Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  ‘You were the one who insisted I needed a man at my shoulder,’ Lysaer said into the teeth of his Lord Commander’s discomfort.

  ‘I would not be elsewhere,’ Sulfin Evend declared, too wise or too foolish to yield before truth, that his adamant stance was unwanted. No stripping glance sidewards might crack his liege’s facade of state poise. Yet behind the impervious mask, the human thread spun wrenching tragedy. Today’s confrontation with Princess Ellaine must revisit the death of a fifteen-year-old son.

  Lysaer s’Ilessid confronted the plinths at the hostel gateway, his ice-cut profile without vestige of feeling to reveal which force might rule the moment: the geas-bound hate that sought reason to kill, or the grief, born of love, Sulfin Evend had witnessed on one bitter night in Daon Ramon.

  ‘The adepts won’t approach unless you pass inside,’ he stated into the lengthening pause. ‘Their code demands that you take the first step.’

  ‘Let this speak instead.’ Lysaer extended a finger and engaged his gift.

  Before Sulfin Evend could raise a stunned outcry, the shot ray leaped towards the gate, aimed straight for the cruik building’s doorway.

  A note sang on the air. The carved pillars seemed to shimmer bright silver. Lysaer’s shaft of light did not pass through, but disappeared, erased from existence as it sliced across the stone portal.

  At shocking risk, Sulfin Evend reached out and jerked down his liege’s wrist. ‘Are you mad?’ he gasped with outraged astonishment. ‘Ath’s adepts are against all forms of coercion. If you want to parley, you aren’t going to win any favours through bullying threats!’

  ‘They are holding my wife!’ snapped Lysaer, unmoved. ‘Best that we make things clear at the outset that I have not come to negotiate.’

  ‘But your wife is not held,’ an unperturbed voice announced from directly behind them. ‘Ellaine did not cross any of our three thresholds by less than her own free will.’

  Lysaer spun about, Sulfin Evend beside him. Together they beheld the white-robed apparition dispatched from the hostel to meet them. Not female, as gentle custom demanded, but a slender young man, his shining presence hazed in an ethereal glow, silvery as moonbeams that could not exist under the full glare of midday.

  ‘I am your response,’ he stated without rancour. ‘Our gates are a boundary. Inside, our way serves the precepts of harmony. Outside, we match distortion with truth. Your aggressive overture is not sourced in balance. Therefore, the guidance that answers you past the stone markers cannot be other than male.’

  ‘That’s no living man,’ Sulfin Evend was fast to point out. ‘His presence does not bend the grass or cast any visible shadow.’

  ‘I am a thought sending,’ the apparition agreed. ‘A focused intent, dispatched as a projection by the one who stands watch and guard on our portals.’

  ‘The particular bent of your sorceries is meaningless,’ Lysaer declared. ‘Nor will I waste time over rhetoric. I’ve travelled here for no other reason except to learn why Princess Ellaine abandoned her home, and whose influence parted her Grace from my secure palace at Avenor. If force was involved, then my light will answer, and your vaunted haven will burn.’

  ‘The fire of will both creates and destroys,’ the watcher’s sending agreed. Wrapped in shining brilliance, he inclined his head towards the hostel enclosure. ‘S’Ilessid! Your wife, now informed of your coming, has determined to hear your petition. Speak wisely and address her with due respect since she stands on her birth-born right to determine her destiny’

  ‘She is Princess of Avenor,’ Lysaer rebutted. ‘Her wedding vow binds her to Tysan.’

  The uncanny sending did not rise to argue, but vanished away without riffling the air.

  Ahead, the sun-washed courtyard was no longer empty. Two additional figures advanced towards the upright plinths of the gateway. These cast a shadow and rustled the grass. Lysaer s’Ilessid confronted his wife, clad in a gown of unadorned linen and wearing no jewel as artifice. Ellaine was accompanied by a single, white-robed adept. Too tall for a desertman, his carriage graced by a striking calm, he held back with loosely clasped hands. Old or young, no eye could discern. His features stayed obscured by the scintillant glare thrown off the ciphers stitched into his hood.

  If Sulfin Evend kept his field warrior’s habit of assessing all points of resistance, Lysaer acknowledged no presence but Ellaine’s. Yet there, without warning, his lordly bearing broke down. The instant, unfolding, held too sore a betrayal. Ringed by the uncanny powers that attended Ath’s adepts, the woman who crossed the gold flood of day became both mother and wife. She woke Lysaer’s ghosts and reopened the sting of each unrequited pain from his past.

  His regal face lost its impervious shielding. Rampant need, and raw longing, and hurt smashed his poise at one shattering blow. Lysaer reeled. Stripped woundingly naked, he recoiled, hurled outside of torn pride and the blaze of unspent animosity.

  Then the moment’s shock passed. He found his recovery. Between heartbeats, all sign of emotion dispersed. Sulfin Evend, observing, could scarcely believe the display had been more than a wishful illusion.

  Except Ellaine herself was not left untouched: that fleeting second of vulnerability crystallized her recollection of all she had left: the dazzling majesty of Lysaer’s state dress, the gleam of his hair—the stunning impact of his virile allure displayed with untarnished splendour. Limned in the noon brilliance, he was power and strength. Yet the briefly glimpsed human heart underneath arrested all reasoned thought. The natural cry to nurture and heal tugged at her to forsake stern resolve and let go in abandoned surrender: to embrace the grand wake of a sovereign’s life, set ablaze with reflected glory.

  ‘Why, Ellaine?’ asked Lysaer with sincere regret. ‘What drew you away from Avenor?’

  The woman stopped her uncertain approach with only the gateway between them. Her eyes were doe brown, but not soft. Her trembling and her threatened tears were not weak, but the courage of stark desperation. ‘You once told me, my lord, that I was a piece set on a political game-board.’ She tipped up her chin and pressed on. ‘My life, tied to yours, was worth nothing more than my value to give you an heir. Later, I found that you did not want a live son, but a bargaining chip to raise armies.’

  A short pause ensued. Lysaer made no plea. He did not offer excuses. Attentively rapt, he regarded his wife, prepared through strapped turmoil to listen.

  Ellaine forged ahead. ‘I left on my own. No other hands helped me until I was outside of Tysan’s crown territory. You may keep your sworn officers with their cold eyes. Their doings are above suspicion. Realm law would declare them no less than loyal. But to the eyes of a mother, they are nothing else but gutless jackals and murderers.’

  Lysaer received that accusation, unflinching. ‘Every last jackal, and all fourteen murderers have been condemned by my seal of crown justice.’ Vised to self-contained calm, he said gently, ‘For the unclean conspiracy that bought Kevor’s death, every man of Avenor’s high council has already faced execution. Come home, Ellaine. The realm shares your grief. Foreign exile cannot ease the loss of a son. But your place at my side can strengthen a people, and see honour is done in his memory’

  ‘Kevor’s memory requires nothing!’ Ellaine declared, flushed. ‘If, as you say, the kingdom is grieving, the crown’s ruling regent might have done better to value his gifts in the first place!’ As though steadied by the silent, robed figure beside her, the princess pronounced her decision. ‘Leave,’ she told Lysaer. ‘Wherever you’re going in the wide world, I will not return as the figure-head piece to complete the charade that you call a marriage.’

  ‘If I were to grant you the rule of Avenor?’ The white-and-gold image of patient authority, Lysaer showed her the dazzling honesty that could shred the most steadfast intention. Then, as though shaken, he broke that clear gaze. Again, his pose of sovereignty ruffled: the scorching glimmer of jewels and gold recorded his unsteady breath. ‘Ellaine. I did not know our son. Can you imagine
his loss held no meaning? Who other than you could restore the lost chance of setting a name and a face to the sorrow a father must bear at his passing?’

  Sulfin Evend felt all his brazen nerves peeled. He heard that note; knew his liege: saw beneath the veneer of false arrogance. The threadbare appeal was forthright, and genuine. Lysaer stood at Ath’s hostel, his true self exposed, begging an estranged wife to forgive the flaws instilled by a curse-driven geas.

  Yet pride could not shape the words.

  Ellaine failed to see past the cold gleam of ribbon and diamonds. Too long held as chattel, her response addressed only the image imposed by vested state rank and authority. ‘The men who taught Kevor, and those you commanded to raise him will have known him best! They are the same ones who sent him to die, and the same that your vaunted justice dispatched. Tell me if you dare, Blessed Prince! Whose heart more deserves to stay empty? I will never return. Seek your requital in your grand cause. Stand or fall by the swords you have paid blood to raise to tear at the throats of your enemies!’

  Lysaer s’Ilessid did not crumble. His imperious calm as he heard her rejection all but blistered the thick, summer air.

  Then he answered.

  ‘Alestron,’ he pronounced with razor-edged clarity. ‘My allies turned enemy, who gave you their covert escort to Methisle and delivered you into the hands of a Fellowship Sorcerer. The price of your defiance shall be written in lives, through the downfall of the s’Brydion citadel. Your choice, Princess Ellaine! Your choice alone. Upon your loyalty rides the duke’s name and family, and my forbearant trust that Alestron still serves in good faith!’

  The moment had no chance to hang in suspension. Perhaps knowing how Desh-thiere’s curse reforged pain to serve the destructive drive of its purpose, the white-robed adept touched Ellaine aside and spoke out for the first time. ‘Your choices are yours. The lady is blameless. Go from this place. You are done here.’

  Lysaer’s presence blazed. ‘What gives you the right to come between me and the woman I’ve married as princess?’

  ‘A law beyond man’s,’ the adept stated clearly. ‘Give over your claim. You are done here.’

  ‘You revere all life?’ Lysaer snapped, unmoved. ‘The child she bore me, has his slaughter meant nothing? If her case for abandonment rides on the accusation of a crown conspiracy to commit murder, the charge fails. I am innocent. No order of mine arranged my son’s death.’

  ‘No murder was committed,’ the adept rebuked gently. ‘Since your son stands here, living, before you.’ The robed brother pushed off his hood.

  Sulfin Evend gasped outright.

  Across the ephemeral line of the gateway, amid humid greenery and relentless noon heat, he watched the father behold his lost offspring, without joy and past tears of redemption. What stood unveiled in the blaze of the sunlight shattered the bounds of all precedent.

  ‘You are not Kevor!’ Lysaer whispered, afraid.

  Nor was he; the child born into crown title in Avenor had been refigured by the exalted currents that danced past the veil. Those burning, pale eyes had explored vistas beyond sight. Kevor might wear the raiment of breathing flesh. Yet the mantle of silent power upon him transcended the bounds of mortality. The being who upheld Princess Ellaine’s free choice had walked through the grand chord of the mysteries. He had touched the well-spring of undying creation and embraced the awareness that sourced his true Name.

  ‘Step forward,’ said Kevor. ‘Your wife will receive you. Your peace does not lie on the field of war, or in your brick walls at Avenor.’ He held out his hand and offered forgiveness, ablaze in the light of the infinite. The moment seemed an image, snap-frozen on glass, flooded with poignant longing that burned, and a sweetness that beckoned like agony.

  Locked speechless, Sulfin Evend yearned for the miracle that cried beyond words for release.

  Blue eyes that were clear met sapphire eyes that were troubled; and the shadow of doubt claimed its conquest. Of two men on either side of a gateway, Lysaer s’Ilessid became the one diminished, then undone by the harsh weight of shame. Folded to his knees by excoriating misery, he shouted aloud, lost as though plunged into blindness. The shoulder that braced him up from prostration was not offered by the son, or the wife.

  Lysaer s’Ilessid was shielded, then raised, and borne from the site by his steadfast Lord Commander.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Kevor said from behind. ‘Take your liege from this place. You are done here.’

  Sunset brought no relief from the heat. Its leaden calm hazed the untenanted cove where Avenor’s state galley lay anchored. Beneath burning lamps, her banners hung limp as rags in the breezeless twilight. Moths off the marshes pattered and died against the hot glass of the gimballed light at her chart desk. Though the sultry air settled like glue belowdecks, Lysaer did not venture outside. Hands braced against the sill in the stern cabin, he stared over the darkening scrub that hemmed the Havistock coast in petticoat layers of bull-grass and tidal marshes. The whine of midges sawed against the calls of foraging ducks and the boom of an unseen bittern.

  ‘We should leave these waters without further delay,’ Sulfin Evend suggested. Perched on a locker with one casual boot propped on the frame of the bulkhead, he used a rag soaked in goose-grease to treat the ingrained salt that threatened to rot through good leather. ‘With active unrest already plaguing the southcoast, the last thing you need is a diplomatic brangle involving the crown might of Havish.’

  Still clad in the ghostly white silk of his finery, Lysaer did not turn his head. ‘The Light does not recognize either sovereignty or borders.’

  By which oblique statement, the Alliance Lord Commander was left to presume that the queer wardings defending the gateway to Ath’s hostel now posed something more than a sore irritation.

  Skirting that delicate issue with tact, Sulfin Evend allowed, ‘Perhaps not.’

  The immaculate set to those white-clad shoulders still ruffled the worst of his instincts. All afternoon, his liege’s hag-ridden mood had skirted the razor’s edge. Tossed between blazing rage and the balked hurt of rejection, a man in his state would be wise to drink, if only to dull the flash-point pain of impact.

  This one eschewed sense. A fool dared not guess which direction the discharge might strike for requital.

  Gently, again, Sulfin Evend tried reason. ‘The Mayor of Forthmark was told to expect you.’

  Lysaer did not answer.

  As the stalled silence prickled his nape, Sulfin Evend shot straight. ‘No!’ He cast down his rag, but too late.

  Either strain, or distress, or the intrigues played out by a perfidious ally had tipped the unseen, fragile balance. The creature who spun from the opened casement wore the face of curse-ridden conviction.

  ‘No,’ Sulfin Evend repeated, much louder. When Lysaer kept coming, he slammed to his feet and blocked the companionway to the deck. ‘Liege,’ he said quickly. ‘What are you thinking? Lysaer! You can’t launch an attack on the adepts of Ath’s hostel. Not in the sovereign territory of Havish! Land on the wrong side of a high king’s wrath, and you risk intervention by Fellowship Sorcerers.’

  ‘Clear my path,’ Lysaer s’Ilessid insisted. Eyes like blue diamond burned with a light that reflected no trace of humanity. ‘Move aside.’

  ‘No.’ Sulfin Evend held out in raw fear. He was as good as dead, whether he acted now or fell later to the insane repercussions touched off by a foray sent to assault the peace of a Brotherhood sanctuary. ‘There are men on this ship who have families at home. I won’t let you launch a disaster.’

  Yet words had lost meaning. The avatar continued his stalker’s advance. Now posed as obstruction, Sulfin Evend wedged himself into the door-jamb and shouted a desperate order to the posted watch abovedecks. ‘Captain! Weigh anchor! Out oars! Drive this vessel at speed towards Shand!’

  He managed no more. Lysaer closed his raised fist. The bolt he unleashed struck his Lord Commander a battering blow to the chest. Sulfin Evend lost wind to scream
. Spirit-marked by a Sorcerer, his flesh did not burn. But the force of concussion hammered him backwards against bolted oak, and his head struck against the strapped hinge.

  Knocked dizzy, collapsed to his knees, and coughing the fumes of his smouldering surcoat, Sulfin Evend saw an answering dazzle of light singe through the white-and-gold breast of the silk tabard, under which his liege hung the Biedar knife. Then he heard Lysaer’s cry.

  The snatched breath the commander forced into seized lungs to answer brought him the ghastly taint of seared flesh. ‘Don’t,’ he gasped, desperate. ‘Lysaer! Don’t throw off the flint blade!’

  Yet hope already died. Sulfin Evend measured his length. As darkness roared over his reeling senses, he heard the distanced clatter of flint as the warding virtue of the stone blade was clawed off its thong and discarded.

  Summer 5671

  Resolves

  Immersed in the labour of stemming the summer migration at Methisle, the Sorcerer Kharadmon receives urgent word from Sethvir: ‘You will need to go north, once you’re done helping Verrain. We have no more grace to wait on Asandir. As I feared, the Mistwraith’s curse forces our hand. Fast couriers bear dispatches for the muster of Jaelot, and Lysaer s’Ilessid can no longer endure the Biedar knife’s stay of protection…’

  Surfaced to dull pain and nausea, Sulfin Evend thrashes off a chill compress, his struggle to rise cut short by the galley’s staunch captain, who assures, ‘Lie easy! Our Prince Exalted saw reason. Your first order still stands. We are now rowing east towards the mouth of the Ettin, where the avatar will debark and ride for East Halla. We’ll face a hard siege. Divine word has decreed the s’Brydion must fall for abetting the corruption of Princess Ellaine, and your course will be to raise arms for the Light across the southcoast of Shand…’