Traitor's Knot (57 page)

Dauntlessly Traithe pressed ahead. ‘Davien had his purpose for luring you to Kewar and granting the key to his library'

‘A fool would suppose that he had no agenda.' Arithon broke the loaf of flat bread, then scooped the torn edge into the thick stew. ‘The price has come due? Then speak, and let it be simple.'

‘Anything but.' Traithe broke his news with savage clarity. ‘Asandir is immersed in a grimward, past reach, and Sethvir lies ill at Althain Tower, burning his own life-force to bind the unstable leaks from two others. Those straits have allowed dire factions the loose rein to act without our constraint. Necromancers have seized a foothold within the Light's initiate priesthood. Darkling's diviner's affected, and Jaelot's, and worse, the cabal extant at Etarra. That branch is now lying poised to swallow the heart of Lysaer's delegate government.'

There, the Sorcerer waited, as Arithon paled and laid down his morsel. A charged interval passed while that impacting news became marked and measured: the virulent, rogue gift of prismatic far-sight must unveil the array of wide-ranging implication. Traithe endured throughout that vicious, slow agony, watched the defiant plan of a future resistance wither, unplucked, on the vine. At one terrible stroke, his stark fact cast its shadow to crush every effort now set in play to dissociate the clans from the havoc caused by Desh-thiere's curse.

‘Which cult?' Arithon asked at scraped length.

‘The nastiest.' Traithe had no balm to mitigate grief. ‘Grey Kralovir, they are called.' He need not elaborate. The devastation in those widened green eyes showed that Arithon already knew of that faction's horrific practice. A cult incursion within the Alliance would not just claim a handful of innocent lives. The blighting danger would spread, masked under the false covenant of Lysaer's religion. Unsuspecting, undefended, the towns' entire populations could come to be enslaved through an orgy of blood-rites. Such hideous corruption outlasted death. Its coercive power could unleash a rabid war host no natural armed company could withstand.

‘Darkling and Jaelot will pose little threat,' Traithe resumed in the same candid vein. ‘Kharadmon and Luhaine can move in concert and clear the few trapped in corruption without undue fuss. But the newly raised battlements at Etarra are warded. As you have probably already realized, besides me, our Fellowship has no one else.'

Arithon swiftly digested the gist. ‘Your other two colleagues are not corporate,' he broke in, then, as perception leaped further,
‘You need me to quell this?'
His piercing whisper ripped to the heart. No kindness might spare him. Initiate master, he was too dreadfully cognizant of the ghastly price should he falter. ‘How long do I have?'

Traithe answered quickly to shorten distress. ‘Enough time to plan wisely, since the first incursion has been successfully put down at Avenor.'

That appalling, near miss was enough to choke speech. Before listening further, Arithon raised his raw will. First act of acceptance, he picked up his dropped meal and started to eat with methodical focus. The warm food was neither tasted, nor savoured. He swallowed sustenance as no less than an act of bald-faced necessity. Melhalla's
caithdein
observed that staunch courage and fought brimming eyes in pent silence.

For an interval, no sound interrupted the pound of the rain or the whispered hiss of the tallow-dips. The saucy raven held itself still, a coal figure stamped out of the air by Traithe's wrist, with eyes like piercing jet buttons. At length, the Sorcerer flicked his scarred fingers, urging the Teiren's'Callient to sit down. She found a chair, while a prince whose exhaustion should have found solace regrouped hammered wits and responded.

‘If my half-brother was touched, there will be complications. I think I'd do better to hear out the list.'

‘Lysaer was wrested clear,' the Sorcerer reaffirmed. ‘You'll hear details, later. The time constraint stems from the fact that our Fellowship has no clear permission to ward him. He currently bears a ceremonial knife, wrought by the Sanpashir tribes' heritage. The talisman lends him a measure of defence. But the esoteric properties have distinct limits and won't guard him from exposure indefinitely'

Yet again, the fierce speed of unreeling prescience let Arithon grasp the raw irony: that an active entanglement would force his half-brother to reject the enspelled knife's protection. ‘The blade's wardings are not compatible with the workings of Desh-thiere's curse?' Now sick to his core, Rathain's prince abandoned his effort to force down the last of his meal. ‘Why did no one inform me?'

The implied betrayal stung deepest since, at any time before Lysaer sailed south, the added threat posed by a curse-driven encounter might have been deferred, or averted.

Traithe ceded no ground for that lost opportunity. ‘Sethvir held out hope Asandir would return. The issue need never have touched you. Your effort to secure lasting peace for the clans was beyond all price, and remains so. We still hold out for the chance of reprieve. The torn grimward at Scarpdale could be settled and done, up until the last moment.'

‘How long do I have?'
Prince Arithon repeated, and this round, no distraction availed him.

‘The first warning's already behind us. Lysaer suffered an incident on the moment when you first set foot in Alestron. The curse aroused, and the knife burned his hand. He's at sea, and quiescent, but depending on weather, he might make a landfall at South Strait inside of ten days.'

‘And we know from my disastrous affray at Riverton that the curse can be raised through the use of a fetch.' Arithon winced. ‘Played that way, my half-brother would cast the knife off as black sorcery and not realize he had stripped his defences. But Jaelot's corrupt priest is a long way from the southcoast. Surely that leaves a wide margin to act?'

Traithe shook his head. ‘Sadly, not. You have three weeks before a messenger bearing a sunwheel seal calls upon Jaelot to muster. The Kralovir's influence must be routed out before next month's new moon. The afflicted in all three of Rathain's towns will need to be cleared and destroyed simultaneously. Luhaine and Kharadmon can time their strike to match yours. That intervention must happen ahead of the cult's opportunistic bid for expansion.'

And again, with cruel sorrow, the Sorcerer watched prismatic far-sight impel the Teir's'Ffalenn to absorb the next shattering set-back: that no time could be spared for his planned stop at Tirans. His chance was lost, to enact the divisive subversion designed to sweep disorder through the Alliance's entrenched hold across the East Halla peninsula. The awful truth dawned, that the Light's sway in Melhalla was going to be left all too disastrously well organized. Twelve towns would be chafing for Lysaer's divine word, dry tinder stacked for the inevitable spark when the call came to raise arms for the cause.

‘This will doom Alestron,' Rathain's prince concluded. ‘If the duke maintains his firm stand in refusal and will not abandon a futile defence, his citadel could face the ruinous consequence well ahead of next spring.'

As Arithon's tortured awareness also encompassed the
caithdein's
distraught state, she addressed him with brusque directness. ‘Whether the s'Brydion come through or not, you must go forward assured, your royal Grace. My clan chieftains will gather to shoulder what's left to be salvaged.'

‘My brave lioness!' Arithon exclaimed, fraught. ‘Given the choice, I should have forgone the presumption of crossing your threshold. Surely you realize? This intervention to scour three strongholds of necromancy must incite another wave of raw fear. My hopes are as ashes. This act will force bloodshed. Etarra will be handed spectacular evidence. No matter how subtle the Fellowship's backing, the wholesale destruction of Rathain's corrupt priests is going to launch misguided fervour into explosion.'

The Teiren's'Callient drew herself up straight, her dignity set into bed-rock. ‘We will field this danger before facing worse.'

Traithe intervened, before the flash-point tension incited more protesting argument. ‘Your Grace! I will need to teach you the keys to work the Paravian circle that stands in the ruin of old Tirans. From there, you and Dakar will cross latitude to reach the focus at Caith-al-Caen.' Keen understanding
acknowledged Arithon's speechless, swift gratitude, that he need not abandon his bound obligation to Jieret's widow at Halwythwood. ‘Your crown right to clan backing will speed your journey northward through Daon Ramon from there.'

Three days ride to the trade-road, a tight disguise, and a string of fast post-horses could see him through to the gates of Etarra. He must be there before the next dark moon, when Lysaer's curse-driven summons to arms would spur the cult's dedicates to bind its next string of picked victims.

Arithon gathered himself to arise, then checked short, aware that Traithe's raven as yet made no move to return to the Sorcerer's shoulder. Stilled as carved onyx, the bird watched with jet eyes, chill affirmation that this devastating audience
had not yet drawn to an end.
‘We don't ride tonight for a lane transfer at dawn?' Now more than nettled, Arithon seized on the tepid wine-cup left untasted at the edge of the supper tray. ‘That fails to explain the need for restoratives!'

Traithe matched that edged challenge with sorrow. Since the harsh pain of his tidings could not be assuaged, he had nothing to offer but pity. ‘Within Davien's library, you once refused to study the rites written inside the black grimoires.'

Arithon stiffened. Pale before, now his skin drained utterly white. ‘For the soundest of reasons.' Aghast horror lashed him onto his feet. Face on, he confronted the dark-clad Sorcerer, who wore the scars of a terrible sacrifice with a humility that burned for its seamless acceptance.

Much younger, more volatile for the raw depth of vision that inflamed his innate compassion, Arithon pleaded. ‘Such knowledge in my hands could be turned! Have you forgotten the reach of Desh-thiere's curse? Some risks,' he paused, cringing scared, and braced his fists on the trestle as the winds of probability whipped and screamed through his mind. Anguished seconds passed one into the next, while the horrific images of a thousand posited massacres tore him to flinching ribbons. Arithon shuddered. ‘Some risks run outside of all sanity. Spare me this burden! I beg not to bear the dread form of this knowledge.'

‘You do have a counterweight,' Traithe said with velvet-clad tenderness. ‘Your royal gift grants you the soundest of safe-guards.'

Arithon raised his eyebrows. ‘Not enough! The Mistwraith's works made short shrift of the s'Ilessid endowment of justice!'

‘Lysaer had flaws of character to support that distortion,' Traithe argued back, unequivocal.

‘And I have none?' Arithon pealed. ‘That's blind arrogance! No more and no less, I am human, just as prone to make errant mistakes!'

‘Free will!' cracked Traithe, sharp as adamant steel. ‘Go in without knowledge and dare the alternative: a half-brother bound by geas, worshipped as a false avatar, and drawn under the abomination of the Kralovir's practice. His officers will fall first, then next month, or next year, such breeding horror will
run rampant throughout the hapless ranks of the faithful. You face the choice, prince, for more than one kingdom, and
for more than Athera's grand mysteries:
to take your informed stand now, at the forefront, or to recoil and find yourself overtaken. I need not say what you already know. Only one of those paths is the master's!'

‘The mercy that kills!' Incensed, Arithon shoved off and paced. ‘The Betrayer has hobbled your compact quite neatly'

Yet release was past reach.
Having once touched the presence of a centaur guardian, he did not stand blind: the profound awakening of Paravian grace had changed his awareness forever. The flame born of that one glimpse of expansive love now seared mind and heart almost beyond self-preservation.

To Melhalla's
caithdein
, whose tradition was maintained by rote, the yawning chasm of this prince's conflict could not be grappled. Her limited view would see nothing beyond the appeal to a crown prince's sworn duty. Yet the Fellowship Sorcerer, and the eyes of the raven, perceived what was actual and real: that no living experience could supersede the importance of preserving a greater beacon of truth, untarnished and free on Athera.

No matter how clear the choice, or how shining the view revealed to the awakened visionary, the break with human ties could not be painless.

Arithon wrestled the hurt of that severance. Entrapped between the dimmed frame of his past and the limitless light that posed all the hope of the future, he appealed, ‘Who will explain to the brothers s'Brydion as the enemy rams their front gates? What about Erlien s'Taleyn of Alland? His clans are exposed, and already committed!' Since no answer met him, he flung out his hands, spurred by his flash-point frustration. ‘Had Lysaer
ever
received the bare basics of training, he would have been given the fair means to stand guard for his birth-born right to autonomy!'

Traithe sighed. ‘So the Fellowship's augury foresaw, and I tried. Any one of us would have granted such learning. Yet Lysaer never asked. On the hour I snatched the opening to broach the first question, he gave me no foothold, not even the opportune grace of ambiguity. By choice and free will, your half-brother denied us the leave to pursue the first step towards a guided initiation.'

‘He was not proud,' Prince Arithon insisted. ‘Lysaer had a strict father who taught him, too early, that only a shameful king asks for help.'

‘Said is done,' Traithe said softly, while the raven looked on, black as a starless midnight.

Three sets of eyes shared the harrowing interval, as no less than Paravian survival swung in the trembling balance. While a desolate man wrestled to reconcile the decision laid onto his overtaxed shoulders, the woman charged to rule as
caithdein
of Melhalla was made to measure a dread that pressed caring resilience to the brink of rebellious, insane rejection. She found, after all, she could not bear to witness the force and breadth of such agony.