TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  A witch's sigil might as readily blind vengeance-bent men, as inflame a wave of wild iyats. Vhandon gasped, horrified. The slack troops who guarded the Alliance lines might be bound under Alithiel's peace, while the Prime's twisted plot to smash Arithon's credibility turned them into hapless targets. Parrien's advance would not pause for mercy. Thousands would die without voicing an outcry, or acquitting themselves in a fair fight.

  Snow fell, and swirled. The savage wind battered the terrified man who kicked his mired boots free and sprinted. 'Dharkaron's bloody vengeance!' Vhandon despaired.

  If Parrien fell afoul of a Koriani plot, he still hacked his way forward, unaware that his grief was the Prime's eager wedge to betray the citadel's chance for salvation . . .

  * * *

  Davien hissed an oath through his teeth, a fist bunched in his flame-coloured mantle. His stance seemed a statement of fury, contained, while the next droplet fell, and shattered the imprinted vista of slaughter that mowed down the dazed ranks of the Alliance's most faithful. . .

  * * *

  An image re-formed, this view showing a weary courier's mount labouring through knee-high drifts. The slight, muffled rider slouched with exhaustion, still on her hell-bent course after a harrowing night in the saddle. She had slipped past the s'Brydion guard at the keeps that defended the harbour chain. Masked by small spellcraft and snowfall, she drew rein at last under the loom of the watch turret across from the quay. Her gloved hands were trembling. Rumpled by storm, she dismounted. The low shore-line here did not cut the wind. Gusts screamed, dimming the high, tower beacon that overlooked Alestron's closed harbour. Across the chopped narrows, the ramparts flanking the wharf at the Sea Gate nestled under the shadow of the upper citadel, had the view not been obscured. The foaming hiss of the breakers flung off rime spray, knife-edged and bitter with salt.

  Undaunted, Elaira shoved back her hood. Tangled hair lashed her cheek as she shouted, thin as a bird's call through rampaging weather.

  She was initiate Koriathain, also versed in the mysteries of Ath's adepts. Her determined voice reached the alert sentries above. The man they sent down heard her desperate appeal, and agreed urgent word must be sent to the citadel.

  The enchantress had risked outright wrath from her order to bear the horrific news: an assault spear-headed by Parrien's men ignited a certain disaster. The sentry's man urged Elaira to shelter inside, shocked distress threaded through his apology. 'Lady, we cannot take action at once!' The gale raged too fierce to launch an oared boat. Clogging snowfall defeated a mirror signal. 'The outside watch posts are silenced and blinded, until this rough weather abates.' No message in code might cross the harbour to warn Bransian's inside garrison.

  'I am sorry, my lady,' the keep's officer confirmed. He dared not waste a valiant man's life, with the channel pitched to white froth. 'No more can be done until the tide's changed, and the worst of the storm has blown past us . . .'

  * * *

  The image pool shivered. As though something massive stirred in the depths, far under the earth where the source lay, a disturbance ruffled the mirror-smooth stillness where Elaira's reflection pressed shaken hands to her face to dam sudden tears of despair.

  'No!' Davien protested. 'I would see the enchantress through Alestron's gates! She is the sole anchor to balance the recoil as Prince Arithon faces this set-back! If I'm not free to grant her assistance, leave me the assurance, beyond question, that her Teir's'Ffalenn will not stand alone.'

  But the Sorcerer's heart-felt appeal went unheard, an unsettling precedent in this secret place, wrought out of his busy genius for crafting, and another's: a power whose will had slept, acquiescent with calm, until now: for the dreaming partnership had awakened, on terms of a bargain come due.

  The next droplet fell. Not of Davien's summoning, its ripple of impact erased the framed scene at Alestron. Now, the fathomless well of the spring gave nothing back but jet darkness. Sourced in the secretive earth, it spilled virgin water, sealed away from air or light and untouched by the quickening stir of the world's wind.

  Davien swore aloud. 'Ath above, you are heartless!'

  A glimmer arose from the unmarked deeps, flaring yellow-gold as a lamp, or the fire that glanced off the eye of a dragon. The light shimmered, fleeting, then dissolved: into a cruel place of sifted, rained ash, cut through by a jagged canyon.

  Stacks of oppressive, striated basalt hemmed in the horizon. Heat and smoke laced with the flat tang of mineral scoured through Davien's flared nostrils.

  The warning stopped thought: almost, he could sense the spirit and flesh of the colleague entrapped inside Scarpdale's torn grim ward. Asandir's will held. His unflagging courage could not last much longer: attrition ground down the resilient strength that a Fellowship Sorcerer could renew, but never from that place.

  'Not yet!' Davien flattened his palm in a gesture that was both plea and negation. 'Not yet! Ath's sweet grace, for my wrecked peace of mind, one thing more before I submit.'

  Sensation receded. The aurora of rainbow-hued light where the water sluiced over the ciphered inscription seemed a living presence no more. Yet a whisper that was not quite sound, not quite voice, rang through the carved spirals that channelled the play of electromagnetics.

  The vibration loosed the next water-drop, falling, a strike that shattered the obsidian polish of the spring's surface. Another scene formed like an eyeblink in time, showing a sun-washed, blue-tiled room, where a family shared an uneasy breakfast around the scrubbed boards of a trestle . . .

  * * *

  The neat kitchen at Inrush lay far removed from the blizzard that beset Alestron. Warmed by the light of southlands morning, cosy with the aromas of jam and fresh bread, Jinesse tied back her fly-away hair with a strand of pastel yarn. Seated alongside, her husband Tharrick confronted her adult twins, his weathered face lined with concern.

  The impasse that had Fiark discomposed in his chair erupted to his sudden anger. 'Don't try me on that score! Arithon sent a letter three months ago. His terms were straightforward. The Alliance's reach has grown too pervasive. All associates linked to the s'Ffalenn name are endangered. His Grace demanded a suspension of every activity handled in his behalf.'

  Blond braid still matted with the off-shore salt left unwashed since her brig had made landfall, Feylind replaced her glower with a wicked smile. 'And did you?'

  Fiark flushed. He looked away first. That stark precedent made Jinesse bite her lip and choke back an outcry. Beside her, a staunch bulwark, Tharrick laced his callused hand through her fingers beneath the table.

  'No,' Fiark confessed to his twin. 'I didn't. And not only because of that desert-bred steward. His queer, stubborn service makes the Khetienn's crew mind their backs like they're creeping around a poked bee's nest.'

  Feylind's triumphant grin brightened with teeth. 'The runt creature's a pest! I'm amazed no one's stranded him. Did he claim he'd skewer you for a roasted goat if you slackened your guard over Mother Dark's Chosen?'

  A twisted smile twitched Fiark's lips, prelude to his chagrined laughter. 'Something like that.'

  Settled back with crossed arms, Feylind nodded. 'The mad imp threatened me once, a warning never to lapse in my care for Arithon's interests. I've no doubt he'd stick me with his carving knife, too, if he thought that my loyalty faltered.' Warmed up to her pitch, she laced in, again. 'Which is why you will not shift my cargo but sign off on the manifest King Eldir's entrusted to relieve the siege at Alestron.'

  'Please,' whispered Jinesse, her throat too tight. 'Daughter, I beg you! Think of your two growing children.'

  Feylind swallowed. 'Mother, I have.' Her quiet appeal also included Tharrick, quite stripped of her seafaring bluster. 'The little ones are as much Fiark's and Corra's, as Teive's and mine.'

  To which her mate added, 'I have to agree. To our own, we are exotic, strange visitors, while your home has soothed the skinned knees of first steps, and provided the constancy of their raising.'

  Fiark
said nothing, a declaration that shouted. In fact, the scrappy desertman had told him much more, then made him swear a frightening vow to hold that revealed knowledge secret. For the Biedar tribes of the Sanpashir desert, the survival of Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn ran beyond an imperative necessity. Fiark loved his twin sister as life itself. Yet far more than his own family's fate hung in the fragile balance.

  To the ship's mate who held Feylind's love, he asked, grim, 'You won't argue our case? When you turn your flag in front of the Alliance armed forces, there'll be no reprieve. If you survive the course, you'll be branded past pardon as renegade shipping.'

  'This is my choice, also,' Teive declared, unabashed. 'I saw what Arithon risked when Feylind and Evenstar lay under threat by his enemies.' Huge, rope-burned hands toyed with the child's tin spoon, borrowed to drizzle honey over the pan bread that languished, untouched, on the crockery. The metal bent, under his whitened knuckles. 'His Grace would have died rather than forfeit our interests. Could I live with myself as a father if I ignored his need, now?'

  'He gave us all that we have here, at Innish' Tharrick said in startling support. As Jinesse paled, he cut short her aggrieved protest, firmly and straight from the heart. 'Not least, you were there! You saw his hand heal when he spared my wrecked life, after I wronged him in Merior.'

  A retired ex-guardsman, once cashiered by Alestron over a miscalled charge of lapsed duty, Tharrick enclosed his trembling wife into his protective embrace. As she sobbed against his broad shoulder, he inclined his grey head in tribute to the stepdaughter who spoke, bold as brass, for her right to take action.

  'I can't go with you, Feylind,' Tharrick declared. 'I don't agree with Duke Bransian's policies, or his hard hand with the men who serve under him. Yet the enemies that gnaw at Alestron's sea flank would have long since defeated a lesser man. The aggression which secures his citadel has always provided the linch-pin that defends the clan legacy protecting East Halla's free wilds. The s'Brydion lineage might be faulted for arrogance, yet that short-fall lends no grounds to condemn a whole people. Lysaer's move to create an Alliance rallying cry, and burn them to the ground as a scapegoat cannot be met with a blind eye.'

  'You will help! I thought so!' Feylind crowed with fierce pride.

  Her gratitude caught the breath of the man who stood for the blood father once lost to the sea. Tharrick sighed. His nod was not grudging. Despite his reservation, that the perilous course Feylind must sail defied every sensible reckoning, he gave what he had to offer. 'For your hare-brained courage, I'll disclose the code signals you'll need to bring you safely into the citadel's harbour.'

  Which left Fiark, tight-lipped and silent in the fine broadcloth he wore as shore factor. He might never recover. Beside Feylind's feckless craving for maritime thrills, and her careless penchant for ship's slops, he was ever the settled, meticulous presence. Quite his twin's opposite, for all that they were as two halves of the selfsame spirit.

  His blue eyes matched hers, across the plank-table, identically bright with regret. 'If I don't endorse your ship's papers through excise, you'd burn the Evenstar's honest registry forthwith and run this cargo through Kalesh as contraband.'

  Like echo, between them, the past spoke in memory, bearing Arithon's cry of stripped anguish. 'Dhirken died!'

  'I know what I'm risking,' Feylind declared.

  Fiark raised his fair eyebrows. Troubled beyond any words to express, he pressed anyway 'Do you? I hope so.' He swallowed, then touched Jinesse in a gentle appeal. 'Mother. My sister is bound to go. I can't withhold my part. The weight of a clerk's stamp on a ship's document won't make any damned difference. Since Dharkaron's Black Spear itself could not stay her, I'm asking you to give over to her Prince Arithon's royal signet. Return the ring. Rescind his Grace's oath, that our lives require his pledge of protection . . .'

  * * *

  The next droplet of water plummeted downwards. Its splash struck the spring, bitter as acid, and unequivocal. The scene within Jinesse's kitchen dissolved as the ring-ripple fled, bringing darkness.

  Time could not be stopped. A summons arose on the strength of a promise not to be withheld any longer.

  Davien bowed his head. His whisper raised a plaintive echo within the domed walls of the chamber. 'Fly well. Fly alone. Find your strengths, my wild falcon.'

  For the Sorcerer saw his worst fear become manifest: he would not be free to stand in support through the harrowing hour of Arithon's need. All of the future hung in fate's balance, while older loyalties, and an ancient binding, lay beyond his might to rescind.

  Another drop fell. In the space where the Sorcerer's form stood erect, warmblooded and breathing, alive, now an eagle's winged form shimmered like an explosion amid the stilled air. Wings spread, it soared but a motionless instant. Then its presence melted into the droplet, still falling, lit now by a searing white spark.

  The mote struck the spring, dissolved by the splash, while the pin-point of light winnowed separate. At the crux, the pattern of consciousness that comprised a Fellowship Sorcerer did not reclaim human form.

  Davien's presence was not borne away as a man, to resolve in another location. Instead, the blazing fleck plunged downward into the deeps that sourced the well's spring. Suspended, it fell like a star as though through forever, then vanished.

  Frail light became utterly swallowed: into the pupil of a wide, living eye, brilliant as a midsummer sun flared golden at sunrise.

  Early Winter 5671

  Dragon

  The rock-chamber shatters, an explosion that avalanches ice, snow, and ejected boulders down-slope in a remote vale in the Mathorns; where a dumb-struck clan scout on routine patrol beholds what no mortal man on Athera has dreamed: the sight of a great drake as she blares in challenge, launches aloft, and soars westward on outspread, vaned wings . . .

  By winter sundown, the dragon's flight rakes over the brick towers surrounding Avenor's Sunwheel Square; while the Light's High Priest whimpers in fear, the creature from eldritch legend dives in, screaming rage, and on a fiery breath, razes every building, every grand hall and mansion, then craters the blasted ground underneath to excise the stolen skulls of four murdered hatchlings . . .

  While the pyre of Lysaer's wrecked capital smokes in death and ruin behind, the golden drake wheels with a thunder of wings; linked with the matrix of Davien's spirit, the great wyrm Seshkrozchiel, once the mate of Haspastion, blazes south-east towards Lanshire, and the site of the Scarpdale grimward ...

  Early Winter 5671

  XI. Second Turning

  At tide's ebb on the southcoast, while the Evenstar set full sail for Alestron, far northward, the gale off the Cildein abated to smothering snowfall. In Melhalla, the flakes mounded over the edged drifts, and settled cold swaths in the hollows. All movement along the coast's trade-roads mired down. The post inns, then the haylofts and carriage sheds became jammed with the misery of stranded travellers. Frustrated caravan drovers and stalled couriers clashed in hot argument over space to bed down, the available resources long since overwhelmed: first by an influx of rootless, armed men, then by straggling refugees, overburdened with bundled belongings and wailing children. As the blizzard paralyzed the surrounding countryside, the flood of humanity leaving Alestron sowed clogging emotional snarls into the natural flux currents.

  If Alithiel's song had defused killing enmity, nothing might ease the flaring energies sparked by such desperate crowding.

  The Koriani seers received the sharp brunt, as the storm static cleared, and the lane flow reopened for scrying. Prime Selidie's galled mood had not settled. Though the wrecked healers' tents had been set right, resecured and defended by earth wards, she had no tolerance left to field set-backs.

  'I cannot serve the order's best interests, or make my next choices groping and blind!' The senior who had just complained that her exhausted circle of talent required leave was sent packing. 'Until I decide to retire myself,' said the Prime, 'you will sort any meaningful news from the dross and
ascertain that I'm kept informed!'

  'Matriarch, by your will' The rebuffed peeress curtseyed, rushed as she rejoined the sisters just tasked to uphold their assignment.

  All fever-pitch purpose remained unassuaged, with the order's threatened future at stake. Selidie dared to allow for no weakness. Dedication moulded her stance: the secret body of knowledge she guarded permitted no flinching weakness. While Sethvir's dire straits kept the Fellowship hobbled, no Sorcerer's resource would quash her. Nothing must challenge her latest bid to wrest back Koriani supremacy.

  To that end, Lirenda's slaved talent now augmented another circle of six senior peeresses. Their combined labour powered the sigils that steered Parrien's obsessive revenge. The inflammatory act was almost too easy, the man's heated temperament inviting the spur that fused discontent into discord, while the subordinate sympathy of his ship's companies drew them into the web of entrapment. Though one seasoned captain had not succumbed, he was left alone to approach the nerve-jumpy watch at the Sea Gate. Few campaigners would attempt the volatile charge of informing Alestron's duke.

  Vhandon became the stickling exception. The lone seeress appointed to dog his each move affirmed his unflagging persistence. He could not be swerved from the chilling awareness that he must win through before Arithon's mage-taught resources faltered. The moment Alithiel's conjury faded, the dedicate core of the Alliance command would shake off mazed dreams and encounter the swath of Parrien's unbridled butchery. As appalled shock recoiled to fury, Alestron's reivers caught still at large would be cut off and killed out of hand.

  'The pressure stays on!' Prime Selidie exhorted. 'Keep those ship's companies wreaking blind havoc up until the last moment'

  The two opposed factions must ignite the explosion. Who lived and who died did not matter. Athera's backwater culture and knowledge could never outweigh the wider legacy of millennia: not with the lore of thousands of worlds hanging in the greater balance. All of mankind's prior history lay at stake, proscribed by an archaic compact. The Paravian presence had withdrawn, long since. Alestron's struggle upheld a doomed cause, no more and no less than the opportune sacrifice to leverage humanity's claim to inherit Athera.