A Posse of Princesses (27 page)

Just in time she shut her eyes.
Magic.
This huge, glittering gem was one of those rare things, a diamond
scry-stone. Most of them were made from quartz, but this was a
single diamond, bigger than her two fists put together. Sidal had
told her once that diamonds held immense amounts of power, far more
than any other clear stone, but that much power was dangerous to
anyone not trained to handle it.

She touched it cautiously, looking at it
sideways: Sidal had mentioned once that mages must be cautious
around
any
scry-stones. Rhis had been bored. She didn’t want
to learn anything about magic. But now, as she stared at the
diamond, unable to move away, but not daring to stare straight at
it, she wished she had listened better. What was it Sidal had said
about warding? That mages could see one another unless one knew how
to ward oneself from being seen? She shivered. What if someone was
looking at her right now? One thing she did remember: the searchers
were not always benevolent.

She could not resist touching it again, this
time letting her finger linger. The diamond seemed to sing on a
very high, sharp note—sharp yet almost sweet. A compelling note;
the stone vibrated with power.

And it lay in the hands of the Damatrans?

The singing changed to a melody so compelling
and poignant, as if beckoning, or rather, holding out hands to the
sky, yearning for freedom.

Rhis’s other fingers gently closed around the
stone. The thinking part of her mind—almost overwhelmed with the
beautiful song of yearning—only had room for one thought:
I hope
you don’t turn me to stone
.

Free, the stone sang. Take me. Set me free,
free, free! It seemed light in her hand, almost as if it wanted to
fit there. So she lifted it, and the song soared with golden,
joyous trills.

She tucked it into her sash. With the
glittering lights gone, she was able to look around, and remember
her surroundings. She had to get away!

She pulled her white blouse over the sash to
hide the bulge, and then held out her bubble-ribbon.

A few raindrops stung her face. The wind was
turning cold, and picking up strength.

She made the bubble, stepped inside, and
leaned up to clear the crenellations of the tower.

She stood—and the bubble slowed, suspended in
the middle of the air above the castle. The wind then began blowing
it east.

East, not west.

Biting her lip hard to keep from crying out,
she leaned her hands against the western side, and it began to move
westward, gradually picking up speed. But when she tried looking
down through the skin, the lights below were blurry, and if she
angled her head down, her hands shifted, making the bubble tremble
and bob.

So she slowed and tried again, lowering
herself little by little until she felt a brush against her
head.

The top of the bubble! It had shrunk!

She pressed harder, thinking over and over
Where is the pottery?
It was now too dark for her to see,
but the bubble was so small she dared not risk slowing as it
whisked over the rooftops.

She peered anxiously down as the bubble
lowered, getting smaller and smaller until she was kneeling.

The bubble touched the ground, and she
collapsed, and bent to pick the ribbon up. It was merely a scrap,
but she tucked it firmly into her sash.

Now to find the others—and not get
caught.

It was full dark under a layer of thin cloud.
She discerned the jumble of out-buildings beside the clay field,
and had just started toward it when she heard the patter of running
steps.

She whirled around—and then gave a glad gasp
of surprise when Dartha whispered, “Princess Rhis! How did you find
us?”

“Dartha? How did
you
get here?”

“Come. This way! They plan how to get you.
Come, come!” She held out her hand.

Rhis took it, and, led by Dartha, ran over
the rocky, weedy ground toward the storage sheds behind the kiln.
She stopped and whistled a bird call.

Seemingly from out of the ground two
silhouettes appeared, and closed on Dartha and Rhis.

Dartha whispered a fast explanation to the
shorter silhouette—one of Taniva’s guards. The other whispered in
Vesarjan, “Who is that?”

“I’m Rhis.”

The boy whistled softly, long and low.

Dartha ran back in the other direction—on
guard.

The boy led Rhis between the storage
buildings to a shed, hissed a few words—and more figures emerged.
They helped him open a rickety door built for wagons.

A faint ruddy glow lit the barn. Rhis’s guard
led her around stacks of huge clay water and storage pots, where
she discovered Yuzhyu, Lios, Taniva, Shera, and some others
crouched in a circle looking down at a model of the city crudely
drawn on an old piece of paper.

They all looked up, but Rhis was aware of
only one face.

“I said I’d get myself out,” she said, and
was gratified at Lios’s wide-eyed astonishment.

“How did you manage that?” he asked, his
admiration plain. “No—”

“Later,” Taniva cut in, waving her hand in a
sharp chop. “My suspicion makes more need to be fast. Come! We get
out
now
.”

The boys turned Lios’s way. He looked
unfamiliar to Rhis, wearing those guard clothes—like the
Damatrans’, sturdy tunic-jackets, though made differently, and dyed
a sort of gray-blue. He said, “Let’s,” and they sprang into
action—one dousing the little lick of flame, another sweeping up
the map, and the rest falling in around the girls as they were led
out of the storage houses and up a rocky, crumbling slope behind
the pottery.

They zigzagged uphill in the darkness, a very
uncomfortable journey, especially when Rhis made the mistake of
looking back once to discover how very far above the city she’d
climbed. Its lamps and torches and glowglobes winked and glimmered
far below. It made her dizzy, or maybe that was the pull of the
diamond, whose lights seemed to twinkle in her mind.

She followed Shera, who was breathing hard.
Up toward the city wall they climbed. From a distance the wall had
looked uniformly smooth. Closer, they could see that it was much
repaired, but still too high to climb. No guards walked the
wall—but it glowed faintly.

Rhis pointed. “Magic?”

“Yizz, yizz,” Yuzhyu whispered. “There iss
magic guarding ze top. We cannot climb over.”

Rhis scooted forward. “But if you are a mage,
can’t you transfer us over?”

Yuzhyu turned her way. “No. Iss political
cause. I can do nossink.”

“But—”

“I have a better way,” Taniva said. “Never
mind the magic. I got in and out without it. Just a bit farther,
above that stream.”

A couple of people exclaimed “Where?” and “I
can’t see anything!”

But Rhis heard the high singing note,
beckoning her. When she turned her face upward and to the left, the
sharpness left the note and it turned sweet. Without any thought
she began scrambling up in that direction.

“Rhis?” Shera called, then hurried
behind—followed by the others.

Rhis kept going. She couldn’t see it in the
thickening darkness as the rain clouds built up, but she could hear
the stream: a rushing trickle.

In silence everyone climbed. Though the
strange singing in her brain kept up, Rhis was able to ignore it
when she concentrated on Lios, behind Yuzhyu.

No one spoke until they had gone a ways
alongside the stream. They often slid in mud, but by now the rain
had begun, so they were wet anyway.

The weird pull on Rhis’s mind eased, and she
faltered, murmuring, “Aren’t we here?” just as Taniva said,
“Hah!”

She took Shera’s hand. Rhis followed. Mostly
by feel she discovered she was to climb under the wall, where the
stream had slowly been crumbling away the foundation of the
stone.

One by one they climbed through, and then
there was another steep scramble, in pouring rain, until they
reached the forested area that had not been cleared away by the
Damatrans.

Early morning light outlined the rocky
hillside surrounded by forest.

Rhis was tired, gritty, and cold, but at
least she wasn’t thirsty. Water dripped and trickled
everywhere.

“My cave is not far,” Taniva said, no longer
keeping her voice low.

“They don’t patrol up here?” Lios asked,
catching up with her.

Rhis felt a brief flame of warmth inside at
the sound of his voice—the magic singing lessened, and she breathed
deeply, aware of her surroundings. But when she remembered those
horrible words she’d spoken to Lios, the inward warmth turned into
the prickly heat of embarrassment.

“Once a week or so a sweep. But they guard
against army. Not one person.”

“We figured that might be the case when we
slipped in,” Lios said.

“How you do that?” Taniva asked.

“Got some laborers’ smocks, and bought a load
of garlic. They eat a lot of it up here, did you know that?”

Taniva laughed. “We eat it, too! And red
pepper! Good spice in winter.”

“We only dared the six of us. This was meant
to be a scouting foray. The rest of the fellows are with the
horses, down in the valley behind the river fork.”

“I know where that one lies,” Taniva said.
“Now. Where . . . where . . .”

Rhis stumbled wearily; Yuzhyu closed in on
one side. “Need you help?” she asked, extending one of her small
hands.

Rhis sighed. “I’ll be fine. But oh, I’m so
tired.” The singing dream world started closing in again. She
forced her eyes open.

“I think we all are,” Yuzhyu said.

“There it is. Still dry!” Taniva called.

Her women split up at once to search the
surroundings as Taniva led the way through a narrow crack in two
great rocks that slanted up a hillside. An ancient landslide left
the rock revealed, like the slanting layers in the great cliffs
behind the city.

Rhis could see the rock. The peachy light
that heralds the sun’s first appearance lit the tops of the tall
pines and the rocky mountainside.

Rhis followed Shera into the cave, which
widened into a mossy area that was out of the storm, just as the
rain began to dwindle to mist.

The cave smelled of mold, but that vanished
when Taniva found her stash of wood and made a fire. She hung her
cloak over the crack in the rock, blocking the firelight from
glowing, and then hunkered down.

Lios gestured, and his young guards gathered
around, sitting in a tired group. “That was a wonderful escape,” he
said.

“Maybe.” Taniva smacked her hands. “But it
was too easy.”

Rhis did not want to call Lios’s attention
her way, so she whispered to Shera, who crouched beside her, chin
on knees, ruddy hair hanging sodden down her back, her eyes closed.
“Iardith?”

“Stayed behind,” Shera whispered back, eyes
still closed. “Said she had plans of her own, which did not include
returning to her father empty-handed.” She opened her eyes, and
grinned wryly. “I think, from some of the things she said, she
planned to oust you as Jarvas’s new betrothed.”

Rhis felt Lios’s attention. Again her face
heated up. “She is welcome to him.”

Taniva said, “I do not like this. No alarm.
No search. My escape, too easy.”

Shera groaned. “If that was too easy, I’d
hate to see a hard one.”

Lios said apologetically, “Hard has to come
next, I’m afraid. We cannot count on late alarms or searches. We
had better leave and make our way to the horses. We’ll rest as soon
as we’re safely over the border into home.”

Taniva smacked her hands again. The sound
hurt Rhis’s ears. She felt the strangeness closing in again, like
water seeping in under the door to her mind: the singing increased
and her mind flickered with dream images, though her body was still
awake.

“First we eat a little,” Yuzhyu said. And
frowned around. “I feel magic. Very strong.”

Rhis turned her way, forming the words to
tell her about the stone. But the singing was too loud, her body
suddenly so heavy, so ready for sleep . . .

She jerked awake when Lios said, “Eating is a
good idea. But I think we’d better do it while walking. I will feel
somewhat better when we reached the camp and the horses. Glaen will
be worried about us,” he added.

Shera sat up, her eyes startled.

But she said nothing as Dartha handed out the
last of the girls’ stores, and they left the cave, walking single
file out into the mist.

Shera was uncharacteristically quiet that
long, nightmarish day. Rhis walked next to her, slipping in and out
of dream. The stone sang sweetly, as if urging her tired feet to
carry her on: it seemed to want to get away as badly as she
did.

Lios walked with seeming tirelessness up and
down the line, encouraging people, talking to keep them awake. That
is, he talked to everyone but Rhis and Shera. Neither of them spoke
to him.

At sunset the tired group shuffled down the
river bank far west of the city, where the river narrowed to white
water. Here was an old row of rocks that formed a hopping bridge,
as Taniva called it.

Under pouring rain, as the light faded, Rhis
faced those uneven wet stones. She wished she could just waft
herself over. And though she did not know any magic whatsoever,
when she hopped to the first stone, she seemed to move slowly
through the air, as if it were water and not full of raindrops, and
landed lightly. She hopped to the next, and the next—and almost
stumbled when Yuzhyu took a crowing breath.

“Rhis,” she called. “Have you a spell on
you?”

“A spell? No—”

“You haff zis magic light on you, ooom.” She
was so excited her accent was back very strongly.

Rhis’s body tingled. She closed her forearms
across her middle and fought away the strange sense of
lightness.