Outside the castle, at a safe distance, waited the women, juveniles, and elders of Old Stump and the surrounding estates, ready to support the invasion as best they could. Owl the tavernmaster sat on a wagon, trying to calm his jittery pair of oeikani. The trees hid the castle, but the sounds of armed conflict rang clear, violating the ears of the assemblage.
Owl felt a drop of sweat trickle down his face and into his collar, to further drench his inner shirt. His nephew was among those who had scaled the walls. He had not even known the boy was a rebel until a few hours earlier, when he, like so many other residents, had suddenly swarmed to the support of the Elandri twins.
The signal came. Owl cracked the whip lightly, guiding his vehicle into its place in the line. A total of ten wagons rolled down the road to the castle, clattering across the drawbridge with the women and youths jogging along beside them. Most were empty, their beds covered with straw, intended for transporting the wounded out of the battle zone. Owl's own was loaded with tarps and sacks of sand with which to snuff fires, for the battle would surely see lamps shattered and torches knocked from their sconces. An unchecked blaze in the main part of the fortress would create havoc for both sides.
The clamor of shouting men and the dull thump of a battering ram pounding somewhere in the bowels of the keep swept over Owl. He strove to keep his composure as he guided his team between the bodies of the fallen to an open space by the outer wall, away from the fighting. He climbed down immediately and freed his animals, for the latter could help in the effort to evacuate the injured. Some of his companions loaded stricken combatants onto the other wagons, in order to rush them back to the aid stations that had been set up beneath the trees. Others tended men still lying where they had fallen.
The courtyard was clear of Puriel's men, except the dead. A small fire snapped and spat in the barracks. Several men and women rushed to Owl's wagon and grabbed material. Those not occupied with saving the living were dragging the slain out of the way, stripping Puriel's guards of armor and weapons which might be used inside by those still fighting. Owl swallowed hard and told himself to relax. The battle was finished here. He was safe. A cadre of townsmen emerged from the main keep, urging a group of a dozen women along ahead of them. They collected the captives in a corner of the yard and put them under guard. The women's nightgowns showed no soil or rents to indicate that they had been touched. Owl nodded in satisfaction. Battle or no battle, the rebels and villagers of Old Stump would not stoop to the sort of abuses indulged in by the governor and his soldiers.
Owl surrendered his oeikani and went to the assistance of two women who were moving bodies. One was his neighbor, Nalicia, with whom he had grown up. The sight of her, shaking and pale, momentarily quieted his own faint heart. He met her eyes, and his own relative calm bolstered her courage. Together the three of them hauled the burden to the side of the yard.
Nalicia sighed, bit back tears, straightened her spine, and started toward the next one. Only then did Owl realize that the corpse was that of Yenni, the silversmith's son. They both knew his father well. But then, most of the casualties would be people with whom they were acquainted. The next, in fact, was a man who had swept the floor of his tavern as a boy. Fearing that the next victim might be his nephew or a close friend, he diverted Nalicia toward a fallen castle guard.
As he and Nalicia each grabbed an arm and lifted, the supposedly dead man awoke, despite the evil-looking gash across his pate, and with a sudden jerk of his elbow sent the unprepared Owl tumbling into the dirt. The latter inhaled a mouthful of grit, coughed, and scrambled to his feet. Too late. The guard plunged his knife into Nalicia's chest.
Owl cried out.
The guard let Nalicia fall, and stared about, dazed and unsteady on his feet. At Owl's outburst, he turned, widened his eyes, and charged. Owl gasped and, without consciously meaning to, kicked his attacker's knee. The man crashed forward, knocking the wind out of the tavernmaster, taking them both down. The knife spun away, kicking up dust an arm's length from their heads. Owl, for lack of a better strategy, seized the guard in a bear hug.
Had the guard not been disoriented and weakened from blood loss, he would have broken free in short order, but as it was, Owl held him just long enough that a teenage boy reached them and, using a mace salvaged from another fallen member of the garrison, caved in the man's head.
"Are you hurt, sir?" asked the boy, as he stared dumbfounded at the man he had just killed.
Owl wiped a fleck of blood from his eyelid. "No. My thanks." His stomach heaved. Next to him, Nalicia stared sightlessly up at the stars.
Hiephora took wing, abandoning the security of the forest. Once more, she endured the jolt as she broached the aura around the castle. This time she cried out, stabbed to the core. The energies roiled and snapped, fed by the fear of the dying, the cold dispassion of the dead, and the hatred of foe for foe. She flew high, where the impact was less severe, and hovered over the great courtyard. She could not bring herself to look downward.
"Cyfee!" she called out.
No response. She quailed to think that her protegee lay embroiled in the carnage, yet Cyfee and three other rythni had not returned to the woods. They could not be dead. Her prophecy had been clear in that regard; no rythni would die in this fight. Otherwise she could not have asked a single one of her subjects to participate. She called again, flying a circuit of the fortress walls.
Over the governor's keep, away from the worst of the din, she heard a faint, urgent, keening cry, unmistakably a rythni song of distress. Yet, strangely, she thought she could detect an alluring whisper beneath it. Both emanated from the northwest tower of the keep.
The wizard's sanctum.
She circled warily before she dared land on the balcony. The room within was dim, foreboding, tinged with the mephitis of sorcery. The distress cry flowed from it clearly, mournfully. She ventured nearer the opening. A strange music, very unlike the harmonics of the forest, reached out and murmured to her.
"My queen!" cried a familiar voice.
Hiephora peered inside. Four rythni lay on the table in the center of the room, under a faintly luminescent net, beside a crystal vase containing a sprig of herb thick with white flowers.
"Cyfee!" At last Hiephora identified the odd undertone that she had heard above the castle. It came from the herb-a whisper promising love, dancing, dreams, and song, the perfect lure for a rythni. It was subtle, almost subliminal at first, drawing in the unsuspecting listener until the trap was woven too tightly for escape. She herself wanted desperately to venture inside, though clearly she, like her subjects, would be snagged like a fly in a web.
"Are you hurt?" Hiephora called.
"No," Cyfee replied. "But it won't let us go." She lifted an arm. The strands kept her from extending it. The other three companions, though awake, seemed unable to move at all.
"Stay still, then. I will bring help as soon as I can."
The wind over the lake licked at Alemar's hair, twisting it into his face. He blew it clear, since his arms, like the rest of him, were propped up by dozens of rythni. They were getting tired, these little ones. They had carried him non-stop from the site where he had been maintaining the camouflage spell around Claric until Omril's arrival. Their strength was fading rapidly, or perhaps it was the essence of the castle, sapping them of their resolve as they drew near.
"Just a little farther," he murmured. "You've done well."
A flutter of movement ahead of them pulled his gaze away from the battlements. "Prince Alemar!" called a small voice.