Sartor (20 page)

Landis—Rel knew
that
name. Every child in the
world had at least heard that name. But history taught that they had all died.

Rel forced himself to his feet, and that act broke the last
of the magic hold. He started moving, at first feeling like he was trying to
run in water. He walked into a spacious street and saw others still sitting
here and there, staring into space.

Magic. Bad magic. Rel kept walking in hopes of finding the
man who’d wakened him, for his mind filled with questions, but after a
time he gave up. Thirst and hunger clamored much too fiercely, and his knees
trembled. He stopped at a fountain to drink, and then sat down on the rim to
stare in bemusement at the water shooting up, falling into the pool, and
draining away somewhere. Surely that fountain had not run for over a hundred
years.

He shook his head, then dug in his pack for something to
eat.

o0o

Darian Irad hastened his way through Eidervaen, trying to
rouse every single person he encountered. Many dropped back into the weird
torpor from which he briefly brought them. Others got up and moved about, looking
lost and disoriented.

He never halted long. This wasn’t his kingdom, nor was
it his war. His single-minded focus, his hatred of Norsunder, and the
unconscious mental resistance he’d built up to the pervasive atmosphere
of defeat and despair in the Norsunder base, kept the weakening magic from
taking hold of him.

And so he kept going, hoping that a leader would emerge from
the groggy, bewildered people he found. He kept going straight north, without
knowing that the strange magic of Shendoral had transferred him several days’
journey to the very northwestern edge of the forest, a few days’ journey
from the capital.

He rode along the Ilder river, encountering dwellings
wherein people sat as they’d been magic-bound for over a century, the
pots and pans in their kitchens dry with ancient dust, yet meager supplies from
that last war-ravaged harvest still stored in larders, cellars, and cupboards.
Two days he traveled, finding loose horses ready for a fast gallop, and
untouched haystacks, and the occasional smoke-blackened ruins of war from which
the fires had long since cooled. In some places the old war was strangely
immediate, in others, long past.

Once he stopped to share a supper with people who had
apparently just woken on their own, and who, still perplexed and dream-mazed,
had fixed a meal, and were slowly rediscovering their attachment to the
material world. The questions they asked him were straightforward, but few of
them could he answer.

At the end of this strange meal Darian picked up an apple
that had been laid in the cellar just before his grandfather’s birth,
during a war that that grandfather had grown up hearing about, and whose
ferocity had shaped the Irad line through the three succeeding generations.

He rode across Sartor, waking up every person he encountered,
until he reached the border at last and thence into a new life.

o0o

Lilah woke up loving the forest foliage overhead, and the
sounds of kids talking and singing. By the end of that day, she’d joined
the bigger kids in circle swinging, which meant going over the bar. The thrill
of motion, almost of terror, made her scream with laughter.

I could stay here forever
, she exulted at the end of
the first night. And when she woke again in the morning to the same leaves.

The third day, she began to pay attention to the regular
patterns of the kids, specifically the training the older ones put themselves
through every morning.

“Here’s how you string a bow.” Hinder showed
Lilah the oiled snapvine string, then demonstrated how to hook it to the other
end of the bow. “You draw your arrow back... like this.” He made it
look easy.

Lilah blew her breath out. It was all very well to say that
she’d asked for adventure, but what about all the people who woke up to
the smell of their house burning, when the revolution happened? And what about
Norsunder’s victims who hadn’t tried to help a princess? A victim
was a victim.

Lilah was determined to never be a victim again. She gritted
her teeth, yanked the arrow back—and let go.

The arrow shot backward.

“Whoop!”

“Ulp!”

She whirled around, horrified as a bunch of kids scrambled
out of the way.
Chuff!
Her arrow flumped ignominiously on the grass.

“Never mind,” Hinder said over his shoulder as
he ran to retrieve the arrow. “Your pull wasn’t hard enough to do
much besides give someone a good poke. And when we started, we were just as
bad.” He was back, and took the bow from her hands. “Watch. Carefully.”

This time Hinder explained everything he was doing with his
hands and arms. Lilah, standing back, noticed that his entire body moved. It
looked as if he drew his strength from his wide-planted feet as he drew an
arrow, aimed, adjusting for the rising western breeze, and then let fly.
Zoing!
The arrow smacked dead center into the target he and his friends had made from
straw and some old cloth, painted with circles.

Lilah tried a couple more times, and on the last one
actually managed to send an arrow in the general direction of the target,
though it fell far short and quite a bit to the right.

By then, several others had gathered around, and they all
complimented her with friendly and generous cheers.

“Better than I,” Brick declared. “Why,
when I first began to shoot, everyone ran to hide in front of the target,
figuring that was the only safe place!”

Lilah laughed with the rest, pretending it was funny. She
didn’t want them to see how useless she felt. She still had her thief
tools, but sometimes there weren’t any locks to pick, or villains to send
off to sleep with Lure flowers—if the flowers had any potency left. Hinder
and Sana and Sin and Mendaen and all these others looked so, so
effortless
with their excellent shots.

Lilah said, “I want to watch. Then I’ll take a
turn.” She moved to the side as the others commenced practice.

Atan appeared next to her. “Lilah, are you all right?
Do you need more rest?” she asked.

Her gaze was friendly and steady, but the shape of her eyes
was a nasty reminder of Kessler’s flat stare. Lilah had avoided Atan the
past couple of days, but she knew it wasn’t fair. Atan was a friend, and
she couldn’t help sharing an ancestor with that horrible Kessler
Sonscarna.

So she said, “I’m all right.”

Atan looked away, then back again, her shoulders tight, her
chin jutting. “Lilah, I’m so sorry I didn’t come after
you.”

“He would have killed you. Or me, once he found out I
wasn’t you.”

Atan shook her head. “I still feel...” Another,
harder head shake. “They said I had an obligation to stay. I felt I had
an obligation to you.”

Lilah’s skin prickled. She hated seeing Atan look so
unhappy. “I think this is what my brother talked about, how horrid you
feel when you’re king and have two choices that are completely
opposite.”

“Peitar talked about that? What did he say?”

“He told me what Tsauderei said. Didn’t
Tsauderei tell you?”

Atan’s lips twitched, almost a smile. “Is it the
‘delegate’ talk?”

“That was it! You delegate whichever choice you can,
and do the other one. Well, when I got out with my uncle’s help, then
Tsauderei came. And Merewen and Hinder were looking for me. I mean, I know you
didn’t send my uncle, but in a way the others were kind of delegated.
Weren’t they?”

Atan rubbed her fingers up her sleeve two or three times,
then said, “If you don’t feel I failed you, then I’ll accept
that.”

“You
didn’t
,” Lilah said. “I
never thought you were supposed to chase that evil stinker Kessler. It would
only have got us both into trouble.”

Atan smiled, at least her mouth did, but her forehead was
still puckered with concern. She lifted a hand toward the others. “So you
want to learn the bow?”

Lilah sighed. “I figure it’ll only be ten years
before I can actually touch the target. Did they teach you anything while I was
gone?”

“Sin showed me a little,” Atan said. “But
like you, I need practice.”

Everyone paired off to work with swords or knives, some with
both. Lilah and Atan didn’t join. They sat on the scattering of boulders
bordering the clearing and watched the tall, black-haired Mendaen, who was by
far the best.

“He told me that his family were palace guards,”
Atan said to Lilah. “He’s been trying to teach them defense, but a
couple of the others insist on only learning the art of dueling.”

“Courtiers,” Lilah guessed, and Atan brought her
chin down in a slow nod.

Lilah knew what that meant: snobs. There were maybe forty
kids here overall. Everybody dressed in ragged old clothes. But even so, there
were still snobs.
It’s like we can’t get away from it, even in
Sartor
, Lilah thought.

It was easy enough to pick out the ristos. Several kids had
somehow managed to find, or bring with them, big, heavy sabers, fancy light
rapiers of the sort that nobles used to wear every day at court the generation
or so before, one or two curved cavalry swords, used only by the biggest, and
they used them with two hands. The only thing that these weapons had in common
was their old-fashioned in design.

The ristos stayed to themselves, in their midst a vaguely
familiar girl with blonde braids. Lilah remembered her from the night before,
asking Atan in a precise, insistent voice, Did someone say that she
wasn’t born a princess? Of course, it’s merely Sarendan...

‘Merely.’ Lilah’s stomach surged with
disgust.

Atan lowered her voice. “Lilah, you can go home if you
like. I think I can work a transfer from here.”

Lilah thought,
She doesn’t want me because I
managed to get myself captured
. And here she’d just arrived, to find
the most amazing hideout ever. No adults, just kids, and it looked like they
had fun all the time! “If you don’t need me, I’ll go back. I
don’t want to cause any more trouble,” she forced herself to say.

Atan frowned, made uneasy by the way Lilah looked down, and
mumbled instead of her usual brisk, happy speech. What did it mean? “Lilah,
I asked only because you’ve already been through a lot on my behalf.
Please be plain. I’m having so much trouble understanding...” She
swooped her hand through the air. “The differences between what is said
and what is
meant
.”

Lilah whooshed her breath out. “I hoped it was just
that, and not because I was fathead enough to get caught. I promise I won’t
cause any trouble, I’ll be careful—”

“As if we’re all experienced warriors?” Atan
countered, relieved. “Lilah, you’re not to blame for
anything
.
Nobody thinks it. I believe I can claim that much, at least.”

Relief flooded through Lilah. “Well, count me in.”

“Thank you.” Atan drew in a breath. “The
truth is, I need your perspective terribly. Though I’ve read so much
about irony and hidden meanings, I don’t know how to hear it. And I
don’t know how to... to see meanings not expressed in words.” She sighed.
“When you talk, your actions fit your tone. When Peitar talked, it was
the same. And with Tsauderei—if he wanted me to know what he was
thinking. With Merewen it mostly fits, but I don’t think she’s
trying to hide anything. It’s more that her Loi side is difficult to
understand. With Hinder and Sin Mendaen, Brick and Hannla and Sana, everything
fits together. But some—”

Lilah watched the blonde girl, who stood with her head
erect, her wrists straight as she whipped the rapier through the air to clash
against her opponent’s blade. “I think I know what you mean.”

Clang-g-g!
At the other end of the clearing, two
Poisoners began a mock battle with a battered wooden practice sword against a
cauldron ladle, chins so elevated the two almost tipped backward, their
movements prissy. Atan looked puzzled, but Lilah understood the mimicry at
once.

Rip stuck out a foot. The one with the ladle stumbled and
fell with a splat, which caused a wrestling match. Lilah sent a quick look at
the ristos. They were paying Rip and the Poisoners no heed.

Lilah snickered, and Atan was glad to see her laughing. As
Lilah watched the Poisoners clowning, Atan let her gaze wander until it was
caught by a tight group talking earnestly on the other side of the clearing,
who flicked looks her way. She decided to find out why.

Lilah didn’t notice her going. She watched the
Poisoners until Hinder sauntered up, wringing one hand. He hopped up on Lilah’s
rock to sit next to her, wiggling his bare toes. Lilah bent to look more
closely at his toe talons.

Hinder said, “No, I don’t know why we morvende have
talons. I guess for digging.”

“I wasn’t going to ask such a nosy question,”
Lilah said, though she felt foolish, because she certainly had been thinking it.

Hinder grinned. “Really? Well then, you’re the
first. Soon’s I came sunside and found my way here, they all asked us. The
little ones right away, the older ones in roundabout ways. Said they’d
heard of morvende, but never seen any of us.”

“Probably everybody’s
heard
of morvende.”
Lilah shook her head. “It’s just that we weren’t sure you
really existed anymore, over in Sarendan. That Norsunder had managed to get all
of you, along with Sartor, and Everon, and all the great kingdoms of the old
stories.”

“Well, not many of our kind have been in those old
geliaths that far east, not for centuries and centuries,” Hinder said. “Norsundrians
have
found some geliaths. And...” He made a swiping gesture, his
talons ripping through the air. “Nobody comes out alive.”

“Ugh. So ‘geliath,’ is that what morvende
call their caves?”

“More like cave... cities. I always wanted to hear
about the sun and about weather, and life on the surface, and so I came up once
I was past eight. And got caught here.”