Lhind the Spy

  Hlanan blinked as a snowflake dropped on his eyelash. He glanced up at the white sky overhead as snow began to fall. Then he faced me. “If I look at the world through Geric’s eyes, his life is compounded by betrayal. Raised as a prince to royal expectations, to discover that the empress has decreed that the Golden Circle is no more. Disappeared for years to be taught dark magic, and coached to connive with style, to court with pretty lies, then sent back to—well, I can see that you are not going to sympathize.”

  I snorted hard enough to make my nose hurt. “I am never going to feel the least pity for somebody born to privilege who finds he doesn’t get any after all. What is royalty anyway, except a kind of illusion without magic? We’re all just a bunch of humans with our clothes off, only I’ve got fuzz!”

  He laughed as I’d expected, but said, “I do pity those raised to privilege, because they aren’t taught how to make a meaningful life any other way. That’s why I will always be grateful to my mother for the way I was raised. If she decides to choose one of my brothers as heir, I can make a meaningful life for myself as a scribe. Or as a mage, though that means years more of study. And I’m not a good student. I like being out in the world too much.”

  He thumbed more snowflakes away from his eyes. My middle hollowed out at the sight of his eyelashes on his cheeks, the tiny veins in his eyelids, the hint of laughter at the corners of his mouth.

  He was such a good person. As for me?

  I shied away from that thought.

  “Anyway,” Hlanan said, “Maybe Geric can learn something in our talk. And I can learn something from him.”

  “Such as what Dhes-Andis has told him?”

  “Yes, and when. And how. We do not know how they are connected, only that they are.”

  An idea hit me then. But I wasn’t going to mention it because I had no idea if it would work, and I was still embarrassed, even uneasy, about what was so new to me. So I said, “I think I did hear Geric just now.”

  Hlanan rose to his feet, brushing clumped snow off his knees. “He’s probably thirsty again. He’s been drinking a lot of water, with that fever.”

  He went off and I looked around. Evergreen woods in one direction, rocky screes in another, a chasm in a third, beyond which lay the narrow, twisted valley of the Pass. To either side, great peaks rose high above our heads—and we were very high.

  High enough? I climbed up the scree, hopping easily from stone to stone. It felt good to leap again, springing high into the air. Oh, yes! On each spring that light sensation buoyed my middle. I recognized it now for what it was: in another form, I could fly.

  So I climbed until I was well beyond the sight of the camp or the guards, then shed my clothes and thief tool bag. I hid them under a rock, stayed long enough to mark the place in memory, and swung my arm. It was healed enough for flying.

  So I stepped to the edge of the cliff, and sprang into the air.

  Flash! I took wing.

  For a time I reveled in the joy of flight, circling spires and diving down so that the tops of the tall firs whispered beneath my belly feathers. But the pit of my right wing pulled enough to remind me that I wasn’t completely healed.

  So I flapped up into a climb, searching for eddies of wind to aid me—and caught sight of a patch of white against the white.

  “Lhind!” A faint cry in the heavy air. But I knew that voice.

  “Tir!”

  Tir angled, riding a current I hadn’t felt; I lifted until I felt the air streaming under me, and matched pace.

  And then we had . . . not a conversation in human words. Nor was it quite the same as talking in the mental realm with Faryana, the Hrethan mage imprisoned within that diamond necklace, or with Dhes-Andis. I didn’t have a sense of the mental plane. That is, my inner door was still shut.

  But in my bird form I could understand Tir, and respond in kind. Indeed, I squawked and creeled—I know that isn’t really a word, but it’s so close to the sound—bird language being so very different than human. The way dog language only has sounds as emphasis. The real communication is all through the complexity of scents, which humans blunder through obliviously.

  I told Tir what I was about. The aidlar responded with pleasure at my intent. I learned that Tir had been watching over Hlanan and me ever since I’d first reached the imperial city, at the behest of the Hrethan.

  Why? I asked.

  The answer can’t be put into words, and I still refused to open the door to the mental plane to share images. But I gained the sense that the Hrethan wished to know who we were. It’s the “whoness” I can’t explain. But it meant more than our names.

  While I struggled with this communication we flew up slopes where the air aided us, and circled in a wide spiral with a slow wind pattern. I not only learned a great deal about flying, but I came to two astonishing realizations: that Tir, the aidlar, was kin to Hrethan, and that my bird form was aidlar. I laughed inside as I soared high. Were my honey-brown eyes ruby, too? But Tir didn’t perceive color the same way I did, or at least eye colors were irrelevant.

  With Tir’s aid, I learned to sense how the snow clouds above me weighed down in an instinctive warning. The snow would soon thicken, and that would be dangerous even for birds.

  We flew high in a great circle, looking down. There was the camp. No one looked up. They looked like ants below me, busily swarming around making a muddy mess of footprints.

  From there we flew outward. Even though snow had fallen, it did not obliterate completely the trail made by numerous humans trampling the ground.

  Circling and flying up the drafts, we located five such trails, which combined into two, and then an enormous one, winding down and down and away. . . .

  Down—the heaviness warned me that I was losing the heights that supported whatever magic caused my transformation.

  Ride the high currents, Tir admonished. Your form flies not in low, heavy air.

  I knew that! Frightened, I adjusted my wings to glide on a slow current that brought up the smells of ground and mulch into the air, and I studied the complicated line of mountains falling southward into hills, and beyond, vast plains bisected by the silver ribbon of the river.

  Was that distant river south of Keprima—had I flown that far? From Tir no answer. To Tir, the land was the land. Human boundaries lay solely in our minds.

  In the extremity of distance, movement in a dark line along that river, where once for a day I had traveled with Hlanan, his sister, and Rajanas. . . .

  It was time to return.

  My right wing gradually tightened into ache as I climbed upward into the sky. Tir exclaimed that I was hurt, and when I favored my right wing, the aidlar flew in a way that helped push a bit of air under my right side.

  Even so, I was losing the battle to stay aloft. Snow fell faster; there were fewer currents to afford me a breather. I began to fear I would have to drop and make my way somehow on foot when Tir screeched to lift, lift—see? I had been completely lost, flying where Tir flew. Below me I spotted the striated rock of the Pass, and above that, the familiar rocks of my scree.

  I plummeted down, less a glide than a drop, and landed hard.

  The transformation thumped into my chest like an invisible fist. Out snapped my legs and arms, heavy as stone, my tail feathers now a snow-sodden tail. My Hrethan tail looks like hair, but it’s actually long feathers that I can lift and wave, which helps my balance—but all those tiny feathers had caught snow, as had my hair, which is a mane all down my back and spine. I felt as if a couch had landed on my back.

  Utterly exhausted, I dropped into sleep without knowing it.

  And there on the heights, I dreamed.

  I was back on board the ship, tossing on the rising waves as Dhes-Andis taunted me.

  Come, my child, whispered a sweet female voice, clearer than ever. But I didn’t trust what had to be another ruse. I didn’t trust anything.

  My mind cowered into itself as distorted memories battered me mercilessly: branche
s whipping my face, my breath searing my throat, a howling mob, a figure writhing in a fire . . . fire . . . streaming in glowing orange rivers through the endless sky as my own voice shrieked, “NO SPELLS! NO SPELLS!”

  Come, my child. Do not linger in fear. Here on the heights we are strong. Lift the veil that divides our minds. There is much I can teach you, but the dream realm is chancy.

  No! HE is waiting there! You are trying to trick me!

  Still I fought, but there was no turning over, or waking up, because my body was frozen. Untethered, my mind drifted closer to the deepest memory of all: finding myself tumbling to unknown ground. Alone with shock, pain, bewilderment.

  The Blue Lady floated down above me, wind rippling slowly through her moon-pale draperies, and she held out her hands.

  Memories: those hands clasping me warmly when I was very small. All around me a fierce, hot wind rose, but I kept my eyes on the tender gaze of the Blue Lady as I held out my dream hands—and again heard a voice, clear as a silver bell, familiar all my life as a fragmented whisper: Lift the veil, my darling daughter.

  No!

  Another door, as memories fragments: the feel of sand on my feet, the howl of the wind as I ran, and always, always, the caw and screech and twitter of birds, as here one dropped an apple into my lap, and there another a spray of sweet grapes.

  When I was cold, warm little bodies settled on me, soft as down, tiny hearts beating a comforting rhythm. Each sensation flowered into forgotten memory.

  I can’t, I cried. He’ll get me.

  Reach for me, she replied, and here was the clearest vision yet. I knew her face, blue as a morning summer sky, blue eyes, not slanted like mine, but round like a bird’s, midnight blue hair floating slowly about her head in soothing ripples.

  Come, my daughter. You shall learn how to permit entry to only those you wish. I will teach you, she said, her arms open.

  I sailed toward her, but I had no hands to reach, no lips to kiss her.

  I have tried to reach you again and again, my heart.

  So has he, I cried over the slow, deep bawl, as if some sea creature as large as an island bellowed deep undersea.

  I have tried to send you aid as I could, through your dreams, and through our kin among the avians. But I cannot teach you unless we can meet mind to mind.

  You’re alive? Why did you leave me? Where’s my father?

  I shouted the word Why? Why? Why? in the dream as the strange bawl intensified to a rising, falling burble.

  Meet my mind—

  Her words blended with the terrifying memory of Dhes-Andis’s mental voice, so friendly, so amused, so ready to offer me any magic spells I wished to learn. This is another ruse, I thought, and far below in memory I wailed in desolation, alone, abandoned and afraid.

  And she was gone.

  TEN

  The dream dissipated, leaving me lying in the snow, panting as if I’d been running. I ached in every muscle, bone, and nerve. I rolled over and squirmed on the rocks to shed the packed snow clotting my fuzz and hair, then groped wearily for my clothes.

  The snow fell in a steady curtain past which I could scarcely see. Faint golden lights dancing about unevenly in the distance resolved into a patrol carrying lanterns as they walked a perimeter around the camp. The sun had set. Tir and I had flown through the entire day.

  The snow glowed dimly blue, dissolving into shadows when I reached the huts.

  Ruddy light and the smell of toasted nut bread assailed my nostrils when I walked in.

  Heads turned, and Rajanas said, “I thought you’d taken yourself off.”

  Kuraf spoke from deep in a muffler, “You’re only wearing that silk. Do you not feel the cold, child?”

  “I’m cold,” I said, sinking wearily onto a pile of blankets airing near the fire. “Where is Hlanan?”

  “Getting soup down Geric Lendan’s throat,” Rajanas said, one hand signing.

  Oflan sat on the opposite side of the fire, fingers clasping a mug whose contents steamed gently.

  The bread I’d smelled lay on a tray, which had been set on a camp stool. I felt too leaden to dash in and swipe some. I gazed hungrily at the pile, my limbs not wanting to move. My right arm throbbed dully.

  Kuraf nodded at Nill. “Get the Hrethan something to eat.”

  I hadn’t realized how worn I was until I got a few bites into the bread. Warmth spread through me, not banishing the aches, but enabling me to bear them, and to become a little more aware of my surroundings.

  Kuraf and Captain Nath and Rajanas bent over a grubby, much folded map that lay on a makeshift table as they discussed how to divide up their scouts. When I left, they were putting forward ideas for provisioning said scouts.

  I finished the bread, forced myself to my feet, and found Hlanan at the hut where Prince Geric lay, deeply asleep.

  Even though his breathing soughed slowly, and his eyes moved beyond his eyelids, I didn’t trust him. So I drew Hlanan near the door, in spite of the cold, and in idiomatic Thesreve, I told him about my flight and what I’d seen.

  Before I got to the end, he took me by the shoulders. “Lhind,” he exclaimed in Elras. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Have you told Ilyan?”

  “No.” I grimaced, trying to put my reluctance into words. “My secret. . . .” I began, then stopped, looking away. But the candlelight playing over Geric’s filthy reddish hair served as a reminder: Geric knew I could turn into a bird. The Gray Wolves knew.

  That secret was no longer any kind of a secret.

  “Come on,” Hlanan said, and took my hand.

  Somehow it was easier to hear him tell it to Rajanas, Kuraf, Oflan, and Chief Nath, rather than my trying to find the words. I was still too worn out to comprehend the consequences until I saw their faces change. Not just their faces. They turned around and faced our way, exhibiting several different kinds of astonishment, as Pandoc signed for Oflan.

  Rajanas thumped his hands onto his knees. “You will never cease to catch me by surprise, thief,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you realize you just saved us weeks, maybe months of rough work?”

  “Of peril,” Kuraf said, as the wind keened around the spires on the cliff above us.

  “And all to discover that your plan worked,” Hlanan said.

  Rajanas slowly shook his head. “It’s too easy.”

  Kuraf sighed. “All those messages. For nothing.”

  Hlanan said, “I don’t understand. You were successful in dividing them, or surely they would still be here?”

  “I think this supposed invasion is a feint,” Rajanas said slowly. “To see how we respond.” A noise at the door caused him to look up sharply, hand going to the knife at his side as Kuraf reached for her own weapon, then both slowly sank back again.

  Prince Geric leaned in the doorway, the knuckles of his hand white as he held himself up. At his side stood one of the forest rangers.

  “Thann,” he said hoarsely, his face blanched paler than it had been right after that sword fight. “They’re on their way to Thann,” he whispered, long-jawed and shocked with betrayal.

  Rajanas looked at him impatiently, then he struck his hand on his knee. “I never thought of that. Gray Wolves are here,” he said, waving an arm wide. “The garrison in Thann is empty, eh?”

  “ Only two troops,” Geric said hoarsely. “Left. Guard city.”

  “Go back to bed.” Rajanas nicked his chin at one of the waiting equerries. “No one is going anywhere right now. We’ve a blizzard moving in, you might have noticed.”

  “Have to go back,” Geric retorted, without much force.

  “Not today. Nobody is moving today, including that army. Get some sleep. We’ll put you on the road soon as we can clear a path.”

  The big equerry took Geric’s arm, and led him away.

  “Hah.” Rajanas shook his head. “That’s a twist I hadn’t foreseen.”

  Kuraf sighed. “He’s been going on about treachery, but nothing we’ve done holds a candle t
o that.” She glanced reflectively at the window, then turned to Rajanas. “Do you really want to send him to Thann?”

  “What else is there to do with him?” Rajanas retorted.

  Hlanan said, “I’ll take him.”

  Rajanas grinned. “See that he gets there, eh?” His smile vanished. “Leaving the question, why would he return there at all? Yes, his former ally Dhes-Andis seems to have conveniently got Lendan out of the way—he and the Gray Wolves both—so he has a ready garrison for his army in Thann, but so what? The Lendans have never held so much as a vegetable plot in Thann.”

  “It seems to have become his home,” Hlanan said.

  Rajanas humphed. “He and Morith a love match, is that what you’re suggesting? Impossible. He never does anything without an eye to gain, and the only thing she ever loved was power.”

  “I don’t know.” Hlanan sighed. “He’s more difficult to understand than I once thought. Something is driving him hard. I’m sure of it.”

  “The aristocrat’s affront at being crossed,” Rajanas stated, as though he weren’t a prince. But then a good part of his life he had not lived like one.

  As equerries came in, bringing a tray of travel mugs wafting a heady aroma, I sank tiredly beside Kuraf on a rude bench.

  The equerries passed out the hot, spicy crackle berry punch. I had never tasted it before—they brewed it from dried berries and carefully hoarded Summer Island spice—and I reflected on how much I had missed while living hand-to-mouth so long. Crackle berries could be found everywhere, but that spice was costly.

  Kuraf spoke up after a reflective silence. “Prince Geric appears to be invested in Thann. Whether emotionally or materially might make a difference in his intent.”

  Rajanas uttered a soft grunt as he set his mug aside. “Which he won’t tell us. Anyway, it’s not my decision to make, but on reflection it seems to me a bad idea to send Geric to the same place a loose army seems to be headed.”

  “If they are Dhes-Andis’s hirelings,” Hlanan said soberly, “they are not likely to take any orders from Geric. And I will be with him.”