V
Morning dawned gray and chill, the fifty-seventh of spring, three days before Summer Eve.
"I had such a strange dream last night," said Jame, sleepily, to Aerulan.
As usual, her cousin didn't answer, but her warm arms gave a questioning hug.
"Well, first there was this hairy, naked man, covered with charcoal as if he'd fallen into a fire. He turned. His face had been burnt off and his eyes had boiled away. Then his charred flesh crumbled and his black bones clattered down at my feet. A cold wind scattered fragments of skin like black moths. I couldn't get the taste of them off my lips. But then I forgot about that, because there was something behind me. Such a chill darkness, big as a mountain, eyes like caverns . . . . No. Like the empty sockets of an Arrin-ken blinded with live coals in the Master's hall, somehow escaped alive. The whole Snowthorn range was one huge, crouching cat, and I was under its paw.
"In the Ebonbane, by the chasm, you escaped my judgment, it said in my mind. So cold. So desperately bitter, like a winter wind flecked with burning. But these mountains are mine.
"I wanted to argue as I did with Immalai, to say that I act only as I must to survive with honor, with precious little help from any of his kind . . . .
"But Graykin kept distracting me. All this time, you see, I could hear him whimpering. I know he's in desperate trouble and that it's my duty to get him out, but he nags and nags and nags until I could hit him! At least, though, he's still alive . . . .
"Oh. I forgot: you aren't, are you?"
Remembering that, she woke, to the warm embrace of Aerulan's death banner and an aching sense of loss.
There are so few of us left . . . .
Sometime during the night, Jorin had crept under the tapestry and now slept curled up as close to her as he could, his head tucked under her chin. Stroking him, she noted by the tight swell of his stomach that he had eaten well. Her hand disturbed a strange scent on his fur, musky and wild, like the Arrin-ken Immalai but with a faint reek of singed hair.
The burnt cat . . . had that been a dream, or the brush of her sleeping mind against Jorin's as the blind taught the blind to hunt? An Arrin-ken might well help a "little brother"—it had happened before—but not all those great, immortal beasts were as well disposed toward her as Immalai had been, nor was she still in his territory. More than one voice in that chorus by the Ebonbane chasm had wanted her to jump.
Jorin began to growl in his sleep.
"Hey!" said Jame.
The ounce snapped at her. She lay very still with his teeth through the collar of her woolen shirt, his breath hot against her throat. His eyes, seen aslant, looked as black as holes in rotten ice.
"Heyyyy," she said again, half crooning.
Jorin shivered, let go, and began apologetically to lick her chin. His tongue was very rough.
"Kitten," she said, fending him off, "you've been in bad company."
Throughout this, the Shanir hadn't stirred although his pale eyes were open. When urged, he sat up listlessly. Was this despair, or an inward-turning so complete that it left no attention to spare? Goosebumps marched unheeded up his thin arms. She pulled off her outer shirt with its torn collar and put it on him, taking care to touch his bare skin only with her gloves. Linen undershirt and flash-blade's d'hen would do for her. The latter, especially, she had no intention of putting aside while the master assassin might still be after her, slight protection as it would be against the Ivory Knife.
As for her dreams, Graykin's crying had at least convinced her that if she arrived at Restormir with a healer in tow, so much the better. Luckily, getting Kindrie to return the way he had come proved easy: When she turned him left onto the New Road and gave him a push, he stumbled northward without seeming to notice which way he went or to care.
Patches of mist still drifted down the valley, but without the ghost-walkers' definition. Had that been a dream too? In Jame's pocket, though, was the odd-shaped cinder. She would keep it, she thought, to remind herself that in this wilderness the strangest of things might be real.
By day, at least, her sense of Bane and the blind Arrin-ken waned. After all, they were both Kencyr, as alien to this world as she herself, even if the latter marked this whole mountain range for his own as Immalai had the Ebonbane or the lords this valley. The land might not be theirs to claim. Anyway, thought Jame, the burnt cat probably didn't even exist. Dreams had played tricks on her before.
So had her imagination, come to that, and so it might be now: throughout the day, she kept catching half-glimpses of the Earth Wife's lodge. Never again did it appear as clearly as it had on the cliff-face. An arrangement of leaves, or bark, or shadow seen askance would merely suggest its carved lintel or imu decked walls, gone when regarded directly. It was only her nerves, Jame decided. How likely was it, after all, that a house should be keeping pace with her through this wilderness? In that case, though, she wished her imagination were less vivid: with each imagined glimpse, that shadowed door had crept farther open.
For the most part, the roadway was set well back from the river so that trees and undergrowth hid it from the opposite bank. Nonetheless, Jame would again have sought a higher, more obscure path if she hadn't been traveling with someone whose boots had been eaten the previous day by a grove of trees. Presumably, the healer could repair his own injuries. That didn't prevent him from sustaining them first, though, nor did it help that he paid no attention where he was stepping. Regarding the trail of bloody footprints behind them, Jame wondered if she would have the heart to drag him all the way to Restormir.
The New Road connected Kraggen, Shadow Rock, Valantir, and Restormir, the home keeps respectively of the Coman, Danior, Jaran, and Caineron. Shadow Rock, sister keep to Wilden, couldn't be far ahead. The east bank was already stripped of trees by Randir foragers and scored with erosion. Still, because of the Shanir's shambling pace they were forced at nightfall to made camp short of the Danior fortress.
Kindrie fell asleep at once, wrapped in Aerulan's banner. Jame sat up to tend the fire and wait for Jorin, who had again scorned the cheese rinds and slipped away when her back was turned. If he learned more self-reliance, she told herself, that was good, regardless of who taught him.
The thought of such dark instruction reminded her of Bane.
"For such a clever person," he had said to her, moments before the mob had come to get him, "you are remarkably ignorant. What a pity I shall never have the chance to educate you."
He might try yet.
Memories: his shadowy figure watching from an upper window as the half-flayed body of a child was pulled from the River Tone below. Later: "There's a rumor that since you joined the Thieves' Guild Bane has given up young boys." Later still, Bane at the Res aB'tyrr, extolling the freedom of the abyss while his bullies held the inn's staff captive: "The weight of honor twists us," he had said. "Better to let it go, to fall away from all restraint . . . that is the course for you, as for me."
"I don't understand you at all!" she had cried, and he had answered with that slow, secret smile of his:
"You know me as well as you know yourself."
Wind ruffled the horse-chestnuts above the hollow where they had camped. Rising sap traced the leaves' primary veins with faint luminescence, so that each defined its movements in the dark by a ghostly, seven-fingered dance.
"Ssssaaa . . ." breathed the wind, and the trees fluttered their innumerable hands. "Sssssaaaaa . . ."
—or was that "Thaaaa . . . ?"
No.
Thoughts of the Burning Ones, Bane, or the blind Arrin-ken were all dangerous, apt like the smell of blood to draw that which she most feared.
Jame leaned forward to put more wood on the fire. Across the sinking flames, she looked directly into the cool silver of Bane's eyes.
He lay stretched out on the ground, propped lazily on an elbow. Firelight caught the dark bronze of scale armor made of last season's oak leaves. They rustled as he breathed.
"Thaaaaa . . ." sighed something under the trees which was not the wind.
The half-burnt sticks of the fire scattered as something thrust up through them. Jame stared at what, for an instant, she took to be an overbalanced log. But logs don't have fingers, charred black as these were, and logs don't grab wrists. It jerked her hand downward. She could feel the heat of the quickening flames through her glove, as well as the crushing pressure of the Burnt Man's grip. Kin-slayers were his special prey, and this time she was without Aerulan's protection. Her finger tips began to smolder. She remembered the story of a Merikit fratricide who had been pulled through a campfire into the ground beneath. All his companions could save had been a boot, with his foot still in it.
Bane watched, expressionless now, his eyes reflecting only fire. Had none of his dubious humanity survived? Was he now purely the demon which Ishtier had sought to create? But he had crossed the running water of the Silver, as no demon could have done. Perhaps he could still be reached.
"Your choice, b-brother."
An absolute stillness came over the figure opposite. He hadn't known, hadn't even guessed, but Jame could feel the conviction of it sink in, as it had with her in the Tastigon temple. For a moment, they stared at each other. Then he threw back his head and began silently to laugh.
The chestnuts cast up their hands—aahhhh!—as a gust of wind swept into the hollow, fanning flames, rattling dry leaves. Fragments of Bane's armor whirled into the fire. The chestnuts beat at the ascending sparks. Jame was still braced against the Burnt Man's pull, with fiery tongues leaping up toward her sleeve. Bane continued to laugh, even as the wind began to scatter him like autumn's memory.
"Choose, dammit!"
His laughter died. He looked at her, expressionless again, and then leaned forward. Between the flares of firelight, his face dissolved into shadow, but she could read his lips:
". . . my choice, then: no blood-price, sister . . . ."
At his touch, the charred thing gripping her wrist crumbled and a quick leap of flame kindled the remains of his leaf shell. Suddenly released, Jame caught only the glimpse of a man-shape in flames, rising, as she went over backward.
"Ssssaaa . . . ." said the wind, and departed with leaf ash on its breath.
Beyond the fire, no one watched.
Sweet Trinity. Thought Jame, sitting up, dazed. Did I fall asleep after all?
But her wrist still hurt. On the black leather of the glove were the ashy prints of four fingers and a thumb.