V
Adiraina still sat by the window, alone now in the falling night. The breeze off the Snowthorns had turned to a rising wind that lapped around her until she felt as if she hovered in it, perilously balanced.
It had taken her a long time to regain even so much poise as this. The old should be used to death's imminence, but tonight had brought back the memory of too many struck down too soon: strong Kinzi, sweet-faced Aerulan, Tieri . . . .
She had almost put that sad child out of her mind, until now. Growing up alone in the Ghost Walks where so many had died, herself the only ghost . . . . Had that long concealment really been necessary? What if she, Adiraina, had actually been punishing the girl for having survived when Kinzi had not?
No, no, NO.
"I didn't have a choice," she had protested to Dianthe, when at last the secret had to be told. "You remember what those times were like. Ganth's madness had thrown us all into chaos, defenseless. The assassins might have returned if they had known that any Knorth women had survived."
"I can understand not telling the lords," Diante had agreed, "then or later. Tieri was the last of her house, a prize—except that without her lord to give assent, any child of hers would have been a bastard. The Kencyrath was in trouble enough without that. But couldn't you at least have told us?"
Not without knowing who had sent the assassins in the first place; and with Tieri dead, Adiraina hadn't wanted to know at all, when the answer might destroy what was left of her world. What did it matter if the blood price for the slain went unpaid when no Knorth were left to collect?
But now the Knorth had returned, brother and sister, Ganth's children.
And if someone still wanted all the women of that house dead?
They can't, she told herself. Not after all these years. Anyway, too many secrets have been kept too long. She daren't betray them now. Long awaited footsteps sounded on the stair. Silk rustled. So, Brenwyr had changed out of "that horrid skirt" but not, from the length of her stride, into the traditional tight under-gown.
"Greetings, Brandan," Adiraina said formally.
"Greetings, Ardeth."
A hand touched her shoulder. *Grandmother-kin,* said the fingers, with that special emphasis that indicated an embrace. "Sorry I'm so late," the Iron Matriarch added out loud. "I meant to attend the council meeting this afternoon but, well, something happened."
"So I heard. You finally met the Knorth. I have said all along that you should, but not quite like that. Do you feel better now, dear?"
"Of course," said Brenwyr, irritably. "Why shouldn't I?"
"You know perfectly well. You flared, my dear. A perfect example of a mature, berserker episode, the sort that always gives you such terrible headaches afterward. That's your touch of Knorth blood again, I'm afraid, the quarter that dear Kinzi gave you. Oddly enough, just before you someone else flared whom I never suspected before of berserker tendencies but should have, given her bloodlines: Jameth."
"Aerulan never flared."
"Dear Aerulan had none of the family curses. All in all, she was the most atypical Knorth I've ever met. But this isn't Aerulan."
"God's claws, don't you think I know that?"
"I have occasionally wondered. My dear, are you quite sure you know what you are doing?"
"No!" Her boots rang on the ironwood floor as she began to pace restlessly back and forth. "Sometimes I think I'm going out of my mind altogether—a proper Knorth response, eh? After I killed . . . ."
"My dear!"
"All right, grandmother-kin. After my mother died, all the self-control I have, I learned from you. I know what it cost you, too."
Adiraina dismissed this with a graceful gesture, even as the memory of Brenwyr's most recent flare sent a stab of pain through her head. Linked by her own Shanir traits to That-Which-Preserves, she knew that she had been lucky to survive her fosterling's childhood, much less her agonizing adolescence.
Brenwyr must have been watching her closely. "It seems that I can't help but hurt what I love best. Ancestors know, I loved Aerulan—but she's been ashes on the wind for thirty-four years! I was barely more than a child then. Since, I've honored a dozen contracts, borne four sons, managed my lord brother's keep, and become a matriarch on the council. You know the name they call me behind my back. Where has that iron discipline been this past winter? All I can think about is Aerulan, about ransoming her banner out of that cold hall, away from the moldering dead. Now. Before anything else can happen."
"Has Lord Brandan spoken to Torisen again about that?"
"He says he won't, that the Highlord doesn't understand, that the issue is too delicate to force. I ask you!"
"He might be right. I've often thought that Torisen Black Lord doesn't know our customs as well as he should, or is likely to with no Knorth Matriarch to instruct him. It occurs to me, though, that eventually there may be one here again."
"This girl Jameth? That's absurd!"
"No. I would say that it's inevitable. Who else is there? It's a disturbing thought, though, considering the example which she has already set for our younger sisters. Do you know what that child said when I told her to keep quiet about what she had seen in the classroom? 'Why?' Oh, she'll obey, but still . . . !"
"Are questions really so dangerous?"
"Now, my dear. You know they are."
"Why? All right, all right: it doesn't matter. After the massacre, though, didn't the Randir Matriarch swear that there would never be a Knorth Matriarch here again?"
Adiraina shifted uneasily. "What a foolish thing for dear Rawneth to have said. I'm sure she's long since thought better of it. It doesn't matter anyway, as long as no Randir Highborn are in residence here and Jameth has been forbidden to enter their compound . . . but perhaps I shouldn't depend on that: the Knorth are so unpredictable, so hard to manage! Why, even Torisen, quiet as he is, has given Cousin Adric some uneasy moments."
Despite herself, Brenwyr smiled. "Does Lord Ardeth try to manage the Highlord?"
"Of course. And yet, and yet . . . sometimes, late at night, I wonder. This impulse, this almost compulsion to control these two young people . . . . Do we find them so threatening because they remind us of what the Kencyrath once was like, and perhaps must be again if we are ever to fulfill the purpose for which we were created?"
"To defeat Perimal Darkling? Do you really think we ever will?"
"Ancestors only know," said Adiraina, and paused.
Before the Fall, her ancestors had thought they knew. Of course the shadows would be defeated, as soon as the three aspects of their god deigned to manifest themselves in the three Shanir known collectively as the Tyr-ridan. Earlier matriarchs had tried to speed that day by mating together potent Shanir. Whether they should have done so, especially within the bounds of blood-kinship, was still hotly debated. One such match had produced those dire twins, Gerridon and Jamethiel Dream-weaver, who in turn had been bred together with no issue except, perhaps, the Fall itself. Nonetheless, some matriarchs believed that in general their predecessors had in general the right idea.
Adiraina winced, remembering Karidia's taunt: ". . . manipulating bloodlines, creating monsters . . . ." True, she had suggested the blood-cross which had produced Brenwyr, but really . . . !
"This much I do believe," she said: "unless our god has forsaken us utterly, someday the Tyr-ridan will come, and then we all will face the ultimate test."
The wind veered, bringing with it a distant, enraged shriek and the sound of shattering glass.
"Someone must have annoyed Kallystine again," Brenwyr remarked sourly.
"I do believe that you are right, although I've never heard her break one of her precious mirrors before. Amazing, the way sound carries tonight. Earlier, I thought I heard the Knorth. 'Butcher of children,' she was crying, if that can be right. 'Butcher of children!' It sounded almost like an evocation."
Brenwyr had come to stand beside her. "The Tishooo plays strange tricks. I thought I heard Aerulan calling my name, over and over, the night she died. Speaking of evocations, do you know where I met the Knorth this afternoon? In the arcade, just where Aerulan fell. There she was, in a heap on the floor with a cat in her arms and a torn skirt . . . Aerulan's skirt . . . ."
Adiraina groped for the younger woman's hand and clutched it. "You mustn't ill-wish that girl," she said urgently. "You know how dangerous that can be! My dear, my dear, remember your discipline: forget what you can't help. We both must. It was all over so long ago."
"Thirty-four years ago tonight." The bitter twist in her smile was as audible as broken bones grating. "Why, grandmother-kin, don't tell me you forgot. This is the anniversary of Aerulan's death."