The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  The nearby shelter, plain and spare, boasted a fire-ring and a hole in the roof in place of a chimneyed hearth, and a projecting shelf in place of a bed. Seven people cramped it almost unbearably. After six days—or four, or whatever the hell it was—Sarra began to feel the lack of a bath.

  There was little to do other than talk. Imilial did not seem so inclined, preferring to polish her sword and various knives produced from unlikely locations about her person. The two Healer Mages busied themselves secreting their telltale sashes and collar pins in the lining of their cloaks. Kanto Solingirt stretched out on the bedshelf, arms folded on his breast like a corpse laid out for burning. Val took the watch outside, motionless on a rock. So Sarra fixed on Alin as the evening’s source of information.

  He saw her coming. A frown greeted her, but she was not one to let a little thing like masculine reluctance put her off. She sat down on the plank floor beside him, opening her mouth to ask her first question.

  “Val probably wants some tea,” Alin said, stood up, and took himself and his half-empty cup outside.

  Sarra scowled, grabbed her cloak, and followed.

  “You have to talk to me, you know,” she informed the pair. “There’s too much to be done, and too much I have to know before we can do it.”

  “It’s cold out, Domna. Go back inside,” said Alin.

  She chose a rock and sat. “I know we’re collecting Mages, but why these particular ones?”

  Alin huddled on the ground, leaning back against Val’s knees. “We can discuss it later.”

  “We will discuss it now.”

  Shrugging, he replied, “If you don’t know, you can’t tell.”

  Sarra gasped. “You can’t possibly mean you don’t trust me!”

  “You already know more than is safe for Val and me—let alone Lusira Garvedian. If something happened—”

  “Enough,” Val said quietly. “She’s right, Alin. She needs to know.”

  “It can wait.”

  “Oh? On board ship she’ll be in her cabin playing seasick. At Ryka we’ll hardly see her at all until it’s time to leave, and then we’ll be all over Lenfell again with hardly a breath to spare. Might as well get it over with.”

  Alin grunted, wreathing his arms around his shins. “You tell her, then.”

  “My thanks for your gracious permission, Domni. Sarra, the Mages we’ll take to Roseguard are the best we can find. Scholars, Healers, Warriors, some of them just plain Guardians, but all of them dedicated to overthrowing Anniyas. Because all of them have personal knowledge of the Lords of Malerris.”

  Sarra nodded. “Then the rumors are true, and more than a few survived.”

  “Oh, they sacrificed a couple dozen when the Castle burned. The very old, the infirm, those who weren’t soul-bound to Anniyas—”

  “Wait a minute. I’ve always known that she’s working with them, but—” Sarra felt her bones freeze. Usually her gut instincts were like a sudden hot wind sweeping her mind clean of untruths and irrelevancies. This was different, this icy burning as vast and inexorable as a Wraithen Mountains glacier.

  “Blessed St. Rilla,” she whispered. “Anniyas is one of them! Mageborn!”

  “Yes,” Alin said in a voice that was almost a hiss. “And knowing that, you’re in greater danger than you can imagine. If Feiran suspects you know anything, you’ll be dead. Now do you see why ignorance was your best defense?”

  Sarra hardly heard him as the words tumbled from her lips, as if the sounds must hurry to escape before the cold caught them. “When Anniyas led the Guard against that moronic Grand Duke of Domburronshir years ago, it was all arranged beforehand—to give her a great enough name and great enough power to do what she’s done since—become First Councillor—and the same with the destruction of Malerris Castle, and Ambrai—” She choked on that, and her lips froze shut so that she could say no more.

  Alin stared at her as if she’d gone mad. But Val was nodding. “Think it through, Alin,” he said. “The Tiers were abolished for the same purpose. Likewise the persecution of Mage Guardians. It’s all part of one gigantic scheme, with the purported goal of classifying and then eliminating Mageborns.”

  “Who told you all that?” Alin demanded. “And why didn’t I know?”

  “Ignorance is your best defense,” Val quoted back at him. “There’s a final piece to it, Sarra. When all magic seems gone, the Lords of Malerris will still be there. Unopposed, and unstoppable.”

  Sarra got her voice back somehow—and heard it fade to a horrified whisper halfway through her next words. “But before then, magic must be shown to be necessary. And history gives the example. Twice.”

  Valirion gave a blurt of surprise. Alin sprang to his feet as if needing physical distance between him and the implications.

  “Val . . . Alin . . . there’ll be a third Wraithenbeast Incursion.”

  And from the fear on Val’s moonlit face, she knew this was something he had not been told. Perhaps Gorynel Desse didn’t even know.

  But it was true. She was certain of it. This was a harsh magic that had come to her, cold and dark and painful. But it had given her the truth.

  “Who else could call them forth but those who long ago helped create them?” she asked, her voice hollow. “And when the whole world is terrorized and thousands are dead, and the Mage Guardians are nothing more than a memory, then the Lords of Malerris will be welcomed back and given anything they ask, if only they’ll send the monsters back to the Wraithen Mountains and—oh, no, no—”

  Alin scrambled to her side, supporting her while Val poured lukewarm tea down her throat. She coughed, waved them away, and rasped, “I’m all right. It just—once in a while it takes me by surprise—”

  “It’s your magic, trying to force its way out,” Alin murmured. He warmed her hands between his own. “I know how that feels.”

  “Enough,” Val ordered. “Go sleep this off. Alin, take her back inside.”

  Sarra made no protest. It had never been like this before. Please don’t let it be this way for Cailet, she begged whatever Saint might be listening. Don’t let it hurt her.

  But as she curled on the wooden floor beneath her own cloak and atop Alin’s, trying unsuccessfully to get warm again, her instincts—her magic—screamed at her to find Cailet and take her to safety. When the Wraithenbeasts came, it would be to The Waste. Where Cailet was. Where Cailet must not be.

  7

  The distance to the sea was much greater than it looked from the mountains. The first day, Sarra kept to herself, speaking rarely and joining the others only for meals. Exhaustion born of tired muscles and knees abused by steep descents should have let her sleep soundly that night. Instead she dreamed, and woke soaked in sweat with no memory of the nightmare.

  They were due to meet their next collectible outside Havenport: Lusath Adennos, Elomar’s cousin, the elderly Scholar Mage who had become Captal at Leninor Garvedian’s death. Sarra was ambivalent about him: his reputation as a man, a Mage, and a Scholar was at best undistinguished, and she didn’t see why they risked so much to take him back to Sheve. But he was the Captal, and as such knew things only Captals knew, and the Captal’s survival was the duty of all Mage Guardians. Even if he was an idiot.

  “Well, why do you think he was chosen?” Imilial replied when Sarra mentioned it. They were taking advantage of a sunny afternoon and a nearby stream to wash themselves and their travel-stained clothes. “The Captal’s an embarrassment. Fa can’t abide him. Elomar won’t even speak to him, even though they’re near kin.” She paused. “But Elo doesn’t speak to much of anyone.”

  “Except Lusira Garvedian?” Sarra asked innocently;

  Imi actually giggled. “Saints, don’t get me started on that!”

  “Then tell me why Lusath Adennos was made Captal.”

  “Well, who better than a doddering, ineffectual old Scholar after a rampaging fury like Leninor?
”

  Sarra found the characterization a trifle extreme, but to comment on it would require explanation of how she knew the late Captal. If secrets have been kept from me that I’m only now learning, I have one nobody will find out for a long while yet. I’ve got my nerve complaining!

  She hid a smile and knelt naked on a large, flat rock beside the stream to rinse out her shirt. “What I don’t see is why what he knows can’t be gathered from everyone else. Alin knows the Ladders, your father is an accomplished Scholar—Val said we’re collecting the best of the Mage Guardians, in fact.”

  “Did he say that?” She splashed water all over her muscular body and shivered. “Oof, that’s cold! I can’t wait for Ryka and a hot bath!”

  Sarra agreed, but any water to wash in was welcome after the searing sweat of her nightmare. “Why bring the Captal along?”

  “Because there are things only a Captal knows. I’m not on the Mage Council, so I don’t know the particulars. But some kind of ritual magic gives a Captal unique powers. Not that Adennos’d ever have the guts—or brains—to use them. Me, I’d like to see someone younger and more capable in the job, like Ilisa Neffe or her husband Tamosin Wolvar. Someone who isn’t afraid of Anniyas.”

  “Like you.”

  “Me?” Imi laughed. “Sarra, there’re two basic kinds of Warrior Mage. There’s Gorynel Desse, who’s fantastic with a sword but rarely uses it—because he considers using it a failure. Then there’s me—all flash and fury, and when I get bored, like as not I’ll pick a fight just to hear the swords ring. If he’d been Mageborn, Val would be in the middle—enjoys his skills, never gets beaten, but he’d really rather not exert himself!”

  “What about Desse? Is he too old now to become Captal?”

  “That may be partly it. I’ve heard rumors. . . .” She twitched a bare, muscled shoulder uncomfortably. “Some plan of his went awry. The Mage Council didn’t favor it to begin with, and once it failed they were dead set against him.”

  Sarra mulled that over and was about to ask another question when Val shouted at them from a respectful distance.

  “We’ve found a pool downstream! You ladies are welcome to first swim!”

  “Not a hot bath,” Imi remarked, “but it’ll do. If I don’t wash my hair, I’ll scratch myself bald.”

  Leaving clean clothes draped on bushes to dry, they waded downstream. It never even occurred to Sarra that any of the men might peek; such things simply were not done. She washed her hair, then lay flat on her back like Imi to float and dream beneath the brilliant blue sky.

  A commotion on the banks attracted their attention. Alin’s voice was raised in outraged tones, joined by Scholar Solingirt. Both women stood in the pool—neck-deep for Imi; Sarra had to tiptoe to keep her chin clear—just in time to see Valirion race from the bushes and belly-flop into the water like a felled tree, naked as the day Sefana Maurgen birthed him and his twin brother Biron.

  He surfaced laughing. “Didn’t look like you were ever going to come out! Politeness to ladies can wait until I’m clean!”

  Imilial pounced on him, forcing his head under. The battle that ensued soon engulfed Sarra—and Alin, who roared into the water to help Imi. Plump, pink Advar Senison picked his way across the pebbly bank, hands modestly covering his groin, stuck a toe into the water, then staggered with arms windmilling: Elomar Adennos—of all people—had given him a mighty push. As they joined the rowdy water fight, Sarra marveled that the grim-faced Healer could chortle like a schoolboy. She began to understand what Lusira saw in him.

  In fact, she was seeing more—and more interesting—aspects of masculine anatomy than ever in her life. At first she was insulted that they should so blithely go naked before women, and moreover a woman of her rank; she was embarrassed for a few minutes more. But the atmosphere of play caught her and they were all as children together, wild and laughing and having wonderful fun.

  Still, she and Imi at least showed manners and turned their backs while the men climbed out and went to dress. When they turned around again, there was a healthy glimpse of Val’s bare backside as he hurried into the bushes.

  “Nice ass, Val!” Imi called. “Alin has all the luck!”

  Sarra choked on shock and laughter. The Warrior Mage winked at her.

  “Men, my dear,” she said, “are like flowers: they exist in this fair world to be admired. If we women didn’t compliment them on their most admirable features, they’d pine away like roses in a heat wave, thirsting for water.”

  “Water, you say?” Sarra enquired sweetly. “Don’t you mean fertilizer?”

  “I heard that!” Val yelled from the trees.

  Later, sloshing upstream to their sun-dried clothes, Sarra considered the four men’s . . . features . . . and indeed found much to admire. Tarise would consider Elomar Adennos too skinny, but Sarra liked the way long muscles wrapped around long bones. Valirion was handsome and knew it, but where Imi had chosen to comment on his admittedly superior posterior, Sarra thought his shoulders more pleasing. She liked Advar Senison’s solidity; not fat, but firm flesh beneath smooth skin that glistened in the water. Alin, though well-made, was bony and as narrow-waisted as a girl. Maturity might fill him out to a shorter version of his brother Taig. She fell to musing what Taig looked like naked—then tripped on a rock and landed with a splash when the image suddenly acquired coppery hair, very blue eyes, and the face of that smug, disgusting Minstrel.

  “Careful,” Imilial said, lending her a hand as she clambered to her feet. “These rocks are all over in Mittru’s Hair moss. Makes for slippery footing.”

  They found their clothes and began to dress, lazy and warm in the afternoon sun. Sarra sat on a rock and drew her comb through her wet hair, eyes closed.

  All at once Imilial said, “Saints, I wish I could get old Addy alone for an hour. Never knew he had such cute knees!”

  “You mean you looked lower than—”

  “Sarra!” The Warrior Mage pretended shock, then laughed. “You’re too young to have such a mouth on you!”

  “Well, it was kind of difficult to miss,” Sarra responded innocently. Then, after a moment’s hesitation: “Imi, why is Alin’s different?”

  Now she pretended confusion. “Alin’s what?”

  Sarra cleared her throat. “Umm . . . his . . . you know.”

  The Warrior Mage grinned over her shoulder. “And where were your eyes, my girl?”

  Sarra blushed hotly. “It’s different,” she insisted.

  “Different how? Bigger? That’s nothing to signify, you know. Matter of fact, the best time I ever had was with a man no longer than—”

  “Imi!” She splashed water at the Mage. “You know what I mean!”

  Taking pity on Sarra, she answered, “It’s a custom with the Ostins and a few other families. They cut off that bit of skin at birth. No one knows why. But since it doesn’t affect a woman’s enjoyment, nobody thinks much about it.” She laughed softly. “You can take my word for the enjoyment part.”

  Curiosity satisfied, Sarra nodded. A minute later she asked, “Imi . . . do you think men talk about women the way women do about men?”

  Imi paused and developed a pensive expression. “You know, I’ve never considered it. I’m sure they notice, but. . . . Those with a proper upbringing don’t discuss such things, of course. It’s not decent. Some men probably do dissect us the way we do them, but only in private.”

  “When they give compliments, they always stick to eyes and lips and hair, that sort of thing,” Sarra mused. “All the ballads are the same, with maybe ankles if the Bard is daring.”

  “Commenting on anything lower than the neck is vulgar,” she agreed. “And a vulgar idea it is, that they’d say about our bottoms what I said about Val’s!”

  By the time they were clothed and combed and had rejoined the men, Kanto Solingirt was napping so peacefully that no one had the heart to disturb him. The men we
nt foraging to resupply their stores of food. Advar Senison went fishing. Half an hour later, Imi wandered off. Sarra hid a grin.

  They feasted that evening on fish stuffed with herbs and baked in leaves, a delicious vegetable stew, and berries soaked in liquor contributed by Healer Adennos (his flask of Medicinal Purposes Only brandy). They slept under the open sky, and Sarra had no dreams.

  8

  On the way down to the sea the next day, they passed a pretty little All Saints Shrine of the triangular type popular many centuries ago. Six slim, square wooden columns, one at each apex and midpoint, were carved and painted with Saints’ sigils. Sarra had seen a similar shrine of marble in the hills above Firrense, but that one had still had its roof. This was open to the sky.

  “How old, do you think?” Imilial asked her father.

  Alin and Val kept walking. Sarra paused with the Mages, interested in the answer, knowing the question was an excuse to let the Scholar rest.

  “Count the Saints,” he replied. “More than thirty-four, and it dates back before the official Calendar.”

  “I thought age was indicated by the dedication of the entry pillar,” Sarra remarked. “Fielto is on the one in Gierkenshir, they say it’s very old. And very lovely as well, all carved in marble.”

  “If it’s that green-veined stone from Bleynbradden, date it to 550 or so. The quarry wasn’t opened until then.” Solingirt gave a self-deprecating shrug. “You pick up a lot of odd bits, reading. I’m utterly stultifying at parties.”

  “Mother always said you could clear a room in a minute flat,” his daughter teased fondly.

  Advar Senison—whose Healer Mage pins were symbolic sprigs plucked from the wreath sigil of St. Feleris—was gathering wildflowers, obviously intending an offering to the patron of physicians. Sarra decided to honor her own Name-Saint—and Caitiri the Fiery-Eyed, too, as long as she was at it.

  “Stay away from there!” Alin shouted.