P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

And the Witch had found some chink in Jame’s soul as well, to make her forget the first cadet to die on that terrible night. Poor, hapless Quirl. That was the hole that Kindrie had sensed in her head.

She thought she heard the echo of Rawneth’s taunting laugh. Will you play another game with me, little hoyden, would-be warrior? Shall we match soul’s strength again?

Jame felt her rage grow, and struggled with it. She wasn’t ready for this. God’s claws, the entire backside of her immature soul-armor was one gaping hole, open to any shrewd blow. Play the game too soon, start the fight unprepared, and lose all.

She had sunken down beside the wall, curled in on herself, fists clenched. Lyra crouched before her, trying to pry her nails out of her palms. “Oh, don’t! You’re hurting yourself.”

Jame freed her hands and tucked them into her armpits. Force down the rage. Force it. Back away.

Ah, good girl , came the fading whisper, rich with amused condescension. I will do with my people as I please, now and forever. Learn that and live . . . for a while.

“Sometimes pain is good,” said Jame, and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Sometimes it helps you to survive.”

She rose stiffly, drew back the tapestry, and shouldered open the door. It wouldn’t have surprised her to find the entire Moon Garden swept away, but it was just as she had first seen it that night, ragged, drear, and overgrown with weeds. There was no sign of Kindrie or Tieri. The southern wall beyond the stream stood intact and blank except for a green glow that edged the stones, already fading.

Farewell, Tieri, wherever death has taken you.

Perhaps her cousin Kindrie now slept in peace at Mount Alban, but she doubted it; nor with his experience was he likely to wake thinking it had all been a bad dream—worse luck for him.

“What’s this?” Lyra was holding the packet that had been sewn to the back of Tieri’s banner. It must have fallen out of Jame’s shirt when Corvine grabbed her.

Jame took it, a quiver of apprehension mingled with exhaustion shaking her hand. This night just kept on getting longer, and more complicated.

Written on the silk, in the faint, shaky letters of the barely literate, was “My ladee’s honnor.” What in Perimal’s name . . . ?

“Who put that there?” demanded Lyra, peering over Jame’s shoulder. “What does it say?”

Like most Kencyr, Kendar and Highborn alike, Lyra didn’t know how to read. Jame suspected, however, that the Women’s World had a stitched language all its own.

“Maybe Tieri didn’t die alone after all,” she said, gingerly turning the packet over in her hands. It stank of mold and mortality.

Remember her as a little girl, virtually walled up alive , she told herself. Forget what you just saw, that thing of mindless horror that she became in death.

“As hidden as she was, it makes sense that she would at least have had a Kendar servant.” Please ancestors, as a companion and confidante, not as a jailor. The days in the abandoned garden and the empty Ghost Walks must have seemed endless. “Maybe one taught the other the rudiments of writing. Anyway, afterward, some one had to weave her banner.”

And in doing so had tried to preserve Tieri’s honor in a sealed pouch masked by the assumed shame of her death.

With Lyra craning to watch, Jame extended a claw and picked out the stitches that secured the envelop. When she eased open the flap, the brittle silk shattered into flakes at the fold. Gingerly she inserted her fingertips and drew out a coarse, folded cloth. It was woven of death banner threads and words were written on it, hard to read by starlight. As the air hit them, they began to crumble off the surface, leaving ghostly stains of script. Jame caught a tiny, falling clot and sniffed it. Ugh.

“Old blood, cold blood, dead blood,” as Adiraina had put it.

No doubt about it: this was the contract that the Dream-weaver had woven, ready for Gerraint’s signet. Yes, there was the rathorn crest, and another beneath it, red wax stamped with the head of a black horse. Gerridon’s mark. Stripped of all soul, thread and blood together were the deadest thing that Jame had ever touched. Abomination indeed, made by innocent hands to damn the innocent, signed by monsters.

Innocence and guilt.

She remembered challenging that blind Arrin-ken, the Dark Judge, at the solstice when he had sought to judge her: “What are you but a stinking shadow to frighten children if you can not strike at evil’s root, there, under shadow’s eaves?”

His answer howled again in her mind, mephitic with frustration and the stench of his ever-burning flesh:

No Arrin-ken may enter Perimal Darkling until the coming of the Tyr-ridan, and that is never, because our god has forsaken us. Once, only once, the Master came within reach here in the Riverland. I felt him cross into this world, into a garden of white flowers, but by the time I arrived he was gone, leaving yet another marred innocent. I would have judged her, punished her, but she had license for what she did. She showed me. The one I should have judged, the one who had doomed her, was then long dead, and he her own father! All things end, light, hope, and life. All come to judgment—except the guilty.

At the time, in the midst of a volcanic eruption, Jame hadn’t had a chance to consider his words. Now she heard again Tieri’s plaintive wail:

. . . I only did what I was told . . .

For a society that claimed to be based on honor, the Kencyrath cast some very dark shadows of its own.

Then another thought struck her.

“Lyra, if a Highborn contracts for a daughter but gets a son instead, never mind that that’s not supposed to happen, is the boy considered a bastard?”

“Of course not. The lady just has to keep trying until she gets it right.”

For Tieri, however, there had been no second chance. At least Kindrie was legitimate, and so was Torisen. Jame had never seen the contract for her own birth, but she knew from Tirandys that no one had expected or wanted twins. She had been as much a shock to Ganth as Tori had been to Gerridon. How ironic that in his desperation to replace the failing Dream-weaver, the Master had contrived to bring about the births of the last three pure-blooded, legitimate Knorth on this side of the Shadows.

But why would Gerraint doom his youngest daughter to such a fate?

“Master, Master! Will you grant me my heart’s desire? Will you restore my son to me?”

Yes, the terms were spelled out in the crumbling lines of the contract, and in a fragment of memory from earlier that endless night, in the death banner hall: a figure clad in gilded leather dragging itself upright against the bier off which it had fallen. It hawked, spat out a mouthful of maggots.

“ ’m hungry,” it muttered, chewing and swallowing. “Dear father, feed me . . . ”

Sweet Trinity. Greshan brought back to life. For how long and to what purpose?

Another snatch of memory: Rawneth, drawing herself up before the gaping darkness which should have been a solid wall but was not.

“Change is coming, and we Kencyr must change or perish. My honor follows my interest. What can this shadow lord do for me?”

“Ask, and see.” Keral again, damn him.

Rawneth laughed, but behind her mask, black eyes shifted to the beckoning shadows and she bit her lip. She would kill the man who played her for a fool, but if this offer was real . . . She approached the breach, swaying willow-supple. Her voice, mock coy at first, sharpened with an ambition as keen as hunger, as strong as madness:

“Master, Master, will you grant me my heart’s desire? Will you raise the dead to love me? Will you give me an heir to power?”