The Sea of Time

VIII Pounding on the Door

Bang, bang, bang!

Torisen couldn’t sleep with that pounding inside his head.

“Be quiet!” he shouted at it.

Yce licked his chin. When had she slipped under the covers with him?

“Be strong,” the wolver pup whined to him, her whiskered lips tickling his beard. “Remember, fathers may devour their young, but only if we are weak.”

“Be still,” whispered Jame’s voice in his ear as her strong, slender arms wound around him and her body pressed against his. “He has to sleep sooner or later. Then we will have him.”

How like them both to think in terms of fighting back. How alike they were, in so many ways.

And white-haired Kindrie? He stood aloof with his back turned, braced against that crack of anger, but stubborn too in his endurance. Ancestors knew, he had suffered as much as any of them.

Am I weaker than he? Torisen wondered.

But their cases were different: Kindrie had faced his demons and (presumably) won, while Torisen still had his dead father lodged like a festering splinter in his soul-image, behind a none too securely locked door.

The tapping began again, almost sly at first but getting louder and louder as Ganth raged.

Do you think you can ignore me? Stupid boy, who has brought a Shanir abomination into my house! Stupid girl, with your cursed blood!

Torisen tightened his grip on his sister in the bed where they cowered together, children again. “Mother is gone. I’ll protect you.”

“And Kindrie too?”

In the sodden field between Wilden and Shadow Rock, the healer had warned him barely in time about shape-shifting Kenan and arguably had saved his life. In return, he had welcomed their Shanir cousin into the Knorth’s “small but interestingly inbred family.” Father couldn’t make him take back those words . . . could he?

The thought was greeted with harsh laughter. Would you challenge me, boy?

Jame was already drawing away, a child no longer but a supple-limbed temptress whose touch he longed to regain. “You let me go before. Will you again?”

“Never!” he cried, and cringed at the loudness of his own voice. “I love you!”

Tap, tap, boom!

He lurched awake in his tower bedroom at Gothregor. From the hearth, Yce regarded him warily.

The Jaran matriarch Trishien sat by an open window in the Women’s Halls, reading. A cool breeze scented with fallen leaves stirred the brightly illuminated pages of her book. Winter was coming. She could feel it in her bones. Soon she would have to spend more time in the warm common room, forfeiting her precious privacy. Time to enjoy it while she could.

A tentative knock on the door made her sigh and put aside her work. Kindrie sidled apologetically into the room, his white hair as always disordered and his pale cheeks slightly flushed from the climb to her quarters.

“Lady, I brought you the salve that Kells promised.”

Trishien opened the glass jar which he proffered and sniffed. “Almond oil and peppermint, I think, with a dash of cayenne. Ah, that scent clears the head, even if my problems lie elsewhere.”

“Yes, also white willow and birch. I helped Kells mix it. If you like,” he added, hesitantly, “and if the joint pain increases, I can work with your soul-image. I’ve had some practice in that area with Index at Mount Alban.”

Trishien smiled, imagining what such sessions with the irascible old scrollsman must be like. What was Index’s soul-image? Probably his precious herb shed. What was her own? Most people didn’t know, but she suspected it was a library or even a single scroll. If the latter, how curious it would be to know which one, and how it ended. “Come winter, I may accept your offer. So.” She regarded him from behind the flash of reading lens slotted into her matron’s mask. “You are still assisting the herbalist. Nothing else?”

Kindrie looked, abashed, at his boots. “I help wherever I can, but no, Torisen hasn’t let me near his papers yet.”

Trishien sighed. “Stubborn, foolish boy, not to take help when he needs it. Even I have heard how his piles of correspondence grow daily and business goes untended. Why else does he think Kirien sent you to Gothregor? Do you miss her?”

“Yes, lady,” said the healer, in a wistful tone that told her more than his words. “She gave me this,” he added, as if in explanation, fingering his blue woolen robe.

“Of course she did,” said Trishien with a half smile. “My grandniece has good taste in all matters.”

“Am I disturbing you, lady?” asked a voice at the still-open door. There stood Torisen Highlord himself, looking ghastly. His face was white under his beard and his silver-gray eyes opaque with pain. He stepped into the room and stumbled against a chest. “Sorry. I have a blinding headache. Literally.”

Trishien went quickly to help him settle into a chair.

Yce crouched on the threshold, wary and watchful.

Kindrie hovered, unsure whether to help or to go away.

“Stay,” Trishien whispered to him. To Torisen she said, “How may I assist you, my lord?”

He laughed a bit shakily. “The last time something like this happened, talking to you helped. If I told Burr or Rowan, they would fuss me halfway to my pyre.”

Trishien turned to her table, deliberately slid the lens out of her mask, and laid them carefully down.

As once before, her naked, farsighted gaze discerned the shadow that stooped over the Highlord’s bent shoulders, shrouding him.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Bang, bang, bang, he won’t stop pounding on the door inside my soul-image. The panels are shaking. The lock is jumping half out of its socket.”

Trishien felt her own heart knock against her ribs. Who was she to meddle with a problem such as this? But she must try. “It sounds to me,” she said carefully, “as if your father is throwing a temper tantrum.” The shadow raised an indistinct head over the Highlord’s dark, bent one. “Yes, you, My Lord Ganth. What, pray tell, is the problem this time?”

Torisen lifted his own head so that the other’s features overlay it like a caul; cold, silver eyes glimmering through.

“I want that stinking Shanir out of my house,” he said in a harsh voice not his own. “Now. See how he lurks, spying. What is he thinking, eh?”

Kindrie flinched and again edged toward the door. Again, Trishien stopped him.

“What do you see?” he whispered.

Rising anger mastered her fear, although her voice still shook. “A sorry sight. You always did hide behind your anger, Ganth. When you couldn’t have what you wanted, you tried to tear down everything, at whatever cost to anyone else. You were hurt, by your brother, by your father, by life, so you hurt others. All your son wants is to build a better world. He has the innate power to do that. Who are you to stop him?”

“My world ended in ruins. So will his. Do you think he is stronger than I am?”

“Or do you mean, than you were? Yes, when you leave him alone. Oh, Ganth.” Her anger gave way to pity. “I loved you once. Perhaps I still do. Don’t destroy yourself a second time in your son.”

“Ah, Trish. I could never love you as you deserved, not after I saw her.”

Again, that mysterious woman who had seduced the Highlord of the Kencyrath, had become his children’s mother, and had destroyed him with her leaving.

“‘Alas,’” Trishien murmured, “‘for the greed of a man and the deceit of a woman, that we should come to this!’”

“You don’t understand. What happened was fated.”

“Well, it was certainly fatal. Accept that and leave this boy alone.”

“Never!” His shadow spread, devouring the room. Kindrie shivered in the sudden chill as if under an eclipse, the past overarching the present. Yce tensed, snarling. “I do with my own flesh what I choose!”

Trishien gripped Torisen’s head. It took all her strength to force the darkness back through his eyes into his bones. “Ganth, my love, you are dead. Go away.”

Torisen swayed and nearly pitched out of the chair, but Trishien caught him by the shoulders.

“I think I understand what you did, lady,” the healer said over the dark, bowed head which he dared not touch, “and I thank you for it, but we both know that he will never be whole while that presence haunts him.”

Trishien sighed. “I have no power to exorcise it for more than a time. Perhaps you do.”

Kindrie drew back. “Lady, to touch him is to release what lies within, whether he is ready or not.”

“Perhaps, then, this is something he must do for himself. At least we have gained a respite.”

Torisen caught his breath sharply and straightened, wiping a hand across his sweat-beaded face.

“What was I saying?” he asked, blinking, sounding dazed.

“Nothing to fret about, my lord.” But her hands trembled as she fitted the lens back into her mask. Had she done good here, or further harm? “How do you feel now?”

“Better,” he said in wonder, touching his temple. “The pounding has stopped. All that’s left is a mutter and a sense of . . . pity? But that makes no sense.”

Kindrie stirred.

“Oh,” said Torisen, noticing him for the first time. “It’s you.”

“Do you want me to leave, my lord?”

“No.” He shook his head gingerly as if to clear it, and winced again. “I’ve been in a damnable muddle about you for far too long. This is your family. I said so. You’ll stay, if you please, and take up the job you came to do. Ancestors know, I need the help.”

Trishien’s eyes met Kindrie’s over his head and she nodded. One step at a time.