Honor's Paradox

XIII Secrets

The great rain had stopped but a gray sky still pressed down heavily over the Riverland. Low, hurrying clouds shrouded the mountaintops, occasionally spitting on the sodden earth beneath as if as an afterthought.

“Remember,” each drop seemed to say. “What I did before, I can do again.”

Torisen stood in the midst of his ruined crops, surveying the damage. While Gothregor itself stood on a high bluff and so had escaped the waters, the fields downstream around the curve of the Silver had been ravaged. The dikes of the water meadow where the hay grew were gone. The grain terraces above existed only in strips, broken by the smear of landslides. The winter wheat and rye had been stripped to the stalk and then beaten into the ground. Spring seed, so recently planted with such hopes, had washed away. Due to the late, cold spring, barley and flax hadn’t yet been sown, but couldn’t now be until the terraces were repaired.

“So in time we’ll have barley bread, beer, and enough rope to hang ourselves with,” said Torisen sourly.

His steward Rowan shot him a sideways look. Her face, as usual, was expressionless, frozen in place by the scars across her forehead spelling out the name of the Karnid god. “We can still turn the inner ward into a vegetable garden, once the livestock return to the fields.”

Torisen laughed despite himself. “I can just imagine Caldane when he hears that I’m growing cabbages on my doorstep.”

“Very nourishing, cabbages. Also carrots, onions, parsnips, and beets.”

“So we can eventually make vegetable soup. What about the next hay crop?”

“The roots are still there, under all of that mud and silt. They should recover. Anyway, now you have the funds to buy new seeds.”

“Hmmm,” said Torisen, unhappily.

He turned to squish back to their horses and Yce, all waiting for them on higher ground. Rowan limped after him. Both Kencyr wore thigh high boots and were glad of them as the clinging mud oozed halfway up to their knees.

Squelch, plop, squelch, plop . . .

True, he did have Aerulan’s dowry, as much as he hated drawing on that (in his opinion) tainted source. His father Ganth had demanded an obscene amount for the girl’s contract in perpetuity and Lord Brandan had insisted on paying it for her death banner. Torisen had wanted simply to give it to him. To profit from old pain felt wrong. However, both the Jaran Matriarch Trishien and Jame had told him that to refuse the price was to do even more harm, not that he quite saw why.

It also confused him somewhat that Aerulan had turned out to be the beloved not of Brant but of his maledight sister Brenwyr, she who had cursed Torisen’s underwear into ribbons and suffered the backlash in her own shredded garments. There was obviously much about the Women’s World that he still didn’t understand, nor was he likely to unless he worked up the nerve to ask his sister about her winter within its halls.

Coward, said his father’s voice behind the locked door in his soul. Then again, what do you need with such trivial knowledge?

He wanted to snap back, Trying to have it both ways, Father? but keeping still worked better with that hectoring, inner voice.

His people must come before his pride. That was his responsibility, his dearest honor. He had already used the dowry to buy this year’s seeds, the previous harvest having been destroyed by the hail and ash engendered by last year’s volcanic eruption farther north. He would draw on Aerulan’s bounty again if he must.

And go on bended knee to ask your sister what she knows about the Women’s World?

That too, if necessary. Odd, how the once unthinkable slowly became possible—almost. Nothing dramatic had happened; he had only had some time blessedly free from nightmares to think. Now his innate good sense warned him that there was much he needed to know about Jame’s mysterious past before that ignorance harmed them both.

Responsibility. How many forms it took.

That morning the Kendar Cron had come to see him.

“Lord, you know that this past winter my young son Ghill died.”

Torisen remembered it—how could he not? The boy had tried to ride one of the new-dropped calves brought in to shelter from the storms and an unlucky fall had broken his neck. Worse, the accident hadn’t killed him outright. When the parents had seen that he was paralyzed, they had requested the White Knife. Torisen had never before brought death to one so young or so brave.

Cron had held himself very straight, but his eyes had shone with anxiety. “I and my mate would like to have another child. Not that anything can replace what we’ve lost, but the room is so quiet without him.”

To sanction the birth of an infant was to guarantee it a place in one’s house. Sweet Trinity, one more name to remember . . .

True, he hadn’t forgotten any since the death of Mullen, but still it was as if he gave a piece of his soul to each Kencyr whom he bound, and there was only so much of him to give.

Then there had been that petition from the Randir Corvine, who turned out to be a former Knorth Oath-breaker. He hadn’t known that there were Knorth in Wilden. A worrying thought, that, but also an intriguing one. What an opportunity to learn about the Randir from the inside. He didn’t blame any Knorth who had had the good sense not to follow his father into exile. Still, it bothered him that their need had driven them to such a haven. There was also the remote possibility that to invite any of them back might be to welcome a Randir spy into his house. After all, some might see Ganth’s madness as a betrayal, as Torisen did himself.

So, two claimants, one position. To which did he owe allegiance, the past or the future?

Rowan gave a stifled exclamation. Torisen turned to find her sunk thigh-deep and floundering.

“Don’t come near, my lord,” she said hastily as he moved to assist her. “Perimal be damned . . . I’ve blundered into a shwupp pit.”

“A what?”

“That’s right,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “You usually aren’t here in the spring, nor has it ever been this wet before. Fetch me a pole and I’ll be fine. Oops.”

With that she sank again, up to her waist. The mud made obscene sucking noises, like a tongue exploring a rotten tooth. She lay back on the quavering bog to spread her weight and tried to wriggle free her legs.

That might work with sinksand. Torisen wasn’t so sure about the present case. Expressionless she might be, but Rowan was taking her current predicament a bit too calmly.

“You might go for help,” she suggested.

“And leave you here in your mud bath?”

He circled her, stepping carefully. The mud around the Kendar, agitated by her efforts to escape, was clearly more liquid than the surrounding earth. By now, water must be pouring into her boots. How deep was this pit anyway?

“I think you just want to get rid of me,” he said.

“Should you stay to laugh? Bad enough what they will say in the barracks tonight. Of all the stupid accidents . . .”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He risked a step forward, bent, and gripped her under the arms. It quickly became clear, however, that to pull her clear through sheer strength was out of the question; while the earth retained its grip, he was more likely to dislocate both of his arms if not to rip her in two. Still, if he could stop her sinking any further until her natural buoyancy came to her rescue . . .

“What, for example, is a shwupp?”

Bloop.

Bubbles rose in a series of small, wet explosions, approaching.

“My lord. Blackie. Just go.”

Bloop, bloop. Here came more trails, from every direction.

Yce splashed toward them. Lighter than they, on huge paws, she ran as if through melting snow although spattered brown to the eyebrows. Then she paused, ears pricked, head cocked.

Bloop, bloop, bloop . . .

At the end of a trail of bubbles, she pounced and dug furiously. A slick head, eyeless and seemingly all teeth, burst out of the ground. Webbed claws churned the mud. It screamed as the pup’s jaws closed on its neck. Then she was on to another trail and another, but there were too many of them, all converging on the hidden pit.

Rowan’s legs came free, her boots shredded. The watery pit seethed with muddy bodies like some obscene eel stew. Tori dragged her clear and helped her up.

“Yce, come!”

The two Kencyr staggered back to their horses with the wolver pup mounting a furious rear-guard defense. Torisen gave Rowan a leg up into her saddle and swung into his own. Yce grinned up at him, white teeth, lolling red tongue, and blue eyes in a mask of mud.

“Good girl.”

It was late afternoon before they regained the fortress. Torisen paused within the guardhouse, regarding the penned-up livestock that had well nigh destroyed the inner sward. After the ravages of cows, goats, sheep, and pigs, one might as well plow up what was left for Rowan’s vegetable garden. Ancestors knew, it was already well manured.

Around the ward were his garrison’s domestic offices and lodgings; across it, the old keep; beyond that, the Women’s Halls, and then an acre of desolation—all within the walls of the greater fortress. If only his soul-image were as large as Gothregor with its thousands of empty rooms, he need deny no one shelter there. The thought struck him that, thanks to the locked door in his soul, he only had access to about a third of it.

What, truly, was behind that door?

His last conversation with Trishien nagged at him. Something had happened, something he hadn’t been able to remember at the time but which kept coming back as if slowly rising out of the well of sleep.

“Just a drop of blood on his knife’s tip, not strong enough to bind for more than an hour or two, just long enough to make the game interesting. ‘Dear little Gangrene,’ he called me . . .”

That had been his father talking about his foul uncle Greshan, talking through him. Greshan had temporarily blood-bound Ganth—how many times, and what obscene game had he played with him?

There had been more, too.

He remembered Trishien standing with her hands pressed to her lips, speaking not to him but to his father: “Ganth. You didn’t want your son to leave you, to go against your will. Don’t tell me that you . . . you . . .”

Torisen shivered. Enough for now. To ashes with the dead and with the past.

He turned to Rowan. “Find Cron, if you please. Tell him that he has my blessing.”

Marc paused in mixing the raw ingredients of a new batch of glass as Torisen wearily mounted the stairs to the High Council chamber.

“You look a proper mess, lad.”

“So do the fields.”

Torisen sank into his chair. More brown with mud than white, Yce trotted into the High Council chamber after him and took refuge under the ebony table.

“I should be glad that they didn’t wash away altogether. Most of the ash did. We can’t even think about planting again until things dry out some.”

“There’s time yet,” said Marc soothingly. “Anyway, you have funds now to tide us over if the summer harvest fails.”

“So everyone keeps reminding me.”

To distract himself from that unpleasant thought, he looked up at the map. Marc had fitted the gaping, stone embrasure with a gridwork of horizontal iron bars. Slotted into the uppermost was as much of the Riverland as he had so far been able to assemble. Shot incongruously with ruby to indicate gold dust, the Silver looped downward with luminous glass clusters on either side to indicate most of the Riverland keeps. Each section was made out of materials native to that particular region plus cullets from the old window to augment it. Oddly, glass fragments representing contiguous geological areas easily fused together without heat, seam, or the need of lead jointure. The result so far looked like a twisting vine shooting off lumpy fruit in a dozen glowing hues at more or less regular intervals.

“That melded glass is surprisingly strong,” said Marc, contemplating his handiwork. “I think I could hammer a nail with it. Perhaps, when the map is complete, it won’t need a brace at all.”

“D’you think it ever will be—complete, that is?”

The big Kendar shrugged and cast a discontented look at the vacant Western Lands. The Eastern were nearly as bare, with many gaps in between. “There’s a lot of space left to fill with these little pieces, much of it country which we Kencyr have never seen. Mother Ragga has supplied materials for some of it and your agents bring more home every day from wherever our reach extends.” He laughed. “Quite a common effort, it’s become almost a competition. Not all the bits fit together so far, though.”

He indicated the ebony table on which a crude map was drawn in chalk. Small sacks and fragments of cast glass dotted it like random pieces of a puzzle not yet attached to the whole.

“I suppose,” he said, scratching his bristly chin, “that I could fill in the blanks solely with recast cullets from the original window and with local material, all held together with lead strips. That would be the normal way of things.”

However, Torisen heard the reluctance in his voice, a master craftsman hesitant to compromise.

“No,” Tori said, “go on with whatever comes in, mixed with old glass to stretch it out as you’ve been doing. This may be the work of several lifetimes, but it’s a good start.”

Marc shot Torisen a look under his shaggy, singed eyebrows. “Something else I’ve noticed. Travelers report that the recent floods have changed the course of the Silver yet again, especially between Shadow Rock and Wilden. See here: there used to be several meander-loops in the river, but now water has cut across the neck of the largest.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. So that was what Holly was talking about. I got a letter from him this morning complaining that the Randir were encroaching on his land where the river boundary had changed. Of course he would be upset: that loop contains the richest bottomland in his domain.”

Holly tended to scrawl when excited. The map made clear what his hasty words had failed to convey.

“I take it that the Randir have claimed everything on their side of the river,” said Marc. “Is that going to cause trouble?”

“How could it not? The Randir squeeze in wherever they can, and the Danior are too small to fight back properly. I’ll need to see to this”—and hope that I have authority enough to make them listen. “But look here,” he continued, puzzled. “These changes just took place. How did you know to include them in the map?”

Marc shrugged. “I didn’t. They just appeared.”

“You mean that the finished glass flowed again? How is that possible?”

“Blessed if I know. There’s something magical about the whole project, if you ask me. I mean, how does one go from a handful of sand, soda, and lime even to simple glass, much less to something like this?” He indicated the growing expanse of glass, subtly aglow in the afterlight of dusk. “There may be possibilities here that we’ve never dreamt of. Have you tried yet to scry with it?”

Torisen shook his head, exasperated. “All it gives me are bad dreams. I look at the Southern Host’s camp and what do I see? Harn, wearing a pink dress. I ask you!”

“Hoy, Tori!”

The cry came up the stairwell, closely followed by the hairy, grinning face of the wolver Grimly. From under the table came a rumbling growl. Yce shot out to tackle the newcomer at the head of the steps. Both tumbled back down with a yelp.

Torisen plunged after them.

Below in the death banner hall, gray and white fur rolled about the flagstones, snarling and snapping. Grimly retained half his human form to hold the young fury at arms’ length. The pup seemed to have grown rudimentary hands of her own with which she tried to grab and pull him into her powerful jaws.

“I come all the way from the Holt and this is how you greet me? Ouch!”

“Yce, stop it!” Torisen circled them, unsure how to break up the battle.

“One side, lad.” It was Marc with a bucket of cold water which he dashed over the combatants.

They broke apart, sputtering. Tori wrapped his arms around the pup and lugged her back. Liquefied mud made her slippery, as did her furious squirming. She snapped at him, ripping his sleeves but not his skin. Her yammering had the cadence, almost the form, of swear words.

“I said, stop!”

All of his force went into the command, and the pup subsided in his grasp, panting.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what got into her.”

Grimly rose and shook himself, one limb at a time as if to make sure that all were still attached. “I do, in part. That’s a common greeting between Deep Weald wolvers, to establish dominance. We of the Holt pick our leaders for their singing. Our wild cousins trust only strength. And did you see those hands? She’s starting to change. With adolescence she’ll be able to shift more and more into human form. Given her attraction to you, Tori, I’d watch out.”

The keep door opened and Burr walked in, bearing a covered tray. He stopped, regarded the assembled company, and thrust his burden into Marc’s hands.

“I’ll bring more food.”

Soon afterward Torisen and Grimly were established in the High Council chamber at the empty end of the table with bowls of venison stew, fresh bread, and tart cider. At their urging, Marc joined them while Burr remained in obdurate attendance. Yce retreated under the boards to gnaw on marrow bones.

“Burr thinks I won’t eat if he doesn’t watch me,” remarked Torisen, spearing a baked apple.

The wolver eyed his friend’s thin face. “There’s something in that. You Knorth. So hard to keep alive, yet so much harder to kill. What’s put you off your feed this time?”

“Nothing. Don’t fret me, Grimly.”

“Like that, is it? All right, all right. Marc, here are some odds and ends from the edge of the Deep Weald to add to your masterpiece.”

The Kendar accepted the offered leather sack with thanks. “Any chance of material from farther in?” he asked rather wistfully.

“Perhaps. We Holt dwellers don’t mix much with the Weald, as you know. I did hear a curious story when I was collecting this lot, though. The King of the Wood has sent out scouts for news of an offspring missing since last summer. White with blue eyes, they say. A rare combination.”

Under the table, Yce cracked a bone.

“D’you think our pup is the stray?”

“Not that exactly. If she left her pack, she had good reason.”

“Maybe she got curious and set out to explore,” suggested Marc. “The way you did from the Holt to King Kruin’s court in Kothifir.”

“I was older, though, and had an invitation. Anyway, she wasn’t satisfied with my pack. Maybe I wasn’t wolf enough for her.”

“So she latched onto me? Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not. I told you: Deep Weald wolvers are attracted primarily to strength. That’s you.”

Torisen laughed, but Marc only smiled.

“So, should I send her back to her father?”

“Only if you want her to be killed. That’s the other reason why she may have run. The rest of her litter were slaughtered, and all the ones before it. The Wood King doesn’t want any rivals. So it’s been ever since he came to power. Before that, he passed for human in Kothifir. I wasn’t the first wolver to accept King Kruin’s invitation.”

Torisen put down his knife, a cold chill running up his spine. “Grimly, are you talking about Gnasher?”

“I think so. Until his scouts contacted me, I had no idea that he’d returned to the Weald, much less that he’d become king there. I’m here now in part to warn you, for the pup’s sake. He’s bound, sooner or later, to find out where she is. Whether or not he’ll come after her is another matter.”

“If I might ask,” said Marc, “who is this Gnasher?”

Torisen remembered that hulking presence and those cold, blue eyes, a big man with the shadow and teeth of a wolf.

“When King Kruin was ill, he employed Gnasher as an executioner and an assassin, to thin the herd of his own potential heirs.”

Grimly snorted. “Thin? He was out to exterminate the lot of them. Kruin seemed to think that if no one was left to inherit, he would live forever.”

“But Krothen survived,” said Marc.

“Yes, with some help.”

Torisen and Grimly looked up at the map, remembering those desperate days. There was the chaotic swirl of glass that represented Kothifir, and below it in more orderly array, the Southern Host’s permanent camp, a small city in its own right.

Torisen suddenly chuckled. “I just recalled my attempt to scry and that dream of Harn in a pink dress.”

The wolver and Burr exchanged quick glances. They weren’t used to Torisen speaking casually about even his most trivial dreams, given how he had once half killed himself trying to avoid them.

“What,” said Grimly cautiously, testing his ground, “like the one you made your sister wear after the Cataracts?”

“I’d forgotten about that.”

“If so,” said Grimly dryly, “you’re the only one who has. Not for a moment do I see Harn Grip-hard tarted up like a Hurlen whore—unless I’ve seriously misjudged the man. I wonder, though: is it possible that, bound to you as he is, you accidentally scryed one of his nightmares?”

Torisen sought to brush this away, even as he remembered dreams stranger yet that he had shared with his sister, not that he was about to share any of those. “Even if I did, why should he dream something so absurd?”

“Well, when your sister passes Tentir, she’s likely to join his command. For that matter, isn’t the Knorth Lordan usually the commandant of the Southern Host?”

“Not Jame,” said Torisen firmly. “She doesn’t have the experience.”

“Neither did Pereden. His was purely a political assignment, to please his father.”

“And a fine mess he made of it.”

“True, but think what revenge Harn might unconsciously fear your sister would take for her treatment back then.”

“Harn had nothing to do with it. She’d be more likely to stuff me in pink flounces.”

“Now that,” said the wolver, “I’d like to see.”

Torisen’s laughter died. “You said ‘when she passes Tentir.’ Perhaps that should be ‘if.’ Sheth has warned me that as the Knorth Lordan she will face a final, potentially lethal challenge. I thought we were past that after the High Council meeting, but apparently not. Greshan died during his.”

“The lass has faced challenges before,” said Marc gently. “No one has gotten the better of her yet.”

There it was again, the subtle reminder that the big Kendar knew more about his sister’s past than he did. He could ask Marc now, or wait until they were alone. No. They were Jame’s secrets, to tell or not. He would ask her if she passed her challenge, if he allowed her to face it at all.

Torisen looked up at the map of the Riverland, at the piece marked with the glow of his own blood in the cast that represented Tentir.

And if you interfere at this late date, will she ever forgive you? Will the randon? Yet alive is better than dead . . . isn’t it?

So Torisen’s thoughts revolved, twisting this way and that. When the others fell silent, watching him, he didn’t notice.