Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  I breathed in, my senses heightened. I felt magic everywhere—the Herskalt’s signature. As was to be expected, if he was renewing the protective spells, though my work should certainly have been good enough for another eight to ten years. Also, the spells felt stronger than protective magic, but that might be the peculiarity of walking in an enormous castle without anyone in sight.

  I transferred back to my tower when a series of yawns made my eyes sting. The sooner the Herskalt took over, the better, I thought, and went to bed.

  One morning, when I walked up to the staff room after an early session with the fans, I discovered that Lasva had returned. I was shocked when I saw her with the strong morning light full on her face. For the first time, I noticed subtle signs of aging in fine lines at the corners of her eyes and across her brow. She was still beautiful, but in the way of a statue, cool as marble.

  “Emras,” she said. “I hoped to find you out of your lair.” She gestured to her private room, and I walked inside, breathing the subtle floral scents that always brought Alsais to mind.

  “Was your journey successful?” I asked.

  “I did my best, but someone was ahead of me. Everywhere I went, I had to answer, ah-ye, misapprehensions about me. About Colend. It’s as if someone did their best to undercut anything I would say. In Tiv Evair, they had the idea that I’d made a secret treaty with Totha at the northern jarlates’ expense, culminating in my being given Tdor’s trunk, which had not left Totha for three centuries.”

  “What secret treaty?”

  “I don’t know.” Lasva opened a travel bag and pulled out a ribbon-tied roll of heavy paper. “Then there was Tlennen, who had heard that I wanted to turn Marloven Hesea into a nation of traders. The warriors would become caravan guards.” She fluttered the roll of paper in Mock Horror.

  “Better that than warriors,” I said.

  Lasva smiled. “I think so, too, and how could I summarily take their weapons away from them? Then I reached Tdiran Yvanavar.” Lasva untied the ribbon and began to lay out the papers on her desk. “She told me the truth, that the north has decided the peace treaty I made with Olavair was a peace without honor.”

  “How?”

  “Because of the granted right of sovereignty.” She tapped her head. “Such things—kingship and borders—it’s all up here. I understand why people want to be kings, but the people they rule? Why should anyone care if your leader calls himself king or jarl, so long as they are left in peace? But somehow, the ordinary folk in Yvanavar and Khanivar and Tiv Evair have decided that Olavair’s being a sovereign nation dishonors the rest of Marloven Hesea. They have always hated the Olavairans. Emras, my mission was a failure. I returned to consider something else, something to try at New Year’s Convocation, perhaps.” She frowned down at the papers, which I could see were sketches.

  “May I ask what those are?”

  “Certainly. Tdiran insisted that I honor her with my advice—it seems that she’s been taken by the notion of reviving the art of tapestry-making. They have looms, of course, but she has no idea how to lay the whole out. I don’t know how serious she is, but I promised I’d try to make some sense of these sketches.” Her lip curled. “Not that a battle has to make artistic sense.”

  “They want a battle scene?”

  “The Battle of Andahi, to be precise, where the Yvanavar ancestor, named Hawkeye, achieved a great triumph just before he died on the battlefield.” She shook her head. “I suspect they want him at the moment of triumph, judging from these sketches of Danrid, who of course is the model for Hawkeye. This runner is a fine artist, isn’t he? It’s a remarkable likeness of Danrid, to the toothy smile. And Inda Elgar is to be posed in suitably martial triumph next to him.”

  “According to the Fox memoir, Inda Elgar was on the cliffs above,” I said, glancing down at the sketch she laid next to that of Danrid.

  What I saw made me bend down to look closer, for whoever had made these sketches had caught the Herskalt, or someone who looked remarkably like him.

  “The Fox writer might have gotten it wrong,” Lasva said, looking through the rest of the drawings. “Unless he was there.”

  “He wasn’t, but…” He had someone’s memories—he had a dyr, I thought, and tapped the drawing. “Who is this?”

  “Some guard captain, I think. I don’t know—he has a familiar face, doesn’t he? Hemma, Hanas. One of these odd names.”

  “Hannik?” I asked. “He’s the Yvanavar sword master.” Lasva had seen the Herskalt twice, as far as I was aware, once at the Olavair battle and right after the Totha one. Both times she was distracted by other matters, and it was clear from her expression of mild query that he had not stayed in her memory.

  But I knew that face well.

  “One of their riders made the drawings during training,” Lasva said, as she laid the rest of the drawings out on her desk and frowned at them, shifting them this way and that, then standing back to observe the whole.

  “May I borrow this drawing?” I asked.

  “Certainly. I have him from three angles, as I do Danrid and his favorite cousin. But these two are the best for the purpose of the tapestry.” She tapped the two in the center, turned her ring around on her finger, then fluttered her fingers in Rue. “Is Kaidas still here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suppose I must interview him. I perceive my cowardice in avoiding him. In Colend, there are a thousand ways to say our old love is dead without ever making a trespass against melende. I suppose I owe him that much, though I really do not know why he came.”

  The problem with the dyr, I thought as I walked out, is that at once you can know too much about a person—that is, facts you might not have wanted to know, and that you certainly cannot share—and yet not understand the person at all. So it was now. I could not understand Lasva’s reaction to Kaidas’s continued presence.

  However, at that moment there was a more pressing puzzle: Hannik.

  I transferred to Darchelde, where I half expected to find the Herskalt. He was not there. If Hannik was his brother (he did not look old enough to have a grown son) or even a cousin, it seemed odd that he wouldn’t have mentioned it when we talked about Danrid Yvanavar. So I would explore the question on my own.

  I settled into my chair, laid the drawing on the table, concentrated and found Tdiran. She was in the nursery with her son, and the daughter who was four. The boy was turning cartwheels as Tdiran admired his looks—annoyance at the thunderstorm keeping her in—Dannor was definitely left-handed. Then the boy knocked over the castle the girl was building with small wooden blocks, which set her screaming. As Tdiran dealt with them, I searched her memory for Hannik… and there.

  Admiration suffused the memory of a straight-backed figure astride a horse. From the distance he did look like the Herskalt, except his hair was bright, catching the light and drawing the eye. I had to make an effort to look past that long streaming tail of sun-glinting hair… illusion?

  I searched farther back in her memories for him. Only once did she watch him, but it was from a distance—drilling the men. Tdiran’s erotic response to the man’s speed and expertise forced me out of that memory. I could find no conversations. Tdiran never seemed to see—ah, echo of conversation, Why don’t you bring him inside? And there was Danrid in Tdiran’s memory, shrugging. I have tried.

  Can you order him?

  No. That was our agreement.

  You can’t give your sword master an order?

  Danrid flushed angrily, looking out a window. That was the agreement we made. Tdiran, he had me pinned down. He could have killed me, and no one would have known. I’ve never seen anyone fight like that, he knew every strike before I made it. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he doesn’t want to talk to us. I want our people to fight like that. If we do reclaim the north, no one is going to stop us.

  I tried to access Danrid, but as the Herskalt had said, he was warded. All I could “hear” were distorted emotions, and the sound of his
voice, but no sense.

  So I returned to Tdiran’s memory of watching Hannik in training. I tried to access him from there. It was like bumping into a shield of polished steel. Vertigo seized me, forcing me out.

  On impulse, I tried to reach the Herskalt and got the same thing, the shield of steel.

  So I shifted back to my tower, and for the first time, wrote a note to Ivandred: I must consult you.

  I sent it and turned to my ward sketches. I was in the middle of an experiment using the slow but subtle magic as set out in my scroll, when I received an answer from Ivandred: We are camped beside the bridge at Or Arei.

  Where I had first performed magic. I would never forget that place.

  When the transfer reaction wore off, I found myself standing in the middle of a camp clearing a few paces from the royal tent, which was exactly like the others only larger, with the Fox Banner suspended from a lance stuck in the ground at one side. At the other, the black and gold Marloven screaming eagle in flight. Above it curved the magnificent bridge. The air was cold.

  Around the camp the lancers moved about purposefully. A few stood near the campfire, from which emanated the smell of pan bread baking, a combination of rye and olive oil that threw me back to those days when we first arrived.

  As I crossed the muddy ground to the royal tent, I caught sight of Tesar, who lifted a camp cup to me in greeting. Then she went back to her conversation; I saw her laugh, her breath clouding on the air.

  I raised my hand in salute, amazed that she could turn down a high rank and a castle of her own just to stand around a muddy camp, weighted down with weapons, eating dry pan bread cooked over a fire instead of properly baked in an oven. Is this love? I wondered. Not the tender passion, as we Colendi would say—though maybe she was in love with someone here—but the kind of love that binds a group into one? Loyalty is one of the great loves, Martande I had written.

  Ivandred appeared at the door to his tent, and Haldren Marlovair passed me by, raising a gauntlet in salute, chain mail jingling.

  “You have a report?” Ivandred asked. “Wards are finished?”

  “I discovered a text by accident that might speed me along. It’s a kind of magic that, ah-ye, you may not wish to hear the details.” His silence I took as tacit agreement, so I unrolled the drawing, and laid it on the camp table beside the ever-present map.

  He glanced down. “It’s the Herskalt. Looks like he’s demonstrating an upward block against attack from someone on horseback. So?”

  “This is Hannik, the sword master in Yvanavar.”

  Ivandred’s brow lifted. “He must have a brother.” The brow furrowed. “I can’t question Danrid directly, because I cannot interfere with who the jarls hire to train their own people, or how. He might take questions as interference.”

  “If Hannik is the Herskalt’s brother, it seems he would have told you.”

  “The Herskalt’s never said anything about Hannik, other than a report on the fact that the man is a loyal Marloven. The Herskalt talks that way about everyone, as if he knows them. So far, what he’s said has proven to be true.”

  I knew why, but I dared not tell Ivandred about the dyr, if he didn’t already know. And he couldn’t know. As sure as I could be about anything, I was certain that Ivandred, who spent most of every year riding around inspecting his kingdom defenses and preparing for attack, would order me to produce the dyr by any means necessary, so that potential enemies’ thoughts could be listened to.

  Ivandred said, “I’ll ask him. He should be here soon to see our innovations in shifting from line to column—” He seemed to see my confusion, and gave me a half smile. “He’s been advising me in methods of consolidating tactical command through inside lines without dividing my force. Our frontal assault is our best weapon, and… heh. I see you are lost. We both have our expertise, Sigradir. Would you like supper?”

  He walked out, opening his hand toward the campfire, where Haldren and the other captains sat together on a log, camp plates on their laps, their faces ruddy in the reflected firelight.

  I discovered that I was hungry, but stronger than the prospect of camp food was the desire to think about what I’d just heard and to do so at the ground where I’d lain after nearly burning myself to death calling fire from the bridge. The inner perimeter guards saluted me as I left the camp and walked toward the bridge.

  My initial thought was that the Herskalt hadn’t used the dyr to help Ivandred on his battles, or I would have seen it at Olavair, and I am sure I would have heard about it subsequently. So Ivandred definitely did not know about its existence.

  I could see why people hated mages, if they found out mages kept such vital secrets. Secrets are another form of power. What had the Herskalt said about the control of information?

  The village had long since been rebuilt, the roofs replaced with tile. Stone had been fitted into the cracks where the old timber had been. It was habit by now to assess magic spells, and here were the expected protections binding the bridge supports, laid by myself during my long journey. How isolated I had felt, how afraid! But not nearly as afraid as the day of that attack, was it really ten years ago?

  The residue of magic broke my thoughts. I stepped onto the bridge, sifting the layers, and caught a familiar signature below mine. The Herskalt’s. He’d been there.

  I remembered the first time I heard his voice. We could not have been far away when he’d healed Retrend and Fnor. I walked closer, extending my hand. Sometimes touching a thing will bring the residue into focus, but only traces remained.

  So I transferred back and got to work.

  EIGHT

  OF EVIL MAGES

  L

  asva mulled the problem of Kaidas. He’d brought the granddaughter of one of her cats. She felt she owed him an interview for that, but nothing she did was unobserved. For the first time, this mattered. She did not want speculation or rumor starting about someone she intended to see as little of as possible, as all it would bring would be pain. So she must interview him in circumstances too ordinary to be remarked upon. She walked through her rooms, looking for suitably ordinary circumstances, noticed that her oldest pair of fans was missing, and went in search of Anhar. She found her consulting with the linen-draper. When Anhar interrupted herself, Lasva said, “My old fans. I hope that means you’ve begun to learn the Altan form?”

  Anhar bowed. “You said once that if I wished to learn, I could borrow them. Birdy, that is, Herald Martande, holds a morning practice in the stable rec room.”

  Lasva had been very proud of the three Marloven runners who’d taken up the fan form, with whom she now practiced each day. But she said, “Ah! I have long wished to practice with other Colendi, and Emras has been too busy these past few years.”

  Anhar said, “She has been practicing with us most days.”

  Lasva smiled. “Is there room for one more?”

  When you are a queen, Lasva thought, there is only one answer to that, and she saw the effect the next morning when she walked in behind Anhar.

  I was as surprised as the others to see Lasva enter. She greeted everyone with grave courtesy, giving Kaidas no more or less attention than she did the others. She took up her stance next to me in our old way and waited while everyone adjusted around her. Kaidas stayed on the other side of the room with his son, who had attracted a gaggle of small children.

  It was this son who Lasva looked at, as she did not want to be observed staring at Kaidas. The boy was fair, black-eyed, with a heartrendingly familiar grin. But he did not have his father’s easy style. There was wariness in his tight shoulders, in his quick glances. He laughed at himself readily when he stumbled with fan or with the Marloven language: the other children seemed to be delighted by his accent.

  In short, Vasande had already made himself popular.

  As you might expect, after the time I’d spent listening to Kaidas and Lasva, I was intensely interested in their meeting now. And so, over the next couple of weeks, as I tried to
master my scroll’s magic forms, I visited their thoughts with the dyr.

  There wasn’t much to descry. His intense reaction to her appearance that morning was to be expected—so intense he made my head throb with his mixture of hard-reined erotic response and the sharp disappointment when she didn’t speak to him except in polite greeting. But she was there. That was all the hope he consciously permitted himself.

  She kept putting off the interview. She was busy, the time was not right, too many people around. Yet she returned to fan practice each day.

  As the rest of that month veered between hot days and the first intimations of autumn, Anise gained two companions, then three—for once someone adopts a cat, more of them seem to appear.

  I was not surprised to be asked to make little houses for their waste like the ones Lasva had had in Alsais. I used Adamas Dei’s magic to make them, for by then I’d discovered who’d written my scroll.

  Political casuistry… the universality of literature… translations… history and whose truth to trust.

  Truth.

  What was the truth? Again I had this sense that I was seeing pieces of a puzzle. It struck me when I reached the last section of Adamas’s text, where he talked about building a mental shield against the magic of mind-listening. The startling thing was Adamas’s wording: It is good practice to prevent the invasion of one’s intellect by idle eyes in the Garden of the Twelve.

  Idle eyes in the Garden of the Twelve. I had seen the phrase before. It was not until the next morning, when I was moving through Altan fan practice (with Lasva there, the conversations had ceased) that I recovered it: the Fox memoir, specifically the interview Inda Elgar had at Ghost Island with the strange, scar-faced Norsundrian named Ramis, who had calmly predicted his own death. Had he used a dyr? That was a disturbing idea, that Norsundrians might have access to the dyr, too.