by Janny Wurts
The enclosure was warmed by a bronze brazier. Reprieved at last from the brutal spring damp, Tarens perched on a horse-hide hassock before the low table where a lit candle and basin sat inside a precision array of chalked lines. Other tools of the seer’s trade lay nearby: a stone pendulum affixed by a string, a hawk’s quill, a tail feather plucked from a raven, and a clamshell silted with sand and the ashes of aromatic herbs. The frame bed piled with cushions and quilts breathed a residue of astringent scent that suggested a paste for aged joints. The ruddy boots tossed by the clothes-chest and the crumpled breeches hung up to dry revised that assessment: the fat man had hiked a long way before dawn, over trackless outdoor terrain.
‘The guardsmen keep us apart from the king. We are otherwise given our liberty.’ Dakar shuffled to the end of the table. He scrounged a plate with a halved loaf of stale bread and a near-emptied wine bottle, shoved the food within Tarens’s reach, then parked his broad rump in the ox-leather camp chair.
When his famished guest chose not to eat, Dakar directed his piercing regard through the lambent flame’s halo. ‘Who are you, Tarens? What brought you here? Tell me everything. For the straits of far more than this realm surely hinge upon your information.’
‘What do you know of his Grace?’ Tarens hedged.
‘Arithon?’ Dakar laced pudgy fingers over his gut and groaned in exasperation. ‘Nothing. That’s my thorny problem. Every scrying I’ve cast that concerns Rathain’s prince has gone dark as the damned since three days ago. Oh, please, sit back down! If he were dead, I’d have sounded the crossing where his shade passed the Wheel. Trust this much, I do know my business. I’ve borne the curse of erratic prescience throughout a very long life.’
Stonewalled by Tarens’s wary reserve, the fat seer threw up his hands. ‘Ath above! You’d be wise to speak openly. I was assigned as the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s close protector for nearly three decades, and more, a scar on my back from an assassin’s shaft should have finished Rathain’s royal lineage!’
‘Then show me proof,’ Tarens said.
‘You sound just like Jieret.’ Offended, Dakar made no move to comply.
‘Strip your shirt to the skin, or this talk is ended.’ Tarens snatched up the uneaten bread, tore off a portion, and let fly as he chewed. ‘I hold Jieret’s memories. If you took a wound in behalf of his liege, the evidence would be known to him.’
‘I have a better way,’ Dakar retorted. ‘You have the iron stomach? Then give me your hand. Why not share the first hand experience?’
Tarens had never lacked stubborn courage even as a stoutly bred crofter. He laid down the bread crust, extended his chapped palm, and invited the Prophet’s moist grip.
‘Permission as granted,’ Dakar confirmed. He took hold, then engaged his trained faculties.
A moment of swimming lightness fluttered Tarens’s gut, followed by a tingle that raced his pulse. Then a jolt at his nape like a blow uprooted his natural senses. While he suffered in sudden white agony and gasped in extremis on the rain-runneled shale of a Vastmark slope, Dakar threshed into his opened mind and seized everything else. The rampaging sweep also rifled the dreams that had broken Tarens’s peace for three nights and dissected their content in punch-cut clarity.
The remorse stung too harshly, that Arithon was alone, set on the run through desolate country with no haven in reach and no friend at his shoulder . . .
Wrung like a rag, then thrust with a sickening wrench back into his skin, Tarens felt the glass clink of a bottle thrust against his locked teeth. Someone’s insistent grip parted his jaws. He choked, barely able to swallow as wine flooded into his throat.
A slap stung his back. He spluttered and breathed. As dizziness threatened to reel him prostrate, he heard Dakar’s thumped tread, then the brisk movement of cloth as the mantled blanket was tossed off and replaced with a sober brown doublet. His sight cleared as the prophet tied off the laces and snatched up his belt.
‘Finish the wine,’ Dakar snapped, beyond rushed. ‘I need you steady and lucid for an immediate audience before High King Gestry.’
‘The armoured fellows outside will object.’ Tarens swayed, unable to rise, in fact forced to lean on the table to fight down a queasy stomach. ‘You have a persuasion to argue with halberds?’
The Mad Prophet seized his wrist without sympathy and hauled him unsteadily upright. ‘I swear by the living grace of the mysteries, I’ll flatten the royal guard to the man, who dares to obstruct the needs of this kingdom!’
Steered remorselessly back through the privacy flap, then raked in turn by the curiosity of the clan youngsters, Tarens had no chance to wonder how much they might have overheard. Dakar’s mood brooked no questions: shaken to pale distress, he snapped orders to Esfand, ‘You three stay here. Pack up your things. A forced march will be underway in an hour. Be ready to move.’
The order sparked a crazed thrill of excitement, with the brash adventurers too wildly eager to embrace a plunge into the throes of a fateful event.
‘No, you young scamps!’ the spellbinder shouted to douse the gleam of their recklessness. ‘You’ll be sent off by clan escort through Elkforest on a secure passage homeward.’
Dakar propelled the stumbling crofter on a ruthless course outside the tent. Desperation fuelled his haste: the man in his braced grasp could scarcely stand upright, far less interpret the rapid-fire speech delivered to placate the guardsmen. But even an unfocused awareness must bend before the urgent development that also lashed the sentries’ bored postures up straight. The fastest one sprinted forthwith to report to his acting captain.
The rest dressed weapons and marched in tight step, shaken beyond thought of protest.
Dakar breasted the buffeting wind, bristled to chills and too pressured for time to smooth anyone’s rankled feelings. Tarens deserved heroic admiration. The fellow endured the brutal onslaught of ill treatment without a complaint past one token slur made for unkind hospitality. The Mad Prophet guided his unsteady step and relied on the brisk uphill walk to settle his shocked wits into grounded recovery.
No tonic of fresh air and exertion might ease the dreadful pitch of Dakar’s anxiety. Ahead of him the grim news of the storm crow, to ask an inexperienced young sovereign to ride into lethal danger. Behind, like a hornet’s stir through the king’s guard, he sensed the realm’s war-captain sprint and vault astride the saddled horse nearest to hand. His spurs raised a gallop that scattered the bystanding grooms from his path like blown smoke. While the man’s break-neck rush angled uphill to intercept, and with Tarens dragged along as an unwitting catalyst, the Mad Prophet approached the tasseled awning at the entrance of the command tent. Eight crown armsmen in Havish’s scarlet-hawk blazon stepped forward, determined to forbid his audience.
Dakar kept walking. ‘Stop for nothing and no one,’ he instructed Tarens. ‘The details are already managed.’
Then the on-coming thunder of hooves shocked the turf. Pulled up at their backs, the war-captain’s blowing destrier spattered foam from the yanked rings of its bit. Its ranked rider dismounted and turned the excited horse loose, too driven to care if an underling’s hands took charge of the abandoned bridle.
Dakar set his teeth, prepared for any expedient to forestall drawn weapons and bloodshed.
‘Let the Mad Prophet through!’ bellowed the war-captain of Telmandir’s elite company.
Advanced to stride abreast, the crown’s first defender came to the crux unarmoured. His surcoat was belted, but lacked sword and baldric. The rapid summons had left him no chance to snatch up his crested helm. His authority still crackled. His scaled right gauntlet stayed poised within knife’s reach, backed by the strength of a veteran retainer sworn to protect Havish with life and limb. Brimstone bitterness rode his broad shoulders: subject to the word of a Fellowship Sorcerer, he had already bowed his bull neck to issue the heart-sore command to withdraw the lines that defended the border. The face of the fighter yet reviled the necessity that mounted the kingdom’s st
rategic stand here and abandoned an untrained rabble of crofters to face slaughter before the Sunwheel invasion.
‘You’d better know what you’re doing,’ he warned Dakar. A testy glance granted Tarens a provisional tolerance for his brave service to Torwent’s survivors.
Then the loom of the current disaster broke off further words. The sentries assigned to the King’s Grace backed off and cleared the carpeted threshold. Both ill-starred petitioners were bustled inside, nailed close by the war-captain’s escort.
Except for staked torches in pierced-metal brackets, the pavilion’s interior did not glitter. Where the core of the realm’s business was conducted, tradition kept every appointment functional. The central pavilion had field quarters on both sides, curtained off by tapestries slung from bronze rods. Their weave was plain wool and the dyes, unexceptional. Unlike the magnificent silk artifacts woven by Paravian workmanship once salvaged from Tysan’s sovereign court, Havish’s Second Age legacy had burned, the great hall at Telmandir sacked in the ruthless first blood of the bygone rebellion.
Yet the scenes reworked in these hangings depicted historic antiquity from First Year One, when the Fellowship Sorcerers had sworn surety for Mankind’s tenancy under the compact. The pageantry commemorated the origins of charter law, that the bounds of human sovereignty on Athera should never be overstepped or forgotten.
The austere furnishings included a trestle table for conference, swept bare of linen or cloth. The royal armour hung on a tree stand, a chain-mail byrnie and hauberk plain as any garrison officer’s but for the surcoat emblazoned with the crown insignia. The leather wall chests were tacked with common brass studs, and the king’s seat, just as unadorned as the chairs occupied by the unsettled stir of the realm’s gathered councillors.
Framed by the blood-and-gold back-drop of Havish’s hawk banner, High King Gestry stood up as the precipitous tumult swept past the honour guard into his presence.
A sturdy, unfinished lad clad in wine-dark leathers, not silk, he presented a face of inquisitive intelligence and a square chin with a dimple, clean-shaven. His dark brown hair gleamed with a reddish tint, tied back in a clan-style braid. Beyond a battered fillet of wire incised with Paravian runes, he wore no gold ornaments. No precious jewels but the massive state collar of rubies and the matched seal ring of his office. His sheathed sword on its cordovan baldric wore the storm-grim glint of tempered steel forged for war.
Tarens’s forward step faltered, tensioned by dismay to be confronted by an old blood monarch without the expected pause for deferent courtesy.
‘High kings are not raised to stand upon ceremony,’ Dakar made haste to explain. ‘Charter law appoints them as the realm’s champions. Their forebears were the chosen speakers, bred of a lineage endowed to treat at first hand with the Paravian presence. They are the arbiters for equal justice, not any figure-head puppet of state costumed to raise awe on a pedestal. Their service is harsh, and too often short. You will nod in salute, right fist at your heart. Show the same respect given to Taerlin’s earl if you happened to meet him in Caithwood.’
They had reached the verge of the rug by the trestle. Dakar made the genteel acknowledgement described, still softly speaking to Tarens. ‘To his Grace’s right, the care-worn old lady in black is Halika, the titled caithdein. She is the king’s conscience, invested with the power to dethrone any sovereign who proves unfit. The blond coquette to Gestry’s left, and still seated, is Princess Ceftwinn, the throne’s heir designate by Asandir’s sanction and daughter of the late queen’s youngest brother. She will inherit, whether or not his Grace should marry, or whether he sires blood issue.’
No more could be done to prepare the broken-nosed bumpkin beside him. Given the High King’s flicked gesture of leave, Dakar addressed the assembly.
‘The danger before you has turned for the worse, with a peril far beyond the True Sect’s armed war host.’ A sideward nod drew their attention to Tarens. ‘This man carries proof! His prescient vision has seen past the dark wards that conceal a dire plot, which eluded the reach of my scryings. Your Grace of Havish, I charge you to stand at the battle-front to defend the weal of the compact! The Koriathain have used their black arts to awaken Desh-thiere’s curse and drive Lysaer s’Ilessid to madness. Their meddling work has reforged his false cause. He’s come south to spear-head the Sunwheel invasion in the pose of incarnate divinity.’
Against the ripple of aghast murmurs and horrified dismay, Dakar added, ‘The bale-fire strike will fall on Lithmarin and destroy everything caught within range.’
‘This is no threat!’ The inevitable protest erupted from the elderly caithdein, thrust to her feet at her liege’s shoulder. ‘Elkforest will be well and soundly defended by his Grace’s raised ward of protection. King Gestry goes nowhere. Our war bands hold their covert defense from the river-bank, while his Grace shields the groves from secure refuge at the Paravian focus! Those were Asandir’s standing orders. Are you mad to suggest the reverse?’
Dakar’s response became shouted down as the gaunt, beak-nosed seneschal banged the trestle in stark disbelief. ‘Why should the Koriathain ignite the fanatics, and what earthly gain would the True Sect achieve through a thrust by the barrens of Scarpdale?’
Gestry quelled his caithdein with a touch, then raised his fists and commanded silence. ‘No earthly victory!’ His eyes were a pale, ethereal blue, focused to a raptor’s intensity as he inclined his head towards the pair of petitioners overshadowed by his war commander’s armoured distrust. ‘Surely the prize for the puppet-string campaign would be the Prince of Rathain?’
The Mad Prophet swallowed. No language existed to soften an impact fit to shatter the very foundations that secured Athera’s deep mysteries. ‘Koriathain desire Arithon dead if they cannot arrange his recapture. At all costs, I tell you, they must not succeed!’
Uproar and objection mounted to a clamour as caithdein and councillors overpowered each other in shouted opposition.
Dakar’s irritable snatch uprooted the nearest torch stand. Heedless of streamered flame, he hammered the spike on the trestle. The iron clang did not quell the noise. But the burst of dashed cinders and flared bits of oiled rag forced several nearby councillors to beat sparks from their smouldering clothing. ‘Gestry must take the field by force of arms and wield the High King’s attunements directly against Lysaer’s roused might!’ Again, Dakar breasted the explosive tumult. ‘Unless the wards over Elkforest are dropped to give Arithon a clean escape, our downfall will be inevitable.’
‘We should risk our feal defenders to carnage for the sake of one life?’ The caithdein pealed on, beyond incensed. ‘To value a threatened royal lineage at such a cost is an outright, reckless insanity. More, any engagement against an assault backed by the false avatar’s light would be suicidal, if not outright treason!’
Against the timbre of fear in her anger, Dakar shook his head and appealed, ‘King Gestry, far more lies at stake than the welfare of Havish! Mark my word as a prophet, but do so in private where I can be heard!’
Again the royal hand rose for quiet. ‘As you wish. But Halika stays for the closet council, and the princess. Also, my first captain at arms.’
The tent cleared, to many a grudging glower and guarded undertones of disgust. Since Tarens’s unkempt appearance and smashed nose caught the undue share of repressed animosity, Dakar protectively hastened him towards the vacated side of the trestle. ‘Don’t mind their resentment. And don’t misapprise Gestry. Despite his appearance of quiet distraction, he’s engaged with the focus at the Paravian circle, slowly building the powerful charge needed to raise the ward curtain.’
‘That duty would tend to unbalance the mind,’ Tarens said. ‘I saw more than I wished, immersed in the flux currents in Caithwood.’
Dakar dragged up a chair pushed awry by the disgruntled exodus and urged the shaken crofter to take his ease. ‘Gestry’s attuned to crown power, not initiate. His affinity isn’t quite the same thing.’
&nb
sp; The crown princess swooped into the empty seat opposite, her linen over-dress a delicate spring green, with the yoked collar and the cuffs of her shift embroidered with mother of pearl that gleamed to her sprightly movements. Slender and fair with peridot eyes, and a saffron scatter of freckles, she smiled and reached across the boards and clasped Tarens’s rough hand in welcome. ‘We should be ashamed. You came only for help with Torwent’s families, yes? Then take my promise that our poor hospitality will be redressed.’
‘There may not be time!’ Dakar broke in, as the inner council settled to listen. Faced by King Gestry and his caithdein, and hedged from behind by the cantankerous war-captain, he stiffened his courage and plunged. ‘What I will reveal stays in strictest confidence! Swear by your lives you will not divulge what I say without the most dire reason. Once I delivered a prophecy which foretold that the Fellowship of Seven will never recover full strength if the Prince of Rathain dies untimely. The record was sealed in the presence of Althain’s Warden and witnessed by four other Sorcerers. Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn was kept uninformed! But because of the crux that hangs on his fate, Asandir asked him to swear a blood oath that he would use every means to survive, no matter the cost or the consequence.’
The caithdein, Halika, turned utterly white. ‘But no sanctioned heir has ever required such drastic measures—’
‘Never before!’ Dakar interrupted. He snatched a chair for himself, eyes locked on the High King, still standing. ‘That should tell you the gravity of the hour! If the Seven should come to be broken, your charter law loses its backbone. The throne’s sovereign purpose cannot be sustained, or the refuge that maintains the free-wilds mysteries in the first place.’
Gestry sat also. Under the sulphur glare of the torches, his pupils were black wells, rimmed by a pale sliver of iris. ‘I am listening. Go on.’
