Senrid

by Sherwood Smith

  We reached the city gates then. Magic-burning torches, glary-red and fitful, highlighted Senrid as he lifted his hand to the watchful sentry-silhouettes on the gate. I smelled fire, and iron, and steel, and dust, and horses. I sensed danger. These Marlovens watching us didn’t have the glass-eyed stare of the Chwahir. They hadn’t had initiative beaten or enchanted out of them, which meant they’d be harder to fool.

  When we were past the sentries, Senrid added, “Kyale’s okay, I guess, but not now. Like that word, okay? Got it from Kyale and Faline. Means yes, well, good, agreement. Okay. Short. I like it!”

  “What about Kyale?” I asked, glad I hadn’t accidentally said ‘okay.’

  Senrid said sarcastically, “Remember when Uncle found out—through my grrreat and precise report—that she gets shut-in mad?”

  “Mmm?” I wasn’t going to repeat that.

  “Think, Ndand, back to summer. Remember when he sent me, was sure Mara Jiniea’s daughter would be on our side? He really thought Leander Tlennen-Hess had enchanted her to be a white. I still can’t believe that.”

  “Believe,” I said, realizing I was hearing some of the stuff we’d been trying to guess at. So I tried a careful question. “Still?”

  Senrid flexed his hands, throwing them outward. “No, of course not. The idea is to enchant her and send her back against her brother. Do our work for us from the inside. So he shut her up in one of the smaller cells with no peephole until she consents. Idea was for a full watch. Been there since I got back—the whole time I was gone getting Faline. Been at least a watch, more like three. He’s probably forgotten about her,” he added.

  We passed through a torch-lit intersection. The streets were broad, well paved, and clean. Apparently the Marlovens also had wanders, the people who patrolled about zapping away animal droppings, like in white magic countries. The houses were big and surprisingly they weren’t all ugly; most were built of a light peachy-gold stone, like the huge royal castle, others were built out of light gray granite. But they were all thick-walled, designed to withstand attack.

  Light flickered over Senrid as we walked. I peeked over the glasses, saw a roundish face, and eyes that looked dark blue. Waving blond hair squared off short at collar length in back—the Marloven military cut, I would realize later. Elsewhere in the world, the toffs had long hair, but not here, where being an aristocrat meant first and foremost you were trained to hold rank in the military.

  Was he sorry about Kyale? He almost sounded sorry. No, he was just annoyed with his uncle.

  “Why don’t you put a loyalty spell on her and have done?” I asked, and then I wondered if Ndand could even ask such a question.

  Senrid’s voice softened, patient and slow, as automatic as don’t-tell. “Remember, it needs consent to make his loyalty spells easy. That means you resign your will: either you obey, or go blank. But no consent is different, especially the kind of loyalty spell uncle wants. There isn’t any good non-consenting loyalty spell—at least that I know of—that destroys will but leaves you able to think well. And sending Kyale against Leander as a walking doll won’t net us anything, he’d know in a heartbeat something was wrong.” He stopped and faced me. A sharp pang zinged through my innards. Was he suspicious before we even reached the palace? “Has he been experimenting on you again?”

  “Again,” I repeated, not sure what else to say.

  “Don’t consent, Ndand,” Senrid said. “I told you. He’ll rant and rave, but if he was going to really kill you, he would have by now.”

  “By now,” I mumbled.

  “And remember what I told you about those spells. I don’t think he’s really perfecting any loyalty spell for us, no matter what he says to you. We’re both loyal. He wants an obedience spell. For me. Something that takes away my will, but manages to spare my skills with magic, since he’s such a rotten mage.” Senrid grinned. I did not like that grin, and the uneven torchlight didn’t make it any more pleasant. “More I think on it, more I’m sure that’s what he was harassing Latvian to cook up, and on a foreigner, so I wouldn’t find out. But Faline got away, and I did find out!”

  He was walking even faster by now, and his speech had gone back to a tumble of quick words. Like he was thinking out loud. I was sure by now that that was the way most of his ‘conversations’ with Ndand went.

  I had to struggle to keep up, but keep up I did. It was, strictly speaking, mid-evening in my own home, but this had been a long day, without any supper—Ndand was the only one who’d gotten any.

  Well, it was really midnight for Senrid, and I knew from Ndand that no one in that castle slept in. That was ‘white-magic weakness.’ I hoped Senrid would conk out soon, so I’d have some time to look around, and think over what I’d seen and learned.

  But first: “Kyale,” I said, hoping to get him back to my rescuees.

  “We can look in on her. Excuse will be to see if she’s given in. If you want to.”

  “Want to,” I echoed.

  “She’ll probably rant at us. She’s funny when she rants! So very self-righteous. When she’s not mad she’s all right. But keep that to yourself,” he added sharply. Not a don’t-tell at the beginning. It wasn’t a confidence, it was an order.

  Annoyance prompted me to snap, “You think I would?”

  “My, how we forget,” he retorted. “The last time you yapped out one of my prize opinions it was two weeks before I could set my shoulder-blades to a chair-back.”

  Yeccch. My hunger vanished, quick as that.

  He snorted a sort of humorless laugh, and looked up. We’d reached the second set of gates. These were before the royal castle, which was gigantic. The gates were as high, and well-guarded, as the ones surrounding the city.

  Again Senrid raised his hand. A couple of the sentries raised spears or swords in salute. No words were spoken.

  I wanted to get him back on the subject of Kyale, so I tried a tease. “You’re such a softie.” An impulse—and a bad one.

  He shot me a fast look of annoyance as he said, “I don’t know that I am at that.”

  I wondered if it had rankled because he was afraid it might be true.

  But it wasn’t much like Ndand to point it out. So I said, “I don’t care. I’m tired. Hungry, too.” I sure needed to keep up my strength, if I was going to make this mess work. “Aren’t you?”

  “Hungry, no. Tired, definitely—and an execution tomorrow. Could chew up the entire day if 713 lasts. And he will, if just to spite Uncle. Not that I blame him, but then it’ll take that much longer to get chores done.”

  “713?” I asked. “Not Faline?”

  “Just gets shot. For him we have to run through the entire list of tortures ordinary and extraordinary.”

  “Why all that?”

  “Price of treason.” Senrid frowned at me. “Use your head, or at least your memory. He’s ranted on about it enough.”

  I snorted my disgust.

  Senrid laughed softly. “Don’t-tell, but sometimes I’m inclined to agree.”

  We reached the immense courtyard, and hiked across it toward the massive iron-reinforced doors. One of the waiting guards opened one. I noticed how heavy those doors were—and wondered uneasily if I could get one open on my own.

  We walked down three very long halls. The stone walls had been partly masked by tapestries, mostly by frescoes, and here, at least, the dreary torches had been replaced by fine sconces. Furnishings carved out of dark wood could be glimpsed here and there.

  I followed Senrid’s quick steps, sneaking peeks in all directions but trying to appear to the silent guards posted at nearly every intersection as if I knew where I was.

  We came to a plain door—guarded, natch.

  The warrior before it (alert and clear-eyed, and very heavily armed) gave us a short nod, and unbolted the door.

  Down we bucketed, into the familiar dank, musty smell of centuries-old dungeon. Does any villain ever have them cleaned? I mean, on Earth this would be a health threat, because th
ere they don’t have the Waste Spell, and dungeons were invented long before indoor plumbing. Here on this world the smells are mainly mold and old sweat, and in some horrible places old blood—but then I guess nobody cares what the prisoners think about their lack of fresh air.

  The stairs downward were narrow and steep and railless. The intermittent torches made the steps seem to move. I blinked; I was more tired than I had thought. My eyes burned.

  “The Mearsiean and 713 are in next to each other. I convinced Uncle to think it was his idea. He thinks they’ll spend all their time in mutual accusations, once they discover that you can talk through the air shafts.” His voice echoed weirdly.

  We walked downward again, deeper underground, and the smell didn’t get worse. Nothing rotting, like in Shnit’s land. Just the damp mustiness, which, in itself, isn’t so bad, if you don’t equate it with dungeons.

  Several sets of guards had to be passed. None of them were drunk, or even playing cards. We could hear them talking in low voices; they fell silent when we drew near, but didn’t act particularly guilty.

  “Here’s where he put Kyale,” Senrid said at last, indicating a storage door at the end of a long row. “Give me a hand and we’ll go in by magic. Simpler than demanding the key and having to explain why. Crouch down,” he warned.

  That meant he didn’t have to tell anyone.

  Making a mental note to scrub later, I hunched down next to him and stuck out my hand, bending my head forward so he wouldn’t see my face, and trusting to the darkness to shroud my hair. Senrid’s fingers closed on it, his palm callused, like puddlenose’s; he muttered the transfer spell without looking at me.

  We zapped inside an utterly dark space, close and cold.

  Senrid dropped my hand and snapped a light into being. The closet was stone, no windows, nothing.

  Squeezed into the corner lay was a bundle of blue cloth with silvery hair lying in tangled skeins over it.

  “Kyale, get up,” Senrid said.

  But the girl didn’t move.

  FIVE

  “Stupid, can’t you see she’s out?” I whispered fiercely, completely forgetting that I was supposed to be Ndand.

  I frog-waddled forward a few inches and pulled the girl up. Her face was white except around the eyes, which were red and puffy even closed. “Obviously she’s not going to do much consenting like this,” I said, struggling to sound uncaring, but in reality I was so very close to transferring out with her—if I could have located Faline I would have, despite wards, no transfer destination, or preparation.

  “I knew it was a stupid idea,” Senrid said—unknowingly avoiding a signed and sealed CJ tantrum. “I guess we’d better take her out.” So saying he grabbed my shoulder, and since I was still holding the limp Kyale, we all transferred.

  The room we appeared in was large, with very fine furnishings, lit by glowglobes high on the wall. It was painfully tidy, except for a shirt lying half-off a dresser where it’d evidently been thrown in haste; there were no pictures or tapestries, the only decoration being an enormous map of Marloven Hess on the wall opposite the bed.

  Senrid closed his eyes as the transfer-dazzle faded away, and I backed out of his grip. Finding a handsome, carved chair behind us, I dropped Kyale into it. Her head sagged against the back.

  “You waken her,” Senrid said. “It’ll only make her madder if I do it.”

  I tried flapping a corner of my dress near her face, like a fan. Then I shook her gently. Nothing.

  “Wake-herbs?” I looked up at Senrid over the tops of the spectacles.

  He frowned, then grunted, as if mentally locating where they would be stored. Then he murmured another transfer spell, and a small crystal vial appeared with a pop onto his extended palm.

  I unstoppered the vial, wondering why these militant people would have such a handsome item—the Chwahir wouldn’t. I waved it under Kyale’s nose. The smell of distilled aromatic herbs made my eyes water, and she moaned and coughed, and tried clumsily to push it away. I kept at it, and was rewarded when her eyelids fluttered up. Her eyes were a pretty silver color, a couple shades darker than her silvery blond hair.

  She raised a hand to her eyes and I faded back.

  All this time I’d let the spectacles perch on the very end of my nose so I could peer over them. It’d felt safe enough in the dark, but in this well-lit room I didn’t dare not look through them, at least in Senrid’s direction.

  So I shoved the blasted things up and looked through them at the two blurry kids before me.

  Kyale spoke. Her voice was high, and clear, with a hoarse edge. “All right…you horrible rat. Do me in if you’re going to. Hurry up! I won’t help you… I won’t join you… and you and your disgusting creep uncle can go rot for all I care!” Her voice wobbled. After a moment, she sniffed, then asked tearfully, “Who’s she?”

  Fear zapped me hard. Kitty didn’t know me—had she met Ndand, and was she seeing through the disguise?

  “My cousin Ndand,” Senrid said. “Ndand, Kyale Marlonen. You don’t remember Ndand, Kyale? Right before we transferred here?”

  “All I remember is trying my hardest to scratch your ugly face off,” Kitty said fiercely.

  I liked this girl at once!

  “Hi, Kyale,” I said, stepping forward, and turning my back to Senrid. I grabbed the spectacles off my face and polished them, staring hard at her. “Remember Faline? She’s down in the dungeon.” I pronounced Faline’s name Fa-linn-eh—with a Mearsiean accent—and Kyale’s eyes flickered from Senrid back to me, her brows puckering.

  Senrid spoke. “Well, Kyale? My uncle will want to know if we have your consent to his spell.”

  “I won’t even bother to lie like you do,” Kyale said, struggling upright in the chair, and flinging her damp, snarled hair back. “You don’t have my consent to anything except sending me home—unless you’d like to turn yourself into a snail. And your uncle along with. That I’ll consent to, promptly and cheerfully!”

  Senrid raised his eyebrows. A moment later I had the spectacles on again, and his face blurred, but his voice was wryly humorous as he said, “I guess you’ve got courage. I like to see that. But my uncle doesn’t because he’ll have you back in that cell quick as—” He snapped his fingers. “When he finds out. Uh oh… there goes the courage…”

  For a second fear squinched Kyale’s features, but at Senrid’s last words she made a sour face. “Ha ha,” she snarled. “Shutting me up won’t work. I’ll start choking again. Eurgh! Spider webs in my hair!” Her voice rose to a wail. “Don’t you have any cleaning frames here?”

  “Baths,” Senrid said.

  I got an idea, and turned to Senrid—and saw a blur. “Let her clean up,” I said, trying to sound flat. Unconcerned. I peeked. Senrid seemed uncertain—not surprising, as it was a weird idea, but I was desperate to get her alone and explain things. “If she looks neat and tidy, Father might change his mind about sticking her back in the closet.”

  I couldn’t believe he was even wavering. He wasn’t stupid. But I would soon learn he was amazingly fastidious, which I never expected any villain to be.

  “She can fix up in my room,” I offered, as flat as possible, not believing he couldn’t see the obvious.

  “Okay. One turn.” He reached for the small sandglass. So the Marlovens used the same thing that most people on this world have for short measures of time—what I think of as about fifteen minutes. I still found it interesting that everyone relies on bells, colored candles, and here and there some honest-to-Earth clocks, but I’d never seen any with a second hand, or even minutes: they chime on the hour. Time is regarded differently here than on Earth, and I was still getting used to it.

  “Thanks,” Kyale mumbled—to me.

  I led the way out, peeking over my spectacles at intervals. The stone of the walls had been covered with plaster in subtle gradations, curving and straight lines that gave the illusion of depth. On the plaster were magnificent paintings in shades of gray. Magnific
ent in design, but spare in detail, and in subject: they were pretty much confined to running horses, or soaring and stooping hunting raptors. I was to see a lot of those throughout the residence part of that castle.

  I shifted my attention from those to the carved-wood doors, hoping I hadn’t gone past Ndand’s without seeing it. Two down from Senrid’s, but what a long way—I looked back—counted—opened the second door—and sighed with relief. I recognized the furnishings from her description.

  Her bedroom was as large as Senrid’s, with pretty blue and gold hangings and cushions and rugs, the furnishings the same fine carved walnut we’d seen in Senrid’s. Didn’t these war-mad Marlovens regard nice furniture as ‘white-magic weakness’? They sure are weird, I thought, as I led Kitty inside.

  The bedroom was cold (no fire—those are for the weak) and I held my chilled fingers over the lamp that a servant had obligingly left burning. Only Senrid had glowglobes, which he’d made himself, so he could read at night.

  I snatched the spectacles off and turned to Kitty, who was just opening her mouth to bombard me.

  “No time for questions. I see a brush on the dressing table. Listen as you work,” I said in Leander’s home language.

  “Oh! I thought there was something funny going on.” Kitty paused in the act of smacking grit and mildew from her gown. “But why is he letting us talk alone?”

  “Probably because he’d never think Ndand would have anything to say that he couldn’t hear. Look, I’m a Mearsiean, in disguise, to rescue Faline, who they intend to kill tomorrow. Leander is in on this plan. The only thing we could think of to get you out too is for you to do what you can to get yourself included in the execution, so I can get us all out at once. I’ll only be able to do a single transfer, I’m afraid, but I practiced and practiced. Because I’ll only have the one chance. As soon as I do that spell, they’ll be laying on wards right and left.”

  Kyale nodded, looking pale and sick.

  “And when you see Leander, tell him first thing that if there’s a warrior with us, it’s 713, so he’s not to attack him or anything. If the guy is on our side, fine, if he’s not, Leander can zap him somewhere else. But I can’t let them execute him. Faline likes him, and I know without seeing her that she’d feel it her fault forever if he was killed. Especially the way they plan to do it. Now, let’s talk about something else before Senrid snouts in.”