Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  Siamis would hear.

  I can’t let fear stop me, then he defeats me before I take a step, she thought.

  Somehow—she never did discern the meaning, the pattern, behind the people who flowed around her—she found herself facing an older white-haired woman.

  Like Lilith the Guardian, this woman had kind eyes and a restful manner. As she held out a hand and bade Liere walk with her to the very edge of the dark waters, the others all faded away.

  “The people of the Lake will shift you to the northern waters,” the woman said. “From there you will have only a day’s ride to Roth Drael, and the horses have offered to bear you and your friends.”

  “Thank you,” Liere said. “How much to the Lake people know about what I’m supposed to do?”

  “They know more, and less, of our concerns than we are ever able to discern. They guard secrets that only time will reveal.” The woman looked down, her profile serene. White hair the color of new snow hung down her back. It was impossible to guess her age.

  “So they can’t help me prepare?” Liere dared her greatest question, but not her greatest fear.

  “With what do you desire help?” the woman asked.

  “The magic,” Liere whispered. “The Guardian twice showed me Erai-Yanya’s book, and I have the sense of it. I think. Ah, I can’t read. I don’t know if I can hold it all here.” She touched her head. “And I know nothing of magic.”

  The woman raised her hand, palm out. “Though Erai-Yanya is a prisoner, there are ways for us to communicate with her. She feels that you will be able hold the magic much better than she could even if she were free. The unity is important. She has not made it. She is of the old generation. But she has laid the path carefully for you. Practice what you were taught. It’s the way we all learn. Practice on your ride tomorrow, again and again, but within the mental shield that you construct.”

  Liere repeated, “‘Hold the magic.’” And then, in a rush, “I don’t even know what that means. Oh, why can’t the Guardian be here? She could do this magic. Why must it be me?”

  The woman shook her head. “We do not have enough allies. That is the nature of the times we live in. I do not know everything, only this: right now—this moment—there is a terrible magical struggle going on along a great line to the south, where Norsunder is trying to force one of their access rifts into our world.”

  “South? Senrid says it is in the north.”

  “It seems that the south is where the efforts are being made, and the Guardian leads our mages, who must defend.”

  Liere understood that she was not the center of the world’s struggle. Maybe hers was a very small matter, and here she was, whining the way her father had always despised.

  She bit hard on her lip. Again emotions were ruling her mind, and she knew that mind must rule emotions. I only have this one thing to do. And I have so many allies. I will stop being cowardly, and do it.

  The woman said, “You need rest. Join your companions. Come dawn, the transfer will be made.”

  Rest. Her eyes ached, and her legs were sore from the unaccustomed riding.

  She remembered Devon—and Senrid.

  “There’s another thing,” Liere began, then she stopped. Somehow—she couldn’t define why—to discuss Senrid’s inner turmoil seemed a betrayal. “No.” She squared her shoulders, and straightened her spine. “Never mind. I’ll see to it myself if I can.”

  They reached the woven rugs. On one Devon lay curled up, deeply asleep. At first it seemed Senrid was asleep as well, but when she lay down on the rug set aside for her, she saw a glint under his eyelids. His gaze was not on her, not even on the cave, but a thousand rides and a thousand days away.

  She closed her eyes and dropped into sleep.

  Senrid returned slowly from his tour of memoryscapes.

  What had brought him so far into his past? He’d thought he’d forgotten his mother. “Your mother was weak,” Tdanerend had said repeatedly. “A weak-willed lighter who weakened your father when he married her. You will have to work hard to overcome the weakness they bred in you. Believe me, everyone can see it.”

  Her patient hands, her warmth, gone so suddenly. Why had she left him? Because she was weak, said my uncle, but that’s not true. It was because she trusted him, and he betrayed her. So is trust weak?

  Tdanerend certainly never trusted anyone. Yet Senrid had realized just this last summer that Tdanerend himself was weak, as is a tyrant who can never get enough power because he goes to bed afraid of the knife in the dark. Who permits corruption in his adherents in order to get loyalty in the form of lip service.

  Tdanerend trusted no one, and nothing, but force.

  So was the use of force a kind of weakness?

  That meant . . . that meant . . .

  The words wouldn’t come. Not yet.

  Endless questions streamed through his mind, until he saw that Liere had returned. She lay nearby, her face relaxed in sleep. Beyond her, little Devon lay curled up in a ball, her side rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.

  Senrid closed his eyes, and dreamed.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Next morning they rode southeast through huge mist-shrouded redwoods as cold mist grayed the world.

  Senrid figured they’d been transported somehow to the northern finger of the extensive Silver Lake. How, he didn’t know. When they woke, they were still lying on rugs in a huge cavern, and the cavern looked more or less the same—though the wall paintings seemed to be stylized lizard and chameleon shapes, not birds, knotted together with what looked like wheat and wen stalks.

  A good breakfast and the gift of rain-repelling, warm green dawn-singer cloaks awaited them, and from the cave they rode on two white horses who needed no guidance. And here they discovered redwoods, rather than the fir, oak, and hickory they’d been riding through before.

  Liere rode alone. From the way she gazed sightlessly ahead, her body stiff and her lips moving, Senrid guessed that she was practicing whatever spells she had to perform. He also guessed that she was feeling the effect of the day before’s long ride—feeling it and determinedly ignoring what she couldn’t help. When Senrid mounted his horse, his leg muscles had protested for a short time. Despite the months of not riding, old habits made him adjust quickly.

  But a glance over his shoulder at poor little Devon made it clear that she, like Liere, was no rider. Terror and pain blanched her narrow face and drew her lips into a thin, white line. Her arms were locked around Senrid’s waist again, and she clung with desperate strength.

  She reminded him just a little of Ndand, his cousin. Tdanerend was a rotten guardian and a bad king, but even worse were his skills as a parent. He hadn’t quite dared to try magic experiments on Senrid, but nothing had stopped him from experimenting with magic for mind control on Ndand, which had pretty much made a mess of her. She was also the only companion Senrid had been permitted, and so he’d gotten adept at diverting desperately frightened and unhappy small girls.

  “See that rock over there?” he began.

  “Yes?” A quick look. “What’s wrong?” Devon’s voice was high and trembly.

  “Hiding behind it I saw a toad-shaped old geezer with six purple noses—”

  She gasped, and then giggled.

  “—because he lost a wager with a very cranky old sorcerer, who . . .” Stories were as easy to spin out as lies—which, of course, they were. Lies had always been stories, little ones lived in briefly, in order to escape from real life if only for a short time.

  And so he kept his story going as the horses paced steadily through the blue-green shadows of the woodland. They rode through the entire day, past vast ferny canopies, occasional brilliant splashes of late-season wildflowers lighting the misty green world, for this far north, autumn had set in some time ago. The air was so good that breathing it made a person feel a little drunk. After a time Devon fell asleep again, leaning against Senrid, her death-grip relaxing at last. He had to hold her spindly little
wrists to keep her on the horse.

  The sky was obscured by the immeasurably tall redwoods, the profound stillness broken only by the horses’ progress over the rich ground, and the occasional, startling thrush-songs that ascended upward like jets of light from the hidden birds.

  Liere didn’t speak until the lengthening shadows had begun to meld into darkness, making the trees nearly indistinguishable. By then the horses walked, but Senrid wasn’t sure if they watched for invisible branches that might knock riders clean off their backs.

  When he felt the slap of needles across his face, he said, “I think we had better camp.”

  Liere gasped as if he’d poked her. She was nothing more than a black shadow against the blue background now. Only her horse’s pale shape marked her out. “Yes,” she said, in her flat voice.

  “We just crossed a stream,” he said. “Maybe we ought to go back there.”

  Liere fell silent. The horses wheeled about and retraced their steps, splashed across the stream, then headed up a small incline.

  “Here,” Liere said. “They say this spot is good for humans.”

  Senrid slid off onto velvet-soft grass, still wet from the rain. He pulled Devon down. The girl snorted and sighed, then staggered as he set her on her feet. “Oh. We’re stopping?” she mumbled.

  An older kid would have netted a sarcastic answer but to Devon Senrid just said, “There’s water over here.”

  Devon rubbed her eyes, amazed that she had actually fallen asleep on the back of the horse! Then she recovered the vague, comforting feeling of Senrid’s strong hands holding her secure, and she thought, sleepily, He doesn’t act like a prince the way Russy says, but more the way you’d expect one to act. Not that she defined that further, for to whom would she say it? She knew Liere had no interest whatever in the actions of princes, and she was too embarrassed to say anything about the subject to Senrid. But she had accustomed herself, in her short life, to inner dialogues.

  One by one they got drinks, and then Liere shared out the nut cakes that the morvende have given them. They ate in silence. After the meal, Devon wrapped up in her cloak and dropped into deep asleep.

  Senrid and Liere both felt tiredness pulling at muscles and joints, but Liere’s yammering heartbeat would not permit her to relax. Anticipation made her restless. A whole world’s safety depended upon her actions, and she was afraid to fail.

  Senrid sat across from her, Devon’s small form between them. All Liere could see was a finger of light on his fair hair. All he could see was her bent head, outlined against the pale bulk of a horse who cropped at grass a little ways away, and the faint blue-white gleam of moonlight on the worked silver clasp she’d been given for her cloak.

  She looked his way. “Would you mind a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s about, well, fame. I mean, you’re a person of royal birth, so you’re used to everyone knowing who you are.”

  “In Marloven Hess, anyway,” he said. He wasn’t about to get into the Marlovens’ reps in outlying countries—and he wouldn’t let her get into it, either.

  Liere said, “Do you feel that, if they know you, they have a claim on you? That you might have to . . . you might feel obligated. . .to, well. Live up to their expectations?”

  Surprised, he said without thinking, “I do feel that obligation to the people of Marloven Hess. Felt it all my life.” He promptly regretted saying that much, but she didn’t jump on it.

  Instead, she sighed. “How do you know what’s the right thing to do?”

  He wasn’t about to get into that, either. Besides, he knew by now that this wasn’t the real issue.

  “You’re having second thoughts about your magical object?”

  “It’s called a dyr. Die—rrruh.” She carefully pronounced the word, squashing the instinct to make two vowel-sounds out of “y” and swallowing her “r”, which in Imar was trilled. “I’m still trying to learn what that means. All I know is, we don’t have anything like them in modern times, yet they were common enough in Old Sartor. Anyway, not about that. I know that’s right. It’s after. I don’t want people putting into my hands power . . . responsibility . . . decisions that will affect their lives.”

  “Who says that has to happen?” Senrid countered. “At least from everything I have read, people don’t give power away, they work to keep it. And even if it’s different for lighters—which I doubt, despite all the rhetoric—it’s only there if you accept it. You can always go back to your home in South End after Siamis gets axed.”

  “I can’t go back,” she said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t. I can’t be what I was. And anything else . . .” She gave a shuddering sigh. “Wouldn’t fit.”

  “Then you go back to those morvende. From where I sat, you’d be plenty welcome, and they’re not going to turn you into a figurehead.”

  “They already have,” she whispered.

  “So that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Does that sound cowardly?”

  “It sounds like you’re borrowing trouble when there’s plenty right at hand,” he said. “Look. Get this dyr thing. Use it for whatever spell Lilith the L—the Guardian told you to perform. Seems to be that’s enough to concentrate on. And maybe by the time that’s done you’ll know what to do next.”

  She ducked her head in a quick nod, a movement barely discernible. “You’re right. Dyr first.”

  “Then let’s rack up. You’re going to need it. Magic takes energy, and when you’re tired, you don’t have energy.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sleep.”

  She rolled up in her cloak and lay down, as did he, but a few moments later he heard her voice again. “How do you live with that? Knowing that what you do affects so many lives? Or are you so accustomed to it you don’t think about it?”

  “Contrary,” Senrid said guardedly. “I do think about it.”

  Liere was silent, and because—so far—she’d been straight with him, he said, “I think about it a lot. I hated having the name and not the power. Things—stupid things—done in my name. I know how I want to rule. When I get home I have to see to it that I can.” He heard the fervency in his own voice, and shut up.

  Liere sighed again, but not the shivery sigh of suppressed tears. She said slowly, “A different set of problems. But . . . I think . . . we have the same goal.”

  “Do we?”

  The derisive question shut her up.

  After a time he slept.

  o0o

  And woke with her hand on his shoulder.

  Weak blue light barely illuminated her thin, taut face and exhaustion-marked eyes.

  “We have to go now,” she said, her voice nearly lost in the hush of the forest around them.

  Senrid rolled to his feet, old habit making him alert at once. He breathed deeply, seeing his breath, and feeling that heady sensation, a little like drinking ale, that was a characteristic of the air here. Ale with no stupidity, no headache. Liquors were for those who took safety for granted, and who didn’t need to think ahead of everyone else.

  He stepped down mossy rocks to the stream and splashed his face and washed his hands clean. The water was shockingly cold, but it tasted good.

  When he climbed back up he saw that the horses, who had vanished sometime during their talk the night before, were back, waiting side by side, their eyes gleaming in the diffuse light from above, their breath clouding faintly.

  Devon’s cheeks had regained their pink, though she still sat stiffly. She smiled as she divided up some food. They ate in haste, then Senrid boosted Devon up onto one of the mounts and vaulted up himself.

  “Shall I show you some ways to make riding easier?” Senrid offered, after a time.

  “Is it hard?” Devon whispered.

  “Naw. I did this when I was six. It will be fun!”

  Liere rode in silence, her mind far away, as Senrid coached Devon, one small suggestion at a time.

  By aft
ernoon, she tried loosening her grip more and more often, as she concentrated on settling into her seat.

  Light slanted through the remote treetops, golden shafts splashing on patches of grass, or moss, or pale-blossomed late-autumn wildflowers. Devon looked around with evident joy, and in an act of bravery, rummaged around in her knapsack. The air was clear, and cold, but their cloaks kept them warm.

  “Wen stalks?” Devon asked, offering long green stems to Senrid. “Found them growing right near where we slept.”

  “Good. Thanks,” he said, taking one.

  They tasted sweet, and killed the craving for food; they’d eat when they reached their destination.

  In mid-afternoon they encountered the animals guarding the ruined city. Roth Drael was near. A gazelle leaped across their path, and the horses stopped.

  “Isn’t that one of the Fens?” he asked. “Aren’t they supposed to be able to talk in human speech?”

  “Yes, but they hate human speech,” Liere whispered. “We won’t ask them to speak to us.”

  Senrid shrugged.

  Liere communed silently with the waiting gazelle, who stood still under the girl’s touch, only her flanks quivering. Then Liere looked up. “Siamis is still behind us, but no more than a day.”

  Senrid whistled softly and appreciatively. “He’s fast.”

  Devon made a frightened noise.

  Liere said, “I’ve asked her to tell the Fens not to risk their lives trying to stop him. I think we can finish the magic and get away before he gets here.”

  Senrid said nothing.

  The horses started forward, and within a short space of time they descended along a riverbank into the ruins.

  There was no building standing whole in what was left of Roth Drael, one of the cities of Old Sartor. Great chunks of a glistening white stone lay scattered about, mute evidence of a truly terrible magical battle. What they could see of the architecture hinted at design to maximize light, and air, with commodious rooms. Graceful curves and angles were all the more shocking because they drew and momentarily pleased the eye—and then there’d be the crack, or the jagged wall, testifying to sudden violence, below which lay the scattering of weather-worn stone.