“Fire in the stable,” said Illvin, his laconic voice at odds with his sudden lunge forward. “Foix, I want you, please.” He sped away down the stairs, long legs taking them three at a time.
Now it begins in earnest, thought Ista, her stomach clenching.
Liss’s eyes were huge. “Royina, may I go with them?” she gasped.
“Yes, go,” Ista released her. She bolted away. Every competent hand would be needed… And then there is me. She took herself down off the wall, at least.
Arhys, running past her, called, “Lady, will you look to Cattilara?”
“Of course.” A task of sorts. Or maybe Arhys, a prudent commander, merely wanted to get all the useless deadwood stored in one safe place.
Ista found Cattilara’s ladies in hysterics; when she had finished with them, their noise was at least muted to well-suppressed hysterics. Cattilara lay unchanged, except for an already visible shrinking of the soft flesh of her face, tightening across her bones. The demon light was knotted tensely within her, making no attempt—yet—to fight for ascendance. Ista blew out her breath in unease, but made sure that the soul-fire continued to pour out toward Arhys without impediment.
THROUGH THE ENDLESS AFTERNOON, ISTA MADE FREQUENT FORAYS from the marchess’s chambers to check the effect of the various ripples of sorcery light that scraped through her perceptions. Only that first great assault on the water supply seemed fully coordinated. After that the attack broke into a disorder mirrored by its effects. People fell and broke bones. The horses saved from the burning stable block, let loose in the star court, knocked down a gallery in their squealing and plunging. A wasp nest fell with it, and three men died screaming, choking, and convulsing from the stings; more men were knocked about and injured by the sting-maddened horses.
Other, smaller fires started in other courts. The little remaining water dwindled rapidly. Most of the stored meat, no matter how preserved, was found to be starting to rot and stink; bread and fruit grew green mold that seemed to spread even as one watched. Weevil larvae burgeoned in the flour supply. Leather straps and fiber ropes rotted and came apart in people’s hands. Pottery cracked. Boards broke. Mail and swords began to rust with the speed of a maiden’s blush.
Any men with histories of tertiary fever began violent relapses; Cattilara’s pleasant dining hall was soon filled with men on pallets, moaning, burning, shivering, and hallucinating. Dy Cabon was pressed into service to help tend the sick and, unbelievably soon, the dying. By evening, the faces of the soldiers and servants that Ista passed had gone beyond edgy and frightened to a pale, deadened, bewildered shock.
At sunset, Ista climbed the north tower, the highest, to take stock. Liss, stinking with smoke and limping from being stepped on by frantic hooves, mounted slowly after her. A man in a gray-and-gold tabard clumped up behind to drop an armload of stones onto a growing pile by the battlement, exchange uneasy grunts with two comrades whose unstrung warped bows were flung aside into a corner, then turn and clump back down the winding stairs.
In the level light of the westering sun, the unpeopled countryside appeared weirdly beautiful and serene. In the grove of walnut trees, the Jokonans’ well-ordered camp seemed to be enjoying a feast; the only smokes were thin aromatic trails rising from cooking fires. Little clusters of horsemen rode about, patrolling, delivering messages—out for an evening jaunt, for all Ista could tell. All abroad wore sea-green tabards.
The town, behind its walls in the valley, also sent up plumes of smoke, but ugly and black. With better access to water than the castle crowning the hill, the townsmen had kept most of their blazes from spreading out of control, so far. But the few tiny figures Ista could see moving fearfully through its streets and alleys were stiff with fatigue. The men behind its walls crouched, or sat barely moving, or lay as if in exhausted naps. Or dead.
Leaden bootsteps scuffed on the stone stairs, and Ista looked around to see Lord Illvin emerge onto the tower platform carrying a small, greasy cloth sack. Even the flushed light of sunset failed to make his face look anything but filthy and pale. Soot and sweat had melted together, to be rubbed in odd streaks by whatever swipe of his hand had dashed the grime from his eyes. He had abandoned chain mail and scorched tabard hours ago, and his plain linen shirt, dotted with small black spark holes, was half stuck to his torso.
“Ah,” he said in a voice that sounded as though it came from the bottom of a mine shaft. “There you are.”
She nodded greetings; he came to her shoulder, and together they stared down into the disaster of Porifors, behind its deceptively blank and solid outer walls.
The whole stable block was burned-out. Blackened timbers were strewn across it, and messes of broken roof tiles spilled over them like blood. Temporarily, no other smoke was rising, but one corner of the kitchen block was also blackened and fallen in. The star court was a mess—one gallery knocked down, the fountain empty and choked with filth. Horses were tethered along one side; their backs looked odd and lozenge-shaped from this high angle of view. What people who could be seen scuttled about bent and anxious.
“Have you seen Learned dy Cabon lately?” Ista asked Illvin.
He nodded. “Still holding up in the sickrooms. We have pallets strewn through three chambers now. Half a dozen fellows just came down with dysentery. With no wash water left, it won’t even take demons to spread that all over the fortress. Bastard’s hell. At this rate, Sordso will be able to take Porifors by assault tomorrow with six ponies, a rope ladder, and a Quadrene temple children’s choir.” His teeth gritted, white against his blackened face. “Oh.” He held out the sack. “Would you like some baked horsemeat? It’s not rotted. Yet.”
Ista eyed it dubiously. “I don’t know. Is it Feather?”
“No. Happily.”
“Not…right now, thank you.”
“You should keep up your strength. Five gods know when we’ll eat again.” He dug out a chunk and dutifully munched it. “Liss?” He held out the bag to her.
“No, thank you,” she echoed Ista thinly.
Failing to take his own advice, he passed the bag on to the former archers, now stone-throwers, who accepted it with murmured thanks and somewhat less revulsion. A crack sounded, as another timber in the stable block gave way and fell in a cloud of soot. Illvin returned to the inner side of the tower to stare down into the debacle again.
“That was one day. Less. Bastard’s tears, what will we be reduced to in one week?”
Ista leaned on the sun-warmed stone with arms that shook, past prayer. “I have brought this down upon you all,” she said in a low voice. “I am sorry.”
His brows flicked up; he rested on one elbow beside her, looking across at her. “I’m not so sure you can claim that honor, lady. The situation here was well along this road before you ever arrived in our midst. If your presence had not baited the Jokonans into attack now, you may be sure they would have struck within another month or so—against a fortress with both of its most experienced commanders dead and rotted, or worse, and none even to explain the horrors pouring down out of nowhere upon it.”
Ista rubbed her aching brow. “So we’re actually not sure if I make any difference, except this way I hand myself as hostage and pawn to Joen.” Perhaps. She stared down at the patterned paving stones, far below her. There are other ways to avoid becoming a hostage.
He followed her gaze, and his eyes narrowed in a penetrating frown. He reached out with two fingers and gently turned her chin toward him. “You made a difference to me,” he said. “Any woman who can wake a man from a sleep of death with a kiss deserves a second glance, I think.”
Ista snorted bitterly. “I didn’t wake you with a kiss. I only disrupted and redirected the flow of your soul-fire, as I did later with Cattilara. The kiss was just…self-indulgence.”
A little smile curved his lips. “I thought you said it was a dream.”
“Uh…” Oh. So she had. His lips curved up farther, maddeningly. She said, “A stupid impulse, then.”
“Come, I thought it was a brilliant impulse. You underestimate yourself, lady.”
Ista flushed. “I am afraid I have no talent for”—she swallowed—“dalliance. When I was young I was too stupid. Now I’m old, I am too drab.” Too stupid then too mad then too drab then too late. “I’m just not the sort.”
“Really?” He turned around, leaned against the battlement, and took up her hand with an air of great curiosity. One sooty finger began to trace the dirt-streaked lines within her palm. “I wonder why not? They say I am a man of wit. I should be able to figure it out, with a little study. Map the ground plan of Castle Ista, mark the defenses…”
“Find the weaknesses?” Firmly, she took her hand back.
“All right, a deal of study.”
“Lord Illvin, this is not the time or place for this!”
“Truly. I’m so tired I could hardly stand up. Nor climb to my feet, either.”
There was a short silence.
His lips peeled back on a flash of teeth. “Ha. I saw your mouth twitch, then.”
“It did not.” It did now, helplessly, as she was reminded of the bird in its nest.
“Oh, better—she smirks!”
“I do not.”
“Poets speak of hope in ladies’ smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.” Somehow, his thumb was massaging her palm again, tracing the subtle muscles of her hand. It felt wonderful. She wished he would rub her shoulders, her feet, her neck, her everything-that-hurt. And everything hurt.
“I thought you said Arhys was the great seducer in the family.” She tried to muster the energy to take her hand back again, and failed.
“Not at all. He’s never seduced a woman in his life. They leapt on him from ambush all by themselves. Not without cause, I grant you.” He smiled, briefly. “There is this, about being the sparring partner of the best swordsman in Caribastos. I always lost. But if ever I meet the third best swordsman in Caribastos, he’s going to be in very deep trouble. Arhys was always better at all things we turned our hands to. But there is one thing that I am quite certain I can do that he cannot.”
It was the fault of the hand massage; it lulled her. She said unthinkingly, “What?”
“Fall in love with you. Sweet Ista.”
She jerked back. She had heard that endearment before, but not on those lips. “Don’t call me that.”
“Bitter Ista?” His brows climbed. “Cranky Ista? Cross, ill-tempered, cantankerous Ista?”
She snorted; he relaxed, and his lips quirked again. “Well, I can no doubt learn to adjust my vocabulary.”
“Lord Illvin, be serious.”
“Certainly,” he said at once. “As you command, Royina.” He bowed slightly. “I am old enough to have many regrets. I’ve made my share of mistakes, some”—he grimaced—“hideous indeed, as you well know. But it was the little, easy things—the kisses I did not give, and the love I did not speak, because there was no time, no place—and then, no chance… Surprisingly sharp sorrows those are, for their size. I think all our chances grow narrow, tonight. So I shall reduce my regrets—however brief—by one, at least…”
He leaned closer. Fascinated, she did not retreat. Somehow, that long arm had found its way around her aching shoulders. He folded her in. He was quite tall, she reflected; if she didn’t bend her head back, she was going to end up with her nose squashed to his breastbone. She looked up.
His lips tasted of soot, and salt sweat, and the longest day of her life. Well, and horsemeat, but at least it was fresh horsemeat. His dark eyes glittered between narrowed lids as her arms found their way around that ridged torso and pressed him inward. What was it she had snarled to dy Cabon—mimicking above what is desired below…?
Some minutes later—too many? too few?—he lifted his head again and set her a little from him, as though to look upon her without having to cross his eyes. His slight smile was altogether drained of irony now, though not of satisfaction. She blinked and stepped back.
Liss, sitting cross-legged against the parapet on the opposite side of the platform, was staring up with her mouth open. The two soldiers weren’t even pretending to be watching Jokonans. Their riveted expressions were of men contemplating a daunting feat they had no desire to emulate, such as swallowing fire, or being the first to charge up a scaling ladder.
“Time,” Illvin murmured, “is where you take it. It will not linger for you.”
“That is so,” whispered Ista.
She had to give his dalliance this much credit; the stones seemed suddenly a much less attractive solution to her plight. That had been his intent, she had no doubt.
A dark violet splash of light sparked past her inner vision, and Ista’s head turned to follow it. From somewhere below, an outraged cry rang out. She sighed, too wearied to pursue the mystery. “I don’t even want to look.”
Illvin’s head, too, had turned at the cry. By his lack of further craning, he also shared her surfeit of horrors. But then he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing. “You looked around before we heard anything,” he noted.
“Yes. I see the sorcerous attacks as flashes of light in my inner vision. Like little bolts of lightning, flying from source to target, or like streaking fire-arrows. I can’t tell what their effect will be just by seeing them, though; they all look much the same.”
“Can you tell sorcerers from ordinary men just by looking? I can’t.”
“Oh, yes. Both Cattilara’s demon and Foix’s appear to me as shapes of shadow and light within the boundaries of their own souls, which, since they are both living persons, are bounded by their bodies. Foix’s demon still retains the shape of a bear. Arhys’s ragged soul trails him, as though it struggles to keep up.”
“How far away can you tell if a person is a sorcerer?”
She shrugged. “As far as my eye can see, I suppose. No, farther than that: for my inner eye sees spirit shapes right through matter, if I pay attention, and concentrate, and perhaps close my outer eyes to reduce the confusion. Tents, walls, bodies, all are transparent to the gods, and to god-sight.”
“What about a sorcerer’s sight?”
“I am not sure. Foix seemed not to have much, before I shared mine, but his elemental is an inexperienced one.”
“Huh.” He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. “Come over here.” He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking the walnut grove. “Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen’s sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?”
Ista blinked. “I don’t know. I could try.”
The trees’ feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men’s voices carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove, the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.
Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here, could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her…she took another breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul once more.
Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot. Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or tangle.
“Yes, I can see them,” she told Illvin. “Some are snubbed up near to Joen, some are all spread out across the camp.” Her lips moved as she made her
count. “Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether.”
She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans’ second camp investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around, toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley upstream. “All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her sorcerers as close under her eye as possible.”
She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. “Most of the sorcerers seem to be sheltered in tents. One is standing under a tree, looking this way.” She could not see his physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.
“Hm,” said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. “Can Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?”
“Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups broke—and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began.” She glanced warily back over her shoulder at Illvin’s tense, closed expression. His eyes were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much pleasure. “What are you thinking?”
“I am thinking…that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors…” He drew a breath, and wheeled. “Liss.”
She jerked upright. “Lord Illvin?”
“Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found.”
She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower’s turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen’s camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.