Sartor (17 page)

Lilah pulled her feet aside. “I don’t know why
you said this escape was too easy,” she said fretfully.

“It was too easy to get out of the fortress,”
her uncle replied.

Lilah’s mouth dropped open.

He shook his head. “We will have to ascribe it to
internal politics, short of any further enlightenment.”

Lilah groaned. Tired as she was, and hungry, and thirsty,
and frightened, she felt a dreary mental sensation, as if she swam in deep
water very far from shore. What did he mean? Oh, who cared what he meant. They
were out, and he hadn’t abandoned her, or said he was going to murder her
in revenge for the revolution. That was all that mattered now.

She looked out at the brown water slopping along the insides
of the biggest slab of rock. “Do we have to drink that?”

“Wait. It’ll run clear after a time.”

Lilah sighed.

Her uncle transferred his gaze to her. “How came you
there?” He added wryly, “The invasion of Sarendan was, I thought,
postponed against some evolving trouble to the north. But ground-level rumor is
often untrustworthy no matter what side one is on.”

Lilah hesitated. Then she said uneasily, “Maybe I
ought to ask how
you
got there?”

“Whom do you expect me to betray?” he retorted. But
at the expression of unfeigned misery in her face, exaggerated by her evident
exhaustion, he relented, and said, “My own betrayal was affected by Kalaeb
Flendar, in a mistaken attempt to bargain himself into a position of influence.
Commander Benoni suspected what had happened and took the time-honored way out.
I was too slow.”

Lilah realized only belatedly what the dry voice meant by
time-honored
way
: suicide. Sickened, she said, “So Peitar was right.”

“He foresaw that, did he?”

“Well, not in so many words. But he was afraid you
might run into some kind of nastiness after you went away. He really wanted you
to let Tsauderei send you by magic to somewhere safe.”

“What else did your clairvoyant brother predict on my
behalf?”

His sarcasm had always stung, but he’d never, in all
her experience, talked about himself. Ever. She fought back through memory and
retrieved one of Peitar’s many incomprehensible utterances. “He
said he hoped you were watching him from a distance, because it would keep him
honest.”

She peeked her uncle’s way to see if that confused him
as much as it did her, but his brow cleared, and his eyes narrowed in a kind of
ironic humor. He understood. That was so strange.

Outside their little space, the rain roared down, a stream
having carved itself in the trail they’d made.

“It is a cause for regret,” he said presently, “that
your brother and I are not likely to speak again this side of death.”

“Oh, Uncle Dirty-Hands, don’t say things like
that.” Her shoulders hunched right up to her ears.

“I will refrain from voicing bleak prognostications,”
he said with even more pronounced irony than before, “if you will favor
me with my name, and not that lamentable soubriquet.”

“Lament—oh! Dirty-Ha—urble. I—it’s
just—”

“Habit. So I apprehended during my brief perusal of
your, ah, chronicle.”

Her stomach churned with embarrassment when she thought back
to all the insults she’d written into the diary that she’d kept
during the revolution. At the end, her uncle had had the diary for a short
time. Words of self-justification formed, but she didn’t voice them. After
all, he’d already lost everything. And anyway, he didn’t sound
angry or even accusing. Just sort of amused.

A humorous Uncle Dirty-Hands—Uncle Darian, that is—was
infinitely preferable to an angry one, especially when they were penned up
here, with who knew how many Norsundrians chasing after them, and a long way to
go until they reached some sort of safety.

Bringing her thoughts back to his original question.

“I went into Sartor with... someone I can’t
name, because there are magic spells if she’s mentioned.” As her
uncle’s brows twitched upward, she said in a whisper—as if that
would fool any lurking magic—“She’s the last of that family.
That rules Sartor. Kept hidden.”

Gratified by her uncle’s evident surprise, Lilah went
on with a little more confidence. “See, the Norsundrians don’t know
she’s alive. Or they didn’t. They think she’s me. I’m
her. Anyway, she broke the time-spell over Sartor, and is on her way to sweep
out the rest of their rotten magic. At least, I hope she is. She was when I got
pinched in her place, by that horrible man with the black hair. Is he really
dead? He said he was.”

“If he was Kessler Sonscarna, Zydes’s runner, he
probably told you that for his own entertainment. How did you come to be
selected for this quest?”

“Well, I offered. And
She
was glad of my
company,” she added defensively. “Anyway, we didn’t know that
disgusting villain Zydes had this magic scope thing that let him see anywhere
within the enchanted borders, and he found us, but I don’t think he knew
which of us was which, because they grabbed me, like I said. Well, he tried to
put a spell on me, only it didn’t work because it was bound on her name.
I wonder if it will suddenly pounce on her and work if she ever gets stuck in
that fortress?” Lilah frowned. “Well, the mages can worry about
that, and I hope it never comes to pass, because—”

Darian Irad raised a hand, and Lilah stuttered to a stop.

He said, “Permit me to restate. Zydes and those under
his command believe that you are a descendant of the Landis family?”

“Yes.”

“And Zydes can see anywhere with this magic object.”

“Not anymore,” Lilah said, and for the first
time, she grinned, though her lips cracked painfully. “I used Atan’s
ring and smashed it. Right before I came to get you out.” She patted her
pocket where the ring resided. “Hurt like crazy, too, but it was worth
it.”

“Well done,” he said.

It was the first praise she’d ever heard from him.

“So they will misunderstand your liberating me—for
which I neglected to thank you, by the way.”

Lilah’s face burned again. She said, “Peitar
would expect me to do what I did. But what’s that about misunderstanding?”

“They will be expecting us to ride straight east. If
nothing else, you—as this missing princess—could throw yourself on Peitar’s
mercy. But I am as sure as I can be of anything that Zydes will expect me to
foreswear myself and raise Sarendan’s army for an invasion of Sartor.”

“Oh. Um, is that bad, or good?”

“As it happens, I chose the northern route as the
flattest and therefore the fastest. I’d expected us to cut for the east
today, and run along Sartor’s southern border.”

“But now?”

“He will send Kessler, who, I am told, cannot be
outrun when he’s on the hunt. We will not test the truth of that boast.
We’ll remain on the northern road, straight into Sartor.”

Zydes—furious, worried, beset by the endless
complications of a troublesome command—tried to win enough free time to
perform a complicated series of spells. They were especially vicious, a
summoning against the will, which was correspondingly harsh on the magician
casting them, but he was desperate.

By the third day, he was in fact desperate enough to extend
the magic almost until he was consumed by it, and yet the spells did not work: Yustnesveas
Landis was not yanked by magic transfer into his warded office.

He slumped back behind his desk, dazed and exhausted, defeat—loss
of control—gnawing at his vitals, for it was not just that girl’s
obviously superior magic that baffled him, but with the scope gone he could not
spy upon Kessler, still out on the chase.

o0o

Kessler had nearly reached the border. His respect for Irad
and the Landis girl had intensified as the chase lengthened, for he drove his
handpicked warriors to the limits of their endurance, with only the briefest
pauses for food and water when they changed mounts at relay outposts along the
east road.

His detachment exerted themselves quite beyond any effort
they might have made for Zydes, for they had all heard murmured stories about
Kessler in action. The likelihood of the rumors being true had been
demonstrated in his performance with sword or knife during practices, not long
after he had first arrived. And when he won, there was no tap, no strike with
the flat of the blade. He broke bones, ripped flesh, just short of the kill,
never with any word of anger or even any change of expression.

So they kept complaints to themselves, brutal as the journey
was. No one wanted the kiss of steel for answer.

Though Zydes couldn’t see him, he wasn’t free of
observers. Dejain had chanced to return to the fortress in time to witness his
fast departure. She made it her business to transfer to each of the replay
outposts after him, and once she determined the direction of the chase, she returned
to the fortress to sift rumors for the object. According to gossip, Zydes had
had some mysterious boy as a prisoner—or recruit—who had vanished
with no less a prisoner—or recruit—than Darian Irad.

She nearly made the same mistake that Zydes did: assume that
Kessler Sonscarna on the hunt finished the business. But she had built a career
on the expert sifting of talk from the lowly, the people everyone in power
ignored. A mention of fresh horse droppings to the north and speculation about
what idiotic plans Zydes might be hatching in Sartor, when everyone knew what
happened to you there, sent her exploring.

She would have to act fast.

The larger reach any spell has, the more difficult it is to
place. But she took the time to set a warning tracer beyond the last northern
outpost, extending into the hills on one side and into the cracked, waterless
plains in the other.

Then she went about her business.

Not three days later, the warning tracer pinged its blue
flower in her mind, and she dropped everything to transfer to a suitable
observation destination, already chosen.

When the transfer reaction wore off, she spotted a
Norsundrian riding with a red-haired scout northward. Again, she nearly
returned, but she remembered the red-haired boy Zydes had had for a short time
as a runner. Already sent on errands without training? That was unusual.

More unusual was the fact that the two traveled parallel to
the road. She watched the horses plod northward toward Sartor and its time
binding, which would effectively place them beyond tracing. They
had
to
be Darian Irad, former king of Sarendan, and the mystery boy. Irad was
worthless, except in a military sense. From all reports, he was almost, if not
quite, as volatile as Kessler. But that brat? Zydes had wanted this unnamed boy,
so there was some mystery here, all right.

There was still time before they crossed into Sartor. Good
thing? No one knew they were there except Dejain! Bad thing? Capturing them
herself meant magic, and that much magic always left traces. She would have to make
certain that Zydes was busy with something else before she could act.

She transferred back to the fortress.

o0o

Tsauderei, high up in the Valley, had maintained his
ceaseless watch on the movement of the ring.

He had rejoiced when it moved away from the fortress, and he
had scarcely slept since. When they reached the territory before the border of
Sartor, he waited until nightfall and transferred, using the ring as
Destination.

Lilah and her uncle found shelter along a riverbed on the
other side, and once he’d cared for the animals as best he could, they
lay down to sleep. But the soft sound of footsteps in the gravel and a gasp
caused Darian Irad, trained from childhood to be wary, to whirl up from his
blanket bedroll, steel in either hand.

Tsauderei raised his hands and lowered himself carefully
onto a nearby rock, palms up. The last fading light gleamed with ruddy color on
a few short strands of hair on the small figure lying nearby. He exclaimed
softly, “Lilah?”

Poor Lilah was so tired she didn’t even stir.

Irad’s eyes narrowed. “Tsauderei?”

“Yes.”

They’d met very seldom. Both were thinking of the last
time, just after Darian Irad lost his throne to his nephew, through
Lilah’s use of her magical flowers.

“One of you has a magic ring I gave to a young magic
student of mine,” Tsauderei said in a tone that invited response.

“Lilah has it. I’m taking her north into Sartor.
They are searching east for us,” Darian Irad said. He added with sardonic
humor, “They also believe she is—”

“Don’t say the name,” Tsauderei cut in
quickly. “There are spells waiting to catch the unwary.”

Darian Irad hated magic. But he respected its reach.

“Ah.” Tsauderei winced against the unforgiving
unevenness of the rock, which did his withered haunches and ancient joints no
good at all, and said, “The time-bindings on Sartor have been broken. There’s
more to be done to free the kingdom, but it cannot be completed until the
person of whom we speak gets safely to her capital. I don’t know why Zydes
isn’t chasing you, or her now, but I suspect that will change sooner than
later.”

Darian Irad said, “I know nothing about magic battles,
as you are aware. Can the populace be raised to defend themselves?”

“I don’t know,” Tsauderei admitted. “I
don’t know how the time-binding spells are diminishing, or where. But
yes, if the populace were to be raised, that would be an advantage to her,
perhaps.”

Irad said nothing.

Tsauderei waited, and when the pause had become a silence,
he said, “I could transfer you to the border of Shendoral, if you like. That
is a vast woodland in the center of the kingdom in which Norsunder cannot
perform magic. Lilah can rejoin Atan. And you’d be that much farther
removed from our friends to the south.”

Irad’s ironic expression was just discernible in the
fading light. “No demands?”