The Sea of Time

XIII Dreams and Nightmares

With the end of the autumn harvest, preparations for winter began in the Riverland. Barley was threshed, chimneys cleaned, meat smoked and salted. All of the outer ward garden at Gothregor had been gleaned except for the mangel-wurzel destined for fodder or, if necessary, for soup; but it needn’t come to the latter. For the first time, Torisen could buy what he lacked, with enough left over for the odd luxury. However, as with many a man suddenly come into wealth, he hesitated to spend any more than was absolutely required. Aerulan’s dowry arrived in regular installments, most of which went into an iron box shoved into a corner.

“You really could afford to buy more clothes,” Kindrie said, eyeing his lord’s meager winter wardrobe. “Most of these coats have darns on top of darns.”

“And all the warmer they are for it.” Which was true: Kendar work tended to be eerily efficient. “Besides,” he added, “Burr enjoys a bit of needlework on a cold winter’s night.”

Burr made a face, but didn’t contradict.

The two cousins were getting along reasonably well, if with some wariness on both sides.

Walking on eggshells, Torisen thought, not that he really doubted Kindrie’s competence or loyalty, nor had he for some time. Rather, he was afraid of waking the wrathful voice of his father deep in his soul-image and the spates of irrationality to which it gave rise. It occurred to him from time to time that he really had to get Ganth out of there, but how? Kindrie was a soul-walker. Perhaps he would know. However, Torisen hesitated to put it to the test, and felt all the more weakened by that hesitation.

Luckily, Riverland politics were currently quiet, although rumors came from Restormir that Lord Caineron still fretted over the loss of the golden willow long after any sensible man would have let it go. Certainly, his ire over the singers’ Lawful Lies had been inflamed. Word came from Mount Alban that he was withdrawing his scrollsmen one by one and questioning them—about what, exactly, they refused to say, but they didn’t look happy.

Meanwhile, Torisen continued to dream, sometimes in a confused fashion about Jame, but more often about his own past with the Southern Host. He caught fitful glimpses of his sister’s journey into the Wastes, though—snatchers groping out of the sand, a rhi-sar charge, a long ride out into the waters of a vanished sea, and then a wailing, desolate cry:

“Langadine has fallen!”

“My sons,” someone was weeping. “Oh, my children!”

Jame stood on the deck of a ship, looking back into nightmare, her face implacable. The slaughter of an innocent population—“Do we also worship a monster?”

“There,” she said, pointing, and the wind did her bidding. A sea of corpses rose up to storm a black tower and everything fell.

I am falling too, Torisen thought. Away from my sister and the present, into the past . . .

Harn looked up from a note on thick cream paper which he had just received.

“King Kruin wants to see you,” he said.

The boy Tori was startled. “How is he even aware that I exist?”

“Ancestors know. You keep quiet enough, all things considered. D’you suppose it has something to do with your new friend?”

Of course Harn had discovered Kroaky’s presence in Tori’s quarters, given that the latter were only feet from his office and that the Kothifiran prince insisted on roaming about after dark. He was a restless houseguest, and a voracious one. Tori had never seen anyone eat so much while remaining so thin.

After Torisen’s hazing in the Caineron barracks, Harn Grip-hard looked at him as if vaguely puzzled. If Tori caught his eye at such a moment, the big Kendar cleared his throat and became even gruffer; however, he also had stopped insulting his self-appointed clerk.

Tori would have liked to think that it was because he had refused to complain about his ill-treatment at Genjar’s hands. However, he wondered if Harn, a former Knorth, was beginning to sense his bloodlines as Rowan apparently had.

If so, that made life easier, but also more dangerous and problematic.

While no one had dared to claim the Highlord’s seat—much less that potentially lethal collar, the Kenthiar—since Ganth’s exile, the Caineron, for one, would never permit the son of their former master to live if they could help it. Look how they had dealt with a senior randon like Harn, only a threshold dweller after all these years. Blood wasn’t enough to protect Ganth’s son. He also needed respect and power. The thought made Tori grimace. How was he to gain either, situated as he was? Nothing would be handed to him as it had been to his ancestors, never mind that they went back to the creation of the Kencyrath. Whatever he gained would be on his own.

For that matter, did he even want his father’s place, supposing that it was in fact vacant? Perhaps he belonged somewhere else within the Kencyrath, gained on his own merit. If only Adric had allowed him to attend Tentir . . .

Harn folded the summons and handed it to him. “Whatever the reason, you’ll have to go. Now. And walk wary: the Overcliff has been unsettled since the king’s illness.”

Tori paused in his quarters to change into the cleaner of his two jackets. Kroaky lounged discontentedly on Burr’s narrow bed.

“You might find some way or someone to amuse me,” he said, pouting.

“Not today. Your father wants to see me.”

The lanky prince sat up, alarmed. “Will you tell him that I’m here?”

“Of course not, but Commandant Harn knows. I take it that you ran into him on one of your evening strolls.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“To the death, unless someone asks him a direct question.”

Kroaky settled back, marginally reassured. “You Kencyr. Inexplicable.”

Torisen rode the open lift cage up to Kothifir.

The first thing he noticed on arrival was that the swirling cloud cover had dispersed. In its absence, the summer sun beat down mercilessly on the clifftop city, washing out its usually vibrant colors and glazing everything with a layer of dust. It hadn’t rained since spring. The Amar ran shallow and bitter, poisoning its fish and withering crops in the field. A few residents moved languidly from shop to shop, where they found little to buy. Some gathered on street corners listening to men muffled in black robes and cheches—Karnids from Urakarn, Tori thought, preaching their obscure message of doom and rebirth. The Kencyrath had little to do with them. Given their own bitter experience with the Three-Faced God, most Kencyr wondered why anyone would willingly embrace any religion, much less one that made such dire promises.

“This world is but a shadow of the one to come!” cried a speaker as Torisen passed. “You, boy, stay and listen to the holy words of our Prophet!”

Here at last was the Rose Tower and the long climb up its spiral stair under the beating sun. Without the clouds, the sparsely occupied mid-towers showed up as clearly as a ring of blight. Some had broken off and fallen into the streets below. One wondered how the rest could support the gilded upper stories where the guild lords lived, although even these looked brassy and cheap in the sun’s glare.

Some claimed that it was all because the Kencyr temple was currently abandoned by its priests. The guild lords also seemed to have lost their power. Tori himself didn’t see the connection.

What he did see were carrion crows circling overhead. Something about the Rose Tower seemed to attract them.

No one guarded the king’s audience chamber at the top. Tori stopped at the threshold on the edge of the pale green, golden veined chalcedony floor, wondering if he should announce himself. No: the wide, circular room brimmed with noblewomen, all in white-faced makeup as befitted their rank. Most wore rich but somber gowns, although a few flashed almost defiantly with brilliant color. The king himself reclined on a lofty dais wearing black in regal imitation of a Karnid’s robe. He was a big man, famous for his hunting prowess. Now, however, his flesh drooped like soft wax and the color on his haggard face came out of a rouge box.

“You ask me where your fathers, and sons, and husbands are,” he said, then paused to draw in a ragged breath. His eyes glittered with feverish, defiant life in their deep sockets. I will not die, they seemed to say, oh no, not me; but he stank as if already dead in that hot, rose-tinted chamber.

“My kinsmen serve me as my sons already have, all but that runagate coward Krothen whom I will find soon enough. That is all you need to know.”

“My lord brother, I disagree.”

The voice boomed from the front of the crowd, but Tori couldn’t see who spoke. He started to edge toward the right, then froze. Genjar lounged against the wall in a turquoise court coat trimmed with blue pearls and whirls of silver thread, watching the drama play out before him with the thin-lipped smile of a connoisseur in pain. Tori moved left. He and the Caineron would settle their score, but not today and certainly not here. Now he could see the front rank of the ladies and their spokeswoman. No wonder he had overlooked the latter: she was very short and, from the width of her, very pregnant. This must be Princess Amantine, the king’s sister.

“My child needs his father,” she said, glowering.

“This city needs its king. Debate that with the towers themselves.”

Someone tapped Torisen on the shoulder. Suppressing a start, he turned to see the shadow of a black-gloved hand withdrawing, gesturing him to follow. The marble walls of the chamber were carved as thin as rose petals and separated so that one could slip out between them. Tori did so, onto an outer walkway that circled the tower. It had no rail. Birds swooped dizzyingly through the void beyond.

“Come here, boy.”

He followed the voice.

“Stop.”

The other stood just beyond the curve of the thin wall, his distorted shadow falling through it.

“I was summoned by the king,” said Tori, keeping his voice down, unsure if he was defending his presence in the royal hall or protesting his absence from it.

“Summoned at my request. So. You are Ganth Grayling’s son.”

Tori felt the flesh jump on his bones, but he held himself still. Then he remembered to breathe.

The other laughed, his voice a soft rumble. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, only it surprised me to learn that you were here. Did your father really let you leave that pest hole in the Haunted Lands, or did you run away?”

“Who are you?” Tori demanded, taking a step forward.

A raised hand stopped him, as if he had run into a wall. “Why, child, who should I be but your true lord and master?”

That made no sense. Ganth was Highlord if he still lived, and Tori felt instinctively that he did, never mind that he had thrown away his power as petulantly as a child might a broken toy. Highlord or not, though, what right did such a man have to claim anyone’s loyalty? His own Kendar had united to free his son from his unworthy tyranny.

Choose your own lord, said the mocking rumble under the stranger’s voice. Have you not earned the right, boy? Did your father keep faith with you, with anyone? Honor is a failed concept. Only strength matters. Choose me.

Tori shook his head to clear it.

“What have you done to King Kruin?” he demanded.

The other sighed. “Nothing. He is not a young man, and has lived a profligate life. Nonetheless, he wants to live forever. I suggested that he might, if he made a few sacrifices. Look below.”

Tori had been avoiding that, not because he was afraid of heights (although the Rose Tower was very high), but because the carrion birds squabbling below unnerved him. Now he looked. A ring of iron thorns circled the edifice. Many of them were tipped with round shapes from which loose hair blew in the wind.

“A lord’s followers serve their master, in life, in death, don’t you agree, little lordling? A variant on that ancient belief has worked for me—so far. But the Gnasher is no Dream-weaver. She reaped; he rends. The latter may not succeed for our dear Kruin.”

“Death and rebirth,” said Tori. Much that the other said confused him, but one thing was suddenly clear. “You are the Karnids’ Prophet.”

“Oh, he died millennia ago. The Karnids say that I am he, returned. It amuses me to play that role.” The other’s purr sank into a half-snarl. “Anyway, why should I submit to death at all? Let other fools die for me, as they were born to do.”

Raised voices sounded within the chamber.

“You would not dare,” Princess Amantine said, and this time her tone shook with more than anger.

“Would I not?” Kruin was panting now. He sounded ghastly. “If your child is a son . . . what are heirs for . . . if not to prolong . . . the life of their king? If I must take him as he is . . . I shall. So the Karnid Prophet has taught me. Now, come here.”

Someone screamed.

Tori slipped back into the chamber to witness panicked ladies surge for the door. Caught up in the rush, Genjar stumbled and disappeared beneath billowing black skirts. Meanwhile, the cause of it all, Kruin, had risen and was lurching toward his sister, a hunting knife in his hand.

“I will gut you where you stand . . . you fat, little pig,” he wheezed. “Give me your unborn child!”

Without thinking, Tori stepped between them. Kruin loomed over him, the king’s stinking breath in his face. He tried to brush the Kencyr aside, but Tori caught him in a wristlock that brought him crashing to his knees. The knife skittered away across the chalcedony floor. Kruin tried to rise, but his legs folded under him. A look of astonishment crossed his wasted face.

“Why, I’m dying. But I can’t be. You promised!”

His eyes rolled toward the stranger who stood by the dais, half in shadows. He wore a Karnid’s black robe and cheche, the tail end of the latter wrapped around his face. A veil beneath concealed all but the silver-gray glint of his eyes.

“Too bad,” he said in that deep but wryly dismissive tone. “It was an interesting experiment.”

“Betrayed!” Kruin’s voice cracked into a howl. “I gave you access to my city! I gave you control of my court! At your suggestion, I have slaughtered most of my heirs! And now all you can say . . . is ‘Too bad’?”

The Prophet shrugged. “Some few merit immortality. Most do not. Yours, I fear, is the common lot.”

“I am not common!”

“So every man tells himself.”

Kruin’s eyes desperately swept the room. “I will be avenged. You!” He had spotted Genjar near the door, unsteadily regaining his feet, his gorgeous coat torn, dripping pearls, one of his eyes blackened. “Seize this charlatan!”

Crows edged, jeering, around the stone petals and stormed the chamber in a fury of black wings. Sharp beaks stabbed everywhere. Jet eyes glittered. Genjar flailed as the birds dived at him. The princess shielded her brother while Tori stood over them both, trying to protect her.

“We will meet again, I think,” said the Prophet in Tori’s ear. Then he and the birds were gone, except for an eddy of black feathers spinning to the pale green floor.

Genjar lowered his arms cautiously. Finding himself more or less intact, he limped over to Tori and slapped him across the face.

“You let that monster escape!”

“No, Commandant. You did.” The princess released her brother’s slack body and rose, arms wrapped around her swollen belly. “The king is dead, but his last order still binds you. Here are witnesses to that effect, this boy and myself. Honor demands that you seek that false prophet throughout Kothifir, even to the gates of Urakarn if necessary. Go alone or take the entire Host with you if that gives you comfort.”

A spasm of pain crossed her face.

“Now, if you will excuse me, my time has come.”

It took nearly thirty days to erect King Kruin’s funeral pyre in the central plaza next to the Rose Tower.

First came the spice-wood scaffold reaching almost up to the now returned, low-hanging screen of clouds. Then the framework was stuffed with dry oil-bush from the Wastes. Finally, every guild in the city contributed to its facings. Empty suits of armor stood guard at the base. Above them fluttered choice silks, then gilded mirrors reflecting the sky, then illuminated pages, then shining boots, all toes pointing crisply out, and so on and on, guild by guild, up to vast murals depicting the late king’s greatest hunts. Above that, just under the platform to which his body would be lowered, were the spoils of his famous trophy wall. The heads of yackcarn, cave bear, wild cat, and rathorn leered from the heights. Kruin had successfully hunted every creature on Rathillien worth the effort except the wolvers, rhi-sar and—to the relief of his Kencyr troops—the Arrin-ken.

Meanwhile, Kruin’s body lay in a chilly Undercliff cave especially noted for its preservative qualities. As the days passed, some joked, quietly, that he would have to be broken out of a stalagmite when his obsequies finally came due.

At last, the day had arrived.

Tori looked around the plaza as he waited for the rites to begin. Despite the returned cloud cover, or perhaps because of it, the city sparkled. Recent rain had washed away the dust and fresh (if limited) produce was again offered in the food stalls lining the main boulevard. The waiting citizens struck a solemn note in their mourning garb, but under that one glimpsed more festive attire. As soon as the old king was reduced to ashes, the new one would be crowned.

Some Kencyr claimed that everything had improved as soon as their temple had come back to life, just after Kruin’s death. Tori wasn’t sure what he thought about that.

With Kruin’s demise and the Prophet’s disappearance, the king’s surviving heirs had come out of hiding. Despite his blood-claims, it had taken them this long to agree on young Krothen as the new king, but only after saddling him with a council of his elders. Tori had heard his former houseguest complain long and bitterly about his lack both of power and freedom, although he still managed to slip off to the Host’s camp for the occasional visit. Although his former experience there had been necessarily limited, he seemed to have developed an admiration for Kencyr life. Certainly, his gratitude to Tori for giving him shelter remained fresh. Although Tori had never spoken his full mind to his awkward guest, he wondered if Kroaky had anyone left besides himself to whom he felt he could speak freely.

Tori wished the attendants would hurry up. Something about the coming transfer of authority bothered him. As a Kencyr, he was sensitive to power—who had it, who didn’t—and Kroaky still felt entirely too like, well, Kroaky. Of course, that was all he still was until his crowning, but if anyone had asked him, Tori would have said without thinking that Kruin was still alive, still king. Which was ridiculous.

One of his command, Cully, edged through the crowd to his side. “They say that the princess’s husband, Prince Near, is ailing,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Tori swore, also softly. The dying hadn’t stopped with Kruin. One by one, his heirs were still falling ill and wasting away. Some blamed it on a parting curse attributed to the Prophet. More accused the Prophet himself, who had not been captured despite Genjar’s best efforts to seal the city after Kruin’s death. True, he had seized some of the street-preachers, but most of the Karnids, with their master, had simply slipped away. Genjar was not said to be pleased, nor was the Council with his efforts, and the commoners simply jeered at him whenever he appeared in public.

No one but Krothen believed in the existence of the mysterious assassin who cast the shadow of a wolf. Tori wasn’t sure he did either, except for the Prophet’s mysterious reference to someone (or something) called the Gnasher. Nonetheless, the new king-to-be had insisted that he, Torisen, investigate. To do so, he needed help. Harn had assigned him eleven Kendar. Most of them, like Rowan, his second-in-command, were former Knorth, but some came from other houses. Tori suspected that one, Rose Iron-thorn, a Caineron yondri-gon, was Genjar’s spy, but like the others she had served as a guard in Kothifir during times such as the recent unrest and so had special knowledge of the city. The irony was that if Harn had stopped one short, Tori would have been assigned as a mere ten-commander. Instead, Genjar had been forced to give him the commission of a one-hundred-commander even though it was understood to be provisional and probably temporary.

On the other hand, Harn hadn’t seemed displeased, almost as if he had assigned the extra Kendar to bring about exactly this result.

Tori couldn’t make out what his small, new command thought about this arrangement. He knew that they called him “Blackie,” mostly behind his back, but to his face they were always respectful, following his orders without question. It helped that they found the assignment interesting, even if it might end up leading nowhere.

Cully loomed over him—all the Kendar did. He and they were also at least ten years Tori’s senior. If the Knorth had still been in power, Cully might have been a randon sargent in their house. And Rowan had been a randon officer, for Trinity’s sake, now reduced to the standing of a common Kendar. Damn Father anyway, for setting such people adrift.

“I asked the usual questions,” Cully was saying. “Had they seen anyone strange lingering nearby, or any peculiar shadows? They hadn’t. It apparently isn’t poison: like most of the Council these days, the prince has a taster. I didn’t see him myself, but according to the servants he’s wasting away. The princess is beside herself.”

“I bet she is,” Tori muttered. Motherhood hadn’t softened Amantine’s militant nature. If her husband died, she was apt to declare war on Urakarn unilaterally.

The crowd stirred and pointed. A temporary catwalk had been built over the pyre and Kruin’s body was being lowered from it through the clouds. Belatedly, with a nervous rattle, the drums began to roll. Jarred awake, one of the attendants darted forward with a torch and thrust it into the kindling.

“Too soon!” said Cully.

Indeed, before the corpse had touched the bier balanced on the top, the bottom of the pyre was ablaze as the oil-bush roared to life. Flames leaped upward, outlining the guild offerings and erupting out of the top of the pyre like a volcano. Figures on the catwalk floundered about, burning. Kruin’s stiff body swayed, then tumbled down the face of the pyre, trailing flames. It hit the ground hard, and shattered. Everyone had drawn back except Tori. Throwing up an arm to protect his face, he darted to where Kruin’s head rolled about the pavement. For a moment he held it, looking down into painted blue eyes already peeling in the heat, then he dropped the head and kicked it back into the blaze before he retreated. His fingers were scorched by the heat, and his sleeves smoldered. Cully beat out the incipient flames.

“You don’t take proper care of yourself,” he fussed. “Truly, the old bastard isn’t worth your hands.”

“Nor anyone’s,” said Tori, shakily brushing off soot. “Did you see, Cully? I could almost believe that the caves petrified his bones, and I never had much respect for his brains even when he was alive, but that head was wood, through and through.”

Prince Near lingered on, and now the princess’ twin cousins were ailing as well.

“They say that patches of their hair are falling out down to the skull, likewise odd chunks of flesh off of their bones,” Rowan remarked, washing down a chunk of bread and cheese with a gulp from a flask of watered wine. “It sounds almost like the result of a soul injury—you know, like a Bashtiri shadow assassin.”

Kencyr believed that the soul cast the shadow rather than the body. So did the Bashtiri guild, with lethal effect.

“King Krothen says he saw a man with the shadow of a wolf,” said Rose. “A white wolf, at that, with a white shadow.”

“That’s just it: if a wolf is somehow involved, you’d expect blood and broken bones, not a wasting illness.”

“Are you saying that the king is wrong?”

“Not necessarily, just that this isn’t anything straightforward.”

That, thought Tori, was an understatement. He tried to remember if Kruin’s shadow had been intact. Yes. In memory’s eye, he saw the king plunge to meet it on the chalcedony floor. The Prophet had claimed that he was dying of natural causes but might gain immortality if his male heirs were sacrificed. The Gnasher, plainly, was the assassin, but no Dream-weaver. The Master’s consort had reaped souls. What was this man with the shadow of a wolf doing and why, now that Kruin was dead? Around and around Tori’s mind went. No wonder he hadn’t been able to sleep. Besides asking questions, his little command had taken to patrolling Kothifir after dark. Tonight, rather than spend another sleepless night, Tori had joined Rowan and Rose Iron-thorn on this second-story balcony overlooking the central plaza.

Laughter and music floated down from the brightly lit uppermost chamber of the Rose Tower. Krothen held a jolly court, to which entertainers and artists swarmed from all corners of Rathillien. No one ever seemed to sleep. Tori wondered if the new king just didn’t want to be alone. The sense lingered that, although crowned, Kroaky hadn’t yet found his feet. It was rumored that he had tried to bless a caravan of spoils from the Wastes and had failed. Merchants throughout the city had been heard to curse his name when their precious wares crumbled into dust.

Kruin, alive . . . but how could that be?

“Look,” said Rowan.

A figure had descended the stair and was lurching across the moon-washed plaza, preceded by a canine shadow.

“Is that a dog?” asked Rose.

“No.” Tori leaned forward, listening intently. “It’s singing . . . I think.”

What he heard sounded more like a modulated howl, but there were words mixed up in the cacophony, and some of them rhymed.

Rose stiffened. A child had emerged from the shadows below and was approaching the raucous singer. Before Tori or Rowan could stop her, she had swung to the ground and was racing forward to tackle the latter, who went down with a startled yelp.

Tori sprinted to the rescue. “Rose, stop! I know this fellow. He clowns for the king.”

“I do not!” howled the Kendar’s prey, curled up in a furry puddle on the pavement, tail tight between his legs. “I’m a court poet! Hic.”

The child regarded him solemnly. “Is the puppy sick?”

“No, dear,” said Rose. “The puppy is drunk. Why did you attack my daughter?”

“Attack her? I didn’t even see her!”

Tori regarded the girl. She was only five or six, as far as he could tell, crowned with a helmet of dark red hair. Even in the moonlight, her eyes were a startling shade of green, her gaze solemn and unflinching. “What are you doing in the city at night?” he asked her. “The lift cages don’t even run after midnight.”

“I climbed.” She handed Rose a packet. “You forgot your dinner.”

“Oh, Brier. How often do I have to tell you not to follow me?”

Tori nudged the crumpled figure with a toe. “You can get up now. Sorry about that.”

“‘Sorry.’ Who apologizes to a poor wolver so far from home?”

“Ah.” Now Tori understood the other’s shadow as it untangled four lanky legs while its owner rose on two shaggy, shaky ones. Other than fur and a disheveled garland of flowers, he was quite naked. “That never occurred to me. Do all wolvers cast the shadow of a wolf?”

“It depends on the phase of the moon.”

“Which tonight is full.” On the chance, Tori had to ask: “Do you know a wolver called the Gnasher?”

“Oh, him. Steer clear . . . hic . . . that’s my advice. I’m from the Grimly Holt, but he’s from the Deep Weald. ’Nother kind of beastie altogether. What?”

He looked up, perplexed, at three intent faces.

“When did you last see him?”

“Why, tonight. He’s up there, entertaining the king. Juggles lights, doesn’t he? Shining Glory, they call him. He’s performed for all the best families.”

“Damn,” said Tori. “Rose, stay with your daughter. Rowan, come on.”

“Don’t you want to hear one of my poems?” the wolver Grimly cried after them. “Oh, never mind.”

Tori and Rowan pounded up the stairs of the Rose Tower. Both were breathless by the time they reached the chamber door where a guard tried to stop them, apparently taking them for performers.

“Here, now, what’s your act?”

“We save the king’s life . . . I hope.”

The crowd within had drawn back to the edges of the room to give Shining Glory room. Tori edged between courtiers with Rowan on his heels. Lights flashed ahead, a rotating circle of spheres flying now low, now high.

“Oh! Ah . . .” murmured the onlookers, except for those that turned to glare as the intruders elbowed past.

The performer was a tall, white-haired man with piercing blue eyes, clad in creamy leathers. Soft explosions of light burst from his hands as he increased the number of spheres that he juggled. In their glow he cast no shadow at all, unlike the spectators whose shades whirled against the rose walls as the balls of light circulated. Kroaky sat on the dais in magnificent sky blue robes, entranced, his shadow swaying behind him.

Each ball of light encapsulated the form of a wolf caught at a different moment. Together, they blurred into a leaping figure.

“He’s juggling his soul,” Tori breathed.

The performer flicked one of the spheres toward a courtier. The man staggered in the splash of light, then recovered himself and applauded with the rest, although shakily. Behind him, his shadow wavered in pieces on the floor.

Another flicked sphere, aimed this time at the young king. Surging free of the crowd, Tori threw himself between it and Krothen. The ball hit him in the chest . . .

. . . and he was falling over backward grappling with a big white wolf. The floor slammed into him, tables and benches tumbling out of the way. Around him rose the stark walls of the Haunted Lands’ keep that was his soul-image. Jaws snapped at his face. Blue eyes glared down at him.

“Who stands between the Gnasher and his prey? Argh!”

Tori had grabbed a broken table leg and jammed it behind the other’s back teeth. The wolver twisted its head back and forth, trying to gain a grip on the wood. Nails raked at Tori’s arms and chest. Bracing his feet against the beast’s stomach, he kicked him off.

Footsteps sounded on the floor overhead, pacing, pacing, and the boards groaned. Boy and wolver pup froze, reduced by fear to childhood like two guilty truants.

“Is that . . .”

“Yes. My father.”

The white pup crept backward on his belly. “My father said he would eat me, so I ran.”

“So did I.”

“Will he come down the stairs?”

“Sooner or later.”

“You wait for him, then.” The pup turned and bolted . . .

. . . and they were back in the Rose Chamber. The big wolver dropped to all fours, shaking his head. Clothes fell away from gaunt flanks, from white fur marked with shadowy whorls and tangles that resembled the horror-stricken faces of his previous victims, moving as the skin moved beneath them in silent shrieks. Snarling, he leaped toward the door, toward onlookers who scrambled out of his way. Only the hapless guard stood his ground. Jaws snapped and the man fell, his cheek and half of his shadow torn away. Then the Gnasher was gone into the night.

“Blackie?” Rowan bent over him. “Are you all right?”

Tori stared down at the remnants of his jacket, at the gouged and bleeding skin beneath. “Well enough,” he said hoarsely. “The king . . . ?”

“Here, Tori.” Krothen appeared over Rowan’s shoulder, looking dazed. “What happened? All I saw was a blaze of light.”

“That was your shadow assassin, the one responsible for all the wasting illnesses among your kin.”

“What? It was? Then after him!”

The confused, surviving guards scrambled to obey, but the Gnasher had slipped away as his master had before him.

That night, Prince Near died. At Princess Amantine’s insistence and on the basis of the Gnasher’s attack, Kothifir declared war on Urakarn.

Tori edged through the limestone passageway, thrusting a torch before him. The Undercliff dwellers had assured him that this was the way to the preservation chamber, not that any of them had visited it since the king’s temporary entombment there. Nor had he told any of his command that he was coming here, given the uproar they would have raised. If he didn’t return, they would find a note in his quarters.

Firelight sparkled on upthrust stalagmites, on the fangs of stalactites. Water dripped.

“Hello?” he called. With no chance of approaching undetected, some warning seemed due.

Light shone ahead. Tori wedged his torch into a crack and proceeded. He could smell water, and stone, and blood. Beyond a rock formation, the cave opened up, some twenty feet wide and too low for a man to stand upright. One end dipped into a still pool. The other rose to a shelf, on which lay a body. Over it crouched a shining white figure with eyes aglow and a gory muzzle. The blood was fresh. Trickles of it ran down from the ledge to the floor and across that to the pool.

“Well,” said the Gnasher, adjusting his jaw for human speech. “This is unexpected.”

Tori sat on his heels. The low, rocky ceiling and general lack of room to maneuver made him nervous, but there was no helping that. At least he had been right to think that no backup could help him here.

“I have to know,” he said. “Are you finished with King Krothen?”

The other laughed soundlessly through sharp teeth. “And if I’m not?”

“We fight. On the level of the soulscape or hand to hand.” He touched a knife at his side. “It isn’t much, but I must do what I can to ensure my friend’s safety before I march out with the Host to Urakarn.”

“If you march out.”

“If.”

“You puzzle me, lordling. You beard the monster in his den, but cannot face what lies within your own soul.”

“You couldn’t either.”

The wolver licked his lips with a long, red tongue. “I was caught unaware. Another time, a different father . . . But yes, I will leave Kothifir after one last gorge. This city has nothing more to offer me.”

Tori nodded toward the sprawling body. “Is that Kruin? What happened to him?”

“He started screaming and wouldn’t stop. Is that how you found us? No doubt the Undercliffers talked, although none of them had the nerve to investigate.”

The body twitched and whined.

“I want to live, I want . . .”

The Gnasher’s jaw extended to tear again. Wet sounds of carnage echoed off the stone walls and the trickle became a pulsing flood. Tori winced.

The Gnasher grinned over his prey, white fangs dripping red.

“You see how hard it is to kill a god-king,” he said. “Not long now, though.”

Tori forced himself to remain still. His instinct had been right: until Kruin died, Krothen couldn’t truly become king, and after what he had done, no one wanted Kruin back.

Like your own father, eh?

Still, it was hard to watch.

The Gnasher lowered his head again and chewed. Kruin shuddered. Then his head tipped back and fell off the ledge. It rolled almost as far as Tori. For a long moment, he looked into Kruin’s horrified eyes. Then, at last, they glazed.

“There.” The Gnasher wiped his muzzle with a paw and spat. “Immortality is too much for the weak. Kruin wasn’t quite dead when his attendants brought him here, you see. I nursed him with soul-shreds from his heirs, even provided a wooden dummy to take his place on the pyre, but something in his mind broke. Never mind. I now know what I came here to learn.”

“You didn’t come to serve the Prophet?”

“Oh, he put me on the track. Our purposes ran parallel for a time, but now he has fled, and so we part.”

“What will you do now?”

“Why, go home, of course, and kill my father. I advise you to do the same.”

Tori shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Then go, lordling. Test yourself against your enemies, but always remember that that which you fear most, you hold closest to your heart.”

The only army that Kothifir had was the Host, supplemented by a few overenthusiastic native brigades commanded by nobles set on avenging their kin. Urakarn lay some two hundred and fifty miles to the southwest over the desert, far enough to require significant logistical planning. While this was being arranged, the Host argued among itself.

“This is madness,” said Harn, stumping restlessly back and forth in his cramped quarters. “Genjar thinks that a token garrison of fanatics holds Urakarn. We don’t know that. Of course, we’ve sent out scouts, but most haven’t come back, which isn’t encouraging in itself. And those who do return report a proper hornet’s nest. The Karnids will also know that we’re coming long before we get there. They still have sympathizers in the city. Trust me, they knew about this farce of a war as soon as it was declared. What are we supposed to do, eh? Walk up and knock on the door? What does your friend Krothen say?”

“Kroaky thinks it’s a bad idea, but he hasn’t yet fought free of his precious Council.” Tori paused to sharpen a quill pen with his knife. Genjar, as usual, had dumped all the responsibility for preparation on his second-in-command, meaning that his self-appointed clerk had to copy out every one of Harn’s scrawls. The Host was growing used to accepting orders at his hands. “He will soon, though, as the new god-king. Give him time.”

“That we don’t have. We’re due to march tomorrow, before half our preparations are complete. Genjar smells glory. It’s been too long since we last proved ourselves in battle, he says. Fah.”

“It has been a long time,” said Tori thoughtfully. “There haven’t been any major conflicts since the White Hills.”

“That was a slaughter, Kencyr against Kencyr, all because Ganth Gray Lord chose the wrong enemy. Are we doing that again? D’you think we need a fresh blooding too?”

“I think we have a generation of young soldiers who have never gone to war. Genjar’s talk is contagious. I’ve heard a lot of enthusiasm around the camp hearths.”

Harn turned to regard him from under shaggy brows. “Don’t tell me you’ve caught the battle bug too.”

Tori considered that. On the whole, he didn’t know if he was excited or scared. Uneasy, more like: the whole expedition felt rushed and haphazard, barely under control.

“I’ve never fought before in a general engagement,” he said.

“Huh,” said Harn. “Then stay close to me. Senior officers usually survive debacles. Unfortunately.”

The march to Urakarn took fifteen grueling days, with Genjar pushing hard. At the end of it, he used the vanguard as bait.

Tori rode with Harn Grip-hard in the first rank, followed by five thousand mixed Kencyr and Kothifiran troops. Day by day, the range of black, smoking mountains had drawn closer on the western horizon, and the sunsets behind it had grown more lurid. Now they were among the foothills, riding on a bed of old lava amid a fall of ash as light as a dusting of snow. Stinking gas rose out of holes in the ground. Every so often, the earth quivered and the horses spooked.

“Which one is Urakarn?” asked Tori.

“There, straight ahead, with its summit blown off.”

Not only was it big but wide, perhaps twenty miles from side to side. The walls towered, despite missing their heights, snow-crowned, black and forbidding below. Trickles of smoke rose from several points in the interior.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Once as a junior officer. Kruin wanted to set up trade connections. The Karnids led us into their stronghold blindfolded and then laughed in our faces. It must be a bleak life inside an active volcano, but it apparently suits them.”

The ground became more broken and the horses began to stumble.

“This is no good,” Harn grumbled, and signaled the dismount. “We’ll have to leave them here or risk half going down with broken legs.”

“And what about our legs?” Rowan murmured, too low for the commander to hear. She, the rest of Tori’s small command, and Burr had insisted on joining the vanguard with him, although he had tried to talk them out of it, especially Rose.

“Think of your daughter,” he had urged the Caineron. “This could be a suicide mission.”

Iron-thorn had only shrugged.

Now they were climbing up among jagged rocks and boulders, some the size of small houses. All provided excellent cover for an ambush. Heat rose off the black rocks in waves that distorted the air and soaked the climbers with sweat. Carrion birds flew overhead. Beyond the scrape of boots and the rattling of rocks, an eerie silence lay over the hills like a thick blanket.

“Maybe no one is home,” said Cully.

The next moment he fell, an arrow through his throat. Tori knelt beside him, protected by Rowan’s and Rose’s shields. More arrows plinked off of them. Cully scrabbled at the wooden shaft, struggling to breathe around it, then his big hands went limp. Tori closed his eyes.

“Where are they coming from?” he asked, rising and unslinging his own shield.

“Pick a rock. Any rock,” said Harn. “Circle!” he bellowed at his troops.

Most one-hundred-commands already had formed knots, those innermost raising their shields to create a roof over their heads against which arrows and stones clattered down like hail. Many Kothifirans, slower to react, fell.

It wasn’t clear if they had sprung the trap that the Commandant had anticipated or if the Karnids were merely playing with them. In either case, where were they to go from here? They had reached a kind of amphitheater surrounded by a circle of fanged boulders, perhaps the site of an ancient, lateral eruption. To advance, they would have to climb out over the Rim. Even then, it was unclear where they could go, except on up the steep flank of the mountain. Urakarn was indeed huge even with its truncated top, its shoulders hunched above its neighbors, snagging clouds. If it had anything resembling a front gate, it wasn’t visible from where they stood.

Black-clad figures rushed out from behind boulders and threw themselves against one of the armored huddles, only to be driven back with sword and lance.

“Hold your positions!” Harn shouted. Even as he spoke, however, a Kothifiran formation broke in pursuit, disappeared among the standing rocks, and didn’t return. The others shifted restlessly, as if eager to follow.

“We can’t just stand here, waiting to be slaughtered,” protested Duke Far. The Kothifiran’s heavy face shone with sweat and his eyes reflected near panic, but he was holding himself together—barely. “We have to rejoin the main body of the Host.”

“Huh,” said the commander. “We can try a breakout. At any rate Genjar should be told what he’s gotten us into. Blackie.”

“Here, Ran.”

“Take a contingent of mixed troops. Try to reconnect with the central command.”

“Yes, Ran.” Tori hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me. The Kencyrath will follow you.”

More missiles whistled overhead. People ducked under their shields. Harn gave a grunt as if of surprise and staggered against Tori. Tori and Burr caught the big Kendar and lowered him to the ground. The right side of his broad face was a sheet of blood, his temple gashed open by a flung stone, down to the bone.

“Damn. I think his skull is cracked. Harn? Can you hear me? Harn!”

The big man said something in a slurred voice. His eyes fluttered open, then closed again.

Tori felt panic tremble like a bubble in his chest. Whatever happened, he had always counted on Harn Grip-hard being there, a wall against which disaster dashed itself in vain. What was he supposed to do now? He looked around for Harn’s second-in-command, then remembered that the man had fallen in an earlier attack. Everyone was looking at him.

They will follow you.

“All right,” he said, and was glad to hear that his voice didn’t shake. “Harn’s last order stands. I’ll take five ten-commands and anyone else who wants to go.”

Most of the Kothifirans quickly volunteered, which surprised no one.

They edged up the slope of the depression, shields raised, and entered the forest of standing stones. Random arrows plucked at them, felling a few. For the most part, however, they proceeded unmolested, although with the sense that they were surrounded by many hostile, watchful eyes.

Here was the place where they had left the horses. The animals were gone and their guards sprawled on the ground, dead.

The dull roar of combat came from ahead, punctuated by shouts, the screams of horses, and the clang of weapons. The Kothifirans strained forward, but hesitated as they came to the edge of another, much larger hollow, this one seething to the brim with Kencyr troops. It appeared that Genjar had walked into the ambush that he had intended for his advance guard. A flight of arrows darkened the sky, whirring like enraged partridges, from the right, then from the left, until raised shields bristled with shafts. In their wake, riders on black thorns swept in from all sides. Tori watched as the charge crashed into one circle, rupturing it. The thorns screamed, bit, and kicked, savaging their way in among the Kencyr, barely under their riders’ control. More arrows flew. The Host was obviously vastly outnumbered. So much for Genjar’s belief in a sparse resistance.

How many? thought Tori, holding his own small command in check with a raised hand. Fifty thousand? More? Double the Host, at least.

But no one was attacking from the east, the direction from whence they had come. The vacancy there drew the troops like a cool draft in that scorching cauldron. Another trap, or were they being invited to retreat? Genjar was shouting, gesticulating. Slowly, reluctantly, his forces withdrew eastward, taking their wounded and dead with them. He raised his glance to the west and for a moment locked eyes with Tori up on the basin’s rim.

Yes, here we are, Tori thought. Remember us?

But Genjar turned away and his gestures grew more frantic. Now he was pushing through the Host, trailed by his command staff, in flight, drawing the others reluctantly after him. They poured out of the cauldron, the rear rank guarding against a pursuit that did not follow.

Tori sighed. “We’re on our own now,” he said to his followers.

Duke Far gave him a wide-eyed stare, then bolted in pursuit of the retreating forces. His men threw down their weapons with a clatter and ran after him, unimpeded.

Tori stood aside for another moment, but no one else followed, nor were they hindered on the way back to the vanguard. It felt like reentering a dark, breathless room and closing the door behind them. Kneeling beside Harn, Tori brushed the bloody hair off the Kendar’s forehead. Someone had bound up the loose flap of skin with a strip of cloth. Harn twitched and began the disconcerting snore of the deeply concussed.

“What now?” Tori asked him, expecting no answer, receiving none.

“Blackie. Look.”

Dark-clad figures had silently emerged from around the hollow and on top of the rocks that surrounded it, more and more of them, ranks deep. It seemed as if the entire Karnid horde had followed them back, but it neither charged nor made any sound.

“I said that we would meet again.”

Tori suppressed a start at that deep, rich voice, speaking so close to him, too softly for most to hear. He squinted up into the setting sun, at a figure standing silhouetted in fire on a rock behind him.

“Shall I offer you a bargain, Grayling’s son? Of these all, only you interest me. Your life for theirs.”

Rowan caught his sleeve. “Don’t listen to him, Blackie. He’s lying. We’ll take our chances.”

Tori indicated the silent horde surrounding them. “What chance is this?”

His heart was in his throat, threatening to choke him. Could he really walk away from his friends, into enemy hands? What would they do to him? Then again, what did it matter if he could buy his followers’ freedom? He swallowed.

“Your word on it, Prophet?”

The other nodded solemnly. “My word on it.”

Karnids advanced and seized his arms.

“On second thought,” said the Prophet, “take a quarter of them prisoner. Kill the rest.”

Tori twisted in his captors’ grip, aghast. “You swore!”

“You may also remember that I said honor was a failed concept.”

Karnids swarmed into the cauldron, no longer silent. The Kencyr shouted back their defiance, each in the battle cry of his house—the Brandans’ deep, sure note, the Edirrs’ jeering shriek, the Cainerons’ bellow, the Daniors’ howl, the Jarans’ defiant cry in High Kens: “The shadows are burning!” and on and on, until the uproar of battle swallowed them.

Tori used water-flowing to free himself. He started back into the fight, but hands gripped him again. Then the back of his skull seemed to explode and he fell into darkness.

This is just a bad dream, he told himself, over and over. Wake up wake up wake up . . .

His chafed wrists were chained to the wall, pinioned too low for him to stand upright, so he sat with his numb arms raised. Water trickled down his sleeves and puddled under his buttocks. His clothes rotted. Sometimes the room seemed cavernous, sometimes as small as a closet, and it stank like spoiled meat.

Voices echoed in the corridor outside. Some called back and forth to each other in Kens: words of encouragement, words of despair. Some swore, others cried. Not long ago, black-robed Karnids had passed carrying an incandescent branding iron.

“Do you recant . . . do you profess . . .” had come their murmur down the hall. “Then we must convince you, for your own good.”

With that, he had heard Rowan scream.

. . . the dead, ripe and rotting in piles in that cauldron under the scorching sun—no, don’t think of them. It does no good, no good . . .

Somewhere, someone breathed heavily, almost in a snore. Harn? The rasping noise stopped and Tori held his own breath.

Breathe, Harn, breathe! Oh Trinity, don’t be dead . . .

The sound started up again. And stopped. And started, in an echo of his own anxious breath.

They were coming for him now as they had day after day, week after week, month after year. Sandaled feet shuffled on the floor. Hooded figures entered the room and stood in a crescent facing him, themselves faceless.

“Do you recant your belief in your false, triune god?” asked the leader, soft-voiced. After so many days of exhortation, he sounded almost bored.

“. . . recant, recant, recant . . .” murmured his followers.

“Do you profess the Prophet of the Shadows to be your true lord and master?”

“. . . profess, profess, profess . . .”

He could say yes. He could lie. But that would truly make him one of them.

What choice had his own Three-Faced God given him in such matters? Where was that god now, for him, for any of them?

Honor is a failed concept.

No. Whatever his god or his father had done to him, there was a core that remained his alone, and its name was Honor.

“Then we must convince you,” came the relentless response, “for your own good.”

The semicircle opened. Two carried a small furnace, out of which others lifted gloves of red-hot wire. They advanced on him, carrying them.

Wake up wake up wake up . . .

“Oh god, my hands!”

His own voice woke him, crying out in a cold tower room. Yce nudged under his arm and licked his face to reassure him, but still he held up his hands with their aching lacework of scars.

“My hands, my hands . . .”