Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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been the sole grace that once defended his sworn liege’s life. Since the talisman had delivered the spirit, intact, from the hideous rites of Grey Kralovir’s necromancers, the Lord Commander of the Alliance’s war host stifled his rampant frustration. He was not such a fool, to transgress arcane bargains. Neither could he evade the harsh charge of his oath to a Fellowship Sorcerer.
His overtaxed nerves would have to be nursed, one hard-set breath at a time. Sulfin Evend ate the simple fare without savour. Wary of the poison that tipped desert darts, he would endure till these uncivilized people chose to grant his appeal.
The haunting strain of the lyranthe remained silenced when at length his warders allowed him to sleep. Yet somehow the searing measures lived on, unleashing a torrent of unquiet dreams. Sulfin Evend catnapped upon the damp stone, while the taciturn dartmen kept watch from the dark, their vigilance stubborn as bed-rock.
Later, an older man came with a torch. Words were exchanged in thick dialect. Then the elder departed. The robed dartmen allowed Sulfin Evend a brief walk outside to stretch his legs and relieve himself. Under daylight, he snatched the opening to ask once again if he might be given a fair hearing. As usual, no one deigned to reply. The desert-folk hustled him out of the glaring white sun. Dazzled and stumbling, he was prodded back into the gloom of the rock cave. While he was still blinking and cursing stubbed toes, they rebound his wrists with their twisted rag ropes. Then he was ushered back underground, but not to the same cave of imprisonment.
This pass, he was led through a narrower cleft, worn smooth by the footsteps of centuries. The close wall on both sides had been carved. Sulfin Evend need not be a scholar to recognize the interlaced coils of Mother Dark’s mystic serpents. Heart pounding, unprepared, he realized his hour for audience had arrived. The reddish gleam of a lit cavern loomed at the far end of the corridor.
‘There, you will go,’ the lead dartman instructed, and although no other order was given, the escort of warriors melted behind. The outland stranger was left the choice to proceed of his own free will.
Sulfin Evend steadied his harrowed nerves. Past turning back, he advanced to confront a power of mystery that had stood in the breach to curb an entrenched binding of necromancy. Such strength, perhaps, fit to rival the arcane reach of a Fellowship Sorcerer, whom none but a fool approached lightly.
Across that carved threshold, rinsed in carnelian glare, a crone sat beyond the embers of a neat fire. She was shrouded. Black silk veils melted at one with the shadow thrown off by the coals. Her motionless presence might have been overlooked had the intricate whorls of embroidery that patterned her hems not chiselled her form in the darkness. The rock floor underneath her tucked knees had been channelled with similar patterns. Their looping spirals confounded the eye, while the gravid air wove an uncanny dance with a fragrant blanket of herb smoke.
Afraid for no reason, Sulfin Evend stopped cold. Instinct insisted that he should take flight without any care for the consequence. Before he risked death as a dartman’s pinned target, his trailing escort grabbed hold. They shoved his reluctant, awkward step forward, then pressed him face-down on the earth.
‘She is eldest!’ snapped one in the stilted accent imposed by his wilderness dialect. ‘Here, she rules. All others brought inside of our circle must show their seemly respect.’
The townsman submitted until they let him up, though the sensitivity brought by his errant clan lineage prickled his nape with unpleasant warning. An odd charge of awareness seemed to attend the ancient woman’s rapt stillness. Almost, the cave’s stone seemed to whisper and speak, while the flickering fire hissed in the cold air like the breath of a thousand vipers.
Sulfin Evend crouched on his heels. A brave man in battle, he could not stop shivering. The crone never moved. She looked unassuming in her rags and raw silk. Yet her wisdom spoke volumes through silence. Worse than Enithen Tuer’s, her eerie knowing unsettled his calm as she uncovered her wizened face. No matter how seasoned, the grown man wrestled dread, while her black, shining eyes stared him through.
The well-rehearsed greeting Sulfin Evend intended stuck on his paralyzed tongue.
The crone motioned him closer.
The skilled dartmen behind disallowed his insane urge to try protest. Sulfin Evend edged towards the fire and sat. Hands tied, he could not refuse the goat-horn flask the barbaric matriarch uncorked and pressed to his lips. He managed the trial, though the swallow he took seized his breath like a fist in the guts. The bitter taste of strange herbs made his eyes water, while the bite of alcohol kindled a bonfire inside, wringing his body to sweat and rushed pulse.
The old one nodded, apparently appeased by his effort to honour her customs. She opened without need to ask for his name, or inquire what purpose had brought him. ‘Your kinsman who lay under threat of the shadow that consumes the spirit is dead.’
‘Raiett?’ gasped Sulfin Evend. ‘Lysaer’s appointed Lord Governor of Etarra? He can’t be!’ The shock left him stunned, that the crone’s uncanny faculties might read even the branching ties of his blood-line. ‘I wished to petition your people for knowledge! Beg a stay of protection, that my uncle might be permitted the chance of salvation.’
‘Done!’ said the old woman. ‘The cult you knew as Grey Kralovir has been sundered. Already, the one you name Raven has passed from this world, cut free from the ties of black craft-marks. Your need was released on the hour his remains were consumed, cleansed of all taint by white mage-fire.’
She moved. Paper dry as the scald of sun on baked rock, her crabbed finger tapped his moist forehead. ‘You need not plead for our help, town-born man! Nor do you owe any debt to Biedar. Not for your kinsman, departed.’
Rattled by the uncivilized drink, or perhaps by the jab of her censure, Sulfin Evend wrestled the scatter of his wheeling, irrational thoughts. For in fact, the dire peril to his uncle had been the lesser of two threats that brought him. ‘I bore a flint knife, made by your ancestry, that your warriors reclaimed at the time I made landfall.’
Unblinking, the crone nodded. ‘The knife you brought back here has always carried but one written Name on its destiny.’
Sulfin Evend gathered his courage. ‘Then I ask leave to plead for your favour.’
The old woman strummed a hand through her necklet of bone, jangling its strings of carved fetishes. If not encouragement, the gesture suggested he had her due leave to explain himself.
‘I once gave my word to a Fellowship Sorcerer to return the knife’s legacy to your keeping. This, I have done. The boon I would ask of your grace is to loan me the talisman for additional protection. I make the appeal on behalf of my liege. Lysaer s’Ilessid lies entrapped under a vile curse by the Mistwraith. Could you grant a stay to defend him when the madness saps his right mind? As the prince’s sworn man, pledged to safeguard his virtue, I speak the truth. The Alliance behind him is built on false cause. I petition your people for assistance. Don’t leave me stripped of all recourse as my liege loses ground to the blood-lust imposed by Desh-thiere.’
The crone laced her seamed fingers. ‘Your obligation not being ours, you shall meet the one whose true gift has arranged for your uncle’s deliverance.’
Sulfin Evend bristled. ‘Did you hear nothing? Lysaer’s misguided policy seeks to cleanse every trace of initiate knowledge from the five kingdoms. Backed by the fanatical, armed might of the towns, this self-righteous crusade may yet come to threaten the ancient roots of your heritage.’
‘Refuse?’ snapped the crone, not one whit inclined to reverse her lofty dismissal. ‘A fool’s errand, truly! Do you realize whose Name you spurn to know? His hand is the same, that will wield our ancestor’s knife! Through him, the Kralovir’s vile works have just been undone for all time. Ahead, if his strength stays the course of his fate, he bears the very flame of your hope.’
Frowning, his throat left seared raw from her wretched decoction, Sulfin Evend forced the stark inquiry. ‘You claim that this man has brought Lysaer’s salvation?’
‘Past,