The Sea of Time

XX A Season of Fog

Patches of mist snagged in the bare trees and drifted, torn, between their trunks. Leafless limbs dripped. Beside the New Road ran the Silver, a sinuous, smoking snake of a river that hid one bank from the other and chuckled slyly to itself as it went. The ground was sodden with last year’s leaves and last night’s rain, the undergrowth snarled with skeins of fog. It was early morning, the sun barely risen over the eastern Snowthorns in a haloed presence.

Along the road’s western bank came the muffled clop of hooves. A white horse emerged from a fog bank as if taking shape out of it. Its rider, on the other hand, wore the black leathers that had given him his nickname.

Storm was still lame and Rain was dead, hence this new mount, a normally placid mare named Snow. Like Storm, Torisen continued to limp. Just as his bruised leg had begun to heal, he had tripped over Grimly lying at the top of the old keep’s stairs and had fallen down a flight, wrenching it anew. It hadn’t helped to be told that his sister made a habit of tumbling down stairs without harming herself.

Torisen wondered what Jame was doing now, at this very moment. He missed her more than he imagined he would, but thoughts of her also made him uneasy. She was so unpredictable, so inclined to ridiculous situations. His dreams of late had been confused, apparently relating to his own past rather than to her present, but seen from a strange angle. If Marc was right about the scrying potential of his stained glass window, he must be mistaken about how it worked.

As to more conventional means of communication, Torisen had sent a post message to Harn asking what had happened to Brier when he had realized that the Kendar cadet had slipped away. He owed such personal attention not only because of Brier’s mother Rose, who had saved his life in their escape from Urakarn, but also because by all accounts Brier was shaping up into something special. In future years, she might well join the ranks of such legendary randon as Harn Grip-hard and Sheth Sharp-tongue. She already had the earned name of Iron-thorn, unusual in one so young, even if she held it in part in honor of her dead mother.

Can’t hang on to your people, can you, boy? came his father’s taunting voice through the locked door in his soul-image. I lost all except those foolish enough to follow me into the Haunted Lands. Are you stronger than I was? Than your sister is? Ha. You pathetic little cripple.

“It’s only a sprain,” Torisen muttered to himself. Snow’s ears twitched at the sound of his voice. “I’ll be well soon enough, dammit.”

But part of him wondered. He had never outgrown his dread of mutilation, stemming from the time at Urakarn when he had nearly lost his burnt hands to infection. A young man might feel immortal. An older one knew that he was not. Was such knowledge good or bad? What if it was hindering him in his role as Highlord? Ardeth had warned Torisen that he held his people too lightly. To them, his consideration might feel like impotence when what they needed most in an uncertain world was a strong hand. Almost anything could be forgiven a lord but weakness.

“I fear, however,” Ardeth had gone on to say, apparently now addressing Torisen’s dead father as, these days, he was wont to do, “that you may have mistaken anger for strength. Use your rage as a tool, not a crutch, if you must use it at all. Never let it use you.”

His former mentor was slipping, Torisen thought, with a shiver. As much as he had sometimes resented the old lord’s high-handed manner, the decay of that formidable intelligence was a fearsome thing.

He wrenched his thoughts back to the postriders carrying his message to Harn. Ten days on the road south to Kothifir at the very least, ten north again. By that reckoning, Harn’s reply was already five days late. It might arrive any time now.

Torisen reined in, listening. From uphill came the muffled thud of axes, then a warning cry and the rip of wood giving way. Branches snapped. The ground shook. He left the road and nudged his horse to climb. Soon Chantrie’s ruined walls loomed over him. A pity, he thought, that no one had ever set about rebuilding it, but then Gothregor on the opposite bank had plenty of roofless, abandoned halls at its own heart. There simply weren’t enough Knorth to restore the ancient fabric of either keep.

Forms moved ahead of him in the fog. One advanced and became his chief forester, Hull, a burly Kendar with a grizzled beard and a bald, lumpy head.

“How goes it?” Torisen asked him.

Hull wiped his brow which dripped with sweat, precipitation, or both. Steam rose from the collar of his open shirt as if from the withers of an overworked horse.

“We’ve our work cut out for us, so to speak, m’lord. Many trees fell during the recent rains when their roots couldn’t hold ’em in the earth. There’s thinning to do too, and pruning, and the alder coppice down by the river is ready to harvest. We’ll have a nice lot of waterproof wood from that, along with seasoning for our cheese.”

“By no account, forget the cheese,” said Torisen dryly. “Well, watch out for pockets of weirding. You’ll recognize them by their brightness.” Huh, he thought; as if the man didn’t know that. “Are there any signs yet of arboreal drift?”

“The sumac always begins to creep with the first thaw. So do other brush.” Hull chuckled. “I had a crew caught up yesterday in a patch of crawling raspberry canes that nearly carried them away. We’re anchoring the more valuable standing trees, in case they get restless. How is it downriver?”

“The water meadow dikes are rebuilt. Now they’re working on the terraces.”

Torisen remembered watching Kendar hoist stone blocks back into place that morning after the flood that had dislodged them the previous year. Before that, the Riverland had been wracked with earthquakes, tornadoes, and fire. Earth, air, fire, and water.

All since your sister came home.

Now, that had to be a coincidence . . . didn’t it?

The water meadow itself would grow the coming year’s crop of hay. Above it, tier on tier, would rise stands of oats, wheat, rye, and barley, unless another natural disaster wiped them out.

Torisen wished that he could lend a hand in the restorations, not that he actually had the strength or skill to do so. God’s claws, at present he could barely dismount without help.

Cripple.

No doubt, though, his people were glad to see him keep his hands clean for once.

“We should be planting peas and beans within a few days,” he said, “as long as the shwupp stay in the river bottoms.”

Hull grimaced. “I hate those sneaky bastards. One wrong step and you’re in a mud pot with your bones half stripped.”

He started as a white shape ghosted out of the trees and trotted past him with lolling tongue and cold blue eyes. Nothing had been seen or heard of the Gnasher since Torisen’s encounter with him in the woods north of Gothregor. Perhaps his broken leg had done him in, as Burr had hoped. At any rate, Yce couldn’t be confined forever.

As they talked, workers passed, bound downhill. Someone below exclaimed in surprise. Foresters started to run, calling questions.

“There’s something unexpected in the coppice,” said Hull. “Your pardon, my lord.”

He hurried off into the fog, axe in hand. Torisen followed more slowly on Snow. A babble of voices rose to meet him:

“Can you see . . .”

“What is it?”

“Damn this fog . . . watch out!”

Wood splintered and rocks churned together. Men shouted in alarm. Something huge was coming up the hill, grinding and smashing its way through the undergrowth. A shape loomed out of the mist.

Snow squealed, spun, and bolted. Before Torisen could rein her in, she cut too close to a tree and slammed his sore knee against it. Dazed with pain, he fell.

The thing was almost on top of him. Bare golden branches swayed back and forth overhead and a massive trunk seemed to reel against the sky. Long fringe roots snaked past him, each tipped with a secretion that ate into the ground and gave the tree innumerable toeholds with which to pull itself along. One nearly lanced through his thigh. The tree which he had hit began to tilt as its own roots lost their grip in the loosened soil. It crashed over, luckily away from Torisen, but the next moment he had tumbled into the cavity left by its root ball. A writhing node of rootlets passed over him like so many wooden snakes, stiff and acreak with the sap just beginning to flow through them. For a moment the tree’s full weight sagged into the hole, pressing him down into the mud. Then it lifted, and the golden willow churned on its way.

People were shouting his name. “Highlord! Blackie! Where are you?”

Torisen spat out mud and croaked back, “Here. In the earth.”

Yce appeared at the edge of the pit, yipping, to be shoved aside. Just as hands reached down to grab him, something under the mud caught his boot and nearly jerked him out of their grasp. Bubbles rose around him through the liquefied soil.

Bloop. Bloop, bloop.

“Shwupp,” said Hull, and pulled.

They extricated Torisen hastily, with such brute force that he thought they were going to tear him in two. Once he was out of the hole, a circle of anxious faces closed around him. Without thinking, he put weight on his sore leg and pitched forward into their arms. Snow, caught, was led back to him and with difficulty he mounted.

“You are going back to the keep, aren’t you?” Hull asked anxiously, looking up at him.

Cold and shock made Torisen’s teeth clatter, and his sodden clothes dripped with mud. No clean hands this time, after all.

“I’d better, hadn’t I?” he said, trying to smile.

Lord Caineron and the Director of Mount Alban sat in the college’s library on either side of its massive oak table. The southward-facing window was curtained with oiled cloth to keep out the fog, leaving a gloomy interior lit with candles as if it were twilight. In fact, it was morning on the last day of winter. The Director leaned back in his chair, his blind, opaque eyes overhung by shaggy, scar-broken brows. Caldane sat opposite in hunting leathers that strained against his girth. He had just finished a late breakfast, more by fretfully scattering its remains about the table and the floor than by consuming them. He seemed simultaneously eager and on edge, although he did his best to hide it. The former randon who served as the college’s current director might not have noticed, but Kirien suspected that he did: Taur was no one’s fool.

Kirien herself stood behind a screen by the door.

The inhabitants of the college had kept their visitor under covert observation since his arrival the previous evening with a large hunting party that claimed to be lost in the dense fog. The Director had pointed out that Valantir across the river had better accommodations, but Caldane had insisted that he couldn’t find the Jaran keep, which might have been true. On the other hand, the Caineron and the Jaran hadn’t been on good terms since the previous summer. Certainly, the current if temporary lord of Valantir, Kirien’s uncle, would have objected to Caldane’s hunters on his land. So did Kirien, as the Jaran Lordan.

Caldane wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his gilded leathers, leaving a greasy smear.

“For this hospitality, again, much thanks,” he said. “Such a fog I’ve never before seen, although we do get some monsters in the early spring. They can last for days.”

“I trust you wouldn’t be exiled from your home for that long, my lord,” said Ran Taur dryly.

Caldane shot the big Kendar a suspicious look. Was he being hinted away?

Yes, thought Kirien. Go.

Caldane leaned back. His chair groaned as he overlapped it on all sides.

“We won’t be leaving just yet,” he said. “I’ve wanted to have a word with you for some time, Ran Taur.” He gestured around him at the library’s scrolls on their towering shelves under the vaulted roof. “It’s about these. How many would you say came with us to Rathillien?”

“Several dozen, at least. We didn’t have time to gather more.”

“And the rest?”

“Scrollsmen and singers dictated them from memory.”

“Ah. Singers. Now, this has always puzzled me: given their use of the Lawful Lie, how can we trust anything that they say?”

“Singers swear not to distort the basic truth in their songs.”

“But they do take liberties with it.”

“They may. Such songs as abuse the privilege, however, don’t endure, nor do we record them.”

Caldane leaned forward. “But how do you know what to write down and what to let fade? This summer, my hunters were put off the trail of a particularly valuable golden willow with some song only two generations old. I gather, after questioning my own scrollsmen, that that song endures only in memory.”

“Then it isn’t law. Your hunters were misled.”

“Ah. I thought as much. And what about these songs of Ashe’s about the battle at the Cataracts? I was there, man. The dead didn’t speak to me. They were just that: dead.”

“If you don’t hear something yourself, my lord, does that make it a lie?”

“If some blasted singer says it, does that make it the truth?”

“That depends on the judgment of the scrollsmen, when it comes to recording a particular song. The two branches of the college keep each other in check. Have you discussed this matter with my lord Corrudin?”

Caldane looked huffy. “I’ve talked to my uncle, yes, although he tends to back into a corner whenever addressed. What that little Knorth bitch did to him at Tentir, I’ve yet to discover, except that it involved falling out a window. He helped me to make sense of things, although we didn’t reach the same conclusions on some matters.”

He made himself sit back with a creak of wood and leather. His beringed, pudgy fingers tapped nervously on the arms of his chair. “Now see here: I don’t quarrel with the oldest songs, the ones composed before the Fall that come to us only through memory. After all, those can be dismissed as legends rather than laws. It’s the more recent lot that worry me. For instance, those that demand individual responsibility rather than loyalty to one’s lord.”

“Honor’s Paradox,” murmured Ran Taur, “born of Gerridon’s fall.”

“Yes. That. A lot of romantic claptrap, if you ask me. Why, my own war-leader, Sheth Sharp-tongue, was misled by it, and the result? He released that brother of his . . .”

“Bear.”

“. . . a dangerous madman, mind you, to roam the Riverland at will. Then the Highlord’s hoyden sister graduated from Tentir, against my express orders.”

“The randon have their own code, as you may have noticed. They are not political.”

“Tell that to the Randir.”

The Director sighed. “M’lady Rawneth pushes to have her own will, not unlike you, m’lord.”

Caldane scowled, uncertain if he had just been handed a compliment, an insult, or simply a fact.

“You think I am wrong to want the Knorth so-called lordan returned to her proper place? What kind of a success has she been at Kothifir, pray tell? I’m told that she is often absent from her post in the camp. Will Harn punish her for that? Probably not. He has also been corrupted by such songs as Ashe sings. Huh. That woman is an abomination. She should have long since been consigned to the pyre where she belongs.”

Kirien became aware of a coldness beside her, and Ashe’s yellow, knobby hand touched her arm.

“Caldane’s men . . . have sealed off the college,” the haunt singer muttered in her hoarse, halting voice. “Not that the fog . . . hadn’t already.”

“But why would Caldane do such a thing?”

“I don’t know . . . but from what I’ve heard . . . I suspect.”

“Have we no way to signal Valantir for help?”

“Not . . . that I can see.”

“Well, we still have this.” Kirien extracted a tablet from her jacket and began to write on it in her rapid, spiky script.

“There are no far-writers closer than Gothregor,” said Ashe. “It and the Matriarch Trishien . . . are a hundred miles away.”

“I know Tori and Aunt Trish. They’ll find some way to answer, although it may take time.”

“Then there’s another song of special interest to me,” Caldane was saying, leaning forward again, more eagerly than before although he sought to hide it. “‘Gerridon Highlord, Master of Knorth, a proud man was he. The Three People held he in his hand—Arrin-ken, Highborn, and Kendar—by right of birth and might.’ D’you remember it?”

“Everyone does,” said the Director. “So?”

“My own scrollsmen tell me that it was composed on this world after the Fall and subsequently written down. Only one copy exists. Now, that I would like to see.”

“Why?”

Caldane airily waved a fat, dismissive hand. “What would your scholars say? Intellectual curiosity.” He looked around the library. “Is it here?”

“Possibly. Most Kencyr know that song by heart, though, passed on as it has been from mouth to mouth. No one has had to refer to the original manuscript in years. Who even knows where it is?”

“One man, I’m told,” said Caldane, leaning back again with a smug smile. “A scholar named Index.”

Someone must have run on ahead, because Torisen and Yce were met at the gate of Gothregor by Burr, Rowan, Grimly, and a dozen other Kendar. So much for his hope to slip in unobserved.

“We’ve built up the mess hall fire,” said Burr, steadying him as he dismounted. “You can strip and bathe in front of it.”

“I thought maybe the stable would be more suitable . . .”

“No.”

Torisen submitted. He owed them that much for having given them such a scare, and the warmth of the leaping fire would be more than welcome. His fingers shook with the cold as he fumbled at clasps and laces. The black leather was slimy with mud, and it clung. With Rowan’s help, he peeled it off. Grimly hauled free a boot and regarded its ripped sole.

“Shwupp?” he asked, looking up.

“On a hillside, no less, and that damn golden willow too. It must have been hibernating under cover of the alder coppice.”

They sluiced him down with warm water, leaving a muddy mess on the floor. Burr returned with clean clothes and boots. Kindrie burst into the hall on his heels.

Torisen and his cousin hadn’t spoken since the latter had suggested that all binding might be a Shanir trait—something which Tori didn’t wish to consider. In the meantime, Kindrie had stayed out of his way, devoting himself in his own quarters to sorting through the Highlord’s long-neglected correspondence. He had a scroll in his hand now and his face was nearly as white as his hair.

Now what? Torisen wondered as he dried himself with a scrap of sheepskin.

“Speaking of the willow,” he said, turning to Rowan, “it occurs to me that it only does harm when someone is chasing it. Therefore, I’m giving it the freedom of the forest, as long as it stays on my land.”

“Well enough,” said Rowan, with her habitual lack of expression, “but who’s going to explain that restriction to a tree?”

Kindrie was virtually dancing with agitation. “Please, read this.”

“You read it. My hands are wet.”

Kindrie gulped and unrolled the scroll. “‘From Caldane, Lord Caineron, to Torisen, Lord Knorth, greetings,’” he began in a shaky voice.

“Caldane never calls you Highlord if he can help it,” remarked Rowan.

“‘Last summer you may have heard of a dispute between the Caineron and the Jaran over the ownership of a particular golden willow. The Jaran sought to prove their case with a song, and while they were singing it, the tree in question escaped. As you may recall, I have never cared for singers’ fancies. Consequently, I propose to visit Mount Alban near winter’s end to undertake some long overdue housecleaning. If I hear nothing from you before that time, I will assume that you agree with the measures that I intend to undertake.’”

“Sweet Trinity,” Torisen said, staring at his cousin. “When did this arrive?”

“A fortnight ago. He must have known that you wouldn’t get to it in time.”

A disturbance at the door caused heads to turn. In glided a Jaran lady, moving faster than seemed possible given her tight underskirt. Lenses worked into her mask swept the room, settling on Torisen.

“My lord, have you heard?”

“Just now, Matriarch. How did you . . .”

Trishien produced a tablet covered with a spiky script not her own. “Caldane has seized Mount Alban!”

“What about Valantir?” demanded Rowan. “The Jaran are closest, and the college’s natural defenders.”

“The fog is even worse to the north,” said Trishien impatiently. “The keeps there are cut off from each other, and no one closer than Gothregor can far-write.”

“We’ll have to ride fast, then,” Torisen said, belatedly grabbing his pants and struggling into them. “It’s a good hundred miles to Mount Alban. With regular changes, post-horses can make it by tonight.”

“There are only a dozen or so remounts standing ready at each station,” Rowan warned.

“My vanguard will take them, leaving one or two for emergencies. The rest of the Knorth must follow as quickly as they can. They may be able to pick up fresh horses at Falkirr, Shadow Rock, and Tentir. Call up an armed hundred-command, Rowan.”

“I’ll find a divided skirt and come with you,” said Trishien. “Don’t leave without me.” She was gone before anyone could protest.

Torisen finished dressing more slowly, thinking, as people rushed about him. How big a force had Caineron brought? What exactly did he mean to do, and how quickly could he do it? The heart of the Kencyrath lay at Mount Alban, encoded in a matrix of scrolls and songs. True enough, the last two had become confused during the flight to Rathillien, and the Lawful Lie hadn’t helped, but to lose any one of them risked unraveling the very fabric of his world.

As he buckled his belt, he thought of something else.

“Burr, go back to my quarters and fetch Kin-Slayer. Yes,” he added, seeing his servant’s startled expression. “It’s that serious.”

Kirien and Ashe hurried down stairs that jinked precipitously through the wooden heart of Mount Alban. The cliff face had been carved out and replaced by a labyrinth of chambers, hallways, and steps all at different levels. Sometimes one could look up the stair well for several erratic stories. Other times, one had to duck under low beams, all the while watching one’s feet on worn, moss-covered treads. There was a more direct stair, but they had chosen not to take it for fear of whom they might meet. Diffuse light filtered through from various outside windows, aided by candles set on banisters, weeping wax. Indistinct voices murmured about them, but the usual morning chatter of the college community was absent.

“You there. Halt.”

The command came from above them on the last landing which they had passed. A big Kendar stood there, clad in Caineron hunting leathers.

“My lord wants to see you,” he said, “and the scrollsman Index. Where is he?”

Ashe stepped in front of Kirien, her iron-shod staff raised.

“Don’t be foolish,” said the man, and drew his sword.

He had barely taken a step forward, however, when a stone crashed down on his head. As he collapsed, a ball of twine bounced on the boards beside him.

“You see?” said someone above. “The rock and the ball fell at the same speed.”

“They did not!”

A tall, gangly scholar clattered down the stairs, followed by a short, squat colleague. Both wore the college’s usual belted coats with many pockets in which to carry tools, notes, or perhaps lunch.

“The rock was clearly traveling faster than the lighter twine,” said the short man, glowering.

The tall scholar looked down his long nose at him. “You just say so because that oaf’s head got in the way.”

Ashe inspected the fallen Kendar. “Only stunned,” she muttered. “Good. Now . . . what’s going on?”

“Besides experimentation?” The short scholar bent with a grunt to retrieve his rock, which required both hands to lift. The Caineron had been very lucky not to have suffered a smashed skull. “As you may have noticed, we’ve been invaded.”

“By how many?”

“Ten around the main door. Some forty inside, hunting.”

“I can see why Caldane wants Index,” said Kirien, “but why Ashe and me?”

“You, Lordan, presumably as a hostage,” said the taller scrollsman, rewinding his ball of twine. “Ashe . . . well, the rumor is that m’lord has a former priest with him who knows the pyrrhic rune.”

Kirien ran distraught fingers through her close-cropped black hair, leaving some of it on end. “Madness! Does he want to start a war?”

The short scholar laughed. “When has Caldane ever thought through any of his grand schemes? My guess is that he talked some of this over with his uncle, then went off on his own. Corrudin would never support something so half-witted.”

“Good hunting, then,” said Ashe. “We go . . . to find Index.”

They continued down the stair. At its foot lay a great hall roughly hewn out of bedrock by Hathiri masons with Mount Alban’s main gate at the far western end. Shapes with torches moved around before it, casting gigantic shadows. On the other side of the hall was the door that led down to Index’s herb shed. It stood open. Kirien and Ashe paused by it, listening. Voices rose from below, and glass shattered.

“Who’s mucking about in my shed?” demanded a shrill voice behind them, and there stood Index, gray beard abristle, eyes glaring with outrage. “No, I won’t be quiet! Let go of me!”

They hustled him away from the door, still expostulating, and across the hall, but others had heard his sharp protests. Voices called from below and feet thundered up the stairs. The guards at the door came running, their shadows leaping before them.

“Quick,” said Ashe.

She led them back up into the wooden maze, but soon left the twisting stair for a murky, narrow hallway. This ended at an iron-bound door set in the college’s eastern wall, against the rock face. Ashe parted a slit in her robe. Underneath was a corresponding sword slice in her skin. The edges of the old wound were shriveled and bloodless. Under them, hard against a rib, was the outline of a key. This she fished out as if from an inner pocket.

“I am going . . . to take Index . . . out of Mount Alban . . . for safekeeping,” she said as she fitted the key into the rusty lock and turned it with effort. “You . . . stay here.”

“But, Ashe . . .”

“No.” Death-dulled eyes peered at Kirien from under the shadow of the singer’s hood. “You . . . will be safer . . . with Caldane . . . if he catches you.”

She forced open the door. Beyond was a tunnel ending in dim light.

“I don’t understand.”

Voices called to each other behind her in the maze. The Caineron were casting about for traces of the fugitives. Ashe pushed a protesting Index through the door and followed him.

“If you really . . . want to help,” she said through the crack as she pulled the door shut, “lead them away.”

The lock reengaged with a clunk of gears behind her.

Kirien was left standing in the hallway, surrounded by Mount Alban’s interior gloom. What in Perimal’s name . . . ?

A faint glimmer on the floor caught her eye. Ashe had tried to slip the key back into its hidden pouch of skin, but it had fallen through. Kirien picked it up and fingered its ornate wards. Should she? What would Jame do? She rarely found herself in the sort of situation that came so readily to the Knorth Lordan, except when Jame was present. That kind of thing was a bit too dramatic for her taste and, she thought, it called for different skills than those possessed by even a talented scrollswoman. But scholars were always curious, and so was she. At the very least, she should open the door since Ashe had just accidentally locked herself and Index out of the college.

Kirien inserted the key and carefully turned it. It worked more easily for her than it had for Ashe, perhaps because the singer had knocked off some of the rust. The door swung open with only a muffled protest. Beyond, at the end of a tunnel cut through living rock, was a wall of drifting mist, lit from above. Kirien had never considered what lay behind the college, assuming it would only be more stone. This seemed to be a cavity in the cliff, open at the top. She edged forward, stopping with a gasp as her foot came down half over the edge of an abyss. A pebble, kicked forward, fell and went on falling, it seemed, forever. Where had Ashe and Index gone? To the left, she heard their muffled voices. Index was still protesting.

Kirien felt along the wall with hand and foot. The latter detected a ledge, which became a narrow path. She edged out onto it. Once started, it seemed impossible to turn back, although the way sometimes slanted downward into emptiness and sometimes the stone wall bulged. More pebbles rolled underfoot, causing her to gasp and clutch at the rock face. The voices drew nearer.

“You’ve wrenched me away from my proper station,” Index was saying. “For my own safety, eh? Well and good. Ancestors know, though, what damage those louts are doing in the meantime. So I’m calling in all my barter chips with you, haunt. For the answers to two questions.”

Kirien’s hand groped around the edge of an opening. A side cave, she thought, and pulled herself toward it.

Down three stone steps, Ashe and Index confronted each other in a small, stony chamber lit by a torch held by the singer. At the back of it was an iron door, scabrous with rust, toward which Index gestured.

“Now, where exactly are we, and what’s behind that door?”

“That,” said Ashe, “is no concern . . . of yours.”

“I’m still asking. D’you want to be declared a cheat?”

For a scrollswoman, that was almost as bad as being called a liar. No one would ever barter information with Ashe again.

“You . . . are being unreasonable.”

Kirien thought so too. The old scholar was acting like a petulant child; his will thwarted in one direction, he was striking out in another. She wondered, for the first time, if he was going soft with age.

“This . . . is a secret prison,” said Ashe. “Bashtiri masons created it. Kendar builders found it. As for what it contains . . .”

The singer’s bony fingers touched her side, then groped futilely at it.

Kirien stepped forward into the light. “This is what you lost,” she said, extending the key.

“Ha!” Index snatched it from her. “Now we’ll see!”

He scurried over to the door and thrust the key into the lock. As he turned it, Ashe dropped the torch and grabbed him around the waist. She wrestled him away, but he clung to the handle and pulled the door open on screeching hinges as he went.

Light flickered across the floor inside. With a chitinous rustle, its surface seemed to split open as a carpet of black beetles seethed back into the shadows. Index craned to look.

“There’s a table in there,” he said, “and something on it. A book and a knife, both white. Sort of.”

He moved to investigate, but Ashe restrained him.

“You fool . . . stand still.”

She placed herself between the other two scholars and the open door, facing it, gripping her staff.

Ahhhhh . . . breathed the darkness.

Kirien thought she saw a figure standing in the shadows, slightly bent under the low ceiling. It looked over its shoulder at her—the crescent of a face with a silver-gray eye, a high cheekbone, and thin lips that twitched into a smile.

Ahhhh . . . ha, ha, ha . . .

It turned and advanced. Its eyes reflected the flickering light of the fallen torch. Kirien retreated a pace, still staring. The thing looked like Torisen before he had grown a beard, but with an obscene twist to its features. The three upward leading steps were behind her. She tripped over them and fell, sprawling.

Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .

It ducked its head under the lintel and stepped into the antechamber, drawing the darkness behind it in a train of seething shadows, as if the noisome room it had just left was turning inside out. It raised a pale face masked with the fluttering wings of moths. Its smile spread and split open the lower half of its face. White teeth writhed . . . no, maggots. A mouth full of them.

Ashe snatched up the guttering torch and thrust it into the creature’s face. Moths ignited. Beetles popped in the heat and stank. It fell back a step as incandescent cracks opened across its face and chest. Then it surged forward again with a hiss.

“Run,” said Ashe over her shoulder to Kirien.

Kirien scrambled to her feet and dived out the door. She had no conscious thought where she was going, even as her feet scrabbled on the sloping shelf of the trail. It seemed to go on forever. Stones rolled under her feet. The unseen abyss called.

Suddenly her hand began to twitch, almost making her lose her grip on the wall. Aunt Trishien was sending a message. Kirien fumbled for her tablet, and dropped it. When she awkwardly bent to retrieve it, a shuffling foot inadvertently kicked it off the ledge into the void.

Moments later, with a lunge, she found herself back at the mouth of the tunnel, gasping facedown on the stony floor.

Her hands still shook, but with nothing more than fatigue and strain. Whatever her aunt had tried to tell her was lost.

What had happened, though, back in the cave?

As her head had turned, she thought she had seen the thing crumble even as it had lurched forward, but instinct told her that it wasn’t dead—well, no more so than it had already been. On the path, she had heard the door thud shut behind her and the rasp of the key in the lock. Ancestors, please, let Ashe and Index be safe. She should go back to check, but her nerve failed her.

Voices called to each other down the stone tunnel and the wooden hall, from within Mount Alban.

“If you really want to help,” Ashe had said, “lead them away.”

Kirien struggled to her feet.

At the outer door she paused a moment, then shut it, hearing the lock engage within. Now that Ashe had the key which apparently worked on both doors, on both sides, she needn’t leave it open.

Where were the Caineron? The wooden maze that made up the college’s core distorted sound. If she could reach the stair . . .

As she dashed forward, however, someone stepped into the corridor in front of her. Kirien skidded to a stop, turned, and ran into the arms of another tall Kendar.

“M’lady Kirien, isn’t it?” he said, looking down at her. “M’lord Caldane would like a few words with you.”

“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.

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.”

Kirien’s hand began to twitch. “Excuse me,” she said, and groped inside her jacket for her tablet, only to remember that it had fallen into the abyss behind the college.

Caldane was watching her. “Now what?”

“Aunt Trishien is trying to contact me. I need something to write on.”

He looked around impatiently. “This is a library, full of parchment.”

“I do not intend to turn any of it into wastepaper, thank you.”

But what else to use? There was an ink bottle on the table and a cup full of sharpened quills. Kirien snatched one of the latter, dipped it in the ink, and began to write on the tabletop. Caldane leaned over her shoulder, breathing heavily, trying to read the rough script. Trishien usually wrote with an elegant hand, but this time her letters jerked all over the tabletop. That and its wood grain almost defeated their transcription.

Kirien lay down the pen and regarded her efforts. “There was an ambush at Wilden,” she deciphered. “Now, who could have arranged that? But Torisen escaped it. He should arrive here soon. With Kin-Slayer unsheathed.”

The day dragged on for the Knorth vanguard. The River Road had been largely repaired since the earthquake that had shattered sections of it the previous year, but one still had to watch for rough patches. One would have supposed, Torisen thought sourly, that horses had more sense than to step into holes, but they still needed continual guidance.

Meanwhile, muscles ached, stomachs growled, and eyes grew weary of the perpetual, featureless, white shroud that enfolded them.

Corvine rode ahead.

Trishien fretted that she had had no new messages from Kirien.

Torisen tried to ease his throbbing leg.

Yce finally tired of trotting beside him, assumed a nearly human shape, and jumped up onto his horse’s back behind the saddle, almost making the animal bolt.

Now there were ten riders, counting the two wolvers, on eight mounts. Once or twice, Torisen thought he glimpsed a ninth horse and sometimes a tenth lagging behind them, downwind, but then the fog closed in again. He wondered how far back his one-hundred-command was and if they had roused the friendly keeps as they had passed.

The randon college at Tentir now lay behind them. It was growing dark, with the ghostly presence of a waxing crescent moon rising over the Snowthorns to the east. Torches were kindled and lit the way, but not very far. The fog was as dense as ever. Lightning glowered in its depths, followed moments later by sullen growls of thunder.

Torisen found himself simmering about Caldane. The Caineron lord had been his enemy ever since Torisen had joined the Southern Host as a fifteen-year-old, sometimes in person, sometimes in the form of his sons, especially Genjar and Nusair, both long since dead. Caldane’s ambition had always been clear. To him, Honor’s Paradox was a way to avoid responsibility while reaping its rewards. He would gladly break the Kencyrath to his liking, as long as enough of it remained for him to rule. It was that recklessness that Torisen found chilling. Caldane was capable of anything.

Corvine suddenly emerged from the fog.

“Mount Alban lies some five miles ahead,” she reported. “There are lights in every window.”

Sweet Trinity. Had Caldane set fire to the college?

. . . I propose to visit Mount Alban at winter’s end to undertake some long overdue housecleaning. If I hear nothing from you before that time, I will assume that you agree with the measures that I intend to undertake . . .

It would be Torisen’s fault as much as Caldane’s if Mount Alban came to grief this night.

Torisen spurred forward, hearing the rest of his escort break into a rattling canter after him. He drew Kin-Slayer. To his left, Trishien gave a muffled cry. In grabbing for her tablet, she had nearly fallen off her mount. Burr seized her reins to lead her as she balanced the paper on her jolting pommel and scribbled a hasty, barely legible note on it to her niece.

After that long, long ride, they hadn’t far to go, but it seemed to take forever. Finally, here was Mount Alban’s outer wall rising precipitously to the right, and Corvine had been correct: some seventy-five feet up, where the college’s windows began, rectangles of firelight bloomed in the murk.

Torisen swung down at the door, nearly falling as his weight came to bear on his sore leg.

Mount Alban’s double front gate was big enough to accommodate a full company of riders, but it was shut. However, a smaller door set into its right leaf swung open as they approached. A tall Kendar stood on the threshold—the college’s Director, Torisen saw, as he advanced at a hasty limp.

“Welcome, Highlord. We had word that you were coming.”

A slim, neat figure slipped past the Director. “Aunt Trishien! Oh, Ancestors be praised! And Kindrie!”

“It pleases me to see you as well, Lordan,” said Torisen dryly as Kirien flung herself into his cousin’s arms. “Is the keep on fire?”

“No. We are trying to signal Valantir, now that Lord Caineron has left us.”

“He’s gone?”

“As soon as he heard that you were nearly upon him and he couldn’t find any of his own men. Over the course of the afternoon, we ejected them all one by one from the college.” The Director gave a smile warped by the scars that crossed his face. “He should have remembered that many of the scholars here are former randon. Some of the traps that they devised were quite ingenious.”

“I’ll go fetch Index and Ashe,” said Kirien happily. “I may not have the key, but I can still shout through the keyhole. Someone, send to the kitchen to start dinner if they haven’t already. I expect that soon we will have a considerable company to entertain. Will you enter, my lord?”

The lure of a hot meal and a place to sit that didn’t bounce drew Torisen forward, but he checked himself short of the door. Kin-Slayer hung from fingers already grown numb from tightly gripping it. Tradition said that the war-blade couldn’t be sheathed until it had killed.

“Go ahead,” he told his followers. “I would like to . . . uh . . . stretch my legs first.” Stepping back, he disappeared into the mist.

Torisen walked away from Mount Alban, going downhill toward the Silver because that was the easiest path to follow. The college’s lit windows faded behind him. The crescent moon above the cloud cover shone only brightly enough to distinguish up from down while the fog pressed against his face like a dank, dark hand. Thunder rumbled closer. Despite it all, however, part of him felt exultant: at the first word of his approach, Caldane had panicked and fled. He had never expected that, although perhaps he should have. While no coward, Lord Caineron didn’t react well to surprises.

Had Torisen really meant to use Kin-Slayer, though? All too well, he knew what a threat the sword represented. However, the college had appeared to be in danger. He hadn’t stopped to think.

For that matter, why had he brought the sword with him in the first place? Presumably, as an emblem of his power as Highlord, should Caldane choose to contest it. When he had first declared himself Ganth’s son and heir, he had had nothing to prove such a claim except for his willingness to wear that potentially lethal silver collar known as the Kenthiar. Then Jame had brought him his father’s emerald signet ring and fabled sword, both of which were said to perform miracles for their rightful owner.

“Wear the ring on the same hand that wields the sword,” his sister had told him.

She had also said something about the shattered blade having been reforged in Perimal Darkling, unlikely as that sounded.

Fact or fantasy? Similar questions had brought Caldane to Mount Alban in the first place.

Torisen had once combined the sword and ring to hack through a mirror and the wall from which it had hung. He had been half out of his mind at the time and for many days thereafter. When he had finally tried to resheathe the sword, he had found that he couldn’t even release it—that is, until he had pried its hilt loose from his grip by breaking three of his fingers. That had been nearly two years ago. He hadn’t touched the damned thing since. Was it an accident that even now he carried the blade in his right hand and wore the ring on his left? Perhaps that meant they were both inert and no threat to anyone, at least at the moment. He could test that hypothesis by trying to sheathe the sword or by switching it to his ring hand, but he hesitated to do either.

Ganth jeered at him from behind the locked door in his soul-image. Do you expect to claim my power when you refuse to accept the responsibility that comes with it? And you call yourself my son.

“Shut up,” Torisen muttered to himself. “Shut up, shut up.”

Downhill, a glow appeared. Torisen thought at first that it was a pocket of weirding, but it pulsed strangely and an odd, two-noted sound came out of it. As he approached, he recognized the site of the hill fort ruins that lay between Mount Alban and the river. Stepping between fallen blocks, he found himself in a cave of sickly light cut out of the fog. The cavity took the internal shape of the hall it once had been, circular, some forty feet across. Someone sat on a rock on its far side, sharpening iron claws with a whetstone and humming to himself. It was from him that the light emanated. He glanced up at Torisen with feverish blue eyes from under a ragged thatch of white hair.

“Well, sit,” the Gnasher said. “Neither of us wants to spring directly into battle, I suppose, although that will come soon enough.”

Torisen lowered himself onto a block. Mindful that it would soon begin to stiffen but seeing no other recourse, he stretched out his sore leg. Kin-Slayer’s pattern-woven blade rippled in the peculiar light as he grounded its point beside his sound foot.

The man he faced wore dirty homespun probably taken from one of the shepherds whom he had slain near Gothregor. One pant leg had been ripped off above the knee. Below, bent at an unnatural angle, was a wolf’s hind leg, its shattered tibia lancing out through discolored, matted fur. The stench of gangrene emanated from it. Clearly, the wolver king of the Deep Weald could not have run all the way from Gothregor in such a condition.

“You were the rider I saw lagging behind us,” said Torisen.

“Between your vanguard and your growing army, yes. How do you think the latter will feel about having come all this way for nothing? They will probably laugh at you, although to tell the truth I didn’t think the fat man would run away like that. Oh, and there was someone else close on my heels. A genuine postrider, I think. Were you expecting one from Kothifir?”

Torisen was, of course, but he put that out of his mind for the time being.

“So, now what?” he asked.

The Gnasher thoughtfully drew a long, jagged nail across the whetstone.

Rasp, rasp, rasp . . .

“The easiest thing would be for you to give me my daughter—Yce, d’you call her? A pretty name, although it doesn’t do to grow attached. Then we both can go home.”

“No,” said Torisen.

“Is that you speaking, or your father? When we last met, you almost turned to him for help. I could feel your hand on the latch to his prison. That’s his sword, isn’t it?”

Torisen’s hand rested on the pommel. He gently twisted it back and forth so that the blade’s point bit into the old keep’s cracked paving.

“You don’t want to face Kin-Slayer,” he said, “whoever wields it. Nor do you want to confront my father. Remember how the mere sound of his foot on the stair turned you into a cringing pup.”

“And you into a cowering boy.” The Gnasher grinned. His teeth were very sharp. “I have grown since then. Have you? No one becomes a man until he has put his father into the ground or, in my case, into the stew pot. I told you, all those years ago, that you had to kill your sire. But you haven’t. I smell the stink of his blood in you.”

Torisen sensed Ganth’s presence too, waiting, listening.

Scree . . . went Kin-Slayer’s point, uprooting shards of pavement with a spray of dislodged soil. Screee . . .

“Then too,” said the Gnasher meditatively, “I learned my lesson from King Kruin, better than he did himself. Name an heir and someday he will take your place. My offspring are all dead, except for this last one. Her death will give me the strength to heal and to live on.”

“Forever?”

“Perhaps.”

He put aside the stone, stretched, and yawned. Jaws gaped. Hinges cracked. Hands became huge paws as they stretched out to touch the ground. The shepherd’s clothes ripped down the back and fell away. He was as big as ever, the size of a small horse, but gaunt with thickly matted fur, and the light his soul cast flared a sickly yellow.

“You see how an heir’s very existence poisons me. Learn from it. They say that you have named your sister as your successor. That was foolish. She may seem hardly more than a mouthful, but she has unexpected qualities. How long can you keep a step ahead of her, eh? Oh, your father would laugh to see you now. Can’t you hear him?”

What Torisen heard were distant voices calling his name. Would his people find him in this murk? Did he want them to?

The grass behind him rustled. Grimly slipped out of it to his right, Yce to his left, both in their complete furs.

“Ah,” breathed the Gnasher.

“Grimly, take her away,” Torisen said over his shoulder to his friend.

“No.”

They all looked at Yce. None of them had ever heard her speak before.

“My father,” she said, showing white teeth. “My fight.”

“Ah,” said the Gnasher again, with a breath of laughter. “Ah, ha, ha, ha . . .”

Torisen started to rise, but Grimly slipped forward to block him. “Wait.”

The two wolvers of the Deep Weald circled each other within the ring of ancient stones. One was barely half the size of the other, but she moved with fluid grace while he dragged his shattered limb behind him. He lunged at her, jaws agape, and bowled her over. Pinning her with his weight, he snapped at her throat, but missed. She twisted under him. Her teeth closed on his ear and shredded it as he reared back.

“You little bitch!”

Yce grinned.

He came at her again, half-blinded by a mask of blood. She ducked under his charge and snapped sideways at his sound hind leg as he passed. Bones crunched. The Gnasher screamed and dragged himself around to face her with iron fingernails that gouged into the ancient pavement.

“All right,” he panted, raising himself. “Meet your siblings.”

Whorls of light gathered around him, tracing the patterns in his ragged coat. The line of an infant jaw, the curve of a muzzle, blue eyes barely open, small paws, scrabbling . . . How many pups he must have slain and devoured, litter upon litter. They covered him now like a moving coat, their edges limned with a purer light than his own. Milk teeth bared, and bit. The wolver king yelped with surprise and pain as red tears opened in his hide. He was bleeding from a dozen gashes, a hundred, and still those tiny teeth worried into his flesh, laying bare muscle, gnawing at bone.

Yce sat and watched. Once or twice, she licked her black-fringed lips.

The Gnasher writhed on the ground, snapping at himself, doing more harm. With a savage slash, he laid open his own guts, which spilled out onto the ground.

Torisen put his hand on Grimly’s shoulder and levered himself to his feet.

“Enough,” he said.

Thunder boomed closer. The phantom interior of the old hall faded and the mist within it became tinged with a foretaste of rain. Drops splattered into the growing pool of gore, thinning it until it ran deep into the circle’s network of cracks. The Gnasher gathered up his steaming entrails and regarded them with disbelief. He raised what was left of his face.

“Am I going to die?”

“Yes. Hold still.”

Torisen gripped Kin-Slayer with both hands and raised it. As the ring and the hilt touched, lightning raked the sky. Down came the blade, and the ancient circle split in two. Thunder rocked from side to side of the river valley. Almost unnoticed in that rolling cacophony, something bounced away down the slope into the shadows.

Yce stood opposite Torisen by a sundered, smoking stone, her slim, white figure ghostlike in the gloom. Crossing to his side, she slid her arms inside his coat, around his waist. He felt the warmth of her body, the firm pressure of her small breasts against his chest. With one hand, he gingerly held Kin-Slayer clear. With the other he returned her embrace.

“I will miss you,” she breathed in his ear.

“And I, you.”

When she disengaged and drew back, not hands but paws rested on his shoulders. The wolver girl bared white teeth in a grin and licked his cheek. Then, dropping to all fours, she loped off into the downpour.

“She’s going to return to the Deep Weald to claim her father’s place,” said Grimly. “I’ll escort her—not that she needs it—and return as soon as I can.”

Then he too was gone.

Torisen became aware that the shattered ruins were surrounded by silent, watching Kencyr. His people had found him after all. Kin-Slayer tingled in his left hand, light rolling up and down its rain-washed length. He sheathed it, to a long sigh from the shadows.

“Has someone brought me a letter from the Southern Host?” he asked.

A bedraggled postrider approached, drawing a folder from her dripping leather pouch.

“Are you sure you want to read it here, now, my lord?”

Torisen wished no such thing, only that the long day be over at last, but that was impossible until he had finished every piece of business related to it.

He drew out Harn Grip-hard’s missal and unfolded it. Judging by the familiar, crabbed script, the Commandant hadn’t trusted his response to a clerk’s fair copy, which was just as well. Torisen read the message three times, memorizing it, before the rain washed it away. Then he tore up the sodden paper and let it drop into the mud. Those watching could make little of his expression except, perhaps, that they had never seen him look more like his father.

“Get something to eat and rest while you can,” he told the rider. “My answer will be ready by dawn at the latest.”

The Kendar was startled. “What, all the way back south?”

“Yes. To Kothifir.”