P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

Jame was also very aware—more so, apparently, than her former five-commander—of the Burnt Man crouching on the ridge above them. Vant had arrived at the solstice just as the master of fire had laid himself in the earth for the winter. A vacuum had formed and Vant had stepped into it. He no more believed in the Four than had Nidling of the Noyat, nor did he see what lurked over him with head cocked as if puzzling over this miniature usurper.

Clutching Jame’s shoulder, Prid whispered in her ear.

“What does the little savage say?” Vant asked.

“That you’re dead.”

He laughed, which set him to a harsh, raking cough. “Now, is that likely? I walk, I talk, I think.”

“So do some haunts. Look at your hands.”

As with his face, flesh came and went there over a lattice of white bones. He regarded the phenomena, and dismissed it.

“True, I was badly burned after you threw me into the fire.”

“Vant, I wasn’t there.”

His face contorted. Skin ripped and sloughed off over taut muscles. “It was your fault. Deny that if you dare.”

“I do.”

As she spoke, Jame realized that she truly didn’t feel guilt anymore, that she never should have in the first place. What had happened to Vant wasn’t fair, but it also wasn’t her fault.

He jerked back with a hiss like raw meat on a hot grill. “You will admit it. Someone is to blame. If not you, then who? I will have justice, or I will have vengeance.”

The night growled back at him. “All things end, light, hope, and life. Come to judgment. Come!”

Something huge prowled the meadow’s edge, a great darkness shot with fiery fissures that opened and closed as it moved. The earth trembled under its paws and the bones of fallen Noyat crunched.

Jame freed herself from Prid’s clutch.

“Stay here,” she told the girl, and moved to face the blind Arrin-ken. Who better to support her cause, but sweet Trinity, how dangerous even to ask.

“Lord, a judgment!” Vant cried behind her.

She and the Dark Judge circled each other. He moved out into the moonlight, seemingly as vast as the mountain range that he claimed as his domain. Heat rolled off his body. Loose strands of her hair rose, crinkled, and stank in the draft.

“Ah,” he muttered and cleared his throat like boulders grinding together. “I would gladly judge you, little nemesis, as I have so many others of your kind. What are you to us but grief and disappointment?”

Jame gulped, her mouth dry. She had dealt with the Dark Judge before, and barely escaped with her skin. All that had saved her was his obsession with the truth.

“I could be the way to Master Gerridon and to the changer Keral who blinded you.”

“So they might all have claimed.”

“But this time there are three of us, all potential Tyr-ridan. Do you dare take the risk?”

“If you should prove unworthy, if . . .” He raked his face with lethal claws as if to wipe it clean. “Argh, where is the stench of guilt? You should reek of it.”

“Sorry,” said Jame. “Not this time.”

“You!” The great head swung toward Vant. “Judgment you have demanded. Receive it you shall. Who threw you into the fire?”

“She did!”

“Liar.”

Jame backed away as the Blind Judge prowled past her, closer to Vant. Prid gripped her arm. The Burning Ones crept past toward the hunched figure on the ridge.

The Arrin-ken indicated Jame with a sideways sweep of his massive head. “I know this one. If she could take the blame, she would. That has confused me before. Someday I will judge her, but not for this. You, however, tried to pull your lord into the flames with you and now you have lied, yet I smell no sense of guilt on you for that.”

“It was his own fault! A lord shouldn’t humiliate his followers as he did by subjecting me to that . . . that freak, his sister!”

“Look to your own winter’s servants. See how they crawl, mewling, back to their true master, how he gathers them up one by one. Is honor only honor when it serves your purpose?”

Vant sputtered with outrage. “How dare you judge me? I am a lord’s grandson, and I will have revenge.”

He started for Jame.

The Dark Judge reared up behind him, blotting out the stars and, with one mighty blow, batted off his head. It rolled, gibbering, to Jame’s feet. By reflex, she kicked it into the river where the heat within, meeting the ice-melt water, exploded the skull.

“Bloop,” said the lurking catfish, and swallowed it. “Burp.”

Vant’s body remained on hands and knees, swaying.

“Yours,” said the Arrin-ken to the Burnt Man, who nodded and gathered up one more smoldering corpse to run, silent, at his heels.

“And you.”

The blind, blunt face swung toward Jame, who tried not to recoil from its fetid stench.

“Our time will come. And for the cadet Damson perhaps sooner. Be careful how you call me.”

“And you, beware how you answer.” The words came from deep within her Shanir nature, and she shuddered to utter them.

“Huh.” The gust of his breath singed her lashes and made her eyes sting. “You have grown, little nemesis.”

When she blinked away involuntary tears, he, the Burnt Man, and the Burning Ones were gone. A cricket sang tentatively, then another and another while the Silver Steps chuckled beside them.

“Come on,” said Jame to Prid in a shaken voice. “Let’s go home.”

Bel carried them to the Merikit village where Gran Cyd waited to enfold her half-naked granddaughter in rich sable.

Jame rode on to Kithorn. There she found the square containing sacred space nearly filled with blue smoke to the height of the torches. Vast shapes moved within the murk, shifting preposterously: the walls of the Earth Wife’s lodge; the Falling Man perpetually plummeting within his wicker cage; the catfish’s gigantic bewhiskered mouth out of which the Eaten One and Drie smiled at her. Largest of all, however, a bonefire blazed in the square’s northern corner. Smoke billowed from it, filling the square, tinged cobalt by the torches.

Bel whickered and minced uneasily as Jame rode her slowly around the square. Where was everyone? There was the smithy in which she had been held captive the previous Summer’s Eve; there, the steps up to the ruined stub of Kithorn’s tower.

“Hello?” she called, if only to break the silence.

Around the southwest corner of the square, she encountered Hatch, clad in green, fiddling with something behind his back. Jame dismounted, keeping her distance.

“Prid is safe,” she said. “The hills are closed. And this is entirely too much like last Summer’s Eve.”

A torch burst into flames beside her, one of a sequence closing the square. Bel retreated, snorting.

“Chingetai is trying to advance the midsummer rite, isn’t he?” she said to Hatch. “You and I are supposed to fight to become the Earth Wife’s new Favorite, but you don’t want that role and neither do I. Can you slip out of it again?”

He lunged at her, an ivy crown in his hand, and tried to plant it on her head. She blocked him with water-flowing, almost causing him to stumble into the square.

“You don’t understand,” he panted, collecting himself. “Who will protect Prid now?”

She feinted again, then caught him in an earth-moving maneuver that sent him sprawling. “Protect her from what?”

“She failed as the Ice Maid of the Merikit. You ruined her reputation. You owe her recognition. I could give that to her as her housebond, but I can’t if I become the new Favorite.”