TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (32 page)

'Wield sorcery?
Me?'
Jieret shot to his feet, slammed his head on low rock, and swore as the pain whirled him dizzy.

'For your life, and the safeguard of your war band,' said Arithon, no whit complaisant, but cornered by grief, that a friend must weigh such a wild-card decision. His stripped apprehension matched the horror in the red-bearded chieftain who towered over him; who, as a boy of eleven years, had been bound by a sorcerer's oath to be spared from the slaughter at Tal Quorin. Twice since that day, he had stood down the brunt of the Mistwraith's possession, when Desh-thiere's curse had overwhelmed his prince.

The passage of time had not loosened that bonding. To the grown man, the sovereign prince gave his honesty, delivered with personal care and sincerity few spirits alive ever witnessed. 'No choice to make lightly. If we try this, and by sheer courage we prevail, the end play will still carry terrible risks. Not least, you could find yourself burned for black spellcraft on some crown examiner's pile of faggots. I might be oathbound to Asandir to use every means to survive. But Dharkaron stand witness, in this, I can't speak as your crown prince. First, as my friend, you would have to be willing. I won't undertake the first step of initiation without your wholehearted consent.'

Jieret swallowed, resisting the battlefield impulse to suck on a pebble to dampen a mouth dry with fear. He looked at his hands, well taught by Caolle to wield honest steel, and thickened with callus from rough, outdoor living. 'It's a difficult service I have of you, prince.'

Arithon's mouth flexed with the rueful trace of a smile. 'You'll recall, at the outset, I tried to avoid it.'

But Jieret found no refuge in banter. A practical man who respected his own limits, his courage was defined by self
-
confidence. At home in the wilds that framed his domain, he towered like rooted oak, unbowed by grief or adversity. The sure carriage and maturity earned through a lifetime of sound leadership came undone in that moment. Dreadful uncertainty creased new lines in his windburned face, while a gust through the defile fanned the gray streaks at his temples. Hung on the cusp of grave responsibility and a hope strung on madness and folly, he measured the chasm that yawned at his feet.

He must not tread the abyss without thought, though at Traithe's behest, in behalf of this prince, he had experienced arcane powers once before. 'I don't regret any day in your company. On the contrary. You've always done right by my trust. Do you have any sureties to offer me?'

'None at all.' Arithon absorbed the recoil that shocked through the glance held between them. 'To awaken your talents, we would first invoke chaos. Break down the mental patterns of resistance, lose the ties to your flesh, until you had no equilibrium left to perceive without taking charge of your talent. True Sight is the conscious landscape of dream. An awareness read by the inward eye, not the dense illusion that governs the outer. You would be cast adrift to unriddle the mysteries. All power moves through the higher vibrations, past reach of the physical senses. But the lowest of frequencies by their physical nature always invoke the higher harmonics. I'd give you my music to guide you.'

A ribbon of sweat licked down Jieret's neck. 'Unlike my father, I haven't been shown the day and the hour of my death.' He braced through a moment of wrenching uncertainty, then made his resolve with the same rugged character that had sustained the hard years of his chieftainship. 'I will shoulder the risk for the lives of my war band, and for my daughter, Jeynsa. Let her not swear her
caithdein's
oath to Rathain ahead of her twentieth birthday.'

* * *

Two hours before dawn, the temperature plunged, with the snow
fine as ice-tipped powder. In the grotto by the Aiyenne, new spangles of hoarfrost etched the sandstone ledges in lacework traceries of leaded silver. Reclad in his own faintly damp shirt and the ribboned silk doublet first chosen to mingle in Jaelot, Arithon looked displaced, the nonchalant elegance of his dress at sharp odds with the predatory, lean face of the fugitive. Then he pulled on his freshly brushed jacket, laced up the leathers beaten soft by the riverside, and strapped on his boots, his small knife, and the tinder kit on its hide-and-cord strap, that he kept in remembrance of the dead trapper. No fine silk showed through as he knelt and stirred up the dying coals. He could have been overlooked as a younger clan scout, prepared to range out on a routine patrol, or to lay traps for marauding headhunters.

Winter in Daon Ramon wore down all men alike. The diet of dried stores and lean game melted off summer's flesh, until bone and muscle pressed through taut, windburned skin. Touched in faint outline by the ruddy glow off the embers, Arithon seemed neither clever or dangerous as he prodded the saturated clumps of tobacco spread to dry in the warmed, iron bowl of the pannikin. The natural grace of his movements lacked symmetry. Each simple task he performed became hampered by his injured hand, its bundled wrapping held cradled from harm's way in the crook of his left elbow.

Jieret observed the course of his halting progress, unable to sleep where he lay, curled in the restored warmth of his bearskin. A liegeman forgot at his peril that this prince had been trained to a sorcerer's mastery.

Memory too often forgave the sharp edges. The Crown Prince of Rathain was nothing if not a creature of shadow and subtlety. He might appear too slight for his clothing, the left hand's clean fingers too finely bred for the sword. Yet the semblance of youthful fragility was misleading. On that day, Arithon s'Ffalenn was in fact fifty-five years of age. His black hair showed no dusting of gray. Beneath every mark of his mortal frailty ran the thread of uncanny design: his Grace had drunk from the Five Centuries' Fountain, enspelled by Davien the Betrayer to endow an unnatural longevity. The mysteries had once opened to his power of command, until the slaughter done in defense at Tal Quorin seared out the vision that accessed his talent.

Seventeen years had elapsed since the summons to Caithwood, when
caithdein
and prince had last exchanged words face-to-face. The spellbinder who had partnered the intervening absence was not here to lend counsel or valued perspective.

Blind faith remained, for a blood-bonded loyalty flawed by the Mistwraith's curse.

The trust that Earl Jieret held for the man was now asked to transcend human reason and cognizance. He could not comprehend the uncanny dangers he might face. Nor would the seasoned skills he possessed afford any shred of protection. Arithon had explained with unvarnished clarity: once started, there could be no chance to turn back.

Now, while nerve faltered, Jieret clamped his jaw hard. He thought instead of his daughter. Despite all the fire and verve of her character, she was too young for the weight of a
caithdein'
s inheritance. The difficult morass of this prince's trials was no fit burden to lay on a green girl. Let Jeynsa enjoy her carefree, sweet innocence, before she must shoulder the brute course of learning that would lead her to Rathain's stewardship.

'Jieret?' Arithon inquired gently. 'The infused leaves are now dry enough to burn. Are you certain you want to go through with this?'

Words came, with none of the heart's hesitation. 'I'm in your hands, liege.' Earl Jieret threw off the mantling bearskin and sat up, annoyed that his effort to rest had bought nothing but disgruntled misgiving and the ranging, dull ache of stiff muscles. He linked his broad hands, stretched his shoulders until his tight joints popped in protest. Weather change coming, he noted by the twinge in the forearm that had once taken a headhunter's arrow. He felt light-headed, hungry, but his prince had advised against having anything to eat. 'Let's have this thing over with.'

'I'll stand with you, each step.' Arithon scraped the dried tobacco from the pan and packed the crushed leaves into a carved stone pipe. 'I believe in your strength.'

Jieret rubbed clammy palms on the thighs of his leathers. He felt no such certainty, though the rest of the items his prince had prepared seemed deceptively unprepossessing: a handful of acorns peeled apart and hollowed out; a green length of birch twig; the hoarded stub of a beeswax candle; a flake of clear mica picked from the gravel by the riverbed. Shaved bark, rolled for spills, and a handful of quartz pebbles had been gleaned from the drift-mantled countryside. A hollowed depression in the rock held a puddle of snowmelt, and beside that, a clod of black earth still spiked with hoarfrost. The deer-antler stylus Theirid used to scratch tallies had been borrowed and resharpened into an awl.

Arithon pressed the packed pipe into Jieret's unsteady hand. 'Take this, sit down, and hold back for my signal. Certain ritual safeguards will need to be set before we can begin in earnest.' He paused, expectant, while his
caithdein
settled near the fire pit.

The coals had burned low. A bearding of ash damped the warmth that arose from the heated stone underneath. Jieret blotted the beading of sweat that sprang on his forehead and temples. 'I'm sorry,' he admitted, discomposed as Arithon's concerned gaze read and weighed each sign of his unquiet turmoil. 'Only a fool does not fear the unknown.'

'The fine line that separates idiocy from courage.' Arithon grasped his friend's shoulder in sympathy. 'I share the same doubts.' Each safeguard he set must be done from memory, with no sighted guidance to know whether an obstruction deflected his course of intent. 'We both must walk blind.'

Jieret clasped the royal wrist in stark affirmation of an honesty that commanded his respect. The clean-breasted admission that hope was uncertain served to buttress his determination. He would not back down, could not so lightly abandon the lives of his war band and his Companions. Their brave stand must confront the Alliance of Light on the field. If they took the shock of Lysaer's assault, he would risk himself first, that death not be granted the least invitation to triumph.

'For Jeynsa and Feithan, I'll see you come through this.' Arithon turned his hand, completing the traditional grip shared between adult clansmen. 'Not for my life's sake would I forfeit the bonding first sworn to spare Steiven's son at Tal Quorin.'

The winter winds spoke through the interval while the two men sustained the wrist clasp of amity. Neither one wished to break free. The past at their backs held too much strife and bloodshed, with the future before them a landscape of thorny uncertainty. Too many hopes rode upon tonight's stakes, and too many failures would cascade from false steps or misjudgment.

Then Arithon said, 'I have one wish, that we stand side by side on the hour of Jeynsa's royal oath swearing.'

Jieret tightened his hold, gripped by sudden, raw need. 'Make me one promise, that after my death you honor my daughter with the same pact you gave me as a child in Strakewood.'

'Ath!' Arithon released his hold as though burned, his skin raised to a startled, bright flush. 'She's a woman! One day she'll marry. If her man dislikes me, a blood oath of friendship would force closer ties than a kinship.'

'Even so.' Jieret smiled, a spiked twist to his humor. 'She's a vixen, sure enough, all sharp tongue and brash courage. When I'm gone, you'll become her charge as Rathain's sanctioned crown prince. As the girl's father, I'd leave her in no other hands than your own. Your first pledge was given for Steiven and Dania. Let this one be done for me.'

'For you, I refuse nothing.' Hands crossed in formality at his heart, Arithon knelt, sovereign prince to sworn liegeman. 'Take my royal oath, I'll swear lifelong friendship with Jeynsa. Accept with the understanding my mage talent is silenced. Unless that fact changes, there can be no certainty the blood tie will be joined the same way.'

'No matter.' Throat locked by a sudden, fierce rush of emotion, Jieret coughed. 'From you, my brother, one word is enough to assure your honest intent.' He rested content, the paralyzing weight of his apprehension lifted from his broad shoulders. 'Do what you will. I am ready.'

That affirmation of absolute trust made the next step most difficult to complete. Arithon broke away, green eyes too bright. He steeled his unsteady nerves. Veiled light from the embers imprinted his slight frame, swathed in crude hide and patched furs, the uninjured fingers pressed to his face, fine boned as a master's engraving. For a struck moment, he could find no words, until the wealth of his bard's gift ceded him lines from an ancient epic.
'By the grace of such subjects, great kingdoms exist.'

Then stillness became an insupportable trial; further thought weighed too grievous to bear. Resolved to grim purpose, the Master of Shadow bent to his herb stores and tipped crushed leaves of cedar on the coals. While the fragrant, white smoke coiled upward and billowed, he snatched up the birch twig and traced a ceremonial circle within the enclosed stone of the grotto. He joined the scribed line, with Jieret and himself set inside. Eyes shut, he whispered a Paravian invocation. He blew a breath to the east, stepped a quarter turn in place, then lit the candle stub to the south and set it upon the perimeter. Faced due west, he traced a rune symbol in water; northward, the same, but with earth.

Nor was his face peaceful, or his speech unstrained as he enacted the ritual that called elemental forces to stand guard. Where once, he would have
seen
the fine blaze of light that affirmed each stage of his conjury, now, he performed by blind rote. The absence of response, the blank vacancy of senses that once had exulted in the layered intricacy of Ath's creation remade each dance step of form into punishment. The tears spilled and ran; the matchless voice faltered, seared by a fire of remorse only three living spirits understood.

Asandir had first measured the scope of the loss, six years after Tal Quorin. Dakar, as well, had shouldered the unendurable whole, on the night of grand scrying that had shaped the tactics whose failure had seen thirty thousand dead at Dier Kenton Vale. None else but Elaira, who knew Arithon's true heart, could have foretold the bleak anguish brought on by tonight's reenactment.

Earl Jieret, as forced witness, shared the shocked revelation: the true price meted out for the clan lives spared from the sword in Strakewood Forest. Like the scant few before him, he watched Arithon lay flat his defenses. The focused purity of intent softened the severe s'Ffalenn features, left them exposed to a child's stripped wonder of expectation. Then the moment of crux, when a lifetime's honed talent launched in flight, and failed to cross through the veil. Base matter stayed obdurate. Sealed vision froze all the world's dazzling majesty to the drab planes and angles within range of self-limited eyesight.

Nor could the lamed spirit vised in the breach shield his bared will from the harrowing. Arithon's vulnerable longing transformed, remade on a breath into ripping loss outside grief or tears to describe; as though light itself lost its luster to limitless darkness, or a dreamed, perfect pearl dimmed to crude gravel at the mere brush of a hand.

Arithon drew in a tormented breath. His face, his whole posture seemed wracked out of true, as though the living heart had torn out of him, and Ath's gift of life made his body a prison pinched out of songless clay.

That moment, Jieret would have begged sky and earth to be anyplace else on Athera. He had seen scouts die of lacerating wounds, but not suffer such agony as this. The bitter understanding sucked him hollow with dread, that no mortal who touched the core of grand mystery could emerge from the crucible unchanged. Any subsequent break in connection left a scar which cut deeper than transient hurt to the flesh. Hard on the heels of unwanted recognition, he knew drowning fear, that he had agreed to embark on that journey without any grasp of the consequences. He had never glimpsed the irreversible sorrows, if tonight's course of expedience succeeded, and he survived the first trial of initiation and cast his conscious awareness into the unseen realms past the veil.

Too soon, Arithon s'Ffalenn knelt before him, his regard a set mix of flint determination and empathy, and a lit spill in his trembling hand.

Just as racked by regret, Jieret accepted the offering. He raised the stone pipe, packed with the tobacco that had been soaked in an infusion of crushed tienelle leaves. 'Whatever may come, keep your safe distance from the fumes as you promised!'

Stripped to sincerity, Arithon said, 'On that point, I won't bend.'

Amid myriad risks, untrained use of tienelle might prove the most unforgiving. Though spiked tobacco was too mild to be lethal, Jieret received warning: the herb's myriad poisons would induce a withdrawal of sickness and cramping. The bystander who breathed tainted smoke could succumb. Arithon could not transmute the effects, reft as he was from his mage talent. The bard's art he offered to guide Jieret's progress relied on his voice, and even slight nausea would stress the control he required to sustain an exacting, true pitch. Beyond physical ills, the herb's visionary properties would unshutter the gates of the mind. Every damaging event held in memory would break free, an unbridled reliving too virulent for conscious awareness to grapple. Under such influence, the Mistwraith's geas might emerge in full force and smash the ties binding sanity.