Master of Whitestorm (43 page)

Ithariel surveyed the view from between two furrows of radishes. “The Archmaster’s garden.” she managed. “Outside the tower walls. By that we can presume my exile has officially caught up with me.”

The Master of Whitestorm spat out dirt and examined his sword blade for nicks. “If pitching his adopted daughter into soil spread over with pig dung is any indication of character, I’d say he’s a bitter old man.” The blade gleamed reassuringly unharmed; Korendir sheathed the steel and glanced tacit inquiry at his wife.

She rested her chin on muddy knuckles. “Telvallind has reason to be difficult. Majaxin caused the death of his only daughter, after all. I resemble my father too much to allow anyone to forget.”

“Then none of the enchanters should have fostered you,” Korendir snapped in just anger. He rolled through a patch of late sprouts and recovered his feet, then offered his hand to his wife.

She accepted, absorbed in bitter memories; how much more irate her husband would become if he knew the truth. Telvallind had raised her as personal assurance that none of her father’s vices might arise to cause grief in the future. Her every move had been watched with critical analysis, even into adulthood. But those days were behind her now. As exile, she dared not wield power, except in peril of her life. The scope of that loss had yet to sink in.

Recovered enough to notice details, Korendir demanded, “Where’s the fisherman?” Pole beans and rhubarb grew undisturbed in rows under southland sunlight, and no sound of snoring intruded to silence the rasp of summer insects.

“He isn’t here.” Ithariel picked bits of loam from the tangled length of her hair. “Neth, we’re a mess. The crusty old bird wouldn’t think to send us on with a wash and a change of clothes. But don’t worry, he’ll look after the grandfather.”

Korendir caught his wife’s fingers and pulled her close.

“I like you fine with sticks in your hair.” Then the eyes that searched her face went very still. “Do you regret?”

Ithariel suddenly could not speak; she managed a shake of her head before tears threatened, and she turned her face into his already salt-damp shoulder.

Korendir stroked her neck. “I have a quarrel with the Archmage,” he said abruptly. “His council might send the grandfather home, but what about gold for his fishing boat? I had no chance to tell the poor man that Whitestorm would cover the damage.”

“Oh, never fret about that.” Ithariel caught her breath through teeth clenched hard against sorrow. “The White Circle doesn’t interfere often in the affairs of mortals, but when they choose, they manage the details most righteously.”

“Well then,” said Korendir with that terrible mildness that had won him the woman he had married, “if they’re going to discriminate and make us walk, we’ll start off by kicking a few cabbages.”

* * *

An afternoon hike, followed by a three and a half month sail saw the lord and lady home to Whitestorm. By the time the trader ship that delivered them dropped anchor, night had fallen over the headlands. The tide lapped high on White Rock Head, and would not ebb until morning. Korendir stood on deck, the folds of his much-used cloak thrown over the shoulders of his wife. Together they leaned on dew-damp rigging, and regarded their fortress by starlight.

Ithariel’s powers might be under interdict, but the wardstone in the watchtower shone yet with all of its former radiance.

“I could have told you that would never change,” Ithariel chided as she felt a long-buried tension depart on her husband’s sigh.

He did not mention that he had been terrified to ask and cause her pain. Instead, he tangled warm hands in her hair and turned her slowly to face him. “What do you think if we make some magic between us, and maybe get a daughter by the spring?”

Ithariel punched him in delight. “They cheated you badly, for not telling. White Circle blood is slow to replicate. Births among our kind are very rare.”

Korendir threw back his head, and his laughter blended with the rush of surf against the cliffs where he made his home. “You pose me a challenge,” he teased. “Of all the contracts I have undertaken, this one will be joyful to complete.”

The ship quite suddenly was too small to contain them. With shameless lack of compunction, Korendir commandeered the longboat and bundled his wife on board. Adrift on the currents beneath Whitestorm, they talked, and loved, and somewhere between passion and sleep Korendir was made to promise that a certain black cloak would be torn up and relinquished to Megga for scrub rags.

That vow he kept, even if he did ask the tailor in Heddenton to cut a replacement before winter. The seasons passed in tranquillity but for the quarrels of the dwarf couple. Ithariel never spoke of the powers reft from her in Dethmark; Korendir was considerate of her loss in his own inimitable way. He learned to read runes, taught her archery and swordplay in return, and rode out often on the High Kelair gray. Nights under stars, or wrapped in furs against the whine of winter storms, the Lord and Lady of Whitestorm lost themselves in each other’s arms; but still after a span of four years they failed to conceive any child.

* * *

Korendir’s shout came again, from the direction of the master suite.
“Haldeth!”
The distress in his voice had been real.

Shocked awake, the smith cast off his coverlet. The dawn beyond the casement still seemed tenuous as a dream. Never, through pain, disaster, and near death, had he known Korendir of Whitestorm to show fear. The novelty caused Haldeth to snatch yesterday’s tunic from the floor and dash in bare feet for the stair.

Korendir met him on the landing, wild with anguish. The force of emotion on a face unaccustomed to expression froze Haldeth in his tracks.

“What’s amiss?”

Unconsolable, Korendir gestured across the threshold at his back. In the chamber beyond, limp as a gutted fish, the Lady Ithariel of Whitestorm lay among silk sheets with her skin the color of death.

Haldeth felt his stomach tighten. “Almighty Neth, what’s wrong with her?”

The wardstone in the tower still burned, a changeless magnificence of white light; under its protective aura, no threat could gain entry from Aerith. Dazed by disbelief, Haldeth pressed past Korendir, entered the room, and lifted the lady’s wrist. Her flesh was cold, and lifelessly unbreathing as a corpse.

“She’s still alive.” Korendir fought to recover a measure of his accustomed control. “If you’re patient, you can feel her heartbeat.”

Deaf to the birdsong beyond the casement, Haldeth waited. If harm had come to Ithariel by treachery, no man dared predict the outcome; Korendir had lived the last years in contented peace, but the influence that tempered him was his wife. With her safety compromised, the underlying violence of his nature could never remain under wraps.

A minute passed like the nethermost end of eternity before a pulse throbbed beneath Haldeth’s finger. “What in Aerith can be wrong with her?”

Korendir had stepped to the wardrobe. Busy with boots and laces, his answer came back clipped: “I don’t know.” He strapped his dirk to his wrist and flicked his cuff overtop without pause to button the fastening. “I intend to find out.”

Like Haldeth, he was convinced Ithariel’s affliction had no natural origin. Sorcery surely held her tranced, and for that, no mortal mind held remedy.

“You’d be wise to beg help from the White Circle.” Certain his advice would be ignored, Haldeth restored the lady’s hand to the blanket; her skin was fine pearl against fingers callused over from forge bellows and hammer. Through the years since her banishment from Dethmark, Ithariel had done nothing to mend her estrangement from Aerith’s most powerful enchanters.

Korendir strapped on his swordbelt. He snatched up the black cloak that Ithariel, for all her love of color, had never successfully weaned from him. His motion as he spun from the wardrobe was dangerously brief, and his eyes showed, rekindled, the old spark of insane ferocity.

Against his every caution, and protections that cruelly had failed to guard, his deepest fear had become manifest.
His voice held a ring like cold iron as he said, “The Archmaster himself will give me audience. And answer with it, or I’ll level his tower from under him.”

The threat was preposterous; but Haldeth could do nothing but sit in shaken sorrow. Too well he knew that a sword blade would sunder any protest he might attempt. “Fortune speed you,” he offered lamely.

Korendir flicked his cloak over his shoulders. His face was still pale, but fear and anger now lay shuttered behind a grimness that reassured not at all. “Look after my lady.”

Haldeth was moved beyond caution. As if the years since his quest by wizard’s gate to the Doriads had not inured him to his recognized limitations, he said, “Stay with her. I’ll go myself.”

Korendir hesitated. His gray eyes shifted to his wife and lingered over blanched features and loosened auburn hair. He leaned over the coverlet, lightly clasped the hands that had shaped his fondest dreams. “No. I’m better off on the road.”

He bent and kissed his lady’s mouth. “Guard her well.”

Radiating tension that threatened at any second to escape restraint, the Master of Whitestorm strode out.

Left alone with a tragedy, Haldeth stared like a half-wit at the incongruous sparkle left glistening on Ithariel’s cheek. He reached out, touched moisture, and was struck by a realization that made past events frightening to contemplate. The cold-blooded decimation of the Dathei had once convinced him that Korendir was incapable of pity. But tears were the man’s parting gift to the lady who lay dying at Whitestorm.

* * *

A brutal two-day ride left the gray stud and another six post horses near to ruin with exhaustion. The closest White Circle initiate lay thirty-five leagues from Whitestorm, and Korendir crossed the distance without rest. If the enchanter Orame could not lift Ithariel’s affliction, her husband intended to demand passage by spell-gate to Dethmark. He would not be refused. Black as his reputation was with the wizards, Ithariel was the Archmaster’s granddaughter. The entire Council Major would stir itself in her behalf, Korendir vowed, his face showing vicious determination.

He drew rein and dismounted on the sun-dappled flags of Orame’s dooryard and instantly sensed something amiss. Customarily the wizard’s dwelling appeared as a sheer obsidian spire, polished to mirror smoothness by arcane protection. Today, where no windows should have been visible, the Master of Whitestorm viewed rows of mullioned casements cracked open to let in the spring. Foreboding drove him stumbling to the entry. The grillework gateway was not locked and the inner panel stood open. Wind had strewn leaves through the hall, and dew beaded the wall sconces.

Korendir stopped still. His initial, creeping uneasiness swelled to driving apprehension.

His knock went unanswered. His shout settled an intruder’s silence over the forest at his back as squirrels startled into hiding, and birds flew. The tower was deserted. Korendir knew even before he crossed the threshold and raced to check each separate room. Hallways echoed like a tomb to his step as he descended the central stairwell. Unresolved worry left him frantic. He must now ride on into Heddenton to shed light on the fate of Orame.

Korendir paused fretfully to latch the door against the elements. The outer gates were made to lock without benefit of a key, but even so slight a delay was inconceivable. The Master of Whitestorm spun away and caught the horse’s trailing reins. Over and over he reminded himself that Ithariel still lived; that one fact could not be doubted. Joined by spell-bond marriage, her passing would call him after her across the threshold of death. While he endured, hope remained for her.

The Master of Whitestorm forced his stiffened body back into stirrup and saddle. The post horse shivered and dripped lather; Korendir stroked its neck in apology, then jerked the drooping head up, reined around, and shouted like a madman until the road became a blur under galloping hooves.

* * *

By late afternoon he clattered into Heddenton on a horse that staggered under him. The groom who took the animal looked shocked, until Korendir threw him a gold piece.

The boy’s face lit with greed. He bit the coin in bright eagerness, then started as the Master of Whitestorm spun him back in a grip of bruising anger. “Tend that gelding well.” Spent as the animal which had carried him, and alarmingly savage-tempered, Korendir added a healthy shake. “Nurse the horse, or put it to the sword, but see that it’s spared further suffering.”

“Yes, Lord.” The boy cowered, as the mercenary released him and urgently strode on his way.

At the house of Heddenton’s mayor, Korendir slammed without ceremony through a locked door. He ignored the steward’s shout of outrage over the split and ruined latch. A parade of bothered servants trailed his swift passage through the halls, where his abrupt and unkempt appearance caused the footpage to start back in fright.

“His Lordship is at tea,” the boy whimpered in protest. Korendir barged past, entered the formal sitting room, and presented a query like a whipcrack.

“Orame is dead,” replied the Mayor of Heddenton. A portly man in a brocade waistcoat and robes trimmed with ermine, he paused to lick honey from his fingers. The rude appearance of the mercenary caused a flicker in his hooded eyes; out of prudence he remained polite. “The woman who sells herbs called on the wizard as she does on her journeys to Northport. She came too late. His corpse was already cold.”

Korendir interrupted. “When?”

The mayor selected another pastry and tried not to look pained. “Three days past, if I remember. Your wife, now. Can I send her a healer?”

Korendir’s response rang like a threat. “What did you do with the body.
Quickly!”
If, like Ithariel, the enchanter’s condition had lent him the appearance of death, the answer was of paramount concern.

The Mayor’s cheeks colored like plums. Only the Master of Whitestorm’s formidable reputation kept the leash on his temper. “My secretary oversaw the details,” he said stiffly. Opals flashed at his collar as he ducked to cram in another bite.