The Sea of Time by P C Hodgell Page A

across the inner ward to the Escarpment and south toward the bulk of the camp. As with Greshan’s apartment at Tentir, she understood that these rooms had stood empty during the long years between Knorth heirs. At least her uncle had never tainted it with his presence. Where had Tori lived when he had joined the Host, nameless and unwanted as he had been? A flicker of the past night’s dream showed her tiny, shabby rooms in the office block near Harn, to whom Tori had been assigned as a special aide. She and her brother had talked about many things in those last days before her departure from the Riverland, but somehow little beyond the bare facts about his experiences in the south. Why was he still keeping secrets, if such they were, and what else might his dreams show her that he couldn’t bear to speak about beyond the Caineron hazing?
    Rue brought her a cup of pomegranate juice sweetened with honey. It took some getting used to after Tentir’s inevitably tart cider.
    “What’s our schedule for today?” Jame asked.
    “Not much. This is our day off. You’re going Overcliff, aren’t you?”
    So her absences had been noted. Well, of course they would be. At least she had tried to limit them to times when she was free of cadet duties.
    “I need to check with Graykin,” she said. “Then Gaudaric’s grandson Byrne has promised to show me something called the Eye of Kothifir. And you?”
    Rue shrugged, turning to lay out Jame’s clothes for the day including the black d’hen . Jame wondered if the cadet understood the significance of the latter. So far, only Sheth seemed to have recognized it as the proper garb of a Tastigon knife-fighter.
    “I had hoped to go to the local market in the inner ward,” said Rue. “Now, I don’t know. One of our ten-commands got a note last night.”
    “Damn.” Jame put down the cup, half-drained. “What did it say?”
    “They’ve been ordered out on wide patrol to the foothills of the Apollynes, a full day’s ride there and back. As a test, it isn’t much. We’ve done the same on foot, with full packs. It’s just the waste of a free day.”
    Similar challenges had been arriving for weeks, usually pushed under the door at night. They were never signed, but everyone knew that they came from the third-year randon cadets who had settled on this method to test the mettle of their juniors, either by groups or individually.
    The tasks they assigned varied from house to house depending on its temper. The Caineron used physical trials. Only yesterday, Jame had seen one of Caldane’s ten-commands clinging, terrified, to the outside of the open lift cage as it rose up the sheer side of the Escarpment. Anyone of them might have succumbed to the height-sickness so endemic in that house and fallen to his or her death.
    She also remembered the nightmare about her brother being tortured by the Caineron Genjar. What had happened next? Perhaps a future dream would tell her. Genjar, after all, was said to have suffered a “strange” death.
    The Jaran, on the other hand, tended toward intellectual tests, the Edirr toward jokes such as ten-commands jogging naked through camp, painted blue.
    No word came out of the Randir, but it was generally supposed that they were using this opportunity to test the loyalty of their cadets. Jame wondered if Ran Awl and Shade had made any progress in their investigation into the disappearances there and if any of the reported deaths had had anything to do with the third-years’ challenges. If so, would anyone tell Shade, given her peculiar background, or Awl, with her war-leader’s status?
    For that matter, Jame had heard very little from within her own house. The third-years’ demands must have been moderate so far or surely she would have heard more, unless her people were keeping things from her again. As with certain demanding duties back at Tentir—latrine patrol or trock eradication, for example—it hurt their pride to see their lordan so