Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Sidir heard the call, and Elaira, and Jeynsa. Each one felt the tingling touch on the heart; heard the clarion cry to seek liberty. They would leave the citadel by the Sea Gate, packed onto galleys and barges and small craft amid throngs of parents, who sang as they gathered things needful for uncertain journeys. The opening promised was granted, that day, to all who sought a new beginning.

  Not least in the upwelling surge of release, Dame Dawr woke, replete in the warmth of her bed. Eyes unsealed, she found the keys to her joy, but not anymore in the flesh: frail age rested at last with the knowledge her heirs had been offered their chance to survive her.

  ‘I am well content,’ she told her devoted man-servant, then smiled with the fresh bloom of girlhood. Her last breath blessed the Masterbard’s name, as loved beyond pain, her dauntless spirit was lifted to soar on the flame of ecstatic departure.

  Early Winter 5671

  Mayhem

  The note Arithon raised off Alithiel’s drawn blade also struck the engaged crystal used by Koriathain to guard their field camp. The ancient quartz shattered, blasted to flying shards and a puff of glassine, white powder. The stone’s demise rent the outer wards of protection, which raised a shriek of pure rage from the senior enchantress who minded the watch. Upset roused the camp. A frantic stampede of ranking initiates rushed to restore the smashed defences, and bolster the inside wards, now set under threat.

  No sister paused to stand upon dignity, while the deep security of the order’s compound was threatened. The Prime herself burst from the curtained enclos ure that served as her private quarters. Pale hair in tangles, and her cream flesh clad in naught but her shift, Selidie surveyed the damage with furious eyes.

  Chaos tore through the neat rows of her healers’ tents. Whatever the plague just unleashed on the sisterhood, the whirlwind unravelled the spells which secured the set stakes against mischance. Guy-ropes cracked to the belly of canvas, flogged in the gusts to thrashed seams.

  ‘Get me the lane watch!’ Prime Selidie screamed. She slapped off the hands of the distraught novice, arrived in her wake in the foolish pursuit of regaling her in proper dress. ‘Bring the sister on duty here. Now!’

  ‘She knows nothing!’ a breathless fourth-rank responded, just come in, and blotting a laid-open cheek. ‘Only a clash of arcane frequencies fit to raise fire and storm could seed such an onslaught against us.’

  ‘Bane of my existence!’ Prime Selidie snapped at the trembling young initiate, who still cowered, clutching her mantle. ‘Find the senior peeress. Send her to me!’

  The central wardings were not going to hold: as the cresting wave hammered the mastered defences, laced over the inner pavilions, the crystals focused as anchors keened under mounting stress. Selidie faced the horrific disaster: every major focus jewel in her keeping could soon be exposed to this hammering threat. Irreplaceable tools, each one was required to spear-head the Koriani agenda. Wrapped in silk were Elaira’s personal quartz, and the most rarefied wands attuned for healing, as well as the ancient set of matched tourmalines that had shielded the Prime’s entourage for centuries before the order’s Atheran residence. In its box, priceless, the Skyron aquamarine stood second to the disastrously compromised Great Waystone.

  ‘I’ll have a living wall raised!’ the Prime cried as the gaunt peeress arrived at a breathless run. ‘Go! In my name, make this happen!’

  ‘Madam, your will!’ The rattled senior bolted to gather the resident inner circle, and create the tranced shield from the breathing flesh of their sister initiates.

  Selidie shouted more orders to direct her hysterical servants. While the upset outside ripped her compound to havoc, inside her central pavilion, attendants and boy wards collided in the rush to lock and seal precious items inside wood chests lined in copper. Dust blew in on the knifing, chill air. Banners streamed, unruly, and cracked their pole standards. Upheaved stakes with their overturned sigils of guard whistled air-borne, and tore the stout canvas that sheltered the Alliance wounded. Screams arose through the hubbub, shrill with panic and pain, as the ridge-pole on one of the healers’ tents snapped its mortised sockets and toppled.

  A seeress’s rallying cry sent more initiates scrambling to stem the disaster, while others, snatched from the throes of activity, became culled to build the tranced circle to buffer the beseiged encampment. Crisis forced novices and seasoned enchantresses to act side by side, in their dash to assist. They linked hands, encircled the main pavilion, and melded their powers, subservient to their Prime’s will. Knowledge perfected through millennia of practice steadied their combined effort. Against uncertainty and terror, their ragged chant rose, blended into a gull’s cry of female voices, welded into aligned strength.

  What a crystal focal point could not sustain, human resource must counter. Each sister recognized her stark peril: in service, her life was expendable. Under oath to her Prime, each one might be used or discarded for the greater need of the order. At any cost, the boundary they secured must not fail. And no guarded line they might raise could outlast the fallible stamina of breathing flesh. Sharp under that pressure, Selidie accepted her overrobe. She sat down, discomposed, while her flinching maidservant combed and dressed her fly-away hair. Throughout, she demanded Lirenda’s attendance, speaking through the tug of the brush and the rake of gemmed combs that pinned up her coiffure. ‘Find out what’s happened! By any means! The order cannot afford the weakness of ignorance.’

  No crystal might be risked for a scrying. Whatever beset their luckless encampment, the effects were too volatile for a fixed matrix. More orders summoned three younger novices as vessels to be tapped for straight power. As they knelt, obedient, the prime cipher commanded: their green talents were pooled to spearhead Lirenda’s expedient probe. The response the former First Senior unveiled fanned cold fury to redoubled outrage. For the force at large was of Arithon’s making, a swell of pitched sound that threatened to strip every focus crystal within reach. Worse, the ranging harmonics up-ended resonant spellcraft, unravelling the flux contained by chained sigils into ungoverned mayhem.

  ‘The conjury itself is a Paravian working,’ the head peeress determined at length. ‘Its vectored intent will not harm life and limb. But all quartz under load will be damaged. Ones not in work are at risk of being energetically stripped of their imprinted records.’

  ‘That’s quite enough to destroy our initiative, expunge our kept archives, and rifle our innermost secrets!’ Prime Selidie snarled. ‘This goes beyond provocation and insolence!’

  Actual facts proved demeaningly worse, as the early reports trickled in from outside: the order was not the intentional target, but the by-standing casualty of a disruption aimed at the Alliance’s war camp. The first of the distraught afflicted poured in, as the Prime’s narrow feet were being laced into her shoes. The sisterhood’s healers received hardened camp-followers and drudges with chapped hands, each bearing startling tales: that an enthrallment arranged by the Spinner of Darkness was clearing the Alliance campaign field. A wave of desertion swept Lysaer’s encampments. Whole companies disbanded, harnessing the teams that moved supply, or seizing the ox-trains that man oeuvred the siege engines. The laden wagons were all rolling out. They left in no order, oblivious to the outcries of dedicate officers. Galleys vacated the seaward blockade, then sailed, loaded down with trained troops. Most men had abandoned their armour and tents, and even their surcoats and weaponry. Others marched with the clothes on their backs, their kit knapsacks crammed with provender filched from the cook-shacks.

  Prime Selidie listened and took stock. By now, she could hear the spontaneous migration that clogged the trade-road. Snatches of riotous laughter and singing carried in on the morning breeze. ‘Where is Lysaer s’Ilessid?’

  No one knew. Loose rumour conflicted. Some folk claimed he had ascended to Athlieria, riding the flash of a light-bolt. Others insisted he had jumped, or fallen, from the unstable scarp and drowned in the tide-race by the citadel. The starry-eyed fools who
lounged, swilling ale, swore the Blessed Lord had stormed into the citadel and demolished the s’Brydion duke and his brothers. The gamut had just one common thread: the white horse with its gleaming caparisons was found wandering riderless, by one of the grooms.

  A chit, big-bellied with a soldier’s get, guffawed when she was questioned further. ‘What use has an avatar for a mount, when at whim, he might claim heaven’s wings?’

  By noon, a more credible story came with a foot-page who asked for a tincture. ‘A small band of loyal officers with the honour guard brought a draped litter into the command tent. Their burden was delivered into the care of my divine Lordship’s valet.’ The same servant had sent him, the page added with pride. ‘I’ve been asked to collect a remedy to reduce fever.’

  ‘The wind-bag pretender has knocked himself prostrate!’ the Prime’s withered attendant declared. An acerbic woman whose decades of service adhered to benign practicality, she banged down a tray piled with tea-cakes, as though nibbling might ease the Prime’s furious strain and quiet the bellowing upset. ‘Such a profligate waste of elemental force! Ought to clip the s’Ilessid man’s arrogance, to be flat on his rear, sweating back-lash.’

  Prime Selidie had no opinion to add. Now clothed in state, enthroned in her chair, she seethed in silenced frustration. Her plot to play Lysaer through the curse, and the pressured assault she had hoped to unleash on the citadel, had become summarily thwarted. The malice that narrowed her beautiful eyes fore-promised a vengeful retort. ‘We must seize the moment. Find an alternative angle, force a reverse, and recoup our advantage.’

  That, or bow to an appalling defeat, with the primary crystals brought in from offworld destroyed beyond hope of replacement. The enchantresses now holding the precarious, last wardings were only human, and fallible. Once their circle collapsed, the blow to the order did not bear imagining.

  ‘Time!’ snapped Prime Selidie. ‘How long can Arithon stand in the breach, upholding Paravian magecraft?’ Could any master initiate endure the wild onslaught this brazen act must have summoned?

  No one knew.

  While the ranging assault wore on through the day, and the trial of resistance endured without let-up, the stop-gap placement of flesh-and-blood conjury stood off the derangement, just barely. Selidie fumed, a flushed doll mantled in violet. Before exhaustion unstrung her ranked talent, she must shoulder the risk and send out the best of her untried young girls. Knowledge was power: she rejected pity and dispatched the ones who were not yet sworn in, or attuned to bear a quartz crystal. With them went hand-picked, talentless servants trusted for their sharp eyes. Impatient, while her sent agents were abroad, the Prime hounded the crowding petitioners. She sifted through their petty accounts, seeking answers amid the coarse dialect of the washing-women and camp-followers who came asking for talismans. The latest included officers’ equerries, whose excited complaints described an outbreak of inexplicable, comatose sleep.

  That curiosity seemed worth pursuit. A first-level healer was given the errand. ‘Strip your personal crystal,’ Prime Selidie commanded. ‘Take a copper amulet stamped with sigils for fiend bane, but alter the closing cipher to act for your own protection. If that construct holds off this Paravian crafting, go out on field rounds. Avoid the deserters. Stay unobtrusive. Examine these victims of unnatural sleep and bring back your findings forthwith!’

  The young woman returned from the war camp, flushed and gasping with pain. The skin at her hip was blistered raw where the wardings in copper had stressed, and singed through her satchel. ‘The defences held, madam, but for only an hour,’ she related, trembling before the Prime’s chair. ‘I bore the discomfort until the hot metal set the cloth wrapping aflame.’

  The remains of the stamped strip showed softened edges and fusing. ‘Exposed for more time, the inscribed seals would have run molten!’ exclaimed the shocked sister called in to consult.

  ‘Sit, child!’ Selidie urged her young charge. ‘Be at ease. You’ve done well.’ Her peremptory wave dispatched an attendant for burn salve and dressings. ‘What did you find out in the officers’ tents?’

  The shaken girl resumed her report. ‘This is no malady. The afflicted appear to be deeply asleep. Their minds are not broken. Their life signs do not labour. Though I could not scan auras without my crystal, I detected no harmful effects on these victims.’ A gasped break, as a healer cut the singed shift away from the seared flesh underneath. ‘The state seems like a profound suspension of spirit, as though the stricken are dreaming.’ The queer correlation took longer to sort, that those who lay prostrate by Arithon’s working were men of unshakeable devotion to Lysaer’s cause.

  The sixth-rank senior ventured her opinion. ‘If they waken, they would make a singular weapon to prosecute war with cold fury.’

  Which suggested a core following, its dross stripped away, pitched to spear-head a relentless blood-bath. Extreme fanatics would wield the Light’s cause ahead of their own survival. The concept gave even Prime Selidie pause. Past question, today’s action was shifting the balance by removing the temperate hearts who might have settled for truce.

  The Prime’s delicate jaw hardened. She withheld her orders to disband the healers’ camp or retire the central pavilion. Ruled by fixed purpose and stubborn fury, no Koriani Matriarch would yield to a crown prince’s hand. Not before testing all options. Since Lirenda’s experience knew the Teir’s’Ffalenn best, Prime Selidie ploughed into her captive mind and ransacked for fresh inspiration.

  One memory emerged, clear as the noon daylight, drawn from a past encounter. Years before, in a baiting exchange with Lirenda, Arithon had seized control of a Koriani scrying by asserting his bardic talent through air. Today’s assault also rode on the winds. Dispersed upon the effortless breeze, such a crafting acknowledged no boundary. Logic suggested that an earth spell might run this bold assault to ground.

  A gleam spiking her glance, Selidie discarded her forced rapport with Lirenda and spoke her next string of instructions. ‘I want more copper talismans fashioned for baneward! Immerse these in water inside of a clay jug, stamped with seals to dissipate fire. Then find me a girl volunteer, or better, a boy ward who’s due for a reprimand. Have him take several such constructs outside. Find out whether their charms can be trusted to frame a stable defence!’

  ‘Earth sigils! How clever!’ exclaimed the senior peeress, cut off straightaway for impertinence. ‘Your will, of course, Matriarch.’ Before the Prime’s glowering censure, everyone fled but Lirenda, whose choice stayed proscribed.

  The Matriarch paced. Up and down the lush carpet, over copper-thread patterns for ward and guard, the rich train of her robe hissed behind her. Pale, predatory, she trembled with nerves. The chants holding the protective circle outside came and went through the punching gusts that billowed the tent pavilion. While chill draughts leached the meagre heat thrown off by the braziers, Lirenda received no release. Forced to stay crouched upon a low hassock, she remained, disregarded as an idle tool until the Prime’s need called for use of her talent.

  Time crawled, until midafternoon, when word arrived that the stricken sleeper had reawakened. The frightened man-servant who returned for the order’s learned help was dismayed to find his case heard in the presence of Selidie Prime. His master, he said, had stumbled erect, acting like a changed creature.

  ‘He could not stop weeping. Then he ordered his tent and belongings packed straightaway to move out. Plaguing dreams,’ the distraught fellow insisted, afraid for his charge’s derangement. ‘My lord sees nothing else but a horrific future, and claims that he witnessed his beloved family, broken and crying.’

  The servant was given a strong sedative to assuage his stressed officer’s grieving. Once he was sent off, Selidie called for additional counsel from the encampment’s most advanced healer.

  ‘By the servant’s account, this bizarre phenomenon would appear to be slanted against Lysaer’s favour,’ the third-rank grey robe appraised. A raw-boned, kind woman, she flus
hed with unease before the high chain of command. Her skills revolved around day-today troubles, her best work beneath the Prime’s notice. But not now, with the hospice reeling from the strange powers wrought in the citadel.

  ‘Elaborate! At once.’ Selidie’s supremacy brooked no delays: by the sisterhood’s oath, she demanded.

  The sweating healer unburdened. ‘The Light’s dedicates might become sapped of conviction while they are deeply asleep. Suppose they arise afterward with their priorities reordered by dreaming? We don’t know the range of the tonal harmonic a Paravian influence might engender, far less understand how that arcane force impacts an untrained human consciousness! If time’s track is altered, these victims might visit a posited future. Whose morale would not crumple, if a husband was able to sense his abandoned wife’s pain, or the bitter despair of his children?’

  ‘We would see Lysaer’s laid siege on Alestron torn apart at one stroke.’ Prime Selidie thumped her gloved wrist on the chair arm. She would not see her coveted quarry uncaged. Fierce rage broke all bounds, that Arithon s’Ffalenn might slip through her grasp with bloodless impunity.

  ‘I will break this unnatural compulsion that’s afflicting the Alliance followers!’ the Prime Matriarch vowed. Since her useless hands could not cast the complex chains of sigils to weave the conjury, she fumed for the fact that she must demand help. Then fresh news arrived: that the construct which paired the clay jug with the talismans proved out her hopeful theory: an earth-linked defence could deflect the worst impact of Arithon’s unorthodox working.

  Deadly, now given the ground for response, Prime Selidie settled back in her chair. She would ply her fulcrum and shift the offensive back in her order’s favour.