Stormwarden

by Janny Wurts

  Taen persisted. Cold savaged her flesh, cut deep into her bones until it seemed her very thoughts would freeze in place.

  Her dream-sense labored, suddenly burdened by an overwhelming weight of earth and ice overhead. Taen persevered, striving to fathom the hidden center of the wardspell, but it was not Anskiere she found. High and thin with distance, she caught the whistling echo of a cry. Strange creatures lay imprisoned beneath. The eerie harmonics of their wailing chilled Taen even more than the terrible cold, for the sound touched her dream-sense with a feeling of lust and killing beyond the capacity of violence to assuage. Held fast by Anskiere's wardenship, the creatures she sensed could not win through to freedom; but here, at the vortex of his powers, where she should have encountered the Stormwarden's living presence, Taen found silence and frost and the impenetrable stillness of ages.

  Discouraged at last she withdrew, returned to awareness of her own body. But the grove of the Vaere seemed strangely comfortless after her sojourn, its unbreakable quiet a constraint upon her ears. Grieved for the fate of her brother and distressed by the loss and the loneliness created by the Stormwarden's absence, Taen bent her head and wept. With her face buried within her crossed arms and her shoulders shaking with misery, she did not notice the thin chime of bells as Tamlin appeared at her side.

  He seated himself on the rock by her feet, his forehead creased by a frown. "I warned there might be risks, child." He paused to puff on his pipe. Blue smoke rose and braided on the air currents around his hair, untouched by any hint of a breeze. "Now, why not tell me what troubles you so."

  Taen lifted her head, embarrassed by the tears on her cheeks. She dried her face with her sleeve while Tamlin waited with his thumbs hooked in his pockets, his beads and his bells strangely silent in the silvery twilight of the clearing. Slowly, carefully, Taen described what she had experienced of her brother. Her phrases were clumsy and halting, but Tamlin did not interrupt. With bearded lips thinned with concentration, he puffed furiously on his pipe, now and again touching Taen's mind directly to gain a detail left out.

  Her tears began again as she described the plight of Anskiere, but she hardly noticed. Tamlin's eyes became piercing and his pipe hung forgotten between his teeth. Yet he spoke no word until she lapsed, faltering, into silence, her tale complete.

  "You bring me sad tidings, Reader of Dreams." Tamlin sighed. He raked stubby fingers through his beard and twirled the pipestem thoughtfully between his hands. At last he stirred, and regretfully studied the tear-stained face of his charge.

  "The demons of Keithland grow overly bold, I think. Mankind must not be left defenseless. If the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer is no longer active, your training and your skills become a matter of urgent importance." Tamlin paused as if weighted by an impossible quandary. "After I have held council on the issue, the Free Isles must be warned of the danger. For if I read the matter correctly, the demons prepare an assault against Landfast. There are records there, in Kordane's shrine, which must never leave the care of humanity."

  He did not add, as he could have, that much of the burden of mankind's defense might fall on the slender shoulders of the girl who stood before him. Soon, of necessity, she must confront the supreme test of her abilities.

  XIII

  Cycle of Dreams

  Lights flickered like a fixed swarm of fireflies across the console in the underground installation which housed the Vaere. If some of the panels stayed dark, the autologic and memory banks which once had served the star probe Corinne Dane still functioned to capacity. But charged with responsibility for mankind's survival, the computer itself had evolved in a manner her builders never conceived.

  The Vaere turned the intricate mathematical functions once employed for stellar navigation toward probability equations. Taen's encounter with her brother showed evidence of a demon's plot against mankind. The Vaere required more data. But with the Firelord dead and the clan priestesses fallen into disrepute, many sources of intelligence had lapsed. Anskiere knew enough to assess the implications of Taen's dream. Yet her failure to find him at the vortex of his own wardspell created complications; the Vaere itself could not penetrate those defenses.

  All sophisticated mechanical practicality, the Vaere pursued alternatives, then mathematically simulated the consequences. The numbers turned up negative with persistent regularity. Had the Vaere been human, it would have cursed in frustration. Being a machine, it tallied assets, and considered a fresh approach. The Stormwarden of Elrinfaer could be reached, but only at considerable risk.

  In an ocean trench beneath the polar ice cap lay Sathid, the crystals which founded Anskiere's powers. The Vaere could generate sonic interference and rouse the crystals; Anskiere would know at once he was needed. But if, as Taen's dream suggested, he had somehow become incapacitated, the crystals would discover his weakness; they might rise up against him. The Sathid were alien symbiotes which augmented the psychic abilities of a host; when bonded with an intelligent being, the crystals acquired sentience, and an insatiable lust for dominance. Agitated lights raced across the console as the Vaere ran yet another set of probabilities. Should the Sathid attempt rebellion, how much of Anskiere's resources could be diverted without risking a reversal of control? Past data held the sole basis for analysis.

  An access circuit closed in the memory banks. The Vaere reran the profile of Anskiere's reactions when he had initially bonded with the Sathid matrixes. He had subjugated the first, for wind, without undue hardship. The graphs mapping his physical and psychic stress levels rose in clean, even lines, then tapered back to normal. But the second graph differed. Decades later, the Vaere surveyed a struggle whose outcome was by no means guaranteed. Controlled, the double bond yielded an exponential increase in power. But failure inevitably created a monster possessed by alien passions; Anskiere opted for a Stormwarden's mastery with full knowledge he would succeed, or be killed instantly by the Vaere who had trained him.

  His stress rose in steep, jagged lines, spiked high into the danger zone as the new Sathid linked with the first. Both matrixes combined to battle the sorcerer's will. Plunged into torment, Anskiere had held his ground, and eventually battered the two Sathid into quiescence.

  The Vaere juggled facts with electronic accuracy. Should the Sathid rise up with Anskiere in difficulty, the most optimistic calculation showed his chances were slight; and if he had raised wards at Cliffhaven to confine frostwargs, he would certainly fail.

  Balked by improbable odds, the Vaere abandoned the idea of contacting Anskiere. With no Firelord left to restrain the frostwargs, the Storm warden was no option. With every alternative exhausted, the Vaere considered Taen, whose empathic abilities held such promise, but whose training was far from complete. Linked with a Sathid matrix, the girl's sensitivity would increase to the point where she could tap any human mind on Keithland for information. Every nuance of the demons' plot would be immediately attainable. The girl was young, untried, and as yet barely able to command her gift. But she was also extraordinarily brave.

  Reluctantly the Vaere ran a third set of equations. Lacking her mentor's years of training and preparation, did the girl possess enough resilience to master the bonding process on her own? Her personality profile was still sketchy; the Vaere had not mapped her tolerance to stress. But extrapolations based on her past history yielded figures which offered a slim possibility of success.

  Never in Keithland's history had the Vaere been forced to make this crucial a decision on such scanty data. The stakes were inflexibly severe; should Taen fail to withstand the rigors of a Sathid bonding, if she once lost control to the matrix, she could not be permitted to survive. Yet logic offered no better course of action.

  The lights on the control panels flickered red as the Vaere entered sequence after sequence of probability figures. If the demons' plan was to be thwarted, Taen must master the Sathid matrix, and achieve the full potential of her gift. Programmed to protect humanity, the Vaere could only ensure her ordeal was
handled with optimum chance of success.

  The girl rested dreamlessly in her capsule while the Vaere finalized its rigorous analysis. A day later, after pursuing each alternative, it concluded that Taen's self-confidence would become seriously impaired were she to be given last minute instruction. Knowledge of the bonding process would be no help to her.

  The Vaere surveyed her vital signs, ran a final check on her health. Unlike Anskiere and Ivain, this child must experience the ardors of bonding ignorant and untrained. If she survived to gain her mastery, she would be physically changed, for the Sathid took seven years to mature. But by applying the principles of the star-drive directly to her capsule, the Vaere would create a time anomaly; she would emerge at the age of seventeen, but Keithland's continuum would have advanced only days by contrast. Once the parameters of the time envelope were set, the girl would be physically isolated from Keithland's reality. No longer could the Vaere intervene in her behalf.

  Taen lay peacefully in her capsule, her ebony hair, red lips and pale skin like the sleeping beauty in the tale from old earth. She felt no pain as the needle pierced her flesh. The Vaere injected a solution containing an alien entity into the vein in her arm; when the Sathid evolved enough to challenge, it would strike when Taen was most vulnerable. In time, the girl would battle her psychic nemesis.

  * * *

  The Sathid spread swiftly through Taen's body. Triggered by warmth and the presence of life, it germinated and groped, instinctively as a newborn child, for awareness of its new host. Impressed by Taen's own character, the Sathid began patterning itself to mesh with her mind. The sensitive psychic empathy of her gift opened like a gateway to her innermost self. Guided by the Sathid's need to explore, Taen began to dream of her past.

  Time meant nothing to the matrix. From the moment of birth to the first acquisition of language, it experienced the girl's memories, analyzing even the most trifling details. Through her memories, it learned to walk, to speak and to reason. Sharing a stolen tart in the alley behind the bakeshop it discovered duplicity, and from her first lie it gained cunning. Taen dreamed on, at first unaware a foreign entity inhabited her awareness.

  Carried back to the age of two, she sat in her mother's lap, playing with shells, while the gusts of an afternoon squall battered the windowpanes and rain fell in hissing sheets down the chimney. Taen concentrated singlemindedly on her game, uneasy in the strange surroundings of her cousins' house. But Uncle Evertt tossed in his cot, sick with a fever. Her mother tended him while Emien and their father were off fishing in the sloop.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the floor with its violence. The girl cowered against her mother's breast, small fists clenched around her shells. Suddenly, horribly, she had difficulty breathing. Taen choked, red-faced, and struggled not to cry; she had promised to be quiet, and let Uncle Evertt sleep. But the air seemed thick as syrup in her lungs. A sharp, tearing pain gripped her chest. Taen felt dizzy. Tears traced silently down her cheeks and soaked into the neck of her wool shift. And alerted by the quiver in her daughter's body, her mother lifted her up.

  "Child, what in Kor's Fires ails you?" She peered anxiously at her daughter's face.

  Yet Taen knew no words to explain what her mind envisioned, that her father struggled for his life, entangled in a net under the sloop's dark keel. Too young to comprehend his death, she laid her head against her mother's shoulder and wept. And the Sathid, sensing discord in her life, probed deeper.

  Three days later, the townsfolk brought Emien home. Taen heard the scrape of boots on the brick sill of the kitchen door. Men spoke in hushed voices in the next room, and suddenly her mother cried aloud in anguish. Alarmed, Taen peeked around the door, her rag doll forgotten in her arms. She saw Emien standing among strangers, still clad in his oilskins. Her brother's clothing dripped seawater, and he stared with unresponsive eyes at the floor while the men talked.

  "We found him adrift beyond the reef," said the tall man to her mother. "The sloop took some damage in the storm, but repairs can be made. The shipwright offered his services for nothing."

  Taen saw her mother straighten in her chair. "And Marl? What happened to Marl?"

  The stranger shrugged, ill at ease. "Can't say, mistress. Old sharks fair ruined the remains. Your boy knows. But he won't talk."

  "Emien?" Marl's widow turned tear-streaked eyes upon her son and opened her arms wide to receive him. But the boy flinched back and refused to meet her gaze. Aware something serious was amiss, Taen ducked out of sight behind the door. She fled the house, crowded as it was with strangers, and sought refuge in the shed behind the goat barn, where the dusty darkness and fragrant piles of hay hid her distress. She lay still. Miserable and alone, she listened between the clink of wind-chimes and the mournful notes of the pigeons for the boisterous voice of her father returning home. But she heard only the shouts of the village boys sent out to search for her. She would not answer, however frantic their concern. Well after sundown, when the wind blew cold off the harbor and the inn's faded signboard creaked like an old man's rocker above deserted village streets, Taen returned to the house.

  The strange men had gone. But her mother's grief tore into Taen's young mind, feeding her nightmares of ruined hope, and that night her Uncle Evertt started shouting. The Sathid looked on, intrigued, while she cowered behind the linen chest with both ears muffled by winter blankets. Yet even through the wool, the girl heard the relentless slap of her uncle's belt, and Emien's cries of pain. Assaulted through the window of her gift by violence, anger, and misunderstanding, she pressed the blankets more tightly over her face; but the shouting seemed never to end. Punishment only made Emien sullen. Weeks passed. He never spoke of the storm. Only Taen, whose strange perception permitted understanding of her brother's mind, knew he had not been at fault for the loss of his father's life. She was too young to explain. And since Emien also was a sensitive child, the damage quickly became permanent. Nothing would ever amend Emien's distrust of his uncle.

  Evertt seemed not to care. He shouldered the additional burden of providing for his brother's family with an islander's dour fatalism. Along with her young cousins, Taen learned to be silent when her uncle returned from the docks, and to stay clear of his boot when rough weather confined the fleet to anchorage. Evertt had always been a brooding, reclusive man; but after Marl's death he spoke little and smiled less. Each of the children tried incessantly to please him, but nothing Emien ever did was acceptable.

  Emien stayed aloof from the village boys. Taen, through the rare insight of her gift, became the only person on Imrill Kand to bridge his isolation, until Anskiere came.

  The Stormwarden had a way with the boy. Where the villagers saw recalcitrance, the sorcerer looked deeper and recognized loneliness and need. He delighted in Emien's company. After a time, the boy began to tag at the Stormwarden's heels.

  Influenced by the Sathid's prompting, Taen dreamed of the year she turned seven. Though still too small to accompany her brother on his jaunts with the sorcerer, she recalled how Anskiere called the wild shearwaters in from the open sea, or dissolved the overcast to bring sunshine. Slowly Emien learned to laugh again, though never in his uncle's presence. His confidence grew in Anskiere's shadow, until at last he managed to tell of the storm, and the accident which had taken the life of his father. The village forgave him. Yet Emien never fully regained his self-confidence.

  On a stormy day the spring she turned eight, Taen ran down to the docks to meet the fishing fleet. As silent observer, the Sathid absorbed the pattern of her dream as she threaded her way breathlessly through the alleys behind market square. Wind tore at her cloak. It rattled the loose boards in the fish stalls and tumbled broken sticks and bits of loose refuse across the rain-sleek cobbles. Taen skipped through the gap in the drying racks, salted by wind-blown spray. Today her brother would return home, after close to three weeks' absence.

  Taen slowed to a walk as she reached the shore. Exposed to the full brunt of the gale, the stor
m slashed across the face of the sea, fraying the wave crests into white tendrils of spindrift. Waves smashed hungrily across the breakwater, thudding into the docks with malicious force; the old tarred pilings shook with the impact.

  Taen surveyed the soaked planks with trepidation. The weather had worsened since morning. Anxious to locate the fleet, she squinted against the spray and intently surveyed the harbor. Several small boats jounced and yawed at their moorings, the greenish copper of their bottom paint showing like a drunken maid's petticoats. Buried under tattered layers of cloud, the horizon was not visible. Taen saw no trace of the returning fleet. Resigned to wait, she sighed and settled herself in the lee of the loading winch.

  A heavy packing crate had been left in the sling. Cords creaked as the wind tossed it to and fro. Irked by the sound and soaked to the skin, Taen huddled under her cloak, attention glued to the horizon where at long last the dark reddish triangle of the first sail sliced the gloom. The rest of the fleet followed behind. Anxious to catch the first glimpse of Dacsen, Taen did not notice the blond tassel of frayed rope overhead, where the line securing the crate crossed the pulley.

  The first ply snapped with a whipcrack report. Taen started, looked up and saw the box swing ominously in the sling. But the chill had cramped her muscles and her body responded sluggishly as she started to rise. The crate shifted before she moved clear. Added strain snapped the rope. Iron-bound wood ripped free of its constraints and fell, crushing Taen's slender ankle.

  The Sathid matrix watched dispassionately as the returning fishermen found her, barely conscious in the soaked folds of her cloak. They lifted the crate with careful hands, and said little to the brother who carried his sister home. One of the younger cousins was sent to fetch the Stormwarden.

  But when Anskiere arrived, he had no magic to mend Taen's shattered leg. He explained as much in a tone subdued by regret, while the gale whipped across Imrill Kand and the wind tore at the shingles with a shriek like Kor's Accursed. Emien watched the Stormwarden gather his gray cloak about his shoulders.