P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

Eventually they turned downhill again and regained the River Road to find their guide waiting for them.

“Why did you do this?” Torisen asked her.

For a moment she was silent, looking down at her hands as they gripped the reins.

“I had a son,” she finally said. “My last child. A randon cadet. His name was . . .” Her normally expressionless face worked as she tried to remember. Then she rolled up a sleeve and read the name etched in deep, crude scars on her forearm. “Quirl. He tried to assassinate the Randir Heir at Tentir, and failed. Lady Rawneth took away his name, his soul. She did the same to all the cadets who failed to do her will. Their parents can’t remember them, only that they have lost something precious. My bond to the Randir broke that night, but no one seemed to notice except me.”

“To whom were you bound?”

“To a minor Randir Highborn, a Shanir confined to the Priests’ College. Lady Rawneth only binds her favorites. As for Lord Kenan . . .” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“What is your name?”

“They call me Corvine. I petitioned once to rejoin the Knorth.”

Ah. Now Torisen remembered. He had received the request at the same time that Merry and Cron had asked permission to have a new child. At that point, he had only been able to grant one such appeal, having learned the danger of overextending himself. Since then, however, the Gnasher had killed several of his herdsmen, opening new vacancies. So had the sudden absence of Brier Iron-thorn.

“If you still wish it . . .”

Corvine raised her eyes. “I do,” she said in a husky voice, and held out her hands.

Torisen cupped them in his slim, long fingers. His scars and the Kendar’s seemed to run together, although her hands were nearly twice the size of his own.

“I confirm our bond and seal it with blood,” he said, using the ancient formula that went back to the time when Highlords were often blood-binders. That latter foolishness, of course, was no longer needed.

“My lord,” she said, and bowed her grizzled head.

Kirien watched as Lord Caineron paced the library, back and forth, back and forth, as the floor creaked under him. The day was dwindling toward dusk, not that one could clearly see this through the continuing overcast of fog. Some time ago the Director had gone with a Caineron guard to check on the rest of the college. Neither had returned. Kirien suspected that Taur, ever the tactician, had only stayed in the library long enough to be sure that she stood in no immediate danger from their unwelcome guest. Now he would be plotting a counterstrike.

Caldane had been polite to her, but with a sarcastic edge that told her he didn’t take her role as Jaran Lordan any more seriously than he did Jame’s as her Knorth counterpart. Both of their houses were playing the fool, in his opinion, and would shortly realize their mistakes.

“M’lord,” she said, “do you really think that destroying a particular manuscript will negate the Knorth mandate?”

“‘Rise up, Highlord of the Kencyrath,’ said the Arrin-ken to Glendar. ‘Your brother has forfeited all. Flee, man, flee, and we will follow.’” Caldane snorted. “Talk about a song providing a legal precedent! Gerridon lost the Kencyrath through his treachery. Who can doubt that? So what if someone copied such foolishness down? A touch of fire, and where is our precious Highlord then?”

Kirien considered her words. She had long ago discovered that if she phrased things properly, people told her the truth, at least as they saw it.

“If Torisen loses power, who takes it up?”

“Why, the strongest, of course. Who but me?”

“Based on how many Kendar are bound to you, I suppose, but how many actually belong to your seven established sons?”

“Humph. They all still serve me. To whom can Torisen turn? I’d like to see that sister of his add to his numbers, not that he would ever let her. Even he isn’t that stupid.”

“And if you claim the Highlord’s seat, will you also claim the Kenthiar?”

Caldane turned away with a petulant scowl. “That filthy old thing. It’s already decapitated three legitimate Knorth highlords. Did you know that? No one even knows where it came from. Torisen would never have risked wearing it if he had had his father’s ring and sword to give him authority. Bloody show-off.”

“In other words,” murmured Kirien, “no Kenthiar.”

Caldane shot a discontented look out the window at the gathering gloom. “Where is that wretched Index? Am I going to have to burn the entire library?”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Ha. Try me. And I mean to incinerate that obscenity who calls herself Ashe, if I can lay hands on her.”

Kirien caught her breath. The man was serious.

“Do you have any idea,” she said carefully, “how much trouble you are in already? For that matter, what do you hope to gain by holding me hostage?”

He glowered at her. “Wait and see.”

“If you hurt me, the Jaran will declare war on you, maybe the Knorth, Brandan, and Danior as well. They take my rank seriously, even if you don’t, and they value the records held here at the college. Think. Where would we be without them?”

“Free to create our own destiny. Don’t you see? The dead past shackles us. Our god abandoned us ages ago. What do we owe him? Even after all these years, this is still a new world, ours for the taking. That we haven’t already is an indictment of Knorth leadership. As for you, what if I were to take you back to Restormir, eh? My eldest son Grondin needs a new consort. He crushed the last one.”

“This is the man so fat that he has to be trundled about his own house in a wheelbarrow, isn’t it? I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t asking for your consent, girl.”

“D’you think that my uncle Jedrak would grant it?”

“If I have you, what choice does he have?”

Kirien regarded him curiously. She was used to academic discourse where contestants might disagree, but each side had a grasp of basic logic and of the shared concept of reality that bound the Kencyrath together. Caldane seemed to live in his own world, defined by his ambition and power. Thanks to his scrollsmen, he had half-glimpsed a possible shortcut to the Highlord’s seat. Now, however, what had once seemed simple was putting forth as many barbs as a porcupine. She read this in his heavy, anxious pout and in the gathering sheen of sweat on his brow.

“I think,” she said, not unkindly, “that you should consult with the Caineron Matriarch about such matters.”

Caldane shivered. “I don’t talk to my great-grandmother Cattila if I can help it. She only laughs at me.”

Kirien’s hand began to twitch. “Excuse me,” she said, and groped inside her jacket for her tablet, only to remember that it had fallen into the abyss behind the college.

Caldane was watching her. “Now what?”

“Aunt Trishien is trying to contact me. I need something to write on.”

He looked around impatiently. “This is a library, full of parchment.”

“I do not intend to turn any of it into wastepaper, thank you.”

But what else to use? There was an ink bottle on the table and a cup full of sharpened quills. Kirien snatched one of the latter, dipped it in the ink, and began to write on the tabletop. Caldane leaned over her shoulder, breathing heavily, trying to read the rough script. Trishien usually wrote with an elegant hand, but this time her letters jerked all over the tabletop. That and its wood grain almost defeated their transcription.

Kirien lay down the pen and regarded her efforts. “There was an ambush at Wilden,” she deciphered. “Now, who could have arranged that? But Torisen escaped it. He should arrive here soon. With Kin-Slayer unsheathed.”