The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  While Doriaz was gone, she practiced her magic. In just over four years she had learned (among other things) twenty different Wards, six calling/retrieval spells, firelighting, the basics of Mage Globes, and the theory behind Ladders—though not the actual location of any on Ryka, or the total number on Lenfell. He’d promised to take her through one on his return. She wondered why he hadn’t used a Ladder to Malerris Castle to avoid the lengthy journey by sea, but on further reflection decided that avoiding suspicion was more important. No one but Glenin and her father knew what Doriaz was; while not conspicuous in and of himself, as tutor of the Guard Commandant’s daughter he was mildly visible at Ryka Court. It was wiser to book passage—though not specifically to Seinshir—and endure the voyage rather than simply to vanish.

  Auvry Feiran had been correct: it was becoming more and more risky to be known for a Mageborn. The Guardians kept to themselves, still not recovered from the loss of the Academy and the energetic if foolish Leninor Garvedian. The new Captal, an Adennos, was an ineffectual Scholar Mage, cowering amid his books in a ramshackle building the Council had provided in Shellinkroth. Formerly a law court, unused since a new Council House opened in a better section of Havenport, the marble hallways were said to be thunderously silent. The scant seven hundred Mage Guardians who remained—Novices, Prentices, Warriors, Healers, Scholars—were scattered across Lenfell: a body sliced to bits that didn’t yet know it was dead.

  As for the Lords of Malerris—this conclave at their great castle had been called to deal with their own rapidly deteriorating status. This had come about courtesy of the Councillor for Seinshir. He was the gray and glowering Risson of the Dalakard Blood, who always looked as if he’d swallowed something sour. And the Lords were a particularly bad taste on his tongue.

  On Malerris Island—one of eight major and countless insignificant islands that made up Seinshir—Dalakard lands abutted those of the Castle. Two decades of petty arguments had degenerated two years ago into a fight over who owned a rich vein of iron ore discovered smack on the border. Risson battled for Dalakard possession with words and lawsuits, but never with arms—for who knew what the Lords would do magically if provoked? A Warrior Mage could be counted on to fight the non-Mageborn according to strict rules of war, without spells (at least that was the theory; recently revisionist histories speculated otherwise, another sign of magic under suspicion). But the Lords of Malerris had no special class of warriors, and indeed scorned Mages both for accepting those with martial skills and for subsequently forbidding them to use magic in pursuit of military aims. So Risson fought for his family’s rights in the courts, and had been losing.

  In the week of Maiden Moon 960, the Council declared itself fed up to the teeth with the whole tedious issue and decided in favor of the Dalakards. A few days later a summons went out from Malerris Castle. The Lords found it necessary to review their position—politically, economically, and societally. Glenin, more concerned with the absence of Golonet Doriaz than the reasons for it, for once did not make the proper connections.

  Her father enlightened her on St. Fielto’s Day. After riding all afternoon in raucous celebration of the Saint’s famous hunt, Ryka Court would feast all night. Glenin was too depressed to join. She spent a desultory morning in the kennels, coercing a litter of puppies down a hallway and into her lap—until the hound bitch came looking for her offspring with hackles raised and teeth bared. In the afternoon, while Elsvet and her other schoolmates galloped wildly through the forest, Glenin took out her bad humor on the cooks from the safe distance of a stairwell. Rising bread collapsed, stews boiled over, milk soured as ice melted in coldboxes. Harmless little magics, and she knew she was being silly, but Doriaz was gone, and she was bored and lonely, and there was nothing to do.

  That night as they finished dinner in their chambers, Feiran asked, “Well, Glenin, did you enjoy using your magic on helpless animals and inoffensive cookpots?”

  She flushed, embarrassed to have been caught in her foolish little spells. Then she was angry. Who had told on her? No one—she’d been careful not to be observed. Besides, she thought, resentful now, she’d done no real harm.

  Gray-green eyes accurately noted each emotion. She saw it, and this time blushed so hotly her cheeks felt blistered. Doriaz had warned her about controlling herself, especially her complexion.

  “You’re lucky,” Feiran went on. “No one was around today who could sense your little games but me.” When Glenin’s jaw dropped, he continued grimly, “Did you think you and I were the only Mageborns at Ryka Court?”

  “I—I didn’t—” She gulped. “Who?”

  “Find out for yourself. But don’t try until you can work with more subtlety than you showed today. I felt the backwash all the way to the parade ground.”

  “Backwash?” she echoed, wits as thick as the milk she’d curdled that afternoon.

  “So. Something Doriaz hasn’t taught you yet.” He half-closed his eyes and a few moments later their servant knocked on the door. “Yes,” Feiran said, “you may clear the table now, thank you.”

  When the woman was gone, Glenin blurted, “You called her! I felt it!”

  “Only because you were groping around for it. I felt that. You’re as delicate with your power as a Healer whose cure for a hangnail is to saw off the hand.” Leaning back, he sipped his wine before adding with a slight smile, “They said that about me, too—only I was accused of lopping off the whole arm. You’ve learned spells, Glenin. What Doriaz hasn’t taught you is technique. He’s been Warding you himself, I gather.”

  Thoroughly ashamed of herself, she managed, “I’m sorry, Father. I know what I did was silly—worse, it was dangerous.”

  “Yes, it was. Especially now that things are happening exactly as planned.”

  “You mean about Mageborns.” When he nodded, she said, “I won’t do it again until Doriaz shows me—”

  “I don’t think he’ll be coming back, Glensha,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I know you’re fond of him.”

  “Not c-coming back—?” Her insides tied into ever-tightening knots.

  “Malerris Castle was attacked this morning by the Council Guard and the Ryka Legion. The walls were breached at sunset. By now it will have been put to the torch.”

  “And—those inside?” she breathed.

  “Many are dead.” He looked anywhere but at her. “I gave orders to spare Doriaz if he was caught.”

  But the elite Ryka Legion did not answer to Auvry Feiran. He commanded the Guards. The Legion belonged to Anniyas. Would she give orders to spare Golonet Doriaz—the man Glenin wanted instead of Anniyas’s own foolish, magic-less fop of a son? Ah, Chevasto help her, she should have been nicer to Garon, less obvious in her preference for Doriaz’s company—

  Then she realized what her father had truly said. “You gave orders? You?”

  “I planned the action, yes.” He set his cup down and met her anguished gaze. “At the request of the Council, which is to say Anniyas.”

  Glenin leaped to her feet. “No! You couldn’t betray the Malerrisi the way you betrayed the Mage Guardians!”

  “Sit down!” he snapped. “No one has been betrayed. What was done today was done with the assistance of the Lords of Malerris themselves.”

  She did not sit down. She reached for the silver carafe of wine and poured her waterglass full, she who was never allowed liquor. She drank it down, poured another, and finally pulled her chair back under her. Seating herself, she stared him straight in the eye.

  “Explain this,” she said flatly.

  A heavy brow arched at this display of Blood arrogance—but she also saw a glint of pride in his eyes. In a neutral voice he said, “If you can tell me why it happened, then I will explain what it means.”

  She considered, then nodded. “The Council, which is to say Anniyas, gave the Dalakards the iron. The Lords gathered to decide how to deal with the insult to themselves and
to the process of law. All in one place, they made an easy target. You, a former Mage Guardian, could warn the troops what to look for by way of Wards—except that most of the Wards were cancelled or weakened.”

  “Go on.”

  “The dead at Malerris Castle are either very old, not very powerful, or servants who don’t matter. Expendable. Anyone important escaped by Ladder. No one but the Malerrisi know how many Ladders there are at the Castle or their destinations, so now no one knows where the Lords are. They can do as they please, safely anonymous.”

  “Very good. A few more items, though. By burning the Castle, the number of and identities of the corpses will be uncertain. As a former Mage, I could not participate personally, or it would seem as if the Guardians had approved it. But of course everyone knows who the Council Guard Commandant is.”

  “The Victor of Ambrai.” She wondered if he knew that he was also called the Butcher of Ambrai. Of course he knew. He knew almost everything. She resumed, “Captal Adennos struck your name from the Lists, but that could have been a ruse to put you in exactly this position, using the Council’s forces to destroy the Malerrisi. Several bodies will be identified as Warrior Mages, won’t they?”

  “Yes. Preventing the fires from burning them past recognition will be difficult, but there are always the identity disks. And you’re right, the Mages will be said to be behind this. The ancient enemy, vanquished at last. And now Lenfell will wonder what the Mages will do next, lacking the Lords of Malerris to counter their power.”

  “A power greatly diminished since Captal Garvedian died,” Glenin pointed out. “Weak as they are, it’ll be hard to make anybody suspect them.”

  “People are accustomed to thinking of them as powerful. As individuals, they still are. As a unified force. . . .” He dismissed this with a shrug.

  Glenin circled the rim of her goblet with a fingertip. “What excuse was used to attack the Castle?”

  “Risson Dalakard asked what a meeting of hundreds of powerful Mageborns could mean. And answered his own question, of course.”

  “An attack on Dalakard lands.”

  “Precisely. He added that who knew but what the Malerrisi couldn’t simply make the disputed iron vanish.” He snorted. “Ignorance of what magic can and cannot do is a vital asset, Glenin.”

  She took a long swallow of wine. It was spicy and warm and felt wonderful sliding down her throat, settling her stomach and her nerves. “So this was as carefully planned as Ambrai.”

  “More so. And much easier. This time we had the full cooperation of those whose home we destroyed.”

  “What about the Ladders?”

  “Fire is the one thing they cannot survive. They are as vulnerable to it as their wooden counterparts. That’s why it was important to burn the Castle. Mage Guardians know about Ladders, too.”

  “Then . . . wherever the Lords went, they’re stuck there.”

  “Each Ladder has only one destination, yes. Would you like me to show you?”

  6

  It was a wink at the corners of her closed eyes, a teasing tingle just beyond reach of her magic. The more she tried to see and the harder she tried to grasp, the less substantial it became.

  “Oh, stop that,” her father said, amusement in his voice.

  Mindful of his chiding her for lack of subtlety, she stopped chasing the wink and opened her eyes to find his face in the darkness.

  “Doriaz told you the basics, I assume?”

  “How it works, but not how to work it.”

  “A conceit on his part. Nobody knows exactly how they work. Nobody knows how to build one, either. The knowledge was lost in the Waste War. As for finding those that still exist—you never know one’s there until you’re in the middle of it, as we are now. Even then it’s a coy beast, quite often Warded.”

  “Keep Away? Danger?” she guessed.

  “Too obvious. I’m told this one once had a rather insidiously clever Stain On My Shirt around it. Note the mirror on the far wall.”

  Glenin laughed nervously. “By the time you got through checking, you’d forget about the possibility of a Ladder.”

  “Vanity can be useful,” he replied, smiling.

  Taking her hand, he centered her with him in the circle. It was delineated by a pattern of pale green tiles set into the white floor of an insignificant anteroom near the Council Chamber. If he hadn’t pointed it out to her with the aid of a Mage Globe, she would never have known it was there. No magical energy betrayed its existence. The circle pattern was repeated in several places to accent the circular room. Doriaz had told her that a Ladder was always situated within round walls. She’d asked why: he’d answered, “An interesting question.”

  Her father hadn’t made her promise not to try the Ladder on her own; she might yet lack subtlety, but never intelligence. Council precincts were forbidden at all hours to anyone not a Councillor—or the man who stood at Avira Anniyas’s right hand. Tonight was the exception to the rule of constant and multiple sentries. Everyone was at the St. Fielto’s Day feast but for a few token Guards, none of whom would dream of challenging the passage of their Commandant.

  “First, center yourself as I taught you years ago,” he said. “Ignore what you almost sense. Calm yourself, close your eyes, and forget where you are.”

  She clung suddenly to his hand, gasping. There was nothing around her—no tiled floor underfoot, no circle of walls, no vast Ryka Court beyond this room.

  “It’s all right. Open your eyes.”

  She blinked. Her eyes stung and her nose prickled with the smell of scorched wood. Clutching his arm with both hands, she looked around wildly by the rose-red light of his kindling Mage Globe.

  “Wh-where—?”

  “Ambrai,” he whispered.

  Glenin huddled close to him. They were still within a circle, but this time it was the central well of the famous Double Spiral Stair. Only a few days before she’d left Ambrai, she and Sarra had played here. People climbing up one side couldn’t see anyone on the other, and the possibilities for startling Grandmother’s stuffy ministers had been endless.

  Now the shining marble was stained by smoke and fire. Oily black tongues of soot licked up the smooth walls. Auvry Feiran guided her through the narrow access slit into the grand hall. She wiped her eyes and rubbed her itchy nose, and made herself look around.

  The tapestries were gone. Of the gorgeous Cloister rugs, chairs and tables, huge vases brimming with flowers, carved wood window casings and panes of colored glass, nothing was left but charred wreckage.

  “But—but you said it had been spared,” she blurted out.

  “As much of it as I could manage, Glensha. I’m sorry.”

  Glenin knuckled her eyes again. “Why?” she demanded, looking up at her father. “Why did they make you do this?”

  “The Council?” he asked, frowning.

  “No! Grandmother and the Captal and—and even Mother! They made this happen, it’s their fault—”

  “Glensha—” He gathered her in his arms and rocked her while she cried. “I’m sorry, I should never have brought you here, please don’t cry, heartling—”

  After a time she regained control. Drawing away, she tugged the hem of her shirt from her trousers and used it to dry her face. “I’m all right. It’s just—I know you did your best to keep it safe.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “One day it will all be as it was.”

  “Better,” she corrected, and he almost smiled.

  He brushed at a step, trying to clean it off so they could sit. Hopeless, of course. Nine years of accumulated grit overlaid on the stains of soot and smoke could not be wiped clean. They sat anyway, his strong arm around her shoulders, her head against his chest.

  “I suppose I could say I brought you here because there was no chance we’d be seen. I’m not much good at invisibility spells.”

  Glenin was. But that
was one of those secrets she kept from her father.

  “A Ladder’s Blanking Ward cancels all other spells until one steps out of the circle anyway,” he went on. “That’s why I had to call up another Mage Globe. I judged this one the safest of all the Ladders at Ryka. . . .” He trailed off, and she waited. Then: “Truly told, I wanted to remind myself of the necessity of sacrifice.”

  Glenin considered. “Did someone you know die today at Malerris Castle?”

  After a moment’s silence, his answer was soft, sorrowful. “Many chose to be left behind, to sacrifice themselves for others. I knew some as teachers, some as friends.”

  Glenin said nothing, listening to the faint whisperings of a breeze through Ambrai’s empty halls. At length, she stirred.

  “How did we get here?”

  “How—? Oh. The Ladder.” He sounded as if awakening from a troubled sleep, and glad to do so. “You didn’t get past the Blanking Ward, did you? It’s unsettling the first time. But once you know where the Ladder goes, you can see that place past the Ward. It’s set to keep the Ladder from use by unauthorized Mageborns, for you can only use a Ladder if you know where it goes. Ancient magic had a sublime elegance that we can’t even hope to emulate.”

  “Will you teach me how it’s done?”

  “Not this time.” He stood. “We should be getting back.”

  Glenin followed him to the narrow opening into the Double Spiral and looked up. The graceful, precisely matched curves would glow pristine white again one day. She vowed it. When she ruled Ambrai, and the Octagon Court was hers alone, and she became First Councillor and no one had to die or hide or pretend or—

  —or sacrifice his life.

  Five days later, word came of Golonet Doriaz.

  “He was the last to reach the Ryka Ladder,” said Auvry Feiran, holding Glenin’s chill hands between his own, watching her shock-dulled eyes. “He helped everyone else first—clearing the corridor to the Tillinshir Ladder took over an hour. Just as he was about to leave by the Ryka Ladder, he was overcome by smoke. I’m sorry, heartling. I’m so sorry.”