Surrender None

by Elizabeth Moon

  He followed the furtiveness he’d observed before, and saw more hurrying backs. Odd that someone’s back could reveal intent, he thought. As much as a face, perhaps more. Then he saw a crowd, in the lower market, where the livestock pens were. At the moment, their backs had the look of guilty curiosity.

  He felt the crowd’s mood shift even before the growling mutter began. Not again, he thought. Couldn’t the fools understand? Why did they start this nonsense again, now, when all was won, and only ruin could follow such anger?

  Those at the back of the crowd moved instinctively away from his determined stride, even before they recognized him. Their voices followed, then raced ahead: “Gird—it’s Gird—he’s coming—” A lane opened for him, leading him toward the trouble.

  There was Luap, as he had expected, and the Autumn Rose. She held the shoulders of a whip-thin, dark-haired lad whose face was a mass of bruises and scrapes, eyes barely visible in the mess. Blood dribbled from his broken nose and split lip. Gird could see the lad shaking, and no wonder. Across from them was a yeoman of the local grange, Parik, sucking raw knuckles. When he saw Gird, he glowered, no whit repentant.

  Luap, uncharacteristically, said nothing. The Autumn Rose looked past Gird’s ear, an insult he would have thought but for the warning that leapt into her eyes. So. He looked back at Parik, seeing in Parik’s eyes the confidence that came from knowing he was not alone in this.

  “Well?” Gird’s voice cracked, as it had been doing since Midwinter Feast and that disastrous dance in the snow. He swallowed the lump and awaited an answer.

  “That’n used magicks,” said Parik, in a tone well-calculated to sting without justifying rebuke. He merely looked at the lad, and then gave a final lick to his own knuckles.

  “You’re accusing him of misusing magicks?” asked Gird mildly.

  “Nah—they all seen it. He’s a magelord’s brat, should never have lived this long, and needs mannering, if he’s to live any longer.” Parik made a show of patting his tunic back into place.

  “And you thought it your job—?”

  “He put fire on me,” said Parik, as if explaining something difficult to a dull child. “He put fire on me, so I put m’fist on him. Like you says, Gird, or used to say, simple means for simple minds.” He laughed, a little too loudly, and Gird heard nervous sniggers elsewhere.

  He closed his eyes, suddenly so tired he felt he must sink to the ground. He had told them, and told them, and explained, and argued, and shouted, and broken their stubborn heads from time to time, and even, when his breath ran out, spoken softly, and here they were, just as bad as ever. Just as bad as the magelords, barring they used fists instead of magic. Gods—! he thought, then stuffed the prayer back. Ask their help and get their interference, like as not. He opened his eyes to find everyone staring at him. Give them an answer, a judgment: he had to, and he could not.

  “The Marshal?” he asked. His voice was unsteady; he could see their reaction to that, like a child’s to a parent weeping.

  “Don’t need no Marshal to know right from wrong,” said Parik, bolder now that Gird had not unleashed his usual bellow. “S’what you taught us, after all: don’t need no priests, no crooked judges, no lords—and ’specially no magelords—”

  Gird looked at Luap: Luap white-faced, gaze honed to a steel blade that sliced into Gird’s mind. Luap, who had warned of this, whose warning he had ignored, thinking it special pleading. It was to Luap he spoke, in a conversational tone that confused the others.

  “You were right, and I was wrong. Are you still of the same mind?”

  Luap’s face flooded with color: surprise. “I—yes, Gird.”

  “They are not all Parik.” And that was special pleading, his special pleading. Luap nodded, taking it seriously. He had not hoped for so much compassion.

  “Talk to me!” yelled Parik. Gird watched the Autumn Rose transfer her gaze to him, as deliberate as someone shifting a lance; Parik paled, but did not retreat. “Is that it, then? Are you hiding behind your pet magelords, using their power to charm us?”

  “WHAT!” That time he had the old strength in it, and Parik backed up a step. Fury lifted Gird to his full height, pumped power into the fists clenched at his sides, as he stalked towards Parik, stiff-legged. “I never hide; I never did. There are no magelords, Parik, because I led you and the others to fight free of them. Mages, yes, and some mere children, like this lad here—but no magelords. No, Parik.”

  Parik backed up another step, blustering. “But—but that lady there—she looked at me—”

  “I’m looking at you, Parik, and seeing a bully who’d be a lord as bad as ever we fought, had he the power.”

  “Me? But I just—”

  “You just beat a lad half your size, for using magicks you said, but you brought no accusation to the Marshal—”

  “Donag, he don’t want to be bothered with little stuff like that—”

  “Then Donag must not want to be Marshal; that’s what Marshals do, is deal with ‘little stuff like that’ and keep big hulks like you from bruising their knuckles breaking lads’ faces—”

  Gird heard a growl from the crowd, concentrated over there— disapproval, backing for Parik. Maybe Donag as well? Could one of his Marshals be supporting this madness?

  “He used magicks!” yelled Parik. “He put fire on me!”

  “And what had you done, eh?” Gird glanced around at hostile faces, frightened faces, confused faces. “What started it all?”

  “Parik’s boy complained,” said someone softly, just audible under the shifting crowd noise.

  Gird swung toward that sound, and located a face that fit the voice. “Parik’s boy?” he asked.

  Silence fell, in the center. Parik scowled at the young woman who edged her way to the front. Neither beautiful nor ugly; a quiet face, clear-eyed and determined. She looked straight at Gird, as if afraid to look elsewhere—certainly not at Parik.

  “It was Parik’s boy, sir—Gird. He’n the others was playing, playing the stick game, y’know?”

  He knew: a boy’s gambling game, easily disguised as something else if disapproving adults came by.

  “Julya—” began Parik angrily, but the girl went on, ignoring him.

  “That lad, he has quick fingers—he’s a tailor’s apprentice now, and I’ve watched him with a needle—and he won twice running. Then Parik’s boy said he was a cheat, and a magelord’s bastard, and the lad said he was no bastard, and Parik’s boy jumped him, and Parik grabbed him, held him for his boy to hit. That’s when the lad made fire on his fingers, to make Parik let go—” Her voice trailed away.

  “You—you just want to lie with a magelord’s son, you Julya—” Parik’s voice had a nasty whine to it. The girl reddened but stood her ground.

  “I don’t want to lie with you or any of your hardhanded sons, that’s the truth. And I won’t see you lying about what happened and not tell.”

  “Here now! What’s going on here!” That interruption was Donag. Gird merely looked at him when Donag got to the center of the crowd, and Donag wilted. “I heard something—” he started to say.

  “Awhile back, I heard something,” said Gird. He hardly knew what he was saying: a great space in his head rang off-key, like a cracked bell, and his vision was uncertain. “Awhile back I heard trouble—which you, Marshal Donag, should have heard. And then I heard that you did not care to hear such trouble. Or so Parik said.”

  In the quick glance that passed between Parik and Donag, Gird saw as much trouble as he feared. Anger gave him the energy he needed to round on them all, but before he had two words out, Donag interrupted.

  “Gods blast it, we’ve tried for years! You keep telling us they weren’t all bad. You keep telling us the children aren’t their fathers. And yet we still have mages working their magicks on us and our children. Look at Tsaia—they have a king again, of the same mageborn line—”

  “He has no magicks,” said Gird heavily. “That was his great-uncle—”r />
  “So he says,” Donag growled. “So they all say. ‘We have no magicks—we were born without—’ And then some mageborn spawn of Liart burns an honest yeoman—”

  “An honest yeoman who was doing coward’s work, holding a lad for his lad to beat! And look at the damage: Parik has not even a blister, and just you look at the lad’s face. By the wheatear and corn, Donag, if the lad had bitten Parik—as any lad would, to get away—you’d no doubt claim that was magicks.”

  “He could poison his bite,” muttered someone.

  “Donag, think! If the lad could charm someone, why didn’t he charm Parik’s boy—or Parik—into letting him alone?” Donag’s face did not change; he was not thinking, or even listening. Nor were the others. Gird tried something new. “Suppose we exile them— send them all away. Will that satisfy you? Let the boy go, and any like him.”

  Parik and Donag both opened their mouths, looked at each other, and then Donag spoke. “If we let them go, they’ll come back. Same as mice or rats or snakes—let ’em go, they’ll breed and come back worse’n ever.” Gird heard a murmur of agreement from the crowd. He wanted to tell them that what bred and multiplied here was their own fear, but he knew it would do no good. He struggled for words, and none came. He could feel the mood deepening, one frightened and angry person reinforcing another’s fear and anger, as one bell vibrates when one near it is struck.

  Black murder hung over the crowd, a veil of hatred and fear. Some had wrapped themselves in it, as if it were a literal cloak of supple velvet, welcoming the darkness. Others stood hunched, frightened, unsure which was worse, the growing darkness or the spear-bright danger of the mageborn.

  Luap gazed at him, calm, almost luminous. For the second time, Gird felt that crevice open in his mind, and Luap’s voice flowing through, cool silver water from a spring.

  —We will not fight—he said. —We will not break your peace—

  My peace! Gird would have snorted if he could. Some peace, with the city in wild turmoil; even Alyanya’s peace could not still this storm.

  —My peace— echoed in his mind, in the great empty cavern still clangorous with the crowd’s noise. —Do you want my peace? Do you want justice?— As once before, he could not confuse that voice with any other.

  Out of his emptiness, out of his pain, he cried—silently, as the crowd listened in momentary silence—for help. To the gods he had tried to serve, and feared, and refused to ask before, he cried for help.

  Again, as at Greenfields, he was snatched up from the ground, whirled in a storm of fire and flowers and wind high above the city. But only for an instant. Then he found himself standing where he had stood, but no longer empty. Overflowing, rather, with utter certainty. Full of light, of wisdom, of mellow peace thick as old honey in the comb.

  It was still hard. His head would burst, he was sure; his mouth was too small for the breath he drew; he could barely form the words that he must speak. They had strange shapes, awkward in his mouth, as if thought were sculpted into individual shapes not meant for human speech.

  With the first words, the crowd stilled. He could not hear himself; he was balancing himself on those internal forces. Incredibly the thought sped by that this might be what women felt at birth— stretched beyond capacity, control relinquished to forces they could not name. Then he was drenched in a torrent of bright speech he must somehow say, its meaning racing past his mind faster than he could catch it. He felt the hair standing upright on his arms and legs, the prickle of awe becoming a wave of sheer terror and joy so mingled he could not tell one from the other. It was so beautiful—! And as he spoke, and tried to hold himself upright, he saw the crowd change, as if someone had thrown clean water on a mud-caked paving. The hatred and fear lifted in irregular waves, leaving some faces free of that ugliness, others still stained but clearing.

  After the first wrenching outwash of it, he was more aware of the crowd, of his own voice, of what he was saying. The words were strange to mouth and ear, but he knew what they meant, and so, somehow, did his hearers. Peace, joy, justice, love, each without loss of the others, engaged in some intricate and ceremonial dance.

  More and more the dark cloud lifted, as if his words were sunlight burning it away. Yet they were not his words, as he well knew. Out of his mouth, through his mind, had come Alyanya’s peace, the High Lord’s justice, Sertig’s power of Making, and Adyan’s naming: these powers loosed scoured the fear away.

  That effect spread. Beyond the crowd gathered in the courtyard, beyond the city walls, across the countryside, the light ran clean as spring-water, lifting from fearful hearts their deepest fears, banishing hatred. Gird knew it happened, but dared not try to see, for the effort of speech took all his strength, even the strength he had been given. Sweat ran off his face, his arms, dripped down his ribs beneath his shirt, and still the great words came, and still he spoke them.

  Now the darkness writhed, lifting free of his land, like morning fog lifting in sunlight. But it was not gone. He knew, without being told that when his words and the memory of them faded, it would settle again. And he could not stand here forever. Even as he thought this, the flood of power in his mind, faded, leaving him empty once more, but light, a rind dried by sunlight.

  —It is not over—He had no doubt who that was. If he could have trembled, he would have. It had to be over: what else could he do? He could not live long as he was now. As he watched, seeing now with more than mortal eyes, the darkness contracted, flowed toward him. He closed his mind to it, as he had closed it to hatred so often before. It would not take him, even now, even weak as he was. But in his head the pressure grew again, forcing its way out, forcing an opening.

  —Do not push that away: take it in. Take it all in, and transform it for them—

  “I can’t—” But he could, and he could do nothing else. With a despairing look at the crowd, at Luap, at the buildings that stood high around the market, even the top of the High Lord’s Hall against the sky, he shrugged and relaxed his vigilance.

  Now the great cloud of hatred and disgust pressed on him. He drew it in, doggedly, like a fisherman dragging a large net full of fish into a small, unsteady boat. It hurt. He had forgotten how painful it was to be that frightened, how hatred prickled the inside of the mind like a nestful of fiery ants, how disgust tensed every internal sinew. He had complained of his emptiness, to himself, but he had found those great clean rooms of his mind restful. There the spirit’s wind had had space to blow; there he could go for quiet, for renewal. Now those spaces were filling, packed tighter and tighter, with stinking, slimy, oozing, crawling nastiness.

  Envy, spite, malicious gossip like cockleburs, wads of gluttony like soft-bodied maggots, a sniggering delight in others’ pain, thoughts and fears more misshapen, harder to hold, than the bright words he had found so painful. He felt himself grow heavier, as if he were filling with literal stones and muck, felt himself cramping into ever more painful positions as he tried to hold it all, and bring the rest of it in. Like a tidy housewife whose home is invaded by raucous vandals, he tried to protect some small favorite crannies of his mind, long-furnished with joyful memories—and failed. The stink and murk of it found every last crack, and filled them all. He felt himself creak, the foundations of his mind almost shattering from the weight. What would happen then?

  He had it all. He dared not open his mouth, lest something vile leak out. The faces around him were stunned, horrified—he could not imagine what his face looked like, but it must be worth their horror. Transform, the gods had said. And just how? That ungainly, rebellious mass struggled to get out, and he squeezed. He did not feel the stones beneath his knees, then his hands—he felt only the terrible crushing weight of fear, the compression of hatred.

  Through scalding tears Luap saw that homely, aging face transformed. Like the High Lord’s windows, he thought. From outside, they looked dark—until at night a light woke them to brilliance. Now light illuminated Gird, almost too bright to watch, and from his mo
uth came rolling the words they all understood without quite hearing them. Beside him, the Autumn Rose murmured a counterpoint to Gird, her face radiant. Then she was silent. Luap felt his own heart lift, expand—and then his sight, as if Gird’s speech awakened all his magegifts at once. He saw clinging darkness rolling away, lifting, knew in his bones precisely what Gird was doing, and what would come of it.

  He could not bear it. It should not be Gird, who had earned a peaceful age, a time of rest. He should be the one. But when he opened his mouth, it was stopped, and the breath in it.

  —You have other tasks—

  He would have argued, but he had scarce breath to stay on his feet, and when he recovered, Gird was silent. Above them the cloud visible only to a few shifted, as if it were living spirit meditating attack. Gird was staring at it, mouth clamped shut just as so often before. Then—then his eyes widened, and his jaw dropped in almost comic surprise. Again Luap tried to move to his side, to help however he could. But again he could not move. Gird shrugged, then, and eyed the cloud doubtfully.

  Even as he watched, Luap was thinking how he could record this in the archives. What would be believed, what would be too fantastic even for the superstitious, what would cause controversy, and what bring peace? He had no doubt that this was Gird’s death. The man was too old, too battered by his life, to survive this.