A Posse of Princesses (25 page)

Rhis couldn’t figure out why Jarvas had said
what he’d said. Did he mean her ill? She’d been the most afraid for
Taniva, royal descendant of this king’s worst enemy. But so far,
the king seemed reasonable.

Besides, she refused to lie, unlike Some
People.

She lifted her chin. “Rhis of Nym.”

The king pushed his chair back. It squeaked
on the flagstones, making several people wince. “
You
are?
You
are
?” He began to laugh.

Jarvas sighed softly just behind Rhis as the
king got to his feet and approached them. He was even bigger than
Rhis had imagined. She fell back an uncertain step or two as the
king approached, grinning down at her. “You are? By all that’s
rich—and that means your father. Jarvas!” He swung around. “You can
put all these over in the garrison prison. The guest cells.” He
chuckled as he wagged his hand at Shera, Taniva, and Yuzhyu.
“Including that one—” He jerked his thumb at Iardith.

“What?” she snapped. “I told you, I agreed to
your marriage terms. You only have to get my father to agree—”

“Your father,” the Damatran king retorted,
“is as poor as a miller in a drought. You might have been good for
a cushion alliance, but that’s it. This little thing—” He flicked
Rhis’s hastily made, lopsided braid. “—comes from a land that might
be as big as an ink blot on the map, but Nym is richer then
Arpalon, Gensam, and the High Plains together! Maybe even as rich
as Vesarja. Who knows? Though I mean to find out! She goes into the
guest tower, boys. We want her comfortable, we want her safe. Very
safe. If she gets down those stairs past you, every one of you will
wish you’d chosen to be bricklayers before you die.” He laughed
again, somehow sounding both jolly and quite heartless. “Don’t
forget writing implements. Her father is going to pay a smacking
good bride price, or an even bigger ransom! She can think about her
choice while uninterrupted.” He swung around and glared at Iardith.
“You, we’ll get rid of as soon as I squeeze that strutting rooster
of a father of yours. Hah!”

Rhis looked around, dazed. Taniva winced,
Iardith looked cold and unconcerned, Shera’s eyes had filled.

Jarvas lifted a shoulder, as if to say: I
warned you.

Rhis’s eyes stung as the guards advanced.

Just before they closed around her, Yuzhyu
stepped close. “Remember, Lios comes,” she whispered.

Oh, wouldn’t
that
make things much
better! Remembering with painful clarity what she had said to Lios
the last time she saw him, Rhis felt the tears burn down her cheeks
as she was marched away.

She was shut up alone in Iardith’s old room.
Right behind her (and her comet-tail of guards) came a row of
servants to whisk away Iardith’s belongings. As she watched three
servants pack up and carry all those dresses and accoutrements, she
wondered if Iardith was the best-equipped abducted princess in
history.

The bed was changed, the silver ewer
refilled, the basin cleaned.

Nobody spoke to Rhis, who dumped her
saddlebag at her feet and sat on a hassock out of their way. She’d
thought once about trying a dash for the door—then remembered the
guards. A quick peek at the half-open door revealed at least half a
dozen brawny fellows—each carrying a sword or spear—crowded onto
the tiny landing or standing on the stairs, all peering in with
serious faces.

Rhis remembered what that horrible king had
promised—they’d all be killed if she got past them down the
steps—so she sat tight, hands on her knees until they left, the
door shutting with a thud, and the lock tumbling.

Rhis stood up and took a look around. The
cell was quite spacious, a perfectly round room, the walls behind
two pretty tapestries (imported, from the style, all the way from
Charas al Kherval) built of the light gray stone she’d admired from
the bridge what seemed a thousand years ago.

The windows were arched like all the rest.
Below them was a sheer drop to the stones far below.

She glanced at the bed, then sighed. This
tower was the highest point in the entire city. How many bed sheets
would it take, all tied together, to reach the ground? Say . . .
100? 150? And all she had were two.

Not even being left with the magical silver
basin with its water that heated up cheered her. It was obviously a
precious gift since the Damatrans had no resident mages—but Rhis
just saw it as evidence that she’d stupidly made herself a prize in
the king’s game, rather than a rescuer of a princess she didn’t
even like. She sat on a hassock, chin in hands, feeling thoroughly
sorry for herself.

That only lasted a short while. She was too
mad to get in a good self-pity wallow: also, much as she disliked
Iardith, and the king of Damatras, she knew most of her mistakes
were her own.

She simply had to think of a way out.

She moved to the windows, surveying escape
possibilities. She peered at the right, beyond the geometric jumble
of towers and crenellated walls. Through the back window was the
waterfall thundering into the river, white water rushing upward. As
the sun gleamed briefly between the clouds, it struck a rainbow
over the clouds of mist.

A rainbow! Usually the sight of one made her
smile. But her heart ached too much for smiles. To the left was the
mountain slope. The Damatrans had cleared a wide space all the way
up the slope beyond the sheer cliffs, probably for defense. Nym had
always done the same, she’d learned at her lessons. This clearing
meant that no invading army could sneak up under cover of the
trees. Supposing an invading army had managed to sneak across the
river below the front window without being noticed, that is, or had
managed to scramble like a bunch of spiders down from the sheer
cliffs behind the city walls.

She gazed upward at the tops of those cliffs,
far above the tower. From her relatively high vantage she could
just make out firs growing along the edge, twisted from the wind.
Teensy tufts at the ends of the branches caught another stray sun
gleam—the rain clouds were breaking up—where new fir grew. These
tufts always looked like candle flames, she’d always thought.

The reminder of home just made her sadder.
Not that she hated her home, but . . . somehow she wished life
would go on like an Eskanda party—or rather, life would go on at
Eskanda—

She turned her back on the window and stared
down at her hands.

At Sidal’s little opal ring, worn faithfully
every day.

Cold chill tingled unpleasantly through her
nerves. Sidal was just a simple spell away. Or was she? Rhis
remembered what Taniva had told them about Damatras having some
kind of mysterious magical ward. Well, if anyone knew what that
meant, it would be Sidal.

Rhis shut her eyes and performed the spell
her sister had taught her.

She opened her eyes expectantly, but Sidal
did not come.

Rhis waited one long breath, two. Three. Then
gave up, and turned sadly to unpack her saddlebag. At least she
could play her tiranthe to keep herself company. She’d sing all the
most tragic, miserable songs she knew, she decided; if the guards
beyond the door could hear her, she hoped they would feel as glum
as she did.

So she sat down on the hassock, warmed up her
fingers and her voice, then began to sing, accompanying herself on
the tiranthe.

She was on her third verse of Eranda
Sky-Born’s Lament—

“
Here I lie,

wounded, cold, and alone,

in this great fortress

of solid stone . . .”

—when a whish of air blew against her cheek,
and there stood her sister!

Rhis stuttered to a halt.

Sidal staggered, then sank onto the bed as
she blinked away the residue of magic transfer. When she’d
recovered a little, she held up a finger to her ear. Rhis
understood immediately
: Anyone outside?

Rhis whispered “Guards,” making
sword-fighting motions with one hand.

Sidal pointed to the tiranthe, mouthing the
words,
Keep playing!

Rhis gave a couple of loud fake coughs in the
direction of the door, then resumed her song.

Sidal smiled, her eyes closed as she
listened. Rhis came to the end of the song and began another,
playing as loudly as she could, but this time she did not sing.

Sidal knelt next to her hassock. “I am in
Damatras, am I not?”

Rhis nodded, strumming chords at random.

Sidal pursed her lips. “This ward, though
enormous, is ancient, and thus easy to break. But I cannot leave it
broken—any powerful mage doing a scrying sweep will notice at once.
Any powerful mage like the Emperor of Sveran Djur.”

Rhis grimaced. Every child learned about the
sinister threat looming over the western sea—the enormous island
empire of Sveran Djur. Its sorcerer king was considered the world’s
worst threat, ambitious as he was. And what lay directly to the
east of his main island? Vesarja. Directly below and a little west
of Vesarja, the smaller island of Ndai. Surrounding Vesarja, which
was the largest kingdom on that part of the continent, lay Damatras
to the north, the High Plains adjacent, and then the rest to the
east, including Arpalon and Gensam, all the way down to Nym at the
southernmost point, across from the smaller island of Wilfen.

Sidal said, “Sveran Djur is always scrying
our way, looking for a momentary weakness. The only hope I have is
that it’s before dawn there, but I have to be fast. Now. Finish
that song, and give me the tiranthe.”

Surprised, Rhis strummed a few more chords,
then handed the instrument to her sister, whose left hand spread
over the chord dampers in a practiced manner, as her right began
strumming. Rhis stared in amazement. She never knew her sister
played. And ballads! She realized what it meant: that Sidal,
knowing Elda’s disapproval, had kept quiet on the subject, probably
for family amity.

Rhis sighed. There was so much she just never
saw! Feeling very young and ignorant, she bent her head close to
her sister’s, and as quickly as she could began outlining what had
happened.

She faltered only when she came to Lios’s
masquerade. Deciding that that had nothing to do with the present
difficulties, she skipped right past the confrontation in the
garden, and all references since, continuing right up to the king’s
command.

“Good enough,” Sidal said, strumming a few
chords. “We can go home right now, then I can fix the ward—”

“No,” Rhis said.

Sidal was so startled her fingers paused, but
she began strumming again, faster than before. “Why?”

“I—I don’t want to just leave the others. I
need to see this awful mess through. I helped make it, after all.
And I know they’re all looking for me,” she added quickly. Though
she knew she wasn’t being honest. That is, those things were true,
but she had to—somehow—resolve things with Lios. Confront him. No,
what she meant was—

“I hadn’t considered that.” Sidal let out her
breath out in a long sigh, blowing a loose strand of hair off her
forehead straight up. The hair fell to her cheek unnoticed as she
finished a song. She handed back the tiranthe.

Rhis promptly launched into another
melancholy ballad as Sidal said softly, “I wish I had time to ask
Mama’s advice. But I don’t dare take any more time. What do you
want to do? I take it you wish to escape in order to rejoin your
friends?”

“Yes!”

Sidal said, “I have at home a cloak that
shrouds you from being seen directly. If you wait until they come
with a meal, you slip out—”

Rhis shook her head, thinking of those
guards. They were all someone’s brother, or cousin, or friend, and
she suspected that the king, jolly as he sounded, would keep his
word. Kings had to keep their word. Even if it was a rotten
word.

“No,” she said. “I can’t go down the steps.
The king said, if I get past them, they all die.”

“Ugh!” Sidal pressed her fingers to her
forehead, then dropped her hands, returning to her usual
efficiency. “Then you must escape by magic, which the king cannot
blame them for. Not if the door is blocked. He’ll know magic was at
fault. It’ll also warn him that his ward, though powerful, is
terribly outdated,” she added. “I think even Emperor Dhes-Andis of
Sveran Djur, terrible as he is, would think twice about attacking
this
kingdom, but we’d rather not find out, right? Very
well, then.”

Sidal rose, extended her hands, and began
whispering. A faint glow shimmered in the air, reaching from her
hands to the bed—which lifted, heavy as it was, sailed grandly
toward the door, and then—very slowly and quietly—tipped upward
until it rested against the door. Sidal rubbed her hands down her
sides, whispered—and the bed returned itself to its place. It still
shimmered; Sidal made a pass over it with her hand, whispered more,
then stopped, wiping trembling fingers over her brow.

“All right,” she said. “When you are ready
for the bed to move again, all you do is pass your hand over
it—just like I did—and say these words.” She repeated the magic
words, which made little sense to Rhis.

But she said them over and over until she had
them in memory. Sidal nodded, saying wryly, “Just as well you
inherited the family talent for magic.”

“One more thing.” Sidal paused and drank off
half of Rhis’s water. “And luckily, I have this one all ready. All
I need is a transfer.” She breathed in and out a couple of times,
then muttered—and after a soft
paff!
of air, a piece of what
looked like black ribbon lay on the floor.

Sidal bent, picked it up, and dropped it into
Rhis’s hand. It was slightly sticky, and heavier than fabric.

“When full dark comes, you step on it, and it
becomes a bubble around you. It will rise. You direct it by
movement. Practice in here first,” Sidal said, as Rhis strummed two
chords over and over as she concentrated. “You really don’t want to
try it while sitting in a window.”