Stormed Fortress Read online

  ‘Stand back!’ murmured Kyrialt to the awe-struck scouts. Dread set him trembling. ‘We will observe from the verge of the wood, and woe betide us if tonight’s work destroys us for your act of invasive meddling.’

  ‘Best beloved,’ sent Arithon. ‘Withdraw or stay, as you wish.’

  Crime or folly, no warning might tear Elaira away, as he settled himself to begin.

  Stillness reigned, and unbearable tension. Athera’s Masterbard knelt with bent head, immersed into listening silence. The enchantress shared the moment of burning immersion, as his heightened awareness evoked his trained mage-sense. With him, she felt the night clearing dissolve, all sight and sensation of physical form redefined as a lacework of energy. Amid that sparkling lattice of light, form spoke as a singing vibration. The musician merged with that ripple of sound. His clear talent mapped the subtleties and embraced their ephemeral harmony.

  Then he settled the strap of the lyranthe and stood. Erect, head thrown back, he set fingers to strings and opened the line of his melody.

  One note sheared the air, aching with a stark purity that framed the essence of solitude. The bard came alone. His phrase began an appeal to a force that stood beyond mortal knowing. He showed no contrition for his brazen nerve. His intrusion was not masked in blandishment. He brought the living cry of his need in a tone that stung flesh for its vibrancy.

  Against the single struck string, he built dissonance: a snarling, discordant plunge that enacted the ruinous fury of war. He played destruction, hatred, and hurt, that smashed like a breaker of fury and ebbed into desolate grief. To the shattering vista of sorrow, carved by howling chords of unreason, he added his voice, and shaped the savagery born out of geas-bent madness.

  He sang Desh-thiere’s curse. All who bore witness recoiled with shame. The watching clansmen cringed with betrayal. The storm he built raged on without quarter, until the glen’s silence was made utterly violate. The bard did not relent. The brutalized horror of ruin was unveiled with unvarnished honesty.

  ‘Ath wept, he’ll be killed for this,’ somebody gasped.

  No others could bear to comment. They only wished the harsh moment undone. To a man, they wept in bitter remorse, that the bard they had brought used his gift to rape a peace they were sworn to hold sacrosanct.

  Cold as struck iron, the musician who wielded the lyranthe did not recoil. His art refused pity. The face of cursed war was forged into a harrowing challenge: as the aimed sword might thrust for the viscera, he did not pull his stroke. With a brilliance past mercy, the discord he played shaped the very wreckage of hope.

  The crescendo reprised the unbearable pain, bleak beyond reach of requital: except for the last line, which hung on a pause, with one note struck through as a question. One note, and one man, left the horror unfinished, a raging query demanding an answer.

  The bard’s voice rang out and sustained, and then became partnered.

  But this time, not by his hand on the lyranthe. The dormant power in the Paravian marker stone aroused and shaped his response.

  A shimmer of light appeared like a star. At first, little more than a gossamer flicker licked over the ancient, carved patterns. Then rock itself chimed. A swelling chord sounded. The tones met and meshed with the bard’s strain of chaos, and matched him in straight opposition. Where his measures cried violence with barefaced appeal, the circle now became closed. Light brightened and blazed, as the guardian spells countermatched agonized ruin with the outpouring of unconditional tranquillity. Wholeness resulted. From horror and destruction came the exquisite freedom of unbridled peace, the harmonic dance as death was rebraided into the dazzling glory of rebirth. Grace resounded. The dark and the light were not separate, but one, reforged in dynamic balance. Where calm, of itself, must engender stagnation, the exuberant range of all possibility turned the symmetry of Ath’s creation.

  Power exploded. The stone lit, then burned, an exaltation that overwhelmed sight and creased the night sky as a beacon …

  Far north, still wrapped in trance state in the brush, Elaira experienced the chord raised in Selkwood, at one with Arithon’s mind and emotions. The bursting flare impelled her love beyond ecstasy. At his union with the Paravian magic, purity illumined all that he was, and all that he held in connection. Vision exposed her heart’s tie to his being, and more: the lines of affection Arithon held for all his friends and associates. Elaira saw the blue steel of the attunement wrought on him by the Fellowship’s oath of crown service. Above that eightfold pattern, scribed in binding fire, lay the promise once sworn in behalf of Earl Jieret’s dying request: the mage’s vow, sealed in let blood, that granted his binding protection to Jeynsa s’Valerient until his last breath.

  Elaira’s scrying through water showed where that oath led, terrible as a cry of despair in the darkness. The bolt of discovery brought Sidir’s ruthless palm, smashing the delicate web of her trance as he stifled her agonized scream.

  ‘Lady! Elaira! For mercy, be still!’ The Companion’s concerned glance pierced hers, as her shattered senses regained distraught focus upon her surroundings. At once, the clansman’s harsh grasp released. The arm that pinned her quiver ing shoulders gentled with sincere distress. ‘I could not withhold,’ he exclaimed in apology. ‘The least noise will alert our enemies.’

  ‘Jeynsa!’ Elaira gasped with alarm. ‘She’s gone to Alestron. Joined her headstrong intent to back Bransian’s ill-starred defence of the citadel.’

  No fool, Sidir grasped the unconscionable gist. ‘She’d dare twist her crown prince’s oath, force his honour, and draw him into the conflict?’ The liegeman shivered, unnerved by dismay. He had stood steadfast at Arithon’s side through the horrific tactics that once brought Lysaer’s war host to a stand down at Vastmark. One of a privileged few, he understood how desperately near the experience had come to destroying his crown prince.

  ‘Dharkaron Avenger avert!’ he wrung out. ‘The girl must be stopped! She’ll seed a disaster beyond all imagining. We must drag her clear, no matter the stakes. Until the hour we have her secure, his Grace must never discover her whereabouts!’

  Elaira permitted Sidir’s urgent grip to haul her onto her feet. Her trance was disrupted: she could not be certain. Yet the empathic link she held with her beloved could not mask her jagged unrest. Arithon owned the rogue Sight of his s’Ahelas forebears. Joined with her heart, the dictates of his talent meant he probably already knew.

  Autumn 5671

  Closure

  The Masterbard in the night glen in Selkwood crumpled, then slid to his knees. A man, and still mortal, he could not sustain his aware consciousness as the dance of raised harmonies sang past the veil. Immersed as his engaged talent fired the grand chord, he was caught fully exposed. The exalted energies blazed through his being, eclipsed his senses, and whirled him into tingling vertigo.

  His onlooking escort of scouts became shocked as well by the standing wave of potentized harmony. Weeping or laughing, rushed witless by ecstasy, they could never tame the unbearable moment. The strongest of them were swept off their feet. The singing, sweet deluge dropped them into a faint, overwhelmed and riven senseless. Then the blasting wave of peak resonance passed. First the light, then the piercing brilliance of sound subsided through the lower octaves. Only subliminal harmonics remained, a live charge laced amid the stilled air. The unseen force thrilled the nerves like a tonic, with the marker stone’s blaze of raw glory reduced to a glimmer. The radiance shone like a pearl in the glen, pure as a star brought captive and spell-bound to earth.

  Kyrialt s’Taleyn was ahead of his prostrate company to recoup his scattered wits. Born of the lineage that bred Shand’s caithdeinen, his heritage granted the depth to withstand the grandeur of the Paravian presence. He marshalled himself, then determined his quivering legs could bear weight. He checked and ascertained the others still breathed; braced the dazed who stirred from blank stupor. His driving concern swung back to his liege as he grounded back into coherency.

&nb
sp; The glen remained seized by a powerful hush. Past the range of natural hearing, the stone’s active presence was felt. A quickened vibration raced through flesh and bone as Kyrialt stepped from the verge of the wood. Nearer, his vision became preternaturally heightened. Scent infused his stripped mind as experience, distinct as a physical touch. The dew-soaked air wore the change in the season with the sweet glory of vintage wine. In darkness spiked with the fragrance of pine, the gleam of the marker stone spattered the glade as though each living leaf had been dipped into mercury. The seed-heads of the grasses seemed graced in light. The autumnal tangle of nettle and weed breathed the majesty of Ath Creator.

  The same pallid radiance traced Arithon s’Ffalenn, where he curled with his instrument couched in his arms.

  Shivering, still awe-struck, Kyrialt knelt.

  ‘Alt,’ husked the bard, just barely aware. ‘Done. Though I fear the presumption’s unravelled the sinew required to stand.’

  ‘My strength will bear you.’ Kyrialt’s touch was received without protest as he lifted the lyranthe away. To the soft inquiry voiced by a scout, he replied, ‘His Grace is down, but not prostrate.’

  The scour of back-lash already heated the flesh that he handled to fever. Initiate master, Arithon also recognized the draining onset of weakness as his physical body succumbed to release. He let Kyrialt raise him. The shift caused by his unshielded proximity to the mystery that commanded the elements was not sickness. Quiet and sleep would heal the imbalance. Clan lore yet maintained the old knowledge to steer him into a safe recovery.

  Kyrialt shouldered the prince’s limp weight. Then he called for the steadiest scout to retrieve the Masterbard’s instrument. Not a man of them did not have stars in his eyes. None walked unmarked, from the touch of grace on their being. The stupefied company regrouped, dazed and stumbling, and surrounded the bard in retreat.

  ‘Forgive the unseemly haste,’ the young liegeman apologized to his prince. ‘Best we get you away to less-sensitive ground, before the flux of the centaurs’ warding wrings all of us into collapse.’

  They settled at last in an open-air camp, where Kyrialt insisted his oathsworn place was to keep watch through his liege’s recovery. Care kept him alert. He stayed at Prince Arithon’s side until the fever broke prior to dawn. Rathain’s prince slept then, a repose kept unbroken, even when the scout sentries reported the arrival of Selkwood’s acting war-captain.

  ‘Hilgreth himself? Whatever for?’ Kyrialt scrambled erect, stopped by the placating fist of the messenger as he reached in alarm for his sword.

  ‘No trouble’s here,’ the woman assured. ‘Not even a muster. The old man’s decked out. Full ceremonial, including his clan badge and Shand’s chevron blazon.’

  Which meant the occasion would involve a matter of state. Mystified, Kyrialt brushed the caught leaves from his hair. He slapped the stuck pine-needles off his breeches and strove to focus. The after-shock of the Paravian warding still hazed him to dizziness. Still, he managed to stay on his feet when his father’s right-hand officer strode up and exchanged the wrist clasp salute of formality.

  Hilgreth came fully armed, a resplendent figure in the belted surcoat once worn to honour Shand’s ancient, initiate kingship. ‘Your father’s sent summons,’ he opened, clipped brisk, his lined face pink in the dawn light. ‘I was dispatched on Lord Erlien’s order to stand in your place as relief.’

  The veteran campaigner acknowledged the bard, still curled in vulnerable sleep under a scout’s borrowed rain-cloak. The dark head pillowed upon the fleece-wrapped lyranthe exposed his over-fine features, stripped artlessly naked. But no more the brunt of the old man’s contempt: the war-captain’s gruffness showed awe. ‘Go with a clear heart. Rest assured, I’ll not shame the discharge of your duty.’

  Which was near as that campaigner’s outraged pride could bend, by way of apology. Kyrialt slapped Hilgreth’s shoulder, and went.

  Lord Erlien s’Taleyn, Caithdein of Shand, awaited his youngest son in the lodge tent maintained by the varied tastes of his mistresses. Clan ways saw a life vow of marriage as an affair of the heart, with the High Earl of Alland a law made unto himself. The five women who loved him held a single passion in common: they shared before giving him up.

  Seldom had Kyrialt seen more than one in camp residence at the same time. The four who were not his birth mother had fostered him alongside their natural children since infancy, each of their lord’s brood of stepsiblings cherished with even-handed affection. Whose son or daughter would shoulder the titles was never a source of contention: clan lineage bestowed the perils of inheritance strictly by merit. Fellowship Sorcerers could upset an assignment. A cousin or sister-in-law’s issue might as readily bear the succession ahead of their own.

  Therefore, the tempestuous style by which the High Earl sharpened his regency did not reign under his lodge-pole. To enter the home shaped by Erlien’s women was to shelter inside the eye of the storm.

  The lamplight was soft, and the earth floor spread over with a luxurious wool carpet soaked in oil of balsam. Throughout the extended warmth of Shand’s seasons, the hassocks and dyed, deer-hide pillows exuded that resinous fragrance to discourage the night-biting insects. The lacquered wood chests and the loomed horsehair mats always gleamed under lavish care. Kyrialt ducked through the black-out felt flap. Always, he knew which foster-mother held residence: personalities spoke through their floral perfumes, or the herbal ist’s fust of drying medicinals, or the tang of the rosemary grease the lean huntress brewed to supple her trail gear.

  Yet today, he walked in on the crowding presence of all five of the mistresses, his two full sisters, and those of his brawling pack of half-siblings within reach of the High Earl’s summons. Most had found time to put on state dress. Come also, the wizened chieftess in Selkforest’s green, whose Sighted talent at times tapped the future. She held the place at Lord Erlien’s right hand, solemn and stilled at the forefront. Seated to his left, a slim form unfamiliarly hooded in Atchaz silk: Kyrialt started, this once unnerved to meet the proud glance of the scout who was his blood mother. Beyond her hawk’s reserve, a stiff reticence suggested she might have been weeping. The earl’s other mistresses stood at her back, their presence perhaps to support a sister in need.

  Kyrialt bent to his knee. Still suffused by the lingering glow of the mysteries, he arose, hands crossed at his chest, as son to acknowledged caithdein. Although he was sworn to Rathain’s crown service, he stood upon Shand’s sovereign ground. Tradition commanded the time-honoured line, made in obligation to charter law. ‘How may I best serve the land?’

  His uncertainty showed, amid the dense hush. This session would be no inquiry over the Masterbard’s commensurate bidding of Alland’s deep mysteries: beside the report dispatched with his runner, the ripple evoked by the unfurled wardings had left no born talent in Selkwood untouched.

  Pinned before all eyes, Kyrialt could not suppress the expectant glance, flicked towards the clan seeress. ‘What untoward happening should call me away from my place at my liege’s side?’

  Though youngest, he once had been his line’s heir apparent, yielded over to Rathain’s crown as a gesture to balance clan honour. The sacrifice meant a half-sibling must inherit the titles. No felicitous appointment, to succeed Teir’ s’Taleyn, after the primary candidate. Kyrialt shivered. The hammered glint in his father’s eyes now bespoke a grief to outmatch his disrupted inheritance.

  Yet none ever claimed that the patriarch’s fibre did not match his illustrious ancestry. ‘My son, hear the course of tonight’s augury, seared in white fire through the lane flux when the twelve centaur markers flared active.’ An un toward precedent, Erlien’s massive arm was unsteady when he raised the seeress to speak.

  She bowed before Kyrialt. The taut atmosphere in the tent became forced as she told over her vision: that Rathain’s sanctioned prince had joined his love with a Koriani enchantress whose talent spoke clearest through water. ‘They are paired in communion, and ins
eparably mated. Heart and spirit spoke when the marker stones blazed, and the imprint rippled the flux. Far more than the Warden at Althain will have heard the cry that his Grace’s beloved released.’

  That young Jeynsa s’Valerient had gone to Alestron, and conspired to entangle the blood oath of protection granted by Arithon at Earl Jieret’s bequest.

  Against dumb-struck silence, the seeress pressed on. ‘I shared the destiny to occur as the Teir’s’Ffalenn answers that charge. He will leave for Alestron. The day must come soon. The binding he holds cannot be forsworn, and his trial, to spare the girl from the Light’s immolation of the s’Brydion citadel.’

  Here, his mother’s hooded head lifted. She would not show weakness, though her bravery should unman him. Kyrialt could but match his sire’s fixed stance, that straitly mastered a pressure that threatened to tear him asunder.

  ‘Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn is not our rightful liege,’ Lord Erlien acknowledged, not as father, but by the unflinching iron that commanded him as the realm’s regent. ‘Yet his Grace of Rathain bears the s’Ahelas lineage, endowed in full measure with the royal gifts. He has granted this kingdom a born prince’s duty by his act of unparalleled courage. For last night’s warding of Alland, we can do no less in return. When his Grace leaves in defence of Alestron, he will ask not to accept the full charge of the crown oath my son carries. Until now, the honour pledge bestowed in reprisal has only been kept as a matter of form.’

  ‘As before, his command would constrain Kyrialt to stay. I’ve foreseen!’ The old seeress acknowledged the young man, arrow-straight, come before them. ‘His Grace would leave you with us here in Selkwood, and not take you north as his own.’

  ‘Kyrialt, as your father, I bid you to refuse your liege’s dismissal. At his side, this royal deserves the protection assigned to a crown heir of Shand. As the flower of our lineage, I ask you to go. Guard Arithon’s life. Stand shadow for Rathain’s principled ruler with my blessing, through whatever Daelion Fatemaster should hold in store for him.’