A Sword Named Truth

by Sherwood Smith

  Senrid crossed his arms, a sure sign that whatever he was going to say next, Hibern would hate. He shifted to Marloven. “If you’re about to yap out that we should tell Tsauderei now, then you can save your breath. How long before he and a posse of mages hunt Jilo down and wrest that book away from him because ‘no powerful artifact should be left in the hands of a child?’ Don’t try to tell me they didn’t do that after Liere took the dyr around when Siamis first showed up. They couldn’t wait to separate her from the damned thing.”

  Hibern stood on the low table, and faced everyone. “For the last time. The plan is, we go, we find Liere, we come back immediately.”

  Leander said, “What Destination?”

  Arthur spoke up from the back. “The city everyone is worried about is called Isul Demarzal, but Norsunder is there now, Tsauderei said, so I wouldn’t use anything in that city. When Erai-Yanya first traveled there, she used a white sand beach as her Destination. There’s one near Isul Demarzal, an unlikely place to find Norsundrians.”

  “Don’t we need tokens?” Atan called over heads, as Rel silently joined her. “This is a world transfer.”

  “But this spell works differently from ours,” Arthur said. “It’s kind of like a tunnel, or lights strung along the way. It’s . . . different. Everyone who’s going, form small circles.”

  He might have said more, but Senrid had already memorized the spell. He vanished.

  CJ had been watching. The Mearsieans grabbed hands, and Clair, who had been practicing silently, did the spell.

  Aided by Hibern and Arthur, the others popped into transfer.

  * * *

  —

  Tsauderei was sitting in his cottage, staring in dismay at the note he’d just received from Erai-Yanya, who had transferred all the way from Geth just to send it.

  He was pondering what—if anything—to say to that half-grown, half-trained, thoroughly wild bunch of puppies currently eating breakfast in houses around the valley when a tracer alerted him to sudden cluster of transfers.

  Instantly suspicious, he hobbled to his door, launched into the air, and scowled at the revealing emptiness all around. He reached the deserted hermit’s cottage to discover that even Atan was gone. He cursed himself, suspecting what had happened: he should never have told Atan about Julian being taken to Geth.

  He slammed out. As soon as he reached his desk he ignored the rain soaking beard and clothes, pulled out paper, and began writing letters.

  Chapter Two

  Geth-deles, Isul Demarzal

  JULIAN walked down the street.

  She liked Geth. It was warm, and the air smelled like gardens and fruits. She liked looking at the houses, so different from what she was used to. She liked the shiny wood that they were made of, and she liked those roofs that sloped at a gentle curve upward to a flat top. Like houses with hats. So much prettier than the slanted roofs in Eidervaen, with gargoyles and things carved around the eaves. And much too high. None of these were high buildings.

  Siamis told her they couldn’t build high because of all the ground shaking, and the roofs could be flat because it never snowed here. The big thing they called Charlotte’s Palace was only one story. She liked that, but she didn’t like how you had to walk and walk and walk to get anywhere inside. It was more fun to walk outside, and see how many kinds of wood and how many kinds of houses there were.

  But if she tried to go out the Charlotte’s Palace Gate and the runaway prince wasn’t there, the mean-faces in black or gray slapped her back inside. If he was there, they didn’t slap her, but she still couldn’t go out.

  “Why?” she asked, the first time she saw the runaway prince again.

  “Because Siamis wants you here, for now.”

  She scowled, then said, “You didn’t come back for me.”

  “I did. You weren’t there before I had to leave.”

  Julian eyed him. “He said he gave you orders.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So he gave you orders to guard this gate?”

  “No. This gate is the result of his orders,” Kessler said. “Because he lied.” Then he rode out to inspect the perimeter teams, leaving Julian standing there.

  So she couldn’t explore outside the gate. She was stuck with the dream people inside the gates.

  At first she’d liked how quiet the Geth people were. How nobody cared when she traded those stupid clothes from the trunk in her room for a long silken thing of crimson and gold with speckled green flowery things, so long she could wrap it around herself and still have long streamers, the way many did here. Nobody noticed when she took a robe thing of bright blue out of someone’s house, when it rained and the air turned a little bit cold at night. Nobody noticed if she walked in and took food right off people’s plates.

  It was just like in Eidervaen, when Siamis had talked those sharp-voiced, frowny grownups like Chief Veltos into smiling and quiet.

  She heard noise. Galloping horses. She sighed. That meant more of the mean ones in gray or black. At least they no longer slapped her every time they saw her, like they’d done at first back in Eidervaen, before Siamis told them not to.

  She missed those days, when he talked to her a lot. Only he’d asked such boring questions. Not about swings, and living in the forest with Irza and Hinder, but about Atan, and Chief Veltos. After Julian said how much she hated them all for trying to make her into a princess, the way Mother used to, he didn’t ask any more. He let her do whatever she liked. He was wonderful!

  But he was the only wonderful one. All his followers were worse than Atan, and worse even than Gehlei or the baras Irza was growing up to be, or Chief Veltos, always telling her to brush her hair, and learn letters, and wear stupid princess clothes. The followers didn’t do any of those things, but they uttered ugly words when they saw her, and sometimes they would spit right in front of her, or where she’d been. If she didn’t want to step in the spit, she had to move away. One time she stepped in it without knowing, until her foot got slippery, so she dropped the clothes right there, wiped her foot on them, and ran off in her skin to get new ones. She heard a woman in gray laughing the ear-hurting kind of laugh as Julian went away, and a man mocking the one who spat, saying, “That puts you in your place.”

  She hopped to the side of the road so she wouldn’t get spat upon, and watched as a bunch of them galloped by. What was that in the front of the middle one? A girl!

  Julian stared with interest, getting a good look at a skinny girl with short hair flopping around her face. She had a red mark on one cheek and on her jaw, and a big scratch on her arm.

  Julian waited until the last gallopers passed, then she ran after them to see who this visitor was. Another girl would be very nice, if she wasn’t bossy. She didn’t wear princess clothes, so maybe she wouldn’t be bossy.

  Julian made it to the big space at the front of Charlotte’s Palace. It was so very pretty, made with shiny wood that was mostly a pale gold, that Siamis said came out of the sea.

  The horse riders stopped, and one of them pushed the girl off the horse so she landed on her hands and knees.

  They laughed as they dismounted, and one (it was the same one whose spit Julian had stepped in) yanked the girl up by her hair, and when she gasped, led the laughter.

  Inside they went, past all the lights that hung down with the pretty globes of glass around them, to keep fires from streaming, Siamis had said. When the ground shivered, the lights swayed and swayed, making shadows dance in rhythm.

  They passed the first big book room where a lot of the people who lived here went about putting all the books and scrolls back on the shelves after those crabby people in gray had thrown them. Julian had watched them one morning in one of the many other book rooms, moving from shelf to shelf, taking things down, looking, then throwing the books on the floor.

  Julian had tried to help by gr
abbing some books to throw, but they’d screamed at her to go away. Julian hated books, so she didn’t understand why they would want to look at them before throwing them. You’d think they’d just throw them if they hated learning, too.

  They passed the hall where another three of the crabby gray ones did magical spells and passes. The air glittered here and there, but nothing else happened, and they looked crabbier than ever. Good. Julian didn’t like any of them.

  Finally they came to the room with the pictures painted on the ceiling, of winged horses and people, and clouds upon clouds, building toward strange stars, as if the ceiling were higher than the sky. Julian liked to lie on the floor and look at this room when no one else was in it.

  But right now Siamis was in it, talking to two crabby grays.

  He looked up, and smiled as Spit Mouth shoved the girl into the room, followed by the rest of his riders. Julian crept along the perimeter of the room so she could see, as Siamis said, “Liere Fer Eider! I wondered who might be venturesome enough to perform a world transfer directly outside the city gates. This is a surprise. What brought you here?”

  The girl’s voice quavered. “I came to get rid of you.”

  That made the followers laugh so hard that Julian hated them all the more.

  The girl jerked her chin up. “I did it before.”

  Siamis smiled his nice smile. “Yes, you did,” he said in his nice voice. “And I trust you brought the dyr? No, I can see from the lamentable state of your dress that you were thoroughly searched, and you neglected to bring the most important element of my defeat. Well, we shall have plenty of time to talk about its whereabouts. But not right now. Put her in . . . where? The biggest building I have ever had the misfortune to get lost in, yet no convenient lock-up. One of the cold-cellars will do.”

  He pointed to a couple of the followers in black, but the girl shrugged them off, pointed to the shiny sword leaning against the table, and said, “Why did you leave the sword named Truth in Bereth Ferian?”

  Siamis stopped what he was doing and got very still. The girl also was very still. Julian struggled to understand the silence, then Siamis said in his nicest voice, “It was a gift, Liere.”

  The girl stiffened as if he’d poked her.

  “It was a gift,” Siamis said gently, almost sadly.

  “And the coins were a gift too?” Her voice shook.

  “No, those were in the nature of a warning, exactly as you surmised. Take her away.” He flicked his fingers and turned back to the grays.

  Each of the followers in black grabbed one of the skinny girl’s arms, and they marched off, the girl’s feet barely touching the ground.

  Julian trotted along behind.

  Siamis watched her go, until interrupted by the ambitious young mage who had carefully pointed out all Dejain’s shortcomings in order to be assigned to this job. “That urchin will be pestering your prisoner,” he said sourly.

  “I want her to,” Siamis retorted. “Though Julian is as ignorant as a garden slug, she’s not stupid. As you ventured to take an interest, and you’ve been singularly useless in locating anything related to the Geth transfer magic, you will station yourself somewhere nearby, where the urchin cannot see you, but you can hear them both, and you will write down every word they say.”

  * * *

  —

  The pair of guards shoved Liere into a cellar room from which everything had been carried out. Here, in the dark, she took stock of her injuries. One elbow throbbed, she had a cut on the side of her face, and her shins were scraped. Everywhere else ached from the gravel she’d fallen on when they knocked her down. She could ignore all that.

  What she could not ignore was her self-hatred, her disgust at her own stupidity. She had heard Senrid say so many times that you scout first, and figure out what to do afterward.

  But no, she’d blundered straight into the enemy. Of course they’d be guarding the gate of the city they’d already conquered. She deserved exactly what had happened.

  For a time she sat there bound so tightly in self-loathing that she wished Siamis would come in and strike her head off with that sword. A gift! Somehow that was the worst threat Siamis ever could have uttered, all the worse because she didn’t understand at all what made him say that. It could only be for some unexplainable, horrific reason.

  Then she thought guiltily how angry Senrid would be if she admitted to wanting Siamis to strike off her head. She could just hear him saying that was the coward’s way out, that it wasn’t her fault evil people did evil things. Her job—she could hear him, could see him pacing around his study, rapping his knuckles on the sills of the four tall windows, and then the desk, and then the carved map case—her job would be to resist evil.

  Well. There was one thing she was good at, thanks to her mean brother, and that was, if they sent a bunch of bullies in to rant and rave and threaten, she could lock herself inside her head and she wouldn’t hear a thing. Until she came out. But she wouldn’t think about that unless she had to.

  “Girl?”

  That voice belonged to a child.

  “Yes?”

  “I saw you. Do you want me to ask Siamis to let you out of the cellar?”

  “Siamis told them to put me here.”

  “Did you do something bad? My mother used to put me in the closet when she said I was bad.”

  At first, Liere thought that the little girl’s voice might be some kind of Norsunder trick. But she could hear the emotions under the surface thoughts on the other side of the door. This little girl’s memories were sharp and clear, so clear they hurt. Liere saw her mother, a pretty woman with a mean mouth who talked in a hissing whisper. She had jewels set in her fingernails that sparkled when she slapped and pinched . . . Julian. The little girl’s name was Julian.

  Liere whispered, “I did nothing bad. Siamis will try to make me tell him where—” She halted before mentioning the dyr. She didn’t know if Siamis had a daughter. He wasn’t old enough for that, surely; maybe this little girl was a spy, or why else would she be permitted to run around? She certainly wasn’t dream-walking under the enchantment.

  Or, somebody from Norsunder might be listening. Senrid had told Liere once how his uncle used to put prisoners together so they would talk, and reveal things that they wouldn’t when interrogated.

  Liere said in a firmer voice, “I don’t know anything.”

  “Me either! Learning is stupid and boring,” Julian said.

  Liere had to laugh, though she wasn’t sure why. That sounded more like an ordinary child, not some kind of mysterious Norsunder child spy, if they even had such a thing. “What’s your name?” Liere asked, so Julian wouldn’t know her thoughts had been listened to.

  “Julian. What’s yours?”

  “Liere.”

  “If you come down, and look under the door, maybe I could see you.”

  Liere crouched down, put her throbbing cheek on the cool tile floor of the cellar, and peered under the door. She saw a mat of messy brown hair, and part of one eye. Small, dirty fingers wriggled under the door insistently, and the girl’s thoughts came clearly. Liere briefly touched the reaching fingers, and was surprised by the flow of good feeling caused by so simple a touch.

  “Would you like me to get you a piece of bread from the kitchen?” Julian asked.

  Liere’s stomach lurched. Until then she hadn’t thought about food. Her last meal had been at noon the previous day, before the terrible news about Derek.

  Hunger woke, simple and insistent. Liere remembered what Senrid had once said about being a prisoner in Norsunder Base: your job was to survive, and then to escape. In order to escape, she needed all her strength.

  “Yes,” she said firmly.

  “I’m hungry, too,” Julian announced. “I’ll come back after I get something to eat. I don’t think they should put people in the dark who
didn’t do anything bad. Is it dark in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell Siamis.” And the feet pattered away.

  * * *

  Geth-deles, on a small island south of Isul Demarzal

  And so the alliance took action for the first time, transferring to Geth-deles in order to find Liere. That was the stated goal, the group goal, but as usual, certain individuals had private goals.

  Those left behind knew that this was more reaction than action. Tsauderei sent an emergency token to Erai-Yanya, to report that he’d lost them all.

  * * *

  —

  The ground coalesced under Senrid’s feet.

  Or that’s what it felt like. He sensed an intense flash of magic fleeing outward into the air, and wondered who might have tracers in the area.

  It wasn’t dark magic, so he looked around, finding himself on the beach of a small, crowded inlet. None of the others from Sartorias-deles were with him, but with no definite Destination, he’d expected the magic to scatter them. Just as well. He’d be faster alone.

  He fought mild vertigo, but the transfer hadn’t wrenched muscles and bones as did long transfers at home. It felt more like he’d been falling down a long, long tunnel, streaming past barely perceived sparks of light, like the ones on the mental plane when he concentrated with Dena Yeresbeth. The falling wasn’t the same as diving out of the sky toward the lake as fast as he could go, as he and Puddlenose and Leander had tried in the Valley of Delfina, where his ears whistled, his eyes hurt if he opened them too wide, and the wind battered his face. There was no wind, but he’d felt that sense of sliding down and down and down.

  He looked at his boots, half-sunk in white sand. That partly explained the sense of unsteady ground.

  He lifted his gaze again, and this time took in more detail: the sand beside a pier, at the seaward end of which clustered long, low, narrow boats. They floated on water of a startling blue even more dense than the blue of Delfina Lake.