High on the sides of almost every valley, of all but the highest gorges, the loose rocks gathered too thickly, perched too precariously. At first the eye buys into the deception. It has to be natural. To move that much stone would take a thousand lifetimes, and to what end?
Taking a rock for a walk turns out to be a genuine national pastime in the Highlands, so deep grained, so known, that nobody seems to feel the need to say more. For generations the men going up to tend their goats have filled any idle moment with the business of carrying loose stones from one part of the slope to another higher part, slowly building up the same piles that their father and grandfather built upon.
If a Renar man takes the ultimate liberty and decides to graze his goats on another man’s land, chances are that there’ll be a sudden rockslide and the man will have lost his flock. If it weren’t a Renar man then he might lose even more than that.
It’s hard to tease out a thread when you’re running, especially when that thread is a plan and you’re teasing it from a memory box, and you’re running uphill with thousands of soldiers in pursuit. But even our enemies call the Ancraths cunning, and I call us clever. So I pulled a little more and all of a sudden I saw the slopes we were running up with a whole new perspective. Or rather, an older one that I had forgotten.
From the journal of Katherine Ap Scorron
October 25th, Year 98 Interregnum
Ancrath. The Tall Castle. In my rooms again. I’m always in my rooms.
I had that dream again. The one with Jorg. I have the knife as always, twelve inches and thin as a finger. He’s standing there with his arms open and he’s laughing at me. Laughing. I’m standing there in my torn dress with the knife and him laughing, and I thrust it into him, like he thrust … and I stab it into him. And old Hanna watches and she smiles. But her smile isn’t right and when Jorg falls there are bruises on him too. On his neck. Long dark bruises. And I can almost see the fingers and the thumb print.
I’m running this torn satin through my fingers and it’s me that feels torn. My memories fight my dreams. Every single day. And I don’t know who is winning and who is losing. I don’t remember.
November 7th, Year 98 Interregnum
Ancrath. The Tall Castle. Bell-tower – keep-top.
I’ve found a place to be alone, the tallest point on the Tall Castle, just me and the crows and the wind. The tower holds only one bell, huge and made of iron. They never ring it. At least now it’s serving a purpose by sheltering me from the wind.
I find myself wanting to be alone. All the ladies grate on me, even the ones that mean well. There’s no peace in the castle – only the feeling that something is wrong, something I can’t name or touch.
I found initials up here, H.J.A, you can see them out on the far side of the tower where it leans over the outer wall of the keep. I can see no way to reach the spot. It says something about Honorous Jorg Ancrath that even his name is out of reach.
Sageous came to my chamber today. Just to the door. The Prince of Arrow has come again. The Prince and his brother, Orrin and Egan. Sareth said they would come back. She said they would come back to sniff around me again. That’s just how she said it. As if they were dogs and I was a bitch in heat.
I don’t think I am. In heat that is. I can be a bitch. I can be a bitch every day. I made Maery Coddin cry today and I hardly meant to.
Even so, there’s something about Orrin and something else about Egan. Grandmother would say they both burn too bright. Too bright for regular folks, she’d say. But I’ve never counted myself regular. And if they do burn bright – if they do put heat in me – or me in heat – what of it? I fancy I put some heat in them. Or why would they both be back at the Tall Castle a moon after their first visit? I don’t think it’s for the pleasure of King Olidan’s company. I don’t think Orrin’s charm or Egan’s threat had much impact on that scary old man. I don’t think the devil would make Olidan pause. I don’t think he’d bow his head even if God himself sent an angel to his doors.
Sareth says both the Arrows are pointed my way. She has a dirty mouth. She says they’ll both ask for my hand. Even though I’m not Scorron’s first daughter and Father promised alliance and land to Olidan already. She says they’ll both ask for my hand but it’s not my hand they’re interested in, or my dowry. She said more, but her mouth is dirtier than my quill, black with ink though it is. And if they did ask, what would I say? It hardly seems that they can be brothers, one as bright and good as my Sir Galen, the other as dark and tempting as Jorg who killed him.
I dreamed again last night. I woke up speaking the words of that dream and now I can’t even remember the shape of it. I can remember a knife, a long knife. I know I need to use it. I remember Jorg hurt me. I should go back and read my journal, but somehow my hands don’t want to turn the pages back, only forward. I had a dream about that too.
Sageous is at the door again. The princes are waiting.
I don’t like that man’s eyes.
Gorgoth is like no other. There is no mould for the leucrota. Twisted by the Builders’ poisons they fall broken from the womb and follow strange paths as they grow. The ribs that pierce his flesh and reach from each side are black and thick, his hide more red than blood, and the muscle beneath surges as he moves. And though he is shaped for war and for horror, there are few men in Adam’s image whose approval would mean as much to me – and most of them lie dead.
14
Four years earlier
A day after we left the sands of Thar and started to ride through the Thurtan grasslands I took the box from Makin. I felt the sharp edges of the lost memory through the copper walls and sensed the poison held there. Makin once told me that a man who’s got no fear is missing a friend. With the thorn-patterned copper clutched uneasy in my fist I thought perhaps I had found that friend at last. I turned it one way, then the other. It held nothing good – only me. And a man should be a little scared of himself surely? Of what he might do. To know thyself must be terribly dull. I put the box at the bottom of my saddlebag and left it unopened. I didn’t ask after Katherine. I took a new knife from Grumlow and rode toward our business in Heimrift.
We rode north across wide acres where the wind whipped the spring grass into a thrashing sea and green ripples raced one after the other. A land made for horse, for galloping, for chasing between the dark borders of one forest and the next. I let Brath have his head and exhausted both of us as if all hell were at our heels. The Brothers kept pace as best they could, all of us wanting to leave Thar many miles behind. Old fires still burned there, unseen. In a thousand years Mount Honas, the place where I lit a Builders’ Sun, might be like Thar, a Promised Land that would return to man in time but for the now loved us not.
That night as we settled to sleep I saw the baby for the first time, lying dead in the long grass by our camp. I threw off my blanket and walked across to it, watched by Gorgoth, and by Gog who slept beside him now. The spot where the child had lain was empty. I caught a whiff of perfume, white musk maybe. With a shrug I returned to my bed. Some things are best forgotten.
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