TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Anxiety blunted her Koriani perception; else Elaira would have noted the Mad Prophet's veiled lids and suppressed calculation. A nuance apparent to Parrien, caught sidelong from inside the stern cabin; s'Brydion cunning deduced the gist before losing Rathain's precious blood-line, the Sorcerers would have a salvage plan. If they dissembled now, their abstruse machinations were surely already in motion.

  Yet hours passed. Night fell to no change, beyond the climbing shrill of the wind, and squalling flurries that led in the storm front. The little sloop reeled, with Talvish strapped to a jack-line on deck, wrestling to tie reefs into the thrashing sails. One man could not control the rank helm. Parrien kicked Dakar from moaning prostration and forced his jelly-legged weight to assist. Tireless strategist, the s'Brydion also cornered the Mad Prophet's reticence.

  'You know our next course change,' he accused straightaway. 'Don't prattle to me that you haven't had your marching orders from Althain's Warden!'

  'We'll be making for Athir,' the spellbinder allowed, his discomfort plain through the shared effort to muscle the wheel-spokes. In the roaring dark, his sickly features showed steel: the mulish point past which nobody's mauling might move him. 'Once we've made our safe distance offshore, we'll steer north. No tricks, for my confidence. If you hope for a lawful reprieve from your felony, Parrien, you will chart the journey in safety. Best for all concerned if your crime is reduced from a life-threat down to a wounding. Pray that Arithon s'Ffalenn regains waking awareness before we reach our destined landfall.'

  So began the difficult passage upcoast towards the desolate spit on Rathain's eastern shore. Amid testy hostility, and the murk of kept secrets, Arithon lay stilled in his berth. The unearthly peace that settled his features wrenched the heart for its changeless serenity. Opposite Dakar's uneasy reserve, Elaira's fraught worry pervaded the sloop's crowded cabin. Her harrowed focus ascertained that his early assessment had not hedged the truth: the nebulous limbo that gripped her beloved did not yet threaten survival. Arithon breathed easily. As long as his muscle tone resisted atrophy, she withheld from trying the arcane means that could entangle his fate with the Koriani Order.

  Glendien's grief, also, found no release. In cruel separation from kinsfolk and clan, her mourning for Kyrialt had no outlet, except to assume her husband's abandoned post and guard the stricken crown prince. While Elaira slept, and Dakar groaned under flattening nausea, the clanswoman glared daggers at the duke's brother from her crouch beside Arithon's berth.

  Yet the ice in Talvish's silence wore the hardest on Parrien's trapped state of penury. Watch after watch, through black storm and under the glittering, blue mornings feathered with cirrus, the blond swordsman shouldered each stint at the helm with his light humour cast into eclipse.

  S'Brydion tenacity broke only once, the hag-ridden temptation too strong to resist when a fisherman hailed off the coast from Perdith rafted up for the purpose of barter. Dakar's odd insistence, that their sloop's onboard stores must be bolstered with long-term provisioning, stayed their passage an hour to onload sealed casks of salt meat and biscuit. With Talvish's muscle immersed with the lading, and the women belowdecks hiding Arithon, Parrien's sneak attempt to stow away on the lugger was thwarted by the spellbinder's detainment for cause, on the outstanding charge of crown justice.

  'Only Arithon's word holds your fate in abeyance! As Rathain's prince, he alone can appeal for the grievance of Kyrialt's death, or call a reprieve for your mad act of slaughter against him.' While the cheerful fishermen cast off their lines, the sloop fell away, turned offshore again to duck hostile patrols, and Eltair Bay's flow of Alliance-flagged commerce through Vaststrait. Dakar planted his obstinate bulk at the helm and shouted down his prisoner's seething rebellion.

  'You will make no dire threats!' Knuckles clenched, brown eyes narrowed, he bristled like an unkempt spaniel flaunting a wolf's teeth. 'What had you planned? To browbeat that crew for their fishing craft?'

  The pinned fugitive glared back. Arms crossed, he said nothing. Sore desperation did not reason, or answer to brangling morality.

  'Forget your suicidal attempt to rejoin the warfront!' snapped Dakar. 'Run like a rogue, Parrien s'Brydion, and you'll face arcane force under rightful reprisal. By my charge to safeguard the royal lineage, you could lawfully be noosed as a murdering criminal.'

  Even scalded to shame, Parrien's shrewd instincts gave warning: something else lurked beneath Dakar's outburst. Hidden pain, stuck like a thorn in the flesh, hazed his nerves beyond volatile. Set on wary guard, Parrien retired, and left Talvish to steer the next leg of their thrashed, winter passage to Athir.

  As night fell again, the next clobbering storm whipped up the Cildein. The sloop reeled and tossed in the shrieking wind, with spars stripped and her helm lashed alee. The savage weather became everyone's gaoler, as hours of frigid, damp misery kept them huddled belowdecks with the galley stove doused to avert wild fire.

  Parrien endured in hostile retreat, protectively curled in the forward cabin. Nobody else would dispute that rough berth, banged and corkscrewed by each hissing wave-crest. The wet salt on his cheeks was not due to the deck leak, when someone's invasive touch clasped his shoulder, softly arrived as a moth's wing.

  His flinching spin and snarled oath met Elaira.

  She held a lit lamp. Her severely neat hair was braided, and her eyes pale as smoke in the dimness. 'Glendien's with Arithon, for the nonce,' she explained, 'and we are not alone, having someone we love in grave jeopardy.' Her voice was unsteady, despite her held calm; a ghost's imprint against the pounding rush of frothed water, and scarcely a plank's width between the storm's fury, and drowning.

  'Damn you!' snarled Parrien, before his throat closed with anguish for Tiassa and his four children. 'Why not hold the hand of your hobbled prince? Or do you seek revenge by jabbing my flanks with censure parading as kindness?'

  Elaira hung the lamp from the ring in the deck-beam. Unhurried, against the sloop's gyrating roll, she pulled shut the louvred door. Even in anger, one must pity her hands. She had worked herself raw, poulticing wounds and grinding the herbals for astringent remedies. Now, the same dauntless mercy withstood the inimical stare fixed upon her.

  She said gently, 'Please understand that your effort has not gone for naught, by steering this craft towards safety.'

  His recoil came on a sharply checked breath.

  She cut him off. 'Your wife is well, Parrien! Alestron's upper fortress has not yet fallen. I'd show you in full measure, that accepts no one's word, offered as a lame consolation.'

  Surely, past question the harsh cold made him shudder. Parrien pulled the dank blanket around his bull frame, tucked up his chapped knees, and demanded, 'Why?' He could not remove her. Not if he manhandled her for rank insolence and bashed her backwards through the latched companion-way. Deeper than Tiassa's nerve-stripping rages, this woman: her provocation was more than witch-trained. Over and over, she displayed the fibre to match and ameliorate Torbrand's fettlesome lineage.

  Parrien fought his tight chest. 'Should my desperate straits matter?'

  Elaira attacked through his blistering spite. 'Not for your pride, foolish man, that snarls to hide your heart's weeping. I have come for your wife, who surely would settle the anguish of mind that torments you from sleep.'

  Massive and war-scarred before her elfin frame, Parrien propped his jaw on his fists and glowered like a denned animal. 'You don't have that high-handed hold over me!'

  The enchantress reached under her mantle and presented a clear crystal sphere. 'Try me?'

  Her invitation awaited no answer. Already, her flicked rune cast the scrying his unbearable need in fact could not resist...

  Night view opened up, of a scene boldly snatched from the midst of the Alliance war camp. There, under lamps in the Sunwheel pavilion, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend stood with Lysaer s'Ilessid, both men clad in the glittering regalia to commemorate the ritual burning and scattered ash of a convicted sorcerer. Which furore now se
t them in ranked opposition to the officers, who clamoured to close the campaign by unbridled aggression. 'We can take the filthy rat's warren down!'

  'Bury the s'Brydion name and lineage in the rubble of their own battlements!' 'End the scourge that has strangled the trade in East Halla, protecting Atwood's barbarians!'

  'Flush the lair that's harboured the Spinner of Darkness and furthered the hindrance of Fellowship sorcery!'

  Above the howl to drive home a swift conquest, then savage the wreckage for spoils, Sulfin Evend slammed down his fist and gave the riot his icy refusal. 'Alestron's sea quarter is already ours! And you've witnessed the corpse of the Master of Shadow blasted to smoke by invoked Light and the hands of your priests! Impatience at this stage will only waste lives. Our galleys risk sinking each time we stage a new company onto the harbour-side landing. Alestron's last bastions won't need to be cracked, since our sappers have broken the cisterns. More than ever before, we sit tight and wait. Hold the defenders hostage atop their own walls, and let thirst and hunger deliver their surrender into our hands.'

  When more outraged yelling disparaged restraint, Lysaer rebuked folly in scalding terms and fierce majesty. 'Are we hungry for death? Addicted to ruin? Has the horror of war and a sorcerer's wiles turned us into despoilers of women and children? Or are we the champions of hardworking craftsfolk, rightfully born to pursue decent lives and build honest security? I say now, under peril of my retribution, we stand proud and hold out for an honourable victory. My leave is not given to tear down a fortress like starving wolves set on a carcass!'

  'The s'Ilessid pretender has changed' murmured Parrien. 'How? Not through Fionn Areth's sorry demise! Don't tell me the burning of a false corpse has blindsided Desh-thiere's curse.'

  'The Mistwraith's grip has not lifted' Elaira affirmed, her grief for the hapless grasslander's fate limned by the scene in the crystal. 'The staged ritual was a sop done to placate the troops. Endorsed by Lysaer, since Sulfin Evend's sworn witness correlated his curse-driven awareness that his half-brother had quit the arena. Now, Lysaer wrestles the warped urge to pursue on the strength first inspired by Alithiel's harmony. You have bought the distance to make reprieve possible. The farther away we move Arithon's influence, the more the geas wanes, and the more freely Lysaer's innate character can fight to reclaim his abused self-command.'

  Unlike the false avatar last seen in Tysan, who inflamed men to wreak righteous slaughter, this sane appeal curbed fanatical zeal and promised mercy through civilian justice. 'Your Lord Commander serves my word of law!' the Blessed Prince appealed in dismissal. 'Arcane workings no longer threaten our conquest! Our lines shall stand firm for an ordered surrender. Every one of you! Carry on by my charge to spare Alestron's survivors from untoward cruelty . . . !'

  'Pretty statesmanship won't let my brother back down,' Parrien said in flat irony. 'A cold day in Sithaer, before he bows his neck and flings open our gates to an enemy.'

  'I know.' The admission was sorrowful. A pass of the enchantress's hand masked the crystal, then unveiled a flickering change. 'But hope always kindles through striving.'

  A fresh view unfolded within the quartz sphere, drawn from another council of war, convened inside the besieged citadel. There, Bransian paced like a shambling lion before the trestle that seated Sevrand, and the dauntless, hard-bitten captains still holding Alestron's defence: heroes, who yet manned the cliff-top embrasures after the fall of the Sea Gate. All were besmirched by cinders and soot. Most gimped in blood-stained bandages. Bransian squinted through smoke-reddened eyes, against all the odds fired by grim purpose. I don't care blazes if the cistern's run dry! We are holding the walls! There's drifted ice mounding the inside baileys. More snow-melt running off the slate roofs that our women are saving in catch barrels. We still have split rock to launch from the trebuchets, and dulled swords aplenty that can be resharpened. By Ath, we have the tools left to strike back! I will hear no more grumbling cant over losses! Tiassa and Sindelle are not whining, as widows, and no s'Brydion babe gives me bawling complaint that they're cutting their teeth on jerked horse-meat. My own do not falter! We continue on! Until we are sucking the bones of boiled rats, this fortress will be protected!'

  Under the duke's irascible glare, belief never flagged, that the effort withstanding the Light's siege might yet win the hour, or find unforeseen intervention . . .

  Parrien scrubbed at damp eyes. Through the tacit pause, the enchantress cleared the spent charge of her scrying and veiled the dimmed crystal back under silk. Because she did not press, or try him with platitudes, he found civil speech. "Thank you. I never properly acknowledged the fact that your action spared me from falling to enemy hands as a hostage.'

  'You would have been butchered outright when the sea quarter fell,' Elaira gave acid correction. 'I shared Arithon's awareness, as he went down.' Agonized by that memory, but sure of her ground, she finished as she intended. 'His Grace's plea to stay Talvish's hand was not bleeding-heart mercy, but a surety, delivered by the rogue far-sight of his s'Ahelas ancestry.'

  'You say?' Parrien looked away. Scratched his beard, then heaved a sigh like a staghound chastised for gutting a warren of rabbits. 'If I owe the runt sorcerer a life debt, may the rainy day come that he has to collect. Needing my help just might peel the man down to the lump in the clay that is human.'

  'The lump in the clay has been there all along,' Elaira declaimed, now amused. 'You both don your breeches one leg at a time. Though I swear, the Fatemaster's list will be written and burned before either of you will admit it.'

  Humour lifted the shadow of shame. Parrien could weather the passage to Athir with at least the semblance of grace. If the Sorcerers made an appearance to try him, he would seize opportunity, rally his courage, and place an appeal in behalf of his brother.

  As if his stubborn resolve was transparent, Elaira laughed with kindly understanding. 'Sometimes such adamant, rock-headed strength opens the path to create a changed outcome.' Her smile blurred by the swing of the lamp, she added, 'We are both snagged by fate. But I will not give way to the pointless belief that I am unworthy, or helpless. That was the one lesson I learned on the streets, and a stance I chose not to abandon.'

  Parrien looked at her. He realized she was not blind, but tenacious, altogether too well aware her beloved's recovery swung over the abyss. 'Beware of your Fellowship prophet,' he told her, forthright. 'At Athir, he may turn on your interests.'

  Her poignant smile resurged, rendered brilliant. 'My gratitude, Parrien. But

  I need no one's warning. Dakar's intentions and mine lie at odds, beyond question, on the subject of Arithon's future.'

  * * *

  The harsh passage lasted for one fortnight more. Alestron's defences still had not fallen on the wind-swept, fair morning the courier sloop wore into the barren headland, where green ocean rollers smashed to lace spray, at Athir. Lest the exposed anchorage should draw undue notice, the stripped hull was scuttled the moment her supplies and passengers had been ferried ashore. Beyond the heaped dunes, atop a windy hillock, the roofless towers of a Second Age ruin stitched a crazy-quilt maze of stonewalls. An old right of way, winding westward towards Minderl, filled the nights with Paravian haunts. The wan silver gleam of ethereal presence made town-born mariners shy away. No one landed to fill casks at the wells, whose water still ran sweetly clear. Few could endure the cry of the breeze, singing over lost beauty in poignant lament.

  Yet clanblood respected the voice of the free wilds, and initiate talent knew how to propitiate ghosts. Dakar invoked need under charter law auspices, for the sake of Rathain's threatened crown prince. Respite was granted, which let Talvish and Parrien's field-guided experience fashion a shelter of sailcloth and spars inside an abandoned courtyard. There, for three days, the small party laired up in wait for assistance from Althain Tower.

  Yet the Paravian circle sited at the old ruin did not deliver a Fellowship Sorcerer. No attempt at scried contact raised answer. Sethvir maintained his obdu
rate silence, while uncertainty shortened balked tempers. Parrien's endless attempts to pick fights moved Talvish to drag him off hunting to fill the stewpot. Arithon regained no sign of awareness, though Elaira fatigued herself, trying. She weathered the cold, lonely nights set apart, with his limp frame clasped in her arms. The rhythm of his breath and heart-beat never once quickened to her murmured speech. His angled features stayed utterly lost, clothed in unearthly serenity. Though she listened, and threw herself into rapport, nothing answered her unpartnered cry but empty distance and vaster quiet. Far beyond the veil, Arithon danced at one with the star song, above the reach of her talent. Each morning, she rose and attended his clothes. Combed his black hair, and changed his linen. With Glendien gone to fetch water and wash, Elaira bared his marble skin and rubbed his raw scar with sweet oil. Until the dread hour that she paused with hitched breath, run chill by the stark recognition: her healer's touch sensed the insipid loss of resiliency in vital tissue.

  'We are losing him!' she snapped in despair to Dakar, who sat cracking the marrow from the stewed bones left over from last night's supper. 'If your Sorcerers care for him, why aren't they here? Ath's blinding glory! I cannot bear to watch while his spirit abandons his flesh to slow atrophy!'

  'You need not, for much longer,' Dakar said, abstruse. He stopped chewing cartilage, swallowed, and caved. After all, he could not brave Elaira's direct stare. 'I know of a way, only one, to recall him. But the chance taken must come at the cost of your guarding hold on his integrity.'

  Elaira shuddered. Desperately tender, she covered the matchless, neat symmetry of Arithon's body: the exquisite hands that had bestowed pleasure on her; that always grasped life with such vivid intensity, now lying bitterly still. Gone was his laughter, along with the passion that sourced the well-spring of his musical talent. Silenced, the rages, so swift to defend his most vulnerable caring.