What I know, lady . . . is that fewer of us walk the Grayland . . . than we did a day ago. I would know . . . why.”
The Gray Lands was the border between life and death where some Kencyr found themselves trapped if their remains were not given to the pyre. To Jame, from her glimpses of it, it looked much like the accursed Haunted Lands surrounding the keep where she and her brother had been born during their father’s bitter exile.
“It came to my attention,” she said carefully, circling the fire to keep it between herself and the haunt, “that those death banners woven from the blood-stained clothes of their subjects had snared their souls in the weave. Not all Knorth wished to remain so trapped. I offered them freedom.”
“Oblivion, you mean . . . with a torch’s flame.”
“They chose to embrace it. I forced no one. By the way, if I might point out, you yourself stand in imminent danger of immolation.”
“Ah.” Ashe looked down at the hem of her robe, which was beginning to smolder where cinders from the fire had fallen on it. She paused to consider, then thumped out the sparks with the iron-shod foot of her staff. “Someday, perhaps . . . but not just yet. Life is still . . . too interesting.”
Jame was suddenly enlightened. “You hope to see it through to the coming of the Tyr-ridan and the Master’s second fall.”
“If fall . . . he does. What singer willingly . . . leaves a song unfinished?”
“And I already know that you think I may become Nemesis, the Third Face of our God.”
Ashe spread her hands. Several fingertips were missing. “Who else . . . is there?”
Indeed, there were only three pure-blooded Knorth left—herself, her brother, and their first cousin Kindrie, who had only recently discovered that he was legitimate. However, each had to recognize and accept his or her role for the Tyr-ridan to be complete. Torisen had no idea that he might become That-Which-Creates. Given how he felt about the Shanir, that was bound to come as a shock. Kindrie guessed that as a healer he was destined to become Argentiel, Preservation, and the thought horrified him. She was closest to fulfilling the position for which thirty millennia of her people’s history had sought to prepare her, but—Ancestors, please!—not just yet.
She looked sharply at the singer. “You’re here to try to talk me into staying away from the hills.”
“Think . . . what you may someday mean to your people. Should you risk yourself . . . for such foolishness?”
“Ashe, last Summer’s Eve you witnessed the Merikits’ rites. You know that they deal with real power, however alien it is to us. And we need this world’s good will in order to live here. I didn’t choose to become the Earth Wife’s Favorite, you know. It was literally thrust upon me. Now every time I miss a ritual, something goes wrong. Besides, didn’t you once say that only a Kencyr can kill a Tyr-ridan?”
“So an old song claims. But at present . . . you are only a nemesis . . . not the definite article.”
“So I should be wrapped in cotton until fate decides? Ashe, I can’t live that way. There’s too much to do.
Ashe sighed. “Can you at least . . . try to use . . . a little common sense?”
Jame smiled, her thin lips tugged further awry by the scar across one cheek bone, a present of the Women’s World. “I can try, but you know me: if I knew what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t be doing it.”
A muffled cry full of terror rose from the barracks below.
Jame cursed. “I knew we were going to give Niall nightmares. I’ve a cadet to comfort, then a few hours of dwar to catch before I leave for Kithorn. Ashe, please go away and do whatever it is you do instead of sleeping.”
She left the apartment as the frightened cry sounded again and other voices rose in drowsy protest.
Ashe grounded her staff and shook her grizzled head. “Some nemesis,” she muttered.
II
Winter Solstice
Four fantastic figures gamboled by torchlight in the snowy courtyard of ruined Kithorn.
One, short and stocky, wore a gaudy skirt and goat udders that slapped against his bare, sweating chest as he pirouetted about the square.
Another fluttered around him with black feathers sewn to every inch of his clothing, ruffled by the cold wind into cat’s-paw waves.
A third figure smeared all over in charcoal stalked them both on tiptoe with exaggerated caution.
Under their feet crawled the fourth, shrouded in the head-and-skin cape of a huge catfish.
The Burnt Man popped up in front of the Earth Wife (who shrieked) and shoved ”her” backward over the Eaten One’s scaly form while the Falling Man flapped in protest. Then they were all up again, panting smoky clouds, circling each other like carnival clowns.
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
Why are they playing the fool? wondered Jame from the snowy hollow outside the gatehouse where she crouched. Didn’t they know how dangerous it could be to mock the Four?
They weren’t drunk, she decided, watching their lurching, desperate sport. They were exhausted. It must be nearly dawn, the solstice night almost past. How long had they been cavorting, and for what audience?
Jame lowered herself in the depression and peered upward through the gatehouse. Something sat on the shattered tower of Kithorn, as if on a throne, something huge, defined against the moonless night sky only by the glowing fissures in his skin. Jame’s own skin crawled. The Burnt Man himself brooded over the shambling shamans below.
Well, whatever their game, she knew better than to disturb it.
She was about to push herself up to leave when a burnt, sizzling stick was thrust into the snow inches from her face. No, not a stick. A bone—more specifically the knobby end of a human humerus. Clumps of charred flesh clung to it near the shoulder, and to the half-skeletal body to which it was attached.
A blunt, blind head swung inches over her head as if questing. Fire had burned away its nose and sheared off its lips from yellow, snaggle teeth. The remaining flesh crackled and split as it moved, expelling waves of heat and a pyric stench. Other forms shuffled around the hollow in various stages of combustion.
The Burning Ones, thought Jame, trying not to breathe, holding very still. The Burnt Man’s hunting pack.
Their usual prey were kin-slayers. While they could neither see nor smell, they could track guilt.
Vant, she thought, and the ravaged head swung toward her.
“Huh!” it said, snorting out chunks of its own charred lungs.
The cadet’s death in the fire pit of Tentir still haunted her. As unpleasant as he had been, he hadn’t deserved such an end, nor should it interest the Burnt Man’s servants in her. Yes, Vant had been bone-kin, the grandson of her wretched uncle Greshan, but she hadn’t been there when he died. It wasn’t her fault . . . or was it? Vant would never have tackled her brother Torisen if he hadn’t thought that he was striking at her. She was the one whose very existence had driven him to such behavior, even though it was Tori whom he had nearly killed. For that matter, why had he been so clumsy? Rue had told her that it almost looked as if he had been pushed.
The Burning One cocked his head as if testing her thoughts. It doubted her innocence. She almost agreed.
Then a yelp in the square drew its attention. The creature swung about and shambled toward the gatehouse on the knobs of its truncated limbs, followed by the others.