Shadowborn (41 page)

“Frankly, now, whether you do or don’t do it, whether it succeeds or doesn’t, if Isolde cannot take down Emeya, if she tries and loses, you’re as dead as we are. And if you live, you’re looking at a cursed lot of power. I’ll not believe any man who tells me that makes no difference to him.” He snorted. “I’ve been trying to persuade her to do it on me, but I’ve as much magic in me as a mud pat.”

“So it’s t’the death, her and Emeya. And after, if she wins, what then?”

He committed his attention not to sonn, but to his other senses, allowing Lysander to think himself unobserved, but listening hard for the change in Lysander’s breathing, for the timbre of his voice as he answered. “Trust me, you
don’t
want to live in a land ruled by Emeya.”

That, at least, sounded sincere. “So th’choice is rule by one or rule by th’other, is it? ”

“If it comes to that—and I’m not saying it will—”

“But y’think it likely,” Ishmael interposed. He was in no mood to indulge prevarication. “I’ll thank you for the feeding and the counsel, Hearne. I’m the better for th’one at least. And now I think I’d best have another word with the lady.”

They found her not in her grand receiving room but on a small balcony that, like the other, was crowded with planters and pots. She was weeding. Ishmael, stepping firmly onto the balcony, suddenly felt a one-sided heat, like the heat of a fire, or the heat he felt through his day shade when he overnighted outside. He checked himself midstride. He had heard neither bells nor dawn chorus to mark the dawn, nor had he sensed his own ensorcellment in the miasma of Shadowborn magic. He did now.

“You’ll get used to it,” Lysander Hearne said with false cheer.

She circled a planter and shook her head reproachfully at her servant. “Shall we go inside? ” she asked, gently.

In the cool of the interior, he recovered his equilibrium; there was nothing to do about the ensorcellment but be glad of it. “You’ll do with me what y’want, m’lady, I’ve no doubt of that. But if it matters t’you that I’m willing, then let me have a sense of you.” He jerked off his gloves, demonstrating, if not conveying, his meaning. It was ridiculous of him to propose this, to pretend that she would be unable to deceive him or suborn his will—but she need not touch him to do that. He said, “If the sense convinces me, then you can have me willing. If not, I’ll fight you with all that I am, puny though that may be.”

“Not so puny, Ishmael,” she said. She extended her hand, as a lady might for a formal greeting. The hand was smooth skinned and evenly fleshed, younger than her face. Even so strong a mage had her vanities. Her hand did not tremble. His, he noted, did.

To have actually taken her hand would have seemed too much an intimacy. He lifted his fingers, offering his palm. She turned her hand likewise, and set palm to palm.

“I shall want you with me” was all Vladimer said as they left the conference with the Lightborn. He had moved on before Telmaine understood what he meant: that he was taking her with him to war. She pushed after him, forcing her way through pressing lines and tight huddles of men, skirts snagging on stacked crates and heaped, stuffed bags.

She caught up with him as he intercepted the stationmaster, who had been trying to dodge him. Little wonder, given the way their last encounter had ended, with the stationmaster telling Vladimer there was no way on this cursed earth that he could convert an open platform into a covered station in the few hours remaining before sunrise, and Lord Vladimer must apply elsewhere for magic or a miracle. Vladimer said only, “Will this train be ready by sunrise? ”

“Aye, it’ll be ready,” said the stationmaster, deflating from posture of war. “It’ll leave within the half hour, if I’ve anything to say about it, and be into Stranhorne less than two hours after sunrise. It’ll be stopping for lookouts; I don’t want it traveling without a Lightborn guard.”

“Good,” Vladimer said. “Have someone call me when it’s ready to leave.”

“Aye,” the stationmaster said, and, with no “excuse me” turned away to bellow, “No, you’ll
not
load that in there, unless y’want to be blown t’very small pieces.”

He sounded so like Ishmael, her heart hurt. She tried for imperious and failed. “Lord Vladimer, did I hear you correctly? ”

“I regret you do not have time to send to the manor for luggage, but I am certain that if you use your charm, some of these gentlemen would be delighted to oblige you.”

Given what she wanted at this
particular
moment, which had nothing to do with luggage, probably not. “Lord Vladimer, a
word
, if you would.”

He did not so much find as clear a corner; the quartet of men occupying it flowed out like putty. “Now,” he said. “What is unclear about—”

“What could I possibly do in Stranhorne Crosstracks? The Broomes don’t want me using magic, don’t want me to be part of their group.” Which had been more humiliating than she would have thought possible, given that she had had to be backed, resisting, into magic, and forced into their company. Given that she had let them into her mind, let them explore the Shadowborn
gift
. The worst of it was that she knew they knew how she felt, and she knew they were probably right. “I haven’t the experience, and I’m too strong to be safe.”

“So I am informed,” he said. “I am willing to take that risk. I know you can communicate over distance without adverse effects on your contact, and it occurs to me that I might need that.”

“You’re not thinking to talk with the
Shadowborn
? ” she breathed.

All expression left his face. “No.”

There was a silence. She stood quivering slightly with the urge to apologize, even for a question that had to be asked in this night of betrayals. “If the Mages’ Temple does not repent of its decision,” Vladimer said, in a whisper like sand blowing through dry reeds, “then I shall unrepent of my silence.”

She pressed her back against the wall, fighting the impulse to scramble away—like the nine-year-old Telmaine whom Vladimer had surprised in his private sanctum, years ago. He said in a slightly less deathly voice, “I trust that they will, for if not”—he raised his head, turned as though to cast, but in the end did not; his hearing would have told him everything he needed to know—“it is likely we are all going to death, ensorcellment, or enslavement.”

“Does that not
bother
you? ” she whispered. “All these people.”

“I recall we had a previous conversation along these lines,” he said. “And while things that have happened since have made me reconsider some of the things I said then, I do not believe that I have done anything to regret, here.” His expression changed, disturbingly, at some thought. She would not have been surprised if he was remembering what Magister Broome had said to him; she certainly was. “If the Temple does repent its decision or find its courage, it will be immensely useful for me to be able to speak to Fejelis or his mage.”

“I don’t . . . think the Lightborn mages will be best pleased with me.” Not if Tammorn was anything to go by. She tried not to sound as frightened as she felt.

“A risk we must both take.” He turned his head, and this time cast over the platform. “They’re nearly ready. You recall that I said—not very long ago, if one merely thinks in hours—that there might come a time to contact Ishmael. I may ask you to do that once we reach Stranhorne.”

“I’d be glad to,” she said. “I’d have done it already, but—”

“I will give you an order, if you wish,” he said.

“I don’t
need
an order,” Telmaine bridled. “Ishmael may need help.”

“Good.” She expected him to move, aware that the crowd on the platform was thinning, that there was almost no one near them. Aware, too, of the presences of the Broomes and their commune: Farquhar Broome��s vast, quiet power; Phoebe’s tightly disciplined strain; the others she was learning to recognize. She could sense about them the foul taint of Shadowborn magic, from their hurried rehearsals. That sense of exclusion scraped her spirit, but shriveled into pettiness as she sensed something more about them: resolve, almost resignation. They had taken the measure of their enemy and their enemy’s magic, and they did not believe they would be returning.

Then Vladimer said, “I have one more request of you, Lady Telmaine. I will not be made a slave to the Shadowborn again. If it comes to that—if I give you the order, or if I fall to their ensorcellment, I want you to kill me. Shoot me in the head, use your fires, do whatever you must to do it quickly and
thoroughly
. I will it, and I
wish
it.”

H
e did not die. He stood on scrub and heather, in night’s very heart, and did not die.

He did not realize until then how much he had wished the high masters had been wrong, even if it meant his death. But he could sense the protective ensorcellment on him, sheathing him but not caging him—he still had all his strength to answer his will—and they had somehow managed to make it feel more like an itchy suit of clothing than a coating of sewage. He would sense the strength and vitality of the high masters in it, but the guiding magic had been Perrin’s, second-rank sport though she was.

Fejelis would chide him for not having paid better attention to what they had been doing, and he would accept the chiding, knowing that Fejelis would not have sunk into passive misery. He hoped Fejelis would understand, and that Tam could return something for his betrayal. The high masters had sent him to negotiate for themselves, for the Temple, and he had no choice in that—but he would also negotiate for Fejelis and the earthborn, if he could.

The thought made him look out of himself and around. His eyes seemed to be adjusting to the darkness, rendering it less absolute with every minute that passed. There was even a thin glaze of light on the barren hills around him, like the luster on one of Beatrice’s pots, from a three-quarter moon rising to the east.

Beatrice
. . . Years ago he had promised to protect her, promised her—standing amidst the shards of glazed crockery and tiles, the sticks left of shelving and workbenches—that she need never again fear the bullies of her own guild. She had come to him on that promise. In that, too, he had failed; the Temple would surely look again at his children, and if it chose, would take over their rearing.

He shivered. The night wind, sweeping in with the moonlight, was cold, and his clothing was styled for the heated interior of the palace and the Temple. He was standing on a dirt path on a barren heather and bracken slope. He knew such dirt paths—he had spent his boyhood driving herds along them, herds that dwindled year by year, sold off for the taxes. The soil here was even poorer than the soil in the foothills of the Cloudherds. But this scraped land was Darkborn; here the barons cared whether their people starved. He smiled bitterly into the darkness. If it were only their brightnesses suffering here, then he would do nothing for the earthborn, a peasant mage’s revenge for the centuries of oppression.

The night seemed darker, now that he could see the moonlight, than it had before. Shadows cast by moonlight seemed far denser than those cast by sunlight. The shaded lee of the hills, the roots of the bracken, the sides of the path, all might have been folded out of the world. He shuddered and raised his eyes to a sky so filled with stars as to replete even a Lightborn eye. He had not looked willingly on the stars for more than thirty years, since his younger brother had been murdered, but even then, he had never seen their full plenitude. If Artarian had been here, he would have flung himself down on the night-damp bracken, green eyes huge with wonder, and not stirred until the sun came up.

Magic surged, sudden, close, and Shadowborn enough to make him swallow hard. Thirty yards down the path was the figure of a man, briefly dark and then radiantly illuminated. Tam stared, the light painful to his dark-adapted eyes, at his right hand, which seemed to be holding the light. Behind the light was great strength not entirely controlled. In the Temple, with his training complete, the man might have been one of the high masters—a contender for archmage, even. He felt the magic rake his ensorcellment, and the man whistled. “Tammorn, I take it? I’m Neill. Emeya sent me to meet you.”

Still staring at his hand, Tam said, “How do you do that? ”

Neill turned up his palm, showed the coldly blazing stick within. “This. It’s quite straightforward.”

“Not for Lightborn, it’s not,” Tam said. “Our lights need recharging by sunlight.”

“I’ll show you when we get a chance.” Neill looked like a man in his early twenties, but then so did Tam, who was nearly fifty. He was quite tall, with an underdeveloped build, as though unaccustomed to using his muscles when magic would serve. His face was angular; hollow-cheeked; and all brow, jaw, and nose, with a lupine cast to it. His dark hair was coarse, wavy, and windblown. His eyes were deep-set, and Tam could not tell their color. He wore a long, patchwork coat of hides and furs, open over a ruffled shirt and heavy trousers. There was an ensorcellment on him, a binding of the will. The invested vitality had the feel of the mage he had spoken to when he had reached into that roil of Shadowborn power south of Stranhorne.

He swallowed again and breathed slowly to calm his stomach and his nerves. “I am ordered by the archmage and the high masters to open negotiations with the Shadowborn.”

“Then, first of all, don’t refer to us as Shadowborn. Our home’s Atholaya.”

He had heard, or read, the name somewhere, but could not recall where—Lukfer had more than once had sharp words for him for his studied indifference to Temple history. If the dead could speak, it would be to say, “I told you so.”

“Are you taking me there? ”

“She sent me here to make sure you weren’t a danger to her. We’ve been dealt a few unpleasant shocks of late.” He did not sound as though he entirely regretted those shocks—but, then, would the Shadowborn archmage ensorcell a loyal follower so?