Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  “Beat the bushes?” Senrid repeated. Was it some idiom translated over from their language? To a Marloven, ‘beat the bushes’ meant a thorough search.

  “Not really.” Gloriel laughed. “I mean, not literally. For one thing, there weren’t many bushes just before we hit the mountains. Grass, yes. Before that, though, lots and lots of forest.”

  “We got sidetracked a few times,” Deirdre said.

  “Rotten weather, and we were slow because that forest was pretty wild,” Frederic added.

  “Anyhoo,” Gloriel said, “what I meant was, look for a road back. Then hustle. Beat feet.”

  “Skedaddle, my great-uncle used to say,” Frederic put in.

  “Scramola,” Deirdre added.

  Peridot whirled around, her braids flying. “Who cares? Let’s just do it, if we have to! I want to get this part over so we can go find Dtheldevor!”

  “All right, then, back to Roth Drael,” Gloriel said.

  “Roth Drael?” Senrid repeated, hiding a surge of rebellion and distrust. There was no need to go to a Lighter center; the rift was supposed to be much farther north.

  “That’s what the Guardian said.” Deirdre spread her hands. “That’s where we were to bring the girl if we found her.”

  Senrid said, “But you don’t have the girl.”

  Frederic shrugged. “We have you. And if you’re the other one we were supposed to find . . . maybe we should go there.”

  Senrid thought, Why does light magic load itself down with all these extra wards, safeguards, tentative steps, so that every Norsundrian in the world will have plenty of time to figure out what’s going on, and strike?

  “There’s another way,” Senrid said, lying cheerfully. After all, what would it hurt? Nothing. His plans were continguous with Lighter plans . . . to a degree. “We go straight up the coast, fast as we can.”

  The off-worlders looked at one another.

  “That way’s faster?” Peridot asked.

  “Yep,” Senrid said. “Has to be. You yourself said the North Forest is wild. We’d be walking up the coast. Lots easier.”

  He watched the others, who exchanged uncertain looks. Only Peridot looked impatient. She’d decided. And not because she was on his side. He sensed antagonism—not just to him, but to anyone who might conceive themselves in authority.

  Like the Guardian.

  To test his theory, Senrid said, “It does mean danger, because Norsunder will be on the watch for us.”

  Peridot glared at him, her lip curled. “So you think we’re chicken? If your way is faster, I vote for that, and let the Norsunder turds watch out for themselves!”

  “But the Guardian said Roth Drael,” Deirdre murmured, looking doubtful. “And I remember that was way, way inland.”

  “Oh, who cares?” Peridot exploded. “Why isn’t The Guardian with us now, if this is so important? I say we take the easiest way, since we’re doing her boring job and she’s too busy to help out, and if she doesn’t like us, she can send us a magical message with directions.”

  Nobody answered.

  Senrid said, “If we start up the coast, which is faster, remember, maybe she’ll catch up.”

  Deirdre’s brow cleared. “Good thinking. Okay.”

  “So north it is,” Senrid said, and laughed inside.

  Detlev, even if it costs my life, you’re going to be very sorry you ever messed with Marloven Hess.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Senrid and his new companions walked northward, passing through snowstorms that scintillated with color at the edge of one’s vision. Senrid sensed such powerful magic that their sense of time and place was not to be trusted.

  They walked for a full day, Senrid watching the clouds and the landscape. Occasionally snow veiled the latter, but not enough to hide how it would change. He couldn’t catch the transition, nor could he feel it.

  At first he assumed that the others didn’t notice. Peridot kept asking him questions or making statements in a goading tone. “Did you go to school?”

  “No.”

  “No? How did you learn to read, or didn’t you?”

  “Tutors.”

  “Tutors! Are you some rich kid, then? Where are your servants and coach and eight horses?”

  “Lost them,” Senrid said. “Where is your school?”

  “Blown up, I hope,” Peridot said angrily. She was even angrier than Kyale, though Senrid did not know why. He tried to shift the focus by turning to Gloriel, “Did you go to school?”

  “Yes. Our schools are different from yours. At least,” Gloriel said, “we never actually saw any here. But they can’t possibly be as stupid as schools where we come from.” For a moment she scowled as fiercely as her twin.

  When Senrid kicked at a clump of snow without offering any observations about schools, Peridot, who couldn’t figure if this kid was stupid or just sort of bland, said, “So what’s the worst word in your language?”

  Treachery, Senrid thought, and grimaced. It sounded too much like his uncle.

  “Whatsa matter,” Peridot goaded. “Too prissy to talk about cusswords?”

  “No,” Senrid said. “I was remembering someone I hate. What do you mean, worst word, as in worst thing you can call someone, or a word for something vile?”

  Peridot said, “Words that get you into trouble if you say them around adults. Like . . .” She unloaded a string of English swearwords and obscenities, watching Senrid closely.

  Senrid blinked—and there was a new cliff face. It couldn’t be the same peak he’d seen before. Deirdre squinted up at the same cliff, then whispered to Frederic, who slewed around, hand over his eyes as if that could sharpen his focus.

  Senrid masked his impatience as he said, “What I’m hearing through the translation magic is just sex, sex, male private parts, sex, and human waste.”

  Peridot put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you have any cusswords?”

  “Sure. But not about sex. We do about waste, though.”

  “You don’t have sex?”

  “I don’t,” Senrid said, hiding his disgust at the idea of permitting anyone such close proximity. He knew that if he released the aging spell, he’d reach the threshold of adulthood within a couple of years. But he didn’t want that to happen. He wasn’t going to relax his guard like his father had. Ever.

  Nor was he going to entertain Peridot with his private thoughts. So he said, “Adults have sex. I’m not an adult.”

  “Even talking about it gets you into trouble at home,” Peridot said. “Disgusting as it sounds.”

  The other kids sidled glances Senrid’s way, and he wondered what he was missing. Except that the subject was so boring, he didn’t really want to know. “Sex is sex,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing. When you get old enough, if you want it, you have it.” He shrugged. “What’s to talk about?”

  Peridot’s brows lifted; Frederic smothered a laugh, then hastily turned it into a cough so Peridot wouldn’t start yelling at him.

  “I know that mountain changed,” Deirdre said low-voiced. “It happens every time we see the rainbow thingies.” She twiddled her fingers at the edges of her vision.

  A crunch just behind her caused her to look over her shoulder. There was Senrid, obviously listening in.

  She’d noticed the way he was constantly scanning the landscape, and wondered what it meant. Maybe it’s just that since he’d picked the direction, he felt that he should be on the watch. But he seemed so tense. At first she thought it was because of Peridot, but even when Peridot ran ahead and started talking to her sister (“sex words” floated back) the quick way Senrid turned his head, the tense way he raised his forearm when they passed a tree and an old branch fell with a ‘crack’ made her uneasy.

  Frederic shrugged. He obviously didn’t much care about magic, except as a thing that did other things. Like thinking about electricity, back on earth. Deirdre had always wondered what made it, and how this invisible thing could make lights work a
nd machines run. Frederic would rather read an adventure book. Deirdre loved adventure books, too (that was how they met, in the fourth grade), but she liked knowing how things worked.

  There was definitely something magic at work here. From the looks of those mountains it should take months to walk, but their trail never got arduous. It felt kind of like being on a train—when you walk from car to car, your steps are slow, but outside the windows, the countryside slides by.

  Next day (after a warm night in a kind of protected cave) they started down a trail winding northward. Before long they glimpses the coast between snowy cliffs and palisades, and by nightfall they’d reached the hilly lowlands. A warm breeze caressed their faces—warm compared to the heights, for though in this hemisphere the season was early winter, the current weather was quite mild.

  “Well,” Peridot said with satisfaction, “that wasn’t so bad, and I hate snow. Now that we’re back in some kind of civilization, shall we spend some of our coins, or try to get a free night?”

  “Neither,” Senrid said.

  Frederic exchanged glances with Deirdre. They dropped back a little—easy, as Senrid walked fast.

  “This guy expects trouble,” he muttered to her in English.

  Senrid topped a little rise, and looked sharply about with a narrow-eyed expression.

  “Yep,” Deirdre whispered.

  “You want to ask him?”

  “You,” Deirdre whispered. “You’re a boy.”

  “So?” Frederic shrugged. “Like that makes a difference?”

  Deirdre knew it didn’t. But she didn’t want to say that Senrid’s tension bothered her. It seemed kind of mean, when he was not only polite, but he put up with Peridot’s showing off.

  He didn’t look afraid, exactly, but like somebody waiting for a thunderstorm, or for bullies to come around the corner back at the school cafeteria. Only Senrid didn’t look like the type to run. More like he’d take them all on, no matter how many there were.

  Senrid kept his thoughts to himself.

  He didn’t relax until they found a secluded grove near the bend in a slow river. Night birds chirped cheerily overhead, and Deirdre gladly breathed in the clean scents of water and grass. Peridot and Gloriel flopped right down on a grassy spot and curled up to sleep, and after a time Frederic’s breathing slowed. The last thing Deirdre was aware of was Senrid sitting with his back to a tree, his form shadowy in the starlight. He was fingering something in the cuff of his sleeve that gleamed with faint silver highlights.

  o0o

  “There’s the beach!” Peridot yelled a day later.

  “Barefoot time!” Gloriel crowed.

  The two kids ran down the last hill and when they reached the sand, they danced about, turning cartwheels and kicking sand into the lapping waves.

  The others followed at a fast walk. Plugging along behind, Deirdre thought about how much she hated moving fast in hot weather. But when Senrid reached the Warren twins, he looked over his shoulder at Peridot and said, “You’re slow.” He gave her a challenging, toothy grin that would have goaded a rock. “Are all girls that slow?”

  The race was on!

  Deirdre thumped along grimly in last place, watching Senrid pacing Peridot. Though the Warren girl was a little taller, Deirdre was willing to bet he was the better runner—at least, the more determined. He ran easily, whereas Peridot was crimson-faced, running hard until her breath gave out.

  Rather than admit she wasn’t the winner, Peridot veered toward the waves and splashed into the water. Deirdre panted up behind, glad at least they could run on wet sand. She caught her breath while Peridot and Gloriel splashed water at each other, their laughing voices sounding a lot like the cry of gulls.

  Senrid watched, his arms folded. On impulse, Deirdre strayed up to him. “You’re not going to do that the whole way, are you?” she asked.

  He cut a glance her way, his forehead tense. “I think we need to move as fast as we can.”

  “Why? We had no problems coming south,” Deirdre said. “I think the elevens lost interest in us.”

  “Think, Deirdre,” he said in a quiet voice. “I made it to the Fereledria—where they can’t track anyone but other elevens, and that by the snowstorms, if the stories are right—and I was chased. They know you’re in this world. I found out by hearing gossip in—”

  He made an impatient, flat-handed gesture, as though smacking something away. “They are going to put us together eventually, and from there even the ones enchanted to be stupid as stones could guess what we’re planning to do. I’m hoping they’re figuring on our going to Roth Drael, and their trackers are strung through the North Forest. It won’t last forever, but it’ll give us time, since your friend Lilith the Guardian seems to be too busy guarding someone else.”

  “You believe it’s that desperate?” Frederic asked, coming up on the other side.

  Senrid had spent enough time around the four kids to figure out who were the smart ones. Not that the twins were stupid, it was just that Peridot let her feelings lead her, and Gloriel tended to follow her sister.

  So Senrid explained quickly about rifts, and about how off-worlders could close them if they sacrificed a sufficiently powerful magical implement.

  “If we close the rift they’re making—or maybe have made, but I don’t think they have finished it yet—it ends access between our world and Norsunder,” Senrid finished. “The little rift gates are easier enough to make, but they can only transfer through one person at a time. Moving whole armies through takes extremely powerful magic.”

  “Why do they have to make it way up north? Why can’t they just make one anywhere?”

  “It has to be where the old rifts were, the ancient ones. Those weakened the world permanently, and they still lie there, like scars. And it has to be in open area, where nothing living is about. If something live gets into the space of something else live, both things kill one another as they cross the rift. Norsunder isn’t going to want to waste all their warriors bumping into a herd of cows or people in a trade town, or even trees. I guess grass doesn’t create the same problem. Anyway, that leaves out forestland. Mountains are dangerous for transferring through great numbers, because the rift might form over a cliff.”

  Frederic grimaced. “Okay. Got the idea.”

  Deirdre nodded soberly. “I don’t really understand magic stuff. We don’t have it on Earth. But it sounds convincing. Here, I’ll go get the Warrens.”

  Senrid said, “It’s not just speed. Even if the magic runs out on your knapsacks—mine is already gone again—we will have to forage. We can’t be seen by any other people.”

  Frederic sighed. “If you think so.”

  His ambivalence was clear—at least until Senrid said, “And if they do find us, our last best chance is to scatter. One of the best ways to mess up a big rift is to speak the spells while using this thing.” He touched the shiny thing in his cuff. “And they know it.”

  Deirdre and Frederic looked at one another. “Okay,” she said.

  o0o

  Leader lay flat on a roof above the Norsundrian HQ in Wnelder Vee’s capital.

  This was Dtheldevor’s home kingdom. She’d met up with her beached crew, and they were busy raising a ruckus all over the city—loosing horses, firing hay, ruining Norsunder’s supplies, even setting fire to buildings the Norsundrians had taken over—in hopes of waking up the enchanted people. Leander had chosen to spy instead.

  Below, the Norsundrians blabbed in Norsundrian. So it had been all day, making Leander feel that he had to stay just a little longer, and longer again, in spite of the hot sun broiling the back of his neck—long enough to hear something.

  Two more Norsundrians came in. They and the other two conversed incomprehensibly, and just when Leander felt he was going to go mad from frustration a new one came in—this one speaking Fer Sartoran to someone behind him.

  “ . . . so we’d better finish with the locals.” His accent sounded like Dtheldevor’s, meaning
he’d originally come from this area.

  “What’s the difference?” asked another, in the same language. “Part of the playacting?”

  The first one shrugged.

  Talk more, Leander begged mentally. What playacting? Who?

  “Who’s to be impressed?” asked a fourth, one of the newcomers.

  The second retorted, “Who is to be mind-ripped for bucking orders?”

  The fourth zapped back with, “Who’s going to be ripped for a city full of chaos when he’s due in?”

  “Shut up.” The first one lifted his head, and when the others fell silent, he returned to reading his papers. ‘He?’ A commander? Siamis?

  Leander squinted down, wondering if the papers were written in Norsunder as well. He was busy thinking about those papers, and how to get at least one of them, when more arrivals came through the door.

  At first Leander thought the first one a civilian, maybe even a prisoner. He was tall, dressed in plain shirt and trousers, the sleeves of the shirt rolled to his elbows. As the man moved to the center of the room Leander saw that he wore a silver sword—a nifty-looking blade that was very unlike the Norsundrian issue. No prisoner, then.

  “What do you have for me?” he asked in Sartoran, holding his hand out for the papers.

  The promptitude with which the first one rose and surrendered his stacks of papers made it clear that, at last, Leander was actually seeing Siamis. After a wild chase of half a year, sometimes catching up to the same city, mostly trailing him by a day or weeks. At last, Siams was right there!

  But Leander couldn’t reach him. And he remembered that business about mind reading. You’re nothing but a bug on the roof, he told himself. A quiet bug . . .

  Siamis leafed rapidly through a bunch of papers, then tossed them on the table. Leander stared down at the blond head, quite frustrated; even if he’d had anything to strike with, could he have managed it at this angle? Senrid probably could, he thought with an inward sigh.

  Siamis looked up at the second Norsundrian, smiling pleasantly.

  “Your people appear to be preoccupied today.”