Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  The newcomer drew steel, shaken to terror, and unable to refute grim conclusion. ‘Why would his Grace kill, unless driven by the curse?’

  ‘On my life as your crown prince, I am in my right mind.’ Arithon bent, his ear pressed to Jieret’s chest. No faint sound of breath; frantic, the Shadow Master snapped, ‘Find Theirid. He knows. He’ll explain.’

  But the plea might as well have fallen on deaf ears. These were the Companions, the child survivors of Tal Quorin who had grown up motherless. Alongside Earl Jieret, they had shared the terrible burden of ensuring the next generation, most of them orphaned themselves, but more desperately cherished by grief-stricken fathers whose families and wives had been slaughtered. Each one had seen sisters broken and violated by Etarra’s campaign of butchery and wrought fire.

  Mere boys, they had piled stones on the grave cairns of their parents and siblings, while the crown prince those massacred kinfolk had died for slipped away in unremarked anonymity. Arithon to them was a figure of hearsay, not seen since, for whose sake their chieftain was wont to depart for months upon dangerous courses of travel, and for whom Caolle had taken his death wound upon foreign soil.

  Panicked to uncertainty, the first scout declaimed, ‘Theirid’s gone on patrol.’

  ‘Then send for him!’ Unable to listen undisturbed, Arithon straightened. He laid chilled fingers against Jieret’s throat, his urgency a dammed-back scream as he felt the fast, thready pulse turn ragged under his touch. He gathered himself again, slapped the flat of his hand down hard on his caithdein’s motionless chest.

  ‘Breathe, Jieret, damn you, man! Don’t fail me and quit.’ To the clamor of outrage arisen as more men packed like wolves in the cleft, Rathain’s prince said, ‘Stand down! Let me finish what’s started!’ If he failed to act swiftly, the chance would be lost, to bind the unmoored spirit of the man back into his flaccid, drugged flesh.

  ‘Your chieftain is alive,’ he repeated, emphatic. ‘I beg you, don’t meddle through ignorance!’

  ‘Then rise on your feet!’ interjected a third voice, the bark of impatient authority surely Braggen’s. ‘Prove what you say. Draw Alithiel against us. If your cause is just, if you’re not possessed and lying, the Paravian starspells will waken as surety.’

  Arithon jerked his head in stripped negation. ‘I don’t have my blade. Jieret took charge of her. Even if he hadn’t, the sword would not waken. Not unless I fought you in earnest. That won’t happen. Can’t.’

  Continuously busy, the Shadow Master set his crooked knuckle against the skin above the bridge of Jieret’s nose. Schooled by Elaira to know healing arts, he applied steady pressure on the meridian point which stimulated the central nervous system. Under his ministration, Jieret’s limp form shuddered. His chest heaved as he dragged in a hoarse gasp of air.

  Eyes closed in flooding gratitude for that tentative sign of reprieve, Arithon sought once again to placate the distrustful Companions. ‘I’ll raise no weapon against you. Charter law binds me. By my oath to Rathain, sworn on my knees before Steiven, you are my charge to protect. Over the steel of your fathers, I pledged you my service as crown sovereign, unto my last drop of blood, and until my final living breath.’

  He sang out a note pitched to a clear F, then pressed his ear flat against Jieret’s torso. If the heartbeat had steadied, the lungs under his ear screamed like an overstressed bellows. Arithon chafed the chieftain’s slack wrists, then grabbed his chilled fingers and massaged the palms on the line that revitalized the diaphragm. He spoke as he worked, his tender inflection at unnatural odds, forged on raw will and concentration. ‘Brother, don’t let go and fall into the darkness. The light shines. I’m with you still. The nightmares you suffer are not real.’

  Yet if the unseen torment of the mind posed the more terrible enemy, the immediate threat enacted by living men in the grotto was perilously still unfolding.

  Braggen snapped first. ‘By Ath, no mouthing of law can excuse this!’ Ox shoulders tucked, he charged forward. Gravel grated, churned underfoot as other scouts surged at his heels. Their bared swords were leveled in rigid hands, their faces torn by a volatile mix of worry and vindication.

  Arithon whirled like a cornered fox. ‘You must not cross the circle!’ His voice cracked to alarm. ‘Heed my word! You tempt dangers you cannot possibly imagine. A mistake made now with the best of intentions could kill your chieftain, or worse, draw in the might of our enemies.’

  The quandary stopped thought, that he could not stand against the scouts’ surge to take him without leaving Jieret abandoned. Split second in decision, he rejected his own safety. If breaking the ritual circle drew notice, there would be no respite from the bloodbath to come without a live chieftain to restore the frayed chain of command.

  Arithon stayed unmoved on his knees, as the blundering rush of his well-meant opposition scuffed across his exactingly drawn rings of protection. Metal spoke first. The drawn swords contained iron, whose grounding nature razed holes through the set frame of his intent. His bard’s gift picked up the high, thin whine as the first line of laid energy sundered. By that sign, he knew: the wards had been active. Whatever questing power had been engaged and probing his sealed defenses, no barrier remained to deflect its hostile presence. The price of that misstep could not be measured; its penalty would fall in the future.

  He cradled Jieret’s head between his fixed hands, disregarding the vehement sting of the hurt palm too recently cauterized. His patient touch neither jostled nor flinched, even as the turbulent press of the men scattered the joined remnants of his precautions to oblivion. He disregarded the rough hands which bore in and touched pricking steel to his sides and his back, with Braggen’s, most fierce, at his throat.

  He raised his chin, adamant; kept his voice vised to calm, keenly aware the least note of upset would lend spin to the nightmares that pinned Jieret at the rim of Fate’s Wheel.

  ‘Fetch me Sidir or Eafinn!’ Arithon swallowed, the sweat at his collar painted in glistening streaks. ‘They served at my side at the Havens. Entrust them to judge me for falsehood.’

  Braggen spat. ‘Eafinn’s gone, killed by scalpers last spring. Sidir’s sent to Caithwood to guard Jeynsa.’

  Hedged by the nervous pressure of six swords, Arithon grated, ‘Then wait here for Theirid!’

  ‘What, and watch Jieret die, sucked dry of life to fuel some spell brought on by Desh-thiere’s fell purpose?’ Braggen shivered, caught aback by the appalling courage of Arithon’s adamant passivity. ‘The High Earl said himself, he’d drugged you unconscious with valerian. If you were innocent as you claim, and had worked no dire spellcraft, you wouldn’t be up on your feet!’

  Shaken, bone white, cranked under stress to the limit of breaking, Arithon battled for hold on his stressed self-control. His effort drove him to the blank-faced, withdrawn concentration of the trapped beast, who gave over all struggle to husband its drive for survival. Rathain’s prince held, obdurate, to his preferred course. Jieret’s welfare came first. His touch on slack flesh remained gentle and steady, until the wrenching dichotomy of his pose seemed unnatural; as though flesh and bone were not man, but demon, inhumanly bound to a purpose beyond the compass of human frailty.

  ‘Mercy, for Jieret’s life!’ The care in his hands struck sharp contrast to his words, a masterbard’s peal of command. ‘I have no other proof to offer as bargain!’

  ‘For your life?’ Braggen said. High emotion suffused his saturnine features. ‘To stay my hand, liege, show us sane common sense. You need do no more than stand aside!’

  Amid that locked tension, Jieret’s breath caught and faltered. Arithon moved to lend succor, caught short by the bristling thrust of Braggen’s sword against the pit of his neck.

  The green eyes blazed then, sparked to desolate fury. ‘Then betray your clans! Render Caolle’s death useless! Break the trust of my caithdein, and cut me dead in cold blood. But beware if you murder. Jieret will be lost. For his sake, I will have given you my life as the l
ast Teir’s’Ffalenn. Dharkaron Avenger stand as my witness! If I die at your hands, I will have crossed the Wheel in unbroken service to all my feal liegemen of Rathain.’

  While the bystanders watched, horrified, he leaned into the steel.

  Braggen held firm, his skin drained sick white. The fixed point dimpled skin. Stressed tissue let go without sound, and parted under the pressure. A welled drop of scarlet sprang and flowed from the puncture.

  Now trembling, Arithon pressed on inexorably. As the sword’s tip encountered the banded cartilage of his windpipe, he gasped, ‘Jieret!’ his raw anguish a brother’s. Eyes shut, in tormented disregard of the hostile steel ranged against him, he addressed his prostrate liegeman with the compassion that formed the very fiber of his heart. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Stop this!’ someone shouted. Another bystander broke down weeping.

  Braggen alone confronted the crux. He must pull his blade, or risk that Arithon’s bearing onslaught would snap before his fixed steel inflicted fatal damage.

  ‘His Grace is oathsworn to our earl by a sorcerer’s blood pact,’ a new voice entreated from the cleft. ‘Braggen, put up! He can’t stand down, though you kill him.’

  Braggen’s confounded consternation might as well not exist, for all the heed his liege paid that cry. Nor did he back down, or beg for a stay of clemency.

  For Arithon s’Ffalenn, no pain of the flesh could unseat his agony of mind, that he may have overestimated Jieret’s inborn strength, or worse, his natural talent. The horror that threatened would not be borne, that his error of judgment should have led the son of Steiven s’Valerient into jeopardy. ‘Jieret! I swore on my blood to hold your life sacrosanct. You won’t escape what that means.’

  For the sake of this one life, he had spared Lysaer at Strakewood. The irony of that hour would not lose its cruel edge: that the price of love and integrity had come at excoriating cost. Had he allowed the Mistwraith’s curse free rein then, had he immolated his half brother years ago at Tal Quorin, the geas of enmity would have ended, fulfilled. Tens of thousands of dead men would still be alive with their families. Nor would the Alliance war hosts have been given the purposeful reason to muster. Lacking the fuel of self-righteous zeal to ignite the cause of town greed, the gold pledged for bounties, which had set clan continuance into jeopardy across the breadth of two kingdoms, would never have swelled the headhunters’ coffers.

  A movement, a sudden shifting of shadows as parted bodies winnowed the candleflame.

  ‘You will hear me, Jieret!’ Rathain’s Prince insisted. His wide, opened eyelids scarcely flicked in acknowledgment as Braggen gave way and stepped back. Arithon rejected all thought of the men who surrounded him. Lent the exacting self-discipline of the mage-trained, he exhorted for Jieret’s hearing alone. ‘I will give you the full measure of your worth, brother. Stand tall, my caithdein. Own who you are, or die craven.’

  While fresh-runneled blood striped his collarbone scarlet, he raised a new song. Each note poured out of his stinging throat framed an edged contradiction of dissonance.

  Nor did he take notice that a sent runner had finally summoned in Theirid. The influx of raised voices, as argument raged over the damning appearance that he had engaged in fell sorcery, did not move him. He sang, heart and spirit, with an artistry focused to stop breath and word in midsentence.

  The clansmen fell mute. Stunned to awed stillness, they had no choice but listen as the bard’s song for Earl Jieret s’Valerient framed a power of forced testament. Whether or not the masterful melody masked some heinous act of dark magecraft, the unalloyed majesty of Arithon’s voice could and did bind each hapless listener into thrall. The soaring web of captivation undid distrust. Doubt unwound. First shamed, then ripped into mangling remorse, the scouts with drawn steel sheathed their weapons. They crept back, caught breathless, and gave the bard space to recall Earl Jieret from deep coma.

  The snare of cruel memory must lose its hold before that fired influx of sound. Seamless melody entrained a sweet, tuned perception that unlocked every closed, hidden door of the heart. Shown Jieret’s Name in a language of trued harmony, given view of his selfhood, exalted to poignancy through the eyes of a friend, the Companions wept to a man. They knew their chieftain, none better: the patience that hardship could recast as intolerance; the care that strong character held in denial, to anneal the courage that enabled year upon year of unyielding defense by the sword.

  Nor was Arithon himself untouched by the sacrifice. Blind with remorse, he hurled all that he was into song, each line in sere a cappella a spearcast flung hard to the mark of exacting pitch. His humility wrought art to a pinnacle of command that cried primal light across darkness.

  His gift flowed like spun dream, love and will distilled into razor-edged clarity. But delay set the penalty. Through the lagged minutes of dissident distraction, Jieret’s awareness had drifted too far.

  Arithon extended his voice and his mind across every barrier of limitation; and still, his rare talent was not enough. He could not bridge the gap. Notes bundled and strung in single formation were too threadbare a loom for the tapestry. Jieret’s ears were sealed clay. His beleaguered senses had ranged beyond reach, lost in the grand weave of subliminal vibrations beyond the bounds of the veil.

  Arithon sensed the limit through the vibrating air and the slack flesh held cupped in his hands. The heartbreak undid him, that the kindled flame of his care could not unbind the sealed gates of the mysteries. Around him, the scouts stood in lacerated shock.

  Silence reigned as the bard acknowledged the blank wall of his failure, and his melody faltered and faded. His face twisted, desolate. No recourse remained. The musician had no access to the harmonics he could have called forth, effortless, from the strings of the lyranthe left behind in Sanpashir. Nor would men in a war band have any substitute instrument. Scouts on campaign carried nothing but weapons, and the joyless necessities of survival.

  The wail of the wind seemed to grind on the quiet left by the melody’s cessation. Arithon opened his eyes, half-unhinged with distress, the fight in him catapulted into mad-dog desperation. ‘Fetch my sword!’

  His whiplash command jarred and broke the diminished grip of spellbound reverie. Wakened to reason, recoiled to distrust, the scouts by the cleft stirred, while Braggen’s bellowed refusal clashed outright with Theirid’s cry for patient tolerance.

  ‘Find me Alithiel, do it now!’ Arithon’s urgency cut like a blade. ‘Braggen! As you love your chieftain, stop arguing. Just let Theirid past. Allow him to give back my sword.’

  ‘We daren’t.’ The protest was Theirid’s, rough with tormented uncertainty. ‘Earl Jieret left firm orders. That blade is all the surety we have against you if Desh-thiere’s curse sunders your sanity.’

  ‘Then bind my hands!’ Arithon snarled back. ‘You will do as I say, now. Unsheathe my sword. Lay her lengthwise, point down, with her hilt over Jieret’s heart. Damn you for cowards, lash my wrists all you like. For this purpose I need not touch the weapon!’

  Against deadlocked stillness, a scraped stir of gravel; a scout pushed through from the rear ranks. Just arrived from patrol, his clan braid pale flax against the striped fur of a badger hat, he appealed, ‘Leave his Grace free! Were my father alive, he would have given his trust.’

  ‘You’re Eafinn’s son?’ Arithon’s taut features eased into startled gratitude. ‘Theirid’s right. For Desh-thiere’s curse, Alithiel should not be given into my charge. For your faith, I give you my honor to guard. For pity, step forward and tie me.’

  Cord was found, amid somebody’s kit. Lanky and competent, despite flushed embarrassment, Eafinn’s son knelt at Arithon’s offered back. ‘Forgive the necessity.’ He looped the knots expertly tight, well trained in the skill of handling dangerous captives.

  The young man arose. His curt nod summoned Theirid, who tested the lashings himself. Only then did the older Companion allow the Named steel to be brought in and drawn from her sheath.

 
Alithiel’s blade glistened like dipped jet, the refined silver tracery of Paravian runes reduced to dulled mercury in the close-gathered gloom. No sparkle of starspells spun gossamer light as Theirid laid the steel at flat rest upon Jieret’s laboring breast. Each jagged, snatched breath ripped the stillness like rent canvas, the stopped intervals now grown irregular, each one more frighteningly prolonged.

  Arithon remained on his knees at the clan chieftain’s head, his arms bound immobile behind him. No word from him was needed to spur haste. His patience itself framed a cold-cast warning to the scouts who completed his rapid directions. They tucked the bear-pelt cloak under Jieret’s nape, then folded the slack hands over Alithiel’s smoke-dark quillons.

  ‘Stand away.’ Rathain’s prince bowed his head. For a terrible instant, he seemed to gather himself, as though he wrestled his crippling doubts, then coiled them into vised stillness. His last instructions framed a hammered command. ‘Snuff out the candle. Once I have started, for Ath’s mercy, stay clear. We’ll have no second chance if I falter.’

  Once again he raised his voice into song. The first line of melody invoked the sword’s Name, a phrasing that extended beyond the three syllables in Paravian that tagged her earth-forged identity. This clear strand of harmony spoke first of star-fallen steel, then of coal fire in a cave, and the dedicated artistry of the centaur smith who had poured out his masterful skill as a craftsman in expression of love for his son. Arithon reached deeper, tracing out the unseen. He sang the sword’s birth, and the delicate complexity of the Athlien spells, which had spun its fine-tuned enchantment using the chord which had Named the winter stars. Then, in darkened tonality, the thralled listeners tasted war and death, and blood spilled in tragedy as Durmaenir s’Darian fell. Arithon’s skill encompassed the sorrow of Ffereton’s grief. His tears streamed in sympathy, though the instrument of his voice remained sure, wedded to the stark demand of his art through a jarring transition in key.