TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

  'Avert!' shouted Selidie.

  The linked tie to the music's entrainment tore away, leaving Lirenda scorched to a cinder. Her unleashed longing found no safe renewal, but fell back, burned to ashes and withering envy.

  Now bare-handed amid the core of the storm, the Prime Matriarch held the emotional leash to Elaira. The move became Selidie's, to break the connection to Arithon's heart. Rip through the seamless current of union, that the ciphers suborned from Koriani influence could no longer regenerate through a master-bard's harmonic infusion. Selidie would snap love's cord. Claim her due oath of debt over Rathain's foremost Companion; or else take Sidir's life, and drive his confirmed prince to stand in challenge against her.

  Dakar foresaw no victory. 'On your crown oath, Teir's'Ffalenn!' he cried, weeping.

  The warning preceded the crude intervention as he braced to invoke the permissions held in his hands. The act ran beyond desecration. The astounding, grand pattern raised up in clear light held too aching a beauty; a brazen feat of sheer innovation that had seemed too magnificent to fail. Yet before the shining coils became poisoned by Selidie's influence, Dakar was obliged to step into the breach. As a Fellowship spellbinder, he must impose Arithon's tie to royal lineage, then back that crown oath and shield Sidir's threatened integrity.

  The bard's sensitivity captured the pause before the irrevocable shift. Choice had been forfeit. Law-bound, the crown's watch-dog must serve. The cry that pealed from Arithon's throat held a note of pure despair. Music accompanied. His stark pain, clothed over in melodic sound, wrung protest from the thrumming strings under his hands. The burst shattered air; awoke fire; and bounded through the staid stone of the tower that housed such insufferable dichotomy: that love for a friend, and a kingdom, and a heart's consort should not be string-tied in duty, but unfettered, and joyful, and free!

  And steel answered. The Paravian sword clasped in Sidir's limp hand blazed incandescent and sang. The wild chord that once Named the winter stars razed into the channel suborned from Elaira's intent. Selidie was forced to match, then counter the risen torrent that retired the contested ciphers.

  In her desperation, she reached too far: pulled on the resource lying nearest at hand, that empowered her to drain life from her serving initiates. As her twisting demand gouged through Lirenda and Elaira to fuel her battle for conquest, the sword screamed.

  The very air lit, scalded to searing brilliance. The tonal dissonance of beauty and pain, of bright harmony and disruptive violation twined together and hammered vibration through the stone tower. The uncanny shriek ran into the earth. It shuddered the citadel's bed-rock. Far under the threshold of human hearing, it woke the bell-tones of an answering chord, this one shaped by chisel and hammer, through the artistry of centaur masons. Too deep to detect, but apparent to mage-sense, Alithiel's wards summoned a subliminal tremor from Alestron's ancient foundations. Walls raised to protect drummed back their subsonic, bass tone in defence.

  Dakar shouted, astonished. All reason had fled. He could not react, could not think, but only rejoice, undone by wonder as the mystical wardings sung into Alithiel's black steel first meshed, then married with the peerless enchantment once wrought to safeguard the life sheltered inside the fortress . . .

  * * *

  . . . Prime Selidie's purchase sheared off at one stroke. While the faceted cut of the Skyron aquamarine failed to chime in concert, its clipped resonance too short to encompass the full range of vibration, her linked senses exploded. Shocked to her core, the Koriani Matriarch was flung backwards, slammed short by the carvings upon her state chair. Her breathless scream was an animal's.

  The icy expanse of the pavilion surrounded her. Not the ringing voice, called from living stone. Never, the shimmering cascade of tone and light that had bespoken the mysteries at the dawn of creation. An old woman, lodged in a young woman's flesh, she was left abandoned in darkness. Inside and out, she felt bereft, desolate as Lirenda's choked sobs, wailing unabated beside her. The moment gave nothing. No victory and no triumph. Only the emptiness of disappointment, as the fleering echo of exaltation faded to deadening blindness.

  Late Autumn 5671

  Recovery

  Light died, and sound lapsed to unearthly calm; then, 'You're right, the healing ciphers have shattered. He ought to be dead,' Dakar's shaken voice declared over him; and Sidir stirred awake, eyes opened to lamplight, and a draught that chilled his bloodied skin: of the terrible puncture wound on his chest, no sign remained, and no hitch of agony impaired his breathing . . .

  Returned home from Dame Dawr's to hear of his wife's night departure with a desperate message for Arithon s'Ffalenn, Mearn bolts across town in clothing unsuited for riding, and accosts Kyrialt s'Taleyn at the threshold of the state guest-chamber; and news breaks at at first hand, that his duke has defied charter law and snatched a sworn guest as a hostage with intent to suborn a crown prince. . .

  In the chill dark, with the Skyron crystal veiled under silk, Selidie Prime broods over her vicious set-back; enraged that the Paravian wards on the citadel could disrupt her planned capture, she stirs, calls the lane watch, and digs for the means to spur Alestron's demise and spring her quarry from his secure love-nest. ..

  Late Autumn 5671

  IX. Schism

  Amid the chill silence of aftermath, the dark and the night seemed oppressive. The frugal fire once made to warm Jeynsa had burned down to smoking ash. Only Elaira's lamp burned within the closed chamber that had narrowly missed becoming the site of a Companion's death-watch. Instead, urgent life now required attendance, with the Teiren s'Valerient's abduction a looming threat wrapped in thorny diplomacy. Dakar filched a cloak from the wardrobe to replace the bloody rags lately cut off Sidir. Upright, left trembling and weak at the knees, the clansman perched on the edge of the bed. The shock of his traumatic healing could not settle without quiet and rest.

  His gifted recovery had come at high cost to the pair who had channelled grand conjury. The blanket that, earlier, had eased Jeynsa's distress, now swathed the enchantress, who had crumpled just after the surge of the Paravian wardings. Cradled in Arithon's arms, Elaira languished, unstrung by exhaustion.

  Aware that the bard's heightened state also verged on collapse, Dakar faced the necessities. 'We can't stay here. You know this! Duke Bransian won't wait out your weakness, or Sidir's. He'll strike for leverage while we are divided.'

  'I realize as much.' Arithon's voice wore the husk of his weariness. After three major workings, without proper sleep, his own demands clamoured for remedy. He was too thinly clad. The shirt and cloth breeches worn throughout the crisis left him cold to the bone as the strain overcame him. The hands that had commanded the lyranthe strings, unfaltering, were no longer faultlessly steady. Since Dakar's scathing regard would miss nothing, Arithon resettled Elaira's slack weight. 'My lady can't argue for bed rest, at any rate.' He sheltered her head against his shoulder, hooked his other arm under her knees, and mustered his compromised strength to arise.

  'May Bransian's bones rot in the steaming muck dropped by Dharkaron's Horses!' Dakar railed. He recognized overdrawn faculties, too well: the wheeling faint spells, and patchy vision that whip-lashed through overtaxed senses. 'You shouldn't move, either.' Already ignored, he laced into Sidir, who was doggedly busy with fastening his breeches and no doubt determined to don belt and baldric as if no sapping after-shock troubled him. 'Leave the sword, man! All three of you need a bracing hot tea and unbroken sleep by a fireside!'

  The Companion glanced up, his blue eyes still strange with the distance of uncanny experience. 'Kyrialt's unsupported,' he pointed out. 'Lady Glendien's with him. If Alestron's duke has dared to seize Jeynsa, why balk at threatening the wife of a liegeman to hobble our embassy further?' He declared, pale but firm, 'I would fight again before letting that happen.'

  'You're not a dumb ox, to keep plodding in harness,' the Mad Prophet fumed, at wit's end. He was wrung out himself. Ready to nap in his boots. 'Nobody else needs a
battle tonight. Help me bash the sense of Ath's reason into your crown prince, instead.'

  Since his tirade was going to be disregarded, the spellbinder lumbered off his broad backside. He snatched up the wiped sword that had not found a scabbard, then hastened to collect the sheathed steel of Alithiel, and bundle the fleece cover over the lyranthe. His awkward burdens were scarcely secured, when the Prince of Rathain surged erect, bearing Elaira. Dakar freed his right hand. Barely in time, he caught Arithon's collar, and steadied his burdened frame upright. 'Larking goose! The breeze off the wing of a sparrow could fell you. Since you won't let me carry your precious enchantress, stay here. I'll send word on to Kyrialt.'

  But a glance had exposed Elaira's waxen pallor. More than weariness sucked her unconscious. One heart-beat more, and the Mad Prophet's shocked, aware touch recorded the flesh, which burned like a furnace beneath Arithon's soaked shirt. The Teir's'Ffalenn was on his feet, though just barely, as the fevers of back-lash raged over him.

  'Fiends plague, we're beset!' The spellbinder planted himself to redress slipshod planning. 'Your enchantress needs a stringent restorative. Much as you hate it, your Grace, you'd be wise to allow me to help.'

  Arithon back-stepped. 'Not this time.'

  Dakar set his jaw. 'You're played-out!' Rather than suffer the searing explosion, he shouted. 'Do I need a mallet to dunt your thick skulls? None of you are going anywhere!'

  That moment, someone's mercuric step raced up the outside stairwell. The unknown arrival met Talvish's crisp challenge, followed up by a brisk dialogue.

  Then a rap demanded an entry, and Mearn's voice, pitched to spur action, 'I've packed up Fianzia! She's sent to Dame Dawr, whose borrowed carriage is waiting outside. I implore that his Grace should accept my suggestion and take sanctuary with my grandame. Shelter under her roof, until I can deal with my brother concerning this churlish assault' As always, Mearn dispatched obstacles at dizzying speed. 'Don't fret for your retinue. Kyrialt and Glendien can be fetched from the guest-tower suite on the way'

  'And Daelion Fatemaster sang for the hag!' Dakar breathed, eyes rolled in relief. 'Our stinking luck's changed.' Straps and sword harness a dangling threat to ladder the knit in his stockings, he clomped to the chamber's sealed doorway and released his layers of arcane wardings.

  Through the crackle as blue bands of energy unbound, he heard Talvish speaking, emphatic. The phrase, 'fatal wounding' pocked a shocking gap; then in rising anguish, 'suffered more than our citadel guard's wasted casualties!'

  Mearn's exclamation pierced through the strapped planking. 'All the more, I insist! The royal party must seek diplomatic asylum within Dawr's household.'

  Yet even as Dakar raised the bar and fumbled to unfasten the latch, Arithon gave crisp contradiction.

  'My people will not turn tail, or compromise the dowager's standing!' When the panel swung open, Rathain's prince added, with delicacy, 'Talvish?'

  'Will accompany me,' Mearn insisted, astute. 'I will have his captain's name cleared! Bransian's actions have been inexcusable.' Surged over the threshold, impatient, he paused.

  Opal studs glittered to his breathless haste. He had run himself ragged. Nerves, or frenetic distress wracked his bearing as his glance surveyed the left mess of scarlet-stained cloth and smeared flooring. At tactful speed, he measured Sidir, dazed but upright on the bed. Then past Dakar's bulk, the Prince of Rathain, placed with his shoulder set to the wall, and Elaira's form bundled in his arms. 'Your Grace, there's no argument. You will need my backing.'

  Which galvanized Talvish, who had hung behind, still on wary guard by the landing. 'Get the living to move' he said as he reached the doorway. 'I'll handle the sorrow of bringing the liegeman's body' Resigned to that misery, he gasped, startled white, as though he beheld a corpse walking. 'Sidir! Ath, what I saw -'

  'Alive!' Arithon snapped across his stark shock. 'We raised conjury in time to heal him. To your credit, my friend. Your prompt action made all the difference.'

  To Mearn, his Grace added, 'We're stunned as beached fish in the wake of a miracle. Yes, assistance is welcomed. I agree that Dame Dawr's charitable offer of transport is necessary. For tonight's rank embarrassment, by all means, claim your rightful place to act first. Face your brother before I make charges. If you promise to speak for Talvish's good name, my party will retire. We'll remain in our appointed suite in the guest tower, provided that Jeynsa's not harmed or abused. Within limits, you'll have my free rein to clear matters within your close family.'

  'That's fair' Mearn strode on towards the bed. Without care for the blood that might mar his finery, he extended his arm to Sidir. 'Can you stand and walk? For our dead, s'Brydion won't ask compensation if your injury can be forgiven.'

  The wronged clansman stared back, too prideful to lean. While Dakar hefted the lyranthe and sword, and scuttled headlong from the chamber, Sidir mustered his dignity and arose to full height. His grave disposition was flint, delivered from wavering balance. 'Until Jeynsa is freed, by crown obligation, I must let my grievance rest in my liege's hands.'

  Mearn nodded, white. 'Of course.' Ball-room silk and mussed velvet made his terrier's stance laughable, except for the fierce courage, which placed no blame, but strove only to master the horrific gaffe his brother's rash deed thrust upon him. Mearn held his hand open, determined enough to spit into the teeth of Dharkaron Avenger.

  Sidir unbent then. He accepted support, a statement as much made for friendship and faith as to manage the steep, spiral staircase.

  More than the staunch clansman's weight became shouldered by the searing flame of Mearn's outrage: through shaming embarrassment, the younger s'Brydion asked, 'How long can you give me, your Grace?'

  Rathain's prince did not answer until Talvish's hale strength had relieved his protective grip on Elaira. Only then, green eyes burning, he relented, and said, 'Noon. Inform your duke to be ready for audience. That's as far as I'm willing to compromise.'

  * * *

  Where the carriages of most well-set ladies were scented with rose leaves, patchouli or lavender. Dame Dawr eschewed flowery perfume. Her conveyance smelled of wax polish and leather, and the cinnamon sticks her manic coachman chewed, since the grandame forbade his pipe while on duty. The skinny man in dapper livery looked harmless. Atop the box, with the lines threaded in gloved fists, he drove like Dharkaron's vengeance.

  'He once moved supply for Duke Bransian's army,' Arithon warned at the outset.

  His fellow passengers scarcely had time to brace, before the closed vehicle jolted and rolled, with Elaira's slack form once again sheltered in her prince's possessive embrace. The four-in-hand bays surged ahead at a gallop, careening through twisting lanes and steep grades, with Dakar rendered green by the sway.

  'Learned his teams as a child, running cargo from the Sea Gate,' Arithon filled in, not quite smiling. 'He knows every inch of the citadel, blindfolded, which is good for us, since he'll probably mow down anything shoved in his path.'

  'Carries a mace, I noticed that much,' the forest-bred clansman observed, not so dazed, though the rough ride rattled bones and teeth.

  'All of Dawr's servants are hardened war veterans.' Arithon closed his eyes. 'Ease your mind. We're in the best hands.'

  Crushed against Sidir's shoulder as the coach thundered over the cobbles and rocked through the next hairpin bend, Dakar continued to glare at the prince, who snatched rest in the opposite seat. Mearn and Talvish had left them, presumably on their promised mission to confront the duke. Removed from outside eyes, and at last granted enough noise to forestall the long ears of Dawr's servants, the fraught spellbinder resumed his remonstrance.

  'You're stark mad to believe you'll be upright and fit by tomorrow! Don't fool with me, Arithon! Elaira's in shock. Your state's little better. If you expect to have all of your wits for a brangle with s'Brydion authority, think again.'

  'I am not going to delegate you as my emissary,' Arithon said without cracking his eyelids. Propped by the carriage's sum
ptuous upholstery, with his lyranthe and sheathed sword beside him, he ruthlessly quashed the objection. 'Dakar! You won't minister to Elaira. Or me. The task I am giving you won't permit compromise. Guard our door. Set up ward-watch, once we arrive. I need you for that! Kyrialt's risking his life on my orders with naught to defend but steel weaponry'

  Dakar fumed, stout arms folded. While the carriage barrelled onward, he had to concede that priority. Dawr's concern was self-evident. Her coachman held orders not to spare horses in his break-neck dash to deliver them. A checkpoint flashed past, to a shout from the driver. A snapped whip urged fresh speed from the team. If any sentries came forward to challenge, the dowager's cartouche stood them off. Her frail health might demand a physician. If not that, her keen temper was legend: nothing short of the duke's direct orders would bring any rank-and-file man to risk delaying her vehicle. The breakneck ride at least would be brief. The guest tower lay in the next quarter.

  Haste counted, if Bransian's underhand ploy should move on their disarray. The instant the carriage rolled to a stop, Arithon flung open the door. His s'Taleyn liegeman was already briefed: Mearn's foresighted gift, that Kyrialt stood at the bridge-head, primed to receive them. The span over the crevice was kept unlit. From behind, the dark doorway threw no silhouette to expose anyone's form as a target.

  'Fionn Areth's already inside,' he reported. 'The guard brought him in, hours past, by routine. They'd found him piss drunk and passed out in a heap, during clean-up after a bar brawl.' As he talked, Kyrialt peered into the coach, measuring with his scout's faculties. 'Your Grace? This is back-lash fever, beginning?' No answer was needed. He read all the grim signs. His touch stayed respectful as he reached in and gathered Elaira's limp weight out of Arithon's arms.