by Janny Wurts
A miracle answered that wounded appeal.
Another horn call swelled over the first. This note, winded on the whorled spine of a dragon, came ranging, freed, across time. Its resounding, deep echo rocked the roots of the hills. All clamors subsided before shuddering awe. Some indefinable quality to the belling, rich overtone made the heart yearn to pause and show reverence. Arithon resisted. He still walked the trial of Kewar Tunnel, where delay carried fatal penalty.
Head up, eyes wide-open, somehow he forged onward. Bound to his forced step, spells of cause and effect gave birth to uncanny vision. He was made witness to an event such as no sanctioned crown prince had seen for five centuries, as the soil of Rathain answered a caithdein's last plea. Night burned and wind gentled. Stars and moon welcomed a towering presence, whose flesh-and-blood hooves trod the ground of a bygone age, yet whose manifest form cast its solidified consciousness into the convergence of Jieret's summons.
Vulnerably mortal, Arithon lost his breath as the centaur guardian entered the Alliance war camp.
The Paravian's arrival transcended all boundaries. The beauty, the wild grace, the shining, immortal majesty stunned thought into poignant stillness. To mage-sight, the creature was blinding light; to the ear of a bard, a peal of ethereal harmony that lifted old pain into ecstasy.
Unable to stand upright before such a beacon of truth, Arithon s'Ffalenn let his trembling limbs fold. Kneeling, he felt himself immolated. The blazing presence of the Ilitharis Paravian burned him down to a core of absolute parity. Recast in pure light, Desh-thiere's curse seemed a cobweb of shadow. The distressed cries of the elite Etarran troops became raucous noise, of no more concern to the vast, turning earth than the shrilling of squabbling gulls. Nor were the forged weapons men carried for war bound to such usage as mute objects. Sword steel thrummed and rang in an outcry for peace. Lance shafts dreamed with the roused awareness of trees, while sheaves of arrows keened into vibration, their fletching yearning for feathered flight, and their forged broadheads recalled to their silent beginnings as ores in the veins of the mountains. Man's purpose was transient. Where a guardian walked in command of the mysteries, the resurgence of natural order must prevail.
Caught up by wonder, Arithon forgot fear. All driving needs lost their urgency. In the span between heartbeats, death and sorrow were subdued, the sting of grief drawn from their memory: except one. That single loss swelled into a festering sore, a scourge branded into quickened flesh with a burning, indelible urgency.
The unabashed tears coursing down his bared cheeks, Arithon cradled his face in his hands and cried aloud without thinking. 'Oh most brave, Ath's beloved! Why did your kind ever leave us?'
Enormous, warm hands grasped his wrists; gently raised him. Their tender touch was immediate: real. Kewar Tunnel's interlaced wheels of spellcraft had bridged space and time through a crown prince's unleashed passion of longing. Standing foursquare, wrapped in the swelling chord of grand harmony and his matchlessly regal splendor, the Ilitharis Paravian had in fact materialized in Kewar's cavern to meet him. 'That riddle was not written, the day I greet my death,' the centaur apologized, his bass voice towering above.
Within the cramping confines of the corridor, the creature's direct presence overwhelmed. His horned head should have scraped the vault ceiling overhead; yet did not. Before such a being, stone itself must give homage.
Ripped open to mage-sight, Arithon could not discern the guardian's detail or form. He beheld the centaur as a pillar of fire and light, felt his touch as a shower of refined illumination more subtle than the glimmer that presaged spring sunrise. Dazzled blind by the creature's shining, pure aura, wrung ecstatically deaf by the unfolding shower of pure harmony that lilted like song through his being, Arithon addressed the incomprehensible. 'How have you come here?'
'I was called, truly. Fate's forger, you were Named. There lies your destiny, ripe for the hour when you finally embrace the full reach and strength of your power.' For a moment, the guardian's massive palm brushed a feather's touch across the crown of Arithon's head.
A rippling tingle swept Rathain's prince into tremors from head to foot. The thrill both defined and uplifted his awareness. Recast by that play of resharpened force, he experienced a range of emotion that surpassed any word to describe. He reeled, mind and senses overset. The shattering wonder that deluged his spirit whirled him into a sublime peace that seemed chiseled from infinite light.
'I give you my memory,' the centaur pronounced. Each word rang with crystalline overtones, wild and free as his horn call had been, ranging over the vales of Daon Ramon. Sound spoke, drawn out of the silence of mystery. The echoes awakened remembrance: of a beauty that burned, as Riathan danced, liquid silver under the moonlight. 'Henceforth, you'll recall your caithdein's last deed. Through my eyes, behold his final triumph. Masterbard! Hear the charge of your calling. When you write the ballad to commemorate Jieret's passing, craft each note and each line without mourning. Your Earl of the North abides now in joy. Let his memory inspire your world without bitterness.'
'The sword of my half brother killed him,' gasped Arithon, aggrieved as he surveyed the detailed, harsh fact, then amazed to find his sorrow undefiled by the answering spark of his hatred. He trembled then. Humbled beyond words, he discovered even Desh-thiere's curse had been silenced.
'Your caithdein did not suffer,' the centaur replied from the peace that encircled his presence. 'The sword and the fire that dispatched his flesh have no power to mar his true spirit. If, your oathsworn brother crossed beyond Fate's Wheel by the murderous act of your kindred, heed my word, the broken husk of his flesh felt no pain.'
'He'll be missed, nonetheless,' Prince Arithon said, moved by imperative truth. 'I can't let his priceless companionship go without feeling the burden on my heart.'
'Walk on, go free,' the centaur said gently. 'Remember the gifts without sadness.' He removed the exalted benediction of his touch.
The withdrawal engendered a desperate, fierce absence that darkened the mind like suffocation. Cast back toward the dimmer frame of his mortality, Arithon screamed in recoiling pain. Unable to endure the descent into darkness that must attend his next step through the maze, he cried out in abject appeal, 'Mercy upon me, I am not yet free!'
Davien's trial still bound him. A short step ahead, more horrors awaited. The coarse prospect of suffering written into maimed flesh posed a contrast the uplifted mind could not bear; not hard-set against the scalpel-sharp purity of a centaur guardian's live presence. Arithon suffered the burn of his conscience more acutely than ever before. Peeled to raw nerves by his birth-born compassion, he sensed the dense knit of the spells, still poised to extract every hurtful stroke his past would demand in redress.
He could not walk, could not return to the mire. Life meant desecration, burdened down by the leaden sorrow of more deaths. How could he condone even a dog's severed life? A survival bought by the premeditated butchery Braggen had committed to preserve s'Ffalenn lineage became an offense before the living gift that Ath's grace once bestowed on the world. Sorely anguished, that his hands were going to run red with the blood of more hapless victims, Arithon bowed down in humility.
'Let me take Jieret's death.' He could no longer shoulder his burden of shame before the Paravian's shimmering presence. Nor in self-honesty could he pretend that the shreds of his courage could outmatch his own rankling weakness. Trusting Elaira's transcendent love would find a way to forgive him, he said, 'Some sorrows have embedded too deep for reprieve.'
'Then receive absolution,' the Ilitharis replied. 'Stand tall and walk at my side.'
'You ask this?' Lent hope beyond horror, offered comfort amid the black wasteland of his despair, Arithon straightened. He could do nothing else. The centaur's compassion was too commanding a force. Before such sovereign grandeur, every shadow of uncertainty must dispel, resolved by the light of the infinite.
The guardian's massive strength caught and steadied his lost balance; and again, the up
lifting tingle of ecstasy razed like a balm through worn flesh. The centaur said gently, 'What is a flaw but a human mistake, or an ignorance that sees without options?'
'My grandsire tried to teach much the same thing.' Arithon shivered, contrite. 'How sorely I failed, as his living example.'
'Failed?' Liquid movement embedded in a fountain of gold light, the Ilitharis bent his horned head and gazed downward, his regard as distinct as his touch. 'Daelion himself would not judge you so harshly. Come ahead. Let true meaning unveil your self-worth.'
Under the Ilitharis's shielding protection, Arithon assayed a next step. The inevitable fall nonetheless struck him breathless. With utmost, dark cruelty, the spellcraft of the maze hurled him back into reliving.
Underfoot, now, the deep drifts of the Mathorns, shadow black and salt white beneath the thin gleam of a waning moon. The rock summits echoed with the belling of hounds, and the shouts of pursuit from armed enemies.
Yet this time, the harrowing vista contained the flame of a living splendor: the centaur guardian walked one step behind the man sanctioned as Prince of Rathain. If gold-feathered hooves left no trace of tracks, the creature's arrival was acknowledged within the broad tapestry of Ath's creation. Time became meaningless. Space shifted, rendered fluid as thought. In the stately reach of Paravian presence, the stone, the trees, and the cloudless night sky upheld the natural order of a world that remembered its first, pristine peace. Under the shining glitter of starlight, the movement and noise of striving men seemed diminished to a puppet play of illusion.
Arithon recovered the resilience to face forward. Erect, his eyes clear, he reforged the confidence to claim his marred past, as the way through the notch yawned before him.
He stepped forward.
Braggen's arrow hissed downward out of the dark, and an Etarran tracker fell screaming.
'Am I worth this death?' Arithon gasped, his voice wrenched into strangled distress. He braced for the pain by raw reflex. But wrapped in the spun gold of the centaur's aura, the shock of the broadhead piercing the man's breast passed him by with no further suffering,
'What does your worth and this death have in common?' the guardian stated in tender remonstrance. 'If this stranger's harsh end for a misled cause and a sorrowful muddle of hatred brands your greater life as unworthy, why does his delusion matter more than another who knew you with intimate clarity? Your Jieret crossed the Wheel for your sake as a gift born of love. His regard for you sprung from a trusting heart, just as his sacrifice stood surety for your character. If you argue that the vision of mankind is clouded, the land of Rathain herself is aware. For the risk you assumed on the solstice alone, this world of Athera upholds your good name as a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince. I came here, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn, because I was called. I stay at your back on my free choice to answer! Claim as fact your irrevocable right to survive, or else choose, if you dare, to disown me!'
Arithon recoiled. Slapped short by rebuke that shamed his adherence to shortfalls as arrogance, he cried out. Then he squared his trembling shoulders. Stripped bare by the eyes of the guardian's truth, he confronted the horror of his own making.
Sickened, still upright, he addressed the agony of the Etarran who writhed in his grave of stained snow. 'If your strength stands beside me, great one, as a gift, I still can't condone this man's pain.'
A harsh truth: he could not pass without stepping over the throes of an arrow-shot victim's last suffering.
'Then help him die,' the Ilitharis said, unequivocal. 'Strike down your limiting belief that you're powerless!'
Arithon knelt. Snow chilled his scraped knees. He tugged the trailing, torn hem of his sleeve from the hand not encumbered with bandaging. 'Easy,' he soothed as he touched the stricken man's chest. He was aware with glass-sharp, terrible clarity, how the damage of such a wound felt. He had died many times through the spasming jerk as torn heart muscle labored, stabbed through by the flange of a broadhead. 'Lie back. Relax, and the numbness comes quickly.'
The Etarran choked, gasping through welling fluid. His filled lungs were rapidly drowning. He peered up, confused by the indistinct form of the stranger arrived to bend over him. 'Who are you?'
Arithon swallowed. He spoke the truth gently. 'Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn.'
'You?' The man jerked backward, racked by a hacking, wet cough. 'The bastard-born Master of Shadow?'
'I am not what you fear,' Arithon replied, the empathy in him at last granted outlet through the grace of his Masterbard's training. 'At least tell me your name, that your passing will not go unsung.'
The tracker spat foaming blood; gave his answer, defiant. Then he winced through an agonized spasm. 'What's my name, to a demon?'
'Very shortly, you'll see.' Granted the musician's insight he required, Arithon sang the first phrase to distance the pain. His talent responded. Relieved by the sigh as contorted flesh eased and settled under his fingers, he added, 'Who do you wish to hear your last words?'
The man mentioned a sister, his mother, a son. He asked that his wife understand that he loved her. Weeping unabashed, as a voice like spun gold sang lyric lines in Paravian over him, he subsided into a haze of regretful puzzlement. 'I wanted to kill you. May Ath and Dharkaron forgive! Your life could have been the one wasted.'
'Does that matter?' asked Arithon, heartsore, as slowly, with tenderness, he built on the phrasing to loosen the life cord.
Slack in the snow, the pumped spurt of blood from his chest a stilled puddle, the man coughed, then struggled to look up. More than starlight gleamed in the distanced depths of his eyes. He knew who he was, saw where he was going. The bard's inspired singing had opened the way for his spirit to ease in transition across the veil. Already, the Wheel turned. His attention diffused, near the moment of release as he struggled to impart the last of his life's garnered wisdom. 'It matters, your Grace.'
'You owe me no title, no sworn word of fealty!' Arithon said, overset by the acknowledgment of rank.
The man's breath spasmed, caught, then eased once again as the flawless phrases of melody resumed. He closed weary eyelids, still aware of the face of the bard, clear as stamped quartz under starlight. 'Then is the kindness you offer an enemy a lie? Is such compassion not the land's hope for peace, that may one day nurture my grandchildren?' The tracker resumed, labored. 'We marched for a false light. Don't you see?' The smile that eased his gruff face at the end smoothed over the lines pinched by trauma. 'I lost my life for embracing delusion. But your death would have made me a murderer.'
Suffering passed into final peace. Arithon settled the corpse in the snow, then arose upon unsteady feet. Ahead lay the rock-strewn slope to the notch, where eleven more deaths would extract their toll of due reckoning. Behind, a fired brilliance of unsullied light, the centaur guardian awaited.
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn regarded his hands, smeared with the blood of the Etarran tracker whose honest last testament had finally silenced his conscience. 'What did that man see, on the moment he left us?'
'That's not yours to ask, or my will to answer,' said the Ilitharis Paravian, his quelling, deep tone hushed with mercy.
Arithon bowed his head, at the last unable to disown his core self, or the unmasked face of his gratitude. 'I accept absolution,' he whispered, contrite.
He felt the radiant warmth of a touch at his back, impelling his final step forward.
'Go in grace, Teir's'Ffalenn.'
The reliving shattered. Blasted apart by the flare of burst spellcraft, Arithon caught himself short of a stumble as his boot sole came down upon Kewar's unyielding stone floor. He cried out, disoriented. Through and through, like a sword's thrust, he ached with the awareness: the centaur was no longer with him.
Better men, before him, had gone mad from such grief: high kings and clan chieftains, whose brief rule had ended when the lacerating toll of such parting drove them to unreconciled agony.
Arithon shuddered. Cast back to the obdurate dictates of training to bind closed the rif
ts in his being, he swayed. When his groping hand met no corridor wall to steady his spinning balance, for one draining heartbeat, he thought he had been torn, whole spirit from dissolute flesh.
Then flash-blinded eyesight cleared all at once.
The tunnel's close confines no longer imprisoned him. Arrived in a doorless, five-sided chamber, Arithon beheld juxtaposed views of himself, the myriad reflections a mirror image of his snarled hair and torn clothing. His composite forms detailed each harried breath, each jerked move, from across a scribed circle incised with Davien's intertwined spirals of runes.
Arithon shut his eyes. 'Elaira,' he whispered. Binding his love to the iron of his oath, sworn on his let blood at Athir, he regathered his will and kept his pledged word to the vanished centaur guardian. 'I will choose to survive.' Unburdened and gasping, too worn to contemplate what consequence might spring from the impetus of forward motion, he completed his final step.
No further reliving ripped his mind into visions. He had brought himself home to the center of the maze. Here, the multiple facets of himself were reclaimed, merged back into autonomous awareness by the empowered acceptance of humanity's right to embrace the full impact of free choice. Quittance came as a tingling, sharp play of energy.
Spelled power fell away, of no more import than a gyre of spent sparks.
Utterly drained, Arithon regarded the jointures of polished black walls. Each unmarked one was lit by a sconce spiked with a burning wax candle. 'I may be free, yet this trial is not over!' he pronounced in a shaken voice.
When no listening presence answered his challenge, he gave way to need, sank to his knees, then curled up in shivering exhaustion. Within seconds, he fell into a blanketing sleep that, mercifully, brought him no nightmares.
Early Spring 5670
Challenge
Deep under the caverns of Kewar Tunnel, far below the polished corridor of the maze, with its spiraling arcs of carved spellcraft, a sealed cylindrical chamber nestled close as a secret within the heart of the mountain. The arched ceiling described a perfect parabola, a shape to refigure the least murmur of sound into cutting, razor-sharp focus. Walls and floor were drilled out of satin-smoothed marble, the raised pool at the center a master-work fashioned by wayward, rogue genius and grand conjury.
