Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Unlike the false avatar last seen in Tysan, who inflamed men to wreak righteous slaughter, this sane appeal curbed fanatical zeal and promised mercy through civilian justice. ‘Your Lord Commander serves my word of law!’ the Blessed Prince appealed in dismissal. ‘Arcane workings no longer threaten our conquest! Our lines shall stand firm for an ordered surrender. Every one of you! Carry on by my charge to spare Alestron’s survivors from untoward cruelty …!’

  ‘Pretty statesmanship won’t let my brother back down,’ Parrien said in flat irony. ‘A cold day in Sithaer, before he bows his neck and flings open our gates to an enemy.’

  ‘I know.’ The admission was sorrowful. A pass of the enchantress’s hand masked the crystal, then unveiled a flickering change. ‘But hope always kindles through striving.’

  A fresh view unfolded within the quartz sphere, drawn from another council of war, convened inside the besieged citadel. There, Bransian paced like a shambling lion before the trestle that seated Sevrand, and the dauntless, hard-bitten captains still holding Alestron’s defence: 589heroes, who yet manned the cliff-top embrasures after the fall of the Sea Gate. All were besmirched by cinders and soot. Most gimped in blood-stained bandages. Bransian squinted through smoke-reddened eyes, against all the odds fired by grim purpose. ‘I don’t care blazes if the cistern’s run dry! We are holding the walls! There’s drifted ice mounding the inside baileys. More snow-melt running off the slate roofs that our women are saving in catch barrels. We still have split rock to launch from the trebuchets, and dulled swords aplenty that can be resharpened. By Ath, we have the tools left to strike back! I will hear no more grumbling cant over losses! Tiassa and Sindelle are not whining, as widows, and no s’Brydion babe gives me bawling complaint that they’re cutting their teeth on jerked horse-meat. My own do not falter! We continue on! Until we are sucking the bones of boiled rats, this fortress will be protected!’

  Under the duke’s irascible glare, belief never flagged, that the effort withstanding the Light’s siege might yet win the hour, or find unforeseen intervention …

  Parrien scrubbed at damp eyes. Through the tacit pause, the enchantress cleared the spent charge of her scrying and veiled the dimmed crystal back under silk. Because she did not press, or try him with platitudes, he found civil speech. ‘Thank you. I never properly acknowledged the fact that your action spared me from falling to enemy hands as a hostage.’

  ‘You would have been butchered outright when the sea quarter fell,’ Elaira gave acid correction. ‘I shared Arithon’s awareness, as he went down.’ Agonized by that memory, but sure of her ground, she finished as she intended. ‘His Grace’s plea to stay Talvish’s hand was not bleeding-heart mercy, but a surety, delivered by the rogue far-sight of his s’Ahelas ancestry.’

  ‘You say?’ Parrien looked away. Scratched his beard, then heaved a sigh like a staghound chastised for gutting a warren of rabbits. ‘If I owe the runt sorcerer a life debt, may the rainy day come that he has to collect. Needing my help just might peel the man down to the lump in the clay that is human.’

  ‘The lump in the clay has been there all along,’ Elaira declaimed, now amused. ‘You both don your breeches one leg at a time. Though I swear, the Fatemaster’s list will be written and burned before either of you will admit it.’

  Humour lifted the shadow of shame. Parrien could weather the passage to Athir with at least the semblance of grace. If the Sorcerers made an appearance to try him, he would seize opportunity, rally his courage, and place an appeal in behalf of his brother.

  As if his stubborn resolve was transparent, Elaira laughed with kindly understanding. ‘Sometimes such adamant, rock-headed strength opens the path to create a changed outcome.’ Her smile blurred by the swing of the lamp, she added, ‘We are both snagged by fate. But I will not give way to the pointless belief that I am unworthy, or helpless. That was the one lesson I learned on the streets, and a stance I chose not to abandon.’

  Parrien looked at her. He realized she was not blind, but tenacious, altogether too well aware her beloved’s recovery swung over the abyss. ‘Beware of your Fellowship prophet,’ he told her, forthright. ‘At Athir, he may turn on your interests.’

  Her poignant smile resurged, rendered brilliant. ‘My gratitude, Parrien. But I need no one’s warning. Dakar’s intentions and mine lie at odds, beyond question, on the subject of Arithon’s future.’

  The harsh passage lasted for one fortnight more. Alestron’s defences still had not fallen on the wind-swept, fair morning the courier sloop wore into the barren headland, where green ocean rollers smashed to lace spray, at Athir. Lest the exposed anchorage should draw undue notice, the stripped hull was scuttled the moment her supplies and passengers had been ferried ashore. Beyond the heaped dunes, atop a windy hillock, the roofless towers of a Second Age ruin stitched a crazy-quilt maze of stonewalls. An old right of way, winding westward towards Minderl, filled the nights with Paravian haunts. The wan silver gleam of ethereal presence made town-born mariners shy away. No one landed to fill casks at the wells, whose water still ran sweetly clear. Few could endure the cry of the breeze, singing over lost beauty in poignant lament.

  Yet clanblood respected the voice of the free wilds, and initiate talent knew how to propitiate ghosts. Dakar invoked need under charter law auspices, for the sake of Rathain’s threatened crown prince. Respite was granted, which let Talvish and Parrien’s field-guided experience fashion a shelter of sailcloth and spars inside an abandoned courtyard. There, for three days, the small party laired up in wait for assistance from Althain Tower.

  Yet the Paravian circle sited at the old ruin did not deliver a Fellowship Sorcerer. No attempt at scried contact raised answer. Sethvir maintained his obdurate silence, while uncertainty shortened balked tempers. Parrien’s endless attempts to pick fights moved Talvish to drag him off hunting to fill the stewpot. Arithon regained no sign of awareness, though Elaira fatigued herself, trying. She weathered the cold, lonely nights set apart, with his limp frame clasped in her arms. The rhythm of his breath and heart-beat never once quickened to her murmured speech. His angled features stayed utterly lost, clothed in unearthly serenity. Though she listened, and threw herself into rapport, nothing answered her unpartnered cry but empty distance and vaster quiet. Far beyond the veil, Arithon danced at one with the star song, above the reach of her talent. Each morning, she rose and attended his clothes. Combed his black hair, and changed his linen. With Glendien gone to fetch water and wash, Elaira bared his marble skin and rubbed his raw scar with sweet oil. Until the dread hour that she paused with hitched breath, run chill by the stark recognition: her healer’s touch sensed the insipid loss of resiliency in vital tissue.

  ‘We are losing him!’ she snapped in despair to Dakar, who sat cracking the marrow from the stewed bones left over from last night’s supper. ‘If your Sorcerers care for him, why aren’t they here? Ath’s blinding glory! I cannot bear to watch while his spirit abandons his flesh to slow atrophy!’

  ‘You need not, for much longer,’ Dakar said, abstruse. He stopped chewing cartilage, swallowed, and caved. After all, he could not brave Elaira’s direct stare. ‘I know of a way, only one, to recall him. But the chance taken must come at the cost of your guarding hold on his integrity.’

  Elaira shuddered. Desperately tender, she covered the matchless, neat symmetry of Arithon’s body: the exquisite hands that had bestowed pleasure on her; that always grasped life with such vivid intensity, now lying bitterly still. Gone was his laughter, along with the passion that sourced the well-spring of his musical talent. Silenced, the rages, so swift to defend his most vulnerable caring.

  ‘Say on,’ she demanded, pressed by reckless fear. ‘I will not believe that Arithon chose to abandon his fate without fighting.’

  ‘You will not like the method.’ Dakar shivered, fussed by his glaring reluctance as he skirted the explosive disclosure. ‘Winter solstice, at Athir, can be made to invoke Rathain’s sanctioned tie through the land.’
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br />   Her recoiling cry, as she grasped the cruel gist, slipped her whitened lips before thought. ‘No! That would conceive his child! Under Selidie’s binding, I can’t ever –’

  But the spellbinder whose loyalty upheld the succession met her cringing nerve with no mercy. ‘Then Glendien must assay the rite in your place. I have asked her, yes! She’s already told me she’s willing to try!’ Against that horrified jolt of deception; into the teeth of an undying love’s speechless fury, he bore in. ‘Arithon swore an oath to survive in let blood to the Fellowship Sorcerers! Here, where his Grace knelt before Asandir to receive the seal over the knife-cut, the ocean sand keeps the imprinted charge of that promise. Koriathain! I tell you, on no terms do you realize the cause that marries the realm to an Atheran crown prince.’

  Elaira stayed obdurate. ‘You will not proceed with this!’ Wildcat angry, poised over her prostrate beloved, she lashed out. ‘What friend would dare even think to betray him with another woman as surrogate! I’ll not grant you the keys to Arithon’s heart! Never for your unscrupulous usage to salvage the throne of Rathain.’

  Dakar shrugged, already braced for that blast of indelicate argument. ‘But I know the keys, lady.’ Past grace, he insisted, ‘They’ve been shared already, given into my keeping since the moment Kharadmon disrupted your misspent union in Halwythwood.’

  ‘Dharkaron Avenge me for that violation!’ swore Elaira, drained beyond pale. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  Footsteps pelted, outside. Her distress had drawn notice. Glendien burst in, panting and flushed, her red hair soaked, and her clothing half-laced in a sprint from the well that expected to thwart bloody mayhem.

  She stepped into a tempest; with her husband’s drawn knife at guard point, and measured the furious combatants. Then saw Elaira’s fingers, protectively clasped over Arithon’s pillowed head. ‘You’ve told her!’ she snapped. Her vitriolic glance flicked back to Dakar, who was harrowed enough to cringe outright.

  Elaira said, stony, oblivious to the tears that silvered her eyes. ‘Glendien? How can you become a consenting party to this? You once tested Arithon’s inner fibre! Could you sell out his helpless integrity while he’s unconscious?’

  Yet on that point, clan custom was adamant. ‘I cannot let Kyrialt’s death go for naught! My own gave himself to save Rathain’s blood-line! How could I cavil, when what’s asked of me is far less?’ Since the naked blade in her hand was now trembling, Glendien rammed the steel into the scabbard. ‘Once, Arithon said the life of my husband outweighed his personal dignity. For his honour’s sake, should that choice be reversed?’ Against Elaira’s horrified pain, she defended, ‘Would you let his Grace die? That’s unnatural jealousy! I’ve agreed with Dakar. The attempt must go forward. Forget personal sacrifice! This may be the last chance we have to save the descent of Rathain’s crown lineage.’

  Elaira looked, one to the other, and measured the tenor of raised opposition: Dakar, with his mussed clothing and smudged, moon-calf face far removed from the scapegrace buffoon. Then Glendien’s ripe and sensual allure, once defeated in a blazing assault against Arithon’s private will, and now reclothed in the razor-sharp mourning of a widow’s determination.

  ‘By Ath, you’re both serious.’ Suspicion pricked through, that the adamant silence imposed by Sethvir in cold fact may have been deliberate. ‘Tell me, Dakar! Has Althain’s Warden withdrawn his counsel on purpose?’

  Would the Sorcerers gamble with her wounded pride, that a royal birth might be snatched from the cross-roads of choice set before her?

  Yet the spellbinder lacked a Prime Matriarch’s connivance, to pour salt on the sting of her misery. ‘No. Elaira, I can’t lie. Not for this. The Warden bade me to bring us to Athir. Though I must speak for the weal of the land, whose power shall bid for Prince Arithon’s life will be left in your hands to decide.’

  ‘My voice casts his lot? Between Fellowship directives and the machinations of Koriathain?’ Elaira withstood the urge to shut her streaming eyes; crushed the howling need to go deaf before forcing her harrowed wits to probe further. ‘Then Sethvir steered you to this ugly course to restore my love’s scattered awareness?’

  ‘No.’ Dakar found his courage and matched her regard. ‘The inspiration was mine. Once, at Rockfell Peak, I linked awareness with Kharadmon. Rathain was imperilled. Lent the Sorcerer’s insight, I observed as Arithon achieved a mastery that harnessed the lane tides. The imprint left me with the access to knowledge. In depth, I saw how the attuned tie at sanctioning binds a crown heir to the realm.’

  Beside him, Glendien listened, endurance pitched to withstand grieving loss in support of a need that held meaning.

  ‘That this accursed day had never arrived, or I had not been born to shoulder this sorrow, laid on me.’ Elaira sat, shattered beneath the hurtful crux placed before her. ‘Leave us! I can’t bear your presence, or think!’

  The choice became hers. If Arithon was not to be abandoned to death, she must decree which way the brand of lasting betrayal fell on him: to serve love’s integrity, she must fulfil the vicious triumph of Selidie’s high-stakes conspiracy. The Prime’s implanted sigil would run its dire course, and a talented girl-child of her and Arithon’s private begetting would be bequeathed to a lifelong enslavement by Koriathain. Or she must forsake the priceless gift of his heart: let Glendien’s rape saddle him, or his offspring, with the burden of Rathain’s royal heritage, constrained under the law by the Fellowship.

  When Talvish returned, by Elaira’s request, his sword stood guard for Prince Arithon. His oathsworn hand became her trusted bastion, as she walked the swept shingle to weigh her fate’s path, under the cold stars of Athir. Love’s grace lent her no surcease from her inner turmoil. She had no guidance, beyond her own heart; no word of reassurance to uplift or buoy her. Only the distanced memory of another night, lit by a fire the Sorcerer Traithe had laid on another desolate shore-line. His word to her then, imparted in kindness, had been of an augury shown to the Warden of Althain. For good or ill, she was the one spirit alive who would come to know Arithon best. ‘Should your Master of Shadows fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.’

  A stumbling step, as a coarse stand of dune grass entangled her ankle. Winter wind and sea-spray were not cruel enough to strip her savaged nerves numb. The silvery sheen of the Paravian haunts showed her naught but their silence. Elaira pulled her damp mantle close. She swore herself breathless with rage, then, emptied, scoured her being for the wisdom gained from her study among Ath’s adepts. ‘How do you feel? What do you believe? Where does your heart’s whisper lead you?’

  But the life she was asked to speak for was not hers. How did she dare to summon such courage, or fathom a judgement that set her responsible word over Arithon’s survival? Give him to death, uncontested, or bid for his life through a binding compromise? Where did love cede her the right?

  How would he feel? What did he believe? Where might his heart’s whisper lead him?

  Above her bowed head, through her agonized turmoil, the winter stars whose clear singing had drawn him past hearing shone down on her tormented grief. She cried to their implacable majesty, broken, ‘How would my beloved choose for himself, if he stood here beside me?’

  ‘Listen,’ Arithon had said. Once, on the ship’s deck, when Sulfin Evend’s bared sword gleamed above him, thirsty to kill over principle, his thought had reached her like struck crystal. ‘Listen!’

  But here lay only the voice of the land, bare of his human warmth and encouragement. The thrash of the ocean breakers rolled in, their tumbling rush hurling laceworks of foam that erased the print of her footsteps. Elaira sat on the chill crest of a dune. Sensed the place, there on the lonely strand, where a crown prince had sworn on his let blood to live, come whatever cost and against every concept of sacrifice. Knowing that Dakar must honour that oath, she sorted her disparate memories. One by cherished one, she reviewed her encounters with the mated spirit become an inseparable part of her. And ther
e, she found Arithon’s unalloyed words, framed by the trust of unbounded rapport, while she had been made one with his innermost being during his passage through Kewar.

  ‘… take my permission here and now,’ he had stated, with regard to the peril of entrapment posed through her by the Matriarch’s meddling. ‘Should my life become threatened, don’t lie, beloved. Even had I not sworn my oath to the Fellowship, I could no more watch you die than cease breathing. My love for you will not suffer false promises. Honour my preference, but only if you are able. For myself, in plain truth, I lack the fibre to hold firm and see you take harm.’

  She had seen his depths laid bare to her then: before letting her perish, Arithon would have indebted himself to the Koriani Prime Council a hundred times over.

  Could she do any less for his sake and not risk destroying the selfsame integrity by which he held his life sacrosanct?

  While, in far-off Sanpashir a Biedar Eldest also shared waking vigil, Elaira addressed the black vault of the sky, mystery written across by the glory of Athera’s constellations. These, the same stars whose Paravian Name wove the chord that endowed Alithiel’s transcendent harmony, and now held her beloved spirit-bound. ‘If I err acting in your behalf,’ she addressed his cold absence, ‘then I must lean on my faith in our love. Surely, between us, we can find the strength for an unbounded forgiveness.’