Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The dazzling shift in the flux streamered outward. Like the opening note struck from a taut string, raised power laced like ephemeral lightning the length of the seventh lane. Dakar saw the heightened coruscation through mage-sight; felt the prickling surge lift the hair at his nape. His awed gasp breathed hope. ‘Ath above! She’s called the land’s current into response. Do you sense the thrill? The very ground underneath us is quickening!’

  Parrien s’Brydion dared not reply. Amid winter dark, a cut shadow defined by the gleam of the stars, he cradled the enchantress’s vulnerable flesh in his sheltering arms. Her courageous endeavour had to succeed. Else he would forfeit his chance for reprieve from the charge of a crown prince’s murder. On Arithon’s life hung his family’s survival, a grace he had not held the forethought to grasp in the furious moment his sword had struck home.

  Nothing must upset the spiralling song, or alter the delicate balance. The first coil of the mystery had been unleashed. Latent charge flooded the focus. The agate inlay flickered, then brightened, unveiling to sight the living pulse within the Paravian pattern. Elaira’s challenge was fully joined, no avenue left for retreat.

  Chilled by his knowledge as Fellowship spellbinder, Dakar trembled before growing fear. Failure now would not forgive a mistake. The grand union Elaira strove to recall must retrace without error the experience broken off in the oak glade at Halwythwood. One slip would bring chaos to burn human flesh. Nor could any protection he offered deflect the impact in consequence. The building stream of the flux woke his seer’s gift, as the forces entrained by crown heritage raised the pulse of Athera’s electromagnetics. The Mad Prophet felt the warning sting through his feet: sensed the hook snag the weave, as the clean emanation from Athir flagged the distant notice of unfriendly interests.

  Prime Selidie had scryers busy at Telzen. Their circle was tracking the lane tide, aware, and poised for a hostile counter-thrust. Should the raised chord of grand confluence command the conception of a royal heir, the Matriarch lurked to seize full advantage, and snatch her prized stake on the outcome.

  Against such betrayal, Talvish’s shining loyalty guarded Elaira’s south quadrant. There, Dakar acknowledged a choice that outstripped ceremonial precaution. If the Warden at Althain was also entrained, the spellbinder made to stand as the Fellowship’s formal witness pleaded by every power of grace! Let him not become the available instrument, hurled into the onrushing breach …

  Far southward on the black sands of Sanpashir, the circle of tribesmen led by the crone who defended Mother Dark’s Chosen also noted the sparkling leap as the flux line at Athir blazed active. The shaping event matched the weave of a prophecy, guarded in hope for millennia.

  As Eldest, she gave her signal command, whisper soft as the breeze. ‘We stand at the crossing. Begin.’

  The men in her service accepted the charge, handed down from a history beyond living memory. Into the silence of pending event, poised on the stretched wings of destiny, they blended their gifted voices in song. The power they wound into patterned tonality braided a knowledge that predated language. With gentle reverence, the Biedar elders framed their appeal to summon the wise of their ancestry from beyond the veil. The delicate notes they sustained woke a resonance vivid as unearthly fire. At Athir, their uncanny working caused the inlaid agate focus to echo in subtle refrain.

  Sound melded with light, brought to bear through the cipher Elaira had used, unwitting, that harked back to the Biedar tribe’s origins …

  The crux rested on her. She held the focal point for all moving forces, immersed, single-minded, in shaping her love as the beacon for Arithon’s recovery. No other thought touched her. Her will shone, as crystal. Rapt attention guided her forward. Her regard never left Arithon’s features, or she would have seen other powers evoked by her outreach: would have shared the breathtaking cry of the miracle, as the Second Age wisps of Paravian ghosts flocked towards the blaze of the circle.

  There, the shades of the past gathered, shining. Limned on the night air like pearlescent floss, came the horned majesty of past centaur guardians, feathered hooves, and tall torsos muscled. They carried the massive, dragon-spine horns slung upon stitched leather cross-belts. Silenced, arms folded, they towered above the diminutive grace of the sunchildren, who whirled, care-free, underfoot. Lost in time, left as a dazzling imprint, the merry dancers spun and leaped to the measures unreeled by the surf. Their joy raised emotion that could almost be sensed, though the ethereal peal of their crystalline flutes lay centuries removed from the present. Their wisped movement still held the echo of magic. The stone focus rang to an age-old renewal, from a time that could be yet again: when, as a burning, gold river of flame, the Riathan – the unicorns – might gallop in thundering herds to the summoning, manes tossing and polished horns gleaming.

  Living bridge, they had been, to the cry of Ath’s glory, free as wind to embody the wildest heart of the mystery.

  While Dakar wept, and Parrien sat dumb-struck, and Talvish gripped Alithiel’s sheathed hilt, Elaira, rushed dizzy, knew only Arithon. For her, the man sharing Davien’s mantle seemed all that existed in the wide world.

  She played the dark silk of his hair through her fingers. Kissed his lips with her own, lit to burning. ‘Only you. Always. Beloved.’

  She rewove the essence of him, strand by sure strand, each line of his body revisited under her hands. The surge of her arousal laid him under bold claim, until singing rapture must answer. She savoured by the ineffable music of touch, until his remembrance flooded the core of her: the spare fitness that shaped profound grace when he moved, as treasured as her own heart-beat. Breathed into the reverence of undefiled memory, Elaira poured herself through the high octaves as light. Warp through weft, she gathered him into a fabric of consummate caring. While the focus beneath magnified her emotion, then burgeoned from violet to gold, she wrapped Arithon in love, until the trembling cry of her unpartnered spirit reforged the lost flame of desire.

  Beneath her, through reflex, his flesh hardened and rose. She answered him, delicate. Easy and slow, her tenderness whispered, skin on heated skin, fused into surrender past bearing. She eased herself deeper, then deeper, guided by spirit into the tranced clarity that tuned her awareness to the upper registers. The act of the body now a distant echo, she lifted the song to take flight in ecstatic melding. The path was well cherished. Her hands knew the way. He had given the keys: shown her how to access his vulnerable core, there to unwind the spiralling shield of his innermost defences. One by one, Elaira accessed the wide-opened flux points; let her own lowered barriers spark through the breach. Drowned under the blaze of exalted embrace, she laid her cheek on his. Kissed his face with her tears and allowed her twined energies, ever so gently, to enter his unguarded heart.

  Around her, beneath her, in fixed star above, the lane forces at Athir ignited to actinic fire. At one with her beloved, Elaira was sheeted in fountains of light.

  There, at the crux that promised hope and joy, she stilled and asked for his inner permissions – and almost lost her grip. The insistent drive towards reflexive completion nearly whirled her over the edge. Somewhere, Elaira found purposeful strength. She resisted. Cried out, then held back the consuming plunge, his and hers, that must not achieve climax unpartnered.

  ‘Beloved. Arithon!’ She gasped the fraught plea to reclaim his awareness. Past the bittermost drive of her need, through the crucible burn that onrushed towards confluence, she must endure, yet. Gentle the savage, animal onslaught, until she poised at the hanging point of trued balance. As the lane forces fired, then towered, then blazed, she had to sustain the drawn crest by herself. Withstand the tension, wait, and hold on. She must! Shuddering, wrung heart-stopped and breathless with splendour, she fought to stay entrained without snapping until the shattering shout of raised earthforce could ground the uncanny allure of the star song.

  Arithon!

  She sensed him, there, alive and still enraptured. Her yearning spirit reached out
to him. First touch, and the tearing sweetness of the chord he experienced ripped down her nerves like white fire. The danger, once started, could not be reversed: that she might not withstand the unbearable edge. Surrender to ecstatic union too far, and she might slip the casing of her borrowed flesh. Lose her tenuous grip in the lane tides at Athir, and she would be swept away, swirled into immersion along with him, there to die entranced to forgetfulness …

  Dakar’s pealed outburst passed unheard in the torrent. ‘Don’t try!’ he warned Talvish. No hand could reach the twined couple, now. The blast of the flux current would hurl even the strongest man off his feet. Every mind in proximity was reeling, all but stunned into black-out unconsciousness as harmonic forces shimmered towards peak.

  Sethvir, at Althain, must be aware. If the Sorcerer heard, the torrent that razed through his earth-sense did not prompt any saving assistance.

  Were the Koriani scryers still entrained, they would be deafened and blinded. No Matriarch’s reach could command the unleashing power that fired the flux. Her most potent sigils would become ripped asunder, undone by torrential harmony.

  At the centre-pin of the gyre, the choice was unmalleable. Break the cascade, and flesh would burn, wracked skin from bone by chaotic disruption. Or allow the event its unbridled, full course, and let the two spirits entwined at the focus become swept beyond reach past the veil.

  ‘We are losing them both!’ Dakar cried in despair.

  He could do nothing, nothing at all! Only watch, aggrieved, while white light and sound rocked into keening crescendo. Joined at the crux, Elaira and Arithon now led the storm that must release a shower of bright exaltation. Unstoppable force, as the star song entangled with the exploding flare that annealed the land circle at Athir. Joined under such influence, a crown prince and mate would enact a royal conception. Rathain’s need would bear fruit as due consequence. But at such a cost, the brave heart could not contemplate; nor could thought lament, or seer’s talent shift the course of that frightening flash-point …

  The crone at Sanpashir alone did not falter. The time and the hour had been her kept charge, since her affirmation as keeper of Mother Dark’s Chosen. Her word aimed the might fashioned by her male singers for release at the tingling crest. Into the burn of wild forces at Athir, while the lane tide scorched towards peak, the tribe’s revered eldest unleashed the full-throated cry that called down the wisdom of Biedar tribe’s hallowed ancients. Into the listening pause that ensued, across a gap, torn through time, she also hurled her bold appeal to the Warden at Althain Tower.

  ‘I choose to call in Anshlien’ya’s debt!’

  Hope’s promise, now reclaimed, from another, prior conception enacted five hundred years in the past. When, as an act done in free consent, spun under the influence of the tribes’ singing, a young maid who had been the last-born of s’Dieneval’s prophets had crossed her blood-line with Shand’s royal heritage.

  Dari s’Ahelas had sprung from that night’s union, and young love, in the heat of Sanpashir’s black sands.

  Let Sethvir dare to deny the Biedar their right to influence tonight’s culmin ation! The Fellowship Sorcerers would yield their fierce claim. Due answer was owed, for what the desert tribe had granted at the behest of the Ilitharis Guardians: a bright light for the future, and continuance for a kingdom, when Shand’s crown succession had been the inheritance facing sure threat of extinction.

  Where Sethvir gave naught but cold silence at Athir, the Biedar crone received the sweet gratitude of his release. ‘Madam, I daresay I have little choice but to bow to your foresight on all counts.’

  The crone chuckled, amused. Her grasp stayed firm on the matrix of power that arrested the trembling moment. ‘You have seen where this leads as Athera’s caretaker?’

  Sethvir sighed. ‘Not all. But enough. I will have to accept the bitter-sweet sorrow for what your kind must ask of me.’

  The crone narrowed her eyes. Experienced beyond knowing, she never left the least thread of doubt under question. ‘Swear your bond now on behalf of your Fellowship.’

  ‘My oath rests, that the father must never hear of the birth, or acknowledge the daughter delivered from this night’s mating.’ Sethvir’s courage was adamant. ‘You would not intervene, but through dire necessity.’

  The Biedar eldest inclined her white head. While the winds sang over the trackless dunes, and her singers wove skeins of ephemeral light through the gleam of night’s constellations, she whispered the one truth she had to balance the Sorcerer’s harrowed decision. ‘This child shall come to spare her father, one day, dispossessed of his knowledge of her paternity.’

  In his fast eyrie at Althain Tower, Sethvir’s distanced eyes welled over. Tears streaked his worn face. He answered aloud to the same winter stars that shone through his eastern casement. ‘Then, madam, I beg that you ask for such grace. In free will, by her royal gift of compassion, let Arithon’s daughter choose for herself when the time comes to shoulder her fate.’

  The crone’s wrinkled smile was gentle. ‘Caretaker! We are the sworn enemy of the Koriathain, and never the same, to wield arcane power as unscrupulous tyrants! This child, conceived under the old Biedar cipher, will bear the endowment of our tribal ancestry. She will not arrive breathing, except by consent! Witness my given word! The path walked by the daughter of Mother Dark’s Chosen will stay impeccably true, and quite fearless. Let her raising begin as Dari’s, under your own peerless guardianship.’

  ‘For her father’s life’s sake, then, her life path is yours,’ Sethvir whispered, saddened. ‘Kept under the Balance, our ends are the same. Proceed with my blessing.’

  The crone opened her hands. The forces held captive rushed into release. As an arrow shot flaming through the crested surge unleashed by the confluence at Athir, the convergent array of multiple futures resolved into one, with the legacy claimed by the Biedar ancients threading the consummate breach.

  A net of gold light unfurled through the cipher Elaira had enacted to share Glendien’s flesh.

  The binding held true to the cloth of its origin. The enchantress whose intent had reforged the old template stayed entrained by that untarnished thread. Lost to herself, she was not beyond reach of the wisdom that guarded the annals of a mighty tradition. Enraptured by the strains of the star song, entwined with the essence of Arithon, Elaira knew only the strength of her love, while the wrought design of Biedar tribe’s making unfurled, then surrounded, and granted the grace of benevolent shielding.

  Black-out followed the deluging blast, an unconsciousness deep beyond knowing to shelter the fragile flame of mortality. Elaira’s exhausted awareness stayed veiled while the blaze of ancestral protection enfolded her being. She was spiralled down, gently. In silence tenacious as her fierce passion, the consciousness of her beloved was also swept out of entrancement. Realigned under the bliss of grand confluence, anchored into the land by his crown tie of attunement, Arithon’s strayed spirit became annealed back into his forgotten flesh.

  Where he could not have stayed, too long sundered from reason, the wise of the Biedar sang of an ineffable wholeness. Their healing secured the shocked fields of his aura as the surging crest waned, then coiled back towards quiescence. Since hours would pass before he recovered the stream of resurgent sensation, the desert tribe’s elders spun him the solace of sleep. Cradled as though Named by a summoning, Arithon rested under the stars, and no longer enthralled in distanced splendour, scattered among them.

  Winter 5671

  Stymie

  The exalted release just completed at Athir found Selidie Prime balked outright from her prized objective: Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn was not captive or dead. His talented child, of Elaira’s conception, would not be born, or sealed under Koriani auspices. ‘We’ve been thwarted! The babe whose future I engineered to acquire will be carried instead by an ignorant, free-wilds clanswoman!’

  The Matriarch’s astounded fury smashed through her coquette’s poise. She erupted from her seat b
y the fireside. Her tigerish step and shrill curses disrupted her circle of tranced seniors. A kick of her slippered foot sent two of them scrambling, out of her path.

  The dim, curtained chamber, with its wealthy trappings and costly carpet, only heightened her caged agitation. Eyes snapping, Selidie quartered the space commandeered for her use, where the seventh lane’s flow crossed through a mansion in the port town of Telzen. The merchant’s wife whose claimed debt lent the room had an obsessive penchant for fripperies. A back-handed swipe of the Matriarch’s crippled fist sent a glassware vase flying. The trinket smashed against the brick hearth.

  Across the tinkling tumble of shards, the Prime muttered, ‘Save us all!’ This bitter defeat ran beyond inexcusable. One rebellious initiate’s deviation from the steps of established practice had wrought a disastrous break! Principles influenced by Ath’s adepts had opened the gateway to hamper the order’s internal affairs. ‘Elaira has aroused the sleeping might of our ancient enemy in Sanpashir!’

  Dharkaron’s hand on her! No miserable, cross-grained third-rank healer should have mattered enough to raise the attention of old Biedar power! Who could have foreseen such determined invention might thwart a reigning Prime Matriarch?