The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Characters

  The Sea of Time – eARC

  P. C. Hodgell

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  Kothifir the Great, ruled by an obscenely obese god-king, peopled with colorful, dueling guilds, guarded by the Southern Host of the Kencyrath. Here Jame arrives, only to find that the turbulent city claims more of her attention as the Talisman than the Host’s training fields do as a second year randon cadet.

  Mysteries abound: Caravans plunge deep into the hostile Southern Wastes and return laden with fabulous riches—from what source, and why do they crumble to dust if not claimed by the god-king’s touch? Karnids from Urakarn prowl the shadows, preaching the return of their mysterious prophet. An unstable Kencyr temple rumbles in the outer, decayed rings of the city. Then too, someone in the Host’s camp is trying to get Jame killed.

  In order to save the present, Jame must search the past, be it fifteen years ago when as a boy her brother Torisen arrived here, unknown and unwanted, or three thousand years ago when the Wastes were a great sea ringed with rich civilizations. Somehow, Tori survived. Somehow, the cities of the plain were destroyed in one catastrophic night. Now Kothifir's gods have lost their power and its proud towers are falling. What curse out of the past has struck it? Jame, a potential Nemesis, must try to stop the destruction—without undoing time itself.

  The Sea of Time

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by P. C. Hodgell

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3649-5

  Cover art by Eric Williams

  Maps by P.C. Hodgell

  First printing, June 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  tk

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  In memory of

  Diana Wynne Jones

  1934–2011

  A fantasy writer without equal

  PROLOGUE

  A Knock on the Door

  Kothifir: Summer 45

  “Jamethiel Priest’s-bane.”

  The Knorth randon balanced the words on his tongue as if trying, dubiously, to taste them. “Queer sort of a name, don’t you think?”

  “Very queer,” his fellow officer agreed.

  “I mean, who would name a child after the Dream-weaver, given all the trouble that she caused? And why ‘Priest’s-bane’?”

  His friend shrugged off the latter and the god that it implied. “Our priests go their way. We go ours. I hear, though, that the Highborn were marvelously put out.”

  They contemplated this as they leaned on the rail of a third-story balcony outside their quarters in the Knorth barracks. It was late afternoon. The smell of dinner drifted up from the kitchen and a clatter of plates rose from the mess hall. The grassy quadrangle below had fallen into shadow. Opposite them stood the limestone bulk of the barracks’ south side. Beyond its ramparts, the ground dipped to reveal the red tile roofs of the Ardeth and beyond that, those of the Randir, all marching down to the South Gate which opened into the training fields and the Betwixt Valley. To the west were the Caineron, the Jaran, and the Edirr; to the east, the Brandan, Coman, and tiny Danior, tucked into an outer wall whose curve followed the eastern arm of the encircling River Amar.

  This, then, was the Southern Host’s garrison at the foot of the Great Escarpment, in the shadow of Kothifir, its paymaster.

  Oddly enough, the Host persisted in calling such a substantial collection of architecture their camp, as if at any minute they might pack up and march away.

  There was more than a hint of ambivalence there, thought the first officer, whose name was Spare. The Kencyrath had been given a great task by the Three-Faced God, to defeat the forces of Perimal Darkling, ancient of enemies. Instead, their deity had abandoned them and they had been forced backward down the Chain of Creation from threshold world to world, ending up here on Rathillien—for no greater purpose than to sell their swords to a local god-king?

  Oh, Spare understood the necessity well enough. His people had been ceded the Riverland, far to the north, but it had proved too poor to meet their needs. And they had been on Rathillien such a long time—three thousand-odd years—that their original purpose had long since been put aside in favor of mere survival. Even Torisen Black Lord, Highlord of the Kencyrath, had had to send nearly half of his forces south to Kothifir to support his Riverland base, without which he could not maintain control over the fractious houses under his dominion.

  It wasn’t right that he and his fellow Knorth should be sent so far from their lord, thought Spare, not for the first time. Torisen held his followers lightly, not wanting to intrude on their lives any more than was necessary—not, of course, that any of them wished to be gripped as tightly as, say, Lord Caineron did his house. At such a distance, however, the bond sometimes trembled, giving rise to unwanted doubts. Now here was another one.

  “Blackie has made this Jamethiel his heir,” he said, testing the idea as he had the name, uncertain of both. “His long-lost sister, a Highborn lady—well, a girl, actually.”

  “I know. And he sent her to Tentir.”

  “Which she survived.”

  Both considered their own first year at the randon college, the culls, the camaraderie, the challenges. Only the best made it through.

  “They say that she redeemed the Shame of Tentir by reclaiming the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi.”

  “How?”

  “No one knows. She just showed up one day at the college with the mare under saddle, then rode off with the lost Randir Heir, Randiroc. And she trained with Bear. And she threw Lord Caineron’s uncle Corrudin out a window. And she killed a Randir tempter with a swarm of bees. And she defeated Caldane’s heir, riding a rathorn. Lord Caineron can’t have wanted her to graduate from the college at all. How could she with his war-leader in place as Tentir’s Commandant?”

  This in some ways was the biggest mystery of all. Sheth Sharp-tongue must have been under great pressure to fail the Knorth’s unlikely heir, and from the sound of it she had given him plenty of opportunities. Yet rumor said that he had been solely responsible in the last cull for letting her pass. Sheth might be a Caineron, but his skills and integrity were legendary throughout the randon community. He would never have supported a cadet whom he believed unworthy.

  “Where d’you suppose she is now?” asked Spare.

  “Probably still presenting her credentials to Commandant Harn. Her contingent of second-year cadets, all ei
ghty-odd of them, should be here any time now. In fact,” he added, harkening to the sound of voices coming down the public road beyond the barrack’s western wall, “that may be them now.”

  Movement below drew their attention as figures spilled out of the Knorth barracks into the quadrangle. Ten, twenty, thirty…

  “That’s the entire third-year class,” said Spare’s friend, leaning over the rail to look.

  Thanks to the great battle at the Cataracts two years ago, an entire class of first-year cadets had either been killed or promoted on the field. Thus they had missed half of their year at the randon college, but had gained a glorious blooding against the Waster Horde. Established randon found them a bit rough-edged and aggressive, but very proud of the distinction that battle had given them.

  Now they rushed forward to close and lock the garrison’s double gates.

  “Now that…” Spare began, but halted as he sensed a presence behind him. A moment later the barrack’s commander appeared at his elbow.

  He and his friend made way for her at the rail, exchanging glances over her gray, short-cropped head. Ran Onyx-eyed spoke to neither of them, but she was usually silent. No one tended to remember that her given name was Marigold. Rather it was her still, dark gaze that captured attention—that, and her masklike face. One never knew what she was thinking. It was most disconcerting.

  Below, the third-year cadets were tumbling building blocks in front of the inner door. The barracks had suffered considerable decay during Ganth Gray Lord’s long exile, before his son Torisen had risen to claim his place three years ago. Scaffolding rose on either side of the inner gate bearing more stones to reinforce the southern wall.

  Voices sounded out in the road:

  “K-north! K-north! K-north!”

  Was that a cheer or a jeer?

  The randon above waited to see what the newcomers would do when they found themselves shut out of their new quarters. After a certain amount of confusion beyond the wall, the outer door swung slowly open.

  “Maybe they forgot to lock it,” said Spare’s friend.

  “Maybe.” Spare felt a stir of excitement. “D’you remember what happened at Gothregor when the ladies tried to lock the Highlord out of the Women’s Halls?”

  “No. What?”

  “Wait and see.”

  Into the expectant silence fell a sound. Someone was politely knocking on the inner door.

  Its portals began to swing ponderously open. The stone blocks in the way were shoved back, digging into the grass, tumbling aside. A slim figure, hardly more than a child to Kendar eyes, stood on the threshold in the widening gap, silhouetted by lances of dying sunlight. And still the gate opened.

  “’Ware the scaffolding,” breathed Spare.

  Wood hit wood, and the builders’ framework splintered. Stones came thundering down. The third-year cadets retreated while officers burst out of the barracks to stare at the billowing dust. At last the cacophony dwindled to a trickling of sand and someone in the midst of the cloud coughing. The Highlord’s sister emerged waving dust away from her face.

  “Er…,” she said to all the waiting faces. “Sorry.”

  “Huh,” said Ran Onyx-eyed.

  CHAPTER I

  Kothifir

  Summer 55

  I

  Halfway to the top, the lift cage shuddered to a stop and hung, swaying, on its ropes. Leather-winged birds flitted around it, jeering through sharp teeth. The morning sun poured between its bars like molten gold, bright and hot, and wood creaked.

  The cage’s sole occupant swore.

  Through the slatted floor under her feet, Jame could see the garrison of the Southern Host spread out like a toy city at the foot of the cliff. There was the inner ward, there the quadrilateral, red-roofed barracks of each Kencyr house. Antlike dots moved through the streets with deceptive slowness. How high up was she? One thousand feet? Two? Kendar had warned her, with a shudder, that it was nearly three thousand to the top of the Escarpment at this point, not counting Kothifir’s towering spires above that. At least she didn’t suffer from the Kendars’ inbred fear of heights—not that dangling here on a few strands of hemp was exactly reassuring.

  Commandant Harn’s headquarters were somewhere within the office block north of the inner ward. Jame remembered her reception there ten days ago, how the burly man had fidgeted around the room, bumping into furniture, avoiding her eyes.

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

  Such a stiff, wary greeting, as if they hadn’t spent most of a year under the same roof at Tentir.

  And speaking of cool receptions, what was she to make of Ran Onyx-eyed?

  “Do you wish to take command of the barracks?” the woman had asked. “Such, after all, is your prerogative as the Knorth Lordan.”

  Did the Kendar want to shift responsibility to her, or did she resent a newcomer’s claim, or was she truly as indifferent as she seemed? That smooth, bland face had given Jame no clue.

  “Uh,” she had said, “please continue to run the barracks for the time being.”

  The last thing Jame wanted was a raft of new administrative chores. Was she shirking her duty? Perhaps, as at Tentir when she had left her five-commander Brier Iron-thorn in charge of the barracks there. If so, she was worse than Timmon at sliding out of duties. There had always seemed to be more important things for her to do, though, and as the Knorth Lordan she had been allowed more freedom than most cadets.

  But “This is Kothifir, not Tentir,” Harn had warned her. “Watch yourself.”

  Her gaze shifted to the training fields beyond the camp walls and the encircling arms of the Amar where her own ten-command was currently practicing with javelins, as she would have been too, without special permission to visit the city.

  Dar, Mint, Killy, Erim, Rue, Quill, Niall, Brier.…

  Jame knew the names of the other second-year cadets as well, of course, and now would have to learn those of the third-years. Their leader, she gathered, was that sullen boy named Char. There were the Knorth randon officers as well. Tori knew all of them, and a thousand more besides.

  Beyond the training fields was the Betwixt Valley, laced fresh green with irrigation ditches branching off from the Amar south of where its east and west branches rejoined. Beyond that rose the dusky, terraced slopes of the Apollyne mountain range. Jame wasn’t high enough to see over the latter to the Wastes beyond, where the rain stopped and the true desert began. However, a glittering veil of golden dust seemed to be drawn across the southern sky behind the peaks’ dark silhouettes. What lay in those desolate, wide-flung expanses? Would she be able someday to see for herself?

  The cage jolted down a foot, making her stagger. Its ropes groaned.

  A fine thing, Jame thought crossly, gripping the bars for balance, to have come all this way only to be dropped on my head.

  Perhaps she should have taken one of the stairs that snaked up the limestone cliff face, carved out of it. So many steps, though, in her new dress grays with a crisp linen cheche wrapped about her tightly braided hair.… To arrive breathless, exhausted, and sweat-soaked on her first visit Overcliff—no, thank you.

  Another lift cage, this one enclosed such as the Kendar preferred, ascended smoothly beside her. Should she have taken it instead? It cost more, however, and Jame wasn’t yet comfortable with having money to spend. A small portion of her new allowance hung in a pouch at her side, tapping her hip as the cage swayed. How was she to know what each coin was worth in trade? They weren’t mere toys anymore for her blind hunting ounce Jorin to chase.

  Ah. The cage rose again, by fits and starts.

  Here caves breached the sheer cliff-face and exhaled cool air in her face through swaying vines. Faces were carved in high relief around many openings—past god-kings, perhaps, or portraits of the engineers who had designed Kothifir. Some looked proud, others merely bored. Through their yawning lips she glimpsed the jagged honeycomb o
f the Undercliff. Plumes of water fell from some cave mouths, also thicker jets from either end of the three-mile-wide semicircular moat that surrounded the city, bracketing it with rainbows. All were fed by the Amar, which approached Kothifir from the north. One couldn’t see it from here, of course, but it was said to be the biggest river short of the Silver to feed into the southern lands.

  At last here was the lip of the Escarpment. The crane swung her cage over the balustrade and it bounced to rest on Kothifir’s limestone-paved forecourt. A squat, sun-darkened Kothifiran opened the gate.

  “So,” he said in Rendish, with a flash of crooked white teeth. “Did missy enjoy her ride? Not that such a featherweight as you is any chore, but next time, maybe the heavier lift for comfort? Yes?”

  Jame glanced at the grinning winch-men. So that had been their game, angling for a higher fee. She had already paid at the cliff’s foot. Fishing a small coin out of her pouch as a tip, she flipped it to the proprietor.

  “For your courtesy. Have you considered installing a trap door?”

  “Oh, we already have that, for those who try to shortchange us.”

  Looking back at the cage, Jame saw that he spoke the truth. No wonder the floor had seemed so unsteady. She extracted another coin. “On account,” she said, tossing it to the winch-men, and walked off to their crack of laughter.

  The city opened out to her at the foot of a broad, curving avenue. Here on the ground level, shops with brightly hued awnings lined the way, offering all kinds of food stuffs from purple eggplants to white radishes, from ruby tomatoes to sacks of golden wheat. Albino crickets sang in shaded cages. River fish gaped in tubs. Hung sheep carcasses seemed to move under a pelt of flies. Spices laced the hot morning air, their fragrance mingling with that of fresh baked bread and spilt blood. Jame breathed the mixture with delight. She had neither seen nor smelled such a wealth of Rathillien’s riches since her days in Tai-tastigon.