Lioness of Kell

by Paul E. Horsman

  ‘We will fight them in the open,’ the veteran tigress said. ‘With all due respect for your efforts, those town walls wouldn’t stop a five-year-old, let alone an army.’

  ‘I know,’ Maud said. ‘Yet the entrance would make a perfect trap. And we have another asset. Artillery.’

  The veteran frowned. ‘Cannons? Those old things in the castle? They’d blow up your gunners, not the enemy.’

  ‘I’m to sail the Magonaut upriver on her engine,’ Yarwan said. ‘My 32-pounders are quite capable of covering the area around the town.’

  ‘Is the river deep enough?’ Wallanck said.

  ‘The part we need, yes. I’ve been taking soundings.’

  ‘I would suggest you send the main fleet to sea,’ Maud said. ‘I have an idea how to fight the carpets, but your vessels would be at great risk.’

  ‘It sounds like you have a plan,’ the veteran said. ‘If so, out with it, girl. Then we can shoot holes in it.’

  They talked, made sketches, spoke with Isaac and Dori, with Commander Taashel, and many others and finally they decided.

  ‘Let them come,’ Basil said. ‘We have the first part covered. Only the big question remains open. What will their High Singer do when we have decimated his forces? Under no condition can he be allowed to escape.’

  ‘We won’t catch this in a plan,’ Wallanck said.

  Basil grimaced. ‘No. That will be a different fight. My fight.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Argyr said. ‘It is my responsibility as Spellstor.’ Father and son locked eyes, till Argyr sighed. ‘The duty is yours, warlock.’

  ‘And so shall it be done, warlock,’ Basil said. ‘Dinnertime, I believe?’

  CHAPTER 38 - FINISHING MOVES

  Two days later, the town woke at sunrise with an enemy army camping at the gates. Without any fuss, the plans went into action.

  Basil stood with Maud and his two brothers on the castle’s tower and stared at the massed soldiery, the singers sitting cross-legged on their now unloaded carpets, the heavily armored riders on their horned spelldrakes, bannered lances resting in the crooks of their arms.

  ‘They look impressive, don’t you think?’ Basil said. His hands gripped his staff, their white knuckles belying his calm.

  Maud shrugged. ‘I’m a Kell, I don’t impress easily. Up to now, the Unwaari have proven badly trained and badly led, in spite of their fine uniforms.’

  ‘True,’ Basil said. ‘The real strength lies with those five in the center, the first singers, and their High Singer.’

  The others glanced at him.

  ‘Nervous?’ Saul asked.

  His brother gave a tense smile. ‘Always.’

  ‘Look,’ Jurgis said. ‘Something’s happening.’

  From the massed army, a solitary figure rode toward the gates on a green spelldrake with a golden sheen to its scales. His beautifully crafted armor was of the same tint as his mount and gleamed in the light of the early sun. In his left hand he carried a lance, with the tip hidden in a tiny cloud. At the gate he stopped.

  ‘Sacrilegious thieves!’ he shouted, in a voice audible over the whole town. ‘You sent us a messenger. We heard what he had to say and return him to you.’ With a wave of his hand, the mist around the lance disappeared and Basil recognized the head of the Strapan’s relative impaled on the point.

  ‘Our answer is this. Surrender the town. Surrender yourselves. Hand over the Holy Faces you stole. If not, we will turn all of Vanhaar, all of Kell and the whole island of Malgarth into a burning pile of waste.’

  Basil clapped his hands together, and the sound carried easily to the waiting army. ‘You are fools,’ he said calmly. ‘For a century, you have lived under a delusion. Now hear the truth. No Vanhaari or Kell stole your holy masks. Nor were they lost by an act of Fate, or because Aera was angry with you. Hear me well, Unwaari—the Faces were lost through an act of treason on your own side!’

  The rider recoiled. ‘What nonsense is this? You stole them from us. You deceived us with your fine talk and seeming brotherhood. Then you stole the Faces.’

  ‘We did not,’ Basil said. ‘There is one among you who knows. I accuse Vystyn son of Glastym for complicity in his father’s theft of the masks and the murders of Iouvast, Kelleur and Panredouce.’ The rider gasped and behind him, the packed armies swayed.

  ‘Vystyn son of Glastym, false High Singer of the goddess you betrayed. Vystyn, you who used the name of Kelwarg the Black Warlock after the real bearer died seven decades ago. Vystyn, calling yourself Volaut of Bleaksproke, Warlock of Malgarth, step forward and defend yourself!’

  ‘What!’ Jurgis said. ‘Volaut is an Unwaari?’

  ‘Attack!’ a voice screamed from within the army. ‘Attack! Eradicate the blasphemers!’

  The rider rose in his stirrups and threw a beam of light at Basil. Seconds later, he withered and died in Basil’s counterattack.

  ‘Shield first, idiot!’ Basil said to the smoking remains.

  A wave of carpets shot up from the waiting army and flew low over the town, blotting out the light of the sun. Massive beams of fire and ice splattered on empty streets. Then, from the clouds, tigresses on brooms dove down. Each jumped onto a carpet, waving a smallsword or ax, and soon the sky rained blood.

  ‘It works!’ Jurgis shouted in glee. ‘Wargall showed them well!’

  ‘Let’s join the fun,’ Basil said.

  ‘Finally.’ Saul grinned as both sprang into the sky.

  On board the Magonaut, steam was up. Yarwan stood on his quarterdeck, hands behind his back, with Elhir beside him. Brywani, the new second mate, was with the guns on the main deck.

  ‘There!’ Yarwan said, as the first carpets appeared over the town. ‘That’s our sign.’ He brought the speaking tube to his mouth. ‘Captain to engine room. Full speed ahead.’

  The engine’s soft purr became a roar as the Magonaut entered the river. Her bow waves crashed into the banks, disturbing whole flocks of angry birds.

  ‘Mistress Brywani! Fire as you bear!’

  The girl waved and within seconds, the first cannon barked.

  Yarwan had his telescope to his eye and saw the shot crash into the waiting army. Immediately, more cannons followed, and the neat columns turned into a shambles of dead and dying soldiers.

  ‘Their singers are shooting back,’ he said with satisfaction in his voice. ‘Their beams fall pitifully short.’

  ‘Look at them,’ Elhir cried, pointing at a few athletic blue robes running in an attempt to come into range. They stopped, visibly panting, but before they could shield up, Dalja’s girls rose from their concealment and no singer returned to the main group.

  Again, the cannons fired, a volley this time, and new holes appeared in the massed troops.

  Suddenly, the ranks broke and the whole mass of soldiers ran to the wide-open town gates, leaving a small group of magnificently armored troops guarding five singers.

  ‘We’ll concentrate on the brass,’ the second mate cried. ‘On my order. Shoot!’ As one, the cannons fired and smoke curled over the river. They ripped the honor guard to bits and in a flash, the singers disappeared.

  ‘Sponge out,’ the second mate called.

  ‘Damn,’ Yarwan said anxiously. ‘Where did the bastards go to?’

  At the town gate tower, Maud and Jurgis saw the soldiers coming.

  ‘They look a bit overwrought,’ Jurgis said.

  Maud’s smile was as broad as his. ‘After Yarwan’s excellent work? Can’t blame them.’

  ‘There they are.’ Jurgis saw the men’s faces, a-feared, unthinking, with only the desire to smash and kill. As they passed the gates, they ran into a problem. The townsfolk had cleared away a lot of rubble, creating a path wide enough for an ox-cart, or two half-crazed soldiers. While the first tens of soldiers tried to flow into this narrow funnel, the ones behind them pressed on, crashing into their comrades and trampling them.

  Maud put her hands to her mouth. ‘Muskets–fire!’

  Fr
om rooftops and open windows, town guards emptied their guns into the milling soldiery. Immediately, they sprang aside to reload, while leopardesses took their places and rained down their arrows.

  ‘Divine gods!’ Jurgis wanted to dance, but he remembered the singer who had nearly blinded him, and remained behind the tower’s parapet.

  ‘Yeah,’ Maud said disgustedly. ‘Those fools aren’t soldiers; they’re a mob, fit for terrorizing villages, but not for fighting a battle.’

  Above them, Basil was thinking the same. Look at them, he thought. They’ve no idea of fighting back. No coordination; everyone is going for himself alone. With a wave of his staff he sent a black beam into a singer trying to catch a running figure on the ground. The man raised his arms and his mouth opened in an inaudible scream as the carpet under his feet burned away and dumped him thirty feet below on the square’s cobblestones. The running figure looked up without stopping and waved, before disappearing into the castle.

  To Basil’s left, a singer tried to gouge out the eyes of a tigress who was strangling him. The fire from his fingers burned her face, but she pressed her thumbs into his larynx and with a quick twist of her wrists, he died. The woman kicked the body from the carpet and was off on her broom, looking for a new victim.

  Those empty carpets, Basil thought, and he turned around, looking for Saul, when his brother appeared beside him.

  He flew close to the unmanned carpet and slapped it. He shouted something Basil couldn’t hear, and the carpet spiraled down to join a heap of others. Saul grinned.

  Basil gave him a thumbs-up and turned to the next singer. That one saw him come and his face twisted with hatred. He mouthed a command, and his carpet came straight at Basil. At the last moment, Basil managed to lift his flying staff’s nose, and the prancing dragon hit the singer full in the mouth. The man arched back, probably dead already, and pitched over the edge of his carpet. The impact was heavy enough to send the staff spiraling madly, spinning Basil around and around as it corkscrewed through the air.

  Basil screamed, gripping the invisible armrests of his seat. Just as he feared he would pass out, the staff’s flight straightened out, speeding away from the town. With a groan, Basil sat up. Go back, he thought dazedly, and the staff turned. Halfway he met an anxious Saul and together they flew back to the town. There wasn’t a singer left in the sky, and with a sigh, Basil landed.

  ‘What were you doing?’ Saul said, dropping down beside him.

  ‘Bumped into a singer,’ Basil said curtly. ‘I think I disoriented the spell.’ He growled. ‘I’ll have to redesign the whole thing; this is too risky.’

  As they walked to the castle, Wargall came running toward them. ‘We won!’ he shouted. ‘The field outside is empty; the soldiers that tried to get in are either dead or prisoners, and at least fifty singers are splattered all over the town.’

  ‘Volaut?’ Basil said. ‘And the four singers in charge?’

  ‘They’re not outside,’ Wargall said. ‘I counted only the usual dead; soldiers, singers, those riders and some guys in fancy armor.’

  ‘Damn. Then the biggest danger is still out there.’ As quick as he could, Basil limped back to the meeting room. Here he found his father, the Overcaptain and a fuming Queen Hilda. The veteran stood aside, arms crossed and an expression of implacability on her face.

  ‘Whatever is happening out there, Hilda, you are not going to fight,’ she said. ‘And that’s final.’

  Basil stepped forward. ‘We won the first round,’ he said.

  ‘What first round?’ the queen snapped.

  ‘The singers are down dead, the Magonaut decimated the army and when they tried to storm the town, we defeated them and took a lot of prisoners. Only the top five leaders escaped for now.’

  The queen took a deep breath. ‘Well, thank you. I’m sure it was a glorious battle. But for some I would have been glad to join in.’

  ‘You would have managed fabulously, ma’am,’ Basil said. ‘Only there would have been little to do. Shooting those soldiers from a rooftop was a task for striplings, your girls looked bored to tears. Of course you could have gone with the tigresses, jumping onto those flying carpets, but there were more girls than singers already and you surely wouldn’t have wanted to spoil their sport?’

  The queen sighed and relaxed. ‘You’re as bad as Master Jurgis. Smooth talkers, both of you.’

  ‘Well, it’s clear that however terrible these Unwaari may have been a century ago, today they are no match for a trained force like the Kell.’

  Both the queen and the veteran laughed at this.

  Basil turned to his father. ‘I didn’t see our warlocks?’

  ‘No. I held them back. To be honest, I didn’t want them throwing any beams around. Not as long as I don’t know whom to trust. They’re assisting the healers.’

  His son nodded. ‘I think that’s wise.’ He sighed. ‘A pity that Volaut and those four stooges of his escaped. Now I’ll have to go after them.’ He turned around. ‘Let us collect everybody in the great hall downstairs. I want to thank them.’ He gave his father a wink. ‘Including the warlocks.’

  An hour later, Basil limped into the great hall amid a standing ovation. ‘Why?’ he said, looking around in surprise.

  ‘Because it’s your pushing that brought us this far,’ Jurgis said softly at his side. ‘Yarwan did a good job getting the town back on its feet, but what we did today was thanks to you, brother.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Basil whispered, irritated. Then he walked to the steps where once a throne must have stood. He faced the crowd and raised his hands. ‘Friends, today we won a great battle. Together, we defeated the mighty army of the Unwaari occupiers. We killed their singers and their many soldiers, and sent their leaders to flight. Your efforts did this. The forces of Queen Hilda of the Kells, those mighty warrioresses; Overcaptain Wallanck with his doughty Chorwaynie and brave Jentakans, and above all the last survivor of our House, Argyr, Prince-warlock of Spellstor. We ...’

  Something shimmered and in the hall appeared five figures. Volaut! Basil waved away the guards that came running.

  One of the four Unwaari, an elderly man in a yellow robe, gave a short bow to Basil. ‘I am Eghol, First Sunsinger,’ he said. ‘You are the Spellstor?’

  ‘I am his heir, the Spellwarden,’ Basil said, cold of face and voice. ‘You come to give yourselves up?’

  ‘You spoke of things today,’ Eghol said. ‘You leveled certain accusations at the address of our High Singer. We would hear more of this.’

  Basil folded his hands around his staff and faced the sunsinger squarely. ‘I am willing to tell you what information I gathered, so that you will understand the terrible injustice you have been doing us and our Kell neighbors for so long.

  ‘I ask you to turn your minds to those four brothers of yours–Glastym, Iouvast, Kelleur and Panredouce. They sailed to this island castle, hidden outside my knowledge, to bring the Faces of Holy Aera back to her followers. Three of the singers were her faithful servants, but the fourth, alas, was a knave.’ Basil saw something dark flicker deep in Volaut’s eyes. He turned to Maud. ‘You have the bottle and the amulet, Lioness.’ Without a word, Maud handed him the bottle and the little iron box she had carried on her body ever since that day at the ruin.

  Basil nodded his thanks. ‘When my ship first arrived on our shores, a vague signal caught our attention. It came from a deep sea cave, with many traces of iron in its walls.’

  ‘Iron!’ one of the other singers said, and his face grew thoughtful.

  ‘Magic-hiding iron.’ Basil tapped the box. ‘Like this. In the very back of the cave we found a brass chest with inside a single skeleton, a bottle and this amulet.’ He thumbed open the box and the song of the amulet filled the hall for those who could hear.

  ‘It’s Glastym’s song,’ the blue-clad singer said. ‘He was of my order.’

  Basil nodded. ‘The bottle contained something of interest. Inside, protected from the sea, was a letter.’ H
e unrolled the document and showed the seal. ‘Do you recognize this?’

  ‘That, too, is Glastym’s,’ the windsinger said. ‘He was a copious writer; our archives hold many of his seals.’

  ‘Then hear his written words.’ In a clear voice, Basil read the damning letter. He saw the four singers stiffen as horror, disgust and something else—a deep hatred—grew in their expressions. He also noted Volaut’s face twist like one demented at his father’s final words. “Vystyn, my traitorous son ... I curse you ... for not coming to my aid ... I curse you, Vystyn!”

  There wasn’t anything left of the suave, young-looking man he had known. Basil stared at the singers as he put the letter back into the bottle.

  ‘That’s how Vystyn and his father betrayed you and offended Aera so deeply she abandoned you. There is more.

  ‘In the days before the war, Vystyn served as an apprentice at Casterglade. After his father’s death and the disappearance of the Faces, he grew afraid. Perhaps even then he began building his alternate identity as Volaut, a young Vanhaari orphan. When the war embraced Casterglade, Vystyn became Volaut and fled, following the last Spellstor, Argyr, to Malgarth. As a warlock, he joined the people who had already suffered so much through his and his father’s misdeeds.

  ‘After a while, a baby son was born among the Kell refugees on Malgarth. The child quickly proved to possess the atavistic traits of his shamanistic forefathers. Volaut, as usual acting on the sly, sold the Warlockry Council the idea of a Kell-born warlock, and thus they adopted the boy as one of them. Enter Kelwarg the Black Warlock. Kelwarg the Decoy.’

  ‘He was only a shaman?’ a councilor cried. ‘But he was so strong.’

  ‘Shamans can be strong, too,’ Basil said quietly. He looked around the mass of faces. ‘Magic is magic. It’s the wielder, not the discipline, which decides one’s strength.

  ‘At age twelve, the boy disappeared. Volaut took him to Unwaar, where he was presented as an Old Kell orphan, while Volaut rejoined his brethren as the singer Vystyn. Now the traitor was working both sides, slowly climbing the ranks. He took care of Kelwarg’s Unwaari education, after which he brought the boy back to Malgarth as a full warlock. Powerful in physique and magic, but still an obedient tool in Volaut’s hands, Kelwarg worked to subvert the councilors. He proposed rules that seemed logical at the time, but would prove destructive in the long run. They were accepted, and Kelwarg became the first Kell prince-warlock.’