Master of Whitestorm

by Janny Wurts

  Iloreth's hands tapped swiftly over the script. Careful, guards.

  Korendir nodded encouragement. "Tell me more of them. All that you know."

  Iloreth answered his questions until her eyes ached from following the letters by the moon's wan light. Just when she thought Korendir would never be satisfied, he rose to his feet. Iloreth settled back on her mat. She followed with her eyes as he paced the breadth of her chamber. His demands had encompassed more details of the sultan's city of Telssina than the princess realized she knew; some points had been phrased repeatedly for clarity, but the subjects reviewed in such depth seemed hardly worth interest and without descernible pattern.

  Korendir had even demanded to know what sort of fitting fastened the scrollwork which railed the upper galleries of the merchant's mansions. Iloreth had provided an accurate enough description; like most slaves, her hands were callused by polishing cloth and compound, and the aching hours of toil required to keep the wrought brass bright. Too weary for curiosity, the princess waited without questions for Korendir's restlessness to end.

  He paused finally beneath a window tinged pink with dawn. "Look for me at the dark of the next moon, Your Grace."

  A smooth leap gave him a grip on the sill. A kick and a slither, and he raised his body through the slit high above. The next instant he was gone so thoroughly that the narrow opening showed empty sky.

  Only the musk of the desert fern lingered to affirm his existence. Iloreth subsided on her mat. She ached with the need to call out, to beg him on her knees to return. Speech being impossible, she fought an undermining tide of hopelessness. The dark of the moon lay a fortnight hence; if on that night some noble chose her for his bed, she would be helplessly unable to keep the rendezvous.

  * * *

  Korendir spent the day asleep underneath a trough behind a vintner's shed. Next night, he skulked through alleys and byways until he learned every quarter of the city. He mapped the guard posts on the walls and noted the location of barracks and stables. Once his reconnaissance was complete, he left through the main gates, clinging to the underside of a wagon bound for Del Morga.

  No one noticed him when he tumbled clear in the dust raised up by the wheels. He recrossed the desert on foot. Past the borders of South Englas, he engaged a post horse and rode north to the City of Kings. The wall sentries admitted him on sight. His hair gleamed like a brand in the sunlight, and his lithe, swordsman's stride set him apart from the merchants, priests, and foot servants who fared on the royal road.

  Upon his return, Korendir demanded immediate audience with the king. His request was passed on. Despite the chamber steward's distaste for the dust which filmed his leathers, and the pervasive musk of the desert fern as yet unwashed from his skin, Korendir did not wait for admittance to the royal presence. The instant the great doors opened, he delivered word that Her Grace, Iloreth had retained both her health and good spirits.

  "Have you a plan to storm the city and arrange for my daughter's release?" Strained and hopeful on a throne studded with amethysts, the king thumbed at a hangnail while the mercenary completed proper courtesies.

  "I ask use of your armor's services, and a carpenter's apprentice for one day," Korendir said. "Also add a length of new rope. Then we'll see."

  "No soldiers?" snapped the king, loudly enough that his bodyguards started at their posts. "Do you mock me?"

  But Korendir declined to elaborate.

  Unsatisfied by the modesty of the mercenary's requests, and anxious for his daughter's rescue, the king clapped his hands. A page fetched the official scribe and seal bearer, and the sovereign Lord of South Englas dictated an edict. In formal script, on finest parchment, Korendir, Master of Whitestorm was granted service from the royal smith, along with whatever resources he might require from any joiner and ropewalk in the kingdom.

  Korendir accepted the writ without comment. To the transparent relief of the chamber steward and certain high-ranking nobles, he left court and proceeded to the smithy where his demands were a good deal stiffer.

  The master armorer of South Englas braced muscled arms on his hips. Charged with forging two score throwing knives whose weight, balance, and spin were perfectly matched, he cursed long and vehemently over the seals which footed Korendir's royal document. Assured in triplicate that the blazons were no forgery, he clamped his jaw and rubbed his bald head.

  Until Korendir mentioned his deadline.

  The armoror drew breath like a bellows and laughed. "You want your knives complete in six days?" He shrugged incredulously. "Impossible."

  Korendir folded the king's document with fingers still grimed from the desert. He wasted no breath in protest, but added a list of further specifications that caused the smith's apprentice to be rousted with an obscenely phrased order to split more wood for the forge.

  Then the king's over-priviledged mercenary became the recipient of the armorer's temper in turn. "Leave me to my work, you!" The man presented his sweating back, and between rude words began hefting his stock of new steel. When he turned with his chosen bar in hand, the mercenary from Whitestorm had departed.

  The joiner faced his task with better cheer. He spun the four-inch brass pin provided by Korendir between his fingers and squinted to estimate diameter. "As it happens, I do stock spicewood in my sheds. But just for ornamental scrollwork, understand? The wood lacks hardness. Dowels turned from such lumber will splinter under the slightest stress." He tipped his head at an enquiring angle. Cedar shavings trickled from his hair as he studied the mercenary who confronted him.

  Korendir returned a level stare.

  "But you know that spicewood doesn't endure already," the joiner amended diffidently. Inquiry after the mercenary's purpose met with an uninformative reply, and stung by the rebuff, the craftsman adjusted his lathe in faintly resentful silence.

  Late day saw Korendir changed from riding attire into tunic and hose of unornamented black. He visited the chandler's on Ships Street and returned with fifty feet of cordage. Settled by the fountain in the king's private garden, he pulled out a marlin spike and displayed the skill of a trained seaman to the half dozen pages who gathered to watch. Afternoon passed as he spliced a set of loops at intervals along the length of rope. The fascination of the boys became shared when the king arrived with furtive lack of ceremony to observe behind the curtains of a second-storey casement. Believing himself unnoticed, the sovereign of South Englas was startled to receive the courtesy due his rank when Korendir finished working.

  The mercenary knelt without fuss, ringed by admiring young boys. His eyes lifted unerringly toward the monarch who sat in concealment as he said, "Grant me the use of three horses. Your daughter will be restored to South Englas in a fortnight, and the ruin of Datha shall follow after."

  The king sprang erect and clapped his hands. No servants answered. Irked by his lapse, for he had forgotten where he was, His Grace dispatched his bodyguard to run his errand to the grooms. Then, embarrassed that a stranger should witness impatience unseemly for a ruler, the king looked askance at the courtyard. Korendir had already gone. The pages were absorbed in practice, weaving splices out of grass, and the shadows that slanted from the guard tower recalled the time. Dinner was nigh. Hungry as he had not been in ages, the king made his way toward the feasting hall.

  * * *

  Korendir rode from court at first light seven days later. The lengths of rope he had altered hung in coils across his shoulder, and the master armorer's throwing knives gleamed, thrust through leather loops in his belt. A sack tied to his saddlebow bulged with the spicewood dowels made to demand by the joiner. Except for two riderless horses hooked to his wrist with braided cord, the mercenary rode unaccompanied. His final word to the king was his promise to return from Telssina with the princess.

  But just before the appointed day of rendezvous, Iloreth's fortune ran out. That afternoon Telssina's gates had opened to admit an envoy from Arhaga, and a ranking official in the ambassador's train had picked her
to warm his bed.

  This latest unkindness of fate brought Iloreth shattering despair. Delivered to the emmissary's chambers at sundown, she paced fretfully, tormented by awareness that the dark of the moon was only one night hence. The last slave who displeased a palace guest had been slowly tortured to death; her screams remained vivid in Iloreth's memory, but the risk of similar penalty mattered little by the time the envoy returned, drunken with overindulgence of the sultan's hospitality. The princess resisted his advances as well as her thumbless condition allowed. She prayed through tears of frustration that brute Arhagai lust would sour and crave another in her stead before morning.

  The official overpowered her before he succumbed to his liquor. Iloreth endured, as she had countless nights in the past; through the quiet hour that followed, she appealed to Neth's mercy that the Arhagai as a race preferred submissive women. Her prayer went unanswered.

  Daylight brought the official a fierce hangover and no recollection of his evening activities. He rose nursing an overblown mood of self-pity, and ordered Iloreth to fetch his clothing and boots. Once dressed, he departed in search of hot drink and a sweet roll. When the house steward inquired after his pleasure, he cradled his suffering hangover and pleaded no change in accommodations. Left the task of straightening tumbled sheets, Iloreth wrestled hopelessness, that the freedom so near at hand should relentlessly pass her by. If she could have laid hand on a knife, she might have ended her misery, but even embassies to a land as savage as Datha carried no arms; the furnishings of the guest suite contained no suitable substitute.

  Released at midmorning to make rounds of the palace chamber pots, Iloreth hid among the flowering shrubs inside the sultan's seraglio on the bald-faced chance she might elude the Arhagan's attentions. The head gardener discovered her and at once second-guessed her intent. His report earned her a beating. The house steward took care not to mark her, since she was presently favored by a guest. Yet welts that stung red and then faded offered nothing by way of consolation; more lasting punishment would await the envoy's departure.

  Returned under guard to the guest chamber, Iloreth stared at the street beyond the scrolled brass grille across the window. Her thumbless hands were incapable of drawing the pins that secured the ornamental grate; and the medallion which framed the central aperture was barely a palm span across. A sparrow might have sailed through between wing beats; a slave was helplessly imprisoned.

  Tropical dusk fell swiftly. A shaved crescent moon sank over the roofs of Telssina and stars burned like lamps on blue silk. Huddled forlornly on a hassock beside the hearth, Iloreth sat with dry eyes and wondered whether Korendir would wait long in the room that housed her sleeping mat. She thought of her parents as the wall sconces were lighted in the street, and the distorted shadow of the window grille leapt and wavered across the floor. Hours passed. Songs from late-night revellers heralded the closing of feasting halls and taverns. Knowing the Arhagan would be along soon, the princess sat listlessly. At any instant the bleak comfort of solitude would end, along with her last hope of home.

  That moment the wall sconce by the window hissed and went dark.

  Normally in Telssina such lights burned until morning, but Iloreth had no chance to reflect why the torch had precipitously failed. The latch of the guest suite tripped up and the door opened. Moved by less welcome than she would have awarded the palace executioner, Iloreth arose, her scarred face set with distaste.

  The Arhagan crossed the threshold. "Come to me, ugly one," he invited. He leaned on the panel as it swung shut, his lips parted over teeth that gleamed faintly from the shadows. He was quite sober.

  "A fine thought, thee had, to leave my chambers dark. We shall make sport together, yes?"

  The Arhagan smiled again.

  A shadow moved at the grate. Steel flashed in an arc through the bars and struck with the speed of a snake. The Arhagan's look of lust froze into horror. He gurgled, clutched at the blade embedded in his throat, then crashed full-length on the floor.

  Iloreth recoiled from her tormentor's dying struggles, and stared wide-eyed through the window. A man crouched there, black-clad and nimble. Before the Arhagan gasped his last, a brass pin chimed on the tile. The grille swung open and in wafted the unmistakable scent of desert fern.

  "Come quickly, Your Grace," whispered Korendir. "Dead envoys are bad luck in any country."

  XIV. Scourge of the Dathei

  Iloreth rushed forward. The mercenary in the window caught hold of her. His sure grasp raised her up and over the sill, then bundled a cloak over her thin silk robes. Half stunned by her change in luck, Iloreth felt herself hurried across the palace street and into a side alley, where a rope dangled from the grille of a gallery.

  "Climb," said Korendir in her ear.

  Loops had been spliced into the rope, forming a ladder for thumbless hands. Iloreth swung herself upward. Steadied by the hands of the northerner, she went quickly. Before the Arhagan left behind in the guest chambers ceased bleeding, she reached the roof and clung to the ceramic of the rain gutter.

  "Hold here, Your Grace." Korendir reached past her, grasped the lip of the tile, and kicked free of the rope. He slung himself up with the agility of a lizard, then crouched and caught Iloreth's wrists. Hoisted in the grip of the swordsman, she landed, breathless, above the eaves.

  "Go across," Korendir instructed. "Over the rooftop on the far side, you'll find another rope fastened to a chimney. Start down if you can. I'll be along."

  Determined to carry her own weight, Iloreth choked back her fear of falling. She scaled the slippery roof tiles and located the line Korendir had left. She caught her fingers in the top loop, clenched her jaw, and slid over the lip of the rain gutter.

  The mercenary arrived at the roof edge just as the princess reached the ground. The rope previously used for ascent was hooked into coils over his shoulder; the other he severed at the knot. Iloreth gathered up the length which cascaded to her feet, while above her, Korendir swung onto a gallery. A movement saw him hanging full length from the brasswork adorning the lower railing; from there he dropped the short distance to street level.

  The second he recovered his balance, he was flanked by a hunched figure in black.

  Iloreth was startled into panic. If she became recaptured, the agonies that awaited at the hand of the sultan's torturer raised a horror that overwhelmed caution. A scream arose in her throat, stopped by Korendir's hard fingers.

  He shook her once, sharply, and his whisper restored her to reason. "Look again."

  Shaking with rattled nerves, Iloreth discovered who sheltered beneath the cloak hood. Tears welled in her eyes. Korendir had stolen Daide from the sultan's seraglio, but his sympathies did not extend to delay for sentiment or gratitude. The mercenary grasped the hands of both women and hauled them urgently into a run.

  Telssina's thoroughfares were never quiet. Caravans from the south commonly scheduled night arrivals, and last watch's guardsmen loitered between gambling halls and wineshops, making each street corner a hazard. Korendir had chosen his route to compensate; he and his refugees utilized rooftops to cross the most crowded quarters of the city. They were challenged only once, while Daide descended by rope from a second floor balcony. Korendir answered the soldier's query with a throwing knife, and pressed on without pause to recover his weapon. The gravest risk lay ahead. Between the inner city and freedom lay the double walls of the sultan's fortifications. The avenue which paralleled these defenseworks was the haunt of beggars, blackmarketeers, and disease-ridden, one-coin prostitutes, every one of them desperate enough to turn informer for the hope of a guardsman's copper. At no hour of the day or night was the street deserted, and a division of the sultan's cavalry patrolled constantly to manage the crime.

  Korendir had no intention of fighting what could not be changed. He sheltered Daide and Iloreth beneath the canvas cover of a refuse cart, then catfooted through the gutters to an alley two streets down. There he broke into the warehouse which held th
e confiscated goods of Elshaid the erstwhile camel trader. In short order he left four tuns of fine northern wines to roll unattended into the avenue beneath the walls.

  Excited shouts proclaimed their discovery by the resident riff-raff. The barrels were broached with abandon, and as celebration drew every lowborn citizen within earshot, the spoils of Elshaid's misfortune were shared out and imbibed and fought over.

  Korendir slipped off into shadow. He ducked beneath the cart that hid the women and waited while Telssina's eastern quarter brewed up a riot of swaying bodies, drunken laughter, and brawlers who cheerfully cursed and cracked heads and battered one another with an assortment of ill-gotten weaponry. The Sultan's horsemen descended like a swarm of yellow hornets upon the site. Forced to dismount and dirty themselves manhandling commoners, their angry oaths rang out above the noise.

  Korendir chose his moment and started ascent of the wall. He slung his first rope over a merlon behind a gate house and climbed to the top without sound. The guardsman on duty died with a shudder and never a chance to cry out. The mercenary leaped before the body stopped twitching and swiftly doused the watch torch. Quick as a spider he swung onto the roof of the battlement which joined the guard embrasure with the far wall. As the soldier on the outer defenseworks peered across to determine what mishap had befallen the light, his face showed briefly in silhouette. The third of the armorer's throwing knives found its mark, and a second corpse crashed on the stone. Korendir completed his crossing of the arch, blackened the next torch, and set the rope for descent over the spikes which crowned the outer rampart.

  The margin he had before discovery at best could be counted in seconds. Racing to beat odds, Korendir retraced his steps and fetched the two women from hiding. He delivered his instructions in a voice breathlessly curt. Iloreth and Daide were to climb, covered from the rear by his weapons. They were told where horses awaited, tethered in a hollow under cover; orders were to ride without thought for whatever might arise behind them.