Sartor (4 page)

Atan winced. At fifty-five, Gehlei had been able to fight
off an assassin, though she’d lost the use of one arm. Fifteen years had
passed since Tsauderei had found Gehlei and Atan on the border. Gehlei couldn’t
fight off an assassin anymore.

“You taught me well,” Atan said. “I’m
bigger than you are now, and I ought to be able to protect myself.”

Gehlei dug her fingers into her right shoulder. “If
only this thing would heal right! But I suppose if Tsauderei’s magic
couldn’t do it, nothing will.” She pressed her lips together. Tears
gleamed along her lower lids. “I wish you’d wait.”

“I thought it would be later as well,” Atan
said. “But this entire week—I can’t explain it. I just know I
have to leave. And the urgency must be more than fancy, because Tsauderei
agrees.”

“So we old people sit here and watch you trot down the
mountain to danger.” Gehlei’s voice roughened. She shook her head,
used her apron to wipe her eyes, then straightened up. “Well, you’ll
do your duty, that’s plain to see. Your parents both did that. So I ought
to shut up and not make it worse. I’ll give you two loaves of nut-bread,
both fresh. They’ll keep for a couple weeks if wrapped tight after every
use. And I’ll put up a bag of nuts, and some preserved fruit, and a good
wedge of Mistress Rhodei’s best cheese.”

She mounted the ladder to the loft, where Atan had slept
since she was two years old. “I’ll also fetch down your gown,”
she said over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” Atan called, and then bent to pick
up the scrap of paper with Tsauderei’s familiar writing. Why was this decision
important? She didn’t know—yet—but she knew it was.

She tucked the paper into a corner of the travel bag that
she had been preparing.

Her magic books had to stay behind, as she didn’t dare
use magic until the end of her quest. She ran her finger along her oldest one,
full of her own writing—every spell she’d mastered, and notes on
what she’d observed and learned.

A clatter and a thump outside the door and Lilah bounced in,
her hair wild, her face relaxed in a funny grin.

“Got ’em,” she proclaimed. “Whew! Those
Lure blossoms do get to you!” She flopped down onto her hassock. “But
a good hard fly in the cold air revived me.”

Gehlei reappeared, holding out two garments, one bulky. “You
can take my old coat,” she said gruffly to Lilah, who thanked her.

Atan packed her one good gown into the knapsack. Her usual
clothes—the tunic and trousers that girls wore for riding—would be suitable
for travel, but if she succeeded, she knew she would have to look like the
Queen of Sartor. As much as she could. The fine white cotton-wool gown, with
its violet trim that she had stitched herself, was going to have to do.

After all, it’s not like Sartor has fashions anymore.

Tsauderei reappeared in his chair. He held out a ring. His
voice was strained as he said, “This ought to give you a little
protection, though only in the form of light. I altered the trip-spell, to make
it easier. Touch it here, and say
Sartorias-deles
. Easy to remember.”

Atan took the ring, looked at the plain band, the
milky-white gem in the middle. Light pooled oddly in it, sending a prickle of
warning through her mind: she sensed powerful magic here.

Good.

She slid it on her finger. This evidence of the Landis past
made her feel peculiar. The ring had been fashioned by dark magic, so it would
escape wards. The long-ago ancestor who had made it had led a very adventurous
life.

And what will they say about me some day? Or will the
last of the Landises disappear without her existence ever being known
?

Well, that was for the future. She had plenty to do now.

“Let us depart,” she said to Lilah, doing her
best to smile.

Lilah had experienced transfer magic twice in her life.

When Atan shifted the two girls from the cottage to a point
well east of the border, Lilah felt that same weird vertigo, and when the
magic-dazzle had cleared away, she plumped down on a mossy rock. “Hoo,”
she said.

Atan smiled in apology. “I know it would have been
nicer to fly, but the flying spell doesn’t extend this far, and we would
have had to transfer anyway, unless we wanted a fearful walk.”

They were still in mountains, though the great peaks were
mostly behind them to the east. Below to the west the mountains were really
more like rocky hills, and beyond those, a gray haze obscured what once had
been fine farmland.

Lilah glanced back at the sky-high snowy peaks. “No, I
wouldn’t want to walk those.” She pulled Gehlei’s coat more
closely about her. “It’s cold.”

“Tsauderei says that once we cross the border it will
not get much colder, either. Part of the enchantment.”

“Which is about to break,” Lilah said, following
Atan.

The taller girl had obviously scouted the area out at least
once before, for she made her way confidently around some thick, scrubby bushes
to a narrow sheep-trail, and began trudging downslope.

Lilah walked with her, amazed at how quickly life could
change. Well, the revolution had taught her that much. You wake up one morning,
your biggest worry how badly your hair holds curl, and the next morning finds
you in prison, and half the palace in flames.

She thought about her offer, which had not been prompted by
talk of magic spells, kings, or history. It was because Atan had looked so
unhappy at the idea that someone had once found her dull. Lilah suspected that Atan
had never had a chance to do normal things like play games, or talk about kid
things. Not having been raised for so long in secret by an old mage and an
aging steward
.

Atan’s face was hidden by the hood of her mountain
coat, made of undyed sheep wool of mixed gray and brown shades. Good camouflage,
Tsauderei had said.

Lilah smoothed her hands down Gehlei’s old coat. Inside
it was lined with heavy, smooth cotton-linen. The outside was nubbly and rough.
Though it was an odd garment, unlike anything people in Sarendan wore, she
liked it very much.

She looked up. They had to be inside Sartor by now. And so
far, no lightning bolts or terrible mages had showed up, all evil-eyed and
spouting nasty spells.

Crunch, crunch, crunch
went their footsteps, the only
noise besides the sough of wind from the heights. Why was going downhill easier
on everything but your feet, and going uphill was all right for the feet but difficult
for everything else? The trail was scarcely visible, very narrow along ledges
as they picked their way down into a gulley overshadowed by trees, so she
couldn’t see much.

“Is there a road?” Lilah finally asked.

“Not yet. I want to avoid any roads until we reach the
most westward of the border mountains, which will open into plains. I know this
walking is not all that pleasant, but it keeps us hidden for as long as
possible. Beyond that we’ll have to follow along the Luyos River. I trust
it has growth alongside. When it bends south, we’ll go west along one of
the smaller rivers—”

Atan stopped, and swung around to face Lilah. Her cheeks
were blotchy with red, her brow knit. “Promise me, Lilah,” she said
in a low, pleading voice. “If I talk too much, if I ramble and meander on
too long about history or magic or the past, tell me. Stop me. Don’t nod
and smile and let me find out later I am the world’s biggest sleep herb.”

Lilah said, quite truthfully, “I
like
it when
you talk about history.”

Atan sighed. “Thank you. I didn’t believe so,
but then—once—I—well, I know I am used to talking to adults
like Tsauderei and Gehlei, but the only friend our age that I had was Dawn, and
you know she wants to study magic. So we never bored each other. You and your
brother were the first people I met outside the Valley whom I didn’t bore...”
She made a comical face, and an attempt at a smile that hurt Lilah with its falsity.
“Let’s just say I am ignorant of the arts of conversation.”

“That’s not true. My brother said that
you’re the first person he ever talked with who made him lose the sense
of time passing. And it was the same for me. What happened?”

Atan looked around, blushed some more, then said in a low,
embarrassed voice, “Tsauderei took me to Bereth Ferian. There is a mage
school there. I was transferred to a place of protection. You will understand I
am not boasting when I say that everyone paid me the greatest attention? Bowing
everywhere I turned, the mages stopping to listen if I so much as asked for a
glass of water?”

“I know,” Lilah said, thinking of the princess
behavior she’d been grumping at Bren about. “Everybody is looking
at you, and you think it’s with great respect...”

“The respect was more curiosity, I think. Though maybe
respect for the ancient name of Landis,” Atan said wryly as she gripped a
sturdy young tree and lowered herself down a slippery bit of trail. “But
I wanted so badly to meet people my age. Finally they agreed, if I promised not
to tell anyone who I was, and dress like an ordinary citizen. Well, you know
how I usually dress, though before I traveled, Tsauderei had had a friend
obtain a suitable princess gown.”

Lilah laughed. “Full of ribbons, no doubt?”

“Not ribbons. Not for a beanpole like me. Lace,”
she said distinctly, twiddling her fingers at her neck and wrists and waist and
knees. “Waterfalls of it. Maybe to fill me out some. But I had taken my
old clothes along. I slipped them on, borrowed Gehlei’s name, called
myself a baker’s apprentice, and went to look at the ancient artifacts,
and...” She shrugged. “I met artisans and students, people my age....”
She shrugged sharply, ducking under a ferny branch before she looked back.
“The short of it is, I thought I was doing so very well until I chanced
to overhear someone asking someone else who the tall clodpole was who
wouldn’t shut up, and who did she think she was impressing, was there
some scribe tutor around looking to hire? At first I didn’t think it
meant me until someone I thought a new friend else said, “Whoever thought
bakers could bore you on every subject
except
bread?”

Lilah grimaced, but as her own friends had said far worse to
her face when they were mad at her, she waited for the worst part.

But that was the worst part. Atan’s voice trembled as
she said, “So I went back. Told Tsauderei to take me home. And ever
since, I’ve tried to read about how to get on in groups, but you know,
the records never talk about that. Even the most detailed records seem to
assume everyone already knows.”

Lilah bit her lip against exclaiming,
Is that all?
“I think I told you that I was pretty much stuck at home, no friends,
until summer. Court didn’t count. Everybody was fake in court. That’s
why I hated it so much. But anyway, during summer, I learned that anybody who
says one thing to you and another about you isn’t worth listening
to.” And after a sideways peek at Atan’s unhappy profile, she said,
“That can’t be new, not after all you’ve read!”

“Falsity and deceit, of course I have read about such.
But are they not bound to politics and kingdoms and power? I can understand
falsity to Princess Yustnesveas Landis,” Atan said dryly. “But why
to a baker’s apprentice? Unless my false guise had been penetrated. I
ought to have thought of that. Lilah, thank you—”

“Wait, wait.” Lilah waved her hands, almost
tripped over a tree root, and halted. “That person might not have guessed
anything
. People
do
that. For silly reasons. For no reason. And
sometimes it isn’t the same person, or the same reason.” She
thought about the arguments, laughter, and ways she’d had to learn to
compromise during the summer, and got an idea. “Why don’t you
practice on me? We can trade off. You tell me stories, and I’ll help you
practice social things. As much as I can. I learned about not boring friends
last summer, as my fellow Sharadan Brothers didn’t hide their feelings.”

“Thank you,” Atan said.

The trail angled steeply for a time, forcing the girls to
pick their way with care. Lilah slipped once or twice, until she figured out
how to watch exactly where Atan stepped, and place her foot in the footprint
left by Atan’s. She was glad she’d worn sturdy shoes with cork
soles, rather than thin green-weave slippers.

o0o

Lilah was glad to talk, because she was still a little
scared of a Norsundrian lightning strike bringing down the mountainside on
them, or at the very least their finding themselves transformed into mushrooms
as a result of breaking the mysterious century-old spell. Even if it was only
one spell in a pile of them. It was still Norsunder! But as the cloud-obscured
sun passed slowly westward, and the girls worked their way steadily downhill,
nothing happened.

When Atan stopped at a stream tumbling down from the
mountain, Lilah said, “Are we resting? My toes ache from all that
downhill walking.”

“We can stop for a little.” Atan dropped her
knapsack, knelt and cupped her hands to drink from the stream.

“For the people. When the enchantment lifts. Will they
know a century passed, or will they think it’s a day later, and they are
in for a big surprise?”

“Tsauderei thinks it’s going to be the big
surprise.” Atan picked up a pair of brightly colored pebbles, turning
them over on her palms. “Sartor,” she murmured, almost too softly
for Lilah to hear. “At last I have come home.”

Lilah hid a sigh. To her eyes, the view was about as ugly as
anything she’d ever seen—much uglier than Sarendan’s dry,
cracked fields during the famine. She gazed into the gray haze that obscured
the land to the west until Atan stirred and said, “I want to get below
Point Adan by nightfall. I think it’ll be less cold if we get off the
heights.”

Lilah hopped to her feet. “Sure!” Her stomach
growled, and she gulped in a breath to hide it. She’d gone hungry a lot
during the summer, so she was used to waiting. “I’ll take a turn
carrying the stuff,” she offered. “I may be short but I’m
strong, and I carried my own knapsack for most of the summer.”