar, his words becoming increasingly slurred. “Today High Bashti honors its ancestors. Well, you just saw that. Later, there’s Autumn’s Eve itself for the recently dead. Who survives as a god, who as a saint, and who goes to the pyre, eh? The current pantheon will also be displayed in their temples. Said they had to prove themselves, didn’t I? I’ve placed a sure bet that Suwaeton will survive. I mean, who’s to challenge him with Prestic gone? But tomorrow are the temple plays, where some of the gods deign to speak through their priests. We have the God-voice. Why shouldn’t their gods speak too? Let you in on a secret, though: Suwaeton only speaks through his favorite actor in a god farce, if he speaks at all, and the king has forbidden those performances. Sacrilege, he calls them. Also, his grandfather loved ’em, so Mordaunt hates ’em. But they still take place, in secret, at a different location each year. I’ve just heard where Suwaeton’s favorite is acting tomorrow. D’you want to see him perform?”
“Yes,” said Jame, “if you promise to go back to the barracks now and sleep until then.”
He pouted. “Well, I’m on duty from dusk to dawn in charge of King Mordaunt’s security, but except for that . . .”
“Good. Then go.”
III
The afternoon passed. Children began to disappear from the streets while more elaborately costumed adults appeared, many already very drunk. At dusk torches flared and fireworks crackled, dropping multicolored lights on the city. The tantalizing smell of cooking arose, but so far no one ate.
“Ah!” exclaimed Rue as golden stars burst overhead.
Blind Jorin blinked uncertainly at the light reflected in Jame’s eyes and flinched at the bang.
Neither Tai-tastigon nor Kothifir had put on such a show, although Jame remembered the night when the former had nearly been set alight during the Thieves’ Guild election in the middle of a drought. It was perhaps fortunate that it had rained so hard here the night before. Now, thunder rumbled above the city in the mountains like an enormous clearing of throats following a nervous stutter of lightning.
People began to stream eastward down the streets of the city. In contrast to their drunken peers above, most of these men went in solemn procession, wearing white robes as well as scarves dyed the colors of their respective houses. Some had also donned waxen death masks, presumably of their ancestors given how individual each was. Some women also went with them, in silence, wearing black, as if to appear invisible.
Drawn by curiosity, Jame allowed herself to be carried along with the crowd, followed warily by Rue and Jorin. Although some eyes slid sideways to observe them, no one commented on their presence. Here and there were other strangers, perhaps visiting from other Central Lands. The reputation of such a massive annual festival would have spread far and wide.
Here between the Sanctor, the Tigganis, and the easternmost Artifax hills lay the valley set aside for the Grand Forum, which Jame recognized from her arrival in the city although then it had been nearly empty. At its center was a large paved expanse with a raised dais at its heart. Surrounding this and edging backward up the adjacent slopes, like so many craggy cliffs, were the major temples of High Bashti’s Pantheon as well as many smaller chapels dedicated to their lesser divinities and to other past dignitaries. More fireworks exploded overhead. Their flash reflected off marble and gilt facades, off the huge stone statues that sat before each structure, painted to look life-like and, in the sudden glare, rather surprised.
The open space was already filling, with more left to come. One hundred thousand? Two? A vast babble of voices arose, mostly cheerful but with an underlying nervous tension. Tonight, after all, this multitude would see for themselves if their patron gods still survived or had failed over the past year. Some would pray for the former, some for the latter.
Boom, went a drum by a temple door, and again: Boom.
A common wooden coffin was carried down the steps, accompanied by mourners and the stench of decay. There, either a god had succumbed or his mortal challenger as nominated by the Council. The betting stalls had favored the latter in regard to the house of the Merchant. The crowd held silent while the coffin passed, then cheered the survivor, whichever he was. Would the worshippers know before they entered? Ah. Here came workmen to remove the head of the sentinel statue, later to replace it. An old god had fallen.
Blatt! sounded a horn, blown from the dais. Harrooo, blatt!
House standards and colors rose above the crowd. People began to sort themselves into alignment with much jostling.
In the swirl, Jame glimpsed a familiar waxen face. It looked at her and its eyes lit with gleeful malice, made all the more disconcerting by the sweet curve of its pale lips. It inclined its head in a mocking bow, then turned and melted into the press.
Jame darted after it. She heard Rue cry out for her to wait, but in her haste she left her servant behind. Jorin pressed against her leg, nearly between her feet, shivering. The crowd swirled around them. Other white faces bobbed up here and there, some individual death masks, others the featureless blobs of the Deathless. The latter circled her.
“Renounce death,” they crooned in her ear. “Join us and never die.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Someone ran into her, hard.
“Watch where you’re going,” an angry voice snarled at her. “Oh. It’s you.”
Jame found herself clinging to Graykin, as he did to her, both off-balance. He peered around.
“Damn. I’ve lost him.”
“Who?”
“Your mystery man on the coin.”
Someone had climbed onto the dais. He, too, wore a waxen mask, but not the one that they had been chasing. His scarf was purple and gold, his face square, blunt, and bearded, with a heavy brow. Below that, his coat of gold brocade hung on him like boxy armor hollow at the core. He raised an ebony staff.
Thud, thud, thud, it went against the floor of the dais, echoing across the suddenly hushed forum.
Then people began to sing. The language was archaic but somehow it spoke to the immortal glory of the gods, to the faith of their people.
What is, will be, it said. We are the heart of this world. Our ways endure.
The standards came to the fore, each followed by its adherents, winding up the steps of their respective family god. Jame followed the Floten gold and purple. Indeed, she could hardly help but do so, given how tightly the crowd was packed. Graykin pressed against her shoulder. A distressed Jorin trod on her toes when she wasn’t actually lifted off her feet. Where was Rue?
The procession mounted the stair of the biggest temple on the western side of the plaza. Jame remembered its counterpart currently being built by Mordaunt for his private use. How could it compare? This was a place of public worship, sanctified by many offerings, some humble, others breath-taking. Its floors were polished stone, its columns enormous, supporting a high roof. Rich tapestries hung against the walls depicting scenes from Suwaeton’s life. Candles burned everywhere.
Jame picked up Jorin and draped him over her shoulder, no light burden. He trembled in her arms.
“What did you mean, my ‘mystery man’?” she asked Graykin, raising her voice to be heard over the uproar.
“Set me to find him, didn’t you?” What, his affronted tone said, you expected me to fail? “Actually, it wasn’t hard to find out who he was . . . or rather, is . . . assuming you ask someone old enough. Thirty years ago, when Mordaunt was still just a prince, he met a stranger who promised him eternal life. The Prophet, people called him. The Deathless cult gathered around him. Then came the White Hills, the death of Suwaeton, the prince’s rise to kingship, and the Prophet’s disappearance. Not before Mordaunt honored him on a specially minted regal coin like yours, though.”
“And now he’s come back?”
“You saw him, or it, or whatever that waxy thing is, and the cult has risen again. Suddenly, everyone wants to be immortal.”
Jorin sneezed in Jame’s ear. She had been aware of someone pressing up behind her, breathing hard. Now through the ounce’s senses, to a lesser degree through her own, she caught a whiff of burnt wood. In the press, however, she couldn’t turn to look. Besides, they had finally come to the temple’s inner room.
On the altar lay a rock crystal sarcophagus, its lid open, its contents from this angle invisible except for a long, shapeless blur seen through a clouded side panel.
Behind the altar stood the king. He had removed his waxen death mask and given it to the priest beside him who held it up as if on display. Mordaunt’s hair was plastered to his skull with sweat—a wonder that the mask hadn’t melted in place. More sweat ran down into the folds of his heavy robe. He looked thoroughly uncomfortable, his sharp face drawn into sour lines. While he had cast off his grandfather’s mask, he clutched Suwaeton’s black staff with its silver knob in both hands in a choke grip, and glowered over it as if to say, Who dares challenge me?
Dar stood to one side, in full armor, looking more or less alert after his day of debauchery. Well, he had said that he was responsible for Mordaunt’s safety tonight and here he was, representing Kencyr honor.
The king’s eyes darted around the hall, trusting no one.
Worshippers inched into the hall, past the coffin, back out. Jame approached it. She saw the legs first, then the chest, then the face. Overall, General Suwaeton wore golden armor, which fit him as it should a soldier. His face was familiar from his death mask, but ruddy above his hoary beard, above close-set lips and a furrowed brow. He radiated power. Moreover, the smell that rose from the sarcophagus was not so much sweet as fresh, with a tang of masculine sweat. One would have thought that he only slept, except that he did not breathe. This, Jame thought, was no ordinary corpse.
Mordaunt glared at her over the casket.
“You,” he said.
Then his gaze shifted behind her and his eyes widened.
Someone pushed Jame aside. She staggered, pulled off-balance by Jorin’s weight, even more so when he twisted in her grasp and, rather than fall to the floor, launched himself on top of the altar. The stone there was highly polished. His claws scrabbled on it as he tried to stop, but he still collided with the coffin which slid backward off the altar with a crash.
“Oh!” wailed the crowd.
The black-clad woman behind Jame lunged with a knife. However, Mordaunt had already scrambled back out of reach. Dar leaped to his defense, but collided with the priest. By the time he had disentangled himself, the would-be assassin had disappeared into the growing chaos of the hall.
Thud, thud, thud.
Everyone froze.
There lay Suwaeton on the altar, without his coffin but with his ebony staff back firmly in his hands. Mordaunt goggled at him, horrified.
“You’re dead!” he cried. “Dead, I tell you! Stop coming back!”
With that, he fled, Dar trailing after him trying to apologize.
“All right,” Jame said to Graykin when at last they made their way out of the temple. Being among the closest to the altar, they were practically the last to leave, and lucky at that not to be detained by a thoroughly rattled city guard. “More is going on here than I realized.”
IV
By now, it was midnight. Doors opened as Jame passed, a shaken Jorin trotting at her heels. Within, families laid out the long-promised feast and welcomed their ancestors to partake. Did wisps pass in the street and enter? It seemed so to Jame, but she felt particularly suggestible after the night so far.
The day had been warm. Now autumn’s chill crept into the air. Breath smoked on the air. Thunder rumbled closer. Was it about to rain again, or sleet, or snow?
Here at last was the Campus Kencyrath, with horses held by squires outside its door, the breath of both steaming on the chill air. Surely that flashy black belonged to Jurik, and what about that litter drawn up next to it, draped in purple and gold? Regal visitors, this late?
Jame passed Lady Anthea’s door on the way to her own quarters. The widow looked out. “Do something!” she hissed. “That harpy is going to ruin him!”
Beyond was Harn’s apartment. A sharp voice spoke within.
“Is that all you can do for him? Paltry lessons in your oh-so-special fighting arts? I thought better of you.”
Harn muttered in reply. Jame could imagine him, hunched to one side, turning his shoulder, but against whom? “Has to prove himself, doesn’t he? The bloodline isn’t enough.”
“It should be!”
The door to his apartment opened. A woman stood on the threshold, small, shapely, fierce. She wore a purple mantle trimmed with gilded fur. “I gave you roses to remember me by, oh faithless one,” she spat. “After what you did, you owe me!” Then she turned and left. Jame ducked out of her way.
That, surely, had been Queen Vestula, but what was she doing here, much less addressing the Commander in such terms?
Rue waited for Jame in her quarters, with a simple dinner of bread, cheese, and date stuffed figs laid out by the fire.
“I thought that you might want me here,” she said. “Also, that you might be hungry.”
“I am,” said Jame. “Ravenous.”
As she ate, Rue sorted her meager wardrobe for the morrow when High Bashti’s current gods were supposed to manifest themselves through their priests.
“You need more clothes,” she said.
“For your benefit or for mine? Sorry, Rue. I just don’t care what I wear as long as it’s clean, decent, and convenient, with a few court coats for special occasions. What does it matter what I look like, beyond that?”
“It does to your people.”
“Then my people must take me as they find me, or go elsewhere.”
“Ha.”
Yet Jame wondered. She hadn’t bound Rue, as much as the young Kendar deserved that distinction. Did Rue still see it that way? So far, she seemed loyal despite what she had first felt as an undeserved slight. A new world was coming. Tori felt that too. How would they all fit into it?
Anyway, what did one wear for a divine manifestation, assuming Dar was still available to escort her to the performance of Suwaeton’s god farce? Whatever that was. Assuming that Suwaeton appeared.
Rue had been too far back in the press to see what had happened at the altar. Jame told her, omitting only Graykin’s report. She had given the latter much thought, though. It wasn’t the first time she had heard someone call himself a prophet and declare that “Death itself will die.”
After all, what had Gerridon’s entire life been but an increasingly desperate quest for immortality?
As the old song put it, “Gerridon Highlord, Master of Knorth, a proud man was he. The Three People held he in his hand. Wealth and power had he, and knowledge deeper than the Sea of Stars.
“But he feared death.
“‘Dread lord,’ he said to the Shadow that Crawls, even to Perimal Darkling, ancient of enemies, ‘my god regards me not. If I serve thee, wilt thou preserve me, even to the end of time?’
“Night bowed over him. Words they spoke.
“Then he went to his sister-consort, Jamethiel Dream-weaver.
“‘Dance out the souls of the faithful,’ he said, ‘that darkness may enter in.’
“And she danced.”
Two-thirds of the Kencyrath had fallen that night, the rest fleeing down through the rooms of the House from link to link of the Chain of Creation into a new world, Rathillien, where it now found itself.
And where did Gerridon find himself?
As far as Jame knew, he had dwelt in the back rooms of the House for eons, where time moved more slowly than it did here, hence the ten-odd years that her brother had gained on her during her sojourn there. So much longer must have been dull for the Master as he had slowly eaten through the souls that the Dream-weaver had reaped for him.
Then he had started to meddle on Rathillien, apparently with Bashti and a young Mordaunt first, only to disappear abruptly during the massacre in the White Hills. When a young Torisen had encountered him in Kothifir some fifteen years later, he had moved on to become the Karnids’ Dark Prophet, preaching his message of triumph over death. Now, with the fall of Urakarn, was she to believe that he was back in High Bashti? Why?
She had never supposed that he seriously wanted to conquer death for everyone. That was just the hook with which he baited his cult. Only his own immortality really mattered to him. Perhaps, though, once having been Highlord of the Kencyrath, he wanted followers with whom to play. Then too, maybe he wanted to use them in other ways. In Kothifir, the Karnid horde had tried to defeat the Southern Host while his priests had preached his message in the city. He had done that twice—when Tori had been there and later when Jame was. Gerridon was a creature of habit. He did the same thing over and over, each time expecting a different outcome. There had to be a word for that. Oh, yes: madness. What was he trying to accomplish here, now, when the stakes for him had grown so dire? Was the wax-faced man even Gerridon at all? Trinity, she hoped not.
Too many questions. Too few answers.
An unfamiliar shiver ran up her spine, jolting her hand, causing the cider mug which it gripped to spill.
Rue stared. “What is it?”
“Death’s-head is having fun.”
She leaped up and ran out of the apartment, followed by Rue’s plaintive cry:
“D’you really want to interrupt him?”
Here was the grassy heart of the barracks. At its far end, a dozen or so people lined the pasture’s fence. More were within, apparently chasing the remount herd. Horses swerved back and forth like a flock of birds, kicking up muddy spray. Then Death’s-head charged through their ranks, scattering them left and right. The human invaders fled before him and scrambled out between the bars of the enclosure. The rathorn swerved, snorting with derision, his tail held high. Nothing had amused him more in many a long, dull day.
Jame recognized Jurik and his friends. So he hadn’t left with his mother, assuming she had indeed gone home. What the prince was up to now was all too clear.
Two of his followers remained in the pasture. Now they were trying to sneak up on the rathorn. Death’s-head charged one. The other used the distraction to snake a rope around his foreleg. Tangled, he fell, plowing into the mud on his shoulder. A second rope snared another of his flailing hooves.
Jurik straightened, climbed over the fence, and sauntered toward the prone beast, a bridle with a cruel, spiked bit dangling from his hand. He might even have laughed, as if it had been so easy after all.
As he approached, Death’s-head glared at him through a besmirched mask, panting. The prince was within feet when the rathorn hooked his nasal tusk under the ropes and ripped them off.
Jurik stopped.
Death’s-head regained his feet. Head low, horns poised, he moved toward the prince. Stalking. One slow step, then another. Oh, never offend a rathorn’s dignity.
Jurik dropped the bridle, turned, and ran.
Jame was running too, toward the enclosure, toward the watching, horrified Bashtiri. She slipped between them, between the bars, between the prince and his would-be prey, just as the latter charged.
Jurik scrambled to safety behind her.
The rathorn sat on his haunches, forelegs braced, trying to stop, but he skidded on slick mud and crashed into Jame, throwing her backward against a post. For a moment, dazed, she couldn’t breathe. A mottled wall of equine flesh loomed over her with horns and red eyes. She grabbed blindly for the flying mane, caught it, and swung up onto his back.
Jurik was shouting for spears, arrows, rocks . . . anything!
Death’s-head stopped short, gathered himself like a cat, and sprang over the fence.
He could have done that anytime he wanted to, Jame thought, hanging on for dear life. Bored as he had been, his supposed imprisonment here had only been a game. Then he came down again and she was jolted face foremost into his rising neck. For a moment, she wondered if she had broken her nose. Then they were galloping across the training field toward the gate. From there one way led into the beast pens, currently used as stables, while the other opened below the outer stair onto the road.
A white face watched them pass—Queen Vestula, waiting after all to see her darling son’s conquest.
Out on the street were the horses of Jurik’s entourage. When Death’s-head charged through their midst, they scattered in panic, pursued by their attendants, dragging the regal litter after them until it smashed turning a corner. Good. Hopefully Jurik wouldn’t be able to follow her, and his precious mother could damn well walk home.
Meanwhile the rathorn’s hooves skidded on slick cobblestones. It must have rained again, Jame thought, clinging to his slippery back. Oh, for stirrups. The thunder seemed closer, if that wasn’t just the echo of hooves against close-set walls. Where were they going? Oh, for reins or a bit with which to steer, not that Death’s-head had ever accepted the latter. Instead, this was a run-away, pure and simple. She must either cling or risk breaking bone on stone. No other way offered itself.
People were still abroad, going from door to door for the Autumn’s Eve feast, perhaps also hoping to greet old, long-lost friends. They shouted at her as she tore past, nearly trampling them. Mired as Death’s-head was, no one seemed to realize what they had just seen.
It occurred to her that they were following the route through the city that they had taken on their arrival, except in reverse. Here was the Thyme Side district, then the now deserted Grand Forum except for workmen busily replacing the head of defunct Merchant god. Beyond was the eastward facing main gate through which they had entered, which now stood open as did all gates on this night. Beyond that again was the farm land of the river valley.
Jame didn’t know where the rathorn was taking her. His mind seethed, incandescent with rage. “Beasts of madness,” some called his kind. Perhaps that had touched her too, to have taken such a ride, but then what had been the alternative? Fall. Break.
When he had galloped out his fury, however, he dropped to a canter and began to consider. At least, she felt that he did. His moods had always been more apparent to her than his thoughts—with Jorin too, for that matter. Bonding had its limits.
Fields of cabbage and carrots spread to either side, then of lettuce and lentils as they passed eastward through the cultivated fields of the Thyme River Valley. Potatoes. Onions. Parsnips. On and on and on, grown for the maw of the city.
The road swerved. Here was the gate in the outer curtain wall, beyond which the main road joined Thyme Street with the river running beside it. Beyond that, bluffs rose. At their feet lay the western edge of the necropolis. Monuments and mausoleums lined both banks of the rushing river—rows of miniature houses, obelisks, statuary, stretching in the gloom back to the cliffs.
Thunder rumbled in the throat of the hills. Another wave of storms was coming.
They began to pass citizens returning from the ancestral feast—early, Jame thought, and looking distraught. Cart after cart passed, carrying mostly women and children driven by servants. Some looked shocked. Others were crying. More than a few cast glares in her direction, as if they longed to blame someone for whatever grief had befallen them.
Death’s-head eyed them askance, slowing to a wary trot.
The bluffs pinched in at the foot of the valley, then drew back in scalloped cliffs slotted with crypts. Flickers of lightning glinted off plaques, gold and silver and bronze, proclaiming the virtues of the dead, begging mercy from death. Angry voices and wails sounded ahead. Something burned in a low-hanging haze of charnel smoke.
They came to flooded strips of road. Earlier, it must have rained furiously in the mountains. More than one stream had burst its banks and was now rushing down to join the Thyme.
The rathorn stopped, snorting, before one such overflow. Would he refuse to cross? Instead, delicately, he stepped into the current, turned left, and waded northward into the overhanging trees. Jame had no idea where he was taking her. Farther and farther back into the undergrowth they went, away from the noise and the stench, through leaves, between trailing vines, around fallen trees. Underfoot, underwater, ran a path paved with smooth stones. The way opened here and there into gardens of sculpture, into ranks of statuary, into squares of small houses grouped as if in communities. The farther they went, the more weathered their surroundings became. This city of the dead appeared to have been built from the back out, tending toward the river. This region, at least, was nowhere near as well kept as that closer to the Thyme. Also, the dates on the tombs were much older, going back centuries when they still stood at all. Everything was over grown and untended. Foxes barked. Owls hooted. Undergrowth rustled with nocturnal life unaccustomed to human incursion.
At length they came to the nearest edge of the bluffs, where water cascaded down into a spreading pond. Jame swung down off Death’s-head’s back as he waded in among the tombstones. The water splashed on his head, and back, and flanks. Mud washed off. White glimmered in the dark among the monuments, a marble statue come to life. He snorted and shook himself. Here at last, he was clean.
Jame watched him for a while. So. This was the refuge that he had chosen. She had seen at Tentir how he could disappear even in closer quarters to the college than this. Given how he could manipulate his smell, no hunting dog could follow him here. As for his tracks . . . well, he had taken care of that.
Reassured, she turned and traced their path backward along the margin of the submerged path. Her boots, at least, were new and more or less waterproof, although they soon began to squelch.
They must have come a mile or more off the main road. What a vast city of the dead this was, and so far she had only experienced one bank of it. Indeed, High Bashti was a very old city with a ban against burying an ordinary corpse within its walls. Most of its dead were cremated. Their ashes might come here, but so did the rest of the bodies, with a few exceptions for the deified and the sanctified. Odd, how municipal reverence for death mingled with repulsion, largely on the basis of class. Snaggles was right to be outraged. No wonder the cult of the Deathless had attracted so many followers.
Here again was Thyme Street, which ran all the way across Bashti down to the Silver. The river Thyme coursed along beside it, dividing the necropolis in half, north from south.
The disturbance before had come from nearby, farther eastward. The noise had subsided, except for a low, moaning chant. Who sang? Why did the night air still reek of charred flesh?
Curiosity edged Jame forward against her better judgment.
Ahead, flames licked out the windows of a majestic three-story mausoleum. That ravaged exterior with its shattered statuary looked familiar. Could it belong to the Tigganis, Prestic’s family, much as she had seen it on her way into the city? The main door had been broken down. No dogs or carrion birds haunted it now, just a roaring wind tipped with orange against the night. Within, piled furniture blazed and wooden rafters sagged, eaten by embers. Were those figures reclining on stone couches? If so, they too burned with an oily smoke that roiled out of the shattered door.
People with torches watched. Firelight glimmered on their tears—of grief, of rage. Men sang a deep-throated dirge to their departed kin, to vengeance:
“Our blood rises, as did yours.
Father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle.
Ah, dear grandparents. Who will avenge you?
We, the living.
And so we swear.”
Some women beat their breasts and wailed. Children? There were a few with wide, disbelieving eyes, and if it was wise to retain them as witnesses, who could say? Vengeance could run for generations.
Jame didn’t know what she was seeing, but the raw emotion of it drove her back, one step, then another, until she found herself in a clearing between tombs, sheltered by their walls. Or perhaps not. More thunder. The rain had held off, but now it began to slice down in icy, hissing veils.
Lightning flashed. Around her stood hollow cavities in the air, given shape by shells of streaming rain. Darkness fell again, but by torchlight she could see their breath hanging before them like so many ghosts.
“No,” she said, backing away, into something.
“Yes,” said a voice in her ear, behind her.
Hands closed on her arms, twisted them. The feverish heat and steam of invisible flesh closed in—that, and the light of yellow, bloodshot eyes.
In a sudden rush, something large and dark burst into the clearing, scattering the assassins of the Shadow Guild. One gave a thin scream. A body thrashed in the grip of the newcomer, defined now not by rain but by blood as it was ripped limb from limb. One arm here, the other there. When the head tore off, the scream suddenly cut short. His fellows had already crashed away through the undergrowth.
Jame had backed up against the side wall of the mausoleum without being aware that she had moved. The fire still raging within warmed the stones. Another flare of lightning illuminated her . . . rescuer? She stared. He panted, glaring. Mismatched hands flexed. Stitches tore flesh. Then night fell again and he was gone.
Trinity.
On the road, wagons were limbering up and leaving. Jame perched on the tailgate step of one, below the occupants’ line of sight. She hoped that they would talk about what had just happened, but no one spoke. The ride back to the city was long, cold, and miserable, even after the deluge spattered to an end. At the eastern gate she dismounted, stumbling a bit with cramped legs, and made her way back to the Campus Kencyrath. Autumn’s Day dawned as she arrived.