II
Out in the hall, Jame turned left—away from the direction in which Brier had gone—and stormed off.
All these years of trying to escape her childhood in the Master's House by flight, amnesia, and arson (having left the upper stories in flames behind her) . . . could she still be carrying the image of that foul place in her very soul?
Those disfigured banners, her scarred face . . . .
No, no, no . . . .
"Forget what you can't help," the Women's World taught.
She had smiled at that behind the mask which they had made her wear, thinking, How convenient: What one forgets, one needn't face or try to change.
Now the instructress's voice droned in her mind as it had in that winter-bound classroom, where little girls were taught how to forget some minor thing so that later they might dismiss much greater, inconvenient facts:
"Forget, forget . . . ."
A minute passed, or perhaps ten.
Jame found herself staring down the crooked stairwell which opened up before her. What had she been thinking about? It was still there, buried none too deeply. Let it lie. Now, where was she?
The upper keep was relatively new in construction and regular in design, built of ironwood and oak. Below it, however, the cave-riddled cliff had long ago been hollowed out and filled with a wooden maze in which all the rooms seemed to be on different levels with ceilings of different heights. Erratic steps connected them, and halls that moved by fits and starts; stairs plunged down dark wells, some slippery with moss, others turned into minor cascades by recent rains.
So much Jame had noted as she and the others had climbed to the upper keep. Now here she was back at an entrance to those interior regions. Well, why not? With Jorin on her heels, she descended to explore.
Below were the quarters and studies where most of Mount Alban's scholars lived. Signs staked out territories, here the prehistorians, there the epic poets, elsewhere the anthropologists and linguists.
"Serious scholarship in progress," read one notice. "Singers keep out."
"Facts please small minds," declared another.
So the old rivalry between the scrollsmen and the singers still flourished, as it had since the Fall, when the few surviving scrolls had gotten so mixed up that no one knew which was fact and which, fantasy. The singers' cherished prerogative, the Lawful Lie, hadn't helped, as their colleagues never failed to point out.
Everything here, though, had an air of abandonment several months old at least. Most of the scrollsmen and singers had marched out with the Host the previous winter and were now enjoying Kothifir's sunny clime. Those left had been the old, the infirm, and the indispensable. After a winter in this dank, drafty chimney of a college, no wonder they were also eager to travel, especially if they could take the dubious comforts of home with them.
The whole thing sounded pretty implausible, though. Did they really expect this massive pile to drift about the countryside, scaring the natives? Still . . . . Not only were the lower windows shuttered but the inner wall was panelled with wood, around which weirding light seeped. The outer rock face should have blocked that out. Was the cliff still there at all? Maybe Mount Alban truly had been cast adrift, like a wooden boat, leaking.
Here was a more recently built stair, cutting down through the chaotic levels with welcome decision. From the depths of the square well came a groaning as if of ship's timbers in a heavy sea; and closer at hand, a different sound: quick, light foot-steps descending. Some fifty feet below, a robed figure scurried across a landing. It was the old scrollsman who had let them into Mount Alban, bound . . . where?
"Well, why not?" Jame said to Jorin.
They followed.
The farther down, the more the wood around them protested. At least, Jame thought, the principal supports must be ironwood, which virtually nothing could break. It wouldn't even catch fire unless exposed to hot coals for several months, and then a good-sized beam would burn for generations. The effect on it of weirding might be another matter. Given the centuries-old levels through which they were now descending, the newness of this stair might be more of a protection against being left behind.
At the stair's foot lay the lower hall. As Kendar had hollowed out the upper reaches of the cliff, so before them Hathiri masons had enlarged the caverns at ground level into high vaulted chambers. Before that, those same caves had been used by the ancestors of the Merikit, whose fort ruins still lay on Mount Alban's doorstep.
Jame paused at the foot of the stair, looking left down the long main hall to the door at its western end. The posts of the latter loomed some forty feet high and its leaves were secured by the counter-balanced trunk of a tree. Into the left leaf was cut a smaller door, cart-sized, and into that, a smaller door still, the height of a man. Each was outlined with weirding light, as were the wooden panels to either side.
Across the hall, the door to the herb shed stood open. Out of it came the chant of an ancient voice. The words became clearer as Jame approached, if not more comprehensible.
"Loosestrife kills flies," the old man was half-singing. "Loose lips tell lies. Parsley makes piss; so does a linguist."
A flight of wooden stairs led down to the shed floor. Jame sat on the fifth step from the bottom, low enough to see into the room below without venturing down onto its still unsteady floor. Jorin draped himself across her knees and fell asleep.
Below, the old scrollsman was sorting out the damage done to the wall of herb jars. As Jame watched, he picked leaves out of the glass shards, bundled them together, and put them in new container, all the time crooning bits of doggerel. These last seemed to consist of herbs' virtues (medicinal, culinary, or otherwise) linked often in scatological terms with the names of colleagues, historical facts, or old songs. Which herbs went into which container seemed very important to him, as did the latter's position on the shelves. Jame listened, trying to make sense of it all. The old man's voice rose and fell. Lamps swayed and wood creaked.
A kind of song began to weave in and out of Jame's mind, not words this time but sounds, rising and falling, wild and beautiful. The Wolver Grimly, she thought, half-asleep, serenading her outside the tent at the Cataracts where Torisen kept her a virtual prisoner. Any moment now would come her brother's exasperated cry:
"Grimly, do you mind?"
She jerked awake. No one had shouted. Below, the old man still crooned nonsense; somewhere above and behind her, wolvers still sang.
This is very strange, she thought and rose, pushing Jorin off her lap, to investigate.
The music came from outside Mount Alban's triple front door. Wisps of weirding trickled around jambs and lintel like smoke, but the surface was cool under her gloved hands. Then it grew colder still as a shadow fell outside, as stealthy and massive as an eclipse. Mist and song dissolved into a chill wind blowing through the cracks. Behind her, Jorin began to growl. Jame felt her own hair stir under her cap. Impossible . . . but she knew the stench born on that dark breath, the exhalation of a tainted land where deformed roots cried as they were wrenched from the ground and the unburnt dead always came crawling back. Incredible to think that once she had thought that loathsome smell only natural, as one does the air into which one is born. Awake or asleep, if she had any sense, she would turn and walk (run) away again, as she had twice before.
Yes . . . if.
Huh.
The smallest of the three doors opened at a touch . . . into another hall.
It was darker than Mount Alban's had been, lit only by the cold glow of a naked sword. Jame knew that bale-blade. In a moment, she also knew the man clad in dusty-black who sat with his back to her, holding it.
"Tori?"
Her brother stiffened, but didn't turn. "So you've tracked me down after all," he said dully. "No more hide and seek. Not from you, not from them. Don't you hear them in the shadows? They're all returning, the Kendar we knew, who ransomed me out of darkness with their souls. Returning, but so horribly changed, and it's all my fault. Listen . . . ."
Was she still asleep on the stairs to the herb shed? Had Tori dragged her into one of his nightmares as he so often had in their childhood?
Scratch, rustle, scrape . . . the stealthy sounds of the haunts that had been her childhood friends, waking to a nightmare of their own . . . .
"He's here too, you know," said Torisen, whispering now. "Father. Dead on the battlements with three arrows in his chest—no, half-dead on the stair, coming down . . . can't you hear him? His voice goes on and on, telling me to kill . . . to kill . . . ."
"You tell him," hissed Grimly, "to let go of that damned sword!"
His voice made her start: she hadn't distinguished the Wolver's dark form, crouching at Torisen's feet. Now she looked at her brother's right hand, lit by the hilt which it gripped, and winced. The thin, elegant fingers had swollen to nearly twice their normal size, knuckles and signet ring sunk into puffy flesh, tight skin marked by dark lines radiating out from burst, seeping blisters. She remembered how painfully that sword had blistered her fingers at the Cataracts, and she had only wielded it long enough to get across the battlefield. Tori had obviously been clutching it much, much longer than that.
Torisen put his free hand on the Wolver's head. "Go back to sleep," he said gently. "This isn't your dream. Anyway, I can't sheathe Kin-Slayer until it's killed someone."
Damn, thought Jame, dismayed. That's a new twist.
Or was it? Crossing the field at the Cataracts, she had spilled enough blood to glut a dozen swords. Of course, it could also be a thirst which the blade had developed after being reforged in Perimal Darkling. She should have warned Tori about that, or at least about the advantage and danger of wearing Ganth's ring on the same hand that wielded his sword.
"Why did you follow me?" he demanded in sudden, almost petulant exasperation. "Don't you see how dangerous we are to each other? I keep thinking that there should only be one of us, but which? Kin-Slayer may have to decide. Father says that you were a mistake, that you're too dangerous to live . . . ."
"Damn Father, Kin-Slayer, and the horse they rode in on!"
It came out almost in a shout. The wind faltered, then blew more strongly, the wolvers' voices all but lost on its foul, rushing wings.
"Please!" breathed Grimly, flat to the ground.
"I haven't come all this way," said Jame, trying to speak more softly, sounding half-strangled, "through fire, water, and darkling shadow, to play victim again to that man's madness. Anyway, he's dead. It's your responsibility now. You decide."
". . . oh, please. We're losing the song . . . ."
"Or should I just drop out of your life again?" She had come up behind him now, wanting to grab those hunched shoulders and shake them but somehow not daring to touch. "You can't bear to look at my face, can you? It's the price I've already paid for your cowardice. So, dammit, decide!"
Looking down, she saw how unkempt his dark hair was, how threaded with silver. What price had he paid, she suddenly wondered, over that long, bleak winter? What price was he paying still?
His head jerked toward the scorched door which led up to the battlements.
"Listen: he's on the stair. All winter, each night, coming one step farther down . . . until now. How can I decide anything with him at the door, listening? Listen. His hand is on the latch. He's fumbling with it, muttering. Is it bolted? I-I can't move . . . I can't . . . ."
The door was rattling. It was opening.
Jame threw herself at it, slamming it shut against resistance.
"Dammit, leave him alone!" she cried, and shot the bolt.
She found herself leaning breathlessly against the outside of Mount Alban's smallest front door. What in Perimal's name . . . ?
Abruptly, the next larger door swung open, taking the smaller one and Jame with it. She stumbled into the college's main hall, to be grabbed by a furious, white-haired figure. The second door slammed shut behind them, locking, as she was thrown backward against it.
"What do you mean, 'Leave him alone'?" demanded Kindrie. His anger shook him, shook her through his grip on her d'hen. "You're the danger here, not me! I followed you down because I couldn't understand how you could have helped Graykin without manipulating his soul-image, and now I've caught you tampering with your brother's. What did you do to it?"
"I-I don't understand. What soul-image? Whose?"
"The Highlord's! That awful keep in the Haunted Lands. Y-you got into it without even touching him. Don't you realize what harm you may have done to him . . . and what can a nemesis like you do anyone but harm? You a-and that vile Ishtier . . . . What did you do after you slammed that door in my face? What?"
"B-bolted it . . . b-but it was only a dream, wasn't it?"
"Dream? Dream? I'll show you how much of a dream that was!"
He dropped her. Jame hadn't realized, until she hit the floor, how far off the ground that slight Shanir had been holding her. He had a Knorth temper, all right, she thought bemusedly, and wondered if it had ever been roused in him before.
Grating sounds came from the shadows. Unable to open the smaller two doors, Kindrie was working the massive counter-weight which secured the double leaves of the largest. Jame looked up. Tendrils of weirding again snaked around all the edges. She scrambled to her feet.
"Kindrie, no . . . !"
The weight sank. Groaning, the tree trunk rose out of its brackets and the enormous doors yawned open. Weirding billowed into the hall.
Kindrie gaped up at it. "But . . . but . . . but . . . ."
Jame grabbed his arm and pulled him down the hall with Jorin bounding on ahead. "We'll sort it out later," she said. "Now, run for the main stair, d'you hear? Run!"
She herself made for the steps descending to the herb shed.
"Sir!" she cried down to the swaying lanterns and groaning timber. "Abandon ship: the hall is sinking!"
The old man appeared at the foot of the steps, staring up at her open-mouthed, then darted out of sight.
Jame swore and shot a glance back at the door. Mist rolled down the hall like a tidal wave but slower and more silent.
A clatter on the steps made her jump. It was the scrollsman scurrying up toward her. At the stair-head, he slammed the door behind him, locked it, and tied a rope to the handle.
"Well?" he demanded, turning to her. "What are you waiting for?"
They ran across the hall, the old man paying the line out behind him, and reached the stair just as the rolling mist engulfed them.
For an endless moment, everything was obscured. Then the weirding lifted.
Jame found herself crouching breathless, one hand locked on Jorin's ruff, the other gripping the edge of a wooden tread with sufficient force to drive splinters under her nails. Kindrie and the old man were clinging to the stair's rails with equal determination, the latter with his eyes screwed tight shut.
The mist formed a ceiling close overhead, but rising. Under it was a hall sculpted of glowing mist—scuffed floor, massive columns, panelled walls—like a chamber in the clouds. Opposite, the herb shed's door looked almost black set in such luminescence, as did the rope stretching across the shining floor. The old man pulled in its slack and secured it to the rail.
"There," he said. "That shed is new built. It should travel with us now, perhaps even longer than the stair does, if the rope holds."
"You mean we'll be trailing it behind us like the . . . the bait on a troll line?" Jame asked, bemused. Her voice sounded muffled, as had his, both half swallowed by the mist. More glowing details of the hall emerged over them as the white ceiling silently rose. "D'you think we'll catch anything?"
The old scrollsman had already started up the stair.
"Lots of old wood in the lower maze," he was muttering to himself as his head disappeared into the mist. "It won't travel far, whatever happens to the stair. Best to get above."
Abruptly he stopped and ducked back into sight, glaring at Jame. "What in Perimal's name d'you mean, 'we'?"