Storms of Victory (Witch World: The Turning)

  Every cart was pressed into service and every available beast, horse, mule, ox, and ass. Many drew the wagons with their loads of saved hay and oats. Others slung the great stacks in, hauling them out of the fields by rope without the aid of any vehicle.

  Workers stationed in the barns and sheds piked each load inside, straining to have one in its place before the next was delivered.

  Although ever threatening in its aspect, the weather continued to hold throughout the afternoon and evening, and when Tarlach at last stood at the window of his chamber which gave him the best view of the cultivated area, it was to look upon gratifyingly empty meadows, half of which would still be full had it not been for the aid furnished by his command.

  Night was nearly upon the world, for the black clouds choking all the sky gave little room for an extended twilight. but the waning sun still provided enough illumination to reveal the tight patchwork of Seakeep's fields.

  The greater number and also the smallest were the gardens bearing the Dale's fruits and vegetables. These had not been emptied of their crops, which had not been ready for harvesting even had there been time to take them in.

  Such tiny fields, he thought, and now more than ever, he appreciated the wisdom of those who had made them thus, minute plots surrounded by high, firm stone ditches which would protect the crops growing within from the gale's anger and hold the carefully tended soil in its place despite heavy rains and steep slope. So it had proved since the settling of Seakeepdale, and so, he believed and hoped, it would prove tonight.

  He shivered. The big room was cold despite the roaring fire. After setting the siege shutters firmly in place over each of the windows and securing them, he returned to the inner portion of his quarters and prepared himself for bed. There would be no point and less pleasure in remaining up very much longer this night.

  10

  The rain began soon after he had retired but remained no more than a particularly heavy downpour for a long time. Then, two hours after midnight, such a blast of wind struck the tower that the warrior snapped awake, grasping the sword which was never beyond the reach of his hand.

  Even as he took hold of it, he released it once more, recognizing the source of the disturbance.

  The man rose quickly and went to the screened window nearest him. He opened the observer's port set into the shutter but could see nothing beyond save a seemingly infinite blackness.

  His eyes shut as a searingly brilliant flash of white light filled all the world around him, and he hastily closed the tiny port once more lest he be soaked by the cascade of rain forcing its way through the small opening.

  Tarlach went back to his bed. He did not return to sleep, for the hammering of the gale-driven torrent, the almost continuous lashing of the lightning, and the exploding thunder were overwhelming in their violence and would not be dismissed from his awareness. Lying there, listening to the tempest's fury, the mercenary commander did not believe he was alone tonight in welcoming the thick stone walls around him.

  He must have dozed at some point, for when awareness again returned to him, it was to find Storm Challenger tugging at his hand. impatiently and none too gently with his cruelly sharp bill.

  Tarlach heard it then, a knock scarcely audible against the chaos raging outside.

  He sprang from his bed. The light from the still- flickering fire was sufficient for his needs, and he did not bother to reach for a candle. Since the war bird told of no danger but rather pushed him to action, though without explanation, he hastened to the door and drew it open.

  Una. She was fully clad in the garments she had worn before retiring and was holding a candle, whose flame danced wildly despite the shelter she tried to give it with her cupped hand. Her eyes were huge and her face too white for its pallor to be explained by the hour and dim light. He saw that Bravery was clinging to her sleeve.

  The Falconer ushered her inside, carefully closing the door behind her.

  “My Lady, what has happened?” He did not even think to insult her by asking if it was the storm that was troubling her.

  “She came to me. My sister. The other Una.”

  He knew that he whitened himself. Although the room was cold and he was bare before her to the waist, he forgot his intention of drawing his cloak around himself.

  “Here?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  “Aye. She said she actually has the freedom of any of the Old Places. “

  He led her to one of the two chairs in the chamber.

  “What did she want?”

  Una drew a deep breath to steady herself.

  “I had remained up to make record of our harvest and to attend to some other business I had let lapse a while and was about to prepare for bed—”

  “You were alone?”

  She nodded.

  “Except for Bravery. I often work late and always dismiss my waitingwoman when I do.”

  “She came then?”

  “Aye, and in haste. She had all but stepped from her passage before I was aware of its opening. Once here, she quickly told me the purpose of her visit, first describing her nature and then confirming what many have come to believe about this world, that the forces of Light and true Dark battled fiercely here at one time and that at long last, after awesome destruction, the forces of Light partially conquered, not totally but securing supremacy enough to impose the balance of life once more and to put checks upon those many servants and works of Shadow and Dark which could not be utterly overcome.”

  “This other Una, what was her role in that war?”

  “None Save that of a distant victim.” She shivered, and not from the chill. “You were right about her in a sense. She is me, or, rather, she is what I would have been had the Shadow never found entrance into this world, but she is not whole. She has no actual substance and no real place in this time or any other time.”

  Una bit down on her lip, fighting to retain hold on her composure before this man whom she feared would have small patience with any display of weakness or hysteria. although it was pity, grief, and not fear that was chiefly driving her.

  “She was content to remain as she was and to make herself accept that role and—and just hope that better might eventually come, but conditions around us have changed to the point that she felt she could no longer do so. The old balance has been troubled. Not only in High Hallack but throughout all this world, Power has been wielded and forces awakened which have long slept, to such an extent that she says the time left to all of us might well be short, so short that she feared if she was ever to have life, real human life, she was going to have to claim it at once.”

  She saw Tarlach stiffen, as if he knew what she was about to say and rejected it utterly.

  “Una wished to meld her spirit with mine so that she would become part of me and I of her—”

  “No!”

  The woman shook her head impatiently, silencing him. “It would mean the life she so craved, and I should have knowledge and the key to the Power she says lies within me.”

  “No!—Una, you did not …”

  His fingers bore into her shoulders so that she winced although she would not permit herself to cry out. He seemed scarcely to notice but did ease the pressure of his grasp.

  “Una, what answer did you make her?”

  The Holdruler's head lowered.

  “I wanted to grant her wish. She pleaded and reasoned so passionately, but I was afraid. Something deep within myself rebelled against the very thought of what she required of me. I battled myself and my selfishness, but I could not bring myself to agree.

  “Bravery struck then. With her mind and all the strength of her body, she tried to force me out of that room and here to you. That was when I recalled my promise to you, and I told Una that I could make no such decision in a moment, based only on emotion and excitement that I must weigh it in all its aspects when my mind was cooler and more open to reason.

  “She grew angry, naming me a coward and the fals
est of friends, then told me to stay as I am and face life and what it might throw at me with the weapons I might have had forever tight sheathed. After that, she—she flung herself into her passage and vanished.”

  “The Horned Lord be praised,” he whispered.

  Tarlach realized his hands were, shaking and hastily Withdrew them. He had been blind, he thought dully, intentionally blind, but this infinite peril had stripped away that comfortable denial. He knew now what Una of Seakeep was to him. He did not merely long to satisfy himself with that beautiful body. He wanted the woman for his companion, to cherish and guard and grow ever closer to her for the whole that remained to him of life, and to center that life around her.

  “Una, that offer was of the Dark. Had you yielded, you would have been lost, and so, too, would your … sister.”

  “No! She is not—”

  “Herself, no, but the Shadow's ways can be seductive. Think what she suggested. was this not the fate that befell our women in those ancient days? They, too, became, not individuals any longer, but extensions of another.” He paused lest his voice begin to tremble and betray him. “Her purpose for asking this does not matter. Each creature comes into being unique. Anything which destroys that individuality, anything which eliminates or adulterates mind or will or spirit, strikes at the very basis of life, at its greatest glory, its greatest strength, its very core. Your loyalty and generosity nigh unto delivered both of you into a trap which neither of you deserved or devised.”

  “Neither of us? Do you really believe that after what you have just said?”

  “If you are’ somehow one, then I cannot accept that she would intentionally have wrought that black evil.”

  “Thanks given for that,” Una said softly. She looked up at him. “I owe more by far than my life to your good sense and to Bravery's.”

  “Do not forget your own. That core within you which protested your granting her plea was no cowardice, Lady.”

  “Perhaps not, though it was not reason, either.—Do you think she was right? About, the old balances being disrupted and our having maybe only a little time left? You have had more experience with Power than I, having lost so much because of its use and even fighting beside the Were Riders if what Rufon tells me is true. “

  “It is true,” he replied stiffly. “As for the rest, I do not know, Lady. That vast amounts of Power have been unleashed and old forces awakened, aye, to that I can testify, but to say more …” He shrugged. “No man has the reading of the future.”

  “Perhaps that is to our good.”

  The Saleswoman came to her feet.

  “I have troubled you long enough, Bird Warrior, but I felt it was your right to know all this.”

  “My name is Tarlach,” he said wearily, as if in defeat, He scowled at the door.

  “If you were Holdlord, I would not permit you to go from this chamber tonight after what you have already endured in your own.”

  “I cannot remain,” Una told him softly.

  Nor could she. Even here, tongues wagged fast and some minds ever ran in a kennel. A lord might do much not permitted a woman without loss of his people's respect, and if he did alienate himself from their ways to the point that he was bereft of that, he could usually still retain his power to command them. With Una, it was different. She needs must keep her name unsullied, or her authority would be seriously compromised, a risk she durst not take at a time when Seakeepdale most needed to stand solidly behind its leader.

  His own position would not admit of scandal either. His Falconers would not smile at such a rumor as a company of another sort would do, and explanation at this point would do him more ill than good. The fact that he had concealed their first encounter with that other Una would have to be revealed, and that deception would of a certainty be most harshly judged.

  “Leave your door ajar. Between them, Storm Challenger and Bravery should be able to alert me if she makes another attempt to reach you.”

  “You believe Una might try to use force to compel me?”

  “Hopefully not, but the despair of deep disappointment has driven many a one to deeds not normally within their nature, for good and for ill.—Have you an amulet of Gunnora?”

  “I do, a gifting from my mother,”

  “Wear it, then, if you do not have it about you now. I do not know what the Lady could or would be willing to do for you since your spirit sister is not herself of the Dark, but we cannot afford to forgo any defense.”

  “I have it on.”

  “Good.”

  He looked at her. She seemed so slight and vulnerable in the flickering light that he wanted only to take her into his arms to shield and comfort her.

  His fingers reached out and gently brushed her cheek before dropping away again.

  “For your trust, thanks given, Una of Seakeep. I shall prove worthy of it, if I must spend the life of my very soul to see you safe.”

  11

  All through the following day—if the dull twilight permitted by the massive clouds could be so termed—the great storm raged and then through the night after it.

  The Falconer captain spent much of his time watching it while the dim light held. The uncontrolled and uncontrollable violence of it fascinated, awed, him and also frightened him a little, whatever the security of his refuge. There was something in this tempest which reached the very core of him, touched in him some primal spark, the ember of a time when there had been rip shelter save a covering of hides or brush or, at best, a cave discovered more by chance than by foreknowledge.

  It was the enraged ocean which kept drawing him and holding him to his window. He had seen storm-flung waves, great waves, before, but never had he imagined to find in Seakeep's harbor the like of those boiling there now.

  The usually peaceful little bay was utterly transformed. It looked larger, for the two arms of land partially enfolding it were submerged at their tips, although both places were of an elevation which normally kept them visible during the year's highest tides even when reinforced by a gale of considerable strength.

  The ravening waters had rushed far inland as well, covering most of the lower pastures. So high did they come at one point that he began to fear for the cottages set nearest the beach. The people were still within them if the lights told true, and there could be no thought of flight to higher ground now. The wind would almost certainly sweep anyone attempting that.

  The dwellings and the planted fields around them remained inviolate, however, further testimony to the knowledge and foresight of those who had originally chosen the sites for them. The ocean threatened, she took the rough lands below, but Seakeepdale's homes and gardens were spared.

  Tarlach slept soundly that night and would probably have slept well into the next day had something not caused him to come full awake shortly, after the eight hour.

  He lay still, trying to “discover in his waking state what had roused him. There was no sensation of danger, and no warning of anything amiss from Storm Challenger …

  There was a change, a lessening, in the sound of the tempest, he realized suddenly. The wind no longer pummeled the round tower so wildly. He had grown accustomed to its scream over the past hours, and this alteration in its force was more than sufficient to have thus activated his Warrior's senses.

  The Falconer dressed rather slowly and then cautiously opened the observer's port at which he was wont to stand.

  The storm was indeed much reduced, although it was still a power against which no sane man would care to pit himself. Wind and rain were both at the level of a more average gale, and the waters had receded almost to the beach once more. The spurs on either side of the bay were nearly completely exposed now, with only their very edges and outlying rocks still submerged.

  The ocean retained her anger, however, and if the breakers crashing onto the shore were no longer so awesomely high, they remained fully as deadly to any mortal forced into joining battle with them.

  The man stiffened then and, throwing back the
shields, leaned forward as far as possible into the narrow window, oblivious of the rain clawing at him through the uncovered slit.

  There was a vessel out there, a merchantman by the look of her, and it required no sailor's eye to see that she was in serious trouble. One mast was broken, shattered approximately at its center. The ship listed sharply, and she rode ominously low in the water so that her deck was almost, constantly awash. Even at this distance, he could see that her movements were sluggish, as if she were heavy with water and unable to respond well to the commands of those trying to control her.

  All this flashed upon his mind in an instant, as did the knowledge that, conditions being what they were, it was very unlikely that any other had seen her.

  Tarlach raced from his chamber and, calling to the ever-present sentries, raised the alarm within the tower.

  The demands and terrors of the ocean were bred into the people of this seagirt Dale, as much a part of them as the limbs which bore them up or with which they performed their lives’ work, and word of the imperiled craft had been carried throughout the valley within minutes of the captain's having sighted her, the storm notwithstanding.

  There was little anyone could do. The boats were ready and their crews beside them, but they could not be launched. They might have braved the seas farther out in the troubled bay, but nothing could pass the churning, crushing madness of the breakers. It was not even possible to light a signal fire or beacon; the drenching rain smothered every effort before the fuel could begin to take light.

  The Falconer officers joined Una and Rufon in her office chamber, watching the agony of the broken vessel, each in agony himself because of his helplessness.

  “She is trying to make the harbor,” the Dalesman said at last with a kind of deadly calm, “but her master does not know this coast. She is dangerously near the cliffs as it is, and if she continues on her present course, she will surely ground on the north spur or on one of its outriders. Once that happens, she is lost and her crew with her; there is no way of getting a boat out to her to take off any survivors.”