by Janny Wurts
That moment, a shriek rent the air. The nearest of the Thienz toppled over, its limbs thrashing in agony. It crashed heavily against Jaric's leg, even as the demon standing watch in the stern snapped straight, a feathered arrow pinned through its gills. It fell without outcry, while its companions shrilled the alarm.
Jaric noticed clan markings on the arrow before cries and screams rent the air and a spear stabbed, quivering, into Callinde1 s sternpost. Another ripped through a Thienz trying to board. More demons swarmed to replace it, jostling and shoving to launch the craft bearing their prisoner back into the sea. Arrows fell in a hail to prevent them. Thienz crashed thrashing into the salt sting of the foam, while others dived to raise the sails. More shafts sleeted among them. Callinde lurched. A javelin struck the deck not inches from Jaric's ear, and a stricken demon clawed him in its death throes. Still he could not move. That he had need to was certainty, for hill tribes on a raid against Kor's Accursed were known to slaughter with berserk fury.
Callinde slewed in the lift of an incoming wave. Jaric fetched up against the pinrail. Then the mast tipped; the boat dragged seawards, spinning, the Thienz at her helm toppled with an axe in its back. The one at the bow who fought to shear the towline died next, of a dagger thrust to the groin. Then an eldritch scream rent the air, bone-chilling for its anger. The sound cut through the minds of the demons like a knife, and those closest wailed aloud in consternation. Jaric felt the bindings upon his mind give slightly. His heart flared with hope as a feather-and-fur-clad clansman leapt Callinde's thwart. Then the boy's view was eclipsed by the head of the Thienz elder who commanded the fleet of black boats. An arrow transfixed its forearm; blood twined channels through its creased flesh, and its eyes were dark with pain, but its hands were vengefully strong as it tugged Ivainson upright by the hair.
'Die in torment, Firelord's heir.' Gills gaped red as wounds beneath its jowls as it opened its mouth. The venom sacs behind its foretongue discharged as it bit, sinking needle fangs into its victim's shoulder.
Jaric did not see the axe blow that severed the attacking Thienz's neck. His mind exploded in a haze of anguish. The poison racked him, each tear in his flesh a heated rivet of agony; and whether the fetters of demons still bound him became immaterial. He lacked recourse to recoil or even to scream. Riven through with suffering, he received the impression of a hillman bending over him with a scarlet axe. He tried to warn, to beg that the Keys to Elrinfaer be sought out and recovered from the hands of the demons who had stolen, all for the ruinous release of the Mharg. But words would not come. The sky and Callinde overturned, pitched him headlong into pain.
Sounds receded, overlaid by a roar like surf. Jaric knew vertigo, then the bitter tang of salt on his tongue. Somewhere an ancient, wrinkled crone lay dying. The vision of her body lying crumpled in white sand was imprinted sharp as sorrow through his torment. Almost he could count the knots in the interlaced leather of her garment; but why he saw the death of a hilltribe's seeress remained a mystery. His skin went from fire to ice to fire again, and his breathing seemed to rock the earth. Then came a jolt, and he saw clearly, a flat grey vista of swamp reeds and scum-caked pools. The feathered heads of the bulrushes seemed to advance upon him, twisted and tossed by wind that made no sound. Seed tips brushed his bitten shoulder and agony flamed from the contact. Darkness flooded his vision. His mouth went bitter and dry as ash, and his feet seemed to float. Taen, he thought, but her image ran like wax in his mind. For a very long time he knew nothing but the jumbled dreams of delirium, boats that sailed over blood-dark seas, and the grinding crash of masonry as the towers of Landfast were falling, falling, blasted to rubble in flames raised by sorcery.
* * *
In time the dream changed texture. Dry heat gave way to darkness and moisture, and a grinding, tumbling roar filled Jaric's ears. Behind that endless, rolling crescendo of sound he heard the treble clang of hand cymbals and chanting. The words were not intelligible, but by the inflection, Ivain's heir knew. The speakers mourned the devastation of Keithland. Where the cities had stood, curtains of red light were falling, falling into absolute dark where Mharg-wings knifed like razors . . . and though his guilt could never be absolved, in time he realized that the sound, and the ritual, and the plummeting curtain of illumination at least were real.
He lay on his side in a place that smelled of moss and cured fur. His limbs were unresponsive as dead meat, and his shoulder throbbed beneath the weight of an herb compress. Though his head swam with dizziness, Jaric determined that he lay in a cavern recessed behind a waterfall. The cascade roared and shattered into fine rainbows of spray not three yards from him, and on his other side a coal brazier spattered highlights like jewelled fire over walls of natural stone.
The chanting swelled and receded, changeless as breaking surf; somewhere in the background a woman keened in grief. Jaric fought to control his muddled thoughts. Powerless to stop the flight of the Mharg and reverse Keithland's doom, powerless even to prevent the tears which traced his cheeks, he watched the falls and wondered why, if life elsewhere were ending, his own wretched existence continued.
A sonorous voice interrupted from the shadows at his back. 'The sorrows of the grievers are not yours. Keeper of the Keys.'
Had paralysis not shackled his reflexes, Jaric would have flinched at the name given him by Llondelei. Yet not even his eyelashes flicked. Helplessness forced him to think, and analyse, and finally determine that the speech was heavily accented, not stilted with images as a demon's would have been.
The Firelord's heir laboured through pain to understand more, when the speaker gently qualified. 'The lament is for the ones who fell to Thienz-cien on the shores of the great sea, and under blessing of the Presence you lie in the Sanctuary at Cael's Falls.'
Jaric knew a spinning moment of vertigo, Disoriented and hurting from the after effects of Thienz venom, he tried vainly to move, to turn and face the unseen speaker. His experience at Tierl Enneth and the treatises in the archives of the Landfast priesthood offered scant understanding of hilltribes' culture, but this much he knew: the Lady who kept the Sanctuary at Cael's Falls was word and law among the clans. Her will was supreme over all other seeresses and chieftains throughout Keithland. On a whim she could order him killed.
But struggle did nothing to alleviate the Firelord's heir's distress. At his back, the speaker uttered a phrase in clan dialect, and a person left the cavern with a soft rustle of leather. Jaric felt shadow chill his body as someone else passed between his pallet and the brazier. Then light and warmth returned and only the crash of the falls remained.
A hand touched his shoulder. He could not recoil or protest, even as the fingers gripped and pulled him inexorably on to his back. Then he did break into a cold sweat, for he had expected the wrinkled crone from the Llondelei dreaming of Anskiere's past. Instead, the Lady of the Spring at Cael's Falls was a girl with russet hair braided and coiled back from a waiflike face. Her age might have been twelve. The ceremony of her initiation had to have been recent, for her eyes were swathed in cloths that smelled strongly of healer's unguents. Her touch upon his flesh was unsteady. No doubt she still felt the ache of the knife which had taken her sight.
'The Lady of the Spring died on the strand with the others,' she murmured, as if her mind tracked his thoughts. Once again he recalled the crone he had dreamed, her bone thin face outlined in a wreath of dry seaweed.
The child bending over him qualified with a reproach that stung. 'I am her appointed successor.'
Her words seemed to shimmer with reflections; of knowledge withheld, and sorrows laid bare. Called to account for his delays at Landfast, Jaric thought of Taen, and then, sharply, of peril and his own helplessness. Again he tried to move, only to lose himself impotently in vertigo left by the Thienz venom. The falls hurtled around him, the churning maelstrom of their waters a sound like the grind of the wheels of fate. Turning, they would crush him, and Keithland would burn . . .
The seeress stiffe
ned. She snatched her hand from his shoulder and uttered a phrase in dialect, her tone all ice and hostility. Young she might be, but the power at her command was shatteringly evident. Jaric's delirium cleared before a surge of raw fear.
Energies he did not understand tingled across his skin. The seeress arose. She whirled, and the knot-worked leather of her garments fanned a chill over him even as the embers in the brazier flared white-orange. Hallucinations touched off by the poisons made her shadow seem to caper as she strode to the back of the cavern. Drapes hung there, fashioned of woven cloth, and sewn with pearl chipped from the shells of river mussels. The clan seeress whipped these back and cried out in a pure, singing tone that shivered the air like a bell. An ache suffused Jaric's bones; uncertain whether this was an effect of his sickness, or the resonance of unknown powers, he fought for breath. Black patches danced before his eyes. Through them he saw a slab as black as a pool under starless night. Intricate patterns were worked in gold upon its surface, concentric circles with interconnecting whorls that dazzled and confused the eye. Silhouetted like a spider on a web, the seeress sank to her knees. Like one tranced she raised her hands and touched the disc at the very centre. No visible phenomenon resulted, yet Jaric felt a force vibrate upon the air. Unseen energies whined along his nerves, and the hair prickled at the base of his neck.
The sensation ceased when the seeress lowered her arms. As she broke contact with the slab she staggered slightly. Small and suddenly very frail, she dragged the curtains closed and then sank down until her cheek rested against the stone of the cavern floor. 'You shall have help,' she murmured to Jaric. 'By the life of my people, I swear you shall be cured.'
The bandages over her eyes seemed to run red, accusing him of crimes and suffering beyond hope of redemption. Whether-this, too, was an illusion born of delirium, the heir of Ivain could not say. The thunder of the falls swelled around him until he screamed and toppled backwards into night.
* * *
He roused choking, the bitter taste of herbs on his tongue. Someone supported his head; horny calluses dug into his cheek, and guttural voices spoke above a white, never-ending hiss of sound. Jaric felt the cold rim of a cup pressed to his lips. Stinging liquid filled his mouth, and he coughed and turned feebly aside.
'Ciengarde!' The exclamation had an acid inflection; and though the language was strange, Jaric understood. They called him by his name, the same name spoken by another seeress at midsummer, under the shadow of the ruins at Tierl Enneth.
'Demonbane!' called the voice again, compelling. 'Drink of the elixir and live.'
Again his mouth was poured full of liquid. The taste was acrid. Jaric swallowed and drew a gasping breath. His chest ached. He wanted, terribly, to run, but his legs were beyond feeling. The hands shook him, pinching him cruelly.
'Ciengarde, answer! Resume the burden of your fate.'
Weakness washed through him. Aware Taen's life depended upon his reply, Jaric struggled, snatched air into lungs that were racked like a drowning man's. But his tongue would shape no sound.
His eyes filled, and he wept. As if his tears were a catalyst, he saw the ancient predecessor of the seeress. Robed in knotted black, her crabbed hand raised and pointing, she spoke no word. Yet her accusation struck Jaric like a blow. Each hour he had dallied at Landfast had engendered tragedy; the life of the boy recovered from demons on the southwest shores of Elrinfaer had been measured and bought in blood.
No. But even in recoil, Jaric could not escape the will which summoned him.
The fingers that gripped his body tightened their hold without pity, and the living seeress's command rang out like a whiplash. 'Ciengarde!' His hard-won core of conviction transformed to a stinging agony of guilt. 'Answer!'
Jaric flinched. The seeress's hand moved as if to slap him, even as a mother might reprimand a stubborn son. Such presumption of authority moved the Firelord's heir to rage. Air dragged like sand across his lacerated throat. 'I am here.'
His words seemed to fall into a pool of blackness. The restraint loosened from his limbs. He sank, utterly spent, into drowsy warmth.
'He will live,' someone pronounced in a girlish treble, while the roar of the falls hammered into echoes that swallowed light.
* * *
He woke next to daylight and the faintly rancid scent of the white bear pelt that covered him. Even the softness of the fur seemed harsh against his flesh, and the hand and wrist lying crossed over his chest flared an angry, congested red. There were scabs left from the ropes. Jaric closed his eyes, listening to the tumble of Cael's Falls. He smelled the, moisture upon the air, a sweetness not unlike rain-washed moss, and he thought of Taen's laughter. Then memory returned, of a tavern, and too much wine, and a shame that cut to contemplate. He tried to close the fingers of the hand that lay upon the coverlet, his left, which he had lain upon through the long days of his captivity. A blaze of pain answered. But the fingers quivered, and slowly, ever so torturously, closed into a fist.
Jaric felt sweat drip down his temples. He gasped in shallow breaths and tried to move the other hand, the one he could not see, the one attached to the shoulder the demon had bitten.
'Ach! No!' And without warning, the female who had chastised him reached out and pulled his hair.
Jaric opened his eyes. The seeress of Cael's Falls bent over him, the bandages over her face replaced by a veil of woven straw. Through the chinks he glimpsed blind, scarred tissue, and a girlishly vexed frown; then the seeress turned and called to someone else beyond his view. An attendant wearing deerhides arrived and fussed with the dressings on his shoulder. By the ungentle twists and tugs of the older woman's hands, the heir of Ivain Firelord understood that his efforts to move had knocked his poultices awry, and that his healers were mightily displeased.
Jaric struggled to turn his head. 'How long?' he whispered, unable to manage more.
But as always, the seeress anticipated him. 'The days number ten and six that the Presence has guarded your spirit.'
The news struck hard, now that hope had been reborn. Jaric forced air into his lungs and attempted to inquire of the Keys to Elrinfaer. Words grated painfully in his throat. 'Tell me - '
Yet before he managed more the seeress turned away. She knew what he would ask, and more plainly than words the line of her back indicated an unwillingness to answer. Jaric persisted. With a wrenching effort of will he raised his left hand and hooked her garment. 'Please.'
The touch was a breach of etiquette. The attendant sucked air through her teeth with a hiss; in shocked reaction she grasped his wrist and snatched back his offending hand. Incensed, the seeress spun like a cat and faced him. Only the trembling lip that showed beneath her veil reminded that she was but a girl, alone and frightened as he. 'When you are stronger, she that the Presence names Dreamweaver to Keithland will reveal those things you must know.'
Jaric subsided against the furs, white-faced. Taen apparently was safe; but for how long? And what in Keithland had become of his trust to Anskiere, that he must wait to hear? But no further questions were possible, for the seeress turned stiffly and left his presence.
The attendant remained, fussing over his dressings. She accompanied her ministrations with scolding clicks of her tongue, until, provoked to rebellion, Jaric sought clumsily to muffle his ears with the furs.
The attendant prevented him, allowing his dignity less regard than the bother of a swarming gnat. 'Lie still.' And she finished with an epithet in clan dialect.
Jaric ripped out a protest. 'I never asked for help.'
His obliqueness required no definition. The hillwoman stopped, lightless black eyes fixed on his face. Her back was stiff, and her muscled shoulders scarred from what looked like an injury inflicted by antlers. She answered finally, in a stilted, broken accent. The Lady is never asked. She acts only by the will of the Presence.'
'And never questions,' Jaric whispered, for even so small an outburst had left him limp.
The clanswoman bent brusqu
ely to her bandaging. 'To question is to die, Ciengarde.'
Angry, debilitated, and faint with pain and worry, Ivainson Jaric turned his face to the falls. When at last the seeress's attendant finished dressing his shoulder, he hardened his will with determination, then struggled to flex his legs.
The attempt served only to tire him. Hot with fever, he tumbled into dreams that rang with the powers of the Presence. He saw torches, a circle of leather-clad clans-folk who chanted laments for the dead. The deceased presented in state at their feet lay covered with dark cloth, sewn and knotted with abalone into the sigil of the seeress. Except this Lady's hair was not aged and white, but auburn; neither were her bared features those of a girl. The tribes of Cael's Falls mourned a grown woman. In flickering flame-light, Jaric observed that the leather ceremonial mask which covered her blindness was stained with new blood, the ritual of initiation itself the cause of untimely death.
Beside the bier stood a girl-child who might once have been sister, or daughter, or niece, but who now bore the mark of successor. She was robed without ornament in white fleece. Her feet were bare, and hair of matching auburn blew unbound in the wind. She lowered a torch with trembling hands. As she touched the ceremonial shroud of her predecessor into flame, her eyes remained vivid and steady. Through the closing rites of the ceremony, while the flesh of her kinswoman burned, she neither shrank nor wept.
