This was my second story about Jame. As in "Child of Darkness," I still couldn't get into her mind, so the point of view, again, is that of a boy reacting to her. It's also a story set years later than Seeker's Mask, although you can see where some of the fraternal tensions in that novel are going. Fair warning: Things between Jame and Tori are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
P. C.
The Master of Knorth, High Lord of the Kencyrath, a proud man was he. Power he had, and knowledge deeper than the Sea of Stars. But he feared death. A bargain he made with Perimal Darkling, ancient enemy. His people he betrayed to win life unending. A house he built under eaves of darkness, and shadows crawled therein . . .
Damn. The ink had begun to clot again. Arie poked at it with his quill pen and upset the bottle. Oh, what was the use? It was too cold up here in the northwest turret of the High Keep to write anyway, especially about so dark a subject.
Arie glanced northward between mountain peaks to where the Barrier loomed up as far as the eye could see like a wall of mist. On the other side lay Perimal Darkling. Nearly thirty millennia ago, the darkness had first breached the greatest barrier of all between the outer void and the series of linked dimensions known as the Chain of Creation. At that time, the enigmatic Three-Faced God had bonded together the three people of the Kencyrath—Highborn, Kendar, and catlike Arrin-ken—to stop the shadows' spread. Then, apparently, the god had left his chosen people on their own. Their contest with Perimal Darkling had become a long, bitter retreat from threshold world to world down the Chain. Arie knew the old songs about every fleeting victory, every final defeat. They made a grim record, but the ones that hurt the most told of the Master's treachery. For the first time, a Kencyr had turned on his own kind and, moreover, caused nearly two-thirds of the Kencyr Host to fall with him. The remnant—Arie's ancestors among them—had fled here to Rathillien, the next threshold world, and raised the Barriers not only against the shadows but against their own fallen kinsmen as well. More than three thousand years had passed since then, but the shame and anger remained, especially at a border outpost like the High Keep. Other Kencyrs snug in the Riverland to the south could perhaps afford to forget, but not those left to guard the Barriers. Here the past still lived. Rangers even claimed that a man could walk right through the mist into the fallen world, into Perimal Darkling. Certainly, poor, warped creatures sometimes made their way out of the shadows to this side. The head of one was nailed to the northern battlement now, surrounded by gorging crows. At least this time it was clearly an animal. Just after Mid-Winter, the last patrol before storm season had brought back something that looked almost human.
Those same rangers were in the lower ward now, at maneuvers on a field of melting snow. They were mostly hoary veterans and boys Arie's age—the old and the young, all with the grim, pinched faces of those sworn to maintain the millennia-old watch of the High Keep Kencyrath down through the white years, though blood should freeze and hearts crack.
Arie knew he should have been one of them, riding, turning, fearing . . . fearing . . . the sweat of the colt, the wild force between his knees, rising, rising . . . Kethra was shouting at him . . . up, over, down . . . crushing pain, darkness . . .
The quill pen snapped in his shaking hand.
Fit for nothing, said Kethra's voice in his mind. For nothing, for nothing, Arie whispered back.
In the distance, a guard's horn sounded. The boy started. Was it an attack? Twisted figures crawling down from the north, from Perimal Darkling . . . The horn sound again, closer, from the south.
Arie heaved himself up and hopped on one foot to the window. Below, Waning Valley plunged down from New Moon Pass, bending southeastward toward the Riverland, home on Rathillien of all the major Kencyr houses. It was nearly two hundred leagues from the High Keep to Gothregor, the High Lord's citadel. Scarcely anyone had come north to this desolate outpost since the downfall of Ganth High Lord nearly forty years ago. Lord Min-drear of the High Keep had stood by Ganth in that last terrible battle among the White Hills and afterward had ridden slowly home, a broken man carrying the ashes of his five sons in a silver box.
Now horsemen rode into the outer ward from the south behind a gray-cloaked figure on a mare the color of fresh cream. The rangers' shaggy mountain ponies snorted and bowed their heads as the mare passed. She was a Whinno-hir, a Highborn's mount. Arie let his breath out slowly. So. The moment everyone had dreaded since Mid-Winter was at last at hand. From the south came riding the end of everything the High Keep Kendar had fought millennia to preserve.
Arie leaned his head against cold stone. Below lay the inner courtyard with Kendar, alerted by the horn, hurrying across it to their various posts. A week, a month, a year from now, what would he see if he again looked down from this perch? These familiar faces, or only those of usurping strangers? He willed himself to see, willed it until the blood hummed in his ears and his sight blurred, but nothing came. Of course not, he thought bitterly: His visions chose their own time, and then they never showed him anything real.
Below, the sun-shadows had moved and a thin, keen wind sprung up. No keep Kendar were in sight now. Instead, just within the gate stood two strangers. One, clearly a Highborn, seemed to smolder against the dark stones in his rich coat of crimson. He was pulling off gold-studded riding gloves. Beside him stood a second visitor, painfully thin, clad in dusty black, whose rank was harder to guess. Both were staring across the courtyard. Following their eyes, Arie saw the stranger in the gray cloak, already half way to the great hall's door.
Near the door was a ramp leading down into the keep's subterranean chambers. From the depths came a sudden hollow clang and an answering howl. The figure in gray stopped abruptly. Arie caught his breath. It was the mid-hour of the afternoon, he remembered. Every day at this time the war hounds were loosed to hunt their food in a yammering pack through the dark mountain forests. No one in his right mind would stand in their way, but no one had apparently warned the visitors, and the huntsmaster in his subterranean kennel didn't know they were there—or, worse, perhaps he did.
The gray bitch leader burst into pale sunlight from the mouth of the ramp, the rest of the pack baying behind her. They were all of the Molocar breed, four feet high at the shoulder and strong enough to bring down a charging warhorse. The stranger stood directly in their path. In a moment, he was surrounded. The hounds surged about him, baffled by his stillness, goaded by their hunger. In their midst, he and the gray bitch faced each other as though carved from stone. Now the stranger was moving. Very, very slowly, he peeled off his right glove, and held out his hand. The bitch leaned forward as though to sniff. Then, with a sudden sideways lunge, she snapped her jaws shut on it. Arie thought he heard bones crunch. He saw the shoulders of the figure jerk.
Too late, Kethra's voice roared across the courtyard. A hound yelped. A moment later the pack was in full flight from the only person who could make them shiver at a word. The Warder of High Keep stood in the hall doorway, her expression nearly as black as the randon scarf knotted around her strong throat. What she saw made her scowl deepen even more.
The pack had fled, but not the gray bitch. She stood as if frozen, the stranger's hand still gripped in her jaws. Drops of bright blood splashed on the flagstones between them. A cold breath of wind swept through the court, stirring gray cloth, ruffling gray fur. Then the hound released her grip and, with a sigh, sat down at the stranger's feet.
Kethra stepped back into the hall without a word, leaving the door open behind her. The stranger followed with the hound trotting at his side. At the gate, the crimson-coated Highborn at last angrily shrugged off the hand with which the other had held him back when the pack first erupted into the courtyard. As he and the thin man crossed to the door, Arie saw that the latter cast no shadow. All disappeared into the hall.
Arie grabbed his crutch and hopped as rapidly as he could down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the door. Inside, he slipped to the right, into shadows. The hall was thick with them. It was a high vaulted room, built for feasts and laughter. Some forty years ago, it had heard its last war song, raised in honor of its lord and his five bright-faced sons. Now the sons watched the hall blank-eyed from their memorial tapestries, woven of threads taken from the clothing in which each one had died. Similar death banners lined the upper reaches of the hall, pair after pair of the distinctive Min-drear hands held open-palmed in frozen, possibly futile benediction. Lady Shian, Lord Min-drear's consort, was there. Only Min-drear himself and his aging sister Nessa were absent.
Kethra stood before the fire, her body hard-edged and unyielding against the fitful flames. Old Tarin, steward of the hall, had put the customary flask on the table before her before slipping back into the wall niche that was his post. The bottle was uncorked but still full. The Warder had offered the visitors no welcome cup.
"I tell you again," she said to the gray-cloaked stranger who faced her across the table, "Lord Min-drear sees no one. Tell me your business and I will inform him of it if I can."
"What, without seeing him?"
The stranger's voice surprised Arie. It had such a curious huskiness that he couldn't tell if a man or woman spoke—not that any Highborn lady would come among them like this. The visitor still wore cape and hood. His hands were clasped behind him, hidden in the folds of the gray cloak.
"Kendar, remember your place!" snapped the crimson-coated man.
"Hush, Kracarn. This is her place and we are guests. Warder, tell your lord that I have come to summon him to council at Gothregor a month hence."
Kethra gave a harsh laugh. "A summons from Gothregor! After all these years! The last time we answered, Highborn, how many of us ever returned? The White Hills are thick with the ashes of our dead and our hall is empty except for those." She gestured toward the tapestries. "Who would you have us send this time? Who is left? Old men and women, children, cripples . . . ?"
Involuntarily, her glance flickered past the visitors to Arie standing in the shadows by the door. He flinched, and so did she. Rage at her slip made the Warder turn all the more fiercely on the strangers.
"Five Highborn and a hundred Kendar gone from this hall," she said savagely, taking such an abrupt stride toward the intervening table that the gray bitch sprang up with a snarl. "We have paid our debt in blood to Ganth of Knorth's house. Leave us in peace!"
"Gently," murmured the visitor, dropping a hand, the left, to soothe the hound. "Others have loved Ganth as little as you. He erred badly in the White Hills. He had just come from Gothregor where he found his family slaughtered and rotting in the sun. He was not sane when he led your people against his massed foes. He was not sane later when, in exile, he drove the daughter of his second wife across the Barrier into Perimal Darkling. He was neither sane nor forgiven. He died with blood in his throat.
"But now Torisen, Ganth's son by that second wife, occupies the High Lord's seat. This council summons comes from him, although he never thought it would travel so far. I will speak plainly with you, Warder. My lord Torisen would do as his father did: gather the Kencyr Host and march against our foes here on Rathillien. He forgets, as his father did, that the true enemy is Perimal Darkling and that only border posts such as this keep the Barriers strong. Perhaps your lord can remind him of that. Otherwise, soon, the war summons may come again, and you will have to answer or be foresworn."
Kethra shook her head as if to clear it. That husky, purring voice had slid like velvet between her thoughts, half deadening them. "Torisen, Torisen . . . he was born in the Haunted Lands during his father's exile, returned to claim Ganth's power, wielded it as High Lord in a great battle at the Cataracts . . . So a wandering singer told us."
This time, she shook all over like a bear rousing itself. A look almost of fear came into her eyes.
"He had a sister. Some say that her father cursed her as a hell-spawn and cast her out. She fell into the Master's hands, but not even he could manage her and she escaped from his house back into Rathillien. They say that she can blood-bind, and that she has spoken the Master Runes so often and so recklessly that some of their power has bled into her voice. They call her the Darkling. Now in Trinity's name, who are you?"
Then, abruptly, there was someone else in the hall. Highborn and Kendar both pivoted to face the thin, white-gowned figure bearing rapidly down on them.
"Lady Nessa." Kethra gave Min-drear's sister a shaky salute.
"Have you found my brother yet?" The white figure fluttered anxiously about them like some ghostly moth. Only her anxious, red-rimmed eyes showed through the slits of her veil-mask. "Oh, I've looked everywhere, everywhere!"
"Even on the foundation level, lady?" the Warder asked with a note of desperation.
"Clever Kethra! No, but I'll search there immediately. Oh!" She stopped short, noticing the strangers for the first time. "Who are you?"
All three visitors bowed. "That is Kracarn of Tagmeth, that, Bender," said the Highborn, shaking back the gray hood. Underneath was a thin face marked by silver-gray eyes and high cheekbones, one of them with the faint white line of an old scar cutting across it. She gave Kethra a lopsided, almost rueful smile. "And I am Jamethiel Priests'-bane, the Lordan of Ivory . . . the Darkling."
"I am honored to meet you," said Nessa in a preoccupied way. "Now excuse me. I must find my brother." With that, she darted away, followed at a tactful distance by a Kendar attendant.
"Have you misplaced Lord Min-drear?" Jamethiel asked Kethra politely.
The Warder made an inarticulate sound. She suddenly stepped around the table, grabbed the other's arm, and wrenched her right hand into the light. Arie felt his stomach turn.
"You said only scratches," Kethra said fiercely. "By God, Ganth's daughter or not, you will carry no infection forth from this house!"
With that, she swept the flask off the table and emptied its fiery contents over the mangled hand. The Highborn shuddered violently but made no sound. Nor did she try to withdraw from Kethra's grasp any more than she had from the hound's jaws earlier. For a long minute, Highborn and Kendar locked eyes as liquor dripped unnoticed into a black pool on the floor between them. Then Kethra dropped the hand with an oath, hurled the bottle into the fireplace, and stormed out of the hall without a backward glance.
"Border hospitality," said Jamethiel. "I have on occasion been made to feel more welcome."
Kracarn came forward quickly, wrenching a white scarf from his neck. "Damn these people anyway, Highborn and low," he said angrily, wrapping the scarf around her hand. "I think they must all be mad! Why did you let them treat you that way—you, the High Lord's sister!"
She flexed her hand carefully, painfully. "There. More mess than damage, I think. That Warder is so upset she hardly knows what she's doing. But why? Something is very wrong here, Kracarn. When I know what it is, I'll know how to react, won't I?"
Tarin emerged from his recess, expressionless, and gestured to the woman to follow him. As she left the hall with the gray dog still at her side and the thin, silent man at her heels, Arie saw that she was absentmindedly licking the last traces of liquor and blood from the tips of her long, white fingers.
In her wake, the hall seemed very empty and silent. Silent? No. There was a throbbing, a deep pulse. Arie felt as if his head was swelling with it. He desperately willed it to stop, willed himself not to see, but already the hall before him was fading. In its place was a much larger, grander hall, its high roof supported by black marble columns, its floor paved with green-veined stone. Thousands of death banners lined its walls. Tapestry faces grimaced. Threadbare hands clutched at rotting fabric. All was dead fiber, and yet the walls beneath were stained with blood.
Arie backed away. "No," he said out loud. "No, it isn't there. It isn't real."
He tripped on steps, then turned and scrambled blindly up and up, past the second level gallery, into the close turnings of the highest tower. The wind came whistling down to meet him.
At its summit, the tower opened out on all four sides. Arie sank down beside the sheer drop, trembling. Then he began to cry. It wasn't fair. He hadn't asked to be so weak, or crippled, or—or cursed with these visions. No one here understood what that was like. Kethra certainly didn't. He hadn't even dared to tell her when he had begun to see things. She would think he was feeble-witted on top of everything else or, perhaps, going mad.
Arie rested his cheek against the cold stones and closed his eyes. The wind rushed about him, slowly stripping away his fears. He began to sing to himself, very softly, first songs that the wandering singer had brought to the keep more than a year ago and then songs of his own. The wind deafened him to his own words but seemed to make them ring all the more clearly in his mind. He worked them this way and that, changing, polishing them, and for a while was content.
It was nearly sunset when he opened his eyes again. Light streamed between the two opposite peaks to the west and shadows slowly rose in the Pass below. To the north, a premature darkness clouded the Barrier. Its surface moved restlessly in patterns that must have been miles across, and lightning flickered inside. There almost seemed to be something solid within the mists. Each flash half defined shifting outlines as of roofs and chimneys and gables as if at any minute the haze would roll back and there would stand the Master's House, looming over the mountains, the High Keep, over all Rathillien. It was a mirage which often appeared before one of those terrible spring storms from the north, from Perimal Darkling, that shook the keep down to its very roots. Arie picked up his crutch, shivering. It was more than time that he went below.
As he stepped out of the stairwell onto the second level, he heard his name called. Here the western wall opened into a long, rib-vaulted gallery lined with windows through which light poured. Someone sat under the center arch in the heart of the blaze.
"You sing well," said the High Lord's sister.
"Y-you heard me, lady?"
"I have a good ear for a wind-borne voice. Sing again."
Arie surprised himself by obeying, and even more by using the words he had been trying to write down earlier that day. Since then, the song had grown. As he sang it, he strained to make out the figure against the white flame of the sun. The gray cloak was thrown back now, revealing cream-colored riding leathers, a short byrnie of rathorn ivory, and high buff boots, all travel stained. Arie had never seen any Highborn lady but Nessa, and very little of her. This woman seemed impossibly slim compared to the powerfully built Kendar among whom he had grown up, and infinitely more graceful, with a hint of underlying tension. Even in repose, she seemed poised for sudden movement.
"Very good," she said when he had finished. "You have the true singer's voice—and sight. How did you know that the Master's hall is paved with green-veined stones?"
Arie gaped at her. "I—I didn't know. I just saw . . . "
Then stammering, he told her about his visions—the corridor extending into infinity, the window opening on such a landscape as Rathillien had never known, the black marble staircase ascending to a doorway barred with red ribbons as if it led to a lord's bridal chamber.
"I remember those stairs," said Jamethiel in a low voice, as if to herself. "Someone was waiting beyond those ribbons, and perhaps still is. When did you see these things?"
Arie told her.
"So," she said thoughtfully. "It all began when the patrol brought back that wretched 'almost human' creature from near the Barrier soon after Mid-Winter. Yes. That makes sense . . . but what a half-witted thing to have done!"
"Lady?"
"Nothing—I hope. Arie, how long has it been since the High Keep had a direct clash with the Master's folk?"
"Centuries, I think. Lady, it's been so long since the Master's fall. Is he really still there beyond the Barrier, still waiting?"
"Oh, yes. Listen to your own song. The man bargained for immortality and got it, he and his people both, after a fashion. Then, too, time passes more slowly in Perimal Darkling than here. The Master can and will wait until we forget him, as my brother has, until we lower our guard. But your leg hurts, doesn't it? What did you do to it?"
"Kethra put me on a half-broken colt when I was a child. I—it reared and fell on me."
"I see. Come to the window."
Arie hesitated, then limped shyly forward, only to stop again abruptly. The darkness at the Highborn's feet had risen. It was the gray bitch.
"Give her your hand," said Jamethiel.
Arie would rather have bolted. Instead, he found himself holding out a shaking hand, bracing himself for the pain which he felt sure would come. The dog sniffed it. Then, incredibly, his fingertips were wet from her tongue.
"Good," said the Highborn. "Now, after me, you are her master. Sit down . . . please."
Arie sat on the window ledge. He could see the visitor's face clearly now in the failing light. It looked very young and tired.
"Does your hand hurt much?" he blurted out.
The thin lips lifted in a wry smile. "Considering the things that have happened to me and that I've done to myself—yes, including that idiotic recklessness with the Master Runes that left me croaking like this—these wounds hardly count." She raised her bandaged hand and looked at it. Her smile slipped away. "In fact, compared to the binding of a creature's body and soul, these scratches are beneath contempt, and I have forced this hound to sell its freedom for a few drops of blood!"
Her long fingers curled stiffly into a fist.
"Lady!" Arie cried, and caught her injured hand in both of his as if to prevent it from striking out at the nearest stone. Its warmth and the feel of fine bones just under the skin startled him. Somehow, he hadn't quite believed before that this strange woman was mere flesh and blood, however much of the latter he had already seen.
"Sorry," she said with a crooked smile, withdrawing her hand. "But this keep. It's so old, so . . . fragile. Like an eggshell. I can feel darkness tapping on the outside, tapping at my self-control, too. How easy it would be to fall in a place like this. Arie, listen: to protect yourself, you have to know what's going on. Somehow, the will of this keep's defenders has been badly undermined, so much so that Perimal Darkling lies just beneath the surface here. Patrolling the Barrier is hardly enough when that sort of rot sets in. And each time the rangers bring back a darkling, things get worse because every creature out of the shadows brings some of them with it. That 'almost human' thing certainly did. So far, no one but you has seen these visions, but soon everyone will if this goes on. This entire keep is in danger of becoming no more than a shadow of that greater fortress in Perimal Darkling, the Master's House."
Arie wrestled with this. "Then, when I saw the room with the green-veined floor . . . "
"It was because Bender and I had just been in your hall, the counterpart of the Master's," said Jamethiel bitterly. She glanced at the gallery wall. Arie, also looking, started violently. The rapidly fading daylight cast both their shadows on the stones, but the Highborn's was darker and had a human face. There stood Bender, as he must have all this time.
"That is an unfallen darkling," said Jamethiel. "I am another one. We both were inmates in the Master's House. Neither of us consented to his evil, but we were both changed nonetheless. Bender is . . . as you see him. And I?" She shivered suddenly, and drew her cloak around her as if for warmth. "I have darkness in my veins now. Enough to blood-bind this poor brute to me body and soul. Enough to cast the very shadows I fight."
Thunder rumbled nearer, louder, and a cold northern wind breathed down the gallery. It was nearly dark now. To the north, verdigris lightning played across the Barrier as through the heart of a black opal.
Then from below came a booming sound. It echoed up the stairwell like some great shout of warning from no human throat and the gallery rang with it.
Jamethiel sprang up. "What in God's name is that?"
"The alarm, lady." Arie lurched to his feet. "Someone has sounded the Keepguard Horn in the lower hall. We must be under attack."
Below, the large room was rapidly filling as the keep Kendar poured into it in answer to the alarm, hurriedly buckling on armor as they came. Kethra stood by the extinct fire, silent and grim. Before her on the table lay something long and pale. It was Nessa's body.
The crowd parted for Jamethiel. She bent over the still form.
"Dead," said Kethra thickly.
"Yes, and already beginning to stiffen." She reached for the mask, which, out of respect, no one else had touched.
"But where is her gown?" asked Arie in a thin voice from the foot of the table.
Kethra looked at him, then at the corpse. What she had taken for the familiar garment in the stress of the moment was in fact only the first of many under-tunics.
"I'm afraid that isn't the only thing missing," said Jamethiel, and turned back the veil. Shock rippled through the hall. Under the silk was a grinning, bestial face whose eyes long since had gone to feed the crows. "I suggest you look on the northern battlement for the head of this poor lady," the Highborn said soberly. "Now. Before dawn brings back the birds."
Kethra turned on her, shock and rage at war in her face, but before she could speak, a Kendar burst through the crowd and threw himself gasping at her feet.
"Warder! In the lowest corridor by the western foundation . . . Tucor, Erlik, and I on guard duty . . . we found Lady Nessa's servant all broken and then . . . w-we saw her in the shadows, beckoning. Erlik and Tucor went to her. I-I saw her put her arms around them and then . . . she began . . . to squeeze. Warder! She crushed them, she crushed them both. I-I ran. Forgive me, but I couldn't fight her."
"Who?" roared Kethra.
"I-I think it was the High Lord's sister, but she wore Lady Nessa's gown . . . "
The rustic of cloth as Jamethiel swung her gray cloak over the body caused the guard to look up. His jaw dropped when he saw them both.
"One thing at least is certain," said Jamethiel grimly. "The dress was hers."
Kethra turned on her again, seething. "Battlements, cellars, exchanged heads—how much of this do you understand, Highborn?"
"Sweet Trinity, less than you should," said the other in exasperation. "Warder, do you know what a changer is?"
Kethra gave her a startled look and then almost by reflex began to recite the ancient lesson: " 'In the Master's House there were those who embraced his evil. To them also life unending was given, but they purchased it with the corruption of body and soul until they could take on the mockery of any form but hold none that was true. So were the changers born.' " She gave a harsh laugh. "Are you saying that's what our guest in the cellar is, Darkling? After all these centuries, and on a night when you just happen to be our guest, too?"
Kracarn put a hand on his lady's arm almost pleadingly. "Jamethiel, it's beneath your dignity even to talk to this madwoman. Kendar!" He raised his voice. "One of you go summon your lord. God's claws, his sister has just been murdered!"
No one moved.
"Kracarn, please. Warder, if I'm right, this keep last saw a changer not centuries but only months ago when your patrol brought back the head of that 'almost human' thing to grace your battlements. Yes, that's what I think it was."
Kethra snorted. "D'you think we wouldn't know a changer if we saw one?"
"I don't think you would recognize one if it threw you down the stairs. Remember, these creatures can counterfeit any appearance. But they were also once like us and still are in some respects. What would you do if someone fed your kinsman or friend or lover to the crows like a common piece of carrion without benefit of death rites or pyre?"
"Do?" The Warder stiffened at the very thought of such an abomination. "Do? Why, I would tear down the bastard's house stone by stone and stake him out among the rubble. I would give him his own blood to drink . . . " She stopped short. "Sweet Trinity. Is that what we did?"
"I think so. And now with the same spring thaw that brought me comes that poor creature's avenger to breach your walls and spill your blood—although, being a changer, he goes about it rather more obliquely than you would."
Throughout the hall, Kendar shifted uneasily. More than one made the Darkwyr sign both against this avenger out of the shadows and against the evil which they themselves might unwittingly have committed. But Kethra looked at the still figure on the table and her expression hardened.
"Whatever we may or may not have done, this poor lady was innocent. Now her blood is a stain on our honor until we avenge her death." She turned to the uneasy crowd and raised her voice. "Hear me! We may have a different kind of quarry tonight, but it is still quarry and we are still hunters and warriors. This creature will die with blood in its throat, so I swear! Re-Kencyr . . . "
"Warder!" Jamethiel's voice cut across the ancient battle cry. "You have no idea how different a hunt this will be. I do. Leave it to me."
Kethra gave her a scornful look. "I'd as soon send this boy. Crippled as he is, he's at least as strong as a poor stick like you."
"Ancestors preserve us," said the Highborn, exasperated. "What has strength got to do with it? You'll never slay this creature by force anyway. God's claws and toenails, what do you think will happen if the lot of you go charging down into those cellars? Think of the confusion. Think of this creature's powers. It may even be one of the breed who can snatch the very thoughts from your mind. Down there in the dark, how long will you be sure that the person coming up behind you is really your brother, your sister, your friend? Then the killing will start. I tell you, the changer has set a trap for you all, and that," she pointed at Nessa's corpse, "is the bait."
"Bait?" Kethra started forward, big hands flexing. "Bait? The last of the Min-drears . . . "
An abrupt silence fell on the hall. No one even seemed to breathe.
"You had better tell me," said Jamethiel. "Whatever it is, you can't hide it forever."
The Warder had turned away, shoulders bowed. "Lord Min-drear is dead," she said in a choked voice. "His poor sister couldn't accept it, but it's true. We gave him to the pyre on Mid-Winter Day."
"And kept it a secret all this time?" Kracarn was outraged. "The news should have gone to Gothregor months ago! Lord Torisen will have to assign this keep to another Highborn family and they, of course, will bring in their own Kendar. You should all have made arrangements to leave by now!"
A low growl rose from the assembled Kendar. They closed ranks around the two Highborn. Arie began to shiver. He saw something in those familiar faces that he had never seen there before, and it terrified him.
"Kracarn . . . " said Jamethiel. "Shut up." She looked with amazement at the wall of hostile faces ringing her in. "My God, what are you people thinking of? D'you really believe that killing us will keep the news from Gothregor forever? And when my brother hears, what then? I give you fair warning: he annoys easily. But I still don't entirely understand. The last of the Min-drears? This boy . . . " she looked at Arie. "He has the build of a Highborn and the Min-drear hands. Isn't he the old lord's son?"
"Yes," said Kethra, as if the word hurt. "But not his consort's. Enough! For the moment, this is still our home and we will defend it as we see fit, without the help of one who once ate that Master's bread and might, for all we know, still earn it."
"Warder!"
Kethra spun around, aware that she had really overstepped herself this time and prepared to bluster. Instead, her eyes met those of the visitor, and she fell back a step.
"Threatening my life is one thing," said that husky, purring voice. "Questioning my honor is another. At the very least, to do so is . . . unwise. Shall I remind you of your manners, Warder? Yes, I believe I will. Three times within one day you have ignored the cup rites. Once for my arrival. You will forgive me if I fail to count the bottle which you so graciously emptied over my hand. Once for your slain lady. Her parting cup should have been drunk before she grew cold. Once for the hunt. Vengeance must be sworn and sanctified in proper form."
"Lady, now is not the time," protested Kethra, thrown on the defensive and more than a bit shaken.
"I say it is. Moreover, all must take part and each rite must last its full hour. Let everyone in the keep assemble here. Steward, bring all the ale you can find. Bender will help you. The rest of you, prepare the hall."
There was a moment's startled hesitation. Arie felt as if someone had kicked the feet out from under him and suspected that others felt the same. It was a long time since the full, innate power of a Kencyr Highborn had been exercised within these walls. Kethra opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again. If Jamethiel's demands had gone any further, she would have rebelled, but the customs invoked had weight with her, and so did the other's manner.
"I think one of us really has gone mad," she said. "All right. Do as she orders. The changer can work no mischief down there by itself. Our hunt and our vengeance are only delayed."
In short order, the hall was made ready. A hundred men and women sat on the benches, each with an ale mug in one hand and a naked sword in the other. All turned grim faces toward the head table where the Warder and Arie sat with the visitors. Nessa's body lay in state on a trestle between the high table and the benches. A thick candle marked with hour bands burned at her head, now retrieved from the battlements.
Kethra rose and growled the code of welcome. The response was muttered sullenly through the hall and the drinking began.
Bender put a small cask on the table in front of the Warder.
"A guest-gift," said Jamethiel. "My cask of wine for your flask of liquor. I occasionally remember my own manners, such as they are. You may have a taste," she added to Kracarn, "but then you must drink the common ale. There is little enough of this."
They poured and drank. Arie knew that he had never tasted better wine.
There was silence in the hall at first, broken only by the splash of ale. Outside, the storm rumbled closer. Fitful gusts of wind breathed through the hall's small upper windows, stirring the banners. Candles flickered and a pool of molten wax began to form beside Nessa's head. Arie drank more wine.
The first hour passed at last. Kethra stood and gave the call to mourning.
The voices in the hall were louder now, raised as though to compete with the approaching storm. The stones of the keep shivered as the thunder spoke again. In the lulls, Arie became aware of Jamethiel's quiet, slightly husky voice reciting the ancient stories of betrayal and flight and Rathillien, the new world, of striving and suffering, joy and triumph. Kethra relaxed and listened as the noises in the hall mounted unnoticed. Arie drank more wine.
The second hour passed more quickly. The summons to vengeance was greeted by a low, hoarse roar and the raising of many cups.
Kethra sank back in her chair. That husky voice had caught her now, all the more so because this time it told a story she had heard before only in fragments. Arie also listened, rapt. As the Highborn described it, he seemed to see that great mass of people known as the Horde slowly circling, circling in the Southern Wastes as they had for centuries past. But then, abruptly, the circle broke and the Horde began to more northward, three million strong, toward the Riverland. The Kencyr Host led by Torisen High Lord marched south to meet it. Host and Horde came together at the Cataracts. Battle followed on the narrow stair beside the falls, and confusion and carnage.
As Jamethiel spoke, Arie almost thought he heard other, nearer sounds: shouts, oaths, a bench crashing over. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement, as though many figures were weaving about in confusion. Shadows leaped and, crying, fell.
But the voice went on, quiet, husky, arresting. It spoke of a girl escaped from darkness who came in search of her brother and found him in the chaos of battle at the Cataracts. It described their reunion, her doomed attempt to live as the Kencyrath said a Highborn woman should. Then followed flight, friendship among the scrollsmen, randon training, and much else besides in a life as breathless as a midnight race along the edge of a precipice.
"Except," said Jamethiel with a sudden smile, "when I occasionally fall on my head and so manage to get a little rest."
"A Highborn woman, uncloistered, unmasked." Even with the evidence before her, Kethra still found that hard to believe. "Has the Kencyrath changed so much since your brother became High Lord?"
"No," said the other, a bit sadly now. "Not really. But there are new possibilities. As for me, my brother hasn't exactly been pleased with my path, but he hasn't done all he could to stop me either."
"I should think," said Kethra wryly, "that it would take a great deal to do that."
Just then, Kracarn slid out of his chair and under the table, still clutching an ale mug. Arie started to laugh. Then, for the first time in hours, he looked past the Highborn to the hall beyond and his mouth dropped open. Half of the High Keep Kendar were sprawling on the floor and the rest slumped over the low tables.
"Oh, yes," said Jamethiel quietly, sipping her wine. "Very little stops me. That, however, might." She lowered her cup and regarded the sword point which Kethra had leveled at her throat.
"No more stories," grated the Warder. "No more honeyed voice. What have you done to my people?"
"Gently, gently. They only sleep, like my companion here, thanks to the phial which Bender poured into their ale. My congratulations on their hardheadedness, by the way. I demanded the full rites, but never really thought it would take all three hours for the potion to work. You have a choice now, Warder: strike, or finish your wine and come with me." She gave a sudden wry grin. "You might at least give me the benefit of the doubt. For once, I know what I'm doing—I hope."
For a moment, Kethra stood glaring. Then she drained her cup with a gulp. The two rose and crossed the body-strewn floor to the stairs leading downward. Bender and the gray bitch followed them.
Arie was left at the table, staring blankly at Lady Nessa's body. The third hour passed in a slow stream of hot wax running down the thick candle at her head. Then the rising storm slammed into the keep with a shout of thunder. The hall doors burst open. Wind came questing into the hall, licked back Nessa's veil. For a moment her pale face, oddly tranquil, caught the light. Then the candle blew out.
Arie grabbed his crutch, with something almost like a sob, and stumbled after the others toward the stair. The murk of the subterranean levels received him soundlessly.
The first basement was occupied by the winter stables and the kennels. As he went, half falling, down the stairway, Arie heard the uneasy movements of horses and a dog whimpering somewhere in the dim maze of wooden partitions.
He caught up with the others halfway down into the second basement where the fire timbers towered fifty feet from brick floor to ceiling. Impossible to ignite by accident, these huge logs had only been made to burn after a year of dropping hot coals into their hollowed-out trunks. It had taken the largest of them many generations to burn through to the bark. Their dusky orange glow lit the hall, but Arie could feel little of their warmth. Someone had left open the trap door in the southwest corner which led down to the foundation level. Chill air rose from the black hole, heavy with the smell of earth. The stairway went straight down into it.
A moment later, they were all standing on the dirt floor of the keep's lowest level with the torchlit passage stretching out before them along the western foundation wall.
Kethra and Jamethiel went first. The Warder still carried her sword naked in her hand and used it to cut tangled webs from their path. The Highborn, unarmed, kept her left hand locked in the gray dog's fur. Arie limped after them, still wine-befuddled, wondering if any of this was actually happening. The torches bracketed at intervals in the outer stonewall had begun to burn with a bluish tinge. High above in the hall, the death banners must be flying over the drugged Kendar, but only a dull vibration in the stones and a groaning from the inner wall of ironwood—like that from the timbers of a ship at sea—marked the presence of the storm. Not even the voice of the thunder could reach them in this grave of narrow passageways.
They found Nessa's attendant at the mouth of the third corridor leading off under the main body of the keep. As the guard had said, she was horribly broken, as if someone had taken great pains to snap every bone. Beyond lay Erlik and Tucor. They had been crushed together face-to-face, tooth uprooting tooth, shattered rib bursting through flesh and armor to lock with rib in a horrible parody of a lover's embrace. The ground all about them gleamed darkly in the torchlight.
Kethra swore out loud.
The gray bitch suddenly strained forward under Jamethiel's hand, growling. The next moment she broke free and disappeared down the side corridor.
"After her!" cried Jamethiel.
They ran, the Highborn and the Warder racing on ahead. Arie stumbled. Bender's thin hand closed on his elbow and drew him on. Surely they were going downhill now, but he had never heard that these passages sloped. The ceiling and walls also seemed wrong, as though the former were rising and the latter opening out between the islands of torch-cast light into shadowy depths. He caught glimpses of high vaulted chambers, arcades, and halls where there could be nothing but iron-wood and ashlar walls.
These are shadows of the Master's House, he thought dizzily. But in the presence of three darklings, they were rapidly becoming more than that.
Then from ahead came a scream of canine agony.
Kethra sprang forward with a hoarse shout, brandishing her sword. Jamethiel tripped her. When the Warder tried to rise, a slim arm snaked around her throat, deft fingers barely touching the pressure points. Kethra gasped.
"You fool, not with the sword!" hissed Jamethiel's voice in her ear. "Remember, this creature's blood is utterly corrupt. It burns."
Kethra shook off the Highborn and rose, seething. "One more trick like that, Darkling . . . "
"And you'll feed me to the chickens. Just as you wish, but later. Here it comes."
The two swung about to face down the passageway. Arie peered around them. He could no longer trace the phantom outlines of the openings, but the sense of open space remained. They stood under a torch between solid walls. Beyond, however, the brands were nothing but blurs in midair, bobbing in the cold wind that slid past where no wind had a right to be.
From ahead in the gloom came a faint rustling sound, moving closer, closer. Something pale entered the farthest circle of light. Arie gulped. That was Nessa's gown, but what in all the names of God was wearing it? The advancing form looked like that of a woman, but even as he watched it thickened, the curve of breast and hip becoming less distinct. Seams ripped. The dim blur of a face swam closer in the murky light. The Warder drew in her breath sharply.
"Kethraaaa . . . " came a low, hissing and yet horrible familiar voice from the shadows. "Keeeethraaa . . . "
"Min-drear?" the Warder whispered. "No, No!"
She lunged forward, steel flashing. Her sword bit deeply into the shoulder of the advancing changer. A few drops of blood spattered on the ground, on her hand, and ate hungrily into both. The awful wound closed around steel, burnt it away. Kethra found herself clutching only a sword hilt. The creature grinned down at her with a face rapidly becoming more and more like that of her dead lord.
"Keeethraa . . . have you missed me? Cooome, and embrace for old love's sake . . . "
It had caught hold of her arms and now began to squeeze. Her coat split down the back. Bones creaked. Arie started toward her with a cry, but Bender held him fast.
"Warder!" The Highborn's voice cracked off the stonewalls. "It takes its form from your memories. Think of something else!"
The creature faltered, its face beginning to lose definition. With a snarl, it thrust Kethra aside.
"Soooo . . . the Master's toy. What do you remember, changeling?"
Arie saw its features begin to alter again as it shambled forward, cheekbones becoming more pronounced, silver-gray eyes widening. Jamethiel went back a step.
"I deny you," she said hoarsely. "I damn you."
Her hands jerked up, bandaged fingers separating stiffly. With horror, Arie saw her start to make the Darkwyr sign in reverse.
Bender caught her arm and sent her spinning backward. She collided with Arie, knocking him into the wall. The stones against his back felt strange—sheet ice over deep water, about to crack. He pushed both Jamethiel and himself away from them.
Bender completed the mirror sign. The wind stopped. Cold grew. In the uncertain light, it looked as if what little flesh the man still had was melting away as from someone years dead, but his hands held the sign without a tremor.
The changer had halted uncertainly in front of him. Now it reached out as if to grab the man, and its own fingertips shriveled at the touch. It turned, snarling, thwarted. Behind it lay Kethra. She had fallen against the wall at the edge of the light. Arie could see her left arm and the lower part of her body clearly, but the rest was indistinct. Instead of stones behind her, there seemed to be pavement, stretching back out of sight, marked with strange patterns. Kethra was straining to pull herself out of the darkness. She would not succeed before the changer reached her.
Without thinking, the boy released Jamethiel's arm and slipped past Bender. The face and form of the changer were in motion again even as he threw himself between it and the Warder.
"Cripple," it said, almost in Kethra's voice. "Worthless little cripple." Then it burst into long peals of jeering laughter.
"Shut up, mother!" he screamed at it. "Shut up, shut up!" He swung his crutch.
The pain of splinters ripping into his palms as the shaft was wrenched out of them brought him to his senses with a gasp. It was towering over him, chuckling now with a sound like bubbles rising through quicksand. He stared up at it, too appalled to move.
Behind him, Kethra staggered to her feet.
"Now!" cried Jamethiel. "Hellbender, bring it down!"
The man dropped his hands. Kethra swept Arie aside. The changer had half turned at the sound of the Highborn's voice. Now it swayed and toppled as both Bender and the Warder hit it simultaneously. Each pinned down an arm. Arie, to his amazement, found himself trying to control one of its legs. The limb slowly writhed in his grasp. He felt a terrible strength gathering in it.
Jamethiel dropped to her knees beside the misshapen head. She tore the white scarf off her hand, hooked her fingernails in the half closed wounds, and ripped them open. Blood spiraled down her wrist. Bender forced the changer's mouth open and she held her hand over it. Blood streamed off the heel of her palm down into the working throat.
The changer gagged, and then it convulsed. A knee smashed into Arie, knocking him two paces down the corridor. Caught by a whiplash arm across the face, Jamethiel staggered back into the wall under the torch. Her head struck the stones sharply. Bender drew her clear.
Convulsion followed convulsion. Nessa's gown was ripped apart in seconds. Beneath it, the pale flesh twisted and writhed, as if each sinew was a separate thing. There was a dull crack as a bone snapped in the midst of a muscular contraction, then another and another. Still, it wasn't until the shattered end of a femur tore its way out through the side of one leg that the thing began to scream. There were words mixed in that rush of agony and dark blood. The changer was begging for death, begging despite its torment in the correct ritual terms. Only a Highborn would use that formula. Only a Highborn had the authority to grant what was asked.
Jamethiel stood over it, her bruised face very still. "Bring me fire," she said in a low voice. "Hurry."
Bender took the torch out of its socket and put it in her hand. She extended it to the distorted thing on the floor. Its hand shot up and gripped the burning wood. Flames leaped down the ruined sleeve of the gown. In an instant, fire clothed the entire form. Flames spread, covering walls, floor, ceiling, and yet none of them burned. It was as if the shadows themselves were being consumed. The heat and stench of the pyre drove Arie and the others back to the western foundation. It was there, when at last the flames and the unnatural wind died together, that they realized Jamethiel was not with them.
They found her sitting on the stairs, hands clenched together with no regard for the torn flesh. Orange light from the fire-timber hall spilled down the steps around her, casting her shadow black on the floor. Bender stood in it. Of course, thought Arie with a kind of light-headed omniscience, that's because he has no shadow of his own. Kethra regarded the Highborn belligerently, fists jammed on hips.
"Well?" she demanded.
"That all depends," said Jamethiel bitterly. "As you may have noticed, I nearly got you killed. That damned sign. I always was too quick with my hands. This time, at the very least it would have cost me my soul or Bender his—if he still had one. Instead, I've killed a Highborn, one of my own blood, with my blood. Set one to catch one, eh? Perhaps, after all, there isn't that much to choose between two shades of darkness."
Kethra regarded her soberly for a minute more. Then she unknotted the black scarf of office around her neck.
"I make my choice," she said and, taking Jamethiel's injured hand, carefully wrapped the cloth around it.
ARIE WOKE the next morning in a corner of the lower hall, groggy with wine and dreams. He remembered finding Jamethiel on the steps and the long climb upward. He remembered his mother and the Highborn sitting at the head table drinking the last of the wine, talking through the last long hours of the night while the storm slowly spent itself outside. He thought he remembered scraps of their conversation:
"A keep is more than its Highborn. My brother and I still agree on that, if on little else."
"The boy is weak. Brave, yes, but weak."
"So am I—physically. Strength isn't everything. Then, too, he sees things, true things. A singer with the sight can be very powerful, very . . . dangerous."
"To you?"
"Perhaps. Someday he may see more in me than I care to know about myself, but no one can stop a true song or, I hope, a new idea."
"Still, a half-Kendar lord . . . "
That last must be a dream. Arie had fallen asleep to the sound of their voices. His last clear memory was of a fur robe dropping over his shoulders.
At last he opened his eyes, and found that not all the warmth of his makeshift bed came from the robe. The gray bitch lay curled up beside him. Her right paw was bandaged and there was a lump on her head. Something in the protective curve of her great body told him that the hound had been assigned a new master. Timidly, he reached out and stroked her gray flank.
It was still very early morning, barely past daybreak. Most of the Kendar still sprawled snoring on the floor and Nessa kept her solitary state, but a voice spoke in the courtyard. It was Kethra, pledging the rider's cup. Arie threw off the robe. He and the hound limped to the door together.
Jamethiel sat her Whinno-hir in the courtyard, one hand still wrapped in the Warder's black scarf resting on the mare's neck. Bender and Kracarn waited nearby, one as inscrutable as ever, the other clearly feeling very ill-used. Kethra was offering them the cup.
Jamethiel saw Arie and smiled. "Mind you," she said to the Warder, "no promises. All I can offer is a new possibility, and hope."
"Hope." Kethra put her hand rather awkwardly on Arie's shoulder. "Yes, we can live on that—as long as necessary. In the meantime, a month from now I and my son will come south to your brother's council. Then, if Arie wishes it, he will stay with you for a while. There are things you can teach him that I can't."
"Do you wish it?" Jamethiel asked.
Arie could only nod.
"Very good. Your songs will help us all push back the darkness. In a month, then!" She raised her bandaged hand in farewell, turned the mare, and in another minute had disappeared through the main gate.
"A month," said Kethra. "Not much time. Still, we will make it count. You will sing for us often, I hope. The shadows have been too long in these halls."
They went back into the keep together, the Warder, the lame boy, and the gray hound.