The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  Col smoothed the bright lengths of silk onto the table. Some were wide, others very thin. He arranged them according to directions for their placement around the smaller bouquets, knotted them together at each end, and tied the first set in a multicolored bow.

  And stopped. And stared. And then laughed, though there was no humor in the sound. The rest of the message was right in front of him.

  Each wide ribbon was a Name’s first color; each narrow ribbon was that Name’s secondary.

  Around the order to escape he had knotted ribbons of black and purple, blue and yellow, crimson and gray, and brown and green. He knew the first two: they were on pennants flying above Roseguard. And although the others had been unknown to him this morning, now that he had seen the cottage in the Grounds—with its pillows and curtains and the napkins at the lunch table—he knew to whom they referred.

  Gray and orange bound the oak, ash, and thorn leaves with juniper. A green ribbon with a thin gray tied marigolds, oleander, and lavender.

  And then there were the colors for the magical portion of the message: blue and turquoise, wide gray and narrow green, gray and turquoise.

  The whole thing was to be bound with gray and crimson: the colors of the Desse Blood.

  Assembled, the message was a masterwork of nonverbal communication. It was also terrifying. And it made him madder than a spider-spun hornet.

  Renne, Slegin, Jescarin, and Trayos must leave Roseguard on or by the eighth day of the third week. A Guide named Ostin would be summoned to succor them in their flight. Feiran was associated with imminent deceit. Knowledge, protection, and magic were available—and Col knew damned well who was expected to provide the protection. That Liwellan girl must be the knowledgeable one; Taig had told him she wasn’t Mageborn. Which left some total unknown named Rille to furnish the magic.

  He caught himself shredding the ends of the Rosvenir gray and turquoise, and swore. How dared that motherless old son of a Fifth involve him in this? He was about to untie the offending colors when the personal import hit him. He was in Roseguard; he was the messenger; he was in danger; he was to be included in whatever plan Lady Agatine formed to get everyone to safety.

  He put the bouquet in his journeysack, locked his door behind him, and went downstairs to get good and drunk.

  And thus it was with bleary eyes and a mouth tasting worse than Blighted Bay that he presented himself at the Slegin residence the next morning at Seventh.

  It was Lady Agatine’s regular day for receiving visitors from outside Sheve. In a brazier-warmed antechamber, Collan cooled his heels in company with a goldsmith from Neele, four cloth merchants from Firrense, a netweaver from Seinshir, a furrier from Tillin Lake, two inkmakers from Wyte Lynn Castle, and a mother-and-sons delegation from the Roke Castle Instrument Makers Guild. All wanted contracts, and all carried samples of their work. The goldsmith and inkmakers were the luckiest in this regard. The furrier was sweating, the netweaver was entangled, and the cloth merchants were burdened like pack horses. The collection of lutes, mandolins, flutes, drums, trumpets, and other assorted noisemakers clattered and rattled and rang until Collan wanted to break every string, slash every skin, and muffle all the metal in all that very handy wool.

  He carried only the bouquet. Which was bad enough, for the broom and lavender were doing dreadful things to his nose. It was all he could do not to sneeze. Adding to his discomfort was the blue coif fastened tight at his throat. Whenever he was compelled to wear it, he was tempted to join the Rising if only they promised to outlaw the damned things.

  Orlin Renne—massively tall, casually dressed, and armed with a list of names—appeared at the door to welcome the visitors. Collan had not applied for an audience in advance. A Minstrel could show up anywhere and expect admittance anytime. Besides, Collan was no stranger in Roseguard and the gatekeeper recognized him.

  So did Orlin Renne. Had Col not been looking for it, he wouldn’t have seen the slight fading of the man’s smile, the downward flicker of his brows. Good, Collan thought, they know something’s up. So much the better. This was not the kind of message he cared to deliver to people completely unprepared for it.

  Still, because he was not on the official list, he would be last of all to see Lady Agatine. To his relief, the instrument makers went in first. Renne took pity on the furrier and cloth merchants, admitting them second and third. It was nearly Half-Eleventh by the antique longcase clock before Collan, all alone for some time after the inkmakers were shown in, was at last escorted to the Lady’s presence.

  Her pretty oval reception room was furnished with a fabulous Cloister rug in Slegin blue and yellow patterned with roses, a brace of unlit bronze candle strands, and a desk of aged golden oak with a carved medallion of flameflowers, graceful tribute to her husband’s family. At this desk sat the Lady herself: elegant, lovely, and worried.

  Orlin Renne dismissed the hovering secretary with a nod. When the door had closed and the three of them were alone, Collan bowed a second time, crossed the rug, and laid the bouquet on the desktop. He said exactly nothing.

  Agatine’s slim fingers stroked each set of ribbons in turn, sunlight dancing from the gold sigil ring on her thumb. She spent a long time looking, touching each element of the arrangement. Her husband stood at her side, one hand, wearing a matching ring, resting lightly on her shoulder. At length she lifted her head and met Collan’s gaze.

  “So,” she murmured. “It begins at last.”

  He didn’t much like the sound of that.

  “I’m sure you understand most of what’s here,” she went on more briskly. “Is there anything you’d like clarified?”

  “No, Lady. I’d rather not know.”

  She frowned and glanced up at her husband, who said, “You’re part of it, friend Minstrel, like it or not. The Rosvenir colors—”

  “—aren’t my problem,” Col interrupted. “It’s not even my Name.”

  “No?” Agatine asked, with an odd note in her voice.

  “I took it and the identity disk from somebody who’s dead.” He hesitated, then shrugged. He’d liked these people on first meeting—five years ago now—and they’d been both kind and generous the several times he’d played for them here. He decided to share the truth. “I was born a slave.”

  “Whose? Scraller Pelleris’?”

  “Yes.” Collan shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I try not to remember it.”

  The strange thing was that he didn’t remember much about his childhood as a slave. His survival depended on forgetting so thoroughly that no one could tell from manner or speech what he had once been. But although he dreamed sometimes about those years, dreams that woke him in a shaking sweat, he avoided all attempts at remembering. At this moment he couldn’t seem to remember his slave days at all. This might have been a blessing, except for the sudden telltale headache. Well, he’d paid his duty and more to St. Kiy the Forgetful last night, and this was only the usual morning wine-head.

  First hangover he’d ever had that hadn’t begun the minute he opened his eyes in the morning.

  Orlin Renne said, “No one would want to remember such things, Agatine.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder, as if in warning.

  “We’ve purchased and freed several of Scraller’s slaves. One of them tutors my sons. Perhaps you knew him—his name is Taguare.”

  Another squeeze to her shoulder; Collan was mystified. He also felt a worse throb in his head.

  “The Minstrel would doubtless prefer not to be reminded of his past,” Orlin Renne said, his deep voice grating.

  “I think it may be necessary,” she replied, softly but firmly, and after a moment’s silent resistance he nodded once and removed his hand.

  “Taguare?” Collan repeated—daring the pain, in a way. Mistake. “Damn it!” he muttered, rubbing at his temple where a vein pounded.

  “Your head hurts, doesn’t it?” asked Lady Agatine.

&
nbsp; “It’s the flowers,” he said stubbornly. “Strong scents bother my—”

  “No, it’s not the flowers.”

  “Agatine!” Renne growled. “Don’t!”

  She ignored him. “If I say that name again, or if you try to figure out why a mere sound brings pain, the pain doubles—doesn’t it, Domni Rosvenir?”

  “How did you know that?” he demanded.

  “But if you avoid the sound that caused it, the headache goes away.”

  Though she had not moved, though no one could seem less threatening than this serenely lovely woman, Collan backed away across the Cloister rug.

  “It’s a terrible irony,” she went on. “That a Minstrel, a man who can make such beautiful sounds with his voice and his fingers, can find some sounds so painful. But it’s symptomatic of Wards.”

  He nearly choked. “M-magic?”

  “When one has seen things, done things, or knows things it’s not safe to remember, a Mage will set Wards. In your case, it was Gorynel Desse who—”

  Had he been wearing his sword, its point would be at her throat—Orlin Renne or no Orlin Renne. “You mean that old—he did things to my head?”

  “For your own safety, Collan.”

  “You’re crazy,” he snarled. “I’m not listening to any more of this. You got your damned message, I’m—”

  “The name Taguare hurts,” she said softly. “And Viko. And Elseveth.”

  Sounds, they were just sounds—and they meant blinding pain. The coif strangled him, he couldn’t breathe. He heard the sounds again and he heard himself cry out with the agony; he heard Renne’s heavy tread, and the sound of his own body thudding to the carpet.

  A day or a week or a year later, he became aware of small sensations: silk beneath his cheek, a sticky taste in his mouth, an aching lassitude throughout his body. The excruciating throb in his head was gone. But when he cracked his eyelids open, the sunlight made him wince.

  “Hush,” a gentle voice told him. “You’ll be all right.”

  “Will he?” This was another voice, deep and angry.

  “Gorsha gave me the mixture a long time ago, Orlin. It’s prescribed in such cases. We never had to use it with Sarra.”

  “You mean you planned this?”

  “The gatekeeper sent word Collan was here.”

  “But you didn’t see fit to tell me. Thank you for your trust, Lady.”

  “Stop it,” the woman said wearily. “I had to know.”

  Col wanted to ask what, but couldn’t hunt down the right words. Fingertips stroked his forehead, ran motherlike through his hair. No coif; small mercy.

  “I remember what Gorsha said about this stuff, too, Agatine,” said Orlin Renne. “It plays hell with the Wards until it wears off. Sarra’s guard her magic. You know damned well Collan’s are totally different.”

  Wards? Him? Oh—something about magic, and Desse, and the headaches—

  “I had to know exactly when the Wards take over,” she insisted. “They’ve never been tested. If I’d known it would be this bad, I never would’ve told Gorsha I’d do this.”

  “He told you to do this to Collan?”

  “He’ll be with the Rising from now on. We had to know.”

  With the Rising—? he thought in puzzlement, then realized what she was saying. Oh, no—not me, Lady! His struggles to move produced a single twitch in one shoulder. It should have frightened him, but fear seemed as distant and alien as the sound-triggered headache.

  “Evidently,” Orlin Renne said with heavy sarcasm, “these Wards were one of Gorsha’s subtler efforts. And until Collan sleeps this through, any of a dozen names will hurt like nails driven into his skull.”

  “He’ll be all right tomorrow.”

  “You think so? Consider how much of that you poured down his throat. All right, Aggie, I’ll shut up about it. I’ll even find out where he’s staying and send for his things. Staying here while he’s in town is perfectly natural.”

  Tongue swollen, lips pulpy, somehow he managed to say, “Not st-staying. . . .”

  “You must,” said Lady Agatine; “You have to now, Collan,” said Orlin Renne. There was sympathy in both implacable voices.

  “No. . .!”

  A sigh, and a soft murmur: “If not for us, then for . . . Falundir.”

  Not nails.

  “Agatine—!”

  Knives.

  “For Falundir.”

  One into his head, its twin in his heart. He screamed. Between his parted lips trickled more of the “something prescribed in such cases.” He passed out.

  13

  Sarra Liwellan and Mai Alvassy said quick farewells as the ship docked in Renig. Both would go ashore—Mai as Sarra, Sarra as a rather short sailor. One would return to the ship. Agata Nalle had timed the arrival perfectly: before dawn after the Feast of Lusine and Lusir. The night Watch was just going home, the day Watch was not quite awake, and the whole town was well-nigh deserted. What few faces they saw belonged to servants and slaves on daybreak errands, and the lower echelons of the port authority who were grumpy with too much wine, not enough sleep, and too little rank for cushy afternoon duty.

  Only three horses were ready for them. Elomar Adennos had not been expected to come along, but he insisted. Sarra couldn’t blame him; anything rather than attend the querulous Mage Captal, cousin or not. Searching for another horse to hire would attract attention, so Sarra mounted up behind Alin. They were well out of Renig before its citizens were yawning over their breakfasts.

  “It’s not customary to get drunk on the Twins’ day,” Alin observed, “not like St. Kiy’s. But Renig will take any excuse it can get.”

  “If I lived in The Waste, so would I,” Sarra said.

  “Why do you think I left?”

  Val laughed. “Stay long enough, Sarra, and you’ll end up either drunk or crazy. Alin-O and I are living proof!”

  She could believe it. For the next ten days they rode through progressively more barren country. The south was fairly civilized: small farms, weaving towns, water mills. Rivers were drinkable only after treatment, so mainly they powered grindstones, furnaces, and looms. The Ostins had made one of their many small fortunes investing in replacement gears.

  As they left the coast and rode upcountry, the land began to deserve its name. Cattle became scarce, then vanished. Alin explained that any cow with half a brain between its horns refused to eat what grew here, and no cow was equipped to rip up the nutritious water-storing roots. Sheep didn’t bite, they tore—and were even more stupid than cows—so sheep country this was.

  “Where Alin and I come from,” Val said one evening by the campfire, “it’s just galazhi. Their hooves and horns dig trenches, and they can chew anything.”

  Alin grimaced agreement. “Teeth to dent a copper pipe. I’ve seen it. And they’re almost impossible to catch. You saw the range riders with the cattle? Useless with galazhi. They can outrun a horse for over a mile, and laugh at you the whole way.”

  “Then how do you people herd them?”

  “People don’t,” said Elomar.

  Alin elaborated, smiling. “We use the descendants of Fa’s dowry. We used to tease Mother that she only married Tiva Senison because she wanted a stud—not him, his dog!”

  “Of course!” Sarra exclaimed. “Senison hounds!”

  “There’s nothing a galazhi can’t outrun, even the big cats. But they’re terrified of dogs. They even catch the scent, and they freeze.”

  “Which is really funny,” Val added, “because all you have to do is smile at anything descended from a Senny and he’s yours for life—all wriggles and slobbers and wagging tail.”

  Alin leveled a blue-eyed glare at him. “You say it, you die.”

  Val grinned innocently. A bit belatedly, Sarra got the joke, and giggled.

  The occasional clouds of dust on the horizon were galazhi herds.
Sarra had many times dined off steaks, chops, or sausage made of the delectable meat, but had never seen one of the animals on the hoof. Galazhi were approachable only when they gave birth and were helpless, but butchering new mothers and fawns was not only a nauseating idea, it was bad husbandry. Before the Senison hounds were perfected—yet another Ostin enterprise, made possible by Alin’s father’s dowry—the only way to catch them was to stampede them off a cliff to butcher on the spot. But for twenty years now the big dogs had herded them very tidily. From postures of petrified terror the galazhi would bounce a few nervous times before freezing once more, one eye always on laughing-eyed, brown-striped dogs who only wanted to make friends.

  They reached Combel at sunset on the tenth of Shepherd’s Moon. All Sarra desired in the world was a bath, the hotter the better. After skirting the outlying districts, where wide streets were lined with comfortable homes, they finally reached a hostelry in a dismal section of town.

  “The Watch still patrols here,” Valirion murmured. “I’m surprised.”

  Alin shook his head as he tied up the weary horses. “Look down the street.”

  Sarra peered through the dusk. What Alin saw, she didn’t, and said so.

  “The boundary between this district and the next—the really rough part of town—used to be five blocks farther on.” Val exchanged glances with Alin. “A year from now, it’ll be here.”

  The hostelry boasted what the owner called a “suite.” This consisted of two tiny rooms with a connecting door that didn’t lock. No tub was available. Sarra made vigorous use of ewer and basin. She slept in a real bed for the first night in the last ten, and so soundly that only during her morning wash did she discover the bug bites. Val, Alin, and Elomar joined her for breakfast in her room, the only one with a table. The Healer Mage and Alin had slept in the second bedroom the previous night. Val had gone out prowling.

  Expecting a scarcely edible breakfast, Sarra was surprised by its freshness and flavor: porridge and fruit, fried galazhi sausage, egg-batter toast, minted tea. Between mouthfuls, Alin said, “Val takes his Name Saint very seriously.”