The third morning dawned bright, clear, and hot. Blue skies gleamed above the canopy of the trees. Senrid sensed as he topped a gentle hill that his searchers had somehow been sidetracked to the north. “Somehow” because he knew better than to believe it was due to his skills.
When he stumbled over a small rock, he wrenched himself upright, and nearly passed out. Branches whipped his face, but he did not feel them. He knew only thirst, and the terrible ache through his body that meant he’d reached his limit.
Strength of will had kept him going for almost three days, with only brief rests when he hid. At some point,the mind must surrender to the needs of the body, or risk sundering the tie forever.
His faltering steps brought him to a stream. He fumbled his way down the gentle bank and fell to his knees in the cold water. Cupping shaking hands, he tried to drink, realized he didn’t have the strength to hold water, and so he dropped his hands into the stream and buried his face in the cool, clear, wonderful water. He sucked it in, swallowed, lifted his head and slung his hair out of his eyes.
For just a moment he felt great.
Then he stood up. Reaction hit with the force of a boulder dropping on him.
Three steps, four, five. He made it to the top of the grassy bank, tripped over nothing, and fell full length.
Shadows crossed his eyelids.
Some remnant of his drive to survive brought him awake, but when he tried to sit up, the world spun, and he fell back, arms outflung. He hadn’t even the strength to pull the hatpin from his cuff.
His eyes were still open. A pair of disheveled Norsundrians rode up, their anger changing to triumph.
He winced, tried to gather some energy—and a whisper came from close by. “Don’t. She’ll get rid of ‘em.”
Senrid arched his neck, staring upside down at a scrawny little girl. Beyond surprise, he turned his head—slowly—as another kid walked toward the riders.
The kid was small and skinny—probably his height, but thinner. No weapons. She looked more like a boy than a girl, but if the other said ‘she’ was a ‘she’ then so be it.
She stopped half a dozen paces from the Norsundrians, and rocked on her heels. Somewhere birdsong broke the peculiar stillness.
The Norsundrians drew weapons, but this strange girl paid no attention. Her focus was entirely on the horses—who reared and galloped away, their riders cursing in futility as they tried to wrest command over their beasts.
The girl turned away, and approached Senrid. He gained a swift impression of large, serious light-brown eyes in a thin, plain face.
She spoke in Fer Sartoran, with a strong Imaran accent. “They’ll stop only when they reach the great river.”
Senrid stared at her witlessly.
She put her head to one side. “The old fear of Norsunder, eh?”
Shock zapped through Senrid. Antagonism? Maybe she knew who he was. He braced for a lecture on how Marlovens belonged with Norsunder—or merely on his own cowardice for not facing them.
“Your posture’s too good,” the little girl murmured.
“Oh yes. I forgot. Guess I was reveling in my little victory.” The boy-girl sounded contrite!
She flopped down cross-legged, and Senrid’s assumptions took another spin. Was she insane? If only he didn’t have a near-blinding headache!
“Who are you?” the strange one continued.
“Senrid,” he said, awaiting a reaction.
“I’m Liere.” She added in a cold, remote voice, “Don’t hold awe. Anyone with dena Yeresbeth could have sent those poor animals in a panic.”
“Oh. Right. Of course,” Senrid sneered, a reaction more look than voice, as his voice was nearly gone. “I forgot.”
Liere gave him a valedictory smile, got up and moved away. She said over her shoulder, “I have to go somewhere for a time. Listen for any more of them. Be back soon, Devon.”
Devon. That was the shorter girl.
Senrid struggled to sit up, grateful for the canopy of foliage that shaded his face from the sun. Hazily he noted the leaves angled to the south, their undersides silvery-brown. The season was late autumn at least, though the air was warm.
“Here,” Devon said, holding out some bread and cheese.
Senrid took it and started wolfing it down.
“Don’t hate her,” Devon said. “It’s just that she’s really scared of being admired. She’s afraid that she might like it, and become like Siamis, or something. I don’t quite understand it, really, but the more different she acts, the scareder she gets.”
“Who is she?” Senrid leaned on one elbow, letting his annoyance fade away. It took too much energy.
“Liere Fer Eider, from Ther Doleh region in Imar.”
“Some kind of deposed royalty, or—”
“Oh, no! I don’t think she’s ever seen any royalty.”
“She has now,” Senrid remarked in Marloven. So this girl didn’t fit his evolving theories about Detlev and his messing with royal families.
“I understood that.” Devon grinned. “It has to do with her abilities. And this thing she has to do. Soon, I mean. Not right now.”
“Ah,” Senrid said. “What is she doing now? Or does she want to reinforce her image of an everyday kid by stalking off in a shroud of mystery?”
“She’ll explain if I ask her to. Always does, though I don’t always understand. Right now I think she’s listening, with her mind, for more of those Norsunder guys. Has to do with DY.”
“DY,” Senrid repeated.
“Dena Yeresbeth. You’ll have to ask her about that.”
Senrid had just finished his sandwich, and was feeling incrementally better, when Liere returned.
She frowned as she came up to them.
“Senrid, were you with some off-worlders a couple of days ago?”
o0o
“Why me?” Gloriel muttered as she was herded at sword point back to where the main group of Norsundrians waited. “I’m always the first one bagged, and just watch, that one will be Siamis.” She looked up at the eleven she was being pushed toward.
Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, for once. This guy wasn’t even dressed like an eleven, and he didn’t look especially threatening, at least in the starlight.
He reached a hand down. Of course she crossed hers—until a vicious jab in her back nearly pitched her face-first into the side of the man’s horse.
So she sighed and held up her sandy, sweaty hand. The man gripped it and pulled her up easily to the saddle before him. She made a mental note to wash villain cooties from her fingers first chance she could get.
Or was he a villain? Maybe one of the zombie-ized enchanted people that Senrid had told them about? She glanced up over her shoulder doubtfully. No uniform, and though he had a sword thrust into a saddle sheath it wasn’t in his hand and he wasn’t making any sinister speeches. Nor did he look like a zombie.
Gloriel heard Frederic’s plaintive “OW!” and an angry yelp from Peridot, as if to underscore the usual procedures of villainy.
Gloriel looked about, counted Deirdre (looking miserable even in the weak light), Peridot, and Frederic. No Senrid.
“Seems one of your number has ditched you,” the man observed.
“Well, of course,” Gloriel said. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Where were you going?”
“That’s for me to know and you not to find out,” Gloriel said, and then remembering her initial question, she added, “That is, if you are an eleven.”
He seemed to be trying not to laugh. “I heard something about closing the rift. We were behind you that long.”
“Well, then, why are you asking me?” Gloriel retorted.
“Conversational gambit,” the man answered in a pacific tone as he clucked to his horse.
They fell into a line, two by two, and started riding up a trail toward the interior. Gloriel and her rider were first.
“I don’t know any more than that,” Gloriel said, somewhat smug
ly. If this guy was a villain, he sure wasn’t any big threat. She was getting away with a delightful lot of smart-mouthing.
“I’m aware,” the man murmured.
Gloriel, testing further, said, “And I hope Senrid gets away.”
“He won’t,” the man responded tranquilly. “But—since he isn’t here now—I suspect he’s going to give them a worthwhile run.”
Gloriel sighed. “I just don’t see why destroy such a beautiful world. Maybe Norsundrians should go to Earth. They’d love all the crime and pollution and creepy stuff.”
“Who is advocating the destruction of the world?” he countered. “What I want is peace.”
“Peace?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a prisoner? You don’t sound zombie-ized!”
Above her head she heard a soft laugh, so soft it was almost just a breath. “The temptation to mislead you is almost overwhelming. My name is Siamis. And you are . . .”
“Anti-Norsunder,” she said, and then felt something almost like dizziness, like seeing with two sets of eyes, only inward, not outward. Or both at the same time.
“Gloriel Warren,” Siamis continued.
“How did you do that? Yuk!” Gloriel exclaimed. Not only was she stuck on horseback with the head villain of all of them, he was a mind-reader, too!
Then she realized she was overlooking an opportunity, and she tried to remember all Dtheldevor’s choicest anti-Norsunder insults, and think them at him.
But apparently Siamis was done with mind-reading, because he said, “There are some who like war for the sake of war, but few of them are in any position of command for long.”
Gloriel snorted so loud her head buzzed. “So you’re trying to say that the crumbums—” That word sounded really odd in the middle of a Fer Sartoran sentence, and her voice trembled on an inadvertent snicker. “The mushroom-brained crumbums who control Norsunder all like peace and plenty? Wow, that’s a hot one! Unless, of course, you mean plenty for them.”
Siamis said with a quiet laugh, “I only speak for myself. My goal, I assure you, is worldwide peace.”
Where’s the trick? she thought. “What do you mean by peace? Maybe we have different definitions,” she said aloud. “Like some idi—people think that strawberries are a yummy dessert, and I think they are a nasty, cloying mess.”
“I like strawberries very much,” came the smiling voice.
“Figures.”
“But let’s talk about peace, then. . .”
By the time they’d finished discussing peace, history, and Old Sartor, she’d forgotten what her initial objection was. She knew only that it was late, and she was tired, and Siamis wasn’t going to let her fall off the horse, so she slid into dreamless sleep, her head against his arm.
Riding on the next horse behind Siamis, Frederic heard Gloriel stop talking, and he wondered sourly if the creep had poisoned her, stabbed her, or just strangled her. He couldn’t see past Siamis’s back; the white shirt gleamed faintly in the starlight, with one braid looped over the guy’s left arm.
Behind Frederic, Peridot was still breathing hard. She at least wasn’t dead. He’d heard her insulting her Norsunder loudly until she was told to shut up. Twice in fact, and then came the sound of a hefty slap. After that came Peridot’s snorty anger- breathing.
Frederic still ached from his own unsuccessful attempt to escape. He’d slid off the horse when they started up a little hill, but the eleven had wheeled the horse immediately and almost rode him down.
Frederic had hoped that some animal would appear and miraculously help him—like that flock of birds when Senrid got away—but either there weren’t any extra birds, or there were too many Norsundrians, or maybe it was Siamis’s presence that scared the animals off.
He got hauled back up into the saddle, his shoulder wrenched painfully.
“Try that again and I’ll pin you to the saddle with my knife,” the Norsunder said.
“That’s impossible,” Frederic snarled. “Stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“Want to try me?” the Norsunder retorted, and Frederic heard the metallic scrape of a dagger being pulled from a sheath. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the gloating voice laughed. “We can experiment.”
Frederic knew he wasn’t going to win this contest. “Earwax,” he muttered, staring between the horse’s ears into the blackness beyond.
And so it went for what seemed like an eternity, until Siamis finally called for a halt to water the horses.
Somewhere up ahead the kids got switched around—Peridot now riding with Siamis—and then they rode on. Frederic kept nodding off and jerking awake, each time more unpleasantly—and more frequently—than the last, until at last they finally stopped in a clearing lit by a ring of torches. Someone had pitched four tents.
He slid off the horse, and almost fell. Hard fingers yanked him upright, and pushed him into one of the tents. A blanket was pitched at him a moment later.
He wrapped it around himself, wondering what the Norsundrians had done with the the Guardian’s knapsacks. He missed his cloak. Gloriel stumbled into the tent. In the ruddy torchlight streaming in the open tent-flap Frederic saw her yawn.
She shuffled directly to a corner and lay down.
“Gloriel,” he whispered. “We gotta escape!” He spoke in English.
“Go t’sleep,” she muttered in Fer Sartoran.
Peridot appeared a moment later, and after several minutes Deirdre finally came in. All three girls curled up to sleep. Frederic reluctantly settled down as well. He was too tired not to.
He had rotten dreams. When dawn filtered weak light through the walls of the tent, he was the first one awake.
He got up and poked his head outside the tent. Black-and-gray clad warriors were moving about in a businesslike manner, breaking camp. One saw him, and jerked his thumb toward a campfire off to the left.
Frederic hesitated, then decided he had nowhere else to go, so he stepped out.
Sitting around the campfire were two or three Norsundrians along with Siamis, who looked up, smiled, and gestured. “And here is the last of our guests. Good morning, Frederic. Do you like coffee?”
“Disgusting pigswill,” Frederic said, adding to himself, I wouldn’t drink it with you anyway. He glanced about, feeling pleased when he didn’t see any sign of Senrid.
“Come. Sit. Pass the time of day while we wait for your companions to waken.”
Frederic sat cautiously on a tree stump, feeling a little as if it might bite him. It—or something. The uniformed Norsundrians all ignored him, except for a young one not much older than a teenager, who gave him a contemptuous glance and returned to whetting a long knife with a flat stone.
Siamis, on the other hand, looked friendly. Casual, sitting there on the fallen log from Frederic’s stump, a coffee mug in his hands. He looked no more dangerous than Frederic’s old English teacher from junior high.
“Any questions for me?” Siamis asked.
“Questions? For you?” Frederic repeated, considering and discarding half a dozen sarcastic answers, before choosing the one that meant the most. “How can we get rid of you?”
A couple of the Norsundrians laughed nastily.
Siamis ignored them. “You can’t,” he said, not smug, not gloating, not nasty. He didn’t sound even remotely like his henchminions. “I’m back to stay. Your job right now is to resign yourself to that, and I’m taking the time to help you.”
Frederic felt that the schoolyard fit the situation. He flipped the guy off, and added the words, just in case they didn’t get the message.
It came out in English.
The meaning zipped right past the Norsundrians, who obviously didn’t understand English. Siamis just smiled. There was no annoyance, no impatience in his manner. Instead he started talking about his own youth, and all the questions he had had.
Siamis had a calm, pleasant voice. His accent even reminded Frederic a little of The Guardian’s own accent, k
ind of, sort of. He found himself listening more closely to identify that accent, and when he began to see flashing images—vivid memories—of Siamis at his own age, he found he was interested.
When Siamis lifted the silver sword from the saddle sheath nearby, he offered it to Frederic hilt first.
Frederic took it, staring in amazement. Here, in his hand, was an artifact four thousand years old! Only it had been preserved outside of time and space somehow. Frederic was glad, for it really was a thing of beauty.
“Emeth: truth,” he muttered, repeating its name as he made an experimental pass in the air. His muscles protested all the way from wrist to shoulder, and the point wobbled. He tried again, secretly impressed that Siamis had been able to handle that thing at his own age.
He gave it back, and wondered what it was that he’d been worried about?
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Siamis said. “Why don’t you see if your companions are awake? As soon as our friends here get the new mounts saddled, it’s time for us to ride.”
Frederic turned obediently. As he walked back to the single standing tent, he heard the short, heavy-shouldered guy address the one with the long, somber face. Funny, he understood their lingo now.
“Why do we have to drag these accursed brats about? What game is he playing now? I say we kill them off, and we’ll be twice as fast.”
Long Face—what was his name? Oh yeah. Davernak. He said, “Because prisoners can always be made dead if you need to, but dead ones can’t be made alive—or not without magic from home base, which would make them worthless for what he’s got in mind.”
Prisoners? Worthless? Frederic shrugged. Nothing to do with him.
Siamis would take care of him, and the girls. Siamis would watch out for them all.
o0o
“Yes,” Senrid said. “There were four off-worlders.”
Liere sighed.
“I take it they were caught?” he asked, grimacing.
“Caught is right. Siamis has them, and they’re under the enchantment.”
Senrid swore under his breath. He knew what it meant, even if Liere didn’t.