The hunt sounded in the distance, drawing closer. The Gnasher must have backtracked on his own trail, but now they had turned with it and were catching up.
“Run. Hide, child-slayer. For surely we will meet again.”
The wolver’s bulk heaved out of the water as direhounds ran at him, red-mouthed and baying. He batted the leader out of midair as it sprang and ripped the head off its mate. Then he was running on two forelegs and one hind as the pack streamed after him in full cry, followed by the booming Molocar.
Torisen eased himself back into the water, panting. In his soul-image, he gingerly released the bolt, amazed that he had brought himself to touch it at all, worried that in doing so he had somehow compromised himself.
Still, he thought, Not today, Father.
Here came Grimly, the wolver, exclaiming with distress, and Rowan, and Burr. Many hands lifted Rain’s dead weight off his leg and drew him onto the bank. The air felt as cold as the water, and the sun had slid behind a cloud.
“Not broken. Just badly sprained and bruised.”
So the herbalist Kells had said once they had cut the wet leathers away from Torisen’s throbbing leg. Already the flesh was turning a mottled black and purple and the swollen knee barely bent.
Kells glanced at white-haired Kindrie who stood to one side, hands clenched behind him against his instinctive urge as a healer to help. Torisen glared at him.
Don’t you dare.
Now he was back in the study of his tower apartment, having rejected all offers of help and stubbornly limped up four flights of stairs. Yce, released from the southwest bedchamber, sulked by the cold fireplace.
“We haven’t heard the last of this,” remarked Rowan, glancing at the wolver pup. “Her sire has escaped into the wilds.”
“With a broken hind leg,” muttered Burr, as if to himself, as he moved about the room straightening things that were already in their place. “With luck, unable to hunt, he’ll starve to death.”
“Anyway,” said Rowan, “he’s shown himself to be formidable but not invincible. Why didn’t he attack while you were pinned under Rain?”
“Maybe he wanted to gloat,” said Kindrie.
No, thought Torisen, he was wary of my soul-image. Ganth still scares him.
It had clearly shaken both Burr and Rowan to so nearly have lost their lord. After all, where would they be without him? The Knorth would collapse (it was foolish to think that his sister and cousin could hold it together), and the other houses would pick its bones. Thus would end the Kencyrath’s divine mission, unwelcome as it had always been. In life, in death, he was responsible. As usual, the thought flicked Torisen like a fly on flayed skin. Dammit, why did everything always depend on him?
Because you are Highlord, said the voice, a snide echo in his mind. You accepted that responsibility when you assumed that lethal collar, the Kenthiar, and it accepted you.
“Burr, stop fidgeting. Leave me alone, all of you.”
It was unlike Torisen to be short-tempered. Surely, however, he had cause enough today. The hunt had been a failure and here he was back again, mere hours later, half crippled and no closer to discovering which Kendar he had failed.
Kindrie stood in the doorway, looking poised for flight but stubborn too. “I meant to give this to you earlier, Highlord. It may help.”
He held out a scroll.
Torisen unrolled it, and saw to his amazement that it listed all of the Knorth Kendar, with lines indicating the various paternal and maternal lineages.
“The first draft was illuminated,” said Kindrie wistfully, “but Lady Rawneth burned it. It’s taken a while to reconstruct the chart from my notes.”
Traditionally, the Kencyr favored memory above writing for most things unconnected with the law. It had never occurred to Torisen that he might fall back on such an aid. Part of him wanted to snap, “D’you think I need this?” Another part grudgingly admitted that he did.
“Thank you,” he said, his eyes already sweeping up and down the columns for the name that he had forgotten.
Kindrie hadn’t moved. He gulped. “Er, Highlord. Has it ever occurred to you that any act of binding, blood or otherwise, might spring from a Shanir nature?”
Torisen’s expression drove him back a step like a physical blow.
“Get out.”
Kindrie scrambled down the steps. Below, he could be heard nervously conferring with Burr and Rowan.
Alone again, Torisen leaned back in his chair, shaken by his own heartbeat. He could accept that blood-binding was a Shanir skill. Ruthless as it was, hardly anyone used it anymore . . .
Except your uncle Greshan and perhaps your father.
. . . but as for the mental bond, all lords employed that. What else, after all, held the Kencyrath together? Were they all Shanir without knowing it? Torisen wished he could talk to his mentor, Lord Ardeth, but Adric was unstable these days, sometimes coherent, sometimes trapped in the dementia of extreme old age. He might say anything.
Am I Shanir?
No, no, no . . .
With an effort, he put the thought out of his mind.
It did, however, suggest something. So far, he had concentrated solely on remembering the names of all the Kendar in his house. What he hadn’t checked was the tie that bound them to him. With that in mind, he started over from the beginning, using Kindrie’s scroll to prompt his memory. Half an hour later, his finger paused on a name that woke no answering spark:
Brier Iron-thorn.
XVIII
“Please”
“Now try sitting,” said Gaudaric. “And remember to breathe.”
Jame gingerly lowered herself onto a wooden chair, misjudged the distance, and dropped the last few inches with a thud. Every joint of the rhi-sar armor creaked in protest.
“Hmm,” said the armorer, regarding her critically, stroking his chin. “Now bend forward. I thought so: the shoulder straps are too tight.”
Byrne detached and lifted each shoulder guard in turn to let the strap beneath out a notch—like adjusting the girth on a horse, thought Jame, grumpily, feeling the front- and backplates of the cuirass shift downward. Unused as she was even to shopping for clothes, the fitting sessions were beginning to try her patience. But the armor did feel better. Now she could reach down to stroke Jorin with a gauntleted hand. The ounce rolled over on his back and stretched, purring. The gloves at least were marvels. The smallest rhi-sar teeth marched down the fully articulated backs, which in turn were sewn to leather gloves with slits in the fingertips to accommodate her extended nails. She hadn’t realized that the armorer had noticed them.
“It will grow more supple the more you wear it,” said Gaudaric. “The trick in making it is to use as little wax and resin as possible to give it its initial shape. Too much and it becomes brittle.”
“I feel like a tortoise,” said Jame in a muffled voice, speaking to her knees. Their leather cops showed the pattern of fine, mottled scales, surprisingly dainty to have come from such a monster.
“You should feel like a dragon,” said Gaudaric. “Stand up. Take a look at yourself.”
Jame rose and stepped in front of the full-length mirror. What she saw reflected there was a fantastical creature sheathed in white leather reinforced by the ivory of tooth and claw. The armor fit together as steel plate would, but it was much lighter. Braided inserts increased its flexibility and vented body heat. Gaudaric had reinforced the helm with a ridged crest and one rhi-sar fang thrusting downward from it as a nasal guard. Two more teeth pointed upward, socketed in the cheek guards. Jame hoped that these last were as unbreakable as Gaudaric believed, given that they presented two very sharp tips just below the slit out of which she peered. Larger teeth encased her torso like an external ribcage, their points tucked under a reinforced breastplate. Smaller ones in addition to claws marched up her arms and down her legs. It wasn’t hard to imagine the white rhi-sar’s mad, blue eyes glaring back at her from within that cage of ivory.