The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  “How difficult for you,” the girl said with elaborate sympathy. “Knowing they bow to him and not you.”

  “Oh, he knows who wields the real power. Not much longer, of course. This year I’ll release and then destroy those disgusting creatures, then take my rightful place as who I truly am. During Rosebloom, I think. My Birthingday gift to myself. But first you’re going to give me a little practice in magic that kills. Hardly a fair contest. You’re bound by that tiresome Mage Guardian ethic, aren’t you? Magic only to defend, never to attack.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  He gritted his teeth. So make an exception!

  As if in answer, the silver rainbows sparkling within the white Mage Globe began to pulse like a heartbeat, with just a tinge of scarlet.

  “Come now,” Anniyas said. “You’re supposed to be the Captal. Impress me.”

  “Let him go,” she insisted. “This is between us, no one else.”

  “My son was a beautiful young man,” Anniyas murmured. “I loved him deeply, and he loved me. I’m in no mood to be civilized.”

  The blood-colored sphere throbbed faster and faster, an almost hypnotic rhythm that caught and sped his own heartbeat before he dragged his gaze away and fixed it on Anniyas. She was rocking lightly back and forth, heel to toe in her white velvet shoes, forefingers rapidly rubbing thumbs at her sides. He waited until he had the timing right—and when she rocked back he surged to his feet, intending to use her own forward motion to propel her off balance and into the vibrating crimson Globe.

  “Collan! No!”

  He heard Sarra’s voice at the very instant he slammed into the solid stone wall of Anniyas’s personal Ward and fell back in an awkward heap. She stumbled a step, but neither fell nor lost control of the sphere.

  “Don’t try that again,” she said without looking at him.

  He felt like laughing aloud. He knew his name again. Collan. The patchwork Wards blew away like cobwebs, and he remembered. Sarra had given him back his name, and his memories with it. And there she was, the fool girl, running from the shadows toward him—clad in an ill-fitting motley of stolen clothes. Once this was all over he’d have to teach her how to dress. He’d refuse to be seen with her otherwise, husband or no husband—

  Anniyas began to turn toward her. The Captal—Cailet—gestured frantically and the white Globe collided with the crimson in a shower of rainbow sparks.

  Eyes bruised by the light, Collan brought his hands up to rub tears away.

  His hands.

  The red sphere was intact. The white sphere had vanished. Cailet was crying out in agony.

  But Anniyas’s magic no longer touched him.

  “Collan! Catch!”

  Instinct brought his hands up—hands that moved and worked and grasped the cool steel of a sword. Gorynel Desse’s sword. One of the Fifty, with magic all its own—even in hands not Mageborn. His hands, strong fingers instantly reversing his grip so the blade lifted, shining bright red. His name, his memory, now his hands and a sword—and he found as he raised it that she had also given him back his voice.

  “Sarra! Cailet! Down!”

  He went for the Mage Globe. He knew he wasn’t supposed to feel anything from the sword; there was no magic in him. But when the blade smote and shattered the shimmering crimson sphere, he felt the shock of the explosion all the way to his spine. Eyes dazzled half-blind, he cursed as fire licked up the steel, up his hands, his arms, his shoulders, his face—a million pinpricks of searing heat that he was sure burned the clothes off his body and the hair off his scalp. It was the Pain Stake multiplied a thousandfold.

  But it was magic, only magic, not real—

  Hell if it wasn’t! A bellow of pain left his throat as flames raced through him, igniting every nerve. For somebody who hadn’t used magic in years, she hadn’t forgotten a thing. The sword trembled in scorched hands, but he hung on, determined to drive it first through Anniyas’s Wards and then through Anniyas.

  Yet as suddenly as the burning began, it ceased. He blinked his eyes free of stinging tears in time to see the sword flicker redly a moment more, then reflect only the misted star-strewn sky and the pure silver of the Ladymoon.

  Anniyas was still on her feet, staring skyward. Paralyzed.

  Collan started for her. Cailet, half-risen from her defensive huddle on the stones, called out, “No! Don’t touch her!”

  He wanted blood. So did the sword. But the Captal commanded and he obeyed. Sarra was suddenly at his side, pressing herself against him. He held her close with his free arm and bent his head, burying his lips in her hair. Cailet joined them, clutching Sarra’s hand. Together they watched Anniyas.

  She worked no magic. She was protected by no Wards. She stood transfixed, head thrown back, gray hair loose of its pins and cascading down her back. From the cool white sphere of the moon floated tendrils of mist. Delicate, descending, spreading across the sky like an opalescent veil, drifting down to hover above the Octagon Court, gathering into a fine silk curtain that rippled gently with a chiming of silvery bells.

  “Wraiths. . . .”

  Collan heard Cailet’s awed whisper and nodded. Sarra slipped an arm around his waist; he held her closer still, wishing he could do the same for Cailet. Especially when she let go of Sarra’s hand and took a step forward, then another.

  Anniyas screamed as the Wraiths drew nearer. Trembling, Cailet backed away.

  “Th-they’ve come for her,” she breathed.

  “Those she killed?” Sarra spoke so softly that Collan barely heard.

  “Those who . . . who did her killing for her.”

  Unquiet spirits, Col thought; vengeful souls. Perhaps Scraller was among them. He rather hoped so.

  Suddenly the First Lord fisted her upraised hands in defiance. “How dare you presume to judge the Warden of the Loom! Go back to the Dead White Forest and be damned! The Captal is mine—”

  She broke off with a shriek as part of the filmy, undulating curtain slipped free of the rest: “Garon—!” As the name left her lips, a spasm wracked her body and she crumpled to the stones of the Octagon Court.

  Cailet was the first to approach her, warily at first, then moving with quiet confidence. She knelt, fingered the pulse at the neck, and sighed. Her silver-gilt hair glinted with the fragile rainbows of the Wraithen assemblage as she glanced up.

  “She’s yours now.”

  The mists withdrew, back to the moonlight, and vanished.

  34

  Behind her, Cailet heard Collan say, “That’s it, then.” For him and Sarra, this was true. Convincing them might take a bit of doing, though.

  Turning, she wondered if they looked as changed to each other as they did to her. Sarra was still Sarra, only more so: more beautiful, more powerful, more vigorously alive than ever. As for Collan—Saints, he looked like a brass trinket buffed and polished in hopes that someone would mistake him for gold. But never had the true gold of him shone more brightly. No one would ever mistake him for a mere Minstrel again. Pure and untarnishable, he was; surely Sarra could see it too, as surely as he could see the love in her eyes.

  Cailet watched, smiling, as the sword clattered to the floor and he took Sarra’s face in his hands. Maybe I won’t have to write the truth in five-foot letters and shove it under their noses after all.

  “Collan—”

  “Shut up,” he said roughly. “If I don’t say this now, I may never get the chance again. I can put more feeling into other people’s love songs than any Minstrel alive. And it’s all faked. That’s the way I wanted it. I swore I’d never let any woman make those songs real for me. But you have. I don’t know how, but you did.”

  Not bad, Cailet thought, nodding approval. Come on, Sarra. Your turn.

  Both dimples appeared. “And when do I get to hear these songs, then?”

  Oh now really! You can do better than that!

  But Co
l seemed to find nothing wrong with this as a declaration. He grinned down at Sarra. “With or without lute? I add—modestly—that I do my best work without.”

  “Frees up the Minstrel’s famous hands,” Sarra agreed, almost purring.

  “Lady,” he murmured, “I’m going to make a song out of you.”

  Cailet began to count. She marveled at their stamina—then worried about asphyxiation. Who stopped kissing whom was a matter of conjecture, but Col was the first to find his voice. Glancing over at Cailet, he drawled, “Y’know, I seem to say this a lot, but—can we please get the hell out of here now?”

  Sarra blinked, needing a moment to remember where “here” was. Then she blushed to the roots of her hair. Cailet laughed at her.

  “Get out of here. I’ll follow in a little while.”

  “Not a chance! We all go now, or we all stay!”

  “Stay?” Col echoed. “Forget it. Leave the bodies for the carrion crows.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” Sarra shook herself free of his embrace. “Glenin’s coming and Cailet means to face her alone!”

  The flash in his blue eyes was of anger, but the flinch in his body was of fear. To hide it, he bent and picked up the sword. But Cailet had seen. Rage shook her. Collan, afraid? Glenin had done things to him—things she’d pay for. Now. Tonight.

  Straightening up, he slid the naked blade through his belt. “If she’s coming, we’re leaving.”

  With a sigh, Cailet nodded. And so relieved were they—and so stunned still by each other—that neither thought to question the ease of her acquiescence.

  Col slung a companionable arm around her shoulders, keeping Sarra close on his other side, as they walked the empty halls to the garden doors. Cailet smiled at the subtle human magic of their happiness. Though whatever spell love might cast, it hadn’t dulled her sister’s wits any.

  “We’ve got over fifty Mages here, Caisha, and if the Bard Hall Ladder still works I think some of them should use it to Longriding, and then go see if anything’s wrong at Ostinhold.”

  “Warrior Mages, if you’ve got any to hand,” Collan said at once.

  “Several. Imi Gorrst can take charge of them.”

  “Nobody better for it,” he agreed. “But make sure a few have good strong Folding spells, so they’ll get to Ostinhold fast.”

  “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”

  Cailet wondered if they heard how they sparked ideas off each other, how well they worked together. Even their steps were matched, boots crunching the gravel path in perfect time as Sarra lengthened her strides and Col shortened his. She banished the smile from her face when Collan glanced at her.

  “I think she was lying to goad you, Cai.”

  She nodded. “So do I. It’s twenty-five days’ hard march from Renig to Ostinhold, over some rough country.”

  “There was a bad storm, too,” Sarra added. “We got caught in it. That would slow them down. But Lady Lilen will need help, and soon.”

  “She’ll have it. We should try to get people to Neele and Isodir as well, and the bigger towns where there’s been fighting.”

  They angled across the weed-wild lawn toward the wallside copse where they’d climbed trees to get in—when? Yesterday? Day before? She couldn’t quite recall, and it didn’t really matter. What counted was now. Tonight. She glanced involuntarily up at the bright white Ladymoon.

  “Of course,” Sarra said. “But first something ought to be done about all these damned Malerrisi. There aren’t enough Mages to find them, and frankly I wouldn’t know how to begin looking.”

  “Without a First Lord,” Collan pointed out, “they have no one to tell them what to do.”

  “Of course!” She smiled dazzlingly. “If we’re lucky, they’ll head back to Seinshir, whimpering the whole way!”

  Cailet almost laughed. So much for love blinding a person to all else.

  “That’s more luck than I’ve had in quite a while,” Collan observed dryly.

  “You’re free, aren’t you?” Sarra retorted.

  They reached the copse, and it was as perfect for Cailet’s purposes as she remembered. “Can we rest a minute? I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. And it’s a long walk back.” She sat on a grassy hillock under a tree.

  “Back where? The Academy? Bard Hall?” Col pulled the sword from his belt, put his spine against the same tree, and slid down it, swordtip digging into the earth between the ridiculous red leather boots.

  Sarra knelt beside him. “No, some houses downriver. Crowded,” she added with a grimace half-lost in the dusk, with the trees shadowing the moonlight.

  “Cozy,” Cailet amended. “Just like Ostinhold when everyone comes for Lady Lilen’s Birthingday. Oh, look—Saint’s Spark! Quick, make a wish!”

  Their faces tilted upward as she pointed to the sky. Collan got as far as “Where? I don’t—” before sliding the rest of the way down the smooth tree trunk, fast asleep. Cailet snatched up the sword before he could endanger anything vital to her sister’s future happiness and progeny.

  Sarra tipped sideways a moment later; Cailet caught her and eased her down so she wouldn’t bruise herself. Pulling her sister closer to the Minstrel, she arranged them side-by-side with Sarra’s golden head on Collan’s shoulder. Then she tugged Desse’s black cloak free and draped it over them both.

  Standing, stretching, sighing for the furious scold she’d receive later for her trick, she gazed for a time at Gorsha’s sword. No, better not. She’d been telling herself that she didn’t intend to kill—but the sword, spelled to work the will of the Mageborn who wielded it, would know if she lied.

  Still, she couldn’t help but touch it. Hold it. Feel it resonate with power ready to do her bidding. Too much temptation. She left it within Col’s reach, and paused to smile at the sleepers.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “But I love you both, so much.”

  Boots silent in the tall, thick grass, she ran back to the Octagon Court to meet her other sister and finish it.

  35

  From Anniyas’s empty office at Ryka Court, Glenin used the velvet Ladder to what had been her own room when a child. The Double Spiral was too obvious. Besides, she would wait while Anniyas wore the new Captal down, tiring her out. Glenin’s own task would be that much easier. How to get Anniyas out of the way presented a problem, but doubtless something would occur to her.

  As she tested the depths of night for magic, her wary senses were buffeted by things she had never felt before. Wild, frightened, ferocious things, not magic but some sort of energy that mimicked magic. Her hands went protectively to her belly. Her son was serenely undisturbed, sleeping in her dark warmth.

  He ought to be born in this palace, she thought as she picked her way to the outer corridor. A Lord of Ambrai, scion of a family that scandalized Lenfell by the favors lavished on its sons. Easy enough to see why: the Ambrai women were not great breeders. Three children was the most any had managed in the last fifteen Generations. Some had none at all. Yet somehow the line had survived, each First Daughter producing a First Daughter all the way back to the Fifth Census. Glenin had sacrificed her own to the dictates of the Lords of Malerris—to Anniyas, with her tender, hypocritical words of comfort—but she was still young. A daughter next time, she promised herself. Though she couldn’t imagine loving any child as passionately as she loved this son.

  She took a back stair to the ground floor. It was deepest night, the Ladymoon high over the Octagon Court, and so quiet she fancied she could hear the baby’s heartbeat. Imagination also whispered how dreamlike this was, how much the stuff of mysterious magic. This idiocy she scornfully dismissed. Dreams and undisciplined imaginings were for fools and cowards who didn’t know how to make life do what they wanted it to.

  She made her way through the palace, intent on keeping her magic under tight control. Surprise was one of her most potent weapo
ns. Neither Anniyas nor the new Captal knew she was coming. She was, in effect, a walking secret. Nothing more powerful, nothing more lovely, than a secret, she told herself as she passed silently along the mostly roofless halls toward the Double Spiral—where she sensed magic as a veteran sailor senses dangerous rocks through fog.

  Moonlight washed Anniyas with curious kindness, smoothing the marks of age on her face, turning to carved silver the waving lengths of her unbound hair. But nothing could soften the horror in her staring, dead blue eyes.

  Glenin gazed down at the corpse for a long time, puzzled by what she felt. Certainly not sorrow or pity. Neither was there satisfaction, nor the sense of lightness and completion that justice done engendered. Sorting emotions, she decided that what she really felt was cheated.

  Tradition demanded trial by magical combat, the First Lord answering the challenge of a younger Malerrisi—perhaps stronger, perhaps not. Anniyas claimed she’d dealt with several in her youth, so thoroughly that no one had sought her place in over thirty years. Glenin had planned to wait until her son was born and she had her full strength back. But there would be no challenge to combat now. The Captal had cheated her of Anniyas’s death.

  Still, she supposed she ought to be grateful: her son was safe from his grandmother. But the Captal had meddled for the last time in Malerrisi affairs. Glenin would prove herself worthy of succeeding Anniyas as First Lord by killing the Captal instead.

  Strange, though—the blood on Anniyas’s hands, but not a single wound on her body. Glenin knew better than to hope it was the Captal’s blood. Perhaps it was the Minstrel’s? She moved silently to the Double Spiral, folding the velvet Ladder over her arm.

  The smell of blood was strong. Patterns of dark smoke stained the white marble interior—but even as she peered within they changed. Not smoke. Smoke didn’t smell like this, or trickle slowly down a wall.

  Glenin backed away from what was on the floor. Garon had often asked to be taken through a Ladder. It seemed his mother had finally granted his wish.