Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Lysaer turned from the glass window, eyes wide-open with a candor that held the passionless obstinacy of a glacier. ‘I married a Westlands woman for the customs of deportment and propriety, that matters of state will not be broached in my bedchamber.’

  Ellaine flushed. Her fists clenched. She forced her gaze rigid, too aware that the least movement of her lashes might spill the hot flood of the tears she refused to shed. ‘Then in your presence, I am the broodmare without a mind?’

  Lysaer leaned back as the vehicle swayed to the onboarding weight of its grooms. His own hands were stilled, his diamond rings like lit water, sparkling to the jolt as the driver on the box shook up the team and the traces creaked taut to the first rolling grind of the wheels. He cut her no slack. ‘You will have no standing in this realm, except the earned grace you’ll receive when you have borne this kingdom’s next crown prince. Which brings us to the point, does it not? Are you bearing?’

  ‘What?’ Ellaine’s second, more violent flush chased her tears to anger and confusion.

  Lysaer regarded her, cat still. ‘I asked, are you carrying a child for the realm?’

  Her color ebbed, pink to white on the cusp of her sharply caught breath. With restored composure, she answered, ‘Not yet.’

  The carriage jolted over the marble curb and into the open street, to a muffled swell of noise from the onlookers. Perhaps for the benefit of those who might catch a glimpse through the carriage window, Lysaer took her hand, touched his lips to her glove, and inclined his head, smiling. ‘Then, my fair bride, you will instruct your maids to bring spirits and fresh linens as they did on the night of your wedding. Expect me during the hour before midnight. This time, I suggest you drink enough brandy to be comfortable before I arrive in your bedchamber.’

  ‘I dislike the principle as well as the brandy.’ Ellaine’s voice shook as she strove to stem ebbing courage.

  ‘Do as you please, then,’ Lysaer said, equable. ‘For my part, the spirits are necessity.’

  If he had hoped to demolish her spirit, the attempt failed. Tears vanquished, Ellaine regarded him with the hurt blazing like a war banner in the depths of her deer-dark eyes. ‘That’s sheer bad manners, if not straight cowardice, to unload your bitterness on me.’

  Half-turned to bestow another smiling salute to his admirers outside the window, Lysaer paused a fractional second, then completed his gesture on the strength of his inborn royal pride. When he faced her again, he was not vindictive. Instead, his face held a vulnerability whose depth of honesty was wounding. ‘I will speak my heart to you just this once, Lady Ellaine. You are my wife, and the princess of this realm, and the mother who will bear the next high king. As such, your value is inestimable. Your worth as a weapon to my enemy’s hand represents a prize behind reckoning.’

  Ellaine challenged. ‘We are all no more than pieces upon the board of your war against shadow?’

  ‘This union we have made for the good of the land will not stand firm upon the foundations of your naïveté.’ Lysaer shut his eyes, not before a cutting slice of his inner pain showed through. The hand in his lap now was hardened into a fist of sharp rings and white knuckles. ‘Lady, I do not hate you. But neither do I dare allow even small affection, for you must understand: if I am made vulnerable, my cause must fail. Once, I made that mistake. For my love of Lady Talith, the cost became thirty thousand lives, dead in cold blood in the dust of Dier Kenton Vale. You are the wife who will bear Tysan’s heir. My trust in your hands, for the weal of mankind, demands that you never become the crack in the bastion that foes can use to let in the dark.’

  He did not turn away as the tears came and spilled silver rivulets down her cheeks. His hands were not cold, or remote, as he flicked out his handkerchief and deftly caught the runoff before it could splash her fine silk. ‘You do understand,’ he said, gentle enough to brand her forever as a needy, inadequate spirit.

  ‘I’m not so strong,’ she admitted, striving to match the demand of his unbending royal stature. She discovered, in all ways, she lacked the unflinching nerve to brazen through the last steps of her game plan.

  Chill quiet reigned as Ellaine realized they had arrived. Lysaer’s concerned gaze upon her suggested that, somehow, she was expected to recover her wits and stand up. They would need to step from the carriage together.

  Then, as a commander on a battlefield gauged the temper of his troops, the prince realized she was overfaced. A saddened, soft smile bent the corners of his mouth. ‘It would seem we’ll be giving the courtiers a show after all.’

  He bent, caught her close, and scooped her limp weight against his chest, then banged the carriage door open with an impatient foot. As if she were featherweight, he lifted her out, with her moist cheek sheltered against his neck. The grooms fell away in astonishment. Smiling guardsmen averted their faces as he bore her across the cobbled apron and up the marble stair to the entry. There he paused, head bent to hers. Through what every onlooker interpreted as the searing passion of his kiss, he whispered, ‘Your handmaid is inside and ready to receive you. For both of our sakes, I beg you never to be so foolish as to attempt a repeat performance.’

  Another smooth stride saw the prince past the doorway. The firm click as the heavy double panel was pulled shut by the servants set final closure to hope and a dream whose fierce edge had turned inward to wound a girl’s tender heart.

  Ellaine felt Lysaer’s cool hands set her down, then melt back, leaving her supported by the anxious clasp of her handmaid. The tears still fell unchecked down her face, though for pride’s sake she withheld from sobbing. In the hours that passed, retired in privacy, she endured the dull ache that burned through the tisanes the solicitous palace healer insisted would bring her ease.

  The drugged syrups gave no reprieve from the truth: that it had been her own defenses breached on that foray. If Lysaer s’Ilessid could refuse human feeling in the dedicated cause of the Light, she was made of no such stern stuff. Nor could her young heart be schooled to withstand even the brilliant, enameled façade he granted the tradesman who gawped on the street.

  Beyond the sanctum of the princess’s apartments, other needs laid claim to the Divine Prince’s attention. The council hall at Avenor pulsed to the clamor of deferred politics. The residual public outcry over the burned ships resounded to thorny complaint over losses to trade, while the sea routes through Havish remained inaccessible to galleys bearing slave oarsmen.

  Having been too preoccupied to pay heed to the first breathless questions flung from the crowd lining the wharf as he landed, Lysaer s’Ilessid released his public statement, and a crown pledge to make disposition. He greeted the dignitaries still in residence from Erdane, and deflected Ellaine’s father with sober confirmation that the dower gold had vanished with the shipyard. Then he dismissed social nicety to honor the demands of his guildsmen.

  He called an immediate session with the high officers of the realm, and those council members who had returned with his royal galley. To everyone’s astonishment, he acceded to demand. With no war in the offing, excess troops would be disbanded. Funds reserved for new weapons and captain’s pay would be reallocated. Hard heads and hot rhetoric would hammer out terms for relief in coin weight sums and lowered tariffs.

  Hurled from hand-wringing despair to backslapping euphoria, Tysan’s merchants never paused to question Prince Lysaer’s stunning volte-face. If one or two among them showed concern for threat of shadow, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend raised no voice to back them. Worry for the uncertain future remained overshadowed by the heat of present crisis.

  At sundown, clad in shimmering finery, Prince Lysaer rejoined his princess, her peaked looks made presentable by her maid’s skill with powders and paint. The newly wedded couple led the formal entrance to the state dinner held to commemorate the royal homecoming. The s’Brydion brothers Mearn and Parrien were given a prominent position in her train, a definitive indication their loyalty remained in the good grace of Tysan’s crown interests. Once
the banquet began, the princess departed to eat a light supper in private.

  The royal bed was made ready by soft-footed servants. Lady Ellaine endured through her disrobing, then retired, wrapped in new ribbons and a nightrobe of rose velvet scented with costly perfume. His Grace arrived later, his step too carefully firm and his diction precise as a scalpel as he excused her handmaid and servants.

  She had chosen the numbness of the brandy after all. Her yielding, limp sweetness granted a release that, very nearly, undid the locked cage on his heart. As Prince Lysaer completed his conjugal duty to the realm, only the aged handmaid who showed him the door afterward ever knew how nearly the lady had come to winning the hand fate had dealt her. She prayed to dame fortune, and to every power she knew, that Lysaer s’Ilessid, Prince of the Light, had not yet conceived the heir he desired for Tysan.

  With sorrow the handmaid understood: a hurried moment’s work between the sheets might too easily become the last time that husband and wife met as intimates.

  The full moon came and went. On Avenor’s broad dales, the season warmed toward summer. The hardy foliage of the oaks spun the hills in glossy, new green, and the tiny, peridot knots of new apples took the place of bursting blossoms. The wedding guests who had enjoyed Avenor’s bounteous hospitality departed at last on dry roads; trade moved as the thaws opened the high Pass of Orlan. The s’Brydion state galley cast off for home port in the east, and left behind a court representative who was a more distant blood relative to maintain the duke’s pledge of alliance. The man was given quarters less lavish than his predecessor; nor was he made privy to the trusted inner circle secretly known to itself as the Cabal of Light.

  With the guildsmen and trade factions settled to mollified prosperity, Lysaer s’Ilessid retired to the guarded tower sanctum, where he met with those chosen few. Since the failed schism with s’Brydion had gutted their hopes for a clan war to draw the unpledged eastern cities under the sunwheel standard, talk and rampant speculation had circled like a balked dog pack. Just what the Prince of the Light would do next became the spearhead of every conversation. Until the sabotaged ships were replaced, there could be no expansion. The inexorable bleeding of profits to ease trade deficits would keep the royal treasury hobbled. Trained troops could not be replaced at short notice. Nor would the minions of shadow and sorcery rest through the years of recovery.

  The volatile flood of complaint reached full spate on the instant Lysaer s’Ilessid arrived and assumed his too-long-vacant seat.

  ‘Save us all!’ The realm’s seneschal shoved erect in vociferous objection. ‘What is the purpose of the Alliance if not to eradicate clan interference with trade and collusion with the Master of Shadow?’

  ‘What use to pursue practitioners of magecraft if they simply flee over the border to take sanctuary under the High King of Havish?’ cried Crown Examiner Vorrice. His full sleeve flapped to his vehement gesture as he shouted down other colleagues. ‘Since you’ve reduced the field companies, all men who are bound to cause evil in the world will simply fly to roost under the protection of Eldir’s banner!’

  Lysaer did not answer, but let the talk swell and tangle, even to the concern raised by Lord Mayor Skannt, that the headhunters’ guilds were going to balk at hard service if purse strings stayed tight and bounties were halved to save bullion.

  Lord Koshlin accosted in brutal practicality, ‘If the barbarians enslaved by crown policy are put to the block, the trade galleys could recover their unobstructed passage through port towns to the south.’

  ‘Let the scum run to Havish, why care?’ Gace Steward dismissed with contentious enjoyment. ‘We’ll just use the peace to build forces and wealth, then deal with King Eldir through an invasion.’

  Silence, while heads turned and tilted, to measure how Lysaer s’Ilessid would react to a statement that, perhaps, might have gone too far.

  The Prince of the Light gave them back no reaction. His hands remained stilled. Touched by more light than the fluttering flames in the high candelabra seemed to warrant, his pristine white clothing reflected a fine nimbus against the dimmer wool tapestry, sewn with the blazon of Tysan. A drawn minute passed, while the dagged velvet curtains billowed in the sea breeze through the cracked casement. From the yard far below, the whistle of the kennelman mingled with the rattle of chain and the bay of idle tracking hounds, who leaped at their tethers to be fed.

  While the drawn pause extended, and the expectant atmosphere became brittle to cracking with pressure, Prince Lysaer unlaced his fingers to a snapping glitter of rings. His smile was butter as he urged, ‘Do go on. Every man present is free to air his opinion.’

  The settled strength of his patience made the yap of his councilmen all of a sudden seem foolish. Given no response and no target, the majority subsided in embarrassment. Red to the wattles, the seneschal cleared his throat. Skannt fingered his knives, flushed with speculation, while others repressed the urge to whisper among themselves. The High Priest of the Light, Cerebeld, was the sole one among them who felt no discomfort, and yet, these chosen few were not fools.

  ‘Your Grace, we are listening,’ noted the Minister of the Royal Treasury, his narrowed, pale eyes most observant. ‘If you’ve already chosen our course for the future, dare I ask what’s afoot?’

  A sharp tap at the door interrupted. Lysaer’s placating neutrality broke into a piquant smile. ‘Raise the latch and accept my invitation to find out.’

  The Minister of the Royal Treasury deferred, since Gace Steward would leap to the task out of jealous intent to be first.

  The door swung wide to reveal Sulfin Evend reversing the pommel of the dagger just used to rap at the panel. Beyond the pebbled gleam of his mail shirt, a silver-haired visitor clad in elegant black: Raiett Raven awaited admittance.

  ‘What’s this!’ burst out Vorrice.

  The others rammed straight, declaiming, as the presence of an unsworn stranger threatened to ignite a fresh round of clamor.

  ‘Protection,’ said Lysaer, then bade his Lord Commander and the Mayor of Hanshire’s former advisor to make free and enter with his welcome. ‘Proceed as we planned,’ he added to Raiett, who carried a coffer set with inlay and gold studs tucked into the crook of his elbow.

  As though he were not made the target of jealous resentment from men who guarded their predatory ambitions, Raiett advanced. His tread made no sound on the chill flagstone floors. His sable clothing seemed to swallow the candlelight and knit his slender frame into the outlying shadows. Against the soft dark, his lean hands stood out, each motion distinct as he set down his burden and unlocked the top with a key that hung from a chain at his neck. The lid opened with the same oiled ease of precise workmanship. Raiett drew out a padded silk bag and deftly loosened the drawstrings.

  All eyes in the chamber stayed fixed upon him, yet his features showed nerveless detachment. He reached inside and drew out a fist-sized item that gleamed with the ocher patina of old bone.

  The tower had niches built into the brick walls, inset with high arches for candles. Raiett placed the first object on the brick sill, and the flare of wax flame roused the heart’s blood sparkle of a jewel. The artifact was a skull the size of a cat’s, but elongated and set with fangs and tearing incisors. The crown was inlaid with a circle of jet, and inside that, crimped in a timeworn copper bezel, glimmered a cabochon ruby.

  Vorrice stirred upright in alarm. ‘In the Name of the Light, what is that?’

  ‘The skull from an unborn dragon.’ Matter-of-fact to the point of cold arrogance, Raiett rounded the table and moved on to the west wall, where he reached into the coffer and removed another silk bag, then a relic as unsettling as the first. The sockets of the eyes slanted, filled with shifting shadow, as though the creature’s dead mind still flickered, watching from inner caverns of cold bone.

  ‘Wards?’ The Minister of the Royal Treasury chafed bony wrists to mask his creeping rush of gooseflesh.

  ‘Just that.’ Raiett’s progress had carried
him to the north wall. Soon a third skull grinned at its fellow to the east, the jewel in its crown a glittering ember. ‘These are very ancient, extracted alive from the egg before hatching imprinted their self-awareness. Taken so, they are tools, their arcane qualities enslaved to the will of humanity.’ On the last wall, he laid the fourth in the set. ‘They watch. The consciousness of dragons is immortal, and the skulls keep a resonance of their awareness, even long after death.’ He added, folding the now empty silk, ‘This set was mislaid by a Koriani senior five hundred years ago, when a sisterhouse burned in the uprising.’

  ‘Heresy!’ Vorrice snapped. His vulture’s profile swung and jutted toward Lysaer. ‘What witchery is this? You’ve reduced the loyal war host. Are you also turned by evil to embrace the very powers of darkness?’

  A lingering chill seemed to lace through the room, as if unseen currents of draft played from the locked gazes of four pairs of empty eye sockets; and yet, no such airs winnowed the candles. The flames stood up stark and still from their wicks, while the men in their velvets shrank and startled.

  Into that uneasy discomfort, Lysaer s’Ilessid gave measured opinion. ‘How else to avert the gaze of a Sorcerer than to use powers of spellcraft against him? A dragon-skull ward bends outside time and space. We’ll need such protection. We cannot thwart shadow, or break the absolute tyranny of the Fellowship of Seven without long-range intentions. Henceforward, I would rather the Warden of Althain was not made privy to our talk.’ White silk defied the encroachment of night as Lysaer rose to his feet. ‘We are gathered here, in strict secrecy, for the purpose of arranging how the word and the light will be made to span all five kingdoms on this continent …’

  Spring 5654

  Schism