Alison Croggon - [Pellinor 04]

by The Singing (lit)

  Maerad hugged her tightly, and then stood back, because she was as wet as if she had jumped into a pond. "I'd better put Keru in the stables," she said.

  "And I must see to Darsor too," said Cadvan. "Silvia, we'll take care of the horses and change our clothes. And maybe then we can work out how we can be of best use to you."

  "Malgorn is in the Watch House. Meet us there, as soon as you can. I have to hurry. There are too many things to do." Silvia drew herself up and Maerad saw with a small shock that underneath her cloak she was wearing mail. She had never thought of Silvia as a warrior. "This is the attack that we all feared was coming. I can't pretend that we don't need all the help we can get. I'm grateful you're here, Cadvan."

  Cadvan clasped Silvia's shoulder, and she nodded at both of them and left. They stood for a moment, listening to the howls of the wind.

  "Well," Cadvan said, picking up Darsor's reins. "Once more into the storm, Darsor; but at least this time there's hay at the end of it." He turned to Maerad. "Better here than outside," he said. "But still, I have a feeling it's going to be a long day."

  IV

  WEATHERLORE

  T

  HEY rode the short distance to the stables at a gallop, fighting the wind all the way, and one of Indik's apprentices, looking pale, took the horses in hand. There they threw on some dry clothes from their packs, in one of the empty stalls: there wasn't time to run to the Bardhouse. That morning when she had dressed, Maerad had only thought of warmth: it had been foolish, she reflected, not to put on her mail coat. Now she slipped it over her head with a shiver. While she rummaged in her pack, her hand clasped the blackstone, sliding across its strange surface. She didn't like touching it, and dropped it at once. Then she picked it up, more slowly, and put it around her neck.

  Maerad peered out of the stable door into the chaos beyond: even in the short time they had spent in the stables, the storm had worsened. It was now almost as dark as night, although it couldn't have been much past midmorning, and the air was bitterly cold. Torn branches and other objects were skid­ding down the narrow roads between the buildings. It looked dangerous simply to step outside.

  "Shield yourself, Maerad," said Cadvan in her ear. "We're going to have to make a run for it, and you don't want to be knocked over by a flying tree."

  She paused for a moment, shielding herself with magery, and then she and Cadvan left the warm refuge of the stables and began to run to the Watch House. The shield protected Maerad from the storm, and the light of the magery made it a little easier to see, although it was disconcerting when leaves and other debris blew straight at her face and then slid past. Rain, hail, and sleet were driven so violently by the wind that they spurted horizontally from the eaves of the buildings. Maerad heard a crash behind her—a tree, probably, falling onto a house or a wall. She didn't look back. Even with her shielding, the storm was terrifying. Such a storm could only be sum­moned by the Landrost. This, Maerad thought, is why Bards distrust the Elidhu: this blind, amoral power, turned to utter destructiveness.

  They were almost at the Watch House, a small stone tower which rose over the gates, when a terrible shriek sounded almost in Maerad's ear and something hit her shield from behind. Even protected as she was, she was almost knocked sprawling, and she called to Cadvan as she leaped sideways, backing up against a wall and drawing her sword. She couldn't see what had hit her, but she had felt a deathly cold, of a differ­ent quality from the freezing air, push past her like a wave.

  Up, said Cadvan into her mind. Did you not see the wings?

  I didn't see anything, Maerad said. And my hearing doesn't work in this noise.

  Wers, I think, said Cadvan. And flying... they must have come over the wards. He was squinting into the sky. With this magelight, we're clear targets. I can't see anything up there, but that thing came down out of nowhere. I'd barely sensed it before it was gone...

  Maerad was surprised to find that she wasn't afraid. The Watch House isn't far, she said.

  Cadvan nodded, and they made a final dash, zigzagging down the street like rabbits dodging an eagle. Two guards stood by the door, sheltered very minimally by a porch, and let them in without comment.

  "There are winged wers out," Cadvan shouted over the wind as they entered the door. "Beware."

  One of the guards nodded to indicate he had heard, but he didn't look alarmed. He was probably too cold, Maerad thought; the skin on his face looked blue.

  The door swung shut, and the sound of the storm was sud­denly muted. Maerad sighed unconsciously with relief: the screaming of the wind was almost as unbearable as the cold. They stood in a small, bare room of undressed stone lit by a single lamp, but it seemed almost homey after the chaos outside.

  "I expect Malgorn will be at the top," said Cadvan, gestur­ing toward a flight of stairs. Maerad nodded, and they wound their way to the top room. Like everything else in the Watch House, the room was without decoration, save for the horse emblem of Innail carved in relief on the wall above the wide hearth, where a fire burned. The storm rattled the shutters of the windows, and Maerad suddenly felt claustrophobic. What was going on outside? In the middle of the room was a broad wooden table surrounded by chairs, and the Bards of Innail's First Circle were gathered around it, deep in discussion.

  Malgorn turned as Cadvan and Maerad came up the last steps, and waved them over. "Wise of you to come back," he said.

  "The weather took a turn for the worse," said Cadvan. "And I have some bad news. A winged wer swooped down on Maerad as we came over here."

  "A wer?" Silvia looked up, her face pale. "Malgorn, I told you the wards were not enough."

  "The warding spells worked well enough in Tinagel," said Malgorn sharply. Their conversation had the air of an old argu­ment. "And it's all we can do. We're stretched thinly enough as it is."

  "Aye, we are." Indik looked grim. "This is a different attack from Tinagel, Malgorn; the weatherworking has an ill feel about it. This is no mere storm, though the Light knows that was bad enough at Tinagel. There's the smell of sorcery in the air. And I

  sense something approaching that I haven't felt before. I like it not."

  Maerad blinked. Indik was right: there was a presence, a sense of menace that she had only noted subliminally, that grew in intensity with every moment. It was unsettlingly familiar ...

  "I recognize that presence," said Cadvan. "I remember it all too well. It is the Landrost."

  A sudden appalled silence fell over the table. Of all the Bards, only Indik looked unmoved.

  "I thought the Elementals could not leave their place," said Kelia, a short Bard who sat to the left of Malgorn, her dark brows drawn into a fierce frown. "I thought that the Landrost was bound to his mountain."

  "They don't like to leave," said Maerad. The Bards turned to her, listening gravely. "Arkan—the Winterking—told me that it is to them like losing their being. But that doesn't mean that they can't."

  "Would he be weaker for being away from his mountain?" asked Indik dubiously, pulling at his lower lip.

  "I don't know." Maerad looked helplessly around the table. The six most powerful Bards in Innail sat before her. In battle, each of them was worth a rank of soldiers; and yet she felt her heart quailing within her. "But—there's a taste like sorcery in the air. The Elidhu are not sorcerers."

  Indik flashed her a sharp glance.

  "You think that there's some Hullish business here too?" he asked. Maerad shrugged. "There have been no Hulls in any other attacks. It's the one thing I've been grateful for. Well..."

  He straightened himself, and looked around the table.

  "Clearly, the wards have been breached by wers," he said. "I think they should be maintained, all the same. I sent out scouts early this morning, as soon as I smelled the weather, and they tell me there is an army of mountain men marching this way; they will be here soon. And there will be wers on the ground, to be sure." Suddenly his eyes went blank, as if he were listening to something no one else could hear
. The other Bards watched him in silence, waiting courteously; Indik was mind-touching, in silent conversation with a Bard on the walls. At last he looked up. "Kelavar tells me that outriding forces have been sighted outside the east wall. They can't tell how many, visibil­ity is very poor, but the flying wers are playing havoc in the town. Not much damage, but a lot of panic. Again, they don't know how many. He thinks five wers have been killed."

  Malgorn frowned, stood up, and walked over to the fire­place. Maerad watched him anxiously. She liked Malgorn, and recognized his strengths; but she suspected that he was not a Bard of war. She looked inquiringly at Cadvan.

  "The weakest place, as ever, is the gate," said Cadvan. "If the Landrost himself marches with his forces, he will lodge his fiercest attack here. Still, we must give thought to the rest of the wall."

  "We lack an army," said Malgorn. "Farmers who use swords as if they're cutting hay are no match, no matter how brave . . . and yes, we have great Bards here. But too few." He said this almost in a whisper.

  Indik's face darkened. "Malgorn, we have no time now for lamentation or regret," he said. "The Light knows that we may have plenty of time later. Yes, we have not enough soldiers, not enough mages. It seems to me that the Landrost aims to crush us utterly. The Dark marches with him. I admit, things do not look hopeful for us. So let us bend our thoughts to how best to use the strengths we have."

  He glowered around the table, and the other Bards nodded. Malgorn flushed, and looked down at his hands. Silvia glanced at him, her face unreadable. She was very pale, but her jaw was set and determined. There was steel in Silvia, thought Maerad, that Malgorn lacked, and she wondered why Silvia had not been made First Bard. For the first time since she had entered the Watch House, Maerad felt a sudden focus of energy, a surge of purpose. As Indik began to outline how he saw the battle before them, she felt, despite the grim picture, a small flicker of hope.

  Indik had a realistic notion of what Innail was up against. He had set captains at intervals around the walls of Innail, who communicated with him through mindspeech. Each was in charge of varying numbers of Bards and soldiers and bands of volunteers drawn from the valley population. There were too few of them, as Malgorn had said, and too few skilled or hard­ened warriors. They were armed with swords and bows— although in the chaos of the storm, arrows were next to useless—and vats of tar and boiling oil and stones to throw on the heads of the attackers. Indik had a select band of highly trained warriors, both horsed and on foot, whom he kept by the gates.

  He had encountered the mountain men before, and he knew them as hard fighters, ruthless, cunning, and unafraid. He was more worried than he liked to admit about the proba­bility that the Landrost was exploiting both Elemental powers and Dark sorcery. He could calculate the odds of battle as well as anyone, and he had measured the strength of wers in other battles in the valley; he figured that even if the wers had breached the wards that he and Malgorn had set in the walls, Innail still had a fighting chance. The presence of the Landrost was an imponderable; until they met him in battle, they wouldn't know his strength. Indik was one of those who believed the Landrost was the same figure as Karak, who in the

  Great Silence had laid waste the lost realm of Indurain. If he was correct, they were up against one of the most powerful of the Nameless One's allies.

  When he thought about it, Innail didn't stand a chance. But Indik was stubborn; the worse the odds, the harder he would fight. While he still breathed, Innail falling to the Landrost was something he was not prepared to contemplate.

  Like Cadvan, Indik reckoned that the major force would be brought against the gates, but he thought their strength of sol­diery should be deployed along the walls. "There we will most likely face siege ladders," he said. "And if the town is not to be razed behind our backs, we will need to fight them off. The wards will help, but I am not sure whether they will be enough, especially if the wers can simply fly over them. I am very dis­turbed that they are already breached. I don't understand why they haven't flown a whole wer army over the walls already."

  "Perhaps only the powerful wers can break the wards," suggested Maerad. She was thinking of the first battle she had ever faced, against wers in the wilds of the Indurain: Cadvan had made a barrier then to protect them, and the wers had changed their wolf shapes in order to fly over it. "Or are they waiting?"

  "The former, I think," said Malgorn. "We are not stupid: we know that wers shapeshift, and can become winged. These wards were set when Tinagel was attacked, and they do not work like walls. Not even a hostile bird should be able to pass them."

  Indik nodded. "I think we should concentrate our strength of magery at the gate. If the Landrost breaks the gate, the wards will fail also. Maerad, do you know how to fight an Elidhu?"

  "No," said Maerad.

  "That's not quite true," Cadvan said impatiently. "You held back the Landrost even before you were in your full powers."

  "I've never fought an Elidhu," said Maerad. "I don't know how." Indik's question made her feel sick with panic; she saw that she was his main hope. Suddenly a major part of the responsibility for defending Innail was on her shoulders, and she didn't know if she would be any help at all. She met Indik's gaze; he was studying her, his face inscrutable, weighing the odds. With a slight shock, she realized that on his face was the same expression as when he tried a new sword: he was calculat­ing the merit of a weapon, testing its temper and edge.

  "Maerad, you know much more about the Elementals than any of us; none of us have even seen one," said Indik. "I don't expect you to single-handedly strike the Landrost down, but I will be relying on your sense of him. Especially any sense you have of weakness. And you too, Cadvan: you were his prisoner for a time. In the coming hours, the smallest detail might swing things in our favor."

  "The first thing is the storm," said Malgorn, frowning. "I've had all the Bards I can spare weatherworking since the clouds were first seen, to no avail. The winds will not hear us. Cadvan, I know you can weatherwork; perhaps you could use your powers there? It would free me up."

  "Of course," said Cadvan. "It may be an idea for Maerad to help here too. Maerad?"

  Maerad had never done weatherworking in her life, and pointed out that if the Bards of Innail couldn't turn the winds, she had little hope of being any use at all. Despite this, Malgorn detailed both of them to the task.

  There was a briskness among the First Circle now; they knew that there was very little time, and that the Landrost's army was almost at the gates. They departed to various destina­tions around Innail, embracing somberly as they took their leave. Silvia kissed Maerad lightly on the forehead, and to Maerad's surprise, smiled warmly. "While there's breath, there's hope," she said. "I'm still breathing!" She was in charge of a section of the walls to the east of Innail, and Maerad watched her go, sadly wondering if she would ever see her again.

  Maerad and Cadvan left with Indik and Malgorn: weather-work had to be performed in the open, and the Bards were gathered on the walls above the gate, near where Indik and Malgorn had their command.

  As she stood up, Maerad glanced at Cadvan, taking a deep breath. She had never been in a real battle before, and her insides felt hollow. Cadvan's expression was stern, but his face softened as he perceived Maerad's anxiety. "Silvia's right," he said. "We have a chance, Maerad, as long as we stand fast."

  "We don't have any choice, do we?" said Maerad, forcing a smile.

  "There's always a choice," Cadvan answered, "as I have told you many times before. None of us will yield our souls, should the end be even as bitter as we fear. Now, for the sake of the Light, let us go and defend what we love!"

  It was hard walking out into the storm again. A walkway led from the top floor of the Watch House to the outer keep above the gate, and it was a wrestle even to open the heavy door and prevent it from immediately slamming shut. Without her magery shielding her, Maerad would likely have been blown straight off the bridge. The shrieking of the wind was so loud it hurt
her ears. Although her shield protected her against the wind and the rain, it did not keep out the bitter cold, and Maerad gasped with the first shock of it; it went into her bones like the deep cold of the northlands.

  But that doesn't make any sense, she thought. If it were that cold, everything would he ice...

  When they reached the keep, a fork of lightning stabbed down so close to them Maerad could smell it, a sharp smell

  like the sea, followed by a massive crack of thunder that made her involuntarily duck. In its brief illumination, she saw the battlements were crowded with people. A few pitch torches lit the walls, but otherwise there was very little light; a silver glow a short distance away showed where the Bards were weather­working.

  Maerad realized at once that this was no easy task. For one thing, it wasn't possible to weatherwork from within a shield, and the eight Bards assigned to the task were huddled against the outer wall, trying to stay out of the worst of the tempest. The sheer cacophony of the storm was a constant assault, mak­ing it impossible to talk.