Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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‘The elder said the Kralovir cult had been cleansed. If so, then the danger posed through the Alliance of Light is now culled. I doubt that my liege would repeat his error, or dare give consent to another pandering ally’s dark ritual.’
‘Lysaer will remember the knowledge exists.’ Arithon exhorted his half-brother’s officer with caustic honesty. ‘Never blind yourself to complacence: Desh-thiere’s curse will not rest. One day, if we cannot find means to prevail, your liege could be driven to use it. Or I could. The pitfalls if I should become cornered might seed a future that dire.’
‘What can I do, except slow down the muster?’ Sulfin Evend responded at tortured length. ‘Though how that could matter, Ath knows, at this pass.’
The devastation left after the Kralovir’s demise had already branded its relentless legacy: the governor’s command struck dead to a man in the scouring cleanse at Etarra would now set all of the north into flame. Sulfin Evend balked at treason. No matter the cost, he would not reveal Lysaer’s picked target as the citadel at Alestron, since the s’Brydion duke’s family were exposed as spies, bound to suffer the brunt of the wrathful consequence. ‘If I resign,’ he said straitly, ‘or if I obstruct Lysaer’s thrust by an outright refusal to engage you, my liege will be left without any bulwark between Desh-thiere’s geas and insanity.’
‘You will not face me,’ Rathain’s prince cracked back. Nor were Lysaer’s martial intentions a well-kept secret, before such piercing attentiveness. ‘Attack the s’Brydion, and nothing you try can draw me out to participate. No alliance exists. I have severed all ties.’
Outfaced by every unimagined complexity, Sulfin Evend gaped, shocked. ‘You? Turn your back and disown your most steadfast supporter? Forgive me, but I can’t believe it!’
Shoved to his feet in sharp rage, Arithon lost his carefully held equanimity. ‘After Vastmark? Tal Quorin? The dead of Daon Ramon? For what reason should I endorse another campaign that cannot but end in red slaughter? By Ath, you’re a fool! No less than Duke Bransian, who would not hear my warning to stand down. Yes, I walked away! The man’s damnable pride in his ancestral seat will bring ruin on all of his innocent holding!’ Flame winnowed, as Arithon paced through the cauterized pain of past anguish. ‘Nothing I know could force me to this! No concept of honour will be made the cause to destroy another clan enclave of women and children.’
Again came that sheet-gold flare through the aura. No matter how brief, the fleeting light showed that Arithon was in fact chafed to exhaustion. His bearing and features were haggard. The nerves that tried his leashed talent suggested the hurt his adamant stance must have cost him. Silenced by pity, Sulfin Evend sat, torn, entrapped by his role as Alliance advocate.
‘How can you sustain this?’ he managed at last, when Arithon’s caged movement threatened to scorch the eddyless air with each passage.
‘I have seen,’ said the Master of Shadow, worn by the cut of his forebears’ wakened far-sight. ‘To the last slaughtered babe, and the tears in the eyes of the women who will be forced on the hour the siege breaks, as spoils.’ He stopped there. Black hair sifted over lean knuckles as he buried his face in his hands. As though applied pressure could anneal his agony, he recontained his emotion. When next he looked up, Sulfin Evend beheld all the terrible depths that victorious passage through Kewar had cost him.
‘I will not live their death,’ said Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn. ‘Not ever by my willing consent, nor as the Mistwraith’s curse-blinded accomplice.’
‘If you stand out this war, the citadel must still go down in defeat,’ Sulfin Evend felt obliged to point out.
‘I have seen,’ repeated the Master of Shadow. ‘Let the town fall as a monument to stupidity, and not for self-righteous sentiment. Depend on my absence. I will weather the conflict inside the free wilds and assist the escape of survivors.’
Aware the discussion was finished, Sulfin Evend unbent his sore knees and rose also. Weaponless, empty-handed, he had no solace to offer the initiate master who had saved all of Etarra from an insidious corruption. A man of the sword possessed no statesman’s gift, only the steel to admit his threadbare regret. ‘I would give anything except the life of my liege, that we had never been adversaries.’
Arithon returned a grave smile, then offered the wrist clasp exchanged between clanborn. ‘Guard my brother,’ he said. ‘If we meet at blade’s edge, I would have you know: you fight as my nightmare, but never my enemy. This much I promise. Though you should pass the Wheel in pursuit of your duty, my blade will not be the weapon to reap Daelion’s justice.’
Footsteps approached through the underground corridor. With uncanny timing, the dartmen returned to resume the lapsed charge of their vigilance.
‘The Biedar revere courtesy,’ Rathain’s crown prince assured as he released his fingers in parting. ‘Give them patience and calm, they must treat with you fairly, since their code demands no act of redress unless they are shown provocation. Rest well. You are safe. Eat whatever they bring you. When the seer’s herb that opened your senses wears off, the tribesfolk will guide you back to your people unharmed.’
Sulfin Evend stepped back, erect but still sickened with vertigo. ‘You’ve had meetings like this one before,’ he accused.
Arithon’s grin widened with piquant delight. ‘Ath, no! If I had to guess, the old grandame here connives hand in glove with the Warden of Althain. Do you gamble?’
‘Not with arcane powers, or seeresses given to drink,’ Lysaer’s first commander shot back. ‘They both want you alive, depend on that much.’ Startled by movement, closed in from behind, he stiffened as the dartmen grasped his upper arms.
‘We must use the blindfold once more,’ they informed, their quiet insistence as near as their kind would come to an open apology.
Against his grain, Sulfin Evend submitted. He did not resist as they led him away. If masked sight spared him from the sting of regret, the knotted rag did nothing at all to impair his sensitized hearing. Behind, in the cavern, the s’Ffalenn bastard who was not his foe engaged his own style of courage. The lyranthe spoke out of the echoing dark. Notes sparkled, and lingered, lilting an exquisite air, plangent with a beauty to transcend all hopeless sorrow.
Too late, the prisoner recalled the debt still left unacknowledged. Sulfin Evend had neglected to voice decent thanks for his kinsman’s deliverance from necromancy. Now he hoped the lapsed opportunity would stay lost for all time. Strapped by his oaths, burdened by Lysaer’s charge to engage the siege that must raze Alestron’s proud citadel to rubble, the Alliance commander prayed the course of his fate would be kind. Let the Biedar matriarch’s prophetic warning prove to be empty. In life, he wished he might never cross paths with the Spinner of Darkness again.
Late Summer 5671
Chase
Eight days’ rugged travel were required to cross the free wilds, after the belated discovery that took the Halwythwood camp by grim storm: young Jeynsa s’Valerient had not ventured north, after all. Her feckless pursuit of her crown prince had never planned for an apology. Instead, folly sent her due south, with but one of her elders the wiser. She sought a ruler’s counsel in Atwood, where, as she had confided to Eriegal, she meant to press a scathing inquiry into the moral probity of her sovereign.
Uninvested caithdein to Arithon of Rathain, and still enraged over the death of her father as sacrifice to salvage the royal blood-line, the girl was not faulted for her misplaced flight. Seventeen years of age, and outspoken, the daughter shared the impetuous dedication of her late sire.
‘No bad thing, that the minx has the spit to stand up to his Grace’s insufferable temperament,’ her brother, Earl Barach, had declared, astonished to fierce admiration at the time. No coward, his sister, to seize her shirked post with such brazen daring. The result would peel skin if she tried formal stature to cross-examine her prince. ‘The