P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

She also sensed that Graykin wasn’t telling her all he knew, so she didn’t share her musings with him.

He looked up with a sudden glint in his eyes. “How were you received in the Host’s camp?”

“Rather stiffly. I seem to make people nervous.”

The spy snickered. “I’m not surprised. As Knorth Lordan you’re supposed to lead the Southern Host.”

“Sweet Trinity. No wonder Harn has been so on edge around me. He needn’t worry, though: I’m not likely to claim the post.”

“You aren’t?” Clearly, Graykin had been looking forward to her ascension. As her servant, it didn’t suit his pride at all that she shouldn’t claim all the honors due to her. “But it’s yours!”

“I’m just a second-year cadet, without the proper training. Besides, I don’t want it. All that administrative work . . . ugh.”

Still, she had to think of a way to get Harn over this awkwardness, knowing how much her brother depended on the big Kendar. As for Graykin’s secrets . . .

“We’ll talk again. Soon.”

And she led the way back to the ladder.

Torisen dreamed of Kothifir and half woke, confused, in the half light before dawn.

“So you’ve come at last, all the way from the Riverland. Have a nice trip?”

Harn had never said that to him. He remembered all too well his greeting to the Southern Host as a boy, especially Harn Grip-hard’s stony face staring at him as the big Kendar tapped his credentials on the desk before him.

“So Lord Ardeth has sent you to me as a special aide. How kind of him.”

Harn was second-in-command of the Host under the Caineron Genjar, but Adric would hardly have entrusted Ganth’s heir to one of his father’s archenemies . . . would he? Not for the first time, Torisen wondered what Lord Ardeth really had written in the letter that he had carried so far. After what the former Highlord had done to the Kencyrath, no kin of his was apt to find a welcome there.

“More likely,” Harn had continued, “you’re one of his bastards and a spy to boot. Ha, that raises your hackles, does it? Then prove me wrong. Know anything about soldiering?”

“No, Ran.”

“Well, we’ll find a place for you. Somewhere. Just stay out of my way. Dismissed.”

And Torisen had walked out of headquarters into the dazzling glare of the Host’s camp. He had been fifteen years old at the time.

“My lord?” It was Burr, carrying a bowl of porridge and a jug of milk, Torisen’s breakfast. He must have dozed off again for now it was full morning with birds flitting past his tower windows. “You had a poor night?”

Torisen unwound the tangled blankets and sat up. The wolver pup Yce watched him, nose on paws, from the hearth where his restlessness had driven her.

“I dreamt about Kothifir when we first arrived there.”

“Huh. Not exactly a warm welcome, was it? What clothes for today?”

“Something practical. I need to walk the fields and talk to the harvest master about the hay.”

He ate, watching Burr lay out a shirt, plain jacket, sturdy pants, and high-topped leather boots, all black like most of his limited wardrobe. Black wore well. He liked it. He used to think that it made him inconspicuous, but now the Host knew him as Torisen Black Lord or simply as Blackie. In those early days he had thought that Burr had been sent by Adric to spy on him, and he had been right. Not until the Kendar had broken with the Ardeth and sworn to him had he really trusted the man.

He dressed and descended from his tower apartment into the great hall of the old keep where Marc worked in a blaze of sunrise glory at the shattered eastern window.

A furry form rose from the floor where it had been basking in the heat of the kiln and became the wolver Grimly.

“Good morning, Tori, and you too, your highness,” Grimly added with a bow to the pup who briefly waved her tail at him in acknowledgement.

“You know,” he said, “she’s getting rangy enough to assume human form, at least partway. Adolescence comes to our kind at about her age.”

Torisen didn’t tell him that he had waked during that troubled night to see a shaggy young girl curled up on the threshold, gnawing at her nails in her sleep.

Marc wiped big, gnarled hands on a rag. He had been setting in place another pane of glass made from materials gathered from the land around Kothifir, brick red shading to green for the copper and iron there. The margins and trade routes of the Wastes were slowly filling out as agents sent back materials native to each region. The Kendar had found that if he properly matched areas and held up the new pieces between ironwood plates, they melded at the edges without extra heat, allowing him to build his map within its upright frame. Thus the map grew in place, a rainbow of color against the eastern sky that only resembled a map to those who knew what they were looking at.

“Did you dream, my lord?”

Marc had noticed that if Torisen added a drop of his blood to the mix, the resulting piece glowed with an inner light. This in turn had given him the idea that the Highlord might use these patches to scry on the corresponding areas, Kothifir in particular. Marc, like Torisen, wanted news of Jame.

To scry, to spy, Torisen thought uneasily. Harn’s first assumption still stung, as did Burr’s initial role. Unlike every other lord in the Riverland, he didn’t use secret agents, hence his lack of information. As much as Jame had told him, though, in those last days they had been together after her graduation from Tentir, he hungered to know more, as if she were the dark side of his moon.

It was also strange that whereas he had once stayed awake for days, even weeks, to avoid certain nightmares, now he reluctantly courted them.

“Yes, I dreamed, but how much of it was true?”

“Anything about the lass?” asked Marc, sounding wistful.

Torisen tried to remember. Why was it that most dreams slipped away so quickly when he couldn’t forget the worst ones at all? “I think she fell down a hole, but wasn’t hurt, and there was something about kicking the head off a mechanical dog.”

Grimly grinned. “That sounds like Jame. What d’you suppose Harn made of the letter you sent him along with her?”

Dear Harn, it had read. Here is my sister. You know her propensities. Try to save as much of the Host as possible.

“You know he isn’t going to be comfortable having her there as a subordinate when she should be in command,” said Grimly.

“Not Jame.” Torisen was emphatic. “She doesn’t know enough.”

“Neither did you at first, but people reacted to you nonetheless, even Harn, for all his scorn. The Knorth blood is old and strong.”

Burr returned with an armload of the morning post before Torisen could answer. He regarded his servant’s burden with dismay; was he never to get to the bottom of these piles? Kirien had promised him a scrollsman scribe, an idea which he regarded with mixed feelings. Delegation of duty had never come easily to him, especially as Highlord when he no longer knew whom to trust. He drew out a parchment at random.

“Huh. Dari is still petitioning to be made lordan regent of the Ardeth.”

“Is the old lord in such bad shape?” asked Grimly.

“I hope not.”

But Adric was on the edge of going soft. If he died . . . no, when he died. The event was unthinkable, but inevitable.

“You confirmed young Timmon as his heir.”

“So I did and so I hold, although the boy is Pereden’s son. Jame sees something in him, though.”

“Then you trust the lass’s judgment.”

“To a point. She knew him at Tentir, but what does she know about politics?”