The Sea of Time (9 page)
Authors: P C Hodgell
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Epic, #Paranormal
At least a dozen of the enemy archers swarmed around the wagons. The driver of the first beat them off with the vigorous help of his passenger, a blond, middle-aged woman. A raider clambered up into the second cart, seized a slight, veiled figure cowering beside the driver and jumped off with her.
The second carter saw Jame as she approached. He rose, waving his arms, and shouted, “They’ve stolen our new seeker!”
Jame angled to follow the fleeing man and his captive. Behind her she heard the cadets clash with the remaining raiders. Ahead, the man ran into a stand of date palms and a moment later plunged out the other side mounted on a fleetfoot. Jame had seen such creatures offered for sale in Kothifir; they were like gazelles, but larger, faster, and often used for racing. Bel began to fall behind.
Jame caught a flash of white. The next moment the fleetfoot squealed and jinked sideways as Death’s-head roared down on it leaving a swath of trampled grain in his wake. For a moment they ran side by side. Then the rathorn snapped at the other’s throat and brought it crashing down with a broken neck. Captor and captive were thrown.
Jame leaped off Bel and hit the ground running too fast for her feet to keep pace, an arrow in her hand. The raider was scrambling up. The arrow caught him in the eye as she slammed into him. They went down together in a heap. Jame felt the shaft’s nock punch her in the shoulder as her weight and momentum drove it home.
Rising from his still-twitching body, she turned to his former captive. The girl huddled on the ground, cradling her wrist. She had broken it. That she had also cut her arm seemed less serious, until Jame saw that the wound was driveling red dust. The skin around it fell away as the flesh beneath turned to powder. More and more fell, until the bone itself began to dissolve. She was crumbling in Jame’s arms, her enormous hazel eyes wide and terrified above a rotting veil.
“Tell . . .” she whispered, and even her voice was a thinning thread, warped by an unfamiliar accent. “Tell my sisters . . .”
Her eyes glazed over and sank. The flesh on her face collapsed. Lips drew back over perfect white teeth, skin over the delicate bones of her face. Jame had been supporting the girl’s head. Now she laid down her naked skull and stared at the web of white-gold hair caught in her fingers.
“Well,” said Timmon behind her. “That was different, even for you.”
“Who was she, Timmon? Where did she come from, and what happened to her?”
“I don’t know, but she was obviously the reason for the raid. As soon as your man ran away with her, the others scattered and tried to escape. We caught them all, of course. Brier reckons they’re from Gemma, a rival Rim city with no seekers of its own.”
Jame remembered the Gemman ambassador in the Rose Tower, the first time she had sought an audience there. Krothen had threatened to hang any captured raiders.
“What will you do with them?” she asked.
“Take them to the king’s guard. All seekers are his people, not to be touched by anyone else.”
“Then I’d better tell Commandant Harn.”
To one side, Death’s-head pinned the dead fleetfoot with a dewclaw and bent to rip strips of flesh off its carcass. He was already splashed scarlet to the knees and all but purring.
“At least someone is happy,” said Jame.
II
SHE FOUND JORIN waiting for her at the edge of the camp, sprawled in the meager shade of an arcanda tree whose leaves rolled up tight during the daytime to preserve moisture. The heat didn’t suit the ounce any more than it did her or, for that matter, the rathorn, all three being natives of the northern climes. The blind hunting cat rose when Jame saw him, stretched, yawned, and trotted up to butt his head against her thigh. She scratched him, noting that he had begun to shed heavily, down to a sleek, pale gold coat mottled with creamy rings.
Together, they went through the camp. Jame was about to turn right into the Knorth barracks when she saw a stir ahead outside the Commandant’s quarters on the far side of the inner ward—new arrivals to the Host from the Riverland. Jame glimpsed a familiar sharp, pale face to one side and advanced to greet Shade. The Randir cadet was clad in dress grays with her gilded swamp adder Addy draped around her neck like a golden torque. Both looked surprisingly cool, as if they shared the same cold blood.
“What’s going on?” Jame asked.
Shade rolled her shoulders in an almost boneless shrug that made the serpent undulate. “There’s been unrest in the Randir barracks over several unexplained deaths, also some disappearances. Ran Awl is here to investigate. I’m her new aide.”
“Congratulations,” said Jame, meaning it. She had wondered what the Randir would do with Lord Kenan’s half-Kendar daughter, especially since she was sworn neither to her father nor to her grandmother, Lady Rawneth. Neither was the Randir war-leader Awl, as far as Jame knew. Politics at Wilden were notoriously complicated.
Awl appeared in the doorway, a tall, raw-boned woman with close-cropped iron-gray hair. Standing behind her, burly Harn Grip-hard overlapped her on all sides.
“Ask if you need any help,” he was saying. “It’s a strange, troubling business.”
Then he saw Jame, and his bristly face reddened.
“So Lord Ardeth has seen fit to send you to me as a special aide. How kind of him.”
No, that was from Torisen’s dream. She wondered if her brother realized that he had shared it and more besides with her.
She saluted Harn. “Ran, an incoming caravan has lost their seeker to an ambush. She literally fell to pieces in my arms.”
“Yes, yes,” he said hastily, already turning away. “These things happen.”
“What,” Jame muttered at his retreating back, “all the time?”
“It seems you have a mystery of your own,” remarked Shade.
“Several of them,” said Jame, and sighed. Even now that she knew why her presence upset Harn, she didn’t know what to do about it. Knorth Lordan or not, surely the man couldn’t think that she wanted his post.
“Here’s someone else who came south with us,” Shade said, indicating a stolid figure as it limped up to them.
“Gorbel! How is your leg?”
The Caineron Lordan scowled at her under his beetling, sunburnt brow. “It hurts, thank you very much. You try getting smashed under a dying horse.”
“Well, yes. You were trying to kill me at the time, you know.”
Gorbel snorted. “Not likely to forget, am I? Father was disgusted with me for failing.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Not as long as he’s let me come south once the bone knit. Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue is the one really in trouble.”
Jame felt her heart sink. Ever since the Commandant of Tentir had beaten Honor’s Paradox by letting her graduate from the college against his lord’s wishes, she had worried about his fate. “What’s happened to him?”
“On the face of it, not much. Now that his stint at the college is over, Father has him mewed up in Restormir twiddling his thumbs. Damned waste of a valuable asset, if you ask me.”
Jame sighed, glad that it was no worse, given what Caineron had threatened. Still, for a man like the Commandant to waste his time playing the courtier . . .
No doubt about it: Caldane, Lord Caineron, was a fool.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “The last I heard, during the final cull you had earned one white stone for diplomacy and one black from the Falconer’s class for absenteeism, canceling each other out. So why are you here?”
“Earned another white, didn’t I, that last day of testing when you were off playing with your precious Merikit. For horsemanship, before you ask, little good it did me against that rathorn monster of yours.”
“I see you brought your pook, Twizzle,” said Shade, indicating the furry lump at Gorbel’s heels. Only the lolling red tongue gave a clue as to which end was which.
“Woof,” it said, and sat down to scratch what was probably an ear. Fur flew.
“I may still be lame, but I can ride. And hunt,” said Gorbel. “Show me a better tracker and I’ll take it with me instead.”
There was a bit more to it than that, thought Jame. Gorbel had shown signs of being bound to the pook as she was to Jorin and Shade to Addy. He should have kept attending the Falconer’s class to develop that link, not that it wasn’t likely to grow on its own with use.
Several third-year cadets walked past, giving the newly arrived second-years sidelong looks. “Fresh meat,” one said, not bothering to lower his voice. The others laughed.
Gorbel snorted. “Think they’re so grand, do they, for having survived the Cataracts and been promoted there? If we had fought, we could have skipped a year’s training too.”
Last year, the college had had virtually no second- or third-year students thanks to that great battle where so many had died.
“Maybe so,” said Jame, “but I would have hated to miss a minute of Tentir. Well, maybe a second or two.”
Shade watched the older cadets go. “There are rumors,” she said, “that the third-years have taken to blooding cadets who didn’t serve at the Cataracts.”
“Hence the deaths in your house and Ran Awl’s presence here?”
Shade shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve heard that hazing was vicious when Genjar commanded, up to the massacre at Urakarn and his death. Torisen forbade it when he took the Highlord’s seat. It still goes on, though, in some houses.”
Gorbel grunted. “No harm in a little spilt blood. Are we training to be warriors or not?”
An elderly, white-haired officer walked past in the other direction, glowering at Jame.
“Do you still get much of that?” asked Shade.
“Some.” Jame had hoped that she was past objections to her status as the only Highborn female in the Randon. “Fash hints to everyone who will listen that I only passed the last cull at Tentir because I’m the Highlord’s heir.”
Fash was one of Gorbel’s ten-command, but not noticeably under his control in this matter.
“That man is and always has been a fool,” said Gorbel heavily. “Tentir was a pond. The Host is an ocean. Let him flounder in it.”
By now it was time for supper. The three cadets exchanged nods and retired to their respective mess halls.
CHAPTER V
An Unexpected Guest
Summer 110
I
TORISEN DREAMED that he was a boy again, struggling to make his way in the Southern Host.
“Here,” said Harn Grip-hard gruffly, thrusting a paper at him. “Take this to the Jaran.”
Young Tori accepted back the note which he himself had transcribed, Harn’s handwriting being nearly unreadable. He had noted that early in his stay with the Southern Host, and it had suggested to him a way in which he might make himself useful. Harn had snarled at him at first, but he had persisted and by slow degrees had gained a measure of grudging acceptance.
Otherwise, he had no assigned role in the camp. That was hard, with everyone else so busy, so sure where they fitted in to the Host’s complex, bustling structure. Only he was the outsider. He had begged to be sent to the randon college at Tentir, but Adric had said that that would be too dangerous, so close to his father’s enemies, so here he was instead, where even the Ardeth wanted little to do with him. Maybe they shared Harn’s belief that he was one of their lord’s bastards, perhaps with a trace of Knorth blood to explain his distinctive looks. All in all, the only place he could call his own was the small, mean set of rooms not far from Harn’s office, kept for him by Adric’s spy Burr.
It was dusk when he emerged from the command block and set off south across the grassy inner ward under the flare of kindling stars.
A ten-command of second-year Edirr cadets trotted past him, skipping on alternate steps to the amusement of all whom they passed. For hazing, that was mild. The Randir and Caineron third-years had drawn blood, especially the latter, where a cadet had swallowed a live coal and died after being forced to tell a lie. The Randir were more subtle. There, two cadets had chosen the White Knife rather than live with what they had been made to do, whatever that was. It was rumored that Commandant Genjar had a taste for such games although he had never experienced them himself, not being a randon. His doting father Caldane had made the Randon Council accept him as Commandant of the Southern Host. Harn actually ran the camp. A proper nest of vipers, the Caineron, and the Randir no better.
The main street opened before him between the high walls of the barrack compounds. Lights shone in the Caineron to the west. The garrison would be sitting down to supper. The Knorth to the east remained dark and empty, a haunting emblem of Ganth Gray Lord’s fall.
Someone moved in the latter’s shadow.
“Please, sir, can you spare some food?”
A Kothifiran beggar, here, at this hour? If he were a thief, though—the camp did occasionally suffer from such infestations—should Tori call the guard? No. From the sound of his nasal voice, this was a boy not much older than Tori himself, and even more an alien here. On impulse he directed the stranger back to his own rooms.
“Tell Burr to feed you.”
The next garrison block, across from the Caineron to the south, belonged to the Jaran. Its gate was shut for the night, but the door cracked open at his knock. A wiry woman took the note which he handed to her. Something about her looked familiar.
“Were you a Knorth?” he asked, speaking despite himself.
She hesitated. “Yes, I was. How did you know?”
“Someone pointed you out to me.”
“A damn fine randon, and another bit of the Highlord’s wreckage,” the man had said. “All his house, scattered to the mercy of the winds. No wonder they curse him.”
“Do they honor you here?” Tori asked abruptly.
Her figure was backlit, her face unreadable. She tilted her head as if in thought. “Well enough, considering. Rather, pity those who went to other houses or who became Caineron
yondri-gon
like Harn Grip-hard. Why do you ask?” She moved a step toward him, as if drawn. “Who
are
you?”
“No one.” He stepped back. Dangerous, dangerous . . .
“Well, my name is Rowan. Remember it. Please.”
“I will.”
The door closed.
Tori turned back toward the inner ward, his mission complete.
But what had just happened? He had been drawn to his father’s people before, as to Harn. Were they now beginning to respond? It felt like a scratching on the inside of his soul-image.
Let me out, let me out
. . .
There was an unlocked door and behind it a faint voice. He tried not to listen, much less to answer.
Father, this is my life, such as it is. I left you, and the Haunted Lands keep where I was born, and the memory of the sister whom you drove out before me. You didn’t keep faith with her. Why should I with you? Leave me alone.
Here again was the deserted Knorth barrack. On impulse, he put his hand on the locked door, and it swung open at his touch on rasping hinges. The inner courtyard was weed-choked and overgrown. Balconies rose above it, tier on tier up to the third floor, faced on the inside by closed doors like so many sealed eyes. What had happened here when his father had marched out the Northern Host to disastrous battle in the White Hills? How quickly had the Southern garrison felt his fall? At once, probably. They were bound to him. Then he had thrown down the Highlord’s collar in petulant despair and gone away, leaving them to fend for themselves in a world echoing hollowly with his departure.
“Damn you, Father,” Tori muttered to the emptiness. “Did you ever think of anyone but yourself, and her?”
Ganth hadn’t then known Tori’s mother (and Jame’s too, he reminded himself), yet he had seemed drawn to her across the Ebonbane, into the Haunted Lands. There she had come to him and he had been happy, for a while. Her departure had destroyed him. Jame had told him that their mother was Jamethiel Dream-weaver, but what sense did that make? The Dream-weaver had been consort to Gerridon, the Master of Knorth, during the Fall three thousand years ago.
“Time moves slower in Perimal Darkling than in Rathillien,” Jame had said.
(What? When? A dream within a dream.
I want to wake up, but I can’t, I can’t, even knowing what comes next . . . )
The wind combed the weeds, twining them around his legs, whining:
never, forever, never, forever . . .
The barrack’s gate rasped again. He had been followed. Four dark figures slipped through the opening, one after another, and spread out to surround him. They wore their cadet scarves over the lower halves of their faces, the insignia turned inward.
“You have enemies,” Adric had said. Which ones were these?
One stepped forward to grab him. Tori caught his hand and pulled him into an earth-moving throw that tumbled him into a comrade. Another he avoided with wind-blowing. He took the fight to them with a fire-leaping kick that made a fourth stagger back and pause to spit out a tooth. Then they were upon him, bearing him down. He struggled in their grip, among the tough, clinging grass, but they were Kendar, a head taller than he, and forty pounds heavier, each.
Someone yanked a hood over his head and tightened its drawstring around his throat. He thrashed in their arms until one of them bashed him over the ear. The world spun. Was he on his feet or off? Which way was up? They were carrying him, he thought, half dazed, but where?
Into a building, against whose walls their shuffling footsteps echoed, up a stair—bump, bump, bump—into a noisy room.
They set him on something that tottered underfoot, a rickety chair or stool. Hands held him upright until his head cleared enough for him to balance, more or less. His hands were bound behind him and a noose had been dropped over his head. While he tipped forward, his hands were drawn up and the noose tightened. The rope must have been passed over a rafter. He fought his way upright and stood panting within the close confines of the hood.
People were talking, laughing, eating. He heard the rasp of utensils on pewter plates and mugs thumping on tabletops.
Someone cleared his throat for silence and got it, except for a nervous giggle off to one side. A chair scraped back. Footsteps approached.
“Now then, mystery boy,” said a voice he had never heard before. “Who are you?”
Tori didn’t answer. A swish, a searing pain across the back of his legs. He barely kept himself from toppling forward.
“Even bastards have fathers. Who was yours?”
No response. Another fiery blow. It must be a switch or thin rod, Tori thought. Nothing that would do him serious damage, unless he lost his balance. But oh Trinity, the pain . . .
“The Ardeth sent you here, but they aren’t in any hurry to claim you. Are you one of M’lord Adric’s bastards, hmm? Answer!”
Another blow.
“Stubborn, aren’t you? Well then, let’s make you howl.”
The switch hissed and cracked, again and again. Time stopped in one endless moment of agony.
“What in Perimal’s name . . . ?”
Harn’s bellow nearly made Tori fall off his precarious perch. Hands grabbed him as he swayed. The noose and the rope binding his hands were removed, but not the hood.
“Steady,” said Burr in his ear, helping him down.
“Commander Grip-hard.” A new voice this time, languid, familiar. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
“I came looking for my clerk.” Harn was trying to speak calmly, but his voice rumbled with enough anger to rattle the silverware. “Perhaps, not being a randon, you didn’t know that hazing is strictly an in-house ritual. This boy is an Ardeth.”
A deep sigh. “Well, then, take him if you must. He was proving poor sport anyway.”
Burr hustled Tori out, not removing the hood until they were in the street outside a barracks.
“You may know,” he said cryptically, “but he doesn’t know that you know.”
“How did
you
know where to find me?”
“That boy you sent me to feed saw you being hustled off. He’s back in your rooms now, probably eating everything in them.”
Harn emerged from the compound, still mountainous with rage. Tori had heard that the Kendar was a berserker, but this was the closest he had seen to a full eruption. The very stones seemed to shudder under him.
“One of these days,” Harn was growling, “one of these days . . .”
Tori freed himself from Burr and touched the randon’s arm. From the sizzle down his nerves, it felt as if he had grounded a lightning bolt. Harn shook himself. His small, bloodshot eyes blinked and focused.
“All right, boy?”
“Yes, Ran.”
“You could complain about this to the Ardeth.”
“No, Ran.”
Tori had had time to think. However nasty the hazing, one didn’t run to the authorities to cry about it. Besides, he wasn’t really hurt, although his legs ached abysmally and threatened to give out under him. Most importantly, he had indeed recognized that drawling voice. The Commandant of the Southern Host, Genjar himself, had presided over his torture.
II