TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The chill air seemed suddenly too thin to breathe. Sulfin Evend leaned against the rough paling, dizzied by the untoward possibility. Surely as the blood that once welled from his veins, sealing his pledge to a Sorcerer, the eerie touch he observed was no conjury wrought by Koriathaini.

  With Lysaer's plight still his foremost concern, Sulfin Evend flagged down a talkative matron. 'Have you heard aught of the Prince Exalted?'

  She smiled. 'Come in from the north, have you?' Her gaiety sparkled, out of place amid the leaden gloom. 'Rumours are flying. Some say the avatar touched off a light-bolt that birthed us a miracle.'

  A bystander took issue. 'No, woman! I've heard from a witness. The Blessed Prince has ascended on wings and bestowed the gift of Ath's grace.'

  That argument sparked off others, each voice with a different opinion.

  'By the Light, no such thing!'

  'Truth spoke, and Shadow's corruption was vanquished!'

  'We are saved by the dawning of goodness and hope, and the war host is being disbanded.'

  Sulfin Evend scraped at his stubbled chin and carefully kept his own counsel. Skin, bone, and viscera, he knew the development was no curse-bound ploy of Lysaer's. The enthusiastic disclaimers around him exposed a ringing, uncanny harmony: a tingling echo that spoke through the heart, to quit senseless striving and conflict. If a masterbard's gift for ethereal music could be fashioned to unseat Desh-thiere's hold, the spectre of ruin and war might escape the fraught grief of a blood-bath. The outside possibility awoke admiration. 'By Ath, as an ally, you don't pull your strokes!'

  For, yet again, memory cited the evidence: as Lysaer's dark nemesis cried out in appeal, flayed raw by his tormented past: 'Depend on my absence' Arithon had promised. 'I will weather the conflict at the fringes of the free wilds, and assist the escape of survivors.'

  The Light's Lord Commander drew in a slow breath. His sudden hope could burn too fiercely bright, that his own insupportable burden of honour might find a painless reprieve. While the press closed around him, and the relentless storm soaked his mantle, Sulfin Evend became aware that somebody shouted. A flustered maid from the kitchen endeavoured to snag his attention.

  'My lord?' Cheap crockery chinked as she flounced, peering across her burdened tray with quizzical exasperation. 'You wished supper and a packed meal for the road? The groom says your mount's being saddled directly. Eat now, or not at all.'

  The post-horse could not arrive fast enough.

  Sulfin Evend pitched her a handful of coin. The hot meal abandoned without second thought, he snapped up the packet of courier's rations and strode straightaway towards the stables. He would girth up the fresh nag's saddle himself, then scorch the track to Alestron and reappraise his neglected command.

  * * *

  Snowfall sifted over the citadel, scrim patterns of white on grey blurring the onset of afternoon. Through the windless, oppressive cold, Alithiel's song slid a louring cry of pure sound clothed in scintillant light. Up close, the effect undid reason and pain. The yearning heart lifted towards laughter. Watch Keep, where Arithon launched his stand for peace, became the lit flame of a beacon. There, the hot star aligned by the sword struck a chord beyond sense and reason. Sustained harmonics charged the air to find voice, tuned to joy by the dance of grand conjury.

  The effect did not ride the free mind past volition, or cancel willed choice and conviction. Those who wished to live free of armed strife departed the citadel's surrounds. The sword's music let the garrison who stayed by their duke help the families who opted to leave. Side by side with their fellows, who chanced a new life, their strength worked the winch at the Sea Gate. Steady assistance directed the evacuation under the cover of storm. Gloved in blanketing murk, and buoyed on the ebb-tide, the packed galleys and boats left the anchorage.

  Now, as the flow in the channel reversed, churned by the eddies that presaged the flood, the last huddled children and matrons were gone. Capped in fresh snow-drifts, the wharf-side loomed empty. Reduced in number, the guard manned their posts. Others slept, touched by unearthly dreams, while the sword on the Watch Keep still blazed, its streaming, wild power unfaltering. Arithon sustained the summoning now to stall the renewal of latent hostilities. The travellers in flight from both camps must have time and leeway to secure their escape.

  Hush gripped the citadel throughout the weaving. Weapons and runners stood idle. If the sentries on guard lost their focus to day-dreams, neither the duke or his captains at arms made rounds to upbraid slackened vigilance. In the vast quiet, above emptied streets, the war paused, its antipathy shrouded.

  Arithon chased his intent without respite. Atop the squat tower that commanded the promontory, the exhaustive hours of prolonged exposure proved bright beyond mortal tolerance. Few could withstand the unshielded force of Alithiel's active proximity. Dakar was the exception. The change instilled by his experience at Rockfell let him manage the overwhelming surge of aligned flux. His measured stints, standing vigil at Arithon's side, left Talvish and Rathain's informal rear-guard to secure the drum-tower's lower ward-room.

  There, the thick fieldstone walls damped the ranging, glass edge of the sword's fierce vibration. If no fire burned for the shortage of fuel, the trestles and benches were sheltered from the cruellest bite of the weather. With Glendien gone to assist in the kitchens, the present occupants made two, beside Talvish: Fionn Areth, who clung against sound advice, and the young forest liegeman from Shand. Though cheerful by nature, Kyrialt s'Taleyn stayed loath to grant any town-bred ally his trust.

  Without Sidir, whose talent for insight surpassed prejudice, no one could gauge honest mettle with the same infallible accuracy. The lack of that guidance, and the sensible absence of Elaira, left Talvish adrift as the duke's displaced veteran.

  'Your toss' Fionn Areth sniped from the gloom that oppressed the austere stone chamber.

  Talvish leaned across the gouged planks and scooped up the dice to defend his staked coppers. But for the fallow gold glint of his hair, he was a lithe shadow, terse and self-contained through inaction. A soldier's fust of damp wool was his element, while the icy draughts wafted snow through the arrow-loops and puddled the hollowed stone floor. 'Will you never lay off cutthroat games before you're landed in debt to your short hairs?'

  The Araethurian shrugged. Jeynsa's stabbing wit had hardened his patience. Sometimes, he remembered that silence beat words in the flaying heat of rejoinder.

  Talvish rolled, six and five. 'Fleeced!' he crowed, laughing. 'Skinned you stark naked as a spring goat.'

  The shied coin of his winning might have bruised flesh. Talvish's reflex fielded the catch, nearly as fast as a clan scout's feral reaction.

  Kyrialt marked his speed with a measuring eye. If he refused gambling, he was not inured to the company. 'Don't cry broke to me' he teased the grass-lander. 'I've no useless freight of coinage at hand for a wastrel like you to borrow.'

  Fionn Areth flexed chilled fingers, bored enough to pounce back. 'Straightly said, for a brigand brought up to seize trade goods.'

  Talvish's keen observation had watched Sidir react under town-biased insult. Always the Companion relied on the cues of his hunter's instinct. The war-captain sensed that same subtlety, now, as Kyrialt tracked the Araethurian's tone of voice and responded to match the intent.

  'Disappointed, are you, that I was raised to weaponry rather than stuck wringing cheese out of goat's milk?' Yet where Sidir invariably cut off discussion to guard the deep scars of past history, Kyrialt's buoyant nature preferred kindness. 'Why challenge the man who'd be willing to teach you? If sharper skills are the wish of your heart, you might ask me to spare time for lessons.' While his gad-fly reeled, set at speechless loss, the clan liegeman added, 'Here's Dakar.'

  Whatever alerted his forest acuity, a moment elapsed before Talvish detected the stolid tread descending from the topside battlement. Low grumbling followed, past the stairwell portal, while numbed fingers fumbled the door-latch. Then the Mad Prophet shoved
his way in, gusting fresh cold through the chamber.

  Talvish preferred the crude recourse of language. 'What's changed?'

  'Nothing.' Past chattering teeth, Dakar let fly in frustration. 'I can't see with a Fellowship Sorcerer's vision! This use of Alithiel's virtue's a precedent, and I don't have access to Sethvir's library.' Unlike everyone else, Rathain's prince was not freezing. The sword's emanation deflected the wind and melted the snow for a three-yard radius.

  Kyrialt tested gently, 'His Grace hasn't moved?'

  'Less than a carved statue, for all I've seen.' Dakar kicked out a bench and plonked his ample rump. 'I can't touch him, besides.' He pitched off crusted gloves, beat his bloodless fingers. 'If I venture too close, the same as before, I lose every hold on my faculties.'

  To Fionn Areth's fast breath, Dakar snapped, 'I don't know! If Arithon's damaged his mind, he's past helping. I can't reach through the well of Alithiel's influence, even to test his defences. Who knows if he suffers from wasting attrition, or if his auric field's locked into stasis?' Miserable and shivering, Dakar shrugged. 'No more can be done.'

  Except wait as they had, and keep anxious vigil, and hope that the sword's wild conjury left its wielder the means to awaken to sanity.

  'I'm stripped of loose coin,' Fionn Areth complained. 'Unless you can stake me a purse from thin air?'

  'Wine,' Dakar amended with a vicious edge. 'Mulled to steaming, and sweetened with sugar and cinnamon, if I possessed such a fanciful talent. Which I don't. You'd have to beg Asandir.'

  No answering banter arose from Kyrialt, to ease the Mad Prophet's wrecked peace. Talvish straightened, first warned by that quiet, then clapped a swift fist to his sword-hilt, the same instant the tensed clansman shot to his feet.

  'We have inbound company!' Kyrialt snapped in warning. Two men. One's the duke's heir, by the swaggering tread.'

  Then Talvish picked out the jingle of mail. Also snatched bits of talk, pitched with concern, too muffled as yet to decipher. The over-loud bass was Sevrand's; the other's more measured responses were burred with sapping exhaustion: but known.

  A prickling chill chased Talvish's spine. 'Vhandon?' Faster, this time, than forest-born reflex, he crossed the dank chamber. His gauntleted hand flung wide the strapped door. Three running steps more, and he captured his stumbling friend in a bear hug. 'Vhandon! Daelion wept!' Fighting for words through his startled emotion, he gasped, 'I thought you had perished with Keldmar's field-troop!'

  Through the swirling snow at the threshold, the bulkier figure side-stepped the reunion: Sevrand entered the Watch Keep amid a kicked scatter of ice clods. Harsh weather never saw him wear a hood. His matted clan braid wore a blood-sparkle of stone: the ruby pendant received from a sweetheart, and his only frivolous sentiment. The cape-shouldered cloak slung over his byrnie clinked to the hang of his weapons: his usual long sword, and an ugly spiked mace, thrust through a studded belt. The steel ring at his hip held a favourite notched boarding axe, which suggested he had come directly from watch at the Sea Gate.

  Trouble?' snapped Talvish, while Vhandon came in and relieved his tired frame on a bench.

  Sevrand grunted. 'What's changed?' Then, 'Sithaer's bleak death! The damned fire's put out?' Pitched to grousing before anyone could reply, 'Jackasses locked up the wood bin, again? Damn the seneschal's prissy-fist rationing!' The behemoth's stride passed down from his great-grandsire impelled Alestron's titled heir to the hearth, where he unslung the axe and demolished the hasp.

  'Does no good, hounding us to hoard logs, while our sentries freeze themselves useless!' Spun on his heel with an armload of kindling, Sevrand jerked his chin towards Fionn Areth. 'Off your lazy arse! A good man's nipped with frost-bite. Clear the grate and help lay a fire.'

  But Kyrialt's silent, impeccable handling attended to that chore already. Since his forest practice could not be surpassed, Fionn Areth snatched up the storm-sodden cloak peeled from Vhandon's shuddering shoulders. As he hung the stained cloth to dry, rushed converse delivered the news that had sparked Sevrand's temper: Parrien s'Brydion's war fleet had run the blockade and made landfall, hell-bent on a vengeful assault.

  '. . . a hot-headed folly turned wrong from the first,' the veteran captain was explaining, while the spurt of new flame in the hearth lit Dakar's riveted features in profile.

  Vhandon pressed on, soaked to the skin, and haggard with sleepless exertion. 'There's an uncanny sigil at play behind this. Koriathain are meddling with Parrien's rage. His men have succumbed, too, driven to berserk slaughter. I think we're seeing a ruinous ploy to twist Arithon's working into an unconscionable massacre. The witches don't care who dies in the breach. We're facing the repeat of the Evenstar's nightmare, but for stakes raised beyond all imagining.'

  'How long?' Dakar broke in, distressed. The horrific damage already stopped thought; raised redoubled agony over the prospect of Arithon's future recoil. If Rathain's prince regained full awareness after the sword's song released, he must encounter the shattering brunt of the murders inflicted against him.

  Talvish was scarcely a heart-beat behind. 'When did Parrien's crazed foray begin?'

  Vhandon glanced up, harrowed. 'Today's dawn.' Against widening shock, as even the goatherd measured the on-going consequence, he qualified, 'Storm's wrecked visibility. Signal couldn't get through to the watch at the Sea Gate. That's why I've brought in the warning myself. Arithon's use of the sword has been turned! Enemies softened under its influence are being hacked down in cold blood!'

  "The Alliance will call his Grace to the account,' Talvish summed up in crisp outrage. 'Added against diabolical luck, we're caught at flood-tide, which leaves Parrien exposed without recourse.'

  Dakar shoved to his feet, stunned by the crux: stop Arithon's engaged conjury with Alithiel, as if anyone could, then Lysaer s'Ilessid would recover his wits. The whip-lash of Desh-thiere's cursed influence would face a butcher's toll of dead allies. Past question, the duke's brother and his suborned companies would die, razed to ash in the virulent counter-strike.

  Sevrand slammed his axe-head into a bench. Iced braid dripping, eyes baleful, he accosted the Mad Prophet. 'You'll do something, spellbinder. Handle this now' I don't want to see how my cousin will meet the loss of his last, loyal brother!'

  'He won't wait,' Vhandon stated. s'Brydion of Alestron did not forsake family. Bransian would attack, and wrest Parrien clear, and try to fight his ensorcelled fleet's crews back to safety. "This moment, the troops are being hand-picked to storm the Alliance encampment'

  'Fatemaster blindfold the eyes of the fool!' Dakar swore with grim venom.

  Sevrand said nothing but bashed past the trestle and snapped the fat spellbinder up by his shirt front. 'Answer me, prophet! What have you seen?'

  'Your untimely inheritance!' Dakar retorted. 'War prowess can't save this! You're facing a Koriani circle at work! Fly out in high passion, and your duke's effort must fail. He'll get trapped himself and deliver his rescue party straight into Prime Selidie's conjury!'

  Sevrand jammed his quarry against the stonewall, intractable as a gored mastiff. 'Miserable coward!'

  'No,' Dakar shrilled. 'A similar horror occurred at Vastmark. Happened the year before you were born.' He gagged, fighting the mailed knuckles gouging his windpipe. 'I swear by the puncture scar left in my back by Bransian's arrow as proof!'

  'Truth!' Vhandon shouted, before Sevrand's hazed fury yanked the lodged boarding axe free. 'Morriel Prime once used such a snare in an attempt to assassinate Arithon. The Warden of Althain sent Asandir to weigh out the formal account. The charge rested: malign arcane influence, with the culpable opening excused as an action of war. Not cold-blooded murder by ambush, although the unsavoury circumstance certainly called for it'

  The heir to the citadel loosed an inchoate growl. While Talvish's blocking arm quelled Fionn Areth, Sevrand slackened his death grip, but did not let go.

  Dangled on his stretched toes, eyes limpid, Dakar continued to reason. 'Even the best of your
men will succumb. Their courage will just feed the blaze of Selidie's plot all the hotter!'

  'Then back the bitch off!' Sevrand snarled. 'No, I don't care how!' Strained cloth ripped under his twisting grip. 'You are Fellowship-trained to uphold the compact, and this filthy violation against free will amounts to possessive enslavement!'

  Never more brave, Dakar clung to dignity. 'My stance must guard Arithon.'

  While Talvish shoved Fionn Areth away, Vhandon drove his weary frame upright. Both war-captains knew that action was futile. Short of death, they could not salve Sevrand's galled pride or stop the cascade of disaster: much as Dakar appeared the soft fool, he was anything but defenceless.

  That moment, the latch clicked. The oak door hissed open, although no gust had hurled its swinging weight.

  'What you need is a talisman,' a voice of firm calm interjected across the influx of flurrying snow. Uninvited, the precipitous arrival strode in: a slender form, swathed in a cloak stained with salt from a fast passage across the estuary.

  'Elaira?' Kyrialt moved first, braced her shoulder and guided her to the fireside. He sat her down, this time ruffled to more than alarmed concern. 'Ath above, lady! What folly possessed you?'

  For the enchantress's wilful return to the citadel posed no gift to her Teir's'Ffalenn's interests. Already he was under siege for his life. With her safety gone forfeit, her presence now served as Arithon's heart-rending hindrance.

  'My Prime's matchless cruelty, what else?' Elaira touched the anxious liegeman aside, then flicked a drilling, cold stare towards Sevrand. 'I suggest you let go. We need the Fellowship's spellbinder breathing. Unless you don't want your cousin's doomed march to fetch Parrien curbed?'

  The duke's heir turned his head and changed target. 'You have a better strategy in mind?'

  Dropped with a jar to his heels that snapped teeth, the Mad Prophet barged his erstwhile tormentor aside and confronted the enchantress headlong. 'No talisman, lady!' he snapped, afraid. 'You can't challenge the force of a crystal-sworn oath! Cross your Prime's will here and now, even as the Fellowship's agent, I can't lift a finger to save you.' His misery palpable, he finished, forlorn, 'I don't own the straight access to power!'