Bound in Blood, page 27
"What's wrong?" Jame asked on impulse, but the Randir only turned away, Addy hissing a warning over her shoulder. At least the snake's eyes were their usual fierce orange, not black, and no alien intelligence sneered out of them
When Jame saw who was leading the class, she got a second shock. It was the Randir sargent Corvine, back from her stint of guard duty at Gothregor. She was staring at Jame with her heavy jaw set, but turned away as soon as their eyes met and clapped to gather the other cadets' attention.
"Right, my lords and ladies. Today you practice your water-flowing kantirs. Remember them, do you? Good. Take your places."
The cadets spread out evenly and assumed the first position of the First Kantir, Water-Stirs-the-Body.
The movements of this set are done slowly, at a steady pace. The essence of water lifts the body and carries it along. Currents shift it this way and that, with flowing hands and bending knees. Arms wave in an eddy, twining and untwining. To the observer, the body is borne like a dead thing on the breast of the flood, but the ease is deceptive. All depends on balance and the summoning of one's inner strength to match that of external forces.
It probably helped that not an hour before Jame had been rollicking in hot water. Her braid was still wet and tended to crack like a whip when she moved too quickly, but this kantir was too languid for that. When it ended, she let out a long sigh, as if all this time she had been holding her breath, and shook out her limbs. Throughout, she had been vaguely aware of Corvine walking up and down the lines, correcting a cadet here, a cadet there, with a tap of her baton. However, she had never come near Jame.
"Right," said Corvine. "The Second Kantir: Body-Stirs-the-Water . . . "
This set of motions proceeds at a varied pace. The stance is deeper, the moves characterized by twists and turns. One swims, now through tranquil water, now through turbulent. Power coils within, wound by each gyration. Twenty-one feet hit the floor together as all are drawn to the bottom of the whirlpool and stomp to break free. Twenty-one bodies arch toward the surface, hands knifing upward. Ah, to float for a moment, then to dive. Bend around rocks. Chase bubbles. Race fish. A roar grows that is both water and the blood in one's veins. Shoot out of the mist of the waterfall, and fall, and fall. Keep control. This is like flying, but one way only, down and down. Water leaps up. Body cleaves it. Nineteen feet hit the floor as one. Nineteen bodies arc up to the sun.
Jame straightened, breathing deeply. The pounding in her ears, of water, or her blood, subsided. Damson and a Randir cadet had lost their balance and fallen to the floor under Corvine's scornful gaze. The Randir contorted and flopped about gasping until a sharp rap of the baton brought him to his senses.
"Turned fish, did you? Now remember how to breathe and tell me where you failed."
The cadet sat up, gulping air and shaking.
"I-it was during salmon-leaps-downstream, Sar. I forgot myself. Ouch!"
Corvine had rapped him again. "That's so you'll remember. We leave ourselves at our peril. With that in mind, the Third Kantir: Body-Becomes-Water."
Most lessons didn't go this far. To become water and yet remain oneself was very tricky. It also involved movements more fluid and extreme than many cadets could manage. Jame herself had never successfully finished the set. She wondered why Corvine was pushing them so hard, but was game to try.
Again, listen for the tide in the blood, but this time it runs deeper and stronger. This is not stream but ocean, vast enough to lose oneself forever and to drown. Great billows of the deep, stitched with silver fish. The shadows of predators, the feel of their skin brushing past. Drawn by the moon, push back. Lifted by the sun, rise. Water is strong and supple. Ocean is immense—don't let it swallow you! Somewhere in it is a vast maelstrom, the size of a kingdom, there, to the north. Water roars into the gaping maw of the chaos serpent of the deeps beneath. Flow. Flee. Now the shore calls. One is back in the moon tide, rising, falling, surging forward. Ah, the sound of the breakers, the curling waves. Keep balance, keep balance . . .
Jame felt her back creak as it arched backward. Surely it would snap. Then the surf took her and she was tumbling helplessly over and over, to wash up at last on the classroom floor.
Damn, she thought, wincing as strained muscles twinged. I didn't make it.
Nor had all but one of the class. Several cadets lay twitching, salt water dribbling from their mouths. Others sat up dazed, rubbing sore joints. All who could stared at the last cadet standing, or rather floating with black hair spread out in a cloud.
Shade bent impossibly, not front to back but back to front, her spine curling over on itself in a serpentine arch. Hands came down but slid above the floor rather than on it. They spread in a swimmer's stroke. Her back uncurled, feet coming over her head. She slid along the floor on her stomach, at last coming to rest, at peace. The kantir was over.
No one clapped. All stared. Someone muttered, "Freak."
Shade came to herself and met their eyes. Her own, still slit and taut despite her loosened hair, narrowed further. Without a word, she gathered up her snake and left the room.
The class scattered soon afterward, still muttering.
"You pushed her to see what she could do," Jame said to Corvine. "Why?"
"Better to know."
"To know what? Addy could have told you that she's a Shanir. So am I, as you well know."
"This is . . . different. I don't understand it, and what I don't understand worries me."
"Do you doubt her honor?"
"No." Small eyes bore into Jame's over the set trap of a mouth. "I care," said this remarkable woman. "About her. About you. We destroy too much that is irreplaceable as it is."
"That doesn't sound like a Randir."
"I wasn't always. Someone else will tell you if I don't. I'm an Oath-breaker."
It took Jame a moment to remember what that was.
"You were a Knorth?"
"Long ago, before the White Hills. I broke faith because of my unborn child. I didn't follow my lord into exile. The Randir took me in, as they did many others of my kind. But it was all for naught: the babe was stillborn."
"I'm sorry. D'you think I blame you? The Haunted Lands were no place for a child. Tori and I were nursed by a Kendar whose infant couldn't survive those harsh, unnatural hills."
"Who?"
"Winter."
"Ah. My cousin. I always wondered. Did she teach you the Senethar as well?"
Jame laughed. "She refused. I was a lady, y'see, although I had no idea at the time what that was besides a dirty word. She taught my brother and I learned by attacking him."
Her mouth quirked, not quite into a smile. "You would."
As she turned to go, Jame called after her. "Do you remember?"
The Kendar rolled up a sleeve. On her forearm, carved deep and scarred over, was a name: Quirl.
"The flesh remembers."
Then she was gone.
VI
Jame arrived, late, for her last lesson of the day: strategy. This class was taught by an irascible, grizzled veteran in the habit of throwing his wooden hand at any inattentive student, thus earning him the distinction of being the only lecturer at the college not only capable of putting his audience to sleep but of rendering it unconscious. Today, however, was reserved for Gen and everyone was already enthusiastically engaged at their boards. Her opponent waited, his own side of the game set up and no doubt well memorized.
Timmon grinned at her. "Hello, stranger."
True, thought Jame, sliding into the chair opposite him; they had hardly met since her return from Gothregor. She had missed the Ardeth's easy manner and even his flirtations, before they had turned serious.
"Are you all right?" she asked him, reminded only as she spoke that she had inquired much the same of Shade barely two hours ago.
His smile twisted wryly. "You know how it is when something gets under your skin, an itch that you can't scratch . . . "
She cut him off. "Please. Let's not go there. I think better of you than that. Damn. I'm no good at this."
"What, at telling me you just want to be friends?"
"What's wrong with that? I'm sorry about your itch, but I'm not obligated to scratch it. Friendship wouldn't demand it."
"So, on your terms or on none?"
"Pretty much. Timmon, grow up. You can't have everything you want, at whatever cost to others. And don't tell me that your father would have taken it as his due. I'm afraid that he would."
Their whispered conversation was interrupted by a wooden missile flying between them and stunning Drie at the next table.
"Are you two going to play or not?" demanded the randon instructor, retrieving his hand. "Sorry about that," he added to the dazed cadet, whose game pieces along with his opponent's were now scattered all over the floor.
So they began.
Timmon had chosen white; perforce, she chose black. The Gen pieces were smooth, flat, river stones about two fingers' width across, and one thick. On their bottoms were indicated their rank or status: one commandant, three ten-commanders, three five-commanders, and twenty-four cadets—in essence, three ten-commands and a master-ten. Added to these were four hunters, four hazards, and one flag. The goal of Gen was either to capture this last or to end play with a higher count of survivors than one's adversary. Strategy and tactics were called for, but also memory: once the pebbles were in place, the player had to remember what each one of them represented, as well as what one deduced about the opposing pebbles by their movement and effect.
Timmon advanced a pebble from the front rank. Was it a mere cadet or an officer? Both moved only one square at a time, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It could even be a hunter, whose movements in a straight line were unlimited.
Jame moved a ten-commander.
Soon the board was busy with sliding pebbles and the players intent on their game.
Timmon attacked one of Jame's pieces by moving into its square. "Two," he said, indicating one of his cadets.
"Five." A five-commander. "Five takes two."
She removed his pebble from the board, first checking to make sure that they had both remembered correctly. If either had been wrong, their piece would have automatically been forfeit.
"They say that this is good training for the Winter War," remarked Timmon, shifting another piece. "Two again."
"Ten. Ten takes two. What Winter War?"
His eyes flickered up to hers, for a moment lit by unholy glee. He loved to catch her out on Tentir lore.
"You mean you haven't heard . . . you don't know . . . ?"
"Five."
"Thirty. Thirty takes five."
So that was where his commandant was, well to the back. It was worth a five-commander to learn that. Had he placed his major player next to the stationary flag? She would have to watch what pieces didn't move and hope that they weren't decoy hazards.
"As to the Winter War, no and no. So tell."
Timmon practically wriggled with delight. He could be cute when he wasn't trying.
"Every Mid-Winter's Day, the whole college stages a campaign, to test our skills, to ward off cabin fever, to give us points toward our eventual placement as second-year cadets. Usually there are two teams. This year there will be three comprised of three houses each. That's nine flags, rated according to each house's importance. You have to protect your own three and try to get the other six. Failing that, you do as much damage to your opponents as possible."
"Damage as in actually hurting them?" She slid one of her pebbles halfway across the board. "Hunter."
"Hazard."
He drew out his deck of hazard cards, each lovingly illustrated, and offered them to her. She drew a card.
"Rathorn."
"How appropriate. Whatever happened to that rogue rathorn Gorbel stormed off to hunt?"
He meant Death's-head. "The last Gorbel saw of him, he was being washed away by a flash flood."
With her clinging to his back, she didn't add. That had been the first time she had "ridden the rathorn," not that she really counted it a success except in that she had prevented the wretched beast from drowning himself.
"So, is your hunter going to conjure up a flood?"
"That would have too widespread an effect on other players. Besides, the referee would consider it impossible." She meant he of the wooden hand, whom no one wanted commandeering their game, however wild it got outside his classroom. "Let's say she climbs a tree."
"Fair enough. That keeps both stones stationary until either she comes down or the rathorn wanders off—at my pleasure, of course."
"Of course. It's your hazard, but watch your own pieces if you set it loose."
He snorted. As if I need to be told. In the meantime, she had effectively lost the use of one hunter. Odd that such important pieces only ranked one point each.
"Damage." He reverted to her previous question. "That depends. Usually it's enough to incapacitate an enemy by seizing his or her token scarf. Lethal weapons are forbidden, which probably includes your claws, my lady, but things can still get rough. That's why certain randon wander around masked, therefore technically invisible, to see that we don't all slaughter each other. But it is a time traditionally to settle grudges, so walk wary. Ten."
"Hazard."
"Good-bye, ten." He slid a piece several squares into the vacated place. "Hunter."
"Same hazard." She drew out her own deck of cards, reluctantly, since they were little more than words scrawled on slips of paper. A game such as this of Long Gen took up to two hours, time she seldom had to spare. In Short Gen, to attack any hazard piece was instant death.
Timmon drew a slip. "Avenger in the wall," he read. "What in Perimal's name does that mean?"
Jame had no idea. She hadn't written that particular card. Shuffling through her deck, she found several more additions: "Guilt in a small room." "Bloody hands." And a small, almost furtive scrawl: " . . . help me . . . "
Puzzled and disturbed, she laid the cards aside for future study and offered the deck again to Timmon. He drew another slip.
"Well mouth with teeth. That's almost as bad. 'Well' as in 'healthy'?"
"No. As in you drop a bucket into it." She had been thinking of hazards she had faced herself, including the River Snake's maw under the well at Kithorn. "Think of it as a pitfall that's very hard to climb out of."
"All right. My player—a two, by the way—disappears to the realms of mystery, otherwise known as your lap."
"Funny. Wait a minute. You said there will be three teams. Who leads them?"
This time his smile glinted with something almost like malice. "Didn't I say? Why, we three lordan, of course: you, me, and Gorbel."
VII
The game ended badly for Jame, who couldn't quite keep her mind on it. Neither flag was captured, but she had spent so many senior pieces defending it that she lost due to pure attrition. Timmon, on the other hand, had played mostly with his cadets until he spotted a target worthy of attack. That was something worth remembering.
But a board game was one thing. How in Perimal's name was she supposed to command three houses in a potentially dangerous campaign?
It had taken her all summer and most of the fall to become an effective master-ten to her own barracks and even so, she still had doubts about her ability. Tentir was supposed to be teaching her how to lead. For Trinity's sake, she was not just a randon cadet but her brother's lordan. Jame sighed. On the whole, she still felt more like a hunter than a commandant.
