Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  '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 ofjewels 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 below-decks, 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 o
r fell later to the insane repercussions touched off by a foray sent to assoult the peace of a Brotherhhod 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 above decks. 'Captain! Weigh anchor! Out oars! Drive this vessel 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 straped hinge.

  Knocked dizzy, collapsed to his knees, and coughing the fumes of his smoldering surcoat, Sulfin Evend saw an answering dazzle of light singe through the white-and-gold brest 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 siezed lungs to answer brought his the ghastly taint of seared flesh. 'Don't,' he gasped, desperate. 'Lysaer! Don't throw of 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 Methilse, the Sorcerer Kharadmon receives urgent word from Sethvir: 'You will need to go north, once you're done helping Verrian. 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'lllessid 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. . .'

  Sent a seeress's message concerning an unusual shimmer of resonance striking down the fourth lane, Prime Selidie stifles a secretive smile, then appoints Lirenda to fetch the wrapped box from Highscarp containing Elaira's wrapped crystal. . .

  Summer 5671

  XIII. Confluence

  If the Mad Prophet had not been blissed prostrate on brandy, the onset of prescient talent would not have taken him unaware. Sprawled in a dimmed corner of the clan chieftain's lodge tent while two of the Companions sat in subdued conference, his walrus bulk passed unnoticed all day. He stayed unmolested, until his resounding snores drew smiles and raised eyebrows from the scouts who arrived to deliver the sundown report to Sidir. The novel amusement also was discovered by an inquisitive boy, which started a bout of giggling mimicry from the camp's younger children.

  When a sturdy toddler decided to bounce on the spellbinder's chest, Feithan gave the offender a scolding and ran the young rascals outside. They whooped as they scuttled. Such wild noise was unwise. Despite the unaccustomed excitement surrounding the return of crown-sanctioned royalty, a mindful adolescent shoved his gangling frame up from the trestle and ducked through the flap to correct them.

  Only Sidir's relentless alertness tracked the gist of Dakar's sotted mumbling. A fragmented phrase snapped him onto his feet with the speed of a dart-shot wolf.

  Across the tent at a bound, with his hardened grasp shaking the befuddled spellbinder by the collar, he demanded, 'What did you say?'

  Riled to rattled teeth, Dakar squeezed his eyes shut. His complaining grumble was ripped short by a belch. For that, he received Sidir's grip on his chin. Iron fingers twisted his face towards the tallow-dip, snatched in fierce haste off the trestle. 'Damn you, speak clearly! What sight? Which vision?'

  'Pesk you with lice!' Dakar stated, thick. 'Douse that fiends-plaguing light in a bucket.'

  Sidir's response was to shove the flame close, within risk of singeing clamped lashes. 'Talk,' he insisted, while Braggen uncoiled from his seat and offered to help torch some hair.

  Aware he was not going to wrest back his peace, the Mad Prophet dredged through his splintering hangover and coughed up his fast-fading augury. 'The babe will be a girl-child.'

  Braggen's bearded face split into a grin. 'Whose?' he asked, laughing, while Sidir's ruthless fingers threatened to tear skin from bone on the force of resharpened impatience.

  Dakar rolled spaniel eyes. Sullen and already sliding towards stupor to escape his galvanic headache, he slurred, 'Whose do you think?' His mumble trailed off as he succumbed to turned senses. 'Arithon's; Elaira's; conceived on this night.'

  The racketing cheers from the scouts at the trestle put the children's rash outburst to shame.

  When Feithan strode over to quiet their foolishness, she was indignantly told of the posited chance there might be an heir for Rathain. She did not celebrate, but shouted for silence, and rushed to Sidir with expostulation.

  'The prophet's all wrong. This is premature nonsense.' Instantly flustered to jagged distress, she backed up her claim with bleak evidence. 'No one planned for child-birth. I helped the enchantress prepare the decoction to prevent a conception myself.'

  'So I thought, also.' Self-possessed and steel calm, Sidir fetched the small bucket kept to soak whetstones and doused the contents across Dakar's face. 'Where's his Grace? Speak quickly! We haven't got time'to wait out your miserable stupor.'

  Dakar spluttered, rammed erect, and coughed through the streaming droplets. Spurred by Feithan's glower, he declared with offence, 'By Daelion Fatemaster's immortal bollocks! Did you have to soak me to perdition?'

  'He'll do it again,' threatened Braggen. 'Talk quickly. We've got to find Arithon.'

  'Find him yourself,' Dakar grumbled, peevish. 'Your liege will have potent defences laid down.' He slapped off restraint, rolled clear of the puddle, and cursed until stopped by a hiccough. Since no Companion ever backed down, and Feithan's ire promised far worse than a cold water bath from a bucket, the Mad Prophet let his unsteady frame be hauled upright. 'Don't you think your liege should be private? His enchantress is not going to thank you for meddling.'

  Feithan lost patience. 'She'll thank us less should your foresight prove true, and her gift of virginity brings her a birth that hasn't been of her devising!'

  'She's under life vows to a childless order,' groused Dakar with planted complacency. 'Stop fretting. We have an accord. Arithon's not intending to father -'

  Sidir recaptured soaked cloth in both fists and braced the Mad Prophet's swayed balance. 'Well, vaunted seer, you've just stated otherwise!'

  Dakar squirmed in discomfort. 'I've forecast a child?' He broke off, brow furrowed, and ransacked his memory once more. Whatever mislaid image the concept recalled, his brosy cheeks drained. 'Dharkaron, black angel of vengeance! Not this way!'

  'How?' Feithan cracked, in no mood for maundering. 'I would have sworn by Ath's grace that Elaira had no deceit in her.'

  'She doesn't.' Dakar swallowed. 'Damn her Prime for creating a blindsided noose.' Sickness notwithstanding, he did not argue as the pair of Companions chose action and hauled him headlong past the trestle. While Braggen rousted the stupefied scouts, the Mad Prophet exposed the bleak fallacy. 'We all thought Prime Selidie intended to snare Rathain's prince by means of the order's practice of debt.' Shinbiarked on a footstool, he yelped as Sidir forced his stride to careening haste. 'Instead, the devious witch has seeded an inactive string of spelled ciphers. She's hidden that spring trap within the ephemeral energy of Elaira's aura.'

  'She didn't notice?' said Feithan, a half-pace ahead and clearing obstru
ctions away from the drunkard's stumbling feet.

  Dakar shook his head, by now rallied enough to sweat himself green with distress. 'Elaira's will is bound into enslavement. Her Prime's master sigil would have been used, set over a powerful cipher to hide the awareness the craft-mark was ever there. Since the working knots through her initiate's oath, Arithon himself can't detect its presence. He won't foresee any pending entrapment. He can't, while the spell chain's inactive. Its directive isn't going to engage until the lovers reach union. The release that completes tonight's consummation will trigger a fertile conception.'

  'Dharkaron avenge!' Braggen swore with scraped anguish. 'By now, we could be too damned late.'

  The sundown report reaffirmed that assessment. Since the eager couple had slipped past the encampment's defences before dusk, the off-watch scouts found themselves shamefaced. Despite dire stakes, they could not name the path their liege had taken to ensure his privacy.

  'He'll have been running wards,' the Mad Prophet gasped, wretchedly nauseous as his bulk was man-handled out of the lodge tent. He snatched a gulped breath, enfolded in sultry darkness, dense with the scents of white oak and pine resin. Against the fierce pressure of expectation, he could give only bad news.

  'Arithon's a talent with initiate mastery! You must realize he outmatches my utmost trained strength. I hold your liege's bond of permission in trust for emergency use in defence. But skin-tight on spirits, my vested knowledge is going to be little use.' The acute pause clipped short as Sidir took charge. 'Then your gift of prophecy needs must suffice. We'll augment your powers by means of a weakened infusion of seersweed.'

  Unsympathetic for the dismal result, that even a dilute dose of the toxic herb would inflame dissolute sickness into a wrenching state of torment, Sidir assigned Braggen to dispatch the scouts. Feithan rushed back for the treated tobacco, while the lodge sentry sprinted to summon a man whose lineage carried the inborn gift for subtle tracking.