Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry Read online

  BLOOD AND IVORY:

  A TAPESTRY

  P. C. Hodgell

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Blood and Ivory: A Tapestry: Copyright © 2002 by P. C. Hodgell

  All rights reserved by the publisher. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Hearts of Woven Shadow Copyright © 2002 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Original to this collection.)

  Lost Knots Copyright © 2002 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Original to this collection.)

  Among the Dead Copyright © 2002 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Original to this collection.)

  Child of Darkness Copyright © 1980 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Originally appeared in Berkley Showcase Number II.)

  A Matter of Honor Copyright © 1977 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Originally appeared in Clarion SE)

  Bones Copyright © 1984 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Originally appeared in Elsewhere Volume III.)

  Stranger Blood Copyright © 1985 by P. C. Hodgell,

  (Originally appeared in Imaginary Lands.)

  A Ballad of the White Plague Copyright © 2002 by P. C. Hodgell

  (Originally appeared in The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes)

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  Paper versions are available from

  Meisha Merlin Publishing Inc.

  www.meishamerlin.com

  ISBN: Hardcover 1-892065-72-X

  Soft cover 1-892065-73-8

  Cover art by P. C. Hodgell

  All interior art work done by, and copyrighted by P. C. Hodgell

  First Baen Ebook, April 2007

  Praise for P. C. Hodgell's Dark of the Gods omnibus

  and Seeker's Mask

  God Stalk

  "Out of the Haunted Lands to the city of Tai-tastigon comes Jame, one of the few remaining Kencyr left to carry on their millennium-long battle against Perimal Darkling, an entity of primal evil. Establishing herself in the city, Jame becomes an apprentice in the Thieves' Guild, make friends and enemies, and begins to develop her magical abilities. Hodgell has crafted an excellent and intricate fantasy, with humor and tragedy, and a capable and charming female hero. Highly recommended."—Library Journal, September 15, 1985

  "God Stalk by P.C. Hodgell takes some familiar elements of fantasy—a city of many gods, a Thieves' Guild, a heroine with the strange powers of an ancient race—and blends them into a delightful concoction bubbling with originality. The heroine, Jame, stumbles into the city of Tai-tastigon suffering from amnesia and the strain of headlong flight from her enemies. She finds herself in an apparently uninhabited maze, a chaos of weird supernatural effects. When the inhabitants finally appear, they're a quirky, lively, and (most of them) down-to-earth group who draw Jame into the network of their lives and concerns.

  "With this novel, [Hodgell] makes a promising debut, and its sequels could turn out to be major contributions to the fields."—Locus, September, 1982

  "It's become increasingly hard to do anything new in the high-fantasy field, but there's still a big difference between those who can only reheat the same old stew and those who can take full advantage of all that's been done before to brew up a fresh mix. Hodgell proves with this debut novel to be in the latter group.

  "Jame is a fully fleshed character in a rich fantasy milieu influenced by the likes of C.L. Moore and Elizabeth Lynn. Like their work, this novel and the series it begins should prove popular."—Publishers' Weekly, September 21, 1982

  "Those who regard fantasy as an insignificant branch of the literary tree lack understanding of the many ways in which all people approach that mystic realm we call 'reality.' Reading God Stalk might allow them to confront a few of their own demons. For the rest of us, whether because we are seeking ways of looking at our lives through fiction or because we simply want to explore someone else's vision, Hodgell's book is a dramatic introduction to a new world that both embodies and transcends our own."—The Minnesota Daily, September 28, 1982

  Dark of the Moon

  "In God Stalk, P.C. Hodgell set in motion a convoluted plot involving such standard elements of fantasy as dark lords, thieves' guilds, and homey inns, and she transcended convention through sheer force of imagination. The sequel, Dark of the Moon, takes all these tendencies even further, with more convolutions, more familiar themes, and—again—a redeeming, delightful originality of vision.

  Already she brings a welcome freshness and flair to a field where creativity often seems more the exception than the rule."—Locus, September, 1985

  "P.C. Hodgell is one of the best young fantasy writers we have and yet her work is not all that well known. This is partly due to her low productivity (two novels and a handful of short stories in the last ten years) and partly due to the difficulty and darkness of her work. Where so much of contemporary fantasy seems to consist of little more than a mindless reworking of Tolkien and Howard, Hodgell's affinities lie with the complex plotting of Mervyn Peake, the dark humor of Fritz Leiber, and the gruesomely poetic detail work of Clark Ashton Smith."—Fantasy Magazine, October 1985

  Seeker's Mask

  "You come away from one of Pat's books with your mind and heart humming. The reverberations of what you've read carry through into the world beyond the book's pages and you see things differently. Connections that originated in the novels link with our own lives, offering insights and questions, both of which are important as we make our way through the confusing morass of the world. The insights show us established paths we can take that we might not have seen before. The questions make us look a little harder so that we can forge our own routes."

  "Like many of us, Pat has cast her net into the pool of what went before, but unlike most, she replenishes those waters with more than what she took. You can't ask much more of an artist and for Pat's unwavering commitment to give us so much, she deserves not only our support, but our admiration and respect as well."

  "Pat Hodgell is one of the original voices and great talents of our field and I couldn't be happier to see her work back in print once more, with at least a fourth novel scheduled to appear in the future. If you're new to her work, get comfortable and allow a master storyteller to take you in hand."—Charles de Lint

  HEARTS OF WOVEN SHADOW

  An introduction to "Hearts of Woven Shadow,"

  "Lost Knots," and "Among the Dead"

  Epic fantasies usually begin in medias res, in the middle of things. Consider, for example, how much history comes before we meet Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not just talking about its prequel, The Hobbit. The Silmarillion will give you a better idea. In this eon-long context, the One Ring can be seen as merely a loose end that must be tidied up before it and its master can destroy all of Middle-earth, smashing sundry lives in the process including those of various innocent hobbits.

  This pattern runs through much of modern fantasy. The past is a looming shadow that shapes the present and threatens the future. Characters thus totter between light and dark, between simple, everyday life and cosmic destruction, on a scale that sometimes boggles the mind even of their creator.

  To lower our discourse a notch, I have always been aware that certain events in the past shape my heroine Jame's life and world. Gerridon's fall is perhaps the most dramatic instance—all the more so because, like Sauron, Gerridon is still active behind the scenes some three thousand years later. In fact, he is Ja
me's uncle because his sister-consort, Jamethiel Dream-Weaver, is Jame's mother. How (and why) that happened is central to Jame's story. It also matters, of course, to her twin brother Torisen. They and one other are the innocents in my story, at least so far.

  I knew many of the details before I sat down to write the following three stories, which appear here for the first time anywhere. However, I hadn't thought out all the ramifications. The time-line came as a surprise. So did Ganth Gray Lord, Jame and Tori's father. Is he also an innocent?

  You decide.

  P. C

  Gothregor 2983

  IT WAS THE SIXTH NIGHT of summer, and the moon was dark. High over the Riverland, wisps of cloud blew confusedly this way and that, making the stars flicker. Mountains blotted out the sky to east and west, but the hunched, gathering darkness to the north was far more profound, and ominous.

  Gothregor's forecourt lay in deep shadow. Across it, however, the gallery windows of the Women's Halls flared briefly with wary light and flickered with shadows. No one slept. The fortress waited and watched as it had night after night after night.

  "Dead!" cried a muffled voice. Stone ground on stone as if the very walls shrank from that terrible cry. "Dead, dead, dead!"

  Between the forecourt and the inner ward of Gothregor rose the keep, ancient, fragile heart of House Knorth on Rathillien. Its door opening into darkness. The low-beamed hall within seemed to exhale—haaaaa—its chill breath rank with a hideous stench and the buzz of flies. Inside, footsteps paced the stone floor, their echo instantly smothered. On and on they went, around and around, and a low, hoarse voice went with them, muttering.

  "How l-long?" asked one of the people standing in the doorway. He spoke in a husky whisper, as if the smell had taken him by the throat.

  A large shape moved uneasily behind him. Furtive light from the windows opposite caught the glint of a randon captain's silver collar. "Five days, lord. Ever since we brought the body back from the college at Tentir. He won't let the priests have it."

  "Sweet Trinity. A soul trapped for f-five days in a rotting carcass . . . I don't understand." The Highborn ran distraught fingers through dark hair flecked with gray. He was young, barely eighteen, but life had already raked him with its claws. "What h-happened, Sere? How did my brother die? And why wasn't I told sooner? God's claws, I was only upriver at Wilden on house business! You m-must have passed right by me on the River Road, without a word. If this lady hadn't somehow learned of it . . . "

  "I'd like to know how," muttered the tall Kendar named Sere.

  He shot a hard look at the slender young woman standing back a pace, listening, motionless except for where the fretful wind teased her traveling cloak. Under hood and mask, her expression was unreadable.

  Behind her, her attendant smirked. The lower half of his face seemed briefly to distort, the lip's corner hitching up into the shadow of his cowl, then snapping solemn-straight again.

  Sere blinked, then rubbed tired eyes and turned his back on them both.

  "The Randon College at Tentir has been sealed to prevent spread of the news," he said to the Highborn in a low voice. "The Commandant was to have come with us to explain what happened, but he preferred the White Knife. So have many here."

  Behind him, another burst of flame bloomed above a courtyard hidden within Gothregor's crouching darkness. A gust of wind breathed the stench of pyres into the forecourt, and stray ashes drifted down, silent calamity riding the air.

  "I have seen war, and death, and madness, but this . . . The Highlord's grief is . . . terrible. And contagious." A tremor, frightening in itself, shook his strong voice. "I think it could almost unmake our world. We randon are trained, after a fashion, to protect ourselves; but our children aren't. Lord, do something. After all, you are the Knorth Heir now."

  The young Highborn flinched. "Trinity. I'd forgotten that. What a m-mess, and how like my dear brother to have caused it, even in death." He swallowed, and his thin face sharpened. "All right. Wait here. You too, lady."

  Skirts rustled impatiently. "But . . . "

  He rounded on her with a suppressed violence that sent her gliding backward several steps into the windy forecourt. Her attendant skipped out of the way.

  "I said, wait!"

  It was almost a berserker flare. The big randon tensed.

  The hooded attendant put his hand on the young woman's shoulder and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. Her lips twitched into a brief smile.

  "I had forgotten," she said in a low, pleasant voice, the purr of a cat to a mouse. "You were expelled from Tentir last fall, were you not, dear Ganth, for your . . . er . . . temper, as well as for that other thing which we Randir will never forget."

  "M'lord Grayling left by choice," said the Kendar sharply. "You know very well, lady, that no blood price can be demanded for any . . . um . . . accident at the college. Even a fatal one. We wish he had stayed."

  "To learn s-s-self—" Ganth clenched his fists, fighting the nervous stammer. "Control. There. As you see, I am neither berserker nor god-cursed S-s-shanir. I am not."

  "So you say," murmured the lady, "and so, of course, you are. Or not."

  Ganth Grayling took a deep breath. It was hard to remember how irresistible he had found this girl when they had first met, he a shy boy of thirteen, she a fine young lady at least three years his senior.

  It had been Autumn's Eve, five years ago. His father was in the keep's low hall, chanting the names of the dead to keep their memory alive as he did every year on this night. The only better immortality was to win one's way into a singer's song or a scrollsman's scroll. Ganth's brother Greshan should have been with him, but had gone hunting instead. Time enough later, he had said, to learn who was who in that moldy gallery and Father, laughing, had let him go. There had been no question of his younger brother taking his place. After all, Ganth would never be highlord—or anything else worthwhile, according to Greshan. So he had walked among the white flowers of his grandmother's garden, wanted nowhere, feeling lonely and restless. Then, suddenly, there she was, black and silver in the starlight.

  She shouldn't have been in the Moon Garden at all, of course: Highborn girls were usually confined to the Women's Halls of Gothregor where they were taught to become proper ladies. Then too, she had been trespassing on Knorth ground, avid to see how the Highlord's family lived; and he had been charmed into showing her.

  "Lady Rawneth of the Randir," he said now with brittle courtesy. "I am s-sorry for your loss in this most recent tragedy, if one can be said to lose what one has never actually possessed, but this business concerns only my h-house."

  As he turned back to the dark hall, the Kendar touched his arm. "Lord, be careful. He drove us out with Kin-Slayer, unsheathed."

  The Highborn hesitated. That ill-omened blade had never yet been drawn without shedding blood.

  He wished suddenly, intensely, that the randon would go in with him, and not for fear of any sword. Last fall, it was Sere who had welcomed him to Tentir, to the start of a new life as a randon cadet. He had thought, surrounded by so many other students, it would not matter that Greshan was also at the college, starting his final year. It had mattered. Now he must face his brother again . . . and his father. Alone.

  Ganth stepped over the threshold and began to pull the door shut after him. Its lower edge grated loudly on the uneven floor.

  The footsteps stopped. "Who's there?"

  "I, Highlord." He fumbled for steel and flint on a ledge beside the door. "Your son."

  The answer came in a hoarse howl, raw with pain. "My son is dead!" The hall seemed to rock. Ganth caught the doorpost to steady himself.

  "Your other s-son, lord. Ganth Grayling."

  He found the first wall torch by touch, struck fire, and kindled it, then the next, and the next. Between them, faces moved uneasily in the flaring light. Men and women, young and old, portrait tapestries woven out of threads teased from the clothes in which each had died—all had the distinctive Knorth face
s: high cheekbones, large silver-gray eyes, thin mouths often twisted in pain, or arrogance, or cruelty. Kendar weavers had the right to portray their Highborn masters as they had been in life.

  They had been kind (thank Trinity!) to his mother, Telarien, dead less than a year with the birth of her last child—Tieri, a daughter. She hung in shadow on the far wall, her death still a wound too raw to face.

  These banners, however, were far more ancient, layered, many dating back to the Fall nearly three millennia ago. Unbidden, the ancient lament echoed in his mind:

  Gerridon Highlord, Master of Knorth, a proud man was he. The Three People held he in his hands—Arrin-ken, Highborn, and Kendar. Wealth and power had he and knowledge deeper than the Sea of Stars. But he feared death. "Dread Lord," said Gerridon to the Shadow that Crawls, even to Perimal Darkling, ancient of enemies, "my god regards me not. If I serve thee, wilt thou preserve me, even to the end of time?" Night bowed over him. Words they spoke. Then went my lord Gerridon to his sister and consort, Jamethiel Dream-Weaver, and said, "Dance out the souls of the faithful, that darkness may enter in." And she danced.