TWOLAS - 05 - Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Had Luhaine still been enfleshed, he would have vented his stress by stuffing himself on muffins and butter. Left to life as a shade after a catastrophic mishap, he could only shed aimless static, his frustration built to a fulminating crescendo by the second month of his tenancy.

  'Far better for everything if those meddlesome Koriani had never set foot on Athera!' He hissed past a balustrade in the Second Age library, goaded to a brisk, snapping breeze since the Prime Matriarch's instructions had dispatched Lirenda to Araethura.

  Elaira's renewed role in her sisterhood's affairs boded the worst sort of trouble. The Fellowship Sorcerers were already spread thin. Their concern now redoubled since the Koriani had failed in their first attempt to take Arithon as their order's string-puppet captive. Luhaine knew best of any: their ancient Prime Matriarch would not abide her defeat. The enchantresses' current intervention in Araethura gave warning of a new strategy, with no Fellowship Sorcerer at hand to track their intent through surveillance.

  Nor was Luhaine complacent. He spun drafts of chill air down seven flights of stone stairwells, whipping the settled dust of two ages into tight, frenzied spirals in his wake.

  He stormed past the landing, a miniature tempest that shrilled through the cracks in the strapped oak doors to the storeroom, which held the Second Age talismans and artifacts. Among the locked coffers and shrouded sword hilts, alongside the ash shafts of arrows with points of chipped crystal, and the gem-studded shields whose arcane properties included wards for the banefire of dragons, he sought the one item fashioned by Fellowship hands.

  The golden hoop had been wrought by Ciladis the Lost shortly after the Mistwraith's invasion. The gentlest, most sensitive of the Sorcerers had endowed his creation with a cipher of scrying to forecast the revival of pure sunlight.

  The device had never been observed to perform its prime function. Sethvir had banished the sunloop to storage on the sorrowful hour when Ciladis had passed beyond contact, his search to locate the vanished Paravians ended by his disappearance.

  Sore grief remained. Despite repeated efforts to trace Ciladis's whereabouts, no Fellowship Sorcerer ever learned what fate had befallen him. Althain's Warden had shelved the sunloop out of heartache, an inadequate gesture to distance the agony of an unresolved mystery. Remembrance still haunted, of the small-boned, walnut-skinned colleague who had immured himself for silent, futile hours, sifting phantom auguries and combing the infinite loom of existence for reprieve from the fogs of Desh-thiere.

  Luhaine sought the sunloop now for reasons of acid efficiency. In that hour, the device's fine-tuned spells of observation offered his best means to trace the events that might threaten the land held in trust by the Fellowship's compact.

  Through the advent of midnight, the first-level storeroom lay cloaked in darkness, its sole arrow slit masked by the board ends of shelving, and Sethvir's scrawled spells against rot. Cold air poured in, an invisible black current that sheared like a blade across Luhaine's purposeful presence. The tidy, round chamber held no trace of mice, only the bracing, spiked scent of frost riming the stalks of dried meadow grass. Sethvir might disregard his personal appearance, but his catalogues and antiquities were maintained with immaculate care. No dust layered the floor. Ancient records did not molder, and the oiled leather scabbards on ceremonial knives did not deteriorate from dampness.

  Luhaine wended his way between the bound coffers and wrapped armrings, bagged in flannel against tarnish. Here lay the massive, gold-banded horns once carried by centaur guardians, the rims chased in runes with Names of forests that remembered the first song of Ath's creation. Amid crowns once worn by Paravian high kings, and the crystal and bone flutes the Athlien played to honor the rise of summer stars, Sethvir kept the jeweled scepter that had belonged to the brightest of their kind, Cianor, who was named Sunlord. But in this hour of the world's need, the fire-wrought bronze dragons that bore the spoken powers of prophecy lay dormant, sleeved in pale silk. In passing, Luhaine shared the echo of memory, a sigh out of time for past glories.

  Even he must bow to the history enshrined in this place. The treasures housed at Althain were the stuff of past legend, with their marvels and wonders, and their uncanny perils to entrap the unguarded mind. Luhaine ranged the collection in wary respect, despite his hurried passage.

  He found the sunloop in its mother-of-pearl stand alongside the whistle the Masterbard, Elshian, had carved from a tine of Shehane Althain's right antler. The placement gave testament to Sethvir's remorse. One blast from that whistle would frame a note to defy time and space, and dispatch help from the tower's current Warden. As if, in hindsight, the Sorcerer who normally shouldered the post regretted not sending the artifact with Ciladis against the perils of an unknown journey.

  Too late now, to wish past mistakes might be salvaged. The Fellowship Sorcerers themselves were shorthanded, with one of them crippled, and another, even now, gone past the veil into mystery. Blunt-nosed, ever-practical Luhaine settled, a viselike well of cold coiled around the sunloop's filigree stand. A nimbus of light clung and shimmered off the delicate metalwork. The cast-gold circle still held the unearthly elegance that set Ciladis's character apart. Abalone inlay threw off misted rainbows where the far-flung spells of vision ranged dormant, a whisper of suggestion smothered within a cruel and unanswering silence.

  As always, the radiant grace of the sunloop made Luhaine feel coarse as old smoke. Still worse, the faint sense of shame and betrayal, as he tapped into the gossamer web of fine energies and changed the significating rune from a figure of joy to one that harkened to discord. Light plunged into darkness as the spell's focus reversed its original polarity.

  The scene that formed in the loop's clouded center showed him the prelude to ruin . . .

  * * *

  The visioning revealed the white-marble floors of Avenor's grand hall of state, rebuilt from ruin in Tysan. Under the costly, clean glow of wax candles, two high officials conferred.

  One hulked solid as weather-beaten rock from his hard-bitten years of field service. An unshakable presence, with his clipped beard and wedged forehead, Lord Harradene had served as Etarra's Lord Commander at Arms since the death of his predecessor at Valleygap. The other beside him, who flourished a sealed requisition, was dark haired and neat as a ferret. His gold-trimmed surcoat might be cut fine as a courtier's, emblazoned with the sunwheel of Avenor's royal guard, but the sword and steel dagger that hung at his waist showed the battered, dull scars of hard fighting. Young for his high position at court, he spoke with a brisk, sharp-tempered confidence, to which the older veteran deferred.

  'I presented your petition.' A furtive flash of teeth, though the eyes remained inimically still as poured nickel. By the sliced vowels of the man's accent, Luhaine identified Sulfin Evend, lately invested as the supreme commanding officer to spearhead Prince Lysaer's armed offensive.

  The speaker resumed with a focus that matched his purposeful bearing. 'His Grace of the Light has heard your appeal. Your men will not quit the field before winter without chance to snatch back the victory.'

  Lord Harradene's thatched eyebrows rose, dislodging a scowl like a logjam. 'We'll get more troops? That's laughable! They can't possibly arrive before the cold weather puts fodder in critical shortage.'

  Sulfin Evend's nerveless response affirmed his reputation for sharp swordplay and vicious strategy. 'His Grace won't send troops.' Light shifted like misted pearl over his silk as he strode past the niche of a casement.

  Harradene flanked like a shambling bear, canny enough not to waste words.

  But Sulfin Evend quickened for challenges; his razor-sharp smile provoked. 'Avenor's treasury's too tight. The trade guilds all know it. They've seized up their ears and their purse strings. The ones with paid spies are all squalling like stoats. Can't be more funding until our Prince of the Light inspects his shipyard at Riverton and sets the launchings there back on schedule.'

  Before Harradene's bull-roaring protest gained force, the l
ean fingers, with their ancestral gold ring, snapped up the sealed state parchment. Sulfin Evend's grin widened, oiled as the fox with a chicken clamped in its teeth. 'Don't let your joy spoil the fun. The Prince Exalted has granted you means to roust out your pesky clan renegades. You now hold permission to set fire to Caithwood to clear out the cover that hides them.'

  Lord Harradene's beard split in half as his jaw dropped. Then he shouted and clapped Sulfin Evend on the shoulder. 'Tell your Exalted Prince I'll be more than delighted to oblige.'

  * * *

  Uncoiled like fluid ice from the gleam of the sunloop, Luhaine flounced in agitation. 'Prince Exalted,' he muttered. 'Aren't we getting high-and-mighty, and just a bit large for our breeches?' He spun off the shelf, rattling the wired fastenings of Sethvir's oak-paper tags. 'And burn Caithwood?' Luhaine seethed on toward the locked and barred door, hurled his essence through the keyhole with a force that raised a shrill whistle. 'Just try, you self-righteous, arrogant ignoramus! It gives me great satisfaction at last to be handed the Ath-given license to stop you.'

  Past the stubs of the candles in their wrought-iron sconces and down the foot-worn spiral stair, Luhaine ranged like a self-contained wind devil. He passed the commemorative statues of departed Paravians arrayed on the tower's ground floor. The poised flutes of sunchildren lent fretful voice to his passage. Stone unicorns reproached with their fixed, sightless eyes, the shine on raised horns like the gleam of dropped tinsel in the late-day glare through the arrow slits. Massive, carved centaurs endured in marble majesty; their jeweled caparisons and linked chains and gold braid rippled to Luhaine's distress.

  The Sorcerer despaired for the timing.

  Threat to Caithwood must perforce overshadow his concern for Koriani malfeasance in Araethura. Sethvir was beyond reach, gone to stabilize the protections that guarded the grimward in Korias. Since time flowed differently inside that dire vortex, no one could predict his return. Disdainful of oaths, Luhaine whined past a carved cornice.

  A blind fool would have realized Prince Lysaer would not recall his crack troops from the field. Not without one last flourish to bring Caithwood's clan defenders to their knees.

  Luhaine slipped through the wards that secured the trapdoor leading to Althain's dungeon. His annoyance raised hoarfrost on the black-iron pull ring, and the oiled chains and counterweights geared to move the massive slab sang back in disturbed notes of dissonance. Sieved through by uneasy, ozone-rank air, Luhaine flowed down another stairwell. He emerged in the blue-tinged glow cast by the third lane focus circle the Paravians had inlaid in white quartz and onyx over a bedrock foundation.

  With candles unlit, and the vaulted ceiling in darkness, the pale marble walls loomed like a veil of merle smoke. The spiraling flux of the lane's background flow raised tingling eddies against Luhaine's unshielded spirit. He passed the carved gargoyle that overlooked the east radiant, its beeswax candle left untrimmed by Sethvir in his rushed hour of departure. Luhaine claimed his favored perch on the statue that stood watch pointing north. Between its curved horns and the bronze socket for the taper, he poised, a distilled point of cold amid the faint web of light swirling from the pattern's vortex.

  Ath help the Fellowship's straits, risk of fire in Caithwood left no other option than to recall Asandir from the field.

  Luhaine spun thought and imprinted the fine energies like a spider spinning in light. His summoning ward stitched ephemeral frequencies into Name for the colleague he wished to contact. A Fellowship ward seal tied the call to the east wind, for guidance. The construct of bound energies would disperse down the third lane, then be picked up in turn by the seasonal breezes that ranged across latitude, driving the currents that spawned the cyclonic winter gales. The shed leaves of turned trees and birds in migration would imprint the resonance of the spell and expand its range, until the designated Sorcerer heard his Name in the air and responded.

  Small use to mourn, that no such broad summoning had managed to locate Ciladis.

  Brooding to the bent of his maudlin thoughts, Luhaine cast free his small binding. The Paravian rune circle flared delicate gold as the field magnetics of Athera accepted the minuscule burden of its signature. Last anyone knew, Asandir was at Methisle fortress to help contain another outbreak of methuri. Unless the aberrated creatures held the isle under siege, the Sorcerer should return to Althain Tower on the tide of the lane surge at dawn.

  Autumn 5653

  Pawn

  On the moors of Araethura, the stars wheeled their inexorable passage across the black arc of the zenith. Midnight gave way to the small hours of night when the child, Fionn Areth, stirred and opened his eyes, unsure what dream had awakened him. The loft he shared with his siblings hung in darkness. Two older brothers had filched the wool blankets. Left to snuggle in a tangle of stale sheepskins, the younger ones lay twined like two mop-headed puppies.

  Outside, the winds scoured over the moorlands. Drafts hissed through the boards where vermin had hollowed out nests in the thatch. The rafters smelled of damp, musty broomstraw, and the grease left from boiled mutton stew. Fionn Areth shoved back his tangled black hair. The ends needed cutting, an embarrassment he resisted, since his mother would use the same shears she kept sharp to fleece the steading's herd of goats. Ungroomed as the wind-tousled ponies on the moor, the boy levered himself up on one elbow.

  'Pisshead,' grumbled the small brother he disturbed. 'D'you have to thrash about like a nanny with the gripes?'

  'Stuff your face,' Fionn whispered. While his sibling muttered and subsided back to sleep, he listened, certain that someone nearby had just spoken and called him by name.

  Below the loft ladder, the banked embers in the grate flared sullen orange as cold air eddied down the flue. The single-paned casement held whorled scrolls of frost, etched brilliant silver by moonlight. No one else stirred. His father's saw-toothed snores rumbled uninterrupted through the downstairs doorway.

  The call came again, no true sound, but a beckoning presence that prickled the nape of his neck. Fionn Areth shivered. He sat up. A prodding compulsion would not let him keep still. Careful not to jostle the sprawled limbs of his brother, he clutched his nightshirt against his thin chest and slipped from the warmth of the sheep fleece. His bare feet made no sound as he padded through darkness and groped his way down the ladder.

  Gripped by the force of an uncanny summons, he reached the ground floor. A pause, while the arthritic herd dog by the hearth raised her muzzle to lick at his fingers.

  'Stay, Bounder,' he commanded, and crept on.

  The dog slanted her black-tipped ears and whined. She was too well trained to disobey. Quivering unease rippled her brindle coat, and her liquid, dark eyes tracked the boy's progress past the baskets of carding left piled beside his mother's spinning wheel.

  'Bounder, stay home.' Impelled by an urge that seemed spun from dreams, Fionn Areth pushed up the door bar and latch, and silently let himself out.

  The stone step was ice beneath his naked soles. More curious than cold, the boy stooped to scratch his scabbed shin, the one he had scraped while chasing a cat over a deadfall. The wind flapped his nightshirt and tousled his hair. Dry leaves still clinging to the crown of the scrub oak stirred like the whispers of old men. The ash trees beyond were already shorn. Their shadowy, thin skeletons flung contorted silhouettes against the stone wall by the hay byre. Stars burned in the autumn-still silence, while a risen half-moon lit the grass to a glittering, frost carpet of silver.

  A little afraid, Fionn Areth fetched the stick he used to feign swordplay. His birth augury promised him battles and fame, or so he bragged when the herd families gathered and his peers drove the goats in for counting.

  Already he could swing with a force to whistle air. When he slashed against the wind he imagined the sharp whine of tempered steel. Pressed on by his spurious craving for mischief, he decided to visit the orchard. On such a mad jaunt, he could fight shadow armies and spar with the crabbed boughs of the apple trees.
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  He gained a new scrape scrambling over the wall. His mother would scold if she noticed. Nor would she let him run wild at night, undressed and without his warm jacket. The gusts bit and burned across his bare skin. Fionn Areth gnawed his lip, unsure. All at once, his bed in the loft seemed more inviting than battering a stupid old branch with his stick.

  'Fionn Areth!' The call came pure as struck glass out of the air just behind him.

  The boy spun around.

  A lady in shimmering violet robes stood limned in the moonlight by the hay byre. She cupped a jewel as cool as a glacier. Her long hair was braided and pinned into a coil the gloss black of a raven against her cameo skin.

  Fionn Areth cried out. His terror redoubled as the crystal in the lady's hands exploded into blank darkness. Sight became blinded. Ears became deaf. Launched to reflexive flight, the boy dislodged a rock from his perch on the dry wall. He overbalanced, fell, while the blackness expanded. Swallowed and suffocated, he never uttered the scream that struggled to burst from his throat.

  Elaira caught Fionn Areth's limp body before the child struck the ground. 'Merciful maker, that was ill done!' She glared past the dark, tousled head now cradled against her shoulder.

  Unperturbed, Lirenda shielded the Skyron aquamarine inside a fold of her mantle. 'I'd think you would thank me. If not, then you needn't have argued my preference for sending him out on valerian.'

  'You could have broken his bones, or much worse,' Elaira snapped. 'If he takes any harm from your cavalier handling, may Dharkaron Avenger demand due redress in his name.'