Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Eriegal could mistake you,’ Sidir pointed out. ‘He may condemn your unkind provocation.’

  Arithon recoiled, flicked to impatience. ‘Let him! Don’t you think I’d prefer my autonomy?’ Caught aback by his overstrung nerves, he shut his teeth, fast, and stood up.

  Feithan watched his approach, no less trapped by constraint. His haunted quietude suggested an urgency: he wanted the dance-steps of etiquette done, as decently fast as compassionate care would permit.

  Unwilling to burden his Grace with her need, she made her brave bid to release him. ‘Your enchantress was mistaken. She need not have been absent. Surely the onus of crown duty, and I, might have waited this once on your pleasure?’

  But that heart-felt supposition proved to be wrong. Past resource to argue, Arithon rejected her saving excuse. He embraced the encounter, regardless. Though he wore his borrowed leathers with natural elegance, their fit was too large. Up close, he was no taller than she. That fine build deceived. His determined strength shocked through his touch as, again, he gathered her hands in his own and shouldered the force of her agony. ‘Jieret was the brother I always lacked. Ask, lady. My passage through the maze under Kewar has made me far more than eye-witness.’

  Her eyes searched his, stripped by grief, then with unruly sorrow, spilled over. ‘I need no more than this. Did my husband suffer?’

  Arithon squeezed her fingers. His sight locked with hers, he pressed her knuckles against the beat of his heart, that she could measure his unflinching sincerity. ‘Jieret supported no more than he chose. His will prevailed, to the end. Had my orders been followed, he would be still living beside you, and Braggen’s death would have burdened my conscience. The void that is left is too high a price. No victory, ever, can replace him.’

  Feithan shuddered, braced straight. ‘I have no more brandy,’ she lamented, her desolation as much for the stranger before her as for the absence inflicted by loss.

  Arithon smiled, a brilliance of spirit that showed her a bitter-sweet glimpse of the humour her husband had shared through the sacrosanct bonds of deep fellowship.

  ‘Jieret wouldn’t mind,’ said the Crown Prince of Rathain, not as royalty, but as he might have chafed a friend’s sister. ‘We weren’t in the habit of maudlin bouts of drinking, and Dakar’s all too quick to suck down raw spirits until he’s a prostrate nuisance.’

  Feithan shut her eyes, all at once overcome. The prince drew her in. His resilient frame was not massive, like Jieret’s. She did not feel as though she leaned on the mountain that weathered all storms, immovable, until the last. Yet beyond any question, Feithan understood that Arithon’s support would extend for as long as she asked for the bastion of his solace.

  Yet the loss of the brandy had to be remedied, after all. The last hurdle facing the Crown Prince of Rathain was the Earl of the North’s oath of fealty. Other unsworn clansfolk might come forward tomorrow. But Barach, as the inheriting chieftain, must acknowledge his sovereign ahead of them. Since clan custom also demanded the traditional cup and guest welcome, Arithon was required to maintain his poise through the course of another state obligation.

  His tacit assurance reached the Koriani enchantress where she sat, immersed in light trance, in an oak grove not far from the camp. ‘Soon, beloved. Dawr’s word said Barach is reasonable.’

  Elaira’s lips turned in the faintest of smiles. Nestled in comfort against a shagged tree, she touched back, sending him patience. As well as he masked his worn nerves in the flesh, the etheric connection between them was transparent. She sensed the deepest ache of his need, overlaid by the medicinal scald of the compress that someone well-meaning had bound over his cut arm.

  ‘Soon enough,’ Elaira returned. She would dress the gash more comfortably, later; in the moment, she sustained her caress within Arithon’s mind, sweetened by the exquisite thrill of a partnered anticipation.

  Around her, the midnight stars burned serene through the filigree patterns of greenery. Frogs croaked from a spring in the rocks, and the dew-soaked air smelled of jasmine. Wrapped in the peace of the woodland glade, Elaira tracked the on-going flurry of activity inside the chieftain’s lodge tent.

  Dakar had entered, bearing the requisite flask. His rotund bulk was trailed by Braggen’s chopped stride, with the self-conscious Companion red-faced and tongue-tied to find himself asked to stand vigil in place of Rathain’s absent caithdein. His hand would bear the naked sword to safeguard his crown prince’s back. At one stroke, that honour exorcised the unresolved ghost of distrust instilled by his past misjudgements in Daon Ramon.

  The broad-shouldered man who entered behind would be Barach, second son born to s’Valerient, and risen to title as Earl of the North in the year before he reached his majority. Now twenty, he carried a fighting man’s muscle under his fringed, buckskin leathers. His rough-cut good looks were made striking by his sire’s hazel eyes, and the glossy clan braid, brown as walnut dipped into lacquer.

  His affable nature had already won him Elaira’s spontaneous friendship. She sent that reassurance across the twined link: knowing the serious young man who came to pledge loyalty must encounter his sovereign, sore with the outrage of his younger sister’s uncivil behaviour. His determined poise could make him seem forbidding as he stepped up to offer his unsheathed blade for the ritual.

  A light breeze brushed the leaves. The spring-waters burbled; flame hissed in the distant lodge tent. Immersed in the warmth of Elaira’s sent peace, Arithon permitted Dakar’s greater bulk to eclipse his immediate presence. Stilled at the center of purposeful movement, he shoved down the black wall of tiredness. He had not slept beyond catnaps for days. Scoured sick by a course of malevolent study, left taxed from the use of strong magecraft, he needed, each moment, to marshal his bearing. Every second of respite was valued.

  ‘Soon,’ he affirmed, while the guest cup was brought, and brandy was poured for the welcoming.

  Then Braggen crossed his fists at his heart. Handed the black sword, he moved into position at his liege’s left shoulder.

  The young earl stepped forward, and Rathain’s prince beheld him, revealed in the flood of the tallow-dip.

  He looked so like Steiven! The resemblance jarred, cracking the last of Arithon’s hard-set equanimity. Beset by a sorrow that laced him with dizziness, he pushed to his feet. The sharp motion failed to curb his wild talent. He stood erect, though harassed by that difficulty, striving for poise to bestow the respect that Deshir’s new chieftain should merit. But the rote words he uttered felt distant and dim. Colours and noise came through muted as by-gone memories sparked the vivid array of multiple unwritten futures. Their insistent pressure slammed through and broke over him.

  Elaira sensed the frenetic wave as it crashed: that this man might have been Jieret’s father, reborn to an unscarred youth. The fresh glow of his presence did not blaze with hatred. No gouging burns disfigured his face, and no vicious hunt to pursue town-born reivers yet hardened the set of his mouth. Upcoming events at Etarra would change that. The required foray to curb practising necromancy could not help but rekindle the fire and storm to launch more butchering head-hunters into the field. The ache was too much, that the unspoiled nobility of the next generation must come to reap the hideous price of that cleansing.

  Arithon shut his eyes, swayed, his stance salvaged by Braggen, who braced him with a touch from behind.

  Then Barach uttered the formal greeting, clan chieftain to sanctioned crown prince. The contact that bridged Arithon’s subtle link with the grove ripped into sparkles and drowned, slashed apart by a burst of raw prescience.

  Heart pounding, peace destroyed, Elaira snapped out of trance. She was breathing too fast. Her frame was still pressed to the ancient tree. She enacted due courtesy: acknowledged its calm, and whispered swift thanks to the elements. Then she surged to her feet, as soon became now with a cry of exigent urgency.

  Elaira ran. Her step trampled no underbrush. Inside the guarded bounds of the free wilds, the fores
t itself was aware; no matter how rushed, one did not fare heedlessly. She made haste with the delicate sense of a tracker, ducking beneath branches and runners of vine and easing her way through the thickets. Her tread did not crush the green moss in the hollows, but touched over stone, root, and hummock at speed, scattering only dew. Between strides, she snagged the impression: of Arithon, once again kneeling. The oath-taking had started.

  Now entangled by time-honoured etiquette, the prince must turn his back to demonstrate his trust for the liegeman about to swear service. Elaira caught snatches of the opening affirmation, declaring Braggen’s appointment as guardian, then the metallic ring as the Paravian sword was drawn and poised overhead as impeccable surety. Then came Arithon’s wretched tremor of chill, as the past wove its thread, warp through weft with the present: now, Steiven’s grandson would be bending his neck beneath that bared blade to give his edged weapon to seal pledge of loyalty.

  The moments flowed one into the next: she sensed the cold cross-guard of Barach’s dagger, clasped between unsteady hands. Against the cruel flare of prescient imagery, through the cross-currents of battered awareness, Arithon raised his response on the strength of his Masterbard’s training. ‘For the gift of feal duty, Barach s’Valerient…’

  Over a shallow brook, scored by the faint gleam of starlight, the enchantress raced for the lodge tent. The scouts on the outer perimeter had already detected her rapid approach. They closed, weapons lowered. One glimpse at her face, and they listened. She was waved through. A signal arrow sped from somebody’s bow, forewarning the next defence cordon that she was inbound, and acknowledged to pass without challenge.

  Under the wavering flame of the tallow-dip, the crown’s spoken oath was just barely ending. ‘Dharkaron witness,’ Arithon stated.

  His equilibrium was still shattered. Elaira sensed his reeling distress. As he locked eyes with the clansman standing above, swept faint by the rip tide of Sight, the metered phrase of the ritual sustained him. He laid one word after the next with precision to carry him through the abyss. ‘Take back this blade as token of my trust, and with your true steel, my royal blessing.’

  He rose, as he must, without Braggen’s help. On the trestle, he discovered the cup for the guest oath. There, the too-earnest help of his friends had done his worn condition no favours. Arithon stifled his flare of dismay for the Mad Prophet’s relentless bad habits: the reprobate had naturally brought the heftiest vessel to be found in the Halwythwood camp…

  ‘Damn the man!’ Elaira gasped, angry. She sprinted flat out, with no pause for rest, through the damp summer foliage. A few minutes would bring her to Arithon’s side. The interval yawned like eternity.

  Barach affirmed the clan’s welcome first.

  ‘Speak,’ Elaira prompted, driven by need to maintain a clear contact. To avoid affront, Arithon should respond with the time-honoured invocation. Wrung breathless, she encouraged and cued his next phrase through the shearing web of his awareness. ‘To this house, its earl, and his sworn companions, I pledge friendship…’

  The flame-light was too brilliant, and the close air, too dense. Arithon battled his ripped concentration. The next line, and the next, he neared the end. He pronounced the last, ceremonial words as a man who fought for wind, drowning. ‘Dharkaron witness.’

  Elaira dashed welling moisture out of her eyes. Racing against time, she plunged through the dark wood, while the on-going ritual proceeded: Barach would now lift the tankard and consume his half-share of the brandy. Custom demanded: in declaration of amity, the guest of the lodge must drain the vessel and replace it rim down on the trestle. There, the affront set by Jeynsa’s late tantrum left no ambiguous grace. Arithon had no choice but to finish. Fail, and he risked seeding the flawed implication of a fatal distrust of the clans.

  He grasped the huge tankard, somehow without fumbling. Though the reeling rush as the s’Ahelas gift wracked his mind in the smoke of ungovernable, overlaid futures, he hefted the vessel. There came a small shock, as the unsteady rim collided against his locked teeth.

  ‘Drink,’ Elaira begged as she broke through screening evergreen, sprang over split rocks, and plunged into a narrow ravine. At the draw, the inner line of clan sentries stood back and let her pass through without slacking. ‘Drink, beloved!’

  Arithon could not afford carelessness. The last drop of brandy would have to be drained.

  Well aware that an incident might launch disaster, Arithon propped his bandaged wrist on the trestle. The sting scarcely cleared his stressed senses. Elaira felt his deep breath, then the brutal will that caught back the dropped reins of his talent: for the hard complication could not be helped. His gift left him desperately sensitive. As the raw spirits seared down his throat, the potent kick scalded, racing through his rushed blood. He paused, though wracking weariness and the incipient fever caused by a virulent back-lash hobbled the trained skills he required to transmute the effects of the alcohol.

  Gut roiling, Arithon tipped up the tankard and swallowed the volatile contents. Fire upon fire, he could scarcely stand up. The ground spun under his planted feet.

  Elaira watched, caught helplessly distant, as his besieged control slipped his grasp, and his tenuous bearings up-ended.

  No light glimmered ahead. Clan encampments were kept darkened for safety. Elaira pounded through the closed circle of tents, leaping pegged ropes to reach the lodge at the center. Already, Sidir heard her inbound step. Infallible guardian, he kept watch to avert an untoward intrusion. Since the enchantress’s presence would not be gainsaid, he moved aside and lifted the flap for her entry.

  Elaira burst through into flickering light. She arrived the same moment the tankard was banged, rim downwards onto the boards. No spill marred that closure. As she rounded the trestle, too stressed for relief, she noticed that Braggen was weeping. His massive grasp closed, caught his liege as he folded. Young Barach proved to be just as quick. He had already turned at his sovereign’s side, shifting the bench underneath him. Joined in evident conspiracy, he helped the Companion lower his prince and settle him onto the seat.

  No fool, Elaira glared in censure at Dakar, hanging on the side-lines like a whipped hound in an attempt to stay inconspicuous.

  ‘We all agreed!’ the Mad Prophet exclaimed in defence. ‘The large cup was chosen by us in advance.’ Fat though he was, he could move lightning fast when singed by a wrathful woman. As Elaira brushed past, he rushed his excuses. ‘You weren’t here! The prince was not biddable. He was burning his reserves like a creature possessed, and what else could his closest friends do for him?’

  ‘Ask!’ snapped Elaira.

  She closed the last step, all but staggered as the explosive resurgence of vision whipped distress like bale-fire through Arithon’s aura. Her hand closed on his shoulder. She felt damp, heated skin through the textures of leather and linen.

  Despite masking clothes, her live touch jarred through him, a piercing arrow of sensation that raked him from head to feet. He ached, he burned, and he bled, that the brandy’s cheap numbness undid him. Elaira sank down on the bench, close behind. She wound her arms around Arithon’s shoulders and rested her cheek at the base of his neck.

  ‘Never mind,’ she murmured. She resharpened her inward focus, the better to reach through disorder and lend a more intimate edge to the contact. ‘You can let go in peace. Your friends meant you well, though they failed to realize their trick set no safety net under you.’

  Initiate talent infallibly sped the body’s responses to volatile drink, a vulnerability exploited with vicious intent to ensure that the victim was flattened. The effect hazed the prince under with demeaning speed. Past question, Arithon was already beyond the grace of coherent response. Her giving nature begged him to release and fall the rest of the way into darkness.

  ‘I’ll be at your side when you waken.’ Her promise sang through him, a weaving of water to quench unchecked Sight and snuff the live embers of prescience.

  The Prince of Rathai
n stirred under her, anyway. Lifted his head; clasped his fingers to hers, then twisted. Eyes open, he beheld the sight of her fully. She saw his face, then his change of expression as he drank in each treasured detail.

  The dark auburn hair, spilled loose from its tie, and grey eyes that met his, exquisite in their attentiveness. Her aware being would have changed, since her time at Ath’s hostel: Elaira saw her heightened state of self-assurance mirrored back in his drowning regard. She felt his melting pleasure for her flushed skin, and the woods scents of jasmine and leaves brought in with her clothing. She shivered, in tune with his boundless delight, as the warmth that rushed through her vibrant touch resharpened the linkage between them.

  The shock as his clasp tightened caught short her breath and forged a kinetic expansion. There would be no boundary. Scarcely able to separate which sensation was hers, and which current was sourced within Arithon, Elaira realized the brandy was not acting fast enough. He was going to weep. Not as the result of exhaustion, or stress, but from the unbridled joy that soared upwards and burned towards exaltation. With that purest ecstasy came wild rage, that he could not command the least of his faculties. The gift of her presence spilled through his grasp, falling away like dropped pearls in a deluge.

  Elaira felt the helpless surge of his anguish. He would have had no watching eyes mar their union. Though desperately tired, he should have received her solace without interruption. His explosive emotion ripped through him like storm, that she was also compelled to crush back the blaze of her unshielded welcome.

  ‘Privacy! Now!’ she cried in appeal.

  But Sidir had already acted. Braggen and Barach were pressured to leave, while Dakar took charge of Alithiel. Feithan made the gift of the bed in her quarters. The curtain at the rear of the lodge tent was already open and waiting.