TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  Kevor pressed his horse faster, at one with the beast as it swerved right and left, carving a track through the trees. Fir boughs and mane slapped his red cheeks, and the air filled his lungs to intoxication. The sky overhead shone a limitless blue, beckoning mind and spirit with the promise of dreams that could break every earthbound constraint.

  In piquant rebellion, the prince wished the stolen moment might last until his horse was blown to exhaustion.

  Responsible recognition hard followed, that his mount deserved better respect. Worse than that, if he indulged his whim, somebody else's reliable reputation must bear the inflexible consequence. Soon enough, one of his honor guard must spur his mount to overtake, understanding a boy's natural yearning for space, and apologetic for the duty his oath had lifesworn him to follow.

  This time, it was Ranne's horse that thundered alongside. The guard's good-natured face was politely averted, the blunt set to his shoulders a statement clearer than speech: he had lagged behind for as long as he could stretch the reasonable limits of protocol.

  Kevor reined in, too acutely aware the man would suffer the captain's displeasure if he continued to vent his explosion of youthful frustration. While the big gelding under him blew snorts of white steam and curvetted in headshaking protest, Kevor tipped back his chin and let the icy air blast down his collar. The heat in him still burned, regardless.

  Ahead and behind on the quaint forest track, the field company rode armed in their polished city steel, bravely turned out in matched surcoats. They advanced uncomplaining, their banners and bearing immaculate, despite an assignment that would carry them into unimaginable peril. Sword and lance were no match for packs of creatures who breathed fire, and flew on sail wings over sixty spans wide. Their pledge to serve the Light in north Tysan must inevitably lead some of their number to an untimely, horrible death.

  Kevor found, after all, he could not tame his feelings, or endure in straitlaced, princely decorum. Who were the almighty Fellowship Sorcerers, that they should allow these staunch men to ride into the breach, and stand down the threat of Khadrim? Where were such paragons of the mysteries now? If their vaunted forces of spellcraft could avert the promise of disaster, why had they withheld their strong arm?

  'Merciful Light!' the prince ground through locked teeth. His personal aversion for Cerebeld aside, he would still have to wonder. The lives in this company felt too well set up, the unnamed list of men soon to suffer and die too smoothly groomed as political martyrs. Their loss could only lend more blazing fuel to the Alliance's strident stand against sorcery. With the Prince Exalted away to fight Shadow in the east, Cerebeld and his acolytes needed no better excuse to fan the embers of war and heap more blame and condemnation on the Fellowship. The Sorcerers made ready targets, with their secretive, unbreachable powers, and their iron adherence to an outmoded law that bound growth and trade to the strangling terms of the compact.

  Ranne's surprised gasp could be heard, even through thudding hooves and the noisy jangle of gear. Kevor jerked his head sidewards, flushed with embarrassment. He had never meant to blurt his viewpoint aloud. Nothing else would serve, now, but to air his thoughtless lapse into heresy. If true justice was answered, should he not be the one to pose the most searching questions? He was a crown prince with an inquiring mind. If he was ever to become the sharp statesman his father was, he must be expected to test the dangerous, harsh edges of Tysan's existing crown policy.

  'Well, do you think it's right that the herb witch by the wharf in Karfael was put to death?' Kevor demanded of Ranne, low voiced. 'Go on. Why not answer? Does the memory of her screams not trouble your sleep?'

  Under the resin-filled silence of the fir trees, the exchange of ideas could remain a secret between them.

  'The poor woman's gone,' Ranne said in flat refusal to further the conversation.

  'She burned to death in terrible agony, and for what? Now we have poor mothers dying in childbirth. Ones who don't have the coin to pay healers.' Once started, the young prince found he could not stem his blazing torrent of doubts. 'Merchants can buy fiend banes by swearing oath of debt to Koriathain. But what about the dairymaids who don't own the milk they toil to churn into butter? Should they go hungry because iyats knock over their settling pans? Tell me, how many northcountry farmsteaders are too lazy to haul their cheap tin all the way to Avenor to be warded by Cerebeld's vested acolytes?'

  'Your Grace, such questions are far better posed to the Divine Prince, your father.' Ranne shrugged. His familiar, hawk profile stayed uncomfortably faced straight ahead. 'I'm a swordsman, not a state minister. It's hardly my place to make free comment on Avenor's established crown policy.'

  'Those are words from the mouth of a brainless sheep, not a man with a mind and a conscience!' Kevor blazed back. 'You're hotter than that, Ranne, and so are Karfael's poor, who now have nowhere to turn for everyday succor and healing.' He paused. Too piqued not to make futile response, he stopped his restive horse short, his profile adamant marble, unwarmed by the strayed mote of sun that fired his hair to dulled copper.

  If my father was the avatar our people acclaim, then why are Cerebeld's acolytes not out in the countryside dirtying their white tunics, ministering to the misery in the hamlets?'

  He faced Ranne again. His blue eyes beseeched, all but humming tears for the point he must not for honor speak aloud: why mortal men armed with naught else but steel should be riding against winged packs of fire-breathing monsters.

  Heart torn as he shared the young prince's dilemma, the guardsman pledged to safeguard his life found no ready answers. His. powerful frame seemed diminished by that failure, and his posture less sure in the saddle. 'One thing I know, boy,' Ranne said in gruff sympathy discarding the honorifics of station, 'Best not say what you think around Fennick. He and I both gave our oaths to your father. You may hold our personal loyalty through affection, but our first allegiance is pledged to obey the Divine Prince.'

  Indeed, Kevor knew. Each day, he lived with the shaming remorse. Two men's lives could be forfeit in public dishonor, should the integrity of their oath ever come to be questioned or broken. He held his death grip on the reins, not ready for capitulation. 'Then rest assured I will seek out my father when he returns from his war in the east.'

  'Fall back, then,' Ranne pleaded. 'Before we make the field captain uneasy. He doesn't like you riding at large, not without twenty lances at the ready for your immediate protection.'

  A stickler for keeping even casual promises, Kevor spun his big gray back toward the main column of the company. His earlier burst of exuberance was gone, and his subsequent anger bottled. The winter forest had lost its allure. He scarcely heard the spritely scolding of chickadees, as he fell in line beside Fennick's charger, with Ranne's a demure stride behind. The young prince rode, still preoccupied. The memory of the disturbing old woman who had grasped at his stirrup troubled him. She had worn owl feathers braided into her white hair, that had seemed outlined in unearthly light.

  Her unsettling words lingered, along with the stone talisman now nestled among his belongings: 'For you, boy, as true a scion of Halduin's line as your s'Ilessid father is false. The wisdom of Ath lies in every small stone. This one holds a pledge wrought to keep you safe. All life is a gift. As you value yours, let this token guard you from threat.'

  * * *

  At midday, the company paused to rest the horses in the yard of a charcoal burner's steading. Fennick and Ranne were allotted the privilege of commandeering hot food for the officers. The royal squires, also, enjoyed the goodwife's hospitality. The pair of them sat at her kitchen hob, wolfing down dumplings and sausage.

  Kevor, as crown heir, would share the captain's table. But as often happened, something outside had snagged the young prince's attention. The place setting laid for him went unclaimed.

  In the yard by the cottage, the rank-and-file lancers drew lots over who should attend to the horses. The fortunate ones who escaped duty as grooms lined up and placed wage
rs on an impromptu match of prowess between the troop's most skillful archers. Soon, arrows hissed and thwacked into the boles of tree targets, through a chorus of whoops and ripe curses.

  Not far from the lines, Kevor perched on a stump amid the cleared glen, watching the charcoalman's young daughters sculpt a family of snow sprites. At the prince's suggestion, they had gathered small fir cones for eyes. Now, in giggling contention, they importuned him for his gold buttons to adorn the queen's balsam tiara.

  'I can't carry an old bucket on the back of my horse,' Kevor demurred in his most grave and amiable courtesy. 'You'll have to trade something better than that. These buttons each have a sunwheel emblem blessed by the Divine Light himself.'

  A distant shadow flicked over the sun. The posted sentry did not look up, engrossed as he was with the archers who vied for the winning point.

  In the wide, sunlit dell, the smaller girl pouted with cherry red lips, and adjusted the lopsided fungus that served as left ear for the king. 'I have naught else to offer but a holly-berry necklace.' A sly glance from brown eyes to see if the prince was fool enough to accept; the berries in question decked the white bosom of the princess sprite. Gaps of raw string showed where hungry birds had pecked and stolen the pips.

  Thirty leagues from the mountains, no man saw the need to set a watch against assault by Khadrim. The thundering crack of taut wing leather whistling over the trees caught Avenor's field troop in shamelessly rooted surprise.

  Except for Kevor, whose untrammeled view of the sky afforded him the only clear second of warning.

  'Run!' he screamed to the woodcutter's girls. Gold buttons scribed bright arcs in the sunlight, as he yanked off his cloak left-handed. His right gripped his sword, drawn on snapped reflex. Born to the mettle of his royal heritage, Kevor pelted into the open.

  Behind him, men shouted, aghast. Their alarm was eclipsed. The Khadrim shot overhead. Black as jet with metal gray highlights struck off its sinuous, scaled body, it folded wings like webbed sails and dropped into a screeling dive. The air of its passage whistled like storm. Its talons were raked scimitars, descending.

  Kevor sprinted. His vision closed down until he tracked nothing else but the narrowed red eye in the serpentine head. Drawn by unerring, predator's instinct, it fixed on the helpless smaller child, frozen in fear amidst the circle of sprites made from sticks and clumped snow.

  Single-mindedly brave, brash with heedless youth, the prince called again to the girl. His cry failed to break her stunned panic. He snapped his blue cloak. The bullion thread sunwheel caught the noon light, sheeting a burst of gold fire.

  The Khadrim's eye flickered and fixed on the movement. Spiked head on scaled neck snaked sidewards, refocused on the distraction.

  'Run!' Kevor shouted. Sword upraised, he streamed the cloak like a flag to hold the Khadrim's killing focus. On the sidelines, the patrol recovered shocked wits. An equerry bolted into the cottage to summon the captain. Horsemen raced to snatch up idle lances. The contesting archers scrambled to retrieve their shot arrows, while their colleagues frantically strung bows.

  'Fire at will!' yelled their squad sergeant, his shrill cry beaten back into his teeth by the whipping turbulence thrown off by the Khadrim's stooping strike.

  The first arrows whined aloft. Disturbed air plucked and scattered them. Crossbow bolts flew faster, and more true. Their ragged volley struck armored scales and sprang off in rattling rebound. The back-fallen shafts rained earthward, each one now a threat to the young prince, who still raced straight into the jaws of peril.

  'Kevor, take cover!' Fennick charged from the house, sword in hand. Ranne pounded hard at his heels. But their entreaties went unheard. One glance showed the moment's abject futility: intervention would reach Kevor too late.

  No mortal man, no matter how dedicated, could possibly close the requisite distance in time. Nor could Avenor's proud field troop stave off the impending tragedy.

  In that moment, also, the grisly revelation punched through. Fully and finally, Kevor acknowledged the death that descended on fang and scythed claw to take him. He was alone. Pitifully exposed in the sunlit clearing, he had no one at hand to share the dawning horror of his predicament. No coward, even now, he skidded and dodged left. He did not cry out, though heart and sinew begged for a miracle only an act of true sorcery could provide.

  The men, watching horrorstruck, never knew of his nightmare fears of the fires, recurrent since the condemned witch had burned back in Karfael.

  They did not hear his snatched prayer, that he might not scream as she had. The Khadrim's stooping descent blackened the sky. Under its shadow, he had time to brace his sword upright. He held firm, perhaps paralyzed before jaws rowed with needle. teeth, that were going to snap shut and mangle him. The futility of his stance made seasoned men weep. The jet claws and the lean, snake-thin neck must outmatch the courage of any green boy's panicked strength.

  The Khadrim closed, more swift than the wind that foreran killing squalls, its wings folded midnight against the living, steel bolt of its body.

  Kevor tipped up his blanched face. At the last moment, he cast his azure mantle overhead, as though, against hope, the gold star and crown blazon of his s'Ilessid forebears might offer him binding protection.

  The same instant, the Khadrim gaped its scarlet mouth and spewed an engulfing torrent of fire.

  The cloak became immolated to white flame and ash, then the boy, wrapped into blinding conflagration. The Khadrim were drake spawn, and like their creators, their fire burned hotter than any wood-fueled flame. The young prince shrieked as the pain bit bone deep. His cry made no final appeal to the Light.

  Instead, in extremis, Ellaine's son called on the gentle faith of his mother, whose love had guided his earliest childhood. 'For Ath's mercy save me!'

  The words, tortured ragged, choked off all at once.

  Then further view of the carnage was eclipsed, as the murdering drake spawn snapped out sail wings. The Khadrim braked in a flurry of sparks and fanned smoke, and touched down, its leviathan size imbued with a stunning, cat grace. Its forelimbs alighted amid the hissing steam of puddled snow, then the hind limbs, in bounding, sleek balance. Wings upraised, neck arched over the site of its kill, the creature shrilled its intent to gorge on live prey, then wreak savage havoc on the timber and lathe of the charcoalman's isolated steading.

  'Shoot! Use crossbolts!' Over the shrieking hysteria of the child, through the disorganized milling of stupefied men still scrambling to order their weapons, the field troop's captain burst from the house, exhorting his archers to rally. 'As you love life, aim for the eye!'

  Yet it was Fennick, weeping obscenities, who grabbed up a contestant's dropped longbow. Racing full tilt for the monster in the clearing, he snatched a steel broadhead from another man's hand. At forty yards, he threw himself sliding to his knees and snapped off a vengeful shot.

  Snake fast, the Khadrim whipped around. Its neck lunged to snap, or more likely, spit fire. By stunning luck, the launched shaft hissed through its gaping jaws, and punched through the mouth to the brain. The beast threshed and fell. Massive, clawed wings scraped up arcs of thrown snow. Talons raked frozen earth. Lashed by a paroxysm of death throes, the spiked tail clubbed like a flail through the trees, snapping off limbs and pelting the glen under a rain of sheared sticks. Most men watched, dumbfounded. Ranne sprinted on. Unable to spare Kevor, he ran the battering gauntlet of slapped wings and threshing limbs, no less likely to disembowel a man in the shudders as life ebbed and ended. In rage, in blind heartbreak, that his young charge had died before his eyes, Ranne finished the task Kevor's bravery had started. He dodged clashing jaws and snatched the charcoalman's wailing little girl from the tumbledown ruin of her playground.

  No man had words, as the aftermath bludgeoned them. The great hulk of the Khadrim's carcass gasped its last steaming breath and finally quivered and stilled. The shock-stricken field troop converged, too overwhelmed to react fully to the devastating impact of s
orrow. Of the young prince's body, nothing remained, though men searched. Decency demanded some small token to send to the princess in Avenor, soon to weep for a son lost to the dedicated bravery bred into his ancestral lineage.

  However they dug through the slurry of thawed earth, they found not one melted gold button nor any charred scrap of bone. Naught remained. Only a trampled circle of seared carbon where the dread holocaust of Khadrim fire had sheared down.

  The day seemed too peaceful, and the sunlight, a bland outrage, to have borne witness to the murder of the s'Ilessid royal heir, once destined for crown rule in Tysan.

  'By my life, that should have been me!' Fennick wept. Still crumpled on his knees in cold snow, oblivious to the companions who urged him to relinquish his deadlocked grip on the bow, he cast his despairing eyes skyward. 'What in the name of the Light will we say to console his lady mother?'

  Late Winter 5670

  Mourning

  Sunlight spilled like liquefied gold through the high, lancet windows at Avenor. The deep, piled carpets with their crown and star motifs spread luxuriant azure over maple parquet, waxed to the warm hue of honey. With Prince Lysaer's extended absence on campaign in Daon Ramon, no fawning advisors crowded the anteroom. The chinking spurs of impatient royal couriers did not echo off the vaulted ceilings, and hopeful petitioners did not line the benches with straight backs, against the carved backdrop of wainscoting. Winter mornings, while the frost traced gauze-lace patterns on the panes, the splendor of the royal chambers became the domain of the princess's women. They perched on the hassocks and window seats, or convened in the claw-footed state chairs, bright as plumed birds in saffron silk as they chattered over their needlework.

  Lady Ellaine sat with them, set apart by her beaded aquamarine bodice, and her cincture trimmed in white lynx. Her hair had been expertly dressed. The premature gray fanned from her temples had been gently softened with cinnabar pins of carved amber. Withdrawn as she seemed from light conversation, she kept her hands busy. More than the strict deportment of her station fretted her upright posture, a manner the unobservant stranger might mistake for spiritless meekness. The short, fierce stitches laid in with her needle bespoke no such retiring tranquillity as she sewed seed pearls on a linen cap for her infant cousin in Erdane.