“It’s Dtheldevor,” the second one said, adding exactly the same sort of pungent insult that she habitually used about his allies. “Tearing up the city, and disappearing down their old rat-holes.”
Siamis waved a hand. “Never mind the details. I’d like very much to meet Dtheldevor.”
It was genially said, but Leander saw in the reaction of the second Norsunder —the tight mouth, the tendons showing on the right handing hanging beside his sword—indicating that he didn’t hear a comment, or an invitation, but an order, if not a threat.
Siamis turned his head slightly. Five or six heartbeats later another eleven entered. Leander gripped his fingers together. If he really ‘heard’ that fellow coming by mind, why doesn’t he hear me up here? Or does he ‘hear’ only the minds he expects to hear?
“The deaf boy you told us to follow has spoken. Encounter a day’s ride south of the lake,” the newcomer said. “Our horses went wild. Couldn’t control them.”
“Not deaf, then.” Siamis smiled. “Or a boy. Liere Fer Eider is much more clever than we gave her credit for, eh, Davernak?”
The newcomer said nothing; his gaze was lowered.
Siamis turned to the fourth, who’d waited in silence. “You have people along the north coast, don’t you? Any sign of the Marloven boy?”
Leander thought, Marloven boy? Is it Senrid—did he somehow escape?
“Yes,” the fourth said.
“Excellent.” Siamis looked at the third. He pointed at the papers. “Your excuses are entertaining, but I believe we can dispense with them. You will cease playing hide and seek with the Knights of Dei. You will find their leader, and bring him to me in the North Forest. I am very much afraid that we’re going to have to take some time out for some riding.”
He walked out, followed by the three or four who’d come in with him.
The second one jabbed a finger toward the fourth. “You know Detlev marked that Montredaun-An brat as his.”
The fourth switched to Norsundrian for what were obviously curses. He must have been fluent as well as unstinting, for the others grinned.
It’s Senrid, Leander thought, agonized. He must have escaped, but now he’s running straight into a trap.
Chapter Twenty
For Liere Fer Eider, the six months following her meeting with Devon were the most frightening and the most exhilarating of her entire life so far.
For Devon, life had become interesting, exasperating, scary, wonderful, tiring—and sometimes very lonely. She was used to loneliness, and had never minded it once she discovered that her own thoughts could be good company. Unlike Russy and Karia when they were involved with their noble friends, Liere never shut her out deliberately or thoughtlessly, but she inadvertently shut the entire world out, sometimes for half a day or longer.
Liere found those sessions challenging and endlessly fascinating, during which she inevitably lost all sense of time and place. She had always been adept at listening on the mental plane; she sorted through the unguarded awarenesses surrounding her, sifting through the crazy jumble of images and words that comprised most people’s thoughts. She learned to narrow her focus, to listen over great distances, and so she found The Guardian.
Her first lesson concerned Roth Drael, and what she must do there once she reached it. Her second lesson was short, and frightening, for Lilith the Guardian taught her how to identify the dangerous minds who spied on the mental plane.
She did not mean to complain, but the Guardian must have heard her wish that she would come herself, would show the girls the way. Maybe even take them there, for did she not know how to travel by magical means?
The Guardian’s thought came sadly, I must stay here in the south. We are in a constant struggle with Norsunder, who is trying to extend a rift from their temporal base. Every mage who knows this kind of magic is here, yet there are not enough of us. Be strong, Liere! I have tried to send you some companions for your journey.
Twice Liere encountered Siamis, whose wordless amusement was clear before she broke contact as swiftly as she dared. Once, at a far greater distance, she sensed another mind, one much more sinister. It deflected her quick, instinctive identity-probe with all the careless strength of an armored hand swatting at a bee. That time she made the shift to first-face so fast she had a headache the rest of the day.
She practiced hiding her own identity asleep and awake.
In the physical plane, their progress was very slow.
At first this was because of winter, and because it was hard to get food. They had Devon’s money, but unless they were careful to go to market in big towns, children buying food caused questions, which brought investigating Norsundrians. Every single time they bought food in a small town or village caused an onslaught of patrols riding back and forth, forcing them to hide in barns, or abandoned houses, or once in a child’s playhouse, for days at a time.
They had to let Kondaria go free, for she couldn’t be hidden, and food for a pony was impossible to find during winter.
Devon wept at that, but Liere listened for the pony for several days after, and was glad to eventually report that she’d made her way to a farm whose family seemed unaware that a new pony had joined their herd.
Liere ventured out alone, as a boy, keeping keep her gaze down and her words dull, until they ran out of money. Then they had to resort to stealing.
This was hard because neither girl liked the idea of theft. They were also bad at it, so the two, who were thin and frail of build, went without food to a degree that would have been dangerous had they not managed to reach the border of Everon at last—and there they were discovered by the Knights.
The animals had been on the watch, and it was vigilant birds who brought the Knights to the two shivering, starving girls deep in Everon’s forest.
Their days took an abrupt turn for the better. The party of Knights delivered them to the dawn-singers of West Everon, one of the oldest enclaves on the deles. There they were made welcome, wreathed from dawn to dusk in song, fed plain but nourishing forest food whose preparation—mostly comprised of a bewildering variety of nuts—had been refined over the centuries into fare that satisfied despite the lack of meats or spices favored by most human palates.
From the dawn-singers Liere first heard the name that they had given her: Sartora. Partly honorific (this embarrassed and frightened her), the name was also intended to hide her true identity. It was this latter aspect that made the nickname bearable.
The dawn-singers loved singing and telling stories, and Liere adored hearing them. Devon did as well, but many was the night when she struggled against sleep, finally dropping off with the sound of sweet, poignant laments—many of them hundreds of years old, and even older—lulling her into dreams of lost lives and times. Her last sight would be the glow of firelight on the ruddy or coin-colored or pale yellow hair of the dawn-singers, and in their midst Liere’s straight, thin figure. Above them all laced the sheltering tree branches, and beyond those the canopy of clouds, and sometimes the eternal stars. Devon would curl up gratefully in her cloak, enjoying the gentle swaying of the tree platforms in the breeze. Breathing deeply of ancient forest scents, she often hoped that the visit would never end.
But with spring came incursions of Norsundrians searching—for this was when Liere had that one encounter with the distant mind.
It was after that incident that Liere mastered the identity shield, after she comprehended that that distant mind had in that one instant expertly plucked from her own dreams the cherished memory of a night of song. And their location.
“We have to go,” Liere said the next morning, shaking Devon awake.
Liere told their hosts what had happened. The dawn-singers gave the girls a basket of nut-breads, then departed.
As if the whole world wept, rain slanted through the trees, cold and wet and gloomy. Devon felt sad that the dawn-singers had vanished, leaving their platforms bare; they might return to them in a year or a hundred years, for th
ese trees were exceedingly old, and the platforms made not by them but by their ancestors.
The girls spent several anxious days toiling down tiny animal paths or crouching in thickets while powerful horses and torch-bearing riders thrashed their way back and forth through the forests in searches.
When those were gone, some animal always appeared: a timid, still deer, or a gliding bird, or once a light-tailed squirrel. There’d be that long moment of mental communion that Devon could not share, and then they’d be off.
Spring ripened while they made their way through Wnelder Vee.
Something else was going on, for there were more Norsundrians here than at any other time. Liere sometimes touched the enemies’ minds. Most of the time she could not read past the narrow focus on the immediate, or past the blood-lust anticipation (or cruel memories) of some. Once she discovered that she was not the object of that particular search.
When they ran out of food, they figured out a story that they could stick to: since they looked enough alike to cause searchers to hit their trail, they became a brother and sister. The brother (Liere) was deaf, communicating with Devon by vague twitches of fingers and waves of her hands. Liere sent mental pictures to Devon when she actually had to communicate something.
They knew that their presence was reported on—inevitable in places where everyone was enchanted—but Liere, now adept at sifting thoughts, twice found city orphanages and they did their shopping nearby. This left the Norsundrians having to sort through all the local kids, and each time they wasted time interviewing quantities of war-orphans, she and Devon slipped away.
And so the guise held long enough to get them across the country to the Fereledria.
There again their days took a turn for the better. Safe, surrounded by magic, Devon slept deeply.
Liere resented every moment that she had to sleep. That is, until she discovered that high in the magical realm of the Geres, the dream realm was equally safe. Here, the watching Norsundrian minds could not hear her, and again she learned new things.
In the long, mild days of late summer—for now they were in the northern part of the world—they descended the last trail and crossed into the Great Northern Forest.
Three days’ walk into their journey they were surprised by a pair of Norsundrian scouts. Liere had been sitting in silent contemplation, as she often did. Devon lay in the new grass, staring up through the trees into the sky.
The Norsundrians came on them suddenly. Terrified, Devon shook Liere hard, just as the horses flanked them.
“What is it?” Liere exclaimed, rubbing her eyes. “Oh.”
“Who are you?” One of the Norsundrians demanded.
Devon stared, numb with shock.
Liere gazed intently at the horses, who suddenly reared, nearly throwing their surprised riders.
Then the animals began to plunge and whuff and toss their heads—despite the swearing and kicking of their riders—following which they turned and galloped away.
“I hate taking over their minds,” Liere said. “But I’m not the first. Their wills have been almost ruined.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Devon quavered.
“Okay,” Liere murmured, and she sighed. “And don’t let me get lost like that anymore. I guess I have to get back into the habit of staying in first-face again.”
Devon promised.
They forgot that the Norsundrians had heard the supposed deaf boy speak.
Chapter Twenty-one
Senrid and the four off-worlders soon found the walk up the shoreline hot and sweaty work.
For a couple of days it was fun to veer and splash in the water whenever they got overheated, but it tired one out faster and clothes that dried stiff and salty got nastier with every dunk.
On the third day they spotted a small town built around the mouth of a minor river, and turned inland to avoid it. They swam in the river during the early evening, which ridded them of salt and grime. That night they slept long and comfortably on a grassy hill above a feeder stream.
Next day they returned to the coast, chivvied by Senrid, who was adamant about avoiding the main coast road.
Peridot sighed loudly. “Talk about your one crack-mind!”
The others laughed, as usual, and as usual Senrid said, “Can’t we walk faster?”
“NO!” Peridot bellowed.
No one argued. They didn’t want to move fast during the heat of the day. Once the sun finally disappeared and a breeze flowed off the sea, their energy slowly returned. When the stars came out, a gorgeous jewel-bright display across the black velvet night, a mood of silliness hit the Warren twins as they walked through the ebbing tidewaters.
“That for Detsie,” Gloriel yelled, churning up the shallow foam as she danced about on the wet sand. “And that for every villain in the world!”
“That for every villain in the universe,” Peridot retorted. She, too, kicked water high in a cool spray.
“Biggest towns are south of the Fereledria,” Frederic was saying to Senrid. “At least, from what the Warrens said to expect. What we saw in the north, there weren’t that many people.”
“That’s because The Guardian put you west of the populated areas,” Senrid said. “From what I hear, the Great Northern Forest is not necessarily faster, but it’s probably a lot safer. It has to be hard for searchers.”
“Definitely not fast,” Frederic said with a grin. “But we sure didn’t see any people. We were alone for our whole trip. I’d rather be lost in fogs and turned around for a month than risk coming face to face with that stinker Siamis in some town—”
Gloriel, who’d danced near enough to overhear, said, “Stupid, pimple-faced, potbellied, pie-eyed poops!”
“Ugly, smelly, nauseating barf-faced poop-heads,” Peridot shouted.
Senrid was tempted to recall some of CJ Sherwood’s more inspired insults. For sheer variety, he’d never heard better. He kept them to himself, but memory made him grin.
“Fatwit dust bunnies,” Peridot was going on.
Deirdre sighed. “Won’t it be a relief to find this rift thingio and get rid of ‘em once and for all?” She walked on Senrid’s other side, sliding her toes through the foamy ripples.
“Why do they have to ruin things anyway?” Gloriel asked bitterly. “They gotta have a reason. I mean, nobody wakes up and says, Hah hah! I think I want to ruin a world! So I’m going to buy me a Norsunder uniform and go out and start murdering every person I see as practice.”
“Because they’re STUPID!” Peridot yelled.
“Because they want power, twit,” Senrid said, tired of Peridot’s one-note harping.
A man spoke from behind, “And you don’t?”
Laughter accompanied it.
The five kids whirled around to discover armed and mounted Norsundrians some twenty paces behind them—the animals’ hoof beats muffled by the sand and breeze and the booming of the surf.
Senrid gritted his teeth, knowing that they had to have transferred in, but just far enough back so he hadn’t sensed the magic.
“Ugh!” Peridot bellowed.
“Run,” Senrid snapped.
“Everyone for herself! Fade out!” Gloriel shrieked, bending to snatch up handfuls of sand. These she flung at the foremost Norsundrians, then she dashed across the beach toward one of the grassy hills.
The Norsundrians ignored the sand and spurred their horses forward, with practiced ease surrounding the kids. Senrid waited until they’d drawn into a tight ring, then he pulled the hatpin from his cuff and whipped it round in a circle. Sparks of blue-white light streamed along the edges as it flashed into sword length. He slashed right in front of the Norsundrians’ mounts’ noses. The horses plunged aside, eyes round with fright.
The kids took off in five directions—Senrid going straight for the underbrush.
The last thing he heard (amid the screams, yells, and insults of the off-worlders) was that same man saying, “I want the Marloven.”
Senrid d
ove through a scrubby brush, its wiry branches scraping off the pack. He thrust himself violently past, too anxious to fight his way back to rescue it from the tangle. Two horses galloped along either side of the hedgerow, one of the Norsundrians laughing derisively as they reined in.
Then the horses reared, pawing the air as an explosion of blackbirds launched out of the hedge and into their faces.
Senrid gained the firmer dirt, and ran flat out for the thicket , leaving behind the shrill screeching of a thousand birds, human swearing, and a sharp-voiced command to dismount and carry on the chase on foot.
And so began a two day chase.
At night, among the low, scrubby bushes that grew thickly along the coast, the odds of a kid outdistancing two grown men were evened. Add to that the interference by local birds, and Senrid’s surprise at staying free for moments turned into amazement that he was still running the next day, even after the shadows began to shift eastward.
After that the surprise gave way to grim determination.
Senrid ducked his head and drank water when he splashed headlong into streams to break his trail. At least that assuaged the agonizing thirst. The only food he got was by accident, when he hid in some kind of berry bush. The berries smelled familiar, so he tried one, and then picked and ate more, as fast as he could with shaking fingers, while a patrol crashed across his path not twenty paces away. When they were gone he changed direction and ran on.
Through the night he continued, and the next day, sometimes running, and when his lungs were on fire and black specks swam before his vision, he slowed to a stagger. By morning he’d stumbled into woodland, which again gave him somewhat of an advantage. He tried to grab brief rest until he realized that the search had been augmented. If he stayed too long in one place he would be caught.
He knew all about perimeters. As he ran, the military rules governing a successful hunt streamed through his mind, and he put his dwindling energies into confounding the Norsundrians, for speed was their advantage, not his.
He was vaguely aware that animals still aided him. How, he did not know, nor did he care. It was enough that they did. His entire concern was to stay on his feet and keep moving.
Fleeing Peace Page 21
