Sartor (19 page)

“If you recognize this place,” he said, “it
will suffice. I believe I will take my leave of you now.”

Lilah said tentatively, “Now? But aren’t you
going to wait till we find Atan?” In her worried gaze he saw the
direction of her thoughts: she was afraid for her friend, the last Landis, kept
hidden by Tsauderei all these years.

Darian hid the wash of bitterness. He would have kept her
safe, had he known of her existence. But he hadn’t been offered the
option.

“No,” he said, and whistled to his mount.

As he began to saddle the horse, Lilah hovered at his side,
looking up, and down, and sideways. Then she scrubbed her grubby fingers over
her dirty face and blinked up him.

“If—if you have a long way to go, why don’t
you take both horses? Atan didn’t have one, so I probably won’t
need that one.”

He nodded and made that one ready as well. She followed him,
chewing on her chapped lips.

Finally she said, “Are you sure you’ll be—well,
all right?”

He hesitated, wondering if it would be possible to make her
see how very sweet was the prospect of real freedom. But he didn’t think
she would comprehend. Probably no one could, no one who had not been born yoked
to a position of power and its endless obligations, and then had lost not only
that but the ability to make the simplest choices. Going from king to Norsundrian
‘recruit’ certainly caused one to reflect upon the significance of
autonomy.

“Yes,” he said.

When he’d tested the last saddle girth and slid the
bigger saber home into the saddle sheath, he turned around, and this time saw
decision in her face. “So,” she said. “No more fox hunts,
Uncle Darian?”

Laughter was another long-forgotten luxury. “No more
fox hunts, Lilah.”

He mounted up, and set out at an easy pace toward the
northeast.

The long fall of notes from a warbler high in the tree above
rippled through Atan’s dream.

She woke slowly, the jumble of dream-images mixing with
sounds from below and above. The sweet, or shrill, or sharp sounds of forest
birds and birds of the meadows, of the lakes, and of the mountains,
complemented the chatter of young voices.

Birds.

She wondered if some of these birds had found their way out
of the disintegrating time-binding.

Her first instinct was to ask Tsauderei, from lifetime
habit. She could picture his old, sardonic face, and his rusty voice when he’d
said once,
You must realize, Atan, that the magic-training for a prospective
ruler is at best a slapdash affair. Far better that the heir has a sibling or
cousin or friend who is trusted, who can spend the required ten or twenty years
living in the wilds, doing nothing but listening to the land—and another
who can spend ten or twenty years working a craft, and listening and learning
how people interact. Only when mages know the balance of nature can they master
the great magic.

I am ignorant
, Atan thought, still not opening her
eyes.
I read and read and read, until I spend enough candles for a family of
twenty, and my eyes burn, and yet I am still ignorant, for I still lack
experience.

Sunlight—warm, golden—flickered across her
eyelids, dappled by leaves rustling in the morning breeze. Urgency, then memory
brought back the evening before: Lilah, back among them!

She still didn’t know what to make of that.
They’d traveled most of the day through the forest, to find Lilah alone,
walking alongside a stream. She’d looked up, and smiled, and greeted
everyone as though she’d only been gone since breakfast. As if there had
been no Norsunder, except there she was in those black clothes, her face
blanched except for those terrible circles under her eyes.

She’d answered questions with a shrug and grimace, no
words. Then said, “Tell me about the hideout.”

Atan had found herself talking, no, babbling, to fill the
silence as they all walked back to the hideout. She’d walked the silent
Lilah around the clearing, explained the two morvende tree platforms, pointed
out the girls’ tree, then taking Lilah to the swing. Lilah had stared at
that, her lips parted, her gaze so strange that Atan had instinctively waved
off the others.

She and Lilah stepped alone onto the swing. Lilah said in a
creaky voice utterly unlike her own, “I heard of these. But never. Saw
one.”

Atan said, “Put your hands on this bar. Lean back
while I lean forward. Brick and Pouldi and Sana all swing it all the way over
the bar, but I haven’t dared yet...” She found herself babbling
again, as they swung back and forth, back and forth, Lilah’s breathing
more ragged. Then Atan made the mistake of singing one of the simpler swing
songs, the one that reminded her of Larksong.

Lilah’s face had gone a nasty shade of yellow-white,
and gulping, bone-shaking sobs racked her so badly she couldn’t talk. She
crouched down with her head on her knees, her arms tightly wrapped around her
legs, heedless of the sway of the platform, and wept.

Atan grimaced, hating the memory of her own helplessness,
the sick sense of guilt that this was her fault, and she could not fix it. Some
queen of ancient lineage, couldn’t even assuage the grief of her first
friend!

A pretty voice broke into her thoughts, shaping words with
aristocratic precision and music. “... well I would think that the
Sarendan princess would wake up today, unless she plans to sleep until
Norsunder is defeated. Oh! I did not see that you had returned! Good morning,
Princess Merewen.”

It was the
tone
that Atan could not define, except
that she did not like it—and she immediately scolded herself for thinking
such a thing.

Then came Merewen’s soft reply: “Good morning, Irza.”

Merewen was back? Time to get up.

Atan opened her eyes, and rolled onto her elbows to peer
over the platform’s edge, relieved and surprised to see Merewen’s
golden hair gleaming in the mellow sunlight directly below her. Merewen and
Julian sat next to one another, each with a lapful of daisies and white
starliss and tiny lavender bee-blossoms, Julian watching with her
characteristic solemn gaze as Merewen’s clever fingers twined the flowers
together.

Merewen shook her hair back and glanced up, question in her
face.

Atan cast a quick look behind her at Lilah, who was, not
surprisingly, still slumbering. Her eyes no longer looked so dark underneath,
and her coloring had returned to normal during the night.

Atan looked down at the ring on her finger, twisting it around.
It had seemed, when Tsauderei gave it to her, oh... not frivolous, but neutral.
An artifact of history, possibly useful. After having pieced together from
Lilah’s halting words what it had accomplished in the Norsunder base, she
regarded it differently: the ring now carried mute threat. A powerful symbol of
the violence of once-living ancestors.

Atan sent one last glance at Lilah’s peaceful face. She’d
cried herself out, then pulled off the ring, and followed Atan to the platform,
where she’d wrapped herself up in the quilt Atan pointed out, and lay
down with her face turned away. So Atan had climbed down to leave her in peace,
finding the customarily loquacious Hinder and Pouldi waiting below in
compassionate silence, and Sin in narrow-eyed wariness.

Atan hoped Lilah would wake up wanting to talk. She would
not pester Lilah. She had made a vow. But she wanted—very badly—to
know what Darian Irad was going to do in Sartor. Not that she could stop him. But
not to know—it was like turning your back on a lightning storm.

She worked a brush through her hair and braided it quickly. Then
she descended, careful not to make a sound.

Merewen and Julian both looked up, and smiled a welcome. Atan
sniffed: fresh pan-biscuits, smeared with the tart berry jam that Rip and his
Poisoners made so well.

As she passed by the girls, Merewen looked her way. So, too,
did Julian, her gaze unnervingly watchful in that small, round face.

Tsauderei had told Atan that her education was far beyond
what most princes and princesses got. But when they weren’t reading, they
were learning how to deal with real people, and here she felt her own lack
every single day.

She listened to the happy chatter of the Poisoners. Rip,
whose nickname came from the initials of “Rest in Peace” was a big,
cheery half-morvende. His hands did not end in the morvende talons, but he had pale
coloring and a shock of blue-white hair. It was his cheery habit of
experimenting with food that had earned him his nickname.

With him worked Hannla, the oldest one in the group, Atan
had recently discovered, though Hannla was very small and slight and didn’t
look sixteen. Hannla’s mother had run a pleasure house in Eidervaen.

There had been no pleasure house or anything like it in tiny
Delfina Valley, where Atan had stayed hidden. Hannla had explained cheerfully, “Oh,
downstairs is where families come, for the food is always the very best, and
there is always music, and entertainment. The grownups might go upstairs, but everybody
young stayed down below, and at
our
house, we were always getting up
plays.”

“Plays?” Atan had asked. “I thought people
went to the theater to see those.”

“They did. But if they wanted to act themselves, or
sometimes to make one up, they came to
us
.” Hannla impatiently
pushed back an unruly strand of her thick, curly hair.

Plays! Music! Dancing! Wonderful foods from all other the
world! This was what Norsunder had either destroyed or froze beyond time. It
made Atan wild with longing, and regret, and anger.

But Hannla was cheerful and friendly. It was she who knew
how to cook so well, how to find spices (and grow more), and to sew small,
exquisite stitches—when they were able to get sewing materials.

Atan walked across the grass to join them.

“Good morning,” Hannla said, her ruddy brown
curls bouncing on her back as she whirled around. “Here’s your
share, fresh out of the pan.”

“Thanks,” Atan said.

“How is Lilah?” Hannla asked, glancing back at Atan’s
tree.

“Sleeping still.”

Hannla pursed her lips. “Was it very bad?”

“Bad enough, I gather,” Atan said.

Hannla gave a quick nod and returned to kneading dough, as
Rip waved his stirring spoon at two of his helpers, who were wrestling on the
ground, and told them to get to work before he dumped soup on them.

Atan bit into her biscuit. Crunchy on the outside, soft and
warm in the middle, it was a miracle of tastiness in these surroundings. So
much unspoken ability—and promise—and potential strife—all
symbolized here in this little brown piece of food.

When she looked up, Merewen was there, her wide sky-colored
eyes alert, her head canted in mute question.

“You have news?” Atan asked. The words “of
Savar” stayed unspoken because Merewen did not seem happy. She
hadn’t gone along to meet Lilah, but had run off in the other direction.

“Last night I went seeking,” Merewen said in her
soft voice. “And I found something new that I think is important. In some
of the little villages, and even some towns, I saw lights. Hin and Sin told me
that the villages are always dark, and when you go near them, you find yourself
drawn into dreams. But I didn’t feel that at the small villages I spied
from the forest’s edge. Only the large town. And I went quickly away.”

“Then the magic must be stronger where there are more
people,” Atan said. “I guess that would make sense: it must have
taken greater magic to bind the enchantment in villages, towns, and cities.”

“Yes, but there’s another thing I saw, and that
by accident.” Merewen frowned. “I don’t know if everyone can
see it, for it isn’t quite like seeing this way.” She bent, picked
up a leaf, and held it up so that sunlight glowed round its edges. “Some
things I see—this way.” She touched her forehead, her eyes closed. “And
this.” She touched her heart. “I don’t know that I can
explain how, or why.”

“It’s all right,” Atan said. “Explain
it as you can.”

“Over those villages, the ones with lights at night,
there was also a kind of glow, but I felt it more than I saw it. It felt like
here, when we cross the bridge.” Again, she touched her forehead.

“Magic,” Atan breathed. “I wonder—I
wonder if that is where we will begin to find allies.”

Merewen nodded. “The lights in the houses mean the people
are no longer dreaming, doesn’t it? I didn’t leave the forest’s
edge, or talk to anyone. I was too afraid.”

“I think we need to find out,” Atan said. Her heart
thumped again. “Before Norsunder does.”

o0o

Some days’ journey upriver to the northwest Rel was
still sitting on the steps of the great palace, lost in memory-dream. He sat
there peacefully until a sudden clap on his shoulder smashed through the
dreams.

“Wake up. Wake up,” a male voice commanded.

Rel fought his way to consciousness. It was not a quick
fight. It took the space of several breaths, while his body protested any
sudden movements. His joints twinged and his neck zinged him with a pang as he
twisted his head to see who’d struck him.

A man ran lightly down the steps, visible only from the
back: medium height, light of build, long brown hair tied back, dark clothes.

“Hey.” Rel was surprised to discover how much
effort that took.

The man paused and glanced back, blue eyes wary and curious.

“What?” Rel asked. His mouth was dry, his tongue
awkward. All he could manage was that one word.

Before he could frame another, the man pointed. “Go
south,” he said, in accented Sartoran. “Norsunder is going to find
out this kingdom is waking up, and the Landis princess is going to need allies.”
Without waiting for an answer, the man leaped down the steps and strode away.