“Zandru’s hells!” burst out one of the guardsmen. “What is that? More wizard hellcraft?”
“I know not,” Dom Mikhail said, sobered. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
One of the courageous soldiers came forward, to try to heave some fragments of the container aside. He fell back, howling in agony, his hand seared and blackened with the stuff.
“Do you know what this is, Allart?” Donal asked.
Allart pressed his lips tight. “No sorcery, but a weapon devised by the Towers—an acid that will melt stone.”
“Is there nothing we can do about it?” Lord Aldaran asked. “If they throw many of those against our outwalls, they will melt the very castle about our ears! Donal, send men to check the boundaries.”
Donal pointed to a guardsman. “You, and you, and you, take your paxmen and go. Take straw shields; it will not harm the straw—See where it has splashed on the fodder— but if it touches metal you will be stifled by the acid fumes.”
Allart said, “If it is acid, take the ash-water you use for mopping in the dairy and stables, and perhaps it will stop the acid from eating through the stone.” Although the strong alkali did indeed neutralize the acid and keep it from spreading, several of the men were splashed by the strong lye. Where the courtyard had been eaten by the acid, even where treated afterward with the lye-water, holes were eaten in boots and whole areas had to be fenced off so that the men would not be injured by trespassing on them. There had been a few direct hits on the stone of the outwalls, and the stone was eaten away and crumbling; worse, the supply of lye-water was soon exhausted. They tried to use substitutes, such as soap and animal urine, but they were not strong enough.
“This is dreadful,” Dom Mikhail said. “They will have our walls down at this rate. Surely this is Lord Elhalyn’s doing, kinsman. My brother of Scathfell has no such weapons at his command! What can we do, kinsman? Have you any suggestions?”
“Two,” Allart said, hesitating. “We can put a binding-spell on the stone, so that it cannot be eaten away by any unnatural substance, but only by those things intended to destroy stone. It would not stand against earthquake or time or flood, but I think it may stand against these unnatural weapons.”
So once again the Tower-trained personnel took their place in the matrix chamber. Dorilys joined them, pleading to take a hand.
“I can monitor,” she begged, “and Renata would be free to join you in the circle.”
“No,” Renata said quickly, thanking all the gods that Dorilys’s telepathy was still untrained and erratic. “I think, if you will, you can take a place in the circle, and I will monitor from outside.”
As monitor for the circle Dorilys would know at once why Renata could not join it now.
It goes against me to deceive her this way. But a time will soon come when she is strong and well, and then Donal and I will tell her, Renata thought.
Fortunately, Dorilys was sufficiently excited at being allowed to take a place inside the circle, her first formal use of a matrix except to levitate her own glider, that she did not question Renata. Cassandra held out her hand and the girl took her place beside Cassandra. Again, the circle formed, and once again they sent out the spell that was only a strengthening of nature’s own forces.
The rock is one with the planet on which it is formed, and man has so shaped it as it was determined. Nothing shall change it or alter. The rock is one… one… one…
The binding-spell was set. Allart, individual consciousness lost behind the joined consciousness of his circle, was aware of the shaped rocks of the castle, of their hard integrity; of the fact that the impact of explosive shells and the chemical slime was harmlessly bouncing away, repelled, the yellow slime rolling down the outside, leaving long, evil-looking streaks, but not crumbling stone or melting it.
The rock is one… one… one…
From outside the circle, a careful thought reached them.
Allart?
Is it you, brédu?
It is Donal. I have stationed men on the outwalls to pick off their cannoneers with arrows, but they are out of range. Can you make a darkness about them so that they cannot see where to shoot?
Allart hesitated. It was one thing to affirm the integrity of nature’s creation by forcing water to remain, untampered, as water, and stone to remain impervious to things nature had never intended to destroy stone. But to tamper with nature by creating darkness during the hours of light…
Dorilys’s thoughts wove into the circle. It would be in tune with the forces of nature if a thick fog should come up. It often happens at this season, so that no man on the hillside can see beyond the reach of his own arms!
Allart, searching a little way ahead with his laran, saw indeed that there was a strong probability of thick fog arising. Focusing on the joined matrixes again, the workers concentrated upon the moisture in the air, the nearing clouds, to wrap the whole of the mountainside in a thick curtain, rising from the river below, until all of Castle Aldaran and the nearby peaks lay shrouded in darkening fog.
“They will not lift this night,” said Dorilys with satisfaction.
Allart dissolved the circle, admonishing his group to go and rest. They might be needed again soon. The sound of shelling had stopped, and Donal’s men below had a chance to clean up the residue of acids and lye. Renata, running the body-mind monitor’s touch over Dorilys, was struck with something new in her.
Was it only the healing-spell earlier? She seemed calmer, more womanly; no longer even a little like a child. Renata, recalling how she herself had grown swiftly into adulthood in her first season in the Tower, knew that Dorilys had made some such enormous leap into womanhood, and inwardly gave thanks to all her gods.
If she has stabilized, if we need no longer fear her childish explosions, if she is beginning to have judgment and skill to match her power—perhaps then, soon, soon, it will be over and Donal and I will be free…
With a surge of the old love for Dorilys, she drew the girl close and kissed her. “I am proud of you, carya mea,” she said. “You have acquitted yourself as would a woman in the circle. Now go and rest, and eat well, so that you will not lose your strength when we need you again.”
Dorilys was glowing.
“So I am doing my part, like Donal, in the defense of my home,” she exclaimed, and Renata shared her innocent pride.
So much strength, she thought, and so much potential. Will she win through after all?
The thick fog continued to shroud the castle hour upon hour, enclosing in mystery what the attacking armies were doing down below. Perhaps, Allart thought, they were simply waiting—waiting, as were those in the besieged castle, for the fog to lift so that they could resume the attack. For Allart’s part, he was wholly content to wait.
This breathing spell, after the hectic opening days of the siege, was appreciated by them all. At nightfall, since even the watch on the castle walls could do little, Allart went to dine alone with Cassandra in their rooms. By common consent they avoided speaking of the war; there was nothing they could do about it. Cassandra called for her rryl, and sang to him.
“I said upon the day of our wedding,” she said, looking up from the instrument, “that I hoped we might live in peace and make songs, not war. Alas for that hope! But even in the shadow of war, my dearest, there can still be songs for us.”
He took the thin fingers in his hands and kissed them.
“So far, at least, the gods have been good to us,” he said.
“It is so still, Allart! They might have all gone away in the night, it is so quiet below!”
“I would that I knew what Damon-Rafael was doing,” Allart said, roused to new unquiet. “I do not think he will be content to sit there at the bottom of the hill, without throwing some new weapon into the gap.”
“It would be easy for you to find out,” she hazarded, but Allart shook his head.
“I will not use laran in this war unless I am forced to do so. Only to defen
d us from certain catastrophe. Damon-Rafael shall not make of me the excuse to bring his frightful kind of war to this country.”
About midnight the sky suddenly began to clear, the fog first thinning, then blowing away in little wisps and ragged shreds. Overhead three of the four moons floated, brilliant and serene. Violet Liriel was near the zenith, full and brilliant. Blue Kyrrdis and green Idriel hung near the western edge of the mountains. Cassandra was sleeping, had been sleeping for hours, but Allart, seized by strange unease, slid quietly from bed and into his clothes. Hurrying down the hallway, he saw Dorilys in her long white chamber-robe, her hair hanging loose down her back. She was barefoot, her snub-nosed face a pale oval in the dimness.
“Dorilys? What is Margali thinking of to let you wander like this in your night-garb at this hour?”
“I could not sleep, Dom Allart, and I was uneasy,” the girl said. “I am going down to join Donal near the outwall. I suddenly woke and felt that he was in danger.”
“If he is truly in danger, chiya, the last place he would want you is beside him.”
“He is my husband,” the child said adamantly, raising her face to Allart. “My place is at his side, sir.”
Paralyzed by the strength of her obsession, Allart could do nothing. After all, this was the only thing she could share with Donal. Since Allart himself had been reunited with Cassandra, he had been highly sensitized to loneliness. It struck him at that moment that Dorilys was almost wholly alone. She had left the society of children irrevocably. Yet among the adults she was still treated as a child. He did not protest, but began to move toward the outer stairs, hearing her behind him. After a moment he felt her small dry hand, a child’s hand and warm like a little animal’s paw, slide into his. He clasped it, and they hurried together across the courtyard to Donal’s post at the outwalls.
Outside, the night had grown bright and cloudless, with only a single low bank of cloud hanging at the horizon. The moons floated high and clear, in a sky so brilliantly lighted that no single star was visible anywhere in the sky. Donal was standing, arms folded, atop the outwall, but as Allart hurried toward him, someone spoke in a low, reproachful voice.
“Master Donal, I beg you to come off the wall. You are all too good a target standing there,” and Donal slid down off the wall.
Not too soon; an arrow came whistling out of the darkness, harmlessly flying past where Donal had just been standing. Dorilys ran and caught him around the waist.
“You must not stand there like that, Donal. Promise me you will never do so again!”
He laughed noiselessly, bending to kiss her, a light brotherly peck, on the forehead. “Oh, I am in no danger. I wanted to see if anyone was still down there and awake, after all, or if they had all gone away; as in that quiet and fog it seemed they might well have done.”
It had been Allan’s own thought—that they were too quiet, that some devilry was afoot. He asked Donal, “Did the fog lift of itself?”
“I am not sure. They have more than one laranzu down there, and it lifted, indeed, all too quickly,” Donal said, wrinkling up his forehead. “But at this season the fog does blow away sometimes, exactly like that. I cannot tell.”
Suddenly, to Allart, the air was filled with cries and exploding fire. “Donal! Call the watch!” he cried. Almost before the words escaped his lips, an air-car flashed by overhead, and several small shapes fell slowly toward the ground, almost lazily, like snowflakes, falling open as they moved and pouring liquid streaks of fire toward the castle roofs and the court.
“Clingfire!” Donal leaped for an alarm bell, but already several of the wooden roofs were blazing up and fire was lighting the whole courtyard. Men poured into the court, only to be stopped, screaming, by the streams of unquenchable fire. One or two went up like human torches, shrieking all the time, until the howls died away and they lay, their corpses still smoking and flaming, lifeless on the stone. Donal leaped to push Dorilys under an overhanging stone cave, but drops of the liquid fire rolled off and caught her chamber-robe, which blazed up wildly. She screamed in terror and pain, as Donal dragged her toward a tub of water and literally flung her into it. Her dress sizzled and went out, but a drop of the stuff had fallen on her skin and was burning, burning inward. She kept shrieking, a wild, almost inhuman sound, maddened with the pain.
“Keep back! Keep in the lee of the building,” Donal yelled. “There are more of them overhead!”
Dorilys was screaming and struggling between his hands, maddened with agony. Overhead, thunder suddenly crackled and flared, lightnings seared and struck here, there… Abruptly one of the air-cars overhead went up in a great burst of fire and fell, a flaming ruin, into the valley. Another great bolt struck a second air-car in midair, exploding it into showers of fire. Rain sliced down hard, drenching Allart to the skin. Donal had fallen back from Dorilys in terror. Screaming, maddened, the child was shaking her fist at the sky, striking with great sizzling bolts here, there, everywhere. A final air-car split with a huge explosion and fell apart over the attacking camp below, sending forth shrieks and howls of pain as the clingfire fell back on its launchers. Then silence, except for the heavy, continuing rumble of the rain, and Dorilys’s stabbing screams of pain as the clingfire continued to eat inward on her wrist, penetrating to the bone.
“Let me take her,” Renata said, running up barefoot in her nightgown. The girl sobbed and cried out and tried vainly to push her away. “No, darling, no. Don’t struggle! This must be done or it will burn your arm away. Hold her, Donal.”
Dorilys screamed again with pain as Renata scraped away the last remnants of the clingfire from the burned flesh, then collapsed against Donal. All around the courtyard men were gathering, silent, awed. Renata tore Dorilys’s charred chamber-robe to bandage her arm. Donal held her against him, soothingly, rocking her.
“You saved us all,” he whispered. “Had you not struck at them, so much clingfire could have burned Aldaran over all our heads!”
Indeed, Allart thought. Damon-Rafael and Scathfell had thought to take Aldaran unawares, unprepared for this kind of attack. Had the contents of three air-cars all carrying clingfire struck them, all of Castle Aldaran would have been burned to the ground. Had they exhausted their arsenal, then, hoping to win at one stroke? Had Dorilys decisively defeated them, then, in this one stroke? He looked at the child, weeping now in Renata’s arms with the pain of her burns.
She had saved them all, as she had saved him, before, from Damon-Rafael’s evil bird-weapon.
But he did not think this would be the end.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There were still fires to be put out, where the clingfire had set buildings alight. Five men were dead, and a sixth died as Renata knelt to look at him. Four more had clingfire burns deep enough that even Allart knew they would not live out the day, and a dozen more had minor burns which must be treated and every scrap of the terrible stuff scraped away, disregarding screams and pleas for mercy. Cassandra came and took Dorilys away to be put to bed, her bandages soaked in oil. But when all had been done, Donal and Allart stood on the outwall, looking down at the camp of the besiegers where fires still raged and flared.
The rain had subsided as soon as Dorilys was calm, and in any case it would take long, heavy soaking rain to put out clingfire blazes. Now Donal had no fear of arrows out of darkness. He said, stepping down from the wall, “Scathfell and his folks will have more than enough to do this night in their own camp. I will leave a small watch, but no more. Unless I am gravely mistaken, they will have no leisure to mount another attack for a day or so!”
He set a few picked men as guards, and went to see how Dorilys fared. He found her abed, restless, her eyes bright and feverish, her arm freshly bandaged. She reached with her free arm for his hand and pulled him down at her side.
“So, you have come to see me. Renata was not being cruel to me, Donal. I know it now; she was scraping away the fire so that it would not burn my arm to the bone. It nearly did, you know,�
�� she said. “Cassandra showed me. She has a scar almost exactly like mine will be, and from clingfire, too.”
“So you, too, will bear an honorable scar of warfare from the defense of our home,” Donal said. “You saved us all.”
“I know.” Her eyes flickered, and he could see the pain in them. Far away he could hear a distant rumble of thunder. He sat beside her, holding the small hand that stuck out below the heavy bandage.
“Donal,” she said, “now that I am a woman, when shall I be really your wife?”
Donal turned his eyes away, grateful that Dorilys was still a very erratic telepath. “This is no time to speak of that, chiya, when we are all fighting for survival. And you are still very young.”
“I am not so young as all that,” she insisted. “I am old enough to work in a matrix circle as I did with Allart and the others, and old enough to fight against those who are attacking us.”
“But, my child—”
“Don’t call me that! I am not a child!” she said with a small, imperious flare of anger; then laid her head against his arm, with a sigh that was not, indeed, childlike. “Now that we are entangled in this war, Donal, there should be an heir to Aldaran. My father is old, old, and this war ages him day by day. And today—” Suddenly her voice began to shake uncontrollably. “I don’t think I had ever thought of this before, but suddenly I knew you could die—or I could die, Donal, young as I am. If I should die before you, never having borne you a child, you could be driven forth from Aldaran, since you are not blood-kin. Or if—if you should die, and I had never had your child, I could be flung into some stranger’s bed for the dower of Aldaran. Donal, I am afraid of that.”
Donal held her small hand in his. All this was true, he thought. Dorilys might be the only way he could hold this castle which had been his only home from childhood. It was not even as if she were unwilling. He, too, after the long days of battle and siege, was all too aware of the vulnerability of his own body. He had seen men blaze up like living flames, seen them die fast and slow, but die nonetheless. And Dorilys was his, legally given in marriage with the consent of her father. She was young, but she was moving quickly, quickly, into womanhood… His hand tightened on hers.
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