Traitor's Knot (62 page)

‘Nightfall!' gasped Elaira. ‘Ath's own grace. That's a torment outside what is natural!'

‘My dear, you are right.' Arithon buried his cheek into her hair, still rocked by his wry amusement. ‘We'll surmount piquant torture. Though by the Fatemaster's list! There had better not be another set-back, or any more confounding complications! As things stand, this predicament is bound to create the most damnably endless day'

Summer 5671

On the first occasion when Lysaer had visited an inhabited hostel maintained by the Brotherhood of Ath's adepts, he had set off without the least notion that their esoteric ways might inconvenience him or come to disturb his lasting peace of mind. He had approached with a foreigner's ignorance and collided headlong with their uncanny beguiling powers.

This time forewarned, he did not arrive mounted. Nor did he lead an armed troop to the gate. The party of ten who guarded his back were told to wait at the head of the vale. Sulfin Evend alone stayed by his sovereign's side. Unarmed, they strode towards the carved plinths demarking the entrance through the tumble-down dry wall, which enclosed an overgrown, circular courtyard.

Under noon sunlight, the grass grew waist high. Seed heads tapped the Lord Commander's empty scabbard. Flowering vines draped the old, lichened fieldstones and smothered the granite portal in verdant profusion. Such riotous growth was not due to neglect. The adepts' blameless code let the earth attend to her own, a celebration of life without boundary. Their orchards and gardens nurtured weeds, birds, and insects with equal-handed, burgeoning plenty.

Sited at the shore-line just east of Spire, the grass prairie of Havistock spread like baked ochre beneath a flawless sky. Trees tangled the hollows in thickets of shade, nestled between the low, rolling hills, whose crests shimmered under the scouring glare. Lysaer surveyed the solitary, cruik-built turret, its massive, beamed sides and gabled roof upheld by the shaped boughs of living trees.

The shagged trunks were ancient. Interlaced branches braced the king beam, which was smothered in stone-weighted thatch. The structure had no discernible windows, and no chimney to vent a kitchen fire or hearth. Those
oddities failed to serve adequate warning, that the space inside was unlikely to conform to the limits implied by its unassuming, outside appearance.

Ath's adepts consorted with uncanny forces that linked with the mysteries outside the veil. Reason enough to approach their abode with taut nerves and trepidation; Sulfin Evend stood under the blazing sun, clammy with dread and unable to gage the course of the coming encounter. Lysaer came dressed in state. The panoply of his glittering finery included a sashed tabard, emblazoned with the sunwheel in gold. His right sleeve bore the badge of the regency claimed with town backing for sovereignty over Tysan. That statement alone was a dangerous overture. His embassy impinged upon territory subject to Havish, yet had not paused at Telmandir to acknowledge High King Eldir or receive a visiting ruler's credentials. Lysaer claimed sole authority to stand on his case: an outright demand for return of his princess, set under his autonomous right to declare her status as traitor or abducted victim.

Today's precipitate demand for a verdict might launch anything from a war to a diplomatic breach of crown protocol.

Not least of the unknown factors at play were the principles of Ath's adepts. A hurried, deep study had yielded little more by way of hard facts. The white brotherhood did not influence politics. Their wisdom inducted no following. Folk requested their blessing to marry, or to lay a benison over sown fields. They might visit a hostel to ask for knowledge or healing, or to leave gifts to commemorate good fortune. The adepts took no coin for their acts of service. Reputation insisted their ways eschewed violence. Their sojourns abroad were made empty-handed, and no record existed to say what occurred if they should be accosted by force. Scholar's theory on that subject claimed that prescient mystery kept Ath's initiates from showing themselves in the presence of conflict.

‘You were the one who insisted I needed a man at my shoulder,' Lysaer said into the teeth of his Lord Commander's discomfort.

‘I would not be elsewhere,' Sulfin Evend declared, too wise or too foolish to yield before truth, that his adamant stance was unwanted. No stripping glance sidewards might crack his liege's facade of state poise. Yet behind the impervious mask, the human thread spun wrenching tragedy. Today's confrontation with Princess Ellaine must revisit the death of a fifteen-year-old son.

Lysaer s'Ilessid confronted the plinths at the hostel gateway, his ice-cut profile without vestige of feeling to reveal which force might rule the moment: the geas-bound hate that sought reason to kill, or the grief, born of love, Sulfin Evend had witnessed on one bitter night in Daon Ramon.

‘The adepts won't approach unless you pass inside,' he stated into the lengthening pause. ‘Their code demands that you take the first step.'

‘Let this speak instead.' Lysaer extended a finger and engaged his gift.

Before Sulfin Evend could raise a stunned outcry, the shot ray leaped towards the gate, aimed straight for the cruik building's doorway.

A note sang on the air. The carved pillars seemed to shimmer bright silver.
Lysaer's shaft of light did not pass through, but
disappeared
, erased from existence as it sliced across the stone portal.

At shocking risk, Sulfin Evend reached out and jerked down his liege's wrist. ‘Are you mad?' he gasped with outraged astonishment. ‘Ath's adepts are against all forms of coercion. If you want to parley, you aren't going to win any favours through bullying threats!'

‘They are holding my wife!' snapped Lysaer, unmoved. ‘Best that we make things clear at the outset that I have not come to negotiate.'

‘But your wife is not held,' an unperturbed voice announced from directly behind them. ‘Ellaine did not cross any of our three thresholds by less than her own free will.'

Lysaer spun about, Sulfin Evend beside him. Together they beheld the white-robed apparition dispatched from the hostel to meet them. Not female, as gentle custom demanded, but a slender young man, his shining presence hazed in an ethereal glow, silvery as moonbeams that
could not exist
under the full glare of midday.

‘I am your response,' he stated without rancour. ‘Our gates are a boundary. Inside, our way serves the precepts of harmony. Outside, we match distortion with truth. Your aggressive overture is not sourced in balance. Therefore, the guidance that answers you past the stone markers cannot be other than male.'

‘That's no living man,' Sulfin Evend was fast to point out. ‘His presence does not bend the grass or cast any visible shadow.'

‘I am a thought sending,' the apparition agreed. ‘A focused intent, dispatched as a projection by the one who stands watch and guard on our portals.'

‘The particular bent of your sorceries is meaningless,' Lysaer declared. ‘Nor will I waste time over rhetoric. I've travelled here for no other reason except to learn why Princess Ellaine abandoned her home, and whose influence parted her Grace from my secure palace at Avenor. If force was involved, then my light will answer, and your vaunted haven will burn.'

‘The fire of will both creates and destroys,' the watcher's sending agreed. Wrapped in shining brilliance, he inclined his head towards the hostel enclosure. ‘S'Ilessid! Your wife, now informed of your coming, has determined to hear your petition. Speak wisely and address her with due respect since she stands on her birth-born right to determine her destiny'

‘She is Princess of Avenor,' Lysaer rebutted. ‘Her wedding vow binds her to Tysan.'

The uncanny sending did not rise to argue, but vanished away without riffling the air.

Ahead, the sun-washed courtyard was no longer empty. Two additional figures advanced towards the upright plinths of the gateway. These cast a shadow and rustled the grass. Lysaer s'Ilessid confronted his wife, clad in a gown of unadorned linen and wearing no jewel as artifice. Ellaine was accompanied by a single, white-robed adept. Too tall for a desertman, his carriage
graced by a striking calm, he held back with loosely clasped hands. Old or young, no eye could discern. His features stayed obscured by the scintillant glare thrown off the ciphers stitched into his hood.

If Sulfin Evend kept his field warrior's habit of assessing all points of resistance, Lysaer acknowledged no presence but Ellaine's. Yet there, without warning, his lordly bearing broke down. The instant, unfolding, held too sore a betrayal. Ringed by the uncanny powers that attended Ath's adepts, the woman who crossed the gold flood of day became both mother and wife. She woke Lysaer's ghosts and reopened the sting of each unrequited pain from his past.

His regal face lost its impervious shielding. Rampant need, and raw longing, and hurt smashed his poise at one shattering blow. Lysaer reeled. Stripped woundingly naked, he recoiled, hurled outside of torn pride and the blaze of unspent animosity.

Then the moment's shock passed. He found his recovery. Between heartbeats, all sign of emotion dispersed. Sulfin Evend, observing, could scarcely believe the display had been more than a wishful illusion.

Except Ellaine herself was not left untouched: that fleeting second of vulnerability crystallized her recollection of all she had left: the dazzling majesty of Lysaer's state dress, the gleam of his hair—the stunning impact of his virile allure displayed with untarnished splendour. Limned in the noon brilliance, he was power and strength. Yet the briefly glimpsed human heart underneath arrested all reasoned thought. The natural cry to nurture and heal tugged at her to forsake stern resolve and let go in abandoned surrender: to embrace the grand wake of a sovereign's life, set ablaze with reflected glory.

‘Why, Ellaine?' asked Lysaer with sincere regret. ‘What drew you away from Avenor?'

The woman stopped her uncertain approach with only the gateway between them. Her eyes were doe brown, but not soft. Her trembling and her threatened tears were not weak, but the courage of stark desperation. ‘You once told me, my lord, that I was a piece set on a political game-board.' She tipped up her chin and pressed on. ‘My life, tied to yours, was worth nothing more than my value to give you an heir. Later, I found that you did not want a live son, but a bargaining chip to raise armies.'

A short pause ensued. Lysaer made no plea. He did not offer excuses. Attentively rapt, he regarded his wife, prepared through strapped turmoil to listen.

Ellaine forged ahead. ‘I left on my own. No other hands helped me until I was outside of Tysan's crown territory. You may keep your sworn officers with their cold eyes. Their doings are above suspicion. Realm law would declare them no less than loyal. But to the eyes of a mother, they are nothing else but gutless jackals and murderers.'

Lysaer received that accusation, unflinching. ‘Every last jackal, and all fourteen murderers have been condemned by my seal of crown justice.' Vised to self-contained calm, he said gently, ‘For the unclean conspiracy that bought
Kevor's death, every man of Avenor's high council has already faced execution. Come home, Ellaine. The realm shares your grief. Foreign exile cannot ease the loss of a son. But your place at my side can strengthen a people, and see honour is done in his memory'

‘Kevor's memory requires nothing!' Ellaine declared, flushed. ‘If, as you say, the kingdom is grieving, the crown's ruling regent might have done better to value his gifts in the first place!' As though steadied by the silent, robed figure beside her, the princess pronounced her decision. ‘Leave,' she told Lysaer. ‘Wherever you're going in the wide world, I will not return as the figure-head piece to complete the charade that you call a marriage.'

‘If I were to grant you the rule of Avenor?' The white-and-gold image of patient authority, Lysaer showed her the dazzling honesty that could shred the most steadfast intention. Then, as though shaken, he broke that clear gaze. Again, his pose of sovereignty ruffled: the scorching glimmer of jewels and gold recorded his unsteady breath. ‘Ellaine. I did not know our son. Can you imagine his loss held no meaning? Who other than you could restore the lost chance of setting a name and a face to the sorrow a father must bear at his passing?'

Sulfin Evend felt all his brazen nerves peeled. He heard that note; knew his liege: saw beneath the veneer of false arrogance. The threadbare appeal was forthright,
and genuine.
Lysaer stood at Ath's hostel, his true self exposed, begging an estranged wife to forgive the flaws instilled by a curse-driven geas.

Yet pride could not shape the words.

Ellaine failed to see past the cold gleam of ribbon and diamonds. Too long held as chattel, her response addressed only the image imposed by vested state rank and authority. ‘The men who taught Kevor, and those you commanded to raise him will have known him best! They are the same ones who sent him to die, and the same that your vaunted
justice
dispatched. Tell me if you dare, Blessed Prince! Whose heart more deserves to stay empty? I will never return. Seek your requital in your grand cause. Stand or fall by the swords you have paid blood to raise to tear at the throats of your enemies!'

Lysaer s'Ilessid did not crumble. His imperious calm as he heard her rejection all but blistered the thick, summer air.

Then he answered.

‘Alestron,' he pronounced with razor-edged clarity. ‘My allies turned enemy, who gave you their covert escort to Methisle and delivered you into the hands of a Fellowship Sorcerer. The price of your defiance shall be written in lives, through the downfall of the s'Brydion citadel. Your choice, Princess Ellaine! Your choice alone. Upon your loyalty rides the duke's name and family, and my forbearant trust that Alestron still serves in good faith!'

The moment had no chance to hang in suspension. Perhaps knowing how Desh-thiere's curse reforged pain to serve the destructive drive of its purpose, the white-robed adept touched Ellaine aside and spoke out for the first time. ‘Your choices are yours. The lady is blameless. Go from this place. You are done here.'

Lysaer's presence blazed. ‘What gives you the right to come between me and the woman I've married as princess?'