P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

No. Rather, it was her head that ached. Again. She touched it gingerly and encountered a bandage wrapped around her temples.

Branches snapped like fingers in the fireplace and flames leaped. She was in her quarters at the camp and someone—Rue?—had set a blaze there. Jorin stretched out beside her, as usual complaining when her movement disturbed him, then rolling onto his back for a stomach rub. The bed was soft under her, the room warm although the late summer nights were growing cool. A large form eclipsed the fire and threw another log on it. Sparks flared up around him as he turned.

“Awake, are you?”

It was Harn Grip-hard.

“Y-yes, Ran. How long . . .”

“Enough for your ten-command to fight free and get you back here, plus a few hours. It’s passing on toward midnight. You took quite a crack to your head.”

“Those black mares . . . what were they?”

“The Karnids’ mounts? They’re called thorns. Introduce a mare in season to a rathorn stallion and, if he doesn’t kill her, eleven months later you get the blackest, meanest little filly you can imagine. All they lack is their sire’s armor. Now, why were the Karnids after you?”

“I didn’t realize that they were. It was a confusing situation. I don’t even know who grabbed me.”

“That was Iron-thorn again, trying to get you out from underfoot before someone trampled you into jelly. Then your command ran for it, quite sensibly, with that bloody beast of yours mounting rear guard. What were all of you doing so far out to begin with?”

Jame told him about the challenge.

He snorted, went to the door, and spoke to someone, probably Rue.

Jame lay back, thinking. Why had she had that sudden image of the Master reaching out for her?

Come. You know where you belong .

Gerridon thought that she belonged with him, in Perimal Darkling, as the new Dream-weaver. What did the Karnids have to do with that?

Then there had been that flash of Tori at Urakarn, under the Karnid torture that had nearly crippled him and left his hands scarred for life. Had he just woken at Gothregor, that nightmare memory still seared into his mind? Once again, it seemed, their dreams had crossed.

Harn stumped back bringing a dark, sullen third-year cadet.

“Char here says that neither he nor his friends sent you any such message.”

“We’ve been waiting to tell you, ever since we first heard,” said Char, sounding exasperated. “We would never have made up such a lame-brained challenge.”

Jame snorted. “As if any of them make any sense. Is this how you test your juniors, with stupid commands? We each find our own rite of passage. Do you agree?”

“Well, yes, of course, but . . .”

“But nothing. Let the other houses make fools of themselves if they must. Here and now, I’m enforcing my brother’s order and forbidding it within the Knorth.”

The cadet stiffened, at first with outrage and then as if drawn further up against his will by her sudden tone of authority. Here, after all, was not only a second-year master-ten but the putative commander of the Knorth barracks and the Highlord’s heir.

“Yes . . . Lordan,” he said, saluted, and left.

Harn drew up a chair and sat down beside the fire. Wooden legs groaned under his weight.

“So,” he said heavily, looking into the flames. “We have to ask ourselves: who among the Host would want to lure you into such a trap, presumably in collusion with the Karnids?”

“If you’re right.”

“Accept for a moment that I am.”

Jame considered her various enemies, in particular Fash, but how would a Caineron cadet newly arrived at Kothifir have connections with Urakarn? Further thought along those lines made her head ache anew.

“We’ll know in time,” she said, dismissing the matter.

“You mean, when he—or she—tries again.”

“If it takes that. Harn, why have you been avoiding me?”

He shifted in his seat.

“It’s been that noticeable, has it?”

“To anyone with half an eye. You can’t think that as Knorth Lordan I want to take my brother’s place as Commandant of the Host.”

He snorted. “A fine mess that would be.”

“Agreed. So?”

Harn fidgeted some more, making the chair’s joints protest. “When Blackie first joined the Host, I didn’t treat him very well. I was a fool.”

“You didn’t know him then. I don’t think he knew himself yet. It takes fire to forge steel.”

. . . oh God, my hands . . . !

He gave her a sidelong look under unkempt brows. “And what fires have you known, heh?”

“A few, if you can call them that. Not enough to be my brother’s equal.”

He snorted. “No doubt. I saw him tested early, before Urakarn. He was challenged too, by the Caineron. Burr warned me. We burst into Genjar’s quarters to find Blackie standing, hooded, on a shaky stool with his hands tied behind him. The other end of the rope was thrown over a rafter and knotted around his neck.”

“Yes, I know.”

He shot her another glance. “He told you about it? That surprises me. I nearly flared.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Around Blackie, I seldom do. That was no such fire as the one to come, but it showed his mettle, if I hadn’t been too blind to see it. In those days, his strength lay in endurance. In you, now, we all feel the power building, like that poor booby of a third-year, when you let it out.”

Now he had embarrassed her. “I can’t help what I am, only what I may become, and maybe not even that. I’m a nemesis, Harn. Yes, potentially one of the Three. And I don’t know yet what I might destroy.”

The big Kendar rose and stood over her, a hulking shape edged with light.

“A nemesis, eh? That explains a lot of things. And your brother?”

“A creator, not that he knows it yet.”

“Too bad there aren’t three of you. Now, that would be something. Are you Blackie’s destroyer?”

Jame forced herself not to shrink in his ominous shadow. They had known each other at Tentir, but here things were different, closer to the bone. His voice was mild, but his big hands unconsciously flexed. He would kill to protect Torisen. The thought wasn’t foremost in his mind, but it lurked close to his berserker nature, and she had seen how suddenly that could be triggered.

She wrapped her hands around one of his (Trinity, how easily he could have crushed her fingers), and held it until its twitching stilled.

“I will never willingly harm my brother, or you, or anyone else whom I love.”

He relaxed slowly and freed his hand. “Well, no. At least not intentionally. You’ll care what you do and take responsibility for your actions afterward, however daft they are. I see that now. What more can one ask, eh? I’ll bid you good night, then, my lady. Sleep well.”

Jame did, although at one point she half-woke to hear Jorin growling. In the morning, Rue discovered that a note addressed to the lordan had been slipped under the door. Jame unfolded it and read the four-word unsigned message:

“Leave,” it said, “and never return.”

Summer ended and autumn advanced. The days remained warm but lost that breathtaking blast of summer. The nights were cool enough to make a fire or extra jacket welcome. It even rained a bit, not that the irrigated Betwixt Valley needed it where the fall harvest was already under way. However, the farmers probably welcomed it in the terraced mountains, and it did help to lay the dust on the training fields south of the Host’s camp.

Jame thought a lot about the senior cadets’ challenge, if one could call it that. All it had needed to become a threat had been an addition of the words “or else.” It was also double edged: if she ignored it, they had won. If she did as they demanded, not that she had any such intention, they still won. All in all, it was a game she refused to play.