Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  It was an artifact of rare, complicated enchantment, the magic on it so intense that that magic itself could be used to counter equally intense magic. Like, say, a rift. If it was wielded by a hand not bound by the world’s magic . . . like an off-worlder’s.

  Tired and achy as he was, Senrid grinned, his chest filling with a fierce joy. That would be one in Detlev’s eye, wouldn’t it, if Senrid could shut down that northern rift? The only way to get my kingdom back is to totally smash Norsunder’s plans. And shutting a rift would do it.

  Senrid stretched out his hand—and stilled.

  The sound was slight, but the air in the room stirred. Senrid whipped his head around and staggered dizzily.

  Linet nodded toward the hall.

  Senrid picked up the hatpin and withdrew from the room. As soon as the door was shut he said, “Who was the fellow in the uniform?”

  “He’s called Rel the Traveler. I don’t know much about him, but he’s a friend of the queen,” Linet said, readily enough.

  “Look—” Senrid began.

  “Linet,” she supplied, smiling.

  “Linet. Those girls are going to stay around here for weeks, maybe months. This pin thing works against Norsundrians. So I figured I could use it. I’ll get it back to them when they need it. Or—” He gave her a derisive smile, remembering how soon he was likely to be identified as a Wicked and Evil Marloven. “—you can come after me with your magic and get it yourself.”

  Linet already knew who he was. She also knew that Senrid was a very long way from trusting anyone he’d been taught to think of as an enemy.

  So all she said was, “Fair enough. I take it you’d rather not be here?”

  “Good guess.” Tense gray-blue eyes regarded her warily.

  “I know where you can rest undisturbed,” she said, and before he could do or say anything, she transferred him to Shendoral.

  Alone in a pleasant glade of whispering cypress, with no icy breath of winter, he stretched out on the grass and slept.

  o0o

  In Eidervaen, Rel took off the ring and dropped it onto Yustnesveas’s hand.

  “The dawn-singers are inviting you to a celebration,” she said, trying hard for an easy tone. The intensity of his dark gaze disturbed her, and she felt foolish. “For rescuing Cassandra.”

  “It was easy enough, with the cat and the ring. Rina seems to be gone,” he observed. It didn’t lighten the atmosphere any, so he tried a weak joke. “Looks like yon cat feels the same as I do about parties.” He saw Yustnesveas’s gaze moving sightlessly about the little room, as though looking for Rina. “Make a fuss over the kids,” Rel suggested, feeling an intense urge to touch her hand, but he resisted it. “They deserve it—and probably need it. The cat did all the real work back there, not me. So I think I’ll just take off.”

  Yustnesveas bit her lip. She said in her calmest voice, “This was a very short visit.”

  “I should probably be going while the weather holds,” Rel answered. “I’ll be back—but I have an idea things are going to get hot up north. I might be able to use this again.” He indicated the uniform.

  Yustnesveas’s brow cleared. Of course he’d want to use the uniform as a ruse to help others who might be in the same plight.

  “You’ve been up all night,” Yustnesveas said, a last try. “At least stay until tomorrow? I owe you that story.”

  “I’d like to hear it, but can it wait until next time?” Rel indicated the north. “I hadn’t known things were as bad as they are, and from what I overheard from the morvende on the way back from the far tunnel, getting worse.”

  Yustnesveas put her hands together. There was no keeping him, then. Sartorans loved celebrations, but the mere prospect of being smothered by overthankment was hastening Rel on his way. She had learned, after dealing with her wayward little cousin Julian, not to hold those who would not be held.

  She would content herself with looking forward to his next visit.

  He said, “I think I’ll change before someone takes a pot at me.”

  She left to arrange for fresh food to be put into his pack—and under it, where he might not find it until he was well away—a bag of coins.

  o0o

  Rel had crossed the northern border of Sartor and was holed up snug in an inn, avoiding a sleet-storm, when Senrid felt recovered enough to find out where he was, and plan what to do next.

  He had slept contentedly on the mossy turf, lulled by the whisper of the wind in the trees over head and the soft chuckle and plash of a nearby stream. He’d woken up once to find a cloak lying nearby. Beyond questioning, he’d wrapped up in it. He soon discovered that it was ensorcelled against rain.

  He woke up again, ravenously hungry, to find fresh bread and a hunk of cheese and a spray of grapes waiting. He was recovered enough to be on the move, and so he ought to be.

  He ate all the food, then picked up and shook out the cloak. Cassandra’s hatpin lay on a flat rock. He bent to pick it up, and paused when he saw a blue flash.

  He straightened up and faced Linet. “I take it Cassandra wants it back—”

  “Wrong,” Linet interrupted calmly. She hunkered down, the shadows of leaves dappling her bluish skin as she gazed at Senrid. “She said ‘fare well’ and you can get it back to her some day, unless you meet The Guardian first. It was not given her. It was only a loan. She wants to go home, and I believe Norsunder has no further interest in her. I take it you have a specific plan for it?”

  “Yes,” he said, and to test his status, “But first to the reason I left my kingdom. Do your lighter allies know about the rift being made up north?”

  “We just found out,” Linet said. “But the northern mages all seem to think that was pretend, to get our mages running around in the north looking for something not there. The Norsundrians are all here in the south.”

  If Norsundrians are seen all over the south, then that’s what they want you to see.

  Senrid didn’t want to say that. After his experience with Kitty, and CJ of Mearsies Heili, and a few other lighters, he knew the next question would be something like, If you understand Norsunder so well, you must be their ally. And then they’d parade all over the moral high ground with I’ve always heard that about you Marlovens. . .

  “About the pin.” He hesitated.

  “Go on. About the pin?”

  Her gaze made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to that. Most people he encountered reacted that way to him.

  He said to the dirt by his hand, “I heard some of the guards talking about off-worlders having being brought to this world. You know anything about that?”

  “I do,” Linet said, still with that steady gaze. “Eight people came through the world gate, four because of an explosion in their domicile, and four from an earthquake. And no, no one seems to know who sent them, or why. Except that it wasn’t Norsunder, or they would not be free to go where they will.”

  “Does anyone know where they are?”

  “The Loi speak to the Geres, the snow folk. According to them, four—the ones your age—are making their way southward down the continent of Drael toward the Fereledria. Back,” said Linet calmly, “to your use for this magical artifact.” She pointed at the pin Senrid had stuck in his cuff.

  Senrid eyed her back. She was no physical threat—they were both about the same size—and though Senrid hardly had the strength to get to the water to drink and then back, he knew he was good for a shortish spurt. Enough to get away.

  Linet’s biggest threat was her magical knowledge. The few glimpses Senrid had had so far had impressed him.

  He said slowly, watching her for reactions, “I’ve read a lot of history.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Especially that written about events in kingdoms where dark magic is used.”

  “I thought you might have,” she said.

  He wished she would just get out the threat so he’d know where he stood. But of course lighters wouldn’t be straightforward with
their threats. Not if they wanted to pretend they worked for Good and Right. Whatever that was.

  So he considered his words. When he was little, his horrible uncle had permitted him two hobbies, reading and drawing. Senrid had figured early on that he was encouraged in those as a way of dissuading him from wanting to attend the academy, like he should have. Uncle Tdanerend had always pretended that he was training Senrid to become king, but by the time Senrid was ten or so he’d figured his uncle was doing everything he could to keep Senrid from learning how to be a king, while using him for his talent at magic. Tdanerend had been a terrible mage.

  “In one of those histories I read,” Senrid said, “I learned something about rifts. How to make them. How to close them.”

  Linet’s eyes narrowed; maybe it was just the light, but they seemed to glow a deep blue, like the summer sky just after the sun sets. Meeting that glow made Senrid’s head buzz.

  Linet said, “I have heard the mages talk about what dark magic can accomplish by sacrificing a life. Is this what you seek, their lives to use?”

  “No.” Senrid let his breath out in a trickle. Linet was nothing like his expectation of a lighter. “People born outside the world are not bound by some of the magic that binds the rest of us.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “So if someone were to find them, and get one of them to use an ensorcelled magical object, like this pin, to close the rift, well, wouldn’t that be one in the eye for Norsunder?” Senrid asked.

  Linet smiled. The glow in her eyes sparkled like light on water. “It would. I will help you. But aren’t you forgetting something?”

  He shrugged. Here comes the lighter speech about gratitude and obligation. “Am I?” he asked, in the voice adults found most goading.

  She walked with a quick, light step to the water’s edge, and leaned down to point. “Looked at your reflection?”

  Senrid glanced down, for the first time, at his torn, blood-splattered, filthy clothes, and grimaced.

  “I’ve magic,” he began.

  “Not here. And besides—”

  He remembered. “Right.” The Norsundrians had him warded against using dark magic, or he would have been out of Norsunder as fast as he was taken there.

  Linet smiled. “So what’ll it be?”

  He indicated the road. She brought for him some warm clothes, a carryall, a clean cloak, and then vanished before he could say a word.

  A week later he was on board a riverboat, earning his way slowly northward against the cold winter winds.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Davernak was irritated to discover on his return to South End that the brat was missing. He couldn’t even take it out on the guard as he was already effectively dead.

  So he summoned more of the mindblank guards who wouldn’t question orders, or talk about them unless directly questioned. He needed to find the brat before Siamis sent for her.

  Sure it would be an easy task, he sent a squad on a house-to-house search. When that turned up nothing, he had no choice but to issue commands for the roving patrols through that region to stop and question any girls on the road who answered to Liere’s description. The enchanted people were told to report any lone girls sighted outside of South End.

  That ought to do it.

  Trusting Siamis to remain busy on his world tour for a while, Davernak set out to do some spying on his own. He did not stay to run the search himself—he wouldn’t even call it a hunt, not when the target is a scrawny, inexperienced obviously frightened at her own shadow. Useless. What damage could she possibly do all alone?

  o0o

  As winter deepened, Siamis continued to move swiftly. Yet word travels faster than the fastest conqueror, and there were some who sought to resist the enchantment.

  In Sartor—catching word, somehow, that Siamis was coming—the Loi tried to draw Yustnesveas to safety, but she refused to hide away and leave her people to the enemy.

  So she called for her army of orphans, and they assembled as fast as they could. They were ringing the old city, nervous hands gripping weapons—or garden and work implements when weapons weren’t to be had—waiting, when, a tall, blond visitor transferred to one of the courtyards of Rive Dian, and walked into the palace alone to visit the queen.

  No one paid him any attention. All were focused outward toward the main gates, braced against the arrival of a great army dressed in gray and black, and loaded with weaponry.

  A short time later he and Yustnesveas came out into the main square together, and sent the would-be defenders home. The defenders began to shift from foot to foot, wondering vaguely why they were standing about holding sharp implements when there were chores to be done.

  They dispersed, walking peacefully home to their dinners.

  Watching from a distance, Linet grieved to see Yustnesveas transformed to a sleepwalker, as were her people, but there was nothing to be done right now except keep ceaseless watch over them—and listen for far-off news.

  Siamis left Sartor to its dream existence and moved on. For the countries governed by more than one leader, or that assembled defenders, he had detachments of warriors. Everyone else fell peacefully under his spell.

  Sometimes Siamis set his enchanted people against doubtful neighbors, friends, and relations. It never failed to take the fight out of them.

  Others—outsiders—who sought to organize found themselves facing a highly trained unit of big, strong Gerandans who cared nothing for foreign lands or people. Inevitably the Gerandans rounded up would-be leaders and brought them along to Siamis for a talk.

  The nature of Siamis’ enchantment depended on leaders. The more faith people put in their leaders, the more swift was the spread of the enchantment. Most people never even saw Siamis himself.

  Were there any who resisted the spell?

  Very few.

  One of these had heard suspicious rumors. She might be just short of her tenth birthday, but she had enough experience to doubt this news of a grownup who traveled around with Norsundrian warriors while talking of peace.

  Devon, now of Imar, tried to express her doubts to Russy and Karia, the young rulers of the country, but to no avail. Her royal friends had changed for the better since the adventures they’d shared together not so long ago—but they were still rulers, and tended to be a little quick to judge, not to mention stubborn.

  So she remained in her room when the man came to have his interview. Devon looked out at those warriors in the courtyard, and knew she was right to worry. She recognized those uniforms, all right.

  She watched from behind her curtains until the Norsundrians were rejoined by a tall, blond man who was not dressed like them.

  She ran down to the royal receiving room. Russy and Karia were still there: tall, dark-haired kids with thin, vivid faces. Russy tended to be sarcastic, and Karia pouty, but they were smart and eager to bring Imar out of its centuries-long slump.

  But when Devon walked it, they looked like . . . like they were asleep on their feet. Karia idly pleated the fringe on one of her elaborate, brocaded gowns, and Russy ran his hand back and forth, back and forth, along the edge of a table while staring out the window.

  “Who was that man?” Devon asked.

  Karia looked up. “Hmmm?”

  Russy said, “Who, Siamis? He wants peace. Says we’ll be as great in Imar as we once were. Greater.”

  “He had elevens with him,” Devon pointed out. “Swords, knives, those jackets—everything. Right in your courtyard.”

  Russy and Karia looked blank.

  “Elevens?” Karia repeated, as if she had never before heard the word.

  “We have commanded the Royal Heralds to issue a peace proclamation,” Russy said.

  Devon scudded back to her room.

  Half an hour later she rode out of the capital on her little gray pony Kondaria. No one tried to stop her—no one noticed her.

  Nearly two weeks later Devon reached the ruins of Ther Doleh in the north, for her idea h
ad been to ride for help from the rulers of Everon, who had kids. Maybe an adult might not listen to her, but she was confident the kids would.

  She’d gotten used to sleeping in the open again, wrapped in the magic cloak that she’d been given when she left Mearsies Heili. It kept out the cold.

  As she rode, she noticed that everyone in Imar acted like they were sleepwalking. She was careful to say or do nothing to draw attention. She bought food for herself and Kondaria, sleeping outside except when it snowed. For her pony’s sake she found good, snug barns. No one ever caught her. It seemed that the people who owned the barns sort of blinked out, like lights, as long as no one talked to them.

  Three times she was stopped by Norsundrians. Each time they looked at her carefully, and she forced herself to act blank, to answer in that dreamy voice other people used.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Why are you out traveling?”

  “My mother sent me to my aunt. My aunt is sending me home.”

  Another stare at her face, their attitudes impatient, disgusted, for no spoken importance had been attached to Liere, and so the Norsundrians figured that the orders to hunt down a skinny little brat with light brown eyes and braids concerned some hostage situation. Nobody wanted to be stuck tending a hostage, particularly if she was the wrong one. And this brat didn’t have light brown eyes.

  So she was let go.

  They are looking for a girl, she thought. Whoever she is, I must look a little like her, but not enough to make them grab me. Devon silently wished the unknown girl a safe journey, as Kondaria plodded steadily northward.

  As she traveled, she had time to think.

  First, about what to do. After she warned Everon’s rulers, she would ask them to send her to CJ and the girls in Mearsies Heili.

  And then . . .

  And then . . .

  She sighed. The right thing was to find a way to break the spell on Russy and Karia. And if she couldn’t?

  That was where her thoughts always stopped and her feelings took over.

  The real truth was, she would love to stay in Mearsies Heili forever. How she loved the girls’ underground hideout, and Clair and CJ and the other girls! But Karia was her first friend on this world, and prickly as she was, she seemed to need Devon.