Sartor (7 page)

Atan found the question funnier than the image, but she hid
it. “Nicknames, even circle names, can be like that,” she said.

“Circle names?” Merewen repeated.

“Oh, it’s a... a social thing, some might say a
court thing, though there are court names as well, though those usually are
centered around titles. Tsauderei told me that Sartoran history is a knotwork
of hierarchies—who is important, who isn’t.”

“Our revolution was supposed to make a circle
including all humanity inside our border,” Lilah said. “But
practically as soon as it happened, you got people not wanting this group in,
only that group, and so on.”

Atan bobbed her head in enthusiastic agreement, then
remembered to practice her queenly manners, and straightened her spine. “One
of my ancestors wrote, and Tsauderei said it was true, that for some people,
circles are only interesting for who they can keep out.”

Lilah grimaced. “So are you going to go back to using...
your name, soon as you know it’s safe?”

Atan sighed. “I’ve looked forward to that all my
life. I even asked Tsauderei to find copies of the official records about the
first three queens who share my name, so I could learn all about them. At
least, I know their official lives as recorded by the heralds. Their private
writings are probably hidden in the royal city, if it hasn’t been
destroyed. But that’s just it. The girl with my name seems like...
someone else. Someone who will have to preside, and pass laws and judgments. I
think I can be her, but when I’m being me, I am still Atan. Does that
make sense?”

“Sure does,” Lilah said.

Merewen cocked her head, more birdlike than ever. “No.”

Atan laughed. “Are you not Linet to your parents, but
Merewen to us? Your parents are a little circle which we cannot be part of.”
And when Merewen’s eyes widened with understanding, Atan looked around. “The
day is almost gone. Shall we find a camp before the light goes?”

“Good idea. I can finish the rest tomorrow, if you
like,” Lilah said, yawning. “My throat’s dry—and I don’t
want to talk about the trial, or being my uncle’s prisoner, at night. We’re
getting to the horrid parts.”

“Not at night,” Merewen said, glancing around as
Lilah led the way off the road to a grassy spot almost indistinguishable from
the ones they’d selected previously.

Atan sat down, her head giddy, as if she sat on a hammock. Strange.
It felt as if they’d walked and walked all day yet stayed in one place,
and each night they camped under the same dry-looking, scrubby oak.

No. She forced herself to observe differences. The tributary
of the Luyos that they had been following bent toward the south. The day
before, it had gone straight west. That line of mossy boulders there, they’d
seen nothing like that. Looked like the teeth of some great beast. This oak was
quite old, and the first night they’d slept under a young, though equally
scraggly, ash.

By the time they were done eating, nightfall was upon them,
and Lilah curled up to sleep.

Atan couldn’t sleep, tired as she was. Her eyelids burned,
and her feet ached from the days of walking, but those were not the cause of
this sense of wrongness just beyond vision and hearing.

For the first time she wished they had the materials to make
a campfire, except if there was danger, would that not draw attention?

She drew her knees up under her cloak, rubbing her chin
against the thick-woven cotton-wool of her trousers. How nice it would be to
bathe, since there was no chance of stepping through any cleaning frames. Though
the cold, and the dry dust, did not really make one feel grimy, just...

She lost herself in a daydream about the hot spring not far
from the cottage back in the Valley, and memory nearly took her into dreams
until a sound brought her awake.

Sound. What? She frowned. A snapping, a crunching, as of old
dry grass.

Another living thing, at last? But not a friend. No, not so
late, and so furtive. There was no time-candle, and she could not see the
stars, but Tsauderei had taught her to sense the last hour of the day, when
Norsunder’s magic truly was strongest. The renewal of midnight—the
beginning of a new day—belonged to the world, magic so old it was
probably as old as the world itself. Of course, those who would destroy would
have discovered that the weakest time was just before renewal.

But that was a diffuse balance of magical strength and
weakness, no more discernible than the pull of the great moon on the tides,
except to mages. Tsauderei had taught her that Norsundrians also acted at that
hour because of the effect of darkness and tiredness, their intent to
intimidate by fear.

When the sounds resolved into the thud of human and horse
steps, she got to her feet and moved a little away from the sleeping girls.

“Who is there?” she whispered into the cold,
still air.

“Are you the Landis girl?” a voice responded in
very accented Sartoran. The voice was male, low, and husky.

She stayed silent, her heartbeat thumping in her ears.

“You will have to come with me,” the voice continued.
“It’s either that or die here.”

“Neither.” Atan’s voice cracked.

She had nothing but the ring Tsauderei had given her.

Though her fingers trembled with the intensity of her
fright, she whispered the magical words and held out her fist with the ring
pointing in the direction the voice had come, desperation focusing her will.
The light lanced out, sudden and shocking as lightning, and nearly as powerful.

The young man gasped, and clapped his hands over his eyes.
Atan blinked tears from her own eyes, though the light was aimed away from her,
as the man stumbled away in an attempt to escape the light.

“Go away,” she yelled. Her fist prickled
unbearably. She dropped her hand, shaking it to restore sensation to her
fingers, and the light vanished. Darkness closed in. “Go
away
,”
she called into the night.

The horse’s hooves thumped, then established a rhythm,
and diminished. The man was in retreat!

Atan felt her way back to camp and sat on her bedroll for
the rest of the night, too frightened for sleep.

On the far side of Sartor’s northwest border
mountains, Rel the Traveler entered an old trade-route inn built beside a
waterfall.

The swirl of cold outside air caused the curious and the
idle to look up, gazes lingering on the tall, broad-shouldered young fellow
entering. Youth? Grown man? He was certainly the size of a grown man, in fact,
taller and broader than most. The deep-set dark eyes could be those of a man,
but the smooth cheeks, contours of chin, the quantity of glossy black hair cut
short at his collar, were those of a youth.

In fact, Rel had not yet reached what would be his full
height.

A troublemaker?
thought those who distrusted anyone
taller than they were.

His clothing was not warlike. He wore plain riding gear,
somewhat worn, but not ragged, dusty and not filthy. His expression was
thoughtful, for he had been thinking of geography, and how the mage-raised
mountains stretching east and west had adapted, over the millennia since the
losing battle against Norsunder, to be indistinguishable from those made by
natural forces.

But habit also made him wary. Aware of the silence caused by
his entry, he cast a quick glance around and, seeing no overt threat, proceeded
to the counter, his step quiet. No strutting cock he, looking for a fight.

He also had ready coin, causing the innkeeper’s
attitude to change to welcome. He gave his name as “Rel, caravan guard by
trade,” paid for a bed in the dorm and meals for night and morning. Then
he sat with his back to the wall, where he ate and drank, ignoring speculative
or challenging glances, and occasionally glancing out the dark windows, beyond
which the gathering rain-clouds were slowly blotting the stars.

It had been a long ride for Rel, and for the customers, a
long workday. After a time he slipped from the others’ interest—all
except the innkeeper’s teenage daughter, who had an eye for a handsome
face. But after two of three unnecessary trips to Rel’s table, and only
politeness in his manner and absence in those dark eyes, she too gave up with
an internal shrug and returned to the pair of snub-nosed, wiry young weavers by
the fire who made up for their lack of handsome looks with enthusiastic
flirtation.

When Rel observed that people’s boundaries of interest
had contracted once again to the perimeters of their own tables, he sat back
and sipped the hot mulled wine the waitress had offered in place of pie, which
was all gone.

He listened to the quiet hum of chatter. The inn’s
common room was small, so it was easy enough to catch a sense of what occupied
people’s attention. Local concerns, it seemed, as far as he could hear:
business, weather, who was stepping out with whom, and weather again.

Shortly after he’d finished, the rain came, an
earnest, slanting downpour that roared on the roof. He trod up the worn stone
stairs to the next half-level, set into the mountain cliff, and opened the door
first on the left.

The room was round, with one window set facing the
waterfall. Four beds framed the room, with a battered old table in the center,
bare except for a burning lamp. This being autumn, the bed nearest the window
was free; the other three had been claimed. Rel was just as glad. He hated
stuffy rooms, and didn’t mind cold, as long as he wasn’t wet.

So he dumped his gear on the empty bed, and was about to get
out his map for another study when the door opened and three fellows walked in.
One was older. The other two were around the same age as Rel.

The oldest gave Rel a furtive glance, which Rel noted. He
also noted the relief that lightened the man’s face on seeing that Rel
was not going to make trouble about being left with the supposed bad bed.

“Brisk night,” this man said, coming forward to
stand near the floor vent, through which the kitchen fires below sent warm air.

Rel shrugged. “Winter’s comin’ on,”
he replied in the same conversational tone.

The two young journey-weavers were obviously brothers—both
blond, skinny, with snub noses that betrayed in their ruddiness the consumption
of too much winter punch. Their flirtation with the innkeeper’s daughter
had apparently been cut short. And—yes, they were looking for trouble. It
was clear from their expressions that they had decided (maybe hoped) Rel’s
acceptance of the worst bed meant he was a coward.

“Well, that was one mighty bright comment,” the
first brother said, sneering.

“Think you can come up with another?” Brother
Two followed his sib’s witty jab with a verbal lunge of his own.

Rel hid a sigh. As the brothers shuffled with many side
glances to what they considered the commanding positions in the small room, Rel
had noted several things: the two might be hotheads but they had no training;
the first one was wild-eyed in his belligerence, but the second one’s
wide eyes and huge pupils betrayed fear underneath his bravado; the old man
withdrawing quietly to a corner to fuss with his pack.

Three years ago, Rel would have felt obliged to fight, and
he’d despised himself afterwards for the damage he caused foolish people.
He’d learned since that brute strength was not always necessary.

“I’ll try,” Rel said, standing up.

His left hand scratched his head, his right gestured
emptily, elbow slightly out as he appeared to stumble against the table. Another
step, and
Ow!, Whoog!,
his elbow collided with one Brother One’s
midsection, making breathing into an operation that took intense concentration,
and his dropping left hand thumped against Brother Two’s nose, causing
tears of pain to blind that fellow.

“Oh, pardon! I didn’t see—here, want a
hand?” In Rel’s clumsy efforts to help, somehow Brother Two got his
elbow knocked against the table in just the wrong place, sending agony zapping
up his arm into his already aching head, and Brother One’s shin collided
with a chair.

“Here—so sorry, please, I’ll have you
steady in a trice—”

“No!” Brother One gasped.

“Heegh,” Brother Two whuffled.

They retired to sit on their beds, and the older man slid
something back into his pack, and he sat down, smiling. “Traveling far?”

Rel saw the smile of congratulation, the speculation in that
steady blue gaze, and said, “Around. Pa wants to retire, wants mountains
at his back, that being a habit.”

“Retire here, in Oneh Kaer?” the man asked with
a skeptical smile.

Rel gave a shrug. “Nobody’s ever heard of it. Sounds
just about right to Pa. He said he wants somewhere boring, a place no one ever
hears about, with mountains at the back that no one ever crosses. He having a
constitutional dislike for waking up to surprises.”

“Ah,” the man said, nodding. “Come from a
military background, do you?”

Rel shrugged. “Pa spent a life guarding the coast o’
Khanerenth against pirates. Me, I like to travel. Usually work as a caravan
guard.”

Comprehension cleared the old man’s brow. Khanerenth—famous
for its military school—fighting pirates—border guard—it all
added up to training but no trouble.

The still-groaning brothers had also registered the same
information, and Rel saw the signs that they had decided to retire honorably
from the list.

“Well, you could tell your pa here’s the place,
then,” the man said. “There is the old road up behind town, but no
one’s been over from it since before my grandfather’s day.”

“Where’s it lead to?” Rel asked.

The old man sighed. “That was once Sartor over there.
You’ve heard of Sartor,” he added.

Rel nodded. “Gran used to tell us old stories about
it.”

“And don’t forget ’em.” The man
shook his head, pain furrowing his brow. “Bad times, we live in. But we
all make our way, and never forget the better days.”