by Janny Wurts
Here another adventurer might have questioned, or raised protest that a thing accursed to wizards might offer greater risk for a man of mortal birthright. Korendir spoke only to offer insight of his own. "The Mathcek Demons must be one such peril."
Jolted by his chance irony, Ithariel nodded. "Since the fall of Morien at Alathyr, yes. He was a fully invested Archmaster, but his powers availed nothing. His Council Major perished with him. The second Bane is Querstaboli, the water elemental which lairs in the isles off Emarrcek. The last, to our sorrow, is Tir Amindel."
No move and no sound came from Korendir.
His silence lent her courage.
Fixed in her purpose as the stars beyond the casement, Ithariel told of Majaxin, whose obsession for beautiful things had led him to infamy and exile. Most powerful of wizards, his last vengeance against the White Circle which disowned him was the abduction of the Archmaster's daughter, then sixteen, and her father's dearest pride. Majaxin had imprisoned her in a cave on the edge of Sithmark, and ward over her was the greatest tallix crystal ever mined.
Here Ithariel caught an edge of the curtain and worried it between her hands. "Eriel bore Majaxin a son and a daughter. She died two years later from sorrow and abuse, and though her fate was kept secret for close to a decade, the White Circle enchanters heard. They moved against her murderer. Majaxin was betrayed into capture by the designs of his own son." Velvet crushed and smoothed and crushed again between the enchantress's fingers. "Although the boy's actions were just, he was never so brave. He took his own life in remorse. Majaxin stood trial, and was fairly sentenced to death."
Ithariel released the crumpled curtain, aware that if she continued her voice would break. As she strove to restore her composure, the set of her back must have alerted Korendir. She did not hear his approach, but started slightly as warm hands closed over her shoulders.
Gently he turned her around. He saw the tears that ran down perfect cheekbones, to splash and scatter droplets through her pearls. He spoke no word, but cradled her head against his chest until she steadied enough to continue.
Ithariel told of the code of redemption, which lawfully allowed the condemned a final act of good will to temper his history of crime. Majaxin built Tir Amindel. The city was offered as a home for all he had wronged, but in the inspired genius of its beauty, he wove a bleak geas of bane. Any White Circle enchanter to enter there became trapped, never to leave, never to die.
Cold in the circle of Korendir's embrace, Ithariel ended her tale. "A crystal laid in the cellars of the ducal palace compels their lives to felicity. You have walked the streets of Tir Amindel. You'll recall a people without grief, or anger, or peace. Laughter and smiles were the only expressions you observed, though tragedy or offense might ache the heart. You must also have guessed the worst, that although the original inhabitants live on to a weariness of days, their offspring do not. They bear and die as mortals do, but deprived of natural emotions."
Ithariel straightened in Korendir's arms. Her face had lost its control. "Majaxin was my father," she said, knowing understanding would tear through the mercenary like a knife.
The enchantress slipped clear of his hands. He allowed her, attuned to her need for private grief; what he had no means to guess was the disastrous potential for risk that she invoked by involving him.
Yet without his singular talents, hope died. No other in Aerith could aid her. Ithariel raised her head, stared at stars, and stated her final plea. "If the tallix crystal is shattered, the city will fall. Even now, the duchess and her husband laugh hysterically over the corpse of a little boy. They suffer most cruelly without tears. Tir Amindel is the last and greatest of my father's sins. I beg you to bring it down, to break Majaxin's banespell and set the inhabitants free."
* * *
Sunlight shone kindly over the city of Tir Amindel; it glanced in starred rays off crystal-tipped spires, and burnished stone bastions against a backdrop of glowering cloud. Korendir of Whitestorm adjusted with a sailor's ease to the heave of the ferry that battled the chop on Kelharrou Lake. A windblown figure in black, he studied the city skyline. Where another man might be reluctant to believe that hostility could motivate such artistry, the mercenary chose without regret. Tir Amindel would fall, swiftly and cleanly as a blossom razed by the scythe.
Ithariel had warned that the tallix which guarded the city's geas might unleash perils upon any who interfered with it; beyond that she could not qualify. All Korendir possessed against the sorceries of Majaxin was a sliver of spell-crystal imbued with every protection in Ithariel's power; the jewel hung from his neck on a length of braided chain. Against the wrath of the duke, she left him the mail from Emarrcek, and the stallion that had matched a wereleopard's speed. The bright surcoat Korendir had refused, out of preference for his threadbare black.
Clouds veiled the sun and smothered the rainbow refractions atop Tir Amindel's bright towers. Gusts from the east blew heavy with rain, and whitecaps smacked the ferry at the waterline, threading fingers of foam across her decks.
"Mean looking squall," observed a gaudily dressed merchant who parked his bulk against the rail. Mistaking the mercenary for a courier, he added, "If you're looking to keep dry in comfort, there's a tavern on the harness maker's street that serves a decent stew."
Korendir returned a taciturn shake of his head. His hand strayed an unfriendly inch closer to his sword hilt, and taking the hint, the merchant edged away. "Must have a message that won't wait," he remarked to the master at the helm.
The boatman spat into the wake. "That one don't carry dispatches. An' storms from the east hold off for no man's comfort."
His gloomy assessment proved true. The sky opened up as the barge reached the landing; icy, whipping torrents chased across the dock as the crew warped the craft to the bollards. The mercenary minded the storm not at all, though water trickled down his neck and wrists and soaked him instantly to the skin. Guards hunched in discomfort on the battlements would be less than watchful, and folk would not linger in the streets. Korendir's second arrival at Tir Amindel would be noticed not at all, which suited his purpose. He paid his fare and left the barge, the boom of shod hooves as his stallion crossed the pier mingled with thunder from the sky.
Korendir mounted and rode beneath the filigree that framed the north keep arch. Spires that had patterned the sunlight with such elegance now sang harmonic intervals as the wind played across them, shifting pitch when caught by an occasional gust from the north. Water cascaded into downspouts and spewed from the mouths of gargoyles. The streams crossed and re-crossed, caught into arcs by gravity and genius for as long as the downpour might linger. Tir Amindel under cloudburst surpassed the renowned court of fountains engineered for the King of Faen Hallir. Fighting the rein astride his restive stallion, the mercenary sworn to destroy the city's banespell found urgency impossible.
Since Majaxin had set his crystal in the deepest chamber of the duke's palace, an official would have to be bribed or coerced to reveal the way to the lower dungeons. Korendir carried gold and weapons in readiness for either expedient.
He passed through a tunnel between two warehouses. Deafened by rain and the clang of steel-shod hooves, Korendir almost missed the child.
A flare of lightning revealed her, crouched with her arms around her knees. Wet hair clung in tangles to raggedly clothed shoulders. Though shivering from the cold, her body remained convulsed in a fit of hysterical laughter. She was scarcely nine years of age.
Without a second's thought, Korendir reined in the gray. He dismounted, slipped off his cloak, and tucked it around the shaking child. "Are you lost?"
The girl raised tearless eyes. "No."
As his vision adjusted to the gloom, Korendir saw she was a street child, most likely a pickpocket and a market thief; but her hunger and her suffering were no less real for that. He pressed a gold piece into her fingers and promised her another if she could tell him of an unguarded access to the duke's palace.
; The child flipped the weight of the gold, jammed it down the cuff of her filthy shift, and returned a description of a grating beneath the west wing archway. The iron was rusted, and with a bit of effort the palace cellars might be entered from there.
The cloak had begun to warm her; the girl's limbs shivered less wretchedly, and a little color flushed her cheeks. Korendir straightened up and flicked the reins over the gray's crested neck. "Watch my horse till I return," he said kindly. "I promise you then that I'll find us a tavern with a fire that sells hot soup."
The girl accepted with eagerness. That her enthusiasm might not be honest caused Korendir little concern. The stallion was the gift of an enchantress; by nature such things tended to look after themselves. Mostly, he wished to keep the child occupied lest she become tempted to sell knowledge of his intent to the duke's men-at-arms before his entry to the cellars was accomplished.
* * *
From a lamplit alcove in her tower, Ithariel of the White Circle watched Korendir's progress through a seeing crystal in a polished oval frame. Her hair was caught back with pins like stars, and her eyes were still raw from weeping. She noted Korendir's fixed frown as he ducked beyond sight of a merchant who braved the storm on an errand. The fact that the mercenary achieved that scowl inside the city walls was significant.
A comment of Orame's had first led her to suspect that the Master of Whitestorm's rare coloring arose from an inheritance of enchanter's blood. But since the man believed himself to be mortal, Majaxin's curse found no foothold. As the audience with the duke had established, Korendir's unschooled powers did not hear the siren spells that made Tir Amindel ruinous to the mageborn.
Korendir was half-bred, Ithariel had presumed, until a moment forgotten from childhood had shown the truth. Now, her conscience ached for an action unforgivably wrong. Knowing, she had sent him through Tir Amindel's gates a second time, into peril more dire than he possibly understood. She had witnessed the hidden proof within his past: the nameless mercenary from Whitestorm descended from a line as pure as her own.
He was White Circle, and legitimate, and if his talents were presently smothered behind ignorance, his immunity to Tir Amindel's geas would be lost in the instant he moved against the crystal. The wards engendered in the tallix that ruled the Sixth Bane would recognize his birth, and exact immediate retribution.
A mortal would die in simple agony. Korendir, untrained, would call down upon himself the wrath of a condemned wizard's vengeance. The nature of his torment could not be guessed, but in all Aerith, he was perhaps the only being who owned enough resilience to cope. He alone stood a chance to unmake a prison that otherwise might endure throughout eternity.
Ithariel cupped her scrying crystal closer as the swordsman moved through the rain and took cover beneath the archway described by the beggar child. Flesh would not forget the gentleness of his touch; branded in mind and memory was the understanding that had backed his resolve as he accepted her burden of care.
The words spoken then still haunted. Lady, be at peace. If a man can break Majaxin's crystal, the feat will be done by sundown on the day I pass the gates.
But quietude had gone before the hoofbeats of the stallion had faded from the glen. Too late, in distressing regret, Ithariel of the White Circle wondered if the value of the man by himself did not outweigh final end to her father's atrocities.
* * *
While the step of a sentry passed beyond sight of his niche, Korendir knelt before a grille-covered window set into the palace foundation. Improper drainage had rusted the bottom palings nearly through. Korendir unfastened his swordbelt. He hung the straps from his shoulder, lowered himself into the aperture opposite the fitting, and with his back braced and his fingers clenched to the weapon across his chest, kicked the damaged iron with both feet. Flakes of corroded metal pattered downward into darkness; a second blow broke the grate through, and a slither and a twist of black-clad shoulders saw Korendir through the gap.
He hung by his hands from the sill and tried to assess his surroundings. The air was dusty and still; the storm-silvered light from the archway proved too weak to illuminate the depth of the space beneath dangling feet. The step of an approaching guardsman cancelled any chance to experiment by dropping pebbles.
Korendir could only escape by letting go. As his stomach turned with the plunge, he hoped the cellar underneath did not house an armory, with a racked sheaf of javelins waiting upright to impale him.
Korendir's fall ended with a slam and a grunt on a pyramid of stored barrels. The stack parted with a grinding, throaty boom as wine tuns cascaded to either side. Jostled like a twist of cloth in a log jam, Korendir was delivered to the floor, while the duke's casks of claret, brandy, and table wines rolled on to wreak havoc. Stores of fine spirits were milled to slivers. The crack and splinter of wood, and an unending tinkle of glass, heralded destruction until the bass rumble of the last rolling tun thudded to a tangle of snapped staves.
Korendir shouldered clear of an unbroached cask. He stood upright, reproached on all quarters by the gurgle and drip of spilled wealth. Unwilling to see how the racket set loose by rolling barrels would be received by the sentry above the grate, he refastened his baldric, then set out through darkness to find the door.
The air smelled of spirits and dust. Glass slivers grated beneath Korendir's boots. Smashed shelves made incautious movement unwise. After several false starts and minutes of blind fumbling, the mercenary located a portal. He considered searching the wreckage for a nail to pick the lock, when a flicker of illumination through the keyhole warned him back.
Someone with a lantern paused in the corridor outside.
Korendir grinned in the darkness. Soldier or steward, someone had arrived to check the disturbance in the wine stores.
Metal clanked and the door opened. The wedge-shaped flare from the lantern picked out a burst barrel, sparkles of shattered glass, and split shelving marinated everywhere with spirits.
"Neth's everlasting martyrs!" swore the arrival, a steward who stalked across the threshold with the raddled gait of a shore bird.
A sentry followed on his heels, redolent of sweat and soaked wool surcoat, and armed with a rain-wet halberd.
Korendir timed his rush. He struck with the butt of his knife and the sentry buckled, incapacitated. The mercenary caught the man's polearm before its dropped blade clanged warning against the lintel.
The steward flung backward, too late to avoid the studded haft of the halberd that hammered the backs of his knees. He collapsed, his cry of surprise cut off as hands caught him and a chilly line of steel constricted his larynx. Too terrified to swallow, he gagged and shrank against his assailant to escape the kiss of the knife.
Korendir spun his catch out of the corridor and yanked him back to his feet.
"I suppose you're the man proclaimed renegade by the duke," the steward gasped. Although the lantern trembled in his grasp, he had not lost his wits and dropped it. He cleared his throat. "However much you threaten, I cannot help you escape. My lord has halberdiers flanking every door and window in the palace. They know your description. If you kill me, you'll die. If you release me, you'll be equally dead. Give some thought to the subtleties, for my sake, desperate sir, and I promise I won't tell where I saw you for an hour."
Korendir held his blade to the servant's sweating flesh. "If the sentry I knocked down told his captain where he went, an hour of grace is no bargain."
"He mistook you for a thief," shrilled the steward. "A misfortune, now that you've killed him. His captain will call for a search."
Korendir shoved his knuckles into his captive's windpipe. "Shutter the lantern and be quiet."
The sentry regrettably was not dead; only stunned, and if he did not drown himself by inhaling spilled wine, he would waken in time and raise the garrison. As the servant groped and the lantern went dark, Korendir searched the man's livery. He removed the one penknife he found, shoved the fallen halberdier aside, and maneuvered his victi
m into the corridor. "Lock up," he instructed curtly. "Then guide me down to the dungeon."
The steward fumbled to sort keys and in the process burned his knuckles on the lantern. Korendir smothered his cry with ruthless fingers. Unable to move, even to lick his seared skin, the servant's plaintive nature got the better of him. He whined the instant he recovered liberty enough to breathe. "Neth, man, why the dungeons? There are rats down there, and not a cranny that'll do for escape."
Korendir's blade jerked and nicked flesh.
The proper key was procured with a jangle, and the steward moaned, "Go left."
With his captive locked in the crook of his elbow, the mercenary marked footprints in claret the length of the duke's lower service corridor.
He moved soundlessly, which disappointed the steward, who hoped a disturbance might call down a rescue. Korendir cracked the lantern only to make certain his charge did not guide him in false circles. At last, after descent of a spiral stair, the pair arrived in the deserted passage that joined the inquisitor's torture chamber with the cells reserved for condemned prisoners. There the air hung dank, stale with the odors of urine and moldy straw.
Encouraged that he had not yet been murdered, the steward twisted against his pinioned neck. "I've served in good faith," he pointed out.
Korendir said nothing. Aware of a throb of heat in the jewel beneath his shirt, he had already surmised that truth. His knife hand lifted and moved. The servant found himself released as the mercenary took the lantern from him and gently slipped back the shutters.
Flamelight revealed a five-sided nook with only one doorway. The walls were bare granite. But a looping figure carved in the floor held a great, cloudy crystal set flush at the center. Its heart glistened like scarlet veined fire as a thousand underlying facets caught the light.
