“It’s all an experiment, lad, like everything else I do.”
He had done remarkably well, thought Torisen, given only a handful of clues from a Tai-tastigon glass-master who had made the common mistake of underestimating the big man’s intelligence. Marc had always wanted to be a craftsman, an ambition thwarted by his size and general usefulness as a warrior despite his dislike for bloodshed. Now that late middle age had crept up on him, it seemed only just that he should be free to explore his other talents.
“It looks good,” Torisen said, picking up a palm-sized bit of pale rose glass shot with gold filigree and holding it to the fading light, “if nothing like a map.”
“Yet you can read it, lad.”
“Only because you’ve told me what to look for.”
“Ah.” Marc surveyed the abstract swirl of hues, each determined by the native materials that had gone into its making—carbon and sulfur for amber, nickel for rich purple, copper for deep green and brick red. Fragments of glass from the original, shattered window made up much of each piece but somehow failed to dominate its hue. Most of the glass for the Riverland keeps was also mixed with drops of the Highlord’s own blood, making those portions potential scrying portals, or so Marc believed. The Kendar had convinced Torisen to try, but all the glass had given him so far were bad dreams.
Like the one of the pyres. Where had he been staring then? At Tentir? At Shadow Rock?
“I’ve a strong desire to see how the whole looks against the light,” Marc said. “Ebony as a backing gives a poor feeling for color. Then too, starting at the top wasn’t the brightest idea, even if local materials are the easiest to come by.”
“When you’re ready with a section, we’ll get it into place somehow. As a favor, though, can you start next with Kothifir and as much of the Southern Wastes as you can manage?”
He could have ordered it as the Highlord, but Marc had declined to be bound to him even as Lord Knorth. That still rankled, although it did make conversation easier between them.
Waiting for you, lass.
Where had he heard that? Most likely in one of his accursed dreams, not that he believed any of them.
“I’ve unearthed a report from the randon I sent to guard the priests on their way to Tai-tastigon,” he said, changing the topic. “All arrived safely, but they report that the temple is a mess and the city is in turmoil. It apparently never settled down after the last Thieves’ Guild election. Moreover, some say that the dead are coming back, both divine and human, whatever that means.”
“Ah.” Marc looked thoughtful. “Now, that’s a city full to the rafters with power. Some of it comes from our own temple, but there’s more to it than that. Our god and the native forces of Rathillien have become intertwined. After all, we’ve never been on any world this long before or become more involved with it. As Tai-tastigon goes, so I suspect does Rathillien. Eventually.”
Torisen remembered his brief, nightmarish time there. Ancestors preserve them all if Marc was right. He knew that his sister and the Kendar shared a past in that city, but he hadn’t yet brought himself to ask about it.
Sooner or later you have to.
Then too, the thought of Jame thrust into those dire southern realms continued to haunt him. If only he could scry what she was likely to face . . . !
Weakling, jeered his father’s voice behind the bolted door in his mind. Afraid to look, afraid to ask, and you call yourself Highlord?
Think of something else.
“Have you had time for that other project I requested?” he asked.
“Oh, aye.” Marc picked up a leather sack which he handed to Torisen. “Here they are: the lordans’ tokens for the presentation ceremony.”
Torisen drew out one, a chunky disc of glass with a house emblem embossed on it—by chance, his own. With this, he would acknowledge for all to see that Jame was indeed his chosen heir.
“Have you had any word of the lass?”
“Only that the college hasn’t yet burned up or fallen down.”
Marc chuckled. “Well, yes, she does have an unfortunate effect on architecture, our young lady.”
“She would spit if she heard you call her that, and the Women’s World would have a collective seizure.”
Among the stack of neglected paperwork through which he was laboring was a request from the Ardeth Matriarch Adiraina that he allow the ladies to return to his halls in the spring. How had they ever come to establish their finishing school at Gothregor anyway? Some former highlord must have agreed in a weak moment. Now, when in residence, they and their guards almost outnumbered his garrison. Over the winter, he had enjoyed prowling that part of his fortress normally out of bounds to male visitors. If there was ever a disturbance there again, he wanted to know where, what, and why.
Still, it would be nice to have the Jaran Matriarch Trishien back. She, at least, he could talk to, even if their discussions sometimes left him feeling that more had been said than he had heard.
Jame’s token was still in his hand.
“I keep thinking of her as the wild-haired child whom our father drove out of the Haunted Lands keep where we were both born. We were inseparable before that . . . most of the time.”
He drew a small, wooden figurine out of his pocket—a cat, perhaps an Arrin-ken judging by the power of its head and shoulders, caught in midleap. Like most Kendar work, it had astonishing vitality. However, one of its hind legs had been snapped off.
“Our nurse Winter carved this for us, or rather for one of us, I forget which. We were very young at the time. Of course, we fought over it . . .”
Two young savages wrenching the carving back and forth between them, as if it embodied the love that each of them craved.
Mine, mine!
No, mine!
“. . . and it broke.”
“Yet you kept it.”
“Yes, all this time, tucked away in my gear. I only came across it again the other day.” He looked from the damaged carving to the glass token and back, holding one in each hand as if weighing them against each other, the past versus the future. “And now she is to be confirmed as my lordan. Can we share such power without breaking everything?”
“You’ve grown, lad. So has she.”
“True enough.” He returned the token to Marc and dropped the cat back into his pocket.
Marc drained a scooper of water through heat-chapped lips and shot a sideways look at Torisen. “By the way,” he said, carefully offhanded, “I’ve heard a bit of news from my Ardeth friends. Lord Adric’s grandson Dari wants to be made lordan regent. That would effectively make him Lord Ardeth, wouldn’t it?”
“In all but name, yes.”
“And you can do that?”
“Under certain conditions, if the health of his house demands it. As I confirm lords, so I can unseat them. Damned if I want to, though.”
Everyone knew how much he owed to Adric. If the Ardeth lord hadn’t hidden him in the Southern Host, he would never have survived to claim the Highlord’s seat. The current breach between them made things doubly awkward, but what could Torisen do? The Highlord must not be an Ardeth puppet as the commander of the Southern Host had felt himself to be. Still, he had promised to look after his former mentor’s interests.
“I also hear,” said Marc, emboldened, “that Lord Ardeth is on his way north to attend the High Council meeting.”
“Is he, by Trinity?”
He should have known that, Torisen thought, chagrinned. Ironically, it was because Ardeth had used Torisen’s friends to spy on him in those early days that he had such an aversion to spying on anyone now. As a result, the Knorth possessed the poorest intelligence network in the Kencyrath, and Marc knew it. No wonder the Kendar was trying to impart his information so diplomatically. Torisen glanced at the stained glass map. Somehow, the thought of using it didn’t agitate him the way using human agents did. How valuable it could be, if only it worked properly. Instead, he was reduced to allies casually passing on news.