by Janny Wurts
Separated by a widening expanse of water, Corlin's first commander fumed helplessly as the Kielmark dispatched crew to launch longboats. Cliffhaven's sailhands obeyed with formidable speed. Blocks squealed and lines came unlashed without fouling or wasted motion. The first boat smacked into the harbour within a minute and a half, and oarsmen scrambled aboard. Somewhere in the interim they had armed themselves for war. Their timing as they threaded looms and initiated stroke against the tide was irksomely flawless. They would reach the town docks, all of them, before the ungainly barge of state could recover headway.
The first commander of Corlin banged a frustrated fist against the stern seat, while his own rowers strained awkwardly at their benches. An officer, however senior, did not countermand his Duke; and the Queen herself had delegated authority to this pirate and his pack of trained cutthroats. Left no graceful recourse, the disgruntled first commander saw two sorcerers and an enchantress delivered to the south shore landing and speedily mounted on horses.
Though the animals were fresh, they suffered in the still air. Their coats shone dark with sweat in the torch-lit yard by the ferry dock. The jangle of bits and swords and mail made them prance as the men at arms appointed as escort prepared to ride.
'Where will you go?' demanded the first commander. He spoke through his nose, as if the air had a taint that disagreed with him.
Anskiere replied with little more courtesy than the Kielmark. 'To Seitforest, and thence to the battlefield.'
The officer reverted to outrage. 'Kor's grace, sorcerer, are trees and squirrels of more account than the living people of Hallowild?' But his question was lost in dust and noise as the Stormwarden's party thundered away from the docks. Taen had no chance to reassure the man that Jaric and Anskiere between them had formulated a plan; her own mount bolted to keep pace with the others. Caught flat-footed by the landing, the soldiers on escort detail clambered belatedly into saddles to give chase.
XII
Hallowild
Night fell; hidden in darkness, the track above Corlin ferry lay soft in the hollows, gouged by livestock and caravans to ruts where puddles were slow to dry. The horses cantered through air that smelled of crushed clover and mud and river reed. Southwest, beyond the streaming flame of the outriders' torches, Seitforest stood rimmed with fire and smoke. The swirl of the Redwater bounded the trail to the north, snagged into ghost-fingered foam where current curled over submerged rocks.
Taen clung by reflex to a bay gelding, her customary distrust of horses eclipsed by dream-trance. Immersed in nets of power, her mind ranged through woodland seeking a man who in autumn should be found wearing soft leather and a jingling clip of bird snares. While Seitforest burned, no semblance of seasonal rhythms remained to guide her search. The trails where the forester normally fared were overrun by panicstricken wildlife. Blazing thickets and smoke-smothered dells yielded no trace of human awareness. At last, on the verge of despair, Taen sampled the mind of a sparrow; through its ears she heard the sharp ring of an axe. She pinpointed the sound and immediately encountered a presence intent as a hawk's. With a cry of relief, the Dreamweaver broke trance and set heels to her horse.
The bay tossed its nose in protest, then lengthened stride to match pace with the Firelord's mount. Taen raised her voice in answer to Jaric's concern. 'Telemark is unharmed. You'll find him cutting a slash in attempt to check the fire.' Dream-image showed him a lantern-lit draw, thick with smoke and the scent of crushed fern; there the forester laboured with shovel and axe in a solitary effort to avert disaster.
Ivainson knew the place. He also saw that the forefront of the blaze raged scarcely half a league distant. Trees exploded violently into flame, fanning deadly flurries of sparks. No mortal endeavour could spare Seitforest from ruin. Telemark worked on out of stubbornness, for the trap runs and the cabin that were all he loved in life. Obligated by friendship and a deep sense of debt, Jaric took immediate action. Trusting Taen to explain to Anskiere, he whipped up his mount and plunged toward the wood at a gallop.
An outrider reined from the column to follow. 'Stay here!' commanded the Stormwarden. 'You'll only get in his way.'
The officer in attendance shouted protest. Anskiere of Elrinfaer did not trouble to answer, but instead woke the light in his staff.
Every horse in the company shied. Riders fought to stay astride, while the night around them grew charged with the sense of impending storm. Breezes heavily scented with rain licked the grasses, bowing their tasselled heads to the earth. The weather wards brightened steadily until Anskiere's tall form stood rinsed in violet glare. Around him, two score hard-bitten men at arms trembled in raw terror, while clouds whipped over the treetops, and the still, hot air of calm broke under influence of sorcery.
* * *
While other men of Hallowild battled to rout the Dark-dreamer's horde of animated human remains, the forester, Telemark, sent his axe ringing into the trunk of a silver beech. Green wood resisted; the steel rebounded with force, chewing off the thinnest of chips. Telemark blinked tear-blurred eyes. Slowed by smoke and the sting of split blisters, he hefted his axe for another stroke, then paused as a rustle disturbed the undergrowth beyond the ground cleared by his efforts.
A man emerged from the trees, well proportioned and dressed for the saddle. As he strode closer, lanternlight revealed gold hair, a tunic of imported design that had fared badly in the briars, and a very familiar face. Telemark straightened in surprise.
'Put down your axe, old friend,' said Jaric. He smiled at the forester's astonishment, then crossed the expanse of stripped earth at a run.
Though stronger and broader of shoulder than the boy who had wintered in Seitforest, Jaric still moved with care, as if at any moment the soil might rise up and trip him; but a glimpse of his eyes showed that such diffidence was long outgrown. The man who returned to embrace his former mentor owned power enough to shape the very stones for his feet.
Telemark returned the greeting, then stepped clear, his axe rested helve downward in the moss. Sweat streaked his wrists like gilt in the torchlight, and black-and-white hair hung matted with ash. 'The Llondelei foretold with truth,' he observed, his welcome subdued by grief for his ruined wildlands. 'Seitforest burns.'
Jaric considered the churned dirt, the swath of razed greenery that love and desperation had accomplished. 'I think I can help.'
As if a weapon could achieve the impossible, he moved back and drew his sword. Telemark recognized the blade. But what once had been ordinary steel brightened with the triple halo of a Firelord's defence wards.
The forester dropped his axe in amazement. 'Great Fires! You're the heir of Ivain?'
Jaric gave no answer. Eyes closed, sword upraised, he engaged his mastery and summoned. The fire that raged through Seitforest responded as if alive. Treetops tossed and rattled, twisted by violent draughts. Telemark braced against a beech trunk, as, whipped by terrible energies, the darkness over his head roiled and broke, transformed to a red-gold sheet of inferno. In a magnificent display of power, the conflagration that had devastated leagues of dry woodland coalesced like a whirlpool to the Firelord's bidding. The air shimmered, tortured into heat waves by a vast wheel of incandescence.
Still the fires gathered. Flame melted into flame, until Jaric stood drowned in light. Telemark shielded his face, overawed by a reality foretold by Llondian vision nearly two years past. Pride and emotion stopped his breath. Had he known at the time whom he recovered from the predations of forest bandits, he might never have found the courage to offer the shelter that had succoured the heir of Ivain.
Yet even such breadth of revelation could not eclipse Seitforest's need. Telemark squinted and bent and groped after his axe. That moment, a chilly fall of rain pattered over his shoulders. A glance at the sky did not dispel the miracle. The drought had broken; clouds blanketed a sky that only moments before had been harsh with heat haze and smoke. The forester shouted in relief. 'Son of Ivain!'
'Go home and rest.' J
aric's voice sounded distant through the thunderous snap of flame. 'The Stormwarden of Elrinfaer will drown the last cinders and see your forest safe.'
Abruptly conscious of a bone-deep ache of fatigue, Telemark straightened before the heat of the Firelord's presence. 'What will you do?'
The face in the conflagration smiled. 'These flames may be needed in Corlin's defence.' And sensing a dry watercourse beneath the ground that sloped conveniently toward the river, Jaric stepped into earth and vanished.
The unbearable brilliance of fire went with him. Blinking in commonplace lanternlight, Telemark retrieved his axe. The sting of his blistered hands woke him as if from a dream. Grateful for solitude, he wept unabashedly while around him the rains beat drum rolls of salvation over green trees, and brush, and acres of seared earth.
The storm gained force at Anskiere's bidding. White torrents poured over the burned expanse of Seitforest, and embers extinguished into hissing plumes of ash and steam; but no rain fell on the south side of the river. Taen, the Stormwarden, and Corlin's contingent of nervous cavalry continued their ride on dry ground. The horses accepted the novelty with equanimity. After the first jigging steps, they trotted willingly forward, hooves lifting spurts of chalky dust from the road. But the soldiers assigned as escort muttered and hung back from the Stormwarden's presence.
'Jaric waits for us ahead,' Taen informed Anskiere. Taxed by the need to ride and ply her talents simultaneously, she gripped her reins like the life lines on a boat. 'Corlin's main army is driven into retreat. The Kielmark knows. He's gone in ahead of the reserve garrison to take command. We'll meet him with the rear guard, about half a league from the Redwater.'
'The enemy lines are that close?' Spurred by concern, the Stormwarden put his mount to a canter.
Light flared suddenly ahead. Leaping, distorted shadows fanned from the forms of brush and riders. Around the next bend in the trail, a figure lined in brilliance blocked the way. The Firelord sat astride his plunging, quivering mare, his sword raised over his head; above the blade towered sixty-foot sheets of flame. drawn from Seitforest, and bound by sorcery to a nexus of biddable force. Glare burnished the ground like beaten metal for yards in each direction, and the trees on either side of the trail rippled with heat waves.
As Anskiere and Taen drew rein, their trailing escort at last caught up.
'Kor!' The sergeant in command covered fear with nervous speech. 'Pity the river's too deep for fording. On the other side that fire could spare some lives.'
Busy murmuring encouragements to his mount, the Stormwarden flicked sweat-soaked reins. When his animal ceased trying to sidle and bolt, he said, 'That's exactly what Jaric intends.' He added a bitten syllable. The staff over his head flared purple. An eerie note of power thrummed on the air, followed by a crack like breaking crockery. Every soldier from Corlin cried out as the mighty span of the Redwater glazed over and froze.
'Ride!' shouted the Stormwarden. He kicked his mount to a gallop and reined headlong down the bank. The animal landed on current chilled hard as black glass. Ice chips scattered from its hooves as it slid and careened to keep balance.
Better accustomed to goats than horses, Taen grasped mane in both hands and clung as her bay scrambled after. The animal stumbled. Banged face first into its neck, she cursed, and clutched, and somehow kept her seat. Her mount skated wildly beneath her. It regained stride, only to slip again down the hardened falls of a rapids. Taen dropped the reins and grabbed saddle leather. The thrust of the horse's shoulders pinched her knuckles. Then the beast was across, and galloping up the embankment to the roadway on the far side. Bruised in places she winced to contemplate, Taen fumbled after her reins. She dared a breathless look back. Jaric followed with a frown intent as his father's, his sword point streaming like a fire beacon.
The riders sent as escort still milled in confusion on the far bank. Neither sorcerers nor enchantress paid them further heed. Thankful for the lapse, two score stalwart men at arms abandoned duty and permitted their mounts to bolt in panic toward Corlin.
A mile farther on, the Stormwarden slowed to allow the horses to breathe. Hooves clanged on the wheel-scarred slate of the roadway; that and the gusty roar of flame effectively foiled speech. Taen snatched the interval to gauge the battle's progress.
The outlook proved discouraging. Corlin's troops were hardpressed, with the Duke forced to issue another command to withdraw. Dismayed by this development, Stormwarden and Firelord wheeled their mounts from the roadway.
They continued at a gallop across tilled fields and pastures, until the stone walls of a sheep fold obstructed the way. Anskiere launched his horse in stride and leapt over. But Jaric had not been raised a prince with the finest of blooded horses at his disposal; he summoned Earthmastery and dissolved the barrier into a spattering rain of sparks. Taen followed him through the gap grateful because her knees galled her. The bay dropped back to a walk.
The defending ranks of Corlin's army were now overwhelmingly close, and losing ground steadily. Just beyond the next rise, shouts and the clangour of weapons tangled with the screams of maimed soldiers. A horn winded close by. The wail of a whistle arrow signalled the recall, answered by the thunder of a cavalry charge to give faltering knots of foot soldiers a second's space to regroup.
'If they get pinned against the river, they're lost,' Jaric shouted.
Anskiere gestured in bleak agreement. He reached the crest of the hill, drew rein, and faced forward, stunned speechless by the vista that met his eyes.
Taen and Jaric stopped their mounts at his side, equally appalled. The sight below affronted human dignity. Fires burned, red and raw as wounds across the valley. Outlined in hellish light, two armies struggled, one composed of staunch but frightened men, and the other of bones of the dead, laced clatteringly together by dried strings of tendon. Men, women, even children had not been spared service to Shadowfane's minion. They fought through no will of their own, skeletons animated to grisly purpose. Gut and soft tissues had long since been chewed away by scavengers. The shrivelled gristle of the faces exposed jawbones and teeth, and eye sockets scraped clean by beetles; but the bony hands of thousands swung weapons.
Their blows wrought tireless slaughter upon the living. Taen saw a handsome young swordsman get his skull half cloven by an axe. Blood fountained as he stumbled; yet he collapsed no farther than his knees. In horror, the Dreamweaver watched him rise, turn, and slash, killing the shield mate who fought at his side. The soldier died with a look of agonized surprise.
Men slain on the field only augmented the ranks of Maelgrim's atrocities. Taen dismounted. Devastated that such malice should be engineered by one she had known as her brother, she stumbled against Jaric's knee.
Ivainson leaned over his horse's withers and offered comfort. The heat of his fires enfolded her. Taen clung as if she might faint, but no space remained for weakness. As Anskiere called an impatient query, Jaric reluctantly touched her hair. 'Little witch?'
Taen straightened with a nod that was dogged bravado; inside, she wanted badly to weep. But her talents could not be spared. Without words, she handed the reins of her gelding to Jaric. Then she settled in the damp grass and gathered her awareness into trance, to assess the strength of the Dark-dreamer whose influence they must overcome, or else surrender the kingdom of Hallowild to Lord Scait and Shadowfane.
The battlefield looked different to the inward eye. In dream-sense, the spirit glow of living flesh outshone the flash of swords and steel-headed lances. At the far flank of the fighting, the flare and sparkle of spells showed where the Duke of Corlin's conjurer bolstered the offensive with wizardry.
But if the army of defenders was visible as light, the enemy they engaged and died to obstruct was darkness, black and featureless as chaos before creation. The shadow that animated the dead arose out of Morbrith. Like tide it swirled and pressed south, tireless enough to engulf the domains of Corlin and Dunmoreland in turn. Cautiously Taen extended her awareness. She probed the e
dges of the Dark-dreamer's powers, and encountered the singing of Gierj.
Far above the limits of normal hearing, the note that enabled the demons to meld and generate energy dashed against her Dreamweaver's probe. Resonance pierced Taen's defences, tore gaps in her concentration wide enough to defeat her.
She slammed back with a cry of pain. Her trance broke, awareness wrenched without transition into night and screams and the clash of thousands of weapons. Gasping and confused, she felt someone's arms encircle her from behind; the solicitude was Jaric's. Light thrown off by his fires played in patterns over her lap.
Reluctantly Taen raised her eyes. The fighting was perilously near at hand. By now the Kielmark had overtaken the rear lines; his great shout lifted above the din and exhorted panicked men to hold their shield wall. 'Belly-crawling lizards, stand firm! If another of you spins and runs, by Kor, I'll have your gizzards out and bleeding on the lances of the relief garrison.'
His imprecations ceased, drowned by the batter of weaponry as Maelgrim's horrors pressed the attack.
Against smoke and flame glow and night sky, Anskiere sat his horse like a stone image, his hand clenched taut on the reins. 'If they stand, they're just going to die that much quicker.' Sickened by the killing, the maiming, and the madness that ruined good men without let up, he turned from the battle and saw the Dreamweaver had aroused from trance. The starkness of her features caused his manner to ease just a little. 'Can you tell us what we face, little witch?'
Taen shook off the discomfort that lingered from her probe. As Jaric loosened his embrace, she straightened and attempted a report. 'Maelgrim directs his assault from Morbrith keep. His source to animate the dead is drawn direct from Gierjlings. I don't know how many, except this time their numbers are too great. I cannot unbind the demons' link. Nor can I break the Dark-dreamer's control so long as his Gierj-circle remains active.'