TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

  While Elaira looked on with stifled anxiety, Sulfin Evend peeled back the blankets. He lifted the cloth of the unmarked black cloak and perused the stained evidence of a wounding, quite real, and invasive enough to inflict the fresh onset of fever.

  'You earned someone's vicious enmity, old man,' he murmured, nettled by the hunch this was not just any civilian casualty. Frowning, Sulfin Evend extended his survey over the invalid's body. Those exquisite, fine hands; the lithe bones and cat's build; surely they woke recognition?

  'You!' he gasped, his bitterness plain as a shout to the ear of the mage-trained.

  And Elaira's breath froze: for her shared empathy stirred to the shattering sense that the disturbance roused Arithon back towards cognizance.

  Talvish would not see, his vantage obscured by the blanket.

  But the fogged eyes within Arithon's falsely aged visage were open and searching for light. No doubt blind except for initiate mage-sight, he groaned and started to stir. Agony caught him short; a hissed gasp, as every razor-cut nerve exploded to ruthless sensation. Rathain's prince languished, laid out in the hammock, and quite unable to move. Confused, convalescent, he came fully awake: alert to the furious oppressor poised over him, stunned yet by the shock of encounter.

  Endangered, possibly fighting delirium, he mustered the rags of his resource. Elaira could follow by heart-tied rapport, as auric imprint let him identify his antagonist.

  'Full circle,' Arithon managed at a frayed whisper. The eldest of the Biedar foresaw this. How will you deal? I still am not your enemy, for all that I had to break my past promise to stand clear of the fight at Alestron.'

  His shadow had answered to spare Feylind's life. For that, he would ask no man's pardon. As Talvish well knew, by the wary movement that stirred in the gloom past the remedy trunk. The wounded liegeman gathered himself to enact a foredoomed intervention. Dakar might act also, protection being forfeit, and Sulfin Evend lashed into impenetrable rage by Arithon's presumed betrayal.

  The paired guardsmen stationed on duty behind failed to notice the building danger: they had no cause to fear a wounded old man, not inside a bristling cordon at battle-strength in full arms.

  'I will not act' said Prince Arithon in stark calm. 'If I'd wanted you dead, you would have gone down, blindfolded and bound in the caverns.'

  If the statement pleaded a line of appeal, Sulfin Evend stayed torn. His watch-dog guardsmen sensed no alarm yet. But Koriani-trained instincts were screaming.

  Elaira firmed her heated grip on the crystal tucked beneath her draped cuff. Eyes open, thought stilled, she divided awareness to access the stone's focal matrix. The sigils required for ascendant domination were ugly, when framed for compulsion. Elaira gathered the resource, regardless. She would not watch Arithon killed out of hand, although nausea raked her in warning: the advanced awareness schooled by Ath's adepts ran utterly counter to all imposed spells of forced mastery.

  Through dizzying strain, her beloved's wracked speech laboured on to reach Sulfin Evend. 'You are not at risk, here! Rely on my word, if you won't hear a friend. The enchantress will not entrain any craft to serve my self-preservation!'

  Ath above! He asked her straight out to stand off. His compassion yet held out for reason. Or maybe he thought to fall back upon Dakar, whose auric fields were shut down to muddy the etheric blaze of his talent. No saving angle existed for back-up, with Sulfin Evend near losing his grip, whip-sawed by conflicted emotion.

  Through frantic dread, Elaira sensed Arithon's touch in her mind, gentle as rain in the desert. 'Listen. Beloved, we are not alone.'

  Listen to what? The pound of her heart was as thunder. Even as her wracked balance floundered, the aligned crystal held at the ready flared in the palm of her hand. Its matrix opened. A sudden surge of unleashed reassurance flooded her being and steadied her.

  'Listen,' sent Arithon, and urgency gave her the access to knowledge she needed: that the crystal she held had been mined on Athera, its innate consciousness encompassed by Sethvir's earth-linked awareness. The Sorcerer was entrained, back at Althain Tower. As Warden, he had sounded the crown prince's wound through the meticulous care in her healing. Now, Sethvir's tuned sight tracked the peril that threatened aboard Adruin's detained galley. As Elaira's overset faculties quieted, the Sorcerer's sending touched through to her: 'If there may come a time to rely on your order, this is not the moment. Holdfast.'

  Elaira glanced sidewards: saw the Mad Prophet's fist locked on Glendien's arm to curb her rash interference. The restraint eased the shrill edge of her panic. What nuance did Fellowship prescience see? Her frantic reassessment showed nothing else. Only the certain plunge towards disaster, juggernaut swift, still unfolding.

  Across the deck, Sulfin Evend's two guards had drawn swords, now distressed as their commander pressed his savage inquiry. 'Lysaer lies in jeopardy as long as you live! The mere fact you breathe is a threat to him.'

  'Truth,' allowed Arithon, drained ghostly pale. "Though I very much doubt my death at your hand will do anything to help save him.'

  Which feverish utterance, born of despair, a Biedar forecast had vigorously denied. Sulfin Evend still bore the searing remembrance. The clear force of its imprint also reached Elaira, a Sighted transference likely steered by Sethvir, as the tribal elder's past warning bridged time like a struck flare of lightning: 'Alone on Athera, he is the key to secure your liege's deliverance from jeopardy.'

  'Koriathaini have plotted to undermine Lysaer!' Sulfin Evend responded in smoking rebuttal. In the cold dark, under the wind-tossed lantern, his justified fears gained dimension. 'Here and now, I have caught their sneak hands in, again! While I saw a corpse, the stark semblance of yours, delivered to my command tent, the true sorcerer languishes here in disguise. The deadliest foe, masquerading as wounded, being ushered under the false cover of charity into the heart of my war camp!'

  'You saw -!' gasped Arithon, while distanced, his friends watched his breath stop. Then restart, on forced need to confirm the unbearable: that Fionn Areth was dead. The sorrow, just breaking, a devastating blow his nerves could never assimilate. Not in such harsh pain, pounded to stranded wits, amidst a charged confrontation.

  One critical instant, Elaira saw Arithon lose hold on the fact that he faced Lysaer's liegeman, whose loyalty posed lethal peril. While for Sulfin Evend, the split-second silence extended too long for tenuous doubt to stay credible.

  'For there will come the dark hour. His life thread crosses the palm of your hand. The choice is yours, Seithvir, whether or not to stay blinded,' the desert elder had forewarned of this fateful meeting.

  'How long, before you planned to drive your nemesis over the edge?' pealed the Light's supreme officer.

  'My kin and my brother! I have raised no attack on him.' Arithon closed the clouded eyes that veiled any humane expression of grief. He had small breath left. Only the presence to rephrase the gentle closure once used before, at Sanpashir. "You fight as my nightmare, Lysaer's true caithdein. But never in life as my enemy'

  Sulfin Evend's controlled temper broke. He had no thought for the onlooking ship's crew; none for the by-standing wounded. No vision to spare for another wrapped form, slung in the adjacent hammock: a fighting man with his head swathed in poultices, who had listened apace with burning hatred dammed behind his shut eyes. Nary a glance acknowledged the blond soldier with the strapped right arm, crouched by the remedy trunk.

  Poised over the s'Ffalenn bastard who was Spinner of Darkness, the Light's Lord Commander unsheathed his sword, perhaps to strike, perhaps only to threaten. Perhaps, as a spirit bound under a caithdein's oath to a Sorcerer, to test the given word of a crown prince, and ascertain whether arcane means or shadow might be turned in foul play against him. No one ever knew: for Parrien s'Brydion rolled out of his hammock, reclaimed by the berserker's geas wrought by the Koriani Prime Matriarch.

  Elaira detected the hard glimmer of spells spindled about his strapped form. She had no second to react, and no br
eath to cry warning, before Parrien's hurled bulk crashed full length, and took Sulfin Evend behind the knees. While the war-captain toppled, and the two Sunwheel guardsmen lunged with bare steel to retaliate, Talvish uncoiled, threw back masking blankets, and drew the black blade of Alithiel left-handed.

  Defence of the helpless unbridled the star spells.

  Bright sound and dazzling light blazed aloft, dissolving the Matriarch's ties of dark practice. The winter night rang to a chord of pure harmony that shattered the fabric of reason. Ecstatic reaction undid the armed men. Every standing guard in the cordon was hurled off his feet. The vibration coursed through weapons and mail, stinging held steel from their grasping hands. As the Sunwheel ranks crumpled, Talvish stood tall, wrung to tears of relief, while the sword's released power ranged outward. Soldiers and seamen and officers alike were wracked helpless, first crying, then laughing, rocked speechless by waves of wild harmony. The onslaught built, scaling octaves, until solid bone felt recast to struck glass, and flesh shuddered, lifted beyond strife by ineffable tingles of rapture.

  If Alithiel's song had been potent before, this explosive release surpassed bearing.

  Already flattened, the witnesses overtaken on board the Light's galley became whirled dizzy, then scattered witless. Prone on the deck, or dropped limp in the hold, they succumbed to euphoric unconsciousness. All, beyond the sword's bearer, and two more: the Koriani enchantress, whose hand clasped a quartz still encompassed by Sethvir's sent warding; and the clownish, fat prophet, whose auric fields were shut down far enough to slow the barrage.

  Elaira had scarcely a moment to notice the shielding that spared her from the sword's tonal confluence. Her hope, taking flight, became pressing necessity, sped on by word from Althain's Warden.

  'Act now, my dear!' Sethvir sent through the crystal. 'Though I realize you'll be concerned for your wounded, the tide in your favour won't wait. Your prince and his retinue must be sailed out of harm's way on the sloop. As a courier, the vessel's officially scheduled. She'll win you free course past Kalesh, where you'll make clean escape through blue water. When Dakar gets seasick, remind him that Parrien s'Brydion knows how to navigate.'

  Early Winter 5671

  Star Song

  While the sloop scuds in brisk winds towards the safety of open waters, Arithon lies senseless in the black weave of Davien's cloak; and although the peal of Alithiel's chord has restored his natural appearance and eased the healing of his dire wound, his shocked spirit has yet to recover awareness since the cry of sheathed steel, fallen silent. . .

  Southward, under stars upon the jet sands of Sanpashir where the eldest in service to Mother Dark's Chosen tips her seamed face to the sky, her tears hang the balance between sorrow and hope as she measures the living course of the prophecy: 'Behold the dark hour of the second death! Now Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn rides the song of the sword, with only one way to survive. His fate, and ours, lies with Elaira anient!. Grant strength for her coming decision . . .'

  Hours later, when the Light's stricken men recover awareness aboard Adruin's anchored galley, the count turns up several missing wounded, with the crew off the courier penned in the stern cabin, and their swift sloop, secured under Sunwheel pennons, long gone with the out-bound tide; in their midst, Sulfin Evend swears with savage refrain, that in life, he might never cross paths with the Spinner of Darkness again . . .

  Early Winter 5671

  XV Athir

  A cold, off-shore passage through stormy waters left a man in acute discomfort too much time for reflective thought. When Parrien s'Brydion awakened, mewed up in a berth aboard the jacked messenger sloop, the small vessel rolled hell-bent for the chartless deeps of the Cildein. Creaking timbers and the moan of taut gear told a seaman's emerging senses the craft bearing Arithon's delegation slogged, ill-set, against a cruel headwind. The risen gusts that screamed through the stays presaged worse weather to come. Parrien gritted his teeth. His mad-dog pain found no voice, that all he loved was endangered. He could not guard his doomed family, or spare them from the horrors that followed defeat. Alestron's sad fate lay beyond his reach, while the siege broke the ramparts, behind him.

  Worse than the throb of a headache at sea, and the sting of his tender contusions, Parrien faced the distrust of his shipboard captors. The moment the enchantress pronounced his health stable, Talvish arrived, armed, and rousted him.

  Chivvied past Glendien's skewering glare, then prodded above deck in a stranger's ill-fitting oilskins, Parrien cursed Dakar's lubberly seamanship as he assessed the sloop's course and condition. Rolling whitecaps thrashed a molten lead sea, sheeting spray off the plunge of the bowsprit. The keel wallowed, awash. Both main and jib-sheet were pinched, and thrumming in waspish protest. Each crest slammed the careening hull, as the north-eastward tack ploughed towards the frayed scud that foreran a trampling storm front.

  Whipped by the hanks of his unbraided hair, still clogged with mud from the poultice, Parrien blustered, 'Why hasn't your piratical prince stirred his arse to attend the ham-fisted trim of these sails?'

  'Mind your vile tongue!' the spellbinder snarled. Forced in soaked misery to man the rank helm, he ran on, 'His royal appeal in behalf of your life is all that's stayed Glendien's hand. I'd rather have left your fate to the thugs grunting oars aboard Adruin's galley.' Between imprecations, Dakar belaboured his s'Brydion prisoner with understanding that, Arithon being infirm, somebody else was required to navigate.

  Parrien licked his teeth. More likely, that inconvenient necessity had been what kept the clan widow's dirk from his ribs. Braced as the salt chased the fur from his mouth, he said carefully, 'Where under sky am I taking us?'

  Dakar's staggered gesture encompassed the darkened horizon. 'Anywhere out-bound.' Under contrary wind, despite heaving sickness, he had won as much distance from Alliance pursuit as the courier craft could withstand. 'What course we set later depends upon Arithon, who hasn't returned to awareness.'

  Which upset was certain to make shipboard life beyond difficult: Parrien understood he was roped by the heels. The Fellowship flunky would scarcely forgive his blood-letting assault on a crown prince. 'A stupid mistake doesn't make me suicidal,' he declared in cornered forbearance. 'If you turn your back now, I won't swap the heading. My death, or your prince's, would just salve the tears of the jackals besetting my family.'

  Dakar's hackles outmatched the queasy reflex to render his gorge. 'I should credit the fact that we're in this together? That didn't restrain your killing rage last time.'

  Parrien shrugged. He need not apologize when pressed at bay, that s'Brydion reacted for kinsfolk. Since survival demanded, he bent his rapacious attention towards easing the sheets. A cross-staff rummaged out of the stern-locker let him sight the sun's angle at noon. He reset the glass to log elapsed time and determine the moment of sundown. Since plotting required map and dividers, he asked for Talvish to relieve the helm. The belaboured keel settled immediately under the man's more-experienced hand. Wet, but less battered, Parrien left Dakar folded against the lee-rail, then braved the on-going hostilities below to establish a running fix.

  With his two wardens topside, the empty stern cabin allowed him free use of the chart nook. His snatched refuge extended, since he could not scribe figures until his numbed fingers got warm.

  Fragmented talk filtered through the companion-way, where the Prince of Rathain still languished in febrile unconsciousness. Glendien remained by his midships berth, where the roll of the sloop stayed the mildest. Elaira meantime braved the noisome task of changing his crusted bandages. 'No sepsis,' she commented, thankful, as the lifted dressing exposed the tender pink of a closing wound. 'The drainage has slackened. I won't need the iodine. Alithiel's chord seems to have healed the grim worst. The fever's less, and his body is mending without any sign of impairment.'

  Yet for the spirit strayed too far afield, swept in thrall by the winter stars' singing, no remedy Dakar or Elaira had tried could effect a waking recovery. The Masterb
ard's gifted awareness stayed lost, strung warp through weft with a harmony past human cognizance. Every effort to summon him through rapport ended in reeling faintness. Against precedent, the enchantress could not touch Arithon's being. Always, the splendour of the grand chord surged through and unravelled her contact.

  'He's drifted too far,' she murmured, forsaken and raggedly desolate. While the lantern swung to the sloop's heeling pitch, she masked tears against her clenched fists. Her wisped chestnut braid draped the curve of her neck, and stress bowed her brave shoulders. Through the keen blast of spray through the hatch, as Dakar clumped below on a staggering weave that fetched him up, green, in the galley, Parrien caught snatches of her untenable anguish.

  Three days . . . drive him beyond safe limits . . . can't measure the scope of his danger! Mercy on us ... try some other more-desperate avenue ... don't find some way to recall him!'

  Dakar left off brewing his peppermint-leaf tisane to kneel at her side. 'Elaira.' Drawn as he was himself, and as sorrowful, he gathered up her distraught hands. 'Stand down. Stay strong. Your beloved is spirit wandering. If he rides the winds, that does not mean he's in fatal danger just yet. The effect of the Five Centuries Fountain should balance his health and grant time to seek wiser means than your order's forced mastery to waken him.'

  'You've communed with Sethvir?' Against Elaira's nature, bitterness showed as she pushed off the spellbinder's comfort. 'I've sent to the Warden myself. Called out in appeal through my crystal, repeatedly. Yet I've gotten nothing but silence from Althain Tower!'

  Dakar stood with a reluctant sigh, braced his awkward weight, and filled the pot on the gimballed stove. 'Sethvir is still fielding the leaks on two grimwards. Even on good days, nobody fathoms the ways of a Fellowship Sorcerer.'