by Janny Wurts
Fear shadowed Taen's resolve. Her Sathid might easily rouse and link with the dual matrix Jaric fought to subdue. If that happened, both of them would be killed. They might die quickly, even painlessly under the merciful touch of the Vaere; but die they certainly would, for Tamlin had once revealed that no man who undertook mastery of three crystals ever escaped domination. The few attempts had turned out monsters, beings so malevolently warped that, for the safety of Keithland, the Vaere had destroyed life rather than let them survive.
Decision bore heavily upon the Dreamweaver. To act at all was to assume responsibility for a loved one's life. Each instant of deliberation extended Jaric's pain; that suffering must eventually drive him to madness became insupportable. Taen could never endure such an outcome. To watch as he lived and breathed, unable to comfort or share emotion, was to lose him in a manner more final even than death. Taen dug her toes in hot sand, but in the end she could not keep still. She abandoned the jolly boat where it lay and crossed the sand spit to Callinde.
The boat had not been left trim. Jaric had brailed the mainsail neatly to the yardarm, but jib and spanker lay heaped in the bow, a negligence he never would have tolerated by choice. A halyard dangled loose in the breeze. An incomplete splice marred one end; Taen rested a hand on the prow and wondered what mishap had parted so stout a line. The boat reminded her poignantly of Jaric, laughing and strong with his hair tangled from wind; together they had sailed this same craft to Cliffhaven with the Keys to Elrinfaer in hand. Taen bit back an urge to call his name aloud. Courage returned. Life or death, suddenly she realized she had no choice but share his passage to mastery. Keithland and her own heart would be as a wasteland without his presence.
Taen raised her knee over Callinde's thwart. She clambered aboard. Sand from her toes pattered over floorboards soiled with swallow droppings. The dirt would have annoyed old Mathieson; grinning at recollection of the aged man's swearing, the Dreamweaver sat on the folded mass of the spanker and stared over the mast. Blue sky shone like enamel between torn streamers of cloud. For an instant she imagined she might never behold such beauty again. Then, with the sturdy self-reliance of her fisherman forebears, the girl closed her eyes and gathered her talent.
Heat and pain and searing brilliance: Taen felt herself immersed in fire. Body and mind, she shared the suffering that riddled Jaric's flesh. Strangely, his will seemed absent. Through a bottomless well of torment she searched, yet found only the echoes of contentment generated by Sathid entities that judged their conquest assured. But the conflict was not finished. Somewhere, somehow, Jaric resisted still, for pain flared and sparked over his nerves with an intensity that dismembered thought.
Taen fought to sustain her purpose. Though able to banish torment in an instant, she dared not grant Jaric the reprieve she had offered once before; should she try, his paired Sathid would recognize outside intervention and attack. This time her only chance was to work through the beleaguered consciousness of the victim himself. Though the agony inherent in the Cycle of Fire dizzied her almost to delirium, Taen shaped her presence into a call of compassion. Then, softly, tortuously, with many a hesitation and misstep, she began to trace the network comprising the mind of Ivainson Jaric.
The process caused her to know him better than ever before. Underneath the Sathid's litany of conquest, she experienced the despair of an infant deprived of mother and father. The taunts of boyhood apprentices became slights against herself; and later, on the wind-whipped deck of a fishing boat, she shared a betrayal she herself had helped complete, when the weight of a sorcerer's inheritance fell full force upon the shoulders of a boy ill equipped to cope. Pained by his suffering, Taen continued her search, through the heartbreak, and the hardship, and rare moments of happiness. She explored Jaric's growth all the way to adulthood, but still encountered no spark of the consciousness that made the man.
At a loss, Taen drew back; bereft, almost beaten, she fought to preserve hope, even as the predatory litany of Jaric's Sathid battered her dream-sense ragged. At any moment the crystals might conquer, destroy this mortal who, against the severest odds, had mustered courage to strive after powers he had never desired. Desperate to avert the inevitable, Taen ransacked memories like an eavesdropper. By accident she stumbled across a sliver of remembrance so well protected that she had overlooked it entirely until now. Jaric had sailed to the Isle of the Vaere for Keithland; and also for love of the black-haired daughter of an Imrill Kand fisherman.
Taen knew pain then, sharper than the physical torment of flame. Never could she endure the ruin of one who treasured her more than life itself. Heedless of discomfort, she hurled herself into the very heart of the conflagration. There she found Jaric. Like a limpet in a tide pool, he clung to the most precious memory he possessed. Once he had stood in Moonless's aft cabin, struck dumb by recognition and loss; now, against the insupportable anguish of the Cycle of Fire, Taen saw that he defended the last of his integrity with the memory of herself, asleep in trance against the fine-grained wood of Corley's chart table.
The discovery nearly unbalanced her. Dangerous as the bared edge of a razor, the Sathid prepared to press their final attack. No margin for error remained. Taen engaged her Dreamweaver's powers with utmost care. She did not force or possess, but blended with Jaric's awareness; tenderly she reshaped the memory he held in his inward eye. Adding dream-vision to his image, she caused the girl at the table to lift her head and smile; along with awareness of her presence, Taen gifted him with hope, and compassion, and light. She met the gaze of the boy in the dreaming mind of the man; there followed a moment of recognition as deep as the sea's depths, endlessly wide as night sky.
The Sathid felt Jaric stir with renewed life. Vengefully strong, they redoubled their onslaught of pain. But even as fires flared to unendurable torment, Taen acted. She reached through the network of Jaric's consciousness and blocked all sensation of hurt.
His relief was immediate, but exhaustion left him limp. He lacked the vitality to respond. Taen wept in dismay. The Sathid also felt Jaric falter; they chiselled at his defences with ferocious energy. The Dreamweaver understood that the instant he broke, her presence would be discovered. The matrixes would then strike to engage her own crystal, and defeat for them both would be final. Enraged by the threat of such loss, Taen could not bring herself to retreat.
Suddenly a voice reached through her dismay. 'Fishwife. Will you never learn to be patient?'
Taen smothered a flash of hope. Perhaps Jaric's passivity was feigned, a ruse intended to throw the Sathid off guard while he marshalled resources for his final step into mastery. Afraid for him, but steady, Taen watched while Jaric extended his awareness into the raging heart of the conflagration. Defended against pain, he now could merge with the living flame, unlock, its structure even as he had unriddled the pebble that granted him Earthmastery. Taen sensed a stab of malevolence; Jaric and his enemy Sathid blurred into a single entity. Then, in a split-second transition, he claimed his sorcerer's heritage and tapped the force of the fire itself.
Energy raged raw across the contact. Taen felt herself savaged by a light that brightened and blistered and waxed impossible to endure. Jaric became lost to her, walled off by ringing roulades of power. No mind could encompass his presence. Taen felt her dream-sense falter. Ivainson the man burned, then blazed, then exploded into brilliance more terrible than Keithland's sun. The Sathid presence recoiled in alarm. Jaric pursued. Vengeful as sword steel, he struck. Searing illumination sundered the web of contact Taen had drawn about his person. Even as Keithland's newest sorcerer achieved the Cycle of Fire, her own awareness winnowed like blown sparks and went dark.
VIII
Gierj Circle
Alone in a sapphire expanse of ocean and sky, the Kielmark's brigantine Moonless changed tack precisely according to schedule. The helmsman turned the rudder hard alee. As the shadow of the spanker scythed across the quarterdeck, Corley paused with his hands gripped fast to the rail and gazed aster
n, toward the elusive Isle of the Vaere. The seas were mild, and the wind brisk. Canvas banged taut against sheet lines and boltropes. As crewmen trimmed the staysails, the brigantine lifted into a heel, the foam of her wake fanned like lace across sapphire waters; the weather was so clear that the horizon beyond seemed trimmed by a knife.
'Nor' nor'east, an' steady as she goes,' called the quartermaster. Moonless cleaved like an axe through the swells, her crewmen trained to the keenest edge of fitness.
Still, her captain regarded the sea with brooding eyes. No pursuit had arisen yet from Shadowfane; but the slightest error in navigation might set his vessel too far south, within the influence of the fey caprice of the Vaere. Despite five days of easy sailing, the manner of Taen's departure made Corley fret. Watching through the ship's glass, he had seen Moonless's jolly boat swallowed by fog arising out of nowhere. There had followed a shimmer like sheet lightning and a muffled boom; then the mist dispersed, ragged as torn gauze, with only the limitless blue of the water remaining. Corley shivered at the memory. The Dreamweaver and her tiny craft had disappeared as thoroughly as if they never existed.
Though the ocean presently showed no trace of the uncanny Isle of the Vaere, not a crewman aboard could look astern without qualms. The stress of unseen threat altered established patterns in Moonless's routine. Sailors ceased grousing over the cook's mistakes in the galley; the mate took his sun sights at noon and quietly gnawed his nails down to the cuticle. Even the steward made himself scarce. All the while Corley paced the quarterdeck, his steps quick and tigerish, and his temper short.
'Deck there!' The lookout's hail from the crosstrees made the captain start at the rail. 'Ships to windward!'
'How many?' Corley reached instinctively for knife and whetstone while the boatswain ordered a man aloft with a ship's glass.
'Two, sir.' The lookout paused, leaned out, and caught the ship's glass from the sailor in the rigging. 'Possibly more. But nothin' shows above the horizon yet but masts.'
'Whose colours?' Corley sheathed his knife. With whetstone still in hand, he rocked impatiently on the balls of his toes, as if at any moment impatience might drive him to leap for the ratlines himself.
The lookout hooked a bronzed elbow around the shrouds and balanced against the lift and surge of the sea. Sunlight flashed on brass fittings as he focused his glass. Then, with a delighted whoop, he answered. 'Kielmark's red wolf, cap'n! Damn me if our own Shearfish don't lead the lot.'
Corley directed a tense glance at the compass. Then he swore with an emphasis he employed only before battle, unaware that hands in the waist left off mending canvas to stare. 'Weather in their favour, and I'd bet silvers to a dog's fleas the other four sail behind her.'
Headsails banged forward. Corley rounded angrily on the quartermaster, whose attention had strayed from the binnacle. 'Steer small, you! Want to set us smack into the tricks o' the Vaere?' Without pause to draw breath, the captain shouted at the boatswain. 'All hands on deck!'
His order tangled with another call from the lookout. 'Five vessels, sir, flyin' Cliffhaven's colours. Dreamweaver steered us wrong, plain as the Fires o' judgement. Seems what ships we left in Hallowild all got clear.'
Cheers arose from the men in the waist, enthusiastically repeated by newcomers rousted from the forecastle. Every man grinned in expectation of rendezvous and celebration, except Corley. He spun from the helm with an explosive snarl of annoyance.
'Caulk yer gullets!' As the shouts lost gusto and died, the captain lowered his voice. But his tone made the hair prickle at the nape of his crewmen's necks. 'I want this vessel trim and armed for battle, now. Move sharp! This may be the last engagement Moonless ever fights. We're five to one, and downwind, with a wee fey isle full of snares to leeward.'
The sailhands shuffled calloused feet. One among them muttered an astonished protest. Corley heard, and gestured for the boatswain to cut the offender from his fellows. A mutinous silence developed as the officer carried out the command.
'D'ye think I jest?' Corley ran stiffened fingers through his hair, his manner suddenly tired. 'Those ships may be ours, but not the men. Do you understand? At best, Shearfish and the rest are traitors, for no man loyal to the Kielmark would leave his post of duty. Morbrith fell to demons. Any one of ours would have died beside the High Earl.'
With his crewmen stiffly, uncomfortably attentive, Corley shrugged as if harried by stinging flies. 'I don't like taking arms against our own ships. But if we don't see the battle of our lives before sunset, I'll take the whipping due the man presently in the care of the boatswain. Now arm this vessel! Man the pumps and wet down all sails and rigging.'
The sailhands disbursed. There followed an interval of tense activity. While the first watch splashed seawater from stem to stern and spread wet sand on the decks, the second watch rolled oil casks into the waist and wedged them beneath the pinrails. They wheeled out arbalests, stripped their covers of oiled hide, and lashed them to bolt rings on the deck. Other men fetched lint and rags from the hold. The boatswain doled out bows, fire arrows, and weaponry, while Corley directed action from the quarterdeck. The lookout reported regularly from the crosstrees, as five vessels flying the red wolf of Cliffhaven bore down upon Moonless's position, hastened by a following wind.
Masts, then yardarms, then hulls became visible from the deck. Corley pocketed his whetstone and snatched his ship's glass from the steward. Glued to the quarterdeck rail, he searched the approaching fleet for discrepancy to prove the vessels unfriendly. His effort yielded nothing. From Shearfish in the lead to the trailing vessel. Ballad, Corley found only the clean-cut seamanship indicative of Cliffhaven's finest. Even the coding of the signal ensigns was correct. Sweating, frustrated, and acutely aware of discontent among the men who strung bows and oiled weapons in the waist, Corley almost missed the change, even as he saw it: Ballad sailed without anchors.
A chill roughened his flesh. 'Lookout! Check Ballad and see whether you find anything amiss with her rigging.'
Corley waited, taut with nerves. Moonless tossed under his feet, cavorting like a maid in the spray as the fleet closed the distance between.
The lookout's shout began with a blasphemy. 'Kor! The fittings are missing from the masts, and by damn if the martingale chains aren't made of blackened brass. I can see by the scratches, fer Fires' sake!'
Corley's apprehension transformed to outright alarm. Only once had he seen a vessel altered in such a fashion; that ship had spearheaded the assault upon Cliffhaven one year past. She had carried the witch Tathagres and her allies, a sextet of Gierj-demons whose ruinous powers of destruction could be thwarted only by the presence of steel.
'By my grandmother's ass bone, we have trouble now.' Corley swore, then prepared to lift his voice and inform his crew.
Words never passed his lips. A force cut into his mind, over-ran his intent with the trampling force of an avalanche. Air jammed in his lungs. He could not speak. Nor could he force his limbs to move, except as something alien and other commanded. His head whirled dizzily and his eyes lost power to see. Corley recoiled, struggling. For a second he felt the rail press solidly against his ribs. He gasped, forced a whisper past his throat. But the presence within his mind flung him back, helpless as a beetle drowning in oil. He thrashed inwardly, to no avail. Imprisoned within his own mind, Corley heard someone speak. Fearfully, horribly, he recognized the voice as his own, commanding Moonless's crewmen to clear the decks of weapons and sand, and run up flags to welcome Cliffhaven's fleet.
The captain fought in a frenzy of anguish. He longed for one loyal man to notice the significance of Ballad's missing anchors and stab a knife in his back. But the diabolical discipline of the Kielmark's command itself prevented insurrection; or else the sailhands worked under demon possession as well. Corley raged, even as the enemy smothered his awareness in darkness. The captain knew nothing more, while Maelgrim Dark-dreamer extended his hold through the borrowed powers of Gierj and claimed Moonless intact for Sha
dowfane.
* * *
Taen woke to a warmth like noon sunlight and the touch of someone's hand on her shoulder. She stirred, brushed an arm across her face, and felt the fingers withdraw from her person. Still disoriented from dream-trance, she opened her eyes to discover sundown already past. The crumpled sail where she lay was dusted silver with dew. Callinde's thwart framed a starry expanse of sky, and both heat and a glow like candle flame emanated from a point just past her head. Taen frowned. The breeze off the sea blew briskly enough to extinguish anything but a shuttered lantern.
Even as the Dreamweaver raised herself on one elbow for a better look, the illumination began to fade. Before it died entirely, she glimpsed a man with hair the colour of wheat at midsummer. He wore a red tunic trimmed with gold, and his eyes, dark as chestnuts, were strange and ancient as time.
'You were chilled,' said Jaric out of the darkness.
Taen pushed herself to her knees, startled by cloth that fell with a slither around her calves. She touched, and felt fine velvet and silk; a Firelord's cloak had been tossed over her while she slept. The man who owned the garment sat intense and still, his presence as fathomless as sky.
Taen bit her lip. The Ivainson seated on Callinde's aft sail locker both was and was not the boy she had known on board Moonless. Wrung by sudden uncertainty, the Dreamweaver drew a careful breath. 'I thought you'd burned me like a charcoalman's sticks.' She drew another breath, this one less than controlled. 'Great Fall, do you know what we've done?'
Callinde's lines tapped the mast through a comfortless silence. Jaric did not reply. Roused to concern, Taen probed with her dream-sense. She discovered him afraid that if he reached for her, she would vanish away like the Vaere, leaving him in solitude on a desolate shore.
