Seeker's Mask, page 23
"That's a weirdingstrom," said Cattila, glaring at the again invisible Ear. "A bad one. I sent one of my pets to investigate, but she never came back, did she, Precious?"
This last was addressed to the foxkin, who "quipped" unhappily.
Why, she's bound to that creature, Jame realized, perhaps to the entire colony. So that's how she learned that I'm not ticklish.
"I've seen patches of weirding," she said. "Is this so much worse?"
"Is a cataract worse than a raindrop? What do they teach you girls at Gothregor these days? Listen: the Three-Faced God created the Chain of Creation out of the chaos of Perimal Darkling, yes?"
"Er . . . ." said Jame, startled. She had always understood that the Enemy was an invader from outside the Chain.
"Listen! The Merikit say that this world rests on the back of a great chaos serpent, left over from the beginning. Its mouth is the great maelstrom called the Maw, that drinks the Eastern Sea. Its offspring run like veins under the earth and water. Some call weirding the Serpent's breath. When it passes over the land, the Serpent's brood awakes, and that includes the River Snake, which lies under the Silver. The first time that happened, the Merikit sent down a hero to subdue the monster. They'll be preparing to dispatch another one now, none too soon. Hear that rumble? North of here, the very face of the earth is changing."
Did the old woman really believe such superstition? But then again, was it? As she had traveled the Riverland's wilderness, stranger thoughts had occurred to Jame. What was it which she herself seen on the river bottom when the willow had dunked her?
"If there's going to be an earthquake that bad," she said, "not to mention a weirdingstrom, this tower can't be very safe."
"The quake we'll have to risk. Worse, to be caught out in the weirding. The oldest buildings like this will be all right in the storm: they're built on hill fort ruins, and those ancestors of the Merikit knew how to stay put. But any additions may be swept away. Good riddance, too! A trap and a snare, this valley has been to us all. Without it, we'll have to resettle the border keeps where we should have been all along, guarding against the shadows."
"But what about your Kendar?"
"Safe in the tower, aren't they?"
" Well, no. They're all out sleepwalking in the square."
The old woman stared at her, toothless mouth opening, closing, opening again. "Well! Got 'em drunk, has he? The lord of this house, not man enough to hold his own hangover. Oh, how could he have been so careless, tonight of all nights?"
"I think," said Jame slowly, "that I know."
She would rather have kept quiet—it would certainly have been safer—but she felt that she owed an explanation to someone. So, haltingly, she told the story: how Caldane had taken her prisoner at the Cataracts, how she had slipped something into the wine which he had offered her and tricked him into drinking, how that "something," mysterious crystals taken from a Builder's house in the Anarchies, had affected M'lord:
"He started to hiccup and then to float, this, with only a canvas roof between him and open sky. He's terrified of heights. Imagine, drifting up and away, higher and higher and higher . . . . When would he come down again, and how fast? Matriarch, what can I say? He panicked."
"When?" demanded Brier suddenly emerging from the shadows.
"Er . . . that would have been the thirtieth of winter. He was still 'not quite feeling in touch with things' on the thirty-first, nor probably for some time after that. Why?"
Cattila had been peering at the big Kendar, smacking her gums thoughtfully. "Brier Iron-thingie, isn't it? I never forget a voice."
"But . . . . Matriarch, we've never met."
"We needn't have. I sit in my garden at the shaft's mouth. Nothing goes on below that I don't overhear."
A dull glow kindled in the Kendar's brown face. "Well, then. You know how angry Lord Caineron was with me, how he swore he would never let me either progress in his service or leave it. His grip is . . . very strong. I didn't think anyone could break it."
"But you must have," Jame protested. "At the Cataracts."
"Yes, lady. Now I understand how. He was . . . distracted."
"Meaning he was probably tethered to the floor having hysterics," said Jame. Then her amusement died. "Matriarch, I listened to his Kendar in the square tonight, unconsciously mouthing his hidden thoughts. He tells himself over and over that he's recovered, that it will never happen again—but underneath he's terrified that it will, and he's trying to bury that fear under excess. That's the reason for his carelessness, and for your danger. I'm sorry for the latter, but by God I had cause for what I did and if need be, I'd do it again."
She stopped, defiant, braced for the old woman's wrath.
Cattila had been making noises like a tea kettle coming to a boil.
"Heh!" she said now, with an explosive venting of stream which made her bob in her chair. "Heh, heh! 'Not quite feeling in touch with things,' eh? Bouncing around the rafters, more likely. Heh, heh, heh! Face like a dinner plate with frog eyes, I beg. Heh, ha, ho . . . hiccupping . . . hooo!"
"I'm glad it amuses you," said Jame weakly, as the Caineron Matriarch beat the arm of her chair with a puffball fist and crowed like a cockerel. "I wish it helped."
Cattila snuffled into the end of the message scarf and blew her nose on it to regain self-control. "Maybe it does, girl. It shows again, as with that boy who jumped, that the bond between Caldane and his Kendar can only take so much strain. T'cha. That idiot won't raise a fat finger to protect his people tonight. They must be free, to save themselves."
"But Brier wanted to break away," Jame protested. "The Kendar below don't."
"That's why they've held on this long. If my darling Caldane were to lose control again, though, and push them too far . . . ."
"Many might wrench free despite themselves."
"Or go mad," said Brier Iron-thorn grimly, "or die."
"It would take a genuine, destructive influence to bring that about," Cattila said, no longer laughing. "A nemesis."
Jame gaped at her. The Nemesis, of course, was That-Which-Destroys, the third face of Kencyr god. A nemesis was a Shanir who didn't quite make the apotheosis, apparently because the other two aspects of the Tyr-ridan, Creation and Preservation, hadn't yet manifested themselves.
"Now wait a minute . . . ."
A low rumble interrupted her.
"Queee!" said the foxkin, and streaked out an open window, Jorin crouched flat, ears back. Below in the compounds, dogs began to howl.
Then, ever so slightly, the tower started to sway.
Jame staggered. For one appalling moment, she knew exactly what terror Caldane had felt, so high up, with such a distance to fall. Behind her, she heard Brier swear.
The swaying stopped. The rumble faded to no more than an echo in the bones.
Cattila had hunched down in her chair, eyes screwed shut. "A nemesis," she repeated. One eye popped open to regard Jame balefully. "If I were you, girl, I'd get on with it."
What could one say to that? Jame bowed and turned to leave, but on the threshold the matriarch's voice stopped her:
"Why, it's for you!"
Cattila was holding up the lace section, which had at last reached her fingers. " 'Don't walk,' " she read out-loud. " 'Run. My turn comes next. You shouldn't have stolen my imu.' "
Jame boggled. "Imu? Your . . . ?" The earthy smell, the dirty nails, the proclivity to eavesdrop . . . . "M-mother Ragga? Is that you?"
" 'Step-mother to you, if that,' " Cattila read, from stitches knit half an hour before.
Jame shook her head as though to clear it. To imagine that the Earth Wife's lodge was following her was one thing: but what in Perimal's name was its mistress doing in the service of a matriarch, much less serving as her Ear on the very Council of Matriarchs?
"Earth-wife, listen: I did not steal . . . ."
" 'Don't talk. Run. Here I come.' "
Jame bolted outside, followed by Brier and no one else.
Dammit, she thought, stopping, feeling profoundly foolish. Those two old women had really spooked her, and for what? The night seemed normal again, the tower rock steady. Foxkin still flitted nervously around the shaft's mouth, but the dogs had stopped howling. A babble of voices floated up from the hall below:
"You're drunk."
"I tell you, it moved!"
"Didn't."
"Did."
"Didn't."
"DID!"
"Look," said Brier.
She was pointing toward the roofline of Cattila's cottage, black against a faint glow beyond. Dawn? But it was far too early, and in the wrong direction.
They circled the building.
From this height, one should have seen the northern reaches of the Silver, a glinting, sinuous ribbon threading back into the dark hills. Instead, a vast river of luminous mist flowed down the valley, filling it from slope to slope. Ruined Tagmeth showed black against it for a moment, as small with distance as a toy, and then was swallowed. Farther back, against a pitch-black sky, peaks emerged like islands in a slowly boiling sea. A continuous grinding noise came from its hidden depths—faint, distant, ominous.
"Is it moon-dark?" the Kendar asked. "Has this world fallen into shadows at last?"
The weirdingstrom must be loosening knots of tension in the ground as it came, Jame thought, sending tremors on ahead of it. As good an explanation as any for the River Snake's writhing.
"It's more a case of Rathillien rising," she said, "which isn't good news for us either. And that tidal wave of mist is coming fast. Damn! If it isn't one thing, it's another. C'mon."
"Take the boat!" Cattila called after them. "God's teeth and toenails, Knorth, Lyra Lack-wit was right: things do happen around you!"
VII
The ten-command waited uneasily where it had been left, under drifting petals.
Jame knelt beside Graykin. Difficult, in this light, to see if he had regained any color, but his breathing was more regular than it had been and his skin less clammy to the touch. After all, she reminded herself, he was half-Kencyr; the shock once past, his recovery should be rapid.
"Good work," she said, grudgingly, to Kindrie, who looked startled at the compliment.
As for the cadets, however, the boy taken ill on the stair had been sick again with the tower's movement and several others looked distinctly unwell. Mistrusting their stomachs if not their nerves, Brier stopped them at the stair-head and descended alone, cautiously, into chambers of her former lord.
The Kendar moved well for someone so large, Jame thought, leaning over the upper rail to listen, but not as quietly as she herself would have done—not that Iron-thorn obviously thought her capable of anything but causing trouble. Odd, to be considered inferior and superior simultaneously. It reminded her, with a painful jolt, how she and Marc had parted without finding a balance between her new-found Highborn blood and his Kendar, after all they had been through together.
Roofless and rootless . . . how could she live among her own people—or anywhere else—without equals, without friends?
Iron-thorn reached the foot of the stair, turned toward the balcony, and froze.
"Well, well, well," said Lord Caineron's voice.
Jame leaned farther over the rail, holding her breath, gesturing urgently for the cadets behind her to keep back. The burnished crown of the Kendar's head was a dozen feet below her. Caldane remained out of sight, but he must be very close.
"Brier Iron-thorn," purred his hated voice. "How kind of you to drop in, just when another randon candidate has . . . er . . . dropped out. But I forgot. Pretending to be a Knorth now, aren't you? Not easy, is it, with Caineron blood in your veins? Not possible, I should think. Come, girl: we both know where the real power lies."
His voice had grown thick and deep. Jame's skin crawled. There was real power here, stripped to its ruthless core by days of self-indulgence, enough to shake even those of a different lineage. For the first time, she understood how Caldane could have ordered that young man to do what he had done to Graykin and be obeyed.
"Shall we resume where we left off?" Lord Caineron was saying. "Would you like to reapply as a Caineron candidate? Let's see your obedience, girl. ON YOUR KNEES."
Brier Iron-thorn made a choking noise. She crashed down as though the legs had been chopped out from under her.
"Kendar are bound by mind or by blood. Such a handsome woman as you, though, deserves to be bound more . . . pleasurably. By seed . . . ."
Cloth rustled.
This is obscene, Jame thought, and shouted, "Iron-thorn, move!"
Brier looked up with a start, and threw herself aside barely in time. Jame landed where she had knelt.
"BOO!" she shouted in Lord Caineron's face.
"Hic!" he said, recoiling.
Jewelled slippers flew off as he thrashed, hiccupping, inches above the floor. Peacock blue sleeves flapped like broken wings on wind-milling arms.
"Hic!"
Pudgy hands leaped up to clamp futilely over his mouth. Small eyes boggled over ring-encrusted fingers.
Highborn, thought Jame, and prodded him in the stomach with a long, black-sheathed finger.
"HIC!"
He bobbed helplessly away from her, beginning to tilt sideways. A sudden stench filled the air as fear-twisted bowels let go.
Rotten, stinking Highborn.
Behind her, she heard Brier say hoarsely, "Don't . . . ." but ignored her.
"Make sport of decent Kendar, will you?" she demanded, following Caldane, jabbing at him. "Play God almighty in your high tower, huh? Well, the next time the urge takes you, remember me. And this. And keep looking down."
Caldane looked, and screamed. He was over the balcony rail. Under his feet was nothing but empty space—all the way to the foul waters of the pit some two hundred feet below.
Jame watched, savoring every detail: the gaudy, flailing figure; the inarticulate cries; the loosened, befouled trousers tangling around plump ankles, falling off. She didn't at first recognize her berserker flare, pure, cold, and deadly as it was, like the chill bite of poisoned wine. This wasn't the brute rage which she had previously known. Use had refined it, could refine it further still, she realized, into an instrument of terrible power. Was this intoxication what it felt like to be truly herself . . . a nemesis? Very well.
Or perhaps not: in Brier's face she saw her enemy's terror reflected and heard his screams echo from other throats in the hall below. Ancestors only knew what was going on among his Kendar, down in the square. Damn all Highborn anyway, herself most of all. What right did any of them have to respect, much less to friendship?
White knuckled, Brier gripped the rail to anchor herself. Caldane's panic had plunged her into the reeling world of a height-sickness which she hadn't known she possessed.
I am not a Caineron, she told herself, gulping down nausea, clutching at control. I am not.
A cold hand caught her chin and turned her head, neck muscles creaking like ironwood in winter's grip. Gray eyes shaded with silver smiled into her own.
"You don't know what you've done," she heard herself croak.
"I seldom do," said that husky voice, burred with destruction. "But I do it anyway. This is what I am, Brier Iron-thorn. Remember that."
The silver stare held her a moment more, then let go as the other turned.
Brier stumbled back a step, catching the rail, braced for nausea. Caldane had begun to turn bare bottom up despite frantic efforts to snag him from the balcony below, but the world didn't spin with him. That slim, cold hand had wrenched her free of the Caineron, perhaps forever.
Dammit, Brier thought. She should have been able to do that herself, as she had at the Cataracts . . . .
No. Even there, it seemed, she'd had help. It hadn't been her own strength at all, of which she had been so proud after so many humiliations. Damn all Highborn anyway, who could jerk her about like . . . like that Southland's bastard, a puppet on strings.
Out in the shaft, the foxkin had found a new playmate.
"Ticklish," said the Knorth, watching. "Good. Now, what's this about a boat?"
VIII
Caldane's boathouse was a chamber hollowed out of the mound at its base, dimly lit by diamantine panels. In the black water of the slip floated a ceremonial barge, some fifty feet long by twelve wide, with six oars to a side, fixed upright at rest. A small head on a long, serpentine neck arched over its prow. Its sides were figured with wings, which swept upward at the stern. Between the wing-tips, on the poop, was a raised dais and on this, a throne under a velvet canopy. Ripples of light danced on the ebon waters; shadows lay across the shining gunwales and deck. The entire craft, from avian figurehead to rudder oar, was sheathed in gold.
