“I gather that they first properly met in the Ardeth kitchen, of all places, and that for lack of dinner Timmon was munching on raw vegetables. I can’t make up my mind about that boy. Is he as rotten as his father, or is there hope for him yet? Jame doesn’t seem sure either. He was rather self-conscious around me, but then he said he saw why he’d mistaken me for Jame and it was my turn to retreat, discomfited.”
Marc eyed the other’s stubble, which so far merely looked as if he had given up washing his face. “So that’s why you’ve stopped shaving.”
“That’s it. Oh, but you should have seen the Commandant, spattered with mud up to the eyebrows! Every cadet below must have let loose at him at once. And both his eyes were turning black. I take it that Harn caught him with an elbow the first time and Jame with a foot the second. Still, he didn’t have to break her fall. I wonder if he or anyone else will survive my sister’s sojourn at Tentir.”
“How is Ran Harn?”
“Sleeping a lot. It’s a good thing that the college takes a break after the Winter War so that we could get him home for a while. He must have absorbed a lot of that foul forget-me-not stuff. It’s still giving him waking nightmares.” He paused, remembering what Jame had told him about the burly Kendar sobbing over his dead father.
“Now help me, boy. Take the knife, draw it just so across my wrist. Good. Now sit with me one last time and wait. It’s all right.”
What would it be like, to have loved a father that much? He could barely imagine it, but he ached for his friend’s raw pain. Some injuries only scabbed over, never truly healing.
“I could kill that wretched Graykin,” he said, “but Jame tells me it wasn’t his fault.”
Marc turned over the hourglass on the windowsill and donned his protective hood. “Is it true that she’s leaving at dawn?”
“It’s two days until the Winter Solstice. The Commandant tells me that she’s somehow gotten involved with the Merikit as the Earth Wife’s Favorite, whatever that is.”
The big Kendar paused, then slowly pulled on one glove, frowning.
“You don’t like it,” said Torisen, watching him.
“No, and not just because the Merikit slaughtered my family, apparently over a misunderstanding. They also believe that if they don’t succeed in the winter solstice rites, winter will never end.”
Torisen laughed. “Surely you don’t take that seriously.”
Marc flexed his fingers into the leather, then pulled on the second gauntlet. Trinity, but his hands were big.
“The forces that they worship are real, and dangerous,” he said. “Do I believe in their rituals? On the whole, yes. More than I sometimes believe in ours. After all, this is their world.”
“I suppose so. At least, the Commandant seemed to think it was important that she go north.”
He frowned, thinking of that last conversation with Sheth as they had drunk a stirrup cup together before his departure. The Commandant was usually inscrutable, but with two black eyes he had also looked masked, distant.
“What has Jameth told you?” he had suddenly asked.
“Precious little.” It had been hard to keep the resentment out of his voice. “Only enough to understand Harn’s condition.”
“Hmm. She honors the secrets of Tentir, as is only right. I tell you this, though, Highlord: while the circumstances that led to your uncle’s death were unusual, the challenge that he faced was not. All Knorth Lordan are tested one way or another, to see if they are fit to rule. Jameth won’t—rule, that is, of course—but someone is bound to challenge her before the end of the college year. For that reason, I initially voted to expel her at the last cull.”
“You take this threat that seriously.”
“Greshan died of it.”
Torisen stirred uneasily. Should he pull his sister from the college? Could he at this late date without insulting the randon whose ultimate judgment had been that she should stay? She was slipping out of his power, beyond his protection, into realms denied to him. Even this journey to the Merikit could be the test of which the Commandant spoke, although it was hard to see how.
Marc opened a slot in the annealing furnace, pulled out a pallet, and slid the molten glass onto the mazer. As he rolled it, it opened out and cooled to an opaque white flecked with translucent pink and gold. His sweat dripped on it. More lines emerged. When it had set, he stopped and stared down at it. Torisen looked over his shoulder. It was roughly heart-shaped, and held the ghost image of a child’s face in its flaws.
Torisen looked in vain for the saddlebag. “That’s Willow, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I put her bones into the furnace and mixed her ashes in this batch to represent Kithorn. It was time to let her go.”
While Torisen agreed, Marc’s decision made him uneasy. He had sensed all along that the Kendar clung to his sister’s remains in part as a substitute for Jame. True, she wasn’t at Gothregor most of the time, but her presence in the Kencyrath was growing. If she passed her year at the college, there would be no stuffing her back into the bag.
Not unless you do to her what Greshan did to me, said his father’s voice in his mind, and what I tried to do to you. Whose blood is stronger, boy? Do you dare put it to the test?
Marc raised his head and sniffed. “Do you smell smoke?”
“From these ovens?”
“No. From downstairs.”
They went to look.
Meanwhile, clad in riding leathers, Jame had entered the death banner hall with a torch. Ghostly figures stood around the wall before their tapestries, waiting for her.
“I understand now how blood can bind, even without intent,” she said to the watching faces, some faded almost to oblivion. “I know that many of you are accidentally trapped in the weave of your death, doomed to walk the Gray Land until fiber and mind rot away. Now at last I see how I can offer you freedom—if you want it. Only reach out and take it.”
She walked around the room, offering the torch. Many bowed and accepted it. Flames climbed swiftly, consuming fragile fabric and fading souls. Ash fell, stirred into eddies by the draft under the door.
“Blood binds. Fire loosens. Go in peace.”
Of those aware, a dozen were left. Among them were Kinzi and, of course, Mullen. Jame saluted them.
“We need whatever guidance and protection you can give us. Soon our destiny will come and we are ill prepared for it. At least I know that I am. Still, your blood is mine and mine is yours, whatever you choose. Your names will be remembered forever.”
With that, she doused the torch.
When Torisen and Marc arrived, they found only dancing ashes and a door open to the coming dawn.
Lexicon for Bound in Blood
Addy: Shade’s gilded swamp adder
Adiraina: blind Matriarch of the Ardeth, beloved of Kinzi; a Shanir who can determine bloodlines by touch
Adric: Lord Ardeth of Omiroth, Torisen’s former mentor
Aerulan: female cousin to Torisen, beloved of Brenwyr, slain in the Massacre of the Knorth women
Anar: a scrollsman who taught Torisen and Jame in the Haunted Lands keep when they were children
Anarchies: a forest on the western slopes of the Ebonbane mountain range, where the Builders disturbed Rathillien’s native powers and were destroyed by them
Anise: one of Jame’s ten-command
arax: a gold coin from Kothifir
Ardet: a Merikit
Argentieclass="underline" That-Which-Preserves, second face of the Three-Faced God
Aron: an Ardeth sargent at Tentir
Arrin-ken: huge, immortal, catlike creatures; third of the three people who make up the Kencyrath along with the Highborn and the Kendar; judges