by Janny Wurts
"Well, carry the bucket for your laziness, then," Megga retorted. "Otherwise I can't reach the latch." She shook out wrinkled skirts, rummaged in a closet, and salvaged an oaken tub from the clutter of brooms and utensils. Nothing rested on hooks, mainly because the dwarf wife hated to reach any higher than her shoulders. The rest of her kitchen stayed neat as a parade ground, even if pans and spoons were racked at the height of the average man's knees.
Amiably grousing, the dwarf couple ascended the stairs. Nix carried the bucket in front of his chest, his short arms clasped round the staves. After he stubbed his toes once, he changed grip; the container then trailed at his heels, bouncing and clattering from the tether of its rope-twist handle.
Megga cast a sour eye on the commotion. "Ye'll raise ugly spirits with your noise."
Nixdaxdimo shrugged. "Ugly spirits, or my big toe, something has to suffer. And I rather hoped to wake up the man. If he's alive, and with our mistress just now, I don't think he wants to be disturbed."
Megga snorted her contempt. "You males think of nothing else, ever."
"For which you should be glad, woman." Nix gained the top of the landing and dumped his bucket face-down beneath the latch. At once he forgot his injunction against doors, and stepped up to peer through the keyhole.
Megga shrieked in affront and kicked her husband's ankle out from under him. The bucket tipped over. Nix crashed in a heap with a grunt that promised retaliation, while the washtub rolled on and bounced down three flights of stone stairwell.
"You worthless clod of a galliwag!" Megga hopped with injured agitation. "What did you see?"
Nix did not answer, but sprawled prone upon the floor. When he failed to move further, Megga cursed and got down on her knees. She found, to her rage, that he was not holding still out of pain, but staring rapt through the crack at the bottom of the door.
Megga wanted to shout insults, but decided on impulse to save them. She plumped down across her husband's back, thrust her chin past his shoulder, and aligned one dark eye with the doorsill.
Across an expanse of scattered sand, within one ward circle still untouched, stood a nest of cast off samite. Within its emerald folds lay the mistress of the tower, naked as the day of her birth. Entangled in her hair and her arms rested a bronze-haired man marked with scars, but sleeping now in the first contentment he had known since childhood.
"Ach, it'll be Whitestorm, then," Nix concluded in disgust. He displaced his wife and sat up. "Archmaster's going to be furious."
Megga took longer to respond, bemused as she was by the tableau in the tower's upper chamber. "A curse and boils for the Archmaster. Now my old age will be ruined with picking the bones out of fish."
"Old age?" Nix made a rude noise. "With that one for master, you think we'll have an old age?"
Now Megga sat up with a howl of irritation. "You'd better hope so, Nixdax. Because if not, I'll break up yon carrot-head's bones for my stewpot."
XX. Debt to Shan Rannok
A wedding took place in Fairhaven during the mild twilight of early summer. Although the event became the talk of every sailor, and the feasting lasted a week, news of the celebration passed the fortress at Whitestorm by. Trader ships did not stop there, except by request, and the first Haldeth knew of the affair was the echo of enthusiastic bickering in the shaft that gave access to the beachhead.
At the time, sunrise barely brightened the mist which mantled the holdfast on White Rock Head; the tide lay at full ebb. The smith set aside the axe he had used to chop wood for his breakfast fire. Belatedly he recalled that the gates to the landing were left open, and had been for nearly a fortnight.
Through Korendir's extended absence, Haldeth had ceased to feel the need for such tireless and diligent security.
The smith made his way toward the bailey with more curiosity than urgency. Whatever party of invaders plied the entry to Whitestorm, they assuredly lacked interest in stealth. Curses rang through the morning stillness, cut short by what sounded like a slap. Haldeth arrived at the upper gate in time to see a dwarf wife emerge from the passageway, her skirts lifted high, and a frizzle of straw-blond hair flying in disarray underneath the strings of her cap.
She paid the smith no notice, but whirled around, set huge fists on her hips, and screeched back down the stairwell, "Let that horse dribble on me one more time, and I'll grind up the both of you for compost!"
A reply floated querulously from the passage. "Compost, you say? There's gratitude. Who was it packed yer butt from the forests to Fairhaven, while the master's lady walked?"
This logic was followed by two pricked ears, a wide eye, then the dappled gray neck of a stallion with a sodden gold mane. Caught like a bug in the tangle was a black-haired dwarf, still waving his fist and shouting. The rest of the horse clattered out with a prance of steel-shod hooves. Once on level footing, it flicked its tail at the droplets tickling its belly. Water flew; and in reflex it shook like a dog. The dwarf astride its barrel all but fell off, and the one on the ground howled outrage.
Haldeth covered his ears in self defense. Bemused, he waited for the clamor to subside, and almost missed the laughter that issued from the passage after the stallion's magnificent tail.
"You will both be quiet," called a female voice from below. "Or I can promise the master will seal you in a barrel and hurl you altogether over the cliff face."
Haldeth's hands dropped to his sides. His brows rose. The prospect of a woman at Whitestorm left him surprised to incapacity. Unshaven, clad in the same shirt he had worn for a week, he stared openmouthed as another figure emerged from the entryway. This last was a swordsman, clothed all in black; but the face beneath familiar bronze hair showed an uncharacteristic grin. Still laughing, a woman in pearls and blue velvet rested in the circle of his arms.
"Take that brute of a stallion off and find a stable for him," she called to the scowling combatants.
As the stallion's ringing stride and the dwarf couple's grousing retreated, Korendir gained the bailey. He set his burden down and the velvets fell away to reveal russet hair and a face of breathtaking symmetry. The rest of the lady was no less magnificent, though her grooming had suffered from the sea. Still gawking, the smith forgot to breathe.
"Haldeth?" Korendir stepped forward and extended the lady's hand, which rested still inside his own. "Come welcome Ithariel of Whitestorm home."
Haldeth shut his teeth, bit his tongue, and recovered his wind with a grunt. Stupidly he said, "I thought you swore not to marry until you secured a wardstone for the watchtower?"
"But he didn't," Ithariel protested. Amused, she reached for a pouch at her girdle and removed a crystal that glittered with a thousand points of light. The mist that clung over the headlands seemed suddenly thinner, less damp, and some other color than gray.
Haldeth blinked several times and raked back uncombed hair. "Neth," he said. His voice shook. "You're White Circle?"
Ithariel nodded sweetly. The Archmaster's threat of disinheritance had apparently been bluster; thus far, Telvallind had done little but rail and shout, inform that Korendir's presence would be unwelcome in Dethmark, and obstinately refuse attendance at the wedding.
Haldeth reached out and tentatively touched the jewel that shimmered in the lady's outstretched hand. The surface tingled like a tonic against his skin. Convinced he was not dreaming, he looked at Korendir, whose face was all strange with a smile of unguarded happiness. The smith scratched his head. "The contract in Tir Amindel brought you other than gold, I see. Now what in the Mhurga's hells will you do with the coins you've got heaped in your hall?"
The Master of Whitestorm seemed surprised. "I expect Ithariel will buy hangings, furniture, and chickens with them. Or do you think the widows of Heddenton need blankets?"
"Widows of Heddenton, my backside!" Haldeth's embarrassment changed to irritation. "We need blankets, the ones we have are moth-chewed, and how in the devil can I provide enough bread and meat to satisfy the appetites of two dwarves?"
"They are gluttons," Ithariel admitted. She veiled the wardstone and looked up with an appeal that had left broken hearts by the dozen back at the docks at Fairhaven. "But on my word, Megga's a cook, and if Nix works one whit less than his worth, I'll send him back to where I found him."
Haldeth accepted the hand she offered and returned a delighted grin. "They peel onions?" he asked hopefully.
"They will." Korendir closed his fingers over his lady's and gave a gentle squeeze. "Or else a certain slave dealer who sells to the mines will find himself cursed with bad stock."
* * *
The dwarves made their presence felt at Whitestorm like an infestation of rats. Wherever a man turned, he tripped over them. Accustomed to solitude, and silence, and an indolent preference for clutter, Haldeth took the change in poor stride.
Megga had a tongue like a shrew, and the first thing she did was rearrange every pot, pan, and spoon in the kitchen. Haldeth came to breakfast one morning and found his favorite sitting nook jammed to capacity with buckets, candle molds, and brooms. His protest earned him a scolding so fierce that he left without tasting the sweet rolls. That mistake spoiled the rest of the day, since Nix took it upon himself to eat for two, and the raisins in the batter griped his stomach.
"You don't want Megga to think her cooking's been slighted," he confided, heroically aggrieved; the pains had reached the point where he parked in the bailey to moan and roll his eyes. "She learned how to nag from the devil's unwed sister, and her pride's just prickly as sea urchins."
"I'll try to remember." One moment of pity gained Haldeth a half-hour lecture on the feeding and virtues of the High Kelair gray, never mind that the stallion kicked its stall doors to pieces and bit everyone except Ithariel, the dwarves, and Korendir.
Haldeth retired to his forge, where he spent the morning hammering out horseshoes with rounded edges and no studs. As always, the fire and the tang of heated steel eased his pique. In time, he began to whistle, and when the sound of Ithariel's singing drifted down from the lord's chambers in the north tower, the smith reflected that life might have turned for the better.
Other things at Whitestorm altered beside the kitchens. The main hall acquired furnishings and hangings, and Megga took in an orphaned wolf pup, which chewed boots and chair legs without discrimination. Ithariel got tired of teeth marks in abalone inlay; she banished the beast to the stables, where it developed an unnatural attachment to the gray. But the most profound changes occured in Whitestorm's master.
He still preferred black tunics, and despite Megga's wizardry in the larder, he gained not an ounce of soft weight. But where once he had been nerve-edged, restless, and too silent, he now showed the grace of his upbringing. He read, discussed every subject from medicine to philosophy, and never wore weapons indoors. Startled by his laughter, an unsuspected and easygoing humor, and a forthright affection for his lady, Haldeth still watched with wary eyes.
Risk and danger had ruled Korendir's character for as long as the smith could remember. The addiction to challenge might be dormant, even lulled temporarily to quiescence. But one day the drive must resurface; the mercenary who had decimated the Dathei even now distrusted peace. Sorcery guarded his watchtower and his gates stayed meticulously locked.
And yet the summer passed without incident. Korendir and Nixdaxdimo cut a path through Thornforest to connect Whitestorm with the post road to Heddenton. After that, Megga took regular wagon rides to town, bearing gold for the village poor, and shopping lists for supplies. Korendir hired in a shipwright, and set about building a boat to replace the lean, uncomfortable Carcadonn. He and his wife went fishing, or just sailing to enjoy the wind.
The worst shock came when Megga returned from a trip for provisions with two young boys behind the buckboard. They wore rough clothing, and were aged maybe eight and ten years. As they passed beneath the gates into Whitestorm, Haldeth caught sight of them, two mops of identical dark hair wedged between the ale barrels and freshly ground flour.
He hastened from the gatehouse the instant the portcullis rattled closed and flagged the cart down in the bailey. "Megga, you can't. Boys are different than stray cubs. Send these back where you found them, or there'll be trouble, I promise."
The youngsters regarded this exchange with fearful and liquid brown eyes; and Megga's temper lit.
"Strays? Not these, you maggot-headed windbag!" She shook a fist under Haldeth's nose. "The master said bring you an apprentice. He meant one, true enough, but these were orphans, and brothers. They'll do much better together."
Haldeth felt his hair rise in precise and definable dread. "Korendir said bring children to Whitestorm?"
"Well?" Megga withdrew her threatening forearm. "What do you think, they have fleas or something?" She summed up her disgust with a grunt, then bounded down off the wagon and set the team prancing as she scuttled under their legs to reach their bridles. "Stupid man, you think I'm deaf? Fetch Haldeth an apprentice, the master said. If you don't remember manners and take these horses off to Nix, your boys are going to stay in my scullery for pot washers."
Most incredibly, her story proved true. Korendir had indeed asked for children to take residence in the loft above the forge; he went further, and did not summon a joiner, but constructed their bunks and their clothes chests himself.
The boys learned to ride, to groom the cart team, and to maintain the wood for the forge fire. Only Nix was too fussy to make use of their services, and after watching him perform inexplicable feats with perfectly ordinary tools, Haldeth understood why dwarf-wrought steel held a mystery.
The fall brought a messenger in the royal livery of Faen Hallir, to deliver a request that Korendir return to mercenary service. The contract was declined, and sailors carried word back to Fairhaven: the Master of Whitestorm was no longer available for hire.
Haldeth settled into complacency. When the snow fell thick at midwinter, he grew used to clean clothing and large breakfasts, and to breaking up fisticuffs between the apprentices. Megga's scolding and Nixdaxdimo's irrational flights of temper became first on his list of hazards, with the teeth of the slate gray stallion just behind.
A year passed. The arrival of a fishing boat when the leaves turned seemed nothing untoward at the time. The shoals off White Rock Head offered excellent harvest, and the sun-bronzed crews who plied nets there occasionally traded herring in exchange for ham and fresh bread. But as Haldeth took in the view from atop the battlements, he noticed that the paintwork on the boat was not plain, after the custom of Dunharra, but patterned in rows of checkered symbols. This craft sailed out of Illantyr. The purpose which called her this far from local waters would not be any scarcity of bacon.
A pang of familiar dread made Haldeth draw in his breath. He spun away from a sight that seemed suddenly less friendly and headed for the master's chambers in the north keep.
Before be could knock at the door, Ithariel's voice rang down the stairwell.
"Such massacre can only be the work of those demons that mortals name Mathcek. Their powers of desecration are documented. The wizards at Alathir all died screaming. Since then not a White Circle enchanter will dare the straits north of Illantyr, and with sound reason. The powers of the demons are beyond them."
Haldeth froze, his hand half raised at the door panel as Korendir's reply came fast and flat as a whipcrack.
"But I'm no wizard. The Lady of Shan Rannok reared me. The farmers of her domain filled my belly until the Mhurgai killed the overlord who protected them. By blood debt, I am obligated. Whatever slaughter these demons may threaten, the islanders have the right to ask my service."
Light footsteps crossed the carpet beyond the door. "Nix and the Archmaster warned against my becoming your wife." Ithariel's words sounded unforced, even fond. "I wouldn't listen to them then, and I won't regret now. But I must point out that my spirit is bound to yours, even past the ending of life. If you're determined to die fighting an enemy that can't be conquered, I sail to Illantyr at y
our side."
Haldeth stepped back until his spine jarred into the newel post. He had relied on the woman to temper her husband's nature, not to abet his recklessness; worse, she was minded to accompany him on this insane and riskiest of ventures. The ballads from Alathir were recitals of unalloyed tragedy. Against the Mathcek Demons, Morien and his Council Major had perished in agony; and they were no mortals, but wizards born and trained.
Korendir cared not a wit for past failures. He spoke in a tone that Haldeth interpreted as unholy and arrogant pride. "Lady of my heart, I will sail to Illantyr to fight. But I've no intention of dying, and you're needed here to secure the holdfast."
At this, Haldeth took umbrage. He laid his hands against the door latch, jerked it free, and barged uninvited into the breech.
The fisherman who had brought in the trouble stood unobtrusively to one side, the cuffs of his smock half crushed under twine-scarred hands. His presence had been forgotten, and his expression revealed an unswerving wish to slink out of sight behind the tapestries.
Korendir commandeered the center of the floor, taut as wound cable and frowning. His hands were braced on the shoulders of his lady, and she, in her velvets, glowered back.
Haldeth dared fate and interrupted. "She's not to be gainsaid, you half-witted madman."
At this attack, three heads turned with expressions of astonishment. Haldeth found himself the focus of a demanding stare from the fisherman, and rapacious study by matching pairs of gray eyes. Their intensity daunted.
The smith sweated, and shrugged, and looked down at the floor. "Orame told me the Demons of Mathcek arose from Alhaerie," he persisted with lame determination. "Against the powers of the otherworld, you'll need an enchanter's knowledge. Let the Lady Ithariel go, and save my boys the backbreaking labor of digging graves."
The enchantress regarded her husband. She touched his cheek with a gentleness entirely at odds with her expression, then softened his mouth with a kiss. "Sail with the fisherman," she murmured in challenge. "And stop me from coming if you can."
