by Janny Wurts
An escort he failed to expect had apparently ridden to meet him. The snap to his posture as he sighted the party evinced his stifled displeasure: two mounted guards and an apprehensive young equerry, holding the reins of his second-string horse.
Up close, his pallor betrayed lack of sleep. Another night, after the disastrous assault, was unlikely to sweeten his temperament. Ranne and Fennick stayed straight-faced and dared not try to fathom his current, vexed mood.
The Light’s avatar accepted the horse. He mounted without a word. His silence beat at his escort’s taut nerves, while the equerry wheeled the odd, lop-eared mare, kept on string for unskilled riders to run errands. Still ungreeted, the small party began its unhurried course towards the Sunwheel command tent. Lysaer rode ahead. Whatever thoughts lurked behind his fatigue, the stamped lines around his blue eyes did not welcome the company.
The foursome crossed the posted ring of camp sentries, passed the new horse picket, and cut an oblique course around a latrine trench, which had not existed at sundown. More men with shovels dug a fire pit to burn the carcasses of two destriers, while the distant thunder of hammers bespoke a labour team’s effort. Lysaer did not pause, or acknowledge salutes, or praise the brisk industry found in his path.
The supply tents were standing with rolled-up flaps. Within their pooled shade, the dry goods had been organized: the filled casks sorted out by their brands, the sealed barrels of flour separated from the boxes of oiled weaponry nested in straw. A squad of men under someone’s crisp orders muscled the inventoried items into neat stacks. More boys rolled and tied salvaged hides. Additional space had been cleared for a practise field. There, squads of recruits with pikes drilled under the squinting review of an officer. Others, between duty, slept in shifts under blankets, while their fellows plied needles and twine, patching tents, or cleaning the singed gear stripped off yesterday’s dead.
Lysaer measured the stamp of brisk purpose in place since his visit to the enchantresses. ‘Who ordered you out, and how long were you waiting?’
Taciturn Ranne raised his eyebrows, while Fennick coughed behind a mailed fist. Neither man rushed to answer. The fury leashed behind that bland tone meant the avatar already guessed the sore point under question.
The inexperienced equerry plunged ahead anyway, pink with cheerful enthusiasm. ‘Our Lord Commander, Sulfin Evend’s returned. He arrived by fast boat before dawn.’
‘He’s late,’ Lysaer answered, and dug in his spurs. The horse underneath him grunted and pelted ahead at a gallop.
When the naive boy kicked his mount to keep up, Ranne clamped a stout fist on the bridle and hauled the boy’s mare to a plunging halt. ‘Don’t think to follow your Blessed Lord now.’
Fennick spoke just as fast. ‘Trust us, you don’t want to be anywhere near when that pair squares off for their reckoning.’
Sulfin Evend’s presence continued to make itself felt when Lysaer reined in at the lavish command tent that also served as his personal quarters. Met by deserted quiet, he dismounted without need to fend off any rush of fawning attendants. No pestering cluster of petitioners milled under the awning to beg for his audience. Only a single, liveried groom appeared to lead off his hot horse.
A high-handed precedent, the ceremonial guards that flanked the front entry had been summarily dismissed from their post.
Had Lysaer not been worn flat, he might have laughed for the irony. Plain as shouted warning, his wayward commander had ascertained their meeting would take place in privacy. The front flap, tied open, displayed shaded gloom sparked by the vacated sheen of lacquer and mother-of-pearl furnishings. As Lysaer stepped inside, someone unobtrusive stepped forward: his long-faced valet, for the gentleman’s service of taking his soiled mantle.
‘His Lordship Sulfin Evend awaits in your map room,’ the servant disclosed, then retired with faultless courtesy.
As the storm broke, there would be no witnesses; if, in fact, anyone sworn to the Light owned the courage to stand in the breach.
Lysaer crossed the lavish carpets. He slipped through the curtain that masked the long trestle used for war counsel and troop assignments. Candles burned there. A pool of light set off the tactical maps with their array of pinned banners and coloured counters. The deployment had changed, the emphasis shifted from offensive lines to a tight ring for impenetrable containment. Not only in symbol: the troops on the field would be re-formed as well. Sulfin Evend’s crisp style chose action before consultation.
Tireless strategist, the man himself spoke out from the darkest corner. ‘I put the heart back into the men with a promise: there will be no more extravagant gestures, and no other messy, headlong assaults.’ The accent of the Hanshire aristocrat continued with stripping sting. ‘I will give you the victory your allies demand, but not as an epic display soaked in bloodshed. This siege will be won by conventional means. The defenders will die of their own stubborn will, or else lay down their arms, starved into surrender.’
‘I should value such counsel, in hindsight?’ Lysaer replied, his indifferent tone a reproach. ‘You took your time mooning about on the southcoast. So long, in fact, filling my straightforward muster, it’s a wonder you didn’t grow roots there.’
Neither was Sulfin Evend inclined to shy from attacking engagement. ‘Good men were burned alive for stupidity. Not over my delay.’
The Alliance Lord Commander had bathed, since arrival, but had declined the entitled splendor of his formal post. Within masking gloom, the detail of his person emerged under aggressive survey: the plain hose and the commonplace jerkin that embraced comfort, before authority. Then the straight, dark brown hair that was expertly barbered, a sharp reverse: today, his liege was the one on his feet, unkempt and jaggedly sleepless.
Past question, such uncharacteristic, sleek grooming would be the perfidious touch of the royal valet. That overly fussy, devoted servant bestowed the attention reserved only for his chosen master. Against form, he acknowledged Sulfin Evend as equal. Such care acknowledged the exemplary courage that had once steered the avatar’s life clear of jeopardy.
Sulfin Evend bestirred one polished, black boot, and shoved a padded chair forward. ‘Sit down, man. You look eaten hollow. I’ve taken the liberty of sending for wine.’
Which amenity had already arrived on the soundless feet of a servant. Lysaer let his aching frame sink into the cushions, and clasped the filled goblet pressed into his hand. As he sipped, he regarded his prodigal officer: lean as a prized hound, and burned ruddy from weeks in the harsh southern sun. As the drink hit his belly, a slow thaw began. ‘You took the time starting the pressed men in training?’
‘So you’ll see.’ Sulfin Evend lifted his glass in salute. ‘Your health.’
Those eyes, level grey, were relentlessly keen. The straight brows and cleft chin could intimidate also, when coupled with acid silence. Lysaer had not forgotten the intractable will, which refused to bow as an underling. Bone-tired, he also regretted the fact he had missed this hard man as a friend. Anger and hurt for the extended absence became much too difficult to sustain. ‘Your hatred will never relent, for the witches.’
‘I don’t trust them,’ Sulfin Evend replied. ‘There’s a difference.’ He never blinked, before he attacked. ‘How did you fare with the Koriani Prime? Was the interview your choice, or hers?’
Lysaer hissed and sat up, catching a dollop of spilled wine in his lap. ‘Demon!’ he snapped. ‘Has it escaped your notice? We have wounded men under charitable care by the auspices of her order. Some are your finest. They won’t arise hale, if you haven’t heard, without somebody’s spellcrafted surgery.’
‘Then we’re haunted by piteous visions of invalids, done up in unguents and bandages?’ Sulfin Evend’s teeth flashed as he tasted the fine vintage, then set the goblet aside with an irritable click on the map trestle. ‘No. The grey robes and the novices do such menial work. Never, the Prime Matriarch or her secretive clutch of scarlet-ranked seniors! Don’t pretend that’s not Selidie’s pavilion pit
ched in the midst of their camp. What did she ask of you, Lysaer? Don’t hedge!’
‘Nothing.’ A drawn second passed, while the wine spill soaked in, and the rumpled blond hair shimmered to a run of fine trembling. Lysaer shut bruised eyes. ‘The Matriarch asked for nothing. I was there to attend to my casualties. No more and no less.’
Disadvantaged, Lysaer reopened pinched lids. This was Sulfin Evend, who mauled every pretence at subterfuge. The man deserved an honest hearing; had earned the right, since his heroic role at Avenor, which defeated a deadly incursion by necromancers. Against the last campaign’s legions of dead, and the nightmare whispers that tormented his dreams, Lysaer had no bastion left. Distrust of this man became a barrier too high for fraught strength to maintain.
‘The Matriarch passed through,’ he admitted. ‘She tried conversation, perhaps even tested the tentative grounds for an overture of alliance. I gave my refusal without ever showing her anything more than my back.’
‘Then be assured, we are her acting tools in this game,’ Sulfin Evend declared in soft venom. He thrust to his feet. Gave way and paced, and at last the candlelight caught him: more haggard than lean, and fretted inside by unease that spurred him to restlessness. ‘Don’t underplay that woman’s power, or underestimate her long reach. Her initiates act, never knowing her reasons. The arcane trickery wielded by her nest of harpies surpasses the meaning of dangerous. I want the Prime’s motive for showing her face, here. Because as things stand, I don’t like the taste of knowing we’re used as her game pawns.’
‘Are we?’ Lysaer regarded his Lord Commander, astonished to realize: the man was needled by more than gruff nerves and exhaustion. The concern that reordered the war camp at speed was lashed on by the Matriarch’s presence.
‘If not for testing the climate for friendship,’ Lysaer pressed, ‘the Koriani Prime might be here because my half-brother’s made the sisterhood his inveterate enemy.’
Sulfin Evend returned a sharp head-shake. ‘No. That’s too simple. We are holding Prime Selidie’s line and doing precisely as she requires, without any clue to the stakes before we get caught in the end-play.’ He leaned on the trestle to survey the map, in fact soothed by the inward relief: that Lysaer s’Ilessid this once was too tired to unmask the core dread beneath ragged anxiety.
The darkest fear could never be spoken. Lysaer fought this war under the latent pressure of Desh-thiere’s cursed influence. Not a fool, the s’Ilessid was strong, and insightful. The values he honoured at heart should have been unimpeachable. Yet he was no avatar; only a man, all too human and desperately vulnerable. Subject to the Mistwraith’s warped influence, he posed an ungovernable force for destruction.
Koriathain owned that power. The horror stopped thought, that they could, and they had instilled such rife madness for their own ends: once, in Lysaer’s absence, Sulfin Evend had witnessed such a vile machination. Years ago, the former First Senior had tried to trap Arithon at Riverton, using a conjured fetch to invoke the Mistwraith’s geas. Unscrupulous schemers, Koriathain had unleashed that mad drive in cold blood, then used its force to goad their quarry to hapless flight. As a trained mage and initiate master, Arithon survived the experience.
Yet Lysaer owned no such defensive protection. Here on the field, he stood as the poised spear-head of a fanatical war host. When Etarra’s troops joined, the numbers that answered his cause soon would swell to seventy-five thousand strong. The frightful potential existed for Prime Selidie to play the Light’s Blessed Prince as her personal weapon to launch a disaster.
Autumn 5671
Brangle
Two weeks out of Vhalzein, and hag-ridden by news that the siege had closed in at Alestron, the merchant brig Evenstar hove into the trade port of Thirdmark. There, her three-masted rig and furled canvas made her a looming albatross set down among bobbing gulls. Her ocean-going keel forced her to anchor outside of the jumbled stone breakwater that enclosed the town wharves, since the Mistwraith’s invasion reshaped the ancient patterns of commerce. The placid, cove harbour now catered to trade fleets of shallow-draught galleys. Even three decades after clear sky restored accurate navigation, the shoal-ridden narrows within Rockbay Harbor continued to favour oared vessels. Tight inlets and jagged shore-lines, compounded by swift-running currents, posed hazards few blue-water captains cared to attempt, under sail.
Evenstar’s master prided herself on being the glaring exception.
From Vhalzein, she had run the estuary to Redburn to take on dispatch packets from Quaid, and to onload the spruce lumber preferred by the Southshire shipyards. Her next call, at Spire, picked up casks of beer, flour, and soda ash to be resold to the glassworks at Ithish. Outbound, and riding low on her marks, she had rounded the north point off the Isle of Myrkavia, a trial of seamanship that had snagged many lesser ships on a reef. At Firstmark, upcoast, she laid in wine and hides for the milk-run that fetched her this rolling, second-rate anchorage.
The charts of those treacherous waters were presently furled and shelved. Now, as the exhilaration of dicey handling subsided to restive fatigue, the news came in by pigeon from other points east that the Light’s vengeful war host had claimed its first casualties.
Worse, to Captain Feylind’s jaundiced eye, the Evenstar’s chart desk lay mired by mercantile trade. Landlubber’s paper-work, bruised by the officious ink stamps of the harbour-masters, and the fussier parchments, crusted with the seals and ribbons, preferred by the excisemen.
While the ship creaked and swung to the outbound tide, Evenstar’s master jammed her taut fingers through the straw hair at her temples. ‘Fatemaster crap on the scribblings of clerks!’ Lading lists! She hated them. Almost as much as the blow-hard authorities who imposed their port taxes and wharfage. Far-sighted, she squinted at the miserable squiggles that valued the brig’s current cargo.
‘Pirating bastards,’ she muttered, irked by the inflated assessment placed on the spruce.
A shadow loomed overhead: the first mate, peering down through the quarter-deck hatchway. ‘That’s better. You’ve been much too quiet since hearing the scuttlebutt ashore.’
Feylind’s return tirade would have shamed a fishwife. She added, ‘I don’t like the news, and you didn’t, either. Is that why you’ve made sure everything’s planned to a fare-thee-well in advance?’
At Thirdmark, said the lists, she would take on goat cheese, and bone meal for the porcelain guild at Sanshevas. Ahead, the bursar’s needs were detailed for reprovisioning at Shandor. To make the stop pay, the brig would swap the cheese and some of the beer for board lengths of West Shandian oak. At Ithish, she would exchange her flour for baled wool bought raw from the shepherds of Vastmark, then that reeking load was bound on to the auctions that supplied the dyers at Innish.
‘We’re scheduled tight as the gears in a pinch-fisted shore factor’s clock!’ Feylind groused.
The shadow solidified into a breathing, warm presence as the mate slung himself downwards into the stern cabin. ‘Damned right.’ Teive approached from behind and folded her into a consuming embrace. ‘We’ve chased our own tail in these forsaken cold waters for too long.’ His salt-crusted chin parked on top of her head, he added in gentle remonstrance, ‘In case you’ve forgotten? Our children are at Innish. Probably banging holes in the tiles of Fiark’s wife’s pretty kitchen. They miss you, too.’
Which stinging line inferred her past night, spent pacing the deck under starlight.
Feylind swatted him off. ‘Your damned stubble itches.’ She tipped up her head, accepted his kiss, then grabbed him, hard, and held on. Wrapped in the fusty smell of his sea jacket, she strove to subdue raw anxiety.
‘You don’t know that Prince Arithon will be drawn to Alestron,’ Teive stated with maddening calm.
Feylind shivered. ‘We don’t know that he won’t.’ She pursued, ‘He came for us when this ship was threatened, and s’Brydion have stood as his allies for years. You think his soft heart can deny them?’
Something
bumped, abovedeck. By the quartermaster’s haranguing tirade, the disturbance involved an inept longshoreman and the cask of grain alcohol just slung aboard for treatment of salt-water lesions.
‘You’d better go topside,’ Feylind said, resigned. ‘Before some slacker thinks to straw-tap that barrel and suck himself rip-roaring prostrate.’
Yet Teive was not diverted so easily. ‘The crew can look after itself for the moment.’
Feylind stirred for sharp protest. He forestalled the attempt, cupped a weathered hand against her turned cheek, and captured her shove to release him. Then he tightened his hold, appalled as he sighted the paper-work on the desk-top. ‘You’re planning to contract our cargo out on consignment to another vessel bound into Innish? Feylind, why? If I allow this, your brother is certain to dice both my bollocks!’
‘If you don’t agree, I’ll claw first,’ threatened Evenstar’s captain, her tigerish mood turned defensive.
Teive had the experience to hear her distress. He fished the snagged loop of blonde hair from his callus but did not release his embrace. ‘I won’t let you go until you tell everything.’
‘When bulls give fresh milk and lay hen’s eggs!’ Feylind wrenched herself free. Ever and always, Teive’s deep concern cracked her nettled rage and undid her. She leaned back, elbows braced on the traitorous documents.
‘We’ll provision at Shandor, well enough,’ she relented. ‘But not keep this cargo. I’ll have nothing else loaded into our hold that’s not westbound round the cape.’
The mate perched his sturdy frame on the chart locker, his grey eyes agleam with challenge. ‘You’d run back to Havish?’ He caught the flicker of determination before she broke off his glance. ‘Telmandir!’ he corrected, appalled, as intuition unveiled her conniving. ‘You want to petition High King Eldir to send relief to the s’Brydion citadel?’
‘Someone must.’ Feylind was never frivolous. Her radical decisions always were framed by the logic of an off-shore navigator.