Her tone changed on the last word.
That night, I began a new castle exploration. I was not about to begin replacing wards until I understood the entire structure of their magic. It was easy enough to see that most had been laid around the mage’s tower, going outward like the spokes of a wheel. There were so many that surely I could use a tiny spell just to illuminate the system.
Until then, I’d been careful to avoid the area everyone called “the old tower.” This massive round structure was jammed awkwardly between the main building and the garrison, where I’d never set foot. The tower was at least four centuries old. In the old record, it was termed the Harskialdna Suite. My first foray was just to walk its extreme perimeter, sensing the wards.
Here is where I must begin discussing magic. Those mages about to sit in judgment over me will see the attached set of spells in specific; the scribes who read this testimony will not know what I’m talking about.
I am going to resort to metaphor, color and chain. I discovered the most amazing series of interlocking links protecting the Sigradir’s chambers, surpassed only by those protecting the king’s. These chains, or rings of chains, were also layered so deeply that I detected seven different hands. Maybe more beneath. Older spells were colder colors, the blue of the ocean, shading to the pale silver of ice. Newer spells glowed red like the heart of a fire. I would not accomplish my task soon. It would take at least a year, probably more.
So, where to begin? With the most recent spells. Only when those were adjusted could I dare to go deeper. And I would begin as far away from the castle as possible, in hopes that adjusting the city wards would not alarm the Sigradir.
However, after an entire day spent walking around the city and following the newest chain of spells, I discovered that the most recent ward entwined the city and the castle… and the lock for the entire interlace of spells was strongest at the tower.
It took a week to comprehend the structure, and then to duplicate the lock in memory before I dared to unlock and replace it.
The rest of that day, and the day after, I used all my skills to remain unnoticed, dreading a magical (or military) summons. When there was no outcry I ventured more bravely, working rapidly to dissolve the entire ring and replace it with a stronger, neater structure. The work was exhausting, and that ring was only one out of thousands forming hundreds of interlocking chains that were further connected by interlocked Venn-knots of protective spells.
But I had succeeded in completing one. I had done the work of a real mage. What did that make me? A scribe attempting to be a mage, I thought as I walked the upper corridor on the third night. It was late. Marlovens retired early and rose before dawn. At this late hour, the king’s hall was guarded only by a pair of roving sentries.
I was so certain that I was alone that I nearly ran straight into the king and his mage as I passed the rooms that were to be the nursery.
I heard voices inside. An unknown voice said, “… that the book exists, but if it does, it’s far away in the land of the Venn. And it will be hidden well, as they are forbidden by treaty against the performance of any kind of magic. It is the only source of that set of spells, I promise you, Haldren-Harvaldar.”
The king’s raspy, gaspy voice was immediately recognizable, “Get it, Andaun! Get it! You must find out who has been tampering with your magic any way you can. It has to be a conspiracy, and I will flay whoever is behind it.”
I backed away and fled, sick with terror. My work had been detected!
The next day, I decided to avoid the castle altogether and study the city wards. I would dare nothing until I understood the entire structure—and how, if possible, to work without detection. I planned to begin at the castle’s outer perimeter, at the other end of the great parade court between the castle and the high wall of the academy, and work outward from there.
I sloshed across the rainy courts behind the castle, ignored my old token-making site, and ventured into new territory. At the perimeter of the garrison I was stopped by unfamiliar guards.
“I’m the Haranviar’s first runner,” I said.
They didn’t stir. Their swords prevented me from moving forward. My heart hammered against my ribs, and my mouth dried: I’d been caught, not by magical wards, but by stumbling into one of the king’s guard perimeters under specific orders.
A guard was sent off and, not long after, the king himself appeared, gasping for breath. “What’s this?” He peered at me, and his face changed from suspicion and anger to wariness. “This is one of the peacocks,” he said to the guards. And to me, “What are you doing here?”
“The tunics,” I said. “For the tapestry. The princess—the Haranviar—asked me to observe the guards’ formal tunics, so we can draw them.” This was entirely true, but it had happened two days before. It was the least suspicious excuse I could think of.
The king waved me aside impatiently. “Go on, go on. Tell the watch captain to summon a pair in formal gear.” And to me, “No one is permitted here but my guard. If you are sent on an errand here, you must ask a runner to accompany you.”
The swords lifted. I passed one way, and the king the other, coughing and muttering.
My skin crawled. I abandoned my real task and, under the eyes of the watchful guards, toiled out into the rain to the command side of the garrison, where I wasted my own morning and that of two young guards who posed for me in the heavy, long, quilted black-and-tan tunics that they wore for their formal Convocation. When I’d made the sketches, I returned to Lasva’s chambers.
She looked at me in surprise. “I already have these,” she said. “Pelis did them night before last. Did you not see?”
Blushing mightily, I said that I hadn’t. As I added my sketches to the pile on the great table, Pelis whispered, “You did not think my sketches good enough?”
“I forgot you made them,” I returned, full knowing how stupid that sounded as she had given them to me on her return.
For the remainder of that week I confined myself to study and review. There was far more danger than I had thought, but why? I did nothing immoral, illegal, or threatening to the welfare of the castle inhabitants. The danger was entirely in the king’s imagination.
I had detected seven hands involved in the creation of the interlocking chains of magic around Choreid Dhelerei (and my walk hinted that there were more, here and there, like knots in a grain of wood). Was it possible the king’s fear was based on some hidden truth? In other words, was one of the seven hands a Norsundrian?
I wanted to know, but I also wanted to do. The potential elegance of the structure of chains, so hidden from everyday eyes, appealed to me as strongly as once had the most perfectly written manuscript, embellished with gold leaf flourishes.
Was it distance from the city that would keep me undetected, or speed? During the next week, I practiced on the least important set of spells, the water-cleaning spell at the stable. I could not imagine the elderly Sigradir prowling the stable to test his water-cleaning wards. I practiced until I was so fast that there was scarcely any time between the breaking of the spell and the establishing of a newer, stronger chain. Now I held the magic more firmly and rarely got that sense of dangerous heat.
The day before Restday, I was in the staff dining hall eating the midday meal when we heard the thunder of horse hooves.
Everyone moved to the open windows to look into the enormous stable yard below, where a double-column of riders galloped into the yard at top speed, reining in almost nose to tail. It was an impressive sight: the perfect control, the lances on the foremost riders never wavering, so the yellow and silver banner lifted freely in the breeze.
On one side of me, a runner snorted. “Look at the mud on those yellows.”
An off-duty guard said, “Typical Yvanavar strut.” She turned away, muttering low-voiced to another woman, “… must be a hot ride in the saddle. Why else would she choose him?”
“Tdiran was always…”
Their voices
were subsumed under a louder male conversation on my other side, about the forebears of the horses. I remained long enough to observe that the host wore their formal battle tunics rather than their regular riding clothes. As the handsome Danrid Yvanavar dismounted and stalked toward the tower that led up to the governmental chambers, leading a train of warriors and personal runners, I understood that this was some kind of political mission, perhaps the equivalent of arriving at Lily Gate at the Hour of the Crown, with musicians in attendance, strumming historical airs.
Judging from the resulting sense of tension, the significance was more dire.
The next morning after breakfast, I found Lasva on her knees in the room that had been set aside for the tapestry. The loom had been built, and the warp was ready. At last Lasva was happy with the drawing and had begun stippling it onto the undyed warp yarn with ink. As customary in Colend, she’d begun with the border.
When I entered, she said, “Let me just finish this row, then we can take up our fans. I’m eager to begin the weft work.” She indicated the table full of yarns waiting behind us, some of the colors having traveled across the entire continent before Nifta, who was our expert in threads and fabrics, was satisfied.
Pelis was in the process of setting the yarn balls in baskets according to hue.
“This fox face is so strange,” I said, putting my finger to the central figure in the border pattern, which was made up of various symbols used by Marlovens over the years. “It looks a little like an eagle from one way, and a fox from another.”
“I thought it was a lion at first,” Pelis said, her head tipping to one side, then the other.
“Here’s what astonished me,” Lasva said as she measured out a very complicated Venn knot. “My discovery that Ivandred’s great-grandfather, who reunited the kingdom, was everywhere hailed as the true king.”
“So romantic!” Pelis exclaimed sardonically, eyebrows aslant, and in Kifelian, “It’s amazing any of them get born.”
“How much of it really happened and how much was rewritten by the victors?” I asked, catching myself after I’d spoken in Kifelian.
Lasva gestured Harmony—not quite a rebuke—and she continued in Marloven. “They tend to burn a great deal of their forebears’ records. It has been quite an expedition, to piece out the missing years. Yet the archive is full of records detailing the lineage of their horses, and the patrols made, and exact countings of people, horses, and animals found there.”
“I thought the idea of ‘true kings’ was confined to the Sartorans,” I said, “—the belief that there must be a Landis on the throne of Sartor. We Colendi certainly never made any such claim.”
“Lirendis are traditional monarchs.” Lasva fluttered her fingers in mockery, then put hands on hips. “I’ve tried to combine all the symbols that evoke kingship. There are so many! Like Khanivar’s marmot, emblematic of the Khani family, who came from—”
The door banged open, and guards clattered in, swords drawn, but held point up. Behind them came the king, his face waxen as he looked around, then the hard, almost mad suspicion corrugating his face eased slightly when he saw the tapestry loom.
We all stood, hands over our hearts.
“Where is my son?” the king demanded.
Lasva spread her hands, eyes wide in surprise. “I do not know, Haldren-Harvaldar. Is he not riding somewhere in the north?”
The king went out again, followed by his guards.
Lasva set aside her drawing tools and signed for me to follow to her inner room, where we took up our fans.
Once across the room, then back again, in silence. Then she whispered in Kifelian, “Ivandred warned me that if I beget a child, his father might seek an excuse to kill Ivandred in one of his fits of anger.”
“Why?”
“Because an infant would be easier to control.” She flicked the fan toward Thorn Gate and said in our language, “Perhaps you did not know, but Ivandred’s sister told me that their father killed his own father the day he came of age.” She sped up the pace.
Whirl, slash, whirl, slash. To the wall and back we stepped, fans snapping and cutting the air. “How do you educate a future king?” she said finally. “I never thought about any of these things before. I want this child to be civilized, to understand the necessity for peace. To understand love. Yet if it’s a boy, he must survive in this…” Her voice trailed off.
Snap, snap, slash! Four times she whirled and struck, ripping the cloth in a perfect cut. Then we took the cloths down, she handed me two, and we went to sit in the next room to stitch them up again. When she spoke again, it was in Marloven. About plays.
FIVE
OF LIGHTNING RUTILANT
Z
athumbre is the Colendi term for the breathless, charged air when the sky is tumbling with lurid clouds and you know that lightning is about to strike but you do not know where. Our words, as usual, come from the Sartoran (zathre) but as usual there is an added meaning: the charged atmosphere of high, uneven, violent emotion, signified in the intensifier umb. In Colend, violent emotion might be expressed in a fan of contrasting colors snapped open to shock the eyes, or in the arrow, that is, a deliberate straight line walked through a gathering, paying no attention to the proper deference. Both, implying transgression, will cause the susurrus of whispers like the rain after thunder. We even have a term for the wake of whispers after a moment of zathumbre.
With the arrival of Danrid Yvanavar, we lived in a state of zathumbre. The attack on the bridge, the Jevair imposters, had formed the context for Marloven life: anticipation of not just emotional but physical violence.
But life must be lived, and we began the tapestry. We all behaved with strict attention to detail, with soft voices and deferential politeness, but the storm broke, as storms will.
Storms are experienced differently, depending on where you are when the clouds roll overhead. For some, this storm had begun years ago. Perhaps even generations. For us Colendi, it began with the king’s summoning Lasva.
She set aside her ink and stippling pen, then cast me a look, her lips tight, her pupils huge. “Attend me, first runner?”
I set aside my yarns (for I was embroidering in the tiny details that cannot be woven) and followed her to the throne room.
Ah-ye! How I remember the sharp smell of male sweat on that heavy, cold air, the shifting eyes of the guards as we followed the king up onto the marble daïs. Before we could take our places, once again the cobblestone streets rumbled with hundreds of hooves.
The king paused, one step on the daïs. He swayed, then jerked his hand at the guards. “Alert,” he rasped, the single word sending him into a fit of coughing.
As some guards unsheathed weapons, moving closer to the throne, others ran to the doors to shut and bar them, staking position at either side with their spear-banners held at the ready. The king dropped heavily onto his cushioned throne, snorting in his breath.
Lasva sank with swift grace onto her cushion, head bowed, palms on her thighs. I took my place behind her, distracted by how purple the king’s huge ears looked, contrasting with the paleness of his hair. Why would I notice such things when I felt danger all around me? Perhaps my fleeing wits caught on any little thing they could comprehend, rather than be swept away entirely by my helplessness before the terrifying sense of imminent danger.
The king drank from the beaten gold wine cup waiting beside him and straightened up, then he beckoned Danrid forward. But before he could speak, a loud rapping on the door echoed through the vast stone chamber.
“Who hails?” one of the door guards called, with a quick glance toward the throne.
“Ivandred,” came the prince’s voice, clear in spite of the thick iron-reinforced wood.
“Let him in. But only—” the king began, then pawed at the air in the direction of the door as he began coughing again.
The doors were opened, Ivandred walked in, mud-splashed to the waist. He paused at a minor scuffle behind him as the guards labor
ed to bar his men from following. Ivandred flicked his hand out behind him in the “halt” command, and the doors shut on his attendants.
“Father,” Ivandred said. He reached the throne in a few swift steps, then saluted, hand flat over his heart. “I rode myself to examine the terrain. Danrid’s charge is false. Olavair remained on their side of the river.”
“I protest this slur on my honor as Jarl of Yvanavar,” the tall man protested, coming forward. “I was well within my rights as defender of my—”
“Tuh…” the king tried to speak, but choked on the words, gagging and hurring.
Ivandred cut through. “It was entirely specious, a ruse intended for one purpose: to ruin Haldren Marlovair—”
“Tuh…” the king tried to shout, but only hacked wheezingly.
“Marlovair disobeyed an order!” Danrid shouted.
Neither Lasva nor I understood the politics, but one thing was clear: the conflict between Ivandred and Danrid had gone from covert to overt.
“Take him!” The king’s voice was so guttural he was almost incomprehensible.
Both Ivandred and Danrid stilled as the king pressed both fists to his chest. The noises he made were so horrible I found myself struggling to breathe for him. He lurched toward Lasva, pawed at her arm as he said, “Guard…” the next word was unintelligible, then he groaned and fell backward, his hands loose.
The guards looked at one another, hands gripping their weapons. Danrid’s eyes narrowed, but he had no weapon. Neither did Ivandred, as weapons were forbidden in the king’s presence. They looked at one another, then Ivandred lunged forward, kneeling down in spite of his mud, to lift his father’s head from the cold black marble of the throne arm.
The king’s mouth had gone slack, his breathing labored. The guards’ gazes shifted between the two men and Lasva, most frequently back to her. The guards’ own lives depended on what they did next. The king had said “take him,” but no one knew which “him” was meant.
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