Traitor's Knot (63 page)

‘A law beyond man's,' the adept stated clearly. ‘Give over your claim. You are done here.'

‘You revere all life?' Lysaer snapped, unmoved. ‘The child she bore me, has his slaughter meant nothing? If her case for abandonment rides on the accusation of a crown conspiracy to commit murder, the charge fails. I am innocent. No order of mine arranged my son's death.'

‘No murder was committed,' the adept rebuked gently. ‘Since your son stands here, living, before you.' The robed brother pushed off his hood.

Sulfin Evend gasped outright.

Across the ephemeral line of the gateway, amid humid greenery and relentless noon heat, he watched the father behold his lost offspring, without joy and past tears of redemption. What stood unveiled in the blaze of the sunlight shattered the bounds of all precedent.

‘You are not Kevor!' Lysaer whispered, afraid.

Nor was he; the child born into crown title in Avenor had been refigured by the exalted currents that danced past the veil. Those burning, pale eyes had explored vistas beyond sight. Kevor might wear the raiment of breathing flesh. Yet the mantle of silent power upon him transcended the bounds of mortality. The being who upheld Princess Ellaine's free choice had walked through the grand chord of the mysteries. He had touched the well-spring of undying creation and embraced the awareness that sourced his true Name.

‘Step forward,' said Kevor. ‘Your wife will receive you. Your peace does not lie on the field of war, or in your brick walls at Avenor.' He held out his hand and offered forgiveness, ablaze in the light of the infinite. The moment seemed an image, snap-frozen on glass, flooded with poignant longing that burned, and a sweetness that beckoned like agony.

Locked speechless, Sulfin Evend yearned for the miracle that cried beyond words for release.

Blue eyes that were clear met sapphire eyes that were troubled; and the shadow of doubt claimed its conquest. Of two men on either side of a gateway, Lysaer s'Ilessid became the one diminished, then undone by the harsh weight of shame. Folded to his knees by excoriating misery, he shouted aloud, lost as though plunged into blindness. The shoulder that braced him up from prostration was not offered by the son, or the wife.

Lysaer s'Ilessid was shielded, then raised, and borne from the site by his steadfast Lord Commander.

‘I am sorry,' Kevor said from behind. ‘Take your liege from this place. You are done here.'

Sunset brought no relief from the heat. Its leaden calm hazed the untenanted cove where Avenor's state galley lay anchored. Beneath burning lamps, her
banners hung limp as rags in the breezeless twilight. Moths off the marshes pattered and died against the hot glass of the gimballed light at her chart desk. Though the sultry air settled like glue belowdecks, Lysaer did not venture outside. Hands braced against the sill in the stern cabin, he stared over the darkening scrub that hemmed the Havistock coast in petticoat layers of bull-grass and tidal marshes. The whine of midges sawed against the calls of foraging ducks and the boom of an unseen bittern.

‘We should leave these waters without further delay,' Sulfin Evend suggested. Perched on a locker with one casual boot propped on the frame of the bulkhead, he used a rag soaked in goose-grease to treat the ingrained salt that threatened to rot through good leather. ‘With active unrest already plaguing the southcoast, the last thing you need is a diplomatic brangle involving the crown might of Havish.'

Still clad in the ghostly white silk of his finery, Lysaer did not turn his head. ‘The Light does not recognize either sovereignty or borders.'

By which oblique statement, the Alliance Lord Commander was left to presume that the queer wardings defending the gateway to Ath's hostel now posed something more than a sore irritation.

Skirting that delicate issue with tact, Sulfin Evend allowed, ‘Perhaps not.'

The immaculate set to those white-clad shoulders still ruffled the worst of his instincts. All afternoon, his liege's hag-ridden mood had skirted the razor's edge. Tossed between blazing rage and the balked hurt of rejection, a man in his state would be wise to drink, if only to dull the flash-point pain of impact.

This one eschewed sense. A fool dared not guess which direction the discharge might strike for requital.

Gently, again, Sulfin Evend tried reason. ‘The Mayor of Forthmark was told to expect you.'

Lysaer did not answer.

As the stalled silence prickled his nape, Sulfin Evend shot straight. ‘No!' He cast down his rag, but too late.

Either strain, or distress, or the intrigues played out by a perfidious ally had tipped the unseen, fragile balance. The creature who spun from the opened casement wore the face of curse-ridden conviction.

‘No,' Sulfin Evend repeated, much louder. When Lysaer kept coming, he slammed to his feet and blocked the companionway to the deck. ‘Liege,' he said quickly. ‘What are you thinking?
Lysaer!
You can't launch an attack on the adepts of Ath's hostel. Not in the sovereign territory of
Havish!
Land on the wrong side of a high king's wrath, and you risk intervention by Fellowship Sorcerers.'

‘Clear my path,' Lysaer s'Ilessid insisted. Eyes like blue diamond burned with a light that reflected no trace of humanity. ‘Move aside.'

‘No.' Sulfin Evend held out in raw fear. He was as good as dead, whether he acted now or fell later to the insane repercussions touched off by a foray
sent to assault the peace of a Brotherhood sanctuary. ‘There are men on this ship who have families at home. I won't let you launch a disaster.'

Yet words had lost meaning. The avatar continued his stalker's advance. Now posed as obstruction, Sulfin Evend wedged himself into the door-jamb and shouted a desperate order to the posted watch abovedecks. ‘Captain! Weigh anchor! Out oars! Drive this vessel at speed towards Shand!'

He managed no more. Lysaer closed his raised fist. The bolt he unleashed struck his Lord Commander a battering blow to the chest. Sulfin Evend lost wind to scream. Spirit-marked by a Sorcerer, his flesh did not burn. But the force of concussion hammered him backwards against bolted oak, and his head struck against the strapped hinge.

Knocked dizzy, collapsed to his knees, and coughing the fumes of his smouldering surcoat, Sulfin Evend saw an answering dazzle of light singe through the white-and-gold breast of the silk tabard, under which his liege hung the Biedar knife. Then he heard Lysaer's cry.

The snatched breath the commander forced into seized lungs to answer brought him the ghastly taint of seared flesh. ‘Don't,' he gasped, desperate. ‘Lysaer! Don't throw off the flint blade!'

Yet hope already died. Sulfin Evend measured his length. As darkness roared over his reeling senses, he heard the distanced clatter of flint as the warding virtue of the stone blade was clawed off its thong and discarded.

Summer 5671

Immersed in the labour of stemming the summer migration at Methisle, the Sorcerer Kharadmon receives urgent word from Sethvir:
‘You will need to go north, once you're done helping Verrain. We have no more grace to wait on Asandir. As I feared, the Mistwraith's curse forces our hand. Fast couriers bear dispatches for the muster of Jaelot, and Lysaer s'Ilessid can no longer endure the Biedar knife's stay of protection…'

Surfaced to dull pain and nausea, Sulfin Evend thrashes off a chill compress, his struggle to rise cut short by the galley's staunch captain, who assures, ‘Lie easy! Our Prince Exalted saw reason. Your first order still stands. We are now rowing east towards the mouth of the Ettin, where the avatar will debark and ride for East Halla. We'll face a hard siege. Divine word has decreed the s'Brydion must fall for abetting the corruption of Princess Ellaine, and your course will be to raise arms for the Light across the southcoast of Shand…'

Sent a seeress's message concerning an unusual shimmer of resonance striking down the fourth lane, Prime Selidie stifles a secretive smile, then appoints Lirenda to fetch the wrapped box from Highscarp containing Elaira's wrapped crystal…

Summer 5671

I
f the Mad Prophet had not been blissed prostrate on brandy, the onset of prescient talent would not have taken him unaware. Sprawled in a dimmed corner of the clan chieftain's lodge tent while two of the Companions sat in subdued conference, his walrus bulk passed unnoticed all day. He stayed unmolested, until his resounding snores drew smiles and raised eyebrows from the scouts who arrived to deliver the sundown report to Sidir. The novel amusement also was discovered by an inquisitive boy, which started a bout of giggling mimicry from the camp's younger children.

When a sturdy toddler decided to bounce on the spellbinder's chest, Feithan gave the offender a scolding and ran the young rascals outside. They whooped as they scuttled. Such wild noise was unwise. Despite the unaccustomed excitement surrounding the return of crown-sanctioned royalty, a mindful adolescent shoved his gangling frame up from the trestle and ducked through the flap to correct them.

Only Sidir's relentless alertness tracked the gist of Dakar's sotted mumbling. A fragmented phrase snapped him onto his feet with the speed of a dart-shot wolf.

Across the tent at a bound, with his hardened grasp shaking the befuddled spellbinder by the collar, he demanded,
‘What did you say?'

Riled to rattled teeth, Dakar squeezed his eyes shut. His complaining grumble was ripped short by a belch. For that, he received Sidir's grip on his chin. Iron fingers twisted his face towards the tallow-dip, snatched in fierce haste off the trestle.

‘Damn you, speak clearly! What sight? Which vision?'

‘Pesk you with lice!' Dakar stated, thick. ‘Douse that fiends-plaguing light in a bucket.'

Sidir's response was to shove the flame close, within risk of singeing clamped lashes. ‘Talk,' he insisted, while Braggen uncoiled from his seat and offered to help torch some hair.

Aware he was not going to wrest back his peace, the Mad Prophet dredged through his splintering hangover and coughed up his fast-fading augury. ‘The babe will be a girl-child.'

Braggen's bearded face split into a grin. ‘Whose?' he asked, laughing, while Sidir's ruthless fingers threatened to tear skin from bone on the force of resharpened impatience.

Dakar rolled spaniel eyes. Sullen and already sliding towards stupor to escape his galvanic headache, he slurred, ‘Whose do you think?' His mumble trailed off as he succumbed to turned senses. ‘Arithon's; Elaira's; conceived on this night.'

The racketing cheers from the scouts at the trestle put the children's rash outburst to shame.

When Feithan strode over to quiet their foolishness, she was indignantly told of the posited chance there might be an heir for Rathain. She did not celebrate, but shouted for silence, and rushed to Sidir with expostulation.

‘The prophet's all wrong. This is premature nonsense.' Instantly flustered to jagged distress, she backed up her claim with bleak evidence. ‘No one planned for child-birth. I helped the enchantress prepare the decoction to prevent a conception myself.'

‘So I thought, also.' Self-possessed and steel calm, Sidir fetched the small bucket kept to soak whetstones and doused the contents across Dakar's face. ‘Where's his Grace? Speak quickly! We haven't got time to wait out your miserable stupor.'

Dakar spluttered, rammed erect, and coughed through the streaming droplets. Spurred by Feithan's glower, he declared with offence, ‘By Daelion Fatemaster's immortal bollocks! Did you have to soak me to perdition?'

‘He'll do it again,' threatened Braggen. ‘Talk quickly. We've got to find Arithon.'

‘Find him yourself,' Dakar grumbled, peevish. ‘Your liege will have potent defences laid down.' He slapped off restraint, rolled clear of the puddle, and cursed until stopped by a hiccough. Since no Companion ever backed down, and Feithan's ire promised far worse than a cold water bath from a bucket, the Mad Prophet let his unsteady frame be hauled upright. ‘Don't you think your liege should be private? His enchantress is not going to thank you for meddling.'

Feithan lost patience. ‘She'll thank us less should your foresight prove true, and her gift of virginity brings her a birth that hasn't been of her devising!'

‘She's under life vows to a childless order,' groused Dakar with planted
complacency. ‘Stop fretting. We have an accord. Arithon's not intending to father—'

Sidir recaptured soaked cloth in both fists and braced the Mad Prophet's swayed balance. ‘Well, vaunted seer, you've just stated otherwise!'

Dakar squirmed in discomfort. ‘I've forecast a
child?'
He broke off, brow furrowed, and ransacked his memory once more. Whatever mislaid image the concept recalled, his brosy cheeks drained. ‘Dharkaron, black angel of vengeance! Not this way!'

‘How?' Feithan cracked, in no mood for maundering. ‘I would have sworn by Ath's grace that Elaira had no deceit in her.'

‘She doesn't.' Dakar swallowed. ‘Damn her Prime for creating a blindsided noose.' Sickness notwithstanding, he did not argue as the pair of Companions chose action and hauled him headlong past the trestle. While Braggen rousted the stupefied scouts, the Mad Prophet exposed the bleak fallacy. ‘We all thought Prime Selidie intended to snare Rathain's prince by means of the order's practice of debt.' Shin barked on a footstool, he yelped as Sidir forced his stride to careening haste. ‘Instead, the devious witch has seeded an inactive string of spelled ciphers. She's hidden that spring trap within the ephemeral energy of Elaira's aura.'

‘She didn't notice?' said Feithan, a half-pace ahead and clearing obstructions away from the drunkard's stumbling feet.

Dakar shook his head, by now rallied enough to sweat himself green with distress. ‘Elaira's will is bound into enslavement. Her Prime's master sigil would have been used, set over a powerful cipher to hide the awareness the craft-mark was ever there. Since the working knots through her initiate's oath, Arithon himself can't detect its presence. He won't foresee any pending entrapment. He can't, while the spell chain's inactive. Its directive isn't going to engage until the lovers reach union. The release that completes tonight's consummation will trigger a fertile conception.'

‘Dharkaron avenge!' Braggen swore with scraped anguish. ‘By now, we could be too damned late.'

The sundown report reaffirmed that assessment. Since the eager couple had slipped past the encampment's defences before dusk, the off-watch scouts found themselves shamefaced. Despite dire stakes, they could not name the path their liege had taken to ensure his privacy.

‘He'll have been running wards,' the Mad Prophet gasped, wretchedly nauseous as his bulk was man-handled out of the lodge tent. He snatched a gulped breath, enfolded in sultry darkness, dense with the scents of white oak and pine resin. Against the fierce pressure of expectation, he could give only bad news.

‘Arithon's a talent with initiate mastery! You must realize he outmatches my utmost trained strength. I hold your liege's bond of permission in trust for emergency use in defence. But skin-tight on spirits, my vested knowledge is going to be little use.'

The acute pause clipped short as Sidir took charge. ‘Then your gift of prophecy needs must suffice. We'll augment your powers by means of a weakened infusion of seersweed.'

Unsympathetic for the dismal result, that even a dilute dose of the toxic herb would inflame dissolute sickness into a wrenching state of torment, Sidir assigned Braggen to dispatch the scouts. Feithan rushed back for the treated tobacco, while the lodge sentry sprinted to summon a man whose lineage carried the inborn gift for subtle tracking.

Too swiftly for his tender condition, Dakar found himself clutching his spinning head, while his filled lungs stung from the volatile smoke. Still reeling on brandy, he succumbed all at once. His mind up-ended at plunging speed and hurtled him into tranced vision.

‘Find Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn!

The relentless demand smashed his unmoored awareness and dropped him headlong, into a starlit clearing…

…
where, surrounded by silence, and ringed by a sentinel circle of oaks, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn paused on the bank of a stream. His arm rested over Elaira's tucked shoulder, and his firm grasp was twined with her hands. The ground underfoot seemed new-made for lovers, a kindly hollow of green grass and mosses. While their pulses beat to the most primal desire and excitement raced through shared awareness, he smiled.

‘My dear, my beloved, let it be here.'

Mage-sight unveiled the moment in all of its rarefied splendour: Elaira's acquiescent reply unleashed an anticipation that flared like pearlescent mist through the stilled summer clearing.

Arithon stepped back. Pleased speechless, he bowed to her. Then, a slight tremble marring his touch, he slipped his cuff-laces and peeled off his shirt. The cloth was let fall with abandon…

Dakar coughed out the bitter stream of pent smoke. His disjointed perception met a strong, weathered face, set into the night's humid darkness.

‘What did you see?' Sidir's voice demanded.

The sound slashed through sensitized ears like a blade. Ripped witless with nausea, the Mad Prophet caught the Companion's forearm and tugged. ‘That way. Go north. There's a freshet with a pool. Hurry' Yanked into a stumbling run, Dakar was aware of the tracker's arrival and of someone talking with urgency. Then all solid sensation plunged away, folded into a dance wrought of light, laced into an eddying circle…

…
a crown prince's soft, yet imperative phrasing asked for a line of permission. The trust he received was granted, then renewed with each of his unshod steps. His reverent progression caressed the land and called forth a synchronous balance. His enchantress looked on from the center of the gyre, aware of the spell-craft his presence enacted
through talented sight and crown-sanctioned integrity. Heart and mind braided with water and air; stone and starlight framed a linked partnership with human bone and the fire of will. Naked, the man walked the bounds of the glen. His step stitched in and out of the streambed, and over the verdant ground. His wholeness of being fashioned the instrument that stroked the ephemeral flux into a spiralling vortex…

Dakar shuddered, wrenched away from the vista of dream by hard fingers, bracing him upright. He sensed Sidir, bent close to hear his torn phrases. He snatched cognizance out of the wheeling haze, spun from the dangerous blend of raw alcohol and a poisoned, narcotic trance. ‘Arithon's invoked his sovereign tie to the land to lay down a stay of protection.'

Despair threaded through. The crushing impact of enhanced emotion doubled him over with dry heaves. Before Dakar recovered, Sidir had the clay-pipe repacked, with the bowl ignited to serve him.

Shocked by the imperative behind such demand, the spellbinder gasped a strained protest. ‘Ath on earth! Even sober, I couldn't breach a ward of such power and strength.'

‘Then get Fellowship backing,' Sidir snapped, terse. ‘You cannot do less! A birth of the blood royal in Koriani hands would unleash a certain disaster.'

The pipe-stem was jammed between Dakar's teeth. He sucked deep. The intake of smoke flensed him out of his flesh and scattered him, skin, bones, and viscera…

Far distant, tucked in his chair by the open casement at Althain Tower, Sethvir glanced up, alert. The tingling spill of fine energies set off by the grand warding enacted in Halwythwood already touched the strung web of his earth-sense. He knew what transpired. Though he could have invoked Athera's awareness and arrested the stayspell's completion, he held. His choice was firm, to guard the depleted reserves that secured the cracked seals that contained the last damaged grimwards. While sundown in Atainia stained the western sky crimson, he also received a concerned thought from Luhaine: specific facts tagged to a crystal that changed hands, plucked from a locked coffer at Forthmark.

The next moment brought him the ragged alarm dispatched by Dakar's distress call.

Since the wind's transmission would be far too slow, the Warden of Althain called on a risen star. Light from its vortex became the willing carrier for his intent and relayed his need to another point lying south; and then on again, bearing his message farther east, across the swept downs of Radmoore…

…while, deep under the steaming black mire of Mirthlvain, a needle of self-contained indigo light paused on its hunting course.

‘What's wrong?' Verrain queried out of the dark, where he leaned on his stave by a sinkpool. Touched aware by a star that crossed the misted zenith,
then invited to share in ephemeral communion, he shivered. Splashed mantle tugged close, he listened with care as a far-distant crisis was revealed to the discorporate Sorcerer immersed in the bog.

‘I will manage,' he stated in firm reassurance. ‘Return as you can. A few escaped migrants are not going to threaten a major breach of the compact.'

The light in the waters died off as though pinched, and an icy breeze riffled the sedges. ‘Even one is too many,' Kharadmon said. ‘Who will console a mother who wakens to find her slain child, bitten to death in its blankets?'

Yet Prime Selidie's plot to enslave the unborn heir to a crown prince demanded remedial action. The Sorcerer abandoned his labour of lancing the warped larvae burrowed into the mud-flats. He unfurled from the sediment in the marsh and departed on a blast of scorched haste…

Dakar drifted. He saw stars like salt, and minnows like sequins, darting amid black-pearl current. Nearby, a scout's hurried phrases described a glen carved out by a curve in the Willowbrook. A pipe-coal glowed red. Smoke plumed into his lungs. The pungent bite hit and unravelled his gut, then scattered his mind to oblivion. He did not stay lost. Drawn as to a beacon, his expanded awareness was gathered into a gyre, spun like a glorious coil of ribbon through the matrix of unseen light. The weaving stirred the undying flow of the mysteries, interlacing a Named thread into the subtle pattern that sustained Athera's firmament. Dakar tumbled into the winding drift. Softly, he eased through the stay that a crown prince had spun to bridle the lane flux…