Stormed Fortress (58 page)

* * *

Uneasy quiet reigned over the guest suite that housed the Crown Prince of Rathain. Dakar kept red-eyed watch. Having set the requested stiff ring of wards, he was left to chew over his frothing anxiety. His scrying already ascertained that Jeynsa in fact was detained without bodily harm. Fionn Areth slept off his drunken stupor, oblivious, while Kyrialt gave his weapons a scouring polish and settled to nap beside Glendien. Sidir slept also, his muscled frame sprawled on the carpeted floor of the still-room. He had dressed in fresh leathers. Except for a draught of restorative tea, he rejected the comfort of coddling. Stoic through crises, he snatched a scout
'
s rest, with his cleaned steel laid alongside, and his limbs covered by his weather-stained mantle.

No one dared assay the stairway, above. The shut door yielded none of its secrets.

Which brooding concern, Arithon s
'
Ffalenn had no intent to dispel. He had been forced on the alert for too long, immersed in strict demand to the volatile currents of wielding high conjury. Rest was now imperative, and more: he needed his faculties, and Elaira
'
s, restored at a speed that left no room for safety.

The duke
'
s berserk temperament was too deadly dangerous. His hackled fury would not brook defeat the trapped pawn in his hands remained in harm
'
s way, with no sureties placed on the outcome. None of Rathain
'
s feal party were secure until Bransian could be set in his place.

'
Bright powers attend us,
'
Arithon murmured, crying inward for patience and strength. He must snatch this moment of unbroken peace, push what resource he had to renew his frayed focus, and reground the alignment of over-stressed senses.

Jeynsa
'
s hot predicament
must
wait for morning. Else the outrage sparked by tonight
'
s wrongful injuries would shatter his grip on constraint. The charge placed before him claimed absolute precedence: Elaira
'
s recovery lay under his care. Arithon steadied his jangled nerves. More than love, more than his next breath, he needed her settled and well. To which end, the direct path was both the most pleasurable, and the most fraught with pitfalls.

The bed and the room were still generously warm, the fire built up for Fianzia reduced to glimmering coals. Rather than pile on a new log, Arithon pinched out the candle-lamp. Soft dark left the ambient glow from the hearth to define the chamber
'
s spare furnishings. He worked, hoarding strength, each calm preparation accomplished in economical stages.

Two decoctions of simples soon steamed in glazed mugs. The unwrapped lyranthe awaited nearby, silver strings shining ruby. Alithiel was unsheathed also. Arithon laid the black blade on the mattress, where he then reclined, tucked into the coverlets beside his beloved. Flesh to stripped flesh, he cradled Elaira, while his trembling fingers smoothed her unbraided hair.

He was foolishly dizzy. Not just from the risen flashes of heat that raked him over in back-lash. The close scent of her turned all his senses: lavender mingled with traces of birch smoke, from the brazier that had heated her remedies. He caressed her skin, smooth as moon-rinsed marble. Stroked her neck, where the pulse raced too rapidly.

This time, in truth, the hour was his. As the partnership forged in the cottage at Merior had been foredoomed from the outset, this night was not going to strand them with yet another tormented parting. Sidir
'
s unorthodox healing had opened the way. Grace and caring now must guard this safe passage.

Mage and musician, Arithon began to trace Elaira
'
s inert form with his touch. He did not massage, but admired: a lingering, sweet courtship pitched first to realign her depleted vitality. As he moved, he raised mage-sight, and laced his own rhythm through hers. Linked his own breathing and heart-beat, which already rebounded from the restoratives he had dosed for himself. He soothed, coaxed, and quieted. As time passed, his stroking hands turned to stimulate, then to tease the response of awakened arousal. Her life signs his music, his desire her kindling flame, he opened the flux points and drew on the depths of initiate knowledge to weave. Female to his male, he led her depleted exhaustion into a yearning thirst to seek ecstasy.

As he had in the cottage in Merior, his spirit called hers back to blazing awareness, as no other living force could.

When, at due length, her eyes opened to meet him, the need in them burned him, unstoppable.

'
You realize what I
'
m asking,
'
he opened, contrite.
'
A flawed gift, under need to rebuild balance soonest, while pushed in the quicksands of crisis. I could wish -
'

Her touch brushed his lips. One finger, caressing, damped his torrent of apology. She gave back the soaring grace of her smile.
'
By my choice, as well. No matter whether the stones in the headland should shake down the stars and the moon.
'

"This is not Rathain,
'
he reassured her.
'
Nowhere near the volatile interface
that
quickens the flow within the free wilds.
'
That truth she would see: no ripple of silver-hazed power aligned with the flux lines, strung active between them. Only the coals in the fire-place burnished the tenderness, mirrored as his own, on her features.
'
My crown prince
'
s attunement will not rouse the land in Melhalla, or stun any sleepers from rest.
'

'
Unless they
'
re unrighteously listening.
'
Her sly humour up-ended his heart, as she matched joy with visceral bravery.
'
Only one of your teas will be necessary.
'

The cup with the simple to prevent conception met her parted lips, held in his steadied hand. After she swallowed the bitter-sweet dregs, he kissed her until heightened pleasure destroyed thought, ravished breath, and dazzled the senses.

'
I trust you,
'
she murmured through urgency.
'
Completely. Without end, and before the beginning.
'

Wordless, he laced her trembling fingers through the black steel of Alithiel
'
s grip. Then, gently relentless, he closed his taut grasp. Caged her hand with his own, as his aching flesh quivered with unbearable suspension against her.

'
You are unsurpassed.
'
Arithon cradled her one instant more. Then he laid his cheek against hers. Drowned in the exotic scent of her hair, he savoured the irrevocable, last moment, then launched them both over the brink. The poised spiral unleashed, while move for move, she cried out with exquisite welcome and matched him.

The fair moment enraptured them with light and song, and was not left unrequited. Starved desire achieved union, as a sword
'
s steel, unsheathed, exploded to shimmering light. Alithiel blazed and belled into bright harmony, with the Paravian wards in the citadel also arisen in resonant defence. The embedded Koriani sigil to enforce fertility was cut off, inert, its insidious spring trap held latent. For this rarefied interval, within secured walls, the dark force of Selidie
'
s power could not strike through or entangle her targeted victims.

* * *

More than Dakar sensed the subliminal, marrow-deep tone, as the wardings imbued in Paravian stonework shuddered the rock of the headland. His outburst of swearing sprang in equal measure from horrified fury and shattered relief. Neither sentiment was shared by the Koriani Matriarch.

Prime Selidie recoiled from the venomous sting that curbed the reach of her oath-bonded mastery. She sat awake, still enthroned in her chair, within the night-dark pavilion. As the connection that channelled her live tie to Elaira scattered into burst static, she did not rail against set-back. Her rage stayed cold. Though her direct plot might be temporarily thwarted, her breathless laugh became prelude to a crow of triumph.

None were present to listen. Only the inconsequential boy page had been retained to attend her. Lirenda was packed off to bed with a posset, and the diligent circle of senior servers dismissed, their task momentarily complete. Wrapped against the cold air, her porcelain face tintless, the Koriani Matriarch murmured over the crystal array left actively poised on her side-table.
'
Our too-clever quarry has taken the bait! Arithon has engaged, and accepted my challenge.
'

Time and folly would snare him. The insatiable fruit of his consummate love would fan tonight
'
s blaze towards careless addiction.

Selidie avowed to hasten that mis-step. Every power and pawn within her grasp would be pressured to flush her royal prey. To that end, she must break the Paravian wardings that championed Arithon
'
s foothold. The peerless defences in the citadel walls would have to be breached, or abandoned. Alestron
'
s defeat would wrest back her opening to resume pursuit upon open ground.

Prime Selidie freed the stiffened claws that remained of her fire-scarred hands. Her fumbling touch engaged the first of two crystals left tuned for her use by the servers. Her choice by-passed the one which reflected the anchorage behind Lugger
'
s Islet where the Sunwheel ships waylaid by Vhandon
'
s refugees were being refitted as war prizes by Parrien
'
s sea-wolves. First, her crippled fingers stroked the crystal linked to Lysaer
s'Ilessid
, lying asleep in the Alliance war camp . . .

* * *

Something was wrong. Sulfin Evend awoke to the certainty. If he did not possess an initiate awareness, the grand oath he had sworn at Althain Tower enhanced his innate sensitivity. Whatever had nagged him to gooseflesh would not let him settle or sleep.

His quarters were quiet, as much as could be, in the pavilion that commanded a war camp that sprawled, tens of thousands of men strong. In the dark before dawn, the outside activity sounded nothing more than routine: wagons lumbered in from the fringes bearing supply, and cut fire-wood for the bread ovens. Chattering laundresses lugged their buckets to the river, and horse-boys led their roped strings of destriers from the picket lines to graze and drink. Bits jingled. Men swore. A smith
'
s hammer clanged. Farther afield, the perimeter scouts could be heard, bugling their skirmishers in from a pre-dawn patrol.

Day upon day, fighting ironclad boredom, the fettlesome mass of trained troops trampled over the occupied turf that surrounded Alestron.

Sulfin Evend measured the background tone of complaint, well aware that he needed to shake up morale yet again.

The mud was still heavy from yesterday
'
s storm. Men in miserable, damp clothing and rust-streaked mail poured too much silver into the hands of the trollops. The women sold comfort, till their thin-stretched services soured to carping disputes. Today would demand another harsh drill, with each brutal exercise set to unstring such rank-and-file idleness, mind and sinew. Sulfin Evend tossed off his blankets. Anxiety rode him too hard to wait for his equerry, or kindle the candle-lamp. Unlike the Divine Prince, he kept his partitioned quarters pitch dark. No call to emergency would catch him blundering and dazzled without his night-vision. Sulfin Evend snatched for the breeches hung from the nail on the tent-pole.

His
finger
s swiped air.

'
Damn
all
to Sithaer for meddling nuisances!
'
he gasped in the pre-dawn chill. Lysaer
'
s prim valet had ignored sense, again. Shouted threats never stopped his twitching fingers from coddling everything within reach.

Bare skin puckered, Sulfin Evend groped onwards by touch and flung open his foot-locker. Two clean shirts flew aside. Then a tied pair of stockings. These had been laundered and folded with a
ridiculous
cachet of mint. Now swearing fit to raise fire and storm, the Lord Commander thrashed deeper and hooked the spare breeches that should, by his lights, have been topmost.

Half-clad, trailing laces, he snagged his belt, retrieved a flung shirt, then clawed on the gambeson left at the foot of his bed. He caught up his byrnie. Prepared to shrug on the bunched mail - and damn all to the hair that pinched out of his tousled head in the process - when the dog-faithful valet barged in from behind.

'
Go and scorch the fur off Dharkaron
'
s black bollocks!
'
snarled Sulfin Evend, annoyed.
'
You can hang the idea of a gentleman
'
s shave. My stubble stays put, for the drill field.
'

No sound, from the servant, beyond a caught breath.

Which raised the ugly, belated awareness: the man carried no basin and razor. He had not struck a light. Caught by the shine through the crack in the door flap, he was not groomed or composed, but trembling on bare feet in his night-shirt.

Hands clenched in the mail he had yet to put on, Sulfin Evend dropped inquiry and sprinted. The stuffy valet would curl up and die, before showing his naked legs to an officer: which breach of etiquette meant Lysaer
s
'
Ilessid
was threatened by trouble too dire to contemplate.

Sulfin Evend burst from his quarters. Beyond, the broad trestles loomed as they should, spread over with markers and tactical maps. The rowed chairs stood empty, beneath the staked hooks with their darkened horn lanterns. Reduced light burned, at night: a paned sconce with a flickering candle stub. The page boys who had neglected the wick snoozed in a sprawl beside the swagged dais. A third, younger child had dozed off while blacking the Divine Prince
'
s boots. The grimed rag he had dropped puddled over his feet, as he stirred in bleary confusion.

'
Fetch the Sunwheel guardsmen on watch at the entry!
'
Sulfin Evend thundered in passing.
'
Move! Get them now!
'
Still packing the mail shirt, he vaulted a stool, kicked a felt hassock tumbling, then charged straight on over a chest and two tables. Counters scattered. A chart of the estuary flapped in his wake, blizzarding white paper galleys. A glass ink-well overset with a tinkle. While the puffing valet dodged his trail of debris, the Lord Commander crashed through the emblazoned curtains into the avatar
'
s suite.

The taint warned him first: not quite a smell, but a lingering suggestion of shadow, half-seen. Always, when steered by his latent clan lineage, Sulfin Evend recognized the presence of Koriani conjury. Now the order
'
s target was Lysaer, already driven awake by the shock of another invasive nightmare.

This one seeded terror. Sulfin Evend met those unseeing, blue eyes, enamel, hard, and vicious with the madness of Desh-thiere
'
s curse. All finesse was forfeit. He hurled the mail shirt.

The steel links sailed, ringing, unfurled like a net that scythed a whistling course through the air. The mass struck the avatar full in the face. Lysaer staggered backwards. The edge of his camp mattress tripped him. He crashed, flailing, into the coverlet.

Sulfin Evend
'
s tigerish spring pounced on top. He fisted both hands in the miring steel links. Ruthless under panic, he pressed the weight down, while the fit body he straddled, then pinned, thrashed with manic strength underneath him.

The candle kept blazing nearby had a solid bronze stand, twined with dragons. Bucked off balance, Sulfin Evend snatched for the base. He swung the flanged edge like a bludgeon, hit Lysaer through the mail shirt, and dropped him on the quilts like felled meat. Now two crises faced him: the flung candle that spattered hot wax and fire in a rolling spray on the carpet; and the chance his crazed liege might arouse and fight back with a light strike.

The Lord Commander moved on the exigent threat first. Ripped the belt from his waist and noosed Lysaer
'
s wrists. Then he snatched the filled pitcher from the washstand. Sulfin Evend threw the vessel and its sloshing contents, still athwart the mattress, with one knee gouged into the chest of the Blessed Prince. The burgeoning flames became doused in a splash of smashed porcelain and water.

The valet arrived, panting.
'
Merciful Light!
'
He snapped the flap shut, too late for decorum. The staring page boy outside was already riveted. Sulfin Evend dared not respond, or take time to amend the disastrous appearances. He tugged away the dead weight of the mail and exposed Lysaer
'
s slackened face. Then swore aloud for the blood, vividly welling through the golden hair nested in the rumpled bed-clothes.

'
Let me, please, my lord.
'
The valet clutched a towel, prepared to minister to the fallen. His gaunt form leaned in and fussed with the sheets, while Sulfin Evend dropped the offensive armour and inspected the damage at speed.

Lysaer suffered a split scalp, but no worse. The moment the copious bleeding was stemmed, the wound could be treated by stitching.

'
Send for crushed ice and tincture of iodine,
'
the Lord Commander snapped, gruff. Relief became fury.
'
Ath above! Did nobody hear my straight warning? Koriathain will dare to waylay any pawn for use on their infernal chessboard! Your master
'
s nightmares weren
'
t caused by the Spinner of Darkness, but witchcraft, fashioned for suborning influence. Don
'
t be complacent. This fit was provoked. Selidie Prime surely wants to manipulate an attack on the s
'
Brydion citadel.
'

More bodies entered: fighting men, by their heavy-set tramp. Were they not the hoped-for, trustworthy honour guard, the damage spread beyond remedy.

'
I want a fresh light!
'
snapped Sulfin Evend.
'
Then dispatch the faster of those two pages to roust out the camp physician.
'

No one moved for a lamp. Instead, the crowding footfalls advanced into a cordoning presence behind him. Sulfin Evend hedged a glance at the valet, who looked rabbit scared, but still moved to salvage the upset candle. The fact that the servant left the bedside by one step reassured Sulfin Evend that the men at close quarters were his own, hand-picked to hold true under knowledge of Lysaer
'
s afflicted madness. Ranne and Fennick guarding his back meant that others, who were disastrously ignorant, had crowded into the entry. These posed an outraged knot of obstruction, muttering in surprise, then exchanging veiled accusations regarding their commander
'
s untoward activity.

If the valet
'
s timely foresight had spread the blanket overtop of Lysaer
'
s lashed wrists, Sulfin Evend
'
s abrasive explosion upset any politic story that the avatar might have fallen by accident.

Already, the first incensed outcry arose.
'
Have you taken leave of your wits, Lord Commander?
'

More zealots joined the declaiming chorus.
'
Or are you possessed?
'

'
What blasphemous folly could make you suggest that our heaven-sent avatar might be vulnerable to Koriathain?
'

Sulfin Evend locked his offended teeth. He dared not admit to his outbred clan lineage. The least whiff of suspicion that he owned wild talent, and Lysaer
'
s rabid following would fetch in a priest to put him on trial, if not arraign him for burning.

The valet shuffled back, the lit candle in hand. No help, that the damning tableau now looked worse: Sulfin Evend placed ruthless priorities first and attended the head wound
'
s necessities. At least the towel compress caught most of the blood. Perhaps a mixed blessing: Lysaer
s
'
Ilessid
stirred back to consciousness under the fluttering flame. His blue eyes flickered open, confused. Healthy reflex contracted his pupils. He was not concussed, or insane, only hurting, and stung to his aristocrat
'
s bones by the public assault on his dignity.

'
Get out!
'
he demanded, succinct as flung ice.
'
If my first commander has lost his aplomb and stooped to a brawling fight, don
'
t expect me to welcome the dumbfounded audience!
'

But the bullheaded captain on loan from Kalesh was quite beyond shame.
'
Has his Lordship, Sulfin Evend, just dared to suggest that mere witches might set your Divine Grace under a spell of compulsion?
'

Lysaer
'
s flattened frame stiffened. Peeled raw himself by that surgical stare, Sulfin Evend stood off, while the valet, inured to all blistering pressure, fluttered in with a robe for his master
'
s bare shoulders.

'
I heard what your senior officer claimed!
'
the Blessed Prince demurred,
angry. Assisted to sit upright, but ignoring the garment, Lysaer sat cloaked in blankets and surveyed the gawkers until every man had flushed red.
'
In fact, Sulfin Evend lost his temper first. He made his insolent point well enough, as you see by the marks on my person. His gaffe excuses nobody else
'
s bad manners! I serve my own reprimands. This one shall stay private.
Get out!
'

They went. At a stumbling run, clashing armoured elbows and swords in a crowding rush through the tent-flap. Which left the impervious valet, still hopefully clutching the dressing-robe; and Sulfin Evend, shivering unarmed in his halfway-laced gambeson. The blast of divine censure fell with swift fury, since the servant could not regale glittering finery on a man perched upright with his wrists bound.

'
I have an errand I need run to the Mayor of Tirans.
'
Despite snarled hair, Lysaer
'
s royal breeding somehow had regained peerless majesty.
'
The instant I have my hands freed for the writ, I charge you to ride post and place the delivery before his closed council.
'