“The judge determines fairness.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s Caineron.”
The field seemed to shift before Jame’s eyes, not cadet against regular but Knorth against Caineron, with her five-commander caught in the middle.
“Watch out for Brier,” she told Damson.
The ball dropped back into play and the horses charged it. Damson rode to Brier’s right, gashing her mount’s sides to keep up. Crook-whips flailed and Brier’s horse screamed, floundering. Then confusion seized the combatants as they found themselves inexplicably beating each other. Brier’s chestnut recovered and surged out of the confining circle.
The ball, meanwhile, had fallen into cadet hands. Jame paced Quill as he charged down the field toward the Caineron goal. Bel startled the goalkeeper by streaking under his nose, and Quill broke through to score.
One to one.
“So far, so good,” panted Dar as they huddled again, “except that Niall is out with a downed horse. We have time for one more win before our set is over.”
Or for one more loss, thought Jame.
Brier’s chestnut was bleeding at the shoulders and flanks from whip blows, likewise his rider across the brow where bright blood matted her dark red hair and dripped in her eyes.
“I’ll take the ball this time,” she said, impatiently wiping her face. “Cover me.”
Jame withdrew, apprehensive, to her ranger’s position.
The horses rushed together a third time. Brier swooped down from the saddle to snatch the ball out from under Amberley’s nose. The Caineron wheeled in pursuit. She surged up on Brier’s left side and bent low to swing a borrowed crook. It caught the chestnut’s hock. The horse stumbled and fell. Brier rolled clear clutching the ball. She threw it to Damson, who swept past toward the goal. Instead of following, Amberley rounded on Brier as she rose, intent, it seemed, on riding her down. Brier dodged and back the Caineron came, whipping her horse’s flank.
Jame cut between them.
“Up!” she cried, and Brier, grabbing her hand, swung onto Bel’s back. The Whinno-hir staggered under their joint weight, but gamely swerved toward the boundary. People scrambled out of the way as she plowed into them. Amberley reined in just short of the crowd and spun back toward the action, but too late: shielded by cadet rangers, Damson had dodged past the goalkeeper and carried the ball between the posts for the winning score.
The judge threw down his baton. “Game!”
Jame extricated Bel from the onlookers and Brier slid to the ground.
“That wasn’t necessary,” she said.
“Maybe not, but it made me feel better.”
XIII
Dreams and Nightmares
With the end of the autumn harvest, preparations for winter began in the Riverland. Barley was threshed, chimneys cleaned, meat smoked and salted. All of the outer ward garden at Gothregor had been gleaned except for the mangel-wurzel destined for fodder or, if necessary, for soup; but it needn’t come to the latter. For the first time, Torisen could buy what he lacked, with enough left over for the odd luxury. However, as with many a man suddenly come into wealth, he hesitated to spend any more than was absolutely required. Aerulan’s dowry arrived in regular installments, most of which went into an iron box shoved into a corner.
“You really could afford to buy more clothes,” Kindrie said, eyeing his lord’s meager winter wardrobe. “Most of these coats have darns on top of darns.”
“And all the warmer they are for it.” Which was true: Kendar work tended to be eerily efficient. “Besides,” he added, “Burr enjoys a bit of needlework on a cold winter’s night.”
Burr made a face, but didn’t contradict.
The two cousins were getting along reasonably well, if with some wariness on both sides.
Walking on eggshells, Torisen thought, not that he really doubted Kindrie’s competence or loyalty, nor had he for some time. Rather, he was afraid of waking the wrathful voice of his father deep in his soul-image and the spates of irrationality to which it gave rise. It occurred to him from time to time that he really had to get Ganth out of there, but how? Kindrie was a soul-walker. Perhaps he would know. However, Torisen hesitated to put it to the test, and felt all the more weakened by that hesitation.
Luckily, Riverland politics were currently quiet, although rumors came from Restormir that Lord Caineron still fretted over the loss of the golden willow long after any sensible man would have let it go. Certainly, his ire over the singers’ Lawful Lies had been inflamed. Word came from Mount Alban that he was withdrawing his scrollsmen one by one and questioning them—about what, exactly, they refused to say, but they didn’t look happy.
Meanwhile, Torisen continued to dream, sometimes in a confused fashion about Jame, but more often about his own past with the Southern Host. He caught fitful glimpses of his sister’s journey into the Wastes, though—snatchers groping out of the sand, a rhi-sar charge, a long ride out into the waters of a vanished sea, and then a wailing, desolate cry:
“Langadine has fallen!”
“My sons,” someone was weeping. “Oh, my children!”
Jame stood on the deck of a ship, looking back into nightmare, her face implacable. The slaughter of an innocent population—“Do we also worship a monster?”
“There,” she said, pointing, and the wind did her bidding. A sea of corpses rose up to storm a black tower and everything fell.
I am falling too, Torisen thought. Away from my sister and the present, into the past . . .
Harn looked up from a note on thick cream paper which he had just received.
“King Kruin wants to see you,” he said.
The boy Tori was startled. “How is he even aware that I exist?”
“Ancestors know. You keep quiet enough, all things considered. D’you suppose it has something to do with your new friend?”
Of course Harn had discovered Kroaky’s presence in Tori’s quarters, given that the latter were only feet from his office and that the Kothifiran prince insisted on roaming about after dark. He was a restless houseguest, and a voracious one. Tori had never seen anyone eat so much while remaining so thin.
After Torisen’s hazing in the Caineron barracks, Harn Grip-hard looked at him as if vaguely puzzled. If Tori caught his eye at such a moment, the big Kendar cleared his throat and became even gruffer; however, he also had stopped insulting his self-appointed clerk.
Tori would have liked to think that it was because he had refused to complain about his ill-treatment at Genjar’s hands. However, he wondered if Harn, a former Knorth, was beginning to sense his bloodlines as Rowan apparently had.
If so, that made life easier, but also more dangerous and problematic.
While no one had dared to claim the Highlord’s seat—much less that potentially lethal collar, the Kenthiar—since Ganth’s exile, the Caineron, for one, would never permit the son of their former master to live if they could help it. Look how they had dealt with a senior randon like Harn, only a threshold dweller after all these years. Blood wasn’t enough to protect Ganth’s son. He also needed respect and power. The thought made Tori grimace. How was he to gain either, situated as he was? Nothing would be handed to him as it had been to his ancestors, never mind that they went back to the creation of the Kencyrath. Whatever he gained would be on his own.
For that matter, did he even want his father’s place, supposing that it was in fact vacant? Perhaps he belonged somewhere else within the Kencyrath, gained on his own merit. If only Adric had allowed him to attend Tentir . . .
Harn folded the summons and handed it to him. “Whatever the reason, you’ll have to go. Now. And walk wary: the Overcliff has been unsettled since the king’s illness.”
Tori paused in his quarters to change into the cleaner of his two jackets. Kroaky lounged discontentedly on Burr’s narrow bed.