Sartor (26 page)

He waited just long enough to see her nod again, and then he
was gone. She waited until the brief, wild breeze of displaced air had brushed
her face, and then she turned to the door, to see Lesca leaning against it.

Shock rang in her ears. Lesca’s lazy smile, her
languorous posture, all belied the intensity of the last few moments. It was unsettling.

“Any orders, O commander?” Lesca asked.

So Detlev had let her stand there and hear it all? Well, he
did say he didn’t care—

That could wait. Dejain waved her hand around the room. “Zydes’s
prison guard decoration does not appeal to me. Can you make this office more
comfortable? I had better get Wend’s report.”

Lesca laughed, made an ironic bow, and then left. Dejain
looked in distaste at that huge desk and forbore going through the papers on
it. Most of it would be worthless. She might as well save herself the time and
throw everything but the garrison status reports into the fire.

Right now she had to establish command, and then get her own
information. The fact that Lesca had been eavesdropping, unpleasant as it was,
would probably redound to her credit. Of course she could not even remotely
match Detlev’s little demonstration. But she could make her own presence
felt by two things: magic and immediate action.

Using the response adrenaline still firing her nerves, she
envisioned Wend’s ugly face and transferred to him.

The moment she appeared she said, “Report.”

And then used all her strength, all her concentration, to
hold herself still and mask the transfer reaction.
Breathe, breathe.
The
vertigo began to dissipate. She hoped Wend and the two others hadn’t seen
it. Wend lay on a bed, his upper half freshly bandaged.

“... no sign of any of the brats. When the fog got so
bad we couldn’t see our feet, I sent the signal for transfer.”

She hadn’t heard everything, of course, but she’d
heard enough. Her mouth tightened at his last words. Fog? Magical in origin? That
meant someone was also running Wend.

But that, obviously, was over.

She searched her mind for something to say, decided that
Detlev’s silence was more effective, and so she transferred back to Zydes’s
old command chamber.

Two transfers so quick in a row gave her a mild headache.
She wondered how Detlev could deal with long distance double transfers—then
she saw Kessler.

She rushed into speech. “Detlev put me in charge.”
As if that was a defense!

“Yes.” He sounded exactly as flat as always. “What
did he say about me?”

“His exact words were,
Kessler Sonscarna is to take
orders from you
.”

As she spoke them, she realized what she’d missed
before, the implied threat there. She had no idea what hold Detlev had over
Kessler. More important, she had no idea why he didn’t put Kessler in
charge of this army—or any other—and loose him against the world. He
had to know how good he was. Whatever that hold might be, it had kept Kessler
running as hound for a fool like Zydes. What she didn’t know was if the
same hold was strong enough to make him take her orders.

“Then what are your orders?” he asked.

She was going to lick her dry lips, was suddenly reminded of
Xoll, and suppressed a shudder of disgust. “Our first objective is to
recover Sartor. It’s going to be a matter for magery or I wouldn’t
be here, is my reasoning. But we’ll also need field backup. You are in
charge of that. All I want is the Landis girl, alive if you can. But removed
from Sartor. She must not reach Eidervaen. This is why I need to see those
field reports, because I must find out exactly what was done at the end of the
attack.”

Kessler said nothing.

How could she get her own hold over him—maybe make him
grateful? “As for Zydes,” she said, “you can do what you like
with him.”

Xoll would have licked his lips in pleasure. Wend—a
dozen others—would have grinned and rubbed their hands, or made some
similar move. Kessler jerked his head, a slight movement, as though throwing
off something. “Waste of time. The Landis girl was last seen heading
north toward the capital. It’s a short distance, but it’s bad
terrain, according to the map. Old volcanic area. Caves, cracks in the ground,
hidden fissures and chasms. A search is going to require a sizable detachment.
And you will have to transfer us all by magic, if you don’t want to lose
three weeks of travel time.”

Dejain sat down, knowing that this first night and day were
going to tax her strength to the maximum—but if she survived it, she
would be able to hold the base. And then start on her plans again, this time
with all its resources at her command.

“Get who you need and supply them,” she said. “Let
me know when you’re ready to go.”

He left, his quick step diminishing.

Leaving her with a silent room, and relief that dealing with
him—so far—had been so easy. And as for Zydes, why shouldn’t
she have some fun, after all? Sword duels were disgusting, but a magic duel was
very much to her taste.

o0o

“They’re back.”

Mendaen slid down the muddy hillside and landed next to Atan.

Everyone had to look. Atan didn’t try to stop them. She
climbed as well. They all knew to keep their heads from creating a silhouette,
and so they peered through scrubby hedges or low plants at the precisely spaced
line of horseback riders crossing the hilltops as they searched.

Atan didn’t know much about horses—there weren’t
any in Delfina Valley—but it didn’t take experience to recognize
that this was nasty ground for riding, what with all the rocks, and cracks, and
slides. But the line of Norsundrians rode fast, wheeling at once when the
foremost one raised a hand, and for a brief time the group vanished over a
hilltop—to reappear farther on.

Then a nudge from Mendaen, and she peered into the late
afternoon sun. Another set of riders crested a hillside in that direction.

Atan scrambled down the hill and waited until most of the
group were gathered around.

She turned her gaze to Mendaen. “They have to be
searching for us.”

He nodded. “They’ll be coming back this way
soon. Looking for our tracks. And they’ll stay in sight of one another as
much as they can.”

Lilah groaned. “This is bad.”

“What we expected, though,” Sin murmured.

“At least we had three days.”

“One, really,” someone in the back retorted.

Lilah grimaced, but it was no more than the truth. The sleety
rain had come in hard, much too cold and dangerous to travel in, and so they’d
spent more time holed up in makeshift caves than actually traveling. And the
travel had been slow because of all the mud and puddles. Ugh! And this morning,
when they set out, the remaining puddles had been covered over with a thin film
of ice.

“Come on,” Hinder said. “We’re
cutting north and east. Now. We can talk as we go.”

“We’ll leave tracks,” Arlas pointed out.

“Can’t be helped. But we’ll be on rock
soon. So north and east, and when we reach Terrace Rock, we’ll go
straight west. That’ll put them off our trail for a bit.”

No one spoke. They used what strength they had remaining to
keep up with the leaders. Merewen listened and watched, trying to grasp the
quick exchanges, the ways people expressed themselves through words, through
tone, through gestures, and how sometimes all three were at variance in the
same person. Lilah and Atan did not seem to mind her listening. Atan would ask,
“What do you think is meant by...” And Lilah would try to explain.

Mostly, it appeared, there was some emotion the speaker
wished to hide.

Merewen also observed the variations in the slanting
striations forming the hills, and the wildly different types of stone. The sky
was ever-changing now, as if weather was rediscovering itself. It was not home,
like Shendoral, but it was interesting.

She felt magic stirring, sometimes in dizzying whirls that
she sensed in some inward way that was not sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell.
Sometimes she felt it in subtle traces as she walked. At a distance pooled
great, heavy quagmires of badness, and they weighed on her spirit, as did the
friction between some of those around her. She did not know how to solve that
last one—she wanted to run when someone was unkind, or felt hurt—but
Atan, she’d discovered, sometimes could mend at least the surface hurt
with a word or a gesture.

Lilah worried about her brother at home, and about her
ability to keep up here. If only the nasties would get close enough so she
could fell them with the last of her Lure! Only she didn’t know if she’d
gotten those petals stuffed back into their bag in time. What if the Lure had completely
lost their virtue after all those uses? Euw, she didn’t want to find out
the hard way!

Sana was busy composing a ballad about their hardships,
complete with internal rhymes in the old wanderer mode. The world she’d
known had changed forever, but as long as there was music, life was good—despite
the cold, and the hunger, and dirt, and the ever-present threat of discovery by
the Norsundrians. Her unswerving desire was to go to a music academy, and
become a bard or a theater musician. As she walked, she sang under her breath,
her gaze on the mud and slush ahead of her ragged shoes, but her mind soaring
on a current of song through images from ancient ballads.

Rip and Hannla were also composing a song about their
hardships, but this one wasn’t meant to last beyond the next time they
camped long enough to share a song. Pompous, stiff, and very, very silly, it
was meant to make them all laugh.

Mendaen worried. He was sick with anxiousness, knowing from
the sight of those well-trained riders that this new commander was far more competent
than the previous one, who couldn’t prevent his men from scattering at
will, and Mendaen feared that his friends wouldn’t last in a fight past
three breaths. He didn’t know whether he ought to die first or last. Gripping,
regripping the dagger he’d taken from his dead father’s hands, he
kept watching Hinder for signals.

Hinder and Sin knew these hills, but only in a general sense.
Each time they stopped, one or two of the five morvende scouted ahead for the
next segment of trail. They had one fallback—but it would be risky. If
they were wrong, it might mean an entire geliath sealed for at least a
generation, maybe forever. And exile for them.

Pouldi was hungry. Oh, for some grub!

Arlas stole worried looks at Julian, who was stumbling,
though not a peep did she make.
Honor
, she kept telling herself.
Act
with honor. If we die, we die with honor. Our names won’t die. That’s
what Irza says, and she knows. She’s the one who remembers everything
Mama used to say.

The sisters were too tired to sketch one another, but at
least they had one portrait each, to rest in the family archives—if the
sketches and the archives survived—to the glory of the Ianth family.

Fear, tiredness, resentment, hunger, cold, sometimes
panic-sparked giggles, and sometimes panic sparked short, hissing arguments.

The one who stayed quiet was Irza, who kept watching the
morvende. Once her mother had dressed for a ball on the eve of the war, but
there’d been no sign of fear or threat in the capital, no hint of trouble
in her mother’s exquisite grooming and straight back. Last, she’d
put on the ancient coronet, rude and misshapen gold, that came out so seldom,
and it had ruined the beauty of her handmade dress, a froth of white and silver
and peach silk blossoms.

Why wear that ugly thing?
Irza had asked.
It ruins
your gown
.

I know
, Mama had said.
It is not the thing itself
that we treasure, but what it means. Everyone who looks upon it will be
reminded that the Ianth family has been in Sartor for thousands of years, with
illustrious members in Sword, Pen and Star. Remember the symbols, my child,
because they are the magic of the aristocracy, and without this magic you
cannot hold power.

Irza did not have the least interest in going into damp,
dark old morvende caves. She did not believe the wondrous stories about
mysterious caves full of singing gemstones, each more precious and rare than
the last. She thought the whole idea of the morvende culture repellent, but
they did carry tremendous prestige. They were a part of Sartor’s history,
and somehow they managed to have enormous power, though as yet she didn’t
see how.

But she knew this much: the tradition was, any sunsiders the
morvende brought into the geliaths were forever honored, in Sartor—even
out in the world. And she was determined that she was going to find out those
accesses, even if she had to sneak. Oh, she’d never, ever,
ever
use them—if they all lived—but to let it be known that she was one
of the blessed...

And so they endured three long days of steady tramping in
horrible weather, over rough terrain, their supplies more scant with each meal.

But they had no experience, so time was against them.

Once there was a close call, when Lilah’s laugh had
rung echoing up grate slabs of old granite, but the echoes led the Norsundrians
wrong just long enough for Sin to hear their pursuit, and Hinder found a chasm
in which to hide the group for the night.

They spent the next half a day crouched in one place, quiet
as the stone around them, while at intervals pebbles skittered down, a dry and
stinging rain on their heads and shoulders, indicating the night-long search.

But at last Mendaen reported early one morning, “They’ve
closed in round us. By noon they’ll have us.”

Four white heads turned Hinder’s way. He nodded. Sin
also nodded. And so did the younger three: a pact agreed to.

Hinder said, “We’ve tried not just to go
northwest toward Eidervaen, but to be within range of our geliath accesses. Well,
we’re by one now. Just over the next ridge.”