The Sea of Time

by P. C. Hodgell

  When she got her breath back, Jame propped herself up and looked around. She had come to rest against the wall of a huge cave. Light filtered into it through the vines curtaining its mouth. The shadowy, stalactite-fanged roof must have been a good two hundred feet up and it was nearly as wide side to side. Its floor, while undulating, gave the impression of having been cleared of all obstacles and trampled smooth.

  A number of people had turned to witness her sudden descent. Their curiosity satisfied, they went back to work. Jame saw that she had fallen into a subterranean marketplace. As above, so below? Getting shakily to her feet, she limped over to the nearest stall where the merchant in charge handed her a tin of cold water.

  “Dropping in on us, eh?”

  Jame gratefully drained the cup. The water tasted strongly of iron. “Am I welcome?”

  “So long as you don’t come to spy.”

  Still collecting her wits, she inspected his wares. Very dingy they seemed—scraps of thin gray cloth, a vest, a codpiece.

  “Woven only of the finest spider web,” he said proudly, “and you know how strong that is. One of these strips will stop an arrow.”

  He named a price that made Jame blink. It seemed to be her day to meet armorers.

  Besides his stall, she saw others selling such basic necessities as fuel and food, the latter rather dispirited, apparent rejects from the market above. Sprinkled among them were more wares native to the Undercliff: multicolored mushrooms, small rock formations apparently intended to be shrines, and water bottled from various subterranean pools. There were also sizable chunks of diamantine softly aglow, priced quite cheaply for such a valuable substance. The Undercliff seemed in general to cater as much to the Overcliff as to its own inhabitants.

  The distorted echo of music reached them from farther back in the cave.

  “Here they come,” said the dealer. “Happy Vediafest.”

  Girls clad in yellow and black robes danced out of the shadow of towering stalagmites playing pipes. As they neared, Jame saw that each one was wreathed with similarly colored snakes, their tails knotted together behind the girls’ necks. Each also carried a long wand at the end of which, tethered with a leash, fluttered a bat. The snakes strained to reach it, coil and strike, coil and strike. When one succeeded, cymbals clashed and the girls cried out in triumph. Supplicants wriggled on the ground at their heels, apparently hoping to see their particular bat caught. Jame saw the bright clothes of Overcliffers and the sturdy cottons of farmers among the drab Undercliffers. Some had obvious injuries; others wore their suffering in their expressions or in the twist of their wasted bodies.

  In their midst came a litter carried shoulder high on which sat the statue of a matronly woman festooned with stone serpents.

  “Mother Vedia!” the stall holder called out to her as she passed. “Grant good health to me and mine!”

  “I didn’t see anything like this above,” Jame said.

  “You wouldn’t, not since King Kruin drove all the Old Ones Undercliff. Seems he didn’t want any rivals to his own godhood. Well, his loss, our gain.”

  A girl with a bald, tattooed head darted through the celebrants and stopped the litter. The statue quivered. Its surface, laced with cracks and white dust, floated down as both woman and snakes stirred to life. She rose, knelt to listen to her petitioner, then signaled her bearers to set her down. While the dancers continued to thread back and forth between the booths, still singing, she and the girl hurried off. On impulse, Jame returned the tin cup to the merchant and followed them.

  They climbed a chiseled stair and ducked into a side cave full of limestone columns with space enough between them for two dozen child-sized sleeping mats. The children themselves were clustered around an alcove at one end of the cave. Jame came up behind them to peer over their heads. In the alcove was a bed and on it lay a restive child with a blood-stained bandage wrapped around his head, supported by a lanky, ginger-haired young man, well endowed with pimples. The bald girl hovered nearby while the matron consulted with another young female, this one plump and blond, wearing a white tunic.

  “I told you that my powers are limited Undercliff,” said the latter, with the hint of a child’s pout. “If Kroaky hadn’t been so insistent, I never would have come. Mother Vedia, can you do any good here?”

  The matron rubbed a hand over her face, smearing the dust there into a network of wrinkles which the limestone had glossed over. In general, she looked older and more dumpy than she had before as a statue. The snakes slithered restlessly over her plump form, in and out of her loose clothing. Two snapped at each other until she absentmindedly slapped them apart.

  “I should have been called sooner, say, when the boy first fell.”

  “He seemed all right then,” the bald girl said truculently, revealing filed teeth as she spoke and snapping off her words. Jame recognized her accent from the Cataracts. A Waster, here? “Then he was drowsy and complained of a headache. That was a week ago. Now we can’t get him to rest.”

  The boy struggled in the young man’s arms. “It hurts!” he whined.

  Jame wondered if this was the unlicensed child-thief whom the guards had thrown down the drain.

  Mother Vedia rested a hand on the boy’s head. Her fingers sank down through hair and skin to the bone beneath, which she felt.

  “He’s lucky not to have split open his skull. As it is, he’s merely cracked it. Now, which one . . .” She fumbled among a collection of small bottles that hung clinking from her belt. The snakes selected one. “Ah, yes. I can at least make him sleep. Now, drink up, little man.”

  The child tried to refuse, but the youth with ginger hair held his nose and ruthlessly poured the potion down his throat. Soon his thrashing quieted. The young man settled him back on the pallet, then raised hazel eyes to regard Jame over the intervening heads.

  “And now, as for you . . .”

  Jame found herself suddenly the focus of all eyes. The children scattered as the bald girl hurtled through them. Jame countered her charge with a water-flowing move that sent her stumbling among the columns. She came back with a knife in her hand.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not a spy, but I am looking for one—Graykin by name. Have you seen him?”

  Ginger slipped between them. “Hush, Fang,” he said, in a nasal voice that Jame almost thought she recognized from sometime earlier that day. “Not everyone from above is an enemy. What is this man to you?” he asked Jame.

  “A servant. If he imposed on your hospitality, I apologize for him. He can be . . . overzealous.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Many things. Call me the Talisman.”

  The youth smiled, baring big, white teeth. “Well, then, call me Kroaky. Fang, my dear, he’s your catch. Will you surrender him?”

  The Waster glowered. “Don’t call me ‘dear.’ Anyway, should we trust an Overcliffer?”

  “She apparently trusts us.” He indicated the ragged band of urchins who had spread out around Jame and were watching her closely. “Will you fight these, Talisman?”

  “Not willingly. They look too fierce.”

  The children nudged each other and giggled.

  Fang reluctantly sheathed her knife. “Well, all right. He’s more trouble than he’s worth, anyway.”

  She led Jame to the back of the cave and a hole in the floor, extending down into a bottle-necked cavity. Firelight glistened on water on its floor. The pit appeared empty, until a white face turned to peer up from the depths.

  “Graykin?”

  “Lady?” His voice echoed hollowly. “At last! Get me out of here!”

  “Are you sure you want him?” asked Kroaky.

  Jame sighed. “No, but he’s my responsibility.”

  A coiled rope lay nearby, fixed at one end to a rock formation. Kroaky kicked it down the hole. The line went taut. Scrabbling and cursing came from below, then a thin, grimy hand groped over the stone lip. Jame seized it
by the wrist and helped a scruffy figure to climb out.

  Graykin shook out his wet robe, looking furious. “Days I’ve been up to my knees in that stinking water, pelted with stale bread. Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?”

  “Not really,” said Jame apologetically. “I gathered that you were annoyed, nothing worse.”

  “Huh! Why did you chuck me down there anyway?” he demanded of Kroaky.

  “I didn’t. Fang did. She doesn’t like spies—and none of your Intelligencer’s tricks: they don’t work down here, as you may have realized.”

  “Why did you go Undercliff?” Jame asked as they made their way back to the ladder leading to the Overcliff.

  Receiving no immediate answer, she glanced back at Graykin who trudged mulishly at her heels.

  “You told me to find out all I could about Kothifir.”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t expect you to get quite so . . . er . . . immersed, though.”

  He stopped and stomped. His boots squished. “No matter what I do, you only laugh at me! Well, I’ve found out more than you think. For example, I bet you didn’t know that that girl in a white tunic was Lady Professionate.”

  Jame stared at him. “The blonde? Why, she couldn’t be more than thirteen years old!”

  Graykin smirked. “You don’t know anything about the guild lords, do you? While they’re in office, they don’t age.”

  “And they can’t be killed,” added Jame, remembering Lord Artifice’s declaration.

  “Yes,” Graykin admitted, a little huffily. “That too. The thing is that Lady P has made it through every Change for at least fifteen years, and Lord Merchandy for three times that at least.”

  “Now you interest me. What exactly is this mysterious Change?”

  Graykin paused to wring out his dripping hem, over which he had been tripping, revealing a dirty white sash around his waist.

  “I’m still investigating that. One happened soon after I first got here. Suddenly the guild lords and masters lost all of their powers, not to mention the king. It was crazy. People didn’t know what to do. No one seemed accountable to anyone. Can you imagine what it’s like in a rigidly structured society when that structure is ripped out of it? Suddenly—oh, horrors—everyone is equal. The Overcliff was like a ship without a rudder, less so the Undercliff from what I hear, which is another reason why I came down here to look around.”

  Jame wondered if the Kencyrath would go to pieces like that without its god. Would the Highborn have enough innate power to hold everything together? Now, there was an unsettling thought. Yet hadn’t she often wished that the Kendar were free of their compulsion to be bound to the Highborn? If that ever happened, though, what would they do with themselves?

  “And then?” she asked Graykin.

  “People got tired of the disorder and began to reorganize. Former grandmasters and lords started politicking for supporters, but as far as I can see, that seldom works. The most unlikely people can suddenly find themselves elevated to lord- or mastership. Take Lady Professionate. She was only a doctor’s servant when the white came to her, not that she hasn’t learned a lot since then, never mind that she still looks like a child. And the more Changes she and Lord Merchandy survive, the more people believe in them. Lord Artifice is less secure.”

  So, thought Jame, they were Kothifir’s equivalent of Tai-tastigon’s New Pantheon gods, but less stable because the Kencyr temple that gave them power was too.

  “How often do these Changes occur?”

  “I’m told that they used to happen every decade or so, but recently much more frequently.”

  That in turn suggested that the temple was growing less stable. Perhaps that was what Torisen had meant when he had called Kothifir especially dangerous just now. While he and Jame had talked more freely in those last days at Gothregor than in the past two years, some things had remained unsaid on both sides.

  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.

  CHAPTER II

  A Willow Rampant

  Summer 56

  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 partw
ay. 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?”