by Janny Wurts
The Mad Prophet stood, stricken. His glance flickered quickly past Arithon’s slack face, then flinched from the pale, lifeless hands that dangled, grooved on the backs from the prints of the hobbles, which for expedience had secured him to his horse. The normally scintillant aura of the Masterbard seemed dimmed and gray to his mage-sense.
Alarmed by the rapid ebb of a life that could not at any cost be replaced, Traithe turned brusque. “Dakar! If you’re planning to grow roots with that bundle of wood, the fire’s more important. We’ll also need a pit dug in the open.”
The rumpled, fat spellbinder wasted no argument. “You’ll use hot rocks?”
Traithe’s smile came out like the sun, rekindling the lost lines of humor that ran in starbursts from the corners of his eyes. “Yes. Choose willing ones so they don’t shatter. There’s a creek bed ten paces inside the trees. And find six straight saplings that are willing to make sacrifice.”
Dakar moved off, intent, to reaccess the rusty tenets of his training. Caithwood was sealed under Paravian law, which demanded strict form and fine harmony with the earth, no live wood taken without proper blessing and a clear gift of permission. “Fiends plague,” he muttered, still fighting a thick head. “We haven’t come back just to lose Rathain’s prince for want of a sweet-tempered tree!”
“Just use plain language and say whose life’s at stake,” Traithe suggested. “Without Arithon s’Ffalenn, the Alliance will triumph. Clan bloodlines will die, and every green thing in this forest is well aware no centaur guardians will return if Desh-thiere survives and claims final conquest.”
The clan scout dragged the cleaned carcass of a buck into the glen an hour later. As he broke through trees, the pleased whistle carried over from his successful hunt died into openmouthed silence.
Miracles had happened in his absence. At the center of the clearing, on a bent framework of willow poles, Dakar finished tying the drover’s cloak and the gaudy layers of the free singer’s court doublets into a shaded enclosure. Traithe stooped by the entrance, bearing a long-handled stick. The fork at the end cradled a stone from the riverbed, baked red by fire, and crackling to the caress of the breeze which kissed its glowing surface.
The scout gawped. “Ath! That’s not possible!” He was no born fool: mere flame took at least the length of a day to raise a river stone to extreme temperatures.
A reedy voice answered his doubt from the grass. “A fine piece of spellcraft, yes?”
The scout leaped back startled. The dropped carcass of the buck slumped into a heap, its glazed eyes fanned with stirred dust. “Fiends plague!” He backstepped before he spotted the minstrel, seated upright, and busy fussing the tangles from his hanks of singed hair.
“Dharkaron’s own spear! Last I saw, you were prostrate.” The scout vented relief, that he had not entirely taken leave of his senses. “Man, you fair lifted me out of my skin.”
Slouched in his motley rags of smudged clothing, Felirin sighed with forbearance. “I’m sorry.” His bandaged hands returned an expressive, wry gesture. “The day seems made for surprises.”
Bent over to reclaim the buck’s tined antler, the scout shot a suspicious glance toward the fire pit, where the Sorcerer plied his stick and scooped out another glowing rock. “How did he do that?”
“What, heat the stones?” Felirin unhooked his tarnished pearl studs, and flapped his stained shirt open at the collar. His manner stayed amused as Traithe shoveled the stone into the darkened shelter of the willow frame. “He called sunlight down through his crystal.” The minstrel’s gaunt features showed delight at the memory. “The event will become my first epic story, how a blinding light shot out of blue sky, a bolt of tamed golden lightning.”
Visibly miffed to have lost his listener’s attention to a gutted, dead deer, Felirin peered disdainfully down his long nose at the sticky blood painting crushed grass stems. “I suppose you want help. That was the last rock Traithe just shifted. Though I’m not fond of fire, I could help roast your game if you like.”
“Soon as you have the skin off, I’ll need to haul water,” Traithe said.
Felirin and the scout both started in unison, spun, and discovered the Sorcerer standing quiet behind them. “Time,” he said gently, as if the one word could explain his uncanny comings and goings. “We have none to spare.” He knelt, his drawn knife in hand. The blade was plain steel, unmarked by runes, or any ritual sign of power, and yet, its metal glowed blue as he spoke a Paravian blessing over the wound where the scout’s arrow had pierced the buck’s heart. A fine mist of energy spun away at his words, then disbursed into the black soil of the earth. Peace remained, and a sense of core balance restored as Traithe turned his deft blade to the work of skinning and butchering.
To the clan scout’s reddened embarrassment, the Sorcerer had the green hide worked free within minutes. His fleeting, mild wink acknowledged the marvel that such haste had not torn holes through the pelt, or left even one hacked edge. “No tricks or spells,” Traithe admitted. “My knife is old and knows this work very well.” He arose with a mild wince at the twinge in his bad knee, and rolled the raw skin hair side in. “Dakar will cut you a spit for the meat. Then pray to Ath that Earl Jieret and I can deliver a live prince to share venison with you at sundown.”
Inside the willow frame, masked under patched layers of tied clothing, Jieret s’Valerient kept vigil with the head of his liege in his lap. The changes he saw would have torn out his heart, had worry not done so beforehand. Arithon s’Ffalenn lay full length on the earth. The glow of rocks in the pit mapped his frame in dense, ruby warmth, the gleam of old scars written over gaunt flesh, and the angry ones fresh from his battle with Caolle. Despite the radiant heat, his cheek felt ice-cold. Each pulse through slim wrists seemed a vestige without force. As though life stayed by rote, his lungs scarcely carried the function of breathing from one moment into the next.
Jieret clenched his swordsman’s fist in black hair, tied between rage and regret. “Live, damn you,” he exhorted. “Caolle died content in the belief you survived him.”
The hard-edged triangle of daylight at the entry dimmed one last time as Traithe entered with the deerskin sloshing with creek water. “Close us in, please.”
Outside, Dakar battened down the heavy wool cloak, then sealed the last gap with one of Felirin’s belled shirts.
Limned in the vermilion glow from the stones, Traithe poured the water into the pit. Steam shrieked and exploded, whirling the air into a scalding, opaque curtain. Jieret shut his eyes, dizzied, and momentarily confused by what seemed like voices, embedded between the meshed cry of four elements, wedded amid the primordial darkness and circling his frame in a chiaroscuro dance of wild energy.
“Don’t mind if they speak.” Rendered formless in shadow, Traithe knelt and sprinkled a handful of crushed herbs, which showered bright sparks and infused fragrant smoke through the darkness. “They are spirits born of fire, earth, water, and air, and they arise to help call your prince back to himself.”
Jieret began a deep breath, then stopped short as the scalding steam burned into his nose and scoured the back of his throat. He realized by the fact that his forearm was cramping that his fingers had fastened a death grip in Arithon’s hair. “You’re saying the earth knows how important he is?”
Traithe sat, the hide with its reservoir of drawn water cradled between his tucked feet. He had removed his boots. By the pulsing, carnelian glow of the stones, the sole of the right one showed a puckered mass of scarred tissue, drawn like the mark of an old burn. “Athera knows all of our names,” he admitted, thoughtful and pleased for the rarity of indulging in philosophical discussion. “No one person’s ranked ahead of another. In Prince Arithon’s case, the elements plead aloud for the sake of the service he may yet be asked to perform.”
“Service!” Irritable as sweat trickled and stung through a brush burn acquired from his hurried, rough ride, Jieret gave vent to deep bitterness. “It was unstinting service that expose
d my liege to unreasonable peril in the first place. The needs of this land are what kill him by slow inches. He would not be undone by a poisoned conscience had he not been asked to face troubles a sorcerer would be hard-pressed to handle!”
“He is mage-trained,” Traithe reminded.
But Earl Jieret was not mollified. Though he faced no enemy, he felt unreasonably impelled to birth his wedged hurt into the concealing darkness. “A hundred stout liegemen would not be enough to manage the burden he carries!”
“You’re right, of course.” Still mild, the Sorcerer splashed a cupped handful of water into the pit. Again, the steam swirled, darkpatterned tarnish on shadow. Beyond that blank veil, his words came disembodied. “Duty won’t be what calls Arithon back.”
“What else does he have?” Once started, Jieret found his restraint had slipped reason. The moist heat made him careless, and the slack weight of his prince made pity a dull blade that sheared off every civilized platitude. “Or will you release him to follow his preference for music?”
Traithe responded to the first question only, his cragged face and pale hair wreathed in sweet smoke from the herbs. “He has his friend, who is living and with him. That matters far more than anything.”
“Your logic is flawed.” Shaking and savage, Jieret failed to note that the lean, hollowed cheekbone pillowed on his thigh showed the faintest, thin flush of rose. “What can his friends do other than die for him?”
“They can live for him,” Traithe said, acerbic at last. “Do you think Caolle would change his fated end if he could?”
“Ath, no!” Earl Jieret’s surprise burst through as a breath of free air. “He died as he lived, for love of his prince. I’ve heard the details. He could have stopped fighting and chosen a less painful passage. As I knew him since infancy, I’d swear this for truth: however much he claimed that his duty came first, in fact, he gave out of personal loyalties.”
Traithe’s correction came gentle. “And are you so different?”
The scald of the steam choked Jieret’s instinctive denial. He snorted, coughed, then let grief tear asunder to release as a leveling of soft laughter. “No,” he admitted. “My days would lack savor without the deep caring to give the bad moments their meaning. This prince holds my true heart.” Eyes shut while Traithe sprinkled the rocks yet again, and the heat rolled in waves to strip the last pall from restraint, Jieret lapsed into reminiscence. “I think that’s been so since my boyhood, on the night when I trailed his Grace into the forest. He’d just sworn his royal oath as crown prince, and was savage with misery for it. Did you know that I eavesdropped on his tienelle scrying? He never lost patience. Nor would he admit that my prank cost him agony, though he had to have seen. I was just a fool boy come with mean intent to belittle him.”
“As well you should have,” a rusted voice interjected. Scarcely audible through the coiling hiss of the steam, and by far less fluid than the wraith language used by the elements, the limping speech stumbled on. “Certainly then, I was a prince seeking to escape the burden of my people’s hopes. In hard fact, nothing’s changed.”
“Arithon?” Jieret jolted straight, his hungry eyes struggling to pierce veiling murk. When vision fell short, he resorted to touch. Battened about in whorled darkness and moisture, the cold flesh of his prince was now heated, and streaming thick sweat. Yet the hand Jieret fumbled and grasped was still limp.
Then a flare from the stones as the steam eddied; Jieret saw the green eyes were opened, and wide, reawakened to a pain-filled awareness that violated privacy to witness.
Elation wrenched through him, then brought sharp remorse for straight guilt. His joy of recognition could not be denied, even in the face of such suffering. Helpless, Jieret could not even look away. “My liege, I have no words at all.”
“Words are not necessary.” Sweat or tears threaded down the hollows at Arithon’s temples. The slicked whorls of black hair were dripping. “Your love calls too strongly, and mine, it would seem, is destined always to answer.”
A break like cut glass in the suffocating womb of close shadow. “Don’t apologize. I’m the one who owes restitution. That was an ugly reward I gave Caolle.”
Jieret yanked breath to protest, caught short just in time by Traithe’s quelling gesture and silent, mouthed words, “No! Let him rant!”
“You should know, he died true to himself.” Arithon’s flesh spasmed through a violent shiver. His grainy, scraped voice bore no semblance of the grace gifted to him through bardic tradition as he labored through his distressed confession. “His courage and his loyalty were of priceless coinage. I could live my whole life without fault from this moment, and still fall short of repayment. Nothing is left for you, Jieret. My hands are more empty than a beggar’s. I have nothing to give back but the bankrupt husk of my sorrow.”
“Your hands are not empty,” Jieret forced out past the rock-hard wedge in his throat. “They hold a masterbard’s talents, and more, the living promise of crowned sovereignty for a whole people. If you never sit on the throne at Ithamon, you can still keep that trust through your progeny.”
Which words pierced twofold, for the fact of a burden unwanted, and for the ruin Desh-thiere’s curse had ripped through an oathsworn integrity. Arithon shook with the force of those sorrows, then turned his face, helpless as his agonized shame unmanned him.
Jieret’s hands held steady and strong, unwilling to relinquish a tormented spirit to the throes of a solitary grief. Without prompting, this time, he found the wisdom to let the torrent unleash. “You’re not alone, ever, despite your belief we would do better outside your company. The Mistwraith’s hold is a wound we all carry. Some of us bleed for it. Others give their lives. Those who survive receive the priceless gift of your sacrifice, and the ones closest keep faith and friendship as we may.”
But no words could succor the pain that escaped in riven bursts. Arithon’s stripped body curled under the force of an anguish his dwindled strength could not deny. Jieret’s arms gripped him, circling his wretchedness with unconditional compassion. “Brother, we are one. My sword does the killing, no less than yours. I can offer forgiveness for trials no man could pass without scathe. You and Rathain’s people are one mind and one heart. Never see yourself as separate, no matter how far the curse madness drives you. If you bear the insanity, let us be the unity that draws you back and receives you. Won’t you see there’s no blame? Caolle’s content. He knew, as I do, that ours is the easier portion to bear!”
“You could die for those words,” Arithon gasped. His splayed hands pressed into the sides of his face, as if physical pressure could somehow contain his coil of untenable torment.
Jieret stroked back coal hair, fingers callused from handling weapons infused with near reverent gentleness. “We all pass the Wheel. When I do, I’ll know peace, no matter the cause. Believe this, my sons and my daughters will be there to steady your next steps in my place.”
“For what price?” snapped Arithon, the wounded edge of his sarcasm striking in savage rebuttal. “Your shackles are wearing! For Dharkaron’s punishment, how many times must I sing a lament over Steiven s’Valerient’s grave cairn?”
Earl Jieret fought back, planted granite rejecting the thrust of fine steel. “For as long as it takes to defeat Desh-thiere and seat a crowned king at Ithamon.”
“Is that so?” Arithon resorted to premeditated viciousness. “Then how many times must Lady Dania’s descendants suffer rapine and slaughter under the swords of sunwheel fanatics?”
Jieret flinched. That dart pierced and struck as no other could, the family he had lost to the horrors of Tal Quorin still coiled in memory and the black nightmares that ravaged the peace from his sleep.
Yet Caolle had trained him.
He clung, dogged, his mind pitched to grasp for advantage. From the shocked reverberation of his own pain, he could gain the measure of Arithon’s: a thousandfold worse, to have used such a personal weapon to strike with intent to wound. And there lay
the vulnerability and the weakness at once. This was not attack, but defense of a vile and desperate proportion.
“You have a vicious tongue when you’re bleeding,” Jieret managed. His voice shook. He steadied it, determined, and smashed past the barrier of empathy that could have, would have stopped him short, if his care had existed only for an ironbound duty to a kingdom. “Makes it harder than plague to bind up your wounds. Even so, Steiven loved you.”
“He’s bones in cold earth, as you will be,” Arithon slashed back. Had he one bodily resource to break Jieret’s hold, he would have risen and fled elsewhere. Trapped helpless, he could only use words for his weapons, and no shield to spare his naked awareness from the lacerating impacts of remembrance. Left unsaid, all the unassuaged hurt of his severance from mage-sight, a brilliance of talent choked off in blood on the banks of Tal Quorin; there existed no weal for its absence.
The Earl of the North was not swayed by pity. “Dania loved you equally well. She would call you impertinent, and say to you now that because of your sacrifice, her bloodline survives. Her four daughters still live unspoiled in my memory. If by Ath’s grace you defeat Desh-thiere in my lifetime, then every one of my family will stand with me in spirit on the hour a Teir’s’Ffalenn accepts his coronation.”
“Let me be dead, first!” Arithon gasped. “What rightful prince ever murders his feal liegemen?”
The despair, the deep canker of shame stabbed by guilt, at last was laid bare between them. Across misted darkness, Traithe leaned sharply forward. “The moment has come. Jieret, speak now!”
Rathain’s caithdein set his jaw. Hardened against heartbreak, he bent and dealt his prince a hard, vengeful shake. In stark force, he said, “Listen to me! Stop crying martyr! Caolle chose not to die of your sword thrust. He got up on his feet and marched back to war
wearing bandages! Nor were the ships lost, or the craftsmen and crews arrested in Riverton. Arithon, he triumphed, despite every obstacle. By his choice and devotion, he gave back your design with only a few torn stitches. Cariadwin was even recovered from Corith, and full half of the men from the outpost.”