Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Hello, the watch!’ she called out. ‘You have friends, come in peace to the citadel on behalf of the Crown of Rathain. With your duke’s leave, we ask to treat directly with Jeynsa s’Valerient.’

  Which opening was honest, if not what Alestron’s overstrained guardsmen were disposed to hear. The response came back surly. ‘Stand forth! Show yourselves and disarm!’

  ‘Obey!’ Dakar cautioned, as Sidir bridled to protest. ‘Now they know we’re here, Bransian’s archers will have us skewered at the least hesitation.’

  ‘In the dark?’ Sidir snarled. ‘You claim they’re that good?’

  ‘Skilled as your best forest clansmen. Incompetents don’t serve the watch at this bridge.’ Dakar gritted his jaw, shoved away from the door-sill that sheltered them. ‘Disarm, as they ask. We’ll be shown to the duke under surety, once they’ve recognized me for a Fellowship spellbinder.’ Then, as six armoured men blocked the lane, with more cross-bowmen positioned at vantages in the battlements over their heads, Dakar gave rushed advice to Elaira. ‘For today, you’re no crystal-bearing Koriathain, but a healer trained by Ath’s adepts who’s chosen to side with the clans.’

  ‘I won’t lie to them,’ Elaira warned, a freezing reprimand.

  Dakar rolled his eyes, caught a fist in his beard as though to yank hair in frustration. ‘For love of your prince, then! Try to limit yourself to the strategic truth that’s least likely to rile s’Brydion temper.’ He added, wrung nauseous, ‘I have faced the whip, here, only spared by a Sorcerer’s intervention. These men never compromise. They’ll kill without thought. If they’re shown cause to believe they’ve been cornered, even your Teir’s’Ffalenn cannot handle them.’

  Then the moment for breathless precautions was past, as the men down the lane advanced to take charge of them. Sidir was given their blunt command to drop his bow. No one cared that he possessed no quiver or arrows. Surrounded at weapon-point, inspected and frisked, the arrivals were made to stand, half-clad and shivering, while torches were fetched. The flaming brands were thrust into their faces, within a whisker of blinding them.

  The splintering light made Dakar’s head spin. He wrestled back dizziness, given no choice but to suffer rough handling.

  ‘Disapprove as you like,’ snapped the burly captain at arms, unfazed by Sidir’s hackled dignity. ‘The last ambassador here got an arrow through him. You haven’t, because Dakar is known to us.’

  The torches were snuffed, then, perhaps not a mercy. Held captive, the three were prodded forward, stumbling in their state of rifled undress, and scrambling to snatch loosened laces.

  Sidir set his chin, large enough to balk at the shove that would spill a lesser man to his knees. ‘The lady,’ he said, ‘is deserving of courtesy. You treat with her no better than ruffians.’

  The protest met laughter, followed up by the clap of a gauntleted fist. ‘You’ll not get your weapons back yet, feral scout. Peace with you, for now, since there can’t be honour between us until you’ve survived your coming interview with our duke.’

  The hour was uncivilized to question intruders who might be spies sent by the enemy. Yet Alestron’s ruling duke was awakened from sleep no matter the time was past midnight. He would interrogate all surprise guests, and without the amenities of state courtesy. Bransian rolled from bed, slit-eyed, while the report still tumbled from the lips of the runner sent in by his vigilant sentries.

  ‘Not that filthy gambeson!’ snapped Liesse, still blinking.

  The duke glowered. He settled for the scarlet dressing-robe. Let the scuttling servant throw the garment over his shoulders, roped with surly scars and hard muscle, and skinned by the chafe of his chainmail. ‘I look like a floor mop,’ he groused, and shook off the wife’s urgent plea for a comb. ‘Beard tangles be damned! And forget boots, as well.’

  He stalked for the door, while the extravagant gold tassels sewn at his hem tapped and glittered against his bare ankles. He paused at the threshold to snatch his sheathed broadsword, belting on the steel-bossed baldric.

  Concerned that such driven haste boded ill, Liesse kicked free of the sheets. She grabbed the nearest dress in her wardrobe and slapped off the dithering servant. ‘Fetch up Keldmar’s widow. Run, do you hear? If my husband holds this interview by himself, we’ll be mopping up someone’s let blood off the carpet!’

  Liesse hurried, yanking at laces. Already, the duke’s voice boomed up from below, directing the session to the closet room he used for hostile receptions.

  That tiny, cramped chamber was airlessly hot, sealed by felt curtains for black-out. Only two of the available wicks were alight, thin flame struggling in the tall candelabra that flanked the duke’s raised chair. Mearn was not present; as the only other sibling in residence, he stood active watch on the walls. But Sevrand sat as the s’Brydion heir apparent, clad in his silver-trimmed captain’s breeches and sartorial, bare-chested splendour. The two wives called at short notice showed their unfinished dress, lacking state jewels, and in hair falling uncoiffed to the waist. Their tight faces redoubled the ominous weight, imposed by the row of heraldic chairs with Alestron’s bull motif worked into the cushions, and stamped in chased gold on the finials.

  The presence the women commanded instructed the captain at arms: the petitioners just prodded in from the stairwell were offered a seat before the raised table. Dakar accepted at once, of necessity. Red-faced and puffing, he leaned back, straitly desperate and battling dizziness.

  Elaira perched also, rough in her scout’s buckskins. If her level stare did not disclose the focus of her order’s training, she would seem ordinary, with her bronze hair tied back in a farm-wife’s plait. Sidir declined to sit. His insistent presence kept a liegeman’s stance, on his feet at her right shoulder.

  Which mannered defiance bespoke her importance, and also proclaimed the ritual warning that Rathain’s crown interests would not yield the s’Brydion cause undue deference.

  Bransian’s eyes glittered: tight as cranked wire by threat at his gates, he came stoked for explosive contention. He introduced the raw-boned, brown-haired matron as his wife, gave the name of his heir, then nodded his greying, leonine head in salute towards the more fragile woman in mourning. ‘Lady Sindelle, my late brother Keldmar’s widow.’

  Despite the late hour, Bransian’s expectation burned incandescent as he addressed the captive delegation. ‘Do you bring us news of Prince Arithon? Has he changed heart? By Dharkaron’s thrown Spear, if he has, we have a need that commands our survival.’

  Dakar broke that hope quickly. ‘No change, my lord. I am Fellowship-sent, bearing a mandate from Melhalla’s caithdein. Rathain’s crown must stay clear of your personal blood-bath. We have come instead to pull Jeynsa out of here.’

  ‘Did you, by Ath?’ Liesse tucked worn fingers to a gleam of pearl rings. ‘And how will you propose to do this against the young lady’s free will?’

  Sidir folded his arms, the fresh scars on his wrists shining baleful under the flame-light. ‘You’re going to back her against us?’ He skirted the indelicate brunt, that to try would defy charter law, by disregard of a crown steward’s edict.

  ‘It’s our children’s lives and s’Brydion heritage,’ Liesse stated, blunt, while the red-rimmed, dark eyes of Sindelle observed with a glass-brittle calm that would shatter reason.

  ‘You can’t stop us,’ the bereaved woman attacked. ‘Nor can Melhalla’s long arm reach us, now. Dare you break your own code, and censure us with the use of unbridled spellcraft?’

  ‘Won’t, rather,’ snapped Dakar, looking rumpled and flustered, the grey streaks grown prominent in his cinnamon hair. Strong spells and prolonged use of mage-sight had drained him. The appalling effort he required to think fast undid his remaining resource. ‘There are limits. The ethics I follow mean something more than your use, for political convenience.’

  ‘Expediency,’ Sevrand drawled, insolent. He lounged back, his main gauche drawn to rout dirt from beneath a ripped thumbnail. ‘Tear us down
from within, you’ll just feed the lunatic madness of Lysaer’s forsaken Alliance.’ A shark’s grin split his beard as he snicked his steel back into its well-oiled sheath. ‘Jeynsa’s dug in her heels. That point’s uncontested. How can you think you’ll stop Arithon?’

  Which was the bone in the meat of the unwelcome challenge to start with. Duke Bransian watched, alert as the coiled adder, to see who would choose to flinch first.

  There, tension hung, to Elaira’s wise silence, and Sidir’s almost seamlessly self-contained rage.

  The candles streamed, choked by untrimmed wicks, while the curtains hung limp in the stillness. Everyone sweated, while the freshened breeze off the harbour whined and buffeted at the latched casements.

  Dakar fought to stay upright. The airless room had started to spin. He swayed, bedazzled by heraldic bulls, heads lowered to charge in rash fury.

  Sidir spoke, finally, with the stark dignity that had snap-frozen fights between Halwythwood’s proud chieftains. ‘One can hope, with a Fellowship spellbinder present, that Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn might not choose to stoop to the part of a nose-led sacrifice.’

  Bransian leaned forward. ‘And the woman, Elaira? What is her interest?’

  ‘She’s a schooled healer,’ Sidir said without blinking. ‘I’m amazed that you’d brush off three Sorcerers’ counsel. Stay this course through, and you’ll need to beg Arithon’s good graces! Though as his liegeman, I’d venture to caution. Your space for apology rests on thin ice.’

  ‘We should run like a forest-born squirrel for a tree?’ Sevrand grinned in contempt. ‘Clansman, for shame! You’ve sent your cowardly mind ahead of your carcass to Sithaer!’

  Liesse interrupted, to stop slanging abuse. ‘Do we even know where among Dharkaron’s damned your Master of Shadow happens to be?’

  ‘Dakar does,’ Sindelle reminded with fixated focus.

  Sevrand slapped the boards, rocked by cynical laughter. ‘Well in that case, we’re sunk! Did you look at your prophet? He’s sloshed in his chair. How much liquor did you have to slug into him to raise the guts for this interview? By the list to his posture, I’d give him an hour before he keels over comatose.’

  Sidir’s pale eyes narrowed. He dared make no move: not since a chopped signal from Duke Bransian had summoned the menat-arms in from the ward-room. Weaponless, the Companion had no leverage to argue, as Dakar was dragged from his chair.

  Nor could the spellbinder help himself. His overtaxed faculties slid him towards collapse. The fevered skin and reeling faintness of back-lash left him saucer-eyed as an owl, dazzled half-blind in the candlelight.

  ‘Sober him, then!’ Elaira jabbed back. ‘Find out what you’ve earned, by your efforts.’

  Yet even that withering satire failed. The duchess gave the barest shake of her head: in warning, Liesse set the urgent example. Bale-fire burned behind her duke’s eyes. Since Keldmar’s death, her husband’s temper had frayed beyond reach of appeasement.

  ‘Stay, Sidir!’ Dakar mumbled. Manhandled upright, he raised no fight as he was dragged to the centre of the carpet. His legs failed him at once. He sat there, unstrung, a mound of limp russet, eyes shut and round features slackened. His brosy, alcoholic’s complexion completed the picture of witless beatitude.

  Bransian shouted. ‘Daelion forfend! You’re a barrel of sops! Left to yourself, I doubt you’d be competent shoved up against the eighth gate of Sithaer!’

  Patience was absent. The garrison remedy to shake a drunk out of stupor sent a man to the spring cellar for a filled bucket. The rich carpet was soon puddled with ice melt. Dakar dripped, curled up in a shivering lump. Pink and coughing, he glared daggers at his tormentors.

  The s’Brydion paused for no civilized apology; no solicitous offer of blankets.

  The moment the water ran out of his ears, Dakar was accosted by Bransian’s demand for Prince Arithon’s location.

  ‘How should I know?’ The spellbinder screwed his eyes shut, trusting Sidir to keep sense and curb the justified outrage that could only spur on the duke’s cruelty. In tried forbearance, the Mad Prophet mocked, ‘Who trusts a libertine? By the time the Master of Shadow confides in me, everyone else has forgotten.’

  Sevrand stood and up-ended the sloshing dregs over his victim’s soaked head. ‘If you don’t know, you wallowing skinful, then find him. We have no clue where to look, and no liberty! Nobody’s heard from your ingrate liege since the hour he walked out of our hall and abandoned us.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Dakar said, sulky. A swipe of numbed fingers scattered the droplets fringing his beard. ‘Since his Grace as a rule keeps to his spoken word, I suggest you apply to the Fellowship, the Koriathain, or else bend your iron-clad knees, begging Ath’s everlasting mercy!’

  The sullen frown on the duke’s livid face, now mirrored by his subordinates, raised unpleasantly brutal memories. Dakar set his jaw. ‘Damn you all to Dharkaron!’ he cracked to Liesse. ‘Since when has the province of charter law become the mouthed word of convenience?’

  ‘He’s sober!’ the enchantress pealed into the shocking breach. ‘And telling the truth!’ Before the armed men were unleashed for bloodshed, Elaira snapped the deadlocked inquiry forthwith. ‘I know how to reach Arithon! Be very sure, before you ask, that you are prepared for the consequence.’

  Her courage stopped breath.

  As the duke shifted focus, Dakar heaved his dripping bulk to his feet. ‘My lady, Lord Bransian, here are your terms laid down by Melhalla’s crown steward: we must be granted our appeal to turn Jeynsa.’ Upright in a puddle, pushed to near dissolution, he showed steel beneath his wrecked dignity. ‘I am Fellowship-sent! If the Teiren’s’Valerient refuses, if she won’t answer my charge as the Sorcerers’ agent, then no one can turn back the ruin that has stubbornly been set in motion. Elaira will find his Grace. She does hold that power. If, pray Dharkaron, his mage-taught shields are let down, and if in the binding heat of the moment, he’s inclined to toss reason and listen.’

  Duke Bransian smiled, a show of bared teeth that defied Elaira’s drawn presence. ‘Fetch the girl,’ he commanded. To Sidir, who had moved no muscle throughout, he added with provocation, ‘I don’t care why this woman’s come, or why she’s placed under your charge. You are all deaf as rock if you don’t already see that we’re leading a dance of formalities.’

  The steadfast Companion needed no words. He had not been fooled. In blighted fact, they had cut their timing too fine: Lysaer’s war host would have the citadel tightened down and surrounded by morning.

  ‘If Jeynsa refuses, I can’t let you go.’ The duke’s glance raked his three captive adversaries. ‘Alestron won’t take the risk you might spill what you know of our straits to the enemy.’

  Now, Sidir spoke. ‘Depend on this: if Jeynsa refuses, we will never leave Prince Arithon’s interests so nakedly unsupported. Nor are you above the law of the realm. In the name of Alestron’s people, every move that you make will be witnessed and sealed by the eyes of a Fellowship agent.’

  ‘You’ll have to survive, first!’ Duke Bransian agreed, a poisonous jab of black humour. ‘The Sorcerers aren’t much threat. I daresay they’re strapped helpless. Or why else would they send in a spellbinder who lacks teeth to back up their vaunted authority? Your fate’s now joined to Alestron’s, and mine. Who else is left, except Rathain’s prince, with the brute power of Shadow to save you?’

  Autumn 5671

  Glimpses

  As the duke’s runner leaves to summon Jeynsa s’Valerient, one of Dame Dawr’s watching servants observes, and through a ruthless tussle of back-corridor politics, the errand is made to change hands: Talvish is plucked from Mearn’s watch on the walls, then charged with the order to escort the young clanswoman throughout her pending audience …

  In the central command tent, under mist that drenches the Sunwheel emblems, the false avatar tosses amid his damp sheets, under guard by Ranne and Fennick; and when the cold horror of dreams snaps his rest, they witness his t
ormented pain, as he paces, awaiting the comfort of dawn-light to scatter his haunting burden of ghosts …

  Amid Elssine’s harbour, while autumn winds toss the Alliance flag galley’s unsettled anchorage, Sulfin Evend rubs tired eyes with his fists, elbows braced on the lists, piled up through his long-deferred muster; then he speaks, to his hovering captain’s relief, ‘Our work is complete. Tomorrow, we row north to rejoin the Light’s entrenched troops at Alestron …’

  Autumn 5671

  V.

  Blood Debt

  The gleam of the full moon sank to the west, slanting shadow through the heart of Selkwood. Since the waking of the old centaur wardings, Lord Erlien s’Taleyn had moved his lodge tent. His chieftains’ encampment retired far inside the free wilds, where the roused song of the marker stones did not fray the sharp minds of his scouts into the mesmerized fever of back-lash.

  Steeped in the old way, the shadowed depths of the forest were no place to wander at large. Even scouts did not fare without guidance. Here lay the core of the land’s silent power, and the sites where the mysteries flourished. Here also, the trust preserved by clan heritage in the absence of the Paravians: paths where no human being might walk without due permission. The hushed glades stayed undisturbed, and the most ancient groves, where the moss-hoary crowns of the patriarch pines combed the restless winds risen with autumn. Trees spoke, in the moaning whisper of needles, and through the tap-roots struck deep in black soil. No two-legged intelligence might fathom the hidden tracks under their branches. None ventured the fringes so near sacred ground without the grace of true talent, bred across generations of recorded lineage.