Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  His last, sorry vestige of pride would be lost if the semblance of dignity escaped him.

  Soon the horn shrilled again. The herald and the city justice retired in highbred sangfroid. The men-at-arms in their heraldic lion tabards dressed weapons and signaled an end to the forms of due process.

  A hand wave from the mayor, then the herald’s ritual pronouncement of execution. ‘Arithon s’Ffalenn, called Master of Shadow! For the sake of your crimes against our fair city of Jaelot, your spirit shall be delivered by sword and fire to your rightful hour of death. Your case now passes to Daelion Fatemaster’s judgment, andthence, to Dharkaron’shandforredress. Maythe powers past the Wheel show you mercy for the aforesaid burdens of guilt.’

  The bursting, wild cheers seemed to batter the air andshake the chalk clouds overhead. Despite the barrage against overwhelmed senses, Fionn Areth knew the executioner’s step at his back. His chilled skin recorded each dread stir of movement, and his breath went shallow with panic. Through blinding tears, he beheld the dark shape of the hooded man who came forward and stopped before him. Black-gloved hands grasped a black-hilted sword. The masked face met and measured his shrinking misery, then the wretched sum of his fear.

  ‘Mercy on me,’ Fionn Areth gasped out, the words mouthed without strength for voice. He wanted to beg the act done with dispatch, but the last scrap of courage deserted him. At the end, he loved life too much.

  The hired butcher stepped close, reached out, and grasped his victim’s bared shoulder. The move appeared natural. As though he would steady his victim’s frail, shivering body and ensure the lethal first sword thrust pierced cleanly.

  Fionn Areth shut his eyes. Bravado failed him. A whimper escaped his locked teeth.

  He felt the ephemeral brush of cloth near his face. Through the ugly, undisciplined clamor of humanity, someone spoke into his ear. The voice was cut crystal, each word stamped separate from that debacle of chaos as a filament spun from a dream. ‘Boy! Hear me, boy.’ Then the insane promise, fired with compassion and backed by a rage to break rock. ‘You shall see death and fire on this day. But by the decree of your crown prince’s justice, none of the blood will be yours.’

  A shake, as though to awaken a sleeper; Fionn Areth opened his eyes. Devoid of hope, emotionally pummeled past logic or even disjointed thought, he watched in uncomprehendingnumbness as his killer’s gloved fingers slipped the ties of the mask. Alone amid a multitude of ravening humanity, he beheld the naked face of the man Jaelot had hired to claim his life by the sword.

  Eyes met his, level green, shelved under an upswept browline. The thin, high-set cheekbones slanted into a tapered, neat chin: line for line, as though some mad facet of perception had warped vision into waking delirium, Fionn Areth beheld his own image in the features of Jaelot’s executioner.

  ‘Just so you’ll know me,’ his double said in dry humor that seared like a struck spark on ice.

  The grip on Fionn Areth’s shoulder clamped down; the other gloved hand cast away the silk mask. In one driving move, the apparition unsheathed his black weapon.

  Light burst, andburned. A white fire of explosion rippedsky and earth into a flash-point flare of primal energy. Amid coruscation to stun breathing life, a sound like no other unfurled, arisen into one burgeoning chord wrought of notes pitched to shatter the very foundations of sanity.

  Fionn Areth cried out. He felt as if all his flesh came unraveled, jerked loose and restrung into that ringing cascade of raw power. Overhead, the executioner’s drawn blade parted the air, its edge of spelled steel a cry to tear darkness and spin mind and heart into soaring and bridleless joy. Then that same sword descended, still howling its unearthly, keyed splendor.

  Fionn Areth cringed, jerked short by tied wrists. Yet no stroke of bared steel rammed home through his breast. Instead, the ropes parted with a jerk that should have dropped him to a limp heap in collapse.

  The man’s hold braced him upright. ‘Hang on,’ the encouragement a torn rag through that fabric of fearful, wild harmony.

  Dizzied and dazzled, rendered witless by that kaleidoscopic maelstrom of tuned sound, Fionn Areth stumbled. By his side, the voice of his rescuer shouted in a pitch that recaptured one facet of the sword’s uncanny resonance. Through screams, between the tearing, rending howl of burst metal as the cordonof armed guards were hurled bodily from their feet, his phrasing seemed sheared from forged light.

  The forceful words pealed through that cry of celebration, honed and edged by a masterbard’s diction. ‘This is a city that dismembers justice and makes murdering sport of the innocent! Stand clear, or stand warned! As your sovereign prince under old kingdom charter, my judgment holds no appeal. As of this moment, by crown law of Rathain, there will be no mercy given to those among you who show none!’

  Light and sound reached their hammering, toned peak of crescendo. Weeping on his knees, Fionn Areth felt as if his very flesh would refigure into winged form and take flight.

  ‘Lie flat! Now!’ The swordsman dealt him an urgent shove.

  But the warning became meaningless noise to his ears. Fionn Areth found no response. His body seemed substanceless baggage, even when a buffeting push pitched him headlong against the swept stone of the dais. Sprawled gasping, stunned breathless by chill and ripped into helpless, whimpering tears by the peal of wild power from the sword, he scarcely cared as the same ruthless hand pinned him facedown, unrelenting.

  All at once, like a gap ripped through the continuity of creation, the tones of primal harmony snuffed out. The black sword fell mute. The wrenching, immediate cessation of song rocked air like a blow. Despair followed after, fit to whirl the stunned mind to insanity. Whipped mindless with panic, the bystanders screamed. Their cries held true terror and a riven, cruel sorrow, as if all the world had been darkened. Cheated of the glorious, exalted step into grand mystery, they found themselves vised back into the ordinary, drab colors of earthly substance.

  A heartbeat passed in bludgeoned suspension. Then the sky overhead ripped asunder.

  An elemental bolt of lightning jagged down. The impact tore apart the oak posts set upright amid the piled faggots. Splinters flew airborne and burst into comet tails of shot sparks. In wan, bloody light, the upset on the dais seemed awash in the fires of armageddon. The mayor and his ministers were sprawled prostrate in terror amid their toppled cordon of men-at-arms. Swords, helms, and mail had been warped out of true, as if cast in refraction through water. Except the links of burst mail left exposed flesh scored and bleeding, and the bent sword blades were no nightmare illusion.

  Thunder rolled in a slamming shock wave of concussion. Blazing knots of burst wood rained down in clumps and ignited the pitch-soaked faggots.

  In orchestrated step, a second explosion whirled the debris like blown chaff. Burning sticks flew airborne. Flaming debris whirled into the screaming, packed crowd like a vengeful storm out of Sithaer.

  ‘Up now. Can you walk?’ The insistent grip tugged.

  Fionn Areth coughed out a ratcheting breath. ‘I don’t know.’

  That instant, the whole world went black.

  ‘Ath!’ he shrilled. ‘I’m blind. I’ve gone blind! I can’t see!’

  ‘No,’ said the benefactor now veiled in blank darkness. ‘You suffer no worse than a shadow.’ His assurance became all the more terrifying for its matter-of-fact dismissal. ‘Now, on your feet! Quickly. Things might be tied in a muddle for the moment. But the second these people pull themselves back to rights, the descent of Dharkaron’s Black Chariot itself couldn’t turn them from shredding us to mincemeat.’

  Hauled shakily erect, Fionn Areth sensed movement, then flinched as a warmed fall of wool flicked his icy skin and unfurled over his naked shoulders. Understanding shot home, foolishly late: that the cloth would be black. His look-alike rescuer would be none other than the Master of Shadow himself.

  He must have exclaimed his discovery aloud.

  ‘Oh, very good.’ Through rising screams, a wafted stin
k of charred hair, and the clashing bellows of two armed officers who shouted for torches and buckets, the criminal sorcerer paused. He tacked sharply, then lunged to the right. His sword sheared and clanged against something metallic. Another parry, a darted thrust, then a whine as bared steel ripped into something less solid.

  ‘Come on.’ Through a ripe reek of blood, the guiding hand on Fionn Areth’s arm pressed leftward. As if no one screamed, or no guardsmen crashed in blundering, blind pain at his heels, the Shadow Master recaptured his dropped conversation. ‘There’s an elegance, don’t you think? The fires meant for you are being rained down on the mayor’s guard and most of your front row bystanders.’ He pursued his unlikely, talkative bent of humor. ‘Fair is fair, after all. The explosion which arranged such a neat twist of justice was our mad spellbinder’s champion touch. Now, come on! You can praise Dakar’s genius as much as you like, but after we’ve survived to rejoin him.’

  Then in breathless afterthought, while Fionn Areth was hauled into a staggering semblance of flight, the running lines of monologue resumed. ‘Be careful. That lump to your right is an unconscious guard. You may step on his hands, just watch out for the sword. Also, don’t spit in the eye of sweet fortune. The darkness you curse just happens to be all that’s spared your skin and mine from the burning. Now, here, mind the staircase.’

  Fionn Areth’s fumbling efforts incited a spectacular oath, hard followed by a snatch of rhymed proverb to the effect that bad actions begat yet worse consequences.

  As though drunk on daft wit and exhilaration, the Master of Shadow added, ‘My apologies in advance. We’ve got enemies waking up. There won’t be any time to claim the day’s prize for grace.’ With small care for torn flesh and battered limbs, those taut, busy fingers shifted grip on Fionn Areth’s wrist.

  His bruised arm wasbraced acrossa wirymuscled shoulder, and the bunched hood of another mantle, likely worn underneath the voluminous black cloak just shed from necessity to clothe him. In a downward, swift rush, the condemned goatherd was dragged free of the block, past the tangled, prone bodies of men-at-arms from the cordon, and plunged headlong into the seething crush of the crowd.

  The dark was black felt. Blinded and mazed, every person packed into the grand square of Jaelot took to their heels in mass terror. The buffeting press of them bashed the wind from Fionn Areth’s chest. His feet slipped and caught on the cobbles. A battering, unseen force in the darkness, the mob elbowed and surged like a beast. Voices shouted and screamed. Hands snatched and clawed. Terror choked reason, while the palpable nightmare of Arithon’s shadow ignited a trampling panic.

  ‘You should be aware,’ resumed that remarkable, silken voice in his ear. ‘Far more than bluebloods from Jaelot are in full cry after our hides.’ Through an unrelenting dark as absolute as poured pitch, the sorcerer steered a definite course through the struggling, obstructive bodies. ‘The Koriathain are much worse than unfriendly. There’s a sizable pack of them shuffling spells to see our free movement cut short. Are you willing to fight? We’ll need more than luck to escape them.’

  The closely bunched bodies made swordplay impossible. If the spelled blade was still drawn, Fionn Areth could not see. Forced to stumbling flight, he noticed the Shadow Master’s mellifluous voice now addressed the maddened hysteria, words and tone pitched to settle and calm. A man with a cudgel was cajoled into helping a crying woman seek her lost child. The shoving torrent of humanity eased a fraction, as bystanders were urged to assist. But if Arithon managed to blunt the irrational edge from the hysteria nearest to hand, throughout the square, crazed upset still reigned.

  Shouts commingled with the clangor of weapons as men-at-arms regrouped under orders to seek the Shadow Master, then resorted to steel to suppress the rampaging ferocity of the crowd. Torches flared. Their light shone queerly battened in murk, as if fog stained with ink roiled and clung against the façades of the buildings. An officer’s bugle blared a shrill call to rally, and the hammering clatter of shod hooves warned where mounted lancers shouldered their destriers through the press, hunting the renegade criminal.

  More torches bloomed, one startlingly near at hand. Propelled headlong by the torrent and by the relentless grip on his arm, Fionn Areth snatched the chance to look closely. He saw, not black hair, but blond, and snub-nosed features that were fair-skinned and rosy.

  His cry of confusion turned nearby heads. One heartbeat, he caught the swift flash of a grin; then blanketing shadow clamped down to forestall any further scrutiny.

  ‘Don’t mind the change,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn from inside that knot of smothered flamelight. ‘The face you saw first is my real one.’

  He found unseen egress between what smelled like a mule drover and someone unwashed and sweaty who worked in a bakehouse. Fionn Areth sneezed out a breath of inhaled flour. Someone else broke an impasse by stepping on some woman’s toes. Theshrieks of the offendedmatronfell behind, with Arithon’s low comment slipped undaunted through bedlam. ‘The odd guard or townsman will be fooled in dim light. Koriathain are another matter.’

  Long overdue, Fionn Areth found his voice. ‘What makes you think I’ll stay with you? I nearly burned for your list of dire crimes. If I win free, I won’t take your murdering cause out of gratitude. Just the opposite. I support the Alliance. For justice, why not give your name to the first guardsman I find wearing Jaelot’s gold lion?’

  ‘Well, that could be difficult, wearing my likeness,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn in quick irony. ‘Pull on your hood.’

  When Fionn Areth made no effort, he yanked the cloth up himself. Then he released his cloaking of shadows.

  Daylight resumed, gray and matter-of-fact, over a scene stirred to roiling motion. The bolting, terrified press of humanity seemed the worse for that stripping exposure. Arithon had swathed his face in his mantle, a green wool broadcloth without embroidery. His head turned away, as if he took bearings, while his supporting hold on Fionn Areth’s arm stayed fixed and firm as a shackle. ‘You’re my drunken brother, if anyone asks.’

  The noise and confusion effectively deferred any argument. Blinking at the sudden transition from darkness, Fionn Areth glanced behind.

  Smoke spired upward from the raised block, where faggots still flamed and streamed cinders. The rucked carpet burned also, and one upset state chair. The space in between teemed black with clumped guardsmen, fallen over themselves to extricate Jaelot’s hysterical mayor. The city magistrate crouched down as though faint, while below, where the cordon of lancers had stood, the belated wedge of heavy cavalry shouted and waved lances, exhorting the pikemen to rally from witless confusion. War destriers plunged and battled their bits as a heedless populace continued to stream past their haunches.

  Ahead, more guardsmen breasted the choking press to set a blockade on the side streets. An upset carriage spun random wheels, while its team plunged and kicked, entangled in traces. The rich had fled from the open galleries. Their departed wake left tables of spilled food, upset goblets, and cut-glass decanters. Upper stories showed a wall of barred shutters, while rioters stormed the doors of the street-level craftshops in search of tools that might serve them as weapons. Not every owner was set back by the looting.

  Fionn Areth saw a red-cheeked butcher and his family handing out knives and cleavers to all comers with blustering encouragement to hunt down and kill the escaped Sorcerer.

  Next step, he tripped over something ragged and wet. Arithon’s hold kept him from sprawling headlong into a body left pulped by the mindless stampede of humanity.

  Sickened again, and reeling with horror, Fionn Areth lagged back in distress. His nemesis ruthlessly braced him back upright. Someone slammed into him. A matron pointed and screamed. ‘Look! There’s the Spinner of Darkness himself!’

  While Fionn Areth’s gut upended in pure terror, he saw a dirk flash off to his right. A black-haired man fell screaming to his knees, with a pale girl bent over him, wailing; not Arithon s’Ffalenn, but a stranger.

  Ye
t the blood which gushed through the victim’s clamped fingers was no less mortal for the tragedy of mistaken identity. The girl wept and clung, while the bystanders cheered, and the killer flourished his dripping blade in whooping, ignorant triumph.

  ‘Seen enough?’ said the trueborn scion of Rathain, now whetted to rage. His shadow clapped down, unmercifully blank, and lidded the carnage in darkness. ‘If you’re dead set against the small talent that shields you, go far out of Jaelot before you try steps that might bring down drastic consequences.’

  Fionn Areth said nothing, but forced knotted muscles to carry a more even share of his weight. Movement had loosened the worst of his stiffness. His bruises pulled less. He found he could limp without stumbling, then bear up to the shoves when hapless folk blundered into him. Arithon’s hand lent more guidance than support, which was well, for ahead, where Cobbler’s Lane met the square, the first Koriathain stood in ambush.

  ‘You see her, too?’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn.

  In chill fact, even the casual eye could not miss her. She waited before the stone archway that fronted a fashionable dress shop, her violet mantle furled against the raw chill, and her alertness keen as a ferret’s. The quartz crystal raised in her hand blazed white light, a beacon whetted in unpleasant, sharp spells that burned a bright star through the uncanny blanket of shadow. Nor did the crowd set to flight in crazed fear wish to pass through that flared burst of spellcraft. The mindless egress slowed and swirled like a river current jammed by a rock. Trapped in the eddy, unable to turn, Arithon sought to stop dead.

  The enchantress was not the only threat present. Under the covered roof built to shelter the rich as they stepped from their carriages, four uniformed guardsmen with nervous, drawn swords kept an uneasy vigil.

  ‘More guards in town clothes wait by that pastry shopjust across the street,’ Fionn Areth observed, apprehensive. ‘Two of them were with the dog pack that dragged me into the dungeons.’

  ‘They know your appearance? Then we have trouble.’ Arithon need not elaborate.