Senrid

  Detlev murmured to Tdanerend in a low voice, and although Senrid screamed, “Uncle!” he never moved, his gaze stayed transfixed.

  From the shadows more gray-coated figures emerged, and flanked the two kids before Senrid could try knocking his uncle overdo break the power of that gaze. Detlev stepped forward and traced a sign with his forefinger on Tdanerend’s temple, and then turned those cold hazel eyes Senrid’s way.

  “Your uncle,” he said, “had little to offer. He will serve, for a time, as a puppet on your throne while we are busy elsewhere.”

  Tdanerend did not react—he sat there, his focus distant, his face more relaxed than Senrid remembered having seen it in years. Had he any will left? Probably not, and he’ll never know it, Senrid thought, his throat constricting.

  Detlev smiled. “Your turn is next, and for you it will not be so easy.”

  He made a gesture, and the silent guards gripped their arms and marched the kids out of the hall into the dark winter night.

  FIVE

  Senrid and Kyale were held outside for a short time.

  No one spoke. Senrid didn’t dare try a transfer—not with those iron-grip mitts on him, because either the spell would destroy him or the Norsundrians would go right along.

  Anger, regret, fear, even sorrow—unexpected and unwelcome—battled inside his mind, making it even harder to think against the exhaustion of the long day.

  Kitty waited in numb terror, her cheek throbbing from where that terrible man had smacked her. Then she remembered something Faline had said, and scrubbed her hand over her cheek, flung the invisible villain-cooties down onto the snow, and stomped them as best she could despite the grip on one of her arms.

  Senrid gave a soft laugh, his breath clouding. “That,” he said, “you have to have gotten from the Mearsieans.”

  Before Kitty could answer Detlev emerged, a threatening silhouette in the weak blue starlight. He murmured some magic spells; Senrid felt a pang shoot through his temples, and knew that he’d been warded. Not clumsy wards, like Tdanerend’s, but the real thing. Detlev seemed to feel no reaction to having Performed strong magic. He immediately executed the transfer.

  Emergence was followed by more terror: had they shifted to the temporal base that Norsunder had reputedly established south of Sartor?

  No. The smells were too much like home. Senrid didn’t recognize the hill they were on, nor the shadowy landscape below, but he knew instinctively that he was in Marloven Hess.

  No one spoke. The two kids were marched a short distance. Senrid realized they were in the midst of a camp. He and Kyale were thrust inside an empty tent before Senrid could get a good look around.

  Kitty turned on him. “Get us out!”

  “I can’t.” Senrid sat on the ground, which was cold, but not wet. “He warded me.”

  Kitty fought against terrible fear, and anger, and hopelessness. “You idiot. You made me come along—”

  “Shut up,” Senrid said wearily. “If I’d known it was a trap I wouldn’t have come either. I thought we could brandish Hibern’s book under my uncle’s nose, and lie about a network of white mages all ready to wipe us both out. Anything to get him to…”

  “To what?” Kitty asked. “Were you really going to put him on trial?”

  “Didn’t you listen to anything this past two weeks?”

  “No.” She was unapologetic. “It was boring, and had nothing to do with me.”

  “It still doesn’t,” he shot back.

  “I don’t care. I want to know.”

  Senrid sighed. “If he’d agreed to it, yes. Trial. Indevan’s Law. I’d abide by it too—we all would.”

  Kitty sighed. “Is that why that awful man, the one with the gold knife, was so nasty a week or two ago? He said something about the frailty of youth when he was walking away. I don’t think he knew I was listening.”

  “Oh, he did, all right. Probably why he said it.” Senrid pulled his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs. Tiredness seemed to settle on his mind like a fog. “A lot of them think I’d obey the laws because I’m not strong enough to be the law, that I’m just a kid and don’t know any better, and at first I wondered about it myself. But I don’t think I’ll change. I don’t believe I’ll change. What I do think—believe—is that if people—the common people, not the privileged—see everyone treated the same under the same law, then they’ll come to expect it. The biggest fight will be against the regional commanders, the Jarls, the ones who ruled like petty kings and Tdanerend winked at their excesses as long as they paid him lip service. Well, and sent him muscle for his stupid war plans.”

  Kitty listened to the headlong words, hearing one in two and comprehending fewer than that. What she listened for, she didn’t hear: what he’d planned to do about Tdanerend.

  “So if Uncle Icky didn’t agree to the trial?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes, when I was angry, I envisioned having him shot. But other times I, well, felt pity.” Senrid grimaced in the dark. “Hoped he’d just leave. After all, Kendred never came back. For all we know he’s dead—either that or training horses somewhere, though I doubt that one.”

  “That Detlev monster probably got him a long time ago,” Kitty said sourly. “So how was that a trap? I don’t get it.”

  Senrid hesitated, thinking of ears listening. Why else had they been put together? Unless the Norsundrians simply didn’t care what a couple of kids said to one another.

  But if that was true, why had Detlev lured his uncle down to Darchelde except to get them both alone? Because Senrid was sure of it now, sure that Tdanerend had been slated for that spell ever since he’d first listened to the empty promises of the Norsundrians.

  ‘We will continue this discourse…’ I think the real trap was for me. Not for my brains and certainly not for my brawn, but because the army was no longer loyal to Tdanerend, they were divided—and then they shifted their loyalty to me.

  He really was king, now. A king with a force poised not to become Norsundrians, but to fight them—unless he himself ordered them to change sides.

  And this soul-rotted scum wanted him to make that decision with his own mind and will intact.

  Anger and a desperate desire to win free made him restless, but the tent was too small to prowl round, so he forced himself to sit still. Besides, he was tired. And cold.

  He said to Kitty, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. How about we get some rest. Tomorrow will be grim enough without our facing it tired.”

  “No thanks to you,” she huffed, settling down. “Curly!”

  He laughed—or tried to, but he felt that sick flutter inside that could so easily turn into a wail of fear, and clenched his jaw.

  Moments later he heard her breathing go deep. He tried to compose himself to sleep, but his mind kept racing from memory to memory, conversation to conversation, and back through time and experience to his reading.

  He fell asleep trying to remember his father’s voice. But all he heard was his uncle’s.

  Dawn arrived, gray, bleak, and bitterly cold. Senrid’s head ached, his gut tightened with fear—and with his determination not to show that fear.

  The tent-flap was unceremoniously yanked open, and the kids pulled out. Kyale struggled. A mistake. Senrid saw her thrust ahead of him down the forest path, and the helmed and armed guard shoving her along seemed deliberately to choose rough shrubs and low branches. Just the type of pointless, petty cruelty you’d expect of Norsundrian low-rankers.

  The big blades’ torture would be more exquisite.

  Poor Kyale was a disheveled, wet mess, her face crossed with red scratches, when they halted on a cliff.

  Detlev awaited them, dressed in the unmarked gray of Norsunder, his long black cloak sweeping out over the cliff edge, flagged by the wind. Senrid looked from that observant hazel gaze, the slight smile, down to the two armies in the valley below, one camped, one already armed and in formation, and horror seized him. Why weren’t the Marlovens ready? Mag
ic had probably hidden the Norsundrians until the last moment.

  But where had all the Norsundrians come from? Senrid could not believe the effort in magic and logistics. Was there some other reason for that force to be in the area?

  “Senrid,” Detlev said, breaking the desperate stream of his thoughts. “This is the lesson in real politics I had in mind. Observe. And learn.”

  Kitty’s fear twisted into terror at the white-lipped sickness in Senrid’s face as he stared down. She forced herself to look downward as well. The lines on the left were still and ready—the Marlovens on the right scrambled into place.

  “What?” She nudged Senrid, realized he was trembling. “What?”

  “We’re at the border, and my army has been taken by surprise. They’re going to defend the kingdom against the invaders.” He stopped, this throat tightened. When he spoke again his voice was rough. “If I don’t command them to change sides—to let the Norsundrians in—it’ll be a slaughter.” The last few words were high with anguish.

  She looked down again. Once she would have been glad, fiercely so, to see Marlovens mowed down like barley at harvest time, but now her only emotion was dread.

  As the group on the cliff watched in silence, the wet, cold winter wind fingering hair and clothing, below in the valley the front lines met, and the brownish white snow soon was dyed scarlet.

  The Norsundrians advanced, killing all before them. There were too many, and they moved like they’d drilled for centuries.

  Senrid turned his head into his shoulder, one hand gripping a barren tree branch. “I won’t do it,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “Will not watch?” Detlev asked, sounding detached, amused. “Haven’t the stomach for it after all?” His smile disappeared. “You have only to say the word, and I’ll halt it.”

  Senrid gritted his teeth. “You lie.”

  “Do you not believe me?” Detlev continued. “I’m afraid it’s your gamble, for I tell the truth when it suits me. Right now I have no interest in any of them below. It’s you I want, which is why I arranged this demonstration of the effects of power. You seem to have lost sight of its meaning in recent weeks as you tangled yourself up in white-magic illusions of obligation and ‘honor’.” His voice scathed the last word.

  Below, a horse screamed; the sound carried upwards on the frigid wind.

  “There is only one law,” Detlev said. “And that is force.”

  A horn blared. The cavalry were riding, hard, to the rescue. But there was no chance to feel pride in their speed, the mettlesome horses dashing over the snow, the silvery helms gleaming and their horsetails streaming in the wind, because—suddenly—before they even could even raise their bows to aim at the Norsundrian front lines—they too began to fall. Illusion-cloaked crossbowmen rippled into view on the wings of the battle, where they had been lying in wait.

  The calm, unemotional voice continued inexorably. “I want your surrender. Now. No magic tricks, no easy will-binding spell to take away the awareness of choice. Of your own free will, and forever. Only then will I stop the slaughter of your people, King Senrid.”

  Kyale pressed her knuckles against her mouth lest she scream. Senrid’s breathing was fast, but he did not look away.

  Detlev drawled out his words now, the sneer like a whiplash, “You prate of protection, but I observe you are willing to trade their lives for yours.” And then, his voice hard, deliberate: “All of them, Senrid. Every one. As dead men they’re coming soulbound straight to me to use or spend as I wish, and you’re making the choice for them.”

  Senrid recoiled, his head snapping sideways as if he’d been slapped. Then his chest heaved, and Kitty’s horror increased when she saw the sheen of tears in his eyes, but then he threw back his head and cried in anguish and despair, “Erdrael!”

  Light coruscated, blinding them.

  Kitty tried to rub the sparkles from her vision.

  When she took her hand away, she and Senrid and a girl their age, who seemed made of sunglow, were alone.

  All around them the wind had stopped, and motion, and time. Detlev and his guards were either invisible, or gone.

  Senrid angrily dashed his wrist across his eyes. “It’s a cheat,” he said fiercely, his voice unsteady, husky with grief. “It’s all a lie. You own me now, is that it? Instead of them?”

  “Free will, Senrid,” Erdrael said. Her voice echoed like the peal of a bell. “You had to see the difference. If you had chosen them, it would have been your last choice. Ever. Detlev told you that much of the truth. You chose my help, and you have the rest of your life—and after. This is as much as I can give you.”

  “Free will,” Senrid repeated, his tone making the words a mockery.

  Erdrael said, her smile sad, “You’ll face hard choices again, and again, and again. That is the nature of life. But right now you are free to make them.”

  “Who sent you?” Senrid demanded. “What is your price?”

  But then he blinked, or both kids blinked, and sound, and motion, and time were restored.

  Erdrael was gone. So was Detlev.

  They were alone on the cliff.

  Kyale breathed in a shaky breath. “Was that an angel? “ Of course it was! Where was Detlev? Had the angel chased him off? She became lost in her own surmises, relieved and joyful and apprehensive; she shivered in the wintry wind, but it was a shiver of release.

  Senrid’s attention remained riveted below, where the battle had turned, for the Norsundrians did not seem to see their enemies any more. The glitter of magic winkled from horizon to horizon, the gray forces were drawn to the south, and then away into a sudden squall of snow, and they vanished.

  The horns summoning the Marlovens echoed up the rock-face, and Senrid watched as the remainder of the western wing of the light cavalry massed again, and the foot reformed, except for those detailed to see to the fallen.

  They were safe. And Senrid was able at last to look away.

  Kitty stood, head down, her arms wrapped tightly about her under her cloak.

  Detlev was still gone. And so—Senrid felt certain—were his wards.

  Senrid touched Kyale’s arm, and transferred them back to Choreid Dhelerei.

  They appeared in his room.

  “You summoned an angel,” Kyale said, as though stunned.

  “It wasn’t,” Senrid responded wearily, scrubbing a shaky wrist across his eyes. The glitter of tears was gone, though his eyes were marked with tension and tiredness. “Just some illusory image, made by some white mage’s trickery. Here, give me Hibern’s book. I’ll return it.”

  Kyale shook her head as she handed Senrid the book. “It was. Llhei told me about angels, immortal beings from outside of time, but good. She never lied.”

  He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

  “Well, whatever it was, at least she kicked out that stinker of a Norsundrian. You won.” She sighed, a long, dramatic sigh. “So—after all that—”

  “Yes,” he said. “I rescind the promise. It doesn’t matter any more.” And before she could speak, he sent her home—he could see the destination as well as his own room.

  She found herself standing in Crestel-castle’s courtyard outside the double doors. She was home!

  As soon as she could get her legs to work she ran inside, crying, laughing, stumbling up the stairs. She wanted to see everyone, to tell them everything, except she was apprehensive that Leander might still be angry—and so she intended to rid herself of every vestige of Marloven Hess before she faced him.

  She sped down the hall toward her room, glad to find it empty. But her door was a little ajar. Odd—unless someone was cleaning it against her return.

  Satisfied that that had to be the explanation, she pushed the door open and started in, then caught a flicker above the edge of her vision.

  She looked up, saw a wide, shallow baking pan teeter—she opened her mouth—to meet a face full of flour!

  “Welcome home, o White Princess!” came Le
ander’s chortle from behind.

  “Ptui! Bleh! Yuk!”

  “Hibern sent a message that you might be on the way back—that it was all over. So I set up a ward for your return, and arranged this little surprise—”

  “Arrgh!” she yelled, but it was fake anger, and as she chased Leander down the hall, his laughter sounded as happy as hers.

  SIX

  Senrid was alone at last, without his silver-haired, self-appointed conscience. Kyale would blab his actions to anyone who would listen. What did that foolish promise matter any more? She’d tell them all that he’d called on an angel—if there even was such a thing—to rescue him. After that, the fact that he’d sentimentally helped an enemy escape would seem like mere caprice.

  He was only alone for a few moments.

  Footsteps alerted him to the fact that Tdanerend had put wards on his room. Of course. Well, those could be removed—if he survived whatever was coming next.

  The door banged open, and there was Keriam.

  “Senrid! You’re alive!” The man ran in, his face looking younger than it had for a couple of years. He laughed aloud, stopped, stood straight, and then with deliberate care thumped his fist to his heart—then to his forehead.

  His fist, not his palm. The formal salute for a newly crowned king.

  “Not yet,” Senrid whispered, finding that his voice was gone. “Not yet.” His vision blurred again, but this time they were not the tears of grief, of shame and despair, but of happiness.

  He wiped his sleeve across his eyes, drew in a shaky breath, and said, “We’re rid of them. But I’m not convinced it’s for long. Detlev left, taking his men. We did not defeat them. If anything—” His voice suspended again, and he force the words out, roughly. “If anything, we would have gone down in defeat under their steel.”

  “Tell me.”

  Senrid did, in quick words; his emotions steadied as he gave detailed observations on the battle. He referred to Erdrael merely as a mage’s illusion. Keriam did not question it. He knew nothing of magic.

  At the end, Keriam rubbed his chin. “Defeat, maybe, but not surrender. I think Waldevan would have struck his banner first. If he wavered, I know Jarend of Methden would have struck his own banner before surrendering to them.”