Sartor
“This one has to die,” he murmured.
“But—” she squeaked. “But!”
Her uncle gave her a strained look. “I can’t save the others, but at least I can spare them serving as entertainment when he is in the mood for blood.” He jerked his chin toward the approaching footsteps.
And what if you lose? Lilah wanted to say, but it was already too late. She already knew the answer: her uncle would not kill someone who’d been dropped into sleep by Lure. Even his worst enemy, and maybe this Norsundrian was, would be given the chance to fight for his life.
So she gritted her teeth and stayed silent, too terrified to do anything but press herself flat against the wall as a big, brawny Norsundrian tromped around the corner. Lilah caught a brief glimpse of a habitually mean face that turned into an ugly sneer when the man saw Darian Irad, who was so much shorter and lighter in build.
The Norsundrian pulled his weapons, and the fight began.
The hallway was about as wide as two men could stretch out their arms. Plenty wide, until you are stuck within range of sharp-edged steel arcing and swinging, and then it becomes close and confining. Trying to watch the fight made Lilah dizzy, but at least it did not last long—that is, she thought so afterward. At the time, it seemed to go on forever, until Darian Irad disarmed the larger man with a fast stroke of the sword, and then with his other hand ripped the knife across the man’s neck.
Lilah flinched away, though not before she saw a dark stream jet out from the cut throat, and there was nothing to prevent her from hearing the terrible gargling sounds of the man dying.
“This way,” her uncle said, and ran. She fled at his heels, terror singing in her ears.
At the stable, he stood back and waved for her to put the stable guards to sleep. Her hands shook terribly, and she almost dropped the Lure, but she managed to do her job while her uncle leaned against the wall, breathing hard, the knife still dark-smeared.
When the guards were asleep, they slipped into the stable.
“Get the headstalls and reins while I clean this weapon and saddle us up.” He pointed with that nasty knife.
She turned away, fighting nausea again, and made it to the long row of bridles and headstalls and blackweave reins before she bent over, retching dryly as she whispered the Waste Spell. Dizzy, miserable, she straightened up, forced herself to get what she’d been sent to get. He’ll get us out of here, she kept repeating to herself. Uncle Dirty-Hands will get us out of here.
When she got back, it was to find that he had saddled both horses and found a second sword, one of those heavy ones the cavalry warriors used, and now he was waiting. He took the bridles and finished that job in silence.
Then he looked around. No one. He said in an undertone, “We are both dressed in uniform. Since no alarm has been raised, there’s a chance we’ll be able to ride out unmolested. But you have to look as if you have business to attend to. And do not speak. If they address us, you leave the talking to me. Understand?”
Lilah jerked her head in a nod.
They mounted up, rode through the empty court and out the gates, under the eyes of the marching sentries.
Surges of terror wrung Lilah’s insides at the way her uncle glanced back at the walls, but he said nothing, and she heard no pursuit, no noises of alarm.
No one stopped them as they rode out into the darkness. Lilah began to believe in the escape only when the torchlit crenellations smeared into a red-glowing blur behind them.
Neither of them was aware of Kessler standing on the highest tower, looking down at their receding figures and laughing soundlessly as their hoof beats diminished rapidly into the distance.
TWELVE
The expected summons came not long after sunup.
Kessler was waiting at Zydes’s office when the latter arrived, as he wanted the pleasure of observing his commander’s process of discovery. Before he opened the office door, Zydes’s face revealed the pallor and tension lines of residual magic reaction. He had to have been off somewhere, planting magic traps for someone. Probable Dejain.
Good.
“Where’s that brat?” Zydes snapped, as he let himself into the office. Kessler followed, watching obliquely, but Zydes did not move toward the scope. He didn’t even turn in that direction; his intent seemed to be on the papers accumulated on the desk. “If she’s still sleeping, yank her out by the ear. I’ll not tolerate laziness.”
Kessler lingered as long as he could without causing comment. Zydes sat down, scowling as he read the top report. With an inward shrug, Kessler left.
He went through all the motions, just as if he’d expected to find the Landis brat in the end chamber. He unlocked the door, surveyed the empty bed, the barren stone corners of the room, shut the door, locked it again, and returned to the office. He could tell instantly that Zydes hadn’t moved—he was halfway through his stack of secret reports. He couldn’t have looked at the side table yet.
“She’s not there,” Kessler said.
Zydes neatly set a paper on a third pile as he said irritably, “Well, go get her, then, fool.”
So Kessler walked down to the mess and looked about with the air of a diligent searcher. He took his time, examining hallways where a child might conceivably have loitered, and then returned to the tower.
Zydes had nearly finished his reading, and had divided the reports into four piles. He looked up impatiently. Kessler wanted to laugh—he still hadn’t looked at the scope.
“I did not find her in the mess, or in this wing. Did you send her down to the stables?”
“I didn’t send her anywhere,” Zydes snarled. Then he rose, and at last turned toward the scope, a gesture so habitual Kessler suspected Zydes was unaware how revealing it was.
His reaction was better than Kessler could have hoped.
His face drained of what color it had. It really was a blanch, the exact expression, or as near as the living might get, to the look on someone’s face whose guts have just been ripped open by a blade. Kessler let himself glance at the table, and he mimed a look of surprise when he saw that the scope was gone, its support rods curved around empty space.
Zydes stared at that empty space, his eyes distended, as though the force of angry disbelief could remake what had obviously been turned to ash. Then he actually walked all the way around the side table, his mouth gaping like a beached fish.
Kessler counted three breaths. Four.
Zydes swung about. Kessler waited. It took no mind-reading abilities to follow the chain of his thoughts here: accusation. Then realization that Kessler could not possibly have entered the chamber, because there were heavy wards against him crossing the threshold without Zydes being present. And Zydes thought he knew no magic. Then he’d remember the wards he’d put in place against Detlev, Dejain, and a half-dozen other mages who did know enough magic—
“Who did this?” It was scarcely a whisper, but Kessler heard it. Then, “Get out!”
Kessler left, and executed all his errands, moving without haste, or furtiveness, because he knew that at some point magic would be tracking him.
One of his stops was to the quartermaster, to pick up supply reports. While the man assembled his papers Kessler wandered along the shelves near the transport square, where new commodities were always offloaded against the incoming magical transfer of more.
Most of what he saw was foodstuffs: barrels of rice, bushels of oats, and crates and crates of various greens that would be transported by magic. But at the other end were rolls of heavy gray wool—the same kind he had ordered some years before, when he’d had to equip an army. This wool was the kind that made the best riding cloak that could be besorcelled against wet.
Invasion. Sartor? Probably. Zydes still had not told anyone that Detlev’s time-bindings had been released.
“Here you go.”
Kessler picked up the papers and left.
The signal came for the guard to change. This was also the signal for the midday meal for
those on the day watch. Kessler retreated to his room to wait.
Mentally he had been tracking Zydes’s likely movements. He would, by now, have found out that one of the recruits was also gone—Darian Irad, former king of Sarendan, no less. And that the two recruit-wing sentries had been rendered unconscious by unknown means, as well as the recruits in Irad’s barracks room, and the command wing guards at the barracks entryway, and stable guards; that Jaskuil, the command wing rover—a notorious informer with an insatiable taste for floggings—was dead, his throat slit. That the two roving patrols whose entire purpose was to question anyone walking about had been sidetracked, one to the prison, the other to the south wall. That two mounts were missing, that two figures, a scout and a guide, had been seen riding out on the north road.
A scout and a guide? Who had issued orders to pass them?
The order traced back to Jaskuil.
Written? No, spoken. By whom?
No one could remember... during the relay of general orders at the watch change?
Whence had come the warning that sent the two roving patrols on futile investigations? The relay of spoken orders again would lead back to Jaskuil.
Kessler knew that his speculations were correct because there was no summons. He did not waste any time thinking about what might happen if someone did manage to place him along the escapees’ trail, clearing the way for them without their knowing it. The most interesting part of the day was the destruction of the scope, which he had not expected the brat to be capable of. (And from the long silence, it was clear that Zydes still had not put the missing brat and the destroyed scope together. He was futilely investigating his rival mages.)
The scope’s destruction changed Kessler’s plans. He sat back, watching through the north window. There were now two possibilities: either Zydes revealed who his ‘messenger’ was, in which case he’d be sending half the mounted after her—or else he’d want to keep her identity secret, in which case—
A bang on his door. “Summons.”
Zydes was pacing back and forth. “The brat is definitely missing. How could she have learned enough of our magic to break my ward?” He flung out a hand in the direction of the side table. “More important, could she possibly be the one who destroyed the scope? Even Dejain couldn’t get at it, and she’s tried. Four times during the last half a year, at least.” He smirked, but his expression immediately soured. “It couldn’t have been that soul-sucking brat!”
Kessler remained silent.
A hand smashed on the desk. “It gets worse. She made a detour, it seems, and managed to spring Irad of Sarendan. That has to mean he’s offered the Landis brat his army to help her retake Sartor. If they make it over the Sarendan border—”
Then everyone in the world, on both sides, will know that Sartor’s time binding is broken.
Kessler said, his voice devoid of any hint of interest, “I thought Irad was deposed.”
A searching look from dark-pouched, yellowed eyes. “Yes. But the puling cripple they replaced him with apparently can’t even lift a blade. My guess is, if Irad shows up in Sarendan again, especially with the Landis girl at his side, and he whistles, his entire army will come running. Especially if they think they can measure blades against us. That’s what he’d been training them for, right?”
Kessler did not answer.
Another look. Another angry, impotent gesture. Then unwilling speech, as if forced out: “You. Take as many as you think necessary, and bring them back before they reach Sarendan.”
Kessler left, issued the orders to detach squads he’d long since chosen against just such an opportunity, and saw to the supplies and to the selection of the extra mounts himself. Within a short time, they were riding east toward Sarendan.
And there was no scope to follow their movements.
Kessler held no ill-will toward either the Landis girl or Irad. When she’d begun asking her clumsy questions about the recruits, it had been obvious that she was contemplating a run, but he hadn’t thought she’d have the guts to actually try. She’d surprised him considerably when she’d not only appeared, but let herself into Zydes’s office with commendable speed, and then emerged again, trailing the stink of burning metal, and proceeding straight down to recruit territory. Again a surprise, when she reappeared with Irad of Sarendan.
Kessler had enjoyed deflecting the worst of their obstacles; covert action was in some ways more demanding and more complex than assault. Irad’s killing of Jaskuil—not at all surprising—had even provided a convenient source for all the false orders.
The Landis girl definitely lived up to the standards of her ancestors. Not even Detlev could have surmised that the stupid front she presented to the world hid not only formidable magic skills—dark magic, yet—but also the ability to execute a clever move like springing the former king of Sarendan—against whom Kessler had, a couple of years ago, looked forward to taking the field himself. Irad, who had been betrayed into recruitment in much the same fashion Kessler had, evoked enough sympathy that, had Zydes released their names and sent the regulars after them, Kessler would have wished they’d manage to stay at large, if only to frustrate Zydes.
But now they had been handed to Kessler, and so they were transformed from objects of interest into weapons to be used against Zydes and Dejain.
He would give them no more consideration than the archer gives the arrow that will accomplish the kill.
o0o
A flight of squeaking bats wheeled through the thick, still night air and vanished with a whisper of wings into the peaks above.
“Oh, can’t we rest?” Lilah cried, unable to endure any more riding or walking, especially without water or food.
The sun had only begun to smear the eastern clouds with grayish light. Her uncle turned her way, but she could not see his expression.
“It was too easy,” he said. “We have to keep on the move.” He gestured. “The horses need water, anyway.”
“So do we,” she muttered.
There was no answer.
Too easy? Too EASY?
Lilah was much too tired—and afraid of her uncle—to wail, but she wanted desperately to yowl and howl and stamp her feet. If a horrible night like the one they’d just endured was too easy, what would he consider tough?
But she neither yowled nor stamped, for she needed every bit of her failing strength to plonk one foot in front of the other. Uncle Dirty-Hands held the reins of both horses, for Lilah couldn’t even do that anymore. The animals’ hooves thudded behind her, their heads drooping, their sweaty sides shuddering.
“Rain coming,” her uncle said.
Water. The thought revived her just enough for her to be able to lift her head and look skyward. Indeed, the flat gray clouds she’d gotten used to had given way to the lowering, ragged-edged blue-gray of moisture-laden thunderheads. Two cold splats landed on her face, and drops chuffed into the aged dust of the hill trail.
Her uncle had insisted they leave the road just before dawn, which had slowed them even more. Lilah had obeyed, beyond questioning, though the sight of the trail upward into the hills on either side of the road had compounded her misery.
She dropped her head, and a cold buffet of wind nearly knocked her off her feet. “Please, Uncle Dirty-Hands, can’t we stop? Just a little?”
“Rain will obliterate our trail,” he said. “I think we can look for shelter now, at least until the storm passes.”
Shelter. Her eyes were too bleary for looking around for hidey-holes. She followed, sticking her tongue out in hopes of water. Two or three drops had finally fallen onto it (though they didn’t make much difference) by the time he said, “Here.”
Two gigantic slabs of striated rock had fallen sideways long ago in some unimaginable tremor, forming a kind of rock tent. It was large enough for both horses, as well as the two of them.
Lilah flung herself down onto the gathered dust along one side, grateful to stop moving at last. But she was too thirsty to sleep.
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Her uncle unslung one sword from across his back, and the other from his belt, set them down, and dropped the knife on top. Then he set to work unsaddling and caring for the horses. She saw that he’d managed to pack food for them in the saddlebags, the same pressed squares of oat-and-hay that Kessler had used for the horses on the road south. She felt a faint flare of hope that was swiftly extinguished when she reflected that stable supplies were unlikely to provide stuff for people.
Presently he came back and sat on a rock opposite Lilah. In the sky, a long mutter of thunder prefaced a sudden downpour of slanting, hissing rain. The air swiftly chilled, and rivulets of dust-laden brown liquid ran into their shelter.
Lilah pulled her feet aside. “I don’t know why you said this escape was too easy,” she said fretfully.
“It was too easy to get out of the fortress,” her uncle replied.
Lilah’s mouth dropped open.
He shook his head. “We will have to ascribe it to internal politics, short of any further enlightenment.”
Lilah groaned. Tired as she was, and hungry, and thirsty, and frightened, she felt a dreary mental sensation, as if she swam in deep water very far from shore. What did he mean? Oh, who cared what he meant. They were out, and he hadn’t abandoned her, or said he was going to murder her in revenge for the revolution. That was all that mattered now.
She looked out at the brown water slopping along the insides of the biggest slab of rock. “Do we have to drink that?”
“Wait. It’ll run clear after a time.”
Lilah sighed.
Her uncle transferred his gaze to her. “How came you there?” He added wryly, “The invasion of Sarendan was, I thought, postponed against some evolving trouble to the north. But ground-level rumor is often untrustworthy no matter what side one is on.”
Lilah hesitated. Then she said uneasily, “Maybe I ought to ask how you got there?”
“Whom do you expect me to betray?” he retorted. But at the expression of unfeigned misery in her face, exaggerated by her evident exhaustion, he relented, and said, “My own betrayal was affected by Kalaeb Flendar, in a mistaken attempt to bargain himself into a position of influence. Commander Benoni suspected what had happened and took the time-honored way out. I was too slow.”