Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  Anger they could understand. Someone was going to catch it hot any moment now—and they did not want to be blasted by the flames.

  Siamis said, “I just finished an enlightening exchange with our young friend. She seems to see herself in the guise of a crusading heroine.” He pointed down at a map that lay open on a big round table. “Probably the same sources that transferred her here ahead of us will return the favor come morning, putting her somewhere south of this lake.” He smiled gently at Davernak. “You have now your opportunity to make up for your error. You will take your group and follow her to the first town or city she comes to. When she’s in the center, you may do what you like with the inhabitants. You have one order: see to it that she doesn’t escape.”

  The newcomer, the loud one with gray hair, said impatiently, “I’ll take that order. I’ll see it done right.”

  Siamis shrugged a shoulder. “You may share the command. I want my orders carried out. You may decide between you who achieves this.”

  The Norsundrians, except for Davernak, all grinned. Frederic could see that this was the kind of command they liked. The gray haired one gave Davernak a contemptuous glance.

  “After it is done, you are to give out the word that Liere Fer Eider was the direct cause of the tragedy and disaster because she—encouraged by Lilith the Lighter—refused my offer of peace, and chose war.”

  “We’re to let her through until she reaches a city,” Davernak repeated, as the gray-haired one looked impatient. “What about the brats with her?”

  “Oh, she’ll be alone. I made sure of that. If her ‘brats’ do manage to follow her, I want the Marloven boy. I have no interest in the other one.”

  The two Norsundrians left. Frederic followed, as usual comprehending without will or direction, as if in a dream.

  He was not the only eavesdropper.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  After weeks of chasing after the Norsundrians, Leander and Dtheldevor got close enough to spy Siamis’s party riding alongside a stream below the ridge they lay on, and thereby discovered Siamis had captured four off-worlders—two of them old friends of Dtheldevor and her gang—she pulled out a bottle halfway through the afternoon.

  Dtheldevor uncorked the bottle and was just raising it to take a swig when Leander gave in to instinct at last, and kicked it out of her hand.

  She looked up, her mouth open, her fingers still curled as if to hold the wine, then her eyes narrowed to slanted black lines of fury and she whipped free her sword.

  “Go ahead,” Leander said, arms out wide. “I’m no match for you. And if you keep sozzling that swill we’re finished anyway.”

  Dtheldevor flung down her sword, cursing violently. Then she heaved a great sigh. “Yer right. Me dad used to say, anger is like smoke. Hold it in and it burns ye. I been lettin’ it burn, and tryin’ to put it out by sozzling.”

  Leander said only, “We’re going to have to find some way to ride.”

  And that was why Dtheldevor liked him. No smugness, no parade.

  She snapped her fingers. “Morvende. Sarmonwilda taught me how to find ‘em.”

  She slapped her hand against her leg, picked up her sword, wiped it off, and they were soon on their way; by the next morning they rode side by side.

  Now that they were close enough, they discovered why the Norsundrians rode such an erratic course. They were being deflected by forest life, and that meant Leander and Dtheldevor shared the fun.

  Fog, diverted streams, mud-sodden paths, and various other disasters kept pursuers and pursuit on the hop. Siamis and his gang pushed hard despite the obstacles.

  Leander and Dtheldevor grimly stuck it out until, after two or three days of westward corrections, Leander figured that Siamis had to be headed for Roth Drael, just as he’d originally said. So they headed straight north, and nothing disturbed them.

  Dtheldevor shook her head after a disaster-free day of travel. “How do they know?” After a long curse, she admitted, “Gives me the butt-chaps in me head, that they can see inside me skull.”

  Leander grinned. “Maybe Norsundrians smell different to animals. I’m just glad we’re out of it.”

  The next morning early they rode for the city, stopping on the northernmost border at Leander’s insistence.

  “They’ll search,” he said. “I’ve got to hide our mounts.”

  “You do that. I’ll do some nosin’.”

  Leander withdrew to care for the horses, and find shelter. He left markers so she’d know where to look.

  About noon, a flock of crying birds alerted him. Before long a lynx slunk out of the forest undergrowth and yowled in the Language: Evil Ones. In the human dwelling.

  Leander checked his hiding place, which was in a sheltered cave next to a waterfall. Thick growth around the upper level would have protected it from discovery by anyone but a kid who had been raised as an outlaw in just this kind of terrain. He sat down, without making a fire, and waited patiently.

  Dtheldevor showed up on the ridge well after dark, her hand on that same lynx’s back.

  “You there?” she whispered. “Dark as Detsie’s heart.”

  “Down here,” Leander murmured.

  Dtheldevor skidded and slipped her way down, muttering fierce oaths.

  As soon as she was on level ground, she said, “No lights. The soulsuckers are stayin’ and some o’ them are out lookin’ for sport. I been on the roof all day, couldn’t move till dark.”

  “What happened?”

  She snorted. “We gotta get in there and bump off that-there fart-face.”

  She repeated Siamis’s orders concerning Liere, punctuated by colorful invective that under other circumstances would have diverted Leander at its mere unlikelihood. But the horror of those orders quenched any impulse to laugh.

  “An’ that was all. Then I hadda lie there all the blasted day, cause they was swarming all over. The kids, too! My own friends, sittin’ there like someone scooped out their heads! It’s bad, bad,” Dtheldevor said under her breath, too grieved even to curse—for a brief moment, anyway. “This mind messin’ is bad. I know how t’fight some o’ it, but it don’t always work. In me dad’s day, you squared up with sword or knife, and cheats were maybe usin’ a chair or a bottle to pitch at yer enemy, or a friend behind to trip up yer foe if you wasn’t so good with yer blade. None o’ this mind damn-blastation.”

  Leander remembered her accounts of vicious-sounding experiments that Detlev had played with the royal families of Everon and Wnelder Vee. Not for him senseless slaughter: that had nearly extinguished human life from the world four thousand years ago. Mind games. Distort the leaders, and half your conquering work was done for you, saving effort and affording entertainment for those patient enough to watch it.

  And apparently the unknown, sinister leaders of Norsunder had just that kind of patience. The world was their puppet, and they hammered their strings through minds. And hearts.

  Leander’s palms had gone clammy. “So you got out unseen,” he prompted.

  “Don’t worry none.” She snorted a laugh. “I ain’t good’s you in the woods—you know that—but I know plenty about snakin’ around buildings. Spotted the patrol routine, saw they got no blind spots. Leastways not yet. They will, though.” She grinned, a brief, fleering grin. “They will. The blank-phizz ones got the outer walk, and they ain’t gonna see no one. They’ll get careless, so long as Soulsucker Siamis is busy, I bet you anything.”

  “I won’t take that bet.” Leander rubbed his eyes. “You kept your mind shield tight?”

  “You bet! So anyhoo, I got me a bird to make a noise in some bushes, and got me carcass on the move soon’s they snouted over to see what was what. Took two breaths o’ time. Then I wandered about until the big cat found me.”

  “Then they don’t know we’re here.”

  “Nope. Saw yer prints and mine on the northside up there, thought they was Sartora and her pals. I reckon theirs got wiped by rain betwixt their leavin’ and Siamis�
�� comin’.”

  “Sartora,” Leander repeated, thinking of Senrid Montredaun-An. The dawn-singers down south had called this mysterious girl, whose real name they kept forgetting, by the name Sartora. That was easy to remember.

  “Was here yesterday, right enough. Dang! If we’d been faster—”

  “Except our job is Siamis,” Leander said.

  “Yes,” Dtheldevor said, grim and cold. “I ain’t forgot.”

  o0o

  Devon woke first.

  When Liere and Senrid opened gritty, tired eyes, it was to find the last of their food shared out, plus some berries and wen stalks that she’d found.

  When they finished eating, the horses were there, waiting side by side. Liere walked to them and stood next to one, her head bowed, her skinny hand flat on the front of the animal’s face.

  Finally she looked up. “They can let the other animals know to stay away,” she said in a low voice. “But the horses will carry us. They say they’re faster than those of the evil ones.” She rubbed her eyes, and sighed. “They aren’t horses like our horses. They are descendants from some kind of creature, not of this form, though it is one that they like, and so they mated with native horses. But I can’t really understand their true form. All I get is light.”

  Senrid thought how weird it was that a being with choice wouldn’t choose human form. What is it in the horse view of the world that’s better? I guess if you want to move fast, and do not trust speech, then horse would supersede human. Then he shrugged. “What it means right now is that we ride, so maybe we’ve got a chance. Until they leave.” He leaped onto one’s back, and extended a hand to Devon.

  Liere pressed her lips together. She ran a few steps, and vaulted up in a fair copy of Senrid’s way of mounting.

  Devon looked from Liere to Senrid. Something was wrong—she knew it—but she also knew she couldn’t fix it.

  Liere continued to stay silent on the ride south, which was relatively short. Senrid entertained Devon with another story, spun out to last all morning, interspersed with riding lessons masked as casual suggestions. The pinched look left her face, and she even laughed out loud.

  The horses veered westward and took them up into the rocky hills above the lake, and from there to a morvende geliath. Liere was silent and remote again, angry with herself for the fear that she couldn’t quite banish.

  Senrid’s awareness had developed so gradually—and so completely—that he couldn’t remember when it hadn’t been that way. He did not know what to say to Liere since he couldn’t understand her willingness to risk her own life on behalf of these nameless others to whom she felt no responsibility other than as a mere symbol. He respected the desperate courage it took, but he didn’t understand it.

  They arrived at the morvende geliath, again through a difficult access that Senrid knew he’d never remember later. He’d looked hard, and discovered a blurring of physical details around the entrance meant to deceive . . . him. Liere and Devon would never think to look for such things.

  Once they were in the tunnel Liere blurted to the first morvende she saw, “We mustn’t stop. The Norsundrians are after us.”

  Senrid, feeling the dyr thump against his body every time he moved, offered no more arguments.

  “Stay for food,” was the answer, and they were led inside.

  This time he was aware of the transfer.

  It was like no other magic. There was no sense of displacement, none of the wrenching vertigo associated with dark magic transfers. The cave around them flickered, resolving into subtly different lines and colors. Again, the perimeter was shrouded in shadow, and the light was concentrated toward the center along the water’s edge.

  What spooked him was that the morvende in the new cave were silent, and waiting. He could feel their expectancy, and their respect that bordered on awe.

  How had they known so fast? His palms prickled. Liere lifted her head, her body straight.

  “Thank you,” she said, sounding very young, her voice tense. “I thank you for all your help. But I have to go on alone. Any who follow, even to help, will lead the enemies to us all. I have what I came north to get, and if I am to use it to break Siamis’s magic, I must go on alone.”

  “We will give you travelers’ fare,” a very old morvende woman said, coming forward. She was barely taller than the kids, but her presence, her tranquility, were calming to the spirit.

  Liere saw Devon’s anxious question and said quickly, “That we’ll accept, and gladly.”

  There was no music when they left.

  As they walked up the tunnel toward the surface, they had to pass the line of waiting morvende. Young, old, male, female, they were all there, all quiet—hundreds of them. As Liere approached, they put their hands together and bowed their heads over them in the old gesture of peace and respect. Some murmured words of gratitude, of good wishes. Her face burned with embarrassment. At least they didn’t say anything.

  These were the people she was trying to keep Norsunder from destroying. Weakness was a luxury. She had to be strong. She had to succeed, or she would fail not just herself, but every single one of these kindly, faithful, hopeful gazes.

  If she failed them, every death would weigh forever on her conscience.

  Senrid paced beside her on one side, Devon on the other. After an eternity she made it to the cave entrance, and out.

  There, she turned to Devon and Senrid. Her mouth was dry, but she forced herself to speak. “I think you should leave me now,” she said. “I can’t put you two in danger.”

  Senrid unpinned his pocket and closed his fingers around the dyr and the hatpin. “You can take this thing back if it’ll make you feel better, and you should take the hatpin, too. It will keep the dyr safe, and the sword might scare away a Norsundrian horse.” He held out his palm with the two objects on it.

  “But,” he added, “as for your stupid idea of going it on your own . . . you know what I think. And I’m not sticking around here.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the morvende cave. He grinned. “I’m sure I’m about as welcome as a fart at a party, though they’re putting up with me with you here.”

  Devon said firmly, “I won’t go.” Her eyes were huge, dark gray with her own strain. “I’ll carry the food. And watch out for you if you forget to sleep. You let me help before. I like helping.” She stuck out her lip, then added, “If he can go, so can I.”

  Senrid understood that it had been a mistake to speak first. Devon would only slow Liere down, and she was obviously worn out and terrified, but there was no denying her courage.

  “You need my help,” Devon pleaded, and Senrid felt how much she needed to give that help.

  Liere nodded slowly. Senrid sensed her relief that she would not be alone after all, though the relief was tangled in guilt and fear and regret.

  “Keep them,” Liere said, touching the dyr on Senrid’s outstretched palm. “I still don’t have pockets.”

  And so the three of them walked out past the rocky entrance, emerging under a cloud-covered sky, to where the—or some—white horses waited. It was impossible for her to tell them apart; Senrid was beginning to, as he’d been raised around horses. These were new ones. Though they all had the white hair, some of them had dun undertones, or roan, or grayish. One had pale, pale spots.

  Senrid leaped up onto one, and held his hand down to Devon, who scrambled up behind him, her knapsack—now full—banging against her ribs, a feeling she found comforting.

  They rode south.

  The forest changed, the northern trees plus opening into grassy fields that Senrid hailed with relief, at first, because here they could see some distance. Raised to see landscape as military topography, he’d never been a forest lover.

  The problem was that just as they could see, so could they be seen.

  “Let’s stay with cover while we can,” he finally said.

  The horses complied.

  Devon felt satisfaction in watching the yellow grasses flash by
beneath the horses’ hooves. It made her feel that they were covering more ground, for she was secretly tired of all this traveling. Looking at the horizon felt too much like they’d never get there.

  Late in the afternoon, a cold wind swept down from the distant mountains. Devon huddled into her cloak and gripped Senrid’s waist as tightly as she used to when she was scared, because the cold couldn’t get between them, and he blocked the wind. Still, she shivered.

  Liere’s energy was fading. Too many nights had gone by with little sleep. She said, when the horses stopped for water, “I need a rest. Just brief one.”

  “A brief rest?” Senrid exclaimed in fake shock, looking around appraisingly. They were on a knoll shaded by a cluster of thick oak trees, around which a stream flowed, chuckling over rocks. A good place to rest. “Lazy! Sloth!”

  Devon laughed, grateful for the stop, and Liere reluctantly smiled. “Am I being stupid?”

  “You’re tired,” Senrid said. “So am I.”

  They ate, and Liere curled up in her cloak. She meant to rest only that hour, but when sunset brought cold rain, the kids stayed under the biggest oak, protected by their cloaks. While rain pattered through the last of the autumn leaves overhead they slept long and deep.

  Unseen, the animals of the North Forest borderland kept silent vigil.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  It was near noon when the kids began to waken.

  Liere opened gritty, stinging eyes, more tired in mind than in body. She scolded herself for letting her emotions rule her as she picked her way down to the stream to get a drink. She had to keep them under better control.

  Senrid was already up—he was soaking wet. His face was a blotchy mess of white and red, his clothes plastered over his body. He was clean, but from the look of him the bath had been horribly cold.

  “Chilly?” she asked, laughing a little. It felt good to laugh. When had she done it last? She couldn’t remember.