Liar's Oath

Chapter Thirty-one

Aris felt a cold wave wash him from head to foot. He had not known Luap had made a contract with elves and dwarves—what contract? The elven king continued.

“We revoke our permission; we lay a ban upon you. The patterns of power you enjoyed will no longer suffer your use. You must scour the evil from this land, or be forever mired in this hall.”

“But what is it?” Luap asked, all in a rush. Then he took a long breath and said, more slowly, “My lords, I do not know what you mean. We do not yet know what the smoke portends; my people have gone to find out. We have waked no evil that I know of—”

“Then you are blind and deaf, mortal, and your pretensions of power all are lies! You were warned; you were told to beware your neighbors, to walk softly and keep watch: you have not. The very air stinks of evil; the rock tastes of it; the water; the trees wither in its blast—and you claim you do not see?”

“But then—if you revoke your permission—you want us to leave?”

The dwarf spoke. “Mortal, we could wish you had never been, save that that would be to walk with cursed Girtres Undoer. What you have done cannot be undone; it must be mended, if that be possible, by the one who broke the covenant. Thus we command, who have that right.”

“But—how? What do you mean?” Aris could hear the tremor in Luap’s voice, and smell the sweat that sudden fear brought out on him. He himself stood watchful, wondering.

The elf spoke again. “You are barred from the use of the patterns to make your way elsewhere, lest the evil you waked travel with you, and bring dishonor on the patterners. You are forbidden permission to live here, where you have polluted a holy place with evil; the living water and all green things will no longer do your bidding. You must fight free on the land’s skin, cleansing it from the evil you waked, or die here—your deaths payment for what evil you have done.”

Aris could not see Luap’s face. His voice, when he spoke, was low and halting. “You—cannot condemn all these for my failure, if indeed I failed. Not all are guilty; we have children, young people. . . . Let them escape by the mage road; I will stay and fight. . . .”

“A people abide the judgment of their prince,” the gnome said in a colorless voice. “If the prince errs, the people suffer: that is justice.”

“But it’s not fair!” Luap cried. “You have never told me the nature of this evil—I don’t even know what I did, or did not do, or what it is you speak of!”

In the silence that followed that outburst, Aris heard running footsteps coming toward the hall. One of the youngest of the militia ran in, gasping, bearing a broken knife in his hand. Without ceremony, he said, “This is it! This is what the Rosemage found!” Luap turned his back on the kings, and reached out a hand.

“Let me see that.” The young man held it out; Aris intercepted it as a strange, almost-forgotten smell tickled his nose. Luap scowled, but Aris brought the broken blade to his nose and sniffed.

“Iynisin,” he said. Luap recoiled, snatching back his hand. Aris turned to the kings. “This is iynisin blood—is that the evil you meant? Are iynisin the evil, or the servants of it?”

The elvenking spoke. “You are right, mortal, in your surmise: that is iynisin blood, and they are now awake and powerful in this place, where once they had been banished and trapped in stone. Your prince paid no heed to our warnings; one by one he broke the terms of that agreement by which we gave permission, and used his magery in ways no mortal should. Now the evil has come upon you; now the pattern comes to its necessary end.” For a moment, compassion moved across his face like a gleam of light between clouds. “We take no joy in the suffering of those innocents among you, but we cannot risk evil escaping from hence to ravage wide lands. Escape may be possible for some of you—but not by magery. Those roads are closed until another of your people comes by land.”

“We have caravans every year,” someone said.

The elf smiled without mirth. “They could not come up the trail from the great canyon against iynisin arrows; you have lost the upper valley. It will be long, even in our perception, before a Finthan walks into this hall.”

The gnome spoke again. “I, the Lawmaster, witnessed this contract the day it began; I witness now that it was broken by Selamis Garamis-son, and that the lords of elves and dwarves declare it void and state the penalties openly. So it is, and so it shall be recorded.” He took from among the pages an irregular cake of wax. “This was your seal, Selamis: it, like your word, is broken.” He dropped it, stepped upon it, and ground it with his heel. Aris noticed that Luap had turned white as milk.

And with no more words, they vanished. Luap stared around him; his eyes seemed sunken in his head. Those who had rushed to the great hall stared back, but no one dared speak. Aris moved forward. “Let the prince have his peace,” he said. “Go to your homes and prepare for whatever comes; gather what food you have, what you can carry—”

Murmuring more and more loudly, casting looks back, they went, at first slowly and then all in a rush. Luap stood alone in the midst of the great hall, silent and motionless. Aris looked at him, then shook himself. They didn’t have time now—he had to find Seri and await the Rosemage’s return.

“What will it take to recapture the upper valley?” asked Luap. It was after the turn of the night; the air tasted bitter and stale. Aris wasn’t sure if that was the lurking evil, or simple exhaustion. They had been in conference for a long time, Luap and all the older inhabitants, with explanations and non-explanations flying back and forth.

“Were you listening?” the Rosemage said, her voice edged like steel. “We cannot take the upper valley with the forces we have, not if we bring everyone in from the western valleys, not if we ask aid from the Khartazh. Which, by the way, I would never recommend.”

“Why not?” Luap had laid his hands palm to palm, a gesture that meant he was withholding blame for the moment only.

“Luap, the king could not hold these canyons before we came; he could not do it now. We are his friends so long as we are useful, and we have been useful because we drove out the brigands that preyed on the caravans. Even if he would help, and could help, his price would be more than I want to pay.”

“We have gold,” Luap said.

“It is not gold he will want, but lives. Which of our people will you send into slavery?”

“Nonsense.” Luap slapped the table. “We have gold; we have other wealth. We are not poor wanderers—”

“Strength is your heritage,” Seri said suddenly. All heads turned toward her; Aris stared. “Arranha told Father Gird that, remember? Your people believe that the strong take, and prove their strength by taking. If you lack the strength to protect your own, what does that make you?”

The mageborn went white to the lips; silence held the room. Seri looked around, meeting each gaze with her own challenge.

“What the lady has said, and what the Khartazh king will see, is that you—we—are no longer a strong ally, to be respected. If we cannot hold these canyons, we come out of them suppliants, beggars, no matter what wealth we bring with us. Can we stand against the Khartazh on open ground? No: and so that wealth can be taken as easily as you once took the land from the people of Fintha and Tsaia. The Autumn Rose does not trust the king of the Khartazh, nor do I.”

“But some are already living there; some have married into families—”

Seri shrugged. “It may be they will fare no worse than other foreigners who settle in his realm—but they will no longer be favored foreigners, when this citadel falls. We must hope for mercy; we cannot demand justice.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“We must try to send word to Fin Panir and stop the caravans: perhaps one can get through, by following the main stream out its gorge. That route is passable, though difficult. We must use what magery we have to seal off the upper valley—and the upper end of the main canyon—and hope that gives us time for the children and those who cannot fight to make their way elsewhere.”

“But where? If we cannot go back to Fintha—and you will not seek aid of the Khartazh—where else can they go?”

“They cannot go back to Fintha by the mageroad, but some, if we are careful, might make it overland with a returning caravan. Some might go to Xhim.”

A growing murmur of dismay. The older mageborn knew they would not be welcome in Fintha, not as long as the present Marshal-General ruled. None of them wanted to face the long journey to strange and unknown lands.

“There must be another way!” Instantly several other voices echoed the first man. “Have you even tried the mageroad?” asked another. “Why should we believe elves?”

“It won’t,” Aris said. “Can’t you feel the difference?”

“I’m going to try,” said the man. Luap started to stand, but said nothing as the man walked quickly to the dais, stepped onto it, and closed his eyes. Then the man fell, as if someone had hit him hard; he made no sound but lay crumpled on the dais. Aris went to him quickly, felt for his pulse, and looked back at the others.

“He’s dead.” Someone screamed.

“Silence!” Luap rarely raised his voice; now it rose above the scream and commanded them all. Aris wondered how much of his royal magery went into it; he felt his own throat close, refusing speech. “I will confer with the Rosemage, with Aris, and with Seri,” Luap said. “You will await my decision. Go now.”

Luap dressed for the conference with care. If he looked slovenly, they might panic; his people—any people, he reminded himself—relied more on appearances than they might think. White and silver gray, to remind them of his power, touches of rich blue to comfort any who still worried about Gird’s view of things. He combed his dark hair—still unfrosted—and congratulated himself on his decision to preserve his youthful vigor. They would need a strong man, not an aged one, to bring them safely through this crisis. Most of them seemed not to notice, but if anyone did—if anyone, in a panic, mentioned it, he could point out that it was proof of his great power. It could not be as hopeless as the elves had said; nothing was hopeless. He had survived too many things in his life to believe that, and his experience mocked the despair he had felt earlier. What a fool he had been, to let those things upset him.

It bothered him that he could not quite think what to do, what solution might come, but he was sure he would in time. He might even find a solution the elves had not thought of. They so hated their once-relatives that they had refused to admit the problem . . . if they had only told him, from the beginning, like any honest person would, all this could have been avoided.

He found the beginning of the meeting tedious. The Rosemage gave her report not once but a dozen times, answering the same questions over and over. Each head of a family had to express shock, dismay, worry. Somehow they managed to entangle old grievances in the present emergency, dragging in all sorts of irrelevancies. Why could they not see that there was no time for this? He quit listening, and began trying to plan some effective action. The next caravan would arrive in the spring; they must get control of the upper valley by the time it was due. They could not fight successfully in winter . . . his eyes narrowed, as he tried to think where in the upper valley a small force could shelter for the winter, to be sure the iynisin stayed away once evicted.

“What will it take to recapture the upper valley?” he asked in the next pause. He hoped that would get their attention and force them to think about the real problem, not who made what minor decision a decade before.

Everyone stared; the Rosemage looked as angry as he’d seen her in years.

“Were you listening?” she asked. He let his brows rise; he stifled the urge to say no one had said anything worth listening to, and let her rattle on. They were too unsettled yet, he decided, as the Rosemage and Seri refused to consider going to the Khartazh; they were still full of complaint, unreasonable, unready to think their way through to answers. When Keris Porchai insisted on testing the mageroad himself (Porchai, who had been slower to learn its use in the first place than most of the mageborn) Luap let him go; when he died, that was the perfect excuse to end the meeting. He would take his few chosen assistants and see if he could knock sense into them in privacy. He would need all of them, and they must quit acting as if he were a halfwit.

He used his power on them, as he rarely did, for the sheer pleasure of seeing it work: one word, and he could silence them all, even Aris. They obeyed, as they had to, leaving in a rush. He wondered if they knew how lucky they were, to have had a gentle, unambitious prince. Until now. Now only his ambition could save them; he would have no more time to be gentle. He led those he had named to his office, and turned with what he intended as a calming smile.

Instead, he faced rebellion. Hardly had he begun to explain what he thought of doing, when the Rosemage flashed out at him.

“You have not aged: surely you know this.”

“Of course,” he said smoothly. “It served its purpose. . . .”

“You used the royal magery for yourself!” The Rosemage glowed, as full of light as a fire, as the sun. “What might have held that evil away from the entire settlement, you used to spare your own years—”

“I held the evil I knew or suspected away from here by using it so, by seeming ageless: have you forgotten how that convinced the king’s ambassador? You are the one who reminded everyone how dangerous the Khartazh empire is. This evil I knew nothing about.”

“And you stole that power from Aris—”

“No.” Luap shook his head. “My own magery served well enough. I would not have taken aught from him.”

“But you did,” Seri said. “Did you not realize that he has less healing power now than a hand of years ago?” Her voice conveyed utter certainty.

“It cannot be.” Luap’s face sagged; he felt as if all his years had come upon him at once. “I would not have done such a thing. It’s impossible.”

Seri shook her head. “It is not impossible, and it is the only explanation we have. Aris’s power has waned, year by year, as you did not age. Let the Rosemage test your power, and she will find the flavor of his. Perhaps you did not know. . . .”

“You had no healing magery of your own,” the Rosemage reminded him. “How, then, have you remained hale and strong so long? You must realize that the healing magery and control of age are closely allied.” Her voice shook; she was, Luap realized, very near tears. “It may be too late, but you must release your magery to its proper purpose.”

“It is too late,” Luap said, looking at his fingers. “The elves say that, and I believe them: they make unsteady allies, but they do not lie, and they know more than we of the iynisin.” He attempted a smile. “I have not even seen one.”

“I have,” Seri said. He had not known that. Her blunt face, weathered from years in the brilliant sun and dry wind, had lost the bright promise of its youth, but nothing could dim her eyes. Now, as she looked past him into the memory where that iynisin had been, he felt a pang that was almost guilt. She should have stayed in Fintha with Raheli; he should even have allowed Aris to stay, if necessary. She was Gird’s child as much as any of his blood; she belonged there, and she might die here, because of his selfishness. If, indeed, he had been drawing on Aris’s power. He still could not believe that.

“Let me see,” the Rosemage pled, her long hands reaching for his. He seemed to see her doubled, the beautiful woman she had been when he first met her, overlaid by the woman she had become. When had her hair gone silver? When had those lines marred the clarity of her cheek and jaw? An insidious hum along his bones urged him to ignore all that: what did it matter, after all, if one woman aged? He could lay an illusion over anything unpleasant. The important thing, surely, was his reign, his kingdom, his power.

Then her hands grasped his with a touch like fire. He could feel her power in his wrists, her magery only just weaker than his, her skill in using it as great or greater, for she had had the early training. Swift as light moving across the face of a cliff, picking out each hollow and ledge, her magery swept along his nerves, into the chambers of his mind. He could not sense what she found, but she recoiled in horror, eyes wide.

“You—you do not even know, do you?” Her voice was a whisper hardly loud enough to hear. Seri, after a quick glance at the Rosemage, stood alert, as if ready for battle.

“What is it?” Seri asked, not looking away from him.

“He . . . was invaded.” The Rosemage scrubbed her hands on her robe, as if to remove the touch of his skin. “I cannot tell when—or I might, but it would take longer. You were right; he has been drawing on Aris’s power, though I do not think he knew it. I am not sure how much Luap is left, to be honest.”

Luap felt something stirring uneasily deep in his mind, like a hibernating animal prodded in its den. What was it? He tried to explore, to do for himself what the Rosemage had done, and met a vague reluctance—no opposition to meet head on, but the sensation that things would go better if he didn’t bother. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said to the Rosemage, in a voice he hoped was reasonable. “I am the same Luap as always.”

“No,” she said, with a decisive shake of her head. “That you are not, whatever you are.”

He wanted to scream at her, insist on it, but Seri stood there, poised for anything he might do. She looked less angry than he would have expected to find that he had been stealing power from her beloved Aris, but he knew she was dangerous. He tried to gather his magery around him, the comfortable cloak he had had all these years, and the Rosemage stirred.

“No,” she said, as if she knew what he was thinking. “No, you cannot do that, not again. I won’t let you.”

The sleeping monster stirred again, then arose, flooding his mind with its anger. “You!” he said, not knowing or caring if he spoke his own thoughts or those of the thing within him. “You not let me? You old woman, I mastered your magery years ago, when first we met: you should remember that. And I can master it now.” It was in his hand, as reins in the hand of a master teamster; he could feel the power straining to be free, to strike. His light filled the chamber; his will—

And Seri came alight. He nearly gaped in astonishment. A peasant? Had she been mageborn all along? But her light met his and did not mingle; his eyes burned. Where had he seen such light before? He squinted against it, his eyes streaming tears.

“You will not harm her,” Seri said. “The gods will not permit it.”

“It is too late,” the Rosemage said. Luap looked at her; she struggled against tears. “I served one bad king: I killed him. Now I have served a bad prince through another exile. I will not kill you, Selamis, but I will serve you no longer. I will serve what remains of our people, and kill only those creatures of the dark. Fare well, Seri and Aris: if you ever come again to Fintha, I hope you bring peace between our peoples. As for you, Selamis, I can neither curse nor praise you; I pray instead that Esea’s light will show you what you have become, and the High Lord will judge fairly how far you consented.” She pushed past Aris, out into the corridor. Luap could not doubt it was for the last time, that she meant what she said. She had never said anything she did not mean. He wanted to scream after her, beg her to stay, but the shadowy presence inside him forbade it.

“What did I do?” he asked himself as much as those around him. “What went wrong?”

Seri, still alight, came near on one hand, and Aris on the other. “Perhaps,” Seri said, “it is what you did not do. Give me your hand.” He would have refused, but she had it already; Aris took his other hand, and they joined theirs. In that instant, he saw the thing within him, which like a soft maggot had found his hollow core, soothing and comforting him as it nestled there, growing to fill what emptiness it enlarged. Now a mailed and glittering malice, the self’s armor against self-knowledge, raised its claws in mock salute and leered. He knew it chuckled in delight, its long purpose fulfilled.

“NO!” Not so much scream as moan, with all the intensity of the feelings he had not felt for years. He squeezed his eyes against the sight, but for the eyes of the mind there are no lids. Shame scalded him. Seri’s light, and Aris’s, flooded his mind, left no shadowy corners, revealed everything Gird had revealed those long years before, but worse. Tears ran down his face; he remembered all too clearly trying to tell Gird he would have been a better king. Better? The presence in his mind mocked him: Could any have been worse? Had any kin of his, any of those royalties whose prerogatives he envied, ever been as feckless, as vicious, as to let such an enemy into such a sanctum? “I’m sorry,” he said; the echo of the many times he had said that reverberated through his mind.

He would have been glad to die, but death was not offered. “Is this what you wanted?” asked Seri. He shook his head; that was not enough. He had to answer aloud.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “It is not.”

“Did you know what you were doing?”

“No.” He remembered all the warnings, and how sure he had been that he knew better, that he had outgrown those warnings.

“Then throw that filth out,” she said. Luap stared at her; surprised he could see her through his tears. Throw it out? How could he? “You must,” she said, more gently, as if she could see every thought in his mind. “You must; no one else can.”

He had no more strength; he felt it running out of him like blood from a mortal wound. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“You were Gird’s friend,” Aris said, unexpectedly. “You can.” All those times he and the others had faltered to a halt in mud or hot sun, certain they could not march another step, and Gird had bellowed at them, rain or sweat running down his weathered face . . . and they had taken the next step, and the next. If Gird were here, would he dare say “I can’t”? No. He could almost hear the old man’s gruff voice, feel that hard fist once more. He had to try again. “Get out,” he whispered to the presence within him. “Get out!”

You’ll die came the response. Its sweet poison soothed; he felt himself responding as he had, unwittingly, all these years. You have no chance but me. Disgust at himself, and the memory of Gird, gave him strength to resist.

“Get OUT!” He felt Aris and Seri joining their power to his, yielding this one last time to his command as his magery proved too weak . . . and then the presence, whatever it was, fled away down the wind of his anger.

And left him once more empty, hollow, guilty, hardly able to stand. Seri and Aris supported him; as his strength returned, he could see them more clearly. No longer “the younglings” he had both admired and envied, but weathered and graying, well into middle age.

“I can’t—I don’t know what to do?” His voice came out rasping and feeble as an old man’s.

“You’ve made the right start,” Seri said. “Now you might try asking the gods.”

Luap winced. He had not, he realized, really asked the gods anything for a long time. He had never really wanted to know what the gods wanted of him. He had spent those times in the yearly festivals when prayers were normally offered giving complacent reports on his own genius, looking for praise in return. Now he had no choice; unpracticed as he was, he must ask. He let them lead him back to the great hall, and tried to fix his mind on the gods he hardly knew.