Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Vhan!’ Talvish blurted. ‘Thank Ath, someone had the good sense to send you!’

  That tone, cranked shrill by relief, impelled Vhandon to tackle the impasse headlong. ‘Elaira should be here,’ he opened, point-blank. As the prince’s angered glance flicked to rake him, Vhandon steadied with uncritical tenderness, ‘She could guide us through her understanding.’

  ‘The duke’s orders brought you?’ Arithon responded. Against the flat glare, detail emerged slowly: despite punishing grief, he had upkept his grooming. His changed clothes were neat, picked for comfort and warmth, of unadorned linen and wool. The scrubbed fingers laid on the trestle did not bear Rathain’s ring, a raw enough statement.

  ‘I can’t argue that Feylind had the free right to risk death as she pleased,’ Arithon added, bald-faced. ‘But I was not ready to let her go.’ He acknowledged the fact: his impulsive defence had sought to guard his vulnerable love first, before any need to secure threatened stores for the sake of the beleaguered citadel.

  ‘For that one moment, she was larger than all of us,’ Vhandon agreed with lancing force. ‘And do you sulk now, resenting the fact? Feylind crossed over the Wheel, content, and well satisfied by her accomplishment.’

  The sudden breath forced through Dakar’s teeth crackled across the pained silence. Talvish winced, also. Which signals foreran the blatant disaster, that Vhandon’s astute guess had missed the sore mark.

  Arithon’s quiet attained the glass edge that defended his most-guarded privacy. While Talvish swore softly, and Dakar cringed, afraid of on-coming explosion, Rathain’s prince spoke again, all impervious lightness, ‘Duke Bransian wants you to petition for my use of Shadow to repulse the attack on the harbour. I refuse. Go back and report.’

  Vhandon tested that walled resistance with the obvious, since he had no better angle. ‘Alestron suffers today because of your unveiled presence.’

  ‘Which is precisely why I cannot help!’ Such taut stillness hurt, as the snow-filtered daylight intensified the pallor of Arithon’s public face. ‘This assault is the work of battle-trained troops, using conventional weapons.’

  Talvish leaped to illuminate Vhandon’s incomprehension. ‘For Lysaer’s frail hold on sanity, can’t you see?’

  Which statement slashed through the veil of decorum. Arithon bent his head, fingers shoved through dark hair. ‘Dakar,’ he pleaded.

  Leave permitted the explanation, that cut too close to the visceral bone. The Mad Prophet righted his kicked chair, and sat. Where tact could not serve, the spellbinder tried for gentleness. ‘When Arithon loosed his gift of Shadow, the s’Ilessid half-brother fell under the curse of Desh-thiere.’

  ‘We all bore witness.’ Vhandon caught Talvish’s signalled encouragement, and moved closer. War steel scraped across tension as he dared the bench and assumed the seat opposite. Then he said, but not as the duke’s henchman, ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Dakar, undone. ‘Arithon knows through the strength he required to hold the brig’s active defence: Lysaer did not spend himself to self-immolation. He did not attack until he collapsed. This time, somehow, he recovered himself. Reason prevailed! Something allowed him to bridle the geas-bent drive to annihilate.’

  Talvish picked up, from the leaned stance just taken as rear-guard against the door-jamb. ‘Arithon believes that the transcendent chord he channelled by waking Alithiel may have seeded the grace for Lysaer to seek healing. If his kinsman now fights to recover free will, then anything that his Grace does in behalf of the citadel might tip that frail effort into deadly jeopardy.’

  ‘Strike now with Shadow to spare the duke’s men, and I would destroy the very dawning of hope, as my brother strives to hold his own ground against Desh-thiere’s active incursion.’ Arithon lifted his face, beyond distressed. ‘I can’t violate trust, in that fashion.’ The Paravian sword’s power, just granted for change, demanded his utmost restraint. He must honour each individual’s choice, no matter the course of the outcome. ‘Every soldier who remains here under arms stayed because he believed in his place.’ Through sudden, springing tears of bereavement, Arithon opened his empty palms. ‘Just as Feylind placed herself at risk for conviction, I have to keep my heart open and permit the folk on both sides of the siege the same open range of free choice!’

  Full meaning hit hard: that whatever Arithon might personally want, Bransian’s men-at-arms must be left to make their own way. ‘That’s a damned raw consolation,’ Vhandon commented, gruff.

  ‘But the prince is right.’ Dakar shouldered the unpractised attempt to ease inconsolable pain. ‘Sometimes there are no victims to save, and nothing is broken that should be fixed. What purpose is served? We cannot lose sight of the actual rift. Desh-thiere’s malice lies at the root of this conflict.’

  ‘Unless Lysaer grapples the curse on his own terms, the same debacle will happen again, in another arena and on a field as unbearably tragic as this one. I must grant my brother the opening to stop! If he can,’ added Arithon, although beyond question he was left aghast, and quite terrified by the necessity.

  ‘Then why were you arguing?’ Vhandon bore in, cued by Talvish’s tension, that Dakar’s upset sensibilities were not yet laid to rest.

  ‘Ath above!’ cried Arithon, goaded at last to exasperation. ‘Like the man with his fist in the teeth of the tiger, you would taunt my temper and ask! Very well. Since this is not my picked battle to fight, our fraught disagreement arose over how I should take my safe leave of the citadel.’

  Vhandon caught himself gripping the trestle until his mailed fingers gouged wood. Dread rode him, roughshod, that Elaira’s absence perhaps was a lethal mistake. He forced the issue, since no one else would. ‘And the terms in dispute?’

  Dakar yanked at his beard with both fists. ‘By daring to walk the unknown, past tried limits! Arithon wants to waken Alithiel again, in trust the sword’s voice can stabilize his half-brother’s compromised gift of royal justice. Which can happen but one way, that I can project!’

  Rathain’s prince cut in, to side-step histrionics. ‘By creating the perceptual appearance I’ve perished, we can blindside the curse of Desh-thiere.’ As Talvish drew breath, he rammed over protestation. ‘Jieret and I did this once, with success, to spirit me away from the war host in Daon Ramon!’

  Dakar shouted back, quite unmindful of Vhandon, caught in the vicious cross-fire. ‘Never this! Not binding your consciousness under, with the sword’s note of transcendent change aroused into actualized force! I touched that raised field for only an instant, and almost unravelled my earthly identity! You immersed for three days, and –’

  ‘Never for one moment did I stand alone!’ Arithon pealed back through the frightened clamour. ‘The living grace within that grand chord gave me back, hale and whole!’

  ‘From how near to the edge?’ the spellbinder snapped, obstinate, ‘You’ve told us straight out! You don’t recall the transitional course that led you into that trance state, far less understand any step on the path that restored you to present awareness!’ Horrified from his mage-wise perspective, Dakar slammed to his feet, smashing his chair over backwards again. ‘This lies past my depth! And yours as well! We need Fellowship counsel for guidance.’

  ‘I am willing to stand on crown auspices and ask,’ Prince Arithon agreed. If his hands, on the table, appeared quite relaxed, his lowered gaze refused Dakar’s adamance.

  Vhandon recognized that evasion too well. Alongside Talvish, he saw the looming crux. The prince who was Masterbard was going to act. His risky endeavour would leap forward on courage, without guarantee that a Sorcerer would have the freed resource to back his appeal.

  Early Winter 5671

  Foil

  Midnight passed by before the last broadhead had been removed from the duke’s arrow-shot wounded. Elaira roused from the close focus of surgery, blurred under the lassitude caused by extended trance. The shift from altered vision slowed her acuity as she washed her stained hands and fumbled
the reach for clean bandaging.

  ‘No matter my dear.’ The kindly voice at her elbow belonged to the raw-boned matron who served the garrison as master healer. ‘My people can bind up that wound and mix possets. Let them handle those chores. You need sleep.’

  Eyes shut as her head swam, Elaira accepted the gift, beyond grateful. The man under her care was now stable. She could pause to ground her awareness. Her form seemed adrift in the cavernous gloom, the swept floor of the sail-loft crammed with makeshift bedding, under demand as a hospice. The lingering tang of tan-bark canvas and hemp rope wrapped the stilled air like a blanket, stitched through by the sweetening fragrance of herbs and the bite of burn salves and iodine. The smells whirled her dizzy, taxed as she was, and verging on feverish back-lash.

  ‘Come away, lady,’ the healer urged gently. A tactful, warm hand hooked her elbow, since the earnest staff bearing the remedies could not do their work till she moved.

  Elaira bowed to necessity, allowed the woman’s spare help to rise onto her feet.

  ‘We’ll give you a bed,’ the healer suggested in mild remonstrance.

  Elaira smiled for her earnest kindness. ‘Thank you, but no. I’ll rest in my own quarters. I need only pack up my satchel.’

  ‘No cause for that,’ the woman assured. ‘Your assistant has your things stowed in order already.’

  Surprised, Elaira stepped forward too quickly. ‘Glendien’s still here? But I dismissed her two hours ago!’

  The healer’s firm grip saved her reeling balance. ‘Then the forest woman knew better than to leave you to handle such menial labour!’ The chiding acknowledged the rows of stilled men, eased and softly breathing, despite having been on death’s door-step. ‘I loaned the young woman a blanket. She will have napped as she waited.’

  Yet across the dimmed floor-boards, over-sensitized magesight captured the flicker of movement. Glendien was urgently coming to meet them, already wrapped for cold weather.

  Concern stirred Elaira’s lagged wits. She tugged free of the healer’s solicitude, and inquired, ‘What’s amiss?’

  For a second figure accompanied the clanswoman, one bearing the grim glint of arms with purposeful readiness. Blunt-cut grey hair and saturnine competence identified Bransian’s prized field-captain, Vhandon. The honed faculties of a Koriani enchantress read trouble: that scarred, dead-pan face masked an anxious stride as the soldier flanked Glendien, and shoved the enchantress’s outdoor mantle into her nerveless hands.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Alarmed, Elaira accepted the cloth, while reflex leaped outward, reaching for Arithon by empathic instinct.

  She encountered a barrier. A warding, laid down with shocking, stark force, that distanced her as a stranger. ‘Beloved! What have you done? Why am I closed out?’ Her inner cry strangled against that razed line, as desperate, she clamoured for access. Recognition slapped back in rebound: the boundary was none of his Grace’s own, but a construct of the Mad Prophet’s, founded upon the blood oath to survive once granted to Asandir.

  ‘You already know,’ Glendien surmised, a wrenching shift that forced displaced awareness back into the echoing sail-loft.

  ‘Know what?’ snapped Elaira through shaken distress.

  Vhandon explained quickly. ‘They mean to waken Alithiel. Then try the same binding that tied Arithon’s spirit into the sword, to evade Lysaer’s berserk chase in Daon Ramon.’

  ‘How long since the spellbinder crafted the wards?’ Elaira pealed in breaking anguish. She pulled on the cloak, fumbling the clasp at her throat. ‘Why in the name of Ath didn’t you fetch me?’ But the reason was obvious: the lives of the stricken men here had required her services, uninterrupted.

  Vhandon’s smart reaction caught hold of her forearm. He steered for the loft stair, still talking apace. A carriage and pair were in harness to take her. ‘Talvish got Dawr’s coachman to handle the lines. Nobody matches his skill in a pinch. He’ll have you across town in no time.’

  Yet that saving forethought could not speed their course until after the men at the lift platform brought her aloft from the sea quarter. ‘Just pray we’re in time.’ Elaira managed the stair, shamelessly leaning on Vhandon’s strength to steady her vertigo.

  Glendien trailed, the slung satchel of remedies chinking complaint at her hip. ‘Are you sure that a Fellowship spellbinder’s misjudged, and the Masterbard’s tactic won’t work?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ Elaira snapped, white. ‘Arithon’s despondency over Feylind’s loss has to colour the handling of his decision. Also, s’Brydion defenders are dying. He would act to disarm conflict soonest!’ She finished, distraught, ‘I trusted Dakar! Relied on his sense to stay my love’s hand, at least long enough to be sure he’d recovered his wise equilibrium.’

  ‘The note in the sword ought to shield him,’ Vhandon offered in stout reassurance.

  Elaira shook her head, weak at the knees in stark fear. ‘Not today.’ The exalted song was the unstoppable impetus that impelled transcendent change. She recalled the fierce allure of its promise. Too well: even the memory haunted, an echo to last all her days. ‘In Arithon’s aggrieved state of conflicted interest, the pure stream of that power could lift him too far to hold on to human identity.’

  Glendien still clung to impervious optimism. ‘His Grace wakened the last time.’

  ‘I know how he came back!’ Elaira corrected. Her voice caught, wrung breathless: she hoped it was just the shock of the icy night air, let in through the ground-level postern. ‘My love reached the open gate to his heart. Dakar backed my appeal. He used the oath sworn to the Sorcerer, and on that blood binding, collected him.’

  Vhandon’s care caught her missed step as she slipped in the alley beyond. Above the loft’s buttressed roof, stars burned against a black zenith. The storm had chased off to a spanking north wind, that whipped loosened snow off the cornices. Someone shouted, ahead. More cries arose, past the chandler’s warehouse. A company of men jogged past in tight purpose, then more runners, sprinting with flittering torches. The commotion increased, spurred by the moan of a horn-call. A bugle shrilled, nearer: three blasts for alarm, while a drift of oily smoke that reeked of burned hide swirled up from the breastworks, at the quay-side.

  ‘You’ll be fielding more wounded,’ said Elaira, torn sick.

  ‘The sea-quarter walls are under attack?’ Glendien snatched at the satchel to protect the packed glass from the turmoil as they shoved through the trampled street.

  ‘Aye, lass! There’s fighting.’ Vhandon ducked through a side alley, either taking a short cut, or clearing them off the main thoroughfare to avoid a careening sledge, overburdened with barrels and stone-shot.

  From the left-side square keep, the jingle and thump of a chain-sling being loaded sounded across hurried footfalls. Then the whistling slam of another’s release sliced a sergeant’s barked call to span arbalests.

  ‘Inevitable consequence, after the strategic rock that Feylind’s taunt pitched through the hornet’s nest.’ The field-captain urged the two women to run. ‘The harbour-side watch turrets have fallen. We’ll be facing the same zealot sappers. The great horn’s cried warning. Means the enemy’s got galley-borne siege platforms also, nosing up for assault on our wharf-side battlements.’

  ‘You’ll be needed elsewhere,’ Elaira insisted. The frigid air braced her. Exhaustion had become thrown into eclipse as they whisked from the by-way, and threaded the rush of armed men pounding down the next street. ‘I can manage from here.’

  ‘No.’ Vhandon’s spare glance scarcely gave her acknowledgement. ‘You’ll require my vested authority. The garrison will have cordoned the windlass platform. Under active defence, they’ll demand check-point passwords. The lift gear gets fired if Sevrand’s guard fails, and the Sea Gate bailey becomes overtaken.’ He added, ‘Come on! You’re nobody’s burden! My command post is rightfully topside!’

  The dash through the dock quarter ended, replaced by the slow agony of the exposed ride up the cliff-side. T
here, the wind’s whistling thrum through the winch cables lashed every patch of bare flesh. Then the cruel chill was forgotten, as the overhead vista unveiled the Alliance assault on the harbour-front. Oared warships thrashed in, their prow-mounted belfries lurid in the orange light. Ranged against them, fire-shot and smouldering oil arced over black water and broke, streaming cinders down the plank siege towers, swathed in their protective, soaked hide. Screams and cries spiralled upwards, cut by horn-calls and shouts, while the barrage of arrows and crossbolts whined more-ominous notes through the gusts. Under the massive sally, the dark teeth of the battlements seemed outlined in torch-flame, and the seething glints that were men, mere reflections thrown off moving armour.

  Vhandon’s grim quiet defeated talk, and quenched even Glendien’s saucy rejoinders. Elaira endured, tightly wrapped in her cloak. Despair squeezed her hollow, that no healer’s skills could accommodate tonight’s toll of maimed and war-wounded. Far worse, she might not reach Arithon in time to avert his rash plan. Shivering as the lift platform wrenched to a stop, she stepped off into Talvish’s arms.

  One glance, and his lean hand cupped her nape, hiding her sudden tears against his mantle. ‘You should never have been here,’ he said in strait pain. ‘Though, Ath’s mercy, there’s nobody else can touch Arithon’s heart and disarm his defences as you can.’ A brief word of gratitude acknowledged Vhandon. Then he bundled her past the cordon of sentries and into the waiting carriage. Glendien managed a scrambling entry. Then the door slammed. The skilled coachman grasped the lines and snapped his tasselled whip, driving the snorting team into their collars.

  Elaira laid her head back as the vehicle surged forward, eyes shut and shallow breaths steadied. Use of her training reined in jagged fear and sustained her through the jouncing passage. When the carriage arrived, and Talvish jumped down from the groom’s perch, she no longer required his ready support.