Traitor's Knot Part 16

That respite escaped him. His dream of lush women and soft, scented sheets broke apart as the door to the sail hold sc.r.a.ped open. Dissident voices shouted outside. Then something banged. A struggling, bound body crashed in and landed with bad-tempered curses across him.

Dakar choked, gagging on the fust of mildew puffed out of his nest of spare canvas. Slammed by an elbow, then punched by a knee in the gut, he curled on his side,, dumbly retching.

Fionn Areth stopped yelling. Aware he had landed on some wretch's body, he wormed to one side, then said, 'Light scorch the black b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they've locked me in, too!'

Dakar hugged his griped belly, too ill to swear back. 'Just keep on invoking Lysaer's false religion, you'll find yourself chucked off for shark-bait.'

'The brig's captain's a maniac!' To judge by the random rustles and thumps that jerked through the rumple of sailcloth, the yokel was struggling to loosen the wrists just lashed up by Feylind's sailhands.

'She's Arithon's pa.s.sionate ally, you dimwit.' Since Dakar was too damaged to call up his mage-sight, he settled for shutting his eyes. 'What did you expect? I'd have thought, after five wretched months in a dungeon, you'd have more brains than to spew your fanatical opinions in public.'

'I didn't speak to her.' Fionn Areth lashed an ineffectual kick that billowed more dust from the canvas. 'Not one word. The uppity b.i.t.c.h wouldn't grant me the time of day for a hearing.'

Feet thumped overhead. Lines squealed through the blocks. Feylind's cried orders were obscured by the whump as more sail was unfurled aloft. Dakar lurched to the kick as the hull slammed the waves, smoking up spray as she gathered way in her trampling run down the estuary.

'What landed you here, then?' he asked point-blank. 'We aren't unbrailing topsails for drill on this vessel. Don't claim you didn't spill all the news of Prince Arithon's flight into Kewar.'

'I wasn't asked,' Fionn Areth said, injured. 'The captain was collared and given the worst by Vhandon and Talvish already.'

Dakar's bursting laugh was choked short by a wince, as pain lanced his tender head. 'No kind reference to vouchsafe your character, I see. Get used to confinement. Feylind's got the mind and long memory of a first-rate off-sh.o.r.e navigator, which is a boon, except when it comes to offenders who ruffle her loyalties.'

'She holds a mean grudge?'

'Like a jilted shrew,' Dakar stated, morose. 'Even so, you should hear my advice, and try not to judge her too harshly.'

'Why not?' Fionn Areth stopped his useless chafing at bonds that were not going to yield to necessity. 'She behaves like a pirate who connives hand in glove with Arithon's marauding clansmen.'

'That's part of the problem,' Dakar admitted. 'How sorely she wishes to run interference on Lysaer's Alliance and their filthy practice of manning their galleys under chained slavery' As his comment provoked scathing disbelief, the spellbinder turned his head, beaten weary. 'Yes, Avenor puts captives for sale at the block. And that last is pure nonsense! Evenstar's registry's kept above-board and clean by Arithon's adamant order.'

'What for?' snapped Fionn. 'His Grace needs the sanctioned front to move his henchmen's lifted trade goods?'

'No!' Dakar sighed, too sore to stay sharp. 'Arithon's stood in for Feylind's dead father since she and her brother were children. He's kept Evenstar honest for the sake of an oath he once swore to their widowed mother.'

'What did he promise?' Fionn Areth shot back, aflame with salacious speculation.

'A binding of honour to hold them both safe from the perils attached to his name. Which is why you'll stop claiming their patron's a criminal. I don't care if you fake a contrite change of heart. You will smile and apologize until Feylind's convinced to unlock the bolt holding us prisoner.'

Tackle creaked. The brig hauled her wind, then slammed, bucking against the tidal race in the channel. Dakar gasped, clinched tight as a clam as nausea clawed at his vitals. Every natural instinct insisted that the Evenstar should have bided inside of Alestron's snug harbour. While Fionn Areth discovered the horrid discomfort that attended blue-water sailing, Dakar endured, sunk in silence.

He misliked the crawling itch in his bones. With time, the nagging sensation grew worse. Some unseen force seemed at work on the brig, an insidious wrongness he could not pin down in his undone state of distress. Days might pa.s.s before he could scry, wracked as he was with sea-sickness and the price of dissolute indulgence.

Late Autumn 5670 Transits 'It's all settled, my dear,' said Dame Dawr s'Brydion, tea-cup laid aside as she arranged disposition for Lysaer's unsettled princess, 'the duke's escort will deliver you to Methisle Fortress, into the care of the Fellowship's master spellbinder. From that safe haven, when need permits, a Sorcerer will see you the rest of the way to Ath's hostel in the city of Spire . . .'

Stinging yet from the cut lately made to reframe his oath by the rite of the Fellowship's auspices, Sulfin Evend arrives in a blaze of raw light at the focus circle in Avenor; and Asandir's swift instructions remain in his mind, as the lane forces fade and release him: 'I have business elsewhere, you must fare on alone. Ride straight through to Hanshire, speak to none that you meet, and your face will stay masked by my warding . . .'

As Asandir refires the lane flux to speed his urgent journey to remedy the damaged grimward in Scarpdale, far east and south, at the hostel in Forthmark, Prime Selidie calls in the attendance of twelve seniors, her purpose to s.n.a.t.c.h the opportune opening to launch her bid to seize the merchant brig, Evenstar . . .'

Late Autumn 5670 VI. Counterploy Chin braced on clasped fingers, Arithon turned the page of an obscure text on the Paravian practice of working masonry without mortar. The hour was late morning. Clad for comfort, he wore an unadorned shirt, and a laced jerkin of black suede. A silver-edged belt clasped his whipcord-lean frame. Though he had not ventured outside of the mountain for nigh onto a year, Davien's quirky habit of issuing challenge had forced him to maintain peak fitness. If he missed the sun, or the frisk of the wind, he showed no fidgeting restlessness.

That discipline was not wasted. A day begun without expectations changed fast as a p.r.i.c.kle of energy brushed at the bounds of his aura.

He stood at once, wary. The candles were streaming, a striking departure from form: never before had Davien's arrivals abandoned the high art of subtlety.

He dared a soft inquiry. 'We have trouble pending?'

A voice answered out of the ruffled air. 'More than you know, Teir's'Ffalenn.' Davien's living form a.s.sumed substance, his fine-grained skin flushed from the cold. He wore a black mantle edged with silver embroidery. The hood was tossed back, a sign of recent impatience since the salt-and-russet tumble of hair was neatly constrained by a tie of dark leather. 'Your a.s.sociates on Evenstar have put to sea,' the Sorcerer opened. 'They've cleared the narrows from Alestron, bearing south-east, and Koriathain have unleashed a spring trap.'

Arithon said without flinching,'I trust I'll have time to gather my sword?'

The Sorcerer laughed. 'In fact, you do not.' He unfurled the thick cape and extended the weapon as offering. The black steel had been sheathed in a st.u.r.dy new scabbard and hung on a bronze-studded baldric.

'You know me too well.' Arithon accepted the blade's icy weight. Without pause for argument, he armed himself, not astonished as the tang of the buckle slid into a hole punched for an accurate fit. 'Princess Ellaine's no longer aboard?'

'No.' For once, the Sorcerer was not inclined to try games. 'The brig's captained by Feylind, her mate and crew. For pa.s.sengers, she carries Dakar, your double, and your clanborn honour guard.'

'Vhandon and Talvish stayed on?' Arithon's glance was balefully sharp. 'My order released them back to their duke's service. They were instructed to remain ash.o.r.e!'

'And so you should, also, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

'What will I be facing?' Arithon surveyed those stilled, night-dark eyes, and encountered a spark of unease. 'Since you didn't ask whether I wanted to go, and unspecified warnings aren't useful, I trust you've a way to transport me?'

Davien raised his eyebrows. 'Even your vaunted nerves will require a shielding.'

'Permission to stand guard and act in my behalf? You have it.' Arithon stepped forward without hesitation. He met and matched the Sorcerer's troubled regard with a trust that was woundingly genuine.

From a stiff, poignant pause, which startled them both, Arithon stated, 'Have we not shared guest oath? If you wished me harm, I would be dead. Your nature is not to beg any-one's help. Therefore, I stand, freely offering.'

Davien's surprise vanished behind masking reticence. 'As you've asked, then don't curse the messenger, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

Arithon stood firm, despite that hurled challenge. He did not flinch at the Sorcerer's approach. Nor did he recoil from the touch, when it came, though the contact held nothing physical. Davien's power arose like a well of poised force. Seamless crystal, its silence enclosed him. Sealed inside its ring of forged purpose, mind and awareness were gathered, intact, then whirled upwards and out of his body. Enveloped in sudden, devouring darkness, Arithon re-emerged through a shower of light.

He sensed air, then wind, then the vault of sky, at one with the flight of an eagle.

Cold rushed across the sleek vanes of his feathers. The ice of high alt.i.tude burned pumping lungs. Arithon rode, gloved in the bird's form, wrapped inside the matrix of Davien's consciousness. All remembrance of his human form was gone, a feat that had happened too blindingly fast to reverse.

Past the threshold of change, the Sorcerer's thought picked up the question left dangling. 'I can't say what you face. Not yet. Prime Selidie has kept her intent tightly guarded. Now that she's launched the close plot she's been hatching, we'll see the design set in play.'

Arithon regrouped his shifted perception, while cloud streamers spun past, and the gusts whistled over the pinions of outstretched, taut wings. Spread below, a crazy-quilt pattern of hills lay seamed by ice-crusted ravines. Such low scrub and briar, snagged with rock at the crests, identified the frost-blasted heath of Daon Ramon. A wing stroke, more clouds, a sensation like dizziness: beneath, now, were snow-dusted vales. Furrowed ledges rose up to white summits that flashed like a crumple of enamel and gla.s.s. The bird threaded a tortuous pa.s.s through the Skyshiels, a transition that smashed every concept of impossibility. Arithon fought his distracted mind steady. Threat by Koriathain left no option except to pursue the subject at hand. 'You can't guess the extent of Selidie's plan?'

'Beyond a sigil for tracking set in Evenstar's keel, no,' Davien admitted point-blank.

The eagle's head turned. His far-sighted gaze scanned the lay of the land, and pin-pointed a summit for navigation. A banking arc steered though a slipstream of air, over the glimmering surge of the fifth lane. Then another vigorous, downsweep of wings. Water now flashed beneath, pocked by a bra.s.s sun, amid the indigo ruffles of wave-crests. Eltair Bay; Arithon identified the distinctive sh.o.r.e-line from a vantage heretofore only seen inked on charts.

'The Fellowship can't act, nor can I intervene without seeding a cycle of damaging vindication.' The Sorcerer's shared musing bespoke undertones deeper than balked frustration or open regret. 'The Koriathain ought to be curbed. Prince, you'll have to win through on your merits.'

Arithon weighed his immediate answer, then probed with the utmost wry delicacy. 'You are not your colleagues' ally, in this?'

Davien's brittle irony suggested that this time, the nettlesome p.r.i.c.k of exposure found him as the unwitting victim. 'You have grown to know me too well, Teir's'Ffalenn.' He conceded, not hedging,'I bear the other six Sorcerers no malice. If their choice was to stand, I had to fall. They had committed too much to revoke their position. I expected no more, and no less than the fate their hand dealt me before I chose exile.'

Another wing-beat, and another plunge into the white-out sheet of a cloud-bank. Arithon realized this was no natural mist, formed out of crystallized moisture, but a transverse pa.s.s through some unknown frame of conjury that unreeled across dimensional distance. When the eagle broke through, they now soared above the East Halla peninsula, slashed by the mud road that led into Tirans, with the broken walls of the Second Age ruin nestled into the fringes of Atwood, due south. Bound at such a pace, they would cross over the open ocean within a matter of minutes.

The need to curb raw curiosity was painful after months spent in freewheeling pursuit of all manner of arcane knowledge. Arithon questioned, reluctant, 'Does Dakar know the ship has trouble pending?'

'He can't avoid the awareness much longer.' Davien dived earthward. The rush of air through his wings became thunder as he used the downdraft over water to plunge from the rarified heights. 'Prime Selidie's engaged the Great Waystone just now, her purpose to waken that sigil. The groundwork she's laid is already entrained.'

'No small working,' Arithon returned in the s.n.a.t.c.hed second before the next uncanny wingstroke.

'Small or large, her construct is most tightly focused.' Davien hurtled them through another blind crossing. 'a.s.sumptions at this point will just cloud the facts. Eyes will serve better. We'll survey the territory on our way in.'

A split-second of whiteness, then the sting of salt air, and stiff wind burdened with the moist charge of a squall line; now Davien's eagle form swooped above the jagged, hooked sh.o.r.e that ran south of the inlet to Alestron's deepwater harbour. The long, rolling combers swept in from the east, spouting lace spray on the rocky spurs that guarded the calm inner coves. Here, where the free wilds of Orvandir bordered the ocean, the coast-running galleys took refuge from storms. The sea-gra.s.s in the shallows showed the sc.r.a.ped gouges of keels where they had anch.o.r.ed in shoaling water.

Near solstice, when the rough weather slowed trade, only the most experienced galley-men put their timbers and crews in harm's way. One oared ship, at most three, might be snugged into shelter in seasons when easterlies threatened; but never inside reach of Ishlir or Durn, and never in bunched-up numbers.

Today, ships were packed in like schooling fish, their decks pebbled with clumps of armed men. The broad-bellied sails were left bent to the yards, with the variegate banners of a half-dozen towns flying like tinker's snippets of yarn. Yet the pendant streaming atop every mast-head bore the gilt-and-white sunwheel of Lysaer's Alliance.

The Sorcerer broached the uneasy remark on their suspect strength and high numbers. 'Someone's been mustering at Ishlir, a.s.suredly forewarned.' Every hull rode far too high on the marks to be properly laden with cargo. 'Their position won't be a coincidence.'

Arithon sorted strategies, speechlessly grim. No natural hazard he could imagine should cause Feylind to alter the Evenstar's off-sh.o.r.e course. Fionn Areth's presence on board made any run to the mainland a risk.

The question demanded swift answer: would the Prime's machinations be framed as a goad, or as bait?

'Seen enough?' Davien asked, though already his next wingstroke sliced and blurred through the boundaries of time and s.p.a.ce. More observation would be useless effort, given the aggressive evidence. The sh.o.r.e of Orvandir had been primed for an ambush. For the brig, any closure would launch a disaster.

The eagle veered due east once again, soaring into the teeth of the gusts, with the Cildein's whipped crests knit cobalt and indigo, patched with the white snags of spindrift. There was a wrongness. Arithon caught the tingle of vigilance that narrowed the Sorcerer's awareness. Through avian senses, he also picked up the ozone that sharpened the breeze. No by-product caused by a natural storm, the scent was too fresh, and much too distinct to be left by a pa.s.sing cloud-burst.

His flicked thought to Davien went beyond warning. 'The brazen b.i.t.c.h wouldn't dare!'

'She would. She has,' Davien confirmed. 'Through the Prime's eyes, this wide world is a game-board. She would sacrifice all to s.n.a.t.c.h victory. Need we tarry? You're going to have less than an hour.'

Response from the Prince of Rathain was leashed fire. 'Get me aboard Evenstar. You already carry my word of forgiveness as the harbinger of bad news.'

Dark wings swept down. Darkness followed. The form of the eagle dissolved into air, then bled away into memory. Arithon tumbled, bodilessly disoriented. He received the errant impression of a sealed stone chamber. The enclosure was egg-shaped, with polished, dark walls flicked by rainbow flares of moving light, and the echo of trickling water. Then that uncanny awareness unravelled. His consciousness plunged through a whirling, hard spiral, and recondensed back toward the forgotten, firm weight of his flesh . . .

Mid morn arrived amid stiff, running swells. Still shut in the buffeting dark of the sail hold, though granted loaned clothes from the slop-chest, the Mad Prophet stirred. At last he had sobered enough to try the rudiments of his trained talent. The door remained barred. If Araethurian herders had pig-iron minds, their stomachs were made of no such stern stuff. Mage-sight revealed Fionn Areth, curled prostrate within a nest of mildewed storm tackle. Misery rendered him too limp to moan. The air reeked of sour vomit and urine, with the promise of worse: the bucket secured by bagged sand in the corner sloshed brimful, a hairbreadth from upset as the brig wallowed and slogged over each trampling wave-crest.

By the working groan of the hull, and the relentless thrum of filled canvas, the Evenstar now ploughed a rhumb-line course through blue water.

Dakar grumbled a thick curse. His tongue felt furred in frog slime, and his bladder was strained full to bursting. He shut gritted eyes. The blackness behind his closed lids fairly sparkled to the white flame of his headache. He groaned, moved, clamped fuddled hands to his brow. Somehow, he must refound the focus to engage his initiate awareness.

Long-suffering patience let him center his mind. Discipline pierced through the muddle of pain, not steady as yet, but sufficient to begin to redress the damage left by his wrecked state of over-indulgence. If the battering that accompanied an off-sh.o.r.e pa.s.sage escaped remedy, a blanketing sleep would do nicely to ease the misery of his condition.

Yet his effort to settle his misaligned aura raised a queer, stinging flash that subsided to haze and red static.

Dakar recoiled to a yelp of surprise. No member of Evenstar's crew had been mage-trained. Nothing he encountered upon the high seas should provoke a defensive reaction. The cold hunch remained, that this source of disturbance was external, and a part of the brig that now sailed, unprotected, across open ocean with Arithon's made double on board.

That unseen pitfall ripped Dakar to chills.

Eyes closed, wracked to dread, he shielded his working, then cast his awareness outwards. Sick pain notwithstanding, he combed through the grain of timber and planks with masterfully delicate subtlety. His probe traced the web-work and knots of tarred rigging, then spiralled through cordage, dead-eyes and blocks, finding no untoward sign of meddling. He sifted the mineral grain of the ballast rocks. No spell-craft lurked there. Pressed to the edge of his limited resource, now fogged by the turbulent rush of the brine, he tested the sheathing under the water-line. As a bare-handed man might grope for a spider, Dakar sounded until he encountered a tingling snap! The incursion sourced here, an embedded cipher that spiked his headache to redoubled virulence.

Flushed to nausea, the spellbinder hissed through shut teeth. What he laid bare in the humid, thick dark, was a Koriani sigil of tracking.

Dakar collapsed his extended awareness. Wracked witless by dread, he pushed straight and slammed headlong against the hatch combing. 'Feylind!' he howled through singing pain. 'Get down here this second! Your ship is threatened and heading for trouble worse than your most evil nightmare!'

The bar slid back. The plank door yanked open, and a sailhand holding a candle-lamp squinted into the redolent gloom. 'Shut yer trap, bucko. The captain's asleep.'

'Wake her!' On his knees, sweating, Dakar s.n.a.t.c.hed a sail hank and jammed the tight swing of the door. 'Move now, you fool! We're disastrously exposed, and primed to fall under an arcane a.s.sault by an enemy.'

'Now hasn't the whisky spun you some ill dream! Man, I've told you already. The old lady's knackered. Fought rip currents and a devilish wind through the narrows. No dog with a brain wants to roust her.'

'I'll risk that, no question.' Dakar rammed the sailhand's obstruction aside and barged shoulder down through the braced doorway. Ignoring Fionn Areth's moaned inquiry behind, the Mad Prophet stumbled the length of the hold toward the grey glimmer of daylight. He mounted the ladder, shivering and sick, and cringed as the salt-laden wind slapped his face. Sea legs, he decided, were a capricious gift that Ath gave to rock-headed m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts. The deficit left him gulping back bile. Dakar reeled his way over careening, wet planks in a rush to bend over the railing.

Dry heaves aside, he required relief. His bladder was nigh onto splitting. Swift footfalls approached. Aware that a pack of deck-hands converged with the riled intent to constrain him, Dakar tore at his clothing with h.e.l.l-bent haste. Let them lay hold of him while he voided. Unless they hauled him away in midstream, his cra.s.s tactics would give him a s.n.a.t.c.hed chance to explain. With naught else at hand to forestall their stupidity, Dakar opened his fly. The rush cost him ripped seams, and a b.u.t.ton. The deck-crew latched hold of his shoulders and arms just as he started to p.i.s.s. He yelled curses at them, to no avail. The tussle devolved to a brangle, with the wind and the thrashing spray off the swells posing both sides a ruinous handicap.

Sweated fist guarding his beleaguered c.o.c.k, Dakar snarled, 'Listen up, you runt litter of milk-sucking virgins! Your ship is packing a Koriani sigil! Do you know what vicious trouble that breeds? If you don't, haul your fumble wits out of your b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!' The Mad Prophet spoke very fast, after that, while the sailhands pressed in, struck to distrustful silence. Rumpled though he was, and green-faced with misery, the spellbinder mustered the rag ends of dignity, and finished, 'This threat is real. Your vessel's been tagged. To track past salt water, you'll have no less than Prime Selidie and twelve ranking seniors, engaged through the force of the Waystone. I can't thwart such power! Not on that scale, and not locked puking sick in the sail hold. Roust out Feylind! Do as I say, or else risk that boy who's set under the word of Prince Arithon's sworn protection.'

'What,' sniped a man with a seamy, squint eye, 'that flea-scratching goatherd who's h.e.l.l-bent to sell us out to Lysaer's Alliance? Throw him off!'

'Aye,' called another. 'Feed his tripes to the sharks. He's a nattering nuisance, I say!'

'Rot that!' snapped the cook, burst out of the galley with two fish skewers stuck through his pigtail. 'Use his guts as fresh bait for my drag-lines, I would.'

Dakar shivered. 'Please, no debate.' h.o.a.rd the last dribble of p.i.s.s though he would, his kidneys were already squeezed dry. Resigned to dread, he unlatched icy fingers and endeavoured to stuff himself back in his trousers.

That moment, the hag face of luck played him foul: the sigil embedded in Evenstar's hull woke and burned, attuned by a circle of two dozen ranked seniors channelled as one through the Waystone.

The influx slammed across the lone spellbinder's frail defences with the thundering force of an avalanche. He yelled, hands convulsed. Though spasmic reflex threatened him with castration, he failed to dodge the connection. Beyond any shadow of doubt, Prime Selidie now knew he and Fionn Areth were aboard Captain Feylind's vessel.

'Ath above!' he gasped, shaken senseless, and bruised in a place that would not let him think. 'Now we have trouble!'

'Because you've snagged your wee hairs in your b.u.t.tons?' The brusque voice was the mate, shoved into the pack to see why his deck-hands were slacking. 'By Dharkaron's fell Spear, I'll have the lot shaved! Are we a latrineful of dimwit voyeurs, or a two-masted ship trimmed under three courses of sail!'

'Wait,' urged the quartermaster, just culled from the wheel for the purpose of handling malcontents. 'Look at the man's face. Whatever's upset him is serious!'

Dakar scarcely noticed the crowd parting around him. Pressed to the lee-rail as his knees let go under him, he caught only broken s.n.a.t.c.hes of words, flung through the rush of thrown spray. Ripped by the blinding pain of his headache, he grappled to muster his talent. Someone must a.s.say the force of the threat now attached to the hapless brig.

If he was the Evenstar's only trained a.s.set, he was not to have peace for his effort.

Hands grabbed his shoulder and spun him about. 'What's happening?' The mate's piercing stare raked him over, now worried. 'What's this I hear about meddling Koriathain?'