Fleeing Peace

  “Risk of discovery by elevens?”

  She shook her head. “We will be protected. But the thing I will get . . my getting it . . . all will bring me a kind of attention that—thinking—don’t want. Ignorance! Ignorance of magic, of learning, of the world, but they will think greatness—”

  Devon cut in, her face solemn, “Liere! You’re doing It again.”

  Liere’s skinny chest heaved. “Thanks, Devon. Sorry! I—here. I think I sense a messenger coming.” She jumped across the little stream, whisked herself around a great-grandfather oak, and vanished up the other side of the gully, sending leaves scattering.

  Senrid put his hands on his hips. “It?” he asked Devon.

  “Leaving out ‘I’,” Devon explained. “She said it’s because she thinks sometimes in the Old Sartoran that The Guardian taught her. The, um, verbs are formed so you don’t say words like ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘he’ ‘she’ and so on.”

  “Pronouns,” Senrid said, amused.

  “That’s it,” Devon said, relieved.

  “Several languages are inflected that way.”

  Devon shrugged. “I guess thinking in Old Sartoran is really, really different. Anyway, she doesn’t like it when she does that, or other things, and so I stop her.”

  Senrid didn’t believe the Old Sartoran explanation beyond the time it took Devon to express it. He saw that Liere was trying in some strange way to squeeze herself as a discrete presence outside the coalescing alignments of power that—nevertheless—seemed to have her at the center. Idiocy!

  o0o

  Liere withdrew to put distance between herself and the others. Maybe if they didn’t see her they wouldn’t think about her, and she could get control of her own emotions.

  I hate feelings, she thought. How hard she fought to control them, to not let them muddy her mind! This one thing she could learn from Siamis, who had not displayed any foolish, weak emotions at all.

  If someone could learn to control them in order to do bad things, she could learn to control them in order to do good things.

  She could. She must.

  So do it.

  She leaned against a tree, rubbing her hands along the rough bark and inhaling the pungent resiny scent. Roth Drael . . . that was for later.

  For now, she needed clear thoughts in order to talk to this boy from Marloven Hess, a place whose images in Senrid’s memory frightened her. That didn’t matter yet, either. What mattered was that at last, she’d found someone who was close to making his unity. So close, and yet he thought himself an adherent of dark magic.

  She sorted through the images, memories, emotions, that he’d sent so strongly—so unheedingly—during their talk, clearer than anyone ever before. Senrid’s mind was like a cascade of rushing water down a mountainside.

  He repudiated words like ‘good’ and ‘lighter’ yet he instinctively rejected their opposite.

  He was so very alone.

  Like she was.

  Though he’d been born a prince, a single child, cherished by his parents, and she had been born one of many children to unimportant shopkeepers, both had found themselves alone at an early age. He through assassination, she through the discovery that she was utterly different. What they shared was a sense of duty. They were both driven by that sense of responsibility, something no one seemed able to help with.

  Liere at least had had Lilith the Guardian to guide her from a distance.

  The only person Senrid had had was some military man named Keriam. Liere shut out the images: to her, ‘military’ was very close to ‘Norsundrian.’ If you were born among bad people, would you know badness as badness? Or would it seem normal?

  She’d heard Senrid’s thought about getting the dyr and using it. She’d also heard his resigned expectation at being closed out of Roth Drael.

  He was on the verge of making decisions that might change his life, and not just his, so many people’s, and she didn’t have the vocabulary or the experience to say the right thing.

  What if she said the wrong thing, and he became the next Siamis?

  I can’t be a coward, she thought. No emotions. Don’t let them get in the way. Senrid’s not a coward, and he’s lived through the kinds of terrible things I was too afraid to even think about.

  Having made this decision, she contacted Devon and discovered that she and Senrid had reached the top of the gully. As she tramped over mossy grasses that had probably not felt a human foot in over a century, she shivered. The breeze had kicked up into a wind.

  Autumn was not just coming, it was here. She looked up at the free-shaken leaves skirling through the air. By nightfall there would be rain—and not one of the soft summer rains, but hard and cold.

  Sitting under a big oak were Devon and Senrid. Wind fingered through their hair and clothes. Devon’s small face, made thinner by its frame of scruffy brown braids, wore its anxious look. Unkempt yellow curls lay across Senrid’s forehead, but they did not hide the tension there; his mouth was bland, but the expression around his eyes betrayed wariness.

  “Soon we’ll get rained on,” Liere said. “But I think we better keep going.”

  “How about some food?” Devon suggested, pulling her small, flat knapsack around.

  “I won’t turn it down.” Senrid grinned.

  “Thanks, Devon,” Liere answered, and the younger girl divided up three portions, looking doubtfully Senrid’s way. But he did not sit back as though expecting to be served, nor did he elbow forward to take his first. He reached out when Liere did, saying nothing about deference, respect, or manners.

  They began to eat. No one talked at first. The wind strengthened steadily.

  This is an opportunity to learn control, Liere thought, forcing herself not to feel the cold. The problem was, when she did that, she could feel the need for more food.

  Presently Devon, who was huddled in her torn cloak, made a remark and a general conversation started, to which Liere paid just enough attention to be polite.

  Her true focus was on a mind making its way steadily toward them. Her mouth dried. What awaited her, she knew, was the kind of place and people most only heard stories about, but what it meant was that she was no longer in hiding. She was going to go through with The Guardian’s magic, and take up a weapon against Siamis.

  There was never again going to be an awkward Fer Eider child hiding in South End.

  There was no going back.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Listen,” she said.

  Bushes rustled. A small forest-dwelling animal emerged, its dark eyes steady with the kind of awareness that spanned species.

  As Liere stepped forward and bent to touch its curly head—facilitating contact—Devon and Senrid watched.

  To Devon, this was yet another inexplicable incident, one in a half-year’s stream of them.

  To Senrid it was . . .

  Marloven vocabulary failed him. He watched, waiting for some morally superior, power-wielding lighter-mage to point an accusing finger at him.

  But the animal stepped back, its paws silent on the thick humus, and with a flick of its tufted tail it was gone.

  Senrid watched Liere wiped her hands slowly down her sides as thought they’d gone clammy. What did she fear?

  “They’re coming for us,” she said. “The morvende.”

  “That creature reads minds?” Senrid asked, amazed.

  Liere’s smile flickered, shifting the planes of her grimy face. “Oh, yes. This is the only good to come out of Siamis and his spell, the alliance. A kind of dena Yeresbeth exists among creatures, but normally they live in their part of the world and leave us to ours. Now they ally. Not serve,” she added, looking up.

  Devon promptly scanned the tossing treetops, but in vain. Moments later, with scarcely a rustle, three white horses emerged from a curtain of ferny leaves.

  Two were riderless. Astride the other was a morvende boy, who looked at them with interest from under drifting snow-white hair. The only color about him w
as the faint blue of veins beneath visible skin, and the pale brown of his eyes—exactly the same shade as Liere’s.

  This is it, Senrid thought. Time to turf the evil Marloven.

  “Welcome,” said the morvende.

  He was dressed in a short-sleeved, knee-length green tunic, his feet bare, his finger and toe talons honed to sharp points. He wore a stone knife at his side. Otherwise he looked like the morvende that Senrid vaguely remembered from the tunnel under the Norsundrian Base.

  Liere said, “Thank you,” and she made a kind of sign with her hand.

  More lighter ritual. Devon looked bemused. The morvende grinned as he mirrored the sign with his long fingers. It looked good when he did it.

  “These are for you,” the morvende said. “And your companions are welcome as well.” He indicated the horses.

  Liere clambered up onto a boulder and then scrambled with stiff, awkward movements onto the back of one of the saddleless horses. Senrid took the other, vaulting easily up. Devon was left looking lost. Senrid reached a hand down and hauled her small weight behind him.

  Devon clasped a desperate death grip around his waist. As soon as her skinny little hands locked together, Senrid suppressed the urge to shake her off, conscious that this was the first time in long memory that someone had touched him without intent to harm or to subdue.

  The morvende clucked. The horses moved smooth-gaited into a canter. Senrid enjoyed the cold wind, the speed, the forest blurring by. Devon shut her eyes and held on.

  Liere was also terrified. This was very different from sitting atop placid, plodding Kondaria all those months ago. She was concentrating so hard on keeping her seat that she was totally unaware of the morvende’s curious and admiring glances.

  Senrid noticed, finding this interaction entertaining.

  “So you understand the ancient Sartoran?” the morvende asked, after a short time.

  “The basics.” Liere sounded as stiff as she looked. “I’m still learning.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “The Guardian. Through memories. I hope your people are safe from Siamis.”

  “Oh, they will never see us,” the morvende said with a laugh. “But they will see mistaken trail markings, and much fog, and so will ride east for a time, thinking it west.”

  Senrid was very interested in how that was managed, but he knew better than to ask.

  The rain began. At first occasional taps and patterings of cold, wet drops rustled through the leaves overhead. As yet they heard more than felt it, for they rode deeper into the tangled thickness of very old forest.

  When night fell, they stopped at a dawn-singer enclave, but only for a short time. Senrid watched the forest people gather in a circle around a great bonfire, their faces lit in the ruddy glow.

  Space was made for all three kids, which surprised Senrid. He could not see any structures around them. He knew the dawn-singers were purported to live in tree houses. If any such houses were in the branches above them, they were camouflaged extremely well. He felt no rain despite the steady hissing thrum of the storm all around them.

  The dawn-singers sang. Their music was slow, long melodic lines that echoed in counterpoint sometimes but otherwise never seemed to repeat, songs evocative of bright image. There seemed to be no rules governing who sang, who stopped, and when.

  The stone-baked nut-and-fruit bread tasted good and was filling.

  As the storm passed westward, once again they mounted, riding for a short time into hilly terrain. Senrid lost all sense of direction. Before midnight they rode through an opening in a rocky palisade. Then they dismounted, and were led down old tunnels, deep below the surface, the animals being taken off in another direction.

  Old tunnels? Senrid thought. Ancient! The stone was worn smooth all about them, as if polished by countless hands over the centuries. Air flowed constantly from somewhere, cool, fresh, smelling of stone and water.

  They wound down and down into a vast cavern with a great dark lake at one end, and Senrid thought he knew where they were: on the edge of one of the great lakes of the Northern Wilds.

  The cavern was filled with white-haired people, and a scattering of dawn-singers. Animals as well, and even a few centaurs.

  They were led to a place not far from the water’s edge where soft-woven rugs had been laid out. Devon plopped down, sighing in gratitude. Senrid threw himself down near Devon, watching everyone and everything. He noted that the lighting was kept central, so that it was difficult to make out the perimeter of the cavern. Still, light did reflect off of faint striations in the rock, and paintings that were not at all symmetrical—like those one would find in a building—but instead followed the natural contours of the stone. He lay propped up on his elbows, staring at the nearest wall, and made out highly stylized birds, interlocked with patterned knotworks of everbloom blossoms and laurel leaves.

  Fascinating. Also fascinating that the lighting obscured the tunnels leading off to further caverns. There were none of the legendary sentient jewels in sight. Perhaps those were the lighter hyperbole he kept expecting to encounter.

  Liere lingered behind, talking to a group of white-haired figures. She never gave her surroundings a glance in the little while that Senrid watched her.

  His attention snapped back when food and drink were brought by quiet morvende adults. The brewed drink tasted of wood and good water and subtle herbs. It cleared all the remaining aches from Senrid’s body.

  Devon busied herself with her food, yawning more and more frequently. When she was done eating, she curled up on her side, hands tucked under her cheek. Two breaths, and she was asleep.

  Senrid lay back, watching through half-closed eyes as Liere was surrounded by various older morvende who were probably leaders. Occasionally their voices rose in song, fast triplets shifting in and out of minor keys, echoing off the stone in timed beats, blending voices and chords in intricate counterpoint.

  For a time he listened. He supposed Liere was participating in some kind of lighter ritual, and he wasn’t far wrong, though he was very wrong about the reasons.

  o0o

  “No,” Liere was saying. “I don’t want to sleep. I want to listen, and to learn. I want to know your history, and oh, everything.”

  “Thousands of years of history would take a thousand years to tell,” a young morvende assured her, his face earnest, to laughter from the older generation.

  “Some day, when time is not pressing, you will return,” an old, bearded man said. “And we can share with you all that you wish to hear. For now, we can lighten your burden a little with some celebration.”

  “We’ll sing about those of your sun-siders who have helped ours,” a small morvende girl said.

  “And those who make peace.”

  “And those who gift us with their own arts,” a third put in.

  Liere walked the length of the cave, listening to old laments and joyous songs and ancient chants that referred to names and events of which she had never heard. For a time she felt as if she had wandered into a great story, or perhaps the Story, for this people seemed to have woven together into a long tapestry of song all the history of the world, and here she was, about to embark on a deed to save them.

  And they knew it. All the songs were chosen to hearten her, to cheer her on, to promise their aid in this quest that—right now—she was the only person who could fulfill.

  She looked back once. Senrid and Devon lay sleeping in the great cavern, surrounded by softly singing voices. Perhaps she could find someone wise to talk her into courage, and to show her what to do.

  Four morvende her age sang about the first Queen of Sartor. When it was over, the old man who had been walking with her said, “The animals call you Sartora.”

  Liere got that horrible hot, itchy feeling all over. “It’s an honor, but I don’t know that the spirit of she I’m named for would accept me.” After all those songs, the formal language felt strange—and right.

  “She, too, came fro
m humble beginnings,” the old man said. “Her gift was the ability to make each comprehend the other, until all felt part of the world’s kinship.”

  One of the white horses came forward, and lowered her head. Liere laid her hand flat on the place between the animal’s eyes, and she heard a mental voice so very different from humans, so full of sound and image, with few words: You are the Sartora. You must ward the Evil One. We have watched for you through two seasons.

  “You who are animals?” Liere asked.

  To all animals, the horse replied, and the images included water beings, and those of wood and sky.

  Then came an impatient growl from a silver timber-wolf near the horse’s legs, Naturally. Who else? Wolves, it seemed, were impatient of formality.

  The old man said, “Do you see what Lilith the Wanderer has done? She has given the world a hero.”

  “Who?” Liere looked around. “Where?” A hero could give her advice—show her the way!

  The man chuckled. “It is you, Sartora.”

  Liere ducked her head, her chest feeling hollow inside with dread.

  “You,” the quiet voice went on, “are a symbol of the alliance for freedom. You will also be a hero for children like yourself.”

  “The others close to dena Yeresbeth?” she asked. “Has anyone done it? Because they can be the hero. Not me. I don’t know anything heroic.”

  “How do you define heroism?” the man replied. “If you confine it to those who wield weapons and destroy others, perhaps you will never be that kind of hero. But if you can use your wits and skills for the task awaiting you in the moonstone city, that is another kind of heroism.”

  She breathed, short and sharp. “I will try to do what I can against Siamis,” she said. “But I’m doing my duty.” And in a low voice, almost a whisper, “As for Sartora, it’s just a nickname.”

  Even as she said it, she knew that she was being silly, that it wouldn’t matter to them. Two things did matter to her: that she succeed, and that she only stay a symbol. She would not seek power.

  More songs greeted her, and she fancied that she saw the news being carried from lips to ears through the cavern, and thence out into the Northwest Wilds, and from there into the world. Other kids would hear. . . her family would hear.