Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  Fionn Areth snarled a frustrated oath. Although Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn had risked capture to spare him from the horror of Jaelot’s scaffold, the Mad Prophet’s assertion the deed sprang from sound character only made the surrounding facts seem the more ominous. Today’s truth spoke too loudly: when the passes reopened, no more wearied men straggled in upon starving, lamed horses.

  The first hardy caravan to descend from Eastwall had described the emergency muster at Darkling. Bloodshed had dogged Arithon’s heels at each step. By command of Avenor’s high priesthood, Alliance troops had unfurled the sunwheel banner and marched upon Daon Ramon. They had not embarked on the campaign alone. At Narms, no less than Lysaer himself had gathered a veteran company. His cry to arms also raised the standing troops trained by his steward at Etarra. Both forces had converged on the snow-clad barrens, to wage the Light’s war against Shadow.

  Until breaking ice reopened the northcoast, and the trade galleys hove in from the west, the eastshore towns held their uneasy breath, as yet unaware that a crushing defeat had shattered Lysaer’s combined host.

  Licked by the trickle of rising water, young Fionn Areth had no choice but to hang his trapped fate on a prayer. ‘Merciful maker, let the ice hold the north passage closed for a while longer.’

  A trained seer, Dakar knew the Spinner of Darkness had survived the Alliance assault. He would not divulge his liege’s location. That sore point piqued Fionn Areth’s suspicion and tightened his queasy stomach. No platitude eased him. Not since the hour the Mad Prophet broke his last scrying, stunned into unyielding silence. He refused to speak of Prince Arithon’s plight, even sunk in his cups at the Kittiwake. Desperately determined to carol himself hoarse, perhaps needing to smother the nag of his conscience, Dakar stayed deaf. He would not acknowledge the scope of his peril, allied to the Master of Shadow.

  A goatherd who lacked arcane talent could do nothing but thrash out his worries alone.

  An hour passed; two. The well of the tide crept across the stone floor. The kiss of cold water seeped through dry clothes, then like slow agony, deepened. Soon the pool lapped at Fionn Areth’s tucked ankles. The flood stirred the vermin, who quested forth upon tentative, pattering feet. Every fraught effort to kick them away brought him vengeful nips from sharp teeth. The misery mounted. Dakar’s filthy stanzas had devolved to gibberish, touched here and there by the oddly placed line, lilted in cadenced Paravian.

  Distempered and ill, Fionn Areth lost patience. Curses did not stop the rodents that clambered over his shivering skin. The sea rose, inexorable. Soon immersed to the waist, he fought chattering teeth, while the scrabbling rats became frantic.

  ‘Fiends plague you, Dakar!’ Fionn Areth jerked his chin left and right, but failed to dislodge the wet creatures that nosed at his ears. ‘Can’t you shut your mouth? Maybe fashion a bane-ward. Anything to send these fell pests to oblivion!’

  Yet the rats’ splashing struggles and shrill squeals could not dampen the madman’s racketing choruses. He sang without let-up, each quavering line of botched metre an insult that mangled intelligence.

  ‘“Oh the sun brings us cherries, then ripe red berries,

  oat sprouts make malt whisky, while the barley king whispers,

  Praise for the bees and the willow trees,

  Seed for the birds and grass for the herds,

  Sweet grapes love spring rain, t’an li’arient, Lu-haine!”’

  The emphasis set on the name at the end served Fionn Areth scant warning. The closed cell became charged. Hair rose at his nape, while his skin puckered into sharp gooseflesh. Not being chained, the rats squeaked and bolted. They splashed helter-skelter in panic. A knifing breeze that moaned down the stairwell, the discorporate Sorcerer drawn by Dakar’s summons, arrived with the force of a silenced thunder-clap.

  If darkness still reigned, its texture had changed, filled by that ineffable presence.

  Fionn Areth recoiled. He wished to be anyplace else in Athera. The affray with the Mistwraith’s prison at Rockfell had shown him the reach of Luhaine and the Fellowship’s power.

  ‘Wards!’ Dakar pealed in jagged hysteria. ‘Set them now! Koriani enchantresses are seeking the goatherd, and I can’t stand them off any longer!’

  ‘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 damned 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 eastshore 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 assessment. 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 bollocks, 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 embarrassment. 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, grass-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 massacre.

  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 pronounced 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 bestial 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 pissed 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 snatched 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 petition 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 pass 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 passage 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 bumpkin, inflamed by his feckless 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 g
uarded 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 passed 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 grass-lands insolence! Now we get to soak through a miserable night. Don’t try another damned word or believe this! I’ll leave your scared arse as chained bait for the witches and watch Shipsport’s vermin feed on your carcass!’

  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 anticipation 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.