Master of Whitestorm (21 page)

Unnoticed, he had moved to Haldeth’s shoulder.

The smith released Korendir in an unceremonious heap, then kicked the loose coils over the brink.

Line unreeled downward with a hiss that had little to do with disturbed air. Before Haldeth’s eyes, the hemp vibrated with light, then reverted with a shriek and a blinding flash into the sorcery that originally created it.

The wereleopards were incinerated in an eyeblink. Not even fumes remained to mark their passing.

Orame tilted his head to one side over the suddenly deserted shaft. As if in afterthought, he stepped to the boulder where, earlier, he had chosen to sit. Calmly he set elegant hands against its rain-streaked shale. The stone groaned, shifted, then rocked with an energy that defied the still earth and every law of inertia. Orame spoke in a coaxing tone, as if he entreated a beloved hound to fetch something unpleasant. The rock hesitated like a live thing. Then it trembled and tumbled awkwardly on its side, to lodge with a great, hollow boom directly in the mouth of the shaft.

No wereleopards would emerge from that cave forever after.

Orame dusted his hands. Satisfaction softened his countenance as he joined Haldeth, who already knelt in concern over the ragged survivor delivered safe from the caverns of the Ellgol.

XII

THE GRIEF OF SOUTH ENGLAS

THE BLOOD
proved to be as much the wereleopards’ as Korendir’s; beyond his mauled leg, a shallow slash on one shoulder, and some scabs on his left wrist, the mercenary from White Rock Head was remarkably unharmed after his trials in the caves. Haldeth tightened the knots on the last make-shift bandage and sat back on his heels with a sigh of intense relief. Attenuation from scanty rations and exhaustion would mend swiftly, given rest and food; clean-dressed wounds would heal.

Permitted finally to move, Korendir’s first act was to recover his sword. The blade was sticky red, and dulled from too much use without sharpening. “You wouldn’t by any chance have oil and whet stone about?” he asked of his companion.

Haldeth returned a curse. “Thank Neth, I don’t.” He shook his head, wondering upon the haggard features of the man before him. Korendir’s eye sockets were bruised from lack of sleep; his hands shook, despite every effort to conceal weakness. Unable to imagine the months and the terrors he had survived under the mountains, the smith shifted his glance to include the sword. There were chips missing from the cutting edge, visible even through congealing layers of gore. “That steel’s not worth sweating over. Give it up. I’ll forge you better when we return to my smithy at Whitestorm.”

Korendir gave back a blank glance, then settled with wiping the weapon on the tattered and already fouled hem of his tunic. After that he turned eyes large as coins in his gaunt face, and measured the shadowed figure at Haldeth’s shoulder.

Starved Korendir might be, and hurting, but his reaction stunned thought. In an instant he was on his feet, wary, poised, but prepared to be courteous in his stiff-mannered way. “You’re White Circle?”

Orame inclined his head. Then, before Korendir could phrase even rudimentary thanks, the enchanter laced slim hands at his belt. His gaze raked the mercenary from bronze hair to torn boots, then flicked in expectation to Haldeth. “My payment, master smith,” he prompted sternly.

Haldeth pushed apprehensively to his feet. He had no stomach for crossing Korendir while sitting on his backside in shale; even worse, the gorse still lodged in his britches added irritation to what now seemed a regrettably bad bargain.

The smith closed his ham hands into fists, faced his companion, and spoke in a rush before his courage failed. “For your rescue I was forced to make a promise. You must tell me the name of your parents.” Next he flinched in expectation of swift and merciless retribution.

Anger tightened every joint in Korendir’s body. He gripped his naked blade, unmistakably poised for attack. Then without warning he checked and shifted focus to the wizard who waited stone-still in the darkness and the rain.

Gray eyes met black through a charged moment of challenge.

Finally a muscle jumped in Korendir’s jaw. “For Haldeth’s honor only,” he allowed. His tone was edged as beaten metal, and directed solely at the White Circle enchanter.

“I am illegitimate.” The sword blade remained, a line of deadly stillness in the air. “The Widow of Shan Rannok may have been my mother. She fostered me. When I reached my twentieth year, I was to be informed of my parentage, but that secret died untold.” Korendir paused, then forced the last words past his teeth. “The Lady of Shan Rannok and all of her following were slaughtered without reprieve by Mhurgai raiders.”

Silence fell, filled by a soft sigh of wind. Without regard for the poised blade, Orame tipped his head to one side and nodded to himself. “Did the lady herself say you were born out of wedlock?”

Korendir moved not at all, but the tic in his cheek went still. He matched the wizard’s expectancy with icy restraint. “That is not for your hearing, enchanter. My debt to you, and Haldeth’s, is discharged as of this moment. If you think otherwise, then kill me where I stand.”

Orame smiled and quietly demurred. “The debt is cleared. If you find any comfort in truth, the gossips at Shan Rannok lied cruelly. The widow was not your natural mother. She stayed faithful to her dead lord, always. The secret of your origins in all probability died before she ever took you in.”

But if the wizard had perceived and answered some deeply hidden longing, his words drew no reaction. Korendir heard this news without gratitude. If Orame hoped to prompt an appeal for additional information, the mercenary’s lips remained sealed, and his sword stayed implacably raised.

With what seemed dry amusement, the wizard turned toward a taut and unnerved Haldeth. “I take my leave of you both. The gold you left at my tower shall be returned to Whitestorm keep. The draft horse, I believe, chewed through its tether and wandered back to the roadway. It has already been recovered by the livery stable.”

“And the cart?” asked Haldeth.

Orame’s eyebrows rose in evident mirth. “That, dear man, had been designated for the junk merchant a fortnight before you chose to rent it.”

The wizard stepped back then. His charcoal gray robes vanished abruptly into the darkness, and if any discernible disturbance marked his departure, the event became obscured by Haldeth’s invective against the ostler at Heddenton who had taken good silver with all the honor of a thief.

When the smith at last ran out of breath, he found himself alone. Korendir had taken his sword and gone off to search for wood to kindle a fire. The rain was perversely falling harder, and with a pang of regret, Haldeth recalled the ham and the cheeses on Orame’s table that he had indignantly refused to sample. The nearest settlement of shepherds was leagues away, and his belly felt empty as a drum.

The evening progressed in miserable silence. Korendir sat wrapped in his cloak, light eyes fixed on the flames. Except to mention that the farmers of Mel’s Bye had left him a stock of supplies, he chose not to speak of his ordeal in the caves of the Ellgol. Raindrops seeped from his hair and dripped off the beard that had grown unchecked through his months of privation. The mercenary may have been brooding; possibly he speculated upon innuendos raised by the final words of Orame; but when Haldeth accidentally brushed Korendir’s flank while adding wood to the fire, the glare flung back at him warned otherwise. The Master of Whitestorm viewed the bargain which surrounded his rescue with cold, inexpressible fury. Aware of a pressure beneath his quiet that burned and seethed like trapped lava, Haldeth strove to deflect the bent of his companion’s thoughts.

“When we get back, and the keep is built, you can give up adventuring and settle down. Orame of the White Circle told me, without question. His kind never sell their services for gold.”

Korendir’s gaze stayed fixed. “Then gold must be raised to buy whatever it is that White Circle enchanters desire.”

“Neth, I swear, you were fathered by a mule!” Haldeth flung a billet on the fire with excessive force. Embers scattered; sparks whirled skyward and momentarily lit the rain like some grisly fall of blood. “A stone responds to reason more readily than you do. Will you never let be and stop?”

Korendir redirected the exclamation with a pointed question of his own. “How goes the construction at Whitestorm? Are the walls shoulder high yet?”

Haldeth answered only when he ran out of expletives. As cold drizzle fell and fell, and light from the campfire traced the tired, too gaunt profile of a man who had fought off wereleopards through three solitary months of confinement, the smith described the state of Whitestorm’s fortifications. He added exhaustive detail, and listed everything from the game paths in Thornforest, to the fish in the tide pools beneath the cliffs. All the while, he could not help but despair inside.

“Your quest is a hopeless waste of life,” he announced in a shattering change of subject. “Don’t expect me to go with you, or save you again, when you rush headlong into risk.”

“No,” said Korendir with a simplicity that implied far too much.

Haldeth stared at the coals and cursed the smoke for making his eyes water. The rescue from the jaws of the wereleopards had most assurely been futile. In time, some unfortunate wretch would send an appeal to Whitestorm, pleading help in behalf of his countrymen, and offering gold in return. Somewhere, anywhere in the Eleven Kingdoms, trouble and woe would be stirring...

* * *

The guardsman who brought word of the tragedy had to be half-carried into the king’s audience chamber, so weakened was he from loss of blood. His surcoat had been rent by a scimitar, and dust-caked stains all but obliterated the device.

“Your Royal Grace,” he managed, swaying on his feet despite the support of two sturdy squires. “The princess’s caravan has been overtaken by Datha raiders. All in her service were slain in her defense. Myself, Neth’s Accursed left for dead. Sire, I searched, but no trace could I find of Her Grace, Iloreth, nor any of her tiring women and maids.”

The queen’s anguished wail fell upon a court stunned to stillness. Shocked courtiers were soon disturbed by the hurry of the royal healer, who shoved past the gaping chamber steward with his smock in disarray. An old man skilled in his trade, he sketched obeisance before the throne, looked once at the guardsman’s gray features, then rounded without ceremony on the king.

“Your Grace, this man is dying. Have I your leave?”

The king ignored the healer’s impertinence and somehow managed a nod. He watched in stony-eyed shock as the guardsman was led away, stumbling over a gold and purple carpet now marred with bloodstains and dust. The first seneschal of the realm spoke urgently to the queen’s ladies. They moved like ghosts in response, and veiled her weeping face behind silk. On the highest level of the dais, the king roused himself. He gripped his throne with shaking hands and spoke.

“My daughter Iloreth is dead.” The pronouncement was met without a rustle from the courtiers seated in the galleries on either side. “If there is life in her body, pray Neth extinguishes it, for the Dathei are an honorless race. Let South Englas mourn for the princess’s soul. When the candles burned in her memory are spent, let no man speak her name in my presence.”

Bells tolled in South Englas by royal decree, shivering the air over the desert sands. The king’s loyal donned the black of mourning, and every priest in the land burned offerings for the merciful deliverance of Iloreth. Yet the sole and beloved offspring of the sovereign of South Englas was not dead.

* * *

The princess had twice tried to take her own life. As the victory screams of the Datha horseman had quavered over her fallen escort, the dagger she turned on her wrists cut well and deeply; but death had not come swiftly enough. Her captors had staunched her bleeding, their cruel, peaked brows shadowing their eyes as they worked. Words in their guttural tongue flew thick and fast between them. They pulled her from the scented dimness of her litter into merciless sunlight. Harsh hands pinioned her limbs, held her helpless before laughter and jeers while other, uglier hands prodded at her young flesh.

Scarlet with shame, Iloreth tore one hand free and seized the curved knife from the belt of her nearest captor. This time she tried for her heart.

The weapon was snatched from her grasp. A ringed fist slammed across her face and opened her cheek to the bone. One of her maids screamed as she sagged upon the sand. Yet the blow in the end proved merciful.

The princess who had never in life known mistreatment swooned into deep unconsciousness. She did not suffer when the thumbs were severed from her hands; she felt nothing of the callused fingers that pried her jaws open, or the knife that hacked the tongue from her mouth. The shock of such mutilation claimed the lives of two of her women. They were the fortunate ones.

Iloreth woke to the tickle of flies around her lips. Pain ran in waves up her arms and over her face; her subsequent attempt to move revealed an agony of cramped muscles. She opened caked eyes and received a whirling, blurred impression of sweat-sheened hide and jewelled leather. She had been lashed like baggage to the saddle of a Datha horseman. The rider was currently dismounted. He and his beast drank from a desert spring in great, sucking gulps; the sounds drew the princess’s notice to the dried and swollen state of her own mouth. That moment Iloreth encountered the horror that remained of her tongue. The discovery made her retch.

The rider heard. He spat water into the sand and turned to find his captive restored to consciousness.

“Yhai,”
he exclaimed. Thin, mustachioed lips parted over white teeth. Sunlight gleamed on his muscled back as he bent and dipped his leather cup in the spring. He jingled as he moved. Brass ornaments sewn to his riding leathers scattered reflections of desert sky; slung from his studded belt, he carried six knives, a scimitar, and a sharpened set of quoits.

Iloreth retched again as his smell filled her nostrils, rancid and sour from the fat smeared on his skin as protection from the desert’s drying wind. The Datha closed his knuckles like a vise in her hair. He yanked back her head, then poured a warm stream of water into her mouth.

Iloreth choked, forced to swallow or drown. Nausea racked her and emptied her stomach the instant her captor released her. His laughter stung her ears. Weak, dizzy, and barely aware, she lay limp, head down over the horse’s sweated side. Her captor hooked the cup to his belt, then spun on his heel and remounted. He spurred his horse to a canter, and tormented once more beyond consciousness by the jolting lurch of the ride, Iloreth missed the raiders’ entry through the gateways of Telssina.