A Sword Named Truth

by Sherwood Smith

  Hibern had promised her that Senrid wasn’t a villain. At least, he was trying not to be one, though he’d been raised to be. All that made him even more interesting. Atan imagined someone even taller than Rel, more imposing, except blond, because the records indicated that the Marloven forebears were Venn, and everybody knew the Venn were mostly tall and light-haired and very good at war.

  When she and Hibern reached Marloven Hess at last, Atan found herself looking down at a boy whose only resemblance to her inner image lay in the light hair. His short, light-boned form reminded her a lot of Hinder, except his quick, nervy movements were totally unlike Hin’s casual drift, and there was a hint of more muscle in the bland white sleeves of his shirt and in the dark-covered legs above the riding boots.

  Senrid stared up at a girl who was apparently even taller than Hibern, or maybe the effect was caused by the up-and-down effect of the purple silk edging to her robe, which extended all the way to the floor. Marloven formal House tunics always ended at the boot tops.

  As Hibern performed the introductions, and Atan took in the little figure half-hiding behind Senrid, once again amazement flooded her. This frail little creature was the famous Sartora? The thin, unkempt child with the wide honey-colored gaze looked like she would have blown away at the first puff of wind, and yet she’d stood up to the evil Siamis!

  Liere reddened. “Would you like a tour?”

  “I would indeed, thank you,” Atan said.

  Liere, not Senrid, led the way.

  Atan’s third impression was that the place smelled awful: the warm, humid summer air brought the distinct tang of horse. Nobody here seemed to know a thing about air or light flow.

  They walked past endless rooms of plain sand-colored stone. The monotony was broken along some halls by plaster reliefs in subtle shades of silver and gray depicting flying raptors and running horses. She counted one tapestry, and from the way it was wrinkled, it had apparently just been removed from storage and mounted on this bare wall at the top of a landing.

  Senrid hung back during the tour. Before their arrival, remembering the discomfiture he’d experienced at the disgust with which CJ of the Mearsieans had described his home, he’d said to Liere, “Why don’t you show her around? You’ll know better than I what non-Marlovens will want to see.”

  So Liere did. She was nervous at first, then quietly indignant at the drift of Atan’s thoughts. She knew she shouldn’t be listening, but she could scarcely help it. They came here to learn the mind-shield, she told herself as they walked downstairs. This was why.

  While Liere talked to Atan, Senrid spoke low-voiced to Hibern in their own language. “What happened to Jilo?”

  “Tsauderei took him somewhere.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t know. Tsauderei’s note to me that night only said that Jilo was with a mage who could help him. Maybe there’s nothing more to tell. But I’ll get Erai-Yanya to ask when she returns, if you need to know who, and what’s going on.”

  Senrid scowled at the floor. “Is it you or me they don’t trust?”

  “They?”

  “Tsauderei and whoever else he’s drawn in.” At Hibern’s skeptical expression, Senrid muttered, “Tell me if I’m wrong, but don’t these adult mages usually love nothing better than to lecture us about our ignorance?”

  Hibern opened her hand. “I’ve been studying at the mage school in Bereth Ferian while Erai-Yanya is gone, and they haven’t heard anything about Jilo. Arthur would hear if anyone was talking about a king our age that far advanced in dark magic. So maybe Tsauderei isn’t talking to anyone.”

  Senrid said, “Where is your tutor? Seems she’s been gone a long time.”

  “She was here, then went back to our sister world, Geth-deles.”

  “The ocean one? Why?”

  “Norsunder is doing something suspicious there.”

  Senrid drew in a sharp breath. That fit the holes in the transfers of the head snakes in Jilo’s book, he was thinking, but he didn’t say anything.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Liere looked back inquiringly.

  Senrid glanced at Atan. “State chambers, maybe?”

  Liere led on. When they reached the throne room, Liere pointed inside the massive double doors. “This is where the Marloven jarls gather for Convocation at New Year’s Week.”

  She observed Atan’s gaze lifting to the banners on the walls, and the crossed swords below, with other artifacts of the Marloven past. She sensed Atan waiting, and added, “I don’t know what those swords are for, or what those crown-like things are.”

  “Helms.” Senrid stayed back in the shadows, watching. “Commanders’ helms. Worn at specific battles.”

  “And those must be their swords?” Atan asked politely.

  “Yes and no. Those are surrendered swords. From the defeated commander, some of them crossed by the triumphant commander’s sword.”

  Atan wasn’t interested in the swords, helms, or banners. She was more interested in Senrid. He didn’t sound all that bloodthirsty, nor was his tone gloating or bragging.

  Atan wondered what having these things on the walls here meant to Marlovens. Perhaps these disgusting objects were intended to scare the jarls into obedience. Either that or these objects were supposed to fire the Marlovens with the desire to go out, win battles, and have their own banners and steel stuck up on that stone wall. She hoped that their own homes weren’t as ugly as this chamber.

  “Very fine,” she said in her first-circle voice.

  “We’re done here.” Senrid ducked through the door, his boot heels ringing a quick tattoo on the stone. He was thoroughly unsettled by how much Atan’s opinion mattered to him. Why should it? But it did. As if she were inspecting his entrails and finding them wanting, like a suspicious fish laid out at the marketplace. “Rest is the same,” he said over his shoulder. “And you came for a purpose, not a hike through my castle.”

  The others followed, Hibern suspecting and Liere knowing that something had disturbed Senrid.

  Liere was glad when they reached the study and Senrid said briskly, “You came here to learn mind-shields. You’re better at teaching mind-shields than I am, Liere. Why don’t I see about your favorite drink? Atan, do you like hot chocolate, too?”

  “Certainly,” Atan said in some surprise, and was more surprised when Senrid shot out the door. “What just happened?” Atan asked Hibern.

  As they sat down in Senrid’s study, Hibern turned a questioning look to Liere, who was not going to tell the Queen of Sartor that she was leaking thoughts.

  Liere said, “Teaching you about the mind-shield will be very boring for Senrid to hear again, since he already knows it.” She had been through this explanation enough times with the northern mage school, Arthur, Erai-Yanya, and anyone else who asked, that she could teach it fairly swiftly: building a wall in the mind, seeing the wall, concentrating on keeping thoughts behind the wall.

  She paused to demonstrate each level, and then said, “That’s it.”

  Atan gazed in surprise. “Really? That’s all? I thought this would be a first lesson, that it would take months. Even years. And maybe hurt.”

  Liere’s face turned a mottled red as she tried not to laugh. She said, “Next comes practice. That takes longer. Until it’s habit.”

  “Ah. Of course.” Atan nodded. “So tell me this, either of you. Those swords on the wall downstairs. Do those sustain some hidden idea, or a version of loyalty, or oaths, century after century? Hibern, you told me that written records don’t often survive one change of king to the next.”

  Hibern said, “I think you could say that they’re a symbol of pride, and power. Order. Much like the statuary in your city. The ones people talk about, I mean, not the ones they ignore.”

  “And yet those weapons aren’t beautiful to look at.” Atan raised a hand in the Sart
oran gesture of apology. “I ask only to be taught. Do Marlovens look upon those swords as art, or are they symbols to remind them of the battles, the stories behind them?”

  “The second,” Hibern said. “Stories are important. And while Marlovens don’t have written records, we do have ballads.” She winced at that ‘we’ slipping out, because it always brought back her father’s thick, angry voice. Get out.

  “About smiting enemies?”

  “About honor and privilege, including the honor, the privilege to go to battle, to die, for the—” glory “—preservation of the kingdom.” She heard a memory echo of the Andahi Lament, and the back of her neck tightened.

  “In Sartor we would call that duty, but no one sings about fighting to keep peace,” Atan said, then added quickly, “At least now, they don’t. We do have some fairly martial songs in the past.” She sounded apologetic, like someone admitting to an error in taste.

  Atan studied Liere. “And you, I think you’re from Imar?”

  Liere ducked her head, her smile vanishing.

  Atan gestured apology once again, knowing she had erred, but not how. “I just wanted to ask, do you feel the same as the Marlovens? Are you going to live here?” She bent closer. “What brings you here?”

  Liere said, “Senrid.” She twisted her fingers together. “He’s my first friend. My real one.”

  “What does that mean, ‘real one’?” Atan asked.

  In spite of the lessons, Liere was the only one whose mind-shield was in place. She tried not to listen, but the inexact nature of the Universal Language Spell distracted her; she could ‘hear’ whispers of meaning all around the translated words, and had to concentrate to shut it out. Senrid had told her she really needed to learn modern Sartoran first, the language people actually used. Discomfort tightened her middle, because she knew her wish to master Ancient Sartoran was in part a wish to truly fight ignorance and in part to merely appear less ignorant.

  Perhaps that was really a wish to show off.

  Unaware of how long she sat in reverie, she finally looked up to discover the older girls waiting. “Senrid never called me Sartora.”

  Atan stared in surprise. “You don’t like that?”

  “No. I do not,” Liere said, her voice low and unsteady. “I am not Sartora. I am not a world rescuer. It was all an accident. At least, mostly—it was just that I was the only one who could use the dyr, which was a very common thing in the days of Ancient Sartor, so I’m told. And so many people helped me. And I don’t live here. I visit Senrid, and he lives here, so here I am. I don’t have a home anymore. I . . .” She heard her father’s derisive voice about whiners, and how much people despised them, and closed her mouth.

  Atan leaned forward. “Sar—ah, Liere, if you want a home, anyone would give you one. Don’t you see what being Sartora means? You can have anything you want.”

  Liere eyed Atan. “No, not really. They call me a queen, but it’s only in a symbolic way. I don’t have a crown, or an army, or guards, or a treasury. And I don’t want them! That beautiful palace in Bereth Ferian doesn’t belong to me. It’s a place where the mages put me. You might not understand, because you are a real queen. You can have anything you want.”

  Atan said, “I can’t have my family back. I can’t command Colend to return the Music Festival, which might sound silly to you. It did to me, at first, until I understood how ashamed all the adults are, the people born a century ago, who came back into the world to discover we’re a hundred years behind everyone else. The world didn’t stop to wait for Sartor . . . oh, never mind all that. I can work on those things, and I will. But you, you’re completely free. You can go where you want.”

  “I can’t have everything I want, either.”

  Atan smiled. “I think the world would give it to you if it could.”

  Liere bit her nail, then snatched her hand down as if she’d been slapped. She wriggled in her chair, head lowered. “Maybe they would. Now. Until Siamis comes back and I won’t be able to do what I did before. How angry will they be that I can’t be Sartora, the Girl Who Saved the World, again?”

  Senrid had been listening from outside the door. He could hear how close to tears Liere was, even if the others couldn’t. He could sense Atan’s puzzlement, her striving to understand, and Hibern’s uneasiness (because she’d forgotten her mind-shield yet again).

  Time to intervene. “The only good thing about Ancient Sartoran Norsundrians is that they usually let a few centuries pass between their visits,” he said as he entered. “Siamis is probably holed up tight, and won’t pop up again until our great-grandchildren are old and gray. Hot chocolate coming right behind me.”

  Hibern and Atan stayed long enough to drink a cup. The conversation was resolutely superficial, and they took their leave shortly after.

  As soon as they arrived back in Eidervaen, Atan said, “Did that go as badly as I thought?”

  Hibern opened her hands. “I don’t know Liere at all. But I’ve seen her get all tied in knots in that same way. It wasn’t you. And I don’t know why she does it.”

  Atan tugged gently on a silken tassel hanging from a hassock. “Art. Do Marlovens see art the way the rest of us do?”

  Hibern snorted. “Does everyone else see art exactly the same way? No, don’t answer, I know what you meant. I think you could say that the idea of art the way you have it here came late for us. Marlovens didn’t have houses until they took over the Iascan castles. They didn’t even know that the Iascans stripped everything out when they left. My ancestors lived with bare stone for ages and ages, but then they were very seldom inside. Still true. Ornaments tend to be badges of triumph. But art, oh, you could say it’s in the songs, and in movement: the perfect gait of a horse, perfect form in shooting, the rhythms in the drums, the sparks shooting upward in the sword dance.”

  Atan’s mouth rounded. “I see. Oh, that is so interesting! All right, last question, or rather, observation. Senrid is so short! He looks about nine, but he’s too well-spoken for that.”

  “He’s the same age as me.” Hibern grinned. “Father quite tall, his mother small, so I’m told. But yes, Marlovens tend to be shorter. Erai-Yanya thinks it’s due to the fact that the Marlovens’ ancestors took to horses, and the shorter, lighter families thrived. They were just as fierce as the big Venn warriors.”

  The bell rang then, and Hibern took her leave.

  Atan walked out into the hall, breathing deeply. Then she had to laugh at herself when she whiffed the faint, familiar scent of mildew, which had become so familiar she’d forgotten it. But she had noticed on her first tour of the castle. Despite the servants’ constant, rigorous efforts to keep everything scrupulously clean, it seemed to be the inevitable consequence of centuries of little change.

  If Senrid was ever to come to her palace, would he think it stank?

  Chapter Eleven

  FOR a couple days, it took all Jilo’s strength to walk out of Mondros’s cottage.

  He made it far enough to drop onto the late-summer grass and gaze down into Colend lying peacefully below. He watched cloud shadows ripple over the land, changing colors to blue tones, then the red-gold reappeared, except for the greens, which brightened with a buttery overlay. The long shadows slowly pulling in then moving eastward fascinated him.

  The third day, the impulse to sit there forever and watch the sky and the land faded away. He was aware of a stronger pull, a fretful anxiety impelled by fear.

  Mondros called him in to breakfast.

  “I walked over the border, to assess the state of Wan-Edhe’s wards. There was no time to ride to your capital. I wish there were, and of course I dare not transfer. But as little as I saw impressed me mightily,” Mondros said when Jilo sat down. “You have improved things.”

  “Not much,” Jilo mumbled. “Not nearly enough.”

  “Many senior students couldn’t do as much as
you have. In fact, I don’t know anyone, old or young, who’s mastered as much about dark magic wards as you have.”

  “Had to learn it.”

  “On the run, so to speak. I’ll accept that, but if you really don’t want to find yourself turning into a replica of Wan-Edhe, then you had better begin your studies in another direction.”

  “Which?” Jilo asked.

  “Is it not obvious? The land. If you want to help the Chwahir, you will have to understand the relationship between land and magic. This corner of the continent has never been easy. Your Chwahir ancestors set out to enhance, to alter, to influence, to change. Well, all our ancestors did. Sartor as well.”

  “How do I fix that? Every book I spotted is for extending those spells. I know better than to release them all at once, even if I could.”

  “Smart boy.” Mondros frowned at his pan of crushed olive. It had begun to steam, so he tumbled in the potatoes, garlic, and purple onion that he’d chopped.

  The smell opened up a yawning cavern inside of Jilo. He had begun to think of cooking as magic. There were so many similarities.

  Mondros shook the pan to even out the ingredients, then jerked a massive thumb over his shoulder at the opposite wall of the cottage, which was packed, floor to ceiling, with books. “You’re going to have to begin studying light magic. And while you do that, you must begin the process of reversing that benighted sinkhole of evil in your castle in Narad. We will address that. Today, begin with the fundamentals. I set some books on the work table.”

  Jilo inhaled the delicious breakfast. With the return of energy came commensurate anxiety, proliferating questions. “Maybe I ought to start now.”

  Mondros could see the fret, and signs of resentment, in the narrow-eyed, speculative glances the boy sent his way. He decided to let Jilo guide the talk as he watched for manipulation, the smiler who tells you what you want to hear. He withheld judgment, aware that survival around Wan-Edhe would warp individuals as much as his magic warped the air.