Hinder shrugged. “If you don’t mind, nobody else should, either. It’s just, if you wanted new, we’d have to get busy finding others with extras and making ’em over, which takes time, and unless I miss my guess, Atan is not going to be keeping us here much longer.”
His chin lifted, and Lilah stared across the clearing to where her tall friend stood with four or five others. Lilah’s nerves jolted. This is why we came, not to live in a forest with other kids, and swing and play and learn Sartoran songs, but to get rid of that enchantment.
Atan beckoned, and Hinder grinned. “I was right,” he said, pursed his lips, and startled Lilah by giving the clear, sharp whistle of a night bird.
Lilah gazed in amazement as everybody scrambled into a big mass, which sorted itself into eight groups of five. Only Hinder, Lilah, and Atan remained where they were.
Hinder jumped off the rock and crossed his arms. “Rather slow.”
Groans and scornful cries echoed through the trees in response.
From the other side of the clearing, Brick hooted like an owl.
The group scattered, some ducking behind trees and others flattening behind shrubs, orienting on Brick, who called, “I see your shadow, Hannla. And who’s laughing?”
“We should be better than that,” Sinder called, her voice clear and challenging. “Because practice is over. We’re going to leave.” She drifted into the clearing, her head tipped to one side as she regarded Atan expectantly.
Atan bent her head and walked toward the center rock. Lilah recognized that teeth-gritted determination. It’s happening already, she thought, struggling against disappointment, and a curl of fear deep inside.
Atan made herself meet all those gazing eyes. She took in the expressions of question, wariness, and skepticism. The ones that hurt the most were those of hope.
She drew in a breath, her entire body vibrating like one of those snapvine bow strings. History changes with a word, a step. You read it, and you’re comfortable, expecting something to happen. But when you are the one doing it... “For the time has come for me to leave Shendoral, and go to Eidervaen to find the last bindings and destroy them.”
Irza spoke up. “What is our part?”
“Whatever you want it to be,” Atan said, feeling how every word she spoke laid down life paths for all forty—paths that could be short, a violent sending out of life and the world. I’m trying to free Sartor. They have to choose if they want to come with me. It was the only way to make the burden bearable. “Merewen discovered that the magic over the villages nearest here is breaking up. That means people are waking from the enchantment, and we might be able to find allies against Norsunder. But it also means that Norsunder is going to notice that the enchantment is gone, if they haven’t already. I must be swift in finishing the end of their spells, before they come in force.”
“We must be swift, and guard and guide you,” Irza stated.
Again the cheer, only louder.
“Our parents led. Now we have to,” Irza added, bolstered by the approval. She straightened up, head high. “What is the plan?”
This is it. Atan took a deep breath.
“This is our last night here,” she said. “Anyone who wishes to go with me and raise allies on the way to Eidervaen, we leave tomorrow.”
TWO
Night.
In Shendoral’s springtime glade, the circle of kids’ faces were colorless blobs in the soft moonlight. Lilah tried to fit herself into the mood of expectation, of celebration. She wanted to stay, to play. To help Atan. She never wanted to see any Norsundrian ever again, ever, ever, ever.
But she couldn’t make herself say the words to ask Atan to send her back.
Atan’s turmoil was so intense it was almost painful. Was it like this, then, so far in the past, when her ancestors and the morvende had found one another after the long recovery from the Fall?
Moonlight glowed blue-silver on Hinder’s wild hair as he climbed the rock and put an arrow to his bow. Sin brought a tiny candle flame and held it to the arrowhead, which sent out sparks and burned blue.
A sigh of satisfaction ran through the kids around Lilah, like the soughing of high branches in the wind.
Hinder drew the bow, aimed high, high, and spang!
The burning arrow kissed the moon before descending to land square in the center of the fire pit prepared by the Poisoners earlier. Smoke, a whoosh, and flames licked at tiny dry branches. Cheers rose from the circle of watchful, orange-lit faces as the fire took.
Rip gave an infectious chuckle on Lilah’s right. Firelight glowed on his broad, pale face and his cheerful smile. “I invented that stuff on the arrowhead,” he said. “Never flames out, no matter what the wind.”
“Tell her how,” Hannla added from just beyond, laughing.
“Well, I was trying to make gravy,” Rip admitted.
Maybe it’s going to be all right. Rip and Hannla don’t seem to be worried, and they’re not warriors, like Mendaen and Pouldi and even Hinder. Lilah snickered, then looked up with expectation as three older boys stood up and began singing a round.
Everybody clapped on the beat. After them began a stream of songs, skits, and more songs, most in the triple-beat chord-shift, counterpoint harmonies peculiar to Sartor. Lilah had heard Sartoran music once or twice at home, and a little more of it during her stay in the Valley of Delfina. It was distinctive and compelling with its counterpoint melodies, its weaving of major chords and minor. But it had not been performed at court for three generations. Sartoran music had dwindled to folk ballads heard along trails or in woods, or sometimes at harvest time during the long hours of work—it had nearly vanished, except in memory. Now it was alive, all around her, like she’d fallen into one of the old histories sitting on the shelves in the library back in Miraleste.
Atan closed her eyes. The melodies—the words—reached ghost-fingers back into her earliest memories, unknotting images, sounds, and their attendant emotions.
The others celebrated so happily. Didn’t anyone feel the pressure of responsibility? Hinder and Sinder capered about as the others sang. Little Julian, so odd, so quiet, sat on Arlas’s lap, fingering the daisy wreath on her head. Mendaen’s profile was so serious as he sang. Hannla’s face upturned as she laughed, sounding like a brook.
If any one of these voices was silenced as a result of her announcing, We leave tomorrow for Eidervaen, she knew she would bear the guilt through her entire life.
o0o
Dejain paced the tower balcony at the Norsunder base. Except for the crunch of her shoes on stone, silence surrounded her.
She liked it that way, silence except for the subdued hush of her hem over the stones, because she was able to hear the footfalls of anyone approaching.
Like her two suborned scouts, coming now. Supposedly Zydes’s most trusted, though only a fool like Zydes could believe you could trust anyone.
The tall one, Wend, said, “We’re here.”
The short skinny one, Xoll, said nothing, just licked his lips.
Dejain had had a couple of days to watch from a distance. Kessler had reached the border of Sarendan the day Irad and the brat vanished from the border.
She had risked a transfer to spy on Kessler and his band, who of course were empty-handed; she had stayed long enough to overhear one of Kessler’s scouts returning from the overgrown tangle of a road into Sarendan to report that there were no hoof or foot prints anywhere, no broken branches or campfires or even any fruit missing from the wild trees. No one could have used that road for a century.
Kessler had ordered them to return to Norsunder Base.
If they rode hard, they might be back within a day or so, and Dejain needed to get her plans into place before then. Kessler would be very angry, which made him even more impossible to predict.
She had to assume that someone had transferred Irad and that brat straight to Shendoral, in order to get them past the time-binding. If the time-binding was still in place. That was the only
place her magic wouldn’t be able to trace them.
The idea that anyone would tamper with Detlev’s spells, no matter how old they were, was stunning in its temerity. Not that she’d put it past that idiot Zydes, if he thought he could get away with it. The only reason why he might protect Irad would be to indirectly aid him in reaching his old army. If Sarendan marched over the border to ‘liberate’ Sartor, that would be an excuse to raise a major force.
The recent military exercises, the inflow of supplies, meant that he intended to put a considerable number into the field—soon. He said the target was Everon, but everybody lied.
She turned to Wend.
“There is a chance that Zydes has tampered with the time-bindings. I want you to test the truth. You are to find Irad as soon as he emerges from Shendoral.”
Wend nodded, thinking that it would probably take Irad more like a month than mere days. Though he didn’t believe a lot of the gas the light magic idiots had blabbed about that place (standard scare tactics, he figured), he did believe the place was much larger than the map showed, because both times he’d been detailed to ride through there, it had taken a lot longer than he’d bargained for. Grim riding. Overgrown thorns and stickers everywhere, no matter how low you bent, or how carefully you dismounted. If the weather hadn’t been both cold and dripping wet, he would have been glad to torch the damn place and laugh while it burned.
Dejain continued. “You know what he looks like? About your height and build, Xoll. Brown hair worn long. Blue eyes. Might still be in recruit uniform, since I doubt he’ll find clothing supplies in Shendoral, whatever else might or might not exist there.”
She paused, and both men nodded. “Irad will attempt to reach Sarendan, where he will raise his army against us. This is why I do not want him to live past his leaving the border of Shendoral. How you accomplish that death—and when—is of course your own affair. Bring the brat to me.”
Xoll licked his lips again, a disgusting sight.
She turned around so she wouldn’t have to see his ferret face. Giving him orders to kill was enough to guarantee his cooperation. Zydes too often wanted prisoners who could be questioned, and Xoll liked, very much, playing with his victims. Wend had more brains—and more ambition—and it was for him she’d made the statement about Sarendan’s army. In case Zydes (or anyone else for that matter) did manage to find out about this conversation, her reason for wanting Irad dead—the army of Sarendan and the obvious military necessity—would deflect interest in that brat. Whoever he was.
“Take whomever you need, but they must be swift and circumspect,” she said. “Just for the sake of thoroughness, you might also put someone in the north, but I don’t believe Irad would take so roundabout a route.”
They departed as noise reached her from the northeast. Dust, distant steady thunder: hooves. A force, at the gallop. Her heart thumped, though it couldn’t possibly be Kessler.
But it was, two days ahead of what she had assumed the outside limit of possibility. That meant he’d forced them to ride through nights.
She drew the hood of her gray cloak well over her head and most of her face so that her silhouette would blend with the stone, and stared down into the torchlit main court. The steaming, blowing horses and the dusty, mud-spattered riders were obviously at the limits of exhaustion.
At the front was Kessler’s straight, slight figure. She could not make out any detail of his face, but she knew—oh, how well she knew—how very angry he would be, to return empty-handed from so hard a chase.
She started at a sound. Xoll and Wend were back again, with their chosen minions.
She transferred them to the destinations she had so carefully selected on the Sartor map, and then retreated to safety to wait.
o0o
The kids shared out a last breakfast, and while the Poisoners packed up the last of their carefully planned meals, everyone except the morvende pulled on all the clothing they had in storage, with the smallest bundled up the warmest.
Atan listened to the chatter. She understood that though the dell was always springtime, everyone had been out in all weathers, and so understood that winter was nigh.
When all was ready and those carrying supplies had hefted their packs, they got into their groups, and walked over the bridge and away. Only a few looked back.
Lilah started out walking by Atan, with Merewen on the other side, the way they’d traveled from Sarendan’s border to Shendoral. But people kept crowding up to ask Atan this question or that, and Lilah would drop back to make space. Finally she stayed back, looking up at the enormous redwoods and trying to guess their age.
“Having trouble remembering everyone’s name, your highness?”
Lilah was surprised to be addressed by the blonde girl who talked like a court snob. Even though her clothes were ragged with many washings, she was careful of them.
“Irza,” the girl said, smiling. “Lirzaveas Ianth Yostavos, third circle. Your highness.”
“Sorry. Were we introduced?” Lilah’s face heated, and she wondered if she was supposed to know what third circle was. “You don’t need to say ‘your highness’ to me. Lilah will do. The king and princess business is too new, and anyway it really belongs back in Sarendan.”
Irza smiled confidently. “A princess,” she stated in her precise way, “is a princess anywhere. And it’s all right if you forgot my name. It took me the longest time to sort everyone out after what happened to us.”
Lilah nodded. “You remember—what happened?” She tried to choose her words carefully.
“I remember the war, yes. I don’t want to forget how Norsunder slaughtered my family,” Irza said, her mouth pressing into a white line. “And I want to remember how I got my sister away by slipping down through the grating into the old tunnel, where we’d once been forbidden to play. But we’d explored anyway, because I wanted to see what the ruins of the ancient city were like—who wouldn’t?” She flashed a quick smile. “Especially if it’s forbidden.”
Lilah laughed. “If all the grownups told me to stay away, I would have explored it first thing.”
Irza pointed at a girl with long blonde braids who was tall and thin, and looked about Lilah’s own age. She walked hand in hand with little Julian. “There’s my sister Arlaseas, but everyone calls her Arlas. Once my younger sister, now my only one.” She smiled again and stepped back, with a practiced gesture giving Lilah precedence when they came to a great mossy root in the trail.
Lilah hopped over. Irza stepped over, holding her skirts in the correct manner.
“So who else are you confused about?” she asked. “Do you want the names, or who we are?”
“Who you are?” Lilah repeated, glancing back at the clumps of two and three or four. Three girls sang a round, but one of the voices rose above the others, reminding Lilah of crystal in the sunlight.
“That girl with the good voice,” Irza said, nodding over her shoulder. “Sana. She’s also quite good as an archer. She had one parent in the king’s forces, and the other was some sort of player or performer. I hope,” Irza added, “that our new queen will remember her with a royal patent for players, or something appropriate.”
Lilah heard a generous tone and saw a smile, but her mind still lurched, as if her foot had stepped on what she thought was solid ground and it turned out to be slippery mud. “Does she want to be a player?”
Irza gave Lilah a fast glance, and Lilah felt the conversational ground shift again. “I don’t know. But she’s quite good, isn’t she?” Again she gave a pretty smile.
“Yes,” Lilah said, as from behind, Sana’s voice soared faultlessly up a long series of tripled notes in the old ballad style, the sound echoing through the trees.
Irza said, “None of us know who is still going to be found alive. Obviously there must be people still living, for Savar pulled us all from the time-binding. Our new queen will need to make order once again, and we don’t know who from the important families has survived. All we are
sure of are...” In that same easy, confident voice she named half a dozen of those walking in a cluster with Arlas and Julian.
Clearly Irza was a noble, and wanted Lilah to understand that she was important. Why?
Because I’m now a princess? Lilah wondered. Except no one here had once asked any questions about Sarendan. Not to be mean. They were just too busy thinking about Sartor—and the Sartor they thought about was over a hundred years old. Probably, Lilah thought as she and Irza separated again in order to hop from stone to stone over a stream, if any of the older ones thought about who might be on the throne of Sarendan, they would name Lilah’s great-great grandmother. Weird!
“Mendaen, there, is son of one of the best army leaders,” Irza said, as though continuing a conversation. “Died defending the king.”
“What about the morvende, Hinder and his cousin?” Lilah asked.
“Oh, they came of their own desire,” Irza said. “That is not to say that many did not die in the fighting, for there were quite a few who allied with the king, and kept their word and didn’t just vanish into their caves when Norsunder came. But these ones all chose to come to the surface. Except the boy who does the cooking, but his family had been on the surface for at least a couple of generations.”
“Doing what? Cooking?” Lilah asked, sneaking a sideways look.
Irza’s shrug was expressive—and threw Lilah straight back in memory to her snobbish cousins at court in Miraleste, during the bad old days under her uncle. “Probably something of the sort.” Irza’s little shoulder twitch and faint smile were dismissive. “No star chamber families, no position.”
Lilah wanted to ask what ‘star chamber families’ meant, but she didn’t want to give this Irza the satisfaction of answering. Besides, her tone made it clear enough: they were special in some snobbish way.
“Well, maybe that will change,” Lilah said, thinking of her own experiences and how her brother had appointed people in positions of responsibility based on merit, and not on family background.