by Bill Fawcett
He stopped.
“If you’d known that earlier,” Talwe finished the sentence, “you would have gone back to them.”
“No,” Paralan replied. “But we would never have challenged Crethok directly. He’s powerful enough, Talwe. But even Lord Sleisher has no chance against both of them.”
“We have little choice,” the darkfur explained wearily. “Arklier’s mrem have nearly cut off our retreat. The castle is already surrounded.”
Paralan looked around him and nodded. “It was too late, Talwe, from the time Arklier appeared. Even if we’d run, we would never have escaped him. Fresh mrem would have run us down.”
“You knew that?” Talwe asked.
“Yes,” came the reply as they began climbing the walls of the fortress.
Talwe smiled. “Let it be, then. Let us fight on until we die. I will go among the warriors with you, Paralan, and together we will steel them against death. We will show them, if we can, that dying in battle is no disgrace at all.”
The smile on the highlander’s face was wide. “Any clansmrem knows that already,” he agreed. “It is the others we have to convince—your lowlanders.”
Talwe did not smile. “On the grasslands, death is not feared,” he said. “The only fear we have is to be forsaken by our gods.” He looked out at the gathering horde of highlanders and added, “The gods do not forsake a warrior who dies in battle.”
And they went down from where they watched, and walked calmly among the mrem, and helped them know that death was nearby. Paralan reminded the highlanders who still remained that they had no choice. If captured they would be turned over to Crethok. The highlanders visibly gained new strength and new life. To the grasslanders Talwe went alone, talking of death and helping them pray, and with the names of their gods on their lips they, too, found courage they had not felt there before. From then until the end, Talwe knew that the battle would be fierce.
Suddenly, he remembered Keth Sleisher. He had not seen him since entering Cragsclaw. Then a mournful cry was raised on the wall to one side of the gate and Talwe felt dread as he hurried toward it.
Guardsmrem milled in confusion. Keth Sleisher lay dead. His eyes were open wide, and his mouth was drawn back against his teeth, and spittle ran from it freely onto his neck. He was already cold to Talwe’s touch, but no new wounds showed anywhere on his body. All there was, the only sign that Sleisher had been killed, was a strange red glow that still pulsed around his head.
When he saw that glow, Talwe understood. Sleisher’s death had been one of magic. Whose magic, the darkfur could not know. But magic that aided the clansmrem.
Then it struck again. Talwe felt himself go numb. He fell, almost toppling from the wall. Then suddenly the red flames inside the mrem’s eyes were replaced with the glare of sickly greenish, yellow light. Then there was only blackness.
•
Sruss did not know how long she had lain there on the top of the western wall of Cragsclaw. Then suddenly a figure appeared before her, standing naked and calm in the freezing night air. She was beautiful, yet also aloof and terrifying. When she held out her hand, Sruss took it and let herself be pulled to her feet.
“Felior!” she exclaimed, when she saw the female’s face.
“Yes,” she acknowledged, “I am Felior.” But her voice was not quite the voice Sruss remembered. Instead it was richer, and deeper, and less kind. As it repeated the name, it seemed to recall rather than know, and Sruss suddenly felt it had come from far away. The harsh wind rippled across bare fur.
“You are naked,” she tried to sound casual. “I will give you a robe.” Sruss knew now that Felior had to be a magician, maybe even one of the Three. She had once thought she had known this female. Felior had been part of the palace staff for as long as Sruss had been alive. The thought frightened her.
“I need no robe,” the female replied. “I am far beyond the discomfort of the air. It may be cold, but there are powers much colder. I know these powers, Dancer; I know now who they are.”
Sruss’s head swam as she nodded. “Stay with me, Felior. I will see that you are protected.”
“Protected?” questioned the astonished voice. “How can you protect me, Dancer? After what I have seen? How can you dare to suggest you understand?”
Sruss heard the quaver in her own voice. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Felior hesitated, then said, “But you must go for now, for you are the White Dancer.”
At those words, Sruss’s soul snapped. She was Dancer by deceit only, Dancer only because the real Dancer had died. She could no more pretend to be worthy of the role than she could claim to know the number of the stars in the heavens. That Dancer had been so much greater, beyond her, much stronger than she could ever be. Suddenly she realized the folly of what she had done.
“I am not the White Dancer,” she shouted to the winds. “I am Sruss, and I live to bear the next king of Ar.” She turned to the female and cried, “That’s all I am, Felior. That’s all I’ve ever been. There is no Dancer. The real Dancer of the Wilds is dead.”
Felior waited till her words had fallen. Then, her voice suddenly tender, she said to the whitefur, “You are wrong. A Dancer can never die.”
Then she took Sruss’s hands once more, and raised her to her feet. And she looked into her eyes and told her, “The bolt that you felt was meant to kill you. Without the Dancer, Cragsclaw cannot survive. But I took the bulk of it for you, because neither Cragsclaw nor Ar needs me as it does you. I do not want your gratitude, because I am more bitter than I can say. I must walk away from here, Dancer, and I must find a place where I can stay. The Kingdom of Ar can no longer hold me.”
“You can help,” Sruss protested. “You can defend Cragsclaw with us.”
“No,” the other interrupted. “You must stay, and Talwe with you. Already Arklier’s army rides toward the fortress. And horror approaches from the east. Mithmid awaits you, but his magic alone cannot hold long. He needs you, and Cragsclaw needs the darkfur.”
The sounds of the running battle grew louder as it approached the walls, and Sruss was torn between her fascination with Felior and the need to see what was happening. The magician continued ignoring the fighting.
“Yet even with you this fortress may be lost. There is more I have yet to learn, but what it is I cannot foresee.”
Sruss grabbed her shoulders. “We need you, Felior, if there is magic in all this,” she shouted. “We need your strength, and your magic.”
“You need neither,” said the female. “My magic is finished. The Eastern Lords have drained it.”
“The Eastern Lords?”
Felior nodded as her eyes went black. “Yes, Dancer, the Eastern Lords. They were the ones who sent that bolt. Cwinyd the magician let them send it through him.”
“Cwinyd?”
“He will never again be truly the same.”
Sruss dropped her head. The Eastern Lords. The defense of Cragsclaw. The coming of the horror from the east. Again she wished for the carelessness of childhood. She looked at the female, who stared back into her eyes, and as she heard herself groan she fell to her knees.
“I am not strong enough,” she whispered aloud. “I am no warrior, and I am no magician.”
A soft hand touched her face. “That is true,” Felior said. “But you need be neither. You are the White Dancer, and that is enough.”
And the naked female stepped off the wall and walked down invisible steps past the fighting mrem and into the night. Not one mrem struck at her or seemed to see she was there. Felior stopped and touched the back of a clansmrem about to drive a spear into a mrem’s back; the highlander fell unmoving. Sruss thought she saw her raise her arms as she passed out of sight, but she knew it could well have been a trick of the moonlight. And maybe she could not trust her mind. But the clansmrem Felior had struck down was still ther
e, a darkened heap in the half-light.
Most of the bandits made it to the gate. Too many didn’t. The last only entered when the gate captain took the initiative to sortie out and drive off a band of highlanders that had cut them off. Then a third bolt struck. It was much weaker, but Sruss was already drained of all her strength. She fell, half-unconscious, into the arms of an astonished Lord Sleisher.
“CALL LORD Sleisher!” The voice was frantic, its words slurred with panic. “Open the gate!”
From his room over the eastern gates, Mithmid heard the voice’s quavering. Hard though it tried to sound brave and unaffected, it was frightened, maybe terrified, and that terror made Mithmid loath to hear more. Ever since he had seen the approach of the liskash during the night mindflight with the co-leader of the Council, Mithmid had hoped that his vision had been wrong.
Now, with this voice, he knew he was about to find out it was not.
“There is a watchword,” shouted the guard. “You cannot enter without it.”
“I don’t remember it,” the voice replied, and Mithmid could hear the beginnings of despair. The surrounding clansmrem would be sneaking into arrow range. “How could I?” the voice wailed back. “After what I’ve seen, I barely remember my own name.”
Again the guard replied, “I cannot admit you unless you have the watchword. Those are Lord Sleisher’s orders, and I may not work against them.”
Now the voice began to sob. Haltingly, its throat catching as it spoke, it tried to explain the urgency of its mission. But the guard would not be swayed. Mithmid was relieved to hear the new voice. It was Lord Sleisher. He had been locked in the room with his son’s body since the youth had been struck down two days earlier. Even the appearance of a White Dancer and two full regiments of Ar-mrem had failed to rouse him.
“Let him in,” Lord Sleisher commanded. He approached from his quarters, throwing a tunic around himself as he walked. Wrapped in a fur, Mithmid hurried down to the gate. He wondered how cold he must feel.
“He does not know the watchword, my lord,” the guard responded correctly.
Sleisher nodded. “I know,” he said. “But I know who he is, and his news is greatly important. You have done your job well, Tarnden, but in all matters of security there comes a time when security is suddenly unimportant. This mrem’s arrival is precisely such a time.”
The guard nodded and snapped a command. Below him, the eastern gates swung open, just enough to admit the sobbing warrior. Sleisher and Mithmid descended the stairs to meet the scout. When the weeping mrem saw his master, he fell to his knees and reached out his hands.
Sleisher took them and lifted him firmly to his feet. Grabbing his head, he lifted the mrem’s face and stared deep into his eyes. The look of the lord of Cragsclaw was stern, and in a short time the scout calmed his breathing and stopped the flow of tears.
“You do no wrong to cry,” Sleisher said to him. “But right now there is no time. You have seen something, something I must know about. Tell me what it was.”
“Horror,” was the only word he spoke.
“Horror?” Mithmid asked. Sleisher shot him a glance, and Mithmid flinched.
“I need more,” Sleisher said firmly. “‘Horror’ is not enough.”
The scout breathed deeply. “So much horror,” he said. “So much horror to come to Cragsclaw.” He looked at his lord. “We can’t survive,” he quavered. “We can’t fight them.”
“Who are ‘them’?” he asked.
The scout pointed toward the gate. “Them,” he muttered. “The ones out there. They march toward Cragsclaw. They killed the rest... I ran. I couldn’t fight.” He sobbed and pleaded, “Don’t kill me, lord. I know I’ve done wrong. But don’t kill me.”
Sleisher raised his hands to strike him. Mithmid stepped forward and grasped the lord’s wrist. “Just a minute,” said the young wizard. “I think I can help.”
Sleisher nodded, but his look was of anger. Ignoring it, Mithmid put one hand on each side of the scout’s head. Then he bent his own head forward to touch the other’s chest, and he said two short words that he knew Sleisher could not hear.
When he took his hands away, the mrem stood up straight. “I have a report,” he announced, his voice clear and firm. “Cragsclaw’s enemies approach from the east. No fewer than a thousand are two day’s march away.”
“Enemies?” Sleisher asked. “What enemies?” He paused, then said, “We know Cragsclaw’s enemies now lie around us, not to the east.”
The scout closed his eyes. “No, my lord,” he said. “They come from the east as well. But they are not all mrem, my lord. I wish to God that they were.”
“What are they?” demanded Sleisher, but it was clear to Mithmid that he knew the answer already.
“Liskash,” answered the scout. “There are liskash in the armies of the Eastern Lords.” As soon as he said it, he fell unconscious to the ground.
•
Jremm watched from the top of the tower. Below him, inside the gates, what was left of Andelemarian’s army formed into the ranks it would need to sortie from the city. Their goal was simple—to capture Gerianan—but the army of the nobles had grown, and the plan could easily fail.
He had not been with the Council when the plan was formed. There, as Sorilia now told him, Reswen had recounted the story of the nobles’ revolt, and he suggested a means by which the rebels might be squashed.
“In fact,” the older mrem had expanded to Jremm after finishing his account of Reswen’s tale, “this new presence is probably as much to blame for the revolt as anything the king has done. At least that is how Berrilund has analyzed the situation. Somehow the Eastern Lords have taken the seed of discontent and made it grow into all this. They took, so to say, the intent to protest and expanded it in the nobles’ minds until it became a revolt.”
The wizard was speaking in a stentorian voice that proclaimed his early training as a teacher of rhetoric. With each point he gestured, his arms sweeping in the red light on the tower.
Jremm remembered trying to explain all this to Mithmid, whose voice had come to him at night across the grasslands. For hours they had maintained contact, sometimes well and at other times poorly, and Jremm’s story had all the grace of the tale of a drunken bard. “The nobles have rebelled,” he had said near the beginning, and at Mithmid’s command he had launched into his recounting.
“Why ask me?” he began. “Why not contact Berrilund, or Reswen, or even old Sthon?”
“Because I can keep contact with you,” came Mithmid’s soft reply. “I’m not sure about the others.”
“But I don’t know anything,” the younger mrem protested. “I wasn’t even at the session. As usual, I was out spying, wandering around Ar in the middle of the night.”
“Please,” came Mithmid’s voice. “We have no time for this. Give me the story. At least as much as you know.”
Jremm sighed. He would try, but he was worried about telling it all wrong. Still, Mithmid had to know, and what his friend did not understand he could get from someone else. All right, then, he would tell what he knew. He only wished that he knew much more.
“After Reswen’s return, and the departure of Sarkarien’s force, the nobles were filled with anxiety. They protested splitting the army’s strength and sending almost a third of it away. They protested Andelemarian’s handling—or not handling, as they put it—of the reappearance of magic in the city. By now the rumors about the death of Eronucu and Lorleen were thick with suspicion, and they grew extremely concerned about the lack of an heir, especially with Ar now in danger. Of course, they probably didn’t care about this at all, because if Andelemarian died, Gerianan would be king, but it gave them another cause for protest.
“In any case, things grew more tense each day. Every action of Andelemarian’s was being monitored, and every visitor scrutinized. It was so tight, in fact, that w
hen Berrilund requested an audience with the king, he was refused for the first time in three years. The king seemed more and more to disappear inside the palace, and after three days nobody saw him at all.
“The revolt itself was sudden. At dawn of the fifth day, a merchant from Kazerclawn found Gerianan lying near death in an alley in the north section of the city. He brought the king’s brother to the house of Ostinen, and that noble took him in and called for the king. By the time Andelemarian arrived, Gerianan was speaking deliriously, and his first words accused someone of trying to kill him. Ostinen heard this and went outside. When the king came out, a group of nobles formed a semicircle around the door and refused to let him leave. They said that he had tried to murder his brother, and they would not listen to Andelemarian’s protests. Three of them stormed into the house and carried Gerianan’s body outside, and together they rallied what mrem they could to their side. Late in the morning, they left the city, and Ostinen vowed to avenge the king’s great crime.
“Of course, the king tried to explain the danger from the east. The nobles also, it seemed, had some outside force driving them. They didn’t want to hear about the danger from the east. Nor could they seem to listen to Oormet.”
The young H’satie shrugged. “Whenever the nobles spoke, they all used the same words. It was as if they were reciting from rote, or one voice was speaking with many mouths.”
A troubled look came over the young mrem. His whiskers drooped and there was a sadness in his voice. “Oormet knows these nobles. We spoke of it this morning. He says they are good mrem, ones who wouldn’t threaten Ar in her hour of need no matter what the provocation. Yet they are.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Jremm continued with his explanation.
“That was four days ago. Since then, the nobles have allowed nobody into Ar. They have intercepted three small caravans, and many more are due shortly. Without the goods they bring, Ar will quickly suffer. Even with two-thirds of the army gone, the city holds far too many people to live for long on the existing supplies. Ar’s storehouses will empty quickly, and the true siege will begin. That’s Reswen’s argument, at least. He says that a siege will force the king to surrender himself to the nobles’ justice. If that happens, Gerianan, who is rumored to be recovering, is a certainty for the next king of Ar.”