Stormqueen! (54 page)

The healing-spell was made, Allart knew. It would be that much harder for Scathfell’s hordes to use the powers of sorcery or matrix science against them, when these did any violence to nature. The best thing was that they had done this without even harming the
laranzu
who had set the spell; for his attempted evil he had been returned good.

Holy Bearer of Burdens, grant it stops at this
, Allart thought. But despite the flow of happiness and well-being in every nerve, he knew it could not stop here. Having barred their attack by illusion, the forces commanded by Scathfell and Damon-Rafael must turn, at least for now, to more conventional warfare.

He said as much to Dom Mikhail, later that day, but Lord Aldaran looked pessimistic.

“Castle Aldaran can stand through any ordinary siege, and my brother of Scathfell knows it. He will not be content with that.”

“Yet I foresee,” Allart said, hesitating, “that if we use ordinary warfare only, it will go hard with both sides. It is not even sure that we shall win. But if they manage to lure us into a battle by matrix technology, then nothing can come but catastrophe. Lord Aldaran, I have pledged that I will do what I can to aid you. Yet I beg you, Dom Mikhail. Try to keep this warfare to ordinary methods, even if the victory comes harder in this way. You have said yourself that this castle can withstand any ordinary siege. I beg you not to let them force us into doing their kind of battle.”

Lord Aldaran noted that Allart’s face was pale, and that he was trembling. Part of him understood and took in fully all that Allart was saying: the part of him that had been repelled when Allart spoke of
clingfire
used in the Lowlands. Yet a part of him, the skilled old soldier, veteran of many forays and campaigns in the mountains, looked at Allart and saw only the man of peace, afraid of the desolation of war. His sympathy was not unmixed with contempt, the contempt of the natural warrior for the man of peace, the soldier for the monk. He said, “I wish it might be kept, indeed, to lawful weapons of war. Yet already your brother has sent evil birds and
clingfire
against us. I fear he will not be content to throw catapults against us and storm our walls with scaling ladders and armed men. I will pledge you this; that if he does not use his dreadful weapons against us, I will not be the first to use
laran
against him. But I have no Tower circle at my command to stockpile ever more frightful weapons against my enemies. If Damon-Rafael has brought Tower-created weapons to place at the command of my brother of Scathfell, I cannot hold him off forever with men armed only with arrows and dart-guns and swords.”

That was only reasonable, Allart thought in despair. Would he allow Cassandra to fall into the hands of Damon-Rafael, simply because he was reluctant to use
clingfire
? Would he see Donal hanged from the castle wall, Dorilys carried off to a stranger’s bed? Yet he
knew
, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that if
laran
were used, beyond this simple spell which reaffirmed that nature was one and nothing out of harmony with it could long exist, then…

Allart’s ears were full of cries of future lamentation… Dom Mikhail stood before him bowed with weeping, aged beyond recognition in a single night, crying out, “I am accursed! Would that I had died with neither daughter nor son.” Renata’s face swam before him, convulsed, anguished, dying. The terrible flare of lightning stunned his senses, and Dorilys’s face showed livid in the storm’s glare… He could not endure the possible futures; neither could he shut them out. The weight of them cut off speech, cut off everything but dread…

Shaking his head despairingly at Lord Aldaran, he went away.

But for a time indeed, it seemed that the attackers had been frustrated and must fall back on ordinary weapons. All that day, and all through the night, catapults thudded against the castle walls, some varied with flights of fire-arrows. Donal kept men with tubs of water continually on the alert, and even some of the women were pressed into service watching for fires and hauling tubs of water where they could be used at once to extinguish fires in the wooden outbuildings. Just before dawn, while most of the castle’s guard were busy scurrying here and there putting out a dozen small fires, an alarm was suddenly sounded calling every able-bodied man to the walls to repel a party on scaling ladders. Most of them were cut down and thrown from the heights, but a few managed to break inside, and Donal, with half a dozen picked men, had to face them in the first hand-to-hand battle of the inner courtyard. Allart, fighting at Donal’s side, took a slight slash in one arm, and Donal sent him to have it tended.

Allart found Cassandra and Renata working alongside the healer-women.

“All the gods be thanked it is no worse,” said Cassandra, very pale.

“Is Donal hurt?” Renata demanded.

“Nothing to worry about,” Allart said, grimacing as the healer-woman began to stitch his arm. “He cut down the man who gave me
this
. Dom Mikhail did never better for himself or Aldaran than when he had Donal trained in warfare. Young as he is, he has everything under complete control.”

“It is quiet,” Cassandra said, with a sudden deep shudder. “What devilry are those folk down there contemplating now?”

“Quiet, you say?” Allart looked at her in astonishment; then realized that it was indeed quiet, a deep ominous quiet both inside and out. The screaming sound of the shells and missiles breaking against the castle wall had ended. The sounds he heard so clearly were all inside his own head, were the possibles and might-never-be’s of his
laran
. For the moment it was quiet indeed, but the sounds he could
almost
hear told him this was only a lull.

“My beloved, I wish that you were safe at Hali, or in Tramontana.”

She said, “I would rather be with you.”

The healer-woman finished bandaging his arm and strapped it in a sling. She handed him some reddish sticky fluid in a small cup. “Drink this; it will keep your wound from fevering,” she said. “Rest your arm if you can; there are others who can bear a sword into the fight.” She drew back in dismay as the cup fell from Allart’s suddenly lax hand, the red fluid running like blood on the stone floor.

“In Avarra’s name, my lord!”

But even as she stooped to mop up the mess the outcry Allart had already heard through his
laran
broke out in the courtyard; unceremoniously Allart rose and ran down the inner stairs, hearing the commotion. There was a crowd in the inner court, edging back from a burst container which lay on the stone, oozing a strange-looking yellow slime. As the slime spread, the very stone of the courtyard smoked and burned and fell away into great gaping holes, eaten away like cold butter.

“Zandru’s hells!” burst out one of the guardsmen. “What is
that
? More wizard hellcraft?”

“I know not,” Dom Mikhail said, sobered. “I have never seen anything like it before.”

One of the courageous soldiers came forward, to try to heave some fragments of the container aside. He fell back, howling in agony, his hand seared and blackened with the stuff.

“Do
you
know what this is, Allart?” Donal asked.

Allart pressed his lips tight. “No sorcery, but a weapon devised by the Towers - an acid that will melt stone.”

“Is there nothing we can do about it?” Lord Aldaran asked. “If they throw many of those against our outwalls, they will melt the very castle about our ears! Donal, send men to check the boundaries.”

Donal pointed to a guardsman. “You, and you, and you, take your paxmen and go. Take straw shields; it will not harm the straw - See where it has splashed on the fodder - but if it touches metal you will be stifled by the acid fumes.”

Allart said, “If it is acid, take the ash-water you use for mopping in the dairy and stables, and perhaps it will stop the acid from eating through the stone.” Although the strong alkali did indeed neutralize the acid and keep it from spreading, several of the men were splashed by the strong lye. Where the courtyard had been eaten by the acid, even where treated afterward with the lye-water, holes were eaten in boots and whole areas had to be fenced off so that the men would not be injured by trespassing on them. There had been a few direct hits on the stone of the outwalls, and the stone was eaten away and crumbling; worse, the supply of lye-water was soon exhausted. They tried to use substitutes, such as soap and animal urine, but they were not strong enough.

“This is dreadful,” Dom Mikhail said. “They will have our walls down at this rate. Surely this is Lord Elhalyn’s doing, kinsman. My brother of Scathfell has no such weapons at his command! What can we do, kinsman? Have you any suggestions?”

“Two,” Allart said, hesitating. “We can put a binding-spell on the stone, so that it cannot be eaten away by any unnatural substance, but only by those things intended to destroy stone. It would not stand against earthquake or time or flood, but I think it may stand against these unnatural weapons.”

So once again the Tower-trained personnel took their place in the matrix chamber. Dorilys joined them, pleading to take a hand.

“I can monitor,” she begged, “and Renata would be free to join you in the circle.”

“No,” Renata said quickly, thanking all the gods that Dorilys’s telepathy was still untrained and erratic. “I think, if you will, you can take a place in the circle, and I will monitor from outside.”

As monitor for the circle Dorilys would know at once why Renata could not join it now.

It goes against me to deceive her this way. But a time will soon come when she is strong and well, and then Donal and I will tell her
, Renata thought.

Fortunately, Dorilys was sufficiently excited at being allowed to take a place inside the circle, her first formal use of a matrix except to levitate her own glider, that she did not question Renata. Cassandra held out her hand and the girl took her place beside Cassandra. Again, the circle formed, and once again they sent out the spell that was only a strengthening of nature’s own forces.

The rock is one with the planet on which it is formed, and man has so shaped it as it was determined. Nothing shall change it or alter. The rock is one… one… one…

The binding-spell was set. Allart, individual consciousness lost behind the joined consciousness of his circle, was aware of the shaped rocks of the castle, of their hard integrity; of the fact that the impact of explosive shells and the chemical slime was harmlessly bouncing away, repelled, the yellow slime rolling down the outside, leaving long, evil-looking streaks, but not crumbling stone or melting it.

The rock is one… one… one…

From outside the circle, a careful thought reached them.

Allart?

Is it you
, brédu?

It is Donal. I have stationed men on the outwalls to pick off their cannoneers with arrows, but they are out of range. Can you make a darkness about them so that they cannot see where to shoot?

Allart hesitated. It was one thing to affirm the integrity of nature’s creation by forcing water to remain, untampered, as water, and stone to remain impervious to things nature had never intended to destroy stone. But to tamper with nature by creating darkness during the hours of light…

Dorilys’s thoughts wove into the circle.
It would be in tune with the forces of nature if a thick fog should come up. It often happens at this season, so that no man on the hillside can see beyond the reach of his own arms
!

Allart, searching a little way ahead with his
laran
, saw indeed that there was a strong probability of thick fog arising. Focusing on the joined matrixes again, the workers concentrated upon the moisture in the air, the nearing clouds, to wrap the whole of the mountainside in a thick curtain, rising from the river below, until all of Castle Aldaran and the nearby peaks lay shrouded in darkening fog.

“They will not lift this night,” said Dorilys with satisfaction.

Allart dissolved the circle, admonishing his group to go and rest. They might be needed again soon. The sound of shelling had stopped, and Donal’s men below had a chance to clean up the residue of acids and lye. Renata, running the body-mind monitor’s touch over Dorilys, was struck with something new in her.