Stormwarden Read online

  Even underground he felt the stormfalcon's return. He also knew his companion was dead, since the spell which confined Anskiere's powers had partially linked their awareness. Rather than pause for mourning, the sorcerer who survived plotted vengeance with the neatness of a spider spinning its web. He lifted the torch higher, and at last discovered what he came to find.

  Close to a century before, the Firelord Ivain had employed his command of flame and earth to fashion a prison for the frostwargs. In the flickering spill of light, the King's sorcerer saw a circular pit incised into the cavern floor. He made his way cautiously to the brink. The torch revealed no bottom. Below lay darkness so thick it bewildered the senses. A man who gazed too long into those depths could became dizzied by vertigo, and fall headlong to his death. The sorcerer did not look down. Instead he jammed the torch in a niche. The draft extinguished the flame. He made no move to restore it. Rigid with concentration, he drew upon his craft, and soon a small blaze of illumination arose between his fingers.

  He bent, anchored the light at the edge of the drop with a word of mastery. Reflections glazed the sweat on his brow as he stepped back, then loosed the spell with a gesture.

  The spark drifted across the abyss, scribing a thin, violet line across the deep. The sorcerer rounded the pit. He fielded the spell as it reached the far side, and flicked it out, leaving the glow of its passage bridged like a needle across the expanse. The sorcerer stepped widdershins to the side. Another spell flashed in his hands. Presently a second line crossed the pit. Patiently, the sorcerer moved again, creating a third, then a fourth line, until the mouth of the frostwargs' prison lay masked in meshes of light. Restless currents of air sighed around his head as he stood back, gazing contentedly upon his handiwork.

  Far beneath the starred eye of his spell slept the frostwargs. At one time, the sorcerer knew, the creatures had roamed the lands above, ravaging forests and farmlands from the first chill of autumn until spring. Come summer, they burrowed into the ground to sleep until the cold returned to color the leaves. In Landfast's records, the sorcerer had read accounts of wasted acres and dismembered settlements; from Hearvin, who trained him, he learned the secret of the frostwargs' confinement. The arrangement was so simple that he laughed.

  Temperature change keyed the frostwargs' awakening, and warm weather kept them comatose. Ivain, who was both Earth-master and Firelord, had merely sunk a shaft for them below reach of winter's cold, where the air stayed constant from season to season. In the years since their entombment, the creatures had never roused.

  The sorcerer smoothed his robes, congratulating himself for cleverness. He stood at the brink of the pit and let his consciousness conjoin with the horrors who slumbered below. Their dreams were restless. Aware they had been cheated of their seasonal rampage, the frostwargs emanated viciousness like lust. Their eight-legged forms twitched, claws clicking against stone; spiked tails thrashed, and between hornlike mandibles slim tongues flickered in memory of the taste of blood and torn earth. Stirred by the creatures' subconscious desires, the sorcerer shivered in anticipation. For the passage of years had unbalanced the rhythm of the frostwargs' slumber; any shift in the air would disrupt their fragile dreams. Warmth, instead of further prolonging hibernation, would stir them to ungovernable rage.

  Delicately the sorcerer disengaged his contact. With the finesse of a man courting a reluctant lover, he summoned forth the framework of the wards which locked Anskiere's powers. They flamed across his mind's eye, a maze of convoluted force, once sealed into a structure Anskiere could not break. But now the death of one of its creators had spoiled the symmetry. Gapped interstices and torn angles showed where the spell was vulnerable. This the sorcerer changed.

  He balanced the breaks with a linkage to the net woven across the pit. The principle was artlessly simple; should Anskiere attempt to exploit the advantage he had gained by murdering Tathagres' warden, his aggression would transfer to the web and dissipate into the pit as heat. The plot made the sorcerer smile.

  "Try to escape," he mocked, wishing his adversary were present. "Just try. Your efforts will free none but the frostwargs." And his smile dissolved into laughter until the grotto bounced with echoes. Confident of the trap he had wrought, the sorcerer groped among the rocks for his torch. Once it was lit, he started up the shaft.

  * * *

  The weight of sodden velvet bowed Anskiere's shoulders like mail as he traversed the cliffs where Ivain had secured the frostwargs. He had discarded the cloak long since. Knotted in a sling of rags torn from the lining, his staff glowed at his back. The stormfalcon circled above, held by the geas of homing even as the storm was bound still to her flight path. Anskiere toiled over rocks glazed by rain, beleaguered by gales his own hand had once controlled; the sensitive instincts which enabled him to bend weather into harmony with his will were absent. Unaccustomed to the hostility of the elements, Anskiere felt like an artist gone blind in the midst of a masterpiece. The predicament might have hurt less had his adversaries not captured the children.

  A breaker smoked over the reef, needling Anskiere with spray. His skin had long since gone numb. Shivering, he crossed a narrow ledge, unable to gauge when the storm would peak, or estimate the high tide mark. The waves were still building. Foam smothered another almost under his boot, and spindrift stung his eyes. The ledge was certainly unsafe.

  Ivain had designed the frostwargs' prison above reefs which slashed the tides into boiling currents of whitewater; waves threatened to dash Anskiere like flotsam from the path. Forced to give ground time after time, still, when the water receded, the Stormwarden always pressed on. He had no choice but to cross at once, before the storm rendered the ledge impassable.

  But progress was painfully slow. Morning was nearly spent when Anskiere began the final approach to the cave. Tormented by the conviction that his enemy had used the delay to his disadvantage, the Stormwarden began the ascent of the final precipice. There, with the cave entrance an arm's reach overhead, he heard the sea rise at his back.

  Anskiere leaped, grabbed a handhold. The foaming maw of the breaker thundered into his shoulders, slammed him against rock. Water pummeled the breath from his lungs, dragged cruelly at his limbs. Grimly he clung. His palms tore on the stones. His body slipped slowly seaward. The surf would kill him, bash him over and over against the coral until his flesh was a mangled rag. Tathagres would laugh, and Taen...

  Anskiere grimaced, consumed by the need to survive. He gathered himself, driven by the roar of another larger wave. With a heave that taxed every sinew in his frame, Anskiere clawed his way through the tumble of receding water. He rolled, gasping and disheveled, into the shaft.

  Pebbles scored his skin. The staff clanged against close stone walls and wedged in a fissure. Caught by the sling, Anskiere tumbled onto a mild incline. He lay prone, blinking salt from his eyes, content at first to be still. But the chill soon made him shiver. Bruised, abraded, and wrenched in every joint, the Stormwarden rose to his feet. Outside the gale battered the cliff face, blocking his retreat; and below, if his assessment was correct, an enemy awaited with plans to ruin him.

  Anskiere shook the water from his hair, spat out the taste of salt. He reached for his staff. Sodden knots loosened reluctantly under his fingers as he freed the wood from the sling. The sea had inflamed the marks on his wrists, but their sting was overlaid by the sharper memory of Taen's fists clamped in his shirt. Distressed, he started down the shaft, scattering droplets from his robe. Now he was glad the dead sorcerer's aggression had kindled the wards in his staff, for their bright radiance lit his way like a beacon.

  The path was smooth at first. Deeper, Anskiere recalled, tunnels twisted with angles and buttresses of slagged stone. Below, the prison fashioned for the frostwargs was as black and tangled as the character of its creator.

  Ivain had originally melted the rock with wizardry of fire, but the acrid smell Anskiere remembered from the shaft's forming had faded long since, replaced by musty o
dors of roots, earth, and moist granite. Except for the echo of his own steps the cave was silent. Bats sought other roosts than the arched ceilings overhead, and wildlife avoided the place, instinctively shunning the evil which hibernated below. The Stormwarden rounded a bend, and the terrain under his boots roughened. Beneath stretched a series of terraces hedged with crystals like swords. Here amid the dazzle of refracted light a misstep could cripple the unwary trespasser. Anskiere trod carefully, unsurprised to discover human bones tumbled among the cave's bewitching beauty. The Ivain he knew had always been careless, even disdainful of life. Uneasy, the Stormwarden proceeded with every sense alert for danger. The din of the storm receded above, dampened by baffles of stone; far ahead, a polished vein of agate threw back a reflection the color of blood.

  The Stormwarden noted, and froze. Cloaked in the frosty gleam of his staff, he looked closer, and saw the crimson flicker brighten slowly into orange. He identified flamelight as its source. Someone with a torch must be ascending the shaft from below and presumably no one had interest in the frostwargs except Tathagres' henchman.

  Fenced by the razor edges of thousands of crystals, Anskiere was in a poor position for confrontation. The staff could not be quenched to glean any cover from darkness, and by now the brilliance of the wards might have warned the enemy sorcerer he was not alone in the shaft. Before the sorcerer caught him, Anskiere chose retreat, hoping to reach the narrow place where the corridor crooked, barely a hundred paces higher. Anguished by thoughts of a small child's tears, he hurried, and barely felt the sting of a crystal against his calf, or the blood which welled above the top of his boot.

  "Why run?" said a voice from below. "By now the tide will have sealed off the entrance."

  Anskiere leaped the last tiers of crystals and whirled, panting, beneath the curve of the upper tunnel. Outside the radiance of the staff lay darkness. The sorcerer had not rounded the corner below; he possibly had yet to notice the wards stood complete, a piece of luck Anskiere had wished for but dared not assume. He seated himself on an outcrop just past the place where the tunnel narrowed. The staff's confined aura bathed him in a raw light. Under similar circumstances, Anskiere recalled, Ivain would have smiled.

  Slowly the orange glow in the distance brightened and acquired the harsh edges of open flame. Light danced up from below, trapped in the hearts of a faery forest of crystals.

  "Fires!" swore the sorcerer. He had at last sighted the wards. Picking his next steps with care, he said, "So that's how you killed Omer." And he paused and cursed for a minute and a half.

  Ivain perhaps would have chuckled. Positioned at the mouth of the tunnel, Anskiere derived little satisfaction from his enemy's predicament. Blocked by solid stone, the sorcerer could not force the Stormwarden out of the shaft without direct contact with a staff whose aura was instantly fatal to anyone unattuned to its forces.

  "You can't win," said the sorcerer. He raised his torch, haloed by a haze of reflections. "The staff will eventually burn itself out."

  Anskiere did not state the obvious, that well before it dimmed the staff could be reduced to safer levels if only his powers were freed. Aware he was protected, he waited for his enemy to reveal whatever plot had drawn him into the cave.

  The sorcerer stopped. He threw back his hood, exposing features polished like a skull's. "The girl will suffer well for this."

  "Can you contact Tathagres through rock, then?" Anskiere said mildly. But his voice missed its usual note.

  "Fires!" The sorcerer gestured angrily. "That ward won't block me forever. I'm not fond of patience. Perhaps we could settle things more quickly."

  Anskiere did not reply.

  The sorcerer impaled his torch on a crystal and gazed upward, his attitude one of regret. "I think you should be taught a lesson, Cloud-shifter."

  He lifted his hands, and light blossomed, firing the crystals into a thousand pinpoint reflections. The cavern blazed, suddenly lit by a pattern delineated in the air. Spread before him, Anskiere saw the spell which confined his powers revealed in geometric splendor. And his trained eye noted, like sour notes in a counterpoint, the gaps one sorcerer's death had torn through the structure, weakening it.

  The display was a blatant invitation to challenge; and also a fully baited trap. Anskiere's hand jerked once against the wood of his staff. Without weather sense, or magic, he could not explore the dangers any resistance might unleash. He rose slowly, burdened by responsibility for the children from Imrill Kand whose loyalties brought them to share his fate. Bound, he could not save them. Free, he had a chance, if a slim one, to counteract the threat his aggression would spring. The marred pattern taunted him. One sorcerer had underestimated him; he had no choice but hope that the second had done the same. "By the Vaere," he murmured. "Let me be right."

  "Won't you bid for your powers?" the sorcerer urged; He pitched his confidence to antagonize.

  Anskiere gathered his will and calmly thrust his consciousness into the spell which spread like a web across the dark. He thought he heard laughter in the moment before his mind caught in the strands. But whether the sound arose from the sorcerer or from an older memory of Ivain, he could not tell. Power snared his awareness like birdlime; fierce opposition blocked all effort to fathom the forces aligned against his inner control. Anskiere never hesitated. The forces which held him were flawed. Poised on that knowledge, he condensed his consciousness to a pinpoint and darted through a gap. The move triggered a sharp blaze of heat. The trap had sprung. Anskiere had no choice but discover the sorcerer's intent swiftly, and try to unbalance his enemy through brash action. Since the threat had been left linked through each break in the spell, Anskiere embraced the pattern's entirety and rammed thoughts like hot needles across every weakness he encountered. Then he withdrew.

  Aware once more of the cold illumination from his staff, he shivered, gripped by the distinct impression he had raised a holocaust. Seconds later, when a high, keening wail arose from the bowels of the tunnel, he understood why. The dead sorcerer's threat had been a real one.

  "Fires," the Stormwarden said softly. "Between us we've roused the frostwargs." And where Ivain would have laughed outright, he felt only terrible calm.

  Below, his enemy stirred from a pose of taut concentration, and the spell's bright pattern faded. Though pleased by the success of his plot, Anskiere's lack of response startled him. Only the insane would linger to face a frostwarg. The sorcerer masked uncertainty with scorn. "Fool. You've accomplished nothing but Tathagres' bidding after all."

  A second ululation issued from below, reverberating eerily through the cave. A faint click of claws followed. Anskiere sat down on his rock. "I see that."

  The rattle of horny carapaces echoed up the shaft; the frostwargs scuttled wildly toward freedom. They moved with horrifying speed, Anskiere recalled. He watched his antagonist's face turn pale, triumph transformed to dismay. The only available exit was still blocked by the aura of an active staff.

  The sorcerer snatched up his torch. "I'll not set you free. You must flee. You have no other alternative."

  The staff burned steady as a brand in Anskiere's hands. He did not move.

  The scrabble of the frostwargs drew nearer. Their frenzied whistles rose, braided into a shrill crescendo of harmonics. A crystal shattered into slivers.

  The sorcerer started forward, careless of sharpened edges under his boots. "Fly! Is your memory gone? No ward can stop a frostwarg."

  "I hadn't forgotten." Anskiere stood solidly in the tunnel.

  The sorcerer checked. His mouth opened, speechless, and his hands fluttered in an imploring gesture he already guessed was futile. The Stormwarden evidently intended to meet the frostwargs, and die.

  Furious, the sorcerer shouted over the rising clatter of claws. "You have lost, Cloud-shifter! The frostwargs are released, and no Firelord remains to control them. The Free Isles will fall, and Cliffhaven also." He spat. "You're a suicide, unmanned by a child's tears and a mother-clinger's principl
es. Were you worthy of your training, you'd not lie down for death."

  "Have I?" said Anskiere.

  A ringing clash underscored his words. Armored by heavy shells, the frostwargs spilled around the lower bend in the shaft. Mustard and black by torchlight, mottled bodies hurtled over the bottom rung of crystals, tumbling them like glass. The sorcerer glanced down, saw a row of glowing purple eyes, and horny mandibles glistened with curved spikes. Nimble as centipedes, the frostwargs swarmed through the cavern, arched tails rattling behind.

  The sorcerer gasped. He dropped his torch, whirled and fled. A crystal bit like a blade into his calf. He fell. Terror overwhelmed him and he screamed aloud. In the corridor above, Anskiere felt the barriers imposed on his powers suddenly dissolve.

  His mind rang, no longer numb to the energies thrown off by the staff; and reawakened weather sense deluged his inner vision with information governing the storm which raged topside. Freed, Anskiere seized control. Without pausing to watch the sorcerer's demise, he quenched the staff's aura and ran. Only seconds remained before the frostwargs tired of the corpse and tasted his scent.

  Daylight glimmered ahead. Too far ahead; Anskiere knew he could not reach the cave mouth. He stopped. From his sleeve he pulled the tiny feather Tathagres' sorcerer had used to taunt him. The quill glowed blue in his hand as he tossed it into the air.

  "Fly," he said, and placed his will upon it.

  The feather shimmered into light. From its center flew a living tern, fragile and white as porcelain in the darkness. The bird darted on spread wings for the opening above. The moment it cleared the cave, Anskiere plunged his awareness into the raging heart of the storm. The tempest answered. Wind shrieked like a chorus of hags, funneling down the shaft. Anskiere shouted, conscious of the frostwargs' whistles at his back. The gale struck. His clothing tore, flogged into tatters. Hair lashed his face. Flattened against the tunnel wall, Anskiere drew breath and called the rain.