"Probably," Kethry agreed wearily. "Well, to continue the story, that young mage was the last pupil we were going to take; we planned to retire within a few years. So I let Rathgar stick around—and I told Lenore I wanted her to run a little deception on him."
"That part I know about," Kero exclaimed. "If you mean that she pretended to be the housekeeper's daughter instead of yours, so he felt free to court her—" Kethry nodded, and Kero flushed. "When I was little, that seemed so romantic...."
Tarma snorted. "Romantic! Dear Goddess—I supposed she'd think of it that way. We were both afraid that if he knew she was Keth's daughter, he'd never even think about courting her. We just wanted her under the protection of somebody who'd take care of her without exploiting her."
"It all would have worked fine, except for Rathgar himself," Kethry said, shaking her head. "If I'd had any idea how he felt about mages—well, she fell very happily and romantically in love with him, and he was just dazzled by her, and it all looked as if things were going to work out wonderfully. He proposed, she accepted, and I told him who she really was—"
"And the roof fell in." Kero felt entirely confident in making that statement. She knew her father, and had a shrewd guess as to what his reaction to such a revelation would be. Outrage at the deception, further outrage that this mage was his beloved's mother. Before long he'd have convinced himself that Kethry had some deep-laid plot against him, and he'd have done his best to pry his poor innocent Lenore out of her mother's "deadly" influence.
"I didn't see it coming," Kethry admitted. "I should have, and I didn't. And at that point, it was too late. My daughter was deep in the throes of romantic love, and Rathgar was her perfect hero. Anything Lenore heard from me on the subject threw her into hysterics. She was certain that I wanted to part them."
"She thought he made the sun rise and set," Tarma said with utter disgust, her hawklike face twisted into an expression of distaste. "It's a damned good thing he was an honest and unmalicious man, because if he'd beaten her and told her she deserved it, she'd have believed him. How could any woman put herself in that kind of position willingly?"
"I suppose I should have expected it," Kethry said gloomily. "I set the whole mess up in the first place. You know what your people say—'Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.' For the first time she had someone around who thought she was wonderful just as she was, helpless and weak, and wasn't trying to force her to do something constructive with her life. Of course she thought he hung the moon."
Tarma threw up her hands. "I still don't understand it. Keth went ahead with the marriage, because anything was safer than letting Reichert have another chance. Well, that was when Lenore decided Keth and I were old fools and began listening only to Rathgar, and when he saw he had the upper hand, he started making demands. Finally it came down to this: when Lordan was born, he made Keth promise never to set foot on Keep property without an invitation."
"So that's why—" Kero's voice trailed off. A great many things started making sense, now.
"I think he was afraid I'd try and take her away from him," Kethry said, after a long silence filled only with the sound of the wind in the leaves below them. "I really do think he didn't care as much about the property as he did about my daughter. On the other hand, I know that he always resented that every bit of his new-won wealth came from me. I think he kept expecting me to try and take over again, to control him through either the wealth, Lenore, or you children."
Probably. That was the one thing he hated more than anything else, being controlled by someone. Maybe because he got a bellyful of taking orders when he was younger, I don't know. I do know that he'd never have believed Grandmother didn't have some kind of complicated plot going.
Tarma got up, stretched, and perched herself on the stone railing of the balcony. "Well, I'm not that generous," she growled. "The man was a common merc; a little better born than most, but not even close to landed. And that was what he wanted all his life—to win lands, and become gentry. That's what most mercs want, once they lose their taste for fighting. Whether it's a farm they dream of, or a place like the Keep, they all want some kind of place they can claim as their own, and that's the long and the short of it."
Kero shifted uneasily on her wooden bench, and put down the last of the sausage, uneaten. She had the vague feeling she ought to be defending Rathgar, but she couldn't. Both of them were right. She knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that Rathgar had adored her mother—but she also knew his possessive obsession about his lands.
And she knew that there would be no way that Kethry could ever have convinced him that she didn't care about the property so long as her daughter was happy. He simply could not have understood an attitude like that. Kero had heard him holding forth far too many times on the folly of some acquaintance, or some underling, giving up property for the sake of a child. And his reasoning, by his own lights, was sound. After all, if one gave up the property now, how could one provide for that same child, or leave it the proper inheritance?
"Destroy a birthright for the sake of the moment?" she'd heard him say, once, when the Lythands had settled a dispute with a neighbor by deeding the disputed land to a common relation. "Folly and madness! Your children won't thank you for it, when they've grown into sense!"
And she was sure now that this was the source of his deep-seated bitterness—that he owed everything, not only to his wife's mother, not only to a woman, but to a mage. And one who had earned it all honestly, herself.
That must have rankled the most. Mages were not to be trusted; mages could change reality into whatever suited them at the moment. Mages were the source of everything that was wrong with the world....
"That's how and why your folk ended up with a breeding-herd of Shin'a'in horses," Tarma said, startling her out of deep thought. "I don't know if you know how rare it is for us to sell a stud, but we let him have one—an ungelded cull, but still, a stud. He wouldn't listen to Keth about the lands, he didn't have her resources, and he didn't have her capital. He was operating on the edge of disaster, squeaking through season after season, never making a profit. We had done fine, but we'd had the Schools. This land is too rocky to be good farm land; the tenants barely managed to make ends meet. Finally I had the Clan bring in a herd of the best culls and sell them to him at a bargain price. He figured he'd outbargained the ignorant barbarians. We didn't care; that got him something he could use to maintain the Keep and Lenore without stripping the lands bare or abusing the tenants. Then, when you and your brother were of an age to train your own beasts, I arranged to have a couple of good young mares slipped into the next batch he bought."
She lifted her face to the sun and breeze, and Kero thought she looked very like a weathered, bronze statue. Tough, yet somehow graceful.
"It wasn't all that hard to do," Kethry said wryly. "Really, it wasn't. After all, we were making trips back to the Clan every year to see the rest of my brood. It was more than worth the fuss to get him convinced you two should have them and then convince him it had been all his own idea. It was about my only way of doing anything for you after I pulled back to the Tower and promised to leave you all alone."
"So what do you think of all this?" Tarma asked, finally turning those bright blue eyes back toward Kero. "It isn't often a person gets an entire Clan as relatives, and right out of nowhere, too."
"Am I ever going to get to meet them?" she asked impulsively. "The others, my uncles and aunts and all—"
Tarma laughed. "Oh, I imagine. Eventually. But right now you and I have a previous appointment."
Kero felt a moment of disappointment, then smiled. After all, it wasn't as if everything had to happen all at once. Look how much has happened in just the past few weeks! I think I can wait a little longer.
"Then we'd better get to it before we both get stiff," she replied, and grinned. "Or before I get a chance to think about what you're going to do to me at practice!"
The one thing Tarma was an absolute fanatic about was cleanlin
ess. She insisted Kero take a bath after morning work and afternoon training, both. There was no shortage of hot water at the Tower, unlike the Keep—that was one magical extravagance Kethry was more than willing to indulge in. Once Kero got over her initial surprise, she found that she liked the idea of twice-daily baths. Hot water did a great deal to ease aching muscles, and the evening bath was a good place to think things over, with a light dinner and good wine right beside the enormous tub. Kethry left her granddaughter alone after dinner, saying when Kero asked her that "everyone needs a little privacy." Kero was just as glad. She tended to fall asleep rather quickly after those long soaks, and she doubted she'd be very good company for anyone.
With unlimited hot water, she found she was following Tarma's example; drawing one bath to get rid of the dirt and sweat, then draining it and drawing a second of hotter, clean water to soak in.
The bathing chamber in her room was far nicer than the corresponding room at the Keep. It was as big as her sleeping chamber, easily, and the tub could have held two comfortably. That tub looked as if it had been hollowed out of a huge granite boulder, then polished to a mirror-smooth finish. There were convenient flattened places, just the right size to rest a plate and a cup, at either end of it. Water, hot and cold, came out of spouts in the wall above the middle. You simply pulled a little lever, attached to something like a sluice-gate, and the water ran into the tub. The water itself came from a spring in the mountain above. Kethry had shown her the cisterns at the top of the cliff the Tower had been built into—telling her they were part of the original building.
The original building. And she doesn't know how old it is. That's—amazing. It made Kero wonder who those builders were—and what they'd been like.
They certainly enjoyed their comforts, she mused idly, sipping her wine. Set into the wall of the bathing chamber was an enormous window made of tiny, hand-sized, diamond-shaped panes of glass. Glazing the windows had been Kethry's addition; the previous occupants had either seen no need for glazed windows, or had been unable to produce them. Tonight Kero had noticed a full moon rising, and once she'd drawn her second bath, she blew out the candles to watch it and the stars. With all the incredible things those Builders were able to do, I can't imagine why they wouldn't have been able to make a little glass. I wonder if they were so powerful that they could actually keep the winter winds out of the Tower by magic?
Moonlight filtered through the steam rising from her bath, and touched the surface of the water, turning it into a rippling mirror. She had to laugh at her fancies, then, for the answer was obvious to anyone but a romantic. Of course; glass breaks, and Grandmother said herself she had no idea how long the place stood empty. There are more than enough crows and robber-rats around here to steal every last shard. Blessed Agnira, some of Mother's silliness must have rubbed off on me.
She laughed aloud, and the water sloshed at the sides of the tub as she reached for the carafe of wine to pour herself a second serving. That was when she noticed that she was nowhere near as sore and stiff as she'd expected to be.
I must be getting use to this, she thought with surprise. By the Trine—I was beginning to think I'd never stop aching! Funny, though—even when I was so sore I wanted to die, I still was enjoying myself....
This afternoon had been the first time Tarma had actually given her a lesson in real swordwork. Admonishing her to "pretend I'm one of those logs," the Shin'a'in had run her through some basic moves, then brought her up to speed on them. Before the afternoon was over, she had been performing simple strike-guard-strike patterns against Tarma at full force and full speed—and she thought her teacher seemed pleased. It had been even better than yesterday, when Tarma started her on tracking. Once Kero knew what to look for, it had been surprisingly easy to track the movements of a deer, a badger, and Warrl himself across a stretch of forest floor.
Of course, none of them had been trying to hide their trails. Kero had a notion that if Warrl wanted to hide his traces, the only way anyone would be able to track him would be by magic.
Most satisfying about today's exercises had been that the skills she'd acquired had been all her own. The sword was hanging on the wall of her room, and Kero wasn't going to take it down until she didn't need its uncanny expert assistance—at least where fighting was concerned.
Is that what I want to do? she asked herself suddenly. Is that what I want to learn? She pondered the question while the moon climbed higher in the window, and the square of silver light crept off the water and onto the floor, leaving her end of the bathing chamber in darkness. I suppose it makes sense, she thought with a certain unease. After all, it's always been physical things that I've been best at. Riding, hunting, hawking—that knife-fighting I pried out of Dent. The only "proper" thing I was ever any good at was dancing....
The one thing she'd been able to surprise Tarma with was her expertise with bow. And then she asked me why I hadn't taken a bow with me when I went after the bandits. When I said that it just never occurred to me, I thought she was going to give up on me then and there. Kero sighed. It's so hard to have to think of people as your enemies... at least she isn't being as nasty as Dent was to Lordan.
Dent had been absolutely merciless on his young pupil, never giving him second chances, cursing and sometimes striking him with the flat of a blade, driving him to exhaustion and beyond. And yet once practice was over, he was unfailingly courteous, a kindly man, who'd praise Lordan to his face for what he'd done right, remind him of what he'd done wrong, and then go on to tell Rathgar of Lordan's progress with exactly the same words, praise with the criticism.
He never treated me that way—but why does it feel as if he wasn't doing me any favors by letting me get off lightly? She closed her eyes and sank a little lower into the hot water. Maybe—because half of what Tarma's teaching me is undoing mistakes I learned to make? Well, at least I can see some progress. I get a little better each day, she shows me something new each day. And she's giving me the same kind of talks afterward that Dent used to give Lordan.
That felt good; warm and satisfying. There were no "buts" attached to Tarma's compliments. When she said that Kero was doing something well, she meant it, with no qualifications.
I just hope I'm not boring her too much. At least I'm patient. Lordan used to get so mad when he couldn't do something right that he'd storm off the field and go duck his head in the horse trough. And she can't say I'm not determined.
The moon finally rose to a point where there was no light shining in the window at all. The bathing chamber was in complete darkness. And the wine was gone.
I guess it's time for bed, she decided. Before I fall asleep in the tub.
She found the plug at the bottom of the bathtub with her toes, took the bit of chain attached to it between her big toe and the rest, and pulled. When Tarma had shown her the drain at the bottom of the tub, she'd been both amazed and amused—the tubs at home had to be bailed by hand, then tilted over on their sides to drain completely. She couldn't imagine why no one had ever thought of something like this before.
She stood up, slowly; a thick towel hung from a rod at the side of the tub; it gleamed softly in the darkness, and she reached for it, then stepped out onto the tiled floor. That was the only thing wrong with this chamber; the tile made the floor cold!
Cold enough that she dried herself off quickly, and hung the towel back where it belonged. Tarma had given her one of those looks when she'd thrown it on the floor, and Kero had managed to deduce that there weren't many servants in the Tower. Thereafter she'd put things away properly.
She pulled on the old shirt she used to sleep in, and walked slowly and silently across the floor to her own room; Tarma wanted her to practice moving quietly whenever possible, so that doing so became habit rather than something she had to think about. Kero had decided on her own that learning to move quietly in the dark would be a very good idea, so she practiced a little every night.
Once past the doorway, she turned to light
the candle she'd left on a shelf by the door. And when she turned back with it in her hand, she thought she'd jumped into a nightmare.
Teeth that was all she saw at first; huge white fangs, gleaming in the candlelight. And eyes the size of walnuts, shining with an evil, green glow all their own.
Seven
She shrieked, jumped back into the wall behind her, and dropped the candle, all at the same time.
The flame went out immediately, leaving her in the dark. She felt for the wall and edged along it toward the door, hoping to escape into the bathing chamber before whatever it was realized she was moving—and wondering what awful thing had happened that this thing had gotten past Tarma and her Grandmother.
:Children,: snorted a voice from—somewhere. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. She froze.
:Child, I am not the Snow Demon. I don't eat babies. I just came here tonight to talk to you.: She didn't move, and the voice took on a tone of exasperation. :Will you please light that candle again and go sit down?:
"W-who are you?" she stammered. "Where are you?"
:Right here.: Something cold and wet prodded her between her breasts, and she nearly screamed again. :It's Warrl, you little ninny! You see me every day!:
"Warrl?" She reached out—cautiously—and encountered a furry head at about chest level. It certainly felt like Warrl.
:And while you're at it, you can scratch my ears.:
It certainly sounded the way she'd imagined Warrl would talk. If Warrl could talk.
"How are you—" she began. He interrupted her.
:I'm Mindspeaking you,: he said, impatiently. :It's exactly what you could do if you wanted to, and the other person had the Gift of Mindhearing.: She felt a brief movement of air and heard the faintest little ticking sound, a sound that might have been the clicking of claws on the floor. :Do light that candle and come to bed, there's a good child.:
She went to her knees and groped about on the floor until her left hand encountered the candle. Once lit, she stood up with it in her hand, and discovered that Warrl had resumed the position he'd been in when she first entered the room. Sprawled on her bed, taking up fully half of it.
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