TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The cessation of her sublime melody scalded a musician's spirit like a whiplash of pain. Arithon felt the air stop in his throat. Hurled into blind dark, he fought to exist, through a weight like a fist at his heart-strings. Numbness threatened to sweep him away, run him through, and unravel his being. The howling void beckoned.

  Arithon yanked back his slipped discipline. Barely in time he stilled the raw cry that burst to escape his locked throat. Into silence that hung fragile as the symmetry in a snowflake, he bowed his head in hushed shame.

  The sunchild paused.

  Sight recovered, with her not a pace from his feet. The lit warmth of her aura caressed the stilled wood and soothed his wracked nerves like a tonic. Arithon still reeled. Unmoored, and flat helpless, he fixed on the jewels caught like stars in her midnight hair. The perfume of her presence overwhelmed sense, a blend of sweet summer that hung between sun-drenched meadow grass and evening rose.

  'Are you real, Exalted?' he asked, not in words. His tears fell, that the coarse grain of his reverent thought slapped the flux as a shouted intrusion.

  The Athlien Paravian cocked her pert head. Eyes bright as green opal regarded him. Since her stillness inquired, he gave her his Name. Her perception, which unravelled his being past form, already welcomed the purpose that brought him. She would see the raw coils of Desh-thiere's curse and know the flawed turmoil that rode him. 'I am your sent answer,' she told him at last. 'You have asked to be freed?'

  His tears fell and fell. He turned his scarred palm, knotted, long past, by a light-bolt unleashed by a half-brother's entangled malice. 'With all my heart, Blessed. I rest in your care.'

  She lifted her flute, breathed one note on the air. Yet the charge in the sound loosed a levin bolt. Light burned, then burgeoned, and smashed like the sun through the held focus of initiate mage-sight. Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn did not see her move. Only felt her brief touch, that cleared the raging heat from his brow with a caress of insatiable tenderness.

  More of her kind must have joined her, although by then, he was hurled beyond seeing. He felt other small fingers trace over his skin, then many hands, insistently lifting him. More flute song arose and joined hers in the night. A music beyond sound wove a net of wild harmony. The sweet tones spun a magic that drew down the dark, and dropped a veil like a nimbus about him . . .

  * * *

  Arithon awoke to the first blush of dawn. He lay on the stone slab, with the desertman's robe wrapped over his shivering nakedness. The gift of the sunchild had been no figment of promise, or wistful remnant of his unhinged senses. His breath flowed in and out, as though his lungs filled his flesh to the soles of his feet. Beyond the miracle that had scoured his aura clean of the Mistwraith's entanglement, he noticed the second gift, rested beneath his crossed arms.

  He cradled no less than the Paravian blade, Alithiel, that he had left secure, back in Halwythwood. The scabbard that covered the steel was the same: a sturdy sheath of black leather, fashioned by the Fellowship Sorcerer, Davien.

  Arithon clutched the sword. He gasped, wrung to dizziness. As the world brightened around him, and brushed the King's Glade in Shand with the blaze of new day, he mustered the shattered rags of his will. Trembling, he stirred and sat up. Before Kyrialt roused from oblivious sleep, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn lost his poise. Overwhelmed by a gratitude beyond words, he gave way, then shuddered, riven through by an unutterable loss that now left him in desolate separation.

  He bent his dark head. With the Paravian weapon braced across his knees, he broke down and wept like a new-born.

  Autumn 5671

  Response

  The ripple unleashed by the event within Selkwood resounded bright echoes the length of the seventh lane. The stone ruins at Ithilt and Athir rang like a bell to the tones of grand harmony. Ath's adepts in their hostel north of Shaddorn were rocked to their knees by a wave of blind ecstasy. In sheltered anchorage under the walls of Ishlir, the Prime Matriarch shouted to summon her seers, then embarked on a fierce course of augury that extended well into the day.

  Farther afield, other factions took note of the cascading impact. In Atwood, within the seclusion of a tumbled keep set amid the old ruin of Tirans, a raven fluffed up black feathers. Crest raised, the jet bead of his left eye cocked upward, he sounded a note like a struck bronze chime.

  Traithe stirred in amazement. Caught in conference with the crown council of Melhalla, he raised his silver head, listening through his bird, while the brisk wind outside flapped the canvas securing the gap where the roof-beams had rotted.

  'Are we endangered? What more's gone amiss?' asked the commodious, fair woman who wore the realm's blazon as steward. Her generous heart melted: too quickly, the Sorcerer's kindly brown eyes had widened with shock. 'Can my people lend help?'

  'Ath's presence on earth!' Traithe exclaimed, while around him, the chieftains attending their caithdein stopped speaking, alarmed.

  Caught in mid-tirade, the distinguished High Earl of Atwood shoved straight. 'You've received more bad news?' he snapped across the sap-sticky boards, cut in haste to enlarge the main trestle. A competent man tasked by fraught crisis, he snatched for his field-worn weaponry.

  Around him, the clan elders displaced by armed invasion dropped their ongoing concerns. Strapped without supply, they foresaw that their cloth goods and food stores were too scanty to last out the winter. The desperation that heated their arguments died, rendered grim before the Fellowship Sorcerer's stretched silence.

  The dank, mossy keep contained their stark quiet. Another set-back could unstring morale, if not press shortened tempers to outright explosion. The scourge of Lysaer's war host blighted the country-side beyond their protected forest. A nightmare invasion, come after a decade of fear: when too many strained families who guarded the realm's blood-lines had become relentlessly threatened as Alliance gold spurred on the head-hunters' leagues.

  Anxious built, until a smile of wonder lit Traithe's features like sunlight burst through a cloud-bank. Shaken to laughter and confounded joy, he spoke in quick reassurance. 'It's Arithon, blast his nerveless s'Ffalenn effrontery! He's just gone and torched the rule-book, again. Where our Fellowship's arts were not sanctioned to act, he has dared the razor's edge and won triumph.'

  Tension broke. The caithdein masked her pale face in plump hands. The earl, who had stood for years as her consort, touched her shoulder in shattered relief. He folded his lean frame back onto the bench, while speculation buzzed through the gathering. Heads turned, most of them bitter and scarred, or turned dour by recent hardship.

  Traithe rose, dark as shadow stamped into gloom; but not his announcement, which rang off the ruined walls. 'Here is hope to lighten your hearts! The crown heir of Rathain has broken the hold of the curse that Desh-thiere laid upon him.'

  Through surging uproar and somebody's wild applause, Traithe found himself importuned.

  'How has this happened?' 'What custom's been flouted?'

  'Can the s'Ilessid half-brother also escape the horror of cursed domination?'

  Traithe related particulars, to more shouts of stunned disbelief, underrun by elated excitement. The Teiren's'Callient was the first to steady rocked nerves. The earl at her side matched her startled glance. She met the round of shattering news with a caithdein's due consternation.

  Her insistent grasp touched the Sorcerer's sleeve. 'You say that Prince Arithon called a Paravian presence to step from seclusion in Alland!'

  That precedent rocked, for its arrogance. Still smiling, Traithe turned his wrist and clasped the soft hands of Melhalla's crown steward. 'His Grace raised an Athlien circle of dancers, but they've gone. We were blessed by their singing for only a moment, as their healing invoked divine balance.'

  Yet the acting authority for a kingless realm was not to be swerved from tight inquiry. 'His Grace did this, you say, for the sake of the headstrong s'Valerient daughter who has placed herself at risk in Alestron?'

  No fool, she had grasped the mad implication:
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn now would be bound north. The woman who bore reigning title for s'Callient had met his Grace only once, an uneasy encounter that stayed acid-etched in her memory. Her canny perception had measured the man, and seen a fated spirit whose determined character would brook no traditional constraint.

  Rathain's prince meant to plunge into the scene of armed conflict. He would come, despite the might of Lysaer's war host, and the insane risk posed by fifty thousand spouting fanatics, swayed by the directive of Desh-thiere's curse. The shrewd mind never rested, behind the munificent warmth that the Teiren's'Callient poured from her tender heart.

  She appealed to the Sorcerer, while the bird on his shoulder observed through unswerving jet eyes, 'Just how much did your colleague foresee, back in Daon Ramon Barrens seventeen years ago? Did Asandir read today's outcome when he chose Jeynsa as a caithdein's successor in her infancy?'

  'Did he or Sethvir forecast these straits?' Which had brewed a dilemma of such daunting scope to force Arithon's reckless hand; and launched this monumental, extreme bid to escape from the Mistwraith's binding.

  Against the posited risk, that might have disrupted Athera's sacrosanct mysteries, even unravelled the stability of Alland, Traithe looked bemused. 'In truth, I can't say' While the raven fixed his disconcerted review with a gimlet stare, the Sorcerer admitted, 'If such an exchange passed between Asandir and the Warden of Althain, they never discussed the outcome.'

  Traithe refused to qualify further. Too many crises still jeopardized his Fellowship's resource: looming troubles that today's stunning triumph could not hope to alleviate. At Althain Tower, Sethvir was still sinking. The adepts at his bedside reported that he had not aroused: only wept in his sleep, when the flowering resonance of Arithon's victory had streamed through his earth-sense. If the flutes of the Athlien dancers could not lift him to partial recovery, some other relentless draw on his reserves pressed him into dangerous depletion. Little else could be done to relieve his blanketing lethargy.

  Luhaine and Kharadmon were too far away, rushed offworld to reweave the mazing spellcraft that thwarted a deadly incursion of free wraiths. Asandir's peril remained unresolved, obscured inside Scarpdale's grimward. He would be beset: the drifters had lately weaned a black colt, spring's get of the field Sorcerer's trustworthy stallion, and surely sired to serve as successor.

  Traithe stood firm, while the raven dug uneasy claws into his threadbare mantle. The unsettled projection fuelled concern, that the Master of Shadow might wield too much influence. For best or worst, Arithon's fate already held the indispensable linch-pin: the hope that fore-promised the Fellowship's reunification, and also the adamant cipher that threatened the downfall of the Koriathain. Today's repercussions could only inflame the Prime Matriarch's grasping agenda. Selidie would redouble her efforts with even more wily diligence. Traithe ached, as he numbered the threads of entanglement: the ancient prophecy of Sanpashir's Biedar, that predated mankind's settlement on Athera, and never least, the precocious Masterbard's talent, that opened the chance of redeeming the ravening spirits that languished upon Marak.

  The towering stakes riding just that one life smashed the frames of reliable augury.

  Brought to bear on the volatile crux at Alestron, none could guess how the balance of power might shift. Traithe surveyed the mismatched assembly lined up at the keep's ill-made trestle: the eyes looking to him, both grim and exhilarated; old and young; expectant, and begging clear guidance. The Sorcerer felt unfit for the task of advising Melhalla's council.

  Consumed as he was by foreboding, Traithe quieted his fretful raven. No Fellowship colleague could forsake his post, or shed the responsibility imposed by the dragons.

  To that end, a smaller disaster-in-waiting must be nipped off in the bud. Traithe measured the shining eyes of the clan heir, a fair-haired young talent who was the High Earl's importunate issue. 'You will dismiss that thought!' he cracked in rebuke. 'Make no mistake, son. You lack the strength to try Arithon's path, or seek the Queen's Grove here in Atwood. No plea you might raise could brave that dire peril, or raise the powers to unkey a grand portal. Never mistake altruistic intent for the tempered awareness born out of initiate training! Without such wisdom, you would meet your death, and bring no Paravian presence back to the realm to succour the need of your people!'

  As the cringing boy bowed his tow-head, the Sorcerer's gruff manner eased. 'Your caithdein needs you exactly as you are, young man. Even my Fellowship cannot solve the great mysteries, or force the old races out of withdrawal. We abide, man and woman, on our combined merits, though the future presents us with shadowed uncertainty.'

  'Should we fear, do you think?' asked Melhalla's caithdein. 'Lysaer's war host is mustered.' The daily influx of additional troops ravaged the bounds of her territory. 'If Arithon succeeds in weaning s'Brydion interests away from destruction, what will happen? Can we dare to lower Atwood's defences and absorb the burden of Alestron's refugees? At the ninth hour, how could our clan enclaves hope to sustain them, when we are hard-pressed ourselves? The old hatreds from outside are bound to prevail. What if the town garrisons unleash their armed might against us in concerted attack?'

  The old earl cut in, determined to keep the realm's peace at his consort's right hand. 'Surely the false avatar's combined horde could expand the siege and surround East Halla's free wilds.'

  His point was not empty. The Alliance war host was massive enough to pose such a wide-ranging threat. All of the eastshore's trade towns were involved, with too many ignorant factions aligned in support of Lysaer's fanatical doctrine.

  Traithe sighed and sat down, harried by more than the pain that plagued his twisted leg. He had no long-term comfort to give. No sound planning to shape a solution. He could not back the promise, that another Sorcerer's help could reach Atwood in time to avert disaster.

  The raven shifted clawed feet, too subdued for an aspect of the mysteries, enfleshed as a bird.

  'I grieve, as well, brother,' Traithe sent without speaking.

  He stood alone, here, with the well-being of Melhalla's clan presence left in his hands. He had no words to tell these proud people they were thrown at the mercy of whatever back-lash Arithon's next actions might stir. With his Fellowship colleagues engaged beyond recourse, Traithe had no more than inadequate strength: such limited power as he could raise through the impairment of his crippled flesh.

  Surely worse, Asandir's absence and Sethvir's strapped resources left the unpredictable bent of Davien's interests an open arena and total free rein.

  Autumn 5671

  Storm

  When Duke Bransian confronted his frothing suspicion that Elaira was Koriathain, his outspoken impulse stung the ears of his wife straightaway. Toss the chit out on her meddling arse and let the false avatar's priests have their field-day'

  Liesse glared back at her husband over his spurned bowl of oatmeal. Shortened days stopped the chickens from laying. The dwindling hoard of eggs cold-stored in the spring-house for baking meant meagre breakfasts, which always fanned the ducal temper. "That enchantress snuck in here straight under the pack, with their wall-eyed talent and snooping noses. Raging hot as they are to burn hedge talent, they're not stupid. Tweak the tail of the Koriani Order, and they'll earn a catfight even their simpering avatar can't win.'

  'I'd risk that and grin.' The s'Brydion lord stabbed his spoon upright in his cold mush, both wrists chapped by the bite of his bracers, and his carping mood unabated. 'Except the confounded witch might stir up who knows what vexing mischief to slap us in retaliation.' His next sober thought was to order the problem set into irons and placed under locked confinement. "That way, we'll keep any spell-driven wiles under our thumb in surveillance.'

  'You've abandoned sense!' Liesse shrieked. 'Like the dumb ox pricked on by the thorn goad, you'd back your shambling butt straight into the shafts and haul the dung cart for your enemies!'

  The duke barked out orders. His summary dispatch for arrest became stalled, because the
wife hiked up her skirts and moved first. She kicked over her carved chair with a bang. Aflutter in layers of lace petticoats, she placed herself in the doorway and stymied the burly captain just given the ducal command.

  'You catty-whomping bitch!' Bransian thrashed to his feet. 'Interfere further, I'll skin you for the grease to quiet the squeal in the gate winch!'

  'And does your drum windlass make such a noise? Who'd hear it?' his wife cried. 'Not the Mathiell Gate sentries! With you reared up on both your hind legs, and braying like a smacked jackass, it's a wonder that anyone else gets the chance for two words and a simple answer!'

  The match burgeoned to shouting, overheard two floors down by Dame Dawr's ubiquitous servants. The dowager's sent runner short-cut through the back corridors and applied astute influence, which double salvo arrived just in time.

  Talvish strode up in his polished appointments, touched Liesse aside, and leaned an armoured shoulder against the door-jamb under dispute. With lazy provocation, he said, 'Did you realize this Koriathain is Prince Arithon's woman?'

  Politically sensitive as an explosion, that name pocked a gap in the argument.

  'Imprison her,' said Talvish, 'or show her the least gesture of discourtesy, and I can promise, as I know his Grace, that we'll have a round of vindictive offence to smoke our hides pink with embarrassment. Worse yet, the woman's a power in her own right. She spent a year with Ath's adepts, Sidir says. Earn her enmity, you might have to beg for relief that's as wishful as a cold bath in Sithaer.'

  'Piss on Dharkaron Avenger himself! I don't simper and scrape before threats.' Duke Bransian jerked his chin at his captain, fist laid on his sword to back up his bluster. "The woman's live trouble and damned lucky at that, to bide in a cell as my prisoner.'

  Except Mearn sauntered up to the doorway outside, slit-eyed as a prowling tiger. He was roguishly clad in a red velvet doublet. The empty, right sleeve had been pinned, with his burned sword-arm done up in strapping. 'Evidently I'm missing out on a fight?'