Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  An electrical current swept the core of the circles, spiked with the sheered tang of ozone. The water cavorting in the fountain sublimated away into nothing, and the sparks in the fire pan whirled up in a crackling vortex and vanished. Blackness claimed the sealed chamber, more dense than the vacuum between stars.

  Against that unwritten scrim of poised force, Sethvir spoke again, a lyric line phrased in ancient Paravian that granted an unconditional consent.

  A snap just past the limits of sound grazed through bone, flesh, and sinew. Time broke from the present. The air outside the conjured circles went unutterably still, its essence beyond animate concept of dark: lightless, empty as the void of potential that preceded the solidity of creation. Inside the circles, on an islet of chill stone, the square of dark velvet lost contour and form, until it became a primordial extension of the same formless energy. This conjury was no mere seeing, no illusion or reflection, but a perilous unmaking of all bonds to matter by the primal forces of the four elements. By their dire cooperation, the scrying within would go forward outside the frame that maintained the world’s form and function.

  ‘Designate,’ Sethvir murmured.

  The stiletto point of force that was Luhaine’s awareness carved yet another ring of protection around the black template on the floor. A melding of four wills set specific intent for the area within to stand proxy for Athera’s place in the cosmos. Two seals were laid over the circled square: one for protection and one to admit the boundless grace of Ath’s blessing.

  ‘Triad,’ Sethvir whispered. He raised a hand gloved in raw power and inscribed three lines of living light upon the air.

  Asandir touched those blank energies and Named them, one for the matter which formed solid existence, one for the spirit which quickened life, and lastly, the word for the stream of consciousness which linked those two poles and governed their spin and direction.

  The rods of light imprinted. The prime pattern that first sourced Ath’s limitless creation formed against the dark field of the velvet.

  The Sorcerers spun more filaments of light, then invited the powers of the elements to imbue them. The pattern branched, an exponential expansion that formed the ciphers that comprised Athera and its intricate, teeming web of life. The construct grew in beauty and complexity, a microcosm reflection of geometry and line whose meaning could be read through the analysis of proportion and numbers. Against the loomed light that reflected the world’s tapestry, Sethvir tapped the expanded awareness of the earth link and Named the individuals who now lived, whose myriad choices and acts wove the disparate threads of existence into the etheric links which tied destiny.

  Here shone the glimmering arc of possibility, last remnant of Paravian influence; there, laid over the phosphor imprint of a reef in the tropics, the searing, pinpoint tangle of light that was Arithon’s fleet in search of the vanished old races. The strands shimmered and settled their display, their tight-woven patterns a formed footprint of the world’s landmasses. Their nexuses crossed, convoluted, and burned, complex as the life force which quickened the web of creation. Nor was that analog display all brilliance and straightforward movement: at Rockfell, still Nameless, Desh-thiere’s wraiths brooded, their intent unknowable except by the impact recorded on passing events. Then, at Avenor, the ugly new threat: the sinister gap torn by the dragon-skull ward.

  Sethvir cleared his throat. Into that ranging hole into nothing, he pronounced the Names of Lysaer’s inner cabal. Earth-sense had shown who had entered that chamber in secret, and reconfirmed those who had left. As the Sorcerer’s designation seeded each individual’s imprint, the unraveled pattern regained a spectral suggestion of movement. Bright ripples shot length and breadth through the tapestry as root cause became linked to effect.

  ‘Proceed,’ Sethvir requested the poised forces of the elements standing in stilled attendance. ‘Show us the progression of the future.’

  A shock like unseen lightning ghost-rippled over the senses. Traithe’s raven ruffled black feathers and croaked, while Asandir gripped his wrists with taut hands, raked by a frisson of chill. All eyes trained on the configured strands, Sethvir to every outward appearance immersed in the throes of a daydream. To those who knew him, that inattentive, soft gaze was sure mark of his rapt concentration.

  The energized pattern shifted balance and flowed forward, reflecting the fixed path of augury.

  From the unseen heart of Lysaer’s inner circle, decisions churned vortices into hard lines which arced outward into causation. Where they crossed the world’s spread design, they touched off cascading change. The strands mapped each sequence, and exposed how the cabal’s conspiracy would deflect the analog course of world destiny.

  ‘Galleys, how ingenious,’ Luhaine noted, his musing spiked irony as he perused the shifts in power and trade that flowed inland from the seacoast. ‘Those vessels with chained slaves will carry state dispatches, but only within Tysan. The ones sent abroad into foreign waters will have sunwheel guardsmen on the benches.’ Those, entangled in branches of ramification, would extend a far-reaching net of eyes and ears to the distant ports of the Cildein. ‘That’s damnable.’ A mouse would not raid a state larder in Melhalla, that Avenor would not hear of the shortfall. ‘Arithon’s line of supply for his fleet will be made increasingly difficult.’

  ‘He’s up to the challenge, for the moment, anyway,’ Sethvir observed, as contraband from clan raids moved by roundabout routes and found their way through Fiark’s ledgers, to be doucely redistributed on trade runs made by Feylind’s brig, Evenstar.

  Against the burgeoning bounty of harvest, a concentrated stir of activity at Alestron recorded the return of the duke’s state galley. Among the signature energies presented to Bransian s’Brydion were his two brothers, Mearn and Parrien, the master shipwright, Cattrick, and a blind old splicer whose evil tongue reveled in gossip. After them came others whose faces in wax effigy had been sunk in the Westlands’ dark waves. Yet the thread of their destiny was not unsnagged; a faint tie of cognizance still remained, strung to the null void at Avenor.

  ‘Lysaer knows that those shipwrights survived.’ Sethvir strung his hands through his tangled white hair. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say he’ll bide his time to spring the trap and expose them.’

  And yet, no war happened. The insidious calm settled into a peace that saw Tysan’s merchants recoup their losses. The high council at Avenor maintained the marked change in policy that acceded to all trade demands. No new recruits were levied to replace the Etarran companies. Armed patrols were maintained to safeguard the roads, and to arrest the mage-talented identified by Lysaer’s Crown Examiner. A star of white brilliance amid a couched web of guildsmen and fawning, affluent courtiers, the prince who made claim as Ath’s chosen avatar stayed suspiciously content to husband the fruits of his kingdom. His charm felled the reserve of the ranking ladies at the celebration feast that honored the conception of his heir, while his young bride looked wan in spangled brocade. Her low spirits and quiet were naturally attributed to the stresses of a first pregnancy. No one took pause as the princess retired early, attended by a train of handmaids who came from cities far distant from Erdane.

  ‘She isn’t done fighting yet.’ Traithe raised a hand to quell the raven, who perched, rapt and restless, at his shoulder. ‘Nor can her staunch spirit win aught but grief for an outcome.’

  The strands tracked that relentless, small tragedy as the slight, sullen spark of Lady Ellaine’s imprint flickered and faded, then resurged as the passing months brought her confinement.

  Her son’s birth in spring, then sharp confrontation as Gace Steward’s block on her efforts to rule the royal household flushed brightened lines over the more shadowy influence of Raiett Raven’s collaboration at court. While Lysaer played the role of indulgent regent, and merchant traders fattened to complacency, his new master statesman engineered politics with the stealth of a man laying bird snares. South Tysan had borne witness to the terrors of sorcery. That impet
us became rooted doctrine. A groundswell of distrust was nurtured into tinderbox unease that one spark might ignite into mass conflagration.

  ‘A man to be feared, and closely watched,’ Sethvir said of Raiett Raven, while the strained silence deepened with shared foreboding. Asandir had no words, chin set on his fist, and a glint in gray eyes like the filings sheared off smelted steel.

  The strands burned out the inexorable course of the future, each sequential pattern more grim than the last as Avenor’s Lord Examiner was invited abroad by a contingent of eastshore mayors. In the city of Ship’s Port, a herbalist burned, the first healer arraigned for malpractice of sorcery inside Melhalla’s borders. Sethvir stuffed his knuckles into his beard, heartsick as the old fear and prejudice embraced an inexorable course of violence. The odd contrast widened between the trade guilds’ building prosperity and the deeper current of unease underlying Tysan’s burgeoning coffers.

  ‘Such dichotomy troubles me,’ Luhaine observed, as Lysaer’s congenial pandering levered that state of imbalance still wider. ‘I sense a designed effort to foster a false sense of security. Imagine the reaction if events should arise to threaten such hoarded wealth. The s’Ilessid gift of farsight might cause Lysaer to aspire toward that end.’

  Asandir looked up, bleak, and tapped a strong finger on the ominous tendril of connection that persistently dogged Cattrick’s new life at Alestron. ‘The s’Brydion should pay heed. They remain the most likely target to be used as an Alliance catalyst.’

  The subtle dance of the strands unveiled the tortuous implications underlying Lysaer s’Ilessid’s long-range strategy: years that stitched a congealed course of change, from the obvious intentions of ceremonial delegations sent to Etarra to establish a standing war host, to the more insidious, shadowy rage of a mob, incited to throw stones at the walls of a sanctuary where Ath’s adepts had lived in gentle seclusion for over four thousand years.

  ‘At least Asandir’s intervention in Caithwood will spare the forests,’ Traithe pointed out to relieve the unremitting grim forecast. Indeed, no town interests inclined toward extreme measures to expunge age-old enmities. A guarded clan presence held out in Taerlin. Eastward, in Rathain, the survivors of Tal Quorin kept one wily step ahead of the Etarran headhunters. Jieret Redbeard looked likely to become the first steward of Rathain to raise sons and daughters to maturity after six less fortunate generations.

  Yet even such victories came at high cost. Within five years, the Alliance of Light would consolidate a pre-eminent foothold in the port cities of four kingdoms. Inside of a decade, that ranging influence would insinuate itself everywhere merchants dispatched trade caravans inland.

  Havish alone held to stable neutrality. Displaced clan families maintained refuge there, to ensure safe continuance of old bloodlines. Controversy arose as their numbers in exile were joined by herb witches and itinerant healers whose lives became hounded by the zeal of Alliance examiners.

  Sethvir chuckled over a quirk of politics that left eight pompous merchants without mansions. ‘Well, King Eldir’s not going to back down, no matter which damn fool thinks he’ll be the first one to bribe him.’

  Crown rule in Havish endured, even-handed and firm, while its queen bore two more sons and another daughter. By the shining, clear lines of emerging character, the next youngest would become the heir designate affirmed by the Fellowship Sorcerers.

  ‘Ath,’ Traithe said, his eyes crinkled with amused delight by the antics in the royal nursery. ‘The young prince could so easily have lied about the tadpoles he dumped in his sister’s washbasin.’

  By sad contrast, domestic affairs in Lysaer’s household in Tysan harbored no such spark of merry devilment. As the decade closed, the strand for Princess Ellaine flared and crossed that of Avenor’s confirmed high priest over her right to choose her son’s tutors. Cerebeld was a man who held women in contempt, and the wife of his divine master as a nuisance to be suffered in stiff-lipped, watchful distaste. Their contest of wills was short-lived and decisive, with Ellaine left heart-torn in defeat.

  ‘She can’t prevail, more’s the pity,’ Sethvir said in despair as the child’s youthful vigor branched away from her side, dimmed to sad, subtle changes. The imprint of the mother glimmered and withdrew into wan spirals of melancholy.

  Nor did Luhaine’s contribution brighten the morose outlook as he moved on to probe the knotted intrigues stirred up by the Koriani Order. ‘I don’t trust the stillness, here,’ he complained at frustrated length. ‘The sequences spin too long and too straight without tangling, and Morriel’s obsessions run too obsessively deep to reflect such sweetness and light.’

  ‘She’s just letting her plot with that herder boy ripen,’ Traithe suggested from the darkness.

  Luhaine released a crisp huff of exasperation. ‘She’d like us to think so. But her spiteful calculation grows the more twisted with age.’ Well versed in the order’s convoluted, self-serving policies, the discorporate mage exhorted his colleagues to delve deeper. ‘No right-minded matriarch would keep an incompetent apprentice. There’s more afoot here than simple malice toward Lirenda in maintaining the charade of Selidie’s aptitude for prime candidacy.’

  Sethvir bent his falcon’s gaze over the strands under question. ‘I see nothing else to bear out your suspicion.’ The patterns for every Koriani senior in the Prime Circle showed no kinks, no runes to mask plotting; nor did he discern any haze of resonant interference to indicate wards of concealment. Through the two remaining years of the augury sealed into surety by the elementals, every chained link of disharmony led through the gloom of Morriel Prime’s chamber.

  Had Luhaine owned flesh, he would have gnashed teeth. ‘The old witch still broods a damned clutch of nursed rancor. How can we be certain she hasn’t shrouded her mad intentions through the powers of the Great Waystone?’

  ‘You think we would miss the impacts of causation?’ Sethvir combed the strands again on that premise, but still found nothing suspect.

  Luhaine remained dissatisfied. ‘Then whatever the witch plans hasn’t manifested yet.’

  Asandir raised his chin from his clamped fist, his eyes like frost and old tarnish. ‘You fear we’ll be blindsided? Why wouldn’t the Koriani lie low while their plot to lure Arithon ripens?’

  ‘I don’t like the smooth way Morriel bides her time.’ Despite his stone patience, Luhaine’s frustration seethed without tangible outlet. ‘Like rats bearing plague, her Senior Circle carries their poison unseen. They’re too well aware we can’t stay free to watch every scurrying move.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s no need.’ Sethvir traced the one stable line in the pattern. Throughout every sequence of burst continuity, one flame of hope remained steadfast; changeless; an obdurate gleam that burned like a star against darkening misunderstanding: Arithon’s brigantines scoured the seas in their exhaustive search for the Paravians. ‘When the storm breaks, the Prince of Rathain will have kept his clear-sighted option to choose.’

  The elementals’ spun vision had guaranteed stable peace for at least the next dozen years. Arithon could rely on that interval to heal and renew his strength for the next onslaught; Lysaer would not hound him, but preferred to nurture the factions of trade until some triggered disaster opened the floodgates of panic. If broadscale war could be wrung from reaction, the telltale signs were yet hidden.

  ‘We’ll have a reprieve to reorder our affairs. May I suggest we don’t waste ourselves wishing a conjectured affray could be mitigated?’ Sethvir tucked restive hands into his sleeves and released the bright energies arrayed on the velvet. The pattern dispersed to a residue like snow haze that winnowed to spent smoke and faded. Head bent, aggrieved as his colleagues, he listened while Asandir addressed formal thanks to the unseen presence of the elementals.

  Active flame reignited in the bowl of the firepan; the fountain’s voice resumed liquid verse. Then the pall of spelled darkness thinned and broke away, leaving the Fellowship Sorcerers alone in the Hall of Gathering. Thr
ough the testy, soft rustles as the raven fluffed wing feathers, each Sorcerer reflected in bleak silence. The strands’ augury bestowed an uneasy reassurance, with hidden factors still pending.

  Kharadmon must remain tied down with the wards, posting guard against the free wraiths upon Marak. Nameless, their activity could not figure in strands, except by the impact of effect. The fact that no sign of attack had been manifest did not mean they stayed safely quiescent. Asandir and Traithe would still be hard-pressed. They alone would be left to reaffirm the old seals and mind the boundaries which contained the Paravian sites ceded to Fellowship wardenship.

  Luhaine churned in place, stirred to a formless unease too vague for a hunch and too strong to be passed off as fancy. ‘No matter our diligence, the day fast approaches when our numbers will be insufficient. Even now, we can scarcely maintain the sworn terms of our binding. Morriel knows this. She’ll tailor her plots to strike that disadvantage.’

  ‘Well, she fell short the first time,’ Asandir pointed out. ‘The Shadow Master has yet to run out of resources; nor has the Paravian presence he seeks disappeared from the world altogether.’

  ‘That’s pulling at straws, to believe we’ll be saved from disaster by the return of the lost centaur guardians.’ Luhaine whirled aloft to erase the chalked wards, hard-set for a tirade of pessimism.

  ‘Straw hope or not,’ Sethvir interjected, ‘until Morriel or Lysaer makes the first play, our own hands stay tied by the compact.’

  Summer Solstice 5667

  Court Festival

  The feast of summer solstice at Avenor’s royal palace had become a women’s affair over the thirteen-year course of Princess Ellaine’s marriage to Lysaer s’Ilessid. At that season, the ranking captains of the guard were absent on campaign in the field, defending the movement of trade on the roads and suppressing established clan outposts. The Divine Prince himself spent his summers with Raiett Raven and Sulfin Evend at Etarra, there to preside over the Alliance grand council, and to review the green recruits signed in for the annual muster.