TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  The contact burned, colder than arctic ice and tingling with a charged corona of power.

  Lirenda would have collapsed then, had the peeress's stout knee not braced her back from behind. What lay ahead would be worse than unpleasant. Twice in her career as First Enchantress to the Prime, Lirenda had been the one asked to bear the live focus stone while a condemned initiate was rendered witless.

  Prime Selidie knew as much. She observed her victim's stifled panic, remote in disinterest as a reptile.

  She has not read the sentence, even still, Lirenda reminded herself. The stress climbed unbearably, while the cloth ties she reflexively fought in tight jerks chafed her skin red, and terror all but overmastered her.

  Yet no reprieve came. Step by step, the process resumed as the Prime demanded the surrender of the accused's personal quartz crystal. Lirenda bit her lip to throttle her urge to whimper as the page came forward, dug under her tight collar, and caught up the stone's silver chain.

  Head turned aside, Lirenda choked back a gasp as the quartz pendant was lifted away.

  'Remove the covering from my hands,' Selidie directed the page. 'Then turn the accused's crystal over to me.'

  White lace was lifted away, releasing the cloying stench of styptic powder, unguents, and herbs. The hands, now revealed, were a grisly ruin, all cracked, charred flesh, and brittle ends of seared bone.

  Lirenda stifled a gagging shriek. Suffocating under the nightmare web of anticipated experience, she needed her last shred of will to stave off total breakdown. Second to second, she battled hysteria with the fact that she had yet to be sentenced.

  The creeping suspicion stayed all but drowned under her blasting fear: that whatever power had upset the Prime's conjury had acted on a scale unimaginable. Never before in the order's long history had Fellowship Sorcerers broken through the wards of the Great Waystone. Ath's adepts, or Paravians, none else were capable.

  Lirenda latched on to the faint breath of hope, that such a crisis meant she was needed. Perhaps after all, tonight's brutal trial was no more than a course of chastisement.

  Prime Selidie refused the humane course in any case. She did not soften or speak outright. In punishment, surely, for the past folly of Lirenda's insinuations at Whitehold, she followed the irreversible steps that would sunder the condemned from personal volition and memory. The Matriarch accepted the quartz and chain into her crippled hands, despite a pain which snatched her breath ragged. She hissed through her teeth and unbent crabbed fingers, then traced the Prime's sigil of command over Lirenda's crystal.

  The accused felt the force of that binding lock over her. Vised in its hold, body and mind, Lirenda became powerless to move. While thought and feeling raged on untouched, shackled within helpless flesh, she felt the first, sawing tingle of the Skyron stone thrumming its invasive vibration through her skull. All her barriers were stripped. The fire of impelled presence poured in liquid torment along the trapped channels of her nerves. Nausea followed, ripped by spinning dizziness. Unable to seize even the animal relief of letting her stomach wring itself empty, Lirenda heard every word as Selidie pronounced the formal lines of her sentence.

  'For the crime of disobedience, for causing willful harm without direct orders from a Koriani senior, the accused will wear the brand for the rest of her natural life.' The Prime Matriarch leaned forward. The raised crystal, its dangling chain gently swinging, was touched to Lirenda's brow.

  Dread flowered from the contact, a desperate, suffocating panic that snapped reason like so much spun thread.

  Cut off from survival's most primal instinct to flinch, Lirenda longed for her wheeling senses to shut down. Relief lay beyond reach. She could not faint. The Skyron aquamarine charged with the Prime's master sigils denied her any small respite. The sickening stench of Selidie's roasted flesh enveloped her like a cloud. By force, she endured the corpse-touch of bare bone, a prick alongside the chill point of the quartz crystal bearing' on her sweating skin. She smelled the Prime's breath, sour with herb tinctures, as the incantation was spoken.

  Then the blinding, hideous pain, as the powers of prime command were unleashed through the crystal, searing the indelible mark of shame on her forehead. Then the figure was completed, the branding accomplished. The quartz point rested still upon Lirenda's brow, driving a rod of coruscating agony into the depths of her cranium. She heard more words, felt the faint snap of connection as the smaller stone became joined into resonance with the overbearing currents raised through the Skyron focus.

  Merciful Ath, the worst was to happen. She would be made witless and finish her days as a drooling husk. Lirenda breathed in snatched whimpers, lost now, about to be broken beyond hope. Through abject terror came wretched relief, that within a few moments, the numbness would come. She would not feel, would not think. Though the body would survive, her humiliation would be ended, all personal awareness erased into peace for the rest of her life.

  'Inform the accused,' said Prime Selidie above her, inexorable as Daelion Fatemaster, whose dispassionate decree dispatched all doomed men to Sithaer. 'She will not be made witless. As eighth-rank, in these times, her high knowledge and training are assets that cannot be spared. Therefore, since her integrity is not to be trusted, her free will shall become bound over to me.'

  A ghastly spear of ice thrust through skin and bone, raw power cast out of the Skyron crystal as sigils were formed and the stone responded in tuned resonance. Lirenda felt all her bones turn to water. Yet she was not permitted to fall. Racked upright by the hold of spelled forces, she could neither move nor blink. Above her, the voice of her Prime tolled on.

  'No spell will the accused cast that does not move through my auspice. She will not speak, unless my voice questions her, or unless my instructions allow. If she ever departs from my presence without leave, her life ceases, her breathing and heart to be stopped. Since her post is to be at my side, day and night, she will act as my personal servant. So must it be.'

  The rune of ending slammed down with annihilating force, a closure like the knell of doom struck through Lirenda's caged being. She found herself crying. The tears streamed down her numbed cheeks, splashing over her silk clothes and the violet sheen of the coverlet.

  After what seemed an eon, the Skyron aquamarine was drawn away by the peeress's unsteady hands. The power of its binding did not ebb with its touch. Selidie's wrought geas stayed fixed through live flesh, deeply set as the thrust of a sword blade.

  Lirenda's fury could do naught but beat helpless wings against the slammed door of her mind. The finality crushed her, that this spelled enslavement was going to be permanent; the secret of Selidie's unconscionable transgression would stay locked into oblivion within her.

  The centuries of life bequeathed by her longevity stretched ahead, framing a bleak and desperate future. Lirenda cursed the air in her lungs, then reviled her reflex to keep breathing. Through that moment, and the next, and the next after that, against the grinding purgatory of stolen years yet to come, the fall of Dharkaron's Black Spear would have been a welcomed kindness.

  Instead, shaken hands caught her elbows, lifted, and resettled her puppet's frame on a stool. Someone's cool industry untied her wrists. Still, the sobs shook her, deep wrenching gasps all the more terrible for the fact that Selidie's punishment throttled them vocally silent.

  Through her desecrated misery, Lirenda was scarcely aware of the bustle as two healers with the gray bands of charitable service returned to minister at the Prime's bedside. Stepping past and around her, they attended the Matriarch's cracked, ghastly hands. Their scolding distress over the folly of movement fell muted, lost into the shadows and scintillant light cast by the bright-burning candles.

  Then one of the healers bent over Lirenda. Her competent touch clasped one wrist and measured the imprisoned, fast race of her pulse. 'She ought be given a sedative to settle the strain.'

  The Prime granted permission.

  A nearby clinking of glass, then the chill rim of a cu
p pressed against the condemned's numbed lips. Unable to wince as the bitter soporific ran over her tongue, helpless to raise the natural objection that should have risen her gorge, Lirenda swallowed.

  Spiraling darkness arose, dense as felt. As she sank toward an oblivion that promised no respite, she heard Selidie's formal address to the peeress, dismissing her from the role of Ceremonial Inquisitor. Then the page boys were given rapid instructions to see Lirenda's clothing packed into trunks for an immediate sea journey to Forthmark.

  The choice made sense, Lirenda understood, sluggish thought fueled by the last, drowning flare of her embittered rage. The irony cut cruelly. Too late to fight, she understood why the dread sentence had not allowed mercy, or sealed her escape into the abandoned peace of the witless.

  Prime Matriarch Selidie had spoiled her hands. She therefore needed a highly trained proxy to enact the steps of her advanced conjuries. How bitter the rage for the price of her mishap, that all the power and young vigor of her body had been hobbled in one crippling setback. She had acted to ensure an uncertain future, in the face of disastrous setback.

  The comprehensive damage to her burns could not be assessed or remedied without exhaustive and expert help. The healers in Shand were the finest in the Koriani Order, and the only ones versed in the balanced use of opposing forces. Both the sigils of death and forced regeneration would be needed to restore any semblance of function to the Matriarch's ravaged fingers, if indeed, the feat could be accomplished at all.

  Burning with smoldering, savage fury as she sank into the numbness of drugged sleep, Lirenda cursed the name of Rathain's importunate prince. Had she never met Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn, she would not be unstrung, or enthralled as the puppet for the cause of Selidie's balked plot against the Fellowship Sorcerers.

  Late Winter 5670

  Elsewhere

  Beneath the spired stacks of Rockfell Peak's cornices, as two specks against its laddered ice and the sweep of pristine snow-fields, Dakar and an argumentative Fionn Areth make their last camp before starting their arduous ascent to the ledge where Luhaine awaits, preoccupied with sustaining the damaged wards guarding the Mistwraith's captivity . . .

  In Ath's hostel near Northerly, under the assiduous touch of the adepts, unguent-soaked bandages are unwound with care to reveal muscle and bone undergoing the start of a healing regeneration; and the lady adept weeps for joy, her face raised to her fellow attendants, 'Ath bless, his young Grace has made himself whole in spirit. As he chooses, the body may follow . . .'

  At Avenor, immersed in his sundown devotions to the Light, Cerebeld sees Lysaer s'Ilessid reunite with the Etarran troops in Daon Ramon; yet the peace of finding his Blessed Prince safe sits uneasily on glittering shoulders, as, robes swirling, the High Priest paces the carpet, his thoughts continuously agitated by Princess Ellaine's confounding disappearance . . .

  Late Winter 5670

  XI. Nightfall

  The heavy soporific Sulfin Evend had given released Jieret from black sleep by midmorning. He did not rouse at once. Scarcely conscious, he realized at length he was strapped to the back of a horse. The creature was moving. That fact seemed detached, a detail of little importance. He suffered the burn of cold winds and the deep ache of injuries at strange remove, as though the dense weight of his flesh-bound being belonged to another existence. The more vital part of himself that was spirit drifted still, unfettered and free.

  Enveloped by peace that reached past mortality, contained in that self-sustained state of winged lightness, Jieret dreamed. Merged with the air, his awareness unreeled over the land, guided in flight by a raven.

  The bird did not speak. In this hour, she did not offer symbols, or gesture at inked, parchment maps. On outstretched, coal wings, she skimmed on the wind's breath, over the snow-clad hills of Daon Ramon. Rock and ice, the scenery glittered like damascened silver under the varnishing glaze of thin sun. The rough brush lay bejeweled, with the deer and the hawk, the winter owl and the hare, set as moving masterworks amid the vast breadth of the Creator's interlocked tapestry.

  At odd moments, the brown pelts of the stags seemed recast in spun light, as if the ghost presence of bygone Paravians aroused lo the touch of hoofed herds on the game trails. Other times the winds recalled the lost resonance of a centaur guardian's horn call, whose belling harmonics had once sounded a paean of joy to awaken the slumbering stone in the outcrops. Past and present merged, a living dynamic that flowed in balance with the dance of four elements, wearing the changing face of four seasons.

  The raven was not bound to the ribbon of time. She had flown these skies in the Age of Dragons, and also knew the dark blank of the void in the era before the earliest formation of matter. Spirit bound to the enchanted bird's course, Jieret followed her lead ever deeper into the layered realms of mage-sight.

  The limitless well of the creature's jet eye held the language of wisdom, the silent unknown that encompassed all things. Raven flew beyond fear of death. She knew each crossing and gateway; she possessed the key to all portals. Peerless navigator, the stuff of the bird's very self was wrought of primordial darkness. The black rainbow shine as the sun struck her feathers knit the shroud of Ath's mysteries: all shape and form pooled as latent energy, the infinite source of the unbirthed potential that could, and had, formed whole, complex worlds at the mere flick of a thought.

  The raven flew, her wings bridging the veil, and Jieret followed. Sustained by the gift of his talent, he traced every twist and turn of her course. Through raven's ears, he heard the speech of the air as the unbridled breath of dawn that gifted the listening mind with inspiration. He experienced the illumination of sun, moon, and stars, and felt the raw fire of passion that could wither or seed resurrection. The water in the streambeds channeled the flow of his feelings, and the love at the heart of him, raised and nurtured to cherish the land. In stone, he was shown the enduring commitment that shaped the firm dictates of will.

  Through the raven's sight, Jieret beheld marvels: the lattice of energies sustaining all being and the strung flare of the lanes that balanced the currents of change. Passion, inspiration, love, and commitment, he tracked the spun forces within his core being. He forgot the slack body Sulfin Evend dragged north, lashed to the back of a horse. Form lost its priority. Thought and breath, desire and emotion, his clay presence was founded in transience. Granted the gift of raven's perception, Jieret threaded the labyrinthine path across the next threshold. Ancient knowledge opened through that gateway of initiation. Like the soundless spin of a black feather, fallen, the first key to grand conjury settled into his outstretched grasp.

  Change bore him into a soaring lift of expansion. Rathain's caithdein beheld the truth in the land embodied within himself, and himself, mirrored back in the body of the land; one cloth, and one thread, wrapped and woven upon the warp-and-weft loom of the elements.

  Raven's knowledge recast all form as flux, vibration and energy cast into illusion as varying states of solidity. Set against the grand backdrop of the mysteries, the momentary present ran fluid. A mountain stood unveiled as a monument of promise; and a river, the expressed voice of emotion. Drawn into connection by the bird's peerless patience, Jieret wept, touched by the purity of the joy that sourced the vast dance of creation. Suspended upon the primal chord of Ath's mystery, failure lost its cruel sting. Death was rerendered as meaningless.

  Peace returned. For an hour, Jieret slept, dreamless, wrapped in primordial darkness. The swish of the raven's wing strokes soothed his throbbing hurts, and the beat of its heart timed his breathing.

  He roused when hands shifted him off the spent horse. Sudden shock and raw hurt cut through like a blade and sheared off his access to mage-sight. Plunged back under the suffocating shadow of blindness, he first cried aloud out of loss, then with heartsore longing to kick free of the pain-ridden flesh that racked his senses and threatened to break him.

  No succor answered, only the vicious teeth of the troubles that bound him unwilling to
life. By then, tenacious, his training took over. Forest-bred clansman, he would not give way to captivity with no show of fight. His mind could be dredged from the shoals of despair. Beleaguered awareness could be compelled to sift through the broken mosaic of impressions. By blistering discipline, against trying lethargy, Rathain's chieftain recovered his bearings.

  Voices exclaimed over him, none of them friendly. Jieret sorted their tones of contempt, and their clipped Etarran accents. One man's baiting comment concerning triced enemies raised gales of unpleasant laughter, then a companion's rejoinder cut short by an officer's reprimand. Boots sucked and splashed through puddled mud. Rough cloth sighed over metal. As the circle of detractors made way for another arrival, the wool-musty smell of their campaign-soured bodies admitted a shearing feather of wind.

  The breeze off the hills was not scoured and clean, but came burdened by the sweat taint of horses, oiled metal, and smoky cookfires boiling links of hard sausage.

  Set on unsure feet in the mushy snow, Jieret had no strength to reject the enemy arms that supported his upright posture.

  'No nonsense!' cracked Sulfin Evend, nearby. 'We keep him alive. That means tender handling and a healer.' His impatient spate of orders faded and resurged, as some busy horseboy gathered slack reins and led off his lathered mount. 'The barbarian will be housed under guard alongside the Blessed Prince. Yes, inside the captain's campaign tent! Now move! You sluggards can't see he's in desperate straits? I want the man flat on his back, now, and cosseted like a sick sister!'

  Before Jieret could be hefted and slung across the most burly guard's shoulder, a small fellow reeking of unguents and dried blood shoved declaiming into the press. 'Dolts! Fetch a litter! There's been an arrow removed from that shoulder, I'm told. Hoist him like that, you'll rip the wound open. Sure as the Avenger's Black Spear, that would kill him, low as he is with shock and excessive blood loss.'