“She’s my responsibility. Somehow, I’ve failed her.”
“Huh,” he said again. “As you will.”
He went to the windows and secured the shutters, then stepped outside, closing the door after him. His booming voice could be heard in the courtyard, sending everyone back to bed.
Jame sat down opposite Brier and took the Kendar’s hands across the table. They were bleeding, gouged with splinters.
“Brier, what is it?”
The other’s hands turned in her grasp and gripped her so hard that her bones ground together and her breath snagged in a hiss. Images flooded her mind, as sharp as knives.
—Kalan’s baby plummeted downward. She reached up and caught its slight weight. Its head bent backward over the crook of her arm. There was a muffled crack as if of a dry twig breaking—
She told me how to hold it.
. . . dead, dead, dead . . .
Mother, gone into the Wastes. Days waiting. Weeks. Months. She never came back except as a pale shadow under the sand, skimming before a stone boat . . .
What did I do wrong? Why did she leave me?
Blackie, telling me the story; the Highlord, offering me a place.
(Oh, Amberley . . . )
Caineron: “Pretending to be a Knorth now, aren’t you? Not easy. Not possible, I should think. On your knees. Kendar are bound by mind or by blood. Such a handsome woman as you, though, deserves to be bound more pleasurably. By the seed . . .”
The rustle of his breeches dropping, and then a descending blur—the Highlord’s mad sister: “Boo!”
“Hic!” Now Caldane was floating, pants around his ankles, turning over in the air . . .
The Highlord is kind, but do I deserve kindness? Do I trust it? Rather give me strength, even if it is cruel. Oh, Trinity, am I Knorth, or still Caineron?
And the memories started again in a vicious loop: Kalan’s baby falling, its neck breaking . . .
Brier raised her head and croaked, “More wine. More noise. Anything to stop that sound, like a dry twig snapping . . .”
“Stop it, Brier. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.”
The Kendar’s bloodshot eyes focused on her.
Torisen Black Lord was too far away, too . . . gentle. Jamethiel Priest’s-bane was not, and she was here. Need speaks to need, as it had with Graykin in the gorge at Hurlen beside the Silver. Like Marc, Brier had the moral strength and the experience which Jame felt she lacked. Would she have survived as a cadet without the Kendar’s support? How much she had come to depend on the other’s solid presence behind her.
“I need you,” she heard herself say through numb lips.
Brier’s fragile bond to Torisen bent and broke. Another, stronger, formed in its place.
“I am yours.”
Then the Southron’s lids fluttered and her head dropped back to the tabletop. Jame freed her hands and leaned back, shaken, massaging her bruised wrists.
Rue emerged from the shadows. “What just happened?”
“Nothing that was intended.” Was it? “Tell no one, Rue. This is our secret, yours, mine, and Iron-thorn’s. D’you hear? Now help me get her up to bed.”
Between them they urged Brier to her feet and supported her to the foot of the stairs. There she shook them off and climbed by herself, holding tight to the railing.
Perhaps she had given the Southron what she needed after all, Jame thought as she followed Brier, and had received the same in return; but oh lord, what was Tori going to say?
XVII
Wolver Hunt
“You don’t look as if you got much sleep last night,” said the wolver Grimly as Torisen descended from his tower apartment into the Council chamber’s early morning light.
The Highlord wore neat black hunting leathers reinforced with braided rhi-sar inserts, high boots, and gauntlets, but his hair was ruffled and his eyes deeply shadowed.
“This makes it—what? Five days in a row?”
Torisen rubbed his bearded face, feeling as if he had either slept too little or too much. Certainly, his wits felt as tarnished as old silver. In the past he had stayed awake much longer to avoid certain dreams, but this time the cause was different.
“I’ve been through their names over and over again,” he said. “Every one of them from Harn down to Cron and Merry’s new baby. Who else is bound to me that I’ve forgotten?”
The last time it had been the Kendar Mullen, who had flayed himself alive in the death banner hall so that he would never be forgotten again. Trinity knew, Torisen remembered the dying man’s blood soaking through his clothes as he had knelt beside him.
“Mullen. Welcome home.”
Five nights ago Torisen had woken with that same terrible, hollow feeling that someone was missing. Whom had he failed this time?
Can’t hold them, can you? sneered his father behind the locked door in his soul-image. I always said that you were weak.
Above, Yce threw herself at his closed door, yipping with distress and agitation. Her claws raked the wood, then rudimentary fingers fumbled unsuccessfully with the lock.
“She’ll tear your bedroom apart,” Grimly warned.
“That can’t be helped. She mustn’t go with us today. Has the hunt master reported yet?”
“He’s waiting for you below.”
Burr appeared with a covered tray. “First, my lord, your breakfast.”
“Burr, I haven’t time . . .”
“Sit. Eat.”
Torisen sank into a chair and glowered at the porridge set before him. “Well, then, send him up.”
The hunt master duly appeared, a middle-aged Kendar with grizzled hair still touched with fox-red, wearing russet leathers.
“The lymers have been out since before dawn,” he reported. “They haven’t picked up a fresh scent yet, but we did come across some odd pawprints. The toes looked wolfish, complete with claws, but elongated.”
“Like this?” Grimly stood on one hairy foot and obligingly held up the other, shaped half between lupine and human.
“Well, yes, but much larger. Whatever this beast is, it’s huge.”
Torisen and Grimly exchanged glances.
“That certainly sounds like the Gnasher,” said the latter.
Since that howl had answered them out of the winter night, they had been on their guard, not that that had helped herdsmen out with the black, irascible cows that preferred to calve in the snow rather than sensibly in the safety of a stall. Several Kendar had been found torn literally to pieces and half devoured among their scattered charges. Torisen had felt each passing like a cold wind through his soul. At least those names he remembered. The attack against Kencyr rather than cattle seemed calculated to draw a response, as had the baleful howl that followed each kill. They hadn’t really known, however, if they were dealing with some monstrous dire wolf out of the hills or with Yce’s homicidal sire.
Now Torisen put down his spoon, the porridge half eaten and, in any event, untasted. “We have to assume that it’s the Gnasher.”
“Ancestors know,” said the hunt master, resting his elbows earnestly on the table, “we’ve tried to pursue it as a mere wolf. The traps we’ve set, the woods we’ve baited . . . but it’s too clever to fall for such tricks.” A howl from Yce made him start and look over his shoulder.
“Perhaps we haven’t offered him the right bait,” said Grimly.
“Don’t even think it,” Torisen said.
“Well, she can’t stay mewed up here for the rest of her life.”
That much was true, thought Torisen, making their current hunt all the more essential. Why, though, did he feel that they were going about it all wrong—or was that just his general uncertainty this morning? He had apparently already failed one Kendar. What if he failed Yce as well? Then too, Storm had an abscess in his hoof so Torisen would be riding his secondary mount, a gray gelding named Rain. Everything seemed subtly out of kilter.