Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  Senrid had seen that peculiar white stone just once before, from a distance, forming a palace high atop a cloud-covered mountain in Mearsies Heili.

  Roth Drael had been long ago reduced to just a street lined with a jumble of white stone on both sides. Midway along it stood the remains of a large building. There were two short towers, one broken, and one wing of rooms, one side of which—adjacent to a wide semicircular terrace—was open to the weather, though he detected a faint sheen of magic.

  The horses halted at the shallow steps leading up onto the terrace, and the three kids jumped down.

  Liere scanned their surroundings, her shoulders hunched, her hands clutching at her elbows. At Senrid’s glance she jerked her hands down, obviously hating her own weakness, and then she said, “I’ve got to find my way around. Then there’s this spell I have to try first. You can either watch, or else meet me here when I’m ready to free the dyr.”

  Devon looked from one to the other, then said, “Unless you need me, is it okay if I wait out here?”

  Liere looked relieved. Senrid would have been interested to hear the lighter magic, and compare its lumbering form to what he knew, but not if it meant Liere would stutter and fumble with false starts. Better to let her do what she had to do. He could always ask about it later.

  Liere walked inside the building.

  Senrid sat down on the steps. The sun—hanging low in the south—was hazy, and not very warm, between drifting gray clouds. The horses had gone somewhere else. Devon dropped down beside Senrid, using a forefinger to trace shapes in the fine dirt that had drifted up against the step.

  Senrid said, “You know anything about this dyr thing?”

  “Only what she told me.”

  “Which is?”

  “Erai-Yanya’s family has had care of it for a long, long time. Her family—the mages who lived here—were all killed when she was small. My age. She escaped, and learned magic from Evend in Bereth Ferian, then came back and lived here all alone and studied more. I guess the family hid all their books, so she had plenty to study. That’s all I really understood.”

  “Liere’s told you everything she knows, hasn’t she?”

  “Everything I asked. Though sometimes it doesn’t make sense.”

  “You know Norsunder’s going to want to get their hands on you.”

  Devon got up, unslung her knapsack, and began to hopscotch over an imaginary boundary along the first level of steps. “They don’t know about me.”

  “They will if she’s successful with what she’s about to do. And they will if they get her.”

  “I’m not too worried,” Devon said, shrugging. “Liere’s got them all figured out.”

  “She does, does she?” The idea of this scrawny kid thinking Norsunder was no problem because a ten-year-old had them ‘all figured out’ was breathtaking in either arrogance or ignorance. He was sure it was the latter, but that didn’t make it any less exasperating.

  “You should ask her. Too hard for me to ‘splain.” Devon went on with her game, her cloak fluttering in the cold wind.

  “Okay.” Senrid kept his voice even. “I will ask her.”

  o0o

  Devon shared out a meal, setting aside a portion for Liere, who never came out to get it. As the shadows lengthened, Devon put the food away again in her knapsack, then she sat on the steps with her cloak tented about her. Senrid spun out another story—prompting Devon to add bits when she got ideas—and so they whiled time until the sun vanished in the cloudbank just above the western treetops.

  Then Liere appeared in the doorway. “Come inside,” she said. “If you want,” she added in haste.

  Devon jumped up and clapped her hands. “Magic,” she exclaimed, grinning. “Liere promised she’d let me watch. And she didn’t forget!”

  She ran across the terrace then peeked in as if expecting to see something strange or frightening. Senrid, following more slowly, saw only a plain room, the white stone unmarred by any kind of decoration. In the center, fine carved lyre-backed chairs circled a heavy wooden table, near two carved-wood cabinets and a desk. Blue-white glowglobes on brass pedestals lit the room, and the archway beyond.

  Beyond, what rooms he could see were completely bare, though one with a faint haze of magic in the doorway suggesting a ward hiding something behind it.

  Liere waited by the big table. “I was successful with my first spell,” she said, her voice echoing slightly. “These rings are what Erai-Yanya and her people have used when they handled the dyr.” She pointed to three silvery objects lying on the otherwise bare table. “I don’t know why yet, but I expect we’ll find out. Take one. Put it on.”

  There was a faint tremor in her voice, and a husky edge, as if from tiredness and thirst. She lifted one of the rings and slid it onto her finger.

  As soon as the ring was on, Liere’s body lightened, like breathing the air the first day of spring when her mother opened the house after the long siege of cold. She laughed, she was strong. She could do what must be done.

  Devon reached for a ring. Senrid hesitated.

  Liere saw his hesitation. “This magic does nothing against your will. The Guardian told me that is the real difference between the two, did you know? Light magic cooperates with the world, and dark magic uses force. That includes its effect on people who use objects of power.”

  Devon had been admiring her ring before she put it over her thumb.

  Senrid made no answer, but held out his hand.

  Liere’s thin, grimy, ragged-nailed fingers picked up the last one and slid it onto his forefinger. Then she stepped back.

  He looked up at the wall, waiting for something to happen. His awareness seemed to intensify subtly, heightening all his senses. He wondered if it was just his habitual wariness, except he did not feel wary. The habitual questions—strength, power, conflicting loyalties—faded into unimportance.

  Devon smiled up at Senrid and Liere, feeling safe, and content. The older kids looked around with the kind of inward expression that she was used to seeing in Liere. Devon waited patiently, knowing that whatever was to come next had to be wonderful. Devon thought, If this is what Liere feels like all the time, I’d like to be an Old Sartoran.

  And she and Senrid were both surprised to hear Liere’s thought in return: What you’re feeling is a magic replication of the unity. But only The Guardian and Siamis are Old Sartorans.

  And Detlev, Senrid thought.

  And Detlev. Ready?

  The question was to both, but Senrid knew it was really for him. He lifted his hand in a ‘carry on’ sign.

  “We’ll go in here.” Liere pointed to the room with the haze. “It was the library and magic room, but the mages hid the books and things, somehow.”

  The two followed her through the doorway. Senrid was surprised that the ward, which prickled briefly through flesh and bones, did not stop them. Powerful—but benign. The room looked empty, and there was an enormous crack in the ceiling, open to the sky.

  They stopped, and stood in a triangle.

  Then Liere began a chant.

  Senrid recognized it at once. It had an analog in dark magic. It was a kind of prelude to making an enchantment, which was in essence a great spell binding other spells. The prelude called on all the magical elements to be bound, and it helped the magician shape his or her mental processes in order to hold all the elements together.

  Liere had been told that the enchantment she was preparing formed around three abstract concepts, faith, hope, love, a trinity called in Old Sartoran mrardya defar-yan. Defar-yan . . . ‘even when she was busy with the words, little thoughts bloomed in her mind, like was that where Ferian came from, as in Bereth Ferian? But she couldn’t follow the blooms, no matter how lovely, or she’d get lost in a sea of flowers . . .

  She concentrated on what she’d been told. These words are symbols, hiding protection after protection. As each protection was released, the power of the dyr strengthened, offering Liere a world of gardens. />
  Liere’s voice was steady, but dry with tension. Devon swam in a sensory glory, utterly trusting, unable to contribute.

  Senrid found his center—just as he’d always found his center—and once he had balance, he held the magic for Liere. It was unconscious, partly habit, for he’d been disciplined in the use of magic for most of his life. He knew the dangers of losing hold, losing control; with dark magic, if you lost the gathered power it would burn you up fast. In light magic, the danger was simply that the balance would not be achieved and the spell would fall apart, like water splashing from a shattered glass.

  It was his holding of a far more benevolent but exceedingly powerful magic that enabled Liere to find her way back to the physical world long enough to make the last sign, and then to reach with her hand into non-space and non-time, and grasp the dyr.

  Its presence intensified the sensation of light and being and infinity . . .

  A vast chord, no, an endless, infinite harmony sang through the mental realm. One could get lost in it forever, a joy reaching and reaching—

  Liere sensed the others’ identities dissipating. She’d been warned by he Guardian, and remembered just in time.

  Barely, barely, she managed to move, to end her spells, and to remove the rings from the others’ hands as well as from her own.

  The moment the rings left their hands the other two slid into sleep.

  Liere sank down on the floor beside them, closed her hands around the rings and the dyr, and put her head on her knees. Her heart felt buoyant with triumph. I did it, I did it, she thought.

  Dawn was barely a paleness in the east when a warning image from one of the horses shot into her consciousness, forcing her tired mind and body to respond.

  She performed the spell to hide the rings again, finding it easy.

  Then she bent over Devon and touched her shoulder. Devon roused, bony knees and elbows hunched in protectively. Senrid woke up fast, his body instantly tense and alert, his yellow hair sticking up in wild curls all over his head.

  Both kids stared at Liere.

  “We have to go,” she said. “Siamis will be here this morning.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Liere, still sensitive, felt Devon’s dismay like an internal blow. “Devon, we knew he was coming, and we got what we came for.”

  Liere held out her hand. There lay a round, coin-sized object, but thicker, made of a silvery-white material that seemed partly metal and partly the white stone of which the building was made. It fit perfectly into the palm, like a pool of melted starlight.

  “The pockets tore on my trousers a long time ago,” Liere said. “Will you take it?”

  “I don’t have any pockets,” Devon said, stepping away with her hands behind her back. “And I’m scared it might bounce out of my knapsack and get lost.”

  Liere offered the dyr to Senrid, who took it wordlessly and put it into his shirt pocket. This he pinned closed with the hatpin.

  They walked out and found the horses waiting for them. They mounted up, the girls with more ease than before, though Devon winced and tried to stretch the saddle soreness out of her legs. She settled gratefully against Senrid’s compact, strong body; he reflexively braced for her small weight.

  Liere paid no attention to the complaints of her body. All her attention was on the road ahead.

  Liere scarcely saw her surroundings. She never noticed that the Fens paced them steadily through the day, far beyond their own boundaries. Devon noticed, and felt safe to see sinuous feline shapes flashing over the mossy ground, muscles bunching under sleek fur as they leaped with breathtaking grace over shrubs and boulders and streams. Senrid, too, noticed this flanking escort.

  Here is real strength, he thought.

  He had been taught that force was a measure of power. And to an extent, it was. But that power required constant exertion on the part of forcer. The moment the exertion halted, the object pushed back.

  The kind of strength he witnessed now sustained itself. Each of its components—all of whom alone might be considered weak against an armed and trained soldier, who obeyed lest he be flogged at the least and put up against the wall at worst—willingly contributed energy. How much of force’s energy was consumed by resistance, however secret?

  As the horses galloped along paths worn centuries ago, Senrid’s mind raced through memories, re-evaluating everything he thought he’d known.

  Tdanerend’s fear of treachery was so fervent that he’d constrained his strongest men to guard his chambers ceaselessly when he had to sleep, which meant the real power lay with them, not him. If so, then true strength was the ability to go to sleep not fearing the assassin’s knife. And not just on behalf of oneself. A strong king also guaranteed that all his people could sleep in peace at night.

  Therefore, strength had to be the ability to defend his people, and not just his, but those in the neighboring lands. Strength was mutual reliance—the ability to fight back to back, trusting one another, which doubled one’s power. Conquering was not the way to achieve it. Norsunder made that clear.

  These animals, offering their protection unasked, unrewarded, were living proof. Senrid knew that if Siamis somehow found them right now, there would not be armed men facing three kids, it would be armed men against three kids and a forest of animals that knew how to fight.

  This was not just a new definition of strength, it was an entire strategy, compelling in its truth.

  What did it mean?

  The magical ramifications were obvious: it would be absurd to continue his studies of dark magic exclusively, thinking that lighter magic was not worth knowing. Ignorance was not smart, it was stupid.

  He thought back over the times when he’d come up against dark magic’s limitations. He’d assumed he had to learn more, and yet more again, ascend to a new level of discipline, at which time he’d master the power needed. Which was true, but only so far as his own safety was concerned. It was also true that dark magic was not for the weak-willed or the coward, for it could so easily destroy the magician.

  He understood now that the danger was not just to the mage, but to the world.

  A life of study, now gone. Worthless.

  No. Not worthless. His studies would forever furnish an insight into the methods of those he knew as enemies. That would always be an advantage. And he did know how to study.

  But it did mean he was going to have to begin all over again, relearning the basics from the other point of view.

  First, of course, he had to get rid of Tdanerend—and his Norsundrian allies. . . .

  While his mind ran down new trails, the horses ran steadily on, and overhead the sun reached its zenith and then descended toward the west.

  Shadows had lengthened and were beginning to gather into blue gloom in hollows and groves when Devon’s restless little movements against his back finally penetrated Senrid’s self-absorption and brought his focus back to the here-and-now.

  She’d started practicing riding once she re-accustomed herself to being on horseback, but now she was clinging again. He looked back into her face, to see more than just discomfort. Her eyes were narrowed as if against a sizable headache.

  “Liere!” he called.

  Her head turned sharply, and she swayed, then clutched at her horse’s mane.

  “Time for a halt.” He tipped his head slightly in Devon’s direction, and saw the gold eyes shift focus from him to Devon. Then widen.

  She didn’t speak, but her horse began to slow, and so did Senrid’s.

  The animals’ pace was soon a walk, and once again they chose a safe place for the humans to dismount, on soft grasses near a stream.

  As soon as they slid off the horses’ backs (Devon dropping straight onto the grass) the animals vanished, two ghost-flickers of white in the intense forest darkness.

  Senrid felt his own tiredness like a sudden weight; he’d ignored it during the long ride. Apparently Devon couldn’t. A residue of the sensitivity afforded by Erai-Yanya�
��s magic rings seemed to linger. He could feel Devon fighting tears as she dug in her little bag for the dense cakes the morvende had given them.

  “I’m sorry, Devon,” Liere said. “Please. When we go on too long, speak up.”

  Devon said unsteadily, “I thought it was more important to get away from where Siamis might be. You know he’s probably real mad, if he found out we got that dyr-thingie.”

  “Probably,” Liere said. “But I think we’ll be all right. That is, we will be if you don’t get sick.”

  Devon hiccupped, bit her lip, then said, “I wish I could go on like you two do, but my legs hurt, and my back, and my head, and I can’t.” Her voice rose high on the last word, and she looked down, tears of shame bouncing down the grimy front of her gown.

  Liere looked up at Senrid, her face drawn with uncertainty. He turned out his hands in a brief gesture: it was up to her to speak.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Devon. We shouldn’t do it, either. Lilith the Guardian says too much control weakens first-face. I’m glad when you remind us. It’s important. Come on, let’s eat. Then we’ll all sleep.”

  Devon hiccupped again, but fought valiantly to blink the tears back as she passed out food. Soon after she’d crammed some of her cake into her mouth her face began to relax. Senrid felt an immediate benefit from the food, which tasted of nuts and breads and spices he couldn’t name. His appetite was fierce, but the thick, heavy cakes filled him comfortingly, after which he followed Devon down to the stream to drink.

  She made her way back up, her movements stiff and pained-looking as she wrapped up in her cloak. The girls’ voices murmured, light and almost inaudible over the quiet hush of rustling trees. He splashed water on his face and hands, then climbed up the rocky bank, blinking water from his eyes. The dyr’s unfamiliar weight thunked against his ribs as he sat down next to Liere.