Читать книгу Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 14

On the day that event struck the anvil of fate, the ambassadorial courier from Varens rode into the trade town of Tirans. He came in the company of four mounted men and passed under the northern gate of the teeming, walled rise that guarded the industrious hub of East Halla’s peninsula. Amid summer haze, the carnelian brick watchtowers arose, sturdy and square, gold-rimmed against an egg-shell sky. Beneath, the dust stirred up by labouring caravans spread a choking, alkali cloud.

The lumbering farm wagons emptied since dawn crowded past eight-in-hand ox teams, hauling inbound drays from the coast. Wedged in the crush, the sweating courier glanced sidelong at the rider clad in sweat rag and hat and anonymous leathers beside him. ‘You were mad to come here without a state retinue.’

The shaded face turned. Fair-skinned, handsome features wore the same grime that coated all summer travellers. A haggard expression bespoke the rigors of three harried days in the saddle. Yet the glint in those wide-opened eyes stayed as steel, struck off azure ice. ‘So we’ll see.’

Turned forward again, Lysaer s’Ilessid never acknowledged the anxious men-at-arms paired at his back. His magisterial manner also refused to draw rein for the tender young talent who straggled behind: today’s royal page was the gawky get of a Korias crofter. He still showed his plough-boy’s fist on the reins, more at ease with a scythe than a weapon. If the Light’s Lord Commander might have bade to correct the appalling lapse in formal panoply, Sulfin Evend was at large to muster the southcoast. His absence left the daunted dismay of his overruled, second-string officers.

The Blessed Prince remained unfazed. He surveyed the jostling backs of the draught teams, then the craft quarter shop-fronts with their gaudy signs. Adroit, he avoided the flower seller’s child, darting to hawk posies to the silk-clad matrons in their parked carriages. Tirans’ three-storied mansions framed the scene with established elegance, from door-sills agleam with new paint, to the carvings on marble cornices. A balladeer’s notes braved the hubbub. The civilized populace adorned their dwellings with statuary, while the potted ivy and gardenia trailing from the upper galleries trumpeted nonchalant affluence.

Against the courier’s outspoken concern, Lysaer observed, ‘After all, we’re not visiting a den of barbarians.’

His informants’ reports had not been remiss: unlike the seaports, this town’s ruling council had yet to embrace the cause of Avenor’s Alliance. If the merchants and well-set craftsmen were aligned with the leanings of trade, Tirans supported no head-hunters’ league. Her standing garrison did not chafe to impinge on the designate bounds of the free wilds. The canny mayor reigned without jostling to upset traditional diplomacy. Here, at the core of East Halla’s prosperity, a frail-but-established truce had held sway since the downfall of Melhalla’s crown. Charter law still kept tenuous influence.

Atwood’s clans were too powerfully placed, allied as they were in tight interest with the warmongering s’Brydion dukes. Which stew of old order and defiant town enterprise primed the stage for an uncivil welcome.

The men-at-arms and the page trailed Lysaer’s horse with closed mouths and inflexible orders. The Light’s avatar had declared war against Shadow. Independent or not, Tirans’ citizens soon would be commanded to muster. No town-born adult might resist that decision, not if he expected to thrive.

Therefore, the five riders on their lathered mounts breasted the moil at the main cross-road. They parted ways with the laden carts serving the craft quarter market, joining the smart, lighter vehicles and lackeys bound on genteel business uptown. As the press slackened, the Varens courier slapped the dust from his blazoned jacket. He assayed a sly glance. The expression under Lysaer’s felt hat appeared reasonable enough to try a last appeal. ‘The mayor’s played fire with politics for more years than I’ve been alive. Blessed Light, Lord, you cannot expect your grand cause to be served by a routine man bearing dispatches!’

‘I expect you to deliver my sealed writ, nothing more.’ Lysaer tipped a nod to acknowledge his two armsmen, then gave an encouraging smile to ease the fresh nerves of his page-boy. ‘That inn, the Flocked Starling, should do very well. My company stops there for a bath and a meal, followed up by a change of clothing.’

While the Varens man gaped like a trout, the Light’s foolishly sparse retinue reined over to the curb and dismounted. The page took smooth charge of his master’s hot horse. Foamed bits and grimed reins brought no disdainful comment, raised as he was at the ploughshare. His birth-born talent was as matter-of-fact. ‘I sense nothing amiss, here,’ he said after a moment. ‘No untoward workings or sorceries.’

Lysaer clapped the boy’s shoulder. ‘Well done. Carry on.’

The yokel ducked, hiding his blush. He had never known privilege, unlike the silent, paired veterans behind, who once had served as honour guard for Avenor’s lost prince. Now, Ranne and Fennick’s taciturn competence headed the avatar’s personal train. Their appointment had been Sulfin Evend’s replacement, after the late, vile strike by cult sorcery destroyed his three elite captains.

Hawk-nosed Ranne never showed second thoughts. His whistle rousted the Flocked Starling’s grooms, while his more personable, ruddy companion unbuckled their scant baggage and stayed to attend the unsaddling.

‘Don’t want your stashed coin rifled out of your gear?’ Ranne needled his comrade-in-arms.

‘Sweet life, I don’t!’ Fennick’s quick glance appraised the poleaxed rider from Varens, caught still astride in the bustling street. ‘Don’t rush the occasion to sour my fun, or are you too gutless to try a hen’s wager?’

Ranne tipped back his helm, while the master self-named as the Light’s Blessed Prince continued discussion with the stalled courier. Then he shrugged and declared the importunate odds: ‘That we’re going to have Tirans declared for the Light before the hour of sundown?’

‘Midnight,’ corrected Lysaer, who had overheard through the clatter of hooves as the brow-beaten rider spurred off on his errand. ‘We’ll have Tirans after sundown, because her stiff-necked Lord Mayor has too much experience to bow to my overture.’

Which feint of sly statecraft left the Varens courier shamed scarlet under the lion’s share of embarrassment. Alone on the carpet before the high council-men ensconced on the governor’s dais, he was left standing in his dusty clothes, redolent of horse and greased leather. He did not have an ambassador’s grace to disarm the pitched tension before him. The attendant High Magistrate looked furious in his lace. Worse, the suffused ire on the Lord Mayor’s face suggested the Light’s dispatch sparked a diplomatic explosion.

Packed in volatile ranks on the floor, and parboiled by sun through the windows, the guild ministers steamed in their lappet hats. Their whispered distress stretched the pause, dropped since the moment the finicky secretary had knifed through the Sunwheel seal.

‘What appeal is presented?’ a guild spokesman ventured across the stuffy atmosphere. ‘How daring a claim does this royal presume to impose on our free city of Tirans?’

For answer, the Lord Mayor raised acid-sharp eyes, and instead accosted the courier. ‘You know what this says?’ Rings sparked to the pitiless snap of a finger against the unreeled parchment.

The tired rider sweated, trapped by the authority lidded under the vaulted ceiling. ‘I’m a Varens man, your Worthiness. Routine messenger, only. Not my place to know, far less to opinionate on what’s written and sent by my betters.’ Which statement admitted no more than the service badge sewn on his jacket.

But the vulture wearing the seneschal’s robe lashed back in jaundiced suspicion. ‘You could be the Light’s dedicate, come under plain clothes.’

‘No.’ The questioned man shifted, to the chink of rowelled spurs. ‘I’m a hired rider, paid by the route. The scrolls in my dispatch pouch bide under seal. The state contents are never my business.’

Nor had the wax been breached beforetime, a fact witnessed by everyone present. First to crack, the town’s acrimonious advisor slapped off his velvet hat.

‘We’re wasting our strategy grilling the messenger! What does the Exalted Prince have the gall to demand?’

The Lord Mayor’s cheek twitched. ‘That by sundown today, we are to be flying the Sunwheel banner from the most prominent pole on our watchtower.’

‘Ultimatum?’ The Minister of the Treasury bristled. ‘Sheer arrogance!’

‘A plea of insanity, more apt to spark war than move us to grant an alliance.’ The advisor sniffed. ‘Beneath our grace to respond, I suggest.’

‘Ignore this? Are you mad?’ The dimpled treasurer stabbed out a finger. ‘This showman has tied the port towns in silk wraps! They embrace errant creed for a menial bargain that secures their defence against piracy!’

‘Then let’s hear the last line of that writ!’ The armed veteran wearing the garrison’s blazon banged the table with his unsheathed dagger. ‘We hoist the Light’s flag, or else what is threatened?’

‘Or nothing,’ responded the Lord Mayor, fixed by icy thought in his upright chair. His frown stayed perplexed. ‘No ultimatum has been presented. We have no other statement. Just the one sentence, which also poses us an impertinent impasse.’ The pause lagged again, while his fish-eyed glare raked over his disgruntled council-men. ‘The rank challenge lies here: the questionable banner we’ve been asked to raise has, thanklessly, not been provided.’

The miserable courier cleared his dry throat. ‘Your pardon, Lordships. And no fault, by Varens. But on my ride in, I was also charged to leave a wrapped bundle, addressed to the day’s standing gate captain.’ Set at risk by the more volatile jab, that the Light’s avatar was in fact present in Tirans, unannounced with a retinue of three, the rider settled for malice. ‘I don’t broach state seals. But a hare-brained fool knows that packet held cloth, set under the Sunwheel blazon.’

‘Black Sithaer, the rogue nerve!’ pealed the gaunt justiciar.

If the garrison captain stayed his ill temper, the less-disciplined officials heaved to their feet. Amid declaiming shouts, and the chorused hysteria of trade ministers crying for reason, the fire of singed nerves prevailed.

‘I will not give way!’ The Lord Mayor pounced on the presumptuous parchment and ripped it to fluttering shreds. ‘I grant this upstart nothing! Never, for anyone, will we discard our town’s pride and independence!’

‘Then stall diplomatically!’ A fat bursar swiped through the small blizzard, ranting, ‘Do less, and we’re likely to cut ourselves off! Don’t forget that the ports supporting the Alliance could freeze our trade by embargo.’

The arms captain howled. ‘You would choose out of fear, for the sop of security bought by the gold in your ledgers?’

As the upset devolved to a fist-shaking knot, the dispatch rider ducked in retreat and quietly let himself out. To his novice’s eye, the brash avatar had brought the Light’s cause no genial accord: just a single, shrewd line that had driven a wedge through Tirans’ steadfast high council.

Word leaked on the tongues of the lackeys and guards. Their talk took wing, that an officious dispatch issued by the Light’s muster had demanded outrageous terms and been spurned by the council of Tirans. By then, Lysaer’s sly order had Ranne installed in the Flocked Starling’s packed tap-room. The beer jack in the man-at-arms’ capable hand was scarcely tasted, although he had been at his ease at the trestle for some time. Since the inn yard’s grooms had gossiped about his arrival, and marked his acquaintance with the Varens courier, natural curiosity moved the florid bar-keeper to approach his available silence.

‘Yon message, just dispatched to our mayor,’ he inquired. ‘Did you know aught of the contents?’

Ranne dangled the question just long enough for the hush to acquire an edge. Brawny craftsmen and smiths stilled at the bar, and a sweating glazier elbowed two journeyman coopers aside, the better to hear the reply.

‘I witnessed the secretary who set the Sunwheel seal,’ Ranne admitted with loaded care. ‘Hard not to know what the document said. The scribe had penned only one line.’

Jeers, speculation, then ribald encouragement, as hecklers begged Ranne to continue. The wise bar-keeper said nothing. Arms folded over his apron, he waited. Few drinkers, shown such undivided attention, could bear to hold out for long.

Ranne sipped his beer. With his dark hair sleeked back from a bath, his fresh cool was a provocation. Challenged, the inn’s patrons dug into their pockets. Lysaer’s armsman accepted their impromptu kitty, if only to dare Fennick to cram more loose silver into his overstuffed saddle-cloth. ‘Just one demand,’ Ranne relented, while the near trestles quieted, and a maid’s laughter drifted, cut free of droned conversation.

‘Is it true the Light’s avatar wants a recruiter’s rights to flesh out his latest campaign?’ a bearded teamster called from the side-lines.

Half-smiling, amused, burly Ranne shook his head. ‘Nothing like. The scroll contained the genteel suggestion that the Light’s banner, now left with your gate watch, should be raised to fly above Tirans’ town standard by sundown. Damned odd request, I felt at the time. No thought over beer’s made much sense of it.’

Now, having roused the crowd’s blank astonishment, Ranne raised his jack in salute. He forestalled the rising clamour of questions by gulping the contents, then wiped his moustache, tossed a coin to pay up, and arose with a shrug of apology. ‘Time to go. There’s the master’s demand for my service.’

And on cue, Fennick’s straw head appeared at the railing that fronted the stair from the upper-floor chambers. The reluctant crowd parted, while across the inn’s tap-room, voices exploded in speculation.

Arrived in alert form at the top landing, Ranne cast a glance towards his stalwart companion.

‘White diamond,’ snapped Fennick, in cryptic summary of Lysaer’s current mood. ‘He’s blithe as an oyster chock-full of new pearls. No one can wring a frown out of him.’

‘Not good then,’ Ranne murmured. The pair were anything but Lysaer’s confidants; just two trustworthy fighters Sulfin Evend had ordered to guard in the uneasy breach. ‘Minding the young heir was the happier charge.’ For no mind kept pace with the forsaken father; not since Avenor’s young prince had decamped to join Ath’s adepts. Granted reprieve from a state execution for their lapsed vigilance on that score, the salvaged men-at-arms had been reassigned by their Lord Commander’s adamant word. Only a few in the regent’s honour guard shared the damaging secret, that their master was warped by the ongoing influence of Desh-thiere’s curse. They numbered a steadfast handful of officers, and two fighting men snatched from death by a felon’s pardon, who formed the frail shield to stem Lysaer’s unnatural fits of insanity. If any man could.

‘We’re not here to shape policy,’ Fennick reminded.

In fact, Sulfin Evend’s instructions remanded them to the role of observers who would, at need, draw their steel to defend the divine regent’s back. Not that any commonplace hazard should have power to threaten the life of the man hailed as avatar.

‘Dead is dead,’ murmured Ranne, despite his elite skill not liking the prospect of risking a murderous mob.

Fair-skinned and freckled, Fennick’s round face was not smiling as he tapped the shut door to the Divine Prince’s quarters.

The knock brought the diffident page, who admitted the senior men-at-arms. Inside, late-day sun slanted through the unlatched casements and brightened the inn’s threadbare carpet. Lysaer sat at ease, eating bread and stewed chicken. His masking sweatband and hat were discarded. Golden hair still tarnished with damp from his bath fringed the snowy collar of a fresh shirt. Overtop, he now wore the gilt fire of an emblazoned Sunwheel doublet. The sight arrested vision: even without the Alliance insignia, his presence shouted with the magisterial force of birth-born royalty.

The paired retainers stalled upon entry, challenged by gemstone-blue eyes.

‘You question the wisdom of state dress, but no retinue?’ Lysaer stated with sanguine charm. His magnanimous gesture offered two chairs, followed up by his striking smile. ‘Sit. Eat your fill, share some excellent wine. Since I’ve paid for the privilege of privacy, we aren’t going to need your bristling vigilance until the hour of sundown.’

While the watchtower with the controversial flag spire lengthened its shadow across the slate roof-tops of Tirans, far to the west, the downs of Atainia hung layered in cloud like a vein of blue jasper. There, the warded stone of Althain Tower cut a stark silhouette, with only one casement illuminated. Candles pooled light where Sethvir languished in his debilitating fight to check the corrosive charge that leaked from destabilized grimwards. His compromised straits had turned for the worse without warning: Asandir’s exemplary hold on the Scarpdale vortex had faltered. No means existed to assess the set-back. The Fellowship’s field Sorcerer might be hurt, even dying, beyond reach of immediate help.

Althain’s Warden endured that concern in fraught silence. From two minor vortices with minimal damage, once again, he had no viable choice but to shoulder the crushing burden of three. The increase already took its sapping toll: his aura displayed the febrile blaze of a spark reduced by a gale-wind. Sethvir maintained his obstinate grip on little more than dedicate will.

‘We are not victims,’ he reminded, the statement fierce at odds with the suffering etched into the face propped up by heaped pillows.

The draught he addressed took pause by the window, mingling chill with the breeze. ‘Say that to Ciladis, wherever he’s gone!’ Kharadmon snapped, frustrated.

Hands stilled on the coverlet, Althain’s Warden sighed. ‘Would you be so angry if you thought him lost beyond all recovery?’

‘Rage before grief,’ the discorporate shade temporized.

Yet his colleague’s point set a virulent sting. The posited chance could not be dismissed, that Ciladis might have abandoned their Fellowship’s interests: the wounding left by the Paravians’ withdrawal could well have broken a spirit beloved for his matchless tenderness.

Kharadmon added, ‘Asandir would be first to remind that the gentlest nature is never least powerful.’ Then, in ripped sorrow, ‘though I’d rather hang trust in the mouth of a fool than wait for the gleam on a pearl to stave off our defeat!’

‘No doubt to the pearl’s everlasting relief,’ Sethvir said, made tart by near-desperate duplicity. He scarcely dared breathe. If his irritable colleague should guess that fresh trouble now embroiled their interests in Scarpdale, the bitter predicament could not be salvaged: even a Fellowship shade could not survive the chaotic flux of an unshielded grimward.

‘Surely you haven’t come here to rant,’ Althain’s Warden pressed with weary delicacy.

‘No.’ Kharadmon had none of Luhaine’s stuffy knack for diffusing rough news with a lecture. ‘Raiett Raven’s effects at Etarra have been searched, down to the last jewelled cloak-pin.’ This testy spirit always delivered his impacts headlong. ‘My best effort failed. The dragon-skull wards copped from Hanshire’s state treasury are still at large in the world. My scour of the empty cult lairs at Etarra found no sign of the coffer that guarded them.’

‘The Kralovir never acquired the talismans,’ Sethvir agreed, unsurprised. ‘If the grey necromancers had ever laid hands on that asset, presumably they would have put it to use?’

Kharadmon’s savage eddy set the candle-flames fluttering. ‘Davien? Are you daring to suggest the Betrayer’s involved? Did he flit in and make off with the contraband before Luhaine and I reached Etarra?’

Sethvir’s wide-lashed eyes stayed a vacant, pale turquoise. ‘For all your distrust, Davien’s never been secretive. He may not pause for leave, but the thrust of his works has always been in the open.’

‘My question’s not answered!’ Kharadmon cracked. ‘If not one of us, then who else is left?’

‘Not who, but where,’ Sethvir defined, too aware of the stick that prospect kicked into the wasp’s nest. ‘I think we want Luhaine’s persistence, if our search must be widened to include Avenor.’

‘Lysaer’s private treasury!’ Kharadmon’s vexed presence recoiled. The vault in question lay beneath the caved ruin of Avenor’s state hall. The keys never left the false regent’s sole possession, even after Lysaer’s explosion of light had blasted the keep’s lower dungeon to rubble.

‘Where else?’ Sethvir said in dismal conclusion. Flame or magma could never destroy the skulls of Athera’s great drakes. But the strapped wood and silk that wrapped the arcane instruments under a passive protection would have been torched. Fire also would damage the skulls’ jewelled settings, in which case the ghost remnant of four foetal hatchlings might be cut loose in a state of unrest.

‘I have not sensed them stirring!’ Sethvir added, fast. ‘Let Luhaine confirm this before you rant! There’s every chance we might not face the disaster of seeing the birth of a new grimward.’

‘We need Asandir’s hands freed!’ Kharadmon skirted the bedside, riffling the blankets. ‘I don’t trust the Betrayer. Not his wild-card, cavalier handling, nor the means by which he has made himself corporate!’

‘Davien hasn’t troubled to offer himself, yet,’ Sethvir reminded with level simplicity. Eyes like mirrored cloud, he fanned old dissent to further his bald-faced dissembling. Behind conversation, the strain bled him, relentless. While the room seemed to reel with unnatural shadows, Kharadmon rounded, suspicious.

‘Ath above, what’s gone wrong? What else are you hiding? What crock of ill news? Is your prodding meant to divert me?’

Sethvir snatched command of the blistering pause. ‘It’s the fool with the torch who picks fights with the wind.’ His dead-pan expression might have been chipped from chert. ‘I don’t have the strength to chase every black vision. The true voice of hope never fades, though without Ciladis, one tends to forget.’

‘We’re drowning in chaos, while you shoulder a load any three of us would beg to delegate!’ Frost on hot iron, Kharadmon added, ‘I would take your place.’ With no such grace possible, and no opening to challenge the Warden’s prostrate regard, he circled again. ‘What’s left, but Lysaer?’

Sethvir pounced. ‘That busy brash rogue is forcing his claim on new Tirans. A sly plan, in full swing.’ The Sorcerer stirred a tremulous hand, inviting the timely diversion. ‘You’re certain you wish to bear witness?’

‘Sight before ignorance,’ Kharadmon groused.

Eyes shut, his face touched by ineffable sorrow, Althain’s Warden engaged an active link through his earth-sense and traced a circle onto the coverlet. Inside, demarked by his measured intent, a sequence of images unveiled the thrust of the self-styled avatar’s strategy …

As dusk falls in the trade town of Tirans, a lamplighter strikes a spark to a wick that ignites. But the flame fails to steady. An unnatural darkness swallows the flare, to a gasp of bewildered confusion … while, down the street, the sconce by a tavern doorway goes out, its brilliance stolen away … the fires in the bake-shop, and the spit in an inn’s kitchen, and the candle on the desk of a scribe do the same … across town, as night falls, every burning light fails amid gathering gloom. Havoc ensues. People rush outside, crying. Terror drives them to huddle in knots, while atop the gate watchtower, the flood of purloined fire coalesces into a raging beacon that illumines the flagstaff still flying the mayor’s device.

No other light breaks summer’s night but stars. Wild rumours fly house to house. News of a Sunwheel banner in the hands of the gate watch drives the seethe of a gathering crowd. The mob storms the door to the garrison keep. Deafened by the shouts, under assault by desperate citizens wielding craft-shop tools and pried-up cobbles, the acting captain cannot make himself heard. Two men-at-arms fall to a stoning. The town mayor and council find themselves helpless as well, unable to quell pandemonium.

Torn by riot, driven by panic, Tirans’ populace batters the grilled door of the gate tower, howling for divine Light in relief …

‘I see where this is leading,’ Kharadmon broke in, while the disturbing flow of scried images on the blanket faded into release.

‘The watch captain will raise the Sunwheel banner,’ Sethvir murmured with sorrow. ‘The same instant, Lysaer will step forth, clad in white pearls and state panoply. He will seize command through raw fear of the dark. We’ve already seen the voice of the mayor drowned by the uprising clamour. His council can’t lead, though they’ll try to hold out. The probabilities converge. By dawn, Tirans will be as softened clay in the trumped-up avatar’s hands.’

‘Like sheep, we’ll have veterans and recruits alike flocking under the Alliance banner.’ Kharadmon reversed course. The tight wind of his passage scattered the white hair spread over the Warden’s pillow. ‘What’s to be done?’

‘Visit Alestron,’ Sethvir said, pale as bone. ‘Pray the s’Brydion duke will hear the voice of old law and take warning.’

‘Why in Sithaer do I wish that Luhaine were here?’ Now poised to depart by the cracked open casement, Kharadmon snarled of his longtime adversary, ‘He’s the one better suited as a harbinger of doom.’

Sethvir widened his eyes. ‘You’d rather dig for the lost hatchling skulls beneath the charred vaults, at Avenor?’

For answer, a white rose spiralled out of the air and dropped on the bed-clothes. ‘I’ll bear-bait the wolves,’ Kharadmon responded, ‘before I sift through the trash buried under that abhorrent site.’

The next instant, he was gone, leaving Althain’s protections still as a premature tomb. Left in vigilant solitude, savaged by dread, Sethvir savoured the rose, while outside, the daylight bled out of the sky, and stained the layered cloud-banks blood crimson.

Bransian s’Brydion always knew by the wintry nip of the draught when a discorporate Sorcerer breathed down his neck. Burnished with sweat in his rolled-up sleeves, he hunched his obstinate shoulders. ‘Take your blustering elsewhere! I don’t want advice.’

Frost became tempest that raised a blue rime over his gorget and chain-mail.

The duke swore, stripped the armour, and planted his feet. Choleric as a bear in the faded surcoat his wife had thrice tried to retire, he cupped massive hands to his bearded mouth and bellowed downhill to the crew at the trebuchet. ‘Another wedge! Crank up the elevation! Then reload and release her again!’

Sunburned industry swarmed on the field below. Bare-chested men laboured, shouting. Ropes creaked and timbers counterweighted with a stone basket groaned and moved. By arduous effort, the massive throwing arm was levered erect, then cocked back.

‘Fire, you slugs!’ Duke Bransian howled. ‘No pissing off, and no slacking for beer bets! Who stalls to break wind will be grubbing with shovels to clear the latrines with the recruits!’

On the field marshal’s signal, the huge engine let fly. With a vast whoosh of air and a pendulous arc, the trebuchet lofted its missile. The launched boulder tumbled, reached height, then plunged, whistling earthward like vengeance unleashed. Outside the lower citadel walls, the ponderous thud of its impact smashed a log target into flying slivers. The crew cheered amid the trembling noon air.

‘That should hammer the teeth out of yon swaggering pretender’s front ranks,’ pronounced Bransian with fierce satisfaction. For the benefit of the sorcerous eddy that now iced the sweat at his collar, he added, ‘That’s precisely how I shall serve the land, this time. No matter what errand Sethvir’s flipped a shade to dispatch! I won’t play the toady with mincing ambassadors or hang out my flag for diplomacy!’

Silence. Even the tough, summer grass had stopped rustling.

Bransian glared mulishly forward, pulse soaring. ‘Is it Luhaine, again? If so, speak up quick! We’re busy as coupling may-flies, which means I can’t dawdle for carping yap from a gas-bag.’

‘Luhaine should hear you,’ Kharadmon snapped with relish, ‘the more since he treasures his grudges like fossils.’

Bransian stiffened. Red-faced, he folded his arms. ‘If you’ve come here to plead against an armed fight, a straight pin in the arse would be kinder.’

‘You may not have a living arse to offend,’ Kharadmon pointed out. ‘Lysaer’s taken Tirans. Varens, Farsee, Northstor, and Easttair have all received Sunwheel sealed orders to march. Need I repeat that their harbours are already swarming? Perdith will join them, with Kalesh and Adruin primed to fuel that bonfire by week’s end. You will see your gates stormed. The Light’s minions will blockade your harbour within weeks, if you care to credit my warning. Carping yap!’ the Sorcerer cracked with offence. ‘Should I waste my time here, or try the reasonable course and visit your lady?’

‘Liesse?’ Bransian’s lip curled. He kicked his dropped gorget, then spun towards the cold dust-devil that marked Kharadmon’s seething presence. ‘My wife’s will backs mine. No women will leave. If they went, they would strip the steadfast heart out of the citadel.’

‘Send Sevrand, then,’ the Sorcerer persisted. ‘At least leave your heir to the refuge of Atwood, if only to safeguard your lineage.’

‘No get of mine would embrace such dishonour!’ Bransian’s glare showed blazing contempt. ‘Shame on your words, Sorcerer! Such as Sevrand’s become, he would run himself through, first. No cousin of mine forsakes his courage, or fails to stand in defence of his heritage.’

‘So would the compact that binds charter law fail,’ Kharadmon stated, ruthless. ‘If each man sheds his blood for his personal turf above the weal of this land, we are lost. Prince Arithon was right to disown you.’

Since drawn steel could not silence an insolent shade, Bransian hit back with complacency. ‘Alestron has always endured, undefeated.’ He squared challenging shoulders, large fists hooked on his sword-belt. ‘Or is the power of Lysaer’s false godhead much worse than the fire of Athera’s great dragons?’

‘Apparently you are hell-bound to find out,’ Kharadmon said, frustrated beyond storm or heat. ‘If I thought earnest prayer could soften your pride, I would beg every power alive that innocents who rely on these walls do not pay the harsh price of your folly.’

‘Over the wrack of my dead enemies, they won’t,’ Duke Bransian insisted.

But the Fellowship shade had already left, without the flourish of a rejoinder.

In his absence, the sunlight beat down like hot brass. The revetted walls danced through shimmering haze, while the glass fragments set into the mortar glared white. Yet even noon’s wilting humidity could not blunt s’Brydion temper. The duke stalked ahead and snatched up his tossed mail. Straightened up with the links wadded in his bare hands, he harangued his available men. ‘Damn your shirking hides! Who asked you loungers to park on your rumps? Hop to! There’s a war bearing down on this stronghold! Load up the next round of stone-shot!’

While Alestron’s titled lord drilled his field-troops, his brother Mearn was not gambling. Found in the smoking, red heat of the forge, the youngest of the duke’s siblings was whetting one of his stiletto daggers. The whine of steel on the grindstone lagged only an instant as Kharadmon’s chill presence sliced in, flaring the smith’s coals bright ruby.

Mearn straightened, astute enough to shout through the clangour of hammers and dismiss the journeymen armourers. The knife in his fist remained poised in fierce irony as the grumbling men filed out. Too soon, he was facing an empty doorway across the brimstone hiss of the coals.

‘You’ve knocked heads with Bransian, now it’s my turn,’ he supposed without formal greeting. Youngest by ten years, he avoided his sibling’s mistake of presuming his visitor was Luhaine. Mearn mopped his wet blade on the leather apron tied over a dandy’s trim doublet. Unhurried, he inspected his work, then stamped a dissatisfied foot onto the grindstone’s treadle.

Were Kharadmon still embodied, his smile would have befitted a hunting tiger. ‘I could edge that blade for you, without need to sweat.’

Mearn raised refined eyebrows. Thin as a whip, and crafty since birth, he shrugged with exquisite disinterest. ‘For what price, pray tell?’

Kharadmon also liked spare debates. ‘The safekeeping of your pregnant wife in the caithdein’s lodge tent in Atwood.’

‘You foresee our defeat?’ Not waiting for answer, Mearn grinned. ‘Bransian will be smoking with temper, for that. Nor, I imagine, did you waste the breeze chasing down brothers Keldmar and Parrien.’

Kharadmon’s snort flared the coals in the pit. ‘That pair? Thick as they are, like two stones in a sack? Though in naked truth, any word from a rock is dulcet and politely reasonable.’

‘You couldn’t expect courtesy,’ Mearn agreed without heat. ‘My brothers see nothing more in a rock beyond dinging the heads of our enemies.’ His quicksilver grin showed sharp teeth. ‘When Bransian wants us complacent in council, he tells our women to ply us with drink. Personally, I’d stuff the lot with red meat. Drowsy and parked like swilled hogs in their seats, they’re less apt to start hammering fights.’

‘Our Fellowship should stoop to such tactics, you think?’ Kharadmon pressed with snide irony.

Mearn deigned not to comment. As the wheel lagged, he resurveyed his blade. Since the finish seemed pleasing, he tucked the glittering weapon back into the wrist sheath beneath his lace cuff. ‘You realize,’ he said, thoughtful, ‘I would set my manhood at risk if I dared to speak for my wife? That’s if she deigned to address me at all. Since Arithon’s rebuff, she’s been thick with Dame Dawr. I will tell you this: if she wanted to birth our first child in Atwood, she would have gone there directly.’

Kharadmon’s sigh riffled dust from the shelves, all but worked bare of the ingots the forges were smelting for weaponry.

‘You’re perfectly free to try swaying Anzia,’ Mearn invited. ‘You’ve no skin to blister. Nor ears to be thrashed till they ring like whacked chimes. The wife swears,’ he admitted. ‘I’m amazed the grandame’s endured for this long without tossing her out on her petticoats.’

Kharadmon did not laugh. ‘If the grandame’s hand selected your match, she’ll have balanced your badgering wits.’

‘She did, the sly bitch.’ Mearn shrugged. ‘Gave me a woman intelligent enough to split hairs with a glower. At least on those days when she’s not ripping mad. Then it’s cut to the tenderest parts straightaway. She’d snip a man’s bollocks with pincers.’ Fishing his next dagger out of his boot, he gave the wheel’s pedal a vengeful kick. As the stone whirred, the knife was applied with neat fingers. ‘Our child’s near term. If I want another, or hope for a kindly welcome in bed, I know when to keep my douce distance.’

‘But unlike your brothers, you’ve never liked hunting,’ Kharadmon admonished with piercing persistence.

‘No.’ Mearn stopped his sharpening, grey eyes intense. ‘But try telling that to the rest of my family. As you’ve said, dumb rocks clapped in a sack have more sense. Nobody weans a s’Brydion from war. Long before Dawr, the cock’s hens were hand-picked for hatching their get for the battle-field.’

‘Not for this accursed fight!’ Kharadmon said. This time sorrow scalded. ‘You were never the fool, Mearn! You snarl in the pit for no cause but display. This stand in defiance is going to sow all manner of wrong-headed principles.’

‘I know.’ Mearn’s admission came without pride. ‘Prince Arithon spoke with a prophet’s conviction. I never was deaf to wisdom. Yet these are my brothers. I would run this dagger through my own heart before I desert my blood-kin.’

‘And Fianzia?’ Kharadmon ventured at last, the lady’s full name spoken with tenderness. ‘You’d risk her to the rampage of Lysaer’s crazed following?’

Mearn’s level stare never faltered. ‘She carries our child. Whatever she thinks now, that babe is our life, made in wedded union between us. Be sure I will sacrifice all that I have to ensure she survives to give birth.’

No more could be given; nothing more said. Kharadmon would have bowed, had he still possessed flesh. No such parting salute was left to a shade. Just regretful silence, followed by a retreat to visit the comfortless news on Dame Dawr.

Three days later, still held in close seclusion within the rock caves of Sanpashir, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn paused where he knelt. He remained oblivious to Lysaer’s bold claim at Tirans; was yet unaware of Jeynsa s’Valerient’s resolve to question his royal character. The hands that secured the hide covering over his heirloom lyranthe poised with the laces half-tightened when the soft, barefoot step he expected intruded upon his kept solitude.

He finished the last knot. Turned his raised head, aware who approached well before the arrival emerged from the underground corridor. He arose with respect. Flawless in courtesy, he offered a seat on the folded blanket that had lately served as his bed. No fool, he did not make the outsider’s mistake and try to lend an elder assistance.

The aged matriarch of the Biedar therefore took her imperious time to make herself comfortable. She circled the rock-chamber. Her fathomless interest peered into the dim corners; stared everywhere else but at the royal guest standing at her attendance.

Arithon waited. He might have been stone, so deep was his courteous stillness. The overhead crack that admitted the day’s failing light dropped a shaft of hazed gold through the gloom. The mote shifted slowly from citrine to rose, then faded into still twilight.

The crone settled at last. A young woman arrived with a fire-pot, then a man bearing strips of raw meat on peeled sticks.

Arithon stayed on his feet, while the revered one roasted her meal. She watched him with bright, bead-black eyes, and as thoroughly chewed each steaming bite.

‘You would not have answered my summons,’ she revealed at length, though not before the evening wind moaned its chill serenade through the gap.

Arithon suppressed his most combative smile. Empty hands remained clasped at his waist. ‘You would not take my gift for your tribe’s hospitality. Therefore, we both suffer hardship.’

The grandame’s cackling laughter bounced off the rough walls, waking a thrum of muffled resonance from his wrapped instrument. ‘One might knap a flint knife with your tongue. Dare you leave? I have not released you with the tribe’s blessing.’

The threatened curve turned Arithon’s lips. ‘And do you bless prisoners who should be set free?’ Regarding her, serious, he added, ‘The one who came armed was dispatched to his ship with no such presumptuous ceremony.’ He considered with care, then selected the term that meant ‘unwitting, ignorant stripling.’ ‘Do you halter the m’a’hia who comes to you naked?’

‘You are not healed!’ the grandame said, angered. ‘A warrior not in fit state does not travel.’

Arithon resisted the need to lash back. ‘Yet I bear no arms.’

Bone trinkets and fetishes clinked: one deft, ancient hand clapped the clay lid on the fire-pot, and night swallowed the blood glare of the coals. ‘M’a’hi! Grown but foolish! You should. Men are burning the standing crops in the fields. This I have seen, in East Halla.’

Cold despite his borrowed silk clothing, Arithon shivered. ‘But I am not bound for East Halla. My path leads to Atwood, by way of Alland, and my sword was left, safe, back in Halwythwood.’ Other messages lay rolled in the wood cylinder, bundled beside his lyranthe. The scroll-case bore letters for Fiark, at Innish, releasing the trade factor and other sworn allies from lists of detailed obligations. ‘Old mother, your care is a dangerous gift should it cost me the lives of my friends.’

The crone arose at his chiding plea. Glass and copper chimed gently as she raised her creased hands and cradled his face with a feather touch. In darkness cut by the pearl gleam of the starlight let in through the overhead crack, she stared into Arithon’s eyes. Her intensity raised the hair at his nape as she said, ‘Mother Dark’s mystery walks in your tracks, while we are the wind, chasing after the wisdom to read them. You will cross through the far side, and visit death twice again. When we meet, I will be with the ancestry.’

Cloth rustled within the deeps of the cavern. Already, a robed band of dartmen assembled to serve as his tireless escort. Arithon reached up and gently unclasped the aged woman’s confining embrace. ‘I do not leave your people, unblessed, after all?’ he challenged with tender humour.

‘You bless our tribe, not the other way round,’ the ancient woman corrected. Then she stepped back and released him, though clear mage-sight would show him the tears cascading down her weathered cheeks.

Late Summer 5671