by Janny Wurts
Sulfin Evend returned a sharp head-shake. 'No. That's too simple. We are holding Prime Selidie's line and doing precisely as she requires, without any clue to the stakes before we get caught in the end-play' He leaned on the trestle to survey the map, in fact soothed by the inward relief: that Lysaer s'Ilessid this once was too tired to unmask the core dread beneath ragged anxiety.
The darkest fear could never be spoken. Lysaer fought this war under the latent pressure of Desh-thiere's cursed influence. Not a fool, the s'Ilessid was strong, and insightful. The values he honoured at heart should have been unimpeachable. Yet he was no avatar; only a man, all too human and desperately vulnerable. Subject to the Mistwraith's warped influence, he posed an ungovernable force for destruction.
Koriathain owned that power. The horror stopped thought, that they could, and they had instilled such rife madness for their own ends: once, in Lysaer's absence, Sulfin Evend had witnessed such a vile machination. Years ago, the former First Senior had tried to trap Arithon at Riverton, using a conjured fetch to invoke the Mistwraith's geas. Unscrupulous schemers, Koriathain had unleashed that mad drive in cold blood, then used its force to goad their quarry to hapless flight. As a trained mage and initiate master, Arithon survived the experience.
Yet Lysaer owned no such defensive protection. Here on the field, he stood as the poised spear-head of a fanatical war host. When Etarra's troops joined, the numbers that answered his cause soon would swell to seventy-five thousand strong. The frightful potential existed for Prime Selidie to play the Light's Blessed Prince as her personal weapon to launch a disaster.
Autumn 5671
Brangle
Two weeks out of Vhalzein, and hag-ridden by news that the siege had closed in at Alestron, the merchant brig Evenstar hove into the trade port of Thirdmark. There, her three-masted rig and furled canvas made her a looming albatross set down among bobbing gulls. Her ocean-going keel forced her to anchor outside of the jumbled stone breakwater that enclosed the town wharves, since the Mistwraith's invasion reshaped the ancient patterns of commerce. The placid, cove harbour now catered to trade fleets of shallow-draught galleys. Even three decades after clear sky restored accurate navigation, the shoal-ridden narrows within Rockbay Harbor continued to favour oared vessels. Tight inlets and jagged shore-lines, compounded by swift-running currents, posed hazards few blue-water captains cared to attempt, under sail.
Evenstar's master prided herself on being the glaring exception.
From Vhalzein, she had run the estuary to Redburn to take on dispatch packets from Quaid, and to onload the spruce lumber preferred by the Southshire shipyards. Her next call, at Spire, picked up casks of beer, flour, and soda ash to be resold to the glassworks at Ithish. Outbound, and riding low on her marks, she had rounded the north point off the Isle of Myrkavia, a trial of seamanship that had snagged many lesser ships on a reef. At Firstmark, upcoast, she laid in wine and hides for the milk-run that fetched her this rolling, second-rate anchorage.
The charts of those treacherous waters were presently furled and shelved. Now, as the exhilaration of dicey handling subsided to restive fatigue, the news came in by pigeon from other points east that the Light's vengeful war host had claimed its first casualties.
Worse, to Captain Feylind's jaundiced eye, the Evenstar's chart desk lay mired by mercantile trade. Landlubber's paper-work, bruised by the officious ink stamps of the harbour-masters, and the fussier parchments, crusted with the seals and ribbons, preferred by the excisemen.
While the ship creaked and swung to the outbound tide, Evenstar's master jammed her taut fingers through the straw hair at her temples. 'Fatemaster crap on the scribblings of clerks!' Lading lists! She hated them. Almost as much as the blow-hard authorities who imposed their port taxes and wharfage. Far-sighted, she squinted at the miserable squiggles that valued the brig's current cargo.
'Pirating bastards,' she muttered, irked by the inflated assessment placed on the spruce.
A shadow loomed overhead: the first mate, peering down through the quarter-deck hatchway. "That's better. You've been much too quiet since hearing the scuttlebutt ashore.'
Feylind's return tirade would have shamed a fishwife. She added, 'I don't like the news, and you didn't, either. Is that why you've made sure everything's planned to a fare-thee-well in advance?'
At Thirdmark, said the lists, she would take on goat cheese, and bone meal for the porcelain guild at Sanshevas. Ahead, the bursar's needs were detailed for reprovisioning at Shandor. To make the stop pay, the brig would swap the cheese and some of the beer for board lengths of West Shandian oak. At Ithish, she would exchange her flour for baled wool bought raw from the shepherds of Vastmark, then that reeking load was bound on to the auctions that supplied the dyers at Innish.
'We're scheduled tight as the gears in a pinch-fisted shore factor's clock!' Feylind groused.
The shadow solidified into a breathing, warm presence as the mate slung himself downwards into the stern cabin. 'Damned right.' Teive approached from behind and folded her into a consuming embrace. 'We've chased our own tail in these forsaken cold waters for too long.' His salt-crusted chin parked on top of her head, he added in gentle remonstrance, 'In case you've forgotten? Our children are at Innish. Probably banging holes in the tiles of Fiark's wife's pretty kitchen. They miss you, too.'
Which stinging line inferred her past night, spent pacing the deck under starlight.
Feylind swatted him off. 'Your damned stubble itches.' She tipped up her head, accepted his kiss, then grabbed him, hard, and held on. Wrapped in the fusty smell of his sea jacket, she strove to subdue raw anxiety.
'You don't know that Prince Arithon will be drawn to Alestron,' Teive stated with maddening calm.
Feylind shivered. 'We don't know that he won't.' She pursued, 'He came for us when this ship was threatened, and s'Brydion have stood as his allies for years. You think his soft heart can deny them?'
Something bumped, abovedeck. By the quartermaster's haranguing tirade, the disturbance involved an inept longshoreman and the cask of grain alcohol just slung aboard for treatment of salt-water lesions.
'You'd better go topside,' Feylind said, resigned. 'Before some slacker thinks to straw-tap that barrel and suck himself rip-roaring prostrate.'
Yet Teive was not diverted so easily. The crew can look after itself for the moment'
Feylind stirred for sharp protest. He forestalled the attempt, cupped a weathered hand against her turned cheek, and captured her shove to release him. Then he tightened his hold, appalled as he sighted the paper-work on the desk-top. 'You're planning to contract our cargo out on consignment to another vessel bound into Innish? Feylind, why? If I allow this, your brother is certain to dice both my bollocks!'
'If you don't agree, I'll claw first,' threatened Evenstar's captain, her tigerish mood turned defensive.
Teive had the experience to hear her distress. He fished the snagged loop of blond hair from his callus but did not release his embrace. 'I won't let you go until you tell everything.'
'When bulls give fresh milk and lay hen's eggs!' Feylind wrenched herself free. Ever and always, Teive's deep concern cracked her nettled rage and undid her. She leaned back, elbows braced on the traitorous documents.
'We'll provision at Shandor, well enough,' she relented. 'But not keep this cargo. I'll have nothing else loaded into our hold that's not westbound round the cape.'
The mate perched his sturdy frame on the chart locker, his grey eyes agleam with challenge. 'You'd run back to Havish?' He caught the flicker of determination before she broke off his glance. Telmandir!' he corrected, appalled, as intuition unveiled her conniving. 'You want to petition High King Eldir to send relief to the s'Brydion citadel?'
'Someone must.' Feylind was never frivolous. Her radical decisions always were framed by the logic of an off-shore navigator.
Teive tried and failed to suppress his sharp qualm. Practical, first, he shouted topside to clear off the Evenstar's quarterdeck.
'We don't need to perk up the ears of the crew,' he told Feylind. 'Yes, lady! We're going to discuss this.'
She folded her arms and glared back at him.
Which only moved Teive's good nature to laughter. 'You never bite half so well as you bristle. If you're going to clam up, I'll toss you in bed. That's easier than sweating over the clues to your hare-brained habit of thinking.'
'No,' Feylind said.
The cabin between them seemed suddenly cold, beyond what the season should warrant. As the quiet stretched, loud with the creak of worked wood, and the wind-driven slap of snugged halyards, Teive sighed. He could be quite as stubborn.
'What if I agree with you?' he suggested, dead calm. 'That Arithon is a friend, and his s'Brydion allies might be in need of us. Why should Evenstar put in to Havish?'
Feylind exploded and stood, as trust smashed her reticence. 'Who else could go?' she exclaimed, her voice cracking. 'If we're going to smuggle supplies for Alestron, we can't involve Fiark! The Light's influence over the southshore towns would have priestly noses poked straight up our backside! Any one of a dozen corrupted officials could tip off the vengeance of the Alliance. King Eldir owes us twice over, after our help throughout last year's famine. And unlike the other ships loyal to Arithon, Evenstar's neutral registry can slip us past the curs at Kalesh and Adruin that watchdog the blockaded estuary.'
Teive scraped his rough chin. 'You think we could carry the pretence of bearing provender to Lysaer's camped troops? Then signal, once we're close enough to be recognized, and our hold's contents to be overtaken by Alestron's defenders?'
'Ath!' Feylind fetched him a cuff on the shoulder, then let him snag her back into his arms. 'You know my mind much too well for a man who's never been wed as a husband.'
'And whose fault is that?' Teive chuckled. 'Not mine, wild woman.' Then he sobered. 'You know by now that wherever you go, I intend to stick like a lamprey.'
'Including the teeth,' declared Feylind, unmoved. 'I take it you're crewing this tub west to Havish?'
'Especially with the teeth.' The mate bent his neck and nipped at her ear until she shrieked with ticklish outrage. 'I am going to Havish,' he added, smug. 'If only to see what High King Eldir will do when you land this whopper in his royal lap. That's if his majesty will agree to allow a tramp captain the daylight for a crown audience.'
Feylind grinned, then kissed Teive's lips with a will to disrupt the dastardly paper-work. 'King Eldir will hear me. It's Fiark,' she murmured, 'who's going to need the threat of Dharkaron's Black Chariot for softening.'
And Tharrick, and Jinesse, and Fiark's wife, prayed the mate, alongside the lunatic, outside hope, that time with the children might prevail against his beloved's bed-rock sense of loyalty.
Autumn 5671
Stirrings
In the Kingdom of Tysan, buried under the ruin that once housed Avenor's state treasury, a wrecked coffer enclosing the skulls of four hatchling dragons settles in the debris; and as their singed silk covering crumbles, a wakened flicker of energy spins out a tendril that is almost a thought . . .
The same hour that a drifter gifts a weanling colt sired by Isfarenn to Althain Tower, Asandir struggles against driving sleet inside of Scarpdale's grimward; he still holds the shade of his stallion secured between his cupped palms, though he slips as the footing shifts to glare ice, and a lightning flare blinds his bearings . . .
While onloading contraband provisions from a fishing lugger, Alestron's roving war fleet hears rumours of the Alliance assault, with Keldmar s'Brydion burned alive with his field-troops amid Lysaer's first onslaught, and through raging grief, Parrien swears to wreak a revenge that will grant the invaders no quarter . . .
Autumn 5671
VII. Siege
A fortnight beyond the initial assault, the entrenched siege gripped Alestron in deadly earnest. Lysaer was not making a second mistake.
His troops maintained their fall-back position, past reach of an offensive strike. The duke's massive trebuchets poised, unused, while their idle crews huddled against biting sea-wind, under the diligent eyes of the garrison. Sentries and armed companies stayed alert at the crenels. They held their posts, watch upon watch, prepared for assault, but offered no useful target. Day upon day, the white-and-gold standards flapped over the Alliance war camp, a view that mocked them with immobile serenity, and a drawn line that enforced their captivity.
No forays occurred, night after stilled night. Upon the stripped earth, the enemy drilled troops and exercised fractious horses. They sprawled and caroused in their invasive pavilions, while the mewed-up defenders watched their manoeuvres from the cold, distant height of the parapets. To stand down was to risk being taken off guard. Any dark, cloudy night, the Light's Lord Commander might launch a sneak attack against the watch turrets at the harbour-front. To endure each patrol, hung in fraught expectation, became an agony in itself. The empty hours sawed at the nerves, until the misery of endless inaction blunted the senses like a dull knife.
Routine begat the worse poison of boredom. Time was the weapon to break steadfast will, while the stockpiled food in the warehouses dwindled, and tight rationing eroded resolve.
The wait bore hardest of all on Sidir. Not the shrinking portions, which ended each meal on the pinch of unsatisfied hunger. Hard winters had shown him gaunt seasons before. His experience weathered such short-falls in step, and his touch with the fretful and crying children could rival a mystical healer's. But his lifelong venue had been the free wilds. The enclosure of walls and stone-paved streets wore down his forest-bred spirit: first to short words, then to deep silences, which extended into reclusive retreat atop the swept crags overlooking the bay-side defences. He was not wont to brood. Since the bow stolen from Lysaer's camp was sub-standard, and the offered replacement from Alestron's armoury never suited his exacting taste, Elaira found him stirring a glue-pot over a frugal fire. Beside him, spread out on a dry wrap of leather, he had laid out the composite laminates: sinew and shaved strips of ox-horn to bond with the frame for a recurve bow.
'Where's Fionn Areth?' the enchantress inquired.
Sidir looked up, his metallic eyes piercing. 'Should I care?'
'Yes,' said Elaira. 'You've been avoiding him.' Against a sovereign imperative, she did not have to add: this clansman's expression of polite reserve was as good as a spoken rebuff. 'Why?'
Sidir's eyebrows lowered in bristled offence. 'You have to ask that?'
'I shouldn't,' Elaira agreed. 'Which is the reason I must.'
Gusting wind streamered the bronze braid she had tied with plain cord and blushed cheekbones that showed the first edge of privation. Despite the pervasive stench of hot glue, she sat on a mossy rock by the verge, where the cliffs dropped sheer to the closed defences that sheltered Alestron's cove harbour.
Sidir's obstinacy kept him stirring his pot, while the rudely hacked ends of his greying, dark hair lashed at his weathered face. 'Did you think an encounter should be so easy?'
Direct to the point of brutality, he inferred the raw pain left from Daon Ramon Barrens, and the horrific cost of the Araethurian's royal rescue. Earl Jieret had died to draw Arithon clear, as well as eight of the remaining Companions, adult survivors of Tal Quorin's massacre, who had seen a generation of children put to slaughter by Lysaer's troops.
Yet the astute awareness of Koriani training saw past the convenient - the obvious - shield spun from grief: this clansman's hands were too steady, immersed in his work.
Elaira shivered. 'You aren't that squeamish, concerning your dead.'
Sidir's jaw tightened. He looked away then, his spare, rugged profile stamped against sky. His reluctance ran deeper than recent resentment; was no wounding due to Tal Quorin, or Daon Ramon, after all. He braced before speaking. 'You weren't at Vastmark when -'
But she had been. 'Look at me, Sidir!' Exposed to his searching regard, Elaira incited his birth-gifted insight for truth: that she had been made witness to the horrors that Arithon's hand had unlea
shed in that mountain campaign. She also knew every twist that occurred in his Grace's deadly, flawed reasoning. 'I shared my beloved's traverse of the maze under Kewar.'
The clansman unlocked his penetrating stare in discomfort. 'You saw most. But not everything.' Attention fixed back on his task, he added, 'Not what was done to keep your man sane, through the back-lash and during the aftermath.'
The soft phrase stayed dangling, a warning that failed. Elaira leaned forward, flipped the hide over the fitted bow frame. 'You will answer this!' Shown his taut offence, she shoved to her feet and rode over clan stubbornness. 'Sidir! Without distractions.'
This weapon can't equal the ones that are shaped, lashed onto forms for a year,' the Companion disparaged. Never inclined to swear over set-backs, he relinquished his glue stick and swung his bubbling pot off the fire. "That boy's an errant, wild spark,' he declared. 'Sets his stormy, emotional blazes without care for anyone's dignity.'
'Perhaps that's why Arithon wants his loyalty grounded,' Elaira allowed without compromise. 'Volatile, he's a danger to all of us. The weak link too likely to fracture.'
Sidir surveyed her. 'Fionn's not so foolish as that, or so angry he won't listen to Talvish. And yet, to hand such a one my prince's deepest vulnerabilities feels like a stark breach of trust.'
Elaira had no grounds to argue that point. Faced by the livid, disfiguring weals on the wrists of a man who was already war-scarred, she said gently, 'Do you know of another way?'
Sidir's recoil was instant. 'Arithon didn't,' he snapped, now annoyed. 'I protest because I don't like it.'
The root reason would be some uncanny awareness garnered through his gift of Sight. Patience might coax his disclosure; or not. Sidir was a tiger, for principles. Elaira gave him space. Further speech was not needed. Sound carried, even to these wind-swept heights: the relentless clash of practise engagement, and the boom of the drums, as the Light drilled its troops through the boredom of deadlocked warfare.