by Janny Wurts
XVI
Storm of Crossing
Gusts off the sea jangled the wind charms the Imrill Kand fishermen hung from their eaves for protection against ocean storms. By that sound, and by the shouts of the children who chased the goats through the streets to pasture on the tors each dawn, Taen woke aware that she was home. Although she opened her eyes to the loft that she had known as a girl, with the same faded counterpane tucked beneath her chin, the present allowed little chance for reminiscence. Too much had changed during the year of her absence. The brother who had slept in the cot across the loft was now forever lost to demons.
Taen rose. She dressed hastily in trousers and tunic that had once been Emien's, with a cast-off shirt of Corley's thrown overtop for warmth. This she gathered closed with a belt of knotted string, tied as a gift by Moonless's sailhands. Her Dreamweaver's robes of silver-grey stayed folded away in the cedar closet, as they had since her arrival. To the Imrill Kand villagers, the garments were uneasy reminders that she had returned to them an enchantress, transformed by the mysteries of the Vaere from a crippled child of ten to a grown woman in little more than one year's time. Accustomed as Taen was to isolation, this new alienation was a misery she tried not to dwell upon. Briskly she combed and braided her hair, then descended the ladder to the kitchen.
Her mother heard her despite the fact that Taen no longer had a stiff ankle to drag and clatter over the rungs. Marl's widow never looked up from kneading dough. but called out to her daughter with her back turned. 'Here's you going bare-foot again. Step on something sharp, or catch chill, and don't come crying to me for pity.'
'Now who's acting the witch?' Taen jumped to the floor, grinning. 'My boots are by the stove, drying, since last night. You didn't see them when you made fire for the bread?'
The old woman made a sound through her nose. ''Twas before daybreak, then, girl. And you shouldn't stay out on the tors after nightfall. Could come to grief on the rocks.'
By the smell, the first loaves were baked through. Taen twisted the tail of Corley's shirt around her fingers and retrieved the pans from the oven. 'I know,' she forestalled, even as her mother drew breath to warn that her sloppiness was bound to cause burns. No matter that a moment later she banged the bread pans down with a clatter and ended licking a blistered thumb.
'Stubborn.' Marl's widow set her dough in a bowl to rise, then turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. Careworn, and aged by sorrow from the loss of husband and son, she regarded the daughter the Vaere had changed into a stranger she barely knew. 'You'll be going to the tors again?'
Taen nodded. She preferred to work alone, where she did not have to watch folk she had known since girlhood making the sign against evil behind her back.
'Might be rain later,' said Marl's widow. She brandished a damp fist at Taen, who had twisted a corner off the fresh loaf and crammed it into her mouth. 'You're old enough not to do that.'
'That's what the cook on Moonless said.' And Taen sighed as the cooling bread was removed beyond reach the barley and smoked fish her mother offered instead made a dull substitute. The Dreamweaver picked at her plate without enthusiasm. Jaric's danger, and the threat of the demons who tracked him, fretted at her thoughts always; but this burden must not be shared here, for the sake of the brother whose betrayal shadowed this house like cobwebs. Of necessity, Taen kept to the ordinary. 'What was Uncle Evertt bellowing about?'
Marl's widow raised offended eyes to the window which overlooked Rat's Alley. 'Wants the Kielmark's brigantines gone from these waters. No matter that they're here to defend. I told him to save his grousing for the tavern.'
'And he didn't,' said Taen, but without bitterness. Times had been hard for her uncle, even before Emien had lost the sloop. Even plain barley was a commodity on Imrill Kand. Taen scraped her bowl carefully, and wrapped the fish in linen for her lunch. 'I can bring back herbs for the pot,' she offered as she rose.
'Won't be back in time for supper, and ye know it.' Marl's widow vanished into the pantry and reappeared with her sewing basket, just as Taen stamped her feet into damp boots.
'Take this, child. The cold's coming, and you'll need something against the wind.'
Taen looked up, saw the cloak in her mother's outstretched hand. The fabric was woven of fine-spun goat's hair, russet, with borders of blue to match her eyes. The gift left her speechless, for she knew better than any that coppers were scarce under her uncle's roof. Taen searched her mother's face, and her delight withered before the certainty that the fabric could not be spared.
Her mother noticed the hesitation and frowned. 'Not fine enough for ye, then?'
Taen recognized the look, and forced a lighthearted grin.
'Only if you stole it.' Then, lest she cry on the spot, she threw her arms around her mother's floury middle and squeezed.
'Settled with the weaver with the money I earned darning sweaters,' Marl's widow confessed. 'Evertt can't throw his weight around over that, and I'll sleep maybe, knowing my girl is warm without taking handouts from pirate captains' mates.'
Taen exploded backward. 'Corley?' she said incredulously, and ended sneezing the flour she had inhaled in her outrage. 'He's Cliffhaven's top-ranking officer, and nobody's lowly mate.'
'Go,' said her mother. 'Now, before I slap your backside for tearing the end off the new bread.' And she bundled Taen and the cloak through the door, into the puddled brick of Rat's Alley.
Bemused, the Dreamweaver ran her fingers over the cloth. Then she smiled with the sweetness that had won the hearts of the roughest of the Kielmark's captains. 'Thank you, Mother,' she called, and started to pin the collar with a brooch of plain copper.
That moment the door flung open again, and a linen-wrapped packet of herring sailed out and struck her in the chest.
'Forgot your lunch,' said Marl's widow. She banged the latch closed, but not before her daughter glimpsed her tears.
That, more than any other thing, impressed upon Taen the change her life had taken since Anskiere had sent her to the Vaere. She had come home, yet Imrill Kand retained little claim upon her loyalty; the villagers and their bitter struggle for sustenance seemed sadly diminished in significance. As a girl, she had longed for healing so she could work on the decks of a fishing sloop; how little she had bargained upon the fact that such simple dreams would lead her to join the Vaere-trained as guardian of Keithland.
The wind blew cold, ruffling the puddles in Rat's Alley; overhead, the luck chimes jingled in warning of autumn. Taen clutched the edges of her whipping cloak and left her uncle's door stoop. She passed the weathered-board stalls of the fish-market, and the docks, and the Fisherman's Barrel Inn, and, remarked by a weaving, squalling flock of gulls, wended a tortuous path through a fish-stinking expanse of drying nets. Beyond lay the goat track which led to the upper meadows, and the rock-crowned heights of the tors. The gulls sped away on the breeze. Taen climbed quickly, where once she had limped. The shingled roofs of the houses diminished beneath, and clouds raced tattered and damp across the crags. Wind and the bells of the goats were the only sounds she could hear when at last she chose a sheltered cranny and settled herself within.
The sea spread like hammered silver from the shore, unbroken but for flyspecks of fishing craft, and the distant masts of a patrol ship from Cliffhaven. Secure in the knowledge she was guarded by vigilant men and weapons, Taen closed her eyes. Her dream-sense answered her readily now that she had gained experience. Within seconds her vision of harbour and village melted away, replaced by wider vistas engendered through her Sathid-born talents. The boats were specks no longer, but craft with crews who laboured with sails and nets. Each man reflected his own pattern of fears and dreams; of emotions and desires and hopes that blended to fashion the spirit of an individual. Although Taen could sift the contents of men's minds with the same fascination that an archivist might show while studying books, she passed by. Her attention extended outwards, across the wide waters between Hallowild and Felwaithe. She encountere
d no demon-sign; only one ship flying the Kielmark's blazon, and a ragged patch of mist. Except for that the seas appeared empty.
A prickle of intuition caused Taen to linger. She had been raised by the sea; all through childhood she had known weather to descend unexpectedly from the northwest, bringing peril to the fishing fleets, and silence in the houses where wives and mothers awaited their menfolk's return. The moods of storm and sea were studied and known and feared; yet something about this isolated fogbank roused the Dreamweaver to uneasiness. She sought the reason, and felt her hair prickle in alarm. This mist was not natural, but drifted purposefully south across wave crests buffeted by winds blowing due east.
Alerted to danger, Taen probed further. Fog hampered her dream-sense, clinging white and impenetrable. The swells crested and foamed, strangely muted, and the air felt oddly dense. Suspecting the handiwork of demons, the Dreamweaver quartered the area with care, yet nothing came of her search. No shadow of a boat moved within the murky mass. She drew back, cold, and prepared to try another pass; then she reconsidered. If demons sailed in strength, with resources forceful enough to blind her dream-sense with illusion, she would be foolish to expose herself further. The most she could accomplish from Imrill Kand was to warn the enemy of the fact that their presence had been discovered. Far better such trespassers were caught unsuspecting, and dealt with before they could cloak themselves and escape. Grimly Taen gathered her dream-sense. She sought across the waters for the irascible presence of the Kielmark's acting officer in command, master of the brigantine Shearfish.
She found the man on his quarterdeck, arguing with the cook over an infestation of weevils in the porridge.
Taen repressed a smile, for the beleaguered cook cursed his captain under his breath in wildly original oaths before he raised his voice in defence.
'Man, you ask too much, when it was yourself came blundering into the bread room looking for crewman's contraband and sliced the sacks what held the oats.' The captain of Shearfish glowered, but by now those deckhands within earshot were watching. As if his manhood were at stake, the cook pressed hotly on. 'O' course the dighty weevils moved right in, could you ask them to forgo a bite with such plenty sprinkled about for the taking? Lucky I found the bag, I say, or we'd be eating bugs and their leavings the rest o' the way back to port.'
'Enough!' snapped the captain, so abruptly the nearer deckhands jumped. The cook went suddenly pale. Taen chose that moment to intervene. She sent a warning and a plea to Shearfish's master, to investigate the unnatural fog to the north; and out of respect for the services she had already rendered to Cliffhaven, her request carried weight. The subject of weevils died with alacrity. Even as Taen relayed details, the captain transferred his shout to the quartermaster; the great wheel spun at his command and Shearfish put about with a thunderous flap of sails.
Taen and the cook sighed with relief. While crewmen ran to polish weapons, the Dreamweaver withdrew. She sped her awareness southwards as she had each day previously, to resume her watch for Callinde and Ivainson Jaric. Now the sick worry hidden within her burst free of constraint. Her last sight of the Firelord's heir had been the night she had discovered him under attack by demons. She had exhausted her powers to break the Thienz' hold upon his mind. By the time she had rested enough to resume her watch, she had encountered no trace of Ivainson or Mathieson Keldric's old fishing boat, though she had tried ever since, repeatedly.
First Taen swept the seas southeast of the Free Isles' Alliance. She had found a strayed trade vessel blown off course from Skane's Edge, and two small fishing fleets. No sign did she encounter of Firelord's heir or Callinde. That in itself should not have been discouraging. The Isle of the Vaere was a fey place, elusive to mortal perception and not always visible to the eye; no charts would show its position. Though any trained sorcerer could sense its location, Jaric would be sailing blind; and by now Taen was forced to assume he plied waters far off his intended course. The past day she had expanded the limits of her search. Still she found nothing. Her dream-sense encountered lifeless vistas the breadth of the southeast reaches, and now she fought against loss of hope. Logic insisted that continued effort was futile; stubbornly she held out. If Jaric had abjured his inheritance, or if storm or demon possession had interrupted his quest, the consequences and Keithland's peril were too final for thought.
Now Taen quartered the seas lying west and north of the fabled isle. She dream-read sailors in the ports on Westisle and Skane's Edge, but their minds held no memory of a fair-haired young man with an antique fishing boat. South she found nothing, not even traces of wreckage. Now only the wide waters to the east remained, the least likely place for a man sailing alone with a small craft and limited provisions.
Northerly gusts blew cold across the tors of Imrill Kand, moaning around crannies in the rocks where Taen sheltered. Her new cloak protected her body, but she barely cared that her fingers and toes were numb. With her awareness centred across the breadth of the Corine, she knew only seas that were patched grey and cobalt beneath the breaking cover of rain clouds. There the wind blew warm and damp from the west, its smell scoured clean with salt.
Presently another scent intruded. The taint was so faint she might have imagined it, the barest suggestion of something acrid. Taen paused, tightening her focus. A moment later, her heart quickened in alarm. The smell travelled clearly on the east breeze, now identifiable as smoke from charred cordage and timber. The source, when she traced, proved swathed in heavy mist, identical to the patch she had diverted Shearfish to investigate in the waters to the north off Felwaithe. Taen's dream-sense shrank in reflexive warning. The evidence overwhelmingly indicated demon-sign and battle; and what reason for both in this desolate stretch of ocean, if not Ivainson Jaric?
Pressured now by fear, Taen added caution to her search. Worse than discovery, she dared not let demons detect her probe, tap into it, and gain further knowledge of Jaric. Her mistake with Emien aboard Moonless must never be repeated.
The Dreamweaver entered the mist with the subtlety of snow drifting through air, and the net she wove to trace was fine-meshed enough to draw minnows. The fact that she might be helpless to intervene should she find Jaric in demon captivity made her palms sweat and her breathing shallow. But the tenacity of her Imrill Kand upbringing shored her spirit against heartbreak. To find him alive would bring hope, however dire his circumstances.
She pressed deeper, found a drift of burnt timbers but nothing else, only an icy, unnatural emptiness which made her flesh crawl. The mist pressed close about her dream-sense. It cloaked the wave crests and coiled like smoke through the troughs. Taen detected no life but schools of scavenger fish come to investigate the flotsam, yet her foreboding only intensified. Something lurked just past the borders of her perception, like movements glimpsed in a mirror. Her skin prickled as if she were watched by hostile eyes; despite the fact that she sat in the distant north, surrounded by rock and soil and thin grass grazed by goats. The entity which lurked in the mist seemed somehow knowing, as though her presence had been expected.
Taen paused. Even as she sought to refine her probe, a force brushed light as feathers down her spine. Suddenly she felt an overpowering urge to pull back, leave this stretch of ocean, and forget the traces of wreckage she had found here. Yet Imrill Kand offered no haven if the Keys to Elrinfaer fell to enemy hands. Certain her-compulsion was demon-inspired, Taen braced to fight; if the Thienz who came hunting from Shadowfane saw fit to hide their machinations, she refused to be cowed. Power smouldered within her, cleaving the mist for a target to strike. Yet her dream-probe encountered no Thienz; only the sudden, unexpected awareness of Ivainson Jaric.
The shock wrenched a cry from Taen's throat. Ablaze with unshed power, and poised for battle, she yanked back. Cold rock bruised her spine, yet discomfort to her body became insignificant before the whetted edge of wariness within her mind. Quite certainly the Firelord's heir had been unveiled because it suited the purpose of demons for him t
o be found. Yet Jaric was not taken captive. He sat alone at Callinde's helm. His hair was sodden and wind-tangled, and his eyes stinging from lack of sleep.
The energies Taen had woven in search of him were still intact. Power flared in answer to his presence; she dampened the force instantly, but not before a spark of contact leapt through.
Jaric raised his head. 'Taen?' he said, and the hope and the confusion in his tone almost broke the Dreamweaver who huddled in the cold in Imrill Kand. That narrowest instant of pity proved fatal. The enchantress hesitated, and the trap she feared, the threat that instinctively cautioned her against maintaining any thread of rapport, overtook her. Thienz grappled a foothold through the contact.
Taen screamed in fear and pain. She slammed up defensive barriers, too late. Her compassion for Jaric ran deep, and the grip of the demons had penetrated through to its source. They had breached that innermost psyche where she was unguarded and their attack was engineered with devastating precision. Jaric had been used as bait, left free and in solitude expressly that demons might snare her. Once Taen Dreamweaver was rendered impotent to defend, her powers would not foil the demons' final possession of their quarry. The last living heir of Ivain Firelord would be taken as surely as a wheat stalk razed by a scythe. The pain of that ripped Taen open to more cruel revelation still: the guiding mind behind this most deadly plot had been not that of a demon but that of the brother she had lost to Shadowfane.
'No!' Taen's cry echoed over the tors of Imrill Kand. She struggled to repel the hold upon her mind, even as power flared and burned her resistance away to nothing. The being who now was Maelgrim had no mercy; all that remained of his humanity had been carved into a weapon for killing. He traded upon ties his sister would harbour, the same loyalty and stubborn love that had made her hesitate to strike him down once before on the heights of Elrinfaer. Maelgrim thrust through the Thienz net to cripple her.
Yet Taen did not crumple. Weeping bitterest tears, she mustered and deflected the killing blow. Her dream-sense flashed white under the paralysing agonies of conflict. Her mind reeled under the backlash, and the suffocating hold of the Thienz released. Taen reached immediately to retaliate, to strike at the source of Keithland's peril before Jaric could be captured or slain. But no force answered. She had dangerously overextended herself, and her powers were utterly spent. Sapped of energy, Taen opened her eyes to grey mist, and a wind that scoured across the rocks of Imrill Kand. Pain and cold wracked her body, and her eyes ached from tears.