by Melanie Rawn
So startled that by accident she tore a flower up by the roots, Sarra straightened and stared at him. “What?”
“You heard me! Don’t go near it!” he yelled back over his shoulder, and kept walking.
Elomar Adennos spoke the first full sentence Sarra had ever heard from him. “There is a Ladder within.”
“A Malerris Ladder,” Imilial added uneasily, pointing at the carved entry column.
Squinting in bright sunshine, Sarra saw the wooden relief of Chevasto’s Loom, complete with thread-heavy shuttles ready for weaving. Above it were the towers and spires of the great castle in Seinshir, rising over a craggy waterfall; impossible to mistake identification or meaning.
She took her scant handful of flowers forward anyway. After a moment Advar Senison followed. She found the right column—with Caitiri’s Flameflower carved right below Sirrala’s Flower Crown. Finding them together was a good omen, she swore to herself, and defiantly placed her offering.
Pausing, she squinted to see inside. Several circles were marked out on the floor, as expected. Most were tile, with grass and flowers springing up around. But in the center, free of encroaching greenery, a hollow circle of copper glinted in the sunlight, wide enough for four or five people to stand within.
“Sarra!” Val shouted. “Come on! Malerris Castle was torched years ago! The Ladder is dead!”
No, it’s not, she thought, liquid ice trickling down her spine. The copper was cared-for, polished, untarnished. If the Ladder at the other end was dead, why was this circle so well-maintained?
She lengthened her strides to catch up with Val and Alin. “What happens if someone tries to use one Ladder in a pair when the other has been destroyed?”
Alin gave her an angry glance. Val asked mildly, “Are you volunteering? You sensed the magic around the Ladders we’ve used so far, right? That’s the Blanking Ward. It’s part of the connection between certain places. If there’s no magic at one end, there’s no connection. Nowhere to go.”
Alin finished for him, “You’d end up with the Saints or the Wraiths, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to choose between them!”
They were being unconscionably rude—again—but she shelved the reprimand once more for a more appropriate moment. “We do know where the Ladder leads. Malerris Castle.” Sarra clasped a wrist in each hand, halting them. And in an admittedly faulty voice, made the more so by excitement, she sang, “‘Spring or summer, summer or spring/Ladder in the copper ring.’”
“So?” Alin almost snarled at her.
She described the copper circle within the temple. “Why should it be so carefully kept if the Ladder at the other end is useless?”
“Maybe the shepherds weed it.”
“If so, Alin, then why not the tiles? Why just the copper ring? Have you ever heard of any other place with copper set into the floor like that?”
“Could be an inn sign, or a jeweler’s, or any number of things.”
“What are you so afraid of? If it’s a Ladder, and it’s usable, then—”
Alin tore his wrist from her grasp. “Because the damned Mage who shoveled Ladder Lore into me until I choked on it included some with no match that he knew of—and the last time I tried to pair two Ladders, Val and I nearly died!”
He stormed off, leaving Sarra speechless.
“I understand your curiosity,” Val said softly. “But you have to understand his reluctance.”
When they stopped for the night, Alin sat apart from them all. Not even Val spoke to him. He curled tight into his bedroll alone, far from the fire.
Sarra woke to someone shaking her shoulder. “Go ‘way,” she mumbled.
“Wake up, Sarra,” Alin insisted. “I know which one it is.”
Sleep-fuddled, she opened her eyes. A few delicate threads of sunlight wove through the trees, all of them seeming to seek Alin’s bright hair. Like Cailet, Sarra thought, and was instantly awake.
“I know the matching verse. ‘Fall or winter, winter or fall/Ladder near the waterfall.’ I’ve seen a waterfall in dreams, and Malerris Castle above. That kind of dream always scares me. That’s how I know it’s one of the unmatched Ladders. That has to be it, Sarra.”
“But there are dozens of verses, and you said you weren’t sure about some of them—how could you know that the waterfall one is—”
“I thought you were the one who wanted to try it!”
“Don’t you snap at me again,” she warned, completely out of patience with him. Nearby, Adennos stirred in his sleep. Sarra lowered her voice. “Help me up, the chill’s made me stiff.”
When they had walked a little way from the others, she went on, “Convince me. Sing all the verses you know, and which Ladders match with which, and which ones you aren’t sure of yet, and then maybe we’ll go back to the shrine—” She caught her breath and swayed against him. “Merciful St. Sirrala! The carving!”
“What carving?”
“On the entry column! Chevasto’s Loom, and shuttles—Malerris Castle was above it, above a waterfall!”
Alin nodded, fair hair gleaming in the predawn gloom. “All right, then. I’ll leave Val a note, and we’ll go back and—”
“The hell you will,” Val said behind them.
Both swung around. Val’s gaze scraped Sarra’s nerves raw; he was angry with Alin for wanting to try the Ladder, but he was furious with Sarra for finding it in the first place. He retained enough decency not to direct his rage at her; she felt a little sorry for Alin, who would bear the brunt of it. Still, the set of Val’s strong features and the fire in his eyes made her want to back up a pace just the same.
Alin gripped his cousin’s arm. “I know where the Ladder goes!”
“Based on a bad rhyme in a children’s song! You’re out of your mind!”
“Based on my nightmares all these years—you remember my nightmares, Val.”
“Better than you! Waking up in a cold sweat, shaking to rattle the bed down, barely remembering your own name—”
“The waterfall’s always been one of the worst.” Alin was nearly pleading with him. “If I can find it, identify it, maybe I’ll never have that dream again. After all these years, Val, you of all people ought to trust me to—”
“All I trust in is that you’ll get your guts strung on the Great Loom!”
They did not remind her of Agatine and Orlin now. They sounded like her parents during those frightening days before her father had taken Glenin away. Sarra repressed a shudder and tried to distract them by saying, “We’re going back to the shrine to confirm our guess.”
Incredibly, Val turned on her. “You’ll try the Ladder, don’t deny it! You’re just as stupid as he is. Bloods! You’re all alike!”
That did it. Of the very few people who had spoken to Sarra that way, none had been male and all had regretted it.
Then she saw that Alin was smiling slightly. Bewildered, Sarra took a few moments to recognize this as a signal that the fight was over and Val had capitulated in the only fashion he could. He was a proud man, as rigid in his way as Grandmother Allynis had been in hers.
It was beneath Sarra to match him for rudeness, no matter the provocation. Still, she had to show her disapproval, so her next words were a command: “You’re coming with us.”
Cleft chin thrust forward, he glowered. “Where he goes, I go.”
“And you both go where I tell you to,” Sarra reminded him. “Alin, tell Imi we’ll catch up to them tomorrow. Arrange a time and place to meet in Havenport. Val, we need food and water. Not much, just something to gnaw on. Get moving.”
9
They were back at the triangular All Saints Shrine well before noon. The carving was as Sarra recalled it. Alin spent a long minute staring at the central column before nodding confirmation.
“The way I’ve dreamed it is like a memory,” he said. “Color and sound, even the feel of the spray. But it’s the s
ame angle, the same perspective.”
“You experience all that in a dream?” Sarra asked.
“The Scholar took the images directly from another mind and put them into me.” He moved slowly away from the column, bending now and then to pluck wildflowers from the thick grass. “Gorynel Desse told me later that Ladder Lore has been passed mind to mind for centuries, maybe since the Waste War. There were so many Ladders then, Sarra! Sometimes I think there must’ve been one in every village, no matter how small.”
“Another reason you travel so much,” she guessed. “On the chance you’ll recognize a Ladder location.”
“I never thought of it that way, but I suppose so. This is the first time it’s actually happened.” He straightened, a stalk of pale lupine clutched in one fist, the flowers nearly the same blue as his eyes. “If I can identify just one more Ladder pair . . . do you understand?”
Not to keep his name alive forever as the man who solved generations-old riddles, but for the Mage Guardians and the Rising. For those who might need those Ladders. She felt the same way each time she found just one more book, poem, song, or age-old broadsheet. But Alin also had a more personal need to match Ladder pairs, to stop at least one nightmare. Sarra resolved that when they got back to Sheve, they’d make a list of his dream images and compare them against the oldest version of the Ladder Song she could find.
Offerings made—Val’s to Velireon the Provider, Alin’s to Alilen the Seeker, Sarra’s to Sirrala and Caitiri again—they sat in the tall grass, ate a hasty meal, and argued about the trip one last time. They took turns objecting and defending, but the conclusion was the same.
“So, we go,” Val concluded. “But at mid-afternoon. Tenth here is First in Seinshir. I’d prefer a couple of sleepy guards to a whole castle wide awake.”
“There won’t be any guards,” Alin told him. “It’ll be Warded.”
“Can you get past?” Sarra asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t even set a Ward, let alone cancel one.”
“I see. One of us will have to be on point. I volunteer. I must have enough magic to sense Wards—I felt the Blanking Wards in the Ladders, anyway. If I do, if there’s a Keep Away or whatever, then I’ll tell you immediately.”
“What she’s not saying,” Alin remarked to his cousin, “is that the Wards at Malerris Castle are likely to be much nastier than Wrong Turn or Oops! I Dropped My Sword.”
“What she’s also not saying,” Val agreed, “is that we’re to prevent her from acting on whatever mad thing a Ward like that might urge.”
Sarra made a face at them. “What I am saying quite clearly is that Val isn’t Mageborn so he can’t fight a Ward once it’s got hold of him, and Alin’s the only one who can get us back here, so I’m the logical choice. Pour out the last of that wine, Val, I’m still thirsty.”
The warm, hazy shadows of the shrine columns were lengthening when at last they stepped into the copper ring. Even Val had to admit that its shiny-smooth surface argued for care not in keeping with the ruin. During their other trips by Ladder, he’d kept one hand on the knife in his pocket. This time he drew his sword.
“Waterfall,” Alin murmured, eyes squeezed shut. “Waterfall . . . castle above . . . sea below. . . .”
Watching him, and resisting the Blanking Ward that hovered around her, Sarra loosened her grip on his hand. “Don’t try so hard. Relax.”
“Who’s the Ladder Rat here, me or you?” But he smiled slightly as he said it, and the tension in his narrow shoulders eased.
She closed her eyes. After a minute or two, she heard Alin draw in a soft breath, and nothingness surrounded her. She let it come. Something inside her flickered like a distant star outshone by the light of the Ladymoon. Magic, she thought sadly—
—and then nothing became a deafening rush of water and a midnight wind needling her face with icy spray. She opened her eyes. Val was braced, sword at the ready. Alin wiped droplets from his cheeks and brow as if it was the sweat of fearful effort.
“We made it?” She couldn’t even hear her own voice above the thundering water to her right and the crashing sea far below to her left. Moonlight made ragged by drifting clouds glowed off two hundred feet of white froth. They stood on a ledge within a small circle of white stones. Sarra peered over the cliff and gulped her heart back down from her throat: the toes of her boots were mere inches from a sheer drop to the ocean.
Val, naked sword in hand, led them back from the ledge into a cave. The roar receded and Sarra could almost hear herself think. Alin came up with a candle and lit it without a match. Wind and echoing water faded as they walked farther into the cave.
“I don’t know who to thank—any or all of our Name Saints, Rilla the Guide, or Mittru Bluehair of the Rivers,” Val said shakily.
“Just so long as it’s not Chevasto,” Alin said, shivering with cold and reaction. “Luring us into his very castle. . . .”
Not a cheering idea. Sarra pushed it aside.
Val slicked back his thick damp hair. “Almost makes me wish I’d worn my coif. Now what?”
“Up there,” Alin said, waving one hand vaguely. “Do we go in, or go back?”
“All this way, and not look around?” Sarra smiled fiercely.
“So how do we get up there—let alone inside?”
“Alin-O,” she replied cheerfully, “to use the Ladder they have to get to it. Where they can go, so can we. And this cave—so very handy to the Ladder, so very nicely carved out, and by human hands, if you’ll notice—just begs to be explored.”
Val cleared his throat. “I just hope none of them fancies a midnight trip to Shellinkroth. I’ll keep my sword in hand, if it’s all the same to you.”
Alin produced two more candles and lit them from his own. They started walking, Sarra on point. The noise died away behind them, due partly to distance and partly to the sound-absorbing cushion of moss and lichen on smooth stone.
Not fifty paces into the damp tunnel, she nearly tripped over a Council Guard uniform that wrapped a rattling collection of bones picked clean.
Alin crouched to examine the remains. “It’s been over eight years. I’m surprised the fabric hasn’t rotted away, too.”
“He didn’t rot. He’s not lying the way he fell,” Valirion commented critically. “See where the trousers are torn, and the angle of thighbone? One arm’s missing entirely.”
Sarra looked, then looked away. “You mean . . . something gnawed—?”
“More than likely. Don’t lose your lunch, Sarra, there’ll be plenty more like this along the way.”
“I’m fine,” she lied, and kept walking.
My father did this. The Butcher of Ambrai. All that we’ll see here, all that happened and everyone who died—attackers and defenders.
No. Not my father. Anniyas. And the Lords of Malerris who destroyed their own castle and their own people. But—merciful St. Miryenne, how could one of your own Mage Guardians do this? Auvry Feiran was a good man! I remember him from when I was little—what happened? What went so wrong?
Val was right about the bodies. Sarra had to step over or around piles of them, trying not to disturb the pale and empty bones in their ragged clothes. Council red, Malerris white, Guardian black—how cleverly it had been done, putting Mage regimentals on some of the corpses.
All included the red sash of the Warrior Mage. Of course, Sarra thought bitterly. The Warrior’s Oath never to use magic in battle must be “proven” false. But of the Sword sigil pins there was no trace—nor of identity disks.
Even in war, custom decreed that if a body was not recoverable for funeral rites, the disk was retrieved and sent to the family. This was done for the Council Guard and the Malerrisi. But there was no such custom regarding the collar pins, and not one of the “Mage” dead had ever been identified.
The Council agreed to withhold the names to spare their families public humiliation. Orlin
Renne, knowing how Anniyas’ mind worked, asserted that she wanted the family of every Warrior Mage to live in dread—and not necessarily of that Mage’s death at Malerris Castle. After the battle, no one admitted to having a Mage in the family; most made life easier on their Names by vanishing.
The identity disks were unnecessary. The sigil pins were proof enough of Guardian participation in this horror. But where had the pins come from? They were not susceptible to forgery; the Academy had had its own small foundry for casting such sigils. Sarra’s instinct leaped and the landing sickened her. The Warrior Mages had been murdered in secret elsewhere, their regimentals and insignia taken, their identity disks destroyed.
It seemed Auvry Feiran—No! Anniyas! she reminded herself frantically—had thought of everything.
The tunnel sloped upward for about a quarter of a mile. Stairs appeared, cut into the living rock, with iron sconces at regular intervals and a torch nub in each. Why hadn’t this place been cleared? If the waterfall Ladder was still used, why make people walk past all this horror?
Simple: if anyone came looking, Malerris Castle must seem untouched. Deserted. Lifeless. They had left the dead to rot in full view of those brave or foolish enough to venture here. Sarra guessed they would find the same in the castle itself. Or—perhaps not. How extensive was the deception? She knew they were here somewhere, but how could they have laid up supplies to last so many years?
She sighed at her own stupidity. She’d seen paintings of Malerris Castle and glimpsed the real thing tonight. The place was huge. With elaborate planning, they could exist in total secrecy for eight years or eighty.
And the Lords of Malerris loved nothing so much as an elaborate plan.
She knew they were here—somewhere. She could feel them.
Abruptly she stopped and turned to Alin. “I think I may have found a Ward. I feel people watching me.”
Alin stepped to her side and frowned, concentrating. Then he shook his head. “Nothing. Val?”
He joined them, and after a moment shrugged. “Nothing.”
“My nerves, then,” Sarra said, annoyed with herself.