Grand Conspiracy (6 page)

A knifing blast of north wind shrieked over the byre and rattled the trees in the orchard. Elaira engaged the focusing properties of the small quartz crystal at her neck. Then, with the cold roaring through her like a cataract, she framed Arithon's likeness with all the detail she remembered: the fall of sable hair and the sharp angles of cheekbone and jaw. The lips which smiled too seldom, and the eyes, their green depths masked by ironies and a guarded defense too wary for most minds to fathom. Through a hazing shimmer of tears, she set perfect recall of the Shadow Master's features into the ice veils of the crystal suspended over Fionn Areth's face.

She tried to hear nothing else but the wind, to let the thrash of whipped branches batter all thought from her mind. But her fickle ears gave her clarity instead: every rolling, studded consonant and silver-toned vowel of the shapechanger's incantation. She clamped her fists against her clenched jaw, torn screaming inside by the insidious progression of the spell. Lirenda remained unmoved throughout, her diction as carved frost while the crystal came alive at her bidding. Hard bars of light beamed from the quartz point. These fell and diffused a spectral mask over the unformed features of the child. The dichotomy burned: through the light-cast image of Arithon's face, a sleeping boy's innocence, forced passive under ties of cold sorcery. In despair born of horror, Elaira stood witness as the webwork of whorled power matched spell rune to set seal, then sank like ribboned wire under blameless skin and bone, there to seed the slow elements of change.

Small differences which would not conform over time struck her now with wounding impact. As if in this one, trapped moment of existence, she must relive each nuance of Arithon's form and measure the particulars anew: these grubby boy's hands would mature to match the broad, sturdy frame of the herder stock of his birth; fingers that would never spin the filament of bardic melody from the wire of a lyranthe's string. The unmarked right forearm and small, callused palm, to stay unmarred by the welt from the light bolt which had seeded the geas of Desh-thiere's curse. The wrists and the ankles that would remain unscarred, never torn by the welded shackles and chain imposed by the blood feud with s'Ilessid begun on the worlds beyond West Gate. Elaira could but ache for the discrepancies that enemies would miss in the engrossing, blind fervor of hatred.

Through revulsion that mounted into lacerating pain, she knew that Arithon's likeness could never make even a second-rate substitute for the character that was the living man.

Long before the finish, when the flare of blue light sealed the ending cipher, her eyes spilled shamed tears. Undone at long last by her pity for the boy and her remorse for the suffering her decision must come to cast upon the grown man, Elaira knelt with blinded eyes. The hot bloom of power extinguished in the heart of the crystal; the small star of light vanished from the center of Fionn Areth's forehead. Elaira knew the critical moment was past. The shapechange to replicate Arithon's appearance had been accomplished beyond any chance of reprieve. Years might
elapse before this night's work reached completion, but the final outcome was set.

Grief for that irrevocability lanced her. Sickened for the part her vows had forced her to play, Elaira missed the odd look of riveted fascination Lirenda fixed on the template image of the Shadow Master still imprinted within the focal matrix of the dimmed quartz.

The portrait was one drawn by love, in each accurate detail a true map of Arithon's character. Through the interval while Elaira recovered herself, Lirenda beheld the features of the man as few others living had seen him. Hooked to inadvertent, rapt fascination, she strove to brand the s'Ffalenn likeness in mind for a later, more leisurely study.

Night by then had waned to the charcoal hour before dawn. The moon rode the horizon like yellowed ivory, with all but the brightest stars faded. The grasses lay rimed and bearded with new frost, and the wind dropped, leaving the air gripped fast in a stilled and penetrating cold.

Elaira awakened to the fact she was shivering. ‘We should be gone before the herd dogs awaken.'

Lirenda stirred, gathered up the chill quartz, and folded the supporting rods. ‘We can't abandon the boy to find his way home.'

Galled that anyone should think her so callous, Elaira stood up. ‘I'll carry him. A veiling of stayspells over the house would be a kindness as I take him inside. The wife's goodman sleeps lightly, and there's a crippled old sheep dog who sleeps on the rug by the hearth.'

‘No doubt the stair squeaks as well?' Lirenda said, scornful.

‘They'll have a ladder,' Elaira corrected. ‘These are simple folk, who trust a dog before locks and keys to safeguard their threshold.' She shook out damp leathers and knelt to gather up the sleeping child. ‘The cottage that has stairs isn't found on these moors. Babes sleep with their mothers until they're old enough to climb.'

‘Well, don't leave your jacket behind out of pity,' Lirenda dismissed, an acerbic lift to her brows. ‘I'd prefer that nobody knows we were here.'

‘Don't worry.' Elaira straightened up, a set to her jaw that betrayed her cutting distress. ‘The last thing I want is to acknowledge our night's work to anyone with a conscience.'

She turned toward the hay byre, the boy's limp form cradled
awkwardly in her arms. His face was his own. No trace showed yet of the profile he would bear at maturity. Through the course of those years, Elaira resolved, she would be far from Araethura. And she had misjudged, when she warned her senior that she would get puking drunk. The sickness inside her need not wait for spirits. Once Fionn Areth was tucked safely back in the loft with his sleeping siblings, she was going to snatch shelter in the nearest thicket and heave her guts inside out.

She reached the cottage doorway, churned-up with self-loathing that made her long for oblivion. As she freed a stealthy hand to raise the string latch, she wondered whether the boy would ever learn that his face was the gift of Koriani intervention, or if he would someday come to know the s'Ffalenn prince he was designed to decoy to captivity.

Autumn 5653

Still infirm, confined by her weakness to her wide bed in the Capewell sisterhouse, the ancient Prime Matriarch receives word from her lane scryer that the first step in the plan to take Prince Arithon captive is in place; Lirenda's task in Araethura is accomplished, and Fionn Areth's transformation a sealed future …

Clad in muddy leathers and a green reek of bog mire, the craggy Sorcerer, Asandir, rummages through Sethvir's pantry at Althain Tower; over rinds of molded cheese, stale bread, and one forlorn sack of rice that hosts a new litter of field mice, he makes disposition to Luhaine, ‘Since I can't survive on air and conundrums, that settles our dispute. You'll stay. I'll go to Caithwood and serve due redress against townsmen who believe trees can burn for the cause of misguided politics …'

Just returned from an errand in the Kingdom of Havish, Mearn s'Brydion, youngest brother and envoy of the clanborn Duke of Alestron, makes landfall at Middlecross; informed there that Prince Lysaer plans a royal inspection of the Riverton shipyards, he smiles in sharkish pleasure, then chooses to play the advantage of timing and let his demand for an inquiry coincide …

A
sandir thumped back the lid of the battered wooden clothes chest, which held the few personal effects he kept at Althain Tower. Craggier, and cross-grained as beached driftwood from the harrowing events that had taxed him to infirmity last season, he chose a formal cloak of heavier wool, a deep enough blue to be taken for black, with borders edged in bands of silver foil ribbon. The rich color brought out his lingering pallor.

To Luhaine, attendant upon his preparations like a cloud of morose, glacial air, the detail became the caustic reminder of a convalescence cut short by necessity. ‘You know you ought to be resting.'

Asandir paused. Recovery had left him just short of rail thin, the creases around his eyes knifed into dry flesh, and the rubbed ivory knuckles of each capable hand embossed through his blue-veined skin. Yet workworn as he appeared, the Sorcerer who shouldered the Fellowship's field work retained his uncompromised will. His gray eyes held the etched clarity of lead crystal, as he countered, ‘You could have asked my leave when you lent Sethvir the use of my black stallion.'

‘In fact, I could not,' Luhaine said, plaintive. ‘At the time he departed, you happened to be comatose.'

That line of defense died into an unsettled quiet, neither of the
Sorcerers anxious to pursue the confrontation head-on. Though Sethvir spent little time in his private quarters at Althain Tower, the chamber was cluttered as a junk stall. Mismatched chairs had acquired heaps of horse harness. Two marble plinths were piled with snake skins, spancel hoops of oak, a tea canister missing its top. The spare pallet held skeins of wool yarn, brought in to remedy a straw hamper stuffed to bursting with holed stockings. Their odd, distorted imprints came and went in the dance of shadows cast by the candle set on a tin pricket.

Asandir knelt on the scarlet carpet, a lit form against the gargoyle shapes sculpted from the surrounding gloom. Nor did he accept Luhaine's comment as he rummaged through the bottom of the clothes trunk. ‘Even unconscious, I would have heard you speak. You know that.' He unearthed an item that chinked metallic protest.

‘At least with no horse we forced you to rest until you regained strength to walk. Do we have to go through this all over again?' Luhaine huffed aside from the grounding threat of steel as his colleague raised a black-handled hunting knife and tested the edge with his fingertip. ‘If you knew how it felt to live as a shade, you'd stop doing that.'

‘You're right.' Asandir snicked the blade back into its sheath. Draft fluttered the dribbled candleflame as he added the knife to his select pile of necessities. ‘Out of body, I'd have small use for skinning a deer.' The invasive smell of vacancy and dust made petty argument seem a welcome affirmation of life. ‘An unnecessary sacrifice, whatever your case, had you taken a moment and asked the bread mold and field mice to feed anyplace else but the pantry.'

Luhaine snorted. ‘The Prime Matriarch has launched a new plot, and you're bound in knots for a miserable few rinds of spoiled cheese?'

Asandir stood. Large boned and imposing as an ocean-flying albatross, with the same matchless grace when he moved, he folded one arm and tucked his other fist beneath the clean-shaven jut of his chin. ‘Luhaine?' he asked with piercing mildness. ‘What under Ath's sky have the Koriathain done this time?'

Stripped by a glance keen enough to shear granite, Luhaine regretted his impulsive choice to broach that particular sore subject. ‘I don't know yet,' he hedged. ‘Once Sethvir returns, I'll hope to be freed to find out.'

Asandir grunted. Unfazed by his colleague's transparent evasion, he knelt and bundled his supplies into a weatherproof blanket roll. ‘Whatever unpleasant hunches you harbor, I could venture to Capewell and confront the Prime's purpose headlong.'

‘That shouldn't be necessary.' Rather than reveal the shattering ill turn, that Morriel's interests had broken Elaira's retreat at Araethura, Luhaine breezed toward the doorway. ‘Sethvir ought to find his way back before solstice. Koriani sigils can't trace Arithon at sea. Since his fleet sailed from Innish with provisions to last through midwinter, the matter should bide until then.'

And must, Luhaine raged in concealing silence; with six camps of Alliance armed forces blocking the safe sanctuary of half the clan bloodlines in Tysan, Caithwood's trees perforce must claim preference.

Blessedly practical, Asandir tied the last thong on his bundle and snuffed the failing candle. ‘Then I'll enjoy being spared the company of a bedridden harridan with a grudge.' Faced with a second, urgent transfer by lane force, then an overland journey to be started afoot, the bent of his thoughts swung full circle. ‘Sethvir needs my horse before I do in any case. That stallion's the only flesh-and-blood creature I trust to stand firm through a flux of grand conjury.'

Luhaine called in droll gloom through the doorway, ‘I'm forgiven in advance if you're tossed off the back of some clansman's borrowed hack?'

Asandir straightened, a lank scarecrow in black leathers. His shoulder-length hair shone like loomed cloud in the fading light through the arrow slit, and his sudden, rare laugh shattered echoes off the ancient Paravian stonework. ‘You're absolved if I happen to fall off a nag.' He raised a lean leg, kicked the trunk shut, and strode clear of Sethvir's belongings. ‘But for the rest of the secrets you're brooding like eggs, I'll hold mercy under advisement.'

The sundown surge of the lane tide carried the Fellowship Sorcerer southward to Mainmere. The circle that delivered him lay under the gloom of near dark. Stars bloomed like punched sparks on a cobalt zenith, and wind-combed, thin cirrus overhung the ink waters of a restless, tide-roiled estuary. Asandir stood motionless and allowed his reeling senses to reorient. More worn from the transfer than he liked to admit, he sorely missed the
warm presence of his horse, and the satin black shoulder that usually braced up his balance on arrival.

He willed himself steady, while around him the raised play of lane force subsided. The bleached, weathered runes laid into rinsed bedrock sparked and flashed as the discharge bled off, actinic white to a whisper of blue, before fading through the spectrum of ultraviolet into the ordinary night.

An owl called, mournful. Beyond the stilled circle, the tumbled-down ruin of the Second Age fortress slept under its shrouding of vine. Past memory ran deep through the rain-scoured granite. Where the wide grasslands of the coast joined the sea, unicorns had once run like braided light on the hilltops, gathered for their seasonal migration. The songs of the sunchildren followed their course, while the joyous feet of the dancers had circled, waking the mysteries of renewal each cycle of equinox and solstice. The coming of mankind at the dawn of the Third Age had woven new thread through that ancient tapestry. From Mainmere, at midsummer, to the landing at Telmandir, the painted boats of townborn celebrants had rowed south under torchlight for the water festival. Each year, humanity made way for the passage of mysteries that were Ath's gift to this world, their presence too bright for mortal endurance, outside of those families born into the time-tested strength of clan lineage.

Now, no burning torches etched the wavecrests like copper engraving. Nor did the memory of vanished powers linger, except in the unquiet peace of broken stones, and in the leashed sorrow of the Sorcerer who addressed them to settle the trace resonance of his urgent passage. He paid the abandoned fortress his respect. Despite the precision of Sethvir's kept records, and the writings of the Paravian loremasters, Mainmere wore legends whose truths were no man's to unlock.

The centaur mason Imaury Riddler was said to have placed a wisdom in each of the megaliths set into the primary foundation. At need, stone would answer, latent power unchained in whispered response to the step of the one who faced the hour of Athera's most deadly peril.

Tonight, for Asandir, the dark rocks stayed silent. Only the storm-tattered crowns of the beech trees spoke on the stiff inland breeze, the first warning of winter borne on the dying taint of turned leaves.

Nor was the Sorcerer alone in that place.

As he strode from the quiescent white runes of the focus
pattern, three forest-bred clan scouts stepped from the brush in cool, unafraid expectation.

‘Kingmaker,' greeted the erect elder in the lead. ‘My Lady Kellis, Duchess of old Mainmere, bids you welcome. In her name, how may we serve the land?'

Asandir's arched eyebrows showed surprise for the pleasure of the company. ‘She knew I was coming?'

‘She believed someone must.' The lead scout reached the Sorcerer, arm extended for the customary wrist clasp. In clipped speech, he explained, ‘The grandmother seer who made simples at the Valenford crossroad was burned last month by the Alliance of Light's Crown Examiner. She screamed as she died that her vision showed burning trees, and sunwheel soldiers wielding torches that opened the sky to a rain of scorched blood. The duchess was worried Caithwood might be threatened. She set us to watch in case help came.'

‘Daelion have mercy for the wrongful death sentence given that misfortunate seer! I'm here,' Asandir affirmed, taller by a head, his blanket roll rammed under one elbow. Shock lent a quickened spring to his step as he let the scouts lead him onward.

‘So is Caithwood endangered?' asked the woman among them, bitter with worry as her lanky, cat's stride carried her through the maze of razed battlements.

Asandir followed through tufted bull grass toward the steep, crumbled stair to the sea gate. ‘Yes. Though the sealed orders from s'Ilessid were sent from Avenor only this morning. You have horses?'

‘Even better.' The woman pointed toward the broken-down archway that funneled the hail of another voice, cautious above the muted splash of water off a bulwark of tide-washed stone. ‘We've got a smuggler's boat from the river delta waiting. Her master's a canny old fisherman who's moved raided goods out of every deep cove in the forest. Where do you wish to make landfall?'

His descent economical on the mossy, cracked slabs of the stair, Asandir gave his answer. ‘The haven you have nearest a camp with fast horses, if I'm to spare more than green trees. How many refugee families are hiding south of the trade road?'

Just as sober, the scout captain replied, ‘All of them.'

Asandir's response held barely leashed rage as the small party arrived on the landing. ‘Then thank that seeress's unquiet shade for our chance of keeping them alive.' He stepped from the
crumbled breastwork into the battered fishing sloop held in waiting by a boy draped with cod-fragrant oilskins.

‘Grace, for your presence,' he murmured in blessing, then assumed the dew-damp seat by the thwart. The bilge swirling under the boards at his feet stank of fish, and the prow held a heaped mound of trawl nets. To the balding, barrel-round man who surged to loose jib and mainsails, Asandir made direct inquiry. ‘Would you mind being loaned an unfair advantage?'

The fisherman's teak face split with laughter. ‘Ye'd call down a gale? Toss up yer dinner, don't come crying to me.'

‘How much can your craft handle?' Asandir wedged his blanket roll out of reach of chance spray, while the boy and two of the duchess's older scouts clambered in at his side. The woman stayed behind, her farewell brief as she shoved off the battered craft into the rip of the tide.

The dour helmsman grunted. ‘I'll warrant my dearie's canvas and sticks'll take more abuse than your belly. We'll do ten knots, if the old besom's pushed.'

‘So, we'll see.' Grim since the news of the witch's burning, Asandir touched the scout silent. He chose the heading for the helmsman himself, west-northwest, for the cove that lay nearest the trade road, which carved a diagonal scar through Caithwood and the low dales of Taerlin.

The fisherman stared at him, his meaty hands guided by instinct as he hauled in the mainsheet. Still regarding the Sorcerer, he called to his crew, a grandson or nephew by the look-alike stamp of young features. ‘Lad, clew in the foresail.'

His corded shoulders bunched as he made his line fast and hauled the boat's tiller to port. The bow swung, sheered up a dousing sheet of spray while the headsail and main clamored taut. The hull rolled, settled into a steep heel, bashed and thrummed by the sucking drag of ebb tide. One squinted eye on the set of his canvas, the fisherman spoke at last in mild censure, ‘Can't keep yon heading until the slack water at midnight. Current's too stiff, no matter the lay of the wind.'

‘So we'll see,' Asandir repeated, his lean mouth pared thin with irony. He tucked his blanket roll under his shoulders, then reclined against the shining, wet wood and shut his eyes.

The older of the two clan scouts huddled into his fringed jacket and repressed the urgency to speak out of turn and disturb him.