The Towers Of the Sunset (49 page)

He squints. Night? Hardly. He swallows. “Megaera…” His voice is tentative, not the voice of the lightnings and thunders he has been.

“Are you all right?”

The warmth in her words reassures him, and his hand reaches for hers.

“I can’t see,” he admits. “The blackness again.”

Her fingers grip his, and the blackness dissolves into the piercing green eyes that search his face.

“You were gone so long.” Tears cascade down her cheeks. “Too long. Don’t ever-”

“I won’t, I won’t.” He shakes his head. “Strange. I’m all right now. But I couldn’t see. I knew you were there, but I couldn’t see.”

“I don’t think you’d better do anything more with the storms. Not until you talk to Lydya.” Her forehead wrinkles, and her eyes and her sense study him. “There’s something…” She shakes her head.

Creslin forces a laugh. “I shouldn’t have to do much more now. Not with the weather. Anyway, you can. Your touch is… more deft.” He feels alone, and his hand squeezes hers.

“You’re…”she begins… frightened… oh… best-beloved…

Creslin does not have to provide the words to admit his fear-to acknowledge the chill created by that sudden blindness that can scarcely be an accident, not this second time-for Megaera understands, and her arms go around him. His eyes remain open, greedily drinking in the damp redness of her hair and the faded blue of the uniform tunic that encases her, even as his arms bind her to him.

“YOU’D BOTH BETTER drink something,” suggests Lydya.

Megaera picks up one of the tumblers, and Creslin follows her example. He takes a deep swallow, ignoring the warmth of the bitter liquid that Lydya has provided. Perspiration drips from his short hair, dribbling behind his ears and down the back of his neck. He looks at Megaera.

Her hair is dark with sweat, matted against her skull. Both he and she stink of sweat, strain, and fear.

“Shierra took the eastern beaches. Klerris went with Hyel.” Lydya’s voice is flat.

Outside the porch, rain continues to fall, not quite in sheets. Creslin rums his head, looking northward, but the clouds are gray, not black, reassuring him that his efforts have not dislodged permanently the controls he and Mega-era had placed upon the high winds. Even without straining, he can tell that the worst impacts of the great storm are flowing westward and mainly onto Sligo, Lydiar, and
Fairhaven.

“What exactly did you do on that last trip?” asks Lydya. Her voice is neutral.

Megaera takes a deep sip from her tumbler. Creslin can feel her guts twisting, not from an order-chaos conflict, but from something more basic.

“Creslin?” asks the healer again.

“I’ll be fine, best-beloved.” Megaera’s hand touches his.

For a moment after her hand lifts, he cannot see, although his eyes are open. He swallows, takes a deep breath, and the darkness passes.

“Oh… I built a storm,” he tells Lydya.

“I had rather guessed that. For the bigger White fleet. Wasn’t it leaving already?”

“Yes. I’d expected it to.” He licks his lips. “But when I thought about it, it didn’t seem like a good idea to let it go.”

“It was a good idea to murder another four thousand people?”

Creslin takes a deep breath. “Yes. Even if you put it that way.”

“Why?” Why, best-beloved? So much death already… did you have to add…

“Because,” he says carefully, “it means that Reduce can survive even if we don’t.”

“So you murdered nearly ten thousand men to save a mere fifteen hundred?” the healer asks.

Creslin takes another sip from his tumbler. “Go back to Candar if that’s what you want, Lydya. Wait while they slowly strangle the continent. Be happy with the lack of fighting as those who don’t support the White Wizards vanish, or die. Then come back in a decade and tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Best-beloved… that’s harsh.” Megaera’s voice is hoarse, and her stomach chums.

Creslin pushes away the nausea that is hers but does not try to stand.

The healer forces a smile. “He’s right. Megaera. But it doesn’t make it easier.”

Puzzlement wars with nausea, and nausea wins as Megaera staggers toward the bucket that stands in the corner. Creslin chokes back the bile in his own throat and manages somehow to keep down the contents of his near-empty stomach as he struggles beside Megaera.

“Just let me be… sick alone…”

“I can’t, remember?”

Laughter mixes with queasiness when she finally lifts her head. “It’s going to be an interesting nine months.”

Creslin swallows. “That was the look…”

Lydya nods.

“You-we-still have some more work to do,” reminds his co-regent. “Such as making sure that the few survivors of our efforts don’t sink the glorious
land
of
Reduce
before it’s even launched.” She breaks off her words for another lurch to the bucket.

This time Creslin’s weakened stomach fails to handle the strain, and he ends up emptying his guts over the edge of the porch. He shakes his head after rinsing out his mouth.

“It was your idea,” she reminds him. “You had to feel what I felt.”

“He would have anyway,” reminds Lydya dryly.

Creslin is not listening as his thoughts skip along the eastern beaches, skirt the dissipating white fog, slip from one shattered hull to another and another, and from those to a schooner seemingly untouched save that it rests firmly on the soft white sands. Below the
Feyn
River
estuary, timbers and sodden bodies bob in the heavy swells, and the whiteness of death seeps toward him. His thoughts hasten farther southward, noting in passing that a good dozen hulls appear sound enough to be reclaimed for trade or defense.

He also notes that more than a few armed groups have formed, especially on the sole western beach where Mega-era attacked the main Nordlan fleet. He frowns, wondering if there are perhaps too many for the half-dozen squads that have become the army of Reduce. The invaders would certainly feel as though they had nothing to lose.

He straightens. “I think I’d better be going.”

Megaera stiffens and reaches for her sword-belt. Unlike Creslin and the guards, she prefers the belt to a shoulder harness.

“Should you?” His stomach tightens as he asks.

“Does it matter, best-beloved?” Her voice is hard.

He bows his head and for a moment cannot see through the burning mist. Her hand, with a trembling warmth, touches his, and he swallows.

“Both of you, drink this.”

“What-”

“You’re each near the edge. This will help.” The healer extends two small cups. Her face is drawn.

Creslin downs the liquid in a single swallow, wipes his mouth, and buckles his shoulder harness in place. “Klerris?”

Megaera, finishing her draught in two swallows, glances from face to face.

“Just go. They’re on the western beach. That was the closest landing.”

“Oh…” Megaera’s soft exclamation rips through him.

“Success has other prices,” he observes as he starts toward Vola, tethered to the railing below the porch.

Extending a hand to Megaera, he ignores Lydya’s puzzlement even as Megaera ignores his gesture and swings into her own saddle fluidly and unaided. Creslin follows her but does not catch up to her until they are nearly halfway up the path toward the keep.

What can he say? Often enough he has done exactly what he planned, only to discover that the results created greater problems. Now Megaera has done the same. By ensuring that most of the ships she has beached are usable, all too many soldiers survive. Still, he had expected more understanding.

“Just stop gloating!”

He swallows. “Is there anyone left at the keep?”

“You told Thoirkel to stay.”

“We’ll take him and anyone else there.”

“Fine.”

Light rain continues to fall, its droplets far smaller and sparser that those that will scour eastern Candar.

Thoirkel is waiting. “Ser… ?”

“Round up anyone who can fight,” snaps Creslin. Go to the western beach, the one below the second field.“

“Yes, ser.”

“Are there any mounts left?” asks Megaera.

“Just four. The others went with the eastern squads. They had farther to travel.”

“Pick four guards-Westwind blades, if any are left- and have them come with us. Get the others to the beach as quickly as possible.”

He guides the black under the overhang. There’s no sense in staying in the gentle rain, and he doesn’t feel like expending effort to direct the dampness away from himself.

Megaera eases the chestnut beside him. “Is this really a good idea?”

“Probably not. But Lydya knows they’re in trouble, and I don’t know what else to do. I’m not sure that I could even handle the winds, not from any distance.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Each success costs more.”

“When do we stop paying?”

“Never.” Neither speaks again until the four guards, each a Westwind blade, join them. Creslin urges the black forward. Megaera rides beside him, the guards two abreast behind them.

Through the mist that still descends, flowing out of the north, the six mounts carry them westward, past the lower fields, past the stone-lined ditches from the distant springs that now carry water to the keep and to the stone-paved reservoir that Klerris has added for the town.

They ride through the browning grass that fills the swale leading through the gap in the hills to the western beach. Creslin rises in the saddle, peering ahead.

All the way down the narrow trail, he surveys the battle on the white sands… except that it is scarcely a battle, with groups of Nordlans fighting guards and troopers. The Nordlans are larger in number. Splitting the Reduce forces had definitely not been a good idea, but Hyel or Shierra, or someone, had gone ahead while he and Megaera had still been destroying ships; they had probably thought that few survivors would escape, as was the case with the Hamorians.

Use of the winds-

“Don’t even think about it,” Megaera warns.

“Why not?”

“You couldn’t even see after the last storm. I wasn’t much better.”

“Ser? Lady?”

“… not a lady…” mutters Megaera under her breath.

“We’ll take the nearest group,” Creslin says, drawing the Westwind short sword from its harness. His heels touch Vola’s flanks; the black snorts but picks up her feet into a quick trot, which is the most Creslin wants over the rough ground above the dunes, where a half-squad holds the high sand against twice as many Nordlans.

The six mounted riders bear down on the Nordlans from the side, the sands muffling their approach.

Creslin strikes first, his blade flashing, and a Nordlan falls.

“The regents! The regents!”

The cry echoes across the sands, foaming like the still-high surf, but Creslin ignores it, his blade working furiously.

A flash of fire sears his left arm, but the blade completes its short arc and reverses.

“… the regents… the regents…”

Creslin wheels and cuts back across the dune, now merely hacking… but the hacking drops another man.

He pulls up as he realizes that no Nordlans stand on the high sand; only Hyel, Klerris, and their troopers are there.

A blond guard—the one who had suggested by use of their titles that action was necessary-is checking a narrow slash on one of Megaera’s arms.

“All right…” pants the redhead. “Let’s go!”

Creslin nods and urges Vola toward the largest group, fighting between the sand-mired stems of two Nordlan frigates. He feels the throbbing in Megaera’s arm, but he raises his blade nonetheless as he guides the mount toward the right-hand end of the fighting, where the Reduce soldiers are falling back.

“…the regents… regents…”

Almost in rhythm to the ragged chant, another man falls, and Creslin turns his horse.

Whpph…

A dart of red lashes his shoulder. His shoulder, not Megaera’s. Even before the full pain of the arrow strikes, he looks up. Almost a dozen archers stand braced on the forward railing of the far Nordlan vessel, having appeared from seemingly nowhere.

“Get the guy in silver and the redhead!”

Another slash of agony scores Creslin’s right arm, and he has to force his fingers to clutch his blade.

Megaera is weaponless, both of her arms burning.

Creslin grasps for the winds, seeing no choice. His blade falls, and he wheels the black as he seizes the nearest high winds, bending them toward the archers, trying to grasp the water and ice, molding ice arrows.

Once again the winds howl.

“Get the silver-head!”

He ignores the cry but continues to ride across the dunes, sightless, letting the mare have her head and ducking low beside her neck, twisting the winds with what power remains to him.

Crackkk!

Lightning flares beside the archer-laden ship.

“Get him!”

Another line of flame scores his right thigh-or is it Megaera’s?-as he grapples with the oncoming wind.

“Protect the regents!”

The panic in Hyel’s voice spurs Creslin, and he wrenches at the higher winds, struggling, tugging, yanking…

Wheee… eeee… The black swerves, then stumbles, but Creslin’s fire-scored arms hold tight.

The ice-rains lash the ships; the cold arrows of the storms drop the archers in a single line of death.

Creslin reins in the black, sitting erect in the darkness, waiting for whatever will come. Nothing does as the sounds of swords and shouts die away, nothing except the burning of wounds that are not his. The darkness remains.

“Ser?”

“Yes?” He can tell that the voice comes from below him, but he cannot feel the land.

“What should we do?”

“How many do we have left?”

“About half.”

“And the Nordlans?”

“Ser… you killed all of them… and a few of ours.”

Creslin’s sightless eyes burn. Burn for his stupidity.

“Take the horses that are left. Find all of the Reduce troops. If they haven’t gotten into fights, tell them not to. Just wait until the land makes the Nordlans-and whoever else survived-surrender. It will, you know.” Before the other can speak, he adds, “I should have thought of that earlier. Darkness, we’ve had enough trouble with the land.” Waves of dizziness batter at him, and his left hand clutches the edge of the saddle.

“Ser…”

“Megaera? How is she?”

“The healer… she’s looking at her. But ser… they’re over there…”

“Oh…” Creslin tries to ease the black so that he at least appears to be looking in the right direction. He fights the darkness swimming before him, and he fights against the searing pains that score his shoulder, arms, and leg. He fights-and loses, even as his hands grasp for Vola’s mane.