Honor's Paradox

XIV In Sodden Fields

The next morning brought another letter from Holly, Lord Danior, almost illegible in his agitation.

“Either his fields are overrun with frogs wearing light armor,” said Torisen to Burr, scanning the note by the slanting rays of a rising sun, “or the Randir have invaded. He’s begging for the Highlord’s immediate intercession. This is going to be messy. Tell Rowan to assemble a war-guard and provision it for a week at least.”

While the garrison scrambled to obey, Torisen knocked politely on the door to the Women’s Halls to request an interview with the Jaran Matriarch. To his amusement, the guards insisted on blindfolding him, as if he didn’t know the way by heart, although usually his path led over the rooftops.

Trishien, greeting him and Yce in her airy study, also laughed. “At least this time you came through the door, not the window.” She swept him a deep bow, the lenses in her mask flashing. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

He told her about Holly’s summons. She frowned behind her mask.

“I don’t know much about the rules governing borders in the Riverland, except that the Silver usually establishes them. Then again, the river has shifted several times in recent memory, if never before directly between keeps. Consequently, there should be some established precedence.”

“So I had hoped. Would you please write to your grandniece to ask if any scrollsman at the college is an expert in such matters? If so, I would like to meet him or her between the Danior and Randir keeps two days from now.”

Trishien tapped her pen with long, ink-stained fingers, mildly amused. “So. You deign to resort to our Shanir skills.”

Torisen fidgeted. “I would send a post rider, but that might be too slow, and this is important.”

“Not just a woman’s trifle, you mean.”

“Lady, I didn’t mean to belittle your skills. They just . . . make me uncomfortable.”

“You may be grateful for them yet.”

He regarded her curiously. “Has something happened? What have you heard from Kirien?”

“News that you should rather hear from your sister or cousin as it concerns your house. My own involvement was a breach of faith with my sisters.”

Torisen saw that she was deeply embarrassed, which confused him even more. How could women’s secrets involve him?

“You do know, I suppose, that this dispute will be seen as a test of your leadership.”

If she wished to change the subject, so be it, although he found this new topic no more comfortable.

“I do seem to rule by fits and starts,” he admitted wryly. “In this case, I really do need expert advice, hence my request to you.”

“Which will of course be honored.”

“But not my curiosity satisfied.”

“I repeat: ask Jameth or Kindrie.”

With that he had to be content.

By early that afternoon Torisen set off with a hastily assembled war-guard, Yce and Grimly trotting on either side of him. It was some fifty miles to the disputed territory, a two-day ride over the broken River Road. When the pup tired, she crouched and sprang up onto Storm’s flanks behind the saddle, nearly causing the stallion to bolt. Torisen found a pair of stubby hands gripping his waist. Sharp nails bit into him until Storm settled down with a snort and a toss of his head, as if in disparagement of the company whom his master chose to keep.

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.”

“I appreciate the offer, but you must see that I can’t. It would be taken as a sign of weakness and of favoritism. Besides, I seem to be well guarded as long as we take up the plank walks at night.”

“Yes, and as long as nothing claws its way up through your floor.”

“I doubt that they’ll try with Grimly under the bed and Yce on top of it.”

Holly grinned. “Have you finally gotten the pup to cuddle with you?”

“Hardly. Every time I stretch out my legs, she snaps at my toes.”

Yce, at his feet, wrinkled a black lip as if in amusement.

Grimly emerged from the tent, sniffing the fragrance of new-baked muffins and hot, honeyed ham.

“What did you see upriver?” Torisen asked him.

“About what you expected.” Grimly flipped open a basket and scrounged down through the contents to the meat pies. “You were right, Lord Hollens. Without roots to hold earth and rock, that northern bluff is rotten, even worse on the far side to the east than here where it’s already slid.”

Torisen was about to pursue this when movement caught his eye. A company of riders was passing rapidly northward along the New Road, one an elderly, white-haired man on a foam-flecked gray mare.

“That’s Lord Ardeth, isn’t it?” said Holly, staring. “He must have met his daughter on the road. What’s going on at Tentir, that people should be rushing back and forth from it?”

“Assuming that he’s Tentir-bound,” said Torisen, although in his mind he had no doubt.

Dammit, Jame, what are you up to now?

“Careful with that bucket,” said Jame. “There’s a salamander in it.”

Damson paused to glare at Dar, who had handed her the vessel in question as part of a bucket brigade hauling mud out of the flood-damaged Knorth kitchen. The muck inside the bucket seethed and stank. An incandescent, spotted back surfaced, then disappeared again in a petulant gout of steam.

“Too hot for you to handle?” Dar inquired innocently.

His expression turned to a worried frown and he swayed as if about to pitch face-forward into the slimy mud that coated the floor ankle-deep.

“Damson!”

The cadet made a face at Jame’s sharp tone, but Dar stopped wobbling. Then he started to belch.

Mint slipped a steadying arm around him as the paroxysms continued, bending him double. “Permission to get some fresh air, Ten?”

“Go. And you, behave,” Jame said sternly to Damson. “See if you can get that beastie into the fireplace,” she added, indicating the raised, reasonably dry hearth. “If it settles in properly, we’ll never lack for a kitchen spark again.”

She watched as the cadet gingerly prodded the lizard into a nest of kindling, which promptly ignited. The salamander curled up in the flames, steaming and purring like a kettle.

“Ha!” said Damson, with a glance after her would-be tormenter.

She and Dar had been sparring for weeks but, to Jame’s relief, Damson hadn’t pursued it to extremes. Was she finally growing a conscience, or was it only because she felt Jame’s eye constantly on her? Now a third possibility occurred to her: Damson might actually be enjoying herself.

“You missed a spot,” said Timmon from his perch above the mess on a countertop.

“I’m missing the entire floor, but it’s down there somewhere. Why aren’t you helping to clean up your own barracks?”

“I’d much rather watch you work. I’ve been good . . . mostly. Doesn’t that buy me the right to indulge myself once in a while?”

“You’re starting to slide out of things again.”

“Truly, only out of some. But I wanted to ask you: have you spoken to Gorbel since he came back from Restormir?”

“I’ve tried. He doesn’t answer.”

“Huh. Something’s afoot there. Fash and Higbert have been smirking all over the college, and we haven’t seen much of the Commandant either.”

Voices sounded above, one of them urgent.

Timmon froze in dismay. “It can’t be.”

But it was.

Lord Ardeth descended the stair and stepped into the mud without seeming to notice it.

“My dear boy!”

Timmon scrambled to his feet. “Grandfather!”

“I was on my way to visit you when I met your dear mother on the road. Is it true? Do you have Pereden’s lost ring? Where did you find it?”

The sight of the gaping cadets who surrounded this tableau spurred Jame to action.

“Up. Out,” she said to them. They sidled around the edges of the room and fled up the stair. “Timmon, why don’t you take m’lord to your quarters for some refreshments?”

Anything to get him out of this stinking hole, to make him forget that wretched ring, not that that was likely with it in bold display on Timmon’s finger.

“My lord,” she said, raising her voice, “I’m sorry about the death of your brother, Ran Aden. It was a terrible accident.”

Ardeth waved this away, as if of little interest. “Dear Aden was growing a bit difficult. It happens to some Highborn at a certain age. No doubt I would soon have had to replace him as war-leader anyway. Now, Pereden—”

Timmon interrupted desperately, with his most charming smile. The kitchen in all of its disarray seemed a brighter place for it. “Yes, do come with me, Grandfather. You must be weary after your long ride.”

He led Adric up the stairs past Jame, who flattened herself against the noisome wall to let them pass.

Ancestors preserve us, she thought as she hurried after them, then broke away at the barracks door, bound for Old Tentir. Adric’s cream-colored riding leathers had been stained not only with sweat but also with flecks of blood.

She ran down the ramp to the subterranean stable, there to find the horse-master grimly examining Brithany by torchlight. The gray Whinno-hir drooped in her stall, her sister Bel-tiari at her side anxiously nuzzling her neck.

“Look,” said the horse-master, almost speechless with indignation. “Just look! He’s put spurs to her sides and near whipped her flanks raw. How could he?”

“The man is ridden by demons of his own. He probably didn’t realize what he was doing.”

“What he’ll do, if he takes this mare out again tonight, is kill her.”

“He’s in the Ardeth barracks now. I’ll see that he doesn’t leave until tomorrow.”

How to do that, though?

So Jame wondered, standing at the rail looking up at Timmon’s lit windows. Dusk was falling. Soon it would be time for the cold supper on which they had all subsisted since the flood. Surely Adric wouldn’t leave before then, but after?

Unless he could completely befuddle the man, Timmon was bound to tell Adric where he had gotten the ring. Holding out on his mother was one thing, on his sovereign lord, quite another. She had been a fool not to realize that the burning of Pereden’s finger would affect his father, although Adric still seemed to be somewhat confused between his son and grandson. Torisen had to be warned about this latest development, but how?

Along the southern rail, the Jaran master-ten was smoking a pipe and blowing rings into the cooling air. Jame approached her.

“I’ve a favor to ask. Someone in your barracks is in far-writing communications with the Scrollsmen’s College. May I speak with him or her?”

“Whom at Mount Alban do you wish to contact?”

“Kirien, the Jaran Lordan.”

The master-ten puffed contemplatively. “We value our Shanir in this house, and we protect them. You will only cause pain.”

“Sweet Trinity, d’you think I would deliberately hurt any of the Old Blood, being one myself?”

“Deliberately, no, but in this case it’s inevitable. Wait here.”

She entered the barracks and shortly returned with a thin, pale boy. So this was the cadet who had strewn Index’s messages over her sleeping body. Jame remembered seeing him at Senetha practice. She had wondered at the time why he was here and not at Mount Alban as some scrollsman’s apprentice, but it seemed that he wanted to be a randon.

“Can you help me?” she asked.

The cadet pulled a rolled, blank parchment out of one sleeve and a steel-tipped quill out of the other. Jame noted that his right hand was bound in linen. He loosened the bandage and pocketed it. His palm was scored with seeping cuts.

“What do you want to ask?” he said, bracing the parchment on the rail and digging the quill into his raw flesh.

You can only hurt.

Jame gulped. If this weren’t so important . . .

“To Kirien: please pass this message along to Trishien and ask her to tell my brother. Adric knows about the ring. He is coming to ask you where you got it.”

The cadet wrote her message in sputtering block letters on the parchment, returning several times to dip the quill into his own welling blood.

Then they waited.

“She may not be in her study,” said Jame.

“It shouldn’t matter. The itch to write will take her.”

His hand jerked into spiky script. “M’lady Kirien acknowledges the message, but reports that the Highlord had gone to Wilden to settle a border dispute. She also asks when Kindrie means to return to Mount Alban.”

Jame felt a chill. “He isn’t there now?”

The cadet’s scrip rounded as Trishien joined the conversation: “ ‘He isn’t at Gothregor either.’ ”

“Trinity,” breathed Jame. “Not here, nor at Mount Alban, nor at Gothregor.”

She remembered saying good-bye to her cousin and his discontented expression. He hadn’t been pleased not to take his pretty chart directly to Torisen on her mere say-so. After she had left, could he possibly have turned south rather than north on the New Road? If so, where had he been the past twenty-odd days? On the road, he should have been safe, but there were always wild animals and, these days, roving Noyat hillmen. Besides, Wilden lay between Tentir and Gothregor.

Oh lord, what if he had fallen into Randir hands?