“That’s not an invasion. Even for something as small as Mearsies Heili, which is mostly farm. Oh. Right. Didn’t the Chwahir already have an outpost of some kind there? But that’s real small, too, isn’t it? Not much larger than a castle and half a day’s ride of bad farmland, under permanent magic-made shadow.”
“Yes, and yes.”
Senrid peered one-eyed at the huge map of the world up on the wall on the other side of his bedroom. But that wouldn’t show much. Mearsies Heili was too insignificant in both size and influence.
Its capital was no larger than a market town in Marloven Hess, but it was distinctive because it had been raised into the sky, surrounded by magical vapor so it looked like a city in the clouds, dominated by a towering palace made of white stone.
“It wasn’t an invasion,” Senrid stated, this time firmly.
Hibern let out her breath. “That’s what I said. They said that the Chwahir and the Mearsieans are enemies going back for generations. And there is that outpost.”
“So what does this have to do with me?” Senrid asked, and added sarcastically, “Don’t try to tell me Clair wants my military advice.”
“Not in the least,” Hibern retorted calmly. “She needs your help to break into the citadel of the King of the Chwahir.”
“What?”
Now she had his complete attention.
Hibern took a deep breath, surprised to find it shuddering against her ribs. It felt as if she hadn’t breathed for the past . . . how long had it been? “It’s even stranger than you think. And I can tell you everything, because I was there.”
Chapter Three
Same day, earlier
Roth Drael
AT dawn that day, while Hibern had been tossing and moaning in the grip of yet another nightmare, her tutor-mage Erai-Yanya, woken by the noise from across the hall, had decided she might as well get up.
She moved into the oddly shaped remains of a chamber, used to the broken walls and half roof overhead—weather-warded by considerable magic—and touched the glowglobes to light. And there she saw a newly arrived letter on the polished wood tray that she had ensorcelled as her transfer Destination for letters. Her heart wrung as Hibern coughed a low, rib-sucking sob into the bedding.
As she had countless times, Erai-Yanya considered getting doors fitted into those arches. Then she forgot doors, archways, and nightmares when she picked up her letter and read it.
And read it again.
She dropped the paper and stared at the window. The sun was still somewhere behind the thick forest to the east, which meant it was still night in Mearsies Heili, on another continent south and west. How to handle this request from her old mage school comrade-in-sneaking, Murial of Mearsies Heili?
Erai-Yanya was still thinking about it as she trod out in the early morning air to fetch some wild grapes from the garden, and had made no decision by her return.
As she set about making breakfast, at the other end of the hall, Hibern woke at last, and knew from the stinging along her eyelids and the panging of her head that she’d had another nightmare about the home that was no longer home.
Hibern rubbed her eyes, consciously breathing against the hurt in her throat as she listened to the little sounds of breakfast being readied—the click of crockery plates and cups on the table—and smelled the scent of fresh bread, which arrived each day by magic transfer, wafting enticingly to her room.
Hibern grimaced down at her hands when she remembered that this was her day to endure the long transfer to the magic school in Bereth Ferian, the northernmost city in the world. That was the last thing she wanted to do, with this headache, but no one would be interested in her whining.
Marlovens learned early that most people had a limited budget of pity. In the last year, Hibern had found that true outside their border, as well; people might have more conventional expressions than Marlovens did, accompanied by a dip of the head and rueful smiles, but they wanted you to pretend their words did away with the pain and get on with it. Marlovens, in her experience, didn’t waste the breath.
She stepped through her cleaning frame, which zapped away the dried tear tracks from her face as well as the normal grime, dressed, and went out to face the day.
Erai-Yanya never paid attention to her appearance, but she seemed even more distracted than usual, her brown hair looking like she’d just woken, the shapeless dress she’d been wearing for a week rumpled. She was surrounded by a moat of open books and scrolls. Hibern suspected that some kind of magical emergency having to do with wards had to be happening somewhere in the world.
“Another nightmare?” Erai-Yanya said, her glance sympathetic.
Hibern opened her hands. And because she knew that all that could be said had been said, “Today is my day to go north. Any messages?”
Erai-Yanya knew that the rational person would have felt only relief to escape Hibern’s dreadful home, but emotions were not always rational. She also knew that she, a recluse from a long line of positive hermits, was never going to understand whatever it was that bound families together for good or ill. She had sent her son off to be trained by an excellent mage, and was proud of him having that place, but she wondered if she would have chosen differently if she’d had a daughter.
But those kinds of what-ifs were useless. She said, “I do have a letter for you to carry, as Clair of the Mearsieans apparently did not take her notecase when she went visiting up there. Murial sent this to be handed off to her niece.” A quick smile as she pushed a sealed note toward Hibern.
Wondering why Murial didn’t send the note to the scribe desk up north, Hibern shrugged. She didn’t understand the ways of royalty outside of Marloven Hess, even the royalty of so small a polity as Mearsies Heili. Or maybe ‘royalty’ was the wrong idea here. Murial, Erai-Yanya had said once, was a regent at a remove, being a fellow hermit-mage living alone somewhere in the wild woods of that country’s western border. She watched over the pastoral little kingdom from a distance, avoiding people as much as she could. Her niece, Clair, led the kingdom day to day.
Midway through breakfast Erai-Yanya startled Hibern by clapping a book shut with a soft, “Ha!” She tucked the book under her arm, and trod to the Destination-book to leaf through it for some tile pattern. She muttered the transfer spell and vanished, the air in the room stirring strongly enough to flutter the abandoned pages.
Hibern sat back and breathed. At least breakfast had vanquished the nightmare headache. She picked up her magic study books, and braced for the magic transfer to the north to Bereth Ferian.
She endured the usual joint-wrench, and staggered in the new space, breathing cooler air that smelled of aromatic trees. She sank onto one of the low benches surrounding the tiles until the transfer magic effects had worn off, then left the Destination chamber.
Since she had the note to deliver, she bypassed the hall leading to the magic school and entered the grand marble-floored hall leading inside the palace, where Erai-Yanya’s son Arthur studied magic separately.
‘Arthur.’ It always snagged at her, that foreign-sounding name. She knew it was a nickname given him by some world-gate crossing friends. She was going to have to find out that story someday, she thought as she passed the gorgeous decorative motifs and statuary, gifts from various northern governments over the generations.
Arthur’s kingship was fiction in a way that Hibern found difficult to understand, coming as she did from Marloven Hess, where kingship had historically been the center of violent struggles for power. For command. Arthur’s title was traditional, a courtesy.
When Siamis had spread his enchantment over a good part of the world a year or so ago (‘or so’ was the only way to consider a period in which time seemed ephemeral, and people had walked about as if in a dream world, obedient to whatever command Siamis gave them, without remembering any of it), the elderly mage Evend, King in Bereth Fe
rian, sacrificed his life to destroy Norsunder’s rift magic. Everyone accepted Evend’s title passing to Arthur even though he was no older than Hibern was. A title with no responsibility, as far as Hibern could discover, except presiding at official gatherings.
The sound of girls’ laughter broke Hibern’s dour mood. Odd, how a duty visit would turn interesting as soon as she heard someone having fun.
“But once you find people, you have to race them to home base,” one of the Mearsiean girls was earnestly explaining as Hibern entered an enormous drawing room lit down one side through tall arched windows by slanting shafts of light.
Arthur stood over by the opposite wall, absently running ink-stained fingers through his short blond hair. His habitually vague expression altered when he saw her, and he beckoned for her to enter. She joined him in a few quick steps.
“Erai-Yanya said the Mearsieans were still here. Why?” Hibern whispered. The noisy Mearsieans seemed out of place in this quiet, archival atmosphere.
“For her,” Arthur said, pointing to scrawny Liere, the girl the world had begun calling Sartora. She sat in the circle of girls, her raggedly cut, lank, almost colorless pale hair framing an earnest face dominated by huge light brown eyes. “I asked them if they’d stay. She seems, I don’t know, happier, with them around.” He sent a puzzled look Liere’s way.
Hibern’s gaze shifted to Liere, then to the other girls. Young people played games in Marloven Hess. Of course. But the games tended to be competitive, often related to military training. Hibern had hated them from early childhood.
This game the Mearsieans played was messy and complicated—the rules seemed to be changing constantly—but Liere clearly found it funny when a freckled, red-haired Mearsiean girl waddled across the far side of the huge drawing room, waggling her elbows and quacking like a duck. Another girl slithered over the beautifully woven rug, graceful even when pretending to be a snake. In the background, the rest of the Mearsieans made barnyard noises, as Liere shook with silent laughter.
“I won!” the freckled girl shouted, her bristly red braids flapping, arms and legs pumping as she danced around. “I’m It! I’m It!”
Liere watched, lips parted as if she were about to laugh out loud but didn’t dare. She looked unchanged since Hibern had met her the previous year, right down to the same worn old tough-woven tunic and riding trousers.
Hibern glanced past her and found Clair, who stood out as the only one with pure white hair.
Clair was short for thirteen or fourteen, ordinary-looking enough except for that white hair. It wasn’t the cobwebby, floating hair of the morvende, nor did she have their fish-pale skin or their talons, but her ancestors had to number among the underground people.
Erai-Yanya had told Hibern about Clair’s upbringing, how her dejected mother drank wine and took sleepweed until she died. Clair had been educated by her aunt Murial, who started her on magic studies when she was small. “Don’t be fooled by her young age. She probably knows more magic than you do,” Erai-Yanya had finished.
When Hibern first met the Mearsiean girls, she’d thought one of the other girls the Mearsiean queen, as she was loud and tended to swank about. But when Clair spoke, the way the others instantly deferred made it clear that her gang of runaways and castoffs regarded her as their chief.
Clair must have felt Hibern’s gaze, because she turned around and then smiled. “Greetings! Hibern, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I didn’t see you come in.”
“Hibern?” Liere whirled around as if someone had poked her.
“Hi, Sartora,” Hibern said.
“Please call me Liere,” Liere whispered.
“My pardon, Liere,” Hibern said, thinking that mighty mind powers or not, Liere was very odd.
Hibern could not understand why Liere would reject an honor that most would be proud of any more than she could understand why the girl wore ragged old clothes and bare feet, when surely she could ask for anything she wanted in that massive, wealthy palace.
Liere’s light brown eyes looked golden in that light. “You’re Marloven, aren’t you? It’s just that I hope everything is all right with Senrid.”
“I see him each week for magic studies. Want me to pass on a message?”
Liere’s thin fingers twisted together. “Yes. No! It’s just that he was my first friend. But I understand. He’s a king, so he must be extra busy. Much too busy to visit. It’s just that he once said . . . no, forget that.”
Her skinny shoulders hitched up near her ears. Hibern suspected Liere had no idea how to get out of that hopeless tangle, so she turned to Clair. “I have a message for you.”
Clair took the note and broke the seal. Then she looked up, her hazel eyes wide. “The Chwahir have invaded,” she said. Her voice changed, dropping a note or two, as if she had to convince someone. “We have to go home. Right now.”
“Invaded?” CJ asked, skinny arms wide, her long, straight black hair swinging. She was Clair’s best friend. Clair had made her a princess, though she’d been born on another world and brought through a world-gate. “Like, war junk and everything?”
Clair held up the paper. “Three ships of warriors, plus those from the Shadowland outpost, under the direction of the King of the Chwahir.”
Hibern made a mental wager that Murial had sent the note begging Clair and these girls to stay here, out of trouble, queen or no queen.
CJ scowled. “I call this completely unfair!” And when everyone turned her way, she pointed at Liere. “Here’s the world saved from the villain Siamis by Sartora. We deserve a golden age of peace, like in all the songs! But thanks to the Chwahir, as usual, we get rotten luck instead.”
‘Luck’? But no one asked what that was as Clair’s mouth pressed into a thin, pale line. “The note says the main attack is magic, on our capital. Aunt Murial is there, trying to fight against it. She said we should stay here in safety—”
I was right, Hibern thought.
“—but I have to go home,” Clair stated.
“To a magic attack?” Hibern asked, and then it hit her, why Erai-Yanya hadn’t told her where she was going. “I think Erai-Yanya went to help.” Hibern studied Clair’s tense face, knowing the other girl was going to go regardless.
Hibern bit her lip, instinct at war with duty. Erai-Yanya expected her to go to the mage school for her long day of study. But she was learning to become a mage because she wanted to help people, and right now, Clair needed help. She’d let Clair’s reaction decide. “Shall I go with you?”
Clair let out a soft breath, her eyebrows lifting in a revealing expression of relief. “I know we’ll need any help we can get.” She waved the paper. “Aunt Murial can protect the country, if we try to protect the cloud top so she won’t have to. Does that sound right?”
Hibern thought, cloud top? She said with more assurance than she felt, “I’ll be glad to help any way I can.”
Clair turned to her friends, who stood in a tight circle, waiting. “Transfer to the Junky, count five between each, okay?”
Her friends reached inside shirts and dresses for the medallions they wore, then began winking out in transfer magic, each disappearance sending a wild current of air whooshing around.
While they did that, Clair described her home transfer Destination tiles to Hibern. Then, in turn, they vanished.
* * *
Mearsies Heili, cloud city above Mount Marcus
Erai-Yanya, satisfied that her single student was safely removed from danger, transferred to the Destination in Mearsies Heili and, once she recovered, gazed upward in astonishment.
Her home was in Roth Drael, once a center for Ancient Sartoran magic until blasted in the Fall of Ancient Sartor. It was a ruin, no complete building standing. The fragments left behind indicated the city had been built out of a strange white stone that looked like a blend of ice and metal. She had discovered on her fi
rst visit to Sartor that there was a single tower in the heart of its capital, made of the same material. She was reverently told by her guide that this tower was the oldest edifice in Sartor.
Now she was standing in front of an entire building built of the same material.
Murial appeared, looking mostly unchanged from their student days, except for strands of silver in her dark hair. “Erai-Yanya,” she called, hurrying across the terrace. “You’re here.”
“I came as soon as I found my mother’s old border protection spells.” Erai-Yanya brandished her book. “Where’re the invaders? Have you contacted the school for help?”
“The Chwahir have already landed.” Murial’s voice was tense.
That meant ships, warriors, borders breeched. It was now a military matter. Mages took an oath not to meddle in such, not that magic was much use in warfare anyway.
Murial went on, “They entered the Shadowland outpost during the night, but emerged on the mountain road a while ago. They can only be marching on this city.”
“Shadowland?” Erai-Yanya looked around. A fountain splashed behind her, and beyond that, a pretty little town seemed quiet, no movement except the stirrings of a breeze in what she suspected were brightly colored flower boxes in windows, though this early before sunrise the world appeared a thousand shades of gray and blue.
Murial pointed down at her feet. “The Chwahir outpost below the city. It’s held by Prince Kwenz, brother to Wan-Edhe, the King of the Chwahir.”
Erai-Yanya glanced down at her dusty sandals, remembering that the Chwahir king never used his name, only his title—‘Wan-Edhe’ in Chwahir meaning The King, as if there never had been and never would be another. Then she blinked past that, remembering that only this palace was actually located on the mountaintop. The adjacent village extended outward on a magically maintained cloud. Unimaginable magic had raised it in the far past, though for what purpose no one now knew. Mearsies Heili had no importance whatever, either magically or politically.
A Sword Named Truth Page 3
