Ithariel returned pure exasperation. "You too! Nix, you faithless scoundrel, I'm going to let Megga have her way. She'll march you downstairs to eat sausage and then scold the ears off your head."
The dwarf declined to retort, which was unusual. He reached out, hooked two workmanlike fingers and upended his scarlet cap. Three shards of crystal slithered out, black as the pits of hell, and faceted on those sides not crazed with fractures. One was the size of a doubled fist, and polished flat on the top. "On your head lie the consequences, then, Lady of the Forest."
Nix rose, snapped for Megga to follow, and stamped off down the stair.
"He's worried for you, that's what!" The dwarf wife admonished as she passed her mistress. "And he's right, if I may say so. Lady, why won't you listen?"
Ithariel glanced aside at a face that reposed in a frame of dark bronze hair, at stilled hands that were made for life and action, and much too fine for the sword. "That's why, little mother. Now leave me."
Megga rustled off, grumbling imprecations. By herself in a chamber gone gloomy with twilight, Ithariel buried her face in her hands and sighed. The dwarves were wise in their way, and loyal to the bottom of their cantankerous little hearts. They knew, even better than she did: the Archmaster's chosen course was merciful, and founded upon centuries of experience. And yet she could not abide. Terrible as the penalty would be if she failed, still, she could not look upon the sleeping man without a burning wild urge to rebel.
Madness, even death, was surely preferable to the passive oblivion of forgetfulness.
The enchantress's hands shook as she reached down and examined the crystals recovered from Tir Amindel. No cloudy lights stirred in their depths, and no trace of power lingered to spark at her touch; the darkness in the stones was complete. Majaxin's evil wards had drained away and left these tallix stilled as pools under starlight.
No gain would come by waiting. Ithariel selected the largest of the fragments. She carried it to the window, and seated herself with the stone a cold weight between her knees.
She began with the things she most loved. As evening deepened about her, she gathered the peace of her forest into a core of bright force, then sang that essence as a note. The sound struck the tallix and generated answering resonance. Ithariel felt a brief vibration sting her skin. Then the crystal sheared; one fragment cleaved away and left a clean and shining facet on the jaggedly broken edge.
Ithariel drew breath and encompassed the tranquillity of birdsongs at daybreak. She shaped a second note, and another chip spun away; she sang of the watersprite's laughter, and the dip of nesting swallows, and the smell of meadow flowers at summer noon. She added the abiding strength of rock, and the patience of oaks, and the warmth of her fires during snowstorms. Each spellsong chiseled a new facet, and slowly the light rekindled in the tallix stone's shady depths.
Below, ruddied by lantern flame in the tower's snug kitchen, Megga and Nix heard the notes which would repulse armies, and the notes which would quiet ocean gales. They knew what their mistress sang into being was a wardstone for the holdfast at Whitestorm, and their eyes met in aggrieved consternation over a plate of untouched sausage.
"I should never have given her the stallion," Nix said with recrimination. "Nor forged that black sword either."
Megga untied her shawl and twisted its length between her fingers. "You're a fool to think that made any difference. She's headstrong, our mistress, and ruled by contrary passions. If that carrot-headed swordsman has the sense Neth gave to a chicken, he'll choose insanity before he takes her to wife."
Nix did not answer, but brooded as his thoughts turned upon a single fact: the gray stud had borne no mark of abuse beyond exhaustion when he returned with Ithariel's rider. Crazed the man might become, but he would never abjure compassion. That one quality would bind him to life; and that one flaw would kill him.
Night deepened. The calls of a wakeful mockingbird rang over the waters of the lake. In the top chamber of the tower, Ithariel of the White Circle stilled her final note. She opened her eyes to starlight, and a crystal that now was a perfect jewel, round and shining with ward-spells. The surface was faceted more precisely than any gemcutter's art; and the magic it contained lay beyond any natural force in Aerith to rend asunder.
One moment the enchantress allowed herself to appreciate the results of her labors. The tallix Korendir had dreamed for at last stood complete in her hands. All that remained was to waken the man and plead for a place at his side.
Ithariel rose to her feet. She wrapped the crystal in the trailing folds of her sleeve. The tremble in her knees had little to do with weariness as she crossed the chamber and ignited the first of the braziers, the north one, since the pull of greatest earth force originated there. She stepped sunward around the circle, and sparks like lit pearls leaped from her fingertips into the bundles of tied leaves. The flames caught without mishap. Smoke drifted across her eyes, and the sweet scents of burning herbs mingled with the smells of forest night that wafted in through the casements. Ithariel lit the south fire, and the west, and then the lesser points between. With the circle closed about her, she knelt by the man at the center.
Illumination from the braziers fell kindly across him. Scars became softened by shadow; the tranquility imposed upon his flesh lent the beauty of a masterwork in marble. Ithariel poised by Korendir's head. She touched the yielding line of his mouth, and for a heartbeat knew tearing remorse. Then she closed her eyes, damped her emotions, and set herself to break the Archmaster's edict of sleep.
Enchanters fashion energies into spells through many channels; Telvallind of Dethmark preferred his work in song, and he had laid the groundwork of Ithariel's training. Familiar with his methods, and blessed with a true voice, she began with random tones. Now and again, her pitch would coincide with an element that comprised the spell. An answering line of energy would flicker to life in the air, thin drawn as wire, a radiant of force in cold light. As Ithariel proceeded, more lines appeared to interlock and build on the pattern; in time she could guess at the spell's configuration, and select her notes with more method. Patient, entirely in opposition to the hurried beat of her heart, she continued until the nets of force that constrained Korendir's mind lay visible above his body.
The Archmaster had wrought with exhaustive thoroughness. His spells were convoluted and guarded, difficult in the extreme to unravel without penalty. Ithariel blotted sweating palms against her sleeves. The thought occurred, that the bindings might directly reflect the savagery of the suffering they contained. Majaxin had been clever and criminal; his hatred of his prosecutors had survived beyond the grave. The Archmaster's multiple defenses might in fact have been called for, not only to deter interference, but to ensure that Korendir never roused to torment through chance attrition.
Ithariel sat with her fingers locked to still their shaking. The complexity of the spell taxed her resolve more than words or warnings. Now would be the moment, could she bring herself to turn back. She regarded the face of the man in the spill of flamelight and spells. No help awaited her there. Only the promise of pain, whichever course she should take. At the last, the very imperviability of the Archmaster's spellwork became her inspiration to act; love could not contemplate safeguards of that magnitude and turn away. She must seek the resolution of victory, or absolute final defeat.
"Forgive me," Ithariel whispered into ears that could not hear.
She reached out, touched the vulnerable hollow of Korendir's throat. Then she raised her voice in unison with the first note of the spell. The line she matched pulsed brighter; meticulous in her control, she raised her pitch to dissonance. The spell brightened, flared red, then frayed without warning into sparks. A wisp of smoke dispersed upon the air, the first piece of the pattern unbound. Ithariel drew breath. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scents of the burning herbs to anchor her concentration. Then she shaped a second note, and cancelled another coil of energy into darkness. She worked without break through an
intricate maze of ward-spells that would kill if she slipped even once. The coals in the braziers dulled to red, and the night waned at her back. Note upon note she sang while gray dawn silvered the casements, unnoticed.
Birdsong pealed through forest stillness. Ithariel began to unravel the grand ward, and exhaustion roughened her voice. She cupped her ears beneath her palms and forced her mind to track the minutest fluctuations in pitch. The centermost defenses extinguished with a whine like snapped harp strings, and disbanded energies left a stinging scent of cordite on the air. Ithariel's brows furrowed into a frown of supreme effort. Against her knee, under her hands, everywhere her skin touched Korendir's, she felt signs of returning awareness. His body twitched fitfully in dreams.
Ithariel completed the last sequence. Her note shivered the last of the spell-lines to oblivion, and her song subsided into silence.
The enchantress opened her eyes. Exhausted by fear, she watched the final vestige of the Archmaster's peace dissolve. Korendir's features spasmed. Agonized by the impact of returned memory, every sinew in his body jerked tight.
Her peril was upon her.
Ithariel caught his wrists and struggled to subdue the surge that drove him into movement. Whatever the cost, he must not break through the ward circles scribed in sand on the floor. He fought her, thrashed to rise, and his eyes reflected vistas that words lacked the bleakness to describe. She could not match his strength. Reflexes trained for the sword were too fast for her to counter, and in desperation, she reached for his mind.
"Korendir!" Ithariel's call was shaped in sound and magic. "Korendir, do you know me?"
He did not answer. His lips shaped a snarl of repudiation and he flung her off. The silken covering tore from his body as he battered his way to his knees. Beyond dignity, the enchantress threw herself against his middle and knocked him sprawling.
Shaken breathless, Ithariel recovered her grip. Korendir moved anyway, dragged her with him in a driving frenzy of pain. As his fingers grazed the rim of the first circle, she forced a thread of awareness between the turbulence that harrowed his thoughts. Again she called: "Korendir! Do you still wish a wardstone for Whitestorm?"
This time he managed a mangled reply. "Yes."
But the cry betrayed broken sincerity. Through the hurt in him, Ithariel glimpsed the image that defeated: a small girl wrapped in a black cloak, with a knife thrust home through her eye.
Resolve faltered. Ithariel recoiled in horror; and the fierce self-condemnation that burned Korendir to wildness ripped her contact clean away. His hand scattered sand grains across granite. The first ward was breached. Only two more remained, and even as the enchantress rallied, the man crossed the line of the next. The ash in the braziers started up in blue flame, and on two levels, protective magic fled.
Korendir screamed as the cutting edge of memory sliced deeper.
Frightened witless, Ithariel tackled him. The drag of her overrobe encumbered them both. The delay lasted barely a heartbeat, but an instant was enough: the savagery of Korendir's resistance itself inspired invention. Before he could breach the last barrier, she fumbled and recovered the tallix fashioned throughout the night before. Without hesitation, she hurled the stone at his face.
He fielded the crystal before it struck entirely by animal reflex. Sunlight through the casement caught upon myriad facets, and the spells so exactingly patterned blazed to a brilliance of glory. Some aspect of the ward's protection must have pierced Korendir's distress, for he stopped and crouched, his fists interlocked over the diamond-clear surface of the tallix. A sob ripped from his throat. "Too late," he whispered. "Much too late."
"Never." Ithariel flung back. She clutched to that one thread of reason and desperately offered reinforcement. "Never too late, but I need your trust and consent."
Deliberately she chose not to elaborate. Against derangement and loss, she pitted the known qualities of a mind that would pursue options to the final spark of life. Korendir of Whitestorm had never been afraid to die; his terror lay in finding himself helpless as cruelties were inflicted on others.
He assumed risks because he did not care; and because he cared too deeply.
The irony was fitting for a son of a former Archmaster, but the mystery of Korendir's parentage must never be revealed, even to spare him from ruin. While his hands gripped the new wardstone, and his thoughts wrestled to fathom the riddle the enchantress had cast to his discretion, Ithariel engaged her powers. She sampled the essence of the banespell, and at last comprehended the nightmare that lurked behind the memory of a slaughtered child.
The perfect and absolute ruthlessness of Majaxin's final vengeance all but stopped his daughter's heart.
The sorcerer had laid his snare knowingly : only a man of compassion would have conviction enough to break his tallix. In evil-hearted malice, the wardspells had arrayed from this assumption. Tir Amindel's people had died, not because their lives were linked to the curse that afflicted the city, but because the man who interceded had acted out of pity for their plight.
Had Korendir been impartial to suffering, every man, woman, and child would have survived to celebrate freedom.
But he was who he was; not the atrocities of the Mhurgai nor the slaughter of Datha's armies had been enough to unmake his nature. For this, the folk of Tir Amindel had perished: in precise and exacting proportion to the value which Korendir assigned to life.
Ithariel reeled, stunned by reflections of his guilt. Had she known, the blood of seven thousand innocents might never have flowed in the streets. And so the trap had closed. Because she, or any other White Circle initiate could never pass the city gates to discern that final peril, the one who intervened of necessity had been an outsider, untrained and insensitive to magic.
The result kindled outrage in Ithariel that no amount of risk could assuage. The Archmaster had been careless, even negligent, to set sleep over mortal pain without first seeking rudimentary understanding. Nix and Megga had been wrong to presume this mercenary's talents should go wasted. And lastly, the enchantress herself acknowledged folly, for sending into jeopardy the one man she should have cherished beyond life.
No one had consulted Korendir himself. Belatedly, in words that came with difficulty, Ithariel made the attempt.
Still within bounds of the outer circle, the man shivered in the glitter of his wardstone. He answered in a voice undone by remorse; his madness was recognition, that his best and bravest intentions had consigned a whole city to slaughter. And yet, even as he had once forborn to whip a stallion, the tatters of courtesy remained. "What do you ask of me, lady?"
Ithariel looked up with all of her feelings exposed. "I ask a home at your hearthstone, a place at your side, and permission to share your life fully."
Something flared in his expression that was outside of insanity or hurt. Ithariel watched his fingers tighten over the wardstone until they quivered. He recovered a surprised breath. Then anguish returned, and over that a look of unmitigated determination. He was going to say no; she saw, and knew why, and the reason cut her to the heart.
He would reject her because he realized he could love her. The discovery was not new. He had recognized the attraction prior to his return to Tir Amindel; acknowledged its existence and laid it aside, for though she knew him, he had determined to spare her from sharing the wretchedness which haunted every aspect of his life.
She cried out before he managed speech. "Oh, you idiot of a man, must I beg?"
In that moment her distress matched his own. Her pain he understood, she saw as much through the chink she had opened in his armor. Despite the betrayal his care had brought Tir Amindel, he still could not forsake compassion. Ithariel saw him glance down. A queer expression of vulnerability crossed features too long denied emotion. His reply emerged quietly, almost an admission of surrender. "Don't beg. Never you. Not for that."
Ithariel could not pause to savor joy, or even to acknowledge her victory. She flung herself headlong into his mind, sought t
he wellspring of untapped awareness that Alathir's heir must own. She found his source, and entered, and mingled her mystery with another of such depth that the pairing left her awestruck. The potential owned by Morien's son was more than a criminal loss; it was tragedy of the first order. But the threat posed by the Mathcek Demons disallowed any hope for enlightenment. Ithariel kept her silence. Bonded to the mortal she had chosen, she embraced him with the peace of her presence.
"Korendir, Master of Whitestorm, beloved, you're no longer alone." The words reached his ears, and the core of his being; and the vision of a knife-slaughtered child lost further power to harm.
Ithariel recovered a measure of awareness, then. Bone weary, but wholly content, she discovered her newly sworn husband had moved. The wardstone no longer occupied his hands. His arms enclosed her shoulders, and the silk that once veiled his nakedness had fallen entirely away. His touch was gentle as she remembered, but this time not so steady. His breathing was ragged and hot, and his words were typically analytical. "Is it true, my only pearl, that enchantresses who marry must die the same day as their mates?"
She shifted slightly, saw through a strand of her own auburn hair that his eyes were watching and serious. "You'll just have to stop taking risks," she said gently, then laughed as he enfolded her into his warmth.
* * *
Morning flooded sunlight over the forest and flecked Ithariel's tower in spatters of leaf-filtered gold. A motewarmed fly buzzed circles through the window and lighted on a plate piled with sausage left uneaten from the night before. Megga shooed the insect away, and fixed a bead-bright eye on her spouse. "The singing stopped a long time ago. I think we'd better go up."
Nixdaxdemo started awake where he snored across the tabletop, and scraped his nose on a fork. "Huh?"
"Oh ye deaf lout, why not listen when I say something the first time!" Snappishly, Megga snatched the cutlery out of harm's way.
"I heard, you nag of a wife." Nix rubbed at his scratch and sleepily reached for his cap. "Go up we will, but I won't be opening yon door."