Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  Leander looked down at his shaky palms. Had to admire CJ’s thorough-going pigheadedness!

  “You’re welcome to do both with us.” Siamis smiled broadly as he scanned Senrid’s papers. “While we wait for the rest of your friends to come along.”

  CJ fumed. Siamis’s lack of anger—and obvious amusement—seemed to be the most effective way of routing her.

  The two kids with the swords turned around. Sunlight gleamed down the silver blade in Kitty’s hands as she dragged it in the sand, making wavy patterns. That was Siamis’s own rapier from Old Sartor.

  Kitty’s blank eyes met Leander’s gaze. “Hi, Leander.” Her indifference chilled him to the heart.

  CJ crossed her arms. “Kyale. I can see off-worlders getting snaked by this splat-banana, but you?”

  CJ said it mostly to be goading. Ever since a harrowing misadventure, she had a horror of even remotely seeming to compromise with villains. Scared, angry, determined, she would mouth off until something happened, either to the situation—or to her.

  Siamis didn’t seem to care, but Kyale frowned. “Who do you think you are to judge me? I’m Princess Kyale Marlonen, and I can take care of myself. And Vasande Leror,” she added, nose in the air.

  CJ’s thoughts dashed about like singed butterflies. This wasn’t the real Kitty, it was a caricature of Kitty.

  “What happened to your brains?” she asked. “Can’t you see those elevens uglying up the landscape?” She jabbed a finger toward the armed men ringing the group.

  A thought not her own darted into her brain: Keep them talking!

  Sartora!

  CJ crossed her arms more firmly, straightened her spine, and dug her toes into the sand. “So what do you think these fatheads are good for?” she asked Kitty in her most sarcastic, snide voice. “Holding petunia pots?”

  “Better that than following that stupid girl around who likes to get cities burned just so she can be famous,” Kitty fired back, her eyes now wide.

  “That’s it,” Siamis said encouragingly. “Let’s get to specifics.”

  From behind, one of the Norsundrians guffawed.

  CJ gulped in air. They’re just hanging around. Waiting for . . . what?

  No time to consider. She settled in for the performance of her life. “Kitty,” she said, “it looks to me like you left your mind back home. Or maybe Siamis leaked it out while looking for a replacement for his flat tire of a brain, but before we get to the ‘I am not’ and ‘You are too’—and I can do it longer and louder than ANYONE ALIVE—let me just tell you a few truths about Norsunder. And believe me, I know plenty about just how stupid, cowardly, mud-brained, not to mention slug-nosed they are . . .”

  o0o

  Senrid stared in blank horror from his slate to the evil sheen over the distant Klenal Bay. Then back to the slate.

  Irene Sherwood’s slanted letters still glowed there.

  SARTORA SAYS—SIAMIS IS AT THE BAY, AND HE’S GOT CJ.

  The rift accesses were just where he’d thought, and so was Siamis. What he’d been wrong about was how well his allies could stay out of danger.

  What now, o brilliant one?

  He cursed.

  Dtheldevor snickered.

  Arthur said, “We’re going to have to go back.”

  “We can’t make it in time,” Senrid said furiously. “It’s happening now.”

  Arthur looked around carefully. Nothing was in sight except breeze-tossed cedars, and an old, overgrown orchard whose blossoms carried fragrantly on the wind. In the distance, cotton trees stippled the contours of the hills in neat rows. All peaceful, oblivious to the human dramas.

  Arthur swallowed in a dry throat. “Someone is pacing us,” he said finally—reluctantly. As if speaking the words would give his feeling, so far unproved, reality. “All day. I haven’t seen anyone, but I’ve felt it.”

  Senrid’s eyes had gone narrow as he scrawled on the slate We’re coming. He said, “I think we’re going to have to risk a transfer.”

  o0o

  “Is there an answer?” Liere asked. “Did Senrid say anything?”

  Irene stared fixedly at the slate. “Just ‘We’re coming’.”

  Liere gulped. Her throat hurt. “Not how long it will take?”

  “But they’re a day’s hike away!” Irene wailed.

  The three girls crouched on the edge of the high palisade and peered down at the tiny but recognizable figures in the bay.

  “He might not know that,” Liere whispered. “He doesn’t know this land any more than we do.”

  “What do we do?” Irene whispered, her hands held out wide.

  Liere turned her gaze to the dyr. Her hands trembled, so she stiffened her fingers as she tucked the dyr into its bag. “I know what I have to do,” she said. “But you two better run for help. Go!” She pointed northward, and they fled.

  Liere got up and shoved aside the ferns. She hesitated on the edge of the steep cliff, her heart thumping, then she put her bottom on the ground and began slipping and sliding down the tree-dotted escarpment toward the bay.

  o0o

  Leander stared in bewilderment.

  Siamis seemed to find rare amusement from CJ Sherwood’s unstintingly sarcastic, pungent, and detailed opinions of himself, Detlev, and a number of prominent leaders among the Chwahir. She did not stop with their looks, manners, and brains, but went on to expatiate on their motivations and goals—never once betraying even a vestige of approval. Or repeating herself.

  Leander did not know what to do—action as well as inaction seemed equally dangerous.

  Kyale argued just to be arguing, interpolating insults of her own, but it was CJ who definitely carried the conversation, without pause or repeat.

  It was a wonderful show. Leander, snickering in dizzy helplessness, wondered—if a miracle happened and they escaped this impossible situation with lives and brains intact—whether CJ might let him read her records of these past encounters that she described so vividly.

  Mostly, though, he was acutely aware of the exquisite cruelty of the wait. Once Siamis met his eyes, and though Leander hastily looked down, his laughter dying, the afterimage of that awareness, the superior smile, were burned against the insides of his eyelids like the sun at midday. Siamis could—and would—end this little scene whenever he felt like it, and they both knew what would happen next.

  o0o

  Keep yourself blocked, Liere thought as she ran hard, pressing her hand against her side to minimize the stitch. Don’t try contact. Just stay hidden.

  She stumbled through the sparse trees, her mind homing on the awarenesses gathered . . .

  There.

  She was on the lowest palisade, directly uphill from Siamis and the others. She paused at the edge of a tumbling stream that emptied down into the bay. She tried to catch her breath as she peered between trees down the little gully. No Norsunder guards in sight, except for those ringing the kids. She checked twice. No humans, but lots of hidden wildlife. Including some very big creatures.

  Think. I have no weapons, and I am alone. A diversion . . .

  She moved forward, shaping images in her mind.

  o0o

  Arthur said, “There are wards against the light-magic transfer.”

  Senrid checked, and checked again. There were no wards for the dark-magic transfer.

  It was an open invitation.

  He stared eastward, struggling with the realization that he had guided his friends right into Siamis’s trap. He hadn’t been a step ahead, but behind.

  He was the goal all along, not Evend. Or Winn. Or Oalthoreh. He’d known that Siamis wanted him, had even explained it, and all the kids had agreed, but the context had been some kind of military action, a sortie and capture.

  But that wasn’t Siamis’s way. That wasn’t neat enough, or cruel enough.

  His friends were just bait—he and Liere were the prize.

  “I’ll do the magic,” he said, and did.

  o0o

&n
bsp; Leander felt the moment that the Norsundrians shifted from entertainment to boredom. The two girls had gone from history to the personal. Everyone wants to hear about himself, but no one cares what a couple of brats think about each other.

  Scarcely a heartbeat later the underbrush rattled along the base of the palisade, and a golden, leonine head poked out, yellow eyes staring at Kyale.

  That beast looked a little like her tame lion from home.

  Leander turned to Kyale. She’d seen as well. She stopped talking, blinked, and her vision focused beyond the lion to a glint in the bushes. And then she said in a small voice, “Conrad?”

  CJ whirled around as gray shapes streaked out of the shrubs.

  The Norsundrians were flanked by big gray timber-wolves who waited with unnerving quiet. Not a few. Fifty—or more.

  A small, crimson-faced figure thrashed her way through the shrubbery.

  “Sartora!” Leander yelled. “The hatpin!”

  Now was the time to act. There was no chance of reaching those off-worlders. What would happen if he tried Senrid’s spells? Disintegration in dark magic fire would be better than whatever Siamis had planned.

  Liere ran forward, then stumbled to a halt as a hand clamped with bruising force on Leander’s shoulder and a knife pricked his neck. CJ let out a yell of fright and rage, abruptly cut off as she was held in a similar grip.

  Liere gasped, her eyes wild—but her gaze was not on Leander, or CJ, or even Siamis.

  Leander felt a cold, weird breeze through his bones: dark magic transfer!

  Senrid and the others appeared.

  “Ah, at last.” Siamis smiled in welcome. “You know what comes next,” he said to Senrid, gesturing toward Leander and CJ—who writhed in a guard’s tight grip, her face purple. “The same thing, incidentally, your uncle did to your father with you. Their lives, and if they don’t work, hers.” He indicated Liere. “Your life, just like your father’s, is the price. Make your choice.”

  Leander watched Senrid’s face blanch. “Liar.” His voice cracked.

  “Try me.” Siamis laughed.

  Senrid’s skinny chest heaved, and then he took a step forward, another. And another.

  They all saw it. He was going to give in—trade his life for everyone else’s. Exactly the way his father had traded his own life so that Senrid could live. Senrid’s mouth trembled, his gaze bitter, but he stepped forward deliberately.

  Leander wanted to shout Don’t do it! but when he sucked in a breath, the knife pressed harder into his neck. In impotent horror, Leander was forced to just stand and watch.

  Senrid was almost within Siamis’s reach when Leander became aware of another voice, a husky, old voice, accompanied by the coruscant wind of building power.

  Siamis’s chin lifted.

  From the shelter of a tall pine stepped a white-haired old man.

  “You will not set foot in Bereth Ferian,” Evend said. “And you will make no bridge to damnation here.” He raised his hands, and intoned swift words.

  Leander shivered, his skin prickling at the tremendous surge of magic coalescing. This old man’s voice was the voice he’d heard—

  “As you will,” Siamis said, and he lifted a hand in a casual sign.

  Davernak whipped a hand to his belt, pulled a knife and threw it, all in a swift motion, sending it speeding across the trampled sand to bury hilt deep in the old man’s chest.

  But not before Evend made another sign.

  He staggered, swayed—and vanished.

  So did the green glow arcing over the sky.

  Liere held out the dyr on her hands. Her fingers trembled, her nose ran, her face was slick with sweat, but she locked eyes with Siamis for a long, agonizing moment—and then, quite suddenly, he was gone, he and his Norsundrians.

  Gone.

  Reaction hammered the kids, some falling to the sand, others frozen as the animals vanished, and the endless waves crashed and hissed on the beach.

  Liere gave a sob, and a hiccough. When everyone turned her way, she said numbly, “Evend took their entire rift with him.”

  “He did it,” Arthur whispered. “After everything I said. He did it anyway.”

  Liere went on, “Norsunder wouldn’t back Siamis. Not against that kind of spell. I—I heard him. Heard them. For just a moment.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “The Guardian, and the Geres . . . and . . “ Her voice wavered, and she stiffened. “And all the powers here were willing to back us.”

  Arthur walked over to Kitty, who stood blinking, still holding the silver sword Emeth.

  Arthur took it, and crossed to Liere, passing the place where drops of Evend’s blood still marked the sand, and he handed her the sword.

  Her wrist promptly bent, and the point buried in the sand.

  “You won it,” he said. “Fair and square.”

  Senrid dropped onto a tree stump and put his head in his hands.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “Is it the city? Or me? What is it you object to?” Arthur asked a day later.

  Liere stared at him. Grief still ringed his eyes and pulled his mouth awry even when he seemed to be smiling. She knew very little about Arthur, but she did understand that old Evend had been a better parent to him than her own angry father had even been to her.

  He’d been enough of a parent to keep his plans from Arthur, including ordering his guild of mages busy running around looking like fools to deflect the Norsundrians in a way that camouflaged his great weaving, from old rift to new, covering each and every access. And he’d been enough of a parent to shadow Arthur and Senrid, suspecting Siamis’s plans to entrap them—while he readied his spells.

  And that had meant that Evend could choose the right moment and end it all at once.

  All the northern rift accesses were gone now, and with them Norsunder’s wards and preliminary spells. There was no trace of them in the entire region.

  Liere sat down on one of the fine carved chairs in the little room. “There’s nothing wrong with you, or your city,” she said to Arthur. “I feel like I’m pretending to be something I’m not. And if I ever stop feeling like that, I’ll hate myself.”

  “How do you think I feel?” he countered, hands wide. “‘Prince’ in Bereth Ferian. It’s a stupid title. It means nothing. Evend as king was all right because I was used to it. Every mage in the world was used to it. But the titles don’t mean anything anymore, because not only do I not have any kind of power, I don’t even mean anything, symbol-wise, like he did. Not with all things changing. The mages all want you to be Queen in Bereth Ferian because everyone in the world knows your name—”

  “But they don’t know my name. I am not Sartora.”

  “That’s a symbolic name. Same as the title.”

  “I know. But can’t it be someone else?”

  “It’s just a title,” Arthur pleaded.

  A new voice spoke at the door. “Cowardice, Liere?”

  They turned.

  Senrid sauntered in, his face at its most sardonic, framed by the wild curls he’d sawed at with a knife.

  “You know how I feel,” she said.

  Senrid dropped down into the window seat, overlooking the garden. “You won’t have any real power. All you have to do is put on the old crown from the anti-Venn Empire days, gas on a little about a new era of peace and magic learning, and then start working on reading lessons.”

  Arthur flushed at Senrid’s tone, but he didn’t speak.

  Liere clutched at the bag round her neck as she cut a glance Arthur’s way. “Can I give this dyr thing back to your mother?”

  “Soon’s the southern mages break the spell to free her. Oalthoreh says it’ll require a day at most. Then she’ll come here and take it off your hands.”

  Senrid said, “What else would you do?”

  Liere turned to him.

  “What else?” he repeated. “You said you can’t go back to South End.”

  Liere looked down at her brother’s ruined shoes, wi
th her toes almost broken out the front, and then back at Arthur. “Do you really think it will help?”

  Arthur said firmly, “All the adults think so. They even got a message from Tsauderei, way down in Sarendan. And Queen Yustnesveas as well.”

  Liere closed her eyes. All right, she couldn’t go home, but it wasn’t as if no one wanted her. They did want her, right here, even if it wasn’t Liere Fer Eider they invited.

  But couldn’t they get to know Liere Fer Eider? She wondered if her objections were a form of fakery. “All right,” she said. “But I want that spell. About growing up. I want to stop, so I can learn how to be my age. And I won’t promise to do this queen stuff forever.”

  Arthur sighed in relief. “I’ll go tell the others.” His smile was sad. It made her heart hurt. “The parties will be fun!” He ducked out the door.

  “Thanks,” Liere said to Senrid, who shrugged, then looked out into the garden.

  “The least you can do is listen to me,” he drawled, “since I nearly managed to get us all killed.”

  Liere sighed. “You don’t know that.”

  He turned to face her, but for once, did not get up and prowl around. Yet she could feel how tense he was. “I was outmaneuvered by both of ‘em—Evend and Siamis—and anything else is fart-noise.”

  Liere sighed again, longer and louder. His rudeness was a measure of not just tension, but how upset he was, though he now blocked off his emotions much better than she did. “It was the only way,” she said. “The only way to keep Siamis from sniffing out their plans was to keep his attention on you, and me, and the other kids.”

  “Oh, I know I was a big help. All I had to do was lead everyone to Siamis’s trap so Evend could pull off his magic.” He sounded sardonic again, instead of savage. “I hate how I underestimated everyone,” Senrid went on, and now he got up, and began pacing the length of the small room.

  “Except us.” Liere tried to smile. “You overestimated us.”

  “Since mine were the worst mistakes, I’m not pointing any fingers. The Mearsieans tried to tell me what they can do—” He stopped, shook his head, resumed pacing. “You have a lot to learn. I have a lot to learn. But I have to go home first and throw my uncle out of my land, and if I live through that, I can get busy at my end.”