A Kendar servant entered instead. "My lord, there's a disturbance of some sort in the main hall. The Highborn has gone down to investigate."
"Has he indeed?" murmured Caineron.
Kindrie's post was his lord's outer chamber, and there he should have stayed, come what may. That Shanir was getting above himself and had been for some time. Caineron even suspected that Kindrie had deliberately rammed his horse at Kithorn to let Torisen pass. The Shanir would be made to confess that, as soon as Caineron felt secure enough to use the means that suited him best. He licked his lips at the thought.
The Kendar was watching him uneasily. Smoothing out his expression, Caineron sent him to find his son. The man returned almost immediately, white-faced.
"My lord, I-I found him . . ."
Caineron rose at once. The moment he stepped out into the hall, he smelled something burning, and followed his nose as much as his servant around the corner to a small storage room at the end of a short corridor. While the Kendar put out the fire that the dropped torch had started, Caineron stood looking down at his son. Torisen must have gone mad, he thought, to flaunt his kill so brazenly, and what an odd kill it was, too. Why the cut wrist when the heart-strike would do, and why in Perimal's name strip the body afterward? But then madness ran in the Knorth blood. Everyone knew that. The important thing now was to remind the High Council of it before Torisen could tell his side of the story, assuming he was still rational enough to do so. In fact, it might be arranged so that the Highlord wouldn't even have the chance.
Caineron was halfway out the door before he remembered his son's body. "Do something about that," he told his servant, and walked on, considering what one should wear when arresting one's liege lord.
* * *
THE STABLE LAY immediately below the main hall. Only a few horses occupied the maze of wooden partitions now, and they moved uneasily in their boxes as the two passed. Torisen wondered who or what he was following. The other certainly looked like Nusair, but he was behaving entirely out of character. Then too there was the murdered boy's bloody cap on his head and his shadow, dancing behind him as they approached a wall torch. Torisen had never seen one more warped. If it was truly the soul that cast the shadow and not the body, how hideously deformed the creature that he followed must be. He must get it as far from the cadets as possible, Torisen decided, and then deal with it as best he could. Neither of them realized that they were again being followed.
Another stairway led down to the brick floor of the fire-timber hall some fifty feet below. Tentir had fifteen upright ironwood timbers, more than half of which were prime with fire glowing in the deep cracks of their bark. Of the rest, six were still too green to burn properly for another century or so and two, kindled soon after the keep's founding, had at last been reduced to heaps of embers in their deep firebeds. A dusky orange light permeated the chamber. It was stiflingly hot. Torisen faced his guide across one of the glowing pits.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you?"
The other chuckled, his voice a deep, viscous gurgle. "Why, who or what should I be but Caineron's idiot son?"
"I don't know, unless . . ." His eyes widened as the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. "You're a darkling, a changer. One of the fallen."
"The more enlightened of us now believe that changers and what not are only some ancient singer's invention," said the other mockingly, paraphrasing Caineron. It began to circle the pit. Torisen kept on the opposite side, out of that terrible grasp.
"I'm a border brat. I believe all sorts of unlikely things." Even this, that a creature out of legend should be stalking him in the orange glow of Tentir's fire-hall? "But your kind left us alone for so long," he protested, raising one last barrier against belief. "Why has the Master sent you among us now?"
"The Master!"
The other spat into the embers. Its saliva burst into flames on contact. It sprang across the pit. Torisen slipped out of its way in a wind blowing move and threw a knife into its back before it could turn. The knife hilt clattered to the brick floor, its blade burned away by the other's blood. The changer turned, chuckling. Torisen backed into an open space between the timbers, the second knife poised to throw.
"Afraid, little man?"
"Of you? Moderately."
"Now, what would really frighten you, I wonder. Shall we find out? Beauty, now!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Torisen saw something gray near his feet. His knife hand whipped down. The blade buried itself in the wyrm's head just as it fastened on his leg. Someone screamed. The chamber seemed to tilt, throwing Torisen to the floor. The wyrm's venom tugged at his senses. Random nightmare images flickered through his mind, going faster and faster. It was like falling down a steep slope, clutching at things too loathsome to touch. Then for a moment he felt the rough bricks of the floor under his hands and clung to them grimly.
Someone was crying. Torisen thought it might be himself, but then as he fought back to consciousness, he saw the changer kneeling not far away, cradling the wyrm's twitching body in his arms. His cap had fallen off. Wild white hair tumbled over his eyes.
"Shanir!" Torisen gasped. "Y-you were bound to that thing . . ."
The changer's head snapped up, its face grotesquely twisted with grief and rage. It lunged at Torisen. He felt its hands close on his shoulders, felt the terrible strength in them. His velvet coat ripped down the back, the prelude to tearing muscles, splintering bones . . .
Pain came and then, incredibly, faded. He was on the floor again, with Burr bending over him.
"I've ruined my coat," he said to the Kendar.
"Damn your coat."
Beyond them, Harn and the changer reeled back and forth on the lip of the pit, gripping each other in deadly silence. Their shadows grappled on the floor. Then Harn caught the other's arm and twisted. There was a wet, ripping sound and a terrible wailing cry. The changer staggered away. Harn stared at its arm still in his hands, his face white.
"Oh my God, not again, not again . . ."
Kindrie caught his hands and wiped off the changer's blood before it could burn too deeply. There wasn't much of it: the ghastly wound had sealed itself almost immediately. Crouching in the shadows under the stair, Donkerri thought he saw more blood, much, much more—waves, oceans of it, roaring over him. He sank to the floor in a dead faint. Above him, feet pounded on the stairs. There were a dozen Kendar in the chamber now— cadets, instructors, even Ashe, the gray-haired, lame singer— holding the changer at bay with its back to the pit. It looked more like a wild animal now than anything human, all resemblance to Nusair gone.
"Careful," said the singer sharply. "If this is what I think it is, steel won't help."
Burr was still on his knees, holding Torisen. He didn't know what had happened to the Highlord, but the changer's attack alone would hardly account for the young man's clammy skin or a heartbeat so fast that it seemed to shake his entire body. Torisen gripped his arm with surprising strength.
"Slipping . . ." he muttered hoarsely. "Slipping . . ."
The changer heard. Its lips curled back over sharp white teeth, the entire jawline shifting.
"Highlord!" Its voice was a guttural bark. "Hellspawn! Blood will have blood . . ."
It charged. The cadet directly in its path grounded his spear and caught it full in the chest. It fought its way down the splintering, burning shaft, and took off half the cadet's face with a single blow. The others threw themselves on it.
Torisen half rose. "Child of Darkness!" he cried in a harsh voice not his own. "Where is my sword? Where are my—FATHER!" He crumpled to the floor and lay there without moving.
The changer fought free. In the moment before it could gather itself to charge again, the singer's staff caught it with a jolting chin-strike. It stumbled backward. She limped after it, coolly striking again and again, keeping it off balance. The others scrambled out of the way except for one cadet, either slower or cleverer than the rest, who was still on hands
and knees at the edge of the pit when the changer reached him. The singer slipped under a vicious swing and pushed the changer backward over the cadet. It fell into the pit. Sparks swirled up from the disturbed embers, lodging in its stolen clothes, igniting them. It tried to climb out, but Kendars now ringed the pit. Its skin began to char.
"Don't think you've won!" it howled from the depths. "We know now what frightens you, little lord, we knoooo . . . !"
The flame had laid bare that searing blood and now kindled it, wrapping the creature in veins of fire. It flailed about, shrieking, as the fire worked inward. Flames burst from every orifice. Then with a roar, it exploded, spraying the pit walls with burning blood and bits of charred flesh. A charnel cloud of greasy black smoke shot with red rolled up toward the ceiling.
Everyone recoiled. Soot settled on their clothing and a foul taste lingered in their mouths, but it was over. The cadets began to pull their shaken wits back together. For most of them, this had been their first serious fight, their blooding, but for none more so than the boy who had stopped the changer's initial charge. Locked in a nightmare of pain, his face ruined, all he wanted was release, the White Knife. Kindrie knelt beside him. Instead of drawing steel, however, the Shanir cupped his hands over the cadet's ravaged face. His own pale features went taut with concentration. After a long moment, the boy slipped from pain's grasp into the healing oblivion of dwar sleep. Then Kindrie turned to the Highlord.
Torisen hadn't moved. Even in the ruddy light of the fire-timbers, he looked gray with shock and scarcely seemed to be breathing. Burr had put his coat over him. Kindrie reached out hesitantly to touch his face, then stopped abruptly.
Caineron and his guards came down the stairs, weapons drawn.
* * *
IMAGES CAME AND WENT in Torisen's mind, swirling, melting into each other:
The dungeons at Urakarn: "Do you recant . . . do you profess . . ." no, no, no (the dead, rotting in piles—don't look) "Then we must convince you, for your own good." . . . gloves of red-hot wire . . . oh God, my hands! Burning, burning, the towers of Tai-tastigon, the Res aB'tyrr
(What? Where?)
. . . trapped, they're all trapped, burning alive . . . Dead. The Southern Wastes black with corpses . . . Squat figures moving among the slain, taking a leg here, a head there
. . . meat, fresh meat . . . Fifteen thousand against three million? Oh, Pereden, you fool, you god-cursed, jealous fool . . .
Burr was bending over him with a worried frown. "My lord? Tori? Hold on to me, just hold on . . ."
. . . slipping . . .
The tower keep's inner door groaned, then burst open, and black-dad warriors swarmed into the great hall, voiceless, shadowless. The defenders fell back before the silent fury of their onslaught. Tables crashed over. Benches splintered against the wall. The captain of the guard grabbed his arm.
"My lord, we can't hold these lower rooms!"
"Betrayed!" The word burst from him in a hoarse bray, and the defenders faltered, "you've all betrayed me again and again and—Can't hold, you say? Then climb, man, all of you, climb!. Make the bastards pay for every step."
And here the Darklings came, silent still, their eyes like those of the dead weary for sleep. For every one of them that fell, two more took his place, and there were so few defenders left. Up the spiral stair, through the second story maze of living quarters, leaving fallen comrades behind in every room, up again to the battlements.
The crystal dome over the solar glowed like a second moon within the hollow crown of the parapet. Dark figures swarmed over it and it cracked. He was driven back against the door of the northeast turret. There the captain fell, fighting at his side, and suddenly he was alone, ringed by still, white faces.
"You're all dead wood!" he shouted at them. "Give me something living to hew!"
"Will I do, Gray Lord?"
A man stepped forward, also black-clad but wearing the rhi-sar and steel armor of a Highborn. He grinned. His face involuntarily shifted into a wolf's leering mask.
"Keral. Oh yes, you'll do nicely."
He brought Kin-Slayer whistling down. The changer tried to counter the blow, but it shattered his blade and drove him down to one knee. Ganth's sword sheered through armor into the changer's flesh. The wound closed around the blade and blood burned it away. Keral rose, laughing.
"Poor Ganth. Can't trust anything, can you?"
The Gray Lord stared at what was left of Kin-Slayer. Then, in a burst of blind rage, he swung up the hilt-shard to strike again. An arrow caught him in the shoulder. He staggered back against the turret door.
"The Master has a question for you, Gray Lord. Answer, and he may spare your life, if not your soul. Now, where is your daughter?"
"I have none!"
Two more arrows jolted him back, nailing him to the door.
"Wrong answer. We'll look for ourselves, if you don't mind."
He bowed mockingly and left. The others followed.
The arrows wouldn't let Ganth fall. He was trapped with the agony that each breath cost him and the ever greater pain of a life finally and utterly come to ruin. They had all betrayed him, again and again and again: his people, his consort, even his son. Pain and light faded together, but into the long darkness of the unburnt dead he took his hatred and spent his last breath whispering it:
"Damn you, boy, for deserting me. Faithless, honorless . . . I curse you and cast you out. Blood and bone, you are no child of mine . . ."
No!
Torisen thought he had shouted the word, but it woke neither echoes off the stone walls nor Burr, dozing uneasily in a chair beside the bed. He was in his own chamber, he saw, lying on the bed under every blanket Burr had apparently been able to find. A fire roared in the grate, branches (fingers?) snapping, black tunnels in the red, twisting, turning, lost . . .
Torisen fought the slow drift back into nightmare. He remembered all too vividly what came next: flight through the labyrinth, sleeping city; Ganth's iron boots crashing in pursuit; "Child of Darkness! Where is my sword? Where are my . . ."
What?
His heart pounded with the dream memory of that chase, but what had it all meant? The nightmare of his father's death was the one he had fled into the Southern Wastes three years ago, the one that had caught him in that ruined city. As far as dreams go, it had made some kind of sense. But as for the other, which had first come nearly two years later . . . a child of darkness was a Shanir, and as for Kin-Slayer, he only wished he did have it, however fickle the luck it was said to bring. In fact, the second dream hardly seemed to be his at all, anymore than the one at Tagmeth had. But he didn't want to think about them, and he wouldn't. Ultimately, none of them meant anything anyway.
Somewhere in the far recesses of the apartment, stone grated on stone. Burr snapped awake and jumped up, his hand automatically going for his short sword. The sheath was empty. He stepped between the noise and his lord, poised to fight. Then abruptly his whole stance changed.
"Sir!"
"Give me a hand with this," said Harn's voice, oddly stifled.
Burr left Torisen's line of sight. He heard the randon grunt, and then the grate of stone.
"Damn near got stuck for good," said Harn's voice. "Blackie was right: I eat too much. How is he?"
Their voices sank.
"If you're discussing me," Torisen called with a touch of petulance, "talk louder."
When Harn and Burr reached the bed, he had pushed back the mound of blankets and was swinging his feet to the floor. The room faded as a wave of dizziness rolled over him. When it came back into focus, Harn was holding his shoulders, apparently to keep him from pitching forward headfirst.
". . . sure you're all right?"
"Well enough, considering. That damned wyrm."
"Wyrm?" The two Kendar exchanged glances. "What wyrm?"
"You didn't see it?" Torisen felt suddenly cold. "It must have crawled away. Damn. I thought I'd killed it."
"There's a darkling cr
awler loose in Tentir?" Harn straightened. "My cadets . . ."
"They'll all leave tomorrow, and it should have been too badly hurt to attack anyone else tonight."
"So that's what happened to you. We weren't sure."
"Sweet Trinity. You didn't think I threw a fit like that out of sheer boredom, did you?"
"Caineron said you'd gone mad."
The word hung in the air like an obscenity.
"And you weren't sure," said Torisen softly. "Like father, like son, eh?"
Burr flinched.
"Don't be daft," Harn said impatiently, with no apparent sense of incongruity. "You've got trouble enough without trying to tear strips off of us. Nusair is dead, and his father is going to accuse you of his murder. That means a blood feud, you against the entire house of Caineron, unless the High Council takes pity and declares you insane. Either way, we won't march against the Horde, and that, ultimately, may mean the end of us all."
Dark of the Moon Page 12
