The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  “Alin,” Sarra said again, “I have a question.”

  “So do I,” Val interrupted. “If they were lovers, where’s the bed?”

  “Cousin, you have a prurient mind.”

  “Just practical. This is one hell of a cold hard floor.”

  “Alin!” Sarra snapped. “If Ladders die in fire, why does this one work? It’s built inside a chimney!”

  “See the braziers? No fire was ever lit in this hearth after Captal Bekke put in the Ladder.”

  “I still want to know where the bed is,” Val insisted.

  “And I want to know how you were so sure about this,” Sarra said coldly. “I forbid you to do this again, Alin Ostin. You are never to risk your life on a guess, a legend, and a children’s song again, do you understand me?”

  Alin’s spine stiffened. Sarra stared him down. Gradually resentment faded to minor grudge, then to acknowledgment that she was right.

  “I’m sorry. But it wasn’t really a guess. It’s the only one that fits. ‘Back and forth, forth and back/Stony Ladder shining black.’”

  “A guess, a legend, and a children’s song,” Sarra repeated grimly. “If the whole Rising is run on logic like that, we’ll need every Saint in the Calendar.”

  “We got here, didn’t we?” Val’s tone was not quite a challenge.

  “Because the magic still functions on both sides,” she retorted. “Why?”

  That silenced them for a few moments. Surely both Mage Guardians and Lords of Malerris knew of this Ladder pair. Why would either allow the other access to their very stronghold?

  “Maybe they Warded—no,” Alin interrupted himself, “we would’ve felt it.”

  Val shrugged. “Ask Gorsha. He’ll know.”

  Sarra’s list was getting longer than she was tall. “What’s the time?”

  “Eight minutes after Second. In Shellinkroth, it’s yesterday.”

  Definitely she was confused by Laddering. “Then let’s get some sleep. Alin, where’s this other Ladder? Have you used it before?”

  “Yes. It goes from the Academy proper to St. Ilsevet’s outside Havenport.”

  “Very well. Domni Maurgen, you have my permission to go find the bed.” And with that she folded the cloak around her, closed her eyes, and slept.

  11

  It was not surprising that after her first view of home in so long she dreamed of Ambrai as it was before Father went away the first time and Mother became so tense and sad. To a child’s eyes, Ambrai had been a wondrous place, all light and flowers and laughter. And with a child’s eyes, she dreamed.

  She saw Grandmother Allynis, pretending outrage when Grandfather Gerrin playfully tweaked her ear or sneaked a quick kiss.

  She saw herself and Glenin, hiding inside the Double Spiral and making what they thought were authentic Wraithenbeast noises to scare courtiers until giggles gave them away.

  She saw Mage Captal Garvedian, and Guardian Desse, and her Alvassy kin, and her friends, and the Bards and Scholars and Healers. And in her dream she did not weep, for she was a child again and all of them lived.

  She saw a family picnic on the lawns, the Octagon Court rising majestically behind them, and beyond the trees the towers of Commandery and Academy, Bard Hall and Healers Ward. A string trio played Grandmother Allynis’ favorite songs; Glenin and Sarra chased butterflies; Mother and Father sat on the grass near Grandmother and Grandfather, all of them laughing. Sarra knew this scene: the family was celebrating Grandmother’s Birthingday.

  She saw an elderly Scholar Mage in gray and black bow to Grandmother and present her with a large book, decorated in gold and turquoise and black. Lady Allynis exclaimed at its beauty; her daughter leaned over for a closer look.

  What she saw next was no part of her memories. Auvry Feiran seized the book and behind him the Octagon Court burst into flame. Sarra then saw herself do a curious thing: she snatched the book from her father’s hands and began to run.

  She woke with a violent start. “Saints and Wraiths!” she exclaimed borrowing Alin’s oath. “I’m a fool!”

  “Sarra?” Alin hurried to her side.

  “Huh? What?” Val struggled to his feet from the cold hard floor where he’d been drowsing while Alin took the watch. “What’s wrong?”

  “Quick, Val—what time is it?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Uh—nearly Fourth.”

  “Are you all right?” Alin asked.

  She ignored his concern. “When’s dawn?”

  “Less than an hour.”

  Sarra pushed aside the lingering emotions of the dream and got to her feet. “If we hurry, there’ll be enough time.”

  “What did I miss?” Alin asked, bewildered.

  “We all missed it,” she said feverishly. “Oh, use your wits! The books!”

  12

  No deceptions here. No bones, no bodies, no uniforms, no Wards. Only blackened heights of stone, heaps of charred wood, rubble, and tragedy. Only the truth of what Auvry Feiran had done.

  Alin led them to a row of columns that supported nothing. The roof had collapsed seventeen years ago.

  “The library,” he said.

  “You knew,” Sarra accused. “You could’ve just told me.”

  Alin shrugged. “You’d only have insisted on seeing it for yourself.”

  “You don’t understand. I remember—”

  Then she stopped. If she wasn’t careful, they would understand all too much. What she remembered was coming here from the Octagon Court on very hot days; the lofty halls were relief from the heat, and the bottom of the cellar stairs was the coolest refuge of all. But to admit that would be to admit she was Ambraian. So she lied, and they believed her.

  “When I was a little girl, a Mage came to Roseguard. She was studying to become a Scholar when all this happened. When we went through my library, she told me about a book vault in the cellar.”

  “Sarra.” Val put a hand on her arm. “It’s hopeless. Someone would’ve come back for them long ago.”

  “I hope ‘someone’ wasn’t a Lord of Malerris,” Alin added. “No, Domna, there’s nothing left down there.”

  “We have to look,” she insisted. “We have to be sure. How else will Cailet learn what she must?”

  Urgency had betrayed her. She knew the instant she spoke that she shouldn’t have said her sister’s name. Better to have given them a version of her dream, and explain the reminder it surely was (from her own mind? from a Saint? from Gorynel Desse—or Grandmother?). She brusquely excused herself the slip by deciding it was time Val and Alin knew, anyway. Some of it; not all.

  “Cailet?” Alin stiffened reflexively.

  In for an acorn, in for an oak, Sarra told herself. “She’s Mageborn—I’ve heard it before, and you told me yourself, Val. The Guardians we’re taking back to Roseguard will form the basis of a new Academy. They’ll teach her and others. But we need the books. If they still exist, we have to rescue them.”

  Val chewed his lip. “What do you know about Cailet Rille?”

  “More than you imagine,” she said shortly. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”

  The cousins went ahead to clear the way. Books burned with frightening efficiency, and wooden shelves with them: nothing left but ash and a few sticks that might once have been chairs or desks. Massive beams had fallen in, too, and a million roof tiles. Picking her way over the rattling mounds was very much like the journey through the tunnel of bones at Malerris Castle. There, people had died; here, knowledge. She didn’t know which made her more furious.

  Alin reached the cellar door first and stood there in silence. Sarra joined him. With her first glance downward, she felt her hands clench angrily. She’d forgotten that the steps of the spiral staircase had been made of wood.

  “That’s an end, then,” Alin muttered.

  It couldn’t be—or why else had she dreamed, and woken with
such urgent certainty of what she must do?

  “How far to the bottom?” Val asked.

  She frowned, trying to remember. At four years old, the steps had seemed endless. The equivalent of one floor? Two?

  “With a spiral, it’s hard to tell,” Alin said.

  Valirion braced a hand on the wall and leaned into the darkness. “The iron framework’s still there, from what I can see. Support rails, banister . . . it’s just the wood steps that burned away.”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Alin warned. “The frame’s come away from the wall. It’ll never hold you.”

  He rubbed his belly, grinning. “Well, I haven’t been feeding as well as I’m used to. Domna Sarra, if you’ll be so good as to hold my sword?”

  Alin grumbled. Sarra hushed him. “I’m the lightest, I ought to go.”

  “I’m the strongest. Alin-O, keep your tongue between your teeth. You’re lighter than I am, stronger than she is, and terrified of heights. By the way, Sarra, how do I open the vault? If the books are that rare, it’ll have a lock.”

  “Or a Ward,” Alin added.

  She looked down into the blackness, cursing herself. She hadn’t thought of that, either.

  “Why don’t I go down and see if it’s open? That ought to tell us something, anyway. We can ask Scholar Solingirt if he knows anything about it.”

  Val got hand- and footholds on the framework. The iron creaked and groaned alarmingly, but held as he started the climb down. Sarra found a table leg charred only at one end, and Alin got it lit. The flames fluttered like frightened birds in the dark stairwell. Every so often iron squealed and Val swore, then called up that he was fine, just scraped a bit. At length they heard soft footsteps on ash-covered marble, and knew he was safely down.

  “If the books are still there,” Alin remarked almost casually, “we can bring a rope back from Shellinkroth.”

  “Mmm. Getting them all on board ship will be—” She broke off at the clatter below. “Val?” Her voice echoed back up at her.

  “Maurgen, you moron, answer me!” Alin yelled.

  “I thought I told you to shut up!” drifted back before Alin’s echoes subsided. “I found it—and it’s sealed. Can’t feel a Ward, though.”

  “We’ll come back later!” Sarra called down.

  And, after Val clambered back up and Alin took them through the Academy’s ladder to Shellinkroth, this was precisely what they did.

  13

  “‘First you see me, then I’m gone/Ladder on a clover lawn,’” sang Imilial as she stacked an armful of books on the floor. The tune she used was a variant of the one Sarra knew. “‘Wet or dry, dry or wet/Ladder caught inside a net!’” She looked around the candlelit shrine to St. Ilsevet, patron of fisherfolk, and grinned. “They had that part right enough,” she added, gesturing to the thin woven latticework that overlaid the underwater scenes painted on the dome. “But I never would’ve guessed the greenhouse at the Academy was a Ladder!”

  Sarra nodded from her nest of cloaks near the altar, and picked up another book from a nearby pile. “It must have been a beautiful floor once. Whoever painted those tiles to look like a lawn was a true artist. Oh, Imi! Look at this! I’ve read references to Steenan Oslir’s memoirs, but I’ve never found a copy—and this one is signed!”

  “Not one of my favorite Captals,” Imilial said, crouching to take a look anyway as she dipped a cupful of water from the bucket at Sarra’s elbow. “A real Slavemaster he was, according to legend.”

  They continued glancing through the books brought back from the vault. Sarra had been forced to stay behind by a sudden overwhelming nausea Alin said was classic Ladder Lag: common in someone unused to Ladders who’d traveled too many too quickly. She fretted until Alin and Elomar Adennos returned from the first trip staggering under the weight of dozens of books. Kanto Solingirt’s advice about the vault’s lock had been impossible for Alin to follow—being only a Ladder Rat, not a real Mage—but Elomar recognized the spell as a variant of one used to secure medicine cabinets. Val stayed behind to bind books for hauling up by rope; Advar Senison did the hauling and untying for transport, armful by armful, back to St. Ilsevet’s Shrine.

  They’d been at this for three nights now. At least, Sarra thought it was three nights; her time sense was skewed and she slept at the oddest hours. When she and Alin and Val first arrived at St. Ilsevet’s, she was pretty sure it was the same night they’d left. More or less. She slept, resolving once more to let Val worry about what time and day it was. She slept while Val went to find Imilial and the other Mages at the rendezvous, and Alin went to find the shrine’s votary, a secret member of the Rising. This ancient worthy, as weathered by sea and salt as his shrine, brought food and a sign for the front door: CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.

  The Mages had arrived—and Imi was complaining that she felt like a trout in a fishbowl—by the time Sarra woke. After so much sleep, she should have been ready to return to Ambrai and help with the books. But when Advar Senison brought her bread and cheese, she disgraced herself all over St. Ilsevet’s floor of sea-blue tiles painted with silver fishes.

  Alin diagnosed her problem and told her to go back to sleep. The two Healer Mages made sure of it with a dose of poppy syrup. Faced with a choice between peaceful slumber and a vicious combination of dizziness, nausea, and chills, Sarra did the sensible thing.

  The rest went on raiding the Academy library. Three nights, four—maybe even five—it was hard to tell in the dimness of the shrine with torrents of rain darkening the sky. The important thing was that books were stacked knee-deep all along the dome’s perimeter. Solingirt had spent yesterday attempting to organize them all by subject, frustrated that they weren’t brought here in tidy shelving order. He finally gave up and tucked himself against the wall, reading whatever struck his fancy. Time enough to catalog everything later.

  Though Sarra was still a bit shaky, she, too, sampled every book in reach. She wasn’t sure how to get them all home, but she knew one thing for a certainty: her dream had told her true. Cailet must and would have these books. Worth any risk—though it annoyed her that she was taking no risk at all.

  Alin looked more ragged each time he popped into view in the center of the shrine. Imilial and Elomar made each trip with him, a little unsteady themselves by dawn. Alin, however, was the one whose magic worked the Ladders, and thus he suffered the most. In a very old book of Magesongs, Sarra learned why.

  A Ladder leads from there to here

  It brings you home from far to near

  For trader’s travel, or flight in fear—

  You pay in magic, always dear.

  “Hunh,” Val grunted. “Bad poetry.”

  “Always the critic,” Alin replied, but with little spirit. “You’d find fault with Bard Falundir. Is there more to the poem, Sarra? Is our Ladder Song in the book?”

  They were snuggled nearby, Valirion providing a sort of living cradle of arms and legs for his exhausted cousin. Alin leaned back against Val’s chest, drowsy-eyed, so slight that he looked like a child in Val’s embrace. They made a sweet picture, Sarra thought, smiling.

  “These poor old pages have seen hard usage.” She held the book up from her knees. “They’ve been sewn back together five times that I can tell, judging by the different colors of thread. The cover and title page are long gone. But a Bard might be able to identify it for us. Which reminds me—I’ll have someone search the Hall one of these days for other books.”

  “It’s not that far from the Academy,” Alin began.

  “It’s the other side of the river,” Val said.

  “Don’t even think about going back to have a look,” Sarra seconded. “If anything survived this long, another few weeks won’t matter. Now, I’ll read the rest of this only if you promise to go to sleep and not try to puzzle it out until tomorrow.”

  “You mean this evening,” Val corrected.

  “Wh
atever.”

  “Still can’t keep track of what day it is?”

  “Don’t gloat, it warps your face,” she retorted, grinning.

  Alin shifted restlessly. “Are you going to read that or not?”

  “Promise first.”

  He nodded, fatigue-bruised lids hooding blue eyes. The Mages were nested amid cloaks and books, tired faces lit by the blue-white Globe kindled above the small altar by Kanto Solingirt. It had hovered there all the hours except when he slept, light to read by and to cheer the cloudy gloom. The storm had eased up, but Imi was of the opinion that a new one would settle in tomorrow. They were due to go to another safe house soon. No one relished the idea of slogging through Havenport’s muddy streets in the rain, but at least the rain kept potential visitors to St. Ilsevet’s homebound.

  Sarra made her voice a gentle sing-song, using the words as a lullaby.

  Twice twenty-two the Ladders girt

  All Lenfell’s Shirs, the Bards assert;

  But one is lost. Mage, stay alert.

  The broken circle’s spell avert.

  Six Ladders each the Shirs possess—

  Though some have more, and others, less—

  When rungs are paired, the sum assess:

  Twice twenty-two. Mage, can you guess?

  Conundrum numbers; think them through

  To sum them in a total true:

  Six times fifteen, twice twenty-two—

  Halve the greatest. The last is due

  The new-struck coin of Captal’s woe

  In payment to the timeless foe.

  “Very bad poetry,” Val murmured. “But very nice work—you sent him right to sleep.” Cheek resting atop Alin’s blond head, Val followed his example.

  So much for my womanly fascination, Sarra grinned to herself, then glanced up as Elomar Adennos unfolded himself from his cloak like a long-limbed cat and padded over. Crouching down, he squinted at the book on her knees.