Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  Not real: her voice was no more than an echo from memory. His heart's flame stayed shackled. Even Elaira could not reach him, here. No tie to the living might rip him clear: not his grant of permission to Dakar, nor the blood bonding, enacted by oath, made to a Fellowship Sorcerer. All aspects were lashed into subjugation. The imperative seal of Davien's longevity imposed by the Five Centuries Fountain did little more than prolong the dragging torment of transition.

  Regret raised still more cries in scalding protest. Most wrenching of these, the death-wish of Earl Jieret's deceased war captain: 'Say to Prince Arithon, when the Fellowship Sorcerers crown a sFfalenn descendant as Rathain's high king at Ithamon, on that hour, he will not have failed me . . .'

  Caolle's accusation was hard-followed by Jieret's: Make me one promise, that after my death you honour my daughter with the same pact you gave me as a child in Strakewood. . .

  Swallowed away with the ingested potion, Arithon still sensed the tug of that oathsworn commitment. His grant of protection to Jeynsa s'Valerient remained intact. Initiate master, he had set his intent in clean form. His binding cord to her must dissolve on the moment his mangled flesh perished. The incised wax ciphers holding him to the body would be broken once the collection of life-force was finished. The necromancer would go on to burn the left husk, or else call forfeit the robbed power he sought to exploit.

  Though Jieret's young daughter would escape without taint, no kindly reprieve might erase the ripping trauma of dissolution. First link in a seeded chain of disasters, the fate of the Teir's'Ffalenn at Etarra brushed against her clanbred gift for true vision . . .

  Asleep in the prow of a waterman's craft in swift passage across Daenfal Lake, Jeynsa shocked awake, screaming. The prophetic dream that had broken her rest continued to rake her with gooseflesh. As the boatman's son tried to ease her discomfort, she swiped back her ruffled hair, panting to the raced pound of her pulse.

  'No, you can't help me.' Arms tucked to her breast, stunned to horrified fury, she shot a glance towards the northern horizon.

  No shadow pursued her.

  Only white needles of reflected starlight scribed the boat's foaming wake. Terror rode her, regardless. The scene exposed by her clanbred talent had been all too graphically damning: of her realm's crown prince, ringed by the rippling presence of ghosts. Girls, women, and boys, each had been entrapped by the black craft of necromancy. The kindly boatman importuned her to sleep.

  Jeynsa refused. She feared to close her eyes. The crushing dread rode her, that the nightmare just glimpsed in the crypt at Etarra would return to harrow her further. 'Just row! Save us from evil, I must reach the shores of West Halla at speed.'

  Her Sighted dream had laid bare the hideous concern, half-suspected since the clandestine conversation overheard in the camp lodge tent. Past all question, Prince Arithon of Rathain had become seduced by a practising cultist. Caithdein's successor, Jeynsa's office was plain: charter law forbade unclean works. The gravity of her errand now carried extreme stakes and a desperate urgency . . .

  Lost, Arithon tumbled. Jerked under, then drowned, he thrashed, entangled within his captor's aura. He tasted despair, revolted by the corrupted taint of a life preserved from the grave. The future promised no hope, only desolate suffering to breed madness. Noosed tight, he howled alongside the innocents chained into bondage before him. Immersed in their agony, he could scarcely feel the ephemeral string of connection that linked him to his dying flesh. The actualized thread of selfhood that streamed from the infinite whole and rooted the seat of his being had been drawn too far beyond reach. The shackling hoop invoked by the bowl dismembered every harmonic alignment with the prime life chord. Ensnared by that garrote, he could not cross the gate through the veil, or access the higher mysteries.

  Grace was absent. Dignity died. Light dimmed, and joy became a dumb figment. All that he was now existed for naught but to feed a blighting corruption.

  Vile wretchedness claimed him: Arithon saw through the black cultist's eyes. He spoke with the creature's rough voice. In words that engendered no music, he recited more lines of ritual. He was the pale hand gripping the sacrificial knife to enact the final stroke over the heart. He slavered along with the diseased awareness that would shortly destroy the wax ciphers dribbled over the husk's bleeding limbs on the altar

  At Althain Tower, Sethvir masked his face, while a weeping adept braced his shoidder. Her steady question could not mask her dread, that no earthly recourse might salvage the balance of Athera's signature resonance. 'You fear that your crown prince has crossed into irrevocable jeopardy?'

  In the mountains of Darkling, observing the enraptured priest, Kharadmon clamped a fierce grip on himself to contain his scalding distress. 'Teir's'Ffalenn! The time to remember your training is now!'

  While at Jaelot, a pin-point vortex of cold nestled inside a candle sconce, even Luhaine's staid temperament cracked. 'Arithon's left his resistance too late! Show us all mercy! The drakes' charge is broken, and we're left four-square in the breach of a grievous disaster!'

  Beyond thought, the shared dread, that the bright weave of the world stood at risk if the heart seed of the last sFfalenn prince became severed past reach of a Fellowship intervention . . .

  The bone-blade touched the breast of the bard, then scribed the last of the dread ciphers. No whisper rose from stilled lips in protest. The incision seeped, nearly bloodless. By now, the victim's heart-beat had stopped. His nerves ceased to register feeling. Residual sensation had drained out of fingers and toes, though the wax seals still conserved the trapped trace of etheric connection.

  Commingled as captive within the grey cultist's aura, Arithon sensed the corpse chill of his abandoned flesh as the creature whose foul practice had stripped him of will laid a splayed palm over the wound on his sternum. Forced symbiote, he shared the chant to unhook the heart spark of his being: the foundational core that guarded his earthly awareness.

  Darkness beyond cognizance crushed his self-contained thought, as chant and cipher made contact. The necromancer's power closed in as a prisoning fist. Pinned at the crux, then dragged past the bleak threshold, Arithon melted into the array of knotted sigils that joined every Kralovir necromancer into energetic communion. His suborned shade would suckle the cult in an initiate order of hierarchy: from established master, to consecrate initiate, down to the least servant held under compulsion, and even unto the planted sigils that marked others, hooking them to an unconscious state of potential. The surge as his induction completed was going to recharge the whole web.

  Arithon felt the pull of that sucking, dark hunger. Cultists whose practice spanned over millennia yearned towards that moment of sublime euphoria. They hungered to indulge in their forbidden fruit, as piercingly sweet as addiction.

  The Kralovir master poised over his conquest with the heart's energy fluttering beneath his spread hand. 'Ready yourselves.' Anticipation thrilled through him. 'Tonight's feast is a rare talent. All my years, I've tasted none like him!'

  While Luhaine despaired, and Kharadmon raged, the Warden of Althain braced to enact an outcome of tragic necessity. Yet Arithon's failure foreclosed every planned option. To forestall the corruption of Etarra's armed company, Sethvir would have no choice but to free all the bound shades, and thereby invoke a crown lineage's ending. . .

  The Kralovir master capped his incantation. His claim opened up the linked channel that married him to his brethren, then breached the innermost seal defining his victim's identity. The pent reservoir of the essence streamed forth, the linkage of interlocked sigils blazing with the burgeoning influx of power. Across the continent, in their secretive enclaves, or kneeling alone before ceremonial candles by starlight, his colleagues gasped, caught up, then enveloped in collective surrender as the fresh charge of the induction wrung them dizzy. The flux lit their shared weave as a lyrical bolt, wrought of tuned sound and bright lightning. The sensation burned, a whirling explosion that crested towards climax.

 
; And there, at the crux, struck in fire and light, one word unfurled from a calyx of wardings and invoked the appeal for release:

  GRACE!

  At Althain Tower, Sethvir cried out. The adept at his side caught his shoulder, then gasped, brought to her knees in winded astonishment. 'When did your sFfalenn prince touch Paravian presence? Ath's blessing on earth, how did we not notice?'

  In Darkling, Kharadmon froze between seconds in time, while Luhaine, in Jaelot, all but ignited the palace on the levin-bolt force of struck shock . . .

  For Arithon had not wrought the predicted defence, or drawn on his rights as a crown prince. Instead of the expected, straightforward plea for a Fellowship intercession, this Teir's'Ffalenn had leaned in trust on the victory snatched from his trial within Kewar's maze.

  There, on the hour he claimed absolution from the weight of his mortal failings, he had owned his true self in the presence of a living centaur guardian. His cry pealed out now, affirming that heritage, rightfully his by Ath's law.

  Aware presence responded. While his defeated will of itself could not cross, or burst through the closed ring of sigils, he was more than a spirit-tied mote of identity. Sourced in the infinite, his true Name spanned the arc of creation. The embedded knowing could not be revoked: or the memory, once lifted to knowledge through the gift of Earl Jieret's sacrifice. He was the land, and the land was his very self. The prime chord acknowledged no physical boundary: the same forces that knit Athera herself underwrote his unencumbered autonomy.

  Rock and air, flame and water confirmed the free gift of an unconditional deliverance.

  The clay bowl exploded. Spattered dregs splashed the symbols on defiled flesh, breaking gaps in their wrought continuity. The very air burned with sound and light, scalding with a purity to remake the sea-tides and the dense span of the firmament.

  The master cultist shrieked and dropped his bone-knife. Stunned witless, he staggered and fell as the bursting influx reamed through him. Its clean force unravelled all chains of dark sigils. Harmonic resonance snapped the warped ties that forged his parasitic longevity. Unstoppable, the wave surged throughout the cult's web, reaping each far-off member of the Kralovir through the whirlwind of immolation.

  Chained spirits winnowed free. Stone and mountain resounded. Water shimmered and rebounded to joy. Stars blazed in exaltation, while the night's breezes laughed in rebirth. Across the five kingdoms, sleepers smiled in dreams. Unicorns flung up their horned heads and tossed their floss manes in astonishment. Within Ath's hostels, stone rang like bronze chimes, as every white-robed adept stood their ground as sounding-board for the light.

  No cranny or crypt might shelter the Kralovir from the reach of the prime vibration called down. No incursion survived. Across the continent of Paravia, the grey cult's coerced servants broke, weeping, cut free of unwilling bondage. The initiate masters' corrupted flesh crumpled, razed clear of surrogate domination.

  While the strapped prince on the stone slab shuddered and breathed, the turning world chimed to the sound of his Name and drew him back into himself.

  Summer 5671

  Catalyst

  The incandescent shout that swept the grand chord lasted for only an instant. Its shimmering deluge of sound and light keyed a rainbow shower of harmonics, then faded. No mortal mind might encompass the infinite arc of its imprint. Yet every aware mote of existence responded. All spirit expressed in form and in flesh underwent a moment of black-out, ecstatic reaction.

  As the pealing reverberations subsided, initiate talent was first to recover full cognizance. Ath's adepts understood how to access such mystery and spin the exalted stream down into the beauty of manifest dreams. Their circle of peace embraced the influx of dimensional harmony. They channelled the resonance through their sacred groves and captured its pure essence in shimmering form as tree and leaf; as mystery, that welled in the sacred springs; and as the silent movement of animals, knit from the living fabric of dark beyond sight.

  From hedge talent to the offspring of old blood clan lineage, whether healer, or seer, or clairvoyant, the spontaneous uprush dazzled the subtle senses. The event shocked the heart to inexpressible joy, then passed like a blanketing plunge from blinding sunshine into deep shade.

  Highest in rank, the Koriani Seniors also sensed the burning harmonics, as the mighty crest struck a note of keening sorrow off the wardings that guarded their focus stones. While sisterhouse peeresses demanded an inquiry, distraught sisters scrambled to fill basins, or snatch veiling silk off their dormant crystals to enact an investigative scrying. Caution ruled as they sank into disciplined trance. This riddle's pursuit called for stringent protections, since the hapless lane-watchers, caught by surprise, had all crumpled into an unconscious faint.

  An order whose wisdom extended beyond artifice, the Fellowship Sorcerers lived and worked past the bounds of the limited senses. The charge of the dragons forced their choice at the crux: to uphold the compact and guard the parameters essential to Paravian survival. The purge of the Kralovir achieved by Torbrand's descendant demanded a scouring cleanse for completion.

  If the windfall gift came at punishing cost, the benefit must not be spurned. Sethvir's earth-sense recorded the site of each fallen cultist, tucked in their hidden crypts and in secretive enclaves across the continent. His appeal summoned both of his discorporate colleagues and assigned them the rigorous list. Before dawn, those husks of corrupt flesh must be burned. White mage-fire must destroy their scattered remains, down to the least sliver of bone. The ash must be immolated, leaving no trace for some power-blind fool whose ignorance might lead into dabbling.

  Kharadmon answered, and streaked out of the cloistered courtyard in Darkling. Behind him, the actinic blast of raw power he unleashed sheared through the breezeless night. Corpse and candles flared up, consumed at one stroke. The slamming report of heat-shocked air showered dew from the flowerbeds, whose blossoms shivered, unsinged. Though concussion shot cracks through cap-stones and mortar, not so much as a single loose block tumbled from the mountain citadel's outer curtain wall.

  Alarmed sentries shouted, regardless. The ram's horn sounded a blast from the gate keep. While the terrified garrison scurried to take arms, the night-watch guarding the central plaza barricaded the guildhall doors. Convinced that their town was beset by dark sorcery, dispatch runners raced through the streets to summon the town's panicked mayor.

  In distant Jaelot, before the candles at the avatar's formal banquet stopped shivering, the plump priest touched his breast, overcome by a faint rush of dizziness. His auric field swirled, re-arranged by release as the dormant cult sigil burned off in the blaze of harmonic forces. Rocked through a moment of unsteady balance, the man suffered raced pulse and bursting sweat, then a shivering surge of clairvoyance. Sight unveiled an image of blood in a crypt, and five cowled figures struck down by a burst of uncanny conjury; further, he beheld Raiett Raven and three of Etarra's ranked

  council-men killed in their chairs where they met in closed conference . . .

  If Luhaine was able to damp down the reverberations of after-shock, and arrest the spurious vision's unfolding, he could not prevent the man's horrified shout. Nor could he avert the impact unleashed by the Prince of Rathain's surprise tactic. The Named affirmation of Arithon's being strung through the weft of the world's weave had struck off the inevitable spark from poised flint: the Mistwraith's geas of violence ignited and flared into ungovernable flame.

  Lysaer's impassioned cry exhorting a vigorous retaliation against Shadow pealed across the shocked gap in the guests' conversation. 'I bring no good news, and tonight's bizarre portent affirms this! The Spinner of Darkness has survived Kewar's mazes! My priest corroborates my affirmation: the creature now works in league with other fell powers to fracture our sworn ties of alliance. Heed my word well! If you fear for your lives, your dread is too small. If you think that your gates and the garrison on your walls can defend, beware! Your striving is as the needle raised against the poise
d axe. I speak this truth, not to dishearten, nor to raise terror or despair, but to guard your back-gate! An ally I held in my highest esteem has been suborned into vile betrayal! For your well-being, for your children's safety, stand with me as I raise my standard to march in redress on the enemy who has turned coat against you . . .'

  Galled by the rising tumult, Luhaine held his ground long enough to ascertain the fat priest's aura had burned clean. Naught else could be tried, short of cold-blooded murder. The back-lash damage was already done. The smashed cabal at Etarra, and Darkling's vanished priest, would now inflame the muster already in progress. No salvage might defang the wrathful campaign or disarm the force now hell-bound to descend on the citadel at Alestron.

  In accord with Sethvir, and in keeping with the tenets of free will posed by the Major Balance, Luhaine whirled out of Jaelot. Time demanded. He must join forces with his discorporate colleague to uphold the honour of Arithon's accomplishment and eradicate the emptied cadavers left at large by the demise of the Kralovir.

  Luhaine arrived on site at Etarra a split-second behind Kharadmon. There, the Light's armed encampment already seethed. Frantic men and shouting officers raced to douse the outbreak of fires set to cleanse the cult's corrupted offshoots. Grooms scrambled to calm panicked horses and uproot the picket lines, while scared foot-troops hauled sloshing buckets out of the cistern. Three officer's tents were already ablaze. Their crackling ferocity still sang of the arcane permission that had kindled the wild element. Another blaze smouldered in the palace precinct. Since his colleague's expedient entry had already shorn through the warded stonewall, Luhaine followed suit and nipped through the tumbled gap still showering fragments and dust over the gate keep's breached southern battlement.

  ' You've never liked stays on your freedom, I realize, but that mannerless assault will scarcely win you the next generation's endearments, ' Luhaine accosted. Cold as arctic wind, he threaded through the hysterical servants who rushed towards Raiett Raven's torched audience chamber. The tainted remains of the four men inside were already reduced beyond reach of a meddler's recovery. Though Kharadmon always moved with the speed of a jackal where risk of cult practice ran rampant, tonight's unrestrained touch broke all precedent.