The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  The Wraith coalesced, tall and black and terrible: Gorynel Desse. Glenin fell back, one foot on the velvet Ladder. No Blanking Ward sprang up around her, canceling all other magic; the furious crimson sphere erupted in yet more flashes toward her father’s sprawled body.

  “You can’t have him back!” she cried. “Not him, not Cailet—they’re mine!”

  The Globe attenuated to a spear of flung magic, slicing through Gorynel Desse’s Wraith and Auvry Feiran’s up-raised arm toward Cailet. The tip of it touched her, and she screamed.

  So did Glenin, holding her belly as if the magic had pierced her womb. She swayed, gasping, both feet on the Ladder now. The Ward gathered. She vanished.

  Cailet felt a hideous burning in her side. Her black tunic and shirt were rent open along the ribs, edges smoldering. Half her breast was gone.

  Gorsha’s Wraith hovered beside her. She looked up at him, then down at the bloody charred mess on her hand. “Should’ve included . . . a Healer . . . in your Making,” she managed. She took a breath, whimpering as her ribs caught fire, and forced herself to sit up. Painfully she tugged Miram’s scarf from her waist and pressed it to the blackened, suppurating burn.

  A hand—a real one, not Wraithen—touched her knee. “Cailet. Forgive me.” He crawled a little nearer. His right arm was a twisted ruin, hanging by a few white sinews just below the shoulder. There was little blood, the wound cauterized by incandescent magic.

  “Lied to Glenin,” he said. “If I’d known. . . .”

  “Would you—” Breath caught in her side like a knife, and she bit her tongue against the pain. New tears sprang to her eyes. “Would you have made me the Malerrisi?” she whispered.

  “No.” He very nearly smiled. “Would’ve . . . stayed.”

  The anguish of that merged in her chest with the physical agony. She locked her left arm over the bandage, pressing it to her wound, and freed her right hand so she could touch her father’s face. “I believe you,” she murmured. Not looking up, she said, “Gorsha. Find Sarra. I need her.”

  He hesitated, green eyes ablaze, then shook his head.

  “Go!” she ordered, Captal to Mage.

  His head bent in submission, and he disappeared. Surely she only imagined the words, Auvry forgive me, drifting on the moonlight.

  “Cailet . . . take my hand. Tighter. Close your eyes . . . that’s it . . . yes. . . .”

  She felt a tingle of magic flow smooth as water up her arm to the shoulder and across her chest to center on the wound.

  “Father, what are you doing?” The pain was already halved.

  “Never much of a Healer . . . can’t restore . . . but at least I can—”

  She tried to snatch her hand away, frightened. But his grip on her fingers was like iron.

  “Let me, Cailet, please—”

  She would have fought, yet even as she tensed to pull away again, his hand went lax and he sank down onto his side. It was the last of his magic, and they both knew it. Cailet breathed deep with scarcely a twinge. When she took the scarf away, there was no more blood.

  “Glenin,” her father whispered.

  Cailet knelt, took his head onto her knees, stroked his face. “I’m sorry. I should have found a way to make her see—”

  “Someday . . . perhaps. But you must see the . . . the shadow, Cailet. She is your shadow . . . the only dark that can touch you. . . .”

  And I am the only light that can touch her.

  As if she had spoken aloud, he nodded.

  And died.

  38

  The first thing he heard was a voice like the rustling of the wind. But it was a bizarre thing, because while he heard the wind with his ears, he heard the voice inside his head.

  Silly girl, sleep-spelling them almost into a coma—! “First Rule of Magic” indeed! Collan! Wake up!

  He was much too comfortable to follow orders. A warm, sweet armful snuggled at his side with her head on his shoulder, and the grass was soft beneath him, and sleep had always been his second-favorite activity when lying down.

  The voice wouldn’t let him. Collan! Open your eyes!

  He cracked an eyelid and saw nothing. “Go ‘way,” he muttered, and buried his lips in silky hair.

  Collan!

  He knew that voice. He jerked upright, hand instinctively groping for knife or sword—closing around a fierce example of the latter—while Sarra, tumbled from her cozy nest, began to swear.

  Col hardly noticed. Just out of reach in the moonlight was another of those things that had come for Anniyas. But when he squinted, this one took on the hazy shape of Gorynel Desse. But the voice hadn’t sounded anything like his.

  “What the hell—?”

  The voice spoke again, from just to the other side of Sarra.

  Wake up and polish your wits, boy, said Falundir inside his head. Cailet needs you.

  “Collan?” Sarra raked her hair back with both hands. “What’s—oh, shit! I’ll wring Cai’s neck for this!”

  Falundir sat back on his heels. The Wraith faded away. Collan shook his head to clear it.

  “Did you—damn it, I heard you!” he told the Bard.

  A smile teased the dark face, and the blue eyes danced with merriment.

  “What are you talking about?” Sarra demanded. “Col, wake up. We’ve got to find Cailet.” Turning to the Bard, she said, “If you know where she is, lead us to her. Hurry!”

  The old man helped her up and they ran hand-in-hand for the Octagon Court. Cursing, Collan snatched up the sword and followed. By the angle of moonlight, less than an hour had passed since he’d last come this way. How much trouble could the kitten get into in so short a time? Plenty, if Glenin Feiran had shown up as Sarra believed she would.

  He felt the wind on his face and tore off the disgusting coif to let it rinse his hair clean of sweat. Where the hell had Falundir come from? And the Wraith of Gorynel Desse? And how had he heard the Bard’s voice—and known it was his voice?

  Cailet was perfectly well and perfectly calm when she met them at the garden doors. Tired, Col thought critically, but unharmed. Sarra flung her arms around her and alternated epithets with endearments, threats of retaliation with anxious questions about her safety. Collan looked around suspiciously. No Glenin. No Desse. No nothing, just the empty Octagon Court beyond the doors.

  “All right, that’s enough,” he said at last. “Are you going to tell us what happened, or make us guess?”

  “I’ll tell you everything later,” Cailet promised. “Right now there’s too much to be done. Bard Falundir, I’m very glad you’ve come. You and Sarra and Collan please go to the Double Spiral, there’ll be Mages arriving from Ryka any minute now. Go meet them, and—”

  “Mages?” Sarra echoed, thunderstruck.

  “From Ryka?” Collan added.

  “Didn’t I mention that?” Cailet smiled. “We won.”

  “How?” Sarra demanded.

  “They’ll tell you. For now, I’ve got to call the other Mages here, and—” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’re here, and in a minute they’ll find Anniyas. Take care of them for me, Sarra, I don’t have time right now.”

  “Cai, wait—what about Glenin?”

  “She’s gone. We won’t hear from her again for—oh, years and years, I expect. I’ll explain everything later,” she repeated. “Take the Mages out to the front courtyard. Leave Anniyas’s body, I’ll deal with it. Go on, hurry. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  And with that she ran back inside.

  “When I catch up with her again,” Sarra muttered, “I’m going to—”

  “What?” Collan asked mildly.

  “Something will occur to me, I’m sure. She may be Mage Captal, but she’s still my little sister, and—”

  “What?” he said again in a totally different voice.

  Falundir did something remarkable then. He be
gan to laugh.

  Sarra cast him a calculating look, then grinned. “I’ll tell you later. Come on, Col. They’ll have found Garon Anniyas and—”

  “You’ll tell me now!” He turned a glare on the Bard. “And what’s so damned funny?”

  Falundir gestured gracefully at Collan himself, still chuckling.

  Sarra tugged Col’s hand. “There’s no time right now. Don’t you hear them in there?” But then she paused, looking up at him with limitless black eyes. “Col . . . it’s a secret. About me and Cailet, I mean. I swear I’ll—”

  “—tell me later,” he finished in disgust. “Why am I surprised? You two sound exactly alike, truly told. Come on, First Daughter. After you.”

  He bowed her through the door, and for the sheer revenge of adding to her astonishment, walked the prescribed two paces behind her all the way to the Double Spiral Stairs.

  Falundir followed them, silent as a Wraith, but Col knew he was still laughing.

  39

  Cailet stood over her father’s body, wondering why she couldn’t weep for him. She ought to; she felt that; but she couldn’t.

  “You will. I daresay you’ll cry for him more than for me.”

  She rounded on Gorynel Desse. He was not as he’d been in the landscape of black glass, but not the Wraithen wisp of before, either. Insubstantial, yes, and beyond her physical touching; she could see the line of turquoise octagons on the white wall behind him. But he was nearly as he had been in life, in youth, the vibrant, black-haired, green-eyed Warrior Mage. First Sword of the Captal’s Warders. Her protector, her defender, her teacher.

  “You damned son of a Fifth!” Cailet clenched her fists, wishing she could pummel him as she had during the Making. “You let him die!”

  “There was nothing I could have done. And he wanted to die, Cailet. Glenin saw his defense of you as betrayal of the Malerrisi, and most especially of her. I say it was a return to the man he once was. But . . . others will decide.”

  She didn’t understand and didn’t want to. “You let him die and you let her do that to me. Why? Because I didn’t do what you always meant me to?”

  “That was your own interpretation. Glenin is Malerrisi to her fingertips. The only person who thought she could be convinced otherwise is you.”

  “Then why?”

  A quiet sigh. “It was never meant to happen like this.”

  “Why didn’t you help me? I needed you—”

  “Everything we are was there for you to use.”

  “So what happened is my fault?”

  “No. Mine. Caisha, I couldn’t stop her. Am I a living Mage Guardian, to counter Malerrisi magic? It’s my fault and my shame that I thought the Bequest would be enough to protect you. I never believed Glenin could do such things to her own Blood.”

  “Neither did he.” She gestured to her father’s corpse. “You were both wrong. And I’m the one who paid for it.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “Never.” Cailet turned her back on him, shaking. She rubbed at the ache in her ribs, avoiding the place where a Ward concealed the damage from prying eyes. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “I don’t need you anymore.”

  “One day you will. I promise I’ll be there.”

  “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “No,” he said, and his voice was wry. “I would never presume, Captal.”

  After a moment she asked, “What about the others? Or are they gone?”

  “Their knowledge and experience are yours. But they took their Wraiths with them when they died. For my own part . . . what I knew, you know. But what I was, you will no longer be, not even in small part. I’ll miss you, though I doubt you’ll miss me.”

  “You’re right. I won’t.”

  “Just the same, Caisha. . . .”

  She flinched as something brushed her shoulders and her hair, like hands and lips bestowing a final caress.

  “Remember how much I love you,” the Wraithen voice whispered. And then he was gone, fading into a brief whispering wind.

  She half-turned, speaking his name. How could he say he loved her, and let Glenin do what she had done?

  Her gaze fell on her father’s body. He had stopped it. He had protected her. Died for her. She felt tears begin in her eyes—no time, not now. She could hear voices nearby. She had already disposed of Anniyas. She had to get her father’s body out of here before they found him.

  She had no strength left for the burden. But from deep in her mind came a spell, and for the first time it felt only of her own magic: certain, capable, calmly knowing. She cast it onto the body and watched—surprised, unsurprised—a thin, nearly transparent film of white-silver magic appear. It hovered above the body for a moment before wrapping it like a shroud.

  With a simple Ward that made her Invisible, and an even simpler Folding, she carried her father through deserted corridors to the gardens and then to the riverbank as easily as if his tall body weighed no more than a child’s.

  Part Three

  Dreams

  1

  It took half the night, but every Mage in Ambrai finally arrived at the great circle outside the Octagon Court. There were freed Mages from Ryka, too, and an amazing number of people avowing they’d been with the Rising all along. Flera Firennos, looking nothing like the senile ancient Sarra had met last year, greeted her with a sparkle in her eyes and a grin on her lips.

  “So many years, such a good joke—I’m almost sorry it’s come to an end! How I wish I could’ve seen Anniyas’s face. What happened to her, by the way?”

  “The Captal is taking care of things,” Collan interposed smoothly. “Lady, may I offer you a chair? Some wine?”

  They’d found a few sticks of furniture in the same storerooms where last night Sarra had slept on a Cloister rug. Pier Alvassy had brought the wine—great oaken casks from some cellar out in the suburbs, brought here in rickety carts drawn by highly offended riding horses belonging to Tiomarin Garvedian—Lusira’s cousin, and nearly her equal in beauty—and Tio’s fifteen-year-old son, Viko.

  As Collan went to fetch the required items, Councillor Firennos said to Sarra, “Charming boy. But do choose his clothes yourself from now on. Those scarlet trousers! Most regrettable. He needs something fashionable, but not quite so. . . .”

  “Flashy?” Sarra suggested, feeling a trifle giddy. “Flamboyant? Florid?”

  The old lady giggled. “Flagrant!”

  Sarra laughed for the first time in what seemed years at the thought of telling Collan how to dress. “I’ll have a word with him,” she promised.

  “There’s a good girl. And one day when we’ve time, you must tell me where you found him.”

  “In a whorehouse,” she replied. “Excuse me, please, Lady Flera. I need to talk to Healer Adennos.”

  Who wasn’t easy to find in the middle of the celebrations. Someone had kindled a bonfire in the circle center, and Sarra wondered if the older Mages were reminded as painfully as she of other fires at Ambrai. At last she saw Elo: dancing with Lusira to the lutes and mandolins and improvised drums of a spontaneous orchestra.

  Before she could approach him, however, she was spun around and clasped in Collan’s arms. “This is my dance, I believe,” he drawled. “This one, and all the others for as long as we’re both still able to walk.”

  “But—Cailet—”

  “She said she’d be here, and she will. Sarra, we’ve won. Enjoy it.”

  Yes, it seemed they’d won. But she hadn’t been part of it, hadn’t even known of it until she and Col met the three Councillors who had been part of the Rising almost since its inception. They had a lot of explaining to do, and though she knew it was childish, she deeply resented her lack of participation in the pivotal event of the age.

  “Pay attention,” Col admonished. “That’s the second time you’ve stepped on my feet.”

  “Third.”


  Truly told, she had been in the thick of things. Gathering Mages with Alin and Val; provoking the first real change in inheritance laws in a dozen Generations; helping Mages escape; and, most importantly, arguing Gorynel Desse into giving Cailet her magic. It wasn’t lack of participation, she decided. It was lack of perspective. Of planning. Of making moves she understood to be strategic advances toward a defined goal. She’d done all sorts of things without a clue as to what they’d get her—besides another day or week of life.

  It was a hell of a way to run a revolution.

  All the others had done was wait for the right moment. Tonight had been perfect. Over a hundred Mage Guardians in custody at Ryka Court; the Legion absent; the Council Guard diminished; everyone who was anyone celebrating Garon Anniyas’s Birthingday in the Malachite Hall. They would have been fools to pass it up. And so here many of them were—leaving selected powerful Mages and officials back in Ryka, of course, to secure the government—dancing, singing, drinking, and in general behaving as if the night just passed were Kiy’s, not Sirrala’s.

  “Stop thinking so loud—you’re ruining the music. And why are you thinking at all? What happened to romance? You should be—”

  “—simpering like an idiot with the thrill of dancing in your arms?”

  “Something like that,” he replied, chuckling.

  “Oh, go gallop Imi Gorrst around the bonfire a while. I’m thirsty, anyhow.”

  “Good. Maybe a few drinks will get you in the mood.” Steering her to the carts where wine casks were rapidly emptying, he left her with a bow and, “With your permission, First Daughter—or without it!”

  Granon Isidir sidled up a moment later, proffering a filled crystal goblet. “Will you honor me, Lady, by sharing?”

  The frothy bubbles should have been chilled, but they went down with a smooth, expensive tingle. “Thank you. Not enough cups to go around?”

  “Not nearly. I brought this with me from Ryka Court.”

  “Admirable foresight, Domni Isidir.”