Stormed Fortress (72 page)

'
. . . a hot-headed folly turned wrong from the first,
'
the veteran captain was explaining, while the spurt of new flame in the hearth lit Dakar
'
s riveted features in profile.

Vhandon pressed on, soaked to the skin, and haggard with sleepless exertion.
'
There
'
s an uncanny sigil at play behind this. Koriathain are meddling with Parrien
'
s rage. His men have succumbed, too, driven to berserk slaughter. I think we
'
re seeing a ruinous ploy to twist Arithon
'
s working into an unconscionable massacre. The witches don
'
t care who dies in the breach. We
'
re facing the repeat of the
Evensta
r'
s
nightmare, but for stakes raised beyond all imagining.
'

'
How long?
'
Dakar broke in, distressed. The horrific damage already stopped thought; raised redoubled agony over the prospect of Arithon
'
s future recoil. If Rathain
'
s prince regained full awareness after the sword
'
s song released, he must encounter the shattering brunt of the murders inflicted against him.

Talvish was scarcely a heart-beat behind.
'
When did Parrien
'
s crazed foray begin?
'

Vhandon glanced up, harrowed.
'
Today
'
s dawn.
'
Against widening shock, as even the goatherd measured the on-going consequence, he qualified,
'
Storm
'
s wrecked visibility. Signal couldn
'
t get through to the watch at the Sea Gate. That
'
s why I
'
ve brought in the warning myself. Arithon
'
s use of the sword has been turned! Enemies softened under its influence are being hacked down in cold blood!
'

"The Alliance will call his Grace to the account,
'
Talvish summed up in crisp outrage.
'
Added against diabolical luck, we
'
re caught at flood-tide, which leaves Parrien exposed without recourse.
'

Dakar shoved to his feet, stunned by the crux: stop Arithon
'
s engaged conjury with Alithiel,
as if anyone could,
then Lysaer
s
'
Ilessid
would recover his wits. The whip-lash of Desh-thiere
'
s cursed influence would face a butcher
'
s toll of dead allies. Past question, the duke
'
s brother and his suborned companies would die, razed to ash in the virulent counter-strike.

Sevrand slammed his axe-head into a bench. Iced braid dripping, eyes baleful, he accosted the Mad Prophet.
'
You
'
ll do something, spellbinder. Handle this
now
'
I don
'
t want to see how my cousin will meet the loss of his last, loyal brother!
'

'
He won
'
t wait,
'
Vhandon stated. s
'
Brydion of Alestron did not forsake family. Bransian would attack, and wrest Parrien clear, and try to fight his ensorcelled fleet
'
s crews back to safety. "This moment, the troops are being hand-picked to storm the Alliance encampment
'

'
Fatemaster blindfold the eyes of the fool!
'
Dakar swore with grim venom.

Sevrand said nothing but bashed past the trestle and snapped the fat spellbinder up by his shirt front.
'
Answer me, prophet! What have you seen?
'

'
Your untimely inheritance!
'
Dakar retorted.
'
War prowess can
'
t save this! You
'
re facing a Koriani circle at work! Fly out in high passion, and your duke
'
s effort must fail. He
'
ll get trapped himself and deliver his rescue party straight into Prime Selidie
'
s conjury!
'

Sevrand jammed his quarry against the stonewall, intractable as a gored mastiff.
'
Miserable coward!
'

'
No,
'
Dakar shrilled.
'
A similar horror occurred at Vastmark. Happened the year before you were born.
'
He gagged, fighting the mailed knuckles gouging his windpipe.
'
I swear by the puncture scar left in my back by Bransian
'
s arrow as proof!
'

'
Truth!
'
Vhandon shouted, before Sevrand
'
s hazed fury yanked the lodged boarding axe free.
'
Morriel Prime once used such a snare in an attempt to assassinate Arithon. The Warden of Althain sent Asandir to weigh out the formal account. The charge rested: malign arcane influence, with the culpable opening excused as an action of war. Not cold-blooded murder by ambush, although the unsavoury circumstance certainly called for it
'

The heir to the citadel loosed an inchoate growl. While Talvish
'
s blocking arm quelled Fionn Areth, Sevrand slackened his death grip, but did not let go.

Dangled on his stretched toes, eyes limpid, Dakar continued to reason.
'
Even the best of your men will succumb. Their courage will just feed the blaze of Selidie
'
s plot all the hotter!
'

'
Then back the bitch off!
'
Sevrand snarled.
'
No, I don
'
t care how!
'
Strained cloth ripped under his twisting grip.
'
You are Fellowship-trained to uphold the compact, and this filthy violation against free will amounts to possessive enslavement!
'

Never more brave, Dakar clung to dignity.
'
My stance must guard Arithon.
'

While Talvish shoved Fionn Areth away, Vhandon drove his weary frame upright. Both war-captains knew that action was futile. Short of death, they could not salve Sevrand
'
s galled pride or stop the cascade of disaster: much as Dakar appeared the soft fool, he was anything but defenceless.

That moment, the latch clicked. The oak door hissed open, although no gust had hurled its swinging weight.

'
What you need is a talisman,
'
a voice of firm calm interjected across the influx of flurrying snow. Uninvited, the precipitous arrival strode in: a slender form, swathed in a cloak stained with salt from a fast passage across the estuary.

'
Elaira?
'
Kyrialt moved first, braced her shoulder and guided her to the fireside. He sat her down, this time ruffled to more than alarmed concern.
'
Ath above, lady! What folly possessed you?
'

For the enchantress
'
s wilful return to the citadel posed no gift to her Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn
'
s interests. Already he was under siege for his life. With her safety gone forfeit, her presence now served as Arithon
'
s heart-rending hindrance.

'
My Prime
'
s matchless cruelty, what else?
'
Elaira touched the anxious liegeman aside, then flicked a drilling, cold stare towards Sevrand.
'
I suggest you let go. We need the Fellowship
'
s spellbinder breathing. Unless you don
'
t want your cousin
'
s doomed march to fetch Parrien curbed?
'

The duke
'
s heir turned his head and changed target.
'
You have a better strategy in mind?
'

Dropped with a jar to his heels that snapped teeth, the Mad Prophet barged his erstwhile tormentor aside and confronted the enchantress headlong.
'
No talisman, lady!
'
he snapped, afraid.
'
You can
'
t challenge the force of a crystal-sworn oath! Cross your Prime
'
s will here and now, even as the Fellowship
'
s agent, I can
'
t lift a finger to save you.
'
His misery palpable, he finished, forlorn,
'
I don
'
t own the straight access to power!
'

As the plea failed to thaw her fixed stare, Dakar slid to his knees at her feet.
'
Elaira! I beg you. Don
'
t challenge your order. The horror will ruin your man
'
s very heart! For Daelion
'
s pity! Get out while you can! Keep faith, and trust Arithon
'
s game plan.
'

'
I won
'
t forge the talisman
'
Elaira said, clipped.
'
You will, and you can, once you
'
re given the template. I
'
ll show you the keys to unlock the seals used to fashion Selidie
'
s sigil.
'
The enchantress bent her head then and stared at the soaked leather that gloved her trembling hands.
'
I am not breaking orders. My Prime
'
s directive, which has not changed, is to stand guard for Arithon Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn
'

When no one spoke, she swallowed, then added,
'
You know, and I, what this atrocity will do to his mind if Parrien
'
s warped revenge is not broken.
'

Dakar made a move, strangled short, drained from green to stark bloodless as Elaira looked up.

He matched her regard, unable to spare her.
'
You
realize
that your Matriarch desires you here! That she
'
s driven you back to Alestron.
'

Elaira shuddered. Past tired, wracked by an incandescence of pain, she admitted,
'
If I suspected before, now I
'
m horridly certain.
'

Dakar stood, spun away, ploughed through Sevrand and Talvish, then ducked

Fionn Areth
'
s rapt interest. Not quite fast enough: he collided with Kyrialt, whose forestborn swiftness clamped an iron-clad fist on his arm.

'
What did you see!
'
the young liegeman from Shand hissed into the Mad Prophet
'
s ear.

'
Nothing!
'
Ripped by the sucking faintness that foreran a true augury, Dakar bit his tongue, hard.
He rejected the prophecy! Forced back
the shredding clamour of talent that strained to unstring his composure. If he strangled the vision, he could not stem his dread. He knew,
Ath he knew,
and Kyrialt guessed also: that somehow, an irretrievable nexus had passed, sealing a future that would unleash a fixed consequence, bitterly final.

Of two destinies, posited, one had been lost when Arithon
'
s beloved re-entered the citadel.

Early Winter 5671

Seshkrozchiel

Conversations with dragons were never a linear experience, with concepts as words, laid one after the next into a logical sequence. Although Drakish language formed as other tongues, by varied sounds packaged in syllables, the meaning translated through vibration and symbol became enlivened by moving images charged with emotion. Such bursts evoked energy that branched through dimensions, swirling eddies that gathered to nexus points. The reactive tapestry could explode, across time. As the dreaming of dragons directed the power to weave or alter creation, a human addressed them, alive to that peril.

Davien
'
s flaunting genius attended the prospect with no less than dauntless focus. Excess passion could kill by such an exchange; and decidedly, he was furious.

'
Our Fellowship
'
s relentlessly difficult trial has been made immeasurably worse!
'
His subsequent pause, stark as a walled barrier, marked the deliberate shift: from drakish vowels that scraped like grinding rock, into limpid politeness. He framed the Name of the being he tasked with exacting care: to the least tender nuance of letter and line, his respectful tone matched and then
cancelled
the discord of his accusation.
'
Seshkrozchiel.
'

The razor
'
s edge trembled upon the stilled air, and unchained no rash probabilities: yet.

The dragon crouched with curled tail at the stony crest of a rise. Behind her, the northern ridge of the Storlains thrust upwards, wisped in smoke from a fumarole. Before her slant snout, the flat wastes of Scarpdale unrolled like straw carpet, the dead grass tufted over the swaths of old lava flows pricked with bare trees and leaden patches of ice. To mage-sight, the creature was blinding-bright - cloaked in living fire, laced layer on layer through an auric field that burned like an aurora, rising eighty-five spans from the needle-points of her dorsal spikes.

Human perception saw only tangible form, and
still
failed to encompass Seshkrozchiel
'
s being. Her sheer size, at close quarters, towered over the landscape, massive enough to break rock with the indolent flick of a tail-tip. The curving arc of a fore-claw, alone, stood the height of the tallest man. Golden scales cast a scintillant, unearthly glimmer, with sovereign disdain for the overcast. She burned in mad glory. Blazing yellow, her slit-pupilled eyes held the terrible glare of the sun.

No need for the scorching, ash-scented breath that steamed on the winter air: where the incendiary puff might blister and kill, her concerted stare could annihilate.

Davien embraced patience. A pin-point fleck of consciousness cupped within the dragon
'
s mailed talons, he need not fret over the mishaps prone to befall hapless flesh. Yet even discorporate, he was cautiously wise. Enough not to press like a fool for the answers today
'
s incumbent peril left dangling. Dragons
never
spoke without forethought. The eldest of their kind, a hand
'
s count in number, expressed themselves scarcely, if ever at all.

Seldom to rarely, when they courted anger, and Seshkrozchiel
'
s rage towered over his own with a might that could shatter planets.

Her scaly eyelids lowered, considering. The gesture slitted the blazing, domed eyes, until thought/voice emerged as a whisper, listing reasons with gossamer delicacy.
'
Abuse to kin. These young were stolen, while yet unborn. Murdered! Then left in the horror of death-pain. A malignant threat. . .
'
The pause came, for the balancing. If, in chill fact, her willed choice included reconciliation. Seshkrozchiel
'
s lids lowered farther, the hot gleam of her glance all but thrown into eclipse. Melody trilled through her finishing phrases, the harmonics
precisely
intoned to annul the agony fated to the hapless clutch.
'
Ath
'
s gift to the world being your charge to safeguard, Sorcerer! The Paravians
'
survival was threatened!
'

The spark that was Davien did not seethe in response;
dared not.
Bound to the service of dragons for two Ages, he kept his response hammered level.
'
It is deemed ... a wrongness, by humans ... to slaughter their living.
'
The last word alone wrought the lifting of resonance: and its tonal meaning declared unequivocal terms:
that which is individual is precious beyond value.
Suggestively gentle, no more than a wisp, the Sorcerer
'
s thought finished.
'
The day
'
s two-legged dead were innocent/unaware. Their ten-fingered (individual) hands did not seed this painful dishonour to egg-young.
'

The drake flared her nostrils. Warning only: no breath issued forth. The wait for her reply extended.
'
None of ours, these two-legged.
'
A
lag, into which more pictures streamed, of offences that stemmed from such (individual!) busyness: of Etarra, and Jaelot, and other - hives - that leached refined light from the lane flux. The drake
'
s breath released, uncurling fresh steam. Her aura expanded in majestic display, all fire and wrath! Then shrank back to the chiaroscuro emanation of boredom. The debated issue lay beneath her contempt. Source-of-being for such irritation might as easily
be
deranged on an afterthought, with such upstart two-leggeds erased from Athera
'
s existence.

A curl of smoke twined, reeking of sulphur.
'
Mankind!
'
the drake hissed in the sting of subsonics.
That
thought framed a nexus. Near, and present, it stirred probabilities, as though reluctant to dissipate.

Davien withstood the heat, which ached beyond flesh. He absorbed the left ripple, a contest of wills most deadly and real, if not quite permitted to manifest. The Sorcerer outmatched the dragon
'
s displeasure, though at heart, he was a volatile spirit, disenchanted with stasis. Ciladis was the more gifted ambassador; had excelled at soothing down the dicey nuance encountered in conference with drakes. Here, even Luhaine
'
s slavish perfection would have revelled in nitpicking details.

Davien quashed irascibility, that Sethvir, on a
bad
day was better inclined to manage this perilous dialogue.

He faced this pass, alone.

In the calm after impact, he avowed by imperative,
'
I am such a man.
'

The golden eyes shut. More steam wisps vented: the drakish equivalent of laughter, perhaps, or an affronted rejection, coloured by lofty disdain.
'
No such man!
'
said Seshkrozchiel in ringing pronouncement, balanced by one word, all harmony.
'
Ours!
'
As the dead in the blasted ruin of Avenor had not been; Athera
'
s dragons acknowledged no compact.

'
Ours!
'
the drake repeated, a stabbing reminder of a dreaming once spun by an enclave at Corith. Seven spirits had answered: created by dragons, or else summoned into confluency by match, the warp thread of their destiny woven through the weft thread of a fate arisen by their traits of character. The Seven
'
s origin as free-will beings, or not, did not signify, by Seshkrozchiel
'
s reckoning.
'
You are ours, made here to defend what is threatened!
'
The after-note that described
just what
was protected sustained a cascade of evocative longing: the ineffable essence of the mysteries and the trifold dancing of Athera
'
s Paravians.

Before these, the two-leggeds who despoiled were as nothing, and the workings of them, less than naught.

All music, Davien contradicted, striking the keys that shouted a triumph.
'
They matter!
'

Golden eyes snapped wide open, ablaze. The dragon regarded the spark of the Sorcerer with blistering query and challenge.

Davien resisted her thundering expectation, that demanded his chastened retraction. Commanded, in fact, though his stance overturned the bent of his former priorities. He did not retort, as he might have done. Did not satisfy pride through the scathing rebuttal that
was
the Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn
'
s aura pattern.

Out of vital necessity, he would not draw Seshkrozchiel
'
s attention to that man! Or risk turning her eye anywhere near the bloody affray that contorted Alestron.

The Sorcerer stilled
all
concepts. He gave Seshkrozchiel
silence.
Restraint, quite as terrifying as the coruscating consciousness whose ebon claws and fixed purpose now caged him.

Davien stayed adamant. Born to free choice, and no creation of drakish dreaming,
he knew who he was:
had seen his true Name illumined in grace in the presence of Athera
'
s Paravians. Tenacious, his being reserved that firm boundary, come what may.

The dragon half lidded her eyes once again. This time, the stiff gust of her breath described whimsy.
'
The task at hand is not one a string-puppet servant might fashion!
'
The music that tendered the balance arrived, searing the statement to irony.
'
Daedanthic. Fire Hands! In fullness, your Name is recognized.
'

The discorporate Sorcerer returned no submission, an insouciance to incense Luhaine
'
s tidy nature. Davien waited, viced into a state that froze thought. Time measured the moments, meaningless to dragons. Their being did not acknowledge the values that gave mortal hours their frantic significance. Despite the pause that expected reply, the Sorcerer stayed self-contained, steadfast as a night-blazing star.

Above
everything,
he did not incline towards the east, or ponder the warfront dividing East Halla.

The dragon Seshkrozchiel abided, poised also. Her sun-shifted shadow etched the cold ground. Yet behind golden eyes, she was no longer still: her thread of awareness longed for the mineral pools that steamed and belched, boiled by the suppressed magma underlying the volcanic crater behind her. The itch rode her to wallow, scour her vanes and wing leather clean and burnish away the tarnish of soot that Avenor had left on her belly scales.

For all her want, another dreaming demanded, as lane tide, and star flux, and the errant dance of probability moved into a stately conjunction. Seshkrozchiel stood. She stiffened her dorsal spines to a chime of bright scales, lashed her forked tail, and arched her sinuous neck. Wide yellow, her eyes, as she lifted her fore-claw, that nestled the presence of Davien, also known as Betrayer.

'
Our portal draws nigh,
'
Seshkrozchiel announced.
'
My own, is your mind still committed? Has your heart
'
s desire stayed true, that we should venture the opening?
'

The blue-white spark, that had seemed imprisoned by curving black talons was not, any longer, in evidence. Its nexus point burned, still vivid, still bright, but no more in the open.

The Sorcerer
'
s awareness now seated amid the black depths of the dragon
'
s left pupil.

'
We go forth,
'
Davien said, a whisper that scribed a line between warning and caution.

Seshkrozchiel dipped her horned crest. Not acquiescence, as her answer shrilled danger.
'
Sorcerer! So mote the way be.
'

The great drake reared rampant. Her kite wings unfurled. The movement raised wind. Fanned boulders shot air-borne. Static jumped from charged dust, became lacework and lightning, which crackled across the whipped air. Then came the shattering thunder of lift, as the dragon
'
s leather-clad down-stroke hammered the elements at full strength. Seshkrozchiel launched upwards, an arrow of gold aimed into the heavens. She slashed an S-curve, roared, and levelled out, spines flat to her back and clawed talons folded, while her whip tail extended, graceful vanes steering. Her course bent over the bared vales of Scarpdale, for the purpose of piercing the moil inside a grimward.

She would dare to disrupt a ghost-kin from his dreaming.
This was no unhatched youngling
'
s unreconciled remnant, but a grown drake slain in battle whose agonized death-scream stayed unquiet, and restlessly bitter.
A living dragon might cross his tempestuous shade and weave new creation to make scatheless passage.