Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The chancellor regarded his knuckles, distressed, while Liesse pressed her ringed hands to her lips, quick enough to stifle her outcry as the poised guardsman was beckoned to move. Fast as the whirlwind spun out of control, past a line that had long since been crossed, the man-at-arms laid the chill edge of his blade against the tendons of the Teiren’s’Valerient’s other, strapped wrist.

  ‘Sign your name, Jeynsa!’ Overpowering within the stifling, shut room, Bransian bored in, beyond mercy. ‘Or find out how dying can be made to hurt. Your corpse can as easily fall with Sidir’s, cashiered as evidence to set your prince under mandate. Alive or not, you will serve as my proof that Rathain’s delegation spurned guest oath and turned weapons against us.’

  ‘Where are your witnesses?’ the chancellor pressed. ‘You can’t escape harm, except by your signature. After all, Sidir’s body will be found in your chamber, with the slaughter of three liveried guardsmen. Your dagger, I’m told, left a crippling stroke. The man with your blood on his blade will be cleared upon grounds that you resisted his lawful arrest.’

  ‘Then be my witness, now!’ Jeynsa seized the pen. She hooked the cut-glass well of ink that awaited beside the draughted parchment. Fear spoiled her fierceness. But never her nerve, that had been her sire’s and grandsire’s before her, as she dipped the quill nib. ‘Your methods are dirty,’ she pronounced in rife scorn. ‘Nastier than anything I’ve ever seen from the slinking ranks of town head-hunters.’

  Quaking and pale, she met the eyes of the duchess, but found Liesse turned beyond sane appeal and hardened to stone by weak character.

  ‘This, for Sidir’s memory? I should be ashamed.’ Jeynsa snapped the poised quill, then back-handed the uncorked ink-well.

  The flung contents flooded the offending document. Spatters sullied Alestron’s bull blazon, on the breast of the duke’s scarlet surcoat.

  Bransian roared. His swordsman lifted his weapon and swung. Jeynsa snatched the split second. As the blade was upraised, she rammed her freed hand to the table edge and shoved with all of her panicked strength. The oak chair overbalanced, and toppled. Her strapped frame was borne over backwards. The heavy, carved finials clouted into the guardsman, who stumbled, his flailing sword stroke gone wild. The blade hissed downwards, sliced through her trousers and hose, and bit into her calf.

  Jolted by terror, Jeynsa expected to die. Trussed without recourse, slammed breathless and bleeding, she squeezed her eyes shut on a wheeling view of the ceiling. The trampling thud of rushed boots around her merged with someone’s shrill shout. Then the door-panel crashed open. More armoured bodies poured in from the outside corridor. The floor-boards under the upset chair pounded and shook to the melee.

  ‘I’ve found them!’ pealed a male voice in fierce triumph.

  Another sword, drawn above her, belled against steel, near enough that Jeynsa cringed from the violent eddy of air. An edged weapon nipped the cuff of her boot, struck off someone’s whining parry. Her courage snapped. She sobbed outright, while somebody’s fists seized her chair with sharp force, and hurled her helpless frame upright.

  ‘We have you safe!’ said Talvish’s voice, by her ear. He bundled her face against his rough mantle, drew his knife, and bent to slice through her trouser cuff. ‘Mearn and Sevrand are both here,’ he explained, as his competent grasp jerked her gashed clothing away, and stanched the red gush of her leg wound. ‘They’ve brought the tower guard, who are lawful. Rest assured. You won’t limp once you’ve healed, and criminal charges are already filed. Though Alestron’s justiciar cursed to be served in his bed, you need do no more than hang on long enough to deliver your testimony concerning what happened last night in your chamber.’

  Jeynsa found she had no strength to move. Despite Talvish’s solid assurance, binding up her fresh injury, she shivered with traumatized terror. ‘You risk being discredited!’ She had seen the rabid wolf in Duke Bransian’s eyes, that abjured every decency.

  ‘Hush!’ Talvish urged, still involved with the field dressing.

  As he spoke, trying to quiet her, Jeynsa shouted him down. ‘The duke wanted my signature to condemn Sidir as a murderer and call in the debt to the Crown of Rathain!’ The muffling folds of the officer’s cloak obscured her frantic words. She struggled, then hammered at Talvish’s shoulder until he straightened to listen.

  Still kneeling, his blond head level with hers, he ended her wildcat fit by gripping her forearms. ‘Jeynsa!’ Her flooded eyes met his steady gaze, until she had to acknowledge: he had heard the grim worst. Still, the core of his calm stayed unbroken.

  As she subsided, shuddering, Talvish unleashed his sly smile. ‘My brave lady, attend to Mearn!’

  In fact, the shouting across the jostled table raised a noise to roust the lost dead out of Sithaer. While Liesse wept, appalled, and the chancellor hunched his stiff neck in his high, sable collar, Bransian’s blustering rage lost wind before stone-walled dismay.

  Which left Mearn, spitting mad, and still speaking. Backed by Sevrand, and a mailed wall of men-at-arms taken from watch off the battlements, the youngest s’Brydion sibling hurled down a thrown gauntlet of accusations. ‘But we have living testament. Worse, you’re outfaced by a clear line of appeal that can be made to extend back to Althain Tower. Dakar’s Sighted talent saw all of what happened, when your henchmen took orders for an illegal assault against Jeynsa.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Bransian roared, cornered. ‘At the word of a drunk, you’d lie down for the wheels of Dharkaron’s Black Chariot? Spit your guts on a pike for an egg-sucking dandy! You can’t toy with the madness of bringing this matter before the Fellowship Sorcerers!’

  Mearn’s tirade cut through. ‘Don’t play the excuse, that Sethvir is preoccupied! Enough power resides here to roast your plucked goose, arse down on the fires of calumny! Based on Dakar’s vision, Talvish sent summons to Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, who moved at speed and brought in Elaira.’ Mearn’s blistering triumph held no joy at all, as he levelled the scathing last line. ‘Sidir has survived!’

  At Jeynsa’s gasp of astonished disbelief, the youngest of Dawr’s grandsons threw her a curt nod, then drove on with his nailing account.

  ‘The Companion was recovered through an act of grand conjury, performed by trained witnesses, one of them Athera’s Masterbard! Three talents observed the Paravian wards, and the black sword, Alithiel, rise and wake for the wronged liegeman’s healing. They bear a just cause. Beyond any poisonous shadow of doubt, you’ve got no leg left to stand on. I have informed your herald. Call a proper assize, brother! Expose our family’s shame to the public’s review and risk dividing our ranks in a siege! Or else do what’s best for the rule of Alestron. Stand forward to answer Prince Arithon’s demand for a closed hearing at noon. Then beg on your knees that your injury to the Teiren’s’Valerient doesn’t inflame him past hope of granting a settlement in private!’

  The duke sat for the royal inquiry, sullen with hobbled rage for the twist that had reined in his scheme by state process. Like the ox stung by the goad in the flank, he bent to Liesse’s insistence and changed his ink-splattered surcoat. Clean, but not cowed, he convened the assembly in the small ward-room, used by the elite troop of the citadel guard. The narrow space with its thin lancet windows and thick walls gave excuse to weed down the attendance.

  Mearn and Sevrand were present. Armed and in family colours, they flanked the central chair, prepared in the unwanted event they might be called on to adjudicate. Liesse appeared also, too sharp-eyed for humility, her seat at the right hand of the chancellor. That prim stick was tasked with the pen to record, in place of the scribe nobody wished to indoctrinate. The captain of the tower watch held the threshold, with his company arrived in formation outside.

  Past question, the mood at the dais was grim, an atmosphere drenched in pent peril and sweat, thick enough to cut with a cleaver.

  Against that cranked silence, which abjured all apology, Prince Arithon arrived on the punctual stroke of the hour. H
e came formally clad in the green, silver, and black of Rathain, the rich doublet from Dame Dawr a sharp contrast with the forest scout’s leathers worn for the forced audience, the day prior. A glitter of storm-scud and lightning overtop, the black mantle from Davien the Betrayer draped over his Grace’s trim shoulders. He did not bring Dakar. Though he was entitled to a Fellowship presence, none but Sidir attended him. Not Jeynsa, whose complaint had already been made. Nor Elaira, whose split loyalty to the sisterhood might become misconstrued as a threat.

  As crown prince to subjects who were the wronged parties, Rathain held the right to bear arms; could have demanded of Alestron’s own captains an honour guard to vouchsafe his person.

  Arithon brought only the clothes on his body. Alithiel’s black hilt did not hang at his side. The clan Companion’s blades at his back were his sole, inadequate protection: a fact still the subject of singeing contention, by the measure of Sidir’s fixed frown.

  Each footfall a shout in the inimical quiet, Arithon approached the dais. He stopped. His right-hand liegeman stayed a half step behind. For an ugly, drawn second, he did nothing at all. Only acknowledged Mearn’s impassive quiet, and Sevrand’s clamped jaw, and Duke Bransian’s vicious, braced carriage, which suggested a mouth clipped shut with a staple just in case the shade of a Sorcerer saw fit to attend his ignominy.

  Yet Arithon had entrained no higher authority. Instead of a ringing list of accusations, he probed, gently quiet, ‘What did you want?’

  The question fell with such lack of censure that Liesse masked her face with ringed hands. Before her silenced sobbing, the chancellor shut his eyes and looked sick to his soul. Most stunned of all, Duke Bransian sat tongue-tied. His huge hands clenched, empty, offered no fight against which to rail and bluster.

  Arithon sighed. Moved. Drew out a rolled parchment carried tucked underneath his silk sleeve. ‘No one needs to make statements. Or review the discomfort of what’s already done. Everything that could have been said is in writing, set under a truth seal by Dakar, in standing as Asandir’s apprentice.’ The document in hand was placed on the table, where it sat untouched as a coiled snake.

  ‘Read it, or burn it,’ said the Prince of Rathain. ‘Just say what s’Brydion wished to accomplish and let proceedings begin there.’

  ‘You would overlook double-cross?’ Mearn ventured, shocked.

  Beside him, Sevrand sat quartz-white and poleaxed. Liesse swayed, faint. The chancellor braced her, while Bransian hunched as though forced to chew rocks, without finesse for words past drawn weapons.

  ‘My lord Duke,’ the chancellor implored, bent sidewards for an urgent whisper. ‘Beware of clever tricks! Take extreme care how you answer!’

  The outburst caused Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn to raise his eyebrows with patent impatience. ‘By all means, look yourself in the eye!’ he rebuked. ‘I will not stand here for the counsel of clerks!’ Then, to Bransian, with that steely tone refined to silk, ‘You can’t speak for your motives in straightforward language, or acknowledge the fear in your heart?’

  Another step brought Arithon up to the dais. ‘Then let me try.’ Still, he unleashed no reviling outrage. ‘I would understand, of all men living,’ he dared to suggest. ‘If you thought a few lives could buy the opening to spare many thousands of innocents, that was the same ugly premise I used, when my half-brother’s war host invaded, at Vastmark. I was wrong, then. Just how wrong, to my sorrow, I lived to find out. May you never bear that harsh pain of regret. Language fails in the description.’

  As Liesse broke down, weeping, Arithon resumed with spare courtesy. ‘Three of your most loyal guardsmen lie dead. Two of Rathain’s subjects suffered injury for the same cause, which you thought a justifiable price to end Alestron’s deadlocked predicament. Five hale defenders struck down, and for naught! I would have no more. Here, before witnesses, I concede once again. I pledge the help that you already had to break off this siege and disband the Alliance campaign at your walls.’

  Bransian stirred. Alestron’s bull blazon glittered to his heaved breath, and his brows bunched into a frown of bafflement. ‘Damn your gall, prince! You said you would not fight to kill.’

  ‘I fight to win lives,’ Arithon corrected. Masterbard, sorcerer, his crisp diction crackled against living bone, and echoed off polished stonewalls. ‘Here are my terms! I will brook no appeal, or this sordid case will be made public to revoke your vested authority!’

  Before the stunned chancellor could wield his pen, the list emerged like a shot salvo. ‘Talvish’s service now belongs to Rathain. He may accept your orders. Even fight for your cause. But for all that he does, he will answer to me, and follow my lead when I ask for him. Consider him free of your feal obligation, though the sensible choice should allow him to keep his captaincy while the citadel’s besieged. For your guardsman, whose weapon struck my liegeman down, and whose blade was raised to harm Jeynsa, this difference: his oath-bound loyalty stays with Alestron! But his sword-arm and fighting strength are owed to Sidir, until the hour the Teiren’s’Valerient is delivered safe and sound to her family in Halwythwood!’

  No one moved through the moment, as Rathain’s prince turned on his heel and walked out, trailed by his forestborn clansman.

  The thunder-clap of relief that surged through the chamber dropped Liesse into Bransian’s consuming embrace. The chancellor was reduced to a quivering wreck, with Mearn left too thoughtfully silent.

  ‘That man’s beyond dangerous,’ Sevrand declared, shaken. Draped limp in his chair, he regarded his slim cousin, who had forced through the honourable settlement just rendered with such frightening lack of hard argument. ‘We could live to regret. I hope you know what you’re doing, leaving that creature loose in our midst.’

  Mearn stood up and stretched. ‘Does anyone presume, where that spirit’s concerned?’ He should have looked kicked to a pulp as the rest, except for the manic, gambler’s gleam veiled in his half-lidded eyes. ‘I wouldn’t care to be standing in Lysaer’s gilded boots,’ he declared with scorching irony. ‘Or be numbered among his Grace of Rathain’s declared enemies. We are, one might say, in the fold with the blessed. Though I doubt that Sidir will be lenient with the wretch who ran a sword’s length of cold steel through his chest.’

  Late Autumn 5671

  Nightmare

  The day arrived, foreseen and long dreaded by the coterie of Ath’s adepts who attended the Warden at Althain Tower: Sethvir had weakened too far to arise. He lay on his cot like a weather-worn effigy carved out of alabaster. No breathing flesh should lie so still. Shrunken and calm, his form never moved, not a muscle twitch or a tremor. The slack knuckles on the scarlet blanket seemed too brittle to have wielded the pen that recorded five centuries of Athera’s history in gracefully miniature script.

  He would not waken, now. The vast reach of the Sorcerer’s aura had ebbed to a cobweb, too frail for the stabilizing infusions that once were arranged, using crystal. The way of Ath’s Brotherhood forbade intervention. Where the world’s weave was interconnected, they could not act in direct influence: and Sethvir owned the Paravian’s gift of the earth-sense, a power that ranged beyond their learned auspices. While Luhaine prowled in and out, his ghost presence fraught with the Fellowship’s lapsed charge of burdens, the adepts kept vigil at the Warden’s side.

  Day and night, their gentle hands husbanded the waning flicker of life.

  Amid tomb-like quiet that was not yet death, one candle was always kept burning. The open casement let in the shine of stars and moon, and today, cold blue sky and a flood of white sunlight. A capricious breeze teased at the wool-blanket, and combed through Sethvir’s beard and hair, cascading over the pillow. Five adepts minded his presence that noon: one at right and left side, and another pair at head and feet. The last was seated off to the side, tasked with tracking the subtle, wandering course of the Sorcerer’s beleaguered spirit.

  For Sethvir’s inner mind still rode the flux tides that mapped all event on Athera. Hour upon exha
ustive hour, he clung yet to the duty left in his care since the last centaur guardian’s departure. Paravian survival could not be relinquished. The Sorcerer fought on without let-up. Dying, he still grappled to stem the leaks in three damaged grimwards. The ending approached. Breathing flesh proved too fallible. Stark will could not counter his dwindling strength, or stem the leaching forces that brought dissolution. While his body became reduced to a husk, the purposeful course of his dreams held the last, fading splendour of his vitality.

  Unclothed thought often found the Sorcerer seated in a meadow of young grass, beside a rushing spring stream. While yellow pollen sifted over his frame, his bare feet would be plonked in the swift, running water, and his chin rested on the crossed arms propped upon his tucked knees. Othertimes, he travelled in giant’s strides over ice-capped peaks, or wandered as a wisp on the wind’s vagrant currents, across skyscapes of towering clouds where sunbeams sliced gold across the cold vault of the atmosphere.

  The adept stationed as listener mapped each of Sethvir’s restless journeys: over polar ice-cap, and seething volcanic vent, and once, through the indigo deeps where fish with serrated teeth devoured teeming prey in the tropical sea.

  Then shrinking attrition claimed its harsh toll. The inner thrust of Sethvir’s journeys slowed down and ceased. The meadow became the recurrent meeting-place where outside spirits held visitation. In that shimmering realm, that was nowhere and everywhere, Luhaine often shared information, or exchanged strained conversations that hobbled his argumentative lecturing.

  Today, another turn of ill news had brought Kharadmon from his guard on the star wards. At his call, Sethvir’s presence was not in the accustomed place, skipping stones for the leaping trout. Instead, an adept of Ath’s Brotherhood strode across the seamed scar that once had channelled the freshwater brook. His figure shimmered too brilliantly white in a dreamscape that no longer sang of renewal. Amid grass that had burned to a sun-scorched brown, his arrival was scarcely needed to confirm the desperate turn for the worse.