Closer to the Heart

by Mercedes Lackey

  And now . . . now they might have murdered one of them. Someone who could have been a friend.

  Please don’t let him die, she prayed helplessly to whoever would listen. Please don’t let him die. Thallan was one thing, but these poor men . . . all they had done wrong was to allow themselves to be persuaded by a madman.

  Mags was running as fast as he could, and all she could do was follow him. Only he knew the way out—

  And then he suddenly stopped dead and caught her with an outstretched arm, just outside a wooden door. “Armory,” he said, wrenching the door open.

  There was a stone room beyond the door, about the size of one of the cells with a single lit lantern at the right side of the door. There were weapon-racks on the walls, some of them empty, some of them full. There was a small table and four little stools around it, with a game-board of some game Amily didn’t recognize carved into the top of it.

  But there was nothing much there they could use. Lots of pikes, swords and daggers similar to the ones they already had. No bows, which would have been the most useful. Amily did find a double handful of stone counters, half dark and half light, for the game that had been carved into the table-top. She pocketed them; they’d be useful for her sling at least.

  Back to the hall they went, but this time Mags held out his arm and she waited with him, holding her breath, while they both listened intently, and he presumably used his Gift. “They found th’ dead birds, but they got no notion ’twas owls,” he said, with a snort. “They think some’un got in an’ killed ’em t’keep from sendin’ messages. They got that half right anyways. We might git away wi’ this . . .”

  Amily had switched from the chain to her sling, and she, rather than Mags, was the first to see a Guardsman coming around the corner ahead of them. Before Mags could react, her stone was in the air; it hit the side of the man’s head and he dropped. They both ran up to him, and found to their shared relief that he, at least, had merely been knocked unconscious. Mags trussed him up and left him while she retrieved her precious stone; they had no time to spare now to tuck him out of the way.

  Just beyond him was a staircase; Mags headed for it as Amily followed on his heels. There were two flights of stairs, with light at the top—a different sort of light from the yellow gleam the lanterns had put out. This was cold and gray and dim. Morning?

  The stairs were no place to be caught; they rushed up the treads as fast as they could, then stopped on the landing at the top. Amily’s heart beat so hard it was making her shake a little, and for a moment she felt faint. She felt a cough coming, too, and swallowed it down.

  The landing led to another corridor. Stone again, everything was stone . . . of course it’s stone. They have to be terribly careful of fire here. Or had to, back when this place held off besiegers and sheltered all the farmfolk nearby. One pot of flaming oil exploding in the courtyard of a wooden fort, and the entire place would turn into a death-trap. This corridor, however, had slit windows all along one side, slits that presumably archers could fire through, if an enemy got as far as the courtyard. The cold, gray light of morning shone in through them. Slit windows without glass, of course. You wouldn’t want glass in something you were supposed to shoot through.

  Mags dropped to his hands and knees, below the height of the windows, and she copied him. Those windows overlooked the central court, as she had thought. More than one alarm bell was ringing now, and without a doubt the courtyard was full of men searching for a presumed intruder. The only reason they hadn’t looked here yet was probably because no one had thought to check the gaol.

  They crawled as fast as they could to the end of the corridor, then got up and pressed themselves into the shelter of the shadows. Mags closed his eyes, the better to use his Gift. Amily waited tensely, stone in her sling, trying to see without being seen. Outside past the windows, there was the sound of running feet, but no shouting. That was not a good sign, actually. It meant these men were highly disciplined, and were running a search they must have practiced enough that they needed no directions.

  Mags opened his eyes and gestured; it was now too dangerous to speak. Even a whisper might be heard. She followed him with her heart in her throat and every muscle knotted with tension. There still was not much of a scent in the air; nothing to tell her that anything but ghosts populated this place.

  And now she alternated her prayers between, please let that man live, and please, let us get out of here. If they could get out, then the small army of the Guard that was coming could settle down to a nice, bloodless siege. Eventually the Guard in here would come to their senses, and turn over Thallan, surely. But even if they didn’t, they could be starved into submission. No one would have to die.

  She added a third prayer. Because Guard fighting against Guard was the worst nightmare she could think of, short of the impossible one of Herald fighting Herald. Please. Please, make it so that no one has to die . . .

  • • •

  Mags knelt in front of the postern door, every bit of his concentration bent on the delicate manipulation of his lockpicks. This was not a sort of lock he had ever encountered before. The locks on their manacles had been simple; the locks on the doors of their cells had been very old, and had taken no time at all. This one was new . . . and complicated. As his teacher had told him; he had to have eyes and ears in his fingertips. He was concentrating so very hard on what he was doing that he didn’t realize they were in trouble until he heard Amily gasp.

  And then he heard the very last thing he wanted to hear.

  “Stand up slowly, boy,” said Thallan, with cold cruelty in his voice. “Or I am afraid your girl will have her pretty white dress badly stained with blood.”

  Mags stood up and turned, as he had been directed. Thallan had Amily’s neck in the crook of his arm with her back to him, and a knife pressed up against her side. His heart started to pound with fear—but then he noticed something odd. Amily didn’t look at all frightened.

  Amily looked furious.

  “Now, I want you to be a good little boy, and put those weapons of yours on the floor,” Thallan continued. “Then we’ll march back to the prison and put you where you belong.” His face was contorted with a sneer. But Mags was not paying any attention to him. He was listening to Amily’s thoughts.

  I am going to count to three, Mags. Nod if you hear me.

  He nodded, and hunched his shoulders a little, as if Thallan had cowed him. Thallan’s sneer turned into a nasty grin.

  When I get to three, charge.

  He hunched his shoulders a little more, and fumbled for his sword, clumsily, as if he was so frightened he couldn’t properly control his hands.

  One. Two.

  “Hurry it up, boy!” Thallan snapped, pushing the knife-point harder against Amily’s side.

  Three!

  He launched himself at the two of them, at the same time that Amily grabbed the wrist of the arm holding her neck, somehow turned in Thallan’s grasp and ducked under Thallan’s armpit, taking the wrist and arm with her. Her leg made a wide sweep at Thallan’s as she got behind him. A moment later, Thallan was crashing to the floor, with Mags landing atop him. Mags got the knife away from the man as Thallan screamed in pain—not from the fall, but from Amily twisting the arm she still had firmly by the wrist, with her foot on his buttocks.

  “My corset is lined with very fine chainmail,” she said, panting and twisting. “He really chose the wrong person to threaten today.”

  Thallan’s screams had reached an impressively high note. “We need to get him trussed up before someone comes looking to see who’s screaming,” Mags said, divesting Thallan of the rest of his weapons. Amily relented a little and eased up on her twisting, so Thallan could get to his feet, actually sobbing with the pain she’d put him through. Mags secured his hands behind his back quickly, using some of the sinew he’d pulled out of the embroidery on his tunic. He
tied them rather more tightly than was strictly necessary . . . and used another piece of sinew to tie his thumbs together as well, a trick Nikolas had taught him. Good luck gettin’ outa that, ’less some’un cuts ’im loose.

  By this point, Thallan had stopped sobbing, gotten a few breaths into him, and looked as if he was about to start shouting. Perhaps he was going to shout for help, but from the look of his furiously flushed face, Mags had an inkling that help was the last thing on his mind.

  “Shut up,” Amily snapped, as he took in a long, deep breath, and opened his mouth. And before he could do anything, she stuffed a piece cut from her undershift into his mouth then handed Mags another strip so that he could bind the wad of fabric in place. This didn’t stop Thallan from trying to shout, but his muffled grunts and moans didn’t carry very far.

  “Now what?” Amily asked. “Do we get the door open and drag him with us?” She eyed the furious “General.” “That could turn out to be quite a task. He’s going to be everything but cooperative.”

  Mags grabbed Thallan’s tightly bound hands and shook them until the man’s shouts turned to whines of pain. “No,” he said. “No. Now we end this.”

  • • •

  They marched into the courtyard, with Thallan slightly ahead of them. Each of them had one of his elbows. Both of them had their swords out, lodged against his ribs, and Thallan was most decidedly not wearing a chainmail-lined corset. In fact, he wasn’t wearing any armor at all, which rather cemented in Mags’ mind the notion that he had never actually been in combat, since the first thing that a combat-seasoned veteran does when hearing an alarm bell is to throw on his armor, or at least the upper part of it.

  The alarm bells stopped as they stepped out into the courtyard, and an ominous silence fell. They walked a few more steps into the middle of the courtyard, and stopped. There were Guards all around, in their familiar blue uniforms, in the courtyard, on the walls, two at the main gate. Some stood there, looking stunned. Some looked puzzled, others angry. The angry ones had their weapons in their hands after a moment, and there was more than one archer with an arrow nocked to his bow, pointing at them.

  Bloody hell. Hope this works.

  And then Amily stepped forward, leaving Mags to control Thallan. “For the sake of the gods, look at yourselves!” she snapped. “Look at us! We are Heralds of Valdemar. You are the Guardsmen of Valdemar! And here you are, pointing weapons at us, perfectly prepared to kill us, and why? All because of this sick and depraved man’s lies.”

  Silence as she let that sink in.

  “We are Heralds of Valdemar. You know you have always depended on us to speak the truth. Here is the truth. You have been manipulated from the beginning. This so-called ‘General’ Thallan is no ‘General’ at all. He’s nothing but a scheming highborn with a lot of theoretical knowledge who has been impersonating a high officer of the Guard in order to gain control of you. There is no ‘General Thallan’ in the Guard, and there never has been. He’s a complete fraud. And now look at you! He’s managed to twist you around until some of you, at least, were preparing to murder Companions in cold blood!”

  Most of the Guards that Mags could see were giving each other startled looks . . . but a couple were trying to back out of sight, as quietly as possible.

  “There!” he said, pointing to the ones in question. “And there, and there! They know! Stop ’em an’ question ’em!”

  The men nearest the three trying to flee seized them by the elbows. They wilted.

  It’s working. . . .

  “And do you know what this fraud, this liar, this scheming spider has brought you to?” Amily demanded, as some of the Guardsmen leapt for the ones trying to escape. “Guards ready to fight and kill Heralds! Guards ready to fight and kill Guards! Your own brothers! Is that what you want? Do you want to kill men you fought beside, trained with? Because in a candlemark or two, no more, that is exactly what you will be facing! Prince Sedric is on the way with a force of loyal Guards ready to put you to a siege and starve you out! And the only way you will get past them is to try and kill them. Men you know. Your brothers.”

  The weapons began to droop with the hands that held them; the archers that Mags could see were letting the bowstrings go slack and lowering their bows.

  “It’s time for sanity again,” Amily said, now speaking in a calmer tone of voice. “It’s time to let go of this madness. I don’t know what this man told you to convince you that he knew the one true way for Valdemar, but what your mother taught you at her knee should have warned you that anything he said was as false as a demon’s promise. You know this above all. There is no one true way. This is how we live in peace with each other. This is how we live in peace with those outside our borders who do not seek to impose their ways on us. And this is the only way we can continue to live in peace. I should not have to tell you this. You already knew it. You somehow forgot it. Now is the time to remember, and live it again.”

  Silence fell then, broken only by the sound of men slipping swords back into sheathes, and arrows back into quivers. Mags glanced at Thallan. He had gone from red to white, nearly as white as the strip of cloth binding his mouth.

  “Now, open the gate and the portcullis,” Amily said, calmly. “And we will all walk out together to surrender this piece of manipulative trash to the King’s Justice, where his own words out of his own mouth will condemn him.” She now took the time to look slowly around her, at the men in the courtyard, on the walls, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “You can come with me, and plead your cases. Or you can run, and never wear the Blue again, and try and find a new home somewhere far from Valdemar, but you will always know that you deserted your true kin for the sake of a proud man’s lies.” She paused again, then repeated, “Open the gate, please.”

  This time, the gate swung open, and the portcullis was raised, the winch and chain creaking in the continued silence.

  Dallen and Rolan were waiting outside the gate, glowing and splendid in the rising sun. Mags and Amily prodded their captive toward the Companions, and slowly, by ones and twos, the Guards joined them, empty-handed, filing out of the gate in complete silence, and leaving the fortress behind them empty of everything but shadows.

  Epilogue

  The sun shone down on the flower canopy overhead, and the air was so thick with the scent of blooms that it could intoxicate. Mags held Amily’s hands in his, and smiled at her, as the flower scent wreathed around them.

  “People of Valdemar,” proclaimed the High Priest of—some temple Mags had never heard of. But that didn’t matter, because the High Priest was Father Gellet, who Mags had met many times at Master Soren’s house, and liked immensely. Like Mags, Father Gellet had come up in the world considerably since that first meeting so many years ago, and was resplendent in gold robes with an embroidered band around the neck.

  “People of Valdemar,” High Priest Gellet proclaimed again, holding his hands over their heads. “Now rejoice with me, for Mags of the Heralds of Valdemar, and Amily, King’s Own Herald, are now man and wife.”

  There was a tremendous cheer from a crowd that would have overwhelmed Mags, not that long ago, and made him blush until his skin burned. There were . . . a lot of people here. The garden where Lydia had celebrated after wedding Prince Sedric was so crowded that the gardeners had been forced to erect hasty barriers of ribbons and garlands around some of the flower-beds.

  Mags took that cheer as the signal to kiss Amily, which only made the crowd cheer harder.

  There were plenty of friends in that crowd—but plenty of strangers, too. As the King had hoped, delegations had been sent from Menmellith, Rethwellan, Hardorn, and even representatives of some of the larger cities of Valdemar itself. The King had been busy from dawn to dusk with meetings—meetings that had included Nikolas rather than Amily, since Lady Dia had been keeping both Mags and Amily quite busy, and the King had decreed that both of them deserv
ed a bit of a respite from “work” for a while.

  The first of those meetings had occurred with the representatives of Menmellith, including Aurebic, where the King had turned over Thallan, now bound securely in chains. With him had come a transcript of the many very interesting things he’d had to say when under Truth Spell.

  The Menmellithians—all but Aurebic—had been shocked at this development. Shocked speechless, in fact, which gave the King an opportunity to give them a piece of his mind. “You could have found all this out for yourselves, if you’d put some effort to it, instead of jumping to conclusions,” he said sternly. “Take him away. Do what you will with him. Although his crimes against Valdemar are many, the only punishment for them is exile. His crimes against Menmellith are far graver, and we deliver him to you for your justice.”

  So half the delegation had carried Thallan off. The other half had stayed with Aurebic.

  As Mags and Amily finished their leisurely kiss and turned to face the crowd, Mags smiled particularly at the friends he saw there. Lady Dia and Lord Jorthun, of course, and Keira. And . . . Tiercel Rolmer, who kept glancing hopefully at Keira.

  There were two “special sections” set aside for those who were particular friends of the bride and groom. Coot, scrubbed until he looked polished, sat beside Bear and Lena, resplendent in Healer Green and Bardic Scarlet in one section, along with Nikolas, Jakyr, Lita, and those other friends among the Heralds, Guards, and other folk that Mags had made since he had been Chosen. The Royal Family of the King and Queen, Prince Sedric and Princess Lydia occupied the other. They were shaded by more bowers of fragrant flowers, just like the platform on which Mags, Amily, and Gellet stood.

  Tuck and Linden, Aunty Minda, and all of Mags’ little band of sharp-eared informants were even now having a festival of their own, courtesy of the Crown, in the yard of the laundry. Mags would have liked to have them all up here, but as Amily had gently pointed out, they would have mostly been uncomfortable in such surroundings, Tuck would have been terrified, and all things considered, they were probably having a much better time than ever they could up on the Hill.