Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Steady,’ urged Arithon. His calm soothed and anchored. ‘The key is to stop thinking, stop remembering. Your personal beliefs will just serve to bend and distort the fine energies. Just be. True sight cannot be imposed from within. You must allow. Invite higher order to manifest what is.’

  ‘Merciful Ath, I’m not made for this,’ Jieret ground out in tight protest. One glimpse at his hands showed his scars as fresh wounds, welling bright scarlet by firelight. The blood there was other men’s, shed with his own. He had no means to tell if the Sight was past reliving, or prescience.

  ‘Your stroke must kill cleanly,’ exhorted Caolle. His irascible shout seemed much too alive to arise out of fragmented memory. ‘Miss your mark through an opening, your enemy will rally. Best way I know to wind up stone dead before you can sire a child to continue the name of s’Valerient.’

  ‘You are more than your past, brother, more cherished than your bloodline,’ Arithon broke in, insistent. ‘Love and worth are not measured by adherence to duty, but for a friend’s generosity of spirit.’ When his razor-clear note of gentleness failed to settle, he insisted, ‘Here. Let me show you.’

  But Jieret heard nothing, drowned as he was in the hardships imposed by his ancestry. Jeynsa’s face filled his sight. Her hands clasped his shoulders, pleading. ‘Father, just come back.’

  Jieret opened his lips to ease her distress, then screamed as a shock like cold steel lanced his flesh. His vision exploded through showers of light, then sucked through a riptide of darkness.

  Late Winter 5670

  Loss

  The wind hissed over the iced vales of Daon Ramon. Its snarling passage through low brush and briar beat a whipcrack refrain, thrumming the tent’s guy ropes and slapping the loose ends against the taut drum of pitched canvas. The drafts found their way through the weave of wool blankets. On winter campaign, the cold nights became a marathon of bitter endurance. For the men in Lysaer s’Ilessid’s company, encamped on the wild vales between the old Paravian way and the serpentine loops of the River Aiyenne, the grinding misery of discomfort was not the least problem. Here, the fourth lane flowed over the land, swelling to meet the ancient nexus at Caith-al-Caen, where age upon age of Paravian dancers once summoned Athera’s living consciousness into a quickened presence. The currents of the mysteries still ran near to the surface.

  The tuned powers aligned in each pebble and stone tumbled in spate with the sun tides. Midnight, dawn, sunset, and noon, the flux could break with stunning force into the unwary mind, seeding burning, bright dreams, or awakening visions like tapestry woven from light. Where a mage-sighted talent, or persons of clanborn descent, might discern the searing beauty of the spirit forms bled through from the past, those ordinary others confined to five senses suffered sharp nerves and jumpy behavior. Seasoned veterans startled at shadows, chafed raw by the constant reminder that unseen powers stalked every move attempted by breathing, warm flesh.

  At dark phase and full moon, a man could go mad, simply trying to sleep.

  Sulfin Evend posted guard over the Divine Prince himself on such nights, unwilling to trust the wits of the sentries allotted that duty by roster. Always, he stood his turn of watch unpartnered. Though allotted a bear rug under sheltering canvas, he preferred not to rest, but perched on the box that contained the sunwheel seal and the chart cases, a sword’s length from his sovereign’s bedroll. His presence was that of a hooded falcon: too stilled to seem dangerous, and cloaked in a stalker’s unobtrusive quiet that melted back into the shadows.

  Royal birth had long since accustomed Prince Lysaer to having his privacy shared by crown servants, loyal men chosen for deferent silence and sophisticate, steel-clad discretion. Yet since the hour he had stood against Shadow at Tal Quorin, he insisted on sleeping alone. That night of full moon, under gauze snowfall and torn clouds, he sat wakeful, as loath to retire as his vigilant Lord Commander.

  He occupied the tent’s only camp stool, a chart of Rathain unfurled over his knees. His head was propped on an informal hand, long fingers with their splintering flare of gemmed rings shoved through his corn-silk hair. He was not drowsing. Sulfin Evend had enough past experience with Koriathain to discern the subtle difference. Despite the wayward, fierce currents of lane force that surged across Daon Ramon, the Blessed Prince had slipped into a light trance. Persisting through several disrupted attempts, he had managed to establish communion with his High Priest at Avenor.

  The candle lamp, burning, cast an aureole over his elegant shoulders. If the surcoat he wore was no longer stainless white after long weeks in the wilds, costly elegance lingered, a marble tableau picked out by the shine of gilt braid where the flame light wakened reflections. As Sulfin Evend watched, those golden sparks flickered, then shuddered to jarring motion.

  Lysaer shot straight, his indrawn breath sounding coarse as a tear in cloth.

  Sulfin Evend twitched not an eyelash. With every nerve in him already primed for instantaneous action, his speech kept its laconic character. ‘Bad news?’

  The Exalted Prince released knotted fists. He masked his face behind his spread hands, elbows braced on the chart, which buckled under his careless pressure. Unsteady enough to display his fine trembling in the shimmering flare of his diamonds, he announced, ‘My son is dead.’

  A pause. Sulfin Evend waited. His war-trained tension uncoiled, since no overt peril threatened life and limb within the pitched tent in Daon Ramon.

  A drawn moment later, Lysaer looked up. ‘Kevor.’ No tremble of inflection; his voice still struck blank from shock, he elucidated, ‘Burned to a cinder with the field troop, apparently dispatched to hunt down Khadrim.’ The eyes on his Lord Commander were an open, dilated black, rimmed in gemstone azure. Yet their depths reflected a wound so deep, thought could scarcely encompass the recoiling agony. Lysaer fought for recovery, as awareness mapped the imprint of a loss beyond any rational acceptance.

  Staring, locked, at that intimate profile of raw grief, Sulfin Evend felt himself speared by transfixing chills. As long as he had served as the Alliance Lord Commander, he had never once glimpsed the depth of his prince’s humanity.

  ‘Kevor’s gone!’ Lysaer gasped. Disbelief strained his words to a whisper. ‘My son, taken before he could achieve his manhood. He’ll never find the mature stature, now, to heal the blight that Shadow and Darkness laid like a curse on his birthright.’

  Sulfin Evend possessed the quick mind of a strategist, no boon in the crux of this moment as he found himself made the voice for Lysaer’s tormented conscience. ‘You could never permit that boy to know how much you cared for him.’ The bitterest price, paid by s’Ilessid for the toil of a thankless, divine service. ‘As the Light’s given arm to defend the innocent, you dare not love.’

  Though the cold ran through flesh and branded, bone deep, Lysaer admitted in searing simplicity, ‘What can be done? That is my fate.’ Behind the fire and passion, a hopeless measure of pain underpinned the framework of autocratic sovereignty. Few men had ever seen past the mask. That privileged handful had all been struck down, Sulfin Evend realized, touched into ripping epiphany. They had died in the wars fought by warped sorceries, at the hand of the Spinner of Darkness.

  The s’Ilessid prince regarded his helpless, clamped fingers, now cradled upon the inked vista of Daon Ramon Barrens. As though the creased landscape stood surrogate for the violence wreaked on his spirit, he added in beaten sorrow, ‘Any tie of the heart, no matter how guarded, might fall into binding use by the enemy.’

  The moment of bludgeoned vulnerability was ill omened, for the hour when Alliance field troops closed the cordon to take down the Master of Shadow. Nor was interruption any more welcome, as coarse canvas scraped warning, and the door flap slapped open. A blast of chill air billowed into the tent, snapping the ties on the pennons. In strode the stick-thin, obsequious seer Sulfin Evend regarded with instinctive, bristling distaste.

  The pale creature bowed. His large hood as always shadowed his face. White
cloth lent him the aspect of a starved wraith, exacerbated by the fingertips snipped from the fine silk mesh of his gloves. He would avoid untoward stains as he practiced, the affectation an odd contradiction for a man who adhered to the shady side of his profession. His knurled hands trembled with evident eagerness as he unveiled his bronze offering bowl and unsheathed his sacrificial knife. Mouthing his incessant, ritual prayers, he raised the bone blade like a flaked shard of ice.

  ‘Jeriayish, not now!’ Sulfin Evend’s concerned gaze stayed fastened on the Blessed Prince. Through this terrible hour, divine duty could wait. Though his Grace seemed himself, the inbred reflex of state poise apparently beyond reach of all pain, Lysaer’s stripped heart betrayed otherwise. The man just made a bereaved father still reeled in wordless shock. He deserved the humane consideration of privacy.

  The diviner-priest paused. His hooded head turned toward the Lord Commander, every draped fold in his mantle a statement of rigid fanaticism. ‘Best that you leave.’

  Sulfin Evend held fast, a leashed tiercel poised on a perch. ‘At Lysaer’s order, not yours.’

  When the Divine Prince gave no gesture of dismissal to break their deadlocked wills, the priest minced a step forward. He placed the bronze bowl on the trestle next to the camp cot. ‘I know Cerebeld’s news.’ His thin lips flexed downward, their wax pallor touched gilt by the ragged flare of the candle. ‘Our hunt for the Spinner of Darkness is too near consummation to let up for the sake of a mortal tragedy.’ He kissed the bone knife, and murmured, ‘Lord Exalted?’

  Lysaer stirred, moved, his arm offered as though by rote. Dragged by its own weight, the gold-embroidered cuff tumbled back. The blood-flecked binding underneath offered the uneasy testament that such rites had grown frequent as an addiction.

  Assured of his authority, the priest closed his jittery fingers over the royal wrist.

  Lysaer jerked back, sparked to sudden offense. ‘Leave me!’

  Jeriayish huffed with exasperation. ‘But Cerebeld’s priests need to know––’

  Cat fast, Lysaer spun in recoil. His forearm raked the trestle and sent the sacrificial bowl flying. The clangor belled through his raised voice as the vessel clashed and rolled across the field armor laid in readiness over his clothes chest. ‘I said leave!’ His cool presence shattered. Lysaer stood, the humanity in him a towering force that cried out in raw pain for reprieve. ‘For the sake of my son, who has died for his people, Cerebeld’s priests can wait for an hour.’

  Jeriayish narrowed his eyes. The knife still held poised in his persistent grip, he accused, ‘If you take any pause to grieve as a father, your Alliance forces from Etarra and Darkling cannot respond if the enemy turns or doubles back in midflight.’ He advanced again, already dismissing the Lord Commander’s watchful presence behind him. ‘You risk much. Let one boy’s death allow Arithon of Rathain to escape, and all of mankind will remain in bondage to the powers of Darkness!’

  Sulfin Evend witnessed the shift at close hand: saw the bastard’s dread name trigger recall of the Light’s divine purpose. Prince Lysaer’s living flesh struck a tensile pause, reforged by a power beyond bearing. His eyes flared, just once, as though racked by mute protest. Then paternal need became smothered out, pinched off like the hapless flame on a candle. What welled up in place of that natural grief was ice chill, as fixed in its purpose as any steel blade whetted for bloodletting combat.

  ‘I know precisely where the Spinner of Darkness makes camp.’ Each consonant was edged glass, and each vowel, a note of undying conviction. ‘We are that close, I can feel him, each breath.’ Lysaer regarded his shrinking priest, his magnificence the forged beacon of altruistic inspiration. ‘I require no man’s impertinent reminder to fulfill the task laid before me! While the enemy lives, I can have no peace. His evil is a thorn in mind and flesh, a gall that won’t ease until his demonic spirit has been cleansed from the world and consigned to its final damnation.’

  Struck dumb by the price a man paid to be god sent, Sulfin Evend shuddered. His sharp intelligence and courage fell short, to endure the scope of such sacrifice. Nor did he possess the sheer, hard-core will to suppress his earthborn humanity. He laid his light hand on the hilt of his sword, humbled as never before. The concept that Lysaer had once scraped his knees in the carefree innocence of boyhood seemed unreal. His fertile mind failed to imagine the crucible that could mold a child to mature with the heartless strength to endure such a burden of inflexible responsibility.

  As Jeriayish stumbled a quailing step back, Lysaer struck with a hammering fist and crushed out the dribbled stub of the candle. Even amid freezing darkness, his driving will made itself felt. He was welded force, both template and channel for the cause of divine purpose. Such power could reshape men and cities, and as surely, the destiny of Athera herself. ‘We march inside the hour. Before dawn, as we pause to refresh the horses, you’ll be given your chance to cast a divination to satisfy Cerebeld’s priests.’

  The diviner bowed and fled, too cowed to grope after his offering bowl. His scuttling retreat through the tent flap just missed collision with the squire called in to assist with the royal armor and surcoat.

  ‘Go!’ bade Lysaer s’Ilessid to the stilled presence of his Lord Commander. The change in his manner posed a terrible dichotomy. No shadow of the bereaved father remained in those enameled blue eyes. First eclipsed, and then canceled, grief stood demolished, flesh and bone become the drawn sword of dedicated ferocity. ‘Rouse the camp. Have the men armed and ready to ride out at my order.’

  Late Winter 5670

  Crossing

  Jieret crumpled, caught by his liege’s quick grasp before he crashed onto cold rock.

  ‘Brother, damn you, bear up!’ Lungs on fire with the need to draw breath, holding Jieret’s limp weight crushed into a slump against his shoulder and neck, Arithon quartered the ground. He retrieved the stone pipe, left-handed. Still holding his throat closed, he managed to stoop and empty the bowl of white ash. Poisoned smoke whirled around him. He staggered, off-balance. The dragging burden of his liegeman all but felled him as he ground the spilled embers under his heel. Wary as he was of the last, wisping fumes, close proximity itself posed grave danger. He was still flicked into reeling dizziness by the taint of the volatile oils ingrained in his caithdein’s hide clothes.

  Yet Arithon dared not chance the moment to invoke more prudent precautions. He snatched up the guard candle from the north quadrant, thrust the flared flame toward the face he held cradled at his shoulder. Eyes of gray hazel stared up at him, sightless. The pupils stayed black and distended.

  ‘Daelion show mercy!’ Slid to his knees, Arithon bent, the bronze head eased to rest against his thighs. He tightened fierce fingers in Jieret’s red hair, spun to fine white at the temples. ‘Don’t surrender. Not without showing some fight!’

  No response; Arithon cupped the slack features of the man who had spared him Desh-thiere’s triumph, who had, under the cold sobriety of given orders, broken his crown prince’s will to preserve an integrity that, for need, must outlast s’Ffalenn compassion. He pressed his cheek close, listening for a faint trace of breath. The hair reeked of tienelle and smoke. The flesh sprawled, inanimate as death.

  ‘Daelion’s bane on me, Jieret. Not this,’ the whisper a stripped plea that did nothing to rouse any sign of vitality.

  Head bowed, eyes tight shut, Arithon steeled his jagged nerves. Then he dealt the stilled face under his hands a sharp slap with his uninjured hand. ‘Aletier!’ Awake! he cried in Paravian.

  Jieret jerked, a spasm of reflex that did not touch the eyes, still sightless and wide in the flickering glare of the candle.

  Arithon pinned the strong wrists hard to the stone, ready for what must follow. He held the man down with all his fierce strength through a harrowing fit of convulsions.

  That moment, a slight noise intruded, where the winter gusts howled through the gap in the boulders. A spattered grate of footsteps crossed the loose gravel and ground to a f
rantic stop. ‘Merciful Ath, was that Jieret’s scream?’

  Then the damning, split-second assessment, as whichever scout had arrived caught sight of his chieftain, bucking and thrashing under the pinioned hold of a sorcerer who gave no civil answer. Instead, he spoke words in fluent Paravian over what seemed a struggling victim.

  ‘What have you done?’ Steel screamed from a sheath. ‘Is this how loyalty is answered by a prince undone by Desh-thiere’s curse? By unspeakable acts of black spellcraft?’

  ‘He is alive!’ Arithon refused the overriding instinct to look up, face around, and address the new threat at his back. Though the voice of the scout was not one he recognized, the lethal combination of fear-blinded rage framed a timbre his Masterbard’s ear must acknowledge. In the white heat of crisis, he cleaved to one truth, that he feared for his liegeman’s life more.

  Nor had his efforts brought about a recovery. Jieret’s struggles subsided again into the torpor of unconsciousness. Arithon locked his hands, both the sound and the wounded onto the younger man’s shoulders. He refused to relinquish the gaze of sightless eyes. ‘You hear me, Jieret! I’m with you, each breath.’

  ‘What have you done to him?’ Studs grated on stone as the scout pressed through the cleft and fully entered the cavern. Touched by the dying glow of the embers, his upraised sword skittered hellish reflections across the shadowed rock walls.

  More scuffling steps arrived from behind. A bass voice burst in, breathless, ‘I heard Jieret scream. What in Sithaer has happened?’

  ‘A curse-born atrocity.’ Checked by shocked fright and agonized betrayal, the first scout edged aside. ‘See for yourself.’

  The scene he exposed offered no shred of contrary testament. A fool could not miss the pungent scents of rare herbs, or fail to measure the items laid out for ritual spellcraft. Caught in the flickering flame of the candle stub, a prince who should have been prostrate with valerian knelt over their chieftain’s felled form. The fresh wrap on his hand showed a spotting of scarlet, as though his blood had been let with deliberation. Jieret’s ginger hair spilled in disordered waves over Arithon’s unsteady forearms, as though he had engaged some ugly ritual of dark magecraft to revitalize himself in exchange for the life drained from his liegeman’s slack body.