P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

No one had brought up that dangerous matter since, the idea being—on the face of it—absurd, and the implications profound.

But Adiraina moved on smoothly, her warning (if such it was) delivered: “We both only want what is best for you and our people as a whole.”

She and Adric probably believed that. Moreover, Torisen had sworn never to hurt his former mentor to whom, truly, he owed much. But to allow the Highlord of the Kencyrath to become an Ardeth puppet . . . he had had enough of that and more as commander of the Southern Host.

“Forgive me for mentioning it, but this winter you will need help. Why the storms should have ravaged your fields worse than anyone else’s, no one knows, but surely all your crops except the hay are lost, and winter is coming.”

For that tone of sweet reason, he could have strangled her. She thought she had him at last, and perhaps she did.

Torisen hardly knew whether to welcome the distraction or to tear his hair out when the door to the Outer Ward began to scrape open, as if pried by gusts of wind and rain. Sodden leaves scuttled across the stone floor. Nearby death banners flapped in protest while the torch in his hand flared wildly. Then through the widening crack slipped a big cat, no, a hunting ounce, anxious to escape the wet. But what followed him?

Torisen had the fleeting impression of a wraithlike figure clothed only in storm-torn rags, white hair and a cloud of steam rising like smoke off an overheated horse. One dark, liquid eye regarded him nervously askance as the creature slipped sideways along the wall. A raised hand covered the other half of that strange, triangular face. Wary ears pricked through its tangled mane.

I’m dreaming , he thought, with a touch of panic.

Too many near sleepless nights must have caught up with him. Again. Certainly, awake he had never seen such a thing, and he wasn’t sure that he was seeing it now.

Then his attention snapped back to the door as a third person entered it, clad in a cadet’s field jacket with the hood up against the weather. Ah. Of course. He crossed the room in quick strides to grasp the newcomer by the shoulder. The hood fell back and a coil of long, black hair tumbled over his hand. He saw the quick flash of extended ivory claws, instantly sheathed, for he had startled her.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Hello to you too.”

His sister Jame gave him her usual wry smile, tilted further askew by the thin, straight scar that ran around one high cheekbone. His former consort, the Caineron Kallystine, had given her that, while he had kept to the Southern Wastes to avoid them both. It was a year since Jame had returned, but every time he saw her the difference in their ages shocked him. How had his twin come to be a good decade younger than he was? There was still so much he hadn’t asked her, afraid of the answers he might get.

“What have you done with your hair?” he blurted out.

Except for the fallen coil, the rest was looped up in an ornate construction secured by . . . what? Something alive, and moving.

“I’ve been on the road with someone who likes to play with it.”

She waved a gloved hand around her head. “Shoo.” Multiple feet let loose. Black wings unfolded and took flight as the rest of her hair tumbled down in a tangled ebon sheet to below her waist. “The randon wants me to cut it, but be damned if I will. It’s the only good feature I’ve ever had.”

“Jewel-jaws?”

He stared as the carrion-eating butterflies settled on a nearby banner, changing color as they did so to match the weave and distort the features that they mimicked.

Jame slipped off her jacket and flapped it at them. “I said, ‘Shoo.’ D’you want to get left behind?”

Wings rose in a swirling cloud and fluttered reluctantly out the door, leaving the banner pocked with tiny holes where old blood had spotted it.

“They’re a species called ‘crown jewels,’ ” she explained, “migrating south with their master who should be well on his way by now; and no, ‘jaws not withstanding, he isn’t dead. Unlike some of our mutual acquaintances.”

Movement caught his eye. The blind ounce Jorin was stalking the wolver pup Yce, or perhaps vice versa, around Adiraina’s full skirt and rigid form.

“Harn didn’t tell you that I was coming, did he?”

“He did not. Again, why are you here?” A roil of emotions—alarm, fear, hope—surprised him. He had almost decided what to do with his sister if . . . when . . . Tentir cast her out. “Did you fail the cull after all?”

“Oddly enough, no. When I left, at a dead run, mind you, the Randon Council seemed to be having a collective fit. At least Harn was jumping up and down in the Map Room, about to smash through the floor.” She laughed. “The Commandant keeps asking me not to drive my instructors mad. So far, I’ve only done it to one of them, and then helped to kill her. A Randir Tempter.” Laughter died and her expression hardened, eyes glinting silver. “She deserved it.”

“I don’t think I would want you for an enemy,” Torisen heard himself say.

“Ah.” She raised a hand to touch his cheek, but stopped herself as he flinched away from her fingertips, sheathed as they now were. “That I will never be.”

Adiraina’s voice broke in on them, sharp with outrage. “Have you dared to bring a horse into this sacred place, tonight of all nights? Don’t deny it. I smell its sweat.”

“For that matter,” said Jame, as the ounce nosed around the Ardeth’s skirts, more interested in the wolver pup lurking behind them than in the Highborn herself, “I smell yours. Your pardon, Matriarch. I didn’t expect to find you here. They say in the Women’s Halls that you never attend your own Spring’s Eve memorials at Omiroth, so why ours, tonight?

“Anyway, not a horse. A Whinno-hir.”

The pale figure had stopped before a banner, that of the tiny, white-haired woman. It seemed to Torisen that they leaned into each other, embracing, but surely that was a trick of the flickering light. Jame crossed over to them, then hesitated, uncharacteristically deferential. The old woman reached out to draw her in, then placed the other’s hands in her own gloved ones.

Let the living go with life.

“You’re sure, Matriarch?” Jame’s voice trembled slightly. “So far, few things have proved safe in my keeping, let alone something so precious.”

“My trust in you, great-granddaughter.”

I am dreaming , thought Torisen, and gave his head a thump with the heel of his hand. That, or worse .

Jame wrapped her jacket around those slim, steaming shoulders.

“The horse-master at Tentir would never forgive me if you caught a chill, lady. Nine days on the road,” she added aside to her brother, “but the first few between Tentir and Wilden, there were . . . problems. We had to gallop the last bit to make it on time, if barely that. Moreover, Bel is recovering from a bowed tendon. But where are my manners? Torisen Black Lord, may I present Bel-tairi, the White Lady, formerly known as the Shame of Tentir through no fault of her own.”

Adiraina stiffened, at which the pup charged the ounce and both streaked up the northeast stairwell in a wild scramble of claws.

“Impossible. Bel-tairi was Kinzi’s mount, dead these forty years.”

“Not dead. Wounded and hiding in the Earth Wife’s lodge. Our uncle Greshan put a branding iron to her face, all to spite Great-grandmother Kinzi. Do you know why, Matriarch?”

The old Highborn bristled. “Who could understand such an atrocity? Dear Kinzi and her grandson Greshan quarreled. Such things happen.”

“Huh. Like the massacre of the Knorth ladies.” Jame paused, as if listening. “Bel, you had better rejoin our boy. He’s getting restless and upset.”