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Chapter XIII
The City and the Forest

Transweald: Autumn 31–50

I

The Kencyr arrived at Wealdhold on the 31st of Autumn in the late afternoon. The city first presented itself as a wooden citadel behind a wooden palisade on a bare plain. A bustling tent city huddled against its southern wall to welcome visitors. To the east were the playing fields. To the north rose the forest wall of the Weald, cut off as cleanly as if by a knife from the city’s pasturage where, mostly, horses, sheep and cattle grazed. But not under the shadow of the trees. There, the line of demarcation was clear, also the hostility of city against forest.

“We’d almost given up on you,” said Garr, the Brandan commander, a dark Kendar with a good-natured but badly scarred face. Here was a man who took nothing seriously except the essentials. “Sharp and her troop of Jaran singers arrived days ago. They will compete too, but mostly, I suppose, it will be you against us.”

“Doing what?”

“Pugnanos hasn’t told us yet. I hear that he longs for a pitched battle, but his nobles fear another White Hills. Anyway, there aren’t enough of us to do the job properly nor, I suspect, do you want to shed our blood any more than we do yours. Oh, you’ve walked into a proper hornets’ nest. Our duke is quarreling with his nobles and with his people. He supports the Princess cult. Most of them don’t. And they know how dangerous it is to meddle with the Weald. This country wasn’t even called Transweald until Pugnanos’s great-grandfather changed it—another small man with grandiose ambitions.”

That evening the duke set a feast of sorts for his most recent visitors. Jame found him short, bad-tempered, and inclined to talk past her to the males in her party. He had been expecting Jurik, judging by all the images of Princess Amalfia scattered about his hall, in silhouette, in high-relief, in statuary, all wooden, all mottled with moss or lichen. There were also demonic figures representing Prince Bastolov, almost in equal measure, the wood here charred as if each image had gone through the fire as had its original. It clearly irked the duke that Jurik had not yet appeared, also that he had gotten Jame instead.

In this atmosphere, he rose to salute his current guests.

“I give you strong herbs, and sour dough, and raw fish. Also mast pastries, if you last that long.”

“He could have served us raw oats or mangelwurzel and be done with it,” said Garr aside to Jame with a scar-twisted grin. “Horse-fodder for the unexpected.”

“I have on occasion been made to feel more welcome. We could use lodgings, though. Our tents got left behind.”

Garr gave her a shrewd look. “Something to do with your missing prince, perhaps. Yes, we’ve heard rumors about King Mordaunt’s heir. In the meantime, we can accommodate you within doors, if you don’t mind moss on the walls.”

One of the Transweald nobles rose, saluting the duke. “Your grace, we have yet to learn the terms of this contest. Would you care to enlighten us?”

They didn’t know either, thought Jame. Pugnanos really was at odds with his court.

The duke scowled and chewed on his mustache. “Very well,” he said crossly, spitting out wet hairs. “You keep saying that after thirty years on our own we don’t need the Kencyr to decide our quarrels for us. Let us see. For the first three days of the games the Kencyr of all three houses will compete against our own people and they against each other.”

“And on the fourth day?” said the noble, pushing.

“Maybe Brandan against Knorth, for possession of the Weald. Maybe something else. Wait and see.”

“And that,” said Garr as he afterward showed the Knorth and the Danior to their quarters, “is his grace in a nutshell. He hates to be pinned down. Also, he likes to keep his people off-balance, guessing. Maybe, though, he just can’t make up his mind. The games that he spoke of take place every four years, so I haven’t seen one before. I hear that they tend to focus on native sports and military competitions, not all of which we hold in common. There will be a scramble tomorrow sorting out our contestants according to prowess.”

“Not so with them?” asked Damson.

“Oh, they’ve been competing against each other for a quarter year already, to determine that.”

The lodgings, as Garr had warned, were damp, which seemed to be true of the entire citadel, perhaps of the entire city. The largest halls, such as the one in which the Kencyr found themselves quartered, had their own cloud banks wreathing the high rafters, dispensing dew by dawn. The bedding, however, was of honest wool and quite warm against the chill even if beaded by moisture. Jame woke blinking droplets off her eye-lashes, staring up into a sketchy fog. If Pugnanos hated the forest, he could hardly escape it in his own home. Maybe that was why he hated it.

Breakfast was bread, butter, and a curious, crunchy preserve made from hazelnuts, akin to the mast filled pastries of the previous night.

Everyone, Kencyr and Transwealdian, assembled in the main courtyard for the opening ceremony. Even some of the wax-faced Deathless were there, but pushed to the rear. The duke emerged in a green robe trimmed with spiky lace, wearing a gilded crown that looked like either a bird’s nest or a pile of kindling, and dedicated the contests to the princess. This was met with murmurs from the crowd. When athletes, trainers, and judges stepped forward to swear to behave honorably, they spoke to a charred statue shoved off to one side, on which the duke turned his back. No one demanded that the Kencyr bow to either figure. Their honor, Jame noted, was still trusted to themselves, and well it should be if the last day of these ceremonies was to have official weight.

She met with Garr after these preliminaries, while the Transwealdian crowd went to honor their ancestral gods, to visit camp to camp, or to view the moldy wonders of the duke’s palace. Meanwhile, the blare of trumpets sounded from the inner courtyard where trumpeters competed to announce the winners.

“As I understand it,” said the Brandan, “today we have the poets, the historians, and the scholars trying to put this whole farce into context. All right. I’m a snob. But what is their history compared to ours? How can they begin to understand who we are or where we come from?”

Jame bit her tongue. Kencyr in general were ignorant about Rathillien’s history. She hardly knew if she understood it herself although she was still trying mightily. What the Kencyrath didn’t understand could still damn them.

“Tomorrow,” Garr continued, “there are equestrian events in the morning. Bare-back races. Chariots. Trotting mares. Squealing foals. We brought horses, of course, but not ones trained to such sports. An endurance event, maybe, but that’s not on the schedule.”

“They still want to see Death’s-head fight, don’t they?”

“Oh, yes. That will come on the third day, when the combat sports are featured and there, I imagine, we will be expected to compete. In the afternoon of the second day, running and jumping. I ask you. We can run seventy miles in twenty-four hours, for days on end with intervals of dwar sleep, but not all at once in a sprint. How far can we jump? That depends on what we have to do. As for strength, there’s wrestling, boxing, and their version of the Senethar, which involves all of their combat skills. Third day stuff. These, I remind you, do not necessarily correspond to our own disciplines.”

“How do we sort this out?”

“Pick our strengths and adapt our techniques to theirs where we can. Not all of us will compete each time.”

They spent the rest of the morning sorting out who among the Brandan, the Knorth, and the Danior fitted best in the schedule. Jame found herself passed over again and again, not that she minded. Riding the rathorn in battle (again, against whom or what?) struck her as challenge enough.

That afternoon, she and Rue went from tent to pavilion to tent, listening to poets and scholars expound on the mysteries of the Princess and the Prince cults. Anyone wishing to curry favor with the duke praised the former, with his guards monitoring to be sure that it was so. Most of it Jame had heard before from Dar. The princess and the king were victims, in this version, the prince an inhuman villain. What could be worse, after all, than regicide paired with parricide?

The tents praising the princess, however, were mostly empty. Others, praising the prince, were full.

Walking down the line of pavilions, Jame heard familiar voices. Here was a packed tent in which the Jaran spoke. Sharp was conducting a dissertation on the prince.

“He was crown prince of his land,” she said, spreading her hands to encompass all. “The princess of Hathor was offered to him to end the long conflict between the right and left banks of the Silver. This was before the great weirdingstrom that sundered them forever.”

“Long, long ago,” murmured the Jaran singers who backed her up. “We Kencyr had not yet come to this world. Its sorrows were not yet counted among our own.”

“She was beautiful,” Sharp continued, as if speaking to friends who had asked for enlightenment. “He loved her at first sight and she, him. Two young people, fated. Why not? But his father the king also saw her and lusted after her. He assaulted her. She killed herself out of shame. His son killed him and so became a parricide, that deadly sin.”

The audience muttered, some in protest, others in comprehension. Like Jame, they apparently hadn’t heard this twist before, that Bastolov had killed his father to avenge his love. Jame had thought that murder strange when she first had heard about it, the work, surely, of a madman. This interpretation changed the balance of sympathy, if not necessarily of guilt.

“But what then,” said Sharp, “of the prince?”

A new voice rose, and this Jame also knew by its rough edges, by its croon. A shaggy young man shuffled forward, shy but defiant. The Wolver Grimly nervously began to keen his song, translating it from Rendish as he went:


“Came he to the green Weald,

Heart sore, in search of refuge.

Wolves greeted him.

One sought him out and loved him.

Pups they had, the first wolvers,

A balm to his wounded heart.

But foes hunted him, his own brothers.

That any kin should be so unkind!

They sought to burn him alive.

The heart of the Weald embraced him.

Charred, he lives on.

Never will we forget his pain.”


It struck Jame suddenly that she was listening to the story of the Burnt Man.

Voices jarred at the threshold, the duke’s guards demanding entry.

“Filthy wolver,” one cried. “To spread such lies! And you, to listen to them!”

Sharp thrust Grimly into Jame’s arms. “Get him away from here,” she hissed.

They escaped out the back of the tent as guards boiled into it from the front. At first the churning audience baffled them. Then it cleared and they were met by a more formidable wall of Jaran randon.

“You would have to stick your neck out,” Jame chided the wolver as they cut between tents into the clear of the eastern playing fields. From the sound behind, the clash was spreading with enthusiasm on both sides, within the tent and beyond.

Grimly giggled nervously. “I should pass up a chance to perform, and with such a subject?”

“You might, if you valued your skin.”

“Rather, I value my people and our beliefs.”

“I beg your pardon. I forgot that the wolvers claim the Burnt Man as their sire.”

He cast down his eyes. The Holt wolvers, as a rule, were not confrontational.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Why should you know how engrained some of these issues are? Truly, though, all of us in the Weald fear the autumnal equinox, Wolf’s Day. That’s the 36th of Autumn. This is the 32nd. The duke is planning something. We all sense it. Will you help us?”

“If you need it. If I can see how.”

II

On the second day the equestrian sports were held. Dawn saw the start of preparations in the eastern fields where a whole cavalry of horses was assembled. Thirty four-horse chariots were to compete. Enthusiasts and gamblers thronged the sidelines. Some had been up at dawn to scent the horses’ droppings for omens—enough grain? Too much? Others whispered to trainers and charioteers, who pretended not to hear. The results, everyone knew, lay in the laps of ancestral gods, and the shrines of these too had their share of early morning supplicants.

Trumpets sounded. The horses pranced forth with glossy hides and flashing eyes, with silver-inlaid harnesses and gilded rigs. The crowd roared. The horses charged around the course, down a six hundred yard straightaway to the sharp turn at the end. Chariots crashed. Charioteers flew over their rigging and were dragged under pounding hooves. Horses fell with shattered legs. Attendants ran out to clear the wreckage. Twenty-three turns to each race. Fifteen minutes to cover six miles, which seemed to last forever.

“Ugh,” said Damson, watching a pileup on the fifteenth turn. “We should subject our horses to that?”

It was the first time Jame had heard her express empathy for anything. Was she finally learning what that meant, at least for animals?

Trumpets blared again. The carnage was over, until naked, bare-back riders took their place, then trotting mares, then skittering foals.

At noon, the hurlers took the field with a ram’s head gripped by its horns. The rest of this unfortunate beast had been sacrificed at dawn, its blood poured over an obscure white stone. Much importance was given not only to the length of this throw but also to the style of its delivery—one spin or two, then the release, then how far the blood splattered.

The winner of the ram-throw stepped up to the mark with a javelin. This weapon was a lance about the height of a man and perhaps a thumb’s width in thickness. It had a sharp point, also a leather throwing thong attached halfway down the shaft. The contestant hooked two fingers in thong’s loop, ran forward with the javelin drawn back, and launched it. It hissed through the air, spinning, farther than seemed possible, toward the distant target of a melon on a pole. The crowd held its breath. The lance missed.

“Ahhh . . . ” said the onlookers, disappointed.

Nine more competitors tried, some falling short, others overshooting. The tenth split the melon.

This athlete went on to the broad jump, where he landed off-balance and fell over backward. Someone else won.

“Aren’t you Kennies going to compete in anything?” demanded a young Transwealdian noble, draping himself over the shoulders of Jame and Garr, who had come up during the latter competition. “Come on. Be good sports.”

He appeared to be very drunk. Jame wondered about that, having last seen him whispering into the duke’s ear and laughing at whatever answer he got. The glance he had shot at the Kencyr visitors had been distinctly mocking.

“What comes next?” she asked Garr.

“A foot race through the city from gate to gate.”

“Shall we?”

Garr shrugged. “We might as well stretch our legs.”

A team was hastily assembled of those Kencyr who were closest, including Jame and Damson, ten in all, half of them women. It wasn’t clear to Jame if this was a group sport or rather an individual contest. What had she gotten her people into? A dozen of their opponents waited for them at the southern gate next to the camp grounds and jeered at them as they came up.

“Come to see the fun?” one called; and another: “We’ve been waiting for you!”

The wooden gate ground open onto a jagged maze of streets. The Transwealdians poured in and took off at a sprint. The Kencyr followed, running in cadence as they were trained to do. It quickly became obvious that their opponents had the advantage stemming from knowledge of a tortuous street plan. Wooden planks boomed under foot. Painted walls rushed past. Where were they going? Generally north, but dead ends threatened to delay them.

“This is ridiculous,” Jame said to Damson.

Here was a gutter reaching from street to roof. Jame grabbed it and climbed. The wooden walls were slick with moisture, the pipe scaly with rust, but she made it up and over the eaves onto an expanse of slimy shingles. Wealdhold’s roof-scape was trickier than Tai-tastigon’s if only because it was more slippery. Otherwise, Jame felt almost at home. She paced the runners below her, scrambling up inclines to see ahead, noting where the way twisted and turned.

“The next street to the right!” she called down to Damson. “Then past two and left.”

The Transwealdians lurked, waiting for them, at the mouth of a blind alley.

“Ambush, right!”

The Kencyr pivoted and charged. Their formation crashed into their opponents, bowling them over.

“Not fair, not fair!” came the plaintive cry from below as the Kencyr turned away.

“Straight on.”

There was the northern gate, standing open. Those who waited to greet the victors looked startled.

Oh well, thought Jame, clambering down to the street to rejoin her troop. At least the Kencyr had at last made an impression.

III

The third day, as Garr had said, was devoted to combat sports, and here the Kencyrath was expected to shine. Or not.

On the way to the contest field that morning, Jame stopped to watch the Transwealdians practice. They were big men, for the most part, and formidably aggressive.

Nearby, two wrestlers grappled with each other, their backs creaking under the strain, their bodies striped with torrents of sweat. Barrel-chested, ox-necked, bulging with muscles, each strained against the other as if striving to uproot the world. One shifted his feet, hoisted his opponent over his shoulder, and slammed him down on the ground.

Boxers jabbed at each other’s head with fists wrapped in leather thongs, some with iron weights bound to the knuckles. Although this sparring was only practice, blood and sweat streaked their faces. One forehead had already been laid bare to the bone. The unlucky participant staggered away, blinded, pursued by his opponent who continued to pound him unmercifully on the back of his head until a judge separated them.

Most violent of all, however, was a third set of competitors who used a mix of the other two disciplines, apparently with no rules whatsoever. They wrestled and punched and gouged and tripped and kicked and bit and, often, tried to strangle each other. Moreover, they didn’t stop until one of them had collapsed in a bloody heap. More than one would not go on to the general contest.

Jame watched this carnage for a while; then, thoughtfully, she went on her way.

The Kencyr had gathered in a tent on the edge of the playing field to prepare for the morning’s contests. Jame heard voices as she approached, but all fell silent as she entered. Most looked at her, except for a few who deliberately didn’t. She cleared her throat to break the tension.

“I’ve been watching the Transwealdians train,” she said, going to a side-table, pouring herself a cup of watered wine, and sipping it. “It occurs to me that the wrestlers can be countered by earth-moving and water-flowing Senethar. I saw one use a basic earth-shifts move, throwing his opponent. Not very good form, but it worked. With the boxers, fire-leaping strikes and especially wind-blowing evasions. With that last group, a bit of everything. I don’t say that it will be easy.”

“You’re right,” said Garr, finally speaking. “Just the same, it’s probably a good thing that you won’t be competing.”

“What?”

“The combat Transwealdians say they won’t be called child-killers.”

“You think that I’m a child?”

“No. You are a randon officer and have proved yourself again and again, if in some unusual ways. We of the collar appreciate that. Our strength lies in diverse talents. There is this too, though: Duke Pugnanos has banned you from participating this morning. It seems that he heard about your part in the foot race yesterday and disapproved. He doesn’t think much of women in general, except for the princess.”

“That’s true,” said one of the nine Knorth women, looking sour. “Don’t take it personally, lady. We are banned too. The number will be made up of our male seconds.”

“Couldn’t Pugnanos have said something about this before now?”

“You may have noticed,” said Garr wryly, “that all of the duke’s Brandan are men. We wondered about that, but it seemed like an accident. After all, Lady Brenwyr is our patron too and our war-leader is a woman. We don’t tend to think along such lines.”

“Does Pugnanos also not want me to fight Death’s-head this afternoon?”

“He didn’t say that. My impression is that he wants to see you dead, in the most humiliating way possible.”

“Oh.”

Garr looked apologetic. “Myself, I wouldn’t care to go up against you. Sweet Trinity, you tackled Bear as the Monster in the Maze!”

Yes, thought Jame, walking away, but Bear had stopped when he realized that, like him, she also had claws. He had become her Senethari, her teacher. She honored him, as she did Harn. Her luck with big men—like Bear, like Harn—had mostly been based on a common Shanir link. With others—for example, Bortis and Jurik—that luck had come from them underestimating her. Would the Transwealdians have done the same? Strength to strength, she wasn’t their match. Skill to skill, who knew? Perhaps it was just as well that that had not come to such a test, nor had she really expected it to. Randon she might be, but the Kendar were instinctively protective of the more fragile Highborn. She was sorry, though, to have cost other women their chance to compete.

That left Death’s-head and the duke’s champion, by whom he hoped to see her defeated.

She crossed the field, drawn to the southeast by her link to the rathorn. Here the plain began to roll, with sparse undergrowth in the hollows and a stream running through it. She followed the marshy bank until she came to a pond. There was Death’s-head, pawing at the mire, a thorough mess. She had brought brushes and combs, expecting this, and set to work on his coat. Bit by bit, the white emerged. He snorted as she combed his mane and scratched under the ivory plates of his armor to pry out dried mud. It was too long since she had tended to his needs, not that he recognized them as such.

This task took her longer than she had expected. The morning was passing. Her allies would be proving themselves against their opponents, the Senethar against whatever they called their martial arts, all to demonstrate that the Kencyrath was still masters of the battlefield and worthy of employment.

With the sun nearly overhead, she finished scraping the rathorn’s coat clean and swung onto him bareback.

Part way back to the city, she met Rue riding her post pony, leading a pack-horse laden with arms, armor, and Death-head’s heavy tack.

“Thought you might have forgotten,” said the Kendar, scowling. “Half of your audience has already turned up, although when I left most of them were busy eating lunch. Bloodshed and a hearty appetite seem to go together.”

Jame herself didn’t feel remotely hungry, which was good because her servant hadn’t brought anything to eat. A welcome water bottle would do, as the day was turning hot.

“How did our people do in the contests this morning?” she asked.

“Very well, with only a few injuries on our part. You were right about the Senethar’s advantage over brute strength. The duke is said to be furious.”

They saddled and bridled the rathorn, who pawed the ground but otherwise stood still for this procedure which he had come to welcome as the prelude to battle. His natural armor protected him from the head, down the throat, across the chest, over the barrel and the groin. Rue had brought his crupper, previously Jorin’s perch, to shield his flanks, also a new addition: a segmented crinet to fit over the crest of muscles on his neck. Jame noted, however, that his shoulders were bare. How had she come to overlook that?

Then there was her own armor. When had she last donned that, much less practiced in it on Death’s-head? Too long ago.

I’m a fool, she thought, worse, an ill-prepared one.

Most of it was rhi-sar leather, hardened, shaped like plate armor and just as strong, but much lighter. Master artificer Gaudaric of Kothifir had made it for her out of the hide of a giant white rhi-sar lizard that she had helped to slay in the Southern Wastes. Then there was the vest of rathorn ivory scales—high at the collar, long enough to protect the upper thighs, divided for riding, worth a small province.

Please accept this,” Gaudaric had written, “as a gift from my family and a grateful city.

Lordan of Ivory, Timmon had called her in jest. Or perhaps not.

It clinked softly as she raised it, like wind chimes, and Rue said, as she had before, “It’s beautiful. But this is all defensive. What weapons d’you want? Here’s a sword. Here’s a dagger.”

“When could I ever hang on to any blade throughout an entire battle? What do they say?

“Swords are flying, better duck.

“Lady Jameth’s run amuck.

“Besides, the Commandant told me that Death’s-head was my primary weapon.”

“At least take the shield.”

This, also, Gaudaric had made out of the braided hides of lesser rhi-sar laced back and forth over a round ironwood frame.

“All right,” said Jame, grudgingly accepting it. Why such hesitation? The whole thing seemed silly although, of course, it wasn’t.

“And don’t forget to wear your helmet.”

She had the last time.

They rode back to the city.

The crowd there had grown. Usually, the combat sports drew the largest audience, but this was a unique event. The duke’s champion sat his black warhorse on the western end of the field. Both shimmered in silver, the horse with scale armor, the rider in chain mail. The latter also carried a long lance, more like a young tree than a spear. Jame hadn’t expected that. Perhaps, after the javelin contest, she should have. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that this really wasn’t her kind of a fight.

Death’s-head, though, clearly enjoyed himself as he circled the field, prancing. The audience stood up on the surrounding grassy embarkment and cheered. Rathorns were rare in the Central Lands except for the Anarchies. Most people here had only heard about them in stories, and many had taken them for myths. The rider in chain mail pivoted his mount to face them as they passed until once again they confronted each other down the east-west axis of the field.

Boom, went a drum. Rattles hissed under its echo in anticipation. Boom.

Duke Pugnanos rode onto the field on a tall dun draped in green and gold barding. He stopped between the two contestants, and a trumpet sounded its clarion note:

Hear, oh hear.

“Good people,” he shouted. Was it his fault that he sounded so shrill after the horn’s sweet call? His horse curvetted at the noise, rocking him in the saddle. “I give you the champions of Transweald and of the Kencyrath. Let their combat decide the fate of our common enemy, the Weald!”

What? thought Jame, aghast.

Was the other rider Brandan? If so, why hadn’t Garr told her? If not, who was he? She had believed that this was a novelty match, of interest but not of much importance. How had such a responsibility suddenly fallen on her shoulders?

The challenger’s black horse rocked back on his hocks, then launched himself into a charge. He was huge. The ground shook. Down came the point of the lance.

The duke scrambled out of his way.

All right, thought Jame, setting her heels to Death’s-head’s sides, and the rathorn plunged forward. This was all happening too fast. Think. Think. The distance between them closed, with a rush at the end and the lance head aimed directly at the rhi-sar tusks that guarded her face. Almost as an after-thought, she jerked up her shield to meet it and legged the rathorn aside. The steel point on the lance glanced off the rhi-sar leather with a snarling rasp. The impact drove her back against the saddle’s high cantle and ripped the shield out of her grasp. Everything to her left roared—the black stallion’s breath, his jaw jammed agape by a cruel bit, the silver of armor, the rush of legs, the eyes glimpsed through the rider’s helm slits.

Those eyes. Whoever the warrior was, he was enjoying this. It was personal.

Death’s-head surged on, snorting. As the lance had dipped, it had scored his bare left shoulder. Blood ran down over muscle and ivory, crimson stark over white. His pace, however, was unhindered, and his temper roused.

They swerved back to the right. The other rider was having trouble turning to meet them. While his charge had been thunderous, he maneuvered badly as the ponderous lance dragged him off course.

Death’s-head cut in and rammed the war-horse broadside. A twist of his horns raked scale armor and tore mail. It gouged both, drawing blood, but only ripped off a few plates, a few links. More compromised was the girth, which the nasal horn had snagged in passing.

Jame pulled back so that she rode neck to the other’s crupper, still at a gallop. Her opponent tried to turn his head to see where she was, but his helmet permitted little sideways movement. Now that they were pacing each other, she heard more: a great clatter as if of a careening cook wagon. Sword, hammer, mace, axe—the black’s rider was festooned with more side arms than she had ever seen before attached to one horse. Reaching out, she detached the mace from a hook on his saddle and let it fall, unheeded.

The crowd roared its approval.

They were turning again, he trying to cut across her path. She reined back and fell farther behind. The warhorse’s scale skirts flared against his flanks, under a flying tail. The rathorn leveled his lesser horn. The horse squealed and bolted.

“Naughty,” Jame told the rathorn. She could sense if not smell her mount’s scent. His kind had been known to drive enemies mad with fear at their mere smell. His opponent, however, was a seasoned beast of battle. It would take more than that and a poke from behind to rattle him.

She surged up again on the horse’s left and plucked off first an axe, then a hammer. Did the rider notice? The lance still swung in search of a target, the black horse roaring with effort and, perhaps, with frustration. Its rider flailed with spurs, at the same time sawing on the bit to regain control.

Jame swerved away. If she and the rathorn were becoming partners, not just weapon and wielder, that would indeed be something.

The war-horse plunged to a halt, nearly throwing his rider.

Jame swung around to face him. He huffed and blew and pawed the torn earth. His rider’s lance dipped, then rose again.

“Ha!”

He charged.

So did Jame. The rathorn battle-cry rose, tearing in her throat and in that of her mount. On came the lance, aimed this time at the rathorn’s eyes behind their ivory mask, but it shivered and swerved as the horse shied at that terrible sound. Death’s-head’s horns caught the weapon’s pole between them. With their leverage and a twist of his powerful neck, he snapped off the lance head and shattered its shaft.

The black skidded to a halt, throwing his rider forward on his neck. The frayed girth snapped. The saddle slid sideways and the rider toppled slowly with it. On impact with the ground, his sword slipped out of its sheath. He scrambled after it, but Jame dismounted and grabbed it first.

“Better duck,” she said, breathing hard. “Lady Jameth’s run amuck.”

How odd to feel the blade’s hilt in her hands, as if for the first time. At last. Rue would be pleased.

The other rider tore off his helmet and dropped it, revealing a sweat-streaked, familiar face.

“You little bitch,” panted Jurik, glaring up at her.

His breath came harder and harder as laughter from the crowd brought home to him the full scope of his humiliation. His eyes bulged, the whites turning red. He was about to flare again.

“You stinking, rotten, little cheat!” he said thickly, and lunged at her.

Jame had been presenting the sword’s point to his throat. Was he about to impale himself on it? Bracing herself, she fought the impulse to draw back.

Then he tripped over his own helmet and fell sprawling at her feet.

The audience roared.

Jurik beat the ground with frustration, his berserker fury spent.

Jame lowered the sword.

“Well,” she said, feeling shaken. “So nice of you to join us.”

IV

Only later did she find out what was going on.

Rue brought her part of the puzzle after talking to one of the duke’s pages, who found the story too good to keep secret and was busy spreading it all over the citadel.

Jurik and his people had arrived the previous night, when everyone else had gone to bed. After that, he and the duke had sat up even later, drinking.

Both belonged to the Princess cult, so they had that in common.

The page himself—made of sterner stuff, he proclaimed—followed Prince Bastolov.

As the night had dragged on, he had longed for bed and become increasingly disgusted at the drunken delay although of course not saying anything about it, which would have been several steps above his station.

The duke and Jurik, he reported, were also united by their hatred of Jame. Somehow, she had gotten under both of their thin skins, beyond sense, beyond reason. A nice enough lady, he had told Rue, with a touch of condescension. Why, she had even met his eyes when speaking to him, and had smiled. A pity about that scar that tweaked her lip. Otherwise, she would almost be handsome.

Oh, and the Deathless had come to the door, but had been turned away. They only wanted to cause trouble between the duke and his Brandan, said the page. His grace had trouble enough as it was.

Anyway, Jurik had been excited by the prospect of riding a prime war-horse in full armor against Jame and that freak beast of hers, neither one of which could possibly be trained for such a match. He had presented himself as an expert horseman and warrior. He, at least, had had no doubt that he could make mincemeat of both opponents. The Dduke seemed to agree. He proposed that Jurik be his champion—in the princess’s name, of course—instead of the noble, Stennen, who had promoted the foot race and considered that he had been made a fool of by Jame’s rooftop stunt. Now that was another person with a grudge against the lordan.

“But,” Jame said, “that would set Jurik up as an opponent to King Mordaunt, whose cause he came here to support.”

Rue reverently folded the rathorn scale armor back into its lambskin pouch.

“I don’t think Jurik considered that,” she said. “He’s used to getting what he wants, and he thinks a lot of himself.”

Jame touched the rhi-sar shield, which had been recovered from the battlefield and would need repairs to its torn grip. How close that lance had come to slicing off her face. “Even if the duke doesn’t believe in Jurik’s prowess, this gives him a ridiculous story to use against his overlord. What is it about Jurik that makes him everyone’s fool?”

“Stupidity,” said Rue.

That night Duke Pugnanos held a banquet in Wealdhold’s great hall. All the champions of the contests were there, each to receive his laurels, to acclaim and much quaffing of wine. The Transwealdians had done well, when not confronted by the Kencyr. Much was made in particular of the horsemen and the charioteers—with good reason. Their performance had been bloody, but magnificent.

Less was said about the combat sports. Jame wished she could have seen them. Some contestants had been reduced to the status of ground meat—teeth smashed, noses squashed, ribs, eye sockets, and jaws broken—but at least none had been killed, which seemed to be a record. Thank Kendar restraint for that. The Kencyr winners received no wreathes. The general idea was that they were professionals, playing for pay, and with that they would have to be content. Luckily, that was all they expected.

If anything, though, this equanimity further inflamed the duke’s sense of grievance, which otherwise seemed to be focused on Jame. He, Jurik, and Stennen exchanged snide remarks and glanced often in her direction. Pugnanos’s features turned redder and redder, the more he drank, and his laugh became a shrill whinny.

The feast neared its end with tansy cakes, almond-cardamom pastries, and sweet wines—quite a difference from the parched fare of only days ago. If the Duke could have excluded the Kencyr altogether, Jame suspected, he would have. As it was, most of them had stopped drinking some time ago.

Not so Pugnanos, who now rose with a brimming goblet in his hand.

“To our contestants and to our honored guests!” he cried to the hall at large, to an answering cheer. “Such feats we have seen, such skill and courage! What a pity that it should end in such shame.”

This last met with an uncertain mutter except from the Kencyr, who put down their cups and listened intently.

“You are all good men,” Pugnanos continued, almost pleading. “Honorable men. What do you know of female duplicity?”

He gestured toward Jame, sloshing red wine over his white cuff. “This woman was forbidden to compete. When have women ever done so in our sacred sports? Did that stop her? No. She brought her mountebank horse to the field. By trickery and deceit, she bested our sworn ally, Prince Jurik. How else could she have won? She defied me. She betrayed you. What judgment shall we pronounce?”

He paused as if waiting for an answer, his arms out-spread. The hall murmured in confusion, each to each, until Garr stood up.

“Your grace,” he said stiffly. “You gave me to understand that you wanted the Knorth lordan to meet your champion. You announced as much to your own people, this afternoon in the field.”

The duke stuttered. “I-I didn’t recognize her in such armor. Why should anyone? And that beast she rode . . . does anyone believe it was really a rathorn? More tricks and deception!”

Some of his court shouted, “Hear, hear! Was what we saw real?”

“What did we see?” others cried, sounding confused. “Who to believe?”

Jame rose, and the hall seemed to subside around her. “Prince Jurik, did you recognize me? Did you recognize my mount? If I say that we both were there, with your knowledge, do you accuse me of lying?”

Everyone looked at Jurik. He in turn regarded his wine glass, then drained it. “I am Mordaunt’s heir,” he said, sounding stifled. “I am the next king of Bashti. What I say is true.”

“What do you say?”

He gulped and glared. “That you are a bitch and a cheat. Unnatural. Treacherous. And that is true, because I say so.”

Jame sagged slightly. “Jurik, you’ve just called me a liar in front of witnesses. Think of your father.”

“Who are you, to suggest that I don’t?”

The Kencyr rose as one and turned away from him. Transwealdian guards stopped them at the door. For a moment, carnage seemed imminent.

“I have further orders for you,” said Pugnanos, leaning on the table, panting. “I declare the last contest void. We won. I won. Tomorrow is the day before the Autumnal Equinox, Wolf’s Day. We will enter the Weald. We will kill every wolver we find there. Yes, all of them! Brandan, no clause protects you from this order. What I say, do. Jurik?”

The prince looked sick but determined. “Yes. You Knorth must also go, and so will my friends. I am in charge of this expedition, in my father’s name. You are sworn to serve him.”

“Sweet Trinity,” said Jame under her breath to Garr as they left the hall. “What now?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “What else? We follow orders.”

V

Before dawn the next morning, Jame borrowed a pot of ointment from the Brandan stable and went in search of Death’s-head.

She found him in the same sunken waterway where he had been the previous day, again slathered with mud. When she brushed the dirty crust away from his shoulder, there was the mark of Jurik’s lance, hot to the touch and pink around the edges, as she had expected it might be. He grumbled, but allowed her to clean the wound and rub the salve into it.

“We keep a watch on this,” she told him. “No work for you today.”

Back in the erstwhile playing field, a host of hunters was gathering. The Knorth and the Brandan were already there, the latter outnumbering the former ten to one. Then again, this was almost their entire Wealdhold garrison, against a token Knorth presence from High Bashti. The Jaran had also turned out—in search, perhaps, of a new song. The Danior contestants barely made a dimple in this mass.

Jame reclaimed the horse that she had ridden here, a sensible bay gelding. “So many people,” she said to Garr, coming up on him as he checked his tack and tightened his mount’s girth.

“Yes. Here comes his grace.”

Duke Pugnanos rode out of the eastern gate. By his side rode Jurik. Their partisans—oh, so many of them—followed.

Trestle tables had been set up and breakfast conveyed to them: wine, plates of spiced eggs, butter bread, braised bacon, and brie cheese with honey among many other dishes. The courtiers of both courts gathered around these offerings, chattering, avid. The outer ranks of the host had no such access. Not expecting it, knowing Pugnanos, they had eaten earlier in barracks. Jame wished that she had.

“What says my master of the hunt?” the duke cried.

A weathered Transwealdian stood forth, looking sour.

“Lord, I have had little time to inspect the ground, much yet to prepare it. You asked for carrion to be deployed, a quartered carcass in each stand of trees, but that only draws wolves. Have you ever hunted wolver before?”

The duke sputtered. “What difference does that make? Both eat the dead. Both are only animals, unless they are demonically possessed.”

“He really doesn’t understand, does he?” said Jame to Garr.

The Brandan shrugged. “Pugnanos is an avid hunter, at least around the forest’s margin. When wolves slink out of the trees to steal sheep (yes, we do have mere wolves) or children wander off, you should hear him rant. He sees himself as the champion of wood-cutters, until the wood strikes back. His ventures into the Deep Weald have been disasters. His grace claims that he believes in only what he sees, but he is also grossly superstitious. To echo his followers last night, what is real and what isn’t? Myself, I think this entire exercise is his attempt to tame the Weald and to turn it into his private hunting preserve—also, by the way, to thumb his nose at his overlord, Mordaunt.”

“How many wolvers does he expect to find?”

“A few dozen at most. They are rarely seen outside the wood.”

“I think he may be in for a surprise.”

The party at the table argued back and forth. Everyone had an opinion: should they single out one wolver to track and if so, which? Should they set lose all of the hounds or establish lines to drive their prey? Should they track one bitch to her lair and so destroy an entire generation of vermin? But nothing had been prepared. Pugnanos, however, clearly felt that this was the hour to strike.

The assembly broke up to the sound of horns. The guides and the hunters with their hounds had already entered the wood. Pugnanos and Jurik followed them, their courts and friends behind, joined by minstrels playing cheerful tunes. After them came the Brandan, then the Knorth, then the servants with their pack-horses. There must have been four hundred in all, Jame thought, settled in more for a picnic than a hunt, and certainly not for a battle.

The wood at first presented a fringe of cut saplings, rotting on the ground.

“When a child disappears into the shadows,” said Garr to Jame, “Neighbors cut down trees, hoping this will force the Weald to give him or her back.”

“Does that work?”

“Sometimes. Usually not. I don’t think these people understand how these things work. For that matter, thanks to Grimly, you probably know more about the wolvers than anyone else here. Even then, Grimly belongs to the Holt, not to the Weald.”

“I wonder,” said Jame.

They crossed meadows of wild flowers which, surely, would have tempted children. Jame could almost see them, laughing, plucking blossoms, running into the fields beyond. Then the company passed into groves of trees—aspen, sumac, birch. The land rolled. The trees grew. Here were the deeper shades of maple, ash, hickory, and oak under a spreading canopy. The ground became littered with pits and mounds, also with fallen, decaying timber. Only game trails wound through the debris, and the horses perforce went single file. The Kencyr were repeatedly forced to stop while those ahead trickled between increasingly massive trunks, with the pack train bunched up behind them. How long was the line of march? Miles by now, Jame thought.

Here and there, a standing dead tree pierced the canopy allowing shafts of sunlight to reach the forest floor through the skeleton of its upper branches. By midday, though, the sky was overcast. All sense of direction disappeared. At first, hunting horns sounded at intervals ahead and behind, but these drew farther and farther away, as if the line was breaking up. How easy it would be to wander off these faint tracks. Which way was forward, which back, or had they started to go in circles?

Bark made faces at them out of the gathering gloom of late afternoon. Shadows moved.

“How quiet it is,” said Damson to Jame.

True, they hadn’t heard a bird or so much as the rustle of a leaf unless stirred by a hoof in the past hour.

Dusk fell. The pack train crowded up on their heels, or at least some of it did. The rest seemed to have either turned back or gotten lost.

“Good luck to them,” said Rue, bringing rations forward to her company.

“Cut no live wood,” Jame ordered, remembering her experiences in the Anarchies. “This forest has known fire. It hasn’t forgotten.”

They ate and tried to sleep. The night hooted from tree to tree, a quivering, eerie sound. Call and response, near and far, call and response. Jame walked the margins of the camp, listening.

“Friend,” she whispered to the encircling darkness. “Friend.”

The dawn of Wolf’s Day came with tendrils of mist creeping along the ground, stretching overhead from branch to branch. The sky, glimpsed through leaves, was opaque.

“Forward or back?” asked Damson.

“Which is which? Anyway, we have our orders. That way.”

She chose at random.

Sometime later, they came across a trail torn through the undergrowth, mired with many hoof-prints. It took them all day to catch up with the main body of the hunt, which seemed to have taken off at a dead run in the middle of the night.

So, at last, they came to the clearing that was the heart of the wood. Its rim was surrounded by tangled deadfalls with few ways in or out. At its center was an inner circle of charred oaks, most now mere stumps or trunks lying on the ground in decay, under a dome of mist. Withered ferns curled in their hollows. Spongy moss felted the ground. The duke’s host huddled in the midst of all this, horses nose to tail, shivering, riders clustered nearly as close.

Jame sought out Garr. “What happened?”

He gave her his lopsided smile, with a twitch at the corner, and his eyes more than a bit wild.

“I hardly know. The hounds belled the scent and gave chase. The duke and his court followed, likewise Prince Jurik. They all rode break-neck, as if possessed. So, perhaps, they were. When we finally caught up near dusk, it was in a glen slathered with blood. Neither hounds nor wolvers did we see at first, but the trees dripped. We looked up. Dogs and hunters both were splayed there on a scaffold of limbs as white as bone. Their entrails dangling. Off in the woods, the wolves howled, and howled, and howled.”

“They’re quiet now,” said Jame.

“Is that better? Anyway, the duke panicked and fled. Both courts followed him and we Brandan, his guards, followed them.”

Dusk came, the darkening of the equinox.

The duke’s people gathered a mighty bonfire within the circle of oaks. Deadfalls added to it, but also fresh limbs and more than one entire tree, hewed down in a frenzy against the encroaching dark.

“That isn’t wise,” said Jame. In the rush to collect wood, no one listened, even if it was too green to burn. “Take the horses to the outer ring,” she told Damson. “Picket them and stand watch.”

Jurik came up to her with a rictus grin. “We thought that you had run away,” he said.

She smiled back at him, showing her teeth. “On the contrary, you out-ran us. How does command feel now, Prince? Do you wish yourself safely home?”

His expression turned into a snarl. “Bitch. Cheat. You will see.”

She laughed in his face. “Shall I indeed? So will you.”

That, she thought as he stomped away, had not been wise. Never taunt the weak; they tend to snap in unexpected ways, at the worst possible moment.

Night fell, just as the few dry leaves within the bonfire finally ignited. Tongues of flame licked at the kindling. Fern fronds flared and died. As the flickering light grew, it was reflected by hundreds of watching eyes in the darkness of the surrounding wood.

A shaggy boy stepped forth and grinned at them. His teeth were white and sharp.

“Let me go, let me go!” cried a Transwealdian noble to the friends who tried to restrain him. “That’s my son, lost so many years ago!”

He fought free and ran into the shadows, which closed after him. They heard him scream, and then the sound of feeding.

“His own son,” said Pugnanos hoarsely.

“No,” said Jame. “A pup learns to shape-shift with adolescence. Wolvers are born, not made. I can’t answer for their diet.”

Sparks rose from the flames to trace the shape of the long-gone trees—trunk, bough, and branch. Like fireflies, they nested in the phantom folds of bark. Like glowworms, they followed the network of roots under the ground. A spectral grove rose around the huddled hunters. Their horses, panicked by the fire, fled to the outer ring where they circled looking for a way out. The picket line of Kencyr mounts swayed, but Damson and her command went among them with soothing words. In the outer gloom, the wolvers began to croon their invocation:

“Came he to the green Weald.

Wolves greeted him.

One sought him out and loved him.

Pups they had, the first wolvers.

But foes sought to burn him alive.

The heart of the Weald embraced him.

Charred, he lives on.

Never will we forget his pain.”


That was the essence of Grimly’s lay from the campsite at Wealdhold. Here his voice sounded among many others, in human speech, in lupine song.

The bonfire shattered, then rose on a glowing skeleton of trunks and boughs as a figure climbed limb by limb out of the ruins until it stood as tall as the ghostly trees. Embers nested in its hair, in the folds of its charred clothing. Its bones smoldered. The Burnt Man stood swaying above all, looking down in bemusement at the rout at his feet.

The Kencyr drew into defensive formation. Everyone else fled except for Duke Pugnanos, who fell to his knees before this unearthly specter.

Jame stood behind him.

She was terrified. In the past, under the influence of the Dark Judge, this Rathillien elemental had tried repeatedly to kill her. If he touched her now, she would burn. She cleared a dry throat and spoke:

“Lord, we are sorry for this intrusion. His grace, the duke, promises never to do it again. You do, don’t you?” she added aside to the crouching noble.

“I-I believe in what I see,” the duke stammered. “Prince Bastolov, I see you and beg your forgiveness.”

“In return,” she said, aware that she was pushing matters, “will you allow his people to leave the Weald unharmed?”

A gray wolver and a white one had come up behind her. She felt their presence like a wall against which she hoped she could lean.

The Burnt Man inclined his head. He trudged past them, out of the circle, trailing sparks, and tore up a section of deadfall. Horses streamed through it. Men ran after them.

Jame sighed with relief. That, she thought, was the first civil encounter she had ever had with the fire elemental.

“Thank you,” she said to him. “Grimly, you asked for my help. Instead I need it from you. Can you guide these people out of the forest? Most of their horses seem to have bolted.”

The wolver grinned. “Horses are good meat. Yes, we can accommodate them. First, though, see this.”

He led her to the edge of the clearing, into the undergrowth. Yce padded after them, wary, jealous. Here was a burrow and in it four pups, two gray, two white. They tumbled out when they scented their parents, stopped when they saw Jame. She knelt and offered them her finger tips. They sniffed, then licked, then rolled at her feet.

“Oh, Yce. Oh, Grimly. They’re beautiful.”

“Tell Torisen that I have finally found my heart.”

“Yes. Of course. Bring them to the Riverland when they’re old enough to travel. Tori will be so pleased.”

VI

It took three days to escape the forest, picking up stragglers along the way, driven into the body of the march by the wolvers. Some had recaptured their horses. Both riders and mounts were very quiet and thoroughly spooked. Jame suspected that they would never again be quite the same. Others, however, were loud and given to hysteria when darkness fell.

Pugnanos rode among the former, Jurik among the latter.

Half of the prince’s followers and friends had been lost. Those who remained accompanied him warily except for Cervil, who clung to his heels and tried to quiet him. Everything was someone else’s fault, he shouted. How could he be held to blame?

But he must have known that High Bashti would not be pleased nor would its king. After all, not only had he gotten the favorite sons of other houses killed but he had also embarked on this expedition against Mordaunt’s express interests.

“Listen to him,” said Damson on the second night, referring to Jurik’s raging as it echoed over an already unsettled camp. “Can’t he control himself?”

“He never has before,” Jame said, from an adjacent bedroll. She wondered if Jurik was again losing control. He was a berserker, she now believed, but to what extent? He had abandoned his people’s tents on the way to Wealdhold, although not his own. Within it, his shadow stormed back and forth, gesticulating.

“Control is important, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jame, aware that to this strange Kendar she was setting a precept. “Especially to those with power. Like Jurik. Like you. Like me.”

A cry pierced the night. Many rose on an elbow to listen, including Jame and Damson. The shadows within the prince’s tent had converged. One fell.

“I think,” said Jame, “that he may just have killed Cervil.”

“And what do we do about that?”

“What can we? Here? Now? Nothing. Responsibility has limits too, or we would all go mad. But I think, eventually, that someone will have to do something about Jurik, one way or another.”

VII

The next day they emerged from the forest, to a valedictory chorus of wolver howls. The city welcomed them back, but in a subdued mood. A third of those who had ridden forth to such acclaim did not come back, nor had their bodies been retrieved. Who knew: they might still wander lost in the forest, on and on and on. At least Grimly had promised to keep searching, although Yce had sneered at his sentimentality. A word from Jame that Torisen would appreciate such an effort might have had an effect.

Once home, Pugnanos retreated into his citadel. It was said that, there, he brought forward all of the monuments to Prince Bastolov and retired those dedicated to the Princess Amalfia. He and Jurik fought over this, loudly enough to be heard in the barracks below by way of the chimney flues.

Jurik damned the Burnt Man as a demon, seeming at times to confuse him with his own father Mordaunt. Vestula, on the other hand, he proclaimed to be the Princess reborn. How dare Pugnanos turn his back on her?

“Easily,” the duke snapped. “She’s your mother, not mine.”

More shouting followed, until Pugnanos sent for his Brandan guard.

“We should leave,” Jame said to Garr when he returned, looking shaken. “Soon. Is there any question that we won the contest?”

“I wouldn’t say so, if only from the sequel in the forest. Most of the Brandan came back alive, for which I thank you.”

Jame shrugged. “They conducted themselves well. That’s to your credit, not to mine.”

The day after that, on the 40th of Autumn, they left Wealdhold—Knorth, Danior, and Bashtiri. The latter took the lead, as if out of sheer defiance, but all made better progress than on the way there. It didn’t rain, and this line of march put Jurik well ahead of Jame. She wasn’t sorry for that.

Every morning before they set out, Jame went to check on Death’s-head with her pot of ointment. The lance wound healed rapidly, to her relief. Others in the camp also needed tending for cuts, sprains, and a few broken bones. Kindrie would have been useful. Jame wondered what her cousin was doing back in the Riverland. Hopefully he was leading a quieter life than hers had recently been.

Ten days later, without further incident, they reached High Bashti at twilight. Their homecoming, here too, was less warm than their departure had been, but a few people cheered. Jame wondered if Jurik had sent a herald ahead to announce his approach. Certainly, someone should have.

Should that have been me? she wondered, but that hadn’t been her job.

Families, patrician and common, clustered on the curb. They could see who had not returned. A groan rose, and then angry voices. Jurik rode on to the royal palace as if he heard none of this. He had done the king’s bidding, after all, had he not?

The Kencyr turned off at Campus Kencyrath, where Jame went to the commander’s quarter to report on the mission. Here she quickly realized that Jurik had sent Harn no news either this entire time. While she cautiously described what had befallen, he listened, again fiddling with the objects on his desk until he abruptly looked up.

“The prince called you a liar?”

“Yes.”

He grunted. “Bad. He should have known better. What next?”

Jame told him about the invasion of the forest, the wolvers, the Burnt Man, and the rout. She didn’t mention Cervil. In fact, she said less about Jurik than she could or perhaps should have.

Nonetheless, Harn seemed to listen to the silence between her words. “Bad, bad, bad,” he muttered, and shook his shaggy head.

On her way out, Jame paused at the door, turned, and spoke despite herself.

“Commander . . . Jurik is your son, isn’t he?”

“Why should you think so?”

“Well, for one thing he resembles you much more than he does the king. For another, Mordaunt is notorious for only siring bastards. Then too, Jurik is a berserker.”

Harn sighed. “That too. I didn’t know, not until I came back this summer for the first time in thirty years and Queen Vestula told me. She says that I raped her.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know. That entire night was a blur, or rather a nightmare. The Knorth ladies had just been massacred back in the Riverland and Ganth had run mad. All of us bound to him were touched by that, even before the carnage of the White Hills. I was here in High Bashti. The next day I rode north. After the Hills, we were cut off from the Central Lands for three decades. I returned to find . . . him. What do I do now?”

This, thought Jame, was what had caused the chaos in Harn’s letters to her brother, which had led to her being sent here in the first place. Now she had seen and understood, but what could she say?

“This society still considers Jurik a boy,” she said slowly. “I think you do too. But he is half Kencyr and, by our standards, a man. Tell him that, if you choose, but hold him responsible for his actions. Good night.”

VIII

Back in her quarters, Rue had set out a simple supper and Jorin rolled over on her toes, paws kneading the air, delighted at her return.

“That was on your bed,” said Rue, nodding toward a scroll.

Jame picked it up carefully. Although not ancient it was old and fragile, inclined to crack at the edges. She unrolled it, held it against her dark counterpane, and read the words written in mere ink that showed through.

“Well?” said Rue, impatient with her silence. “What does it say?”

Jame let the manuscript curl up again under her hand. “What I expected it would.”

And there it lay, looking so innocent. At last she had proof of what had happened thirty years ago at Gothregor, to have caused so much death and disaster in the Kencyrath, to have so warped its future.

That raised two questions, though: What should she do with it now, and why had the Shadow Assassin Smeak delivered it to her in the first place?


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