Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Talvish vanished into the coiling smoke billowed up from the wrack at the water-front. ‘You’ll ask that in Arithon’s presence! If you dare.’ Through hacked coughing, he added, ‘Trust my guess? His Grace doesn’t plan to come back. The guest suite’s stripped bare. The enchantress and Rathain’s feal following have gone downside, every parcel of remedies packed along with them.’

  They found Arithon s’Ffalenn in the sail-loft at the chandler’s, made over as hospice to succour the injured too stricken to move. There, where the crash of the enemy’s incursion shocked vibrations through walls and floor-boards, Parrien first heard the notes that a masterbard’s skill wrought to fuse shattered bone and torn ligaments. The sweet clarity pierced the dust-sifted air like the chime of steel rings, dropped onto sheet glass. The harmonics sheared the dross from the mind, and lifted the spirit into ineffable joy.

  Caught within the dimmed stairway, Parrien s’Brydion lost a gasping breath and crumpled onto his knees. Mailed fingers pressed into his face to stop tears, he tried and failed to recover. One gasping shudder followed the next, until he was helplessly weeping. If he thought he had ever known beauty before, the musician’s winged mastery reformed him.

  Talvish, beside him, was better prepared. Aboard the Khetienn, seventeen years before, he had witnessed the first, explorative measures an exacting practice had shaped to enact today’s healing. In matchless splendour, the bard’s talent redressed suffering, bleak disharmony knitted to wholeness. Now, far-sight and initiate mastery evoked a fresh edge of refinement: the cascading melody brought to full flower might have balanced a stone on the wisp of a moonbeam.

  ‘You won’t die, though your heart’s fit to burst,’ Talvish managed. His fraught grip braced the larger man’s weight, while the seconds flowed past, gilded in exquisite sound. Thoughts wrung still, the chance-met observer could only endure, while the dynamic framework of life was made whole, and the revivified spirit unfolded and ached for a balance precocious and glorious.

  Scarcely bearable, the onslaught found closure at last. Spent strings dwindled into taut silence. Roughshod against calm, the clamour of war continued its harsh storm outside. Within, the stark cry for retreat reached crescendo: felled on the stair, Parrien shuddered, unable to rise.

  Talvish hauled him erect. ‘Your doing taught my liege that entrained sequence. He wasn’t born knowing the key to access those rarefied octaves.’

  ‘I once broke his leg?’ cracked Parrien, bitter. ‘Ath’s own mercy!’ The depth of such fierce sensitivity daunted. ‘What brought your crown prince to return here?’

  ‘His friends, and a life debt.’ Talvish climbed onwards, beyond resolute. ‘You couldn’t have realized. But Arithon renounced your family’s alliance for reasons of love. The Seer in him would not be reconciled.’

  Which truth fitted too well: laid open by his receptive talents, a masterbard of such stature could never endorse the destruction that ravaged the citadel now. The failing sea-walls were soaked in let blood. That held line could not last. Before sunset, the harbour-side keep would be shattered by the invasion. The brother charged as the ducal ambassador struggled to rally his bludgeoned wits. If he would appeal for the grace of an interview, his plea must be made before the musician engaged the next healing.

  Kyrialt kept steadfast guard at the threshold. In forest leathers and clan braid, his formal stance stayed immaculate, until sight of the scarlet s’Brydion colours jabbed him to wary antagonism. State manners could not curb the frowning glare he shot Talvish.

  ‘Let his Grace determine!’ the blond liegeman murmured. ‘Allow us to pass.’ Wan light at the threshold illumined his face, unveiling the fact he was haggard.

  Kyrialt’s umbrage dissolved into shock. ‘Tell me! What’s happened? Where’s Fionn Areth?’

  This time, as grief locked Talvish’s speech, Parrien tendered gruff answer. ‘I’ve not seen the goatherd. Vhandon fell holding the breach in the shipworks, and I am not sent with the message for consolation.’

  But the High Lord of Alland’s past heir proved too seasoned to bait. ‘Where his Grace of Rathain is concerned, your family’s entangling history predates me. Never show me fresh cause!’

  Parrien acknowledged the challenge, teeth bared. Pleased not to be misjudged for his court-dress, he bulled ahead, knowing Talvish would hound every by-play stirred up in the sail-loft.

  Two steps stopped him cold. No rife bluster could ease the sight of the torment laid on the rows of stained pallets.

  There, shorn of arms, and outside secured walls, the man reviled as the Spinner of Darkness chose to spend the matchless gift of his resource. With Elaira beside him, and Glendien’s assistance, he bent his royal knee to administer to the abandoned, the wrecked, and the hopeless. Groaning men lying gutted by pole arms and steel; bundled forms butchered senseless, that laboured to breathe; others scorched beyond recognition by fire. Children bled limp by the loss of a limb, or afflicted with crushed ribs and the cyanotic pallor of flail chest. These lay side by side with brawny smiths and prime craftsmen, once gainfully busy supporting their kinsfolk, and now at death’s door from the mangling accidents that struck when the torsion ropes strained and snapped under load on the arbalests and catapults.

  The ugliest face of the war sheltered here, where expedient logic begged for the clean end of a mercy stroke.

  ‘Why?’ Parrien pealed, riven numb. ‘Heal them or not, you can’t possibly save them!’

  ‘I would be here, anyway, given what’s passed.’ The slight figure bearing the lyranthe overheard, aroused from the languor of after-shock. Arithon stood. The state cloth that met his turned glance shouted warning. He touched Elaira’s lips in swift reassurance, then handed his heirloom instrument off into Glendien’s keeping. Alone by discreet choice, he approached the intrusive s’Brydion petitioner.

  Close up, beyond artifice, his severe features were stripped: wide open still to the insight that tapped the well-spring of deep mystery. In unguarded green eyes, Parrien saw his own sorrow, unbearably mirrored. More, the tuned range of subtle awareness mourned every tear yet to be written, the more vividly seen by rogue-talented s’Ahelas vision.

  The s’Brydion spokesman reeled before a compassion he felt flawed and unfit to withstand. As the forms of diplomacy failed, the lean hand of the prince steered him wide of the horror sprawled on the cots.

  ‘You have my attention,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn.

  Sweating before that initiate awareness, Parrien needled, ‘Why not just flay my thick skin with an axe?’

  Arithon fielded the jab with neutrality. ‘I’d save the discomfort. Masks drop without bleeding.’

  ‘Not on this turf,’ Parrien countered. ‘We grew up stretching Kalesh’s spies on the rack, and our mother died screaming, poisoned by Adruin’s assassins.’ Stripped of pride, his appeal emerged without effort, unleashed by his torrent of longing. ‘For my brother, and the sake of this law-bound clan holding, your Grace can do nothing more than attend to the hopelessly wounded?’

  ‘The born right to live that’s given each person was never assigned to my keeping. Nor could I force sense against the grain of your duke’s short-sighted decisions.’ Arithon inclined his head to acknowledge Elaira, who had dragged up two sail-maker’s stools to smooth the thorny audience.

  After Parrien, the crown prince seated himself. Now the extent of his weariness showed. In tight lines at his eyes, and in the searing constraint imposed by the Evenstar’s defeat. Yet Arithon would not bow to grief. A spirit forged by the trials of Kewar’s maze, his reserves could match lacerating distress with frank tenderness. ‘The present moment holds all our strengths. I have not given over my hope! Of those futures left that my choice can still influence, I act for the one that unfolds with least death. Many of your citadel’s folk may go free.’ As Parrien’s composure threatened to break, he assured, ‘Even yet!’ Careful to salve wounded dignity, Arithon waited a moment, then qualified. ‘If the Mistwraith’s influence can be disarmed
, then my half-brother’s insane enmity will become temporarily suspended.’

  Long enough, maybe, to blunt the brutality driving the inevitable conquest. Respect, before reticence, allowed Parrien to grasp that unpleasant gist.

  ‘I cannot salvage your stake in the citadel,’ Arithon said finally. ‘Yet if the s’Ilessid royal gift can be freed from the curse, we can steward the chance of just treatment for your civilian survivors.’

  No fool, Parrien sprang to the crux. ‘I should retire without fuss? Accept Lysaer’s criminal charges? Daelion’s fate, prince! You will just stand aside, while your s’Brydion spies get arraigned by s’Ilessid for treason?’ Now shadowed by Talvish’s defensive presence, closed in behind his right shoulder, Parrien blazed with honest agony, ‘We as good as married our honour to yours, Teir’s’Ffalenn! I see we were only a sop, all along, to be thrown to the jaws of your enemies.’

  ‘Your own enemies, since Riverton!’ snapped Arithon. Annoyed, but not vicious, his crisp outrage answered. ‘Before that hour, the s’Brydion name was untainted. Mearn’s post as ambassador stayed above all suspicion! Dare you recall, Parrien? I once fought your bullheaded choice to a standstill! You broke my right leg. Overrode my appeal, that Lysaer’s royal shipworks should be left to bide without your killing spree of reprisal!’

  ‘We made that mistake, and on our own merits,’ Parrien was swift to admit. ‘We have lived by the sword for too long. Our friendships are forthright, and founded on passion. We also decided to help Princess Ellaine. She was not abandoned to wrestle a plight that trapped her as a helpless game-piece.’

  When Arithon said nothing, Parrien bore in, probing hard to smoke out flinching weakness. ‘In fact, are you Torbrand’s most pithless descendant, to shelter the peace at all costs? If you do hold the power to sway Lysaer’s hatred, then our blood-line sees an ignominious end because you gagged on a principle! Can you sit back on your string plucker’s arse and, like the rank coward, do nothing?’

  ‘But I have not done nothing,’ Arithon corrected. He stood up and bowed. ‘Alone of your kindred, Mearn saved his family when I invoked the Paravian sword to enact intervention. Fianzia’s first-born will arrive in two weeks, under the protection of Verrain at Methisle. By the gift of forevision bred into my ancestry, I have Seen that child’s Naming! On grounds of succession, your brother’s appeal is already met.’ Unfazed as the larger man shoved to his feet, Arithon dismissed, ‘I have no more patience! Go and tell Bransian on my royal oath: your ancestral lineage survives beyond question.’

  Parrien’s electrified surge to draw steel was arrested on Talvish’s sword-point. ‘No, brother! Not here. Not now, against this man. Indulge your blind rage, and you will murder hope. Trust me, I beg you! If you press this fight, you will have abandoned your own wife and children. On my word, by my years of true service, my liege has not told you everything!’

  ‘Then explain!’ snarled Parrien to Arithon’s turned back. ‘Straightaway and in unvarnished language, say why I shouldn’t drop you both to rot alongside your doomed lot of carrion.’

  ‘In fact he must die, at least by appearance,’ a breathless voice interjected. The intrusion was Dakar’s, barged through without leave as he made his rushed entry. In the teeth of Parrien’s suspicion, he added, ‘Sparing the sentiment, these wounded also offer the key to salvage the threat being taken with Rathain’s crown heritage.’

  ‘Where’s Fionn Areth?’ asked Arithon, spun volte-face in a sharp change of subject. ‘Dakar! Why isn’t the grass-lander with you?’

  The Mad Prophet ran over that question, roughshod. ‘Shall I remind you as Fellowship spokesman? I answer a higher authority than yours! Your Grace, clear this room. We have run out of time! Only one life inside this doomed rock pile is not considered replaceable!’

  As Parrien purpled, and Talvish changed stance in vain hope to forestall a royal explosion, the Mad Prophet shed his cloak and slumped on a stool, unstrung by puffing exertion.

  ‘You risk moving too late!’ he accosted the prince, beyond caring whose temper might savage him. ‘The mule-headed sentries permitted my passage because at this moment, enemy sappers are working the rock to crack the underground cisterns. The sea quarter’s condemned, and Parrien’s stranded. The duke’s guard are torching the lift.’

  Early Winter 5671

  First Betrayal

  In forest-bred stillness overlooked since the latest intrusive arrival, Kyrialt observed Parrien’s disrupted audience from his posted watch at the threshold. He kept his ear tuned through Dakar’s bitter news, and the brutal shock, that the duke’s expedient sacrifice of the sea quarter had left a brother cut off from his kinsfolk. Amid the raised voices, Arithon’s cracking-fast question repeated.

  Again, Rathain’s prince demanded the reason for Fionn Areth’s unexplained absence.

  The forced pause hung, electrified.

  Kyrialt tensed, no longer on guard for a posited threat from the stairwell. From inside the door, the sharp rise in tension bristled his nape in dire warning. Hunter’s instinct reacted. He moved on the turmoil that converged at the front of the sail-loft.

  Talvish’s pallor snagged his eye first. Kyrialt mapped that bleak reticence and knew: the grass-lander’s fate had gone badly, somehow tied to Vhandon’s demise. Talvish’s lapsed attention, as he scrambled for words to break tragedy, opened the gates to disaster.

  Kyrialt charged, silent, knife and sword drawn in stride. Alerted to violence with preternatural clarity, he locked on to Parrien’s overdrawn tension. Saw, as the moment’s insupportable pressure drove the man’s shattered fibre past breaking.

  Parrien raised a lightning, mailed fist. He slapped Talvish’s ready sword-point aside, drew cold steel, and lunged to strike Arithon: who was unarmed, and caught unaware, entrained as he was on the nascent distress behind the spellbinder’s evasions.

  Kyrialt extended muscle and sinew, past time to voice any outcry. A fraught fraction too late, he pushed his athletic faculties beyond thought of self-preservation. The blade he thrust between Parrien’s stroke hit and slid with a clashed scream of metal.

  The assault that should have stabbed home was turned. But the driving momentum, unstoppably launched, deflected its razor cut downward. The slashing impetus carved Arithon from midriff to hip. There, the murdering weapon snagged bone, and wrenched a deep gash through the viscera.

  Kyrialt vented his distraught anguish, above Glendien’s harrowing shout. ‘Alestron’s reprieve will never be bought by selling my liege to your enemies!’

  Yet all recourse was spent. Talvish, caught flat-footed, was moving. But Kyrialt’s intervention blocked his direct response.

  As Arithon folded, the befouled long sword jerked clear.

  Parrien snarled, ‘His Grace meant to play dead! By Ath, should I wait and abandon the lives of my own threatened family?’ His riposte launched to finish his foiled assassination.

  Kyrialt let his hurled bulk drive in between. Unbalanced already, his sacrificed footing committed beyond all recovery, he caught the force of the strike in his back. Then slammed into the floor-boards, aware he was dying. Beside him, crumpled and bleeding, Rathain’s prince lay curled in fraught agony.

  Still living: what distressed voice his bard’s talent could raise was pitched across belling steel, a gasped plea that begged restraint for the life of Parrien s’Brydion. ‘Tiassa’s children should not grow up fatherless! Talvish! Honour my royal word as promised for Dame Dawr’s legacy!’

  Then Elaira arrived. Her whipped skirts brushed the grazed skin of Kyrialt’s cheek. Masked his view of his liege as she dropped on her knees to attend what should not be salvaged.

  Kyrialt raised his chin. Shuddered. ‘No lady! On my oath.’ Which freed her to turn and look after her stricken beloved.

  Son born to the flower of a caithdein’s lineage, Kyrialt s’Taleyn had no more strength nor acuity left for his scout’s faculties to track the fight left abandoned. He could not see whether the spellbinder’s art m
ight curb treachery under the law of the compact. The rank jet of blood soaked through shirt and leathers. His veins emptied with the pumped gush of a severed artery. The end would be quick. Unlike the lingering pain of the wounding that he had tried, and failed, to spare Arithon. Kyrialt shut his eyes in despair. Already, vitality faded. Dizziness up-ended his senses, air-starved despite his raced breathing.

  ‘Kyrialt! Husband!’ The grip that supported him through the ebb matched his last wish, being Glendien’s. He barely felt the spellbinder’s furious hands, wadding cloth to stem his rushed bleeding.

  ‘Davien’s cloak,’ Kyrialt entreated, thread thin. The limp fingers clutched in his wife’s frantic clasp were unable to close as he faltered.

  ‘Rest easy,’ said Dakar. Speech came from far off. ‘Crown honour attends you. Trust my word, we’ll secure the life of your prince in your absence.’

  Kyrialt smiled. His awareness recorded Glendien’s tears, then her hair, fallen warm on his face as she kissed his lips and eased his heart through the wracking, last spasms.

  The serenity to set warding circles was lost, the chance ruined, to engage the intricate preparations for securing the live spirit outside its dormant casing of flesh. Now, the throes of a dire wounding smashed the hope of controlled intervention to slip Arithon past the Alliance war host and disarm Lysaer’s cursed affliction. Dakar wiped bloodied hands, paralysed by anxiety. He dared make no other grievous mistakes. If this bitter crisis careened beyond salvage, by his own wretched prophecy, the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s death would smash the course of the Fellowship Sorcerers’ future reunity.

  For Kyrialt, nothing more could be done. Most brave, his swift passage was over. While Glendien shrouded her husband’s stilled form, Talvish restrained Parrien’s sprawled frame with the strap leather of belt and baldric. Both men bled from fresh sword-cuts, though the disabling blow had been Dakar’s, an oak stool snatched at need and shied into the s’Brydion nape from behind. Whether or not the felon was damaged, the Mad Prophet faced the more urgent priority. He sank to his knees on the spattered floor, laced his hands in black hair, and cradled Arithon’s head.