The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8)

by P. C. Hodgell

  Little, lost children, come play with me . . .

  Dream-stalkers. Soul-walkers.

  When she had shouted at Tori to wake up, for a moment she had found herself at Gothregor, in his bed, shaking him. She remembered the touch of his clammy skin and his wild, startled eyes, staring at her own from only inches away. So very close. Ah, the scent of his breath, the feel of muscles gliding under her fingertips, the taste of his sweat . . .

  Twins, had come a gloating whisper out of the dark, with shining eyes behind it, but always meant to be one. In each other’s arms. In bed together. Deny that if you can, little girl.

  She had blinked, and found herself halfway down the stair to Lyra’s apartment at Tagmeth. The moment’s distraction had caused her to miss a step and nearly fall. This morning her twisted ankle still ached.

  It was all very confusing.

  “Is he gone?”

  Lyra had come up behind her.

  “Yes.”

  The Caineron girl studiously traced a line on the ground with her toe. “I’m glad . . . I think. He confused me. But he is very handsome, isn’t he? And I don’t think he meant to hurt me with his . . . his . . . whatever it was.”

  “Dream-stalking. He never means harm, but sometimes it happens anyway.”

  She had never stopped to wonder which face of their triune god Timmon as a Shanir was aligned to. So far he didn’t create, he didn’t preserve, but did he destroy? Narsa had hanged herself. Drie had joined the Eaten One in an aquatic love-death. The actions of Timmon’s father, Pereden, had almost annihilated the Southern Host. Were any of these events Timmon’s fault? Only what had happened to Narsa, and then only because Timmon had been too self-involved to pay attention.

  Shanir didn’t always mature at the same rate. She herself had committed acts both of creation and preservation in the past. Here she was now, trying to resurrect an entire keep. It wasn’t a simple matter. What one did with one’s nature had to be finely tuned to the situation in which one found oneself. So far, for the most part, Timmon hadn’t done anything but please himself. Perhaps he would remain confused, ineffectual, until he took a side, until, in effect, he grew up. And maybe by then it would be too late.

  Could the same be said about her?

  “Where are you sending me?” Lyra asked.

  “As I said, someplace I hope you will like. And I’m taking you there. Pack up. We leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  II

  IT HAD OCCURRED TO JAME that one reason her people doubted her was because they didn’t know where she went when she disappeared into the wilds. It really didn’t have to be a secret anymore if, indeed, it ever had.

  This was running though her mind as she waited in the courtyard for Lyra.

  Char trudged through the inner gate, a heavy scowl tugging down the corners of his mouth.

  “I’m worried about the cows,” he said, without preamble. “Most of the pregnant ones are swelling fit to burst, and it’s only been some forty days. They aren’t due to calve until winter.”

  Jame hoped he was exaggerating, but still this was alarming news.

  “What’s our diminutive visitor up to these days?” she asked.

  Char snorted. “Still hanging around, looking hopeful. The breeding season is past, though, with so many of the cows in calf. If he tries again, he’ll get kicked to pieces.”

  “Hmm. I wonder if the Merikit have any experience with cross-breeds. Would you like to ask them?”

  Char regarded her as if she had proposed a trip to the moon. “Well, of course, but . . .”

  “Then gather your kit.”

  In the tower, Lyra could be heard to apostrophize whatever hapless Kendar had volunteered to help her: “No, no, no! That skirt is horrid! Can’t you find anything better?”

  Jame sighed. “We leave as soon as m’lady has sorted herself out, hopefully before sunset.”

  As it happened, Lyra was ready about noon, although then she insisted on luncheon as the previous late night’s snack could only be expected to sustain her for so long. Jame gave her Bel-tairi to ride, with the Whinno-hir’s reluctant consent. Char joined them on the road astride a stocky roan gelding. One of the cows lumbered after him. While not exactly bulging, she was clearly pregnant.

  “This is Bene,” he said, with a touch of embarrassed defiance. “Short for Beneficent. She’s taken to following me everywhere. Why, I don’t know.”

  Jame was still on foot, with Jorin trotting at her heels.

  The River Road rose in steps beside the Silver as it spilled down over rocky ledges through the gorge above Tagmeth. The air was a cool haze of spray, and ferns hung dripping from the surrounding stone walls. Everything seemed to shiver with the roar of rushing water. Lyra talked on and on with animated gestures that jerked Bel’s head back and forth, to the mare’s evident irritation, but Jame couldn’t make out what the girl was saying. At length they emerged from the ravine into a forest of gold-dappled leaves and lush undergrowth, still on the road, still beside the river as it curved northwestward.

  “Are we really going to see the Merikit?” Lyra asked as soon as she could make herself heard. “Cousin Fash says that they’re cannibals who eat their own babies. With salad greens for garnish.”

  Jame stopped Bel, took the reins out of Lyra’s fidgeting hands, and slipped off the Whinno-hir’s hackamore.

  “Don’t take anything Fash says too seriously,” she said, draping the gear over a rock where it could be collected on the way back. Bel only wore tack as a courtesy to her rider. Off the road, in the wilderness, she did better without it. “I won’t say that he’s a liar, but he knows a lot less than he thinks he does.”

  He was also partly responsible for the flayed Merikit skins that graced the floors of his lord’s personal quarters. Lyra had been there. Jame wondered if she knew what she had been treading upon.

  “It’s over twenty miles to Kithorn,” said Char, “and the Merikit village is beyond that. Are you going to walk all the way?”

  “I hope not.”

  As the day progressed, however, she was still on foot and growing annoyed. Her ankle ached from the twist it had received the previous night. Jame wasn’t used to being injured and didn’t accept it gracefully.

  Around midafternoon, Bel left the road. Lyra tried to get her back on course by kicking her sides and tugging her mane, but Jame stopped her.

  “She knows where she’s going. From now on, we follow her.”

  “No wonder you end up in strange places,” said Char.

  Soon they were beyond the sound of the Silver, picking their way through a trackless wilderness, lucky to know at least, judging from the sun, that they were still northward bound. Jewel-jaws danced around them on azure wings. Waterfalls spilled down the slopes of ravines through nodding ferns. The hills offered them turn after turn with no guarantee except that, eventually, a downward path would lead them back to the river.

  Lyra continued to chatter without pause until her voice blended with the chittering birds in the trees under which they passed. Jame stopped listening. Char, however, kept shaking his head as if plagued by ringing ears.

  Jorin butted Jame’s knee in complaint. His paws were sore. He wanted to be carried. Jame declined. At forty pounds, he was too much of an armful for her, and she didn’t intend to burden Bel with two riders. Char turned his head to hide a smirk. He clearly had no intention of accommodating his lady’s spoiled pet. Besides, his attention kept turning to Bene, who repeatedly dropped behind to graze and then, just when they thought that they had lost her, lumbered up behind them, huffing through wet, red-rimmed nostrils.

  In late afternoon they were overtaken by one of the Riverland’s brief, hard showers, which made Jorin even more unhappy.

  Finally, dusk fell.

  Bel chose a campsite by stopping beside a stream, under a majestic horse-chestnut.

  “How far d’you think we’ve come?” asked Char as he gathered what dry wood he could find and laid a fire.
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  “I have no idea.”

  “Huh.”

  Char glanced at Lyra, who had drifted off to regale Bel (again) with an account of everything she had seen that day and what she thought about it. The mare flicked an ear and continued to graze.

  “Doesn’t she ever shut up?” asked Char.

  “This is extreme, even for her. She’s nervous, though, and more than a bit afraid. After all, we’re taking her to visit people whom she’s been told are cannibals.”

  “And you’re sure that they aren’t?”

  “Reasonably so. The problem is that we’ve never tried to understand them. Call folk savages and that seems to answer all questions about them.”

  “They did slaughter the garrison at Kithorn.”

  “Except for Marc. Yes, that was his home keep. What he thinks about being settled so close to that old tragedy, I haven’t yet had the nerve to ask. However, I have since learned that the massacre was due to a misunderstanding, likewise to our ignorance about Merikit customs and beliefs.”

  “And that justifies them killing us?”

  “Of course not. Nor does it justify the Caineron hunting them for their skins.”

  Char looked up, startled. “They do?”

  “Yes. Some of them, anyway.”

  It was dark now. The crackling fire tossed sparks up into the boughs above where they landed like fireflies on fluttering seven-lobed leaves like flat, polydactyl hands. A glow spread through their veins, tracing their dance.

  “Sssaaa . . .” they breathed as a breeze tossed them. “Sssssssaaaa . . .”

  Something beyond the campfire’s light gave a harsh cough, and the flames leaped. The horses jerked up their heads in alarm. Jorin rolled off Jame’s lap and crouched beside her, flat to the ground. The fur began to bristle up his back, down his tail. She jumped to her feet.

  “Lyra. Come back to the fire. Now.”

  The girl rushed to her and clung, terrified, accidentally pinning her arms to her side.

  Something huge moved through the forest, circling them. They saw it by the etched veins of fire that defined it against the sylvan darkness. Branches cracked as it passed. Saplings were shouldered impatiently aside. Massive paws made the ground shudder and left a smoldering trail even in the damp woods.

  Bel crowded as close to the fire as she dared.

  Bene glared myopically into the night, lowered her horns, and pawed the ground.

  The gelding squealed and bolted into the woods.

  Faster than seemed possible, the thing was upon him and he crashed down. His scream abruptly died, replaced by the muffled crunch of bones and a wet, slobbering snarl. The stench of charred flesh and burnt hair rolled out of the shadows in waves of heat.

  Jame threw off Lyra’s frantic grip. “Stop it!” she shouted into the darkness.

  “Quiet!” hissed Char. “You’ll anger it!”

  “It’s already quite mad, and then some. Dammit, stop!”

  A low growl answered her: “All things end, light, hope, and life. Come to judgment. Come!”

  That voice . . . it rasped on the nerves like a predator’s tongue ripping flesh off bone. Something moved behind a screen of shattered boughs, of such vast power that it warped the very reality through which it trod.

  Jame gulped. She could flee, screaming, or she could rouse her Shanir nature. Already anger thickened in her throat. Careful, careful . . .

  She circled the fire, keeping the great beast before her, its potential prey behind. Her voice, when she spoke, emerged as a throaty purr.

  “You tried to judge me once before, lord, and found no cause. Has that changed?”

  “Huh.”

  Its snort sent embers flying. Leaves ignited overhead, throwing up their green, kindling hands in horror. Lyra squeaked and flung herself into Char’s reluctant embrace.

  “You were born guilty, girl, and yet . . . and yet . . .”

  “If you condemn every Shanir born a nemesis, who will be left to fight the shadows? Think, cat, think.”

  “Arrr-HA!”

  A hot wind roared past Jame, and the fire exploded sideways, into her face. In a confusion of whirling sparks, she heard Lyra shriek. By the time she had raked clear her eyes and stopped coughing, the girl was gone.

  “Which way?” she snapped at Char.

  He gripped her arm. “That was an Arrin-ken, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Let go.”

  “And you’re going to challenge him?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  She pinched a nerve in his arm. He released her with a curse, and she plunged into the darkness.

  From ahead came the snapping twigs of Lyra’s passage and the cracking branches of the Arrin-ken’s pursuit. The Dark Judge had no reason to hunt her, Jame guessed. This was merely a cat’s instinctive response to a fleeing mouse.

  Still dazzled by the fire, she didn’t see the ravine until she fell into it. The land dropped away and she rolled to the bottom through undergrowth, into a small stream. Before the cold ice-melt could penetrate her clothes, she was scrambling up the opposite slope.

  At the top, something waited, glimmering in the murk.

  “Huh,” Death’s-head snorted in her face.

  At last.

  The rathorn colt wheeled away, then charged back at her, brandishing his horns. Jame stepped within his rush and swatted him on the nose. His skull mask bruised her hand, but he was startled into a lurching halt that nearly knocked her back down the gully. She grabbed his mane, first to regain her balance, then to swing up on to his back.

  “Turn, you brute,” she snarled at him, and kicked his ivory-clad sides. More bruises, but some instinct prevented her from using her claws. “Turn and follow.”

  They plunged through woods almost too dark for Jame’s keen night-vision and emerged in a clearing, where the colt skidded to a halt on his haunches.

  The Arrin-ken paced back and forth before them. It was hard to take in his size or shape since both seemed to spill outward, overwhelming the senses. His species was cat-like, certainly, but in this case raging madness added an extra dimension that frayed both nerves and reason. He reeked of the fire with which the changer Keral had burned out his eyes in the Master’s House during the Fall. Smoldering cracks opened and closed in his flanks. Truly, he and the Burnt Man were well matched.

  “Mine,” he growled. “Give me.”

  As her sight adjusted, Jame made out Lyra huddling in the thick branches of a massive oak on the opposite side of the clearing. No, not branches. Arms, clad in warty, drooping flesh and brown, deeply fissured skin. They gathered up the girl with a great creaking of limbs and held her close to a broad, knobby bosom. High above, pale green eyes glowered down through the canopy of leaves.

  “No,” said the Earth Wife. “Mine.”

  The Arrin-ken advanced, snarling, under the oak’s spread. A tremor ran through the tree’s entire frame, and water captured in the earlier shower cascaded down. Where drops hit the great cat, clouds of rank smoke billowed from his overheated sides. He howled in pain and spun in a circle, tearing at his own flesh. A murky, stinking fog filled the clearing. Jame swung down from Death’s-head. The rathorn backed up, snorting, shaking his armored head at the stench, and nearly ran over Char as the cadet emerged behind him from the woods.

  The commotion at the heart of the miasma faded away as if into the distance.

  “Here,” called Lyra, like a distraught chick peeping. “Here, here, here!”

  Jame waded into the smoke, batting at it with her hands. An indistinct figure emerged to meet her and flung itself into her arms.

  Jame stroked Lyra’s tangled hair, dislodging leaves and twigs.

  “Thank you,” she said to the presence that loomed over them.

  “Ha—hoom! She is my old gossip Cattila’s great-granddaughter. Rather, thank her. Fare you well, children.”

  The green eyes seemed to blink, and then fluttered off in opposite directions as wide-winged lunar
moths. The oak settled back into its arboreal self. Somewhere in the forest, one cricket chirped, then another and another.

  Jame and Lyra returned to the campsite, their way dimly lit by returning starlight and by the answering glimmer of the rathorn’s ivory. Char was there before them, grimly rebuilding the fire. Jame settled the girl in her blankets among the chestnut’s knobby knees, then rejoined the circle of light. Jorin flopped on the ground by her side with a sigh. Hearing a grunt behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see that Bel had folded her legs at last to rest, as all equines must for at least two hours a day. The rathorn settled next to the Whinno-hir, his heavy chin resting protectively on her withers. He had lost his dam, slain by Jame, when still barely a yearling. In Bel, he had found the mother that he had lost. Relaxed he might seem, but his watchful eyes still flared red in the fire light.

  “I’ve upset you, haven’t I?” said Jame, to break Char’s stubborn silence. “How and why?”

  “You know.”

  “Truly, I don’t.”

  Char chewed doggedly on a strip of dried venison. “That monster of yours . . .” He glared at Death’s-head, who glared back.

  “After all, he is the emblem of our house,” said Jame, somewhat amused.

  “That doesn’t mean he should be in our house. Or here, for that matter. I mean, who actually rides a rathorn? All right, all right. You do, but you’re a . . . a . . .”

  “The word you want, perhaps, is ‘Shanir.’ One of the Old Blood.”

  “And what use are you? Your time passed long, long ago. The Kencyrath has moved on. I don’t say that the present is better than the past. It isn’t. In fact, lots of Kendar are pretty miserable with the way things are. But these days we face reality. Your kind stirs up memories of long ago. What is the past but a bad dream? Look at that . . . that . . .”