The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  When the magic faded, the crowd bludgeoned the Mage to death.

  Sarra accepted that as truth, too.

  In the twenty-six days since, rumor had spread throughout Lenfell. The broadsheet was the first official version of the facts and also printed the authorized announcement of a Council Decree: Mageborns must be taken into custody. All Lenfell was exhorted to vigilance. The Council was doing everything in its power to assure the security of honest citizens. In all Shirs Council Guards were arresting Mageborns for swift arraignment by the Justiciary. Additionally, a large force had been dispatched to Roseguard, a city sympathetic to Mage Guardians.

  Sarra—and the rest of Lenfell—also knew that Marra Feleson’s editorial was direct from Anniyas herself. Mageborns were dangerous. Destroying the Academy and all Ambrai had not been enough. Putting Malerris Castle to the torch and killing its inhabitants had not been enough. All remaining Mageborns must be found and imprisoned. Only then would Lenfell be safe from magic.

  Knowledge was bad enough. Ignorance was worse.

  Who was the Warrior Mage? The Lord of Malerris? Why had they broken cover? What had prompted the Mage to attack? Insanity was too obvious an answer. What threat or perceived threat had made her do such a thing? Well, no; that was the wrong question. Sarra knew in her guts that this oh-so-opportune event had been planned by the Lords of Malerris, but how they had managed it was beyond her comprehension.

  Not that her personal understanding mattered. The Malerrisi had died—almost certainly sacrificing himself and making sure he took as many people as possible with him. Sarra understood that much. It provided final proof of magic’s evils. It was Anniyas’ excuse for open persecution of Mageborns.

  And the Rising. All those sly hints in her little song, all those Names connected to the Rising . . .

  . . . and Roseguard.

  This was the crux of Sarra’s ignorance, where knowledge of Anniyas’ assault on Roseguard intersected with knowledge of Agatine’s involvement in the Rising. At the point where these met inside her was a vast emptiness that she must struggle not to fill with images of Ambrai. She had lost one family, one home. She begged every Saint in the Calendar—excepting Chevasto the Weaver—to protect her second family and her second home, perhaps more beloved than the first for being hers so much longer.

  St. Chevasto, she cursed.

  “They will flee to Ladders,” Elomar Adennos murmured suddenly, and Sarra flinched. “And be slaughtered. The Malerrisi know Ladders, too.”

  More knowledge, bringing with it its burden of ignorance: which Ladders, if any, were still safe to use? How many Mages would die? The print blurred. She told herself it was steam from her coffee.

  A strong brown hand descended to the broadsheet, splayed fingers abruptly clawing the paper into a ragged crumple.

  “We can still help Taig and Cailet,” Valirion said quietly. “Don’t torment yourself, Sarra.”

  “The horses?” Elomar asked.

  “Outside.”

  The Healer Mage clinked a few coins onto the table. “Come, Sarra.”

  She went with them. Numb. Helpless. Taig, Cailet—how remote they seemed, how unclear their faces compared to the immediate images of Agatine and Orlin and her brothers. . . .

  Cailet is my sister in Blood, but we’ve spent our lives apart. She’s not quite real to me yet. She’s an idea, not a person.

  And I’m not even that much to her. . . .

  Outside in the street, Alin usurped Val’s usual role of determined cheerfulness. “Didn’t even have to steal ’em,” he said as he boosted Sarra into a saddle. “I just walked in to a livery owned by a Senison cousin of mine and asked for four of the Ostin horses.”

  “Scraller and the Council be damned,” Val said as they turned up Shainkroth Road that led west to Longriding. “Lilen Ostin is the real power in Combel.”

  “And everywhere else in The Big Empty,” Alin added proudly.

  Thus it was in Sheve with Lady Agatine Slegin. Or—had been. Where were they? And all the Mages—and Imi Gorrst and Advar Senison and the books, and Lusira Garvedian and Telomir Renne and—

  “Sarra, stop it,” Val ordered.

  She turned her head dully. “I can’t.”

  “Are we dead yet, or in chains?”

  As he quoted her own words back at her, she felt a small flaring of temper. But not enough. She needed more to make her angry enough to stop thinking about what she couldn’t do and start thinking about what she must do.

  Knowing her by now, he obliged. “Did I mention that I think going to Longriding is a real shit of an idea? What were you planning to do—give a welcoming party for Glenin Feiran?”

  “She knows that you know Taig’s there,” Alin put in.

  Elomar’s turn: “You inferred her moves—why should she not infer yours?”

  “Shut up, all of you,” she snapped. “I know damned well what she’ll do.”

  Her magic, victimized by fear and helplessness, sparked along with anger. Splendid, she thought sourly. The only time I’m usefully Mageborn is when I’m furious. What a comfort.

  “Really?” Val pretended polite astonishment. “Might one inquire . . .?”

  Taking advantage of the opportunity to repay him for all those convoluted answers to What time is it?, she said with vicious sweetness, “I know what she knows and she knows that I know it. Either of us, or both of us, or neither of us will go to Longriding. If neither go, Taig is unwarned and uncaptured. If I go, he’s warned; if she goes, he’s captured. She can’t afford to let me warn him. I can’t afford to let her capture him. Therefore, both of us will go to Longriding.”

  Alin was the first to react. “I’d applaud, but you’d probably hit me.”

  “I’d applaud, too,” Val retorted, “If I knew what the hell she just said.”

  “Perfectly simple,” Elomar told him.

  “Then explain it to him,” Sarra said, and kicked her horse into a gallop.

  4

  “No,” said the Fifth Lord of Malerris, flatly and absolutely. “Not into the middle of an acid storm.”

  Glenin, furious enough at being forced to consult Vassa Doriaz, finally lost her temper. “How dare you dictate to me what I can and cannot do? Show me the safe house in Longriding and get out of my way!”

  “You misunderstand, Lady Glenin,” said a musical voice behind them, and Glenin whirled. No one at Malerris Castle ever called her Lady. She wondered if Saris Allard used the title now to mock her or cozen her.

  Moving gracefully into the room, Saris placed a wine tray on a low table and spared a single glance for her husband. “Acid storms are still fraught with Wild Magic, even after all these centuries. It would be dangerous for you to use any Ladder, and especially the velvet one.”

  The Code of Malerris had made no mention of this; neither had any of her various teachers. Glenin frowned.

  “Malerrisi avoid The Waste as a matter of course,” Saris went on. “We so rarely go there that few ever bother to mention the problem. And it is a potentially deadly omission. I wish, Vassa, that you would occasionally recall who Lady Glenin is, and how valuable.”

  “After Anniyas,” he appended, smooth as fresh butter.

  “Before Anniyas,” she corrected sharply, hazel eyes narrowing in her darkly lovely face. “She has freedom of movement, stronger magic—”

  “—and rotten luck,” Doriaz interrupted, getting to his feet. “Please excuse me, Domna. My son and I usually spend this hour together. Good evening.”

  When he had gone, Saris calmly picked up an embroidered pillow and flung it at the closed door with a force that made her multitude of black braids quiver.

  “Sometimes,” she said with perfect aplomb as Glenin stared, “one wishes for a knife. I apologize for my husband’s manners. In recent days he has killed many Mage Guardians, an activity he has always enjoyed—as you may know. It makes him arrogant.
”

  “His son,” Glenin said by way of agreement.

  Saris nodded and began pouring wine. “Chava turns fourteen this spring. Soon his magic will make itself known. Between you and me, Vassa is both proud and frightened of the boy.”

  “Chava’s magic is stronger than his?”

  “I believe it will prove so.” Her smile told Glenin that Vassa was right to worry. Glenin smiled back. “As you are stronger than Anniyas. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  “She so rarely uses it.” Glenin shrugged and accepted a winecup. “I suppose ‘luck’ suffices.”

  “In some things. Not all.” Seating herself in the chair her husband had vacated, Saris continued, “What she calls luck is but an ability to take advantage of opportunities gained her by the hard work of others.”

  “I think you’re right.” And she wouldn’t have said so if they hadn’t been in the Iron Tower, safe from prying spells. “For me, however, hard work alone must provide. Lady Saris, I must get to Longriding. The acid storm will slow down the Liwellan girl, too, but I must be there before her.”

  “I had thought it was Taig Ostin you were after.”

  “I want all of them,” Glenin stated.

  The Lady of Malerris sipped delicately at her wine. “Will Sarra Liwellan not expect you in Longriding, and plan accordingly?”

  “Certainly. She has no choice but to go there. If I were in her place—” Glenin stopped. Would—could—either of them outsmart the other? Or would each merely chase her own tail trying to be the more clever?

  “In her place,” Saris Allard remarked gently, “I would expect you at any instant and go half-mad with looking over my shoulder. Lady Glenin, do you really need to go to Longriding?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I—”

  “You’ve met her, so you would know better than I, but . . . it seems to me that nervousness alone may cause her to make a mistake. Overcaution is as foolish as recklessness. But even if she makes no mistakes, she can’t stay where she knows you know her to be.”

  Glenin nodded slowly. “Longriding is obvious. Too obvious, truly told. The real trick is to figure out where she’ll go next.”

  “Is that not the place you ought to be waiting for her?”

  “But where will she go?” Glenin tapped the rim of her winecup. “No, I think the question is whether it will be a place of her choosing. There will be Mages with her, after all.”

  “Of course. I’d forgotten that. Probably even Gorynel Desse—” She broke off with a comical shudder. “I don’t envy you this one, Lady Glenin! Thinking like another woman is one thing—but like a man? Who knows how their minds work?”

  “At times,” Glenin confided wryly, “I doubt that they have minds. Usually after an evening with my husband.”

  “In a contest, mine would win. One day you and I must sit down and decide what we did to deserve them. But before then, you have the appalling task of thinking as Gorynel Desse would.”

  Glenin rolled a tongueful of wine against her palate, savoring the taste as her father had taught her, then swallowed. The Mages needed a hiding place remote enough to be secure—but such a place would be too remote for easy supply and communication. Unless there was a Ladder. But she’d never heard any rumors that they’d planned for this eventuality. The Mage Guardians didn’t have a Malerris Castle—remote, secure, and replete with Ladders.

  “Mage Guardians don’t plan,” Glenin mused. “They react. It’s a most untidy way to live.”

  “I must say that imagination fails me,” Saris admitted. “Where could any Mage Guardian go now to find real safety?”

  A Malerris Castle. . . .

  “As for Desse,” she went on, “no one knows him better than your father.”

  Malerris Castle. To all outward appearances, a place dead and abandoned long ago. . . .

  “Lady Glenin, I believe you ought to return to Ryka Court and consult your father about Gorynel Desse.”

  “Lady Saris, I believe you’re absolutely right.”

  5

  It wasn’t until Verald Jescarin was dead that Collan realized he’d lost a friend.

  He knew hundreds of people. He called none “friend.” When Verald fell to a knife out of nowhere in the dark, Collan felt a hole open up inside him.

  He filled it with other deaths.

  It happened so fast. One minute the pair stood guard outside a farmhouse. Collan was rubbing his nape, saying, “You had to hit me that hard, I suppose?”

  Verald chuckled. “Your skull’s rumored to be thick.”

  The next minute a knife thudded into his chest. He gave a soft, startled grunt, toppling sideways into the woodpile, dead before he hit the ground.

  Black-cloaked shapes surged forward from the snowy forest. Collan began to kill.

  Orlin Renne and his two elder sons and Rillan Veliaz burst from the farmhouse. They killed, too, swords ringing like chimes.

  Col resented every death he didn’t claim himself on Verald’s behalf. He could not have said how many Council Guards it would take to assuage his need. More than were available to him, certainly. The sudden lack of swords lifting to meet his own was a bitter disappointment.

  Into the abrupt silence spilled an impossibly roseate light. Col turned and saw Gorynel Desse appear from the trees, seemingly carrying a large ruddy-gold sphere that cast a sunrise glint across glistening snow.

  “Orlin?” he called out.

  “Here. And Riddon and Maugir—both wounded.” Renne joined Collan, his sons in tow. “Rillan’s checking the perimeter.”

  “Verald?”

  “Dead,” Col replied, wiping his sword on a Guard’s cloak and kicking the corpse for the pleasure of it. Wishing it was Gorynel Desse lying there. “Where the hell were you?”

  “Not where I should have been, obviously.” He didn’t look just old, he looked ancient.

  The answer absolutely infuriated Collan. “What about your famous Wards? All that Warrior Mage magic you’re supposed to have? Why didn’t you protect—”

  “Enough,” Orlin Renne commanded. “Riddon, Maugir, come inside. You need bandaging.”

  “I’m all right,” Maugir protested, but his wince as he limped through the door said otherwise.

  Desse and his Mage Globe drifted into the winter night, touring the battle scene like any general who’d sat high on a hill out of the fray.

  It had happened so fast. It hadn’t lasted long enough. Collan started piling corpses to either side of the front walk. Rillan Veliaz showed up, dragging another. It was grim work by the silver of the Ladymoon and the feeble wash of starlight. Eventually Desse returned and surveyed the stacked bodies—and the single figure off to the side, wrapped in a dark blue cloak.

  “I set Wards,” Desse said to Collan. “That’s why we were found. They had a Mageborn with them, a Lord of Malerris.”

  Col backed up an involuntary step.

  “He’s dead. The only magic now in the air is mine.”

  “And a big help it was too,” Collan replied bitterly.

  Veliaz cleared his throat. “We’ll have to burn them, Guardian Desse. Inside, with the Ladder.”

  “Yes,” said the Mage.

  “No,” said Col. “The others if you want—but not Verald. Not with them. He stays outside.”

  Fierce green eyes, oddly reddened by the Mage Globe, searched Col’s face for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yes. I understand.” He glanced around. “I assume you’re responsible for much of this litter?”

  Col shrugged, wishing he could claim all the dead as his own work. “Only nine or ten.”

  “Respectable,” Desse murmured absently. “Not unworthy. . . .”

  “Of what?”

  He was ignored. “Twenty-five Guard dead?”

  “Yes,” Veliaz said. “I counted.”

  “Then the whole squadron is accounted for. When they don�
��t return, someone will investigate. We must leave soon. It’s half a day to Ryka Court if I Fold the land.”

  “Ryka—!” Collan exploded. “I’m not going anywhere near Ryka Court!”

  “You’ll go where I tell you, boy,” Desse snapped. “Or do you forget that my magic will always be swifter than your feet—or your sword? Geridon’s Stones, you’re even more stubborn than your—”

  “Gorsha!”

  Agatine’s urgent cry sent all three men running into the farmhouse. Sela Trayos lay on a cot near the hearth, gasping, both hands pressed to her belly. Agatine and Tarise hovered beside her.

  “Her water hasn’t broken,” Tarise said, “but if the pains continue and she goes into labor—”

  “I’m surprised it didn’t happen before now,” Agatine said angrily. “Taking a pregnant woman through a Ladder!”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Orlin reminded her, busily tying torn cloth around Maugir’s leg.

  She flung a scowl up at him. “With two more Ladders to go, her baby may be in real danger.”

  “Only if she’s Mageborn,” Riddon said. He was pale, his arm tightly bound, but he didn’t seem to be in pain. “There’s no magic in the Trayos or Jescarin lines that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” said his mother; “Of course,” said his father. They did not look at each other or at Gorynel Desse. Collan got the shivers from that determined absence of eye contact. Sela’s baby would have magic—although how any of them knew it was beyond him. He wondered if Sela knew it. And what the danger was in taking an unborn Mageborn through a Ladder.

  The old man stood beside the young woman, taking her face between his hands. Orlin drew Col away with a touch on his arm.

  “Let him do what he can for her. We ought to do what we can for Verald.”

  The loss opened in him again. Nine or ten deaths, nine or ten thousand—nothing would ever make up for the loss of this one life. This friend.

  It wasn’t as if they’d known each other long or had much in common, a part of him argued.

  Instinct said otherwise. There were people one simply knew on sight. Strangers one instantly recognized as friends.