Stormed Fortress (66 page)

'
Sit, child!
'
Selidie urged her young charge.
'
Be at ease. You
'
ve done well.
'
Her peremptory wave dispatched an attendant for burn salve and dressings.
'
What did you find out in the officers
'
tents?
'

The shaken girl resumed her report. This is no malady. The afflicted appear to be deeply asleep. Their minds are not broken. Their life signs do not labour. Though I could not scan auras without my crystal, I detected no harmful effects on these victims.
'
A gasped break, as a healer cut the singed shift away from the seared flesh underneath. "The state seems like a profound suspension of spirit, as though the stricken are dreaming.
'
The queer correlation took longer to sort, that those who lay prostrate by Arithon
'
s working were men of unshakeable devotion to Lysaer
'
s cause.

The sixth-rank senior ventured her opinion.
'
If they waken, they would make a singular weapon to prosecute war with cold fury.
'

Which suggested a core following, its dross stripped away, pitched to spearhead a relentless blood-bath. Extreme fanatics would wield the Light
'
s cause ahead of their own survival. The concept gave even Prime Selidie pause. Past question, today
'
s action was shifting the balance by removing the temperate hearts who might have settled for truce.

The Prime
'
s delicate jaw hardened. She withheld her orders to disband the healers
'
camp or retire the central pavilion. Ruled by fixed purpose and stubborn fury, no Koriani Matriarch would yield to a crown prince
'
s hand. Not before testing all options. Since Lirenda
'
s experience knew the Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn best, Prime Selidie ploughed into her captive mind and ransacked for fresh inspiration.

One memory emerged, clear as the noon daylight, drawn from a past encounter. Years before, in a baiting exchange with Lirenda, Arithon had seized control of a Koriani scrying by asserting his bardic talent through air. Today
'
s assault also rode on the winds. Dispersed upon the effortless breeze, such a crafting acknowledged no boundary. Logic suggested that an earth spell might run this bold assault to ground.

A gleam spiking her glance, Selidie discarded her forced rapport with Lirenda and spoke her next string of instructions.
'
I want more copper talismans fashioned for baneward! Immerse these in water inside of a clay jug, stamped with seals to dissipate fire. Then find me a girl volunteer, or better, a boy ward who
'
s due for a reprimand. Have him take several such constructs outside. Find out whether their charms can be trusted to frame a stable defence!
'

'
Earth sigils! How clever!
'
exclaimed the senior peeress, cut off straightaway for impertinence.
'
Your will, of course, Matriarch
'
Before the Prime
'
s glowering censure, everyone fled but Lirenda, whose choice stayed proscribed.

The Matriarch paced. Up and down the lush carpet, over copper-thread patterns for ward and guard, the rich train of her robe hissed behind her. Pale, predatory, she trembled with nerves. The chants holding the protective circle outside came and went through the punching gusts that billowed the tent pavilion. While chill draughts leached the meagre heat thrown off by the braziers, Lirenda received no release. Forced to stay crouched upon a low hassock, she remained, disregarded as an idle tool until the Prime
'
s need called for use of her talent.

Time crawled, until mid-afternoon, when word arrived that the stricken sleeper had reawakened. The frightened man-servant who returned for the order
'
s learned help was dismayed to find his case heard in the presence of Selidie Prime. His master, he said, had stumbled erect, acting like a changed creature.

'
He could not stop weeping. Then he ordered his tent and belongings packed straightaway to move out. Plaguing dreams,
'
the distraught fellow insisted, afraid for his charge
'
s derangement.
'
My lord sees nothing else but a horrific future, and claims that he witnessed his beloved family, broken and crying.
'

The servant was given a strong sedative to assuage his stressed officer
'
s grieving. Once he was sent off, Selidie called for additional counsel from the encampment
'
s most advanced healer.

'
By the servant
'
s account, this bizarre phenomenon would appear to be slanted against Lysaer
'
s favour,
'
the third-rank grey robe appraised. A raw-boned, kind woman, she flushed with unease before the high chain of command. Her skills revolved around day-to-day troubles, her best work beneath the Prime
'
s notice. But not now, with the hospice reeling from the strange powers wrought in the citadel.

'
Elaborate! At once.
'
Selidie
'
s supremacy brooked no delays: by the sisterhood
'
s oath, she demanded.

The sweating healer unburdened. "The Light
'
s dedicates might become sapped of conviction while they are deeply asleep. Suppose they arise afterward with their priorities reordered by dreaming? We don
'
t know the range of the tonal harmonic a Paravian influence might engender, far less understand how that arcane force impacts an untrained human consciousness! If time
'
s track is altered, these victims might visit a posited future. Whose morale would not crumple, if a husband was able to sense his abandoned wife
'
s pain, or the bitter despair of his children?
'

'
We would see Lysaer
'
s laid siege on Alestron torn apart at one stroke.
'

Prime Selidie thumped her gloved wrist on the chair arm. She would
not
see her coveted quarry uncaged. Fierce rage broke all bounds, that Arithon s
'
Ffalenn might slip through her grasp with bloodless impunity.

'
I will break this unnatural compulsion that
'
s afflicting the Alliance followers!
'
the Prime Matriarch vowed. Since her useless hands could not cast the complex chains of sigils to weave the conjury, she fumed for the fact that she must demand help. Then fresh news arrived: that the construct which paired the clay jug with the talismans proved out her hopeful theory: an earth-linked defence could deflect the worst impact of Arithon
'
s unorthodox working.

Deadly, now given the ground for response, Prime Selidie settled back in her chair. She would ply her fulcrum and shift the offensive back in her order
'
s favour.

'
Where is Parrien s
'
Brydion
'
s renegade fleet? Fetch me an able seeress! One with natural talent. I want her to meld with the earth
'
s flux without using a crystal matrix. Then have her link her birth-born gifts through Lirenda
'
s power, directly. Move quickly!
'
Selidie gestured with incandescent anticipation.
'
Find me the position of Alestron
'
s war galleys at once!
'

Bold timing must play Parrien
'
s weakness into her order
'
s design. Selidie smiled, inwardly smug. She could fashion a warding, grounded through earth, that would shelter those ship
'
s companies from the effects of Arithon
'
s influence. Then, through more sigils, the men
'
s discontent could be pushed into mounting an assault on the mainland. They would strike while chaos distressed Lysaer
'
s troops. No s
'
Brydion sea-wolf would question the source of their vicious drive to attack. Steered through hell-bent desire, who among them would not snatch the chance to cut a swath through the ranks of their enemies?

* * *

Evening fell, chased in by a searing north wind, and the lowering cloud of a storm front. Snow would fall, blinding, within a few hours, a hardship that posed a back-handed blessing to any who risked crossing the battle-lines. Heavy drifts buried the tracks of all fugitives: both those who fled from the ranks of the war host, and others, braving the white-out blizzard, who chose to abandon the pent misery at Alestron.

Cloaked in unobtrusive, plain clothes, the small party sent under the charge of Sidir rowed across the north bay of the estuary, packed into an open boat. The ebbing tide sped their passage, helped on by the rising wind. Scudded eight leagues past the citadel
'
s watch beacons, they landed far outside of the chain that guarded the inner harbour. There, the huddle of chilled fugitives commandeered a farm-cart and rattled southward over the frozen ruts of the trade-road. Against the fast-falling dark, buffeted by whipping gusts, they unhitched the mule, reloaded the provisions in packs, and prepared to turn off the main thoroughfare.

Safety lay leagues from the site. Well past the Paravian standing stone that demarked the south bounds of Melhalla, the plain of Orvandir
'
s free wilds rolled, wind-raked, a dangerous, exposed passage to reach Lord Erlien
'
s secured encampment inside of Selkwood.

'
Your lady?
'
Sidir inquired of Mearn, whose distracted concern fixed on Fianzia
'
s gravid condition.

'
Bearing up.
'
No complaint, but the bitterly agonized regret: that his wife
'
s near-term pregnancy not only threatened the life of their cherished child but might fatally slow the escape, and hamper safe passage for all of them.

Sidir clapped Mearn
'
s shoulder with brisk encouragement.
'
Townsman! Our clans have birthed babes under hostile pursuit for more years than you
'
ve been alive. Trust our hardened experience.
'
His new bow crossed his shoulder, a powerful statement of forest-bred prowess. He would hunt the wary, dun deer at their grazing and trap the swift hare in the hollows.
'
We won
'
t starve.
'

Mearn protested.
'
But Fianzia -
'

'
Your lady,
'
snapped Sidir,
'
will ride in a litter. Jeynsa knows how to cut the green boughs and weave withies. We won
'
t suffer too much. This storm
'
s nothing worse than we
'
ve handled with our women, caught out on Daon Ramon Barrens.
'

"Then we rest in your hands,
'
Mearn gouged back, resentful. The unpleasant odds raised his hackles. Scavenging packs of league trackers were deadly, without adding the unpredictable motivations of Alliance deserters and refugee craftsmen. Though their party had slipped past the Alliance sentries and left behind the drawn lines of the siege, soon enough, the trade-roads and the open country-side would be jammed by today
'
s unplanned exodus. No one might second-guess the result. Too many rough men were left foot-loose. Armed companies who had abandoned a strict discipline soon would encounter the pressures of short supply. Renegade soldiers and homeless civilians might try who knew what lawless acts out of desperation.

A wife so near term could not run, or withstand prolonged chill and privation. The grim husband was not sanguine. Mearn faced his precarious future with only two northern clan allies, Bransian
'
s indebted captain, and four of his most trusted retainers. Family honour protested. Too many of Alestron
'
s free citizens must be left at large to find their own way. That they might be guided by the odd field veteran, or seek protection with other rank-and-file men also leaving defence of the citadel scarcely settled his strident unease.
'
I feel remiss. More than my forebears would brand me a coward for leaving blood-bound obligations.
'

Turned to help Fianzia down from the tail-gate, Mearn almost rammed into Sidir, who had not moved: tempered lifelong by unjust persecution, the Companion gave the ideal of s
'
Brydion nobility short shrift.
'
You
are
the living name of your family, now, and your wife
'
s unborn heir, the hope of your future lineage!
'

Mearn stared, lips pinched shut. The shock stayed too fresh, that Sevrand had chosen to stand beside Bransian inside the beleaguered citadel.

Sidir added, emphatic,
'
Don
'
t think for one moment you
'
ve chosen wrongly, or that the lives you protect are not paramount! If you try to turn back, Ath forgive, I must stop you! Good man, I would do so, that one day your child survives to applaud my priorities.
'

'
There is nothing to salvage, if your lineage dies here,
'
Jeynsa stated, come up beside him.
'
You know your lady is too close to birth to endure the slow pace of group travel.
'

Fianzia
'
s cold fingers touched Mearn
'
s turned cheek. This once, even her razor tongue did not upbraid his uncertainty. Words and tradition offered no comfort. Nor could the sound backing of old charter law ease the sting of exiled displacement. A clansman
'
s place was to guard his progeny, and a father, to attend his child
'
s birth and ensure a stable succession.

Neither Jeynsa nor Sidir would cave in to argument. Mearn set his teeth. Still bristling, he braced to steady his wife, who would bear the brunt in the trial to come. He
must
abide. Yet nobody living could salve his torn heart, or make him feel other than mortified. The rank fear persisted, that Fianzia might die under hardship in childbed. Winter would wait upon no human mercy. Their precious first-born might freeze, a corpse left to rot in an unmarked cairn.

A fierce slap on his shoulder caused him to spin, enraged for the offensive presumption.

Sidir snapped backwards and missed getting stabbed by the reflexive thrust of Mearn
'
s dagger. Perverse creature, the forest-bred liegeman was smiling.
'
Bide easy! We have a hard journey of fifteen leagues to reach the Paravian marker, but there, in a hidden place shored up with boulders, the clans have dug out a snug hideaway. The chamber
'
s kept stocked with food and necessities for scouts pressed by hot-foot pursuit. We
'
ll have secure shelter, I promise. But we
'
ve got to move before the deep snow.
'

'
Southward!
'
Disgruntled embarrassment stiffened Mearn
'
s back as he resheathed his blade.
'
What
'
s on the plain of Orvandir for us?
'
Durn and Six Towers would not welcome his family name, now. Nor could swift flight reach the safe enclaves in Alland before Fianzia
'
s pending travail.

Sidir shook his head, his weathered features softened to laughter.
'
Mearn! You
'
ve been mewed up behind walls for too long. We are not going to Alland! Or north, to East Halla, but up-country to the reed-banks of the River Methyl. This cold snap will freeze that placid current to ice. We
'
ll make speed in comfort on a carved sledge. Give me a fortnight, and this mule kept sound, and your lady will lie in under Verrain
'
s protection, inside the fortress at Methisle.
'

At which moment, when flagging hope dared to rekindle, the change none had noticed was pointed out by the garrison captain assigned to guard Sidir
'
s return journey to Halwythwood.
'
Your liege
'
s Koriani enchantress has left us,
'
he said, striding in from rear-guard.
'
And no, I did not see her leave.
'
As though any man might have swerved an initiate sister from her chosen course.

'
Let her go!
'
Sidir stated, gruff.
'
Elaira has her own business. She knows she could have asked for my help, had she needed the hand of a friend.
'
In harsh truth, Arithon
'
s woman remained oath-bound to her Prime. Whether she wanted solitude, or if her order
'
s command had remanded her to close service, she could scarcely continue backing clan interests without raising a scalding embarrassment.

"The minion of Selidie Prime can
'
t share our right to claim Fellowship sanctuary at Methisle,
'
Fianzia reminded.

Resolute, Sidir hurried his small party south, while the risen north gusts nipped hard at their heels and lashed at the mule
'
s heavy coat. They went, touched by grief as the night fell around them, and Elaira failed to return. Sidir could not speak of his desolation, or admit that her courage and indefatigable spirit were going to be sorely missed. Duty commanded Rathain
'
s steadfast liegeman. If his heart cried out, and his worry chafed over Elaira
'
s secretive departure, his feal priorities stayed unremitting. His crown prince had given him only
one
charge, and no margin to risk careless failure.