Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  Braggen regarded the sheathed steel still in hand, his hard features set with dumbfounded distaste, or else fear that chilled metal might burn him.

  ‘That step isn’t done yet,’ Jieret reassured. He resisted his sharp urge to consign the cursed twists of s’Ffalenn ingenuity to the nethermost bowels of Sithaer. As much the unwilling victim of circumstance, he withstood Braggen’s riled unease and wiped sweating palms on his leathers. ‘I’m sorry if you feel cast out of your depth. The truth is, the man appointed to Arithon’s side must assist with the final stage of the ritual.’

  Booted feet planted, Braggen clutched the black sword with the delicacy of a man who handled a venomed serpent. ‘I well understood why Caolle spat curses over the subject of magecraft.’

  Jieret hesitated, swallowed, forced himself steady despite a trepidation far worse, that he, with his sighted talent just wakened, must enact the distasteful conjury. ‘Someone should be left to seek Fellowship help in case the spells fail.’ The whelming fear was too monstrous to silence, that his inexperience presented a thousand stray loopholes. ‘Dharkaron avert, I begged his Grace not to go through with this madness! The whole harebrained tactic could go wrong.’

  ‘It won’t. It can’t.’ Braggen folded his arms. The dulled studs on his bracers a rasped note of disharmony against the uncanny Paravian sword. Unashamed for the clay in his nature, he was first to brace up failing nerves. ‘We’ll just have to set trust in our liege’s wisdom and follow through as he asks.’

  Jieret stifled his rampaging thoughts of disaster. In punishing truth, every passing second diminished a margin that Arithon could ill afford to lose. More stressed than the hour he pledged marriage to Feithan, Deshir’s chieftain made himself survey the arcane framework already laid down under Arithon’s meticulous guidance. The unsealed gift of mage-sight unveiled the glimmering figures like chalked light, surrounding the prince’s stilled form, then the harder, bright line of the circle of protection that shielded his naked spirit from the outreach of hostile intent. The trace smoke from the cedar burned to hallow the space still dusted the air with an ephemeral shimmer of indigo. Confined by the blazing barriers of intent that imbued the charged line of the circle, Arithon’s spirit paced, naked of flesh, a translucent vessel in refined human form, hazed in the delicate, striated gold of the unshielded aura.

  ‘You won’t fail me, Jieret,’ he insisted, a voice without sound heard in the mind of the caithdein whose oathbound service had enacted the defenses that both protected and bound him.

  ‘You can’t know that,’ Jieret whispered, well aware the change of roles he intended would shortly make Arithon furious. Yet duty to kin and kingdom came first. ‘My liege, forgive.’

  His gut remained tied into battlefield knots as he began the irrevocable last steps of the safeguard that would either spare Arithon’s sanity, or else strip him defenseless for the enemy sword that would seize opportunity and kill him.

  ‘Stand there,’ Jieret instructed, amazed that his voice should sound steady. With his heart locked against his prince’s cry of dismay, he grasped Braggen’s elbow and guided the Companion’s step past the spelled lines that ungifted eyesight could not discern. ‘Unsheathe Alithiel and hold the blade upright. Whatever happens from here forward, you can’t let the steel touch the earth.’

  Faint as the distant chiming of bells, Arithon’s shade pealed wild protest. ‘Jieret! My brother, we’re blood bound by oath. By the mercy of Ath, don’t break that trust. I hold your life sacred! Don’t spurn the integrity that lies between us, not like this!’

  Jieret’s jaw flexed, spiking the chestnut ends of his beard. He said nothing in answer, while his steadfast Companion assumed his position three paces from the boundary that contained Arithon’s scarce-breathing flesh.

  ‘No, Jieret.’ Imprisoned by the flux of preset limitation, Arithon’s spirit swirled like whipped fire, spiked to savage, trapped sparks of irritation. ‘I’ve wept for Caolle too long and too hard!’

  ‘As you knew Caolle, you’ll agree he would approve.’ Deshir’s adamant chieftain took up the cut-birch stick. To Braggen, who stared in perplexity, he explained, ‘I’m addressing my liege, who’s making his sovereign displeasure plain as scat in rough language. You don’t sense him?’

  Braggen shook his seal-dark head. ‘I don’t. The birth gift never ran strong in my family. Our women always claimed our lineage survived the Paravian presence through bear-stubborn will, and an ironclad core of stupidity.’

  ‘Well, right now, that’s your blessing,’ Jieret said in chagrin. ‘His Grace isn’t sanguine. Had he the means to recover his talent, he’d blister my hide for presumption.’

  ‘Then be sure I’ll get flayed for your insolence later,’ Braggen shot back in sour irony.

  ‘That’s Torbrand’s lineage,’ Jieret agreed. ‘Vindictive when crossed as an iceberg-bred kraken dumped spitting into a lava pit.’ His smile too grim, and his hand faintly shaking, he went on to inscribe the requisite patterns of protection.

  The first circle sealed the confines of the cavern against outside interference. Jieret marked the cardinal points of direction, recited the clear words of permission and intent, then lit the cedar brand and fanned the sweet smoke to clear the laid ground of any disharmonious imprints. To the reviling oaths that sang through his mind, he said calmly, ‘I have sons and a daughter raised to maturity. Consider that proof you have kept any promise you once made to Steiven and Dania.’

  ‘Damn you!’ snarled Arithon, impotent as a whirlwind balked by a pane of caulked glass. ‘That doesn’t excuse your obligation to Feithan, or cast off your ties as a father!’

  While Braggen looked on, stunned still with embarrassment, the High Earl straightened up, stricken. The second circle was just barely complete, linking the Companion, himself, and Arithon’s vacated body.

  ‘Arithon, look at me,’ Jieret insisted, his voice strangely tight. ‘Yes, look! A change has been wrought.’ Stripped of defenses, laid bare of subterfuge, the shift became all too apparent. The strange, distanced glint in his gray hazel eyes reflected that eerie, unworldly detachment given to those who had journeyed too far past the veil.

  ‘Do you know what I saw in the tienelle trance?’ Soft as a plea underlaid by the razor’s edge of a scarcely buried suffering, Jieret addressed the space where the disembodied spirit of his prince paced in searing frustration. ‘I met my sisters and mother in a place of pure light, and they were unspoiled and beautiful. There was joy in that reunion. There, I could find closure and healing for a grief that has blighted my peace for nigh onto thirty years.’

  A drawn, sharp pause, while Arithon froze in shock, and Jieret gathered up an unprepossessing flake of mica.

  No longer trembling, Deshir’s chieftain grasped the unsheathed knife laid out for completion of the ritual. ‘Don’t let me end this without your understanding. A true brother would give me that much.’

  ‘No word of understanding I could ever deliver will explain my breach of trust to your daughter.’ Behind the evil, glittering line that shackled his heart’s cry for action, Arithon’s sorrow shone pale as crystal, etched into a rebuttal that gave no ground to defeat. ‘For the love that I bear you, which is all I hold for bargain, I reject this bitter gift. I withhold the grace of my royal blessing. The cost of a crown can come too high! Jieret, don’t leave me the wretched legacy of a life bought in blood. I won’t endorse a survival founded upon the sacrifice of our vital friendship.’

  Jieret regarded his prince, no longer torn. His blunt features had refigured to a tender sorrow, bespeaking a care that extended beyond fragile ties to mortal life. Gently, he shook his leonine head. ‘For the sons of my sons, liege, you’ll see that I must.’

  Silence, of a depth to make the mind ring to the cry of an unexpressed agony.

  Jieret used the birch stick anyway, laid down another shining circle that contained nothing more than the ringed cipher holding Arithon’s shade, and himself. A small flash, as he cupped the
flake of mica and asked for the permission to serve his great need. Then, unflinching, he bent and swept a gap in the primary circle that held his prince’s confined spirit in separation.

  One circle contained them. Caithdein and prince faced off as a pair. Jieret, in warm flesh, and Arithon, whom he had been born to serve, a bristling imprint wrought out of spirit light in the poised stance of a duelist. Yet no offensive was possible, naked spirit pitched against an entity sheathed within the protections of the body. Nor could any act his Grace might conjure revoke the free-will permissions he had left in trust with Jieret s’Valerient. His royal consent, given to his liegeman, by its nature had been unconditional. No regret, even one wrought from untenable grief, could cancel the binding set upon him.

  Arithon could but watch, agonized, as, each move deliberate, Jieret tipped the flake of mica and captured the reflection of his unshielded spirit.

  Steadied as steel, the Earl of the North invoked the words of binding that would marry Arithon’s image into the mineral’s matrix. As the Shadow Master had promised through a morning of cursory instruction, mage-sight clearly showed the moment the spell sealed and meshed. The common fleck of mica heated and flared, then burned into configured light. The mercuric blaze of its presence became augmented with the signature essence of Prince Arithon’s living aura. For all intents and purposes, the mirror spell of illusion merged his live presence with the stone and made them one and the same being.

  Into the wondering triumph of the moment, as Jieret spoke the rune to seal his flawless execution of grand conjury, Arithon s’Ffalenn used his silence like weaponry to wear down resolve and compel space for second thoughts.

  Jieret stayed unmoved. He tucked the spelled mica amid the packed contents of the last acorn without fumbling. ‘For the love I bear you, Arithon, I return the gift of life you gave me as a boy on the banks of Tal Quorin.’

  Such drilled quiet could have burned, for its baleful intensity. Jieret reaffixed the acorn’s cap, careful not to mar the minute chains of ciphers scratched over the seed’s oiled surface. He secured the end with pine pitch, spoke the name for the Paravian rune of ending, then wrapped the finished construct in a loose twist of silk. As he tucked the fated bundle into the breast of his jerkin, he concluded, ‘You’re not free to refuse, liege. Not before you have tasted fulfillment, as I have: conceive an heir in marriage with the woman of your choice and raise Rathain’s next crown prince to maturity.’

  Silence, from the Teir’s’Ffalenn, as the realm’s acting steward arose to his lanky, full height. Sketched in the failing light of the candle stub, he loomed large as his father, his broad hands as capable, and his carriage as self-assured as he shouldered the deliberate next step.

  Braggen watched, seized dumb, as Jieret struck the flint and lit the spill of herbs left bundled and waiting. He reinscribed the line of the circle holding the Teir’s’Ffalenn. No vital step omitted, he cut himself separate from Arithon’s ward of containment, then sealed the new circle behind him with a crisp incantation and a powdery trail of warmed ashes.

  Arithon tried again, spoke Jeynsa’s name with each syllable of appeal pronounced with a masterbard’s attacking clarity.

  Jieret fielded the strike, placid. ‘On the hour my daughter swears her oath as caithdein she’ll embrace the steel of her heritage. She has been raised strong. As the Fellowship’s marked candidate for my succession, she’ll rise to her inheritance and forgive us both for what comes of this day’s work.’

  ‘If she might, I won’t.’ Half-unmanned by his failure, Arithon faltered, his gift for glib satire broken by strain into vindictive desperation.

  ‘You forget,’ Jieret answered. ‘I know you too well. However you bristle and snap, your compassion can seed no rancor. For that, you’ve forgiven me already. It’s your conscience that’s hounding you past reach of peace. Have done, brother. For my sake, and yours, let it go.’

  Inarguably firm, he asked Braggen to hand him Alithiel’s empty scabbard.

  ‘I’ll renounce you,’ threatened Arithon. ‘Your family, your heirs, everything you stand for! I’ll turn my back. If I survive, they’ll watch me walk away, forgetting the names of your father and mother, and every misbegotten offshoot of your lineage.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, and you can’t,’ Jieret contradicted. ‘If the truth hasn’t moved me, your lies just demean you.’

  Rammed against an unyielding defeat by the High Earl’s immovable courage, the conflicted presence of Arithon s’Ffalenn whirled in raging bitterness. The fabric of his very self all but came undone as he saw his bluff called. Never before this had his arsenal of threats been so savagely reduced by bare honesty. Even had Jieret not known his true heart, a blood-pacted friendship sworn under the sighted strength of his mastery was utterly beyond his present power to revoke.

  He could do nothing, nothing but rage, as his caithdein laced the scabbard in the black silk cord pulled from his ripped-off shirtsleeve. Warded word, and arcane sigils laid down at each crossed junction, remade the battered leather into a spelled prison to bind him. Then the parallel lines, drawn by the birch twig, and sealed with dry ashes, framed the path that would join the connection.

  Braced to finish the final stage of the ritual, Jieret asked for the sword. Deaf to pity, he sat with the blade’s icy length pressed between his fixed palms. He made the incantation, flawless and sure, that traitorously transferred his liege’s Named permission into the warded black metal.

  Against silence like a cry, he returned the weapon to the hands of his waiting Companion. ‘Braggen, on my word, you will raise the sword Alithiel and thrust her blade through the circle of ash that holds Arithon’s spirit form captive.’

  The victim found his voice, a peal of blazing torment that raised sympathetic resonance from cold stone. Vibration cast back in subliminal echoes, to lift the hair at the nape. ‘Jieret, no, don’t do this!’

  Made aware by Braggen’s bounding start that the plea had sheared within range of hearing, Jieret stiffened to adamance. He confronted his prince, his hewn features drained pale, and his voice racked to stark desperation. ‘Even if, in my place you know well you would do the same thing?’

  ‘Still, I ask you, I beg you, don’t do this. Bear the spelled sword yourself. Stay at my side as we planned.’ A stricken pause, then the admission, delivered with stripped human need, ‘After you, there is no one else but Elaira. Can’t you see how your loss would diminish me?’

  A long look, exchanged between caithdein and sworn prince; a stretched second, fractured from time by pure heartbreak. In speechless communion, the locked conflict between them encompassed a love beyond words. The bonding first made with the boy at Tal Quorin had grown to mean more than blood, more than duty, more than the gift of breath and life.

  The one moment was too unutterably fleeting to carry the hope and the pain that should have endured to the peaceful, quiet parting of old age.

  ‘No,’ Jieret gasped, his tone flattened and final. ‘I see too well I’ve made the right choice. You might give too much, if I rode beside you. The temptation to spare me might drive you to jeopardize your survival. Caolle would have endorsed my fair judgment. Braggen’s better with the sword, always has been.’ After a frightful, shuddering pause, he mastered himself enough to manage the echo of his most wicked smile. ‘You’ll live to be crowned as Rathain’s next king, or else leave s’Ffalenn progeny. In memory, I’ll still stand beside you.’

  Cruelly isolate within the spelled circle, Arithon’s spirit form lashed back in emphatic rejection. ‘You can still change your mind! Cast the mica construct into the running waters of the Aiyenne. Jieret, you’ll have done far more than your duty to Rathain on the instant you’ve won a diversion.’

  And again, Deshir’s High Earl gave back his refusal, sealed by a caithdein’s irreproachable integrity. ‘The crown charter we guardian can’t stand on the foundation of our mortal attachments.’

  ‘Bedamned to the law, if it strangles the care that gives o
ur wretched existence its meaning! The weight of royal sovereignty is as much my bane as any warped destiny bound by the curse of Desh-thiere.’ Shattered, unable to weep for the fact he was helpless, Arithon recoiled at last against the tenacious thorn of his character. ‘Iam not reconciled,’ he insisted.

  And yet, Teir’s’Ffalenn and Torbrand’s lineage to the very bone, he gathered the bleeding shreds of rent pride. In thankless torment, he strove to embrace the left burden of an insupportable tragedy. ‘Meet my death well, Jieret. Swear to me! Promise! Make Lysaer strike you down fast and clean in the open! By the tenets of clan custom, you won’t let his Alliance fanatics seize their chance to take you alive.’

  ‘Ath keep you safe, liege,’ was all Jieret said. ‘On the hour, when it comes, I’ll give Caolle and Steiven and the others who have loved you all of your heartsore regrets.’ At the crux, only tears slipped his ironclad control. Scalding drops traced his cheeks, their soundless agony absorbed into the graying strands of red beard that had made his name the scourge of the Northern League of Headhunters.

  Jieret had the rest of his nerves kept in hand as he nodded his signal to Braggen.

  Nor did man or sovereign flinch through the devastating instant of parting. Eye to eye, heart to heart they endured the shearing grief as Braggen carried out his called duty.

  The black sword sliced the circle. Hungry spells set into the metal by unbending design first swallowed the scintillant golden aura, then the defiant, bright spirit and vital personality of Rathain’s last sanctioned crown prince.

  Darkness remained, scored ghostly phosphor by the lines of spelled circles, and the less ordered flare of the struggling candleflame.