The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  Pretending his legs didn’t wobble, he went to help the pair over to the bed. “What happened? Where the hell are we?”

  “Ambrai. The Mage Academy. Feiran knows about the Ladder now, but he can’t possibly know where it goes. We’re safe enough here for the present.”

  Col considered reminding him that it had been only minutes since he himself had asked if it was safe anywhere. “What happened?” he repeated instead.

  “Auvry Feiran!” Tarise spat, knuckling her eyes—uselessly, as new tears welled. “He killed my Lady and my Lord and—and Elom—”

  “Why didn’t Desse kill him?”

  Rillan gave him an odd look. “Do you know that he didn’t?”

  “Couldn’t have.” Col shrugged a shoulder. “We left in too big a hurry, without the—without them.” And he wondered then why he had been part of the first group. He’d been doing all right with his sword, hadn’t he? Maybe even scored Feiran a good one—he seemed to recall hitting something.

  “My father is powerful,” said Telomir Renne. “But he also taught Feiran all the Warrior Mage lore he knows. Add to that the tutelage of the Malerrisi. . . .” He shook his head. “In a way, we’re fortunate it wasn’t Glenin who confronted us. Even Gorsha is wary of her.”

  “But what happened?” Col demanded for the third time. “I remember—”

  “—very little, I’d imagine,” Renne interrupted. “Battle Globes can do that. It was a brave effort, Collan, and together you and Riddon and—and my brother bought us some time. But steel is useless against magic, unless you’re extraordinarily lucky and possess one of the Fifty Swords.”

  An old song stirred in memory, something associated with a large folio and long nights of practice to get the fingering just right. And with the memory came the warning knife in his temple. Frowning into Telomir Renne’s eyes, he had the distinct feeling that Fifty Swords had been mentioned on purpose to elicit just that reaction, so he’d let the matter drop.

  He was damned if he’d—

  “Perhaps you’ve heard the old ballad,” Renne went on. “It’s said to date back to The Waste War, but the definitive version was written by—”

  “F-Falundir,” Col said, defiant and paying for it in terrible pain.

  “Yes. Go sleep it off, Collan,” he said, not without sympathy. “There should be a cot in the next room, if memory serves.”

  Collan had no choice. His head simply hurt too damned much. He sprawled across a blanketless canvas cot and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the surcease of the silent dark.

  8

  “Did I mention that this was a lousy idea?”

  Sarra barely heard Val’s shout over the roar of the acid storm outside. They had galloped into Longriding half an hour before corrosive winds swept down from the Wraithen Mountains and the town locked up tight. Truly told, they were fortunate to have found this livery stable, the only one in the eastern quarter that had four stalls left. For them, there was a hayloft—at a daily fee that would have bought a week at the best hostelry in Roseguard. At least payment in advance was not demanded; Lady Lilen’s name, invoked by her son, once again secured their needs.

  The distance between the stable they sheltered in and the Ostin residence was no more than a half mile. It might just as well have been half a million for all the hope Sarra had of getting there anytime soon.

  Ignoring Val, she wrapped herself in an old and smelly horse blanket and burrowed into the hay. She cast a nervous glance upward at the ceiling. It looked secure enough, but she’d heard plenty of tales about severe scarring from acid burns.

  Alin saw the direction of her worry, and smiled. “It won’t leak.”

  “There’s not a single leaky roof in all The Waste,” Val agreed.

  Elomar, plumping up a straw pillow for himself, added, “A family goes hungry first.”

  Which says a lot for the Council’s concern for its citizens’ safety, Sarra thought. There ought to be an allocation of local tax money, and a similar fund for coastal cities victimized by hurricanes—and while I’m at it, dikes on the Bluehair River so half Kenrokeshir doesn’t flood every ten years. . . .

  She fell asleep to plans for civil engineering, but her slumber was made restless by dreams of claws and talons plucking away roof tiles and hurling them at fleeing people who screamed under a fiery rain.

  Wraithenbeasts, a part of her mind informed her quite calmly. They’re coming. They’re inevitable. They’ve been gathering strength for hundreds of years. They’re waiting for the Lords of Malerris to let them out.

  The dream changed. A plain of black glass stretched before her in all directions. Glenin, laughing and beautiful, turned an enormous key in a gigantic lock. She stepped back and with a graceful gesture invited the iron gates to open.

  Beyond lurked horror.

  Wraithenbeasts, commented the dispassionate voice in her dream. Millions of them. Hungering, raging, mindless. Created by Mageborns when they created The Waste. Twice now Mageborns have locked them in. Only Mageborns can let them out. And she will be the one to do it. It is the pattern of her thread in the Great Loom. And only Cailet can stop her. Only Cailet.

  A girl appeared—a child, really, not even eighteen years old—slight, thin, her white-blonde hair tangling above fine black eyes, frowning at Sarra and utterly unaware of the Lady of Malerris—

  “Sarra, wake up. Sarra!”

  She spasmed upright, clutching at Elomar’s arms. A single wild glance by the delicate light of his Mage Globe reoriented her at once. A hayloft in Longriding, acid storm howling outside—not a featureless plain and iron gates unlocked to the howling horrors beyond. Elo, Val, and Alin nearby, familiar and real—not her two sisters, the phantom strangers of her dream.

  “I’m all right,” she muttered, raking sweaty hair back with both hands.

  But, Saints, how she hated portentous, pretentious dreams. Why couldn’t her Warded magic give her another useful one, like the one about the books? Fear had caused this one, not magic or foresight or a Saint or anything else. Disgusted by her own lurid flair for the dramatic, she lay back down.

  Alin and Val were talking quietly nearby; that she could hear them meant the storm was waning. She felt better at the thought. But the dream would not let her be.

  “One good thing about this storm,” Alin was saying to Val, “she can’t get through it, either.”

  “Unless she’s already here.”

  “What a cheering thought.”

  Positively delightful, Sarra thought.

  “Well, how about this? She’s stupid enough or arrogant enough to use a Waste Ladder even in an acid storm.”

  “Much better. But I don’t really believe it, do you?”

  Neither do I.

  “Sounded good, though.”

  “Nice try, Val.”

  “Have to admit, though, it warms my heart to think of her trapped by Wild Magic.”

  “Mmm. But there’s only one Ladder in Longriding, and she’d have to go all the way to Ambrai to use it.”

  Val laughed. “I can just see her popping into Lady Lilen’s green house—”

  “—right into the loving embrace of a six-foot spiny-sword!”

  I must remember to thank Alin for not taking me through that one. . . .

  “Why’d your mother name it after Gorsha instead of you? Except for the height, you and that cactus have a lot in common.”

  “You could use a razor, yourself. It was his idea to train it into a circle like that. Almost as good as one of his Wards.”

  Wonderful, Sarra told herself as she drifted off. All I lack is a dream about an affectionate six-foot cactus. . . .

  But this time she was smiling as she went to sleep, and did not dream.

  The next morning she woke to silence. On a hay bale rested a bottle, a hard roll, and a wedge of incredibly stinky cheese. She gobbled ravenously, thinking how outraged G
randmother Allynis would be at her manners, even though nobody was there to see her. With that thought came another: Does Glenin remember our childhood at the Octagon Court? When she considered what could have happened if Glenin had seen past the Wards to remember, her stomach turned and for a moment she feared she’d lose her breakfast.

  Glenin Feiran had no sister. Sarra Ambrai—she gave herself her true Name defiantly—had only one. And it was time to find and claim her.

  When Sarra climbed down from the loft, Alin was renegotiating the price of stabling their four mounts another day.

  “Why is he bothering?” she whispered to Val. “We’re leaving here by Ladder, not on horseback.”

  “Makes it look good,” Val replied softly.

  She gave a shrug. What the citizens of Longriding thought or didn’t think was of no interest to her. Taig and Cailet: they were important. No one else.

  As they walked through the main part of town, Val remarked on the new pits in buildings and pavement. Sarra could discern no difference from what she’d seen before the acid storm. Real rain would have washed everything clean. The stains on Longriding were indelible.

  She remembered Ostinhold as an ugly jumble of angles, add-ons, and any-color-available. The Ostin house was a complete surprise. The two-story building was all graceful curves, constructed as a series of seven large bays reminiscent of side chapels in an All Saints Temple. Narrow arching windows were shuttered in dark green to complement pale yellow walls; a fan-lighted doorway was sheltered by a semicircle of columned portico; the domed roof was emphasized by curving patterns of tiles; a slim round tower nestled at the side of the house, with a water cistern on top and—Sarra was positive—the Ladder on one of the other three floors.

  Almost eighteen years had passed since Gorynel Desse had taken her through the Ladder; she was a grown woman now, not a child of five. Yet as she walked up the stone path toward the portico, she caught herself glancing around for her mother. She’d thought of Lady Agatine as her mother for so long that Maichen Ambrai’s features had blurred in her memory.

  Does Glenin remember? Does she ever wonder what happened to Mama and me?

  And why am I thinking about her when it’s Cailet who’s so close now?

  Simple. Glenin might be close, too.

  “So we just walk right on in?” she asked Alin.

  “Why not? It’s his house, too,” Val said.

  “That’s not what she meant, Val. It’s been a few years, but I’m known in Longriding. So’s Val. It’d be silly to sneak around.”

  “Some people probably even remember you, Elo,” Val pointed out. “Why haven’t you been arrested?”

  The Healer Mage allowed himself a smug little smile. “Although not in First Sword Desse’s class, I am not inept at Wards.”

  Sarra resisted a shrug. Magic all around her—Elomar, Alin, even Val with his time-sense—and all she had were dreams and gut-jumping.

  But she had warning enough, an urgent fire of danger along her nerves. Before she could speak Glenin’s name, even before Alin could use the brass knocker shaped like an oak tree, the door swung open.

  A girl stood there, a tall man behind her. Taig.

  Cailet.

  Not the child from Pinderon. The young woman from the dream. Taller than Sarra, not as tall as Glenin. Pale blonde hair cut short, silky bangs drifting into black eyes that dominated an oblong face.

  Dangerous?

  Sarra’s Warded magic screamed Yes!

  Cailet saw Alin and Val first. Her eyes grew even wider and her lips parted on a cry of joy she never uttered.

  Because she saw Sarra then. Recognized her. Not as the girl from Pinderon. As Sarra.

  Her lips drew into a rictus of agony and she gave a low moan, echoed an instant later by Alin and Elomar. The Healer Mage collapsed to his knees as Alin sagged bonelessly against Val. Even Sarra felt it: magic, exploding against her Wards, power finally freed, running wild, lashing out in mindless fury after its long imprisonment.

  The sisters saw nothing but each other: one stricken to the heart, the other stricken by magic.

  Taig stepped forward and swung Cailet up into his arms. “Val! The Wards have broken! Get out of here!”

  “Where?” Val cried, lifting Alin as easily as Taig had lifted Cailet. “Not by Ladder—Saints, Taig, look at him!”

  “Yes, by Ladder! Go on, hurry! Once he’s away from her, he might—”

  Cailet’s sudden spasm was exactly matched by Alin’s. Elomar had wrapped his arms around his head, groaning.

  “No!” Sarra cried. “I won’t leave her—”

  “Do you want your own Wards to shatter?” Taig demanded.

  Maybe she did.

  “Sarra—” Cailet’s voice, a rasp of pain.

  She knows me. She knows my name. She knows everything—

  Cailet’s eyes—black, luminous, their mother’s eyes—Sarra’s eyes—a silent shriek of rage and rampaging magic—

  “Go, Sarra! Now!” Taig exclaimed, and fled upstairs with Cailet in his arms.

  She would have followed. But Val pushed past, carrying Alin into the house. And Elomar’s long fingers clasped her wrist hard. He swayed upright, shaking his head as if to rid it of some horrifying vision. His skin was paste-gray, his eyes flinching with bruises to his magic, perhaps to his very soul.

  “The Ladder,” he mumbled. “Help me, Sarra.”

  Cailet—

  —has Taig. Doesn’t need me. Elo does.

  He leaned heavily on her shoulder, tall body no more coordinated than a string puppet. Somehow she got him walking. Somehow she kept herself on her feet, supporting his awkward weight. Somehow she found her way across the entry hall to a door.

  Val stood in the middle of the greenhouse, guarding Alin, who huddled on his knees. Circling them with a multitude of thin green arms studded with dagger-long spikes was an incredibility of a cactus. Six feet high, growing from a capacious stone trough, it uniquely warded the Ladder. Elomar stumbled through the two-foot wide break by himself. Sarra slid in behind him and crouched beside Alin.

  “Take us through,” she said.

  He was shivering, blue eyes huge with the same bruised expression Elomar wore. “Can’t,” he muttered.

  “Do it, Alin,” she demanded. “Now.”

  “Let him be,” Val snarled.

  “It won’t get any better until he’s as far from her as he can be. Take us through, Alin. Now!”

  Val’s stance became almost threatening. Alin shook his head and reached up for his cousin’s hand.

  “She’s right. Has to be now. Hang onto me, all of you.”

  Sarra took his other hand. Elomar put both hands on Alin’s shoulder. The Blanking Ward formed slowly, sluggishly. A long, stomach-lurching time later, Sarra could see again.

  Sitting quietly in an armchair before a brazier, was a thin, dark, elegant man of middle years. He regarded them with sad blue eyes.

  Alin wilted onto the carpet. Val gathered him up once more and carried him to the nearby bed. Elomar lurched to another chair and folded his long body into it, exhausted.

  Sarra eyed the man. “I know this is Ambrai, but where in the city are we?”

  He gave an eloquent shrug.

  “You mean you don’t know? That’s impossible. You’re a Mage, you must—”

  This time he shook his head.

  “You’re not a Mage? Then how did you get here?”

  He said nothing.

  “Tell me who you are and why you’re here—wherever ‘here’ is.”

  Bright blue eyes watched her; amusement quirked the full lips.

  “Vow of silence?” Sarra inquired sharply. “If so, I suggest you break it. There are things I must know, and you’re going to tell me.”

  “Leave be, Sarra,” said Elomar, very softly. “You don’t understand.”

  Valirion approached t
he silent man. He bowed with more respect than Sarra had believed him capable of—but his rudeness in introducing her to him rather than the other way around was wholly in character.

  “Domni, this is Sarra Liwellan.”

  The blue eyes in the dark face caught and held hers, and she had the oddest feeling that he would once again shake his head—as if he knew Liwellan was not her real Name.

  “Sarra,” said Val, “you have the rare honor of being in the presence of Bard Falundir.”

  9

  The First Councillor’s private chambers were unWarded. Many long corridors away, in the comfort of her own small sunroom, Glenin both saw and heard the conversation perfectly.

  Although conversation was much too polite a term for the impressive rampage Anniyas now indulged in at Auvry Feiran’s expense. Glenin had never feared the woman before. This morning she learned the folly of her contempt.

  “You had him!” Anniyas shouted. “Right in your hands, you had him! How could you let him escape?”

  Glenin had been wondering that very thing. When her father made no answer, only stood with head bowed and hands clasped, the First Councillor seized a magnificent obsidian vase and hurled it at a mirror. The resulting crash and splinter made Glenin wince.

  “Our greatest enemy! Leader of the Rising! First Sword of Warrior Mages—and you lost him! And don’t you dare tell me that within the week there’ll be no more Mages, Warrior or otherwise!” Anniyas shook both fists in Auvry Feiran’s face, her own features contorted in fury. “With Desse still alive, and that moron of a Captal with him—thanks to your stupid daughter—”

  His shoulders stiffened. “That wasn’t Glenin’s fault. She did all she could to ensure—”

  “Close your mouth, Prentice Mage!” She spun, knocking against a table. Plump fingers closed around a carved jade bowl and flung it into the wall. “Find him! Find them both! I want their deaths, do you understand me? Or, by the Weaver and the Loom, I’ll have yours!”