by Hilari Bell
“So that’s what they think happened?” She considered this a moment, then shrugged. “Close enough.”
“That’s not what happened?” The story his friends had told about Mistress Koryn’s escape had some holes in it. But they were all clear that her horse had bolted, and that was how she got away. How she’d broken her leg in the process wasn’t entirely clear.
“It’s true as far as it goes. We had almost no warning. We were far enough from the border that we never expected them to reach our estate, but my father set watchers on the edge of our land, just in case.”
“So you did get some warning?” Jeriah asked. Her golden skin was pale—but Jeriah wanted to learn about her, and this was his chance. Besides, he had a feeling that she ought to talk about it. That she might be ready.
“You could say that,” Koryn said. “They screamed. Warning enough. A barbarian war band was swarming across our fields by the time we all ran outside.
“My father was organizing the men to fight.” Her voice quivered for the first time. “But he told our steward to get the rest of the family on horseback, to put me up on Snake. Snake was his own horse, the fastest in the stable. I was still arguing that my father would need him when old Rinnie threw me into the saddle.”
She had been staring off into space. Now she turned to Jeriah, and he flinched at the agony in her eyes.
“I was a good rider, better than my mother, but when the barbarians attacked…No one could have kept Snake from bolting. I tried to turn him back. I did.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Jeriah said gently. “And no rider can stop a bolting horse until it’s ready to stop. You couldn’t go back.”
“Oh, but I could.” The smile that touched her lips chilled Jeriah to the bone.
“I fell off when Snake jumped the north ditch,” she continued. “But my left foot got caught in the stirrup. I remember being dragged for a while. Then nothing till I woke up, just before sunrise, with my leg twisted three ways and my head hurting almost as bad. I was tangled in a big clump of brush,” she added. “That’s probably what pulled my foot out of the stirrup. And it must have kept the barbarians from finding me, because I was only a few fields from the house.”
Jeriah’s whole body tightened when he realized what would come next. “You went back?” He couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper. “You went back there?”
She eyed him curiously, as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Most people assume I crawled away.”
Jeriah shook his head.
“Well, you’re right,” she went on. “I crawled back to the house and found them. Everyone. Even the servants…I’d grown up with them, too. So you see, I know exactly what happened to my family. Although you’re right,” she added. “It certainly influenced my judgment.”
“Why aren’t you crying? You should be hysterical by now.”
In fact, Jeriah was wondering if he should send for a healer.
“You think I didn’t cry? I screamed my head off. I cried my eyes out. I spent the whole trip to the palace, and most of my first month here, bathed in tears. I finally got tired of it.”
She didn’t claim she’d healed, Jeriah noted. She might never heal. On the other hand, she was clearly able to talk about it, and that might help.
“So how did you escape? With a badly broken leg, behind the battle lines, and no horse?”
“A horse wouldn’t have done any good,” she said. “I couldn’t have mounted something that tall. We had an old donkey, in a pen under the stable that the barbarians missed when they were stealing the rest of our livestock. I managed to get myself onto his back. As for getting through the lines, I’d been riding through that countryside my whole life. I knew every ditch, back road, and trail. It wasn’t hard to avoid the war bands. They were noisy.”
Her voice flattened on the last words. Jeriah could all but hear the screaming, the sound of carnage drifting over the grape fields.
“I’d probably have lain down and died,” he admitted.
“I thought about it.” Was there a note of humor in her voice? “But I wanted revenge more. So I made my way to the regional headquarters and told the commander that his pickets had been massacred, and the whole barbarian army was ravaging the Southlands. They were quite surprised,” she added. “And even when I told them, they didn’t—”
She rubbed her face and sighed.
“No, that’s not fair. Once I got word to them, they did all they could. No one can stop the barbarians.”
“But why?” Jeriah demanded. “I don’t care how many barbarians there are—every man in the Realm who can carry a weapon would turn out for that fight!”
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “Come on, Rovan, think! Even if you were recalled before the fall skirmishes began, you must have heard rumors!”
“I heard dozens of rumors,” Jeriah said impatiently. “Maybe hundreds. What are you talking about?”
She hesitated a moment, then said softly. “About their magic.”
“I know the barbarians have magic. And I heard plenty of wild rumors about it, too. So what? Our battle priests serve the Seven Bright Gods, and their power is more than a match…for…”
The hard stillness in her face stopped him. This scholarly girl, who’d faced so much, was now facing something that frightened even her.
“Nothing is more powerful than the Seven Bright Gods!” For all his shock, Jeriah’s voice dropped. This was a conversation no one should overhear.
“So they say.” Koryn might be frightened, but she didn’t retreat. “I don’t know what gods the barbarians serve. I’ve been trying find out, but the bits of information I’m reading don’t make much sense. What we do know is that the barbarians have a magic our priests have never encountered before. It comes from human sacrifice, from death and blood and pain. And it makes the barbarians so strong in battle that our troops cannot defeat them. No matter how many men we send to the front, the Realm’s defeat is inevitable. Unless we find a position of overwhelming tactical superiority. Like a very small border”—she gestured to the map—“defended by a big stone wall.”
“No magic is stronger than that of the Seven Bright Gods,” Jeriah repeated. “It can’t be. If it was…”
“Then one of the founding tenets of the church, the bedrock beneath the whole Realm, turns to quicksand,” said Koryn softly. “And on the eve of invasion by an army we can’t defeat, we’d be faced with anarchy and rebellion as well. Inconvenient, isn’t it?”
If that was true…It couldn’t be true.
“But suppose…suppose the barbarians’ magic is just some new trick of the Dark One? Something our priests could easily counter if they could figure out how. Suppose figuring it out is the Bright Gods’ test?”
“Suppose all you want,” Koryn said. “Why do you think I’m studying every scrap of any document that even mentions the barbarians? Our battle priests have been trying for years now to find a way to negate their magic. If this is one of the Bright Gods’ tests, we’re failing.”
Jeriah struggled to gather his scattered wits. The barbarian invasion had suddenly become much more real. But even if their magic was stronger than that of the Bright Gods—which he still couldn’t believe—he had a brother to save. He’d wanted to learn about Koryn, in order to find a lever to use against her. And he had.
“The priests,” Jeriah said softly, “aren’t the only ones in the Bright Gods’ Realm with magic.”
Koryn snorted with unladylike force. “You think hedgewitches and herb-healers can defeat barbarian battle magic? You’re dreaming.”
“Maybe,” said Jeriah. “Or maybe that’s part of the test. Has anyone tried it?”
He already knew the answer. So did Koryn. “They got rid of all the lesser magic workers because they might have encouraged resistance to the relocation. So we’ll never know, will we?”
“There might be a few left,” Jeriah said carefully. “If someone could find them.”
The g
ray eyes fixed on him with the intense focus Koryn gave the books she studied. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
“You know some of the lesser magic workers? You could contact them?”
“No,” said Jeriah truthfully. “I don’t know any of them, and I have no way to contact them. Even if I did, even if I wanted to give them a handful of barbarian amulets, say, to see if they could tell us anything about barbarian magic, I couldn’t do it. Because I don’t know where the amulets are, either.”
He had no doubt she’d take the bait—there was nothing this girl wouldn’t do to destroy the barbarians.
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Koryn said slowly, “but they don’t have the power to disrupt the relocation now, so I can’t see how it would do any harm. And if you could find a better way for us to fight—even something that would buy us a little more time—that’s worth some risk. But, Rovan…”
“Yes?”
“If you do anything to hinder the relocation, anything at all, I will stop you and all your friends. Permanently. No matter what it takes.”
The cold fervor in her voice left Jeriah speechless.
“The amulets are stored in chests under the chorus steps.”
Koryn rose awkwardly to her feet and limped away.
Guilt washed over him, so intensely that he almost called her back. Jeriah would have felt guilty using a tragedy like that against anyone, and Koryn…she was a hero! She’d overcome agony, and a grief he couldn’t even imagine, to warn the army. Every life they’d saved from that attack was to her credit. No knight in the Realm’s history had done more. In an earlier, more romantic age, Jeriah would have knelt and offered his sword to her service. A part of him wanted to do it anyway—she deserved that kind of tribute. But Jeriah had a brother to save. That intelligent, driven young woman was his enemy.
INTERLUDE
Tobin
“BIRD TRACKS, MICE, SOME SQUIRRELS. But that’s all.”
The reporting Tracker was as muddy as Tobin, and he looked almost as tired. He couldn’t be more tired, for these days weariness seemed to drag at Tobin’s bones.
Today he had a headache, too. But this long marsh was the best water source in miles, and anything that approached it would leave its mark in the mud. Tobin had hiked along one section of the slippery shore himself—though even with their magic drained, the goblin Trackers were better at it than he was.
When Tobin had scouted around their previous camp, it had mostly been as part of another task; wandering away when the log cutters didn’t need him, or accompanying the Greeners who hunted foodstuffs farther and farther afield.
When they reached the new village site, Makenna had sent him out to search the area before he’d even had a chance to unpack. And she’d sent a handpicked band of Trackers and Flichters with him. It was a perfect scouting team…had there been anything to find.
No predators larger than a fox. No sign of building, of any intelligent life. No trouble even from the weather, except that it was hot in the afternoons.
Tobin rubbed his aching temples gently.
“We’re going to head back,” he told the Tracker. “All the way back to the main camp. I’ll send the Flichters to round up the others and bring them in.”
“That’s assumin’ none of them found anything either, right?”
“If anyone’s seen anything, then of course we’ll investigate,” Tobin assured him.
But in his heart he knew they hadn’t. And it wasn’t because he wanted to get back to Makenna, although he did. Despite being surrounded by goblins, as she’d been most of her life, her connection with her own humanity was growing every day. Every time he looked at her, Tobin sometimes thought.
That was why he’d followed her through the gate; to keep her human. He needed her human.
But the real reason he wanted to return was his nagging conviction that the goblin camp was the reason all these strange things were happening. Erebus had pointed out that peculiar events could be taking place all over the Otherworld, all the time, and they’d only know about the things that affected them. Tobin was certain that even that mountain had been moved just to drive them out.
If they had an enemy, the new camp was where it would strike.
Tobin rubbed his aching head again. “Round up the others,” he repeated. “We’re going home.”
CHAPTER 10
Jeriah
THE DAY BEFORE MASTER LAZUR and Nevin departed seemed eternal. The night, most of which Jeriah spent reviewing his plans, was even longer.
He caught a glimpse of their departure from the dais as he carried petitions from the crowd to Master Zachiros, but dealing with the Hierarch under the secretary’s sharp eye took all his attention. To his disappointment the old man had forgotten his name again, but Jeriah hoped he’d start remembering it soon.
After the petitions he helped the menservants put the Hierarch to bed, and then pulled Mohri, the most senior of them, aside.
“Before he left, Master Lazur asked me to conduct some business for him. It was scheduled before his departure and can’t be delayed.”
“Yes, sir.” The man didn’t even look curious. Don’t say too much.
“The problem is, I may not be back by sunset—can you attend the Hierarch at prayers?”
“Yes, sir. But what about his medicine?”
“I’ll be back in time to give it to him,” Jeriah said. He’d better be finished by then! “But if I’m not, I’ll brew it for him when I get in. I’d have done that before, if I’d realized…”
“All right, sir.” Mohri turned away, and Jeriah hurried to the stable to put his plan in action.
He saddled Glory and rode into the city in case someone checked his story. Was he making this too complicated? He had to make people believe he’d left the palace, or he’d be forced to attend the Hierarch this evening. Jeriah wished he knew how to pick locks. He hoped St. Cerwyn, the patron of wild and desperate ventures, would favor him once more.
He was going to need the help of all the saints to get into the Otherworld in time to save his brother. Tobin could become ill any day now, and the Lesser Ones still hadn’t contacted him!
At least after tonight he could set the goblins searching for the spell notes. While they were doing that, Jeriah would track down that cursed tinker and choke the information out of him! He’d have to make some excuse…What excuse could he make to abandon the Hierarch? Especially if Nevin wasn’t there to take his place. Could the menservants alone keep the Hierarch’s condition secret? And if they couldn’t, would that be so terrible?
Yes, Jeriah realized grimly. Only a divinely guided Sunlord could have convinced the Realm that relocating was truly necessary. That the barbarians couldn’t be defeated in battle. If the Hierarch and Master Lazur’s shadow government fell, the relocation would fall with them. And then, if the barbarians won…
Catastrophe. A catastrophe beyond imagining.
Jeriah thrust the thought away. He had to save Tobin. The servants could make some excuse for the Hierarch’s non-appearance, claim he had some minor illness until Nevin returned.
Half the government was looking out for the relocation—Jeriah was the only one who was trying to save his brother.
A different guard shift was stationed at the gates when Jeriah added himself to the crowd that came to the palace to attend the Sunset Prayer. The few grooms still in the stable paid him no attention when he returned Glory to her stall. Jeriah joined the people climbing the temple stairs, concealing his identity simply by pulling up his hood and keeping his eyes lowered.
The warning chime sounded as Jeriah got off the steps at the fourth-level terrace—he could have been rushing to change his clothes before the prayer. He dashed into his room and shut the door behind him, then he changed his mind and cracked it open. When the ceremony began, he could hear the distant murmur of prayer and response clearly.
Jeriah slipped around the terrace to the dining chamber, hugging the wall. Everyone was su
pposed to be in the temple, but what if someone was late? Or was using this emptying of the palace for their own purpose, like he was? Jeriah grinned. I won’t tell if you won’t. It was a bargain he’d made several times, working pranks in the past. He hoped he wouldn’t need it tonight.
If anyone else was shirking their pious duties, Jeriah didn’t meet them. He took the laundry stairs to the third level, and the narrow servants’ staircase to the corridor that ran between the Hierarch’s rooms, Master Zachiros’ offices, and the petitions court. At the end of that corridor, a ladder with a hatch at the top gave access to the crowded storeroom under the chorus steps.
Jeriah quietly opened the hatch—the Hierarch’s strong voice and the chorus’ rumbling response came clearly through the steeply angled ceiling. The first third of the prayer was already over. When Jeriah had been in this room before, he’d been looking for spell notes, not chests of amulets. The high wall held narrow cabinets, where the priests of the chorus kept their robes. They were labeled with their owners’ names, and Jeriah took a few seconds to read down the line. If one belonged to a friend of Master Lazur’s, he’d take a moment to check it for the notes—but the only name he recognized was Herb Mistress Chardane’s. If Jeriah could find those cursed notes, he wouldn’t need the amulets—but that wasn’t going to happen now.
On to the storage compartment. Jeriah had to shift several crates to reach the small door. Quietly—if he could hear the prayer this clearly, they might be able to hear loud sounds he made.
The last crate he pulled aside revealed a keyhole, but Jeriah reached out and tugged the handle anyway. Locked! Jeriah swore under his breath. But at least he knew where these keys were probably kept.
He climbed down the ladder and ran down the hall to Master Zachiros’ office. No locked doors here. Jeriah had been in the secretary’s desk several times, fetching things he’d “forgotten.” He knew exactly where the keys were.
