Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  The old woman peered through fogged marble eyes, attuned to some cue beyond sight. ‘Healer trained, are ye? Then ye know well enough, a true quartz will defend against lies and dishonesty. Go on, dearie. Take the crystal you need. Just give someone needy the eight silvers she’s worth when you manage to mend your lapsed fortune.’

  ‘Ath’s blessing on you, mother,’ Elaira replied. ‘I’ll see your kindness repaid tenfold.’ She accepted the crystal, and left in its place a tin of her own spelled emollient, made to ease the pain of stiffened joints.

  The old woman touched the tin, lifted it, and sniffed at the contents. A smile touched her face, easing the wrinkles pinched at the corners of her eyes. ‘There’s a boardinghouse with red shutters on Cod Street. The landlady there may let her attic for a penny, if you offer to attend the complaints of her guests.’ The tin disappeared into the folds of the shawls, and a crabbed finger shook in admonishment. ‘No, dearie. I have lodgings elsewhere, and no memory left for recording elaborate recipes. What meager craft I still practice is more suited to amulets, besides.’

  ‘Then I owe you my heartfelt gratitude. Bless your days.’ Elaira gathered the quartz and moved thankfully on her way.

  Hungry, but in too much hurry to eat, she squeezed past the hawkers who sold bread, hot fish cakes, and sausage. The alley she descended led to the seawall.

  The bay was a heaving cauldron of spindrift. Green, foaming breakers reared up, steep sides glistening, then hammered an uneven percussion of spray against the riprap that fronted the harbor. Wheeling birds landed in the sluice of the runoff, pecking for crustaceans stranded like jewels amid knots of jetsam and weed. Elaira braved the stripping brunt of the winds and filled her tarred bucket with seawater. In shrewd afterthought, she added a gleaner’s harvest of kelp.

  If she planned to earn bread treating quarrymens’ pulped knuckles, she would need to replenish her tincture of iodine.

  The owner of the red-shuttered boardinghouse was a vivacious grandmother whose shrewd glance measured the cut of her seal riding boots, then the quality tanning of the leather pack slung over her cloaked shoulder. ‘One pence was summer rent,’ she insisted, and held out her palm for two coppers.

  Elaira gave in and paid her last coins, well aware hard-nosed bargaining would not prevail on a night with an easterly brewing. Her work required a roof over her head. Soup and coarse bread was included with lodging, and if she did not mind standing in line for the privilege, she could use the common washtub in the laundry.

  ‘Just show me inside,’ she answered, too chilled to stand on the icy stone step any longer.

  The grandame regarded the brimming bucket askance, then grudgingly widened the door and admitted her. Elaira followed her shuffling step over worn runners of carpet, then up a servant’s back stair. The attic landing led into a tiny room with a salt-streaked dormer window. The blankets on the truckle bed were moth-eaten, but clean. Beyond a washstand appointed with a battered tin cup and pitcher, the board floor was bare. Impressed by the size of the dust batts caught in the unswept corners, Elaira sincerely hoped the last occupant had earned her keep carding and spinning.

  ‘Candles cost extra,’ the landlady informed. ‘Water’s drawn from the crank well in the yard. Fetch and haul what you need for yourself.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Elaira stepped over the scuffed wooden threshold, cloak tucked against the drafts that sang through the gapped panes, and rippled the cobwebs over her head. Her breath scribed white plumes in the gray filtered light, and the basin wore armor-clad ice. She deposited her bucket of seawater and kelp, then latched the plank door after the landlady’s departure. Still badly shaken, she scarcely cared that the garret room was unheated. Far worse, to try a course of questionable practice in the precinct of a Koriani sisterhouse.

  ‘Dharkaron avert!’ She was no small bit frightened by her plan to enact reckless upset to Selidie’s expectations.

  Elaira squared her shoulders, firmed quaking nerves, and raked the wet kelp from the bucket. She piled the mass by the frozen basin. Next, she unhooked the tin cup from the washstand and scooped it full of raw seawater. The tarred bucket remained under half-full, its handspan depth just sufficient. Elaira dug through her pack, fingers shaking. She removed the silk-wrapped weight of the scrying sphere. The dread burn of its active sigils of command cast a bone-chilling ache, even through layered cloth.

  In naked trepidation, on a pent breath of terror, she eased the veiled quartz into the saltwater bath in the bucket.

  Sparks flew from first contact. A whine of released power threw off a hot wind as the sigils of binding tore asunder. Elaira jerked back a singed hand, while the water spat and roiled to the blast of unwound coils of energy. Crouched on her heels, her blistered hand cradled, she held on to hope that the quartz sphere could withstand the liberating force as the sigils dissolved without cracking.

  ‘Be free,’ she whispered in earnest encouragement. ‘Let the spells of coercion be lifted.’

  If the sphere had been loaned to help track Rathain’s prince, she would employ her own skills, leaving no loophole for unasked assistance through the seals of a preset binding. There would be no fertile ground for slipped steps, no avenue left for blind snares. The Prime’s bitter bargain to guard Arithon’s life would not be won upon hidden traps or sly trickery. By nightfall this day, Elaira avowed she would cast off all resource upon which to hang the obligation of her order’s oath of debt. If the hour ever came when for wisdom and compassion she must claim her given option to betray her heart’s love, she would use her own power by free choice. Though she die in the effort, she would shoulder a future that relied on naught else but the course of her cognizant will.

  The steps she must tread held no recorded precedent. Each minute brought dreadful uncertainty. The quartz she had cast to its fate in the pail offered no safe reassurance. While it thrashed and rattled and shook through its passage to a cleared state of neutrality, Elaira sweated and hoped. The striking eruption of violence appalled her, as the virtue of salt water stripped out the yoked power of uncounted active sigils. Every instinct shrilled with alarm. The process appeared to be lasting too long. She had been a six-year-old child when the order’s seniors in Morvain had inducted her for her talents. All her Koriani arts had been learned by rote, her specialized experience aligned for an herbalist’s practice.

  Closed in the barren solitude of a two-penny attic chamber, the quartz sphere her need had put to the test delivered a stark lesson in humility. Elaira pressed shaken hands to her heart. ‘Ath’s mercy, forgive!’ She realized how little she understood the coiling depths of the powers she engaged day to day, without thought, sheltered beneath the insular traditions fostered by the sisterhood.

  Elaira endured, helpless and afraid as she measured the shocking scope of her ignorance. Compassionate care proved inadequate; her knowledge of healing fell woefully short. She had no advanced skills to ease the crystal through its rough passage. The efficacy of her talent fed through runes and seals, harnessed by the time-tested rituals that aligned cause to effect and bridged the veil in chained constructs that magnified will into raised power.

  ‘Bide whole!’ she entreated the traumatized sphere. ‘Please. Don’t let my folly lead to lasting harm.’

  As though speech keyed response, the tempest in the bucket subsided. The churned water smoothed and settled to rest, with the crystal’s clear structure unfractured. Elaira crouched on her heels, her limpid relief spiked through by renewed trepidation. The release just effected would not escape notice. Any flux of shed energy deflected the lane current, and the dispersal of worked sigils always released a distinct signature. The peer sister assigned to keep routine watch would recognize that imprint. She might wait until sundown and list the incident amid her routine report. Or she might be a scryer gifted with foresight and sound the alarm at the prompt of sharp-eyed experience.

  Elaira wiped dampened palms on her sleeves, then unstuck the wisped hair from her temples. Time wa
s her enemy. If she paused for one moment to nurse her faint nerves, a Koriani senior might break down her door under outraged instruction to stop her. For the willful step of blanking the scrying sphere posed but the first stage of necessity. Her next course of action was going to spark fury, if not an incensed cry for arraignment.

  She shoved back to her feet. A questing sense of Arithon’s awareness ranged in chills over her skin. She distanced his concern, too terrified to dwell on the chance of obstructive ramifications. Worst case, she might face the supreme punishment for oathbreaking, if Prime Selidie’s promise of unfettered choice did not allow her to claim full initiative. Elaira braced against the washstand, too wrung with dread to question the price she might pay for unbending self-honesty. The tin cup with its fateful cargo of seawater all but slipped from her nerveless grasp. She forced her wrist steady. One by one, she stamped down the gathering fears that threatened to shred her resolve. Her love for Prince Arithon was caught in the breach. She dared do no less than employ concrete safeguards.

  Elaira unhooked the silver chain at her neck and drew off the strung quartz that served as her personal spell crystal. Talisman for her power, carrier of the seals and sigils which held the focal point for her talent, the sliver of stone had been her companion since the hour she passed her novice initiation. Today, the flaring warmth of the stone’s presence engendered no surge of confidence. Set against the Prime Matriarch’s insidious designs, its familiar quiet radiance masked pitfalls and dangers. Elaira could not evade the harsh truth. The crystal itself belonged to the order. It would be reclaimed and cleared at her death, then reissued to another enchantress. The fact its possession was a borrowed resource could pose an unseen liability. Elaira poised the tin cup. Shaking, she prepared to reject the temptation that its everyday usage might serve to trap Arithon under Koriani obligation.

  She would clear the quartz, living, and unbind its attunements, and bear the gamut of unknown consequences.

  Poised over salt water, the crystal looked innocent, a flashy bauble that sheared light into rainbow refractions.

  In reality, its function sustained an intricate balance of forces. A personal spell quartz bonded with its wearer. The complexity of its matrix evolved with use, often aligned with prerogatory directives imprinted by the will of the Prime’s Senior Circle. Elaira fought ebbing courage. Twenty-eight years ago, Morriel Prime had selected her for longevity. The crystal held haplessly dangling had bindings laid into its fields that sustained and renewed living tissue. To clear out the quartz would disrupt patterned energies, with the recoiling effects of unsanctioned release rewritten in her hapless flesh.

  All her experience with healing and craft lent no guidance to predict the near future. She had no grace for soul-searching thought, and no safe chance to seek deeper knowledge. The cleansing properties of salt were most final, and utterly unselective. Once the crystal was submerged, the spells of suspension that revitalized her body would unwind, then bleed away into entropy.

  She could but hope, as she steeled nerves and will, that the shock of release would not kill her. To leave Arithon’s fate to Lirenda’s design posed the potential for outright disaster.

  Eyes tightly closed, Elaira tried and failed to calm the rushed pound of her heart. The rasping itch of wool mantle against skin; the draw of each breath through her lungs; the tempestuous shrilling of wind: all subtle sensation conspired to unstring her resolve and mire her in hopeless dread. Life tied her too strongly. The looming fear of greeting death’s shadow urged her to shrink from impeccable commitment. Worse, she might live, wasted or crippled by backlash thrown off as the linked sigils in her aura dispersed.

  ‘Ath help me, I can’t do this.’

  Yet even as she wavered, stark honesty stung her. At the crux, she loved Arithon more. The integrity that cemented his trust crossed beyond life, went past nerve, flesh, and bone, and the bounds of sane limits and safety.

  Elaira released the dangling chain. Hard braced for the shock of inflexible fate, she let her quartz take the plunge toward salt water.

  The same instant, a firm hand closed over her slacked fingers. A half-sensed, fast movement, and a soft sigh of cloth intercepted the crystal’s immersion. A gentle voice chided, ‘There are better ways to establish the safeguards you seek.’

  Elaira recoiled, instinctively too wise to scream. Her wide opened eyes met a white-robed, male figure who stood as though bathed in moonlight. His grip on her hand was warm, and not harsh. She could have pulled free on a wish, had she chosen. But the unearthly calm of his presence was not either forceful or threatening. The silver and gold ciphers that patterned his hood marked him out as an adept of Ath’s Brotherhood.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she gasped, stupid and stammering with shock.

  His smile lit the bare room like new sunlight. ‘Sethvir of the Fellowship thought you needed help.’ He released her fingers, then pried the tin cup from the frozen grasp of her hand. The fluid economy of poured water graced each move as he set the tin next to the basin. Then, his brown, almond eyes deep and grave, he regarded the spell crystal caught in the cloth-wrapped palm of his hand. ‘Do you mind if I hold this?’

  ‘By all means, be my guest.’ Elaira stepped back, folded at the knees, and dropped rump first on the cot. Dust flew from straw ticking. She sneezed, blotted wet cheeks with the back of her wrist, then surveyed her uncanny visitor. ‘If I had a chair, I’d invite you to sit. Since I don’t, please feel free to share my perch on the landlady’s mattress.’

  Beyond middle age, Ath’s adept inclined his head, then pushed back the folds of his hood. Graying ash hair tumbled over his shoulders. His face was strong boned, and serene as rubbed ivory, and his knuckles, workworn as a farmer’s. ‘Thank you. Be sure I won’t stay one moment more than I’m welcome.’

  ‘Sit then.’ Elaira slid over and made room. ‘Why didn’t I hear you come in?’

  His step on bare floorboards was light, but not soundless; his weight settled like snowfall beside her. His clothes smelled of balsam, and his laughter fell rich as the deep shade of tropical night. ‘Well, you didn’t because the gateway that brought me resides in the crystal you just claimed from the market.’

  Elaira opened her mouth, closed it, and forcefully stilled her clamor of thunderstruck nerves. ‘Then I need not be concerned that the peer seniors in my order should suspect I have mystical company?’

  The initiate opened his palm and revealed her quartz pendant nestled inside a halo of grainy, gold light. ‘You need fear for nothing. This room, and our words from here forward are as a dream, one step removed from the reality you know. Sigils can’t breach this octave of vibration, far less carve a foothold for impact.’

  ‘Traithe once built a fire,’ Elaira allowed, too stressed and too tired to grapple nonlinear logic. ‘Since your time is a gift too precious to waste, I’ll let you explain without my green questions and curiosity.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ Settled at ease on his end of the cot, one shoulder braced to the wall, the adept seemed a figure loomed from ghostly silk and spun light from ethereal vision. ‘Time is an illusion shaped by need and belief. The trust you have embraced for Prince Arithon’s sake cannot be sustained without honesty. I’m here to open a doorway to knowledge, beginning with explanations.’

  Elaira’s expression of owlish thought broke under the relentless strain. She arose and paced. The cramped garret could scarcely contain the scope of the terrors that threatened to shatter her. Since the fires of Sithaer yawned at her feet, she opened the point that could catapult her into trouble. ‘I made no conscious appeal to Sethvir.’

  ‘You did not.’ Ath’s adept tracked her agitation, amused, but not patronizing. Aware her question scratched only the surface, he answered her core of concern. ‘Your Prime Matriarch has been given no grounds to serve punishment, unless you can be taken to task for acquiring a piece of rock crystal. No rule forbids you. Yet there’s a quirk in your order’s history that’s only revealed to t
hose in the highest ranks. Your major focusing jewels, and all personal quartz crystals held in Koriani use, were never mined on Athera.’

  Elaira poised against the ice-etched panes of the dormer, her level brows pinched with reflection. ‘The stones were brought in when mankind begged sanctuary? Then those crystals won’t be tied by the compact?’

  ‘More.’ Smile vanished, the adept met and matched her determined stance. ‘Those crystals are not of Athera. Therefore they exist outside the scope of Sethvir’s earth-sense, as well.’

  The cold little garret seemed suddenly dimmer, though sundown was two hours away. Elaira tucked her fingers under her cloak to ward off a creeping chill. ‘Are you telling me Althain’s Warden cannot see them at all?’

  The adept denied nothing. ‘More to the point, Sethvir’s gift grants him intimate contact with those crystals whose being evolved on Athera. Through the one the crone gifted, he captured the echoed cry of your tormented emotion. In his wisdom, he deduced your intent to be clear of the sigils of power your order enacts to imprint the face of creation. The step you just took on your own strength of character has opened an alternate path. Put simply, you asked. Ath’s grace returns answers. My presence offers the means to pursue a gateway to higher understanding.’

  Elaira swept back to her perch on the pallet, her gray eyes wide and intense. The first, incredulous tremor of excitement cut through clammy fear as she grasped the frayed threads of her courage. ‘You are offering me power without strings to the order, that I might use for Prince Arithon’s defense?’

  ‘True power is neither given nor taught,’ the adept said in mild correction. ‘The key to the great mysteries is a gift to be claimed, arisen from wakened knowledge of the self. The course of discovery must be your own. I can serve as a mouthpiece for truth. You must draw the map. My words may affirm your first footsteps.’

  Too cautious to trust fully, given her assigned charge, Elaira pounced on the glaring discrepancy. ‘That’s why you spared my quartz from being cleared in salt water?’