I
Gothregor: 54th—55th of Spring
The dream began as it always did: Jame was searching for Tori.
She was angry with him for letting their father drive her out, but she still had to find him because . . . because she had something for him. Ganth's ring and sword. The ring was on her finger; the sword, ill-omened Kin-Slayer, in her hand.
The sword worried her. It had broken in their father's hand, but now it was whole again, except for the hilt emblem. Under the cracked crest something moved, dark and wet: fleshless lips that muttered endlessly in their father's voice; sharp teeth that gnawed at her hand. She couldn't let go, though, until Tori took the sword out of her grasp. But when he did, he didn't notice how it had hurt her. He didn't care. So she didn't warn him about the mad, mumbling voice or the hungry teeth.
Then she was searching for Tori again because . . . he had sent her away, and now he was hiding from her, as if this were some silly game.
On Spring Eve she at last found him, standing at the edge of the Southern Wastes, his back to her. He was holding Kin-Slayer and listening to the voice. Unnoticed, blood ran down the sword's blade from his hand, where the teeth did their silent, malicious work.
She called his name: "Brother."
"I refuse to dream this!" he snapped, and walked rapidly away.
"Come back!" she cried after him. "You can't run away from me forever!"
But he had already disappeared into the blowing sand.
No, not sand but dry leaves, hitting her face with furtive, brittle taps. Before her lay a gray city street, lined with decaying houses. Something dark crawled over the broken cobblestones toward her, its shadowy fingers delicately probing the rubble as it came. Behind shut doors, children were whimpering in terror. The Lower Town Monster, not destroyed after all, whispered a voice on the wind. Her voice, from another place, another dream.
The gibbous moon emerged, white and cold. Not sand or leaves, but snow, hiding the summits of Mounts Timor and Tinnibin as they loomed above her. She was in the Blue Pass of the Ebonbane, facing east toward Tai-tastigon. Something was crawling toward her like a shadow cast on the snow. Then it raised its head, and she recognized Bane's features.
The wrong brother had answered her.
Turn. Flee. If only she could escape back into the waking world, leave him here where he belonged, nightmare creature that he had become . . . .
"You can't run from me forever," whispered the darkness behind her, mockingly. "Blood binds . . . ."
The moon waxed, waned, then waxed again, the snow melting under its pale light. The shadow-thing that pursued her sank into the green of spring, but still it came on, sometimes crawling, sometimes wrapped around some wild creature which it caught and rode until the soul was eaten out of it. One stag lasted a week before falling to pieces before the horrified Grindarks who were hunting it. On it came, down the trade road beside the Ever-Quick, through the Oseen Hills, over the toes of the Snowthorns, into the Riverland, and finally to the gates of Gothregor itself, to break its long fast and then to hunt . . .
Jame woke with a gasp. Slowly, the tower room redefined itself around her, Jorin's grunt of protest at the sudden tightening of her arms changing back to a drowsy purr. Calm down, calm . . .
Those damned dreams again. Bad enough that they repeated themselves every time exhaustion forced her to sleep. Worse, that each repetition ended with a new installment, as if the pursuit really was drawing nearer. But, after all, they were only dreams.
All right: she did resent the way that Tori had treated her. It hadn't been easy to restore Ganth's sword and ring to him. Some of the things she had done, some of the places she had been, would have startled him considerably, if he had bothered to ask. He never had. Of course, Marc could tell him, but Tori disliked spies so much that she didn't think he would seek information behind her back. Fine, then: let him stay ignorant . . . but she really should have told him that Kin-Slayer had been reforged in Perimal Darkling.
As for Bane, the Lower Town Monster might have been constructed around his soul but it had never (to the best of her knowledge) had his guiding intelligence. Blood binds? That made no sense either. Tori was the blood-binder, not she, not that with his terror of the Shanir he would ever admit such a thing even to himself.
Blood—its taste when Bane's farewell kiss had nearly bitten through her lower lip, the hidden scar which her tongue could still trace . . . .
That had been real enough.
As for the rest, it would be different if she were a far-seer. Never mind that her thoughts had actually crossed Bane's at least twice in Tai-tastigon, or that her mental distance from Tori had seemed to diminish greatly since they had both been exposed to wyrm's venom the previous winter. That wasn't farseeing. She had never far-seen anything in her life, dammit, and she wasn't going to start now.
But still the last image of this latest dream lingered: in the Brandan night nursery, a shadowy form creeping up the side of a child's cot . . . to break a long fast? Bane always liked little boys.
Ah, it was no use. Dream or not, Caineron patrols or not, she had to see for herself that her brother's house was safe.
Down in the Forecourt again, Jame cut across toward the Brandan compound with Jorin trotting at her heels. A bright, gibbous moon had just cleared the mountains to the east. Near midnight, then. Her shadow fluttered on the grass in the boisterous wind, as though at any moment it might shred and blow away. Shadows had become detached before, along with the souls which cast them. That, after all, was what the Lower Town Monster had been, while Bane had walked shadowless in the noonday sun. Then too, the Sirdan Theocandi had sent his soul abroad at night as the assassin Shadow Thief.
But neither he nor Bane had had to contend with the Tishooo, which was romping along with Jame, snatching at her hem like a playful dog.
"Stop that!" she cried.
"Whooo . . . ?" said the wind, and swept up under her full, outer skirt, inverting it.
Jame found herself cocooned in heavy velvet, blinded, entangled. As she struggled to free herself, she heard a whistle—shrill, excited, and very, very close. Jorin was growling. Then someone yelped, as though in surprise or pain. The taste of blood again—in the cat's mouth, not her own. Jame clawed the gown away from her face.
No Jorin, nothing but an empty courtyard full of wind.
Where . . . there, ancestors be praised: a glimmer of silver fur in the shadows, a very upset ounce slinking toward her across the grass. Catching him, she pried something out of his jaws. It felt like coarse cloth. However, except for a corner stained with blood, she couldn't see either it or her own hand, which the rest of it covered.
Sweet Trinity. Could this be mere?
Jame stood holding the scrap of invisible cloth against the wind's tug, feeling suddenly chilled.
"Kitten, let's get under cover. Fast."
Strangely, no guard was on duty at the entrance to the Brandan quarters. Jame crossed the arcade where, earlier, she had encountered the Iron Matriarch, and entered the compound proper. Still no guards or anyone else, although she could hear whistling in the distance.
The nursery was on the second floor, at the heart of the compound. The door stood half open, warm firelight spilling out of it. Jame slipped inside. It was a large, L-shaped room with many cots in it, all empty, as far as she could see. Nonetheless, fires were lit on the several hearths. Someone must be here. Jame stole silently between the rows of small beds toward where the room bent to the right. The hearth-fires danced uneasily as she passed.
The fire at the far end of the ell, however, had burnt down to tinkling embers. At one side of it sat a comfortable chair, empty. At the other was a cot, in which something moved sleepily. Bending over it, barely visible in the gloom, was a shadowy form. Jame could see the wall through it. It raised its head and looked at her out of eyes like the wells of night. The tenebrous planes of its face shifted. It was smiling at her. Jame went back a step, nearly stepping on Jorin as he scuttled under a bed. Then she saw that those shadowy fingers were resting in the creases of the child's blanket, inches from its sleeping face.
She heard herself say, hoarsely, "Don't you dare!"
Footsteps sounded on the nursery tiles behind her. She turned just as the Brandan captain rounded the corner and stopped short, clearly startled to see her. For an instant, Jame was also disconcerted: she thought she had seen something flicker aside between her and the sandy-haired Kendar, but nothing was there now except a stray shadow on the floor.
The captain advanced, scarred brow knitted in a frown. "Lady, what are you doing here at this time of night? Did you know that every Caineron in the halls is searching for you?"
Obviously, she hadn't yet seen the thing by the cot. She also didn't notice the shadow on the floor until her own, cast ahead of her by the room's outer fires, fell across it. Then she gave a sudden gasp and crashed to her knees. Her own shadow seemed to be floundering in that other darkness. As the two locked in unequal combat, she pitched forward and lay writhing on the floor.
"Get out!" she cried to Jame through clenched teeth. "Run!"
What in Perimal's name . . . ? Was this somehow Bane's doing?
But even as Jame turned to look back at the cot, where the child had woken and was beginning to cry, an all too solid arm slide around her neck from behind. It jerked her off balance. A flash of steel . . . . She barely got her own right arm up in time, the edge of her hand against the other's wrist, holding back sharp death for an endless moment.
Abruptly, she was released and flung sideways, almost on top of the stricken Kendar. Shadow hands were sliding over the woman's throat and face, fumbling at her eyes, while she tried futilely to tear them off. In another moment she would blind herself. Jame grabbed her wrists.
Above them, a shrill whistle began as if in triumph, but ended with a breathy explosion. Still gripping the Kendar, Jame twisted about to peer up over her shoulder. Something indistinct loomed over them—man-shaped, she thought, but somehow she couldn't focus on it. All that showed clearly were wild eyes without a face, a knife poised in midair, and below it a skinny, bare wrist, marked by Jorin's teeth.
For a moment, she thought that the assassin wanted them to "see" their killer, or rather to rub in that they couldn't. Then she realized that, just as he had caught her seconds before, so now he himself was caught. A shadowy something stood behind him, its indistinct arm around his neck, its ghost of a hand grasping his knife hand at the wrist.
M'lady, whispered darkness. Have you noticed? Every time we meet, someone bleeds.
The shadow hand tightened on the other's wrist. It drew the knife across some six inches below the terrified eyes, cutting slowly, cutting deep. The assassin jerked. Blood spurted, painting his neck, his chest. His breathing changed to a desperate wheeze as his trachea was severed, but without his soul he couldn't die. Jame flinched aside as his shadow fell away from the Brandan captain and scrabbled past her. The moment it reattached itself, the stricken assassin, crumpled, twitched, and lay still, defined against the floor by the spreading pool of his own blood.
The shadowy thing that was Bane rose from the corpse like black smoke off a pyre. It bent its head against the ceiling and spread wide its sooty arms. Out of that towering charnel cloud, the glimmer that might be eyes stooped over Jame . . . no, bowed ironically, then melted into the upper shadows, leaving behind only the ghost of a mocking whisper: Later . . . .
Jame gave a long, shuddering sigh. Later? Trust Bane never to do anything direct.
She released the Kendar's wrists. The woman huddled on the floor with her face hidden in the crook of her arm, clammy-skinned and shaking, but with her shadow still intact. No soul damage there. Perhaps the assassin's shadow-casting technique was limited to incapacitating his prey. Although it was screaming with fright, the child also appeared unhurt when Jame rose hastily to check it. As she scooped bedding off a nearby cot, Jorin crept out from under it.
"Some help you are," she told him.
After piling the blankets on the randon to combat shock, she gingerly turned over the sprawling figure. It no longer cast a shadow. So, Bane had broken his fast after all. Really, this mere cloth was amazing: only where it was soaked with blood could she see it clearly. She stripped off the other's sodden hood and stared down at the waxy face of a boy not more than fourteen years old.
"He's an apprentice in the Bashtiri Shadow Guild," said the captain behind her. She had sat up, clutching the blankets around her. Her teeth rattled together as if with the cold and her square, scratched face was haggard, but she came of hardy Kendar stock and had trained in a tough discipline.
"What's he doing here?"
"At a guess, trying to earn his journeyman's mere-tempered knife by fulfilling the contract which someone took out on the Knorth women, thirty-four years ago. I had kin on duty here that night. Bloody hell. Why didn't someone anticipate this?" She tried to stand up and failed, cursing. "Everything is upside down tonight. None of my cadets are where they should be. There's always some confusion, settling in a new garrison, but this . . . ! I should have realized that it wasn't just the other house guards ragging us."
Jame rose, the hood a flicker in her hand. "Well, he's dead now."
"He probably didn't come alone. There are usually thirteen shadows in a casting. Lady, I'm not sure we can protect you. Run. Hide. Trinity knows, you're good enough at that. The Caineron have been taking your name in vain from one end of the halls to the other, all evening."
The click of footsteps made them both start, but it was only the child's attendant, a Kendar maid, come back from whatever errand had drawn her away. She was outraged to find her charge shrieking itself apoplectic in the presence of two apparently indifferent adults, but then she saw the far end of the room awash in blood and showed signs of waxing hysterical herself.
"Don't!" said Jame, Highborn to Kendar.
The girl stopped with her mouth open. It stayed that way while she listened to the message which Jame wanted her to convey to the Brandan guardroom, in hopes that at least the watch officer would be on duty. She left still looking as if someone had hit her between the eyes with a board.
"You need help," Jame said defensively, meeting the captain's eye, "and someone's got to be told that there are foxes loose in the hen-house again. C'mon on, kitten."
"Lady, where are you going?"
Jame paused at the door, tucking the hood into her belt. Where indeed? To run, to hide? No. There was blood on the floor of her brother's house and blood in her veins, swift and hot after the winter's chill as she had never thought to feel it again.
"To warn the other house guards; then, perhaps, to hunt foxes."