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II
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THE BREACH in the outwork was being repaired.
Brynat Scarface had gone out to watch, and was standing on the inner parapet supervising the work. Itwas a cold morning and mists flowed up the mountainside; in the chill the men moved sluggishly. Littledark men from the mountains, most of them ragged and still battle-stained, fought the rough ground andthe cold stone; they were moved by shouts and the occasional flick of a whip in the hands of one of Brynat’s men.
Brynat was a tall man, dressed in ragged and slashed finery, over which he had drawn a fur cloak fromthe spoils of the castle. A great seamed scar ridged his face from eye to chin, giving to a face which hadnever been handsome the wolfish look of some feral beast which had somehow put on the dress of aman. At his heels his sword bearer, a little bat-eared man, scurried, bowing under the weight of theoutlaw’s sword. He cringed when Brynat turned to him, expecting a blow or a curse, but Brynat was inhigh good humor this morning.
“Fools we are, man—we spend days tearing down this wall,” he complained, “and what is the first thing
we do? We build it up again!”
The bat-eared man gave a nervous sycophant’s laugh, but Brynat had forgotten his existence again. Drawing the fur around himself, he walked to the edge of the parapet and looked down at the ruined walland the castle.
Storn Castle stood on a height defended by chasms and crags. Brynat knew he could congratulatehimself for the feats of tactics and engineering which had broken the walls and poured men through themto storm the inner fortress. Storn had been built in the old days to be impregnable, and impregnable itwas and had remained through seven generations of Aldarans, Aillards, Darriels and Storns.
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When it had housed proud lords of the Comyn— the old, powerful, psi-gifted lords of the Seven Domains of Darkover—it had been known to the world’s end. Then the line had dwindled, outsiders hadmarried into the remains of the families, and finally the Storns of Storn had come there. They had beenpeaceful lords without any pretense to be more than they were—wilderness nobility, gentle andhonorable, living in peace with their tenants and neighbors, content to trade in the fine hunting hawks ofthe mountains and sell fine wrought metals from the forges of their mountain tribe, which dug ore from thedark cliffs and worked it at their fires. They had been rich and also powerful in their own way, if bypower one meant that when word went forth from the Storn of Storn, men obeyed; but they smiledinstead of trembling when they obeyed. They had little contact with the other mountain peoples and lesswith the lords of the farther mountains; they lived at peace and were content.
And now they had fallen.
Brynat laughed smugly. In their prideful isolation, the Storns could no longer even send for help to theirdistant lordly neighbors. With care, Brynat would be established here as lord of Storn Castle long beforethe word went out through the Hellers and the Hyades that Storn Castle had a new lord. And would theycare that it was ruled no longer by Storn of Storn, but by Brynat of the Heights? He thought not.
A cold wind had come up, and the red sun was covered in scudding clouds. The men toiling at thelugged stones were moving faster now to keep warm in the biting wind, and a few flakes of snow werebeginning to fall. Brynat jerked a careless shoulder at Bat-ears, and without looking to see if the little manfollowed—but woe to him if he hadn’t—strode inside the castle.
Inside, far from watchers, he let his proud grin of triumph slide off. It had not been all victory, though hisfollowers revelling in the rich spoil of the castle thought it had been. He sat in Storn’s high seat, butvictory eluded him.
He walked swiftly downward, until he came to a door padded with velvet and hung with curtains. Twoof his mercenaries lolled here, drowsing on the comfort of cushions; an empty wineskin showed how theywhiled away their guard. But they sprang up at the sound of his heavy tread, and one sniggered with thefreedom of an old servitor.
“Ha, ha! Two wenches are better than one—hey, Lord?”
Seeing Brynat scowl the other said swiftly, “No more weeping and wailing from the maid this morning,
Lord. She is still, and we have not entered.”
Brynat scorned answer. He moved his hand imperiously and they flung open the door.
As the door hasp creaked, a small blue-clad form sprang up and whirled, long red braided hair flyingabout her shoulders. The face had once been piquantly lovely; now it was swollen and dark with bruises;one eye was half shut with a blow, but the other blazed in quenchless fury.
“You whelp of a bitch-wolf,” she said low, “take one step further—I dare you!”
Brynat rocked back loosely on his heels, his mouth drawn to a wolfish smile. He set hands on hips anddidn’t speak, surveying the girl in blue. He saw the white, shaking hands, but noted that the swollenmouth did not tremble nor the eyes drop. He approved with inward laughter. Here he could feel genuinetriumph.
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“What, still unreconciled to my hospitality, Lady? Have I offered you word or deed of insult, or do you
blame me for the roughness of my men in offering it?”
Her mouth was firm. “Where is my brother? My sister?”
“Why,” he drawled, “your sister attends my feasts nightly; I came to invite you to attend upon my lady wife this morning; I believe she pines for a familiar face. But, my Lady Melitta, you are pale; you have not touched the fine food I sent to you!” He made a low, burlesque bow and turned to pick up a tray laden with wine and rich food. He proffered it to her, smiling. “See, I come in person, at your service—”
She took one step, snatched the tray, picked up a roast bird by one leg, and hurled it into his face.
Brynat swore, stepping backward and wiping the grease from his chin—with a great burst of laughter.
“Zandru’s hells
Damisela
, I should have taken you, not the whimpering, whining creature I chose!”
Breathing hard she surveyed him defiantly. “I’d have killed you first.”
“I make no doubt you’d have tried! Had you been a man, the castle might never have fallen—but you wear skirts in place of hose and the castle lies in ruins and my men and I are here and all the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg. So I advise you in good sadness, little mistress: wash your face, put on your fine robes, and attend on your sister, who is still Lady of Storn. If you have good sense, you’ll advise her to have patience with her lot, and you shall both have robes and jewels and all things that women prize.”
“From you?”
“Who else?” he said with a laughing shrug, and flung the door open to the guards.
“The Lady Melitta is to come and go as she wills within the castle. But attend me, Mistress—the outworks, the parapets and the dungeons are forbidden, and I give my men leave—hear me well—to stop you by force if you attempt to go near them.”
She started to hurl a curse at him and then stopped herself, visibly toying with the thought of what evenlimited freedom could mean. At last she turned away without a word, and he shut the door and moved
away.
Perhaps this would be the first step in his second victory. He knew, though his men did not, that Storn Castle conquered was only the first victory—and hollow without the second conquest. He bit off anothercurse, turned his back on the room prisoning the girl and strode on. Upward and upward he went, highinto the old tower. Here there were no windows. There were only narrow slits which admitted, not thered daylight but a strange, eerie, flickering blue light like chained lightning. Brynat felt a strange, coldshiver pass over him.
Of ordinary dangers he was fearless. But this was the ancient Darkovan sorcery, the bare legends ofwhich protected such places as Storn Castle long after their other defenses had fallen. Brynat clutchedthe amulet round his neck with suddenly nerveless fingers. He had guessed that the old magic was merelya show, had hardened his mercenaries to storm the castle and had won. He had caroused in Storn Castleand had laughed at the old tales. Their magic hadn’t saved the castle, had it? He had thought it a show tofrighten children, no more harmful than the northern lights.
He strode through the ghostly flickers, through a pale arch of translucent stone. Two of his hardened and
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brutal men, the most nerveless he could bribe to the task, lounged there on an old carven settee. He noted that they were neither gaming nor drinking, and that their eyes were averted from the arch beyond, where a flickering curtain of blue light played like a fountain between the stones. There was naked relief in their faces at sight of their chieftain.
“Any change?”
“None, Lord. The man’s dead—dead as Durraman’s donkey.”
“If I could believe that,” Brynat said between his teeth and strode boldly through the curtain of blue
flame.
He had been through it before and it had been his bravest act—bold enough to dwarf the single-handedtaking of the last barbican. He knew his men held him in awe for it, but this alone he did not fear. He hadseen such things beyond the mountains; they were fearsome, indeed, but harmless. He felt and enduredwith distaste the electric tingle, the hairs bristling on head and forearms. He stiffened his backbone againstthe surge of animal fear and strode through.
The blue light died. He stood in a dark chamber, lit with a few pale tapers in fixed cressets; soft hangingsof woven fur circled a single low couch, on which a man lay motionless.
The still form seemed to glow softly in the darkness; he was a slender, frail man, with pale hair streamingfrom a high forehead and deep-sunken eyes. Though he was still young, the face was drawn and stern. He wore a tunic and plain hose of woven silk, no furs and no jewels but a single star-shaped stone like anamulet around his neck. His hands looked white, soft, and useless—the hands of scribe or priest, handswhich had never held a sword. The feet were bare and soft; the chest did not stir with breathing. Brynatfelt the old frustrated fury as he looked down on the pale, soft-looking man. Storn of Storn lay there,helpless—yet beyond Brynat’s reach.
His mind whirled him back to the hour of the castle’s fall. The servants and soldiers had been seized andsubdued; trusted men had been sent to bind, but not to harm, the ladies. The younger Storn, no morethan a boy and bleeding from many wounds, Brynat had spared with grudging admiration—a boy todefend this castle alone? The lad was dungeoned, but Brynat’s own surgeon had dressed his wounds. Storn of Storn was Brynat’s real prey.
His men did not know; they had seen only the spoil of a rich house, the power of holding an ancientfortress where they could be secure. But Brynat sought choicer game: the talismans and powers of theold Storns. With Storn of Storn in his hands, a Storn of the true blood, he could wield them—and Storn,he had heard, was a fragile, sickly, unwarlike man—born blind. Hence had he lived in retirement, leavingthe management of his castle to his young sisters and his brother. Brynat had maidens and boy;
now forthe feeble Lord
!
He had found his way through weird lights and magical fire curtains to the private apartments of the Lordof Storn—and found him escaped; lying unrousable in trance.
And so he had lain for days. Now Brynat, sick with rage, bent over his couch, but no stir of muscle orbreath revealed that the man lived.
“Storn!” he bellowed. It was a shout that he felt must rouse even the dead.
No hair stirred. He might as well have howled into the winds around the parapet. Brynat, gritting his
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teeth, drew the skean from his belt. If he could not use the man, he held one power, at least: to send him
from enchanted sleep to death. He raised the knife and brought it slashing down.
The knife turned in mid-air; it writhed, glowed blue, and exploded into white-hot flame from hilt to tip. Brynat howled in anguish, dancing about and shaking his burnt hand, to which the glowing skean clungwith devilish force. The two mercenaries, trembling and bristling in the blue lights, faltered through theelectrical curtain.
“You—you called us,
vai dom
?”
Savagely Brynat hurled the knife at them; it came unstuck and flew; one of them fumbled to catch it,yelled and shook it off to the floor, where it lay still hissing and sizzling. Brynat, with a low, savage streamof curses, strode from the chamber. The mercenaries followed, their eyes wide with terror and their faceslike animal masks.
In marmoreal peace, far beyond their reach in unknowable realms, Storn slept on.
Far below, Melitta Storn finished bathing her bruised face. Seated before her toilet table, she concealedthe worst of the marks with cosmetics, combed and braided her hair, and brought a clean gown from thepress and donned it. Then, conquering a sudden spasm of sickness, she drank deeply of the wine on thetray. She hesitated a moment, then retrieved the roast bird from the floor, wiped it, and, deftly tearing itwith her fingers, ate most of it. She did not wish Brynat’s hospitality, but sick and faint with hunger shewas useless to herself or her people. Now, with wine and food, she felt a measure of physical strength, atleast, returning. Her mirror told her that except for swollen lip and darkened eye, she looked much asbefore.