Near Falkirr they passed another party traveling south across the Silver on the New Road.
“Who’s that on the white horse being chased by a pink canopy?” asked the wolver, craning to look. “At that pace, she’ll be lucky not to break her neck.”
“I think it’s Adric’s daughter, Lady Distan, probably come from visiting her son Timmon at Tentir. Why the haste, I have no idea.”
They camped off the road for a short night and arrived between Wilden and Shadow Rock by noon the next day.
Of the scrollsman expert, there was as yet no sign.
Holly, on the other hand, was overjoyed at their arrival.
“You see how it is.”
He gestured to the contested ground. Formerly, it had been a large, flat region surrounded by a meander-loop of the Silver. Enfolding it on either side were a pair of pincerlike bluffs claimed by the Randir, studded with rotting stumps. However, the tip of the northern bluff had given way in a landslide into the river, diverting it across the loop’s hundred-foot-wide neck. The Danior held the western bank of the new cut while the Randir hovered across the old riverbed, now fed only by runoff from Wilden’s moat and bidding fair to become an oxbow lake. Between the old course and the new, lay a deep meadow currently overwhelmed with silt, but already showing green shoots of lush grass.
“The field is too muddy for fighting,” Holly added, “or we would have been at each other’s throats by now.”
“Grimly, go take a look upriver,” Torisen told the wolver. “Yce, you can let go now. Holly, can you spare me enough planks to build a platform for a tent?”
Thus the Highlord set up his camp between the two forces in the middle of the muddy field, precariously, on quaking, oozing ground reached by plank pathways.
“No sign of a shwupp infestation, at least,” he remarked to Rowan. “I suppose the grass roots are too tough for them to chew through.”
“Perhaps. These are creatures that can gnaw through solid bone, though. Just stay off the marsh.”
Lord Danior and a representative from Lord Kenan met in the tent’s reception chamber at dusk, but not hospitably over dinner as Torisen had hoped. He was also disappointed that Lord Randir himself didn’t attend. His spokesman was a sleek Highborn named Wither with a gold ring in one ear and the filed eyeteeth that signaled his joint allegiance to Lady Rawneth. Torisen had heard that politics among the Randir were complicated and unconventional, but also that mother and son usually spoke as one. He wondered again about the Knorth oath-breakers like Sargent Corvine who had taken shelter in Wilden after Ganth’s fall. To whom among the Randir did they owe their allegiance?
Wither sipped his wine. “A fine vintage, my lord. From your own vineyards?”
“Hardly, since I have none. This comes from the Southern Lands.”
“Ah. We had heard that Brandan funds have allowed you to improve your cellar.”
Torisen’s smile tightened. Trust the Randir to rub his nose in his debt to the Brandan—or rather in theirs to him.
“Personally,” he said, “I prefer cider.”
“As does Lord Brandan. Shall we proceed? The issue seems simple enough to us. The Silver has always served as the border between keeps, so the border changes with the river. As you see.” He indicated the rushing cut with a wave of his hand. “Your objection, my lord?”
Holly put down his cup. “This bottomland has been ours for generations. We developed it into the rich source of hay that it is now.”
“Yet the flood has washed away your dikes.”
“As it has many times before. We always rebuild.”
“Has the river shifted this much before?” asked Torisen.
“Never. The northern bluff has always diverted it and then the swoop of the land has carried it eastward, as you see from the old bed, until it bends back westward around the southern bluff. If the Randir hadn’t logged those hillocks bare, they wouldn’t be crumbling now.”
Wither examined his nails. “Do you blame us, then?”
Holly only glared. Although he had dealt with the Randir all of his life, he couldn’t match them in polish or wiles.
Soon after, Wither left, with the understanding that they would wait for the expert’s opinion.
Holly stared out over the moonlit ground, gleaming silver under a sheen of water. “We get most of our hay from that field,” he said bleakly. “I don’t know if we can survive the winter without it. You think it’s hopeless, don’t you?”
“I don’t immediately see what I can do,” said Torisen. “The Randir have a good argument. They want it ratified, though, and respected by the rest of the High Council. Maybe Trishien’s scholar can give us an edge.”
“If not, it won’t look good for you either, will it? I’m your bone cousin. You should be able to defend my interests.”
“I will if I can.” Torisen sighed. “Perhaps a lord like Caldane can ride roughshod over his neighbors—in truth, he doesn’t seem to know how to ride any other way—but in a Highlord it would be seen as a sign of weakness.”
This time Holly sighed. “Yes, of course I know that. You do realize, I hope, that your overthrow or death would plunge the entire Kencyrath into chaos.”
Torisen paused to consider that. He supposed it was true, given that the only other purebred Knorth in the Kencyrath was his sister Jame. If he fell, would anyone propose her as Highlady? It seemed unlikely, unless the randon stood behind her. A quiver of jealousy ran through him. They might . . . as they had supported him? Not quite. She was nearly one of them now, as he had never been.
His warning given, Holly retreated to Shadow Rock.
Torisen stood for some time regarding the sparkling lights of the two keeps on either side of him, each up its own slot valley, then went to bed.
Something woke him in the small hours of the night: a splash, a muffled cry. Under the cot, the wolver growled and Yce sat up at its foot, ears pricked.
Torisen rose, knife in hand. At the outer flap he found Burr, Rowan, and most of his escort, the rest presumably guarding the tent’s far side.
“What?” he breathed in Rowan’s ear.
The Kendar shook her head, still listening intently. The moon had either set or been overwhelmed with clouds, for it was very dark. Neither Wilden nor Shadow Rock showed more than a star-dusting of dim lights, barely enough to distinguish the bulk of each fortress from its enclosing valley. A faint breeze stirred the tent’s canvas.
. . . bloop . . . bloop, bloop . . .
The listeners stirred. More plopping sounds came from every part of the meadow.
“It seems that I spoke too soon about the lack of shwupp,” said Torisen.
“But what are they after?” asked a young guard nervously.
“We’ll find out in the morning,” said Rowan, “or not. Shwupp don’t leave much. In the meantime no one is to leave the platform. My lord, you should go back to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
Torisen acquiesced, but didn’t sleep. He could hear the guards speaking softly to each other all around the perimeter of the tent and their feet shuffling on the wood. From beyond them, out in the sodden meadow, came a stealthy sound as if of some great pot boiling.
. . . bloop, bloop, bloop . . .
Near dawn it at last fell silent.
Torisen emerged to find Holly already on the platform, bearing panniers of breakfast. Together they stared out over a field now blotched in half a dozen places with spreading circles of blood.
“It’s pretty clear to me what happened,” said Holly. “The Randir sent assassins after you last night. Some of them stumbled into shwupp pits. The rest fled. I wasn’t fooling yesterday when I said what your death would mean to the Kencyrath. Here in particular, the Randir are only waiting to gobble us up. How we few Danior have lasted so long against them is beyond me, but this is sure: you aren’t safe out here. Come back to Shadow Rock with me and conduct your negotiations from there.”