Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry Page 15

  Penari paused a moment in his furious thrashing. "Umph?" he said irritably, from the depths of his own clothing.

  "Since the Maze is a three-dimensional map of Tai-tastigon," said Jame slowly, "it might well be considered a model of the city. In that case, to damage the building would be to endanger the entire town. The priest thought that your quarrel with Rugen might put the Maze in jeopardy, and he sent me to find Rugen's skull, just as you did. But I don't think he wanted me to destroy it. I mean, here's the man who built the Maze, who bound himself to it with blood and bone. Couldn't you say that his mind was the Maze? Then this skull would be its physical emblem, its model, if you will. So if I destroy it, what happens to the building . . . and to the city?"

  "What?" snapped Penari, his head finally popping into sight. "Oh! Those damned correspondences again. If we're playing that game, I should think that my head would be worth any number of his. But then, that was the original argument, wasn't it? Who is the Mastermind of the Maze? You claimed you were, didn't you, you old fraud?" he suddenly shouted up at the architect. "You were so cocksure that you didn't need any help to get out of here.

  "Why do you want the plans, then? I say to you."

  "Oh, I have a special use for them, but it isn't to find my way. Never think that. This building is my end-work. I know every turn in it."

  "And, the gods help us both," said Penari, his voice suddenly sinking, "I took you at your word."

  Jame had been staring up unblinkingly at Quezal's devilish face, haloed by the chandelier that hung above them both. The mass of wax and metal moved slightly, groaning. Monster must be shifting. Then the import of what Penari had just said sank in.

  "Do you mean that you didn't intend . . . But what about Quezal? Didn't you realize that something was wrong when he came back?"

  "I thought that Rugen had left the Maze, discovered that the plans were missing, and sent his pet demon back in to steal them. The robber robbed. That would have appealed to the old bastard. So, just to teach him a lesson, I grabbed his gargoyle and popped it into my ivory inlay chest. Then, well, I was a busy man in those days."

  "In other words, you forgot about it."

  The old man nodded miserably. "Months later, I came across Rugen in the Maze. Nastiest shock I've ever had in my life. So I'm sorry, but that doesn't change anything," he said, abruptly rallying. "The plans are still mine—I say!—and you can't have them. Put that in your back teeth and chew on it!"

  You see how it is, said Jame silently to the skull. He didn't mean to kill you, but you still died—-just as Scramp did because I failed him. Penari's pride in the Maze and mine in my reputation made us both . . . careless. But how long do we have to go on paying for that? Only you can tell us, and you'll have to do it now because I can't keep you at bay any longer. Your old apprentice said you were a fair man, so to hell with mercy. Give us justice.

  Then she closed her stinging eyes and waited.

  A long, nerve-wracking silence followed, broken by a deep groan from above.

  Something slammed into Jame. She was sent flying backward head over heels with the skull still in her arms and, a second later, Penari's sharp elbows in her ribs.

  A tremendous crash shook the floor. Dust filled the air, half choking both master and apprentice as they tried to sort themselves out by the far wall. Jame felt a sudden weight on her good shoulder. Startled, she looked up to find Quezal the Gargoyle perched there. What the hell?

  "Here," she said, shoving the skull into Penari's arms.

  With the gargoyle still clinging to her and vhor bones crunching underfoot, she waded into the cloud of dust, batting at it ineffectively. She almost hit Monster. The albino python loomed up in front of her, his head a good two feet above her own. But this time his other four-fifths were on the floor. Quezal's claws tightened painfully as the giant snake made a tentative effort to wrap itself around Jame's neck.

  "If you're that upset," she said crossly, pushing him away, "go cuddle your master. What have you done to the chandelier?"

  It lay before her, a great mass of twisted metal and smashed candles with its broken chain draped over it. Underneath was a rectangular hole in the floor. Penari, blundering up from behind, nearly fell into it before Jame could stop him.

  "Where's Rugen?" the old man demanded. "And what's become of my center stone?"

  "Center stone!" Jame repeated, startled. She peered down into the hole, and at its bottom saw the splintered remains of Rugen's skeleton.

  "When the chandelier fell," she said, thinking out loud, "it must have triggered some counterweight hidden in the floor. The stone tilted, and the bones slid into the grave prepared for them."

  "The grave? Whose grave?"

  "Why, Rugen's, of course. Remember, this was his end-work."

  "He wanted to be buried here, in my Maze?" The old man, began to bristle again. "Why, the nerve of the man! But that's just like him: he always did treat everything as if it belonged to him. No one else was to take any credit at all—oh, no! Arrogant old bastard. Serves him right that even his own gargoyle deserted him in the end."

  Jame had been regarding her master oddly as he stomped back and forth. "Sir, you don't understand. Quezal may have pushed me out of the way, but it was Rugen who saved you."

  "What? Oh, hell." Penari stopped short and seemed visibly to deflate. "Oh, bloody hell. He would turn noble on me at the last minute. Well, two can play at that. He can stay here if he likes and . . . and what's more, he can have the damn plans." He fished about impatiently in one of his voluminous pockets, at last jerking out a familiar packet tied with a dirty string. "It's not as if he were going anywhere with them, is it?" he demanded, glaring up defiantly at Jame. "Just the same, you do the honors: he'll never be able to say that I handed them over."

  Jame unwrapped the packet. It contained not the sheaf of papers she had expected but a fine linen cloth with the plans drawn on it. So that was why Rugen had been so determined to keep possession of this thing: it was his shroud. She jumped down into the grave with it. In one corner of the hole lay a small object wrapped in silk: Rugen's missing finger, almost certainly. Jame placed it with the other bones on the burial cloth, finally adding the skull, handed down by Penari, to the top of the heap.

  "I'm sorry that I mistreated your bones before, and called you Hervy," Jame said to the skull. "Sleep quietly at last, master architect." And she folded the cloth with its intricate drawings over the fleshless face.

  "Well, that's that," said Penari with relief when they had put the center stone back in place. "A sticky business, on the whole, but I think I handled it rather well. Let that be an example of what courage can accomplish. Stay with me, boy: I'll make a man of you yet."

  And with that, the old thief gave Jame a hearty slap on her injured shoulder.

  She stepped hastily out of his reach. Rugen's claws had caused more mess than damage, luckily, but the scratches still stung. In another sense, though, Jame would hardly have cared at that moment if they had cut to the bone. For the first time in three months, the weight of Scramp's death was gone, and she felt almost light-headed with relief.

  But there was still one loose end.

  Penari broke off his panegyric of self-praise as she headed for the door. "Here now!" he called after her in sudden anxiety. "Aren't you going to help me clean up this mess?"

  "Later, sir. Just now, I owe a friend an apology. Maybe Quezal will lend a hand until I get back."

  Between one blink and the next, the gargoyle shifted from her shoulder to Penari's head. He flailed at it, squawking, then went off in a sort of war dance about the room, making loud, semi-articulate declarations that he would not be sat on in his own hall, thank you, and would Quezal please sit somewhere else.

  Jame regarded her whirling dervish of a master, the vhor bones piled high on the floor, and Monster nosing cautiously among them, obviously ready for a precipitous retreat if any of them should move.

  Ah, home, she thought. How nice to have every
thing back to normal

  Then she went out into the Maze and beyond that into the sun-washed streets of Tai-tastigon in search of Patches.

  STRANGER BLOOD

  An introduction to "Stranger Blood"

  This was my second story about Jame. As in "Child of Darkness," I still couldn't get into her mind, so the point of view, again, is that of a boy reacting to her. It's also a story set years later than Seeker's Mask, although you can see where some of the fraternal tensions in that novel are going. Fair warning: Things between Jame and Tori are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

  P. C.

  The Master of Knorth, High Lord of the Kencyrath, a proud man was he. Power he had, and knowledge deeper than the Sea of Stars. But he feared death. A bargain he made with Perimal Darkling, ancient enemy. His people he betrayed to win life unending. A house he built under eaves of darkness, and shadows crawled therein . . .

  Damn. The ink had begun to clot again. Arie poked at it with his quill pen and upset the bottle. Oh, what was the use? It was too cold up here in the northwest turret of the High Keep to write anyway, especially about so dark a subject.

  Arie glanced northward between mountain peaks to where the Barrier loomed up as far as the eye could see like a wall of mist. On the other side lay Perimal Darkling. Nearly thirty millennia ago, the darkness had first breached the greatest barrier of all between the outer void and the series of linked dimensions known as the Chain of Creation. At that time, the enigmatic Three-Faced God had bonded together the three people of the Kencyrath—Highborn, Kendar, and catlike Arrin-ken—to stop the shadows' spread. Then, apparently, the god had left his chosen people on their own. Their contest with Perimal Darkling had become a long, bitter retreat from threshold world to world down the Chain. Arie knew the old songs about every fleeting victory, every final defeat. They made a grim record, but the ones that hurt the most told of the Master's treachery. For the first time, a Kencyr had turned on his own kind and, moreover, caused nearly two-thirds of the Kencyr Host to fall with him. The remnant—Arie's ancestors among them—had fled here to Rathillien, the next threshold world, and raised the Barriers not only against the shadows but against their own fallen kinsmen as well. More than three thousand years had passed since then, but the shame and anger remained, especially at a border outpost like the High Keep. Other Kencyrs snug in the Riverland to the south could perhaps afford to forget, but not those left to guard the Barriers. Here the past still lived. Rangers even claimed that a man could walk right through the mist into the fallen world, into Perimal Darkling. Certainly, poor, warped creatures sometimes made their way out of the shadows to this side. The head of one was nailed to the northern battlement now, surrounded by gorging crows. At least this time it was clearly an animal. Just after Mid-Winter, the last patrol before storm season had brought back something that looked almost human.

  Those same rangers were in the lower ward now, at maneuvers on a field of melting snow. They were mostly hoary veterans and boys Arie's age—the old and the young, all with the grim, pinched faces of those sworn to maintain the millennia-old watch of the High Keep Kencyrath down through the white years, though blood should freeze and hearts crack.

  Arie knew he should have been one of them, riding, turning, fearing . . . fearing . . . the sweat of the colt, the wild force between his knees, rising, rising . . . Kethra was shouting at him . . . up, over, down . . . crushing pain, darkness . . .

  The quill pen snapped in his shaking hand.

  Fit for nothing, said Kethra's voice in his mind. For nothing, for nothing, Arie whispered back.

  In the distance, a guard's horn sounded. The boy started. Was it an attack? Twisted figures crawling down from the north, from Perimal Darkling . . . The horn sound again, closer, from the south.

  Arie heaved himself up and hopped on one foot to the window. Below, Waning Valley plunged down from New Moon Pass, bending southeastward toward the Riverland, home on Rathillien of all the major Kencyr houses. It was nearly two hundred leagues from the High Keep to Gothregor, the High Lord's citadel. Scarcely anyone had come north to this desolate outpost since the downfall of Ganth High Lord nearly forty years ago. Lord Min-drear of the High Keep had stood by Ganth in that last terrible battle among the White Hills and afterward had ridden slowly home, a broken man carrying the ashes of his five sons in a silver box.

  Now horsemen rode into the outer ward from the south behind a gray-cloaked figure on a mare the color of fresh cream. The rangers' shaggy mountain ponies snorted and bowed their heads as the mare passed. She was a Whinno-hir, a Highborn's mount. Arie let his breath out slowly. So. The moment everyone had dreaded since Mid-Winter was at last at hand. From the south came riding the end of everything the High Keep Kendar had fought millennia to preserve.

  Arie leaned his head against cold stone. Below lay the inner courtyard with Kendar, alerted by the horn, hurrying across it to their various posts. A week, a month, a year from now, what would he see if he again looked down from this perch? These familiar faces, or only those of usurping strangers? He willed himself to see, willed it until the blood hummed in his ears and his sight blurred, but nothing came. Of course not, he thought bitterly: His visions chose their own time, and then they never showed him anything real.

  Below, the sun-shadows had moved and a thin, keen wind sprung up. No keep Kendar were in sight now. Instead, just within the gate stood two strangers. One, clearly a Highborn, seemed to smolder against the dark stones in his rich coat of crimson. He was pulling off gold-studded riding gloves. Beside him stood a second visitor, painfully thin, clad in dusty black, whose rank was harder to guess. Both were staring across the courtyard. Following their eyes, Arie saw the stranger in the gray cloak, already half way to the great hall's door.

  Near the door was a ramp leading down into the keep's subterranean chambers. From the depths came a sudden hollow clang and an answering howl. The figure in gray stopped abruptly. Arie caught his breath. It was the mid-hour of the afternoon, he remembered. Every day at this time the war hounds were loosed to hunt their food in a yammering pack through the dark mountain forests. No one in his right mind would stand in their way, but no one had apparently warned the visitors, and the huntsmaster in his subterranean kennel didn't know they were there—or, worse, perhaps he did.

  The gray bitch leader burst into pale sunlight from the mouth of the ramp, the rest of the pack baying behind her. They were all of the Molocar breed, four feet high at the shoulder and strong enough to bring down a charging warhorse. The stranger stood directly in their path. In a moment, he was surrounded. The hounds surged about him, baffled by his stillness, goaded by their hunger. In their midst, he and the gray bitch faced each other as though carved from stone. Now the stranger was moving. Very, very slowly, he peeled off his right glove, and held out his hand. The bitch leaned forward as though to sniff. Then, with a sudden sideways lunge, she snapped her jaws shut on it. Arie thought he heard bones crunch. He saw the shoulders of the figure jerk.

  Too late, Kethra's voice roared across the courtyard. A hound yelped. A moment later the pack was in full flight from the only person who could make them shiver at a word. The Warder of High Keep stood in the hall doorway, her expression nearly as black as the randon scarf knotted around her strong throat. What she saw made her scowl deepen even more.

  The pack had fled, but not the gray bitch. She stood as if frozen, the stranger's hand still gripped in her jaws. Drops of bright blood splashed on the flagstones between them. A cold breath of wind swept through the court, stirring gray cloth, ruffling gray fur. Then the hound released her grip and, with a sigh, sat down at the stranger's feet.

  Kethra stepped back into the hall without a word, leaving the door open behind her. The stranger followed with the hound trotting at his side. At the gate, the crimson-coated Highborn at last angrily shrugged off the hand with which the other had held him back when the pack first erupted into the courtyard. As he and the thin man crossed to the door, Arie
saw that the latter cast no shadow. All disappeared into the hall.

  Arie grabbed his crutch and hopped as rapidly as he could down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the door. Inside, he slipped to the right, into shadows. The hall was thick with them. It was a high vaulted room, built for feasts and laughter. Some forty years ago, it had heard its last war song, raised in honor of its lord and his five bright-faced sons. Now the sons watched the hall blank-eyed from their memorial tapestries, woven of threads taken from the clothing in which each one had died. Similar death banners lined the upper reaches of the hall, pair after pair of the distinctive Min-drear hands held open-palmed in frozen, possibly futile benediction. Lady Shian, Lord Min-drear's consort, was there. Only Min-drear himself and his aging sister Nessa were absent.

  Kethra stood before the fire, her body hard-edged and unyielding against the fitful flames. Old Tarin, steward of the hall, had put the customary flask on the table before her before slipping back into the wall niche that was his post. The bottle was uncorked but still full. The Warder had offered the visitors no welcome cup.