Stormed Fortress (8 page)

Although genteel instinct yearned for reprieve, if only to soften discomfort, Sidir held firm. He carried the charge of an aggrieved mother
'
s trust, as well as a kingdom laid open through the perils stalking its crown prince.

'
I
'
m duty-bound to keep contact with Arithon
'
s interests,
'
Elaira ventured at last. She rejected bitterness, despite the straits that seized her affection as the killing piece on the political game-board.
'
My Prime
'
s command leaves me no other path. But, pleas to Ath, I will seek my beloved after I
'
m certain you
'
ve secured that young girl from harm
'
s way. She
'
s your task, after that. Rope her wildcat fury to heel, then use every persuasion to make sure she wields her feal office from the safety of Halwythwood!
'

Such blistering courage deserved better grace.
'
I don
'
t like the need,
'
Sidir allowed.
'
But I can
'
t drop my role as the diligent sentry
'

'
Don
'
t neglect the cold fact you
'
re my enemy?
'
This time, Elaira
'
s sarcasm bit.
'
Then stay at my back. Keep your guard with drawn steel for as long as you think I lack basic human integrity
'

'
Your heart
'
s intent was never distrusted,
'
Sidir corrected with stickling firmness.
'
The truth grants no quarter.
'
Oathsworn over crystal, the enchantress could not enforce any claim to free will.

'
Let me enlarge on your view-point,
'
she said.
'
If not me, you would have another Koriathain appointed to your prince
'
s fate. She would be a huntress, ruled by vicious hate. This was the choice I was given, at Highscarp. When the Prime
'
s bidding was laid before me, I claimed the burden upon the belief that the precepts of love would not hasten defeat, but instead seek a way to find triumph.
'

'
A queen of the realm would be as courageous.
'
Sidir swept her a bow, moved despite himself.
'
Consider my sword at your back as a friend. Let my stroke fall as Dharkaron
'
s own Spear and be welcomed, if ever your Prime tries to twist your resolve and enact my liege
'
s destruction.
'

The tears rose too suddenly. Throughout the brutal rip tide of release, Sidir did not try the demeaning palliative of soothing her anguish. Wise man, he knew which wracking griefs could be tempered and which must abide, unconsoled.

Nothing was left, except to move on. Elaira turned from the Companion
'
s staunch calm. Too desolate to indulge her deep sorrows, she knelt on the jumbled rock by the river-course, then rallied her adamant discipline.

* * *

Water with fast-flowing current was never easy to tap in rapport. Most impressionable of the four elements, in liquid state tumbling with gravity, its bonding properties unravelled as bursts of electromagnetics. Such whirlpool turbulence rejected all pattern. Yet that same effervescence, harnessed with skill, might key a scrying that could not be traced. Elaira
'
s affinity was an inborn gift. She let her active awareness dissolve into the flow of the Arwent.

An ephemeral thrill raced over her skin, leaving her momentarily deafened and blinded. Then her dissociate senses cleared: she became the black pool, scribed with whirling eddies, and the exuberant splash, necklaced with foam under starlight. She was the rampaging gush through the gorge, then the broad, placid sheet of Daenfal Lake, wind-ruffled and hemmed with plumed reed-beds. The expansion rushed through her, tingling her nerves, as near shore to far, she traced the meandering loops of the outflow, winding away towards the sea.

Elaira declared her bounds of intent before her reach encompassed the bay, and dispersed in the salt deeps of the ocean. Poised, she
became
the essence of water, inside a radius of one hundred leagues.

And water, an impressionably volatile medium, reflected the flows of the lanes, receptive as an echo to the harmonics struck off by human emotion. Awake to such whispers, Elaira could plumb the dreams of sleepers in Daenfal. She sensed the lampsmen and sentries on watch at the walls, and the individual moods of the goatherds encamped in Araethura. The scout patrols and the clan hunters of Halwythwood also were made known to her. Each living presence moved as liquid light, stamped into the streamlets and marshes, with exchanged conversation a subliminal resonance, laced through the underground springs.

At the cusp where earthly form bordered the mysteries, the innate cry of her hampered spirit burned for sweet return to the linked empathy only Arithon could partner. Elaira checked that yearning flame short. Since his late mission to curb the deadly cult at Etarra, she had promised him solitude for safety
'
s sake. Though a Sorcerer wearing the form of an eagle had brought word of his triumphant survival, his silence since suggested he was still in healing recovery. Ache though she might to touch his close presence, news of Jeynsa
'
s escapade would stress him. Elaira would not shake his peace, or breach polite ethic and invade the privacy of strangers. She quested, instead, for the signature presence of Jeynsa s
'
Valerient. The Fellowship
'
s marked choice for a
caithdein
'
s
inheritance, the girl
'
s imprint should stand out like a brand.

Yet no match arose to receive the sought pattern divined through the element. The essence of Water spoke across time. Had Jeynsa died, her passage would have left ranging echoes of the event.
Unless she was warded.
That thought raised ugly questions.

What covert motive would drive a candidate whose duty spoke for the law as a crown prince
'
s conscience?

Uneasy, Elaira refined her approach, sweeping for the resonant wake left by the girl
'
s spent emotions.

Those residual traces emerged, one vivid imprint embedded in Daenfal Lake, stamped just after midnight at the recent dark moon. Jeynsa
'
s terrified scream had distressed a young waterman and the steersman of the boat that had ferried her south towards Silvermarsh. The nightmare raised by the girl
'
s Sighted talent now bled through:
a vision of the realm
'
s crown prince, strapped to a stone slab, his bleeding form ringed by tormented ghosts. The bound shades were young girls, wracked women, and boys, entrapped by the practice of necromancy ...

Elaira smothered her visceral outcry. Cut free of gestalt awareness, revolted to nausea, she crouched on her knees and used merciless discipline to smother her stark bolt of fear.
This event was the past!
Arithon had confided his plan to bait the Kralovir to their downfall; yet his spoken word could
never
prepare for the impact of the horrors just witnessed. Elaira steadied her rattled nerves. Choked back springing tears for the glimpse of a suffering that defied endurance. Beyond sparing Sidir from a hideous explanation, her fierce reaction risked drawing Arithon himself into sympathetic rapport. Such carelessness could disclose Jeynsa
'
s ill-starred defection and, worse, inflame the fresh scar the traumatic ordeal must have set on his spirit.

The humid night wrapped the enchantress like a blanket. Plumed spray off the thrashing falls braced her skin. Life
'
s concert of crickets still pealed from the grasses, small balms to lean on until calm returned and overwrought pulse slowed and settled. Elaira steeled herself to proceed. No way else could she hope to trace past the warding that cloaked Jeynsa
'
s movement from servers. Determined, the enchantress plunged back into immersion, aligning her search south and east.

She sounded the bogs and the turbid reed-beds that fringed the lake-shore, into Silvermarsh, and there, detected a dark thread of silence that stitched a straight course through the landscape.
A talisman would soak up the natural flow of electromagnetics.
Jeynsa
'
s trail led into Melhalla, where she did not move alone. Elaira
'
s tuned senses detected a glimmering fan of pack-focused intent closing in on the girl from behind. The pattern fitted a tracker
'
s array, running dogs for the head-hunters
'
league.

Elaira wrenched out of trance, shoved erect much too fast. Her staggered step encountered Sidir, his alert courtesy charged to alarm by the sight of her stricken face.

'
What
'
s wrong?
'
Just as fast, his bracing grasp steadied her.
'
Has Jieret
'
s daughter been killed?
'

'
No.
'
The enchantress shivered.
'
Not yet. She
'
s endangered.
'
Displaced senses still reeling, Elaira unburdened.
'
Jeynsa
'
s already crossed Daenfal Lake. She
'
s set on the run through the game trails of Silvermarsh, pressed by a bountymen
'
s ambush.
'

'
Fatemaster
'
s mercy!
'
Sidir pealed in anguish. His grey eyes held the urgency seen once before, that unthinkable night when he had forced the breach of his crown prince
'
s intimate privacy.
'
How can I tell her mother we
'
ve failed? Dharkaron avert the cold hand of necessity! That girl
'
s got a lead of sixty-five leagues, too far to hope we can help her.
'

'
Not if we chase her,
'
Elaira agreed.
'
She
'
s ahead of her enemies. She may outwit them. If not, the trackers will haze her into West Halla.
'

'
Straight into the swords of the Alliance
'
s muster, by now choking the trade-routes through Pellain!
'

As Sidir loosed his grasp, lashed frantic, Elaira captured his sleeve.
'
Wait. There
'
s more.
'

Restrained at the edge of explosive impatience, the Companion still listened.

'
Jeynsa
'
s bearing a talisman,
'
said Elaira, aggrieved.

His sharp wit took stock. Then why didn
'
t Eriegal decide to tell us, since he saw her off back in Halwythwood?
'

Elaira met that probing dissection with silence, reluctant to suggest a conspiracy. Since the man at her side would shatter himself in a doomed attempt to best fate, she strove to avert suicidal disaster.

'
I know you
'
re loath to rely on my trust. But, Sidir, if you ask, I can hasten our journey. Snag a ride on the deck of a trespassing barge, and my resource can buy a swift passage. From Daenfal, we could fare southward by river.
'

'
You could disguise my origins?
'
The clansman
'
s bleak glance mapped that prospect, displeased.
'
Perish the thought! Far more than my life will reside in your hands.
'

'
I know.
'
Elaira withstood the balked heat of his rage.
'
Dharkaron
'
s revenge strike me dead if I
'
m false, since I don
'
t see a more hopeful recourse.
'

'
On your head, then,
'
snapped Sidir, his staunch courage proof of his iron-heart character.

No use, to pretend that his stakes were not desperate. For every step taken to speed their pace to Melhalla, the Light
'
s call to war would raise obstacles. The inns and the roads would be seething with troops. Each officer bearing a stamped requisition would be clamouring for transport, alongside contingents of Sunwheel priests, with the eyes of their zealot examiners. Should her power of arcane concealment fall short, or should her Prime Matriarch
'
s fickle interests command Sidir
'
s betrayal, he would be condemned. Clansmen caught inside town precincts were granted no trial. She asked Rathain
'
s most loyal liegeman to run the risk of a death that began with public dismemberment.