Fleeing Peace

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When Senrid woke next, he was surprised to discover Liere and Devon still there. Since the weird one seemed to be able to get rid of Norsundrians at will (mounted ones, anyway) he was just as happy that the girls hadn’t taken off.

  He sat up, aching all over, and forced himself into the stream. The shocking cold made the aches worse, but then his body numbed. He thrashed about, doing his best to divest himself of the two days’ worth of grime he’d taken aboard during his run.

  When he slogged out of the stream into the sunny clearing, he found Devon sitting on the grass. Three portions of some kind of nutty bread lay on broad leaves.

  Liere walked through the dappled shadows as Senrid bit into his bread.

  “Where’d the food come from?” Senrid asked.

  “Dawn-singers gave it to us a couple of days ago,” Devon said. “We’ve got enough for another day.”

  “We should meet another group by then, I think.” Liere looked upward.

  “That what you found out on your spy trip?” Senrid put the question as more of a test than a request for information—though he wanted that, too.

  Liere glanced at him, her gaze remote. “That, and also I found out that Siamis and the off-worlders are riding north.”

  “To Roth Drael?” Devon asked. She looked worried.

  Liere nodded. “We have to get there first.”

  “You can’t,” Senrid said. “Unless your magic mind-powers extend to flying. Siamis is mounted, and I don’t see any horses. He also has magic, if he really wants to move fast.”

  “They can’t use magic to transfer into Roth Drael,” Liere said, then she crammed a bite into her mouth.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” Liere mumbled thickly. “All I know is they can’t. Not yet, anyway.” She gulped down her bread so fast her eyes watered, but her voice cleared. “We should have help soon, and there are those who will hinder Siamis. But we have to be as quick as we can.”

  “We,” Senrid repeated. “Am I included in this ‘we’?”

  Liere said, “I hope so. You have that hatpin, which will help warn us of danger if I can’t. And it’s a kind of defense, isn’t it?”

  “Not nearly as effective as whatever it is you do,” Senrid said with a laugh.

  “That’s only with animals,” Liere said, remote again. Her voice was thin and flat. “And the enemies might figure a way around it.”

  “If I’m the only hope of defense that you have,” Senrid said grimly, “then you haven’t much of a chance. I’m no good with a sword. Not against trained warriors.”

  “You have to be better than we are.” Devon shrugged skinny shoulders. “Anyone is!”

  “And the hatpin can warn us.” Liere picked off another piece of bread. She appeared to be impatient with having to eat. “We could use your help.”

  Roth Drael.

  Senrid did not want to go to Roth Drael, famed center of light magic study and practice, at least a few centuries before. Apparently still in use now.

  He didn’t know much about light magic, other than that it was so hedged with safeguards it was next to useless. On the other hand, in spite of those safeguards, it could make things like this hatpin. If whatever lay in Roth Drael was more powerful, why not?

  It didn’t seem to Senrid there was anyone, anyone at all, trying to stop Siamis.

  “All right,” Senrid said. “Let’s get moving.”

  Liere had been watching Senrid with an odd, tense, unwavering gaze. When he spoke, she jumped a little, then grabbed up her share of the food and finished it off as they set out northward.

  Senrid forced himself to match her pace. Before too long the worst of his aches had worked themselves out, his clothes were dry, and the food helped infuse him with enough energy to keep him moving.

  “What else did you find out?” he asked Liere after they’d been walking in silence for a time.

  Liere shook her head. “There are watchers.”

  “Watchers,” Senrid repeated. “You don’t mean human. Or even one of the magic races. Animals? Birds?”

  She nodded. “Some of the animals of Helandrias are guardians there, though few see them.”

  “So you’re the one behind the animals?” Senrid asked. “All along I’ve been getting last-ditch rescues and warnings, and it can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It isn’t my doing,” Liere said. “But I can hear them.” She tapped her head, then frowned at Senrid, not anger but perplexity. “You probably could, too.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  Her lips thinned as her shoulders hunched. She walked on, staring at the ground.

  Senrid tried again. “I’ve never heard of anyone really talking mind to mind, with either people or animals. Only in old myths about the ancient days, and I think half of that was a lot of poetical shield-thumping on the part of the lighters.”

  Liere looked up, her brows quirked in relief. When she wasn’t withdrawing behind that wall of aloofness, her changing reactions were so clear.

  “Dena Yeresbeth is one of the Twelve Blessed Things,” she said.

  Senrid was about to point out that the whole notion of ‘twelve blessed anything’ was just more lighter shield-thumping, but he kept his mouth shut. This mind-business was clearly no myth. At least, not any longer—and whether it was ‘blessed’ or not depended on your point of view, right?

  “ . . . unity of body, mind, and spirit,” she was saying. “When you make your unity, they all work together. It takes focus and control, something I keep trying to learn.”

  He said casually, “Seems to me you’re doing all right, what with hearing all these birds and things.”

  She tipped her head back, staring up through the tree branches. “So much to learn. And when I learn do learn things . . .” She stopped, staring ahead at an oaken coppice growing on the jumbled bank of a very old riverbed.

  Senrid cut a fast glance from Liere to the scenery and back again, wondering if she really noticed what was in front of her. Her problem seemed not to be apprehension of danger, but some inward battle. “Learn?” he prompted.

  Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear her. “I can’t let my abilities turn into a wish for more power. Then I’d become like him.”

  “Him? You mean Siamis?” Senrid’s memory flickered back to the beach, and he heard his own voice saying to Peridot, They want power, twit, followed by Siamis’s taunt, And you don’t?

  Liere nodded, taking a swipe at her forehead, which was grimy and sweat-streaked. Though they walked in shade, the air was warm and close. “He must have been good, once. I don’t believe people are born to evil—to the desire for power—or suddenly find it their only path. It must be a gradual thing, mustn’t it?”

  Try telling Kyale that, he thought with an inner laugh, but he said nothing out loud. The terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ themselves were almost meaningless, quite separate from the matter of acquiring power. He was very sure that Uncle Tdanerend thought himself—well, if not ‘good’, right. He certainly held the power in Marloven Hess, even if he couldn’t hold it on his own and had to have Norsunder back him up.

  Another example? Well, he was quite sure that Detlev would not waste time or breath trying to convince anyone he was good, but he certainly had power.

  “You equate power with evil,” Senrid said at last.

  “Isn’t it?” Liere asked. “Wanting to force others to do your will. That’s evil.”

  “Magical power is a separate thing. Political power is just another word for leadership, and people follow leaders,” Senrid said. “That much I know is true, whether for lighters or anyone else back in history before the magical, and cultural, distinctions of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ happened. I always thought ‘good’ and ‘evil’ came down to terms for sides in a power struggle. My side is good, your side is evil—and you say that yours is good, and mine evil.”

  “Norsunder does not claim to be good,” Devon said, skipping a c
ouple of times to catch up.

  Liere looked at her. “Except Siamis uses all the language of good,” she said. “When he talks about peace, and harmony, and prosperity.”

  Senrid thought, He doesn’t use the language of a conqueror, he just does it.

  Liere looked at him, eyes wide. “You’re right! His language and his actions—”

  Senrid recoiled.

  Liere winced, and stumbled to a stop, hands pressed over her eyes; he saw sliver-moons of grime under her nails.

  When she spoke again, it was in a low, embarrassed mumble. “I can’t help it.” She added plaintively, “You were sending your thoughts right at me, like you wanted me to hear.”

  Senrid’s breath whooshed out, and he kicked at a drift of fallen leaves. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to fix that?”

  Liere said quickly, “Actually, there is. Like anything else, a mind-shield takes practice. It’s nothing we’ve ever had to learn before Siamis came—”

  “Mind hearing,” Senrid cut in. “Say, if you can do that, can’t you undo whatever it is that Siamis did to the off-worlders?”

  “There’s magic mixed in,” she answered. “And he’d know I was there. Also, two people invading a third’s mind—well, I don’t know what would happen, but I’m scared it would kill the person.”

  Senrid whistled. “How long’ve you been doing this stuff?”

  “Hearing thoughts of second-face? All my life. I remember hearing my mother’s.” Liere looked away, as though fascinated by the sight of Devon picking stickers out of her dirty stockings. “The Guardian says that minds are private things. Trespass is a betrayal, and it can hurt.”

  She looked back in her own memory, hearing her mother thinking, What a homely, awkward child, when looking at Liere—but her emotions had not been bad ones. A strange mixture of astonishment, worry, exasperation, and love. Helpless love. Liere still struggled to try to understand it—but all she could comprehend was how little her mother believed she could actually do, besides day-to-day chores.

  Senrid comprehended some of these emotions as he watched Liere’s face, which was completely unguarded when she did not withdraw.

  She turned his way, her upper lip long, her brow worried, and he wondered if his own reaction had somehow echoed back. She squared her shoulders, and he felt her retreat behind some kind of invisible wall. Or was it mere imagination?

  “I learned early not to reach to hear those things,” she said at last. “In fact, I did it so long I had to relearn to listen.”

  “Read my mind now,” he said. “I just want to know once and for all that it can be done.”

  “Have I your permission?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Think on something safe. I’ll know when to stop. Or,” she added, “you can try to block me out.”

  “Got it.”

  She half-closed her eyes, walking with her hands stiff at her sides, fingers spread. Devon danced ahead of Liere, swishing her skirts back and forth as she watched the trail.

  Liere said in Marloven, “Senrid Montredaun-An, Marloven Hess, capital Choreid Dhelerei, boundaries on the east (dismay) I thought I could keep her out—” She stopped.

  Senrid laughed, a little embarrassed, but mostly intrigued.

  “The shield is something you have to construct in here.” Liere tapped her forehead. “I always thought of it as a wall. It was easier to make, that way.”

  Devon dropped back, now that Liere was done with the mind stuff and she didn’t have to watch. She scuffed happily through the autumn leaves. She’d heard all this stuff about mind-shields several times before, and it made little sense, but it was so good to have company, to hear voices! She could listen to them talk without having to talk herself. Instead she could listen to the rustling and crackling of the dry leaves, and sniff the sharp smell of them, and love the sight of orange and yellow and brown and gold and red. How pretty it all was!

  The talk sped up. It seemed the boy didn’t have any trouble understanding what Liere was talking about as he fired questions at her. Was that because he was a prince?

  Devon had been afraid at first, when she understood that he was a prince. Would all her happy peace with Liere be gone, if they had to remember to bow when he rose or sat, and say ‘your highness’ and serve him first, as Russy demanded?

  So far Senrid had made no such demands. Another person, Devon thought, feeling very sophisticated, might not believe him to be a prince, for Russy had insisted that all princes required deference—it was manners, royalty-style. It was respect, if not for the person he would add with one of those fake laughs people use, then for the rank and what it means.

  But Devon remembered the wonderful days with CJ and Clair, neither of whom insisted on titles, or bowing, or any of the rest of it. Though CJ became a princess when Clair adopted her as a sister, Clair had been born into a royal family, just like Russy.

  Maybe this Senrid came from a wonderful little country like Mearsies Heili, and that would explain his lack of insistence on royal manners.

  Devon put her head back, watching leaves drift down from the trees. They were still talking about mind stuff. She sighed with resignation. Maybe she could ask him about his country later. It would be so much fun if it was nearby, and they had pie fights there, like CJ and the Mearsiean girls.

  “I take it your finding me was no accident,” Senrid said.

  “Your emotions were like a beacon.” Liere picked her way among mossy stones half-hidden among great tree roots. “And your trail wasn’t hard to find, especially when some forest creatures put us in the right way.”

  “A blind man could have followed me,” Senrid stated with derisive cheer. “The only reason I stayed clear as long as I did before you came to the rescue was because of those animals I mentioned, and because Siamis wasn’t along with his minions.”

  “He was busy with the off-worlders that first night, and then they went north. Looking for me.”

  “Looking for you,” Senrid repeated. “North. Then you lost time protecting me.”

  Liere shrugged. “I can’t let them get someone if I can stop it. And all the creatures I commune with know who you are . . .” She paused and shook her head. “Said you should be protected.”

  Senrid touched the hatpin. “Because of this thing?”

  Liere shrugged again, reaching out to catch hold of a tree branch as they picked their way to the bottom of the gully. “There’s lots I still don’t understand. Every new thing I learn brings me ten awarenesses of how much I don’t know.”

  A cool breeze had sprung up, fingering its way up the little valley and sending a brilliant fall of leaves drifting and swirling around them.

  Autumn rain was on the way. All three sensed it.

  “Let’s begin with what you do know,” Senrid said. “Roth Drael. Siamis needs magic and lives if he’s going to make extremely powerful spells, the sort to force rifts open between the real world and Norsunder. There has to be some sort of light magic either pooled there, or some enchanted object of staggering power, or maybe both. Do you know?”

  “Some thing is there,” Liere said. “Something very magical, something Norsunder has wanted for centuries. It’s a thing I have to get so I can break his enchantment.”

  “So it’s not just this thing that they are after?” Senrid touched the hatpin in his cuff.

  “No, there’s something else.”

  “If they know about it, why didn’t they pinch it years ago?”

  “Because they didn’t know where it was for sure, only that it existed. Still existed. It is an artifact from Old Sartor.” Liere looked strained in the filtered, greenish light. “I didn’t have a good shield when The Guardian gave me what I needed to learn. Someone else came at the mere mention of the thing. Someone far more dangerous even than Siamis. So we had to stop right then.”

  Senrid snapped his fingers. “I’ll wager you anything you like to stake that that would be Detlev.”

  “Perhaps. Whe
n I tried to find the identity, I got deflected.” She clapped her hands. “Like that.” Which sent a pair of tiny birds jetting upward from a nearby tree, scolding in song.

  “So he can’t get into Roth Drael?”

  “The Guardian says the city is a web of magical protections. If anyone with dark magic does manage to get in—and it will take lots of work—they’ll never find this thing. And they can’t transfer in at all.”

  Senrid gave the trail a sardonic grin. So much for his evolving plan for netting this mystery power object for himself, and using it to go after Uncle Tdanerend—or anyone else who had a hankering for Senrid’s throne. He thought, I’ll probably not get in, either. Certainly not by magic.

  But there was no use in worrying about it now.

  Instead, he considered the problem objectively, as they started upward alongside the stream. “Ah. So that’s where the off-worlders come in, eh? Siamis camps on the perimeter of the city and sends Deirdre, Frederic, and the Warrens in to do the job for him.”

  Liere looked confused. “I find it so hard to understand these things about magic. So many of the words I just don’t know, and they don’t always come with clear images.”

  “And you think you’re going to get there first.” Senrid called up as accurate a map of the Northern Wilds as he could. There were no political boundaries around Roth Drael, nor to the south, clear down to the Fereledria. That was why Frederic and the others hadn’t met any humans on their journey. That area was also reputed to be rife with other sorts of beings, none of whom recognized political boundaries—except as something to avoid.

  “I think so,” Liere said, her voice muted. “We shall know for certain very soon.”

  “So your worry is that we won’t make it.”

  To his surprise Liere shook her head. “We’ll make it. I think.” Her mouth tightened, and once again she walked stiffly, each step precise, her expression bleak. “But. If—if we are to get there first. And get that object. I will have to, well, declare myself.”

  “To whom?”

  She lifted her hand, indicating the entire forest to the north. “To let them know my quest. To take the consequences.”