Free Honor's Paradox-ARC by P C Hodgell Page A

strongest potions to enhance his powers. They thought it was going to kill him. But after spinning around like a mad douser until everyone with him was falling-down dizzy and fit to die, he ended up pointing north toward the Riverland.”
    “And now Adric is coming here to find it? Sweet Trinity.”
    The mere suspicion that Pereden had joined the Waster Horde had nearly given his father a fatal heart attack. If Adric did find a bone in the Riverland, now, how in Perimal’s name could Torisen explain it when he didn’t know himself?
    Somebody cleared his throat near the southwest circular stair. Torisen lowered his hand from the collar of his coat where he had instinctively reached for one of his throwing knives.
    Don’t kill the messenger.
    It was, of course, Cousin Holly’s courier, whom he had told to meet him here.
    The Kendar approached looking uneasy, handed Torisen a pouch, and backed away.
    “Highlord, my lord asks that you treat this as urgent, not to go on your to-do pile.”
    Trinity, did everyone know that he was behind in his paperwork? Of course they did.
    He flicked a knife out of his collar and sliced open the lumpy packet. Something black fell out. Yce snapped it out of midair and retreated with her prize, growling. Marc went after her under the table, like a large bumblebee in a small bottle. The table rocked. Glass slid.
    Torisen shook out the rest of the packet’s contents, consisting of a note and a heat-cracked moon opal signet ring in a tarnished silver setting.
    For a moment he stared at the paper. It reeked faintly of burning. Writing on a page . . . This was the message that he had been looking for all along, in the wrong place.
    Dear Tori, he read. I took this at the Cataracts, just in case we ever had to prove that Pereden actually was there. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. Now I don’t know what to do with it, so here it is. Sorry. Love, Holly.
    Marc emerged from under the table with something in his big hand. He held it out to Torisen—a finger shriveled by the pyre, half its flesh seared away.
    “Your family does make a practice of carrying around bones, I’ve noticed. First your sister with your father’s finger and then you with my sister Willow’s remains. So what’s this?”
    Torisen slid the ring over the bone and stared at the resulting combination. The former bore the Ardeth crest.
    “Now my head really hurts.”

CHAPTER V
The High Council

    Winter 90–100
    I

    Now came the harshest days of winter.
    Everyone huddled close to the fires at night under mounds of fur, and still an exposed finger or nose might turn ominously white by morning. Bare bodies threw on clothes in a hopping frenzy. Sheets of ice sealed wash basins. Food arrived at the breakfast table already cold. After the morning rally in the square, cadets hustled back indoors to make their way to classes by the interior hallway. Lessons proceeded as normally as possible if rather fast to generate heat for chilled limbs. Weapons, strategy, history, the Senethar, the dread (and freezing) writing class . . .
    Nonetheless, everyone worked hard, all too aware that with spring would come the final tests that would determine not only if they passed Tentir but where their posting would be the coming year.
    “Oh, let it be the Southern Wastes!” groaned many a miserable cadet. “No more winter, ever!”
    At first, horses plunged about outside in drifts up to their shaggy bellies, muzzles clumped with ice, while cadets floundered out to them dragging sleds full of hay and ice-mantled water.
    Soon, however, they had to be moved inside. The subterranean stable filled to overflowing; the extras were quartered in the great hall under the banners of the major houses. The air thickened with their steaming breath and droppings while the horse-master moved among them checking for strangles or any other deadly, communicable complaint. In passing, he patted the dappled flank of the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi and wondered how her