Dejain drew a deep breath.
“This changes everything,” she said.
She busied herself with the cup of fresh coffee that she had not wanted, just so she could think.
The cold had intensified, and though she was now settled deep within the fortress in Lesca’s warm rooms, her bones felt brittle as winter ice, making thought difficult.
She’d always been careful where her own existence was concerned. When her first non-aging spells had been so disastrously destroyed, the tracer had sent her straight to Norsunder. But Detlev had found her and had re-engendered the spells, restoring her youth, before she could attempt recovery on her own.
His magic was exponentially stronger than hers. Detlev was very seldom overt. It was enough that they both knew she owed her life to him, and he could just as easily take it away without exerting himself.
She sighed. At least he was at a distance, involved in something or other that kept him occupied except for brief and rare visits. She sipped the coffee—disgusting stuff—and frowned at her hostess. “You are certain you heard the word ‘Landis.’”
Lesca lay back on her cushions, her smile lazy. “If you wish to believe that I misheard, feel free.”
“Of course not,” Dejain said. “My question is a measure of my surprise, not at all indicative of disbelief.”
She could not afford to make an enemy of Lesca, who knew just about everything going on in the fortress. Lesca might be lazy and love comfort above all things, but she had a quick mind. Dejain did not know what her background was. Obviously she’d been trained as kitchen-steward for huge establishments. Maybe even royal palaces. But she liked it here at the Norsunder base. Being a cook, she was invisible to those who had no interest in anyone of so low a position, and that meant she overheard an astonishing number of conversations. She also knew how to find out about the few she didn’t overhear.
Lesca smiled and helped herself to fresh fruit, transferred all the way from the northern hemisphere. “Zydes was quite distinct. Kessler, find that Landis girl, wherever you have to go. Take anyone you want. But don’t fail.” Lesca tossed a rind into the bowl. “Kessler brought back a red-haired urchin, therefore the urchin is this Landis girl. And then she vanished, leaving Zydes in a pretty panic. Not that the sight is all that pretty.”
She laughed, and Dejain smiled, appreciating the image of Zydes in a sweat. “A Landis is alive,” she repeated. The astounding news was overlaid by early childhood memory; how the world seemed to have lost its meaning when the news came that Sartor had succumbed to the enemy. And nothing had happened. The sky did not fall. Birds pecked at seeds. Traders came and dangled ribbons before the girls of the village. The seasons changed, and changed again, with blithe indifference to human tragedy. The so-called great and powerful mages of Bereth Ferian did not descend like a singing of angels and do away with the enemy—in fact, they were soon defeated themselves.
She’d been a child, and the lesson that life had taught her that only power was true, in that those who had it made ‘truth’.
So began a lifelong quest for power.
She said, “Then Detlev’s spells were not destroyed by Zydes. My only question is, why hasn’t Detlev been here before? Surely he had some sort of ward set up to warn him. He’d have to, for spells that powerful.”
“Who knows, with him?” Lesca said, shrugging her round, plump shoulders. “Maybe he has been. He’s sneaky, that one. You don’t know he’s there unless he wants you to.” She affected a shudder, then languorously threw back her lemon-colored braid.
A Landis, alive. A girl, not a boy.
She tried to recall what that brat had looked like, but her focus had been on Irad, and all she remembered was a type found all over this portion of the continent: ruddy hair and complexion, with foxy features, sturdy build. Not even remotely resembling the Landises whose portraits she’d seen when she was young. Of course, distinctive features did not show up in every single family member, even in the Landises, but really, Kessler had more of that distinctive shape of the eyes than that brat had—and the Sonscarnas and Landises had only had a single marriage alliance that she was aware of, generations ago.
Obviously, the first requirement now was to get hold of the old field reports, and review exactly who had done what, or seen what, at the very end of the Sartor war. But the thought of going into Norsunder, where there was no time, or space, not by any definition that had meaning—and where the Host of Lords could, and did, amuse themselves with rifling one’s mind and memories at any time—made her flinch.
Maybe she could send someone.
Magic-warning flickered behind her eyes. Wend! He was signaling her for transfer.
She smiled. She’d fixed the transfer spell so he couldn’t activate it at his end, which meant that this time she would definitely be the first to hear whatever news he had.
Lesca watched her in growing amusement. Really, she rather liked Dejain. Ambitious, of course—all the mages and rankers were. But she showed no interest in flirtation with anyone at all, and she hadn’t displayed any of those lamentable tastes for torture and protracted death that made some of the other would-be commanders so tiresome. She also shared information, which Zydes never had.
She watched the small, pretty face, saw the inward look. Magic contact, of course. Probably Wend. He was currently running tame for her. Did she even know how badly he wanted revenge against Detlev? No, for the humiliation of Wend’s very public demotion after he and the horrible Vatiora lost that tangle with the Venn had taken place up north, and Dejain seemed to confine her interests to the southern hemisphere.
“Thank you for the coffee,” Dejain said, rising to shake out her skirts.
Lesca watched the small hands, dainty movements, the swinging blonde curls against the straight, slender back. Dejain’s vanity was so very inward, so self-absorbed, that Lesca found her endlessly entertaining.
As Dejain disappeared up the corridor, Lesca laid an inward bet she was bracing for another trip to the tower, where she so trustingly thought she was not overheard, and prepared for a night of rich diversion. All the signs were in place. Wend was plotting, Zydes was plotting, Dejain was plotting, and Kessler prowled around looking crazier than ever... not as crazy as Vatiora, who might appear at any time.
Now that was a frightening thought.
Lesca decided it was time to find a safe vantage from which to watch the confrontation she knew was nigh, as soon as Detlev appeared.
oOo
“They’re searching,” Sin said, sliding down the rock next to her cousin.
“How many?” Atan asked.
“Riding in twos, that much I saw. But the fog is getting heavy.”
No one needed to voice the next thought: how many were waiting somewhere just out of sight?
Atan asked, “Thick fog?”
Sin shook her head. “No. Fingers and drifts. But getting worse. I couldn’t see the farther hills.”
Atan said, “Maybe we should talk about our diversion plan.”
Hinder and Sin worked their way round the clumps of damp, filthy kids in the grotto where they had been forced to spend the day. Cold, dank air made it thoroughly unpleasant, but that was better than being discovered. The fog intensified the damp chill, but they dared not start a fire.
Sin and Mendaen had posted watchers in the shrubs all night. It had been Kevri, one of Brick’s friends, who’d seen the Norsundrian searchers at dawn, riding hard through the woods. She’d scrambled back down to the slowly waking group, and Atan bade them all stay put until the searchers were safely gone.
That had not happened all day; they’d continued to trade off watches.
Mendaen approached, his dark hair lank and damp, and his face blotchy from the damp cold.
“If they haven’t gone, it means they’ve got a perimeter,” he said. “An accurate one.”
“That being?” Atan asked.
“They’ll put a... a line, or a limit, at one end where we were first seen, and for the other end where we’re likeliest to be headed. Make a circle. Search methodically within it.”
“And the other end is going to be Eidervaen,” Atan guessed.
No one argued.
As the day wore on, the fear changed to restlessness in some, boredom in others. Lilah watched Arlas take from her clothing a tight scroll of hoarded paper, and a silver-point drawing crayon, and sketch her sister sitting on a rock in her dirty gown and tangled hair, while Julian slept.
Mendaen worried, checking his weapons and peering upward toward the sky. From above, the grotto was all but invisible, but eventually some Norsundrian was going to press past the shrubs that hid the old quake crack that formed their hideaway, and he feared they’d be bottled between enemy searchers.
Atan sat up straighter, trying to ease her aching back. Hinder and Sin had finished their circuit. The group scrunched close to one another. Atan looked at the expectant faces—tired, grubby, but alert—and said, “Here’s a plan. I will continue on alone, except perhaps for one or two others, for I am the one drawing danger to you. If the group spreads out, wandering about and pretending to be lost, or caught in the magic, so the Norsundrians have to stop and question everyone, then you have a better chance of escaping notice. If you never mention Shendoral or me, then you should be all right, I hope. And I will go north to Eidervaen.”
“Who are the one or two others you would honor with such a trust?” Irza asked.
Lilah looked around, and noticed both Hinder and Sin with bent heads.
“I would leave that to volunteers,” Atan stated. “But those volunteers would have to understand that the worst danger is where I go.”
“Then we all shall volunteer.”
All heads swung Irza’s way.
She didn’t speak loudly, but her whisper was all the more forceful.
Silence from the group.
“But it’s better if I go alone,” Atan said.
Irza bowed, but her face was blanched with anger, her fingers shaking. “I know you wish to preserve us from danger, your majesty,” she said.
Lilah grimaced into her knees. The tone in that your majesty would feel like a slap across the face. She didn’t even have to look at Atan to know she felt the sting; Lilah sensed it in the way Atan’s body tensed into stillness.
“But in denying us the right to face danger with you, and defend you, you also deny us honor.”
There’s That Word. Now that it’s out, nobody is going to make any sense anymore. Lilah sighed. She’d learned that much over the summer, when adults had slammed one another with accusations about honor with exactly as much heat and passion as a duel with swords. The wounds couldn’t be seen, but obviously they sure could be felt.
Yes, Atan looked as if she’d been stabbed. Hinder was red with anger.
Lilah muttered as loudly as she dared, “Nonsense!”
Foosh! She fancied she could feel the wind as all heads snapped to face her.
Lilah struggled to sit up. Her cheeks and neck prickled with the heat of embarrassment, but she wasn’t going to back down now.
“It’s a perfectly good plan. Diversion is something military people do. I learned that much when Sarendan had civil war last summer. Nobody loses honor.”
“She is right.” Heads snapped again.
That was Sin, who almost never spoke above a soft murmur—and rarely when more than one person could hear her. But she too had red cheeks and narrowed eyes. “There is no honor lost in leading the enemy away from the monarch.” When had all the morvende gathered with her? Suddenly all five of them were there, ranging in sizes, but all with wild white hair and taloned fingers. And Rip was with them, his round face unwontedly sober.
“I will not put my own safety above that of the only Landis in the world,” Irza stated, her head high. “My parents swore when they first took the Yostavos coronet that they would spend their lives defending their lands and the royal family. I can do no less.”
“That’s right,” Arlas stated, arms crossed.
“It’s true of my family as well,” young Vian Ryadas proclaimed, his snub nose elevated.
Murmurs came from the others—and not just the aristocrats.
“We can’t divert if no one will go,” Pouldi said, scratching his ears.
“Maybe we can divert as a group.” That came from Yoread, one of the quiet ones.
Everyone started talking, their eyes wide, their fingers stiff and shoulders tense as they all struggled to keep their emotions to whispers.
Atan listened in dismay, burdened by that constant awareness that every decision she made shaped their future interactions, just as everything she did would be remembered, and told and retold. If they lived.
She lifted a hand, and the whispering ceased.
“Then how about this? We divert as a group.”
Irza conceded with a regal nod, like one would do in court. Lilah watched Hinder send her a long, stony glance, but Irza didn’t notice. She was busy whispering to her sister.
Lilah turned toward Atan in time to catch a quick, private grimace Hinder’s way that caused Hinder to grin just as quickly.
“We’ll manage,” the morvende said softly.
What? Lilah thought. Once again the ground had shifted. No, it was more like the world had shifted. She’d missed an important cue and didn’t dare ask, because if Atan was not being obvious, then that meant she didn’t want to call attention to whatever-it-was.
So Lilah sat there, feeling dismal and stupid, until she noticed Merewen watching with the painful concentration of someone who is trying her very best to make sense of a conversation in a foreign tongue of which she knows a few words.
So I’m not the only one, then.
oOo
Dejain made her way up to the command tower. When she reached one of the landings with the right angle, she stepped up on tiptoe to peer out the air-slit and saw that all Zydes’s windows were lit, giving off a faintly bluish cast that indicated lots of magic.
She turned away and found herself face to face with Kessler.
She controlled the instinct to recoil, but shock was like a dagger of ice as he stood there, still, hands at his sides, blocking her path. Though she had magic and he had no visible weapons, he didn’t need any weapons to be a danger. He was too near for her to speak any spell before he could close his hands around her throat.
“Zydes didn’t tell anyone the brat is a surviving Landis,” she said.
“No.”
“The field reports,” she said. “From the Sartor attack a hundred years ago. I want to see—”
Another shock: “Hidden,” he said, his pale blue gaze as always devoid of any expression.
But he wasn’t trying to kill her. “You sought them out?”
“A week ago,” Kessler said. “And again. No access.”
“Who took them? Where are they?” Dejain considered this new wrinkle as her heart thumped wildly. “Not in the Garden of the Twelve!”
He said, “Do you want to go there to find out?”
Horror gripped her at the idea of entering the center of Norsunder, where They had created their own paradise—a place where time and space responded only to the strongest will. And no one’s will was as strong as that of the Host of Lords.
Not even Detlev’s, who had surrendered to them, four thousand years ago.
“No,” she said.
Kessler smiled faintly, and then he said, “I believe Vatiora has those reports.”
“Vatiora?”
But he said nothing more.
Dejain stepped aside, her heartbeat a fast drum of fear—and he walked past, the sound of his footsteps diminishing rapidly. Vatiora was as insane as she was powerful. She also had a reputation for making her victims linger extraordinarily long.
Dejain shuddered and hurried on her way, hating the distances she had to cover—but she dared not transfer, lest Zydes have mirror-wards against transfer anywhere on her route. He was certainly capable of it.
When she reached the tower, she completed the transfer, and Wend appeared. “Get the rest of my men,” he said.
“Not until the plan is complete,” she retorted.
He said, “We don’t have supplies for a long search. Those brats have gone to ground, and my people need rest and food.”
She looked into that ugly face and knew two things: that he would not report in more detail until he had his team, and second, that he was up to something, and she did not know what it was.
Fighting the urge to scream and curse, she began the transfer spells. One by one she brought his people in, until the last had arrived and her head buzzed with magic reaction.
oOo
“Fog’s come down hard. Like night,” Pouldi said, reappearing after a careful, scouting check on his hands and knees.
“And none of the enemy in sight or hearing,” Sin added. “I think they went away.”
Hinder nodded.
“Then everyone take hands,” Atan said. “We’re going to leave.”
In silence, except for the crunch of footfalls on gravel and the occasional skittering of rocks, they slunk to the surface again, and pushed past the shrubs into a world of soft, cold whiteness.
Hinder’s white head, pale skin, and his light-colored tunic made him nearly invisible, though he was only three people in front of Atan. On her right Lilah toiled, her breathing loud after the long upward climb, her small, square hand warm and strong. On her left was Sin, her thin, strong fingers cool and dry to the touch, the talons flexed away from Atan’s flesh.
“Stay in line,” Sin murmured. “Pass it down.”
Atan heard Lilah whisper to whoever was beyond her.
They kept moving.
And while the kids snaked slowly up a hill away from the river, Dejain stood on the tower, fighting anger and nausea, her eyes closed—until she heard a shout echo up from the courtyard directly below:
“Now!”