by Janny Wurts
'No!' His protest echoed off walls of windowless stone. Demons came. They slashed Jaric's flesh with a knife, and poured the dissolved crystals of the living Sathid into his wound. Shackled by demon malice, Jaric experienced the first unbearable torment of the Cycle of Fire; if he survived, Kor's Accursed intended to command his powers. Their will would become his own, and he himself would betray Anskiere's trust, break the wards over Elrinfaer Tower, and release the horrors within.
'No!' Jaric howled in the throes of insufferable anguish. Flame consumed his limbs. The blackened flesh of his hands peeled from splayed bones. 'No!' Tendons popped and sizzled, and sparks shot through the eye sockets of his skull. 'No!' Riven by madness, the son of Ivain would raise fire and sear the last human life from Keithland. 'No, no, no!'
'Jaric!' Taen's voice echoed through a roar of flame. Taen Dreamweaver, who died bleeding on the dagger of her brother.
'No, Jaric, will you listen?' A girl's cold fingers reached through curtains of fire and grasped his shoulder. Charred muscles burst under her touch. Jaric screamed in mortal agony.
'Ivainson Jaric, wake up!' The fingers tightened, shook his body with desperate violence.
Jaric moaned and opened his eyes to the grey folds of a Llondian cloak. He flinched and started back, but small hands caught him close. Taen's face loomed over him, backed by sky and the sun-dappled leaves of a forest.
'Jaric?' With a tenderness that tore him to the heart. the Dreamweaver smoothed the damp hair from his brow.
Tatters of nightmare fled, but waking thought could not disperse their memory. Jaric drew breath into a throat stung raw from screaming. Shattered, shivering, he clung to her, afraid to close his eyes; afraid if he lost sight of her for an instant, he might drown in the morass of despair inflicted by Llondelei far-seers.
'Kor's grace,' said Taen unsteadily. 'That was bad.' She endured the grip of his hands, though his fingers gouged into her back. Patient, and near to crying herself, she numbed the worst of his anguish until equilibrium could return.
Jaric steadied under her touch. His quivering gradually subsided, and he loosened his locked muscles with an effort that was visible. Pressed against Taen's side, he twisted at last and examined his fingers. The skin was tanned and healthy, unmarked by any trace of burns. With a final shiver, he said, 'You know what they tried to tell me.'
Taen met his eyes. Now she could not prevent the tears which coursed down her cheeks. She said nothing. But Jaric knew that through his dream, the Llondelei had permitted her to discover the fate which awaited her brother.
Tortured by her steadiness, Jaric lowered his gaze. 'Kor! I can't try the Cycle of Fire, do you understand?' He rammed his fist into the chilly dampness of last season's leaves, and watched a spider scurry in panic across his knuckles.
'I understand what will happen if you won't,' said Taen in a voice kept painfully calm.
Jaric rolled away from her and wrapped his arms around his knees. He would not ask if she knew of the attack upon Corley; not immediately. 'Where are the Llondelei?'
'Gone.' The cloak borrowed from the demons rustled as Taen shifted position. She did not touch him. 'Once the Sathid finished crystallizing, I was free to leave. They released you in the forest a short time later. I used my dreamsense to find where.'
But her words became background to echoes of the nightmares wrought by Llondelei. Their meddling in Jaric's mind had offered warning. Dared he proceed without heeding? Eight hunters from Shadowfane lay dead, but their kindred at Shadowfane would already have sensed their fate. More attacks would follow; if demons overtook Moonless in force, Corley's crewmen would be no match for them. Aware through deep disquiet that the Dreamweaver had stopped speaking, Jaric hid his face in his hands. His words emerged muffled. 'You're well, then?'
Taen reached out and tugged his wrist until he surrendered. With a smile so genuine it caught the breath in his throat, she placed a small amber stone in his palm and closed his fingers over it. 'There. You hold the foundation of my power as Dreamweaver. Tamlin has urged that I hide it, lest demons use it against me. Why must you believe the legacy of the Vaere-trained is an intolerable burden?'
Jaric sighed. His emotions felt threshed over and over until only the husk of feeling remained. Yet his expression softened slightly as he gathered the girl close. 'If anyone on Keithland could convince me, little witch, you would be the one.' He paused then, too lacerated to hide the fear which tangled his inner self. The Llondelei had shown him horrors. Terrorized by another possibility, that Keithland might also fall to ruin because he embraced the Cycle of Fire only to repeat the madness that had made Ivain devastate Elrinfaer, Jaric fixed on the last place his quest had left unsearched. 'I have one more plan left to try.'
He returned the crystal to Taen's hand. Then, looking down into her trusting blue eyes, he found himself caught by an irrational rush of desire. Flushed to the roots of his hair, Jaric resisted an urge to kiss her. 'Will you help?'
The words came queerly strangled from his throat. Aware of his discomfort, but not the turmoil which prompted it, Taen replied with a brave attempt at humour. 'Help do what, you fish-brained scribe?'
'I need to subvert the priests and break into the sanctuary towers of Landfast,' said Jaric. Driven in his need to escape destiny, the idea firmed, a shelter against a future too terrible to contemplate. If a defence against demons existed, it surely must lie within the heritage of the first men of Keithland; records might still survive from the ship, Corinne Dane. But to break the security of the priests was treason of the first order, a direct violation of the Landfast Charter. Smudged with dirt, with his shirt torn and small sticks hooked in his hair, Jaric braced his shoulders in anticipation of rebuke.
Taen grinned. Then the incongruity between his request and his appearance broke her control; she burst into peals of laughter. Jaric's brown eyes widened with hurt. Before he could retreat, she sobered and caught his callused hand. 'I can do better than that. If you want, I can pick secrets from the mind of the Supreme High Star himself. But first I think we should get back to Moonless. If we delay much longer, a certain captain I know will be whetting his knives down to needles.'
* * *
Sensitive to the signs that weakness lingered yet from the Dreamweaver's harrowing illness, Jaric controlled his impatience to be far from the burrows of the Llondelei; he matched his pace to Taen's as they hiked through the breezeless summer morning. Noon came and went. By afternoon, the pair reached the forest's edge, where they rested. Withdrawn and broodingly silent, Jaric stared across open meadows. The broken towers of Tierl Enneth lay etched against the skyline beyond, blue with haze, but eloquent with still-remembered tragedy.
Braced against a tree trunk, Taen Dreamweaver plucked a tassel of pine needles from her collar. The intensity of Jaric's stillness disturbed her. 'You're very quiet.'
The boy shrugged. Distressed by his reluctance to answer, Taen sounded his mood with her talents. Jaric felt her touch. He jerked back, tensed as if to move on; and balked by his restlessness, the Dreamweaver could discern nothing of the reason for his worry.
She spoke of ordinary things to disarm him. 'The Llondelei didn't keep your weapons.' Attuned even to particulars, she shrugged her cloak from her shoulders and qualified. 'Corley carried your sword and dagger safely back to Moonless. I contacted him to be sure.'
Yet mention of the captain seemed only to intensify Jaric's silence. 'He knows you're safe? Then he'll want you back on board as soon as possible.'
Taen frowned, now certain that the stresses implanted by Llondelei dreams absorbed Ivain's heir still. A glint of pure mischief lit her eyes. 'You can't fret all the time. I won't let you.' Without warning she launched herself at him, piling shoulder first into the hardened muscles of his middle.
Caught unprepared, Jaric gasped. He overbalanced, fell rolling into soft grass with Taen clutched in his arms. Her hair tangled in his shirt laces, then scattered across his face, fragrant with the herbs used to sweete
n her bath.
Wakened to the fact that the touch of her was pleasing, Jaric ceased struggling and lay back with her warm weight sprawled across his chest.
Taen spoke, her words muffled by the cloth of his sleeve. 'Do you mind if we take a nap first?'
At a loss to answer, Jaric swallowed. Her nearness disoriented him. He could feel the pound of his heart against her cheek, and the pressure of her hip against his groin stirred his blood with desire. Abruptly he tried to pull away.
'Don't, Jaric.' Taen shifted and caught his ears between her fingers. 'You're not a scrawny apprentice anymore. And if I were a serving wench from Morbrith, I'd treat you differently than you remember.' With an impish grin, she released him and began to tickle his ribs.
Jaric broke into laughter. Yet his mirth caught in his throat, transformed to a wrenching sob of despair. Llondelei warnings had cornered him, unveiled a painful sequence of destiny no sane man could tolerate. Aware how sorely he needed release, but not that he feared for her safety, Taen applied her mastery and deftly overturned his control. Immediate tears flooded his face. With the last of his pride, Jaric twisted his face into the grass and wept.
Taen curled next to him, her arm across his shaking shoulders. She said nothing, offering only the comfort of her presence. But when he finally steadied, his expression no longer seemed a mask of agonized endurance. Though the grief instilled by the Llondelei visions had not left him, now he observed the summer meadow with calm; the strength and the life in his limbs could be appreciated without shrinking in horror of tomorrow.
'You cheat like the daughter of a Landfast merchant,' Jaric accused the Dreamweaver at last. Yet he spoke without rancour.
'Daughters of Landfast merchants don't roll in the hay with vagabonds.' Taen climbed to her feet and shook grass seeds from her fallen cloak. 'Are you going to spend the rest of the day on the ground with the ants?'
'I should.' Jaric grinned and rose also. 'The worst they ever do is pinch.'
He caught Taen and pulled her into his embrace. Then, too embarrassed to express himself, he opened his hands and whirled abruptly eastward towards Tierl Enneth. Taen fell into step at his heels. Reassured that the quality of Jaric's mood had changed, she did not badger him from silence.
Except for occasional gullies, the terrain offered easy walking. Still, sundown spilled shadow across the hills by the time Dreamweaver and Firelord's heir reached the site where the clans had celebrated summerfair. The painted wagons had departed, leaving torn earth and the dried mounds of horse droppings. Jaric and Taen trod a flattened expanse of grass where dancers had celebrated solstice. But the desolation of the place now was total, with the tenantless dwellings of Tierl Enneth brooding black against amber in the afterglow.
The pair hastened their pace. They entered the wall through the damp mouth of the arch, Taen wrapped in the Llondian cloak, and Jaric shivering in his torn tunic. Dusk deepened over streets and towers; in time their legacy of bones became veiled kindly in darkness. Taen grew weary. Jaric caught her stumbling; he supported her lagging steps, then carried her outright. This once her physical nearness did not move him. Now more than ever before he had no wish to linger amid ruins whose sole testimony was a sorcerer's failure to protect.
At last Jaric heard the rhythmic wash of breakers ahead. The lane he traversed widened and joined the avenue which led to the sea gate. The harbour glistened silver in starlight beyond the gapped span of the arch. Blackly outlined against the sandy shore, a boat waited with four oarsmen lounging by the thwarts.
A man's voice called from the breakwater. 'Jaric? The Dreamweaver warned me of your arrival.' Corley leapt the wall and extended brawny arms towards Taen. His left hand was poulticed, and on his wrists the scars of old battles were scribed across with fresh scabs. Overset by remembrance of what might have resulted had the clansmen not interceded, Jaric lost all inclination to speak.
As he surrendered the Dreamweaver to the captain's care, Corley added, 'I saved your sword and dagger, boy, but, Kor! I'll flay you with the dullest knife on Moonless if you ever again give up weapons without a fight.'
* * *
The tapers burned low in Shadowfane's great hall in the early hours before dawn. Shadows crawled grotesquely over the skulls used as end caps on the posts of Scait's tall throne, but the Demon Lord did not sit. He paced, the click of his spurs upon stone an uninterrupted rhythm since the news which had drawn him from council. Back and forth he passed across the dais; no underling dared to approach. Finally he flicked a thought-query at the Thienz who knelt with snout pressed to forelimbs at the foot of the stair by the mirror pool.
'What passes in Keithland, one-who-cowers-beneath-my-feet? The report from your underlings at Tierl Enneth is carelessly overdue.'
The Thienz raised features gone yellow and creased with age. Too experienced to be cowed by its overlord's irritable insult, it whuffed air through its gill flaps and chose words. 'Lord-mightiest, I offer news of a mishap.'
Scait stopped poised between steps. The long hackles at his neck ruffled aggressively, a warning noticed at once by those favoured advisers gathered across the hall. They stopped murmuring and lifted their eyes from the wax model of Landfast which had preoccupied them through the night.
'Speak.' commanded the Sovereign Lord of Shadowfane. A neat movement spun him round, and he sat very stiffly on his cushions.
The Thienz repeated its bow, then rose on ridiculous feet. It offered image to explain. Scait received with narrowed eyes; sharing the view of a woodland dell in the highlands of Tierl Enneth. Between innocuous thickets of greenery lay the dismembered remains of eight Thienz sent to apprehend Jaric. Insects had hollowed the bodies; bones showed white through shrivelled flesh, but decay did not affect the feathered tokens staked through the victims' torsos.
'Clansmen,' hissed Lord Scait. His hackles bristled in displeasure, and his spurs scraped reflexively over the skulls. 'How did this happen?'
The Thienz sang a mournful note. 'Treacherous are the tribes of Tierl Enneth, Great-Lord. Their seeress sees much we wish would stay hidden. They dissipated the death-dreams of the fallen; most-unforgivably, little memory survives.'
Scait's body stilled. At his silence, the boldest of the favourites abandoned her fellows and joined the Thienz by the dais. 'Lord,' she intoned. 'If Taen and Jaric sought the burrow of the Llondelei on Tierl Enneth, what-chance the Dreamweaver survived?'
Scait's eyes flicked up. He bared teeth to silence the nattering of his underling, for her noise added nothing. Why the Llondelei should support humans was not fathomable; but that they might have chosen to spare Taen Dreamweaver from Sathid death must not be lightly dismissed. In the deep, chill hour before dawn, Scait weighed options. His next move must be planned with boldness, or mankind might gain another Vaere-trained sorcerer as ally. The boy Ivainson Jaric must be apprehended without thought for losses.
'Here is my command,' said Scait. The favourites straightened to hear, and the Thienz swivelled small, half-sightless eyes towards the throne. 'Send forth underlings to steal boats from human fishermen. The victims must be carefully chosen, isolated from their families and far from any harbour, for the rulers of Keithland must not be made to suspect.' Here Scait paused and narrowed his focus upon the Thienz. 'These boats you will load with a venomed elder, and those of your kind who have least seniority. They shall sail south into Keithland at the earliest opportunity.'
The Thienz rocked in keenest anticipation. Though the young who were appointed would receive such orders with trepidation, that Taen-Dreamweaver-who-killed-brothers-at-Cliffhaven might be found and ripped apart was cause for joyful sacrifice.
Yet even as the Thienz rocked in anticipation, Scait sensed the cause of its jubilation. He sprang from his throne, crossed the dais in two steps, and descended the stair beyond at a bound. 'You will not set the hunt after Taen Dreamweaver.'
'Lord!' objected the Thienz, then abruptly smothered its protest as the spurred thumb of its overlord flick
ed out and pricked its neck.
'The boats will seek the Isle of the Vaere.' Gently, cruelly, the Lord of Shadowfane bore down. Blood beaded around his spur, and the Thienz twitched, even as it received its instructions. 'At all costs your siblings must find and kill Ivainson Jaric before he finds his way there.'
Pinned and helpless, the Thienz repressed an ingrained reflex to cower. 'Mightiest-high-one, your will shall speedily be done. But if the Dreamweaver has recovered her powers, she will cloak the prey from our sight. What means shall locate the one-you-desire-killed?'
Scait withdrew his spur and delicately licked the point.
Since the slightest taste of blood could stimulate the insatiable appetite of his kind, the Thienz scuttled in terror from underfoot. But the Great Lord's feeding instinct remained quiescent as he turned lambent eyes to his favourites. One or two waited with short hackles raised, as if they questioned his judgement concerning Taen; perhaps their hidden thoughts contemplated something more grave than disapproval. In the annals of the compact, combat had been called against rulers with less provocation than this.
But Scait dismissed such threat and turned his back, challenging belligerence with contempt. 'The girl is nothing at this time but distraction. Dally for her now, and we risk facing a trained Firelord.'
One among the favourites dared a small sound of dissent.
Scait whirled, deadly and graceful and utterly sure of his dominance. 'Against Taen Dreamweaver, we have her brother. Had you forgotten? His powers will begin to stabilize within the next few days. Then shall a ruse be framed to snare the sister.' The Sovereign Lord of the demons slashed the air with his spurs, and the long hackles at his neck bristled fully erect. 'This is my plan. Who among you dares disapprove?'
Dawn spilled grey through the high windows of Shadowfane's great hall. In its light, the tapers smoked and guttered, while with manes smoothed in agreement, the sycophantic circle of demons all bowed to the will of their overlord.
