The Sea of Time

XV Winter’s Tales

Torisen arranged the fur robe over his outstretched legs and snuggled back into its folds. A cup of hot spiced wine gave welcome warmth to his hands, assuaging the scars’ ache. It was a cold night, full of drifting snow, but Marc’s two glass furnaces kept the great hall at Gothregor pleasantly warm, even with wind whistling in through holes in the as yet uncompleted stained glass window. At least, it was much better here than in his tower study above.

The wolver curled up before one tower kiln, Yce before the other. Marc ground ingredients at the head of the table nearest the window which he had appropriated as his work space. To one side, Burr was teaching Kindrie how to darn his well-worn socks using a wooden egg.

“You catch up an edge of the hole, see? Then draw the thread across the bulge of the egg to the other side. Stitch into that side. Back and forth, back and forth. Then change direction. Now weave the thread over and under the original warp . . . good. Keep going.”

Grimly stretched and yawned. Paws in the air and furry belly exposed to the furnace’s heat, he shifted his mouth for human speech.

“You look as if you should be purring.”

Torisen sipped his wine. “I had a good day.”

Grimly wrinkled his nose. “What, helping muck out the stables?”

They had been snowed in for a fortnight and the walls were starting to clamp down on them all. With little to do except keep the fires going, eat, and sleep, tempers had grown short. However, nothing stops a horse’s digestive tract except starvation, and provisions for both man and beast were still excellent. Moreover, the entire remount herd was currently lodged in subterranean stalls, all faithfully producing manure that must be shoveled out at least once a day.

“What did your Kendar think of you lending a hand?”

“They didn’t like it, of course. What, their precious Highlord to waste his time on so menial a chore? But I had to do something.”

“Better than catching up with paperwork,” Kindrie murmured to Burr, who snorted.

Torisen cocked an eyebrow at them. “What’s more depressing than being left with the last thing that you want to do? Anyway, afterward there was the race.”

Kendar had shoveled a path around the edge of the inner ward and cartloads of manure had been emptied into it to cover the ice. Every day, the horses were brought up fifty at a time and given the run of the course for exercise. Today had been Storm’s turn. The black, quarter-bred Whinno-hir had burst off the ramp with head high, eyes bright, and nostrils jetting steam like a dragon. He had pawed at the snow, then looked at Torisen askance and whickered.

The invitation was clear.

Torisen hadn’t ridden in what felt like forever. He grabbed Storm’s mane, up he swung bareback, and off they went, thundering down the northern straightaway with snow flying from the black’s hooves. Someone whooped behind them. More horses acquired riders and it became a race. Around the northwest corner, down parallel to the western walls, up the southern side . . . Storm’s ribs heaved between Torisen’s knees. A bitter wind laced with snow blew in his face while Storm’s mane whipped against his hands. A crash behind them on the southeast turn: one of the horses had slipped and fallen, bringing down several in his wake. Now they were pounding home with the towers of the old keep swinging overhead. Kendar lining the way cheered. Torisen pulled Storm to a stop just short of the slippery ramp down into the stables and let out his breath: Ah . . .

He didn’t think that the Kendar had let him win on purpose.

“How is Cron?” he now asked Kindrie.

“The fall fractured his leg, but he should be up again soon. Meanwhile, he can tend to their new baby while his mate Merry handles his chores as well as her own. That shouldn’t be hard, just now. I didn’t know that male Kendar could breast-feed if necessary.”

“Oh, the Kendar are full of surprises. We Highborn don’t take their talents half as seriously as we should.”

Ever since Cron and Merry’s young son had broken his neck and Torisen had administered the White Knife to him, he had been interested in the pair. Somehow, they seemed to represent the health of his Kendar garrison. A new child was good, and it had been born under his protection, guaranteed a place in the Knorth. That couldn’t be said of every Kendar who wanted to join, not because Torisen didn’t wish it but because he was only able to bind so many and no more without weakening his hold on all. He had learned that the hard way with the suicide of Mullen, whose death banner now hung in a place of honor in the Knorth hall. Cron had come to him at an opportune moment to request a new child. Just the same, he was sorry that the Kendar had injured his leg.

Chunks of limestone rasped in an ironwood mortar as Marc ground them into dust. To this he added dried spice-bush and sand from the Wastes. The sound and the tang of the bush reminded Torisen of the last postrider before the snows to bring news from the south and, incidentally, a score of small bags containing raw material for Marc’s window.

Grimly noted his change of expression and rolled over on his side with a thump. “What?”

“You heard that Kothifir is undergoing a particularly rough Change at the moment. I was just hoping that Harn would restrict Jame to the camp for the duration.”

“Did he say that he would?”

“No.”

“Wise Harn. If something interesting is going on, there’ll be no keeping your sister away from it.”

Torisen sighed, remembering Jame’s bright, curious eyes and her talent for finding herself in absurd situations. Even as a child, she had had that knack.

“True,” he said.

“D’you remember the first time we met?” asked the wolver, perhaps to distract him. “That was during the big Change when King Kruin died and Krothen came to the throne.”

“I remember.” Torisen eased into a laugh. “It surprises me that you do, given how drunk you were at the time.”

Kindrie looked up, intrigued. “What happened?”

Grimly untangled limbs grown long, lanky, and human. “If you like, I will tell you.”

“From the beginning, please,” Torisen said. He and Burr knew the story. The others didn’t.

“Very well. One day long ago when I was just a pup, King Kruin came to the Grimly Holt to hunt wolver. We hid and watched while he set up camp in the ruined keep that was our den. A poet sang to the king in Rendish that night, but the king was too drunk to listen. I did, though, from the cover of a nearby bush. The poet saw me but said nothing. That was his revenge against his inattentive master.

“Well, come the dawn Kruin set off into the forest, but the deep wood is dangerous and the Deep Weald wolvers are ingenious. We watched Kruin’s men die in clever ways all day. Finally we offered to lead him out. He wasn’t exactly pleased by our assistance, but he accepted. In return, he offered a place in his court to any wolver who cared to present himself there.”

“What,” said Marc, with a smile through his graying beard, “on his trophy wall?”

“That was our first thought. We didn’t know it then, but a Deep Weald wolver had followed us out and was also listening. He took up the king’s offer first.”

Yce’s ears twitched. She rolled over and regarded Grimly with unblinking frost-blue eyes.

“When I came of age,” he continued, “I went south and found the poet whom I had heard sing. He was old by then, out of favor and fashion, but I didn’t know that. When he offered to present me at court, I was overjoyed.”

Grimly paused and sighed. His joy in storytelling dimmed. “Why are the young such fools? We see the bright path before us and romp down it.”

“You were neither a fool nor a cynic,” Torisen said. “Then or now. In Kothifir, you were a novelty. He used you to work his way back into favor.”

“Of course I know that now. Then, they laughed at me.” The old hurt whined in his voice. He coughed and shook his head, but the past still had him by the throat. “All of those years learning how to compose in Rendish, waiting to perform, and they laughed. So I began to clown and to drink in order to stand myself. ‘The Wildman of the Woods,’ they called me. That was who Rose Iron-thorn tackled that night in the plaza: a drunken buffoon.”

“Still, if you hadn’t told me that the Gnasher was performing above for Krothen in the Rose Tower, we wouldn’t have been in time to save him.”

And if the Gnasher hadn’t served Kruin before that, Torisen thought, he would never have gotten the idea that immortality lay through killing off all of one’s heirs. In that case, he wouldn’t be searching for Yce, his daughter, now.

“Ah well,” said Grimly, giving himself a shake. “I’ve told my tale. Your turn, old friend.”

“What d’you want to hear?”

The wolver looked at him askance, perhaps sensing that he was relaxed enough to part with some of his long-held secrets.

“Answer a question or two, then. How did you escape from Urakarn as a boy?”

Torisen considered his cup of steaming wine, now nearly empty. Burr rose without a word and refilled it. They were waiting for him to speak. Well, why not?

“You know the basic story,” he said, and took a sip. Burr had chosen a heady vintage for someone more accustomed to hard cider. It laced his veins with warmth and plucked at the knots of his reticence.

“That you, Harn, Burr, Rowan, and Rose Iron-thorn fled into the Wastes, found a stone boat, and sailed it across the dry salt sea, yes,” said the wolver. “That’s all plain enough. But how did you get free of Urakarn in the first place?”

“That I can’t tell you. I was chained in a room of changing sizes and then I wasn’t. Chained, that is. They had fitted my hands with white-hot wire gloves and the burns had become infected, y’see. My mind was none too clear. Perhaps I slipped off the cuffs myself. Perhaps someone freed me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” Torisen frowned. He thought he remembered the touch of cool hands on his own burning ones. Wake. Live, a voice had whispered in his ear and warm lips had brushed against his cold brow. Whose, if not a fever-born dream?

“If you can’t answer that riddle,” said Grimly, “then here’s another. I saw you just after you rejoined the Southern Host, and thought that you were a ghost. Genjar had reported the slaughter of the entire vanguard. But there you stood and told me off for still being a drunken lout, which I was. You said you were going to see Genjar. The next thing anyone heard, he was dead. What happened?”

Danger, Torisen’s instinct told him. Here was a secret, deep and dark. If Caldane ever heard it . . . but these were his friends. Whom else could he tell?

“As you say, I went to see him in the Caineron barracks . . .”

And as he spoke, memory carried him back.

No one had seen him enter or climb the stair. He seemed to pass through their midst like the ghost that Grimly had believed him to be. He felt like one, hollow and still echoing with the sand’s endless whisper. But his hands throbbed with infection. They had told him to go to the infirmary. Instead he had come here.

“You don’t see me,” he kept muttering. “You don’t see me.” And they didn’t.

Here was Genjar’s third-story suite, with voices coming from the farthest room. The door stood open. Tori stopped within its shadow. The bedchamber beyond was awash in morning light and billows of unrolled silk. Sea, sky, and earth might have roiled there, so various were the glowing, jeweled colors. Genjar stood before a mirror, holding up a length of pale lavender.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Nice, but it clashes with your eyes.”

The second languid voice was as smooth as samite drawn lightly over steel, unexpected yet familiar.

Genjar made a petulant sound, dropped the silk, and picked up a wine glass. His hand was none too steady and his eyes were bloodshot, matching none of the treasures on which he trod.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?” he asked. “A good vintage, this.”

“I thank you, no.”

Genjar’s guest lounged in one of his ornate chairs, long, black-booted legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles, elegant fingers steepled under a dark, sardonic face.

“Then to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” asked Caldane’s heir, stumbling a bit over the formal phrase.

“As you know,” said Caldane’s war-leader, Sheth Sharp-tongue, “I am newly come from the Riverland. On my arrival, of course I heard about your . . . er . . . exploits in the Wastes before Urakarn.”

“Then you know how outnumbered we were. I did well to bring back as much of the Host as I did.”

“Still,” murmured the other, “not since the White Hills have we suffered such a needless defeat.”

“Our paymasters ordered me to go!”

“And so you did, well enough pleased to do so by all accounts. Did no one advise you that your first duty lay in talking the Kothifirans out of such a reckless course, based on so little evidence?”

The Caineron make an impatient gesture, spilling wine. “The Host was eager enough, at least those with any spirit.”

“You mean the young bloods. What of the senior randon?”

Genjar snorted. “That pack of old women.”

“My dear boy,” said Sheth with a flickering smile. “Never underestimate old women. And then there are your losses. One in five dead, or so I hear, not to mention the entire vanguard . . .”

“They went too far ahead, too eager to steal my glory! How was I to know that they were in trouble?”

Tori remembered how their eyes had locked across that bloody cauldron.

Yes, here we are. Remember us?

“Scouts could have informed you, as they would have of the Karnids’ strength.”

“They told me nothing!”

“Because you didn’t wait for their reports. Harn Grip-hard has apprised me of that much at least. Due to a crack on the skull, he remembers little else, which is probably just as well. Ah, you didn’t know: he and three others have rejoined the Host. Many more were taken alive at Urakarn, but only they escaped. More lives lost. More bones unclaimed.”

Genjar’s flushed face mottled mauve and white. “What else did they tell you? Liars and cowards, the lot of them. I saved the Host! Can you hold me accountable for those too weak to fight their way out?”

“Yes.” The war-leader rose with leonine grace, and Genjar retreated a step from him. “I bring you a gift.” He laid a white-hilted knife on the table. The Commandant of the Southern Host stared at it, then gave a shaky laugh.

“My father would never send me such a message.”

“Nor did he. This comes from the randon under your command, alive and dead.”

“Them! They failed me, d’you hear? Why, they couldn’t even defeat a band of desert savages. Take back your precious gift!”

But Sheth made no move to reclaim the ritual suicide knife. “Then keep it,” he said lightly, “as a memento of honor. Good day to you.”

A step outside the door, he encountered Tori. For a moment he looked down at the boy, then nodded to him and left.

In a rage, Genjar stumbled across his bedchamber, kicking at drifts of silk as they caught at his feet. He poured more wine, sloshing it over his hand, drained the glass, and threw it at the wall.

“Of all the presumption . . . he dares to judge me? Father will have his scarf when I tell him. No more a high and mighty war-leader, Sheth! Cut someone else with your self-righteous tongue, if you can.”

Then he saw Tori standing in the doorway and stopped short, jaw agape. “You!”

“Here I am. Remember me?”

“Are all the unburnt dead coming back to haunt me? Well, I won’t have it, d’you hear me? I won’t!”

Genjar snatched up the knife and lunged toward Tori, but his foot snagged in a silken coil and he fell. He picked himself up gingerly with more sheer fabric festooned over him in loops. The knife was lodged in his side. He pulled it out and stared at it, then at the blood staining his now ruined coat.

“Look what you made me do, you . . . you bastard!”

His legs started to give way. He stumbled backward onto the balcony, into the railing which caught him at waist height. Fabric clung to his legs. He kicked petulantly to free himself, tottered, and fell over the handrail. A bolt of silk skittered across the floor, unwinding. Its board lodged between the bars and the silk went taut with a snap.

Tori picked up the knife and walked out onto the balcony. He looked down at the swinging figure, shrugged, and tossed the blade over the railing.

Shouts of alarm started as he gained the stairs and descended, again unobserved. Where had he been going? Oh, yes. To the infirmary to . . . to see Harn. It had nothing to do with the throbbing, infected burns that laced his hands. He shoved them into his pockets. If the surgeons saw, they might cut them off. He couldn’t have that.

The great hall was silent after Torisen finished his tale. They were all staring at him.

“You mean,” said Kindrie at last, “that he simply tripped and fell?”

“‘Simply’ rather understates the situation, don’t you think?” Grimly said. “Why, one could say that his own vanity tripped him. Nonetheless, the story should never leave this room.”

“But it was an accident!” Kindrie protested.

“Did I say anything else? Think how Lord Caineron would react to it, though. As it is, the only comfort he can take out of the whole debacle is that he thinks his favorite son died honorably by the White Knife, if with embellishments.”

“At least you kept your hands,” said Kindrie. “A healer might have prevented the scars, though.”

“No!”

In that snapped word, the barrier went up again between them.

Torisen sipped his wine, cursing himself. Just when he thought he had finally overcome his loathing of the Shanir, it sprang back at him. The wine had cooled. His scarred hands hurt anew at the encroaching bite of the cold.

“Enough of that,” he said. “Sing for us, Grimly. In your own language. I promise we won’t laugh.”

Grimly considered. “All right,” he said, and his muzzle returned to its lupine form. He began to sing them a summer’s night in the Holt. A long howl, fading, swelling, fading again, traced the curve of a full moon. Yce rolled upright. Her soft yips were branches etched against its disc. Grimly paused and gave her an approving look. Together they traced the black lace of twig and leaf, the strong trunks between which fireflies danced. Wind stirred the grass. Sharper notes defined the bones of the ruined keep and a burble in the throat became the stream that wound its way down the broken hall, glinting under the moon.

Yce stopped suddenly. Her growl shattered the image and her hackles rose. Grimly also stopped and leaped to his feet.

Somewhere out in the dark, snowy night, a deep-throated howl had answered them.