“Yes, and no, your majesty.” A gesture invited Hibern to elaborate. She forced herself to say, “You’re not wrong.” She’d known this subject would come sooner or later. May as well get it over with. “My father practices dark magic. Traditional in Marloven Hess. He was responsible for spell renewal, wards, and protections. But the regent wanted more, things like loyalty spells. My father, well, the short answer is, he tried his best to find such—did some experiments for the King of the Chwahir in return for certain spells—and used the household for the experiments. My brother most of all.”
Atan grimaced. “What happened to your brother?”
“He went mad, your majesty. Even worse, the regent was impatient, as Senrid was learning magic fast, and beginning to question his uncle’s decisions. The loyalty and obedience spells were intended for Senrid. The regent tried some of those on his own daughter, as he didn’t quite dare to try them on Senrid until he knew they’d work.”
“May I inquire after the result? You did say yes and no.”
“The ‘yes’ part of my answer is that one of my aunts is connected to the local governor, your majesty. She was always giving me books about history. I told her I wanted to learn magic, to fix poor Stefan, and to save the rest of us—well . . .” Despite her best efforts, Hibern could feel her throat tightening. “The short answer is, I began to study light magic. In secret. To counter my father’s spells.”
Atan leaned forward. “Who taught you?”
“Lilith the Guardian.”
Atan sat bolt upright. “You’ve met her?” The mysterious mage Lilith the Guardian appeared in the world perhaps once a century, guarding the world from Norsunder. Though she certainly didn’t guard Sartor a century ago, Atan thought to herself.
“Yes. She found me. I don’t know how. Gave me my first light magic books, and introduced me to history outside our own. Pointed out the green star, so bright in the sky, and said that it was Songre Silde, a world circling our sun. And that the tiny dull one is Aldau-Rayad, destroyed in the Fall. She told me that we have a sister world—”
“Geth-deles!” Atan exclaimed. “Circling opposite us, so we never see Geth-deles in our skies. Do you find that amazing, too?”
Hibern’s tone lightened as she said, “When I first heard about Geth-deles being a twin world opposite ours, I thought that Lilith meant a world exactly like ours, and that there was a Hibern on it, but she moved backward to me, maybe using this hand instead of this.” She held up one palm, then the next.
Atan rocked back on her chair, her fabulous silks rustling and crushing as she clapped in delight. “Oh, that’s wonderful! So Lilith taught you magic?”
“Well, she gave me my first magic books. Our visits were brief. She warned me they would be. She couldn’t always come.” Hibern paused to take a deep breath. “She cautioned me about studying secretly, what it might mean if I got caught. By my family. I didn’t care. I wanted to fix Stefan, and I knew I was right . . .”
Another pause, as she gazed into memory, evoking the pain of the past year. “The regent’s rewards to my father turned to threats. The king was getting harder for him to control. He also offered one further reward: to marry me to the king when we came of age. My family has never married into the royal family, but they’ve served loyally for generations. My family would gain thereby.”
“So you would have been married off to an enchanted king.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Go on, please, Hibern.”
“I was eleven then. I wanted more study time. I turned an accidental fall into a fake permanent injury. Got a reputation as poor mad lame Hibern. Ah, being physically strong is important in my country. Crippled limbs from war wounds give one prestige, but falling down the stairs makes one despised. I studied in secret, countering my father’s spells when I could.”
Another deep breath.
“Lilith the Guardian came one last time, to say that Norsunder was rising again, and she could no longer come as she had too many places to watch that might be under imminent attack. She introduced me to Erai-Yanya, to see if we might fit together as tutor and student, then Sartor came back, and Siamis appeared. You know the rest better than I.”
Atan leaned forward, her gaze intent. “I know the history of the Siamis enchantment, though I spent that year enchanted into a dream sleep, like most of the rest of the kingdom. The world. Go on, please.”
Hibern went on in her most neutral voice, “Your Sartoran mage guild had sent mages north, so they didn’t fall into the enchantment. When they came back, they put out the call for aid. Erai-Yanya said it would be good practice to come here to Sartor, to help your guild close those rifts through which Norsunder could move armies as fast as the Norsundrian mages made them.”
Hibern dropped her gaze, remembering the Sartoran Mage Chief Veltos exclaiming, A Marloven? Have we come to such a pass? Even worse, when Erai-Yanya fell into a dark magic trap, Hibern was the first one questioned, as if she’d been responsible. And even after Tsauderei managed to break Erai-Yanya out, the Sartoran mages still insisted that Hibern be assigned to help the elementary students. She was never let anywhere near the Tower of Knowledge.
But none of that was Atan’s fault, Hibern knew.
While Hibern thought, unaware that her pause had stretched almost to a silence, Atan watched Hibern’s tightly clasped hands and her lowered gaze, before Hibern said, “I could only help with elementary spells. When Siamis was defeated and the rift magic destroyed, I returned home.”
By then the memories crowding her mind were so strong she was unaware of the pain in her face, and her white-knuckled grip on her hands. She shut her eyes against the betraying sting of tears. “When I got home, I . . . my father had discovered my study. What I had been doing. To counter his wards.”
The image of her father’s face replaced Atan’s, his eyes wide with fury, his mouth twisted with disgust as he screamed at her.
A vile traitor in my own home? ‘Help Stefan’—what do you think I’ve been doing this past year? What you have done has worsened everything. I could have reversed those spells by now.
Sick dismay chilled Atan as Hibern’s gaze blanked and her voice lowered to a whisper of pain. “He told me to go. So I left.”
Still gripped by memory, Hibern felt the echo of her father’s finger poking into her forehead, then his open hand as he slapped her away.
Get out of this house. Hibern remembered lying on the floor dizzily, looking up at the vein ticking in his forehead. Then turning to her mother as she cried, But I wanted to fix things. That’s what light magic does.
Hibern’s throat ached as she remembered her mother’s furious face, her low, angry whisper, Then you could have done it another way besides sneaking behind our backs.
Abruptly Hibern recollected time and place. And shut her eyes, mortified. She strove for a normal voice. “So I live with Erai-Yanya now. And Senrid—our king—asked me to tutor him in light magic. Your majesty,” Hibern belatedly remembered.
“Call me Atan,” was the answer, with a quick gesture, as Atan looked away, disturbed by the pain her question had caused. “You may drop the ‘your majesty’ if it’s not part of your habit of courtly speech. It certainly wasn’t part of my own upbringing.”
“I don’t have any courtly speech training, your majesty,” Hibern said. “Other than being coached to always append ‘your majesty’ to a response asked for by, well, you.”
Atan cast an uneasy look at her hands. “Does your king require such honorifics?”
“We don’t have any honorifics such as ‘your grace’ or ‘your majesty.’ Titles are part of the holder’s name. King Senrid is Senrid-Harvaldar in our tongue.”
Atan gave her a sober glance. “I asked Tsauderei for a study partner my age, who wasn’t from an exalted family that would expect favors, and who wasn’t considered a part of either of the
magic schools . . . well, because. Do you have any questions for me?”
“What was it like?” Hibern asked. “Coming back into the world after a century, I mean?”
“I didn’t, really. I mean, I did, but as a baby. I was born a century ago. My mother’s last act was to send me away, carried by one of her bodyguards. Gehlei fought her way out of the city, and even though she was wounded so badly she lost an arm, she made it with me almost to the eastern border when the enchantment caught us. We were discovered by Tsauderei, lying there on the mountainside. I was a crying baby, and Gehlei’s wound was still fresh. He took us back to his valley, which is a very old mage retreat that Norsunder cannot get into. There, I grew up during the last fifteen years of the enchantment. As I was just a baby when it happened, I don’t remember anything of the war, or the time before. But I spend all day every day with those who do.”
Atan’s smile was pensive. “It was so happy, at first. Then . . . then they started learning what it meant for them, that their yesterday had happened close to a century ago in the rest of the world. We had ninety-seven-year-old stores in the cupboards, and all our old ties with the world had been broken. The treasury was completely empty, because of the war my father lost. Trade monies had vanished, treaties no longer had meaning. Reclamation is near impossible from those long dead. People who had relatives outside the country . . . don’t. A lot of them had already lost their families in the war.”
Like yours? Hibern thought, but didn’t say it. She’d been bitter about being driven out of her home, troubled as it was, but at least her family was alive. Atan was never going to get her family back.
A distant bell bonged, and Atan sighed. “The steward will send someone to fetch me soon. My duties leave me this one hour a week, and I mean to keep up with my magic studies. I don’t want to lose what I worked so hard to gain. I study better if I have someone to do it with. Will you come back?”
“Yes,” Hibern said. That would mean several transfers in a day, but from Marloven Hess to Sartor was considerably less than from Roth Drael to Sartor. And she did have to get used to it.
“Thank you,” Atan said. “I so look forward to it!”
“So do I,” Hibern said, but before she could add anything else, there was an insistent tap on the door.
Atan said, “Enter.”
As the door opened, Hibern got to her feet, bowed self-consciously, and slipped past the entering servant, who gave her a stern glance before greeting the young queen in formal language.
Hibern walked slowly back to the Destination, her mind filled with that conversation, so unexpected in every way. Despite all the coaching about protocol, and her knowledge of Atan’s prestigious background, it struck Hibern that Atan was a lot like herself.
In a thoughtful mood, she shifted back to Roth Drael.
Erai-Yanya looked up at the flash and air-stirring of transfer magic. She took in Hibern’s closed expression and turned back to the letter she was writing to her son.
Hibern went to her room, where she stood, head bowed. Except for that wakening of those horrible feelings of rejection, she thought it had gone well. Enough of that shudder inside remained for her to breathe in and out, reminding herself that she had the life she wanted, and further, the Queen of Sartor had accepted her, despite her background and mistakes, to be her study partner.
She went out to find Erai-Yanya sealing a finished letter.
“Hungry?” Erai-Yanya asked, indicating a covered dish from which steam still trickled. “How did it go?”
“Oh, Atan is great. Her majesty. She wants me to call her Atan.” Hibern sat down. “The best moment was finding out we both like history. And the study of worlds. The formal language from the servants was what I expected, public circle, polite and correct, but the moment I met the morvende boy Hin, everything went different.”
“How?”
Hibern told her, then added baldly, “I told her the truth about myself. Because that was a promise I made to myself. The queen—Atan—did me the courtesy of listening. And kept herself from saying anything about Marlovens.”
Erai-Yanya ran a quill through her fingers. “Pause, Hibern. Do not invest her words with insult that was not there. So begins misunderstanding. I feel fairly certain that the impression she has of Marlovens is that when they are not at war, they practice civility. Sartorans practice courtesy. And the Colendi practice politesse. You do perceive the difference?”
Hibern flushed. “I take it back. When I was done, I guess I hoped it was me she would find interesting, not a Marloven oddity.”
“I expect it was both.” Erai-Yanya chuckled. “Orange talons! The morvende are doing it to annoy the Sartoran first circle, and maybe even the high council, I should imagine.”
“Why?” Hibern’s emotions swooped.
Erai-Yanya pursed her lips, still running the feather through her fingers. “Is it not clear? Atan’s had a strange upbringing, as she told you herself. What she didn’t tell you is that she’s next thing to a prisoner.” As Hibern gasped, Erai-Yanya stuck the quill into her untidy bun. “Oh, it’s not like your kingdom, iron bars, torture chambers—”
Hibern was going to interject that Marlovens, for the most part, despised torture, but kept silent.
“—kings and jarls murdering one another right and left. Everyone in Sartor seems to be doing their duty as they see it, but they have Atan nearly strangled in protocol and obligation, the more so because they’re all certain that Detlev of Norsunder, or Siamis, whoever gains the ascendance over the other, is going to come back.”
Senrid believes it, too, Hibern thought, but decided against saying it, after that crack about Marlovens. She knew Erai-Yanya didn’t intend to be mean, but she was so ignorant about Marloven Hess. And she had no interest in learning about a primarily military kingdom with a problematical past.
Erai-Yanya continued, “The thing to understand is that the young queen’s morvende friends are trying to loosen those constraints as best they can, since they have the freedom to do it.”
“I’ve never heard of morvende being in royal palaces like that.”
“They usually aren’t. Even when they come sunside, they have nothing to do with sunsider governments, and they pay no attention to political boundaries. But in Sartor, it’s always been different. And those two, Hinder and Sinder, were part of the Shendoral Rescuers, the youths who helped the queen break the century-long enchantment. They have a special status.”
“But the queen—Atan—”
“Call her Atan. She really needs to be Atan to someone, without expectation in return, even if it’s only for an hour a week.”
“Well, that’s easy enough.”
“Hibern.” Erai-Yanya leaned forward, her expression sardonic. “Nothing is ever easy in Sartor.”
Chapter Nine
Same day
Norsunder Base
THE alliance, so far, numbered thus: the Mearsieans, whom nobody had ever heard of and nobody would pay attention to if they had; Senrid, whose kingdom everyone had heard of and distrusted; and Hibern, a lowly mage student unclaimed by either school, who had lost her home.
All of them approached the idea of recruitment in significantly varying ways. The single shared conviction was that any alliance must form some kind of defense against Norsunder.
However, ‘Norsunder’ was no more a unified entity than their alliance.
The same day that Hibern visited Sartor, a week’s ride south of Sartor’s border, everyone in the vast fortress called Norsunder Base stilled as greenish lightning flashed in windows. The vast granite construct resonated with an abyssal boom more felt than heard.
The burnt-metal smell to the air, gone in an instant, warned the mage Dejain that a mass transfer had been attempted, and had failed. Those who had attempted it had vanished into whatever-it-was between physical locations.
She met the eyes of Lesca, the fortress steward, and sighed. “Why do they keep trying to transfer in groups? They know the rifts are gone.”
Lesca grimaced. “Because everyone’s plots need to have happened yesterday, of course.” Her eyes crinkled with amusement, as she sat back comfortably on her chair, a large, curvy woman with a taste for the delicate embroideries and fragile silks of Colend. “I guess I won’t be needing to find space for this latest bunch.”
“I had better go see what’s happened,” Dejain said, though she’d just arrived at Lesca’s request. “They’ll be wanting the mages.”
“Do that,” Lesca said. “Then come back and tell me everything.”
Dejain left the steward’s chamber and turned the corner toward Norsunder Base’s command center, where she was waved past the sentries. She started down the hall to the room at the other end of the soot-blackened, torchlit hall.
She had expected to be the first arrival, as Lesca’s suite was two short halls from the command center in the enormous fortress. But she didn’t expect the only two voices in the command center to be speaking in the lilting Ancient Sartoran that Dejain had expended much effort to attempt learning.
Siamis and his uncle Detlev, alone? She glanced back. As expected, the sentries faced outward. All she saw were their backs. She didn’t quite understand all that talk about mind-shields, but she knew from personal experience that Detlev really was able to invade someone’s thoughts, and so she closed her eyes, and imagined a brick wall encircling her head. When she had that image, she tried to listen from within it, the way one would listen to a conversation from the other side of a fence.
“. . . and you were wrong by at least a century.” That was Siamis, the handsome young nephew, grown up under the aegis of Norsunder. Everyone knew that Siamis had been taken hostage as a boy of twelve, over four thousand years ago, forcing Detlev to go into Norsunder-Beyond to try to rescue him. What no record revealed was what Ilerian, the most terrifying of the Host of Lords, had done to Detlev to turn him against Sartor.
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