The Border

by A. H. Lee

  He couldn’t have said how long he sat in the quiet of the wood with his feet in the water, before someone jerked him back into his body.

  * * * *

  “I share your sentiments about the witch, Sairis. I’d like nothing better than to send him back to Karkaroth in pieces. I think Daphne was mad to let him in the door without a collar. He cannot be trusted. But he is a weapon, Roland. A necromancer on a battlefield? Can you imagine?”

  The conversation with Uncle Winthrop felt like something from another life. Roland had to remind himself that it had happened only a week ago. Nevertheless, the details returned with icy clarity as he pounded down the road to Carmath.

  “Collar him, clap him in chains, and take him to the border. If he doesn’t cooperate, cut off fingers until he does.”

  Roland hadn’t been sure at first. He was acting on a hunch. However, as he rode his destrier along the dusty highway, through the drought-ravaged fields of his homeland, his suspicion grew more concrete. He remembered Winthrop’s little nod to him when Daphne announced her decision to throw their entire remaining strength at Hastafel’s troops in the pass.

  “Daphne promised him safe conduct.”

  “That was none of your doing. We owe nothing to Karkaroth or to his underlings.”

  “I will not gainsay my queen!”

  “Well, then capture him outside the palace! He seems young and overconfident. Pretend you’d like to hear his ideas, lure him somewhere private, and take him in hand.”

  The memory of that statement would have made Roland laugh if he hadn’t been so angry. How dare you, Uncle?

  “This is not a child’s game, Roland. This is win or die. We cannot afford to be precious about the rules.”

  You’re about to see me get damned precious about this one.

  Cato, Roland’s horse, would be faster than the column. Nevertheless, the column had two days’ start, and the afternoon was fading into evening. The new moon had been only a few days ago—a poor night for travel. Fear gnawed beneath Roland’s anger, but he forced it down. Fear was useless. Anger was better. He rode until the night was too dark for safety. Roland cursed the drought and the war that had resulted in poor repair of the roads. He daren’t risk breaking Cato’s leg in a wagon rut, so he stopped at last and threw down a bedroll in a newly cut hayfield.

  Roland knew he was taking a risk. In these troubled times, bandits and deserters roamed the countryside. Mistala had all she could do to repel the invaders at her gates and few resources left to deal with home-grown trouble. Nevertheless, he was less than a day’s ride from Chireese, where folks still respected the palace guard, and he judged the benefits worth the risks. He would need his wits about him if he was going to help Sairis.

  Roland paused to fish Sairis’s glasses out of a pocket before lying down. He studied them, held close to his face in the gloom. “I’m right,” he murmured softly. “You wouldn’t leave these. You didn’t.”

  What if you don’t know him as well as you think you do? whispered the voice of doubt. Sairis could be asleep in his bed in Karkaroth’s tower with Hastafel’s sword and whatever power it represents. Maybe every mirror in the palace is now a window he can use to spy, and he’s pulling your strings from a distance thanks to whatever charm he put in your head. Can you even trust your feelings for him?

  Roland didn’t have an answer. He forced himself to shut his eyes. He thought he should put the glasses back in his coat pocket, but in the end, he went to sleep with the delicate frames in one hand, curled against his chest.

  Chapter 5. Helpless

  “My acolytes tell me you keep slipping off the mortal plane. You need to stop doing that.”

  Sairis registered Marsden’s growl even before he opened his eyes.

  “You know summoning circles aren’t so much to get you there as to get you back, right?”

  Sairis spoke through dry lips. “What would you know about it?”

  “I know there are things roaming the Shadow Lands that would love to wear your skin. I know I don’t want to deal with them. Look at me, Sairis.”

  Sairis had no interest in looking at him or in continuing this conversation. He tried to sink back down through the vail, but Marsden snapped something onto his left wrist, and the shock brought him bolt upright, hissing. An iron cuff. The other end was attached to the frame of the cot, anchoring him in more ways than one.

  Sairis glared at Marsden. He was dressed in riding leathers, sitting at a small table beside the bed. The wagon seemed to have stopped for the night. A single candle burned on the table, and a sheet of heavy parchment lay beside it. “Do I have your attention?”

  Sairis said nothing. He was painfully aware of the relative weakness of his position—younger and smaller and unarmed in every possible way. He was still wearing borrowed clothes from the Knave. His captors had taken his waistcoat and boots. Sairis fervently hoped he hadn’t soiled himself. It didn’t smell like it. He hadn’t eaten anything or drunk much. He felt hollow.

  Marsden watched him from under bushy brows. He was sitting close enough in the small room that Sairis could see details of his face even without glasses. The gray streaks of his aristocratic hair and beard gleamed in the lamplight. Sairis suspected that Marsden enhanced his formidable appearance with magic. He was an illusionist, after all. It had been his specialty before the Sundering. Sairis had the petty urge to rip off his glamour and see what wrinkled decrepitude lay beneath.

  “Why did you come to Chireese?” murmured Marsden. He didn’t sound as though he expected Sairis to answer.

  “I was invited.” Sairis’s voice came out smaller than he had intended.

  Marsden pursed his lips. His fingers drummed once on the table. “Karkaroth doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

  Sairis forced himself not to react.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No.”

  A moment of silence. When it was clear that Sairis would not say more, his captor sighed. “You have a choice, Sairis.” Marsden pushed the paper forward. Sairis saw that it was vellum—probably spelled, although without magic, Sairis had no way to tell. The page was covered in runes. He had to squint to read them, although he already had a good idea of what they meant. It was a contract.

  “Sign this,” continued Marsden. “We’ll make a proper collar for you. It will sit more lightly than the one you’re wearing. You can use magic again. You will, however, be accountable to me.”

  Sairis set his jaw. Bound like a demon to another’s will. A monster on a leash.

  “Your other choice,” continued Marsden, “is to remain as you are. When we get near the battle, you’ll soak up the death magic. You won’t be able to help it. We’ll use you like an artifact in the fight with Hastafel’s creatures. We’ll take everything you’ve got, and that will probably kill you. You’d make more efficient use of the magic yourself, but I can’t risk a necromancer uncollared. You can survive, but you have to sign that paper with your true name.” Sairis saw that the implement lying beside the vellum sheet was not a writing pen, but a bone needle. He was meant to sign in blood.

  My name from my own hand, signed in my own blood. Marsden can make quite a collar out of that.

  Sairis wanted to laugh. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to go back to the River. Instead, he said, in as neutral a tone as he could manage, “Did the prince survive?”

  Marsden cocked his head. He thought for a moment. “I see. You understand that your ultimate survival is contingent upon his. Yes, he survived. Although he was still unconscious when I left and likely to remain bedridden for a few days.” He hesitated. “If you sign and do as you’re told, you will not be killed after this is over. At least, not if I can prevent it. We can use you at the school, or you can take an inhibitor and assume an honest trade.”

  Sairis looked down at his hands—lifeless without magic. He looked at Marsden and gave a crooked smile. “Do you really think there is any chance I’ll sign that contract?”

  Marsden shru
gged. “It was worth a try.” Then he reached out, quick as a snake, to cram something into Sairis’s mouth. It tasted of iron. Sairis reeled back on the cot. He gagged, tried to spit, but Marsden leaned across the small table to clamp one hand over Sairis’s mouth and the other behind his head, forcing his jaw shut.

  Sairis felt alien magic seeping through him, working its way into his blood, his brain. No.

  Marsden had pushed the table out of the way. He pinned Sairis to the cot while he choked and struggled. Sairis thought, as he slipped away, that Roland would never have been so humiliatingly helpless.

  * * * *

  Roland was in the dark. He had the sense of opening his eyes, but seeing nothing. Cold stone beneath his fingers and toes, cold iron around his neck. A chain clanked when he moved. It was attached to the wall...and to his collar.

  Like a dog.

  The links of the chain between his fingers felt huge and heavy. He could take three steps forward, three steps to either side. The chamber pot was on the left, his food and water dishes on the right. He knew these things. He had known them for an age.

  The collar around his neck hurt. Roland had no words for that pain—a kind of visceral ache. He felt as though he’d swallowed something very cold. It should have dissolved in his stomach. Only it hadn’t. It sat there at his core, an icy chunk of granite, freezing his throat and insides.

  He had vomited at first. He remembered that. But the vomiting had stopped long ago, and now he just endured.

  A light appeared at the far end of the room, coming down from above, along with the tread of heavy boots on wooden steps. The light blinded him. Roland crouched, trembling. He remembered being beaten. He remembered the collar welded shut and how the tongs had burned him and how the smith had not cared.

  “He’s over there,” said a voice—hated and familiar.

  Men looked down at him in lamplight. Roland had to squint to see them. His eyes were not accustomed to light. “Careful,” murmured the hated voice. “He bites.”

  “His name,” said another man—a new voice. “He needs to write it himself.”

  Roland felt disoriented as the man crouched in front of him. The man was so tall. No. I am small. Roland’s hands, dirty in the torchlight, were those of a child. The man presented him with a strange pen. It looked as though it were made of bone. The man held out his large, flat palm, full of silvery dust. “Write it here,” he said gently. No one had spoken to Roland that gently in as long as he could remember.

  He stared at the man, whom he recognized from dreams. He was afraid, but also fascinated.

  At last, his childish hand came forward. He wrote in the man’s palm, “S. Harris.”

  The fellow holding the torch gave a grunt of disgust. “It’s how he used to sign. He knows better.” His voice dropped to a snarl as he said, “Your whole name, you little shit—”

  “Be silent,” said the newcomer. He did not speak above a murmur, but the other man’s voice stopped as though cut with a knife.

  Bright, gray eyes looked into Roland’s, the palm still outstretched. “Your whole name, child,” said the man. “I have purchased it with two deaths and one life.”

  Roland’s dream began to break apart as his hand—no, the child’s hand—came forward and wrote again in silver dust across his new master’s palm. “S...”

  Roland woke up.

  Chapter 6. Traps

  Roland rode the remainder of the distance to Carmath in a state of self-enforced clarity. He’d slept only four hours, but it had helped. I cannot charge in like a storybook knight to save my lover. If I behave that way, I’ll damn us both. This has to be about Daphne.

  By the time he encountered a picket on the road, Roland had rehearsed his speech five times. He felt that he could deliver it with conviction, in part because he meant it. He held himself tightly in check while the startled soldiers bowed and scraped and then escorted him towards the center of the camp.

  Carmath Town stood at a confluence of roads beside the Shadywine River. It had always been a point of strategic importance and included a grim and ancient castle. Battles had been fought here and the broad, open fields had seen more than one army mustered. Beyond the castle, forested hills rose towards the jagged peaks of the southern border with Zolsestron. This area had always been rugged, even before the Sundering. Castles like Carmath’s made a chain along the border, allowing troops to strike at an exposed invader and then retreat behind impenetrable walls. Unlike the coast, this part of Mistala had remained relatively intact through the Sundering. It was obvious why Hastafel had not chosen to make his invasion here.

  Roland forced himself to ask calmly about the mustering of the garrisons—which border lords had arrived, how much in the way of provisions, when they expected to march. He listened to the answers, and he did not drive his horse into a gallop or demand to know where the magicians were billeted or whether they were keeping a captured necromancer.

  Roland waited calmly in the tent where they left him while someone went in search of his uncle. It was a place intended for lords and officers to take refreshment. Roland ate and drank without tasting. He waited. An hour passed before Winthrop walked through the flap in sweat-stained riding clothes, talking to an aide even as he entered. He turned to Roland at last, a smile spreading over his face. “Nephew! This is a surprise, but I am pleased you’ve decided to ride with me.”

  Roland did not smile back. “Uncle. I believe you have some explaining to do.”

  Winthrop’s smile did not falter, but after a long look at Roland, he turned to the aide and said, “You may go.”

  Roland waited until they were alone. He finally allowed some of the seething anger to creep into his voice. “Where is he?”

  Winthrop approached the table with its refreshments and selected a dried apricot and some cured ham. “Where is who, Nephew?”

  “You took the necromancer,” snarled Roland. “Daphne promised him safe passage. She gave her word, and you made her a liar. This is very close to treason, Uncle. Explain yourself.”

  Roland had hoped to put Winthrop on the defensive, but he saw no sign that he’d succeeded. Winthrop was only two years younger than Roland’s father and he had a similar bearing—tall and broad, dark brown hair like Daphne’s, wavy like Roland’s, a hint of gray, but not a trace of frailty. He’d taught Roland to ride a horse alongside his own children, who were nearly the same age. In spite of the fact that Roland could now look him in the eye, Winthrop had a way of reducing Roland to juvenile awkwardness. I cannot let him do that now.

  Still, Roland suspected he would need more than adult confidence and princely authority to accomplish his purpose here. Roland was a hero of the war in the pass, but he hadn’t been home in the last four years. The men outside this tent did not know him as a soldier. They knew him as an un-blooded boy. His uncle, on the other hand, they’d known all their lives. They’d fought Falcosta and Lamont and Zolsestron under Lord Winthrop. Roland did not want to test his authority against the loyalty of his uncle’s men.

  I must be firm, but diplomatic. A hint of threat, no more. And this must be about Daphne, not my personal wishes.

  “Roland.” Winthrop spoke in the same tone he’d used when Roland was fourteen and overeager for a hunt, getting ahead of himself. “I am expecting the last of our border lords this evening. If all goes well, we will ride tomorrow. I am glad you have chosen to accompany me. There are many things I would like to discuss with you, your sister’s attitude towards dark magicians among them.”

  Roland set his teeth. “You had no right. You are casting doubt upon Daphne’s authority in the hour of our country’s greatest peril.”

  Winthrop’s mouth twitched—an infinitesimal movement, but it filled Roland with secret relief. I was right. Sairis is here.

  His uncle met his eyes with a hard look—no hint of patronizing now. “Roland, there is a reason that women do not rule kingdoms. Even women like Daphne, whom we both know has been trained for this task, and is
quite clever in her way. Women have a softness that men lack. They desire to make peace, to trust and to be trusted. This is, as you say, Mistala’s hour of greatest peril, and we simply cannot afford to be soft.”

  Roland drew in a slow, angry breath. “You are going to return Sairis. Daphne had reasons for keeping him, and I will personally vouch that he did nothing but help us until Marsden attacked him. He saved our lives from Hastafel. You are going to return him to me, and I am going to return him to Daphne, and you had better pray she is willing to consider this all a misunderstanding.”

  There was a pause that went on for slightly too long. It was the sort of pause that means, “Are you quite finished?”

  Winthrop poured himself a glass of wine. “Daphne sent you on this errand? I must say, I am even more astonished at her behavior. This merited, at most, a courier. Were you supposed to rebuke me as well as return the necromancer? Or was that your own addition?”

  Roland could feel himself redden and cursed the treachery of his face. As a prince, he should be offended by the implication that his sister was using him as a messenger boy. On the other hand, Winthrop was entirely correct. Roland had put himself at a disadvantage by behaving like a pawn.

  “Daphne does not know what you have done,” Roland admitted. “I intend to right the situation before you further erode her authority. The last thing we need right now is to fight among ourselves.”

  Winthrop was giving Roland a shrewd look that he did not like at all. “Indeed.”

  The silence stretched.