Shadowfane

by Janny Wurts

  At last, in the weeks before spring planting, the Kielmark's fleet of six made landfall. Taen stood at the rail while the brigantines anchored in the waters off the traders' docks that lined the banks downriver from Corlin Town. The estuary of the Redwater was clear of ice, but a freak late snowfall stung the faces of the sailhands as they stripped the canvas from the yards. Since all but a maintenance crew would march north as the Dreamweaver's escort, the small fleet might remain in the harbour for weeks yet to come.

  Corley spotted Taen between rounds of inspection, her blue cloak being the brightest colour on board after weeks of grey swells. 'Why not join the supply party?' he yelled across the deck. 'The outing would do you good, and you can help the men with the bargaining.'

  'For horses? I'm better practised at cleaning fish.' But outraged sensibilities could not quite quell Taen's smile. Her Dreamweaver's perception had revealed the motive behind the captain's request: he wanted a woman along to allay the suspicion invariably aroused by companies under Cliffhaven's banner. She agreed to the plan for reasons of her own. For a short time, the sounds and sights of a strange town might divert her, enable her to cease brooding over the fate of Ivainson Jaric, and the cruelty of the brother sworn over to demons.

  The longboat dispatched to Corlin carried no device, and the men on board rowed with weapons and swords bundled out of sight beneath their cloaks. Still, Taen saw labourers and teamsters pause to stare as the boat passed the landings and warehouses of the trade port. The oarsmen's rapacious efficiency trademarked a fighting command, and six black brigantines flying the wolf in the estuary had not escaped remark. The Duke's officer of the port questioned them tactfully upon landing. He wore gold chains by the dozen, and a cloak bordered with peacock feathers; under the weight of all his finery, he sweated more than the situation seemed to warrant.

  'We're just here to buy horses,' said Corley's boatswain. Hatless in the cold, his single hoop earring emphasizing the fact that he had once lost half his scalp to a sword cut, he gestured toward Taen with his elbow. 'Would I be lyin' in front of a woman, sir?'

  'You'd lie in front of your mother, so,' grumbled the official. But he granted them leave to moor the longboat.

  As the Kielmark's shore party ploughed into the press before the gates, the boatswain grinned at the Dreamweaver and confided, 'I think the man knew we'd've bashed his birdie brains out if he refused.' The pirate officer sounded self-righteously cheerful.

  But Taen proved more interested in the city than in acknowledging seaman's boasts. Corlin stood at the edge of Seitforest and the backland domains of the north. Fortified by square walls of brick, trade prospered there despite roving bands of outlaws that preyed upon passing caravans; the marketplace in the commons bustled with merchants, craft tents, beggars, and a vigilant squad of men at arms, for Corlin's Duke was a man dedicated to security. Since the streets were safe and prosperous, Corley had encouraged Taen to browse and listen for rumours from the remote frontiers of Hallowild.

  A girl raised in the austere society of Imrill Kand needed little excuse to explore. By day, Corlin's central square offered a maze of temporary stalls. The Dreamweaver wandered, enthralled, past merchants selling bread and beads and cloth. She stopped to hear street minstrels and watch a dancer with a monkey that leapt to catch coins. At the mouth of Craftsman's Alley, Taen found birds in wicker cages and tools new from the forge. Jostled by a pedlar selling wine, she half tripped over a drag-sleigh piled with cured pelts. The hand she thrust out for balance sank to the wrist in rare fur. Mottled black and silver, a cloak sewn of ice-otter pelts would be prized like the jewels of a duchess.

  Taen clenched her fingers in silky hair, remembering: Jaric had set traps for such beasts the year he had sheltered in Seitforest.

  'That's hardly a perfect specimen,' said a mild-mannered voice. 'Would the lady care to see a better one?'

  Taen looked up. At her side stood a leather-clad forester, streaked black hair tumbled over his shoulders.

  His face had weathered into permanent lines of patience, but his eyes were light, intent, and fierce as a hawk's.

  Slammed by recognition, Taen felt words stop in her throat. She knew this man. Here stood the forester who had remade Jaric's self-reliance, a process the Dreamweaver had shared through a winter in close rapport. The shock of meeting Telemark in the flesh overwhelmed her. Desperately she longed to speak of Jaric, to unburden her concern upon the forester's staunch sympathy. But to reveal Ivainson's trial in the grove of the Vaere to this man would shatter a peace of mind so deep that the notion itself was a cruelty. Miserably, Taen kept her silence.

  'Lady?' Strong fingers supported her shoulder. 'Are you ill? Do you need help?'

  The touch was sure, familiar to the point of heartbreak; for thus had Telemark steadied Jaric through a period of painful convalescence. Taen bit back an urge to weep and found herself overcome. Her mind sought after Jaric in a rush of uncontrollable need.

  Power surged inside her, far too cataclysmic to bridle. Without warning, her awareness exploded across space and time. After months of empty silence, Taen achieved contact with Jaric's consciousness.

  Flame raged across the link, blistering flesh with pain that had no voice and no outlet; feeding on nerve and muscle and bone, Sathid-born hatred consumed the living body of the man who suffered the Cycle of Fire. In agony, Jaric resisted. Torment stripped away his humanity, left nothing but instinct to survive. He recognized no presence beyond the enemy, and the reflexive vehemence of his defence flung the Dreamweaver's contact outward into darkness.

  Reality returned with a disorienting jerk. Restored to the bustle of Corlin market, Taen found herself weeping in the sturdy arms of the forester.

  Telemark shifted his grip, his trap-scarred knuckles warm through the folds of her cloak. 'Girl, are you ill?'

  'No.' His shirt smelled of balsam and woodsmoke, just as Jaric remembered. Bravely Taen composed herself. 'I'm sorry. By accident you reminded me of someone I know and love.'

  She disentangled herself from Telemark's embrace, then fled before he could question her further. The crowd hid her from view; but for a long while afterwards Taen sensed the forester staring after her with a frown of puzzled concern.

  * * *

  By early afternoon the boatswain and his three henchmen had driven a milling mass of horses out of Corlin market. They made rendezvous with Corley and the main company from the ships just beyond the gates. Between the shouting and the sorting of mounts and men, Taen's silence passed unnoticed; numbed by Jaric's predicament, she mounted with little of the trepidation that riding usually inspired. Beside her, the boatswain reported to his captain.

  City gossip had included no mention of Maelgrim's blighted dreams, yet the lack of news was no basis for encouragement. With roads still mired with snow-melt, word would travel slowly until caravans resumed trade to the north.

  'The High Earl was imprisoned for heresy, though.' The boatswain stowed his bulk with surprising grace in the saddle of a rangy chestnut.

  'Oh?' Corley chose a grey that nipped at his seat as he turned to mount. Unperturbed, he slapped its muzzle and vaulted astride. 'When did that happen?'

  'Summer before last.' The boatswain spat. 'Kor's brotherhood governs Morbrith in the Earl's stead. Farmers griped over the tax shares. Claimed that bloody simpering initiates counted the oats in the sheep pats to pad out their tallies.'

  Corley grinned, settling easy as the grey sidled beneath his weight. 'Fires. I wouldn't have wanted to be the man in charge of inspecting the grain tax, then.'

  The boatswain howled with laughter. 'Farmers would've bagged sheep leavings, surely. But they dared not, unless they wanted to see their Earl staked out for the fire.'

  Corley looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he summed up his opinion of priests in an epithet, and motioned his company forward. The last men mounted, and with startling speed the stamping, snorting mass of beasts sorted out into columns. Taen reined her mare in behind the lead
company of men at arms. She did not join in the laughter as the sailors' contempt of the saddle found expression in a spate of coarse jokes. While Jaric suffered in his struggle to master the Cycle of Fire, she could do nothing but go forward to defend the borders; and unless he won free very soon and came north to free Anskiere, even that effort would prove futile.

  * * *

  Snow shifted to cold rain as the Kielmark's contingent left the road and pressed on into the hill country north of Corlin. Here the terrain was rocky, dense with forest unrelieved by way stations or hostels; the only inhabitants were the occasional isolated farmsteader, or wandering tribes of clansmen. At night the men slung their ship's hammocks from trees, or slept on boggy soil. Bowhunting for deer kept their marksmanship sharp, and Corley's vigilance ensured that mail stayed polished, and swordblades maintained a killing edge. That six armed companies had been dispatched to protect a single enchantress was a necessity no man questioned. The Kielmark's orders were never gainsaid, and the ways of demons could be unpredictably savage as spring storms.

  Yet Maelgrim once had been human, and his actions did not entirely lack pattern. He preferred to strike at night. Taen did not try to oppose him at once, but watched, well shielded, until Corley's company had travelled close enough for her talents to have maximum effect.

  Seated by lanternlight in the confines of her tent, she wiped damp palms on the cotton robe she preferred to her daytime garb of riding leathers, then bent her mind into trance. Cautiously she cast her awareness over the land. The north country of Morbrith was a patchwork of wilderness interspersed with the tilled fields and orchards of steaders. Apple branches rattled in winds still edged with winter, the buds of blossom and leaf tightly furled against the cold. Taen deepened her net. The discipline of Tamlin's teaching enabled her to sense the life force of the earth, to share awareness of every natural rhythm, from beasts in hibernation to the sleeping presence of the steaders' families. She merged with the essence of their dreams and waited with coiled patience for the first, spoiling disharmony that signalled Maelgrim's attack.

  This night he chose a child, a small boy with auburn hair who slept under quilts sewn by his sister and grandmother. Taen narrowed her focus, warned as the victim twitched with the first stirrings of nightmare. He dreamed that his bedclothes came alive and pinned his small limbs helplessly to the mattress.

  Only a Dreamweaver's sensitivity could perceive the unnatural lattice of energies gathered about the boy's form. Taen balanced her own resources. Before his rest could be shattered with images of blood and terror and every crawling fear that Maelgrim wrought to unhinge the spirit, the Dreamweaver shot a bar of light across the child's mind, a shield to repel intrusion.

  A startled pulse of force answered her effort, daunting for its intensity. At first contact, Maelgrim's strength proved more powerful than her worst anticipation. Frightened at how sorely she might be tested, Taen Dreamweaver held firm. Strangely, the counterattack she expected did not follow. Maelgrim paused in his weaving, his web work of destruction drifting incomplete above the wards she had set to protect the little boy. Rather than batter her defences with energies to reclaim his victim, the Dark-dreamer sent words across the link. 'Sister! Have the Vaere made you timid? I had expected to encounter you sooner.'

  The message held overtones of challenge, an exuberant anticipation of battle joined that made Taen's flesh creep. She strengthened her protection about the child. Then, her own shields tightly shuttered, she extended a query into her brother's mind in an effort to explore his motives. Maelgrim sensed her touch. He responded with a crackling flare of force that stung her back, but not before she divined his intent. Shadowfane's human minion intended to draw her north, and weaken her, and afterwards claim her person and her powers for exploitation by demons.

  Revelation of such betrayal caused a sharp ache of sorrow; still, Taen did not lose equilibrium. This moment had been inevitable since the recovery of the Keys to Elrinfaer. That day the man she knew as her brother had been forever lost. The Dreamweaver checked to be certain the momentary disruption had left her guard over the little boy's mind intact. Then, chilled by the potency of her enemy's rejection, she forgave the Kielmark's tyrannical concern for her safety. The escort he had assigned in his obsession was no less than grave necessity. Without his men at arms to safeguard her through the hours she must spend in dream-trance, the Dreamweaver would have been forced to abandon her defence of the north.

  An echo of laughter cut short her thought. 'Do you think men with steel can protect you?'

  Taen drew a shaky breath. The spite that rang through the Dark-dreamer's words pained like a wound to the heart. Yet, in another manner, the nature of his cruelties only stiffened her resolve. Some aspects of her brother's character had not changed. Behind Maelgrim's malice she detected impatience, and bitter annoyance. The men at arms were an unexpected complication. Before Maelgrim could take her, he would have to contend with swords in the hands of the most tenacious fighters in Keithland.

  The Dark-dreamer returned her assessment with mockery. 'And do you think I will find killing the Kielmark's few soldiers very difficult?'

  Taen started, shocked that he could so easily broach her awareness.

  Maelgrim indulged in a moment of poisonous amusement. 'There are other ways to defeat steel.' Then, with no warning, without even the briefest pretext of contention, he ripped aside the Dreamweaver's wards and pinched out the life of the child.

  'No!' Taen recoiled in horror, that defeat should happen that fast, that easily, and with such terrible, irreversible finality. The little boy's fingers remained entwined in his pillow. His hair spilled in tangles across his brow as if he still slept, but his eyes would never open to see the morning.

  'I could destroy the Kielmark's men at arms as easily,' warned the Dark-dreamer; and Taen saw that he might. All along he had been feinting, toying with the lives of steaders and clansmen. Never until now had he unveiled the full extent of his strength.

  Yet the arrogance that drove him to flaunt his superior power itself was his greatest weakness.

  'You can try.' Knowing he would read her words, Taen seized the advantage. She struck while satisfaction left him unguarded, and in one bold move sounded and discovered her adversary's link with the Thienz-demons. Their collective mind augmented Maelgrim's will, granted him means to overwhelm her wards and kill.

  The loss of the child was bitter. Taen let herself weep, but refused to be trapped by despair. The Dark-dreamer might break her wards over distance this first time. Now that she knew of the demons, she could alter her tactics to compensate; the abominations of the Thienz might be deflected. Within the confines of the campsite she could safeguard the minds of Corley's men. At least while the effects of Maelgrim's early training matured, to the limit of her Vaere-trained resources she would fight.

  'You do that,' the Dark-dreamer invited. Hatred rang through his words. 'Hard or easy, slowly or not, the victory at the end shall be mine.'

  Taen offered no reply. Brashly stubborn as her fisherman father, she waited without moving until the abrasive evil of her brother's presence faded and departed.

  The Dreamweaver roused sluggishly from trance. Drenched with sweat, and gasping from the aftermath of tears and emotional stress, she reoriented to her surroundings with a shock like pain.

  The air in the tent was close, sour with the scent of mildewed canvas. Taen's robe clung unpleasantly to her skin. She wrestled off the damp cotton and sat shivering.

  This night a child under her protection had died. The loss was insufferable. The Dreamweaver unstuck a lock of hair from her forehead, hammered a fist into her thigh, and uttered the favourite obscenity of Imrill Kand's most coarse-tempered fishwife. Then, feeling not one whit better, she hurled herself into trance and lashed a stinging hedge of wards about the cottage that sheltered the murdered child. She could do nothing more for the boy. But he had parents, and the young sister and the grandmother who had sewn his quilts. If Taen
kept watch, she could ensure that the child's family survived to grieve.

  But the night passed without incident. No trace of Maelgrim's presence returned to try her. When at last the sunrise spilled motes of light through the trees to speckle the tent canvas, Taen dispelled her wards. She rubbed tired eyes and lay down beside the blankets that were folded, unused, by her knee. Without enthusiasm she contemplated her riding leathers and hairbrush, and the daily trial of rising to wash in a creek surrounded by ruffians who inventively sought excuses to interrupt her. Though friendly, their persistence seemed suddenly too much. Taen squeezed her eyes closed. Weariness overcame her, and she drifted into sleep across her crumpled robe.

  Her peace was not to last. Half an hour later the Dreamweaver was rousted by a raucous whistle, followed immediately by the slackening of a guy line. The post that supported the ridgepole of her tent toppled unceremoniously across her knees.

  'Shall we pack you in with the cooking pots, then,' gibed the boisterous voice of a sailor.

  Taen batted collapsing walls of canvas out of her face and returned an epithet.

  'Hoo, she's alive, then,' observed her tormentor. But he stilled his tongue, fast, at an irritable reprimand from Corley.

  The next moment the captain himself raised the tent flap and peered through the gloom within. 'Taen? It's daylight. We've got to move camp.' Only when his eyes adjusted did he note the raw pain in her eyes, and the mouth set with unbreakable determination. Corley's manner turned briskly direct. 'What happened?'