by Helen Lowe
47
Tempest
Maybe I was wrong about the portals, Kalan thought, swinging into Madder’s saddle and turning toward the dike. Yet logic insisted the backwash of power had not been strong enough for a gate of any magnitude—and he refused to contemplate Malian’s account of the demon, Nindorith, emerging through a similar portal in Caer Argent.
At first glance the Darksworn ranks appeared unchanged. But when Kalan stood up in his stirrups he detected a new banner, progressing from the legion’s rear toward the front lines. The indigo standard bore the sun in gold, with a wash of red across its face, and Kalan recognized the device from Malian’s description of that borne by Arcolin, the Swarm envoy to Emer. The Darksworns’ forward ranks were opening now to allow a tall rider on an armored Emerian great horse to pass through. Not Tercel, Kalan reassured himself, identifying the coat beneath the caparison as gray, not bay. Despite the destrier’s Emerian harness, the rider’s black mail was Darksworn in style, and his indigo surcote also bore the red-washed sun. His visor, shaped into a raptor’s beak, was closed.
An aura of power hung about the newcomer, and when Kalan looked more closely he could pick out calligraphy on both the helmet and mail. No, runes, he amended, studying the power that glittered in each swooping stroke. They linked one to the other, armoring the wearer in sorcery. According to Malian, Arcolin’s face and hands had been painted with similar runes when he confronted her below Imuln’s temple in Caer Argent—which tallied, Kalan supposed, with the presence of the red-washed sun device.
The horse stopped in the center of the Darksworn line while the rider surveyed the camp. The defenders stared back, as silent as if the newcomer had cast a mesmerizing spell. Through the medium of his shield-wall, Kalan could sense allure reaching out to enfold the camp, and wondered if a similar working had been used to glamour the Honor Guard from oaths and honor. He frowned when a swift check confirmed that his shielding was still intact, reluctantly impressed that even without magic, the rider had the presence to compel the camp’s attention.
The glamour met the shield-wall and recoiled, but returned almost at once, prying along the psychic barrier for weakness. A growl of power rumbled across the plain and many defenders looked uneasily skyward, hearing the sound as thunder. Kalan, watching the rider’s right arm rise, suspected the truth was as much to be feared as one of the dry electrical storms encountered in this country. He thought the rider was shouting words through the visor: the voice sounded hoarse, even strained, but that could be an effect of distance and the power being channeled. The runes on the rider’s armor had grown dark, and the darkness within each character began to crawl. Like wasps in a nest, Kalan thought, intrigued and repulsed at the same time.
The glamour exploring his shield-wall vanished. Simultaneously, the Gray Lands’ wind swung to the rider as though called and began driving toward the camp, swirling up stones and grit into a flying curtain. The defenders muttered among themselves, because although they might not hear the rider’s chant as Kalan could, even the most resolute New Blooders would know this was no natural wind. As if mocking the defenders’ uncertainty, dust devils whipped into life across the intervening ground—but a new breeze rose in answer, swift as dawn on the face of the sea, and blew away from the camp to meet the dust devils head on.
Kalan could have sworn the new breeze held the ocean’s tang, and a quick glance back showed him Nimor and Murn by the inner barrier, with Reith and three more marines guarding them. He could sense the weatherworkers’ focus on the sorcerer as the Sea wind strengthened, dispersing the dust devils and driving detritus back toward Darksworn lines. The runes on the sorcerer’s armor writhed as the two winds buffeted each other, striving for mastery. Wildfire crackled toward the camp as the Sea breeze and Darksworn wind boomed together again, and many of the defenders cried out, clapping their hands over their ears.
By the time the boom faded and debris began to settle, both the contending winds had been extinguished and Murn’s head was bowed, his weight resting on his staff. Nimor remained intent on the Darksworn sorcerer, who sat motionless, his arm still held high, while the ranks around him were equally unmoving. Waiting, Kalan thought, but for what? “What’s happening?” a nearby defender asked, and Kalan heard the question repeated around the perimeter with varying degrees of doubt and fear.
“Stay calm and keep to your stations.” He pitched his voice to project command and reassurance at the same time. “Keep your eyes on the enemy.” Because, he added silently, as Jad and the other company leaders reiterated his orders, whatever’s coming next has already started.
Madder stamped, tossing up his head as the pulsing from the sorcerer’s runes intensified. From this distance, the armor itself appeared to be moving. The effect was disorientating, but Kalan forced himself to concentrate on the penumbra building above the runes. From what he could discern of its pattern, the sorcerer was creating a summoning spell. The Gray Lands’ haze thickened and crept forward in answer, despite the wind that had sprung up again, spiraling fresh dust as the were-hunters advanced through the murk. Power was building around them, too, except this time it crackled rather than shimmered, as though infused with the sorcerer’s wildfire.
Kalan had seen were-hunters use spells to increase their power before, when they sought to overwhelm the hill fort in Emer. Now their howls sounded in counterpoint to the rising wind, and the power surrounding them pulsed to the same rhythm as the runes. The grit thickened, whipping into whirlwinds that drove toward the camp like the earlier dust devils, only they were already larger and considerably more fierce.
The were-hunters were summoning a dust storm, Kalan realized—trying to break his shield-wall with a combined magical and physical assault. “Secure the perimeter,” he shouted, and all around the earthworks he heard the exiles’ voices, quelling panic and shouting to get the defenses tied down. “Take Madder and look to the horses,” he told Tehan, dismounting and thrusting the roan’s reins into her hand. “Have the envoy shelter them.” If he can spare the power, Kalan thought. He could hear Nimor and Murn chanting aloud, a low steady counter to the tempest as the salt breeze sprang up again. The whirlwinds began to diminish and Kalan experienced a momentary hope—before the wind off the plain bellowed and a dark front of dust, stones, and grit came roaring in, overtaking the whirlwinds and battering the Sea breeze back.
“Hold fast!” Kalan shouted, as defenders screamed and a handful broke toward the inner camp. The camp’s perimeter defenses were still their best protection against the storm’s onslaught, whether real or magic, and the Darksworn host would be poised to attack as soon as the tempest had done its work. The runners wavered, some returning voluntarily before Tehan and the reserve turned the rest back. Kalan could hear Orth, threatening to kill anyone else that ran, his bull voice rising above the storm’s shriek as the company leaders reiterated Kalan’s exhortation to stand firm.
Murn had staggered before the counterattack, and Reith was supporting him. Simultaneously, Nimor’s staff bucked against his grasp and he fought visibly to steady it. The best the weatherworkers were likely to achieve, Kalan gauged, would be to slow the storm’s advance, rather than preventing the wall of murk from reaching them. The physical wind was already lashing the camp ahead of the tempest of power, tearing up everything that was not tied down, and the defenders were screaming, or cursing, or frozen, staring at the blackness bearing down on them.
“Remember you are Blood,” Kalan shouted, at the full capacity of his lungs. He wished he could infuse them with fortitude in the same way he had strengthened his shield-wall with earth and stone. Instead of taking shelter himself, he remained upright, angled against the force of the wind with one hand locked onto the wagon behind him. He was in the clear space beyond fear now, where time stretched and he could take in the storm’s entire front while simultaneously noting every swirl of dirt and wind-blasted stone flying their way. Kalan was aware, too, of those nearby watching him. He saw headshake
s and heard imprecations, but gradually his calm spread outward, infecting those nearby with a similar composure that spread around the defenders’ circle.
The storm wall towered overhead now, and the wyr hounds leapt onto the crest of the dike, their eyes on fire as they bayed defiance into the vortex. “Bravehearts!” Kalan shouted, and sprang up onto the wagon bed, one hand still locked onto its metal frame while using shielding to protect his eyes from flying grit. He laughed into the wind’s fury, aware of every inch of his shield-wall, just as he was of his body’s sinew and bone. An instant later both breath and laughter caught as the tempest of wind, magic, and debris smashed into the invisible barrier, clawing for a fissure to chisel open, or weakness to batter apart. Power and debris hurtled high above the impact before crashing back down and eddying around the perimeter of the camp—exactly as Kalan had seen the ocean pound in against the Sea Keep, only to founder about its deep foundations.
The wind, rudderless, roared back and forth across the plain. Most of the were-hunters had collapsed together with their conjuring, and the few who were still on their feet howled, a prolonged ululation to defeat and doubt. The Darksworn sorcerer had lowered his arm but remained unbowed, so Kalan guessed that his magic could not have been tied to that of the were-hunters, possibly because he would have to relinquish his protective penumbra for that. Or allow the were-hunters within it . . . Both the runes and their associated swirl of power had faded now, but the sorcerer’s raptor visor continued to regard the intact camp with the same savage expression.
Kalan felt the moment when the rider’s attention fixed on him. One of the sorcerer’s escort stepped close to the gray destrier, pointing from the oriflamme to the weatherworkers, but the rider’s gaze did not waver. “He knows who his true opponent is,” Tehan said, very quietly, as she and the reserve closed in behind Kalan. He nodded, holding the sorcerer’s stare, then on impulse raised his arm in the salute used between adversaries on the Field of Blood. A ripple disturbed the opposing ranks, but no one responded, either in kind or to voice insult or defiance.
“’Ware arrows,” Tehan murmured, and Kalan nodded again, jumping down from the wagon bed as the wyr hounds retreated from the dike’s crest. The defenders were utterly silent, either staring at Kalan and the hounds or toward the weatherworkers. Murn was sitting on the ground with his head bowed, while Nimor leaned on his staff as though it was all that was holding him upright. Reith stood close beside the envoy, but his attention was on the Blood defenders. He had not stood the escort down, no doubt because he understood, as Kalan did also, that the camp’s reaction to the tempest hung in the balance.
Clearly, the defenders must know that the storm sprang straight from what their House called fireside tales and it was only the old Derai power that had saved them. At another level, Kalan guessed that understanding was currently warring with five hundred years of Blood’s fear and loathing for magic in any form. In all likelihood, too, the defenders would believe the Sea Keepers were solely responsible for the power that had protected them, reinforcing the Betrayal’s deep divisions between the Houses.
Kalan frowned, weighing the frozen scene and its implications. He also registered Lady Myr’s presence, standing with Faro in the entrance to the inner camp. They were both watching him and looked frightened. Not just because of the tempest they had survived, he suspected, but aware of the tension that could trigger at any moment, either to accusation or acclaim, relief or violence. Ignoring the strained atmosphere, he turned to Lady Myr and bowed—the same sword champion’s bow, with the fingertips of his right hand laid against his heart, that he had made to her after his duel with Parannis. “Daughter of Blood,” he said, tacitly reminding the defenders of why they were all here. And then, straightening: “We keep faith.”
Lady Myr, as grave and graceful as though she still stood above the Red Keep’s field of honor, did not let him down. Fanning her bloodstained skirt wide, she sank into a curtsey: first to Kalan, and then—as those around the perimeter turned to watch her—to Nimor and Murn, using the deep, deep courtesy the ruling kin reserved for those who had done the House of Blood great service.
Kolthis might have taken pains to emphasize her Rose heritage, but Lady Myrathis was still a Daughter of Blood and the Bride, and the gore on her clothing came from tending the camp’s wounded. A single cheer sounded as she rose from her second curtsey: a hesitant, uncertain sound but a cheer nonetheless. Then everyone joined in, raggedly at first, before their relief and acclamation swelled into a roar. “Daughter of Blood,” the defenders cried, as they had shouted for their House earlier in the day. And then, as Kalan bowed to Lady Myr again, “Storm Spear! Storm Spear! Storm Spear!”
“So now you know,” Tehan said, to no one in particular and everybody nearby in general, “why we like to keep our weatherworkers close.”
“But I’m only in the weatherworker reserve,” Murn said plaintively, before swallowing the contents of the vial Kion placed in his hand. “If I was powerful enough for the sort of carry-on we just faced, I’d have been assigned to a ship, not secretarial duties.”
Kalan, who had arrived to confer with Nimor, grinned as he was supposed to and clapped Murn on the shoulder, but he did not like the young weatherworker’s pallor. Power was no more inexhaustible than physical strength, which was why the were-hunters had collapsed and Murn was still sitting on the ground. Behind him, he could hear a group of defenders still trying to puzzle out exactly what had happened. “Was that all weatherworking, then?” a voice he did not recognize asked.
“I thought Mhaelanar had placed his shield over us, just like the old tales say.” That was Darrar, sounding solemn.
“Mhaelanar!” Orth snorted. “Priest-kind handiwork, more like!”
“Under the circumstances, perhaps we should just be glad it worked.” Kelyr was very dry, and for once, rather than replying with challenge or derision, Orth remained silent.
“Ay, although it’s not weatherworkers who’ll see us through this, but the Storm Spear, mark my words.”
The final speaker’s pronouncement prompted a string of obscenities from Orth. Kalan thought Tehan must have caught the discussion, too, because she frowned toward the Sword warrior before observing, with apparent casualness, “The giant’s no admirer of yours.”
“Though I think he’s starting to concede Khar has nerve,” Jad said, joining them, “having seen him stare down that storm. Personally,” he added to Kalan, “I thought you’d taken leave of your senses. As for saluting the enemy, that was just brazen.”
“Impulse,” Kalan replied lightly, and they all grinned, even if their humor was as much reaction as mirth. He was aware, too, that many of the defenders were still watching, either openly or pretending not to, as he and Nimor moved apart from the rest. Kalan kept his voice low. “Does Murn have the strength for another round?”
The envoy looked tired, too, but his reply was matter-of-fact. “We’re both overmatched, no question of that. You, though—” He paused, but did not finish whatever he had started to say.
“Am still overmatched,” Kalan replied, “because they have numbers. The were-hunters may have collapsed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dead. And the sorcerer appears relatively unscathed.”
“Ay, he used their power to buffer his.” Nimor’s forefinger tapped against his staff. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think he was the only adept to come through that portal.”
So what are the others about? Kalan wondered, frowning toward enemy lines. If he were the opposing commander, he would be weighing the Darksworn’s apparent reluctance to take losses against the time required to bring the shield-wall down, together with the likelihood that any prolonged expenditure of power would be detected, despite their psychic blockade of the camp. Yet I’ll be cursed, he thought, if all I do is sit here and hope against hope, waiting for my enemy to act. “Could you manage a good strong following wind?” he asked Nimor. “The sort that will fan fire into a conflagration and p
ush it fast toward the enemy?”
“They may just push it back at us,” Nimor warned.
“Probably.” Kalan’s frown deepened, his eyes returning to the Darksworn force. “But fire’s the next thing I’d try, in their place, and we’ve made all the preparations against it that we can. At least this way we may set them scrambling, and even if all that buys us is a little more time—” He let the sentence hang, but Nimor was nodding, and when Kalan turned and gave his orders, the defenders sprang to give them effect.
PART VII
The Sundered Web
48
Watchtower
“Still nothing,” Rook said, and wanted to look away from the despair in the Blood ensign’s face—what he could see of it, given the beating she had received. But looking away would only lead to another of Torlun’s punishments designed to toughen him up, so Rook kept his eyes straight ahead. He knew Torlun would say the ensign’s despair was because her attempt to deceive them had failed. Personally, Rook considered it far more likely she was afraid that all her comrades, and the Daughter of Blood she claimed to serve, were already dead.
“I’m still only in training,” he said, for her sake as much as Torlun’s. He might have caught the flare of a mindcall earlier, but the single flash was so faint it could equally well have signaled the beginning of his current headache. Rook was not prone to headaches, but knew this one could stem from having overstrained his power—which might have compromised the farspeaking and could also explain his inability to reach the ensign’s caravan. “I may be being walled out, too—” he began.
Torlun’s gesture cut him off. “Beat her again,” he said. Rook, still staring straight ahead, contemplated the shame of being assigned to his kinsman’s service, even if Torlun was from the First Line of Adamant’s ruling kin, while he was only of the Third. Repugnance, however, did not alter the fact that he had been assigned to Torlun’s company for the duration of this escort detail. He dared not look away either, as Corlin used his power to hold the Blood ensign immobile, even though her hands were already tied. Sird, another of Torlun’s warrior-priests, channeled air and stone, using the ensign as a punching bag until she sagged to her knees.