Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Rathain’s prince was still conscious. The wracking shock of the wound that had felled him rocked through him in waves of agony. Elaira had cut his stained clothing away, laying bare the horrendous damage.

  One glance left Dakar wheeling and faint. He said fiercely, ‘Don’t you dare leave us, your Grace!’

  Pooled in running blood, the gash that crossed Arithon’s stomach was not threatening. Severed muscles could mend. The diaphragm was not pierced. Unlike the tender flesh of the groin, where the terrible sword stroke had ended. Dakar’s belly heaved into revolt. Twice, he mangled the cantrips attempted to ease back afflicted suffering.

  ‘Give over!’ Elaira cut in, stark as steel. ‘Trust my recent training with Ath’s adepts, and my natural skill as a healer.’

  Wrists rinsed scarlet, she worked. A crystal poised in a delicate hand was invoked for a probing assessment. Dakar’s gorge rose again. The nerve in him quailed, that a quartz matrix bound to the Matriarch’s service should be invoked for Rathain’s royal legacy. Then Arithon raised a dreadful, rasping croak. ‘She guards my integrity. Always. Dakar, look again.’

  ‘Beloved!’ chided Elaira, most gently. Her eyes streamed with tears. However she trembled with terrified pain, her expedient touch stayed viced steady. ‘Don’t speak!’

  In fact, Dakar saw his concern laid to rest: her lit shaft of quartz was Atheran in origin. Scried insight disclosed the honest acquisition, gifted from a wise woman who sold simples in Highscarp. Rapt with the crystal’s tuned focus, Elaira stitched subtle light in accord with the Major Balance. Through each check for surety the spellbinder made, the meticulous permissions had correctly served balance. Though a Koriani sigil would have worked faster, for Arithon’s safety, the enchantress used gentler means to stanch the cut veins in his savaged flesh.

  The horrific rip through the viscera must wait. Bleeding and shock would kill before sepsis. Dakar swallowed back resurgent nausea, knowing: the prognosis of gut wounds was never assured, or easy to minister against the onset of insurmountable anguish. No surcease might relieve Arithon’s effort to muffle his harrowing screams.

  Dakar measured bad odds. Though the binding of Davien’s Five Centuries Fountain held the potential to stay the fatal course of the sword-thrust, the on-coming Alliance invasion left no safety to nurse a prolonged convalescence. Arithon could not command his talent. Pain unstrung the immaculate focus required to spiritwalk under his own resource, and all of their planning was ashes. The transmigration of spirit accomplished before in Daon Ramon could not be attempted to disarm Desh-thiere’s curse, or smuggle his vacated body across enemy lines.

  If, in icy truth, the same arcane ruse could blind-side Lysaer’s talent-sensitive priests. The doubt on that score had already been thrashed under jangling argument.

  ‘Whatever you do, decide your course quickly!’ Talvish snapped in bald warning. Despite injuries, he had recovered his sword to assume the lapsed guard at the threshold. ‘Sevrand’s force has withdrawn! Can you not hear the noise?’ Already, the Light’s zealots mowed through the last resistance defending the harbourfront. ‘We’re going to have looters inside a few minutes! I can’t hold the influx off very long, if I’m forced to a stand in the stairwell.’

  ‘Don’t try!’ cried Elaira. ‘Your liege needs you alive!’ Unswerving, attentive, she cupped Arithon’s cheek. ‘Hush. I’ll speak for you. I can track every thought in your mind. We’ll accomplish what’s needed.’ While her touch with the crystal continued to weave an unerring course of swift cautery, she relayed instructions.

  ‘Dakar! You’re to strip off Parrien’s state surcoat. Burn the cloth in the grate and untie his clan braid. Then bundle the man naked into a cot. Poultice his head and start binding his wounds as though you’re a healer in training. Talvish! Dig through that pile of used clothing and pick out a Sunwheel surcoat. No argument! Just do as I say. Several men who once wore them lie here with the fallen, brought in from the battlement. You’re now asked to languish as one of my wounded. Slump on that empty stool as if faint, awaiting your due turn for treatment. Glendien! Lock Arithon’s lyranthe in my larger remedy trunk. Move anything out to make room. Then I’m going to need that Sorcerer’s cloak! Look inside the brass-handled hamper.’

  Glendien left the side of her dead without ceremony. Born to forest customs, that placed exigent survival before mourning, she took action and shortly arrived with Davien’s mantle clutched in her arms. The bordered edge of the night-black wool glittered, laced with patterns of silver embroidery.

  The thread would contain spellcraft.

  Before Dakar’s hot protest, that the Betrayer’s work could not fail to invoke unknown consequences, Elaira cut in, ‘Would you rather fall back on the arts of my order? Arithon’s free choice must run contrary!’

  ‘You have trusted too much!’ the spellbinder reproached the prince with shut eyes, who gasped bleeding.

  ‘Then set faith in Kyrialt, who didn’t!’ Ravaged and pale, the young widow hung on by her obdurate spirit. ‘You will honour my husband’s last word in this life and wrap his feal prince in the Sorcerer’s garment!’

  ‘Hurry.’ Elaira laid her dimmed crystal aside. She caught Davien’s mantle in frantic, wet hands. Heart laid bare, yet without hesitation, she spread the cloth over Arithon’s wracked form, head to feet. Dark wool settled, for one hanging instant turned as deep as the primordial void. The brilliant embroidery sieved down through the weave, dissolved to ephemeral light that sank into the prostrate body beneath.

  Black fabric remained, an unmarked, plain cloak. But the shrouded man did not wear the familiar semblance of Arithon. Again, Dakar viewed the guise of the blind elder, last assumed when Rathain’s prince stalked the Kralovir cult at Etarra. Just as before, Davien’s craft appeared seamless. Even as mage-gifted Sight read the aura, the Sorcerer’s finesse masked the etheric stamp left by Fellowship sanction and royal identity.

  The feat occurred with such speed that Dakar shivered with gooseflesh. ‘Merciful Ath! Would that I knew how that working was done!’

  If Elaira was shaken, her healer’s attention already rallied to measure the changeling spell’s impact.

  ‘Arithon’s unconscious,’ she announced, undone by relief. ‘Davien’s enchantment has stabilized his erratic pulse and lifted him quite beyond pain.’ Which was well, for the moment. Her beloved would not feel the brute course of the treatment their effort demanded to save him. ‘Glendien! I’ll need that plank trestle cleared. Let’s bear his Grace up with the utmost of care, since I can’t accomplish refined surgery crouched on the floor.’

  Talvish’s prior projection proved wrong. The sail-loft over the chandler’s was not barraged by pillagers fired with the passion of conquest. What thundered up the stair in hobnailed boots was a Sunwheel officer, in crisp command of a task squad. His duty, to mop up an ordered assault, encountered no futile last stand; no suicidal charge by panicked citizens trapped by the harbour keep’s downfall. The door he kicked in broke a stifling quiet, cut across by the piteous moans of the prostrate. His raking glance scarcely absorbed the rowed cots, before Glendien scalded him scarlet.

  ‘Idiot man! Take your warmongering elsewhere! No one lies here but the sick and the maimed.’

  ‘You say, forest bitch!’ yelled a soldier from the landing behind. ‘My sword says your accent makes you the Light’s enemy!’

  Before his startled sergeant-at-arms could agree, or snap a reprimand for impertinence, Elaira arose from the trestle, both hands stained with gore to the elbow. ‘Sir! You’ve dared to break into a Koriani hospice. If your man speaks ill of our novice again, I will silence his rank tongue.’ As the lead officer straightened, fast, to apologize, she cut him short. ‘Leave this place! Here, where we undertake a charitable service, your steel and your blundering pose an offence.’

  Shamed stiff, the sergeant refused to be cowed. ‘I go nowhere, enchantress. With all due respect, you are harbouring Alliance traitors, if not outright minions of Shadow.’
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  ‘Glendien,’ said Elaira, her voice dripping ice. ‘Deal with this. Now!’ Back turned, she resumed her grisly work, where nobody’s eyes wished to linger. Her blanketed charge displayed a hideous sword wound, a gashed length of pink gut laid out on the plank for cleaning. The stink lingered, beyond ripe. What the woman’s fingers were stitching with spells would wring a staid veteran to heave up his breakfast.

  The barbaric redhead laced in straightaway, a scathing reminder that Koriathain did not take sides. ‘By all means,’ she challenged with venomous sweet ness, ‘march in like butchers and clobber your own. Your dumb inter ference comes at your own peril!’

  The officer took pause. His survey by then had swept past the cots, and covered the farthest, dimmed alcove. There was a blond casualty who reeled on a stool. He did have an ugly slash on the wrist, stanched with the wadded hem of a Sunwheel surcoat. Not yet convinced – the chap might be an imposter – the sergeant regrouped and tried reason. ‘If you truly have any Alliance men sheltered here, then you’ll have to show me firm proof.’

  ‘Koriathain don’t lie!’ cracked Elaira. ‘Inspect and be quick! You’ll see faces you recognize. But I warn! Show all due respect for the ones not your own. If anyone under the sisterhood’s care takes harm by your prodding, if I’m forced to stir to mix a fresh posset, or if Glendien must reset a bandage, be sure I will visit my undying curse on the manhood of every last wretch in your company.’

  Before the hazed officer could protest, Glendien lit in ahead of him. ‘Can you be so arrogant?’

  ‘Have you no need at all for our skilled help to attend to your mortally wounded?’ Elaira pealed, pushed beyond tolerance.

  The sergeant blanched. ‘Sisters, forgive. My duty commands me.’ He waved a subordinate forward with the curt imprecation to review the bedridden casualties. ‘And touch nothing!’

  ‘Aye, sir!’ Horror met the man’s flinching glance. Pity tore, for the mangled children and unconscious boys, who languished past hope of a hale recovery. The crippling wounds, the ghastly, weeping burns, and the blistering reek of strong unguents wore down brash nerve and sapped the will to continue.

  ‘These two are ours,’ the man-at-arms verified. He glanced up in sweating appeal, that his senior officer would choose to be satisfied.

  Again, Elaira seized the initiative. ‘Have your bearers bring the worst cases here. You’ll find litters, there. Yes! Propped in the corner. I’m sorry one’s burdened with the sheeted dead. The corpse goes wherever you’re planning to burn the citadel’s fallen. If you’ll hear my suggestion, take the fat servant with you. He knows enough to set the bleeders in field dressings, and bind splints so the broken bones and the paralysed can be moved without further trauma.’

  Dusk fell, palled in smoke, which fore-promised a night limned in the flitter of torches as the assault companies came in, worn, off the siege front. Shouts criss-crossed the Alliance camp, as replacement companies from Etarra marched aboard waiting galleys to shoulder the relief watch inside the broached harbour. The troop change proceeded with seamless discipline, as Sulfin Evend returned to the calm surrounds of the Light’s high command tent. Fast strides and a nod from the guard at the threshold admitted him. He plunged past the rich hangings of the ante-room, the ruddy crackle of pitch pine outside replaced by the polished glimmer of candle-lamps.

  Ranne’s sombre report met his rushed arrival at the tapestry that partitioned the trestle and tactical maps. ‘No change,’ he assured, in reference to Lysaer.

  ‘I came as fast as I could.’ Sulfin Evend slowed down. Shut his eyes, and swore out of simmering distaste. The row between officers, just broken up, already clamoured towards riot concerning the upcoming seizure of spoils.

  ‘Bulls in the porcelain shop?’ Ranne murmured in sympathy.

  ‘I told the grasping fools I’d wring their necks if they unleashed their troops like raiders on a stricken caravan!’ The discomfited twitch of broad shoulders resettled the Lord Commander’s mussed surcoat, but not the burdensome weight of his mail. ‘Except, to be fair, the damned clansmen don’t rape.’ Remiss for his bad temper, Sulfin Evend concluded, ‘It’s the head-hunters’ lewd viciousness that incites our fresh troops to rude expectations and swaggering.’

  Past the flap, the large trestle and siege models remained in place for debates over strategy. The rowed chairs stood empty, the last stage of the battle already closed. If the velvet-and-wood furnishings escaped the grime of war, the taint of char and oiled steel rode the air, oppressive as everywhere else.

  Sulfin Evend encountered Lysaer, standing, back turned to the entrance. Ranne’s reliable eye had not sweetened the truth. Under stainless white cloth and gold trim, the crown regent’s carriage reflected the strain of a sleepless night. Inexperience might not see beyond his innate majesty. But the more intimate survey sensed a pressured stillness that trembled like an indrawn breath, denied from explosive release.

  The fight to resist Desh-thiere’s geas never ceased. Hard against flinching nerves and hazed will, the hateful drive flamed on consuming course to shatter the veneer of sanity.

  ‘The body’s not his,’ announced Lysaer s’Ilessid, quite aware of whose presence invaded his fraught need for solitude.

  If his opening seemed casual as a tea-room discussion, Sulfin Evend dared not rely on appearances. Straightaway, he approached the draped plank by the lamp. Flipped back the stained sheet, and exposed the muddy, mauled corpse retrieved after the melee that swept the sea quarter caverns, and now delivered here by his diligent second officer. The light unveiled a young man with black hair. The green eyes were dulled glass, and the angled cheek-bones, crusted over with blood. Feature for feature, the face was the same, recalled from the past encounter at Sanpashir.

  Memory resurged, fit to raise the gorge for the ring of forthright conviction: ‘Nothing I know could force me to this!’ Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn had insisted. ‘No concept of honour will be made the cause to destroy another clan enclave of women and children.’ That ringing, clear voice, gifted to render a masterbard’s music, also had carved a living miracle. Sulfin Evend bristled to primal rage. He could not reconcile the unearthly, grand chord, which had founded the bid for Lysaer’s redemption, evoked as well through callous duplicity to gull his effortless trust. The murderous liar had moved with such grace! Even laughed with engaged abandon.

  And there, reason snagged on the glaring discrepancy. In death, one detail mismatched the impression left by the bastard’s live presence. These awkward hands, nicked with wounds, were all wrong: the wrist-bones too coarse, that suggested the stocky frame of a labourer. In fact, no old scar seared by a past light-bolt marred the stiffened right forearm.

  Sulfin Evend reined in his unruly emotions. ‘I agree,’ he told Lysaer. ‘This would seem an imposter. Though the likeness is quite astonishing. Your priests did not sense any residue laid by a worked enchantment?’

  ‘None.’ Not moving, which was no good sign, Lysaer added, ‘I still feel the gnaw of the curse in my vitals. Which would not be so, if the Master of Shadow had crossed Fate’s Wheel.’

  Sulfin Evend lowered the shroud and stepped back. Every instinct he had shouted wrongness. ‘If we are supposed to be duped, this faked carcass lacks the murderous artifice we’ve always met on the field.’

  No one had died, beyond mundane casualties. No spectacular provocation had been staged to upset the campaign’s ordered progress. The broadscale chaos unleashed on the troops who had marched upon Vastmark and Daon Ramon gave the lie to a ruse of such obvious transparency.

  Frowning, Sulfin Evend hooked a chair, spun the seat to face Lysaer, and perched. His uneasy senses shrilled with the need to stay vigilant. Lysaer’s volatile state remained driven past surcease by Arithon’s close proximity. Each passing hour, that peril increased as the pressure leached his reserves.

  While the siege approached closure, Sulfin Evend had no choice but to keep watch at his liege’s shoulder. No one else had the talented Sight to pre
vail, if crisis broke in his absence. He could not stand down, though the arduous demands of the upstepped campaign wrung him to blinding exhaustion. The befogging ache pierced his bones, to sleep like a rock where he rested.

  ‘What is your intent?’ he probed at quiet length. ‘It might suit our purpose, and perhaps blunt the rabid aggression of conquest, if we let the ceremonial burning to rest the shade of a sorcerer go forward.’

  ‘You want that diversion to lend the free rein to investigate on your own,’ Lysaer surmised. ‘For what gain?’ He turned around, his cranked tension unveiled by the bruised rings that shadowed his eye-sockets. His state collar glittered under the force required to steady his breathing. ‘Who handles the parade of appeals to the Light, if you are not here, and I have to answer directly? My Sunwheel priests already realize the Spinner of Darkness still lives. You wanted the guiding presence of talent. I haven’t the means to blindside that array of trained sensitivity! Gag them outright, and I cannot mislead the dedicate fervour of the rank and file with lies. Not without sending them to self-destruction, since the criminal sorcerer is surely at large, and quite busy supporting the s’Brydion resistance. As well as I, you must realize our victory progresses too easily to be trusted.’

  ‘The risk mounts, the tighter we corner our prey,’ Sulfin Evend agreed. ‘The object is not to fall for his wiles but to take him down clean, before spending the lives of the war host positioned to flush him. That calls for swift stalking ahead of the lines. You can’t act there with covert anonymity, my friend.’ In unvarnished honesty, the fear could not rest, that a direct encounter must trigger the insane ferocity of Desh-thiere’s curse.