by Melanie Rawn
Is only Truth. You, Mageborn Stranger,
Hold coin and key. The Truth is yours.
Collan was free to go. He’d paid up. She hadn’t. And he knew it as well as she did.
Sarra returned to the balcony. “All right, then,” she muttered, and drew breath to tell a Truth.
The magic here should have sharpened her instincts. She should have had a warning, a twinge in her heart or a twist in her guts. But she was as thunderstruck as Collan when the outer door slammed open and a deep, sonorous voice said, “So. She was right, and there is someone here.”
After that instant’s stunned shock, Collan behaved as if Sarra didn’t exist. He turned to Auvry Feiran, saying, “Come on in. Dinner’s over, but I’m sure the wine jug will be filled up again by now.”
A cold wind swept through the door, and Sarra felt it as a million icy winged things swarming up the stairs. She didn’t dare move for fear shifting shadows below would reveal her presence. She hardly dared breathe, though her heart throbbed a demand for air, more air, she’d faint if she didn’t breathe—
“Thank you, but I believe I’ll decline your invitation. I know what this house is, and what it wants before it will allow one to leave.”
“Oldest platitude in the book,” Collan replied easily. “The Truth will always free you.”
“A tired old saying, I agree. But in this case, appropriate.”
“You won’t come in to get me because you’re afraid of the truth? Or maybe you’ve forgotten what it is.”
There was a brief pause. Then Feiran said calmly, “My understanding of what is true is not shared by the makers of this house.”
“And here I always thought true was true, no matter what.”
Now he sounded amused. “It appears we’re going to have some interesting philosophical discussions, you and I.”
“What?” Col exclaimed, pretending astonishment. “I thought people like you just killed people like me straight off. Snag in the Tapestry, and all that.”
“It may be necessary at some point. But not yet.”
“Imagine my relief.”
Sarra was breathing in short, silent gulps now, no longer in danger of fainting. Still, she felt sick listening to the verbal swordplay.
“You might wish to consider coming outside now,” said Auvry Feiran.
“Come along quietly like a good boy?”
“You’d find the alternative most unpleasant.”
Sarra heard the velvet menace and bit both lips between her teeth to keep from crying out.
Collan’s tone had changed, too. “You can’t come in, and believe me, Commandant, there’s no way in hell I’m coming out.”
The reply was a low, musical chuckle. Sarra remembered it from childhood. Remembered trying to earn it and the smile that went with it. Her father. . . .
“An accurate summation, as far as you know. What you don’t know is that fire can destroy this house as easily and completely as it destroys Ladders.”
Another brief pause.
“I’m not exactly dressed for travel.” Collan gave a casual glance upstairs, as if indicating he was about to go change clothes. For the moment that his gaze caught and held Sarra’s, there was a strangely sweet, almost tender smile in his eyes.
Auvry Feiran said, “I rarely travel by the usual methods.”
“Oh. One of those portable Ladder things?”
“My daughter is an excellent teacher. She would have come herself, but we had no way of knowing who would be here, disturbing its usually placid magic.”
“Do you always waste so much time explaining things?”
“There’s nothing urgent waiting for me back at Ryka Court.”
“Been there, thanks. Good food, lousy service.”
“Is there somewhere you’d rather go?” came the silken question.
“Well, I know a great bar in Isodir. They serve brandy in buckets.”
“I imagine you could use a drink about now. I have a rather good private cellar. Shall we go sample it while you tell me all about the new Captal?”
“New one? What happened to the old one?”
“Oh, I think you know, Minstrel Rosvenir.” Menace slid free of its slithery-soft wrappings.
Sarra could see the muscles of Collan’s broad shoulders tense beneath the green robe. Fire-burnished curls shifted fractionally, as if he’d nearly looked up again and restrained the impulse. Then he shrugged and walked forward, out of her sight.
“It’ll take you about five minutes to find out that whatever you think I know, you’re wrong. But let’s go. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Sarra would never know how long she stood there after the door closed. The cold faded as the hearthfire’s warmth reached out from the bedchamber, promising rest and sleep and peace.
“I am an Ambrai,” she said suddenly, clearly, in a high, strained tone that frightened her. “I am Sarra Ambrai, and the new Mage Captal, Cailet Ambrai, is my sister—” She heard her voice rise to a shout and couldn’t stop it. “—and if that’s not enough Truth for you, then take this one! I’m in love with Collan Rosvenir! Does that satisfy you? Does it?”
Almost sobbing now, she dragged up the robe in armfuls and started down the stairs. Five steps, six, seven—she stumbled the last few risers and flung herself at the door, hauling it open to the cold misted night.
The silence of The Waste stretched before her in all directions, as bleak as its name, as dangerous as the war that had birthed it.
Wind froze the tears on her face. She whimpered, despising the sound and the words that shaped her lips, the plea of a tired, whining child:
“I want to go home.”
Not to Roseguard. To Ambrai.
Truly told, she had nowhere else to go.
20
For the second time in her not-quite-eighteen years, Cailet stood on land her ancestors had ruled. She’d wondered if she would feel a sense of homecoming this time—for, of course, she’d been unconscious during her first arrival in Ambraishir scant weeks ago. There was no soft twinge of nostalgia, no warm sigh of the land welcoming one of her children home. Cailet shrugged, dismissed the absurd disappointment, and turned to wave farewell to the fishing boats that had ferried the Mages and what was left of the Rising across Blighted Bay.
Taig had hoped they’d be set ashore as close as possible to the Brai River, within four days’ walk or so. Even had the winds not been contrary, there was no adequate anchorage that met his wishes. They stood instead on a beach guarded by towering bluffs that were the spur end of the Wraithen Mountains—named Deiket’s Blessing for good reason, for the protection given Ambrai from the acid storms of The Waste.
“Faster to climb than go around,” Elomar said as they finished a meager lunch. He pointed to a dozen or so birds flying north. “Only spindle-shanks can walk the salt marshes.”
Cailet spelled her coffee to near-boiling and watched the long-legged birds on their spring migration to Maidil’s Mirror. They looked ridiculous: winged, green-iced puff pastries dangling broken sticks of chocolate.
“Any hope of Folding a way through?” she asked.
“Captal,” he smiled, “not even you could make solid ground of quicksand.”
“Then we’ve got a problem, Elo. Some of us are old and others aren’t well after being in jail so long. Horses would make the climb much easier for them. But if we had horses, I couldn’t Fold the road.” She squinted up at the cliffs and the layers of hills rising beyond. “And I’m not sure I can Fold whole mountains for so many people.”
Taig swirled grounds in his cup and tossed them in a murky splotch onto the sand. “All you can do is try, Cai. But I think there’s a farming village somewhere around here. We might get horses there.”
Lusira arched both exquisite brows. “Clydie plow-nags with backs as wide as double beds?”
He gave a rueful grin,
the one that always caught Cailet’s heart. “Sorry. No high-stepping Tillinshir grays here, you’re right.”
“I’d settle for a ‘Burry pony,” said Elin. “Horns and all. Two and a half days on that boat, and I’m so stiff I barely made it up the beach! And don’t you dare mention the word ‘bed’ again, Luse!”
“Nothing like exercise,” Elomar continued.
Cailet finished her coffee and pushed herself to her feet. “Then let’s get started, if that’s the Healer’s prescription.”
They had to climb the bluff without benefit of Cailet’s magic. Despite the age of some and the exhaustion of most of the rest, no one fell. There were scrapes and bruises aplenty, but nothing serious. At the top, Cailet cast the Folding spell, trying to analyze what she did while she did it.
It appeared to consist of two separate maneuvers: surrounding the people with one kind of magic, and penetrating the ground ahead with another. The former was easy to maintain once cast. The latter required constant adjustment, pushing ahead and digging down at the same time with every step taken. Working it and experiencing it simultaneously tired her, however, and after a few minutes she stopped observing and simply got on with the job.
It was going to take a long, long time to run through the whole of her new knowledge and find out how and why it all worked.
There were Mages enough to teach her, she told herself as the established spell obligingly Folded without her having to supervise. In fact, her magic was as gleeful in its freedom as a child liberated from classes and chores on a sunny spring day. Scholar Mages, Healer Mages, and Warrior Mages could show her how she knew what she knew, how she did what she did. Yet to judge by the wisps of memory blown up by consideration of magic, she doubted that any Mage now living knew the why of magic.
There were ways to go about learning, she mused, without revealing that she was not Captal in the way others had been for Generations before her. I could ask them to review techniques as if I were testing their knowledge—
—and competence! How insulting! came an instantaneous protest.
I could ask for help in refining particular spells, and sort of work my way around to all of them eventually.
Can you afford to admit that there are things you don’t understand? warned another voice.
Frustrated, she thought, I could sit in on lectures and demonstrations with the Prentices.
And make the teachers feel you’re judging them, while making the students nervous!
Do you suppose you can wait long enough to set up another Academy before you learn how all this works?
She nearly tripped on a fist-sized stone. After a moment’s concentration to spruce up the Folding spell, she returned to the irksome internal dialogue. I know all that! But what can I do?
Your magic works. Worry about the mechanics later, advised one voice.
Does it even matter? asked another, a bit wryly.
It’ll come to you, soothed a third.
If all else fails, said Gorynel Desse, you might try a few honest questions to Mages you trust as friends.
Cailet sighed and felt the road grow steeper underfoot. More magic required; but she had plenty and to spare. All right, all right! she thought at all four of them. Later, then. When I’ve got the time.
Wondering all the while if she’d kept completely private her doubts about ever having the time.
21
All things considered, he’d rather be in Renig Jail.
Even in one of the cells he couldn’t get out of.
The vintage wine Feiran had promised turned out to be spiked. Col knew it the instant he tasted it. He drank anyway. Might as well get it over with.
He figured he knew five really vital pieces of information. In ascending order of importance, they were: Taig Ostin was alive; Sarra Liwellan was alive; Cailet Rille was the new Mage Captal; the Mage Captal possessed the memories and knowledge of Lusath Adennos, Tamos Wolvar, Alin Ostin, and Gorynel Desse—and the girl had the old man’s sword, one of the legendary Fifty.
He also knew he was expected to answer one really vital question, the one for which he had no answer: Where was the Mage Captal now?
To his surprise, all the wine did was send him to sleep. He woke in a white box. There was no bed, no blanket, no chair, no toilet, no sink, no door, and no window. The eight-foot cube was perfectly, seamlessly white. The floor was a single slab of white marble. Walls and ceiling were equally featureless, as if the box had been carved from snow turned to stone.
He was stark naked, freezing cold, ravenously hungry, and just plain mad.
And maybe a little scared, because he knew this room was an impossibility. So they must be using magic on him. How did he defend himself against magic?
He couldn’t. His Wards might, but he couldn’t count on them.
With a long sigh, he stood up. The less of him in contact with that icy floor, the better. The bare soles of his feet made small slapping sounds as he paced his cage, echoing from each wall and up to the ceiling. He heard his breathing quicken, and consciously slowed it down.
Incessant circuits of the white box warmed his blood and loosened his muscles. He noticed after a time that he cast no shadow. Maybe the marble gave off its own light. Some rocks did that. But maybe that was magic, too.
He heard his footsteps become irregular. Arrhythmia displeased his Minstrel’s ear. He began to whistle, then hum, then sing every song he knew. It was quite a list. He spared his voice, holding back on notes he usually sang full-throated. He walked and he sang and it might have been four hours or four years before he started to get tired.
At least in this cage, he could stand, and pace. Not like that other one.
WHAT OTHER ONE?
Why, the one he’d been put in after the wind knocked him into the ditch, of course.
He kept walking. And singing. As Wards dissolved like Wraiths in strong sunshine.
There’d been a cat in the cage before he took up residence. There’d been a woman wearing an armband set with blue onyx that had belonged to his mother who’d sat with him near the hearth, singing. There’d been a long time in a stuffy wagon and then Flornat the Slavemaster had bought him and marked him as Scraller’s.
He’d killed Scraller. He hadn’t really known why at the time. Now he did. And felt renewed energy flush through him, honest pleasure in honest vengeance. He walked faster, and sang another song. The memories flashed past almost too quickly to see, as if someone was changing painted glass slides too fast on a projection wall. Acid storms, The Waste, galazhi, Taguare the Bookmaster and Carlon the Lutenist, and Scraller with his turgid pornographic bedtime stories and his greasy-lipped guests—
—and Gorynel Desse appearing one night in a swirl of white beard and dark robes to take him to Lady Lilen’s in Combel. No wonder he’d instinctively liked her so much when he met her again. He hadn’t even known it really was again.
There’d been long weeks on his own, and the old man popping up out of nowhere in Cantratown, and—and—
Falundir.
He stopped pacing and his eyes filled with tears that froze on his cheeks. The house in Sheve Dark. The songs. The lute, his lute—Bard Falundir’s lute! Evenings by the fire, learning, practicing, striving for his best even though his best would always be mediocre compared to the mastery of the cruelly crippled, tragically silenced Bard. He’d cried over that, remembered how some days he’d run miles into the forest and screamed out his rage at Anniyas—
He screamed it now, a voice-ravaging bellow that ripped his throat raw and sucked all the air from his lungs.
“Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear?” asked a deep masculine voice somewhere overhead.
“Perhaps,” a woman answered. “Let’s give him a little while longer.”
Col heard them, but couldn’t be bothered with trivialities right now. He was remembering. The Wards were gone.
He re
membered walking down the hill to Sleginhold, and sneezing beneath the flowery trellis when Verald Jescarin handed him the Miramili’s Bells. He laughed with genuine joy to know that somehow he’d recalled this friend despite the Wards. He laughed again when he remembered Sela’s pert little face and tasted once again the sticky sweetness of violet candies and his first kiss.
He remembered, laughing with delight—remembered—
“That is what I was waiting for.”
The lid slid off the white stone box.
Leave me alone, damn you! There’s more, I know there’s more to remember—
An old woman stared down at him. Silken waves of graying hair framed a softly plump face. Her lips were parted and moist, her icy-blue eyes avid as a lover’s. The tall, middle-aged man beside her, handsome and thoughtful, wore an expression of concerned intellectual curiosity. Collan glared up at them both, enraged that they had dammed the flood of his remembering.
They didn’t expect his anger. His outcry had provoked comment; the old woman had said his laughter was what she waited to hear. He saw in their eyes that his cold fury surprised them. Aw, for shit’s sake! he thought. They think this silly white room’s made me crazy!
Swift on this realization followed the surety that he’d better act crazy or they’d find another way to do it.
He’d made a mistake by showing them he was furious. But he could use that, improvise on it the way Falundir had taught him to improvise on a single musical phrase. Col gave them what they wanted: insanity. He roared like an enraged bull elk, beat his fists against the wall like a child in a temper tantrum, shrieked curses like a dockworker when the bar runs out of ale.
They watched, leaning on the topmost of three silver rails spanning their side of the box. Their white clothes matched the white wall behind them so that faces and hands seemed to exist independent of bodies. A gleam of satisfaction sparked in the old woman’s eyes as Col elaborated on his theme, and her mouth curved in a uniquely unpleasant smile.
Auvry Feiran was not as easily convinced. He frowned, gray-green eyes shadowed by heavy brows knotted over a long nose. Col recognized him now, with the Wards back in place to hold those other memories away from him again. Auvry Feiran. Former Prentice Mage, Commandant of the Council Guard, Lord of Malerris. Which meant, Col told himself—swearing in genuine pain as he jammed a finger against the wall—that the old woman must be First Councillor Anniyas. To merit this kind of exalted attention, they must think he knew a lot more than he did. He heard his voice crack on another howl, wondering about his chances of pretending to be so crazy that he didn’t remember his own name.