The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  She saw—and approved—the apprehensive glance the two young men exchanged. She did not especially like the little grimace of apology Alin directed at the Mage, but it was beneath her to notice it. She led the pair down a corridor crawling with children, most of them Mageborns and all of them intent on catching Tamsa’s exhausted kitten. Sarra gave poor Velvet a sympathetic glance; she felt rather the same way, with everyone trying to track her down and make their individual problems her paramount concern.

  Some of it she had gratefully shoved onto Tarise and Rillan: finding food, beds, blankets, and bathrooms, mainly—though she knew they did much more, if only to keep busy. More Mages and members of the Rising arrived every day, some by Academy Ladder, some overland from the coast, some from upriver or down. Bard Hall was the least damaged of all the great centers of learning at Ambrai, and even after so many years there were supplies enough to take care of several dozen people. The food was rather monotonous; beds there were aplenty, though the blankets all had holes; the bathrooms, praise be to whichever Saint interested Herself in sanitation, still functioned perfectly.

  But they could not stay here forever.

  Once Alin discovered Collan Rosvenir’s profession (a fact learned from Val, who recognized him from a Cantratown tavern performance), he’d dragged the Minstrel off to wrangle over versions of the Ladder song. Not even Gorynel Desse knew all the Ladders at the Mage Academy—he’d been thunderstruck to learn of the one in Captal Bekke’s Tower—and it was just possible that not all of them had burned. When Alin had one or two secure, he’d take the majority of the Mages and their families to safety.

  They all wanted to know where of course, and when, and what they would do when they arrived, and what protection there would be, and so inevitably on. This was why Sarra kept to Falundir’s little suite of rooms near the Ladder; the instant she showed her nose elsewhere, people crowded around with endless unanswerable questions.

  Thus her escort this afternoon. Alin and Val could look forbidding enough when they chose: Val had the height and build for it, and no one could match Alin for ice-eyed menace. Sarra’s temper had been scraped raw enough by Gorynel Desse. She had little hope of retaining her composure if yet another frightened Mage made yet another demand for information.

  Sarra was frightened, too. And she had no knowledge to give anyone, least of all herself.

  Some of the Mages, in fact, knew more than she did about what was happening across Lenfell. Every known Ladder was now watched by Council Guards or Lords of Malerris or both. Many Mages had died trying to flee by Ladder from one place to the next; some of those here had gotten through only because their fellows bought time with their lives. Everyone with any connection at all to the Rising had been arrested. Some were being held over for trial. Some had died by “accident” in or on the way to prison.

  Though much was known, much remained a mystery. The fates of Imilial Gorrst and Advar Senison, at sea with a cargo of books; of the Mages Alin had taken back from Combel to Neele (the Ladder was reported taken—she had little hope for their survival); of Lusira Garvedian and Lilen Ostin; of Mai Alvassy’s sister and brother; of Tamos and Tamosin Wolvar, Ilisa Neffe, and Captal Adennos. Sarra would not think of any of them as dead until she had proof, but neither would she believe they were safe until they stood before her.

  One bit of news had given her grim satisfaction: a bounty had been declared on Mai Alvassy. Val was incensed that his name did not appear on the warrant—until Alin, weak with relief that he wasn’t mentioned either, pointed out that this might mean their mothers and families would escape notice. For now. What it meant to Sarra was that Glenin had been forced to accept the switch of identities, and “Sarra Liwellan” was officially dead.

  Of the other dead she dared not think. It shamed her that she could not bring herself to be with Riddon and Maugir and Jeymi, weep with them, share their grief. Neither could she go into the room where Sela lay, deeply unconscious thanks to something Elomar had brewed up to prevent labor. Sarra had known Verald Jescarin. She had danced at their wedding. She had visited the cottage in Roseguard Grounds—

  No. If she remembered Roseguard, and all the people who had lived there, she’d scream. The most horrifying news brought by the Mages was that Roseguard had been put to the torch.

  She could not afford to think of that, nor of the dead and imprisoned all over Lenfell, nor of her own dead. She could do nothing about any of it. She could do nothing for Cailet, either, but Cailet was the one concern in her life right now that no amount of emotional or mental discipline could dismiss.

  Cailet was, quite simply, losing her mind.

  Sarra paused in the doorway and watched Alin enter the room. He was her measure: yesterday he’d taken ten steps before he paled and trembled. Today it was five careful paces, six—

  His breath caught and he backed away.

  Elomar Adennos unfolded from a chair by the bed. “Yes. It’s worse.”

  “How do you stand being so close to her?” Alin whispered.

  “The Wards are of my making.” And that was all he would say.

  “Wait for me outside,” Sarra told her companions, and as Alin gladly closed the door she advanced to the bed. “I can’t feel it.”

  “Your Wards are of Gorsha’s making.”

  “So were hers—and they shattered.”

  “You are a spark. She is a firestorm.” He gestured for her to join him in chairs by the cold hearth. “Yesterday I eased the walls a little. Within her—” He shook his head. “Hurt, anger, and most of all fear.”

  Sarra sat down, tucking half-frozen hands under her thighs. “She’s still a child, Elo. She’ll lash out at anyone in reach.”

  “She loves you very much. She sees you as the only person in the world who truly belongs to her.”

  Warmth seeped into Sarra’s bones, and tears into her eyes.

  “Yet . . . I regret, Sarra, but she cannot help but hate you for causing her this pain.”

  Cold again. So cold. She nodded dully. “I’d hate me, too.”

  “She’ll understand that the fault wasn’t yours.”

  “And hate Gorynel Desse instead. We’ll have that in common.”

  A sandy brow arched. “Yours is not a face meant for bitterness.”

  “Mine was not a life meant to be bitter,” she retorted. “Neither was Cailet’s. Yet here we are.”

  “Nor was Glenin’s.”

  “Now, there’s a topic! What do you think she’s doing right now? Gorynel Desse says she has a portable Ladder woven in cloth, a thing of legend that turns out to be real—by his interpretation of her movements, anyway. Where would the Malerrisi go next? And don’t tell me to intuit her actions, Elomar, I was wrong about Longriding.”

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps she was persuaded otherwise. It doesn’t matter now.”

  Sarra got to her feet and started to pace. “She doesn’t matter. Cailet does. When can she have her magic?”

  “Did I hear someone ask for a little music?”

  Collan Rosvenir sauntered into the room, lute slung across his back and Tamsa’s kitten sleeping on his shoulder. “Don’t blame your pets for letting me in, Lady. I sent them off to help clean tonight’s dinner.”

  “Alin and Valirion are not my ‘pets’!”

  “Whatever. As I was saying, we’ll eat fresh fish tonight. Jumped right into Taig’s net, or so he says. But I suspect it was innocent trust—long time since anybody’s fished this stretch of the Brai. Hope you’re in the mood for trout.”

  What she was in a mood for was to kick his perfect white teeth down his warbling throat. She remembered every nuance of their last encounter.

  Elomar, however, had risen to welcome him. “I was hoping you’d find time today. Shall I take Velvet? I’m about to make my rounds.”

  “Tamsa lent her to me. Purring’s nice harmony. Velenne knows, there’s nobody else here who can so much as hu
m in tune.” He snorted. “Bard Hall!”

  The Minstrel crossed to the bed, carefully unhooking claws from his longvest. Gently, he placed the kitten near the curve of Cailet’s neck. Velvet circled several times, burrowed under the quilt, and settled down to her interrupted nap.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Elomar said. “You might stay and listen, Sarra.”

  She did. So—incredibly—did Cailet. The anguished frown smoothed from her face. Her lips softened. After a while she turned her cheek into the kitten’s warm tawny fur. Sarra watched and listened and marveled.

  Collan Rosvenir’s was a voice in a Generation. He sang lullabies mostly, varied with a ballad now and then, but always in a deep, silken voice that soothed the hurt from Cailet’s face—and even some of the hurt from Sarra’s heart. When he paused at last to retune the lute, she rose from her chair to perch at the foot of her sister’s bed.

  “That was beautiful. Thank you.”

  One broad shoulder hunched and lowered dismissively, and a sidelong glance came her way from very blue eyes beneath wild coppery curls. “I’m better at singing big girls to sleep.”

  He waited politely for a retort she was incapable of uttering. At last he grinned.

  “You just didn’t stay around long enough last time to find out. I must say, I like you better with your mouth shut.”

  “The next time you open yours, it had damned well better to be sing!”

  “Shh! You’re disturbing the kittens.” He played a ripple of notes like stream water dancing over smooth stones, and began another lullaby to repair the damage.

  Come and lie you down, little one,

  The golden Sun’s a-yawning,

  Ladymoon’s quilt of silver stars

  Will wrap you ’round ’til morning. . . .

  His magic worked once more on Cailet. For Sarra, the spell was broken. “. . . true what they say about a Minstrel’s hands!” she heard his insufferable taunting voice say in memory. Well, she’d break his fingers for him some other time. He was doing Cailet too much good right now.

  I’m a spark—she’s a firestorm. She repeated Elo’s characterization to herself, and knew that as desperately as she had sometimes wished for her own magic, she didn’t want it if it meant this kind of pain. And it would end only when Gorynel Desse set her magic free. That particular argument was still ahead of her, but he was going to see things her way. Instinct didn’t tell her that. Sheer stubbornness did.

  Elomar returned, Tamsa at his heels. She reclaimed her kitten with tender hands, whispering, “Did Velvet help? Did she?”

  Rosvenir nodded. “Even more than my music, Domna. Thank you.”

  “I’ll bring her again tomorrow,” Tamsa announced, and with a smile all around left the room.

  Elomar murmured, “You have my gratitude, Minstrel.”

  Rosvenir got to his feet and stretched. He and Elomar were nearly of a height, though the Healer seemed taller for being so much thinner. It occurred to Sarra that Imi Gorrst would find much to admire in Collan Rosvenir, as would Agata Nalle: both of them liked their men big and lean and muscular.

  With the thought of two friends—one certainly and the other probably dead—all her troubles descended once more onto her shoulders. Sarra turned her face away so the men would not see how she bit her lips.

  Elomar escorted the Minstrel from the bedchamber, asked him to come back again tomorrow if he could, and shut the door firmly behind him. Given the time, Sarra regained control of herself. She wiped her eyes and met Elomar’s gaze as he returned to the bed.

  “You know, he’s not a bad singer.”

  “He is the finest voice since Falundir.” A tiny smile played about his mouth. “And you know it.”

  “I never heard Falundir—and I never will,” she replied. Suddenly that tragedy did to her what the sight of Cailet and the thought of Imi and Agata—and Agatine and Orlin and Elom and Verald and all the others—had not. Maiming the greatest Bard who ever lived was the first of Anniyas’s crimes, predating Ambrai’s destruction, presaging all the rest. Sarra found to her horror that she was weeping uncontrollably against Elomar’s bony chest.

  “Past time, too,” he murmured, smoothing her hair. “Let it go, Sarra. Let it all go.”

  Why did people always say that? she wondered furiously. For her, a “good cry” only resulted in a nose so swollen she couldn’t breathe, sandpaper eyelids, a hideously mottled complexion, physical exhaustion, and emotional humiliation. Sarra hated to cry.

  But cry she did. When she was spent, Elomar coaxed her to curl up at the end of the bed with a blanket around her. Trusting him as she trusted only Alin and Val—but glad neither had seen her this way—she fisted cold hands beneath her chin and closed her eyes.

  All in all, a rotten way to learn how much other people mattered to her. Cailet must come first; her heart and the Rising demanded it. But as a leader of whatever would be left of the Rising, Sarra must think of others as well. As a leader. Letting them be important to her personally was why she’d cried. Just before she slept, she promised herself it wouldn’t happen again.

  12

  At Half-Third the next morning, the eleventh day of St. Ilsevet’s, Alin and Val escorted thirty Mages and their families to the Academy and took them through two previously unknown Ladders. They left well before dawn, and there was much grumbling at the earliness of the hour. Sarra was patient, reasonable, hiding annoyance that the very people who had complained of not leaving sooner now complained that they didn’t feel safe leaving at all. She reassured them that Alin knew exactly where they were going and exactly what awaited them—in Gierkenshir and Domburronshir respectively, Ladders he knew were secure because he’d taken Val and Taig through each of them twice in the last two days. When skeptics—particularly the elderly Warrior Mage with the sharp tongue and sharper perceptions—spoke up, Sarra remarked that they were welcome to stay if they felt their personal Wards were good enough. Because precisely at Fifth, Gorynel Desse would begin his work with Cailet.

  None stayed. Whether doubting a weary old man’s ability to rein in such powerful magic, or merely reluctant to find out, they left the Academy. By Fifth they were in Gierkenshir or Domburronshir, and on their own.

  Cailet’s powers and predicament had become known last night. Two Prentice Mages, playing cards in a room six doors down the hall from hers, had suddenly been taken with horrific headaches, fits of shaking, and irrational anger that set them at each other’s throats before a Scholar Mage could separate them. If Cailet could affect people—admittedly imperfectly trained—at less than two hundred feet while Warded, St. Miryenne defend every Mageborn within a mile if Desse lost hold of her.

  And so the population of Bard Hall decreased to seventeen, of whom six were Mageborn. Telomir Renne, Alin, and Sarra had been strongly Warded in childhood by Desse himself. Elomar, who would stand ready to apply what Healing arts he could, spent the night in meditation designed to bolster his personal defenses. The battle would be between Cailet’s raw young power and Desse’s seasoned, subtle knowledge, and Elomar’s task was to help their bodies survive it.

  Desse told Taig to banish everyone, non-Mageborns included, to the farther reaches of Bard Hall. Sarra told Taig to go to hell; she was staying. While they argued, the three Slegins helped Tarise and Rillan move Sela to another bed. Collan, already warned by Taig, had vanished with Tamsa and the kitten.

  Thus only Falundir was present in the Ladder chamber at Half-Fifth when Ilisa Neffe and her husband Tamosin Wolvar brought Captal Lusath Adennos and Scholar Tamos Wolvar through the Ostin greenhouse Ladder in Longriding.

  The first Sarra knew of it was Ilisa’s wild-eyed, frantic arrival in the hallway outside Cailet’s bedchamber. Still arguing with Taig, Sarra was nearly run over as Ilisa all but flung herself down the marble corridor.

  “Where’s Elomar?” the Mage gasped. “We need him, Sarra, where is he?”
r />   “Why? Who’s sick?”

  “Tamos, the Captal, they—”

  “Calm down,” Taig advised, taking her arm to steady her. “Catch your breath. Did Geria kick you out?”

  Ilisa shook her head, hair straggling around her face. “No, no, it wasn’t your sister. In fact, your mother’s in Combel.”

  He relaxed with a smug little smile. “So much for First Daughter.”

  Breathing more easily, Ilisa continued, “Lady Lilen told us to come here. Tamos never woke up, Taig. Saints know what Malerrisi magic did to him.”

  Sarra frowned. “But I thought the Captal’s help—”

  “He did—by getting us to Longriding by a Folding spell—”

  “Wait.” Taig eased her down onto the floor so she sat with her spine to the cold marble wall. “Another breath. Now. Tell it in order.”

  “Your mother came to Combel. She said it would be best for us to leave, the Guard had already been to Ostinhold looking for you and Alin. And Tamos needs a Healer Mage. The Captal cast the Folding spell, but halfway there he had some kind of seizure—his heart, maybe, he’s an old man and not used to exerting himself either physically or magically.” She paused, raked her hair from her eyes, and coughed. “Sorry, it’s just I’m so tired. . . . Anyway, at Longriding we got into the house and rested a night before using the Ladder. The Captal barely got us through. He needs a Healer Mage.” She sagged back, looking in dire need of medical attention herself.

  Sarra exchanged glances with Taig and said, “Ilisa, I’m sorry. Elomar can’t be spared from helping Cailet and Gorsha. The other Mages are gone—Alin took them to safety hours ago. There aren’t any other Healers available.”

  “Gorsha’s here?” Ilisa pushed away from the cold marble. “Take me to him.”

  “I can’t.” Taig shook his head. “In fact, the sooner you get away from here the better. Cailet’s magic keeps escaping. Any Mageborn in reach is in danger.”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Cailet?”

  “That’s a long story,” Sarra said. “Taig, see what you can do for the Captal. You can tell her along the way.”