The Search for Magic Part 3

Quietly, steadily, Jai said, "You don't have to stay, father, but I don't have to leave."

Marise rose, turning her back on the window. "You do, Jai."

"But I don't know anything! I don't know who you talk to, when or where or what you say. You've always made sure of that, so there's no need for me to flee. I couldn't tell anyone anything if I wanted to. Go to Mianost and leave me behind-"

"No," said Emeth, and now his face wasn't so pale. His hands didn't tremble. "No, Jai. If Medan ever came to suspect us, he would take you to torture."

The Knights would break him bone by bone in that terrible place beneath the barracks. Jai's blood went cold. "But I would never- Father, you know I would never-"

Emeth held up a hand, a gesture Jai knew well. "No more, Jai. You would never tell, but you would be killed for your silence. That won't happen. You will come with us. No more will be said."

Jai took in a long, difficult breath. In his mind he heard the words of the Lady Librarian, spoken only today: We can't forget who we were, Jai. It's how we know who we are, and how we can guess who we will be. How could he abandon the holy work? Breathing again, he understood he could not, and he knew it would gain him nothing to continue to press his case with his parents.

"Jai," Marise said. "Son, go back to the Library."

He shook his head, not understanding.

"Have your supper and then go back. You always do at this time. It would seem strange to anyone who might be watching if you didn't tonight."

Jai looked to his father, who nodded slowly. "Yes, but be back before the moon is highest. Say nothing to anyone about our plans."

Jai did as he was bidden, and when he left his parents' home, his were the usual lurching steps, his. .h.i.tching gait well-known to his neighbors and to any minion of the Marshal who might be watching.

Jai sat in silence among the histories of the kings. He had no plan for staying behind. He had not even the smallest thought or idea to turn into a plan. He had only his work, and this he did, trusting that some idea would spring to mind. So sunk in concentration was he that the sound of a footfall startled him. His heart jumped, and he looked up to see Annalisse standing in the doorway.

"Here you are," she said, entering the room. "I'm not surprised." She slipped a finger around the edge of the first page of The History of Kith Kanan. "You are the best of my students and the most faithful of my apprentices. Any of the others would have left this work for tomorrow." She fell silent a long moment, her silence like shadows creeping. "And yet, I don't know how many tomorrows there are."

Jai looked up. "Lady?"

"Don't you hear it, Jai?" She looked at the ma.n.u.scripts and books, at the st.u.r.dy tables and high stools. She turned, looking out the door, and Jai knew she saw what he did: gracefully spiraling staircases leading down into winding corridors, reading rooms, the silent nooks where once scholars came to study, and the vast, high arched chamber in the middle of all, where the most prized pieces of the library's collection were displayed. There, in older days, elven kings had entertained poets and philosophers.

"Jai," she said, "This place has been a temple, in its time as sacred as any raised to G.o.ds. Treaties were signed here, laws enshrined here. All that we are is contained in the towers of this place. In the march of Medan's Knights I hear an ending coming."

The scent of ancient ink and venerable parchment filled the room. Jai looked around at the folios, the books, the tightly rolled scrolls all here for repair. Sometimes in quiet hours, when there were only these for company, Jai thought he heard the scratch of ancient quills, the voices of elves many long years dead as they spoke the words of an age-old ballad or tale. And yes, he could feel an end coming.

"Do you think the dragon will fall upon us, lady? Do you think . . . ?"

Annalisse shook her head. "Who can know? But I feel. . . something. Like the future knocking on the door of the present. I have spent so much time among the histories and the long tales that I often think I can see the pattern of how things work out. You feel it, too, don't you Jai?"

He admitted that he did. An end was coming. To a kingdom, to a long and many-leafed branch of a shining history. . .

Annalisse's eyes went soft and sad. "I feel something else, a closer ending. Are you leaving, Jai?"

Shock ran like lightning along Jai's nerves.

Annalisse shrugged, a melancholy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Well, I see how you look around tonight, how your fingers linger on everything-table, pen, page. You look like a man who has another road to take."

Fear made him shiver even as he scrambled to think of something to say. In the end, he reached for a portion of the truth, hoping his voice didn't shake.

"Madam, I'm sorry. I would have told you in time. My father has had word that his uncle who lives in Mianost is calling the family to gather."

A cloud chased across her brow, then vanished. "Ah, that's a shame, but it has been a long time coming, hasn't it?"

Jai nodded. "It has."

"Well"-she sighed-"I'm going to miss you. How long will you be gone?"

Jai said he wasn't certain. "There is the gathering of the family, and then . . ."

And then they must wait for his father's ancient uncle to die. After that, the funeral rites, a period of mourning, and the settling of the will. All this, his pause asked Annalisse to understand, and she nodded gravely as though she did.

"When do you leave?"

For the barest moment, Jai hesitated, feeling he'd said too much already, not knowing how he could have said less.

"I'm not sure," he lied. "Mother said something about making an early start. Father said he had some small matters to tend to."

His lie sat like truth. He knew it because Annalisse's grave expression never changed. With his next breath, however, Jai spoke sudden words unplanned, and these were not lies.

"And," he said, glancing causally away as if this were a minor detail, "I don't know that I'll stay in Mianost as long as my parents will. After my uncle's death, that is. The business of his will and the disposition of his home . . . well, that's best handled by my father. I might well come back here."

He said this, and it was all he could do not to smile. He'd found his plan. He had, for he'd said aloud that he would return, and if he did not. . . why, that would look suspicious indeed.

Briskly Annalisse clapped her hands, as one does who doesn't like to dwell on sadness anymore. "Well! Let's make use of you while you're still here. There's no reason we can't at least begin to catalog the repair needed on the first page of the Histories tonight."

Jai agreed there was no reason, and they spoke of his departing no more.

When he returned home, Jai let his parents know he'd been obliged to say something to Annalisse about their leaving Qualinost, and he told them what other thing he'd said. About Annalisse, they seemed to understand that he'd had no choice. They agreed that he'd handled the matter well. About his decision to return to Qualinost after sufficient time had pa.s.sed, his parents were not pleased. His father looked like a man being blackmailed. His mother quietly wept. Neither could change what he'd done.

The Windwild family left Qualinost as planned. The night's darkness was just going to gray, the sky yet possessed a few stars, and the moon had only an hour before sinking into the west. Like people who had nothing to hide, the Windwilds left the city riding-Marise upon a pretty roan mare, Emeth on a tall black gelding, and Jai astride a docile little gray that followed his mother's mare peacefully. At Manse's suggestion, they made the most of their pretense, taking care to greet those few who saw them and to say they were going to Mianost prepared to mourn a kinsman. At the black-breasted guards who walked the four spans of the silver bridge that girded Qualinost they did not look.

One of those who stopped them on their way was Annalisse, the Lady Librarian. Outside her home, which was not far from her beloved library, she looked up from a bench in the garden at the sound of bridles ringing. She went out from the garden and took Emeth's hand in hers, speaking quietly of her wish that his uncle pa.s.s peacefully from the world. "But not," she said, "until he experiences the joy of seeing all his kin come to gather around him, the old and the young. Travel in peace, Emeth, and keep well."

"You, too, old friend," Emeth replied quietly. "And we will meet again."

Her sapphire eyes luminous in the fragile light, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corners of her mouth, Annalisse agreed that they would.

Hearing her say so, seeing her smile, Jai suspected what he had not before: the Lady Librarian was part of the resistance.

"Mother," he whispered, his voice a little tinged with surprise.

"Hush," Marise murmured, and that one soft word was all the confirmation Jail needed.

The small shady path at the head of a winding forest trail was known best to the folk of Mianost who liked to slip away from parents or spouses to keep a lover's tryst. There, in the late afternoon, Jai and his parents met a tall, lithe woman with flashing eyes so palely blue as to look like diamonds. She wore her golden hair in a thick braid. Her clothing was of gray and green and b.u.t.ternut, so that, seeing her move, one had the impression of sun-dapple and shade and fern. Jai's heart rose to see her, for she was lovely like a wild thing, quick and canny and dangerous.

She stepped toward Emeth, and though he was surprised by her sudden appearance, he greeted her courteously. Jai noticed that she did not offer her name, and his father did not offer theirs.

"Greetings, traveler," she said to Emeth.

"Warrior, I greet you," Emeth replied.

Warrior!

"Father . . ."Jai said, suddenly uneasy.

Emeth hushed him with a gesture. To the newcomer, he said, "I hadn't expected to see you so soon."

"Nor I you. There's no going on to Mianost, Emeth. A Dark Knight has been seen farther up the trail."

Jai's heart lurched. Like his parents, he darted frightened glances into the forest shadows.

"It's all right," said the woman. She put a calming hand on the neck of Emeth's horse, which had begun dancing uneasily, scenting his rider's fear. "I don't know if he's looking for you, Emeth, but we can't take the chance he is, or even that he's alone."

Emeth nodded, as though he understood something his wife and son did not. Marise voiced the very question in Jai's mind. "How will we get past the Knight?"

The lady warrior hooked her finger through a golden chain hung round her neck. From her blouse she lifted something bright green. Jai had the swift impression of a talisman of flashing emerald, the stone shaped like a leaf half furled. She dropped the talisman so that it hung outside her blouse, the stone sitting at the V of her rough gray shirt, the place where her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose.

"Magic," she said. "If we're lucky."

"Father?" Jai said again, but he didn't give voice to his doubts. The newcomer looked up at him, right into his eyes. She raised a brow and smiled, and Jai found himself not looking into her eyes but at the emerald nestled on the woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The wind changed, shifting so that it was at the woman's back. Jai caught her scent and could think of nothing else. His mind filled with images of the forest, of oaks and elms and trees less tame than those in the orchards of Qualinost. Clinging to her hair and skin and clothing was the perfume that comes from beyond the bridges of Qualinost, from outside the city and deep in the forest where the glens are shrouded in shadow and the streams run nameless into rivers long secret.

"Let me a.s.sist you," she said to Jai, holding the gray horse still and reaching a hand to him.

Words of protest rose in Jai's heart at the thought of this tall, lovely woman handing him down from the horse as if he were a child. He said nothing, however, for he found himself foot to ground before he remembered moving. Indeed, his parents stood each on one side of him, his mother's face a little paler than it had been, his father's settling into lines of peace. Jai's heart kicked hard against his ribs. He gasped for breath. Once, twice, and then the woman put a hand on his shoulder.

"Easy," she whispered. "It's like a dream." She came very close, and his eye fell on the emerald again. She laughed, a low, soft chuckle. "Just like a dream."

And it was, the kind of dream where people did not move but suddenly found themselves in other places with no understanding of how they got there.

Jai drew breath to speak, but she warned him to silence. With that warning he realized she hadn't really spoken to him at all, not with lips and tongue. She spoke into his mind.

The magic is unstable, she said she said, keep still and trust. Concentrate on being still.

Trust! That trembled in him just as his heart did, and he wondered if that quaking heart would be enough to cause the magic to collapse or worse, to change into something the woman couldn't control. Again, she laughed. Her voice sounded like jays in the trees, raucous and challenging. Suddenly, it had nothing to do with jays at all, but became the voice of a storm. Wind and rain and driven leaves whirled along the ground.

Jai cried out-or tried to. He had no breath, no words, and no sight. The last sense to fail was his hearing, and the last thing he heard was his mother's voice, frail and thin in the storm-wind of magic, crying, "Jai! Emeth! Hold on to-!"

"Hey," said a voice, low and very deep.

Jai groaned, and then he shut his mouth. He simply lay still, in pain. He must have fallen hard. His chest hurt as if all the air had been blasted out of his lungs and only recently returned. His head hurt. Worse, pain screamed through his knee. The joint felt as if it were on fire. The ruined muscles that once supported him twitched feebly.

"Hey." A finger poked him, once and then again. "Hey! Can you hear me?"

Jai opened his eyes to see a dwarf crouching near, a glowing lantern on the ground beside his knee.

A dwarf. How? How?

The lantern light flickered and moved, but not like a candle's flame. It pulsed. The dwarf leaned closer, his bearded face so near Jai could see the blue flecks in the irises of his dark eyes. "I said can you hear me?"

Jai closed his eyes again. "I'm not deaf."

The dwarf grunted. "That's good." He kept silent for a heart's beat, then, "Your ears work. How about the rest of you?

Jai's belly clenched, but he refused to groan as he moved his leg. Pain lanced through the knee, shooting up his leg to his hip, yet in that pain he found a measure of comfort. Even all these years later, he remembered what broken bones felt like, he remembered how ripped muscle screamed and burned. His breath eased through clenched teeth. He had broken or torn nothing.

He opened his eyes again. "I'm all right."

"If you say so." The dwarf shrugged, sitting back on his heels, deeper into the shadows beyond the lantern light. In his muscular left hand he gripped the haft of a throwing axe. "I'm Stanach Hammerfell. You're Jai Windwild, I take it."

Jai frowned. "How did you know . . . ?"

Relaxing his grip on the axe, Stanach nodded toward Jai's knee. "I've been told to keep an eye out for you- a lame elf named Jai."

For a long silent moment, the dwarf looked at the ruin of Jai's knee, the poorly knitted bones, the swelling of new bruises. He gave Jai a sidelong glance as to say, Well, that'd be you, wouldn't it?

But aloud, he only said, "You might like to know your mam and your da are all right."

"My what?"

Stanach looked at him as if he'd had a few wits jogged loose by the fall. "Your mother and father," he said with exaggerated care. A sly smile tugged at his lips. "You were concentrating on something when the lady did her magic, eh? That pretty emerald in its pretty nest. Not concentrating on keeping still and trusting, which is what you were supposed to do. d.a.m.n magic. I hate it when they have to use it. It's always me got to go searching miles of tunnel for the ones who fall out of it too soon or too late."

"Where am I?"

"Underground." Stanach sat back again, and this time Jai noticed that his strange eyes changed, as a dwarfs will when the light recedes. The irises opened wide, all black now, no blue flecks to be seen. "Underground, and nearer to Qualinost than Thorbardin."

Thorbardin?

At Jai's puzzled expression, the dwarf nodded. "Thorbardin, which is where you're headed. Didn't they tell you that?"

Flatly, Jai said, "No one tells anyone all of anything about escape plans."

"All right, then, I'll tell you. I suppose you or your parents did something to catch the eye of the dragon's underlings, yes?" Jai let his silence be the answer. "Thought so. Well, you're near the route you elves take when you're leaving Qualinost in the dark of night.

Dwarves have been delving a tunnel between Thorbardin and Qualinost -"

"Delving? Why?"

Stanach shrugged. "Kings don't tell me why they do things. The elf-king and our thane put their heads together one day and said, 'Delve!' and off we went, digging a road between Qualinesti and Thorbardin."