by Janny Wurts
"Not at all." Orame grinned, plainly entertained by his companion's discomfort. Obligingly he poured more ale. "I knew something had followed us, and wished to flush it without giving reason for suspicion. Alhaerie's inhabitants can be quite ruthless. Sometimes the best defense is surprise."
"That strategy can cut both ways, enchanter." Haldeth downed his second helping of ale and fussily pushed to his feet.
Impervious to bitterness, and fastidious to the least detail, the enchanter collected the food platters. From the occasional flash and backwash of heat, Haldeth presumed Orame worked new spells, but he had lost any interest in watching. His head ached already from too much magic, and his concern for Korendir intensified with each passing minute.
"You're not burdening us with more ham and bread, I hope."
"Hardly that." Orame's tone stung with reproof. "You've a companion, I think, being harried by wereleopards?" And he extended to Haldeth a bundled length of new rope.
The smith accepted the coils with a flush of embarrassment. Worry left him mannerless; brisk Orame may have been with regard to his fearsome craft, but he had helped a mortal without stinting. Haldeth struggled to swallow his pride and apologize.
Orame forestalled him. "Time is short, master smith. If your friend is to be saved, we must leave at once."
The wizard strode downslope, toward an outcrop that speared like a sentinel through a hillock mantled with gorse. As if privy to Haldeth's thoughts, he added, "Your contrition is misplaced. I came for my own motives."
Such sudden and stinging arrogance permitted no space for reply; Haldeth did not try, but breathlessly hastened to follow. Daylight was beginning to fail. The wizard's charcoal-colored robes melted almost invisibly into cloudy twilight and a sky that unkindly threatened drizzle. The wind had acquired a chillier edge as it rattled through tough stands of gorse; but cheerless weather perhaps might help deter wereleopards. Haldeth strove to wrest comfort from that hope as the last gleam dimmed above the peaks, and darkness closed over terrain that was treacherous with roots and loose rock.
Orame pressed on without misstep. Haldeth kept pace, cursing as his ankles turned, and his elbows skinned into jutting edges of shale. He thought wistfully of lanterns, and almost slammed into Orame as the wizard suddenly stopped.
"Your pardon!" exclaimed the enchanter. "My kind see well in the dark." He made a pass with his hand and a cold light flared above his palm.
The illumination burned with an energy that stabbed the eyes; the ground underfoot became rendered in patches of fiery brilliance and shadows deep as pits. As the wizard started forward once more, Haldeth found himself stepping over objects not worth the bother, and tripping on things that seemed to spring out of glare and snag his ankles like malice given life.
His curses grew more heated.
Orame paid no mind, but paused finally before an aperture that yawned between the rocks. "Here."
Blinking to see through the dazzle, Haldeth said, "Where?"
Abruptly the smith wished his question unspoken, A yowl to freeze the blood erupted from the earth below his feet. A slither of leather on stone tangled with a din of reverberations, and finally made aware that his light was unsuited for clarity, Orame dimmed the brightness by half.
Granted an untrammeled view, Haldeth discovered he stood on the lip of a drop overlooking a shaft that led to a subterranean cave. There was movement within, something that may have been a bronze spill of hair.
"Korendir!" shouted Haldeth. He unlimbered the rope and frantically shook out coils.
A hand glimmered deep in the darkness, and mage-wrought light suddenly caught on an uplifted, bearded face. "Haldeth?" The voice was hoarse with stress, and also a tentative, incredulous hope. "Neth, you crazed smith, is that you?"
A second yowl obscured the smith's call of encouragement, identifiably the hunting cry of the wereleopard; already fey killers closed to corner their prey. All too aware of his peril, Korendir heaved himself bodily up the shaft. He was hampered by injured knuckles and a sliding fall of loose rock. Haldeth whipped the end of the rope into a loop and fumbled with knots, furious with himself; why had he had not thought to prepare himself for trouble sooner? Orame's unbroken competence had put him off guard, and now he rued the lapse. The time required to secure the safety rope cost dearly.
"You have only seconds to effect your rescue," Orame said dispassionately from a point not far behind.
"Try offering help instead of pointing out the obvious." Haldeth jerked tight his last knot and cast the line.
Rope snaked downward into the shaft. A coil caught on an outcrop, and the smith was forced to waste precious seconds flipping and shaking the line in an effort to free the snag. He cursed and sweated and banged the heel of his hand on sharpened shale. The rope slipped clear, and the loop knotted into the end flicked straight and dangled, an arm-span above Korendir's head.
The starved yowl of a wereleopard echoed up the shaft, close enough to harrow a man's courage. The cry was joined by others, bloodthirsty and eager, the celebration of a pack on the hunt.
"It's after dark." Orame observed with nerveless steadiness. "The creatures will be in man-form, and well capable of climbing."
Haldeth did not bother to reply. "Korendir!" he shouted, desperate to be heard over the snarls of closing predators. "Look up, man!"
Korendir clawed for a higher hand-hold, but did not tip his head. The rope spun slowly, unnoticed. Haldeth repeated himself and flapped the line to attract attention. The loop swung and tapped the rocks on either side of the shaft. Pebbles bounced down like sparks in the wizard-light.
Still Korendir did not respond.
"Rouse him," cried the smith to the enchanter. "We're too close to lose him now!"
Orame declined answer. Haldeth glanced furiously aside and spotted the wizard perched unconcerned on a boulder. The smith drew breath to utter something heated, but a sudden, sharp tug on the rope killed his epithet unspoken.
At long last Korendir had caught the line.
Haldeth swung hastily back. He stared down the shaft to find new blood glistening on the wrist that grasped the rope, and by that came to realize: his friend was hard-pressed by an attack from the caverns beneath.
"Hang on!" screamed the smith.
He heaved on the line without waiting for Korendir to hook the loop over his shoulders. As his friend kicked off from the rocks, fangs gleamed where his feet had been. Sharp over the echoes of the pack's cries, Haldeth heard the clear clash of jaws.
A shiver swept his skin. Fear lent him strength as, hand over hand for the second time in life, he raised his friend toward safety. His palms sweated against a line already damp. The rope itself did not help. Spell-woven cordage was slick, and the plies slipped at the slightest provocation. Haldeth tightened his grip.
The rope jerked suddenly.
Hard won footage burned through Haldeth's palms; he gritted his teeth, cried aloud from the sting of abraded skin. "Hold still, man, for love of life."
But in the shaft below, his safety precariously secured by a fist wet with gore, Korendir fought frantically for survival. More agile than a man, the wereleopards scratched and scrabbled holds in near vertical stone. They snapped at his suspended ankles, and droplets of venom flew like jewels against the dark. Korendir shoved a jutting ledge with his toe and set the rope spinning to thwart the jaws that clashed at his heels. He swung his sword with his sound hand and managed to harry a beast off its niche. It plunged into darkness with howl that set its companions into frenzy. The one in the lead launched upward. Talon-like hands swiped air and caught Korendir in the calf. Claws sank deep into flesh.
Haldeth's yell tangled with Korendir's scream of agony.
Jerked to the brink of disaster by doubled weight on the rope, the smith braced mightily and held, though his hands quivered and his palms felt flayed by fire.
Korendir kicked out, smashed the wereleopard in the face with his unencumbered boot before it could sink teeth and poison him. It spa
t through broken fangs. Korendir kicked again, and the creature ripped free and fell twisting into darkness.
Haldeth's burden immediately lightened. He hauled, straining, gasping, his vision swimming with the effort. Coils piled at his feet. An eternity seemed to pass, all wrought of crippling pain and overtaxed muscles. Then a bloodied hand emerged from the hole. Fingers groped and caught at the rock by the smith's braced ankles. An equally crimsoned sword blade followed.
"Drop that cursed weapon," Haldeth gasped.
Korendir was beyond hearing, long past rational thought. He continued to react on reflex. Poised by one arm on the lip of the shaft, he twisted round to battle the enemies who yet clambered upward to kill.
As the drag of the rope slacked off, the smith dropped his hold. He bent at once, dodged Korendir's reflexive sword swing, and seized a wrist that felt thin as a stick. Haldeth jerked his companion bodily upward, and out into rain-dark night. Wereleopards swarmed up the shaft after their prey, eyes glinting green by wizard-light.
"Toss the rope into the shaft," said Orame succinctly. Unnoticed, he had moved to Haldeth's shoulder.
The smith released Korendir in an unceremonious heap, then kicked the loose coils over the brink.
Line unreeled downward with a hiss that had little to do with disturbed air. Before Haldeth's eyes, the hemp vibrated with light, then reverted with a shriek and a blinding flash into the sorcery that originally created it.
The wereleopards were incinerated in an eyeblink. Not even fumes remained to mark their passing.
Orame tilted his head to one side over the suddenly deserted shaft. As if in afterthought, he stepped to the boulder where, earlier, he had chosen to sit. Calmly he set elegant hands against its rain-streaked shale. The stone groaned, shifted, then rocked with an energy that defied the still earth and every law of inertia. Orame spoke in a coaxing tone, as if he entreated a beloved hound to fetch something unpleasant. The rock hesitated like a live thing. Then it trembled and tumbled awkwardly on its side, to lodge with a great, hollow boom directly in the mouth of the shaft.
No wereleopards would emerge from that cave forever after.
Orame dusted his hands. Satisfaction softened his countenance as he joined Haldeth, who already knelt in concern over the ragged survivor delivered safe from the caverns of the Ellgol.
XII. The Grief of South Englas
The blood proved to be as much the wereleopards' as Korendir's; beyond his mauled leg, a shallow slash on one shoulder, and some scabs on his left wrist, the mercenary from White Rock Head was remarkably unharmed after his trials in the caves. Haldeth tightened the knots on the last make-shift bandage and sat back on his heels with a sigh of intense relief. Attenuation from scanty rations and exhaustion would mend swiftly, given rest and food; clean-dressed wounds would heal.
Permitted finally to move, Korendir's first act was to recover his sword. The blade was sticky red, and dulled from too much use without sharpening. "You wouldn't by any chance have oil and whet stone about?" he asked of his companion.
Haldeth returned a curse. "Thank Neth, I don't." He shook his head, wondering upon the haggard features of the man before him. Korendir's eye sockets were bruised from lack of sleep; his hands shook, despite every effort to conceal weakness. Unable to imagine the months and the terrors he had survived under the mountains, the smith shifted his glance to include the sword. There were chips missing from the cutting edge, visible even through congealing layers of gore. "That steel's not worth sweating over. Give it up. I'll forge you better when we return to my smithy at Whitestorm."
Korendir gave back a blank glance, then settled with wiping the weapon on the tattered and already fouled hem of his tunic. After that he turned eyes large as coins in his gaunt face, and measured the shadowed figure at Haldeth's shoulder.
Starved Korendir might be, and hurting, but his reaction stunned thought. In an instant he was on his feet, wary, poised, but prepared to be courteous in his stiff-mannered way. "You're White Circle?"
Orame inclined his head. Then, before Korendir could phrase even rudimentary thanks, the enchanter laced slim hands at his belt. His gaze raked the mercenary from bronze hair to torn boots, then flicked in expectation to Haldeth. "My payment, master smith," he prompted sternly.
Haldeth pushed apprehensively to his feet. He had no stomach for crossing Korendir while sitting on his backside in shale; even worse, the gorse still lodged in his britches added irritation to what now seemed a regrettably bad bargain.
The smith closed his ham hands into fists, faced his companion, and spoke in a rush before his courage failed. "For your rescue I was forced to make a promise. You must tell me the name of your parents." Next he flinched in expectation of swift and merciless retribution.
Anger tightened every joint in Korendir's body. He gripped his naked blade, unmistakably poised for attack. Then without warning he checked and shifted focus to the wizard who waited stone-still in the darkness and the rain.
Gray eyes met black through a charged moment of challenge.
Finally a muscle jumped in Korendir's jaw. "For Haldeth's honor only," he allowed. His tone was edged as beaten metal, and directed solely at the White Circle enchanter.
"I am illegitimate." The sword blade remained, a line of deadly stillness in the air. "The Widow of Shan Rannok may have been my mother. She fostered me. When I reached my twentieth year, I was to be informed of my parentage, but that secret died untold." Korendir paused, then forced the last words past his teeth. "The Lady of Shan Rannok and all of her following were slaughtered without reprieve by Mhurgai raiders."
Silence fell, filled by a soft sigh of wind. Without regard for the poised blade, Orame tipped his head to one side and nodded to himself. "Did the lady herself say you were born out of wedlock?"
Korendir moved not at all, but the tic in his cheek went still. He matched the wizard's expectancy with icy restraint. "That is not for your hearing, enchanter. My debt to you, and Haldeth's, is discharged as of this moment. If you think otherwise, then kill me where I stand."
Orame smiled and quietly demurred. "The debt is cleared. If you find any comfort in truth, the gossips at Shan Rannok lied cruelly. The widow was not your natural mother. She stayed faithful to her dead lord, always. The secret of your origins in all probability died before she ever took you in."
But if the wizard had perceived and answered some deeply hidden longing, his words drew no reaction. Korendir heard this news without gratitude. If Orame hoped to prompt an appeal for additional information, the mercenary's lips remained sealed, and his sword stayed implacably raised.
With what seemed dry amusement, the wizard turned toward a taut and unnerved Haldeth. "I take my leave of you both. The gold you left at my tower shall be returned to Whitestorm keep. The draft horse, I believe, chewed through its tether and wandered back to the roadway. It has already been recovered by the livery stable."
"And the cart?" asked Haldeth.
Orame's eyebrows rose in evident mirth. "That, dear man, had been designated for the junk merchant a fortnight before you chose to rent it."
The wizard stepped back then. His charcoal gray robes vanished abruptly into the darkness, and if any discernible disturbance marked his departure, the event became obscured by Haldeth's invective against the ostler at Heddenton who had taken good silver with all the honor of a thief.
When the smith at last ran out of breath, he found himself alone. Korendir had taken his sword and gone off to search for wood to kindle a fire. The rain was perversely falling harder, and with a pang of regret, Haldeth recalled the ham and the cheeses on Orame's table that he had indignantly refused to sample. The nearest settlement of shepherds was leagues away, and his belly felt empty as a drum.
The evening progressed in miserable silence. Korendir sat wrapped in his cloak, light eyes fixed on the flames.
Except to mention that the farmers of Mel's Bye had left him a stock of supplies, he chose not to speak of his ordeal in the caves o
f the Ellgol. Raindrops seeped from his hair and dripped off the beard that had grown unchecked through his months of privation. The mercenary may have been brooding, possibly he speculated upon innuendos raised by the final words of Orame; but when Haldeth accidentally brushed Korendir's flank while adding wood to the fire, the glare flung back at him warned otherwise. The Master of Whitestorm viewed the bargain which surrounded his rescue with cold, inexpressible fury. Aware of a pressure beneath his quiet that burned and seethed like trapped lava, Haldeth strove to deflect the bent of his companion's thoughts.
"When we get back, and the keep is built, you can give up adventuring and settle down. Orame of the White Circle told me, without question. His kind never sell their services for gold."
Korendir's gaze stayed fixed. "Then gold must be raised to buy whatever it is that White Circle enchanters desire."
"Neth, I swear, you were fathered by a mule!" Haldeth flung a billet on the fire with excessive force. Embers scattered; sparks whirled skyward and momentarily lit the rain like some grisly fall of blood. "A stone responds to reason more readily than you do. Will you never let be and stop?"
Korendir redirected the exclamation with a pointed question of his own. "How goes the construction at Whitestorm? Are the walls shoulder high yet?"
Haldeth answered only when he ran out of expletives. As cold drizzle fell and fell, and light from the campfire traced the tired, too gaunt profile of a man who had fought off wereleopards through three solitary months of confinement, the smith described the state of Whitestorm's fortifications. He added exhaustive detail, and listed everything from the game paths in Thornforest, to the fish in the tide pools beneath the cliffs. All the while, he could not help but despair inside.
"Your quest is a hopeless waste of life," he announced in a shattering change of subject. "Don't expect me to go with you, or save you again, when you rush headlong into risk."
"No," said Korendir with a simplicity that implied far too much.
Haldeth stared at the coals and cursed the smoke for making his eyes water. The rescue from the jaws of the wereleopards had most assurely been futile. In time, some unfortunate wretch would send an appeal to Whitestorm, pleading help in behalf of his countrymen, and offering gold in return. Somewhere, anywhere in the Eleven Kingdoms, trouble and woe would be stirring. . . .
