Lilah watched Atan’s eyes widen, and the big grin that glowed all across her face before the worry and concern clouded again.
“Think about it,” Lilah said quickly—and leaned forward to squish the sickening what have I done? feeling inside. “You said that armies can’t help. Norsunder would sure notice an army. But not one girl going alone. So why not two, so she doesn’t have to be alone?” She turned to the mage. “You’re going to be watching out with magic, right?”
“As much as I can,” Tsauderei said. “But what would your brother have to say to me, if I let this happen?”
Lilah crossed her arms. “We promised not to nag each other. I can do what I want.”
Tsauderei laughed. “Saying that and having it be true are two different things.” Then he drummed his gnarled fingers on his knees as his bushy brows knit. When he looked up, he said unexpectedly, “Are you serious about your offer?”
Lilah couldn’t hide her surprise that he was actually considering it. But then, he’d let Lilah, Bren, his cousin Deon, and their friend Innon go down into Miraleste as spies in the middle of the revolution—with a magical protection.
He must be planning to give us something like that now, she thought, and looked at Atan’s expression of anxious hope. “I am.”
Tsauderei said, “You will pardon me?”
He made a sign, whispered under his breath, and before Lilah’s astonished eyes he vanished.
oOo
Tsauderei performed the transfer magic with the destination chamber of the royal palace in Miraleste fixed in his mind.
He did not need destination images. It was a courtesy. Unless there was emergency—or you were on familiar terms—you did not fix on close proximity to a person, and suddenly appear. The destination chamber was the equivalent of knocking on a door and giving the porter time to answer and announce you.
It also gave him time to prepare for what might be a difficult interview. As the destination chamber page ran off to report Tsauderei’s arrival to someone, the old mage glanced out the window at the city, full of people crawling over roofs laying new tiles, or rebuilding walls. In the other direction, boats sailed peacefully about on the lake. Fall was well along here, with its colors, its cool, extraordinarily clear air, through which one could just make out the shapes of the distant mountains bordering Sartor, far to the west.
Tsauderei contemplated those mountains, his hands clasped behind his back, until a quick, arrhythmic step behind him brought his attention round.
He was not pleased to see not-quite-twenty-year-old Peitar Selenna looking more like forty, but he knew that every ruined house, burned field, every family with an empty chair, would weigh on Peitar’s conscience until it was somehow amended, or healed, if only by time.
One could not alter that any more than one could alter the intense, almost severe gaze from the thin, high-browed face, the sensitivity of the curved mouth so much like Lilah’s—though the two resembled one another very little otherwise—or the air of almost endless compassion that was striking in one so young.
“Lilah is with us in the Valley,” Tsauderei said, and pulled from his pocket a small stone. He whispered a word over it, and the air formed a glittering bubble around him and Peitar. “There. We can speak for a short time in safety. I do not wish to rely on circumlocution when we need plain speaking. Lilah wishes to accompany Atan to Sartor, to break the enchantment.”
“Sartor.” Peitar’s lips shaped the word, but no sound emerged.
“We both know how impetuous Lilah is. And how loyal to her friends. I can also see how much it would mean to Atan to have a friend, or I would not be here.”
Tsauderei was surprised and unsettled by the intensity of Peitar’s reaction, so swift and then so quickly hidden. “If you want me to, I can tie Lilah by the heels. Give her a pleasant time in the Valley.”
Peitar crossed to the other window, the lurch in his walk somewhat easier after several weeks of careful healing spells. It was going to take at least a year to restore those mis-healed bones. Peitar would not take the time to rest, which meant his recovery would be the longer.
“You are asking, not telling me to keep her home for her own good.” Peitar turned to face the mage. “That suggests to me that you want her to go.”
“Yes,” Tsauderei said. “Though I have misgivings, on the whole I think it might be a good idea. With certain safeguards.”
Peitar looked through the window again, and Tsauderei wondered what his face was expressing that he did not want seen. “Is there a chance of success? I mean, does the possibility of success outweigh the quite obvious dangers?”
He hasn’t spoken Atan’s name, Tsauderei thought, and took a step nearer, until he could see Peitar’s profile, half-hidden by the long, splendid dark brown hair he’d obviously forgotten to comb and tie back that morning. “I trust so.”
“You cannot go with them,” Peitar observed.
“No. Too many wards against me. If I perform the smallest spell, Norsunder is alerted in both the temporal and non-temporal realms. What you see before you,” he said, smiling with irony, “is a worthless old bag of bones who can no longer even heft a sword. Not that I was ever much good, even in my young days. I was adept at gymnastics and running and riding, but I never did learn to bang at people with steel. And magic I can just as well employ from a distance.”
“That would be my preference as well.” Peitar’s profile was tense, his mouth compressed into a line. Yet he was not refusing.
“What I am gambling on is that the two girls will go unnoticed. Atan is determined. I believe a companion would be a good thing for her to have.”
Peitar’s head lifted when Tsauderei said ‘Atan.’ It was a tiny gesture. Most would not have seen it. But Tsauderei had made a lifelong study of human nature as well as magic, and he remembered vividly his own ardent youth.
So he guessed what Peitar would have kept hidden: that he was suffering the throes of a first, adolescent love.
The impulse to smile ruefully vanished. Any other young man of nineteen was certain to recover as swiftly as he’d fallen, but Peitar wasn’t like the usual young man, any more than Atan was like the usual girl of fifteen.
Of course it had happened—he should have foreseen it, all those conversations during the stresses of the summer, history, reading, theories of government. While rain pattered outside and the fire leaped on the grate. Tsauderei should have foreseen it, and yet he would not have taken away those conversations, which two lonely young people had clearly cherished.
I trust and hope he recovers, Tsauderei was thinking. This cannot possibly end well.
Peitar broke into these thoughts. “Wish them both the best. And tell Lilah I’m glad that she is helping in this quest. She does have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, it seems.”
“I shall,” Tsauderei said, and performed the transfer spell.
oOo
When Tsauderei vanished by magic transfer, a puff of displaced air buffeted Lilah’s face as the flames in the fireplace snapped and stirred. “Wow! That was weird!”
“Transfer magic,” Atan said, wishing she could go to Miraleste, Sarendan’s capital, and see what improvements Peitar was making. Talk to him again, like they had during summer. Only now he would be too busy, surely...
“Can you do that?”
“Yes.” Atan smiled. “But I won’t be able to do it in Sartor because it’s warded against light magic using that spell.”
“Light magic. That’s the kind that builds, or repairs, or makes things better in the world, right?”
“And dark magic burns or spends magic. Its primary purpose is warfare. Well, more precisely, force. So dark magic spells are very, very hard to break, whereas light magic spells must be renewed.”
Lilah nodded. “I remember reading about magic being gone after the Fall of Old Sartor. Though I thought it was more of that legend kind of talk, because of all that other stuff that the old poems and things said. You know, about how our ancestors had magic without doing spells, and talked to each other in dreams, and nagoo yadoo, nagoo yadoo.”
Atan smiled. “Apparently some of it really did happen.”
“Huh.” Lilah snapped her fingers. “Tsauderei did tell us that they used to control the aging process, before he did the child spell for us.” She scowled. “Tsauderei said he can lift it whenever we want to begin the change toward grownup, but I don’t want that. Ever. If it means ending up like my mother.”
Atan bit her lip. “You are talking about romantic love?”
Lilah held her nose and waved a hand. “More like the stench of romantic love.”
“Yet you love your brother,” Atan said.
“Of course I do!”
“So family love is to be revered, but not the love that begins the family?” Atan asked.
Lilah snorted out her breath. “You haven’t read my mother’s diary. Family love is smart. It’s good. You protect each other, and if you argue, well, you don’t get angry forever. But romance?” Her face reddened as she said fiercely, “It just makes you stupid! Mother loved my uncle. Yuk! I know, but apparently he wasn’t so bad when he was young. However, that’s nothing to what she turned into when she fell in loooove with Derek’s father. Drip, drip, drip, her whole diary turned from interest in her garden and other people to moaning about Kepreos this and Kepreos that. Drip? Rivers and oceans of tears, all the time!” She made a gesture of warding. “So he walks into a snow bank, in spite of having two small boys, and she gets herself sick and dies when I was a baby. Romantic love is selfish and stupid.”
Atan had never seen Lilah so bitter and angry. It was the more unsettling because some of what Lilah said paralleled things she had wondered. Your parents were ill-matched in everything but love, Gehlei had said once. Strange, how powerful love is, and how poisonous when it doesn’t go balance. Then she’d frowned, and refused to say more.
Lilah said, “I can’t help thinking that, as usual, the adults don’t know anything worthwhile, and what’s needed are some kids to solve the mess. Like the rest of the Sharadan Brothers. That is, Deon has gone off to find those kid pirates somewhere up north, but Bren and Innon would surely come. Or at least Bren. He’s got nothing else to do.”
“But the more people we have, the more likely we are to draw attention.”
Lilah jumped when a glittery flicker on the edge of her vision resolved into Tsauderei. Again displaced air breezed around the little cottage room. Tsauderei’s face was tight with strain. Obviously, transfer magic wasn’t easy for mages, either.
“Peitar wishes you both success.”
Lilah grinned, and patted the pocket of her gown. “As it happens, I got into the habit of always traveling with my thief tools. But there’s one thing I’m missing. So if I don’t come back right away, you better get someone to haul me away from the Lure-flowers.”
Tsauderei didn’t argue, or even remonstrate. He said only, “You have an appropriate container?”
“The spice bags we used all summer. Kept ’em from drying out and losing their strength. But Innon actually got ’em. Is there a trick to harvesting them?”
Tsauderei nodded. “Not a trick, just extreme care. Spot the ones you want, make a dive, and begin holding your breath midway down. You have to get the entire flower, because it’s the dust inside that carries the magic that puts humans into deep sleep.”
Lilah said, “All right. Better get busy.”
Atan watched the girl vanish through the door before turning to Tsauderei.
“What is it, Atan? Second thoughts?” the mage asked, recognizing the expression in his student’s face. Twelve years of Atan’s fifteen, he had been her teacher, a position he never would have chosen for himself, but he had been appointed by the Mage Council.
He knew at glance that she was suffering ambivalence, and also knew that getting her to express it required prodding. She kept things inside too readily.
Atan let out a short sigh, trying to ease that awful knotted feeling in her middle. “I want Lilah to come with me, and yet I can’t help thinking, what if something happens?”
Tsauderei sat back, the fire reflecting twin pinpoints in his dark eyes. “Ah. I am afraid I don’t have any comforting advice to offer you, Princess Yustnesveas. The moment you step over that border, your innocence ends. You will begin a lifetime of feeling responsibility for others who willingly offer their lives for your cause. It is the pain of being a ruler, one I never want you to stop feeling, because the day you do, you turn into a tyrant.”
Atan ran her damp palms down her sides, but that didn’t help the iciness of her fingers.
“I have regretted the necessity of permitting you to go into Sartor alone, ever since the prospect before us evolved into reality. Lilah’s offer makes me glad. She’s young, but she’s smart and practical. She does not have that visionary gift that runs through the Irad family, but it’s more than compensated with the Selenna adaptability and good humor. Lilah will be good company for you. She will do her best to make you laugh. Get her to Shendoral, and if there is danger beyond, leave her there. That magic, I feel safe in venturing, being far older than Norsunder’s evil, will keep her safe.”
Atan ducked her head. “Thank you. I have one last favor to ask.”
The old mage lifted a hand.
“I would like you to teach me the non-aging spell.”
Tsauderei looked surprised. “Why?”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about. A lot. And something Lilah said made me realize that I’m not alone in thinking about it. I am not certain I want to be an adult yet. If don’t succeed, it’s not going to matter, right?”
Tsauderei heaved a sigh. “I gave Lilah and her friends that spell because it won’t do any harm for them to delay the onset of adulthood for a time. But you know it doesn’t make you immortal. It simply delays your physical maturation.”
“I know that,” Atan retorted.
Tsauderei fingered the diamond in his earlobe. “Most young folks your age can scarcely wait to be grown up. But then soon enough the adult begins looking back longingly to the untroubled days of youth.” He chuckled, then sobered. “Lilah’s reasons I understand. She can blame the unhappy portions of her childhood on her mother’s failed romance. But you?”
“I just know that I’m not ready to be courted. Until I learn more about how to be around real people, not just people from history books. And above all, I don’t want to be distracted by... by adult matters, until I understand people my age.”
“But how are you going to learn about such things except by experience?”
Atan sighed. “Maybe it’s a bad idea... and maybe I won’t do it. But I think... I think I want the option.”
Tsauderei rubbed his forehead, then sat back. “You know it won’t work if you’re over the threshold already. Have you begun your female courses?”
“No,” Atan said. “But Gehlei told me it should be soon.”
“Well, one good thing about light magic is that it is benign,” Tsauderei said wryly. “If you are too close to the threshold, then the spell will not hold. Very well. I’ll give it to you. And the antidote.” He gave her an ironic glance from under bushy brows, and she wondered for the very first time in all their years of studying together if the old mage had ever had a romance in his life. “Perhaps a year or two more of childhood might be an aid for you.”
He reached for the inkwell and paper that always lay ready on the low table.
The door opened then, but instead of Lilah, Gehlei entered, a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables on her arm.
Gehlei took them in, question lifting her gray brows, then she turned away, so that all they could see was her silvery-white braid.
“Here you go,” Tsauderei said, setting the pen down beside the ink bottle. “I have one more thing, which I will fetch directly.” He made the transfer magic, and vanished.
Atan thought it better to get the worst over before the other two returned. “Gehlei, I am leaving for Sartor’s border,” she said. “Lilah is here. She will accompany me.”
Gehlei turned around. Atan could see how unhappy—how angry—she was.
“I wish I could go to protect you,” Gehlei said.
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.