Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  Her clipped gesture offered a rough, wooden chair.

  Released all at once from her piercing regard, Sulfin Evend sat down as she bade him. Her attic was tiny, shelves and table-tops jammed with balled twine and strange leather sacks, filmed with the dust of years. Wrapped in the fragrance of drying herbals, smoke, and stale grease, the Alliance man-at-arms huddled under his cloak, afraid to disturb the unnerving items clutched in his awkward grasp. ‘What do you require to lend me your services?’

  ‘No coin.’ Enithen Tuer shuffled to the hob. Her stumpy feet were bound in frayed flannel, and her fingers, chapped rough as a ragman’s. She snapped a flint striker to give him more light. ‘There is peril in this. Are you prepared? Can’t be turning back once you’ve chosen.’ Eerie, milk eyes surveyed him, unblinking, while the tallow-dips hissed on the mantel. ‘Be aware, warrior. The cost will test and try you. If you are weak, you’ll be broken.’

  ‘What cost, old woman?’ Struck cold, Sulfin Evend suppressed his impatience. ‘I don’t care for riddles or the drama of veiled threats. A man that I speak for lies dying.’

  But Enithen Tuer would not be rushed. Her uncanny awareness seemed to press like a blade against the raced pulse at his neck. ‘Beware who should carry your heart’s pledge, brave man. The wise would walk softly, and rightly so. Lysaer s’Ilessid has been declared outcast from the terms of the Fellowship’s compact.’ The crone sensed his start; nodded. ‘Ah, truly, then you do understand what that sentence means.’

  ‘Explain anyway’ Unnerved by the pitfalls that might arise from the folly of a presumption, Sulfin Evend dropped pride. ‘My sources at Hanshire might not have been accurate.’

  Enithen Tuer decided to humour him. ‘For breaking the sureties sworn by the Sorcerers, your prince’s licence to inhabit this world is revoked. His fate will be ruled by Paravian law. All the worse, for the trouble you carry tonight. As a man disbarred, Lysaer can’t ask for the grace of a Fellowship intercession.’

  ‘But the Paravians are vanished!’ Sulfin Evend shoved back his hood, ruffled as a jessed hawk. ‘Should I fear the old races’ absent reprisal? There are other powers abroad on Athera. Perhaps I should present my liege’s appeal to the Order of the Koriathain.’

  The seer raised frosty eyebrows. ‘Would you indeed?’

  Sulfin Evend steadied his rankled poise, aware all at once he was bargaining. ‘Their oath of debt might give me the more lenient terms.’ The sisterhood had chafed for thousands of years under the yoke of the Sorcerers’ compact. Surely, in the breach of Paravian presence, they would extend arcane help if he asked them.

  Enithen Tuer gave that prospect short shrift. ‘Koriathain will not treat with the powers that currently shadow your prince. Why else, worthy man, did you come here? After the scandal that destroyed your grand-uncle, surely you recognized Lysaer’s malaise as a blood-bound tie of compulsion?’

  Sulfin Evend could not mask the straight fear that shot through him. ‘How I’d hoped not. You’re certain?’

  The crone tucked bowed shoulders. ‘Sure enough.’ She seemed suddenly tired as her gesture encompassed the objects swathed under his cloak. ‘The items you carry will show us which faction.

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed, arresting his move to unveil the unpleasant contents. ‘Not so fast! Never, without wards of protection where such a cult has engaged active workings!’ Porcelain eyes glinted, nailing him down with the force of their occult regard. ‘I, too, must demand my due reckoning for this service. Will you bear the cost and the consequence?’

  Her swift, stabbing finger forestalled his response. ‘I will help. But know this, young man. You bring me my death. The moment I opened my door to admit you, that forecast outcome was set. I have waited to go, for years longed for the day I would greet the turn of Fate’s Wheel. What are you willing to pay in exchange? Would you give your heart, if I ask, or the last breath in your lungs? Will you stand firm, and risk all you hold dear to salvage the life of your master?’

  The Alliance Lord Commander said, threadbare, ‘Anything. I must. The s’Ilessid prince carries my life debt.’

  ‘Then shoulder your fate.’ The crone bent to one side, and snatched up the blackened spike of the fire iron. ‘You are a loyal man, Sulfin Evend. There lies your strength and your downfall.’

  ‘Enough caterwauling emotion, old dame.’ Eyes like chipped slate matched that ancient, blind stare. ‘How do you want your pledge satisfied?’

  ‘Set down your burden,’ the seeress replied. ‘Then, if I can, I will ease your straits, but after you’ve sworn a caithdein’s oath to the kingdom.’

  ‘Here? In Erdane?’ Prepared to unfasten the knots on the bundle, Sulfin Evend shoved upright, his brows arched with fierce incredulity. ‘That’s a perilous folly, since the Fellowship Sorcerers have already appointed the post to a reiving forest barbarian!’ This was insane precedent, set alongside the fact that the Lord Mayor would subject any man who dared to revive the old forms of crown charter law to a branding, followed up with a public gelding.

  ‘Folly, is it?’ The ancient wheezed through a breathless laugh as she heaved herself to her feet. Fire-iron in hand, she stumped over the carpet and fetched a slender birch-rod from a hook. ‘How little you know of your blood-line, young man.’

  Sulfin Evend clenched his jaw, head turned as the crone touched the wood stave to the floor-boards. She began scribing a series of interlocked circles, her swaying steps moving widdershins.

  ‘I won’t hear this,’ he stated. ‘I can’t. I’m aligned with the towns!’ The witch had to know: he was a mayor’s son by birth. The duties invoked by his Alliance office ran counter to all that Tysan’s caithdein must stand for. ‘I’m not free to swear you an oath to the land. My rank as commander of Lysaer’s war host has already claimed my pledged loyalty’

  The old woman ignored him. She sealed the last circle, invoked a charm that puckered her forearms with gooseflesh, then hefted the iron and flicked back the silk that covered the ceremonial artefacts. Dingy glow from the dips brushed the blood-stained bowl, with its dark band of incised ciphers. The horrid, black knife, with its slender bone-blade seemed to drink the available light.

  Enithen Tuer gave his vehement protest a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘Then bear the cost of your pride, foolish man. The ones you oppose steal the living and usurp their identities.’ As Sulfin Evend turned pale, the crone nodded. ‘Yes.’ She flipped the shielding cloth back into place without ever touching the contents. ‘They are necromancers. Unopposed, they will suck off your prince’s vitality. When he is weakened enough to succumb, they’ll replace him with another, long-dead awareness. To have any hope of standing against them, you must invoke the latent heritage of your blood-line.’

  ‘My ancestress, the Westwood barbarian,’ Sulfin Evend snapped, startled. ‘Damn my forefather’s unbridled lust! You claim to know who she was?’

  Enithen Tuer settled cross-legged on the rag rug by the hearth. Her marble eyes remained fixed ahead, as though the far past had been written across the murk of her spoiled vision. ‘The first Camris princes were seated at Erdane. Their ancestress declined the honour of founding the lineage of Tysan’s high kingship, did you know that?’

  At Sulfin Evend’s vexed breath, the crone nodded. ‘Oh yes. There are records the vaults under the palace have lost. The Fellowship did not compel your first forebear. They would not, by the Law of the Major Balance. When their second choice, Halduin s’Ilessid, gave his willing consent to enact the blood binding for his future heirs, Iamine s’Gannley accepted his plea to stand shadow for that authority. She became the steward for Tysan’s throne. Her descendants have kept that tradition, unbroken, for well over five thousand years.’

  ‘Ancient history, old woman. This has nothing to do with me,’ Sulfin Evend broke in. ‘Nor does it bear on the life of my prince.’

  ‘It has everything to do with your threatened prince!’ the crone contradicted him, curt. ‘In your generation, the old line of the Camris princ
es has devolved into three significant branches. In primary descent is Maenol s’Gannley, oath-bound as Tysan’s caithdein. He has answered the Fellowship’s call for an heir. One branch, until this generation, bore the title of the Erdani earls, until its recent, importunate offspring established himself as unworthy. The other, descended matrilineally is your own.’

  Sulfin Evend might have laughed for the evil, sharp irony. With his father now standing as Mayor of Hanshire, and his uncle, Raiett Raven, as Lysaer’s acting chancellor to secure the absentee mayorship at Etarra, his immediate family wielded the axe blade of Alliance power. That set them in direct opposition to s’Gannley, as dedicated enemies of the clans. Unless, of course, the preposterous tale was founded on senile fancy.

  ‘A fine theory,’ he said in scorching relief. ‘I might have believed you, had my great-grandame not been taken captive in Westwood.’

  Enithen Tuer nodded. ‘She was there for her wedding. Her name, do you know it?’

  Sulfin Evend was forced to concede he did not. The infamy was part of the family legend. The woman had left a blank line in the register, when his great-grandsire had forced her to wife.

  ‘Now you’ll hear why. She was Diarin, Emric s’Gannley’s first daughter. The clanborn blood enemy of Lysaer s’Ilessid is none other than your distant kindred.’

  That news fell like a blow to the chest. Strong man though he was, his heart missed a beat: for why else should the Koriani enchantresses have pursued their strangling interest in his father’s offspring? Moved to slow rage, Sulfin Evend said tartly, ‘Old woman, which of my two bollocks would you take for your offering, that my prince might regain his autonomy?’

  ‘Your oath,’ said Enithen Tuer, not gently. ‘Sworn now, on your blood and then repeated in the presence of a Fellowship Sorcerer. You must promise to journey to Althain Tower, where you will seal tonight’s pledge in completion.’

  ‘No man could reconcile what you demand,’ Sulfin Evend blazed back.

  The seeress stared him down. ‘There must be. I have seen. One day fate will force you to choose which of two loyalties you will sacrifice. The land does not bear a blood-sworn oath lightly. The powers you invoke will be greater than you, and they will not treat with duplicity. You will stand before them, stripped naked, young man. Heart, mind, and body, you will be bound true. No way else can I give what you ask for.’

  Sulfin Evend returned her glare, anguished. ‘Demand something different! My own life, if you must! I cannot consent to dishonour.’

  The crone watched him, saddened. ‘Then go. Abandon the life debt you owe to s’Ilessid. Walk away loyal, and do nothing.’

  Yet he could not. Should Lysaer be suborned by a necromancer’s cult, the power at risk was too dire to unleash on an unsuspecting populace. The seeress had weighed the fibre of his character and measured him down to the bone. ‘Then fetch out your knife, and be quick, old witch. You have saddled me with the reckoning.’

  Late Spring 5670

  Errand

  The unseasonable cold lingered on through the spring, blustering off the Bittern Desert and whistling over the stark bastion of Althain Tower, set amid the sere and frost-scoured hills. The tightly latched shutters rattled and creaked. Yet no influx of draught winnowed the candle in the snug chamber on the fourth floor. In the beleaguered lands to the west, this isolate haven remained: the tempestuous gales born of misaligned lane flux were not granted licence to enter.

  The quarters where Sethvir of the Fellowship languished stayed sealed to inviolate calm. There, the wax light burned straight and true, as flame must, in the presence sustained by the white-robed adepts of Ath’s Brotherhood.

  Here, where tranquillity reigned absolute, the frail fulcrum that balanced the fate of the world trembled, poised, at the brink of disaster.

  When Paravian presence had ebbed from the land, the Fellowship Sorcerers had shouldered the task of guarding Athera’s mysteries. Heir to the last centaur guardian’s gift of earth-sense, Sethvir provided their eyes and ears and much more: if he foundered now, the core balance of the planet would shift. The forces of expansive renewal would shrink, and the spiral would sink into entropy. Ath’s initiates had extended their constant attendance ever since the Koriani Prime’s insane bid to seize power distressed the flow of earth’s lane flux. Although that imbalance was swiftly restored, the disruption deranged an array of spelled boundaries, including the ungoverned wells of raw chaos constrained by Athera’s grimwards.

  That black hour at midnight, while the wick burned serene, the most critical of these had been rededicated. Three yet remained, with the Sorcerers’ resources strapped to the verge of paralysis.

  Sethvir kept the crippling vigil at Althain. Day to day, moment to precarious moment, he endured, while the insurgent trend of town politics moved apace to exploit the lapse of the Fellowship’s oversight. No colleague owned the breadth of vision to counterbalance the triplicate breach. The slow burn of stressed wards consumed him, relentless, while Asandir braved the perilous work in the field, realigning torn ciphers and weaving the boundaries back to their former stability.

  Sethvir lay prostrate to mask the stressed pain that leached at his innate vitality. Drawn flesh over bone, his stilled face seemed winnowed beyond substance, and his form, wrought of gossamer spirit light. The ivory hands tucked over the coverlet seemed naked without their archivist’s spatter of ink stains.

  Tonight, as the lane tides surged toward solstice, Sethvir’s office as Warden of Althain demanded active use of his earth-sense. The adepts on watch as he asked for assistance numbered an even six.

  Four were arrayed at the cardinal points to protect his weakened aura. Two more steadied a pane of polished obsidian, Sethvir’s preferred tool to reflect the impressions garnered from current events. The combed fall of his beard streamed over his chest, scarcely stirred by his shallow breathing. His far-seeing eyes remained closed. If the tension pinching his parchment lids seemed the sole sign of his living awareness, he did not stint the demands of his task.

  The images that unreeled like smoke over glass stayed meticulously clear as an etching…

  …in the mountains near Eastwall, an auburn-haired enchantress lays a quartz sphere aside, while her mind rides a day-dream in longing search of a black-haired, green-eyed man…who, in a place far removed, looks up from an opened book and smiles an affirmation. ‘Soon,’ he assures, as her tender thought touches him. ‘Brave heart, I’ll fulfill my sworn promise to meet you…’—while far to the south, riding the turquoise swells off the Scimlade, a blonde-haired captain on an ocean-bound brig paces over her tossing decks, for not knowing the same man’s location…while elsewhere, another clad in the nine-banded robes of the Koriani Prime Matriarch nurses her fire-scarred hands and commands an avid circle of scryers to search for the selfsame spirit…

  Beloved, or friend, or inveterate enemy, all would find their desires deferred: Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn seemed content to extend his earned sanctuary in the caverns beneath Kewar’s mazes.

  Without judgement, Sethvir recorded. The male adept on station at south glanced up in concern at his counterpart, on guard at north. ‘He’s drastically weakened. Much longer’s unwise.’

  She inclined her hooded head in response, the silver-and-gold thread-work stitched into her mantle glinting through the hazed light of her presence. Her hands moved, gently cradled the Sorcerer’s head, and touched reverent thumbs to his brow. ‘Sethvir is aware. His senses are tracking a formative current that demands his listening attention.’

  In the dark glass, meantime, the sequential ripples sown by Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn flowed one after the next, unobstructed.

  …as in Halwythwood, alone, a younger girl weeps, and bitterly curses the name of the prince whose enemies destroyed her father… then that image dissolved, to another, showing a fat prophet and his dark-haired charge, asleep in the brush by the fringes of Atwood…

  That instant, a static spark cracked across the polished face of the
glass. The image sheared off, and re-formed to another: a view focused with the exquisite detail invoked by the blaze of true magecraft.

  …in the close gloom of a candle-lit garret, a fighting man worn whipcord lean from campaign stands naked inside a scribed circle. At his side, a bent crone whispers quavering cantrips and calls the four elements to guard point!

  Sethvir’s eyes snapped open, their cerulean depths as vacant as fired enamel. ‘Luhaine!’ His whisper carried an imperative edge, and his gaunt hands locked on the coverlet. ‘Luhaine! You are needed! Go to Erdane, at once! Our pledge to protect an old friend has come due.’

  Yet the summons, once sent on the flicker of thought, today lacked the force to imprint the stream of the lane flux.

  ‘He’ll need to use quartz.’ The adept at the Sorcerer’s feet moved forthwith. Though by nature, he would not raise power to affect the way of the world, on request, he could fetch and carry for the infirm. Beyond the scarlet carpet, he delved into an ambry tucked in an embrasure that once had served as an arrow-slit.

  ‘The clear point,’ Sethvir prompted, his voice gravel rough. ‘The one charged last week in the midday sun, that’s wrapped up in fleece and black silk.’ He shut tortured eyes as the unpolished crystal he required was laid into his anxious hands.

  He cupped the base, traced its contours in welcome, while candlelight flared through its streamered veils and fired the shimmer of rainbow inclusions. As the stone warmed and awoke to the Sorcerer’s touch, he acknowledged its conscious presence. A flash of joy answered. Moved to a faint smile in response, Sethvir lifted his trembling grasp and puffed a soft breath to charge the front-facing facet. Then he placed his thumbs overtop and aligned his determined awareness.

  The quartz matrix imprinted his patterned thought, amplified his intent, and recast its frequency as a beacon. Sethvir’s appeal rode the magnetic tides and ranged outwards, bearing summons to his distant colleague…

  Far southward, gusty winds spattered rain on the glass of the fire-lit hall where the crowned sovereign of Havish kept late hours in council with his weather-beaten caithdein, Machiel, and three other seasoned advisors. The hand-picked foursome were not known for soft words. Under King Eldir’s ringless, broad hands, the tally sheets lately compiled by the clerks showed the wear of a tactical chart spread for a siege. Machiel had a cross-bow disassembled on the table. His mood egg-shell brittle, he oiled and scoured the rust from the trigger latch, while his neighbours in their spotless brocades observed, wall-eyed, caught in the breach.