Sartor

  There was a space on one side, so he jammed the last of his bread in his mouth and hopped on, finding the slow back and forth arc comforting.

  So began a pattern that lasted for several days.

  In Shendoral, rain came. The kids stayed in great tree-platforms that maulons had constructed centuries ago. Atan lay in her snug hammock at the end of each day, listening to the patter of rain on green leaves, fighting against that anxious helplessness that underlay everything she did, said, or thought. Every day that ended without news of Lilah was another day of personal failure; the only escape was this new thing she’d read about, but no book could possibly describe the pleasure of the plain old Sartoran swing. Sometimes she counted the arcs, hoping that each would bring her closer to news of Lilah.

  o0o

  As for Lilah, each day saw her further south.

  Lilah struggled with conflict. She had decided to keep on pretending to be Atan, but how to escape? She could use her Lure, make Kessler sleep, but what if the horse also went to sleep? What if it threw her off, or ran toward the Norsunder Base—even if she knew which direction to go in? The sky was always gray, and the landscape steadily more dusty and rocky, with no landmarks at all to guide by.

  It would be better to bide her time. She had a feeling she would only get to use the Lure once. It had better be at exactly the right time.

  Kessler had no use for Yustnesveas Landis. Being a mage-trained princess, she’d either prate a lot of gibberish about good and evil, or else she’d mouth out defiant lies. His intention was to get this demeaning assignment done with as fast as possible, and carry on with his former plans—but he must first deliver a live prisoner who was reasonably in her wits.

  At the same time, he respected the abilities of the young. He knew what he’d managed to do when he was scarcely ten, and his defeat in ’33 had been initiated by a pair of girls even younger than this Landis.

  So when, on finishing her ration the next morning, she asked, “Are we going to the Norsunder Base?” and he had answered “Yes,” she blurted out, “Are you really dead?” he saw the incipient terror in her slanted gaze and lied. “Yes. Killed by a brat your age. I exist only for revenge.”

  His reward was a shocked silence, which was scarcely broken for the remainder of the journey.

  Now Lilah was too afraid to attempt to use her Lure. What could possibly work against the walking dead whose souls were owned by Norsunder’s distant creators? She was afraid that the magic keeping him alive would also keep him from falling into Lure sleep—though she wasn’t sure, because he did seem to need regular sleep, though far less than she did.

  She was even afraid to use that ring again, which obviously hadn’t worked, or she wouldn’t be here.

  In fact, she didn’t even like looking at it, she discovered when she examined the milky gem. Its soft glow rippled slightly, as if water ebbed across its surface or just under. When she stared at it, she felt a nasty sensation, as if the ring sucked light right out of her eyes.

  When Kessler led the horse to water, she pulled the ring from her finger and slid it into the secret pocket next to the Lure, her heart slamming against her ribs. What if he asked for it? Did he even remember it? The ring was Atan’s, not hers, and she didn’t want to lose it, icky as it was.

  Better to wait, keep her tools secret, and use them on those she knew were still, well, human. This Norsundrian didn’t really act human. He talked in that flat soft voice, never looked around, never showed any kind of emotion—even anger.

  The rain caught up with them just about the time they reached some barren mountains. Great fire-blackened cliffs rose on either side, obviously blasted by magic. Beyond the ridge of mountains something jutted, a massive fortress. A landmark at last—but it had to be the Norsunder Base. It was too late to escape. They had run out of journey food, and even Kessler’s canteen was empty. Though she could orient by heading away from that thing, how long would she last without food or water? Not long, she thought, her eyes stinging with tears.

  o0o

  Zydes stood on one of the western towers, watching a field exercise through a glass, though he was far more aware of Detlev standing at his left than of the warriors skirmishing on the dusty plains.

  Dejain stood beyond, busily plied a glass, the hypocrite. Zydes knew she detested the noise, stink, and squalor of battle even more than he did.

  And he was right. That is, mostly right. She swept her glass over the converging forces, most of whom thought they were war-gaming, trying to find by some sign which unit had been given the kill order. She always watched the beginning of an exercise in order to descry, if she could, who had the kill order. Sometimes they betrayed their triumph by subtle signs, sometimes obvious—and sometimes not at all. Then she’d watch the others for reactions to the realization that they had become targets. Or trophies.

  Keeping the glass aimed toward the plain, she flicked a quick sideways glance.

  Detlev stood with his hands behind his back, his attention downward. At least, so it appeared. He did not use a glass. She wondered if he made any sense of the chaos of blades, dashing horses, milling infantry, and dust obscuring everything.

  Probably. Though he gave no sign, one wing of cavalry wheeled, streaming toward a flank. She knew he had somehow sent an order mentally. It was so sudden, and there had been no trumpet call or waving of banners from any of the captains below.

  An intense spasm of envy and longing tightened her insides. How she would love to have that power! She indulged herself with a daydream: her first target would be that slab-faced fool standing at Detlev’s right...

  While she enjoyed her fantasy, Zydes was thinking much the same thing about her. But underneath his desire to crush Dejain’s life out—slowly, slowly—he was anxious about time.

  He’d ordered the field exercise mostly to divert focus from Kessler, who, he had seen in the scope just that morning, would arrive within the day from the other direction. But the exercise had somehow been noised beyond the physical realm, and Detlev had shown up, unannounced as always, with Dejain mincing prettily at his heels.

  Zydes gripped his glass, wishing he had her skinny neck between his hands. After exhaustive investigation he had discovered that she’d not only betrayed Kessler in ’33, but had managed to twine his own magic in her machinations, causing his defeat in Bereth Ferian. She was therefore responsible for him being stuck in this dusty hole far from anywhere interesting.

  Well, he’d pay her in like coin—as soon as he had that Landis safely locked up. Before anyone could discover who she was.

  He plied his glass, trying not to shift from one foot to the other.

  Dejain observed the signs of his impatience and laughed inwardly. He was obviously up to something. Oh, she’d find out what.

  He, like these military fools below, all thought they were on the rise to power. But she’d learned that those with real power in Norsunder tolerated mages like Zydes so that they would handle logistics. Probably the only mage, outside of Detlev and of course Them—the Host of Lords—that held power was the vicious old mage Vatiora, who rarely emerged from Norsunder. Her deeds had bloodied the pages of countless histories several centuries back, and though she’d escaped death only by hiding out in Norsunder, she made Kessler look sane and mild by comparison, her only weakness a pettiness equal to her bloodlust. She was ruled by whim, and put the same no-limits effort into spite as she did into vast plans.

  Outside of people like Vatiora, who seemed to live for cruelty and bloodshed, most allied with Norsunder in order to indulge a taste for war, or for spying—but never for logistics, the necessary third component for war.

  Zydes was the perfect quartermaster, and he didn’t even know it.

  Both Zydes and Dejain were startled when Detlev turned away from the battlement. The field exercise had scarcely begun. What now?

  Detlev’s gaze flicked Zydes’s way. Zydes braced himself inwardly. Zydes was considerably taller, but somehow you never thoug
ht of Detlev as shorter. He forced himself to meet that gaze, felt the expected pain strike through temples and the back of the eyes, and then Detlev said, “Marigor is slow, and he doesn’t seem to understand that heavy cavalry can break a line, not just protect the foot’s back. I suggest a protracted maneuver.”

  Zydes nodded.

  Detlev smiled faintly. “You don’t want them getting lazy, either foot or mounted.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he lifted his hands and transferred out.

  Zydes became aware of the sweat on his brow, but he wasn’t going to wipe it with that smirking Dejain there.

  “Quite edifying,” she said.

  Apart from the sudden, vicious desire to smash his glass across her face—of course he controlled that—Zydes did not react. Then, as the rage ebbed a little, he recognized that tone, an attempt to emulate Detlev.

  She’d failed. He laughed, not bothering this time to hide it.

  She transferred out. He cursed her, then turned his attention to Detlev, and that parting remark. What did he mean? Did he know about Zydes’s forming plans for Sartor? He couldn’t know. Could he?

  Zydes forced himself not to hurry down to his rooms, but he was blind to anything else besides his agonized questions until he reached the relative safety of his warded lair. There he cautiously performed the oblique ward he’d set up to track Detlev.

  It still worked. And, better, Detlev was again off-world.

  Letting his breath trickle out, Zydes prepared for Kessler’s arrival.

  o0o

  Lilah’s eyes were gritty with dust, and ached from the long ride and the dry, parched air when they reached an outpost. Kessler did not permit them to stop long enough for a drink of water. He left the exhausted horse and demanded two more. Lilah got to ride alone, but he held the reins to her horse.

  It was nearly impossible to see where the gray-covered sky began and the rocky, broken land ended, except for a weird line somewhere in the distance. It seemed to waver beyond the fortress.

  Lilah couldn’t make out what it was, but Kessler stilled, then made one of his sudden moves. Snap! His reins slapped against the rump of the Lilah’s mount, and it leaped forward, nearly casting her off its back.

  The animals raced down the road as the light began to fade—and that line got closer as the lines of the fortress sharpened.

  Exhausted, hungry, desperate with thirst, Lilah wondered if she had somehow been taken into Norsunder’s realm beyond death, for the light faded so slowly, making her feel blind, and they rode and rode and rode.

  How her head throbbed! And her butt ached, and her lungs from the dust, and her lips were dry. Kessler had dwindled to a sinister shadow on her left, his gray tunic-jacket blending with the landscape.

  But then, just as the last of the light faded, the fortress loomed over them. Torchlight high on the battlements glowed, red and wicked. The dust was worse than ever; a cold wind had arisen from where the last pale gray gleamed on the horizon, bringing gouts of dust, and an ugly hot-metal smell that made her shoulders hunch and her neck-hairs prickle.

  Gradually she became aware that the sound she heard, a low, thundering noise, was not just her aching head. Just before they rounded a massive stone tower, she glanced to the side and saw a vast line of bobbing torches.

  An army! An invasion?

  Fear made her look to Kessler, though she wondered why. He was not going to save her from anything. The orange light of the torches overhead illumined the angry jut of his chin and his narrowed eyes. It was almost a human expression, but not a pleasant one. They galloped up a ramp and into a courtyard, and only then did they stop.

  “Come along.”

  Lilah blinked wearily. Kessler was standing at her stirrup. She managed to slide out of the saddle and fell right onto the stones. A strong hand gripped her arm and yanked her up again. She stumbled against the horse’s heaving sides. The animal’s hair was slick with sweat, and bits of foam had splashed over its withers. The smell stung her nose—not unpleasant, just sharp. Anything was better than dust.

  The hand yanked her again, as the thunder grew louder. Her feet fumbled beneath her. Pangs shot up her arm into her head as Kessler thrust her through a torch-lit archway.

  Stable hands dashed out for the horses. Lilah’s last glimpse of the courtyard was two grim faces glancing after them before the animals were led away.

  They’d arrived just ahead of a big army, it seemed. Not invading, but returning.

  Up stairs. Down a long corridor. The air was stuffy and smelled of old stone. The world seemed to have turned into darkness and dust.

  She sneezed three times as Kessler rapped on a thick wooden door. He pushed her into a room. Blinking tears from her eyes, she stumbled, then looked up at a huge man dressed in Norsunder gray and black, who glowered at her, twin gleams of red torchlight briefly reflecting in his dark eyes. He stood behind a great dark-wood desk.

  Zydes was quite pleased with what he saw. This fox-faced scrub of a child was as unlike the tall, strong, farseeing Landises of legend as was humanly possible. She didn’t have the ugly gooseberry eyes common to the Landises, which were so well-known he’d hoped to be able to brandish her (when he was ready), letting her face serve as proof of who she was. But not all of them had those eyes. This girl’s father hadn’t, from all accounts. He hoped she was as stupid as she looked.

  “To business,” he began, but a rap at the door interrupted him.

  The door opened. A tall fellow came in, bearing papers. Lilah tried to blink away the bleary rings round the lamps on the desk and the torches outside the windows. The hulking form of the newcomer blocked the man behind the desk.

  That meant he couldn’t see her. A heartbeat’s chance. She took it.

  She sprang through the open door just before it shut, and dashed madly down the hall—where? Where?

  She’d forgotten Kessler, who had retired out of the reach of the lamplight to lean against the wall. The world revolved slowly, for he, too, was exhausted. He had been reflecting with regret on last year when Dejain’s magic had enabled him to work straight through days and nights without ever having to sleep. Except after the spell had worn off—causing a stupid sleep-haze for weeks—he’d understood that she had done him no favor, that clear thought had disintegrated with imperceptible slowness, leaving him with the distortion of dream-image overlaying reality.

  He was startled when the brat whirled and bolted. He caught up in five steps.

  Once again those five steel bands clamped onto Lilah’s arm, just before she was about to launch herself down a stairway. She was suspended in the air, arms and legs extended useless as a lifted turtle’s, and then her vision whirled and her feet landed with a painful thump on the flagged flooring.

  Kessler’s fingers shifted to the scruff of her neck, almost choking her, and back to that office they marched. In the doorway he paused, and she glanced up, bracing for violence, glaring past her overlong bangs.

  “You need a haircut,” he remarked, and then thrust her back inside.

  The messenger was gone. Zydes drummed his fingers on the desk.

  He said to Lilah, “Don’t waste my time again.” And with a glance at Kessler, who had released the neck of Lilah’s gown and retreated to his place at the wall, “At least not while I have my hound who is so quick on the fetch.”

  Lilah stared. The tall one smirked, a very unpleasant expression in that glaring lamplight. Kessler’s face—as usual—did not change.

  “Where is your magical aid, young Landis?” the man asked, holding out his hand.

  Magic aid? Magic aid?

  Her bewilderment was plain. Zydes sighed. Was she really so stupid? Better so, perhaps.

  “You used magic against Kessler.”

  Lilah tried to lick her lips, but her tongue felt dusty. Her voice came out like a frog’s croak. “It was a magic ring that makes light. But I lost it when he grabbed me.” Her heart thumped again at the lie.

  Zydes looked at
her grubby dress in disgust and disappointment. He was too disinterested to bother searching the brat. A magic ring that only emitted light: that matched what he’d seen. Useless. But it also meant the brat was no mage.

  He snapped his fingers at Kessler. “Put her in the far room, and lock the door. She’s too sleep-sodden to hear one word in five. We’ll begin again in the morning.”

  Out they went again, Kessler’s hand on the scruff of Lilah’s neck. He pushed her into a plain room with a single window. She turned around. “Who is that villain?” she asked, her mind now weirdly numb after all the frights.

  “Zydes,” said Kessler. And with that faint almost-humor, “He likes subordination. You had better stay with ‘sir.’”

  He slammed the door and locked it.

  Lilah slapped her pocket, wherein resided her thief tools, including her lock pick. She could tell just from the sound that these locks were old indeed—old and crude.

  Why would they bother with new locks? she thought wildly. Once one got out, where would one go?

  “But I have to try,” she whispered, becoming aware of the steady sounds of horses and iron-reinforced boot heels on stone. She moved to the window and looked out. The window gave onto a complicated angle of tower curves and buttresses, and thence to a narrow concourse below.

  What seemed to be an entire army marched under her tired eyes. Streams of warriors passed below, some mounted, most not. Numbers of them bore wounds, evidenced by cloth wrapped around arms, and comrades carrying those who had difficulty walking.

  Her mind wheeled purposeless, like a bird caught in vicious crosswinds, until she was startled out of fugue by a vaguely familiar outline, a familiar walk, in the midst of that countless horde.

  A slim man of medium height in the middle of a row of three, dark hair pulled back, the wary walk of the life-trained warrior—

  The man’s head lifted at the last moment, and Lilah stared down into a face she had known her entire life.