Sartor (6 page)

He wiped his hands down the sides of his tunic. If it was in
truth a Landis just over the border,
he was the only one who knew
.
Unless Dejain—

He bolted to the window, but of course they were long gone. No,
Dejain and the Landis signal could not be connected. She’d had some
scheme going for days, and this alarm spell had been wakened recently, sometime
between dawn and now, for he’d been out of the office all morning and
most of the afternoon.

He cleared his mind and murmured the spell that activated his
magical scope, his most powerful invention. He waited for the residual magic
vertigo to pass, and then looked down into the black curve of the scope’s
bowl, and whispered the spell that would locate any living Landis.

Dark had fallen, corroborating that the Landis was indeed in
Sartor. It was difficult to make out much. He saw three childish shapes
rummaging around. Girls, from the clothing. Making a campsite. A distinctive
landmark silhouetted against the lighter sky beyond them. He was sure he’d
once seen it on the—ah. He flicked open his map and ran his fingers
around the bowl of mountains that bordered Sartor, touching at each of the old
access ways. Point Adan.

Facts: the Landis was only a girl, and she’d just that
day crossed the eastern border. And had no magic protections—at least, nothing
important, nothing that had warded her from location spells, or his spell would
not have worked. She was accompanied by a pair of girls. Had to be
maidservants. Only which was the Landis? The scope was most useful for spying
on the fortress’s denizens. The farther away it had to reach, the flatter
and more distorted the images. One of them was doing something, and magical
light flared briefly. Of course that would be the Landis, probably taught
spells by whoever had secreted her.

Though it was true that this girl’s presence would
break the key to Detlev’s century-old enchantment, those spells would
take time to dissolve, and Detlev was elsewhere in the world, or out of it. Once
he had the girl, Zydes could weave his own spells, with keys only he knew, and
so even if Detlev returned,
Sartor would belong to Granon Zydes
.

He gazed hungrily into the scope, a plan flowering in his
mind. A capital plan. The spells over Sartor could be renewed, but altered by
him
.
The people would be
his
. The land would be his. The Landis child,
suitably enchanted into an obedient puppet, could be an enormous asset in a
world that still heeded the power of the names
Sartor
and
Landis
,
and he would accomplish it all himself, before any of the other soul-devouring
death’s-heads in Norsunder even noticed.

The lure of power was sweeter than anything in the world.

He snapped his fingers and the spell ended, the scope going
black. A quick murmur: the alarm spell vanished as well, leaving no trace of
evidence.

He was the only one who knew. He began to reorganize the next
day so that he could go in pursuit—except then his absence would be
noted. And he couldn’t transfer out, not without triggering wards—

How many spies did the place have?
Everyone
was a spy
for somebody, even if only for themselves.

Time was limited. Therefore he must act with dispatch, but
not careless haste.

The first requirement was to get hold of the Landis girl.

He stepped to the door, then hesitated. His best runners had
just been transferred out by that scheming Dejain. But there was always
Kessler.

He frowned. Advantages: he was quick, unnervingly fast,
which was astonishing because he was a Chwahir, who were known for being the
worst-trained fighters in the world. He was smart, and so far he did what he
was told with speed and efficiency.

Disadvantages: every one of his advantages, for Zydes knew
someone that smart and that fast was not going to remain a runner. He was also
crazy, so crazy there was no reading him, no using the usual enticements to
keep control of him. He seemed impervious to mind-warping spells as well, and
worse, he was just beginning to learn magic—though Zydes tried to keep
him busy enough with scutwork to permit little time for
that
.

Zydes opened the door and sent one of the guards to fetch
Kessler. Zydes had his plans in place by the time the door opened again. Kessler
appeared, barely medium height, and so slim that apparently some less observant
warriors thought he was feeble. They didn’t survive the mistake. Zydes
didn’t care about anyone’s personal prowess, real or boasted. The
jolt he felt every time he saw Kessler was entirely due to those protuberant
eyes with the droopy under-lid. Landis eyes, only pale blue, in a black-haired,
pale Chwahir face. Long ago the Landises had married with the Sonscarnas of
Chwahirsland, and here was evidence, generations later, in
Prince
Kessler Sonscarna, now putatively a runner.
Not for long, if he can help it
,
Zydes reminded himself.

Kessler only saw a silhouette.

He approached the broad desk set squarely before the window,
glowglobes behind it, so that its owner was limned in light, rendering him a
shadow. It was a trick to intimidate, but Kessler interpreted it as hiding. That
meant Zydes was launching some sort of plan.

It also meant that Kessler was about to be ordered to
perform the scut work: whatever Zydes either didn’t want to do, or did
not want to be seen doing, himself.

“There are three children who just crossed into Sartor’s
eastern border. Bring me the one who has a light-making magical aid. I’m
minded to try an experiment.”

Kessler said nothing. He waited, not reacting, because he
knew that Zydes hated not seeing visual clues, and so was likely to break a
silence by saying more than he had planned to.

“At once,” came the sharp voice.

“The other two children?” Kessler asked.

Zydes waved a hand. “Kill ’em.”

There was a need for no witnesses, and in a hurry? Yet Zydes
would not speed his plans along by giving Kessler access to magic transfer? And
he wanted one child—one with magic—without naming names?

Kessler thought,
The impossible is possible. There is a
Landis still alive
. And like everyone else, Zydes assumed that a Chwahir
was too ignorant of any history but their own to be aware of things like the
conditions of Sartor’s enchantment.

He withdrew, closing the door soundlessly behind him. By
dawn he was already mounted, riding beyond the gates to the northeast under a
gray, grim sky. He loathed the errand, but he did not mind several days’
hard riding. He was alone, and he had time to decide what to do.

o0o

The girls woke up, broke camp, and set out.

Lilah was already bored with the countryside, but she
enjoyed her companions. Atan she had admired from their first meeting, and the
newcomer, Merewen, was so interested in everything that she became interesting.
She talked about everything with such delight—the moths flickering around
the weird light on Atan’s ring when she used it to help them make camp,
the sedge, the subtle colors of rocks along the river’s edge, and of
course, her companions.

But though Merewen chattered about the world around them,
she did not comment on all that she observed, such as Atan’s mood growing
of abstraction.

Lilah also noticed. They’d begun the journey with Atan
and Lilah talking and Merewen sometimes interposing questions, but that had
changed to Lilah and Merewen talking, with occasional questions by Atan.

Atan’s mood had indeed changed. She’d begun both
exhilarated and afraid. The lonely road and the absence of living creatures
around them had banished the expectation of discovery, attack, the need to
transfer out fast. She was here at last, in Sartor. She studied the land as
closely as the peculiarities of the slowly dissipating spells permitted.

She could not see very far because of the gray haze, and
wondered how many villages and farms it concealed. The weather seemed
unchanging, a continuously unbroken gray sky that warded the sun by day (there
was no rain or even wind) and permitted no stars by night. The eastern
mountains had dwindled to a flat purple-brown smear by the end of the first day’s
walk, though Atan knew they could not have progressed very far.

Even the shortening of the days, so noticeable before they
left, meant nothing here. It was light, then—suddenly—it was dark. She
could measure progress only by the diminishing food in their knapsacks, for the
days blended into one another, so that, unless she concentrated, she could not
easily recall just when they had set out.

One morning as they set out for another day’s trudge,
she became aware of a pause that had grown into silence, and she looked to
either side to discover two questioning faces. Atan said, “Have I been a
sorry companion?”

“A quiet one,” Merewen said.

“Is there something to worry about?” Lilah
asked, looking around.

“I’ve been thinking about magic. But instead of
talking about it, which I know would be boring, how about we hear about
something outside of Sartor? Lilah, why don’t you tell Merewen the story
of the freeing of Sarendan?”

“Yes, yes,” Merewen exclaimed, skipping ahead a
few steps. “A story! I like stories.”

Lilah paused, considering where to begin. She was delighted
to be asked, but the reminder brought back some fairly nasty memories.

“What are you looking at?” Merewen asked,
causing Lilah to turn her way in surprise.

But Merewen was not talking to her. Atan was several paces
behind, crouched in the pathway, intent on something in front of her feet.

At first Lilah thought Atan was ill. No, she was weeping!
Those were tears along her lower eyelids, but the tears did not fall.

Atan sat back on her heels, her coat dragging unnoticed in
the old dust. “Time.”

She stretched out her hand to touch the edge of the path. Lilah
blinked, seeing only dirt, bounded by the tangled roots and branches of the dusty,
ancient dark green hedgerow—a common enough sight back home in Sarendan
through certain areas. “Time, and silence.” Atan wiped her eyes. “I
didn’t think it would hurt so much.”

Lilah was still puzzled. Atan’s intensity caused her
to step closer and look again. The hard-beaten path really did dip quite low,
compared to the hedgerow. Very low indeed. As Lilah looked at that perplexing
tangle of root and branch—for it was impossible to descry each individual
plant—all mortared together with the duff of moldering old prickly dark
green leaves, her perspective shifted, and she saw what Atan saw: a path
stamped flat by untold generations of Sartorans, the hedge marking a boundary a
thousand years old. Longer.
Much
longer.

“How many generations of people passed this way,
singing the old songs?” Atan asked, her lips trembling. “The
emptiness—the silence—” She stood, and shook her head, and
then her voice wavered. “I don’t know the songs. No one wrote them
down, Tsauderei said, because everyone knew them. Will anyone remember?”

Lilah shifted her gaze from the path’s border to Atan,
who wiped her eyes again. “It’s only been a day,” she said. “You
told me so yourself.”

”Yes. That’s if Norsunder didn’t kill them
all when my father and mother were killed.” Atan wiped her eyes. “But
we don’t know any of that yet, and I’m borrowing trouble. Sorry.
Sorry! Lilah, may we have that story?”

Lilah cleared her throat, wondering if the enchantment was
getting to Atan.
Well, if I can’t understand, at least I can divert
,
she thought. “Shall I start with when I met Bren and his cousin Deon?”

“I’d like that.”

Merewen’s eyes were very blue, gathering and holding
the diffuse light. “I like it when people meet. Is it funny? I love funny
things.”

“Oh, yes, there are some funny bits.” And so
Lilah launched into the tale, dwelling on the humor, and skipping past the
really terrible bits. Her reward was Atan’s chuckle, for Lilah had
learned from observing her brother how some people took as wounds in the spirit
every evidence of war, or cruelty, or destruction.

o0o

Atan enjoyed Lilah’s style of talking, and the sound
of her voice, but she kept having to catch herself up lest her mind drift
outward into that haze, wondering who had survived and how many, and when would
they waken from their century-long dream? Would they actually be asleep, or
perhaps sitting at a loom or worktable, and they’d put down tools, and
glance through the window, and blink dusty eyes, wondering how the war was
going? Would their cupboards be filled with dust, and their homes with spider
webs?

Late in the afternoon, Lilah’s sudden chuckle brought
her out of anxious imaginings.

“But I do not know the name for baby horses,” Merewen
pointed out. “Though horses have passed through Shendoral, they don’t
seem to live there.”

“Well, you don’t have to know ’em. Bren
does
know the different between a foal and a colt, you see, as he used to help his
brothers in the stable. But his cousin Deon didn’t, because she had no
interest in horses, so when she said ’clot’ instead of
‘colt’ and Bren pretended to go along—even the outlaws were
laughing, but Deon never knew we were joking!”

“Oh,” Merewen said, in a tone of interest.

Lilah chuckled again, a pleasant sound, like a spring fall
down the rocks behind her old cottage, Atan thought. A good sound to hear in
this vast, dead silence.

“And I’m the only one laughing, I see. I guess it’s
one of those things that’s only funny if you were there.”

“Perhaps it’s not gasp-for-breath funny, but I
like hearing about it, because I get a picture of your friends,” Atan
said.

“Perhaps it is not funny,” Merewen said, with
that bird-like air of curiosity. “But I think it interesting, too, this
pretending not to know a thing. Then there are all the extra words and names. Like
your calling your uncle Dirty-Hands, even though you say his hands were clean
when you saw him. Or is that funny to you?” She swung round to face Atan.