by Janny Wurts
His remark brought no reply. A herd of goats bleated in the shadow below the wall, and afterglow shed light as flat as beaten metal on the waters of the harbour. The sounds and the view seemed oddly, inappropriately ordinary. Taen stared unseeing into distance. As if hooked by a crosscurrent of thought, she murmured something concerning an oath of debt that was too quiet to be quite understood.
Corley's hackles prickled. 'What?'
'He won't be shedding any man's blood. Not ever again.' And as if slapped into waking awareness, Taen suddenly flinched. Her face drained utterly of colour. 'Kor's grace, it's Shadowfane. The Kielmark - ' Her eyes widened in shock.
Corley caught her hard by the shoulders. 'What about the Kielmark?' His fingers bit, unwittingly harsh, and wrinkled her linen robe.
Taen shivered. 'He's dead.' Her words seemed unreal. The event they decribed should have been beyond the pale of any Dreamweaver's insight. The Kielmark's demise had happened in the dungeons of Shadowfane, deep under rock where no Vaere-trained talent should reach. Chilled through, Taen knew of no natural way she could pick up echoes of the tragedy.
Yet the vision had come to her, hard-edged in its clarity. Taen had no chance to fear, that an absolute of Vaerish law had been unequivocally overturned. The immediacy of Corley's grief overwhelmed her sensitivity and cancelled the contact.
The captain drew Taen close to offer comfort. The act became motion without meaning. The weight of the ruby tore bore heavily as a curse about his neck. He fumbled after words to ask what had happened, but his mind refused acceptance. Deprived the challenge of the Kielmark's explosive character, the future seemed brotherless and empty.
Below the walls, the lanterns of the wizards tossed gently in the wind. Corley shut his eyes as their lights splintered to rainbows through his tears. 'Bad luck,' he said thickly. 'Any sailor knows. Talk about storms at sea, and they come. I should never have agreed when the man left his rubies on the table.'
The captain's voice seemed almost detached, but Taen Dreamweaver heard beyond control to a core of blighting anguish. 'Your Lord always intended to come back.'
A man stopped the Kielmark at his peril, once his mind had been set; Deison Corley knew this, and was silent. His hands convulsed upon the cloth of Taen's shift. The wizards' lamps shone too bright beneath the walls. To escape their brilliance, the captain raised his gaze to the ships' masts in the harbour. 'Just tell me one thing. For the sake of his final peace, and the lives lost at Morbrith, did the great foolish hero take any demons with him?'
Beyond speech, Taen Dreamweaver managed a nod.
Corley's fingers slackened slightly, though the tension coiled within him gave not at all. 'My Lord would have cursed like a cheated whore, but after twisting the tail of the compact, he'd have to agree. Shadowfane's vengeance is bound to be brutal and swift. I was right to let wizards ashore on Cliffhaven.'
Taen had nothing to add. She regarded the camp of the wizards, terrified to fathom the source that had touched her. All too likely, through some dangerous and unseen turn of events, the vision had come through the man who lay dearest to her heart. The son of Ivain Firelord would now be alone, and in immeasurable peril.
Night deepened over the harbour, and the air took on a bite that warned of winter. Deison Corley stirred, finally, and guided Taen firmly from the wall. 'Let us go in out of the darkness. Anskiere will need to be told.'
'He already knows.' The Dreamweaver struggled to explain what should never have happened; her powers by themselves held no means to breach stone. Whatever force had sent her news of the Kielmark's end boded no good. Suddenly her body stiffened. Without warning she doubled over with a harrowing scream, her hands pressed tight to her chest.
Corley caught her. 'Taen?' She gave no sign she had heard. 'Taen answer - is it Jaric?'
The Dreamweaver's eyes clenched shut with agony. Though her lungs felt transfixed by pain, she managed a tortured affirmation.
Corley cradled her against his chest, then sprang at once to a run. Foreboding lodged like sheared metal in his gut. He dispatched the nearest guard to fetch the Stormwarden to the Kielmark's study. Then, as an afterthought, he shouted back over the wall and demanded the presence of the Magelord of Mhored Kara. If that ancient and crotchety person did not hurry his old bones to share counsel, the successor to the Kielmark's command swore under his breath that he'd spit the old conjurer on a shark gaff.
* * *
Jaric screamed, a high-pitched cry of shock and despair that did not quite mask the scrape of blade against bone, nor the grate of steel on stone as the sword pierced through his flesh and jarred unyieldingly into tile. A flood of warm fluid gagged his throat. Dying, he thought resentfully; pain left no space for fear. Yellow eyes flared in darkness as Scait Demon Lord flexed his wrists to clear his blade.
Jaric coughed in agony. His hands spasmed in their fetters. Beyond the reflexes of mortal pain, he knew fury so focused his vision seemed seared with light. Unaffected by the wards blocking his Firemastery, the Sathid entities within him retaliated. Skeins of energy ripped up the swordblade and exploded with a terrible cracking flash. Scait was flung backwards, spurred fingers clenched to his weapon. The steel pulled free with a horrible, sucking jerk. Jaric arched, mouth opened to scream. But ruined flesh framed no sound; his awareness splintered into a thousand spangles of fire. Scait collapsed on the floor beside him, cut down without chance for a death-dream.
Yet the Demon Lord's end did not satiate. The rage-roused tide of wild Sathid reached around the torment of Jaric's chest wound and ransacked his memories for facts. In a flash their awareness encompassed the massacres that had decimated Elrinfaer, Tierl Enneth, and Morbrith. Polarized to immediate revelation, the crystalline entities perceived the demon compact as a threat.
Their clamorous bid for survival meshed with Jaric's own cry for vengeance, not least for the theft of human young and the entrapment that had destroyed Marlson Emien.
Even as Ivainson Jaric thrashed in the throes of dying, hysterical packs of Thienz sensed the stir of wild Sathid within his mind. They backed away from the corpse of their overlord, and stampeded in terror from the chamber. However frantically they barred the door, neither flight nor steel locks could save them. The fading spark of the Firelord's awareness charged two score Sathid to a rage like unleashed chaos. Jaric allowed the current to take him. Even as death dimmed his thoughts, power more intense than any he had initiated as Firelord surged forth. The Thienz who scuttled through the corridor were obliterated in a searing flash. No outcry marked their passing. Neither did the Sathid subside.
Instead they fused with his hatred. One terrible instant showed Jaric the passions that had twisted and ruined his father. He discovered in full measure the lust in his desire to destroy. Capacity for power touched off a heady joy. His enemies would fear him as they perished. One breath ahead of oblivion, Jaric embraced the poisonous euphoria of vengeance. The Sathid within him responded.
Dizzied by a rush of expanded perception, Ivainson sensed the citadel of Shadowfane in its entirety, every warren and passageway and convoluted maze of stairwells; lightning-swift, cruel with excitement, the killing powers of his anger coursed outward. From deepest dungeon to the spindled eaves of the keeps, every cranny became seared with unbearable light. All that lived perished instantly. The eggs of Karas shape-changers scorched to dust in their sacs, and Thienz died wailing. The great hall of the council chamber entombed Scait's advisers, favourites and enemies alike immolated to drifts of ash; between one moment and the next, the mirror pool reflected an empty throne, and a sooty arch of vaulting.
Deep beneath the storerooms, in a grotto that opened onto a corridor of fire-slagged stone, a warded circle of stillness remained untouched. Alone of the demons of Shadowfane, the Morrigierj and its underlings escaped the Sathid's cyclone of destruction. Jaric could do nothing in remedy. Bleeding, cold, and abandoned, he had no resource left. His last thread of self-awareness slipped inexorably downward into night, as he
battled, and failed, and lost consciousness. Motionless alongside a corpse whose spurred fingers clamped the grip of a bloody sword, Ivainson Firelord stopped breathing.
Yet the bindings of his spirit did not loosen.
Alien energies coursed through his body, pinching off blood flow to ease his laboured heart, and mending with speed and sureness no surgeon could have matched. Being self-aware and psionic, the will of the combined Sathid could unriddle the mysteries of nature in an instant. While the damage inflicted by sword steel sapped life, their collective awareness diverted to the knitting of bone and sinew and organs.
One Sathid, two, even three could not have cheated death; but Jaric bore the seeds of two score entities. Each one constituted an exponential increase in power, the sum of which approached the infinite. The echoing clangour of the chain and counterweights that dead Thienz had used to secure his tomb had scarcely faded from hearing when his chest shuddered into motion. Breath wheezed through torn tissues. Life endured, precarious as candle-flame winnowed by draught.
Hours flowed into days; Jaric drifted on the borderline of death. At times, his skin glimmered blue, as the resources of crystalline entities lent him energy to survive. Later, fever raged, and he thrashed in delirium.
Dreams gave rise to nightmare as, inescapably, the cycle of bonding continued.
Days became weeks. Jaric's condition stabilized. Sathid attended the needs of his body and mind, and at length encountered the wards restraining his mastery of fire and earth. The crystals challenged, displacing the patterns of the spells. Enchanted fetters flickered on lax wrists. Dimmed as coals in ashes, the bindings of sorcery faded; and two score wild Sathid encountered the quiescent presence of their own kind. Innate obsession for dominance drove them to meld.
As their energies roused and interlocked with the crystals of Vaerish origin, the cycle granted an interval of reprieve. Jaric opened his eyes to darkness thick as felt. He shuddered and breathed, and immediately choked, overpowered by the stench of corrupted flesh. Dizzied, he wet his lips with his tongue; then he flinched, recalling Scait and the sword that should have ended his life. A frown marred his brow. He raised scabbed wrists, and by the absence of illumination recognized the collapse of the demons' wards. Though Firemastery might answer his will once more, he dared raise no light. On that point, Tamlin's teaching had been explicit. To engage Sathid-based sorcery while bonding additional crystals could only hasten disaster.
Jaric sat up. His own rasping breath and the chink of spent bonds echoed loudly in the dark as he crossed his hands on his knees. His mind seemed suspiciously lucid. Certain the passive state of the Sathid could not last, Jaric tightened the muscles of his forearms and jerked. The links connecting the cuffs of his fetters gave way with a sound like breaking glass. Grateful for even that small freedom, Ivainson rubbed his abraded skin. Then a presence touched his mind, insistent, familiar, and gentle enough to break his heart.
'Jaric?'
The Firelord stiffened. Wary and alone in his misery, he presumed the call was illusion; the chamber of his prison was still sealed, and no Vaere-trained Dreamweaver could breach the barrier of stone. Well might the Sathid indulge in such tricks to torment him. But the touch came again. Undone by longing, he surrendered himself. The reality of Taen's presence embraced him, warm and immediate as sunlight. Yet the reunion yielded little joy; wild Sathid coiled to observe, patient and deadly as a nest of adders. The Dreamweaver sensed their presence with a cry of dismay. 'Ivainson, beloved, what have they done?'
Defences parted. Jaric beheld a cherished face framed in black hair. He tried words. But the knotty mass of scar tissue left by Scait's sword obstructed his voice, and he barely managed to croak. 'Little witch, if life were just, I should have died before you found me.'
'Sathid, Jaric. Demons infected you with crystals?'
'Not exactly.' He qualified with incriminating brevity. 'Scait tried to place my mastery in bondage through a matrix cross-linked to a Thienz. I avoided the same fate as Emien, but only by contaminating myself to the point where Kor's Accursed dared not meddle.' Ivainson swallowed painfully and finished. 'Scait perished. The compact died with him, but the Llondelei should know. Their store of stolen matrix can never be recovered.'
A disturbance eddied the dream-link. Taen's image diminished, and the sealed chamber at Shadowfane seemed suddenly, intolerably desolate. Jaric sensed echoes. Shivering, his eyes flooded shamelessly with tears, he waited while the Dreamweaver pleaded with someone far distant. Then, poignant with distress, she sent an abbreviated farewell. 'Jaric, I love you. Never, ever forget.'
Her warmth faded sharply away. Savaged by loss, Jaric struggled to recover composure, even as a voice of uncompromising command snapped across the dream-link. 'Ivainson Jaric!' Wind eddied the chamber, fresh as frost amid the miasma of decay; through discomfort and despair slashed the presence of Anskiere of Elrinfaer.
Unnerved by failure, Jaric shrank but could not evade contact. The Stormwarden appeared, straight and tall before the windswept arch of Cliffhaven's watchtower. Cloaked in cloud-grey velvet, he stood with his staff propped in the crook of one elbow; breeze off the sea ruffled his white hair. His eyes were lowered, sorrowfully regarding a pair of amber crystals in his palm. Chilled to the heart, Jaric recognized the jewels that founded his mastery of fire and earth.
Brass-shod wood grated gently on stone as the Stormwarden turned. 'You are doomed.' He gazed into the haze of the horizon; so long had Jaric known darkness that the vision of ocean and sky and sunlight that filled his mind seemed unreal. At length Anskiere qualified. 'Tamlin of the Vaere warned you. No help and no hope remain. Have you strength enough to keep loyalty to your race, or do you need assistance?'
The gravity of the plea overshadowed all else; for the safety of Keithland, the Stormwarden required Jaric to take his life before wild Sathid overturned his mastery and brought disaster upon mankind. The request was not made lightly. The crystals cupped in Anskiere's hand were no longer coldly neutral but warmed by conflicting energies. Even as the Stormwarden awaited answer, wild Sathid sensed threat to their numbers. In a flash of shared awareness, they stirred their bonded counterparts toward rebellion.
Ivainson needed no urging to perceive the gravity of his predicament. He laced scarred fingers together, tightening his grip until his knuckles went numb. He had effectively died once. A second time should not prove unendurable, except that Scait's fatality thwarted all hope of simplicity. Impeded by scars and uncertainty, Jaric strove to relate how intervention by wild Sathid had healed a sword wound of fatal proportions. He might take courage into his hands, run himself through with a blade, yet still survive the result. Words would not come. The dizzy whirl of Sathid-sickness defeated concentration, and his struggle to frame speech went unnoticed.
Anskiere spun from the window with his brows forbiddingly lowered. 'Firelord! You swore me an oath, that day beneath the ice cliffs. Dare you break faith?'
The accusation cut like a lash. Jaric knew pain, then anger, that his sincerity still stood in question. He ignored the suspicion that wild Sathid tuned his emotions for their own gain, and returned a look wholly his father's. 'Do you doubt my word?'
Anskiere did not speak, but lifted his hand so Jaric could see; the crystals he held glowed red. Provoked by the rigours of bonding, their surface flared hot enough to blister. Yet the Stormwarden's least concern was the pain. At any moment the structure of the matrix would collapse, unleashing hostile energies no human could withstand. Before then, for the safety of humanity, the man who had mastered them must die.
Sweat sprang at Jaric's temples. His anger transformed to raw desperation, for steel no longer held power to kill him. If he consented to the grace of a mercy stroke, even one fashioned by sorcery, disaster might follow. His executioner might provoke wild Sathid to the same defensive reaction that had slain Scait and every demon in the compact. Ivainson forced his ruined throat to frame speech. 'Your Grace, there is danger in my death.'
Powerless to bridle the blaze of his own mastery, Jaric shouted frantic affirmation. No chance remained to explain. Wild Sathid whirled his thoughts like wind devils. Through rising curtains of fire, he saw Anskiere tumble both crystals of mastery across the sill. Unseen to one side, Taen shouted a useless plea concerning conjury and the wizards of Mhored Kara. The Stormwarden returned a look of anguish. Sorrowfully he shook his head. No magic in Keithland could spare the life of her love. Pitiless as an autumn storm front, Anskiere of Elrinfaer caught his staff in blistered fingers. Defence wards activated with a blinding shimmer of light.
'No!' Ivainson raised his hands, as if the gesture might somehow span ocean and avert the staff's descent; by Vaerish law, the destruction of a sorcerer's matrix would kill with swift finality. The wild Sathid were aware. Jaric cried warning, not for himself, but in agonized concern for the lands and the people under the Stormwarden's protection. 'Prince, you and all you defend are in danger!'
The protest emerged as a whisper that had no chance to be heard.
Isolated by brightening veils of power, Anskiere prepared to obliterate the crystals on the sill. Necessity compelled him to wall away sympathy for the boy he had called from Morbrith keep, who had suffered the Cycle of Fire and won a Stormwarden's freedom from the ice cliffs, only to be judged and slain in the comfortless dark of Shadowfane. No sorcerer held power to change destiny or reverse the command of the Vaere. For the sake of mankind's survival, the Stormwarden repressed awareness of private tragedy, the impact of which was cruel enough to deter him. Later, when Keithland's safety was secured, the ghost of Ivainson Jaric would join the dead of Elrinfaer, and Morbrith, and Corlin, until one day the sorrows of guilt and responsibility became too heavy to endure.