Sartor (12 page)

Better to wait, keep her tools secret, and use them on those
she knew were still, well,
human
. This Norsundrian didn’t really
act human. He talked in that flat soft voice, never looked around, never showed
any kind of emotion—even anger.

The rain caught up with them just about the time they
reached some barren mountains. Great fire-blackened cliffs rose on either side,
obviously blasted by magic. Beyond the ridge of mountains something jutted, a
massive fortress. A landmark at last—but it had to be the Norsunder Base.
It was too late to escape. They had run out of journey food, and even Kessler’s
canteen was empty. Though she could orient by heading away from that thing, how
long would she last without food or water?
Not long
, she thought, her
eyes stinging with tears.

o0o

Zydes stood on one of the western towers, watching a field
exercise through a glass, though he was far more aware of Detlev standing at
his left than of the warriors skirmishing on the dusty plains.

Dejain stood beyond, busily plied a glass, the hypocrite. Zydes
knew she detested the noise, stink, and squalor of battle even more than he
did.

And he was right. That is, mostly right. She swept her glass
over the converging forces, most of whom thought they were war-gaming, trying
to find by some sign which unit had been given the kill order. She always
watched the beginning of an exercise in order to descry, if she could, who had
the kill order. Sometimes they betrayed their triumph by subtle signs,
sometimes obvious—and sometimes not at all. Then she’d watch the
others for reactions to the realization that they had become targets. Or
trophies.

Keeping the glass aimed toward the plain, she flicked a
quick sideways glance.

Detlev stood with his hands behind his back, his attention
downward. At least, so it appeared. He did not use a glass. She wondered if he
made any sense of the chaos of blades, dashing horses, milling infantry, and
dust obscuring everything.

Probably. Though he gave no sign, one wing of cavalry
wheeled, streaming toward a flank. She knew he had somehow sent an order
mentally. It was so sudden, and there had been no trumpet call or waving of
banners from any of the captains below.

An intense spasm of envy and longing tightened her insides.
How
she would love to have that power! She indulged herself with a daydream: her
first target would be that slab-faced fool standing at Detlev’s right...

While she enjoyed her fantasy, Zydes was thinking much the
same thing about her. But underneath his desire to crush Dejain’s life
out—slowly, slowly—he was anxious about time.

He’d ordered the field exercise mostly to divert focus
from Kessler, who, he had seen in the scope just that morning, would arrive
within the day from the other direction. But the exercise had somehow been
noised beyond the physical realm, and Detlev had shown up, unannounced as
always, with Dejain mincing prettily at his heels.

Zydes gripped his glass, wishing he had her skinny neck between
his hands. After exhaustive investigation he had discovered that she’d not
only betrayed Kessler in ’33, but had managed to twine his
own
magic in her machinations, causing his defeat in Bereth Ferian. She was
therefore responsible for him being stuck in this dusty hole far from anywhere
interesting.

Well, he’d pay her in like coin—as soon as he
had that Landis safely locked up. Before anyone could discover who she was.

He plied his glass, trying not to shift from one foot to the
other.

Dejain observed the signs of his impatience and laughed
inwardly. He was obviously up to something. Oh, she’d find out what.

He, like these military fools below, all thought they were
on the rise to power. But she’d learned that those with real power in
Norsunder tolerated mages like Zydes so that they would handle logistics. Probably
the only mage, outside of Detlev and of course
Them
—the Host of
Lords—that held power was the vicious old mage Vatiora, who rarely
emerged from Norsunder. Her deeds had bloodied the pages of countless histories
several centuries back, and though she’d escaped death only by hiding out
in Norsunder, she made Kessler look sane and mild by comparison, her only
weakness a pettiness equal to her bloodlust. She was ruled by whim, and put the
same no-limits effort into spite as she did into vast plans.

Outside of people like Vatiora, who seemed to live for
cruelty and bloodshed, most allied with Norsunder in order to indulge a taste
for war, or for spying—but never for logistics, the necessary third
component for war.

Zydes was the perfect quartermaster, and he didn’t
even know it.

Both Zydes and Dejain were startled when Detlev turned away
from the battlement. The field exercise had scarcely begun. What now?

Detlev’s gaze flicked Zydes’s way. Zydes braced
himself inwardly. Zydes was considerably taller, but somehow you never thought
of Detlev as shorter. He forced himself to meet that gaze, felt the expected
pain strike through temples and the back of the eyes, and then Detlev said, “Marigor
is slow, and he doesn’t seem to understand that heavy cavalry can break a
line, not just protect the foot’s back. I suggest a protracted maneuver.”

Zydes nodded.

Detlev smiled faintly. “You don’t want them
getting lazy, either foot or mounted.”

Without waiting for an answer, he lifted his hands and
transferred out.

Zydes became aware of the sweat on his brow, but he wasn’t
going to wipe it with that smirking Dejain there.

“Quite edifying,” she said.

Apart from the sudden, vicious desire to smash his glass
across her face—of course he controlled that—Zydes did not react. Then,
as the rage ebbed a little, he recognized that tone, an attempt to emulate
Detlev.

She’d failed. He laughed, not bothering this time to
hide it.

She transferred out. He cursed her, then turned his
attention to Detlev, and that parting remark. What did he mean? Did he know
about Zydes’s forming plans for Sartor? He
couldn’t
know. Could
he?

Zydes forced himself not to hurry down to his rooms, but he
was blind to anything else besides his agonized questions until he reached the
relative safety of his warded lair. There he cautiously performed the oblique
ward he’d set up to track Detlev.

It still worked. And, better, Detlev was again off-world.

Letting his breath trickle out, Zydes prepared for Kessler’s
arrival.

o0o

Lilah’s eyes were gritty with dust, and ached from the
long ride and the dry, parched air when they reached an outpost. Kessler did
not permit them to stop long enough for a drink of water. He left the exhausted
horse and demanded two more. Lilah got to ride alone, but he held the reins to
her horse.

It was nearly impossible to see where the gray-covered sky
began and the rocky, broken land ended, except for a weird line somewhere in
the distance. It seemed to waver beyond the fortress.

Lilah couldn’t make out what it was, but Kessler stilled,
then made one of his sudden moves.
Snap!
His reins slapped against the
rump of the Lilah’s mount, and it leaped forward, nearly casting her off
its back.

The animals raced down the road as the light began to fade—and
that line got closer as the lines of the fortress sharpened.

Exhausted, hungry, desperate with thirst, Lilah wondered if
she had somehow been taken into Norsunder’s realm beyond death, for the
light faded so slowly, making her feel blind, and they rode and rode and rode.

How her head throbbed! And her butt ached, and her lungs
from the dust, and her lips were dry. Kessler had dwindled to a sinister shadow
on her left, his gray tunic-jacket blending with the landscape.

But then, just as the last of the light faded, the fortress
loomed over them. Torchlight high on the battlements glowed, red and wicked. The
dust was worse than ever; a cold wind had arisen from where the last pale gray
gleamed on the horizon, bringing gouts of dust, and an ugly hot-metal smell
that made her shoulders hunch and her neck-hairs prickle.

Gradually she became aware that the sound she heard, a low,
thundering noise, was not just her aching head. Just before they rounded a
massive stone tower, she glanced to the side and saw a vast line of bobbing
torches.

An army! An invasion?

Fear made her look to Kessler, though she wondered why. He
was not going to save her from anything. The orange light of the torches
overhead illumined the angry jut of his chin and his narrowed eyes. It was
almost a human expression, but not a pleasant one. They galloped up a ramp and
into a courtyard, and only then did they stop.

“Come along.”

Lilah blinked wearily. Kessler was standing at her stirrup. She
managed to slide out of the saddle and fell right onto the stones. A strong
hand gripped her arm and yanked her up again. She stumbled against the horse’s
heaving sides. The animal’s hair was slick with sweat, and bits of foam
had splashed over its withers. The smell stung her nose—not unpleasant,
just sharp. Anything was better than dust.

The hand yanked her again, as the thunder grew louder. Her
feet fumbled beneath her. Pangs shot up her arm into her head as Kessler thrust
her through a torch-lit archway.

Stable hands dashed out for the horses. Lilah’s last
glimpse of the courtyard was two grim faces glancing after them before the
animals were led away.

They’d arrived just ahead of a big army, it seemed. Not
invading, but returning.

Up stairs. Down a long corridor. The air was stuffy and
smelled of old stone. The world seemed to have turned into darkness and dust.

She sneezed three times as Kessler rapped on a thick wooden
door. He pushed her into a room. Blinking tears from her eyes, she stumbled,
then looked up at a huge man dressed in Norsunder gray and black, who glowered
at her, twin gleams of red torchlight briefly reflecting in his dark eyes. He
stood behind a great dark-wood desk.

Zydes was quite pleased with what he saw. This fox-faced
scrub of a child was as unlike the tall, strong, farseeing Landises of legend
as was humanly possible. She didn’t have the ugly gooseberry eyes common
to the Landises, which were so well-known he’d hoped to be able to
brandish her (when he was ready), letting her face serve as proof of who she
was. But not all of them had those eyes. This girl’s father hadn’t,
from all accounts. He hoped she was as stupid as she looked.

“To business,” he began, but a rap at the door
interrupted him.

The door opened. A tall fellow came in, bearing papers. Lilah
tried to blink away the bleary rings round the lamps on the desk and the
torches outside the windows. The hulking form of the newcomer blocked the man
behind the desk.

That meant he couldn’t see her. A heartbeat’s
chance. She took it.

She sprang through the open door just before it shut, and
dashed madly down the hall—where? Where?

She’d forgotten Kessler, who had retired out of the
reach of the lamplight to lean against the wall. The world revolved slowly, for
he, too, was exhausted. He had been reflecting with regret on last year when
Dejain’s magic had enabled him to work straight through days and nights
without ever having to sleep. Except after the spell had worn off—causing
a stupid sleep-haze for weeks—he’d understood that she had done him
no favor, that clear thought had disintegrated with imperceptible slowness,
leaving him with the distortion of dream-image overlaying reality.

He was startled when the brat whirled and bolted. He caught
up in five steps.

Once again those five steel bands clamped onto Lilah’s
arm, just before she was about to launch herself down a stairway. She was
suspended in the air, arms and legs extended useless as a lifted turtle’s,
and then her vision whirled and her feet landed with a painful thump on the
flagged flooring.

Kessler’s fingers shifted to the scruff of her neck,
almost choking her, and back to that office they marched. In the doorway he
paused, and she glanced up, bracing for violence, glaring past her overlong
bangs.

“You need a haircut,” he remarked, and then
thrust her back inside.

The messenger was gone. Zydes drummed his fingers on the
desk.

He said to Lilah, “Don’t waste my time again.”
And with a glance at Kessler, who had released the neck of Lilah’s gown
and retreated to his place at the wall, “At least not while I have my
hound who is so quick on the fetch.”

Lilah stared. The tall one smirked, a very unpleasant
expression in that glaring lamplight. Kessler’s face—as usual—did
not change.

“Where is your magical aid, young Landis?” the
man asked, holding out his hand.

Magic aid? Magic aid?

Her bewilderment was plain. Zydes sighed. Was she really so
stupid? Better so, perhaps.

“You used magic against Kessler.”

Lilah tried to lick her lips, but her tongue felt dusty. Her
voice came out like a frog’s croak. “It was a magic ring that makes
light. But I lost it when he grabbed me.” Her heart thumped again at the
lie.

Zydes looked at her grubby dress in disgust and
disappointment. He was too disinterested to bother searching the brat. A magic
ring that only emitted light: that matched what he’d seen. Useless. But it
also meant the brat was no mage.

He snapped his fingers at Kessler. “Put her in the far
room, and lock the door. She’s too sleep-sodden to hear one word in five.
We’ll begin again in the morning.”

Out they went again, Kessler’s hand on the scruff of Lilah’s
neck. He pushed her into a plain room with a single window. She turned around. “Who
is that villain?” she asked, her mind now weirdly numb after all the
frights.

“Zydes,” said Kessler. And with that faint
almost-humor, “He likes subordination. You had better stay with ‘sir.’”