II
Half an hour later, a ten-command in close formation trotted toward Restormir as if eager to take shelter for the night. Their way was lit by innumerable stars except to the far north, where darkness blotted them out. A faint grinding noise came from that direction, and the earth occasionally shivered underfoot.
More strangeness on the way, Jame thought.
She stepped on the heel of the cadet in front of her and would have fallen if hands hadn't caught her. Brier had tucked her in the middle of the formation, where her dark clothes rendered her almost invisible. By contrast, Kindrie's white hair shone in the front rank like a beacon. The cadets on either side gripped his arms tightly, as though to hustle along a prisoner, when in fact they were supporting most of his weight so that his bare feet hardly touched the ground.
They came to a small, half-built compound on the tributary's southern bank, at the fortress's western end, which belonged to Tiggeri, Caineron's youngest established son, still in Kothifir in disfavor.
"Not too deep, I hope," Jame had said. "Not if you intend to pass yourselves off as his retainers."
"Tiggeri's practical jokes never quite bury him, lady, but sometimes he makes his Kendar very nervous. If on their way home they found this healer wandering, they would bring him along as a peace offering to M'lord."
A peace offering. Jame glanced at Kindrie again, this time with a twinge of unease. The Shanir had served Caldane briefly. She had heard that they had parted with no love lost. Perhaps Restormir was dangerous for him too—but he was a healer, dammit. What risk, ultimately, could he run? Anyway, too late for second thoughts: here was the gate, and now they were through it into Tiggeri's compound, unchallenged.
Only the rathorn crest stitched in white on their black token scarves marked them as Knorth. Easy enough to fold the needlework inward and to turn the scarf knot to the front in the style which Tiggeri favored. Jame had been afraid at first that Iron-thorn would balk at this stratagem, which her own knowledge as a former Caineron had suggested. Something about the big Kendar made subterfuge seem impossible. However, she had apparently decided that on this mad night anything might happen—not that "anything" included lying about their identity if directly challenged.
It was a relief, therefore, to find Tiggeri's compound virtually empty. His people must still be with him in Kothifir, where perhaps he had managed to stay by design. Only established since the previous summer, he and his retainers still lived in half-constructed quarters which would have been cruelly cold that winter. Still, huge piles of fire wood showed that they would rather have kept these stark lodgings than give up the morsel of independence which their lord had granted them. How important it was to be established, given permission to bind Kendar in one's own right.
If he ever found out about Graykin, Tori would have a fit.
The squad slowed, for the first time hearing the sound of the greater fortress as it lapped about this silent compound. Ahead loomed the castle keep on its high hill. The lower, older portion of the tower was dark, but on top of that like some fantastic crown sat the family quarters. There all windows stood open and lit. Snatches of song and laughter fell from them, disjointed by the height, and the quarters below gave back echoes, laugh for broken laugh, cry for cry.
"Passwords!"
The challenge fell suddenly on them from a guard-box perched on top of the wall which they were approaching. Under the box, sputtering torches bracketed the closed gate leading to the next compound.
"Passwords!" the guard demanded again, with a curious, high-pitched giggle. "C'mon. You know!"
"I don't know," Brier shouted back. "We just got here."
"Atta girl." The gate creaked open. " 'I-don't-know.' Tomorrow's watchwords, if you're interested, are 'I-don't-care.'"
Brier waved the squad through. "Are you drunk?" she demanded of the guard, who was now leaning perilously far out of the box to watch them pass.
"I'm not. They are." With a giddy sweep of his arm, he indicated the lit windows of the keep high above. "Five days and five nights, ever since M'lord got home. All the sons are up there too, except yours. Think what fun you're missing, cadet! If Kencyr weren't so hard to poison, we'd all be dead by now. What've y'got there?"
He was peering down at Kindrie, trying to focus.
"Something M'lord lost awhile ago."
"His Shanir toy, is it? Good, good. That Southron plaything he brought back with him won't last the night. Distract 'im, thassa idea. We've had about all the fun here we can stand."
He gagged briefly, but there was nothing in his stomach to bring up nor had there been, probably, for the better part of five days. They heard him begin to giggle again as they pressed on, his voice a shaky echo of his master's, carousing in the high keep above.
That shrill titter followed them all the way through the quarter belonging to Higron, Caldane's sixth established son. They heard it in raucous guard-halls, in shadowy side-streets, in the darkened bedrooms of children, once even burbling in a rain barrel where a burly Kendar was trying to drown himself.
Jame fell in beside Iron-thorn, a nervous Jorin trotting close at her heels. "You know," she said, "this isn't particularly funny. I had no idea that the bond between Highborn and Kendar could work this way."
"A lord's health always affects his people, lady, depending on how tightly he grips them. All the Caineron hold very tight. Then too, excessive wine can . . . complicate matters."
Jame shot her a sidelong glance. "You feel it too, don't you?"
"I'm sworn to your brother now, lady," the other said stiffly. "But my family has been Caineron yondri for generations. I feel enough to remember why I seldom drink."
They were approaching the gate of Grondin, Caldane's oldest son and the frequent butt of Tiggeri's practical jokes. Once, Brier could have judged to a hair how matters stood between the brothers. Not now. But to reach Caldane's citadel they must pass this way.
Grondin's district was the largest in Restormir except for M'lord's on the far side of the river. Two bridges spanned the latter, the farther to the east, leading to Caldane's general compound; the closer to the north, connecting by a side door to the castle mound itself. Brier proposed to use this latter route, if she could get her squad past Grondin's watchmen.
This proved easy.
Once the guard had locked the gate behind them, however, he gleefully whistled up his cronies to harry the "Tiggie" cadets like so many stray dogs.
Brier hurried her squad on. Tiggeri notwithstanding, she had seen Grondin drunk. To fall into his people's hands just now would be more than unpleasant. Damn. It sounded as if the entire district was rousing to join in the fun. Drunken halloos echoed from street to street to mark the twisting course of the chase.
"We're going in a circle," said the Knorth.
Brier almost demanded how she knew, but then glimpsed the tower looming over roof tops to her right. She had only been in Restormir briefly two years ago and never in this quarter, which was laid out with as little foresight as everything else that Grondin did. Moreover, her sense of direction was even worse than her head for heights. Perhaps this narrow way cut back to the main thoroughfare. No. Windowless walls rose on three sides, close and dank. A dead end.
The uproar approached. Torchlight washed across the blind alley's mouth. Then someone seemingly overhead cried:
"Haloo-loo-loo! This way!"
Torchlight withdrew as the hunt followed that insistent voice, now crying in the upper distance:
"Kalli-kalli-catch-'em-if-you-can!"
Brier's relief was short-lived, however; when she turned back to her small command, the Knorth was gone.
She might have asked herself, where? Only a drainpipe to the roof broke that blank expanse of discolored brick. Instead, all she could think was that the girl had bolted. Knorth or Caineron, all Highborn were alike after all.
However, nothing her superiors did diminished her own responsibility. She must get these cadets safely away.
At the alley's mouth they turned left—toward the relative safety of Higron's gigglers, Brier thought. But soon afterward she realized that she had gotten turned completely around when they came to a wall with the sound of swift water beyond it. Left again . . . and here was the eastern bridge leading to Caldane's compound.
"Well, it isn't exactly the back door," said the Knorth, breathless at her elbow, "but I take it we can still reach the citadel by this route. You didn't think I'd run out, did you? Sweet Trinity. You did. Cadet, listen: you can expect some fairly strange behavior from me, off and on, but never that. Understand?"
The Kendar simply stared at her.
"Right," said Jame. "I'll just have to prove myself as we go, won't I?"
And she would, she swore to herself, just as she had to Marc—but not by telling this wooden-faced cadet how she had spent the last half hour scrambling about on the roof tops with a death banner slung across her back, playing hare-and-hounds for the third time that week.
"After you," she said, indicating the bridge with a sweep of her hand.
Water plunged under the span, snow-fed, raging between the close-set walls of the two compounds. The noise made ears ring. On the far side, after they had slipped through Caldane's gate and closed it behind them against the river's roar, Jame repeated the question which she had tried to ask half way across.
"You must have lived in this quarter when you served at Restormir. How well d'they know you here?"
"Well enough," said the cadet shortly. "It can't be helped." She gave Jame a sharp look. "How did you know I'd done a home tour?"
"I . . . er . . . must have heard it somewhere," Jame said, embarrassed.
In fact, she had overheard it from inside the Highlord's tent.
"Ancestors know what that Kendar did to make Caldane so angry," Torisen had said and paused—in question, Jame had thought.
The quality of Harn's silence in response, however, had said as plainly as words, There are some things Highborn shouldn't ask.
"Odd that there's no guard here," she said, hastily changing the topic and backing up for a look at the sentry box perched over the gate.
Her foot hit a trip-wire. She went over backward, nearly landing on Jorin, who sprang aside with an affronted exclamation. Affront turned to a terrified squawk at a tremendous crash. Shards of crockery flew out of the shadows.
"Clumsy lot, you cadets," said a calm voice overhead.
A gray-haired man sat on the edge of the box. Propped against its corner support, legs dangling, he looked more like a discarded puppet than the veteran randon officer which his token scarf declared him to be.
"Well, well," he said, smiling down at the big Kendar. "Welcome back to Restormir, Brier Iron-thorn."
Brier answered in a language which Jame didn't understand, but the man interrupted her.
"Use common Kens, child," he said gently. "You don't have a right to Caineron battle-speech anymore."
"As you say, Randon Quick-foot. Are you going to raise the guard?"
"I just did, or tried to," he said, with a curious roll of his head toward the makeshift alarm. "Why are you here?"
"Private business, ran. Nothing that should endanger the Caineron or Restormir, as far as I can see."
She wouldn't have come, Jame realized, if she had thought that it did. It wasn't easy, after all, to change the allegiance of generations.
"Fair enough," said Randon Quick-foot. "You're hardly the one for whom the watch was set, anyway. Most of our people are out chasing reports of Merikit at large in the valley. No one here has forgotten Kithorn."
"That was our mission too, randon, out of Tentir. We were about to call it off due to serious weirding."
"Weirding." His eyes flickered in his slack face. "Not that too. Still, our randon can go to earth, the Merikit way. Away from Restormir, their wits should at least be clear enough for that."
"Yes, randon. Without help."
The officer's mouth twisted in acknowledgment of some point which Jame didn't catch. "True, child, true. 'Help' can be costly. Advice is cheaper, so I'll offer you that, for old time's sake: whatever your business, stay out of M'lord's way. He's initiating a randon candidate tonight."
"I . . . see. Good-bye, Ran Quick-foot, and thank you."
"That was quite a crash," said Jame as they went on. "Why aren't we up to our necks in guards by now—and what was wrong with your friend?"
"My friend, lady? Yes, I suppose he was. He's been chewing black-root. A bit of it keeps the head clear. More leads to progressive paralysis, like a series of self-induced strokes. Five days of it . . . . At best, he'll never be quick footed again."
"And that's what's happening to randon all over this compound tonight? For a toad like Caldane?"
"No, lady. For the same reasons you invoked earlier: honor and obligation."
One of the cadets gave a startled exclamation, and Jame turned quickly to find a stranger in their midst. By her clothes, she was a common Kendar, perhaps a baker. She had come up behind the squad and then, because her pace was faster, walked straight into their ranks. Eyes wide but unseeing, she passed between Jame and Brier. They stared after her. She was walking on her toes, as if lifted by the scruff of the neck and hauled forward.
More sleepwalkers overtook and bore them along, as if caught in waters running rapidly downhill. All flowed into Restormir's main square. The large, open space was already full of people—men, women, and children—moving in unison as if to the steps of some strange dance. If one turned, all did; if another gestured, a thousand hands followed suit. Expressions crossed their sleeping faces like windflaws over water: anger, arrogance, and something very like fear. Some were mouthing words, others mumbling them, so that a low murmur filled the square from side to side.
"Wait here," whispered the Knorth.
Before Brier could stop her, she had slipped into the crowd and begun to winnow through it, apparently in search of the most articulate sleep-talker. No one paid any attention to her. Nonetheless, the walkers were becoming more agitated. Now it looked as if each one of them was circling something, or someone. The Knorth walked backward in front of a large Kendar, face to face, perhaps the better to hear him. A thousand hands swung in a sudden, vicious slap, but only one struck home.
Brier swore. Ducking into the crowd, she snatched the Highborn out from under the Kendar's feet while he and a thousand others went on kicking thin air. Back on the square's edge, she propped her against a wall.
"Did you hear that cry?" the latter asked, dazed.
"No, lady. You didn't make a sound." Brier's attention sharpened. "You're bleeding. Healer . . . ."
"No!" The Knorth straightened, hastily drawing a sleeve across her face. "Don't fuss. I'm all right."
In the square, the sleepers stumbled and for a moment fought to regain their balance, again on tiptoe. The sight of all those wind-milling arms would have been funny, if not for the sudden terror on their faces.
"It's never been this bad before," Brier muttered. "Never. What in Perimal's name is M'lord drinking?"
"It may be as much a matter of what he drank," said the Knorth under her breath. "Damn. C'mon, then."