TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The s'Brydion spokesman reeled before a compassion he felt flawed and unfit to withstand. As the forms of diplomacy failed, the lean hand of the prince steered him wide of the horror sprawled on the cots.

  'You have my attention,' said Arithon s'Ffalenn.

  Sweating before that initiate awareness, Parrien needled, 'Why not just flay my thick skin with an axe?'

  Arithon fielded the jab with neutrality. 'I'd save the discomfort. Masks drop without bleeding.'

  'Not on this turf,' Parrien countered. 'We grew up stretching Kalesh's spies on the rack, and our mother died screaming, poisoned by Admin's assassins.' Stripped of pride, his appeal emerged without effort, unleashed by his torrent of longing. 'For my brother, and the sake of this law-bound clan holding, your Grace can do nothing more than attend to the hopelessly wounded?'

  'The born right to live that's given each person was never assigned to my keeping. Nor could I force sense against the grain of your duke's short-sighted decisions.' Arithon inclined his head to acknowledge Elaira, who had dragged up two sail-maker's stools to smooth the thorny audience.

  After Parrien, the crown prince seated himself. Now the extent of his weariness showed. In tight lines at his eyes, and in the searing constraint imposed by the Evenstar's defeat. Yet Arithon would not bow to grief. A spirit forged by the trials of Kewar's maze, his reserves could match lacerating distress with frank tenderness. The present moment holds all our strengths. I have not given over my hope! Of those futures left that my choice can still influence, I act for the one that unfolds with least death. Many of your citadel's folk may go free.' As Parrien's composure threatened to break, he assured, 'Even yet!' Careful to salve wounded dignity, Arithon waited a moment, then qualified. 'If the Mistwraith's influence can be disarmed, then my half-brother's insane enmity will become temporarily suspended.'

  Long enough, maybe, to blunt the brutality driving the inevitable conquest. Respect, before reticence, allowed Parrien to grasp that unpleasant gist.

  'I cannot salvage your stake in the citadel' Arithon said finally. 'Yet if the s'Ilessid royal gift can be freed from the curse, we can steward the chance of just treatment for your civilian survivors.'

  No fool, Parrien sprang to the crux. 'I should retire without fuss? Accept Lysaer's criminal charges? Daelion's fate, prince! You will just stand aside, while your s'Brydion spies get arraigned by s'Ilessid for treason?' Now shadowed by Talvish's defensive presence, closed in behind his right shoulder, Parrien blazed with honest agony, 'We as good as married our honour to yours, Teir's'Ffalenn! I see we were only a sop, all along, to be thrown to the jaws of your enemies.'

  'Your own enemies, since Riverton!' snapped Arithon. Annoyed, but not vicious, his crisp outrage answered. 'Before that hour, the s'Brydion name was untainted. Mearn's post as ambassador stayed above all suspicion! Dare you recall, Parrien? I once fought your bullheaded choice to a standstill! You broke my right leg. Overrode my appeal, that Lysaer's royal ship works should be left to bide without your killing spree of reprisal!'

  'We made that mistake, and on our own merits,' Parrien was swift to admit. 'We have lived by the sword for too long. Our friendships are forthright, and founded on passion. We also decided to help Princess Ellaine. She was not abandoned to wrestle a plight that trapped her as a helpless game-piece.'

  When Arithon said nothing, Parrien bore in, probing hard to smoke out flinching weakness. 'In fact, are you Torbrand's most pithless descendant, to shelter the peace at all costs? If you do hold the power to sway Lysaer's hatred, then our blood-line sees an ignominious end because you gagged on a principle! Can you sit back on your string plucker's arse and, like the rank coward, do nothing?'

  'But I have not done nothing,' Arithon corrected. He stood up and bowed. 'Alone of your kindred, Mearn saved his family when I invoked the Paravian sword to enact intervention. Fianzia's first-born will arrive in two weeks, under the protection of Verrain at Methisle. By the gift of forevision bred into my ancestry, I have Seen that child's Naming! On grounds of succession, your brother's appeal is already met.' Unfazed as the larger man shoved to his feet, Arithon dismissed, 'I have no more patience! Go and tell Bransian on my royal oath: your ancestral lineage survives beyond question.'

  Parrien's electrified surge to draw steel was arrested on Talvish's sword-point. 'No, brother! Not here. Not now, against this man. Indulge your blind rage, and you will murder hope. Trust me, I beg you! If you press this fight, you will have abandoned your own wife and children. On my word, by my years of true service, my liege has not told you everything!'

  "Then explain!' snarled Parrien to Arithon's turned back. 'Straightaway and in unvarnished language, say why I shouldn't drop you both to rot alongside your doomed lot of carrion.'

  'In fact he must die, at least by appearance' a breathless voice interjected. The intrusion was Dakar's, barged through without leave as he made his rushed entry. In the teeth of Parrien's suspicion, he added, 'Sparing the sentiment, these wounded also offer the key to salvage the threat being taken with Rathain's crown heritage.'

  'Where's Fionn Areth?' asked Arithon, spun volte-face in a sharp change of subject. 'Dakar! Why isn't the grass-lander with you?'

  The Mad Prophet ran over that question, roughshod. 'Shall I remind you as Fellowship spokesman? I answer a higher authority than yours! Your Grace, clear this room. We have run out of time! Only one life inside this doomed rock pile is not considered replaceable!'

  As Parrien purpled, and Talvish changed stance in vain hope to forestall a royal explosion, the Mad Prophet shed his cloak and slumped on a stool, unstrung by puffing exertion.

  'You risk moving too late!' he accosted the prince, beyond caring whose temper might savage him. 'The mule-headed sentries permitted my passage because at this moment, enemy sappers are working the rock to crack the underground cisterns. The sea quarter's condemned, and Parrien's stranded. The duke's guard are torching the lift.'

  Early Winter 5671

  First Betrayal

  In forest-bred stillness overlooked since the latest intrusive arrival, Kyrialt observed Parrien's disrupted audience from his posted watch at the threshold. He kept his ear tuned through Dakar's bitter news, and the brutal shock, that the duke's expedient sacrifice of the sea quarter had left a brother cut off from his kinsfolk. Amid the raised voices, Arithon's cracking-fast question repeated.

  Again, Rathain's prince demanded the reason for Fionn Areth's unexplained absence.

  The forced pause hung, electrified.

  Kyrialt tensed, no longer on guard for a posited threat from the stairwell. From inside the door, the sharp rise in tension bristled his nape in dire warning. Hunter's instinct reacted. He moved on the turmoil that converged at the front of the sail-loft.

  Talvish's pallor snagged his eye first. Kyrialt mapped that bleak reticence and knew: the grasslander's fate had gone badly, somehow tied to Vhandon's demise. Talvish's lapsed attention, as he scrambled for words to break tragedy, opened the gates to disaster.

  Kyrialt charged, silent, knife and sword drawn in stride. Alerted to violence with preternatural clarity, he locked on to Parrien's overdrawn tension. Saw, as the moment's insupportable pressure drove the man's shattered fibre past breaking.

  Parrien raised a lightning, mailed fist. He slapped Talvish's ready sword-point aside, drew cold steel, and lunged to strike Arithon: who was unarmed, and caught unaware, entrained as he was on the nascent distress behind the spellbinder's evasions.

  Kyrialt extended muscle and sinew, past time to voice any outcry. A fraught fraction too late, he pushed his athletic faculties beyond thought of self-preservation. The blade he thrust between Parrien's stroke hit and slid with a clashed scream of metal.

  The assault that should have stabbed home was turned. But the driving momentum, unstoppably launched, deflected its razor cut downward. The slashing impetus carved Arithon from midriff to hip. There, the murdering weapon snagged bone, and wrenched a deep gash through the viscera.

 
; Kyrialt vented his distraught anguish, above Glendien's harrowing shout. 'Alestron's reprieve will never be bought by selling my liege to your enemies!'

  Yet all recourse was spent. Talvish, caught flat-footed, was moving. But Kyrialt's intervention blocked his direct response.

  As Arithon folded, the befouled long sword jerked clear.

  Parrien snarled, 'His Grace meant to play dead! By Ath, should I wait and abandon the lives of my own threatened family?' His riposte launched to finish his foiled assassination.

  Kyrialt let his hurled bulk drive in between. Unbalanced already, his sacrificed footing committed beyond all recovery, he caught the force of the strike in his back. Then slammed into the floor-boards, aware he was dying. Beside him, crumpled and bleeding, Rathain's prince lay curled in fraught agony.

  Still living: what distressed voice his bard's talent could raise was pitched across belling steel, a gasped plea that begged restraint for the life of Parrien s'Brydion. Tiassa's children should not grow up fatherless! Talvish! Honour my royal word as promised for Dame Dawr's legacy!'

  Then Elaira arrived. Her whipped skirts brushed the grazed skin of Kyrialt's cheek. Masked his view of his liege as she dropped on her knees to attend what should not be salvaged.

  Kyrialt raised his chin. Shuddered. 'No lady! On my oath.' Which freed her to turn and look after her stricken beloved.

  Son born to the flower of a caithdein's lineage, Kyrialt s'Taleyn had no more strength nor acuity left for his scout's faculties to track the fight left abandoned. He could not see whether the spellbinder's art might curb treachery under the law of the compact. The rank jet of blood soaked through shirt and leathers. His veins emptied with the pumped gush of a severed artery. The end would be quick. Unlike the lingering pain of the wounding that he had tried, and failed, to spare Arithon. Kyrialt shut his eyes in despair. Already, vitality faded. Dizziness up-ended his senses, air-starved despite his raced breathing.

  'Kyrialt! Husband!' The grip that supported him through the ebb matched his last wish, being Glendien's. He barely felt the spellbinder's furious hands, wadding cloth to stem his rushed bleeding.

  'Davien's cloak,' Kyrialt entreated, thread thin. The limp fingers clutched in his wife's frantic clasp were unable to close as he faltered.

  'Rest easy,' said Dakar. Speech came from far off. 'Crown honour attends you. Trust my word, we'll secure the life of your prince in your absence.'

  Kyrialt smiled. His awareness recorded Glendien's tears, then her hair, fallen warm on his face as she kissed his lips and eased his heart through the wracking, last spasms.

  * * *

  The serenity to set warding circles was lost, the chance ruined, to engage the intricate preparations for securing the live spirit outside its dormant casing of flesh. Now, the throes of a dire wounding smashed the hope of controlled intervention to slip Arithon past the Alliance war host and disarm Lysaer's cursed affliction. Dakar wiped bloodied hands, paralyzed by anxiety. He dared make no other grievous mistakes. If this bitter crisis careened beyond salvage, by his own wretched prophecy, the Teir's'Ffalenn's death would smash the course of the Fellowship Sorcerers' future reunity.

  For Kyrialt, nothing more could be done. Most brave, his swift passage was over. While Glendien shrouded her husband's stilled form, Talvish restrained Parrien's sprawled frame with the strap leather of belt and baldric. Both men bled from fresh sword-cuts, though the disabling blow had been Dakar's, an oak stool snatched at need and shied into the s'Brydion nape from behind. Whether or not the felon was damaged, the Mad Prophet faced the more urgent priority. He sank to his knees on the spattered floor, laced his hands in black hair, and cradled Arithon's head.

  Rathain's prince was still conscious. The wracking shock of the wound that had felled him rocked through him in waves of agony. Elaira had cut his stained clothing away, laying bare the horrendous damage.

  One glance left Dakar wheeling and faint. He said fiercely, 'Don't you dare leave us, your Grace!'

  Pooled in running blood, the gash that crossed Arithon's stomach was not threatening. Severed muscles could mend. The diaphragm was not pierced. Unlike the tender flesh of the groin, where the terrible sword stroke had ended. Dakar's belly heaved into revolt. Twice, he mangled the cantrips attempted to ease back afflicted suffering.

  'Give over!' Elaira cut in, stark as steel. 'Trust my recent training with Ath's adepts, and my natural skill as a healer.'

  Wrists rinsed scarlet, she worked. A crystal poised in a delicate hand was invoked for a probing assessment. Dakar's gorge rose again. The nerve in him quailed, that a quartz matrix bound to the Matriarch's service should be invoked for Rathain's royal legacy. Then Arithon raised a dreadful, rasping croak. 'She guards my integrity. Always. Dakar, look again.'

  'Beloved!' chided Elaira, most gently. Her eyes streamed with tears. However she trembled with terrified pain, her expedient touch stayed viced steady. 'Don't speak!'

  In fact, Dakar saw his concern laid to rest: her lit shaft of quartz was Atheran in origin. Scried insight disclosed the honest acquisition, gifted from a wise woman who sold simples in Highscarp. Rapt with the crystal's tuned focus.

  Elaira stitched subtle light in accord with the Major Balance. Through each check for surety the spellbinder made, the meticulous permissions had correctly served balance. Though a Koriani sigil would have worked faster, for Arithon's safety, the enchantress used gentler means to stanch the cut veins in his savaged flesh.

  The horrific rip through the viscera must wait. Bleeding and shock would kill before sepsis. Dakar swallowed back resurgent nausea, knowing: the prognosis of gut wounds was never assured, or easy to minister against the onset of insurmountable anguish. No surcease might relieve Arithon's effort to muffle his harrowing screams.

  Dakar measured bad odds. Though the binding of Davien's Five Centuries Fountain held the potential to stay the fatal course of the sword-thrust, the oncoming Alliance invasion left no safety to nurse a prolonged convalescence. Arithon could not command his talent. Pain unstrung the immaculate focus required to spiritwalk under his own resource, and all of their planning was ashes. The transmigration of spirit accomplished before in Daon Ramon could not be attempted to disarm Desh-thiere's curse, or smuggle his vacated body across enemy lines.

  If, in icy truth, the same arcane ruse could blind-side Lysaer's talent-sensitive priests. The doubt on that score had already been thrashed under jangling argument.

  'Whatever you do, decide your course quickly!' Talvish snapped in bald warning. Despite injuries, he had recovered his sword to assume the lapsed guard at the threshold. 'Sevrand's force has withdrawn! Can you not hear the noise?' Already, the Light's zealots mowed through the last resistance defending the harbourfront. 'We're going to have looters inside a few minutes! I can't hold the influx off very long, if I'm forced to a stand in the stairwell.'

  'Don't try!' cried Elaira. 'Your liege needs you alive!' Unswerving, attentive, she cupped Arithon's cheek. 'Hush. I'll speak for you. I can track every thought in your mind. We'll accomplish what's needed.' While her touch with the crystal continued to weave an unerring course of swift cautery, she relayed instructions.

  'Dakar! You're to strip off Parrien's state surcoat. Burn the cloth in the grate and untie his clan braid. Then bundle the man naked into a cot. Poultice his head and start binding his wounds as though you're a healer in training. Talvish! Dig through that pile of used clothing and pick out a Sunwheel surcoat. No argument! Just do as I say. Several men who once wore them lie here with the fallen, brought in from the battlement. You're now asked to languish as one of my wounded. Slump on that empty stool as if faint, awaiting your due turn for treatment. Glendien! Lock Arithon's lyranthe in my larger remedy trunk. Move anything out to make room. Then I'm going to need that Sorcerer's cloak! Look inside the brass-handled hamper.'

  Glendien left the side of her dead without ceremony. Born to forest customs, that placed exigent survival before mourning, she took action and shortly arrived w
ith Davien's mantle clutched in her arms. The bordered edge of the night-black wool glittered, laced with patterns of silver embroidery. The thread would contain spellcraft.

  Before Dakar's hot protest, that the Betrayer's work could not fail to invoke unknown consequences, Elaira cut in, 'Would you rather fall back on the arts of my order? Arithon's free choice must run contrary!'

  'You have trusted too much!' the spellbinder reproached the prince with shut eyes, who gasped bleeding.

  'Then set faith in Kyrialt, who didn't!' Ravaged and pale, the young widow hung on by her obdurate spirit. 'You will honour my husband's last word in this life and wrap his feal prince in the Sorcerer's garment!'

  'Hurry.' Elaira laid her dimmed crystal aside. She caught Davien's mantle in frantic, wet hands. Heart laid bare, yet without hesitation, she spread the cloth over Arithon's wracked form, head to feet. Dark wool settled, for one hanging instant turned as deep as the primordial void. The brilliant embroidery sieved down through the weave, dissolved to ephemeral light that sank into the prostrate body beneath.

  Black fabric remained, an unmarked, plain cloak. But the shrouded man did not wear the familiar semblance of Arithon. Again, Dakar viewed the guise of the blind elder, last assumed when Rathain's prince stalked the Kralovir cult at Etarra. Just as before, Davien's craft appeared seamless. Even as mage-gifted Sight read the aura, the Sorcerer's finesse masked the etheric stamp left by Fellowship sanction and royal identity.

  The feat occurred with such speed that Dakar shivered with gooseflesh. 'Merciful Ath! Would that I knew how that working was done!'

  If Elaira was shaken, her healer's attention already rallied to measure the changeling spell's impact.

  'Arithon's unconscious,' she announced, undone by relief. 'Davien's enchantment has stabilized his erratic pulse and lifted him quite beyond pain.' Which was well, for the moment. Her beloved would not feel the brute course of the treatment their effort demanded to save him. 'Glendien! I'll need that plank trestle cleared. Let's bear his Grace up with the utmost of care, since I can't accomplish refined surgery crouched on the floor.'