Traitor's Knot (6 page)

That news fell like a blow to the chest. Strong man though he was, his heart missed a beat: for why else should the Koriani enchantresses have pursued their strangling interest in his father's offspring? Moved to slow rage, Sulfin Evend said tartly, ‘Old woman, which of my two bollocks would you take for your offering, that my prince might regain his autonomy?'

‘Your oath,' said Enithen Tuer, not gently. ‘Sworn now, on your blood and then repeated in the presence of a Fellowship Sorcerer. You must promise to journey to Althain Tower, where you will seal tonight's pledge in completion.'

‘No man could reconcile what you demand,' Sulfin Evend blazed back.

The seeress stared him down. ‘There must be. I have seen. One day fate will force you to choose which of two loyalties you will sacrifice. The land does not bear a blood-sworn oath lightly. The powers you invoke will be greater than you, and they will not treat with duplicity. You will stand before them, stripped naked, young man. Heart, mind, and body, you will be bound true. No way else can I give what you ask for.'

Sulfin Evend returned her glare, anguished. ‘Demand something different! My own life, if you must! I cannot consent to dishonour.'

The crone watched him, saddened. ‘Then go. Abandon the life debt you owe to s'Ilessid. Walk away loyal, and do nothing.'

Yet he could not. Should Lysaer be suborned by a necromancer's cult, the power at risk was too dire to unleash on an unsuspecting populace. The seeress had weighed the fibre of his character and measured him down to the bone. ‘Then fetch out your knife, and be quick, old witch. You have saddled me with the reckoning.'

Late Spring 5670

The unseasonable cold lingered on through the spring, blustering off the Bittern Desert and whistling over the stark bastion of Althain Tower, set amid the sere and frost-scoured hills. The tightly latched shutters rattled and creaked. Yet no influx of draught winnowed the candle in the snug chamber on the fourth floor. In the beleaguered lands to the west, this isolate haven remained: the tempestuous gales born of misaligned lane flux were not granted licence to enter.

The quarters where Sethvir of the Fellowship languished stayed sealed to inviolate calm. There, the wax light burned straight and true, as flame must, in the presence sustained by the white-robed adepts of Ath's Brotherhood.

Here, where tranquillity reigned absolute, the frail fulcrum that balanced the fate of the world trembled, poised, at the brink of disaster.

When Paravian presence had ebbed from the land, the Fellowship Sorcerers had shouldered the task of guarding Athera's mysteries. Heir to the last centaur guardian's gift of earth-sense, Sethvir provided their eyes and ears and much more: if he foundered now, the core balance of the planet would shift. The forces of expansive renewal would shrink, and the spiral would sink into entropy. Ath's initiates had extended their constant attendance ever since the Koriani Prime's insane bid to seize power distressed the flow of earth's lane flux. Although that imbalance was swiftly restored, the disruption deranged an array of spelled boundaries, including the ungoverned wells of raw chaos constrained by Athera's grimwards.

That black hour at midnight, while the wick burned serene, the most critical of these had been rededicated. Three yet remained, with the Sorcerers' resources strapped to the verge of paralysis.

Sethvir kept the crippling vigil at Althain. Day to day, moment to precarious moment, he endured, while the insurgent trend of town politics moved apace to exploit the lapse of the Fellowship's oversight. No colleague owned the breadth of vision to counterbalance the triplicate breach. The slow burn of stressed wards consumed him, relentless, while Asandir braved the perilous work in the field, realigning torn ciphers and weaving the boundaries back to their former stability.

Sethvir lay prostrate to mask the stressed pain that leached at his innate vitality. Drawn flesh over bone, his stilled face seemed winnowed beyond substance, and his form, wrought of gossamer spirit light. The ivory hands tucked over the coverlet seemed naked without their archivist's spatter of ink stains.

Tonight, as the lane tides surged toward solstice, Sethvir's office as Warden of Althain demanded active use of his earth-sense. The adepts on watch as he asked for assistance numbered an even six.

Four were arrayed at the cardinal points to protect his weakened aura. Two more steadied a pane of polished obsidian, Sethvir's preferred tool to reflect the impressions garnered from current events. The combed fall of his beard streamed over his chest, scarcely stirred by his shallow breathing. His far-seeing eyes remained closed. If the tension pinching his parchment lids seemed the sole sign of his living awareness, he did not stint the demands of his task.

The images that unreeled like smoke over glass stayed meticulously clear as an etching…

…in the mountains near Eastwall, an auburn-haired enchantress lays a quartz sphere aside, while her mind rides a day-dream in longing search of a black-haired, green-eyed man…who, in a place far removed, looks up from an opened book and smiles an affirmation. ‘Soon,' he assures, as her tender thought touches him. ‘Brave heart, I'll fulfill my sworn promise to meet you…'—while far to the south, riding the turquoise swells off the Scimlade, a blonde-haired captain on an ocean-bound brig paces over her tossing decks, for not knowing the same man's location…while elsewhere, another clad in the nine-banded robes of the Koriani Prime Matriarch nurses her fire-scarred hands and commands an avid circle of scryers to search for the selfsame spirit…

Beloved, or friend, or inveterate enemy, all would find their desires deferred: Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn seemed content to extend his earned sanctuary in the caverns beneath Kewar's mazes.

Without judgement, Sethvir recorded. The male adept on station at south glanced up in concern at his counterpart, on guard at north. ‘He's drastically weakened. Much longer's unwise.'

She inclined her hooded head in response, the silver-and-gold thread-work stitched into her mantle glinting through the hazed light of her presence. Her hands moved, gently cradled the Sorcerer's head, and touched reverent thumbs
to his brow. ‘Sethvir is aware. His senses are tracking a formative current that demands his listening attention.'

In the dark glass, meantime, the sequential ripples sown by Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn flowed one after the next, unobstructed.

…as in Halwythwood, alone, a younger girl weeps, and bitterly curses the name of the prince whose enemies destroyed her father…
then that image dissolved, to another,
showing a fat prophet and his dark-haired charge, asleep in the brush by the fringes of Atwood…

That instant, a static spark cracked across the polished face of the glass. The image sheared off, and re-formed to another: a view focused with the exquisite detail invoked by the blaze of true magecraft.

…in the close gloom of a candle-lit garret, a fighting man worn whipcord lean from campaign stands naked inside a scribed circle. At his side, a bent crone whispers quavering cantrips and calls the four elements to guard point!

Sethvir's eyes snapped open, their cerulean depths as vacant as fired enamel. ‘Luhaine!' His whisper carried an imperative edge, and his gaunt hands locked on the coverlet. ‘Luhaine! You are needed! Go to Erdane, at once! Our pledge to protect an old friend has come due.'

Yet the summons, once sent on the flicker of thought, today lacked the force to imprint the stream of the lane flux.

‘He'll need to use quartz.' The adept at the Sorcerer's feet moved forthwith. Though by nature, he would not raise power to affect the way of the world, on request, he could fetch and carry for the infirm. Beyond the scarlet carpet, he delved into an ambry tucked in an embrasure that once had served as an arrow-slit.

‘The clear point,' Sethvir prompted, his voice gravel rough. ‘The one charged last week in the midday sun, that's wrapped up in fleece and black silk.' He shut tortured eyes as the unpolished crystal he required was laid into his anxious hands.

He cupped the base, traced its contours in welcome, while candlelight flared through its streamered veils and fired the shimmer of rainbow inclusions. As the stone warmed and awoke to the Sorcerer's touch, he acknowledged its conscious presence. A flash of joy answered. Moved to a faint smile in response, Sethvir lifted his trembling grasp and puffed a soft breath to charge the front-facing facet. Then he placed his thumbs overtop and aligned his determined awareness.

The quartz matrix imprinted his patterned thought, amplified his intent, and recast its frequency as a beacon. Sethvir's appeal rode the magnetic tides and ranged outwards, bearing summons to his distant colleague…

Far southward, gusty winds spattered rain on the glass of the fire-lit hall where the crowned sovereign of Havish kept late hours in council with his weather-beaten
caithdein
, Machiel, and three other seasoned advisors. The hand-picked
foursome were not known for soft words. Under King Eldir's ringless, broad hands, the tally sheets lately compiled by the clerks showed the wear of a tactical chart spread for a siege. Machiel had a cross-bow disassembled on the table. His mood egg-shell brittle, he oiled and scoured the rust from the trigger latch, while his neighbours in their spotless brocades observed, wall-eyed, caught in the breach.

Yet the enemy confronting the restored realm of Havish wielded no concrete weapon.

As the imbalanced weather kept its savage grip, the sown crops were struck cold in the fields. The rich, coastal lowlands fared no better, as frost left the ground, and the driving storms drowned the farm-steads under sheet-silver puddles and ice melt. Swollen rivers were raised to boiling flood. Sea-going galleys were forced to stay battened, snugged to moorings within sheltered harbours. The roads were awash, soaked to bogging mud, and the looming spectre was famine.

Eyes gritted red from a sleepless night, King Eldir slouched in his lion-carved chair. A large man whose presence might not seem imposing, his square chin wore steely filings of stubble and a plain circlet contained his tousle of fading brown hair. The realm's scarlet tabard had no jewels or gold thread. His sleeve-cuffs were bare of embroidery.

In words just as blunt, he addressed a point of vacant air by the window nook. ‘Our straits are grim, Luhaine. If we can't charter blue-water ships and skilled captains, the reserve stores we have can't be shifted an inch.' His irritation sprang from the exasperating fact: the best crews under sail in rough waters were associates of Arithon s'Ffalenn, whose name was political disaster.

Eldir ran on, his intent features tracking the vexed breath of air, now riffling dust from his tapestries. ‘If, as you say, the rains won't cross the Storlains, then Havistock's harvest won't fail. But word's in from Quaid. The passes to Redburn are still choked with ice. Mercy on us, the inhabited country-side's devastated. Tomorrow, I'll be faced with reports that more children are wasting away from starvation!'

The discorporate Sorcerer paused in response, his florid style turned painfully clipped. ‘That's not why I've come. Your treasury's not wanting. You can hire more deepwater vessels. If you're uneasy in bed with his Grace of Rathain—'

‘That choice of alliance could start a war!' Machiel interrupted, busy hands scraping the firing pin.

Luhaine lost patience. ‘We already have a war! I'm here to help you stay clear of it!' To the High King, he added, ‘If you balk at liaison, then learn by example: Prince Arithon trained his captains by recruiting the cream of Eltair Bay's smugglers.'

‘It's his navigators we need, not his damnable sly habits!' the Minister of Trade ventured sourly.

‘So who needs to know?' snapped the spokesman from Mornos. ‘Men with esoteric knowledge can be kept under wraps.'

‘Who could guarantee their unsavoury characters?' The upright, prim chancellor forgot his ribboned cuffs and folded angry forearms on top of the oil rag. ‘Would they change their stripes for a starving babe, do you think, when the same breed of henchmen cut throats in cold blood for the Master of Shadow's assault at the Havens?'

‘That's enough!' Luhaine's outburst shook the floor with an ominous, subsonic vibration. ‘Let us not sully facts with irrelevant hysteria.'

Eldir stared back with unswerving brown eyes. ‘Should I be surprised? The one accursed name always saddles us with trouble. In fact, why have you come, Luhaine?'

Machiel remembered, by his disproving glance: the last unsought message from a Fellowship Sorcerer had plunged the royal court into mayhem, playing host when Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had required sanctioned oversight for the ransom of Lysaer's first, ill-starred princess. As the pause hung, the
caithdein
broke in, sarcastic, ‘Don't tell me the poisonous rumours are true? That Lysaer's
second
wife has gone missing?'

Luhaine's disembodied quiet stunned the air to suspended intensity.

Machiel unleashed a studied string of expletives, while the council-man who guarded the venues of trade leaned forward with fired agitation. ‘Dharkaron Avenger's Five Horses and Chariot! An outbreak of plague couldn't sever our rotten relations with the Alliance port towns any faster!'

King Eldir's jaundiced calm remained fixed, even dangerous, as he challenged the Sorcerer's silence. ‘Are you here to tell me an estranged royal wife will be scratching at my door and begging for sanctuary?'

‘No one knows what Lady Ellaine will choose,' Luhaine responded with acid delicacy. Tired of breaking Sethvir's packets of bad news, he would not give way and temporize. The straight possibility the princess might look south for safety could destroy the last, frayed thread of diplomacy between Havish and Tysan. Strained relations, on top of the ravages of famine, were going to rattle Avenor's choleric ambassador harder still. ‘Served with timely warning, you can field the problem with diplomacy. I remind your Grace: the lady has borne a living son to s'Ilessid. Since she won't realize her status under charter law, she could be advised of the fact she's entitled to ask our Fellowship for assistance.'

Before the harsh point was argued, that the Sorcerers might not have a free hand to answer in time to forestall repercussions, Machiel interrupted. ‘But Lysaer's son passed Fate's Wheel. Got himself scorched to heroic cinders by a Khadrim, so we heard.' Never fully at ease within walls, the forest-bred steward retrieved the cross-bow stock and used his skinning knife to ream out the quarrel slot. ‘We were led to understand that breaking news of the tragedy was what caused his mother's crazed flight in the first place.'

‘Not exactly.' The Sorcerer's shade whisked over the patterned carpet, fanning groomed heads and lace and riffling the coals in the grate to a sullen flare of heat. ‘Prince Kevor's still alive. An arcane recovery, not yet widely known.' Now poised by the mantel, Luhaine's presence all but bristled the air into hoar-frost. He required to say more. But today his fond penchant for diatribe was cut short as a hammering gust battered into the latched glass of the casement. The draught that seeped through stalled his windy voice and engendered a freezing silence.

A crowned high king attuned to all four of the elements, Eldir stood up. Braced short by his move, the wiser council-men stilled, while Machiel shivered outright and ceased his idle fuss with the workings of dismantled weaponry.