Everybody took in the two boys, the taller sturdy one with a round, genial face, dressed in a shapeless long shirt belted by a bit of rope. He carried a pitchfork in one hand, and something greenish poked out of the other sleeve.
The second boy was smaller, his perfectly oval face lifted. The filtered bluish light fell softly on his high, intelligent brow, his definite jawline beginning to emerge from baby-round cheeks. He, unlike the older boy, stood still and alert.
“Hiya Darksiders,” the big one called.
“Darksiders?” Kyale popped up, fists on hips. “Do you think we are dark magic villains?”
“No, no!” The taller boy patted the air. “Darkside of the Sun is our name for your world. On account of we can’t ever see it.”
Kyale crossed her arms. “I assure you, we have just as much sunlight as you do.”
“I know! And I understand a very fine place it is. But it’s an old name, see? So here’s me, to lead a lot of Dar—foreigners to the cave under the city, and all I find is trampled grass. Do I smell?”
He lifted his arm, sniffing at his armpit, then made a show of gagging as he reeled, arms flapping.
Puddlenose almost broke his sinuses holding in a laugh, but when he saw Christoph’s red face, it escaped, and he dropped down out of the tree, figuring any kid with a sense of humor would never join Norsunder.
“Who are you? I’m Puddlenose,” he said.
“Bena Dak.” The newcomer hefted his pitchfork. “But you can call me Dak. That’s my brother, Cath.”
The green thing in his sleeve moved, slithering out. A snake!
“Hoo,” Puddlenose said. “Did you know you had a snake in your shirt?”
“I do?” Dak pretended to be shocked, then laughed. “This is Alivier. She travels with us.”
By then, the others were approaching. “What is that?” Dhana asked Cath, pointing to the flute-like object in his hand.
“We call them silverflutes,” Cath said. His childish treble was precise. He held out the silverflute on his palms, so those interested could see the pearlescent wood that wasn’t quite white, nor silver, though it gleamed at a distance.
“You must’ve been playing since before you learned to walk, to be that good,” Kyale said enviously. She’d tried to learn a couple of instruments, but could never stick with practice long enough to get past the boring basics.
“A year,” Cath said.
That left his audience silent as he slid the silverflute into a kind of sheath hanging from his neatly tied sash.
Dak said with his friendly smile, “The sharron sent me, on account of, I know some o’ them, and I got to be friends with some mages.” The Mearsieans liked his accent, which CJ thought of as sort of French.
“The sharron are in a pucker over these stone-backs. We call the enemy that on account of those gray jackets they wear—”
“We call them Norsundrians,” Kyale offered importantly.
Dak grinned. “Well, the sooner we hoof ’em out, the better, is what I’m saying.”
“Then lead the way,” Hibern said. “We can talk as we walk.”
Chapter Four
Isul Demarzal
TALL trees towered overhead, long-lobed leaves of every shade of green, blurring in great swoops back and forth.
Julian was dreaming about the swing again.
Liere liked this dream, or this part of Julian’s dreams. All the rest of Julian’s dreams were different kinds of horrible. There were the ones where all the furniture was distorted and giant and the walls red, as if seen from the floor. Those were the ones with the whispering woman in them, jewels in her headdress and at her neck and on her fingernails glittering like tiny needles and knives. Those dreams always carried remembered pain.
The forest dreams had unknown children singing or playing games. Sometimes those began as swing dreams, but below those were sharper memories: being interrupted by tall, pretty Irza, who came to take Julian away from Atan, whispering things:
“Atan will make you do your duty.”
“I will always give you whatever you want.”
“You’re our baby, our dolly, our perfect girl.”
Liere could hear Irza’s thoughts across the distance, brought close and painful. In Irza’s memories she didn’t think Julian was perfect, she thought she was a spoiled brat, and yet she gave her whatever she asked for, smiling, smiling, smiling.
Atan didn’t hurt Liere with distortion because the Atan she saw and heard in Julian’s dreams and memories was the Atan whose actual thoughts whispered across the distances.
Liere knew what was dream and what was memory. If someone appeared in her dreams, and she stepped through the mirror into their dreams, she had found that she could think away specific ugly symbols, like red walls, and sometimes the feelings that came with them, and then walk through into a better memory. She had done that for her mother many times.
When Irza turned Julian’s dreams sour, Liere thought the dream-Irza away and brought dream-Atan back, and when she did, she brought some of Atan’s own memories of the forest glade into Julian’s dreams: Her joy in pushing Julian on the swing. Julian’s toes twinkling among forest grasses. Julian laughing, her flower garland shedding blossoms on the breeze. Julian warm and happy and clean.
As the days drifted by, Liere, so used to separating out dreams from memories, and memories from thoughts, caught flickers that surprised her. She woke up one day comprehending that Atan was here. On Geth. In Atan’s dreams, she searched and searched for Julian, worried and scared.
Liere ventured further and discovered that not only was Atan on Geth, so were many from the alliance. Including Senrid.
Liere promptly shut her mind-shield tight. She was good at dream-walking, but she knew that Siamis was far better, and better yet was the sinister Detlev, whom she had never met, but whose presence sometimes passed through the mental realm like the shadow of a predator bird blocking the sun.
They were here. Because Liere had been stupid and managed to get herself caught. But still, joy closed tight as a flower seed in her heart. She was not alone, and she knew that Senrid would look for her.
Meanwhile, Julian was not conscious of Liere in her dreams. She only knew she was happier. One day she felt so restless she got tired of crouching on the floor to talk, so she ran outside to look at the people and the streets.
She wanted to talk to the runaway prince again.
* * *
Outside the city
Cath’s oddness partly explained itself when Senrid felt a brief, subtle sense of widened perception or echo on the mental plane. He knew that sense. He’d first experienced it with Liere. When he looked around sharply, he met the boy’s steady gaze.
I was asked to listen for the enemy. Cath’s mental voice was as clear and precise as his spoken voice—unlike Senrid’s hard-to-control mental contacts.
Senrid said out loud, “We’re not enemies. But I’d do it, too, if I had as good a control as you have.” Unspoken was the term ‘Dena Yeresbeth,’ which Cath caught.
Cath’s thought came: I don’t know what Dena Yeresbeth is. ‘Marsh mad’ is what we call it.
With that came an almost dizzying sense of weird space, full of rich scents, an echo of which Senrid had already experienced.
That was the difference, Senrid perceived. With Cath, it was like their minds met somewhere, and with Liere, it was not a place, but more like in his head.
Yes, Cath thought. I heard that girl. Dak did, too. But we daren’t listen long for her. The enemy can hear in the Marsh.
Dak thumped his pitchfork on the ground. “I was told you want to go in, searchin’ for where the stone-backs keep First Witch, which we can’t do, because we’re warded. But they didn’t ward you, because they don’t know about you bein’ here.”
“That’s right,” Senrid said.
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“We’ll find her,” Hibern promised. “If you can tell us where to go.”
“But we don’t rightly know that,” Dak admitted. “They coulda put her anywhere.”
“Then we’ll be faster and more efficient if we divide up and hunt through the city,” Leander said reasonably.
“Yeah, and we can’t run, or change our expressions,” CJ said. “We have to act zombified. That’s what people look like under Siamis’s evil spell.”
Dak thumped his pitchfork in agreement on each point, then said, “The Witches said, you need disguises.”
Puddlenose walked backward. “I dunno.” He scratched his head. “Nobody loves disguises more than I do. An adventure isn’t a good one unless I get to wear a false beard, or a fancy dress. But don’t you think Kessler would recognize some of us even in disguises?”
“In a city?” Leander asked. “He can’t be everywhere at once.”
“These would be illusion,” Dak said, as Cath lifted his head to watch a flock of long-tailed birds erupt from a flowering vine that had overtaken an old fence.
“I don’t want to go looking for some old woman,” Glenn muttered. “I thought we were here to kill Siamis. That’s what I want to do.”
Atan said to Dak, “Illusory disguises would keep us from being recognized by any Norsundrian who has seen us on our world, but what about Norsunder’s wards?”
“That’s been thought of,” Dak said, thumping his pitchfork again. “Talk as we walk. They told me to get you to the tunnel by sundown tomorrow.”
They camped, and the next morning, Dak led them behind a waterfall in a rocky, rough portion of hill, but instead of the trail skirting the hill, it opened into a tunnel hidden by the falling water. Some found it fun to slip and slide over the green, mossy rock, others picked their way carefully.
Down and down they hiked, until the sound of the waterfall was replaced by the susurrus of a rushing underground stream.
Dak was explaining the general layout of the city as they walked. “Over our heads right now is Weavers’ Row. Then comes the park, see the tree roots way up there? Then over here begins what they call Charlotte’s Palace. We don’t know what part Charlotte actually lived in, it’s been rebuilt and added onto so many times, but it’s the biggest building I’ve ever seen. Some say in the entire world! Now, down this here tunnel, and then we’re—ak!” Dak stopped short, dropped his pitchfork onto a flat rock, and put his hands on his hips. “There you are, Cath. Good. Right in time.”
Cath had brought an older boy, skinny, as brown as the off-world visitors, with jug-handle ears and a big grin.
“Ol’ Bones!” Dak exclaimed with pleasure. “Explain to ’em about vagabond magic.”
Old Bones faced the allies. “My magic is something new to Geth. It’s pretty much illusory, and Les is only teaching it to a few of us. It isn’t like regular magic. It fades away on its own, except at sunset and sunrise, and when other kinds of magic are done. They can’t put the magic tracers on it, any more than you can shape a statue out of ocean water, no matter how much you use.” He turned to the others, without explaining who Les was. “So I can give you any kinda fake face and form you want. ’Long as you don’t touch anybody, you’ll fool ’em.”
The rescuers considered thoughtfully, then CJ said, “I want to try being an old bat. With a warty chin! No elevener will pay any attention to an old bat hobbling around.”
“Me, too! Me, too!” Kyale shrilled. “Warts on my chin and my nose!”
“I want to be an old geez,” Bren declared. “Beard down to here.” He indicated his knees as he hunched over and shuffled in a circle.
“Pirate captain!”
“And I’d like to be a raptor,” Senrid said. “But we’re supposed to be keeping attention away from ourselves. Pirates and a whole lot of warty old people aren’t going to go unnoticed.”
Dak thumped his pitchfork on the boulder. “Whatever you choose, make it quick, as the day is getting late.”
“Line up,” Old Bones said.
* * *
Isul Demarzal
In Charlotte’s Palace, Liere and Julian crouched at the doorway.
“Siamis said it is a joke, see?” Julian explained. “He says they named the sword Truth in the old days, but there isn’t any truth.”
“I know. He said the same thing to me once.”
Julian shrugged, uninterested in the subject of truth. “At least he got a sword as a present. In the bad days, Mother only let me have jewels and princess dresses.” The emphasized words came out in a tone of sullen resentment, underscored by the memory of terror, which Liere had seen in Julian’s dreams.
“I think there’s truth,” Liere said.
“What is it, then?”
“Well, I think truth is . . . when you make a promise, you keep it. And if you know you can’t keep it, you don’t make the promise. Truth has a lot of things in it, but one of them is trust. Like, I trust my friend . . . Devon,” Liere avoided mentioning Senrid, in case that lurking listener might somehow know that Senrid was somewhere in this world.
Liere had seen him twice in her dreams, once alone, sitting on a boat, looking down at the sea, and another time with Atan and Leander, eating smoked fish off sticks.
“If Devon doesn’t know a thing, she says so. If she sees a thing, she tells me what she sees, not what she thinks I want to see. And if she can’t keep a promise, she won’t make one. Devon speaks truth.”
Julian was running her fingers along the underside of the door, back and forth. “Irza didn’t keep her promise. She said if I liked her best she would give me whatever I wanted.”
“Did she?”
“When we lived in the forest. Those were the good days. But when we had to come into Eidervaen, then she didn’t.”
Liere thought that over. “Did Atan make promises?”
“She said I didn’t have to be a princess.”
“Did you believe her?”
“No. Irza said Atan wouldn’t give me what I wanted. And she didn’t! She tried to give me what she wanted. Clothes, and lessons, and stupid things that make princesses. Just like Mother.”
Liere thought back through all the dreams. Atan had come all the way to another world to get her cousin free. Liere knew better than to say that; Senrid had said once that the nastiest weapons were the ones you can’t fight, and to Liere that meant the way her father always used to finish a scold by adding another scold for not being grateful. “But wouldn’t lessons let you be what you wanted?”
For a time all Liere could hear was Julian’s breathing. She didn’t want to break the mental wall, lest Siamis pounce, but she was tempted. Then Julian said resentfully, “I said I don’t want to be a princess. It hurts.” And there again, sharp as a knife, were the memories of pinching and slapping, enforced by the whispering voice, If you want to be a princess, you have to smile, and be sweet.
“So you don’t have princess lessons,” Liere said calmly. “There are lots of kinds of lessons. You go to the stable for lessons if you want to be a . . . a horse rider. You go to the kitchen to learn how to cook tasty things. There are lessons to be an artist, or make music. Did Atan mean to offer you those?”
Julian said, “I don’t know.”
She got up and ran away. She hated those old memories. She ran as hard as she could down one long corridor and up another, until the memories turned into questions.
She stopped at the kitchen to get a cake, then took her cake back to the place where Siamis usually could be found. When she saw him, she said, “The runaway prince told me you broke your promise.”
Siamis smiled. “I may have.”
“Why?”
“Here’s a lesson,” he said, and Julian looked wary. Lessons again! But he went on, “When you are in power, you can keep promises when it suits you. And ignore them when it suits yo
u.”
“What if people don’t keep promises to you?”
“Then I destroy them.” He laid his hand on the hilt of the sword named Truth, only there wasn’t any truth, so maybe he was lying. Then he made that motion with his fingers that meant he wanted her to go away.
Atan doesn’t lie, Julian thought as he turned his attention to one of the crabby grays waiting impatiently. In memories and in dreams, Atan just got sad if people broke promises.
Julian wandered off, and watched the cooks make rows and rows of pies. They had power, too, she thought. Everybody needed food. They kept the promise of being cooks by making pies every day. So that was one true thing and it had nothing to do with being a princess.
She pondered asking them for lessons, and wondered what Liere would say about that.
* * *
From hidden vantages all around the city, mages from both worlds watched through the illusory magic set up to protect the young allies as they covered the last distance alongside a vast underground pool.
“Here’s the stair,” Dak said, his voice echoing in the stone cavern. “This stairway will put you in the center of Charlotte’s Palace, in the servants’ wing. This used to be the laundry, centuries ago, before the mages invented cleaning frames. Me and my brother will wait for you here. Cath is listening for the mages.” He tapped the side of his head, then perched on a rock nearby, his pitchfork laid across his lap.
The young allies looked at one another in their illusory disguises, then down at themselves. Hibern saw from Senrid’s narrowed eyes, Arthur’s thoughtful expression, and Atan’s careful testing of the illusion that she was not the only one who felt extra magic worked into the illusion, though it was impossible to categorize. She suspected there was some kind of protection woven into the mysterious ‘vagabond magic.’
A Sword Named Truth Page 75
