Inda (66 page)

“Now,” Shen said, laughing as she shut the door, her chin high, her eyes wide with more real emotion than Tdor had ever seen in her. “Now we meet the future.”

Shen was not aware of sounding portentous. She was aware only of her heartbeat, faster than the drums for a charge.
Time,
she thought.
It is mutable. When you love something enough time races ahead like the wind chasing autumn leaves, sending them skipping and dancing out of reach, no matter how fast you run. But when you want something and must wait to get it, time stops.

Now the time had come for both love and want. She couldn’t walk fast enough, though she tried, despite the trembling in her knees and hands. Her mind reached ahead to the archive room where she knew Hadand waited, her body working as hard as it could to close the distance.

Still, training was training: she noted Ndara-Harandviar’s own guardswomen at key intersections, and no one else about, for the king was busy in council below.

Tdor, meanwhile, trotted alongside Shen, thinking:
Meet the future? What does that mean?

For a horrible moment she felt a little like she had the day she’d swum in the river in late spring, when the water was moving fast, and she’d stepped out confidently, remembering the shelf from the summer before, just to find herself underwater, struggling against the cold, fast current as she fought for grip or ground.

Shen paused outside the archive door. Tdor waited for her to open it. Instead Shendan leaned her forehead against the door, her braids falling forward, half-hiding her face, her hand still on the latch.

Tdor pressed her knuckles against her lips.

Shen whispered, so softly her voice was scarcely audible, “If Foxy is truly dead, then it is
my
son your daughter will marry. And their daughter might go to Sartor to study magic.”

Shen fought to still the trembling in her wrists as she thought of the future while Tdor stood there thinking not about magic, but about Shen.
She calls her brother Foxy.

And Tdor thought once again of those Montredavan-An runners in black and gold and the fox banner that the academy carried, belonging once to the Montredavan-An heirs.

Chapter Twenty

T
HE door opened, and Hadand looked relieved. Tdor realized that Hadand had arranged this interview, whatever it was, to occur while the game was going on.

In fact, Ndara-Harandviar’s own women were on guard. That meant neither king, queen, nor Shield Arm knew about it.

Hadand said in Sartoran, “This is Mistress Resvaes of Sartor’s Mage Guild.”

Tdor’s mouth opened when she saw the old woman in the strange gown sitting there in the best chair. Both girls bobbed awkwardly; Queen Wisthia had taught them all curtseys when they served in her rooms, so they knew it for an outland sign of respect, though it felt peculiar.

“Come. Sit down,” Mistress Resvaes said, indicating the chairs around her. Tdor obeyed, distracted by the green-edged linen robe the woman wore, how soft the fabric looked, how well it was made. “I come in response to a letter of invitation brought to me by an influential member of the Sartoran Royal Court, on behalf of the Duchess—what do you say—the
Jarlan
of Cassad, and on behalf of her sister, who is, I understand, a princess of . . .”

“Choraed Elgaer,” Tdor whispered.

“Ah! Yes, thank you. And you are . . .?”

Shendan’s smile was practiced, her eyes appraising. Tdor’s smile was the quick, inadvertent smile of one caught by delight: that Sartoran accent was the real thing, and how beautiful it seemed! Not at all like the labored enunciation of their tutor at Tenthen, and yet Tdor could hear at last what the poor woman had tried so hard to teach them.

Tdor spoke, glumly conscious of her inharmonious Iascan accent: “I am Tdor Marth-Davan.”

“I am Shendan Montredavan-An,” Shen said, in a fair copy of Resvaes’ own accent.

“The Mage Council has been told that you have been trying to collect rare and ancient scrolls, mainly historical. You want ones that concern magic. We wish to know to what use you intend to put these scrolls, should we release copies.”

Shen worked to hide the elation caused by this woman’s presence; her mother had warned her it might be generations before they would get a hearing with so august a visitor.

Mistress Resvaes watched their reactions: Tdor’s interest, Hadand’s sobriety, Shen’s triumph.

She had been sent against her will to visit this rapidly expanding empire, a return of a favor owed to a well-respected Sartoran noblewoman who was sister to this Princess of Choraed Elgaer. What the noblewoman, and the sister, would not find out was that she came to observe and question with an eye to warding this empire of warriors, if necessary.

“The study of magic use in history,” Shendan said.

Hadand looked at Shen’s wide, unblinking gaze, the tips of her teeth showing in her smile, and instinctively tried to draw the visitor’s attention from the passion so plain to see there. “We study history. Our interest is in the far, far past. We know that women used to control magic, largely. That’s why there are spells for waste, and why there is the Birth Spell, and the spell that makes our wombs unable to conceive a child unless we take the herb gerda, though we know that women alone didn’t make that magic. There are, or were, some sort of beings that gave them the magic in the first place, who also made that magic.”

“Because we couldn’t,” Mistress Resvaes said, her pleasant manner giving no hint to how closely she watched Hadand’s anxious care in choosing words, Shen’s hunger that she could not mask, and Tdor—obviously a girl with a good heart—who seemed not to question the Marlovan view of the world.

She said slowly, “Not even with the skills vouchsafed to us then. And as you probably know, those were far superior to what we know now. We lost so much in the Fall, knowledge and skills we might never recover. But you know that, too.”

“All the old ballads attest to it,” Shen said, chuckling.

“They do. Go on.”

Hadand winced inside, sensing that this woman knew very well what they really wanted: access to magic. But she said, “We’ve learned that women were the first to get magic in coming here from some other world. And besides the other changes I mentioned, women were able to effect changes like eradicating terrible sicknesses.”

They also killed,
Mistress Resvaes thought.
They killed sexual predators until that instinct was eliminated from humankind, because they knew if they didn’t, these “beings” you so blithely referred to were going to destroy us all, down to the oldest grandmother and newest born child. They tried to kill off the instinct for war, and maybe would have succeeded, but for one foremother’s taste for yet more power, inviting in what became Norsunder’s Host of Lords. But you are not going to find out any of that until I know a lot more about you.

“We just want to understand how we are what we are. We don’t even know if those beings hinted at in the old records were wiped out by magic too, if they even still live.”

Shendan said, “It is very difficult for us to get older works that we can trust and that we can comprehend.”

Hadand said, “We know we have only pieces of what has shaped our lives. Fareas-Iofre, my mother, is a descendant of Lineas Cassad, as well as the Princess of Choraed Elgaer.” Hadand waited until she saw an encouraging nod. “Well, she told us we have only a leg of the table, and though we study its carving, and even its grain, we still are only speculating about the rest of the table, and the other legs.”

“True. So let’s discuss what you do know. Tell me,” Mistress Resvaes said, “what exactly does ‘Marlovan’ mean?”

They exchanged glances of surprise. Tdor looked down at her hands. Shen hesitated, still searching for the right words to tell this woman whatever it was she wanted to hear.

Hadand said, “Marlovans have no written history. The oldest songs and stories tell us ‘Marlovan’ means ‘accursed of the Venn.’ By studying Iascan history, we’ve found out that the word really is a blend of three words, meaning ‘outcasts of the Venn.’ ”

“I see. So you have corrected the songs, then?”

“Corrected the songs?” Hadand repeated, taken aback. “The songs are songs. Separate from, well, anything else.”

“Who sings these songs? Everyone in Iasca Leror?”

Hadand said. “We do, the descendants of the Marlovans.”

“Who speaks Marlovan? Not everyone, I apprehend.”

“No,” Shen said. “Just us. In fact it wasn’t even spoken for several generations. Or only at home, on festival days.”

“Why is that?” Mistress Resvaes asked, leaning forward.

“There are different ideas,” Hadand said slowly; at first she’d been surprised at the woman’s ignorance, for mage teachers were supposed to be quite learned. But now she suspected the woman knew the answer, and waited only to hear how the girls framed it. “My mother says it’s because nothing was written down, that we had only stories to go on. Iascan, being written, was more useful for government and trade. Others claim that Marlovan must only be spoken by descendants of the plains, a custom denoting pride. Yet the Cassads tell us that most of the Marlovans of the second generation after the kingdoms joined were ashamed of their language, because it wasn’t written, it hadn’t—” Hadand frowned, seeking words.

“The sophisticated vocabulary,” Shendan said, watching the mage for the tiniest reaction. “And yet it does, but for life on the plains. For weather, for seasons, for matters of the open air, my mother says, Marlovan is far more subtle than Iascan. There are nineteen verbs just for rain.”

“For weather, for seasons, for matters of the open air such as war?” Mistress Resvaes asked. “So I have heard. I have also heard that Marlovan is called ‘the language of war.’ ”

No mistaking the girls’ reactions: surprise, followed swiftly by wariness in Shendan, resignation in Hadand, and the puckered brow of inward questioning in Tdor.

Shen’s lips parted, and Mistress Resvaes said in a gentle voice, “Do not attempt to tell me it’s just the men who say it thus. It was Ndara Cassad, the one you term Harandviar, who told me just last night, when we had our private interview. Our secret interview, unknown to any of the men here, at which she told me pretty much everything you have told me—except what you would do with knowledge of historical magic.”

Silence.

Mistress Resvaes breathed slowly, searching for the words that would bring these girls to a wider understanding. “And I must observe, if men and women are so divided here, you will never really have peace.”

Shen said, eyes wide, “So because we are Marlovans you’ll withhold knowledge from us? Ignorant we might be, but we’re trying to fight against that, and meanwhile, we’re informed enough about other kingdoms to know they aren’t perfect. Yet they have trained mages, and not just healers, living among them. Why should we be condemned to ignorance? Is it because we won’t permit the Venn to conquer us?”

“There are so many wrong assumptions lying behind your words I hardly know how to begin,” Mistress Resvaes said. “But I will try. First, no one is withholding knowledge as knowledge. Magic, yes, for a time, but I shall see to it that you get better records, for I think you must begin to understand what happened to us before the Fall, the chain of bad choices humankind made, often for the best of reasons, and the results. It is we humans, not anyone else, who nearly destroyed ourselves. And we used magic to do it.”

“But we don’t want magic for war,” Hadand said, her hands gripped together. “No one ever thought that. We all want it to make life better.”

Tdor spoke for the first time. “Fareas-Iofre taught us magic can’t be used for war. Only for improvement of life.”

“It can be used for anything,” Mistress Resvaes said to her, and though her voice was kind, her gaze was serious. “And we have made some very terrible mistakes. Not just in our ancient history, but more recently. Far more recently.”

She went on to ask some more questions about their history, and heard the eager answers. She had been trained well, and so the girls saw no sign of just how alarming Mistress Resvaes found them, with their passionate desire to master magic for “peace” when they so clearly accepted war as an expected way of life. Yet she felt an unexpected sympathy: she knew that these girls did not lie; they really believed just what they said.

That made them even more frightening. Their intentions were the best, but they had accepted the mandate of their kings that Marlovans conquer their neighbors for their own good and then rearrange their lives so that they would live the Marlovan idea of peace and plenty. And prepare for war against their ancient ancestors, a cycle that promised never to end.

They would get their ancient records, but ones that detailed politics and lives and laws, nothing about magic except as result. Not method.

Shen fought tears. She had let herself hope, and she
hated
hope, for the only thing about it you could trust is that it would always, without fail, be denied.

And so she and Tdor withdrew with silent steps, watched ahead by Ndara-Harandviar’s women, until they reached the Royal Armsmistress, just as all the girls were returning from the game. The Royal Armsmistress declared their break-in a win.

And so there was a celebration that night, their triumphant riding given leave, and in their midst Shen talked, and laughed, and drank, but at night Tdor lay in compassionate silence below her, listening to the harsh breathing of grief that lasted until dawn.

Chapter Twenty-one

J
ORET looked down at the intertwined gilded lilies circling her beautiful porcelain cup, and knew that this interview with Fareas-Iofre was not going to be an easy one.

Late summer light streamed in the west windows, painting tall columns of glowing gold up the bare peach stone of the opposite wall, and reflected back into the room, glinting on the rims of the cups.