In Siege of Daylight

by Gregory S Close

  In Siege of Daylight is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or rituals of sorcerous destruction is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Gregory S. Close

  Cover design, art and logo copyright © 2012 Mike Nash

  Editor: Thomas Weaver

  First publication: April 2013

  First edition

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  IN SIEGE of DAYLIGHT

  ISBN: 0988852012

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9888520-1-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9888520-0-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013903439

  Gregory S Close, San Carlos, CA

  Gregory S. Close

  www.lightdarkandshadow.com

  @gsclose

  Mike Nash

  www.mike-nash.com

  @MikeNash

  Thomas Weaver

  www.northofandover.wordpress.com

  @Weaver2392

  In Memory of Maxwell L. Close

  My Obi-Wan,

  My Gandalf,

  My Friend and My Father.

  1941 – 1997

  CONTENTS

  PRELUDE

  CHAPTER ONE: MYLYR GAEAL

  CHAPTER TWO: THE MESSENGER

  CHAPTER THREE: PAST AND PRESENT

  CHAPTER FOUR: HOMECOMING

  CHAPTER FIVE: RAOGMYZTSANOGG

  CHAPTER SIX: BAD NEWS GETS WORSE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: STORMS AND WARDS

  CHAPTER EIGHT: PASSAGES

  CHAPTER NINE: WALKING IN RAINBOWS

  CHAPTER TEN: DWYNLEIGSH

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: UNDER THE SPUR

  CHAPTER TWELVE: OLD BONES

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ROSES IN WINTER

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SONGS FOR A KING

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE NYRUL CAYL

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: OSZMAGOTH

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: LIGHTS IN THE DARK

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: HUNTING GAMES

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: PREY AT BEDTIME

  CHAPTER TWENTY: PAYING DEBTS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: TOO MUCH TALK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: ANOTHER FOR THE LISTS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: FIRE AT THE GATES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CASTING SHADOWS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: A MOST GENEROUS HOST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE WELLSPRING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: SHADOWS AND PORTENTS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: SHADES OF MEMORY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: WHISPERS OF DEATH

  CHAPTER THIRTY: WISDOM, HONOR & VALOR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: WELCOME TO WAIT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: A RHYME FOR ALL REASONS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: CUTTING IT FINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE PRICE OF FRIENDSHIP

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: DAY FOR KNIGHTS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: KEEPING PLACES

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: A FRIENDLY TOAST

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: WHEN ANSWERS COME LOOKING…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: …QUESTIONS PURSUE

  CHAPTER FORTY: AN UNPLEASANT DUTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: THE INEVITABLE BY SURPRISE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: COLD TRUTH

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: PERSUASIONS

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: SALT AND COOKIES

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: A TASTE OF HOME

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: OUT ON A LIMB

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: A MOMENT ALONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: THE BITTER CUP

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: IN DREAMS ALIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY: A SHORT ORDER

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: SACRED HOURS

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: FITTING PROPOSALS

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE: A MOMENT TOO SOON

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: A PAN FOR FRYING

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE: THE KING’S LANCE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX: NOW, INTO THE FIRE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: RAINBOWS AT DUSK

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT: DANGEROUS WAYS

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE: VICTIMS OF TRUTH

  CHAPTER SIXTY: RETREAT TO CONQUEST

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE: MEYR GA’GLYLEYN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO: SUCCESSION

  POSTLUDE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PRELUDE

  The old man navigated the maze of tables in small, practiced steps. His arms were pressed close to his sides, hands clasped before him, avoiding the precarious array of hand-blown glass vessels that he’d spent his lifetime arranging. He passed them without a glance, ignoring the bubbling multicolored contents, his watery blue eyes focused on the small open window at the other end of the room. The pale, pure light of Illuné shone in through the weathered stone opening, while the Dead Moon, Ghaest, secreted itself in her flowing cloak of clouds. He stepped into the moonlight, the brisk breath of winter on his face, and looked down from his high tower toward the frost-dusted ground below.

  They were there, just as he’d seen in his vision, gathering about his door with broadswords and short curved bows. Their eyes burned yellow in the night, their breath hot wisps of steam between sharpened teeth and narrow lips.

  Dirty beasts, the hrumm, he thought. Brutish creatures.

  It had been decades since he’d seen their kind at his doorstep. But the old man’s eyes passed over them without interest or fear. They could not harm him in any way that mattered. The Pale Man was with them, at the front, his dark cloak snapping in the wind and the ashen blade of his vile sword bare and hungry in his hand. As it was in the dream, so the Pale Man spoke.

  “Gai! Open the door. You know why we come.”

  The lines of the wizened face in the window wrinkled into a grimace. Gai knew the sword-bearer from a time long past and a life already lived and buried. Esmaedi Elidiaeol. Exile. Oath-breaker. And a wizard of the Tenth Order, at the very least – even without the bonesword.

  Gaious Altuorus was not short on titles and honors himself, though such accolades lay under the grave dirt of his previous life. Still, he had seen worse in his day.

  “Open it thyself, Esmaedi,” he growled. “Or have your pets beat it down for you.”

  The pallid face of the man at the door looked up toward Gai. The smile crossing his delicate features almost concealed the intent in his almond-shaped eyes. “Ah, there you are.” The voice was measured and polite, if a bit dismissive. “You locked in a tower, and me beating down the door? How times change, Gaious.”

  “How indeed,” answered Gai. “Once, you warred with legions under your care, Esmaedi. Now, you hold the leashes of filthy animals, and are but held on a leash yourself.”

  The Pale Man laughed. It was nothing more than a conversational chuckle, as if two friends were bantering to and fro over morning sweetmeats. “I am called Dieavaul now – Esmaedi is as dead as the Empire we served. There is such power in a name, don’t you think, Gaious? Or is it simply Gai…” His voice lilted over the words playfully. “No matter. I hold a new leash, over new filthy beasts, but I see little difference. One must have means to one’s ends, yes?”

  “If you mean to have my end, I welcome it. Don’t think fear of death will serve you here.”

  Dieavaul shrugged. “You have made your life irrelevant, Gai. I seek your end no more than I would seek that of a toothless old lion hiding in the back of his cave. Spare your life, if you wish, or forsake your oath and make your grand last stand. Either way, I tire of this discourse. Open the door.” The Pale Man gestured, and without pause, his hrummish soldiers hefted a felled pine trunk and heaved it on their shoulders. “I’ve not built a reputation as a pati
ent man.”

  “Indeed,” responded Gai, “and I’m not known as an accommodating man. If you are intent on murdering me, I will not help the dagger along on its course. Good night.”

  With that, Gai slammed the shutters on the night and his unwanted guests. He turned and sighed, placing a trembling hand to his chest to alleviate the dreadful weight gathering there. He stumbled to his high-backed oaken chair and sat down on the threadbare cushion even as the relentless pounding began below. Agrylon had strengthened the timbers with a Word of Binding when last he visited, but it would not delay their entrance long.

  Gai had not recognized the Pale Man’s current incarnation in his dream, when first it came upon him. But in the flesh, those mocking black eyes stared up at him and sparked his memory. Once, he had known Esmaedi as a War Mage of the Third Legion, apprentice to the Archmage Dmylriani herself, and High Blade of the Lymiruia. Even then Dieavaul had been a man of great power. But it was not the man that worried Gaious.

  No, it was the sword – ilnymhorrim. A weapon of legend, few even believed it existed outside the metered verse of the Song of Andulin.

  Osrith had believed, he remembered. The recently departed mercenary’s own experience with the Pale Man attested that the Hellforged had chosen well for its dark purposes.

  And now it had come for him.

  What saddened Gai most was leaving his work. He had come so far in his research at this secluded retreat, it was a shame it might all soon be in ashes. The trespassers entered below with a splintering crash, followed soon after by dreadful screams.

  Gai frowned. He’d told Osrith not to delay himself by setting any traps before he left. Valuable time had been wasted.

  Gai closed his eyes, muttering a soft incantation. He whimpered as his iiyir coalesced at his command; he gathered and channeled it only to turn it back inward, against itself. His life energy was reluctant to facilitate such a self-destructive act, but his iron will forced it to obey.

  I won’t die by that blade, he resolved, and not for the first time. He couldn’t risk revealing his knowledge to the likes of the Pale Man or the Undying King he served. Gai found it ironic that the first offensive spell he’d cast since burning his Black Robes and coming to the mountains, he cast against himself.

  Gai’s heart slowed.

  He wondered if killing himself actually violated the oath he had taken that day, as the flames consumed his raiment of death. Does violence against oneself to save others fall under the mien of offense or defense? He supposed once he was in the greylands, he might have time to contemplate that. In his stead, Agrylon would likely blast the lot to flinders with angry magic, devoid of any such philosophical worry. Gai himself might once have done so, before forsaking the ways of war. He had certainly seen, and dealt, enough death and devastation in his lifetime.

  But the Pale Man would not fall so easily. Esmaedi would not prove easy prey even without ilnymhorrim. With it, depending on how much myth and legend had exaggerated its powers, Esmaedi might be more than a match for both him and Agrylon.

  Gai’s breath grew shallow.

  He drew some small comfort from the fact that Osrith and the dreamstone were already away. He had done what he could to warn them. If there was anything to be done about the evil across the mountains, it would be for Guillaume and Agrylon to determine.

  Gai convulsed quietly.

  It wasn’t painful. He had removed all feeling of pain with Saint Aerylan’s Wort in his morning tea, but his body still fought for life despite its own best interest, struggling against the increasing stranglehold his own powerful iiyir had clamped onto his feeble physical self.

  He wheezed one last time, and then his lungs succumbed to his deadly magic and were still.

  There was a commotion from the hallway beyond his chamber, then a gurgled scream and crash of bodies down the long spiral stair, accented by angry cursing. Gai’s lips curled slightly as the gentle light in his eyes grew dim. With the last issue of sound from his throat, his heart’s tired beating stopped, and he felt his body drifting away.

  His last thoughts were of his messenger.

  Osrith. It’s all in his hands now…

  CHAPTER ONE

  MYLYR GAEAL

  GREY. It swallowed the world in its uncompromising maw, reaching down from the sullen skies to the snow-blanketed hills below with no concern for what lay in between. Not long ago the snow had been brilliant and white, a mantle of purest silver aglisten in the crisp awareness of day. Now, in the soft but unyielding grip of twilight, only grey.

  The slopes of the Crehr ne Og were gentle here, the dwindling swells of a great undulation of limestone and weathered marble that lapped at the shores of the grassy plains leagues below. Trees, naked of leaf in the seasonal chill, huddled in scattered thickets, growing denser and less passable the further into the highlands they reached. Small rivulets of water ran recklessly through narrow gullies, feeding into the crashing roar of the Vlue Moignan as the mighty river continued its own long journey to the crystal blue waters of the Ceil Maer.

  A ruined castle clung to a ragged promontory of bare stone, splitting the edges of the wilds. The aged foundations of the fortress clawed for purchase on the sheer weathered rock even as nature worked to strip its tenuous grip away. The dark hand-cut stone melted into the natural substance of the earth, each year more memory than testament to the dead hands that wrought it.

  Within the remains of the keep, smoke drifted into the sky from a low sputtering fire nestled in the half-shelter of a buckled archway where two figures bent over a game board. For but a moment, the light of the great moon Illuné shot down through the clouds, her pale lance finding a chink in the armor of the storm, and in that heartbeat their ghostly shadows danced on the granite walls of the empty fortress before vanishing again into the advancing night.

  Calvraign looked upon the somber landscape, lost in thought. Brohan often brought him to these ruins for the impromptu lessons that comprised his education. The displaced stones of the castle lay scattered about them, their glory long since surrendered to time and nature in all but legend. As a boy, Calvraign had eagerly awaited the long trip into the foothills. Then it had been an enchanted playground, a place where he did battle with honorless barbarians, matched wits with andu’ai and dragons and vanquished the unliving minions of Ewanbheir. Now, it was a study in history, warfare and politics. Those innocent games of his childhood seemed so far away now, buried by the layers of knowledge and experience that commonly smothered youth.

  Brohan still watched him, his sparkling green eyes hinting silent laughter. Not the mocking laughter all too common for those with his intellect and bearing, but rather a reflection of genuine mirth. His face was beautiful, skin smooth and black, body slender but strong. He had the long manicured fingers of a bard, as agile in the art of his instruments as in the weaving of his minor magics. He was dressed modestly in green and tan leathers, his winter cape pulled around his shoulders and the hood over his long, silken dark hair. It was rumored that his mother, a princess from one of the far lands to the west, had enjoyed a tryst with an aulden that left her Brohan as the unwelcome result. He had never asked Brohan if the rumors were true, but he suspected that the answer would only be his laugh of liquid silver in any case.

  Calvraign turned his thoughts back to the dark expanse of snow, ice and rock wherein he sat. Bad enough to gossip, he thought, but gossiping to myself? He cleared his mind with a shake of his head, struggling to remember what consternation had led to his distracted musings. One glance at the circular, five-tiered game board reminded him of his dilemma.

  Mylyr Gaeal was a game of kings and scholars. On its five translucent tiers were stylized monarchs, faerie, knights and other beasts of fact and legend, arrayed for battle. Though most versions of Mylyr Gaeal were based upon the Blood Wars, pitting the fae and their allies against the slaoithe, Brohan often spoke of other, more exotic boards on which the game could be played, with alternate rules and pieces. He had
promised that if Calvraign ever defeated him in the standard version that they would move next to the scylithwr board, which reenacted the ancient conflict of the giants, when the Duath Andai and the Neva Seough battled across the lands of Wyn, in the Time of Mists. For a good year now he had been losing to Brohan, though the last few games had brought him a small amount of grace in defeat. He was, even now, searching for that elusive bit of grace, but very little seemed evident.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself shall do little for victory, lad. A less forgiving opponent would already have claimed forfeit for your delay.”

  Calvraign frowned at Brohan in response. “Ach, be still! I’ll be about it in a moment.”

  “Temper, Cal,” chided Brohan. “Mylyr Gaeal is a game for civilized opponents. You must temper your anger with a sense of style and a sharp wit. By snapping at me, you have lost face. Had this game been played in the venue of the king’s court, even if somehow you managed a victory, you would have lost the respect of your peers.”

  “And how should I respond if so insulted?” challenged Calvraign defiantly.

  “Well, since you beg the answer…..” Brohan tapped a slender finger against his cheek. “Ah! Perhaps this: Please excuse my delay, sir, but you have left me so many options that I find myself distracted. Or maybe this: a thousand apologies, milord, but it seems your strategy, much like your company, has lulled me into a pleasant stupor. Better still –”

  “No need, Brohan. You’ve driven your wit home. I mustn’t forget the game within the game, if I take your meaning.”

  “Indeed. The sharper and more damaging the wit, the more entertainment the game provides the audience, many of whom are little interested in the strategy of the game itself. There is no insult too great for your opponent, so long as it is delivered during the game and with a smile. “Well,” he reconsidered, “assuming you are not playing too far above your station. Then it might be best to hold back your most poisonous barbs.”

  “After these many years, why tell me this now?” asked Calvraign. “We’re in the midst of the game, not my lecture.”

  “Why indeed?”

  Calvraign stared blankly at Brohan for a moment, then at the board. There must be something there that he had missed. Brohan had taught him a twofold lesson. Not only the art of insulting his opponent under the veil of grace, but perhaps the more relevant art of distraction as well. The threat must be real, if not obvious.