Honor's Paradox

XIX Challenge

Jame woke late, with a vicious hangover.

Someone was bustling about the lodge, singing. A billow of dust made Jame sneeze. She rolled over, blurry-eyed, to observe Prid bundling up old tapestries, assisted by Hatch. They had already made fair inroads on the dwelling’s dank clutter, most of which they apparently had disposed of by shoving it up the stair into the open. Cheerful voices above indicated that they had help.

“Oh, you’re awake!” Prid exclaimed, seeing her move.

“Not so loud. G’ah, what did they put into that wretched mead anyway?”

“Everything left over from the winter, probably. Beer, ale, burnt water, fermented fish piss . . . People have been stopping by all morning to say what fun they had, as good as when Ma married Da, from all accounts. Here.”

She handed Jame a beaker of water, which the latter gratefully drained, splashing the last of it on her flushed face. She had been dreaming. There was someplace she was supposed to be, some duty she had neglected to fulfill. A nightmare sense of failure rose like bile in her throat, unless that was bile.

She observed Hatch by the loom, carefully removing rotten threads and setting its wooden limbs to rights.

“We decided,” Prid announced. “Hatch may have new duties in the village as the Earth Wife’s Favorite, but he’s going to stay here with me. Now that I’m a lodge-wyf, no one will object—unless you do.”

It seemed like a sensible arrangement to Jame, and she said so. Prid would have company and Hatch, when she was ready, would have Prid.

Then she remembered what she had forgotten: Gorbel’s challenge. “I have to go.”

The blanket had twisted around her legs. When she tried to rise, she fell headfirst between the sleeping ledge and the raised hearth. Prid and Hatch disentangled her. She gave them each a distracted kiss, grabbed her gear, and scrambled up into a bright morning.

Merikit women were sorting the offerings of the lodge—what to keep, what to discard, and what to burn immediately. Their good-natured greetings followed Jame down the boardwalk, mixed with bawdy jibes from the men about the supposed pleasures of her wedding night. Hopefully no one understood the answers that she snarled back at them in High Kens, a language rich in courtly invective.

Bel waited for her outside the gate. She had brought the mare in part because the Whinno-hir was easier to ride but mostly because she knew the Riverland better than the rathorn did. Still, the sun marched steadily across the sky as they traveled southward by the folds in the land until at last they arrived in the rocks west of Tentir.

“It’s about time,” the horse-master said, rising from his seat on a low boulder that might have doubled for his bald head. “Gorbel and his friends have been waiting for you in the training square since just after breakfast, in full armor, getting crosser by the minute. The Commandant has given you until sunset to appear.”

Both looked up at the descending sun, now less than half an hour above the western peaks.

Death’s-head ambled up wearing his usual riding tack as Jame scrambled into her light leather armor. For arms, she took a buckler and, reluctantly, a short sword, scythe-arms being a risky proposition in mounted combat if one didn’t want inadvertently to lop off ears or tails.

The horse-master surveyed her as she straightened her oversized helmet. Really, when she had time (if she had time), she needed to commission something better fitting.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He gave her a leg up onto the rathorn’s back and stood clear. Picking up on her nerves, if not on her mood, the colt capered in place, slashing with his horns. Then he plunged forward with Jame hanging on for dear life.

Their grand dash faltered at the hall door. The portals to the great hall stood open, but Death’s-head hesitated to enter where he had never been before, nor yet perhaps under any manmade roof. Jame coaxed him over the threshold.

The dark hall echoed like a seashell with the clamor of the cadets outside. A few voices picked up a chant, then more and more:

“. . . 30, 29, 28, 27 . . .”

They were timing the sun’s descent.

The rathorn’s ears twitched, but not at the ringing count. Darkness moved and became the Commandant, standing between them and the farther door.

“Well, Lordan.”

“Well, Ran.”

Would he stop her? What would be the point of that, though, when all he need do was cause a delay?

“. . . 21, 20, 19, 18 . . .”

Anyway, she had already solved his problem by failing to earn enough white pebbles to graduate from the college. Could he also mean to humiliate her by denying her this challenge? Certainly, his lord would love him for it.

“I thought you would come up with something, but this”—he indicated the rathorn—“rather exceeds my expectations. Can you control him?”

“After a fashion, Ran.”

“. . . 10, 9, 8 . . .”

“Well then, let’s see how you fare.”

He turned and pulled open the door. A shaft of brilliant sunlight, the day’s last, lanced through into the hall. Jame nudged the rathorn forward as if into the mouth of a furnace, out the door, into the square.

“. . . 4, 3, 2 . . .”

The voices petered out. Struck blind, Jame could see nothing. Then the sun set. Blinking dazzled eyes, at first she saw only black and crimson, then bit by bit what appeared to be the entire college lining the rail and the windows above, staring back at her. The eight armed Caineron riders waiting in the square seemed almost incidental.

The rathorn’s jaw dropped. Overwhelmed, he tried to back up, but the Commandant had closed the door behind him. His rump hit it with a hollow boom and he lunged forward, snorting, startled.

“It’s just a white horse in armor,” someone protested, uncertainly.

“Are you daft? Look at all that ivory!”

“It can’t be.”

“It is!”

Someone else cheered. It sounded like Rue.

The noise spread, thunderous, and Death’s-head brandished his horns at it. His defiant scream soared about the tumult, cutting it short.

In the startled silence that followed, Gorbel began to clap, slowly, in the heavy, measured way with which he had greeted her win at the Senethar so many months ago. The crowd picked up the beat.

The colt shook his head and moved forward along the rail. His hooves struck hard earth in time to the clapping. It picked up and he began to prance. The riders turned with him, their horses’ eyes rolling white as they caught the rathorn’s scent. Cadets fell back from the rail as he passed in a shimmer of white silk and ivory.

“Show-off,” Jame muttered at him.

They regained their original position in front of the hall door and swung about to face their opponents.

Silence fell again, except for Death’s-head pawing the ground.

“Have you words for me?” Jame asked Gorbel, following the formal pattern.

“I challenge you as the Knorth Lordan to prove your worthiness of that title.”

“I accept your challenge.”

Death’s-head snorted. Enough. He laid back his ears and charged, nearly leaving Jame astride thin air.

One of the horses, a piebald, turned and bolted with a squeal, the rathorn roaring on his heels. Confronted with the rail, he vaulted over it into the packed ranks of cadets, there shedding his rider. Then, confused, he plunged through the front door into the Caineron barracks. Cadets who had lined the windows to watch jumped out of them. Crashes and shouts came from within.

The colt was already swerving away. Jame swayed perilously off balance in the saddle, nearly over the rail herself with all her weight on the outer stirrup, before regaining her seat.

They were charging back toward the riders still clustered in the middle of the square. This time three broke ranks and ran, screaming, before them. Death’s-head thundered in pursuit. The Caineron cadets sawed on their reins, turning their mounts’ foaming muzzles to the sky, but nothing would stop them. So many would smash the entire rail flat, never mind the cadets who lined it.

“Hall, there. Hall!” Jame shouted, echoed by Gorbel.

The door opened. Two horses bolted through, carrying their hapless riders with them, but the third was shouldered aside and crashed through the barrier near the Brandan quarters, into the passageway that led to the southern door. His rider, scraped off against he wall, lay blinking at his departure.

It had taken the rathorn less than two minutes to clear the square of his most skittish opponents. That left Gorbel himself, his five-commander Obidin, Higbert, and Fash.

At a hoarse cry from their leader, the four charged. Death’s-head leaped to meet them, swerving at the last moment to pass between Fash and Higbert. On her left, Fash dealt Jame’s buckler a blow that drove it back to her shoulder. On her right, Higbert hacked at her sword and sent it flying. Simultaneously, the colt slashed at Higbert’s girth. Then they were past. Higbert slowly toppled over, saddle and all. Fash screened him as he dashed to the rail and dived over it. His horse plunged out of the square through the hall door.

That ended the second round, Jame thought, as the rathorn trotted around the perimeter, seeking his next prey. So far, their sheer number had prevented Gorbel or Obidin from striking a blow. Nonetheless, the loss of her sword was almost a relief as it allowed her to grip the colt’s roached-up mane for balance. She had already grasped that her only chance for survival was to stay on the rathorn, and that she could do precious little to direct him now that his blood was up.

They would try to catch her between them again—or would they?

Here came Fash, gashing his mount’s sides with his spurs, riding high in the saddle with sword upraised. The raw hate in his face struck her like a physical blow. She didn’t like the man, but neither did she loathe him as much as he apparently did her.

Vant’s features flashed before her, just before the Dark Judge had ripped off his head. He too had seen her as an abomination and as a personal insult. What about her inspired such malice? Everything she did seemed to slap someone in the face.

Philosophize later, she thought, gripping the colt’s mane.

Fash’s sword rang on her buckler, numbing her arm to the shoulder. Their mounts wheeled, head to tail, as he battered down her defense. Just before it fell, the rathorn rammed his nasal tusk into the horse’s belly and wrenched up, disemboweling him. The animal squealed, stumbled over the descending loops of his own intestines, and went down. Fash sprang clear. Death’s-head knocked him off his feet, then went after him as he rolled on the ground as if after a snake, pounce and strike, pounce and strike.

The crowd roared.

There was blood in the rathorn’s mouth. Jame could taste it and the savagery that it unleashed in his veins, in her own. Ah, the intoxication of one’s strength, of one’s ability to kill and kill and kill . . .

Beast of madness, here is your heart.

In that jolting ride, Jame had bitten her own tongue, her blood mixing with the phantom taste of his. She fought to free her mind of that red haze, of that raging blood lust.

Obidin unintentionally aided her by riding up behind. Death’s-head kicked the five-commander’s mount in the face, dropping him. Fash used the momentary distraction to gather himself and leap, trying to pull her out of the saddle. She dealt him a stunning blow with her buckler, He fell away and rolled under the rail to safety.

That left only Gorbel.

Forewarned, the Caineron had chosen a steady gray charger well used to combat, but the smell of blood had roused him too. Both stallions reared up, striking out with their fore hooves. The gray’s iron-shod foot opened a gash on the rathorn’s unarmored shoulder. Gorbel clouted his mount on the head to bring him down. The beasts circled each other, ears back, snapping, while Gorbel smashed at Jame shield to shield. He got the edge of his buckler hooked under hers and wrenched it away. For a moment she stared into his glowering, sweat-streaked face, seeing his raised sword out of the corner of her eye.

In the audience, Damson leaned forward over the rail.

“Damson, no!”

The gray horse shied away from the power in Jame’s voice, throwing Gorbel off balance.

The colt’s head snaked out and he sank his fangs into the gray’s throat. The gray squealed and tried to tear free, but he was caught as in a lion’s grip and his blood poured out. The rathorn jammed his shoulder into the horse, driving him first to his knees, then to the ground. Gorbel went down with him and was pinned.

The horse rolled frantically, as if trying to escape its own death. Gorbel gave a grunt that, for anyone else, would have been a scream. His leg audibly snapped. The dying horse continued to thrash.

Jame swung down from Death’s-head and darted to the Caineron’s side.

“Help me!” she called over her shoulder as she tried to pull him free.

“I think not,” said Fash, putting his knife to her throat. Then he stiffened and crumpled as a sword’s pommel clipped him over the ear.

“I think so,” said Obidin, sheathing his blade.

Between them, they dragged Gorbel clear, trailing his mangled leg. Ragged bone had ripped through his trousers at the thigh. Blood spurted. Obidin wrenched off his scarf to use as a tourniquet. It was too short. Jame gave him her own.

“Here, now.”

The college surgeon pushed them aside and applied pressure to the torn femoral artery.

Death’s-head was watching them curiously, his blood lust forgotten. The horse-master gripped his bridle and tugged him away. They left by the hall door, the rathorn still craning to look back over his shoulder.

Gorbel was carried out and so was the still-unconscious Fash.

Jame turned to find herself looking up into the Commandant’s dark face.

“I lost my weapon, Ran,” she said, stupidly.

He smiled. “No, you didn’t, although one can hardly say that you kept it very well under control.”

He looked around at the dead horses and at Obidin’s, which was staggering to its feet with what appeared to be a broken jaw, at the shattered rail and at the Caineron quarters which still rang with shouts and frantic hooves. The piebald had apparently achieved the second floor and was refusing to come down.

“The college reduced to rubble . . .” murmured the Commandant.

“And me standing in the middle of it, looking apologetic. I know. Sorry, Ran.”

He brushed this off. “It could be worse. At least the buildings are intact. Mostly. Ah, quite a day it’s been. I have something for you, Lordan.”

He dipped long fingers into a leather sack and drew out a white pebble.

“This is for Bear.”

And another. “This is for the Winter War.”

And another. “This is for not utterly destroying Tentir, although you did try your best.”

Jame stared at the three white stones in her cupped hands. That made it five to four. She had passed the college.

“Commandant, senethari, are you sure?”

“If you mean, how will my lord like it, let me worry about that. Now, wave to your friends like a good child.”

Jame gave a whoop of laughter and brandished the pebbles in her fist over her head. The Knorth cadets realized first what they were and what they meant. In the front row, Rue bounced up and down cheering. Timmon started off the Ardeth, Obidin the Caineron, followed by the other houses one by one including even a weak chorus from the Randir until the square rang with jubilant cries.

While the square was being cleared, cleaned, and prepared for the evening’s feast, the Commandant visited the infirmary to make sure that his lord’s heir would recover.

“Yes,” the surgeon reported, “although only thanks to the quick action of bystanders.”

Then he retired to his quarters.

Someone stood in the shadows by the balcony of the Map Room, looking down. A white shape at his feet raised its head and greeted the Commandant with the brief wave of a tail.

“You saw, my lord?”

“The whole bloody shambles.”

“Granted, it got messy, but at eight to one the lordan needed an edge.”

The other gave a sharp laugh. “How many edges does a rathorn have? Where did she get that creature and why wasn’t I told about it?”

“No one knew, or perhaps only a few. I see that I must speak to my horse-master. Gorbel also didn’t seem surprised.”

“She would tell a Caineron but not me?”

“They have the Tentir bond, which is not a bad thing. I am pleased with most of my cadets this season. You should be too.”

The Highlord moved out of the shadows. “I still mean to do it, Sheth. For my own peace of mind. Do you advise me not to?”

“I would say that it is unnecessary for her, but perhaps vital for you. She is your heir. You must learn to trust her.”

“This, from a Caineron?”

“This, from the Commandant of Tentir.”

He watched Torisen pace restlessly. Truly, he had the dark, Knorth glamour that made him a presence even in the room’s growing dusk. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, despite the white in his hair, he was still a very young man—for the long-lived Highborn, not much older than the cadets setting up tables in the square below. Ah, if only Tentir had had his training, not that the randon of the Southern Host had done badly with him. But there was no bond.

“As far as the randon are concerned, she has proved herself. If you challenge her again, openly, it will seem that you trust neither her nor us.”

Torisen ran a scarred hand through his hair. “It isn’t that, exactly. Before today, I had only seen her fight once, at the High Council presentation, and that was as odd a combat in its way as this one. Kothifir is dangerous, especially now. Should I risk half of my surviving blood-kin there?”

The Commandant frowned. Half?

“Very well,” he said, after a pause. “Test her you shall. Before dinner. Give her at least until then to enjoy her victory.”

The Knorth barracks were chaos. Only now did Jame realize how much her absence the previous day had disconcerted everyone. Some really must have thought that her nerve had failed and that she had run away.

“You see?” crowed Dar. “You see?”

Jame met Brier Iron-thorn’s jade green eyes over the throng. The Kendar gave her a small, stiff nod. Perhaps, finally, she had proved herself to the critic whose opinion she valued the most, short of the Commandant’s.

Short even of Torisen’s?

How would her brother react to this success for which he had never planned?

Ah, but it was sweet to accept the congratulations of her peers, to know that they accepted her at last. She had never before had a real home. Now they were welcoming her into one bound not by walls but by fellowship. However, it was still hers to lose. Next came Kothifir the Cruel, an unknown entity, but she shoved aside this doubt. Whatever happened, they would face it together, united in their strength as much as in their ignorance.

She saw Damson standing quietly nearby with a little smirk on her round face.

“You were going to make the gray stumble,” Jame said, in sudden enlightenment.

Damson shrugged. “I couldn’t get into the Caineron’s mind for some reason, but his horse . . . Was that wrong?”

How could Jame say “No” when that moment off balance had probably saved her life? Still, “In the hills, the Dark Judge mentioned you by name. He knows what you did to Vant and will be watching you now. Be careful.”

“Oh,” said Damson, for the first time looking alarmed.

“I should hope so,” said Jame.

Rue pushed through the crowd carrying something. White cloth shimmered in her arms, every inch of it patterned with swirls of cream-colored embroidery. It was a coat, a beautiful coat.

“See?” said Rue. “Treasure from the Wastes it may be, but I figured that enough stitches would anchor it in this world. Everyone added their own with silk thread unraveled from one of your uncle’s shirts. Trust me: we washed it half to pieces first. It’s like our house banner, but special to our class.”

Jame hesitated to don it; her clothes were splashed with the blood of both Gorbel and his charger.

“Take ’em off,” Rue urged impatiently.

She stripped off her jacket and shirt. The coat slid over her bare skin like cool water and molded itself to her body.

“Oh . . . !” breathed the cadets.

“To the Lordan of Ivory!” someone called from the back of the crowd, and all cried, “Hurrah, hurrah!”

It was too much.

Jame broke free and fled to her quarters where Jorin flopped over to greet her with sleepy affection.

“Look, just look!”

She ran her hands over the glimmering sleeves, feeling the texture of silken stitches under her fingertips. Did the Kendar also use knot codes? She felt instinctively that they did, and that they had worked their own subtle magic into this cloth. So much work, done by so many, all on the sly. She hadn’t even thought about the fabric that Rue had bought from the Southron traders since the day of the egging. Memory rose of the previous Lordan’s Coat, so gorgeous but so foul, infused with Greshan’s black soul. This was the heirloom now, and she the last lordan, bearing the record of her school days on her back for all to read who could.

Nothing could have pleased her more.

Calmer now, she slipped out of the precious coat and carefully folded it on her pallet. Rue had laid out clean clothes. She put them on, crept down the stair and, avoiding the still-packed common room, made for the infirmary in Old Tentir.

Gorbel lay on one of the cots, his leg heavily bandaged and splinted. He was very pale with a dark bristle of beard and black strands of hair straggling over his bulbous forehead. Jame remembered that he had waited for her all day in the hot square. Now he waited still, moving restlessly, his chapped lips parting with an audible smack. She offered him water in a ceramic cup. He drank avidly.

“Good,” he muttered, his eyes still closed.

“More?”

He blinked at her. “Yes.”

She poured him another cupful and supported his head as he drank. His hair was greasy with sweat. He squinted at her over the cup’s rim.

“I knew you’d bring that monster,” he said, “and that we would be lucky to escape from it alive.”

“You had a good horse.”

“The best. Old Gray-leggings will be hard to replace.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was to the death, whatever you were told. I just never counted on horse before rider.”

“You’d rather it was the other way around?”

“I could have spared that idiot Fash.”

“So could we all. Now rest. You left enough blood in the square to launch a small fleet.”

At the door, his voice stopped her. “I nearly killed you.”

“I know. Never mind. And cheer up: here comes Timmon with a nice bunch of flowers.”

The water cup shattered on the lintel over her head.

“Now, was that called for?” asked Timmon, approaching with an arm full of white daisies, some pulled up by the roots and dribbling dry soil.

Jame closed the infirmary door. “He really isn’t up to teasing.”

“Would I do that?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Then you take these.” He thrust the flowers at her. “In token of your victory. Besides, I look silly carting them around.”

“And I don’t?”

“They complement your eyes. Also, the Commandant asked me to tell you to meet him in the great hall.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. And congratulations,” he called after her. “That was quite a show, if rather hard on the livestock.”

The Commandant paced before the empty fireplace in the great hall. Dusk filtering through high windows supplied the only light, the only sound his heels clicking and a murmur from the square outside. He had locked the doors. The hall was as secure as he could make it.

Keeping him company were the looming banners of all nine major houses. He glanced up at his lord’s against the northern wall, a great, swollen collection of stitches that all but obscured its design with more to be added that evening. What would Caldane say about today’s events? His heir’s near death would mean far less to him than the Knorth Lordan’s success. Would he carry out his threats? Sheth accepted philosophically that Caldane might, and that his own active career as a randon might end as soon as word of today’s events reached Restormir. If so, then so. He had emerged from the paradox with his honor intact, a thing which, in itself, would make Lord Caineron smash anything within his reach.

The Commandant looked up at the rathorn banner hanging over the fireplace and shook his head. Oh, the Knorth. He had thought before, more than once, that they put everyone to the test whether they meant to or not. So it had proved again.

Footsteps sounded on the stair. Jameth descended, carrying a sheaf of bedraggled flowers.

“You sent for me, Ran?”

He flicked a drooping daisy with a fingertip. “Very becoming. Not I. Him.”

Puzzled, she turned in the direction that he indicated, down the hall. A pale face crowned with silver-shot hair seemed to materialize out of the growing gloom, approaching.

“Tori!” she cried, first joyful, then perplexed. Sheth saw her gulp. She faced the Highlord, straightening, as if against a force of nature.

“Have you words for me, brother?”

“Sister, I challenge you as the Knorth Lordan to prove your worthiness of that title.”

“Truly, Tori?”

“Truly.”

“Then I accept your challenge.”

She handed the flowers to the Commandant, who received them with a raised eyebrow, and started down the hall toward the Highlord. They approached like images in a mirror, lithe, loose of limb, and black clad, their house and kinship proclaimed by the fine bones of their faces and by their silver-gray eyes. Three paces apart they stopped and saluted each other, equal to equal. Then they began to circle.

At first their moves were tentative as they felt out each other’s skill. Torisen flicked a fire-leaping blow at Jameth which she deflected with water-flowing. He struck again, harder and faster. She blocked and snapped back with a response that grazed his cheek. With that, the fight settled into a serious match. Her style was classic and smoothly cadenced, his rougher but no less effective, though neither as yet had landed a telling blow. Fire-leaping met water-flowing, wind-blowing channeled aside earth-moving.

Their shadows moved with them, larger than they, and the banners rippled against the walls at their touch. Each gesture extended beyond itself to sweep dust from the floor and fan the Commandant’s coattails. He felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. His Shanir sense told him that here was power, barely aroused, barely controlled. Torisen reversed suddenly with a move from Kothifir street-fighting. Jameth blocked awkwardly and stumbled back against a pillar. She only brushed the stone, but it groaned and dust shifted down from the rafters. She came back with a Kothifir counterblow that knocked the Highlord off his feet.

The Commandant watched with interest: he had heard that the Southron Brier was training the lordan, but hadn’t guessed that her lessons had proceeded so far.

He was also concerned. The hall seemed to swell with the force that it contained and his ears popped. Clearly, these two should never fight each other. He put down the flowers and drew a wooden flute out of his sleeve. At what seemed like a propitious moment, he began to play.

Jameth instantly shifted to the Senetha. Torisen, not so quick to adjust, carried through with his attack and kicked her in the head. She staggered. It had been a potentially killing blow, but she didn’t fall. After a moment’s pause, the Commandant continued to play.

They were dancing now. Jameth stumbled through the opening moves, kept on her feet as if by some external force that defied gravity. Torisen swayed to support her, but never quite had to. They glided through the forms again mirroring each other, swoop and turn, dip and rise. Hands slid past hands, arched bodies nearly touched, flesh tingled, to pass so close. Power was building up again, this time thick and erotic. The Commandant could feel it rippling up and down his spine but still he played as if unable to stop. The floor on which they danced was dark green shot with glowing verdigris veins, the banners multiplied, now with faces that watched and smiled, lopsided, hungry. If he could have turned, what would have been on the hearth behind him?

Squeee, squeee, squeeeee . . .

Claws flexed on stone. The shapes of long-dead Arrin-ken rose at the edge of his vision to loom over him.

“You see how they are drawn together,” whispered a mocking voice in his ear. “Ah, my dark lord’s sweet blood-kin. What if they should touch? Who of us would survive the union of creation and destruction? Schoolmaster, should you forbid them, or wait to see what follows?”

The Commandant wrenched the flute from his lips, tasting blood as flesh sundered from wood.

Jameth stumbled and fell. As Torisen bent over her, she spat out a tooth and groaned. “Not the same one.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop in time.”

“ ’S all right. It will grow back.”

The Commandant slipped the flute up his sleeve. “Highlord, are you satisfied?”

“Trinity, yes. I was a fool to doubt you, wasn’t I?”

Which of them he meant wasn’t clear, but one would do for both.

The Commandant wondered, though, if Torisen’s fears were unjustified after all. Jameth would make a good randon, no doubt, but Kothifir would be lucky to survive her. Might not the same be said about the entire Kencyrath? What, after all, had he been nurturing in his nest at Tentir?

Child of darkness, breathed the shadows. Lordan of light.

But those were thoughts for a different time. Outside the hall door, he heard the cadets bringing the feast to the table amidst laughter and cheers. They had earned this day. So had Jameth. He thrust the door open and gestured them through.

“Before you leave for Kothifir,” he heard the Highlord say, “we have to talk.”

She threw back her head with a crow of triumphant laughter. “Finally!”

The Commandant followed them up to the high table and there presented them to the assembled cadets.

“I give you Torisen Black Lord and his sister Jameth!”

The latter stood up. “For the last time,” she said in a clear, high voice, eyes locked on her brother’s, “my name is not Jameth. It’s Jame, short for Jamethiel. Jamethiel Priest’s-bane of Knorth.”