Glyphbinder (7 page)

Kara squeezed his hand before letting go.

“A Lunyr apprentice can hire out in Mynt,” Halde continued, “and a Solyr apprentice can hire out in Tellvan. There are only so many teachers available. Border skirmishes will never change that.”

“This Prince. Beren.” Trell focused on what memories he did have. “I remember him. He may remember me. Would he grant me an audience?”

“The Leader of Armies has returned to Tarna.”

“How far is that?”

“Our capital city is just under a week’s ride, and I must be clear. If you did fight for Tellvan, and Prince Beren knows this, you will be taken as a prisoner of war.”

Trell imagined a prison made of gray bricks and rusting metal bars. He imagined dripping water and rats. He tasted stale bread and slept on hard stone and all of it, every indignity and slight, was preferable to the alternative. To a life without a past.

“Dangerous as it might be,” Trell said, “Prince Beren may be the only person who can tell me who I was. I will go to Tarna. I must have my life back.”

“Your determination is admirable. In exchange for your care here, I would ask you a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Kara is planning a journey to Tarna soon, where she will apply for the position of royal apprentice. I don’t want to send either of you on such a long journey by yourself, not in a time of open war. I would like you to make the journey together.”

“I would be honored. So long as you have no objections, Kara?”

Kara smiled at him, and it made him feel warm all over. “No objections at all, provided you can leave tomorrow. My plans are rather set in stone at the moment.”

“Tomorrow, then?” Halde asked.

Trell tested the thick sore muscles of one arm. They worked. “I will be fit to travel by midday.”

“Excellent,” Halde said. “I’ll have horses ready.”

This was a good deal. Trell would have been hesitant to travel alone even at full strength. He doubted he could even navigate to Tarna without Kara’s help.

“I must leave you now.” Halde was now standing by the door, but Trell could not remember seeing him move. “Rest. Apprentice, I will see you before you leave tomorrow.”

“Yes, respected elder.” Kara bowed her head, and Trell remembered to do likewise. When he looked up, Halde had vanished.

“Busy day!” Kara plopped back down on his bed. “So it looks like we’re taking you to jail. Traitor. I promise I’ll visit.”

“Kara, tell me something. Why do you trust me?”

“What?”

“All signs point to me being Tellvan. It’s very likely I was injured fighting the people of your province, yet you spoke for me without hesitation. What made you do that?”

Kara laughed, but it felt forced. “I’m a good judge of people, and I don’t judge you a threat.”

“I would not hurt you or this academy.”

“Look at you, fussing like a mother hen! I believe you. One way or another, we’ll get you to Tarna. We’ll get your memory back.”

“Thank you. For your part in saving my life, your trust, and your vow to help me.”

“See? It’s as easy at that.” She rose. “Now I’d best shove off. You need sleep. You look like you’re about to collapse right on the bed.” She raised an eyebrow. “Or on me.”

“I am tired. So. Tomorrow?”

“I look forward to it. Halde’s favor is not an imposition?”

“No.” Trell collapsed in the warm space Kara had vacated. “It is the least I can do for one who has done so much for me.”

“You’re sweet.” Kara squeezed his arm. “Five guard your soul.”

“Five guard your soul.” Trell heard the sliding panel open, then close. His bed swayed and rocked like a river had swept it up. His head pounded. The panel slid open once more.

“Are you ready to sleep?” Landra asked softly.

Trell nodded.

“Then relax. I must scribe a few more healing glyphs. They will help you regenerate your strength and ready your body for tomorrow’s journey. Allow your mind to drift.”

Trell abandoned his struggle to remember. He let his mind go. Sleep took him the moment Landra’s hands touched his skin.

KARA HURRIED UNDER the freestanding arch leading into the Memorial Garden. Little bigger than four student rooms put together, the garden nevertheless held life of great beauty. Purplish ivy, glowing with the light it had stored during the day, wrapped around the shimmering mage stone columns at each of the garden’s four corners. Kara had known she would find Halde here.

Boxed rows of roses and sweet-smelling honeysuckle bordered the garden. White tile with inset diamonds of obsidian led to its center, where a single white marble monolith stood alone. It bore the names of all Solyr mages who had given their lives to thwart the enemies of Mynt. Halde sat in front of it.

“Well?” Kara asked softly. “What’s our course?”

Kara stopped beside him and ran her eyes across many names, stopping on the ones she recognized: Lared, Cantrall, Torn. She knew their names, stories, and deeds as well as she knew her own. Torn’s legacy, ending the All Province War, would live for all time.

Halde said nothing. Kara settled herself cross-legged by the memorial, beside him, and leaned back to rest her hands on the cool tile. “Visiting Cantrall?”

“It is an odd time to think upon him, isn’t it? I haven’t been here in more than two years.”

“That’s not odd at all. I’m sure he knows the responsibilities you face in running this academy. If anything, he’d want you to get back to work.”

“Sometimes, I wish you’d known him better.”

Kara winced. Halde’s twin brother had been burned alive ten years ago, murdered in an inferno of hostile phantom fire that no mage had yet traced. Cantrall had died, shrieking, before his brother’s eyes. The gruesome sight had thrown a Selection Day ceremony into chaos and sent vengeful Solyr mages riding to all corners of the Five Provinces, searching for answers. They searched for years. No one found anything.

Cantrall had been the initial point of contact for the fledgling students at Solyr, guiding them all with firm and steady hands as they scribed their first glyphs. Cantrall had taught them how to take the dream world. He had been a kind man and a taciturn leader with a sense of humor similar to Halde’s, and many still missed him.

In the ten years since Cantrall had died there had been no resolution, no claim of responsibility. There had been no peace for anyone. Scribing his name on this monument was the only comfort Halde had. Though Halde had hidden it long and well, Kara knew his memory of his twin burning haunted him to this day.

“I’m going to be blunt with you, elder,” Kara said. “I don’t like lying to Trell. He didn’t lose his memory by banging his head on some rock. When he found me, there was a battlemage right on his heels. If something happened to his memory out there, if that mage did something to wipe it away, we should tell him.”

“I do not dispute that,” Halde said. “Yet from your description of the dream lines involved, I cannot really tell him anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“His selective amnesia does seem unlikely, but glyph-wrought? Landra is the best Bloodmender at this academy, and she’s found no trace his mind was tampered with.”

“His memory’s the least of it. When I first met Trell, he was moving like the walking dead.”

“I know of only two types of glyphs that could account for the green lines you saw. The first has not been seen since the All Province War, and cannot guide the living. The second…” Halde glanced at her. “You are certain those dream lines were green?”

Kara opened her mouth and then hesitated. “Right. I might have been seeing things. I was anemic when I took the dream world, and most color was gone … but that green was bright as day, cloaking his dream form as he fought those wolves.”

Halde sighed, and Kara only then noticed his drawn face, the bags under his eyes. She had never seen him so tired. She wasn’t sure what to think about this new Halde. He seemed … broken.

“Kara, I don’t doubt you. I just don’t know what to tell you.”

The admission surprised Kara, but it only increased her respect for him. Elder Halde might be one of the most powerful people at Solyr, but he knew his limits. Even elders had days when they didn’t want to get up in the morning.

“I appreciate you even trying.” Kara looked to the monument. “Yet one thing I don’t doubt is the five-sided stars inside those graybacks. They were sent to kill us.”

“Beastly madness is a simple glyph. Tellvan battlemages have taken animals as familiars in many battles, yet you must understand how this is different.”

“I’m not quite sure I do.”

“If a battlemage from Lunyr really tried to kill you, in direct violation of the Tassau treaties, and if we prove it … that requires a response.”

Kara swallowed. So she was to be responsible for reprisals, now? War between the academies?

“The Tellvan have struck directly at Layn Keep,” Halde said, “and skirmishes are occurring everywhere along the border. We haven’t seen such fighting for seventy years.”

Kara had not seen Cantrall die, herself, but she had heard the stories countless times from others. Cantrall’s screams as he roasted. The smell of cooked meat and smoke. She focused on Halde, on the world she knew. A world that was sane.

“We won’t war with other academies. The Lunyr elders follow Torn just like us, and Torn demanded we remain above conflict before he left to close the gates at Terras. Only after apprenticing may we take sides.”

“Do you remember his words, Kara?”

She did. She quoted Torn from memory. “No matter the wars between our provinces, our schools must stand above their fighting. We are the ones who stand between our world and the demons who would devour it. We form the wall against the Mavoureen. Our academies must never fight among themselves again.”

Halde smiled. “They were good words, and I still believe them. But do our rulers?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Our world has been turning toward the Underside in the last decade, every day since my brother burned alive. Tellvan claims Mynt invaded first, killed their people and burned their villages. You remember those claims, don’t you?”

Kara felt a deepening chill. “Rain said the same thing. That we attacked them. That’s why they rebelled.”

“Rain is scarcely a fourth as big as we are. Tellvan is twice our size and its army is the best in the Five Provinces. We will not best them in an open war. If our rulers grow desperate for power, if they defy our council and enlist the help of Demonkin—”

“Respected elder!” What Halde suggested was perverse. Obscene. Just saying it out loud made Kara want to scrub herself off.

“Am I frightening you?”

“Drown me, yes. But … if the magic schools do not discover why we’re turning toward the Underside, why your brother died, who will?”

“That was what we thought as well. Yet we have no leads. We have discovered nothing. You can imagine how frustrating that is.”

“The Demonkin can’t rise again. We won’t allow it, and King Haven would never stand for something like that.”

“You do know your post in Tarna would not be a mere training exercise?”

Kara knew exactly what Halde meant, and she did not like how it made her feel. Like a traitor. “You know I’d do anything for you. But I’d make a horrible spy.”

Halde chuckled softly. “I’m more interested in a mediator. We’ve had little contact with Adept Anylus since he and King Haven broke with Solyr’s wishes by going to war with Rain. We need a dialogue. We
must
know if they decide to take rash action again.”

Kara frowned at that. “I’d not been aware that the elders disagreed with our decision to attack Rain.”

“Few are. It would be poor judgment to appear divided to the other provinces. Anylus will have insight into the conflict between Mynt and Tellvan, and he may know something of why our world’s turning to the Underside. He was one of our most talented Soulmages, for a time.”

“You knew Anylus?”

“We trained together. I once considered him a dear friend.” Halde stood and straightened his robes. “Until I met you, I considered him the most talented mage I had ever known.”

Kara’s cheeks burned as she turned her eyes to the white tiles. “I’ll do all I can to persuade him to help.”

“You certainly will. I plan to include the details of what you witnessed, regarding Trell, in a letter you will carry to Anylus. Now, about Trell. You trust him?”

“With my life.” Kara hopped up and only then realized she and Halde were the same height. When had that happened? “He fought beside me with a bleeding head and a broken leg. He was ready to die for me. He can’t be our enemy.”

“I’m glad we agree. I would not send him with you if I believed he was a threat, but I want you to watch him closely during your journey. Give Anylus your thoughts.”

“I don’t like it. Keeping Trell in the dark about this. But it’s not the first time I’ve done something I didn’t like.” She felt herself smile. “A feeling I’m sure you know well.”

“I’ll expect a full report from Tarna when you arrive.”