Stormwarden (25 page)

The alien matrix pinned her thoughts without warning, then struck a psychic blow which sent her reeling back, stunned and surprised and in agony. At first unaware the entity which opposed her used the same powers she controlled scant seconds before, Taen felt herself plunged back into the mind of her brother, but deeper than she had ever ventured previously. She fell, as if into darkness. And poignant as a minor arpeggio of harp strings, emotions pierced her until her whole mind rang in concert with the boy's unbearable pain.

"Your brother Emien is a cruel man, his deeds unfit for forgiveness," said the Sathid within her mind, its voice framed as her own, or perhaps that of her mother. Laced in the depths of nightmare like a fish in a gill net, Taen tried to raise her voice in denial. But her throat pinched closed and no words passed her lips.

"See for yourself," continued the voice of the accuser, and Taen found herself unable to close her eyes against the vision which battered her awareness.

She saw her brother Emien stride the length of Crow's pinnace, a length of knotted cord in his fist. The boat tossed, her bowsprit flung skyward by wave crests which thundered and crashed over the razor fangs of a reef. Emien threatened the rowers in a voice gone ugly with rage. And with the same hand he had used to dry Taen's tears as a child, he lifted his lash and brought it down with all his strength on the helpless backs of his oarsmen.

Taen shouted denial, but her protest went unheard. Blood flowed down the naked backs of the men, spilled in thick drops to mingle with the bilge, while Emien shouted like a madman, sounding more and more like his Uncle Evertt.

"No!" Taen shouted. "It's not true!" But vividly etched by her gift the details said otherwise. The pinnace slammed into rock with a boom that deafened thought. And Taen fell, through a dying man's cry of agony, into darkness once more.

The Sathid pursued, hounding her with remorseless certainty. "Your brother is a murderer, a breaker of the codes of life. Let him be condemned."

Taen whimpered in protest. But through the firelit boughs of a forest glen, she watched Emien select a rounded stone, and with a clean, vindictive throw, end the life of an elderly man. The victim crumpled, lay still in the wilted folds of his black cloak. And stung into action by fierce disbelief, Taen searched the mind of her brother. His memory confirmed the scene she had witnessed, the emotions etched by the remorse of an act best forgotten.

Taen retreated, stunned. Emien was no longer the tormented but guiltless brother she had loved on Imrill Kand. Somewhere, somehow, he had become hardened and insensitive in a manner not even his mother would accept. Wounded by the change and unable to adjust, Taen abandoned herself to pain. And anticipating victory, the Sathid moved to imprison her.

While the girl's will lay passive, it fashioned barriers, using the shattered remnants of her faith. The instant her love for Emien shifted to hatred, her confinement would be complete. The Sathid paused for a moment to gloat. How very smoothly its takeover had proceeded; the girl hardly resisted at all.

Absorbed by her grief, Taen felt an echo of the Sathid's triumph. The emotion rang false. Whether Emien had murdered or not, she could not abandon him to Tathagres' demons. Re-dedicated to her earlier resolve, her emotions polarized, and at once she recognized the image and the voice to be that of an enemy. Not Lord Sholl; this one knew her, used her mind and her memories against her in an attempt to break her spirit.

Taen struck back. With the anger of the betrayed she smashed through the Sathid's grip, recalled the image of the victim Emien had struck down with his stone. But this time she viewed the completed action and recognized the man in the black cloak as Hearvin, one of Anskiere's oppressors and evil in his own right.

"Liar!" she accused the Sathid. "Who gave you the right to meddle?"

"I need no right," the Sathid replied. "I am a part of you." And as Taen paused to question the statement, the matrix added, "See for yourself."

Taen focused her scrutiny inward. With every available discipline Tamlin had taught her, she examined the source of the Sathid's intervention and discovered it to be inextricably linked with her powers as dream-weaver, its character a mirror image of her own. The Sathid had spoken the truth; the opponent she faced was herself. Yet because that self had encouraged her to abandon her brother, break the integrity of her upbringing upon Imrill Kand, Taen perceived the matrix to be the dark side to her character, that flawed facet of selfishness which sought to overturn gentleness and love with discontent.

"You see," said the Sathid. "We are one. To oppose me is to deny your own resources."

But words did little to ease Taen's suspicion. To follow the Sathid's logic was to invite the same mistake Emien had made to the detriment of his own self-worth. And as the survivor of misfortune which had left her a cripple in a society where bodily health was a necessity, Taen had already accepted the fact she could never be whole. She would reject the Sathid's proposal though she had to suffer life-long deprivation. And because she believed its interference to be an extension of her own small-mindedness, she condemned it ruthlessly, left not the smallest quarter for argument.

"I will help my brother no matter what he has done," said Taen firmly.

The Sathid returned with a laugh which bounced demonic echoes across the fields of her awareness. "You're an idealistic fool. Do you truly know the brother you intend to save? I think not. For Emien is becoming someone far different than the brother you grew up with. If you try to help him now, it is apparent by his character he would kill you."

"No!" Taen pulled back, tried to thrust the irritating presence from her mind. But it was part of herself, and inseparable. She found no release from her nightmare.

"If you look, you will see," invited the Sathid.

And challenged by her own self-honesty, Taen sought the measure of its statement. "Show me. But I'll not be convinced by half truths. If Emien is evil, let me see for myself."

Goaded by the Sathid's cold reasoning, Taen sought her brother, sank downward into the limitless wells of Emien's subconscious, through territory within his mind unknown even to himself. She visited a landscape of insecurity. Sensitive to a fault, Emien saw his early years as a siege against the relentless and wounding concerns of his elders; the pressures of survival on Imrill Kand allotted no space for his fears. With only Evertt to share the workload, necessity often forced Marl to ask his young son to shoulder a man's load. Isolated by his perception, Emien hid his suffering, strove to meet expectations too great for a child to master. Life became a ruthless experience, a joyless siege of endurance. He despised the hardship, for it exposed his weaknesses without mercy.

Taen unravelled his personality with utmost patience. Tangled at the core of his being, she found Emien longed secretly to inflict cruelty, as if causing hurt to others might somehow ease his starved feeling of inadequacy. Yet twisted desires alone did not make a criminal. Desperate in her care, Taen searched further.

She traced the emotions underlying her brother's admiration for Anskiere. The Stormwarden alone had breached the boy's melancholy following the death of his father. Taen explored the trust which had grown between the sorcerer and her brother first-hand. The contact initially had been a fragile thing, tenuous as the miracle of birth or a light in the darkness of midwinter. Through the sorcerer's guidance, Emien discovered happiness and laughter and the bright new joy of self-acceptance for the first time. The news of Tierl Enneth and Anskiere's guilt had fallen with the devastation of a cataclysm. The fact that he had given his innermost love to a condemned man whose crimes were beyond human pardon threw Emien into towering, ungovernable fury. All his frail new stability collapsed like sand castles bashed flat by the tide.

The blow of that discovery sheared through Taen's defenses. She experienced the panic Emien had known as he raged, blinded by the brutal solitude of betrayal. Through the dream link, the sister experienced the fear, the horror, and finally the first sour seeds of resentment. For Emien never accepted responsibility for his own unhappiness. If Anskiere had brought down ruin and death with the same powers he had sworn to the protection of Tierl Enneth, all that he lived was a lie. His teaching left Emien vulnerable, another victim for the spoiling unkindness of fate. Driven by a venomous tide of bitterness, the boy wished he had never tasted the illusion Anskiere had brought: that life could reward a man who aspired to develop his strengths, and that security and happiness were things of faith within reach of any who strove. Feeling his contentment slip forever beyond reach, Emien abandoned belief.

Scourged by the sharing of her brother's loss, Taen beheld the birth of his ultimate desire. Emien sought a way to crush the fear which lurked within the darkest center of his being; he wished a weapon, power great enough to ensure that no man nor sorcerer nor any agency of fate's design should ever judge and find him wanting. Never again would he suffer manipulation at the hands of one he loved. For now he trusted no one.

Imprisoned behind the brickwork of an untenable position, his spirit ached for release. Taen perceived that her brother's misery knew no limits and understood none. He could not achieve peace without first acknowledging failure; and goaded by Tathagres' contempt, Emien found it simpler to kill.

He believed his sister had died, drowned without mercy by Anskiere's hand during the foundering of the galleass
Crow.
To accept her as alive, safeguarded by that same sorcerer's hand, was to negate what had come to be the foundation of his existence. And though he did not yet know the extent of the wretchedness his suffering had created, Taen beheld the truth the Sathid had foretold. Emien would murder before he would forgive himself the error of condemning Anskiere, even if the life he took was that of his own sister.

The Sathid poised itself; the moment it awaited had come to pass. The girl's loyalty surely would crumble under the knowledge, and in that instant, when the impact of rejection weakened her, the matrix would achieve permanent dominance over her will.

Taen felt the first stir of the Sathid's expectancy. She pushed it back, sharply and as unreasonably as a spoiled child. All but undone by the loss of her brother's trust, she did not welcome its intrusive sharing of her grief. No logic could console her loss. The Sathid waited with the cold patience of a serpent. It had measured Taen's vulnerability and extrapolated from there, centering its attack upon the one event which would create her greatest distress; the outcome was as inevitable as frost at the end of summer. After years spent judging Taen's character, the matrix anticipated that pain would shortly break her spirit.

But the moment never came. To Taen, daughter of generations of fishermen who had braved the caprice of ocean storms, Emien was not lost until he was dead. If the Stormwarden could not spare her brother, at least he would know a way to alleviate the boy's misery. The girl roused herself. She would seek Anskiere. And pressured by the dogged edge of her determination, the Sathid discovered it had underestimated her capacity to hope.

The conflict now was joined, with no advantage left but surprise. As Taen reached for the power to bridge the distance to the ice cliffs, the Sathid lashed out. It struck with the physical agony she had known when the crate crushed her ankle, its intent to throw her off balance.

Stabbed by a white-hot wave of pain, Taen perceived the Sathid for an enemy. Although it had merged with her mind, its will was a separate entity, and now it stood as a barrier between her and Anskiere, who offered Emien's sole chance of deliverance. Dizzied by the savagery of the matrix's attack, she clung to consciousness with the desperate grip of a sailor cast adrift on a spar. To yield was to invite oblivion. And having mastered the torment of injury once before, Taen endured. She would not give in to torture. She had seen into Emien's wounded spirit, and death itself could not make her choose the same self-betrayal.

"I will reach Anskiere." Her words emerged mangled by suffering, but her intent was fixed. "Set me free."

The Sathid shifted focus, assaulted her mind with a score of hurtful images compiled from her memory. Taen watched the houses of Imrill Kand smashed to a snarl of weathered gray boards by the fury of an ocean storm. The matrix showed her the same desolation the inhabitants of Tierl Enneth had known when Anskiere's powers destroyed their homes and families. Icy gusts flattened her skirts against her knees, hampering her steps as she trod the choked remains of the village streets. Beneath the slivered beams of her cousins' home, she discovered the bones of the Stormwarden she sought, knotted like tide wrack in the tattered wool of his cloak. The skull regarded her accusingly, eye sockets clogged with sand.

"No!" Taen wrenched against the Sathid's hold, forcing the scene to dissolve. She tried to counter its ugliness with her own memories of beauty, but the images twisted in her mind, corrupted by the matrix; as she reached for spring wildflowers on the tors of Imrill Kand, her hands grasped withered thorns. The warmth of the solstice fires blew away as dust transformed to stinging sleet, and the small violet shells she had once collected on the beaches at low tide rotted as she touched them. The Sathid's malice knew no limits. Unwilling to watch everything she loved desecrated by its spite, the girl sought the coarse mind of the fish trapper Tamlin had often borrowed for her training.

And as nothing about the fish trapper's existence had ever been dear to her, the Sathid found no hold to exploit. It hesitated, thrown off balance, and in that instant, Taen's will predominated. Her dream-sense cleared. She saw herself once again through Emien's eyes. He sat, limp and trembling on a bench in the palace courtyard. Tathagres supported his elbow, her expression sharply concerned.