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Jame had immediately recognized the Randir captain from Gothregor, or at least her semblance. That the woman herself should be here was quite possible: Wilden was her home keep, after all; and, given their crawling pace, she could easily have beaten the fugitives to it—but in such company?
From the boulder's height, Jame could see Kindrie's track beaten through the tall grass as he had fled from cover to cover. The ten Randir cadets, however, had left no trails at all, while their officer still stood as if by chance in the Shanir's footsteps, her own feet sunk into them to the ankles. It was too dark to see if, like Bane, she cast no shadow. If she was the demon whom Lady Rawneth had conjured, that would explain the ten others as bogles, mindless projections of her power. Yes: if.
"'Knorth protection,'" the randon repeated, smiling up at Jame. "Now, who are you, girl, to confer that?"
One point to me, thought Jame.
The real captain had never seen her dressed like this, but she would have guessed after that slip about the Knorth. A demon concentrated the worst attributes of its host soul, without always gaining its knowledge. Unfortunately, she didn't know the Randir's true name either, which would have helped if this creature was indeed constructed around her soul the way the Lower Town Monster had been around Bane's.
The other's smile peeled back into a broad grin, baring very white, distinctly human teeth whose incisors had been chipped to form points, so recently that they still bled. Behind her, ten faces broke into empty smiles, luminous eyes devoid of pupil, iris, and life.
The glowing eyes of the strange cadets in the Randir arcade at Gothregor . . . these?
"Why don't you come down and play, little girl?" crooned their captain. "Or shall we amuse ourselves elsewhere?"
As one, the ten turned their gleaming gaze on Kindrie.
The dark randon on the upper slope moved as if to protest but checked herself. What in Perimal's name were Knorth cadets doing here anyway, Jame wondered, distracting her at such a moment?
"Your mistress won't thank you for hurting this boy," she said quickly to the face smiling up at her. "She must want him back alive."
"But not necessarily intact. Healers are such fun."
White hands reached out toward Kindrie. Long nails rattled together over him like thorns in a winter wind. Where they brushed his skin, red lines appeared and began to drip.
That did it.
For some time, thunder had been grumbling closer. Now the yellow light above flared briefly as lightning gave an oddly muffled crack. To destroy a demon, Ishtier had once told her, you needed first its true name and then lots of fire or water. True, she didn't know what to call the creature gloating up at her, but by God, maybe she could still wipe that damn grin off its face. No time to conjure up the proper master rune, but Gorgo still owed her at least one favor.
"All right," she said to the lowering sky, "Now."
A raindrop struck her upturned face, then another and another, hard. One moment she could see all the way upslope, where the red-haired Kendar had barked an order at her command and was starting down with the cadets scrambling into formation behind her. The next second, the rain had drawn a hissing, gray veil across everything. A wail of protest came from the grass below where Jorin lay hidden.
Something was climbing the rock. For a moment, Jame looked into a face from which all features had been washed except the sharp-toothed grin. Fingers webbed with melting flesh groped for her. She launched herself over the creature's head, as much through water as air, to land hard on the flattened grass beyond. Wet fur brushed against her, chirping anxiously. Jorin. She stumbled toward where she had last seen Kindrie. There he was, a pale, huddled blur on the ground, ringed by cloud-of-thorn brambles. She slashed through them with the Ivory Knife and hauled the Shanir out.
Suddenly, the air around them changed. The rain was replaced by a glowing mist so dense that Jame couldn't see or hear anything at all. She tightened her grip on Kindrie's arm while a frightened ounce pressed so close that he stood on her foot. Those two points of contact were all she could feel. Beyond them, all of Rathillien might have melted into chaos.
Then Jame realized what had happened: under cover of the storm, a bank of weirding had swept down on them.
Sweet Trinity, now what? Weird-walking had occasionally been practiced in the past, with mixed results. A walker might cover great distances, but he also might end up one place and his feet another. Still, the naked Merikit had risked it. This mist-bank was traveling southward. Would it roll past or was it already taking them with it? Since Jame neither wanted to stay where she was nor find herself at the Cataracts, much less both places simultaneously, she stumbled on in the direction which she had been going, hoping it was northward, dragging Kindrie and Jorin with her.
Time seemed to dissolve along with everything else. Past and future melted into a present that stretched on and on until it was hard to imagine anything but mist.
Then, between one step and the next, the world returned.
The mist rolled away southward, leaving them under a dusky sky fretted with stars, on the crest of a ridge. Some distance below, stretching from the river bank back until the western hills swallowed it, was the largest fortress which Jame had ever seen. Actually, it looked more like a city with many walled districts. A castle keep built on a towering mound dominated the whole, separated from it, moat-like, by the split waters of a tributary rushing down to join the Silver.
Jame only had a moment to stare, though, before someone behind her gave a startled exclamation. She and Jorin leaped aside as a number of people plunged out of the retreating mist, hanging on to each other. The lot of them tumbled off the ridge, taking Kindrie with them, to fetch up in a pine spinney a little way down the slope. Jame was left facing the dark cadet, who had emerged last and least precipitously from the mist.
"If it's any consolation," she said to the Kendar, glancing at the muddle below as it began to sort itself out with dolorous cries, "the one on the bottom is a healer. Who are you people, anyway, and where have we all landed?"
The tall randon was staring down at the mass of buildings, in patent disbelief.
"Restormir," she said softly. "Restormir."