Lilah realized only belatedly what the dry voice meant by time-honored way: suicide. Sickened, she said, “So Peitar was right.”
“He foresaw that, did he?”
“Well, not in so many words. But he was afraid you might run into some kind of nastiness after you went away. He really wanted you to let Tsauderei send you by magic to somewhere safe.”
“What else did your clairvoyant brother predict on my behalf?”
His sarcasm had always stung, but he’d never, in all her experience, talked about himself. Ever. She fought back through memory and retrieved one of Peitar’s many incomprehensible utterances. “He said he hoped you were watching him from a distance, because it would keep him honest.”
She peeked her uncle’s way to see if that confused him as much as it did her, but his brow cleared, and his eyes narrowed in a kind of ironic humor. He understood. That was so strange.
Outside their little space, the rain roared down, a stream having carved itself in the trail they’d made.
“It is a cause for regret,” he said presently, “that your brother and I are not likely to speak again this side of death.”
“Oh, Uncle Dirty-Hands, don’t say things like that.” Her shoulders hunched right up to her ears.
“I will refrain from voicing bleak prognostications,” he said with even more pronounced irony than before, “if you will favor me with my name, and not that lamentable soubriquet.”
“Lament—oh! Dirty-Ha—urble. I—it’s just—”
“Habit. So I apprehended during my brief perusal of your, ah, chronicle.”
Her stomach churned with embarrassment when she thought back to all the insults she’d written into the diary that she’d kept during the revolution. At the end, her uncle had had the diary for a short time. Words of self-justification formed, but she didn’t voice them. After all, he’d already lost everything. And anyway, he didn’t sound angry or even accusing. Just sort of amused.
A humorous Uncle Dirty-Hands—Uncle Darian, that is—was infinitely preferable to an angry one, especially when they were penned up here, with who knew how many Norsundrians chasing after them, and a long way to go until they reached some sort of safety.
Bringing her thoughts back to his original question.
“I went into Sartor with... someone I can’t name, because there are magic spells if she’s mentioned.” As her uncle’s brows twitched upward, she said in a whisper—as if that would fool any lurking magic—“She’s the last of that family. That rules Sartor. Kept hidden.”
Gratified by her uncle’s evident surprise, Lilah went on with a little more confidence. “See, the Norsundrians don’t know she’s alive. Or they didn’t. They think she’s me. I’m her. Anyway, she broke the time-spell over Sartor, and is on her way to sweep out the rest of their rotten magic. At least, I hope she is. She was when I got pinched in her place, by that horrible man with the black hair. Is he really dead? He said he was.”
“If he was Kessler Sonscarna, Zydes’s runner, he probably told you that for his own entertainment. How did you come to be selected for this quest?”
“Well, I offered. And She was glad of my company,” she added defensively. “Anyway, we didn’t know that disgusting villain Zydes had this magic scope thing that let him see anywhere within the enchanted borders, and he found us, but I don’t think he knew which of us was which, because they grabbed me, like I said. Well, he tried to put a spell on me, only it didn’t work because it was bound on her name. I wonder if it will suddenly pounce on her and work if she ever gets stuck in that fortress?” Lilah frowned. “Well, the mages can worry about that, and I hope it never comes to pass, because—”
Darian Irad raised a hand, and Lilah stuttered to a stop.
He said, “Permit me to restate. Zydes and those under his command believe that you are a descendant of the Landis family?”
“Yes.”
“And Zydes can see anywhere with this magic object.”
“Not anymore,” Lilah said, and for the first time, she grinned, though her lips cracked painfully. “I used Atan’s ring and smashed it. Right before I came to get you out.” She patted her pocket where the ring resided. “Hurt like crazy, too, but it was worth it.”
“Well done,” he said.
It was the first praise she’d ever heard from him.
“So they will misunderstand your liberating me—for which I neglected to thank you, by the way.”
Lilah’s face burned again. She said, “Peitar would expect me to do what I did. But what’s that about misunderstanding?”
“They will be expecting us to ride straight east. If nothing else, you—as this missing princess—could throw yourself on Peitar’s mercy. But I am as sure as I can be of anything that Zydes will expect me to foreswear myself and raise Sarendan’s army for an invasion of Sartor.”
“Oh. Um, is that bad, or good?”
“As it happens, I chose the northern route as the flattest and therefore the fastest. I’d expected us to cut for the east today, and run along Sartor’s southern border.”
“But now?”
“He will send Kessler, who, I am told, cannot be outrun when he’s on the hunt. We will not test the truth of that boast. We’ll remain on the northern road, straight into Sartor.”
THIRTEEN
Zydes—furious, worried, beset by the endless complications of a troublesome command—tried to win enough free time to perform a complicated series of spells. They were especially vicious, a summoning against the will, which was correspondingly harsh on the magician casting them, but he was desperate.
By the third day, he was in fact desperate enough to extend the magic almost until he was consumed by it, and yet the spells did not work: Yustnesveas Landis was not yanked by magic transfer into his warded office.
He slumped back behind his desk, dazed and exhausted, defeat—loss of control—gnawing at his vitals, for it was not just that girl’s obviously superior magic that baffled him, but with the scope gone he could not spy upon Kessler, still out on the chase.
o0o
Kessler had nearly reached the border. His respect for Irad and the Landis girl had intensified as the chase lengthened, for he drove his handpicked warriors to the limits of their endurance, with only the briefest pauses for food and water when they changed mounts at relay outposts along the east road.
His detachment exerted themselves quite beyond any effort they might have made for Zydes, for they had all heard murmured stories about Kessler in action. The likelihood of the rumors being true had been demonstrated in his performance with sword or knife during practices, not long after he had first arrived. And when he won, there was no tap, no strike with the flat of the blade. He broke bones, ripped flesh, just short of the kill, never with any word of anger or even any change of expression.
So they kept complaints to themselves, brutal as the journey was. No one wanted the kiss of steel for answer.
Though Zydes couldn’t see him, he wasn’t free of observers. Dejain had chanced to return to the fortress in time to witness his fast departure. She made it her business to transfer to each of the replay outposts after him, and once she determined the direction of the chase, she returned to the fortress to sift rumors for the object. According to gossip, Zydes had had some mysterious boy as a prisoner—or recruit—who had vanished with no less a prisoner—or recruit—than Darian Irad.
She nearly made the same mistake that Zydes did: assume that Kessler Sonscarna on the hunt finished the business. But she had built a career on the expert sifting of talk from the lowly, the people everyone in power ignored. A mention of fresh horse droppings to the north and speculation about what idiotic plans Zydes might be hatching in Sartor, when everyone knew what happened to you there, sent her exploring.
She would have to act fast.
The larger reach any spell has, the more difficult it is to place. But she took the time to set a warning tracer beyond the last northern outpost, extending into the hills on
one side and into the cracked, waterless plains in the other.
Then she went about her business.
Not three days later, the warning tracer pinged its blue flower in her mind, and she dropped everything to transfer to a suitable observation destination, already chosen.
When the transfer reaction wore off, she spotted a Norsundrian riding with a red-haired scout northward. Again, she nearly returned, but she remembered the red-haired boy Zydes had had for a short time as a runner. Already sent on errands without training? That was unusual.
More unusual was the fact that the two traveled parallel to the road. She watched the horses plod northward toward Sartor and its time binding, which would effectively place them beyond tracing. They had to be Darian Irad, former king of Sarendan, and the mystery boy. Irad was worthless, except in a military sense. From all reports, he was almost, if not quite, as volatile as Kessler. But that brat? Zydes had wanted this unnamed boy, so there was some mystery here, all right.
There was still time before they crossed into Sartor. Good thing? No one knew they were there except Dejain! Bad thing? Capturing them herself meant magic, and that much magic always left traces. She would have to make certain that Zydes was busy with something else before she could act.
She transferred back to the fortress.
o0o
Tsauderei, high up in the Valley, had maintained his ceaseless watch on the movement of the ring.
He had rejoiced when it moved away from the fortress, and he had scarcely slept since. When they reached the territory before the border of Sartor, he waited until nightfall and transferred, using the ring as Destination.
Lilah and her uncle found shelter along a riverbed on the other side, and once he’d cared for the animals as best he could, they lay down to sleep. But the soft sound of footsteps in the gravel and a gasp caused Darian Irad, trained from childhood to be wary, to whirl up from his blanket bedroll, steel in either hand.
Tsauderei raised his hands and lowered himself carefully onto a nearby rock, palms up. The last fading light gleamed with ruddy color on a few short strands of hair on the small figure lying nearby. He exclaimed softly, “Lilah?”
Poor Lilah was so tired she didn’t even stir.
Irad’s eyes narrowed. “Tsauderei?”
“Yes.”
They’d met very seldom. Both were thinking of the last time, just after Darian Irad lost his throne to his nephew, through Lilah’s use of her magical flowers.
“One of you has a magic ring I gave to a young magic student of mine,” Tsauderei said in a tone that invited response.
“Lilah has it. I’m taking her north into Sartor. They are searching east for us,” Darian Irad said. He added with sardonic humor, “They also believe she is—”
“Don’t say the name,” Tsauderei cut in quickly. “There are spells waiting to catch the unwary.”
Darian Irad hated magic. But he respected its reach.
“Ah.” Tsauderei winced against the unforgiving unevenness of the rock, which did his withered haunches and ancient joints no good at all, and said, “The time-bindings on Sartor have been broken. There’s more to be done to free the kingdom, but it cannot be completed until the person of whom we speak gets safely to her capital. I don’t know why Zydes isn’t chasing you, or her now, but I suspect that will change sooner than later.”
Darian Irad said, “I know nothing about magic battles, as you are aware. Can the populace be raised to defend themselves?”
“I don’t know,” Tsauderei admitted. “I don’t know how the time-binding spells are diminishing, or where. But yes, if the populace were to be raised, that would be an advantage to her, perhaps.”
Irad said nothing.
Tsauderei waited, and when the pause had become a silence, he said, “I could transfer you to the border of Shendoral, if you like. That is a vast woodland in the center of the kingdom in which Norsunder cannot perform magic. Lilah can rejoin Atan. And you’d be that much farther removed from our friends to the south.”
Irad’s ironic expression was just discernible in the fading light. “No demands?”
Tsauderei spread his hands. “You ought to know by now that direct interference is not one of my habits. You made an agreement with Peitar, which you seem to be keeping. I will not interfere with you anywhere outside of Sarendan’s border.”
A nod.
Tsauderei said, “Then we’d better act fast.”
Darian Irad roused Lilah, who barely had time to rub her eyes and look around before magic took hold of her and her uncle.
When Dejain transferred back to put her plans in place, it was to find her quarry gone.
That had to mean somebody more powerful than she was entering the game. Sometimes silence was more deadly than overt threats and posturing of the sort that Zydes favored. It meant that someone was waiting for the right moment to strike.
She retired to consider and to observe.
o0o
Atan swung down from her sleeping platform, handed herself down two branches, her feet only touching the vine-ladder twice, and then dropped onto the grass. When she’d first arrived, it had taken time, effort, and all her concentration to get up and down again. Now it was easy.
As soon as she appeared, voices clamored for her attention.
“Arlas is not doing her share—”
“They’re accusing us of being lazy ristos again—”
“Atan, I need to talk to you. Just you and me.”
Atan had learned the etiquette of the maulon sleeping platforms. When you were up, you were away—as if in a locked room—unless you specifically invited someone up. But when you came down, then that meant you were ready for company.
She looked around at the faces—some angry, some sulky. Hinder looked worried.
“Hinder, is something wrong?” she asked, remembering that he’d volunteered for the last forest sweep. In fact, wasn’t he supposed to be back in two days?
Hinder ducked his head in a nod, his wispy white hair falling forward to hide his face. Atan was still trying to make sense of where she fit in this crowd, but she knew one thing: when Hinder spoke, it never was a personal demand, it was always about something that had to do with the group as a group, or the forest.
She moved toward the rock in the center of the clearing, which she’d come to understand as the group’s speaking place. Since her arrival, a few had acted like it was her throne.
She felt ridiculous, sitting on a rock with others at her feet, faces upturned expectantly. But they all did it, so that indicated a social pattern. She’d read about social patterns. She’d talked about them with Tsauderei. She understood that humans acted in patterns. But she didn’t feel a part of this pattern.
As she walked, she observed the others. Irza, as usual, fell in behind Atan as one who had the right. It had nothing to do with friendship, and everything with the patterns of rank.
On the other side of the clearing, Rip and the Poisoners—the four boys and two girls who did food-preparation—sang, a cheery song. Atan suspected the melody was old, half-remembered, because the kids had made up their own words:
“Stir! Stir! Stir! The spoon goes in a blur, stir stir!
Chop! Chop! Chop! Off the leaves with a lop, chop chop!”
Rip and the Poisoners paid no attention to the etiquette of the rock.
Hinder wriggled his toe talons through the grass at each step. How he loved sunside and all its growing things! They grew things in the caverns—of course—but there was no wind and weather there for the wild beauty of shape, or the tumble of unplanned gardens.
He loved sunside, and his expectations, well, his dread, of the rumored Last Landis had been met, but she wasn’t another Irza, even more arrogant and assured of her place at the pinnacle of human hierarchy.
Sin had said earlier, “You tell her.” She added with a flickering smile, “Are you sure you don’t just like her because she’s powerless?”
Hinder was sure. Atan was never
boring, she knew more history than he did, and... well, liking to help didn’t mean you wanted people to be powerless.
He waited until she sat on the rock, then leaned close. “Your friend who disappeared? I think we’ve found her,” Hinder said, and watched as Atan’s sober, slightly worried expression changed.
It was everything he’d hoped for, that change—like sunrise after a night of storms.
Atan never thought about her face. She was only aware of her heart giving a thump against her ribs, then drumming. “Lilah? You found Lilah?”
“I think so. It was your other friend, the one who ran off, who used to live with Savar, who found me, see—”
“You mean Merewen?”
“That’s the one.” Hinder held out his hand at approximately Merewen’s height. “Blue skin. Came smack on me like a dropped rock as if we saw each other every day. Said she’s been all over the eastern end of the forest—I guess she can travel a whole lot faster than we can.”
“She’s part Loi,” Atan said.
“Ah, that would explain not just her speed, but some of the other part.”
“Part?” Atan was thoroughly confused.
Hinder sighed. “I’m telling it backwards. Merewen said she’d tried to go after Lilah, but when she got to the border, she said she was drying up like old leaves. She was afraid if she tried to cross into Norsunder’s parched lands, she would fly into ash.” He cocked his head. “I thought she was being, you know, poetic.”
Atan opened her hands. “I don’t know her well enough to tell you if she speaks truly or figuratively.”
“Ah. Well, she seemed quite sad, said she’d returned, having failed to help Lilah and failed to find Savar.” He hesitated. He came close—so close he could feel the first word shaping his tongue—to saying Fancy her going off all alone to run a rescue. It was exactly what the rest of the patrol had said, but he looked at Atan’s wide gaze, bright with a suspicious gathering of moisture, and remembered that Atan had wanted to do the very same thing.