Jiala nodded obediently and ran out of my workroom. I stared after her, astonished. How she had grown! Not a small child at all, but tall and vital. So much change in the two years I had been imprisoned. Pila continued to brush away the singed bramble thread. I winced at her touch.
“Don’t complain,” she said. “Blisters mean you’re alive.”
I flinched away from another round of brushing. “You found my body, it seems.”
“It was a near thing. I was expecting a coffin to arrive. If Jaiska hadn’t been decent enough to send word of where you’d been dumped...” She shrugged. “You were nearly tossed into the water with the rest of the corpses before I found you.”
“Help me stand.”
With her support, I made it to my feet. My old familiar workshop, but altered under Pila’s influence.
“I had to replace much of the equipment,” Pila explained as she braced me upright. “Even with your instruction, it was an uncertain thing.”
“I’m alive, though.” I looked at her balanthast. My design but her construction, noticing places where she had made changes. She held it by a leather strap that she slung over her shoulder. “You’ve made it quite portable,” I said, admiring.
“If we’re to run, it’s time we did.”
“More than time.”
In the hall, our last belongings were stuffed into wicker baskets with harnesses to hold them upon our backs. A tiny pile of essentials. So little of my old life. A few wool blankets, food and water jugs. And yet, there also, Pila and Jiala. More than any man had any right to ask for. We slung our baskets, and I groaned at the weight in mine.
“Easy living,” Pila commented. “Jiala could carry more than you.”
“Not quite that bad, I hope. In any case, nothing that a long walk won’t fix.”
We ducked out into the streets, the three of us together, winding through the alleys. We ran as quickly as we could for the gates of Khaim, making our way toward the open fields. Inside, I felt laughter and relief bubbling up. My skin was burned, my hair was matted and melted, but I was alive, maybe for the first time in almost twenty years.
And then the wind shifted and a cloud of smoke blew across us. One of my own infernal detectors, now standing sentry on every street.
Jiala lit up like an oil lamp.
Pila sucked in her breath. “She was only treated yesterday. The magic still shows. Normally I kept her in, after Scacz spelled her.”
Quick as a cat, she swept a cloak over Jiala, smothering the blue glow. And yet still it leaked out. Jiala’s face shone an unearthly shade. I picked her up and buried her face in my chest. She was heavy.
“Don’t show your skin, child.”
We slunk through the city and out into the fields as darkness fell. We went along the muddy road, trying to hide my daughter’s fatal hue. But it was useless. Farmers on the road saw and gasped and dashed away, and even as we hurried forward, we heard cries behind. People who sought to profit from turning in a user of magic.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Pila said.
“Run then!”
And we did, galloping and stumbling. I panted at the unaccustomed exercise. I was not meant to run. Not after years in prison. In a minute, I was gasping. In two, spots swam before my vision and I was staggering. And still we ran, now with Jiala on her own, tugging at me, dragging me forward. Healthier by far than I.
Behind us, the shouts of guardsmen echoed. They gained.
Ahead, black bramble shadows rose.
“Halt! In the name of Khaim and the Mayor!”
On the run, Pila fired her balanthast. Lit its prime. Prepared to plunge it into the ground at the bracken root.
“No!” I gasped. “Not like that.” I lifted the device so it pointed into the guts of the bracken. “Don’t hurt the roots. Just the branches.”
Pila glanced at me, puzzled, then nodded sharply. The balanthast roared. Blue flame lanced from the nozzle, igniting the branches. Bramble writhed and vaporized, opening a deep narrow corridor of smoking writhing vines. We plunged into the gap. Another shout came from behind.
“Halt!”
An arrow thudded into a bramble branch. Another creased my ear. I grabbed Jiala and forced her low as Pila fired the balanthast again.
Behind us, the guardsmen were stumbling across the tilled fields, splashing through irrigated trenches. Their swords gleamed in the moonlight.
Blue flame speared the night again, and a writhing bramble path opened before us.
I pulled out the spell book of Majister Arun. “A match, daughter.”
I struck the flame and handed it to Jiala. In its flickering unsteady light, I read spidering text by the hand of that long dead majister. A spell for sweeping.
A dust devil formed in the bracken, swirling. I waved my hand and sent it spinning down the narrow way behind us. A simple spell. A bit of household magic for a servant or a child. Nothing in comparison to the great works of Jhandpara.
But to the bramble all around, that tiny spell was like meat tossed before a tiger. The vines shivered at magic’s scent and clutched after my sweeping whirlwind. I cast more small spells as Pila opened a way ahead. Bramble closed in behind, starving for the magic that I scattered like breadcrumbs, ravenous for the nurturing flavors of magic cast so close to its roots. Vines erupted from the earth, filling the path and locking us in the belly of the bramble forest.
Behind us, the guards’ shouts faded and became indistinct. A few more arrows plunged into the bramble, ricocheting and clattering, but already the vines were thick and tangled behind us. We might as well have been behind a wall of oak.
Pila fired the balanthast again and we moved deeper into the malevolent forest.
“We won’t have long before they follow us,” she said.
I shook my head. “No. We have time. Scacz’s balanthasts will not work. I crippled them all before I left, when Scacz thought I was improving them. Only the one I used for my demonstration worked, and I made sure to shatter it.”
“Where are we going, Papa?” Jiala asked.
I pulled Jiala close as I whispered another spell of dust and tidying. The little whirlwind whisked its way into the darkness, baiting bramble, closing the path behind us. When I was done, I smiled at my daughter and touched her under her chin. “Have I ever told you of the copper mines of Kesh?”
“No, Papa.”
“They are truly wondrous. Not a bit of bramble populates the land, no matter how much magic is used. An island in a sea of bramble.”
The blue fire of Pila’s balanthast again lit the night, sending bramble writhing away from us, opening a corridor of flight. I picked up Jiala, amazed at how heavy she had become in my years away, but unwilling to let her leave my side even for a moment, welcoming her truth and weight. We started down the corridor that Pila had opened.
Jiala gave a little cough and wiped her lips on her sleeve. “Truly?” she asked. “There is a place where you can use magic? Even for my cough?”
“As sure as balanthasts,” I told her, and hugged her tight. “We only have to get there.”
Another blast of blue flame lit the night, and we all forged onward.
Sandmagic
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is the bestselling author of more than forty novels, including Ender’s Game, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction’s two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. His most recent books include another entry in the Enderverse, Ender in Exile, the first of a new young adult series, Pathfinder, and The Lost Gates, the first volume of a new fantasy series.
The great domes of the city of Gyree dazzled blue and red when the sun shone through a break in the clouds, and for a moment Cer Cemreet thought he saw some of the glory his uncles talked about in the late night tales of the old days of Greet. But the capital did not look dazzling up close, Cer remembered b
itterly. Now dogs ran in the streets and rats lived in the wreckage of the palace, and the King of Greet lived in New Gyree in the hills far to the north, where the armies of the enemy could not go. Yet.
The sun went back behind a cloud and the city looked dark again. A Nefyr patrol was riding briskly on the Hetterwee Road far to the north. Cer turned his gaze to the lush grass on the hill where he sat. The clouds meant rain, but probably not here, he thought. He always thought of something else when he saw a Nefyr patrol. Yes, it was too early in Hrickan for rains to fall here. This rain would fall to the north, perhaps in the land of the King of the High Mountains, or on the vast plain of Westwold where they said horses ran free but were tame for any man to ride at need. But no rain would fall in Greet until Doonse, three weeks from now. By then the wheat would all be stored and the hay would be piled in vast ricks as tall as the hill Cer sat on.
In the old days, they said, all during Doonse the great wagons from Westwold would come and carry off the hay to last them through the snow season. But not now, Cer remembered. This year and last year and the year before the wagons had come from the south and east, two-wheeled wagons with drivers who spoke, not High Westil, but the barbarian Fyrd language. Fyrd or firt, thought Cer, and laughed, for firt was a word he could not say in front of his parents. They spoke firt.
Cer looked out over the plain again. The Nefyr patrol had turned from the highway and was on the road to the hills.
The road to the hills. Cer leaped to his feet and raced down the track leading home. A patrol heading for the hills could only mean trouble.
He stopped to rest only once, when the pain in his side was too bad to bear. But the patrol had horses, and he arrived home only to see the horses of the Nefyrre gathered at his father’s gate.
Where are the uncles? Cer thought. The uncles must come.
But the uncles were not there, and Cer heard a terrible scream from inside the garden walls. He had never heard his mother scream before, but somehow he knew it was his mother, and he ran to the gate. A Nefyr soldier seized him and called out, “Here’s the boy!” in a thick accent of High Westil, so that Cer’s parents could understand. Cer’s mother screamed again, and now Cer saw why.
His father had been stripped naked, his arms and legs held by two tall Nefyrre. The Nefyr captain held his viciously curved short-sword, point up, pressing against Cer’s father’s hard-muscled stomach. As Cer and his mother watched, the sword drew blood, and the captain pushed it in to the hilt, then pulled it up to the ribs. Blood gushed. The captain had been careful not to touch the heart, and now they thrust a spear into the huge wound, and lifted it high, Cer’s father dangling from the end. They lashed the spear to the gatepost, and the blood and bowels stained the gates and the walls.
For five minutes more Cer’s father lived, his chest heaving in the agony of breath. He may have died of pain, but Cer did not think so, for his father was not the kind to give in to pain. He may have died of suffocation, for one lung was gone and every breath was excruciating, but Cer did not think so, for his father kept breathing to the end. It was loss of blood, Cer decided, weeks later. It was when his body was dry, when the veins collapsed, that Cer’s father died.
He never uttered a sound. Cer’s father would never let the Nefyrre hear him so much as sigh in pain.
Cer’s mother screamed and screamed until blood came from her mouth and she fainted.
Cer stood in silence until his father died. Then when the captain, a smirk on his face, walked near Cer and looked in his face, Cer kicked him in the groin.
They cut off Cer’s great toes, but like his father, Cer made no sound.
Then the Nefyrre left and the uncles came.
Uncle Forwin vomited. Uncle Erwin wept. Uncle Crune put his arm around Cer’s shoulder as the servants bound his maimed feet and said, “Your father was a great, brave man. He killed many Nefyrre, and burned many wagons. But the Nefyrre are strong.”
Uncle Crune squeezed Cer’s shoulder. “Your father was stronger. But he was one, and they were many.”
Cer looked away.
“Will you not look at your uncle?” Uncle Crune asked.
“My father,” Cer said, “did not think that he was alone.”
Uncle Crune got up and walked away. Cer never saw the uncles again.
He and his mother had to leave the house and the fields, for a Nefyr farmer had been given the land to farm for the King of Nefyryd. With no money, they had to move south, across the River Greebeck into the drylands near the desert, where no rivers flowed and so only the hardiest plants lived. They lived the winter on the charity of the desperately poor. In the summer, when the heat came, so did the Poor Plague, which swept the drylands. The cure was fresh fruits, but fresh fruits came from Yffyrd and Suffyrd and only the rich could buy them, and the poor died by the thousands. Cer’s mother was one of them.
They took her out on the sand to burn her body and free her spirit. As they painted her with tar (tar, at least, cost nothing, if a man had a bucket), five horsemen came to the brow of a dune to watch. At first Cer thought they were Nefyrre, but no. The poor people looked up and saluted the strangers, which Greetmen never do the enemy. These, then, were desert men, the Abadapnur nomads, who raided the rich farms of Greet during dry years, but who never harmed the poor.
We hated them, Cer thought, when we were rich. But now we are poor, and they are our friends.
His mother burned as the sun set.
Cer watched until the flames went out. The moon was high for the second time that night. Cer said a prayer to the moonlady over his mother’s bones and ashes and then he turned and left.
He stopped at their hut and gathered the little food they had, and put on his father’s tin ring, which the Nefyrre had thought was valueless, but which Cer knew was the sign of the Cemreet family’s authority since forever ago.
Then Cer walked north.
He lived by killing rats in barns and cooking them. He lived by begging at poor farmers’ doors, for the rich farmers had servants to turn away beggars. That, at least, Cer remembered, his father had never done. Beggars always had a meal at his father’s house.
Cer also lived by stealing when he could hunt or beg no food. He stole handfuls of raw wheat. He stole carrots from gardens. He stole water from wells, for which he could have lost his life in the rainless season. He stole, one time, a fruit from a rich man’s food wagon.
It burned his mouth, it was so cold and the acid so strong. It dribbled down his chin. As a poor man and a thief, Cer thought, I now eat a thing so dear that even my father, who was called wealthy, could never buy it.
And at last he saw the mountains in the north. He walked on, and in a week the mountains were great cliffs and steep slopes of shale. The Mitherkame, where the king of the High Mountains reigned, and Cer began to climb.
He climbed all day and slept in a cleft of a rock. He moved slowly, for climbing in sandals was clumsy, and without his great toes Cer could not climb barefoot. The next morning he climbed more. Though he nearly fell one time when falling would have meant crashing a mile down into the distant plain, at last he reached the knifelike top of the Mitherkame, and heaven.
For of a sudden the stone gave way to soil. Not the pale sandy soil of the drylands, nor the red soil of the Greet, but the dark black soil of the old songs from the north, the soil that could not be left alone for a day or it would sprout plants that in a week would be a forest.
And there was a forest, and the ground was thick with grass. Cer had seen only a few trees in his life, and they had been olive trees, short and gnarled, and fig sycamores, that were three times the height of a man. These were twenty times the height of a man and ten steps around, and the young trees shot up straight and tall so that not a sapling was as small as Cer, who for twelve years old was not considered small.
To Cer, who had known only wheat and hay and olive orchards, the forest was more magnificent than the mountain or the city or the river or the moon.
He slept under a huge tree. He was very cold that night. And in the morning he realized that in a forest he would find no farms, and where there were no farms there was no food for him. He got up and walked deeper into the forest. There were people in the High Mountains, else there would be no king, and Cer would find them. If he didn’t, he would die. But at least he would not die in the realms of the Nefyrre.
He passed many bushes with edible berries, but he did not know they could be eaten so he did not eat. He passed many streams with slow stupid fish that he could have caught, but in Greet fish were never eaten, because it always carried disease, and so Cer caught no fish.
And on the third day, when he began to feel so weak from hunger that he could walk no longer, he met the treemage.
He met him because it was the coldest night yet, and at last Cer tore branches from a tree to make a fire. But the wood did not light, and when Cer looked up he saw that the trees had moved. They were coming closer, surrounding him tightly. He watched them, and they did not move as he watched, but when he turned around the ones he had not been watching were closer yet. He tried to run, but the low branches made a tight fence he could not get through. He couldn’t climb, either, because the branches all stabbed downward. Bleeding from the twigs he had scraped, Cer went back to his camping place and watched as the trees at last made a solid wall around him.
And he waited. What else could he do in his wooden prison?
In the morning he heard a man singing, and he called for help.
“Oh ho,” he heard a voice say in a strange accent. “Oh ho, a tree cutter and a firemaker, a branch killer and a forest hater.”
“I’m none of those,” Cer said. “It was cold, and I tried to build a fire only to keep warm.”
“A fire, a fire,” the voice said. “In this small part of the world there are no fires of wood. But that’s a young voice I hear, and I doubt there’s a beard beneath the words.”
“I have no beard,” Cer answered. “I have no weapon, except a knife too small to harm you.”
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