Stormwarden (9 page)

* * *

Jaric never felt the hands which lifted his blanket-wrapped body from the cot above the smithy. Fretful from worry, the Master Healer oversaw the guardsmen as they hefted the boy down the ladder. More guards waited below. Even with the doors open, the forge was stifling with the smoky heat of banked embers. Yet Jaric stayed chill to the touch, and his eyes glinted, pupils widened and black in the glare of the lamps.

"Kor," said one guardsman. "He's cold as a fish. You sure he's not dead?" Watched uneasily by his companions, he lowered the boy onto a litter.

"If he were dead, none of us would be missing sleep," snapped the healer. He snatched up his satchel of remedies and stalked out of the forge. The men at arms followed more slowly with the boy.

"Damned summerfair's no place to go with a litter," muttered the guardsman in the lead. His complaint was just. The nomads who gathered on Morbrith Heath each solstice were clannish and temperamental; though merchants bartered goods with them during the day, no townsman lingered outside the keep walls after dark. To cross the festival with a helpless boy was to invite violence; but no Morbrith man dared gainsay the High Earl's command.

In the shadowed security of the gatehouse, the guardsmen checked their weapons. The valley below was patterned like patchwork with wagons, colored lights, and the flimsy wooden booths of the summerfair. Shouts and laughter and the scraping notes of fiddles blended raucously on the night air. The guardsmen formed up. With the healer and the boy sheltered inside a ring of mailed bodies, they set out.

From the moment the gates clanged shut, the crowd enveloped the small party like the surge of a breaker. The guards struggled to maintain position, aware steel would be little deferent should they encounter trouble. Jaric never stirred, though he was shoved, fingered and jostled by painted clansmen who reeked of sweat and spirits. He knew nothing of the noise, the discomfort, or the dust as the Earl's men at arms labored to clear a path through the closely packed revelers. By the time they reached the far boundary of the summerfair the men were tired, white with the strain of handling clansmen who were drunk, and often quick to draw knives.

As the noise and lights fell behind, the healer permitted a short pause by the river at the edge of the heath. The men rested the litter on the stone buttresses of the bridge. In the wind-tossed light of the lantern, the boy's eyes seemed as glazed as a corpse's. One guardsman whispered apprehensively and another disguised a shiver by dusting the grit out of his tunic.

"He sure looks dead."

The healer overheard. He jammed his hat over his ears until his hair stuck out in bristles, and gestured toward the summerfair. "Want to go back? No? Then he's alive and that's the end of it."

The men moved reluctantly forward. The path to the sanctuary tower laced between a stand of pines, dim and gray by starlight. The healer lifted
Jaric's
wrists from the blankets. The boy's pulse was erratic, and much too fast. If Jaric was going to die, let it happen in the High Lord's presence, the healer thought vindictively. He urged the men to increase their pace.

The land rose sharply, eroded into gullies made treacherous by roots and loose shale. The lantern swung, and cast bewildering shadows over the footing which steadily worsened. The guardsmen stumbled and swore until exertion robbed them of breath. The trail steepened. Jaric jounced on his litter, raked by branches and bruised against rocks. The poles which bore his weight dragged against the scrub, and weaponry clanked. Night birds startled into flight almost under the guardsmen's boots as they toiled through narrow clefts of rock.

Finally lights glimmered ahead and the spire of the sanctuary tower reared in silhouette against a starry arch of sky. The men quickened pace, anxious to reach the stone-paved security of Koridan's Shrine.

Just before the gates a figure on horseback cut them off.

Certain that he faced an outlaw, the healer started back and slammed painfully into a litter pole. The men at arms reached for weapons.

"Desist at once!" commanded the Earl of Morbrith, his voice overlaid by the dissonant ring of steel. "Fires!"

He dismounted irritably. His horse sidled, oddly noiseless; its hooves and bit had been muffled in flannel, and it smelled of sweat. The Earl had brought no escort, and his cloak, tunic, and the harness of his mount were bare of ornaments. Whatever his intentions, he had taken care to travel without attracting notice.

"How is the boy?"

The healer framed his reply with resentment. "He lives, but barely." His insolence was ignored.

The Earl lifted lathered reins from the horse's neck, and offered no explanation for his appearance. He turned immediately with instructions to his guardsmen. "Remain here. Let no man enter the shrine." His tone softened. "You've done well. The flask of wine in my saddlebag may be shared among you, but keep the celebration quiet. I want no priests awakened before I return."

The Earl tossed his reins to the guard captain. Then he bent over the litter, gathered Jaric in his arms and started for the gates. The healer moved after, determined to protect his charge; through thirty years of practice, he had never known the Lord of Morbrith to behave so callously.

The Earl paused and blocked his path. "Your services are no longer needed," he said coldly.

The healer's muscles knotted with outrage. "You're unaware of the risks. Would you sanction murder? I'll stay only if you swear no harm will come to the boy."

The Earl answered in a tone of ringing authority. "I'll swear to nothing. Consider yourself excused, or I'll have the guards tie you like a felon."

"You've gone mad." The healer groped for words to argue, and lamely shook his head. "Stark mad."

The Earl said nothing. Unwilling to linger under the healer's accusing stare, he spun on his heel and bore Kerainson Jaric out of the circle of lamplight.

The healer watched with a leaden sense of foreboding. The haste, the secrecy, and the Earl's curt manner were reasons enough to fear for Jaric's safety. The boy had no family but the Smith's Guild; who would ask questions on his behalf should he fail to return? Spurred by self-righteous concern, the healer decided to follow.

The Earl had proceeded in the direction of the sanctuary tower, but darkness, rocky footing, and the need for silence hampered the healer's progress. By the time his eyes had adjusted to the dark, his quarry had already reached the postern of the tower. The Earl was no longer alone. The healer saw a tall figure muffled in gray standing beside him. From the shadow of its cloak hood gleamed lidless orange eyes, too widely spaced to be human and with pupils slotted like a serpent's.

The healer gasped. Sweat sprang along his spine and his hat seemed suddenly too tight against his brow. The creature he beheld was surely of demonkind, a Llondian empath; its presence within shrine grounds became a breach of natural law. The healer strove to quell his fear, without success. Surely as tide, the Earl intended to investigate Jaric's affliction through contact with the accursed being's mind. Such practice was unthinkable, heresy beyond the pardon of any decent man.

Without pausing to review consequences, the healer ran forward, hands interlocked in a gesture to ward off evil. "I cannot sanction this!" he shouted.

The pair ahead froze and looked back. Startled, the Llondel whistled and ducked into the arched doorway of the tower. Its eyes shone like coals in the dark.

"Be still, you fool." The Earl shifted the unconscious boy against his shoulder and faced the healer with an expression of rage. "Waken the priests, and I'll see you burn with me. If a member of my household is struck down by a sorcerer, I'll know who, and why, no matter what methods are required. I'll not endanger all of Morbrith for the sake of a single boy."

"This is irresponsible." Trembling, the healer considered the powers of the Llondelei, and the accounts of humans driven mad from their effects. "Have you no thought for your guardsmen? They lie well within range of Llondel's imaging, and you left them without warning."

The Earl stood stiffly as the wind tumbled Jaric's hair against his collar. "You're wrong," he said at last. "The wine is drugged. The men at arms will sleep soundly until dawn. Either accompany us or go back and share the flask with them."

But the healer held his ground. "What of the priests in the shrine?"

"That was less easily arranged." The Earl sighed. "But I can promise they will suffer no ill effects from this night's work."

The Llondel glanced around, orange eyes ablaze with unfriendliness. It copied the healer's earlier gesture with seamed, six-fingered hands, and stalked after the Earl. The healer straightened his hat and watched as its dusky cloak blended into the dark. For all his concern, this time he was unable to proceed.

* * *

The Earl waited, circled by the intricate mosaic work which patterned the anteroom of the sanctuary tower. The Llondel barred the door, its movements liquidly graceful.

"I'm sorry," the Earl said softly, aware the being he addressed could follow his emotion, if not his words. "Few of my kind understand."

The Llondel trilled a treble seventh. It touched the Earl's shoulder, trilled again, and extended long arms toward the boy.

Muscles aching, the Earl surrendered Jaric's weight with a grateful sigh. Moments like this always made him wonder why Kordane's Law held all demons alike. Most types were dangerous, it was true; the Llondelei were no exception. But their empathic sensitivity made them gentle, even retiring, and they spun harmful images only when threatened. The Earl of Morbrith started up the stair, knowing stone walls made the Llondel ill at ease. Yet the creature had come without hesitation earlier when he had relayed the plight of the boy.

'Sorcerer,'
the Earl thought, and recognized the mind-touch of the Llondel by the way the concept formed; the creature must have picked up his inner reflection. It stopped on the stair, shifted Jaric's limp form into the crook of one elbow, and repeated the healer's gesture to ward off evil.
'Must,'
it sent urgently, then consolidated its disjointed attempt at communication into a single image.

And the Earl frowned, for the concept the demon pressed against his awareness implied the evil to be averted constituted danger to the
sender
of Jaric's affliction. Exasperated, he sighed. The Llondel was surely mistaken.

'No.'
Orange eyes flashed up out of the gloom.
'Not wrong.'
Frustrated with word symbol images, the Llondel stamped a clawed foot on the stairway, bitterly offended.

"I'm sorry." The Earl was desperate to know the cause of Jaric's distress. He pushed open the door at the head of the landing and held the carved panel wide. "Humans have difficulty believing what they cannot see. Will you show us?"

Light flooded from the chamber beyond, illuminating a gray-brown alien face. The creature hesitated. Crescent nostrils quivered, and its bone-slim fingers tightened on the blanket-wrapped boy.

"We need your help," the Earl coaxed softly.

The Llondel returned a sour chirp. It moved forward, but not, the Earl understood, for the sake of Morbrith. As the demon crossed the threshold, he again received the impression of a sorcerer endangered; but this time he held his opinion. He closed and barred the door, and a voice called querulously from the shadows.

"You took eternity to get here."

"I know." The Earl bent and stuffed a length of felt into the crack beneath the door. "I had to wait for the guardsmen. Would you want to cross the summerfair with a litter?"

A grunt answered him. The Earl straightened and regarded the wizened countenance of Morbrith's Master Seer by the light of the cresset which blazed in an iron bracket closeby.

The old man glared back, chin jutted outward from a nest of untrimmed hair. His mouth pursed deeply with displeasure. "Better that than the saddle at my age. You'd never, were you seventy. My bones ache."

But spry movements belied his complaint as he rose and shuttered the chamber's single window. The Llondel seated itself in the center of the floor with Jaric cradled in its lap. Then it fixed its sultry gaze upon the Earl and pointed to the cresset.

'End the light,'
it sent.

The Lord of Morbrith lifted the torch and plunged it into a water bucket beneath. The chamber went dark with a crackling hiss of steam. The man settled himself beside the seer, and waited as the last airborn spark flurried and died, leaving blackness punctured by two burning red-gold lamps which were the Llondel's eyes.

Suddenly uneasy, the Earl clamped damp palms on his sleeves. "You will reveal to us the sender of this boy's affliction," he said to the Llondel. "No harm will come to any human here."

The eyes vanished, eclipsed by the cloak hood as the Llondel bowed its head. No image arose in reply, and no sound intruded but faintly labored wheezes from the seer. But as the Earl strained to see form in the darkness, a spark of yellow appeared suspended in the air. It flared brighter, acquiring the flowing edges of live flame, then widened into a ghostly wheel of fire which shed no light on any of the surrounding objects. The apparition sent a thrill of fe
ar down the Earl's spine. The Ll
ondel and the boy appeared to have vanished.

Through a gut-deep hollow of dread, the man understood that he gazed directly upon Jaric's nightmare, and he longed suddenly to be outdoors, surrounded by summer's chorus of crickets. But door and window were barred, and every chink battened with felt. The Llondel's empathic imaging smothered the Earl's wish, pitched his awareness through the spinning heart of the flame, into the boy's mind....