Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Then the badinage ended. Davien offered his opened palms and commanded, ‘Take hold of my hands.’

  The instant went strange. As though perception split off from rational credibility, each of the three saw and felt no one else in the world but themselves, and the Fellowship Sorcerer, positioned opposite. As each, individually, received Davien’s clasp, the misted night quiet of Stag’s Islet up-ended.

  Awareness shattered into a blaze of incandescent colour. Scalded, consumed, hurled into a current that unravelled logic, the mind stumbled. For Glendien and Kyrialt, the whirling dissolution hurled them into black-out oblivion.

  Arithon, mage-trained, retained his centred balance. He was braced for the absence of bodily sensation, having travelled by transfer with Davien before this. The explosive vertigo took him, self-aware. Sustained by his knowing, innate right to be, Arithon rode, awake, upon the clear thread of his consciousness. He experienced the stretched moment that looped over what seemed the unshuttered eye of eternity: when a parabolic chamber of stone sealed him into the womb of the mountain that seated the Sorcerer’s overarching access to power. A spark of light, falling, from Davien’s turned palm, he sensed the spring of virgin water, rushing to meet the naked point of his spirit. That welling flow slid across a carved ring, sheeting over the intricate ciphers that freed the pulsed surge of lane energy.

  For that fleeting instant, the mote of his being perceived more: the stark, yellow eye of a living awareness, coiled within the stilled earth. The bottomless black pupil lurked under the pool, enclosed by a shimmering iris.

  Then the descending spark of himself splashed into the unruffled water. The impression that something watched fled away. While the chamber dissolved into rainbows and the high, singing stream of the flux, Davien’s mastery, unerring, transformed to an eagle and steered a swift passage onwards to the citadel.

  The meadow of Alestron’s high commons was empty, except for three cows, and a few grazing sheep, whose bells clanked in dissonance. Weather had scattered the ashes where Sidir had boiled his glue-pot. The dark hours past midnight were slipping towards dawn, while the low, scudding clouds that fore-promised rain dodged past winter stars, whose names were as music in spoken Paravian. Brisk wind off the Cildein flattened the grasses and sang over the cliff-walls fronting the estuary. The lone figure who waited braced against the gusts that streamered her braid and cloak. The glamour that brought her past the sentries, unseen, had dispersed like the dew on a cobweb.

  Elaira steadied the frisson that ruffled her nerves. Primed as she was with informed excitement, keen as talent could sharpen her senses, the moment still caught her, surprised. One second the darkened terrain was unoccupied. The next, a magnificent eagle swooped down and alighted before her. Then that form erased, and another replaced it, tall and straight and sardonically smiling. The fox-brush hair, with streaked white at the temples, tossed and tangled and snapped, in the breeze.

  ‘Elaira, anient,’ Davien greeted, his smoky baritone and peculiar address unchanged from their former encounter. ‘I deliver your prince, and with him, two others. You’ll be given your moment to greet him, alone. His escort will follow, though you’ll need to wake them. The journey will leave them unconscious.’

  The enchantress had no chance for a response.

  ‘Take my hands,’ said Davien.

  As she reached, his form shimmered. Not in any way that the senses could follow. Yet the fingers that closed over hers were not the peremptory grip of the Sorcerer’s.

  These hands, she knew, lean and beautifully slender.

  She had but an instant to focus on Arithon’s face: level with hers, and untamed by the sudden infusion back into warm flesh. No grace was given to savour the sight, or measure his new-found serenity.

  His urgency swept her off balance, headlong. Despite sword and lyranthe, slung at his shoulder, he bundled her into his arms. His hair was still damp from his wash in a stream. His weathered clothes yet smelled of pine from Selkwood’s majestic glades. The muscle beneath was coiled and fit, beyond her last memory from Halwythwood.

  Elaira gasped, overcome by sheer pleasure. Made safe from the wind, she felt his fists lock amid the spilled warmth of her hair. The silver-and-black mantle draped over his forearm slipped from his grasp and fell free.

  Arithon left the rich cloth in a heap. ‘Beloved.’ His kiss was all fire and longing and joy, exquisite with tender reunion.

  She returned the greeting in cherished trust, held him close till his presence drowned reason. Stinging cold was forgotten. The rushed blood in her thundered, aroused to white flame. Nothing within the world’s compass should spoil that. Not the fact that their love dared not be made consummate, nor the ominous truth, that his arrival must bring lethal mayhem. The sacrosanct promise he kept, for Earl Jieret, meant that other, more personal oaths were going to be rent without shame.

  Late Autumn 5671

  First Audience

  Dakar chose not to frequent the whores, despite the dragging idle hours caused by the Alliance campaign. The marked change was noticed. Gossip spread the sulky complaint from the rouged lips of an abandoned favourite, that he was grown inept. Others, more kindly, sighed and supposed that last year’s bout of bingeing, to mislead Koriathain, had soured his taste for the flesh-pots.

  A more sombre truth chained him: the torrid comfort of doxies no longer thwarted his errant talent. The dismal change stayed, since two Fellowship Sorcerers had commandeered him to share the ward-sealing at Rockfell. Dakar snatched what indolent ease he still could; grumbled and drank, since Alestron’s old fortress was cheerlessly grim while besieged. The tension afflicting the beleaguered populace and the latent charge guarding the ancient stonewalls sparked the wild surge of his talents. Too often he wakened, reeling sick, his senses burned by impending prescience.

  ‘Mayhem like that fairly wrecks a man’s peace,’ he groused to the available barmaids.

  Alcohol haze bought him a forgetful peace, until short-falls in the citadel put an end to all sotted carousing. Sobriety risked him to an uncontrolled plunge into the tides of precognizant vision. The Mad Prophet fought to stay wakeful. Night after night, he crammed himself into the company of Bransian’s off-duty soldiers.

  Often, the hour before dawn found him dicing in a cramped, corner tavern, loud with the coming and going of men. They came in from their watch-posts to warm out the cold, or for camaraderie before turning in to their barracks. Lean as scarred wolves, and jingling with weaponry, they elbowed for space on the benches, with Dakar’s bulk a wadded, brown bolster wedged between broad shoulders armoured in chainmail.

  That morning also, Mearn slipped in for the cards, a habit he used to sharpen his mind before assuming duty at sunrise. The siege had stripped off his fine cloth and lace cuffs. He came bearing full arms, belted over the oiled wool of a field surcoat. A long sword replaced his favoured rapier. Fitness pared his quick slenderness to vital flame, before which larger men cleared him a place at the trestle.

  Rainy weather made the tap-room a dim cave. Candle-lamps on their chains flickered low. The windows were dark, still, filmed by the clogged air, redolent of sweaty fleece and damp steel. Dice rattled, and cards slapped and slid on worn wood, while the men soaked their hard, war-time biscuits in the onion broth that simmered the salted, jerked meat into palatable gruel. Noise reigned, but no drunkenness. The muscular bar-keeper rationed the beer, and defended his tap like a jackal.

  As the hand-picked messenger lately arrived, Talvish shoved through the press. He dodged offers from friends to share a hot meal and declined the ale jack allotted to serving troops. His refusal drew notice: day on day of tight rations never quite eased the growl pinching anyone’s belly. Urgency brought him to Dakar’s hunched shoulder as the cast dice clattered across the nicked trestle. The veteran opposite whooped in triumph, while Mearn, grey eyes sharpened, peered over his card hand with inquiry.

  Dakar’s immersed concentration stayed deaf. He huffed over his losing throw
like a walrus, his pungent curses unveiling the fact that his gambling stake involved forfeiting two chits for beer.

  Talvish bent and spoke into the frizzle of hair at the Mad Prophet’s ear. ‘Your Koriani enchantress has guests!’

  The swearing intensified, changed target to malign a black-headed feather-wit, whose folly should favour the Fatemaster’s list as a suicide.

  Mearn’s rapacious interest perked up. ‘Is the news made official?’ he called through the racket.

  Blond hair rinsed by the sultry spill of the lamps, Talvish turned his bare head. ‘Not yet. Just till I go on watch and report. You’ll have that much delay, and no more. That’s if you’re minded to act, and not scramble to keep your safe distance.’

  Mearn would outrace that storm, either way. His shyster’s instincts disposed of his game. Before the cup passed to collect his due winnings, he rounded the trestle, slick as an eel through the pack of rough men and the inveigling of the loose women. He reached Talvish as Dakar heaved to his feet, disrupting the patrons on either side like the rolling surge of an earthquake.

  Through the hubbub of oaths, ducking fists from those jostled, Mearn broached, ‘Where’s the forest-bred liegeman?’

  Talvish fended off a hothead’s rash knife. A wedged knot in the swirl, hell-bent on a mission, he breasted the crowd towards the doorway. ‘Sidir’s off keeping young Jeynsa in check.’

  ‘She’s not been informed?’ Dakar said, his flush anxious.

  ‘Won’t be,’ Talvish answered, and banged into the street, with the pair, fat and thin, at his heels in matched haste.

  Outside, the raw wet cast a pall over pending daybreak. Rain slapped, wind-driven, to sting exposed flesh. Talvish finished his statement through clenched teeth. ‘Not first thing, at least.’ He grinned, too aware that the spirited girl would rebel once she found herself leashed. ‘I’ll keep the lid on Fionn Areth, as I can. Catch him up and assign him down to the Sea Gate on my way past the barracks.’

  Mearn applauded the foresight. ‘If Bransian doesn’t get his muscle in first, he’ll be keen to chop royal bollocks for treason.’

  Dakar puffed a warning, hunched against the gusts that pummelled the cobbles in torrents. ‘Don’t expect his Grace will give ground for protocol, or bow before Bransian’s authority.’

  ‘We’re kites at that blood-bath, useless except to clean up the carrion afterward,’ Talvish said, grim. They had reached the cross-roads, where he must part company.

  Mearn dared not stall, even to accommodate Dakar. Irked as a cat as the wet soaked him through, the duke’s youngest brother stretched his lean legs, and sprinted.

  Practised at suspicion, the s’Brydion lodged inauspicious state visitors in a defensible drumkeep with one narrow entry. The access bridge overhung a ravine. Rain transformed the spring-fed sluice in the moat to a torrent that jetted seaward as an air-borne waterfall. Who came and went passed the eyes of four sentries, on routine watch at the wall. If, by Talvish’s tactful phrasing, the enchantress Elaira had guests, and the duke’s men were left none the wiser, then someone had used arcane means on arrival to blind-side Alestron’s security.

  ‘That’s sure to bristle Bransian’s hackles!’ snapped Mearn, surprised to discover the stout prophet had matched the pace and kept up. ‘If Talvish delays his report, he’s a dead man. Which means your prince better have something besides talk to launch this citadel off the defensive.’

  The spellbinder was too desperately winded to answer. Soaked through his woollens, wheezing under his streaming moustache, he crossed the plank span in a reeling rush. Mearn tripped the latch and let him pass, as a Fellowship agent. Dakar blundered off balance through the iron-strapped door.

  A forest clansman Mearn did not recognize caught the spellbinder’s panting bulk up short. No ninny for strength, to outmuscle that load, the creature’s quick reflex recovered.

  ‘Kyrialt!’ gasped Dakar. ‘Where’s his Grace?’

  The edgy young liegeman forbore to answer. Distraught as Sidir to be boxed by stonewalls, he clung to his poise as if drowning. His wary grip clenched to his sheathed sword, while his glacial stare fixed in challenge past the floundering spellbinder’s shoulder.

  Storm-lit in the doorway, the leaner arrival spoke fast. ‘Mearn s’Brydion, brother to the reigning duke. Should I know you?’

  ‘As a son of s’Taleyn, sworn to Rathain’s crown service,’ Kyrialt responded with correct apology. He extended his freed hand and offered the wrist clasp for amity. He did not lack manners: the Sorcerer’s conjury that brought him from Selkwood had upended proper diplomacy.

  As the fox would size up the dog caught in its territory, Mearn acknowledged that caustic embarrassment. ‘Your prince isn’t known to stand upon ceremony.’ When the clansman’s rapt guard was not bluffed into lowering, he added, ‘Twice before this, his Grace crashed through our gates. He came in disguise as a mountebank. Should I expect the third pass to be different?’

  ‘He’s not in disguise, this time,’ Kyrialt declared, cheerful. ‘There’s your fair warning, if you plan to walk in without pressing a host’s claim against royal rank.’

  Mearn showed his teeth in spontaneous approval, then unveiled all his knives as he shed his wet cloak. ‘One doesn’t wrest the advantage from your Teir’s’Ffalenn on the limping excuse of propriety.’

  ‘Well, the predator’s rip for the vitals won’t work.’ Still amused, masking laughter, Kyrialt gave ground and permitted free passage. ‘The prince is quite testily blooded, already. My wife Glendien’s nipped in ahead of you.’

  Dakar found his breath. His roaring disapproval all but shocked cracks in Paravian masonry.

  While Mearn stared, intrigued, Shand’s young liegeman endured being reviled as a frivolous idiot in epithets, piled one on top of the next.

  Kyrialt’s humour outlasted the tirade. ‘I’ve come as my father’s gift, done for clan honour,’ he interjected through the first pause. ‘Glendien’s here by the whim of Davien. Without her, the Sorcerer refused to grant passage, and even your prince doesn’t argue with the Betrayer.’

  ‘More the fool he!’ Dakar snapped, his eyes bloodshot. Chin out-thrust and dripping beard kinked into ringlets, he ploughed on towards the stairwell. Anxiety drove him. At first hand, he would gauge whether damaging scars still unstrung Arithon’s subtle aura, and whether the dread rites of necromancers had unbalanced him, since Etarra.

  Mearn launched after, a snap to his tread like the weasel set loose in a chicken-coop.

  The siege restricted the usage of fuel. No oil-lamps burned on the upstairs landing. Dimness shrouded the chamber beyond, presently burnished by the hectic glow thrown off a pot of live coals: the enterprising enchantress had filched a brazier from the citadel’s grumpy apothecary. Not for her own comfort: Elaira had set up a still-room. A glass boiler burbled on a squat tripod, heating a mash of crushed kelp.

  The daunting reek of fresh iodine met the arrivals crowding the threshold. ‘We haven’t got cots, yet, to house the infirm,’ Dakar huffed in humiliation.

  Mearn, just behind, was scarcely prepared for the sweeping change imposed on the guest-quarters.

  The once-naked stonewalls held a bright weaving from Narms, and the floor, a pretty, fringed carpet: loans from Dame Dawr, in antique good taste, and matched to the scarlet bed coverlet. The bronze tub, with its lion’s head ring handles, currently soaked rags for bandages in a bleaching mixture of lye. The weapons rack had been commandeered to dry herbs, as well as the towel stand next to the wash-basin. More bundles of medicinal rootstock were strung from a line between two empty wall sconces. The armoire gaped open, jammed with bottles and packets, while the ousted clothes were piled with the linens on the sill, against the latched casement. A trestle set up in midfloor held pestles and stoppered glass jars, bees-wax for seals, and an ink-well, rested atop the rice-paper sheets used to package the powders for tinctures. Across the melange, two heads bent together, one fiery red, and the other, deep auburn, touched wi
th a chestnut highlight.

  Yet Mearn’s avid glance scoured through the deep shadows and noted the wrapped lyranthe leaned against the far bedstead. The instrument’s master sat by the hearth, unobtrusive against the brass andirons. To that slight figure, perched on a stool with tucked knees nestled into clasped hands, he observed, ‘You’ve acquired an entourage fit to outrank a blow-hard Tirans ambassador.’

  Teeth flashed in the gloom. ‘That’s presuming a bit,’ returned Arithon, smiling. ‘Talvish was discharged and sent back to your duke. Prime Selidie’s tyrannical fist rules Elaira, and Glendien curtseys for nobody’s rank, far less minds an order that won’t put a shine to whatever whim’s hooked her fancy. Right now, that’s herb simples, and before you object, we don’t plan to open an infirmary.’

  ‘You may have to!’ snapped Mearn, around Dakar’s bulk. ‘If you don’t bow to sense, you’ll have bloodshed before sunrise. Once Talvish reports, my brother will send an armed company to collect you. Your Grace!’

  ‘If you’ve come to replace them as my advance escort, I’m reasonable. You suggest we leave now?’ Arithon unlaced his linked fingers and arose.

  The movement brought him into full view, with Dakar immersed in deep mage-sight. The sweeping, bright shift in the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s aura jerked him up short with a gasp.

  Mearn, hard behind, slammed into collision. His nettled curse tangled with Dakar’s awe-struck shout, ‘Ath on earth, how did this triumph happen?’

  Elaira was smiling, tears brimming her eyes, as Arithon stepped out of shadow.

  ‘I’ll explain that part later,’ said the Prince of Rathain, also lit with exultant happiness. ‘For my botched score in the present, I’ve got to mend my relations with Duke Bransian, first.’ To Mearn’s blazing annoyance at being shut out, he admitted with shattering brevity, ‘I no longer bear the scourge of Desh-thiere’s laid curse.’