Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Across the plank-bridge, with Glendien following, she rushed the staircase towards Arithon’s quarters, braced for a fight, and prepared to match adamant force against Dakar’s wardings. Instead, she confronted the shocking reverse: the doorway stood open before her. The fear blinded, that she was too late, with the ritual binding of Arithon’s spirit already complete. Yet Kyrialt guarded the head of the landing, his unrestrained welcome unstringing her dark net of panic.

  ‘They chose not to go forward!’ Elaira exclaimed. ‘Has wise council prevailed?’ Then, caught by the driving anxiety behind the clan liegeman’s relief, ‘What happened?’

  ‘The Paravian sword would not rouse for this hour’s cry of appeal,’ the young liegeman revealed. ‘You are needed, if only to console the raw heart-ache left by that failure.’

  Elaira gasped, fuming, ‘Consolation is not the course I have in mind.’ She brushed past, with Glendien panting at heel to share in the thrill of explosion.

  Except Kyrialt’s grip closed on his wife’s wrist. No regret for brisk handling, he snapped her short. ‘You, my most brazen, are not going in there! The Koriani mate’s ripped enough to taste blood. While she goes for the throat, her man doesn’t need such as you, whetting teeth for a lunge at his bollocks.’

  Before Glendien’s protesting jerk could break free, Elaira slammed the strapped oak panel with a thud to bang chips from stone masonry.

  Inside the shut chamber, the light shone too thin, the flickering fish-oil lamp fiercely trimmed to spare fuel. What the low flame obscured, mage-sight must unveil through taut patience. Poised to one side, Dakar’s defenceless misery would have caused his retreat, had Elaira’s instinctive gesture not stopped him. Unwilling to apologize for duty-bound trust, he endured, his beard and screwed hair reflecting the strain on plump features.

  ‘Did you think I would shout?’ Elaira snapped, saddened. ‘Then your past choice in Halwythwood has taught you nothing!’

  She moved onwards, searching gaze shifted to the other stilled figure, found seated under the Mad Prophet’s shadow. Arithon’s wide-opened eyes met her as she reached the trestle where Alithiel rested, unsheathed. The black steel abided, its gateway to mystery opaque. The glassine rune inlay gleamed coldly quiescent, all prismatic rainbows muted. Like the blade’s shuttered promise, the beautiful, bard’s hands on the boards did not shift as, unflinching, the man accepted her furious scrutiny.

  ‘You saw no other way to spare Fionn Areth,’ Elaira apprised at delicate length.

  The sigh of relief was Dakar’s, released by the startling grace of her empathy. ‘No one else realized,’ he stated, gruff. ‘At the outset, I didn’t perceive that wretched angle, either.’

  Elaira found the bench, pulled the seat out, and perched. Her chilled fingers were too numbed to grapple the fastenings to shed her mantle. Bone-tired, and edging on sickness herself from the ingrained reek of dried blood and iodine, she swallowed. The straightforward ease of her honesty faltered, as she picked her spare words through like thorns. ‘The grass-lander’s stubborn. He has not grown enough to concede that forgiveness does not demand punishment. We may have to accept that he can’t be extricated. If not, our lapse in protection at this pass may not be accounted a failure.’

  ‘Your own heart would not rest,’ Prince Arithon said. Nothing more. Yet the sure, fluid move that broke his stillness arose too fast to assimilate. Poised behind her, he slid his hands under and through her pinned hair and eased the wrapped braid from confinement. Beneath the fall of her crimped auburn locks, his touch mapped the wire-strung ache in her neck, then lightly shifted in a proprietary caress across the mantle that dragged at her collar-bones. The loop catch slid free. The burdensome wool tumbled onto the floor, replaced by his warmth as he straddled the bench and drew her shaking frame into his embrace.

  His dangling response stayed unfinished, until her head nestled into his shoulder. ‘After all, you once left Fionn’s fate in my hands. The right choice. I will not abdicate.’

  Dakar’s leashed calm suggested an argument forced into simmering abeyance. Elaira tried anyway. The issue had to be thrashed over again, if only for form’s sake, and despite the cruel culpability that her own oath-tied burden forced her to weather. She steeled for the course. ‘What comes of your commitment if the goatherd’s free will insists otherwise?’

  Arithon’s clasped fingers tightened and held. ‘Then he chooses. But with the clear road to claim freedom opened and secured before him.’

  And that sparked explosion, an incensed cry torn from her stung heart. ‘Not at the cost of your sacrifice! Arithon! If Feylind were alive, she’d back this fight, tooth and nail by innate woman’s wisdom. My hurt is not blameless! I helped shapechange that child. You can’t lift that pain from me, however you try. Fionn Areth himself never asked for your help. He has not offered a trustworthy friendship. I will not see your life thrown to risk for an undervalued relationship!’

  Arithon waited, steady. The torrent that broke loose was too friable, begun in lone anguish on the cold, Araethurian night when the order’s might had compelled an untenably harsh set of choices. ‘Fionn’s character, or lack of it, does not revoke his birthright.’ The correction was careful, almost too mild to declare an unbreachable stance. ‘Rathain’s chartered provenance makes that boy’s cause mine for what he has suffered in violation. As a subject under crown auspices, he bears my explicit claim of protection.’

  Upwelling tears snapped Elaira’s last poise. Dakar seized the moment and arose on quiet feet, assured he could quit the arena. Love’s tenacity must now secure the thread of Rathain’s threatened legacy. The armed core of Arithon’s will was exposed, and the pitfall that terrorized foresight: that if the extreme escape plan went forward, and a repeat attempt could unleash Alithiel’s power, with the last Teir’s’Ffalenn moved to imbue his stripped spirit into the awakened sword, the ungrateful ally might snatch that opportune opening for his betrayal.

  The muted clink of the door-latch signalled the gift of the couple’s privacy. No other disturbance would visit tonight, to intrude on that haven of shared solitude. Arithon laid his cheek overtop of Elaira’s head. While the lamp-flame fluttered, and silence settled, fragrant with the herbal mélange wafted up from the downstairs still-room, he cradled her searing flood of distress.

  Unrushed, at due length, he addressed her in soft quiet, ‘This is not about Fionn Areth, entirely.’

  A shudder raked through her. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘Ah, beloved!’ Tenderness infused Arithon’s touch as he mapped the true source of her misery. ‘You are regretting your return to the citadel. Don’t. Did you fear that my measure to disarm this cursed conflict may also have been tried in your behalf?’

  Not waiting for answer, Arithon shifted his grip. He tipped her cupped face to his matchless regard. ‘Do you know of your worth to me? Hush! Words can’t fathom the substance. Forget the conniving hooks of your Matriarch. Regrets of all kind are not seemly. My joy in your presence remains without fault, no matter what straits lie against us.’ As her eyes welled again and spilled over, he smiled. ‘Never doubt.’ He bent farther and kissed. The salt tears on her lips were absorbed, then melted away by an onslaught of caring too sweet for denial.

  Dakar kept his jagged urgency hidden from Kyrialt’s sight. He dodged from the stairwell into the still-room, grateful that Glendien’s tasked work engrossed her with restocking the remedies. He moved abreast of her, yawning, then flipped off a critical comment that hackled her to a flush.

  ‘Braying jackass!’ Glaring daggers, she snapped, ‘Where were you? Bent over kissing your bollocks while the brave fallen lay in their blood, dying?’

  ‘Why, bouncing the jennet,’ Dakar cracked with a smirk. She flailed at him with a pestle. He ducked, chased safely past striking range. Out of the far door without flagging her inquisitive instincts, he dropped his buffoonery and bolted for the ground floor. Outside the guest keep, his pounding rush collided with Talvish, striding
inbound across the foot-bridge, since squaring affairs with the coachman.

  Rammed to a grunt on sharp impact, the swordsman’s field reflexes saved them both from a tumble into the snowy ravine. ‘Fiends plague, Dakar!’ Mail-clad fingers relaxed their vexed grasp and shoved the spellbinder back upright. ‘If you’ve unearthed another rough crisis, we’ve got trouble ganged up on all fronts already.’

  Chill slid like a blade through Dakar’s layered cloaks. No mistaking that tone of urgent concern, though the scud of cloud obscured the expression beneath the guardsman’s spiked helm. ‘The Alliance’s whelming assault has begun?’

  ‘On-going, and laying on pressure like vengeance.’ Talvish darted an un settled glance to his rear, that the action took place without him. ‘Sea Gate’s holding out. Can’t last, up against Lysaer’s perishing numbers. The duke’s critical short-fall’s going to be the hard fact that we’re now under strength.’

  Which was Arithon’s doing; blame would come to roost. Talvish’s razor-thin nerves gave that warning.

  The Mad Prophet tugged his rumpled cloak back to rights, uneasy for another reason. ‘Where is Fionn Areth?’

  Talvish frowned. ‘Haven’t seen him.’ He was on fighting edge: that fast, he fielded the change in pursuit. ‘Not since he delivered the wretched bad news, that Evenstar’d snagged in a lash-up.’

  ‘Can I ask your assistance to find him?’ Dakar blurted, ‘I have a bad feeling.’

  Talvish expelled a fretted breath, his poise now charged to leashed lightning. ‘My liege? Was his late feckless enterprise thwarted?’

  ‘Diverted, for now,’ Dakar reported. ‘He’s settled with Elaira. She sees well enough. Expect she will try the time-honoured gift to serve his obdurate grief consolation. Kyrialt’s guard will handle the door. We haven’t much time. Will you help?’

  ‘Bad feeling, or augury?’ Talvish rapped out, then swore over Dakar’s clammed-up silence. ‘Never mind. His Grace doesn’t know?’

  ‘I’m not foolish!’ The Mad Prophet clutched two-handed to batten his billowing cloak. ‘Though, Ath wept! Stalking a live stream of prescience past the thickets of s’Ahelas far-sight felt like hopping live toads through a fire pit.’

  ‘Let’s move on it, then!’ Talvish wheeled back across the plank-bridge. ‘Damned well I don’t like leaving Arithon now. But worse, if we’re caught blindsided again by some ugly prophetic vision!’

  ‘Premonition,’ Dakar qualified, tart. ‘Not quite the same thing.’ Short legs pumping to match the tall veteran’s fast clip, he puffed too hard to lament the dismissal of the loaned four-in-hand coach.

  The citadel streets teemed with frenetic activity. Hand-carts packed rag tinder, and sheaves of arrows and crossbolts. The larger drays bearing stone-shot and oil casks were pulled by sweating men, the oxen long since butchered to feed the populace. Courier’s relays sent from the duke’s command eyrie threaded through, run on foot or mounted on small, agile horses. The riders passed off their sealed batons with fresh orders at speed, and received in turn the breathless reports dispatched from the fighting at harbour-side.

  Through drifting smoke and ragged torch-light, stumbling in the chopped slush, Dakar croaked for a reprieve. A misstep that tore the nails in his boot-heel bounced him off a wagon’s pinned tail-gate.

  He yelped, hopping lame, as the flapping leather tripped him again. Forced to rip off the hindrance, he sliced his thumb. ‘Dharkaron’s vengeance! Why bother hauling these forsaken rocks?’

  ‘The trebuchets can’t bear on a target, close in.’ Talvish shouted above the rumble of wheels and the clatter of messenger ponies. ‘Small shot’s for the catapults and the large arbalests. They’ll heat the rocks red. Then lever them into the sling beds for firing through the hide shielding that covers the galleys landing the siege towers. Or else drop them down upon enemy heads through the murder holes in the barbicans.’

  Where Dakar would have lagged, to escape being trampled, Talvish snatched his stout wrist and towed him headlong. The duke’s men still honoured their ex-captain’s prowess. As his insistent questions crossed their fraught activity, supporting the Sea Gate defences, several brief facts were ascertained: Fionn Areth was not ensconced with Lord Bransian, nor with Parrien’s posted look-out at Watch Keep. He had not tagged along with the armed guard attending the s’Brydion wives still in residence.

  Moving apace, Talvish snapped in pared summary, ‘That leaves Vhandon’s command. He’s assigned at the winch platform, handling resupply for the battle-front.’ To get there, they flagged down a fast-moving wagon and hitched a ride to the cliff-side bastion.

  The smoke drift thickened, fouled by the reek of singed hide and the rolling billows thrown off by torched oil. Coughing behind his mailed fist, Talvish croaked to the driver, who answered, yelling through the rag tied across nose and mouth.

  ‘Aye, fires enough. Siege towers, mostly.’ The burly man veered for a galloping messenger. While his sweated team skidded, he steadied the lines, coaxing still more reckless speed. His scrambling wheel-horse swung the tight corner, shod hooves nicking up sparks. ‘Bad, on the dock quarter,’ the man shouted, as the cart rumbled beneath the arched entries of the guild-halls. Above, the three-story facades were faced granite, with flat roofs notched with crenels, as battlements. The unflinching driver whipped his horses on, the hubs of his vehicle clearing the chipped balustrades of the bottom stairs by a cat’s whisker.

  ‘Sevrand’s got shipwrights to whip-saw through the bollards on the south wharf,’ he told Talvish, who clung to the load, alert as a leopard poised in a half crouch. ‘Else the enemy might’ve winched them up with a capstan and seized the tarred logs for a ram.’

  ‘That near, they’ve tried landing?’ Dakar exclaimed.

  ‘It’s a gang-up swarm,’ said the driver, morose. A clattering slide down the last, icy incline reined the wagon up short at the press by the windlass. His imp’s grin flashed sidewards. ‘Here you are, then.’

  Talvish vaulted down, belting out a shrill whistle.

  The signal brought Vhandon, bearing full arms, in a running charge from the lift shack. Where his bark met resistance, he elbowed through the pack-train of burdened stevedores. ‘There’s trouble, Tal?’

  ‘Aye. Maybe.’ Talvish gestured towards Dakar, who was still wedged fast between the stacked casks in the cart. ‘Yon prophet’s gone lathered. Where’s Fionn Areth?’

  ‘Not here.’ Vhandon instinctively vaulted ahead. ‘You think that boy might try to upstage Feylind’s heroics and offer himself in Prince Arithon’s stead as a sacrifice?’

  ‘No.’ Dakar grunted, straining not to cough as thicker smoke streamed from the harbour-front. ‘Much worse, more’s the pity.’

  Vhandon was less tolerant of gut-shrinking cowardice. ‘The grassland rat’s hopped off to turn coat? Dharkaron Avenger’s Black Spear! I’ll wring his slinking, goatherder’s neck! Damned fast as that, if he thinks to crack open a postern gate and betray us.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’ Dakar redoubled his struggles, red-faced. ‘Not consciously. At least, not yet.’

  As one partnered move, Vhandon and Talvish grabbed hold of the stout prophet’s arms and slung him headlong from the wagon-bed.

  ‘Then say what you’ve seen!’ Vhandon bellowed. ‘Talk fast!’

  ‘Prime Selidie’s immersed in a fresh round of conjury!’ Dakar yelped, stung by the harsh impact to his mangled boot-heel. ‘Her activity’s too busy for anything innocent. The posited horror’s quite real, that Fionn Areth may pack a masked sigil very like the one tagged on Elaira as a specific trap to snare Arithon.’

  ‘What harm could it do?’ the two swordsmen asked as one voice.

  ‘Could the working crack through the Paravian wardings?’ The new question came from the by-standing watch sergeant, just barged in to query his diverted captain.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dakar shut his eyes, abruptly wrung sick as his senses plunged into vision again. As before, he captured the flickered impression …


  … of Prime Selidie, bent above the flame of a black candle, her pale hair twisted and pinned at her crown like a coil of adders. Across from her, serving for her burn-scarred hands, Lirenda sat, dark as twinned night. Neat fingers laced chains of lightning-sharp seals over the cloth of an effigy: a man’s crude figure, painted over with runes, and wound in gold wire stamped crosswise with sigils …

  Then the gut-wringing wave of raw vision released. The Mad Prophet gasped, propped upright in the grasp of the impatient sergeant.

  ‘Vhandon?’ Dakar craned his neck, senses swimming, while the buffeting press jostled past, muscled men rolling barrels, or burdened with sacks of small shot. Someone nearby was swearing mayhem over the nuisance of obstructive idlers.

  The sergeant said something.

  Dakar understood that he needed to move, or risk getting trampled. The absence of Vhandon’s authority gave short shrift to his debilitating fits and histrionics. He yelled anyhow, then spotted Talvish’s tall form on the winch platform, lowering from the cliff rim. The watch sergeant in charge refused to flag down the windlass team to let the spellbinder join the descent.

  ‘No civilian goes down! Duke’s orders. Now clear yourself out of the warfront before someone spits your fool gut on a pike!’

  ‘Ath’s own grace, I’ve just signed that boy’s death warrant!’ Dakar shivered and wept, while the duty-bound officer hurled him aside without sympathy.

  Left at loose ends, exhausted, Dakar crumpled against a stone buttress, out of harm’s way. Woe betide him for his jelly-legged weakness, and Dharkaron’s curse on the lapses brought on by his unruly talent. For if the paired veterans caught up with the Araethurian, they would act first for Alestron’s security: take down the suborned double by expedient force, then settle their frank questions afterward.

  Early Winter 5671