P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

They made their way toward the former site of the Kencyr temple. The towers Jame passed were dark and quiet, their windows shuttered. Threatened both by the army outside its gates and by the enemy within, the citizens were hiding. From somewhere in the distance, though, came shouts and an occasional crash. The Karnids wouldn’t be so noisy, nor probably the Old Pantheon gods. Who else was abroad tonight?

Here was the place where she had last met Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed, next to the broken foundation of the tower that had contained the Kencyr temple. Rubble still loomed dark in the predawn light. However long she had been gone, no one had yet done anything about it.

Jorin pressed against her leg, growling. Three dark figures had emerged from the shadows and were silently approaching. Karnids, for certain. Jame might have run, but she had unfinished business here. She slid into fighting stance. Then someone stepped between her and the advancing men.

“Don’t look,” said the Earth Wife’s red-haired Favorite to Jame over his shoulder. Then he spread wide his coat.

A blinding flood of light emerged, fiercer than it had been for his predecessor when he had appeared as the sun at the summer solstice. It painted the inside of Jame’s eyelids crimson as she turned her face away and shielded it. She heard the Karnids cry out and smelled something burning. They stumbled away, their faces seared, their eyes, burst, streaming down into their beards.

The Favorite closed his coat and buckled it, although light still shone through the seams. He turned back to Jame. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something to return.”

She drew the miniature temple out of her pocket, where its sharp edges had been bruising her hip all night, and carefully placed it on the road near the entrance to the step-forward tunnel. Tiny, outraged voices piped up inside it. It pulsed and grew, making Jame and the Favorite hastily retreat, but stopped when it was only three feet high. One side opened like a door and a crumpled figure forced its way out. The high priest straightened up and shook out his robes.

“Well?” he demanded, blind eyes fiercely aglare. “Are you quite done shaking us around like dice in a box? Answer me, whoever you are!”

“Will the temple keep growing?”

“In its own good time. I know your voice. You’re that wretched girl who calls herself the Talisman. Where is my grandson Dorin?”

How best to answer that?

“I’m afraid,” said Jame carefully, “that he died trying to save you from the Karnids.”

“What, here? Oh, never mind. Somehow, you’re to blame. Ishtier warned us that you were trouble, and he was right.”

He reached out to grab her, but she dodged away. His clawlike hands flexed, trying to pull in the power with which to strike her, but the temple was still too small.

“Later,” he panted. “Now, go away!”

“What an unpleasant old man,” remarked the Favorite as they left, not quite at a run.

“You understood him?” The priest had been speaking in Kens.

“No, but ill will translates itself.”

“What’s going on in the city?”

“We are hunting, as you see.”

They paused to let a swarm of frogs hop past in formation: “GEEP, geep , geep . . .”

“But there are fewer Karnids than we expected. Meanwhile, Master Needham and his followers are storming the treasure towers, but I think they will hold. Then there are Prince Ton’s bully boys, defending the Rose Tower against the Armorers’ Guild.”

“King Krothen is still there?”

“At the top, with Prince Ton and Princess Amantine. Ton wants his uncle to abdicate. He’s afraid, if he commits regicide, that the white won’t come to him. They’ve been at Krothen all night. The king must be tougher than he looks.”

He paused and gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were once a Favorite.”

“How d’you know that?”

“Odd thoughts come to me, since I won the red. So tell me: how did you manage all of those women? They line up outside my door every night. I hardly get any sleep at all.”

Afterward, trotting through the streets with Jorin at her side, Jame decided that the Favorite hadn’t really believed her tale of the Four as worshipped by the Merikit. He seemed to think she had some as yet undisclosed secret that would make his own life more bearable. In that, she was sorry to disappoint him. It occurred to her that she had been lucky in her own experiences. That in turn made her wonder, yet again, how her growing family in the hills was doing.

She also thought about what the Favorite had said regarding the Karnids in Kothifir, that there were fewer of them than he had expected. When she had left Urakarn—Trinity, had that only been a few hours ago?—it had seemed to be deserted. If its residents hadn’t used the step-forward tunnel to flood Kothifir, where were they?

To the northeast, firelight bloomed out of the streets accompanied by distant shouts. Master Needham was trying to breach the treasure towers with flame. Jame had seen them. They had no lower windows, iron doors, and granite walls. All in all, they hardly required guards. Needham’s chances of sacking the treasuries without inside help didn’t look good.

She stopped on the edge of the central plaza. There was the Rose Tower, twisting up into the sky like an inverted tornado. Its outer spiral stair swarmed. A handful of Prince Ton’s militia held the top of the steps. Jame recognized the bully whose head she had set on fire before Paper Crown’s tower. Half the Armorers’ Guild assaulted from below, led by Gaudaric and Ruso. The militia had made a barrier of furniture at the level of Krothen’s apartment that functioned like a cork. Despite superior arms, armor, and numbers, Krothen’s would-be rescuers were making little progress.

Black-clad figures slipped out of the mouths of surrounding streets, intent on taking the attackers from behind. As Jame drew breath to shout a warning, however, a gray form materialized in front of the foremost Karnid. Smoke issued from its hooded cloak. It spread wide its arms and enveloped the oncoming man. The cloak momentarily bulged with its thrashing prey and then dissolved into a sooty cloud. A second later it rose again behind another Karnid who, in swerving to avoid the greasy spot on the paving where his mate had disappeared, ran full into its arms.

Poof, poof, poof . . .

Then it reared up before Jame.

There was no face within the hood, only churning ash, and it stank of charred flesh.

“Burnt Man . . .” she gasped.

But guilt and grief choked her. Never mind that she seldom killed; how many had died because of her? Faces swirled in the ashen flakes: Dally, Theocandi, Vant, Bane . . .

“Father!”

Child of Darkness, where is my sword? Where are my . . .

He had meant to say “my fingers,” for they had broken off when she had pried Kin-Slayer out of them, and she had carried away one of them with his signet ring still on it—all for Tori, who hadn’t known what to do with either.

Accept my judgment. That was the voice of the blind Arrin-ken who called himself the Dark Judge, whose precinct was the Riverland. You know your guilt.

. . . yes . . .

“No.”

A hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her back. Jame landed on her butt, shocked to feel real pain.

Brier Iron-thorn stood between her and the hooded figure who might or might not be the Burnt Man. It coughed in her face. The image swirled on its breath of a stern-faced woman who looked much like Brier herself.

. . . my daughter . . .

“No,” said Brier. “I was a child when you died, not to blame for your death, nor would you want me to feel that I was. Go away.”