The man stood up angrily. “Here? In Loss Harthadaun? We can’t have that! Where are the Knights? Lam? Lam! I need to send a message to the King—at once!”
A young scribe ran in, his arms full of papers. “Oh, sir, I—”
The white-bearded man looked past the girls and the scribe, and his expression changed again, to relief. “Roderic Dei,” he said. “You are most welcome indeed. This child tells me there are Norsundrians outside our very gates!”
Relief washed through Roderic when he saw the two children standing near the magisterial desk. The taller one dressed like a boy watched him through wide eyes, their expression a compound of patience and joy and apprehension, overlaid by the long effects of stress.
“Wait,” he said to the girls. “Wait here, please.”
“Commander, what is to be done?”
Roderic said, “By now I suspect they have ringed us entirely, except perhaps from the water.”
“Us? Why?”
“You’ve been enchanted,” Roderic explained, lifting a hand to indicate not just the Magister, but the entire city. “That girl over there just freed you. You and all the people who owe you allegiance.”
“How? Lam! Do you know aught of this?”
“No, sir.” The scribe looked totally bewildered.
“Roderic, are you certain that it is not you who was enchanted? I surely would be aware if—hai! Summon Mistress Hollem.”
“She is at work trying to break Norsunder’s magic,” Roderic said. “I just now came from her.”
The Guild Magister pressed his lips together, then he said in a less forceful voice, “Why would they line up against us? We have no warriors here. We are a trade town.”
“They seek this child, we suspect.” Roderic pointed back at the silent girl. “They may just be waiting for her to leave Loss Harthadaun. It was not just you who was enchanted. It exists all over the country. The King and Queen. And all over the world. This girl—the morvende call her Sartora—is going to break it.”
Liere flinched, and Devon bit her lip.
“Ho. Hai! I think you had better come within my chamber here, for every question you answer raises ten more. Much too akin to the weeds in my garden, when I try to tend my starliss! You, Lam, make this child comfortable—here, where is the boy?”
Roderic spotted the scribe standing just outside the office, talking with excited gestures to a growing crowd of people, and pointing back inside. Obviously spreading the word.
Liere’s insides quaked with fear. Devon was terrified at the crowd of loud, talking, arguing adults.
Enough, Roderic decided. He would not issue orders to a child who was apparently a great mage whose arrival had occasioned a rare visit from the morvende, but he wanted to see her safe.
“I shall return shortly,” he said to the girls, hoping that that was sufficient to keep them in one place until he and the Magister and the local mage could agree on the best course of action.
But plans seemed impossible to make. Gone was the nerveless order of the enchantment days. Every person had to be heard. Celebration! That was the word he heard most often. By the time he was halfway down the crammed stairs, the Magister’s great, booming voice reached over the hubbub: “I proclaim today a holiday—a day of freedom!”
A great cheer rang up the walls and rattled the windows. Roderic smiled. That loud voice had had at least as much to do as the man’s political acumen in keeping him so long in place as Guild Magister.
Roderic spotted the two girls, and fought his way down the surging tide of people. “Sartora,” he shouted. “Don’t go anywhere until—”
She vanished from view.
“Where is she?” he yelled.
“Guest chamber!” Lam yelled back, jumping up and down to be seen over the heads. “The little one was frightened. Too crowded!”
Good. That kept them safely in one place.
Now to do something about the Norsundrians.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Senrid looked around as well as he could without moving his head, counting elevens, noting positions and possible escape routes—not that he saw any of the latter. The signs of a more permanent camp indicated that Siamis had augmented his forces, for whatever reason. Senrid counted tents—estimating their size—and counted sentries at the inner perimeter.
There were a lot of elevens, obviously bored here in the wilderness, where from the slackness of their grip on their weapons, the careless looks at the unchanging forest, they had not only never seen anyone but did not expect to see anyone.
Near the two-towered ruin of a palace, Senrid saw the off-worlders. The Warren girls were playing some kind of game, listless and unfocussed, with rocks and twigs. Frederic sat with his legs dangling on a broken column, and Deirdre leaned against it. All four looked up at him, their faces wearing the same exact expression of incurious blankness. It made his skin crawl.
Then one of the Norsundrians behind Senrid pushed him past the kids into the building—and from there into the very same room where Liere had performed the magic freeing the rings. Senrid thought of his empty pocket and his lip curled.
The room was different. The few remaining furnishings not broken up for firewood had been shoved back against the white walls. Only the great round table remained in the center of the room. On it was a map dotted with flags and markers.
Senrid looked down at it, rapidly assessing—
“Who is this sorry spectacle?”
All heads turned sharply. The Norsundrians flanking Senrid faded back and Siamis moved around the table, giving Senrid an amused up-and-down.
They all knew he knew very well who Senrid was, but the leader stated his name and where he’d been found. Senrid looked away.
“Your friend Liere,” Siamis said pleasantly, “is right about here.”
A long finger reached past Senrid and tapped the map at the northwestern corner of Wnelder Vee.
Senrid glanced up over his shoulder. For a moment he and the infamous Siamis studied one another. Siamis smiled faintly, his gaze steady—inviting Senrid to meet it. Senrid turned his back.
Siamis said, “Noliar.”
Senrid heard a knife pulled from a sheath, and braced himself. The eleven named Noliar did not grab him by the neck, but by the wrists. A quick saw and Senrid’s hands were free. He flexed them, trying not to wince at the ache of lacerated flesh, of muscles too long confined.
So Siamis was in the mood for talk, not blood.
Senrid would rather have postponed this interview. He was ravenously hungry and desperately tired. He knew what lay ahead. The four kids outside were plain enough testimony to the efficacy of Siamis’s spell.
It was either that or execution.
Siamis waved a hand in casual dismissal, and Senrid heard the ring of heels in the direction of the door.
“Have you any questions for me, Senrid?” Siamis asked.
Senrid said nothing.
“You’ve been elusive until now. What prompted you to run into a trap?” The amused voice was edged with contempt.
So it would be at home, from anyone who heard.
A year ago, Senrid would have reacted exactly the same.
“Save me a longer trip,” he said finally, unlimbering some of his stored-up sarcasm, and hoping to provoke a hint of Siamis’s plans.
Siamis cooperatively said, “Your young friend Liere Fer Eider is not going to enjoy the trap she’s walking into, I fear. But you figured that out, did you not? Why didn’t she listen? The taint of the Marloven taste for war?”
“That and the praiseworthy desire to snap her fingers under your nose,” Senrid retorted.
“Irresistible,” Siamis agreed, still smiling. He added gently, “But it’s going to cost.”
The lack of threat was more sinister than the most graphic bully speech would have been. Senrid swallowed convulsively, his cracking lips thinning despite how much it hurt.
Siamis continued, “Detlev maintains that you exhibit possi
ble signs of the family gift for strategic thinking. If that is true, perhaps I can use your gifts myself before I accede to his request to send you along southward. Look here, and tell me what you think.”
Family gift? Accede to his request?
Senrid knew he was not being complimented. Almost dizzy with exhaustion, wary, he looked down at the map, where Siamis’s long hands swept over familiar continents and political boundaries. “Settled first were physical locations for the old rifts, as well as the new rift we’re creating. These sites await only the access spells. . . . “
The voice was warm, pleasant, instructive. Senrid watched the hands, noted the callus-hardened palms. The voice—the voice—
Alarm zapped through Senrid. Tiredness was no excuse for rank stupidity. He wrenched his gaze from the map, and fixed his attention on the middle button of Siamis’s shirt.
“ . . . areas of potential military uprisings. . .”
No. Close out the voice. Concentrate on the button. Wooden round hollowed-out shank, little holes at each end, white thread.
“ . . . and the final step will be to consolidate all the spells, and at the same time to use that power to force the rift into permanence, and I think you know how it’s most effectively achieved. I’m afraid that we’ve just suffered a setback down south, which is going to cause some realignment on both sides. Since lighters value symbolism, I prefer my original plan, which is to proceed in Bereth Ferian . . .”
The voice had caught him again. Desperately Senrid ground one of his wrists against the edge of the table. Blisters and scabs broke, and hot blood trickled down his palm, but he welcomed the pain. He concentrated—and he felt his mind lock behind that wall of pain.
He could no longer hear the voice. The words, meaningless as rain, fell around his ears.
The triumph did not last long.
A hand grasped his chin and forced it up. His aching head rocked back, and briefly, just briefly, he met Siamis’s steady, humorous gaze. “Very good! We will try again presently,” he said. “For the moment I have other business awaiting my attention.” And then, in a hard voice, a singular tone that numbed nerves and seized control of Senrid’s body from within, Siamis said, “In there. Now.”
Senrid felt his nerves flare white-hot then cold. His body jerked around and plunged through an arched doorway, into the empty room where he and Liere and Devon had freed the dyr. Then he abruptly collapsed on the floor.
That wasn’t the enchantment, it was a voice of command, of control so calculated it got between your own mind and your physical self. I will learn that voice, Senrid vowed to himself. I will learn it, and no one else will ever use it on me again.
He forced himself to his feet, wincing against aching skull and joints. Though every muscle, nerve, and bone throbbed, he and forced himself to pace back and forth, back and forth. He essayed the arched doorway, but backed up hastily when his bones and teeth hummed and he perceived the dark sheen of a fairly vicious ward. Not the protective ward he’d previously sensed, but something new, strong, and made by lethal dark magic.
He looked up. The broken ceiling was at least the height of three men overhead. Smooth walls, no way to reach that promising hole.
No windows.
No escape.
He could not sleep, he dared not, for he knew he would wake up like those kids poking around outside.
As the light disappeared Siamis worked, steadily, and then at last, haloed in the light of a glowglobe, Siamis sat down and put his head on his hand in a posture that reminded Senrid of Liere when she’d done long distance contacts.
Senrid swayed, forced himself upright, and watched.
Chapter Thirty
Rel introduced himself to the glazier’s apprentice. For the first time in weeks, he received a normal response—curiosity, even excitement. “ . . . are you going for a Knight?” the boy demanded. “My sister did, and I want to someday, if I can just get better with my archery and my . . .”
Rel listened to the boy babble on, letting the incoherent family history wash over him. It was almost as if a year’s worth of conversation, of reaction, of activity had to free itself all at once from some corner of the kid’s mind.
Rel was released when the boy remembered a friend, and ran off to talk to him. “Mind watching the shop?” the boy asked over his shoulder as he disappeared out the door.
Rel lifted a hand in assent and walked slowly downstairs. He wished he’d been able to keep the white horse as he leaned on the counter, studying the glazier’s tools with mild interest. So far, he’d never posed as a glassmaker.
He was examining glass containers of intensely colored liquids when the front door opened and Roderic entered, looking grim. “Not out celebrating?” he asked.
“Celebrating?” Rel repeated.
“You’re the only one who isn’t. It’s like they’ve all turned into children again. There’s no controlling them. The Magister is going to post notice that no one can leave town. I hope that will be sufficient to keep those warriors out there at bay.”
“Think they’re waiting for Sartora to come out?”
“What else can it be? Sartora—or others, who might somehow spread the news. Watching not just the roads but the countryside. Has to be that. There’s no tactical advantage in attacking a market town full of civilians who aren’t going anywhere.”
Rel, thinking of the number of those strike troops, said reluctantly, as if speaking might make the horror of his speculation into reality, “There’s an emotional advantage.”
Roderic paused two steps up the stairs, and looked back, his mouth grim. “This Siamis does tend to use that, doesn’t he? But it wouldn’t be a war, it would be—”
“A slaughter,” Rel said. “And a warning.”
Roderic bounded up the stairs. “Mistress Hollem!”
o0o
Senrid kept up his pacing, but felt the increasing weight of weariness in all his joints and muscles, and especially in his mind. It was a weariness so deep that surrender was not a choice, it was inevitable: his body was going to give out.
Siamis sat motionless, alone, in the big room. None of the Norsundrians were in sight.
The door shimmered with ward-magic.
. . .at the same time to use that power to force the rift into permanence, and I think you know how it’s most effectively achieved.
Gripped by the sick anger of helplessness, Senrid stared at the ward-magic, wondering if whatever the ward did to those who tried to cross it was less horrible than the end Siamis intended for him. Coward! Do it fast—
He was nerving himself when he heard a soft “Psst!”
Had to be one of the Norsundrians tormenting him.
“Senrid.” A whisper.
A kid’s whisper.
“Don’t think on us.”
A familiar voice—in the Leroran language.
The desperation in the voice convinced him—though he admitted to himself he was ready to believe anything, risk anything, for he had nothing more to lose.
So he obligingly pretended that he was going to be rescued. Of course it was totally fake, but why not pretend? So he pretended to look up at the jagged ceiling, and lo, a rope made of woven vines was descending.
A rope. From familiar hands. And beyond the hole, a familiar face—squarish, framed by overlong black hair, and spring green eyes.
All pretense! Pretense.
Don’t think about Leander Tlennen-Hess, or why he’s here. Don’t alert Siamis even by thought of anyone else’s presence. Just pretend, that’s it.
Now he was going to imagine jumping up and climbing hand over hand up the rope. Oh, he imagined his hands hurt, but he’d done this kind of rope climbing every morning at home ever since he was six, and anyway if his hands gave out he’d use his teeth, his toes, anything that got him up, and away, where Siamis could not enchant away his brains and his will, and force him to end his own life—and open the rift for Norsunder to pour into the world.
Two
very different hands would now reach down and grasp his arms, hauling him up onto the roof, where slanting rain instantly wetted him to the skin. Rain? Why didn’t it reach the room below? Well, that was part of the daydream!
And here, sure enough, was his old enemy, Leander Tlennen-Hess.
Pretense! Hold onto it! Leander is not real, and neither is what’s happening . . .
And so Senrid wound himself deeper into the daydream, into the sense of unreality that paralyzed mind and thought, as Leander and a tall, strong girl with heavy dark braids helped him down a broken wall and then—by degrees—into the blackness of a forest.
o0o
Mistress Hollem shoved, elbowed, and hip-bumped her way straight to the Magister.
Once she reached him, a very few words convinced him to rescind his holiday and declare an emergency, but no one stayed around to hear it.
She came back to report, “You cannot pour the wine back into the bottle when it has been spilled. We will have to go out and talk to people face to face.”
Roderic said tiredly, “I do not think many will listen. Especially those already half drunk.”
“They probably won’t,” Mistress Hollem said, “but children will.”
They separated off, Roderic to the houses, Rel along the city streets, and Mistress Hollem to the town’s small school and to the guild training building—everywhere there were prentices. They ordered the children to go to the old tunnels behind the quarry, as they’d been trained.
All the rest of the day the three worked, talking to everyone they could, and asking them to spread the word to friends, relatives, neighbors: get out of town! Now. By the water, or through the old tunnels behind the quarry, which opened onto rough country.
As the sun sank westward, its light washed into gray by another brief storm, Rel began to feel the futility of his efforts. For every person he convinced to stop celebrating and leave town, five laughed him off, or offered him food or drink and turned away to resume dancing in the streets.
But he kept at it until long after dark, until no one would even listen. People were too triumphant, too angry, too determined to show those soul-suckers outside the city just what celebration meant. Too drunk to listen.