Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Here,’ Sidir offered. ‘I’ll bear him up. It’s all right. You can trust. Our history extends back to Vastmark.’

  Summer 5671

  Twining

  Indomitable will could not break all limits. Arithon succumbed to the brandy. Elaira felt the thinned trace of his awareness slip away before Sidir set his liege down. His Grace of Rathain was laid, quite unconscious, onto a pine-stuffed mattress thrown over with softened deer-hide.

  ‘Do you wish my assistance?’ the Companion inquired, his courtesy dauntless as he ascertained the candle was fresh, with spares close at hand, that the enchantress would not require the later indignity of asking.

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Elaira. ‘I need only two errands. My satchel, which I left by the spring on the north bank of the Willowbrook, and a bucket and basin for washing.’

  Sidir straightened and faced her. His tall frame loomed over her, shadowing the auburn spill of her hair, torn loose from her sprint through the brush. He measured her eyes, of a rain-washed grey that just now bordered on lilac, then her wrists, with the workaday scrapes from her herb-gathering. Koriani sister, oath-bound to her prime, she might pose the realm’s prince an unknown measure of danger. Sidir weighed her presence, not willing to hurry. His clan lineage carried the true talent for insight. As a man, he prized listening and honesty.

  Discernment showed him a woman whose desire was forthright: every line of her wished his departure. Nonetheless, his grave survey held out until his peerless assessment was satisfied. ‘I will get what you need.’ Then he smiled, head tipped towards his prostrate liege. ‘He is in the best hands. You shall not be disturbed. I’ll drive the pack off until daybreak.’

  ‘He’s going to need longer.’ Elaira sank down on the pine-needle bed, fingers clasped to Arithon’s wrist. ‘The brandy was a foolish mistake. He was already run to the edge and verging on back-lash from the handling of unrefined lane flux.’

  Sidir knelt, touched her sleeve till she faced him. His pale eyes stayed level, unfired to rage by the animosity that accused him. ‘The brandy was not the best tactic, perhaps. But without it, we couldn’t have bought him an hour. Half the men in the camp, and most of the women, have yet to meet their crown prince in person. We don’t have closed doors here, unless someone’s sick. Our children come and go as they please. They greet strangers by climbing all over them.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Elaira said, crisp.

  Again, Sidir stood to full height and gazed down at her. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he answered, his caution unmasked. ‘Enchantress, they were afraid of you.’

  Gone on that word, he shut the privacy flap. Elaira was left alone at long last. Hers, the task to salvage the damage that exhaustion and strong drink had wrought with a barely tamed gift of raw prescience. Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn lay senseless beneath the glow of the candle. Though his numbed state was brought on by alcohol, his pulse was too fast, and his skin held the flush of a border-line fever.

  Those symptoms stemmed from an imbalanced aura. Elaira attended them first. She loosened his clothing, stripped off his leathers, his boots and breeches, then slipped the stained shirt off his shoulders. Unwilling to impinge upon his helpless dignity, she left him the modesty of his small-clothes. His body was adjusted for comfort, face-up, with each of his limbs laid out straight.

  Lean as fine sculpture, he was beautifully made, except for the scar where the light bolt had struck, and the older marks left by shackles. Where the woman might linger, admiring, the healer dared not show indulgence. Elaira combed her fingertips just above his bared skin. She tracked the kinetic flow of his life-force and sounded the snarled energies left by overplayed talent and ragged distress. Though her skills could have righted his traumatized shock within a matter of moments, she dared not incur the risk. Not when the price of her order’s knowledge might bind him into an oath of debt.

  Denied stronger remedies, she relied upon touch, lightly stroking to resettle the flux points that sustained the flow of his vitality. Release came in stages. As she coaxed subtle energies back into alignment, his strung sinews warmed through and relaxed. The heart-beat slowed down, and the breath became regular. She checked his eyes, often. By the time her fresh water and herbals arrived, Arithon’s pupils had lost their blackened state of dilation.

  The nightmare waves of prescience would be subsiding. If Arithon dreamed, he was no longer hag-ridden to shock by the uncontained burst of wild talent.

  Only then did Elaira stir from his side. She recovered her satchel, then the bucket and basin already brought in and left within reach of the curtain. Constrained to simple remedies, she used oil of lavender to scent the wax candle. Then she made a compress of cold water and herbs, and laid the cloth over Arithon’s closed eyes.

  A sigh shuddered through him, relief as cool darkness soothed his taxed senses.

  While the subtle blending of fragrance transformed the enclosure into a haven of quietude, Elaira made an infusion of hot water, chamomile, and wintergreen for a bracing tonic. With gentle care, she sponged off the dirt left ingrained from his overland journey. Inch by cherished inch, she explored his stilled form, an acquaintance enacted in a flame-lit silence unmatched for its vulnerable intimacy.

  More than once, Elaira sat back on her heels, overcome: her beloved was here, in the care of her hands. Yet the spirit she held as close as life itself ranged too deep to respond. He was present, but unaware of her. The odd thought occurred, that their roles had reversed. Arithon must have felt much as she did now, when she had been undone by a difficult healing in a cottage in Merior twenty-six years ago. The desperate length of her wait to be near him let her savour the interval for its peace. Her contentment unfolded, moment by moment, now that he moved out of danger.

  Brought to the last detail, Elaira stripped the compress off Arithon’s arm. She rinsed away the medicinal salves, since they only posed a further hindrance. Ath’s adepts had guided her to a deeper awareness. Where once, she would have used sigils and force, now she invoked by harmonic intent, and a partnered rapport with the elements. The wound healed. Not invisibly, not all at once: Elaira eschewed applied use of her talent. Her connection stayed sourced within Arithon’s innate balance, until the gash closed to a hair-line scab. From there, the tissues would knit without pain, clear of any scarring infection.

  Sleep must finish the rest. As his weariness lifted, Arithon would recover the use of his arcane faculties. Since the soporific effect of the brandy would not hold him under for long, Elaira stripped down to the loosened strings of her shirt, then tucked in on the mattress beside him. In the warm, summer air, wrapped in fragrance of lavender, she indulged herself, and let the low candle burn. While her heart-beat twined into rhythm with his, she drifted asleep to the sight of his dark hair, nestled amid a pillow of balsam-stuffed deer-hide.

  Near dawn, she awoke to the change in his presence. The candle had extinguished, and the herbal compress was gone, tossed who knew where in the darkness. Arithon’s eyes were wide-open. Chin propped on his closed fist, he was alert: regarding her with an almost desperate care, as though the gift of her at his side was a dream, inclined to shatter at the least movement. By his tenuous, pinched frown, she gathered the fact the camp’s brandy flask packed a sharp wallop.

  Elaira grinned. ‘If I stir, your head might tip over and fall off?’ The words raised a thrilled shiver of anticipation that invited his touch, or his voice. ‘Are you very sore?’

  ‘The hair of the dog would not be a blessing.’ Arithon reached out, stroked a strayed wisp from her cheek, then threaded an arm overtop of her shirt, and insistently drew her in close. ‘We had a promise?’

  Pressed full length against his wiry strength, Elaira murmured the phrase he had said, from a memory shared within Kewar. ‘“Kiss under the moon till the stars fall?”’

  ‘No moon,’ said Arithon. ‘Don’t expect me to wait.’ His hands moved, cupped full of her tumbled bronze hair, and paused for one glorious moment. Then his que
sting fingers slid upwards and cradled the back of her head.

  Ruffled to the barest chill of alarm, Elaira sucked in a swift breath.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Trust me fully, beloved.’ The tender brush of his lips against hers bloomed into a whisper-light contact.

  She trembled and burned to that melting touch. Felt him tauten like an overstrung bow. His fiercely leashed will and careful restraint reassured her beyond need for protest. He respected her fear: that she was Prime Selidie’s bait for a trap designed to tear down his autonomy. A stark folly, should they become swept away and fall into a heedless union. The approach towards completion must be watched for the unforeseen pitfall, which meant an arduous course of advance and retreat, with each intimacy sounded to its core response through the use of talented mage-sight.

  Now that desire lay within reach, Elaira choked back blinding terror. The unconscionable dread, that she might cause his downfall, seized her numb and all but made her heart stop. Here, in his arms, where no care should intrude, there were agonies too dark to contemplate.

  Arithon cradled her shivering against his clothed loins, and the warmth of his unabashed confidence. ‘We have all day, and all night, as need be,’ he whispered into the crown of her hair. ‘And the next night, or however many it takes.’ He moved, shifted grip, let her unquiet form mould against the stripped heat of his chest. Delight raced his heart. His breathing had quickened. Yet his hands upon her showed no urgency. ‘The bait is too sweet, though I promise not to explore you in earnest until we know for certain your Prime’s vow of freedom holds true.’

  ‘You can’t do that hung-over!’ Elaira accused. ‘You might be rested, but I am a healer. Plain as daylight, you know that your subtle awareness has not yet achieved full recovery’

  He smiled, his mental touch a bit ragged, and his cheek against hers in mild need of a razor. ‘The drink hasn’t quite lifted,’ he agreed in douce grace. ‘The short-fall ends there. Rauven’s mages taught me the skills of restraint. Year upon year of practising abstinence, you’re likely to find I have far less experience releasing myself to indulgence.’ His bent knuckle stroked her cheek, trailed down her neck, then played over the skin underneath of her draw-string collar. ‘Trust me. You must. Or else Selidie wins. The cold ache of her game will just as thoroughly ruin us.’

  Arithon cradled her chin in his palm. The resharpened sense of his presence let her know he looked with stripped earnest into her eyes. ‘If there are limits, beloved, let us find where they are.’

  The unwritten corollary of the initiate master, instilled by strict training at Rauven: that the fear never faced would let in the danger that stalked and destroyed from behind. Elaira clung to him, aware he was right. The snare first must be known, to disarm it.

  Surrounded in tender warmth, ringed inside of a guarded protection that made her being an inseparable part of him, Elaira laid down the knot of her jangling unease. She matched his embrace. Their lips met again, and softly, so softly, tested the uncertain waters. She felt the depth of her care shock straight through him. Then the almost undetectable catch of his breath, as he engaged his schooled reflex and deflected response, and allowed the kindling conflagration to flow into him without resistance. The current streamed through the core of his body, and out, passed back to the realms of the infinite as an etheric wind through his aura. His expertise was an unerring shield that reconfigured the explosion of sexual response and stepped the flame down to a glowing, banked ember. Reduced, but complete, he sampled her with an exquisite constraint that surpassed pleasure and heightened the dance of expectation to a force that begged dissolution.

  Terror fled in that moment. Elaira leaned into him, safe. She sank into his embrace, then spread her starved fingers over his skin and let go in suspended surrender. The connection between them closed and flowered, as the presence of spirit joined that of the flesh.

  And light bloomed: a rolling charge of unspent, subtle energy that brightened and flared to a burst of actinic static. The confined quarters blazed. The close air belled, then sang, gathering tone to arrive at a pealing note of wild triumph. The vibration never fully awoke as heard sound: Arithon already damped down the contact and snuffed the errant explosion back into battening darkness.

  ‘What!’ gasped Elaira.

  He brushed her lips, shaking with rueful laughter. ‘No work of your Prime’s, but the price of my heritage.’ He shivered, not with distress, but in wonderment. ‘My crown prince’s tie to the realm, don’t you see? An event in the Mathorns, and a centaur within Kewar, and the practice of a Fellowship attunement at the time I was sanctioned for right of succession have combined to spin us a startling tangle. Our union of spirit is raising a joy that invokes my sovereign tie to Rathain. We spark that much light. We’re in the free wilds -too near Ithamon, bang over the ley that runs through Thembrel’s Oak and flows across Caith-al-Caen. The flux has to respond. Your talent and mine are that strongly matched. Anywhere within leagues of this place, we are going to enact a completion of the land’s higher mysteries.’

  The lane forces would be fired to a spontaneous consummation on no less than the love shared between them.

  ‘We can’t do that here!’ Elaira shoved onto her elbow, appalled to a flush of embarrassment. ‘Mercy on us, we’d shake down this tent! Arouse every sleeper, and have the entire camp grinning as though they’d been shocked by the ripple of a grand confluence.’

  ‘Patience. You’re right. We can’t do that here, or hold out the least hope of commanding our privacy’ Arithon soothed her down. A sprawled cat at her side, he let his hand play, rearranging her hair and grazing a feather-light fingertip over her shirt front. Most carefully, he checked any heedless contact with bare skin through the moments as her touch responded. Posed a challenge to try even his mage-trained endurance, he shared his conclusion in the scented darkness. ‘We’ll need night, and a spring, and a sourced connection with the earth. I know how to configure a gentle stay. If you don’t mind open sky, and a bed in the moss, we can allow the flood to disperse and ground into the tides of the lane flux.’

  ‘Nightfall!’ gasped Elaira. ‘Ath’s own grace. That’s a torment outside what is natural!’

  ‘My dear, you are right.’ Arithon buried his cheek into her hair, still rocked by his wry amusement. ‘We’ll surmount piquant torture. Though by the Fatemaster’s list! There had better not be another set-back, or any more confounding complications! As things stand, this predicament is bound to create the most damnably endless day’

  Summer 5671

  Severance

  On the first occasion when Lysaer had visited an inhabited hostel maintained by the Brotherhood of Ath’s adepts, he had set off without the least notion that their esoteric ways might inconvenience him or come to disturb his lasting peace of mind. He had approached with a foreigner’s ignorance and collided headlong with their uncanny beguiling powers.

  This time forewarned, he did not arrive mounted. Nor did he lead an armed troop to the gate. The party of ten who guarded his back were told to wait at the head of the vale. Sulfin Evend alone stayed by his sovereign’s side. Unarmed, they strode towards the carved plinths demarking the entrance through the tumble-down dry wall, which enclosed an overgrown, circular courtyard.

  Under noon sunlight, the grass grew waist high. Seed heads tapped the Lord Commander’s empty scabbard. Flowering vines draped the old, lichened fieldstones and smothered the granite portal in verdant profusion. Such riotous growth was not due to neglect. The adepts’ blameless code let the earth attend to her own, a celebration of life without boundary. Their orchards and gardens nurtured weeds, birds, and insects with equal-handed, burgeoning plenty.

  Sited at the shore-line just east of Spire, the grass prairie of Havistock spread like baked ochre beneath a flawless sky. Trees tangled the hollows in thickets of shade, nestled between the low, rolling hills, whose crests shimmered under the scouring glare. Lysaer surveyed the solitary, cruik-built turret, its massive, bea
med sides and gabled roof upheld by the shaped boughs of living trees.

  The shagged trunks were ancient. Interlaced branches braced the king beam, which was smothered in stone-weighted thatch. The structure had no discernible windows, and no chimney to vent a kitchen fire or hearth. Those oddities failed to serve adequate warning, that the space inside was unlikely to conform to the limits implied by its unassuming, outside appearance.

  Ath’s adepts consorted with uncanny forces that linked with the mysteries outside the veil. Reason enough to approach their abode with taut nerves and trepidation; Sulfin Evend stood under the blazing sun, clammy with dread and unable to gage the course of the coming encounter. Lysaer came dressed in state. The panoply of his glittering finery included a sashed tabard, emblazoned with the sunwheel in gold. His right sleeve bore the badge of the regency claimed with town backing for sovereignty over Tysan. That statement alone was a dangerous overture. His embassy impinged upon territory subject to Havish, yet had not paused at Telmandir to acknowledge High King Eldir or receive a visiting ruler’s credentials. Lysaer claimed sole authority to stand on his case: an outright demand for return of his princess, set under his autonomous right to declare her status as traitor or abducted victim.

  Today’s precipitate demand for a verdict might launch anything from a war to a diplomatic breach of crown protocol.

  Not least of the unknown factors at play were the principles of Ath’s adepts. A hurried, deep study had yielded little more by way of hard facts. The white brotherhood did not influence politics. Their wisdom inducted no following. Folk requested their blessing to marry, or to lay a benison over sown fields. They might visit a hostel to ask for knowledge or healing, or to leave gifts to commemorate good fortune. The adepts took no coin for their acts of service. Reputation insisted their ways eschewed violence. Their sojourns abroad were made empty-handed, and no record existed to say what occurred if they should be accosted by force. Scholar’s theory on that subject claimed that prescient mystery kept Ath’s initiates from showing themselves in the presence of conflict.