by Judith Tarr
“You would be its salvation. Think you that his intent can be secret? He has forged alliances throughout the Hundred Realms. He toys with Asanion, to ease its suspicions. Yet his purpose is clear to any who can see. When the Hundred Realms are firm in his grasp, he will give them as a gift to the conqueror.”
“If the conqueror proves worthy of them.”
“By his existence he is worthy. He was bred to rule under your father’s hand.”
“Old lies,” said Elian, “and old spite. How can I credit a word of it? You who were high priestess of Avaryan—you wear the robes of a black mage. You stink of darkness.”
“It is all one,” the Exile said. “Light and dark, all one. That is truth, kinswoman. To that, your father is blind; and with him the one whom he wrought for empire.”
“So then must I be. I am no slave of the goddess. I will not yield to you.”
“I did not speak of yielding. I spoke of taking arms for the truth.” The Exile sighed as if weariness had overcome her. “Time will be your teacher. Time, and your clear sight, which in the end you cannot deny.”
oOo
Torment, Elian could have borne. There was no ambiguity in it. This was subtler. She had a tent to herself. She was bound, but lightly, with a tether long enough that she could move about. Food and drink waited for her to deign to notice them.
She refused. It would be a yielding; and she must not yield. She crouched by the tent pole and shivered, weeping a little, child-fashion, less for fear than for humiliation.
Something watched her.
She froze. The Exile’s familiar sat in front of her where had been empty air, washing its forepaw with perfect and oblivious innocence.
Her eyes narrowed. The beast nibbled a claw. No stink of the hells lay on it. It seemed but a lady’s pet, harmless, absorbed in itself. Yet it was here, and it had not come through the sealed door.
Mageborn, she had studied little of the sorcerer’s art. She needed neither spell nor familiar. Her power ran deeper, closer to instinct. But her father had taught her enough, or tried to teach her, if she could but remember.
It came to her in a flicker of vision: three magelings before the master, and two were red Gileni and one was Ianyn-dark, and the youngest was small enough to sit on the master’s knee as he spoke, and set her ear against his chest, and fill her head with the drum-deep cadences of his voice. “A familiar,” he said, speaking as much to her as to her brothers, “like a staff or a grimoire, is a vessel of power. It need have none in itself. It can be eyes and ears and feet, and it can guard what the mage wishes it to guard.”
“Useful,” said Halenan. His voice, which was breaking, wavered even on the single word; Elian was too interested to laugh at him.
“Useful,” Mirain agreed, “but cumbersome, and maybe dangerous. What if the familiar is captured by another mage? Or killed? What happens to its master then?”
“That depends on the depth of the bond,” answered the Red Prince. He stroked Elian’s hair, idly. It was pleasant; she let him do it, slitting her eyes to make the world go strange. Mirain’s face blurred into a shadow.
“I would never so divide my power,” he said.
“You need not,” said the Red Prince. “It is born in you. But if you were a simple man, and you had come to magic through spells and long art, a familiar would not lessen your power: it would focus it, and nurture it, and make it strong.”
“But I would always be vulnerable,” said Mirain.
Elian drew a slow breath. The familiar coiled bonelessly upon itself, scouring the base of its tail.
She tugged at the thongs that bound her wrists. The creature raised its head, turned its eyes on her. She set teeth to her tether.
White pain flung her back. Her cheek burned and throbbed. Blood spattered her coat.
The cat sat erect, vigilant.
She bared her teeth.
It yawned. Its fangs were white needles.
She crouched, and would not think of pain. Surely those claws had raked her to the bone. The bleeding would not stop, even for her hands pressed to it, an awkward knot of leather and flesh.
She struggled to gather her power. It kept scattering, eluding her grasp, mocking her with a spit of feline laughter.
Grimly she kept her temper. Rage would fell her. Despair would cast her into her enemy’s hands.
She had it. Not all of it, but perhaps, by the god’s will, enough. It writhed and fought as if it were no part of her at all but an alien thing. She set upon it the full force of her will.
Her hands were free. The tent’s door was open, a guard blank-eyed before it. She stepped toward him.
The cat yowled. She whirled. Claws raked her tender breast; teeth snapped at her throat. She tore the thing away, flung it with all her trained strength.
Silence. Stillness. She backed away. Nothing. She spun, leaped past the motionless guard.
Her power was quiet in her center, obedient at last. She let it lead her around the edge of the camp. No one saw her. No one would see her. The forest waited beyond with its promise of safety.
oOo
It came without warning, springing out of the night, swift and silent and terrible. Its claws stretched to seize her, to rend her. She flung up all her shields.
The shadows rippled with cold cat-mirth. For she stood full in the light of a watchfire, clear for any mortal eyes to see.
Someone shouted.
Left was night, and the green gleam of eyes. She darted right, round the flames.
Voices cried out. Fire seared her face. With the strength of desperation she dropped her mind-shield, thrusting all her power into the fire.
Her body sprang after it. Flames roared high, engulfing her. The shadow-beast veered away.
In the instant of confusion, she reached from the very core of her.
oOo
The fire vanished. Darkness swathed her, the darkness of earthly night, with a shimmer of stars and a whisper of wind in leaves.
Later she would begin to shake. She had gone—otherwhere. But where or how far, she could not tell, although the air tasted still of the woodlands of Ashan.
Her power, unguided, had served her far better than she had any right to expect. Or perhaps it was luck, or fate. Or the god.
Her knees buckled. Power, strength, she had none. All gone. All spent. If men or sorcery found her now, she had no defense. “Avaryan,” she breathed as if he could hear, or would. “Help—protect—”
The night opened its arms. She let it take her.
SIX
Light woke her first. She turned her head away from it, waking pain. With a groan she burrowed into her bed.
And sneezed. Her bed was no bed at all, but deep leafmold; her face was pillowed in it.
She levered herself up on her hands. Trees loomed all about her, evergreens with but little growth between them. Their sharp fine needles matted in her hair, pricked her skin. She worked her knees beneath her and brushed at the clinging fragments.
At the sight of herself she made a small sound, part pain, part disgust. She was filthy, spattered with blood, with her garments hanging open like a harlot’s. Cheek and breast were raked with thin deep scratches, bleeding no longer, but burning fiercely.
She managed with some fumbling to fasten her coat; enough remained of buttons and lacings for that. She was ravenously hungry and parched with thirst. And no water within sight or scent, nor enough of power left to find any.
The sun slanted through branches almost full before her. Left and perhaps north the ground sloped downward, broken with stones and hollows.
Downward, her masters had taught her: water runs downward always, and many a hillside boasts a stream at its foot.
She was safe, uncaught, unbound. She would not think of the rest: that she was alone, afoot, and wounded, without water or food or weapon, and sorely worn from her battle of power; and that she had no knowledge of this place into which her waning witchery had cast her. For all she knew, she
was but returning the way she had come. It was enough now that she set one foot before the other, and that if she stumbled she did not often fall.
Once she fell badly. The slope was steep; she rolled, bruising herself on root and stone, stopped at last by the solid strength of a tree. For a long while she could not move at all, nor even breathe.
Little by little she gathered herself together. Nothing had broken. But ah, she hurt. She made herself stand, take one limping step, then another.
She scented it before she heard it, an awareness far below the conscious, a blind turning of the body toward its greatest need. Water, a trickle over moss and stone, pausing in a pool little bigger than her hand.
She collapsed beside it, to drink until she could drink no more. Every muscle cried then for rest, but she took off her garments one by one, slowly, like a very old woman, and washed herself a hand’s breadth at a time. Only when she was clean would she lie back with the sun’s warmth seeping into her bones.
Food. That, she needed still, and sorely. But the sun lay like a healer’s hand upon her skin. She let it lull her into a doze.
Wake! It was not a voice, not precisely. Wake and move. Sleep after power—sleep is deadly. Wake!
Feebly she tried to close it out, to sink back into her stupor. Yet her body stirred and rose and fumbled into its filthy coverings. They were stiff; they itched and stank. Her clean skin shrank from them.
Food. Here, green, and a white root, crisp and succulent. There in an open space, a tangle of brambles with fruit nestled within their thorns. Beyond, a widening of the stream; a small silver fish, now leaping in her hand, now cold and sweet on her tongue.
She gagged, but the fish had found her stomach, and she was herself again, weak and still hungry but clear enough in mind. She found a further handful of thornfruit, and a clump of greens, root and top. Time enough later to fashion a snare for the meat she needed.
She drank from the stream and knelt for a time beside it, laving her face. Her father had warned her often and often. All power had its price. Used lightly, it asked no more of the body than any other exercise. Expended to its limit, it drained the body’s strength, could even kill unless its wielder moved to master it. And even with mastery one needed long sleep after, and ample food and drink, and a day or more of rest. She had never gone so far, but she had seen her father after some great feat of wizardry, building or healing or calling of the wind, borne away like an invalid, bereft of all strength.
But she had done so little. Unlocking; illusion; shielding; swift travel from place to unknown place. Yet she had come as close to dissolution as she ever cared to come.
It was still too soon to remember. She stood wavering. Only a little farther. Then she would seek shelter and set her traps.
She began to walk beside the water. She felt hale enough but very weary. A little farther—a little.
Where the stream, wider now, descended between steep banks and bent out of sight, she stopped. Her knees folded beneath her. Shelter—her snares—
A shadow crossed the sun. She regarded it without alarm. A voice spoke above her, strange words, yet she ought to have known them.
The shadow cast a shape. A man in kilt and cloak of shadow green, a very dark man, black indeed, with a proud arch of nose over a richly braided beard.
Fear erupted within her, and beneath it despair. She was caught again. There would be no second escape.
Another man appeared beside the other, dark likewise, and taller, and perhaps younger; his face was clean-shaven. From where she lay they seemed very giants. The newcomer stooped, reaching for her.
She fought. But her blows were feeble; the men laughed.
They were handsome men, with very white teeth, and rings of copper in their ears and about their necks and on their arms. The taller one said something; she thought it might have been, “Now, brave warrior, be still. We’ll not be killing you right this moment.”
No. She would die slowly, at the Exile’s hands. She renewed her struggle, striking with all the strength that was left her.
“Aiee!” yelped the man who held her arms. “He’s a regular wildcat. Tangled with one, too, from the look of him.” Her elbow caught him in the ribs; he grunted. “Now then, you. No more of that!”
It was less a blow than a cuff, but it half stunned her. She sagged in his grip. He slung her over his shoulder and strode forth, with his companion following.
Belatedly, and numbly, she realized that they had been speaking the language of Ianon.
oOo
With no more transition than a thinning of trees and a leveling of the hillside, the forest ended. Elian had come by then to herself, but she rode quiescent on the broad shoulder, only lifting her head to see what she might see.
She marked the opening of land and sky, and the changing of the ground from leafmold to long grass and stones; and she heard and scented and felt the camp on the field. Here were the voices of men and beasts; the pungency of a cookfire; an ingathering of folk to inspect the arrivals, with much curiosity and some amusement. “Hoi, Cuthan!” they called. “What luck in the hunt?”
“Better than I looked for,” her bearer called back.
In the center of the gathering he halted and set Elian down. Tall though she was for a Gileni woman, as tall as many men, he stood head and shoulders above her. Yet she faced him bristling, eyes snapping, hands fisted at her sides.
He grinned. “See,” he said, “a wildcat.”
There were not, after all, so very many people about. A dozen, maybe. Despite their amusement, they had watchful eyes; their fire was well shielded, with little scent and no smoke, their seneldi tethered near the trees. Binding each cloak or glinting on the collar of each coat was a brooch of gold in the shape of a rayed sun.
Although no one held her, she was surrounded. Several of the men held bows, loose in their hands but strung, with arrows ready to fit to the string.
“Well, little redhead,” said the man called Cuthan, “suppose you tell us who you are.”
“You are Mirain’s men,” she said. Few of them were northerners. She marked trousered southerners, red and brown, and one Asanian clad incongruously in northern finery. “Where is he, then? Is he close by? For if he is, he trespasses. This land belongs to Ashan’s prince.”
“Does it now?” Cuthan gestured, no more than a flicker of the eyes. The scouts began with seeming casualness to disperse, but several stayed close by. He laid a hand on Elian’s shoulder, guiding her toward the fire, seating her there.
His knife glittered as he drew it. She tensed. He barely glanced at her, cutting a collop from the haunch that roasted over the flames, bringing it to her.
He did not lend her the knife to cut it. She held it gingerly, for it was searing hot, and nibbled with care.
Cuthan waited, patient. When the meat was gone, he held out a cup. She sniffed it. Water. Gratefully she drank.
A second man sat on his heels beside Cuthan: the Asanian. In that company he seemed almost a dwarf, a smooth sleek ageless man with bitter eyes. They took in Elian with neither favor nor trust. “Gileni,” he said in thickly accented Ianyn. “Born liar.”
“Maybe not,” said Cuthan.
“Maybe so,” the Asanian said. “Test it. He spoke clearly enough. This is Ashan; its prince is no more a fool than our king. He would have engaged spies.”
“Redheaded Gileni spies?”
“Why not? Red mane, witch-power, they say in the south.”
Cuthan frowned. “I’ll question him. That’s fair enough. But I’m not sure—”
“If I were spying,” said Elian, “you would never have caught me. I was looking for your army. I want to fight for your king.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Elian bit her tongue. Cuthan was amused, but not entirely. She met his eyes. “Your . . . friend sees this much of the truth. I am from Han-Gilen. I heard of the Sunborn. I wanted to be free. I wanted to fight. I thought that if I joined with h
im I would have both. I ran away from home.”
Cuthan’s grin came back. He believed that.
She found an answering grin. “My mother would never have let me go. At night I ran away.”
“You came alone? Unarmed? Afoot?”
“Alone, yes. The rest I—I lost. Back yonder. Have you heard of the woman called the Exile?”
The men within hearing tensed. Cuthan leaned forward. The Asanian’s look was almost a look of triumph.
Her fist clenched at her belt where her sword had hung. “She camps a day’s journey south, maybe more. She has men with her. They caught me and killed my mare and took all I had.”
The Asanian’s full lip curled. “They let you go.”
She bared her teeth at him. “No. Not the likes of me. Red mane, witch-power. She knows that as well as you. But not well enough.”
“No one escapes from that demon incarnate.”
“One does if she happens to turn her mind elsewhere. She is not, yet, omniscient.”
“Southern lies.”
“Plain truth.” Elian faced Cuthan. “Take me to the king and let him judge.”
The Asanian leaped to his feet. “The Exile is Gileni. Red Gileni, witch and sorceress. What better weapon against my lord than one of her kin? Young and innocent to look at, but shaped for murder, as she murdered the god’s bride.”
“She is traitor and outcast, abhorred by all her kin.” Elian flung back her tangled hair. “Your king will know. Take me to him.”
Cuthan shifted. Shamelessly she followed his thoughts. He was commander here, but he was young, and a better judge of land than of men. An obvious spy, a grown man prowling where he ought not to be, that was easy enough to judge. But this lordly youth, pretty as a girl, found fainting by the waterside: was he truly what he seemed to be, or was he indeed a servant of the enemy?
“The king,” said Elian. “He can judge.”
“He can,” Cuthan said slowly. “Maybe he’d better. But first we’ll see to those scratches. They look nasty.”