P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

“In all but name, yes.”

“And you can do that?”

“Under certain conditions, if the health of his house demands it. As I confirm lords, so I can unseat them. Damned if I want to, though.”

Everyone knew how much he owed to Adric. If the Ardeth lord hadn’t hidden him in the Southern Host, he would never have survived to claim the Highlord’s seat. The current breach between them made things doubly awkward, but what could Torisen do? The Highlord must not be an Ardeth puppet as the commander of the Southern Host had felt himself to be. Still, he had promised to look after his former mentor’s interests.

“I also hear,” said Marc, emboldened, “that Lord Ardeth is on his way north to attend the High Council meeting.”

“Is he, by Trinity?”

He should have known that, Torisen thought, chagrinned. Ironically, it was because Ardeth had used Torisen’s friends to spy on him in those early days that he had such an aversion to spying on anyone now. As a result, the Knorth possessed the poorest intelligence network in the Kencyrath, and Marc knew it. No wonder the Kendar was trying to impart his information so diplomatically. Torisen glanced at the stained glass map. Somehow, the thought of using it didn’t agitate him the way using human agents did. How valuable it could be, if only it worked properly. Instead, he was reduced to allies casually passing on news.

“I thought Adric was going to wander the Wastes forever,” he said.

“Not now that he believes at least one of Pereden’s bones is in the Riverland.”

Torisen stared at him. “Why in Perimal’s name would he think that?”

Harn had put the boy’s body on the common pyre at the Cataracts, he thought. It should be ashes on the wind. He had felt guilty about Ardeth’s futile search of the Wastes and wondered how to end it. Now, however, he remembered his dream and was chilled. This was an ending unlike any he had ever envisioned.

“Well,” Marc was saying, “the thing is that Lord Ardeth found the site where the central column led by Pereden clashed with the Waster Horde. Where else should he look for his son’s bones? But they weren’t there. At the same time, his Shanir sense told him that at least one still existed. Frustration was like to drive him mad, and his people with him. So he took one of his strongest potions to enhance his powers. They thought it was going to kill him. But after spinning around like a mad douser until everyone with him was falling-down dizzy and fit to die, he ended up pointing north toward the Riverland.”

“And now Adric is coming here to find it? Sweet Trinity.”

The mere suspicion that Pereden had joined the Waster Horde had nearly given his father a fatal heart attack. If Adric did find a bone in the Riverland, now, how in Perimal’s name could Torisen explain it when he didn’t know himself?

Somebody cleared his throat near the southwest circular stair. Torisen lowered his hand from the collar of his coat where he had instinctively reached for one of his throwing knives.

Don’t kill the messenger.

It was, of course, Cousin Holly’s courier, whom he had told to meet him here.

The Kendar approached looking uneasy, handed Torisen a pouch, and backed away.

“Highlord, my lord asks that you treat this as urgent, not to go on your to-do pile.”

Trinity, did everyone know that he was behind in his paperwork? Of course they did.

He flicked a knife out of his collar and sliced open the lumpy packet. Something black fell out. Yce snapped it out of midair and retreated with her prize, growling. Marc went after her under the table, like a large bumblebee in a small bottle. The table rocked. Glass slid.

Torisen shook out the rest of the packet’s contents, consisting of a note and a heat-cracked moon opal signet ring in a tarnished silver setting.

For a moment he stared at the paper. It reeked faintly of burning. Writing on a page . . . This was the message that he had been looking for all along, in the wrong place.

Dear Tori, he read. I took this at the Cataracts, just in case we ever had to prove that Pereden actually was there. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. Now I don’t know what to do with it, so here it is. Sorry. Love, Holly.

Marc emerged from under the table with something in his big hand. He held it out to Torisen—a finger shriveled by the pyre, half its flesh seared away.

“Your family does make a practice of carrying around bones, I’ve noticed. First your sister with your father’s finger and then you with my sister Willow’s remains. So what’s this?”

Torisen slid the ring over the bone and stared at the resulting combination. The former bore the Ardeth crest.

“Now my head really hurts.”

Now came the harshest days of winter.

Everyone huddled close to the fires at night under mounds of fur, and still an exposed finger or nose might turn ominously white by morning. Bare bodies threw on clothes in a hopping frenzy. Sheets of ice sealed wash basins. Food arrived at the breakfast table already cold. After the morning rally in the square, cadets hustled back indoors to make their way to classes by the interior hallway. Lessons proceeded as normally as possible if rather fast to generate heat for chilled limbs. Weapons, strategy, history, the Senethar, the dread (and freezing) writing class . . .

Nonetheless, everyone worked hard, all too aware that with spring would come the final tests that would determine not only if they passed Tentir but where their posting would be the coming year.

“Oh, let it be the Southern Wastes!” groaned many a miserable cadet. “No more winter, ever!”

At first, horses plunged about outside in drifts up to their shaggy bellies, muzzles clumped with ice, while cadets floundered out to them dragging sleds full of hay and ice-mantled water.

Soon, however, they had to be moved inside. The subterranean stable filled to overflowing; the extras were quartered in the great hall under the banners of the major houses. The air thickened with their steaming breath and droppings while the horse-master moved among them checking for strangles or any other deadly, communicable complaint. In passing, he patted the dappled flank of the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi and wondered how her companion was doing out in the snow. The last time he had seen Death’s-head, the rathorn had grown a pelt as shaggy as a wolf’s, but still, all that cold, cold ivory . . . !

Jame missed working with the colt and felt his aching cold through the bond between them enough to deepen her own shudders.

However, she was also glad not to go outside Tentir more than necessary.

For one thing, she had proved to be more susceptible to frostbite than most Kendar, not surprisingly given her slighter build. Bits of her froze almost casually, over and over, and each time had to be reawakened to throbbing life.

For another thing, she didn’t want to encounter the Dark Judge, if he really was haunting the college’s environs. The colt’s senses gave fleeting suggestions of this, but in general, rathorn and giant cat kept their distance from each other. Some nights Jame thought she heard that terrible voice pleated with the wind, wailing wordlessly. Such hunger, such desolation! Was he only lashing out in his eternal pain, or did he think that judging her would make him whole again? Certainly, he longed to pass judgment on such a nemesis as she had proven to be, however innocent. What really drove him mad, however, was that he couldn’t strike at the root of evil itself, Gerridon. In an agony of self-revelation, the great cat had told her that no Arrin-ken could enter the halls of the Master’s monstrous house swallowed by Perimal Darkling until the coming of the Tyr-ridan.