Sartor

  “I would like you to teach me the non-aging spell.”

  Tsauderei looked surprised. “Why?”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking about. A lot. And something Lilah said made me realize that I’m not alone in thinking about it. I am not certain I want to be an adult yet. If don’t succeed, it’s not going to matter, right?”

  Tsauderei heaved a sigh. “I gave Lilah and her friends that spell because it won’t do any harm for them to delay the onset of adulthood for a time. But you know it doesn’t make you immortal. It simply delays your physical maturation.”

  “I know that,” Atan retorted.

  Tsauderei fingered the diamond in his earlobe. “Most young folks your age can scarcely wait to be grown up. But then soon enough the adult begins looking back longingly to the untroubled days of youth.” He chuckled, then sobered. “Lilah’s reasons I understand. She can blame the unhappy portions of her childhood on her mother’s failed romance. But you?”

  “I just know that I’m not ready to be courted. Until I learn more about how to be around real people, not just people from history books. And above all, I don’t want to be distracted by... by adult matters, until I understand people my age.”

  “But how are you going to learn about such things except by experience?”

  Atan sighed. “Maybe it’s a bad idea... and maybe I won’t do it. But I think... I think I want the option.”

  Tsauderei rubbed his forehead, then sat back. “You know it won’t work if you’re over the threshold already. Have you begun your female courses?”

  “No,” Atan said. “But Gehlei told me it should be soon.”

  “Well, one good thing about light magic is that it is benign,” Tsauderei said wryly. “If you are too close to the threshold, then the spell will not hold. Very well. I’ll give it to you. And the antidote.” He gave her an ironic glance from under bushy brows, and she wondered for the very first time in all their years of studying together if the old mage had ever had a romance in his life. “Perhaps a year or two more of childhood might be an aid for you.”

  He reached for the inkwell and paper that always lay ready on the low table.

  The door opened then, but instead of Lilah, Gehlei entered, a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables on her arm.

  Gehlei took them in, question lifting her gray brows, then she turned away, so that all they could see was her silvery-white braid.

  “Here you go,” Tsauderei said, setting the pen down beside the ink bottle. “I have one more thing, which I will fetch directly.” He made the transfer magic, and vanished.

  Atan thought it better to get the worst over before the other two returned. “Gehlei, I am leaving for Sartor’s border,” she said. “Lilah is here. She will accompany me.”

  Gehlei turned around. Atan could see how unhappy—how angry—she was.

  “I wish I could go to protect you,” Gehlei said.

  Atan winced. At fifty-five, Gehlei had been able to fight off an assassin, though she’d lost the use of one arm. Fifteen years had passed since Tsauderei had found Gehlei and Atan on the border. Gehlei couldn’t fight off an assassin anymore.

  “You taught me well,” Atan said. “I’m bigger than you are now, and I ought to be able to protect myself.”

  Gehlei dug her fingers into her right shoulder. “If only this thing would heal right! But I suppose if Tsauderei’s magic couldn’t do it, nothing will.” She pressed her lips together. Tears gleamed along her lower lids. “I wish you’d wait.”

  “I thought it would be later as well,” Atan said. “But this entire week—I can’t explain it. I just know I have to leave. And the urgency must be more than fancy, because Tsauderei agrees.”

  “So we old people sit here and watch you trot down the mountain to danger.” Gehlei’s voice roughened. She shook her head, used her apron to wipe her eyes, then straightened up. “Well, you’ll do your duty, that’s plain to see. Your parents both did that. So I ought to shut up and not make it worse. I’ll give you two loaves of nut-bread, both fresh. They’ll keep for a couple weeks if wrapped tight after every use. And I’ll put up a bag of nuts, and some preserved fruit, and a good wedge of Mistress Rhodei’s best cheese.”

  She mounted the ladder to the loft, where Atan had slept since she was two years old. “I’ll also fetch down your gown,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” Atan called, and then bent to pick up the scrap of paper with Tsauderei’s familiar writing. Why was this decision important? She didn’t know—yet—but she knew it was.

  She tucked the paper into a corner of the travel bag that she had been preparing.

  Her magic books had to stay behind, as she didn’t dare use magic until the end of her quest. She ran her finger along her oldest one, full of her own writing—every spell she’d mastered, and notes on what she’d observed and learned.

  A clatter and a thump outside the door and Lilah bounced in, her hair wild, her face relaxed in a funny grin.

  “Got ’em,” she proclaimed. “Whew! Those Lure blossoms do get to you!” She flopped down onto her hassock. “But a good hard fly in the cold air revived me.”

  Gehlei reappeared, holding out two garments, one bulky. “You can take my old coat,” she said gruffly to Lilah, who thanked her.

  Atan packed her one good gown into the knapsack. Her usual clothes—the tunic and trousers that girls wore for riding—would be suitable for travel, but if she succeeded, she knew she would have to look like the Queen of Sartor. As much as she could. The fine white cotton-wool gown, with its violet trim that she had stitched herself, was going to have to do.

  After all, it’s not like Sartor has fashions anymore.

  Tsauderei reappeared in his chair. He held out a ring. His voice was strained as he said, “This ought to give you a little protection, though only in the form of light. I altered the trip-spell, to make it easier. Touch it here, and say Sartorias-deles. Easy to remember.”

  Atan took the ring, looked at the plain band, the milky-white gem in the middle. Light pooled oddly in it, sending a prickle of warning through her mind: she sensed powerful magic here.

  Good.

  She slid it on her finger. This evidence of the Landis past made her feel peculiar. The ring had been fashioned by dark magic, so it would escape wards. The long-ago ancestor who had made it had led a very adventurous life.

  And what will they say about me some day? Or will the last of the Landises disappear without her existence ever being known?

  Well, that was for the future. She had plenty to do now.

  “Let us depart,” she said to Lilah, doing her best to smile.

  THREE

  Lilah had experienced transfer magic twice in her life.

  When Atan shifted the two girls from the cottage to a point well east of the border, Lilah felt that same weird vertigo, and when the magic-dazzle had cleared away, she plumped down on a mossy rock. “Hoo,” she said.

  Atan smiled in apology. “I know it would have been nicer to fly, but the flying spell doesn’t extend this far, and we would have had to transfer anyway, unless we wanted a fearful walk.”

  They were still in mountains, though the great peaks were mostly behind them to the east. Below to the west the mountains were really more like rocky hills, and beyond those, a gray haze obscured what once had been fine farmland.

  Lilah glanced back at the sky-high snowy peaks. “No, I wouldn’t want to walk those.” She pulled Gehlei’s coat more closely about her. “It’s cold.”

  “Tsauderei says that once we cross the border it will not get much colder, either. Part of the enchantment.”

  “Which is about to break,” Lilah said, following Atan.

  The taller girl had obviously scouted the area out at least once before, for she made her way confidently around some thick, scrubby bushes to a narrow sheep-trail, and began trudging downslope.

  Lilah walked with her, amazed at how quickly life could change. Well, the revolution had taught h
er that much. You wake up one morning, your biggest worry how badly your hair holds curl, and the next morning finds you in prison, and half the palace in flames.

  She thought about her offer, which had not been prompted by talk of magic spells, kings, or history. It was because Atan had looked so unhappy at the idea that someone had once found her dull. Lilah suspected that Atan had never had a chance to do normal things like play games, or talk about kid things. Not having been raised for so long in secret by an old mage and an aging steward.

  Atan’s face was hidden by the hood of her mountain coat, made of undyed sheep wool of mixed gray and brown shades. Good camouflage, Tsauderei had said.

  Lilah smoothed her hands down Gehlei’s old coat. Inside it was lined with heavy, smooth cotton-linen. The outside was nubbly and rough. Though it was an odd garment, unlike anything people in Sarendan wore, she liked it very much.

  She looked up. They had to be inside Sartor by now. And so far, no lightning bolts or terrible mages had showed up, all evil-eyed and spouting nasty spells.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch went their footsteps, the only noise besides the sough of wind from the heights. Why was going downhill easier on everything but your feet, and going uphill was all right for the feet but difficult for everything else? The trail was scarcely visible, very narrow along ledges as they picked their way down into a gulley overshadowed by trees, so she couldn’t see much.

  “Is there a road?” Lilah finally asked.

  “Not yet. I want to avoid any roads until we reach the most westward of the border mountains, which will open into plains. I know this walking is not all that pleasant, but it keeps us hidden for as long as possible. Beyond that we’ll have to follow along the Luyos River. I trust it has growth alongside. When it bends south, we’ll go west along one of the smaller rivers—”

  Atan stopped, and swung around to face Lilah. Her cheeks were blotchy with red, her brow knit. “Promise me, Lilah,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “If I talk too much, if I ramble and meander on too long about history or magic or the past, tell me. Stop me. Don’t nod and smile and let me find out later I am the world’s biggest sleep herb.”

  Lilah said, quite truthfully, “I like it when you talk about history.”

  Atan sighed. “Thank you. I didn’t believe so, but then—once—I—well, I know I am used to talking to adults like Tsauderei and Gehlei, but the only friend our age that I had was Dawn, and you know she wants to study magic. So we never bored each other. You and your brother were the first people I met outside the Valley whom I didn’t bore...” She made a comical face, and an attempt at a smile that hurt Lilah with its falsity. “Let’s just say I am ignorant of the arts of conversation.”

  “That’s not true. My brother said that you’re the first person he ever talked with who made him lose the sense of time passing. And it was the same for me. What happened?”

  Atan looked around, blushed some more, then said in a low, embarrassed voice, “Tsauderei took me to Bereth Ferian. There is a mage school there. I was transferred to a place of protection. You will understand I am not boasting when I say that everyone paid me the greatest attention? Bowing everywhere I turned, the mages stopping to listen if I so much as asked for a glass of water?”

  “I know,” Lilah said, thinking of the princess behavior she’d been grumping at Bren about. “Everybody is looking at you, and you think it’s with great respect...”

  “The respect was more curiosity, I think. Though maybe respect for the ancient name of Landis,” Atan said wryly as she gripped a sturdy young tree and lowered herself down a slippery bit of trail. “But I wanted so badly to meet people my age. Finally they agreed, if I promised not to tell anyone who I was, and dress like an ordinary citizen. Well, you know how I usually dress, though before I traveled, Tsauderei had had a friend obtain a suitable princess gown.”

  Lilah laughed. “Full of ribbons, no doubt?”

  “Not ribbons. Not for a beanpole like me. Lace,” she said distinctly, twiddling her fingers at her neck and wrists and waist and knees. “Waterfalls of it. Maybe to fill me out some. But I had taken my old clothes along. I slipped them on, borrowed Gehlei’s name, called myself a baker’s apprentice, and went to look at the ancient artifacts, and...” She shrugged. “I met artisans and students, people my age....” She shrugged sharply, ducking under a ferny branch before she looked back. “The short of it is, I thought I was doing so very well until I chanced to overhear someone asking someone else who the tall clodpole was who wouldn’t shut up, and who did she think she was impressing, was there some scribe tutor around looking to hire? At first I didn’t think it meant me until someone I thought a new friend else said, “Whoever thought bakers could bore you on every subject except bread?”

  Lilah grimaced, but as her own friends had said far worse to her face when they were mad at her, she waited for the worst part.

  But that was the worst part. Atan’s voice trembled as she said, “So I went back. Told Tsauderei to take me home. And ever since, I’ve tried to read about how to get on in groups, but you know, the records never talk about that. Even the most detailed records seem to assume everyone already knows.”

  Lilah bit her lip against exclaiming, Is that all? “I think I told you that I was pretty much stuck at home, no friends, until summer. Court didn’t count. Everybody was fake in court. That’s why I hated it so much. But anyway, during summer, I learned that anybody who says one thing to you and another about you isn’t worth listening to.” And after a sideways peek at Atan’s unhappy profile, she said, “That can’t be new, not after all you’ve read!”

  “Falsity and deceit, of course I have read about such. But are they not bound to politics and kingdoms and power? I can understand falsity to Princess Yustnesveas Landis,” Atan said dryly. “But why to a baker’s apprentice? Unless my false guise had been penetrated. I ought to have thought of that. Lilah, thank you—”

  “Wait, wait.” Lilah waved her hands, almost tripped over a tree root, and halted. “That person might not have guessed anything. People do that. For silly reasons. For no reason. And sometimes it isn’t the same person, or the same reason.” She thought about the arguments, laughter, and ways she’d had to learn to compromise during the summer, and got an idea. “Why don’t you practice on me? We can trade off. You tell me stories, and I’ll help you practice social things. As much as I can. I learned about not boring friends last summer, as my fellow Sharadan Brothers didn’t hide their feelings.”

  “Thank you,” Atan said.

  The trail angled steeply for a time, forcing the girls to pick their way with care. Lilah slipped once or twice, until she figured out how to watch exactly where Atan stepped, and place her foot in the footprint left by Atan’s. She was glad she’d worn sturdy shoes with cork soles, rather than thin green-weave slippers.

  o0o

  Lilah was glad to talk, because she was still a little scared of a Norsundrian lightning strike bringing down the mountainside on them, or at the very least their finding themselves transformed into mushrooms as a result of breaking the mysterious century-old spell. Even if it was only one spell in a pile of them. It was still Norsunder! But as the cloud-obscured sun passed slowly westward, and the girls worked their way steadily downhill, nothing happened.

  When Atan stopped at a stream tumbling down from the mountain, Lilah said, “Are we resting? My toes ache from all that downhill walking.”

  “We can stop for a little.” Atan dropped her knapsack, knelt and cupped her hands to drink from the stream.

  “For the people. When the enchantment lifts. Will they know a century passed, or will they think it’s a day later, and they are in for a big surprise?”

  “Tsauderei thinks it’s going to be the big surprise.” Atan picked up a pair of brightly colored pebbles, turning them over on her palms. “Sartor,” she murmured, almost too softly for Lilah to hear. “At last I have come home.”

  Lilah hid a sigh. To her eyes, the view was about as ug
ly as anything she’d ever seen—much uglier than Sarendan’s dry, cracked fields during the famine. She gazed into the gray haze that obscured the land to the west until Atan stirred and said, “I want to get below Point Adan by nightfall. I think it’ll be less cold if we get off the heights.”

  Lilah hopped to her feet. “Sure!” Her stomach growled, and she gulped in a breath to hide it. She’d gone hungry a lot during the summer, so she was used to waiting. “I’ll take a turn carrying the stuff,” she offered. “I may be short but I’m strong, and I carried my own knapsack for most of the summer.”

  “All right,” Atan said, and handed it over. She was already glad that Lilah had come. As long as they stayed safe, she thought as she watched the smaller girl hoist the knapsack onto her back. They started off.

  They wound down next to the stream, as Point Adan—the westernmost height—rose above them, an outthrust of ancient rock, colored with angled layers, evidence of the violent and desperate wrenching of the land into protective barriers made by long-dead mages in a vain effort to safeguard Sartor against invasion.

  Atan had begun to review past lessons on ancient magic when something moved. Something pale, beyond the hedgerow bordering the trail. She stilled, a hand out to halt Lilah.

  The girls poised to run, as the pale something obscured by the tangle of leaves resolved into—another girl!

  She stepped carefully around the tangle of dusty-green shrubbery, and stopped.

  Lilah stared at this wraith of a girl who looked Lilah’s age, or younger, her wide blue-gray eyes regarding them with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity that (Atan reflected) was probably a twin to their own faces.

  “I’m Merewen,” the girl said. “Ah, eh. Merewen Dei.”

  Atan was too surprised to speak. Another girl? Not just a girl, but a relative of some kind, because Atan’s mother had been a Dei before her marriage contract.

  Lilah was more interested in the girl, who seemed blue with cold. Except that she didn’t shiver. Lilah studied her more closely, from her long braids of wheat-colored hair past the anomaly of a silvery-white woven yeath-fur cloak worn over a plain, dusty summer tunic that came just below her knees. Her feet and arms were bare, the hue of the sky at sunup, sort of a peachy blue, and not at all mottled. Her gray tunic was sashed. Over her shoulder, peeping out from the soft folds of the expensive cloak, she’d slung a knapsack.