The Swordsman's Oath (Einarinn 2) (69 page)

“Ware Elietimm,” I bellowed, a bare breath before black-liveried shapes leaped out of the empty air, swords naked and hungry, pale steel soon running with the blood of startled victims. The mercenaries, caught on the back foot, ran to meet this unexpected challenge but took a moment to realize that the invading Elietimm were sweeping past anyone with a blade to cut down scholars and wizards with indiscriminate butchery.

I ran to Planir, Livak at my side, mercenaries led by Minare dashing toward us, all of us desperate to protect the wizards gathered in a tense circle around the Archmage. Tonin tried frantically to run to one of his pupils, a young woman, harebell eyes glazed and lifeless as they stared blindly at the brightening sky, the pallor of death shrouding her young face, but two mercenaries tripped him with merciless force and dragged him bodily with them.

“Get behind me, you imbecile,” Minare cursed the weeping mentor, thrusting him into Parrail’s startled arms. “She’s dead meat and you need to save yourselves!”

Minare’s lads formed themselves into an angry ring of steel around the mages, blades outward, hacking down the invaders, who were throwing themselves forward again and again, taking blows from behind without heeding them as they spent their lives in a single-minded attempt at killing the wizards.

I parried a scything stroke to my knees and swept my own blade upwards to take the man’s hand off at the wrist. Our eyes met in that instant and I saw only madness and hatred in that ice-blue, white-rimmed gaze. His life bleeding out from the wound, the Ice Islander still ripped a dagger from his belt and lunged past me, reaching over my shoulder in a suicidal bid to stab at Shiv. As I wrestled with him, feet slipping on the bloody ground, Livak slid a careful hand inside this foul embrace to stab him once in the vitals. The Elietimm stiffened in my arms, head jerked backward as foam bubbled from his bloodless lips. I flung his corpse from me, dead before it hit the ground.

A great gout of flame reached for the distant sun and I saw Kalion ignite the ground all around him, a knot of panicked scholars clinging to the tails of his jerkin as the fires greedily licked at their boots. The handful of Elietimm who escaped immolation circled the inferno, seeking any flaw only to die at the hands of Lessay and his warriors coming up behind them, eager to channel their own fury and chagrin into killing those who had taken them so badly by surprise.

In what could only have been a matter of moments, Arest’s harsh voice was echoing around the encampment, the stone now betrayed as such an inadequate defense, as little use to us as it had been to Den Rannion. “Any enemy still alive? No? Make sure!”

“My lads, get your arses on to the walls!” Outrage thickened Minare’s yell.

Lessay’s shout came hard on the heels of Arest’s. “Find your pairs, check who’s wounded and count the dead!”

Voices harsh with the accents of Lescar came from all directions in turn, other mercenaries hurrying to fetch water, bandages and salve as calls came from the wounded. I hugged Livak close once she had sheathed her daggers and we looked around for Halice and Shiv. They were together, Shiv pale as Halice ripped away a bloody sleeve in one brisk movement.

“I have tunics I’ve put fewer stitches in than you, wizard,” she remarked with rough sympathy as she washed the gore from a ragged slice above his wrist. “Whoever taught you to use a blade left a nasty hole in your defenses; I’m going to have to give you a few lessons!”

“Leave that! Shiv, here, with me!” Planir caught the dented silver bowl from the ground as he strode toward us, the rim now an irregular ellipse. The Archmage swept a hand over and across it, the last remnants of the morning mist sucked down to coalesce into a feeble puddle in the mud-smeared base.

“Your hand,” Planir caught Shiv’s fingers, still slippery with blood, the burns on his own wrist raw and angry beneath the scorched linen of his shirt.

A flash of multi-hued light struck an image from the surface of the water, the inlet where the Elietimm had anchored, the rocky arm reaching out into the surf, the trees of the forest gently tossed by no more than a breeze, no sign of either camp or vessels.

“Pox on it!” spat the Archmage. “Tonin, get over here!”

The still trembling mentor peered into the bowl and shook his head slowly in mystification, wringing his hands.

“Are they still there and somehow hiding themselves, or have they gone elsewhere?” demanded Planir.

Tonin shook his head again. “I have no way to tell, Archmage.”

“We’ve three dead and a handful wounded, two badly, out of the fighting force,” Arest declared, striding up. “What of the scholars?”

Parrail peered unhappily around Tonin’s shoulder, tears carving pale streaks through grime on his face. ‘They killed Keir and Levia, mentor—”

“How many of your number are wounded?” demanded Arest.

“Six,” Parrail drew a long, shuddering breath and tried to straighten his shoulders. “And two others dead, Alery and Mera.”

I winced; by my count, that meant two of every three of the scholars were fallen or injured. I was relying on them and their learning to free me from Temar’s insidious tyranny.

“What of the wizards?” Arest looked around and cursed. I looked after him to see Kalion kneeling by a motionless figure, one of the two cloak carriers who had attended him so assiduously on board ship, a youngish wizard whose name I had never quite caught. When the fat wizard stood, his face was swollen and purple with a fury that promised dreadful retribution.

“Get Shannet and that lass of hers off the ship,” Planir ordered, dropping both Shiv’s hand and the scrying bowl. “Arest, deploy your troops to give us a secure perimeter while we work. Kalion, over here, if you please. Kindly work with Shannet to construct both a barrier and concealment over this place; you can draw on everyone save myself, Usara and Shiv.”

Kalion nodded, eyes burning with determination now he had a task on which to focus. “The only thing that will get past me will be embers blown on the wind!”

“I’ll provide that,” croaked Otrick hoarsely, rubbing darkly purple bruises on his throat with a shaking hand.

The Archmage spun on his heel to fix Tonin with a challenging eye.

“Mentor, who is your most adept pupil still unharmed?”

“That would have to be Parrail,” Tonin quavered.

“Then work with all the others, wounded or not, to weave whatever enchantment you think might conceal or protect us from aetheric magic,” the Archmage commanded him crisply. “Get to it at once, if you would be so good.”

“What do you want with the lad?” asked Tonin, shuffling through his parchments nonetheless.

“You’re going up river, scholar,” Planir turned from the gaping lad to me. “Ryshad, we need to find that cavern and fast. You and Shiv, take the boat, take ’Sar and as many troops as Arest can spare you. The Elietimm will be here as soon as they can. If they’ve crossed the ocean, they almost certainly have magic to work against the weather, so it could be any time. Otrick, Kalion and I will be able to hold the river mouth for a good while, but the faster you find the colonists, the happier we’ll all be!”

I could feel Temar’s exultation echoing around the back of my mind. “Of course, Archmage,” I replied with some difficulty.

“I can scout for you and we’ll ask Minare for some of his lads.” Livak spoke up from where she was holding Shiv’s arm secure for Halice’s needle. “Go on, Rysh, find him while we finish up here.”

I did as I was instructed and we had the ship manned and rigged for river sailing before the sun was halfway across the morning sky. I stood on deck, looking up at the Den Rannion steading, no heads visible against the greenery although I knew full well archers now waited patiently on every trust-worthy section of the wall walk, ready to send a deadly rain of arrows down from the battlements. Equally unseen, Kalion’s magic was enclosing the whole area in defenses of elemental fire, Shiv assured me, while Planir’s power stalked beneath our feet and Otrick’s skills rode high on the winds above. Parrail had tested the aetheric barriers with repeated attempts to contact his colleagues, each failure perversely boosting his confidence.

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” Livak demanded a breath before I could come up with a more tactful version of the same question, but Parrail was not affronted by this.

“Quite sure, my lady,” he replied in the cultured tones of Selerima, one of the great trading cities of western Ensaimin. “I am one of the most well-versed practitioners of these arts, as we so far understand them,” he added with simple pride.

“Do you know what you have to do to revive these colonists?” I asked, trying not to let my desperation show. At least Parrail was proving older than I had first thought, being a rather baby-faced youth with softly curling brown hair above a snub and freckled nose. His rueful hazel eyes told me he was well used to this kind of reaction, as he nodded, clutching Tonin’s ornately inlaid casket to his chest. “I will continue to study our theories as we travel,” he assured me earnestly.

The word theory had a worrying lack of certainty about it, but there was nothing I could do about that. The boy had earned the silver ring to prove his scholarship, hadn’t he? I waved to Halice, who nodded to the mercenaries waiting with her on the wharf side. They cast the ropes securing the boat into the water. Raising a hand, I signaled to Shiv who was standing by the captain of the ship at the tiller. Defying both current and tide, masts and spars bare of canvas, rails lined with mercenaries, bows at the ready, the boat moved upstream, slowly at first and then more rapidly, a spur of foam at her prow frothing with green light.

“Now we should see an end to this, Arimelin willing,” muttered Livak, coming to stand beside me, offering a cup of tisane.

I took a sip of the steaming liquid, feeling the bracing bite of herbs at the back of my throat. “You’re sure you want to do this? I’d understand if you wanted to steer well clear of any aetheric magic—”

“And stay with Planir? To risk being skewered by an Elietimm who thinks he’s an Eldritch-man or get myself fried by Kalion getting overenthusiastic?” Livak shook her head. “I’d sooner challenge one of Poldrion’s demons to a draw of the runes for free passage to the Otherworld!”

“That’s a cheery thought,” I grimaced as I took another sip of tisane. “I’m glad to have you with me though, after the way you avoided me on the voyage here.”

“I had a lot of thinking to do.” Livak fixed her gaze on the curve of the river as it narrowed toward a bend. “I had to decide if I wanted you badly enough to put up with all that comes with you just at present.”

“And you do?”

“For the moment,” Livak’s eyes remained hard. “And I’ll be making sure every cursed thing possible gets done to empty that D’Alsennin out of your head, once and for all.”

Despite the seriousness of our situation, I felt absurdly happy. As I watched the river banks slide past, at once both unknown to me and familiar to Temar, I could not agree with her more, finding it harder and harder to batten down the defenses in the back of my mind.

We reached the mouth of the gorge just as the sun slid down behind the grim and mossy crags of the high ground above us. The captain guided the ship cautiously into a limpid pool, frowning as gravel scraped noisily beneath the hull.

“Where to now, Shiv?” I asked as both wizards and Parrail came to join me and Livak at the rail.

“I’ve no idea. I mean it’s the right place, sure enough, but I can’t locate a cave,” He shook his head. “I’ve been scrying and there’s nothing, nothing at all.”

“There’s something preventing me from searching beneath the surface on the far side of that ravine,” Usara looked thoughtful. “That must mean something.”

“Parrail?” I turned to the young scholar who clutched a parchment defensively to his chest, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m sorry but I can’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

“Which is what we’d expect if this place was supposed to be shielded from aetheric magic,” Livak managed to damp down most of the scorn in her voice. “Let’s follow Usara’s lead. Buril and Tavie, you’re with us.”

It seemed Halice’s word was good enough to give Livak a measure of authority over the mercenaries and the two she named climbed down readily into the ship’s boat, the rest remaining alert and guarding the ship. I followed more slowly, my feelings increasingly confused, reluctant to risk making contact with this ancient magic, desperate to rid myself of Temar and constantly struggling to keep him from laying his shadowy presence over my eyes and my hands. I was starting to feel quite light-headed as we reached a rocky ledge, where a stunted tree offered a handy place to tie up. The feeling worsened as my feet made contact with the ground and with every step we took up that narrow ravine, my senses reeling as the jagged walls of the defile seemed to be pressing in on me, frozen in time but ready to topple down on me at any moment.

“It’s no good, I can’t find any kind of entrance to a cave,” said Usara with marked irritation.

“There’s no sign along here,” called one of the mercenaries, a bull-necked man with blunt features marred by a thoroughly broken nose. “Nor here,” confirmed his mate, Tavie, I think it was, a burly bruiser with a gut on him like a two-season child-belly.

Livak looked down from where she was exploring a narrow ledge, sure-footed as a mountain goat. “This all looks as if it’s been undisturbed since Misaen made it,” she commented. “Shiv?”

“What?” the wizard looked up from a puddle in a rocky hollow where he had been working magic. “No, there’s nothing I can see that’s of any use.” He turned to me, face deathly serious. “The only one who’s going to be able to find that cave is Temar D’Alsennin.”

My first instinct was to reach for my sword but I managed to stick my hands through my belt instead. “What do you mean?”

“You have to let Temar show us the way,” Usara folded his arms. “It’s the only way, Ryshad.”

I shook my head slowly, wanting to shout my denial but unable to find the words. Livak slid down a convenient tree and reached up to lay her hands on either side of my face, drawing my gaze to her.