A Sword Named Truth

by Sherwood Smith

  Senrid went on, “You’d think she’d be able to figure out that I’m not him. I wasn’t even named for him.”

  “I suspect to Sartor, there isn’t any difference between the Senrid who reunited the old Marloven Hesea centuries ago and your great-grandfather. How much attention do you pay to Sartoran affairs?”

  “I can name maybe ten of their rulers. Point taken. So Erai-Yanya is back?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s about time! Did Tsauderei ask her how the dyr can be used to ward Norsunder?”

  Was that the weight on Senrid’s mind? “He didn’t send for her until now because whatever she’s doing on Geth-deles is more important than what’s going on here.”

  “More important than a Norsunder invasion?”

  Hibern said, “Yes. But rather than argue about which problem is worse, let me remind you of what Erai-Yanya said before: we don’t know how to use the dyr, she can’t find anything in the ancient archives on how to use it, and if we try, we’re almost sure to draw the likes of Detlev or Siamis like arrows to the mark.”

  “They can probably smell it from beyond the world,” Senrid agreed. “They sure were good at hunting Liere and me down. Shit. I knew it was too easy.”

  “As for working with the thing, part of the problem is the necessity for Dena Yeresbeth.” Hibern touched her mittened fingers to her forehead. “Which you have. If you get an idea, go ahead and talk to her, but you’re going to have to convince her that—”

  “I would never think of using it for war,” Senrid cut in impatiently.

  “Convince her,” Hibern said with deliberate emphasis, “that war isn’t a game.”

  He eyed her, recognized the Marloven-to-Marloven irony, and said, “But it is a game. It’s one we play to win until we’re killed.”

  Hibern knew both the songs he was quoting from. She rubbed her hands together, then stuck them in her armpits as she stared out at the boys on horseback circling around one another, waving long sticks. It looked uncomfortable in the extreme. “Senrid, something’s galling you under the saddle.”

  Senrid struck the roof flat-handed. “I want to know what they want.”

  They? The boys out there on horses? No. Norsunder. “You know what they want,” she said.

  “I don’t know what they want. All Detlev’s experiments with mind-magic at high levels, and maybe these weird enchantments that cut whole kingdoms off from the rest of the world, have to be a part of it.”

  “The scariest thing to me was hearing that he’s been in the world more times recently than in the last five centuries,” she said.

  “Right.” He sighed. “I’ve got my east, west, north, and south armies placed at what we think are best spots for invasion for each border. But where are Norsundrian invaders going to come from in order to get here? They don’t sprout out of the ground. If they do manage to punch another big rift in the south, large enough to shove an army through, what’s the use of attacking Marloven Hess in the middle of Halia and fighting us to a standstill, which is going to take out half the population?”

  “Half?” she drawled, and he flashed a quick grin.

  It was gone a heartbeat later. “And those left will be resisting covertly until the last one is dead. Unless the soul-suckers want us as a bloody training ground, it makes no sense to come after us, not unless they have armies and armies ready to take the entire continent. If they did, yeah, all my reading says we’d make a perfect foothold, they grab Halia, press east. If they’ve got enough of ’em.”

  “We know they’ve got armies and armies. We even know some of their names.”

  Senrid’s lip curled. “I hope I never actually get to meet great-father Ivandred. He’s bound to come thundering through here first in as a warm-up exercise.”

  Hibern watched as Senrid thumped his fist lightly on the roof tile. In certain moods he could be really annoying, the way he’d carom around a room, rapping lightly on things as he uttered a fast stream of talk. But seeing him so still, wrapped in a little ball like that, was unsettling.

  He said, “I don’t think they’re going to attack us in force.”

  “You think it’s going to be a mage war?”

  Senrid turned to face her, his chin grinding on his knee. “I think it’s going to be Siamis’s plan again, enchanting everyone’s brains out when they don’t see him coming.” He looked away. “Only worse. I remember that Siamis kept refining that enchantment as he went. At first it was a few people, then a village, then a town, and then he was able to enchant entire kingdoms through their loyalties, once he’d hunted down the right person. Yeah, Liere broke the enchantment, but he’s had years to learn how to get around it.”

  Here it comes, she thought.

  Senrid’s voice flattened. “I think their being around so much, and experimenting with magic that messes with minds, has to do with this damned Dena Yeresbeth. That I probably inherited from my mother, she being a direct descendant of the Cassads.”

  Hibern knew all the stories about the Cassads, or Cassadas, who had ruled before the Marloven invasion, and some stories insisted they were related all the way back to the mysterious Adamas Dei of the Black Sword. The Cassads had been mages, and all the old stories and songs insisted that some of them heard thoughts and talked to ghosts.

  She turned up her palm. “If anyone would inherit Dena Yeresbeth, it would be descendants from them. But why ‘damned’?”

  “Because I don’t know how to control it. I don’t know how to use it. What if that’s what Detlev and Siamis want? What if Detlev gets to me, rips my brains out with Siamis’s spell, and forces me to order my own army to cross the border in Norsunder’s name?”

  “Then you tell everybody if you don’t sound like yourself . . .” Her mind raced ahead of her tongue. “Oh.”

  Every Marloven grew up knowing that you obeyed orders or you died.

  Senrid said, “I thought about trying to change a thousand years or so of tradition, naming kings whose orders were flagrantly stupid, but Keriam pointed out to the seniors in command class that when everyone knows that the commander, whether king or riding captain, is responsible for the order, then people obey, knowing that even if they disagree, they’re protected. It’s those at the top who pay the price for stupidity. Eventually.”

  “And of course, if you issue a command to ignore you if you sound funny, then any troublemakers can claim you sounded funny if they don’t like your orders.”

  “Right.” He said in a low voice, “If Siamis gets to me, I think I’m going to order Keriam to pick up a crossbow and shoot me dead.”

  Hibern’s insides cramped. She pressed her arms across her middle, and reached for logic. “But Senrid, people under Siamis’s spell didn’t have any volition, they just sort of existed. If you issue commands, you’re going to have to sound like yourself, or nobody will believe you. You remember what people under the spell were like? Sleepwalkers.”

  “That was then. What if he’s refined it, either he or his shit of an uncle?”

  “Then you prepare a token, give it to some trusted people to drop a stone spell on you, with a transfer to Tsauderei’s Valley of Delfina, where the wards are so ancient and so powerful that Norsunder never has broken them. Which is another reason I’m here. I think the alliance should pass the word to hide out there, if Siamis comes back looking for rulers to enchant. We all know people our age would be the easiest targets. If you end up there, Tsauderei will know what to do.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Senrid’s expression eased. “Hibern, that’s great. Have you written to Thad and Karhin to sound out the others?”

  “Last night. But listen, Senrid. Here’s what’s important. If you’re alive, there’s a chance to fix things. If you’re dead, you’re dead. Would you do that to Marloven Hess, force Keriam to shoot you?”

  “Would you be my heir?” His voice was
thin, as if the words had been wrung from somewhere deep inside him.

  Hiding the surge of nausea those words caused, she struck the air with the flat of her hand. He was unsettled now, but she knew instinctively that he would hate pity as well as sentiment. Much, much better to be brisk, treating the question as a joke. “I turned on you once, to prevent my becoming a gunvaer, remember?”

  He grinned. “I thought you turned on me so you wouldn’t have to marry me.”

  “You or anyone, I am not the kind of person to become a queen.” Hibern managed to laugh, relieved to see him catching himself. It wouldn’t do to let Senrid know how disturbing she found this conversation. “Look, nobody would accept me as Hibern-Gunvaer even if I wanted it. The Askans haven’t put anyone in the field for generations, and you know how important that is to the jarls.”

  “I don’t have anyone else.”

  “So, I’m very sorry, but you’re just going to have to stay alive.”

  His gaze flicked back and forth between her eyes. She stared back, her eyes squinted against the cold. She knew her mind-shield was shut tight.

  Senrid’s quick grin was more pain than humor. “Right.” He looked away. “I’m still making plans for possible invasion. Because Siamis took all that trouble to leave that coin here, so why not deny him what he wants most? If my wards vanish I’ve ordered the entire city guard to melt away—dress civ and become carters or blacksmiths or bricklayers. Same with the academy. And the army. Norsunder won’t even get our horses.”

  “The horses will go into the Nelkereth Plains?”

  “Yeah. Soon’s we begin seeing grass, the stable girls have their orders to go to the plains and get lost. We’re not waiting for word, we’ve decided the horses would like a summer out there even better than their usual winter.”

  “If you can get them there before the rains wipe out the trail, it’d take Norsunder Base’s entire army just to find ’em and round ’em up.”

  “That’s what Fenis Senelac promised. She’s got relatives out there, in old Tlennen territory, and they know even the farther reaches. If my brains are enchanted out of my head, it’ll take me time to round everybody up. Maybe by then someone will either shoot me or turn me into a statue.”

  “Go to Tsauderei’s Valley before they can get you.”

  “Yes.” He let his legs down, his heels knocking against the roof. “Is Liere all right?”

  “Erai-Yanya sent her up north. Listen. Erai-Yanya thinks Liere might have been poisoned by the dyr. Carrying it so long.”

  “What?”

  “You carried it,” Hibern said, as he crouched down again, gazing intently into her face.

  “Yes.”

  “Did it make you feel sick? Or anything?”

  “Nothing like that. Well, except when we did the magic. Not sick. It . . .” Senrid shut his eyes, then said after a protracted pause, “It made me feel like my skull had vanished, and my thoughts spread out beyond the sky. Ech, how stupid that sounds in words. Why does Erai-Yanya think Liere is poisoned?”

  “Haven’t you asked yourself why she looks so . . .” Hibern put her thumb and forefinger together. “Frail, and like a sheet that has been washed too many times?”

  “I think that’s something she does to herself,” Senrid muttered. “But maybe it could be due to the dyr. Except she looked like that when I met her, before we got the dyr. Of course she’d been on the run for months.” He climbed quickly down to the wall, hopped to the ground, and walked away with his characteristic quick step.

  Hibern sat there on the roof, considering how Senrid’s dread kindled hers. It had been great, thinking about how Tsauderei and Erai-Yanya had looked at her with respect after her demonstration in Sartor, but the exhilaration dissipated like her breath in the cold air when she thought about what Senrid feared: a war they couldn’t win.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t try.

  * * *

  —

  By now, calculating what time it was in various parts of the world took Hibern only a moment or two: it was early for the Mearsieans, but a promise was a promise.

  She transferred to the white palace and was sent to the underground hideout, where she found them all at breakfast, including Clair.

  The girls listened to the illusion idea, CJ and Clair thoroughly enthusiastic. Then, as usual, the rest of the girls turned the entire matter into a joke, offering silly suggestions like pie fights, or greased stairs, or short-sheeting beds. Hibern waited it out as long as she thought it polite, then said she had to contact the rest of the alliance.

  “You mean Fonebone,” CJ said. “I even made up names for every kingdom, really funny ones, that the villains would never understand. I’ve written about these to everybody, but nobody’s written back. Maybe if you mention it?”

  Hibern suppressed a sigh. Maybe being silly was the Mearsieans’ way of dealing with fear. She said with what she hoped was a diplomatic tone, “I think that’s your project. Meanwhile, if Siamis comes after you, get yourselves to the Valley of Delfina however you can.”

  “Okay,” CJ said, thumping a thin fist into her palm.

  * * *

  Norsunder Base

  The Norsunder Base resounded with the sharp voices of those anticipating action. Gossip flew, and Lesca amused herself at her listening post, reporting to Dejain each night.

  One day midway through winter, Kessler abruptly confronted Dejain. “Henerek is on his way to Everon,” he said, answering one of the questions everyone had been asking.

  She understood immediately that Kessler was following his own rule: even trade, one for one. She had not told anyone he was secretly learning magic. Rather than trying to extract a favor, or threatening to reveal some secret he’d winnowed out about her, like a normal person, he was offering a fact she might not know.

  And she hadn’t known that. Henerek and his followers had made a large noise about conducting a training mission in the mountains.

  “On orders?” she asked, dread crowding her heart at the prospect of Kessler having learned enough magic to determine who had cast that blood-spell on him.

  “Absent of,” he said.

  “Ah.” She said, testing, “You could take this base. They’d all follow you.”

  “Why?” His expression didn’t change, but he managed to convey contempt in the angle of a shoulder, the slight turn-away gesture of his right hand. “Why would I get them into shape just for Siamis to walk in and take over?”

  When Kessler actually conducted a conversation, there was a reason. She ventured a guess. “You’re leaving. To take Sartor in spite of Bostian?” She named one of the up-and-coming Norsundrian captains—this one obsessed with the desire to conquer Sartor, oldest kingdom in the world.

  “He’s an idiot,” Kessler said. “Sartor is a bowl. Anyone who takes it can squat and say ‘I hold ancient Sartor,’ but what use is that? And while there aren’t enough of ’em to put up much of a fight, I don’t ever want to find myself in Shendoral again.”

  “He’s asked me to ward Shendoral Forest,” Dejain said, and when Kessler lifted his shoulder slightly and began to turn away, she said, “Chwahirsland?”

  He flipped up the back of his hand. “It’s a useless ruin. And Efael will one day send Wan-Edhe back.”

  She hid a flinch at the casual mention of the youngest and nastiest of the Norsunder’s Host of Lords. She said, “You want a beachhead. In the east? That would either be Sarendan, or if you have ships, Khanerenth.”

  She had little interest in military planning, but she’d perforce learned something about it during the time she’d allied with Kessler. She knew he hated stupid questions. It was the sure way to get nothing from him, so she considered swiftly.

  Both Sarendan and Khanerenth would put up a strong fight. He would like that, if he was to exert himself at all. Sarendan would furnish better supp
lies once he won, but there would be those mountains to get over before he could advance into the eastern end of the Sartoran continent, the prize being Colend, the richest country in the east—many said in the entire continent. Khanerenth would give him easier access to Colend, but scarcer supplies, and he would have to get there in ships. “You don’t have ships. Or do you? Is that why we found Pengris’s corpse at the foot of the mages’ hallway? He’d been gloating about some find deep in Norsunder.”

  “Pengris winnowed out a stash of old transport-object artifacts that Detlev had secreted centuries ago against just this situation. Henerek killed Pengris for them. I just shifted the body, because Henerek set up the murder to point to me.”

  “Did Henerek get all Pengris’s stash?”

  Kessler turned away without answering, which she took as a no.

  She called after him, “Sarendan or Khanerenth?”

  He had nearly reached the end of the hall before he said, “Either promises to be fun, but Sarendan is closer.”

  Chapter Four

  Sarendan

  ON a cloudless New Year’s Firstday, the northern light shimmered on the ice like hammered silver as Peitar Selenna walked with his sister Lilah and Derek Diamagan into the throne room, which he seldom used, especially in frigid weather.

  It was packed solid, which almost took the chill off. The marble columns were slick with moisture from so many breaths as he walked carefully up the shallow steps to the dais. Peitar no longer needed a crutch, or even a cane, but the echoes of old pain still twinged when he mounted steps, especially in the cold weather.

  Lilah hopped up, grinning at her friends among the youngsters who’d started out calling themselves the Sharadan Brothers, in honor of Lilah’s secret group during the war. The girls among the orphans left by the civil war had changed the name to Sharadan Brothers and Sisters—then Sharadan Sisters and Brothers—and now they were the Orphan Brigade.