"Joen's sorcerers are now in place, it seems," said Ista flatly.
Foix swung around in wide-eyed dismay; within him, his bear shadow was on its feet, snarling. "What was the purpose of that! A warning? If they can do that, why not burst our bellies or our skulls and have it over with?"
Dy Cabon raised a shaking hand. "Free demons cannot slay directly—"
"The Bastard's own death demon does," said Ista. "I have seen it do so."
"That is a very special case. Free demons, those escaped into the realm of matter . . . well, they might try to slay directly, but—death opens a soul to the gods. Whether the soul chooses to advance through that door at that moment or not is a matter of will, but in that instant it opens both ways. And the demon is vulnerable to recapture."
"And so they jump away when their mount is slain ..." said Foix.
"Yes, but using magic to slay also creates a link between sorcerer and victim. The effort and the backwash are supposed to be very hard on the sorcerer, as well." He paused thoughtfully. "Of course, if a sorcerer uses magic to stampede your horse over a cliff, or any other indirect method of accomplishing your death, the risk does not apply."
A panting soldier in a gray-and-gold tabard burst through the door. "Lord Arhys! There is a Jokonan herald at the gate, demanding parley."
Arhys drew in his breath between his teeth. "Warning indeed. Notice. Well, they have all my attention now. Illvin, Foix, Learned dy Cabon—Royina—will you attend upon me? I want your sight and your counsel. But stay back below the battlement, out of view, as much as you may."
"Yes." Ista paused to release her ligature from Cattilara's neck and be certain the demon would remain quiescent. Foix watched silently, taking up station at Ista's shoulder as if to guard her. Liss had not been named in Arhys's roll, but she rose anyway, arms crossed and shoulders tucked as if trying to make herself small and unnoticed.
Illvin, striding for the door in Arhys's wake, suddenly stopped and swore. "The cisterns!"
Arhys's head swiveled; the two looked at each other. Illvin clapped his brother on the shoulder. "I'll check, and meet you above the gate."
"Hurry, Illvin." Arhys motioned all within to follow him out; Illvin turned aside on the gallery and ran.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THEY CROSSED THE COURT OF THE FLOWERS AND CLIMBED THE inner stairs after Arhys. Above the gate a projecting parapet thrust out. Arhys shouldered past his archers spread out along the sentry-walk, mounted to the top of the battlement, and stood spread-legged, staring down. Ista peeked out between the toothed stones.
To the right, where the road turned away toward Oby, she could see the Jokonans settling into camp in a grove of walnut trees, just out of bowshot or catapult range. Tents were being set up, and horse lines arranged. On the far side of the grove, some especially large tents of green cloth were rising at the hands of servants, some wearing the uniforms of the palanquin bearers. To the left, down in the valley along the river, another column was pouring in, threatening the town walls. At its rear, some soldiers were already driving a few plundered sheep and cattle into the arms of their camp followers, dinner on the hoof.
Beyond, the countryside looked deceptively peaceful—emptied out, Ista hoped; only one or two barns or distant outbuildings seemed to be on fire, presumably sites of some temporary, desperate resistance. The enemy had not—or not yet—fired the fields and crops. Did they anticipate being in secure possession of them by harvest time? The third column presumably was taking up position behind the castle, along the ridge.
The drawbridge was up, the castle gates closed. On the other side of the deep dry cleft that fronted the wall, the Jokonan parley officer stood, bareheaded. The blue pennant of his office hung limply from the javelin in his hand in the afternoon heat. He was flanked by two tense guards, sea-green tabards over their mail.
As the parley officer turned his face upward, Ista's breath drew in. He was the same translator she had met in the raiding column retreating from Rauma. So, was his new duty a reward or a punishment? He did not notice her, half concealed in the embrasure; but it was quite clear by the alarmed widening of his eyes that he recognized Arhys as the sword-wielding madman who had nearly taken his head off in that ravine. Arhys's stony expression gave no clue if the recognition was returned.
The Jokonan moistened his lips, cleared his throat. "I come under the flag of parley from Prince Sordso to Castle Porifors," he began, in loud, clear Ibran. He gripped the shaft of his blue pennant as a man might clutch a shield, and ground the butt a little harder into the dry soil by his boot. It was considered very bad form to shoot a messenger, likely to be coldly criticized by an officer's peers and commanders, later. Rather too belated a consolation from the messenger's point of view, to be sure. "These are the demands of the prince of Jokona—"
"Doesn't it worry you, Quadrene," Arhys overrode him in a carrying drawl, "that your prince has become a demon-ridden sorcerer? As a pious man, shouldn't you be burning him rather than obeying him?"
The guards did not react, and Ista wondered if they had been chosen for their lack of Ibran. By the grimace that flashed over the parley officer's face, he might have felt that his enemy had a point, but he returned sharply, "They say you are a man dead three months. Does it not worry your troops to be following a walking corpse?"
"Not notably," said Arhys. He ignored the slight murmur of his archers, clustered behind him. The looks they exchanged covered a range of expressions, from disbelief to alarm to revelation, plus one fellow who vented an impressed Ooh. "I can see how it might pose a problem for you. How, after all, can you kill me? Even a sorcerer must find it a troublesome paradox."
With a visible effort, the parley officer wrenched himself back to his script. "These are the terms of the prince of Jokona. You will surrender the Dowager Royina Ista at once, as hostage for your cooperation. All officers and soldiers of the garrison will lay down their arms and march out your gate in surrender. Do this, and your lives will be spared."
"To be corralled as demon fodder, perchance?" muttered dy Cabon, crouched looking through an embrasure farther down the walkway. A rather more merciful fate, Ista couldn't help reflecting, than what a divine of the Bastard caught in such a conflict might normally expect from overexcited Quadrene troops.
"Come, come, Jokonan, would you trouble me to spit upon you?" asked Arhys.
"Pray save your spit, Lord Arhys. I hear such liquids will be hard to come by in there soon."
Lord Illvin had climbed up behind the parapet in time to hear this exchange, and smiled sourly. He cast a quick look out over Ista's head, taking in the enemy's arrangements in a sweeping pass. Arhys glanced down at him; Illvin leaned his shoulders against the wall below his brother's feet and gazed back out over the forecourt. In a voice pitched not to carry to the Jokonans, he reported, "They got both cisterns. Leaking like sieves. I have men bailing with every intact vessel they can find, and trying to line the tanks with canvas to slow the outflow. But it's not good."
"Right," Arhys murmured back. He raised his voice again to the parley officer. "We refuse, of course."
The parley officer looked up with grim satisfaction at what was obviously the expected answer. "Prince Sordso and Dowager Princess Joen are merciful beyond your deserving. They will give you one day to reconsider your stance. I will come again tomorrow to hear your new answer. Unless you send to us first—of course." With a bow, he began to back away, inadequately covered by his two guardsmen. He retreated quite a distance before he dared to turn his back.
Not just the expected answer: the desired outcome, apparently.
"What happens next?" asked dy Cabon in worry. "An assault? Will they really wait a day?"
"I wouldn't trust them to," said Arhys, jumping down onto the walk again.
"An assault, yes," said Ista. "But not, I think, by their troops. I would wager anything you please that Joen wishes to play with her new toys. Porifors is her very first chance to test her array of sorcerers in
open war. If the results satisfy her ..." A purple line, though only one this time, flashed across Ista's inner vision.
Most of the stretched bowstrings along the sentry walk snapped at once, twanging. A couple of men yelped from the sting of the recoiling cords. An exception was a cocked crossbow that let loose. Its quarrel shot into the thigh of the man standing next to its bearer; the man screamed and fell backward off the walk to smack onto the stones of the court and lie still. His horrified comrade gaped at his bow, flung it from himself as though it burned his hand, and hurried after his fallen mate.
Another, darker flash crackled past.
"Now what?" muttered Foix uneasily, staring up and down the line of appalled archers. Some, already fishing in their belts for replacement strings, found them shredding in their hands.
A few moments later, across the rooftops of the castle's inner courts, a plume of smoke billowed into the air.
"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 boot steps 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 t
his 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.