The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  Having rid herself of her watchdog, Sarra entered her sister’s room—and wished she, too, had a wall behind her to prop her up. Cailet was draped like a corpse in a faded blue quilt, only her head free. Her face was ancient with pain and her square jaw was set as if against a scream.

  In a cot beside the bed, Elomar’s long body was also laid out as if for burning. His eyes were closed and his fingers were laced beneath his chin. Only the slow, controlled rise and fall of his chest indicated life. The rhythm of his breathing exactly matched Cailet’s; Sarra felt her heart give a frightened thud as she realized he was breathing for her.

  Gorynel Desse hunched at the edge of the bed, one hand buried in Cailet’s pale hair and the other cradling his own skull as if it weighed a thousand pounds. He breathed in time with Elomar, too. The implications horrified Sarra.

  Never had she felt so utterly useless. She was walled and Warded so thoroughly that she sensed not the slightest glimmer from the three powerful Mageborns, even though Cailet’s face, Desse’s posture, and Elomar’s trancelike withdrawal shrieked of magic.

  Silently, her own breathing matched to theirs, she pulled a chair to the other side of the bed. She ached to hold her sister’s hand but didn’t dare touch Cailet, or make any sound, or otherwise indicate her presence. If pressed to identify what she did during the next hours, she would have grudgingly admitted that she prayed. To Caitiri the Fiery-Eyed, Sirrala the Virgin; to Telomar the Patient and Gorynel the Compassionate; to Miryenne the Guardian, to Rilla the Guide—even to Chevasto the Weaver as he had first been canonized: he who held all the beautiful, multicolored threads of life in his hands.

  Sarra watched, Desse worked, Cailet trembled, and Elomar breathed for them all. Finally the old man’s head lifted. The fingers twined in the girl’s hair smoothed limp, disordered strands back into a sleek blonde cap.

  “Ah, child, child,” he murmured. Then, seeing Sarra across the bed, he managed a tiny smile. “She is everything I thought, and even more powerful besides.”

  “Too powerful?” Her voice felt raw, as if she’d been screaming.

  He snorted.

  “Be honest, Gorsha.” This from Elomar, who was pushing himself upright. Sweat beaded his face and he looked one step from the death his posture had imitated, but there was a sort of weary victory in his eyes. “She almost got away from you a couple of times.”

  “Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But at least now she understands that she needn’t run from me. That I’m trying to help.”

  “That you’re freeing her magic,” Sarra said. When Desse slanted a look at Elomar and received a shrug by way of a reply, Sarra sprang to her feet. “You have to! This may be the last chance!”

  “Spare me the cliché, Sarra, it’s unworthy of you.”

  “Not half as unworthy as jealousy of a power that outstrips your own!”

  “You forget yourself!” He straightened as if a sword had been shoved down his throat. “I am First Sword of the Mage Guardians, answerable only to the Mage Captal.”

  “And I am Lady of both Ambrai and Sheve! Moreover,” she added viciously, “all women of your own line being dead, by virtue of your sister’s marriage to my grandmother’s brother—”

  “Sarra, don’t,” Elomar pleaded.

  “—you are answerable to me,” she finished.

  “How dare you!” Desse roared.

  “Spare me the cliché,” Sarra retorted acidly. “You will do as I tell you, Guardian Desse.”

  “You have no right!”

  “I have every right. If you have believed nothing else in your life, believe that I mean what I say.”

  There was the small, hollow sound of wood and strings knocking gently against a solid surface, and then the noise of sarcastic applause. Sarra whirled and nearly spat at the sight of Collan Rosvenir. His lute lay on a table near the door, freeing his palms to slap together over and over again.

  “Amazing!” He sauntered in, still applauding. “Best impersonation of a Blooded First Daughter I ever saw!”

  Why did this man constantly appear where he was neither wanted nor needed? And how much had he heard? Not the crux of it, or he’d react with astonishment not sarcasm. Sarra drew breath to order him out. He paused in mid-clap, mock terror contorting his features.

  “Have I said something amiss? Was the performance meant to be—oh, that’s right, you really are a Blooded First Daughter!” He leaned close and in a loud whisper said, “If you want some good advice, work on the costume. The attitude is perfect, but you can’t do a really convincing job of it in torn trousers and a dirty vest.”

  Sarra took her desire to strangle him and shoved it into her mental box labeled LATER. “I don’t know why you’re here,” she began furiously.

  “No Minstrel ever needs an invitation, Lady. But as it happens, the Healer asked me to come sing again.” Turning to Elomar: “How is she?”

  “Progressing,” Gorynel Desse replied.

  The upward quirk of his brows politely doubted it. “Be that as it may, Taig Ostin says you ought to know one or two things. First, the Captal and the Scholar Mage aren’t doing well.”

  “The Captal—?” Elomar looked at Desse in bewilderment.

  “A pair of Mages brought them here a while ago,” Rosvenir said. “One’s unconscious—has been for days, as I understand it—and the other’s got some sort of heart trouble.”

  The Healer swayed to his feet. “I must go to them.”

  “And I.” Desse pushed himself upright. “Minstrel, be so kind as to sing to the girl until we return.”

  “You haven’t heard the rest of it yet,” he warned as he collected his lute from the table. “Val Maurgen saw campfire smoke coming from the Octagon Court.”

  “More refugees?” Elomar guessed.

  Desse shook his head. “The only Ladder there leads to Ryka Court. No Mage would be fool enough—”

  “You were,” Rosvenir observed. He seated himself in the chair Sarra had vacated, crossed lean legs, and began tuning up.

  “I should have said that it’s a very public place at Ryka Court. It might be innocent, a fire lit by squatters.”

  “No,” Sarra said abruptly. The three men looked at her. “They’re searching for us.”

  “Sarra,” Elomar began, “this is the last place—”

  “Exactly. The very last place. Don’t you see? It’s the only place with Ladders enough to take Mages in and then take them to safety elsewhere. They couldn’t get here by Telo Renne’s Ladder. But there’s one at Ryka that leads to the Octagon Court.” She glared at the old man. “‘Last chance,’ Guardian Desse!”

  “They can’t be certain,” he replied, more to convince himself than as a statement of fact. “They’ll have to move slowly, make sure they’re not caught in any remaining Wards—”

  “Then somebody had better set some!”

  “And you’d better settle down,” Rosvenir advised by Cailet’s bedside. “You’re making her restless.”

  “Go to the Captal,” Sarra ordered the Mages. “Do what you can for him and Tamos Wolvar.”

  “Generosity worthy of a Saint,” the Minstrel remarked.

  She ignored him. “But you must finish with Cailet soon. Alin was barely able to get her through the Ladder a few days ago. She’d never make it now.”

  Elomar nodded and hurried from the room. Gorynel Desse paused a long moment. Then, as the first lilting notes were coaxed from the lute, he gave a mighty sigh and nodded.

  “It shall be as you wish, Lady,” he said.

  “Yes,” Sarra said. “It shall.”

  The Minstrel played song after song, seamlessly, without taking his fingers from the strings even once. This time she felt no enchantment in his music or his voice. All she could do was sit on the cot and stare at her sister’s young/old face and worry.

  An hour passed, perhaps two. Still Collan Rosvenir played and sa
ng, and gradually Cailet relaxed. Sarra couldn’t bring herself to express gratitude even with a glance. It had nothing to do with pride. It was as if she now breathed for Cailet, as if the very beat of her heart was linked to Cailet’s, and if she took her gaze away for one instant she’d lose her only sister.

  They won’t find you, she vowed, wondering how Cailet would react when she understood exactly who “they” were. It won’t happen yet. One day you will meet them—I know it, I feel it—but when you do, it will be with your magic shining around you like a Ward of Caitiri’s own Fire. . . .

  13

  “Put out that damned fire!”

  Auvry Feiran’s order rang in Glenin’s mind as well as in her ears. She flinched in every muscle. Her father used magic so seldom around her that she had forgotten how powerful he truly was.

  Hurrying around a corner, she saw a young Malerrisi throw his cloak onto a pathetic pile of half-burned wood. Smoke billowing around him, he jumped onto the smothered remains of his fire and did an absurd little dance, stamping on the cloak, off-balance, a gawky teenager growing fast into adult height but not yet into adult grace. Glenin repressed a sudden ache of recognition: if she ignored the awkward movements, Chava Allard was very like his father’s brother, Golonet Doriaz. They shared the same tawny coloring and long bones, and though the boy was but fourteen his talent already reminded many of his dead uncle.

  His accomplishments did not, however, include Golonet Doriaz’s self-command. He cringed before Auvry Feiran, who was twice his size and four times his age. The boy dug his heel into a protruding piece of charred wood, slipped, and went down in a sprawl of clumsy limbs.

  “Cold, were you?”

  “I—I’m sorry, I—” He coughed smoke from his lungs. “It won’t happen again—”

  “In this, you are correct.” He raised his voice in a shout. “Lord Keviron!”

  Darvas Keviron ran across the gravel and presented himself with so sharp a squaring of his shoulders that Glenin almost heard his bones snap. Squat and short like most of his Name, he was here because he was expendable; he had fathered no Mageborns, and indeed had fathered no children at all.

  “Young Allard is your responsibility from now on. He doesn’t sneeze without your permission, am I understood?”

  “Perfectly, Commandant. Come with me, boy.”

  Chava scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry!” he said one last time, and hurried in Lord Keviron’s wake.

  Glenin hid her twinge of annoyance at the lack of a Malerris title. Success here might just convince the First Lord to grant Glenin her coveted “Lady.” But Auvry Feiran had once been a Prentice Mage. He would never hear himself called a Lord of Malerris.

  He held out his arm to Glenin, and together they left a side hall of the Octagon Court for what had once been Lady Allynis’s private garden. Glenin glanced up at the sky. Icily clear, painfully blue, no smoke ought to have stained its chill and crystalline beauty.

  The thought took her by surprise; perhaps it was born of her happiness. Not because she had returned home—she cared nothing for that. It was what they would do here that exhilarated her. Victory sang along her nerves. Mage Guardians were dying all over Lenfell, but the real work would be done here by Glenin and Auvry Feiran, fifty Lords of Malerris, and a fourteen-year-old boy whose presence had been ordered by the First Lord himself.

  Glenin knew why. Chava’s burgeoning prowess had attracted notice, and the First Lord now wanted a child by Saris Allard. This honor done her son was a long step toward her bed. Or so he thought. Glenin thought otherwise. And so, she was sure, did Vassa Doriaz—who had not been included on this venture. While his adolescent offspring participated in the greatest action against Mage Guardians since the destruction of Ambrai, back at Malerris Castle the Fifth Lord’s Scissors were snipping at thin air.

  The First Lord’s interference had enraged Anniyas—not because of Chava Allard, because of Glenin. But the command was binding: both father and daughter would go to Ambrai. So Glenin was here rather than confined at Ryka Court, and Anniyas’s fury at the fact exactly matched Glenin’s pleasure.

  And—a thing she admitted only to herself—relief. Equally secret was her understanding that one reason she was here was to make certain Gorynel Desse did not escape again. This was the final test of Feiran’s loyalty to Malerris: the death of his old teacher. No one had to tell her that. Nor was it necessary to spell out the punishment for failure . . . or that she was the one expected to administer it.

  The Commandant of the Council Guard prodded an immaculate boot at the last smoldering bits of wood and fabric. “That idiot boy,” he muttered. “Please the Weaver, no one saw the smoke.”

  “I can’t imagine they’d be looking for it,” Glenin said, taking his arm. “In any case, it was only a few minutes. The chances of their having a sentry posted are slim enough. That someone looked exactly this way at exactly the right time is outside probability.”

  “‘Chance’ and ‘probability’ are delicate things, Glensha.” They walked the weed-strewn gravel path away from the shell of the Octagon Court. “Betrayers, like St. Maidil. There’s a chance of failure. It’s not probable, but Desse is wily as well as powerful. If he escapes again, go at once to Malerris Castle. The First Lord will protect you from Anniyas.”

  “I won’t need protection. We’ll succeed, don’t doubt it for an instant.” She picked her way carefully over the blackened debris that had once been a trellis for climbing roses. “Have the other Ladders here been inspected?”

  “All are dead these many years.” A tiny smile quirked his lips. “When I light a fire, it stays lit.”

  They entered the garden room, where Gerrin Ostin had long ago coaxed rare orchids into magnificence for his Lady’s delight. All the windows were shattered now; bright sun and a chill breeze washed in over collapsed shelves, broken pots, and little iron braziers that had kept the sensitive plants warm.

  “We’ll move on to the Healers Ward this afternoon,” Feiran said.

  “Healer Mages would go there first, I suppose,” Glenin mused. “The Ladders leading there would be familiar to them—assuming those Ladders aren’t in the same state as these. But why can’t we go directly to the Academy?”

  “It’s more convenient this way, my dear.” He reacted to her arched brows with another smile. “There was a Ladder from the Ward to the Academy infirmary. Damage there was not as extensive as elsewhere, so I think it may very well be alive. We can use it instead of climbing over all the rubble.”

  She nodded, accepting the explanation.

  “It’s not only that,” her father added suddenly, seriously, as if sensing that he must justify himself. “We need to secure all other possibly extant Ladders first. All those leading to the Academy are being watched at the other end. Anyone who tries them will be killed. If Desse is there, Glenin, he’s trapped.”

  “Except for this one Ladder at the Healers Ward. I see. Father, what about Bard Hall? Surely it had Ladders.”

  “Only one I know of.” He paused, then finished dryly, “To Ryka Court.”

  Glenin laughed. “And if the one to the Infirmary is available, our appearance will be so sudden he won’t have time to think, let alone escape!”

  “Precisely.”

  “You know, after we’re sure of all the other Ladders, we can take the Academy pretty much at our leisure. No sense making it look too easy—either to Anniyas or the First Lord.”

  Gray-green eyes sparked with amusement. “You have a rather good grasp of tactics.”

  Glenin smiled back, thinking of a saying in the Code of Malerris:

  When you know what to do when there is something to be done—that is tactics. When you know what to do when there is nothing to be done—that is strategy.

  Her father had learned tactics from Gorynel Desse. Unless the old man was equally good at strategy, he and all the Mages with him would be dead before the Equino
x.

  14

  “They’re dying,” Elomar Adennos said wearily.

  “You can’t know that,” Sarra Liwellan protested.

  “I’m a Healer Mage. I know.”

  Collan softened the notes dancing from his lute, hoping to soothe the anguish that had entered with Adennos and Gorynel Desse. But every note he played sounded like a dirge.

  True to First Daughter form, Sarra confronted the old Warrior Mage. “Can’t you do something?”

  “There is nothing to be done.” He sank deeper into the chair, chin lowering to his chest. After a moment his head lifted fractionally and he looked at her from beneath bristling white brows. “Were Tamos’ magic a thing of skin and flesh, I would say it had been burned to the bone. And just as flesh cannot survive such damage, neither can a Mageborn mind.”

  Col had heard the story from Taig—how the Scholar had faced Malerris magic, saving a dozen lives and sacrificing his own. Worthy of a ballad in tribute to such bravery; not for the first time since Verald Jescarin died, Col regretted that his brain was not as facile with words as his throat was with melodies, his fingers with strings.

  Sarra Liwellan still wasn’t finished. “What of the Captal?”

  Elomar Adennos stared at his hands, as if in dull loathing at their uselessness. “While I examined him, his heart spasmed again. I heard it, Sarra. I heard death take another step into his body.”

  “He and Tamos have two days, perhaps three—no more,” Desse finished.

  After the briefest pause, the young woman said, “Very well. It’s nearly sunset. If there’s nothing you can do, you might as well get some rest.”

  Collan let his hands play what they would. He watched Sarra, wondering why this walking icicle had wept uncontrollably over the pitiable girl lying in the bed. He hadn’t meant to spy, he’d merely come back for a dropped pick. But there she’d been, sobbing in Adennos’s arms. He’d been forced to reconsider his judgment of her and this irritated him.