Banner of the Damned (29 page)
Read Banner of the Damned Online
Authors: Sherwood Smith
“So boiling a pan dry is evil?”
Olnar rubbed his hands together as he squinted up at the statues of ancient writers. “It’s not evil itself, but most of those who use that kind of magic—no safeguards and spending it profligately—use it for evil purposes. And use it faster than nature can replenish it.”
“So light magic doesn’t spend it faster than it can be replaced?”
“Correct—which is where the word ‘light’ comes in, from the sun that returns each day. Light magic is used in small amounts. Bound to the thing being made or protected. Slowly it leaches back into the lake over time. It isn’t burned up, as in a house consumed by conflagration. That’s why all our things need to be respelled over and over.”
“So you go around renewing bridge spells, and road protections, and binding spells on walls and roofs?”
“I have done so,” he said slowly. “All this last year. But I’m training for wards.”
“I hear about wards. At borders. But not what they do.”
“They are invisible walls to keep out specific types of spells.” He made the flat hand gesture once used to negate spywell enchantments. “They can be as wide as a kingdom or as small as a single person.
Kingdom-wide wards are built by a team of mages, working together. Those are the most powerful ones. Except the wards that put things beyond space, which is what banks use.”
I had never thought about banks, for I would never have a fortune to be kept for me. Banks in Alsais are run by a branch of the heralds, their storage all being shifted to magical space.
“And so Norsunder is not just a story to frighten children. It really exists—beyond time and place,” I said, hunching my shoulders when I saw how his mouth tightened.
“Oh, it exists,” he said in a low voice. “And the lords of it really are thousands of years old. And they really do smite you with a thought. But they seldom come into the world we know. We’re taught that the resumption of the pull of time and the weight of existence in the material world exact a cost even on them.”
We’d stopped in the street outside of the Guild. “Oh, I want to hear more. But I do not wish to miss Greveas.”
“Greveas,” he repeated.
“She gets up early—ah-ye! You know her?”
He shrugged. “We met. Look, your selection will require thought and attention. How about we try to meet again when you really are free, before I leave? We can catch up on family news without having to worry about duty.”
Of course I agreed. I gazed after him, wondering if Greveas had been a girl in his life. That was the only explanation I could think of for his sudden change of mind.
F
F
IRE AND
W
ATER
I
You must remember, my darling grandchildren, or grandchildren of my grandchildren—whoever reads this—I cannot know what fashion will decree in heralding the movements of courtiers by the time you are born, but in my day we all had handsome panels that attached to the sides of our coaches, and when we wanted our movements publicly known, the panel was taken off and hung on a hook outside the castle, or palace, or suitable posting inn, proclaiming our presence. On our river and canal barges, the panels hung from the taffrail: the most important in the middle, and the others moving outward by rank and degree.
So you see the picture, my dears? We are at a posting house along the Margren River at Arva, at the very southwest corner of Colend. This is a large affair built of pale, patterned brick and decorative stone, located above Great River Fork, and there along the low roof are all our panels, including that of Princess Lasthavais, and behind the inn are gathered the prettiest coaches we can afford, for it’s here that we will leave the river and start eastward toward home.
Then rides up, in the sort of military formation you only heard
about in very old songs, a group of young men, most with braided hair the color of sunflowers, wearing these plain coats of servant gray that were not cut like anything our servants wear: made tight to their arms and chests, high at the neck, but the skirts long and full, down to the tops of their high blackweave boots. And, oh my dear you would never believe the horses! Riding at the front, all dressed in black except for the golden buckle on his belt, is their leader, who stops his horse and raises his hand.The foremost rider throws a javelin to strike down into the ground before the inn door. Attached to that javelin is a peculiar banner—a length of cloth, all black with a fox face on it—a strange sort of fox that almost looks like a hunting bird, a ruff fanned around its head in petals shaped like flames.
And I knew at the very moment that javelin struck the ground that everything in our lives was going to change.
Hindsight, of course, is always accurate in prediction.
The Countess did not lie. She was there and saw Ivandred’s personal runner throw down the javelin bearing the Montredaun-An fox banner—which had, historically, been the heir’s and was again, now that they were back on the throne of Marloven Hesea.
The Countess, her younger sister Lissais, and Ananda Gaszin had been walking about on a shaded knoll under carefully tended fruit trees, glad to stretch their legs after the long barge journey. Each carried her travel album. On seeing the newcomers they all stopped, the albums’ tassels dancing in the wind as the ladies took in the blue-eyed leader.
The other fellow was not as exotic, though perhaps more dashing; taller, handsome, with a generous smiling mouth, his blond hair worn loose. And he was dressed in the latest fashion: dupion silk woven in green and blue, edged with silver braid.
A short time later Ivandred stood in the center of a spacious chamber, the walls hung in pale green watered silk, the quilt matching, a copper bath in a small room adjacent, with tiled knobs that released magical spells summoning (and later transferring underground) heated water. Ivandred, scrutinizing that bath, was impressed. At home, posting houses and castles had general baths in great pools siphoned off from underground streams, with the water-heating and cleaning spells on them.
“Will it suffice?” asked his cousin, Prince Macael.
Ivandred glanced aside, a hand still on the copper rim. “Fine. I don’t know about that bed, though. Looks like a whole lot of pillows. Stifling.”
“Then sleep on the carpet.” Macael cast himself gratefully into a chair. “No one will know, unless you invite someone in. But you’d better get rid of the day’s sweat and dress for dining, unless you want to lose our wager by offending the princess’s pretty nose.”
Dress for dining. Ivandred reflected on that as his cousin shut himself into the bath. At home they dressed for dining once a year, on New Year Week’s Firstday, after he stood behind his father’s throne and listened to the jarls renew their vows. He wore the same battle tunic every year, handed down from his grandfather.
Ivandred approached the empty fire place and raised both hands, concentrating as he intoned a spell. Heat built behind his eyes, his teeth vibrated, the sense of danger increased rapidly but he pictured the spell held between his outstretched hands, finished the words of power, and—
There! Flames shot up the flue. He clapped his hands lightly and spoke the word of quittance. The flames went out, leaving the acrid tinge of hot stone.
Too slow, he thought as he opened the window, and fresh air off the river scoured out the smoke. If only he had time to practice!
When we first arrived at the inn, Darva had watched Lasthavais’s blue gaze read the salon as if a written record, for she was always kind to those excluded, or troubled in countenance. It was this quality, remarkable in one so young, and not her beauty, that made Darva love the princess.
Lasva was emerging from her bath when Darva called.
When I told Lasva who had requested to see her, she assented, but with that blank smiling countenance that had become painfully familiar. We entered the small outer chamber together.
Darva observed, “The day has been long.”
“The summer has been long. I am grateful for any signs of autumn’s approach,” Lasva was tired enough to admit.
Darva curtseyed. “I told the innkeeper to send for musicians. Until they come, we have been reminiscing over the drawings.”
In other words, Darva promised her a peaceful evening, if she could contrive it.
I was glad. Too many evenings we’d spent shut in, Lasva lost in reverie as I contrived to keep myself busy until it was time to retire.
As for her reverie, here is what she was thinking when she withdrew to dress for the evening and stood looking down at her fans.
How strange
. For a moment she saw the familiar fans as bizarre objects.
I think about which I shall choose and what message that sends, and I use it to say things I cannot voice
. Some things you couldn’t say even with a fan, such as how much she hated Ananda’s angry obsession with the news from Alarcansa.
I’d thought that was idle attraction. Was it more, did Ananda love Kaidas, too?
Lasva thought, her fingers tracing up and down each fan, then back again.
Do we share a grief?
Ananda wrote every day to her cousin in Alarcansa, who was connected to a baron there. It was as if she could not forbear plucking at a healing wound. She insisted on uttering daily bulletins in a wicked voice, mocking Carola and her newly wedded duke with his hair tied back in a white ribbon.
Lasva never answered the slanders or joined the mirth at Carola’s and Kaidas’s expense.
She tried to wish he’d found love, but it was her mind exhorting her heart without effect. She dreaded seeing him again and picked up a fan at random, moving away as if she could leave the familiar pain behind. “Emras, do you have my album? Thank you.”
We walked out, silence between us.
“The dining rooms are that way,” Macael said to Ivandred as they walked downstairs. He pointed with his thumb in one direction, along a carpeted hallway with inlay paneling. “The private ones have closed doors, my man told me. The one at the end, double doors open, is for anyone who didn’t request private dining.”
“Private dining,” Ivandred repeated, entertained by the notion. “If the princess is dining in private then we won’t see her. Why don’t we sup with my riders?”
Macael shook his head. “We should join Nanvo and the boys in the public dining room, and practice our Kifelian. We all need it,” he added.
Ivandred could not argue with that. He’d discovered on the month-long ride north and east that Geral had been right. The language itself was deceptively easy to learn, for it was related to Sartoran. But the way people spoke it was quick, curiously drifting, with convoluted tenses
whose meaning was difficult to grasp without reflection, and word clusters separated by pauses that appeared to convey yet another layer of meaning. In addition to that, these courtiers seemed to sing, almost, the way their voices rose, fell, paused, with drawn-out vowels that sometimes changed notes.
At times, the language seemed less like expression and more like code.
I stepped back to permit Lasva an unimpeded view of the inn’s main salon, which had been hired by the Duchess of Gaszin. Lasva returned bows and curtseys, her fan held open at the neutral Anticipation of Artistic Pleasure, giving a smile and polite word here and there, as she made her way across to the room to the table by the fire.
The focus of this side of the room was Lord Rontande, whom I had quite unreasonably hated ever since he used my desk without asking and hurt Lasva by his ambition. I knew he was no worse than any others, and some said he was better than most. But experience shapes emotion.
His hair was dark again, contrasting with his robes of a subtle straw hue. He was holding forth to Darva’s smiling sister Lissais, another popular lord, and a very bored Ananda, leaving a young lady new to court sitting all alone.