Kessler thought, The impossible is possible. There is a Landis still alive. And like everyone else, Zydes assumed that a Chwahir was too ignorant of any history but their own to be aware of things like the conditions of Sartor’s enchantment.
He withdrew, closing the door soundlessly behind him. By dawn he was already mounted, riding beyond the gates to the northeast under a gray, grim sky. He loathed the errand, but he did not mind several days’ hard riding. He was alone, and he had time to decide what to do.
o0o
The girls woke up, broke camp, and set out.
Lilah was already bored with the countryside, but she enjoyed her companions. Atan she had admired from their first meeting, and the newcomer, Merewen, was so interested in everything that she became interesting. She talked about everything with such delight—the moths flickering around the weird light on Atan’s ring when she used it to help them make camp, the sedge, the subtle colors of rocks along the river’s edge, and of course, her companions.
But though Merewen chattered about the world around them, she did not comment on all that she observed, such as Atan’s mood growing of abstraction.
Lilah also noticed. They’d begun the journey with Atan and Lilah talking and Merewen sometimes interposing questions, but that had changed to Lilah and Merewen talking, with occasional questions by Atan.
Atan’s mood had indeed changed. She’d begun both exhilarated and afraid. The lonely road and the absence of living creatures around them had banished the expectation of discovery, attack, the need to transfer out fast. She was here at last, in Sartor. She studied the land as closely as the peculiarities of the slowly dissipating spells permitted.
She could not see very far because of the gray haze, and wondered how many villages and farms it concealed. The weather seemed unchanging, a continuously unbroken gray sky that warded the sun by day (there was no rain or even wind) and permitted no stars by night. The eastern mountains had dwindled to a flat purple-brown smear by the end of the first day’s walk, though Atan knew they could not have progressed very far.
Even the shortening of the days, so noticeable before they left, meant nothing here. It was light, then—suddenly—it was dark. She could measure progress only by the diminishing food in their knapsacks, for the days blended into one another, so that, unless she concentrated, she could not easily recall just when they had set out.
One morning as they set out for another day’s trudge, she became aware of a pause that had grown into silence, and she looked to either side to discover two questioning faces. Atan said, “Have I been a sorry companion?”
“A quiet one,” Merewen said.
“Is there something to worry about?” Lilah asked, looking around.
“I’ve been thinking about magic. But instead of talking about it, which I know would be boring, how about we hear about something outside of Sartor? Lilah, why don’t you tell Merewen the story of the freeing of Sarendan?”
“Yes, yes,” Merewen exclaimed, skipping ahead a few steps. “A story! I like stories.”
Lilah paused, considering where to begin. She was delighted to be asked, but the reminder brought back some fairly nasty memories.
“What are you looking at?” Merewen asked, causing Lilah to turn her way in surprise.
But Merewen was not talking to her. Atan was several paces behind, crouched in the pathway, intent on something in front of her feet.
At first Lilah thought Atan was ill. No, she was weeping! Those were tears along her lower eyelids, but the tears did not fall.
Atan sat back on her heels, her coat dragging unnoticed in the old dust. “Time.”
She stretched out her hand to touch the edge of the path. Lilah blinked, seeing only dirt, bounded by the tangled roots and branches of the dusty, ancient dark green hedgerow—a common enough sight back home in Sarendan through certain areas. “Time, and silence.” Atan wiped her eyes. “I didn’t think it would hurt so much.”
Lilah was still puzzled. Atan’s intensity caused her to step closer and look again. The hard-beaten path really did dip quite low, compared to the hedgerow. Very low indeed. As Lilah looked at that perplexing tangle of root and branch—for it was impossible to descry each individual plant—all mortared together with the duff of moldering old prickly dark green leaves, her perspective shifted, and she saw what Atan saw: a path stamped flat by untold generations of Sartorans, the hedge marking a boundary a thousand years old. Longer. Much longer.
“How many generations of people passed this way, singing the old songs?” Atan asked, her lips trembling. “The emptiness—the silence—” She stood, and shook her head, and then her voice wavered. “I don’t know the songs. No one wrote them down, Tsauderei said, because everyone knew them. Will anyone remember?”
Lilah shifted her gaze from the path’s border to Atan, who wiped her eyes again. “It’s only been a day,” she said. “You told me so yourself.”
”Yes. That’s if Norsunder didn’t kill them all when my father and mother were killed.” Atan wiped her eyes. “But we don’t know any of that yet, and I’m borrowing trouble. Sorry. Sorry! Lilah, may we have that story?”
Lilah cleared her throat, wondering if the enchantment was getting to Atan. Well, if I can’t understand, at least I can divert, she thought. “Shall I start with when I met Bren and his cousin Deon?”
“I’d like that.”
Merewen’s eyes were very blue, gathering and holding the diffuse light. “I like it when people meet. Is it funny? I love funny things.”
“Oh, yes, there are some funny bits.” And so Lilah launched into the tale, dwelling on the humor, and skipping past the really terrible bits. Her reward was Atan’s chuckle, for Lilah had learned from observing her brother how some people took as wounds in the spirit every evidence of war, or cruelty, or destruction.
o0o
Atan enjoyed Lilah’s style of talking, and the sound of her voice, but she kept having to catch herself up lest her mind drift outward into that haze, wondering who had survived and how many, and when would they waken from their century-long dream? Would they actually be asleep, or perhaps sitting at a loom or worktable, and they’d put down tools, and glance through the window, and blink dusty eyes, wondering how the war was going? Would their cupboards be filled with dust, and their homes with spider webs?
Late in the afternoon, Lilah’s sudden chuckle brought her out of anxious imaginings.
“But I do not know the name for baby horses,” Merewen pointed out. “Though horses have passed through Shendoral, they don’t seem to live there.”
“Well, you don’t have to know ’em. Bren does know the different between a foal and a colt, you see, as he used to help his brothers in the stable. But his cousin Deon didn’t, because she had no interest in horses, so when she said ’clot’ instead of ‘colt’ and Bren pretended to go along—even the outlaws were laughing, but Deon never knew we were joking!”
“Oh,” Merewen said, in a tone of interest.
Lilah chuckled again, a pleasant sound, like a spring fall down the rocks behind her old cottage, Atan thought. A good sound to hear in this vast, dead silence.
“And I’m the only one laughing, I see. I guess it’s one of those things that’s only funny if you were there.”
“Perhaps it’s not gasp-for-breath funny, but I like hearing about it, because I get a picture of your friends,” Atan said.
“Perhaps it is not funny,” Merewen said, with that bird-like air of curiosity. “But I think it interesting, too, this pretending not to know a thing. Then there are all the extra words and names. Like your calling your uncle Dirty-Hands, even though you say his hands were clean when you saw him. Or is that funny to you?” She swung round to face Atan.
Atan found the question funnier than the image, but she hid it. “Nicknames, even circle names, can be like that,” she said.
“Circle names?” Merewen repeated.
“Oh, it’s a... a social thing, some might say a court thing,
though there are court names as well, though those usually are centered around titles. Tsauderei told me that Sartoran history is a knotwork of hierarchies—who is important, who isn’t.”
“Our revolution was supposed to make a circle including all humanity inside our border,” Lilah said. “But practically as soon as it happened, you got people not wanting this group in, only that group, and so on.”
Atan bobbed her head in enthusiastic agreement, then remembered to practice her queenly manners, and straightened her spine. “One of my ancestors wrote, and Tsauderei said it was true, that for some people, circles are only interesting for who they can keep out.”
Lilah grimaced. “So are you going to go back to using... your name, soon as you know it’s safe?”
Atan sighed. “I’ve looked forward to that all my life. I even asked Tsauderei to find copies of the official records about the first three queens who share my name, so I could learn all about them. At least, I know their official lives as recorded by the heralds. Their private writings are probably hidden in the royal city, if it hasn’t been destroyed. But that’s just it. The girl with my name seems like... someone else. Someone who will have to preside, and pass laws and judgments. I think I can be her, but when I’m being me, I am still Atan. Does that make sense?”
“Sure does,” Lilah said.
Merewen cocked her head, more birdlike than ever. “No.”
Atan laughed. “Are you not Linet to your parents, but Merewen to us? Your parents are a little circle which we cannot be part of.” And when Merewen’s eyes widened with understanding, Atan looked around. “The day is almost gone. Shall we find a camp before the light goes?”
“Good idea. I can finish the rest tomorrow, if you like,” Lilah said, yawning. “My throat’s dry—and I don’t want to talk about the trial, or being my uncle’s prisoner, at night. We’re getting to the horrid parts.”
“Not at night,” Merewen said, glancing around as Lilah led the way off the road to a grassy spot almost indistinguishable from the ones they’d selected previously.
Atan sat down, her head giddy, as if she sat on a hammock. Strange. It felt as if they’d walked and walked all day yet stayed in one place, and each night they camped under the same dry-looking, scrubby oak.
No. She forced herself to observe differences. The tributary of the Luyos that they had been following bent toward the south. The day before, it had gone straight west. That line of mossy boulders there, they’d seen nothing like that. Looked like the teeth of some great beast. This oak was quite old, and the first night they’d slept under a young, though equally scraggly, ash.
By the time they were done eating, nightfall was upon them, and Lilah curled up to sleep.
Atan couldn’t sleep, tired as she was. Her eyelids burned, and her feet ached from the days of walking, but those were not the cause of this sense of wrongness just beyond vision and hearing.
For the first time she wished they had the materials to make a campfire, except if there was danger, would that not draw attention?
She drew her knees up under her cloak, rubbing her chin against the thick-woven cotton-wool of her trousers. How nice it would be to bathe, since there was no chance of stepping through any cleaning frames. Though the cold, and the dry dust, did not really make one feel grimy, just...
She lost herself in a daydream about the hot spring not far from the cottage back in the Valley, and memory nearly took her into dreams until a sound brought her awake.
Sound. What? She frowned. A snapping, a crunching, as of old dry grass.
Another living thing, at last? But not a friend. No, not so late, and so furtive. There was no time-candle, and she could not see the stars, but Tsauderei had taught her to sense the last hour of the day, when Norsunder’s magic truly was strongest. The renewal of midnight—the beginning of a new day—belonged to the world, magic so old it was probably as old as the world itself. Of course, those who would destroy would have discovered that the weakest time was just before renewal.
But that was a diffuse balance of magical strength and weakness, no more discernible than the pull of the great moon on the tides, except to mages. Tsauderei had taught her that Norsundrians also acted at that hour because of the effect of darkness and tiredness, their intent to intimidate by fear.
When the sounds resolved into the thud of human and horse steps, she got to her feet and moved a little away from the sleeping girls.
“Who is there?” she whispered into the cold, still air.
“Are you the Landis girl?” a voice responded in very accented Sartoran. The voice was male, low, and husky.
She stayed silent, her heartbeat thumping in her ears.
“You will have to come with me,” the voice continued. “It’s either that or die here.”
“Neither.” Atan’s voice cracked.
She had nothing but the ring Tsauderei had given her.
Though her fingers trembled with the intensity of her fright, she whispered the magical words and held out her fist with the ring pointing in the direction the voice had come, desperation focusing her will. The light lanced out, sudden and shocking as lightning, and nearly as powerful.
The young man gasped, and clapped his hands over his eyes. Atan blinked tears from her own eyes, though the light was aimed away from her, as the man stumbled away in an attempt to escape the light.
“Go away,” she yelled. Her fist prickled unbearably. She dropped her hand, shaking it to restore sensation to her fingers, and the light vanished. Darkness closed in. “Go away,” she called into the night.
The horse’s hooves thumped, then established a rhythm, and diminished. The man was in retreat!
Atan felt her way back to camp and sat on her bedroll for the rest of the night, too frightened for sleep.
FIVE
On the far side of Sartor’s northwest border mountains, Rel the Traveler entered an old trade-route inn built beside a waterfall.
The swirl of cold outside air caused the curious and the idle to look up, gazes lingering on the tall, broad-shouldered young fellow entering. Youth? Grown man? He was certainly the size of a grown man, in fact, taller and broader than most. The deep-set dark eyes could be those of a man, but the smooth cheeks, contours of chin, the quantity of glossy black hair cut short at his collar, were those of a youth.
In fact, Rel had not yet reached what would be his full height.
A troublemaker? thought those who distrusted anyone taller than they were.
His clothing was not warlike. He wore plain riding gear, somewhat worn, but not ragged, dusty and not filthy. His expression was thoughtful, for he had been thinking of geography, and how the mage-raised mountains stretching east and west had adapted, over the millennia since the losing battle against Norsunder, to be indistinguishable from those made by natural forces.
But habit also made him wary. Aware of the silence caused by his entry, he cast a quick glance around and, seeing no overt threat, proceeded to the counter, his step quiet. No strutting cock he, looking for a fight.
He also had ready coin, causing the innkeeper’s attitude to change to welcome. He gave his name as “Rel, caravan guard by trade,” paid for a bed in the dorm and meals for night and morning. Then he sat with his back to the wall, where he ate and drank, ignoring speculative or challenging glances, and occasionally glancing out the dark windows, beyond which the gathering rain-clouds were slowly blotting the stars.
It had been a long ride for Rel, and for the customers, a long workday. After a time he slipped from the others’ interest—all except the innkeeper’s teenage daughter, who had an eye for a handsome face. But after two of three unnecessary trips to Rel’s table, and only politeness in his manner and absence in those dark eyes, she too gave up with an internal shrug and returned to the pair of snub-nosed, wiry young weavers by the fire who made up for their lack of handsome looks with enthusiastic flirtation.
When Rel observed that people’s boundaries of interest had contracted once a
gain to the perimeters of their own tables, he sat back and sipped the hot mulled wine the waitress had offered in place of pie, which was all gone.
He listened to the quiet hum of chatter. The inn’s common room was small, so it was easy enough to catch a sense of what occupied people’s attention. Local concerns, it seemed, as far as he could hear: business, weather, who was stepping out with whom, and weather again.
Shortly after he’d finished, the rain came, an earnest, slanting downpour that roared on the roof. He trod up the worn stone stairs to the next half-level, set into the mountain cliff, and opened the door first on the left.
The room was round, with one window set facing the waterfall. Four beds framed the room, with a battered old table in the center, bare except for a burning lamp. This being autumn, the bed nearest the window was free; the other three had been claimed. Rel was just as glad. He hated stuffy rooms, and didn’t mind cold, as long as he wasn’t wet.
So he dumped his gear on the empty bed, and was about to get out his map for another study when the door opened and three fellows walked in. One was older. The other two were around the same age as Rel.
The oldest gave Rel a furtive glance, which Rel noted. He also noted the relief that lightened the man’s face on seeing that Rel was not going to make trouble about being left with the supposed bad bed.
“Brisk night,” this man said, coming forward to stand near the floor vent, through which the kitchen fires below sent warm air.
Rel shrugged. “Winter’s comin’ on,” he replied in the same conversational tone.
The two young journey-weavers were obviously brothers—both blond, skinny, with snub noses that betrayed in their ruddiness the consumption of too much winter punch. Their flirtation with the innkeeper’s daughter had apparently been cut short. And—yes, they were looking for trouble. It was clear from their expressions that they had decided (maybe hoped) Rel’s acceptance of the worst bed meant he was a coward.