Sartor (21 page)

Lilah had heard stories about the morvende—how they
taught Sartorans their style of music thousands of years ago, how they were
half-human. How they lived in fantastic caverns full of rare, singing jewels.
She was too embarrassed to ask directly, so she said, “I guess morvende
can just leave?”

He shrugged. “Of course. Why not? A few of us like
going sunside, that much I remember. Many go right back home.” He
shrugged again. “Wherever they come from, people tend to stick to what
they’re used to, mostly. That’s what my grandmother told Sin and
me, before she taught us the accesses.”

“Those accesses,” she said. “Are they
obvious?”

Hinder grinned. “No. And we don’t show ’em,
not without permission. We agree to that, which is why they don’t let us
out until we’re at least eight. See, it takes only one Norsundrian to
find out, and then—” Another ripple through the air, then he
flicked one talon against the black sleeve of her tunic. “Do you want to
get rid of those duds?”

Lilah glanced down in vague surprise, and remembered her
Norsundrian scout’s uniform. She looked up. “I hated it at first,
but then I got used to it. It’s comfortable and warm. Do I have to? My
gown is lost, and it was a mess anyway.”

Hinder shrugged. “If you don’t mind, nobody else
should, either. It’s just, if you wanted new, we’d have to get busy
finding others with extras and making ’em over, which takes time, and
unless I miss my guess, Atan is not going to be keeping us here much longer.”

His chin lifted, and Lilah stared across the clearing to
where her tall friend stood with four or five others. Lilah’s nerves
jolted.
This is why we came
,
not to live in a forest with other kids,
and swing and play and learn Sartoran songs, but to get rid of that enchantment
.

Atan beckoned, and Hinder grinned. “I was right,”
he said, pursed his lips, and startled Lilah by giving the clear, sharp whistle
of a night bird.

Lilah gazed in amazement as everybody scrambled into a big
mass, which sorted itself into eight groups of five. Only Hinder, Lilah, and
Atan remained where they were.

Hinder jumped off the rock and crossed his arms. “Rather
slow.”

Groans and scornful cries echoed through the trees in response.

From the other side of the clearing, Brick hooted like an
owl.

The group scattered, some ducking behind trees and others
flattening behind shrubs, orienting on Brick, who called, “I see your
shadow, Hannla. And who’s laughing?”

“We should be better than that,” Sinder called,
her voice clear and challenging. “Because practice is over. We’re
going to leave.” She drifted into the clearing, her head tipped to one
side as she regarded Atan expectantly.

Atan bent her head and walked toward the center rock. Lilah
recognized that teeth-gritted determination.
It’s happening already
,
she thought, struggling against disappointment, and a curl of fear deep inside.

Atan made herself meet all those gazing eyes. She took in
the expressions of question, wariness, and skepticism. The ones that hurt the
most were those of hope.

She drew in a breath, her entire body vibrating like one of
those snapvine bow strings.
History changes with a word, a step. You read
it, and you’re comfortable, expecting something to happen. But when you
are the one doing it...
“For the time has come for me to leave
Shendoral, and go to Eidervaen to find the last bindings and destroy them.”

Irza spoke up. “What is
our
part?”

“Whatever you want it to be,” Atan said, feeling
how every word she spoke laid down life paths for all forty—paths that
could be short, a violent sending out of life and the world.
I’m
trying to free Sartor. They have to choose if they want to come with me
. It
was the only way to make the burden bearable. “Merewen discovered that
the magic over the villages nearest here is breaking up. That means people are
waking from the enchantment, and we might be able to find allies against
Norsunder. But it also means that Norsunder is going to notice that the
enchantment is gone, if they haven’t already. I must be swift in finishing
the end of their spells, before they come in force.”

“
We
must be swift, and guard and guide you,”
Irza stated.

Again the cheer, only louder.

“Our parents led. Now we have to,” Irza added,
bolstered by the approval. She straightened up, head high. “What is the
plan?”

This is it
. Atan took a deep breath.

“This is our last night here,” she said. “Anyone
who wishes to go with me and raise allies on the way to Eidervaen, we leave
tomorrow.”

Night.

In Shendoral’s springtime glade, the circle of kids’
faces were colorless blobs in the soft moonlight. Lilah tried to fit herself
into the mood of expectation, of celebration. She wanted to stay, to play. To
help Atan. She never wanted to see any Norsundrian ever again, ever, ever,
ever.

But she couldn’t make herself say the words to ask
Atan to send her back.

Atan’s turmoil was so intense it was almost painful. Was
it like this, then, so far in the past, when her ancestors and the morvende had
found one another after the long recovery from the Fall?

Moonlight glowed blue-silver on Hinder’s wild hair as he
climbed the rock and put an arrow to his bow. Sin brought a tiny candle flame
and held it to the arrowhead, which sent out sparks and burned blue.

A sigh of satisfaction ran through the kids around Lilah,
like the soughing of high branches in the wind.

Hinder drew the bow, aimed high, high, and
spang!

The burning arrow kissed the moon before descending to land
square in the center of the fire pit prepared by the Poisoners earlier. Smoke,
a whoosh, and flames licked at tiny dry branches. Cheers rose from the circle
of watchful, orange-lit faces as the fire took.

Rip gave an infectious chuckle on Lilah’s right.
Firelight glowed on his broad, pale face and his cheerful smile. “I
invented that stuff on the arrowhead,” he said. “Never flames out,
no matter what the wind.”

“Tell her how,” Hannla added from just beyond,
laughing.

“Well, I was trying to make gravy,” Rip
admitted.

Maybe it’s going to be all right. Rip and Hannla
don’t seem to be worried, and they’re not warriors, like Mendaen
and Pouldi and even Hinder
. Lilah snickered, then looked up with
expectation as three older boys stood up and began singing a round.

Everybody clapped on the beat. After them began a stream of
songs, skits, and more songs, most in the triple-beat chord-shift, counterpoint
harmonies peculiar to Sartor. Lilah had heard Sartoran music once or twice at
home, and a little more of it during her stay in the Valley of Delfina. It was
distinctive and compelling with its counterpoint melodies, its weaving of major
chords and minor. But it had not been performed at court for three generations.
Sartoran music had dwindled to folk ballads heard along trails or in woods, or
sometimes at harvest time during the long hours of work—it had nearly vanished,
except in memory. Now it was alive, all around her, like she’d fallen
into one of the old histories sitting on the shelves in the library back in
Miraleste.

Atan closed her eyes. The melodies—the words—reached
ghost-fingers back into her earliest memories, unknotting images, sounds, and
their attendant emotions.

The others celebrated so happily. Didn’t anyone feel
the pressure of responsibility? Hinder and Sinder capered about as the others
sang. Little Julian, so odd, so quiet, sat on Arlas’s lap, fingering the
daisy wreath on her head. Mendaen’s profile was so serious as he sang. Hannla’s
face upturned as she laughed, sounding like a brook.

If any one of these voices was silenced as a result of her
announcing,
We leave tomorrow for Eidervaen,
she knew she would bear the
guilt through her entire life.

o0o

Dejain paced the tower balcony at the Norsunder base. Except
for the crunch of her shoes on stone, silence surrounded her.

She liked it that way, silence except for the subdued hush
of her hem over the stones, because she was able to hear the footfalls of
anyone approaching.

Like her two suborned scouts, coming now. Supposedly Zydes’s
most trusted, though only a fool like Zydes could believe you could trust
anyone.

The tall one, Wend, said, “We’re here.”

The short skinny one, Xoll, said nothing, just licked his
lips.

Dejain had had a couple of days to watch from a distance. Kessler
had reached the border of Sarendan the day Irad and the brat vanished from the
border.

She had risked a transfer to spy on Kessler and his band, who
of course were empty-handed; she had stayed long enough to overhear one of
Kessler’s scouts returning from the overgrown tangle of a road into
Sarendan to report that there were no hoof or foot prints anywhere, no broken
branches or campfires or even any fruit missing from the wild trees. No one
could have used that road for a century.

Kessler had ordered them to return to Norsunder Base.

If they rode hard, they might be back within a day or so,
and Dejain needed to get her plans into place before then. Kessler would be
very angry, which made him even more impossible to predict.

She had to assume that someone had transferred Irad and that
brat straight to Shendoral, in order to get them past the time-binding.
If
the
time-binding was still in place. That was the only place her magic wouldn’t
be able to trace them.

The idea that anyone would tamper with Detlev’s
spells, no matter how old they were, was stunning in its temerity. Not that she’d
put it past that idiot Zydes, if he thought he could get away with it. The only
reason why he might protect Irad would be to indirectly aid him in reaching his
old army. If Sarendan marched over the border to ‘liberate’ Sartor,
that would be an excuse to raise a major force.

The recent military exercises, the inflow of supplies, meant
that he intended to put a considerable number into the field—soon. He
said
the target was Everon, but everybody lied.

She turned to Wend.

“There is a chance that Zydes has tampered with the
time-bindings. I want you to test the truth. You are to find Irad as soon as he
emerges from Shendoral.”

Wend nodded, thinking that it would probably take Irad more
like a month than mere days. Though he didn’t believe a lot of the gas
the light magic idiots had blabbed about that place (standard scare tactics, he
figured), he did believe the place was much larger than the map showed, because
both times he’d been detailed to ride through there, it had taken a lot
longer than he’d bargained for.
Grim
riding. Overgrown thorns and
stickers everywhere, no matter how low you bent, or how carefully you
dismounted. If the weather hadn’t been both cold and dripping wet, he
would have been glad to torch the damn place and laugh while it burned.

Dejain continued. “You know what he looks like? About
your height and build, Xoll. Brown hair worn long. Blue eyes. Might still be in
recruit uniform, since I doubt he’ll find clothing supplies in Shendoral,
whatever else might or might not exist there.”

She paused, and both men nodded. “Irad will attempt to
reach Sarendan, where he will raise his army against us. This is why I do not
want him to live past his leaving the border of Shendoral. How you accomplish
that death—and when—is of course your own affair. Bring the brat to
me.”

Xoll licked his lips again, a disgusting sight.

She turned around so she wouldn’t have to see his
ferret face. Giving him orders to kill was enough to guarantee his cooperation.
Zydes too often wanted prisoners who could be questioned, and Xoll liked, very
much, playing with his victims. Wend had more brains—and more ambition—and
it was for him she’d made the statement about Sarendan’s army. In
case Zydes (or anyone else for that matter) did manage to find out about this
conversation, her reason for wanting Irad dead—the army of Sarendan and
the obvious military necessity—would deflect interest in that brat. Whoever
he was.

“Take whomever you need, but they must be swift and
circumspect,” she said. “Just for the sake of thoroughness, you
might also put someone in the north, but I don’t believe Irad would take
so roundabout a route.”

They departed as noise reached her from the northeast. Dust,
distant steady thunder: hooves. A force, at the gallop. Her heart thumped,
though it couldn’t possibly be Kessler.

But it was, two days ahead of what she had assumed the
outside limit of possibility. That meant he’d forced them to ride through
nights.

She drew the hood of her gray cloak well over her head and
most of her face so that her silhouette would blend with the stone, and stared
down into the torchlit main court. The steaming, blowing horses and the dusty,
mud-spattered riders were obviously at the limits of exhaustion.

At the front was Kessler’s straight, slight figure. She
could not make out any detail of his face, but she knew—oh, how well she
knew—how very angry he would be, to return empty-handed from so hard a
chase.

She started at a sound. Xoll and Wend were back again, with
their chosen minions.

She transferred them to the destinations she had so
carefully selected on the Sartor map, and then retreated to safety to wait.

o0o

The kids shared out a last breakfast, and while the
Poisoners packed up the last of their carefully planned meals, everyone except
the morvende pulled on all the clothing they had in storage, with the smallest
bundled up the warmest.

Atan listened to the chatter. She understood that though the
dell was always springtime, everyone had been out in all weathers, and so
understood that winter was nigh.