Merewen looked troubled.
Atan lowered her voice. “I thank you for the warning, but please don’t get between me and danger. Then two of us are threatened. Just shout at me. Or grab my braid or something.” She tried to smile.
Merewen tried to smile back, but her round, sky-colored eyes were wide, and her forehead was puckered with concern.
Atan said to the others, “Smooth down the snow, and let us go.”
Mittened hands worked quickly to eradicate their traces as much as possible. Wind had blown most of the snow against the east and south sides of the road bank. Ice puddles and rock-hard frozen ground curved south toward the city. Drifts of her fog began to swirl northward. Atan thought she could make out the city’s towers, gray pencil marks on the white horizon.
It was home. And not home.
They began to walk toward those distant towers, Irza in the back looking around with a troubled, intense air, and Julian so small and so trusting, once more between the sisters.
Atan wished she hadn’t spoken. Irza had guarded Julian, always knowing where she was, and insisting on meals and bed and baths when Atan would have forgotten such things, not being used to the care of a small child.
Here is the truth, Atan thought. I should not have let her come.
But Atan could not send her back because she could not promise they would return for Julian. Who was right? Irza marched along, not looking her way. She thinks I endangered Julian, Atan thought sorrowfully.
Irza wasn’t thinking about Julian at all. She had greater concerns, like the future and her position in it. Her hints and questions and wanderings had produced absolutely nothing with respect to those morvende accesses. Her overt admiration of their music and weaving and other arts had not netted her any invitations to inner secrets.
She surveyed the featureless snowy countryside. The prospect for glory was nigh, and it was her duty to see that the Ianth name was among those sung at the triumph celebrations.
Atan turned to Lilah. “Rel must be well on his path by now and we have a long road ahead of us as well. Let’s run.”
o0o
Rel urged his fresh, mettlesome young horse toward Eidervaen’s south gate. He was impressed with the speed with which the morvende had produced not just the horse, but the news that Kessler was currently south of the city on a tour of inspection.
Though the morvende weren’t in any way a military culture—he hadn’t seen a sword anywhere except for his stolen one and the few belonging to the kids—they seemed to have quietly and efficiently developed a formidable defense strategy.
They weren’t unequipped for a fight, either, for what he did see were bows, mostly made of ash, and knives. Old ones. These were mostly stone, and a few made of very old steel. It made sense, he thought as he breathed in the foggy air. Fighting with long blades in uneven tunnels was a fool’s game. It made better sense to strike and run, and use the dark and confusing tunnels to get away. In the big caverns, arrows would be useful. Those steady breezes from the air vents underground meant little would spoil your aim.
He’d learned that trust among new allies had to go both ways. He would give no sign that he’d noticed how the carvings on the various stones set about so decoratively around some of the tunnels varied between one dip in the bathing pools and the next. It also happened with certain cleaning frames, for a dash through them would zap one with more magic than cleaning frames in sunsider houses had, and the next tunnel would have different markings.
He suspected they were being transferred incalculable distances (close or far), but he didn’t ask. The morvende had their reasons for not explaining.
The horse shimmied sideways, then halted, flicking its tail, ears flat. Rel made out the soft thud of hoofbeats in snow.
This had to be Kessler’s outer perimeter. That didn’t mean he was with the riders. In fact, that seemed too great a coincidence—unless the morvende had somehow managed to guarantee it wouldn’t be any coincidence, by letting him out the entrance nearest the enemy. If so, their abilities to spy far surpassed his guesses... Later.
Rel stared into the thickening fog as it eddied and whorled away from the riders intersecting his path. He made out two, four, six, eight shadows, and a ninth at the lead. Despite the bitter cold, Rel’s palms were damp, his armpits soggy, and he hoped the little stick he’d been given by way of magic token wouldn’t fail to work because of the damp air, like tinder failing to spark.
A gust of frosty air revealed the foremost rider. His cheeks and nose were blotchy red, and fog-damp hair slung in curls across his forehead, so sharply did his head turn. Rel did not recognize Kessler until he met those blank blue eyes.
He broke the stick he’d been given, clamped his legs against the horse’s sides, and raised his fist as if in signal. His heart lifted when he saw the ghostly forms of riders appear, helms gleaming. Atan’s spell!
Time to ride.
Kessler recognized Rel and frowned in confusion. Rel was a part of the past, last seen in Mearsies Heili.
Then Rel shouted something in Mearsiean, wheeled his horse, and clucked for the animal to gallop. Behind him, barely visible in the fog, rode a good-sized host of helmeted and mail-clad riders.
Ruse or not, this had to be dealt with. Kessler said to his aide, “Back to the city. Order the southern roads sealed off.”
Then, whipping his tired mount into a gallop, he set off in pursuit of Rel and his ghostly entourage, the rest of his patrol riding in perfect formation at his back.
o0o
Atan and the kids ran, sides aching and mouths open, sometimes slipping and falling in icy patches, while Kessler’s aide galloped flat out for the city gates.
The aide reached the gates, shouting Kessler’s order.
Sentries on the gate shot fire arrows upward in signal. The pinpoints of flame turned the grim, cold city into an ant-swarm of activity.
The Norsundrian guards had been bored and cold. They were delighted at the prospect of action. Quickly they assembled outside the south gates, one wing to guard, and the other as reinforcement to Kessler’s patrol. They rode south to the expected attack.
About the time they reached the outer perimeter and the wing commander spotted a patrol to hail for the latest report, Atan and her group reached the northwest wall of the city.
The fog was thick, and though the sun was almost as high as it was going to get on this wintry day, the sentries on the gates could see and hear nothing amiss from the mist-obscured ground. Everyone’s attention was either southward or on the roads directly below the gates.
When the kids began to make out the wall through the thinning mist, Atan waved Irza to the front to take the lead.
Irza did so, trembling with excitement. She was now the leader! Fear curled through the excitement: what if her memories were untrustworthy?
Then she spotted the very same juxtaposition of wall and old vine-wreathed trees that she had seen so long ago, and waved at the others. Oh yes, glory at last!
In silence they spread to search. It was Hinder’s group who found the grate first, almost at the foot of the old mossy wall.
Mendaen, Brick, Pouldi, and Sana struggled with each corner of the grate, but they managed to shift the heavy iron. Below, in the dank-smelling darkness, water rushed and tumbled. Hinder sent a comical grimace at Atan, then lowered himself down.
Splash! Atan mouthed the words, Thank you! to Irza before she followed Hinder. Arlas and Irza followed, joyous, almost giddy with triumph. Why, this was easy!
One by one, the kids jumped down, their feet splashing in a thin stream of rushing water below the city. Irza gestured for them to follow a little ways away, gathering on a broad flat area that (Irza explained rather self-importantly) had been a tiled terrace four thousand years before. Lilah gazed about in gratifying amazement.
“I think that tunnel takes you to the palace,” Irza said. “I know that this way goes under Eidervaen, branching out—” And she rapidly named different cit
y districts.
“Here is where I have to go on alone.” Atan knelt down to address her little cousin eye to eye. “This is the most dangerous part of our plan. Julian, I don’t think you should come into the tower. I don’t know how many enemies I will find there, or how many will chase me. I would feel safer if you stayed with everyone else.”
Julian leaned against her. “But she’s going.” Julian pointed at Lilah.
“I’m going to guard her back,” Lilah said, also kneeling down. “And I have a way to fight if one of those nasty Norsundrians comes by. But you don’t have a way to fight.”
Merewen closed her eyes, then opened them. “You have to stay, little one,” she said. “And be brave.” Again, she said it, then looked puzzled, then very unhappy.
Everyone turned her way, Atan quickly, Lilah in apprehension, Irza impatient. To Irza, Merewen seemed half-mad, and certainly negligible as far as future social position was concerned.
Julian said, “Why?”
Merewen squatted beside Lilah, her thin cotton tunic fluttering around her bare legs. She seemed immune to the cold. She pointed upward. “The tower magic, it might swallow you up. I can’t explain, but I can’t see you there. It troubles me. I hope it means you’re safest here. I don’t know. It’s just... feelings I get here.” She touched her heart. “I don’t hear any words here.” She touched her head, not telling them that she could sense the Loi as a kind of blue presence somewhere outside her thoughts. She suspected that the Loi were trying to send her words, but she couldn’t hear them. This was not the time to explain her shortcomings and add to Atan’s worries.
Irza stepped forward, hands on her hips in a way that Julian instantly recognized. “Julian may remain in my charge. Arlas and I know how to watch over her. She will be safe with us—or at least as safe as we ourselves will be.”
Atan let out a cloudy breath. They were all in danger, but she knew hers was by far the worst. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Julian, please stay. And—and if I’m successful, you come stay with me again, and you don’t ever have to go somewhere else, unless you want. I promise.”
Julian sighed, too, her cloud smaller. “I’ll stay.” Her reward was a slight easing in Atan’s troubled face.
“Let’s go quickly then.” Atan kissed Julian’s brow, got to her feet, and walked swiftly away.
Hinder caressed Julian’s cheek and followed. Lilah grinned at Julian, Merewen looked troubled, then they were gone, too.
When the sounds of their splashing diminished, Irza saw Mendaen about to speak, and forestalled him. She was the leader, not him. “It is time for us to split into our groups and get busy rousing Eidervaen.”
Without looking at him, she turned and motioned the crowd of kids into their groups; most had already separated, some moved, but others gave her irritated glances and stayed right where they were. They would move when it was time.
Mendaen lifted a hand to his group and started off without any more speech. He never spoke to Irza if he could avoid it. She was indifferent; he had no rank. She watched in satisfaction as he and his group departed down another tunnel, their footsteps slow and tentative.
“Now, you stay close by,” Irza said to Julian. “You will have to run, for we must be swift. We’re going this way, into the city.”
Julian had been looking down the tunnels, then back up at the grating where it was light.
“Atan said to stay,” she said. “I promised. I’m going to stay.”
Irza firmly controlled the spurt of anger that made her hot inside. Julian was small, and getting more tiresome every day, but she might one day be a princess—Atan’s heir—and she would need a guardian.
Irza had to make sure the child knew obedience, or what was the use?
She looked around. Mendaen had vanished down one of the tunnels, the sounds of splashing feet echoing back. She turned back to the child, whose solemn six-year-old face and unreadable Landis eyes stared back up in the weak light reflected from the grating.
“You must. Come. With. Us.” Irza bit off each word.
“No. Merewen said I could stay. I’m going to stay here. I promised Atan. She will come here for me.”
Irza glared, her palm itching to slap. “This is not the time to act willful,” she said. “She meant for you to stay with us, not stay in this gutter.”
“No.”
Irza gritted her teeth, then forced her voice to be even. Reasonable. “You promised to help. Obeying is helping.” Her tone sharpened. “Being a brat is not helping.”
The word ‘not’ rang out, sending sharp echoes down the tunnels. Irza’s group waited, some sidling looks in a way that irritated Irza even more.
Julian pointed back to the hole next to the wall. “I can help by being here,” she said. “Nobody can put that thing back. Hinder worried. Atan worried. Everyone worried.”
“That’s true,” Arlas whispered.
“Quiet,” her sister ordered in a fierce whisper.
“So if I stay here, you can find me. But if they come, they will think I fell down here.” Julian crossed her arms. “It’s my plan. Hinder would listen. He’d let me stay.”
Vanya said, “Leave her. At least we know where she is.”
“And we’re all in danger, she no more or less,” added Dorea.
Irza hated to even listen to a mere curtain runner, but Atan had selected the teams, dividing up the aristocrats among all those of lesser rank. She wavered, then realized that standing about was not going to win them any glory at all.
She bent over Julian. “A princess,” she whispered, “would do her duty and listen to her elders.” She touched Julian’s face—not in a caress but, quick and sharp, she pinched her ear. Hard.
Just like Julian’s mother used to when she talked about being a princess.
Julian’s jaw jutted, and her eyes narrowed.
Irza felt better. To forestall the brat’s wailing again, she straightened up and turned away. Maybe it was better not to be slowed by the brat. “Very well,” she said. “We must do what we promised, at least.” She turned a last glare at Julian. “As for you, stay here. And be quiet and careful.”
She walked away, and as Julian faded from sight she faded from mind, for the familiar turnings of the tunnels harrowed Irza with memory. She motioned to Dorea, whom she’d made certain to be included in her group, and said, “You should be able to find out where we are.”
“I never ran in the drains,” Dorea said. “But I’ll try.”
Julian heard Dorea’s voice echo, then all she heard were the diminishing footsteps. Let them go. She smiled. She had a job, a real one, an important one, that no one could take away or pretend was theirs. And nobody was going to pinch her ear and call her prin-cess.
She sat down on the old tile, swept clean by years of water, tucked her ragged hem around her feet, pulled Merewen’s soft, warm yeath-coat around her, and looked up at the sky through the open hole left by the shifted grill.
As it turned out, she hadn’t long to wait.
o0o
Kessler’s instinct was to capture Rel and choke from him the reason he was here in this kingdom, how many he led, and where they were.
Very soon, he began to wonder if his first reaction—that this was some kind of ruse—might be true. Rel’s unaccountable presence and his shouted command in the Mearsiean language was far too inexplicable, and the timing suspect. That suggested a deflection or decoy. Kessler would accept Darian Irad at the head of a mysteriously raised company, but not Rel.
So he wheeled his horse out of the line and waved at them to continue their pursuit.
He rode hard back to the city. His horse had nearly foundered when he reached his reinforcements, who were advancing exactly as he’d ordered.
“I think it might be a feint,” he said to the leader, and broke the would-be strike force into smaller groups, taking under his own command the greater number. Pausing only long enough to make one of the warriors exchange his fresh mount for Kessler’s sp
ent one, he rode off, leading his new search force.
Fog swallowed them, in some places so thick they were forced to a walk. Though Kessler could hear the others behind cursing and fuming, it gave him time to think.
If in fact Rel of Tser Mearsies was running decoy here in the south, it meant that whoever he was protecting was probably somewhere in the north. The old magic tower lay at the west end, attached to the palace, which couldn’t be patrolled. If an army was on the attack, they’d go for the gates. But if it was magic they were after, the tower would be the target.
Magic. Kessler dropped his hand to his pocket. Dejain had departed without giving him one of her transfer tokens.
He cursed, then said, “To the north side of the city. We’ll have to search along the walls.”
o0o
Dejain had been brooding about what she’d discovered to be true, and what not. She’d also reflected on the unlikelihood of any child being able to transfer thirty or forty people at once from under a landslide, which meant they’d been able to hide somehow. Every explanation opened disturbing possibilities.
The thought of going back to the palace walls was sickening. She loathed cold, but more than that she loved her command, and the way to keep it was to be thorough, to avoid disaster first, but if defeat seemed unavoidable, to make certain that Detlev could find no blame to ascribe to her.
That meant she must force herself back to the hills where Kessler had last seen the children, and search for magic traces herself.
She didn’t think it likely, but it was always possible that some of those old animal caves were disguised morvende tunnels. She hadn’t heard of any geliaths this far east. Everyone knew that morvende after the Fall had honeycombed deep in the western mountains, but their geliaths were protected by very old magic that was far beyond her abilities to break. Anyway, if the ancient geliaths still existed, no one had reported seeing morvende popping in and out.
If a rabble of brats could find an abandoned, empty geliath, so could she.