Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  Liere and Devon left the Fereledria with regret, descending to the very western boundary of Wnelder Vee in the deep, green-layered cove forest that had been growing there almost since the world was made. It was wild, beautiful country—morvende and dawn-singer country—and despite the rich tangle of ancient growth those peoples made certain that the next few days’ travel were easy ones.

  But Liere felt she could not seek or stay with individuals, for they’d become targets, just as she was. She had to make for the cities under the enchantment. Towns—lots of people—Siamis would never find her there.

  Yes, that was a good plan.

  And so, on the ninth day, the girls were taken downriver under cover of darkness to the border trade town of Loss Harthadaun.

  o0o

  Rel, surrendering to a sharpened sense of urgency, left his ship when they landed on the coast of Everon. He was granted a day’s leave, but he left his pay, which was easier than explanations, and walked inland until he came to woodland.

  Near a certain path he left a sign, and by nightfall he was met by three of the Knights of Dei.

  Rel knew his foster-father, Raneseh of Tser Mearsies, had had some connection in Everon in his past, and so he’d visited this kingdom after his adventures in Sartor. He’d made friends, had helped against the Norsundrians in small ways, and had found himself invited into the Knights—a rare honor given to few, and none (in so far as he was aware) who were not natives of Everon.

  He’d very nearly accepted, except for one thing: he couldn’t swear to stay in Everon for the rest of his days. It had probably been the toughest decision of his life so far, something he’d only mentioned to one or two close friends.

  He sat around a campfire with two young men and a young woman, friends with whom he’d trained during a spring in better times.

  “The situation is grim enough,” Enthold, the oldest, said. “We’re limited in movement since we’re targets—”

  “People reporting you?” Rel asked.

  “On sight,” Seiran said, her face somber. “It’s a part of the enchantment.”

  “So we’ve been relying heavily on allies to find out what’s going on.”

  “Which is?”

  “A child, from Ther Doleh just to the south, who reportedly has the means to break Siamis’s magic. The very latest news is that she recently escaped Siamis in the northlands and is making her way down toward us.”

  “Then she’ll have to reach Wnelder Vee first,” Seiran put in.

  “The elevens will be on the watch,” Rel said, feeling that neck-tightening sense of urgency.

  It was the same sort of feeling he’d gotten during his various recent exploits. Each time he’d acted on it, he’d found someone in need.

  This time was the strongest, almost a compulsion to find this girl and aid her. No, not a compulsion. A compulsion would leave him no choice. He felt the need for his intervention with a strength that could be called exigency, but his desire to heed it was very much his own.

  Enthold gave his head a shake. “The enemy are not searching, they’re waiting.”

  “Where?” Rel asked.

  “On the outskirts of the capital city. Outside some towns. We three are supposed to get into Naer by morning. We shall ride tonight.”

  Why would the elevens gather outside towns and cities unless preparing for attack? But why attack pacified, enchanted civilians? Again he felt that inner tightening, and he thought of his Norsunder uniform, safely residing at the bottom of his pack.

  “What’s the girl’s name?” he asked.

  “They are calling her Sartora.”

  Rel began to see some connections with earlier rumors, and he said, “They’ll hit when she arrives.”

  “That is what Roderic says.” Enthold rubbed his jaw. “We do not know where she is. We have our orders in case she bypasses towns in Wnelder Vee and progresses through Everon on her way to her home.”

  “Where are you strongest?”

  “Where the Norsundrians are—along the coast.”

  Rel nodded. “Any chance of a mount?”

  Enthold stared across the fire at Rel. There was no expression in the deep-set dark eyes.

  Enthold remembered a conversation with Roderic, after it became known that Roderic had invited Rel (with King Berthold’s full concurrence) to join the Knights—and that Rel had declined.

  The younger Knights had been a little resentful at first. Not surprising, since the group was intensely tight-knit and loyal. Roderic had said: You are to treat Rel the Traveler as if he were one of us. Teach him the access signals, and always make him welcome, sharing with him as you would a brother or sister Knight. In all true ways he is one of us, and may someday be greater.

  Enthold said, “Seiran and Harn. You two have ridden double before, and we are almost at Naer.”

  Seiran shrugged, and Harn grinned and looked resigned. They expected to be the double since they were youngest and the lightest in build.

  “Thanks,” Rel said.

  “Fare well,” was the response, and very soon they all parted.

  As soon as he was alone with his new mount—one of the white horses, rare everywhere else in the world but here—Rel said, “Take me to Sartora.”

  A year ago he might have felt foolish assuming that animals had any interest in the doings of humans, outside of their own immediate connections. But that was before he’d been led successfully in and out of Norsunder’s impregnable Base by a little black cat. Though he still didn’t understand that, he felt the communication was worth a try.

  The horse’s ears twitched, and the animal moved westward.

  It took Rel a week to cross Everon while bands of heavy rain pounded the countryside, and the Norsundrians watched ceaselessly the roads in and out of every major town or city.

  At the end of the week he rode, under cover of a heavy storm, down an ancient and treacherous dawn-singer trail into the border town of Loss Harthadaun, and only then did the sense of urgency loosen its grip.

  He still did not know why, or what he was expected to do, but he was definitely where he was supposed to be.

  o0o

  Senrid’s second trip north to Roth Drael was a dramatic enough contrast to the first to underscore the difference between lighters’ and Norsundrians’ attitudes toward their fellow humans.

  They moved fast, the Norsundrians dividing night watches two and two; they rode armed at all times, with bows tight and arrows nocked, their eyes constantly sweeping above and below for targets. No animals attempted rescues this journey. Senrid never saw a glimpse of any kind of life except for silent shrubs and trees. He also felt the Norsundrians’ disappointment, for they’d looked forward to some target practice against bird or beast or whatever came at them.

  The man Senrid dropped during that brief fight obviously felt that a solid week of bullying was hardly enough to even the score. Orders for a live prisoner restricted his creativity, but he made up for that by constant petty cruelties.

  The weather seemed to conspire against Senrid as well. Autumn was edging into winter, and a long succession of cold, dreary days with intermittent driving rain kept Senrid’s teeth chattering and his body shivering.

  The ropes round his wrists chafed into infected nastiness, but the Norsundrians had just sufficient respect for a short unarmed kid having decked an armed warrior to keep his hands bound behind him while he rode, and while he slept. Or tried to sleep. The only time they cut him loose was when they remembered to give him a meager portion of their trail food, which was mainly comprised of stale bread, dried chicken, and hard cheese, for there was no one to steal from, and trail food did not get any fresher in blackweave packs. The meals (or Senrid’s inclusion in them) were infrequent enough to make him grateful for what he got, but he did think with regret of those music-graced meals among morvende and dawn-singers, and with more regret of peaceful meals sitting under trees with Liere, arguing freely back and forth.

  He never spoke. He k
new the rules governing the treatment of prisoners: there weren’t any, except to deliver the victims more or less alive. Anything he said—anything at all—would only result in more torments. Those were going to happen anyway, for Norsundrians did not sing or tell stories when they camped, but if he was boring the sessions would be shorter, and orders insured that he’d survive.

  He was determined to survive.

  When he didn’t respond to goads and taunts, the Norsundrians decided that the lighters had enchanted his mind into rocklike stupidity. Tit for tat. Senrid treasured up all his sarcasm for the inevitable interview with their leader.

  Eight and a half long days he endured until they rode at last into Roth Drael.

  o0o

  The sun was just topping the eastern horizon when Liere felt the blankets lifted from where she crouched behind a load of barrels. The rain had gone. The air was cold and clean and clear.

  The owner of the trade raft silently loaded Liere’s and Devon’s arms with rolls of cloth, which they carried carefully to the loading area.

  When Liere straightened up, the young woman who owned the raft said in a low voice, “Welcome to Loss Harthadaun.”

  Then she turned away—as Liere had requested.

  We cannot aid you in the political lands, Arand the morvende had said to her two days before. In our lands, so far, Norsunder hasn’t the strength to attack, and we will protect you here.

  But I cannot stay. I have to break Siamis’s enchantment, and I don’t want anyone going into danger with me, Liere had answered. I must go alone.

  She gazed at what looked to her inexperienced eyes like a huge city, built along the hills that bordered the lake, and thought: Loss Harthadaun. ‘Daun.’ It was part of Senrid’s name, too.

  Her mind sorted through the words in Old Sartoran that The Guardian had given her, and she traced what seemed to be its development: once Venn, the word had come south as ‘davan’, shortening over centuries to ‘daun, always meaning ‘dweller’. She gazed up at the mellow golden stone buildings, the reddish timber bridges and upper stories. Pale, almost peachy golden stone. She remembered Senrid’s memory-images of Choreid Dhelerei, his capital, so very far away, on another continent. Golden stone there, too. Was there a shared history? Some day, she hoped, she could find out.

  She walked silently beside Devon, trying to look like a responsible big brother to any unfriendly eyes that might be watching.

  At least—so far—she knew Senrid was alive. The contact had been brief, inadvertent, made on the edge of sleep when she had been thinking about him, and it was very unpleasant. Senrid couldn’t maintain it (he might not have even been aware of it) and she didn’t dare prolong it. But it had been enough for her to discern that he was angry, and miserable. But alive. A surge of joy bubbled inside her—followed by fear.

  Stop that. Emotion is weakness.

  She watched her scuffed shoes treading the flat-worn cobblestones leading up into the town. She and Devon had talked about how to walk, to look like the enchanted people. She watched her plodding steps, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Her brother’s shoes—so large and uncomfortable when she left South End—had molded to her feet, the once-sturdy soles now worn thin.

  She’d hacked off her hair again, when the morvende let them stay overnight in a cave. She’d used one of the finely homed morvende knives. She didn’t want to know what it looked like. Such things ought not to matter. What did matter was that she and Devon were clean again. It felt good.

  “Where now?” Devon whispered.

  Liere blinked. Her reverie had carried them up a street. She peered over the roof tops, toward the highest building, with two smallish, rounded brick towers. “That way.”

  She didn’t dare say ‘town center’ aloud, not in case some enemy—human or animal—was listening.

  No one paid them any attention as they made their way past gardens and larger houses to the Guildhall, which their rafter had said was where the Magister lived and worked.

  Across a central square—cobbled with patterns in colored stone, washed clean from the recent rain—was the tall building with the brick towers. Its front was decorated with handsome columns and carvings and colored-glass windows contributed by all the guilds.

  o0o

  The sky had partially cleared by the time Rel reached the quiet streets where the artisans lived. He found what he was looking for worked into the wooden carving around the door to a glazier’s shop.

  He passed inside, and found a gangling youth stacking frames. The youth looked up, his eyes incurious.

  “I am a cousin,” Rel said.

  The boy looked away. Family members were compassed by the enchantment; strangers caused the people to drop their work and seek someone to report to. Rel disliked using people this way, but he would not harm them, and his errand was urgent.

  He wondered if they remembered anything from day to day. If they’d remember being enchanted. If they would ever know. Somehow that seemed worse, as if Norsunder had robbed them of a part of their lives.

  But then, that was the idea.

  Upstairs he found a locked door, and tapped softly, a pattern of three-two-three.

  The lock clicked. The door cracked, and an eye peered out. Then the door was flung wide, and the long, heavy-featured face of Roderic Dei, Commander of the Knights, relaxed into pleasure and relief. “Rel. Ah, it’s good to see you. Come in.”

  “Roderic, you’ve got what look like strike troops lining up along the river road into town.”

  “I know. I saw them. Just came in from the north.” Commander Roderic indicated his mud-caked boots and dusty clothing.

  The other two people in the room, a young morvende and an older woman, exchanged glances.

  “Is this girl everyone is looking for here?” Rel asked.

  “Sartora,” the morvende said. “She is in the city. I just came to tell you,” and to Rel, “I arrived moments before you did. She entered just after the sunrise.”

  “Why is she here? What will she do?” Roderic asked, turning to the morvende. “I tell you, my mind misgives me, this making war through children, and through the minds of our leaders.”

  “She will try to lift the spell, if rumor is right,” the woman said. “If the spell is bound to leaders, then she will go to the Magister.”

  “Can you do anything?” Roderic asked.

  She lifted her hands. “I have been unable to use magic for nearly a year—magic of any consequence. Each month their control is a little stronger, and there are more traps for us. We do what we can to unravel the minor spells, but the great ward preventing transfer, and other major magics, holds. We are spread too thin, with the battle against the rifts in the south.”

  Roderic said, “I can’t raise an enchanted populace to fight.”

  Rel considered what this meant, and nodded.

  “I’d better get over to the Guildhall,” Roderic said, then paused. “If I have need of you, will you be within contact?”

  “I’m here to help,” Rel said.

  “Then wait here, until I scout out the situation. Then we can plan.”

  Roderic and the morvende descended the stairs, the morvende’s bare feet soundless.

  Rel looked around as the woman bent over what had to be magic books, a pen thrust behind her ear. Her gray-streaked brown braid slipped over her shoulder, unnoticed.

  “Transfer,” the woman muttered. “If there was a way to . . .”

  Rel walked out quietly so as not to disturb her concentration. He leaned against a narrow wooden balcony and watched the skinny youth below, who moved methodically about his tasks with unswerving focus.

  Though not that many years separated them, Rel felt peculiarly old.

  But as he watched, the boy looked up, blinked, then he threw down his etching tool and bounded to the door to gaze up at the sky.

  When he turned back, he put his hands on his hips and surveyed the shop. His lips were pursed, his brow furrowed. As if he’d lost or forgotten
something.

  Then he glanced up at Rel. Friendly brown eyes rounded in surprise. “Hey! Who’re you?”

  o0o

  No one said anything to Liere or Devon as they walked inside the Guildhall. Devon admired the inlaid wood, the great murals celebrating historical moments in bright color, with noble figures and fine details, all surrounded by ivy-leaf gilding.

  “I’m trying to make contact,” Liere whispered. “It’s so horrible. Their minds are like fish, slithering away. But maybe I can catch one long enough to get us to the person I have to find.”

  Devon watched people stare, frown, then their eyes slid away again. It was creepy. Just as creepy was the unseeing way that Liere walked, her feet fumbling blindly for the stairs. Devon took her hand and guided them both up the giant curved stair.

  At the top Liere sighed, swayed, then she opened her eyes. She moved forward and stopped at each of the tall, carved doors along the balcony.

  “Here.” She laid her hand on a fine brass latch, then pulled from her tunic the little cloth bag that the morvende had given her. She dug the dyr out and opened the door.

  A big, plump old man with a snowy, spreading beard stared out the window.

  Liere walked to him, her hand held out. The dyr caught light from the window, looking like melted silver on her palm. When his eyes seemed to focus on it, Liere stumbled hastily through her spell, the words sounding blurred to Devon’s ears.

  “Did you wish to see me?” the man asked, sounding like all the other enchanted people.

  Liere began her spell again, her voice shaking. The man’s gaze roamed from Devon to Liere in disinterest, and then to the glinting silver thing on Liere’s hand. His brows quirked in puzzlement, and he leaned forward, now staring as if from a very long distance. His expression changed from confusion to wonder, and then to a perplexed impatience.

  “Hai!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? I haven’t time for children!”

  “The Norsundrians,” Liere said.

  “What?” The white brows snapped together in a quick frown.

  “They’re outside the town,” Liere said.