Interim I
Kothifir Encampment: 54th of Spring
"What do you mean," demanded Lord Ardeth: " 'Something is coming'?"
Torisen Black Lord stopped short in his restless pacing, startled and annoyed to find that he had spoken out-loud. What had he meant? The words had simply risen in his mind, out of a formless but growing apprehension. Dammit, lack of sleep was no excuse to lose control.
Turning, he tripped over a footstool.
Damn.
During his tenure as commander of the Southern Host, these lodgings had been sparsely furnished, each piece elegant and useful, with room in between to pace. Pereden, his successor, had redecorated according to his own tastes: gaudy, pretentious, cluttered. Dead as he was, that wretched boy would break Torisen's neck yet—turnabout fair play, perhaps.
The leavings of that other, worthless life seemed suddenly to press in on him. He had to get away, out into the desert dark, to prowl alone through the remaining hours of this interminable night . . . .
Ardeth stood in his way. "My boy, you mustn't."
"Thal's balls, Blackie," Harn Grip-hard growled from the table, crumbling the report which he had been pretending to read. "Your enemies already think you're half crazy. Wander around tonight looking like the unburnt dead and they'll be sure. Remember what day this is: thirty-four years ago your father ran mad as a gelded rathorn and most of us ran after him, all the way to death in the White Hills. No one in the Hosts, north or south, has forgotten that. No one ever will."
"Oh, really!" Ardeth protested—against the expression, not the facts. "Still, your behavior since the Cataracts has cost you much of the credit you gained there. This continued refusal to sleep, merely for fear of dreams . . . ."
"Who told you that? Was it Burr, spying on me again? No."
Torisen ran thin, scarred hands through his dark hair, gripping it briefly to remind himself with pain. Burr had been Ardeth's agent years ago, openly, when he himself had been a nameless boy in the old lord's service. Now Burr served him. After the events leading up to the Cataracts, everyone must know that he often avoided sleep, if not why. His three oldest friends, here in this room, knew full well that the pattern went back years.
"All right," said Ardeth soothingly. "We'll discuss that another time. But as for your refusal to make certain necessary decisions . . . listen to me: you must form an alliance with some house strong enough to protect your interests. If you're too fastidious to bargain with your own bloodlines, use your sister's. The girl has to be contracted out for the best advantage you can obtain. Oh, if only my son Pereden were alive to offer for her . . . !
"My boy, what's the matter?"
Torisen had turned sharply away.
He was remembering what it had felt like, in his tent by the Cataracts, to break Pereden's neck. Then he'd had to go into the Wastes with Ardeth to hunt for the bones of his "hero" son, knowing all the time that Harn had reduced them to ashes on a common pyre at Hurlen. Damn Pereden anyway, that vain, spoiled boy who had led the Southern Host against the vastly larger Waster Horde, against orders, in a stupid attempt to prove himself a better commander than Torisen had been. Captured, he had changed sides, seduced by the promise that the Horde would make him Highlord. And all because he thought that Torisen had stolen Ardeth's love.
Fathers and sons. How did any of them manage not to murder each other?
Pereden would have used the shame of his treachery to destroy Ardeth, if Torisen hadn't killed him first.
Right. Try explaining that to a grief-stricken father.
Torisen stepped out onto the balcony and leaned on the rail. The Host's permanent encampment formed a city at the foot of the escarpment, with Kothifir on the cliff-top above. To the south, over the garrison's roofs, he could see the Wastes, a line drawn flat on the horizon, black beneath, star-fretted above—his land, which Ganth had never even seen.
Still, the Gray Lord's shadow fell over him. Maybe he would never escape it as long as he claimed the Highlord's power as he had his father's ring and battle-sword, now hanging from a belt-loop at his side. Songs said that Kin-Slayer made its rightful owner all but invincible. For Torisen, however, it had remained sullenly inert, as if it knew how Ganth had died, cursing his runaway son, disowning him. Ironic, if the only thing he had inherited from Ganth was his insanity. He could feel the tug of it now. Somewhere, something was about to happen.
No. Think of something else.
He turned restlessly back into the room, trying not to chafe under the anxious regard of his friends. An aimless step brought him up short before another of Pereden's prize possessions: a full-length mirror in an ornate golden frame. He stared blankly at the shadow which fell mask-like across the reflection of his face, feeling empty with fatigue. Hounded day after day by the lords, haunted night after night by dreams . . . .
The face in the mirror stuck its tongue out at him.
Torisen recoiled, then controlled himself, furious. She was four hundred leagues away, wasn't she? He had seen to that.
But all winter, the moment his eyes had closed, he had felt her hunting him as relentlessly as she had as a child, playing hide and seek. She had almost caught him too, on Spring's Eve.
It was a dream, he reminded himself, scowling defiantly into the mirror. Only a damn dream—wasn't it?
It had, at least, been seven weeks ago, too long even for him to stay awake. Since then, when the need for sleep had overwhelmed him, he had hidden from her in the one place to which he thought she would never willingly return. In his dreams, reduced again to childhood, he had huddled miserably in the dark, cold hall of the Haunted Lands keep, hearing the tentative rustle in the shadows of dead Kendar returning to what, for a haunt, passed for life, hearing those other slow, dragging footsteps descending the stair from the battlements where his father had died but refused to stay dead, the mad mutter in the stairwell growing closer, more distinct night after night . . . .
He hadn't bolted the stair door. Did he dare rise to do it? Jame would, if she were here. No one stood up to Ganth but her. She was so strong. He could stand anything, if only that door were bolted, but he wouldn't run out to find her. He wouldn't. He would stay here, with Ganth's madness fumbling at the door, mumbling through the cracks:
"It's all her fault, boy. She is strong. She has power. You've got to destroy her, boy, before she destroys you . . . .
"Drink, lord," said Burr.
Torisen looked down at the cup of mulled wine which his servant and old friend had thrust into his hands. His cold fingers curled around it, the lace-work of white scars grateful for its warmth. Had he spoken out-loud again? A fortnight awake, dreams bleeding into reality—he had starved himself of sleep often enough to know the signs. Dammit, why couldn't he master them?
Control. Must keep control . . . .
He raised the cup to drink, then in the mirror saw Ardeth's eyes on him. The wine smelled peculiar. A shudder went through him, followed by rage.
"Traitors!" he heard himself say in a harsh voice not his own. "You eat my bread and yet you conspire to betray me. You, and you, and you . . . ."
Burr's plain face had gone stiff. Without a word, he took back the cup and drank deeply from it, his mud-brown eyes locked on the Highlord's silver-gray. He blinked. Ardeth took the half empty cup from him before he could drop it. Harn threw a burly arm around his sagging frame to swing him around to a seat by the table, growling over his shoulder:
"Blackie, you damn fool."
Torisen Black Lord stared, beginning to tremble. "I . . . it wasn't . . . ."
The rage had gone as abruptly as it had seized him—but he wasn't a berserker, to flare like that, or to speak those words with that voice. All, all had been Ganth's, born of that obsession with betrayal which had driven some of his loyal followers to suicide and the rest to contrive his son's escape from the Haunted Land's keep. Those Kendar had ransomed Torisen out of darkness with their lives and honor.
Listen: hear them now in the shadows of the hall, bereft of honor and life, rustling, rustling . . . .
"No. I refuse to dream this."
He turned his back and stepped out again onto the balcony, to grip the rail, to master his shaking hands. Even now, she was seeking him, but he wouldn't hide again in the dream of that terrible hall, where madness fumbled at an unlocked door. He would stay awake—for the rest of his life if necessary.
Wait it out, just wait it out . . . .