by Janny Wurts
Tortured by the need for clarity, the Dreamweaver delivered the last of her message in image. Through dream-touch, Stormwarden and Firelord understood that Maelgrim's demons generated harmonics forceful enough to strip her defenceless. Unless the melding of his Gierjlings was disrupted, she could do nothing; and plainly Maelgrim intended no surcease until the last of Corlin's inhabitants were annihilated.
Anskiere dismounted. Grim and preoccupied, he tossed his reins over his horse's head, then glanced in apology to Jaric. 'I had hoped to avoid the use of force. Now the necessity can no longer be denied.'
Ivainson Firelord flinched taut in anguish. He had never wanted a sorcerer's powers. Since the day he undertook mastery, he had prayed beyond hope never to engage his Vaerish powers in the cause of war. All too easily the hurt and the hatred inspired by his father's madness might find new focus in him.
Taen sensed Jaric's conflict. Though closest to his heart, even she could not offer solace. Always Ivainson tried, yet failed, to bend the wind; his destiny inevitably was too great for any mortal to alter.
Sick with shared grief, the Dreamweaver stumbled to her feet. The man she had come to love rose at her back and bore up. Inscrutable now as his father, Jaric gathered the reins of his own mount, and the bay, and finally Anskiere's gelding. He laced the leather gently through Taen's hands, while the Stormwarden delivered instructions.
'The horses must be led clear. We've no time for niceties. The effects of raw power can't help but spook them.'
His decision was in no way premature. Shadowfane's army of horrors advanced relentlessly. The cries of wounded men and the horns of the officers sounded almost at the foot of the hilltop where the Vaere-trained prepared their defence. Fighting surged like current dragged through shallows. The foremost line of defenders was spearheaded still by the Kielmark and his scythe of a broadsword. Predictable as death, he shouted insults; and as if by arcane inspiration the strongest men rallied in support.
Yet this once the Lord of Cliffhaven's ferocious penchant for command invited disaster. As the ranks on either side turned toward safety, he and his cadre of fighters were left without support. Already the vanguard of Shadowfane's corpses threatened to surround his flank.
Anskiere stepped to Jaric's side. 'Act quickly. Another minute, and we'll have no choice but to slaughter some of our own with the enemy.'
Taen overheard. Rein leather crushed in her sweating hands as she tuned her concentration to warn the bravest defenders of their peril. She found the Kielmark and the men he led lost utterly in the clash and chime of weaponry. Her dream-touch itself became a hazard; one careless thought, and she would deflect the fighters' concentration, or disrupt the critical timing of parry and riposte. During crisis perfect concentration proved impossible. Any attempt at precision became overturned by the terrible wail of the Gierj. The convergence of power through Maelgrim's focus frayed Taen's talent until the battlefield below became form and movement without meaning, a nightmare afflicting a mind that did not seem her own.
Stressed to distraction, she had no choice but to abandon her efforts. If she persisted, her meddling might earn the imperilled soldiers a quicker end on the swords of Maelgrim's apparitions. The horses were her assigned responsibility. Firmly Taen took them in hand, to lead them away from the tumult before the powers of Stormwarden and Firelord joined the battle. She managed a scant dozen paces before Anskiere's staff flared active at the crest of the rise.
Light stabbed forth amid chaos. Wards surged and crackled into readiness and triple purple haloes scattered ghost glints amid the dew. Storm wind followed, whipping droplets like sparks into darkness.
The horses balked. Intimidated by their huge strength, Taen stroked the sweat-sheened tautness of their necks and coaxed, without success. That moment, Ivainson Firelord engaged his mastery. He built the blaze gathered from Seitforest higher and hotter, until flames ripped skyward with a roar that deafened thought.
The big gelding reared. Wrenched off her feet, Taen shouted, but could not bring it down. Her own mount and Jaric's mare wheeled together. Rather than suffer dismemberment, she let the reins burn through her fingers. The knots at the ends broke her grip with a jerk. As the horses shied and thundered wildly off into the night, Jaric and Anskiere joined forces. The combined intensity of their powers lit the heavens, and burned a baleful, fiery glow over the battlefield beneath.
Taen scarcely noticed. Tumbled in a heap on damp grass, she cursed like a fishwife and sucked skinned knuckles. Above her, the directives of two sorcerers merged. A screaming cyclone of wind wrapped itself in fire, then ripped downslope to the destruction of the risen dead.
The energy struck with the immediacy of a lightning flash. Cavalry bolted in panic. Live men broke ranks and fled before the conflagration; the Kielmark's band wheeled and fell back along with them. But the demon-possessed marched yet, blindly oblivious to ruin. Fires overtook them with a roar like storm surf.
Bones danced an instant in silhouette; whirled like sticks into tangles, thousands of corpses ignited and burned. Rickety fists clenched weapons that heated white, then splashed molten to the earth. Trees exploded into torches. Skulls bounced and rolled over the ground, eye sockets streaming cinders.
The fire seared forth, utterly without discrimination, and razed all in its path. Wounded men and disabled horses screamed and died in agony. The flames raged and cracked and licked outward until the entire valley west of the Redwater lay mantled in scarlet and gold.
Only then did the onslaught cease; between one breath and the next, the fury of sorcery died.
Flame flicked out as if snuffed by darkness. The ground where Maelgrim's atrocities had marched lay black as a pall of death. Charred weeds and bushes tasselled with embers rimmed a field veiled heavily in smoke; feathers of ash sifted earthward. At a price terrible to behold, no bones remained to rise and kill. The song of the Gierj that had animated Shadowfane's army was disrupted at last to ragged and impotent disharmony.
At the brow of the hill, Anskiere quenched his staff and glanced over his shoulder. 'Now, Taen!'
Below him, the men at arms left living cheered with hysterical relief. Some banged swords on their shields, but the Dreamweaver could not share in the victory. Called to sever the Dark-dreamer's link with his Gierj, she flung herself deep into trance.
* * *
Dream-sense showed Taen a place of damp, cold stone, and a sensation of dizzy height. Chills touched her, as awareness embraced Maelgrim's lair in the watchtower at Morbrith. The sense of evil lurking inside made her quail. Torches in wrought-iron brackets licked the walls with orange light. Over dissonant eddies of Gieij-whistle she heard a clink of wire; that small sound became her guide.
The Dark-dreamer of Shadowfane leaned by the south-facing window, flicking silver bracelets with his thumb. Night sky framed a face more finely drawn than Taen recalled. Under level brows his eyes shone enormous, depthless as smoke, and entirely devoid of humanity.
'Well met, my sister.' Maelgrim bowed in the high style learned in Kisburn's court. 'Though I'd say your rescue of Corlin was flamboyantly overdone.'
Taen ignored the jeer. A secretive attempt to read the entity that inhabited the flesh of her brother yielded a barrage of viewpoints, as if he perceived his surroundings through multiple sets of eyes. The experience left her queasy and disoriented. The task of separating the minds of demon from host lay beyond her abilities; Maelgrim's mind was other, transformed by Gierj contact to the point where even his thoughts were alien. But Stormwarden and Firelord had engaged desperate measures to gain this opening. For their sake, for Corlin's, and for the fact that this atrocity sent from Shadowfane had once been her sibling, Taen had to try.
'The boy you called Emien was pathetic, frightened of everyone and most of all himself.' Maelgrim smiled, and the familiarity of the expression wrenched his sister's heart.
'I have no brother.' Wary of his malice, Taen probed for a weakness. Maelgrim permitted her search. That in its
elf offered warning. Her powers were useless here; if she lingered, she risked more than her life.
'You guard the wrong front, my sister.' Maelgrim lowered his arm. Bracelets jangled around the heel of his hand, and as if the gesture signalled attack, the Gierj-song's pitch levelled out.
The Dreamweaver never registered their recovery. Demon power crested too swiftly for thought, battering against her senses and threatening her identity with chaos.
Belatedly, Taen strove to rally. In the instant before retreat became necessity, she hammered her query home, and confirmed her worst suspicion. Maelgrim struck now to wound more than human soldiers. The arm and the instrument of Shadowfane, he moved to cut down the only living resource capable of marring the demons' plans of conquest. His target now was Anskiere of Elrinfaer, and after, the Firelord, Ivainson Jaric.
'No!' Taen understood her position was futile. She challenged anyway.
Maelgrim retaliated. His power lanced her mind, cast her away as an ox might shudder off an offending fly. Taen knew darkness. Hedged in by the dagger prick of her brother's desire to see her broken in defeat, she raised a stinging lattice of wards. Yet Maelgrim only toyed with her. His laughter filled her ears, and contact with Morbrith sundered in a ripping flash of pain.
Hurled to her knees on stony ground, Taen twisted to avoid a fall. A hand caught her, Jaric's, red-lit by the aura of his drawn sword. He stood alone on the hilltop, amid weeds and rocks and a windy expanse of night sky.
The Dreamweaver drew breath in alarm. 'Where's Anskiere?'
'Down there.' Jaric inclined his head toward the valley where, by the dying flicker of fires, men at arms converged around the tall presence of the Stormwarden. 'He went to advise the troop captains.'
Tiny with distance, the army looked like an array of toy figurines; except that the weapons were sharp enough to kill, and the blood on the surcoats had not been painted on for effect. 'Signal the Stormwarden back.' Shrill with dread, Taen qualified. 'He's in danger.'
Before she could finish, the Dark-dreamer struck. Taen engaged her talent to ward, but Maelgrim foiled her. His thrust was not shaped against Anskiere himself. Instead Shadowfane's minion attacked the undefended mind of the man at the sorcerer's back.
Gierj-power overran the victim's will in an instant. Enslaved utterly by enemy compulsion, the soldier drew his dagger and lunged to stab the Stormwarden from behind, Taen cried out. Panic constricted her talents. She closed her eyes, strove frantically to recover control enough to warn before treachery struck Anskiere down. But her attempt to establish rapport opened a buffeting channel of sensations. Savaged by a flare of cruel heat, she heard the ringing scream of a man in his final agony.
Surely the possessed man's dagger had found its mark. Crushed by grief and failure, the Dreamweaver looked to find the Stormwarden unharmed within a cordon of stupefied men at arms.
The possessed man who had attempted murder writhed in flame at Anskiere's feet, felled by Ivainson's conjuring. A senior officer sprang to end the traitor's suffering. As his sword rang from his scabbard, Taen sensed echoes of laughter through the Gierj-song. Before she could rally, the Dark-dreamer struck again.
The officer on the field completed his mercy stroke. With no break in motion, he turned his fouled blade and lunged to murder the sorcerer beside him.
On the hilltop, Jaric gasped as if he had been hit. Again he summoned fire. Dazzled by glare from the backlash, Taen perceived her brother's diabolical design. Maelgrim intended to continue, forcing one man after another to raise arms. Anyone in the field might turn assassin at his command. Taen's talents could never extend far enough to secure the minds of an entire war host. If the Stormwarden was to be saved, Jaric might be forced to massacre every living ally from Corlin.
The night seemed suddenly cold beyond bearing. Taen shivered miserably in dew-drenched weeds, arms clenched around her knees. Her spirit reeled in the throes of bleakest despair. She dared not think of the Firelord, whose distaste for violence could not be reconciled with killing, even to defend the Stormwarden's life.
Yet power rose again at Jaric's bidding. Through empathy compelled by love, Taen suffered equally as the death screams of Maelgrim's victims cut her man to the marrow; she shared guilt and the tearing effort of each successive counterstrike.
'This has to end!' Jaric cried at last.
Below, the Kielmark had perceived Anskiere's peril. Heedless of complications, the sovereign of Cliffhaven gathered his men and stormed recklessly through the ranks toward the centre of conflict. His loyalty only courted tragedy; the killing intensity of his fury would make a ready tool for Maelgrim's Gieij.
Jaric closed his fists in an agony of helplessness. Hoarse with self-loathing, racked by the possibility he might be forced to cut down a friend, he appealed in desperation to his Dreamweaver. 'Can't you fashion a ward that the Gierj-crazed can't pass?'
Taen lifted her head. The Firelord awaited her reply, desperate as the time he had first scaled the ice cliffs to answer Anskiere's summons. Haunted and horrified and self-betrayed, he fought to thwart the demon-possessed, while she herself had withdrawn, disheartened. Such passivity from her was wrong in a way that defied reason. Jaric regarded her with sudden clear-eyed concern. 'Little witch, what's amiss?'
His words sparked revelation. Abruptly aware of outside interference, Taen perceived with damning clarity that her emotions themselves had become the tool of Maelgrim's design. Snared during her sally in the tower, she had apparently fallen victim to his control.
XIII
The Reaving
Before Taen could sound her inner depths to assess the extent of Maelgrim's stay-spell, Anskiere raised the powers of his staff.
In the valley, sorcery shattered darkness as the auras of his weather wards sprang active. Purple glare lit the nightmare reality of another man drawing steel under Maelgrim's influence. Anskiere slapped his attacker off balance with a gust. The man fell heavily upon his back, winded, but struggling still to raise his sword.
Jaric could no longer spare Taen his concern. Determined to avert another killing, he engaged Earthmastery from the hilltop. At his bidding the grasses whipped into rope and bound the assassin's body at feet and wrists. The measure was stopgap, an inadequate diversion that could last no more than a minute.
Struggling still to recover her initiative, Taen caught the echo of Maelgrim's amusement. His laughter mocked her efforts, and cast a veil of confusion over the disciplines of her craft. Still helpless, she felt the Dark-dreamer counter Jaric's ward by releasing control of his victim's mind.
The officer under demon influence recovered self-awareness instantaneously. Denied any memory of his assault upon Anskiere, he discovered himself shackled by earth sorcery. The bodies of slaughtered companions smouldered in the weeds nearby. Over them loomed Anskiere of Elrinfaer, his eyes like chipped ice, and his staff charged with energy like a storm front.
The officer screamed in terror. 'Kor's Fires! We're betrayed like the folk of Tierl Enneth!'
Only those men who were closest had seen the attempted assassination. Blocked by the press, the ranks behind knew only that the situation seemed suddenly, dangerously wrong; already traumatized by sorcery on a scale that defied understanding, their commanders shouted orders.
The army raised weapons. Light from the Stormwarden's spells spangled a steely hedge of swords, halberds, and axes with edges angled to charge; archers reached to string bows, and lancers took to horse.
Anskiere raised his staff. Hair whipped back from his face as he bound his waxing powers into whirlwind, to be turned in self-defence against enemies that were human.
But these men were misguided, not possessed. The Stormwarden poised to destroy could not know that his attackers acted outside the Dark-dreamer's influence. Taen stiffened her back. Though she wrestled yet to disengage Maelgrim's restraint, more ordinary means remained to stem the rush of the army.
'Frighten them,' she cried to Jaric. 'They're not deprived of wit
s, and they'll run.' The tactic might work; certainly panic would make the men at arms more difficult for Maelgrim and his Gierj to manipulate.
Yet sorcery did not answer immediately. On the ridge, the Firelord stood like rock, his face tipped toward a sky pinpricked with stars. His expression seemed strange and remote as he slowly raised his sword.
Light slashed the darkness. Dazzled by an overwhelming discharge of power, the Dreamweaver glimpsed gold-barred feathers. Above her, the light-falcon which once had summoned her to the Isle of the Vaere unfolded wings that spanned the breadth of the heavens. The bird screamed. Its crested head swivelled, eyes of burning yellow surveying the army massed to kill in the valley. Jaric spoke a word. Air hissed between spread pinions; then, with awesome and terrible grace, the focused manifestation of his power sprang aloft. It swooped down upon the ranks of Anskiere's attackers, trailing a wake of crackling flame.
Maelgrim Dark-dreamer sensed the rising flux of power. Pressed by the threat raised by Jaric, his attention shifted; and in that instant, Taen cut through his block and broke free. The crippling despair lifted from her, just as the effects of Ivainson's conjury reached the valley.
The light-falcon's flight cut the night like a blade heated red from the forge. Scalded by wind off its wings, men looked up, their shouts of alarm transformed to a chorus of terror. No weapon would avail against the unleashed projection of a Firelord's anger. Most men broke formation and fled. But maddened by the appearance of certain doom, others levelled weapons and charged vengefully upon the sorcerer who still stood vulnerable in their midst.
Yet the Stormwarden stayed his hand. Whirlwinds shrieked in check in response to Taen's plea for time to engage her dream-sense. This time Maelgrim's meddling did not cripple her. She magnified fear into a weapon, striking panic into hostile minds until, in a rush, the last men broke and ran.