"Look," Velg whispered, pointing.
Lights gleamed in the East Tower, a golden glow of torches. The West Tower stood dark, like a blind eye. Between ran a great span of wall. Ithk’s breath hissed in, sudden and sharp. Upon the wall three figures walked, passing before the flames of ensconced torches. They looked at the valley beyond, down toward the great stoneland.
"Brand," said Velg. "There he is."
Was it Brand? Ithk couldn't tell. The watchers on the wall were too far away.
"Is he in there?" Ithk asked. "You saw him?"
Velg nodded. "Saw him. Saw the others." He grinned, a toothy leer. "Saw that elf girl, too. They still got her. Better than that, Ithk. I saw a way in."
Ithk looked down the road, the winding stretch. "What way? They'd see us and fill us full of arrows before we got halfway down the road."
Idiot.
Velg shook his head. "Wait. Wait till dark. You'll see." Shivering in the cold, eye on the light and what he imagined must indeed be warmer quarters, Ithk decided he had little choice. He hunkered down, back to the stone until night came to cover. In time, he did see, for night came down upon the mountain like a shroud. The moons were slim, the stars shone, but their light didn't reach. On the wall, the watch changed, and if they turned to look into the courtyard they wouldn't have seen even a horde of goblins, let alone two.
Still, Ithk and Velg were careful when they left the road. The goblins drifted like shadows along the dark edge of the flanks of the mountain. They made no more noise than wind slipping over the stone of the courtyard. They kept to the shadow of the Tharkadan and the mountain itself until they came to the great wall. There they flattened themselves against the rising face of granite and edged along the perimeter. Above, outlaws walked on the heights, watching over the plains. None looked down. None thought to consider that enemies lurked so near as to be but a few paces from entering the Fortress of Ghosts through the gap in the sprung gates.
Through the opening they went, and it was their luck that the watchers on the wall didn't look down into the interior of the fortress. Why do that? They believed all their enemies were without, trying to get in. First Ithk, then Velg slipped inside, keeping to shadows and seeking the darkest places. Because they were goblins, they found at once the way to the lowest levels, the places humans and elves would not naturally seek. All up in the air, those outlaws.
No matter, no matter. Let goblins take the lowest levels, in safety to plot and plan, perhaps to see what weapons remained in this pile of dwarf-built stone. Then they would sneak up on the outlaws when the time seemed best. They picked up two stout branches on the way, blown in by storm. Wood for fire, for light and warmth.
Maybe, Ithk thought, he'd go back to Gnash with Brand's head in a sack and fling it at his feet. Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd just carry it around for a while till he got tired of smelling it and then boil it long to get rid of the hair and flesh, scoop it clean, and use it for an ale mug to drink to a good end to a long feud. He enjoyed this picture very much, and he fell asleep embellishing the grinning skull with chasing of silver, perhaps a polished bronze stand on which to set it.
In the chamber the outlaws had taken for their own, out of the wind and the cold, Elansa walked carefully around sleepers, disturbing only one: Arawn, who leaned up on his elbow to watch her pass, following after with his narrow glance. She heard his breathing among all those sleeping, the rasp in his throat like hunger. Careful not to look at him, she crossed the floor, noiseless in broken boots. She'd felt Brand leave her a while ago and knew he'd gone to take his turn on the wall. Restless, she'd been unable to sleep. Thinking of the air outside, imagining it crisp and clean and cold, she'd wrapped herself in her ragged cloak and risen. She longed to see the outside of the tower, to feel the cleaner air. On silent feet, she slipped out the door and into the stairwell leading up to the wall. Maybe he would send her back, bully her away and into the darkness of the tower again. Maybe he wouldn't, and it seemed to her that the risk was worth the chance.
Light drifted down from above. A door stood open, and torches flared and hissed. Elansa climbed up, taking the unfamiliar stairs slowly, eyes on the golden glow. At the top, she stopped and sighed as the first breeze touched her cheek. Brand stood at the far end of the Tharkadan, head low and talking to Char. They leaned against the wall, Brand with his elbow on the parapet, Char with his back to it. It was the dwarf who heard her first. He looked up, his face pale in the light of his torch, rough and white with his thirst, unable to ease it. He jerked his head in her direction, Brand turned to look, then looked away.
They left her alone, kept the distance of the wall between while she stood at the parapet, looking out over the valley. She tasted the breeze and listened to the profound silence of the heights. Dawn had broken perhaps an hour before, and new light spilled down the valley. Elansa filled herself up with it, and in that silence she prayed. She did not pray for rescue. It startled her to realize she'd stopped doing that—she couldn't remember when she had. She prayed only to be seen, to be known to gods who were so very far away.
See me, she whispered, soft in her heart, praying to the god she had always served. Wherever you are, O my Blue Phoenix, wherever you have gone, see me, for I am here.
Just that prayer she made, and then she left the wall, for the night was cold and her cloak was thin. Footfalls sounded behind her, echoing against the parapet. She knew the step, the measure of the tread. Brand followed, and he carried a torch to light their way.
"Peace," he said, low behind her. "Go back to sleep."
Elansa nodded, but she didn't turn to look at him.
In the dark cellars below the east tower, Velg had not been able to sleep. He took flint and steel from his pouch and broke the branches into pieces, kindling sized and larger. He made a fire because he didn't like the dark.
In a chamber not far from where he and Ithk rested, something woke, something thin and rattling and dressed in rusted chain mail and a helm that fit better when it was fleshed. Light didn't wake it, but the smell of flesh did, of pumping hearts and blood running in veins. Behind a closed door, it sat up on its bier, aware of a great hunger.
It cried, "Brothers!" in a voice like wind, and when it moved it sounded like naked branches rattling in storm.
Others awoke, not all, but the most hungry of them. They opened the doors of their crypts. Darkness was nothing to them, these creatures who had no eyes but only gaping holes where eyes once had been. They? left their cold beds, ancient warriors uncorrupted in life but corrupted in death. They woke from the dreamless sleep, and the waking was like a cold birth. Out from their crypts, they shambled across the great hall, wandering through the spaces between the pillars. Corpses of gully dwarves lay in the corners, headless, armless, crawling with maggots. The sickening odor of decay filled the cellar. The creatures hardly noticed. They smelled living things.
They had no voices, not anymore, though in centuries past their voices had lifted in praise to a king, in oaths sworn upon valiant hearts. Elves and dwarves and humans, they had made the Royal Guard of the elf king Kith-Kanan. They had loved him in life. Every one had guarded him, each willing to trade his own life for that of the great king. They had no voice now, though, nor heart or soul to remember the glory of kings or the legend of their own devotion. Wretched, corrupted, they made no sound at all. None, until one shoved its shoulder against the stout oaken door, trying to get past it, out of the hall to where it smelled warm flesh and blood. Others joined the first, flinging against the door, mindless and driven.
The thunder of their need boomed through the corridors and up into the towers of the fortress itself.
Chapter 16
Brand heard the drumming first. As he walked down the tower steps he felt it reverberating in the cold air.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Behind the thunder came voices, and though the drumming was distant and the voices closer, those voices sounded far and frail, the startled sounds of men
and women wakened from sleep.
"In the name of gods," Elansa whispered.
Up the stairs, four flights and distant, Char’s voice called, "Brand! You down there?"
"Here! Down here, Char! What’s—?"
"Trouble up here!"
"The banging, I know. I hear it."
Silence, a breath held, then the booming started again. Hinges squealed as though Char yanked the door wide. His voice echoed down the stairwell. "Don't know about banging. It ain't coming from here. Up here, we got real trouble, an army's worth of it and riding hard!"
For just that moment all the world stood still to Elansa, frozen in the bright glare of Brand's torch. Even the shadows held. She heard the voices beyond the door, she heard the banging, but she didn't move. And then she turned and said to Brand, "Go! Go up and see what's coming." Boom! Boom-boom! Boom! "I’ll go see what's here."
If she startled him, suddenly commanding, he didn't show it. He was gone, leaping up the stairs after his shadow. Only once did he turn, and when he did, she saw his eyes bright and keen in the mage-light.
"Go!" she cried, "go!"
He went, and Elansa turned from the sight of him leaving, for she had the feeling that something had changed, like a wheel turning. The turning filled her with strength, as though gods had looked at her from far, far away.
"Oh, damn," Brand whispered.
Dawn's quickening wind caught his hair, blowing it back. It combed his beard and stung his face, for up here the wind never blew warm. He squinted against the blowing cold to see a bright line running across the stonelands. The army ran swift upon one of the old roads that stretched a good distance before failing. Gray as pearl, the sky breathed with the first light of the new day. Stars were fading, the moons had gone west beyond the Qualinesti Forest, and the bright line ran on, catching the predawn light and taking the frail glow for itself. At the wall Char turned, and the white look on him said he wished he'd had a fine fat skin of dwarf spirits.
"I reckon," he said, "there's got to be about a hundred of ’em, and those ain't goblins, Brand."
Brand leaned over the parapet, peering into the ghostly gray. "Too bright for goblins, that's for sure. And look at the dust; it's hanging high. Mounted men." He squinted at the twin lines of horsemen and the plumes of dust rising up in the cold air. "Elves."
"Elves, all shining in armor and bristling with swords and arrows and lances." Char spat over the wall. "And I'll wager I know what they're looking for."
Brand shook his head and squinted out over the plain again. "I don't think they're coming for her, or not just now." He slapped Char's shoulder and pointed west. "There!"
There went unmounted men, enough to be marked by their dust, only this cloud rode lower, from this distance like a smudge right above the ground. These did not ride but went on foot.
"Ah, now. Those are goblins." Char leaned his back against the parapet and looked up at Brand. "You reckon they're running for here?"
"I do."
"You suppose the elves are after the goblins?"
Brand nodded, and wind moaned around the towers.
"And we'd be idiots to think we're not going to get squeezed in the middle."
Brand agreed that they would be idiots to think so.
Char looked at the mountains and the towers and all the ancient fortress, the stone scarred by time, steadfast and standing. "Ah, well. It was a nice high fastness for as long as we had it." He heaved a gusty sigh. "Wish I had a drink."
Brand nodded, still looking at the dawning day. "I wish you did, too. But you don't, and we're here."
Brand leaned over the parapet, watching the cloud from the west and the riders from the south, listening to the wind. After a time, he looked at Char and said, "I'm thinking we're already squeezed." He pointed to the stone beneath their feet. "Something’s going on in the cellar."
"So I hear." Char sucked his teeth. "What do you want to do?"
Brand turned away from the sight of advancing elves and running goblins. He put a hand on Char’s shoulder and turned him toward the stairs. "Fight the fight we can win, old friend, and worry about the other when we have to."
The sound of the dwarf’s laughter sailed out with the wind, harsh as a crow’s call. He loosed the hard-edged throwing axe from his belt.
Elansa stood in the darkened stairwell, just at the top of the first of four flights leading down to the cellars. On the landing below hers, Dell and Tianna and Ley stood listening. They heard nothing more than Elansa did. The booming had stopped only moments before, the last of it seemed still to be ringing in her ears.
A quiet footstep sounded behind her, and she turned to see Brand dark in the doorway.
"What?" he whispered.
Elansa shook her head.
He looked beyond her, down into darkness where torches stood in iron brackets on the walls. The light flared, and the shadows ran tangling up the walls. As though she felt his presence, Dell looked up. Her face was a pale oval, her eyes like dark pits. She shrugged, Brand gestured, and she turned away. A moment later Elansa heard her footfalls, the sound climbing the steps. "Don't know what happened," Dell said. Her dark hair hung over her shoulder in a thick braid. She tossed her head to fling it back. "It got quiet, real sudden. You have any idea—?"
He glanced at Elansa, his eyes dark. "What ways are there into the cellars?"
Chilled, shivering in the darkness, Elansa shrugged. "In the days of the king, the entrances from the courtyard, and two from the Hall of Columns." The name of the place meant nothing to him, and she didn't try to explain. "One of those ways is trapped, the other isn't. Anything—anyone could have gotten in from the caves. There are tunnels all through there. Maybe they were strong and unbreached once. Now, I don't know what time has done to the tunnel walls."
Brand grunted, considering this. "There are goblins outside, and elves. Could they have gotten in?"
"I suppose, but would they—either of them—make all that noise?"
He didn't think so, and neither of them could think what would. "All right," he said, nodding to Dell. "Whatever it is, we make ’em come up after us. We're holding the high ground."
Eyes glittering with sudden excitement and battle-lust, Dell turned and bounded down the stairs. Moments later, those outlaws who had been watching in the stairwell came leaping up the stairs. Brand sent them all into the tower with orders to arm themselves and prepare to hold the door.
"Tianna, go up to the wall and bring back—"
The scream cut through the darkness below, high and terrified. It shouted in goblin-speech, gabbling curses and pleas. Came another, and both screams turned to shrieking, then to sudden silence.
Tianna said, "Brand, if goblins got into the cellar, something worse is in there with them."
She shot a glance over his shoulder, and her long elven eyes met Elansa’s. Nothing passed between the two women but that look, and each understood what the silence between them meant. As though Tianna had spoken aloud, Elansa knew her thought: I am sorry, princess. Neither of us is getting out of here now.
Another scream wound up the stairs, then silence, cold and empty. Inside the tower, the outlaws spoke in low, tense voices as they took up positions to guard the door. Quietly, with Tianna still on the stair, Elansa said, "Brand, you told me there are armies outside. If they are elves and goblins, as you say, I don't think we need worry about them battering down the doors here."
"They're after each other."
"And now what’s in the cellar is after us. I don't know what it is, but I do know this: Whatever it is, I can meet it as I met ogres. In magic."
He stared, almost ready to laugh as she drew herself up as tall and straight as aching muscles would let her. She lifted her head, met his eyes, and held them. He did laugh then, the sound cold as ice cracking.
"Will you bring down the tower on whatever it is, girl?"
Tianna shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her glance darting from Brand to Elansa. Softly
, she said, "Give her a chance, Brand. Listen."
Brand never turned to the half-elf. He kept his eyes on Elansa. Eyes narrowed, he said, "You trying to strike a bargain with me, girl?"
Elansa nodded. "I am telling you the terms. I will deal with what’s below. When I have, I will walk out of here."
"And go where? They'll be fighting out there, your folk and the goblins."
Elansa shivered, but she did not break gaze, "They will be. I am their princess, Brand. I would rather go die with my people than stay here a moment longer than I must."
In the cold stairway he looked at her long, her face a pale shining oval in the dimness, her long eyes bright with the kind of light he'd seen on men right before a battle.
"So, I am supposed to give you the phoenix and trust you?"
In the depths of the fortress the booming had fallen silent, and yet all the air around them pressed close and cold with dread, a fear crawling up the stairwell, like a dark miasma. From within the chamber that once housed thanes and kings, the voices of the outlaws called, one to another, and fear edged every one.
"That's our choice, Brand," Elansa said. "I will do what I must to stop whatever is down there and trust you not to kill me with an arrow in the back right after I've done that. You can count on whatever it is down there coming to kill you, or you can trust me."
He clapped his hands hard, the crack like thunder in the narrow stairwell. He did laugh then, and the bright and brittle sound of it startled her more than the thunderclap. "Well said!" With one quick motion, he slipped the silver and the phoenix over his head and dropped it into her hand. "You kill what’s down there, you can walk out the front gate, my girl, if that’s what you want."
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