“Where are they, Purvis’s men?”
“Near, Wisteria. Too near.”
So many things happened in the next instant that I had trouble sorting it all out.
The trees in front of us, the ones not completely charred, started moving, their branches dropping down and writhing like serpents. Between trunks I saw rows of thorny growths spring up. The crickets and tree frogs stopped their songs. But the swarms of gnats and flies, drawn by the bodies of men and horses, persisted.
One man, in Lord Purvis’s colors, appeared between gaps in the branches. He waved his arm to get the attention of his unseen fellows, and he pointed at us.
“Lord Purvis!” he hollered. “Look ye there! Nanoo!”
Another man in chain mail, sword in one hand and shield in the other, stood in a beam of starlight. Others joined the two and saw us, all of them hollering now and charging forward, tabards hanging down in the water and whipping around their legs.
Tillard ran forward to meet the first man, his long legs easily hurtling the growing thorns. He glanced over his shoulder. “Wisteria, Purvis is behind these men. Circle their line if you want him.”
He knew my brother’s location from the thoughts of the advancing men. I spun to the south and ran, knowing my sloshing steps could be heard, but counting on other noises to keep the men occupied.
Swords clashed to the west, wood groaned as limbs moved forward, stretching to grasp the trespassers. I fought to keep my wyse-sense in check, as I couldn’t risk being overwhelmed here with the stench of death and all the wild emotions that I was certain filled the fen.
The chanting continued, as did the ringing of swords and sickles. I didn’t want to look to the north, where I knew Tillard fought. I didn’t want to see what was happening there. I feared it would be nothing good. Serving as a guard and learning sword skills during the course of a few months would not put Tillard at the level of Lord Purvis and his men.
Someone hollered in pain, someone else in victory.
Was either voice Tillard’s?
I ran faster to the south, my steps in time with the pulsing throb against the back of my head. Faster still, then I was flying forward, my foot hooking in a submerged root and throwing me off balance. I slammed into the ground, all of me submerged, my lungs sucking in the water, then spitting it out when I pushed myself to my knees. I coughed until my chest ached, then I took in a great swallow of air and reached forward into the water, fingers fumbling until I found the pommel of Celerad’s sword.
On my feet once more, I pressed against the trunk of an ancient black willow, its branches flailing all around me. Then the branches stretched away from me and reached out toward two men in chain armor. They were advancing, one of them in a Moonson’s tabard. I couldn’t see the features of the men’s faces, and so I could not guess their ages or know their mettle. But without trying I tasted their fear, as the branches coiled around them and raised them far off the ground, hanging them and drawing the life from them.
I sped forward then, avoiding branches that could well snare me, too, then springing into the darkness, where the canopy above had not burned and so kept the stars at bay. I slipped past two more men, then found myself face-to-face with another.
I held the sword in front of me, just as Bastien had taught me so many years ago.
“I offer you your life,” I hissed. “Leave the fen and Lord Purvis, and I will leave you alive.”
He snarled and charged me, and I felt a chill pass through my arms, traveling from my fingers that wrapped around the pommel to my shoulder. It was a pleasant sensation, though it precluded a most unpleasant deed. It was the chill I’d felt during my first lesson with Bastien, the sensation that gave me strength.
I brought the sword back, feeling my muscles bunch then relax as the blade came forward, keen edge slicing into the links and going deeper. It made a grating sound, passing into his armor, then rasping against a rib. His sword fell, splashing against the surface of the water, then disappearing beneath it. The man fell to his knees, mouth open in surprise, but uttering not even a moan.
I sidestepped him as he fell forward, then I was running again, going north now, hoping my course would bring me around and behind the rest of the line of men and to Lord Purvis.
Fearing it would indeed bring me to him.
“Rembert.”
I saw him heartbeats later, sword flashing and slashing against the lowest branches of a half-dead elm that was trying to skewer him. I saw, too, that smeared on the trunks of trees near him were patches of a slimy mixture that sparkled like new snow.
“No!” He meant to set more of the woods ablaze. “Rembert!”
He whirled as he slashed at another branch, cleaving it. His helmet was gone, and so all of his face was revealed to me. A ropy scar ran down his right cheek and disappeared into a thin beard. His hair was coppery, the same shade I’d remembered from our childhood, slightly longer than mine and wet with sweat.
“Rembert, stop this!”
He took a step toward me, sword raised, then he paused when some hint of recognition struck him.
“Who?” he mouthed.
“Rembert, please, by all you value, please call a stop to this. Have your men stand down. No more dying. Rembert, please.”
His mouth worked, silent words spilling out, head cocking. Another step forward. “Wisteria? Sister?”
I gave a nod. “Yes,” I added. “I’m your sister, Rem.” I neared him, cautiously. Though I knew who he was, I truly didn’t know the man he’d become. “Please have them stand down.”
All around us the woods creaked with the arcane life the Nanoo had given them. Branches whipped at men out of my eyesight. Faintly, I still heard the clash of sickles and swords. Fainter still, the cry of someone who’d been wounded, perhaps killed.
“Alysen doesn’t have to spill words of your horrid deeds, Rem. And you don’t have to kill her or any of the Nanoo.” My speech to him was a lie, though, as in my heart I knew word had to get out about the murder of my father and the Emperor. And about the Empress’s dark ambitions.
What was my brother’s wyse gift? Could he read my mind like Tillard could?
He stared at me, seeming to look through me. I could tell he wasn’t reading my mind.
“She’s a child, Rem.”
His sword lowered just a little, and he took another step. “Wisteria. By the Green Ones, Wisteria.” He paused and swallowed hard. “I saw you earlier, watching me. You scryed on me. I didn’t know it was you, didn’t recognize you. Hadn’t seen you, sister, since the day I went to the south and they sent you to a village.”
“Nar.” The village you slew, I thought. My home that you shattered.
“Nar.” He dropped his gaze for a brief moment. “The Village Nar.”
My free hand clenched tight, fingernails boring into my palm.
“She saw me, Wisteria? Saw what I did in that village?”
“I wasn’t there, Rem. But I know what you did. She told me.”
“The girl Alysen told you.”
“Yes.”
“She scryed on me. She saw too much.”
“But she doesn’t have to tell what she saw, Rem.” Again I lied.
Rembert’s shoulders sagged. “I can afford no witnesses, sister, no matter that one of those witnesses be a girl living with witches in the swamp.”
A silence slipped between us, and in it I heard the shush made by branches waving against one another, the click of other branches striking at armor, the cries of the wounded.
“You can end this,” I argued. “Have your men stand down.” A heartbeat later, I added, “Or they will die, Rem. The Nanoo were the first people of the world to learn the secret. They have more wyse-power than anyone. A peaceful people, Rem, they will kill your soldiers and Moonsons. You give them no choice.”
He shook his head and I saw the corner of his lip curl up. It was the familiar sneer from the visions.
“I should have brought more men wit
h me, Wisteria. I will bring more men the next time. I command an army, you know. I should have brought them all. This would have been fast work for an army.”
Was there madness in my brother’s eyes and voice? I hoped so. I prayed madness was responsible for his acts of greed and murder and his taking a name that wasn’t truly his.
“Next time, Rem?”
“Yes, sister, I will grant you that on this outing, I underestimated the power of the Nanoo. I will have to call a retreat, and…”
He paused again, and in the interval between his words, I heard the screams of more men and the groan of wood. The fen and the Nanoo were winning, I could taste their victory. Too, I heard a great crack and then someone holler, “The ground opens. Like the maw of a beast, it swallows us!”
“Next time, sister.” He bowed slightly to me, then took a step back, and then another, retreating in the direction from which he came.
“No!” There will be no next time. I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, seeing my House Lady’s foot, her broken fingers, the blood thick on the ground. Nanoo Gafna’s broken fingers. I opened my eyes and saw he’d backed farther away, keeping his gaze on me. “When did you develop your wyse talent, brother?”
He stopped for just a moment and offered me a slight smile. “A year after I’d been sent south. In boredom, I recalled mother’s lessons about the world’s secret.”
“The secret that the wyse exists in each of us.”
“Yes, to varying degrees. The magic of the world is in us and around us, and if we search deep in our souls, we’ll discover what gift the Green Ones bestowed on us.”
“Every woman, man, and child is gifted with the wyse,” I said.
“Few of them know it or believe it, though,” he returned. “Good for us, eh? Good that not everyone knows they have a gift.” He bowed again. “Next time, Wisteria.”
No next time.
The coolness spread from my chest and down my arms, swirling in my fingers that gripped the pommel of my sword. I felt strong and certain of purpose, my head no longer throbbing, and aware of everything around me. It was like the very first lesson Bastien gave me, when I discovered the sword was not so heavy.
I became aware of everything … the soldiers and Moonsons dying, some of the soldiers running north and beyond the grasp of the trees … the rent in the earth that swallowed half of my brother’s forces … the thorny walls springing up either to drive men back or trap them.
Too, I became aware that Tillard still lived, directing the Nanoo and alternately helping those nearest him who’d been injured.
Aware of everything, I saw only my brother. My vision had narrowed to blot out all else.
“No next time!” I raised the sword and rushed him, feet pounding across the fen and sloshing water in all directions.
Aware, I avoided submerged roots and rocks.
Aware, I closed and brought my sword down hard against his. So very hard.
He gasped in surprise and jumped back, brought his sword to the side and swept it in a great arc, meaning to slice through my stomach.
I dropped below his swing and pulled a long knife with my free hand, then sprung up so close I felt his breath on my face.
I drove the knife forward, the blade sliding between a gap in his armor and going in up to the hilt.
His eyes wild, wide, and full of madness, he brought his sword above his head, pommel held in both hands. He howled and brought it down, but I’d moved.
His blade cleaved through empty air, even as my blades rose and flashed in the starlight, the sword cutting through his right arm, and the knife lodging in his neck.
Blood spilled from his lips as he fell back, sword slipping from his dead fingers.
“Rembert. Oh, by the gods, Rembert.” The chill faded slowly and the throbbing at the back of my head returned. “By the Green Ones, I am sorry. So very, very sorry.”
33
The dead were left to the woods, though pieces of armor, swords, and shields were gathered. The Nanoo didn’t want the metal rusting in the fen and posing a hazard to those walking there.
Tillard never told the Nanoo that Rembert was my brother. Neither did I reveal that news, as it would change nothing that had happened and would benefit no one.
Alysen decided to stay with Gafna, though in truth she had no say in the matter. Too young to be on her own, too powerful to be left untaught, she needed a guardian. All of the fen witches would serve that role.
“People must know about the murders, Wisteria. They should know about how the Emperor and your father died. They have to learn about the Empress.” Tillard sat next to me just beyond the fen, at the edge of a pasture where the vanner and his horse grazed.
I agreed, though I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it.
“We’ll travel, you and I, to village after village, then to the great city in the south and to the lands beyond. Wisteria, we’ll tell all the people about the Empress’s doings, the murders.”
“Work together.”
“Yes, sweet Wisteria. My gift … I’ll know who believes us and who among them will help spread the word. I’ll know who needs more convincing and who is beyond convincing. The word will travel far and fast, Wisteria.”
I nodded. “And unrest will spread.”
“Better that than complacency.”
“Perhaps our words will foment a war.”
“If there is a war, we will win, Wisteria.”
I looked at him, at his eyes so full of hope. I tasted his hope, so strong I could get drunk on it. And I tasted other emotions that didn’t scare me any longer. I liked the company of this odd-looking man.
Who will win? I wondered. Who is this “we”?
He gestured across the pasture. In the distance I saw a curl of wood smoke from a fireplace.
“We will win,” he repeated. “All the good people of this land.”
“And in the process the wyse will grow stronger in this world.” I believed the words, and I believed Tillard.
He took my hand in his and we watched the horses graze.
In the back of my mind, I no longer could picture the Village Nar.
The Green Ones favored me this day.
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
A TASTE OF MAGIC
Copyright © 2006 by the estate of Andre Norton and Jean Rabe
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
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