Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon (The Wars of Light and Shadow, Book 10)

by Janny Wurts

  The shaman’s lackeys exchanged alarmed glances, while their master flipped back his cowl and shoved erect in his midnight mantle. Formidable despite egg-shell bones and frail balance, Roaco stepped from his sedan chair. The back-drop stir of the Ettinfolk quieted. Stillness gripped even the wind off the heights as the iconic figure of authority opened a line of arcane incantation.

  “Don’t!” the black-haired outsider warned. He never moved. Yet his stance in the thickening dark acquired the latent charge of a storm front.

  Then, obscured from villagers’ view, the broken wand cast at the feet of the shaman quivered and shuddered upright. The tassel of feathers lifted erect in defiance of gravity.

  The initiate bearers exclaimed in shock.

  “Save us!”

  “He’s accursed!”

  “We’ve sheltered a fiend-bringer!”

  “Execute the offender at once,” the fourth one shouted, distraught. “He must die where he stands as an abomination!”

  But Roaco deferred a public contest of strength. While the bystanders cowered in dread, he rebuked, “Past question, unbridled, you are a danger!”

  The foreigner inclined his head, poised enough to stay reasonable. “As you say, I could be the rife thorn in your side. Choose wisely. You don’t have to cross me.”

  While the left-handed bearer fumbled after a bane charm, the outlander whistled the threnody for fiendbane, pitched to a piercing crescendo. Screened from the curious villagers by the bulwark of the sedan chair, the upright stick with its bristling feathers toppled flat on the ground.

  Which harmless overture foundered against a charged wall of cutthroat hostility. Roaco’s filmed gaze raked Arin’s person with a glare fit to freeze living flesh. Beyond negotiation, Ettinmere’s master conjurer launched a probe aimed to drive the offensive bard to his knees.

  Arin staggered. “Don’t be a fool!” he snapped, his skilled voice pitched for the party bunched beside the sedan chair. Braced on planted feet, he did not counter Roaco’s attack. Only moved: an innocuous gesture first perceived as a shrug brought his unclasped hands to the fore. He had stripped the wrapped cloth. Unveiled in the deepening night, the glimmering threat held all along in reserve: each exposed finger was gloved with an uncanny shimmer of blue-violet light.

  Roaco smothered his conjured assault as though choked.

  “Teaah’s Breasts!” someone swore.

  While a riled underling hissed through clenched teeth, the outlander gently listed his demands. “You must restore my liberty, and without question, unless you’re still in doubt of your straits? I could make you a laughing-stock, and to no purpose, since I’ve no provocation as yet to upset your guarded existence.”

  Roaco received this, inwardly seething as pressurized magma clapped under a pot-lid.

  For the deadlock presented a stark ultimatum: a thousand iyats, released on a thought, would evoke chaos enough to inundate his cabal’s resources. The charms for fiendbane they carried were inadequate for a mass onslaught, and delay while they brought reinforcement would see the village savaged by the horde. Given the bard’s whistle might effect a banishment straightaway, the Ettin shamans risked the loss of the people’s respect, and the forfeit of their unquestioned standing.

  Roaco’s stymied fury quivered the coal plumage stitched to his mantle. “Do you think to survive as a larking fool with our hostile knives at your back?” Nonetheless, his clipped gesture dismissed the poised archers.

  Arin ended the stand-off forthwith. He doused the glittering peril worn like jewellery under his cloak, then side-stepped his thwarted antagonists. The puzzled onlookers watched him stride past without a backwards glance.

  Which uncivil retreat plucked the cranked string of a perilous, unresolved tension. Arin might actually command the ability to thrash Roaco and his colleagues in a contest of arcane strength; or else he went, clothed in bluster, daring them to call his bluff. This night’s withdrawal was no truce, but a brittle suspension of overt hostilities. The laden sledge bearing the proof of his measure stayed at large: a careless sop for presumptive authority to claim in his wake.

  Roaco spurned the lot outright, snatched his broken wand from the grip of a flummoxed underling, then settled into his sedan chair and snapped his imperious fingers. The archers formed ranks. His attendants scrambled as bidden to shoulder the poles and lift him aloft. They bore their aged shaman into the night without the flourish of a last pronouncement.

  The stunned Ettinfolk inherited an emptied stage. They milled, uncertain, while bafflement erupted to indignation: the outsider’s outrageous insolence had escaped both chastisement and just execution. Fists shook and talk circled, until the winter gusts numbed feet and pried through bundled clothing. Massed fury eroded as mothers cornered their fretful children and turned their dissatisfied husbands toward home. The Daldari kinfolk also broke away. Forced to take charge of the laden sledge before wild scavengers spoiled the contents, they shouldered the chore of salting and hanging the parcelled meat in the smoke-house.

  Accounting of Vivet’s household share fell to the Daldari grandfather, who assessed the raw furs with experienced hands. “These animals were deftly noosed and not punctured. None thrashed or suffered, besides. I find no chafed bald spots or tears from poor skinning. The pelts are first quality. Yon fellow’s minded his duty, no matter we’ve no cause to like him.”

  The relatives gave over their grudging acceptance. If some were inclined towards lenience concerning their kinswoman’s plight, none were mollified: for the maddening outsider had quit the scene and left them no ready target.

  Vivet was alone when at length her provider reappeared at her cottage. Since doorways in Ettin were latched against nothing but storms and foraging mice, she spun to the soft, inbound step at her threshold, caught off guard as the panel creaked open.

  Skirts flapped by the blast of cold air, she let fly in testy reaction. “Teeah’s sweet mercy, you’ve wrung my nerves inside out and shown my family no courtesy.”

  “I have made my peace,” said Arin, unruffled. “Your brothers saw fit to withdraw their threat to dissolve your household.” Tangled hair as untamed as the night, he pinned his acute stare upon her and waited. The tallow dips fluttered and streamed greasy smoke: demonic lighting that exposed, unabashed, the purpose behind his arrival.

  Fastidious, always, he had stripped to wash; was in fact dripping beneath his outlandish trapper’s cloak. His white knuckles clenched a collection of straps: the doffed belt and sheathed knives slung over his shoulder. Where the briar-scraped leathers draped on his forearm had been brushed clean of mud, dried offal and blood stains fouled his breeches, small-clothes, and the shirt bunched under his opposite forearm. Nakedly shivering, he addressed her twice. Through her shocked paralysis, he tripled his request to make use of her iron cauldron.

  Vivet remembered to breathe. He wanted to boil his rank clothing, of course. Her consent was required, his need to stay civilized the first break that his iron pride ceded to her advantage.

  “Come in, then! Shut the door.” Flustered to chills, Vivet blunted her unnatural surge of apprehension. He had no clue that her compromised future hinged on his domestic acceptance, or that she owed her primary allegiance against his interests. She arose from her spinning. Hoped he would overlook the mauled yarn, when she stepped to the hob and tipped the water pail into the pot. His wary regard like a knife at her back, she stirred up the coals and hung the filled vessel to heat.

  Shortly, the hinge squeaked and the bitter draught ceased. Relief as the latch clinked galled her to scold, “You could have bathed under my roof in comfort.” The brutal cold was a misery even for his stubborn spirit.

  Arin denied her stab at sympathy and shed his belt, blades, and leathers into a heap a half step from the door-jamb. There, he poised, while the frail pause stretched like liquid glass drawn to its snapping point. She yielded first, and withdrew beyond reach. Barefoot, numbed bloodless by the chill, he still eschewed intimacy
when he advanced. The bulky canvas coat obscured his slight frame as he seized the wooden paddle and immersed his soiled garments.

  Vivet hoped he might soften enough to perch on her stool by the fireside.

  But the prideful man skirted the braided rug and claimed the bare floor beside his wretched possessions. Tucked there, cross-legged, he mined the caped coat’s flap pocket for a bone awl and a length of greased sinew. In relentless silence, he mended a tear in his trail-battered leathers.

  Vivet stole furtive glances, praying the shadows would hide the untoward heat flaming her skin. Arin did not acknowledge her. Head bent, he stayed immersed in his work, while fire-light sharpened his angled cheek-bones and clean-shaved jaw, the toll of his alienation told over in sallow skin and lean flesh.

  Which extreme independence overran sense. Vivet risked twisting the tail of the tiger. “You must be hungry. At least let me offer you something to eat.”

  His eyes flicked up, a spiked glint of sheared tourmaline. “With strings or without?”

  “You’ll need someone’s shelter!” Vivet retorted. “Your high fettle won’t stay upright on prickles for long, if you drive yourself to skin and bones. It’s unfair to whet your annoyance on me. I never prompted my kinfolks’ ill will, or set Roaco’s disfavour against you.”

  His scorn slapped back like a ricochet. “Didn’t you! In fact?” While she reeled, stung breathless, he added, “Which is the butterfly drawn to the flower, and which, the poised hand on the net? No!” he snapped as she filled her crushed chest. “Don’t trouble to speak.” His roughshod contempt trampled protest. “My trust is given, not steered. Someday, perhaps, your child may earn the right to ask for my confidence.”

  “Not if you succumb to malnourishment, first.” Self-conscious of her ripening belly, Vivet slung the smaller pot onto the chain. Flame-light streaked gilt through her tumbled hair as she straightened, knuckles gouged into her cramped lower back. “You don’t want me beholden to Tanuay and my cousins? Then accept the need to keep yourself fit.”

  Arin jerked a tight stitch, broke his twine, and swore. “Debt to your relatives would strap me with the less tiresome complication.” Yet this time, the jab reflected annoyance. Hostility quelled, he repaired his burst seam, while Vivet chopped onions and carrots on tenterhooks, and shredded a portion of salt meat. The meal simmered amid an armed quiet, while the droughts through the chinks breathed the scents of lye soap, steamed victuals, and the fust of the carded fleece readied for her drop spindle. Once the food had warmed through, better sense prevailed. Arin unbent and accepted a bowl and spoon from his helpmeet’s hand.

  But not enough to quell his recoil from her most casual touch. The enthrallment set on her spurred Vivet to seek contact. This near, the insatiable pressure woke urgency: to slide her hands under the obstructive canvas and caress his vulnerable, taut flesh. Knees weakened, she yearned to kiss his lips, until her pent-back, driven desire stripped her grip on restraint.

  Just as desperately primed for evasion, Arin recoiled from her as though scalded.

  “You hate me,” she accused.

  He glared back, exasperated. “Honestly? I prefer to feel nothing at all.”

  “That’s not humanly possible.” Vivet eyed the bowl he raised like a shield. In fact he was not as unmoved as he seemed. The spelled hook had set, well and deep in the viscera. Stymied under the force of the ensorcelled allure, she let balked passion fuel her argument. “No creature born into flesh lacks desire. Or heart. What makes you think you are different?”

  His stare caught the sulphur flare of the coals. “Your shamans seem hell-bound to argue the case.”

  “Well, you gave them a reason!” Vivet tossed back her chestnut hair, wrung to a sensuous gasp as his sight raked across the bare skin above her laced bodice. She reined in frayed composure, fought the relentless glamour enough to resume conversation. “Why make a display of your arcane talent if not for provocation?”

  That snagged his unpleasant, riveted focus, as though sight alone could trace her inner thoughts and interpret her covert deceit. “You were not with the crowd to denounce me.”

  Vivet back-stepped, palms defensively raised. “A neighbour brought word. After all, your actions bear on my well-being. Tell me, what dire threat unnerved Roaco?”

  Arin’s twisted smile showed teeth. For the unadorned hands in plain view were quite ordinary: sculpted bone clothed in unremarkable flesh, chapped raw from exposure. “Are you still hot to bear my uncanny get?”

  Her pinched lips went white, and her instinctive clasp laced her ripening belly. “The trapper’s virile seed’s the more likely. You know that.”

  The goad of his suppressed laugh stung too deep to choke back her embittered retort. “Damn all to my happiness, how you must detest me!”

  “No.” His quicksilver grin momentarily resurged. “But at least there’s one point of agreement between us.” He ate the meal, ravenous. Tousled head bowed over the food, he resembled a starveling waif. How easily forgotten the steel will that battled his entangled fate, no matter the sinister strategy aimed to noose him to a cause without quarter.

  Vivet’s anguished loneliness must have betrayed her. For his knitted brows rose, guileless with a surprise that curdled to irony. “Did you actually think I could relish the pinch of the oath your condition’s laid on me?”

  Vivet gave at the knees and claimed the vacant stool. “I daresay you’ve left little slack for debate.” In need of a rescue, she snatched up the knife, rummaged for the soap cake, and carved off a generous dollop. Then she laid claim to the paddle, stirred up the suds, and began to pound the ingrained soil out of his laundry. “You mock even the pretence of goodwill when you insult blameless strangers. Why should you flaunt your contempt of our matrons?”

  “Ah!” His expression settled, though not his keen survey, which bored through the puffed steam that polished her fecund bloom under exertion. “By all means, let’s belabour the obvious. Your culture’s coercion has secured my guardianship for the sake of your threatened child. I’ll grant that the babe is entitled to live. But no Ettin custom, and no lustful indulgence on your part can trade on a newborn’s survival for my affection.”

  Yet his reserve has been challenged: the instant before he returned to his meal, his gaze lingered upon the luxurious mass of her auburn hair. Desperation, more than indifference, armoured his adamant reserve. Close quarters over the winter would build up the pressure of intimate contact. Vivet meant to pry through his defenses, no matter the means or the cost. Though not tonight, with his temper glass-brittle with fight and exhaustion. Since he had breached her threshold at last, she granted what solace she might at safe distance.

  When he scraped his bowl, she retired to her spinning, which enticed him to cross the room for a second portion. Food left him replete, enough to venture a trip to the hearth to add a log to the fire. Heat infused the small cabin. Likely warm for the first time in weeks, Arin succumbed to drowsiness. In time, his head nodded. Black hair curtained the curve of shut eyelids before Vivet dared to retrieve his used crockery.

  When Arin failed to arouse, she stole the liberty to ease the spoon from his slackened grasp. Then she rinsed his clothes and hung them to dry. Lest he react to the further effrontery of covering him with a blanket, she left him wrapped in his disreputable coat.

  Sleep allowed what his waking awareness rejected: her undisturbed survey measured his skinned knuckles and scrapes, and the squint lines etched by the glare of the snow-fields. His fingers seemed too fine for their office, nipped raw by the cold, with the hang-nail on his thumb altogether too poignantly human. Nothing suggested the inexplicable power that had stood down Roaco’s ultimatum.

  Vivet’s allure was the tailored entrapment to snare this unlikely foreigner. Whether her mission brought ruin, or unravelled her worldly peace, the play for his spirit was joined. Since the attempted seduction begun in the woodland cabin, Vivet’s aching desire built momentum. Release was impossible while t
he engaged imprint imposed upon her inflamed them both.

  An unannounced rap at the door broke Vivet’s reverie. Irritable, she cursed the intrusion. But the man in her charge did not stir when her impudent cousin cracked the shut panel.

  “Brought something sent by the family. Came off the sledge. Since no one’s laid claim, uncle’s said this belongs here with Arin.” The message ended with a resonant bump, as the boy propped a bundle that housed something wooden and hollow beside the entry. “I’m also to say that your tally is met. You’ll have two shares of millet from the common harvest. If your man brings a second haul in before solstice, you’ll merit a draw from the stores. Also a wagon to haul your household belongings down country to the lower vale.”

  Reprieved from indenture, Vivet dismissed the boy and snuffed the candles. Rather than risk awakening Arin, she left the delivery where it lay. After brushing her hair, she conceded defeat, banked the fire, and retired to bed.

  She woke once in the night, alone in the sheets. Arin’s dried clothing was gone, and the floor by the door-jamb lay vacant. A barefoot foray across the cold cabin confirmed that the covered object had been collected. Arin had left without leaving a trace. Or so Vivet thought, as she huddled in her blanket and opened a shutter to the windy dark.

  The gusts tossing the firs also winnowed the sprightly notes of a lyranthe. Her breath stopped. Captivated by the musician’s artistry, she listened, astonished, as carousing voices joined the plucked measures and belted into a raucous chorus. Vivet shivered, exiled from the convivial circle while the bard who disowned the grace of her womanhood claimed his place with the settlement’s people.

  Early Winter 5923

  Implications

  Immersed in the reactive stream of the flux in the fast safety of Althain Tower, Elaira lies wakeful and weeps, aware of the desolation behind the bard’s rollicking performance; worse, her heart aches for the spellbound attraction to Vivet, which impels Arithon’s resolve to leave Ettinmere in the bitter hours before dawn …