TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  His other hand tightened upon his held rein. The rowel at his heel moved and flashed. Gilt in sunlight, he wheeled his stallion again; gold on snow, the wind-ruffled flutter of silk, and the bullion tassels adorning the magnificent animal's caparisons. Lysaer's arm, still upraised, held poised for the strike to enact divine justice.

  High above, an eagle's eye, circling, noted the flash of a mirror from inside the keep by the Wyntok Gate. The signal was dispatched by one of four men, doomed as they held to their station. Their unobscured vantage exposed Lysaer's move, which could not be observed from the promontory. The winking flare was caught by the Mathiell Gate's watch, and passed onward the instant before the Light's retribution unleashed.

  Then the bolt crackled and burst from the avatar's fist and bloomed into howling vengeance. Hurled power roared out, an unstoppable wave that consumed sky and earth without quarter. Shattering, bright heat and destruction unfurled with the force of a whirlwind. Walls and buildings exploded. Air shrieked with blinding flame. Stone screamed, flared to ruby, and boiled to slag. The conflagration crested and burned every structure that stood in its path.

  Farthest up on the rise, the Wyntok keeps torched and crumpled. The insatiable holocaust hissed over the tidal chasm, while the eagle that circled the ripple of fumes beheld what no living mortal had witnessed: the protective response evoked by warded stone, raised to strength by Paravian builders.

  Lysaer's raw power clashed against Alestron's innermost bastions. A quartz-bearing granite laid down and fused by the endurance of Name, the conscious grace holding the citadel's heart spanned the veil and invoked the spiralling arc of eternity. The presence that answered knew itself as itself, a foundation of being, inviolate.

  The howl of light element fashioned to harm was turned in midstrike and deflected. The back-lash whipped skywards. Raging curtains of flame shrieked into a towering ring, slammed against arcane shielding. The pillar knifed towards the zenith, a perfect, drilled vortex, with the citadel left untouched at its centre. The roar of its passage trampled all sound; ate the wind; consumed by thunder the cries of men's voices.

  Yet the mirror-flash from the Wyntok Gate, last dispatch from a captain scorched dead at his post had been sent in time. The critical signal already unleashed the poised line of s'Brydion defence.

  Trained troops responded. Trigger lines were cut free as the light flared, a murderous act of drilled timing: from their bedded platforms set high on the cliffs, the massive trebuchets tripped into release. One after the next, their slung missiles were launched, to the ponderous creak of their throwing arms. Load upon load of hurled boulders sliced into the dazzling sheets of the false avatar's unnatural assault. Their whistling passage creased the stressed air, shot into torched light that obscured the view.

  The hard-bitten captains howled against pummelling winds, and spurred on their sweating crews. 'Reload and fire!'

  Even deafened by the unbearable noise; even with their watering eyes masked with wet rag, the trained squads cocked back the huge engines. They shot by rote, well-primed to seize their moment to enact their duke's desperate strategy.

  Only the eagle observed the course of the missiles' trajectory. Mage-sight sensed the moment, as hissing, flung rock dissolved into spattering magma. The oblivious ranks of the Alliance war host received no second of warning. No moment in which to pull back. The barrage from the promontory burst through the white sear of Lysaer's light and sliced havoc across their drawn lines.

  S'Brydion were unparalleled masters of warfare. Ruthless practice perfected their tactics. The first impacts struck down their standing marks with diabolical accuracy.

  The molten splashes set fire to scaling towers; whumped into the squat frames of the mangonels and shattered the poised rams. Others whipped like a scourge into rows of armed men and dropped them screaming, aflame. Order dissolved. Shocked devotees scattered. The planked frames for the sappers and the piled oil casks for the fire-arrows splintered and ignited, and sowed mayhem. Phalanxes unravelled in panic as their officers fled for their lives. Underfoot and around them, the fallen still thrashed, scalded to agony inside their heated armour: and still, without cease, the impacts hissed down. Death slammed in their wake, stones melted to slag by the intensity of Lysaer's raised offensive. Other loads became fire-balls that streamed poisoned fumes and volcanic cinders.

  The false avatar doused the white blast of his gift, but too late. His elite honour guard were already broken, half their number cut down. His priest acolytes pelted and scattered. While the white charger bucked, singed mad by flung slag, its rider was forced to take charge to avoid being tossed from the saddle. If his elemental strike left a vista of ruin, and the smoking shells of wracked buildings, the retort from the citadel did not let up.

  The hail of flung boulders continued to fall, ripping down camp tents and tearing through horseflesh and men, and smashing the stragglers who carried the wounded. No retaliation could answer, uphill. The high keeps of the citadel lay beyond range. Red bull banners still streamed from the watchtower.

  No rag remained of the Sunwheel blazon strung up in premature triumph. No man strutted, before gutted walls. No horns blew, and no trumpet flourished. Only the cries of the wounded and dying lifted above drifting smoke. For the wreck of their craft precinct, Alestron's defenders exacted their bitter price: a rout in let blood that might force back the lines, but that could never concede them a victory.

  Far overhead, a circling speck untouched by the reek and the slaughter, a lone eagle folded its wings and vanished.

  * * *

  The appalling shock of a spinning descent dropped away into nothing. The mind reeled, disembodied. Then the pine-scented greenery of Selkwood returned with a wrenching rush. Stunned breathing resumed. Shocked nerves recoiled as the unmoored spirit snapped back into cognizant flesh.

  Kyrialt shuddered. His senses felt painfully magnified. Sound hurt and sight stung, so much colour and noise, as he swayed on his feet. When his spinning head cleared, he noted the renegade Sorcerer, still present.

  Davien remained standing, arms folded, his flamboyant dress like a shout against the undisturbed forest. He watched the crown prince at his feet through unblinking, relentless black eyes.

  There, the moment hung, burning. Shand's guarding liegeman rejected the reflex to unsheathe his sword. No fight could prevail, here. Davien's errant interests were too deep to fathom, and his motives, unimaginably perilous. Kyrialt was not given the opening to challenge. At his feet, his prince had emerged from the scrying, utterly shattered from peace.

  Arithon's outcry was stifled, just barely, his muffling palms locked over his lips as he choked. His skin had gone bloodless. Tortured eyes were pinched shut, while the tears he could not repress welled and spilled through his lashes.

  Kyrialt dropped to his knees in blind shock. 'Your Grace!'

  He reached out, afraid. Would have braced up his liege's bowed shoulders, had his touch not been rammed aside by Davien.

  'He's seen everything you did, but opened through mage-sight.' The Sorcerer knelt himself. He captured Arithon's wrists. 'I am here! Let me help.'

  As though no incensed liegeman scrambled to rally, murderous with outrage beside him, the Sorcerer stayed riveted. 'Arithon.'

  Rathain's prince hung on, his face pressed behind his clenched fingers.

  Davien laid his brow against Arithon's untidy black hair. 'I'tishealdient, Teir's'Ffalenn. Blessed peace. You heard the outspoken chord laid into Alestron's white stone by the grace of the Ilitharis Paravian wardings?'

  A shudder raked the overstrung frame he supported. 'That.'

  While Kyrialt watched, distressed, Arithon forced his stopped lungs into motion. He husked, 'More.'

  Davien murmured in Paravian. If he had been sharply commanding before, now his tone held melting compassion.

  Arithon shivered. He tried to move, to reject, but could not recover the will to stay private. Contained by an embrace too tender to break, he let go. His
shuttered hands moved. Green eyes flicked open and let in the sight of the Sorcerer's face.

  Kyrialt lost his wind; averted his sight, but not fast enough. The suffering clarity had been unmasked: pain and pity exposed beyond even a Fellowship Sorcerer's redress.

  'Ath have mercy,' Arithon whispered, bereft. 'My brother. I saw how he's -'

  As language failed him, the Sorcerer did not: the swift weave of his spell-craft unfolded and dropped the Teir's'Ffalenn into sleep. As Kyrialt moved, Davien shook his head.

  'No. Let me.' His deft hands gathered the prince's limp form, then bundled him under the sable cloak that still mantled his shoulders. The Sorcerer arose as though his burden posed less inconvenience than a sick child. 'Where are his Grace's quarters? Gather his things. I will take him.'

  'Was this necessary?' Kyrialt snapped, on edge for the affront to his liege's dignity.

  Davien glanced sidewards. 'Would I trifle? Your prince can assimilate what he's learned with less trauma through his initiate use of the dream-state.'

  Rather than test the Sorcerer's censure, Kyrialt retrieved the dropped awl. He scooped up the lacing and unfinished strap leather, in haste to keep pace with a creature whose reputation frightened him beyond sense. 'If you knew that his Grace would suffer this way, why did you come here to bedevil him?'

  'Is your loyalty true enough to find out?' Davien turned his back and strode directly toward the scout's tent appointed to Arithon. As the flustered liegeman stayed in flanking step, the Sorcerer said quickly, 'Don't try to speak here! Not if you don't like unwarranted notice, since I won't respond to anyone's bothersome questions.'

  They passed the s'Taleyn lodge tent, where no sharp-eyed scout raised the alarm. Bore on across the central encampment, where two younger women scraping raw hides failed to look up, as Davien's moving shadow flicked over them. No laughing children broke off from their play. The elderly man who heated pine resin for torches said nothing. Another, who split grouse feathers to fletch damaged arrows, kept on telling jokes to a neighbour, as though no untoward apparition circled the cookfire or passed in front of him.

  Kyrialt followed. Jaw clenched, he bore uncivil witness as his father's security was invaded with high-handed effrontery.

  Davien paid no mind. Whatever dire warding allowed him to pass, even the seer-gifted hunters who read flux lines did not notice his passage. Unerring, the Sorcerer ducked into the guest tent, with the clan liegeman stalking behind.

  The door flap slapped shut, leaving gloom. If Kyrialt bristled, thrown back on scout's instincts, the darkness afforded the Sorcerer no inconvenience.

  Davien flipped back his mantle and laid Arithon down on the pine-stuffed pallet. 'Your Grace,' he pronounced, as respectful, his touch straightened out rumbled limbs and arranged the pillow. 'I will not leave your side until you can rest without reliving the carnage through nightmares.' Though his unconscious charge seemed unfit to be listening, Davien finished off with a tart remonstrance. 'One thing further, I don't fancy repeating myself.'

  He unpinned his rich mantle, that once had been gifted and left, overlooked in the leave-taking from Feylind's brig. The jet cloth tumbled over the motionless prince. Davien smoothed the fine wool, with its pearl satin lining and exceptional silver embroidery. Then he dragged up a hassock and perched with intent to honour his promise.

  The liegeman who witnessed was left at a loss. Aware of the Sorcerer's black eyes upon him, bright with irony and obtuse humour, Kyrialt set Arithon's unfinished handiwork down on the empty trestle. If every protective line of his carriage screamed to stay standing at sword's reach, he had the courage not to act foolishly. Kyrialt dragged out the pine bench. He sat. Leashed his riled nerves through a quiet that pricked like a knife's point.

  Davien chose to relent in due course. 'I will say what should be put in words only once, to spare Arithon's need to explain himself. He thought to leave for Alestron in ten days. My lesson has shown him, by graphic example, that he is ill prepared to support the experience.'

  Kyrialt released a pent breath. 'What occurred in the King's Glade has laid him wide open. Our healer can't help. She says he's not ailing. Yet at times, his Grace can't bear the sound of his own voice. He won't touch the strings of his lyranthe.'

  'That acute state of sensitivity will pass.' Davien folded his artisan's hands. Under spilled light from a tear in the canvas, his sculpted knuckles wore the spark of a trefoil ring, silver inset with citrine. 'You must understand. To break Desh-thiere's curse, your liege extended himself to the verge of dissolution. He carried the scourge of the geas, self-contained, and went far enough to surrender himself to the mysteries. Throughout, he had to stay in command. Fully conscious, he held what could never be balanced, until the interlocked layers of his aura refined and all but sheared away. He did not die, because he willed to live, free. The healing he asked for respun his whole pattern, set under exalted influence. The gift of the Athlien Paravians will not fail him. He is still himself. Yet he needs to discover his natural balance. He battled the Mistwraith's drive for so long, he can scarcely recognize his own spirit. Despite what he presumed, now he knows: he is not ready to withstand what awaits on the field at Alestron.'

  Kyrialt frowned. The Paravian warding set in the old wall, can you understand what it did to him? Ilitharis would not work in disharmony. What note could Arithon hear that was damaging?'

  Against waiting stillness, perhaps reluctant, Davien decided to answer. 'He heard joy.'

  Unbidden, Kyrialt recalled the sheer force that had seized and turned the wild fires of Lysaer's assault. Before a truth that demolished resistance, his naked intellect faltered. All of his presupposed thoughts lay in error! Wrenched into humility, he shivered. 'I see that I lack the experience upon which to base understanding.'

  Profound silence answered, conclusion suspended. Where wisdom was lacking, courage remained. Kyrialt dared. He tested the Sorcerer, whose name walked hand in glove with contention, and whose ascetic, intelligent features showed nothing at all in deep shadow. 'You've implied something other than time may be needed?'

  Davien's smile was sudden and bright. 'You are worthy enough not to make a mistake. Yes, there is more. The s'Ilessid still suffers. No recourse exists, yet. Desh-thiere's geas still grips Lysaer in wilful blindness. All of his choices are clouded. That madness can't help but turn for the worse if Arithon comes into close contact. The half-brother will strive to murder his nemesis. To survive unscathed, your Master of Shadow may require Dakar's help, or Elaira's assistance to shield him.'

  Now Kyrialt did use the striker to brighten the tallow dip, the trembling move in defiance of the Sorcerer's piercing regard. "Then stop him,' he pleaded. 'Let his Grace never enter the s'Brydion citadel. As his sworn protector, for the honour due him by this realm, I will have the Teir'sTaleyn, Lord Erlien, take action to back your decision.'

  'You can all try, and fail.' Davien seemed amused. 'Be sure this prince will reject every effort to override his free will.' An impatient gesture foreran the venom drilled through the last line. 'Dharkaron Avenge! Did you actually think I arranged today's scrying merely for petty cruelty?'

  Kyrialt's anger was damning. 'Could any survivor of Shand's royal lineage have a sound reason to trust you?'

  'This is not Shand's sovereign,' Davien stated, precise. Irritation gave way to fury that cut, the more dangerous under distrust. 'Tell me, what other means, fair or foul, could have deferred your liege's unwise planned departure from Alland? I never came for the sake of his s'Ahelas ancestry! Don't make that assumption again.'

  So began the long and uneasy vigil, which ended before dawn the next morning. Kyrialt did not recall that he drowsed at his post. Yet through the night, as the tallow dip burned, Davien arose, undetected. All that remained of his high-handed visit was the magnificent black cloak, draped over a prince who rested past reach of harsh dreams; and the shoulder-strap, meant to hang Alithiel's scabbard, that was left neatly finished, spread out on the trestle table.

/>   * * *

  A man in no hurry to fare northward by galley never lacked for excuses to stall on a midautumn passage. Avenor's state flagship might boast a superb crew, with spars and bright-work kept trim. Yet the stiff winds and high seas off the Cildein could still overmatch an oared vessel's flat keel and low free-board. Sulfin Evend, Lord Commander of the Alliance war host, also sailed escort for the unwieldy flotilla bound for the siege of Alestron.

  The two dozen hulls straggled in his warship's wake flew the banners of seven towns' registries. They wallowed, as well, packed belowdecks with gear, and jammed by the ranks of the disparate companies culled to fight by the southcoast muster. The arguments thrashed between the ships' pursers and their equally contrary captains made each day's logged course a predicament. Two severe storms had furthered delays. Once, the fleet sheltered at Ishlir's sea-walled harbour. A second, more maddening hold-over was spent pitching at anchor, tucked inside a cove above Durn. By then, the new recruits were green-faced. Oarsmen and deck-hands turned rank as caged bears from dull food and over-tight quarters.

  Worse than the trials of weather and supply, Parrien s'Brydion's packs of armed warships roved the sea-ways like nipping wolves. Their furtive night raids and gadding strikes at the laggards were no use to keep fighting men in trim form. Land troops were unwieldy, crammed on a ship's deck. Infantry weapons at sea carved blundering wounds and made accidents caused by slashed rigging. Two galleys were sunk, over one lost to Parrien. The archers evened the stakes, launching fire-arrows. Three of Alestron's ships were set flying, aflame. Yet no paltry victory might satisfy injuries. Each surprise engagement resharpened short tempers, and unravelled the confidence of drilled training.