Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Against the raw wind, she arose, the race of her heart at last quieted. She left the shore and re-entered the ruin to shoulder the unthinkable course.

  Inside the tent shelter within tumbled walls, a single rushlight stayed burning. A neat, clansman’s fire boiled a stew that no one found stomach to sample. Talvish maintained steadfast watch by the pallet, guarding Arithon’s inviolate privacy. Parrien looked on, alert as a weasel, as Elaira shoved through the canvas flap.

  She faced Dakar and Glendien, then spoke her mind. ‘This night, no one sleeps. I will not suffer longer, or stand aside while this limbo of dreaming robs Arithon’s health and vitality.’

  The spellbinder said nothing. If the clanswoman coveted a personal stake, she laid down the skinning knife used to clean pelts with the grace not to show untoward eagerness. As the tireless pound of the sea through the quiet stripped every vibrating nerve, Talvish made the soft inquiry. ‘You’ll not wait for the safer timing at solstice, or evoke the crown oath to the kingdom?’

  Elaira lost voice. Withstood the awful, terrified moment she needed to bridle her terror. When she answered, she had steadied again, strengthened by icy conviction. ‘The realm’s throne has no claim, here. Arithon’s adamant preference swore the blood oath to preserve his life. He did not bend his will for the weight of a crown when he granted commitment at Athir. I would rather remand him to a fight against enemies than consign him to the stagnation of traps spun by those who call themselves friends.’

  Her passion broke through to fresh tears, as, even now, the fat spellbinder dared the breath to belabour her with reasoned protest.

  ‘You wish your prince living?’ she pealed, past restraint. ‘Or dead of the trust that you will murder outright if you attempt the false road by manipulative betrayal. We will act now, or not at all, if my hand must direct the proceedings.’

  Dakar shoved erect in the tumble of blankets that had not brought the comfort of sleep. ‘You’re insane!’ he lashed out, appalled. ‘You will use your love under vow and sell his Grace over to your Prime Matriarch?’

  ‘No,’ said Elaira, razed to dread for necessity. ‘But I will take the lead in this dangerous dance. I need Glendien’s help. And yours also, backed by the authority of the Fellowship Sorcerers. If you’ll give clean consent to what has to be tried, here is how we’re going to proceed.’

  For what she proposed, there were no guarantees. Only bare hope, that Arithon’s strayed spirit could respond to her love, impelled by no more than her bonded rapport, kept inviolate and untarnished. Parrien carried the unconscious prince to the site of the Paravian focus. There, Arithon was laid down, wrapped in Davien’s black mantle, atop a rough bed of dune grass. If the lane force purling through the patterned stone inlay touched through to his distanced awareness, no colour quickened his flesh. The bitter wind flicked his hair, unregarded, while the darkness attendant upon his slack form remained fathomless as loomed velvet. Dawn seemed far off. The angled features lit by the torch Dakar held seemed no more alive than carved ivory.

  Undaunted, Elaira asked Talvish to kneel. As trusted crown liegeman, his solemn oath to stand watch for Prince Arithon must be witnessed and sealed first of all. Elaira embarked upon every small safeguard. No part of the poisonous bargain she struck would be left to lapse, or fall forfeit.

  The swordsman bared his blond head and crossed his hands on the hilt of Alithiel. Quiet voice clear through the thrash of the sea, beating the headland at Athir, he declared the terms of life service under which he extended protection. ‘As I am appointed my prince’s right arm, be assured of my word, sworn in my Name under grace of Ath’s light, and upheld by Dharkaron’s Black Spear should I falter.’

  Elaira raised him with her own hands. Her swift embrace shored up his lanky height, as he lost words for her unbounded courage. ‘No friend has done better,’ she told him. ‘Whatever comes, you hold as worthy a place as any of Jieret’s Companions.’

  Beneath the unshielded blaze of the stars crowning the sky overhead, she let Talvish go to assume his post on the line that demarked the south quadrant.

  Of the barriers woven by Selidie’s malice, and the entanglements blood-sworn to a Sorcerer, Elaira did as she must, and called Dakar forward to make dis position. She could not thwart fate without drawing, in part, on the knowledge derived from her order. Therefore, she asked the spellbinder to swear oath of debt, that no blank line should be left for Koriani interests to interpret. ‘You will not bind over the Name of Arithon s’Ffalenn,’ she decreed with explicit directness. ‘The bond will be assumed against the Crown of Rathain, which must answer to Fellowship precepts.’

  ‘Ah, clever!’ crowed Parrien, against Dakar’s stiff misery. ‘Leave it to women, for stickling bargains to strangle posterity!’ For the fine point she accomplished by invoking crown law would involve the Sorcerers, should the Prime Matriarch move to collect.

  ‘I am not Sethvir, to read all angles of nuance,’ Dakar warned, chilled beyond what the winter air warranted.

  Elaira bowed her head. ‘I don’t claim that vision. My faith rests with your masters, who will keep their covenant. More powerful wisdom than yours, or mine, must determine how tonight’s knot unwinds in the future.’ She would not risk their child; never chance the unconscionable betrayal, that the prodigious gifts of the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s lineage could become the vessel to shape the Prime Matriarch’s ambition to groom a successor.

  Dakar ceded his case. To hold Elaira’s love clear of the mire, and secure her help to spare Arithon, all else must tread the razor’s edge: such brazen effrontery must serve to thwart the enslavement of an unborn child. Rife uncertainty triggered no errant augury, either to warn or to guide him; no contact from Althain Tower forbade, as he handed his torch off to Parrien. Committed, Dakar entered the circle at Athir. He embraced the midnight crest of the lane tide and assumed the binding that crossed the sedition of the Koriathain with Fellowship stakes in Rathain’s undetermined accession.

  The last, and most critical part became Glendien’s, to assume by free choice. Clad in a loose robe that belonged to Elaira, her loose hair scented with herbals, she came forward with her impertinent wit as armour to shield the raw wound of Kyrialt’s absence. ‘Why sulk?’ she accosted Dakar. The provocative pout to her lips was bravado, a poor effort to salvage torn pride. ‘Don’t we all get what we want in the end?’

  ‘Don’t cheapen your sacrifice.’ With a depth of awareness untapped through five centuries of whoring debauchery, Dakar plumbed the fierce light in her tawny eyes and tested her feckless dismissal. ‘Are you not offering up your own destiny in belated repayment for Arithon’s selfless past gesture in Shand?’

  ‘No.’ Glendien ran her hands down her supple body, that beyond any question did not bear the quickened seed of her deceased mate. ‘I give myself for the land’s sake, and Kyrialt. This is not about my past blunders, or any flirt atious temptation to try the mettle of Rathain’s prince. Keep your long nose in your own business, spellbinder! Enchantress or not, Elaira is woman enough to honour her private conscience.’

  Already, the steps had been clearly laid out, with consent on acceptance made unconditional. The deep binding the enchantress proposed to entrain had been practised since time beyond memory by the order’s advanced healers. ‘You’ll be enveloped by what feels like a normal sleep,’ Elaira reassured the clanswoman as she made preparations. ‘Throughout the duration, you cannot change course. Although your awareness will not leave your flesh, you will stay gently held under the threshold of waking.’

  The Atheran crystal unwrapped in her hand as she scribed the first circle for arcane containment also would grant oversight to Althain’s Warden. Sethvir could intervene, should objection arise, if his earth-sourced attention was not deferred elsewhere. Elaira evoked no darkening veil of concealment. The boundary laid down by her order’s skilled surgeons only ensured that no sensation would cross the spelled barrier; they sought by their working to mask fear and pain. Yet since nothi
ng planned here would mar the flesh, Elaira left the last loop in the intricate cipher unclosed.

  She told Glendien, ‘If you allow Dakar’s trust to stand guard for your spirit’s integrity, I promise to leave you with the record of what your body has known, to ascertain your dignity stays intact, afterward.’

  But never the memory of Arithon’s shared heart! That distinction was not left in question.

  ‘My dignity’s scarcely at issue,’ declared Glendien. ‘Ath above, don’t I know? Your finicky prince is the one we’re wringing ourselves dizzy, protecting.’ The spelled circle was joined. She assumed the role given her; permitted Elaira to braid up her hair in the pattern familiar to Arithon’s fingers. Provocative lest she should break in retreat, the clanswoman flipped Dakar a sensuous grin and crossed the grand arc of the focus.

  Elaira raised the black cloak over Arithon. Endured the moment, unflinching, while the widow stretched out in cat comfort against his limp frame.

  As unsettled to uphold the part that was asked of her, Glendien kept her insouciant courage. ‘Do your utmost, enchantress. If his Grace will answer the cry of your need, just bring him back to us, singing!’

  Elaira masked her face in cold hands. A deep breath lent no steel to fraught nerves. Tears at this pass would not lift the uncertainty: that if Dakar’s hand failed her, or if the forces unleashed by the high flux at Athir burned through every herbal decoction, an unspeakable prize might be conceived of tonight’s posited union. The most dire precautions might not be enough to wrest the chance-born possibility of a child away from the Koriani Matriarch. But earnest search had uncovered no better option: for Arithon’s life’s sake, Elaira must finish the frightening course she had charted.

  ‘Parrien?’ she summoned, too exposed for false calm. ‘Put out the torch, if you please, and come forward.’

  For the reckoning demanded that she lie down in trance, then gather the resource to spiritwalk. The surgeon’s link, framed by the order’s seniors to map internal damage for healing, would then be engaged to fuse her awareness into tuned rapport with Glendien’s body. Hours might pass, in that altered state. No one could map the fraught danger she trod. If survival relied on her partnered effort to recall Arithon’s strayed spirit, someone must keep her vacant flesh warm throughout the arcane transference.

  Parrien s’Brydion arrived before her, embarrassed, but prepared to return the kindness he owed her. ‘Although merciful grace! I am risking my married skin. Promise! Again! That you’ll gag Glendien’s tongue and keep this night’s work from the twitching ears of my wife.’

  Elaira found laughter to lighten his scowl as she allowed her shivering form to be wrapped in his mantle and cradled in his brawny arms. ‘Should I have asked Dakar to watch your fresh hands?’

  Last sight, against stars, before closing her eyes, the brief flash of teeth through wire beard: Parrien grinned, his bass rejoinder rumbling the chest pillowed under her ear. ‘That’s the fox set to guarding the hen-house, forbye. Like the mythical silkie, just be back in your own skin before dawn. No pretty woman stays in my lap when the need calls me to stand up and piss!’

  Winter 5671

  Concatenation

  The world turned, between breaths. The moonless spin of the stars seemed to hang suspended, momentarily sliced out of time. Farthest south, in Sanpashir, the same hush that gripped the headland at Athir also suffused the darkened desert. There, the revered who was Eldest sat amid the men of her council. Her listening patience sensed the closing cipher Elaira entrained: the glyph that permitted the spirit of one to enter into another, done as an act of shared harmony. The working was recognized from a rite her tribal people had known for uncounted millennia; and a secret that had been stolen away, from an origin that long preceded the diminished enclave now resident on Athera.

  Yet the woman that an Araethurian seeress had once called Fferedon-li – the same also spoken to become the affi’enia forecast by Ath’s adepts – as Koriani enchantress, she who was also named anient by Fire Hands did not impose the rogue sigil of forced mastery, as taught by her thieving order.

  The freely made gift of compliant consent raised the ancient cipher to its original template. The same peaceful melding, formed in sacred ritual by the Biedar initiates to commune with the wise of their departed ancestry, now became repeated upon the Paravian grand focus at Athir.

  The elder in service to Mother Dark’s Chosen cried out and clapped wrinkled hands. ‘Attend on this hour of the new moon! Our part draws nigh as hope for the wandering spirit becomes reborn. She who speaks for his heart must not fail! Or the gifted talent her beloved bears will not waken again in this world.’

  Elaira reopened her eyes to cold darkness, clothed in warm flesh that was not her own. She steadied herself. Strove not to recoil from the unfamiliar comparison, or reject the vivid awareness of transfer. Discipline let her sink into accepting immersion. Glendien’s presence was there, but cocooned in serene unconsciousness. The opened channels for senses and touch recorded her earth-bound surroundings. The beat of the surf on the headland and the whisper of winter wind were the same as ever they had been. Yet the trained reach of initiate talent that extended beyond breathing form was Elaira’s, the nuance of her spirit brought across intact for the vital purpose of healing. There, she was not disoriented. Her innate sensitivity thrummed to the pulse of raw lane force, coursing across the inlaid agate pattern that charged the focus circle beneath her. Beyond eyesight, she knew the man wrapped in the cloak at her side was the bone-and-blood form of her own best beloved.

  Arithon. Urgency for him eclipsed other thought, made exigent as no movement met her. His fractious embrace did not welcome her in. Instead, torpid flesh absorbed her living heat, slack limbs and stilled face unresponsive. Elaira endured that grief, as she must. Forlorn, not disheartened, she rejected fear, that their paired strength could be rendered powerless!

  The unearthly rapture that drew Arithon away left him deafened to tactile caresses. Mere animate reflex could not bridge that gap or reach his unbounded experience. To recall his consciousness, the ephemeral matrix must be redrawn, then sparked to rekindle his self-awareness. Glendien’s form did not matter: the drift in his subtle interface was etheric. Elaira assayed the challenge, shed the herb-scented robe and tucked naked under the silk-lining of Davien’s mantle.

  Come what may, she steadied to sound the attenuated layers of Arithon’s aura. Where Dakar would have gathered the lane flux from the land, then commanded in summons to refire his lapsed will through blood oath and crown obligation, Elaira eschewed overriding demands. Heart and mind, she began with the whispered intimacy born of her consummate love. That terrain, Glendien’s fair charms and stern heritage did not own the power to replicate. Where a stranger must wake sensuality by rote, Elaira stitched a treasured and beautiful tapestry, gilded by partnered experience.

  The hand laced through Arithon’s wind-tumbled hair also knew the charge of his tempestuous passion. The features she cradled with poignant care carried the more vivid recall: of his opened eyes, trained in adoration upon her. If she ran her finger-tips so, down cheek and neck, then over his chest and across his vulnerable flank, with precision she knew how he preferred her touch. Where he responded to firmness and warmth, and how he shivered, when tendered in lightness. How, engaged in resonant harmony, his initiate focus released, undone in abandon until he became dazed by raptured delirium. She recalled the sweet moment of his hitched breath, as he gathered himself for shared pleasure. Ached for the delicious, unbearable pressure, while he shuddered and laughed, raised to match what was freely given.

  Always, he reclothed that stunned flood of sensation into a masterful poise: let the fiercely held flame of his ardour fly majestically wild to captivate her surrender in turn.

  She had all his murmured words of endearment; had joined into seamless rapport with the thundering force of his presence, whirled at one with the lane flux in Halwythwood.

  Memories the spellbinder could n
ever recast, except at second hand, pallid reflection. If that searing, grandiloquent spiral had been smashed short of explosive requital, the languid nights Elaira spent in Arithon’s embrace at Alestron had rewoven their explicit love into a matchless intimacy. Each moment, and each remembered caress kept, as jewel-bright, in a setting of untarnished tenderness.

  Tonight’s rite would not breach that trust. If Arithon woke, he would feel, first of all, the inviolate symmetry of union unbroken between them.

  Now, the drastic absence of his awareness became her most daunting obstacle. The template Elaira asked his flesh to rebuild denied her the gift of his reassurance. This hour of congress could not cherish, as honey, the tactile joy of senses tuned into concert. Her welling tears must not pain him! Though she felt no trembling, exquisite tension answer the sounding board of his skin, her intent dared not waver. She stroked him over, each fingertip certain in familiar sequence. No matter how one-sided the touch, she persisted, listening with fervent intensity. Seeking, she invited. Provocative, she extended her healer’s awareness and reached, striking always to raise his reactions, but in the higher octaves of spirit light. To succeed, she had to arouse what extended beyond nerve and flesh.

  ‘Dearest, my own,’ she whispered.

  Words evoked vibration, even though Arithon’s displaced attention ranged beyond human hearing. The reverent appreciation described by her hands enacted a dance that also – she knew him! – spoke past his reflexive defences. His living memory, she wove as a net, until her remembrance stretched the cry of true partnership into the realm of exalted creation. The suspenseful caresses were hers, plied with a love that made her regard as the mirror to reflect his very self.

  Immaculate concentration steered her, until no exquisite part of him was left cold. Hands laced through his, pressed against his warmed flank, she reached farther, to gather the Name of him. Her own faculties raised to preternatural clarity, she let her pitched adoration lace over and through him. Humility mapped his being in all his splendour: embraced, but did not try to bridle the essence of what could never be tamed. She kissed him, a kindling call beyond words, forged out of her matchless devotion. As the flesh she wore for him blazed for his presence, entrained with the light that was spirit, the flux current honed through the focus at Athir infallibly imprinted her fused emotion. As mate to crown prince, the lane force flared up, called to answer the flame of its rightly tuned match….