Banner of the Damned (85 page)

Deeply disturbed, I sat right down and wrote a fast response, telling them about the queen’s orders and my subsequent decision to learn magic directly instead of learn about it (thus protecting Tiflis, who got me that book). I explained that my lack of information about my new studies after the death of the king was nothing more sinister than habit, and that I was a beginner, my job to renew the protection spells.

As for Olnar being warded, that was because Marloven Hesea’s border had transfer wards that were fairly old and fairly strong, specifically against mages from the Sartoran Mage Guild. I said that maybe the new king would order those removed, but someone with more skill than I would have to see to the removal.

Wondering if I’d hear from Olnar next, and if he would still scold me for my unorthodox method of learning, I folded my note, opened the case, and discovered another letter.

It was not from Olnar, but from Birdy:

This hit me such a blow I walked out of my room as if physical distance would lessen the pain.

As one does instinctively when emotions are overpowering, I turned toward the light and nearly ran into Lasva, who was walking the hall with the baby clasped in her arms. I had forgotten how she often prowled around, walking back and forth with a fretful baby, so that Marnda could sleep. In those first few months, the young prince was colicky, and Lasva was adamant that he not be left to cry it out.

“Emras,” she exclaimed. “You look like Thorn Gate come again. What is amiss?”

I told her. She followed me to my room, and when I was finished, she said, “Who is this Birdy? Do I know him?”

“You knew him as Herald Martande. Sent back to Colend.”

Lasva gazed at me as she hefted the heavy, slumbering infant up tighter in her arms. “Herald Martande? A lover? You are not
elor?
”

“Not my lover,” I said quickly, for well-drilled in me was the old rule about how royal scribes were never to marry. Even mates were frowned upon, for one’s loyalties must not be divided. But such things no longer mattered. “He’s my friend.”

“I can see he is important to you. I could have kept him here. Why did you not tell me?”

I stared at her, my lips moving. So deep was my training, I could scarcely get out the words
First Rule
.

But she understood. “Emras, I am sorry, most particularly because it seems my sister is right after all. I know how much she resents Sartor and interference, though they use other terms. Even in my earliest visits to Sartor for the music festival, I noticed that ineffable superiority the Sartorans feel for all the rest of the world whose kingdoms are not four thousand years old.”

She hefted the baby again, glanced into his face, and gently laid him on a cushion. He was too deeply asleep to notice. “Ah! Then I can let poor Anhar sleep. She has been up reading to him every night while he cuts these wretched teeth.”

She pressed her fingertips to her forehead and dropped her hands. “If Herald Martande ever wishes to return to us, we will find him a place. I will give orders to that effect.” She looked around again. “While you are on your journey, I will have your things transferred to the mage tower.” She peered into my face and said quickly, “Nothing needs to change, except your experiments probably require more space. And my staff complains of a burning smell, as if cloth were singed, when you have been very busy. I would be honored if you would continue the fan practice with me, just as usual, on your return, and you may always eat with us.”

She left me feeling ambivalent about the prospective change. My resentment of Sartor’s officiousness annoyed me so much that I decided I owed them no explanations. I had never made any oaths to them. The only promise I made was to alert Greveas via the toe ring if I ever discovered any Norsundrian influence. That promise I would keep—though I didn’t know how much good it would do, if Sartor’s mages couldn’t transfer into the kingdom.

L

I lifted my pen, scribe training prompting an objection to my tone. Duty did not require an opinion.

Would Lasva really want to read the details? I was grateful to her for having assigned Anhar to see to my needs. Lasva had told the Marloven runners that only a Colendi understands the little habits and rituals that make life comfortable for another Colendi. But even the most skilled poet would struggle to make the grubby details of travel interesting.

Nor would I write about the tedium of repeating the road spell for throwing off snow, as Ivandred had requested. So I ended that letter with an apology for its brevity, reminding her that I was keeping exact records of each spell for the Chief Herald. I could copy it for her if she wished.

The following night I was surprised to discover a letter from her in my scrollcase when we halted for the night.

Ah-ye, was she still thinking of my having hidden my mage studies? But she was never petty.

She wanted more details, but how could I give her what I did not have? By describing exactly how the Marlovens did their best to shut me out and otherwise limit me?

The Jarlan of Marthdaun sent an honor guard—everyone dressed in their formal colors—to meet us at the city gate. The jarlan herself met us at the castle gate, a tall, weather-beaten woman of some forty years. She walked at my horse’s bridle to their enormous stable, where the jarl waited to greet me. He seemed tall, though when I dismounted he was not much above my own height, but so massive was he through the chest and arms that he seemed like a mountain on legs.

“The young king speaks well of you, Sigradir,” he said. His voice was low and rough as gravel.

Then this imposing couple closed in on either side of me to conduct me up the stone steps into a typical castle, opening into a great hall, which led off to smaller chambers.

There, with rather intimidating ceremony, they offered food and drink. As we partook, they enumerated the things that needed magical reinforcement.

When we rose, there was no conversation, or even an offer of a bathe or a rest. They clearly expected me to get right to it. So I did.

Most of what needed doing I had already done on an earlier visit for
emergency repairs. As before, I added extra layers, repeating the spells until my head buzzed and specks swam across my vision. My intention was to ensure that no matter how much use these various things saw, there would be no need for a mage for at least ten years. I did not want to make this arduous journey again anytime soon.

When I could do no more, there was another meal waiting. I stared down at those wide, shallow dishes full of steaming rice, sweet-pepper fish, cabbage rolls, and rye biscuits, and swallowed convulsively, unable to speak.

“She needs to bathe and lie down,” came Anhar’s voice.

The jarlan, who had been with me every step of the way, returned a noncommittal answer, and soon I floated in the bath, my eyes closed, as Anhar’s fingers smoothed the knotted wires around my head, my jaw and neck, and my cramped hands. Oh, the relief! I wondered idly if her clever hands, so sensitive to the hidden pain in muscles and nerves, made sex into an art, and I thought, of course they do. The vivid image of her lying with Birdy imprinted against my eyelids, but absent was that small ball of disgust at the notion. All I felt was gratitude that he found that elsewhere, and the sense of our abiding bond, like being aware of the sun lying below the rim of the world before Daybreak. Love—from the devouring intimacy of sex to the undemanding touch of tenderness—is as mysterious as magic.

“What was that?” Anhar said.

“Did I speak aloud?” I discovered I had the strength to respond. “What you do… is magic.”

She laughed, a soft sound. “It’s training. Like your own.”

“It feels like magic to me,” I said idly as I climbed out of the bath.

I did not think anything more of it as I employed what little strength I’d regained to record each spell I’d performed. The strict accounting, which I was to turn over to the Chief Herald, was a part of the king’s fulfillment of his vows.

Thinking about how I, at my extreme distance, thus functioned as an extension of the king’s will, I crawled at last into the bed and fell into profound sleep.

I woke to Anhar singing the carillon pattern of the Hour of Leaf. As well that only two tasks remained, for it was clear from the way that the jarl and jarlan gravely thanked me after I finished that there would be no relaxing, no sharing of entertainment, no extra night of rest. I was expected to move on.

Once again the formal farewell, a reverse of our arrival: the jarl and
jarlan walked me to the stable; the jarlan, as commander of castle life, paced beside my horse to the castle gate, and an honor guard accompanied my own guard to the city gates, the lancers exchanging last conversations with their friends among the Marthdaun guards. As we galloped away, I had the distinct sense that we couldn’t be gone fast enough.

Once we were out of sight of the city and had slowed to a more comfortable walk, I was so irritable about the prospect of an aching night on the ground when I could just as well have slept in a bed, and so mindful of the total lack of conversational detail to report to Lasva, that I observed to Anhar, who was riding next to me, “They might have invited us to stay the night.”