Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  To that purpose, the sisterhood’s resource must juggle each pawn for the endgame. Prime Selidie beckoned the seeress assigned to keep watch on Elaira. ‘I must know. Has the initiate snapped under pressure and tried to forewarn the Prince of Rathain?’

  The senior came forward, an upright traditional swathed in rustling silk. Her careful step bespoke the frailty bestowed by longevity bindings, and the austere character that tightened her wrinkled lips. ‘Matriarch, by your will, I have seen. Elaira remains in the shoreside watch turret. As you hoped, the rambunctious charge of the storm concealed our cast line of disruption. We’ve successfully foiled her primary talent. When her working through water failed to flag Dakar’s attention within the citadel, she deepened her trance and tried to reach Arithon s’Ffalenn by linked empathy. That channel lies past our means to befoul, however, that barrier posed us no set-back.’

  ‘Elaborate!’ interrupted the Koriani Prime, her clawed fingers twitching. ‘Was the song of the Paravian sword the factor that bought interference?’

  The prim seeress curtseyed. ‘Matriarch, yes. Elaira’s empathic call was overwhelmed by the cascading flow of harmonics. She can’t surmount the obstruction at distance. The male partner’s entrained focus must stay immaculate. Through her efforts, we’ve found that Arithon’s being sustains the conduit for the grand conjury. Even a master initiate’s sensitivity cannot pierce through the veils of Alithiel’s enchantment.’

  Prime Selidie tucked her maimed limbs under her purple mantle. Satisfaction warmed her, bone deep. Despite the day’s toll of surprise damages, she had recouped the footing to seize the high ground. At long last, the string of reverses unfolded in line with her careful plan: her quarry moved in lock-step towards his doom. Compassion incarnate, Arithon would stay on course with supreme endurance. Since the half-brother’s following fed upon fear and the impetus of their fixed hatred, the sword’s powers were pitched to dissolve the entanglements driving a curse-driven siege. To ensure Jeynsa’s safety, and seed hope for a peace that might spare Alestron’s clan sovereignty, Rathain’s prince must extend his prodigious reserves until talent and strength were played out.

  ‘How long before the tide changes to flood?’ Prime Selidie asked the hovering subordinate.

  ‘Two hours past noon.’ The ancient fluttered a dismissive hand. ‘The young captain at the harbour-side beacon can’t launch a boat to try crossing before then, though he’s grasped the stakes that spur Elaira. Once the current’s in favour, his men will have orders to row her across to the Sea Gate.’

  ‘Straight into my net!’ the Prime whispered, elated. The glittering strand that perfected her snare required that Elaira should spurn the sisterhood’s interests. Love must keep her bound to Arithon’s side. That irresistible, fatal attraction would tie his will at the citadel’s fall, and finally close the Koriani fist on the reins of his destiny.

  While Selidie excused the older seeress to resume her vigilant post, movement at the pavilion’s entry presaged another disturbance. A sister broke protocol and shoved in without leave, barging over two protesting fourth-rank peeresses. Breathless, she argued that her breaking news carried imperative urgency.

  ‘Silence!’ snapped Selidie.

  The uproar cut off. Both indignant seniors stifled their rebuke. ‘Let me weigh the gravity of the offence,’ the Prime said. ‘If, in fact, this mannerless claim proves to be a spurious impertinence!’

  The flushed miscreant curtseyed, knee bent to the floor in relief. ‘Matriarch, your will be done, this is no insignificant development.’

  ‘Come here, girl. Speak up!’ Selidie measured the petitioner’s approach, not forgiving or lenient. ‘You’re the initiate assigned to review the inbound dispatch from our western lane watch? Then I gather the storm’s subsided enough to allow a transmission that’s not routine.’

  ‘Yes, Matriarch.’ Beneath the high dais, placed under the lofty vantage of the Prime’s chair, the second-rank seeress was properly fearful. Her water-stained hem betrayed trembling knees; her clenched fingers, rapt dread and excitement. ‘Forgive my presumption! But this news is momentous. The Fellowship Sorcerers have dared to flout history, and wakened the might of a dragon.’

  ‘Ah!’ Selidie barely stifled her triumphant shout. ‘When have the mighty been so sorely tried?’ Her smile showed teeth. ‘Get on with your list, girl. Tell me our dragon-skull wards at Avenor have become the first drakish casualty!’

  The initiate seeress stared in blank shock. ‘Lysaer’s royal capital has been razed to the ground. No mercy was shown to the hapless inhabitants! Thousands have died. The injured and burned who survive have no shelter. More wander, lawless, sacking the hamlets, or crowding the byres and trade inns. They will face disease. Folk are desperate and starving, left with too little resource, and no store-sheds for grain, even if ships can bring relief help.’

  The bleak picture unfolded, beyond damning words: winter seas slowed the galleys. Supply would be hampered, with Havish’s ports closed off to Tysan’s chained oarsmen by crown decree. The distressed initiate fought for the com posure to finish her daunting report. ‘Though the courier’s relays are in disarray, some of our sisters already pack for emergency travel from Hanshire. They act to forestall sickness, since Lysaer’s examiner has fallen too hard on the local talent.’ Few herbalists and trained healers remained to attend such a massive number of casualties.

  Before Selidie’s calm, which displayed no shock over the horrific damages, the seeress lost courage and faltered.

  The moment hung, sharp as etched light through a crystal, until a senior bearing five red bands of rank seized charge and inquired, ‘By your leave, Matriarch? Had you foreseen this might happen? Why weren’t we warned to prepare?’

  For the ugly conjecture held power to terrify: that the disaster caused by the hatchlings’ remains had been no misfortunate accident. If Avenor had been purposefully exposed to such peril, then the wholesale destruction of Lysaer’s ruling seat had been seeded by a long-range design: a choice that harked back to Morriel Prime, the reigning Matriarch’s deceased predecessor.

  Selidie surveyed the stunned sisters at hand, from the lowly grey robes who fetched and carried as drudges, to the eldest crones in their graded red bands of seniority. Ironic, that she, as the youngest of them, should be censured by their regard. Selidie’s iron nerve never flinched. Her control showed the glacial reserve that upheld her tradition of power. Her mantle was ancient. Far older than recent tenure on Athera, her responsibilities sank tap-roots into a past that once had spanned networks of star-faring empires: cultures more vast and varied than today’s sheltered underlings had wits to imagine.

  ‘Do you think, after this, that Lysaer s’Ilessid or his Alliance can afford to turn a blind eye? Or that he will keep his insufferable arrogance, or rise up in dispute of our claim that humanity’s future’s endangered? With Avenor in ruins, the statesman in him must rise to respond. The Fellowship’s supreme disregard for mankind’s well-being will force a review of alliances.’ Unblinking, Selidie unveiled the hideous badge of defeat left by Davien’s vicious guile: stumps of useless fingers, seared livid with scars, could not even lift a cup of hot tea, or arrange a lace skirt, or pull the jewelled shaft of a hairpin. ‘How many cripples shall we lament?’ the Prime cried to drive home her venomous conclusion. ‘Even the High King of Havish will have a rough time excusing the purpose that’s raised a great drake for a flight of rampaging massacre.’

  Hush gripped the pavilion again, while the Matriarch’s regard raked over her oathsworn. Seated and standing, and linked in avid circles, they were as stopped puppets on a stage of draped canvas, painted in pallid skin and poised jewels under the flickering candles. Each one, a live piece at her Prime’s beck and call. This was as it should be: the order had cause. The weapon was forged to strike at need, wielded always without question. Only Lirenda’s furious gaze masked the outrage of wider awareness.

  Selidie spared that downtrodden tool no glance of ack
nowledgement. Informed or not, the sisterhood’s power stayed under her sovereign charge. Her status in the order’s hierarchy would not be threatened today. Her higher purpose must reign, with fate’s axis poised to unseat the Fellowship Sorcerers.

  ‘We are at war, ladies!’ Selidie declared. ‘A battle we must win at all costs or risk losing our dedicate mission to act in mankind’s behalf. For far too long, we’ve been ground down and silenced! I tell you now, as your Prime, that I guard an untold wealth of knowledge, a heritage swept aside and unjustly gagged by the tyranny of the compact. We were forced in duress to accept this world’s terms during sanctuary. Since that hour, our ideals have stayed clipped by oppression!’

  ‘Then this news of Avenor’s demise is aligned with your will?’ the distraught senior peeress ventured outright.

  ‘Not welcome, except that the Fellowship of Seven are trapped in extreme disarray.’ Selidie never moved: could not ruffle a statuesque fold of clothing, or risk snagging coiffed hair, that would require a servant’s attendance. Only the flash of her amethyst brooch betrayed her excitement. ‘I mourn for the deaths of the children and innocents crushed down for Paravian interests! Tysan’s sisterhouses will bear the brunt of their suffering. Let our own hands minister to those shattered lives, and lend succour to what can be salvaged. Our order shall act to ease hurt and grief through inexhaustible mercy.’

  To that end, the distressed junior seeress on lane watch was granted the Prime’s curt dismissal. ‘Go out, serve your post. Send my word back to Tysan. Our oathsworn are to render assistance with all speed and resource.’

  The initiate curtseyed and rushed her retreat, fast followed by the rest of the white-ranked sisters, remanded to their work in the healers’ tents. At the heels of their reordered departure, the Matriarch resumed her address to her chosen. ‘We must pursue our cause with dauntless conviction! The terror just visited upon Lysaer’s realm proves that Davien and his colleagues are set on the run. They will be too preoccupied to guard their backs, or disrupt the course of our affairs. We are poised,’ declared Selidie. ‘I insist on your faith as I seize our bold opening to hobble our age-old oppressors.’

  Only the crowning cipher remained. ‘Take Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn when the citadel falls, and the end game delivers our triumph.’

  Sulfin Evend abhorred delays, when fury stuck spurs in his haste. Already well overdue on the road, still blistered by the excuses served up by Tirans’ mayor, whose vindictive manoeuvring arose out of spite, since Lysaer’s cut-throat statecraft stampeded the town’s elders, and usurped their pompous authority. While their young men marched in the ranks at Alestron, and their flag snapped underneath the Sunwheel of the Alliance, the baiting chance to discomfit the Light’s Lord Commander posed too choice a temptation.

  Only the fettle of a Hanshire aristocrat let Sulfin Evend temper his killing rage: an ally run through at sword-point would serve none but his wolf pack of rivals. Since the bloodless alternative meant cooling his heels, Sulfin Evend spurned the next banquet. He pulled rank and bullied the gate sentries. Shouted over their stammered protests, then stymied their captain’s adamant plea for a state escort with language fit to shame the whores in the war camp.

  Five days on the road, with two more spent crawling against an eastshore blizzard, Sulfin Evend exchewed the temptation of rest in a warm bed at Kalesh. He changed horses, cursed the wet saddle, and turned west till the deepening snow bogged his pace. Wrapped in pearl overcast, he was by now beyond cold and bone-tired, jarred to the teeth from a hack with slab shoulders and jolting gaits.

  No discomfort made him shed the rough anonymity of his field-issue over-cloak: the smart trappings beneath would draw too much notice. Better, he felt, to suffer mean treatment before risking the pitfalls of title that might stall his urgent progress. Alone, with only sheathed steel at his side, he pushed on until his spent mount stumbled under him. The next wayside tavern at last loomed ahead, doubtless jammed beyond wretched capacity.

  The gabled monstrosity nestled behind a ramshackle paling that also supported an expanded post-station to milk the traffic of war. Too likely the coach yard would be green planks, laid across squelching mud. Sulfin Evend drew rein in the snow-banks outside. Dismounted, limping with aches, and frozen half-stupid, he slogged toward the gate and braced to endure the crush of unwashed bodies and sour ale, and the greasy reek of onions boiled with salt beef. Perhaps a relief, after the wine sauces and snide jabs inflicted by Tirans’ spurned mayor. Lip curled, Sulfin Evend barked out a laugh. No vile indignity would stand in his way as he closed the last leg of his journey.

  Or so he thought, as he entered the enclosure and breasted the seething commotion.

  ‘No room, and no beds, here!’ snapped the blanket-wrapped man he shouldered aside to make way for his horse. Three more women stood up, shaking snow from their skirts, to clear his path towards the stable. Fist clutched on soaked reins, Sulfin Evend shoved into a space that held standing room only.

  Families huddled in every available cranny. More bedded down in the open corrals by the ox barn. Dogs yapped underfoot. The apron by the stable was beyond crammed, yoked teams and steaming draught horses tied shoulder to shoulder in pickets.

  Alone, and unrecognized in his mud-stained wool, Sulfin Evend squared his jaw and ploughed forward. Where language failed, he engaged blunt force, elbowing bodies and displacing a fat merchant with a back-handed cuff of his bracer. Folk shuffled aside, ignoring his rank urgency. Most murmured, apologized, even smiled as though they were moonstruck.

  Sulfin Evend sucked in a vexed breath, tripped over an upset bucket, then found himself stalled as a screaming toddler crashed headlong into his knee. He righted the mite and almost collided with a Sunwheel soldier, who shed his white cloak, unabashed, and passed over the garment to shelter the shrieking child. The urchin was no paragon. Foul-tongued as the poxed get of a camp-follower, to judge by his soiled motley and cross-gartered rags, with his unlikely benefactor one of Lysaer’s elite, unmistakably Etarran. What anomaly possessed such a pedigree officer: first to stray from his post, far less to grant charity to riff-raff?

  Sulfin Evend checked a field bellow, fit to soil the miscreant gentleman’s linen. Instinct gave warning, that more was afoot here than travellers caught out by the storm. Destitute older men; grandmothers; matrons and toothless babes were perched on crates of fluffed chickens. Wet baggage and tied canvas shelters had been jammed helter-skelter between the slats of parked ox drays. Crowded in misery inside farm-carts were pregnant sweethearts and girls, crying children and tousled young boys, tucked in blankets amid oddments of household gear, tatterdemalion sacks, and stacked barrels. Beneath wind-tattered tarps, Sulfin Evend sighted hogsheads branded with Alliance seals, then more bales and crates bearing the tally marks from the pursers who logged in supply for the cook-shacks. The alarming tumult showed every sign of an on-going refugee exodus.

  ‘Dharkaron avenge the Fatemaster’s born fool!’ The Light’s Lord Commander jerked his hood low, as much to muffle his smouldering rage, as to mask his distinctive features. His untoward absence had lasted too long. With Lysaer unguarded, the well-ordered siege left behind at Alestron appeared to be coming unravelled. By whose stroke of meddling, he shuddered to guess: the details in front of him failed to add up. Past the oddly delinquent captain at arms, who seemed shorn of his natural arrogance, Sulfin Evend caught the snap of clan accents from a cluster of craftsfolk. An inconceivable shock, that folk from Alestron should dare show their faces outside the duke’s citadel. Yet, there they sat, sharing bread with armed troops, who appeared on the lam as deserters. No companies had been slated for legitimate leave; nor were these rank-and-file men billeted under the hare-brained Etarran officer. In shameless display, their field accoutrements and garrison blazons were exposed to haphazard view: astounding behaviour for a pack of slackers, larking off for a binge in Kalesh.

  The Light’s Lord Commander gripped a circumspect hand over the soaked flap of his over
-cloak to keep his gold braid out of sight. He was alone, and outnumbered, upon slippery footing if he was seen and backed into a fight. He brushed cautious shoulders with a whistling sergeant, passed two pikemen hooting at someone’s raw joke, before he was able to flag down a groom and surrender his lathered gelding. Beset by alarm, he realized the chills that ruffled his skin had nothing to do with wet clothes.

  ‘Find me a fresh mount,’ he told the harried boy, then eased his demand with five silvers. ‘I see that you’re busy. Do what you can. I’ll double my gift if the remount’s a runner, and rested enough to make speed. I’ll be outside, meantime. Tell the inn matron I’ll pay if someone can bring a hot meal and packed fare from the kitchen.’

  ‘Sir, at your pleasure,’ the boy promised, pleased, his raw fingers stowing the coins as he took the blown horse.

  Sulfin Evend moved upslope from the puddled ox urine and tucked up in the lee of the timber wall. From that covert vantage, amid whirling snow, he listened, intent as a predator. Frolicking children raced at his feet. The chatter of women rode the storm-deadened air, through the jingling stamp of the harness teams. The shared mood of the men also seemed knit by an incongruous camaraderie. Whatever event had disrupted the warfront, these folk were not fleeing a debacle.

  Prompted, perhaps, by his inborn clan talent, Sulfin Evend recalled the interview forced on him by the wild tribes of Sanpashir: when Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, cracked to flinching recoil, had voiced his ultimatum concerning the s’Brydion stand at Alestron. ‘I will not live their death! Not ever by my willing consent, nor as the Mistwraith’s curse-blinded accomplice.’

  Unbidden thought followed, that the bizarre behaviour seen here might be a working by the same sorcerer’s hand. Beneath laughter and gossip, through the banter exchanged between travellers, Sulfin Evend almost recaptured the grandiloquent depth of experience, when Arithon had torn himself free, as Desh-thiere’s influence entangled his aura.