Traitor's Knot Part 29

Vhandon met the sight of state panoply with a locked jaw and steel resignation.

'What did you expect?' Talvish snapped, just as clipped. 'A vaunted public ceremony? At least the charge will be formal and quick. We'll finish the inquest without risk of a mobbing, though by Ath, this affray sticks in my retching craw, sideways.'

'We aren't leaving Shand,' cracked Arithon in reb.u.t.tal. 'No matter what unpleasantness happens, my plan for these people goes forward.'

Thrown a censuring glare from his liegemen, the Master of Shadow insisted, 'This rising whipped up by misled town fanatics will destroy the breathing heart of Athera's sacrosanct mysteries. You both know this!'

Silence, marred through by leashed breath and checked temper.

'You might have thought of that, liege,' Talvish said. 'It's a steep price to pay, there's no question.'

No longer impervious, his marked features drained white, Arithon remained adamant, refusing their plea for retreat. 'If these forest clansmen hope to stay free to preserve their ancient tradition, they'll have to deal. Charges or not, they have no choice. They need my support to survive.'

'Brazen harlot!' Vhandon flushed to the roots of his iron grey hair. 'I don't know how you summon the dung-licking nerve! Don't expect us to stomach the slur on your character. Survive the day, and our oath is discharged. Be sure Duke Bransian will hear from my lips what low sort of ally he's brought to lean on the strength of his family name!'

'Vhan!' cautioned Talvish. For in fact, their advance had brought them within earshot.

Yet in shattering departure from his stern form, Vhandon refused to be placated. 'If Shand covers this up under law by a decree of forced marriage, Teir's'Ffalenn, I'll break your randy, insolent neck with naught else but my own two hands.'

Arithon wrenched to a stop and let fly with a venom rare even for his savage tongue. 'I suffer the penalty for one stolen kiss! You are disgraced, and dead by my hand, if you ever dare imply past that.'

Talvish's lightning shove to disarm the combatants was struck short: a surge of rage burst through Arithon's presence, palpable as a pressed wave. Such power, forced in check, might have stopped time, or scorched the free-falling rain into cinders.

'I will answer the charges,' Prince Arithon said. He side-stepped, and resumed his resolute course. The two liegemen recovered their stride and moved with him, stunned to an uneasy quiet. Three abreast, they broke through the last stand of trees, into sunlight that stabbed down like a blade.

Lit without mercy, they halted. Unabashed, the sanctioned Crown Prince of Rathain presented his welted face to Lord Erlien, High Earl of Alland, and the son, whose handfasted woman had used nails and teeth beyond all excuse to beg pardon.

Only Arithon had the courage to meet Kyrialt's eyes, grey as pressed ice, upon him. He held his ground, wordless. Before his straight stance, the spiked targe and the sword: beside him, two liegemen stamped rigid with shame, oathsworn to shed blood to protect him.

The moment ached, for its motionless dread.

The Shandian clan heir was taller, and broader, a muscled lion poised over prey. 'By Ath,' he remarked through the pregnant pause, 'she's marked you up and down like a scratching post. Poor wee man. What did you do to receive the scourge of my lady's disfavour?'

Light wind through the glen riffled Arithon's hair. Black strands, glued with blood, stuck to the scabbed gashes furrowed at his left temple and full length down his opposite cheek. Hands clasped at his back, he never quailed. His adamant stillness stretched, then extended, and his silence admitted to nothing.

His oathsworn liegemen held out with stopped breath. Vhandon's bearing stayed rigid. In wary form, Talvish kept his trained eyes on the clansmen, who, by affronted insult, now must be adversaries.

Yet no spoken reproof or overt hostility shattered their anxious suspension. No accusation was issued. Erlien s'Taleyn, High Earl of Alland stood at his full height, gaze frosty as midwinter sky. Then he reached over, drew his son's sword, and knelt in the tough stand of gra.s.s. He drove the bared steel upright in the earth. With his wrists crossed in salute at his chest, he bent his proud head in submission. 'Your Grace, for the life of my son, what will happen next has my sanction.'

Taken aback, Talvish gasped out, incensed, 'My lord, you will not kneel to this man! For such as he's done, he'll be stripped of crown t.i.tle. Once formal word reaches the Teiren's'Valerient in Halwythwood, his Fellowship sanction will be revoked by the terms of Rathain's royal charter!'

Yet Shand's caithdein failed to arise.

When Vhandon shoved forward, the hard thrust of Kyrialt's shield arm checked the move to haul his father back onto his feet. 'His Grace has told you he tried to force Glendien?' Still down on one knee, Lord Erlien broke in with the bite of a ruler's authority. 'Liegeman! Take care how you answer! The credibility of my daughter-in-law's word will come to rest on your testimony, not to mention the character of Rathain's oath-bound crown prince.'

'What character?' Vhandon spat in contempt. His fl.u.s.tered glance sidewards smoked with disgust. 'I've got eyes, more's the pity. I've seen such evidence as I shall take to my pyre with cringing embarra.s.sment! Will you look, there? Yon gutsy savage has got a dog's nerve, to breathe the clean air in our presence!'

Throughout, reviled as though he was deaf, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn stood detached. With Glendien's handling stark on his face, and the bruise on his neck livid purple, his stillness itself framed a d.a.m.ning refrain to his liegeman's ruthless refutement. Talvish broke custom and averted his glance before suffering the humiliation.

'What exactly did his Grace say?' inquired Kyrialt with razor-edged delicacy.

'He won't speak, himself,' Vhandon evaded, distressed. At the crux, his innate distaste ran too deep. He could not, after all, say the requisite words to condemn a man he held liege-sworn.

No less revolted, Talvish just wanted the harrowing inquiry over with. 'Precisely?' His sigh sawed across the strained pause. 'The tongue in his Grace's head was right churlish. He allowed he was guilty of one stolen kiss.'

The bridegroom, who should have exploded with rage, instead fought a choked snort of laughter. 'Not from Glendien, then. She's too brazen to run. No matter how d.a.m.ning the evidence, I've seen her provocative manners when pushed. A man keeps his distance, if she's displeased. As my rakish friends have discovered, that she-wolf stands her ground when she's cornered.'

'You don't believe her?' cracked Vhandon, incensed. And again, his blond comrade's s.n.a.t.c.hed grasp restrained him.

'Stand down!' Lord Erlien arose to his towering height, discomposed, and finally offended. 'You don't see her knife in his ribs, foolish man?' As the prince's paired liegemen looked on, one gaping, and the other stunned into guarded suspicion, the High Earl of Alland completed his statement. 'Then Glendien has told us no less than the truth. The a.s.sault that occurred was not caused by your prince.'

Erlien's keen regard fastened back upon Arithon, who had not moved a muscle throughout. 'There's my son's sword, upright at your feet. A woman handfasted to my household has entangled you in a wrongful effort to shelter her bridegroom. Your Grace, here's my lawful settlement. S'Taleyn would have you kneel to swear oath, since Kyrialt would grant you his fealty.'

Arithon shivered. 'I can't take this charge,' he insisted, steadfast. 'Whatever Lady Glendien has told you, no grounds exist for such grat.i.tude. Not to receive grant of a crown obligation from Shand, or to bear a loyalty as deep as this one.'

The High Earl of Alland met and locked with those fathomless eyes, that perceived with the chill of a sorcerer. He did not back down, or shrink, though a fine sweat sprang up and beaded the lines of hard living scored into his features. 'Then, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn, swear by the promise of Dharkaron's vengeance! Claim that my son's handfasted woman has lied. Then draw your steel. For you'll have to fight me to defeat again, if you think to enforce your will over the attested word of a kinswoman.'

Of them all, the fair swordsman correctly interpreted the instant of searing tension. He alone saw the shift as his liege marked the challenge, and for the first time, drew breath to answer his case.

'No!' Talvish cried. 'Hold your weapons! My lord Erlien, can't you see? His Grace will s.n.a.t.c.h his chance, and all of this country will bleed for it.' His horrified eyes fixed on the Prince of Rathain through a dawning rush of epiphany, he snapped, 'You were sparing that boy, and perhaps us as your liegemen! If so, I am having no part of this!'

Then Kyrialt broke in, sharp and fast in support. 'Deny that statement as truth, Teir's'Ffalenn! Refute Glendien's confession, as well. Swear that for my life's sake, you never offered to shoulder the blame for a crime that our clan tradition holds outside of any forgiveness.' Smiling, the youngest blood son of s'Taleyn bent his knee. He laced his hard fingers over the hilt of the weapon his father's own hand had struck upright. 'Your Grace of Rathain, I will bind myself first. Unless you can give me a single sound reason? Why under Ath's sky should I not serve a prince who counts a stranger's life as more precious than his royal dignity?'

'Debt of blood,' Arithon admitted, his sorrow laid bare. 'Your Glendien lost a parent at Vastmark.'

His glance shifted, raised to bridge the disparity between his slighter stature, and Erlien's winter-clear eyes. 'Her sire was Tanuin? If so, he fell while guarding a notch. The ending was cruel. He held his ground against twenty bowmen while a tribal grandmother and five children were being a.s.sisted to safety' Arithon loosed a shuddering breath, as though feeling the stab of barbed steel through his viscera; as, within Kewar's maze, he surely had: the resurgent bite of remembered pain was that desolate. 'My lord, caithdein, keep your son at your side. I was wrong, beyond question. I should never have failed to acknowledge the courage and strength of your clansmen's sacrifice. But I could not thank you for sending those scouts. Too few of them lived to come home to you.'

'Each one fought for Shand,' the High Earl corrected. 'They had a prince under Fellowship sanction on the battle-line at their shoulder. The grace of that presence but honours the soil of the free wilds they died to hold sacred. Now accept my son's blade. Swear your royal oath! Or by Ath's very grace, I will have the act done inside an armed circle of archers.'

As Arithon rallied his shocked nerves to protest, Talvish cleared his own weapon. 'I'll stand sword's honour for the formal oathtaking,' he volunteered with expedient grace. 'Arithon, kneel! You've earned the award of this man's redress. Such heart as you've shown must accept defeat kindly. Or Vhandon will just have to break your d.a.m.ned legs. Don't think he won't. He's my senior officer by more than ten years. One day soon, he wants to retire.'

'A stand-down?' said Arithon, taken aback.

'On your knees, prince,' Alland's High Earl insisted. 'I swear by my pride as a father, you will bend your miserable, stiff neck here and now, else I'll run you out of the kingdom!'

Returned to the clan encampment on the heels of the unplanned oathswearing, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn appeared more than harried. Inflamed scabs and raw swelling did not fully explain the haunted look in his eyes. Against the whipped-dog contrition of his two liegemen, his sombre quiet posed a striking contrast to young Kyrialt's euphoric enthusiasm.

No bristled word of dismissal sufficed. A flagrant, trim figure in his trappings of state, the young man determined that Glendien's outrageous behaviour deserved abject care. The insistent choice followed, to escort Rathain's abused crown prince back to the comfort of guest quarters in person. Arrived at the shaded entry to the grottoes carved out by the flood of the Hanhaffin, the royal party ran headlong into Dakar's blistering censure.

'The fool tangles you spin!' the Mad Prophet accosted, as the miscreant prince darkened the cranny appointed to shelter Rathain's delegation. 'You could have lost everything for the sake of one life! Not to mention the fact that the Teir's'Taleyn could have finished off his past effort to butcher you!'

'Worry instead that I might gut the High Earl,' snapped Arithon in brittle annoyance. 'More's the pity, I can't let go and try. Or break his arrogant head on a rock. I need his scouts, and he needs my help. Which sterling fact is the only weak thread holding a stay on the peace.'

'Dakar. Don't press him,' Vhandon urged, breathless. 'Not if you don't want your skin peeled.'

'Would I so!' the furious spellbinder cried. 'And how much of every-one's skin should be risked because our prince can't contain his bleeding-heart gift of compa.s.sion? Was one woman's tears worth what he just staked? Is any man's life price enough to endanger the stability of the realm?'

Spun on his heel to stalk off, the Mad Prophet found himself nose to chest with Kyrialt's virile bulk, the spiked targe with the ancient device of Shand a gleam of cold steel at his breast. 'One party agreed that the action had merit.' Vivid and brown, the young man amended, 'It's my life you're tossing like straws on your tongue. I've sworn my feal oath. Does the act not demonstrate my proper grat.i.tude, or the sincerity of my family's honour?'

'You admire the order his Grace keeps with sharp words?' Dakar raised pudgy fists and yanked at his hair in a fit of hobbled frustration. 'Well, I doubt that sits well when you're the next target. Don't think that won't happen. Arithon's nerveless. The more so whenever the rest of us fail to keep pace with his fiendish conniving. Look at Vhandon's face! Or Talvish. Ath's living tears! Both of them were blindsided today, and they've served Rathain's crown prince for years. Ask them, if you don't believe me.'

Kyrialt shrugged, compressed to acid pride. I'd be a sight less comfortable on my knees in white silk, swilling the spout of lying divinity. Give me Sithaer with its nine levels of h.e.l.l, before I go blind and seek paradise under s'Ilessid.'

'Arithon could have lost you the free wilds of Shand!' the stalwart spellbinder exploded.

Kyrialt showed teeth like the grin on a snake. 'Could, is it?' He seized Dakar's collar, and muscled the recalcitrant prophet like a fat puppy to the rim of the ledge. There, above the sweep of the hollow that led to the river's edge, he snagged his targe against the hide flap strung across the open-air entry. 'See what's happened. Perhaps you're actually jealous?'

His gesture tore off the curtain.

A gathering met them. Bearing sheathed steel, and strung bows, and the badges of house lineage, the clan chieftains of Alland were packed outside to pledge their support without the formality of a hearing. Kyrialt spoke over their raucous acclaim. 'My father still talks of your prince's skill with a sword. Here's twice we've had to acknowledge his mettle.' He brandished his fist, while the boisterous cheers rocked against the steep face of the cliff. 'Lysaer's new troops had best tremble. For your Teir's'Ffalenn will now be the voice directing our raiding war-bands.'

'Well, on that score, you're certain to face disappointment.' Dakar tugged himself free. His offended shrug yanked his skewed tunic straight, and his cinnamon eyes remained hostile. 'Argue or threaten, his Grace won't listen. Your war-bands might as well toss their drawn blades in the Hanhaffin. You think I'm mad? Then stay and find out. I already know that Arithon's plans will never launch the stupidity of a pitched fight.'

The presence of the m.a.s.t.e.r.b.a.t.*rd at her bridal feast scarcely dampened the scorching fire of Glendien's nature. Clad in fine deer-hide with sandy embroidery, and flaunting an outrageous shawl cut from the raided silk, she was a sight to brand memory and eyesight as she weaved her determined way across the torch-lit festivities. Warnings failed to deflect her picked course; the th.o.r.n.y thicket of legend that surrounded the Teir's'Ffalenn's past posed no obstacle. She raised her beautiful, willful chin and sailed straight ahead, trailing scarlet fringes and wide-eyed young men in her wake like an errant comet.

'Just stop me,' she challenged, as Kyrialt blocked her.

'You don't think you've degraded his Grace enough in the course of a single day? As you wish. Naturally.' Her frowning bridegroom shrugged and gave way.

Glendien girded herself with a challenging smile. Then she barged into Arithon's presence and asked questions that caused Vhandon and Talvish to flinch, and Dakar to choke with his face half-immersed in his beer jack.

Even Lord Erlien paused, transfixed, to observe the offended reaction. Arithon deflected her sallies with smoking ridicule. His ripostes lost no whetted edge to persistence, until Kyrialt silenced his woman's mouth with a kiss that raised ribald whistles and laughter.

Glendien ripped free of him, flushed, her topaz eyes unabashed. 'Love, I don't cow in the face of seduction.' She ducked past her protector. Leaned over the trestle where the prince sat, graciously winding new strings for the lyranthe loaned out of somebody's lodge tent, she announced, 'I'm sorry.'

Arithon did not look up.

She raised a bold hand, would have traced the welted scabs on his cheek.

His stinging, swift parry arrested the touch.

Her verbal dart followed, undaunted. 'Your Grace, I lost the guts to see through the end game. Don't tell me you're sorry as well?'

'Woman!' snapped Vhandon, on guard to one side, his weathered stance stiff with embarra.s.sment, 'Your wiles have made things all that much worse. Your madman of a husband bent his knee, drew his steel, and accepted crown oath to Rathain. That act means your future children will become his Grace's feal subjects!'

'This prince?' Glendien's mirth pealed out like bronze bells. 'Who else could I trust to keep such as Kyrialt alive long enough to be raising them?'

'Trust Dharkaron himself, ei'an ist'thalient.' Done with twisting silver, Arithon arose, flipped the loop over the drone peg, and rested the lyranthe across his knee to raise the new string to pitched tension. The fall of the torch-light threw his tipped face in shadow, masking the hard spark of irony that might have exposed his true thought. A minute pa.s.sed, hanging, while Glendien waited with bated breath for his translation.

'You know your Paravian quite well enough,' Kyrialt chided her presently.

Arithon said nothing. His fine hands nursed the tuning-pegs. At due length he cradled the instrument and caressed the first notes from taut strings. A harmonic triplet speared through, arresting the bursts of coa.r.s.e comment from the side-lines. As the onlookers quieted, Athera's t.i.tled m.a.s.t.e.r.b.a.t.*rd tilted his torn face to one side. A snapped sparkle of notes winged from his trained touch. Satisfied with the instrument's quality, he straightened, bowed, and excused himself with soft irony. 'Breed up your impudent clutch as you can, little bride. Tonight, for my part, you'll be merry. Tomorrow, be warned. For I am quite done being burned by your cutting, mettlesome fingers.'

Before Glendien could retort, or Kyrialt move with redoubled intent to restrain her, those skilled hands moved, and launched into sheer captivation.

The rollicking measures of a fast-paced jig ripped the feast into giddy celebration. Arithon played. He danced the clans of Selkwood to shouting, exuberant exhaustion, and this time, accepted their offer to get reeling drunk in their company.

Dakar abetted the choice. Shoved into the press, he volunteered to broach the bung on a tun of fine claret. That the branded staves wore the house seal of the Mayor of Telzen only heightened the mood of piquant enjoyment. Arithon folded himself into the thick of the revels, his presence met by slaps on the shoulder and the inevitable ribald good cheer. The quips he gave back tied knots in loose tongues. Challenge and match, the serious drinking devolved to a contest with bows. Arithon shot drunken, as Dakar had not seen him since a long-past winter, spent with tribal shepherds in Vastmark.

While the whining, sped shafts ripped the targets to stuffing, Fionn Areth delivered his stiff-lipped opinion, that such careless abandon was a disgrace. 'Those arrows pack broadheads, not target points. A man with a bow who can't walk a straight line is begging to cause someone an injury.'

'Leave him be,' Dakar murmured. Determined to savour his evening of peace, he stowed himself at the trestle where the borrowed lyranthe lay, abandoned. He deserved the escape. Alestron's paired liegemen could be trusted to keep their vigilant eye on the dark head ensconced amid AUand's rough pack of roisterers.

'Your liege has not known a true moment of ease for over a year,' the Mad Prophet admitted. 'Certainly not since the hour he used Sanpashir's focus to launch his crazed foray to rescue you.'

'What?' the Araethurian retorted. 'Fourteen months in the caverns of Kewar were not enough for his restful amus.e.m.e.nt?'

Pudgy fists clamped to his jack of fine spirits, Dakar shook his tousled head. The mad leap of the shadows thrown off the pitch torches made his features look old, with the silver thread through his chestnut beard grown p.r.o.nounced since his trials at Rockfell. Eyes owlish, he kept his secret thoughts to himself, that Arithon's release was more likely an ominous sign of the storms the near future might presage. 'Davien gave the prince shelter,' he admitted at length. 'But it's the rash fool in that Sorcerer's company who would let down his guard for one second.'

Another shaft ripped into the mark, to a fresh round of whistles and clapping.

'Arithon will get whipped,' Fionn Areth insisted through the groans of the vanquished bemoaning the score. 'Watch me. I'll cheer when that happens.'

Talvish turned his flax head. 'That's just because you can't beat him, cold sober,' he remarked without rancour. 'Take your sour tongue off. If you're wanting a shoulder to cry on, go mope in feminine company.'

Fionn Areth fixed disgruntled green eyes on the swordsman, who took his ease like a lounging lynx with an insolent hip braced on the trestle. 'As if I could treat a clan woman like a bawd, and not lose my head to her kinsfolk!'

This time, Vhandon's muscle jerked Talvish short. 'Let the gra.s.s-lander go. He's confused enough. How will he ever learn who he is? With that face, he'll probably never find means to stand clear of the royal shadow.'

The arrow shoot lasted until the sore losers decided that Arithon was safest pried loose from the bow and tucked back amid their musicians. There, Rathain's prince chose to entertain himself further by trying their wind-instruments one at a time. For each slipped mistake, he downed a neat draught of claret. Vhandon refused to place silver with Talvish, that his Grace would become last man standing.

To their novel astonishment, the musician's quick fingers tripped less, as the effects of hard drinking undid him. If his eyes brightened, and his speech blurred, his wit remained stinging, and his music retained the ache of its vibrant clarity. Swaying, abstracted, a carved flute in hand, Arithon wove melody with the crystalline tang of frost on the gra.s.ses of autumn.

He refused the lyranthe until the last. Just after the traditional wedding at dawn, he returned the silver-wound strings and delivered a performance that surpa.s.sed the predecessor who had taught him. The net of matchless harmony spun through the mist silenced even the most raucous reveler.

Dakar lay snoring, his cheek mashed on the trestle; Vhandon and Talvish stared at their fixed hands. Glendien turned her face into her husband's braced shoulder, and Lord Erlien openly wept.

No one, grown man, woman, or child, escaped the tug of the melody's lyrical pa.s.sion. No eyes looked up, or noticed the eagle perched amid the stilled pines overhead. None moved or spoke, through the seamless delivery, and none sighed, till the final note faded.

When Arithon finished, those who knew him best realized he was not sober. He still slipped his admirers with casual ease. His leave-taking granted their stamping cry for an encore no shred of satisfaction. While daybreak speared through the crowns of the trees, and the torches smoked, spent to cinders, Vhandon and Talvish arose together and saw their sworn liege off to bed.

Lord Erlien, watching, was shocked to discover his stiff beard was dampened with tears. To Kyrialt at his side, and the scarlet-wrapped bride, the High Earl observed with sc.r.a.ped grief, 'It's a straight violation of Ath's grace to set such a talent at risk for a war. That man should never have touched killing steel!'

Kyrialt shut his eyes against more than the night's chill. His clasped arms tightened over his shivering wife while, in the grey flood of light, he returned a low snarl of rage. 'If that accursed s'Ilessid pretender succeeds, and his upstart religion takes root, we'll see that rare gift forced to battle for nothing else but survival.'

Erlien responded, cold as the fog that purled like ghost shades through the forest. 'Then by Dharkaron Avenger's Black Chariot, we had better fight to make certain the false doctrine withers.'

Overhead, still unnoticed, the perched eagle unfurled broad wings. Its pinions hissed down as it launched and soared, then vanished amid a pale shower of sparks that could not be seen, but by mage-sight.

Spring 5671 Entanglements Cold drizzle falls on the morning that Arithon leaves Selkwood for Telzen; behind, he leaves Kyrialt s'Taleyn with a penned sheaf of orders, eighteen bolts of white silk, and the tribute gold taken to sow conflagration amid the new legions of Light; with him go his double, the Mad Prophet, and two liegemen, bearing between them a borrowed lyranthe and a chest of poached amethysts to be restored to the reigning caithdein of Melhalla . . .

Past the waning fury of the equinox storms, as a trade galley leaves the shelter of Eltair Bay to ply southward, an initiate courier bears a wrapped packet containing Elaira's personal quartz crystal to Ithish port, where it will see transfer to another enchantress bound overland to the Forthmark sisterhouse, and final delivery to Selidie Prime . . .

At the edge of the wind-swept wastes of Atainia, the Warden of Althain dreams: of a sinister figure riding the Camris road, and black webs of horror spinning cold shadows in Jaelot, Darkling, and Etarra; and the clean, searing line of his summons arcs out, touching a distant shade, a raven, and in tenuous plea, an eagle that soars on the icy winds of high alt.i.tude . . .