by Janny Wurts
Though how the Warden had finessed the feat, or accessed the prodigious outlay of power defied imagining, given that an engagement of Rathain’s flux lines by way of Arithon’s seal ring remained proscribed under Asandir’s oath. Dakar refused the temptation to pry. Cosach bedamned, only a fool crossed the will of a Fellowship Sorcerer.
A hunched raptor with slate-coloured eyes, the High Earl of the North checked his ornery temper only until the fat prophet recovered his feet. Then he said, triumphant, “Collect Tarens. Now we can turn south for Ettinmere, leaving my war band free to hunt scalpers.”
The Mad Prophet bridled.
“Ah, no, not again! I won’t stand for excuses.” Cosach exploded in nettled suspicion, “Don’t claim Althain’s Warden cannot be trusted to act in the woman’s best interest!”
“Fiends plague!” Dakar raised open palms before the clan chieftain drew his ready sword. “Strike me dead all you like, that won’t flip the bad odds. Silver to toadstools, Elaira can’t overturn the lure the Prime Matriarch’s foisted on Arithon anytime soon. Not against Asandir’s oath of noninterference, and twice never while Sethvir’s dissembling delay lends the Fellowship’s long-term cause an advantage.”
“What?” Cosach stared, inimical, while a cat’s-paw of prescience riffled chills down Dakar’s cowardly spine.
“You cannot see why?” The Mad Prophet shivered, his mop of greying chestnut hair swagged over his slumped shoulders. “If Arithon succumbs to Vivet’s lush charms, the Seven acquire their coveted chance of an heir for Rathain’s crown blood-line.”
Cosach weaned his fist off his weapon and clapped Dakar’s back with a gut peal of laughter. “So, why the glum face? Ath bless! A wee royal by-blow’s no moping tragedy.”
To that, the Mad Prophet found no pat reply, engrossed as he was in brown thoughts surrounding a joyless encounter with Tarens.
“Can’t make the Ettinmere plateau before the winter gales block the passes,” Cosach ran on with testy practicality. “Are you coming? Bedamned if I’ll twiddle my thumbs while you dither. Forbye, you deserve to be horsewhipped for the bother, chasing yon foxy enchantress for naught the full breadth of the territory.”
“I owed Elaira the gesture of courtesy,” the Mad Prophet retorted, if only for the unconscionable blow he had once dealt to her dignity. He turned up his collar and stumbled ahead, cheeks still flamed with remorse for a mis-step over two centuries unforgiven. Daelion, Master of Fate, pity him on the day he came to face Arithon. The wretch caught in that cross-fire might wish for one decent act for the mark of grace in his favour.
Legend and folk-tales agreed: the visitor who entered Althain Tower as the guest of a Fellowship Sorcerer never survived the encounter unchanged. The alternative being worse, Elaira drifted back into awareness, secured within stonewalls warded by ancient perils beyond her imagining.
Yet no whisper of such primal power pressured her subtle senses. Eyes shut, she listened, tucked like a jewel in a treasure-box, and surrounded by a rapt silence profound as the ages. The transient present spanned those quiescent depths, thin as slicked oil and defined by the gad-fly whicker of flame. A candle nearby was infused by the fragrance of rose extract.
Impossible, that she did not feel diminished, where the grandiloquent sorrows of Paravian history overshadowed humanity’s busyness. She pondered that marvel and encountered instead its diametrical opposite: the tender care by which her mortal needs had been cosseted. Sethvir did not dispense impersonal comfort, but tended his guests with an intimate touch fit to pierce the heart and unstring her defences.
Through the swift well of tears, Elaira surveyed the exquisite appointments that furnished her south-facing chamber. A slit window framed the indigo mantle of evening above the wax taper, socketed in the mouth of a bronze dragon coiled with spread wings on the nightstand. Towel rack, ewer, and an embossed clothes-chest with trinket drawers occupied the shadowed corner, softened by antique tapestries patterned in idyllic foliage, and a waterfall cascading into a forest pool.
Which imagery prompted her alarmed recall of the disaster behind her shattered ankle. Elaira took immediate stock of her responsibilities. Rathain’s seal ring was safe on her finger. The Biedar knife yet hung, sheathed, from the thong looped over her neck. She reclined against mismatched pillows, nestled upon the counterpane coverlet of a four-poster bed. Still clothed, she sensed the aftermath tingle of spellcraft that had left her tidy and dry. Such finesse had not humoured her injured leg. Skilled hands, and not talent, had removed her boot, snipped off the stocking beneath, then slit the calf of her leathers knee high.
The broken bone had been set in splints and the ragged flesh wound, expertly dressed: but without arcane artifice. Beyond the expected twinge, when she stirred, no thread stitches bound muscle or skin. Her mage-taught senses revealed only a supported alignment of the damaged tissue. Her injury would mend on its own, given rest, a stout crutch, and the tedium of convalescence.
Set against the specious regard for her modesty, Althain’s Warden was disinclined to hasten her back onto her feet. Elaira could heal a clean break herself through the order’s forced sigils of regeneration.
“But not here.” From beyond the open arch of the doorway, the unnoticed arrival rebuked her irritable impatience. “That style of practice would place you at hazard, since Shehane Althain’s guardian spirit must take exception.” The Warden crossed into the light at the threshold. A tray piled with cups, bowls, and plates wafted enticing aromas, topped by a head of mussed hair like a cotton bole, and a wizened face sliced by a grin. “Might I come in?”
Elaira laughed, charmed by the chagrin in the Sorcerer’s turquoise eyes. “On sufferance, naturally, for the unfair advantage.”
For of course, as a famished invalid she was unable to fend for herself. Sethvir stepped inside, sprightly as a pixie despite his burden. The awkward reach to span her lap should have strained his frail frame, but did not: his offering hove to rest without clinking the pauper’s collection of mismatched plates and tin cutlery.
Elaira regarded the tempting spread, salivating. The fragrance of hot muffins and jam, tea with cream, a steaming platter of herb-seasoned eggs, roasted apples, and honey cakes sprinkled with nuts demolished her wary resistance.
Sethvir chuckled at her crest-fallen sigh. “If you’re anything like Asandir, you’ll be deathly tired of trail fare.” Sixth of his Fellowship colleagues to greet her, aside from distanced encounters through scrying, he pulled up a chair and sat with the toes of his frumpy buskins tucked behind the lower rung. Up close, he resembled a doddering grandsire. Absent was the presence of Asandir’s might, gloved in peril as the sheathed sword-blade. Elaira sensed nothing of Davien’s mercurial intelligence. Sethvir’s rumpled maroon robe was clean, if worn shiny and eaten with moth holes. Snagged threads fuzzed his cuffs, blotched with the faded, scrubbed spatters of oil and lamp-black left ingrained by the mixing of ink.
Elaira caught herself staring and blushed.
Sethvir winked back. Aimless as a fey creature woven from thistle-down, he softened into reverie, most pleased to encourage her dissecting interest.
A rank fool would believe that disarming facade. She had no shield at all, and no shred of privacy to outface the ferocious reach of his earth-sense.
Sethvir ventured nothing. Only blinked with an injury that suggested the most deafening complaint in the room was her meal’s getting cold.
Elaira flushed deeper, shamed to have implied any Fellowship Sorcerer would violate her free will. She drowned her contrite embarrassment in the enjoyment of excellent food.
Left at length with scraped plates and two crockery mugs, Elaira slipped the cozy off the tea-pot and poured, then pushed one cup across the tray towards Sethvir. Since Fellowship Sorcerers were not wont to speak first, she steeled her nerves. “A Masterbard’s song can unfurl the subtle light to stitch broken bone into wholeness. No splints are required. I daresay the spirit of Shehane Althain would revel in the experience.”
Sethvir sipped his tea, waiting, eyes suddenly focused to an alarming intensity.
“I gave myself into your active protection!” Elaira snapped. “Why not fuse a snapped ankle? Or was my need answered only because you protected your crown prince’s seal ring?”
“Ah. Is that what you believe?” The Sorcerer glanced upwards and surveyed the ceiling beams.
Which maddening obfuscation at last yanked her short, doused her temper, and forced her to think. “You could not act in behalf of Rathain’s crown. Asandir’s terms of settlement to the Order of the Koriathain forbade you?”
The answering twitch of his smile was bitter-sweet, wreathed in white tangles of beard. “Alas.” The Sorcerer raised his mug to his lips. His shut eyes, overtop of the rim, evinced nothing more than savoury enjoyment.
Cued to reason aloud, Elaira continued. “I was on my way to seek your counsel. My case was not forbidden?” And the import dawned, quickly. “My charge to unriddle the Biedar mystery! The purpose behind their stone knife was the cause that enabled your hospitality?”
“But of course.” Mildly vexed, Sethvir studied his tea. “The Rei-yaj Seeress possesses uniquely piercing vision.”
Which remark shocked Elaira into a sweat. “Ath! Then you did act to spare the Biedar’s artifact!”
Sethvir reached for the tin spoon and drizzled more honey into his mug. “The crone’s request was urgently persuasive. You have arrived here by her grace.”
“But not intact.” Elaira regarded the crude splints and winced. Use of the clean precepts learned from Ath’s adepts would not raise Shehane Althain to umbrage. However, with broken bone at the joint, she might hasten recovery by only a fortnight. She seethed with frustration like a bull-terrier. “Why hold me bedridden? Or is this an underhand bid to waylay me?” For winter would choke the high passes to Ettinmere before she could regain the hardihood for rough travel.
The Sorcerer flicked the spoon dry and balanced the shaft on one finger. “I might ask, instead, why you avoided Dakar. His hands are not tied by Asandir’s oath. He seemed rather desperate to reorder your personal priorities.”
Elaira’s frown exposed the heart-felt wrench of deep conflict. She ducked her head before the tears welled. “Because I already know the stakes in play at Ettinmere.” She added, unsteady, “You need not delay me here with a gimp leg. I could, anytime, from anonymous distance, destroy the glamour the Prime’s spun over Vivet to snag Arithon’s male fascination.”
Salt thrown into her sore distress, Sethvir said, “Then, if you could free him, why haven’t you?”
Stunned, Elaira looked up. Eyes the delicate tint of dawn sky met the Sorcerer’s, that mirrored her anguish, redoubled.
Surprised to a strained silence, she paused through a moment as frail as cracked glass, set to shatter under the challenge posed by his question. Her intaken breath shook, while she groped for the abstruse thread of logic. “Because I have leave to use the Biedar knife only once in my own behalf. Never Arithon’s. And because, am I wrong? I both shaped and witnessed Dakar’s oath to the Order of the Koriathain at Athir. He invoked the debt to the Crown of Rathain. Kharadmon’s statement to me revealed Asandir’s sworn release, made at Whitehold, to discharge the obligation. I’ve never touched the engraved slab he created to verify his sealed intentions. But your cautious admission today confirms Rathain’s seal ring falls outside the reach of the Seven’s protection. Therefore, I must be correct to place absolute trust that your colleague’s commitment has been kept in form?”
Althain’s Warden stilled like a statue, while wafted steam sieved through his beard, and misted a stare fixed by suspended terror.
Elaira swallowed, shaken. “I dared not act first until I made sure.” Past prevarication, she outlined the ghastly conclusion behind the Sorcerer’s mute tongue. “Debt falls to the crown. If Vivet conceives to your acknowledged prince, if she bears an heir fit for the royal succession, then as long as that child breathes in this world, Arithon’s fate would be freed from your Fellowship’s absolute terms.”
Sethvir’s relieved smile dawned like the sunrise, achingly bright, while double-edged sorrow sluiced tears like thrown diamonds down his seamed cheeks. “If Vivet births a son for the lineage, in fact. Asandir’s exact words bound ‘his Grace’, the obvious male pronoun nuanced to invite the leap of assumption. Though, Ath wept, at this jointure with Vivet, we cannot be certain your Prime did not grasp that stickling loop-hole at the outset.” He added, distressed, “You’ll forgive this?”
“For Prince Arithon’s life?” Elaira broke down, anguished to contemplate a newborn child tossed out in cold blood as a bargaining chip: even one birthed through deception under the order’s wicked design. Despite the weak character of the potential mother, the babe would be Arithon’s! The posited impact on him scraped nerves already stripped raw. “No! I beg you, Sethvir, don’t say any more! Never tell me how the outcome from Athir plays through, or infer that your Fellowship might ever sanction an infant sacrifice, even to salvage the compact.”
“Never against the Law of the Major Balance! Nor can the question of Arithon’s issue bear weight anytime before spring.” For of course, the birth of the bastard came first. Without reassurance, Sethvir’s misty eyes veiled the past, and also today’s possible range of intangible futures: if in truth any cheat card existed to defeat the Prime’s vicious settlement.
Rather than dwell upon that unpleasantness, Althain’s Warden refreshed the tea, content to sit in companionable quiet while the candle burned down, and stars glimmered through the glazed arrow-slit. Elaira reclined in the pillows, still restless. The dangerous mystery behind her errand too piquant to let her settle, she unslung the artifact hung from her neck.
“Selidie Prime has hounded my trail across the breadth of the continent. Is this knife behind the reason? Since the Biedar crone appointed me as the interim bearer, I’d like to know why, along with anything else your greater wisdom permits.”
Althain’s Warden laid his beverage aside. Erect, his drilling, direct gaze upon her, he extended his palm. “May I?”
Hesitant, Elaira measured the knife. The desperate wear of her guardianship showed, the white goatskin sheath grimed from travel, with beads torn from the eldritch, whorled patterns of copper, turquoise, and red glass, and the rainbow glimmer of freshwater pearl.
“Your heirloom came here from another world,” Sethvir added, apologetic. “My earth-linked awareness encompasses only what originates on Athera. Except for the hide, which belonged to a doe, I am blind to its making unless it is handled. I would not be the first outside the Biedar birthright. Once, Enithen Tuer minded its legacy. She passed the blade on to protect Sulfin Evend, who entrusted it for a short while to Lysaer s’Ilessid.”
“In defence of what threat? Do you know?” asked Elaira.
“Yes.” Althain’s Warden inclined his head. “The talisman was loaned to thwart the black arts of the Grey Kralovir.” Shown Elaira’s sudden, rattled alarm, he appended, “Thankfully, due to Arithon’s courage, that particular cult and its wicked practice have been expunged from Athera.”
She surrendered the knife after that, as though further delay might raise blisters.
Sethvir tucked his feet cross-legged on the chair seat. Leaned back with closed eyes, the cow-licked fur of his buskins poked through the frayed edge of his hem, his artless disregard for decorum belied his vast depth of experience. Fleeting distaste flexed his mouth. Then a quick movement unsheathed what seemed a primitive blade. The Sorcerer stroked his fingers down the crude flint, reciting as though the voices of the Biedar ancestry whispered through his questing touch.
“This knife was knapped as a cry of lament, in redress for the shame that stemmed from a young woman’s triumph. Called by Jessian, she was an outsider granted the exceptional privilege to witness the power of the tribal mysteries at first hand. She died for that knowledge, pressured by ambitious oppressors who coveted all forms of arcane practice. Though she kept
her vow and never revealed the Biedar’s secrets, her adamant silence under interrogation provoked a concerted search for disclosure. Those who authorized her execution for non-compliance did not rest, but pursued what was hidden. In their relentless arrogance, they extorted the tribes, seized the vital heart of the Biedar heritage, and proceeded to pervert its integrity.”
“The Biedar crone told me that Jessian was Koriathain,” Elaira admitted, worrying her linen napkin.
Sethvir opened his lids and surveyed her with unnerving sympathy. “The order is ancient beyond your imagining. This knife, created for Jessian’s requital, predates Athera’s Second Age.”
Which striking statement implied that the Biedar artifact had been passed down for nigh on to twenty thousand years. Althain’s Warden stroked the leather-wrapped handle, and resumed, “Jessian was the most infamous name from the early annals of your sisterhood. Your spirit, and hers, shine with similar light. She rebelled for the same reasons you have. More, I warrant the Biedar crone already has appointed her champion. Whether that choice sprang from the foresight of her desert prophets, or through your self-determined character, you’ve inherited a role in the charge of redeeming the great wrong inflicted through Jessian’s legacy.”
Elaira folded her arms against a ranging chill. “Ath’s mercy on me, that you can’t interfere!” Her instructions from the revered elder had not been to fulfil that legacy herself but to pass the tribe’s relic on to Arithon when she saw fit.
Surely as troubled as she by the import, Sethvir snapped the blade home in its beaded sheath and handed it back with a cryptic precaution. “You carry an extremely powerful talisman, consecrated in part for the purpose of breaking the ritual workings of necromancy.”
Elaira’s heart-beat sped in the oppressive quiet. For the Sorcerer did not arise to close the audience when she tucked the Biedar heirloom away. Instead, he retrieved his neglected mug, spooned more honey, and replenished his tea.
Against every sensible fear, Elaira weighed that subtle encouragement. Fellowship Sorcerers honoured free will. They gave nothing unless they were asked. Sethvir had not healed her ankle, and yet his authority sheltered her. He acted in her behalf, by admission, under the Biedar crone’s wishes. Which contrary tangle suggested his hands were not tied, at least where tribal lines had been drawn to oppose Koriani affairs.
