Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  Fionn Areth flushed, grumbled an apology in his backcountry dialect, then relented enough to let Dakar lead him into the shelter of the tumbledown mill.

  The roof had caved in to a rickle of slate, but the beamed track of the log carriage for the saw still stood. The planked platform winnowed the worst of the snow. In the single dry corner, cut off from the wind, Dakar had lit a neat fire. A pot of gruel bubbled over the flames. Four horses munched hay, tied by neck ropes to the skewed post of the mill shaft, its base secured by the massive runnerstone that had ground countless harvests of barley. The animals’ warmth blunted the edge from the cold. Beside three heaped saddles, acquired by means of forged requisitions and subterfuge, Dakar had blankets and cloaks and thick boots lined with lamb’s wool. The collection included two buck knives, a hunting bow, and provisions fit for a trek across mountain terrain.

  ‘Oh, well done, Dakar.’ Arithon unhooked the iced clasps on his mantle, hung the sopped cloth on the sacklift, and accepted the blanket tossed into his numbed hands. Swathed like a wraith, he resumed his expert inspection. ‘Where are the spirits?’

  Dakar chuckled. ‘Here was I, wishing the troublesome brains had been frozen clean out of your head. I’ve got spiced wine laced full of restoratives. If you drink too much, don’t damn me tomorrow. You’ll feel like your innards got packed with wet sand, with river rocks jammed in your eye sockets.’

  Between helping Fionn Areth, the Mad Prophet unslung a cord from his neck and passed over a stoppered skin flask.

  Arithon fumbled his effort to draw the cork. He grimaced, used his teeth, then shut his eyes in distaste and belted a hefty draught. The offensive sting made his eyes water. A husked burr of betrayal roughened his voice. ‘You didn’t mention lye-stripping the tissue off my poor vocal cords. I won’t sing a true note for a week.’

  ‘And right blessed that misfortune will be!’ Dakar shot back, scathing. ‘Given the powers you’ve roused up in blind ignorance, we’re lucky not to be cinders scattered over the Ath-forsaken dunes of Sanpashir!’

  He snatched up Fionn Areth’s discarded shirt, wrung out the cuffs, and hung the linen to dry. ‘You’ll find a clean tunic and smallclothes in the saddle pack.’ At the young man’s hesitation, his moon features knit into a glower fit to torch silk. ‘Don’t even think to protest obligation. You’re the guest of your crown prince. He’s oathbound by law to provide you his best hospitality.’

  ‘We’re touchy,’ observed Arithon, his thoughtful gaze on the Mad Prophet’s back. He rolled a sawn log closer to the fireside. As though his balance might desert him without warning, he perched. ‘Has your pending fit of prescience not lifted since sundown?’

  Bent over, rummaging through saddle packs like a corpulent thresher, with Fionn Areth hovering with bad humor and crossed arms, Dakar grumbled through his beard. ‘I’m hungover. Jaelot’s gin is a grade below horse piss – that much hasn’t changed in twenty years.’

  ‘I’m remiss.’ A wry grin lit Arithon’s fox features, tinged orange in the flicker of firelight. ‘Why not sample your vile restorative?’ He passed back the flask, while the tireless wind skirled snow devils across the darkened gap of the tailrace.

  The Mad Prophet ignored both comment and offering. Straightened up burdened to the chin with bunched clothing, he foisted the pile without apology on Fionn Areth. ‘Put those on.’ He accepted the flask and slapped its gurgling bladder on top of a sheepskin jacket. ‘As soon as you’re dressed, drink up. We’ve got to be moving before midnight.’

  Fionn Areth gaped, his arms clutching his third change of raiment since morning. ‘Why can’t we rest here?’

  Dakar threw up his hands, eyes rolled to white rings. ‘Because this is solstice, and the lane tides were unleashed to deliver your crown prince to Jaelot.’

  When Fionn Areth looked blank, Arithon ventured a more civil explanation. ‘This ruin sits on a natural watercourse. At midnight, a cresting flow of raw power will rip through the site like a conduit. Without the Paravian rituals to mitigate, the flood will rattle and shake any structure not blessed into alignment with the flow of Ath’s greater mystery.’

  ‘This mill tore to wreckage in the last causal event. And before you ask, yes, it was Arithon who sang the same powers active in Jaelot twenty-five years ago.’ Nakedly worried, Dakar stowed his bulk on a saddle pack. ‘The repeat performance to break your captivity might easily fell the last stones in these walls. You want to sleep under the rubble?’

  ‘I won’t sleep at all where there’s sorcery afoot,’ Fionn Areth retorted. Having suffered the brunt of mistaken identity, only narrowly spared execution for the selfsame sorceries raised by the hand of his nemesis, he gave each fold of clothing his suspicious inspection. If he expected copper-thread sigils worked through the seams of the hems, he encountered nothing amiss. Only sturdy, stitched hemp and plain cerecloth linings. Defeated at last by the merciless chill, he burrowed into a shirt and tunic better suited to his build than the castoffs garnered from the lady’s servant who had helped them evade close pursuit.

  While sorcerer and prophet shared out gruel and brisk talk, the herder buckled on his sword, then donned jacket and cloak. Leaned on a post, determined to stand guard, he declined to eat, wary lest he fall sound asleep among enemies.

  The contents of Dakar’s flask had a faint, metallic aftertaste. Fionn Areth drank deeply, too parched to realize that the spellcraft he reviled was in fact bound into the spirits. Grasslands ignorant, he gave no thought to question, even as the pungent restorative burned through his body and revitalized flagging, sore muscles. Restored to clear focus, warmed and eased back to comfort, he followed the conversation ongoing between the Mad Prophet of legend and the prince whose appearance the goatherd shared.

  ‘The Fellowship knows, then?’ Arithon asked concerning the defeated plot that entwined them.

  ‘Once you crossed through Jaelot’s outer wall, you broke through the ward the witches had set to forestall Sethvir’s earth-sense.’ Preoccupied with securing the saddle packs, Dakar shrugged. ‘Better worry more for Jaelot’s patrols. If I couldn’t scry you, then the Koriani seers are going to be hobbled as well.

  Their clairvoyants can’t act in full force for as long as the snow keeps falling.’ The water element in the storm would maze the transmission of spells set through a quartz focus.

  Arithon paused with his spoon half-raised, his level glance suddenly piercing. ‘Dakar, that didn’t answer my question.’

  The Mad Prophet hunched his thick shoulders. Both hands stayed engrossed with the straightforward task of threading a strap through a buckle. ‘Why can’t you accept that I’m out of my depth?’

  Arithon’s expectant silence stretched taut.

  ‘Very well, I can speculate. Sethvir’s surely known about Fionn Areth’s transformation for years.’ Dakar gave over the truth in stark misery. ‘Since the boy swore the Koriathain his free-will consent over a crystal focus, the Sorcerers can do nothing by way of direct intervention.’

  ‘Go on. There’s more.’ Arithon let down his spoon, well aware his companion’s diligent tidiness was in fact an outright avoidance.

  Dakar jabbed the tang through the leather with a force he withheld from his language. ‘For today’s round of upsets, we’re both in the dark. I warned you before. Something set an aberration through the lane’s flux last night. Such an event on the cusp of the solstice has certainly led to an imbalance. Grievous enough to blind Sethvir’s vision. Or else your bid to reach Jaelot would have been stopped well before the Sanpashir focus reached resonance.’

  ‘That’s old ground for argument, surely?’ Arithon set his stew bowl aside, banal to the point of disinterest.

  Yet Fionn Areth was not fooled. Set on edge by such casual firsthand reference to Fellowship resources and magecraft, he bristled, his unease lent preternatural spin by the spell-charged effects of the wine. Warm food and shelter notwithstanding, he noticed: Arithon had not shed his piercing wariness, either.

&nbs
p; Nor was Dakar convinced by lame gestures. ‘All right.’ His capitulation exposed his threadbare fear. ‘I sent for help, a plea made under the permissions you gave to be used in last line of defense. No Fellowship Sorcerer has answered.’

  ‘Which doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been sidetracked by a catastrophe,’ Arithon pointed out, reasonable, except for the sly, lightning glance to one side that gauged Fionn Areth’s poorly leashed temper. ‘The Sorcerers might just be allowing matters to run their due course by choice.’

  Dakar glowered back, but had the good sense to keep quiet. He, too, noted the dangerous antipathy the herder showed toward Arithon.

  ‘His Grace will have a plan,’ the Mad Prophet said in a belated effort to soothe. ‘At least, he passed an almighty thick sheaf of orders to the captain he left entrusted with care of his brigantine.’

  ‘There was always a contingency,’ Arithon agreed. Settled enough to have recovered his appetite, he scraped the savory last dregs from the bowl and washed out the residue with snowmelt. Just as seamlessly unperturbed, he requested an oiled rag. Then he cleared his crusted sword from its scabbard and began the deferred chore of cleaning. The fouled blade was rubbed down through an ongoing discussion of covert land routes to Tharidor.

  As though fingers and rag were not crimsoned with stains from six brutally slaughtered guardsmen, Arithon concluded, ‘Evenstar should call in port there sometime before the thaws break. She’ll give us secure passage to Alestron, where Vhandon and Talvish will see us safely back to the Khetienn, offshore.’

  When Dakar looked mollified, Arithon grinned. ‘Well, that was the promise that bought their hardheaded cooperation.’ He gave a critical squint down his blade, the unearthly, dark metal of its forging like wet slate. The inlaid Paravian runes caught the sheen from the fire, sullen in mystery as molten glass drawn on the rod before shaping. Lined in the leaping, uncertain flame light, the thread silver edges gleamed straight and true. The uncanny temper showed no pit of rust, nor the wear left from commonplace sharpening. ‘Vhandon got his chance to revisit home soil, and Talvish couldn’t argue the blandishment. The s’Brydion duke can most likely be cozened to keep Khetienn provisioned in my absence.’

  Arithon tossed the fouled rag in the flames, then companionably offered the oil to Fionn Areth, whose weapon was wet, and not kept preserved by ensorceling spells out of legend. ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ the Shadow Master confided. ‘The s’Brydion clan are warmongering lions who judge a man first by his armament.’

  ‘What makes you think I’ll stand with you to Tharidor? Or that I care for the criminal bent of your byplays with Lysaer’s sworn allies?’ Fionn Areth drew himself up, braced to defiance by the spelled wine. ‘On no count did I promise to stay in your company beyond Jaelot’s outer walls.’

  ‘Well then, oil your sword,’ urged Arithon, agreeable. ‘Because on that count we’re going to fight.’

  ‘Damn you both!’ Dakar plowed erect, the stick he used to poke up the fire dropped in a shower of sparks. ‘I may have wards up, but they won’t protect from an outright indulgence of folly.’

  As Fionn Areth accepted the invitation and the oil, and Arithon, indulgent, tore another strip of rag, the Mad Prophet howled ripe protest. ‘Fiends plague, you goose-brained s’Ffalenn bastard! That boy is scarcely past adolescence! To him, your fool mockery is serious!’

  ‘I’m serious, as well.’ Arithon’s green eyes stayed imperious, their hard brilliance as faceted emerald. To the young man who ranged opposite, drawn steel in hand, plying the rag over and over his weapon’s honed edge, Rathain’s sovereign prince minced no niceties at all. ‘Shall we cross swords? Very good.

  That should settle all differences. Let’s please set the stakes very clearly beforehand.’

  ‘No stakes,’ Fionn Areth rebutted. ‘I just want you dead. That’s what drew me from Araethura in the first place.’

  ‘I took that as given,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn. ‘Now hear out my terms.’ Against Dakar’s furious, clashing reproof, his challenge continued, implacable. ‘I say you’re on our side, whether you like my morals or not. The Koriathain are to blame for your trial of misfortune, but their meddling left you with my face. Despite my list of disreputable habits, I won’t stand aside and see you gutted as my namesake. Neither will I drag my close friends into jeopardy by saving you from the faggots again. The only men I trust with your safety are my own. To change that, you’ll have to defeat me.’

  For answer, Fionn Areth stripped off cloak and jacket and jerked up his chin. ‘We’ll take this outside?’

  Arithon arose, all trim grace, to meet him. The blanket slipped off his squared shoulders, unnoticed, while the smoke-dusky steel in his hand flashed with a predator’s confidence. ‘Kill me, and the townsmen will heap you with praise. No doubt Dakar will be amazed to see how you go about claiming the hero’s honors while wearing my royal likeness.’

  ‘You can’t do this.’ A contrast of lumbering corpulence, the Mad Prophet shoved upright and attempted to thrust in between.

  Arithon drove him back with a glance, then faced Fionn Areth, the furious temper of his bloodline a welded, unyielding presence. ‘Seize the opportunity,’ he goaded. ‘Take me down! Cast me bleeding in the mud. For the murdered children at Tal Quorin, seize the moment to claim retribution.’

  Fixated, Fionn Areth stalked past the fire. ‘Shall we start?’ He tested the edge on his blade, prepared to cut down that light, silken voice, the withdrawn countenance and cat-footed poise of the spiteful creature who opposed him. Who wore frayed wool and linen with the arrogance of fine velvet, and whose contempt seemed to scald every private, inner wound and gall-broken dream with bright viciousness.

  Dakar watched, stunned breathless, as the goatherd arose to take the thrown gauntlet. Like a moth’s suicidal plunge to the flame, he resumed his plea for intervention. ‘Arithon, damn you! Have you gone mad? The wards I’ve set weren’t made to mask sound! Fight with steel, and the noise will draw guardsmen.’ The Mad Prophet snatched at Arithon’s sleeve and found himself shaken off.

  ‘I want this,’ said the Master of Shadow, unequivocal. His most scalding nod encompassed Fionn Areth, who paced back and forth with impatience. ‘He holds my given word I would answer to justice. Since we’re not going to stop, show the good sense to back off.’

  ‘Good sense?’ Dakar cried in shrill disbelief. ‘You’re the one who intends to cross steel in the dark, over glare ice and slippery footing! Not since you tried tienelle before Dier Kenton Vale have I seen you act this irresponsible.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to trust that I have my sound reasons.’ Arithon brushed past, committed.

  As he rounded the fire, Dakar glimpsed the stained bandage showing beneath his left shirt cuff. Concern fanned his anger. ‘Then get yourself killed! I don’t want to watch.’ While the prince and his look-alike stepped into the storm, the Mad Prophet turned to the thankless task of breaking camp and saddling the horses.

  In the millyard outside, the raking east wind swept the snow to a thinned, brittle sheet. The pristine layer silenced footfalls as Fionn Areth and the man he pledged to destroy lined up to cross killing steel. A gust hissed down the cleared gash of the tailrace. Its funneled fury lashed at exposed hands and faces and moaned unchecked through the fir thickets. Darkness choked the impaired visibility down to an unreliable few yards.

  If the man of experience now held second thoughts, no sign of hesitancy showed in the angle of the sword he raised up to guard point.

  Nor did Fionn Areth shrink at the crux. Heedless that spelled wine had bolstered his resources, he stood braced to reclaim willful charge of the prophecy the Araethurian seeress had made at his birth. ‘Begin,’ he rang out. ‘In the name of the Light, start the trial whenever you’re ready.’

  Arithon s’Ffalenn remained stilled, his held steel a motionless line scribed against felted darkness. ‘Oh, no boy. You have your priorities dead wrong. For Alliance principles or for Morriel Prim
e, I won’t play. If you would aspire to become Lysaer’s puppet, you’ll close on the same terms that he has. Just as at Tal Quorin and Vastmark, you’ll have to be first to attack.’

  ‘You think I lack courage?’ Fionn Areth launched into an immediate lunge, gratified by the belling clang as his blade met his enemy’s firm parry.

  The slick footing demanded exacting balance. Arithon engaged the classic defense, his style and form letter-perfect. Despite adverse conditions, Fionn Areth flushed with self-confidence. His years of hard training rose to the occasion. He moved to heightened focus, prepared to carve out his own ebullient brilliance.

  He blocked Arithon’s strong but predictable counterthrust, and answered. Steel chimed. Like dancers engaged in partnered combat, the duelists circled, their swords a glancing point of contact between them. Fionn Areth took no chances. Deliberate in technique, he held down his hot nerves, gratified as he measured Arithon’s offensive, and content to await the clear-cut opportunity to close with a lethal stroke.

  Through the back-and-forth, testing exchange of first blows, he matched his antagonist’s form. Not a large man, the Master of Shadow countered weight and force with neat footwork. The polished execution of each thrust and parry displayed the temper of unruffled experience. Fionn Areth gave that spare style his reasoned analysis. He had heard the exalted heights to which this man, as Masterbard, had carried his gift of music. Time demanded limitation: few men might support the same brilliance in two different arenas at once.

  Engage and spring back, then sideslip; the locked patterns of combat stamped overlapped prints in the draw. Each parry cast the ring of sheared steel through the cloaking mantle of darkness. Between whining gusts, the high banks of the millrace funneled the din of each passage. Nor did the muffling snowfall do aught to mask tortured dissonance, as blade locked to blade, then screamed edge to flat upon parting.