Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  'Well, on that score, you're certain to face disappointment.' Dakar tugged himself free. His offended shrug yanked his skewed tunic straight, and his cinnamon eyes remained hostile. 'Argue or threaten, his Grace won't listen. Your war-bands might as well toss their drawn blades in the Hanhaffin. You think I'm mad? Then stay and find out. I already know that Arithon's plans will never launch the stupidity of a pitched fight.'

  The presence of the Masterbard at her bridal feast scarcely dampened the scorching fire of Glendien's nature. Clad in fine deer-hide with sandy embroidery, and flaunting an outrageous shawl cut from the raided silk, she was a sight to brand memory and eyesight as she weaved her determined way across the torch-lit festivities. Warnings failed to deflect her picked course; the thorny thicket of legend that surrounded the Teir's'Ffalenn's past posed no obstacle. She raised her beautiful, willful chin and sailed straight ahead, trailing scarlet fringes and wide-eyed young men in her wake like an errant comet.

  'Just stop me,' she challenged, as Kyrialt blocked her.

  'You don't think you've degraded his Grace enough in the course of a single day? As you wish. Naturally.' Her frowning bridegroom shrugged and gave way.

  Glendien girded herself with a challenging smile. Then she barged into Arithon's presence and asked questions that caused Vhandon and Talvish to flinch, and Dakar to choke with his face half-immersed in his beer jack.

  Even Lord Erlien paused, transfixed, to observe the offended reaction. Arithon deflected her sallies with smoking ridicule. His ripostes lost no whetted edge to persistence, until Kyrialt silenced his woman's mouth with a kiss that raised ribald whistles and laughter.

  Glendien ripped free of him, flushed, her topaz eyes unabashed. 'Love, I don't cow in the face of seduction.' She ducked past her protector. Leaned over the trestle where the prince sat, graciously winding new strings for the lyranthe loaned out of somebody's lodge tent, she announced, 'I'm sorry.'

  Arithon did not look up.

  She raised a bold hand, would have traced the welted scabs on his cheek. His stinging, swift parry arrested the touch.

  Her verbal dart followed, undaunted. 'Your Grace, I lost the guts to see through the end game. Don't tell me you're sorry as well?'

  'Woman!' snapped Vhandon, on guard to one side, his weathered stance stiff with embarrassment, 'Your wiles have made things all that much worse. Your madman of a husband bent his knee, drew his steel, and accepted crown oath to Rathain. That act means your future children will become his Grace's feal subjects!'

  'This prince?' Glendien's mirth pealed out like bronze bells. 'Who else could I trust to keep such as Kyrialt alive long enough to be raising them?'

  'Trust Dharkaron himself, ei'an ist'thalient.' Done with twisting silver, Arithon arose, flipped the loop over the drone peg, and rested the lyranthe across his knee to raise the new string to pitched tension. The fall of the torch-light threw his tipped face in shadow, masking the hard spark of irony that might have exposed his true thought. A minute passed, hanging, while Glendien waited with bated breath for his translation.

  'You know your Paravian quite well enough,' Kyrialt chided her presently.

  Arithon said nothing. His fine hands nursed the tuning-pegs. At due length he cradled the instrument and caressed the first notes from taut strings. A harmonic triplet speared through, arresting the bursts of coarse comment from the side-lines. As the onlookers quieted, Athera's titled Masterbard tilted his torn face to one side. A snapped sparkle of notes winged from his trained touch. Satisfied with the instrument's quality, he straightened, bowed, and excused himself with soft irony. 'Breed up your impudent clutch as you can, little bride. Tonight, for my part, you'll be merry. Tomorrow, be warned. For I am quite done being burned by your cutting, mettlesome fingers.'

  Before Glendien could retort, or Kyrialt move with redoubled intent to restrain her, those skilled hands moved, and launched into sheer captivation.

  The rollicking measures of a fast-paced jig ripped the feast into giddy celebration. Arithon played. He danced the clans of Selkwood to shouting, exuberant exhaustion, and this time, accepted their offer to get reeling drunk in their company.

  Dakar abetted the choice. Shoved into the press, he volunteered to broach the bung on a tun of fine claret. That the branded staves wore the house seal of the Mayor of Telzen only heightened the mood of piquant enjoyment. Arithon folded himself into the thick of the revels, his presence met by slaps on the shoulder and the inevitable ribald good cheer. The quips he gave back tied knots in loose tongues. Challenge and match, the serious drinking devolved to a contest with bows. Arithon shot drunken, as Dakar had not seen him since a long-past winter, spent with tribal shepherds in Vastmark.

  While the whining, sped shafts ripped the targets to stuffing, Fionn Areth delivered his stiff-lipped opinion, that such careless abandon was a disgrace. 'Those arrows pack broadheads, not target points. A man with a bow who can't walk a straight line is begging to cause someone an injury.'

  'Leave him be,' Dakar murmured. Determined to savour his evening of peace, he stowed himself at the trestle where the borrowed lyranthe lay, abandoned. He deserved the escape. Alestron's paired liegemen could be trusted to keep their vigilant eye on the dark head ensconced amid Alland's rough pack of roisterers.

  'Your liege has not known a true moment of ease for over a year,' the Mad Prophet admitted. 'Certainly not since the hour he used Sanpashir's focus to launch his crazed foray to rescue you.'

  'What?' the Araethurian retorted. 'Fourteen months in the caverns of Kewar were not enough for his restful amusement?'

  Pudgy fists clamped to his jack of fine spirits, Dakar shook his tousled head. The mad leap of the shadows thrown off the pitch torches made his features look old, with the silver thread through his chestnut beard grown pronounced since his trials at Rockfell. Eyes owlish, he kept his secret thoughts to himself, that Arithon's release was more likely an ominous sign of the storms the near future might presage. 'Davien gave the prince shelter,' he admitted at length. 'But it's the rash fool in that Sorcerer's

  company who would let down his guard for one second.'

  Another shaft ripped into the mark, to a fresh round of whistles and clapping.

  'Arithon will get whipped,' Fionn Areth insisted through the groans of the vanquished bemoaning the score. 'Watch me. I'll cheer when that happens.'

  Talvish turned his flax head. 'That's just because you can't beat him, cold sober,' he remarked without rancour. 'Take your sour tongue off. If you're wanting a shoulder to cry on, go mope in feminine company.'

  Fionn Areth fixed disgruntled green eyes on the swordsman, who took his ease like a lounging lynx with an insolent hip braced on the trestle. 'As if I could treat a clan woman like a bawd, and not lose my head to her kinsfolk!'

  This time, Vhandon's muscle jerked Talvish short. 'Let the grass-lander go. He's confused enough. How will he ever learn who he is? With that face, he'll probably never find means to stand clear of the royal shadow.'

  The arrow shoot lasted until the sore losers decided that Arithon was safest pried loose from the bow and tucked back amid their musicians. There, Rathain's prince chose to entertain himself further by trying their wind-instruments one at a time. For each slipped mistake, he downed a neat draught of claret. Vhandon refused to place silver with Talvish, that his Grace would become last man standing.

  To their novel astonishment, the musician's quick fingers tripped less, as the effects of hard drinking undid him. If his eyes brightened, and his speech blurred, his wit remained stinging, and his music retained the ache of its vibrant clarity. Swaying, abstracted, a carved flute in hand, Arithon wove melody with the crystalline tang of frost on the grasses of autumn.

  He refused the lyranthe until the last. Just after the traditional wedding at dawn, he returned the silver-wound strings and delivered a performance that surpassed the predecessor who had taught him. The net of matchless harmony spun through the mist silenced even the most raucous reveler.
r />   Dakar lay snoring, his cheek mashed on the trestle; Vhandon and Talvish stared at their fixed hands. Glendien turned her face into her husband's braced shoulder, and Lord Erlien openly wept.

  No one, grown man, woman, or child, escaped the tug of the melody's lyrical passion. No eyes looked up, or noticed the eagle perched amid the stilled pines overhead. None moved or spoke, through the seamless delivery, and none sighed, till the final note faded.

  When Arithon finished, those who knew him best realized he was not sober. He still slipped his admirers with casual ease. His leave-taking granted their stamping cry for an encore no shred of satisfaction. While daybreak speared through the crowns of the trees, and the torches smoked, spent to cinders, Vhandon and Talvish arose together and saw their sworn liege off to bed.

  Lord Erlien, watching, was shocked to discover his stiff beard was dampened with tears. To Kyrialt at his side, and the scarlet-wrapped bride, the High Earl observed with scraped grief, 'It's a straight violation of Ath's grace to set such a talent at risk for a war. That man should never have touched killing steel!'

  Kyrialt shut his eyes against more than the night's chill. His clasped arms tightened over his shivering wife while, in the grey flood of light, he returned a low snarl of rage. 'If that accursed s'Ilessid pretender succeeds, and his upstart religion takes root, we'll see that rare gift forced to battle for nothing else but survival.'

  Erlien responded, cold as the fog that purled like ghost shades through the forest. 'Then by Dharkaron Avenger's Black Chariot, we had better fight to make certain the false doctrine withers.'

  Overhead, still unnoticed, the perched eagle unfurled broad wings. Its pinions hissed down as it launched and soared, then vanished amid a pale shower of sparks that could not be seen, but by mage-sight.

  Spring 5671

  Entanglements

  Cold drizzle falls on the morning that Arithon leaves Selkwood for Telzen; behind, he leaves Kyrialt s'Taleyn with a penned sheaf of orders, eighteen bolts of white silk, and the tribute gold taken to sow conflagration amid the new legions of Light; with him go his double, the Mad Prophet, and two liegemen, bearing between them a borrowed lyranthe and a chest of poached amethysts to be restored to the reigning caithdein of Melhalla . . .

  Past the waning fury of the equinox storms, as a trade galley leaves the shelter of Eltair Bay to ply southward, an initiate courier bears a wrapped packet containing Elaira's personal quartz crystal to Ithish port, where it will see transfer to another enchantress bound overland to the Forthmark sisterhouse, and final delivery to Selidie Prime . . .

  At the edge of the wind-swept wastes of Atainia, the Warden of Althain dreams: of a sinister figure riding the Camris road, and black webs of horror spinning cold shadows in Jaelot, Darkling, and Etarra; and the clean, searing line of his summons arcs out, touching a distant shade, a raven, and in tenuous plea, an eagle that soars on the icy winds of high altitude . . .

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  Spring 5671

  X. Appeal

  Two nights after the wedding in Selkwood, the ice point blaze of the spring constellations glinted on jet above the slate peak of Althain Tower. Their silver light fell as a gossamer whisper through the opened east casement, where the Warden reclined, head propped on a padded chair, awaiting the late rise of the moon. A blanket the colour of wine warmed his limbs from the breezes that fluttered the candles. The frail lids of his eyes remained closed, while a dark-skinned adept trimmed his unkempt hair using the knife he kept sharp to cut wild goose-quills for pen nibs.

  'You know your best asset is north-bound towards Telzen?' The whisper threaded the empty air, not a handspan from Sethvir's left ear.

  'Was,' the Fellowship Sorcerer responded in silent reply to the unseen arrival. One whose presence escaped an adept's tuned awareness, a feat of unrivalled astonishment.

  But then, only one busy mind on Athera pried into the mysteries with such startling invention. To the shade, whose stealth wore the fierce tang of the magics imbued by the drakes, Althain's Warden proffered the image of Arithon s'Ffalenn, his cloaked figure in the company of the Mad Prophet, disguised as a button seller. The errant pair made their way westward on foot, down the Southshire

  trade-road. Sethvir added, 'Didyou think me behind on current events? The ruckus at dawn could have called up the dead, never mind the display that stamped warding patterns into the lane flux.'

  Fionn Areth, Talvish, and Vhandon had fallen asleep to the memory of Arithon tuning the lyranthe bestowed as a parting gift by the clansmen. After their night of oblivious sleep, they awakened to the stunning discovery that prince and prophet had gone. A note was left tucked with the strong-box of amethysts. Arithon's script directed them northward to keep the planned rendezvous in Atwood. Fionn Areth was placed under Rathain's crown protection, the bold lines of writing assured; Koriani interference should pose them no difficulty. Sethvir's earth-sense had captured the binding involved when Arithon invoked his initiate awareness and sealed the penned note with his Name.

  Since Vhandon and Talvish knew charter law well enough to grasp the full implications, Althain's Warden finished his thought with disingenuous calm. 'The young double ought to be safe for the nonce.' Prime Selidie dared not try the Waystone before she reconfigured her sigils to match the crystal's changed resonance; and Arithon's signature enabled a crown obligation, leaving the clear-cut grounds to allow a Fellowship intervention.

  'Flawed logic,' the subtle intruder responded, a flow of consciousness slipped through the sussurrant snip, as fine steel sliced through hanks of white hair. 'Without Selidie's impairment, whom could you send?'

  Sethvir was too enervated to argue. Particularly since the Fellowship's short-handed state had invited the mocking exchange in the first place.

  Aloud, he said, 'Welcome to Althain Tower, Davien.'

  The startled adept flinched. The knife flashed, and a cut fleece of hair drifted down and strewed the wax shine of the floor-boards. 'Your colleague is here!'

  'As he wishes, he could be.' The Warden's mouth turned in tacit acknowledgement of the adept's contrite touch, lamenting the gap just razed through his beard. 'My dear, no apology. My roof sparrows will use the spare wool for their nesting, and my vanity shall mend, over time.'

  The adept set down the knife. Her other palm pressed the Warden's frail shoulder, the brief contact a warning to guard his wracked strength. 'Call as you have need.' Her passing shadow darkened the lacquer-worked clothes-chest as she departed and latched the door shut at her heels. Left to resume his discussion in privacy, Sethvir opened forthwith, 'I sent because I would ask for your help.'

  Behind closed eyes, he unreeled a string of images winnowed from the ongoing stream of his earth-sense: of Raiett Raven, at Etarra, lying in wakeful dread of the coercive voices that riddled his sleep; of the subtle ties, spun like lead foil and shadow, that streamed from his tainted aura and afflicted others of his acquaintance. Of a spy network, compromised by insidious forces, and of officials in three of Rathain's northern towns, slowly bent to embrace an inexorable dance with corruption invited by their blinkered prejudice. Vision revealed the first cobweb strands of the ties that might one day solidify into a network that fed upon torture and death. Althain's warden foresaw the thousands of afflicted spirits burning in their torment. The auric force woven from their captivity flickered at nightfall like candle-flames and cast a shadow deep as the abyss.

  Reeling through that horrific future, where the practice of necromancy spread like a plague on the false sacrament of the Light, Sethvir resumed his strained plea. 'I can send a discorporate to clear the corruption in Jaelot and Darkling.'

  Davien leaped ahead and captured the gist. 'Etarra requires an incarnate presence. How

  inconvenient, with you and Asandir caught busy as jugglers, with your hands full of imbalanced grimwards.'

  Sethvir added nothing. The conclusion was obvious. If the cult incursion stayed unresolved beyond the next winter'
s solstice, its extended roots would establish tight bolt-holes, and finally become entrenched. 'That city already traffics in child conscripts,' he rasped. 'Before those unfortunates are ritually bound and put to use for abomination, the compact demands our response.'

  No Fellowship awareness could evade that glaring truth. Such horrific rites, done in that trammelled pass, must disrupt the resonance of the fifth lane and finally unbalance the seat of grand confluence that anchored through Ithamon itself. The sharp shift in frequency would wreak permanent change; the heart of Athera's greater mysteries could not do other than falter beyond recovery.

  'You have not abandoned your care,' Sethvir added. 'Or why else did you break your sealed silence in Kewar? Why, on the very moment that Lysaer s'Ilessid first let his blood with a tainted bone-knife?'

  That perceptive statement caused the tight-knit thread of contact to resolve into a standing figure. One with flame-and-salt hair tumbled over proud shoulders, and clad in a tunic of russet, accented with sable embroidery. Davien's long stride brought him up to the colleague who sat tucked as an invalid in the stuffed chair.

  'Your words are too generous,' the renegade Sorcerer said. Flesh and blood, breathing, he stood his cold ground with authority, but not repentance. 'Who could defy the charge that we seven stand guard

  for?'

  Eyes still closed, although the live flame of his visitor's aura beat against his exposed skin, Sethvir smiled. 'You cared too much, rather.' A raw effort of will, he turned a rested hand palm upwards: no reconciliation, but a gesture of bare supplication. 'In fact, what has changed? The Kralovir hope to root a cult branch at Etarra. Their dedicate cause to eradicate clanborn will move forward under the sunwheel banner. One might hope your concern will prompt you to assist. Or else why respond to my summons?'