TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Sethvir pounced. 'That busy brash rogue is forcing his claim on new Tirans. A sly plan, in full swing.' The Sorcerer stirred a tremulous hand, inviting the timely diversion. 'You're certain you wish to bear witness?'

  'Sight before ignorance,' Kharadmon groused.

  Eyes shut, his face touched by ineffable sorrow, Althain's Warden engaged an active link through his earth-sense and traced a circle onto the coverlet. Inside, demarked by his measured intent, a sequence of images unveiled the thrust of the self-styled avatar's strategy . . .

  As dusk falls in the trade town of Tirans, a lamplighter strikes a spark to a wick that ignites. But the flame fails to steady. An unnatural darkness swallows the flare, to a gasp of bewildered confusion while, down the street, the sconce by a tavern doorway goes out, its brilliance stolen away. . . . the fires in the bake-shop, and the spit in an inn's kitchen, and the candle on the desk of a scribe do the same. . . . across town, as night falls, every burning light fails amid gathering gloom. Havoc ensues. People rush outside, crying. Terror drives them to huddle in knots, while atop the gate watchtower, the flood of purloined fire coalesces into a raging beacon that illumines the flagstaff still flying the mayor's device.

  No other light breaks summer's night but stars. Wild rumours fly house to house. News of a Sunwheel banner in the hands of the gate watch drives the seethe of a gathering crowd. The mob storms the door to the garrison keep. Deafened by the shouts, under assault by desperate citizens wielding craft-shop tools and pried-up cobbles, the acting captain cannot make himself heard. Two men-at-arms fall to a stoning. The town mayor and council find themselves helpless as well, unable to quell pandemonium.

  Torn by riot, driven by panic, Tirans' populace batters the grilled door of the gate tower, howling for divine Light in relief. . .

  'I see where this is leading,' Kharadmon broke in, while the disturbing flow of scried images on the blanket faded into release.

  'The watch captain will raise the Sunwheel banner,' Sethvir murmured with sorrow. 'The same instant, Lysaer will step forth, clad in white pearls and state panoply. He will seize command through raw fear of the dark. We've already seen the voice of the mayor drowned by the uprising clamour. His council can't lead, though they'll try to hold out. The probabilities converge. By dawn, Tirans will be as softened clay in the trumped-up avatar's hands.'

  'Like sheep, well have veterans and recruits alike flocking under the Alliance banner.' Kharadmon reversed course. The tight wind of his passage scattered the white hair spread over the Warden's pillow. 'What's to be done?'

  'Visit Alestron' Sethvir said, pale as bone. 'Pray the s'Brydion duke will hear the voice of old law and take warning.'

  'Why in Sithaer do I wish that Luhaine were here?' Now poised to depart by the cracked open casement, Kharadmon snarled of his longtime adversary, 'He's the one better suited as a harbinger of doom.'

  Sethvir widened his eyes. 'You'd rather dig for the lost hatchling skulls beneath the charred vaults, at Avenor?'

  For answer, a white rose spiralled out of the air and dropped on the bedclothes. 'I'll bear-bait the wolves,' Kharadmon responded, 'before I sift through the trash buried under that abhorrent site.'

  The next instant, he was gone, leaving Althain's protections still as a premature tomb. Left in vigilant solitude, savaged by dread, Sethvir savoured the rose, while outside, the daylight bled out of the sky, and stained the layered cloud-banks blood crimson.

  * * *

  Bransian s'Brydion always knew by the wintry nip of the draught when a discorporate Sorcerer breathed down his neck. Burnished with sweat in his rolled-up sleeves, he hunched his obstinate shoulders. 'Take your blustering elsewhere! I don't want advice.'

  Frost became tempest that raised a blue rime over his gorget and chain-mail.

  The duke swore, stripped the armour, and planted his feet. Choleric as a bear in the faded surcoat his wife had thrice tried to retire, he cupped massive hands to his bearded mouth and bellowed downhill to the crew at the trebuchet. 'Another wedge! Crank up the elevation! Then reload and release her again!'

  Sunburned industry swarmed on the field below. Bare-chested men laboured, shouting. Ropes creaked and timbers counterweighted with a stone basket groaned and moved. By arduous effort, the massive throwing arm was levered erect, then cocked back.

  'Fire, you slugs!' Duke Bransian howled. 'No pissing off, and no slacking for beer bets! Who stalls to break wind will be grubbing with shovels to clear the latrines with the recruits!'

  On the field marshal's signal, the huge engine let fly. With a vast whoosh of air and a pendulous arc, the trebuchet lofted its missile. The launched boulder tumbled, reached height, then plunged, whistling earthward like vengeance unleashed. Outside the lower citadel walls, the ponderous thud of its impact smashed a log target into flying slivers. The crew cheered amid the trembling noon air.

  'That should hammer the teeth out of yon swaggering pretender's front ranks' pronounced Bransian with fierce satisfaction. For the benefit of the sorcerous eddy that now iced the sweat at his collar, he added, 'That's precisely how I shall serve the land, this time. No matter what errand Sethvir's flipped a shade to dispatch! I won't play the toady with mincing ambassadors or hang out my flag for diplomacy!'

  Silence. Even the tough, summer grass had stopped rustling.

  Bransian glared mulishly forward, pulse soaring. 'Is it Luhaine, again? If so, speak up quick! We're busy as coupling may-flies, which means I can't dawdle for carping yap from a gas-bag.'

  'Luhaine should hear you,' Kharadmon snapped with relish, 'the more since he treasures his grudges like fossils.'

  Bransian stiffened. Red-faced, he folded his arms. 'If you've come here to plead against an armed fight, a straight pin in the arse would be kinder.'

  'You may not have a living arse to offend,' Kharadmon pointed out. 'Lysaer's taken Tirans. Varens, Farsee, Northstor, and Easttair have all received Sunwheel sealed orders to march. Need I repeat that their harbours are already swarming? Perdith will join them, with Kalesh and Adruin primed to fuel that bonfire by week's end. You will see your gates stormed. The Light's minions will blockade your harbour within weeks, if you care to credit my warning. Carping yap!' the Sorcerer cracked with offence. 'Should I waste my time here, or try the reasonable course and visit your lady?'

  'Liesse?' Bransian's lip curled. He kicked his dropped gorget, then spun towards the cold dust-devil that marked Kharadmon's seething presence. 'My wife's will backs mine. No women will leave. If they went, they would strip the steadfast heart out of the citadel.'

  'Send Sevrand, then,' the Sorcerer persisted. 'At least leave your heir to the refuge of Atwood, if only to safeguard your lineage.'

  'No get of mine would embrace such dishonour!' Bransian's glare showed blazing contempt. 'Shame on your words. Sorcerer! Such as Sevrand's become, he would run himself through, first. No cousin of mine forsakes his courage, or fails to stand in defence of his heritage.'

  'So would the compact that binds charter law fail,' Kharadmon stated, ruthless. 'If each man sheds his blood for his personal turf above the weal of this land, we are lost. Prince Arithon was right to disown you.'

  Since drawn steel could not silence an insolent shade, Bransian hit back with complacency. 'Alestron has always endured, undefeated.' He squared challenging shoulders, large fists hooked on his sword-belt. 'Or is the power of Lysaer's false godhead much worse than the fire of Athera's great dragons?'

  'Apparently you are hell-bound to find out,' Kharadmon said, frustrated beyond storm or heat. 'If I thought earnest prayer could soften your pride, I would beg every power alive that innocents who rely on these walls do not pay the harsh price of your folly.'

  'Over the wrack of my dead enemies, they won't' Duke Bransian insisted.

  But the Fellowship shade had already left, without the flourish of a rejoinder.

  In his absence, the sunlight beat down like hot brass. The revetted walls danced through shimmering haze, while the glass fr
agments set into the mortar glared white. Yet even noon's wilting humidity could not blunt s'Brydion temper. The duke stalked ahead and snatched up his tossed mail. Straightened up with the links wadded in his bare hands, he harangued his available men. 'Damn your shirking hides! Who asked you loungers to park on your rumps? Hop to! There's a war bearing down on this stronghold! Load up the next round of stone-shot!'

  * * *

  While Alestron's titled lord drilled his field-troops, his brother Mearn was not gambling. Found in the smoking, red heat of the forge, the youngest of the duke's siblings was whetting one of his stiletto daggers. The whine of steel on the grindstone lagged only an instant as Kharadmon's chill presence sliced in, flaring the smith's coals bright ruby.

  Mearn straightened, astute enough to shout through the clangour of hammers and dismiss the journeymen armourers. The knife in his fist remained poised in fierce irony as the grumbling men filed out. Too soon, he was facing an empty doorway across the brimstone hiss of the coals.

  'You've knocked heads with Bransian, now it's my turn,' he supposed without formal greeting. Youngest by ten years, he avoided his sibling's mistake of presuming his visitor was Luhaine. Mearn mopped his wet blade on the leather apron tied over a dandy's trim doublet. Unhurried, he inspected his work, then stamped a dissatisfied foot onto the grindstone's treadle.

  Were Kharadmon still embodied, his smile would have befitted a hunting tiger. 'I could edge that blade for you, without need to sweat.'

  Mearn raised refined eyebrows. Thin as a whip, and crafty since birth, he shrugged with exquisite disinterest. 'For what price, pray tell?'

  Kharadmon also liked spare debates. 'The safekeeping of your pregnant wife in the caithdein's lodge tent in Atwood.'

  'You foresee our defeat?' Not waiting for answer, Mearn grinned. 'Bransian will be smoking with temper, for that. Nor, I imagine, did you waste the breeze chasing down brothers Keldmar and Parrien.'

  Kharadmon's snort flared the coals in the pit. 'That pair? Thick as they are, like two stones in a sack? Though in naked truth, any word from a rock is dulcet and politely reasonable.'

  'You couldn't expect courtesy,' Mearn agreed without heat. 'My brothers see nothing more in a rock beyond dinging the heads of our enemies.' His quicksilver grin showed sharp teeth. 'When Bransian wants us complacent in council, he tells our women to ply us with drink. Personally, I'd stuff the lot with red meat. Drowsy and parked like swilled hogs in their seats, they're less apt to start hammering fights.'

  'Our Fellowship should stoop to such tactics, you think?' Kharadmon pressed with snide irony.

  Mearn deigned not to comment. As the wheel lagged, he resurveyed his blade. Since the finish seemed pleasing, he tucked the glittering weapon back into the wrist sheath beneath his lace cuff. 'You realize,' he said, thoughtful, 'I would set my manhood at risk if I dared to speak for my wife? That's if she deigned to address me at all. Since Arithon's rebuff, she's been thick with Dame Dawr. I will tell you this: if she wanted to birth our first child in Atwood, she would have gone there directly'

  Kharadmon's sigh riffled dust from the shelves, all but worked bare of the ingots the forges were smelting for weaponry.

  'You're perfectly free to try swaying Anzia' Mearn invited. 'You've no skin to blister. Nor ears to be thrashed till they ring like whacked chimes. The wife swears,' he admitted. 'I'm amazed the grandame's endured for this long without tossing her out on her petticoats.'

  Kharadmon did not laugh. 'If the grandame's hand selected your match, she'll have balanced your badgering wits.'

  'She did, the sly bitch.' Mearn shrugged. 'Gave me a woman intelligent enough to split hairs with a glower. At least on those days when she's not ripping mad. Then it's cut to the tenderest parts straightaway. She'd snip a man's bollocks with pincers.' Fishing his next dagger out of his boot, he gave the wheel's pedal a vengeful kick. As the stone whirred, the knife was applied with neat fingers. 'Our child's near term. If I want another, or hope for a kindly welcome in bed, I know when to keep my douce distance.'

  'But unlike your brothers, you've never liked hunting' Kharadmon admonished with piercing persistence.

  'No.' Mearn stopped his sharpening, brown eyes intense. 'But try telling that to the rest of my family. As you've said, dumb rocks clapped in a sack have more sense. Nobody weans a s'Brydion from war. Long before Dawr, the cock's hens were hand-picked for hatching their get for the battle-field.'

  'Not for this accursed fight!' Kharadmon said. This time sorrow scalded. 'You were never the fool, Mearn! You snarl in the pit for no cause but display. This stand in defiance is going to sow all manner of wrong-headed principles.'

  'I know.' Mearn's admission came without pride. 'Prince Arithon spoke with a prophet's conviction. I never was deaf to wisdom. Yet these are my brothers. I would run this dagger through my own heart before I desert my blood-kin.'

  'And Fianzia?' Kharadmon ventured at last, the lady's full name spoken with tenderness. 'You'd risk her to the rampage of Lysaer's crazed following?'

  Mearn's level stare never faltered. 'She carries our child. Whatever she thinks now, that babe is our life, made in wedded union between us. Be sure I will sacrifice all that I have to ensure she survives to give birth.'

  No more could be given; nothing more said. Kharadmon would have bowed, had he still possessed flesh. No such parting salute was left to a shade. Just regretful silence, followed by a retreat to visit the comfortless news on Dame Dawr.

  * * *

  Three days later, still held in close seclusion within the rock caves of Sanpashir, Arithon Teir'sTfalenn paused where he knelt. He remained oblivious to Lysaer's bold claim at Tirans; was yet unaware of Jeynsa s'Valerient's resolve to question his royal character. The hands that secured the hide covering over his heirloom lyranthe poised with the laces half-tightened when the soft, barefoot step he expected intruded upon his kept solitude.

  He finished the last knot. Turned his raised head, aware who approached well before the arrival emerged from the underground corridor. He arose with respect. Flawless in courtesy, he offered a seat on the folded blanket that had lately served as his bed. No fool, he did not make the outsider's mistake and try to lend an elder assistance.

  The aged matriarch of the Biedar therefore took her imperious time to make herself comfortable. She circled the rock-chamber. Her fathomless interest peered into the dim corners; stared everywhere else but at the royal guest standing at her attendance.

  Arithon waited. He might have been stone, so deep was his courteous stillness. The overhead crack that admitted the day's failing light dropped a shaft of hazed gold through the gloom. The mote shifted slowly from citrine to rose, then faded into still twilight.

  The crone settled at last. A young woman arrived with a fire-pot, then a man bearing strips of raw meat on peeled sticks.

  Arithon stayed on his feet, while the revered one roasted her meal. She watched him with bright, bead-black eyes, and as thoroughly chewed each steaming bite.

  'You would not have answered my summons,' she revealed at length, though not before the evening wind moaned its chill serenade through the gap.

  Arithon suppressed his most combative smile. Empty hands remained clasped at his waist. 'You would not take my gift for your tribe's hospitality. Therefore, we both suffer hardship.'

  The grandame's cackling laughter bounced off the rough walls, waking a thrum of muffled resonance from his wrapped instrument. 'One might knap a flint knife with your tongue. Dare you leave? I have not released you with the tribe's blessing.'

  The threatened curve turned Arithon's lips. 'And do you bless prisoners who should be set free?' Regarding her, serious, he added, "The one who came armed was dispatched to his ship with no such presumptuous ceremony.' He considered with care, then selected the term that meant 'unwitting, ignorant stripling.' 'Do you halter the m'a'hia who comes to you naked?'

  'You are not healed!' the grandame said, angered. 'A warrior not in fit state does not travel.'

>   Arithon resisted the need to lash back. 'Yet I bear no arms'

  Bone trinkets and fetishes clinked: one deft, ancient hand clapped the clay lid on the fire-pot, and night swallowed the blood glare of the coals. 'M'a'hi! Grown but foolish! You should. Men are burning the standing crops in the fields. This I have seen, in East Halla'

  Cold despite his borrowed silk clothing, Arithon shivered. 'But I am not bound for East Halla. My path leads to Atwood, by way of Alland, and my sword was left, safe, back in Halwythwood.' Other messages lay rolled in the wood cylinder, bundled beside his lyranthe. The scroll-case bore letters for Fiark, at Innish, releasing the trade factor and other sworn allies from lists of detailed obligations. 'Old mother, your care is a dangerous gift should it cost me the lives of my friends.'

  The crone arose at his chiding plea. Glass and copper chimed gently as she raised her creased hands and cradled his face with a feather touch. In darkness cut by the pearl gleam of the starlight let in through the overhead crack, she stared into Arithon's eyes. Her intensity raised the hair at his nape as she said, 'Mother Dark's mystery walks in your tracks, while we are the wind, chasing after the wisdom to read them. You will cross through the far side, and visit death twice again. When we meet, I will be with the ancestry.'

  Cloth rustled within the deeps of the cavern. Already, a robed band of dartmen assembled to serve as his tireless escort. Arithon reached up and gently unclasped the aged woman's confining embrace. 'I do not leave your people, unblessed, after all?' he challenged with tender humour.

  'You bless our tribe, not the other way round,' the ancient woman corrected. Then she stepped back and released him, though clear mage-sight would show him the tears cascading down her weathered cheeks.