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

by P. C. Hodgell

  Bear made a tentative stab at the bowl with his spoon and grimaced as porridge splashed across the table. Jorin leaned forward to lap it up. Jame corrected his grip again. At least he recognized the spoon as a tool.

  “Has he been in the wilderness all of this time?” asked Marc.

  Jame did some figures in her head. The brain-damaged randon had escaped from Tentir the spring before she had left for Kothifir. That meant he had already survived one winter on his own and now was well into another one. His clothing might stink, but he had made it himself down to the drawstring bags encasing his feet.

  “As bad as it was, his wound didn’t kill him,” she said. “There’s a chance that a Kendar can, eventually, recover from anything.”

  Marc gave her a sidelong glance. “So you hope, anyway, and perhaps you’re right. It doesn’t altogether surprise you to see him here, though, does it? Why?”

  “Those odd kills, as if done with tooth and claw—as, of course, they were. Then, too, I visited the last site and saw his prints in the snow. Even with those bags on his feet, you can see the trace of his toenails, which probably need trimming. He’s our honored guest as long as he cares to stay. Can you see to his needs, and maybe find him a new pair of boots?”

  Marc smiled. “Of course, lass. Your friends are always welcome here. How not?”

  IV

  IN THE PAST, Jame had gone on adventures and had met interesting people. Now she sat still (relatively) and strange people came to her, bringing strange adventures, or so it seemed.

  Bear proved a most peculiar house-guest.

  The garrison came across him everywhere in the keep, exploring, poking, experimenting. Many things puzzled him, but none frightened him. He was, after all, only an old warrior in a strange, presumably friendly land.

  The elder randon treated him with respect, remembering the great war-leader that he had been. The regular Kendar were kind, as was their way.

  The randon cadets only knew him as the Monster in the Maze that was Old Tentir, once a faceless dread, now a curiosity to be followed and watched.

  Jame hoped that none of the latter would tease him, as had proved fatal in the past. Already, someone had started a sly rumor that he shared more than her blankets at night. Rue, outraged, had taken to sleeping on the stair in an attempt to keep him in the guest quarters below where, in truth, he was happy enough as long as there was a fire, and bedding, and food. Jame was almost jealous to find that Jorin occasionally joined him there.

  Marc found him better cured leathers and furs to ward against the cold.

  Swar filed his overgrown toenails, but only with Jame’s help.

  Then they tried to give him a bath and he bolted, wearing only his new boots, with his new clothes in a bundle under one arm. No one saw him for three days after that.

  So far, he hadn’t discovered the gates.

  One morning, however, he found something else.

  Wakened by dreams, unable to regain sleep, Jame came down before even the bakers to find two sets of strange tracks in the snow.

  Drifts from the storm still clogged the courtyard and, overnight, had shifted to half obscure the paths. Jame cut across toward the mess hall. Bear had come this way before her, she saw, not that his nails showed through his new boots but no one else wore such big footgear, swollen at the toes to accommodate his unusual armament.

  Where the path joined the rim trail, another pair of footprints passed. Small as a child’s but slim and long, with even longer bare toes.

  What in Perimal’s name?

  Bear crouched before the darkened kitchen, cautiously peering in the doorway. Jame stopped beside him. The path before them was swept clean, the broom dropped in apparent haste. Whatever had made those peculiar tracks had bolted back inside. From the interior came that breathless silence only achieved by someone standing very, very still.

  Jame touched Bear’s shoulder. They retreated to the path that led back to the tower and paused there, waiting.

  Something in the kitchen fell over. Then, in a sudden scurry, a small, gray-robed figure darted out, clutching a loaf of yesterday’s bread. It ran past them around the edge of the courtyard before disappearing through the new gate to the oasis, which clicked shut after it.

  Jame stood outside. Again, that intense silence of listening. She could almost feel the other’s bated breath, hear the muffled, pounding heart. Then it went away.

  Bear loomed over her, prepared to pursue, but she held him back.

  “If that was what I think it was—but oh Trinity, how could it be?—we need time, and a lot of tact.”

  Sounds from the barracks announced other early risers. A cough. The murmur of voices. Shuffling feet.

  Jame went quickly back to the kitchen, seized the broom, and finished obscuring the footprints.

  Marc emerged, yawned, and stretched.

  “So, are you our good imp after all?” he called to Jame.

  She smiled although her breath still felt tight and her own heart twanged in her breast.

  “That remains to be seen,” she said.

  V

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Jame gave the situation considerable thought.

  The first thing she did was to withdraw the ten-command currently serving at the oasis. This caused some surprise, as also did the lack of an explanation. Every day thereafter she went through the gate with fresh loaves of bread that she left before the white hut on the lakeshore. At first these remained untouched except by birds and mice. Then one morning the entire stack was gone.

  Jame spent that day at the oasis, walking among the trees, gathering fruit to eat, lying on the sand until it became too hot. Jorin hunted bugs and slept. She had sometimes wished for time simply to relax, but this was boring. Every time this thought occurred, however, she glanced sideways at the hut and shivered.

  At length the sun set and night fell. Jame built a small campfire on the beach a careful distance from the hut and sat before it, trying to stay awake. The flames’ warmth was welcome as the desert around her cooled. Stars circled overhead. The last quarter of the moon rose, a sickly crescent. The fire snapped.

  Jame woke from a doze with a start. Someone sat opposite her. The form was small and hooded, only the lower half of its face touched by light from the dying fire.

  Jame cleared her throat. “Er . . .” she said. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  The other’s voice was thin and high, like a child’s, but with a hoarse edge.

  What to say next? Jame had thought about this moment endlessly; now, however, her mind went blank.

  “I . . . we invaded your home. Took it over. We didn’t know that you were here. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry.”

  Was that a response, or was he just repeating what she said? Trinity, why had she assumed that he would speak Kens? Had her kind and his ever even met before?

  Builder.

  Finally, in her mind, she called this strange creature what, against all reason, she believed him to be. According to legend, the creators of the Kencyr temples had always finished their work and moved on to the next threshold world before the arrival of the retreating Kencyrath. On Rathillien, though, the destruction of their temporary home in the Anarchies and their supposed annihilation had left the temples incomplete, the gates to the next world unbuilt.

  She tried again.

  “My name is Jamethiel Priest’s-bane. Jame.”

  Jorin trotted out of the night, a limp jumper mouse dangling from his jaws.

  “Waugh,” he said around the furry morsel, and dropped it beside her.

  Then, through her eyes, he saw their visitor and circled the fire to investigate. Jame held her breath. Jorin stretched out his neck, sniffed within the shadows of the hood that turned toward him, and sneezed into the other’s hidden face. Then he retreated to Jame’s side, reclaimed his prize, and began to munch upon it.

  The Builder raised a long-fingered hand to push back his hood. It fell away from a face in s
ome respects like a baby’s, but with deeply wrinkled skin. Firelight hinted at protuberant veins lacing a domed, hairless skull but not at coloration. Bright eyes undimmed by age watched her warily from pouches of loose flesh.

  “My name,” he said, in lightly accented Kens, “is Chirpentundrum. Chirp.”

  Jame still found herself floundering for the right thing to say. She glanced at the little hut. “Is that where you live?”

  “It conceals the entrance, behind a defense of step-backward stones across the threshold. We dwell in quarters underground.”

  “‘We’?”

  His gaze lifted. Twisting around to look behind her, Jame suppressed a start. A dozen more small, gray-clad figures huddled there together, regarding her with clear apprehension. A soft twitter of words passed among them as if through a flock of sparrows. Then they were silent again, staring.

  “How long have you all been here?”

  “Since the white city was destroyed. We were tending our gardens when that disaster occurred. To this day, we do not know what happened, except that all of our kin perished, leaving our work on this world uncompleted and us stranded here.”

  That meant that these weren’t descendants but the original Builders themselves, exiled here for over three thousand years. Before that . . .

  “Are you immortal?”

  The little man smiled sadly. “We can die, but previously few of us did.” He leaned forward, clearly coming to what most concerned him. “Who else besides you knows that we are here?”

  “So far, one other.” She didn’t add that Bear probably had no idea what he had seen. It had suddenly occurred to her that if these people wished to stay hidden, only she stood in their way, and a dozen of them, however harmless they appeared, were standing behind her.

  Beside her, a tiny skull crunched in Jorin’s strong jaws. Between her and these strange castaways, which was the mouse?

  “Who else will you tell?”

  Jame frowned, considering. “My brother the Highlord, I suppose. To say that the scrollsmen would be overjoyed to hear would be putting it mildly. . .”

  The little Builder shuddered. “Please. Not academia.”

  Who else, Jame wondered. Would the current lords even care? For most of them, not unless they could use the Builders’ skill to their advantage—which, of course, was always possible.

  The priests? Yes, to rebuild the temples. Would that be a good thing, though? Only the priesthood and, ironically, the native New Pantheon, used the temples’ power. It had never been clear to Jame what else it was good for, except breaking through to the next threshold world if the Three People should need another retreat. Now it was her turn to shiver. To start over again somewhere new, even more damaged than they presently were . . . unthinkable. Whatever the end, Rathillien must be the Kencyrath’s last stand.

  To prevent more unstable temples from imploding, though. . .

  She remembered the destruction of Languidine where so many innocents had died, the bodies surging up around the sides of the boat on which she and her command had fled. Terrible. Then too, Kothifir’s temple was incomplete, its fluctuations a constant threat to the city. For that matter, in the midst of the storm she had sensed the Western Lands’ structure stirring to life, with no priests to control it.

  G’ah. Worry about that another day.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Leave. Forget that you ever saw us. Take your people with you.”

  “I don’t think that I can do that. We’ve come to depend on the fruits of this oasis, of all your gardens. Indirectly, the defense of Rathillien may depend on them. Perhaps we can trade for other things. Do you need meat? Milk? Eggs?”

  “Those we never eat.”

  “But you wanted bread badly enough to steal it.”

  “When we lost our other gardens, we also lost access to grain. One craves what one cannot have.”

  “That at least we can supply. Please. Can’t we find a way to coexist?”

  The Builder stirred unhappily. “Our kinds were never even intended to meet. Always, we have gone before, building. What was our charter, our . . . compulsion.” His long fingers twitched. He stilled them. “The need still gnaws at us, but what can we do? Our time has passed. We only wish to be left in peace.”

  Jame clapped her hands on her knees, coming to a decision. “We’ll do the best we can. Certainly, no one will harass or hunt you. My word on it. If I may, I would like to talk to you again. There are so many questions . . .”

  The Builder unfolded his short, hidden legs and rose. So, reluctantly, did Jame. The top of his bald head barely came to her sternum, but dignity gave him stature.

  “Until next time, then,” she said, and bowed to him, then to the anxious others, some of whom bobbed nervously in return. With Jorin trotting at her heels, without looking back, she left the shore and entered the trees, where false dawn cast a smoldering golden glow devoid of shadows. Above, all of the birds were waking to sing. It had been a long night and before that a longer day. Her people probably wondered where she had gone, since she had told no one. Thinking about breakfast, she opened the wooden door that replaced the previous stone barrier. Beyond lay Tagmeth’s snowy courtyard, still blue in shadow. A cheerful clatter rose from the kitchen, accompanied by the scent of fresh bread baking. She would have to arrange for a daily portion of the latter to be delivered to the oasis. For that matter, never mind the lords, priests, and scrollsmen: What should she tell her own people about their newly discovered neighbors?

  The ground shivered underfoot and Jame hesitated, frowning. An earthquake? Inside there was also a pause, then voice questioned voice.

  Now came a rumble, growing louder, coming from the east.

  Kendar emerged from the kitchen, curious. One of them was Mustard, carrying a basket of provisions. While her condition now notably bulked out her clothing, her face was thinner than Jame remembered, a hectic flush on her sunken cheeks. She looked about with apprehension and seemed to draw in on herself.

  Louder, closer . . .

  The wooden door to the savannah shattered. Through the gate rushed a tidal wave of massive black bodies, some sleek, others grossly swollen. Eyes rolled white. Nostrils flared red. Horns tossed.

  Workers dived back into the kitchen, one through a window.

  Must froze.

  Jame darted out, seized her arm, and bundled her back into the shelter of the tunnel, none too soon: Already the cows were upon them. One hooked the door with a horn and wrenched it open, off its hinges. Jorin bounced away, all of his fur on end. Must dropped her basket and shrank back against the wall. The stampede roared past the opening in a madness of thrashing limbs and passed on, by the sound of it, into the outer ward, across the upper meadow where horses fled it screaming, over the bridge to the River Road.

  People emerged to stare after it.

  Char appeared at the shattered door, panting, red-faced with agitation.

  “I sent you word yesterday!” he raged at Jame across the trampled courtyard. “Why didn’t you send help?”

  “For what?”

  “I damn well told you! It’s their time. They calve in the snow, remember?”

  Must gave a faint cry and slid down the wall, clutching her belly. Jame held her as she spasmed. “Oh no. Not you, too. Help!”

  Voices exclaimed. Feet came running.

  “It’s all right,” Jame said, cradling the girl. Never in her life had she felt so helpless. Oh, please, let it be all right.

  Chapter XIII

  Death and Life

  Winter 63—66

  I

  MUST WAS MOVED into the tower’s second-story guest quarters, despite her protests that she wanted to rejoin her people in the undercroft.

  “I don’t intend . . . to impose on you, lady,” she told Jame, an edge of sarcasm sliding between bouts of coughing. “So far . . . I’ve done well enough . . . on my own.”

  “Ha,” said Jame.

  Bear
took one look at the newcomer and fled.

  Rue rushed off to start boiling water.

  Kells arrived with his sack of herbs. When he emerged from the room sometime later, having previously driven everyone else out, he looked grim.

  “It’s true labor all right,” he reported, “although she’s nowhere near ready to give birth. Then, too, the child is large and she’s just a slip of a girl, going through this for the first time. I don’t like that cough either. It weakens her.”

  Jame thought guiltily about that damp, chilly cave under the outer ward. Why had she let Must stay there in her condition? To herself, she acknowledged that she simply hadn’t wanted to think about the problem that the Caineron presented, to which she still had no solution.

  The morning dragged on, bright, almost warm. Snow banks began to shrink in the sun. Water trickled.

  Across the Silver, agonized bellows rose from the wood where some ten cows were also in labor. Things were not going well, Char reported through Killy. Well, how could they? The poor cows were carrying half-yackcarn calves, big enough to rupture them. Damn Bully anyway, yet what he had done was only in accordance with his nature.

  Afternoon.

  Kells ordered tea made from blue cohosh, dark and bitter.

  “She should have had this regularly for the past week,” he told Jame. “Even now, though, maybe it will help with the contractions and the pain.”

  The other Caineron yondri and some of the Randir gathered in the courtyard to wait. One, a gruff woman named Girt, insisted on attending Must throughout her ordeal. Kells would have forbidden her, but refrained when he saw the girl’s thin, strained face lighten at the sight of the Kendar.

  In general, the Knorth garrison kept their distance. They had never favored Must’s ambition, which they saw as presumptuous, yet here she was about to produce Tagmeth’s first child. Jame supposed that those who had begun to think of the keep as home would see this as a hopeful sign. She was certainly aware that many watched her askance to see what she would make of the situation.

  “Maybe it would be best if both mother and child died,” remarked Killy, munching on an apple.