Stormed Fortress Read online

  A blank interval later, the Mad Prophet aroused to a deafening chorus of bird-song. Daybreak had fled. The new morning was grey. His overhead view through the pines showed a lowering sky that threatened cold rain. Dakar sat up, befuddled. The storm’s rising gusts harried his clothes and buffeted his spinning senses. He rested his aching head in his hands. His breaths came too fast. The galloping pound of his heart pained his chest, and sweat trickled under his collar. He scrubbed a stray beetle out of his beard; brushed scattered leaves from his shirt front.

  Through disorientation, he groped to recall why he perched on a rock in the woods.

  ‘Fiends plague,’ he grumbled. The horse he had ridden had broken its bridle and wandered away while he maundered. Its thrashing excursion had carried it down-slope, where it browsed, munching leaves.

  Dakar started to curse, then coughed, ripped double by nausea. The sickness recalled his troubled night; then the shattering of his tranced vision of Jeynsa, leading into an uncontrolled fit of prescience. After-shock always destroyed his digestion. Dakar gouged at his temples. What had he foreseen? He retained no memory, not the least clue. His chill lashed up goose bumps. Such bouts of amnesia foreran events of dire consequence. When the auguries escaped him, they always came true.

  Black dread harrowed him to his feet. A clutched pine branch saved his wracked balance.

  Cruel fragment, what knowledge he had bought no comfort: Jeynsa s’Valerient should be nowhere near the hostilities in East Halla. The short-handed Fellowship could not intervene. Since the risk of informing the Teir’s’Ffalenn was tantamount to insanity, the Mad Prophet rallied his wits. He clawed his snapped reins from the tree trunk, determined. He had no choice now but to waylay a fishing boat, brave a rough crossing, then plead for a stay to send Jeynsa home through the auspices of Melhalla’s caithdein.

  Dakar clenched his jaw. Stumbling with sickness, he set after his horse. At least his wild talent had claimed him where no eavesdroppers could hear him raving. Yet though he believed that the rogue prophecy had been lost, on two deadly counts, he proved wrong.

  Late Summer 5671

  Observations

  Far south, in the Koriani enclave at Forthmark, the seeress attending the lane watch at dawn importunes the sisterhouse peeress: ‘I ask leave to present a fresh record in crystal directly to Selidie Prime. We have captured the imprint of a true prophecy, made by the spellbinder, Dakar. He fumbled his boundaries in his distress, and the flux running through the quartz vein in the Skyshiels disclosed our view of the event …’

  In a seamless, domed chamber of rock, Davien the Betrayer regards a black pool welling up from a virgin spring; the water sheets over a carved ring of ciphers, raising rainbow mist, through which a drop falls, unveiling the prophesied scene to unfold two days hence in Duke Bransian’s citadel …

  Raced south by galley from Highscarp, the first-hand account of the sorcerous strike at Etarra reaches the port town of Varens; and mounted state couriers depart at speed: one to Lysaer s’Ilessid, commanding from Tirans, while two other riders pound on through the night to Perdith, bearing sealed orders for dispatch by sea to raise Kalesh and Adruin to arms …

  Late Summer 5671

  III.

  Obligations

  Prime Selidie granted the unscheduled audience to review the captured lane imprint just picked up from the Fellowship Spellbinder. More, she called in her seniormost staff: opportunity walked in Dakar’s slipshod vigilance, given his tight association with the crown prince targeted as her sisterhood’s quarry.

  ‘We have gleaned forewarning of a momentous event that will shift the course of the Alliance campaign at Alestron,’ the duty watch seeress pronounced. If her ambitious claim at first raised disbelief, the purloined content of Dakar’s late vision unfolded with clear vindication as she unveiled her imprinted quartz. There, etched in light through a west-facing arrow-slit, the scene foretold to occur would take place inside what should have been a warded keep within Alestron’s citadel …

  There, the duke glowered across an oak table left grooved by the ropes that strapped spies for interrogation. Prophetic sight showed the scarred boards spread across with a chart, salt-stained from last use on a galley. The corners were weighted with Parrien’s whetstone, a tankard with dents left by Sevrand, and two impaled stilettos, pinched from Mearn. The youngest brother s’Brydion never relinquished such prizes, except under bitter duress. Mearn presently stood, decked out as the dandy, a negligent shoulder braced to the stonewall. His claret doublet agleam with seed pearls, he held the drawn blade from his shirtsleeve in hand, paring his nails like a dilettante.

  That warning, no one who knew him misjudged: Mearn’s affectations infallibly masked the murderous bent of his rages.

  The duke’s wife, Liesse, was advised to tread softly. Her mere female presence an invasion of male authority, she had positioned her raw-boned frame in between her quarrelsome spouse and his snake-tempered younger brother.

  ‘You want the truth?’ Mearn contended. ‘We’re pickled.’

  Bransian sweated in mail shirt and helm. Brows knitted, he leaned upon planted fists, spitting nails over the tactical map, which already reflected the blood-letting frenzy touched off by the grey cult’s demise at Etarra. The inked shore-line of the East Halla peninsula lay inundated by the enemy. Black blocks representing the massed Alliance force threw long shadows across the wood plugs used as counters to mark the defenders: two veteran strike companies in the field under Vhandon, and the garrison troops entrenched by Keldmar’s directive to safeguard Alestron’s unharvested crops. Longer shadows striped the Cildein’s scrolled waves, cast by the carved hulls representing Parrien’s fleet of armed galleys. While they matched the sea-going might of Kalesh and Adruin, their numbers were too sparse to counter the warships inbound from Durn and Ishlir.

  The advent of autumn could only bring worse. Elssine and Telzen downcoast flew the Sunwheel. Their standing companies would flood in, hard followed by spearmen and horse from Shaddorn. Then that menace soon to be augmented by Sulfin Evend’s massed muster, sweeping the towns on the southcoast under the false avatar’s banner.

  Tottering piles of blocks sketched the outcome: the duke’s men would be hard-pressed to hold their field entrenchments long enough to secure the harvest.

  While Liesse laced tight fingers, too canny to comment, Mearn flipped a nail paring out of the arrow-loop, and glared, slit-eyed, at his brother. ‘Stewed,’ he insisted, ‘and for stiff-necked pride. On the hour you jettisoned Arithon’s goodwill, we might have attempted to reason with him.’

  ‘Reason? With a bastard stripling whelped on foreign ground, witch-bred in descent from no less than Dari s’Ahelas?’ The duke bristled, his wiry beard shot with grey, except for the side singed to frizz during yesterday’s testing of fire shot. ‘Fiends plague! You forget. Parrien fought the wretch to a bleeding standstill, and still had to break his damned leg.’ Bransian swiped at the offensive document that had launched his tactical argument: a ribboned edict, dispatched from Tirans, and stamped with the Sunwheel. The flourished sig nature was no delegate secretary’s, but Lysaer s’Ilessid’s own hand.

  The parchment fluttered towards the stone floor, its language demanding Alestron’s surrender, upon charges of s’Brydion conspiracy in concert with powers of Darkness. The elaborate seal cracked off as it struck, crushed to powder by Bransian’s boot-heel.

  His baleful glance accosted his duchess, composed in her rose linen and shimmering cincture of pearls. Her hopeful expression pushed him to snipe first. ‘Don’t bother advising a plea for apology! We don’t know where among Dharkaron’s damned the Master of Shadow might be!’

  ‘His Grace doesn’t shift his fixed principles, anyway,’ Mearn reminded. ‘Thinks all his strategies through in advance. Like a plague-bearing weasel bashing a hornets’ nest, you don’t tend to notice his damages while you’re bent double, nursing the stings. I should know. I spent enough time as his captive at Vastmark to learn how
he works from his captains.’

  Liesse awarded such carping short shrift. ‘You could be wrong, this time. When Arithon delivered his ultimatum, he had no idea he would become summoned to rout a cult cabal out of Etarra. Given he has set that spark on dry tinder, don’t you think civil words might make him reconsider?’

  ‘Send my wits ahead of my carcass to Sithaer!’ Bransian swore, while Mearn straightened.

  ‘Besides the bald fact we’ve no clue where to look?’ The duke’s younger brother sheathed his vicious, small knife. ‘As soon try conversing with Daelion himself, to wheedle your way past due reckoning. His Grace would rightfully tell us straight out to suck eggs in our well-soiled nest.’

  Dame Dawr’s cross-grained assessment agreed, that s’Brydion had spurned their last chance. Liesse pressed a taut hand to her lips. Regrets salvaged nothing. If the duke had abandoned the citadel as Arithon had asked, today’s mustering cry to retaliate would have left Lysaer’s cursed rage no fixed target. Now, the bone-crushing silence extended. The black blocks and red counters opposed on the map lent vicious hindsight to the Prince of Rathain’s urgent argument.

  ‘Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks,’ cracked Bransian, pinned under the pleading calm of his wife. ‘I’m no weathercock ditherer, to spin about at each puff from the arse of town-bred politicians! No, don’t start again!’ He had made his grim point: the Fellowship’s come-lately offer of sanctuary would have laid Alestron’s civilian population open to attack on forced march to old Tirans, if not see another third slowly starved from inadequate stores through the winter. Aware of the tears Liesse held in check by the mulish set to her chin, Bransian hammered a fist, sending counters and tin ink-wells flying. ‘We fight, and survive without grubbing for a miserable existence in the free wilds! You’ll not see me kiss this false avatar’s boots. Nor should I recant and risk getting burned for the skins of a handful of fainthearted relatives!’

  ‘I’m loath to bring comfort with difficult facts,’ a cooler voice interjected. ‘But the roads at this point are no longer an option, either for children or cavalcades.’

  While Liesse startled, and Mearn grinned like a fox, more words spiralled up from the stairwell outside. ‘Don’t forget that Lysaer once burned his own troops in a curse-driven fit in Daon Ramon. Such madness as that can’t be trusted by anyone.’ Paused, breathless, at the last landing, the inbound newcomer added, ‘Recant or not, none of ours would gain quarter. The damned fanatics can’t rest till this citadel has been sacked, with every clan blood-line eradicated.’

  Footsteps presently crested the stair-head, and Talvish strode in, road-dusty and redolent of hot horseflesh, cinders, and goose grease. ‘You’re one counter short,’ he admonished the duke. ‘We’ve more smoke-hazed enemies scuttling our way from Pellain.’

  ‘Show me!’ snapped Bransian, an arm clamped to secure his mail shirt as he bent and pawed under his chair for his scattered markers.

  The lean swordsman advanced to the table. He snapped a courtesy nod to the duchess, then scrounged two spare broad-heads from his gear and used them to replace Mearn’s knives as corner pins holding the map. ‘More than enemy troops happened by the west road,’ he provoked, quick enough to avoid the duke’s youngest brother’s rabid snatch to recoup his weaponry.

  Mearn’s face lit. ‘Trouble you can’t trust with Vhandon’s division?’

  Talvish tipped his fair head towards the door, where other footsteps and more conversation flurried echoes up from below. ‘Judge for yourself.’

  At least one of the voices was recognized. Duke Bransian shoved back upright, distempered, and snatched the pinched hairs of his beard from the links as his chainmail resettled. ‘If Arithon’s dimwit double tried running away, I’m astonished that you didn’t help him.’

  Talvish stood dead-pan, with Mearn at his side perked to a weasel’s fixed interest. As the duke dumped the counters and began to restate the array of the Alliance deployment, Liesse unwound her laced fingers, and said, ‘That’s a maid’s voice, with Fionn. Whose daughter?’

  ‘Earl Jieret’s and Feithan’s,’ Talvish murmured, then shook his head, crushing out revived hope that the Teiren’s’Valerient might bear an official reconciliation from the Prince of Rathain. ‘Jeynsa was bound for East Halla, unaware that the borders were closed into Atwood.’

  Then trouble itself strode through the door, the girl’s rangy form clad in holed boots and forest leathers that broadcast her need for a bath. Too thin, she moved with instinctive grace, the ruthlessly cropped hair fronding her face as rich brown as her scattered freckles. Eyes the sparkling, pale brilliance of aventurine dismissed every person who was not the duke. To Bransian, bow and bone-handled knives rattling, she bent her proud head and offered the crossed wrists at her breast by which clanborn acknowledged titled rank.

  ‘Jeynsa, Teiren’s’Valerient, Lord,’ she opened with point-blank formality.

  While Mearn watched, avid, and Talvish stayed neutral, Liesse tucked her impulse to frown behind the bland stare she used on suspicious ambas sadors.

  Bransian slapped down a block for the vengeance-bent company riding the Pellain road, then flicked the red plug for Vhandon’s reserves to harry their bristling advance. His inimical stare raked the tall girl, without deigning acknowledgement of Fionn Areth’s come-lately arrival, behind her. ‘You look like a stick dragged in by a dog, and for what? By Dharkaron’s Spear, you have some strong nerve! What kind of fool would dare soil my presence, whose ungrateful liege washed his finicky hands of our years of unbroken service and loyalty!’ While Jeynsa faltered, outfaced, Bransian surged forward in anger. ‘Where is his Grace, anyway?’ accosted the duke. ‘I have some choice words to blister his ears concerning the enemies his doings have pitched like hazed rams against our defences.’

  Liesse spoke, fast, her warning meant to deflect the girl’s brazen approach. ‘Child, be at peace. My husband has already heard that Prince Arithon was dispatched by the Fellowship to destroy a cabal of necromancy. Bluster though he will, Bransian knows a Sorcerer’s summons could not be refused.’

  Jeynsa flushed, shamed for no obvious reason. ‘So Talvish told me,’ she admitted. Threatened by Bransian’s livid affront, almost anyone would have cowered. This sprig squared her shoulders with mulish bravado. ‘I have seen your walls, your gates, and your fortress, and heard the ground-swell of complaint in your streets,’ she addressed the duke. ‘I make no excuse for my liege’s defection from sharing Alestron’s defence.’ Jeynsa lifted her chin. Gaunt from the trail, irresolute in herself, the core of her stayed determined. ‘As Rathain’s chosen steward, I say his Grace was wrong to hand you his callous desertion.’

  ‘Toss us a tit-bit we don’t already know,’ Mearn snapped, disgusted. ‘Can you tell us where your skulking prince went when he left his charged task at Etarra?’

  Jeynsa tossed her head, no. Grubby hands to scraped leathers, she looked as she was: a half-starved child called onto the carpet by strangers for a thoughtless escapade. Except the steel in her glanced as the weapon’s trued edge, whetted and deadly past compromise. ‘I don’t care where his Grace has hidden himself. Your cause was ill served. I won’t sanction his choice, which leaves innocent families at risk before Lysaer’s raised armies.’

  Bransian’s iron gaze narrowed. ‘Caithdein of Rathain, are you officially here to depose a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince?’

  ‘No. Better yet.’ Jeynsa brushed off Liesse’s startled alarm and knelt with bent head to the duke. ‘Alestron, for need, has only to ask. By your leave, I can bring him.’

  ‘What foolery is this?’ exclaimed Talvish, astonished.

  Mearn gave the girl his most fixated stare. ‘Do say how you plan to bid that wild spirit! Even the Fellowship can’t rein Arithon in. Or I daresay events would have taken a different, safe route through his recent affray at Etarra.’

  Bransian’s roar overruled his wife’s chiding. ‘Say again, you insolent chit!’ His ice-grey eyes raked with dismissive conte
mpt. ‘Shadow behind Rathain’s throne, you may be, girl, but no possible loop-hole in charter law appoints you the right to command your crown prince’s presence. No sovereign charge can force his defence inside the realm of Melhalla!’

  Flushed purple, now dangerous, the duke advanced, while Liesse’s protesting grasp locked his wrist, and Talvish tensed, a hand closed on his sword for a suicidal prevention.

  Yet the girl spoke first.

  ‘No sovereign charge,’ Jeynsa agreed, uncowed before brittle tension. ‘I hold the sworn bond of Rathain’s prince. Last month, in Halwythwood, he sealed a mage’s blood pledge that binds him to my protection.’ Insolent, aware she stopped everyone’s breath, Jeynsa hooked the nearest empty chair. She sat down, not caring that Liesse trembled, or that Mearn’s whiplash loquacity was finally shocked still. Behind her stiff back, even Talvish’s aghast face had drained white.

  Jeynsa shrugged, while the duke’s menace loomed over her. ‘I need do nothing at all but stay here. His Grace will hear word. When the siege closes, his sworn debt will come due. Prince Arithon must come for me if I’m endangered.’

  The point was inarguable: a mage-trained master constrained by life-oath would have no other choice.

  Liesse found her voice. ‘My lord, you won’t! We can’t stoop to extortion, far less on a sanctioned crown heir!’

  ‘That’s risky business!’ cracked Mearn. ‘We’d call down the wrath of a Fellowship Sorcerer for sure!’

  Jeynsa’s eyes stayed upturned on the duke. ‘There will be no opening,’ she insisted, too crisp. ‘Sethvir is gravely ill. Paravia is not endangered. The prime tenet of the Major Balance itself will allow for no grace of appeal.’

  Mearn’s fast wit flanked her. ‘Alestron’s governed by town charter, that’s true enough.’