Read Online Sartor by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online Page B

once Sartor over there.
You’ve heard of Sartor,” he added.
    Rel nodded. “Gran used to tell us old stories about
it.”
    “And don’t forget ’em.” The man
shook his head, pain furrowing his brow. “Bad times, we live in. But we
all make our way, and never forget the better days.”
    Rel said, “Anyone ever been over that back road, just
to see what’s what?”
    “Sure. Every generation some hothead has to go, and
they never come back. Some sort o’ bad magic traps a-layin’ for the
unwary, I hear,” the man said. “But at least whatever’s
beyond it don’t come back over this way. Road’s probably grown over
long since. Sartor is gone from history, except in memory.” He shook his
head. “Well, I’m for bed. Long, soggy ride for the coast, come
morning, looks like.”
    “Good night,” Rel said.
    The brothers were already in bed. Rel leaned over to
extinguish the lamp.
    o0o
    The next morning, Merewen sat up, rubbed her eyes, and
sighed with relief.
    Lilah sat up with a snort. “Something wrong?”
    “I had a terrible dream,” Merewen exclaimed.
    Their voices roused Atan, who blinked tired eyes. “Danger
last night.” Her voice came out hoarse. She cleared her throat. “I
didn’t fall asleep until the sun began to rise.”
    Shocked and dismayed, Lilah and Merewen listened to Atan’s
story as they walked to the edge of the river.
    “A Norsundrian,” Lilah whispered, looking
fearfully around. “Has to be! Did he threaten you?”
    “He wanted to take me away, so he must know who I am.
That means someone knows I’m here. But I used the ring. The light is very
powerful. It made my own vision go dark for a time. I think it might have
blinded that man, for he took it full in his face. He rode away.”
    “Then let’s put some distance between us and
him. We can go faster without any food weighing us down,” Lilah said
doubtfully, as she watched Merewen’s small hands divide the last of the
journey bread. “My guess is, Norsunder knows the spell got broken. Or a spell, or whatever it was you said.”
    “One spell was broken,” Atan said. “But
the enchantment still binds.”
    “I thought ‘enchantment’ was a fancy word
for spells.” And at Atan’s surprise, “Big ones?”
    Atan leaned forward, hands tightly clasped. “An
enchantment is more than one spell, bound together for a purpose. The binding
spell requires a key to hold it all together. That key can be a time, or a
thing, or a person—just about anything.”
    “So we broke one spell. What does that actually
mean?” Lilah asked, hoping the answer would be, No more danger. “Why would they bother with a lot of little spells, anyway?”
    “Cruelty, in part,” Atan said. “From what
we know of the final defeat, the Norsundrian in charge, an Old Sartoran known
only as Detlev, bound the time-enchantment onto us Landises.”
    “Ugh,” Lilah said.
    “In front of my father.”
    “Eugh!”
    “Right before he was killed. Saying that only the
Landises could free Sartor, and the last of them was about to die. In other
words, he let my father know that all of his children were dead before they
killed him.”
    Lilah shrank down into a hunched knot. “That,”
she muttered with heartfelt horror, “is really, really nasty.”
    “It was calculated to be as cruel as possible.”
Atan shivered. “Perhaps we should wait to talk about these things until
we are safely in Shendoral. If we are out of journey bread, I trust we will see
it before too long.”
    Merewen smiled. “We are very near.”
    “ You can see it?” Lilah asked, squinting
into the distant gray haze that looked to her exactly the same as always.
    “No. But I feel it.” Merewen laid her hand over
her heart. “I feel it is close—maybe today, if we hurry.”
    “Can you lead us?” Atan asked, hope banishing
her tiredness.
    Merewen faced west, her eyes closed. “It’s all
along there.” She opened her eyes, her hand pointing to the northwest.
    “Then we have