Sartor (16 page)

They mounted up, rode through the empty court and out the
gates, under the eyes of the marching sentries.

Surges of terror wrung Lilah’s insides at the way her
uncle glanced back at the walls, but he said nothing, and she heard no pursuit,
no noises of alarm.

No one stopped them as they rode out into the darkness.
Lilah began to believe in the escape only when the torchlit crenellations
smeared into a red-glowing blur behind them.

Neither of them was aware of Kessler standing on the highest
tower, looking down at their receding figures and laughing soundlessly as their
hoof beats diminished rapidly into the distance.

The expected summons came not long after sunup.

Kessler was waiting at Zydes’s office when the latter
arrived, as he wanted the pleasure of observing his commander’s process
of discovery. Before he opened the office door, Zydes’s face revealed the
pallor and tension lines of residual magic reaction. He had to have been off
somewhere, planting magic traps for someone. Probable Dejain.

Good.

“Where’s that brat?” Zydes snapped, as he
let himself into the office. Kessler followed, watching obliquely, but Zydes
did not move toward the scope. He didn’t even turn in that direction; his
intent seemed to be on the papers accumulated on the desk. “If she’s
still sleeping, yank her out by the ear. I’ll not tolerate laziness.”

Kessler lingered as long as he could without causing
comment. Zydes sat down, scowling as he read the top report. With an inward
shrug, Kessler left.

He went through all the motions, just as if he’d
expected to find the Landis brat in the end chamber. He unlocked the door,
surveyed the empty bed, the barren stone corners of the room, shut the door,
locked it again, and returned to the office. He could tell instantly that Zydes
hadn’t moved—he was halfway through his stack of secret reports. He
couldn’t have looked at the side table yet.

“She’s not there,” Kessler said.

Zydes neatly set a paper on a third pile as he said
irritably, “Well, go get her, then, fool.”

So Kessler walked down to the mess and looked about with the
air of a diligent searcher. He took his time, examining hallways where a child
might conceivably have loitered, and then returned to the tower.

Zydes had nearly finished his reading, and had divided the
reports into four piles. He looked up impatiently. Kessler wanted to
laugh—he still hadn’t looked at the scope.

“I did not find her in the mess, or in this wing. Did
you send her down to the stables?”

“I didn’t send her anywhere,” Zydes
snarled. Then he rose, and at last turned toward the scope, a gesture so
habitual Kessler suspected Zydes was unaware how revealing it was.

His reaction was better than Kessler could have hoped.

His face drained of what color it had. It really was a
blanch, the exact expression, or as near as the living might get, to the look
on someone’s face whose guts have just been ripped open by a blade. Kessler
let himself glance at the table, and he mimed a look of surprise when he saw
that the scope was gone, its support rods curved around empty space.

Zydes stared at that empty space, his eyes distended, as
though the force of angry disbelief could remake what had obviously been turned
to ash. Then he actually walked all the way around the side table, his mouth
gaping like a beached fish.

Kessler counted three breaths. Four.

Zydes swung about. Kessler waited. It took no mind-reading
abilities to follow the chain of his thoughts here: accusation. Then
realization that Kessler could not possibly have entered the chamber, because
there were heavy wards against him crossing the threshold without Zydes being
present. And Zydes thought he knew no magic. Then he’d remember the wards
he’d put in place against Detlev, Dejain, and a half-dozen other mages
who did know enough magic—

“Who did this?” It was scarcely a whisper, but
Kessler heard it. Then, “Get out!”

Kessler left, and executed all his errands, moving without
haste, or furtiveness, because he knew that at some point magic would be
tracking him.

One of his stops was to the quartermaster, to pick up supply
reports. While the man assembled his papers Kessler wandered along the shelves
near the transport square, where new commodities were always offloaded against
the incoming magical transfer of more.

Most of what he saw was foodstuffs: barrels of rice, bushels
of oats, and crates and crates of various greens that would be transported by
magic. But at the other end were rolls of heavy gray wool—the same kind
he had ordered some years before, when he’d had to equip an army. This
wool was the kind that made the best riding cloak that could be besorcelled
against wet.

Invasion. Sartor? Probably. Zydes still had not told anyone
that Detlev’s time-bindings had been released.

“Here you go.”

Kessler picked up the papers and left.

The signal came for the guard to change. This was also the signal
for the midday meal for those on the day watch. Kessler retreated to his room
to wait.

Mentally he had been tracking Zydes’s likely
movements. He would, by now, have found out that one of the recruits was also
gone—Darian Irad, former king of Sarendan, no less. And that the two
recruit-wing sentries had been rendered unconscious by unknown means, as well
as the recruits in Irad’s barracks room, and the command wing guards at
the barracks entryway, and stable guards; that Jaskuil, the command wing rover—a
notorious informer with an insatiable taste for floggings—was dead, his
throat slit. That the two roving patrols whose entire purpose was to question
anyone walking about had been sidetracked, one to the prison, the other to the
south wall. That two mounts were missing, that two figures, a scout and a
guide, had been seen riding out on the north road.

A scout and a guide? Who had issued orders to pass them?

The order traced back to Jaskuil.

Written? No, spoken. By whom?

No one could remember... during the relay of general orders
at the watch change?

Whence had come the warning that sent the two roving patrols
on futile investigations? The relay of spoken orders again would lead back to
Jaskuil.

Kessler knew that his speculations were correct because there
was no summons. He did not waste any time thinking about what might happen if
someone did manage to place him along the escapees’ trail, clearing the
way for them without their knowing it. The most interesting part of the day was
the destruction of the scope, which he had not expected the brat to be capable
of. (And from the long silence, it was clear that Zydes still had not put the missing
brat and the destroyed scope together. He was futilely investigating his rival
mages.)

The scope’s destruction changed Kessler’s plans.
He sat back, watching through the north window. There were now two
possibilities: either Zydes revealed who his ‘messenger’ was, in
which case he’d be sending half the mounted after her—or else he’d
want to keep her identity secret, in which case—

A bang on his door. “Summons.”

Zydes was pacing back and forth. “The brat is
definitely missing. How could she have learned enough of our magic to break my
ward?” He flung out a hand in the direction of the side table.
“More important, could she possibly be the one who destroyed the scope? Even
Dejain couldn’t get at it, and she’s tried. Four times during the
last half a year, at least.” He smirked, but his expression immediately soured.
“It
couldn’t
have been that soul-sucking brat!”

Kessler remained silent.

A hand smashed on the desk. “It gets worse. She made a
detour, it seems, and managed to spring Irad of Sarendan. That has to mean he’s
offered the Landis brat his army to help her retake Sartor. If they make it
over the Sarendan border—”

Then everyone in the
world, on both sides, will know that Sartor’s time binding is broken.

Kessler said, his voice devoid of any hint of interest, “I
thought Irad was deposed.”

A searching look from dark-pouched, yellowed eyes. “Yes.
But the puling cripple they replaced him with apparently can’t even lift
a blade. My guess is, if Irad shows up in Sarendan again, especially with the
Landis girl at his side, and he whistles, his entire army will come running. Especially
if they think they can measure blades against us. That’s what he’d
been training them for, right?”

Kessler did not answer.

Another look. Another angry, impotent gesture. Then
unwilling speech, as if forced out: “You. Take as many as you think
necessary, and bring them back before they reach Sarendan.”

Kessler left, issued the orders to detach squads he’d
long since chosen against just such an opportunity, and saw to the supplies and
to the selection of the extra mounts himself. Within a short time, they were
riding east toward Sarendan.

And there was no scope to follow their movements.

Kessler held no ill-will toward either the Landis girl or
Irad. When she’d begun asking her clumsy questions about the recruits, it
had been obvious that she was contemplating a run, but he hadn’t thought
she’d have the guts to actually try. She’d surprised him
considerably when she’d not only appeared, but let herself into Zydes’s
office with commendable speed, and then emerged again, trailing the stink of
burning metal, and proceeding straight down to recruit territory. Again a
surprise, when she reappeared with Irad of Sarendan.

Kessler had enjoyed deflecting the worst of their obstacles;
covert action was in some ways more demanding and more complex than assault. Irad’s
killing of Jaskuil—not at all surprising—had even provided a
convenient source for all the false orders.

The Landis girl definitely lived up to the standards of her
ancestors. Not even Detlev could have surmised that the stupid front she
presented to the world hid not only formidable magic skills—dark magic,
yet—but also the ability to execute a clever move like springing the
former king of Sarendan—against whom Kessler had, a couple of years ago,
looked forward to taking the field himself. Irad, who had been betrayed into
recruitment in much the same fashion Kessler had, evoked enough sympathy that,
had Zydes released their names and sent the regulars after them, Kessler would
have wished they’d manage to stay at large, if only to frustrate Zydes.

But now they had been handed to Kessler, and so they were transformed
from objects of interest into weapons to be used against Zydes and Dejain.

He would give them no more consideration than the archer
gives the arrow that will accomplish the kill.

o0o

A flight of squeaking bats wheeled through the thick, still
night air and vanished with a whisper of wings into the peaks above.

“Oh, can’t we rest?” Lilah cried, unable
to endure any more riding or walking, especially without water or food.

The sun had only begun to smear the eastern clouds with
grayish light. Her uncle turned her way, but she could not see his expression.

“It was too easy,” he said. “We have to
keep on the move.” He gestured. “The horses need water, anyway.”

“So do we,” she muttered.

There was no answer.

Too easy? Too EASY?

Lilah was much too tired—and afraid of her uncle—to
wail, but she wanted desperately to yowl and howl and stamp her feet. If a
horrible night like the one they’d just endured was too easy, what would
he consider tough?

But she neither yowled nor stamped, for she needed every bit
of her failing strength to plonk one foot in front of the other. Uncle Dirty-Hands
held the reins of both horses, for Lilah couldn’t even do that anymore. The
animals’ hooves thudded behind her, their heads drooping, their sweaty
sides shuddering.

“Rain coming,” her uncle said.

Water. The thought revived her just enough for her to be
able to lift her head and look skyward. Indeed, the flat gray clouds she’d
gotten used to had given way to the lowering, ragged-edged blue-gray of
moisture-laden thunderheads. Two cold splats landed on her face, and drops
chuffed into the aged dust of the hill trail.

Her uncle had insisted they leave the road just before dawn,
which had slowed them even more. Lilah had obeyed, beyond questioning, though
the sight of the trail upward into the hills on either side of the road had
compounded her misery.

She dropped her head, and a cold buffet of wind nearly
knocked her off her feet. “Please, Uncle Dirty-Hands, can’t we
stop? Just a little?”

“Rain will obliterate our trail,” he said. “I
think we can look for shelter now, at least until the storm passes.”

Shelter. Her eyes were too bleary for looking around for
hidey-holes. She followed, sticking her tongue out in hopes of water. Two or
three drops had finally fallen onto it (though they didn’t make much
difference) by the time he said, “Here.”

Two gigantic slabs of striated rock had fallen sideways long
ago in some unimaginable tremor, forming a kind of rock tent. It was large
enough for both horses, as well as the two of them.

Lilah flung herself down onto the gathered dust along one
side, grateful to stop moving at last. But she was too thirsty to sleep.

Her uncle unslung one sword from across his back, and the
other from his belt, set them down, and dropped the knife on top. Then he set
to work unsaddling and caring for the horses. She saw that he’d managed
to pack food for them in the saddlebags, the same pressed squares of
oat-and-hay that Kessler had used for the horses on the road south. She felt a
faint flare of hope that was swiftly extinguished when she reflected that
stable supplies were unlikely to provide stuff for people.

Presently he came back and sat on a rock opposite Lilah. In
the sky, a long mutter of thunder prefaced a sudden downpour of slanting,
hissing rain. The air swiftly chilled, and rivulets of dust-laden brown liquid
ran into their shelter.