by Hilari Bell
It took him longer than it should have to take in Tobin’s bizarre story, but he finally set the last page aside and stared at her. “Could that possibly work? I mean . . . It couldn’t! Could it? The whole barbarian army?”
Makenna was thinking so hard, he could feel it. After several moments dragged past, Jeriah got tired of being ignored and snapped his fingers in front of her face.
“Hey! Do you think he’s crazy? Or could it work?”
“Well, if it doesn’t, it won’t be my failure as stops him.”
“Mine either,” said Jeriah, stung. “But is it even possible to build a gate a whole army can pass through?”
“I don’t see why not.” Her eyes were distant, calculating. “It wouldn’t have to be much bigger than the gate that took us into the Otherworld in the first place. Though we’d have to hold it longer. But with enough power . . . If we had some priest mages who could replace those who tired, and if the spirits cooperate . . .”
“That’s another thing! Why should they let an army of people who want to kill them into a place they created to escape from those people?”
“Leave that to me,” said Makenna. “You worry about your part.”
“That means you don’t know how to do it,” said Jeriah. “Doesn’t it?”
“And do you know how you’re going to convince the army to give up a large piece of the Southlands, Jeriah Rovan?”
She was the one person who had never addressed Jeriah as Rovanscourt—and his delight at finally shedding the heir’s title was so great that he was willing to admit the truth.
“Well, no. But—”
“Then I suggest you set about it. Now.”
Over the past few weeks, Jeriah had finally come to see her, not as the infamous sorceress who had lured his brother to destruction, but as a girl near his own age. The woman who stood before him now was Cogswhallop’s general, giving him his orders. The bow Jeriah gave her before he departed was only half ironic—she was probably a better commander than the next officer he’d be dealing with.
It took him just under two weeks to reach the border, and he had to hire another horse to give Glory some relief, for he’d left Fiddle with Makenna. She’d be making this journey herself, hopefully soon. And Jeriah meant to be ready when she arrived.
The Southlanders’ olive skin and curly dark hair reminded him of Koryn. She was here somewhere, presumably staying with friends. Jeriah wasn’t sure if he wanted to see her or not. Part of him did—and the other part was tired of being sniped at.
He wanted to see her anyway. It took an absurd amount of self-control to ask the soldiers stationed along the road where the commander was, instead of asking them if a thin, crippled girl with big gray eyes had passed this way.
Tracking down Commander Sower took him only a few more days. But then his plan fell to pieces.
“So you failed,” the commander said wearily. “I suppose it was too much to expect that he’d listen to you, any more than he’s listened to everyone else we sent. But I don’t know what we’re going to do now. The longer it takes him to see that the relocation must go forward, the more lives will be lost.”
The despair in his eyes made Jeriah’s heart ache with pity and hope.
“Sir, there may be another way. Do you remember my brother, Tobin?”
Commander Sower frowned, then nodded. “Yes. A reliable young man.”
Unlike you. But he hadn’t said it aloud, and Jeriah pressed on. “Sir, Tobin had the misfortune to be captured by the barbarians—no, he’s not dead. It’s stranger than that, and there’s a great deal going on in the barbarian camps that we didn’t know about.”
The story was so bizarre that it held the commander’s attention until the sun sank and his aide came into his office to light the lamps. Tobin hadn’t had time to write down half of it, but one of the goblins who’d gone with Cogswhallop was a Bookerie; he’d taken down most of the story Tobin had told Cogswhallop, and the goblin had passed that report on to Makenna as well. But there were still a number of points that didn’t make much sense, even to Jeriah. He wasn’t surprised that at the end of it Commander Sower sighed.
“It’s clear your brother has been through a terrible ordeal, Rovanscourt. It’s no discredit to him that . . . Well, if he manages to return home, time and peace can make a great difference.”
“I’m not Rovanscourt,” said Jeriah. “Not as long as Tobin’s alive. Am I to take it, sir, that you don’t think his plan will work?”
“I think living so long in that kind of danger, under so much stress . . . Small wonder he’s . . . creating ways to defeat the whole barbarian army in one battle. Without even having to fight them! But assuming such a gate could be cast—which you yourself admit has never been done before. And assuming we could usher all the barbarians into this Spiritworld, why should they politely agree to go? You haven’t seen much combat, Rovanscou—oh, all right, Master Rovan. But I’ve been fighting the barbarian army for years, and I assure you they never do what you want them to. Much less do it exactly when and where you wish!”
“The ‘where’ is our part, sir. You know they’re constantly scouting our borders, looking for weakness. If we deliberately create one, show them a place where it looks like they might break through, why wouldn’t they attack? We have nothing to lose by trying, and everything to gain! Because if Tobin’s right—”
“Nothing to lose? Nothing to lose by making part of the border look so weak that it’s obvious the barbarians can break through? The only way to do that is to withdraw a large number of troops, which means we will be weak! Suppose instead of riding obediently through this gate—which may or may not be cast in the first place!—suppose the barbarians ride right on through our lines, then launch an all-out attack on our forces? This could create the opportunity they’ve been waiting for to take another huge section of the Southlands.”
“Tobin says they want to invade the Spiritworld more than anything else! Tobin says—”
“Tobin has been under incredible pressure,” said Commander Sower gently. “It’s a miracle he’s still alive, and I pray with all my heart that he escapes. I’m not inclined, however, to let him dictate my battle plans.”
“Surely there’s no harm in making the attempt!” Jeriah protested. “You could fortify the border just beyond the section we weaken; make it impossible for the barbarians to advance any farther.”
“From what I’ve observed, very little is impossible for the barbarians.” The commander’s face was still impassive, but the despair crept into his voice. “And when you say no harm in trying, no harm to whom? Which landholder, how many farmers, do you propose to make homeless because we ceded their lands luring the barbarians in? Will you be the one to remove them from homes they’ll probably never see again? Because I decline to do so.”
It was clearly a lost cause, but that didn’t stop Jeriah from arguing until Commander Sower lost patience and dismissed him. And then threatened to have him thrown out. The commander was shouting for his aides when Jeriah finally gave up and departed.
He never considered quitting. It was true that if the barbarians weren’t stopped, the destruction of the Realm would be all his fault. And this was the final step toward saving Tobin, who clearly didn’t intend to return—the stubborn idiot!—without saving everyone else first. If they couldn’t bring this off, what lunacy would he come up with next? But mostly Jeriah couldn’t quit because he couldn’t stand the idea of Makenna succeeding in her part while he failed in his. It should have been the least of his motivations, but imagining the ironic contempt in her eyes got him into the saddle before dawn the next morning.
It took several more days to reach Commander Malveese. He was still stationed in the same area, but the commander was out on an extended patrol with one of his troops, and it took Jeriah some time to track them down.
Seated by the campfire, Jeriah told the commander and his lieutenants most of Tobin’s story and all of his plans.
The young
officers looked at Jeriah as if he was crazy, but when he finished, the commander’s face was thoughtful.
“You’re certain, Master Rovanscourt, that the barbarians would choose this Spiritworld over ours?”
“I have no idea,” said Jeriah. “But my brother’s certain of it, and I trust him. And it’s Rovan, sir. Not Rovanscourt.”
The commander paid no attention to this. “But what if being their prisoner for so long has driven him mad, as Commander Sower thought? You can’t deny—”
“If he’d gone mad, Cogswhallop would have seen it and rescued him, no matter what Tobin wanted,” Jeriah told them. He was even more certain of that than he was of Tobin’s judgment. “I can’t say what the barbarians will or won’t do. But Tobin’s in a better situation to determine that than anyone else in the Realm, and this is his plan. We have to do something. You know that better than anyone, sir.”
“So you’d have us put our trust in your mad brother and a pack of goblins? That doesn’t reassure me.” But dry humor lurked beneath the commander’s grim expression, and Jeriah held his breath.
One of the other officers stirred. “There were some goblins in our vineyards. I never saw them myself. Only a few people did, but we all knew they were there. When we did something for them, left out food, or a few feet of cloth, or a set of doll dishes my sister had outgrown—they did things for us in exchange. They never stole. They never cheated.”
Several other men nodded agreement.
“What did you do when they passed the Decree?” Jeriah asked.
“Our priest was one of the strict ones.” The officer sighed. “We had enough trouble getting our local hedgewitch and finder out of the village alive. We stopped setting out gifts for the goblins, and they stopped helping us, but we didn’t try to burn them out like the priest wanted. I don’t know if they left or not, but the yield in the vineyard where they lived went down a lot. And then the barbarians took all our land, so I hope they did get out, but . . .”
He spread his empty hands.
“I have no land now,” said Commander Malveese abruptly. “If I did, I don’t know if I could stand to risk it as you ask. But I have friends, and some relatives, who still do. I’ll give you their names.”
The other officers pitched in as well. When Jeriah rode out next morning, he had a list of names, and letters addressed to the men they knew, vouching for Jeriah and begging the landholders to listen to him.
With any luck, Koryn might be lurking on one of these estates. He hoped so—though it would be even harder to convince some Southland landholder to risk everything on Tobin’s plan if Koryn was dissecting it as he spoke. He’d have to talk with her first, convince her he was right. He’d never managed to convince her of anything. Yet.
Jeriah found the first of the men on his list before midday, not riding his vineyards like the lord he was, but hoeing weeds out of a common vegetable patch. If Jeriah had paid more attention to his father’s lectures, he might even have known what the small green sprouts would become.
The man removed his hat, wiped sweat from his forehead, and read the letter. When he’d finished, he looked up at Jeriah with steady dark eyes.
“Are you out of your mind? I’m not yielding one inch of my land! Not till those barbarians take it over my dead body!”
“But if the plan works, the barbarians won’t take your land. Or anyone else’s, ever.”
“Then let ‘anyone else’ take the risk. It won’t be me.”
The second landholder, when Jeriah approached him late that afternoon, said much the same. The third, whom Jeriah found supervising the turning of his wine casks, not only read the letter but listened to the whole plan, why Tobin thought it would work, and why Tobin was in a position to know. It was dark when Jeriah finished.
“And there will be soldiers stationed here too, to protect the gate. And you could evacuate your family to safety first, in case anything goes wrong. And if you don’t do it, sooner or later they’ll take your land anyway. Living here on the border, you must know that.”
“There is much in what you say,” the landholder admitted. “These barbarians, they must be stopped. But the land, my winery, this is all I have. If your plan failed . . . No. You must go elsewhere.”
Jeriah spent the rest of the evening arguing his point, since it was too late to travel onward anyway. But the longer he thought about it, the more fearful and stubborn the landholder grew. In the morning Jeriah rode on.
“What if the barbarians don’t do as this lunatic brother of yours predicts, eh?”
“What if the sorceress can’t cast such a great portal? Then my lands would be the first to fall!”
“I agree, young sir, someone must take the risk—but it must be a man with less to lose than me.”
At this point Jeriah began to notice that not only was everyone turning him down, they were looking askance at him while they did it. A few refusals later, he realized why, and confronted the landholder he was talking to.
“Look, I’m not a Southlander myself, but I come from a place a lot like this. I know how you feel.”
In truth, the mottled gold brick of the Southlands was nothing like Rovanscourt’s somber gray stone—but loving your home was common to all people.
The Southland lord was much the same age as Jeriah’s father, and he gave Jeriah the same skeptical look his father would have given a young Southland knight in similar circumstances.
“Do you? How many of your friends’ estates have fallen to these invaders? How many of your neighbors have sold, at copper-for-gold prices, and run while they still had a chance to salvage something? How many of your sons are risking their lives to stop this enemy, young Norther?”
He rode away fuming, but eventually his irritation subsided. How much attention would his father have paid to a Southlander—to anyone Jeriah’s age—who asked him to risk all of Rovanscourt in a wild gamble? A gamble hatched by another young outsider.
Jeriah needed an insider. Someone who could speak to these men as one of their own. Someone who believed, bone deep, that the barbarians would swallow the whole Realm unless drastic steps were taken to stop them. In short, he needed Koryn.
Now that he had an excuse—no, a valid reason—to seek her out, it took only half the next morning for Jeriah to track her down.
The friends of her dead parents, who’d taken her in, owned a small homey estate that was too close to the battle lines to suit Jeriah. She’d barely escaped one barbarian attack; was she courting another?
But he knew Koryn wouldn’t court her own death, not until the last barbarian had been wiped from the face of the earth . . . so she’d probably live to a ripe old age.
The thought cheered Jeriah as he followed the landholder’s wife’s directions out to the grape arbor where Koryn had taken her books and notes.
The rustling grape leaves that grew along the long poles of the shelter’s roof provided a cool refuge from the pounding sun. In the fall, this was probably a crushing station, where the grapes would be run through a juice press and the results kegged for fermenting.
Now, with the grapes still green amid the leaves, only Koryn was there. The tumbled frizzy hair and moon-big eyes were the same—for a moment he’d have sworn they brightened at the sight of him, but then her expression turned cool. Here in the Southlands she wore only a light cotton blouse with a loose shift over it, and her feet were bare.
Something about those pale bony feet disarmed Jeriah, and he spoke quickly, before she could launch the first attack.
“I didn’t come here to fight with you. I need your help.”
With Makenna that wouldn’t have worked. Koryn blinked once, then asked, “Help with what?”
“Thank you!” Jeriah sank down on the bench beside her, deeply grateful for more than just the shade.
“I haven’t agreed to help you yet,” she said.
“You will when you’ve listened.” And she’d agreed to listen, thank the Bright Gods.
Jer
iah told her everything Cogswhallop had told him. Tobin’s report about the nature of barbarian magic had her reaching for ink and paper and making him slow down so she could take notes.
“This information is exactly what I spent the last year trying to find.” Koryn had pushed her hair back several times, with ink-stained fingers, and smudges marked her temple.
“Tobin is risking his life to get it,” Jeriah told her grimly. “And he’s figured out how to use it, too.”
He went on to tell her all about Tobin’s plan. Halfway through, she stopped taking notes. By the time he finished, telling her about Makenna’s promise to obtain the spirits’ cooperation, Koryn was deep in scowling thought.
The silence stretched for a long time, but Jeriah wasn’t impatient. He didn’t think Koryn was even aware of his presence now.
Eventually the scowl faded, and her gaze found him and focused. “I know more about the barbarians by now than anyone else in the Realm. And judging by all I’ve learned, all I’ve read . . . your brother’s plan might work.”
“If I can persuade a Southland lord to let us use his estate to bait the trap,” said Jeriah. “That’s where I need your help.”
She was rising, careful of her twisted leg, even as he spoke. “What are we waiting for?”
Koryn’s leg wasn’t strong enough to allow her to post, so they rode at a walk through the sun-drenched fields to meet with the man Koryn considered the most promising prospect. She hadn’t taken time to change her clothes, only adding riding boots and a broad-brimmed straw hat that completed her peasant ensemble. But when they arrived, the Southland landholder greeted her by name and kissed her cheek when he lifted her down from the saddle.
He still didn’t agree to help them, despite Koryn’s impassioned plea. Nor did the next most promising prospect, nor the next.
