Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Now, an invasion of abrasive basalt sands choked the smashed friezes of sunchildren, and thorn-tipped plants elbowed for survival where runoff from the walls afforded a rare patch of moisture. Here and there, the pale carving of the original arches stood intact. Their cloud-filtered shadows traced the barren soil in elongated, spider-legged grace, while the cloverleaf patterns of their pierced stonework whispered like hollow bones played by the wind.

  The two men passed through with sword-trained distaste for the footing. Hobnailed seaboots sank into maws of dry sand, while the breeze fanned behind. Grit tumbled in hissing currents and erased every trace of living presence.

  Parrien had no liking for the emptiness. Nor did the heat numb his senses to the point where he missed the fast, furtive movement that slipped through the tumbledown stonework ahead.

  ‘Desertmen,’ the youthful clan guide informed him, then grasped his tensed forearm to stop the reflexive draw of his knife. ‘Don’t rile them. They carry blowpipes and darts, and hit well enough to stick a man through the eye at eighty paces. There’s always half a dozen come to guard his Grace’s back whenever he makes his way ashore.’

  Eyebrows tipped upward in rankling inquiry, Parrien wrenched free, while his instinct for survival took sobering note that these desertmen came and went with disquieting stealth. The insects still clicked and chirred undisturbed from their shaded crannies.

  The clan scout rubbed a grazed palm on his leathers, and admitted, ‘In truth, the creatures unnerve me as well.’

  ‘You said they guard Arithon.’ Parrien scanned the way ahead, but saw nothing else beyond sun-blasted rock, sheeted in mounds of dark sand. ‘Why?’

  ‘The tribes here invoke the blessing of their mother goddess, Darkness. Shadows, they say, are her infant sons.’ The clan scout shrugged. ‘They think Arithon’s god-touched. He explained in plain words that his powers were no better than mortal. A mage’s birth gift gave him command of the elements. You knew?’

  At Parrien’s nod, the guide finished, ‘Well, none of the desertmen wanted to listen. The local tribe elder just patted his Grace’s shoulder and insisted their luck and their goats would increase if the tribesmen give him protection.’

  Another shrug; then a kicked bit of gravel that ricocheted through the embittered conclusion. ‘No one of us cares if their tribal belief stems from worship or augury. Their vigilance brings no harm, and keeping the Shadow Master’s favor won’t hurt. My blood for surety,’ the scout swore in fierce words that shocked instant respect from any man raised to clan heritage, ‘a light-based religion will show these nomads no tolerance. If Lysaer plays the Mistwraith’s curse into an excuse for a holy war, his new breed of soldier-priests are likely to pass the wild tribes under Fate’s Wheel for heretics.’

  ‘Religion?’ Parrien forgot about desertmen and knives. ‘What claptrap is this?’

  The clansman glanced aside, his uneasy eyes and the lift of his jaw too sharp for the youthful stubble on his chin. ‘Hasn’t a sunwheel priest chapped on Alestron’s postern yet? Well then, as the one Alliance ally who won’t wish to spurn the old order, your duke better think what he’ll say. The day will come when he’s asked to swear faith and string shadowbanes on the stiff necks of your family.’

  Parrien laughed. ‘I pity the dimwit who dares try!’

  ‘Tomorrow, that might not seem funny.’ The guide skirted a ruckle of stones where the sea storms had chewed the foundations. ‘High council in Tysan claims Prince Lysaer’s the manifestation of righteous good come to save us. They say he won’t age, and call him Divine Light. You’ve been to Southshire. The ports on the coast are buying the lie. The mayor at Innish let that sunwheel examiner dispossess the sea-quarter herb witches as well.’

  ‘More fools, they!’ Parrien bristled, his eyes trained ahead and his fingers tapping a nerve-wrought tattoo on his dagger hilts. ‘Let five months go by, they’ll be tripping over the pregnant whores kicked out in the streets begging charity. If their cities don’t like starving babes underfoot, they’ll wish they’d left at least one of the old besoms her practice.’

  No lighthearted quip came back from the clan scout. ‘What will Alestron do when the sunwheel banner becomes a rallying cry for religion?’

  ‘Duke Bransian will probably skewer the first messenger who declares himself Lysaer’s priest.’ Parrien flashed a wicked, insouciant grin, while the indignant wind lashed the white strands licked through the seal hair at his temples. ‘That’s if my brother Keldmar didn’t seize his chance to handle the idiot first. He’s said before that sunwheel tunics make tempting targets for archery. He’s been frothing at the mouth to sharpen his aim in case things come to a brangle.’

  Through the shade of another etched archway, the scout said, ‘Lysaer has a way of bending allegiances.’ His shrewd glance measured. ‘Once, we counted on Cattrick.’

  Parrien scraped sweat from the nape of his neck, bristled to sudden ill temper. ‘You imply we’d turn? Or that Mearn would?’ His outrage slapped echoes off dusty stonework like the portentous growl of thunder. ‘Alestron’s not sanguine with Alliance affairs. My brother’s no dreamer. He’s set new revetments in his battlements and kept the armory forge fires busy for the time this charade of arse-kissing amity breaks open.’

  Yet even for a Westlands boy marked with a galley slave’s brand from Lysaer’s crown policy against clansmen, the ultimate loyalty of the s’Brydion armed forces was too forthright a question to ask.

  The moment for more probing inquiry was lost in any case. Past the crumbled shell of a bastion and the miniature tracks stippled by a foraging scarab, a poured avenue of sand shimmered across the gapped portal to what had been a spacious bailey; nor was the space empty, or desolate, or dead.

  Out of that sun-fired shell of baked stone poured a shimmering cascade of pure harmony. The tenor and pitch was liquid and minor, wrought of a stark tension to lacerate peace and wring tears from dry eyes to succor the tortured desiccation of the earth.

  Parrien stopped before thought. His hand left his weapon hilt without conscious volition and clutched in a fist to his chest. On emotion torn like grained rust from his throat, he whispered, ‘Ath show blind mercy!’

  The clan guide stopped also. His sympathy was reverent, and no little bit tinged with fear. ‘Dakar told us once, if his Grace pours out music, sometimes he won’t get the nightmares.’

  Parrien swore hot enough to anneal the war temper from cold steel.

  If the bard overheard, his sealed concentration never faltered. That wounding progression of notes spiraled on, seamless as ribbon drawn through the silk weave of eternity. Lent poignant echoes by the enclosure of ruined masonry, the inspired mastery of his talent broke reason and loosed passions which purveyed the mind to the borders of madness.

  To listen too long was to court sheer despair, cankered too deep to rout out.

  Parrien shook himself. He glanced hard at the clan scout, and sweated to ram words through the pain of a need beyond language. ‘I think I’d better go forward alone.’

  The guide flicked a tear unabashed from his cheek. ‘That’s wisest. I’ll wait at the cliff head.’ He departed, secure in the knowledge the distrustful guard of the desertmen would stay true to Arithon’s interests.

  Alone with that stripping, glass-edged cry of sorrow, Parrien wrestled reluctance. There seemed no more barbaric a desecration than to go forward and disrupt the bard for the sake of a mundane purpose.

  Then the lyranthe’s rending performance cut off; the furtive footfalls of desertmen, or some musician’s instinct had perhaps served a merciful warning. Arithon’s voice called out from across the vista of broken rock. ‘To your right.’

  Parrien clamped down his unstrung nerves. As if bodily exertion could shake off the hurt left strapped like chain through his chest, he moved to lay claim to his audience.

  The bard sat on a broken length of wall, clad in dark breeches and a loose, open shirt of plain linen. The unbleached, ivory cloth rippled an
d snapped in the wind. His black hair streamed also, untrimmed and tangled beside the hands laced white-knuckled over the scroll at the lyranthe’s peghead. The instrument was not either flashy or new. A frayed-off end of scarlet silk showed where a past owner had adorned it with tassels.

  At first measure, Parrien judged that Prince Arithon was ill. His war-trained eye tested fitness at a glance, and read in that delicate stillness the posture a stricken man used when a sword thrust bled beyond remedy.

  Then the musician laid down his instrument, stood up, and turned. His straight stance was too fluidly poised for a man just arisen from sickbed. He acknowledged his visitor with wide, wary eyes; and Parrien measured a face like stamped steel, with a spirit inside that grief had left stranded in a solitude as cruel as imprisonment.

  ‘If that’s Parrien of Alestron, you’ve brought more bad news,’ Prince Arithon opened, his inflection vised to indifference.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Squinting against the cloud-glare, Parrien played for disarming humor. ‘Unless you count your Mad Prophet brought back drunk on brandy a disaster of major proportions.’ On the strength of shrewd guesswork, he added an afterthought. ‘Your packet of dispatches is safe.’

  Arithon closed the last distance between them and stopped. He was unarmed and guileless, clear enough indication that his mood was doubly dangerous. ‘Dakar’s scrapes are scarcely earthshaking events. Why come here in person?’

  ‘I could ask the same.’ More than the harsh light made eye contact difficult. Parrien surveyed those angular, cool features, his skin raked up into gooseflesh. A decade had passed since he and Arithon s’Ffalenn had last parted on a wind-raked Vastmark hillside. And yet, for all the hard years in between, the Master of Shadow showed no mortal sign of aging.

  ‘There’s not any mystery,’ Arithon said, jolting for the ordinary way he responded to a mannerless interrogation. ‘I plan to search offshore until I find where the Paravians took refuge. Unless I would risk leading men into madness, my ships are best sailed by a crew with unbroken clan lineage. They’re here for training. I came to secure the integrity of our supply lines. The voyage we embark on could last for years. We aren’t rushed, but I admit to worry when Dakar was overdue back from Southshire. No doubt you’re owed thanks. If his rescue requires repayment, name the sum. I’ll compensate for the bother.’

  Gauze bands of cloud scattered the sunlight between them. Despite the heat, Parrien shivered. ‘Ath,’ he burst out on a stab of unease. ‘Who in Daelion’s name are you?’

  ‘Lysaer’s half brother, and human as you.’ Arithon waited, hands clasped to contain his faint exasperation, while the desert winds braided raffish strings of elf locks into his shoulder-length hair. Since the s’Brydion flint stare allowed him no quarter, he sighed. ‘You’ve heard the new claim of s’Ilessid immortality? Don’t believe it. Our gift of longevity stems from the same source, and divine cause has no connection.’

  ‘Go on.’ Parrien’s tongue had gone dry in his mouth, and the palms on his knife handles drenched. ‘I think my family should know, being entangled in the destiny between you.’

  Arithon said without rancor, ‘Davien the Betrayer once built an enchanted fountain through the West Worldsend Gate, in the Red Desert by the ruins of Mearth. Both of us drank while delirious with thirst. The mistake held high stakes. One swallow inflicted a Sorcerer’s burden of five hundred years’ added life span.’

  ‘That’s scarcely reassuring,’ Parrien snapped. ‘In the next generation, will you weep to remember? The rest of us have only one life to spend in your service.’

  Arithon flinched, a fractional slip of control, but one that unstrung his masking appearance of sangfroid. ‘The enchantment is fallible.’ He spun, but the refuge of the curtain wall was too far. Clear air could not mask his untenable agony, and for pride, he refused craven use of his shadow. ‘A sword thrust might not serve to dispatch the spirit, but death could be sealed by dismemberment.’

  ‘And fire?’ pressed Parrien. ‘That might work, too?’

  ‘That’s why they burn sorcerers,’ Arithon lashed back, flat and fierce with impatience. ‘Flame is considered unequivocally reliable. If you’re going to examine my murky integrity, could I suggest that we continue in privacy?’ He inclined his head.

  Struck by the passionless edge to the cue, Parrien s’Brydion glanced behind.

  Still as sinister shadows, eight gray-robed desertmen fanned in a half circle, hair spiked with resin and blowpipes poised at their lips. They had advanced from their niches in the stonework without even a whisper of scuffed sand.

  Parrien faced back to the Shadow Master, the creeping flesh between his shoulder blades a goad to his simmering temper. ‘So, are we enemies? If not, I can hope you speak desert dialect well enough to explain.’

  ‘They trust what they see,’ Prince Arithon replied. ‘Since they hold a touch sacred, any small gesture of amity should suffice. Let us embrace, then retire in comfort to my chart room aboard the Khetienn.’

  ‘You know me better.’ Parrien laughed, causing the desertmen a tense and unwelcome start. ‘We’ll talk on my galley or nowhere at all.’

  ‘Just so my packets of dispatches wait there.’ Arithon closed the last step between, prepared to evince his personal trust. Glare no longer masked his condition as he exchanged a formal embrace. The s’Brydion brother ached then for the evidence under his hands: the Master of Shadow had indeed suffered illness. Under the deceitful folds of loose clothes, his whipcord-lean strength had worn down to attenuated sinew and bone. Nor did he carry a knife in concealment, even beneath the voluminous drawstring sleeves.

  ‘Forgive me for testing,’ Parrien said in husky apology. ‘We know well to trust you. But it’s no canny matter, these whispered rumors of blood magic, demons, and divinity. On the streets in broad daylight, I’ve seen merchant’s children wearing white prayer cords and shadowbanes.’

  Arithon stepped back. His green eyes stayed hooded beneath the peaked browline stamped with the unmistakable heritage of his ancestry. ‘I don’t like it either,’ he admitted with self-haunted honesty.

  Whatever he was, whether or not he was begotten by a s’Ffalenn prince upon a mortal woman, none who faced him could deny his human burden of grief.

  ‘What do you say we forsake this scorching cliff top, and see if Dakar left anything liquid in my wine locker?’ Parrien fell in stride as Arithon swung back to retrieve his lyranthe from the wall. By the time they retraced their steps toward the cove, the desertmen had melted back into the ruins, leaving only the dimpled smears of footprints.

  Nightfall brought in a mantling sea mist. A needle-fine drizzle chased droplets like mercury down the amber-tinged glass of the galley’s stern windows. The brisk slap of wavelets came interspersed by slow footfalls as the deck officer paced out his watch. Forward, contained behind muffling wood, Alestron’s mercenaries worked goose grease salve into the calluses hardened by hours at the oar. The sail crew diced, or bragged over their beer rations of their prowess while on shore leave. Inside the privacy of the stern cabin, behind a companionway guarded by the field troop’s scarred captain and two of his steadfast veterans, Parrien leaned across the table to pour wine.

  His eyes flashed offense as he found Arithon’s goblet untouched in its place on the sill. ‘You aren’t drinking. From anyone else, that would become a fighting man’s grounds to take insult.’

  Arithon attacked without looking up from the sheet of reed paper he held poised over the unshielded candle. ‘For anyone else, I wouldn’t accept the polite burden of guest traditions at all.’ The leaflet in his hand betrayed slight unsteadiness as the lines inked in lemon juice smoked and seared brown, revealed like script penned in by a ghost.

  The verbal byplay ongoing since sundown suspended while the Shadow Master read.

  Neither man had changed clothes since afternoon. Parrien’s creased field tunic seemed fit for a rag against the scarlet leather and brass buttons upholstering the benches. The lamps wit
h their cut-crystal panes made Arithon’s stark dress seem a rebuttal of state manners and the comforts of civilized opulence.

  A flick of long fingers tipped the page to the flame. Paper flared up and blackened, then shriveled to ash in a pot filched without the cook’s knowledge from the galley. The saloon with its heraldic carving and scrolled brightwork, and the salt-musty smell of wool tapestry cushions already wore a layered haze of smoke and a nauseating reek of singed parchment.

  Parrien dropped nicety and drank from the flask. ‘If you keep that up, my brother’s going to ask who we tortured with hot irons for a confession.’

  Expressionless, Arithon used the sharp knife from the chart desk to snap through another wax seal. ‘If you want the details of my sordid affairs, you can hire henchmen to sift through the gossip yourself.’

  Yet already, Parrien’s prying had plumbed the vulnerability behind the late round of snappish defenses. His ruthless observation had not missed the missive bearing Rathain’s formal seal. Caithdein, Earl Jieret, had again served his duty as the official royal conscience. His written exoneration for Caolle’s death while in s’Ffalenn service lay amid the curled sheets that survived incineration. S’Brydion interests notwithstanding, Parrien respected the loss. He had witnessed the bond between Shadow Master and war captain firsthand at the close of the campaign in Vastmark. The sorrow of his wounding by his own liege’s hand sliced unimaginably deep.

  Light from the gimbaled lamp on the bulkhead accentuated Arithon’s fragile exhaustion: the bright, circled eyes and the precise way that he perused and absorbed the fresh impact of bleak news. The trumped-up charge of black sorcery made by the Alliance against his actions in Vastmark had been used to spawn an insidious unrest. Everywhere but in Havish, Lysaer’s minions had been diligent to incite small fears to paranoia. Sunwheel garrisons were being funded by trade guilds exhorted to groundless dread. More than one missive had cited burnings for criminal sorcery. In remote parts of Melhalla where Arithon had never trod, far less called down shadow, misinformed citizens had risen in vociferous declaration against him. Three farmers had slain a traveler with black hair for refusing to tell his identity.