The Sea of Time

XXIII The Feast of Fools

As it happened, Princess Amantine survived the fall, if with sundry broken bones. The unhappy Lady Cella did not.

Jame, Brier, and Jorin left Kroaky thrashing out with Master Iron Gauntlet and Lord Artifice how he was to present his transformed self to the city. There would, Jame supposed, be problems. However, no one could deny in the end that, for all his pimples, the lanky young man was indeed Kothifir’s god-king, reborn.

With dawn and the end of the Change, the city was astir. Doors and windows opened. People scurried about in the streets and gathered at corners, eager for the latest news. Who were the new grandmasters and the new guild lords? What was this about Krothen’s dramatic return? Jame heard, in passing, that Mercer was again Lord Merchandy and Shandanielle, Lady Professionate. She wondered if Mercer was still deathly ill. Dani had said that immortality was a burden to him, but apparently he had again set aside his poor health to serve his city.

They met Needham’s disgruntled troops filtering back from their failed siege of the treasure towers. Needham, it appeared, had not regained his position as Master Silk Purse. Some reported that they had left him hammering bloody fists against the treasury’s iron door and sobbing.

There was no sign yet of the Southern Host’s return to the city. Presumably it was still out on the plain, chasing Kothifir’s would-be invaders back to Gemma.

In contrast to the noisy streets, Jame and Brier walked together in silence. The Kendar had barely spoken since Amberley’s death. Jame glanced more than once at her emotionless face, but didn’t know what to say. The bond between them told her nothing. As a Caineron, Brier had clearly learned to hide her feelings. Jame had supposed that she would go to find Amberley’s body, but she hadn’t. Someone else would have to retrieve it for the pyre.

As for Jame, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Walking through the city with Jorin trotting at her side, she felt disconnected from the streets’ excited bustle. She had had a role to play here, but now, with the king’s return, it seemed to be over. It occurred to her that she should say something to someone about the possibility of mining diamantine from the deeper caves to replace the lost silk trade. The city didn’t seem to realize that the stone was valuable. But that was a minor thing. Kothifir would go its own way now, into whatever the future brought.

Would her own people welcome her back, though, after so long an unauthorized absence? Before that, she had turned command of the barracks over to Ran Onyx-eyed and missed many days of lessons—not behavior expected of a leader-in-training.

Face it, she thought disconsolately. You would rather act alone, and that’s where events keep taking you. Were you ever meant to be a randon at all?

“Leave and never return,” the note shoved under her door had said during the season of challenges.

Others had no doubt that she didn’t belong and never had.

Here was the Optomancers’ Tower, a thin, crooked structure thrusting up into the growing clouds like a gnarled finger raised to stir the sky. On impulse, Jame climbed its outer stair, followed by Brier and Jorin. Near the top, she was almost bowled over by the gangly young man with the enormous glasses who had showed her and Byrne the Eye of Kothifir at the end of summer.

“Whoops,” he said, grabbing the rail to steady himself. “I wasn’t expecting visitors. Is it true what they say about King Krothen?”

“I expect so, depending on what they say.”

His eyes, greatly magnified, blinked at her through thick lenses. “It’s a great day, then, but life goes on. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like a glimpse of the city and its environs. To gain perspective.”

“Come along, then.”

He led them up to the Eye and threw open its door. When he closed it, complete darkness again fell within. They heard him stumble around the room, muttering to himself, then a shutter creaked open and blinding light fell in a circle on the floor. Jame blinked watering eyes and tried to focus. The image was of the upper plain. Perhaps the caretaker of the Eye had been keeping track of the battle there, of such concern to the entire city. As she had guessed, the Gemmans were in flight, with their war lizards mounting a rearguard defense. The Host, mostly on foot, surrounded each of these giant reptiles in turn and pulled it down, then moved on to the next. As Jame watched, the Gemman line broke and fled.

“So much for that,” said the caretaker’s voice from the shadows, with unmistakable relief. “Where next?”

“The Rose Tower.”

The lens of the Eye rotated, groaning.

There stood King Kroaky, Lord Artifice, and Grandmaster Gaudaric on the lowest turn of the spiral stair, a sea of upturned faces beneath them. Mouths opened in unheard cheers, which grew as Mother Vedia descended to join the royal party. Perhaps now the Old Pantheon would be welcome Overcliff once more. Certainly, Kroaky owed this goddess for serving as midwife to his peculiar rebirth. Below, the crowd parted. Jame glimpsed Dani’s blond head and Mercer’s white one. The healer was supporting the merchant, who raised a weak hand to return the city’s applause. Citizens lifted them up and carried them to join the company on the stair. All seemed to be well there.

“Where next?” asked the caretaker again.

“Show me the Host’s camp.”

The lens shifted to point, dizzyingly, down the Escarpment to the stone barracks at its foot. These seemed unusually quiet, even for so early an hour. Only the cadets were there, Jame remembered, as well as a skeleton staff of randon. How they must regret missing the fight above. Char and the other Knorth third-years were probably grinding their teeth, her own second-year ten-command as well. For herself, she had seen battle and its attendant horrors at the Cataracts, enough bloodshed to sate her for a lifetime.

She was about to turn away when the lens swung yet again, perhaps reverting to its set point.

“Wait. What was that?”

“What? Where?”

“Westward, up the valley.”

“I didn’t see . . . oh.”

The Eye had caught a teeming blur moving down the Betwixt, filling the valley between the Escarpment and the Apollyne mountains. The lens tightened its focus. The mass became horsemen, headed toward the camp which lay some ten miles ahead of them.

Brier leaned in, staring. Her head cast a shadow over the scene and she withdrew with a frown.

“Has Gemma launched a second attack to the rear?”

Jame had thought so too at first. Then she had seen that all of these riders wore black, and the front rank rode black horses.

Thorns?

She remembered Urakarn, apparently deserted. Where had its inhabitants gone, given that they couldn’t take their mounts anywhere by the step-forward path? It would, on the other hand, have taken them about this long to arrive overland by the Betwixt Valley. It was potentially the Urakarn massacre in reverse. The Karnids were coming.

On the point of turning away, she glimpsed another rider out in front of the thorns. His mount, steel gray, fought against its bit. Even the thorns edged away from it.

Memory caught Jame by the throat: The stallion surged up over the hillcrest with nostrils flaring red. Its steel hooves nearly clipped her as it roared over her head. It landed and turned, torn grass shrieking underfoot. Its iron teeth were bared, its eyes rolled white and dead . . .

The changer Keral, jeering at her: “We can always feed you to his new war-horse.”

It couldn’t be . . . could it?

“What?” the caretaker demanded as she turned from the bright image and floundered through the darkness in search of the door.

Jorin squawked as she tripped over him. Glass shattered. Here at last was the way out, the door smashing open to admit a wash of early morning light across the floor.

Jame scrambled down the steps with the ounce on her heels, still protesting, and Brier Iron-thorn bringing up the rear. Here was the street, leading to other streets crowded with people celebrating the end of the Change and, incidentally, the Feast of Fools, that day between winter and spring that is recorded on no calendar. Usually, it was a festival of misrule, when powers secular and religious were set aside. How ironic that this year it marked the return of the king and the gods, both old and new. Whispers had grown to whoops and shouts, timorous groups to an excited mob.

“Dance with us!” cried a plump matron in a nightgown bedecked with fluttering ribbons.

She grabbed Jame’s hand. Jame in turn grabbed Brier’s. Thus they were pulled into one of many chains of celebrants that snaked back and forth down through the city’s byways, between the legs of stilt walkers, around men wearing the giant heads of gods. Jorin wound about the pounding feet to keep up, chirping in agitation and occasionally squalling when someone stepped on his toes. This was not his idea of fun. The chain broke and re-formed. Now Jame was holding hands with a baker, whose every step raised clouds of flour from his clothing. She freed herself while maintaining her grip on Brier. They plunged into another group who were tossing one of their number in a blanket. Their victim flew free in a mill of limbs. Brier caught him.

“Wheee!” he said breathlessly, laughing, as she set him down. It was Byrne.

“Your father is at the Rose Tower,” Jame told him.

“Let him find his own blanket!”

With that, he plunged back into the crowd.

Another turn brought Jame face-to-face with the spy Hangnail, who looked terrified at having been hauled out into the open.

“Who’s your new grandmaster?” she asked him.

“That gray sneak again, gods damn it.”

“See that you honor him, or I’ll come back to haunt you.”

Hangnail gave her a look compounded of incredulity and horror. Then the dance whirled him away.

They reached the main avenue where shopkeepers had set out their wares with the dawn. Cabbages and rutabagas now flew over the crowd, kicked from the sidelines. Jame ducked a flailing bunch of carrots. An onion hit Brier in the face. They broke away near the boulevard’s end and headed across the paved forecourt toward the lift cages. Of these, only one was at the top. However, its attendants had left their post to join in the general rejoicing.

“Wonderful,” said Jame. “How do we get down?”

“We could use the stairs, or you could take the lift. I can use the brake to regulate your descent—I think—and let gravity do the rest. It will be a bumpy ride, though.”

“And you?”

“Someone has to warn Harn Grip-hard.”

Jame looked at the cage and gulped. Three thousand feet down. . . .

“All right,” she said, and stepped into it, followed by the ounce.

Brier fumbled for a minute with the winch and crane, then used them to lift the cage up and out over the balustrade. She released the brake. The cage fell in a rush that left both girl and cat hovering in midair. Then the floor leaped up at them, nearly making their legs buckle. Down it plunged again, again stopping with a jerk as the brake reengaged. By such fits and starts they descended, falling the last ten feet for an abrupt and noisy arrival.

Jame staggered out of the cage.

“All right, kitten,” she said to the distraught ounce, trying to catch her breath. “All right.”

She stumbled through the north gate and the tunnel that led under the official offices, then across the inner ward. The Knorth barracks had a gate that opened onto the ward, but it was sealed for repairs. Jame plunged into the streets that separated the various houses. Early rising cadets turned to stare at her as she passed.

“Returned at last, have you?” Fash called from the Caineron’s eastern door. “What makes you think that we want you back?”

Onyx-eyed’s second-in-command, Ran Spare, met her as she entered the Knorth by its western gate.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“I had business elsewhere.” Jame paused, trying not to pant. “Listen: the Karnids are coming!”

He stared at her. “What?”

“I saw them through the Eye of Kothifir, coming down the valley. It’s all done by mirrors, you know.”

“You aren’t making sense.”

Jame realized that he had never been exposed to the Eye. Really, Kencyr didn’t know Kothifir as well as they should, given how long they had been here.

“They’re coming,” she said again. “My word of honor on it. Don’t you believe me?”

“I have to, don’t I? Either that or declare our lordan mad. How many?”

“More than I could count. Ten thousand? About ten miles out.”

“We could match that, if we were all here,” said Ran Spare, thinking out loud. “As it is, there are fewer than two thousand cadets in camp. I’ll sound the alarm.”

He left at a run, and Jame pounded up the stairs to her apartment, where Rue met her at the door, almost limp with relief.

“Ten! Brier Iron-thorn said that you’d come back! What’s going on?”

Jame told her.

“Truly?” Her eyes widened.

Then she started as the great horn outside Harn’s apartment blared out over the drowsy camp. One by one, the waking compounds added their alerts, the Knorth’s immediately above Jame’s quarters, on the roof. Below, feet hit the floor and cadets scrambled into their clothes. Damson appeared at the door, barefoot with her shirt unlaced. Quill and Niall were behind her.

“What?” she asked, then registered Jame’s presence. “I should have known.”

“Just answer it,” said Jame. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

They turned and ran.

Now, where was . . . oh, there. Gaudaric had delivered the rhi-sar armor as he had promised, in bundles piled at the foot of her bed. Jame tore off the wrappings and arranged the pieces on her blanket over the mound formed by Jorin, who had crawled under the cover and was resolutely ignoring her.

“They’re forming in the inner ward,” Rue reported from the northern balcony, hanging over it to look down. “Here come the other randon in camp. Ran Spare is talking to them. Some are arguing with him—no wonder when, from what you say, we’re outnumbered five to one. But as a Knorth he’s senior to the others.”

The horns stopped, little Coman piping to the very end and finishing with a discordant, excited bleat.

Rue turned back to the room. “What’s that?”

Jame unwrapped a large, round parcel. It was, as she had suspected from its shape, a shield, made of braided rhi-sar leather laced back and forth over fire-hardened ironwood. Another package yielded up barding in the form of a quilted crupper to cover a horse’s flanks. She hadn’t forgotten Death’s-head’s last, unfortunate encounter with the fangs of the black Karnid mares. That left one bundle. Now, what was this?

“Oh,” said Jame, and held up the rathorn ivory vest, which she had last seen on display in Gaudaric’s showroom. Morning light glimmered off its intricate, overlapping plates, each barely two fingers wide, drilled at the top and laced to a sturdy, padded jacket. Its collar was high, its skirt long enough to cover the upper thighs and divided for riding. It shifted in her hands, its scales softly clinking. A note tumbled from its folds.

“I could see that the gorget fretted you,” Gaudaric had written. “Please accept this as a gift from my family and a grateful city.”

“It’s beautiful,” breathed Rue, touching it with a fingertip.

“Yes. It is. And now it has to be useful as well.”

Jame regarded the armor laid out on her bed, trying to remember the arming sequence. One started at the feet.

Ran Spare’s voice echoed below, distorted by stone walls. He was telling the cadets what they faced.

Jame fumbled with the hooks that secured the back- and frontplates of the greaves, then remembered that she hadn’t buckled the heel plates onto the articulated boots. Quick, quick . . .

Next the belt, to which the thigh guards were attached.

“Now what?” Rue indicated the padded gambeson and the equally padded ivory vest.

Should she have put on the former first? Too late now.

“The vest.”

Rue helped her on with it and laced it up the back. Then she dropped the breast- and backplates of the cuirass over Jame’s head. Below, Spare was ordering the cadets to the armory, then to the stables.

. . . arm harnesses, spiked shoulder guards, gauntlets . . .

Jame started to pick up the helmet, then remembered that she needed a weapon. Gaudaric hadn’t sent her a sword because he knew that she already had one. It hung from a hook in its leather sheath in the corner, a nicely balanced, sharp-edged piece of steel with the wavy patterns down its blade of many foldings. Her lack of skill with it was legendary. As the doggerel verse went:

She had never yet managed to hang on to a sword throughout an entire engagement.

Beside it were her scythe-arms, those elegant double-pointed blades that functioned as extensions of her claws. Of the two weapons, Jame much preferred the latter, but they weren’t intended for mounted combat. Reluctantly, she took down the sword and strapped its belt around her waist.

“Here.” She gave Rue the shield and barding to carry, herself taking Death’s-head’s high, heavy saddle and bitless bridle from their racks. “We need to get out the South Gate before the cadets catch up with us.”

Horses neighed in excitement behind them in the ward as they hurried down the deserted street.

Creak, creak, creak went Jame’s leather armor. It might not be as heavy as steel plate, but it certainly was noisy. And stiff. I’m a dragon, not a tortoise, she told herself, beginning to sweat and pant as the saddle’s weight dragged her down and its dangling stirrups tripped her up.

Meanwhile, she called silently to the rathorn, but received only sullen silence in reply. She had visited Death’s-head as often as she could over the past year, but had had little to ask of him even though she sensed that he was growing bored and resentful. Now he was sulking.

Bel-tairi met them beyond the gate, over the bridge. Jame slung the saddle onto the Whinno-hir’s back and tightened the girth as far as it would go but, designed for a much larger barrel, it hung loose. Rue grabbed the right stirrup as Jame swung herself up, then handed her the shield, bridle, and folded crupper while she balanced precariously.

“I don’t think she can carry me too,” the cadet said, stepping back. “You go on.”

Jame looked down at her, remembering how Rue had longed to prove herself to the rest of the Knorth barracks. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Go.”

She rode across the training field, into the dips and hollows carved by the Amar’s overflow. From ahead of her came the sound of swift water, and of something noisily churning in it. Splashing around a curve, Bel knee-deep in the early spring runoff, she saw the rathorn in the shallows, vigorously rolling in the mud. He regained his feet with a snort and shook himself. His white coat was streaked with muck, his mane and tail tangled. Jame regarded him in dismay.

“Oh, no. Not now.”

She shifted to dismount, and felt the saddle slide sideways under her. There was barely time to kick free her feet before she hit the water. Trinity, but it was cold, even so far from the mountains that had given it birth. She surfaced sputtering to find both rathorn and Whinno-hir watching her. Death’s-head snorted again, as if in scornful laughter. Jame pushed dripping black hair out of her eyes and scowled at him.

“Come here, you.”

At first she thought he was going to sidle away from her, but she must have put more command into her voice than she had thought. He stood, blowing with impatience, as she sluiced water over his shoulders and raked her claws through his unkempt hair. Beyond the ravine, out of sight, horses thundered past, the cadets riding to war. Quick, quick . . .

Death’s-head accepted the saddle, bridle, and crupper with an ill grace, but his ears had twitched at the sound of hooves. Something was afoot, something interesting.

Jame swung up into the high saddle, feeling water drain down inside her armor and run out of the gap at her heels. She had barely gathered the reins when the rathorn was in motion. He trotted up the creek bed with his horn-crowned head held high and his nostrils flaring red, then clambered up its steep bank to the valley floor. The other riders were a cloud of dust to the west. Death’s-head started after them at a canter that quickly grew into a gallop. Jame resisted the urge to clutch his mane, instead tightening her legs around his barrel. At the touch of her heels, he went even faster.

Some two miles from the camp, a mountain spur cut into the valley from the south while a recent massive landslide from the Rim pinched it to the north, leaving only a hundred feet clear between them. The cadets were racing for this bottleneck, the only place along the Betwixt where their inferior number might hold off the far larger Karnid horde.

But for how long? Jame wondered.

By now, hopefully, Brier had alerted Harn Grip-hard. The bulk of the Southern Host would come as soon as it could, but it would take time for a significant number to descend the Escarpment, and then how many horses had the cadets left them to reach this new battlefield?

Two miles for the cadets to cover, eight for the Karnids, but the former had spent a good half hour getting ready. Who would reach the gap first?

The mountain spur loomed ahead, its steep sides bristling with stunted trees and shrubs. Opposite it was a slope of rocky debris, reaching from the valley floor halfway up to a giant bite taken out of the Escarpment’s rim. Sunlight climbed both. Beyond, westward, the sky was still dark enough to show scattered stars, although building clouds soon obscured them.

Ah. The cadets were pulling up just short of the gap, with no Karnid yet in sight. They had won their race, for whatever good that might do them.

Jame hauled back on the reins, but the rathorn only tossed his head in irritation, almost unseating her, and plunged into the Kencyrs’ back ranks. Horses squealed, fighting to escape his rank scent. Some threw their riders and bolted back toward Kothifir. Others collided with their mates and fell in tangles of thrashing limbs.

“Sorry,” said Jame to startled faces as she bucketed past. “Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .”

She emerged through the broken front line to face a crescent of nine senior randon who had turned to observe her precipitous arrival.

“I don’t believe it,” said the Caineron, scowling. “Where did she spring from?”

None of them looked pleased to see her, Ran Spare least of all.

“You should turn back, Lordan,” he said. “This is no exercise.”

There was a jostling among the riders. Timmon emerged on her left riding a palomino, Gorbel to her right on a sturdy dark bay. The Ardeth wore hardened leather with rhi-sar inserts over gilded chain mail; the Caineron, a full suit of unornamented black rhi-sar. Most of the other cadets had donned less, down to mere padded jackets, depending on the wealth of their respective houses. Jame began to feel overdressed. She also felt rising anger.

“Why the Caineron and Ardeth Lordan, but not the Knorth?”

Death’s-head fidgeted under her. He wanted to get past these blockheads and at the enemy, whoever that might be. The officers’ horses stirred uneasily.

“For one thing,” said Ran Spare, “you see what effect that monster of yours has on our mounts. Are we to sacrifice the entire cavalry for one rider?”

He rode toward her as he spoke, calming his nervous mare with the touch of his hand. Death’s-head’s nostrils flared with interest. Pray Ancestors that she wasn’t in season.

“For another, have you ever fought in that armor? I thought not. For some reason, you’re also dripping wet. Worse, where is your helmet?”

Jame touched her bare face, shocked by memory. The helm with its fearsome guard of ivory teeth still lay on her bed in camp, where in her haste she had forgotten it. She hadn’t even missed it until now.

Fool, she thought. What am I doing here?

The randon was beside her now, their mounts head to tail. The rathorn sniffed. The mare stood her ground, although her withers darkened with nervous sweat. “Most important, though, there is this.” Spare spoke too softly now for anyone else to hear. “In the next hour, we may all die. Your lord brother survived Urakarn, otherwise no one would have known what happened to him or to the troops under his command. Someone must survive here too, to tell our story. Please, lady.”

Timmon rose in his stirrups and pointed. “Here they come!”

Beyond the gap, the valley widened and turned toward the southwest. Black-clad riders appeared around the bend, filling the Betwixt from side to side as their front line swung across it. They seemed to bring the wings of night with them, under whose shadow they rode in a many-legged mass. Likewise, their hoofbeats rolled together into a continuous rumble like distant thunder and dust rose like smoke in their wake. Through rents in the latter, one could see something looming behind them that was neither the Escarpment nor any Apollyne peak. Black it was, high and wide enough to dominate the sky, although its snowbound summit was broken. Columns of steam rose above it from its hidden interior and its flanks were fissured with cracks that glowed red in the dusk of its shadow.

“‘Black rock on the dry sea’s edge,’” Gorbel growled, quoting one of Ashe’s songs to the surprise of those close enough to hear. “‘How many your dungeons swallowed. How few came out again.’ D’you mean to tell me that that hulk is . . .”

“Urakarn,” breathed Timmon. “Or a counterfeit of it, like a mirage.”

Snow tumbled down from the heights and a cloud of ash belched up over its ramparts. Jame remembered the boiling lake and the seam of rising fire within the earth. Some moments later, the ground shuddered slightly underfoot, but any sound it might have made was swallowed by the rumble of the oncoming horde.

Jame watched the gray stallion in the vanguard. It really was Iron-jaw, she decided, who had been her father’s war-horse. She remembered Tori daring her to ride the brute, and that bone-jarring fall, and Tori dragging her back through the fence, out from under those deadly, steel-shod hooves. Iron-jaw had always had an evil temper. Then Ganth had ridden him to death in the Haunted Lands, searching for the Dream-weaver, his lost love. When the stallion had come back as a haunt, the changer Keral had claimed him for his master, Gerridon.

. . . we can always feed you to his new war-horse . . .

Was that who rode Iron-jaw now?

The figure on the haunt stallion’s back wore silver-gilt mail and black steel plate of an ornate, antique design that predated the Kencyrath’s experience on Rathillien with the rhi-sar. A horned helm obscured his features. It occurred to Jame that, despite growing up in his house, she had never seen the Master’s face clearly. He had always stood in the shadows, or behind her, or behind something else, such as those red, bridal ribbons. Tori had met him at least twice in his youth with the Southern Host but never face-to-face, if her experience of his dreams was to be believed. Only the Randir Matriarch Rawneth had had that dubious honor in the Moon Garden, but it was the changer Keral with whom she had mated, not Gerridon as she still believed.

How had she known one face from another?

How was Jame supposed to now?

“M’lord Caineron,” said Ran Spare, “take the rocky slope. We can’t afford to be outflanked. M’lord Ardeth, can you fortify that hill?”

It required someone who knew him to see the strain in Timmon’s answering smile, but it wasn’t cowardice. He hadn’t yet proved himself to his house. This might be his last chance.

“With pleasure,” he said, and wheeled his horse back into the crowd, followed by the Ardeth cadets.

Spare turned back to Jame. “Lady . . .”

Death’s-head snorted and pawed the ground. When he tossed his head, he nearly pulled Jame out of the saddle. Spare tried to grab his bridle, but Jame knocked his hand away before the rathorn could take off his arm.

It comes to this, she thought.

Ever since she had first seen the gray stallion and had guessed who might be riding him, this fight had become personal. The Master had betrayed the entire Kencyrath, but his own house first, including her own hapless father. And she owed him for a miserable childhood which she still only partly remembered.

Yet doubts arose: what could a single rider do, even on such a mount as Death’s-head? To make a sacrifice was one thing; to make a fool of oneself while doing so was another, and to what end?

Moreover, despite her suspicions, what could have possessed the Master to risk his person after so long lurking in the shadows—not that he was really in the light now with night roiling over his head, slashed by distant lightning. If he was here, he must think that there was no real risk. He meant to smash through the cadets and seize the camp before the Host could arrive to defend it. Meanwhile, he must believe that his puppet Prince Ton had overthrown King Krothen to become the Host’s paymaster. To whom did the Host belong then, if not to him?

Jame didn’t think it would be that simple, but the Master of Knorth was arrogant enough to believe that it was.

Thus her thoughts and emotions churned, underlaid with an unspoken fear: was she simply afraid?

The Karnids had seen them. They came on at a gallop that made the earth shake, Iron-jaw thundering before them with sparks under his hooves where steel met rock. Thousands of swords cleared their scabbards and flashed back the dawn light from under the boiling clouds of night.

In the next hour, we may all die.

At the very least, she might buy them some time.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Spare. “He was Lord Knorth before he betrayed us all. This is house business.”

With that, she put her heels to the rathorn’s sides and he bolted forward, almost leaving her in midair.

They passed through the gap, hearing the cries behind them as the cadets formed ranks. They would hold their position as long as they could, but not follow, nor did Jame expect them to. The rathorn’s hooves devoured the ground. She felt his back arch with each stride while the wind tore at her loosened hair.

Her shield was slung across her back. She slipped it down onto her left arm, truly feeling its weight for the first time. The rhi-sar lashings might be light, but the ironwood backing was not.

Iron-jaw lunged toward her. Jame remembered meeting him in the soulscape, how he had nearly run down the foal that had been Death’s-head, how she had grabbed his thick neck, swung up, and plunged her nails into his eye. Sure enough, the right socket was a scarred cavity weeping thick, dark blood. Blind on that side . . .

The space between the two equines was closing rapidly. Trinity, were they going to crash head on? The haunt was larger and heavier than the young rathorn, his hooves the size of platters. He loomed over them like a gray cliff.

At the last moment, Death’s-head swerved to the right. As they hurtled past each other, the rathorn slashed at the haunt and its rider hammered down with a battle axe on Jame’s raised shield.

Jame thought for a moment that he had broken her arm, but he had only driven the shield back to her shoulder, momentarily numbing it.

Death’s-head turned faster than the haunt could and surged up on his right side. Jame finally remembered to draw her sword, but how was she supposed to manage it, the shield, and the rathorn all at once?

Have you ever fought in that armor? Spare had asked. I thought not.

Ah, well. Death’s-head would do as he wanted. As always, he was her primary weapon.

She took the reins in her fingertips behind the shield. The haunt’s rider hammered down on it again, chipping its ironwood rim. She could see the glint of his eyes on either side of his nasal guard and hear the hollow boom of laughter within his helm.

Iron-jaw turned to the left. Death’s-head, following him, almost ran into a wall of rearing, lunging thorns. Jame saw that the black mares surrounded them in a circle, around which the Karnids streamed to throw themselves against the front rank of cadets. To either side, they were dismounting and swarming up the rocky slope to the north and the mountain spur to the south, to be met above by Gorbel’s and Timmon’s forces respectively. She glimpsed the Caineron Lordan in his black armor methodically chopping at cheche-covered heads as they rose to his level. On the other side, the Ardeth fought in a shimmer of gold, backlit by the rising sun.

Jame reined in Death’s-head who, surprisingly, obeyed. Iron-jaw plunged ahead of them. Coming up on the haunt’s left from behind, Jame saw the gleam of white ribs where the rathorn’s nasal tusk had ripped open his side but not noticeably slowed him. She slashed at his hindquarters. He screamed in pain and rage. Jame shot past, and again pulled hard to the left to avoid the mares. Their wicked black heads snaked out to snap at the rathorn’s barded flanks as he passed.

Iron-jaw cut to the inside and drew up level where he rammed his shoulder into his lighter opponent, lifting the rathorn off his feet. Jame was thrown up onto Death’s-head’s neck and only kept her seat by clinging to it. The gray haunt rounded on them. His head shot over the rathorn’s as he tried to pin the white equine to his chest, the better to kick him to death with his steel-shod fore hooves. Ropes of slaver swung from his mouth into Jame’s face. His white eye rolled at her. She stabbed at it, and the haunt reared back with a squeal, letting the rathorn drop. No fool although dead, he had already lost half of his sight to her.

Somehow Jame stayed in the saddle and Death’s-head regained his feet, stumbling but not falling.

Meanwhile, the haunt nearly toppled over backward into the ring of shrieking mares. His rider was still off balance when he thudded down. The other’s shield had jerked up. Jame came in to the left and hacked at the exposed wrist. The rider’s gauntlet flew off, taking the shield with it . . . and his hand too? Where the vambrace ended, there was nothing.

. . . a hand, reaching out between red ribbons to claim her, her knife chopping frantically at it . . .

I cost him that, Jame thought. It is Gerridon after all.

The reality of it almost took her breath away. Whatever she had suspected, to find herself actually at sword’s point with the Master of Knorth seemed too fantastic to believe. Scrollsmen would sing about this encounter, however it ended, for he was a creature of legend. But then so was she. Jamethiel Priest’s-bane, daughter of Ganth Gray Lord and the Dream-weaver, sister of Torisen Black Lord, Lordan of Ivory . . .

“Ha!” she said, and slashed at him again.

He turned in his saddle to meet her blade with the edge of his axe. With a flick of his wrist, he disarmed her.

Jame dropped her shield, kicked free from her stirrups, and threw herself at him. The axe’s return stroke hissed over her head. She felt his strength as she grappled with him, but also his unsettled mass shifting. Then they were both in the air, falling, she on top, his hot breath roaring in her ear. Jame twisted to lead with the spike set on her left shoulder guard. She thought she heard a startled cry just before she crashed down on him. The rhi-sar tooth scraped against the nasal guard, then plunged into the helmet’s eye slit. The next instant her weight slammed into the steel shell, and something snapped.

The impact took away both Jame’s breath and, for a moment, her wits. She regained the latter to find herself lying on her back, staring up at the ragged sky. What had happened? Where was Gerridon? Silence spread about her, the clash of arms and more distant cries dying away one by one. Was she going deaf? What had broken? Sweet Trinity, not her neck . . .

Hooves scraped the ground close by, and she found herself looking up the length of two black, slender, equine legs. The thorn’s head descended. It sniffed at her, stirring the lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes, and bared its fangs behind curling lips. Like Death’s-head, it was a carnivore and had carrion breath. Would the rathorn ivory at her throat protect her? Then it sneezed in her face and stretched its neck to prod something that lay beside her with a nasal tusk. Metal rattled. The thorn snorted and withdrew.

Cautiously, Jame turned her head. There lay the Master’s horned helmet, scored where the rhi-sar tooth had entered it. Its mangled eye slit seemed to stare back at her, dark and empty.

She started to rise, and gasped as pain lanced through her left shoulder. Finding that arm limp, she struggled up onto the other elbow. The rest of the black enameled armor sprawled on the ground nearby, also tenantless, held together by various buckles and straps.

Iron-jaw was gone too. Whether he had vanished like his master or simply walked away, she didn’t know. Death’s-head remained, looking about curiously with head high and ears pricked. The battle had stopped in its tracks. Jame had the impression that the Karnids had all turned to stare at what remained of their fallen prophet, but now their attention was fixed on something to the west. She craned to follow their gaze.

Urakarn still loomed behind the rags of night, but its face had changed. A massive column of ash billowed above it, stabbed through by lightning bolts, and fiery chasms had opened down its flanks. As Jame watched, the eastern face of the mountain bulged and slid. Another explosion belched clouds of steam near the summit, and another, and another. Everything was in motion, rising or falling, to a sound like that of distant thunder. The Betwixt appeared to be in the direct path of that vast, roiling collapse. Just when it seemed that a wall of debris would come rolling around the valley’s western curve, the sun lifted over the mountain spur to the east and night rolled back, taking the shades of Urakarn with it.

The sky growled and the ground briefly trembled. A trickle of smoke rose on the far horizon from a mountain hidden by the curve of the earth.

The Karnids stirred and muttered. From where Jame lay, she could see mostly shifting black legs, of horses, of men. All seemed to reach the same conclusion at once. With that, they turned and trudged off westward, away from the battlefield, toward the ruins of their home.

Jame rose slowly, carefully, as if one joint at a time. Her left arm hung dead at her side and her left shoulder slumped forward within her shell of rhi-sar armor. All around her, Karnids were retreating, skirting the circle of combat as if the ground there were tainted. No one so much as looked at her.

“That’s it?” she asked Death’s-head.

The rathorn snorted and shook himself.

When she turned to the east, the sun blinded her. The two ridges and the gap between them appeared to be full of waving figures. Their voices seemed far away and faint, but she thought that they were cheering. Jame waited for them, holding her arm by the elbow close against her side, feeling cold and sick.

The camp surgeon told her that she had broken her collarbone.

“It’s nothing serious,” he said cheerfully. “A healer could set it right in a few days, but we don’t have one. Say, two weeks in a sling with plenty of dwar sleep, four or five weeks without it.”

Then he had given her a sleeping draft, which she had hardly needed. It seemed an age since she had last closed her eyes—twenty days, if one went by the calendar.

Toward dusk, she woke in her dimly lit quarters with Jorin curled up beside her. Rue had propped her upright with pillows to ease the pain in her shoulder. Sounds of celebration filtered through curtains drawn across the windows. She gathered that the rest of the Host had returned to camp during the day, following Harn Grip-hard who had ridden up on a donkey, the only mount he could find, as they had quitted the pass.

“I see that you’ve done it again,” he had said to her. She still wasn’t sure exactly what he had meant.

Her mouth was very dry, her lips chapped. “Water,” she croaked, hoping that Rue was nearby. Instead, a dark figure loomed up beside her holding a cup of water.

“Here. Drink,” said Harn. “I sent your servant off to enjoy the festivities. The Feast of Fools has been going on all day, Overcliff, Undercliff, and in the camp. You, however, got your foolery in early. What possessed you to take on the entire Karnid horde single-handed?”

Jame thought that she had had her reasons, but none of them sounded convincing now.

Harn drew up a chair and sat down beside her. Wood groaned under his weight while his knees peaked halfway up his chest.

“Never had a broken bone before, have you?” he said. “It’s disheartening. Everything will seem worse than it is until you get used to the idea, and by then the bone will have knit.”

Jame sipped the water, tasting the tang of pomegranate juice.

“How many casualties?” she asked.

“In the Betwixt? A dozen wounded, but none killed. The cadets had too strong a position, and their line held. On the other hand, the Karnids must have lost several hundred. We’ll never know for sure since they took their dead with them. Given the way the valley funnels there, most never got within striking distance.”

Jame regarded him. Everything will seem worse. . . . “You have something else to tell me, don’t you?”

Harn looked away, then back at her. “While you were gone, I got a message from Blackie. He wanted to know what had happened to Brier Iron-thorn. As far as I knew, nothing had, until I asked her. She said that her bond to the Highlord had broken, and re-formed with you.”

Jame sighed. She had known this was coming, but had hoped that, somehow, it would never arrive. “It was an accident,” she said. “Brier was very upset when the seeker’s baby died in her arms, and Tori was too far away to help her.”

“Whereas you were right there. Yes, I understand. Hopefully Blackie will too, when he hears the full story.”

A moment’s silence fell between them. Both were thinking that Torisen’s responses weren’t always rational, and that this one had sprung from the heart of his deepest insecurities.

Harn clapped his big hands on his knees with an air of someone facing up to the worst. “There’s more. He’s ordered you to return to Gothregor. Immediately.”

Jame stared at him. “But I still have sixty days, all of spring, left of my year at Kothifir!”

“The randon will understand a summons from your lord—I hope. You’ll take Iron-thorn, of course. And your ten-command as an escort, on extended duty. Cheer up,” he added, seeing her expression. “However mad your actions this morning, you aren’t exactly leaving under a cloud.”

Her eyes dropped to a little pile of paper scraps on the floor. She remembered waking earlier that day to find third-year cadet Char standing by her bed, glowering down at her.

“D’you still have that note I slipped under your door?” he had asked.

She had fished it out from under her pillow and mutely handed it to him. He had torn it up. Then he had left without another word. Just now, waking, she had thought that it had all been a dream. Apparently not.

Harn stood up, seeming to scrape the ceiling and fill the room. “For all Blackie’s histrionics, you needn’t leave until tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

In the doorway, he passed Brier. The Southron stepped into the apartment, glanced after him, then raised an eyebrow at Jame.

“Tell the others to pack,” Jame said, leaning back against her pillows with a sigh. “We’re going home.”