The Border

by A. H. Lee

  “You left the country?” asked Sairis with interest.

  “Far behind,” said Marsden. “I went south. We weren’t at war with Zolsestron yet. Hastafel was probably doing the same thing Jonas was doing—learning how to use his new power. The royal family was still alive and in marginal control. They had a dragon problem near the border with Bethsaria—a creature who’d been living there for ages, but had gotten more aggressive since the Sundering. They paid me a handsome sum to help. I had some skill with fire magic, which is useful when dealing with dragons.

  “After that adventure, I crossed into Bethsaria and lived peacefully for a few years until I felt I was thinking properly again. When my money ran out, I offered beauty charms and illusions. I have a kind of magic that is easy to sell.

  “At last, I got restless and took a ship to the Cloud Lakes and the islands beyond. Few ships sail the Shattered Sea now, and even fewer took the risk back then. The crew were all magicians of one stripe or another, risking their lives for knowledge and fortune. Every day there was something new—little crabs that fell from the sky and sang in many voices, a great serpent, giant rays that breached the sea like whales. Jellyfish in the shape of wild dogs climbed over our bows one night and hunted us through the ship with deadly venom in their touch, only to melt into a gelatinous mess at dawn. I saw naiads, a bird that might have been a phoenix, and mermaids. One day we sailed into a fog and passed an island that everyone insisted did not exist and would cease to exist again the moment the fog lifted.

  “When I reached the Cloud Lakes, I made my way to the forests of Karth, where the trees are coming to consciousness. From the highest mountain, I glimpsed what remains of the island kingdom of Suel at the center of the caldera in the very heart of the Shattered Sea. Something malevolent lives there now, and the locals have taken to calling it the Shrouded Isle. What was once a rich kingdom is partially sunken and wholly abandoned to the new magic.”

  He lapsed into silence. Roland wondered what it would be like to visit so many strange places. They seemed impossibly far away.

  Marsden shook himself. “I lived abroad for a decade. I did not think I would ever return to Mistala. From time to time, I heard news or rumors from my homeland. Things seemed to have gotten worse: brief civil wars brutally crushed, outlaw bands, unrest among the gentry. I heard the king had taken conservative counsel, that he was hanging magicians. I told myself that no one I knew could be suffering, that Jonas was long dead, lost to his own magic, beguiled by the River. Then I heard that the peasants had a champion—a necromancer who was raising corpses as fast as the king could make them. I hoped it wasn’t Jonas, but...I knew.

  “When I heard that Arnoldo had been crowned, that he intended to pardon the magicians of Mistala and ask for their help...I couldn’t stay away any longer. I suspected I would have the greatest chance of improving the situation if I returned with my family name behind me. I decided to assume the identity of one of my male cousins who’d been traveling the islands on the day of the Sundering and was presumed dead. No one in Mistala had seen either myself or the lost cousin in years. So I borrowed his name, and I told them I’d developed magical aptitude during the Sundering. I said I’d not returned home for fear of execution. It wasn’t even far from the truth.”

  Roland couldn’t help but marvel at the audacity. “That’s quite a roundabout homecoming.”

  Marsden shrugged. “It certainly felt strange. I resumed the highborn identity I’d discarded when I ran off to marry a necromancer. I was one of the first Mistalan magicians to come out of hiding—less cautious, I suppose, since I hadn’t been dodging the king’s justice for years. Arnoldo accepted my service. Others followed. We set about comparing notes, trying to understand how to combat the new magic.

  “We didn’t have much time. Chireese was practically a city-state amid a hostile, starving countryside. The military that had once patrolled our borders was patrolling our own streets. Castles that had once offered protection, culture, and commerce to surrounding farms and villages now stood like grim jailers, prepared to enforce the law with brutal efficiency at the slightest sign of disobedience. And still the land withered and the dead walked and the necromancer known as Karkaroth held sway in a tower that you could see from the parapets of Chireese on a clear day.

  “The only reason Mistala hadn’t been overrun by its neighbors was that they were dealing with similar problems. I didn’t think that would be true for much longer. Arnoldo needed to get the situation under control at once. Unfortunately, he was having a devil of a time convincing the old guard that embracing magic was a good idea, let alone inviting magicians to share counsel and fight with Mistalan troops. We needed a swift victory—a demonstration that his new clemency was the right decision. So I sat down with my fellow magicians, and I told them everything I had learned in my travels—about magic, about necromancy, about death.”

  Sairis spoke with a note of acid in his voice. “Did you tell them you knew their enemy intimately?”

  “No.” There was a long pause, during which Marsden seemed to decide whether to respond to Sairis’s tone. Then he continued without emotion, “I told them that we needed to cut off the necromancer from sources of magic. If nothing lived in the wood, nothing could die there. Wards would prevent him from drawing on the surrounding countryside. We needed to empty the town of Arabis.”

  “You murdered the town of Arabis,” muttered Sairis.

  Marsden shook his head. “I’m not going to litigate this with you, Sairis. I told the king what it would take to stop Karkaroth. I was not part of the decision process that followed.”

  “The people of Arabis were in thrall to the necromancer,” said Roland cautiously. “At least...that’s what I was always told.”

  “Arabis hadn’t paid taxes in years,” said Sairis. “They were eating regularly. I suppose you could call that thrall.”

  “I’m not sure that he hadn’t bound them,” said Marsden. “Arabis had become a strange place. It was said that even if you cut the head off one of those people, they still walked. Anyway, I wasn’t present when the army went to clear out the town. The people were supposed to be removed to western settlements that were being rebuilt. They were not supposed to be harmed. Indeed, I warned the king that deaths within the town would give power to his enemy. However, the removal went poorly. The people fought, and the bodies were burned immediately before they could rise. The whole town burned. So many deaths within his territory must have given Jonas an enormous burst of power. It certainly inclined him to vengeance.”

  Roland knew what came next. “The plague,” he whispered.

  “He didn’t do that,” said Sairis. “Dirty water, famine, and unsanitary conditions did that.”

  Marsden ignored him. “The summer brought a plague the likes of which no one had ever seen. People were well one morning, dead by nightfall. They died in the city. They died in the countryside. And wherever Jonas had gotten some hold over them, they walked.

  “Chireese was besieged. The barons would claim later that messages asking for help never reached them. I think they were just afraid to come. When it became clear that the city could not hold out until the likely relief of winter, King Arnoldo declared that he would lead an assault upon the tower himself—a decision that would forever gild him in the eyes of his people.”

  Roland remembered that summer of his tenth year. He remembered the sweltering heat, the mind-numbing terror of the plague, the absurd and useless preventatives they’d all taken, and the steady disappearances among the staff. He’d crawled into Daphne’s bed one night—a thing he hadn’t done since he was six. She’d comforted him just like Mother used to do in his dream-like memories. She hadn’t scolded him, not even when he’d wet the bed, and they’d had to get up and change the sheets in the small hours. “I’m afraid of the necromancer,” he’d whispered.

  “Father will beat him,” she’d said.

  Father had ridden out that morning with the last of the healthy soldie
rs and Mistala’s handful of royal magicians. Everyone had whispered that the magicians were hand-in-glove with Karkaroth, but Father didn’t agree. He had ordered the gates barred behind him, and the sound of that bar falling into place had echoed in Roland’s nightmares for years. He’d squeezed the blood from Daphne’s hand, weeping, while she stood dry-eyed, but never letting go of his smaller fist.

  “We fought our way to the tower,” said Marsden. “Somehow. We magicians warded the tower while the soldiers died to protect us. We knew we’d done something right when the dead started to drop. We’d cut them off from their source of purpose.”

  “What would you have done if he’d come out?” asked Sairis.

  Marsden’s eyes were fixed on something far away. “I don’t know.” After a moment, he added, “He didn’t. The soldiers tried to burn the tower. I told them it wouldn’t work. I said we needed to increase the warded area, draw off all the magic we could, and seal it up. We did our best while the soldiers created quite the bonfire.

  “The king returned in triumph, with the tower smoking on the horizon and the dead around Chireese dropping like puppets with their strings cut. He was a hero. The soldiers were heroes. Even we magicians were suddenly heroes.

  “There was no time to throw our own victory banquet, of course. Arnoldo kept the fires at the foot of Karkaroth’s tower burning night and day so that the necromancer could not emerge. We magicians widened and strengthened the wards, eventually taking them all the way to the edges of Karkaroth’s lands and sinking them deep in stone.

  “That fall, soldiers dammed the Parabola River and spread spelled salt through the forest. They made repeated attempts upon the tower, but they could not do more than blacken its walls, and no one could find an entrance. I did not want to have a direct confrontation with Jonas. I wasn’t sure he was even awake...or alive in any traditional sense of the word. I thought he might be wandering the Styx, intoxicated with his magic, binding ghosts and sending them back to the world to cause trouble. In the end, he did not come out, and no one could get in.

  “Meanwhile, the king made the infinitely prudent decision to pardon the treason of every peasant and baron who’d misbehaved during his father’s reign. He declared them to have been ‘under the influence of necromancy.’ This unexpected act of benevolence changed the attitude in the countryside. The king ordered the royal grain reserves rationed out to the entire populace and followed this with a flash raid on Falcosta. Arnoldo managed to seize lands taken from Mistala a generation before. Those lands had functioning farms and food stores. The country was able to stave off starvation long enough for the hard-won peace to have an effect. Overnight, Arnoldo went from a king who seemed likely to die in his own capital, unaided and unmourned, to a hero so popular that he could walk unescorted through the grimmest streets in the country without fear.”

  Sairis gave a bitter laugh that Roland suspected he’d been holding for some time. “He blamed Karkaroth for everything from the plague to the behavior of the peasants. Then he robbed his neighbors.”

  Marsden let out a long-suffering sigh. “Having lived in both the world of the walking dead and the world of lawful order, I can tell you that I very much prefer order, even when it comes with some hypocrisy. The people of Mistala were not better off when the fields burned and the plague ran riot. And as for Falcosta, the border has changed hands so many times it’s difficult to say where those towns belong. And it was that or starve.”

  “It’s no wonder Norres hated you all,” said Sairis.

  Marsden looked at Roland. “Because of what we’d done in the war, magic was legal again. And a number of other things besides.”

  Roland said nothing. He had a sense of history pressing down on him, saddling him with complexities, obligations, and regrets that he hadn’t chosen and didn’t want.

  Sairis spoke into the silence. “It’s a good thing you all had a villain to help you pull together. Otherwise, I don’t know how you would have begun treating each other like human beings.”

  Chapter 20. Pigeon

  Yesterday Sairis had enjoyed the fact that riding double required so much physical contact. Now he wished it didn’t. He just wanted some space for himself—a moment alone. Or maybe a lifetime. The world has only one role for people like us, Karkaroth had said to him once. If you don’t want to play that role, stay in the tower.

  Marsden and Roland were talking about Arnoldo’s border wars, about the king’s brothers, about the barons. Sairis let the conversation wash over him. He stared out over the wilds of Zolsestron and wondered whether the world had had only one role for Hastafel, too.

  “Sairis?” He turned. He had no idea what they’d been saying.

  “I really would like to know how he’s doing,” said Marsden.

  You don’t deserve to know. “He’s sick.”

  Sairis had no intention of elaborating, but then Marsden said, “Because of the wards?”

  Sairis couldn’t stop himself from snapping, “Yes, of course because of the wards! He can’t get enough magic to heal himself properly, and he won’t go out looking for it—not anymore. He sleeps and spirit-walks. Sometimes I can’t tell which.”

  Marsden was silent for a long moment. “I tried, you know. Two years after we took the wood. I was setting up the school. I had married Sophia. I was happy for the first time in a long time, and I hated to think that he wasn’t. I had the ear of the king, and I thought I might be able to negotiate some kind of pardon, perhaps in secret. Especially since we were hearing of such alarming events in Zolsestron. I thought maybe Jonas could help.”

  “Would you have put a collar on him?” asked Sairis bitterly. He tried to imagine his master submitting to such a thing. He couldn’t.

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t come down. I folded a message into a paper dart and sent it through a high window with a bit of magic. No answer. I thought for a while that he had died or fled the country. But over the years, a stream of knights, bounty hunters, and adventure-seekers made attempts upon the tower. They frequently did not return. A few magicians tried. One of them managed to unmask the door. The spells that protected the tower were not being fully repaired and they deteriorated over time. Jonas was weak inside the wards. I wondered why he didn’t leave, but...he was born in Arabis, and I don’t think he’d gone more than twenty miles from home in his entire life. Magicians are territorial. We can easily become inflexible—ruinously attached to specific places and sources of power.”

  “He has gone more than twenty miles from home,” muttered Sairis. “My town was at least fifty miles away.”

  Marsden looked at him curiously. “People often claim to have seen Karkaroth or his creatures in towns or on roads near his wood, although one never knows what to believe. About ten years ago, they started mentioning an apprentice, and that was...surprising to me.”

  Sairis let the silence stretch. At last, Roland said, “How did you come to be with him, Sair?”

  “I’m sure it’s not your turn to ask a question.”

  Silence.

  “I was five when my schoolhouse caught fire,” Sairis said. “Everyone who managed to make it out was badly injured. Ten children, including my older brother. They died one-by-one over the next two weeks. I got better.”

  Marsden grimaced. “I assume you got much better.”

  “Healed without scars,” agreed Sairis. “Everyone said I killed them—that I’d been visited by a faerie or a demon, and I’d made a bargain with it, trading their lives for unnatural powers. Witch, they said, or changeling.”

  Sairis had known for some time that he would eventually tell this story. He had resolved to do it simply and quickly—like pulling a splinter from a finger. The pain had mostly leached away over the years anyhow. Or so he thought until one of Roland’s hands shifted from the horse’s reins to settle over Sairis’s, trapping it against the warmth of Roland’s stomach. Sairis was amazed at the way this made his eyes prickle. I have built all my defenses against cruelty and none
at all against kindness! He was actually relieved by Marsden’s presence. He was certain that pride would not allow him to weep in front of Marsden.

  “You didn’t kill them,” said the older man. “You drew magic from their deaths, which your body used to heal itself. But you didn’t kill them.”

  Sairis shrugged. “Everybody said I did. And for a long time I believed them. The village council put an iron collar on me, had it welded shut, and chained me to a wall in the speaker’s basement. I thought my parents would come to save me, but they didn’t. As far as I know, they didn’t even try. They loved my brother, and maybe they were afraid I would kill my other siblings.” Roland squeezed his hand, and Sairis did his best to ignore it.

  “I learned to spirit-walk down there in the dark. For two years, ghosts were my only companions. Then one day, Karkaroth walked into the basement and took me away. He was the first living person who’d treated me like a human being since the fire. He was kind, and he certainly didn’t have to be. The village sold me to him like a hog to a butcher. I think they expected him to sacrifice me as a source of magic. Gods know he needed it inside those wards.”

  Marsden gave an indignant sputter. “I knew people were trading with Jonas for supplies and small favors, but I had no idea...!”

  Sairis waved his hand. “It was fifteen years ago, and the village is in Lamont now.”

  Roland’s thumb traced the inside of Sairis’s index finger, ran round a knuckle. Sairis had the desperate notion that no matter how hurt or angry he felt, he would never have the willpower to pull his hand away from Roland Malconwy.