Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  Still near the coast, on the fringe of the wood, the patrol followed a forester’s trail cut across fir-cloaked flatlands. The scattered few clearings fed browsing deer, preyed upon by nothing more fearsome than the occasional swift-running wolf pack. The troop would cast out more scouts and outriders as the rolling ground met the rockier crags of the Tornir foothills.

  As always, the seasoned patrol captain rode the length of the column in morning review.

  ‘Fool horse,’ he chided, as his seal brown gelding tussled the bit in high fettle. ‘You in a rush to get flamed to a cinder? Go ahead, then. Just keep on acting the flighty goose. You’ll be dead meat and get left as a carcass, picked over by wolves and ravens.’ The horse shook its head, snorted, and jig-stepped, long since inured to the strings of mock threats crooned by its craggy rider.

  Yet today, the teasing play between horse and man did not win the usual lump of molasses filched as a treat from the cook. The field captain firmed his hand on the rein and sighed through his teeth in resignation. He would rather be digging latrines as a recruit than shoulder this foray through Westwood. No bracing fight lay ahead for these men, but a madness better suited to the uncanny tricks of a Sorcerer. Since time beyond memory, Fellowship spellcraft had always contained the escaped packs of Khadrim. In the sane light of reason, no veteran company of Alliance guard with steel weapons and bows were a match for such vicious predators.

  Yet the packet of orders sent by fast courier from the High Priest at Avenor had decreed the Fellowship’s compact was tyranny. For profit, the trade guilds applauded the edict. Since no Sorcerer had emerged to contain the flying scourge that slaughtered at whim through the north wood, no faction in Tysan’s council was likely to give the matter an argument.

  Beneath the thatched shadows of Westwood’s dark firs, the troop captain swore with rare venom. High Priest Cerebeld’s reply to his earlier letter had all but named him craven for expressing rock-hard common sense. Nor had the directive set under the Light’s sunwheel seal given him any choice. Khadrim ranged at large. The guild ministers feared the marauding packs would threaten the movement of commerce over the trade roads. With the Prince of the Light away to fight Shadow, the Alliance field garrison was duty bound to step into the breech.

  Securely positioned near the middle of the column, Prince Kevor cuffed away the playful blond squire who leaned from his saddle and suggestively named a court maiden. ‘Oh, get away! She does not! And anyway, you’re ungallant to suggest such behavior in a company of right-thinking men.’

  The squire grinned, insolent, while his smart chestnut gelding skittered in response to his brash shift in balance. ‘She does so! Even kisses the carpet where your foot treads, and how do you know the men in this company have one set of right thoughts between them?’

  ‘Well, for one thing,’ Kevor retorted, flushed red, ‘I haven’t been able to escape my palace tutors long enough to go in one brothel, far less the variety we’ve heard discussed every night around the campfires.’ While his friend puffed his chest and drew breath to rebut him, he issued a laughing challenge. ‘You’ve been with a lady in any of those dives? Swear? Then describe her. Surely Ranne’s cousin is worldly enough to have spent a paid night there. Let’s ask him to vouch for the doxy you speak of.’

  The younger squire with the freckled nose stoutly defended his friend. ‘That leaves your Grace as the moral example?’ Paused to duck a low-hanging branch, he cast a sly glance sideways.

  ‘What about that herb witch with the owl-feather talismans who accosted you by the roadside? Did you keep that disgusting token she gave you?’

  ‘A small white stone,’ Kevor corrected. The back-snapping branch dusted his surcoat with shed needles, and the astringent scent of green balsam. ‘Clean as any other quartz pebble the innocuous old bat could rake from a Camris streambed.’ Tysan’s heir readjusted his reins. Turned suddenly serious in his disturbing new way of casting slight matters against a larger-scale tapestry, he finished, ‘She was a harmless old woman, and a subject of the realm. As her future liege, I was merely being polite.’

  The stone in fact still tumbled loose in his scrip, untouched since the moment he had tucked it away.

  ‘Old besom’s a witch,’ the older squire insisted, agile enough to duck the next branch sprung on him in punitive vengeance. ‘When Vorrice finds her, he’ll have her arraigned for dark spellcraft.’

  ‘Worse,’ mocked the boy in the lead, twisted in his saddle to stab a self-righteous finger toward his flustered young prince. ‘If High Priest Cerebeld hears you accepted her charm, he’ll have you called on the carpet for embracing the forces of Darkness.’

  Even set amid teasing play, the name of the High Priest tucked Kevor’s features to an imperious frown. ‘Let Cerebeld try!’ Light temper gone as though reamed by a chill, the s’Ilessid heir pressed impetuous heels to his mount. The blooded horse bolted into a brisk canter, and left the two squires behind in a pelting shower of snow clods.

  Braced by the winter breeze in his face, Kevor shrugged away the recurrent premonition that the High Priest’s eyes watched his back. He had never trusted Cerebeld. The instinctive avoidance that carried throughout his childhood had catalyzed to dislike on the solstice, when the night sky had erupted in portents. That hour had brought him to take his first stand as crown prince.

  Every man in the city garrison knew his act had stayed Avenor’s populace from running riot in fear.

  The affray had aroused the High Priest’s enmity, as well as the adulation of a people the s’Ilessid heir must one day rule. Now more than ever, Kevor dared not voice his bone-deep distaste for the crown’s practice of burning the wretches the Light’s tribunal convicted for sorcery. Often thoughtfully private, where most boys his age might indulge their outspoken opinion, Prince Kevor could but hope Gace Steward’s sly scrutiny overlooked his strained bearing, each time Tysan’s justice consigned the condemned to the sword and the faggots.

  He had found space to breathe, away with the field troop, released from the tight expectations of royal birthright and the incessant demands of court politics. Fair mornings like this one, traveling in the company of men under the vaulting branches of Westwood, he could sometimes forget he was the Divine Prince’s heir. He could snatch the rare moment and run his fine charger, and imagine himself free of obligation.

  Kevor pressed his horse faster, at one with the beast as it swerved right and left, carving a track through the trees. Fir boughs and mane slapped his red cheeks, and the air filled his lungs to intoxication. The sky overhead shone a limitless blue, beckoning mind and spirit with the promise of dreams that could break every earthbound constraint.

  In piquant rebellion, the prince wished the stolen moment might last until his horse was blown to exhaustion.

  Responsible recognition hard followed, that his mount deserved better respect. Worse than that, if he indulged his whim, somebody else’s reliable reputation must bear the inflexible consequence. Soon enough, one of his honor guard must spur his mount to overtake, understanding a boy’s natural yearning for space, and apologetic for the duty his oath had lifesworn him to follow.

  This time, it was Ranne’s horse that thundered alongside. The guard’s good-natured face was politely averted, the blunt set to his shoulders a statement clearer than speech: he had lagged behind for as long as he could stretch the reasonable limits of protocol.

  Kevor reined in, too acutely aware the man would suffer the captain’s displeasure if he continued to vent his explosion of youthful frustration. While the big gelding under him blew snorts of white steam and curvetted in headshaking protest, Kevor tipped back his chin and let the icy air blast down his collar. The heat in him still burned, regardless.

  Ahead and behind on the quaint forest track, the field company rode armed in their polished city steel, bravely turned out in matched surcoats. They advanced uncomplaining, their banners and bearing immaculate, despite an assignment that would carry them into unimaginable peril. Swo
rd and lance were no match for packs of creatures who breathed fire, and flew on sail wings over sixty spans wide. Their pledge to serve the Light in north Tysan must inevitably lead some of their number to an untimely, horrible death.

  Kevor found, after all, he could not tame his feelings, or endure in straitlaced, princely decorum. Who were the almighty Fellowship Sorcerers, that they should allow these staunch men to ride into the breach, and stand down the threat of Khadrim? Where were such paragons of the mysteries now? If their vaunted forces of spellcraft could avert the promise of disaster, why had they withheld their strong arm?

  ‘Merciful Light!’ the prince ground through locked teeth. His personal aversion for Cerebeld aside, he would still have to wonder. The lives in this company felt too well set up, the unnamed list of men soon to suffer and die too smoothly groomed as political martyrs. Their loss could only lend more blazing fuel to the Alliance’s strident stand against sorcery. With the Prince Exalted away to fight Shadow in the east, Cerebeld and his acolytes needed no better excuse to fan the embers of war and heap more blame and condemnation on the Fellowship. The Sorcerers made ready targets, with their secretive, unbreachable powers, and their iron adherence to an outmoded law that bound growth and trade to the strangling terms of the compact.

  Ranne’s surprised gasp could be heard, even through thudding hooves and the noisy jangle of gear. Kevor jerked his head sidewards, flushed with embarrassment. He had never meant to blurt his viewpoint aloud. Nothing else would serve, now, but to air his thoughtless lapse into heresy. If true justice was answered, should he not be the one to pose the most searching questions? He was a crown prince with an inquiring mind. If he was ever to become the sharp statesman his father was, he must be expected to test the dangerous, harsh edges of Tysan’s existing crown policy.

  ‘Well, do you think it’s right that the herb witch by the wharf in Karfael was put to death?’ Kevor demanded of Ranne, low voiced. ‘Go on. Why not answer? Does the memory of her screams not trouble your sleep?’

  Under the resin-filled silence of the fir trees, the exchange of ideas could remain a secret between them.

  ‘The poor woman’s gone,’ Ranne said in flat refusal to further the conversation.

  ‘She burned to death in terrible agony, and for what? Now we have poor mothers dying in childbirth. Ones who don’t have the coin to pay healers.’ Once started, the young prince found he could not stem his blazing torrent of doubts. ‘Merchants can buy fiend banes by swearing oath of debt to Koriathain. But what about the dairymaids who don’t own the milk they toil to churn into butter? Should they go hungry because iyats knock over their settling pans? Tell me, how many northcountry farmsteaders are too lazy to haul their cheap tin all the way to Avenor to be warded by Cerebeld’s vested acolytes?’

  ‘Your Grace, such questions are far better posed to the Divine Prince, your father.’ Ranne shrugged. His familiar, hawk profile stayed uncomfortably faced straight ahead. ‘I’m a swordsman, not a state minister. It’s hardly my place to make free comment on Avenor’s established crown policy.’

  ‘Those are words from the mouth of a brainless sheep, not a man with a mind and a conscience!’ Kevor blazed back. ‘You’re better than that, Ranne, and so are Karfael’s poor, who now have nowhere to turn for everyday succor and healing.’ He paused. Too piqued not to make futile response, he stopped his restive horse short, his profile adamant marble, unwarmed by the strayed mote of sun that fired his hair to dulled copper. ‘If my father was the avatar our people acclaim, then why are Cerebeld’s acolytes not out in the countryside dirtying their white robes, ministering to the misery in the hamlets?’

  He faced Ranne again. His blue eyes beseeched, all but brimming tears for the point he must not for honor speak aloud: why mortal men armed with naught else but steel should be riding against winged packs of fire-breathing monsters.

  Heart torn as he shared the young prince’s dilemma, the guardsman pledged to safeguard his life found no ready answers. His powerful frame seemed diminished by that failure, and his posture less sure in the saddle. ‘One thing I know, boy,’ Ranne said, in gruff sympathy discarding the honorifics of station, ‘Best not say what you think around Fennick. He and I both gave our oaths to your father. You may hold our personal loyalty through affection, but our first allegiance is pledged to obey the Divine Prince.’

  Indeed, Kevor knew. Each day, he lived with the shaming remorse. Two men’s lives could be forfeit in public dishonor, should the integrity of their oath ever come to be questioned or broken. He held his death grip on the reins, not ready for capitulation. ‘Then rest assured I will seek out my father when he returns from his war in the east.’

  ‘Fall back, then,’ Ranne pleaded. ‘Before we make the field captain uneasy. He doesn’t like you riding at large, not without twenty lances at the ready for your immediate protection.’

  A stickler for keeping even casual promises, Kevor spun his big gray back toward the main column of the company. His earlier burst of exuberance was gone, and his subsequent anger bottled. The winter forest had lost its allure. He scarcely heard the spritely scolding of chickadees, as he fell in line beside Fennick’s charger, with Ranne’s a demure stride behind. The young prince rode, still preoccupied. The memory of the disturbing old woman who had grasped at his stirrup troubled him. She had worn owl feathers braided into her white hair, that had seemed outlined in unearthly light.

  Her unsettling words lingered, along with the stone talisman now nestled among his belongings: ‘For you, boy, as true a scion of Halduin’s line as your s’Ilessid father is false. The wisdom of Ath lies in every small stone. This one holds a pledge wrought to keep you safe. All life is a gift. As you value yours, let this token guard you from threat.’

  At midday, the company paused to rest the horses in the yard of a charcoal burner’s steading. Fennick and Ranne were allotted the privilege of commandeering hot food for the officers. The royal squires, also, enjoyed the goodwife’s hospitality. The pair of them sat at her kitchen hob, wolfing down dumplings and sausage.

  Kevor, as crown heir, would share the captain’s table. But as often happened, something outside had snagged the young prince’s attention. The place setting laid for him went unclaimed.

  In the yard by the cottage, the rank-and-file lancers drew lots over who should attend to the horses. The fortunate ones who escaped duty as grooms lined up and placed wagers on an impromptu match of prowess between the troop’s most skillful archers. Soon, arrows hissed and thwacked into the boles of tree targets, through a chorus of whoops and ripe curses.

  Not far from the lines, Kevor perched on a stump amid the cleared glen, watching the charcoalman’s young daughters sculpt a family of snow sprites. At the prince’s suggestion, they had gathered small fir cones for eyes. Now, in giggling contention, they importuned him for his gold buttons to adorn the queen’s balsam tiara.

  ‘I can’t carry an old bucket on the back of my horse,’ Kevor demurred in his most grave and amiable courtesy. ‘You’ll have to trade something better than that. These buttons each have a sunwheel emblem blessed by the Divine Light himself.’

  A distant shadow flicked over the sun. The posted sentry did not look up, engrossed as he was with the archers who vied for the winning point.

  In the wide, sunlit dell, the smaller girl pouted with cherry red lips, and adjusted the lopsided fungus that served as left ear for the king. ‘I have naught else to offer but a holly-berry necklace.’ A sly glance from brown eyes to see if the prince was fool enough to accept; the berries in question decked the white bosom of the princess sprite. Gaps of raw string showed where hungry birds had pecked and stolen the pips.

  Thirty leagues from the mountains, no man saw the need to set a watch against assault by Khadrim. The thundering crack of taut wing leather whistling over the trees caught Avenor’s field troop in shamelessly rooted surprise.

  Except for Kevor, whose untrammeled view of the sky afforded him the only clear second of w
arning.

  ‘Run!’ he screamed to the woodcutter’s girls. Gold buttons scribed bright arcs in the sunlight, as he yanked off his cloak left-handed. His right gripped his sword, drawn on snapped reflex. Born to the mettle of his royal heritage, Kevor pelted into the open.

  Behind him, men shouted, aghast. Their alarm was eclipsed. The Khadrim shot overhead. Black as jet with metal gray highlights struck off its sinuous, scaled body, it folded wings like webbed sails and dropped into a screeling dive. The air of its passage whistled like storm. Its talons were raked scimitars, descending.

  Kevor sprinted. His vision closed down until he tracked nothing else but the narrowed red eye in the serpentine head. Drawn by unerring, predator’s instinct, it fixed on the helpless smaller child, frozen in fear amidst the circle of sprites made from sticks and clumped snow.

  Single-mindedly brave, brash with heedless youth, the prince called again to the girl. His cry failed to break her stunned panic. He snapped his blue cloak. The bullion thread sunwheel caught the noon light, sheeting a burst of gold fire.

  The Khadrim’s eye flickered and fixed on the movement. Spiked head on scaled neck snaked sidewards, refocused on the distraction.

  ‘Run!’ Kevor shouted. Sword upraised, he streamed the cloak like a flag to hold the Khadrim’s killing focus. On the sidelines, the patrol recovered shocked wits. An equerry bolted into the cottage to summon the captain. Horsemen raced to snatch up idle lances. The contesting archers scrambled to retrieve their shot arrows, while their colleagues frantically strung bows.

  ‘Fire at will!’ yelled their squad sergeant, his shrill cry beaten back into his teeth by the whipping turbulence thrown off by the Khadrim’s stooping strike.

  The first arrows whined aloft. Disturbed air plucked and scattered them. Crossbow bolts flew faster, and more true. Their ragged volley struck armored scales and sprang off in rattling rebound. The back-fallen shafts rained earthward, each one now a threat to the young prince, who still raced straight into the jaws of peril.