by Angus Wells
“Do the clans stand?” I asked.
“So far.” He nodded and wiped at his mouth. “But does this go on …” He shrugged, glancing nervously around. “My Quan will hold, else I’ll have all their heads. But … This frightens them, Gailard.”
It frightened him, too. I could see that, and must admire him for his steadfast purpose. Perhaps he was fit for Ellyn.
“Bring me to them,” I said. I could no longer find directions in this fog. “And spread the word that an army of Hel’s Town pirates comes to support us. They come up the Coast Road, and they’re welcome.”
He nodded and shouted orders to his men, which impressed me. And then impressed me more as he asked, “The warriors I sent with you, they’re safe?”
“I left them behind,” I said, “to bring our allies safely in.”
“The gods be thanked for that.”
“Thank them when we’ve won,” I grunted. “Now bring me to Shara and Ellyn, and send for Mattich and Jaime.”
I found them where we had established our command center. It was no grandiose thing—only a cluster of tents with one large enough that we might confer at the middle of the ring—guarded by nervous clansmen who flinched at each skyborne blast and stared at me like puppies experiencing their first storm. That sense of horrid dread that accompanies Nestor’s magicks was less present here, which I supposed was due to the proximity of Shara and Ellyn.
I found them inside the tent. They sat to either side of a small table, their hands stretched out that they might link their fingers, four hammered-tin bowls between them. One held earth, the second water, the third a candle, and the last was empty. Both their faces were pale, and their eyes were hollow. I hesitated, unwilling to break their obvious concentration.
And Shara said, “It’s begun. Nestor has summoned all his power. He looks to destroy the siege engines. I …”
The tent shook like a rag doll tossed into a gale as light filled the morning. I felt the ground tremble beneath my feet, and for a moment I was blinded even through the canvas. I clutched at a pole and shook my head, rubbing at my eyes.
“We can defend the men,” Shara continued out of a dry mouth, “but not the engines. They’re mostly gone.”
I ducked out of the tent and saw more pyres loft through the mist.
“What next?” I asked. I stared at Ellyn, who seemed oblivious to this conversation. Her eyes were rolled back so that only the whites showed. “Shall more—worse?—magic come against us, or honest battle?”
Shara said, “I don’t know—I cannot know! Only that I and Ellyn hold Nestor’s magicks off the warriors. For now …”
New thunder rolled across the sky. I watched as Shara trembled and shuddered—as if her very bones, the templates of her brain, the blood running through her veins were seared.
Nor was Ellyn better; she clutched at Shara’s hands and screwed her eyes tight. I saw tears leaking from the closed lids, and pain that made her face haggard. Her lower lip was bleeding where she’d chewed it.
“Not for much longer,” Shara muttered. “He gathers strength, and …”
The shock tumbled me off my feet. I rose unsteadily to see the table trembling, water spilling from one bowl, earth from another, the candle’s flame wavering. I smelled the roof of the tent scorching.
“He finds us!” Shara’s voice was harsh as stones rubbed together. “He’s wrecked the engines and now he’d slay us.”
“How can he know where you are?” I asked, even as I saw little curls of flame descend from the canvas ceiling.
Shara let go of Ellyn’s hands. “When Ellyn slew those hunters, he found her … pattern in the aethyr. When I destroyed that chariot, he found mine … Now we’re so close he can locate us precisely, and direct all his power against us. We …”
A bolt of lightning struck the ground directly before the tent, and I felt its heat as I was flung back. I saw the ground scorched and flames run up the guy ropes. The oiled canvas began to burn. I picked myself up and saw Ellyn on her back beside her overturned chair, her eyes wide and blank.
Shara said, not steadily, “We must move away. This drains me and might kill Ellyn. She’s strong in the talent, but not so strong she can survive this.”
“Where?” I asked as I took Ellyn in my arms. “Where shall be safe?”
“I don’t know.” Shara turned her head in a helplessly negative gesture. “Beyond the mist? I don’t know! Only away from here.”
I had never seen her frightened before, and that frightened me. I stumbled from the tent. Canvas walls fell around us in lickering tongues of fire as I carried Ellyn out. Shara gathered up the pots, careless of their contents, and I thought the thunder and the lightning and the sense of horrid dread grew stronger as they were emptied.
I held Ellyn and looked about. I could see no farther than a few paces, but I could hear men shouting in fear, and the shrilling of terrified animals. I thought our only chance was to attack—but could not see how we might. Not now, when the siege engines I had relied on to break Chorym’s strong walls were all burning. By the gods, I could see them even through this unnatural fog: bonfires rising in hopeless sparks toward a sky that was sometimes late summer’s blue, and sometimes dark as winter’s night—alternating in an eye’s blink between the one and the other, so that my eyes were tricked and confused and I could not tell if Nestor delivered us light or dark. I could only feel the dread that filled me and wonder if the Vachyn owned such power as must defeat us and destroy us at his whim.
Shara emerged from the burning tent with a satchel on her shoulder. I saw that her hair was scorched, her face muddied with ashes. I took her arm and dragged her away before the tent could collapse and engulf her.
It fell down in a great gout of flame that sent us all starting away. I wondered if I heard laughter fill the sky. Then Roark came out of the brume, and Mattich and Jaime were with him.
“I’ll take her,” Roark said.
I looked to Shara, who nodded. So I handed Ellyn to him, and he cradled her in his arms.
Jaime said, “What is this, Gailard? The gods knew, but there are men of mine who’ve run. We’re not used to fighting such as this.”
Mattich said, “Roark told me we’ve allies coming. But can we hold? Shall they defeat this?”
We all ducked as fresh thunder roiled the sky and lightning stalked like some long and multiply legged insect across the ground. I heard the screams of men join those of the animals. I saw tents burst into fire, cooking pots explode, stacked wood ignite. My head swam. Old wounds ached. I felt afraid—and, as I remembered the Darach Pass, angry. That helped.
“We shall defeat it,” I said. “We’ve the Hel’s Town pirates coming to our aid. They hold the river against Talan’s men, and they bring at least a thousand to our landward forces.”
“But shall that be enough?” Mattich asked. “The gods know, I’ve …”
He shivered as light filled the sky and pointing fingers lanced toward us. Fires erupted around us.
Shara screamed, “We must be gone!”
And we ran through the horrid fog until we were clear, and there was an open field. It had once owned a stone wall, but I supposed that had been taken by Talan—or us—to load catapults, and now it stood empty, like an old mouth pulled free of teeth. There was a farmhouse, or its relicts—for that, too, was torn down in war’s purpose. But the grass was green, and the fog was ended here, and it was morning and the sun shone bright, and Roark set Ellyn down.
Shara said, “This will do,” and began to unpack her satchel.
Mattich said, “I cannot promise the Dur, not against this.” He gestured back at the ring of fog we had escaped, where the lightnings still flashed and fires still burned and men and animals still screamed. “My warriors are frightened.”
“Nor I the Arran,” Jaime said. “The gods know, we’re with you in setting Ellyn back on her throne. But this …” He shook his scarred head. “This is … Gailard, we fight a battle we cannot win. Tal
an’s Vachyn is too strong.”
“NO!”
Shara’s voice seemed loud as any thunderclap. “Do you not understand? Do you give up now, you hand the world to the Vachyn. Give up the fight now and Talan shall own Chaldor, and soon the Highlands, and you’ll be conquered. And do you think that Talan and Nestor shall forgive you? No! They’ll take your heads and make all your clans their servants as they go on to conquer.”
“But we cannot fight magic,” Mattich said. “We face walls we cannot break, because the magic has destroyed Gailard’s engines.”
“And your power cannot defend us,” Jaime said. He pointed an accusing finger at the supine Ellyn. “She’s strong in the talent, you said, but look at her. What use is she?”
“Hold!” Roark stared angrily at Jaime. “Hold your tongue, eh? The Quan stand with her and I’ll not hear her insulted.”
Jaime shrugged an apology. “You love her, but I love my clan no less—and I cannot see her use in this war, save as Chaldor’s heir.”
“She’s strong with magic,” Shara said, “and in a while she’ll wake.” She emptied her satchel and began to set her pots on the ground. “And you have no choice betwixt failure and defeat. Shall you run away and be hunted down by Talan’s soldiers and Vachyn magicks, or shall you fight like a warrior?”
“Against warriors in honest battle?” Jaime nodded. “That, surely. I’ll face any man in honest fight. But this?” He gestured at the disturbed sky. “I’d assumed you’d counter this—Vachyn against the Lady of the Mountains—but I see no hope in this. I see my men dying, and scant hope of victory.”
“The Quan shall fight to the end,” Roark said, “in support of Ellyn.”
Shara used her fingers to dig earth from the ground: one pot filled.
I said, “I trust Shara.” I watched her pour water into another; set a candle in a third; set the last, empty, on the ground. “And in Ellyn.”
Ellyn stirred. Roark laved her face with a dampened cloth and an adoring look, and Ellyn woke and stared into his eyes.
Shara turned from her pots, speaking urgently to Ellyn. “We’re beyond the aegis of Nestor’s magicks now, and I need you. Are we to succeed, you must help me.”
Ellyn groaned, leaning against Roark. “That hurt,” she muttered, for an instant sounding petulant as the child I’d known. “My head aches.”
“The Hel’s Town pirates come to our aid,” Shara said. “We’re sore beset, but they might make the difference.”
“What difference?” Ellyn rose a little way into Roark’s arms. “What difference can I make?”
“Enough,” Shara said, “do you work with me.”
I ducked as horrid peals of thunder struck the sky over the ring of mist that surrounded Chorym. I watched fresh fingers of light touch the ground. The mist hung still and steady and dismal there. I doubted the clans would hold for long, and feared all our hopes be soon shattered by Nestor’s magicks and Ellyn’s recalcitrance.
“Listen,” Shara said, “for there is a way.”
She looked at me and smiled.
“Do you remember when I first came to you, when Eryk hung you on that tree?”
I nodded. From the corner of my eye I saw men come running from out of the fog. They had thrown away their weapons and now fled with the look of panicked animals. Mattich and Jaime shouted at them, for some wore the plaid of the Dur and the Arran. Others bore the Devyn colors.
“I must work that spell again.” Shara hesitated. “I must go into Chorym.”
“No!” My answer was no less explosive than her earlier negative.
More men stumbled from out of the fog as she said, “Save we find a way in, we’ve lost. We cannot break the walls now, and soon all our army will run. I doubt the Hel’s Town pirates shall fare better. So …”
“You cannot! You must not!” I grasped her hand. “You say that Nestor can find you now. Do you use that spell, he’ll surely know you’re coming, and be waiting for you. If he does not destroy you first!”
“What else is there?” she asked.
“Besides,” I said as if she had not spoken, “you don’t know the city. You’d not know which gate, or how to open it.”
“I can open gates,” she said.
“Only do you live. And I doubt you should. The gods know, but you’d face Talan’s soldiers and Nestor’s magicks, and I doubt even you can defeat both.”
“What other choice have we?” She looked me in the eye. “Save we enter the city, we lose everything.”
I cursed loudly. That awful sense of dread was gone now that I was clear of the Vachyn fog, but old wounds still ached, and I could imagine how the men still encompassed by the brume felt. I watched Roark smooth Ellyn’s hair as she sat up. Mattich and Jaime studied me and Shara with dour faces lined with lost hope, waiting for some miracle they doubted could come. Indeed, I was none too sure myself. Save …
“There’s another way,” I said, and touched Shara’s lips as she began to protest. “No, listen—you transformed me then. Can you do that again?”
She nodded, eyeing me warily, clearly ready to argue my plan.
“I know the city,” I said, “and folk know me—I might find allies. Also, I am a soldier and can fight better than you.”
“Not against Nestor’s magicks.” She shook her head. “Did I transform you, he’d sense you coming.”
“He senses you and Ellyn,” I said. “He knows there are two with the talent, but not of any other.”
“Even so, he’d know.”
“Suppose,” I said, “that you and Ellyn worked your magicks as I entered? Might that not confuse him long enough that I might enter the city?”
She allowed a cautious, “Perhaps.”
I paused. This stratagem sprang suddenly to mind—the gods knew that we needed to act swift!—and I had not fully thought it through. “And the Hel’s Town pirates shall arrive soon,” I said. “What if …”
I outlined my hasty plan.
When I was done, Shara thought a moment, then lowered her head in reluctant acknowledgment. “It might work. But it’s dangerous.”
“War is dangerous,” I said.
She put her hands to my face and drew it down that she might put her lips to mine. “I love you, Gailard.”
I gloried in that kiss. It was the promise of all I’d hoped for, the promise of reward to come. In that moment, as she drew me close, I forgot Ellyn, forgot my purpose—and knew only that I’d conquer Chorym to have this woman I loved. I’d conquer the world for her—save she’d not have that. But Chorym—yes. The gods knew, I’d stake my life on that—to have her.
She drew apart, and I wondered if she was embarrassed. I laughed. “So let’s to it, eh?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“They withdraw?” Talan Kedassian stared at the wall of fog that encircled Chorym’s walls. He could see no deeper into that magical brume than any other mortal man, but he wondered at the sounds that came from within its shadow. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” Nestor ducked his head. “Their siege engines are all destroyed and they fall back.”
“To where? They flee? We’ve beaten them?”
Talan rose on the tips of his armored toes, peering at the mist as if he’d force his eyes to find what they could not. Sunlight glittered on his golden armor and he unlatched his helmet for the sake of better vision. A servant hurried to take the helm from him.
“I can see no farther than you.” Nestor’s tone was irritable. “But I know they fall back. How far, I cannot say—only that they withdraw beyond the aegis of my magic.”
“And Ellyn? Shara?”
“My erstwhile sister?” Nestor shrugged. “She works no magic now; neither Ellyn.”
“Then they’re dead?” Talan asked hopefully. “You slew them?”
“Perhaps.” Nestor frowned. “I cannot say for sure. But I cannot feel their magicks at work, so perhaps …”
“How can we be sure?”
“I could lif
t my spell,” Nestor said, a hint of mockery in his voice.
“And leave us defenseless?” Talan shook his head. “No, not until we’re certain.”
“Let me send out patrols,” Egor Dival suggested. He looked to Nestor. “Or shall your filthy fog unnerve them, too?”
“Of course.” Nestor studied the older man with undisguised contempt in his dark eyes. “Think you I can conjure such a spell that affects only this man, and not that?”
“I thought you omnipotent,” Dival returned with no less contempt.
“Hold, hold.” Talan raised a nervous hand as the Vachyn’s eyes narrowed and Dival’s good hand touched his sword’s hilt. “We stand on the brink of victory, eh? This is no time to quarrel.”
“Save unless we know whether or not the Highlanders are gone,” Dival said, “we are sealed in as much as they are sealed out.”
“Do Shara or Ellyn work any further magicks, I shall know,” Nestor said. “And find them, are they not already slain.”
“Which we cannot know whilst that fog remains,” Dival grunted. Then he laughed: “A joke, eh? We are trapped by our own success.”
Talan looked from one to the other, but it was Nestor to whom he turned in the end. “What shall we do?”
“I would suggest,” the Vachyn said, “that I maintain the spell awhile—a day or two—and then let this soldier send out his patrols.”
“Which means you must lift …” Talan gestured at the brume. “Which shall leave us without defense.”
“You’ve an army here,” Dival said. “And have the Highlanders not attacked by then, it must surely be safe. The gods know, their engines are all destroyed and they’ve no longer the means to break Chorym’s walls. We’ve all our forces here—and the men to defeat them in honest battle. How can we lose?”
Finally, Talan said, “We shall wait for two days. Then Nestor will lift his spell and you can send men out.” He nodded, approving his own decision, finding military pride in the prospect of an easy victory. “Are they fled, we’ll harry them back to their dismal Highlands.”