P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

Jame shook herself. Enough futile banging of heads against walls for one day.

“Everybody out,” she said, slinging the pack in a corner and unfastening her jacket. “It may be early for you, but I need some dwar sleep and mean to get it if it kills me.”

They filed out except for an unusually quiet Rue who stayed in her self-appointed role as body servant, gathering Jame’s clothes as she stripped them off. She was naked before she saw the white note on the pillow.

“Remember the equinox,” it read, and this time it was signed: “Index.” Probably some Jaran cadet had slipped in to leave it, as they had the first note in the dining hall.

The old scrollsman meant another Merikit ritual in which Jame was presumably supposed to take part as the Earth Wife’s Favorite, but about which she knew nothing. Moreover, it was half a season away.

“Bugger that,” Jame muttered and cast herself down on an almost too soft pallet in the corner, only to swear and shift off the thorns of a well-meant but inconveniently placed rose.

Silence fell except for the muted voice of the college settling for the night. Outside, the long twilight dwindled. The last sound Jame heard before sleep took her was Rue locking the door.

The door to the hall was propped open with an old, double-headed battle axe, the foremost blade of which, still deadly keen, cleaved the wind with a whine as it rushed past into agitated darkness.

Both glass furnaces must be drawing hard, Torisen thought as he paused on the threshold, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Yce brushed past him, a greasy length of rabbit gut clenched in her jaws, and bounded up the northwest spiral stair. Beyond the wash of afternoon light that spilled across the stone floor, death banners were fretted against the walls. Among them stood figures, motionless except for their ruffled clothing, their eyes turned askance to watch him. One looked unnervingly like his sister, but with a most unJamelike expression in her eyes:

Aerulan’s lips moved, unheard but clear in their plea: Oh please, send me home . . .

“This is your home, cousin,” he told her crossly, “and mine too, ancestors help me.”

Another blink of his eyes, and she was only woven cloth again, stained with ancient blood.

Was it better to see those spectral figures or not? Either way, they—and she—were still there, still waiting. He should be used to that by now.

So, are you at last willing to accept my devil’s bargain? purred his father’s voice behind the bolted door in his soul-image. You can free yourself at least of one ghost and be well paid for it .

To that taunt at least he was accustomed, as to the muted sting of a whip on flesh almost too numb to feel the blow.

“I’m tired, Father,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Leave me alone or, better yet, tell me how to get rid of you altogether.”

I am part of your weave, boy, my death crossing your life. To destroy me, you would have to tear yourself apart, but you haven’t the guts for that, have you? Not like your sister . . .

He had been wrong: that stung.

“Oh, shut up!”

A burst of harsh laughter, fading, gone, along with the sound of a door handle furiously rattled.

How strong was he, Torisen wondered. How capable? Ironic, that so far he had been more of a success as Highlord than as Lord Knorth.

He had ridden by the ruined fields on the way out to the hunt early that morning, seeing nothing but pale mud and weeds. They had been lucky to get the haying done, if barely in time. Wheat, oats, rye, flax, all were gone, down to the seeds of future harvests, if any. Some root vegetables, berries, salted fish, hazelnuts, milk, cheese, and flesh from whatever livestock the garrison had managed to get under cover before the lethal ashfall . . . All well and good, as far as it went, but that wasn’t far enough.

“Should I send everyone to Kothifir?” he asked Mullen’s banner. “There’s always food with the Southern Host. But my Kendar are terrified that I will forget their names as I did yours. Most, like you, would rather die and you, of course, I can never forget again.”

He couldn’t accompany them south this time either, not with the other lords wintering in the Riverland. Someone would be bound to make a grab for Gothregor. As much as he disliked the place, it was the Highlord’s seat and the emblem of his power. To lose it might well finish him.

So, not such a success as Highlord either, eh? Where are your allies? Are you prepared to crawl back to Ardeth?

“Be damned if I will,” he said out loud, “or sell my cousin, or take another unfit consort, or marry off my sister. So where does that leave me?”

In a cold hall, with starving followers. Ah, taste it—the bitter dregs of power. How often it was on my tongue during the long years of my exile, and yet the cup never ran dry.

Wearily, hunting leathers a-creak, Torisen followed Yce up the stair.

The second floor of the old keep greeted him with a wave of heat. As windowless as the first, once a hall of judgment, it was now lit by red-rimmed doors set in the northeast and southeast corner turrets behind which fires roared continually to heat the furnaces above. Mounds of coal shouldered out of the darkness. Long ago, the Knorth had discovered a rich bituminous vein in the mountains above Gothregor, enough to warm many a frozen night. The garrison was already busy stocking up for the winter, and some coal from every load found its way here. Tori hadn’t thought to order it, but Marc’s many friends saw that it happened, just as they took turns in their rare off-duty hours to stoke the fires. The whole project had become a community affair, but with only one increasingly knowledgeable (by dint of trial and sometimes disastrous error) glass-master.

Torisen climbed up to the High Council chamber and checked, startled, on the topmost step.

At the far end of the room under the vaulted expanse that had been the great, stained glass map of Rathillien, Yce appeared to be locked in combat with a monster. At any rate, her crouching adversary was huge, clad in a patchwork of old rhi-sar armor and animal skins, with round, glowing eyes and paws for hands. The wolver pup lunged back and forth, snarling, before it. They were playing tug-o’-war with her length of cleaned guts. The strange figure let go of his end and rose, pulling off first protective gauntlets and then a leather hood with smoked glass inserts for eyes. Beneath, sweat plastered thinning, reddish hair to Marc’s skull and made a bedraggled rat of the big Kendar’s beard. Before he had come up with this gear, he had managed to singe off his eyebrows, giving him a look of perpetual surprise. The fringe of his beard was also heat-crinkled as was the hair around his parched lips.

“Did the hunt go well, my lord?”

Tori wanted to snap at him, I’m not your lord. You chose not to accept my service .

Nonetheless, here Marc was, trying to repair the damage Jame had done all those months ago. Tori had his doubts that the Kendar would succeed, but some thing had to be done about that gaping hole before the other lords could set foot again in this chamber and snicker at it.

“No,” he said instead, shrugging off his heavy jacket, slinging it over the back of the Highlord’s displaced chair, and dropping into the seat. This room was nearly as hot as the one below, despite a cool breeze blowing in one broken window and out another. He was indeed very tired.

“Ummm . . . ” said Marc unhappily

Torisen hastily removed his booted feet from the table before they could smudge the map chalked on its surface or disturb the little leather pouches strewn about it.