by Carol Berg
Idiot. Could you have insulted her more directly? Hoping to recover lost ground, I tried to make a lesson out of the dispute. “It might seem foolish to keep a fire burning if you don’t need it right away, but if you’ve no means to make one at all, sometimes it’s the only answer. To strike a new fire from nothing is far more difficult. Try it ... here . . .” I grabbed a wad of tangled grass from the tinder basket and set it on a flat stone. “Alter the image in your mind—first see the grass, taste its dryness, smell it, and then consider the spark, quick, clean like the prick of a knife, the heat, the first smoke—and use the words diargh inestu instead of the other.”
I felt the sputtering flickers of enchantment, and heard the others muttering. Cold ... it just leaves me cold ... can’t find it ... Quiet, dolt. Feel it, don’t say it . . . I’ll never get it ... Impossible . . .
I fixed my eyes on the little wad of grass. To set it alight on the damp stone without touching it would be very difficult. But that was the beauty of sorcery, of course, the art of it . . . to combine the imagining, the tale of the senses, the deep-rooted understanding, and then to loose the warm flood of melydda ... just enough, shaping it with the word. I closed my eyes and breathed the words diargh inestu ... oh, gods, I never tired of it ...
“Damn! Who did it?” said Farrol, sitting back on his heels and staring at the tiny golden flame consuming the wad of grass.
Blaise smiled and raised his cup to me. “Our master, of course. Can’t you feel it? We creep along the ground while he soars.” Which was truly strange for him to say, who could change himself to a bird with a single thought.
I moved away from the fire and sat down on a thick log next to Aleksander, allowing the lesson to lapse. Soon Gorrid was ladling his broth into the wooden bowls stacked beside him, and Roche began passing them out. Elinor abandoned her sewing and brought out bread and cheese.
Though I tried not to let her see me staring, my eyes followed her as she moved around the circle. I was surprised by the implication that she was capable of wielding melydda. When the Ezzarian elders had rendered the cruel verdict that Blaise was demon-possessed and must be left in the forest for wolves to devour, their parents had taken the two children and fled Ezzaria. In the ensuing years, Blaise’s parents had given up all use of melydda, terrified that Blaise’s “demon” might someday use it to wreak havoc upon those who fought the demon war. They surely would have insisted that seven-year-old Elinor abandon her short years of experience, too, and the ability to control melydda dwindled away with prolonged disuse. Had she recovered it somehow? What other mysteries lay hidden within her?
As we ate, Blaise and Farrol laughed over their magical attempts and speculated on what they might have to do to create other magical workings. Elinor shook her head at them, unable to resist a smile at their teasing, and even sour Gorrid forgot his hostility for the moment and snorted in good humor at the pair.
“You enjoy teaching.” Elinor stopped in front of me, offering to refill my bowl and to speak to me at the same time, a gesture of truce that was not lost on me.
“Yes.” I fumbled my bowl and spilled the dregs on my breeches, cursing my thick head for not coming up with something clever or interesting to say that might prolong the conversation.
Elinor, her gaze fixed on my bowl, dipped her ladle in the pot and carefully replenished my dinner. “Evidently you’re decent at it. Mattei often helps me with Evan.”
One would think my bowl had been transformed to beaten gold, for my eyes would no longer leave it. “Mattei is a fine young man,” I managed to get out.
“Yes.”
Elinor refilled Aleksander’s bowl and moved on to the next man. I considered drowning myself in the steaming broth.
After a while, Admet began talking quietly to Roche and Gorrid about a scouting report he’d gotten from a contact in Syra, a mining town east of Zhagad. He seemed to have forgotten that Aleksander and I were sitting right behind him. “... and she says the shipments go out regularly every fourteen days. Danye’s heard there’s a larger one than usual going out five days from now—a levy wagon. The mine garrison is just twenty warriors—ten for each half-day watch. They keep only four warriors at the mine entrance, and six down inside. By the time they pull off extra to protect the shipment, that might leave only five or six warriors in all, plus the overseers and mining stewards. What’s even better—they’ve dammed a stream above the mine, put in a sluice gate that they open to wash the tailings to get the last bits of gold from them. Famarn says it would take no more than an hour to breach the sluice gate and leave it to flood the works. Wouldn’t that set the cursed Derzhi baron on his ear? The Danatos would have to forfeit their levies for ten years, and the worst slave pit in the Empire would be left unusable.”
“How many would we need to send?” said Gorrid.
“No more than twelve or fourteen. Two to breach the sluice gate, four to hold the entrance. Six to take care of the inside guards and get the slaves out before the water—”
Ever since Admet had begun, Aleksander had been shaking his head. “You’ll never do it,” he said, interrupting the Suzaini’s assessment. Though the Prince spoke quietly, almost to himself, the whole group fell silent and stared at him as if they’d forgotten he could speak. “You’ll bury more than six this time. Every one of you will die. And the slaves with you.”
“What’s that?” said Blaise.
“Danatos and his gold mine—the richest mine in the world. Do you think because he’s a Derzhi that he’s also stupid? Do you think because he’s a mindless villain whose own mother has denounced him, that he would fail to consider such an obvious ploy? It’s no wonder you change nothing in this world with such naive heads devising your strategies.”
Gorrid jumped to his feet. “You would love us to fail, wouldn’t you? Derzhi bastard—”
“Danatos works over seven hundred slaves in his mine,” snapped Aleksander, “most of them chained to the rock. They live and die in there. It would take you half a night to free them. And the sluice gate ... even if you managed to kill the warriors inside the mine, plus the guard and the miner who work the sluice gate, you’d have to deal with the watchpost just across the ravine from it. Not five people outside Danatos’s garrison know the exact location of this watchpost, and the warriors’ families are held hostage against their revealing it. The post is manned with three archers every hour of every day, and they would not miss the heart of a thief at the sluice gate were it twice the distance, for Danatos’s archers are the finest in Azhakstan. He pays them in gold from the mine, which means their hostage families live very well indeed. And it’s true there may be only twenty warriors in the mine garrison, but Danatos never provisions less than a hundred and fifty warriors in his keep. Once the alarm is raised, it would take perhaps half an hour to have every one of the hundred and fifty waiting outside the mine . . . but you would never make it out to face them, for the Derzhi warriors inside the mine would already have closed down the air passages and suffocated every living being in the mine—you, the seven hundred slaves, and themselves. They have sworn upon their father’s swords to do so, and anyone who thinks to fight a Derzhi must understand that they will do what they have sworn. I would send no warrior of mine on such a mission unless I wanted him dead.” Aleksander drank the last of his soup, tossed his bowl on the stack of them, and then stood up as if to leave.
“What are we to believe of you, Prince?” said Admet, the softness of his Suzaini accent not hiding his intensity. “The Danatos are your own kind. For half a year you have been pursuing Derzhi alliances. You could well be trying to protect them.”
“I could be,” said Aleksander. “Go on and try it then.” He started across the grass toward the olive grove.
“Wait,” called Blaise. “A moment, Lord Aleksander. Do you know where this archers’ watchpost lies?”
The uneven footsteps paused, and after a moment the answer came from the shadows. “I do.”
“And do you kno
w how the alarm would be raised?”
“A bell hangs on the cliffs above the mine. Two watchers stand where they can see the mine approaches, which are lit by octar seeps that burn day and night. The watchers never sleep.”
“Lord Aleksander, would you ride with us to Syra?” Blaise’s quiet question grasped the night and held it by the neck. Lost in my personal confusions, I had missed something of tremendous importance, something extraordinary, but Blaise had not.
“The Danatos hold the mine at Syra by grant of my great grandsire, given in thanks for repelling the invasion of the Empire by Edusian barbarians, who ravaged every land they touched. Only ten warriors of the Danatos heged survived that battle. Every other was slain. I am my father and his father and his before him; how can I steal back my own gift?”
“Perhaps they have forfeited your gift,” said Blaise. “Perhaps they have themselves become the Edusians, ravaging our land.”
Months of running and hiding, of a world ripped apart, of life turned inside out, of pain and grief, guilt and exhaustion at last found expression in Aleksander’s anguish. “The warriors to be killed in your venture are Derzhi ... my own people ... my brothers. I am responsible for them. For the Danatos. For all of you. And yes, for the seven hundred who are chained to the rocks inside the Danatos mine. Do you think this is a game where I can choose sides and upend the board if I don’t like the outcome?” Aleksander was not speaking to Blaise or me or anyone else. Only to himself.
“Think on it,” said Blaise. “Choose. We go in five days.”
CHAPTER 24
Five days. Five days to decide whether to turn against the Empire he had thought to rule. Once committed, there would be no going back. For a prince of the Derzhi to attack a stronghold of the Twenty, to ride out of the darkness and slay Derzhi warriors ... the word would sweep through the Empire like a paraivo. And there would be no hiding. Aleksander would never paint his face. He would braid his bar and ride like a Derzhi prince were Edik’s warriors awaiting him at the mine with a noose in hand.
I walked back to the hut in the olive grove that night, determined to breach the wall that had sprung up between Aleksander and me. But he was neither there, nor sitting out under the trees, nor anywhere that I could find him. I sat in the doorway of the hut waiting, unable to take pleasure in the brilliance of the full moon, the towering cedars down the vale beyond the grove, or the scent of wild lavender hanging on the soft night. In my hand I twirled Aleksander’s olive-wood walking stick. He had discarded it a few days before, saying I could burn it if I wished.
At some time I drifted off to sleep, for I was stretched across the doorway and the moon had almost set when the hand shook me awake. He was crouched beside me, a dark shadow against steep-angled moonlight behind him. “Seyonne. Are you awake?”
I banished disturbing dreams of mountain prisons and gamarand woods, and sat up, uncomfortably aware of the aching stiffness that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my back and knees. “I’m completely awake,” I said, yawning. “Waiting for you.”
He stood up immediately and strode across the clearing to the nearest olive tree, only to spin on his heel and come right back. “I need your help.”
“That’s why I’m here. Whatever you—”
“I need to send a message to Lydia.” He crouched down beside me again. “You’ve got to do this for me. She trusts you.”
“Of course I’ll do it. Whatever—”
“She must appear before Edik and petition him to dissolve our marriage.”
“What?”
“This is what you’ll say to her ...” He permitted no questioning or discussion. Instead, he gave me the words to tell the wife he adored that he no longer loved her, that he would as soon be wed to a jackal as to a woman who failed to defend him before his enemies, and that he had found a more satisfactory woman to share his bed—one who would give him sons.
“My lord, she’ll never believe it. She knows you better than you know yourself.”
“Then make her believe it. Enchant her, swear at her. Remind her of how I sent her away, of how I shamed her in front of everyone in Zhagad. You said ‘whatever I needed,’ and I need this as I need nothing else in this world. She must not be my wife one hour more.” He had not taken five days to decide.
“Will it keep her safe?”
“Gods of night, I pray it will. I should have done it months ago, but I couldn‘t, not while—I couldn’t.” Not while there was hope of stepping back into the life he knew. He paced back to the olive tree and broke off a clump of the fleshy green fruit, then stared at it as if he weren’t quite sure what it was. “Perhaps she’s done it already. That would be the best of all. But she is so ever lastingly stubborn ...”
“Have you considered telling her the truth? Letting her decide?” Ysanne had not trusted me with the truth of our child’s demon birth. I still felt the bitter hurt of it.
“Of course, I’ve considered it. But I’ll not have her dead for me. Anger will keep her alive.”
There was no dissuading him, and I could not muster the conviction to thwart his will. Perhaps this was the way things were meant to fall out. He had yielded everything, as Qeb had foretold. Surely this deed must be the ending of it. To be willing to cut off your own flesh, though it be your very heart. “I’ll do my best,” I said at last.
“You’ll fly ... or something magical ... ? I hate to ask it, but the time—”
I stood up and gathered my cloak and sword belt from the hut. “I’ll get Blaise to guide me. Traveling his ways, we can finish it tonight.”
“Tonight?” His strangled response was that of a man who believes he has steeled himself to have a limb removed, only to discover the ax already hanging over him. “Good. Tonight, then. Make her believe, Seyonne. Make her hate me.”
Blaise understood my mission and its implications without long explanation, and he agreed to leave immediately. “Three hours hard riding to get there,” he said. We would arrive just before dawn.
The easy part of the mission to Zhagad was getting inside the walls. The spires and arches of the imperial city were just taking shape in the gray light when Blaise and I left our horses in the care of a feebleminded hostler. Outside the walls of Zhagad, a city of castoffs had grown up, built by those too poor, too diseased, or too unsavory to be allowed inside the imperial capital. We hurried through its narrow lanes until we found a deserted corner where we could shift to birds’ form without being observed.
“You first,” said Blaise. “I’ll watch.”
“Just don’t watch me,” I said.
After the requisite uncomfortable time, I perched on a broken barrel, and Blaise inspected me in the dim light. “A reasonable job,” he said, his face looming large in my sight. “Still a little beaky. Your tail feathers should be longer, and you’ve left too much white in the breast. Haven’t you ever taken a close look at a falcon?”
I yelled at him to stop talking and get on with it, which, of course, came out as a totally unintelligible kek-kek-kek. He laughed and crossed his arms upon his breast, and in less time than it took me to think about transforming, a brown and white hawk fluttered down the alleyway before me.
Aleksander had told me where to find the Marag town house, an imposing pile of finely cut stone, nestled up so close to the palace grounds, its balconies overlooked the Emperor’s gardens. Blaise and I flew over the courtyards and walkways, keeping an eye out for guards, especially archers who might be idling away the early hours by taking shots at passing birds. Smoke was rising from the kitchen chimneys, and servants were already dumping wash water into the stone planters and carrying baskets of folded linen from the washhouse into the residence. Aleksander had said that Lydia’s apartments looked out on a water garden—a maze of stone steps and sculpted walls, tiled troughs and pools that were filled, sprayed, and spread with an unending flow of water drawn from the deep limestone wells under the desert city. The place was easy to find. In the quiet of the morning, t
he splash and trickle of the water was unmistakable, accompanied by the chittering of a thousand small birds who rose in a cloud of annoyance at the invasion of a falcon and a hawk.
We circled low over the garden, and I examined the balconies and doorways, debating whether to fly inside the house and search for the Princess, which would leave me in a vulnerable spot while shifting back to my own form, or to shift first and go hunting as a man. The latter would have its own dangers. But the decision was made unnecessary. In the corner of the water garden nearest the house, two women were seated on a small patch of grass beside a pool that shimmered with gold in the morning light. One, fair-skinned, with long, elegant bones, was draped in a voluminous white shawl against the cool morning. Her damp red curls were spread over her shoulders as if to dry in the morning sun. A book lay open in her hand. The other woman wore a servant’s plain brown tunic and skirt, and the loose white scarf preferred by traditional Suzaini women, covering the hair and the lower part of the face, leaving the eyes scarcely visible. The two were intensely engaged, the serving woman bent toward her mistress, pointing out something in the book. It appeared that the Princess Lydia was learning to read, a skill most Derzhi disdained as a menial task akin to cleaning or sewing or selling trinkets in the market. Useful, but unnecessary for a race of warriors.
While Blaise perched in the limbs of a lemon tree, I settled on a flagstone path in a secluded part of the garden and shifted back to my own form. Waving a hand at Blaise, I hurried down the winding path, hearing the art of the master gardener in the changing texture of sound as I passed: a splattering fountain, a soft, hissing spray, a gurgling brooklet. In moments I was peering into the lady’s courtyard from behind a dripping wall. With no sign of watchers and only the one servant, the situation was as good as I could expect. And so, prepared for every reaction from tears to knife throwing, I stepped out from my hiding place, went down on one knee, bent my head, and cleared my throat. “Your Highness, I beg a word with you.”
