by Janny Wurts
Kevor shivered, overwhelmed all at once. The uncanny place, with its deep-running current of mystery, was too strange to quell his uncertainty. Cast out of his depth, he fell back on his breathtaking gift of raw courage. 'Say how I should start.' His voice shook, as again, the thought of his mother left alone in Avenor raked over his heart like cold fingers.
The adept clasped his hand. Her touch felt warm, too real for a dream figment, and yet, her sincerity could not be faulted as she led him toward the lip of the spring. Her voice was clear as poured honey, over the bubbling uprush of water through stone. 'First you must honestly answer what caused you to set your life into jeopardy.'
'But that's simple.' Kevor let himself be drawn into the pool. Cool water burbled up through his toes, and splashed over his ankles and shins. 'The forester's daughter was going to be killed, and I was the one standing in the nearest position to act.'
Her hand released him. The subtle absence of touch became the first indication that his integrity was set on trial. 'If that were all, you would not have seen harm.'
'But—' Kevor's protest died away unspoken as the water in the pool rippled and fractured into vision: showing him alongside his two honor guards, and one of them prepared with a bow and a timely arrow. Showing him again, with the presence of mind to exhort the children to scatter, then himself, spinning to run in the opposite direction, which caused the Khadrim a fractional hesitation, as it was forced to discern, and choose between three possible targets. Showing him again, hurling his cloak as diversion, then rolling to hide underneath the snow-covered log he had sat on.
'Something undermined your commitment to life,' the adept pointed out. Her velvet admonition came tempered in honesty that probed his intent like honed steel. 'You acted to spare someone's child, that is true. But your own purpose faltered. You allowed your own death in the outcome.'
Kevor swallowed. His chest felt stone heavy, and his mind flinched from direct encounter with the weighty revelation that gnawed at the edges of consciousness.
The adept read his reluctance. Her compassion was immediate. 'You are given free will. No one but you can name the moment when you pass across Fate's Wheel. The complexity lies in the way you lose your true self in the maze of your own awareness. Healing is an energy that arises from within. If your choices, your feelings, and your fears lie in conflict, the channel of your will becomes clouded. To cross back, to return to the other side of this divide and reclaim your right to wholeness, you must first understand the choices that set your life into jeopardy.'
Kevor lifted his head, faced her square on, though the roil of raw nerves made him dizzy, and his spirit shrank from the impact of the cruel facts that arose out of darkness to meet him. Once he had skirted that edge of harsh truth to Ranne in the winter wood. The questions still held locked in his heart must find voice, though the cost would be written on a shrouded future, wrought of unformed event on a landscape of shapeless menace.
'I was afraid,' he confessed. 'I knew if I broached the uncomfortable question, I might uncover more lies. The answers I found might run deeper than a corrupt influence in Avenor's high council.'
Kevor faltered. The adept waited, patient, as he assimilated his sorrow and defined the fell demon that rode him. 'If I examined each issue, and followed the logic of mercy, I realized I might expose my father's call to the Light as a fraud. Worse still, I saw the possibility of a more callous cruelty: that the men who rode with me were being sent to their deaths for the purpose of a political manipulation.'
Once spoken, the ripple of dread rolled over and through him. Chills puckered his skin. He was naked, stripped beyond privacy, inside and out. The shame burned Kevor red, first for the taint on his s'Ilessid name, then oddly, for the fact the ugly truth freed him. He could act. Now, he could face the worst, and not let the core of his own hidden dread stalk him out of the shadows.
His young will took fresh fire, rekindled by the knowledge that if Tysan's high council had a rotten core, his born gift of justice must prompt his return. He would confront his father and rout out the canker. No son worthy of his royal lineage could leave Lady Ellaine alone to face the possible threat of Avenor's internal corruption.
His resolve must have shown in his face and changed bearing.
'You should be warned,' the adept added in tender precaution. 'In this place, you walk very near to the seat of your true power. You will choose to live, but the fires you call down to transfigure your maimed body cannot do other than remold the foundation of your being. Your flesh will be made anew in the passion of, your will. But the man who steps forth shall be changed.'
Kevor replied with the bright-edged impatience of youth. 'Then I must take that chance.'
'No chance, but a certainty.' The adept regarded him and saw no weakening of his resolve. 'Immerse in the pool. Make your choice with your heart and the whole of your mind. Then allow what occurs. You will awaken and arise if you can accept the gift of your own grace, healed or still scarred by the tenets of your conviction. If you cross the Wheel, one will assist. If you regain awareness, I will be there, standing vigil at your bedside to offer you comfort.'
Kevor gave her his smile, which had won him the loyalty of men, and the love of Avenor's populace. His resolve showed the steel-clad fiber of his heritage. A shining commitment to justice that, in another set of circumstances, with no premature blight cast on the path of his destiny, would have earned him the Fellowship's sanction for high kingship.
Tysan's true prince bowed amid the safe haven of the grove. 'Lady, my gratitude will last for as long as I live to draw breath.'
His grace in that moment as noble as his ancestry, he bent to his knees, drew breath in an eagerness mixed with trepidation, and plunged into the mystical flow of the water.
For a moment, nothing happened. The spring lapped around him in a swirling caress, cool and impersonal in its peace. Then all at once his awareness of form seemed to melt. Current that was power itself brushed his skin, then touched through him in tacit contact. Kevor shivered, quelled his spasm of hesitation, and opened his spirit in welcome.
The trickle swelled into a thundering spate that roared through him. He was blinded, deaf, made the focus of a cataract that ripped open the fabric of his being and hurled all that he was into light.
He knew of no time, no space, no beginning, and no end. No solidity anchored him. Kevor shouted with no voice as he found himself cast headlong into the sea of possibility, whose mystical fires kindled the crucible of change. Adrift on the flux of prime power, he lit and blazed, at one with the chord that sustained Ath's undying creation.
At the last instant, before his awareness dissolved into that dance of eternal celebration, he realized the adept's warning had surpassed all imagining. On the day he chose to separate from the flux and return to earthly awareness, he would no longer be the idealistic young prince, but something else altogether. Here, limits dissolved, and bold wishes held impact. The constraints of duty and obligation lost meaning. He could remold himself on the wings of free will, and arise annealed to become whatever he chose . . .
Late Winter 5670
Fluctuations
Recalled from the deeps between stars by Sethvir, the Sorcerer Kharadmon knots one last twist in the maze he has spun to deflect Marak's free wraiths; grim in the hope his work will delay their incursion through the unavoidable span of his absence, he arrows across distance toward the mottled blue fleck that comprises the world of Athera . . .
At Avenor, the royal guard rides out in glittering force to search the hamlets in the countryside; galleys comb the fishing coves on the coastline, and the inner cabal meets under candlelight to report all comings and goings from the city; yet frantically as High Priest Cerebeld drives the search to recover the missing princess, he fails to find any trace . . .
A fair spider in a spun web of spellcraft, Prime Matriarch Selidie confronts the sisterhouse prioress: 'You are required to stand witness,' she pronounces, her command lent
incised clarity by the phosphor array of fine sigils surrounding the enabled Great Waystone. 'Earl Jieret must be tracked. As Rathain's caithdein, he now bids to secure the Master of Shadow's escape. I hold the firm hope that adverse circumstances will draw Elaira in as accomplice . . .'
Late Winter 5670
IX. Caithdein
With the consummate care that marked the skills of a forest-bred clansman, Earl Jieret urged his winded pony into the stand of a hazel thicket. He broke no twigs. The respect his kind tendered toward all growing things gave apology to the frozen moss crushed under his silent step. His knowing instinct avoided loose rock. Since he had never asked more than the pony could give, it followed with herdbond trust.
The stillness man and beast wore like a cloak wove them as one with the landscape. Jieret's dull leathers blended into the gully that seamed the swale. As the pounding roll of inbound hoofbeats neared his exposed position, he stilled all fear. He did not withdraw, or huddle up and shrink inward. His woodwise heritage used Paravian wisdom, and expanded the fabric of his awareness outward, merging his humanity with the fabric of Daon Ramon until his poised presence wore the staid patience of stone.
Versed in the lore of his people since boyhood, Jieret used such ancient skills to make himself seem invisible. He stilled all thought, all concept of danger, as the band of Alliance trackers crested the barren ridgetop. Through the bustle and commotion as they overtook and swept past him, his mentor the hunted hare, the caithdein relied on thin camouflage: the ceaseless thrash of the wind through bare twigs broke the outline of his motionless form. Whining gusts over gorse and rock masked his horse's labored breathing. Crouched low, his face tucked deep in the hood of his mantle to shadow the tone of pale flesh, he stood his ground as two enemy riders clattered a spear's length to either side of him.
Headhunters, both, the men did not speak. Vigilant and thorough as hungry predators, they quartered the ground on patrol, thrashed through the gulch, then clambered up the lichened scree that crowned the low rise beyond.
Jieret waited, immobile after they passed. He listened for the cheeps of foraging sparrows to mark the moment he could safely emerge. The triumph bought by his minuscule victory brought no smile to his set lips. Now slipped inside the vanguard of Prince Lysaer's company, his peril would vastly increase. A chance sighting or an unlucky encounter would see him cut off with no line of retreat.
He still seized a moment for the time-honored word of respect, giving thanks to the scrub growth and cragged rock whose presence had granted him shelter. He left the requisite token of offering: a strand of hair nipped from his clan braid. Yet on this day, when necessity brooked no delay and the future course of the kingdom hung on the thread of its crown prince's safety, the traditional rituals that honored the balance triggered a barrage of expanded awareness.
A wave of indescribable sensation flowed upward out of the earth. Startled by a tingling rush that blasted away equilibrium, Jieret reeled. Embraced by the clarity of conscious being, he shared the impact of his own gratitude, as plant and soil and stone acknowledged the human need in his thanks. Each spirit responded by its true nature, as doubtless it always had. Only now, the latent talents of the mage had crossed the threshold of initiation. His retuned ear heard the voice of the land speak with a living presence.
The reedy stems of dry grasses now whispered the language of wind, their summer green memories aged into wisdom. Frozen streambeds promised the cascade of fluid emotion, and their power, the catalyst to key unformed expression to the alchemy of creation. As Jieret gasped, dizzied with shock, stone steadied him, earth's presence giving the love of a mother, guiding her child's first footstep. Jieret marveled, entranced as the cradling embrace of the hazel boughs cherished him in a communal embrace.
A man could lose himself amid the loomed threads of Ath Creator's diversified joy. No singer, Jieret felt the wild urge to open his throat in a burst of unfettered laughter. As though every nerve had been painlessly stripped, he became deluged in a lucent gold sleet, as the forces inlaid through sunlight and air whirled him into their dancing spiral of regeneration.
Overset by the lure of a dangerous fascination, Jieret fought back the sweet waves of abandon. He drew a succession of steadying breaths, aware he must recover his concentration. The wonders he witnessed already blurred his prudent discernment. Under mage-sighted influence, he would regard an enemy's bared steel as a friend, seeing no more than a sorrowful ignorance in the hand that acted with hatred and malice. Temptation tore him. He could so easily marry his thoughts to the wind, casting aside the bothersome needs of survival.
Jieret shivered, jostled as his pony butted him in impatience. Perhaps the creature understood by herd instinct that its rider grazed too near the razor's edge of stark peril. A man cloaked in mage-sight perceived how a wrong word or thought could be crippling. At one with the mysteries that nurtured his very being, he faced the interlocked recognition that the mere influence of his will could unbind. Jieret realized he must disengage from his state of heightened awareness, yet the shift must be done with delicate care. His state of connection lent every choice the brute force of a sharpened impact. If he shut down the cataract of sensation through fear, his mind would accept his perception of threat, and reseal the open door after him.
He risked being blinded. Without access to mage-sight, he could never complete the worked plan that enabled Prince Arithon's escape.
'Merciful maker,' Jieret whispered. He floundered far out of his depth. Arithon had opened the keys to the mysteries, with no time given to enact proper safeguards or begin the basic sound teaching to use them.
Jieret squeezed his eyes shut. No improvement; masked sight only wakened his inward, seer's vision sprung from his talent for prescience.
Caught in unalloyed solitude, Deshir's clan chieftain crumpled to his knees as his outer perception dissolved into silvery dreamscape. Like trained adepts who could forecast at will, his refined gift reattuned to match the cascade of the lane currents. Ancient powers became manifest. Jieret beheld the vibrant, living matrix of the earth, which combed through the land in bright channels, with himself as a being of shadow and flame embedded within the flux.
His confused thoughts cast shimmering, concentric ripples. The rings fled away and collided, entangled with other sets roiling from elsewhere, their vast confluence a sea of quivering, mercuric energy. Man and beast with their stirred-up moil of emotions impressed that smoothed flow into moving spikes of interconnected response.
Jieret experienced each singular disturbance as a feather brush down his scraped skin. Split away from the familiar, solid world he had known, he felt the tug of a burgeoning undertow as senses he never knew he possessed transmitted the warning of pending danger. Unease ripped his gut as the converging flows revealed Lysaer's Alliance allies as they closed their advance to take Arithon.
Fear refined that raw vision. Jieret perceived the blood shadows of dark magics that sent the seer priests the simultaneous command to re-form their massed ranks for battle. Suspended in earth's energy like an insect on a pool, he traced the sinister change in the lane currents as armed companies paused and mustered into coordinated patterns of assault.
Ripples became arrowed waves of raw force: this marring flow from the south the ragtag guard troop from Jaelot, haltered in the tangle of the Koriani sigils that drove them under geas to attack. Farther east, another influx lit by rage and sharp vengeance, the survivors from Darkling's garrison advanced, hazed on by the comet-blaze of conviction raised by a fanatical priest.
Sharp knots in their path, the determined bands of clan scouts, standing ground to obstruct where they could. The lane's flux revealed their inadequate numbers; without mercy exposed the futility of their fierce dedication and bravery.
Desperate with grief, Earl Jieret buried his face in his hands. Though the horsy taint of his deerhide gloves touched his senses with near-painful clarity, his Sight did not change. His awareness found no firm foothold. Terr
or washed through him, snagging static through the flux, as again, he fought to reorient. Entrapped in deep vision, he was left vulnerable as a babe to the enemy. Though he worked himself dizzy, he found no relief. Inner sight only shifted his vantage.
Northward, he sensed the elite sunwheel companies dispatched out of Etarra. The trained ardor of the Light's foremost field troop had knit the lane's flow into an axe blade of unified purpose. Its passage razed onward, distorting all patterns found in its path. A wall of sharp minds, brought to welded purpose, eclipsed the webbed traceries of rocks and plants under a stain of penumbral shadow.
Before them, like hapless prey set to flight before the assault of beaters and hounds, the fired spark of purpose that was Braggen and three horses, bearing the spelled sword, Alithiel. His plight, appeared hopeless, snagged as he was between Lysaer's advanct and the inexorable crush of the Alliance's closing forces.
Jieret battled despair, that his night of high risk and desperate planning now seemed an act of futility. The rage all but seared him, that his liege's painstaking strategy might send valiant men to their deaths, all for naught.
Too late, he recalled his connection to the mysteries, as the bursting dam of his anger incised the live flux of the lane force. Instant impact slammed him to jangling discord. The crosscurrents tumbled him. Plummeted downward, as though his awareness plunged from great height, he drowned, immersed in a vast ocean of feeling.
As stone, as plant, as the body of Athera herself, he ached from the vibration of townborn feet. As the interlocked weave of sand grains and soil, he flinched to the pained grunt of spurred horses. Empathy savaged him, as thorn branch and mosses shrank from shared awareness of plant cousins callously trampled. Sucked under by the whorled tumult of distressed energies, Jieret suffered direct pain, a burning recoil lashed through mind and spirit where the companies of sunwheel men-at-arms forced their self-righteous passage. Bursting panic could not break the sequence of altered perception. His senses wheeled free. Reft from his humanity, he experienced with utmost, faithful clarity, as the wind-raked, barren hills of Daon Ramon responded in kind to the drama of hunter and prey.
