The Stormbringer

by Isabel Cooper

  “I’ve still got better reflexes and endurance than most people in this fort.” Darya spoke quietly, evidently not wanting to brag too loudly in front of the soldiers, but she also tossed her head just a little, its dark braid bouncing with the motion. “And I’ve been training for longer. Besides, Emeth’s with me, and I’ll hide behind her if things get rough.”

  “Try to shriek and clutch your bosom too,” said Emeth. “Might as well have some fun before Thyran’s hordes rip our throats out and eat our bones.”

  “You think that’d be fun for me?”

  “No, for me.” Emeth sketched a bow in Amris’s direction. “A good evening, sir. And may I say that you’re in fine shape for your age?”

  Darya winced and shot her friend a truly annoyed look, but Amris couldn’t get very upset. He knew the rough edges of humor in the days before a battle. “I’ll treasure such a compliment for the rest of the evening, madam. Best of luck surviving in the woods—I hope the insects are less fierce at twilight than they always were in my day.”

  Before the two of them left, Emeth gave him a nod of respect. Darya’s face was considerably harder to read.

  * * *

  “You’re touchy on his behalf,” said Emeth. “Touchier than you’ve ever been for yourself.”

  She’d waited until they were far enough outside that Amris wouldn’t hear, gods be praised for small blessings. “I’ve never spent a century outside of time. And if I did, I wouldn’t have nearly as many people to mourn.”

  “Your heart wouldn’t break for me? I’m wounded, truly.”

  “Keep this up and I can arrange it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I’m a tactical asset. Gods, are those the beasts?” They’d rounded the corner to the stables, and the non-horses were standing in their own paddock outside, quite visible. “Last time I saw something that ugly, I was eighteen and she’d looked wonderful the night before.”

  “Tell me again how you, of all of us, ended up with a lasting partner?”

  Emeth chuckled. “I have great legs. Or so I’m told. And a wonderful…sense of invention.”

  The stable hands were waiting for them, with real horses saddled and ready. The older of the two looked up at Darya for a long minute as she mounted the bay. “Sentinel,” he said, “will the things coming all be riding the sort of creatures you brought in?”

  “Not all,” said Darya. “I don’t know how many. Even they won’t bear twistedmen—those have other mounts, and I don’t know how many of those either.” The boy couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and his hands shook as he gave her the reins. “Sorry,” she added. “I wish I could tell you more, and better.”

  He nodded, bowed, but didn’t speak again. Darya wondered if he trusted his voice.

  * * *

  Upstairs, in private, Amris settled himself on his bed, with the sword across his lap. “An odd way to talk,” he observed, “though I’m sure I’ll grow used to it.”

  You have a great deal to grow used to, Gerant said. How is it sitting with you?

  “More easily than I’d thought, in truth. It might well have been harder in peacetime, but war is still familiar, for good or ill. Or it’s so heavy itself as to make other burdens seem light.”

  I’d be inclined to the second. I slept beside you for a while, after all.

  “You were very kind.”

  Among other adjectives. Gerant’s mental voice held an echo of lust, or the memory of it, as faint as a drop of wine in a flask of water. Then it vanished and he went on, sympathetic. Even when you didn’t wake, you rarely looked easy.

  “I dreamed less when I was young.” Fear in the moment had been sharper then, and starker, but command strained the nerves with an unrelenting pressure. “The fighting was easier too, and not only physically.” Amris thought of the woman he’d given directions to earlier, and the fear on her child’s face. “If someone’s already a soldier when you come to love them, you know the risk you’re taking, and a child of such parents grows up with it, but when war comes to civilian doorsteps… It will be very sudden to those we’re training, and to those who love them.”

  I never had the heart to take up with another warrior, after you, Gerant said. In those times, that wasn’t much protection, but you’re right. I had the choice.

  The moon shone in through the tall windows, making narrow lines of silver on the floor and across the thin beds. “I hope,” said Amris, breaching the topic gingerly, “I hope you were happy, after I vanished. You said you were past eighty when you died, and—”

  That would be an ungodly length of time for grief-stricken chastity, yes. And I was happy, as much as the circumstances would let anyone be. I found someone five years later—but you only have to know as much of that as you want.

  Amris leaned back and thought about it. “The lecture notes,” he said, a joke between them that his tongue still knew well.

  In his head, Gerant laughed softly. Well, then. He’d been a potter, and a sculptor, before the storms. He helped to craft a few statuettes that I needed for magic. We stayed lovers until I died, he perished a few years later—we were of an age—and we raised his sister’s children. She didn’t survive one of the storms.

  “Ah,” said Amris.

  Yes, I miss him, said Gerant, who’d learned to read his silences far too well. But I miss many people. It’s a part of my state. I expect the list to grow until my work is done—if it ever is. I’m glad, he added, that I can stop missing you for a while, however different our circumstances are now.

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to miss you,” said Amris, still on unstable ground. He hastened to clarify. “Not to say that I wouldn’t have you back in your body, had I the choice, or have spent more time with you then. But you’re here. Your form doesn’t change my love.”

  Nor mine, said Gerant. You know that I never stopped thinking of you, or loving you, even with Dominic. It just took different shapes. Love always does.

  “It does indeed. Now—” He raised his head to take in the bare room and the moonlight outside. “I’m only starting to find my way here, though gods know I may not have time to do more than start. I’d have been utterly lost without you. I don’t wish to part again, not more than briefly, if we all survive. Still, I don’t want to hinder you and Darya about your duties.”

  I won’t leave you either. Darya… Gerant thought it over. She does work alone, generally. Unless I count. Most men have no chance of changing that. You might be the exception, and not only because you’re tied to me.

  * * *

  “Things shaped like we are,” Emeth told the owl. It perched on her wrist, fluffing violet wings and listening with that particular owl tilt of the head. She gestured with her other hand, pointing to the north. “But coming from that way.”

  Her voice was higher and sharper than normal, though not enough so that a stranger would have been likely to notice. Darya had noticed at first, but now took it as fact, and accounted for the sound and its echoes as she listened for others.

  At night, the edge of the forest was still loud, as bugs, bats, and birds all tried to mate with or eat one another. Darya knew those noises well, though. Different ones would stand out.

  Her horse, placid and plump, continued munching nearby leaves as Emeth spoke to the owl again. “Come this way when you see them.” Another wave of the hand indicated the direction they’d come. “Big stone place. Find a person. They’ll find me.”

  With her free hand, she stroked the owl gently on top of its head. The multicolored eyes blinked in contentment, and the bond that made the animals remember her request set itself. Darya had seen the same process with a badger and a fox already that night.

  As the owl flew off, she said, “Pity you can’t get them to fight for us.”

  “If there were wolves or bears nearer here, I might,” said Emeth, with no trace now of her earlier teasi
ng, “or if we met a greycat by chance and it didn’t kill us before I could talk. But they won’t come to my call, and the smaller creatures will hide from anything as large as the Twisted, not fight.”

  “Smart of them,” said Darya.

  “If you only think about the moment. Now,” and her voice dropped, became whuffly and braying, “everyone stand still and be quiet.”

  The horses froze. Darya froze. Emeth was silent as far as human ears went, but she threw her head back in the pose of one calling out, with her mouth open wide, and Darya saw the muscles of her throat moving.

  She stopped and sat upright. Darya began to speak, but Emeth held up a hand, and that was when Darya heard scores of small wings flapping above them. She tilted her own head up and saw the colony of bats just as it descended.

  They perched on any and all convenient surfaces. That meant Darya too. Tiny claws clung to her sleeves, her boots, and her hair. She looked sideways into a black-velvet face with tiny eyes. Individually, the bats were cute, which didn’t keep her from feeling like a statue in the middle of pigeons. Her horse, which didn’t care anything about cuteness or missions, was shifting uneasily beneath her as Emeth’s instructions struggled with its instincts.

  Talk fast, Darya thought at her friend.

  * * *

  “The Order has done well under your guidance,” said Amris, “though I never expected that guidance to be so lastingly personal.”

  Gerant chuckled inside his head. After the initial melancholy had passed, it had done them both good to speak of his life after the storms, though they’d avoided the most immediate aftermath. Instead, they’d talked of the politics of mages and the struggles with gardening, once the weather had shifted, and over an hour had relaxed into the comfortable conversation Amris had once known well.

  It would have been better to have such conversation with Gerant draped over him, his breath warm and his heartbeat soothing, but that absence didn’t hurt as much as it had five days or so back. This was the way they were now, and it was better than many found after a war.

  None of us did, at first. I can’t take credit for the idea either—that was Ayleen. Do you remember her? She was a tall lady, and I believe her hair was still red when you left, though it went gray very quickly. Extremely fond of dogs.

  Amris called to mind a tall, spare figure in dark robes, frequently present alongside a cup of tea and a tray of pastries when he’d come home from training. Once, she’d arranged the pastries in a half circle to make some point to Gerant, with a lemon scone as the focal point.

  He wondered if anyone made lemon scones anymore. Or tea.

  He’d liked the dogs. He supposed he’d liked Ayleen, too, though they’d had little in common aside from that.

  She focused on the properties of rocks and metals, as a rule, and she always had more than a slight penchant for necromancy. All ethical, of course—she thought about bringing back one of her dogs, she said, but she decided they had bad enough breath when they lived.

  “Practical lady,” Amris said, laughing.

  I do seem to find their company, don’t I? Though Darya’s practicality takes very different forms.

  “She’d be a strange sort of wizard, or scholar.” It was difficult to be careful while sounding as though he wasn’t. “That’s no slight to her intelligence, of course, but she seems ill-disposed toward theory—toward much that doesn’t progress in one direction or another, in fact.”

  True. Though she’s excellent at stillness to a purpose—well, you’ve seen her hunting.

  “Yes, with a variety of prey.” He thought of her descent, arrow-like, onto the korvin’s back, prevented his mind from going on to their encounter at the stream, and ended up remembering the fire in her face when she’d spoken of her bond to Gerant. “It’s well that the two of you found each other, and not only for my sake. She cares a great deal for you.”

  I’m very fond of her as well. As I said, I seem to have a taste for the ridiculous and valiant.

  While Amris was laughing, the door opened, and Olvir stepped inside. His earnest face turned immediately perplexed at the sight of his companion laughing in an empty room, a Sentinel’s sword on his lap, and he started to step backward. “Apologies for the intrusion.”

  “No, no. It’s your room too. Er—”

  By all means, tell the poor lad. Before he thinks you’ve cracked under the strain, ideally.

  “You know, do you not, about the Sentinels and their swords?”

  “The spirits?” Olvir asked. He closed the door and crossed to his bed, and Amris became gladder that he’d insisted the younger man stay. He looked pale and drawn, and his hair was plastered to his head with sweat. The day had been hard on them all, and the knight might have gotten the worst of the training—or pushed himself deliberately to avoid thinking.

  Amris had done as much, in his time. “Aye, just so,” he said. “Well, the spirit in Darya’s sword is my lover. Or was.” He made a face. “There’s…some difficulty about describing it. Beloved, still, and always, but—”

  “But he’s a spirit in a sword,” Olvir finished. “And unless I’m in error, that makes you considerably older than you appear.”

  “True, in a fashion.” Briefly, Amris sketched the situation and was more than a little surprised by Olvir’s relative lack of astonishment.

  That must have shown, for Olvir gave a slight, sad smile and a shrug of his broad shoulders. “Thyran’s returning, sir. Once I’ve got my mouth around that, any news after is easy to swallow. Besides, it’s not the first oddness I’ve had close at hand.”

  “Ah, I should have expected as much from a knight,” said Amris, and laughed. “Still, it’s a great comedown for me as a figure of mystery and excitement.”

  There’s nobody like Tinival’s servants for keeping you honest, after all, Gerant pointed out.

  Chapter 29

  An important thing to keep in mind, Gerant said to Darya, and Darya said to the small audience in the mage’s tower, is the physical enhancements of the twistedmen leave scars, magically speaking, or holes. Their flesh is far harder to affect than yours or—well, than mine some forty years ago. He laughed, Darya grinned, and the mages produced a couple of smiles between them.

  The army wizard was a small person with bronze skin and a cap of dark hair, close cut to their skull in the style a lot of wizards sported; working around candles did that. By their side was the square-built old midwife who, Hallis had told Darya, apparently was known for a side trade in fortune-telling, good-luck charms, weather-witchery, and maybe the occasional curse, though nobody had come right out and said that. Third in the line was a gawky, spotty, towheaded lad, with a squint that spoke of nearsightedness and ink-stained fingers from writing: an apprentice with no master, just a lot of old books and experiments in his father’s barn.

  Other than what the gods might do for their servants and the Sentinels might manage in partnership with their swords, those three mages were all the magical power at Oakford’s command, outside of healing.

  All of them watched Darya with varying degrees of awe and unease, as they’d done from the start. It was well known the Sentinels kept the dead in their swords—which dead, and how dead they had to be beforehand, was the subject of youthful rumor and parental threat—but hearing the proof was new. So far, Tebengri, with their military background, had taken it the most calmly of the three. Gleda eyed Darya as though she were a good hunting dog that still might go for a hand at any moment, and young Eagan gazed at her with all the curious wonder he probably brought to pickled young mermaids and stuffed gryphons.

  The smiles might show they were following the lecture, if they hadn’t just been responding to her expression.

  But their spirits are more vulnerable, Gerant went on, and thus so did Darya. A bolt of lightning or an aetherstrike might leave them still standing, but it is possible to exploit one
of the holes and yank their spirits outward into the earthly astral. That will leave the body disoriented, at least, and if you can sever the connection, they may both collapse. It is, however, very individual work and perhaps best used on their officers, such as they have.

  “Ma’am…sir?” Gleda asked, gaze moving uncertainly between Darya’s face and the gem on her sword. “What about striking at their minds?”

  Good question. Possible, possibly effective, but very dangerous. I have seen twistedmen made to turn on their foes, or groups to fall to their knees from phantom pain—but getting to that point means touching their minds, and that’s not always the sort of contact a mage can stand and retain their own wits.

  “I’d think not,” said Tebengri, the wizard with the most experience with Thyran’s monsters. They grimaced, as if at a memory. “Better to focus defensively, then. Alroy will already be strengthening the walls, unless he and Hallis have both lost all sense, and there’s not much we can do directly there. I’d wager the three of us can prepare the field beyond, though—gods know there are enough rocks and branches there normally—and start the long-term encouragement of rain and fog. That will help with the walls, too, and we might be able to get a few more barrels of water out of it.”

  “Is that important, your honor?” Eagan asked.

  “Most important of all,” Tebengri said. “Hunger and thirst are the chief weapons of any siege—especially since I doubt the forces coming will manage treachery.”

  Hunger, thirst, and gold, Amris used to say, Gerant added to Darya, and then added, and likely is saying now.

  * * *

  “They likely won’t have gold,” said Amris, facing the ranks. Four hundred eyes stared back at him, set in faces of all genders and ages from fifteen to fifty, and that moment was another that might well have come from his past. Some, particularly among the career soldiers, watched him with suspicion: Who was this stranger from outside the ranks, and why was he leading the training that day? Others, particularly among the rawer recruits, had more wonder in their expressions. Rumors had already started about Amris’s origins, and not all were far from the truth.