Stormwarden

by Janny Wurts

  Her tone was deceptively soft. "The truth is, they dare not lay hands on me."

  The grand Conjurer caught his breath, his sallow complexion gone pale. He froze like a painted icon in his seat by the King's left hand and beyond him the advisors fidgeted, suddenly sweating above the stiff cloth of their collars. Taen needed no empathic skills to understand how greatly they feared Tathagres' powers. No man on the dais could touch her with impunity. Only Lord Sholl and the King seemed unconcerned by the woman's implied threat. The rubies in the chief advisor's rings flashed as he laced his fingers together on the table top; his colleagues' discomfort served only to amuse him. And a rushed glimpse of Kisburn's thoughts showed him weighing possible ways of evading the justice of Kor's Brotherhood, should the alliance prove viable. If anything, the added edge of danger in the plan attracted him the more. Now frantic to avert a decision all but complete, Taen turned her Sathid-born talents upon the disingenuous person of the King's chief advisor.

  Her probe went amiss. Accustomed to the layered configuration of the human mind, its fixed preoccupation of past memories and learned passions, Taen was immediately baffled by hazy fields of patterns, a snarled confusion of sensation human reason could not sort. The alienness of the images overwhelmed her and she faltered. That instant, something slammed closed around her mind.

  Dizzied, isolated, Taen strove to recover her balance. For a second she sensed the shape of the forces which sought to hold her trapped. Their strangeness defied comprehension. Alarmed, Taen tapped her reserves, and with a sharp stroke severed the link. There followed a flurried moment of confusion. When at last her inner vision cleared, Taen found herself restored to Emien's perception.

  He crouched in the dust-dry darkness behind the peephole, doubled over by an excruciating pain in his head. Hammered by the effects of a backlash he did not understand, the boy moaned. He pressed a hand to his aching brow. And through the discomfort her own interference had brought upon him, Taen heard Lord Sholl's voice ring out across the council chamber.

  "There is a spy present, your Grace. Did you place an observer behind the wall?"

  Both advisors exclaimed in surprise, cut short by curt orders from the King. The doors to the audience chamber banged open. And through the jabbing waves of discomfort in his head, Emien realized the feet which thundered down the aisle outside belonged to royal men at arms sent to apprehend him. The wave of panic which shot through him disrupted Taen's equilibrium. She had no time to consider her peculiar encounter with the chief advisor's mind before Emien rose, slamming his elbow clumsily against the wall.

  "Kor!" exclaimed the Conjurer. "There is someone back there."

  That moment, the access door to the passage crashed open. Dust eddied against sudden light as guardsmen shouldered through. Emien whirled to run. Almost immediately a mailed fist, dosed over his wrist. The guard yanked him around, shoved his face toward the door.

  "Fires!" The soldier's voice carried an unmistakable note of disgust. "You're nothing but a squire." He hauled Emien out of the passage, but his grip on the boy's arm became slightly less punishing. Frightened but defiant, Emien permitted the guardsman to escort him down the corridor and on through the portals of the audience chamber.

  Over the chatter of the advisors Emien heard Tathagres speaking in a tone entirely free of inflection. "... My personal squire, your Grace. No, I did not send him to spy. He did so upon his own initiative."

  Held pinioned in the grip of the guardsmen, Emien glared sullenly up at the men on the dais. The advisors' agitation had mellowed into speculative curiosity and the Conjurer simply looked bored. Only Lord Sholl regarded Tathagres' black-haired squire with the tireless intensity of a carrion bird, until Emien flinched and turned away.

  His Grace of Kisburn tapped agitated fingers against the pearl buttons on his cuff, his expression sour with displeasure. "Take him away," he said to the guards. "I would have him questioned later, to determine whether his behavior warrants a trial."

  "No!" Tathagres rose sharply from her chair. Her cloak slithered unheeded to the floor and the clink as the brooch struck the tiles sounded like a cry of distress against the silence. "The boy is mine. None will lay hands on him. I demand that he be released at once."

  "You're impertinent," snapped the King. "How badly do you want the Keys to Elrinfaer?"

  "How badly do you want Cliffhaven?" Tathagres tilted her head, and with an imperious grace no court woman could equal, touched her fingers lightly to the neck band at her throat.

  Between the guardsmen, Emien started. The movement attracted Lord Sholl's attention. His gaze intensified upon the boy, and with an unexpected thrust of force, Taen felt him seek contact with her brother's mind. How the chief advisor had acquired a dream-reader's talent remained a mystery, but his touch was crude. Emien noticed the presence which sought to exploit his thoughts. Hair prickled at the back of his neck. In attempt to disrupt the intrusion, he gasped and flung back against the guardsmen's hold.

  The King sat sharply forward, antagonized by the disturbance. But the royal displeasure had no effect upon Lord Sholl. He brushed past Emien's discomfort, rummaged ruthlessly to discover whether the boy still harbored the source of the touch which had molested him earlier at the council table. Rather than reveal her presence, Taen withdrew, darting like a fish into shallows out of reach. Presently Lord Sholl abandoned his search. But his expression of annoyance bespoke the fact that he would forget nothing until his suspicions concerning Emien were fully satisfied.

  "You will release my squire," said Tathagres to the King. "I tell you he is mine. Would you contest me?" She phrased her words politely, but Taen saw into her heart and read murder there. And during the moment the girl tested the witch's intentions, a portion of Tathagres' mind engaged with a presence within the golden band at her throat. Although her body remained standing before the King of Kisburn in the palace audience chamber, her thoughts traversed a vista of darkness.

  Swept along by the dream link, Taen accompanied the witch into a dimension of nightmare. Wind arose, buffeting her like the rustle of bats flying from their roosts at twilight. She recoiled, repelled. But the tenacity born of her island upbringing lent the girl strength to overcome shaken nerves. She clung to the contact. Presently the suffocating blanket of shadow dissolved into light, as red as sunrise viewed through thunder-heads.

  The illumination brightened, flared suddenly to blinding intensity. Sensing the advent of evil, Taen battled an urge to withdraw. Suddenly a wave of savage spite overpowered her. Through the window of Tathagres' consciousness, the girl perceived the demon faces of Emien's dream. Only this time the vision was direct and imminently threatening. Taen held on for her brother's sake. Though blistered by the ferocity of the demons' hatred, Taen reached beyond, to partial understanding of their intentions. Not only did Kor's Accursed grant Tathagres her power, they sought control of Emien as well.

  "No!" Taen's horrified protest reverberated through the fabric of her contact, and snapped the dream link a bare second before Tathagres engaged with the demons. Yanked back to Emien's perspective, Taen felt an unseen force strike the hands which restrained her brother's wrists. The guardsmen shouted and staggered back, releasing their grip. Weapons held no edge against sorcery; deaf to the King's shouted command, the soldiers fled the chamber, unwilling to risk further contact with the boy.

  "Don't try my tolerance, your Grace," said Tathagres, unmoved by the commotion set off by her action. The advisors watched, white with alarm, as she bent and retrieved her cloak. "I will await your reply, but not long. My patience, like my time, is limited." And with a nonchalance which bordered on insolence, she motioned Emien to her side and departed.

  The boy followed on his mistress's heels, barely able to refrain from gloating. He discovered a bitter, vindictive pride in Tathagres' manipulation of the King, and, inspired by a wish to emulate her skills, he quickly regained his shaken confidence. Taen pulled back, sickened. Peripheral emotions still leaked from t
he audience chamber, pervading her dream-sense; through the advisors' dismayed affront, she felt the King's appetite for risk bite into her awareness with the cruelty of a spring frost. There could be no doubt; he would choose the demons' alliance, if only to intimidate his rivals.

  Taen tempered her distress with a stout resolve. She would stop the corruption of her brother. Trained by the Vaere to dream-read and heartened by confidence in her increased powers, she decided to attempt contact with Anskiere once again. Perhaps now she could call him back to her brother's aid. Except that the instant her young determined heart became dedicated to that quest, the Sathid rose up to prevent her.

  The alien matrix pinned her thoughts without warning, then struck a psychic blow which sent her reeling back, stunned and surprised and in agony. At first unaware the entity which opposed her used the same powers she controlled scant seconds before, Taen felt herself plunged back into the mind of her brother, but deeper than she had ever ventured previously. She fell, as if into darkness. And poignant as a minor arpeggio of harp strings, emotions pierced her until her whole mind rang in concert with the boy's unbearable pain.

  "Your brother Emien is a cruel man, his deeds unfit for forgiveness," said the Sathid within her mind, its voice framed as her own, or perhaps that of her mother. Laced in the depths of nightmare like a fish in a gill net, Taen tried to raise her voice in denial. But her throat pinched closed and no words passed her lips.

  "See for yourself," continued the voice of the accuser, and Taen found herself unable to close her eyes against the vision which battered her awareness.

  She saw her brother Emien stride the length of Crow's pinnace, a length of knotted cord in his fist. The boat tossed, her bowsprit flung skyward by wave crests which thundered and crashed over the razor fangs of a reef. Emien threatened the rowers in a voice gone ugly with rage. And with the same hand he had used to dry Taen's tears as a child, he lifted his lash and brought it down with all his strength on the helpless backs of his oarsmen.

  Taen shouted denial, but her protest went unheard. Blood flowed down the naked backs of the men, spilled in thick drops to mingle with the bilge, while Emien shouted like a madman, sounding more and more like his Uncle Evertt.

  "No!" Taen shouted. "It's not true!" But vividly etched by her gift the details said otherwise. The pinnace slammed into rock with a boom that deafened thought. And Taen fell, through a dying man's cry of agony, into darkness once more.

  The Sathid pursued, hounding her with remorseless certainty. "Your brother is a murderer, a breaker of the codes of life. Let him be condemned."

  Taen whimpered in protest. But through the firelit boughs of a forest glen, she watched Emien select a rounded stone, and with a clean, vindictive throw, end the life of an elderly man. The victim crumpled, lay still in the wilted folds of his black cloak. And stung into action by fierce disbelief, Taen searched the mind of her brother. His memory confirmed the scene she had witnessed, the emotions etched by the remorse of an act best forgotten.

  Taen retreated, stunned. Emien was no longer the tormented but guiltless brother she had loved on Imrill Kand. Somewhere, somehow, he had become hardened and insensitive in a manner not even his mother would accept. Wounded by the change and unable to adjust, Taen abandoned herself to pain. And anticipating victory, the Sathid moved to imprison her.

  While the girl's will lay passive, it fashioned barriers, using the shattered remnants of her faith. The instant her love for Emien shifted to hatred, her confinement would be complete. The Sathid paused for a moment to gloat. How very smoothly its takeover had proceeded; the girl hardly resisted at all.

  Absorbed by her grief, Taen felt an echo of the Sathid's triumph. The emotion rang false. Whether Emien had murdered or not, she could not abandon him to Tathagres' demons. Re-dedicated to her earlier resolve, her emotions polarized, and at once she recognized the image and the voice to be that of an enemy. Not Lord Sholl; this one knew her, used her mind and her memories against her in an attempt to break her spirit.

  Taen struck back. With the anger of the betrayed she smashed through the Sathid's grip, recalled the image of the victim Emien had struck down with his stone. But this time she viewed the completed action and recognized the man in the black cloak as Hearvin, one of Anskiere's oppressors and evil in his own right.

  "Liar!" she accused the Sathid. "Who gave you the right to meddle?"

  "I need no right," the Sathid replied. "I am a part of you." And as Taen paused to question the statement, the matrix added, "See for yourself."

  Taen focused her scrutiny inward. With every available discipline Tamlin had taught her, she examined the source of the Sathid's intervention and discovered it to be inextricably linked with her powers as dream-weaver, its character a mirror image of her own. The Sathid had spoken the truth; the opponent she faced was herself. Yet because that self had encouraged her to abandon her brother, break the integrity of her upbringing upon Imrill Kand, Taen perceived the matrix to be the dark side to her character, that flawed facet of selfishness which sought to overturn gentleness and love with discontent.

  "You see," said the Sathid. "We are one. To oppose me is to deny your own resources."

  But words did little to ease Taen's suspicion. To follow the Sathid's logic was to invite the same mistake Emien had made to the detriment of his own self-worth. And as the survivor of misfortune which had left her a cripple in a society where bodily health was a necessity, Taen had already accepted the fact she could never be whole. She would reject the Sathid's proposal though she had to suffer life-long deprivation. And because she believed its interference to be an extension of her own small-mindedness, she condemned it ruthlessly, left not the smallest quarter for argument.

  "I will help my brother no matter what he has done," said Taen firmly.

  The Sathid returned with a laugh which bounced demonic echoes across the fields of her awareness. "You're an idealistic fool. Do you truly know the brother you intend to save? I think not. For Emien is becoming someone far different than the brother you grew up with. If you try to help him now, it is apparent by his character he would kill you."

  "No!" Taen pulled back, tried to thrust the irritating presence from her mind. But it was part of herself, and inseparable. She found no release from her nightmare.

  "If you look, you will see," invited the Sathid.

  And challenged by her own self-honesty, Taen sought the measure of its statement. "Show me. But I'll not be convinced by half truths. If Emien is evil, let me see for myself."

  Goaded by the Sathid's cold reasoning, Taen sought her brother, sank downward into the limitless wells of Emien's subconscious, through territory within his mind unknown even to himself. She visited a landscape of insecurity. Sensitive to a fault, Emien saw his early years as a siege against the relentless and wounding concerns of his elders; the pressures of survival on Imrill Kand allotted no space for his fears. With only Evertt to share the workload, necessity often forced Marl to ask his young son to shoulder a man's load. Isolated by his perception, Emien hid his suffering, strove to meet expectations too great for a child to master. Life became a ruthless experience, a joyless siege of endurance. He despised the hardship, for it exposed his weaknesses without mercy.

  Taen unravelled his personality with utmost patience. Tangled at the core of his being, she found Emien longed secretly to inflict cruelty, as if causing hurt to others might somehow ease his starved feeling of inadequacy. Yet twisted desires alone did not make a criminal. Desperate in her care, Taen searched further.

  She traced the emotions underlying her brother's admiration for Anskiere. The Stormwarden alone had breached the boy's melancholy following the death of his father. Taen explored the trust which had grown between the sorcerer and her brother first-hand. The contact initially had been a fragile thing, tenuous as the miracle of birth or a light in the darkness of midwinter. Through the sorcerer's guidance, Emien discovered happiness and laughter and the bright new joy of self-acceptance f
or the first time. The news of Tierl Enneth and Anskiere's guilt had fallen with the devastation of a cataclysm. The fact that he had given his innermost love to a condemned man whose crimes were beyond human pardon threw Emien into towering, ungovernable fury. All his frail new stability collapsed like sand castles bashed flat by the tide.

  The blow of that discovery sheared through Taen's defenses. She experienced the panic Emien had known as he raged, blinded by the brutal solitude of betrayal. Through the dream link, the sister experienced the fear, the horror, and finally the first sour seeds of resentment. For Emien never accepted responsibility for his own unhappiness. If Anskiere had brought down ruin and death with the same powers he had sworn to the protection of Tierl Enneth, all that he lived was a lie. His teaching left Emien vulnerable, another victim for the spoiling unkindness of fate. Driven by a venomous tide of bitterness, the boy wished he had never tasted the illusion Anskiere had brought: that life could reward a man who aspired to develop his strengths, and that security and happiness were things of faith within reach of any who strove. Feeling his contentment slip forever beyond reach, Emien abandoned belief.

  Scourged by the sharing of her brother's loss, Taen beheld the birth of his ultimate desire. Emien sought a way to crush the fear which lurked within the darkest center of his being; he wished a weapon, power great enough to ensure that no man nor sorcerer nor any agency of fate's design should ever judge and find him wanting. Never again would he suffer manipulation at the hands of one he loved. For now he trusted no one.

  Imprisoned behind the brickwork of an untenable position, his spirit ached for release. Taen perceived that her brother's misery knew no limits and understood none. He could not achieve peace without first acknowledging failure; and goaded by Tathagres' contempt, Emien found it simpler to kill.