Sartor (37 page)

Arlas laughed, then cupped her hands around her mouth. “Here,
Princess Yustnesveas, over here!”

“The Landis queen! Princess, here!” Sana called
in her clear, beautiful voice.

Landisss.... Landissss.... Princessss
.... The
echoes spread through the drains, causing a sudden silence. Then they heard the
sound of running feet. Many running feet.

Irza laughed as she led the way down the tunnels, drawing
the Norsundrians out and away from the palace.

o0o

Kessler and his men clattered through the city gates to the
courtyard of their command post, the horses sweaty and foam-flecked. Kessler
sprang down and began issuing orders. He was still speaking as he reached up to
lift Julian to the ground.

One of the garrison runners approached. “We just now
nabbed a pair of children from one of the drain wells. We think they might just
be locals, but—”

“Bring them here,” Kessler said.

The runner took off for the other end of the palace complex,
where the time spells had faded. There Hinder and Lilah had been locked up for
later questioning, the Norsundrians having fallen for Lilah’s hasty ruse.

The room they were locked in had one single window, perhaps
shoulder height, far too narrow for a man to get through. A pair of kids,
however, managed with a squeeze, a push, and a grunt.

They found themselves on a narrow ledge. It had been formed
when the upper story was added to the ancient wall, using a different type of
stone. Keeping their backs to the wall, they sidled along the ledge. Lilah
tried not to look down.

Hinder had fewer problems with heights. He reached the
battlements first, turned pulled Lilah after him.

o0o

Inside the tower, Atan looked up from the book, her eyes
burning from her repeated attempts to complete the chain of powerful spells she
found there. Her mind struggled against a flowing tide of magic power; she
swayed, gripped the table, and the book almost toppled.

Merewen caught it, though she, too, fought to comprehend the
intersection of two worlds, one human and one not, that did not quite converge.
The room was so crowded, she gave up trying to guess which figures belonged to
which world.

“I have to be outside,” Atan whispered. “I
can’t do it here. I have to see the horizon, really see it, to anchor
myself to the world...”

Merewen drew a deep breath. The blue figures flowed outward,
receding to clear a path.

Merewen tucked the book under one arm, and Atan’s
unresisting hand with the other hand, and followed the beckoning blue figures
toward next pair of stairs.

o0o

“Up there!” came a shout.

Lilah and Hinder peeped down at the courtyard to see Kessler’s
runner pointing at them.

Behind, a swarm of dark clad warriors fanned out.

“They’re gonna chase us,” Hinder said.

“Let’s run,” Lilah said, pointing in the
other direction. “Get as many as we can after us. Because if they chase
us, they can’t chase Atan.”

Hinder ducked his head. “Right.”

The wall was barely broad enough for them to attempt a low,
loping sort of run. Hinder took the lead, running until he fetched up above an
arched bridge. They stared down in surprise at all the people who had come out
of their homes and shops. The people stood about in apprehensive clumps,
looking around at one another. “They’re just getting out of the
spell,” Hinder guessed.

From the other end of the great square, a lone horseman rode
an archway, twin to the one Hinder and Lilah stood on.

“Rel!” Lilah exclaimed, as the Norsundrians
poured into the square from a side street and once more fanned out.

Rel’s head lifted. Lilah saw his dark eyes take in the
square, the enemy, and also the bridge, with Lilah and Hinder standing on it.
His hand flicked in a private salute, and she grinned and waved back.

“It’s working,” Hinder breathed, the rising
breeze ruffling his blue-white hair. “We’re keeping the enemy away
from Atan.”

Lilah wondered how he knew as below, Rel rode the horse in a
prancing circle and began to shout, “To arms! To arms! Yustnesveas Landis
has returned, and needs all of Sartor to rise!”

His words were met by stares and open mouths. People exchanged
looks.

Then a woman from one of the inns took a swipe at a passing
Norsundrian with a great iron skillet. The clang rang up the stone walls, the
man staggered, and an eye-blink later the court was filled with shoving,
struggling figures.

The battle was grand for about the space of three breaths. Then
the court filled with fast threesomes of dark-clad warriors who cut their way
through the surging crowds. Lilah saw blood and heard cries of anguish, and she
wailed, “Stop! Stop!”

“Come, Lilah,” Hinder said sorrowfully,
wondering why Lilah hadn’t known what ‘raising the city’
meant. He pulled her arm, having no idea that the sight of fighting threw her
back into memory of angry crowds the summer before, during Sarendan’s
revolution. “See that tree in the next square over? If we can reach that,
we can get down. We’ll have to hurry, for the Norsundrians will be out on
the wall soon.”

Lilah gulped, her chest heaving on a sob.

“They’re defending their city,” Hinder
said. “It’s the only way we can get the time for Atan to do what
must be done magically. Don’t look, Lilah, because you can’t stop
it, and your pain won’t help them.” Hinder drew Lilah over the
bridge, along another wall to where the branches of a mighty tree reached over.

Back in the great square, Rel watched the people rise
against the enemy. His reaction was a combination of admiration and dismay. He’d
counted on a crowd. He had not expected violence—not after a hundred
years of magical sleep.

But to these people it had only been days since their king
was killed.

He could not stop it now. They were too angry, and more
poured into the court with every breath. At least, they were slowing the
Norsundrians, but at what cost? He winced at the sounds of ringing swords and
cries of agony. He forced himself to ride on, for it was only a little ways to
the house where he’d found the sword.

When he reached it, he saw that it was empty. He dismounted
and laid the borrowed weapon on a windowsill, hoping it was not too late for
the unknown owners.

The tired horse stood patiently, its hindquarters shivering.
Rel spotted an inn yard across the street and led the mount there. A small boy
peered fearfully at him from behind bales of fresh-looking hundred-year-old
hay.

“Take the horse?” Rel asked. “Needs care.”

The blue eyes shifted, rounded, and the boy nodded firmly.

Rel ran back to the square just as Kessler arrived from the
other end, scanned the chaotic scene, then looked up and stilled.

Rel looked up in the same direction—and made out two small
figures on the top of the great white tower. They were silhouettes, but those knee-length
braids had to belong to Atan.

Kessler gestured to some of his followers to come close, and
he began issuing a rapid stream of orders.

Rel remembered the plan: delay, deflect, decoy. He looked
around, spotted a fallen blade, and grabbed it. With an inward groan, he swung
his way through the Norsundrians.

Kessler looked his way and smiled.

A moment later, Rel was too busy to think of anything.

o0o

On the tower, Atan heard the shouts of Sartorans coming to
the rescue, and then clashes and clangs of steel. Every clash meant that
someone was hurt or fighting for their life. She must hurry.

She wiped her sweaty palms down her sides and gripped the
great book in both hands.

She whispered the first part of the spell over and over to
herself first, knowing that it was going to tax all her ability and then demand
more.

She lifted her gaze to the horizon, purple in the
already-setting sun, and began.

The world narrowed to the sound of her voice.

Merewen kept watch beside her, surrounded by blue figures
looking down, down, waving their hands downward. Merewen sensed danger,
warning, threat, its cause unidentifiable until a black flowering of destructive
magic smote the blue figures away like a scouring wind.

Merewen stared down at the spot where Dejain had appeared.

o0o

Rel attacked Kessler, who shouted orders over his shoulder
as he met Rel with saber and knife both.

A few of the Norsundrians had begun to surround them,
obviously preferring to enjoy the show and leave tangling with the hapless
citizens to their fellows. Kessler’s short commands sent them scattering.

Rel fought for his life. He’d forgotten how strong
Kessler was, in spite of his slight build and medium height. Kessler was not
only strong, he was unnervingly fast, as only those with a long-term
single-minded focus on the niceties of killing with steel can be.

Though he’d improved, Rel soon knew he was going to
lose, and concentrated on not making it easy.

He had no idea it was the best fight Kessler had had in a
long time, one that under other circumstances would have been worth prolonging,
but he had glimpsed Dejain on the edge of the observers, and he had to end it
fast.

Rel’s chief advantage was his strength and reach, but
Kessler was faster, and he had the knife as well as his saber.
High defense,
low, feint, feint.
Rel stepped to break, putting his blade at exactly the
angle Kessler wanted. He caught Rel’s blade between the hilts of his
weapon and used his body to force Rel’s arm backward and loosen his grip
on the sword.

Stepping close, Kessler whipped the knife from underneath
and stabbed Rel in the shoulder, not to kill, for he’d as soon not lose
this excellent prospect for recruitment, but to get him out of the way.

He yanked his knife free. “Come,” he commanded
the last man, as Rel dropped his sword and staggered. “Leave him.
He’s not going anywhere. Bring the brat.”

The Norsundrian grabbed Julian by the arm and half-carried,
half-dragged her after Kessler.

Rel had fallen to one knee as he fought against the shivery
nausea of pain, and the weird rippling shadows that threatened to overwhelm him.
He had to stay awake! He staggered to his feet, blinking at Kessler’s
rapidly diminishing figure—and Julian being towed along behind. He bent
to retrieve his sword, faltered, fighting against black waves, then drew in his
breath. He was determined not to pass out.

Kessler ran across the quadrangle.

Dejain beckoned to him and held out a silver crossbow bolt. The
greenish gleam of dark magic spells glimmered along its edge. “Kill her,”
she said, lifting her chin toward the girls on the tower. “The tall one
with the book.”

He took the bolt. Magic tingled under his fingers. He
wondered what ugly spell had been bound to it as he grabbed a crossbow from one
of the sentries, slapped the bolt in, cranked it back, raised to aim—

And shot.

Up on the tower, the blue figures crowded around Merewen so
close she could almost feel them. She could almost hear them, but her attention
stayed on Atan as the princess gathered magic in a sky-wide vortex discernible
only to those who had the training; it was the magic of her ancestors, of the
place where she stood, of time.

Merewen looked away as the woman below handed a thin thing
that glowed with fiery threat to a man with a crossbow.

Between heartbeats, she stepped once, twice, until she stood
between the unheeding Atan and the red-glowing bolt flying toward her, the blue
hands wreathed around her, tight, tighter—

Merewen gasped at the cold prick of icy pain and recoiled
not only physically, but in the realm of the spirit. She let go of her human
self at last, felt mind and spirit caught by the waiting hands—

And transferred
.

The metal bolt dropped with a clatter onto the tower stones
at Atan’s feet.

Atan glanced aside. In the briefest instant she saw the
bolt, and Merewen falling away into a glittering wink of blue light that
vanished. Horror and grief seized her by the heart, as deep and sharp as if the
bolt had torn through her own flesh.

But she had this task, and too many people’s lives
depended on her finishing.

Don’t look.
She forced herself to keep speaking
without faltering, though her heart wailed in anguish.

The vortex began to turn, slow and massive, gathering power
and speed, plucking at body, mind, and spirit—

o0o

Kessler said, “The little one took the bolt.”

“Quick,” Dejain said, handing him a second bolt.
“Now. It’s the only one left.” It had taken her an entire
night to enchant only these two.

Rel knew he was not going to make it before the rising waves
of blackness overwhelmed him. But he could do one thing: free an innocent
child. With the last of his strength, Rel picked up his blade and brought it
hilt-down on the head of the Norsundrian holding Julian.

The stunned Norsundrian crumpled, freeing the child, who
sprang straight at the enemy.

Kessler raised the crossbow—

And Julian bit him on the leg as hard as she could.

Unexpected pain flowered in his calf, causing his arm to
flex the moment he triggered the release. The bolt flew harmlessly a
hands-breadth over Atan’s head.

Kessler looked down. “You leave her alone!”
Julian shrilled.

Atan closed her eyes, mind, heart, and spirit holding the
magic... holding it...
mind and magic and time
—

The last word—

—and
finished
.

Everyone felt Detlev’s enchantment snap and vanish
like ash dispersing on the clean, driving winter wind. Atan swayed on the tower
roof, then sank to her knees, clutching the book tight to her chest as tears
filled her eyes for Merewen.

Dejain cursed, a flow of bitter invective.