Stormed Fortress Read Online Free Page B

as Masterbard, he chose to use her cultural phrasing for absolute clarity. ' I don ' t see how our lines cross. Therefore, I don ' t understand. '
    She cackled, amused. Seamed fingers brushed his cheek like a child ' s, while her patience chided his insolence. ' Lines! They are ancient. Older than Biedar have lived on Athera. Mother Dark has shown us your name for that long. The winds speak your voice, at each birthing. '
    ' I don ' t see how our lines cross, ' Prince Arithon restated, the edge to his tone all but warning.
    ' Torbrand ' s get! Truly ' Black eyes glinted. The elder settled back on her heels. Ever restless, the breeze whirled stray sand on the blanket through the moment she peered at him, slantwise. ' You wish to leave, naked? '
    Outplayed, not yet irritated, Arithon sighed. ' Fire Hands was remiss not to leave me a cloak. '
    ' He knew you that well, ' the old woman agreed. Her dry grasp shifted, cupped over the frown that troubled his brow. Since he was tired, he chose to allow her: the touch brought him sleep that carried him, dreamless, into the gold of new morning.
    Since the desert tribes travelled by night in deep summer, he was not aware of the strong, younger hands that tucked him in a litter and bore him into a cairn of stacked rocks. He slept the day through. When sundown came, the aged crone rubbed his wrists and his feet with sweet oil, and set a fresh warding to ensure that he did not awaken. Her nod roused the camp. The young men who stood guard shouldered the litter again, then resumed their careful trek eastward under the slender sickle of the waxing moon.
    Arithon rested. The trackless, black wastes erased the night ' s journey from memory, while the wheeling stars passed overhead without record. The soft lilt of voices, and the bright ching! of the goat-bells glanced off his unhearing ears.
    No nightmare struck until the dark just past midnight, when the spirit tide ebbed, and frayed boundaries were most wont to weaken. The horror that stalked was not real, not present; but the dream-state both altered and rippled the veil, blurring the line between time ' s world of substance, and the vistas beyond, that lapped at the unfettered mind.
    Hammer to anvil, the emotional impact shuddered through breathing flesh. Arithon thrashed. The insufferable feeling lived with him, still: a remembered horror that had occurred, as his being was drawn by arcane constraint, then forced into shackling bondage. The experience of being disbarred from death shocked a howl that began in his viscera and opened his throat in raw agony.
    A callused palm muffled his outcry. Other hands, agile and youthfully strong, caught his battering wrists and his ankles. While spoken words that meant nothing tried and failed to bring surcease to his torment, he struck out with deranged ferocity.
    ' Nay so! ' rapped a voice of incisive command. The restraint - not bloodied rope ties, or wax seals - fell away.
    Abruptly freed, Arithon curled on his side. A knot laced into himself, trapped in misery, he trembled, until a tentative, kindly touch laid a strung lyranthe against his clenched fingers.
    His shuddering breath took in the farniliar: a fragrance of citrus-waxed wood and old varnish. The clean scent of the resin used to stiffen the instrument ' s tuning pegs raised the forgotten echo of joy. Closed fists unbent. Tortured, Arithon reached out and stroked the cool, silken finish of shell inlay and gemstones. These had voice in the darkness. A beauty that whispered through mage-sense, imprinted by generations of masterbards, each devoted, unswerving, to harmony. Most recent of these, Halliron sen Alduin, still seemed to be chiding him with the wise vehemence given to elderly men before dying: ' If a masterbard ' s music can one day spare your life, or that of your loyal defenders, you will use it. .. '
    Successor now bearing his mentor ' s title, Arithon fought the surge of his nightmares to listen. His outer ear heard the brushed