Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Sidir’s sharp work, meantime, had not left loose ends. No wounded remained to divide concentration, or conflict his affectionate loyalties. Mage-sight affirmed the shocked absence of aura: the duke’s henchmen were dead beyond salvage.

  Which left the huddled form by the casualty sprawled on the far side of the room. Where a silhouette jammed against the pooled lamplight showed Dakar, brought to his knees, with his hand clasped around the slackened fingers that had reaped the grim price of the sword. The spellbinder choked, unabashedly weeping, as Elaira sank down in support at his side.

  Sidir breathed, still. Initiate senses picked up the stammering pulse-beat, which flared static bursts through his faltering presence. From Elaira, as well, Arithon sensed the intensity of focus, as she brought her trained skills as healer to bear.

  Eyesight and hearing recorded, unasked: the leap of jerked sinew, as trauma tized muscles were thrown into spasm. Skin, wrung too white, and the cut ends of salt-and-black hair, matted with running sweat in extremity.

  The body could be made to achieve the unthinkable. Arithon closed the last stride and crouched, met by Dakar, who turned and acknowledged him.

  If pain refused speech, the spellbinder’s expression transmitted emotion, transparent. Arithon flinched, caught defenceless. All the cankered remorse from a night dell in Vastmark was written over the Mad Prophet’s streaked face.

  ‘Just like that shepherd child, taken by wyverns,’ he gasped in laid-open distress. ‘The beer I swilled in the tavern tonight was to heckle Fionn Areth into a safe stupor. Only now, when it counts? We are losing Sidir! I’ve pissed away the whole power I had, that could have been used to help ease him!’

  Arithon murmured, ‘Hush!’ At relentless need, his bard’s schooling granted at least the appearance of presence. ‘You’ve done enough. We are here, and my liege-sworn’s not crossed, yet.’

  But already Elaira’s taut features showed pity. Her early prognosis was grim.

  Sidir lay on his side. Talvish’s hand had cut back his clothes when there had been hope of a field-dressing. The blade struck through his bared chest canted right: no heart damage, but a grievous lung wound. His bleeding frothed pink with let fluid.

  ‘I’cuelan am-jiask edael i’tier, Sidir,’ the Teir’s’Ffalenn said, his Paravian phrased with inconsolable quiet, translated, ‘your feal prince attends you.’

  The liegeman returned no sign of response. His eyes, squeezed shut, pinched the suffering flesh to his skull, while torn tissue laboured, wrestling against inexorable fate for each separately congested breath. The battle he sustained could not last for long.

  Dakar choked off a sob. ‘I couldn’t hold him! Even to grace him with the last words he might wish to leave his three daughters.’

  ‘He’s still fighting!’ snapped Elaira.

  The adamant, clamped features, that acknowledged no comfort, proved that Sidir hoarded his dwindling strength. His silence supported a frayed concentration, in pursuit of an obstinate, brave will to live.

  Arithon swallowed, eyes wet for such courage. The hard task was his, to rise to match the man’s blistering resolve, then speak. ‘My friend, all you fought for, my hand will put right. Care absolves you of fault. You are free to release your feal burden.’

  The next shallow exhale expired, then doggedly, shuddered to inhale. The punishing struggle still would not be relinquished.

  ‘I’ent cuelan am-jiask edael ameinnt-huell i’tieri, Sidir!’ Arithon repeated, this time phrased in the emphatic form that claimed the fullest promise of responsibility. ‘What can be done, shall be.’ Rathain’s prince unsheathed his black sword. Blade laid at his feet, he also unlaced the fleece cover from his lyranthe. ‘Elaira?’

  Her delicate touch traced across Sidir’s breast, completing her rapid assessment. ‘The windpipe’s deviated too far to the left.’ A dire sign, that confirmed chilling failure: Sidir’s right lung was already filled, and the pierced chest wall, collapsing. ‘We can’t pull the sword, either,’ Elaira despaired. ‘He’s bleeding to death. The gush as the steel’s drawn will drain him, and flood the drowned airway much faster.’

  ‘Cautery’s needed,’ Arithon agreed, sorely tried, that Sidir was clanborn, and too natively fluent to mask the grotesque exchange behind ancient language. ‘The blade stays in place, then. What do you suggest?’

  She hesitated only a moment, tough lady. Then, ‘Ath above! We’ve no time to induce gentle measures. No matter how badly Sidir wants to live, his vigor is ebbing. I’m no adept, with the transcendent power of a sacred grove to tap through! This recall is far outside of my means, except through the invasive use of the knowledge derived from the Koriathain.’

  Arithon held her terrified eyes with his own. ‘Imposed measures are not in violation if they are used by informed, free consent.’ Hammered steady, even under the storm of his human uncertainty, he added, ‘You’ve done this before! Dakar is here also, as a Fellowship initiate, in step with that open practice.’

  Elaira spared no sideward glance for the spellbinder’s horrified consternation. Tuned into relentless rapport with a suffering that abjured an eased course of release, she curbed doubt. To argue for limits admitted despair, which diminished all effort to nothing.

  ‘A transduction sigil can be made to flash-burn enspelled heat through the metal,’ she allowed, though the prospect was frightening. ‘But we can’t blunt the senses under narcotic herbs. Already, Sidir’s too weakened.’ The pain would be dreadful, a shock to speed certain death. Elaira shivered. Pinched with distress, she scrubbed fouled hands on her shift and found dauntless courage to finish. ‘If we stem the slashed veins, the lung must be drained, and depending on how bad the damage inside, perhaps even forced to regenerate.’

  Before she broke under Sidir’s demand, Arithon broached the rest for her. ‘Then we shall have to halter the living spirit, or he won’t survive the harsh course of the surgery.’

  Dakar recoiled. ‘Ath’s own mercy, I can’t!’ The dread stared him through: a misery ingrained by the hideous failure, as his resource fell short for the mauled girl in Vastmark. Now, sick with drink and undone by the back-lash from a prescient trance, he lacked his basic faculties. ‘Don’t invite the disaster! I won’t watch Sidir’s life slip through my inept hands! Not even for you will I try this!’

  Arithon bowed his head over his gleaming lyranthe, now unwrapped and braced upright. ‘I quite understand.’ While Elaira ransacked her satchel for the requisite remedies, he drew up a stool, struck a note, and bent to his tuning.

  From flushed rejection, Dakar drained white. ‘No. Your Grace, no!’ Through the sliding, sweet pitch, ruled fair by the tuning peg, and the ghastly saw of Sidir’s ripped chest, the Mad Prophet shouted, ‘Past question, Arithon, you can’t dare to link in consenting rapport with a Koriani enchantress! If Elaira invokes her order’s knowledge for you, you’ll be bound to Prime Selidie’s cause. Dharkaron Avenge and butcher my carcass, before I let you be compromised by a Matriarch’s oath of debt!’

  ‘But I’m not doing this for Arithon!’ Elaira cracked, cross. ‘The healing is Sidir’s, underwritten for his sake!’

  Dakar’s taut face cleared. ‘Ah, clever lady!’ For the admissible terms of a feal obligation enabled the crown’s opening. As Prince of Rathain, under charter law, Arithon was sworn to protect a kingdom subject’s born right to freedom; which legality also carried the Fellowship’s charge, should Selidie outstep her limits.

  Stunned cautious, Dakar warned, ‘You won’t like what befalls if I’m called to defend in the name of the Sorcerer who trained me.’ The stakes were unforgiving: for Arithon to rely on a formal intercession, asked under his sanction to rule, the honourable course of reciprocity would be demanded in turn by the Fellowship. His Grace would bend his knee: not to the Prime Matriarch, but to the imposed weight of his ancestral inheritance.

  Now, Elaira bristled. ‘I will let nobody’s talent act through me! Not if Arithon’s to be hounded to embrace a coronation by exp
ediency!’

  ‘Peace, beloved!’ The appeal broke dissension, cut by the unbearable, pure tone as the treble string sang in trued pitch. ‘Sidir’s cause won’t languish. I have more than one title on which to lay claim to a clear line of authority.’

  Dakar glared, slack-jawed. ‘You would challenge the Prime Matriarch as Athera’s Masterbard?’

  ‘And on my own resource!’ Arithon avowed. ‘Sidir is my friend. He is Jieret’s appointed replacement for Caolle, to grant Jeynsa the paternal guidance she needs to mature. My debt is personal, and deep enough, that if I must, I’ll give all in my power to save him.’

  Amid the anguished pause, loud with clinking glass, and the sharp reek of tincture of iodine, Elaira prepared her honed instruments. At relentless speed, she set her boundaries. Yet unlike the past surgery rendered in Merior, she did not proceed in presumption, as she selected the herbals for healing. Her sojourn in Ath’s hostel corrected such arrogance. Poised in tender humility, she now sounded out the thread of consciousness underpinning each plant. Then, under intent to mend tissue in partnership with Sidir’s desire, she asked for participation.

  Even Dakar must acknowledge that pause for alignment in accord with the Major Balance. No matter how urgent her need, Elaira suspended opinion. She had to sense whether the channel would open, and grace her willed use with permission. Only then could she engage the Koriani sigils of power that heightened remedial efficacy.

  Attuned to the peace she required to concentrate, Arithon gentled his stiff ultimatum. ‘On all counts, Dakar, you hold my consent. You will use that authority, and without restriction, should my innate talent as musician fail to stay the full course.’

  ‘Impose your acceptance of Rathain’s sovereign duty through my ties to the Fellowship?’ Dakar crossed his arms, desperate to quell his anguished heart, as in searing language, he qualified, ‘Allow this, by force, in a state of extremity? Beware what you say, prince! The blood oath you gave over to Asandir included no term of release! You know I must hold you to your sworn promise, not to permit you to fall into jeopardy!’

  ‘I have no intention of letting things come to that.’ Under the sputtering flare of the lamp, as Elaira adjusted the wick, a plucked shower of notes stabbed out in reproof. ‘Trust me, I beg you,’ Arithon pleaded. ‘I protected Feylind. Salvaged the Evenstar.’

  ‘And nearly lost all you were to the Kralovir cult at Etarra!’ Dread and rancour laid bare, Dakar lashed out. ‘Without trusting me then, or sharing your strategy beforehand, how dare you rely on me now?’

  ‘I will rise to this!’ Arithon stated, determined. ‘Stand by me, or leave. I won’t shirk the attempt.’

  Dakar lost all words. While a dying friend’s fingers chilled in his clasp, and the ugly, wet suck of drawn air stretched the seconds, necessity demanded: Sidir’s margin for rescue diminished, each moment they wasted in argument.

  No more could be done, except to shoulder the adamant watch from the side-lines.

  Arithon phrased a final request as Dakar stirred to capitulate. ‘Please lace Sidir’s hand through Alithiel’s grip. If the fight we enact is for a just cause, the sword’s enchantment could be moved to speak for him.’

  With consummate speed, then, events moved apace. The bard sounded a ringing chord that tested the pitch of his instrument. Elaira knelt, chalk in hand, poised to allow the beguiling draw of his music to amplify her healer’s trance. Within the stilled chamber, reeking of death, and still roiled by the discharge of violence, the Prince of Rathain, acting as Masterbard, addressed his prostrate liegeman. ‘Can you trust, Sidir?’

  Wracked in spasms, near emptied of blood, the Companion opened his tortured eyes.

  Arithon’s voice all but faltered. ‘No! Don’t speak! Your right of free choice to survive is acknowledged. If the channel for your consent has been made, let me do the work. I will find it.’

  He gripped his fine instrument. Side-tracked the clamour of agonized uncertainty, tipped his dark head, and listened with his whole being. Then his hands moved. Touched on metal and wood, that the empathic whisper to forge vital sound might be wedded with fretboard and string. Now, mortal flesh dared not slip from high mastery. Fear and anxiety must have no voice, lest he mar the balance that danced between life and loss.

  Arithon opened the phrase for the summoning. Delicate, seeking, he ran the first skein of harmony: sought the bold measures that accessed the keys to the human soul. In rhythm and line, made captive through inspired harmonics, he founded the melody that would play for Sidir his Name.

  Partnered with him, entrained to his talent, Elaira inscribed the exacting ciphers for the spelled circle: the matrix, once done for a fisherman in Merior, that would come to shelter the unshielded spirit. Only this time, the consummate weave of meshed talents trod more than the razor’s edge of mortality. Initiate skill must also thread the unerring path: between Prime Selidie’s plot to ensnare Arithon, and the Fellowship Sorcerers’ need to preserve Torbrand’s irreplaceable crown lineage.

  One narrow advantage altered the scales: Arithon’s reclaimed mage-sense let him perceive with cleared sight as the ephemeral gold light spun by his notes raised the shimmering construct between them. That delicate framework acknowledged true worth, forming the haven to draw a living awareness clear of its stricken flesh.

  Should the bard’s gift withstand the arduous course, the enchantress must enact, without flaw, the contrary sigils that structured a perilous healing. No longer hampered by Sidir’s debilitated pain, with her refigured art uplifted on the wings of the Masterbard’s melody, Elaira might stem an ebbing tide long enough to stay the turn of Fate’s Wheel.

  And if not, if this sinking liegeman reached the end to his striving, the courage must be there, no matter the grief, to play onward and loosen the ties for his passage beyond the veil.

  Late Autumn 5671

  Reversal

  A novice initiate had flirted with one of the Alliance wounded, taken in by Koriathain for healing. Her rash action upset every established activity within the sisterhood’s field encampment. Even on distant worlds whose histories predated Athera’s compact, the order always had jealously guarded the range of its oathsworn prerogatives. Discipline fell with punitive speed.

  The Prime Matriarch called the session of inquiry, despite the late hour’s inconvenience. Lirenda’s slaved presence was retained for the demeaning service of verifying the actions of the accused, while the formal pavilion was cleared straightaway. By the time the displaced peeresses scuttled out, bearing heaped armloads of books, Prime Selidie sat enthroned in her chair of state, her delicate shoulders regaled in the purple mantle and scarlet-edged robes of high office. No servant came to build up the fire, though lights for reading still burned in the incense-soaked air. The disgraced initiate was kept standing, bolt upright and trembling with fright as she realized her coming interrogation would be impelled through the matrix of a major focus crystal: a gruelling review that entrained thought and mind, and forced past event into present recall. Such intimate analysis was no choice of the subject’s, but a forced subjugation of character, made under the absolute terms of the Prime’s claim to oath-bound obedience.

  The Skyron aquamarine was unveiled for the task, frigidly blue as faceted ice, and as unpleasant to handle; the same jewel, once used to query Elaira, when she had been exposed for her budding attachment to Arithon s’Ffalenn. Then, as now, Lirenda clasped the enabled stone between her bare hands. The waves of dire cold raised by its active field punched her skin into gooseflesh and needled her nerves.

  That whip-lash discomfort concerned her far less than her nettled aristocrat’s pride: unlike the past trial that harrowed Elaira, this testing was not conducted under the ritual formality reserved for oathbreaking. The Matriarch administered the questions herself. Lirenda was not honoured as the titled Inquisitor. No more the cosseted, superior favourite, groomed to inherit prime power, she was not charged to wield the tuned matrix directly. Instead, her person was fused
into the link, made to serve as both reed and sounding-board for the Prime’s stripping analysis.

  As bearer, not master, Lirenda suffered the probe of each question, inducted through crystal. While the miscreant subject sweated under the throes of involun tary reliving, Lirenda also expressed the experience, down to gut-level reaction. Each sordid response became as her own, drawn from the intransigent girl. Tonight’s examination carried no heady rush of dominant power, no private thrill of excitement. Instead, the loss of autonomy remade the ordeal into raw degradation.

  No escape existed. The teasing, lustful affray in the hospice tent sprang out of concupiscence. Sickened to trembling, Lirenda suffered the wrenching brunt: an exchange nothing like the lyric affair of the heart that had seeded Elaira’s rebellious affection. This raging obsession for sex overturned her ordered mind and rampaged through her virgin’s senses. She quickened, then quivered, inflamed by desire, until she felt engorged and sullied.

  The process bore on, unending, while Selidie conducted her methodical inquiry. ‘And how did you touch him?’

  A flood of tactile sensation became her heated hands, eagerly fondling forbidden flesh underneath a bed-sheet. The trapped spirit engaged as the proxy witness shivered in mute protest under the relentless onslaught.

  ‘Hold!’ The sudden command shattered the entrainment, channelled from the subjugated novice. Hands clenched to the Skyron crystal by reflex, Lirenda reeled, whip-lashed back into the severed awareness of her chill seat in the pavilion, with its scent of stale incense ribboned across the candle-lit dais and cavernous gloom.

  Against that stilled back-drop came movement and noise: a senior enchant ress had dared to enter and risk interruption. While the released novice swayed upon buckling knees, the cloaked arrival curtseyed in rushed obeisance and delivered her breathless report.

  ‘My Prime, as your will commands. The enchantress posted on lane watch has detected the signature energy evoked by our order’s conjury. The signal is the one you predicted, arisen from inside the s’Brydion citadel.’