Traitor's Knot Part 12

'They still exist,' Asandir repeated, steadfast. His saving grasp captured the metal-bound box, before his visitor thoughtlessly dropped it.

Sulfin Evend scarcely noticed his clamped grip had loosened. His longstanding distrust could not be sustained, not here, swept away by what stood unveiled in commemorative glory before him. In the moment, Asandir's bracing touch offered a balm for stunned nerves, while his obdurate will gentled the mind through the reeling shock of its weakness.

Left unmoored, the man could do little but lean if he wished to remain standing upright.

For grief pierced into a shattering pain, that the light of such majesty should have walked in the world, and been lost, dimmed into abandoned forgetfulness.

Sulfin Evend bent his head, masked his face, crushed down by the force of his shame. 'We are desolate,' he murmured, ripped wretched by honesty. 'How does your Fellowship bear our foolish insolence, that most of humankind does not spare time to realize, or far worse - that we blind ourselves with rank arrogance rather than acknowledge such overpowering greatness?'

'How does man or woman bear cold, death, and ignorance?' Asandir finished the grim thought himself. 'Because they must, and for no other reason. To do any less would cast away hope, deny truth, and declare that caring and peace have no meaning within Ath's creation.'

Sulfin Evend permitted the moth-light touch that steered him on and guided his way up the stairwell. Led into a carpeted chamber and installed in an antique chair, he managed to sit and brace his elbows upon a polished ebony table.

There, he endured until the raw fire of his anguish burned itself down to embers.

He blotted his cheeks, finally. Aware of himself, and embarra.s.sed for his bruised dignity, he looked up and encountered the Sorcerer, seated across from him.

Wax candles lit Asandir's cragged face. Two ages of weather had chiselled those features down to their gaunt frame of bone. The eyes, reflective as light on a tarn, gazed into places no man had gone.

Sulfin Evend caught himself staring; and Asandir, with an unlooked-for calm, permitted that uncivil liberty.

Observed at close hand, the Sorcerer's patience seemed nothing less than formidable. An unquiet shadow, or some ravaging horror had been the force that annealed his tenacious endurance. Behind his stark power, which wore no disguise, Sulfin Evend sensed more: the lurking spark of a wistful joy, and a dauntless strength tempered by what was in fact an uncompromised well of serenity.

'People have reason to fear you,' the Lord Commander insisted, but quietly.

Asandir did not move. 'They fear their beliefs.' The question followed with disarming mildness. 'Have I caused you harm?'

'Not yet.' Sulfin Evend glanced away. A pot of spiced tea steamed on a tray. Someone thoughtful had included a cheese wedge on a plate, brown bread, and bowls of raisins, nuts, and dried apples.

'Sethvir insisted you'd be tired of game.' Asandir already cradled a br.i.m.m.i.n.g mug, infused with the rich scent of cinnamon. The scatter of burns first observed at the windla.s.s, unnervingly, seemed to be fading, the blisters reduced to rose pink against a lacework of older scars.

Again, Sulfin Evend averted his sight, only to become overawed by the details of his surroundings. Heraldic banners covered the walls, offset by a ma.s.sive fire-place with black-agate pilasters. The Lord Commander identified the star-and-crown blazon of Tysan, then the silver leopard on green of Rathain, and left of that, the scarlet hawk of Havish, adjacent to the purple chevrons of Shand. The golden gryphon of Melhalla no doubt hung at his back. The inlaid chair that supported him had served as a royal seat for far longer than the Third Age. Before man, this room had hosted the sovereign grace of Paravian rulers, whose names and deeds framed the heroic legends of the early First Age ballads.

The King's Chamber at Althain Tower had heard Halduin s'Ilessid swear his blood oath, of crown service. Here, Iamine s'Gannley would have stood witness, a.s.suming a charge still borne by an heir who now skulked in the wilds of Camris.

Weighed by that past, and distressed by his errand, Sulfin Evend remembered the iron-bound coffer, mislaid since the moment he had witlessly lowered his guard.

'Your burden is safe.' Asandir tipped his head toward the mantel. There the coffer rested, still locked. He moved one hand, but did nothing more than reach for the tea-pot. 'You look like a man in need of refreshment. Or will you hold out as the victim of nursery tales, which warn against sharing food or drink with my Fellowship?' The glint of a smile came and went as Asandir filled a mug, then pushed the honey-pot across the table.

Eyebrows raised, the Sorcerer waited again. When Sulfin Evend left his offering untouched, he shrugged. 'Crumbs won't harm the ebony.'

Then, as his visitor failed to relax, the Sorcerer checked a sigh of incredulous, caustic impatience. 'Mother of mercy! The tea is quite normal, imported from Shand, and whatever plain fare we set before guests, the food is by no means ensorcelled.'

With that, eyes half-lidded, Asandir lifted his own steaming vessel and sipped.

Sulfin Evend managed the semblance of courtesy, stirred unsteady fingers, and spooned out a dollop of honey. 'My nurse was more graphic' He talked to forestall nervousness. 'She claimed that your Fellowship tore the hearts out of babies and ate them.'

'Raw and still beating?' Asandir helped himself to some raisins. 'Not particularly pretty, to stand accused of a practice that in fact is not ours. Such an unclean death is actually used by cults of black necromancers in their rites of initiation.'

Sulfin Evend choked on his tea.

Brilliant as mercury lit by a spark, the Sorcerer's eyes sharpened. He pa.s.sed a cloth napkin, and added, contrite, 'Did you not come here to inquire on that subject?'

After a cough to clear his closed throat, Sulfin Evend admitted, 'I had expected to broach the matter with Sethvir.'

Asandir savoured his tea, frowned a moment, then hooked back the honey for more sweetening. 'Sethvir has a scar as long as your arm that was left by a necromancer's knife. His patience is short where their works are concerned. For myself, I've spent too many years in the field to waste undue time over niceties. Will you hear my straight warning? The faction you've roused is unspeakably dangerous. Leave Tysan. Travel under my ward of protection, live your life, and never turn back.'

Despite gnawing doubt, Sulfin Evend held firm. 'I can't do that.'

'Then make no mistake. Your brash bravery is not wisdom!' When Lysaer's officer withstood that sharp censure, the Sorcerer broke off, grasped the cheese knife, and began to slice bread.

'I made a promise to Enithen Tuer,' Sulfin Evend revealed at due length. 'Would you send me off with a meal and no hearing?'

Asandir pinned his guest with steel eyes. 'You might as well eat. The dangers you're bound and determined to face aren't going to forgive any weakness. Your nerves falter now? Then rethink your position. The works of the death cults are by lengths more ugly than the unfounded whispers you've heard concerning our Fellowship.'

That said, the Sorcerer folded a chunk of cheese into the bread, took a bite, then shoved the filled plate toward the opposite edge of the tray. 'I know how it feels to spend months on the road. Don't try to pretend you're not hungry.'

Thereafter, the Sorcerer tucked into his meal. He did not look up. Nor would he respond to polite conversation. Sulfin Evend was left watching. Need triumphed, eventually. Soon after, the tray was emptied of food, and the bread loaf, demolished to crumbs.

'That's better.' Asandir stretched and arose. He fetched goblets and a decanter of cider from a carved hutch, then served himself and Sulfin Evend.

As the cut crystal-gla.s.s was placed before him, the Hanshireman bridled. 'Do you think me a fool? I did not journey here to have my tongue loosened with drink!'

The Sorcerer regarded the pale amber liquid, unoffended. 'Sethvir does brew strong spirits when the mood takes him.' He sampled the cider, then looked up, brightened to an incongruous spark of hilarity. 'What threat from me are you guarding against, Sulfin Evend idna cou'wid en tavrie s'Gannley?'

A son brought up by the Mayor of Havish had the schooling to translate the Paravian, which meant, 'fourth-born who denies a Named heritage.' 'I won't let you bait me,' Sulfin Evend replied.

Asandir settled back, looking suddenly worn. 'By all means, have things your way. I merely hoped a difficult discussion would go easier if you were not saddle worn, or strung-wire taut with distrust. As I've taken delicate steps to point out, I am not your judge. Nor am I your misguided master's executioner! I will not support pretence. If you won't hear my counsel, why else are you here?'

Evasion was not possible. 'I made a vow to Enithen Tuer that I would swear a blood oath under Fellowship auspices.'

'That requires my consent.' Asandir spun the crystal between his deft fingers. 'A caithdein's invocation binds a tie to the land. Do you understand fully? You are asking my sanction to stand moral ground as a high king's conscience, and the s'Ilessid you serve is most vilely cursed. The Mistwraith's set geas is what drives his war against Rathain's lawful crown prince. Not shadows. Not evil. Not moral cause. This is the bare truth. Are you ready to own that your campaign of slaughter is a man-hunt for a spirit who is blameless?'

Sulfin Evend raised his cider, defiant. 'I survived the fires of Lysaer's madness on the field in Daon Ramon Barrens. I watched him kill as a person possessed, then torment himself in the aftermath. I have seen through the lie he plays out as self-sacrifice. While his heart is imprisoned beyond reach of pity, your Fellowship has named him as outcast.'

'With great sorrow,' Asandir interjected. 'Lysaer chose, despite our urgent advice.' The fingers poised on the stem of the goblet kept their forceful calm. 'Do you realize what you ask, Sulfin Evend of Hanshire? Your sworn bond must set you at odds with your family. It will splinter your integrity as Alliance Lord Commander. Understand clearly: a binding made here cannot supplant Maenol s'Gannley. Nor will it lend you any false grounds to pose Lysaer as a prince at Avenor.'

'I bled and p.r.o.nounced the vow once in Erdane,' Sulfin Evend shot back. 'Do you imply that my act held no consequence?'

'Enithen Tuer would not err, in that way. Make no mistake, foolish man. You were bound, well and truly. But not under terms of old charter law, and not under our Fellowship's formal endors.e.m.e.nt. A binding made here will command your true self. The accounting for that will extend beyond flesh, and could even endure after death.'

Sulfin Evend held braced through a shuddering chill, as an icy wind blew on his destiny. 'If I do not stand firm at Lysaer's side, who else will? In all of Athera, where can he turn?'

'Do you think to redress the flaw in his character?' Asandir waited.

'No.' Sulfin Evend swallowed. 'I can't. Lysaer's web of subterfuge is too seamless. Every-one who gets close is in awe of him. Who else can provide a staunch voice of reason, or act with a conscience outside the reach of the cursed forces that drive him? Will your Fellowship stand aside while his last shred of principle is stamped out by the hideous usage of necromancy?'

'Our hands have been tied by Lysaer's free will,' Asandir rebuked, unequivocal. 'The priest, Jeriayish, also bided his time. He was a mere p.a.w.n, but a clever one, careful to instill his cult's compulsion when his victim was weak. That opening was s.n.a.t.c.hed when a lane imbalance claimed all of our Fellowship's resources. Rest a.s.sured, the problem shall be addressed. You need not stay involved in the outcome.'

'You will intervene to spare Lysaer from threat?' Sulfin Evend challenged point-blank.

'We must act to curb necromancy in its most extreme forms,' Asandir allowed. 'Its practice abrogates the most basic terms of the compact.'

'But not this time?'

The Sorcerer sighed. The hands that had crowned the original high kings now rested flat on the table-top. 'If Lysaer should fall victim to the Kralovir, the grey cult, the power its pract.i.tioners might seek to wield through him could compromise the very heart of Athera's deep mysteries.'

'You would execute him,' Sulfin Evend gasped, shocked.

'We do not kill!' Asandir snapped, emphatic. 'Do you understand the abomination you face? If Lysaer succ.u.mbs fully, he'll be worse than enslaved. Something other than dead. The rites the cults practise do not leave soul or spirit intact. We are sadly left to release what remains. The devoured husk must be burned in white fire to put an end to a horrific misery. Stay at Lysaer's side, you might risk the same fate.'

Sulfin Evend leaned forward, roused as a mantled falcon. 'I will swear oath.' He raised his gla.s.s and tossed off the spirits as insistent proof of his trust. 'Lysaer spared my life, once. I owe him this much.'

'Lysaer saved you from nothing,' Asandir rea.s.serted. 'You are free, Sulfin Evend. Walk away from this place under my warded protection.'

Yet no entreaty displaced the Lord Commander's fixed stance. The Sorcerer regarded him one taut moment more. Then he emptied his gla.s.s, and accepted the burden laid on him with a sigh of hard-set resignation. 'Very well. As you wish. What can be done, will be. Fetch down your locked box. You'll allow me to deal with the contents?'

'Freely.' Sulfin Evend stood up. Anger steadied him as he retrieved the strapped coffer, then unhooked the chain he wore at his neck and surrendered the key to the Sorcerer.

Asandir placed his fingers against the top one brief second, then turned the lock. He flipped up the lid and touched the wrapped contents. His mouth tightened, as though contact pained him, even through veiling silk. Then he said, 'Do you wish to step out?'

Returned to his chair, about to sit down, Sulfin Evend checked sharply. 'If I stay, do I stand in jeopardy?'

'No.' The Sorcerer did not elaborate, but incanted a phrase in actualized Paravian. As the knots binding up the sacrificial blade loosened, he slipped off the silk and snapped a fist around the knife's handle as though he took charge of a striking snake. His left forefinger and thumb grasped the bone-blade, and ran, hard, from hilt to tip. Light flared. Air screamed. Through rushing wind, a child cried out in piteous pain. An old man's voice wailed for reprieve. A young woman wept, and something else sobbed in shrieking, soprano agony.

Head bowed, Asandir gripped the vibrating knife. His tall form seemed wrapped in scintillant light. Through tumultuous noise, he gathered himself and began speaking. Names, Sulfin Evend realized with cold horror: a long list, recited one after the next, with a gla.s.s-edged, imperative clarity.

The wailing gained volume, keened into a hideous, tormented cry that first raised the hackles, then threatened to freeze mind and heart. Asandir turned the knife, point down toward the earth. Then he clasped his left fist at the haft, firmed his grip, and drew the blade through. The sharp edge slit his flesh. Blood ran. Fire bloomed. Droplets pattered onto the ebony table and dissolved, smoking, into white light, within a chamber that seemed suddenly darkened and crawling with shadows.

Inky ribbons of force unfurled from the bone-blade. As the power awakened and, called by blood sacrifice, snaked out to claim a fresh victim, the Sorcerer's person came under attack. His arms, his broad shoulders, then his face and head were bound up, then swallowed by those blighting streamers of darkness.

Cramped to nausea, Sulfin Evend reeled. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a bracing grip on the chair-back. While he steadied himself, the room dissolved through a burst of blinding, unbearable brilliance. Asandir spoke a word that razed through the turmoil and caused the stone table to ring like a bronze bell. The pure tone shattered thought, undid human reason. With a start, the Hanshireman realized the voices had all fallen silent. No more fell winds howled. The queer lights were gone. Only the commonplace candle-flames burned in their metal sconces.

The knife lay, clean and ordinary, on the stone table. Asandir was stanching his opened left hand with the sleeve of Lysaer's erstwhile dress-shirt. 'You found that unpleasant?' The Sorcerer glanced up. His scalding stare blistered. 'I beg you, go. Don't try to meddle with necromancers. Their doings lie outside all mercy.'

Speechless, Sulfin Evend sat down. Sick and shaking through the after-shock, he watched the Sorcerer unwind the stained silk. Asandir's hands seemed quite normal. The fresh wounds on the fingers and palm had already closed and healed over. Naught remained but the seam of a livid scar. Beneath that, his workaday callus was marked across and across: older weals, thin and shiny white, their accounting too many to number.

Asandir smoothed down his cuff. He reached for the cider, refilled his gla.s.s, then slid the bottle toward Sulfin Evend. 'You will bury that knife,' he instructed as he eased his dry throat. 'The blade was cut from the bone of a girl-child's thigh. Her name was once Enna. Her parents believed they had apprenticed her to an upright woman who worked for the weaver's guild as a yarn-spinner.'

Sulfin Evend managed a shuddering breath. 'You will take my oath?'

Asandir sighed. 'I must.' He retrieved the cleansed knife, gently laid it to rest in the box, shut the lid. 'As you said, we have no one to stand guard for Lysaer. I have a simple request, in return. Are you willing?'

The Lord Commander straightened. 'What do you ask of me?'

Settled back with his cider, Asandir tucked away his scored hand. 'You carry a stone-knife from Enithen Tuer, given for your protection. I ask you to accept my direct warding instead, since an object could be easily lost or misplaced. The stone-knife may help to guard Lysaer, as you wish. But when the day comes, if you rout the works of the grey cult from Avenor, and clear the foothold they seek at Etarra, then -'

Sulfin Evend shot straight. 'Etarra!'

'Oh, yes.' The Sorcerer leaned forward. He pressed his guest's hand around the stem of the goblet with an almost ephemeral touch. 'Drink, foolish man. You've established your bravery. Cerebeld has been a cult puppet for years. He dispatched his priests to three cities in the east, and your uncle Raiett is already shadowed by the same peril.'

Pale to the lips, Sulfin Evend raised his gla.s.s, amazed at how quickly Sethvir's strong cider burned off his deep-seated nausea. 'I'll give what you ask.' Prepared for a blood price, a geas, or some demand for a difficult sacrifice, the Hanshireman held braced for the worst.

Asandir smiled. The expression showed tender sweetness and sorrow, and quite transformed his gruff face. 'Take the knife given you by the seeress and, at your earliest convenience, return it to its rightful owner.'

'Who might that be?' Sulfin Evend asked, disbelieving. 'Do I know him?'

'Her?' The Sorcerer shook his head. 'She is the elder of the Biedar, a desert tribe found in the Black Waste of Sanpashir.'

Autumn 5670 Game-pieces While falling leaves and frosts clothed the north in carnelian and gold, edged with diamond, amid the milder lands to the south, the day's early heat streamed through the high colonnades of the ancient hospice at Forthmark. The Koriani Seniors who attended their Prime Matriarch were obliged to wait in the glaring sun of the courtyard. Yet unlike her three sisters, Lirenda was powerless to shed her stifling formal mantle. While sweat trickled down her nape, and her layered skirts clung to her humid ankles, she could not unclasp even one tight b.u.t.ton. Chin held high, she was powerless to protect her pampered complexion or raise her hand to relieve the p.r.i.c.kle of heat rash inflicted by dampened wool.

No reprieve lay in sight. The courtyard's stonewalls, with their uncanny carvings, blocked the breeze from the snow-clad peaks. Shaded under the overhang, Selidie Prime sat enthroned in a high-backed chair. Her purple mantle draped in pristine folds, the hems st.i.tched with sigils of copper. Beneath pinned gold hair, her aquamarine eyes offset a delicate, doll's face. Exquisite in beauty, her deformity jarred: bundled in linen, her maimed hands lay like clubs on a cushion placed in her lap.

Tragic center of the morning's activity, the most skilled of the hospice's healers bent over the Prime's ravaged limbs. They fussed and conferred, in no rush to finish the delicate task of removing their enspelled bandages.

While the ranked seniors waited, constrained to patience, Lirenda fumed in forced stillness.

A more terrible fate could not be conceived to crush pride and dismantle ambition. Fallen from power and privileged position, Lirenda suffered, consumed by trapped rage, her favoured t.i.tle stripped from her. Through the months since she fell under punitive sentence, she fed on her well of balked hate. Though she still owned the knowledge of an eighth-rank initiate, her punishment denied her autonomy. Snared by the sigil of obedience sealed through the matrix of the Great Waystone, Lirenda could not move or speak without a direct command. Kept like an item of valuable furniture, she existed now as a precision tool at the beck and call of the Matriarch.

Unlike the witless ones, stripped as blank husks, Lirenda suffered the corrosive torment of her unimpaired intelligence. Day to day, she endured, her most basic needs enslaved to one voice, that her flesh must obey without question.

She could not speak, though the pretence on-going before her scalded her very blood. She must watch each move as the sigils for reversal, destruction, and regeneration were dissolved, one by one in succession. The polished quartz stylus dipped, flashed, and cut, a moving light in the healer's deft hand. The meticulous work would be tiresome: each eddy of tied energy must be recaptured in crystal, then given release and dispersal. Close handling of such contrary forces required deep concentration. One slip, or one misplaced stroke might easily sever a finger. With unflagging courage, the hospice healer blotted her brow. A skilled a.s.sistant answered the Prime's breathless complaint, then offered a posset to numb her gnawing pain. Slowly, the fine gauze bandages were snipped, then unwound with tender care.

Lirenda chafed as the rest of the farce was played through. She seethed to witness each hopeful, faked phrase the Matriarch spoke to her underlings. For this warped creature who sat wearing the mantle of prime power well knew of the gaps that existed between the restorative spells and a resident spirit that did not match the auric matrix of her youthful body. Today's exhaustive effort must fail. The same as it had, week upon week, since the Matriarch's arrival four months ago.

Immersed in their dangerous, intensive labour, the best healers at the order's command still believed they might cure their Prime's ruined hands. Lirenda stayed powerless. She could not divulge the unsavoury secret: that Selidie was a being possessed by the unscrupulous shade of her predecessor. The irony scalded, that Morriel sat there, a smug, changeling crone, re-embodied as a slender sylph.

The last layers of the dressing were eased away to a cry of dismay from the healer. For of course, the contracted claw fingers remained frozen amid their scarred calyx of wrecked bone and tissue.

Selidie said no word to ease the distress. Forthmark's most skilled talent exclaimed with bent heads, then faced their defeat with hushed deference. The thin silk mitts were retrieved and slipped over the Matriarch's ghastly infirmity.

'Next week,' the Prime ordered. 'You shall try again.'

'Your will, Matriarch.' The healer dared not argue a direct command, or protest today's thankless dismissal. Oath-bound to obedience, she wrapped her instruments, while her a.s.sistants swept up the cut shreds of bandage and bundled them for disposal. The group curtseyed and filed out, leaving Prime Selidie enthroned in her chair.

Such towering confidence should have raised hackles, had any-one present possessed either authority or courage to try inquiry. Yet Prime rank of itself granted total immunity. The sole voice that might have denounced the vile crime had been crushed by that tyranny, then silenced. As Selidie surveyed the seniors awaiting her needs in the courtyard, Lirenda alone had the sense to be frightened, aware as she was of the ruthless mind behind that peremptory glance.

'I want Fionn Areth,' the Prime opened at length. 'He has been left at large for too long. I require him taken back in hand and placed under our order's protection.'

The peeress wearing the fourth band of red rank responded with veiled trepidation. 'By your will, Matriarch, your command shall be served, though with all due respect, the boy is still kept under lock and key inside warded walls at Alestron. We lack the duke's confidence, and the merchants we hold under our sworn oath of debt have not succeeded in buying his ransom.'

'This could change, shortly,' Selidie said, crisp. Where, as Morriel, she would have dispatched subordinates with an impersonal snap of her fingers, now, her change of persona compelled her to address them by name. 'Marisette! Prepare an array for a grand scrying. Lirenda, take charge of my keys and fetch the Great Waystone from the compartment beneath my state chair.' On afterthought, she added, 'You look hot. If you like, my page can take charge of your mantle as you let yourself out.'

Reduced to a miserable, subservient grat.i.tude, Lirenda swept out on the errand. By the time she returned, shrouded jewel in hand, Forthmark's skilled seeress had completed her protective chalked circles. The quartz sphere for her scrying had been aligned to receive the Prime's influx of tuned spell-craft.