Master of Whitestorm

by Janny Wurts

  * * *

  Korendir's shout came again, from the direction of the master suite. "Haldeth!" The distress in his voice had been real.

  Shocked awake, the smith cast off his coverlet. The dawn beyond the casement still seemed tenuous as a dream. Never, through pain, disaster, and near death, had he known Korendir of Whitestorm to show fear. The novelty caused Haldeth to snatch yesterday's tunic from the floor and dash in bare feet for the stair.

  Korendir met him on the landing, wild with anguish. The force of emotion on a face unaccustomed to expression froze Haldeth in his tracks.

  "What's amiss?"

  Unconsolable, Korendir gestured across the threshold at his back. In the chamber beyond, limp as a gutted fish, the Lady Ithariel of Whitestorm lay among silk sheets with her skin the color of death.

  Haldeth felt his stomach tighten. "Almighty Neth, what's wrong with her?"

  The wardstone in the tower still burned, a changeless magnificence of white light; under its protective aura, no threat could gain entry from Aerith. Dazed by disbelief, Haldeth pressed past Korendir, entered the room, and lifted the lady's wrist. Her flesh was cold, and lifelessly unbreathing as a corpse.

  "She's still alive." Korendir fought to recover a measure of his accustomed control. "If you're patient, you can feel her heartbeat."

  Deaf to the birdsong beyond the casement, Haldeth waited. If harm had come to Ithariel by treachery, no man dared predict the outcome; Korendir had lived the last years in contented peace, but the influence that tempered him was his wife. With her safety compromised, the underlying violence of his nature could never remain under wraps.

  A minute passed like the nethermost end of eternity before a pulse throbbed beneath Haldeth's finger. "What in Aerith can be wrong with her?"

  Korendir had stepped to the wardrobe. Busy with boots and laces, his answer came back clipped: "I don't know." He strapped his dirk to his wrist and flicked his cuff overtop without pause to button the fastening. "I intend to find out."

  Like Haldeth, he was convinced Ithariel's affliction had no natural origin. Sorcery surely held her tranced, and for that, no mortal mind held remedy.

  "You'd be wise to beg help from the White Circle." Certain his advice would be ignored, Haldeth restored the lady's hand to the blanket; her skin was fine pearl against fingers callused over from forge bellows and hammer. Through the years since her banishment from Dethmark, Ithariel had done nothing to mend her estrangement from Aerith's most powerful enchanters.

  Korendir strapped on his swordbelt. He snatched up the black cloak that Ithariel, for all her love of color, had never successfully weaned from him. His motion as he spun from the wardrobe was dangerously brief, and his eyes showed, rekindled, the old spark of insane ferocity.

  Against his every caution, and protections that cruelly had failed to guard, his deepest fear had become manifest. His voice held a ring like cold iron as he said,"The Archmaster himself will give me audience. And answer with it, or I'll level his tower from under him."

  The threat was preposterous; but Haldeth could do nothing but sit in shaken sorrow. Too well he knew that a sword blade would sunder any protest he might attempt. "Fortune speed you," he offered lamely.

  Korendir flicked his cloak over his shoulders. His face was still pale, but fear and anger now lay shuttered behind a grimness that reassured not at all. "Look after my lady."

  Haldeth was moved beyond caution. As if the years since his quest by wizard's gate to the Doriads had not inured him to his recognized limitations, he said, "Stay with her. I'll go myself."

  Korendir hesitated. His gray eyes shifted to his wife and lingered over blanched features and loosened auburn hair. He leaned over the coverlet, lightly clasped the hands that had shaped his fondest dreams. "No. I'm better off on the road."

  He bent and kissed his lady's mouth. "Guard her well."

  Radiating tension that threatened at any second to escape restraint, the Master of Whitestorm strode out.

  Left alone with a tragedy, Haldeth stared like a halfwit at the incongruous sparkle left glistening on Ithariel's cheek. He reached out, touched moisture, and was struck by a realization that made past events frightening to contemplate. The cold-blooded decimation of the Dathei had once convinced him that Korendir was incapable of pity. But tears were the man's parting gift to the lady who lay dying at Whitestorm.

  * * *

  A brutal two-day ride left the gray stud and another six post horses near to ruin with exhaustion. The closest White Circle initiate lay thirty-five leagues from Whitestorm, and Korendir crossed the distance without rest. If the enchanter Orame could not lift Ithariel's affliction, her husband intended to demand passage by spell-gate to Dethmark. He would not be refused. Black as his reputation was with the wizards, Ithariel was the Archmaster's granddaughter. The entire Council Major would stir itself in her behalf, Korendir vowed, his face showing vicious determination.

  He drew rein and dismounted on the sun-dappled flags of Orame's dooryard and instantly sensed something amiss. Customarily the wizard's dwelling appeared as a sheer obsidian spire, polished to mirror smoothness by arcane protection. Today, where no windows should have been visible, the Master of Whitestorm viewed rows of mullioned casements cracked open to let in the spring. Foreboding drove him stumbling to the entry. The grillework gateway was not locked and the inner panel stood open. Wind had strewn leaves through the hall, and dew beaded the wall sconces.

  Korendir stopped still. His initial, creeping uneasiness swelled to driving apprehension.

  His knock went unanswered. His shout settled an intruder's silence over the forest at his back as squirrels startled into hiding, and birds flew. The tower was deserted. Korendir knew even before he crossed the threshold and raced to check each separate room. Hallways echoed like a tomb to his step as he descended the central stairwell. Unresolved worry left him frantic. He must now ride on into Heddenton to shed light on the fate of Orame.

  Korendir paused fretfully to latch the door against the elements. The outer gates were made to lock without benefit of a key, but even so slight a delay was inconceivable. The Master of Whitestorm spun away and caught the horse's trailing reins. Over and over he reminded himself that Ithariel still lived; that one fact could not be doubted. Joined by spell-bond marriage, her passing would call him after her across the threshold of death. While he endured, hope remained for her.

  The Master of Whitestorm forced his stiffened body back into stirrup and saddle. The post horse shivered and dripped lather; Korendir stroked its neck in apology, then jerked the drooping head up, reined around, and shouted like a madman until the road became a blur under galloping hooves.

  * * *

  By late afternoon he clattered into Heddenton on a horse that staggered under him. The groom who took the animal looked shocked, until Korendir threw him a gold piece.

  The boy's face lit with greed. He bit the coin in bright eagerness, then started as the Master of Whitestorm spun him back in a grip of bruising anger. "Tend that gelding well." Spent as the animal which had carried him, and alarmingly savage-tempered, Korendir added a healthy shake. "Nurse the horse, or put it to the sword, but see that it's spared further suffering."

  "Yes, Lord." The boy cowered, as the mercenary released him and urgently strode on his way.

  At the house of Heddenton's mayor, Korendir slammed without ceremony through a locked door. He ignored the steward's shout of outrage over the split and ruined latch. A parade of bothered servants trailed his swift passage through the halls, where his abrupt and unkempt appearance caused the footpage to start back in fright.

  "His Lordship is at tea," the boy whimpered in protest. Korendir barged past, entered the formal sitting room, and presented a query like a whipcrack.

  "Orame is dead," replied the Mayor of Heddenton. A portly man in a brocade waistcoat and robes trimmed with ermine, he paused to lick honey from his fingers. The rude appearance of the mercenary caused a flicker in his hooded eyes; ou
t of prudence he remained polite. "The woman who sells herbs called on the wizard as she does on her journeys to Northport. She came too late. His corpse was already cold."

  Korendir interrupted. "When?"

  The mayor selected another pastry and tried not to look pained. "Three days past, if I remember. Your wife, now. Can I send her a healer?"

  Korendir's response rang like a threat. "What did you do with the body. Quickly!" If, like Ithariel, the enchanter's condition had lent him the appearance of death, the answer was of paramount concern.

  The Mayor's cheeks colored like plums. Only the Master of Whitestorm's formidable reputation kept the leash on his temper. "My secretary oversaw the details," he said stiffly. Opals flashed at his collar as he ducked to cram in another bite.

  "Then send for your secretary." Korendir's hand flexed on the bleak black hilt of his sword. "The grave must be opened."

  "My good man!" The mayor choked and dropped his pastry. "Would you have us all laid under curse? Brings about ill fortune, it does, to cross a wizard's ghost. Forget Orame. I'll send for my personal physician."

  "Tell me the name of your secretary instead," Korendir demanded.

  But the mayor feared spells worse than sword steel; undone by terror, he refused. Rather than waste more time, Korendir turned sharply on his heel and departed. A coin in the servant's wing bought the name he desired; additional gold in the secretary's palm revealed that Orame had been buried in a suicide's grave at the crossroads beyond the town walls.

  "If his ghost is going to walk, let it do so without disturbing the rest of the decent," the servant ended nervously. He glanced aside to see how the mercenary who waited with hairtrigger impatience might handle this flimsy excuse. But to his mortified relief, the mayor's senior secretary discovered his justifications had been delivered to an empty corridor.

  XXIV. Bane of the White Circle

  Spring constellations glittered icy as frost over the suicide's cairn which marked the crossroads beyond Heddenton's wall. Deep in its shadow, Korendir of Whitestorm knelt and thrust his hands into the new-turned earth of a grave. His fingers grazed cloth, the coarsely woven sort used to wrap corpses appointed a pauper's burial. In spite of braced nerves, the Master of Whitestorm shivered. He could see nothing in the pitch dark. The sweat of exertion chilled on his shoulders as he scraped away dirt and loose stones. The mayor's fears were not founded on superstition; sorcerer's bones were best left unmolested by mortal hands. But Korendir held to his conviction that Orame had not been dead at the hour of his burial.

  The rented gelding chinked its bit and stamped once. It showed no alarm as Korendir raised the bundled body from the earth, drew his knife, and slashed through damp burlap.

  A slack hand brushed his wrist. The Master of Whitestorm started, fist clenched on his dagger haft. Then reason caught up with his racing heart. Orame yet survived; his illness had spared him from suffocation, for a corpse three days in the earth should be bloated and beginning to putrefy.

  Korendir twisted away the shroud and clasped at the wrist inside. Orame's bones were as fine as his own, but frightfully chilly to the touch. The wizard wore no rings; if his robe had been richly adorned, the one left on him for burial was mean enough to shame a beggar.

  Korendir wished the torment of Mhurgai slavery on the mayor's thieving secretary. A lonely minute passed as he searched for a pulse in the flesh beneath his touch. Even so basic a lifesign took an eternity to manifest. Korendir settled back on his heels with a mildness that deceived; beneath his still demeanor surged a rage of shattering proportions, that Heddenton's pompous officials had caused Orame to be interred alive.

  Stung by fresh fear for his lady, Korendir raised the enchanter clear of the shroud and carried him over to the gelding. The horse sidled as the lax body settled across its saddle. Korendir eased the beast with a word, then mounted up behind. Already the stars had faded; the east showed a lit streak of rose, heralding sunrise and the prospect of rain yet to come. By day the roads would swarm with couriers and merchants bound for Northport. The first drover who stopped behind the cairn to relieve himself would discover the wizard's plundered grave; Heddenton's populace would panic. Orame must be locked safe inside his tower before a mob of vigilantes could assemble and seek to overtake him.

  Wearily, Korendir gathered the reins. No wizard's gate might speed him to Dethmark now; a thousand leagues of ocean lay between Heddenton and the Archmaster, two months' sail on a fair wind. More than one life depended upon his appeal to a council who grudged to grant favors to mortals. Korendir kicked the gelding to a canter, aware that he needed a miracle.

  * * *

  Sixty days later, with salt-stained boots and a deck hand's callus, and nerves that had not snapped through brute willpower, Korendir reached the western strands of Dethmark. Lowering sunlight brightened the triple spire of the Archmaster's tower; behind long shadows, the oarsmen who had delivered him ashore pulled rapidly back to their ship. Wizards were distrusted by crews who plied blue water. Although the ports were alive with rumors of towers whose inhabitants had lapsed into silence, sailors across the kingdoms interpreted the news with threat. Korendir's apprehension was no less. If White Circle enchanters across two continents were all falling tranced by sorcery, Telvallind Archmaster and his vaunted Council Major must be aware of the fact. Yet not a power among them had acted.

  Korendir strode away from the beachhead. There remained only direst conjecture, and worries that harried like the tireless circling of carrion birds.

  The possibility existed that no wizard remained to aid his cause at all.

  The stronghold at Dethmark was built of rose quartz, and roofed by the gleam of leaded slate. The lawns grew rank between gardens plots choked over with weed. Melons rotted in the sun. The outer gatehouse proved untenanted, and spikewort thrust brown, untidy stalks through the flags of the courtyard beyond. The mercenary's solitary footsteps reverberated back from baked stone, until he seemed to walk amid a legion of marching ghosts. The door to the main tower was closed, but not barred. Defense sigils glowed on panels cross-hatched with ivy, and the gargoyle boss beneath the latch lay twined in runners like a festival maiden.

  Korendir's knock went unanswered. Whatever had subdued the most powerful enchanters on Aerith might only be pursued across portals spell-warded against intrusion. A mortal's only means to test whether the tower's defenses still functioned was to challenge by crossing the threshold.

  The Master of Whitestorm blotted damp palms on his tunic. Whipped on by purest pain, he drew his knife, slashed away the ivy, then thumbed the latch and pushed with both hands.

  The portal swung wide to reveal an anteroom dusty with neglect. A tracery of disturbed motes winnowed inward. The boom as the panel struck the stops echoed and re-echoed, disrupting silence within a well of dank stone. Shadow hung dense past the stoop, oppressive with the miasma of something dead.

  Korendir sheathed his knife. He spoke his wife's name like a talisman and stepped through.

  His consciousness spun like a dowel on a lathe. A whine grazed his ears, and his skin encountered a vicious sting of heat. Then his foot met the floor inside. Dizziness and discomfort disappeared.

  Korendir recovered a shaking breath. He stared in disbelief at his boots, now wreathed in whorls of stirred dust. Morien's paternity perhaps had permitted him entrance; but bloodline was all that he had, and Telvallind's tower held peril for the unenlightened mind.

  * * *

  In the topmost chamber of the stronghold, Korendir found a pentagram traced in faint light upon boards whose symbols recalled another day; but the Archmaster who had refused his inheritance in cold anger was no longer a threat to be argued with. Telvallind's remains sprawled inside the spell circle. His flesh had shrivelled to his bones; the eye sockets tipped toward the doorway gaped empty. He had been dead for quite some time. Around his corpse in its midnight and gold-sewn robes lay all of his Council Major, passive as discarded puppets, and filmed with the same
fine dust that layered the furnishings.

  Still winded from his tour of the living quarters, Korendir braced his shoulders against the lintel. He breathed shallowly as a man with a fever, pent nerves making him shake. Behind countless closed doors, he had found only mice and old parchments. Here, sorcery was still active, and dangerous to the unversed trespasser.

  Knowledge, wisdom, and spell-craft had failed to save the enchanters from whatever had stolen their consciousness; the only weapon left was simple human force. Korendir shoved off from the doorway. He strode into a chamber that rang with magic before helplessness and resurgence of past fears could master him and annihilate rational resolve.

  The pentagram crackled static as the mercenary neared the perimeter. When he crossed its glimmering border, it dealt him a jolting shock and snapped out. Shadows swelled, heavily spiked with ozone. Uneasiness prickled Korendir's spine. He advanced another step, felt his heels scrape the sigils carved into ancient floorboards. No magics flashed to restrict him. A beetle scuttled from the cuff of Telvallind's crumpled sleeve; everything else remained still.

  Korendir knelt by the nearest enchanter. The body was still living, but grown grotesquely thin. Ithariel might have wasted in similar fashion. Dread crashed through self-control and raised the specter of horror, of pearl-clear skin webbed over with creases, and hands crabbed like claws by sickness. The nightmare intensified, recurred in a dozen pernicious forms, until Korendir trembled outright. He thwarted the screams that battered to escape him through a mindless frenzy of action. He made eighteen unconscious bodies comfortable, then wrapped up the corpse of the Archmaster. He interred Telvallind's remains beyond the walls. Past sundown, sweating more than physical labor should warrant, the Master of Whitestorm fetched wine and smoked sausage from the cellars and ensconced himself in the library.