TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  They felt like his murderers, to send him to Kewar.

  Yet, worse, the unbearable mercy he asked if they insistently sheltered him: to grant him his crossing on the blade of a sword, trussed like a rabid animal.

  'I'll call the eagle,' blurted Hewall, too miserable to extend the prongs of unbearable quandary. 'Then ride for your life, liege. Where the bird leads you, none of your line who have entered have survived to return. You will be guided to the portal of Kewar Tunnel. If you decide to cross that dread threshold, may Ath Creator stand at your shoulder with every bright power of guidance.'

  Early Spring 5670

  Lynchpins

  Late day at Rockfell, Fionn Areth stands lonely vigil on the ledge, while the Fellowship Sorcerers Luhaine and Kharadmon, who shares Dakar's mind and body, shoulder the arduous task of resetting the ward rings guarding the Mistwraith; while beyond the star wards, questing free wraiths from Marak spin through another maze spell, ever closer to unraveling the defenses laid down to deny their crossing to Athera . . .

  The Warden of Althain lies imprisoned in bed, staying the flawed seals on three grimwards; when his earth-sight reveals an eagle in flight over the Mathorn ranges with a lone fugitive following, his fists clench in helpless remembrance of High King Kamridian, who had set foot into Kewar Tunnel, and encountered the Maze of Davien, and died, entangled by the thorns of his conscience, and his born gift of s'Ffalenn compassion . . .

  Past Leynsgap, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend weighs up the explosive tension displayed by the Blessed Prince, and the reports of Skannt's expert trackers; then commands the moment to engage the spearpoint of his strategy: 'We send on the squad of fifty light horse, with a hundred more in reserve. Press them ahead. Let them harry the Shadow Master's heels. I want him worn down! Drive him staggering blind with exhaustion. Then we corner him for the kill . . .'

  Early Spring 5670

  XIV. Hunted

  The clan scouts left their prince the gray gelding for his willing heart, his sharp turn of speed, but also because of his color. A light horse's coat would blend with the snowdrifts and fade into the veiling rain, chased in by south winds at midmorning. That elusive quality made Arithon s'Ffalenn the more difficult to trace, by friend and enemy alike. His image became an ephemeral shadow, embedded in the watery clarity of the quartz sphere attuned for scrying his covert movements. Elaira cursed the steamed prints of her hands, sprung to damp sweat as the Etarran light horse dispatched by Sulfin Evend closed their relentless pursuit. As wedded to the chase as hounds coursing deer, they crossed over the great divide in the Mathorns, their human prey running ahead of them.

  Well mounted, well armed, they were fifty men, with double that number of reserves hauling spare gear and remounts behind them. Expectation spurred their excitement. Pitched for the end of an arduous chase, they quartered the low ground of the valley and knew: their quarry had drawn within range.

  Hounds and skilled trackers were no longer necessary. The riders on point now pursued the fresh-stitched trail of the dappled gelding's hoofprints. As morning advanced, the marks filled with puddles of melt under the wisped curtains of drizzle. One rider's imprint forged onward by then: at Arithon's suggestion, the two clan scouts dispersed into the brush. Wherever they could, they set spring traps and nooses at opportune crossings and gulches. Their efforts were shortly defeated. The soaked ground dissolved into slush and patched mud, the slurry too sodden to smooth with a pine switch. In the end, they were forced to seek cover themselves, lest their own furtive tracks upon the sere landscape become too troublesome to mask.

  By then, even the most skillfully laid traps posed the enemy too small an impediment. A handful of casualties, and the five unlucky men and three mounts waylaid with snapped bones did not slow Sulfin Evend's chosen veterans. Their risks were well compensated. A death on campaign granted a man's surviving family a crown pension; for the glory of the Light, and deliverance from evil, the elite guard were relentlessly honed for a manhunt over rough country.

  Each stage of pursuit passed in agony for Elaira, immured in distant sanctuary at Whitehaven. The quartz sphere traced each brutal development, each barked order from the dedicated troop captain whose vehement manner and driving, sharp spurs permitted no moment of respite. He marshaled his assets and made no mistakes, pressing horses and men to their limit.

  Arithon's lead relentlessly narrowed.

  Elaira observed each step of lost ground, aching beyond succor or recourse. Ath's adepts gave her shelter, but could not intervene. Lent the use of a quiet tower chamber for her vigil, she stayed the grim course, while Alliance pursuit harried the Master of Shadow ever nearer to inevitable capture.

  By noon, the gray gelding had spent its generous reserves. Stumbling tired, without wind and stamina, it had reached the far side of the valley. There, the steep rise in terrain all but brought the brave animal to its knees.

  Arithon s'Ffalenn was forced to draw rein halfway up the first hillock. He stroked his mount's steaming neck with apology. Then he kicked his feet from the stirrups. The horse's drawn flanks and painfully rasped breaths left no choice. He must dismount now, or wantonly kill by riding the blameless beast into the ground.

  Yet as he shifted his weary weight to vault off, the eagle ahead banked into a tight reverse circle. Screaming indignation, it looped back and stooped out of the sheeting rain. Black talons grazed the horse's hindquarters. The creature bucked into panic-struck flight.

  Arithon grabbed a wet handful of mane. Half-unseated, his loose stirrups banging, he clung through the careening gallop over the hilltop, then down the boulder-strewn pitch of the slope.

  Rain wet his face, plastered the hair at his nape, and snaked tangled strands at his temples. Soaked leathers had long since blistered his knees. His hands were chafed raw, and the sodden cloth binding his wound wore new bloodstains. That lone splash of scarlet stood out like a cry against the vista of gray slush, weathered stone, and wind-raked stands of bare brush.

  The quartz steamed again. Elaira swore as her gusting breaths clouded the ephemeral image. Desperate enough to weep where she sat, she wiped the fogging moisture away. For Davien's intervention, she had painful, mixed feelings, entangled as she was by her empathic link to Arithon's mind and heart.

  'Since he can't spare himself, he won't feel any better if he leaves a good horse broken-winded,' she whispered aloud in frustration.

  If her entreaty reached the self-assured Sorcerer who sent the guiding eagle's flight, he was no spirit to waver for a dumb beast's reprieve. Must not, in harsh truth; at this jointure of fate, when that smallest of mercies would deliver Arithon alive to his enemies.

  Elaira tossed aside the limp square of creased silk, striving again to contain the worry that married her to the crystal. Yet the lamplit shelter she enjoyed at Ath's hostel brought her no semblance of calm. How long could the stout heart endure the unbearable? Her beloved rode for his life in the Mathorns, and she could not act to spare him. Not without invoking a debt that would bind his free fate to the whim of the Koriani Matriarch.

  As worn as the faltering mount underneath him, Arithon lacked the brute strength to curb the animal's terrified flight. Rain blinded his eyes. The rocks in his path were half-sunk in pooled melt. The hollows lay choked with the grayed rinds of drifts, under a gauze layer of ground mist. The crystal recorded the stiff set to sore shoulders. It showed every gobbet of foam, flung off the horse's rank bit, and each thorn-ripped tear in soaked clothing.

  Stride followed careening stride; the horse trailed the eagle as if nose led by spells. Then a misstep cost its precarious footing. It flung up its head, skating wildly downslope. The right foreleg struck a boulder, and the weight-bearing cannon bone shattered. Horse and rider went down in a violent, threshing roll. Arithon pitched free and crashed in a granular puddle of snowmelt.

  Palms clamped to the quartz sphere, Elaira cried out. She waited through agonized, terrible seconds. At length, the Shadow Master stirred. He folded his sc
raped frame, stood up, and swiped mud and gravel off a grazed cheek. Battered but uninjured, he smoothed a kink in his baldric, then wrung out the cloak hem that slapped at his calves and hampered his need for free movement. No use to pause for the provisions in the saddle pack; the men dogging his back trail would close before nightfall. He would have no chance to fade through starvation. The enemies at his heels would prefer sword and fire to dispatch him to Dharkaron's vengeance.

  Arithon bled the horse, out of mercy. Shivering with chill, or perhaps aching pity, he held his gloved hand cupped over its dulled eye as it shuddered through its suffering last breaths. Then he stroked its stilled neck one last time, and spoke his first words since daybreak: 'Little brother, you gave no less than Jieret, or Caolle.' A torn gasp, then the finish, wrung to desperate anguish. 'How in Ath's wisdom will I ever prove worthy, bound under Desh-thiere's curse?'

  Bone weary, hounded against the stark rim of insanity, Arithon pressed on afoot.

  Elaira whispered a useless entreaty over the bleak image in the quartz. Her words would not be heard. But her blazing desire to encourage her beloved became the shot arrow, sped on the heart link between them. He must sense her presence amid the rain-swept hills where he thrashed, stride by stride, through clinging thorn and wet gorse. Touched back by the steel in his agonized courage, Elaira scarcely noticed the white-robed adept who came on silent feet to trim the small lamp and leave her mulled cider and currant bread.

  The quartz sphere consumed her attention. With the same stark fiber once shown in Jaelot, Arithon rejected defeat. He clawed up seamed gullies of granite, scaled rocks splashed with gushing snowmelt, and plowed through dense brush, choosing the rough ground to hamper the horsemen. If his enemies must close on him through the next hour, he would not fight their onslaught blindly.

  Granted her keyhole view through the quartz, Elaira watched, dizzied, as his straight flight tacked a zigzagged, reeling course over a stony crest. The corrie beyond gleamed with leaden, iced drifts. Slipping and tumbling down the steep slope, Arithon planted his staggering trail partway up the next rise. There, he left his stuffed cloak and jacket, collapsed in convincing extremis.

  He backtracked, relying on softening snow to excuse the blurred edges as he stepped within his own footprints. By now, he had enemies all but on top of him. Elaira could hear the oncoming jingle of harness beyond the line of the ridge. She observed with stopped breath as Arithon engaged a masking of wrought shadow and concealed himself in a thicket.

  Rain fell, relentless. Strung droplets pattered off thorn and twig, and streamed from Arithon's soaked clothes. Such damp chill would settle in aches to the bone, through even the briefest stilled wait. Arithon crouched, gloved hands tucked to conserve warmth. He looked wretched, exhausted and pale. The miniaturized view through the quartz did not mask his incessant shivering.

  Elaira pressed her hand to her mouth, too miserably riveted to weep as the Etarran horsemen surged onto the hilltop. They held their formation at a confident trot. If the sunwheel surcoats over their mail shirts were rust-streaked, their weapons and spirits were diligently sharp since discovery of their quarry's dead horse. Cloaked in oiled wool, fortified with spirit flasks and raisins, hard bread, and cheese, they knew they were one short step from their victory, and instantly deadly to a lone fugitive forced afoot.

  Arithon kept his head down as the mounted force jingled by. A held screen of shadow lent him the semblance of a rock spur through the shouts of excitement as the lead ranks spotted his false form in effigy. Despite harrowing odds, he kept nerveless timing, withheld his move until the charging riders plunged well down the far slope, with the advance troop's rear guard just breasting the rim of the rise.

  As he hoped, there were stragglers. Men grown weary of the brutal, long chase, who, perhaps, did not revel in the death of a fugitive who had drawn them in grueling pursuit across leagues of wind-scoured wasteland. Arithon kept still until the last, stolid horseman drew alongside his thicket.

  Then he unfurled his gift of shadow like a lid on a jar, and plunged the corrie in darkness.

  The trailing Etarran scarcely felt the crashing blow to the nape that felled him. Unconscious before he struck ground, he gave no outcry in warning. Arithon seized his shying mount's reins. He vaulted astride as the animal spun, and drove it, flat out, off the ridge. His oblique descent carried him away from the corrie his gift had left swathed under darkness.

  Elaira swore like a southshore fishwife. The quartz attuned to scry Arithon's movements might as well have been dipped into ink. Sound still came through, faint but distinct. She choked back frustration, straining to discern one horse's rushed hoofbeats from the yammering shouts of the Etarrans doused blind in the corrie. To judge by the bursts of ripe language from the men, and the shearing screams of downed horses, untold mayhem unraveled the pride of the sunwheel troop's vaunted order.

  'Mother of chaos, love, what have you done?' Then she realized; might have laughed outright had the straits not been other than desperate. Arithon's shadows had snap-frozen the slope to an impasse of treacherous sheet ice.

  A hornet-mad remnant of the rear guard managed to claw its way out. Cast shadow still mazed them. Through bitter complaint, Elaira heard them dismount. They had to grope forward by touch, until the dark thinned to wisps and momentarily lifted. By then, their fell quarry had opened a fresh lead. The best bowman among them attempted two shots, the first a near miss, and the second one fallen short. The minion of darkness had passed out of range, with the best of their troop trapped, milling like trout in a bowl. Escape for them would be impossible. Hours would pass before the flash-frozen slope softened enough to lend purchase.

  Elaira resettled the quartz between clammy palms through the pause while the Etarrans retrenched their balked strategy. The shouted parley exchanged with the troop's furious captain could not hold her attention. Whether the five men at liberty would be dispatched in pursuit, or if they would hear orders to stand down until the reserves could send in reinforcements, the fierce wish of her heart ruled the spells of reflection. The scene with its milling men and jostling, panicky horses dissolved, overlaid by another.

  Charcoal shadow against gray-felt curtains of falling rain, the quartz unveiled Arithon driving on at a hammering pace astride his purloined mount. Shown his bloodless, set face, and the stripped concentration engendered by breakneck flight, Elaira cried out in tortured understanding. For the Prince of Rathain, the hounding fury of the Etarran light horse was no longer of prime concern. The forced delay to dispatch the mounted troop at the corrie had enabled Lysaer s'Ilessid to narrow the critical, safe margin. Now set under redoubled assault by the pull of Desh-thiere's geas, Arithon rode as though the furies of Sithaer howled and snapped at his heels. Lose his battle of will, and killing madness would drive him to turn and engage in doomed battle with his nemesis.

  'For mercy,' Elaira whispered in cold-struck terror. Sliding and careening over unsafe terrain, the pressed horse must surely stumble. 'Arithon, beloved, go carefully!'

  He managed a league at that cracking, fast pace before the blown animal forced him to slacken. Dropped back to a raggedy trot, the horse flattened its ears as Arithon's heels pressured its choppy stride forward. His determined hands on the reins drove a straight course, with no allowance for clawing, low brush, or snow-patched swales and snagged ground. The Master of Shadow forged on like a wraith, through stands of black firs, their storm-whipped boughs bowed to the ground. He clattered over rock gulches and fissured ledges at a pace not designed to spare horseflesh.

  The eagle he followed flew steadily northwest, its wing strokes no less urgent. The hillocks it traversed reared upward into massive stone ramparts. No horse could scale them. The towering scarp sheared in canted, layered stone, patched with glaze ice and rockfalls, and riddled with treacherous footing. Left nowhere to go but into the heights, Arithon slid from the saddle.

  He murmured phrases to soothe the beast's rattled nerves, but could not stop its
shying from the smell seeped through his right glove as he stripped off the blood-soaked leather. His breathless apology translated through the scrying spell in the quartz sphere. 'Little brother, stand easy. I owe you my life.'

  His voice missed the gentle register he required. Elaira winced for the strung note of tension; shuddered as he drew the clogged knife that had dispatched the valiant gray. Yet this time the blade was not wielded for slaughter. Arithon cut only the leather headstall and girth, then jettisoned the stripped tack.

  'Go find a wild mare!' he enjoined the dazed horse. Perhaps knowing Elaira's presence stood by him, he loosed a lamed gasp of laughter. 'I'd do as much, if I had your freedom.'

  The confused animal regarded him with mournful, dark eyes: nothing like the endless, deep mystery he cherished in Elaira's bright gray ones. The solitary desolation of his straits all but broke her heart, as he slapped the creature's steamed rump, then peered ahead, and shouldered his dogged way forward.

  'After you,' he said in stark irony to the eagle, perched above him in ruffled impatience.

  The bird snap-turned its head. Its glance harbored no human light of encouragement as it unfurled dark wings and launched into a beating climb up the slope.

  By then, the warm rains had slackened to drizzle, touched chill by the increased altitude. Ground fog drifted off the thaw-rotted snowbanks, breathed into white rags of mist. The vales hung under cloud like spoiled lacquer, and the dank air blew raw off the heights. Small sounds fell magnified by close rock and dense moisture, until Arithon moved through a half world defined by the rasp of his own labored breath and the slipped scrape of his steps on slicked rock. At times he clawed upward hand over hand, his fingers grazed raw on the ledges. He suffered repeated, painful delay, his knife needed to chip off loosened ice.