TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  Sorrow

  The scandal of Talith's lost ransom resulted in strings of hot horses, hard-pressed in fast passage as royal couriers spurred up smoking trails of dust. They crossed and recrossed the forty leagues of roadway between Ostermere and Cheivalt. For two months, the post stables did brisk business in remounts. Every outbound galley bore letters north to Avenor, or dispatches southward to Innish with news and fresh orders for the mustered warhost.

  Prince Lysaer's strapped mood ran counter to summer's languid rhythm. Never had Lord Commander Diegan seen any man held so severely in check, his smallest move calculated, his every word tempered like hot steel quenched into patience. The mansion provided for the royal delegation was exquisite, the finials of pillared doorways gilded or adorned with marble borders of carved leaves and beasts. The tessellated floors and groined ceilings were polished agate, veined in gold, or jade green, the majesty of stone laid in patterns to soothe the nerves. Wide, arched windows fronted the sea and scooped the breezes. They framed the lapis tints of Cheivalt's harbour, the painted sails of fishing fleets splashed against the squall lines massed above the horizon.

  But the ocean held too recent a recollection of s'Ffalenn piracy for Lysaer to appreciate the view. Inland, the wide, rolling hills rippled under ripening barley: Cheivalt's true wealth lay in her acres of farmlands. Yet the old thread still wound, deep under earth, remnant of the mysteries that had been before man. In black hedgerows where the wild lilies bloomed, the moonflower vines and bindweed twined to a less-ordered rhythm, when the grasslands grew unscarred by the plough, and unicorns had run in a beauty that burned across the wilds of Carithwyr.

  Under starlight in the grainfields, from the corner of the eye, a man might glimpse their dancing ghosts.

  For Lysaer, the pastoral peace of Cheivalt sawed like the cut of a canker. He might go out with the ladies and their gallants to dance in the masques held by torchlight, but the laughter and the gaiety rang hollow. For him, in that summer of Talith's captivity, the city was a cage in which he was fed a steady diet of bad news.

  To raise the second ransom, every man in his retinue had stripped himself of wealth. His lady's chests of personal jewellery and the coffers in the armada's galleys had been emptied. Men-at-arms forwent their pay.

  On the heels of such sacrifice came Arithon's insolent refusal: payment in gems was unsatisfactory when terms had been set in gold coin weight.

  Through the crystalline, hot days, and wearing delay as factors were engaged to sell royal sapphires for bullion, Lord Commander Diegan reined back his temper, time and again shamed by the impeccable decorum of Avenor's fair-haired prince. Buyers who could afford even the least of Talith's pieces were rare, to hurry their sale was to sacrifice her jewels at far below their fair value.

  Yet haste was what Lysaer required. For each day that passed, by diplomatic constraint, his massive war host stayed paralysed in Shand. Summer reached its splendid holiness and mocked him: each day that passed shortened the interval left before autumn when unfavourable weather would force him to disband his hard-earned troops. Royal officers fretted every minute. The alliance with s'Brydion threw strain in the weave, as Duke Bransian's vociferous letters urged action despite the thorns of statecraft.

  'I'm aware large campaigns can't be fought in the mud,' came Lysaer's reply, consonants pinned through vowels like welded rivets. 'Nonetheless, I gave my royal word.'

  The scribe who sealed his missive packed his pens in quaking haste, then fled with the dispatch to the harbour.

  Except in close council, Lysaer spoke and moved in a patience that captivated hearts; he attended the mayor's private socials. He kissed the hands of ladies and discussed rare books in the gardens with the highborn of Cheivalt. Their children adored his indulgence, clamouring at his knee for the games he had learned in his birth world beyond West Gate.

  Diegan alone was not fooled. Behind masked blue eyes, the royal temper raged and flared like leashed lightning.

  The setbacks at Valleygap and Minderl Bay had imprinted their harsh lesson. The season for active campaigning was slipping away, precisely as the Shadow Master intended.

  Into that sticky honeycomb of pretence, of statecraft woven in threads that looked effortless to a webwork of larger strategy, Asandir of the Fellowship of Seven brought word from the king's court at Ostermere. His arrival made a stir in a city unaccustomed to living visitors out of legend. At his side walked the Mad Prophet, as the Prince of Rathain's appointed spokesman.

  In the airy chamber shown them by trembling servants, Dakar made his bow before the royal half-brother whose company was more to his taste. 'Your Grace of Avenor, I bring joyful news.' He straightened up, smiling, stone sober and tidy in his best brown broadcloth. 'Your last chest of gold lies secure in King Eldir's treasury. At long last, your princess's hour of deliverance lies at hand.'

  Lined in the spill of sun through the window, Lysaer bent his golden head. He could have been a statue etched out in pure light, or the motionless figure of a white guardian from Athlieria, come in male form to spin song in the hour of creation.

  'Ath bless!' The spell broke to his whispered catch of breath. Lysaer regarded the pair of streamered stick puppets clenched in his hands for the amusement of the Mayor of Cheivalt's dimpled daughter. His fair, straight profile stayed hard set, as though against nature the dolls' painted faces might turn animate and utter a curse on him; as if night after night in the torment of nightmares, he had heard the same news, only to waken to another cruel setback.

  Yet the uncanny stance of the Fellowship mage in Dakar's company became assured proof of reality. The girlchild's openmouthed awe was no dream, as the Sorcerer's forceful presence made her shrink behind the marquetry furnishings.

  'My liege,' murmured Lord Commander Diegan from the sidelines, 'grant me leave to assemble your retinue.' The chests of state finery, the banners, the appointments of the royal galley had long been held in readiness. 'You need only meet us at the quay. The docklines can be cast off inside the half hour.' Pressed at full stroke, the oarsmen could work in shifts and see their prince northward to Ostermere inside of two days.

  'Post-horses through the night would be more direct,' Dakar blurted, his past ties renewed to a surge of thoughtless sympathy.

  'I know,' said Prince Lysaer in a patience that shamed. 'But my retinue could never match the pace.'

  He roused back into himself. The stick puppets between his ringed fingers had tangled, their ribbons wrapped by nerves until the merry figures lay noosed into strangling partnership. Lysaer smoothed the streamers back to order. Gravely he placed the toys in the hand of the little girl who lingered, still shy, behind his chair. 'I'm sorry, sprite. I have to leave Cheivalt. Please find your mother and father for me. I owe them my thanks for hospitality.'

  His pat on the head sent the child skipping off. No longer overmastered by the moment, Lysaer s'Ilessid looked up and gave the Mad Prophet the recognition he craved from a friend he had missed for nine years.

  The royal features now were a shade less serene, the stainless, clear flesh remoulded over bone to a leaner, stronger beauty. The blue eyes remained unflawed by shadow. Despite Desh-thiere's curse, their gaze held direct in a way that pierced a man's heart. Only the most searching study could unmask in turn the burden such honesty entailed. The lines traced by private grief and self-sacrifice were masterfully eased over; the relentless, lonely imprint of a fair-handed sovereignty contained in majestic reserve.

  Dakar turned aside, torn by regret that duty denied him free choice. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered.

  Lysaer's formality thawed into smiling, sunny pleasure. His warm regard noted the neat clothing and anxious care Rathain's envoy displayed in his behalf. 'You look properly bludgeoned into the role of a courtier.' He arose and clapped Dakar on the shoulder. 'By this, I presume I see a man in crying need of a drink. What's your preference in this heat? Ale? Beer? Fine claret?'

  Struck speechless that footing still existed for ami
ty after four years in liaison with an enemy, Dakar allowed himself to be swept into step as Lysaer gestured for his bodyguards to stand away and allow them a moment of intimacy. 'You have my promise, the stores on my galley will admit you to paradise without pain. Indulge yourself as you please while I see to my leave-taking. After that, we'll find time to talk.'

  Dakar swallowed back discomfort, his love of rowdy drinking a dangerous habit to encourage on the occasion of Talith's ransom. 'You don't ask of your wife,' he said, stung to more sharpness than he meant.

  Lysaer stopped, spun, faced him in all his matured splendour of restraint. 'She's healthy and unharmed?' At Asandir's spare nod, he produced a magisterial smile. 'I can lodge no complaint, then. As a hostage, her needs would seem adequately met.'

  Shamed to embarrassment, Dakar kicked himself for a fool. As Arithon's envoy, he was no likely candidate for Lysaer's easy confidence; yet the emotionless language of statesmanship rankled. Unthinking as the first, sliding step through a pitfall, he recalled Arithon at the wharfside in Ostermere. On his knees, Rathain's prince had voiced warning to the Warden of Althain, his horror and fear in full public view without care for political expediency.

  Cross-grained, viciously defensive when imposed upon, Arithon s'Ffalenn masked no secrets behind mannered complaisance.

  Dakar fell to brooding. Unaware of Asandir's speculative interest upon him, he endured through the seamless courtesies as Prince Lysaer discharged his debt to the mayor's household. He found he could not smile at the quips. Nor did he feel drawn into the camaraderie that bound Prince Lysaer's retinue. The poisonous, creeping, new suspicion refused to be dismissed, that old ties could be used to exploit his recent connections. Strong liquor might be offered to encourage a loose tongue.

  The chance to test Lysaer's intentions became lost in the whirlwind as Avenor's guard and servants assembled for swift departure. Pushed aside by the parade of officers seeking direct orders from their prince, Dakar found in distaste he had adjusted too well to Arithon's astringent independence. The fawning adoration of young pageboys; the scrambling bustle of chamber steward, valet, and bodyguards, all tripping over the ship's crew as they vied for position, abraded Dakar's sensibilities. He sought a calm corner where the chatter and commotion would leave him a clear space to think.

  Asandir had no moment to spare for sympathetic counsel, absorbed as he was in strong magecraft. When the royal galley set sail for Ostermere, she drove through the sunset wrapped in wards of concealment and protection. The Fellowship would extend its full surety that mischance could not strike through the Mistwraith's curse while the two half-brothers stood in perilous proximity.

  Lysaer travelled in state befitting a prince. Food was fresh and plentiful, and the wine of the finest vintage. Two musicians played a lyrical counterpoint in the galley's cushioned salon to ease the hours of passage. But touched to unwonted and maudlin melancholy, Dakar avoided the avid circle of Avenor's officers.

  While the night unreeled its spill of summer moonlight, he leaned on the weather rail and watched the frothing, black heave of breakers tear themselves against a quiet shoreline. The headland's high cliffs threw back sound in rhythmic thunder, perfumed in the green scents of orchards. Dakar missed the brigantine, where the gusts combed over the bow unstained by the taint of sweating oarsmen. The crew belowdecks were not chained convicts, but free men who laboured in shifts. Lysaer's speech to fire their hearts for swift passage had done little to lift Dakar's spirits. He saw no need for rush, that war could be closed to exterminate a band of Vastmark archers before the onset of winter.

  As the beat of the oars thrashed white tracks in the swell, Avenor's Lord Commander at Arms emerged on deck to join him. Diegan parked his muscled height, unfamiliarly altered, his dandy's silk and jewels replaced by steel mail that licked his torso in chains of silvered highlights.

  'Don't take appearances too much to heart,' he said in reference to his prince. 'He's bled every night since my sister was taken, but in private. No one sees his grief. His Grace refuses the self-indulgence lest his people find cause to lose heart.'

  'Cause?' Dakar straightened, surprised by his own vehemence. 'I can't embrace bloodshed clothed over in a mantle of false righteousness. This is no clash of morals you will fight for in Shand, but the drive of the Mistwraith's geas.'

  'Do you think so?' Steel jingled as Diegan stretched through a wolfish shrug. 'Then you should be pitied. How dare you overlook the destruction that happened to innocents in Jaelot? Was Desh-thiere's curse the provocation for seven wanton deaths at Alestron? Condone those events and what else have you become but Arithon's lackey after all?'

  Dakar swore. The truth raised his gorge and half-choked him, that both incidents in their way had been prompted by his own brash faults. Remorse followed, damning him in guilt: for far more than a shepherd child's forfeited life, Arithon had forborne to condemn him. Glad for the night that masked his wretchedness, Dakar took leave of irksome company. The first servant he found he sent scurrying to fetch Lysaer's strongest spirits from the hold.

  The Mad Prophet crawled away with a cask and a jack and sat with his back against the chain locker. There, settled pounds of cold iron damped back the singing ache of Asandir's layered defence wards enough to spare him the rank bite of nightmares. In stubborn pain, he applied himself to stun his busy conscience into oblivion with drink.

  Like the draw of ebb tide, the stupor he desired slipped his grasp. Entangled instead in punishing insight, he pleaded aloud for escape. Despite hatred, through an unwilling service that encompassed several attempts at cold murder, the years he had suffered in Arithon's company had irremediably changed him. Even sunk in his cups, he could howl for pure gall. His abrasive unhappiness yielded no ground to the blurring ambiguity of peach brandy.

  Truth chafed through and sprang stark to the eye. Lysaer bound his following to love and devotion. He was the honed sword, the just light, and the high star to follow. Without the bedazzling example of his strength, like Lord Diegan, the company he gathered to his banner were as men lost. Dakar hiccuped behind a closed fist. He hated deep thoughts when his head pounded. But his maudlin mood kept its terrier's hold; he could not shrug off his conclusion.

  A puzzle of subtlety set in absolute contrast, Arithon rejected dependency, spurned even his sanctioned claim to royal ties. He discouraged without mercy the weak spirits who sought to cling. The likes of Jinesse and Tharrick found their need turned around in painful, brisk handling that left them whole and contained in themselves; and enemies found their hatreds used against them.

  The spirit who followed the Shadow Master's course in the end acted by informed choice, freely sharing loyalty and respect.

  As sorely as Dakar longed for the undemanding warmth of Lysaer s'Ilessid's close company, his yearning came flawed as he played through the temptation of false steps. To take refuge with his friend was to embrace a wrong cause, and hunt down in turn another prince who was innocent at heart of self-blinded delusion.

  Desh-thiere's curse had bent Arithon to private subterfuge and flight, not as Lysaer, to raise a public cry to take arms for a misdirected justice.

  Long before the brandy cask was emptied to the lees, Dakar threw aside his cup, bent his head on soaked wrists, and wept. For the means to win Lysaer's salvation from the blighting morass of Desh-thiere's curse remained his, to use or discard as he chose. His augury at Vastmark held good. He need only stand aside and let an arrow fly its course, and leave Arithon s'Ffalenn to meet his fate.

  * * *

  The set hour for the princess's ransom arrived like the crowning play of a chess match, each major piece allotted its place for a carefully arranged set of moves. Asandir and Luhaine kept Lysaer and Avenor's royal galley swathed under wards at the quayside. The force of their labours skewed the eye and shimmered the outlines of rail and rambarde like heat waves. Passersby and tradesmen backed off in stiff fear, making signs against evil. Though the spellworks in no way upset the sensibilities
of draught animals, commerce recoiled. Carters snarled the side streets with vehicles to avoid the avenue by the docks.

  Arithon remained in King Eldir's state apartments, Sethvir and Kharadmon in attendance.

  Despite every safeguard and surety, each member of the Fellowship sensed the sliding, straining pressure as self-seeking energies within each half-brother strove to slip through restraint. Air itself held an unquiet tension. The limestone and brick of Ostermere's keeps became wont to spring stress cracks in the old, crumbled mortar. The Sorcerers had long suspected no forcible separation of the princes could quiet Desh-thiere's geas of enmity. Now, as they played subtle threads of constraint through layered curtains of spells to deflect the immediacy of its force, they saw their dread theory borne out.

  'There's a radius of proximity, do you feel it?' Kharadmon fumed in the hour the royal galley tied up in Ostermere's harbour. 'Despite all our seals and protections, this curse is a self-aware thing. There's a low-grade current that cross-links the princes beyond any power to subdue.'

  'Unnatural,' Sethvir agreed, too immersed in defences to review the dire worry: that the passing of time intensified the danger. The princes' opposed gifts of light and of shadow, the world's best line of defence against the peril still active beyond South Gate, could not help but erode farther beyond reach of reconciliation through each successive encounter. The smallest mistake now would exacerbate the problem, until even Luhaine's fussy nature did not argue with necessity.

  The exchange of Lady Talith for her ransom must be handled with consummate speed.

  The event took place without fanfare or ceremony in Eldir's grand hall, the parquet floors cleared of carpets for the summer, and the galleries empty of curious courtiers. On the red baize dais, his state chair flanked by two dozen men-at-arms and six kingdom officials to stand witness, the High King of Havish presided. Ten coffers of gold lay piled by a counting table, where his caithdein, his royal seneschal, and the justiciar of the realm oversaw the tally of the ransom, then, the coin count confirmed, each box was set under lock and sealed with ribbon and wax impressed in Eldir's winged hawk blazon.