Sartor (23 page)

Julian’s color returned to normal almost immediately. Merewen
smiled. She’d worn the yeath-fur cloak because her mage guardian had given
it to her, but she’d discovered that she didn’t really need it. Dressed
only in her tunic, Merewen still felt a pleasant sense of coolness, not cold,
and so too did the morvende, used as they were to the stone depths never warmed
by the sun. As long as they were dry, the morvende did not mind cold. But as
the forest thinned and they emerged onto the hills above the River Ilder, the
others felt the grip of winter closing around bones and flesh.

That wasn’t the only problem. Used as the patrollers
were to gleaning for nuts during autumn and fresh berries during spring as they
roamed Shendoral, trading work for milled wheat from the miller, they had
assumed that scavenging along the road would make their stores last longer.

But the land was barren, ready for winter, and the streams
they’d found so far had no mills. There were no other spring glades with
fruit growing year round, much less the vegetable patch that the Poisoners had
tended so carefully. Unless they found people who had extra stores, food was
going to become scarce.

Bigger than both these problems was that of the riders.

The kids emerged from the protection of Shendoral just
before sunset. As they peered down the road toward a winding river, they saw horseback
riders on the other side, between the river and the twinkling lights of their
first village.

Arlas was certain they were villagers, Hannla cheerfully
pointed out that here was proof Sartor was waking up, and shouldn’t they
flag down the riders?

“They’re searching,” Lilah said,
remembering the king’s patrols of summer. ”They’re not riding
around having fun. They’re on a search.” She watched the riders as
she spoke, appearing and vanishing again beyond the distant hedgerows and
fences and the last of the trees. She saw weapons at the saddles, the
back-and-forth movement of heads.

“Searching for us?” Atan looked up. “Who
even knows we’re—oh, yes.” She grimaced when her gaze fell on
Lilah’s black clothes. “They’re looking for me.”

Searchers
. The whisper worked down the line, quieting
everyone. Faces turned Atan’s way. She felt those gazes, felt the
question behind them.

Brick pointed from behind a broad tree. “Are they
Norsundrians? Mendaen, you’d know.” He turned his head the other
way and beckoned wildly.

Mendaen had supervised the small ones ducking behind a
hedgerow. He ran quick and low to join the others. “They wear no
one’s livery,” he said.

From above in the tree, Sindan said softly, “They all
wear gray.”

“Norsunder,” Atan whispered. She glanced at
those expectant faces, then said, “Hinder, I think you and the others
ought to go back. I will go on alone, because they have to know where I’d
be going if they really are searching for me.”

“I’m going with you,” Lilah forced herself
to say, though her insides quivered like watery jelly. But she’d seen how
those others had almost began yelling for the horsemen’s attention.

“I am, too,” Hinder said from behind a tree, so
that his white hair would not draw the riders’ eye. Lilah crouched beside
Atan, her shoulders hunched to her ears, arms folded across her front.

Merewen was nowhere in sight.

Atan was thinking rapidly. “Since we don’t know
who they are, let’s stay quiet,” she suggested. “We might
wait until midnight, and then we’ll see the magic that Merewen saw,
showing us who is free of the enchantment, and who not. If it’s safe, maybe
we will find allies in the village.”

Her suggestion was turned into an order as it passed down
the line.

This plan spread down the line, and they clumped up together
on top of the highest hill so they could peer at the village, with its golden
lights in a few windows.

None of them had any idea that they’d been spotted.

Wend and Xoll, Dejain’s trackers, found the footprints
of Atan’s group in the otherwise undisturbed dust of the road. So they
eased up until they heard the kids’ voices clear on the cold air.

“They’re sitting on the ridge on the other side
of the river, watching the village in the valley,” Wend reported to
Dejain after they transferred back.

“Why?” Dejain asked.

“One of them said that at midnight they’ll
perceive some sort of light picking out the domiciles of those breaking out of
the time-bindings. They seem to think these people will be potential allies.”

“Some sort of light?” Dejain repeated. “Magic.
But whose?”

Wend shrugged. “Didn’t say. Only that they were
waiting to see it.”

“None are adults, you say?”

“None.”

“How many?”

“Somewhere between three and four dozen. Oldest ones
look sixteen or seventeen. Most younger.”

“Irad wasn’t with them?”

“No adults. No sign of Irad, other than the hoof
prints we spotted at the very north end. Might be his, might be someone else’s.”

It was midnight now. Dejain studied Zydes’s best
tracker and tried to read the long, ugly face. Ech, he was ugly, and she
preferred men to be pretty. This one had a broken nose, scars, belligerent cast
to eyes and forehead, but he was good at his work. He also had to be considered
a danger because she didn’t—yet—know his weakness.

Xoll, now, standing there licking his lips, his weakness was
a craving for catching and playing with prisoners. He loved killing. Give him
an order to kill, and he worked for you.

Dejain said, “What does Zydes know?”

Wend’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Nothing. Too
busy ranting.”

So he didn’t deny reporting to Zydes before coming to
her. Lesca the head cook had seen Wend coming out of Zydes’s office, or
Dejain wouldn’t have known, but her question didn’t seem to worry
Wend. “Let me guess,” she said. “A new search for Irad?”

“Eastern border. Mountains. And if not, then he wants
me to go covert over the mountains and down into Miraleste.”

“He won’t be there, he’s still in
Shendoral, hiding out—has to be,” Dejain said. “Unless he
rode into the time binding.”

Wend shrugged.

Inwardly Dejain cursed the clumsiness of having to use these
trackers, and having to slink around to hold these private conversations
without unwanted witnesses. Magic tracers would be so much neater! But Zydes
had a net of wards over the Base, and Sartor’s enchantment was still too
strong for any other spells to work.

As for the trackers... if only she could find out Wend’s
ambition, his weakness. His desire.

She pulled her cloak tighter about her. There was no weather—of
course—but the cold had intensified. The fangs of winter were about to
sink deep into their hides. It made her bones and joints ache. Even her teeth
hurt. Twice she’d had to force her hundred-year-old self back to this
youthful appearance, but dark magic could not truly rejuvenate.

“Children,” she repeated, turning about and
staring north. Her thoughts returned to Darian Irad and the brat he’d had
in tow. “Find that child, the one Irad had. Bring him back here. Do what
you want with the rest.”

Xoll uttered his high, keening giggle, a sound like the
dying shrieks of a ferret.

o0o

“We have to leave,” Merewen whispered, breathing
hard from her run. “Now.”

“What?” Atan whispered back. She looked around. The
sky was clear, peaceful with brilliant stars, and below lay the village,
apparently asleep. And... was that a silvery glow, above the middle there? No,
it was probably her imagination. Midnight was still a while off.

“I went back up the road, and I saw two more of those
riders. But they weren’t riding. They sneaked up behind that old vine
there.” She pointed. “And listened to you. Then they went away
again, and I followed, and I saw them go out like lights.” She snapped
her fingers.”

“Transfer magic,” Atan whispered.

Atan’s doubts resolved. “We can’t wait
around to see lights. We have to get to Eidervaen, as fast as we can,”
she said.

“But—wouldn’t allies be good to get?”
Hinder pointed to the village.

She shook her head. “Can’t be helped. Merewen is
right. If the enemy vanished by magic, they can transfer back by magic, and then
they could follow us in and kill everyone we lead them to.”

Hinder whistled, short and sharp.

Tired, cold kids scrambled into their groups, some
whispering, others looking about fearfully. Hinder motioned them together.

“We’re going to cross the Ilder,” Hinder said,
“and run. Hard, fast, and stay low. No one go up a hill and create a
silhouette.” That much morvende children, with their white heads, were
taught from an early age.

Hinder began to run, followed by the rest in a long snake.

Mendaen and Sana separated and ran within sight of one
another at the back, bows within easy reach. For a time, the long line pounded
along in silence. At the bottom of a hill, the stream they followed dumped into
the Ilder, and they pattered across an old bridge. On the other side, an old oak
grove was just discernible in the darkness. Used to forest living for so long,
Hinder made straight for it.

Once they were running under the shelter of branches, the
children separated, some laughing breathlessly, others trying to whistle up
birdcalls. Lilah and Atan spotted Merewen in the midst of one group, silvery
moonlight bathing her happy face as they raced across a glade.

They stopped when the wood became dense, and they lost their
sense of direction. Occasional cries rang out as people ran into unseen twigs
and branches, which stung faces and arms.

The smaller ones were lagging, a few sobbing quietly.

As soon as Atan became aware of that, she said to Hinder, “We’d
better stop for the night. But somewhere secluded.”

Hinder paused and whistled the
gather!
signal. “Wait
here,” he said. “I smell water. I’m going to find us a
camping spot.”

The smaller kids flung themselves onto the mossy ground, too
exhausted to question. The teens whispered, sometimes looking speculatively
Atan’s way. Lilah watched, uneasy.

When Hinder returned, he gave a soft whistle, calling them
together. Sighs and grunts and muffled moans accompanied the general rising. Slowly
they followed in single file down a gulley into almost complete darkness.

“Hold hands,” Sin called.

They did, and soon found themselves in a rock grotto at the
base of a waterfall. Above them the cliff was thick was growth; they could no
longer see the stars.

After everyone got a drink of water, which was good but lip-numbingly
cold, they pressed up into a group to rest. The smallest ones dropped
immediately into slumber.

Lilah fought yawn after yawn. Her eyes burned, her stomach
gnawed with hunger, and her limbs ached from all that walking, but her mind
reeled with memories: Kessler forcing her to ride, the dust, the terrible
atmosphere at that fortress.

Atan let out a sigh, so soft it was a trickle of breath just
audible above the rush of the waterfall.

Lilah scooted nearer. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Atan murmured. “That is,
nothing besides the obvious. I know what to do now.”

“Which is?” Hinder asked, scooting up on the
other side. He was barely visible except as a moon-touched silhouette.

“If Norsunder comes chasing us—and they are
almost bound to—then I am going to have to separate off. I have to make
my way straight for Eidervaen.”

“And so? The rest of the group?” Hinder asked. “What,
a decoy?”

Atan said, “Here is how I perceive the situation. Norsunder
knows that a Landis lives, so they’ve surely guessed I’ll go as
fast as I can for the old tower, to break the rest of their spells. But they
won’t know the road I’m taking. So if the patrollers lead them hither
and yon, it might cause them to spread their search very thin. The little ones
can be taken to a village. Why would they worry about the actions of a bunch of
kids?”

“Target practice,” Lilah muttered, but beneath
her breath. And, in case she’d been heard, she said, “I’ll
volunteer for decoy duty.” She forced a grin. “I already did it by
accident once. They don’t know for sure that I’m
not
Atan.”

Hinder saw Atan’s wince and knew how much she hated
Lilah’s gallant offer, how badly she still felt. He said, “Why don’t
we figure it out come morning? Right now everyone should sleep while we’ve
got the chance.”

“Yes. Let us do that.” Atan sighed.

Lilah thought she hid her own relief, but Atan saw her face
ease as she curled up against a thick, spongy plant that felt like moss and
smelled like some sort of herb. Once again she felt that sickening sense of
responsibility, that her lightest word could, and would, launch others so high
of heart into action that might end their lives.

The scent, not unpleasant, tickled Lilah’s nose. She was
warm in her sturdy clothes and would have slept, but for the tall outline still
discernible against the stone, her head bowed.

“Atan?” she breathed.

“Sorry. Do sleep, if you can.”

“Something’s wrong.”

“No... no. Not that. At least, beyond the obvious.”

“Please tell. If you worry, then I worry.”

“I apologize, Lilah.” Atan’s cold fingers pressed
Lilah’s. “I can’t sleep because I see my duty so clearly, but
I don’t know if I can do it. Is it because I spent my childhood with a
mage who insisted on telling me his mistakes? I have always thought, if
Tsauderei thinks he’s inadequate for the fight against Norsunder, what
does that make me?”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because he says we have to learn from our mistakes,
not just mourn over them. He says he always assumed that Detlev would be a
brainless minion, mindlessly acting out his masters’ will, but every
single encounter Tsauderei lost, and so he was forced to conclude that Detlev
did not give up will, or cognizance, or initiative when he surrendered. Only
honor and morals. He said to me, oh, so many times,
You can be certain that
he never suffers remorse after mistakes, and we must be forced to learn at
least not to permit our own contrition to paralyze us
.”