TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  'I'm not going up to that portal again,' Fionn Areth declared, his hot spurt of fear forced through as belligerence. 'Whatever's inside makes my teeth hurt.'

  'Mine, too,' Kharadmon admitted with sudden, limp weariness.

  As Luhaine whirled off in a flurry of agitation, the Sorcerer gave up trying to fasten bone buttons with wrapped hands. In response to an unspoken jibe from his colleague, he dredged up the Mad Prophet's most plaintive shrug, and confessed, 'Yes, a new leak has sprung in the ward seals. I was holding it stable, before Dakar's bladder laid siege to my efforts. You think it's grown worse? Then you'll just have to hold the breach stable while Fionn Areth mixes the posset for pain. Soon after that, if the sky doesn't fall, I ought to be fit to resume work.'

  Strung to a note of horror and dismay, Luhaine shrieked from beyond the black portal, 'Merciful Ath! That's no minor breach! We're both going to be tied here until Dakar's strength is restored and each layer of the wards is rebuilt.'

  As somber, Kharadmon bowed his unkempt head. Unreconciled to the body where he maintained a residence of uncomfortable necessity, he gave his last word in unspoken thought, wrung to grief and impotent helplessness. 'We are shackled, my friend. Chained here by fate and the murdering works of the meddlers we once sent to exile through Southgate.'

  Luhaine's aroused presence spun down. Poised above the swept ledge, to mage-sight a roiled play of interlaced light against Rockfell's gaping portal, he said, 'Now I am worried. You realize, neither one of us can break free to honor Sethvir's request? We can't send help. Prince Arithon could die in the throes of the fever he's bound to suffer in backlash.'

  Kharadmon had no comfort to offer. No condolence crafted in any world's language held the balm to ease that harsh truth.

  Luhaine, lead stubborn, ground on to belabor the frighteningly obvious corollary. 'But that leaves—'

  'Don't speak that name!' Kharadmon cut him off. As apprehensive himself, for once stripped of his prankish invective, he shivered against the staunch young man who propped his swaying bulk upright. 'We're too accursedly shorthanded to weep, far less do a thing in prevention.'

  'What's happened?' Fionn Areth demanded. A passing veil of cirrus raked the disk of the sun. Downslope, a transparent cloak of shade swept across the lockstepped mosaic of snowfield and rock. Blurred edges fell out of etched clarity. Suddenly cold, the i Araethurian tightened his grip on the shoulder beneath Dakar's mantle. His plaintive tone added resonance to an already cruel despair. 'Something else has gone wretchedly wrong, hasn't it?'

  'The whole world's upside down,' Kharadmon snapped. Drained wan, and bitterly disgusted, he left his trouser flap gaping and assayed a wobbling step forward. 'If you'll help this Prophet's ox frame off sore feet, and fix that confounded remedy, we can at least make a start setting one addled patch of Ath's wide creation back to rights.'

  Early Spring 5670

  Divide

  The depths of Arithon's fever-soaked dreams spiraled his mind through featureless darkness. He rode that black tide, wrung by savage desperation, and pursued by relentless, sharp terror. The Mistwraith's curse tore at him in force. Lose himself, let his frail self-possession fray away in delirium, and the legions of enemies stalking his mind through the quagmires of nightmare would have him.

  Not formless dream, but relentless reality, the screaming clamor of instinct: Lysaer s'Ilessid invaded the Mathorns, with a troop of armed men, trained for the sole purpose of killing him.

  Through the raced beat of blood through his veins, amid the stressed pain of a body unstrung by the recoiling cramps of raw backlash, Arithon wrestled that branding awareness. He resisted the pull of incessant need, strove to turn a deaf ear to the siren whispers that urged him to cease fighting the inevitable. The fickle voice never quieted, but spun him the honeyed promise of peace. He need only give in; embrace the beguiling ease of surrender, turn back, and engage the merciless directive to destroy the cursed seed of his hatred.

  Lysaer s'Ilessid was marching.

  The spiteful drive of Desh-thiere's cursed enmity battered at the locked gates of identity. Twisted passions flared up and eroded a boundary now fatally undermined by his unshielded handling of wild earth flux. Left miserably sick, Arithon curled into himself, the cool comforts of reason fallen behind. Ahead, the rough waters of uncharted peril pummeled him into the dark.

  His set will was reduced to a spluttering flame, overwhelmingly besieged. As the hours passed, the conscious choice holding stark madness in check became worn, a thread strung across the howling abyss that would seal his annihilation.

  Just once, through a feat of dogged exertion, he clawed back to wakeful awareness. He lay wrapped in blankets, still dressed, but not armed. Night sky overhead showed clear stars. A wolf pack howled in the distance. He must have cried out, or groaned as he surfaced, for the clan scout wearing the wolverine hat knelt over him, his unsmiling face stiffly anxious.

  'Liege?' A cup touched his lips, cold with the mineral tang of water scooped from a puddle of snowmelt.

  Eyes shut, suffering gut-wrenching cramps and muscles sucked hollow with lassitude, Arithon wet his mouth. He swallowed, then forced the reserves to frame speech. 'Get me up. Lash me onto my horse.'

  The scout withdrew the cup in stark shock. 'But my liege! You're—'

  'For mercy, just listen! Whatever the cost, for my life's sake, keep moving!' Arithon subsided against the rough blanket that pillowed his sweat-runneled cheek. 'Strap my sword on me. We have to press northward.' Against the dragging pull of spent strength, and the clamor of curse-stressed awareness, he stayed adamant. 'Or else give the enemy his prize while I fail you. Hold me here, and we die for your pity. The insane designs of Desh-thiere's geas cannot do other than triumph.'

  He resurfaced again, jolted briefly aware as competent hands heaved him back into the saddle. Every jarring move pained him. The backlash he suffered bit with fell vengeance, cramps in his belly like twisting, hot knives, and his limbs rendered weak by a nerve storm of palsy that could do nothing except grow worse. Breathing hurt. His lungs and chest felt strapped in hot lead, and his ribs, laced in knots by the fever. When someone's voice pleaded to lift him down, he rejected the sympathy, cursing.

  Much later, the crust on his swollen lids cracked. The dazzle of snow glare struck through his eyes and rammed heated rods through his brain. Through the melodious rush of the breaking spring melt, he measured the passage of tormented seconds by the clangor of shod hooves on rock. Wheeling vertigo suggested ascent up a slope of snagged boulders. Arithon assembled painstaking awareness. His flesh felt wrung to a flaccid rag. An ice compress, packed in cloth, had been tied against the burning, tight skin of his forehead. Marred hearing netted him snatches of birdsong, the high notes fallen distorted through the ringing dissonance of his fever.

  He struggled, not knowing how long he had drifted, or how far the horse's gait carried him. Not far enough to find quiet or win surcease: the eddying pull of the Mistwraith's curse twisted each thought like hot wire. Moment by raw moment, its hold gnawed away the integrity of his barriers.

  The effort required to sustain staunch denial slid him back down into darkness. He refused to let go, even then. The abraded shreds of his will could be bound to the ordered meter of cantrips. He chose the first lines of the prayer of prime law, phrased in the lyric Paravian, and used by Ath's adepts for self-discipline and release. 'I speak peace, I breathe peace, I live peace, for all of my days, birth to death.'

  Over and over, against Desh-thiere's assault of ravening hatred, Arithon affirmed his desperate plea for deliverance and protection . . .

  * * *

  By nightfall, his chanting had come unraveled to ripping, coarse gasps and slurred phrases. The clan scout who walked at the horse's head paused, his fingers clenched hard on the bridle.

  'No, he's not raving,' he answered his fellow. The gray horse stamped in the shadow of the firs, while day faded over the bleak scarps of the ridges, and the afterglow of sunset sta
ined high-flying cirrus to bloodred wisps overhead. The clansman listened through the next tortured line. 'His phrasing's still lucid, just barely.' He stripped off his glove, laid the back of his hand against the prince's slack face, then recoiled, stunned breathless. 'Merciful Ath! There are limits.'

  The younger clansman wheeled his horse and rode back, readied weapons and flamboyant earring masked in the fast falling gloom. 'Bad news?' While the rising wind fluttered the horses' tucked tails, he snugged down his mantle, and winced at the sting of the sore newly chafed on his knee. 'Do you think we're going to lose him?'

  'I don't know.' Hewall jammed down his piebald fur hat, his shrug a cranked gesture of misery. 'He's very far gone. Skin's a dry furnace. Got muscles all tied into shivering knots. You ask me, he can't tolerate very much more. Merciful maker, the helplessness wrings me! I can't stand to watch him slip over the edge.'

  'Then I suggest that you stop,' said a crisp voice ahead of them.

  Both scouts bounded into a violent start. Spun on matched reflex, with weapons unsheathed, they wildly scanned their surroundings. Yet whoever approached, his presence stayed masked. Ahead, the swept snow lay unmarred as spread silk. No movement strained through the thin stand of firs, nestled into the stony rise of the crest.

  'Or not,' the speaker resumed, far too close.

  A knife might pose problems, except the attacker must break out of cover to throw. A man set in ambush would scarcely talk first, and this stranger's diction was not hostile, or townborn. In phrasing marked out by the antique lilt inflected by fluent Paravian, he added, 'Whatever you choose, I'm no threat to your liege.'

  'Speaks like a Sorcerer,' the younger scout whispered.

  Less prone to entangle himself sorting out riddles, Hewall snapped out a challenge. 'Who are you? Show yourself!'

  For answer, the fellow stepped into view. His light-footed presence emerged quiet as a breath, uncannily detached from the screen of the trees. He approached with no disturbed rustle of needles; no cracked ice spilled from capped branches. He was lean and well made, richly clad for the wilds, in brushed suede leggings and soft boots topped with lynx fur. If he carried a blade, he would not be drawing at speed, with the rest of him wrapped in a russet cloak pinned with a round silver brooch.

  Closer, he came, empty-handed. His forthright manner did little to placate the unsettled scouts. He moved like a stalker, his rugged stride easy. Bareheaded, with a shock of shoulder-length hair streaked to white at the temples, he had sharply creased features fitted over ascetic angles of bone. Faint moonlight traced a firm mouth, a hawk nose, but did nothing to illumine his strikingly piercing dark eyes. Stopped at arm's length, his presence screamed power as he offered in unruffled courtesy, 'If you wish, I might lend assistance.'

  Hewall expelled a rattled breath. 'You were sent by the Fellowship?'

  The man smiled, unspeaking. The understated bow he returned reassured, for its seamless elegance. He gestured toward the bundle of blankets, and paused, closely listening, as Rathain's stricken prince labored through another affirmation. 'His Grace is not in a good way. Shall we see what can be done for him?'

  'He's grown steadily worse,' the younger scout blurted, frustration outstripping his innate sense of caution. He felt the instant, bearing pressure of the stranger's regard, demanding as a lover's touch upon him. Sword lowered, he flushed to sweating embarrassment. 'Nor are we versed in the remedies to treat him. What other choice do we have?'

  'You can shield his mind from Desh-thiere's geas?' Hewall ventured, his braced stance unmoved, and his raised sword arm too stiff, as he fought to stay sensibly guarded.

  'I don't know,' said the stranger. 'For that, I would have to examine him.' He clasped his bare hands, perhaps to contain his impatience. 'I don't wish to press, but his enemies are moving. Every lost second is critical.'

  From the gray's back, a jagged tear in the meter as Arithon broke his recitation. His frame convulsed, head to foot, in a wracking, sharp cramp, while the upset horse under him sidled. Though the scout tugged the bridle and arrested the movement, its burden was unavoidably jostled. Arithon gasped in pain, but did not regain waking awareness. Still trapped in the narrows where delirium and consciousness raged in the throes of doomed struggle, he snarled a curse, then fought and regrouped savaged wits. At length, he picked up his dropped line of verse, the words jerked like stones through clenched teeth.

  'I can't help him at all if you stall for much longer,' the stranger said, tart. His mood all at once seemed volatile as hazed smoke, to disperse at the whim of the breeze.

  'If you're Fellowship sent, we've no cause to distrust you.' Hewall slammed his sword, ringing, back into his sheath and told the young scout to offer the reins of the gray.

  But the cloaked man refused him, the corners of his mouth a tucked pleat of graven amusement. 'No need to go anywhere.' His bare hands raised, palm open, he eased closer. 'His Grace overextended his mortal faculties, channeling unrefined earth flux. The worst imbalance in his aura can be cleared by informed touch. You need disturb nothing.' A nod to the young scout, 'If you will, simply steady the horse.'

  Arithon's forced recitation snapped off, leaving uneasy silence as the clansman braced his stance and firmed his grasp on the gray's reins.

  The stranger stepped past him, his assurance unthreatened. His glance of deep irony acknowledged Hewall, judiciously placed to keep guard on his opposite side. 'Believe this,' he stated, his resonant baritone uninfected enough to seem mocking, 'For the service rendered to Athera this equinox, Arithon of Rathain is due my undying respect.'

  He had neat, tapered fingers, adorned with a silver ring patterned with interlocked crescents. Its glittering citrine setting displayed no arcane powers as he laid his spread hands over Arithon's dark hair. There, his touch lingered, sensuous, as though he enjoyed a sculptor's appreciation for the nuance of texture and form. He cradled the prince's head, his fierce concentration surveying the landscape of Arithon's unshielded face.

  'Oh, my leashed wild falcon!' he exclaimed, his let breath of air too soft to overhear. Like the flare of sparked flame, his expression changed, for one fleeting instant aroused to captivated fascination.

  The odd moment passed. His features again revealed nothing beyond the wear carved by rugged, long life, and an unruffled detachment.

  Through the interval while he stood motionless, the night constellations wheeled overhead. A low-lying cloud bank edged in from the south, its drifting advance moist with thaw. No wind stirred the firs. The night-hunting wolves had finished their chorus under the high-riding arc of the moon. The hole in the silence struck by Arithon's quiet left only the plumed breath of the horses, ephemeral as drifted spirit light.

  Then, without warning, Arithon stirred. His unseeing eyes flicked wide open, and he blurted, 'But I don't know you!'

  The stranger released him. Hedged by nervous clan scouts, he met their renewed distrust with a bemused headshake. 'No harm done. Your prince is mage-trained. He carries an array of extremely well guarded barriers.' In rueful amazement, his peaked eyebrows lifted. 'Unusually strong ones, to hold past waking consciousness.'

  'You can't heal him,' said Hewall, distressed. He shifted stance, his furtive right hand still relentlessly poised to draw steel.

  'Not safely, not this way,' the stranger confessed. Lightless black, the eyes in their deep, shadowed sockets swept away and regarded the troublesome s'Ffalenn subject, once more draped obliviously limp. As though two riled scouts were not primed for assault a sword's easy thrust from his back, he kept speaking. 'If I asked, your prince would lower those defenses. But in staying guarded, he's also resisting the draw of the Mistwraith's laid curse. An enemy might risk his exposure. I won't.' He turned, sharp and sudden. 'Do you have a water flask?'

  The vehemence of the question set both clansmen aback.

  The younger one answered. Perhaps more attuned to the ripe threat of danger, or perhaps the stranger's self-contained courtesy shot warning like cold th
rough his gut. 'If you're a friend, Hewall bears a horn flask.'

  'The water is yours, but you must give your name,' the older scout added, insistent.

  Exasperation flexed the man's chisel-cut mouth. 'Asandir could not come. A deranged grimward prevents summons or contact. Sethvir lies ill at Althain Tower. Kharadmon and Luhaine are repairing wards, which are failing, at Rockfell Peak.' Under starlight and the wan gleam of the moon, the set stone on his finger seemed a lit spark, against his anonymous clothing. 'Traithe is too far, and would be endangered. There is no one else, and if I were your liege's enemy, I would not stand here at all.'

  'You've not said you're his friend,' the elder scout noted. Aware his companion had all but stopped breathing, he plowed on with mulish bluntness, 'Arithon is sanctioned as Prince of Rathain, whose late crowned ancestor bled and died at the hands of a mob in the uprising. By all means, as you wish, let us not say your name, if you are who you must be, Sorcerer.'

  'So do knives cut, and needles pull thread,' the self-contained visitor agreed, no longer equable or patient. 'If I wanted his Grace dead, why trifle? Your Teir's'Ffalenn would have seen his life forfeit the instant the last of his overthrown lineage returned to set foot on Athera!' The gold ember of the ring's stone moved in the dark as he extended his hand for the horn flask unslung from the clansman's shoulder. His steely, bright humor without amusement, he accepted the offered strap. 'Thank you, profoundly. I've been called many things. But never before this has anyone had the effrontery to name me a liar.'

  'You don't lie,' the young scout allowed. He had the advantage, not being pinned down by the Sorcerer's sardonic, deep scrutiny. 'You don't murder, either. But history tells us you toy with men's lives. Why should we entrust you with this one?'