"Of course. A simple enough process with the right equipment—which I had the good sense not to leave behind on this occasion. Now, what about the Dragon-wand? I gather you had some small difficulty from various sources."
"Your understatements are showing, altrou" Aldric grinned. "Yes, we did have some trouble—though none of it was connected with them" Gemmel nodded, knowing quite well who they were. "I can't understand why, because they found me easily enough in Erdhaven."
"Don't look for reasons—just consider yourself lucky. By the way… how do you find talking to firedrakes?"
Aldric made a face. "Hard—very hard. They don't have much in the way of small talk. I'm glad you taught me what you did, because Ymareth doesn't seem like a being that would listen to excuses."
"It isn't. Where is Ykraith now?"
"I gave it to Dewan—he has a sheaf of javelins on his saddle, and the Dragonwand's hidden amongst them. How are the horses, by the way?"
"Quite healthy. Lyard's probably a better sailor than you, by all accounts."
"Not very difficult. Gemmel… I'm always asking questions and now I've got two more. Important ones. What does the Dragonwand do? And how do you plan to use it? I'd like a proper answer to each, please."
Gemmel combed his beard with his fingers, neatening it, then stood up and bowed with mock-politeness. "Of course, my lord," he said. "But not at once, my lord— because I'm telling King Rynert and part of his High Council almost exactly what you want to know, and if you're at the meeting you will find out. Of course, since you're still in bed…"
"Not for long. I shall want a bath and something to eat before… what time is it, anyway?"
"Dawn, on a wet, windy, thoroughly miserable midsummer day. Well, it's not actually midsummer, but the alliteration pleases me."
"Oh Heaven," Aldric moaned in feigned horror, "what you do to our language is probably illegal."
"Come on, Bladebearer Deathbringer—Rynert expressed a particular desire to see you, and if he doesn't you will be in more hot water than your bath can hold. But afterwards you and I shall have a private little talk concerning the spellstone of Echainon. Good morning once again." He turned and left the room.
"What was that you called me?" Aldric asked an instant too late. Then he shrugged, yawned, stretched and slithered out of bed, shivering in the unaccustomed cold air. As the young man wriggled hastily into a robe he glanced out of the window at the wet rooftops, grimacing as a gust of wind slapped raindrops against the glass. "Fine summer weather," he muttered, and turned away.
He did not notice the crow huddling for shelter under the eaves of an opposite house, even when the bird's head lifted with a jerk as he appeared at the window. Its beady eyes fastened on his face, and its pickaxe beak opened to utter a croak of surprise even as it shuffled further into the shadows. Once Aldric had gone, the crow gurgled to itself in a most uncrowlike fashion and performed a triumphant little dance on the narrow ledge. Then it launched itself into the rain-slashed air on wide black wings and glided silently off across Kerys, heading north-north-west for Dunrath six hundred miles away.
As the crow flies.
Lord Endwar Ilauem-arluth Santon reined in his charger atop the same ridge where Aldric had once sat and, like the younger man before him, gazed at the brooding might of Dunrath-hold. There was an army camped before the fortress, six thousand men in a ring of steel through which nothing passed unchallenged. Santon dismounted and went to sit on a camp-stool under the shade of his blue and purple standards with their white lettering. Not that he needed shade, even though the sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky; there was no warmth from it at all and the wind which tugged the snapping banners overhead was icy cold.
Endwar-arluth took off his helmet and scowled. It had taken eight days' hard marching to bring his legion up from Erdhaven; two hundred-odd miles, and somewhere along the road they had passed from one season to another, leaving the Spring Festival far, far behind. Santon had seen with his own eyes a brief but unmistakable scudding of snowflakes across the open moorland. Snow— and summer air like the breath of an underground crypt. He shivered with more than the cold.
Dunrath had been grey when last he saw it, blue-grey stone from the Blue Mountains under a blue-grey autumn sky as he rode to young Aldric's Eskorrethen ceremony. Now, perhaps by some trick of the light, the fortress was red. Red with the rustling vermeil silk of Kalarr cu Ruruc's war-flags hoisted over every wall, and red too as if every stone, every tower and every turret had been dipped in some great pool of blood. The crimson hue shifted and changed like the folds of a shaken cloth and only one thing remained constant: the ominous, glistening scarlet of the citadel's donjon, which drew and held the gaze with an awful fascination. It reminded Santon of an Imperial prison he had once seen in the city of Egisburg, the sinister Red Tower whose gates had never yet released a living prisoner.
The lord drank wine offered him by an armed retainer and wondered how long it would be before King Rynert and the other legions joined his leaguer. The men he commanded here were not—save for two thousand foot—regular troops, but levied vassals, kailinin of lesser clans who owed him service for their lands and those warriors of his household who had come with him to Erdhaven. Four thousands of foot and two of horse— not enough to take the fortress by either siege or storm, but quite sufficient to bottle up its occupants behind the high, strong walls and put all thought of open battle from their minds.
Dunrath was widely regarded as the mightiest fortress in all Alba; true, it was not so large as Leyruz-arluth's citadel at Datherga, nor as modern and complex as San-ton's own hold of Segelin, which he called a "castle" after the Drusalan word—but Dunrath had never fallen to any foe in war. It had changed hands twice during the Clan Wars, leaving and returning to Talvalin possession within the space of two months, but both occasions had been by treachery. And now it had been taken by treachery again. Santon drained his cup and rose, glaring towards the blood-red tower. Why was it so cold? he wondered silently, rapping his commander's baton against one armoured leg. What purpose did it serve? And was the answer one a wise man would want to hear… ?
After a leisurely bath and a meal which by its size deserved a better title than merely breakfast, Aldric walked back to his room to collect his weapons and put on the only formal elyu-dlas he owned. Custom and protocol required that he wear only a taipan shortsword with the Colour-Robe, but in the circumstances he felt a taiken of Widowmaker's lineage would make an acceptable substitute.
It would have to serve.
The building, indeed the whole town, seemed aswarm with kailinin, lesser lords and legion officers, and Aldric had bowed or saluted more often since leaving his bed an hour before than he had done during the previous fortnight. He had also been the source of considerable speculation—the anomaly of a young, short-haired venjens-eijo in combat leathers, who yet wore a high-clan crest-collar at his throat and the colours of Talvalin on his tsepan, had caused more than one dignified head to swivel in a most undignified manner.
Then Aldric turned a corner and stopped with one eyebrow arching quizzically. Tehal Kyrin was standing a little way from his bedroom door, holding a letter in the fingertips of one hand as if it was a noxious insect, with a distracted expression on her face and her lower lip nipped between her teeth. When she saw the Alban she started slightly, made as if to say something and then instead twisted the letter into an untidy cylinder which she pushed through her belt.
"You look rather better than when I last saw you," she said, venturing a smile which fell rather short of the mark. Aldric failed to notice anything wrong even when he tried to embrace her and found her slipping nervously aside.
"It's surprising what hot food, hot water and a sharp razor can do," he grinned. "Have you eaten yet?" She nodded, toying with the rolled-up letter, and seemed once again on the point of telling him something important when he continued talking. "It looks as if I'm finally going to get some answers out of Gemmel about the Dragonwan
d. Usually he listens politely to every question you ask and then equally politely avoids giving a reply."
"Sounds familiar," the girl murmured. Aldric let her comment pass.
"He called me Bladebearer Deathbringer. Why? I don't like the title."
"You'll have to get used to it. En Sohra's gone, but her crew did a lot of talking during the few hours they spent in harbour. You're quite a hero."
"Hero!" Aldric laughed without much humour. "I've heard some unlikely things in my life, but that really—" He stopped and reached out one hand to the girl's face, turning it towards the wan daylight from the window at the end of the corridor. "Why are you crying, Kyrin… ?"
She pulled away from him, wiping her face with the back of one hand, and with the other drew the letter from her belt and pushed it at him. Aldric unrolled the parchment and scanned it quickly, his gaze flicking once or twice from the writing to her face and back again. Then he took several deep breaths before trusting himself to speak.
"The characters are Alban—but the language is Val-hollan, yes?" Kyrin nodded her head sadly. "And this name, Sijord—"
"Seorth," she corrected.
"Seorth, then. That's the man who was to marry you?" Another nod. "I can't read this, but let me guess; Seorth has come looking for you, am I right? And you will go with him, of course." This was not really a question, more a statement.
Kyrin studied her lover's face for a long time before she replied, gently touching the white scar under his eye with her fingertips.
"Yes, I will, as I think you expected all along. I've tried to tell you often enough… But it's not a duty— I do have the right to choose—"
"And you choose the man you've known for longer than two weeks. I can't blame you." The look in his dark eyes said differently and Kyrin knew it.
"You put a great deal of living into those two weeks, Aldric," she said. "I've come to know you very well and like you very much—but I have loved Seorth since I was little more than a child, and from this it seems he loves me too. That's why I'm going. Believe me, Aldric-ain, you will understand… eventually."
"Will I? Tell me why?" He fought to keep the harshness from his voice, knowing that to be kailin-eir was of necessity to accept ill-fortune with the same courteous equanimity as the most splendid victory.
"You should know." Kyrin's voice was very soft. "You've come to terms with a greater loss than my going away."
"I… I had no choice then. I have now—and the power to alter it. You said yourself I was heir to lands and ranks and titles. So… What I want, I take, and no man—or woman—can gainsay me." The girl stared at him in disbelief, then stepped over to his bedroom door and threw it open. One corner of her mouth tugged down as she tried to summon up contempt and failed. "You're crying again," he said, not caring that the words came out like the crack of a whip.
Kyrin flinched as if he had indeed lashed her across the face, and still the tears welled silently from her eyes even when she scrubbed at them with her knuckles in a gesture almost violent enough to bruise the sockets. There were no sobs, and when she spoke her voice was without a tremor though it was faint and desolate. "Yes, I'm crying. Crying for you—for whatever spark within you that must have died last night. Because you aren't the man I knew any more. I'm crying for you, Aldric. Because someone must." She entered the room and returned seconds later with Widowmaker in her hands. "Here, kailin-eir Aldric ilauem-arluth Talvalin. Wait for Seorth and my father. Justify your token's name and kill them both, then take me to your bed by force. Because you're not a naked barbarian makes all the difference to rape and murder…" She flung the longsword at him.
Aldric caught the weapon without thinking, his gaze fixed on the girl's face which still held more of sorrow than of rage. Hard to hurt an enemy, he thought sombrely, easier to hurt a friend—and easiest of all to break a lover's heart. Perhaps it was as well, to make their parting easier. Then his fingers clenched spasmodically around the taiken's hilt. He wanted to shout, to rave, to smash things, to… Yes, to kill… something, anything, himself. To behave as not even the lowliest of lordless eijin should behave.
Then it was as if a sheet of ice closed over the anger boiling in his brain, and he became abruptly calm again. Why so angry? he asked himself. Especially with Kyrin, who had done nothing except react the way any right-minded woman would to his vile temper and grossly dishonourable suggestion. The whole foul episode was his own fault and no one else's. His thoughts touched briefly on the tsepan pushed with meticulous nonchalance through his belt, then dismissed it with a mental shrug. Why bother, when at any time within the next three weeks he could be flung into the Void. If he survived beyond that, perhaps his formal suicide might recompense many people for many things, but first and foremost were Kalarr and Duergar. Their deaths, whether formal or otherwise, were long overdue.
Aldric went down on both knees and laid the taiken at Kyrin's feet, then bent forward and pressed his brow to the cool, lacquered scabbard. "Tehal Kyrin-an," he whispered huskily. "Lady, forgive the words I spoke in anger."
She knelt too, so that their faces were once more level; so that she could watch his eyes and see if they truly mirrored what he said, or gave the lie to his courteous phrases. What she saw was an expression disturbingly like that he had worn after learning of his brother's apparent treason, except that this time it was directed at himself. It was shocked, haunted, unwilling to believe how easily mere words had soured their relationship. A face which should have wept, but where any tears had frozen in eyes like obsidian, or flint, or jade. The same bone-chilling grey-green as a winter sea. A widowmak-er's eyes.
"I am truly sorry, Kyrin."
"I believe you."
He bowed forward slightly, as much to hide his face as to acknowledge her acceptance of his apology. Kyrin hesitated, then leaned towards him and touched her lips against each eyelid, then to forehead and mouth. The movement was less a kiss than a valediction, and Aldric knew it.
"Go now, Kyrin-ain," he muttered. "All the words were said long ago."
She rose and walked away, then stopped and took a few steps back towards him. "I cannot just leave like this," she said firmly. "Aldric-eir, the quarrel's already been forgotten. You acted honourably towards me at all times, and I shall tell Seorth of it. Any house of ours is yours, Alban, fire and food and safety if you ever need it. I promise." Kyrin bowed slightly, the way she had seen Aldric do so many times. "Go with God, Aldric— and may Heaven grant you long life."
"Long life is often no great gift," Aldric murmured, "and can sometimes be a curse." He thought for a moment, staring into space with narrowed, frosty eyes, then half-smiled and said:
" 'What is life, except
Excuse for death, or death but
An escape from life?' "
"Recall my name with kindness, lady, now and then." As she left him kneeling there, a black figure with a black taiken before him, Kyrin thought about his poem and as she did she shuddered.
From the balcony of Dunrath's donjon Lord Santon's legion resembled a child's toy soldiers, set out in little blocks of men around the fortress walls just out of arrow-shot. Duergar Vathach leaned on a parapet and surveyed them dispassionately, aware of the impasse which had caused the siege. With another thousand picked troopers of Grand Warlord Etzel's guard he could pulverise the small Alban host, while without them he merely stood up here and wished. Fabric rustled behind him and he turned as Kalarr cu Ruruc stepped out on to the balcony, wind whipping at his forbidding vermeil robes.
"Have they altered their disposition?" he demanded.
"Not since dawn. Why? What difference would it make?"
"Enough to annoy me greatly. I've spent the night preparing a spell based on the siege positions they assumed when they arrived last night, and while it's effective it's also inflexible. What about the traugarin?"
"The putrefaction stopped once the air cooled—it has not returned."
"Good. One disadvantage about using corpses as soldiers, li
ttle necromancer, is that you can resurrect the bodies, but you have to keep fending off the natural processes which follow death. Awkward if you don't want your army rotting away before you can put them to use."
"But having set the Charm of Undeath on them, I have to keep them in that state. The spell will not affect a cadaver more than once."
"Isn't life awkward for the workaday wizard," Kalarr observed drily. "Why you didn't think of weather-magic before, I cannot imagine. After all, even the Drusalan Empire must know that killed meat keeps better when it's cold."
"I don't like nature-magic; it's slow, clumsy, crude— and hard to control safely."
" 'Like!'" scoffed cu Ruruc."'Safe!' Those are not words a true sorcerer should have in his vocabulary."
Duergar sensibly did not argue with him and the issue was tacitly dropped. "It seems," Kalarr continued, "that yonder lord has sent me his defiance." He grinned with sinister relish as he used the old term. "Therefore I feel justified in giving him a demonstration of the power which he has challenged—making sure, of course, that enough are left alive for the warning to be noted." Though his lean face remained devoid of all expression, there was an ugly purr of eagerness in his voice as it shaped the prolix phrases.
Duergar looked at Sainton's army, the scales of their tsalaerin twinkling in the chilly sunlight, then turned to his companion. "What do you intend?" he ventured carefully, knowing from previous experience that with this mood of fierce exuberance on him, it was unsafe to be near Kalarr.
"Once, long ago," cu Ruruc said, "someone called me the slayer of hosts. It is time, I think, to reaffirm that title. There's a spell known to few sorcerers and seldom written in grimoires. I know that spell, and have spent the night preparing it. Now it merely needs priming and direction before I can unleash it."
"But…" Duergar began, reluctant to raise an objection, yet knowing it had to be done, "but surely they have some protection—otherwise they wouldn't have dared to come so close."
Kalarr allowed himself to smile with a slow, evil unveiling of his teeth. But he was not angry, merely amused. "You're very sharp today, my friend," he observed. "Such a theory crossed my mind earlier this morning, so I tested it. Lesser enchantments only, mere probes, extinguishing fires and the like—but nothing so dramatic that it might remind them they're besieging a sorcerer's fortress. They'll learn that soon enough.
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