Defiant Swords (Durlindrath #2) (5 page)

The great serpent rose higher, a massive thing that even
those in distant parts of Cardoroth could see. People ran into the streets;
some screamed, others remained deathly
quiet
, watching.

Gilhain, atop the battlement, was one who watched in
silence. The creature’s coils flowed and undulated,
ascending
from the vast pit without end.

It towered above the Cardurleth, blotting out the sun. But
it did not strike. Gilhain realized that it would not attack that
way
; it would not rend with its great fangs or use poison. It
had some other means to visit destruction upon them.

The creature’s lower portions began to slide along the
rampart. It covered hundreds of feet of stonework, grinding and smashing
against the merlons, sending them tumbling down in ruin to the earth below.

Though the coils were thicker than the trunk of an ancient
oak, the soldiers attacked. Their blades did nothing. Some of them, getting too
close, were crushed by a sudden heave of the serpent. The stones ran red with
blood.

With its slow haste, the serpent continued, oblivious to the
hundreds of men that attacked it like a swarm of ants.

A stench filled the air, and Gilhain and his wife gagged at
the putrid smell. Slime dripped down the stone. Aranloth stood close by,
unaffected. His head was down, either in acceptance of an opponent beyond his
ability to fight, or else in deep thought.

“May fate show us mercy,” whispered Aurellin.

The great loops of the serpent began to constrict. They
closed slowly, but surely. Stone popped. Sprays of dust and loose gravel filled
the air. Cracks appeared, not just in merlons but lower down. A deep grinding
noise thrummed through the air and pulsated up through the stone into Gilhain’s
feet.

He took Aurellin’s hand in his own. “It will bring down the
Cardurleth,” he said softly.

“And let in the horde,” she answered.

They watched in terrible fascination as a white-robed
lòhren, near the head of the beast, made a desperate move. Her black hair
spilled out behind her as she ran. Swift she moved, but the creature paid no
heed. And then she was upon it, thrusting her staff into its mouth.

Purple-blue lòhrengai flared. Men with axes raced behind
her, attacking in unison. They hewed with mighty swings at the neck, as near as
they dared approach the flame.

The creature made no sound, but a ripple ran through it.
Suddenly, it threw up coils of its long body. They crashed into the men and
sent them sprawling, axes clattering from lifeless hands. Some few crawled away,
broken bones slowing them, but they escaped.

The lòhren was not so lucky. Bravely she stayed where she
was, lòhrengai flaring from her staff until she dropped to her
knees
, exhausted. But the great jaws of the beast snapped
shut around her.

She
screamed.
Blood sprayed. Bones snapped with a crack audible even to Gilhain. Her staff
fell from her writhing arms. The creature
then
spat her out, its massive jaws agape, and the ruined body of
the lòhren fell, tumbling
across
the rampart and down
the other side into the city streets.

Wider still the jaws opened, and the beast vomited the
lòhrengai back out. It seemed unharmed.

The screaming of the city folk was a sound such as Gilhain
had never heard before, nor ever wanted to hear again. It was
primal
fear given voice, unfettered by thought or hope or
restraint. Other cities had heard it, other cities that had fallen before the
enemy. But they had not fallen without a fight; they had not gone willingly
under
the
shadow, and nor would Gilhain.

Without word or gesture or haste, the king drew his sword.
He stepped forward to attack, and men followed him. It was no longer about hope
of victory; it was about fighting an enemy, about never surrendering to
an
opponent. Blades would not work. Lòhrengai would not work.
But that did not mean he would not try to the last, and there was a victory in
that worth more than life. It
was
life, for nothing else mattered in the
end.

The great sword of the king hacked and slashed. The soldiers
near him did the same. Yet for all their effort they were like men hewing at a
mighty oak with paper axes: the scales of the serpent were too thick and the
blows were as nothing.

The massive coils of the serpent rose above the king. The
queen now
leaped
to
his side, stabbing with a knife,
and the shadow of the creature fell over them. Whether by accident, the
intelligence of the creature, or the design of the elùgroths who had summoned
it, the coils crashed down seeking to crush
them
both.

But the Durlin were there. In a last great effort they flung
themselves forward, some to attack the creature with pikes, others to pull back
the king and queen to safety. Some died beneath the toppling coils, crushed and
broken, but the king and queen were saved, the pikes holding back the weight of
the monster for just a moment before they
slipped
away
beneath
its
vast
bulk.

More stone popped, and
powdery
dust filled the air. Rubble fell. The foundations of the
Cardurleth shook. The coils gripped ever tighter, yet no one fled.

Gilhain stumbled back. This was it. This was the fall of
Cardoroth. He was powerless to stop it, and the prophecy of old, the
foretelling of destruction that had come down through the long years was
correct: the city would fall in red fire and blood.

Cold fear stabbed him. Despair smothered him. His own life
would soon end also, and that of his wife. Ruin would take them all.

He held out a hand to Aurellin, and she took it. They did
not speak. No words were necessary. All that mattered was that they would be
together when the end came.

He drew his gaze away from the person he loved most in the
world, and looked to Aranloth. He would say goodbye to one of his great
friends. But the lòhren did not look at him. Instead, he strode forth.

Aranloth lifted his arms high, and there was a look of such
determination on his face that the king’s heart skipped a beat. The lòhren
would not yield. His was a will beyond a normal man’s; a will honed and
strengthened by forgotten ages. He was like a force of nature, and his heart’s
beat was one with the life of the land that he had wandered for years beyond
count.

The lòhren spoke no word. He gave no sign. And yet every
other lòhren along the rampart instantly looked at him. Something passed
between them, between the students and the master. If it were possible, the
expression on his face of iron-hard will strengthened further. It was a will
that had seen ages of men come and pass. He was a thing of the land
itself – old as the hills, bearing a burden of time and change even
as
did
they. And he had learned
a thing or two in that time. He had survived.

Gilhain watched, awed and puzzled. What would the man he
dared to call a friend do?

“You cannot tempt me,” Brand said. “I want neither realms
nor armies. I want nothing you offer. Stand aside. You have no claim on the
staff.”

The
witch
smiled at him sweetly. Her
glance was long and keen and intimate. With a sudden stab he knew that he
wished to see that same look on the real Kareste.

“Begone!” he said.

She tossed her ash-blond hair. “In life you often get what
you don’t want, though few say no to realms or armies – or even
magic.”

It disturbed Brand how much she knew of him, how much she
read from his mind. Some things were
easy
to guess, but
others were not. Hers was a peculiar magic, but all magics had strengths and
weaknesses. He would discover her weakness in due course, and to that end he
did not mind talking. It would give him time.

She smiled at him. It was a smile for him alone as though no
one else in the world mattered.

“I know what it is that you most want. A simple thing it is
too. You wish to inherit what should have been yours – the chieftainship
of the Duthenor. You already wear the helm on your head, and the sword of your
forefathers is
always
by your side. But an usurper
rules in your place, supported by men from other tribes, and he will not be
easy to dislodge. Yet it
would
be
a small thing for
me
to
accomplish. For you, I could do it. I could do it with ease. And you should
know this, also. The usurper will one day be usurped himself. The wild men that
he has brought in will turn on him, and in the end they will rule the Duthenor.
And they will be harsh masters.”

Brand was troubled, and this time he could not disguise it.
Not that it would be worth the effort to try; Durletha seemed to know more
about him than he did himself. Worse, she seemed to know his very thoughts.

“Begone!” he said again. “Temptation will not sway me, and
fate will be what it will be.”

For the first time, the witch showed displeasure. And in
that Brand took hope, for it seemed to him the only reason she had to be
displeased was that her offers were rejected. Yet, if she truly knew his
innermost thoughts, she would have known from the beginning that it would be
so. He was loyal, if nothing else, and Gilhain, and now Kareste, were his
friends. No force on earth, and no temptation, would cause him to break trust
with them.

Durletha hissed. It was a frightful sound, and
it
was
all the stranger to now see open hatred on the mask of
Kareste’s face. That hurt him, even though he knew it was not her. Suddenly, he
realized that he could hear that same hiss in the tops of the trees all around
them, and then he understood that all the while
that
she had been talking her voice was also reflected in the
wood. The sound of it was in the hollows of tree trunks, in the whispering of
leaves, in the slow creak and mutter of tree roots. It was in the bubbling of
water in a rill somewhere further into the wood and out of sight, and
it
was
even in the slow seeping of water though the earth.

He understood now what had troubled him all along about her
voice, for there was power in it, and all the while that she spoke it was
gathering itself, building, forming some spell, and only at the last did his
instincts perceive it. At the last, and perhaps too late.

There was a sudden noise. It was shrill. From all around
them it came, and Brand understood even as it drove into his ears,
turning
,
twisting
,
piercing
like a hot needle, what it was. All the sound for miles had
been turned into a weapon by the witch. Her magic had taken it, transformed it,
compressed it into a single thing and sent it
tunnelling
into their ears. It was unbearable.

Kareste fell off her horse, yet she managed to hold onto
Shurilgar’s staff. Brand could not think. He was dizzy, and the pain drove him
like a madness. He wanted to act, to do something to relieve it, but it only
grew and scattered his thoughts to the wind.

All the while he heard the voice of the witch beyond the
shrill sound that speared into him. She chanted, and though he did not
understand the words, he perceived that her power was growing as the need for
subterfuge was gone. Soon, she would kill them.

Brand struggled to control his mount. The idea came to him
to ride the witch down, but he floundered in a sea of pain and confusion. It
took him some moments to realize that the horse’s reins were no longer in his
hand but had fallen and trailed between its legs.

Durletha’s chanting rose to a higher pitch. If it were
possible, the pain redoubled. Brand’s vision swam, and he knew that there were
only moments
left
before he
fell from the horse as had Kareste.

And then he heard another sound. Faint at first, but
something different from the high-pitched daggers in his ears. It was Bragga
Mor’s flute. As it had been earlier, so was it now: beautiful, sweet, haunting.

The chanting of the witch faltered for just a moment. She
seemed perplexed by how to take this new sound up into her attack. In that
moment Kareste regained her feet. She staggered up, but she did not attack with
her sword or try to summon power from Shurilgar’s staff.

Brand, his newfound senses growing day by day, dimly
perceived her mind reach out, and her own power become one with the music of
the flute.

He
was
staggered by the shadowy sense of what she was doing. With skill and precision
her power became one with the music, and swift as thought took hold of it and
transformed it into a kind of shield. It veiled them from the witch’s attack,
not nullifying it completely, but subduing it so that it was no more than an
unpleasant noise.

He realized that though his sensitivity to lòhrengai was
growing, he had only the same skill in the craft as a young boy picking up a
sword for the first time. It had taken him years of hard practice to acquire
the skill to be bodyguard to the king, and that same effort awaited him if ever
he wished to become proficient with the power that was in him.

He shut down that line of thinking. It was yet another way
the magic inside him tempted him to its use, for
to
learn
a
skill
was a challenge, and the harder something was to achieve the
more Brand set his mind to attain it.

All sound in the wood now seemed muffled, yet still Brand
heard the witch shriek. Whether it was
in
anger or pain, he did not know, but he sensed her frustration
and knew instinctively that the danger had not passed. She would not give up on
claiming the staff, and a new attack was imminent.

As soon as Brand had that thought he knew that he must
attack to forestall her. But driven by need rather than considered reason, his
body reacted with an instinct of its own, or at least the magic that was in him
did.

Without thinking he raised Aranloth’s staff. Fire burst from
it; a hot wild stream that roared to life and leaped at the witch like a living
thing.

He rode toward her, forgetting his sword and concentrating
only on the flame.

Kareste moved also. No flame came from Shurilgar’s staff,
but it was raised in threat. It was a threat that Durletha saw and understood.
She understood also that her attack had failed. Temptation had not worked, nor
surprise. And she did not like it.

The witch hissed again. Her left arm she held up as a
shield, and by the power that was in her she rebuffed Brand’s flame. A small
thing for her to do, and easily could she turn it aside and launch her own
assault upon him. But for this Kareste waited, for in that moment she would
strike herself, and the witch would be open to a greater attack, directed by
skill and strength.

“Begone!” Kareste yelled, taking up Brand’s words.

The witch looked at them, poised amid the flame, beaten, but
not defeated.

“This is not over,” she said. “It will never be over until
that staff is in my hands, and then the other half after it. Old as the hills I
am, and I have patience. I’ll watch you fall yet, and it will be all the
sweeter.”

With a toss of her ash-blond hair she fixed Brand with a
look of hatred, and he wished never to see such a look again, for it was
Kareste, Kareste as she would be if she fell to the Shadow and refused to
destroy the staff at the end. It was the way she would look at him if they
fought, and fight they must, no matter that it was the last thing he wanted, if
that came to pass. For he saw now more clearly than ever before, understood so
much better Aranloth’s warning, that for the sake of Alithoras the staff must
be destroyed.
Otherwise
,
the
evil
in
the
world
would
constantly
seek
it.

One moment the witch was before them, her ash-blond hair
tossing, and then she was gone. In her place were the flicking wings of a hawk
and a fierce cry from its hooked beak. The pale underwings flashed. Feathers
beat the air and swift as an arrow it drove, talons outstretched, at Brand’s
face.

He ducked, but not quick enough. Talons ripped and clawed,
seeking
for his eyes, yet his head
was now bent low and the
shrieking
attack
struck only the helm of the
Duthenor.

There was a flash of silver light, and then the hawk shot
upward into the air and was gone.

Brand and Kareste looked at each other. They did not speak.
The only sound they heard was the playing of the flute.

They
turned
to
Bragga Mor. Tears ran down his face, and the music, up close as they were to it
now, filled
them
with
sadness
and
a
sense
of
longing
for
something
forever
beyond
reach. It had saved them, but it was heartbreaking,
and Brand felt the outside edges of a
sorrow
greater than any he had ever known. It was a
grief
that this stranger endured
every day.

Bragga Mor
ceased
playing
, and he looked at them with eyes sadder even than the
music.