TWOLAS - 05 - Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Where the ground sloped into a dry gully, the servant blundered into an armed ambush of shouting men who wore camouflage paint like barbarians. These carried javelins and short bows, and through rank, tangled beards, smelled as though they had not seen a bath for a sevenday.

  Prince Lysaer was beyond the next rise, immersed to the chest in a trout basin where a stream splashed out of the high peaks of the Mathorns and swirled on its mad, jagged course toward the river bottom. He was soaked. Dripping hair fronded his magnificent build, while he called helpful advice to a boy who chased a flip-flopping fish through the lush summer weeds on the bank.

  'Grit your fingers with sand, or else pounce with a shirt. That one? Very well, there's my man. That way the slick devil can't slide through your grasp.' His amiable encouragement dissolved to laughter for the fact that the garment snatched up for netting was his own. 'Never mind. A few scales won't matter. The embroidery should acquire a fascinating glitter. The sensation might become the new rage in fashion for the pedigree rakes in the city.'

  Too timid to intervene, the city messenger neglected to recall Sulfin Evend's guarding presence until a hand grasped his shoulder from behind, the bite of mailed fingers demanding. 'You came bearing word for his Divine Grace?'

  The house servant startled half out of his skin. 'My Lord Governor begs leave for an audience,' he blurted, as intimidated by the Alliance Lord Commander's ice eyes as by the sight of the Blessed Prince, who emerged dripping from the stream, his poised self-command lent intimidating force by his state of unabashed nakedness.

  While Sulfin Evend's snapped questions probed the nature of the errand, Lysaer's seamless good nature just as meticulously attended loose ends. The panting trout in his shirt was released back to freedom, then the boy recruit dispatched at a run to his drill sergeant. The gold-sewn linen shirt saw further abuse as a towel, then lay discarded over the flat muscle of the Divine Prince's shoulder.

  'Something's wanted?' He bent and retrieved his immaculate white tunic and trunk hose from the grass.

  'Etarra's Lord Governor Supreme has asked to receive you,' Sulfin Evend filled in. His restless hands stayed too well married to weapon hilts for him to volunteer for service as dresser, even when haste might be called for: Etarra's aged despot was failing. 'Something to do with a sealed city document.'

  'I presume Morfett wants to announce the ratified agreement concerning his imminent succession.' Lysaer tied off his points, tossed his head to clear the running beads of water from his hair, then bent his grave gaze on the red-faced palace servant. 'I'll seek audience directly. Make sure the water boy gives you a dipper. Then ask at the cook's camp for a ride in the next wagon sent inbound through the town walls.'

  * * *

  Morfett, Mayor of Etarra, Defender of Trade, and Lord Governor Supreme of the Northern Reaches languished, dying, in silk sheets, a heavyset man of short stature and liver-spotted skin, and a complexion tinged jonquil with jaundice. The daytime bedchamber where he conducted the affairs of his last will and testament was built of marble and lozenged glass tile. Noon sunlight strained through the awnings shading the wide-open casements. What minimal breeze wafted through wore the flint-earth smell of baked brick.

  The sluggish air inside reeked of medicine and stale sweat, embedded in the costly musk of incense and attar of roses. A servant with a peacock tail mounted in ebony, lapis lazuli, and gold fanned the supine figure on the bed. To one side, a plate of nibbled melon rinds drew flies, and a tattooed half-breed physician from Atchaz mixed philters in a row of blown glass vials.

  His desert tribe parentage had instilled the rites of Mother Dark along with rare knowledge of herb lore, for the tiny man grabbed his ring of bone amulets and fled, muttering dialect, as Lysaer s'Ilessid crossed the threshold.

  Strong sun had dried the stream water from his hair. Through the steep ride to reach the pass commanded by the city's stolid watch keeps, the blond ends had curled in wind-combed tangles over the superb carriage of his shoulders. If he had taken no pause for grooming, a servant had rushed him into fresh hose and a fine, pleated shirt, with yoked collar and cuffs worked in gold wire and faceted beadwork. At each move, the ornamentation caught light; the needle-fine scatter of reflections danced and flitted across the heavy, oiled gloom of the state palace's furnishings.

  'How may my gifts serve your city?' Lysaer asked as he stopped at the foot of the bed.

  The Lord Governor opened pouched eyes, the corneas milk hazed and unfocused. 'Blessed Prince.' His cracked lips parted, more grimace than smile. 'You came.'

  Knowledge of imminent death weighed his tone. He bore no resentment, but took settled comfort in the miraculous proof of divine intervention: Prince Lysaer had not aged throughout the twenty-eight years he had known him. Still vital, still strong, here stood the same man who had reknit the backbone of Etarra's defense through the mangling losses meted out by the Shadow Master on the banks of Tal Quorin.

  'I have two last bequests,' wheezed Morfett. "The city council has already set their seal of approval to one of them.' He gave an impatient jerk of the chin, the gesture all but buried in folds of flaccid flesh. 'Come nearer. Examine the writ for yourself.'

  Small points of illumination flitted like ghost mayflies as Lysaer stepped forward and opened the hasp of the document chest at the bedside.

  "The scroll has black cord and ribbons of silver and scarlet,' said Morfett. 'You should find it resting on top.'

  Lysaer drew out the weighty parchment, sealed with the nine sigils of Etarra's city guilds and the massive wax imprint of the Lord Governor's blazon, its knotted closure unbroken. 'My Lord Governor? I hold the document.'

  'Break it open. Read. It concerns you.' The dying man on the bed sank back in stained pillows, the dome of his forehead dewed shiny with overripe sweat. 'I spent my last breath and will overriding the arguments against a ratification,'

  Lysaer cracked the seal. A faint nimbus seemed to emanate from the wisped gold of his hair as the parchment unrolled. At the top, the twined cipher of Etarra's city council was handpainted in vermilion and gilt; beneath that, the heavy, ornamental script framed two brief lines, appended by rank upon rank of sprawled signatures. Its grant appointed Lysaer s'Ilessid, old blood prince of Tysan, the sanctioned right to be named as a candidate for election to Etarra's ruling office of lord governor supreme.

  'You don't ask why,' the aged incumbent wheezed, his suffering eyes shut amid the propped morass of pillows.

  The flicked light off exquisite bead embroidery stirred and stilled as Lysaer raised his head. His resonant voice filled the lofty chamber with assurance through the whispered rhythm of the peacock fan in the hands of the servant. 'I would leave you your dignity.' His sure, sun-browned hands stayed unhurried as he rolled up the parchment and looped its dangling ribbons over the split seams of the seals.

  'Shrewd man.' The Lord Governor repeated his death's-head smile. 'I see I won't need to remind you that the office lasts for life. But first you have to manage to win the common vote. Fail me in that, and the curse of my last breath will lie on you.'

  Not to be drawn by barbs masked in banter, Lysaer placed the scroll on the bed.

  'You'd wait for my liver to fail, first? Very well.' The Lord Governor reopened irascible eyes. 'I am afraid. The Master of Shadow has made himself scarce, and your guilds at Avenor have lost their edge in pursuit of their trade. Too few of your guard there survived Dier Kenton Vale to remind them of the perils still at large. Here at Etarra, we haven't forgotten Tal Quorin, but those who witnessed the devastations there and at Minderl Bay are aging. I'm a suspicious man. I believe the Spinner of Darkness will return to sow evil on an unsuspecting, new generation. If so, the next decades are critical. Preventive measures must be sealed into place before my peer councilmen step down for their retirement.'

  'You mentioned two bequests,' Lysaer replied. 'Go on.'

  The Lord Governor barked a wheezing laugh that bled off into gasps and a pallor that left his jau
ndiced face runneled like half-melted butter. 'I want new walls, prince. Rings of strong defenses that can be manned twenty-four hours a day. A siege here would be an ugly affair, soon over. The stone slopes of the mountains cannot sustain our large populace. We have no rain cisterns and no secure inner citadel.' The pale, sausage fingers plucked and wandered on the coverlet, too palsied for vehement gestures. 'I'd have defenses erected on the Plain of Araithe, where livestock and grain could be held secure to provide my city with sustenance. We have mountain caverns that could be set up for storage and granaries. I ask you to build Etarra into a stronghold for the Light, lest weak hearts and short memories fail your cause at Avenor. Will you do this? As my dying wish, I would leave the city's interests in dependable hands. Yours, if you will accept.'

  Lysaer arose. Flecks of light arrowed and spun from his cuffs as he reached out and captured the Lord Governor's hands inside his sword-callused fingers. 'Consider your wish granted. Etarra shall have walls, each stone of them pledged to stand in the fight against shadow. A side benefit of thriving trade at Avenor, the crown treasury can find funds to pay stonemasons. Which keep do you wish to be named in your memory?'

  'The one overlooking the north, and Tal Quorin,' whispered Lord Governor Morfett. His eyes flagged and closed, his vitality drained by the minimal effort of speaking. 'Go in the Light's grace, Blessed Prince, and ask a servant to send in my daughters.'

  'I'll take the word to your family in person,' Lysaer s'Ilessid said gently. He reached left-handed, pulled up a stool, and sat down. 'But after you've heard what else the Light plans to secure your great city of Etarra.'

  He started to speak. Throughout, he held the Lord Governor's ice-cold, moist hands firmly clasped in his generous strength. By the hour he finished, late afternoon cast tea-colored light through the sun-faded canvas of the awnings, and grateful tears seeped down the seamed chasms in the Lord Governor's aged cheeks.

  'I can die unafraid of the darkness.' Morfett settled, replete on his pillows. His bleared eyesight encompassed the man by his bed, but saw only stars set into a gold haze of brightness. 'In the Light, may you win the election as my successor. Deny the s'Ffalenn bastard his crown at Ithamon, and rule long and ably after me.'

  * * *

  Two months past the hour the death bells tolled for Etarra's Lord Governor Supreme, Alestron's state galley blew into her home port ahead of a black squall line that stitched the dark harbor with lightning. An adept from Ath's Brotherhood had just finished blessing the shorn barley, and the last straw sheaves were bundled and dry in the East Halla lofts. As sun-browned as his field hands, Duke Bransian strode into the lower hall of his citadel. His servants knew all of his habits. Before he could bellow, a kitchen boy brought him a tankard of ale. The duke praised him for his foresight, then opened his mouth to slurp at the foaming head which spilled over the fist wrapped around the crockery tankard. Two deerhounds and a mastiff dropped in panting heaps at his feet, ears turned back to screen out the energetic noise of the household's two-legged offspring. Children tumbled and laughed, or toddled sucking fingers, the dozens of nieces, nephews, cousins, and bastards indiscriminately mixed with the get of dairymaids, craftsmen, and servants.

  Clanblood held the concept of birthright in contempt; even five centuries after the uprising, a stablehand's son could grow up to captain the guard, based on his mettle and merit.

  A girl runner dispatched from the harbor found the duke wiping ale from his beard, one boy of three years wrapped around his dusty boot. An apple-cheeked daughter, just able to walk, shared her bread crust with the deerhounds, and a third child, missing breeches, screamed with laughter and let the mastiff lick the jam off his face.

  'State galley's back, uncle,' yelled the messenger through the clamor. 'Dame Dawr's halfway up to the citadel.'

  Duke Bransian choked. Beer suds flew from his beard as he howled. 'These weans are more muddy than the hounds in my kennels!' He waved a huge hand at the oblivious sprawl of Alestron's next generation. 'Dawr finds them like this, she's likely to nail all our skins to the gatehouse. Somebody better drag at least half of them out for clean clothes and dunk the rest in the horse trough.'

  As Mearn's sharp-tongued wife took charge like a sergeant, the duke drained his beer at a gulp, glanced down, and found the girl still breathless at his shirttails. 'What else?' Lightning flickered; rising wind shook the glass in the stained-glass arches of the casements while the duke glared down at the child, one of Parrien's, or Keldmar's, to judge by her mulish, square chin. 'Isn't the old besom's arrival quite enough to ruin my day?'

  A barrage of close thunder shivered the thick stone. 'The brig Evenstar's also inbound from the north,' the girl resumed in a rush. 'Lookout at Great Rock saw her masts in the channel before the squall line closed in. He sent a horseman. That man says she flies Keldmar's banner and the pennant of the Fellowship of Seven.'

  'Dawr and an interfering Sorcerer, both on the same misbegotten day?' Duke Bransian wiped the back of his hand on his sun-faded red surcoat; he was wont to wear his mail shirt, even in the barley fields, and his great sword never left his side. 'Daelion's cock and bollocks!' He thumped his drained mug on the nearest trestle, raked loose straw from the shorn ends of his hair, and loosed a laugh that lit his gray eyes to a battle-crazed spark of delight. 'Well, things just woke up and got interesting.'

  Then, belatedly aware of his own muddy boots and the sweat rings and stains on his shirtsleeves, he snapped new orders to the girl runner. 'Find my wife or her maidservant and have one of them toss out a clean shirt.'

  While the child took to her heels and the dogs yapped and howled at the inbound storm, he stripped. Stained cloth and mail flew into a heap. His worn, quilted gambeson sailed onto the top. He kicked off his boots and strode through the side door unclad except for his hose. The deerhounds balked at going out. Forlorn and whining, they watched the lightning flare and crack. Then the squall broke. Rain hammered the cobbled yard to a froth of wind-driven current and puddles. The mastiff crouched on its haunches and endured in the open, sneezing mournfully. Grinning at the mayhem, since the weather matched his mood, Bransian sluiced his head and torso in the raging gouts of runoff that spewed from a gargoyle downspout.

  * * *

  Alestron's inner citadel had a high, slender tower with a top chamber secluded as an eyrie. The embrasure was punched through with arrow slits. Their vantage overlooked the upper-fortress walls, and a view which encompassed the descending steps of town rooftops and the outer bastion that rimmed the canyon-steep cliffs of the estuary. Bransian s'Brydion favored the room for close councils. The site provided an effective deterrent against eavesdroppers. As an added advantage, it held too few chairs, a tactical point that gave graceful avoidance to the opinionated presence of family wives.

  The bullish bastion of male authority would have stayed uncontested, in any case. Given the duke's openhanded invitation, the s'Brydion women would have kept their wise distance.

  Whenever the duke and his brothers met in parley, no firm decisions resulted. Accusations inevitably led to contentions that became spectacular, fur-ripping arguments. Experience had taught the ladies that each point of dispute would be repeated in exhaustive detail when their husbands descended to salve their wounds. They would hear the whole list of rife insults exchanged, the items at issue larded through with opinion on the mutton-headed faults of each sibling. Accustomed to the blustering nature of their men, the wives gathered in private to sort out the tangle with cool heads. Duke Bransian's high-handed stubbornness had prevailed but a handful of times, and only if the women failed to reach a consensus or arrive at a sensible compromise.

  Those notable occasions when the Fellowship sent a Sorcerer to arbitrate, the four brothers' wives shared tea and cake, and gratefully left the role of wise counsel and adroit restraint to the powers of higher authority.

  Grandame Dawr, at her whim, proved the indefatigable exception. Her hand latched on the silver head of her stick, she thumped up t
he difficult turnpike stair, crossed the landing, and perched like a sparrow in the massive oak chair appointed with the ducal blazon.

  Bransian deferred to her. Arrived at her heels, with his beard blotting moisture into his clean shirt and dry doublet, he kissed her cheek in greeting. His massive bulk always made the round chamber feel close as a closet as he unbuckled his broadsword and laid its russet leather sheath on the round oak table. Then, discomfited as a parade horse yanked back from a roll in the mud, he spun one of the smaller chairs backwards and straddled the seat to a squeaking complaint of glued struts.

  Outside, the storm snapped and thundered. Gusts winnowed fine dousings of rain through the arrow slits and licked trickles of damp down the walls, where a thin, channeled drain released the overflow through the bared fangs of a gargoyle crouched on the vertical stonework outside.

  Parrien stamped in next, his clan braid dripping, and the tops of his breeches plastered against the bunched muscle of his thighs. Word of the arrival must have caught him at the boards, since he still gnawed at the early apple impaled on the point of his dagger. Mearn dogged his heels, his narrower face contentiously thoughtful. A soaked raven flapped in from the stairwell, lit on a chairback, and beat the wet from its wings with a rusty croak of reproach.

  'Traithe's here?' Bransian bellowed through the opened doorway.

  'Aye,' came Keldmar's reply, spiraled through with the echoes that arose from the lightless depths one flight down.

  Moments later, the Sorcerer entered, black-clad and composed despite the lamed step he had wrestled through the ascent. His broad-brimmed felt hat had prevented the storm's sheeting rain from streaming down his high collar.

  Keldmar, behind, had disdained all protections. Parrien's near twin, and unrivaled for recklessness, he entered, skin wet, his boisterous, scuffed strides muffled by the squelching slosh of a salt-musty pair of holed seaboots. He unslung a waxed leather map case from his shoulder. The bronze ends clashed on wood as he banged it onto the table next to Bransian's sheathed broadsword. 'Who's got oiled rags?' he demanded point-blank. 'Old storm's damn well going to set rust stains on my favorite steel.'