Stormed Fortress (108 page)

* * *

Convulsed by the acuity of remembered agony, Asandir kept his hand immersed in the violet flux streaming off Seshkrozchiel
'
s dorsal spine. He sustained the recoil. Endured, braced, as the scream of the colleague he would have spared, whole, reechoed across his stretched nerves. If Asandir wept, if he also recalled Ciladis
'
s tears for a judgement forced into premature closure, the hour for grieving was over. The field Sorcerer embraced the experience without falling to the harrowing onslaught of guilt. He had wrestled such emotional echoes before, immersed in the coils of grimwarded haunts. While the imprint razed into the unfolding flux, he knew the live dragon
'
s engagement would capture the shattering resonance.

No barrier deferred the tangling impact.
Creation must follow,
as the tumultuous, past trauma fed the storm of reactive event.

Davien
'
s conscious memory was swept along. His threatened cognizance became riveted as the horrific shock of his error resurged, nightmarishly vivid as direct experience.

Asandir held the line. Fist still clenched in the crackling forces thrown off Seshkrozchiel
'
s dorsal spine, he added his heart-felt appeal to her dream-weave:
that explosive recall of Davien
'
s fatal severance would seed enough charge to bind a discorporate spirit to self-awareness amid lawless upheaval.
And that if his drastic tactic sufficed, such searing coherency might last
long enough
for Seshkrozchiel to unspin the vengeful haunt
'
s fit of battle-fury.

No thought and no time could be spared to examine for wide-ranging consequences. The Fellowship
'
s past action to appease Shehane Althain
'
s defences had been the same: a heart-rending choice of expediency seized in a split second
'
s opening. Crisis had not let them salvage the mis-step that threatened Davien
'
s destruction. Nothing else, now, might shield him from ruin through the bid for Scarpdale
'
s restoration.

Asandir stretched his practised faculties, counterworking the whip-lash effects of grimwarded dissonance. He recognized peril: at no time had the shade of his stallion been cross-linked with a living dragon
'
s awareness. No Fellowship Sorcerer might foresee the outcome sown by Seshkrozchiel
'
s perception. Nor had Asandir witnessed the prior banishment of Hanshire
'
s strayed lancers, or tracked the speed at which her avid attention could freeze the progression of breaking event. Her close survey, by which she mapped the essence of all things
not dragon
would have left even Sethvir
'
s resources reeling.

Asandir received Davien
'
s conflicted torment, rocked by a fear that fused thought and will into ruthless concern for the future; while Davien saw beyond his branding need for redress with a merciless, refigured clarity.

If Kharadmon had been incensed from pain, and Luhaine, still mad with grief for the rebellion
'
s harsh losses, the luminous care behind disparate viewpoints now eclipsed every meaningful truth. Beyond the cruelty of Davien
'
s wracked horror, sparked to salvage abraded identity, Asandir brought the quickened, yearning frustration that once dead-locked the Fellowship
'
s impasse: Ciladis
'
s joy, never robbed by disdain, but overspent by driven exhaustion; the suffering born of Traithe
'
s crippled perception; and not least, the most disastrously misappraised stress of them all: Sethvir
'
s harrowing struggle to master the augmented stream bestowed by the earth link.

Davien
'
s stunned recoil, and Asandir
'
s shock, had no chance to recover. Seshkrozchiel did not perceive as Mankind. Her intent acknowledged no course beyond
victory.
Thus, the entangled energies that were
not dragon
became seized and recast, made her own. A recombinant pattern, snatched from the throes of the Fellowship
'
s failure, would resharpen the cascading thrust of her assault.

'
Yours to choose, ancient!
'
Asandir whispered, undone if his stop-gap strategy should overturn to the detriment of all he held dear.
Seshkrozchiel dreamed.

The resonant print of the warding raised by Shehane Althain struck
skull
and bone shattered; while the matchless depth of Ciladis
'
s patience overwrote the sting of an unmated defeat into a poignant longing that eased bitter rage into loneliness. The crazed haunt had no footing to stand before
love:
a concept,
not dragon,
strung through Asandir
'
s
adamance,
and Sethvir
'
s
loyalty.
The onslaught awoke flooding sorrow,
for beauty lost:
and the inspiration of new understanding broke the grip of riled insanity. Refigured by change, the intractable drake-spirit knew the unfolding grace of release. It embraced death such as no dragon had known in the course of evolving creation.

While Davien, whose hot-blooded urgency had once impelled a tragic disaster, met the shearing crux of his past ruin again in the flux of a live dragon
'
s dreaming.

Watching, the golden eye of Seshkrozchiel encountered his human
regret.

The flame of lost desire stood stark as cut diamond. Force kindled reaction, unstoppable. Davien
'
s present, discorporate consciousness launched across a threshold of shifted event. Devoured by a coruscation of rainbows,
he passed through the King
'
s Chamber at Althain Tower.
Then the fleeting impression plunged into oblivion dense as the dark of the womb.

Winter 5671

Redemption

Tradition held that change always followed the footsteps of Fellowship Sorcerers. If Glendien had never troubled before with the gravity of ancestral warnings, that reckless attitude had withered amid the blustering days of midwinter. Her capricious exchange with Davien the Betrayer had led to the siege of Alestron and loss of her husband in Rathain
'
s crown service.

Now her womb harboured the next s
'
Ffalenn heir. Such ties to crown lineage evoked privilege: Glendien accepted the offered grant of a protected residency. The explicit need for her informed consent might have caused her to weigh that decision more carefully; or not. Scoured by grief, she would have seized upon any distraction to numb her fresh heart-ache.

History declared without exception: to cross over the threshold of Althain Tower was to be tested and tried, either to break, or to reforge shrinking weakness into the strengths of true character. Yet Luhaine
'
s expedient transfer had not delivered her to Sethvir. Her needs were met instead by a White Brotherhood adept, who had smiled but answered no questions. The second-floor guest suite was austerely furnished, the swept stone floor warmed with a bright rug, and a south-facing window with diamond panes that let in flooding sunlight. Except for the silence, her room seemed quite ordinary.

Glendien detected no dread currents of power. Even the burn of the flux lines seemed stilled, which warned her the chamber was shielded. Althain Tower lay on the primary lane that flowed through Atainia, where the Great Circle at Isaer
'
s old ruin once hosted the council of the centaur guardians. Transverse lines crossed here, which powered the Sorcerer
'
s Preserve and the axis under the Mathorn Mountains; also the shining track that surged through the old way from Narms, past the marker stone in Daon Ramon Barrens, and the Second Age nexus sited at Ithamon.

Yet no turbulence blazed through Glendien
'
s dreams. She sensed no other voice but the wind, whisking across ancient stonework. Restless despite a night
'
s peaceful sleep, she brushed her red hair for the third time and fretted under the irritation of leaving the tresses unbraided. Never having borne Kyrialt
'
s child, she had no more right to the clan pattern of s
'
Taleyn; if the s
'
Ffalenn name had been gifted a traditional weaving, she had no elder of Arithon
'
s lineage to guide her.

'
Ath above,
'
she burst out, as she ripped up a lashing of static.
'
I
'
d rather a bow to go hunting!
'

Uncertainty coloured her isolation. She noted no outside bustle of comings and goings; nothing important arose to explain why she should be abandoned to her own devices. Sethvir
'
s hospitality seemed vexingly dull. Her forestborn talent strove, and quite failed, to pierce through the blanketing quiet.

By contrast, every slight comfort was met before asking, until Glendien felt like a cosseted jewel tucked into a velvet-lined box.

That impression broke the next morning when a robed adept arrived at her door. He had bright, dark eyes, the brown skin of a tribesman, and a spry stride that outpaced her ascent of the stairs as he escorted her two floors higher up. There, she was admitted to the King
'
s Chamber and asked to wait on the attendance of a Fellowship Sorcerer. No assurance of welcome soothed her jangled nerves. Instead, her anxiety gave rise to more doubts at the sight of the banners denoting Athera
'
s five kingdoms. The hearth fire did not ease her mounting dread, in this place. Which of the empty, carved chairs at the ebony table had once seated Torbrand s
'
Ffalenn? Here also, Rathain
'
s first
caithdein
had stood with drawn sword, on the hour the lineage
'
s founder had knelt to seal his crown oath over his blood descendants.

Glendien shivered. One day her child might be called to serve in the grandiloquent weight of such footsteps.

The dyed carpet felt much too rich underneath her irreverent tread. Thick silence itself seemed reproachful. Glendien ran her fingers over the panelling that softened the tower
'
s stonewall. The curly maple all but sang to her touch, fitted with the uncanny rapport that bespoke Paravian joinery. She could not deny the sharp misery that broke her bravado to tears. In dread fact, she felt unfit. Arithon Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn had not chosen her as the mother to bear his first child.

'
You still can turn back,
'
a mild voice declared from the doorway.

Breath caught, her pulse pounding, Glendien whirled face about.

The promised Sorcerer stood at the threshold, watching with steely grey eyes. How long had such powerful stillness been present, unnoticed until he had spoken?

Keeping her pinned in his earnest regard, the arrival finished his statement.

'
The hour is not yet too late to change your mind and step back. You need not bear the full consequence that will result from your choices at Athir.
'

Glendien swallowed. Temper sparked off the raw flint of her fear as she trembled beneath his close survey.
'
Do I seem that untrustworthy?
'

'
No.
'
Asandir strode fully into the room. Soundless of step, he left the door open, perhaps aware that her forest-bred nerves felt entrapped by closed quarters. His imposing height was clothed in formality: a deep indigo robe bordered with silver that shimmered like summer lightning. He had labourer
'
s hands, close-trimmed nails, and large knuckles, the impression of capable strength unnervingly callused and ordinary. The Sorcerer accepted her stare. Without comment, he turned one of the ivory-trimmed chairs and sat down. Now settled beneath her regard, he seemed care-worn, even shadowed by signs of a taxing recovery.

Which insight lent nothing, by way of advantage. His conclusion stayed dauntlessly level.
'
You keep what is promised, and without complaint. I would have said, Glendien, that you are impetuous.
'

She raised her chin.
'
No quality fit to endow a crown heir. My pride can withstand your rejection.
'

One corner of Asandir
'
s mouth pulled awry. He folded his hands and leaned forward. Lit head to foot by rapt expectation, he urged in silk quiet,
'
Continue. What other faults should you list for my censure?
'
As she flushed scarlet, he added, quite mild,
'
Or else say what you actually want. Short and plainly is best, from the heart.
'

The cry of her grief for her dead beloved emerged as fresh tears that welled over. She turned her back. Hoped the crude need for retreat came in time, as the silver and black on emerald green of Rathain
'
s royal leopard dissolved from her sight in the flood. Worse, her shaking knees threatened to buckle. The courage that should have raised her fighting spirit ebbed under her crushing anguish.

Perhaps she gasped Kyrialt
'
s name, after all.

For suddenly the Sorcerer
'
s presence was
there,
looming over her wretched misery. A ghost
'
s touch clasped her elbow. She was steadied, then upheld without words through the torrent, regardless of acute embarrassment.