Bound in Blood

III The Forgotten

The Brandan and Caineron compounds occupied the northernmost halls of the Women’s World. Both were large by its standards, but dwarfed by the empty halls beyond that extended to the far eastern walls and the Ghost Walks, former home of the Knorth.

Jame paused at a fountain in a courtyard between the two compounds, the last public source of water before the wastes beyond, and sank down on the marble rim. She knew she shouldn’t stop, but suddenly felt bone weary. Several days’ hard ride, a wrangle with her brother, a fight with Adiraina, and now an upcoming visit to a ghost—once, all of that would have been a mere foretaste of the night to come.

And there was something else, something she should remember but couldn’t, quite. It had niggled at her for days, like some small hole in her memory not to be found by random prodding. Something recent had half-roused it, but now it was gone again.

Stripping off her gloves, she bent to wash her face, carefully, trying to get as little blood in the water as possible. The moon, waning toward the dark, had long since set, but the clouds had momentarily parted, leaving starry rents in the night sky. Gusts of wind rattled bushes against the surrounding walls and blew the fountain’s central jet of water sideways in misty veils. Fallen leaves floated on the dark surface. Beneath them, faintly luminous, drifted silver clouds of tiny fish.

It probably wasn’t that easy to blood-bind someone, she thought, dashing water out of her eyes and wiping her hands dry on her pants. After all, that particular darkness had run in her veins all her life and, to the best of her knowledge, she had only twice bound anyone with it—a certain young rogue rathorn who had made the mistake of trying to have her for lunch and, maybe, her half-brother Bane, who in his farewell kiss in Tai-tastigon had nearly bitten off her lower lip. Even so, as when Greshan had temporarily bound his younger brother Ganth for his sadistic pleasure, the effect clearly varied depending on the relative strengths of binder and bound, perhaps also on the amount of blood involved. As for Tirandys . . .

Tears pricked her eyes. Ah, no, Senethari, dear teacher, I don’t want to remember.

But she did.

Tirandys had damned himself at the Fall for love of Jamethiel Dream-weaver, becoming a shape-shifting changer in Gerridon’s service. Under shadow’s eaves he had taught the Dream-weaver’s daughter, Jame, the Senethar and the meaning of honor by his own bitter example. At the Cataracts, on his master’s orders, he had tried to blood-bind Torisen, not realizing that Tori himself was a blood-binder, far stronger than he. The resulting convulsions had nearly torn him apart before the Ivory Knife had brought him final peace.

“What is love, Jamie? What is honor?”

“Child, what do you know of grief or of death?”

Of grief, much. As for the rest, well, she was learning. Oh, but it was hard.

Forepaws on the marble rim, Jorin stretched down his long, graceful neck to lap water. A fish rose to the motion, thinking that someone had come to feed it. Instead, the rough tongue scooped it up and the cat sprang back in surprise, dropping it on the grass. Then he nosed out the frantic quicksilver wriggle from among the blades, gulped it down, and began eagerly to angle for another with quick, random dabs of a paw and much joyous splashing.

Her bond to him was of a different sort, formed spontaneously when his breeder had tried to drown him as a kitten. Royal gold ounces were valuable, but not blind ones. About a dozen other Shanir at the randon college possessed this particular gift and were bound to a variety of creatures ranging from a hawk to a gilded swamp adder to assorted insects.

Jame smiled, remembering Gari and his temporary infestation of termites, exiled to sleep in the training square because wooden floors kept disintegrating under him.

Her amusement faded as she thought of her half-breed servant Graykin. That had been another spontaneous bond, of mind rather than of blood, created out of his desperate desire to belong and her need, at that moment, for his assistance. Desire had outlived need, or so it seemed, but the bond still held, awake and asleep. How often she had dreamed of the Southron’s soul-image where a chained mongrel guarded an empty hearth—empty because his mistress had escaped and failed to take him with her.

She would have to decide, when she got back to Tentir, what to do about him.

All in all, how many kinds of binding there were, as if their detested three-faced god had tried to lash them all together in as many ways as possible before he (or she, or it) had deserted them for realms unknown. That applied most strongly to the Kendar, like poor Mullen, who felt incomplete when not bound to one lord or another. As a rule, Highborn didn’t bind other Highborn; the link of kinship was usually considered enough. If a lord was mistrustful or sadistic enough, though . . . there were some terrible, ancient stories of madness among the Highborn consummated in blood. What Greshan had done to his brother, however temporary, was a pale shadow of such abominations.

Then there were the deeper connections, which she was only beginning to understand.

Shadows, names, and souls were definitely linked.

Dreams could be prophetic or utterly trivial, individual or shared. As a child, she had lived in her brother’s dreamscape as easily as he had in hers, the one melting into the other. Some of that was coming back, to Torisen’s horror and her amusement, when they didn’t make her tingle with half-aroused annoyance.

More important, dreams gave access to the collective soulscape. Everyone had a soul-image, whether they knew it or not, and at some point all such images merged, first within a house, then within the Kencyrath as a whole. There, one touched as deep as it was possible to go short of penetrating the god-head itself. A lord bound his followers on this level; a healer worked here to cure body and mind; a nemesis—ah, what mischief one could inflict with access and sufficient ill will.

Jame wondered if she should tell anyone that Rawneth had somehow invaded Brenwyr’s soul-image and had been taunting the Iron Matriarch half to madness—that is, until she, Jame, had ripped the Witch out.

She extended her ivory claws, each like a honed crescent of the moon, and flexed them thoughtfully. Click, click, click. So many years hating and hiding them, only to find them a valued asset at Tentir. The Kendar were practical that way, unlike most Highborn who saw the shame of Gerridon’s fall in every Shanir child born among their ranks. The irony of that was that they had destroyed or discarded many potential Tyr-ridan over the past three thousand years and so effectively had thwarted their own destiny.

Brenwyr the Maledight was undoubtedly a nemesis, but one (so far) constrained by love and honor.

What, if anything, restrained the Witch of Wilden? Neither time nor space, apparently, and her presence in Brenwyr’s soul-image suggested some truly appalling possibilities.

Jame’s awareness of the Randir Matriarch had sharpened over the past year, even over the past few days since she had seen Rawneth in the eyes of her puppet, the possessed, dying Tempter. It was a good thing, although mortifying, that Rawneth considered Jame no more than a mouse under her paw, a plaything rather than a threat. No question about it: The Witch was much more experienced than Jame. She certainly got around a damn sight too much in the soulscape for Jame’s comfort.

And what in Perimal’s name had she done to those poor Randir cadets?

Again Jame saw the leaping flames of the pyre, the silent watchers, and Lord Kenan’s features twisting, twisting, into the face of the servant who had stood a-smirk behind Rawneth on the night that Greshan burned.

Surely I know that man . . .

She jerked awake, on the verge of revelation and of tumbling into the fountain.

It had been much too long a day.

Jorin ambled around the rim to join her.

“Am I forgiven?” she asked him as he butted her with his nut-hard head.

So many bonds, she thought, rubbing cheeks with the ounce. So many ways to misuse them.

Yes, she was also a nemesis. It was her nature to sense the weak places in the fabric of her people, rotted with ambition or treachery. Every instinct told her to reach in with her claws and rip out the foulness, just as she had Rawneth from Brenwyr’s soul and the Randir Tempter from Tentir’s shadows. She could do that, but could she contain the damage that she caused?

Tai-tastigon in flames, Karkinaroth crumbling, “The Riverland reduced to rubble and you in the midst of it, looking apologetic . . . ”

Adiraina was right to fear her.

Still, some things did need to be broken.

I’ll just have to be more careful, she thought.

Jorin’s ears pricked. He jumped down and trotted toward the bushes hard against the Caineron compound just as a figure clad in billowing white burst out through them.

“Surprise . . . umph!”

“Yow!”

Lyra Lack-wit sprawled at Jame’s feet, having tripped over Jorin and, again, trodden on his toes.

“Between us,” said Jame, “we’ll cripple that cat yet.”

She helped the young Caineron to rise as Lyra floundered in a welter of lace that revealed as much as it concealed, secured by a haphazard web of ribbons. That and a sketchy mask made up the night attire of a young lady belonging to a very rich house with not very good taste.

“I hate these clothes,” Lyra said, wrestling with wayward cords as if with a knot of silken serpents. “They keep trying to strangle me. What do you wear to bed?”

“Nothing. Lyra, why are you plunging around in the shrubbery, much less this late at night?”

“That’s my room up there.” The girl gestured vaguely toward the looming bulk of the Caineron quarters. As with most Caineron structures, given a family tendency to height-sickness, there were few windows, but one halfway up sported the defiant stub of a balcony. “I saw you below and came down to say hello. Hello!”

“To you too, lady.”

It was impossible not to like the little idiot, daughter that she was of an enemy house. Moreover, she and sometimes the Lordan Gorbel suggested that there might be some worthwhile Caineron after all. The value of Lord Caldane’s war-leader and current Commandant of Tentir, Sheth Sharp-tongue, went without saying.

“Now go back inside,” she told the girl. “I think it’s going to rain again. Besides, this isn’t a safe time to be abroad.”

Lyra pouted. “Oh, I’m tired of being safe. It’s so boring. Everything is, here. That’s why I was so glad to see you. Such interesting things always happen when you’re around!”

“That’s one way to put it,” said Jame dryly. “Just the same . . . ”

Lyra gave a little shriek, and Jorin began to growl. Someone stood by the southern entrance to the courtyard, a black shape defined by its stillness against a restless fretwork of leaves.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

That hoarse, rasping voice told Jame who spoke, and her heart sank. She had forgotten that the Kendar nicknamed Corvine was currently doing a guard rotation in the Women’s Halls at Gothregor. Tentir had been much more pleasant without the Randir drill sargent running any Knorth she could find into the ground. Jame hadn’t yet suffered under her discipline, but had been uncomfortably aware of the Kendar’s hard eyes following her across training field, hall, and square. Most Randir were more subtle, mirroring their mistress’s sly, almost amused malice. With this one, however, the hatred seemed more raw and personal although Jame didn’t know why.

Now she gave the Randir sargent a wary salute, deferential but tempered with just enough dignity to remind her that here at Gothregor, Jame was more than a mere cadet.

“How can I help you, Sar?”

A strange grating sound answered her. Corvine stepped out of the shadows into the courtyard’s dim starlight. For a Kendar she wasn’t tall, perhaps only a bit over Torisen’s height, but she was twice Jame’s weight and none of it fat. As to age, she might have been anywhere from forty to sixty years old; with Kendar, it was often hard to tell. The rasp in her voice came from an old throat wound which the healers hadn’t dealt with in time. The grinding noise came from her teeth.

“They say you were there when my son died.”

Startled, Jame heard herself reply, “I didn’t know that your son was a cadet.” God’s claws, she hadn’t even known that Corvine had a son. Memories of the cadets granted the White Knife by Randiroc flashed through her mind. Which one had he been?

And again, there was that fleeting, fretting sense of something—someone?—forgotten.

The Kendar stalked toward Jame, her face blunt and grim as a Molocar’s, her big hands opening and closing.

. . . clenched in on themselves like a fist . . . just waiting for someone to hit . . .

“If you want,” whispered Lyra, peeking out from behind Jame where she had taken refuge, “I can scream.”

“Not yet.”

They backed away from the advancing Randir, beginning to circle the fountain through its plume of spray. Jame hoped that Jorin was nowhere underfoot this time. She had had some experience with large, angry Kendar. They were best faced at arm’s length, when solidly on one’s feet.

“He was the last of my children. The last. And the way he died . . . ”

But to die by the White Knife was honorable, thought Jame, still confused. Perhaps the Kendar meant the boy’s wasted state.

Oh, Rawneth, what did you do?

“Remember!” Corvine slammed her fist into the fountain’s marble rim, making Lyra jump and squeak. “Why can’t I remember? But you were there. You saw. Dammit, tell me!”

“Tell her what?” Lyra whispered.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember either.”

It had begun to rain, a quick, tentative patter that dappled the dark water, followed by a sheet falling so hard that it hurt. Corvine shouldered through it, oblivious, her voice a growl matching its muted thunder.

“You cursed so-called lordan of a ruined, fallen house, how could you let any child die that way?”

“Sar, I’m truly sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.”

“Liar!”

Lightning for an instant revealed three black figures, two huddled so close that they merged. Thunder boomed, rattling stones. Then came the deluge.

“Run!” Jame shouted at Lyra. Her own ears rang so loudly that she wondered if the girl heard, but another whiplash of light showed something white rushing away—not toward the safety of the Caineron compound but northward, out of the courtyard into the deserted halls beyond. Damn.

Jame sensed rather than saw Corvine hurtle toward her. She side-stepped. The Kendar stumbled against the fountain’s rim, cursing, and toppled over it. Thunder swallowed the splash. Lightning caught silver fish momentarily airborne.

Jame turned and ran.