The Sea of Time (41 page)

“WHAT TIME D’YOU THINK IT IS?” asked Rowan, gazing up into the fog-bound sky. The sun had to be up there somewhere.

“Late afternoon, I’d say,” Grimly replied, reshaping his mouth for human speech. Otherwise, he was in his complete furs, trotting beside Torisen’s post horse. “And my paws are getting sore.”

“You should have accepted a mount at Falkirr,” said Torisen, glancing down at him.

“Then my butt would ache.”

The mist was denser than it had been at Gothregor. Now one could barely see more than a horse’s length ahead. Their pace, accordingly, had been slower than expected, although they were still outpacing the main Knorth force which now, hopefully, had been augmented by the Brandan keep. Ten riders and two wolvers, with at least fifty miles yet to go. Bare branches dripped on their heads. The wet stones of the River Road were slippery underfoot. When the dark came—all too soon now—it would be hard to see anything.

Yce loped along at Torisen’s other stirrup, making no comment. No one had thought about Yce in the rush to leave Gothregor, and by the time she had ghosted up level with them out of the fog, it had been too late to send her back.

“Lady?”

“I do well enough,” answered Trishien, through gritted teeth. It was a long time since she had last ridden astride and her muscles burned, but be damned if she meant to hold anyone up. Her gloved fingers fluttered to the tablet that she carried thrust into her coat. Why had there been no word from Kirien since that last, terse message?

Kindrie saw her motion. “I’m sure your niece is all right,” he said. “Caldane would never dare hurt her.”

“As for what Caldane would or wouldn’t do,” she replied tartly, “Ancestors only know.”

Grimly and Yce both pricked their ears.

“Someone is coming,” said the former.

They must be approaching Wilden by now—near Shadow Rock too, for that matter, but the Danior keep was on the other side of the Silver from both them and the next post station, for which the Randir were responsible.

Torisen signaled a halt. Behind him, swords rasped free of their scabbards. His own hand dropped to the hilt of Kin-Slayer, but before he could draw it, a pale horse splashed with mud to its shoulders plunged down the slope to their right and into their midst. The rider set her mount back on its hocks to stop it, then dropped the reins and raised empty hands.

Rowan barked a challenge.

“Quiet,” came a low, rasping response, “for Ancestors’ sake.”

The stranger drew up next to Torisen, ignoring the two wolvers although they made her mount dance nervously.

“Highlord, an ambush has been set for you at the Wilden post station,” she said in a voice that grated on the nerves.

As far as Torisen could recall, he had never met this Kendar before, and he thought that he would have remembered her. She had a distinctive, square face, small eyes, and the clenched, blunt jaw of a Molocar. A scar across her throat explained the gravel in her voice.

“How did the Randir know that I was coming?” he asked.

“As I understand it, Lady Rawneth had prior knowledge of Lord Caineron’s plans. She knew that the Jaran Lordan would communicate with her aunt—that’s you, I assume, Matriarch—and that her aunt would tell you, lord. No one could doubt what would happen next. I can show you a way around the trap.”

Rowan snorted. “In order to lead us into another one? Why should we trust you, Randir?”

“Look.” The woman bent forward and lifted a heavy fall of hair off the back of her neck. The wavy lines of the rathorn sigil were branded into her flesh, the white scars decades old.

“An Oath-breaker,” said Burr, and his eyes grew hard. As a rule, Knorth Kendar did not sympathize with those of their house who had failed to follow their lord Ganth into exile after the White Hills.

“I carried an unborn child at the time,” said the woman in a flat voice. “It died anyway. After that, the Randir took me in. Follow if you will.”

She turned her horse and plunged back up the slope.

Rowan reined about to regain Torisen’s side. “Are you mad, Blackie? She betrayed your father. Why not his son?”

“Was it sensible for anyone to follow Ganth Grayling over the Ebonbane? Remember, he threw down his power like a petulant child with a broken toy and abandoned his followers, all but the ones who couldn’t conceive of life without him. Those I pity and hope some day to reclaim.”

He summoned one of his riders and sent him back to warn the main Knorth body about the ambush. Another rider peeled off to cross the Silver as best she could to alert the Danior keep to Mount Alban’s plight.

The diminished vanguard left the road. The slope above was slick with last year’s matted grass and cut across by streams that tumbled down from Wilden’s moat higher up. The widest of these were bridged; the rest required fording. Their guide rode before them, barely visible. Then she disappeared.

“I warned you,” said Rowan, keeping her voice low. “Now what?”

Grimly had trotted on ahead. Now he slipped back to rejoin them.

“She’s met someone on a bridge,” he reported. “Most likely a guard. They’re talking.”

Torisen edged forward, acutely aware of the muffled jingle of tack as the others followed him. Now he could see the bridge and two mounted figures on its crown, their horses standing head to tail. There was a grunt. One of the riders slumped and toppled. The other signaled the Knorth to advance and rode on. Crossing the bridge, Torisen looked down at the huddled figure of a Randir who appeared to have been knifed. His horse stood over him, whickering to his oncoming mates. Grimly offered him to Yce, then swung up into the saddle himself when she refused, much to the animal’s distress: no horse wanted to have a wolver on its back.

Eventually they turned downhill again and regained the River Road to find their guide waiting for them.

“Why did you do this?” Torisen asked her.

For a moment she was silent, looking down at her hands as they gripped the reins.

“I had a son,” she finally said. “My last child. A randon cadet. His name was . . .” Her normally expressionless face worked as she tried to remember. Then she rolled up a sleeve and read the name etched in deep, crude scars on her forearm. “Quirl. He tried to assassinate the Randir Heir at Tentir, and failed. Lady Rawneth took away his name, his soul. She did the same to all the cadets who failed to do her will. Their parents can’t remember them, only that they have lost something precious. My bond to the Randir broke that night, but no one seemed to notice except me.”

“To whom were you bound?”

“To a minor Randir Highborn, a Shanir confined to the Priests’ College. Lady Rawneth only binds her favorites. As for Lord Kenan . . .” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“What is your name?”

“They call me Corvine. I petitioned once to rejoin the Knorth.”

Ah. Now Torisen remembered. He had received the request at the same time that Merry and Cron had asked permission to have a new child. At that point, he had only been able to grant one such appeal, having learned the danger of overextending himself. Since then, however, the Gnasher had killed several of his herdsmen, opening new vacancies. So had the sudden absence of Brier Iron-thorn.

“If you still wish it . . .”

Corvine raised her eyes. “I do,” she said in a husky voice, and held out her hands.

Torisen cupped them in his slim, long fingers. His scars and the Kendar’s seemed to run together, although her hands were nearly twice the size of his own.

“I confirm our bond and seal it with blood,” he said, using the ancient formula that went back to the time when Highlords were often blood-binders. That latter foolishness, of course, was no longer needed.

“My lord,” she said, and bowed her grizzled head.

VI

KIRIEN WATCHED as Lord Caineron paced the library, back and forth, back and forth, as the floor creaked under him. The day was dwindling toward dusk, not that one could clearly see this through the continuing overcast of fog. Some time ago the Director had gone with a Caineron guard to check on the rest of the college. Neither had returned. Kirien suspected that Taur, ever the tactician, had only stayed in the library long enough to be sure that she stood in no immediate danger from their unwelcome guest. Now he would be plotting a counterstrike.

Caldane had been polite to her, but with a sarcastic edge that told her he didn’t take her role as Jaran Lordan any more seriously than he did Jame’s as her Knorth counterpart. Both of their houses were playing the fool, in his opinion, and would shortly realize their mistakes.

“M’lord,” she said, “do you really think that destroying a particular manuscript will negate the Knorth mandate?”

“‘Rise up, Highlord of the Kencyrath,’ said the Arrin-ken to Glendar. ‘Your brother has forfeited all. Flee, man, flee, and we will follow.’” Caldane snorted. “Talk about a song providing a legal precedent! Gerridon lost the Kencyrath through his treachery. Who can doubt that? So what if someone copied such foolishness down? A touch of fire, and where is our precious Highlord then?”

Kirien considered her words. She had long ago discovered that if she phrased things properly, people told her the truth, at least as they saw it.

“If Torisen loses power, who takes it up?”

“Why, the strongest, of course. Who but me?”

“Based on how many Kendar are bound to you, I suppose, but how many actually belong to your seven established sons?”

“Humph. They all still serve me. To whom can Torisen turn? I’d like to see that sister of his add to his numbers, not that he would ever let her. Even he isn’t that stupid.”

“And if you claim the Highlord’s seat, will you also claim the Kenthiar?”

Caldane turned away with a petulant scowl. “That filthy old thing. It’s already decapitated three legitimate Knorth highlords. Did you know that? No one even knows where it came from. Torisen would never have risked wearing it if he had had his father’s ring and sword to give him authority. Bloody show-off.”

“In other words,” murmured Kirien, “no Kenthiar.”

Caldane shot a discontented look out the window at the gathering gloom. “Where
is
that wretched Index? Am I going to have to burn the entire library?”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Ha. Try me. And I mean to incinerate that obscenity who calls herself Ashe, if I can lay hands on her.”

Kirien caught her breath. The man was serious.

“Do you have any idea,” she said carefully, “how much trouble you are in already? For that matter, what do you hope to gain by holding me hostage?”

He glowered at her. “Wait and see.”

“If you hurt me, the Jaran will declare war on you, maybe the Knorth, Brandan, and Danior as well. They take my rank seriously, even if you don’t, and they value the records held here at the college. Think. Where would we be without them?”

“Free to create our own destiny. Don’t you see? The dead past shackles us. Our god abandoned us ages ago. What do we owe him? Even after all these years, this is still a new world, ours for the taking. That we haven’t already is an indictment of Knorth leadership. As for you, what if I were to take you back to Restormir, eh? My eldest son Grondin needs a new consort. He crushed the last one.”

“This is the man so fat that he has to be trundled about his own house in a wheelbarrow, isn’t it? I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t asking for your consent, girl.”

“D’you think that my uncle Jedrak would grant it?”

“If I have you, what choice does he have?”

Kirien regarded him curiously. She was used to academic discourse where contestants might disagree, but each side had a grasp of basic logic and of the shared concept of reality that bound the Kencyrath together. Caldane seemed to live in his own world, defined by his ambition and power. Thanks to his scrollsmen, he had half-glimpsed a possible shortcut to the Highlord’s seat. Now, however, what had once seemed simple was putting forth as many barbs as a porcupine. She read this in his heavy, anxious pout and in the gathering sheen of sweat on his brow.

“I think,” she said, not unkindly, “that you should consult with the Caineron Matriarch about such matters.”

Caldane shivered. “I don’t talk to my great-grandmother Cattila if I can help it. She only laughs at me.”