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

by P. C. Hodgell

  While the peach orchard was done for the year, there were still the apples and farther sweeping fields of tall wheat and other grains growing wild.

  So far, so good.

  Which gate should they open next?

  There remained Lyra’s third expedition to the “dark place,” but here Jame hesitated to follow her lead. Something about that description still bothered her, and gave her bad dreams that she couldn’t remember in the morning, except for the trickle of mortar dust.

  Most of the remaining gates also had cracked seals, damaged in an earthquake perhaps as recent as three years ago when she had escaped from Restormir in Caldane’s boat down the ravaged Silver, fleeing the weirdingstrom. Trinity, what a long time ago that seemed, given everything that had happened since.

  But she wondered most of all about the last part of the Storyteller’s tale. Had Granny really meant to suggest that ancient Tagmeth had given the Builders their model to construct the nexus under their city in the Anarchies? True, mysterious ruins and relics were scattered throughout Rathillien, hints of times long since lost. Everywhere, civilizations rose and fell, each with its own secrets. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Builders, coming across a particularly clever trick, would try to adapt it. If so, their step-forward roads were indeed more clumsy and long-winding than Tagmeth’s short tunnels, but she could see them still wanting to use Tagmeth for access to provisions. Ancestors knew, anything they could find to eat in the Anarchies would probably bite them back.

  Her own only contact with that mysterious, diminutive people had been with one of their ghosts wearing a gray hooded robe and subsequently with his skeleton, which had crumbled to dust at her touch. For their careless arrogance in sealing off sacred land, the rathorns had screamed them to pieces. What a fate after millennia of faithful service to the Three-Faced God, even if they hadn’t actually been counted as members of the Kencyrath.

  While she was pondering all of this one afternoon some days later, the watch in the hills sounded his horn. Tagmeth was about to have visitors.

  Jame put on a coat against the crisp autumn weather and went down to the courtyard where Kendar were scurrying about hiding the two opened gates, not that that made them look much different. Rue came up to her, panting: She had run out to see for herself.

  “It’s two Caineron and three horses,” she reported. “Coming openly.”

  “Well then, let them in.”

  A short while later, two mounted men crossed the bridge, the second leading a pack-horse. The Caineron yondri in the outer ward either stood defiantly, watching them pass, or ducked aside. Must seemed of two minds, but in the end stood her ground, glaring. The lead rider looked down sharply at her, then away with a grunt. Something odd sat upright in the saddle before him, not unlike a short roll of fur.

  “You forgot to mention the pook,” Jame said to Rue, then stepped forward to greet her guests as they entered the courtyard. “Hello, Gorbel. Hello, Bark. Hello, Twizzle. What brings you three so far north?”

  The Caineron lordan swung down, his hunting leathers creaking. Jame remembered the latter gear from both Tagmeth and Kothifir, but now it barely fit. Gorbel had grown a considerable paunch. He lapped it with both hands, looking disgusted.

  “I got sick of eating all day long, half through sheer boredom. They say that some keeps are like to starve this winter, but you’d never guess that at Restormir. Good, hard hunting, that’s what I need. So here I am.”

  Jame laughed. “You missed the real fun. Come up to my quarters and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  When Gorbel had heard, he snorted.

  “I envy the first hunt, but not the second,” he said. “Chingetai struck me as a fool the first time I saw him, but all in all he made a good recovery. I’ll be curious to hear how Bully works out as the village pet.”

  “So will I,” said Jame, smiling.

  Rue entered carrying a tray burdened with tankards of cider and a plate of figs.

  “I haven’t seen these since Kothifir,” said the Caineron, popping one of the latter into his mouth. “Where did you get them?”

  Jame shot Rue a dirty look, at which the Kendar cadet turned dusky red under her thatch of tow-colored hair.

  “Oh ho, a secret.”

  And some people thought that Gorbel was stupid.

  “Restormir has mysteries of its own,” she said with a tight smile. “But seriously, have you any news to share about the Riverland? For all I hear, we might as well be a border keep three hundred leagues away.”

  Gorbel accepted this change of topic with a grimace.

  “Things are pretty much as they were,” he said. “A mess. More Kendar are coming back from Kothifir, bringing more mouths to feed. The harvest has been poor, and the Central Lands have raised their prices on everything. Meanwhile emissaries from the Seven Kings haunt every keep, dangling contracts for mercenaries. The Highlord ordered that no one was to negotiate with them.”

  Jame frowned. “I can’t see that going down well.”

  “It was stupid,” said Gorbel bluntly. “For once, his usual light style of leadership has served him ill. The other lords might expect orders from his father (whether they obeyed is another matter), but Torisen doesn’t often show his strength or, in this case, the lack of it. What holds him back, anyway? There’s power there, I swear, enough to stand us all on our heads, but he rarely uses it. Maybe he doesn’t want to be like his father who, from what I hear, was most effective after he ran mad.”

  Jame hadn’t thought of that. Of course, Tori wouldn’t want to be like Ganth. She and her brother both had known what strength born of madness was like.

  “Anyway,” Gorbel continued, “he amended his order to a demand that no one sign anything until after the High Council meeting on Winter 100, which is still pretty strong for him.”

  “It’s certainly better, but still awkward.”

  “He’s been stumbling more than usual. The word is that he’s still suffering from hay-cough, yes, two seasons later. Add to that fatigue, fever, and terrible headaches, or so I hear. Father says it serves him right. Speaking of relatives, I see that Mustard is here.”

  “D’you know her?” Jame asked, surprised.

  “Of course I do. She’s my half-sister.”

  Jame had thought that Must might be part Highborn, but this was more than she had expected. “Can you tell me about her?”

  Gorbel blinked slowly, like a lizard. “Well now. A mystery for a mystery? Not that her story is one, really. Just sad. All right. My father is her sire, and he’s possessive about all of his offspring. We played together as children. Even then, Tiggeri had his eye on her. Grown, she served in the Crown. Then word came that I had passed Kothifir to become a third year cadet. There was a party, more drunken than most, which is saying something. This was on Summer’s Eve, while I was still with the Southern Host. Tiggeri didn’t take kindly to my promotion. As I hear it, he raped Mustard. My father heard about it and expelled her to the common quarters. Then she disappeared.”

  Poor Must.

  “Will you tell Caldane or Tiggeri that she’s here?”

  Gorbel thought, pouting out his lips and frowning. Jame could almost see him deciding whether or not to bargain on this point since he had let the other slip past.

  “No,” he said, clapping hands to his knees. “After all, why should I? If she wants to be here of all places, she must have her reasons.” A thought struck him. “Could it be . . . no again. Whatever her secret, it belongs to her. Let her go. Now about my father . . .”

  His turn to change the subject. Jame waited with a catch in her throat.

  “He’s left you alone so far and may for some time to come. My guess is that he’s plotting something that he doesn’t want disrupted, perhaps in regard to the High Council meeting. But he hasn’t forgotten your little establishment or that you may have had something to do with Lyra’s disappearance—she is all right, isn’t she? I thought so. Walk wary, though. He may not be very bri
ght, but he never forgets a grudge and he’s got one against you, Ancestors know why.”

  Jame remembered the tent near the Cataracts, the Builders’ crystals tipped into Caldane’s cup.

  “This is a rather potent vintage,” he had said, sipping. “Luckily, I have a very strong head for wine . . . hic!”

  And with each hiccup he had risen another inch into the air.

  Caldane was afraid of heights. Truly, that day she had given him something to fear.

  “I’ll be careful,” she now said, wondering if care was protection enough. “It will be dinnertime soon. You and your servant will join us, of course, and we have guest quarters if you would like to spend the night.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to a real bed,” he said, rising. “Hard hunting is all very well, but there are certain luxuries . . . speaking of which, is there somewhere I can bathe? I must stink to the skies.”

  He did.

  “We have a room level with the river at the forward end of the island,” said Jame with a grin. “Open the ducts and you get sprayed, hard, with ice water. Will that suit you?”

  “Ha. A likely drowning chamber. And I thought that Restormir’s dungeon was wet.”

  With that, he scooped up Twizzle, who had been warily regarding Jorin (assuming one knew which end of the pook was which) and clumped down the stair shouting for Bark.

  V

  DINNER WAS A SUBDUED AFFAIR, the mess hall rather like a pond into which a large predator has been dropped. Gorbel, surprisingly, wore an elaborate, much wrinkled court coat that he had stuffed into his hunting pack. He didn’t comment on the lack of exotic fruits at the table. Although he irritably pressed it down, his scanty hair still stood up at the back in a wet cowlick. His bath, he said, had been “stimulating.”

  After the meal, they retreated to Jame’s quarters and talked there awhile longer about inconsequential matters. Jorin sniffed cautiously at Twizzle and jumped back when the wrong end of the pook barked in his face. Eventually Gorbel gathered up his pet and descended to the guest room that had once been Lyra’s.

  Jame slept poorly that night.

  Again in her dreams mortar trickled—tick, tick, tick, a sound to drive one mad—and then, suddenly, stones fell.

  The way is open, said a bell-like voice in her mind, somehow bearing the impression of golden eyes. He is coming.

  Jame found herself on a blasted hilltop under a scuttling night sky. The air stank like a thing long dead. Rank grass whined about her knees as if seeking to cling.

  Go. Don’t go. Go. Don’t go . . .

  Distant lighting forked the sky, limning the keep in the hollow below. How well she remembered that shape, half-sunken as if the land itself gnawed at its foundations. On its steps, before a closed door, sat a huddled form.

  Don’t go. Go . . .

  Where? Away, or down? That figure drew her with both compassion and exasperation. How lonely and miserable it looked but, if so, why didn’t it leave?

  More lightning. Above the keep loomed the facade of the Master’s House, every line of it a melting abomination down which fetid water poured. A light shone in a high window, and a figure stood against it, gazing down. From the whole massive pile came a grinding, creaking noise as it edged forward out of Perimal Darkling into the Haunted Lands like some monstrous blind worm.

  Darkness rushed in again with a clap of thunder.

  Another flash.

  Over the swelling hills, what were those strange shapes crawling, shambling, running? Down they went into weed choked hollows and up again toward the shattered sky, down and up . . .

  Here they came over the crest of the hill on which she stood. All of those faces sloughing off the bone, all of those dead eyes, staring, those reaching hands . . .

  It was Winter’s Eve. The dead had come out.

  Jame woke with a gasp, in sweat-soaked sheets. I’ve forgotten something, she thought. Somehow, this is all my fault . . . but how?

  It was dark. Sleet tapped on the slate roof overhead. Prowling thunder growled outside.

  Something was growling inside too: Jorin, crouched at the foot of her bed, all of his fur on end.

  Another flare of lightning.

  The Kendar Winter stood over her, dripping. Big hands sought to hold shut the wound from Ganth’s sword Kin-Slayer that had nearly cut her in two. Swollen, rotting intestines oozed over her fingers. Her short hair was burned away on one side as was much of her skin, and her teeth showed through a flayed cheek. Oh, the stench . . .

  “Child,” she said in that rasping, beloved voice. “Beware.”

  Someone surged up behind her and swung an axe. It cut deep into her shoulder. She turned, clutching a wound with each hand as if to hold herself together.

  “Cousin,” she croaked.

  Corvine swung again, and again, and again. Thunk, thunk, thunk. It was butcher’s work, although the shuddering flesh still moved. She’s dead, Jame told herself. She can’t feel it . . . but, oh, how did one know with a haunt?

  Her former nurse fell, yet Corvine continued to hack until the haunt’s severed head rolled away. Gorbel stopped it in the doorway before it could bounce down the steps.

  “What in Perimal’s name . . .”

  “They’re in the keep,” Corvine panted, and staggered away down the stair, almost knocking Gorbel over.

  “I’ll arm,” he said to Jame, and disappeared.

  Jame fought off her tangled blankets.

  “It’s all right,” she said, somewhat distractedly, to Jorin, as she snatched up clothing at random. “Stay.”

  Below, the courtyard swarmed with shadows. One lurched toward Jame, reaching with ragged nails. Berry rammed into it, her twin sister Buckle a step behind.

  “Lady!” they cried, speaking as one. “Get to safety!”

  And where might that be, Jame wondered, looking around, if she should feel so inclined? The garrison had instinctively snatched up swords and axes, the better to hack with. Dismemberment seemed to work best, even if severed limbs continued to twitch. The ground was greasy with blood. Luckily there didn’t seem to be many haunts, a dozen at most, most wearing the tattered garments of Skyrr from north of Tai-tastigon. How Winter had fallen in with such a band, one would probably never know.

  Sweet Trinity, Winter . . .

  The battle was almost over. Dar took a short sword from Mint to halt her hysterical onslaught on a fallen invader.

  (“ . . . but it won’t stop moving!”)

  All paused to catch their breaths.

  “What in Perimal’s name just happened?” someone asked plaintively.

  Jame stood before the unbarred gate. The stones, indeed, had fallen, pried apart by frantic nails that had left smears of blood and skin behind. If she stepped closer, she would be able to see over the crest of the hill, down to the keep where she and Tori had been born. Would that solitary figure still be huddled on the threshold?

  She refused to look.

  “That was what I forgot,” she muttered to herself. “Lyra left the other two gates ajar. Why not this one too? And I did nothing to secure it.”

  “Well,” said Gorbel, coming up behind her. “This isn’t quite the hunt I expected when I came north. What are you doing with a back door into the Haunted Lands?”

  “Getting rid of it, I hope. Dar, see that this is walled up again, immediately. No trick stones this time. Gorbel, will you tell your father?”

  “Huh. Would he believe me?”

  “What do we do with these . . . er . . . remains?” Jerr asked, for once not making a joke.

  “You mean, how do we kill what’s already dead but won’t lie still? They need to be burned. Does anyone here know the pyric rune?”

  Heads shook. Such matters were left to the Kencyrath’s priests, of which Tagmeth had none.

  “Then we’ll have to make do. Get dry firewood, also tinder, also oil. A lot of each.”

  “You’re going to need that wood later,” said Must at her elbow. Jame hadn’t noticed tha
t the Caineron and Randir yondri had been heavily engaged in the struggle. “Why not just throw them in the river?”

  “Because they would only wash up down-stream, still kicking. Corvine, fetch Winter.”

  With that, she began to shiver and couldn’t stop. Brier dropped a coat over her shoulders in passing, then went off to see to the pyre.

  They constructed it in a corner of the lower meadow and, after considerable unpleasant hauling, transported all of the miscellaneous fragments down to it. The sleet had stopped. Now, hesitantly, it began to snow. Someone brought a torch and thrust it into the pile. Flames leaped and spat. Was it the waves of heat or did the bodies still move even as the flames consumed them? Jame didn’t want to watch but made herself, for this was Winter’s true pyre, after so many years.

  “Good-bye, Winnie,” she murmured. Good-bye, childhood.

  Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned just in time to throw her arms around Corvine. The Kendar surged forward toward the flames, dragging Jame with her, but other hands caught them both, pulled them back. When Corvine continued to struggle, Brier hit her on the head with a piece of firewood. She collapsed on top of Jame.

  “This place is a madhouse,” said Gorbel, extricating her. “You must feel right at home.”

  VI

  KELLS HAD WRAPPED a bandage around Corvine’s head and another around her forearm, savaged in the fight. Jame sat by the Kendar’s pallet waiting for her to wake, thinking over the night’s events.

  Most of the latter were fairly straightforward, as such things went.

  No one in their right mind would build a gate to the Haunted Lands, but that part of Rathillien hadn’t been contaminated in the old days, before the Kencyrath’s arrival, even before that of the Builders. Now, a gate ajar would draw haunts as an open door does flies, especially with fresh meat on the other side. And these last hours were the dregs of Winter’s Eve. Jame remembered the much more benign dead of the Merikit village emerging from their wicker coffins to join their descendants’ feast on such a night as this two years ago. The Merikit revered and preserved their dead, down to trapping their last breaths inside leather suits, then sealed with wax. How different from the Kencyrath’s obsession with pyres.