Betrayals

by Sharon Green

  Twenty-nine

  Lorand sat on the coach seat, Jovvi's sleeping head against his shoulder, wishing he, too, could be asleep. He wasn't far from total exhaustion, but right now there was something required of him that had to be done. They'd been driving for two hours at least, but still hadn't found a safe place to stop and rest.

  To Lorand's extended talent, the night was far from quiet. Even in the rain life continued its cycle, as those who prowled the night did so with mild complaint rather than with gusto. Every life-form out there was busy, either hunt­ing, or growing, or warning of danger, or simply healing in sleep. Sleep ... that would have been nice ... the way Naran had also fallen asleep ... and the way Tamrissa was fighting not to....

  Suddenly Lorand's head snapped up, sleep no longer the foremost thing in his thoughts. The area they'd just reached

  ... the feelings of the animals around here were just that much different from normal, the normal of empty woods and nothing of human habitation. Here the prowling or rest­ing animals were uneasy and cautious, which ought to mean—

  "Rion, tell Lidris to stop the coach," Lorand said out his window, the words Rion had probably been waiting for. The other man had been riding his horse close to the coach, using his Ail magic talent to keep himself dry. "I think there may be a farm or something around here, but I don't know ex­actly where."

  "There should be a way to find out," Rion responded, then called to the coach driver to stop. Alsin Meerk also rode on the coach, Lorand knew, his horse tied to the back of it. The man had continued to look disturbed and deep in thought, and it was possible that he rode on the coach with his man so that the two could talk. Lorand wasn't much of a judge, but Alsin Meerk seemed to need someone friendly to talk to very badly.

  When the coach stopped, the following wagon naturally did the same. Those on horseback had been riding in various positions, either near the wagon, behind it, or ahead of the coach. Now everyone came together, and Lorand put his head outside the window.

  "There should be some sort of human habitation on the right side of the road," he told everyone. "The problem will be finding the way to get to it in this darkness, so I'd like to try an experiment. If those of you with Earth magic will try to link with me, we can search for what would be an unnatural opening in the trees. I take it you all understand what that would feel like?"

  "I do," Meerk said as he climbed down from the box, his words joining the agreement of three others on horseback. "How do you want to do this?"

  "Open yourself to the power, then reach out with it in my direction," Lorand said, speaking to all of them. "I have no idea whether or not the link will work, but we should try it before we do something else."

  Lorand didn't mention that the only something else would be his Blending with his groupmates. Blending was ex­tremely draining, and afterward most of them would be good for nothing but falling down and sleeping. This way some­thing might be accomplished without leaving their strongest protection weak and useless.

  It was obvious when the four other users of Earth magic opened to the power, just as obvious as the fact that Meerk was the weakest of the group. The other three really were Highs, and briefly Lorand wondered if their relatively fresh strength would overwhelm him when they tried to link—or if his weariness would be the reason the experiment didn't work. And then their power and talent touched him, and more than new strength flooded into him. His own talent was magnified in some way, at the very least twice as great as it was normally....

  "There it is," Lorand said, distantly aware of the same words coming from the other four people in the link. "A crude road cut into the woods about a hundred yards ahead, but more overgrown than a road that's used should be."

  They broke the link then so that those on horseback could ride to where the road began, and Lorand had another sur­prise. The new strength he'd been given had ebbed only a little with the breaking of the link, which meant he'd now have less trouble doing what was needed to make them safe.

  Meerk went to his horse rather than climbing back up on the coach, and then their little convoy followed those on horseback. The road they'd found would have been passed without the least notice, thanks to the darkness surrounding it and the fact that it had begun to be overgrown. Other riders came up to join those with Earth magic, and the way light flared in the darkness and rain said that those others had Fire magic. When they turned off onto the road, they would not be traveling blind.

  It took quite a few minutes of cautious traveling before they came to an area that had once been cleared for culti­vation, and then another stretch of time before they reached buildings. Somewhere in the darkness Lorand could tell that there was a small herd of cattle, but the feel of pigs and chickens was scattered all over the place rather than centered in specific spots.

  And the buildings themselves .. . there seemed to be three houses on each side of a larger-than-usual barn, but none of them showed a light. At that time of night the occupants should be asleep, of course, but their arrival was really too noisy to be slept through. And then Lorand realized that there was nothing in the way of indications of living beings inside those houses....

  "I think this place is deserted," Jovvi said, obviously having seen the same thing Lorand had. "I wonder why they didn't take their livestock with them."

  "I wonder why they would build six houses and a barn, then tarn around and abandon it all," Lorand countered. "Something about this place just doesn't feel right...."

  Shouts came from up ahead, and Lorand had the distinct impression that something had been found. A rider came galloping past the coach to stop at the wagon, the woman on the horse riding with one hand to her mouth. That con­firmed the uneasy feeling Lorand had, and Jovvi looked pos­itively alarmed. But they didn't find out what was causing the uproar until Rion came riding back.

  "Until a few moments ago, I had convinced myself that I was no longer innocent," Rion said in a wooden voice, his face pale in the glow of the small ball of flame which Tamrissa had set in the air beside him. "Now . .. now I wish I truly were still innocent, as the price of worldliness is at times much too high."

  "Rion, what is it?" Jovvi asked very gently, and Lorand had the impression that she touched Rion with soothing and loving concern. "What did you find that caused such an uproar?"

  "The people in this place... they didn't leave," Rion answered, his voice now filled with pain. "Alsin Meerk sug­gested that this farm was established so far away from everything else because the people were tired of working just to provide the nobility with more income. So they de­cided to take unclaimed land and work only for themselves, but clearly the nobility found where they were. They ..."

  Rion's voice faltered as he shook his head, very clearly unable to go on. But by then Valiant had joined him, and their groupmate's face wore an expression of furious and unrestrained rage.

  "Those animals couldn't allow six families to escape from them and set up on their own," Valiant growled, not quite looking at anyone. "It would have given other people ideas, and that they certainly didn't want. So they made an example of these people, hangin' each family from crude gibbets put up outside their houses. Men, women, and chil­dren, even two infants. They've been hangin' there for some little time, certainly as a warnin' to anyone who came to see how the 'escapees' were doin'. One look tells it all."

  Lorand felt shock so great that he couldn't speak, simply holding to Jovvi as she shuddered against him. Tamrissa had one hand to her mouth, as though to hold back physical illness, and Naran wept silently. What Valiant and Rion had just said was beyond belief, far too savage and inhuman for it to be real. There had to be a mistake of some kind....

  "My father's farm," he found himself saying. "Could that be the real reason he didn't want me to leave? Because he had to produce a certain amount in order to keep the nobility happy? And to let the rest of us live? But he never said that the farm wasn't his alone ..."

  "We've got to destroy them," Tamrissa's voice came
then, calmly reasonable with only a hint of hysteria to it. "The entire world changes with every day and everything new we learn, and every change makes things worse. They kill and maim and destroy and enslave, and no one does anything to stop them. We have to do something, or we're no better than those butchers are."

  "We will do somethin'," Valiant assured her, but his voice was too grim and hard to be soothing. "Right now we've got to take those bodies down, then we'll all spend the night in that barn. In the mornin' we can have a mass cremation, and then talk about the details of what we'll do. This is more than the last straw ..."

  Lorand nodded and began to leave the coach to join them, but Rion quietly told him to stay where he was before turn­ing his horse to follow Valiant's already retreating mount. The new strength that Lorand had found was now drained out of him, so he made no attempt to argue about staying in the coach. He simply felt a vague sort of impatience, wanting his full strength back so that they could begin to avenge six families of people who had sought for nothing but their freedom....

  Lidris climbed down from the coach and more of the men and some women came from the wagon, and even Tamrissa and Naran went to join the grisly cleanup effort. Even so it took quite some time, but finally Lidris returned to mount the coach box again and urge the horses forward. They were brought to the front of the barn, where Rion waited to open the coach door.

  "The coach and wagon will be put behind the barn, and the horses stabled in the back half," Rion informed them as he helped Jovvi out then turned to give Lorand a hand. "That leaves an adequate amount of space for us humans in the front half, thank whatever Highest Aspect there might be. If we had to stay in any of those houses, I think most of us would have elected to sleep in the rain."

  "I know I would have," Lorand said as he turned to close the coach door. "Staying in one of those houses would be an inexcusable intrusion, considering that the owners of those houses were brutally murdered. Is there anything left that Jovvi and I can help with?"

  "No," Rion began with a faint smile and a headshake, but his gentle denial was overridden by someone else's much stronger opinion.

  "Yes, there is something the lady can do," Meerk said as he strode over, his expression totally unlike anything Lor­and had ever seen on the man before. "Once everyone is in the barn, she can make certain that there are no more spies among us. Once that's taken care of, I'll describe what I've been thinking about to everyone together."

  "What sort of thing have you been thinking about, Al­sin?" Jovvi asked, a faint frown line between her brows. "I can see that it's caused you a good deal of pain, but that's all I can see."

  "I've come to the conclusion that I deserve the pain," Meerk said, apparently forcing himself to discuss something he hadn't been able to before. "Everyone kept telling me that I was being a backward fool, seeing myself as more noble than the nobility because I refused to use their meth­ods to defeat them. And that was the way I saw myself, as someone too nobly upright to lower himself. I was even willing to have people believe me too frightened to fight, rather than letting them know that I was really too good a person to indulge in such bestial tactics. I've now discovered that I've been lying to myself."

  "So you've reversed your former position," Jovvi said with a nod, leading them all into the barn and out of the rain. "Are you sure that that's what you really want to do?"

  "I've known it's what I should do for hours, only I kept finding excuses not to," he replied, looking down at his feet rather than at them. "I even tried to get Lidris to remind me what I believed our aims ought to be, but Lidris has been doing his own thinking. We assured each other that we would continue to do things the right way, and then we got here ..."

  "And the right way became something else entirely," Jovvi finished for him with another nod. "Yes, I not only understand completely, I feel the same way. Everyone here is filled with thoughts of vengeance and violence, and rather than trying to soothe those feelings away, I'm joining in feeling them with everything inside me. Tomorrow we will make plans, but frankly I have no idea what they should be beyond freeing any of our people who are still in Quellin."

  They were interrupted by sounds of satisfaction coming from all around, and Lorand suddenly realized that the dampness he'd been feeling for hours and had stopped no­ticing had abruptly disappeared. Then he saw Valiant stand­ing with two other people, all three of them glancing around in the same direction, and thought he knew what had been done. Valiant had linked with others having Water magic, and together they'd removed every bit of moisture from the clothing of their group.

  "Bless that man," Jovvi said with a satisfied sigh of her own. "That wasn't anything like being able to use a bath house, but somehow I now feel a bit cleaner. In the morning, when we've all regained our strength, we've got to see about getting a bath."

  "There's something we have to see about before that," Meerk said, not so much disagreeing as speaking what was uppermost in his mind. "We'll have to put sentries out close to the road, to let us know the minute our pursuers come in range of their talent."

  "So that we can hide all traces of where we are," Jovvi said, a faint dissatisfaction now touching her. "It's too bad there isn't something else we can do...."

  "But there is, and not only can we, but we must," Meerk said, drawing himself up straighter. "Going up against Quellin is all well and good, but not while a large number of guardsmen are coming up behind us. Before we turn our attention to the enemy ahead of us, we have to completely eliminate the enemy at our backs. No one who knows any­thing at all about warfare would consider any other course of action."

  Hearing that, Lorand stared at Meerk with an expression that must have suggested the man had two heads. He'd said warfare, as though the word meant more to him than just another word for large-scale fighting. Was it possible that the man actually knew something about it, which the rest of them didn't? If so, the knowledge might actually make the difference between their winning a battle or two, and their eventually standing victorious over all their enemies....

  Thirty

  Jovvi wasn't sure about how to respond to what Alsin had said, not when his thoughts were so grimly hard. What had happened to the man was something Jovvi had seen twice before, both times in the presence of some sort of traumatic incident. The person involved had usually had many private doubts about what he or she was doing, and the shock of whatever incident reached them was so strong that they be­gan to blame themselves for what had happened. And they accepted that blame without argument, thinking that if they hadn't clung to their previous opinions then the incident might not have taken place.

  In some cases the change was a good thing, but in most it produced a strong fanaticism in the reverse stance which the person adopted. Their previously rejected ideas were now the only thing possible for them to do, and they began to pursue the completion of those ideas no matter who tried to stand in their way. It was true that they all needed to be strong and hard right now, but fanaticism was something else entirely....

  "I hadn't realized that you knew so much about warfare, Alsin," Jovvi hedged, trying to get a clearer reading of the man. "While we were looking for a safe place to rest, Tam­rissa told me that you'd mentioned how unfortunate it was that we had no one who could be considered experienced in actual warfare. We all agreed that that was because the em­pire wasn't even supposed to have an army, although now we know it does."

  "I've suspected the existence of an army for some time," Alsin responded, his tone of voice and the tenor of his mind saying again that he now confessed the terrible things he'd done before. "I... happen to be a student of history, mil­itary history in particular, and one of the books I read said that no political entity like our empire ever existed in the world without an army, unless it existed alone. And even then there would probably be at least the remnants of the army which caused them to be alone in the world."

  "That makes sense," Lorand put in with a nod, and Jovvi was glad to see that he sounded support
ive and cautiously enthusiastic. "Now that you've made the point, I agree that we need to do something about the guardsmen who are com­ing after us. Even if they simply passed us by and continued on to Quellin, that would do nothing more than reinforce the people we need to go up against."

  "Exactly," Alsin said with his own nod, now warming to his subject a bit more. "So we have to set up an ambush, and make sure they don't ever reinforce anyone ever again."

  "You want us to kill them all?" Lorand blurted, and Jovvi could feel the shock in him that the concept had been put that baldly. "But didn't you say some of your people might be with them? How can you suggest killing your own people?"

  "Any guardsman who's a member of my organization will stand back and refuse to participate in a fight," Alsin stated, the words very flat. "At least that's what they all swore to do, just as Grath swore to be loyal to us. If they break their sworn word the way he did, they deserve what­ever happens to them."

  "I... see," Lorand muttered, still taken aback, but Alsin Meerk noticed nothing of that. He clapped Lorand on the shoulder, then looked around.

  "People are beginning to bring the blankets and things out of the wagon," he said, nodding toward the men walk­ing from the back of the barn with their arms full. "That means they're in the process of stabling the horses, and they'll need help with that. You and I will have to talk again later."

  Jovvi watched Lorand smile and nod before Alsin turned away, knowing well enough how he really felt. Once Alsin strode off, Lorand put an arm around her and drew her close.

  "This isn't something I have to pretend to be enjoying," he murmured, looking down into her eyes with a smile. "I've needed this since the time before I woke up, but be­fore we go any farther with our personal lives—such as they are—we need to talk. Is he really as bad off as he seems?"