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

by P. C. Hodgell

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. You’ve heard this before, lass, and it’s no less a fact now as then. Looking as you do, so slight that a strong wind can literally bear you away, people are bound to underestimate you. I’ve told them before that that’s a mistake. Maybe now they will listen.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare them.”

  He chuckled. “Sometimes that’s unavoidable. It occurs to me that it would be no bad thing if your brother occasionally threw a tantrum of his own, just to wake people up.”

  Jame laughed, a bit unsteadily. “You have an odd view of us.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less valid.”

  Soon after, he left to help with the preparations for dinner. Jame waited awhile longer, then dressed and slipped out of the tower. Sure enough, noise clattered out of the mess hall. If her garrison had been shocked by her behavior, it seemed to have recovered itself. She did wonder about Brier, though, and pictured her sitting mute amidst the uproar. Well, there would be time to deal with that later.

  Caineron and Randir refugees moved out of her way in the inner ward, some sketching salutes as she passed.

  Horses stirred in the island’s lower pasture, aware of her presence. It had begun softly to snow again. Bel emerged from the flakes to nuzzle her hand, others following her. Their breaths were plumes of smoke, their muzzles velvet dabbed with melting white.

  One looked up, then another, then all including Bel scattered, snorting in alarm.

  Jame gazed upward, seeing at first only the swirling onset of night.

  “. . . aaaiiiee . . .”

  The Falling Man plummeted down toward her out of the muffled sky, stopping some ten feet short of the ground but seeming, in his way, hardly to slow his descent. As always, one cringed in expectation of a bloody smash that never came. Jame carefully stepped back, swallowing her heart.

  “Tishooo. Old Man,” she said. “Or should I call you Your Majesty, the Witch King of Nekrien?”

  “Oh, please. Aren’t we friends?”

  “I’m the one, back at Urakarn, who suggested that you investigate the Western Lands. Have you been stuck there all of this time?”

  Rathillien’s air elemental tried to shake some order into his tumbling clothes and hooked his long, scraggly beard over one ear to get it out of the way. His blue robe, Jame noted, was frayed at the edges and trailing loose silver threads. He achieved some poise at last by seeming to recline in midair, his chin propped on his fist.

  “Oh, I was there awhile,” he said, with a nonchalant wave of his free hand. “It isn’t all quite as bad as the bit where we met. Mercy! The elements seemed to go mad there, didn’t they?”

  “That may be because we were up against a Kencyr temple.”

  The Tishooo’s start set him gently spinning. “That white tower? I should have guessed that you Kennies were involved somehow.”

  “Up to our eyebrows, I should think,” said Jame ruefully. With the Four, it was best to be honest and besides, not much good to lie even if the Kencyrath’s god had allowed it. “As I figure it, the original architects of the gates linked one to the western coast. Long afterward, our Builders used Tagmeth’s ring to place at least one of our temples there, only one more easy step for them from the Anarchies. I don’t know if our own priests are active there now, but it was starting to hum.”

  That might have been a grin, but by now the Old Man was hovering upside down so it was probably a scowl.

  “What are the rest of the Western Lands like?” Jame asked quickly to forestall an outburst.

  “Hurrumph. A mess. Every part of them is prey to one disturbance or another, mostly perversions or exaggerations of Rathillien norms. If any people still live there, I didn’t see them. And you tell me that this is all due to that Perimal what’s-its-name?”

  “As far as I can make out. It’s already swallowed whole chunks of this world, and before now you really didn’t notice?”

  The Tishooo had come upright again, which meant that he had to hold his robe down over spindly shanks to keep it from flying up over his head, a pose not much in accord with dignity.

  “I was busy,” he said huffily. “Besides, everything changed when you people arrived. How was I to know what it was like before that? Whatever’s gone wrong now, it’s all your fault.”

  And that, apparently, was his last word for now on the subject. Besides, his clothes were getting badly out of hand. With a thin shriek, in a bundle of flapping fabric, he tumbled back up into the sky and was gone.

  Jame sighed. Somehow, she still had to convince the Four that while the Kencyrath might be to blame, the problem was theirs too.

  When she turned, it was to find herself in a circle of curious horses, staring yondri and a handful of bemused guards.

  “It’s been a strange day,” she said to all of them, and went off to bed.

  Chapter XII

  Tracks in the Snow

  Winter 36—63

  I

  WINTER DEEPENED.

  Day after day, the sun hung lower in the sky, sometimes haloed with a double rainbow of ice crystals. The shadows it cast were black fingers that ran up to the indomitable shade of evergreens at dawn, groped across snowy fields at noon, and crawled back into the valley at dusk. The cold sent birds shivering to the heart of trees. The wind boomed down the throat of the ravine above Tagmeth.

  Wooden shutters had long since been crafted for most of the keep’s windows to exclude the wintry blast. Jame’s apartment also had screens fashioned of worn-out underclothes stitched together, then scraped with bear grease to render them translucent and nearly impervious to the north wind. Their muted colors reminded her of Marc’s unfinished stained-glass map at Gothregor. Scouts had collected many samples beyond the gates from lands that the Kencyrath had never before visited, enough to keep him well occupied if—when—he eventually returned to make new glass.

  Two more gates had been explored. One led to a turbulent seacoast somewhere in the south. Once, there might have been a harbor at the foot of the cliffs there, suggesting trade with other ports, or perhaps fishing. Kencyr were not, as a rule, seafarers, but the hope of a piscine harvest had spurred enthusiastic if somewhat peculiar experiments in shipbuilding.

  The other gate opened into a tangle of giant, vine-draped trees. Scouts were still exploring the wilderness there to see what it might hold besides strange plants and stranger creatures. As for where it was located on Rathillien, no one knew.

  As growing cold gnawed at Tagmeth, ten-commands took turns beyond the milder gates to thaw out. Oddly, most didn’t want to stay away long, seeming edgy about leaving the keep shorthanded. Jame wondered if this was another sign of their growing attachment to their new home. Perhaps places, as well as Highborn inspired loyalty. Interesting, if true. Certainly, her Kendar had put enough work into Tagmeth by now to consider it home.

  Early on a sharp morning, she emerged from her tower to find the courtyard already a bustle with the ten-command currently assigned to Cook Rackny in the kitchen.

  “Yes, we’re always up first,” said Marc, greeting her on the threshold. “I’ll tell you a strange thing, though: Sometimes we arrive to find the yard already brushed clear of snow.”

  “By whom?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe someone can’t sleep, or lie abed idle, like you. It’s a change from our joker, anyway. Here. Have some fresh shortbread.”

  Jame accepted a finger of the treat.

  “Ginger, allspice, and cinnamon,” she said, tasting it.

  “Also cardamom. If we’re careful with our supplies, we may have enough to last until the midwinter feast.”

  “Very good. Now, where is Brier?”

  He regarded her askance. “So the time has come, has it?”

  “She and I need to talk. Maybe no more than that. Certainly no less.”

  “She’s in the subterranean stable, helping Farrier Swar. Lass . . .”

  Jame touched his arm. “I know. I’ll try.”

/>   Most of the horses were still in the lower meadow, but a few had been brought below for shoeing or other maintenance. Unobserved, Jame settled on a bale of hay to watch Swar float the teeth of Brier’s chestnut gelding. Brier herself held her mount’s thick tongue sideways out of his mouth to quiet him as the farrier applied a file to the overgrown hooks on the outsides of his back teeth that prevented hay from falling out of his mouth but which, if overgrown, could also rasp raw the insides of his cheeks. The busy file scraped, accompanied by the stench of friction-scorched bone. The horse rolled his eyes and quivered as he stood. Otherwise, Brier’s powerful grip held him still.

  The fire in the forge struck a red glow in the Southron’s short-cropped auburn hair and green in her malachite ear-stud. Her skin had the permanent bronze glow of one born to the Southern Host, her frame the lithe muscles of one accustomed to adversity, her face the strong bones of character. Jame admired that strength, that presence. How sure she must be of herself, of so many things. But here, now, she was wrong.

  “Hold hard,” said Swar. “Just a few more strokes. There. Done to a turn.”

  Brier released the chestnut’s tongue. He shook his head, that organ flapping ludicrously, then withdrew it and composed himself with a snort as if nothing had happened. Brier clapped him on the neck.

  “Good boy.”

  Jame cleared her throat.

  “Are you done?” she asked Brier. “Then walk with me.”

  They climbed the steps to the inner ward and crossed it to the middle gate. Neither spoke, not until they came into the lower meadow. There, horses had trampled flat the snow and then pawed it up in search of grass despite hay being brought in from beyond the gates. Some days previously an impromptu snowball fight had broken out here, staining the ground red in patches: Someone had thrown barely covered rocks. Jame wondered if the keep joker was responsible. Nothing had been heard of him since the autumn. No doubt he was still in their midst but not, Jame supposed, occasionally sweeping clean that inner courtyard like some helpful sprite. That phenomenon had a completely different feel.

  “D’you want me to release you?” she asked her companion.

  Although her gaze was fixed forward, out of the corner of her eye she saw Brier glance sharply at her, then away.

  “No,” said the Southron, stony-voiced.

  “Then we need to understand each other better. I gather that you see kind leaders as weak and cruel ones as strong. From the beginning, you’ve underestimated me and, I think, my brother too. Yes?”

  Brier grunted. That might have been assent.

  “If so, you wrong Tori. He has had more than his share of problems, especially at present, but they haven’t broken him. We grew up under hard discipline, he and I. Both of us were bred to be the tools of other people. One either submits to that or rebels. Have you any doubt what we did?”

  “No,” said Brier, sounding reluctant. “After all, here you are.”

  “And so are you. Caldane would also have made you his puppet. Isn’t that the purpose of his little tests? Honor is obedience. Obedience is everything, according to him. Remember?”

  Brier shuddered.

  “Pretending to be a Knorth now, aren’t you?” Lord Caineron had said to her on the balcony in Restormir’s Crown. “Not easy, is it, with Caineron blood in your veins? Not possible, I should think. We both know where the real power lies. Let’s see your obedience, girl. ON YOUR KNEES.”

  His hands had dropped to loosen his belt.

  “Kendar are bound by mind or by blood. Such a handsome woman as you deserves to be bound more . . . pleasurably. By seed. . .”

  And Jame had leaped down to shout “Boo!” in his face, at which point he had started to hiccup and float, thanks to the Builders’ potion that, much earlier at the Cataracts, she had tricked him into drinking. She remembered Brier’s glare.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “I seldom do, but I do it anyway. This is what I am, Brier Iron-thorn. Remember that.

  “And have you forgotten?” she now asked the stony profile opposite her. “Brier. Think. From the start, I gave you fair warning.”

  No answer.

  Jame sighed. “I don’t know which is worse, your stubborn lack of faith or my inability to earn it. All right. Here it is in practical terms: Your current attitude is bad for discipline. However you feel, for whatever reason, you have to back me or everything we’re trying to build here will fall apart. Agreed? Agreed?”

  The Southron made a sound in her throat then gave a brusque, reluctant nod.

  “Very well. Do I have your support?”

  “I said yes, didn’t I?”

  “After a fashion. I am honored by your service. Someday, I hope you will be honored by my command.”

  With that, she turned and walked away.

  II

  SOON AFTERWARD, the first blizzard descended on Tagmeth. Days of snow, cold, and howling wind followed as everyone stayed indoors as much as possible. The horses sheltered underground. So did the Caineron and Randir refugees. The garrison played endless games of gen, or told stories, or sometimes sang as if to accompany the raging wind outside. Lots were drawn to establish who should bring in the next load of firewood. Trips to the garderobe were accomplished in great haste and, among the men, with anxious inspection afterward in case anything had snapped off. Snow drifts climbed halfway up the northern face of the tower. In the courtyard, mere tracks were kept clear leading to and from the principal doors.

  On a particularly stormy night, Jame woke suddenly, her heart pounding. She had pulled her pallet up dangerously close to the hearth for warmth and had snuggled into the bracken under a pile of shaggy blankets. Alternate heat from the fire and cold from the room tweaked her nose. The shutters rattled as if under assault. The seams of the screens piped thinly. It was indeed a noisy night, but what had woken her?

  Ah. She had been dreaming. Again.

  Whatever approached across the Haunted Lands came on and on, but it was making painfully slow progress. Moreover, tonight, something hunted it, getting closer, closer. . . Iron hooves drummed on the swooping hills. A monstrous gray shape heaved itself up the far side of a rise, snorting. Its eyes rolled as white and mad as the dead moon careening overhead. Spume flowed from jaws pried apart by a cruel bit.

  “Ha!” cried its rider, lashing its flank.

  Crouch, she told herself. Hide in the dead grass under the weight of a stolen burden. Shouldn’t have taken it. He wants it back, not me. Let us go, let us go . . .

  And then, again, Beauty’s voice: “They are coming.”

  Jame gulped. What did it all mean?

  Thump, thump, thump . . .

  Had a shutter worked itself loose? Was the wind about to lift off the roof? No. Those were feet, stumping up the stair.

  Jorin struggled out from under the blankets, growling. Jame tightened her grip on him, wondering for a moment if he was upset enough to claw his way free.

  Thump, scuffle, thump.

  Not Winter come back from the pyre. Not that terrified fugitive huddling on a moon-stricken hillside. Through Jorin’s senses, under the reek of badly tanned hides, she smelled something else, something familiar that roused the memory of a wooden pit and of a small, sour room, too long a prison.

  “Huh,” said her visitor, and lowered himself with a weary thud to the floor.

  She felt his warmth behind her as he settled against her, back to back, and fumbled for the blankets. After a bit of a tussle, she let him have most of them; after all, the fire was on her side and so was Jorin. The ounce stopped snarling, gave her chin an apologetic nuzzle, and snuggled back into the dried ferns, into her arms.

  The shutters rattled. The fire popped.

  Two of the room’s three occupants began to snore.

  III

  THE NEXT MORNING, Rue woke Jame with a jolt by shouting in her ear:

  “Quick, come down to the mess-hall!”

  By the time Jame had fought her
way out of a cocoon of bedding, the cadet had clattered back down the stair. Jame hastily dressed and followed her.

  Overnight, the storm had blown itself out, leaving a vault of celestial blue down from which drifted a few orphan flakes. Those on the ground rose in drifts waist high, crisscrossed by shoveled paths leading to a cleared rim. Half of the garrison crowded the maze, all craning to peer in through the mess-hall door. Jame edged through their ranks.

  Inside at a table sat an enormous man clad in ragged clothes and ill-tanned leather. His full, unkempt beard seemed to merge his head into his broad shoulders and barrel chest. The crown of his skull was split nearly to his eyebrows in a crevasse full of tumbled, gray-streaked hair. Someone had placed a bowl of porridge in front of him. With great concentration, he was trying to wield a spoon against it. Jorin sat on the bench next to him, occasionally tapping his wrist as if to say, “Leave it to me.”

  Jame slipped into the hall, drew up a bench opposite, and sat.

  “Like this,” she said, and curled his fingers around the spoon’s handle. Her own hand nearly disappeared into his huge paw. Compared to his massive claws, her own were so slight as to appear almost dainty.

  Marc sat down next to her.

  “It’s Bear, isn’t it?” he said, speaking softly. “The randon who taught you the Arrin-thar?”

  “Yes. I suppose, come to think of it, that he must have another name, but no one has used it in years. That cleft in his skull came from a war axe in the White Hills. You could say that my father was to blame: After all, it was his madness that triggered that misbegotten battle. Bear should have died, but didn’t.”

  They had placed him on the pyre where his brother, Sheth Sharp-tongue, had seen him twitch through the flames and had pulled him out. That might not have been a kindness. Lord Caineron had wanted no more to do with his damaged commander, so the randon college at Tentir had taken him in, then confined him after he had been baited into killing a cadet. Jame was the first Arrin-thar pupil he had taught in years, given that she was also one of those rare Shanir with retractile claws. Then too, factions at the college had tested them against each other for battle-madness. That had nearly gotten Jame killed even though, of the two, she was the only true berserker.