Traitor's Knot Part 2

'Done,' Luhaine answered, mercifully brief.

Fionn Areth shut his eyes, braced for a blast of scouring light, or a purging release of wild energies.

Nothing happened.

The slosh of salt water did not abate. Apprehensive, the Araethurian cracked open one lid. Stillness remained, laced by a nexus of withering, cold air and a living awareness not to be gainsaid.

'Rats,' Luhaine qualified. 'They gave their consent and carried the spells to lay down my guarding circle.' Fixated on Fionn's repressed jerk of startlement, he bristled, 'What did you expect, goatherd? A flare of crude conjury? Such a beacon would have been grossly misplaced where the utmost of finesse is needful.'

'What enchantresses? Where?' Fionn Areth accused. 'I saw no women but shameless harlots when Dakar's lunacy rousted the Kittiwake.'

'Be quiet, Fionn! Koriani spell-craft was the reason I tipped the d.a.m.ned beer on my head in the first place.' To the Sorcerer, not drunken, the Mad Prophet said, 'Then you knew the accursed witches were after him?' His slurred speech in fact the sapped mark of exhaustion, he complained, 'For my pains, then you might have come a bit sooner.'

'Your goatherd is not a blood prince of the realm,' Luhaine pointed out, miffed. 'To strike a clean balance, you did have to ask. Even then, my act stands on tenuous ground. I could not defend, but for Arithon's ill-advised pledge to spare a crown subject from injustice.' Met by Dakar's crest-fallen silence, the shade of the Sorcerer tempered his censure. 'Though you need not have waited for use of salt water to mask your cry of intent.'

The Mad Prophet's sigh echoed off dripping stonework. 'Well, you're scarcely the sort to choose congress with rats.' Chain clanked as he shifted, trying to ease the strain on his manacled wrists. 'Last I saw, Luhaine, you hated their ornery nature worse than the plague.'

'I don't enjoy rats,' the Sorcerer admitted. 'Although Koriathain please my sensibilities far less, our Fellowship is critically short-handed. Next time you cry out for help in a crisis, we may not be able to answer.'

'What's to be done, then?' Dakar appealed, wracked by his galling frustration. 'Shipsport's dungeon can't keep us protected.' He need not press his point: once the brutal news of the Alliance's losses travelled the eastsh.o.r.e trade routes, Fionn Areth's unnatural resemblance to Arithon would turn into a red-hot liability. 'We've missed our planned rendezvous. Evenstar's already weighed anchor and sailed on her scheduled run south.'

Luhaine subsided to stilled cogitation, as much to measure the rigid distress behind Fionn Areth's stark quiet. 'You'll have to change plans. A sea berth's unwise.'

Fresh off the docks, even the back-country goatherd was forced to the same grim a.s.sessment. Every ship bearing flags of town registry flew the gold sunwheel of the Alliance. Aboard such a vessel, amid Arithon's pledged enemies, the young double could all too easily find himself hung from the mainmast yard-arm. Yet lacking the natural defence of salt water, a spellbinder's skills risked being outmatched by the quartz-driven snares unleashed by the Koriani Order. Until the pair reached warded walls at Alestron, Fionn Areth's contested freedom was bound to remain under constant siege.

Begrudging the ice-water freezing his b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, and ambivalent toward the powers of sorcery, the beleaguered herder buried his fears behind his uncivil suspicion. 'You'd rather we came to grief on the road?'

Luhaine had the grace not to rise to offence, though the chill in his silence rippled the brine, and the Mad Prophet hissed through his teeth.

'I don't like rats, either,' Fionn Areth lashed back, tired of being a bone in the jaws of a deadlocked political conflict.

The stillness stretched, filled by the slosh of the tide. The Sorcerer's presence stayed, a poised force welded into obsidian air. The truth kept its cruel edges: Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn would never have been forced into flight through Daon Ramon, if not for Fionn Areth's obstinate wish to align with Lysaer's Alliance. The Light's war host would have had no hazed fugitive to chase and no fresh round of slaughter to lay at the feet of the man they called Spinner of Darkness.

Justly reviled by the uncanny weight of the Fellowship Sorcerer's displeasure, the Araethurian flushed with embarra.s.sment. No use to lie, or to pretend his deliverance by Arithon's hand had not torn his youthful ideals to raw wounds and conflicted loyalty.

Thrown out of his depth, Fionn Areth clung yet to his obdurate, gra.s.s-lands honesty. He dared not rely on the spellbinder's word or place trust in the doings of Sorcerers. The s'Ffalenn prince himself had yet to account for the criminal charges against him. Until guilt or innocence could be resolved, Luhaine must respect the unquiet fact: that the straightforward cut of country-bred cloth could not reconcile a stance that had plotted a cold-blooded ma.s.sacre.

Though he drowned, gnawed by vermin, Fionn Areth would as soon run his steel through Prince Arithon's heart. While he lived and breathed, he would not embrace the dread choice of abetting dark magecraft.

'Boy, you grant me no opening to respond,' Luhaine p.r.o.nounced at due length. 'Your grounds for safe conduct must still rely on the oath Dakar swore to appease his Grace of Rathain. Remain in the spellbinder's company, and the shield of crown justice will provide you with shelter. Leave, and all ties become forfeit.'

'I can't stand down the Koriani Prime Matriarch alone,' Dakar appealed in trepidation. 'My defence wards won't hold. The instant the tide ebbs, we'll be stripped and hung by our heels like a brace of skinned rabbits.'

Luhaine's leashed presence revolved, unperturbed. 'Then you'll have no choice but to show their trained scryers precisely what they expect.'

'Cast me off. in surrender?' Fionn Areth cried, shocked. 'Your crown prince risked death, first!' Despite his ambivalence, the meddling Koriathain had wrought the bane that unravelled his destiny in the first place.

'Fionn, be quiet! You won't be betrayed.' Too short and fat for his tether of chain, Dakar wrestled the pain of wracked joints, and pursued harried converse with Luhaine. 'Yes, my fit of erratic behaviour disrupted their spelled sweep of the Kittiwake's tap-room. But now we owe fines. We can't lose their probes by seeding a wild rash of bar brawls. What do you actually suggest?'

'Give them the whoring wastrel.' Luhaine's pause carried a poison simplicity. 'Would any celibate circle of women, rigidly scrutinized by their seniormost peers, play the role of voyeur to keep pace with unsavoury company?'

'Sithaer's coupling fiends!' Dakar gasped, half-strangled. 'Oh, please, let them try!' The order's initiates were female, after all, with most of them blushing virgins. The calm state their scryers required for trance could scarcely withstand the raw onslaught of vice, with its b.e.s.t.i.a.l range of sensation. The spellbinder whooped, his eyes leaking tears. 'You know, I could wreck those prim ladies through drink!'

Quartz crystal would magnify his drunken stupor. Even an experienced circle must falter, hazed out of focus as their snooping seeresses threaded their watch sigils through him.

'Give them debauchery,' Luhaine agreed. 'Who would waste breath to comment? For you, rank indulgence is not out of character. The distortions such excess will spin through your aura can be made to mask my wrought binding to shield Fionn Areth.'

'Well, you'd better not fail me,' the Mad Prophet said, tart. 'Wasting hangovers hurt, not to mention, my access to conjury is going to get p.i.s.sed straight to shambles.' Undone that way, he would be incapable of even the small cantrips to cure his myopic eyesight.

Luhaine stayed unmoved. 'The stakes could go far worse for your charge, if Prime Selidie learns that you've balked her will by asking for Fellowship backing.'

I'll bang myself witless,' Dakar said point-blank. Before Fionn drew breath, he doused the inevitable protest. 'The witches had you swear an oath of permission over the Skyron aquamarine. That tie has kept you in peril since the moment Prince Arithon s.n.a.t.c.hed you from Jaelot. The Koriani hold on your life might turn out to be revocable. If so, you'll need the trained help of an embodied Fellowship Sorcerer. Or else find your way to a Brotherhood hostel, and risk the chance you can beg Ath's adepts to call down a divine intercession.'

'If indeed, they would extend such relief,' Luhaine temporized, 'and provided you arrived with your freedom intact to ask for the grace of their sanctuary' The nearest such haven lay too far removed from Dakar's planned route to Alestron. 'Very few supplicants who pet.i.tion receive the fruits of exalted, wise counsel.' The Sorcerer gave that faint hope his crisp closure. 'You can't sustain such a pilgrimage, herder. None pa.s.s the threshold to enjoin the high mysteries who walk with an unsettled heart.'

'Should I argue mixed feelings?' Fionn Areth attacked. 'By Alliance tenets which might pose the truth, your Fellowship's practice is tainted. The Light's doctrine also holds that Ath's Brotherhood is corrupt, suborned by the powers of Darkness.'

Luhaine's presence recoiled.

'Forgive backlands ignorance!' the Mad Prophet cried. 'Leave Rathain's crown prince his preferred right to answer this.'

Yet Fionn Areth lashed out, goaded on to brash fury. 'I don't need -'

'Shut up, you dolt! The bright powers of Athera are not Lysaer's enemies, no matter who taught you to fear them.' Dakar leaned forward, jerked breathless as his manacled wrists wrenched him short. 'Luhaine, for pity! Respect the constraints of my bond to Prince Arithon.' The spellbinder's appeal gained a frantic, shrill edge, as the hair on his skin stabbed erect. 'You know the young fool has a vicious tongue, and no semblance of manners when he's been terrified.'

'An apology would be civil,' the Sorcerer snapped, vexed. 'If the cant of Avenor's false priesthood held truth, your yokel would no longer be using the blameless air to support his ungrateful opinions!'

'For Arithon's sake, don't deny him your help,' Dakar begged with strained dignity.

'Help?' Luhaine huffed. 'I'd sooner converse with a Sanpashir scorpion. At least they don't sting before they are threatened, and they are soft-spoken and gracious.'

'Once, I was the hare-brained scapegrace,' Dakar entreated. Warned that his charge might open his mouth, he dispatched a kick, underwater. 'Luhaine, for pity! Grant me the favour. The delay from your summons to Rockfell Peak is what cost us our safe pa.s.sage on Evenstar.'

'There are limits.' Yet the missed rendezvous with the brig scored a point that could not be dismissed. For the harrowing service just given to spare his strapped Fellowship from a crisis, the Sorcerer chose to unbend. 'I can't ease the constraints,' he admitted, begrudging. 'Technicalities cloud your present awareness. Fionn Areth bears a life debt, acquired at birth. Elaira yielded that tie under oath-bound duress to the power of the Koriani Council. Her retraction might free him, with Asandir's backing. But at present, your lump-headed moorlander can't ask that choice, or be traumatized by any-one's act of grand conjury.'

Though the cresting tide surged through the cell in black currents and immersed the chained prisoners chest-deep, Luhaine's summary cancelled the needful alternative. 'My colleague cannot spare the resource, just now. Nor have I the leeway to chase after an ingrate stripling as nurse-maid. You'll have my warding as far as Alestron. From there, take to sea aboard Khetienn forthwith. Wring what refuge you can from blue water.'

To the b.u.mpkin, inflamed by his f.e.c.kless ideals and his suicidal confusion, Luhaine discharged his last word. 'Dakar must escort you to safety himself. The wards that will hide you are spun through his aura. By your will, mark my warning particulars carefully! I can't grant you a guarded shred of autonomy under my Fellowship's auspices. Woe betide you if you should ever stray from the side of your oathsworn protector.'

'Luhaine, wait!' Teeth chattering, Dakar shouted to stem the rushed breeze of the Sorcerer's departure. 'What of the fee imposed by the Kittiwake? Hold back! Shipsport has pa.s.sed sentence, and we haven't the coin to defray the clerk's fine or meet the landlord's exorbitant damages.'

'You do now,' corrected the Sorcerer's shade, his fading voice thinned to asperity. 'The magistrate's clerk will find an entry that states the fine's paid in full in the morning. Farewell!'

The chained prisoners were abandoned to hollow darkness, scored through by the lap of salt water and the resurgent chittering of swimming rats.

'Is he gone?' Fionn ventured, his rage drained away to threadbare exhaustion.

Dakar cursed in spectacular, rough language until he ran short of breath. 'Yes, Luhaine has left us. Bad cess to your yapping gra.s.s-lands insolence! Now we get to soak through a miserable night. Don't try another d.a.m.ned word or believe this! I'll leave your scared a.r.s.e as chained bait for the witches and watch Shipsport's vermin feed on your carca.s.s!'

Late Spring 5670.

Binding.

The town of Erdane's formal banquet to honour the Divine Prince's return from his arduous campaign against Shadow had been planned as an effusive celebration, until the moment of Lysaer s'Ilessid's opening statement. Hushed antic.i.p.ation welcomed his entry. Resplendent in the sharp glitter of diamonds, his state presence on fire with white-and-gold thread, he delivered the list of shattering losses that outlined a vicious defeat. Beyond words for sorrow, he retired at once. His wake left behind a stunned silence.

The lean companies from Etarra encamped by the south wall were not the advance guard, transporting the critically wounded. In harsh fact, no more troops would be marching home, bearing accolades, honour, and triumph.

Hours later, the impact still rocked the guests who lingered in the mayor's palace: news that Arithon, Spinner of Darkness, had escaped beyond reach through the entry to Kewar Tunnel. Everywhere else, that formal announcement might ease the impact of tragedy, even offer resounding relief. The renegade Sorcerer, Davien the Betrayer, had fashioned the maze that lay beyond that dread threshold. The foolish who dared to venture inside did not survive the experience.

Yet Erdane possessed more accurate knowledge concerning the powers of Fellowship Sorcerers. Here, where the archives had not been destroyed with the overthrow of the high kings, breaking word of the s'Ffalenn b.a.s.t.a.r.d's evasion was received with sobering recoil.

The terse conversations exchanged in the carriage yard became a trial on Sulfin Evend's taut nerves. Despite the biting, unseasonable cold, guild ministers decked out in jewels and lace seemed to pluck at his cloak at each step.

'My Lord Commander of the Light?' The latest pet.i.tioner ploughed in, undeterred by the field weapons and mail worn beneath the Alliance first officer's dress-surcoat. 'What are your plans? Will the Divine Prince regroup his defence in the east?'

'I don't know,' Sulfin Evend demurred. His hawk's features turned from the blasting wind, he unhooked the merchant's ringed fingers. 'Too soon to tell,'

'The entrance to Kewar should stay under guard.' The insistent courtier still barred the way, unscathed by the war veteran's impatience. 'Did the Prince of the Light leave no company in Rathain to stand watch over the portal?'

'Had any-one stayed, they'd be dead to a man!' Sulfin Evend barked back, since his tied hands on that score rankled sorely. Although tonight's bitter weather still gripped all of Tysan, to the east, spring thaws mired the roadways. Ox-trains would labour, slowed to a crawl, with Daon Ramon rendered impa.s.sable. Melt-waters now roared through the boulder-choked vales, too engorged for a safe crossing. Supply would bog down in those forsaken notches, riddled with uncanny Second Age ghosts, and enclaves of hostile clan archers. 'I won't post my troops as bait to be murdered. Our toll of losses has been harsh enough without risking more lives to stupidity!'

As the guildsman bridled, Sulfin Evend cut back, 'That ground is reserved as Athera's free wilds, and deep inside barbarian territory.'

'Your bound duty is not to eradicate vermin?' a fresh voice declaimed from the side-lines. 'Our gold fills the coffers that arm your men! To what use, if you pack them up and turn tail each time the chased fox goes to earth?'

'Good night, gentlemen!' The Alliance commander shoved through the last wave of inquirers, pushed past his last shred of patience. Too many fine officers had died on the field. Left in sole charge of demoralized troops, he found his resources stretched far too thin. Erdane was a stew of insatiable politics, both council and trade guilds riddled with clandestine in-fighting, and coloured by the entrenched hostility held over from past resentment of old blood royalty. The Lord Commander preferred not to billet the men here, worn as they were from the last weeks of a harried retreat. Yet his bursar lacked ready funds for provision, and troop morale was still fragile. Tempers ran too ragged to risk quartering the company at large in the country-side.

Beside the Master of Shadow's escape, Lysaer's regency faced pending crisis: each pa.s.sing day raised the spectre of famine, as the unnatural, freezing storms rolled down from the north and forestalled the annual planting.

Yet since the Blessed Prince had wed the Lord Mayor's daughter, a strategic refusal of this town's hospitality became a social impossibility.

Sulfin Evend outpaced the overdressed pack at his heels, stamped slush from his spurs, then mounted the stair from the carriage-way. Admitted through the mayor's front door, he endured the butler's imperious inspection. He stood, steaming, for the liveried boy who removed his sunwheel cloak, and sat for another, who buffed his soaked field boots until he was deemed fit to tread on the mansion's priceless carpets. Their service was gifted no more than a copper. The shame was no secret: the Alliance treasury was flat strapped. If the town's ranking ministers were all jumpy as jackals, expecting appeals for new funding, the mayor's sleek staff accepted their token with the semblance of deferent charm.

'Your Lordship,' they murmured. 'Enjoy a good evening and a sound rest.'

Sulfin Evend stood up, a whipcord lean man with dark hair and pale eyes, and the well-set, alert bearing that bespoke a razor intelligence. Hanshire born, and the son of a mayor, he showed flawless courtesy, inwardly knowing he dared not trust Erdane's cordial reception too far. Secret brotherhoods still gathered inside these gates. Pract.i.tioners of magecraft and unclean rites lurked in the crumbling tenements by the west wall. Tonight's wealthy sycophants spurred his concern, as their flurried whispers and rushed, private dispatches widened the breach for covert enemies to exploit.

The Alliance commander climbed the stair to the guest wing, decided on his response- He would stand his armed guard in the Divine Prince's bedchamber, and be d.a.m.ned if the mayor's pretentious staff took umbrage at his distrust.

His intent was forestalled by the royal equerry, who had obstinately barred Lysaer's quarters.

'You'll admit me, at once,' Sulfin Evend demanded. 'I'll have the man whipped, who says otherwise.'

'The Divine Prince himself.' The equerry's nervous distress emerged m.u.f.fled, from behind the gilt-panelled entry. 'His Blessed Grace is indisposed. By his order, he stays undisturbed.'

That news raised a chilling grue of unease, fast followed by burning suspicion. Lysaer s'Ilessid had often looked peaked through the weeks since the campaign ended. Aboard ship across Instrell Bay, his Blessed Grace had scarcely emerged from his cabin. The retirement seemed natural. Each widow and grieving mother would receive a sealed writ of condolence from the hand of the Light. Over the subsequent, storm-ridden march, Sulfin Evend had not thought to question the hours spent addressing correspondence in the shelter of a covered wagon. Yet if Lysaer was ill, and masking the fact, the cascade of damages ran beyond the concept of frightening. A man hailed by the ma.s.ses as a divine avatar dared not display any sign of a mortal weakness in public.

'You will admit me!' His mailed fist braced against the locked door, Sulfin Evend surveyed the latch, an ornamental fitting of bronze the first hard blow would wrench from its setting. 'Open up, or I'll come, regardless.'

No man in the field troop defied that tone.

Wisely, the equerry chose not to risk scandal. 'You, no one else.' He shot the bar with dispatch. 'The mayor's staff was led to understand that his Exalted Grace was overjoyed with the welcoming brandy.'

Sulfin Evend slipped past the cracked panel, at once enfolded in blanketing warmth, expensively scented by citrus-polished wood and bees-wax. As the nervous servant secured the entry behind him, his tactical survey encompa.s.sed the loom of stuffed furnishings and the gleaming, shut doors of the armoires. The room's gilt appointments lay wrapped in gloom, the resplendent state finery worn for the feast long since folded away in the clothes-chests. By custom, one candle burned, on the night-stand: the Prince of the Light did not sleep in the presence of shadow or darkness. Amid that setting of diligent neatness, the lit figure sprawled upon crumpled sheets stood out like a shout of disharmony.

Every nerve hackled, the Lord Commander advanced. The frightened page who minded the flame abandoned his stool and jumped clear. No stammered excuse could dismiss the harsh truth: Lysaer's condition had pa.s.sed beyond indisposed. Nor had drink rendered him prostrate. Lifelessly white as a stranded fish, a torso once muscled to glorify marble lay reduced to skeletal emaciation.

Horrified, Sulfin Evend exclaimed, 'How long has your master been padding his clothes?'

'My lord,' the boy stammered. 'His Divine Grace swore us to silence.'

'Blazing Sithaer, I don't care what you were told!' Sulfin Evend strode forward. He tugged off his gauntlets, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the p.r.i.c.ket, then bent to a.s.sess the shocking extent of Lysaer's condition. The porcelain-fair profile on the pillow never stirred at his touch. The icy, damp flesh was not fevered. Alarmed, the Alliance commander raked back the disordered gold hair. No reflex responded as he pried back the flaccid, left eyelid. The unshielded flame lit a gla.s.sine, comatose stare, and a pupil wide black with dilation.

'Answer me now! How long has his Divine Grace languished like this?'

The equerry quailed before that steel tone. 'My lord, we don't know when this wasting began. Grief would blunt the appet.i.te, one might suppose, so soon after the loss of a son.'

That honest uncertainty seemed reasonable, since the train of personal attendants initially brought from Avenor had all died in the course of Daon Ramon's campaign. Sulfin Evend shoved back the rucked coverlet and continued his anxious survey. The prior disaster did not bear thought, against this one, sprawled senseless before him.

'Do you actually fear someone poisoned him?' the equerry ventured from the side-lines.

Sulfin Evend said nothing - just thrust the candle back toward the page. 'Hold this.' While the whipped flame cast grotesque shadows about him, he grasped Lysaer 's arm. Unnerved by the grave chill to the limp wrist, the Alliance commander held out in grim patience while the light steadied, and unveiled the dread cause of the malady.

Up and down milk pale skin, in recent, scabbed cuts and old scars, Lysaer wore the tell-tale marks of a man being leached by the dire magics of a blood ritual. Sulfin Evend leashed his stark fear. The nightmarish course of this sapping addiction scarcely could have occurred under Lysaer's informed self-command. Nor would such a complex and dangerous binding be invoked by rote or the lore of a fumbling novice.

'Those scabs aren't infected,' a new voice declaimed. The prince's long-faced valet had emerged from the closet where he kept his pallet. Barefoot, still plucking his livery to rights, he padded up to the bed.

The Lord Commander waved him back, wordless. Peril stalked here for the unwary. Bearing a taint of clanblood in his ancestry, he owned a birth-born talent, if an untrained one. Though that unsavoury history was nothing he wished to make public, he had little choice. Erdane's mayors had burned the mage-gifted for centuries. Since that policy was also held in force by the Alliance of Light, and the sealed mandate of Tysan's regency, no initiate healer could be summoned here without causing political havoc.

Exposed to risk, uneasily aware that his lack of knowledge laid him open to an untold threat, Sulfin Evend ran a tacit, spread palm above Lysaer's livid wounds. Eyes closed, he sounded the range of awareness outside his immediate senses. The horrid grue all but crawled up his wrist, as his seeking hand ruffled across what felt like a chill flow of wind, ripped with tingles.

Beyond question, an arcane influence was draining the Blessed Prince of his vitality. Worse, the debilitating tie was entrenched to the point where a recovery might lie beyond reach.

Sulfin Evend addressed the hovering staff, dangerously level and low. 'First, how often does his Divine Grace undertake the foul ritual, and next, where are the knife and the bowl?'

. Blank stares from the servants; Sulfin Evend met their stone-walled quiet with fury. 'Don't pretend you don't know what I speak of! Your master has cast his life into jeopardy, and I won't stand down until you give me a straight answer.'

'But my lord,' protested the equerry. 'His Blessed Grace said not to' - which words clashed with the valet's shrill dismay - 'but my lord, he can't die! As the avatar sent here to put down the Dark, how dare you imply he is mortal!'

'Avatar or not, he can still cross Fate's Wheel!' Sulfin Evend smoothed the slack hand on the sheets. Distaste turned his lips as he lifted the other, which still wore streaked stains of dried blood. 'Here! See the proof? Our liege may be blessed with unnatural longevity, but he can't sustain if he's been enslaved by dark practice. Or are you sheep, too awed to see that he's skin and bones? Before your eyes, he's bled himself white! For all we know, the vile rite has been feeding some sorcerous cabal that's h.e.l.l-bent to destroy him!'

Consternation wrung gasps from the pair of servants, while the page-boy looked sick unto fainting.

'Oh, yes! Believe it,' Sulfin Evend cracked to their stupefied faces. 'Did you think Avenor's high-handed Crown Examiner could sweep the length and breadth of the realm executing born talent and not draw a wolf pack of powerful enemies?'