VII: Mór’s Tower

Dawn came for Rothesay with fingers of creeping horror. She woke abruptly, staring up into dimness with a nightmare sense of lurking danger, and groped for memory: there was some reason why she should fear—

Something cold and sharp pricked her throat almost painfully, just beside her windpipe, as a black shadow whispered menacingly, “Ghost.”

Rothesay screamed.

So did Lacie, shooting bolt upright in bed.

The shadow chuckled. “Sorry, Lacie,” Rory apologized. “Guess nights’ll be a little more exciting for you, too, now!”

With a disgusted groan, Lacie flung herself back into her coverlets and buried herself. Rothesay, heart still racing, glared up at her vanquisher. She did not dare move, for his blade had not. “Well? Now what?” she demanded, softly for Lacie’s benefit.

“Well, if you think you can get out of this, try. If not, you say, ‘yield.’”

She was silent for a moment, certain that Arngas would never have been taken this way, but no ideas came. “Yield,” she mumbled at last, despising the taste of the word. Rory withdrew his blade. She still did not move, except to pull her blankets close: having no nightclothes, she might as well have been bound hand and foot. Remembering that she was supposed to pay some sort of forfeit, she sighed. “So, what do you want me to do?”

In the starlight, Rory’s eyes were huge. “Oh, my aching possibilities! Damn that man!” he breathed. He looked away, whistling softly in obvious resignation, and rubbed his chin pensively. A whisper like a breeze over dry grasses sounded loud in the stillness, and he looked at his hand as the source of the noise. “Can you give a shave?”

“No,” she snapped.

Rory grinned. “You willing to learn?”

It was certainly better than whatever possibility had him aching. She wondered who ‘that man’ was – Dav, probably – and what he had to do with Rory’s ghost options. “Right now?”

He shrugged. “Before lunch. Go on back to sleep, Sugar,” he said generously. He gathered up a coil of rope and moved silently toward a window, then paused and looked back. “What’ll you give me for the chance to sleep in?”

“Huh?”

“I ghosted away a week’s worth of chores, getting in here first. Even got the Hawkman! What’ll you give me to keep away the seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths?”

“What do you want?”

“Aren’t you easy! Can you sew?”

“No.” Needles were much too dear; she had never held one, only a notched fishbone with which to darn her coarse-woven ‘dishclouts,’ and that without grace.

“Braid?”

“Well, of course—”

“Make me a headband. See you, Sugar.” And he was gone out the window like smoke. Rothesay dived back into her pillow for what was to be the last time for years to come.

So began life at Colderwild, a life much like a running game of ‘fox and goose,’ except that there was no time out; no safe base; and who was fox and who was goose depended on who won or lost any encounter. The only rule seemed to be that, in the presence of anyone not of the Order, the assault must be so subtle or concealed as to be perceptible only to the involved parties: detection voided the ghost-contract between the combatants, and both victim and victor became ‘ghost’ to their betrayer. Days, therefore, when folk from Dorchastir and Kavinsrae trafficked in and out, passed in some peace— deceptive peace, for nerves strained more tightly, senses stretched closer to their limits, than during the wild abandon of night. Visitors, their own neck hairs prickling in the tension of their hosts, stayed no longer than necessary, and left wondering, carrying whispered tales of the demonic aura of Colderwild.

And visitors there were. Lords, greater and lesser, came from time to time, chiefly, in Dav’s phrase, to bargain with Death. Most of these departed more uneasily than they came; though that fall Rothesay watched as one man, an insignificant princeling from the western marches, left amid his small entourage in nothing less than astonishment, turning often in his saddle to look back at Colderwild’s towers as if to make sure they still stood. Dav had been singularly good-humored that night.

Priests came, and philosophers, but Colderwild’s favorites were the poets. They were usually the most interesting, with songs and tales and news from all over Peria and beyond. And they were often the boldest, staying sometimes for weeks at a time. Elraic Marre, the First Poet of Sferan Peria, seemed to be more than half a Runedaur himself, and was in fact one of that select number the Order styled her Friends.

Rothesay saw little of them; indeed, little of Colderwild. She was in training.

Formal training, she discovered, far from being mandatory, was—as a rule—not even provided: it had to be stalked, taken, won. Knights and masters in the pursuit of their own perfection, squaring off with one another or playing at feats of agility and daring, provided constant example of heights of skill that were yet to be attained; if a novice wished to learn how to dance a tautened rope or split one arrow with another, however, he had to seek it out. Sometimes it was as simple as asking. Sometimes he might have to collect a dozen or so fellows, to make it worth the desired instructor’s time. Sometimes the teacher laid down his own demands that must be met first, strange and obscure perhaps but later shown to be teaching devices to the very skill in question, when they were not simply to relieve the knight of an unwanted chore. Study being self-sprung, it was therefore possible to putter about the Order for years without ever attaining knighthood; so long as one could bear being pounded, poisoned, and pounced upon, and stayed at least moderately useful, no one minded. What a soul had to show for itself at the calling of Death was its private affair.

And sometimes, best of all and broadly envied, one became the object of a knight’s own self-training. Leoff took to Rothesay like a child with a magical toy. In her lay the chance to try his blade against a legend—if he could induce the current incarnation not to interfere. In this, Dav took a part, not so much in helpfulness as in refusal to be left out of the challenge, till Rothesay felt, as she complained bitterly to Lacie late one night, like a wine jug.

“A what?”

“A wine jug—I’m just a container for what they’re really interested in!”

Lacie laughed sympathetically. “Well, you could seduce them,” she suggested at length.

Rothesay’s brows beetled. “Don’t you ever think about anything else?”

“Don’t you ever think about it at all?” she marvelled in return.

Not if I can help it, she sighed inwardly, crouching later, sword athwart, waiting for Leoff’s move and trying dutifully to follow his cryptic advice and ‘lose herself in action.’ There at least was one small blessing of living with the Arms-master from his first call at dawn till his final, reluctant dismissal barely shy of midnight: she could not tell if Leoff recognized her even as a living creature, let alone a girl.

The masters’ first tack was to train her in reverse. Taking the art as given, they sought to begin with teaching her the faith, the trust that allowed the artist of the sword to let go and let his powers flow. This succeeded occasionally. What the knights of Colderwild discovered swiftly, the students were weeks in working out: that the more violently Rothesay was startled, the more likely she was to win an encounter; whereas if she was given time to think, and therefore doubt, she would try to win, and hand them the victory.

Slowly Rothesay’s focus expanded from aching lungs to cold flagstone to the murmur of low voices speaking in the sky at her back, and her head throbbed. She recognized the signs. Leoff had knocked the wind out of her—again; never an accident, but retribution for some particular piece of folly. What had it been this time?

“Ignorance,” she heard Leoff muse. “That would seem the choice, brother. The body must know, of course, and that much has been handed us; but it is not enough.”

“She must know,” Dav agreed. “Or live unconscious—er, more so than usual.”

“Back to basics,” Leoff sighed. “To teach her—what she already knows; to have her practice what is already perfected, till she forgets what she does not know she knows.”

Rothesay rolled over to find the Arms-master grinning down at her, a wide grin of deep merriment, as uncharacteristic of him as flowers of midwinter. In his bone-pale face, it made him look like Death incarnate; yet the mirth was real and pure, a delight in life’s prankish humor.

“Come, girl. We begin anew.”

So she began to learn the Seven First Moves, their names, forms and philosophies, and some of their simpler variations, and began to define and understand her body’s strange new inclinations. ‘Oh, I’m trying to ‘parry’!’ Leoff watched in delight as a new power emerged from thick shrouds of stupidity and frequently kicked himself, and Dav as well, for having tried to buck old wisdom in the first place.

For Rothesay, the simple magic of names dispelled a great weight of apprehension. Once reluctant even to move lest she do something she did not understand, now she tried her powers with unforeseen delight; and when Leoff was briefly distracted by others wanting his attention, played at finding the differences between the magical prowess and her own beginner’s attempts.

Leoff, receiving this for explanation upon catching her at it, stared. Suddenly a war whoop broke from him, a startlingly huge cry for so small a man; it echoed back from Colderwild’s walls in ringing exultation. He seized her about the waist in a crushing bear hug, stepped back, and attacked.

Reassuming his air of grave reserve, he spoke as they worked, explaining, almost apologizing for his outburst. One of the fundamental principles of learning was no more than the ability to discriminate between what one actually did and what one desired to do: simply said; yet since it carries the burden of acknowledging that one’s present actions are wrong, very few folk over four years of age, said Leoff, ever dare apply it.

“That’s—a good way—to stay stupid,” Rothesay puffed, with barely breath to spare even for her short end of the conversation.

“So it is. And there are no stupid Runedaur—living,” Leoff agreed solemnly, and bowled her to the ground. “If you will let your feet cross like that, your speed must be as inhuman as your strength. Here, little sister, you may err and err, and err again; risk your skill, and fail freely; blunder, stumble, and fall, for, here, your errors will be corrected. Welcome your mistakes, for they are the trophies of daring; and they are friends—here—who serve you warning that you do not yet have all you need to take the victory. Ignore them and die. Despise them and die.

“Now, I have just seen you at play, as you said, at play with your inexperience and your potential, and that is the second of the principles of learning. Play is the will to risk—” he paused, reconsidering. “Play is the joy of risk, and so, it is the occasion of learning. Fear is the demon, the traitor that will betray you to the object of your fear, the gaoler of the soul. He who fears cannot learn; but he who plays has all the world for a school.”

“What—about—hard work?”

Leoff grounded his sword with a flourish and gracefully folded both hands on it as on a cane. “Where play and work are one, there is a knight of the Runedaur. Now, little sister, play with me!”

Leoff’s sense of play took strange turns. One afternoon, he tumbled her violently into the fountain at the east end of the yard; when she extricated herself at last, she found him leaning against the north wall, head pillowed against his forearm, his sword-hand dangling limply.

“Master?”

He made no reply. She approached warily. A few white-gold strands of his hair floated with a shiver, as though he trembled, though it might have been a breath of breeze. “Master?”

Still he did not answer. She marked his arm’s length, plus sword-reach, and approached that circumference, and saw that he was indeed trembling, shivering all over. Alarmed, she dropped her training sword and stepped up to seize his shoulders. She had just time enough to feel the trembling cease under her fingers before he knocked her to the ground.

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He stood over her, his eyes like fire, his sword twitching above her nose daring her to move. “So,” he breathed softly, “you are Dav’s child, then?”

“What??”

He grinned his skull-like grin. “Come. Watch this.”

Leoff took off running. Light as a cat he darted through the maze of Colderwild, or on the maze, running on walls and roofs like Dav in Floodholding, everywhere from the massive curtain-wall that guarded the keep from the east, to the healing-houses and their pleasant gardens that looked straight down the unwalled western precipice. Serving-folk from the villages ignored him like so much weather; a few knights challenged him and were cut down without his troubling to claim Ghost. Rothesay finally thought he was looking for something, when he stopped on the roof of a wing of the rambling library, and beckoned her to approach silently.

Below, the alley next to the King’s Hall was a well of white light in the afternoon. Dav stalked briskly through it, unillumined shadow, every line of his countenance clear warning even to her not to interfere with him. Leoff stole her sword from her inattentive grasp and leaped down in front of him.

“Not now, Lee!” she heard him snarl. Her sword clattered as he knocked Leoff’s toss irritably away.

Leoff attacked anyway. Dav dodged, rolled, snatched up the sword and kicked at Leoff’s belly as he rolled on to his feet and Leoff leaped, twisting in air like a cat; Rothesay thought the kick had not found its mark.

Training swords clattered together, swirled and slithered apart and slashed suddenly, each finding only air. The masters circled. Dav’s left hand glittered suddenly with his dagger; Leoff switched sword-hands and whipped off his black sash. He struck with the sword at Dav’s body and with a loop of the sash at his dagger. The little blade ripped the cloth but let it slide to entrap Dav’s wrist; Dav dropped the dagger to seize the cloth and yank Leoff’s hand; the Arms-master somersaulted under Dav’s sword-arm, abandoning the sash with one last tug to trouble Dav’s balance. By chance or design, his sword was up to block Dav’s swing.

He hesitated a moment, his back to his opponent: something seemed to have caught his eye where the cobbles met the wall. Even Rothesay would have ignored this, except to use the hesitation against him, and he turned only just in time to trip Dav’s attack. He forced Dav back and down, then used his advantage to glance again at the corner. Dav came flying back up, Leoff thoughtlessly raised a parry with his empty hand and only at the last instant brought up his sword, Dav glanced at the corner that was so distracting to his foe and Leoff clubbed the back of his head hard enough to knock him into the wall. Dav slowly folded to the ground, closing his hands delicately about his skull.

Leoff grounded the tip of his sword, piled his graceful hands on the pommel and glanced up to beckon Rothesay down. She slid from the roof to the garden-wall and leaped to the alley well out of Leoff’s reach. Dav rolled over, wiping blood from his brow.

“Curiosity is the master of the Master of Runedaur,” said Leoff, grinning, and offered Dav a hand back to his feet.

“Whoreson blackguard,” Dav grumbled.

She played; but she woke one dark pre-dawn in no mood to play with anyone at all. More than a fortnight had passed since she had ridden in under Colderwild’s dark arches at Dav’s heels, and she felt she had learned little more of the place than the path from her bed to the training lists. Her body ached from unaccustomed exertion and a skinful of bruises—not all of them gifts of Leoff, she admitted, glancing over her carefully contrived deadfalls at windows and door with grumpy satisfaction. The booby-traps had so far brought her four nights’ almost-unbroken sleep, since she first set them up last week, not to prevent but only to give loud notice of midnight assaults; she had been careful to devise a different arrangement each night, and Lacie knew better than to disturb them. And she never slept in the same bed twice. Once she had even slept under Lacie’s.

Lacie was not exempt from the game of Ghost, but only from assaults in her sleep: those training to magic often chose this, as they could ill afford the exhaustion. They were required to understand that the wide wild world would not be so considerate, and their martial skills would thereby be lessened; Lacie explained her choice by saying that she would sleep, and fear be damned: she would not ransom her sleep now against fear of any foe yet-to-be, for was not that simply giving that unknown enemy power over her today, or tonight? Rothesay did not altogther understand, nor know why Dav approved.

This morning, she did not want to know, wanted no part of any of it, and Leoff least of all. In sudden anger, she slipped (already dressed; she had slept clothed since that first hazardous dawn) out into the silent halls. Down to the kitchen she crept, alert all the way for any stray play-foe.

Sothia was already awake, if she ever slept at all. She was Nessian’s coequal, Mistress of the Open Hand; her domain was the kitchen and the presses. A huge ring of keys jingled at her belt, failsafes to rescue novice lockpickers: Colderwild locked things up purely as challenge and entertainment, and locks changed as often as someone brought home a new sort to try. As for the valuables they warded: Rothesay finally learned who owned Dav’s white silk shirt. The Order did not recognize the principle of ownership. Whatever was within its holy power, belonged to all members equally, from master to novice; whether golden goblets and jewels in the treasury, sword or mail in the armory, or Sothia’s spices, Dav’s shirt, Caltern’s necklaces, or Rothesay’s sword, the Order acknowledged nothing more than association, and anyone possessing both interest and skill to take something, might do so, being obliged only to give the thing proper care. And anyone wanting it back might do likewise. Such contests had sometimes blossomed into epics, engulfing all Colderwild and even some of the other houses in vast mock wars, the original prizes forgotten. Shoes alone could be considered property, since they wore to the unique shape of one set of feet, and even they might be borrowed. It was a long time before Rothesay appreciated the nature of the wealth implied in this custom: only those who fear that they will have nothing need to cling to possession. And the Runedaur mocked the need to own as a sign of impoverishment of the soul, and of fear.

So, now, Rothesay knew she did not need to ask Mistress Sothia’s permission to take what she pleased from the buttery for her breakfast, except that she was more in a mood to smash a door than fiddle with a lock. She asked politely.

Sothia looked her over thoughtfully, smiled, and led the way. Rothesay sighed. Perhaps she could spend the day shadowing this gentle, silent woman, a veritable well of tranquility. She was old, older than Nessian; a mist of fine grey hair cascaded unbound to her waist; her skin, burnt nut-brown under the sun of many flaming summers, wrinkled finely all over her face, pulling close against her still-beautiful cheekbones like the skin of an old apple. Her eyes were very dark.

It was a peaceful thought, staying by Sothia, but Rothesay craved company, ordinary company and casual chatter, and she would get no speech from the Mistress. Sothia practiced the “whole silence,” utter abstinence from word or gesture for communication, scorning even the complex Runedaur sign-language, making her will and wishes known solely by force of physical attitude. It was not necessary to learn the art oneself to understand one of the Silent: that was their art, and no one ever misunderstood Sothia. One whole house of the Runedaur, Rose House deep in the great Mathstrede Forest, scorned to speak; knights or students from the other halls often spent months or years in residence there, studying this art of silence.

Still, it was not an art suitable for idle gossip, Rothesay thought. She accepted the Mistress’s proffered apples and cheese, and fled for the top of the Tower of Stars, perversely choosing complete solitude if she could not get conversation.

Here where Kahan had strangled Rory on her first day in the hold, she leaned back against the parapet, ate, and watched the great dome of glittering stars slowly grow pale with Areolin’s rising. Soon Leoff would be knocking at the door of the Silver Novitiates chamber. What he would think when he found her not at home, or what retribution would be hers for fleeing her training, she did not care to guess; but she could not stick one more hour of it. She bit into her last apple and wondered when she would find the courage to come down from her starry haven.

The limb of the sun broached the edge of a crenellation with a line of golden fire, studded with golden stars where the light spilled through the deep-cut grooves that marked the seasons of the stars. Then a black shadow blotted the gold.

“Well, hey, Sugar! What are you doing up here? Master Lee’s looking for you.” The shadow Rory vaulted to the tower-top. He was barefoot, evidently for free-climbing, any sound of his approach masked by the stiff and steady eastern wind.

“And if he’s sent you to fetch me, you’ll have to fight for it!” she snarled, grimacing around her breakfast.

“Hey, no, not me,” he protested.

“Just out for a casual morning’s wall-climbing?”

“No.” Against the dawning glare, she could see his shoulders hunch. “Just out for a morning think.” After a long silence, he shifted to the shelter of the northern wall. The sunlight struck bright coppery sparkles in his hair and moustache, but had no power to lighten his glum expression. “So how’s training?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” she almost shouted, feeling as bruised in soul as in body. “I don’t want to think about it, and I don’t want to go back down to it!”

Rory flashed her a sympathetic grin. “Have they given you the Frustration Lecture yet? about great achievement being born of great frustration? Ever see Master D get frustrated?”

“I haven’t seen anything but Master Leoff’s face, and the ground of the training field,” she grumbled, shoving her hand against her nose for demonstration. “And I’ve got half a hundred Ghost debts to pay off yet—including yours. Especially yours. I’m never going to work my way clear!”

“Nuh-uh. Bad form, making predictions you don’t want to come true—and just leaving them that way, I mean. Now finish it off by saying, ‘Never if I don’t—’ whatever.”

She sighed explosively. “Well, what can I do? Say, excuse me, Master of the greatest warriors in the world, but I have to go pare potatoes because I lost to an undersized pimplefaced adolescent novice?”

“Well, it’s not like you have to jump when a Master says ‘frog.’ Beg off politely and do what you like. You don’t even have to say anything past the ‘excuse me.’ And it’ll free him up for the rest of us to pester. You have to understand masters. They’ll let you believe any fool thing you want to, and they’ll take every advantage of whatever those fool things make you do, till you bury yourself in a grave of your own digging. Then they dig you up, smack the dust off you, and say, ‘Now exactly why did you do that?’” He snorted. “I’ll tell you this, though: you’ve won some respect. Don’t think I could stand two solid weeks with the Wraith!” Then he sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “I mean, ‘not yet!’ ” he amended, biting off his aggravation.

Rothesay, though, was so relieved, she flung her arms around him and hugged him. “Well, hey,” he chuckled, hugging her back, “let me be the one to set you straight anytime, Sugar!”

“I’m sorry I shouted at you, Rory,” she apologized, releasing him.

“Yuh. It’s not worth it, it’s never worth it, losing your temper, you know. All it gets you is vacuity of the brain and lots of practice saying you’re sorry. Oh, gods, look who’s lecturing on temper! What a joke!” He laughed, but bitterly. “That’s my bugbear, you know, my demon. I can quit being angry, though I maybe don’t as often as I should, ’cos it doesn’t feel so good at first. What I want is not to go over the edge in the first place.”

“Is that possible?”

“You ever see the Hawkman blow off?”

She had not, and it seemed unlikely in Kahan; but she wisely refrained from suggesting that Rory ask his arch-rival for advice. It was a cruel irony, she thought, that the one who possessed what Rory needed most, was the one person from whom Rory could accept nothing at all. “Well, I can ‘blow off.’ If you find the secret of staying collected, come tell me about it first!”

Rory stuck out a brawny hand. “First one to get the answer tells the other. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They shook, and then she left him to his morning think as she ran off in search of Leoff, to release herself properly from the prison of his kind interest in her. She took the stairs from the trapdoor, however, feeling far from ready to attempt Rory’s perilous route.

She was to call Rory ‘brother’—even Master Dav might be called brother—and he seemed in truth as fond a brother as Alrulf, whom she missed daily. She marvelled. Runedaur were rumored to be demons, yet she had found nothing demonic at Colderwild, except a fascination for skulls. They were said to be sexual profligates, and that, too, seemed to be libel. Apart from Lacie’s pubescent fascination, Rothesay observed no lasciviousness on anyone’s part, certainly none directed at herself. She had frankly expected to be ravished sometime in her first few nights here, had steeled herself for it as an inevitability from the day she left Padriag. Out on the road or in the wild, her own mistress, she would have flatly served any lecherous rogue his own teeth, and maybe his ballocks as well, rather than let him touch her. Coming here, though: she had imagined herself a kind of servant of the hall, and it was only a matter of time before some lord or lordling made clear how little voice a servant-girl had.

And no one did. That Rory, for example, could sit and simply talk, could give a hug without taking a grope— amazed her, and she wondered where the evil rumors of animal lust and orgiastic rites could possibly have originated. Then she wondered warily, Or is it me?

She found Leoff four Ghost matches later, two of which she initiated herself and all of which she won, and used to reduce her own debt burden. Along the way she remembered at last her unsupported decision on her first day here to think for herself, and realized that for two weeks she had done nothing of the sort.

Leoff made her a gracious little bow and gestured delicately to the racks of wooden training swords. The sweet pungence of the cedar oil with which she had rubbed down the tools of her novitiate twice daily, rose thickly about her from two boys, Cobry and another she could not name, busy at the task themselves. Their rubbing paused at her approach, and they glared up askance, ready to give battle for possession of Leoff’s attention.

“Good morning, Master!” she greeted him with new cheer, folding her hands behind her back to decline his invitation.

“Not playing today, little sister?”

“Begging your pardon, Master Leoff, I’d rather not! There is a great deal else I should like to do now!”

“Indeed? What, specifically?”

‘Specifically’: the simple word was one of a Runedaur’s favorite tools for whetting attentiveness, for many a wild notion, many a bitter grievance, many a fawning compliment had met its death on its keen point. Rothesay’s jaw flapped for a moment, bereft of the true, but uselessly vague reply of, ‘everything!’ Then brightly she parried, “What are my possibilities?”

There came a thaw in midwinter. A wisp of a smile appeared under the Arms-master’s impossibly-pale moustache. “Where can you best find out, and most quickly?”

“Umm—the Lore-master?” And a longstanding desire to investigate Colderwild’s libraries burst into full consciousness.

“Let it give you joy,” said Leoff courteously, bowing.

“I hope you’re not offended, Master?” she said anxiously. One slim eyebrow rose, and she blushed, abashed without knowing why.

“Do you accept anything that is offered you?” Leoff inquired.

“No, sir . . . ?”

“Do you take something offered, turn it into something else, then hold the giver accountable?”

“No, sir.”

“To take offense, intended or not, is to surrender mastery. Think on this.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you very much.”

“As well thank the wind for one more breath to draw.” Then he turned to the boys.