TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (53 page)

Braggen transferred his prince's slack weight onto the back of a fresh horse. The bandaged hand was still dry, though the bindings keeping his Grace in the saddle had chafed a sore in one wrist. Braggen eased the raw patch with salve, then wound a torn strip from a dead man's shirt around the cord to make padding.

By the time he set foot in the stirrup and remounted, his pulse raced. Fear and tension had filmed him in clammy sweat that was going to chill bitterly, later. Worse, the horses stopped short in refusal to leave the protected ravine. Shrinking himself, crying curses for the necessity, Braggen lashed their balked rumps with the ends of his reins and drove them to forsake their sound instincts.

For now the cold posed an enemy more deadly than any two-legged tracker the Etarrans might set on his back trail. Weariness compounded the incessant chill, hazing the mind toward dozing sleep and leaching away better judgment. Braggen bludgeoned his thick wits, agonized between choices: whether to stop and seek shelter, or press onward into the terrible wind, at the risk of fatal exposure.

Overhead, the stately turn of the stars told him three hours remained before sunrise.

Braggen scraped the frost rime from his beard, his breath a white plume in the darkness. A glance backward showed the rumpled swath of his passage. The scarred prints stitched over the pristine hills left a beacon for enemies to follow.

He made his decision in grim understanding that Daon Ramon's bitter cold at least posed an element of uncertainty. The threat at his heels held no sweet ambiguity. If a company of Etarrans came on in pursuit, and caught him dismounted to rest, he and the prince he was charged to safeguard would be dead in a matter of minutes.

* * *

In the end, the torments of unremitting winter lent the gift that spared the s'Ffalenn lineage from extinction. For when the past night's bloody ruse was unraveled, and the slaughtered patrol left unhorsed in the gulch had been tracked down and accounted, only one party of Etarran men-at-arms was dispatched to ride out and retaliate. The accounts matched the evidence with inarguable impeccability: the task force was assured they pursued a lone killer, burdened down with a wounded henchman. Because their presumed quarry was likely no more than a scout strayed from Jieret's war band, they avoided the savage discomfort of mounting the chase until dawn broke.

Under the knives of pallid new sunlight, the patrol of ten lancers saddled up and turned windward. They broke ground, pushing hard, inside a few hours covering the same ground that Braggen had passed through the night. They recognized the lamed mare they found in the ravine, and also, to an outbreak of curses and threats, the stained cloak jammed in her saddle pack.

Enraged, primed for vengeance, they thundered ahead, plowing the barbarian's insolent trail into ripped gouts of torn snow.

The prints they were following yielded no fugitive, but diabolically converged with the chopped slurry of the Mathorn Road.

The patrol pulled up, milling. Amid frozen ruts, the trampled mishmash of cart tracks, and the ice-rimmed hoof marks of galloping couriers riding post from the inland cities to Narms, they could not decipher which way, east or west, their benighted quarry had turned.

'Sithaer's breeding fiends!' cracked the distempered officer, compelled to draw rein and split forces. His men dispersed under orders to detain and question every wagon and rider they encountered. Yet no merchant's caravan reported anything untoward. The message couriers who might have distinguished the barbarian were long since away down the road.

The search party encountered no other loose horses; none bearing a bearded and bandaged officer, and none ridden by a reiving clansman disguised in a bloodstained town mantle. Nor did they find any telltale sign that the fugitives had turned off the thoroughfare. The pair might have slipped northward into the mountains, or swung south again in fiendish deception, to hide in the boggy, briar-thatched bottomlands carved by the frozen Aiyenne.

The officer hammered an enraged fist into his horse's wet neck. He swore until he ran short of breath, not one whit appeased when his unhelpful scout suggested the clansman was quite likely a Companion from Deshir.

'A right demon for cleverness, and worse, on this route, he'll be a well-seasoned raider.' The veteran slapped his whip against his gloved palm in balked fury. 'Send too many men to beating the bushes, we could see them blunder into a right mess of set traps. If not, very likely you'll see what slender evidence he's left become ground underfoot and obliterated.'

The sergeant shut his mouth, his frown like strapped lead. Inexcusably, this setback was going to serve him a serious delay. 'Call the patrol in, then!' he snapped in the teeth of his exasperated scout. 'Find our three fastest men. They go back to fetch trackers. Tell them, better blister their butts at a gallop! Each minute we hang back, that clan butcher's widening his lead. I could strip
hide
for the blighted night watch and their pussyfoot shirking! We're not going to close on this murderer now without help from the headhunters' damned dogs!'

Penalty

The Prime's summons reached the sisterhouse in the early afternoon, with Lirenda immersed in the distasteful task of rendering sulfur for plague talismans. Highscarp's wealthy merchants preferred such wards for their southbound trade ships. Naught else, they believed, would repel the suborned humors that carried the virulent summer pestilence that plagued galley crews sent around Scimlade Tip.

Lips tucked in grim distaste, her patrician nose wrinkled under the assaulting odor of rotten eggs, Lirenda batted away a fallen strand of jet hair with the back of a humid wrist. Detesting the stench, left rumpled and sweaty from the heat thrown off by three boiling pots set on braziers, she would have given the plump, beringed customer the sharp side of her tongue, had he stood there: that the eight-penny casks filled in the marshes by the Ippash delta caused more running flux than any seasonal change in the air. The pinchfisted fool could have saved the bother of talismans, and spared the silk guild a needless oath of debt had he underwritten the silver to pay for clean water drawn from the city cisterns.

Immersed within her black cloud of irritation, Lirenda failed to notice the liveried page at the doorway until he had spoken in direct address.

'Initiate Lirenda, you are asked to present yourself to the Prime.'

Called in the act of weighing an ounce of ground sulfur piled on a twist of rice paper, the enchantress who had fallen from senior privilege startled abruptly erect. Her sleeve snagged the chain suspending the scale pan. A chiming spill of tipped weights clattered across the sheets of stamped copper on the tabletop. One struck the glass flask, and the sulfur upset. Arisen with her lap streaked with reeking yellow powder, Lirenda all but spat the requisite words of formality. 'You may lead me to the Matriarch.' Bristled with anger to be caught in a common laborer's state of disarray, a frosty edge sharpened her aristocrat's hauteur. 'I shall follow the moment I've refreshed my appearance.'

'You'll come now,' an icier voice interrupted. Arrived behind the page, her cowled robe missed in the gloom of the corridor, Senior Cadgia touched the boy's shoulder in kindly dismissal. No such softened sentiment eased her brisk manner as she surveyed her former superior. 'I have been sent as your escort this time. The Prime is ill disposed, and will not be kept waiting on a charge of disobedience.'

A moment, while threat flooded dread like poured ice through her veins; Lirenda bent her head. The onyx sheen of her hair dipped into the shadow as she grasped the tongs and emptied the coals from the braziers into the fire pail. Steam billowed in clouds of silvery vapor that drafts from the high windows dispersed. Her tawny eyes an unblinking tiger's upon her triumphant elder, Lirenda said, 'I bow to the Prime's will on the matter, of course.'

* * *

The audience was not held in the customary ground-floor chamber, with the wide, breakfront windows overlooking the whitecapped vista of Eltair Bay. The doubled doors to that room were latched closed as Lirenda was ushered past. Muffled by the carved panels of curly maple, she heard the scrape of industrious brushes, as complaining drudges inside scrubbed and waxed the parquet floor. An acrid odor hung on the air, reminiscent of recent smoke. Had the enchantress not been consumed by the need to stifle her rising anxiety, she might have asked after the irregularity. But Cadgia's tread hustled her down the wainscoted hallway, then up the stair with its brass rods and red runner. A clipped gesture warned Lirenda to follow without pause, sure sign any questions would be rebuffed.

An acrid bite of charred wood also lingered along the upper passage. Smoke had grayed the groined ceiling. Pallid light fell through the lancet windows and struck bladed rays through a film of blue haze. The leftover smell bore a nauseating reek of singed meat, poorly masked by the purging fragrance of herbs.

Through the delicate perfume of sweetgrass and gardenia, sharp as filings, Lirenda noticed the bracing tang left by an infusion of tienelle. That trace scent of seersweed awoke damning proof: something more than an act of deep conjury had transpired behind those shut doors late last night.

Snapped from self-absorption, Lirenda took stock of the overlooked details and noted the undue tension that stilted her colleague's self-righteous carriage. Speculation rekindled, igniting the predatory glint in the depths of her tawny eyes. She had heard that a Senior Circle had met, filled by members of the Koriani Council. She had not guessed, nor had stirring rumors yet ruffled the routine affairs in the sisterhouse, that their works had gone drastically wrong.

Lirenda smiled, sparked to provocation. 'I'm not being called to mop up the spilled broth?'

One brief returned glance brushed her off in contempt. Yet the stunned, secret silence that stilled Cadgia's tongue bespoke a far-reaching disaster.

Lirenda had no chance to probe whether the setback could be milked for advantage. The older enchantress turned down a molded gilt archway, set her pink, matron's hand to the latch, and clicked open the door to the Prime's private apartment.

The anteroom, with its dark, tasseled tapestries, and its low, cushioned divans, lay empty. Stale air and closed-in dust suggested the casements had not been opened for freshening. The plush rugs, bordered with sigils of guard, had not been brushed up by the servants. The purple wool pile bore the crushed imprint of many feet, coming and going. An overbearing taint of tansy salve lingered, the rancid musk of the goose-grease base intermingled with the dried lavender the past Prime, and now her young successor, preferred to sweeten her closets.

The Prime's bedchamber door was also closed, with the thick velvet curtains gathered over the lintel drawn across to muffle sound.

Curiosity prickled too sharply to quell. 'Selidie's unwell?' Lirenda demanded in a disbelieving whisper.

Cadgia regarded her, again without answering, the chill deep as layered ice in blue eyes. She brushed back the curtains, gently tapped. As the page inside responded and inserted a key, then unlocked the oiled-wood panel, she gestured for Lirenda to enter. 'You're expected.'

The disgraced enchantress straightened, chin raised. She needed no refined skills of observation to sense that looming peril awaited her beyond. Her dignity regal despite her wisped hair and the sulfur streaks marring her skirt, she crossed over the threshold to answer the mandatory summons.

The curtains over the windows were drawn.

Under gloom deep as night, scented candles burned in tiered ranks from silver holders atop the armoire. More tapers blazed from bronze stands, set on both sides of the raised bed. The furnishing itself was massive and old, of black Valzein lacquer, gleaming with citrus oil, and inlaid like white fire with floral patterns in costly mother-of-pearl. The tied-back folds of the bed hangings were purple, the sumptuous Narms dyes dark enough to seem black. The warding sigils stitched in copper and gold thread, whorled in patterns of hold and bind, bespoke an exhaustive, even desperate strength. The chained ciphers described no pattern of protection Lirenda had ever been taught.

All but overcome by the sudden, shrill instinct that urged her to drop dignity and flee, she clung to decorum. Step by trembling step, she advanced. The figure propped amid the pillows regarded her, the cold eyes pale azure, not jet. Yet with her lush hair bound under a headdress of white linen, and her porcelain skin pale as a snowfield, Prime Selidie for one unnerving moment seemed as wasted as the ghost of her late predecessor, Morriel.

Shaken by that uncanny impression, Lirenda reached the throw rug spread at the foot of the bed. Deportment sustained her. She curtseyed. Yet even as she drew breath to pronounce the formal words of obeisance, another woman's voice interrupted; someone whose presence had been shielded behind the strategic dazzle of candles.

'You will not address her,' informed the sisterhouse peeress. 'Nor will you otherwise speak, except in reply to set questions.'

Lirenda lost poise, her gasp of sheer terror like a rip in the absolute quiet: for this summons was no formal audience, and no straightforward reprimand. She had been called to the ritual, closed trial reserved for initiates who had transgressed their vow of obedience.

The peeress's presence had passed unseen because she would be veiled and gowned in black for her role as Ceremonial Inquisitor.

Heart hammering, drenched in the sudden, sour sweat of a fear of suffocating proportion, Lirenda shut her lips against protestations. The order's strict form would not permit questions. By ancient custom, the Koriani Prime could refuse to speak to outsiders. As an initiate placed on trial for infraction, Lirenda was forced to rely on the inquisitor to stand as her intermediary.

'You will kneel,' instructed the peeress. Even her judgmental nature showed distress for the gravity of the charge. Also aware of the unspeakable horror that attended the supreme penalty, she visibly struggled to uphold her office with the semblance of neutral decorum. 'Face your Prime.'

Lirenda did as bidden. Worse than afraid, she shifted her gaze and confronted the Matriarch enthroned on the bed.

Selidie's regard encompassed her with frigid dispassion. The eyes beneath her delicate, arched brows were placid, clear as the glaze on the gentian glass blown by a Falgaire artisan. She appeared settled, in full command at initial, first glance.

Yet the fine-grained, young skin wore the faint stamp of circles beneath masking layers of rice powder. The experienced eye read the signs: the Matriarch was spent from some hard rite of spellcraft, her febrile exhaustion betrayed by the light, kept low to ease sluggish pupils. Composed as she seemed, the hands in her lap lay concealed in the frothy, voile lace of a shawl.

Her tone as she spoke was blunted and languid, as though she had been dosed with strong possets. 'Inform the accused there will be no questions. Her guilt is already proved.'

Lirenda jerked back from retort just in time. Any speech, any appeal would compound her disobedience, closing forever the last loophole in due procedure, that her sentence had not been pronounced. Under the burden of unbearable tension enlivened by panic, she could feel every fiber of the pile rug digging into her knees; each fan of draft across her damp skin. The scent of the air, laden with unguents and the medicinal sting of turpentine, all but overwhelmed her strained senses. Lirenda swallowed, choked mute. Despite every effort, her body betrayed her: once she began shaking, she could not stop. Humiliation stained her cheeks as the long, raking tremors built and built, then swept beyond hope of concealment.

A word from the Matriarch would seal her fate for all time. She could be condemned as a witless one, pinned down and marked with the oathbreaker's brand on her forehead. That cruel debasement would become her last conscious memory before her core self became forfeit. By Koriani law, the mind of the forsworn was routed out by spelled forces channeled through a major crystal until her last shred of identity became stripped.

Selidie said nothing.

Through the hideous pause, the candles kept burning. The boy pages in their gold-and-violet livery maintained their assigned post by the door. Under the muffling veils of the Ceremonial Inquisitor's regalia, the peeress scarcely breathed. Her long fingers clasped white knuckled at her waist, the only detail picked out of the shadows to reveal her silenced distress.

Raked over the coals of a reviling helplessness, Lirenda sustained under torture. Her sole voice was the lifetime result of stern training: a will that let her endure in raw courage. She held herself, kneeling, just shy of collapse, quiet in the threadbare pretense of a calm that had long since been shattered.

Selidie stirred finally. Her head tipped back to rest amid the pillows sewn with sigils in metallic thread. She slanted a glance toward the Ceremonial Inquisitor. 'What should be the punishment for acts of vengeful spellcraft inflicted upon a company of unsuspecting guardsmen from Jaelot? That harm cost their lives.' Her voice dulcet, she added, 'The geas of pursuit that drove them to ruin
was not done by my order
!'

Forbidden to answer unless the question was addressed to her by name, Lirenda stayed silent. Pinned under the Prime's devouring regard, she still wrestled her risen distress. Her body refused the same self-command. Perspiration stippled her brow and rolled in drops down her temples. Frozen as the mouse before the coiled snake, she dared not even wonder how the Prime had discovered the details of her transgression. She had set rigorous sigils of guard against scrying. A linked construct tied in by masterful invention should have kept the spell's signature from imprinting any telltale traces on the lane flux.

The Ceremonial Inquisitor also was reft speechless, while the ranked candles burned, the white beeswax run liquid and refrozen in grotesque, clumped driblets.

Selidie Prime held her blazing regard on Lirenda. Her stilled quiet stayed absolute, the linen mantled over her as freezing white as the shimmer off a distant ice field. At length, she snapped a command to her pages. 'Fetch the Skyron crystal.'

Brittle as blown glass, drained sickeningly hollow, Lirenda fought not to faint. Mercy upon her,
she was not sentenced yet'.
But the desperation, the looming fear of annihilation, threatened to break her before time. If this were Morriel she faced,
everything that transpired was a test.
The penalty confronting her was not pronounced; its severity could yet be mitigated. But not if she snapped or lost her head. Lirenda hung on beyond reason and will, her soaked clothing plastered against quivering flanks. She closed her dry throat against pleading until the tears she refused to shed brimmed the shelves of her eyelids.

'The accused has schooled herself to a superb self-control
.'
Selidie observed, while the page who filled her request came forward and raised the lid of a bronze-bound coffer. 'A great shame she could not show the same character regarding her personal feelings.'

The prioress herself could scarcely withstand the bearing pressure of those glacial, blue eyes. She curtseyed, her black robes and veil a sigh of stirred draft in the stillness. 'Given a stay of clemency, the accused might yet learn.'

Selidie's delicate features showed no change of expression. 'She has been shown quarter. Was, in fact, granted an earlier reprieve in the form of a trial of recompense.' Contempt like a whipcrack infused the last line, and the chill gaze blazed back, to flick over Lirenda, from her raised, rigid chin, to her cramped, slippered feet, tucked under her buttocks as she knelt in ruthless suspense by the foot of the Prime's raised bed. 'She failed the test, and in rebellious fury, committed the act that has brought her here to face sentence. This time, no plea will be heard.'

The prioress bent her head, chastened. 'Your will be done, Matriarch.'

'Bind the wrists of the accused with stout cloth
.'
Prime Selidie commanded the page who remained by the door. No gesture accompanied her ringing, hard words. 'Then bring her before me.'

To the Ceremonial Inquisitor, she instructed, 'Take up the Skyron crystal when the boy retrieves the small coffer. You will unveil the stone. Raise its active focus, then hold the channel open for my use.'

Lirenda shut her eyes, a fractional break in control, but one impelled by necessity. Dizzied and faint, she could not stay upright for another moment without easing her spinning vision. Sound continued to reach her, the remorseless train of forward events marked out through a swimming, self-imposed darkness: the approaching step of the page, then his hesitant touch as he grasped her. She must not resist, must not flinch at the tightening bite of the cloth as he knotted her wrists behind her back.

Nor did that ignominy blunt the clink of wrought brass as the prioress unlatched each one of twelve fastenings on the box holding the Skyron aquamarine.

Although this focus stone did not emanate the overwhelming aura of the Great Waystone, its unveiled presence could be felt, a dire current flooding through the sharp taint of ointments, and the musk of Lirenda's terrified sweat. She fought her turned senses, roused deadened flesh to respond as the page's prod at her back signaled her to arise. Stumbling against the boy's inexpert touch, she mounted the low step to the Prime's bedside.