The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  “You did,” said Rue, with a stubborn tilt to her shoulders.

  “I slashed my way across a battlefield—Ancestors know how clumsily—to bring my brother an accursed sword that he didn’t know how to wield. Niall was there too, and Brier, after worse than either of us experienced. If the rest of you missed it, well, what about our adventures up and down the Riverland, all the way to the Southern Wastes and back? Sweet Trinity, you helped me to raid Restormir itself to free Graykin! You have nothing to prove either to me or to the Highlord who, incidentally, has forbidden all such hazing. I don’t want to see any randon cadet subjected to it. Do the regular Kendar have to put up with this nonsense?”

  “They have their own rites of passage, I suppose.”

  “More practical ones than ours, I bet. God’s claws, isn’t the average Kencyr’s life hard enough as it is?”

  To her surprise, Rue didn’t agree.

  “Of course I don’t want to be beaten or humiliated or whatever the third-years have in mind,” said the towheaded cadet, turning stubbornly to face her. “But what other way is there? In a normal year, we would have gone through this at the randon college, but the second- and third-year cadets were all here by then. Now, how else are we supposed to prove that we belong with the Southern Host?”

  “Aaiiee.” Jame threw up her gloved hands in disgust. “Tradition!”

  At the south gate to the Knorth compound, she encountered Brier talking to a tall young woman with the dark tan of a native born Kothifiran Kendar and cropped hair the color of wild honey. When the latter saw the Highborn, she smiled and said something to Brier that made the latter stiffen, flushing. Then, with a flipped salute, the stranger walked off.

  “Who was that?” Jame asked, coming up.

  “Amberley. A regular Caineron. Before I left to become a Knorth randon cadet we were…close.”

  “Oh,” said Jame, listening as much to the other’s flat, carefully neutral tone as to her words, knowing by now how to read most nuances in the other’s manner. “How did she feel about your leaving?”

  “Angry. We fought.”

  It couldn’t have been easy for Brier to turn her back on all her former colleagues by changing houses, Jame thought, watching the Southron stalk back into the Knorth barracks. She had thought so before. It just hadn’t occurred to her that there might have been someone special.

  The north gate of the Ardeth faced her across the road. She saw Timmon enter his compound’s courtyard wearing what appeared to be a dirty apron and carrying a bucket of steaming slops.

  “What in Perimal’s name…?”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “I got a note. It seems that all the scullery duty I slipped out of at Tentir has finally caught up with me.”

  “And you’ve consented to do it now?”

  He shrugged. “You advised me to stop avoiding responsibility.”

  “I’m not sure this is what I meant.”

  “Should I let them humble me, d’you mean? I don’t know. It’s easier than hunting up some way of my own to prove myself, assuming that’s what I’m doing. Anyway, it could be worse. Did you hear about Gorbel’s challenge? What it told him to do was anatomically impossible. He read it out loud to his house at dinner, then tore it up.”

  Jame laughed. “That’s Gorbel. He can get away with it, too, despite his fickle father. It must be nice to be so self-assured.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “Sweet Trinity, no.”

  Yet she was more so than she had been before her graduation from Tentir, or more specifically before she and her brother had fought to establish her competence. She had surprised Tori there, just as he had surprised her by resorting to Kothifiran street fighting techniques. She needed more lessons from Brier.

  When would a note arrive for her, she wondered as she bid Timmon farewell, and what would she do about it? Ah, there was no telling until she learned what was being asked of her. Like Rue, she didn’t care to be humiliated, nor was she sure that was the way for a lordan to gain acceptance. Challenges. Huh.

  II

  The open lift cage took her smoothly up to the top of the Escarpment where she was greeted by Kothifir’s usual, lively street scene. Her way from there led outward into less respectable streets on the edge of the deserted towers. There she entered what on the outside appeared to be a narrow structure but on the inside opened out into a dingy tavern. A slatternly maid brought her a mug of thin, sour ale. Sipping it, she let her eyes roam around the edges of the room until a glimmer of white caught them. Graykin emerged from the shadows as if given birth by them.

  Jame signaled for another mug.

  “You’re getting very good at that,” she said as her servant slid into the opposite chair.

  “Being Master Intelligencer has some advantages. Now everyone tells me their secrets, whether they intend to or not…well, almost everyone,” he added, with a sidelong look at her.

  Knowledge was his coin of power, one that she hadn’t always been willing or able to pay him. Perhaps that hesitation wasn’t fair. She knew that he would keep her secrets to the point of death as he had at Restormir while in Lord Caineron’s power. Still, some secrets were hers alone.

  “So,” she said. “What news of the city?”

  He shrugged. “There’s not much to report. Prince Ton and his mother are still scheming against King Krothen, not that they have any chance while he retains his godhood.”

  “Which is to say as long as our temple remains stable. What?”

  Graykin’s eyes had flickered. “Maybe nothing, but there’s word that the temple has shrunk slightly. That often happens before a Change. It’s been known to dwindle down to the size of a clenched fist. The priests try not to be inside when that happens.”

  “I should think not.”

  Jame remembered the miniature temple at Karkinaroth and the priests trapped, starving, inside of it. Somehow, the inner and outer sizes of any Builders’ work never quite matched.

  “What about the guilds?” she asked.

  “They go on much as always, depending in part on their guild masters. Some of the masters are generous with their skills, like your friend Gaudaric, and their members thrive—small thanks to his fellow armorer Lord Artifice who only thinks about his own projects, to the detriment of all the other craft guilds. He should watch out, though. His work is brilliant now, but from what I hear, thanks to his selfishness his talent may burn out when—or rather if—he loses his position. Gaudaric, on the other hand, is more likely to keep his. That’s partly why Ruso is so desperate to remain Lord Artifice. He wants to be like Professionate and Merchandy, who have retained their power practically forever.”

  “That sounds like a cautionary tale about leadership,” remarked Jame.

  She wondered if Graykin had considered the personal implications. What would happen to him, come the next Change? He didn’t seem to be doing anything at all for his own so oddly won guild except using the powers that it granted him.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Not really, except that a few Karnids have crept back into the city.”

  Jame stared at him. “Graykin! You’re talking about the people who slaughtered thousands of Kencyr before Urakarn!”

  “Only because we chased them there, or rather because we chased their blessed prophet. Anyway, that’s an old story,” said Graykin with a shrug, as if less than two decades rendered it inconsequential. “As I understand it, when King Kruin was dying, the Dark Prophet came to him and promised him immortality if he would buy it with the lives of his heirs.”

  “That must have been when Kroaky took shelter with my brother and the Host,” said Jame, as more fragments of the previous night’s dreams came back to her.

  Graykin glared. “Who’s telling this story anyway, and who’s this ‘Kroaky’ fellow?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  “You’re laughing at me again.”

  “Well, maybe a little. Please continue.
King Kruin was dying and…?”

  “For a while, he didn’t. Meantime, Karnid priests were welcome here and made a lot of converts. When Kruin found out that he’d been fooled, he drove out his precious advisor. After his death, the city council sent the entire Host against Urakarn.”

  Including Tori, thought Jame, remembering the lacework of scars on her brother’s hands, the mark of Karnid torture that had almost crippled him for life.

  “I don’t know much more,” Graykin concluded, “not being a Karnid initiate.”

  “Well, see what you can find out.”

  Gray hadn’t grown up within the Kencyrath, Jame reminded herself. For him, perhaps, one Kencyr disaster merged into another. The slaughter of the Knorth women, the debacle in the White Hills, Ganth’s exile, Genjar’s catastrophe before Urakarn, the Kencyr Host against the Waster Horde in the desert before the battle at the Cataracts…say “massacre,” and which one did you mean? Looking back, it was hardly a surprise that the Southern Host was so depleted. Trinity, the entire Kencyrath had been bled white since it had first come to Rathillien, never mind what had happened before in all those other lost worlds or during the Fall itself. What was left to fight the final battle with Perimal Darkling? Perhaps only three, the Tyr-ridan, of whom she potentially was one.

  G’ah. Jame shook her head. All the weight of the Kencyrath’s past seemed to settle on her shoulders, for surely That-Which-Destroys would have to move before Preservation and Creation. She wondered how her brother and Kindrie were doing. If they couldn’t learn to cooperate, the entire history of the Kencyrath would be for nothing. Her cousin might have some sense of that, but her brother as yet had none. What a time to leave them alone together.

  Then too, she had little trust in her own ability to fulfill her role—that is, without destroying everything in her path. Tai-tastigon in flames, Karkinaroth crumbling, Tentir rocked to its roots…past results did not bode well for the future.

  Their conference done, she rose to depart. “Same place and time next week?”

  “I’ll send you word. Some of my guild are getting suspicious, especially Hangnail, the same who shoved you down the ladder into the Undercliff.”

  “Watch out for that one. He means you no good.”

  “I know,” he said, and laughed soundlessly, dismissively, within his hood.

  III

  From the desolate outer rings, Jame made her way toward the central towers, one of which housed Gaudaric’s workshops. The lower three floors offered such armor as the average buyer might want, all well-crafted but nothing special, mostly made by apprentices and journeymen. The fourth floor, however, was the master’s showroom. Gaudaric’s basic style was supremely functional, whether in steel or leather, elegant in its simplicity. However, he also entertained himself with fancier touches. Shafts of light from arched windows illuminated contoured breastplates of shining steel, helmets fashioned to resemble the heads of lions or bears, woven strips of rhi-sar leather in all the colors of nature, and one whole suit that looked like some fantastic beast with horns everywhere. Most wondrous of all, however, was a simple scale armor vest made of rathorn ivory, worth half the guild’s annual income.

  “Talisman, Talisman!” Byrne rushed down the spiral stair from an upper floor. “Are we going to see the Eye of Kothifir?”

  His grandfather followed him, wiping sooty hands on a leather apron.

  “Is it safe?” Jame asked him.

  “If you mean because of Lord Artifice, I think so. True, his boys were a trifle heavy-handed when we first met, but Ruso isn’t so bad, really. For the most part, he’s just obsessed with his craft.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  Gaudaric ruffled his fringe of gray hair, considering. “I’m serious about it, of course. It’s my life, but so is my family. Ruso only has his mechanical toys, his bullyboys, and his ambition. To tell the truth, I feel a bit sorry for him.”

  Not entirely reassured, Jame let Byrne tug her out into the street, bound for the Optomancers’ Tower. It was a tall, thin, crooked structure full of strange devices, eyeballs in jars, and prisms flaring rainbows against whitewashed walls, all glimpsed through windows as they climbed the outside stair. At the top, just above the cloud cover, the tower ended in a windowless dome, and out of its door popped a gangly young man wearing enormous lenses in wire frames that drooped with their weight.

  “Welcome to the Eye!” he said as he bowed to them with a flourish into the darkness. “Watch your step. Oh!”

  Byrne had barged into something that tinkled like glass wind chimes and broke.

  “Not to worry. Not to worry. The Eye sees all regardless. Just stand still while I close the door. There.”

  They stood still as ordered in darkness so total that not even Jame’s keen night vision helped her. Meanwhile their guide fumbled around them. More glass broke.

  “Damn. Where is it? Oh, here.”

  A sudden, dazzling light pooled on the floor in a circle some four feet across.

  It took Jame a moment to focus on what she saw. The lens pointed west, over Kothifir’s walls along the edge of the Escarpment, toward Gemma, the circling clouds presenting no obstacle. Dots moved on the clifftop plain, the closer identifiable as Kencyr patrols. Jealous Gemma was always threatening raids on its wealthy sister-city, necessitating at least the Host’s token presence Overcliff.

  The lens rotated, grinding.

  “Look!” cried Byrne in delight.

  There was the Rose Tower, as clear as life. Tiny figures climbed up and down its circular stair. Merchants swarmed around its foot, one of them having his pocket picked. Jame waved her hand over the scene. It rippled across her fingers, which trailed shadows across the floor.

  The focus shifted up the tower. Near the top was a ring of projecting thorns from which figures dangled, surrounded by diving birds. They must be hanging just outside the windows of the king’s apartment. Krothen had made good his threat to execute the Gemman raiders captured eleven days ago. Jame had heard rumors that one of them was the son of a Gemman council member.

  “Show me home!” Byrne demanded.

  Above them, the optomancers’ dome groaned and rotated. The city on the floor revolved, dizzyingly, until Gaudaric’s tower came into sight. The armorer himself was sitting on a window ledge, buffing a helmet. Byrne waved to him.

  “Hello, Grandpa!”

  Beyond the tower, out of focus, was the rim of the Escarpment.

  “If you can see over that,” said Jame, “I’ll really be impressed.”

  The image moved close to the rim, closer, and then the view angled sharply down toward the red tiled roofs of the camp.

  “It’s all done with mirrors,” said the young man proudly.

  Jame watched the flecks that were people swarming around the inner ward where local traders had set up the market that Rue had wanted to visit. A smaller cluster of specks was riding down the southern road, reminding Jame of the unfortunate Knorth ten-command whom that accursed note had sent forth to labor on this, their free day. She remembered the rest of her conversation with Rue, the things said, the things unsaid, and sudden unease gripped her.

  “Can you show me the southern road?”

  The retreating specks grew, then blurred, but not before she had counted them. There were only nine.

  “Byrne, we have to go. Now.”

  The boy set up a howl, but she found his arm in the dark and grabbed it. Where was the damned door? The image on the floor cast some reflected light over its surroundings even while its brilliance dazzled the eye. She tripped over a stool, breaking more glass, and lunged toward towards a faint, rectangular outline.

  “Oh, I say!” protested the young man behind her.

  “Sorry, sorry…”

  Then they were outside, on the stair, down in the street. Byrne hung back, wailing with disappointment.

  “Look.” Jame stopped short, still gripping his arm. “I apologize for dragging you away, but this is important…no, listen:
sometimes grownups have to do things that children don’t understand. That’s part of what makes them grownups.”

  Byrne wiped a snotty nose. “Like when Grandpa can’t play with me because he has to work?”

  “Yes. Now, do you want to grow up or not?”

  “Y-yes…”

  “Then humor me.”

  The child snuffled all the way back to the Armorers’ Tower, but stopped dragging his feet. Jame left him there with one of his grandfather’s journeymen.

  “Get me down as fast as you can,” she told the liftmen at the rim, and stepped into the cage.

  It fell out from under her. She clung to the bars, suspended above the floor, wondering if they had simply dropped it. The camp rushed up to meet her. Finally, her feet touched the floor, and then her knees almost buckled. The cage slammed down onto its platform, raising a billow of dust and causing yelps of alarm from its toll-keepers. Jame staggered out, into the camp.

  “Lost your command, have you, Jamethiel?” Fash called out to her, laughing, as she ran past the Caineron barracks.

  Her sixth sense told her that Bel-tairi was with the remount herd to the west of the camp while Death’s-head was ranging much farther afield. She called them both. Bel met her at the South Gate. She scrambled onto the mare’s bare back and they set off at a gallop down the south road towards the shadowy Apollynes.

  IV

  Brier and the rest of the ten-command had gotten perhaps ten miles away from Kothifir by the time that Jame caught up with them, having slowed Bel alternately to a trot and a walk so as not to overtire her. Jame rode up beside Brier Iron-thorn on her tall chestnut gelding. Bel’s head barely came up to his shoulder. Neither spoke for the next mile. The others tactfully fell back to give them privacy.

  “You should have told me,” Jame said at last, nudging the Whinno-hir into a brief trot to catch up with the chestnut’s longer stride. Trinity, no wonder people used saddles; her tailbone throbbed with every bounce.

  Brier shrugged. “You had other things to do. Besides, why should you waste a day with the rest of us?”