Traitor's Knot (39 page)

Sulfin Evend stared, horrified, as the amalgamate shades of the corrupted dead moved on and poured into the open mouth of Gace Steward, who howled in shock from the side-lines.

Measured and marked, already prepared as the vessel of a practising necromancer, Gace's human instinct to scream became choked. His eyes strained wide open, then bulged as he gagged. The reflex retained no intelligent will: only the animal urge of warm flesh to cling to instinctive survival. The struggle lasted no more than an instant before the assaulted body gave way. Gace's lungs filled. His auric field bloomed like sludge with the haze of its unclean possession,
that fast.

Sulfin Evend saw, sickened. Harrowed urgency drove him. He wrestled to span the discharged cross-bow, while the shuddering frame of the palace official completed its grisly transition and became the empowered receptacle. Slack-lidded, replete, it surrendered to the addictive yoke of the master.

Gace Steward straightened to the chime of spelled chains. Infused with the presence of undead magics, he leaned on the barred door. His foam-flecked lips bowed into a smile.

‘Sundown has arrived!' The evil he bore was a palpable force. ‘Kill us, sweet fool. Did you realize you had left my master's minion in charge of a prearranged stable of surrogates? I have seven other gibbering shells that your heroic work has sucked vacant!' Glittering, dark eyes raked over his adversary. ‘Can't you see, bantling? Althain's Warden has failed you. He's left them unsealed and well bridled for riding! We'll just mount another. For each one you drop, our strength will increase! Kill the last, and we'll jump. What can you do? We'll just seize the next whole man we encounter and crush him to serve by strangling his will by main force!'

Less
than a second had passed since first contact. Repossession happened that quickly. Sulfin Evend rushed his hands, fumbling the last crank of the windlass in his need to engage the trigger latch. He slotted a fresh bolt. Clammy with sweat, he already saw that his striving was useless. The spells that Sethvir had set into the chains secured no more than the body, with the opportune ending by fire and sword thrown away with the advent of night.

Why had Lysaer s'Ilessid deliberated? Worse yet, why had he broken orders and come, against every adamant warning?
For his sovereign step still descended the stair, straight into a morass of danger.

Winter 5671

Sulfin Evend gave a frantic shout up the stairwell for the Blessed Prince to stand clear. Then he slammed the ward-room door in between. He could not drop the bar. The panel was designed to bolster security, and never fashioned to lock from within. Shoulder braced to that insecure barrier, loaded cross-bow in hand, he faced the warped creature shut inside the cell, along with four corpses and the shells that seemed as men, but were no less than a deadly, suborned pack of surrogates. The wrists of each one remained cuffed in silver. Their hands would stay shackled. Stout locks were tongued through the reinforced slot in the barrier that restrained them. Unless this fell cult could walk its possessed through forged steel, the corrupted could not break out of physical containment.

‘Give this up,' the Lord Commander said, steady. ‘To have Lysaer, you must first go through me. Nor will I let his Blessed Grace cross this threshold while I have one resource to stop him. Posture on, you stick puppet! Rant all you like. That won't change the fact you can't touch me.'

Brave words, or more likely, the stance of a fool. Cult spells, or loosed wraiths might slip through such barriers at whim. Yet a defender with his back to a door, and no options could but hope Asandir's given word backed the truth: that free will held aligned by a Fellowship warding could not be displaced or fall to the crippling coercion of necromancy. For the stakes at play now risked far worse than his life. Should he die under rites, no matter how foul, Sulfin Evend stood his ground on a Sorcerer's promise that his self-aware spirit could not be denied a natural passage across the Wheel's turning.

Behind the barred grille, the reanimate flesh that had once been Gace Steward
proffered an oily challenge. ‘Guard your prince if you can. Though how can you react? He has not paid heed to your warning.'

The threat was not empty. Outside, the filtered sound of raised voices moved nearer. Descending footsteps came on, undeterred in their disastrous approach down the stairwell. Then Lysaer's called inquiry affirmed that restraint had been thrown to the four winds and jeopardy. Or,
perhaps not:
the invidious smirk on the face of the captive suggested some form of a lure.

‘What have you done?' Sulfin Evend cried, shocked. He had no mage training, could not guess what vicious mischief might have been tried to turn Lysaer's sensibilities.

A desperate, split-second remained to respond. This time, Sulfin Evend must act alone, without the mystical powers of a Paravian focus at lane crest, and with none of Sethvir's strength to back him.

He spun, shoved open the door, and plunged into the gloom of the stairwell. A kick slammed the iron-strapped panel behind him. No moment to spare, to engage bar or lock, or snatch the lit torch from the wall sconce. Ahead, through the welter of uncertain light, four men approached unaware. Only one might be saved. Sulfin Evend's live body must become Lysaer's shield. Without time for outcry, past reach of sane action, the Alliance commander slapped the spanned cross-bow into his left hand. He drew his knife in the course of his pelting dash upwards.

Between the slapped echoes of his own raced strides, he heard his most competent captain call downwards in concerned inquiry.

Sulfin Evend ran silent. He had no breath for grief. Reason and words would
be far
too slow to deflect the on-coming disaster. He could do
nothing.
Just hurl himself, sprinting, up the turnpike stair, driving muscles that screamed from exertion. He kept on. Watched the curve of the walls unveil course after course of blank risers. More torches passed. His wake set them fluttering. Warped shadows capered around him. A man who prayed might have beseeched fate. Sulfin Evend drove forward, panting. Let the distance from the closed cell be enough. He needed no less than sixty feet, with an additional margin for safety. He counted each pace, three stairs to the yard. Seventeen, eighteen, with his winded chest tight unto bursting.

Then at last, a clear view: Lysaer s'Ilessid in shining white, his bare head raw gold in the flame-light. By strict orders, three trusted, armed officers accompanied him.

Frustrated agony found no release. Their Lord Commander saw his dread realized. The royal party had already drawn too close, with the tactical blunder past help to reconcile. Asandir had been ruthlessly explicit: under darkness, a cult working could encompass the energy field raised by its operant source.
‘There lies the range of an enabled necromancer, and by extension, any thralled subject who has been suborned under his power.'

The abomination in the cell had attached three subordinate entities whose
drained corpses had dropped without fight. Cerebeld's death yielded four, then Gace Steward, five; attack, if it came, would be fiercely potent. Conquest might come without warning. Climbing, sides splitting, Sulfin Evend dared not gasp even a last-minute plea. He could only act to ensure Lysaer's safety by the only crude measure at hand.

He levelled the cross-bow. Aimed and squeezed the trigger. Cable spanged in release. The shot bolt hissed upwards and slapped the lead officer in the pit of his throat. His choked, surprised corpse and the discharged weapon fell and struck the stair simultaneously. As the tumbling body and discarded weapon crashed downwards, Sulfin Evend threw his small knife. The missile took the man just behind Lysaer, the blade struck stark through the eye. The kill fell, gouting blood. The dying man's weight jostled the Blessed Prince, just stiffened in shock, and now staggered forward into the last man-at-arms, who led a purposeful half-pace ahead.

While the soldier's rocked frame swayed to recover balance, Sulfin Evend leaped the threshing tumble of dead limbs as his shot officer caromed down the stairwell. Gagging on bile, he charged upwards, sword drawn, and cut down Lysaer's last standing guard:
his most trustworthy field veteran.
The hard, upward sword-thrust rammed between ribs and pierced a true man through the heart.

Sulfin Evend met his victim's betrayed glance, eye to eye. The stabbed carcass jerked, cramped to spasms of agony. His sunk blade wrenched away as he hurled the body aside. Strangling down nausea, the Alliance commander bore on. He knocked into Lysaer, slammed the white-clad form backwards and tripped his legs at the ankle. They fell, locked together. For cruel expediency, Sulfin Evend pinned his liege flat amid the splashed filth and blood that befouled the risers.

‘Burn the dead!' he snapped, tortured. Though a slaughtered man voided and drummed heels at his elbow, and two others thudded in a downward plunge towards the shut door of the ward-room, he slapped down Lysaer's outrage. ‘Torch them! Now! Trust me, trust my Sight! I am not possessed.'

Vivid with fury, Lysaer snarled, ‘Are you not? Then why did you send for my presence?' His wrestler's response replaced accusation. He thrashed to hurl what must seem a rogue murderer over backwards down the stone stair.

Pressed to dirty tactics, Sulfin Evend snapped a knee into his liege's groin. Lysaer's resistance broke instantly. His gasping surrender could not last a moment. Even in agony, eyes pinched against tears, he shuddered and clawed to retaliate.

‘Damn you,
listen!'
His relentless strength pinned hard overtop, Sulfin Evend snatched a fist in splashed silk. ‘I never sent, do you hear me?' He ripped the Divine Prince's collar. Rich fastenings scattered. The rebounding clatter of flung pearls echoed downwards, each pin-point impact struck like tapped glass through the shuddering throes of the dying.

‘Burn my fallen!' Hands still moving, Sulfin Evend spoke fast. ‘For the Light's sake! You must do as I say.'

Lysaer bucked, enraged. ‘You are not yourself! Or why would you slaughter your best officers!'

His Lord Commander hardened his fists. Stressed silk tore asunder. ‘Damn you, liege!
Be still.
Your life, or theirs, I had to choose!'

Wasted entreaty; Lysaer freed his arm. His punch slammed into Sulfin Evend's left side, hard enough to damage a kidney had the impact not clashed into mail. The Lord Commander hammered in with his knee: again felt abused flesh recoil. This time, beyond mercy, he followed up, ground an elbow into the hollow of Lysaer's shoulder with a pitiless force that would paralyse.

No more pleading leave, he grappled through the ripped tunic. His bracer gouged scrapes into fine-grained skin. Heedless, he burrowed beneath snagging silk, seeking a hide thong and slung knife sheath. Lysaer's ragged gasps were obscured by the scream of rent fabric. Sulfin Evend bared the Biedar knife at long last and closed his desperate grip on the handle.

Already, wisps of dull shadow moved at the corner of his eye.
Something
unleashed by the necromancer's craft encroached on his peripheral vision. Lysaer jerked. Perhaps aware that an uncanny invasion nipped through his aura to claim him, he tried a mad wrench to break free.

‘Damn you, hold!' Sulfin Evend snagged the desert-worked knife from the sheath. While his instincts cried scintillant warning of danger, he laid the flint weapon crosswise against Lysaer's throat.

Barely in time!
The creeping invasion of uncanny forces coiled above the unwarded victim's nose and mouth. Past reach of finesse, Sulfin Evend bore down. He sliced a shallow nick through fair skin.

Lysaer recoiled.

Desperate to keep contact, and not cause lethal harm, Sulfin Evend pressed the warded flint against the seeping edge of the wound. ‘Hold still!' he pleaded. ‘You are under attack, and this blade frames your only protection!'

Lysaer shut his eyes, then grated, choked short, ‘If you're not turned by the enemy, what do you See?'

‘A spirit or vile sending of some sort. I'm no sorcerer! Damned if I
know
what ugly powers have stirred, or what creepish force has come stalking. Don't move!' Still winded, Sulfin Evend fought each word through agonized, galling bitterness. ‘Breathe the thing in, it will taint your blood. Your heart might be touched. This blade is your warding. Contact is binding your fragile protection, so sting and be grateful, your Grace.
Why didn't you trust me?
Under no circumstances were you to come down, far less seek this place after sunset.'

His anguish towered: three brave men were dead.

Now the horror that might yet enact a possession was arrested
just barely
from flooding its victim. It poised in mid air, a sinuous veil, arrested by
unknown
eldritch powers worked into a tribal dagger.

‘A page brought your summons,' Lysaer said at strained length.

‘His name?' snapped Sulfin Evend. ‘One of ours, or from the palace?'

‘Does that matter?' Lysaer ground out. Dispassionate ice-blue eyes raked back. ‘How do I know that you're not corrupted?'

‘Sithaer's damned! Have you heard me? My best men were killed
because I had no means to defend them!'
No protection existed within this bleak place that could spare them from becoming taken in thrall to a necromancer. ‘You have just one knife,' the commander appealed in snatched grief. ‘I had to choose which life should be saved. Now burn my casualties! I won't see them rise! You owe them that much, for their sacrifice.'

Lysaer coughed, his tangled head jammed against the stone stair, sullied gold in the glimmer of flame-light. Whether he sensed the threatened invasion, or whether the harsh knock-down had dazed his wits could not be determined.

‘You must raise your light!' Sulfin Evend insisted. ‘Tysan's safety
right now
depends on your gift. Or your hope to rout out this corruption is ashes!'

‘You have lost hope, regardless,' declared an intrusive voice
from below.

Sulfin Evend froze. Through his strained breathing, he heard furtive movement, then an uncanny shuffle. One of the freshly killed corpses had stirred. Puppet to the black will of a necromancer, it would mount the stair and wreak every form of fell horror.

‘Burn them!'
he gasped. ‘Lysaer, do it now!'

Whether or not his liege meant to comply, the reanimate body kept speaking. ‘I have news of the Master of Shadow, Blessed Prince! Arithon the bastard has flung you a challenge!'

Which statement changed
everything.
A repeat of the horrific event in Daon Ramon, Sulfin Evend watched a terrible, sweeping change eclipse the reason in Lysaer's eyes. Asandir had declared the effect was a curse, laid on by the Mistwraith's malice. Cast geas, or mad principle, the effect was the same: ruling power tossed like straws on a game-board set for unbridled disaster.

‘Lysaer!'
Frantic, Sulfin Evend bore down until the flint blade razed into raw skin. ‘You are being played for strategic diversion. Tell yourself the truth! Fight back, man. Hold your rage. Don't rise to the bait of an enemy!'

The plea fell on deaf ears. Lysaer's features contorted to a rictus of fury, while down the stairwell, an obscene aberration with a hole in its heart staggered erect and continued in monologue, ‘Did you know you are betrayed? Arithon s'Ffalenn has suborned the s'Brydion of Alestron. They have sheltered your renegade shipwright, Cattrick, and more. Your wife, in their hands, is now being dispatched to a hostel of Ath's adepts. The master I serve could hand you the victory. The death of the by-blow who has shamed your name could be delivered into your grasp.'

‘Lies!' cracked Sulfin Evend. ‘Burn the dead, or we're lost!'

Lysaer heaved. An animal whipped to an insane pitch of fury, he battered to dislodge the stone-knife from his throat. Sulfin Evend wrestled the slighter
prince down. His ruthless fist hardened against Lysaer's neck, now become as much a deadly liability as an indispensable stay of protection. ‘Hold, liege! You must! You're being reeled in like a fish!'

‘Let go.' Implacable, Lysaer clawed to throw off restraint. ‘Stand down. Or burn! I will not be thwarted.'