Stormed Fortress Read online

  Helpless, she languished, draped on her branch, while the torpid air pressed down like a lid. Her nemesis continued to sweat and slap flies. He did not sit, did not sleep, failed to shirk his post despite itching discomfort. Ready to kill out of broiling frustration, Jeynsa endured. Before her survival, the warning she carried must reach the clans in Melhalla. Her crown prince was involved with dark sorcery. Sighted vision had unveiled his vile rites at Etarra. Against the grim charge of collusion with necromancy, Jeynsa required a witnessed accusation, then the formal backing of a Fellowship Sorcerer.

  She suffered her impasse, until the young man below her tipped back his head.

  Jeynsa went cold. Past question, beneath the smeared dye, the sharp cast of those features was royal. As if thought had conjured him, she confronted the very same prince that her duty must challenge for criminal conduct.

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed, furious. ‘What conniving dishonesty brings you here!’ She discarded her bow, shoved out of her eyrie and pounced.

  The man she accosted startled and yelled. He snatched for the sword in his scabbard.

  Jeynsa bore in, caught his wrist, then grappled as Sidir had taught her. A wrestler’s move a clan child would know hooked his ankle and tripped him. Thrashed into the brush, her bared knife at his throat, he slammed at bay against the tree trunk.

  ‘Dharkaron avenge!’ she railed through her teeth. ‘You won’t escape justice. I’ve seen your foul works. As I live, I won’t rest till I see you deposed for those sacrificed girls in that crypt!’

  ‘I’m not who you think!’ gasped the dishevelled victim. When the jab of her steel said she was not convinced, he ran on in a twanging Araethurian accent. ‘Cutting my throat won’t resolve a thing. The murdering bastard you want will be laughing, since I’m not the Prince of Rathain!’

  ‘Liar!’ Jeynsa snarled a vicious phrase in Paravian.

  ‘And may I couple goats on your grandparents’ grave,’ Fionn Areth retorted. ‘Whoever they are. If you had any.’

  ‘Say again?’ Jeynsa snapped. ‘You laid out their burned bones in Strakewood. Built their stone grave cairn yourself!’

  ‘I did no such thing,’ her prisoner insisted. ‘Though thinking I did will end my complaint and send you past Fate’s Wheel straight after me.’

  ‘Ath above!’ Jeynsa swore. ‘I should fall for a shameless mouthful of mimicry? Do you think I’m flat witless?’

  ‘Aye, so,’ said her captive, agreeably limp. ‘Probably worse, since armed men on both sides of this thicket have you sighted under drawn bows.’ As she stared at him, vexed, he risked bleeding and qualified. ‘We’re sent to pluck one of your woods-grubbing countrymen out of the teeth of a dog-pack.’

  Set aback, moved to check the device on his jerkin, Jeynsa shoved upright and crouched. ‘You’re Alestron’s sworn man?’ She blinked, overset. ‘Daelion forfend! The made double?’ Shaken, incredulous, she pulled her bared steel. ‘Then you’re the poor wretch that almost got roasted for my liege’s misdeeds in Jaelot!’

  ‘His other associates are equally rude,’ Fionn Areth declared as he brushed himself off.

  Jeynsa watched him rake the caught leaves from his hair and dig a trapped beetle from under his collar. The face underneath the brown dye was alike as a rendered masterpiece. Yet as he stood up, his movement lacked the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s hair-trigger grace. These green eyes were not deep. Only prosaic as he sized up her cropped hair and torn leathers, then her gaunt state of privation.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ he determined at last. ‘At least sheathe the knife. You look faint enough to fall over.’

  ‘Not just!’ Jeynsa huffed. ‘Warn your bowmen away. All night in a tree, I’ve got needs that won’t wait.’ Pink with embarrassment, she unclipped her quiver and flung it beside her dropped bow. ‘If you see any hounds, shoot them down. They’re league trackers. Stand guard for our lives, that’s the least you can do, since I’ve lost my lead to the slipshod fact that you failed to look up, or declare yourself.’

  Dagger poised, she shoved off with indecorous haste and burrowed into the privacy of the brambles.

  She managed to give them her lineage and name before she collapsed at the feet of the acting sergeant. His cursory check encountered no injury, beyond a few festering thorns. ‘Nothing that rest and good food won’t put right.’ He settled Jeynsa’s limp wrist and regarded his men, gathered under the tree where Fionn Areth had flushed her. ‘Do I have volunteers? Good. You’ll need thick skins. I don’t fancy she’ll stay unconscious for long. Bound to fight like a cat once she notices she’s being carried.’

  Fionn Areth surveyed the unkempt girl they disarmed, then slung over the shoulder of the first burly man who stepped forward. Her filthy, cropped hair, tattered soles, and starved face seemed too young for the courage that would dare a black sorcerer’s morals at knife point. ‘The Teiren’s’Valerient? That sniping chit is caithdein to Arithon, and steward for the realm of Rathain?’

  ‘In these hills? That name becomes an endangerment. I’d say she’s all that she claims to be. If not, the problem’s not ours. It’s our duke she’ll have to answer to.’

  ‘Melhalla’s caithdein,’ Jeynsa interposed. Slung upside down, she should have had no standing left, and nothing resembling dignity. Yet her sharp demand was delivered forthwith. ‘I ask for safe escort to Atwood.’

  ‘Not possible.’ The sergeant glanced at the darkening sky, as an icy gust tossed the oak leaves. The summer squall line threatened to break and douse them in a white torrent. ‘Move out!’ he barked. ‘Keep ahead of that storm. This is no sort of place to leave footprints.’ Fresh mud would hold an impression for days; Pellain’s constable would not need a tracker.

  To Jeynsa’s protest, the officer repeated the news that dispatched their troop through the country-side. ‘You can’t go to Atwood. Access is closed. Kharadmon’s resetting the Paravian markers to guard. We’ve been forewarned that our lives could be forfeit if we try to enter the free wilds without a Sorcerer’s escort.’

  At the end of her strength, the Teiren s’Valerient allowed them to bear her without further argument. The field company would see her through to Alestron. Denied other choice, her sensitive news must be brought to the ear of Duke Bransian s’Brydion.

  Late Summer 5671

  Prophet

  The last time Dakar crossed the high mountain pass through the Skyshiels, he had been piss drunk in his self-absorbed effort to thwart a Fellowship directive to stand guard for Arithon s’Ffalenn. This time detained by a renegade Sorcerer’s meddling, he rode himself ragged to rejoin the same prince’s service. Wayside inns where he had once dragged his feet now chafed him with obstructive delays. The after-shock of the cleanse that had expunged the grey cult’s grip at Etarra made fit post-horses in scant supply. A fat man plagued with inept balance astride could not hope to outpace the state couriers bearing bad news. Nor could he bribe the deep treasuries of guildsmen, or overrule the sealed writs of Alliance requisition, unleashed by the imminent war.

  The upset seeded at the moon’s nadir had sparked Darkling’s whirlwind muster as well. Clear down to Highscarp, the road had been choked with ox-drawn supply trains and foot-troops. Fast transport by galley across Eltair Bay became priced to extortion by the same demand. Jammed inns and a crucial shortage of provender made Dakar’s need for haste a trial of sapping frustration. Even fishermen’s luggers had been pressed in service to move men and arms to East Halla. The Mad Prophet fumed, coughing dust on the by-ways through the hamlets, cadging rides in lumbering farm drays. Forced to stage his way by the south route to Jaelot, his scapegrace past left him haunted by irony at every bend in the road: hung-over after a staggering binge, he once had endured the same, winding drive in the bed of a masterbard’s pony-cart.

  Such memories wore daggers. This smoky tap-room, and that gabled inn recalled the arduous care with which Halliron sen Alduin had shaped the talent of his successor. Twenty-seven years might have passed in a season:
each painful detail remained vivid. The ghost echoes of the old bard’s remonstrance, then Arithon’s diligent hours of practise notes lurked in the flickering shadows of the ingle-nooks, or else wafted down the backstair of some wayside tavern’s tawdry lodgings.

  Often, the spellbinder flushed with fresh shame, as informed hindsight brought wounding discovery: the guise of Medlir from those bygone days had masked s’Ffalenn features, and nothing else.

  The laughing wit, and the quizzical patience shown to Dakar’s complaints and slack living had never been feigned. The gently barbed tolerance granted to rage and eruptions of poisonous rancour had been Arithon’s true nature, released to a care-free existence.

  Now, the same tap-rooms were crammed with armed men, loud with their boastful intent to tear down the turncoat clan duke who had spied for the Spinner of Darkness. As the town garrisons marched to assault the s’Brydion, other factions that thrived upon strife positioned themselves to grasp profit. The boys in the smithies stoked the forge-fires, while farmers and merchants clustered in knots, concerned for their loved ones and livelihoods.

  Dakar heard the bent of such rumours, and ached. Today’s trouble came too late for regret. His vindictive lapse years ago now enacted its tragic con clusion: Halliron had died, and Desh-thiere’s curse gave scared men a name for their doubts and a cause to vent feuding hatreds. Maturity did not excuse the mistake. The drunken buffoon who had run from himself now faced his irresponsible legacy. The uncaring act, however small, had unleashed a round of savage consequence.

  ‘Dogs die!’ cracked a bearded troop captain. The sweaty crowd packed into the tap-room raised cheers. Here, Alestron’s clan families posed no more than an abstract target.

  The swaggering noise wrecked Dakar’s appetite. If wisdom had sprung from mismanaged experience, the deep scar remained. Some events that shifted the course of a lifetime might never be mended. One forgave the weakness of why one fell short. Yet the light of remorse scarcely eased burning shame.

  The events that sent Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn into Kewar could not be reversed, or rescinded.

  Dakar left a coin for his unfinished meal. Though blistered until thought of the saddle held torture, he stepped out and bullied the head hostler until he obtained a fast horse. The gelding had the white, rolling eye of a rogue. Dakar mounted anyway. Striving to honour today’s steadfast friendship, he gathered the reins and spurred southward. He could not mend the past. But the possibility drove him half-mad, that he might fail to reach Prince Arithon’s side for the hour that guided the future.

  Concern only grew as day brightened. The spellbinder choked on stirred dust from the recruits, press-ganged to fill Jaelot’s troop rolls. He sensed the raw fears of the young dragged from home, and the grim apprehensions of veteran officers whose comrades had died under Shadow and sorcery in Daon Ramon. Another dew-soaked night in the open gave him no respite in rest. Here, where the range of the Skyshiels hemmed Eltair’s coast, the quartz veins that laced the mountains amplified the stream of the lane flux. Cold sober, wrung sleepless by his sensitized talent, Dakar tracked the volatile elements, awakened and called to stand sentinel: he felt the Fellowship working to close Atwood. No prior demand in Athera’s Third Age had ever enacted such dire expediency.

  The spellbinder stole his next post-horse and galloped. Aching, bone deep, he could not outrun the tuned chord of the centaur markers, or escape cringing from the ubiquitous clangour of hammers forging steel for bloody destruction. The eastshore’s industry girded for siege, while the cream of its men loaded stockpiled supplies, and burdened galleys embarked from every available harbour.

  The charged atmosphere heightened Dakar’s talent for prescience. Threatened, while waking, with chaotic, seer’s dreams, he dared not linger in public. Private rooms were commandeered by troop officers, with the tap-rooms, haylofts, and craft sheds jammed full, rented to billet fresh conscripts. The rainy night he bribed a bed in a garret, he aroused in tears, his head spinning. Stung yet by the reek of phantom smoke, he regarded the rafters above, overlaid by the image of burning fields as far west as the Pellain trade-road.

  Shivering at the window, while the gibbous moon swam through the tissue of errant vision, the Mad Prophet recalled the familiar blond head he had Sighted among the duke’s reivers: Talvish now wore Alestron’s bull blazon. In his company rode Fionn Areth, and worse, the Teiren s’Valerient, Jeynsa.

  ‘Ath wept, this can’t happen!’ Dakar whispered, sick. He groped into yesterday’s discarded clothes, barged into the stable, and extorted the grooms. Then he risked his neck in the mud and the dark, pressing his commandeered mount off the road, deep into the Skyshiel foothills.

  When the post-horse exhausted its wind, he reined up in a hidden copse. Sunrise and seclusion would give him the chance to scry through the lane tide.

  A seer’s trance demanded inflexible calm, if his unruly talent could be self-directed. Dakar selected a flat rock and settled. Wrapped in the resinous fragrance of pine, he wrestled his nagging anxiety. Basic discipline failed. Entangled in fear, he felt crushed by uncertainty. The pre-dawn gloom hung chill as the grave. Too often, the etched silence of spontaneous prescience ruffled his disrupted consciousness.

  Dakar resisted that drowning current. His heart raced, and his shallow breaths whistled. Thin air and altitude had never agreed with him. He had no sorcerer’s cast-iron nerve, to face death and heart-break, unflinching.

  Yet on this hour, dread outfaced the most shrinking cowardice. He held fast. And the quiet sank deeper, first losing its shrill, surface ripple of worry. Next the undertow drag of his doubt smoothed away. Detached, Dakar waited. When the shuddering tingle spurred through his flesh, quickened by the rising lane tide, he slid into the flow and framed his willed intent.

  Sighted vision responded. He saw into now, untainted by maybe, and the forest surrounding his physical senses dropped out of awareness …

  … he was a breathless messenger, debarking from a fast galley at Varens and bearing the urgent tidings of deaths inflicted by Shadow at the Alliance stronghold of Etarra … and he was the choleric Mayor of Jaelot, exhorting his captains to redeem the defeat that disgraced the lost company slaughtered in winter upon Daon Ramon Barrens … and he was the weeping wife of Pellain’s magistrate, decrying the wanton destruction of livestock, and the ash of the summer harvest … and he was a pall of etheric mist, raised by a Sorcerer’s summons to bind the free wilds of Atwood into protection … and he was the goatherd, Fionn Areth, arguing with the Teiren’s’Valerient over the ethics of the Fellowship of Seven …

  That thread, Dakar snagged. Aligned with the charged flux, he let the bright burn of emotion flow through him … as though he shared the ache of a harried night’s ride, keeping pace with Talvish’s veterans, he observed the gauntlet Fionn Areth hurled down over a breakfast of hard-tack with young Jeynsa …

  ‘I don’t see!’ snapped the goatherd, his yokel’s drawl stubborn. ‘Why should the Sorcerers defend hill-sides and trees but not set the same stringent wards to safeguard the clan lives at risk in Alestron?’

  ‘The Fellowship can’t.’ Jeynsa’s frown was her father’s, stuck like nails through old oak. ‘The duke’s domain is not the high seat of Melhalla’s crown capital. His citadel isn’t sited inside the free wilds. You don’t know the old law?’ She swiped back her cropped hair, looking sorrowfully drawn as she stabbed home her point, out of patience. ‘Such towns where men dwell are set outside of the Sorcerers’ marked jurisdiction.’

  Shown the grass-lander’s blank incomprehension, she rolled her eyes and rapped out a clipped lesson. ‘Fellowship power does not rule mankind. Free will is an inalienable right under the Major Balance. Yet this world of Athera was not given as ours. The Sorcerers stand surety for our human conduct. They will not intervene, unless the greater weal of the compact that serves Paravian survival becomes threatened. Before the uprising, charter law and royal justice kept the balance. Town coexistence was supported by those born a
nd tested to bear the burdens evolved through old lineage. The High King acted as intermediary. With Melhalla left crownless, no force can gainsay. Since Bransian rejected his caithdein’s appeal to abandon the citadel and claim clan right to sanctuary in the forest, no recourse remains unless he breaks his titled covenant.’

  ‘She means,’ broke in Talvish, arrived to roust laggards, ‘that Alestron has chosen to stand or fall alone on the strength of its merits.’

  The Araethurian took brazen issue regardless, never able to withhold an obstreperous opinion. ‘Then why has your prince forsaken his allies?’ Outraged, he challenged the fixed resignation that stared him down on two fronts. ‘Why, when his Grace’s elemental Shadow might spare thousands of lives and save hapless families from certain destruction?’

  Jeynsa bristled to frame her reply …

  Contact snapped. Dakar lost the unreeling thread of true vision as the lane’s crest subsided with daybreak. Tumbling unsupported amid the flux, he stretched to recapture the dialogue still exchanged in the Tiriac foothills. The ephemeral moment slipped beyond reach. Desperation, concern, and his forced need to know unravelled his grip. Set boundaries tore, fast followed by the chaotic surge that kindled his unbridled prescience … and vision spiralled him forward in time, to an afternoon meeting two fateful days hence. Late sun would be streaming in blades through the arrow slits in the keep where Duke Bransian conducted closed councils …