Rel rubbed his jaw. “You’ve a lot of helpers. All willing to do their bit. I’m among ’em.”
“But I’m the one Tsauderei has been training for ten years to get the job done, and it has nothing to do with princesses and commons, but magic and...”
“Guts,” Rel finished. He put up a hand, and his eyes watered.
Atan caught the yawn anyway.
“Then I guess it’s time for me to stop dithering, and do it. Go to sleep,” she said, hoping the words would set her course, give her courage, direct things to the right end. “I’ll talk to the mages about any magic they might know, and to the kids about how to get into the city. If you’ll keep drilling them so they feel ready, even if we can’t fight armies?”
“That I can do.” Rel got to his feet. “Sleep well.”
He ducked out and moved away, his step, for so big a person, light.
Atan stretched out on her pillows and closed her eyes.
o0o
“And you searched for bodies?”
“Four days,” Kessler said.
“Four days!” Dejain frowned. “They were probably all killed.”
“Maybe.” Kessler’s voice was flat. “We were snowbound for three. Fourth, we started the search. All I wanted for evidence was one body. Nothing.”
Dejain started to speak, but he lifted a hand, one of those quick, impatient gestures she remembered from the old days.
“In shifting some of the bigger stones, we set off another landslide, lost two. Third badly hurt. We found all three of ours.”
Dejain’s impatience vanished, to be replaced by a sense of threat. She’d been debating whether she was secure enough to label Kessler’s thoroughness foolhardy. Now her perspective shifted. “Magic,” she said. “But so many at once? It’s a very rare mage that can manage that kind of transfer.”
Kessler said nothing. He was obviously not going to speculate about magic.
“The ring.” She frowned. “Why didn’t you or Zydes take it from her when she was here?”
Kessler had had four days to consider whether or not he would report that he had gotten hold of the wrong child. He owed Dejain nothing. In the disaster the year before, she had not betrayed him outright. She would not be standing there alive if she had. But in the process of doing what he had asked for in the way of magic, she’d secretly bound the spells somehow into some kind of complicated magical feint against Zydes, who was at that time commanding the occupation of Bereth Ferian. It was that feint that had unexpectedly helped shape his own defeat. He’d found out only after Zydes’s fall, and by accident.
So he had decided not to tell her that Yustnesveas Landis had not been to the Norsunder base. Just as he had not told her that he was—on his own, and whenever he could without being seen—studying magic.
He said, “She told us she’d lost it. Zydes did not deem it important enough to put her to the search.”
“Fool,” she exclaimed.
Kessler did not ask whether she meant Zydes or himself. He didn’t care either way.
Dejain eyed him, as always unsettled by Kessler’s flat affect, his utter lack of reaction. There was no discerning what he was thinking, much less what he wanted—that left her in the weaker position. (She tried not to think about what Detlev had learned about her own weaknesses when he’d asked outright—and she’d answered.)
Well, there was nothing for it. “If it’s true she was trained by Tsauderei, it’s possible that the ring was in part a transfer talisman. That would also explain how she and Irad managed to get away so easily,” she added, keeping her words general. Kessler was not to know about her part of that business. “So it’s possible that she did manage to transfer them all to safety before the slide reached them. But where would they have gone? Have you sent someone to Shendoral?”
“Yes,” Kessler said. “No report as yet. Probably won’t be for days, unless you yourself want to track them down by magic. The snow was very heavy, unremitting for most of that three days. My guess is they’re mired somewhere north of the wood.”
Dejain hoped they were, but she didn’t trust it. That answer was too easy. “There’s the possibility that she and her brats have reached Eidervaen.”
Kessler said, “I sent half my detachment to lock the city down. They’ll be searching every house. But we’ll need more people there if we’re to guard the perimeter as well as the main city routes.”
“The bindings have all disintegrated?”
“Not over the palace, I found out before I used this.” He held out the contact token she had given him. “We sent a patrol in, and they have not come out. No one has come out, either ours or the civs.”
“Detlev will have bound the palace even more thoroughly than the city, and the smaller the boundary, the easier it is to bind,” she said, her thoughts skipping from subject to subject—from vexation to vexation. Why didn’t Detlev reappear and reestablish all his old spells? His distance was sinister—oh, everything about him was sinister. She’d had time to think about that abortive coup, and had come to the conclusion that Detlev had wanted her to see what happened to Vatiora. He didn’t need to make any verbal threats. His actions were more effective than mere words would ever be, especially in a place like Norsunder, where everyone lied whenever convenient and there was no such thing as trust.
But there was expedience.
She would not contact him. Neither would she try any moves against him. The problem here was that she could not possibly recreate the powerful, lethally intricate enchantment that had once bound Sartor. She did not have nearly enough resources or capability to duplicate those spells—something she would not admit unless forced to.
Maybe she couldn’t duplicate Detlev’s magic, but she could try something different, beginning with some of the traps she’d already concocted for Zydes. Why not recast those spells in Eidervaen, only set the trap for the Landis brat?
Three days of snow meant winter. She loathed the idea of submitting herself to the merciless bone-chill of weather unleashed after a hundred years of binding.
There was no help for it, and she must not betray any sign of weakness.
She said, “Organize whatever and whoever you need. We’ll transfer directly into the city. Prepare a welcome for the brat whenever she does show up.”
TEN
Julian Landis looked at all the serious faces bent over the flat stone planning table, and then closed her eyes. She’d learned that the most of the older kids thought she didn’t understand anything she heard, especially when she played with her stick dolls or curled up with her eyes closed.
Well, sometimes she didn’t understand them. Oh, she knew what each word meant, but not what they meant altogether.
Like Before, when she was almost four. One morning her mother suddenly pulled her hair. Julian remembered the smart, the sting of tears in her eyes, her own gasp, and her mother saying in a low voice, Do not pick your nose. Princesses never put their hands near their faces.
Am I a princess? Julian had asked, thinking of her cousins. Everyone called them ‘Prince’ or ‘Princess’.
No, but one day you will be. Her mother had gripped her chin, which also hurt, and smiled and said, You’ve got the eyes.
She’d known what every single one of those words meant separately, but together they had not made sense, not until Cousin Atan came, and Julian saw her eyes. They were the same funny shape that her own were, when she peered into Irza’s little mirror.
It was the same another time, after one of the birthday parties, in those Before days. It had been a better birthday party than most, for Prince Iskandaer had not pushed her into a pond, or poked her when she was about to eat a bite, or laughed when her food splashed, making Mother angry not at him, but at her.
This time he’d bent down on hands and knees and let them the little prince and princess cousins and Julian climb on his back. He made horse noises, and everyone had fun. Cousin Atan had been a very tiny baby then. Mother sat beside Aunt-the-Q
ueen and laughed. Julian could still see their hair outlined in the window, Mother’s light as a candle flame, and Aunt-the-Queen’s dark, but otherwise they looked so alike, with their crinkled eyes and their happy laughs. But after, when they went away, Mother had said, You will never have a sister to steal a throne from under you.
Julian knew every one of those words, too, but not what they meant together.
Except for this: whenever her mother had talked about behaving like a princess, she had pinched and slapped and her voice was not kind or sweet. Julian had decided, right then, after that last birthday party, that she never wanted to be a princess.
“Here’s the palace,” Irza said, her hands moving across the stone table. Her voice was pretty when she wasn’t talking right at you, Julian thought. When she talked at you, she sounded too much like Julian’s mother had. When she talked to Arlas, her voice was pretty. She wasn’t talking at Atan right now. “The drains go here, and here, and here. Now here are the grill-ways I remember...”
Julian lifted her eyelids for a longer peek. Irza was still bent over the smooth stone, sketching with chalk. Her curling pale hair was outlined in silver light from the cool white glowglobes overhead. It was the same color as her mother’s hair. Irza had once said they were a kind of cousin. She’d seemed very happy about that. Julian didn’t feel happy or sad, even when both Irza and Arlas both called her Cousin, before Atan came.
Julian looked at Atan. Butterfly wings tickled her heart. It was a good feeling. She’d gotten butterfly feelings when her mother had been happy with her, when the Landis cousins were all kind.
Besides words, there were things she didn’t understand, like how Atan, who had been the baby cousin at the last party in the old days Before, had come to Shendoral all tall and older, and Julian was still six.
Julian had been glad inside when Hinder whispered to her, “Do you know what it means to have your cousin here? No one will try to make you be a princess.”
How had he known she didn’t want to be a princess? She hadn’t told anyone. But maybe he knew why she refused to learn to read and to write, or to wear the pretty dresses that a proper princess would wear, even when Irza got that sour mouth like her mother had gotten, and talked at Julian about duty. Except Irza had never ever hurt her or slapped her. Sometimes she walked away, angry, but other times she’d smiled and said, You’re too little to worry about these things now. But I promise if you are brought to the throne, I’ll be there to teach you. I will be your guardian and teacher, just like I was to my own sister. I will be a big sister to you.
Irza hadn’t figured out that Julian did not want to be a princess. How had Hinder done it? Was it because of his white hair? The white haired people seemed to know things that others didn’t know. But Atan did, too, and she didn’t have white hair. Maybe it was the way they listened, with their gazes on you, not on the ceiling or the floor, or your messy clothes and hair, or someone else.
“... and that is all I remember about those drains,” Irza finished.
“Thank you,” Atan said. “These two accesses near the tower are probably what we need. If the grills still lift.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Irza said. “The city has been magic-bound until recently, and I would be surprised if the Norsundrians would ever think of even looking at drains.”
Mendaen said in his soft voice, “If we can get into them, we can cover you as far as the tower. We can use the decoy plan and leave someone at each drain access to lead the enemy off, if necessary. We can also begin raising the city if people are waking up. But we still cannot get you past all the Norsundrians riding around outside the city.”
The others stilled. The new one, the big tall one called Rel, had been silent all along. Julian took a quick peek at him without turning her head. He reminded her of a walking mountain.
Then Merewen said, “Rel, you know what to do. Why do you not speak?”
Julian was surprised. She hadn’t seen Merewen join the group. Her voice came from behind, which would explain how she’d arrived without Julian seeing. Merewen also knew things, and she listened not just with her ears but with her whole body, like you were important, and your words were your words, not the words somebody else wanted you to say. Merewen gave Julian the butterfly-wing feeling inside.
Even at the very end, the last thing her mother ever said to her, she hadn’t looked at Julian. Julian remembered her mother whispering with someone at the door, and then she sat down in the old window seat at their house, and she cried and laughed at the same time, and how frightening that had been! Every day had been frightening, at the end of Before.
After she finished crying and laughing, Mama turned to Julian, and though she talked right at Julian her eyes stared and stared, as though Julian were a window, and Mama gazed somewhere Julian couldn’t see. Dead! They’re both dead, but maybe there’s a throne to be wrested from the chaos. Come, child, we are going to ride!
And then her fingers, hard as tree roots, yanked Julian—
Rel spoke. His voice was deep and quiet, and the terrible memories whipped away like wind through old cobwebs. Julian thought Rel sounded like a mountain as well as looked like one. “I hesitate to put myself forward. But there’s a chance I might be able to trade on my past encounters with Kessler and decoy him, if we can catch him near the city gates. If he thinks I’m leading an attack, it might stir them up long enough for your group to slip inside.”
“But we haven’t anyone to go on attack,” Atan said.
And then, at last, Grandfather Lonender said, “Remember, you have magic. All Norsunder needs is to think they are being attacked.”
“Ah. Illusion. That I can do,” Atan said, smiling.
o0o
Dejain pulled her coat closer about her and retied the sash, but it made no difference. Drifts of snow swept out of the low, iron-gray sky and stung her face. Her nose and lips were nearly numb, making it almost impossible to perform magic.
Kessler had permitted his guards to build a fire here atop the sentinel station on the city gates. She bit the glove fingers, pulled her hands free, and plunged them toward the fire, as close as she could bear. The prickles of discomfort were stronger than the warmth, but she ignored them. Damn it anyway, how one needed gesture and word in order to get the human brain to compass magic and execute it. To mumble, to make a vague gesture, was to lose control of ingathering power. With dark magic’s lack of safeguards, that could kill you.
She bent her face down, hoping to thaw it. Through the wavering smoke-wreathed air she studied the north. It was very irritating that she had to stand on the city rampart, but the magic had not worked in any of the sheltered places she’d chosen previously. She huffed a laugh and watched her breath fog. It was gratifying to have discovered a weakness in Detlev’s magic; the interlocking of his spells into the great enchantment should not have negated other magic. But that did not help her now.
So she’d been forced to come up here, where there was no lingering trace of Detlev’s spells, and where she would have an unimpeded view of the progress of her workings; she knew she should probably be closer to the tower, but she wanted the proximity of the fire.
No one, save Kessler’s pairs of riders, was in view. He’d apparently established two perimeters, one outer, patrolled by riders, and the inner one along the city walls. It was efficient. No one was going to get past him. His efficiency, unfortunately, increased the sense of pressure. The weak link in this chain of defense was magical.
Rubbing her still-tingling hands, she turned her head and glanced down into the city, sloping away to the south. No one walked the streets, except warriors at the two visible crossroads. Yellow lights glowed between the shutters of some of the houses, but this wing of the old palace was still dark, and Kessler couldn’t patrol that. At least, the people he’d sent in had never come out. The ancient tower at the west end, the lower half ivy-covered, the upper half made of bone-white stone, looked blank. It, too, was unapproachable, lest one get
bound in the still-powerful spell whose periphery had diminished, but whose strength within those borders had not.
She had tried to approach the tower herself, but warning magic caused a hasty retreat, and the unsettling awareness that Detlev’s fading binding spell was, despite its limitations, despite its diminishment, stronger than any new one she could cast.
Well, but how long had it taken him to lay this enchantment? Maybe weeks—months. If she had enough time, she could layer plenty of wards over this accursed place.
She had to lay the first one, and have it stick.
She clapped her hands, which were now warm enough. The faint smell of singed wool accompanied the agreeable sting of heat as her clothes shifted. She stood so close to the fire she was nearly in it, but at least it had thawed her.
She straightened up, raised her hands, and performed the ward-spell she’d prepared—
Bluish lightning flared, rippled over the rooftops, bounced away from the white tower and dispersed like a spill of milk across the sky.
She stared, aghast. Warded! No, it was worse than that. This ward was stronger even than a mirror ward, which was the most formidable type of ward she knew.
There was nothing for it. She tightened her coat and hood, drew her gloves back on, and fixed her attention on the wall nearest that tower. The she transferred. When the transfer-nausea faded, the cold bit into her with fangs of ice. She looked down at crystallized moss along the worn sentry path at her feet, and then up at the tower. Smooth white stone gleamed beneath ivy. She could always try to bring the thrice-damned thing down. Fire was useless against rock. Was there a loose stone somewhere? Some rubble or mortar that could be shifted?
No. She bent and picked up a pebble. Transferring something solid into the wall might at best make cracks—if she judged the distance right—but it would suffice as a test.
She performed the spell, keeping her gaze on the smooth tower wall at eye level, finished, and felt the snap of power—