The Fall of Neskaya (18 page)

In the silence that followed, Aran drew back, dropping all physical touch. The set of his shoulders showed clearly that he knew something was wrong. And Aran, being who he was, would assume it was his unintended overture.

Oh, my friend, my sworn brother, what is wrong is not you!
Coryn opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had frozen. The place deep within his belly, the old wound he could barely remember, the wound without a scar, throbbed.

“I’m sorry,” Aran said in a thick voice. “I didn’t intend for this to happen—I would never—”

Miserable and mute, Coryn watched Aran stumble from the room. He lowered himself to the bed, wondering if he would ever be able to repair the hurt he had caused. The pale, multihued moonlight shone through his window. He found no solace in its terrible, stark beauty.

A second message arrived shortly afterward, this one from High Kinnally. The forces of King Damian had not stopped with the easy conquest of Verdanta but had marched on. Kinnally Castle was under siege and could not hold out for long. The Storns in their desperation appealed to Tramontana for aid. Tramontana’s fealty by law and custom was unclear, one reason Kieran had long advocated a neutral stance. Originally, some believed, the Tower had been allied to Aldaran. At various other times, it had served Storn, Ambervale, or another small kingdom bound to Acosta but long since absorbed into neighboring lands.

Liane, her reddened eyes set in a face as set and pale as ice, urged Coryn to add his voice to hers.

“We have no standing army, any more than you did, Coryn,” she said. “No matter how bravely our guards fight, they are no match for Ambervale. I’ve known these men from before I could walk. They will hold out as long as they can. We must act quickly, before it is too late.”

“We?” Coryn, stirred out of his misery, asked, “What must we do?”

“Tramontana must give us
clingfire
and the means to deliver it. Rain it down on the tyrant! Destroy his armies and scatter their ashes to the winds! Free both our lands! Once we have lifted the siege, we obliterate the vermin’s nest itself.”

Clingfire
was indeed a potent weapon, and it was High Kinnally’s only chance. A few men, flying overhead in gliders or shooting arrows tipped with the deadly stuff, might well destroy a small army.

Coryn shook his head. “Ambervale now occupies Verdanta. For all I know, Verdanta men march with their armies. Would you have me turn against my own?”

“No! I would have you destroy the outsider! Or have you so quickly given up any thought of saving your people?”

“I hardly think it would be
saving
my people to drop unquenchable fire down on them.” Coryn thought of that terrible forest fire so many years ago, of how his father had battled to protect everyone under his care, from closest family to poorest smallholder. He had never witnessed
clingfire
in battle, though he had seen what a small slip in concentration making the stuff could do. Each droplet of
clingfire
adhered to whatever it touched. It would go on burning, through metal as well as flesh and bone, as long as there was anything left to be consumed. A trained matrix worker, especially one armed with a fire-talisman, might contain a stray bit here and there, but not a coordinated onslaught.

In a flash, he saw himself swooping over Verdanta, hands filled with fragile glass spheres. Each glowed like a malevolent ember. Eddard’s face, pale and furrowed, lifted to see him, eyes straining wide in disbelief. The vessels slipped from his fingers, bursting into corrosive fire. Tessa ran screaming, her unbound hair a curtain of flame down her back. A slender skeleton staggered through the familiar courtyard, bony arms smoking, and fell into a heap which continued to glow and smolder.

“What,” he cried, his voice shaking, “should I firebomb my own brother in Verdanta Castle, attack my home and my people? What kind of monster would do that?”

“
You
may think it better to live under an invader’s yoke,” Liane shot back, “but I do not! If it were
my
brother torn from his wife and baby—as well he may be if we do not act quickly—I would stop at nothing to free them! Even death would be better than such a life. And if I were held captive there, I would say to you, I would beg you,
Send the
clingfire!
Burn the castle to the ground beneath my feet! Better a quick death than a lifetime of slavery!
”

Liane went on with scarcely a pause for breath. “Have you heard of the Sisterhood of the Sword? Each one carries a dagger around her neck, so that she may never fall alive into the hands of the enemy. Can a mere woman have such determination—such courage—such
honor,
and you have them not?”

“Liane, that’s not fair! My honor has nothing to do with it! Our enemy is Damian Deslucido, not each other. I want him gone just as much as you do. But I will not sacrifice the lives of my family and all those who owe us loyal service. I love my country! Besides, I can no more save your homeland than you could save mine. The fate of High Kinnally hardly rides on my decision.”

“No,” she said in a voice gone suddenly grim. “But Kieran listens to you. And his word rules here at Tramontana. If he says, ‘Send
clingfire
to High Kinnally,’ then
clingfire
will be sent.”

I once thought to go back to Verdanta in a glider, carrying the fire-fighting chemicals I had created myself.
Now the thought of returning home in the glider of his dreams, bearing the living hell of
clingfire
, brought only soul-deep sickness.

Yet, in her overly dramatic way, Liane had the right of it. Damian Oathbreaker, for so he would always be in Coryn’s thoughts, must be stopped. Already, a handful of smaller, weaker kingdoms lay under his rule, adding their resources to his. With each new conquest, his power grew. Coryn, like any mountain-bred boy, knew that the longer a forest fire burned unchecked, the higher the cost of putting it out. The inferno that was Deslucido must be put out before it grew beyond any man’s control.

In the end, Coryn went with Liane to plead her case with Kieran, determined to temper her argument and persuade her to reason. He prayed with all his heart that some other way might be found to deal with Deslucido. Surely Kieran with his experience and wisdom would see a less horrendous path. At least, Liane’s desperate grief might be restrained until she could see reason, even as his own pain had been. This much he could do for her without betraying his own people.

Once more they met in his chambers and stood beside the fireless hearth. After listening to Liane’s petition with a grave expression, Kieran flatly refused to supply her with
clingfire.
It was, he said, too dangerous for any Tower to meddle in local politics of which it knew nothing.

“Local politics!” Liane flamed, for once losing her usual deference in the Keeper’s presence. “My family and my home are at stake! Even Coryn, whose land has long held a feud with us, agrees we must take action! What do you propose we do, think nice peaceful thoughts at them?”

Kieran shifted in his chair. His mind was tightly shielded, but Coryn read his distress in that small movement.

“If you will not command your circle to make the
clingfire
,” she went on, begging now, “then let me gather one. Coryn will help me—and Aran, if I ask him—and some of the others. We can do it on our own time, the Tower need not be officially involved—”

“And who will act as your Keeper, binding such a circle together?” Kieran’s pale brows pulled together and his voice grew a shade quieter, more deadly.

“More importantly, who in the outside world will believe the Tower had nothing to do with it? You would endanger everyone working on the project—under criminally careless conditions, I might add—and you would put the entire Tower at risk of retaliation. The reason, the
only
reason,” he repeated the phrase for emphasis, “for a Tower to make such weapons is at the lawful order of the lord to whom it owes fealty. We do not make policy, nor do we decide the fate of kingdoms.”

“You sit up here on your mountain while people suffer and die and you could prevent it!” Liane cried, wiping away a splash of tears. Coryn put out a hand to steady her, but she brushed him off.

“What do you think the world would be like, if we in the Towers allowed ourselves to be drawn into every petty quarrel?” Kieran said. “What if we had supplied High Kinnally with
clingfire
years ago? Oh, yes, your people asked us. As did yours, Coryn. They used the same desperate words you do now. If it is not one good cause, it is another. Then you would have used it on one another with the same fervor you would drop it on this King Damian.”

Coryn’s heart skipped a beat, as he realized where Kieran’s argument was going. Verdanta and High Kinnally, each armed with an inferno, with all the simmering years of hatred and nothing to restrain them. Forest fire would be as nothing compared to the destruction
clingfire
would have brought. Might still bring.

“If you had,” Liane went on stubbornly, “then we would not be in this position now! We could have defended ourselves. Ambervale would never have dared—”

“Ah, but what if we had supplied both High Kinnally
and
Verdanta?” Kieran repeated. “As both of you had asked when the feud first began?”

Liane’s eyes widened. “No . . . No, we would not—”

“We would both be ashes many times over,” Coryn said as gently as he could. “Kieran’s right. Listen to him,
breda.
Ambervale and its king must be stopped, yes, but not this way.”

“What—” Struggling visibly for control, she turned in his arms. “What else can stand against them? And while High Kinnally falls under this invader, what should I do?”

“You are a
leronis,
” Kieran said in a voice so colorless it hardly sounded human. “You must use the discipline you have been taught. Gareth will monitor you to safeguard your health, so that you may return to work as soon as you can.”

Coryn took Liane’s slender hand in his, drew her toward the door. She came passively, her fire quenched. Outside the door, in the stillness of the corridor, she drew a shuddering breath. He reached for her, to draw her close.

She whirled and slapped him full across one cheek, hard enough to snap his head around. “
That’s
for not standing up for me! I thought I could count on you. How could you give up so easily?”

“Kieran was right,” Coryn said, his face burning.

“You idiot, you worship the ground he walks on! If he said the sky was green and there was only one moon, you would agree with him! What does he know of family, of honor?”

“He is Keeper at Tramontana. He answers only to his own conscience. Listen to me, Liane. I would give anything to have my father alive again—”
and Kristlin!
“—and Verdanta free. Anything! But Kieran is right. Can you imagine what would have happened if
Ambervale
had been armed with
clingfire?”

“Tell that to King Damian! If we are not able to defend ourselves, what is there to stop
him
from using those weapons anyway?” she snapped.

“Liane—” He held out his hands.

“I really thought Kieran would listen!” she cried, brushing him aside. “What a fool I was!”

“Fool, no. Just blinded by what you wanted to hear, the false hope of a quick victory.”

She spun around and strode away, leaving Coryn standing there. This time, he made no attempt to go after her. Verdanta was gone, his family dead or scattered; then Aran, who had been like a brother to him; now Liane. He had never felt so desolate in his life.

C
oryn, after several sessions with Gareth monitoring and clearing his
laran
channels, returned to work. The intense concentration allowed him to leave his grief behind for a time. The Tower, with Kieran at its heart, seemed to him as solid as the rock upon which it stood. If it would not move as he, in his anger, wished it to, then neither would it fail him, home and sanctuary in one.

Liane took longer to join the others at communal meals and gatherings by the fireplace, on the lengthening winter nights when one or another might take out a
rryl
and sing a ballad.

As for Aran, Coryn ached every time they passed in the corridor or acknowledged each other with only the most polite words. Though Aran kept his eyes averted, Coryn dreaded the pain he would see there. Surely the other workers, especially Kieran or Bronwyn, felt the coolness between them, but no one commented on it.

What was there to say? What was there to do? If he reached out for his friend, he would only make things worse, intensifying Aran’s distress. He drew on the discipline of the Tower and forced his heart to beat more slowly, his breath to come more deeply.