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

by P. C. Hodgell

  Jame had been present when Winter had received her death blow, but not for her cremation. That, obviously, had been botched. She imagined it now. Would Father have had the nerve to attend? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The Kendar should have stayed to feed the flames all night if necessary, as a ten-command was doing now in the lower meadow, in the falling snow. Maybe it had rained that night on those blighted hills. Winter, crawling out of the smoking embers, half charred, dead but oh, so horribly aware. . . The average haunt was mindless, except for an all-consuming hunger. (Did hunger imply that they also felt pain? Did she dare ask the haunt singer Ashe?) The average undead would have been drawn back to the keep. She guessed that Winter had resisted. To be alone, cold, and starving, for years and years . . . the thought made her cringe.

  But Winter had come back to warn her. Child, beware. Of what?

  The way is open. He is coming.

  “The way,” obviously, was the gate, but who was “he”? Please Trinity, not the Master himself. She wasn’t ready for that.

  Moreover, who had voiced that tocsin in Jame’s mind? “Golden eyes” only meant one thing to her: the shadows in the Master’s House who had taught her the Great Dance which, if misused, reaped souls.

  But there was one of those strange folk whom, perhaps, she could trust. Her name was Beauty. She had first come to Tagmeth as a darkling wyrm but, several metamorphoses later, she had emerged from her chrysalis as a shadowy child with gold-veined wings and a sweet, innocent smile. Thinking of her seemed to summon her back into Jame’s mind, still smiling in a wreath of diaphanous hair.

  The way is shut, her soft voice said, yet he will come.

  Corvine groaned.

  Jame raised a cup of cool water to the Kendar’s chapped lips and she drank before fretfully pushing the vessel away.

  “Oh, my head. Why did you stop me?”

  “Winter was your cousin? She was my wet nurse and later one of my tutors. That gash across her stomach . . . she got it protecting me from my father. I know that you’re upset about what happened to her—Trinity knows, so am I—but to choose self-immolation . . .”

  Corvine gave a harsh bark of laugher. “D’you think that’s why I tried to walk into the fire?” She tore away the bandage on her arm and brandished the bloody marks of teeth.

  “I only wanted a clean death.”

  “Oh.”

  “Dammit, are you laughing at me?”

  “N-no. Of course not. It’s just that . . . here, look.”

  Jame rolled up her sleeve. Old scars showed white on her arm.

  “I was bitten by a haunt too, once, and the wound festered, but good people nursed me through the fever and I recovered. You only become a haunt if you die of the injuries that they inflict, as Ashe did. It also helps to die in the Haunted Lands, where nothing stays dead forever. To walk into the fire would complicate the situation, but probably just make it worse, and a lot more painful.”

  Corvine looked blank. “Just another wound . . .” she said, fingering it.

  “A nasty one, though. Take care of it.”

  With that, she rose to leave. The Kendar’s voice stopped her in the doorway.

  “You never thought of letting me go, did you?”

  Jame paused. “Frankly, that never occurred to me.”

  Then she stepped out into the crisp morning, onto a blanket of crackling snow.

  Chapter XI

  In Stranger Fields

  Winter 10—35

  I

  SOON AFTER THAT, the nightmares began.

  At first, Jame found herself again standing on the hill in the Haunted Lands. The gate behind her had disappeared. Somehow she knew that, although she was unable to turn her head or even blink. A fold of the land hid the keep that had once been her home. Was that desolate figure still huddled on its doorstep? A step to one side would have shown her, but she couldn’t move. Across the rolling, blighted expanse the Master’s House loomed. Someone stood in an upper window as before, black against the sickly witch glow within, apparently staring back at her.

  The next night it lurked in the House’s doorway.

  The next, it was on a nearby hilltop.

  They are coming.

  They?

  Jame never saw the figure move nor could she make out its features. The distance between them remained the same even as, between episodes, it advanced. Framed by the window, it had looked painfully thin. In the open, its outline blurred and seemed surreptitiously to seethe. The wind moaned. The grass whined. The House creaked. Sometimes silent lightning flickered around its battlements against the midnight sky and a growl came from its depths.

  It is coming.

  It?

  Jame always woke chilled, hoping that it was only a dream, fearing that it wasn’t.

  “Child,” Winter had said. “Beware.”

  But of what?

  Meanwhile, cautious exploration of the gates continued.

  “After all,” Jame said to Brier, “we can’t just ignore them.”

  The Kendar snorted. “Oh, can’t we?”

  It was true, though, that winter had arrived and with it the end of possible supplies from the south, even assuming that the Caineron would let them through. Anyway, the last messenger had reported that most of the Riverland would be on short rations soon. Tagmeth certainly didn’t have enough to last the season. Jame also thought wistfully about discovering such bounty that she could share it with her startled brother. Already she was considering a shipment of fruit from the oasis, if she could somehow contrive to sneak it, unfrozen, past the Caineron. That would show Tori that she was neither helpless nor useless, and worth at least a letter.

  Then there were grander dreams. In accepting the Riverland keeps, the Kencyrath had trapped itself here for nearly two thousand years, perennially short of provisions, forced to lease its fighters to whatever petty ruler could afford to hire them. That in turn had tied it to the economies first of the Central Lands, then of Kothifir, and now of the Seven Kings again. Much that now distorted the Three People stemmed from these evils. Ah, to be free of them . . .

  But the gates had also shown themselves to be potentially deadly. Brier argued against further exploration, but finally gave in. However, she didn’t want Jame to go with her and insisted on choosing the next gate—on the southeastern side of the courtyard, for some reason—and took a heavily armed ten-command with her. Jame and Jorin sidled through on their heels.

  On the other side was a rolling plain clad with scattered trees and thick, lush grass. Here it appeared to be spring or summer, the weather deliciously warm after Tagmeth’s chill. A pack of animals, perhaps big cats, regarded them from a distance, making Jorin chirp with excitement when Jame saw them. Closer at hand, a buck antelope regarded them warily as his herd grazed. Stark mountains reared to the west. To the south, the land rose into tangled, misty green.

  “Any idea where we are?” Brier asked without looking at Jame, whom she had been studiously ignoring.

  “Somewhere south of the Riverland, at least. It doesn’t look like the Central Lands, though.”

  “Huh. Are you even sure that it’s Rathillien?”

  That was a disturbing thought. Jame remembered the room in the Builders’ city with its view through bars of their lost, doomed home world far down the Chain of Creation. However, she was fairly sure that these step-forward stones had been set by natives of Rathillien, if only because they were so efficient. The Builders, sometimes, had been too clever for their own good.

  “Reasonably sure,” she said. “This would be a wonderful place to graze our herds.”

  “Assuming the local wildlife doesn’t eat them. Assuming there aren’t any predatory neighbors. Assuming we can get them through the gate to begin with.”

  “Usually, those cows can defend themselves, but Char’s ten-command can stay with them. First, though, we should scout for natives. As for the gate . . .”

  They all turned to regard it. There it stood incongruously all by itsel
f on the plain without the usual surrounding wall. In case anything should rush them on the far side, they had left the barrier up but ajar and had edged past it. Whether they could get cattle to do the same seemed unlikely unless, perhaps, they were blindfolded.

  Jame had wondered what role the barriers played besides being not-very-efficient obstacles. After all, the haunts had torn one apart with their bare fingernails. True, however, before Lyra’s discovery everyone had assumed that the gates were simply walled-up, blind arches, a ruse that had worked for centuries. Perhaps that subterfuge was more than enough.

  Brier was regarding her askance.

  “You really want to make use of these gates, don’t you, despite what happened.”

  “If you mean the invasion of haunts, yes, despite that.”

  She paused, thinking this over. “We’ve been on Rathillien longer than anywhere else since the long retreat began. Even now, Perimal Darkling is just across the Barrier, on all sides of us. Much of Rathillien has been swallowed, but we’re still here. Something about this world has resisted for over three thousand years. It’s unique in the Chain of Creation, and none of us understands it properly. Most Kencyr don’t even want to try, why, I don’t know, unless we’re afraid to admit that we’ve utterly lost control.”

  Brier snorted. “When, since the beginning, have we controlled anything?”

  “That’s just it. We haven’t. Maybe, though, just maybe, we can start here, now.”

  “With the gates?”

  “With something. I’d like to talk to the Earth Wife about this development, but perhaps only after we make it work. If we can.”

  “Dreamer.”

  “Well, yes. I would so like to create something before it all gets smashed to pieces. When we get back, let’s see about replacing the stone barrier to this place with a wooden cattle door.”

  “After our scouts report back,” said Brier stubbornly, and turned to give the ten-command their orders.

  II

  THE NEXT TIME Jame wanted to explore a gate, Brier was even pricklier.

  “It isn’t your job to go blithely jumping off into nowhere,” she said, with a glower into the fireplace in Jame’s room.

  It was a bright, cold day and the fire was welcome, but not all that fascinating. Jame stood at the other end of the mantelpiece, trying to catch the Kendar’s eye. They were apparently going to have another of their rare fights, and she didn’t want to conduct it with the malachite stud in Brier’s left ear. The way that dark red hair swung forward in a curtain, she couldn’t see the other’s face at all.

  “It’s my job to lead,” she said, trying to sound reasonable. “If there’s unknown danger, I should face it first.”

  “You should not. Tagmeth can’t spare you.”

  “And it can you?”

  “More easily, yes.”

  “What, I should replace you with Killy? Oh, he would love that.”

  “Who . . . oh. Him.” The corner of her mouth twitched. Jame had almost made her smile. “Then pick someone else,” she said. “Dammit, why do you insist on throwing yourself into harm’s way?”

  “The savannah was a good find, wasn’t it? Char says the herd is settling in nicely.”

  “I could have found it without you. So we now have pasturage, fruit, and grain. Isn’t that enough? What else are you looking for, a nice vegetable garden?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to one, although it does occur to me that the oasis has enough water and the orchards enough adjacent land to plant our own.”

  Brier made an exasperated sound. “Always, always, you push, and things keep getting stranger. What happens when your luck runs out? Are you a gambler who can’t leave the table?”

  “With so many cards left to play? Seriously, practical considerations aside, aren’t you at all curious about this mystery, this opportunity, that we’ve been handed?”

  Brier’s fist hit the mantelpiece with a crash, for a wonder not cracking it.

  “D’you take me for a coward? Of course I’m curious, and I do see the possibilities. But I’m also responsible for our people, for this keep. So are you.”

  Jame fought down a surge of anger. She should have seen this coming. Tori also complained about his people obsessively trying to keep him safe—“swaddled in cotton,” as he put it. After all, without him their whole world would collapse. Though only Brier was bound to her, the other Kendar at Tagmeth were concerned too, as she had seen during and after the yackcarn stampede. That was nice, in a way. It made her feel as if they were really creating a mutual home here. But her habit of risk-taking was obviously tying Brier into knots. That wouldn’t stop her, though.

  “There are some things I have to do,” she said. “You forget: I’m commander of this keep, a third-year randon cadet, and my brother’s heir.” Also a potential nemesis of the Tyr-ridan, she could have added, but didn’t. “In fact, there are some things that only I can do.”

  “Fine,” Brier snarled and turned to storm out of the room, nearly braining herself on the low lintel.

  III

  THEY AVOIDED EACH OTHER for a time after that—without difficulty given that each had more than enough to keep her occupied.

  The cold was only just settling in, no doubt with the savage storms of the north to come, especially with the Tishooo still absent to blow moderating breezes from the south. The horses, it was decided, would winter in the island’s lower meadow except in the worst weather. Before that, the subterranean stable had to be prepared while hay, grain, and apples were brought in through the gate from below the peach orchard.

  Meanwhile, exotic fruit arrived steadily from the oasis. Gatherers reported a sense of being watched, but saw nothing, reminding Jame of her own first experience in that fertile land. Perhaps, the Kendar said, the place was haunted. Those who tried to explore the hut on the shore found themselves yards back from it every time they attempted to step over the threshold.

  Every day Cheva and Tiens led out the hunt in search of fresh meat to supplement the smoked yackcarn of which they expected soon to be heartily sick.

  Sometimes they found unexpected tracks, for one the huge pug-marks of the blind Arrin-ken known as the Dark Judge, melted through the snow crust. The giant cat seemed to be restlessly circling the keep. Sometimes far-flung patrols heard his desolate howl in the night:

  Come to judgment. Come!

  More than one Kendar had had to be forcibly stopped from responding.

  There were also blurred footprints near unfrozen ponds and sometimes beside fresh kills. A wandering hill-man, some thought. A solitary hunter, or a lunatic. From the reports, these prey had been torn apart by tooth and claw.

  And there were other human tracks in the snow, within sight of the keep but still at a wary distance. These, some guessed, might belong to Caineron spies. It made sense, after all, that Caldane would want to keep track of his unwelcome neighbors. Jame counted Tagmeth lucky to have gone as long as this without interference.

  Meanwhile, the Caineron and Randir refugees continued to gather firewood as well as gorse and bracken and to shelter underground as the nights grew colder. True, it was warmer there and would be all winter, like the cave that it was, but oh, it was so damp. Jame worried about Must. What could she do, though, without slighting her own people? Dammit, she would not be blackmailed.

  In the end, though, the lure of the gates brought commander and marshal back together, to the latter’s disgust.

  “You shouldn’t go,” said Brier stubbornly, still not meeting Jame’s eyes. “Dangerous work like this ought to be delegated.”

  They were standing in a courtyard swept clean of the morning’s snow, Jerr’s ten-command of second-year cadets ready behind them, pretending not to listen. Everyone knew that they had quarreled; gossip was every keep’s staple, and the spice of Jerr’s life.

  “Nonetheless,” said Jame, ignoring his avid interest, “I mean to go. Your choice. Again.”

  It was a challenge.

  Wit
h a grunt of disgust, Brier waved at the gate next to the one that led to the savannah. Perhaps she assumed that if one were safe, the other would be too.

  Fine.

  This was another with cracked mortar. More dust fell as Brier pried it open, and dank air breathed out of the darkness beyond. Jame called for torches.

  Brier glowered at her. “You know where we’re going, don’t you?”

  “I could be wrong. Watch your step inside.”

  They edged past the barrier. Instead of the other gates’ short tunnels, this one seemed to go on forever. The cadets entered it cautiously, gaping at the expanse before them of dripping walls revealed by their flaring torches. Soggy lichen squished under foot. Luminous albino crickets swarmed over stone, shrilling an alarm, reminding Jame of the verminous cave behind Mount Alban where Bane’s dark soul sat guard over the Ivory Knife and the Book Bound in Pale Leather. The cadets murmured, unsettled.

  “How far?” Brier demanded.

  “D’you want to turn back?”

  “Huh.”

  They kept going. A chasm opened on one side of the path and dark things whirred out of it.

  “Quipp? Quipp?”

  One of the cadets flailed with her torch at the darting shapes until Jame stopped her.

  “They’re only foxkin. Friendly, if inquisitive.”

  “Y-yes,” said the cadet, steeling herself as a bat-winged creature clambered over her shoulder and stuck a sharp, curious nose into her ear.

  “See?” said Jerr. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Nonetheless, he held his own torch close enough to his head to singe hair.

  More troubling, however, were the beady eyes catching the torchlight in the abyss that now yawned beside them.

  “What’s down there?” another cadet asked nervously.