TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

  'How your words in my mouth raise my hackles!' Davien threw up his hands. 'Say again that this is not a staged trial, tailored to fit the renegade criminal roped in for summary judgement! I find the role that you've scripted too pat.

  Your string-puppet accused will not dance for the question!' Quick as the turn of a leaf in a storm, the Sorcerer spun on his heel. He strode towards the doorway with a fierce glance back, talking fast to jam Luhaine silent. 'You don't need my presence to bandy conjecture. Carry on, by all means. Enjoy your salacious dissection of character without the bother of my protestations.'

  Sethvir's fraught cry for restraint went unheard. His tenure as Warden was too recent, yet, for his colleagues to grasp full significance. Or perhaps Davien sensed the overshadowing gravity. In his wild rage, he might have left the warning suicidally disregarded. The heated moment had fanned Fellowship tempers too high for clear sight: that Althain Tower's Paravian defences had stirred active by their raw dissension.

  The warding seal at the doorway had never been meant for restraint. Sethvir's token binding was symbolic, a sincere gesture to confront wounded trust and reforge a confidence torn by the pressures of Desh-thiere's invasion.

  Davien broached the drawn line and stepped out. Brilliant as autumn, he vanished into the stairwell, without second thought crossing the focused will of the appointed Warden of Althain Tower.

  Asandir was alone, as he leaped in response to the unforeseen crisis. Chair slammed over backwards, the field Sorcerer vaulted the ebony table and launched off in desperate pursuit.

  He might have overtaken Davien in time. Intervention, at speed, perhaps could have checked wounded pride and stopped his colleague's incensed departure.

  But Kharadmon slammed the door in Asandir's path. 'Let the betrayer go his own way!'

  Luhaine's victimized feelings agreed. 'Davien's incessant meddling brings naught but dissent! He'll break our hearts, arguing, while new packs of head-hunters are reiving through the free wilds slaughtering clansfolk -'

  'Shehane Althain's aroused!' Sethvir's shout at last broke the clamour.

  But the fortunate moment was already lost. Davien encountered the raised might of the tower's guardian centaur, and the vigorous reflex for self-preservation entrapped him, past any recourse save one: the ceremonial dissolution his colleagues enacted to spare him, that stripped the spirit out of living flesh ...

  * * *

  Convulsed by the acuity of remembered agony, Asandir kept his hand immersed in the violet flux streaming off Seshkrozchiel's dorsal spine. He sustained the recoil. Endured, braced, as the scream of the colleague he would have spared, whole, reechoed across his stretched nerves. If Asandir wept, if he also recalled Ciladis's tears for a judgement forced into premature closure, the hour for grieving was over. The field Sorcerer embraced the experience without falling to the harrowing onslaught of guilt. He had wrestled such emotional echoes before, immersed in the coils of grimwarded haunts. While the imprint razed into the unfolding flux, he knew the live dragon's engagement would capture the shattering resonance.

  No barrier deferred the tangling impact. Creation must follow, as the tumultuous, past trauma fed the storm of reactive event.

  Davien's conscious memory was swept along. His threatened cognizance became riveted as the horrific shock of his error resurged, nightmarishly vivid as direct experience.

  Asandir held the line. Fist still clenched in the crackling forces thrown off Seshkrozchiel's dorsal spine, he added his heart-felt appeal to her dream-weave: that explosive recall of Davien's fatal severance would seed enough charge to bind a discorporate spirit to self-awareness amid lawless upheaval. And that if his drastic tactic sufficed, such searing coherency might last long enough for Seshkrozchiel to unspin the vengeful haunt's fit of battle-fury.

  No thought and no time could be spared to examine for wide-ranging consequences. The Fellowship's past action to appease Shehane Althain's defences had been the same: a heart-rending choice of expediency seized in a split second's opening. Crisis had not let them salvage the mis-step that threatened Davien's destruction. Nothing else, now, might shield him from ruin through the bid for Scarpdale's restoration.

  Asandir stretched his practised faculties, counterworking the whip-lash effects of grimwarded dissonance. He recognized peril: at no time had the shade of his stallion been cross-linked with a living dragon's awareness. No Fellowship Sorcerer might foresee the outcome sown by Seshkrozchiel's perception. Nor had Asandir witnessed the prior banishment of Hanshire's strayed lancers, or tracked the speed at which her avid attention could freeze the progression of breaking event. Her close survey, by which she mapped the essence of all things not dragon would have left even Sethvir's resources reeling.

  Asandir received Davien's conflicted torment, rocked by a fear that fused thought and will into ruthless concern for the future; while Davien saw beyond his branding need for redress with a merciless, refigured clarity.

  If Kharadmon had been incensed from pain, and Luhaine, still mad with grief for the rebellion's harsh losses, the luminous care behind disparate viewpoints now eclipsed every meaningful truth. Beyond the cruelty of Davien's wracked horror, sparked to salvage abraded identity, Asandir brought the quickened, yearning frustration that once dead-locked the Fellowship's impasse: Ciladis's joy, never robbed by disdain, but overspent by driven exhaustion; the suffering born of Traithe's crippled perception; and not least, the most disastrously misappraised stress of them all: Sethvir's harrowing struggle to master the augmented stream bestowed by the earth link.

  Davien's stunned recoil, and Asandir's shock, had no chance to recover. Seshkrozchiel did not perceive as Mankind. Her intent acknowledged no course beyond victory. Thus, the entangled energies that were not dragon became seized and recast, made her own. A recombinant pattern, snatched from the throes of the Fellowship's failure, would resharpen the cascading thrust of her assault.

  'Yours to choose, ancient!' Asandir whispered, undone if his stop-gap strategy should overturn to the detriment of all he held dear. Seshkrozchiel dreamed.

  The resonant print of the warding raised by Shehane Althain struck skull and bone shattered; while the matchless depth of Ciladis's patience overwrote the sting of an unmated defeat into a poignant longing that eased bitter rage into loneliness. The crazed haunt had no footing to stand before love: a concept, not dragon, strung through Asandir's adamance, and Sethvir's loyalty. The onslaught awoke flooding sorrow, for beauty lost: and the inspiration of new understanding broke the grip of riled insanity. Refigured by change, the intractable drake-spirit knew the unfolding grace of release. It embraced death such as no dragon had known in the course of evolving creation.

  While Davien, whose hot-blooded urgency had once impelled a tragic disaster, met the shearing crux of his past ruin again in the flux of a live dragon's dreaming.

  Watching, the golden eye of Seshkrozchiel encountered his human regret.

  The flame of lost desire stood stark as cut diamond. Force kindled reaction, unstoppable. Davien's present, discorporate consciousness launched across a threshold of shifted event. Devoured by a coruscation of rainbows, he passed through the King's Chamber at Althain Tower. Then the fleeting impression plunged into oblivion dense as the dark of the womb.

  Winter 5671

  Redemption

  Tradition held that change always followed the footsteps of Fellowship Sorcerers. If Glendien had never troubled before with the gravity of ancestral warnings, that reckless attitude had withered amid the blustering days of midwinter. Her capricious exchange with Davien the Betrayer had led to the siege of Alestron and loss of her husband in Rathain's crown service.

  Now her womb harboured the next s'Ffalenn heir. Such ties to crown lineage evoked privilege: Glendien accepted the offered grant of a protected residency. The explicit need for her informed consent might have caused her to weigh that decision more carefully; or not. Scoured by grief, she would have seized upon any distraction to numb her fresh heart-a
che.

  History declared without exception: to cross over the threshold of Althain Tower was to be tested and tried, either to break, or to reforge shrinking weakness into the strengths of true character. Yet Luhaine's expedient transfer had not delivered her to Sethvir. Her needs were met instead by a White Brotherhood adept, who had smiled but answered no questions. The second-floor guest suite was austerely furnished, the swept stone floor warmed with a bright rug, and a south-facing window with diamond panes that let in flooding sunlight. Except for the silence, her room seemed quite ordinary.

  Glendien detected no dread currents of power. Even the burn of the flux lines seemed stilled, which warned her the chamber was shielded. Althain Tower lay on the primary lane that flowed through Atainia, where the Great Circle at Isaer's old ruin once hosted the council of the centaur guardians. Transverse lines crossed here, which powered the Sorcerer's Preserve and the axis under the Mathorn Mountains; also the shining track that surged through the old way from Narms, past the marker stone in Daon Ramon Barrens, and the Second Age nexus sited at Ithamon.

  Yet no turbulence blazed through Glendien's dreams. She sensed no other voice but the wind, whisking across ancient stonework. Restless despite a night's peaceful sleep, she brushed her red hair for the third time and fretted under the irritation of leaving the tresses unbraided. Never having borne Kyrialt's child, she had no more right to the clan pattern of s'Taleyn; if the s'Ffalenn name had been gifted a traditional weaving, she had no elder of Arithon's lineage to guide her.

  'Ath above,' she burst out, as she ripped up a lashing of static. 'I'd rather a bow to go hunting!'

  Uncertainty coloured her isolation. She noted no outside bustle of comings and goings; nothing important arose to explain why she should be abandoned to her own devices. Sethvir's hospitality seemed vexingly dull. Her forestborn talent strove, and quite failed, to pierce through the blanketing quiet.

  By contrast, every slight comfort was met before asking, until Glendien felt like a cosseted jewel tucked into a velvet-lined box.

  That impression broke the next morning when a robed adept arrived at her door. He had bright, dark eyes, the brown skin of a tribesman, and a spry stride that outpaced her ascent of the stairs as he escorted her two floors higher up. There, she was admitted to the King's Chamber and asked to wait on the attendance of a Fellowship Sorcerer. No assurance of welcome soothed her jangled nerves. Instead, her anxiety gave rise to more doubts at the sight of the banners denoting Athera's five kingdoms. The hearth fire did not ease her mounting dread, in this place. Which of the empty, carved chairs at the ebony table had once seated Torbrand s'Ffalenn? Here also, Rathain's first caithdein had stood with drawn sword, on the hour the lineage's founder had knelt to seal his crown oath over his blood descendants.

  Glendien shivered. One day her child might be called to serve in the grandiloquent weight of such footsteps.

  The dyed carpet felt much too rich underneath her irreverent tread. Thick silence itself seemed reproachful. Glendien ran her fingers over the panelling that softened the tower's stonewall. The curly maple all but sang to her touch, fitted with the uncanny rapport that bespoke Paravian joinery. She could not deny the sharp misery that broke her bravado to tears. In dread fact, she felt unfit. Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had not chosen her as the mother to bear his first child.

  'You still can turn back,' a mild voice declared from the doorway.

  Breath caught, her pulse pounding, Glendien whirled face about.

  The promised Sorcerer stood at the threshold, watching with steely grey eyes. How long had such powerful stillness been present, unnoticed until he had spoken?

  Keeping her pinned in his earnest regard, the arrival finished his statement.

  'The hour is not yet too late to change your mind and step back. You need not bear the full consequence that will result from your choices at Athir.'

  Glendien swallowed. Temper sparked off the raw flint of her fear as she trembled beneath his close survey. 'Do I seem that untrustworthy?'

  'No.' Asandir strode fully into the room. Soundless of step, he left the door open, perhaps aware that her forest-bred nerves felt entrapped by closed quarters. His imposing height was clothed in formality: a deep indigo robe bordered with silver that shimmered like summer lightning. He had labourer's hands, close-trimmed nails, and large knuckles, the impression of capable strength unnervingly callused and ordinary. The Sorcerer accepted her stare. Without comment, he turned one of the ivory-trimmed chairs and sat down. Now settled beneath her regard, he seemed care-worn, even shadowed by signs of a taxing recovery.

  Which insight lent nothing, by way of advantage. His conclusion stayed dauntlessly level. 'You keep what is promised, and without complaint. I would have said, Glendien, that you are impetuous.'

  She raised her chin. 'No quality fit to endow a crown heir. My pride can withstand your rejection.'

  One corner of Asandir's mouth pulled awry. He folded his hands and leaned forward. Lit head to foot by rapt expectation, he urged in silk quiet, 'Continue. What other faults should you list for my censure?' As she flushed scarlet, he added, quite mild, 'Or else say what you actually want. Short and plainly is best, from the heart.'

  The cry of her grief for her dead beloved emerged as fresh tears that welled over. She turned her back. Hoped the crude need for retreat came in time, as the silver and black on emerald green of Rathain's royal leopard dissolved from her sight in the flood. Worse, her shaking knees threatened to buckle. The courage that should have raised her fighting spirit ebbed under her crushing anguish.

  Perhaps she gasped Kyrialt's name, after all.

  For suddenly the Sorcerer's presence was there, looming over her wretched misery. A ghost's touch clasped her elbow. She was steadied, then upheld without words through the torrent, regardless of acute embarrassment.

  Then Asandir said, 'You've seen everything that was needful, in here. Let's move our discussion outside. Doubtless both of us would prefer the open air.'

  Despite brimming eyes, Glendien stared upwards in shocked surprise.

  Asandir's quick smile eased his severe face. 'Why else do you think I stay out in the field? Sethvir's the one who likes sitting, mewed up with his piles of books. He's always preferred his fur buskins and comfort, though if you stay, you'll have to excuse his loose habit of letting the blizzards dump snow through the casements.'

  Glendien permitted such disarming patter to steer her through the door, and on down the draughty stone stairwell. The Sorcerer allowed her to lean, without comment, as she wavered in threading between the commemorative statues of the Paravians, housed in Althain's ground-floor chamber. Then the awe raised by yester-year's majesty fell behind, closed off by the chased panels at the sallyport threshold. The icy shrill of the draughts through the murder holes under the gate arch restored her. Glendien gulped desperate breaths in the cold, while Asandir manned the winch and unbarred the tower's triple array of defences.

  Then the north wind off the Bittern Desert slapped into her aching lungs. Speech was not expected, through the bracing shock, as Sorcerer and clanswoman stepped out. Together they traversed the heath that surrounded Althain Tower. The sere toss of the grass wore rime-frost, but no snow. The blue sky was combed lace, with cirrus. Early sun shot flickers of brittle gold light on the tossing canes of last season's briar. Even at midwinter, the air was alive with the rustle of small animals and bird-song. Nesting wrens liked the ivy on Althain's south wall. Their fluttering, as they gleaned for small insects, seemed to scatter ahead at each footstep. Elsewhere, a jay's squalled retort gave warning of a soaring hawk.

  Glendien felt her heart lift. Wind flagged her red hair to fresh tangles. The gusts rippled the indigo velvet of Asandir's mantle, across silence that begged her to talk.

  'You'll snag such fine cloth on the thorns,' she ventured at testing length.

  'Not the first time, for that.' The Sorcerer's comment seemed wryly amused, though a note like iron struck through his calm as he
finished, 'We've both survived amid turbulent times. My last set of leathers came back unfit to wear. Sethvir's sewing replacements. He says any chore that keeps his hands busy helps him sort through his brooding thoughts. You don't enjoy needlework, do you? Our Warden's always been secretly crushed when a guest won't leave him with the mending.'

  Glendien shivered, not from the cold. Arms wrapped at her breast, she had not marked the moment when the Sorcerer's touch had abandoned her. 'Should I bear Arithon's child and stay?'

  'I can't answer that for you.' Asandir's ranging stride led to the crest of a hillock. The vales roiled away in serried ranks, wind-swept and mottled with violet haze until the edges blurred into distance. Lancing sunlight kissed the mica-flecked rock, sparkling like stars dropped to earth. The Sorcerer's voice seemed woven into the enduring grace of the wilderness. 'You are entitled to ask questions. If I can, I will lend your choice guidance.'

  His piercing whistle slashed the clear air; woke the blast of an answering whinny. Amid the high brush, a black colt raised his head, nostrils blowing and ears pricked in his burr-tangled mane. Young, not yet yearling, he flagged his high tail, then stretched his long legs and galloped. He veered, playing tag with the gusts, and joyously kicked up his heels.

  'Show-off,' Asandir murmured with fondness.

  The animal ploughed to a snorting halt. Eye rolling, he reared. The swift, punching strike of a stockinged foot asserted his bold independence. Then he pranced up to nuzzle the Sorcerer's fingers and try a swift nip if he could. High crest to flat back, the magnificent creature knew his own worth; was proud to own the place he inhabited. He had a narrow, white snip on his nose; one blue, ghost eye, and one brown, that shone deep and bright with intelligence. 'You take after your sire,' Asandir declared. 'A rare gift, born out of a blood-line even a sorcerer can't hold for granted.' Asandir's attention remained on the horse, where his keen insight might not intimidate. 'You might start with the child,' he invited gently.