P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

“Where next?” asked the caretaker again.

“Show me the Host’s camp.”

The lens shifted to point, dizzyingly, down the Escarpment to the stone barracks at its foot. These seemed unusually quiet, even for so early an hour. Only the cadets were there, Jame remembered, as well as a skeleton staff of randon. How they must regret missing the fight above. Char and the other Knorth third-years were probably grinding their teeth, her own second-year ten-command as well. For herself, she had seen battle and its attendant horrors at the Cataracts, enough bloodshed to sate her for a lifetime.

She was about to turn away when the lens swung yet again, perhaps reverting to its set point.

“Wait. What was that?”

“What? Where?”

“Westward, up the valley.”

“I didn’t see . . . oh.”

The Eye had caught a teeming blur moving down the Betwixt, filling the valley between the Escarpment and the Apollyne mountains. The lens tightened its focus. The mass became horsemen, headed toward the camp which lay some ten miles ahead of them.

Brier leaned in, staring. Her head cast a shadow over the scene and she withdrew with a frown.

“Has Gemma launched a second attack to the rear?”

Jame had thought so too at first. Then she had seen that all of these riders wore black, and the front rank rode black horses.

Thorns?

She remembered Urakarn, apparently deserted. Where had its inhabitants gone, given that they couldn’t take their mounts anywhere by the step-forward path? It would, on the other hand, have taken them about this long to arrive overland by the Betwixt Valley. It was potentially the Urakarn massacre in reverse. The Karnids were coming.

On the point of turning away, she glimpsed another rider out in front of the thorns. His mount, steel gray, fought against its bit. Even the thorns edged away from it.

Memory caught Jame by the throat: The stallion surged up over the hillcrest with nostrils flaring red. Its steel hooves nearly clipped her as it roared over her head. It landed and turned, torn grass shrieking underfoot. Its iron teeth were bared, its eyes rolled white and dead . . .

The changer Keral, jeering at her: “We can always feed you to his new war-horse.”

It couldn’t be . . . could it?

“What?” the caretaker demanded as she turned from the bright image and floundered through the darkness in search of the door.

Jorin squawked as she tripped over him. Glass shattered. Here at last was the way out, the door smashing open to admit a wash of early morning light across the floor.

Jame scrambled down the steps with the ounce on her heels, still protesting, and Brier Iron-thorn bringing up the rear. Here was the street, leading to other streets crowded with people celebrating the end of the Change and, incidentally, the Feast of Fools, that day between winter and spring that is recorded on no calendar. Usually, it was a festival of misrule, when powers secular and religious were set aside. How ironic that this year it marked the return of the king and the gods, both old and new. Whispers had grown to whoops and shouts, timorous groups to an excited mob.

“Dance with us!” cried a plump matron in a nightgown bedecked with fluttering ribbons.

She grabbed Jame’s hand. Jame in turn grabbed Brier’s. Thus they were pulled into one of many chains of celebrants that snaked back and forth down through the city’s byways, between the legs of stilt walkers, around men wearing the giant heads of gods. Jorin wound about the pounding feet to keep up, chirping in agitation and occasionally squalling when someone stepped on his toes. This was not his idea of fun. The chain broke and re-formed. Now Jame was holding hands with a baker, whose every step raised clouds of flour from his clothing. She freed herself while maintaining her grip on Brier. They plunged into another group who were tossing one of their number in a blanket. Their victim flew free in a mill of limbs. Brier caught him.

“Wheee!” he said breathlessly, laughing, as she set him down. It was Byrne.

“Your father is at the Rose Tower,” Jame told him.

“Let him find his own blanket!”

With that, he plunged back into the crowd.

Another turn brought Jame face-to-face with the spy Hangnail, who looked terrified at having been hauled out into the open.

“Who’s your new grandmaster?” she asked him.

“That gray sneak again, gods damn it.”

“See that you honor him, or I’ll come back to haunt you.”

Hangnail gave her a look compounded of incredulity and horror. Then the dance whirled him away.

They reached the main avenue where shopkeepers had set out their wares with the dawn. Cabbages and rutabagas now flew over the crowd, kicked from the sidelines. Jame ducked a flailing bunch of carrots. An onion hit Brier in the face. They broke away near the boulevard’s end and headed across the paved forecourt toward the lift cages. Of these, only one was at the top. However, its attendants had left their post to join in the general rejoicing.

“Wonderful,” said Jame. “How do we get down?”

“We could use the stairs, or you could take the lift. I can use the brake to regulate your descent—I think—and let gravity do the rest. It will be a bumpy ride, though.”

“And you?”

“Someone has to warn Harn Grip-hard.”

Jame looked at the cage and gulped. Three thousand feet down. . . .

“All right,” she said, and stepped into it, followed by the ounce.

Brier fumbled for a minute with the winch and crane, then used them to lift the cage up and out over the balustrade. She released the brake. The cage fell in a rush that left both girl and cat hovering in midair. Then the floor leaped up at them, nearly making their legs buckle. Down it plunged again, again stopping with a jerk as the brake reengaged. By such fits and starts they descended, falling the last ten feet for an abrupt and noisy arrival.

Jame staggered out of the cage.

“All right, kitten,” she said to the distraught ounce, trying to catch her breath. “All right.”

She stumbled through the north gate and the tunnel that led under the official offices, then across the inner ward. The Knorth barracks had a gate that opened onto the ward, but it was sealed for repairs. Jame plunged into the streets that separated the various houses. Early rising cadets turned to stare at her as she passed.

“Returned at last, have you?” Fash called from the Caineron’s eastern door. “What makes you think that we want you back?”

Onyx-eyed’s second-in-command, Ran Spare, met her as she entered the Knorth by its western gate.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“I had business elsewhere.” Jame paused, trying not to pant. “Listen: the Karnids are coming!”

He stared at her. “What?”

“I saw them through the Eye of Kothifir, coming down the valley. It’s all done by mirrors, you know.”

“You aren’t making sense.”

Jame realized that he had never been exposed to the Eye. Really, Kencyr didn’t know Kothifir as well as they should, given how long they had been here.

“They’re coming,” she said again. “My word of honor on it. Don’t you believe me?”

“I have to, don’t I? Either that or declare our lordan mad. How many?”

“More than I could count. Ten thousand? About ten miles out.”

“We could match that, if we were all here,” said Ran Spare, thinking out loud. “As it is, there are fewer than two thousand cadets in camp. I’ll sound the alarm.”

He left at a run, and Jame pounded up the stairs to her apartment, where Rue met her at the door, almost limp with relief.

“Ten! Brier Iron-thorn said that you’d come back! What’s going on?”