Master of Whitestorm (37 page)

Light footsteps crossed the carpet beyond the door.

“Nix and the Archmaster warned against my becoming your wife.” Ithariel’s words sounded unforced, even fond. “I wouldn’t listen to them then, and I won’t regret now. But I must point out that my spirit is bound to yours, even past the ending of life. If you’re determined to die fighting an enemy that can’t be conquered, I sail to Illantyr at your side.”

Haldeth stepped back until his spine jarred into the newel post. He had relied on the woman to temper her husband’s nature, not to abet his recklessness; worse, she was minded to accompany him on this insane and riskiest of ventures. The ballads from Alathir were recitals of unalloyed tragedy. Against the Mathcek Demons, Morien and his Council Major had perished in agony; and they were no mortals, but wizards born and trained.

Korendir cared not a wit for past failures. He spoke in a tone that Haldeth interpreted as unholy and arrogant pride. “Lady of my heart, I will sail to Illantyr to fight. But I’ve no intention of dying, and you’re needed here to secure the holdfast.”

At this, Haldeth took umbrage. He laid his hands against the door latch, jerked it free, and barged uninvited into the breech.

The fisherman who had brought in the trouble stood unobtrusively to one side, the cuffs of his smock half crushed under twine-scarred hands. His presence had been forgotten, and his expression revealed an unswerving wish to slink out of sight behind the tapestries.

Korendir commandeered the center of the floor, taut as wound cable and frowning. His hands were braced on the shoulders of his lady, and she, in her velvets, glowered back.

Haldeth dared fate and interrupted. “She’s not to be gainsaid, you half-witted madman.”

At this attack, three heads turned with expressions of astonishment. Haldeth found himself the focus of a demanding stare from the fisherman, and rapacious study by matching pairs of gray eyes. Their intensity daunted.

The smith sweated, and shrugged, and looked down at the floor. “Orame told me the Demons of Mathcek arose from Alhaerie,” he persisted with lame determination. “Against the powers of the otherworld, you’ll need an enchanter’s knowledge. Let the Lady Ithariel go, and save my boys the backbreaking labor of digging graves.”

The enchantress regarded her husband. She touched his cheek with a gentleness entirely at odds with her expression, then softened his mouth with a kiss. “Sail with the fisherman,” she murmured in challenge. “And stop me from coming if you can.”

For an instant Korendir was torn between rage and a fierce compulsion to laugh. Then his seriousness won out. “You understand me,” he marvelled, his voice too quiet to be overheard. Then he did smile, teasingly. “You know you’ll have to put a sleep spell on the dwarves.”

“Or they’ll follow us, howling, I know,” Ithariel nodded toward the fisherman who fidgeted to one side. “We’ll be ready to sail with the tide.”

The enchantress turned in the circle of her husband’s arms, her last instructions for Haldeth. “Fetch Korendir’s black sword from the armory. Steel will be very little use against demons, but if his Lordship of Whitestorm crosses the sea without a dwarf-wrought blade, Nix will most cheerfully break my neck.”

* * *

Mantled in pre-dawn gloom, the fishing boat bound for Illantyr hauled anchor and unfurled lateen rigged canvas. The folk who crewed her did not sing as their sturdy craft heeled with the wind. Mist overhung White Rock Head and blotted the fast-fading stars; the water under the keel swirled black, scribed with reflections from the tallix that glimmered through fog above the fortress. But Korendir of Whitestorm did not linger at the stern rail to watch his home shoreline recede. Instead he leaned against the head stay, his eyes trained intently to the west. Beyond the horizon lay the isle whose shores held the fire-charred stones of the holdfast where he had been raised. Now, in murk only feebly cut by the flame of the deck lantern, the terrors of that past and the murder of the widow who had mothered him seemed vividly close.

Ithariel joined her man on the foredeck. She saw his tense stance, and did not touch, but settled instead on a bight of rope coiled behind his heels. Muffled to the chin in blue wool, she waited without impatience for him to break his silence.

He spoke finally in tones pitched for her ears alone. “I never meant to go back.”

She heard the words, but sensed a more difficult concept behind; indirectly he tried to impart that her presence at Whitestorm had been enough. Ithariel spared him the need to apologize. “You’ve been your own master since the day you won free of the Mhurgai.” After a pause, she qualified with the tough part. “Love by itself does not cancel obligation.”

Korendir turned his head from the sea and looked at her. “If I had a coinweight of sense, you wouldn’t be here.”

Ithariel smiled exactly as she did when Megga tried her nerves. “If
I
had a coinweight of sense, I’d agree with you.” Her eyes seemed very bright. Beyond her, the streaming mists lightened with the advent of sunrise.

Korendir watched the wind play through her coils of dark hair. “We could go back.”

But the core of hardness had not left him and the enchantress was not fooled. “Go back?” She laughed gently. “To bed, I should think, and when you had loved me to distraction, you’d steal away while I slept?”

He recoiled slightly, fingers tightened against the headstay. “Witch. I should never have married a woman of spells.”

“But you did.” Ithariel leaned her warmth against his shins. “For us, there can be no turning back.”

“No.” Korendir looked at her intently, and shared an insight of a depth even she found surprising. “When I took contract for the Duke of Tir Amindel, I had already passed the edge. That little boy’s life had become my last anchor for sanity. When I found the child could not be saved, nothing remained that held meaning.” Here he paused and drew breath. “Lady, you should know. Majaxin’s vengeance notwithstanding, my sole reprieve from madness was through your intervention.”

Unwilling to face the implications of why he should seek to free her conscience, and doubly aware of how near his losses at Shan Rannok threaded the surface of his thoughts, Ithariel resumed in dogged steadiness. She described what she knew of High Morien’s towers, though little enough was recorded in the archives at Dethmark. The disaster had been started by a careless apprentice who opened a wizard’s gate without safeguards. His meddling went awry, tore open the fabric of reality between Aerith and Alhaerie. Morien’s council had heroically sealed the breach, but not in time. Entities from the otherworld had slipped through, ones with an insatiable bent for destruction. Defeat for the defenders at Alathir had been swift and utterly final, while the enemies which had annihilated them lived on unvanquished.

Ithariel listed the demons’ attributes, those that were documented, and although the sun struck gold through the mist when she finished, shadow seemed to linger on the decks. The boat that plowed through the new morning only hastened toward misadventure; for if the fishermens’ tales were true, the Mathcek Demons had ranged south from Alathir’s ruins and desecrated the outlying villages of Shan Rannok. No power in Aerith was great enough to stop them; only a foolish few farmers and three dozen hired guardsmen stood ground to contest their advance.

Ithariel regarded the husband who stood still as a carven figurehead upon the bow. He sailed out of duty to the widow who had fostered him, but the foe he opposed was far older. The Mathcek Demons were second of the Six Great Banes. They would recognize High Morien’s heir; unwitting last survivor of Alathir, Korendir would be mercilessly hunted from the moment he offered challenge. But Ithariel knew the futility of trying to deter him with the certainty he was fated to fail. Knowledge of his father’s doom would but commit him to action more firmly. By her oath to Telvallind Archmaster, Ithariel kept that secret unbroached.

Five days later, lit by the sickle of a fading quarter moon, Korendir regarded the land which bulked black against a misted, predawn horizon. The fishing boat rolled at her anchorage, a cove on Illantyr’s eastern shore sheltered from the westerlies by the ridge which thrust from the isle’s central plain. The fishermen slept in hammocks slung from the rigging on deck, while Ithariel occupied the stern cabin. Soft lights burned within, and scrawled pearly reflections on the wavelets beneath the counter; the enchantress used her arts to scry out the danger before their planned landing in daylight.

Korendir scanned the decks. Nothing stirred but one fisherman who snored and twitched in a dream. The boy who shared anchor watch sat beneath the deck lantern, whittling toys for his nephew. He glanced off the stern from time to time and studied the wave crests guardedly, unconsoled by Ithariel’s insistence that demons never crossed water. The thought did not occur that the mercenary from Whitestorm might wish to.

Despite the chill, Korendir had not worn boots. He shed his cloak and sword belt with a predator’s stealth, then pulled off the tunic beneath. Clad in leggings and shirt, he re-buckled his baldric across his shoulder. The scabbard and cross guard he secured with a length of twine filched from a net float. Lastly, cat-silent, he cleated an end of the jibsheet to a belaying pin and lowered himself over the rail.

A wavelet slapped his ankles. Korendir repressed a shiver and let the line burn through his fingers. He slipped without splash into the icy embrace of the sea. The swim to the shores of Illantyr was close to half a league; Ithariel had insisted they anchor well out, to avoid risking notice by demons. Korendir floated quietly until the current carried him beyond earshot, and the flicker of spells in the stern windows diminished to a dull spark of light. Then he struck off with overhand strokes for the shadowy shoreline to the west.

Daybreak found him stretched full length on sands packed firm by breakers. He rested long enough to catch his breath, and to ponder the dangers ahead. The enemies he proposed to challenge were nothing like wereleopards, which had been loosed by a meddling wizard who crossbred desert wildcats with creatures from AIhaerie. The demons which victimized Illantyr were directly transported from the otherworld. More than shapechangers, they could take any form, or none; on the effort of a single thought they could alter the landscape into any appearance they chose.

“Humans are endowed with like powers beyond the wizard’s gates,” Ithariel had explained during the crossing from Whitestorm. “To imagine a thing is to create it, fully formed from the void. A portion of Alhaerie’s existence unravels to supply mass and energy. And so it is with outworld beings who trespass Aerith. They can shape into form whatever dream they desire, but our flora and fauna and soil sustain untold damage in consequence.”

Korendir flexed tired muscles and rose from his hollow on the beach. He dusted sand from his skin. Shivering in his salt-spangled shirt, he drew his dirk and cut the lashings on his sword. Sunrise bronzed the ocean at his back as he struck off, barefoot, for the hills.

High Morien had met demons with spellcraft, and lost; it remained to be seen what a mortal without magic could accomplish.

* * *

Just past full daylight, Ithariel stepped from the stern cabin clad in a man’s boots and tunic. The clothing was unbleached linen, but cut to her size, and bordered with leaves and birds in rust thread. Her eyes were reddened, result of a night spent scrying, and her braids were pinned back in a fashion more practical than pretty. The frown that leveled her brows was one men cared not to cross. She inquired after Korendir from the boy who whittled by the sternsheets, went forward, and discovered the decks empty; except for a tunic and cloak in a discarded heap by the rail.

Fishermen from Illantyr never wore black on shipboard; the color begged Neth for a funeral, they claimed, and only the daft tempted fate.

But Korendir remained as impervious to superstition as to his current rejection of plain sense. Ithariel’s shout brought the ship’s company bounding up the companionway from the galley.

These included three brothers, captained by a sprytongued grandfather who was creased like old leather from seafaring. He had seen two sons die of foolishness; the significance of Korendir’s empty clothing registered in less than a breath.

He regarded the outraged enchantress with keenly considering eyes. “You’ll be going after him, then.” He did not wait for reply, but ordered his grandsons to unlash and lower the jolly boat.

Ithariel clenched her hands on the rail and stared toward the land which bulked to starboard. The horizon above the hills rolled black under dense blooms of smoke. Whether a village or some farmer’s field was ablaze hardly mattered; her scrying showed demonsign everywhere.

“We’ll find him,” the old man assured her. “I and my grandsons will help.”

Ithariel picked a stray thread from her cuff. As if the captain had not spoken, she said, “I should have suspected all along when he failed to try me with arguments.” A stitch gave under the persistence of her worry, and a wisp of embroidery unravelled; one of the little birds was left wingless. “Damn.” The enchantress clamped her hands on her forearms just as a clamor arose from amidships.

“Neth, will you look,” shouted the youngest boy to his grandfather. “Block ‘n’ tackle’s been got at, and the line’s fouled.”

“Oh damn him!” Ithariel hammered her fists on her sleeves. “Of course! He would have laid plans to delay us.” She turned bleak eyes to the captain. “Old man, forgive my stupidity and inspect your ship. For as I know my husband, we’ve seen just the first of our troubles.”

The fisherman glanced back in bright anger. “We’ll see about that.” He nodded to his eldest, who whirled at once to comply.

Ithariel joined the search, and almost immediately snagged her frayed seam on the dagger sheathed at her belt. Wholly impatient with trivia, she ripped free, drew the offending blade, and hacked off her shirt cuff, fine embroidery notwithstanding. Then, fighting tears, she bent to inspect the ship’s rudder. All the pins but one had been neatly removed from their seatings.