The Earth Wife puffed out her cheeks with indignation looking (if she had known it) like an elderly, female version of Gorbel. “All of your precious keeps sit on ground similar to surrounding areas, don’t they? I have access to those.”
“Similar, yes, but not exactly the same. Mother, I say again, let be. We needn’t fight, and I do need the materials you’ve been good enough to provide.” This last, in a sidelong plea to Torisen, who looked ready to pitch the Earth Wife out on her ear, preferably through the empty window frame.
With an effort, Torisen regained most of the control that he had momentarily lost.
“Indeed, lady, we value your help and friendship, not that I exactly understand who or what you are. If Marc speaks for you, I accept his word that you mean no harm or disrespect.”
Her small, black eyes glittered up at him and her mouth spread in a gaping, toothless grin more disconcerting than her previous ire. “Oh, I respect you, boy, if only because you’ve survived that sister of yours for so long. Whether the rest of us will is still in question. As for harm, we’ll see, won’t we?”
Again, Marc felt it time to interpose. “Er . . . Mother Ragga, I’ve just noticed: neither the old map nor the new include the Western Lands. I’ve heard tell that there used to be Kencyr border keeps there, garrisoned by minor families, but it’s been generations since we heard from them. You do know what’s out there, don’t you?”
“Of course I know, or would if I bothered to look. The Central Lands are my home. Enough goes on there, not to mention here in the north, to keep me busy.”
Torisen had been tracing the chalked western line of the map, from the Snowthorns down the spine of another range to the Southern Wastes.
“What about Urakarn?” he asked abruptly.
“That nasty place? Why should anyone want anything to do with it?”
“I don’t know. It still gives me nightmares. But if my sister graduates from Tentir, she’s likely to be assigned to the Southern Host at Kothifir.”
“So? That’s hundreds of miles from the Black Keep.”
“Put Jame within a hundred leagues of such a mystery and she’s bound to seek it out.”
“I hope not,” said Marc, not sounding at all sure. “If we go by likes and dislikes, though, there are going to be lots of blind spots on the map. Oh, I can make do with normal glass. I’ll have to, to fill the frame. Still, one way or another, this isn’t going to look anything like the original or, to the casual eye, like a map at all.”
Torisen suddenly laughed. “It will give the High Council one more reason to question my sanity, or at least my taste in cartography.”
With that, the Earth Wife departed, still grumbling. Marc watched her go, then turned to the Highlord.
“Have you any experience scrying, lad?”
“None whatsoever, nor do I want to try.”
The very thought roused his long-held dislike of any information covertly obtained by a betrayal of trust. Doubtless he was being overly squeamish, just because Adric had spied on him through Burr from the time he entered the Ardeth lord’s service until Burr had left it.
Still, he found himself staring at the patch of red that represented the heart of Tentir and continued to do so, seeing nothing, until night turned it black.
Early the next morning, Torisen joined his servant Burr in the subterranean stable with Aerulan’s banner, rolled up and sheathed, slung across his back and the wolver pup Yce on his heels. He looked haggard.
“I didn’t sleep well,” he said in answer to the Kendar’s questioning look. “Too many strange dreams.”
Burr accepted this warily, no doubt remembering how often in the past his lord hadn’t slept at all for days on end to avoid certain dreams. They always caught up with him in the end, though. It was something new that he spoke of them at all, even without details.
Torisen’s black war-horse Storm was already saddled and a sturdy bay for his servant. Rowan and others had begged to go with him, but he had turned them down. Given his will, he would have ridden out completely alone and unnoticed, not watched by so many covert, anxious eyes. He felt the weight of his people’s concern, and it irked him, as well as he understood it. The only thing worse than having their lord forget their names was to lose him altogether. For once, though, he was going to be selfish and suit himself.
As the day brightened and began to warm, they rode down the east bank Old Road, infrequently passing other travelers. In particular, Brandan’s supply wagons were on the move, following their lord home to Falkirr. Guards rode with them and saluted Torisen, looking startled, as he passed. They would have a long day of it, whereas a post rider with remounts could have made the same distance in two hours. At a modest pace, Torisen expected to spend the better part of the day on the road, and looked forward to it, if not necessarily to arriving at the end. The creak of tack and Storm’s easy movement soothed him. Moreover, he had had precious little time to enjoy the autumn’s blaze of color, even when riding to the hunt.
His shadow kept pace with him on the ground. Glancing at it, he was startled to see that two rode the war-horse, the second a slim figure behind him on the saddle. Ah well. It wasn’t the first time he had ridden with the dead. Aerulan’s banner lay in a band of warmth across his back as might her arm. He could almost feel her eager breath in his ear. She at least had no hesitation about this mission.
His thoughts drifted back to the previous night’s dreams. Some of them were familiar. The Haunted Lands keep:
He had been playing hide—and-seek with his sister and found her in their parents’ bedchamber. Mother had been long gone by then and their father half-mad with seeking her, yet Torisen had seen her, dancing in the mirror, and would have gone to her through the silvered glass if Jame hadn’t stopped him.
He had turned on her. “Don’t you understand? If Mother comes back, Father will leave us alone. If she doesn’t, sooner or later he’s going to kill us!”
“ ‘Destruction begins with love’?”
“Yes! Now let me go!”
But she hadn’t. They had fought and she had tipped him onto the bed, which had collapsed under him, stunning him with its falling footboard. By the time he recovered, she was gone, driven out by their father.
The Cataracts, with the changer Tirandys writhing on the ground and a girl bending over him in tears:
“Who in Perimal’s name are . . . oh no. Don’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid so. Hello, brother.”
Kithorn in ruins:
“Your friend Marc warned me that I would probably find the Riverland reduced to rubble and you in the midst of it, looking apologetic.”
“Er . . . sorry.”
Old dreams, all of them. But then had come a new, baffling set of images:
Four hands weaving a golden, living form with the orange glint of an adder’s eye.
A cadet prancing, flailing at his back: “ . . . get it off, get it off, GET IT OFF!”
A foot obscenely wrapped in writhing, fibrous growth.
A card, on which was written, “Do you want the world to end?”
A hand drawing patterns in blood on a supine female body . . .
He knew that lithe form. That cloud of black hair. His sister’s face. Her hand reached out to him and his to her through a curtain of red ribbons. But was that his hand? Where were the scars? A flash of steel and spurting blood . . . ah!
That had woken him with a start, in a cold sweat, his sister’s voice purring after him down the fading corridors of sleep:
“You have woken destruction. Now come to meet it. First, my uncle’s coat. Now my uncle’s shirt. And now, I think, your skin.”
He had not slept again that night.
They stopped around noon to share bread, cheese, and apples, washed down with a stream’s cold, clear water while Yce happily cracked open the meaty bone that Torisen had brought along for her and rasped out the marrow.