Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Well, mountains don’t quake for no reason, as my granduncle would say in Araethura,’ Fionn Areth retorted. When Dakar’s stiff silence gave him no choice but to kill or back down, still in ignorance, he sheathed his steel. Arms crossed, feet planted, he held his ground, while the fat prophet rubbed his chafed skin in scowling, ungrateful relief. ‘Why should I believe the forked tongue of a sorcerer?’

  ‘Spellbinder,’ Dakar groused in correction, then grappled the steel-shod spike of a headache to form a coherent answer. ‘We’re due east of Rockfell, placed on direct line with the ley which crosses the Paravian circle at Ithamon.’

  The herder’s hard stare and blank face showed he failed to see the connection.

  All but yanking his beard in martyred impatience, Dakar bit back his curses and qualified. ‘When Arithon received his due sanction as Teir’s’Ffalenn, a Fellowship ceremony linked his spirit in a vow of dedicated service to the land. The force that just upset our scrying was Rathain’s very heartrock, responding to the distress of its threatened crown prince.’

  ‘I saw Jaelot’s guardsmen in your spelled water,’ Fionn Areth admitted. Thawed enough to relax stiff ideals and his death grip on harebrained histrionics, he stood down, his stout hand released from his sword grip. ‘They’ll surely kill him.’

  Dakar massaged his aching temples, as though gouging pressure could wrest more detail from the wisp of ephemeral memory. ‘Not right away. His captors appeared too scared foolish to act. The petty officer in charge has sent for his captain and strong reinforcements. That could buy delay, perhaps until tomorrow morning.’ He hesitated, pricked by the disturbing hunch something else of importance eluded him. Yet pursuit of that thought led him nowhere. A mental blank wall encompassed his mind, and no prompt stirred his latent prescience.

  Fionn Areth regarded the suspect water, slowly freezing in the tin basin. ‘Is that it? His Grace just dies? Nothing more can be done with your vaunted powers to help?’

  ‘From here? No.’ As though the appeal had not shown a stunning volte-face concerning the use of strong magecraft, Dakar shrugged. ‘I was never the most gifted of Fellowship apprentices.’ Where before knowing Arithon, he would have hedged, now, he just stared at his boots. ‘The sad truth is, I never reached mastery.’ This, despite the embarrassing centuries of Asandir’s thorough instruction.

  Shamed by past failings; not about to be criminally careless twice in the course of one day, the Mad Prophet attended his botched construct. He took strict steps to effect proper ritual, not speaking until he had released the hung remnants of his disrupted conjury.

  While the wind bit cold through the thin, winter sunlight, Dakar rewrapped the stained scrap of linen. His care denounced fate, that within hours, the man whose blood had once soaked the cloth might be lost beyond reach, his spirit passed over Daelion’s Wheel to lay down the harsh burdens of this lifetime. Savaged by regret, that a friendship whose depths had yet to be plumbed might end with such brutal finality, Dakar pitched the iced water from the basin.

  Fionn Areth looked on in dull misery. Contrary creature that he was, his brooding would be sourced in a sudden resurgence of guilt.

  The Mad Prophet saw, and gentled his attacking frustration. ‘All hope isn’t lost. Do you set faith in prayer? Then beg whatever powers will answer that the resonant cry you sensed from Ithamon will call in the attention of the Fellowship. Sethvir, at Althain, will act if he can. He may already have dispatched a Sorcerer. Last I heard, Traithe was camped in the mountains south of Forthmark. The eastern spur of the Kelhorns will resonate to the fifth lane, and despite his crippled strength, he still interprets speech out of stone very clearly.’

  Yet as the Mad Prophet gathered himself and arose, he dared not voice the fullest extent of his fear. Speaking dread thoughts only lent them the more impetus, and allowed them more chance to come true. Yet avoidance could not banish the unpleasant facts: with deadly surety, the distress cry broadcast by the hills of Daon Ramon must raise the Koriathain to alert. They would plumb the cause and discover Arithon’s current state of helplessness. Other Alliance enemies who employed the mage-gifted against Shadow might sense the disturbance as readily. If they knew the old lore well enough to recognize Ithamon’s affirmed linkage to the oathsworn heir of Rathain’s royal line, they would muster and converge on the site with self-righteous zeal and armed war hosts.

  Midwinter 5670

  Winged

  On the winter white verge of the wood lying northeast of Karfael, an old hedge woman with bundled owl feathers laced through her hair slips past the royal guard and grasps the bridle of the young prince’s palfrey, pronouncing, ‘Your Grace, Teir’s’Ilessid! In Ath’s blessed name, I am come to grant you the gift of a luck charm to ward your royal person from danger…’

  High over the snow-covered hills near Ithamon, a golden eagle spirals in upward flight, and when he seems no more than a fleck drifting under the vaulting of cloud, he wings south and westward, his sharp eyes surveying all that moves across the sere Barrens of Daon Ramon…

  Farther south, in an upland valley in Vastmark, a Sorcerer pauses in traverse of a shale slope, his head turned in surprise as the raven launches from its accustomed perch on his shoulder: ‘You’ve been summoned, little brother? Then fly with my blessing, and pass on my news to Sethvir…’

  Winter 5670

  VI.

  Clan War Band

  On his knees in thin snow, Earl Jieret, caithdein of Rathain, braced his gloved hand on a sharp rim of rock to anchor his reeling senses.

  ‘My lord, you’re unwell?’ said an iron, gruff voice to one side. Sidir knew him as deeply as his oldest scar, being one of the fourteen survivors of the slaughtered generation lost to war on the banks of Tal Quorin.

  Beyond reply, the red-bearded clan chieftain jerked his chin in negation. His head whirled still. The nausea that had just emptied his belly yet knifed through him in dousing, white waves. He gripped the rock; waited, sure as rain the sickness that siezed him was not the result of spoiled meat.

  He suffered a resurgence of disorienting darkness, then a moment of rippling confusion as his stressed senses gradually stabilized. The aftermath receded, leaving him stranded in the pallid light of winter afternoon. Above him, torn clouds cast their marching shadows across the high, ocher grasses tipped through the snow-covered barrens of Daon Ramon.

  The day had utterly ceased to be ordinary: the subliminal cry that had knifed through the land resounded still in his memory. As though for one moment the rock and the soil of Rathain had been given voice to express an event of agonized extremity.

  Jieret s’Valerient, Earl of the North, knew but one man for whom such an outcry would manifest. More than the realm’s dedicated caithdein, he was also blood bond to a prince granted lawful sanction for crown rule. Their paired fates stood linked with Rathain’s destiny, a tie that transcended the enactment of ceremony. Asandir of the Fellowship had himself conducted the ritual of affirmation. His was the adept command of the mysteries that had transmuted a handful of dross soil into the silver circlet that conjoined royal flesh and living earth into a lifelong partnership. A Sorcerer’s seal had set the husbandry of five territories on the brow of the mortal man blood-born to uphold the high kingship.

  ‘My lord?’ whispered Sidir, strained to anxiety as the silence extended.

  Jieret braced his leather-clad shoulder against the weathered slab of the rock. Still distinctly unsteady, he scrubbed his pale face with a dousing handful of snow. ‘Trouble,’ he gasped, as his tight throat unlocked.

  He pushed off and arose. The ground underneath him felt too solid, a disjointed, unimaginable distance removed from the uncanny wave of subsonic vibration and refined light that had transmitted his prince’s raw anguish. Sidir caught his groping arm in assistance and steadied the first, awkward step.

  ‘We’ll have to ride hard,’ said Earl Jieret, succinct. His large hands, out of habit, checked the hang of his weapons, then jammed down his brindle
d wolf hat. ‘If I must hazard a caithdein’s guess, an enemy force has outpaced our intent and already made camp at Ithamon.’

  ‘From where?’ Sidir as ever showed no surprise. His stance stayed poised and quiet, except for a gray-shot wing of seal hair, that the wind flicked and lashed across his high forehead, and the stoic, deep lines etched into his windburned features.

  ‘Jaelot, most likely, which means they’re bone stubborn, to have stayed the course through Baiyen Gap.’ Restored to himself, Jieret closed the few strides to his horse and vaulted back into the saddle. He snapped a curt hand signal. The swift, all-but-silent flurry of movement that drew his war band from close cover around him did not fire his usual pride and fierce confidence.

  The rest of his hunch was too ugly to hazard. Certainly his gift of Sight had never before provoked sickness. Yet Jieret was no spirit to shrink from harsh facts. Survival came first. He had to weigh the frightful possibility that the Teir’s’Falenn who embodied clan hopes had suffered a violent blow to the head. If the Master of Shadow was in enemy hands, not only Rathain’s future, but the fate of the world rocked on the brink of disaster. Luhaine’s given warning had been harshly concrete when defining the grim balance that hung upon Arithon’s life thread.

  ‘Ride!’ Jieret shouted, his broad shoulders too determined to bend before the abject terror that raked him. His place was to stand at the shoulder of kings, and if need called, like his father, to die there. The anguish hurt worse than a tearing wound, that Ithamon lay fully twenty leagues eastward, on the far side of a chopped spread of ravines and rough, untenanted territory.

  He might drive his company until their horses foundered, with nothing gained except grief. At two hundred strong, his hard-bitten war band could not cover the distance without rest. Nor could they forgo the short pauses to hunt, while the small, shaggy hill horses prized for their hardiness scoured the lee hillsides for fodder. They faced nothing less than ten days of hard travel, given fair-weather conditions. Even a select strike force sent in advance would reach the ruin too late to matter.

  Bad odds did not reconcile Earl Jieret to the looming possibility of defeat. He would ride past the Wheel of Fate, if need be, to stand with his prince for the passage. Over the next crest, the fresh wind in his face, he counted three hours to sundown.

  ‘Come on, you windbag sack of hot tripes!’ He weathered the bucked stride as the surly hill pony flattened ears to the stab of his heels. ‘You won’t like the life you’ll be forced to lead if my prince meets his hour of reckoning.’

  When the shortest days ended on Daon Ramon Barrens, the light ebbed from the arch of the sky like water drained out of a bowl. The lingering afterglow lit a band of citrine above the cut-sable folds of the hills notching the western horizon. Early stars claimed the deep cobalt of the zenith, nicked flecks of silver that brightened and burned over the swept rock, and deep-drifted, snow-clad swales. The clan companies led by Earl Jieret called a halt to last until the late-night rise of the moon. They would let the hill ponies recover and graze, and snatch rest and sustenance as they could, while the cold settled biting and bitter, and spiked hoarfrost dusted the thickets.

  No fires were lit. Posted scouts stood sharp watch on the ridges, their best assurance no trouble approached the howl of the free-ranging wolf packs.

  The clan courier sent out of Halwythwood overtook them at last. Only canny experience let him spot the deep fold where they camped, thinly covered by scrub and dead bracken. He answered the sentry’s crisp challenge, well aware that drawn bows would stay trained upon him until a cousin affirmed his identity. Led in by the watch on perimeter patrol, the man found Earl Jieret hunkered down on his bearskin cloak, kneading knuckles that reeked of wintergreen horse liniment into the iron-tight sinews of his neck.

  Disheveled, exhausted from unimaginable setbacks, the man delivered the message he had borne like a knife in the chest throughout fifty leagues of hard travel. ‘My lord, I bring desperate news from the west.’

  ‘Sit!’ Jieret ordered. ‘You look ready to fall over.’ He unhooked a flask from the thong on his cross belt, a silver-inlaid horn filled with neat brandy. ‘Speak again when you’re steady.’

  The scout was still youthful, if pitifully haggard. He swayed, then crumpled, in sore need of sleep. His fur jacket was matted. Stout leathers were shreds about calves and knees, ripped to ruin on the briar. To close the long lead and overtake the clan war band, he would have run league after league on foot, one arm linked through a stirrup to spell his wearied horse. Nor had he spared time for the rites at the standing stones, to placate the ghosts that whirled thick as floss on the roadway from Caith-al-Caen. Some of their haunted light shone in his eyes as he gathered frayed nerves and related details of the Alliance armed force now mustered and marching from Morvain.

  Earl Jieret snapped an oath through shut teeth. A bystander ventured a question.

  ‘No mistake.’ Fingers clamped white on the neck of the flask, the courier gasped out the disheartening gist. ‘Our scouts snagged a townsman who strayed too far from camp. He talked. We know Lysaer s’Ilessid himself’s south of Narms. He’s got a sunwheel priest and ten veteran officers spearheading a second strike force of experienced headhunters. Ath help us, they’re guided. The target of both war bands is the ruins at Ithamon. They’re expecting to corner Prince Arithon.’

  ‘Save us all, they will find him.’ Jieret shot to his feet. More than strong fumes from the liniment sheened his eyes to an anguished brilliance. ‘How has this happened? Jaelot’s ahead of us! Morvain and Narms move abroad in deep winter. If Lysaer’s involved, we have to presume they’re acting in concerted strategy. We could find ourselves facing the brunt of an Alliance campaign on the wide-open ground of the barrens.’

  No band of armed clansmen could stand down such numbers, not without forest or mountains to cover them. Nor could Arithon withstand a head-on encounter with his half brother. The affray at Riverton had confirmed the bleak course of the murderous insanity broughton by Desh-thiere’s curse. Jieret felt all of a sudden unmoored, as though the harsh cut of the wind scoured through his hollow sense of foreboding. Far too likely, the clan company mustered from Halwythwood might not leave the barrens alive.

  For of course, they must fight. Turning tail would save nothing. If Arithon died, and Alliance ways triumphed, then across the four kingdoms Lysaer held in sway, clan bloodlines would be laid waste under a decree of extermination.

  His tone sparked to iron, Jieret signaled the perimeter scout, who listened, close-mouthed, at his shoulder. ‘Get me Sidir. Wake the other Companions. Tell them we face a disaster.’

  Unless a clan counsel could find the means to call down a miracle, Rathain’s dwindled liegemen could suffer a repeat of the grief that had blood-soaked the banks of Tal Quorin.

  Under the frost-point blaze of the stars, and amid icy wind in the bracken, the Companions gathered to weigh the course of their forthcoming action. Chafing chilled hands, breaths plumed in the cold, they lit no small fire for comfort. Their wary presence left almost no track on the desolate face of the landscape, with reason. These were the men of Deshir who, as boys, had survived the grim knives of Etarra’s vengeance three decades and one year in the past. On Daon Ramon that night, at the side of their chieftain, were nine of the original fourteen who remained of a slaughtered generation. Three others had since died in forays against headhunters, one in Arithon’s service at Dier Kenton Vale. Another guarded Halwythwood, as war captain and advisor to Jieret’s family. The youngest, and least reconciled to the deaths at Tal Quorin, still maintained an obdurate presence in the endangered clan warrens of Strakewood.

  The hate ran bone deep, for what they had lost. Stark as storm-weathered granite in their rawhide-laced furs and worn weapons, they huddled in darkness to answer the feud that never ceased threatening their people. No moon yet shone to reveal their expressions as the dire news was unfolded. Yet Earl Jieret could sense desperation like bared steel in Sidir’s scouring
silence. The same stifled foreboding was repeated in Theirid’s crossed arms, and Braggen’s fixed grasp on his sword hilts. Opinions were given in minimal phrases. No man disputed the need to split forces. Arithon s’Ffalenn could not be abandoned to suffer the Mayor of Jaelot’s sentence of execution; nor could Lysaer s’Ilessid be permitted to savage Daon Ramon with war under drive of Desh-thiere’s curse.

  The relentless flaw that gutted each strategy became the unyielding reality of numbers. ‘Send too few to Ithamon, we risk losing our prince to the enemy,’ Sidir pointed out. His habitual, acid-etched clarity was enforced by the ramming stab of a finger. ‘Send too many, and the others who ride north to set traps on the Second Age road through the barrens can’t prevail. A handful won’t buy his Grace any time to escape open land and reach safety.’

  No one belabored the unpleasant truth, that the war band which rode to stand down s’Ilessid must shoulder a suicide mission. Earl Jieret had witnessed the firestorm of destruction Lysaer’s gift of light had visited upon the war fleet at Minderl Bay. The swept, snow-clad downs of the barrens would give his clansmen no shelter. Each foray to divert the Alliance advance must be closed under ruinous disadvantage, from a state of relentless exposure.

  ‘We’re going to be targets, no mistake about that.’ Theirid spat in contempt, the black-fox tails tied into his clan braid a barbaric mane down his back. ‘Can’t pin them with arrows, either. Not if they slink like the townbred at Valleygap, and cower beneath their supply wains.’

  Braggen laughed, sour. ‘Well, they can’t very well cram their draft beasts under the axles beside them.’ He lifted his massive shoulders in the shrug that trademarked his hot-tempered courage. ‘Can’t move on Daon Ramon without their supplies. To buy time for our liege, starvation will stall them. The wild game can be hazed off, as well.’