Sartor (3 page)

One could not alter that any more than one could alter the
intense, almost severe gaze from the thin, high-browed face, the sensitivity of
the curved mouth so much like Lilah’s—though the two resembled one
another very little otherwise—or the air of almost endless compassion
that was striking in one so young.

“Lilah is with us in the Valley,” Tsauderei said,
and pulled from his pocket a small stone. He whispered a word over it, and the
air formed a glittering bubble around him and Peitar. “There. We can
speak for a short time in safety. I do not wish to rely on circumlocution when
we need plain speaking. Lilah wishes to accompany Atan to Sartor, to break the
enchantment.”

“Sartor.” Peitar’s lips shaped the word,
but no sound emerged.

“We both know how impetuous Lilah is. And how loyal to
her friends. I can also see how much it would mean to Atan to have a friend, or
I would not be here.”

Tsauderei was surprised and unsettled by the intensity of
Peitar’s reaction, so swift and then so quickly hidden. “If you
want me to, I can tie Lilah by the heels. Give her a pleasant time in the
Valley.”

Peitar crossed to the other window, the lurch in his walk somewhat
easier after several weeks of careful healing spells. It was going to take at
least a year to restore those mis-healed bones. Peitar would not take the time
to rest, which meant his recovery would be the longer.

“You are asking, not telling me to keep her home for
her own good.” Peitar turned to face the mage. “That suggests to me
that you want her to go.”

“Yes,” Tsauderei said. “Though I have misgivings,
on the whole I think it might be a good idea. With certain safeguards.”

Peitar looked through the window again, and Tsauderei
wondered what his face was expressing that he did not want seen. “Is
there a chance of success? I mean, does the possibility of success outweigh the
quite obvious dangers?”

He hasn’t spoken Atan’s name
, Tsauderei
thought, and took a step nearer, until he could see Peitar’s profile,
half-hidden by the long, splendid dark brown hair he’d obviously
forgotten to comb and tie back that morning. “I trust so.”

“You cannot go with them,” Peitar observed.

“No. Too many wards against me. If I perform the
smallest spell, Norsunder is alerted in both the temporal and non-temporal
realms. What you see before you,” he said, smiling with irony, “is
a worthless old bag of bones who can no longer even heft a sword. Not that I
was ever much good, even in my young days. I was adept at gymnastics and
running and riding, but I never did learn to bang at people with steel. And
magic I can just as well employ from a distance.”

“That would be my preference as well.” Peitar’s
profile was tense, his mouth compressed into a line. Yet he was not refusing.

“What I am gambling on is that the two girls will go
unnoticed. Atan is determined. I believe a companion would be a good thing for
her to have.”

Peitar’s head lifted when Tsauderei said
‘Atan.’ It was a tiny gesture. Most would not have seen it. But
Tsauderei had made a lifelong study of human nature as well as magic, and he
remembered vividly his own ardent youth.

So he guessed what Peitar would have kept hidden: that he
was suffering the throes of a first, adolescent love.

The impulse to smile ruefully vanished. Any other young man
of nineteen was certain to recover as swiftly as he’d fallen, but Peitar
wasn’t like the usual young man, any more than Atan was like the usual
girl of fifteen.

Of course it had happened—he should have foreseen it,
all those conversations during the stresses of the summer, history, reading,
theories of government. While rain pattered outside and the fire leaped on the
grate. Tsauderei should have foreseen it, and yet he would not have taken away
those conversations, which two lonely young people had clearly cherished.

I trust and hope he recovers
, Tsauderei was thinking.
This cannot possibly end well.

Peitar broke into these thoughts. “Wish them both the
best. And tell Lilah I’m glad that she is helping in this quest. She does
have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, it seems.”

“I shall,” Tsauderei said, and performed the
transfer spell.

o0o

When Tsauderei vanished by magic transfer, a puff of
displaced air buffeted Lilah’s face as the flames in the fireplace
snapped and stirred. “Wow! That was weird!”

“Transfer magic,” Atan said, wishing she could
go to Miraleste, Sarendan’s capital, and see what improvements Peitar was
making. Talk to him again, like they had during summer. Only now he would be
too busy, surely...

“Can you do that?”

“Yes.” Atan smiled. “But I won’t be
able to do it in Sartor because it’s warded against light magic using
that spell.”

“Light magic. That’s the kind that builds, or
repairs, or makes things better in the world, right?”

“And dark magic burns or spends magic. Its primary
purpose is warfare. Well, more precisely, force. So dark magic spells are very,
very hard to break, whereas light magic spells must be renewed.”

Lilah nodded. “I remember reading about magic being
gone after the Fall of Old Sartor. Though I thought it was more of that legend
kind of talk, because of all that other stuff that the old poems and things
said. You know, about how our ancestors had magic without doing spells, and
talked to each other in dreams, and nagoo yadoo, nagoo yadoo.”

Atan smiled. “Apparently some of it really did happen.”

“Huh.” Lilah snapped her fingers. “Tsauderei
did tell us that they used to control the aging process, before he did the child
spell for us.” She scowled. “Tsauderei said he can lift it whenever
we want to begin the change toward grownup, but I don’t want that. Ever.
If it means ending up like my mother.”

Atan bit her lip. “You are talking about romantic
love?”

Lilah held her nose and waved a hand. “More like the
stench of romantic love.”

“Yet you love your brother,” Atan said.

“Of course I do!”

“So family love is to be revered, but not the love
that begins the family?” Atan asked.

Lilah snorted out her breath. “You haven’t read
my mother’s diary. Family love is smart. It’s good. You protect
each other, and if you argue, well, you don’t get angry forever. But
romance?” Her face reddened as she said fiercely, “It just makes
you
stupid!
Mother loved my uncle. Yuk! I know, but apparently he
wasn’t so bad when he was young. However, that’s nothing to what
she turned into when she fell in
loooove
with Derek’s father.
Drip, drip, drip, her whole diary turned from interest in her garden and other
people to moaning about
Kepreos this
and
Kepreos that
. Drip?
Rivers and
oceans
of tears,
all the time!
” She made a
gesture of warding. “So
he
walks into a snow bank, in spite of
having two small boys, and
she
gets herself sick and dies when I was a
baby. Romantic love is
selfish and stupid
.”

Atan had never seen Lilah so bitter and angry. It was the
more unsettling because some of what Lilah said paralleled things she had
wondered.
Your parents were ill-matched in everything but love
, Gehlei
had said once.
Strange, how powerful love is, and how poisonous when it
doesn’t go balance.
Then she’d frowned, and refused to say
more.

Lilah said, “I can’t help thinking that, as
usual, the adults don’t know anything worthwhile, and what’s needed
are some kids to solve the mess. Like the rest of the Sharadan Brothers. That
is, Deon has gone off to find those kid pirates somewhere up north, but Bren
and Innon would surely come. Or at least Bren. He’s got nothing else to
do.”

“But the more people we have, the more likely we are
to draw attention.”

Lilah jumped when a glittery flicker on the edge of her
vision resolved into Tsauderei. Again displaced air breezed around the little
cottage room. Tsauderei’s face was tight with strain. Obviously, transfer
magic wasn’t easy for mages, either.

“Peitar wishes you both success.”

Lilah grinned, and patted the pocket of her gown. “As
it happens, I got into the habit of always traveling with my thief tools. But
there’s one thing I’m missing. So if I don’t come back right
away, you better get someone to haul me away from the Lure-flowers.”

Tsauderei didn’t argue, or even remonstrate. He said
only, “You have an appropriate container?”

“The spice bags we used all summer. Kept ’em
from drying out and losing their strength. But Innon actually got ’em. Is
there a trick to harvesting them?”

Tsauderei nodded. “Not a trick, just extreme care. Spot
the ones you want, make a dive, and begin holding your breath midway down. You
have to get the entire flower, because it’s the dust inside that carries
the magic that puts humans into deep sleep.”

Lilah said, “All right. Better get busy.”

Atan watched the girl vanish through the door before turning
to Tsauderei.

“What is it, Atan? Second thoughts?” the mage asked,
recognizing the expression in his student’s face. Twelve years of
Atan’s fifteen, he had been her teacher, a position he never would have
chosen for himself, but he had been appointed by the Mage Council.

He knew at glance that she was suffering ambivalence, and
also knew that getting her to express it required prodding. She kept things
inside too readily.

Atan let out a short sigh, trying to ease that awful knotted
feeling in her middle. “I want Lilah to come with me, and yet I
can’t help thinking, what if something happens?”

Tsauderei sat back, the fire reflecting twin pinpoints in
his dark eyes. “Ah. I am afraid I don’t have any comforting advice
to offer you,
Princess
Yustnesveas. The moment you step over that
border, your innocence ends. You will begin a lifetime of feeling
responsibility for others who willingly offer their lives for your cause. It is
the pain of being a ruler, one I never want you to stop feeling, because the
day you do, you turn into a tyrant.”

Atan ran her damp palms down her sides, but that
didn’t help the iciness of her fingers.

“I have regretted the necessity of permitting you to
go into Sartor alone, ever since the prospect before us evolved into reality. Lilah’s
offer makes me glad. She’s young, but she’s smart and practical. She
does not have that visionary gift that runs through the Irad family, but it’s
more than compensated with the Selenna adaptability and good humor. Lilah will
be good company for you. She will do her best to make you laugh. Get her to
Shendoral, and if there is danger beyond, leave her there. That magic, I feel
safe in venturing, being far older than Norsunder’s evil, will keep her
safe.”

Atan ducked her head. “Thank you. I have one last
favor to ask.”

The old mage lifted a hand.

“I would like you to teach me the non-aging spell.”

Tsauderei looked surprised. “Why?”

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about.
A lot. And something Lilah said made me realize that I’m not alone in
thinking about it. I am not certain I want to be an adult yet. If don’t
succeed, it’s not going to matter, right?”

Tsauderei heaved a sigh. “I gave Lilah and her friends
that spell because it won’t do any harm for them to delay the onset of
adulthood for a time. But you know it doesn’t make you immortal. It
simply delays your physical maturation.”

“I know that,” Atan retorted.

Tsauderei fingered the diamond in his earlobe. “Most
young folks your age can scarcely wait to be grown up. But then soon enough the
adult begins looking back longingly to the untroubled days of youth.” He
chuckled, then sobered. “Lilah’s reasons I understand. She can
blame the unhappy portions of her childhood on her mother’s failed
romance. But you?”

“I just know that I’m not ready to be courted. Until
I learn more about how to be around real people, not just people from history
books. And above all, I don’t want to be distracted by... by adult
matters, until I understand people my age.”

“But how are you going to learn about such things
except by experience?”

Atan sighed. “Maybe it’s a bad idea... and maybe
I won’t do it. But I think... I think I want the option.”

Tsauderei rubbed his forehead, then sat back. “You
know it won’t work if you’re over the threshold already. Have you
begun your female courses?”

“No,” Atan said. “But Gehlei told me it
should be soon.”

“Well, one good thing about light magic is that it is
benign,” Tsauderei said wryly. “If you are too close to the
threshold, then the spell will not hold. Very well. I’ll give it to you.
And the antidote.” He gave her an ironic glance from under bushy brows,
and she wondered for the very first time in all their years of studying
together if the old mage had ever had a romance in his life. “Perhaps a
year or two more of childhood might be an aid for you.”

He reached for the inkwell and paper that always lay ready
on the low table.

The door opened then, but instead of Lilah, Gehlei entered,
a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables on her arm.

Gehlei took them in, question lifting her gray brows, then
she turned away, so that all they could see was her silvery-white braid.

“Here you go,” Tsauderei said, setting the pen
down beside the ink bottle. “I have one more thing, which I will fetch
directly.” He made the transfer magic, and vanished.

Atan thought it better to get the worst over before the
other two returned. “Gehlei, I am leaving for Sartor’s border,”
she said. “Lilah is here. She will accompany me.”

Gehlei turned around. Atan could see how unhappy—how
angry—she was.

“I wish I could go to protect you,” Gehlei said.