The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

“As if they’d memorized a page of appropriate sentiments,” Sarra said. “‘Charming couple, fine future, lovely young woman, delightful young man—’” She snorted. “Why don’t they just set it to music and have done with it?”

  He nodded absently, trailing his fingers along the stone banister as they descended to the lawn. Noise and heat behind them now, Sarra gave a sigh of sheer relief. This was more like Roseguard—gentle light, soft shadows, cool air. A Minstrel sang to a small group of young people over by the lily pond, his voice deep and expressive, his lute as supple as any Sarra had ever heard.

  But as captivating as his gifts were, Sarra had other things on her mind.

  “So,” she began. “When did you last see Gorynel Desse?”

  Taig chuckled. “You don’t waste time. Actually, he hasn’t been to Ostinhold in quite a while.” He paused. “You realize that if I worked for the Council, you’d be at the top of my list just for implying that Gorsha’s still alive?”

  “A man who wears that symbol—and calls a Warrior Mage by a personal diminutive—is more of a danger to the Council than I am. Besides, I know I can trust you. My instinct is never wrong.”

  “A useful talent—but don’t rely on it too much.” He slipped a hand under her elbow, warm pressure guiding her down a side path. The Minstrel’s richly evocative voice faded behind them into the shadows.

  “This meeting wasn’t supposed to happen yet, you know,” Taig said. “But I couldn’t resist the chance to see how you’d grown up. I must say I approve.”

  Compliments had ceased to impress her at the age of twelve. “What do you mean, ‘yet’?” She paused beneath a torch, wanting to see his expression. His fingers on her arm coaxed her away from the light.

  “Let’s walk on,” he suggested.

  “Let’s not.” She planted her slippers in the fine gravel of the walkway. “I mean to understand exactly what’s going on before we go any further.”

  “Sarra.” His grip tightened; she had a choice between walking and stumbling. “What a pretty fountain,” he commented, pointing with his free hand. “Is it a natural spring, or piped in?”

  Sarra neither knew nor cared. Gardens bored her. “Domni Ostin,” she began angrily, but he shook his head. A moment later she saw another couple stroll out from behind some trees, and bit her lip.

  Fifteen long minutes and a quarter mile of winding gravel paths later, they were truly alone at the western corner of the huge Witte estate. Sarra could hear waves crash against the rocks far below. Taig sat down on a wooden bench, sprawling his legs, and squinted up at her in the dimness.

  “You’re too young. You must understand that, Sarra. You’ll join us, never think you won’t. In a few years things will be in place. But we must wait for the right time. Gorsha would run me through with my own sword for telling you even this much, but the minute I saw you I knew you had to be warned.”

  “Against what?”

  “Doing whatever it’s in your head to do in order to find the Rising.” She sensed rather than saw his smile. “You want to be part of it. I already am. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned, and I’ll tell you—”

  “—what it’s safe for me to know?” She consciously relaxed her fingers from the tense fists that betrayed anger—a bad habit she was trying to break. “All right. I know there are Mages in hiding all over Lenfell. I’ve met a few, though they never admit to what they are. The only one I’ve ever talked to at any length is Gorynel Desse, and he hasn’t been to Roseguard in years. He always comes disguised, and it’s nearly impossible to track him down to talk to. But I’ve traveled, and I’ve heard things. And you can figure out a lot by the news broadsheets, even though they’re the Council’s voice.”

  “Go on.”

  “A specific?” Sarra gave a shrug. “These ‘friendship’ journeys Anniyas takes. The most recent to Bleynbradden fits the mold. She arrives, the locals welcome her, everyone is excruciatingly nice, she leaves—and inside of a week there’s at least one unexplained, unsolved murder or disappearance. Every so often one of the victims is identified as a Mage. It’s obvious that she ferrets them out for someone to kill later. What I want to know is how the Mages are caught. Are they that stupid?”

  “No,” Taig murmured. “They’re the most courageous people I’ve ever known.”

  An easy leap of intuition, but one that left her gasping. “You mean they—they sacrifice themselves?” When he nodded, she burst out, “But why?”

  “To keep Anniyas contented. Oh, she’s not greedy,” he added bitterly. “Not the way she used to be. She only needs a few every year to feel her power. News of the murders is allowed out as a warning. ‘We’ve caught another of you—none can escape us.’ The idea is that one or more will panic, make a wrong move, and be flushed out without Anniyas’ having to leave Ryka.”

  “But how does she do it? How does she know where to look?”

  “Haven’t you noticed who she always takes along?”

  She’d noticed. Of course she had. But it was only coincidence. It had to be. She felt her knees give and groped her way to the bench, sitting down hard.

  Taig’s voice was soft with sympathy. “At first it was just Feiran. But when she was old enough, and especially after Garon was betrothed to her—”

  “No.” She shook her head, trembling. “I don’t believe—”

  “Auvry Feiran is feared. Though nobody speaks of Ambrai, everybody remembers. But a young girl—what threat is she, despite who her father is?”

  “No! No!”

  Taig was silent for long minutes. Then he touched her shoulder. She jerked back. “Sarra . . . I know you don’t want to believe it. But it’s true.”

  Huddling away from him, she nervously shredded the fringe of her shawl. Of all the things she’d ever deduced or suspected Glenin was, accomplice to murder had never—

  “She’s Mageborn, like her father,” Taig went on. “Trained by a Lord of Malerris named Golonet Doriaz. He’s dead now, caught in the destruction of the Castle four years ago. Glenin is—”

  He broke off as running footsteps crunched gravel. An instant later a small, slight figure in black skidded to a stop before them. Fair hair shone like a beacon even in the dimness—like a dark candle lit with a golden flame, Sarra thought as the child gasped for breath, as if all available light sought itself in that short, girlish cap of straight blonde hair.

  “Taig! Here you are! I had to come tell you—” She stopped, eyes narrowing suspiciously at Sarra.

  “Slow down,” Taig advised. “Get some air into you, little one. You can speak in front of my friend. It’s all right.”

  A quick shrug: If you say so. Gulping the cool night breeze, she went on in the quick accents of The Waste, “There’s Council Justices here from their own banquet, and Guards with ’em.”

  “How many justices and how many soldiers?”

  “Two Justices. Twenty, maybe thirty Guards.” Long fingers raked the sunny hair, then rubbed against the coarse weave of black trousers. “I saw from a balcony. At first I thought it was just courtesy with the Guards as escort but then I heard talk about the Minstrel—you know, the one who sailed with us from Renig and sang that song of Bard Falundir’s nobody’s s’posed to know—” She broke off and looked directly at Sarra again. “You sure she’s all right?”

  The world lurched as Sarra looked into the child’s black eyes. All the forgotten things that had frustrated her for years welled up like ocean waves crashing over her head, drowning her in names, faces, scents, textures, a Ladder and a long ride, weeks at Ostinhold, Lady Lilen and her many children—Taig!—a sister’s birth and a mother’s death—and brilliant black eyes exactly like her own.

  They stared at each other, the elder sister trembling, the younger sister wide-eyed with startlement—especially when a girl she’d never met before in her life whispered, “Cailet—?”

  “Yes, this is Cailet.” T
aig’s voice sliced between them like a swordblade. “The one I told you about.”

  He had done no such thing. But that didn’t matter. She remembered now how Taig had always taken her part at Ostinhold against First Daughter Geria, how he had been her friend. Sarra shook her head sharply, but the world did not resume its previous shape. This was her reality. The other had been a lie. The small, fair-haired, dark-eyed girl standing in front of her was the sister she hadn’t remembered—why? What had been done to her that she had forgotten?

  She turned her head with an effort and met Taig’s eyes. How could she not have recognized their fierce quicksilver glow? His father’s eyes, they’d said back then. Thirteen years ago. Weeks blocked out of her five-year-old mind, Warded away, other memories substituted and some expanded to fill the void—how much did a child that age recall, anyway?

  Plenty, now that the Ward was gone. It was as if scenes and words and feelings had been locked alone in a tiny room like a musician practicing a difficult piece in total privacy, total dedication. She heard Lady Lilen and Healer Irien say that Maichen needed a Healer Mage . . . she felt wind in her hair and her fear of the powerful horse beneath her as she galloped away to find—

  Gorynel Desse! He had done this to her. He had taken away a summer of her life. He had robbed her of her memories and her little sister.

  “I saw our Minstrel by the lily pond,” Taig was saying.

  “Didn’t see him there,” Cailet replied, shaking her head. “Didn’t hear him anywheres, either.”

  “If the Justices are after him, Cai, we’ll have to find and warn him.”

  The child nodded. Her hair was a silken flame around her thin face with its astonishing eyes. “We can split up and look for him. Will she help?”

  Taig smiled. “Count on it. Forgive my manners, ladies. Lady Sarra Liwellan, Domna Cailet Rille—my charming if pesky stowaway foster sister.”

  “They wouldn’t take me, so I sneaked on board,” Cailet explained with a shrug. “I’ll take the east, Taig, along the meadow wall.”

  “You know what to look—and listen—for,” he agreed. “Tell him to hop the wall and go to the Feathered Fan, just off Hawk Alley. I’ll meet him there before dawnlight. Hurry, now.”

  Cailet darted off, vanishing into the night. Taig rose and drew Sarra to her feet. His grip on her shoulders was firm, bracing. “Yes, I know who you are, and who she is, and who you are together. We’ll talk about it some other time. For now, please keep in mind that you were made to forget—but for Cai, there’s nothing to remember.”

  Sarra nodded mutely. Cai—the nickname they used for her, all the people who knew the little sister stolen from her long ago. So much to learn about her, so much to talk about, and no time for it now.

  “All right. This Minstrel we’re looking for—he’s about my age, a couple of fingers taller, reddish hair, no coif. His voice is incredible.”

  “I heard, earlier.” She straightened the shawl. “Go. I know where to send him if I find him.”

  Taig smiled again. “You don’t disappoint, you Ambrai girls,” he murmured, bending to kiss her cheek lightly. Then he strode off down the gravel pathway.

  Sarra tucked the new/old memories into a corner of her mind and picked up her skirts in both hands. Fashion had changed recently, and gowns were daringly short—rumored to be Glenin’s doing, to show off exquisite ankles—but there was still enough volume to Sarra’s dress to prevent a quick pace unless her knees were free. She’d drop the skirt back to modest length if she encountered anyone, but right now she needed speed. Hurrying through the night-shadowed garden, she shut out the sounds of conversation, laughter, and the occasional languid sigh (ridiculous noise) and listened hard for strings and singing.

  Ah—there. A lute being tuned. Directly across a broad lawn was a little copse of birch trees sheltering a bench and an inferior statue of St. Imili. Sarra slid through a break in the intervening bushes, crossed the path, and wished for longer legs that would let her cover more ground with each carefully casual stride. Half the garden away she heard a few telltale clinks of metal. Soldiers were searching the grounds. What had Cailet said—something about a song no one was supposed to know? This Minstrel must be a fool, to sing it anywhere but atop a mountain or in the middle of The Waste or alone in a rowboat in St. Tamas Bay.

  And she was an even bigger fool, to risk so much by warning him of danger. Her shoes slid on damp grass and she swore under her breath, catching her balance. Instinct assured her it was absolutely right to help Taig help this Minstrel, but that wouldn’t preclude giving the idiot the sharp side of her tongue for his stupidity. He was probably one of those misty-eyed imbeciles who lived on dreams and music, wouldn’t know a sword from a pine branch, and sat a saddle as if surprised it wasn’t an upholstered chair.

  Her feet connected with gravel again. She glanced around, saw no one, and raced for the copse. There he was: all alone, and the perfect portrait of a wool-brain who existed only for music. Delicate hands, sensitive profile half-visible by the moons’ light, eyes closing as he sighed and brought a few notes from his lute—the shit-wit didn’t even hear her approach.

  Sarra, mindful that there might be someone listening from a romantic shadow beyond the birch trees, cleared her throat loudly. “Forgive the interruption, but I had to find the source of such glorious—”

  The words dried up in her throat. The Minstrel’s head lifted, and a stray shaft of moonlight fell on his head—modestly covered by a Bardic blue coif. He got to his feet, lute cradled like a child in protective arms; he was barely a head taller than she.

  He bowed. “No more glorious than your beauty, which inspires me to a song.” He positioned the lute and struck an opening chord.

  Sarra called up her dimple, and a simper that would do credit to Mirya Witte. “I came to tell you that you mustn’t hide such music away, good Minstrel, really you mustn’t. I have friends who ought to hear you—people who appreciate music and look for fine talents to ornament their court. Go up to the east terrace and wait there while I fetch them, won’t you? Please?”

  “Domna,” he replied with another low bow, “I am yours to command.”

  She didn’t watch him go. Fool! She should have heard the difference between his insipid playing and the remembered mastery of the man by the lily pond. A salutary lesson in more careful observation learned, she set out again, this time through the copse to the paths beyond, alert now for a truly Bard-worthy performance.

  The only music she heard for the next fifteen minutes came from the ballroom orchestra, playing a succession of dances. After a complete circuit of the gardens, Sarra admitted defeat and trudged back toward the terrace.

  Standing beside some potted orange trees were two Justices in formal robes, five Council Guards in red-and-gold regimentals, and Lady Lilen Ostin in a gorgeous green gown and cap studded with moonstones.

  How could I not recognize her? Sarra thought. The answer came quickly: Because Gorynel Desse does his work very well. If it hadn’t been for Cailet and her unmistakable black eyes—Blood calling to Blood, she told herself. That must be the reason. But once I catch up with that damned Mage again. . . .

  “—sheltering a known subversive, Lady Lilen,” a Justice was saying. Sarra melted into the shadows of the bushes to listen. “I understand, of course, that you had no way of knowing. But some are not generous in their interpretations.”

  “Then it will have to be explained to them, won’t it? He cozened his way on board saying he’d earn his way by entertaining us. His songs were pretty enough, I suppose, but not worth the price of bed, board, and passage. You’ll do me a favor by finding the wretched man. He still owes me money.”

  Sarra grinned admiration. Lilen spoke with just the right degree of Blood arrogance tinged with merchant’s annoyance. But knowing what she now did, she could hear how precisely calculated the tone and words were. Lady Lilen Ostin was involved in the Rising r
ight up to her jeweled headdress.

  “I’m sure your grievance will be addressed in due course,” said the Justice. “But there is also the matter of your son.”

  Sarra stiffened, clutching the stone lip of the terrace.

  Lady Lilen heaved a martyred sigh. “That boy! Doubtless he’s been chasing someone’s First Daughter again. Not yours, I hope, Justice Ballardis? Or yours, Justice Rengirt?”

  “Neither,” Ballardis replied, sounding amused.

  “Saints be praised for it. One tries so hard to turn out modest, mannerly sons, but—”

  “This is serious, Lady Lilen,” said Justice Rengirt in severe tones. “Your son has been seen with low and vicious characters since his arrival—”

  “He works fast,” Lilen observed dryly. “We’ve only been here five hours.”

  “—in a tavern known to attract the worst elements of Pinderon’s populace.”

  “A tavern.” Another sigh. “I should have known. His father had the same weakness for your famous wines. I did adore the man, and I’m afraid I see him in my son too much for proper discipline.” She squared her shoulders and shook out her skirts. “Well! I’ll tell you one thing, good Justices, and no mistake. Although they say youth must be served, this time it’ll be on a pewter plate with peach compote!” She paused. “How much do I owe the innkeeper for damages?”

  Sarra heard things in this conversation far beyond the Justices’ threat of guilt by association. Lilen was, first and foremost, brilliantly wasting their time. She was also painting Taig as a wastrel not worth the bother, and herself as a long-suffering mother afflicted with difficult offspring. But it was the subtlety of her disassociation from her son and any activities the Council might consider subversive that impressed Sarra, even as it angered and frightened her. Mages had sacrificed themselves, Taig had said. It was possible that Taig would have to be sacrificed to keep the Rising safe. And if this frightened Sarra, Lilen must be terrified. But there were more important things at stake than family or friendship. Sarra understood this immediately—and her instincts for once scared her thoroughly. Lilen would protect her son as best she could, but if it came to a choice. . . .