by Janny Wurts
That shook her. “We are bargaining, bloodless man.” The glass edge of solitude had eroded her strength. Both fear and contempt rang true as she spoke. “Did you plan to climb down as you came? Then I’ll have your rope and grapple to reel in once you set down on the council-hall roof. Deliver my note to my lover of choice and let him scale the wall for my favor.”
Mearn inclined his head. “I’ll bear your note. The rope I would leave you in any case, to escape or invite whom you will. The person who sent me shall hear of your plight without any need for persuasion.”
He shrugged off the hemp coils, nettled by more than fresh scrapes and the stinging of his grazed fingertips. His refusal of her sex lodged an ache of unassuaged need in his gut. Still, he felt her gaze track him, fierce as the heat thrown off magma.
“If you’re dedicated as you seem to the cause of Lysaer’s Alliance, this won’t matter,” Talith said in sudden, terse resolve. “But if you speak to other clansmen, or have sympathy for ones in Tysan at risk of enslavement, I offer this much. The Koriathain are in league with Prince Lysaer against Arithon. Their kind have sent word: my lord husband has left Etarra. He returns to Avenor with all speed, in secret, for he knows the Master of Shadow has suborned the shakedown crews at his shipyard.”
Mearn blinked. Set upon dangerous ground since no suspicion of doubt must touch on s’Brydion loyalty, he tossed off an insouciant grin. “You lay claim to a knowledge of state secrets, from here?”
Talith met him with the thinnest of smiles, spiked in thorns and malice. “You didn’t know?” She stepped sideward, flicked back a felt curtain, and seated herself in the box bed. “Beneath lies my jailer and handmaid, who also is mistress to Lysaer’s appointed High Priest of the Light, Cerebeld. I married a man who now claims to be god sent.”
She paused. Mearn said nothing, preferring to listen, while his thoughts spun on tangents of frightful speculation.
The focused intensity of his stillness must have reached her. “Oh yes, you suspect the very truth,” Talith affirmed. “The meetings in this tower seek to seed a religion. Cerebeld and his mad-dog fanatic, Vorrice, have been consecrated to carry out a divine mission. Lysaer makes long-range plans to unleash a holy war against the Master of Shadow.”
Touched by the fluttering play of the candle, Talith gave a small, resigned shrug. “The s’Ffalenn prince might be a pirate, might ply his sorcery and connive against innocents, but he does not spin fair lies to justify his killing. Remember that, if you stay to fight him.” Her hands had laced themselves taut in her lap, white knuckled in response to sharp memory. “Arithon’s criminal and clever, but he’s truthful. If I can smear Lysaer’s reputation just enough to tear down this false claim to godhood, the world might come to bleed a little less.”
Again she looked up. This time, her striking beauty held no subterfuge, but an appeal stamped in hard desperation. “I might win back a husband who is human if his gifted power to win a following is besmirched.”
“You love him, not his cause,” Mearn confirmed. He could rely upon that to protect the s’Brydion good name. “If you plan to keep my rope and grapple after I’ve lowered myself down, what will you do about hinge pins?”
Talith looked blank for a second, then chuckled low in her throat. “Pick the lock on the hasp, what else? The Etarran daughter who failed at that skill was judged unfit to be married.” She arose, too wise to offer him meaningless thanks, and too worldly to press further claim on his personal loyalty. “If you’ll wait, I’ll pen my appeal for a bastard.”
Mearn laughed, enchanted by her spirit. “Dear princess, if you are cast off and left lovelorn with cousins, allow me to visit and pay court. If you liked, I’d spirit you out of Etarra and invite you to tea with my grandmother. The result would certainly repel boredom.”
“With vinegar and sand?” Talith rose in wry grace, tore a leaf from a book on her nightstand, then dipped water from the ewer and ground makeshift ink from a handful of ashes in the grate. “I’m not sanguine.”
A thin quill drawn from the stuffing in her mattress, cut and split with Mearn’s knife, made a pen.
“You’ve brought me precious hope,” she admitted as she scribed her perilous invitation to lure a lover. “If you fall getting out of here and break your silly head, I’ll entreat your grandmother’s shade to come haunt you.”
“No need,” Mearn quipped. He shed his coil of rope. Volatile in movement as sparked flame, he took her folded missive and tucked it away in his belt, then kissed the warm fingers of her hand. “Dame Dawr has already sworn to do as much anyway, if she doesn’t find a way to live forever.” He blew out the candle. Removed to the window, he tipped back the shutter to an unwelcome blast of night wind. “Fate’s blessing on you, princess. May you win back your joy outside the walls of this tower.”
Much later, returned to the security of his bedchamber, he penned his own messages for Maenol’s clansmen to bear warning to his duke, and also the Master of Shadow. As he inked his dire findings in close-spaced, ciphered script, Mearn s’Brydion could not set aside his last sight of Avenor’s royal lady, erect in a silvery outline of starlight, the silent tears falling and falling off the breathtaking, proud slant of her cheekbones.
First Upset
Early Spring 5653
No sound destroyed Lord Maenol s’Gannley’s sleep faster than the inbound drumming of hooves.
Shot to alarm in the misted, predawn gloom, too nerve wound to snatch for his boots, the man who bore title as Tysan’s caithdein rolled headlong from the cloak which also served him as blanket. While crossing barren scrublands and open territory, he slept clothed in jerkin and breeches. His main gauche and daggers stayed sheathed at his belt. Damp earth and tender spring grass chilled bare feet as he snatched up his longsword, ready on the instant to fight, hide or flee to keep his small company living.
“Don’t trouble,” he murmured to the scout come to wake him. “Guard yourself as you can.”
Edging the salt flats, en route to their next seacoast rendezvous to embark with three more of Arithon’s purloined ships, none of his party slept disarmed.
The rest of his band stirred amid fog-choked hummocks, as hair-trigger wary as he. Their discipline became their young chieftain’s sole pride. No chink of weapons and nary a torch marked their movements. Their presence blended like chaff upon burlap with the rise of the inland dunes and their low crests, fringed with wind-harried sedges. Stained dark with walnut, their exposed hands and faces melted into the rank stands of cattails and brush. Yet here, even the most covert care could not ensure their survival. Fourteen leagues south of Hanshire, their picked destination a hidden tidal estuary, their foray offered choice bait to headhunters ranging in search of scalp trophies, or worse, the double bounty routinely paid by the crown to muscle the galleymen’s oars.
Breezes still spiked with the late season’s chill wisped the loose strands from Maenol’s clan braid. Every sense trained alert, he breathed in the lushness of green-budding willow, and the brackish fish taint of the bogs. The threat was still closing. Around him, the shrilling pipe of spring peepers fell silent before the oncoming hammer of hoofbeats.
“Just one light-boned horse,” relayed Jyce, whose barrel-stout frame was small help in an ambush, but whose hearing made up for his clumsiness. “Not a destrier.”
Maenol stayed wrapped in habitual silence, too spare with words to confer. Armed patrols seldom swept this landscape by night, unless they were dealt provocation; and over these reed-choked, stream-tangled lowlands, a war-bred charger would mire too deeply to canter.
“Nobody moves out of cover,” Maenol said in a terse whisper. “We might face a traveler strayed from the road. With luck, he’ll pass by without finding us.”
Yet the rider came on, relentless. The swish of bent willows and the splash of muddy shallows marked an arrow-straight course through the bogs. On Maenol’s signal, men prepared to ease steel in a soundless draw from their scabbards.
T
hen a low, trilling whistle signaled warning to the sentries. No chance-met arrival, the horseman reined in his foam-flecked mare. He dismounted, sweat drenched himself and half-winded, and shoved through the last stand of reeds under escort by one of Maenol’s own watch scouts. “Tysan’s caithdein, is he here?”
Any courier who knew to search these wilds for that name could bear only calamitous news.
“More slave raids,” Maenol surmised. He stepped forward, gut tight and braced, his bloodless grip jammed on his sword.
The sardonic male voice which hailed from misty darkness belonged to no Korias clansman. “No. Not this time.” The rider resumed with hoarse urgency, the peppery snap of his eastshore accent now clear enough to be recognized. “A trap’s to be sprung on Arithon at Riverton.”
Maenol advanced another step, piqued by an unwelcome hunch. “Mearn? Mearn s’Brydion? Merciful Ath! You have no business risking yourself here, even for such word as this.”
“No time for passed messages. These tidings can’t wait.” Mearn’s chin jerked up in a spasm of startlement as a second scout slipped from the brush at his elbow to take his reins and attend his blown horse. Prince Lysaer’s increased bounties to slavers had pitched the forestborn clans to a wariness even sworn friends found unnerving.
Lord Maenol gave no apology, but pinned his close scrutiny on the mare. Relief eased some of the bite from his manner as he marked a rented hack with nondescript markings, and tack without blazoned trappings. The clan envoy from Alestron had been canny enough to seize every desperate precaution. Marshy soil would hold a shod horse’s track for days. Skannt’s headhunters might pick up his back trail. If they chose to pursue, the animal must be cut loose for expedience, or else bled to death lest her noise draw the hounds to full cry.
In the s’Brydion style of rapid-fire summary, Mearn broke the news that had brought him. “Lysaer’s returned.” He caught the caithdein’s wrist in a grasp like wound wire and drew him aside to speak privately. “You can’t imagine worse. His Grace has reached Avenor even as we speak.”
A woman scout on the sidelines overheard. “That’s not possible!”
Others echoed her incredulity. To the north, the mouth of Instrell Bay and every northern harbor remained locked in the grip of green ice; the mountain route through Camris was sealed shut with drifts. The severity and strength of a lingering winter left the West Road trade routes impassable.
“Tornir Peaks are deadly, razed by avalanche at this season, and our scouts from the Thaldeins say the Orlan pass will stay blocked thirty days past the equinox,” Jyce protested.
“Yes. That’s the lynchpin of Lysaer’s strategy.” Mearn plunged ahead, straitly grim. “I presumed the very same, a near-fatal mistake. Lysaer’s forged a liaison with the Koriani witches. They parted the floes with spellcraft to row a galley into Mincress, then breached the Fellowship’s wards to bring him southwest through Teal’s gap.”
“You claim he’s crossed Tornir Peaks through the Sorcerer’s Preserve?” the woman cried into stricken silence. “That’s insanity!” No mortal company could survive that terrain. Every savage pack of fire-breathing Khadrim held confined by the Sorcerers would descend, and tear an armed supply train to pieces.
“The Prince of the Light’s in Avenor,” Mearn insisted. “He had arcane guidance, and could have arrived no other way.”
The outspoken scout swore. Her young chieftain met the disastrous news like unflinching oak, hands firm on the hilts of his weapons. Over the rattle of breeze through stiff sedges, through the muffling, salt-heavy mist, he said only, “Give us more detail, if you will.”
His caithdein’s composure and straight stance revealed nothing. Unable to measure his courage in darkness, Mearn matched his tone, talking fast. “The prince arrived in close secrecy. The town’s not been informed. The outrider’s servant I bribed for the gossip said his Grace planned a conference with the inner cabal of his council. He will board a waiting galley and put to sea by this dawn’s tide, then slip ashore again at Hanshire. You can expect him to take the direct route by road and rejoin his specialized assault troop.”
Before Maenol’s steadiness, Mearn ticked off a trip-hammer listing of hard facts. The company came on special levy from Rathain, a division of Etarran field guard, handpicked, and deadly at infighting. These had already marched south under orders to cordon the roads and the ferries, and cut off all routes out of Riverton.
“Seven days,” Tysan’s caithdein extrapolated. “You say that’s all we have to break through with a message, and let friends spirit Arithon out.”
“You’ve got less,” Mearn rebutted. “The elite company bypassed Avenor. They took remounts with them and parted from Lysaer’s guard past the Melor River bridge. They’ve gone straight across country. I traveled at speed through the night out of hope the high spate off the peaks may mire their passage by Mogg’s Fen.”
Maenol seized the gist. The torrent fed by the snowmelt might open a frightfully narrow margin for clansmen who knew the high ground to engage and delay the advance of the enemy company.
“You’ll need to move like Sithaer’s winged demons. Damned well I wish I didn’t need to be here,” Mearn added, vehement. Yet he could not shirk inescapable facts. More lay at risk than his s’Brydion family honor. The next shipyard launching was due a week hence. Bold plans under way aimed for clan crews to abscond with not one, but three stolen vessels. The temptation to expose Arithon’s interests for reward would be great for a man without a blood stake on the outcome.
“Anyone notices where you’ve gone, and why, you could be put to the sword,” Maenol said, then instantly shouldered the risk of that debt. “You have my free welcome to take sanctuary among my clans.”
Mearn snorted a disdainful laugh through the graying, salt-burdened air. “Don’t mind my back. I left town in fine order. My chambers are barred, with word out I’m drunk to incapacity. For added assurance, three whores fill my bed. The house servant’s keeping them occupied, blissful man. That much gold in their hands, I’ll just have to hope the trulls won’t exhaust him too soon, nor care whose prick stands to greet them.”
“Come or go as you please, then. Make free with our stores if you’re hungry, but hurry. You’ll know we can brook no delay.” Too rushed for more than that bare thread of courtesy, Maenol stepped aside to mete out instructions to his war captain. “No help for it, we’re going to get bloodied. Send runners in relays. We raise call to arms. Also, word must be won through to Riverton to warn Arithon. Spend lives as you must. We’ll see no free children if those dogs of Etarrans pin down Rathain’s prince in their cordon.”
As he caught wind of Mearn’s clipped request to grain and refresh his tired horse, Lord Maenol spun back. “Where are you bound before morning?”
The youngest s’Brydion sibling bared his teeth in acidic self-mockery. “South, wherever else? I have Lysaer’s note of safe conduct. Should your efforts fail in the fenlands, this fresh Etarran company has no clue that I’m prostrate, easing a thick head with doxies. If they won’t be weaned from bullheaded prejudice, I’ll just indulge them and uphold my ill-bred reputation.”
“For harebrained acts and wild barbarism? I see.” Maenol regarded him, thoughtful, his mustache quirked at an angle that almost smoothed the furrows from his brow. “As Duke Bransian’s envoy and Avenor’s pledged ally, you’ll seed uncivil chaos in the chain of Lysaer’s field command?” Before Mearn could muster a mettlesome retort, he burst into deep-throated laughter. “Go softly. You’ll call down your brother’s ducal vengeance on my head if you pass beneath the Wheel on this foray.”
Mearn eyed him askance. A lethal spark of fury smoldered through his lean frame as he ended discussion with a shrug. “Better worry more whether Arithon’s killed.”
While the Alliance of Light gathered strength through past feuds and political incentives, both men held no illusion: the Master of Shadow became their last hope to stave off decimation of clan bloodlines.
Do
wnfall
Early Spring 5653
On the same misted daybreak that saw Maenol’s scouts race east to attempt their desperate stand by Mogg’s Fen, the first gold blush of light rinsed the high battlements of the tower where Princess Talith of Avenor was sequestered.
As always she opened her eyes to deep gloom. The strapped shutters leaked only pinpricks of light. Airless and chill, the flinty dankness of the brick enclosed the fusty odors of soot and beeswax, the lavender sprigs in her clothes chest too refined to drive the must of mildew from her blankets. Talith lay still, never so agonized by her plight that she gave way to helpless resignation. Where once she had commanded chattering maids to serve up scalding tea and the choice snippets of the night’s gossip, now she had only her ears to record the ongoing events outside. Born and bred a pedigree Etarran, she would lie dead before she renounced her belief she could wrest back her place in court politics.
On calm mornings such as this, at the tide’s turn, the exchanges of oaths between the stevedores and crown customs men winnowed up from the harborside. By the number of epithets relating to oxen, she deduced that a carter backed his dray down to the dockside. Talith heard the exchange of bawdy jokes, then laughter, which faded once the inspection was complete. An excise officer duly stamped the bill of lading; then a grinding, hollow thunder tore the quiet, as the dockworkers off-loaded the wainload of barrels. Left to conjecture, Talith wondered if the casks held water for a ship’s stores, or whether another cargo from the brewer’s rolled down the quay to burden the hold of a trade galley.
A ruled sliver of sunshine struck through a crack, the only snippet of natural light to brighten her chamber all day. The slow hours of her isolation racked her like torture and stretched highbred nerves to drawn glass. As if to compound that sawing misery, the bastard growing in her belly, contrived by liaison with a worshipful palace page, made her feel drawn and queasy. Talith cherished the still interval after each dawn, and the cozy warmth of the box bed. All too soon the chambermaid who served as her warden would burst in with wash water and firewood. Made arrogant by her position of propriety, the woman always grumbled in monotone while her fussy, brusque hands girded the princess into chilly clothes to endure another day of grinding emptiness.
