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

by P. C. Hodgell

  “Trocks, I think. The Builders’ pets, gone feral, and they can eat through anything. Watch your feet.”

  “Why is this tunnel different than the others?” Brier asked, in a voice that grated against the nearest wall and plunged eerily down the opposite chasm.

  Could she be afraid?

  “It’s not so bad,” Jame said. “Trocks only move in shadows. We have torches.”

  One guttered out. The cadets huddled closer together.

  “As for the tunnel,” she continued, as much to fill the shuddering silence as to answer her marshal, “if the Builders adapted the work of native Rathillienites in order to reach their gardens, it stands to reason that they would also need a link back to their own city in the Anarchies. Ancestors know where this originally led. The Builders obviously made it their own like the ones to the temple sites.”

  “And do we want to go to the Anarchies?”

  “Not really. Not now. I said I wasn’t sure where we were going.”

  One of the cadets yelped with pain. “My foot!”

  “I said, watch your shadows!”

  It immediately became clear that however one stood, one cast an eclipse. Claws chittered on stone. Pinpoint eyes advanced in waves, before and behind them, although a frantic sweep of torchlight revealed only furrowed, fist-sized rocks. Someone else swore.

  “Bugger this,” said Brier.

  Jame found herself swept up and slung over the Kendar’s shoulder.

  “Back,” Brier said, driving the cadets before her.

  Every stride she took punched Jame in the gut.

  “Brier—huh—slow down! You’re pan—huh—icking again!”

  Dammit, Jame thought, her nose bouncing off the other’s back, trying to catch her breath, this is ridiculous.

  Her first impulse was to punch Brier in the kidneys. At best, though, that would make the Kendar stumble and they both might fall into the abyss, toward those swarming, waiting eyes.

  Never say things can’t get worse . . .

  Reflected light glinted behind her, close to the ground, filling Brier’s shadow. Ahead, there was a wild scrabble as trocks gave way before the oncoming torches.

  Here was the gate, the barrier, the stones scraping against her buttocks.

  Brier dropped her in the courtyard.

  “Enough,” said the Kendar. “Never again.” And she stomped off, the chewed tatters of her boots flapping at her heels.

  “Well,” said Jame to Jerr, sitting up, gingerly rubbing her bruised stomach. “That was pretty definitive.”

  IV

  ANOTHER PERIOD of strained silence followed between Tagmeth’s two leaders.

  “This is no way to run a keep,” Marc commented, stirring a bowl of batter. “I don’t have any candied ginger for this. Would it upset you if I added a handful of fermented dates?”

  “Will they explode?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. For someone in other respects quite ruthless, you do have a soft spot for fruit.”

  “Also for cats.” She rubbed Jorin’s furry tummy with her foot as he stretched out on his back before the kitchen fire, his toenails extended through their enclosing tufts of fur. “Also for cooks. What am I going to do, Marc . . . and am I really that cruel?”

  “Not cruel, exactly, but on occasion, yes. When you have to be. That’s how leaders are.”

  Jame felt her face flush, not from the fire’s heat.

  “You’re thinking about my berserker flares.”

  “Then, truly, you are terrifying, and I say that as a friend. After all, it’s bred into you.”

  “What a terrible thing to say.”

  “Is it?” He fixed her with a mild eye. “We all have our roles to play. You happen to have been born both Highborn and Shanir. Yes, I know that you don’t like either. Neither does your brother. I’ve wondered about that. You and Torisen are both very private people. Does responsibility frighten you or are you just afraid of letting folk down?”

  “Are the two mutually exclusive? Neither of us was raised to rule. I think we were both meant to be puppets, Torisen of our father, I of the Master. I did tell you about that, didn’t I? It makes one very aware of what misused power can do, a lesson that our father, not to mention Gerridon, never seems to have learned.”

  The big Kendar added milk.

  “You should also remember Lord Caineron,” he said, breaking eggs and beating them into froth. “Brier grew up under his rule, and there I lived for many years. He wants control, at whatever cost to others.”

  Jame snorted. “Orders given, but his hands clean of their results. The end justifies the means. In turn, ‘I was only doing as I was told, sir.’ Honor’s Paradox again.”

  “Yes, at its most brutal. But don’t underestimate the cost, day by day. One maintains one’s integrity in part by distancing oneself from corrupt influences, and by extension from anything outside one’s control. Brier must fear that. Her self-respect and her honor are at stake. On top of that, here not only was she responsible for a command of scared cadets but also for her liege lady, upon whom she has staked her very identity.”

  Jame wriggled. “You make me feel ashamed.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” He tipped the eggs into the batter, coated the bottom of a heavy skillet with oil, and poured in a small amount of the mixture. “Everything is a compromise, one way or another. One problem with our people is that we make precious few allowances for that. Now, how about a nice stack of spiced pancakes?”

  V

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER Jame rode out on Bel to investigate another mysterious kill site. Something a scout had said about the hunter’s footprints there had sparked her curiosity and, when she saw them, they were indeed curious. That gave her much to think about on the way back, until she began to feel increasingly uneasy without quite knowing why. Bel’s walk lengthened to a trot, from that to a canter, from that again to a gallop.

  Rue grabbed the Whinno-hir’s hackamore and stopped her with a jerk as they plunged, sweat-soaked, into the courtyard. Jame slid down and gently detached the cadet’s anxious grip.

  “What’s the matter? Where’s Brier?”

  “That’s just it. Soon after you left, she took Corvine and her ten-command and opened a new gate. That one there. They haven’t come back yet, and it’s been hours.”

  That was it, of course, only she so seldom touched her bond to the Southron that she hadn’t been sure what she was feeling. Jame swallowed her anxiety as best she could and regarded the arch in question.

  “It would have to be westerly.”

  Marc came up, frowning, in time to hear. “That makes a difference?”

  “If I’m right about gates facing the directions toward which they lead. Dammit, she deliberately waited until I was gone.”

  As usual, the stones looked solid, but gusts of wind edged around them, alternately hot and cold, stinking of brimstone. White flakes swirled out, mixed snow, sleet, and ash.

  “It wasn’t like that when they went in,” said Marc.

  Rue grabbed Jame’s arm. “You aren’t going after them, are you?”

  Other anxious faces stared at her in a growing ring. They would stop her if they could. They must not. She gave Rue a hard look. The cadet gulped, let go, and backed off. So did the others. Her eyes met Marc’s worried gaze as he loomed over the loosening circle.

  I’ll give you “ruthless.” Let’s see how you like it now.

  “I will do what I must,” she said, turning to sweep them all with a challenging glare. “Never forget that.” Was this the precursor of a berserker fit? Feeling as if sparks were snapping from her fingertips, she curled them inward until extended claws bit into her palms. Control, control. . . “Someone, get me a long, strong rope. Did Brier take one? I thought not. Listen: I’m guessing that the visibility on the other side isn’t good, and we don’t want whatever’s out there sweeping in on us.”

  “But how will you find them?” someone protested.

  “Brier Iron-thorn
is bound to me, isn’t she? I can follow that link, or try to. If I tug on the line, haul me back. Fast.”

  Someone had fetched a thick coil of cord such as the engineers had used in rebuilding the outer wall. Jame started to knot one end around her waist, but let Marc finish the job when she found that her hands were shaking. The Kendar slung the remaining loops over her shoulder, retaining their nether end.

  “I’ll bring her back,” she said, and gave him a fierce hug. “My word on it.”

  “Just remember to return safely yourself,” he said, returning her embrace, then snubbing a length of rope across his own broad shoulders.

  Jame edged past the barrier. Beyond was a short, dark tunnel, then a wall of white blowing savagely this way and that. Jame took a deep breath and plunged out into it. Within a stride, she was soaked to the skin with sleet and sinking into mud. The ground shuddered continuously beneath her feet. For the most part, she couldn’t see a thing. As the wind changed, however, amorphous caverns opened within the maelstrom and just as suddenly closed. Inside them, the very air seemed to die. Without, oh, the bitter taste of ash and gas. . . The gate had disappeared behind her. As the wind tried to pluck her off the ground, she was very glad for the weight of rope pinning her down even as she paid out its loops behind her.

  What drove her forward, she realized, was not just anger as she had at first thought, but an equal portion of guilt. It was her fault that Brier had come to this terrible place, bringing others with her, because she, Jame, had failed to give the Southron the leadership that she needed. Brier had been flailing around in a vacuum perhaps no less terrifying to her than this howling wilderness. One way or another, Jame must make that right.

  For a moment an expanse of air cleared. Far off to the left there was a burning, spitting mountain—the source, no doubt, of the ash seeking to clog her lungs. Ahead loomed a tall, white tower. Beyond that, a black hill seemed to be rolling toward her. The next instant she recognized it as a wave and the sudden land’s end beyond the tower as a clifftop. The wave smashed into the cliff. The ground shook. A wall of water exploded upward to shatter against the tower.

  Then the driven ash closed in again.

  Jame threw herself down flat. The next few seconds of waiting seemed to last forever. When the rest of the wave crashed down on top of her, it was like being caught between an earthen anvil and a coldly molten hammer. She clung by her claws to the sodden ground as bitter salt water rushed over her, taking her breath with it. Just when she thought she would have to inhale brine, the flow reversed. Now it was the rope’s tension that held her in place.

  It seemed to her, as her ears cleared, that she heard a fell cry somewhere overhead: “Aaaieee . . . yike!”

  With her other senses confounded, the sixth drew her staggering sideways, into the tower’s lee. There she paused for a moment on one knee, coughing, until her eyes cleared enough to see ash-caked figures huddled against the structure’s flanks. Two rose—tall Brier and burly Corvine. The former seized Jame by the collar, jerked her off her feet, and shook her until her teeth rattled.

  “You little fool,” she shouted into Jame’s face. “Why did you follow us?”

  Corvine intervened, breaking Brier’s hold. “You two. Stop it.”

  Jame had tumbled backward, landing with a muddy squelch on her rear. She scrambled up, every bit as angry as the Southron.

  “Someone had to, you damn idiot!”

  Another wave smashed into the tower. Fanged sheets of spray slashed around it, then the water was sucked back into the abyss as everyone braced against its pull.

  “Now,” said Corvine, ever practical, “how do we get out of here?”

  “Get them up,” said Jame, fumbling with the rope.

  Corvine roused her command and pushed them one by one to stumble toward Jame. Peering into their red-rimmed, dazed eyes, she reminded herself that they had been breathing this poisonous air much longer than she had, and already her own head felt light.

  “Hang onto the rope,” she told the first groggy face, and wrapped a loop around his wrist when he seemed not to understand.

  Then she gave the line a sharp tug.

  A hard jerk on the other end tightened the coil and yanked the Kendar out of sight, into the howling storm. Quickly she secured the next in line, and the next, and the next, until only Corvine and Brier were left.

  “Now you, lady,” said Corvine.

  “No. Me last. I insist.”

  “Huh,” Corvine said, accepting the judgment of her superior, and with that departed.

  Only Brier remained.

  The Southron stood glaring as her, big fists opening and closing.

  “No,” she said thickly.

  “Yes.”

  The Kendar lurched forward and enveloped Jame’s gloved hand in a crushing grip. What she would have done next would never be known for she had also stepped into a fallen coil of rope just as it snapped taut around her ankle. The next moment she was face down in the mud, the one after, dragged backward. Jame tried to hang on to her, but her glove came off in the other’s grip. Then she was gone.

  Her abrupt departure jerked the remaining loops off Jame’s shoulder and with them their anchoring weight. The next gust of wind knocked her off her feet and into the air, where the storm engulfed her.

  It was a whirling maelstrom. Up, down, sideways all disappeared except for the frequent, violent checks of the rope’s end still secured around her waist.

  Like a damned kite, thought Jame with a gasp, wondering if she was about to break in two, hoping that at least she was still being reeled in.

  Ash stung her eyes and coated her throat. Her cap had come off, her Merikit braids uncombed by the wind so that long black hair whipped in her face. The uproar was a vast abomination that shook her as a Molocar might a rat, as if bent on unknotting every bone from bone.

  Where was the tower? If she should smash into that. . . Instead beneath rolled black water. She was out over the cliff’s edge.

  “. . . aaaiieeee!”

  That cry again, closer.

  Something, someone, tumbled toward her from above, shrieking. She had barely seen it before it crashed into her. Bony hands scrabbled at her clothes. A stringy beard whipped her face.

  “Let me go, let me go!” wailed a voice in her ear.

  Abruptly the air cleared and the wind died. Jame stared up into a familiar, bewhiskered face.

  “Oops,” it said.

  Then they were falling, clinging terrified to each other, back into the storm. As chaos clapped down on them again, the rope tightened with a bone-jarring jerk.

  The other’s weight bore her down, although not as much as she would have expected. By now they were both tangled in the cord. A dark arch appeared in the confusion. They were dragged through it, abruptly, into clear air. Instead of falling, Jame was dragged upward by her companion until the rope suddenly unrolled, releasing him, and he tumbled up into the sky in a swirl of blue robes, with a trailing shriek. Bemused, Jame hadn’t time to realize that she was plummeting to earth until waiting arms caught her. They set her down on trembling legs. She plucked futilely at the length around her waist, now pulled so tight that she felt cinched to a wasp’s span. Someone had the wits to cut it with a knife.

  “Ah . . .”

  And here came Brier, looking half-demented with her usually neat helm of red hair ash-clotted and her glaring eyes bloodshot.

  “You . . . you . . .” she sputtered, and threw down Jame’s glove. “How could you be so childish, so . . . so selfish, as to play a trick like that? Not only are you too fragile for such games but, in case you haven’t noticed, the people here depend on you. You can’t risk yourself just for the fun of it anymore. Dammit, grow up!”

  Jame, listening, felt her temper give way.

  “Quiet,” she said to Brier.

  The Kendar stopped short although she continued to shake like an overwrought horse.

  Jame began to circle her. Tick, tick, tick, went her fle
xing, unsheathed claw tips against the outer seams of her pants as if implacably counting stitches. Tick, tick . . . tick. Tick . . . tick, tick. The rest of the garrison drew back a step, then another, then another, until they pressed against the court’s inner walls.

  “Fragile.” She heard the velvet purr creep into her voice as if the word were a mouse with which she played. “Shall I tell you what horrors I have survived? Would it please you to learn? Oh, I think not, unless you wish to revisit the worst nightmares of your childhood. Remember the old songs. Think of yourself living them. Certain people stand between you and that fate. I am one of them. Be glad of us. And beware: Such times may come again, sooner than you think.”

  The wind drove wisps of snow about the courtyard. More crunched under her pacing feet, the only sound in that breathless expanse until Brier’s teeth began to chatter. Jame flicked a particle of ash out of the other’s hair with her nails.

  “Shall we talk?” she asked softly. “I think we must. Later.”

  Then she withdrew. Winter played around her, cutting into her wet clothing. One cold replaced another. She began to shiver.

  Rue tossed a blanket around her shoulders.

  “Get warm cider,” she snapped at the nearest kitchen worker. “Don’t you know shock when you see it?”

  VI

  THIS TIME, people left Jame alone, for which she was glad, at least at first. The kitchen provided honeyed cider and hot buttered bread. A new-laid fire leaped and crackled on the hearth, its light playing across Jorin’s white stomach as he cuddled up beside her, paws in the air. Sounds rose from below as workers bricked up the newest gate. There was no need to revisit the Western Lands anytime soon, Jame thought, or perhaps ever. The very thought of them still chilled her. Lost, lost, like so much else of this world, and all because of her own people.

  A tentative knock on the door roused her. At her bidding, Marc ducked under the lintel, the balding crown of his head entering first.

  “Well?” she asked him as he stiffly lowered himself onto the hearth beside her. “Is everyone still in shock?”

  “You gave them something to think about, and that’s no lie. About time, too.”