Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  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 questing 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, beamed 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.

  '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. Sul
fin 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.'