Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  ‘If you pray,’ she said through clenched teeth to Fionn Areth, ‘better hope there’s an ally in this town who has enough power to uphold your right to fair judgment. For if I should fall defending your innocence, believe this. Your vaunted Alliance fanatics will see us both dead without even one second’s thought.’

  Fionn Areth said nothing, too paralyzed with dread to do aught but feign limpid unconsciousness.

  Elaira had no words of encouragement to spare him. The first wave of the mob surged down the staircase in a battering press of torches, bristled with bared swords and cudgels. The front ranks encountered her chain of defense wards and slammed to a stupefied stop.

  ‘Go home!’ cried the enchantress in the face of their wrath. ‘You’ll do no more murder in cold blood this night. Not as long as I stand to oppose you!’

  Far north of the disturbance in Jaelot, light snowfall and a knifing, cruel wind raked over the Skyshiel Mountains. Snug in the privacy of her palanquin, the Prime Enchantress of the Koriani Order sat awake by gold lamplight, tatting a band of spelled lace. Aged hands etched down to tendon and cartilage picked and rearranged the ebony pins stuck on her frame of dark velvet. Her bundled spools of metallic thread dangled. Glints caught like thin drizzle in the flare of the wick as they swung to the twist and turn of her weaving. Her lace was not fashioned from ribbon or linen. The patterns she knotted were strung into chains of sigils and seals, their filaments drawn steel and copper.

  The bobbins were carved bone, stained dark with age. The drafts which rippled through the curtains of the palanquin clicked them like primitive amulets, causing the dutiful apprentice successor to blink with unease at her post.

  ‘Selidie,’ Morriel rasped. Her frailty grown disturbingly pronounced, she raised a peremptory hand, as if the young woman had never grown to maturity since the hour of her selection. ‘I’ll need the canister of tobacco infused with tienelle. You may pack the stone pipe with the snakeroot stem and have the striker ready. Then fetch me another opium taper from the lacquered box in the herb chest.’

  ‘Your will, Matriarch,’ Selidie replied, her voice sweet with childish sibilance. She attended the first chore, then crossed the cramped quarters as though balanced on eggshells, each movement infused with awed reverence.

  The senior seeress crouched beside Morriel’s pallet remained absorbed over the quartz sphere she used for clear scrying. Her murmur cut through the shriek of the gusts that clawed through the black spruce outside. ‘Your moment is nigh. The Mayor of Jaelot has been roused from his bed to quell the vigilantes storming his dungeon. As you wished, Lirenda has convinced the town magistrates of the need to place spells of protection over the walls of the city.’

  Bone spools clacked as Morriel plucked a pin and preset the next stage of the pattern. Her fingers looped threads like a spider’s legs, spinning webs to net hapless prey. ‘Well-done. The timing’s immaculate.’ An interval passed as she tied off a thread, one knot in the ritual rune of ending. ‘Selidie!’ she snapped. ‘Quickly now! Light the taper. Then drink the posset in the corked flask on the stand by my pallet. The herbs I’ve prepared will allow you to sleep undisturbed throughout this night’s work.’

  The seeress looked up then, inquiry written into her wrinkled face.

  Morriel returned a quelling gesture. ‘You’ll stay. Your skills are yet needed.’

  ‘Matriarch, your leave,’ lisped the young initiate. She placed the lighted taper on its stand, then curtsied and uncapped the squat wooden flask. The contents smelled bitter. She wrinkled her nose, then dutifully drank, while the restless drafts toyed with the curtains. Morriel watched, eyes half-lidded. As a sated cat might follow the movements of a mouse, she surveyed each detail of the girl’s smooth limbs as she stripped to her shift and snuggled into her cot by the corner post. Morriel sat without speech or movement. Limned in the unstable flicker of flame light, she appeared as a death’s-head amid a catafalque of pillows and quilts.

  In time, the girl’s breathing steadied and slowed into the rhythm of deep sleep.

  ‘Do you know how to call in and tie the life energies to a proxy?’ Morriel husked to the seeress.

  The enchantress set down her crystal in the dense, scented gloom of the palanquin. ‘Of course, I’m familiar with the steps.’ Unsure of what service her Prime might demand, she resisted the urge to direct unsettled glances at the motionless young woman on the pallet.

  Nor was the Koriani Matriarch forthcoming. She gave no explanation for the drugged posset as the minutes dragged by in suspension. Bone clicked on bone as she tied in her last knots. One by one, she removed the pins which nailed her worked pattern in place. The meshed chain of ciphers swung free. Light caught like sparks of live fire amid the tied threads, twined in a contorted array of interlocked sigils and seals. Their sequence framed chaos, each meticulous cipher a spun spell to unilaterally foul order and balance.

  Sunk in her mood of poisonous amusement, Morriel watched the seeress’s expression vacillate between dread and unwholesome curiosity. ‘A lovely recipe for ruin, I agree. How better to divert the Fellowship of Seven as Lirenda sets seals of ward over the walled battlements of Jaelot?’ She folded the lace ribbon aside with due care. Her hands threw insectile shadows on the counterpane as she picked up the demon-stemmed pipe. ‘For that purpose, earth itself will be made to act as my sounding board.’

  She snapped a thin, yellowed thumbnail. Flame bloomed at its tip, fanned to life by a breath through her withered lips. The infused leaves caught and burned red in the whorled stone pipe bowl. A lingering reek of sulfur clogged the air, aftershock of the sigil to rule fire. The acrid odor persisted through the rich, blooming fragrance of tobacco smoke, and the narcotic spice of the tienelle.

  Through the first twining streamers, Morriel’s eyes were chipped jet. ‘You will stand ready to send my signal to all senior initiates in the order who are not on active duty in Jaelot. At my word of need, each one of them must engage in trance and give over their powers to me. By the grace of their discipline, our will shall prevail. On this night, Sethvir of Althain will learn better than to align natural forces against the might of the Koriathain.’

  The seeress’s tired eyes flicked toward the silk-covered tripod supporting the faceted Waystone.

  ‘No,’ Morriel answered her unspoken thought. An unholy pleasure warmed the scrape of her voice. ‘Not the Waystone just yet. For this work, I’ll engage the Skyron aquamarine first. That and the items I will need for the opening ritual are in the small coffer by my feet.’

  Long used to the Matriarch’s autocracy, the seeress fetched and carried without rancor. She was also wise enough not to badger her Prime with unwanted questions. Her patience was rewarded. Once the perimeter circles were sketched out, Morriel unkeyed the spell seals securing the lid of the coffer. She picked through the raw silk wrappings inside and laid out the contents in age-old, arcane configurations.

  First came the traditional axis aligned with the cardinal directions. In the feeble glow of the draft-torn flame, the seeress identified the dulled, iron gleam of polished hematite for grounding; the rods of black tourmaline for protection and shielding; the false gold flash of the cubed pyrite Morriel would use to strain interfering energies from the four quadrants of her construct. Next, the icicle rods of six quartz wands, each one unique in its chiseled aura of energies.

  Although Koriani practice disdained the use of animal talismans, tonight Morriel rejected tradition. She rifled the depths of a soft linen bag with string-tied bundles of bird feathers. These were not windfalls, shed during molt, but the glossy, crisp quills taken from birds killed in summer. The Prime’s plundered hoard included the barred plumage of hawks, owls, and wrens, the fierce blue of jays, and the black quills of ravens, delicate beside the razor-edged primaries plucked from an ocean shearwater. Their presence threw off thin auras like smoke, affirming the sacrificial deaths had been done on a dark moon, in painstaking ritual with stone knives.

  The Prime Matr
iarch arranged her feathers in a circle inside the warding ring of laid minerals. She used cantrips to stitch their hazed magnetism into a focused cone of tiered power. Later, those energies would be used to command the element of air, which cradled every wavelength of energy instilled in the earth’s subtle aura.

  The construct to stand as Athera’s proxy had been fashioned from a globe of raw clay. It, too, had been ritually prepared in advance, with layers of fine spellcraft invoked. The two missing elements, water and flame, would have gone into its making. Nor would any vessel or implement of iron have been used in the course of its shaping. Morriel cupped its dry weight in seamed palms and intoned the lines of summoning. Her words drew ephemeral geometrics in the dark, lacing will through the trifold forms of intent: wrought of thought and scribed rune and incantation. Where the signature of earth’s imprint had been bound into clay, she secured those significating energies from attrition with lightless seals of stasis. Each sigil was incised with a fingernail stylus, and a brow crimped with concentration.

  The seeress observed. Half-forgotten in her corner, she watched the bound forces swell, a nexus of stitched light noosed coil by coil in the fist of Morriel’s will. Step by slow step, the alignment was stabilized. The Prime placed the enabled proxy at the center of the crystal array, surrounded by its aureole of feathers. Another invocation, and a second renewal of the perimeter circles of protection; inside the palanquin, the atmosphere stilled, made stifling with the pent-back force of an oncoming major event. The whine of the winter-chill winds outside became lost and distanced by shifting curtains of raised power.

  Morriel Prime delved into her silk-lined coffer and unveiled the Skyron aquamarine. The gem’s star-cut eye gleamed like a fissure in ice. Its aroused presence suffused the palanquin with a radius of cold far beyond any chill engendered by seasonal elements. The steps to engage and master its focus aged the Prime’s taut-laced features, each crease underscored by her arduous effort. As her will engaged with the prime axis of the crystal, the flame-cast shadows themselves seemed to shrink, and the drafts moved softly in her presence.

  The last linkage remained. Morriel retrieved her length of spelled ribbon, a meshed weave of sigils imprinted with the directives of her desire. She wound the fine wires of one end around the enabled aquamarine. The tail, with its convoluted knots of closure, she swathed about the clay proxy.

  All preparations now stood complete. The Skyron crystal with its winding of filaments rested in Morriel’s stilled hands. Focal point of the feather array, centered in the raised circle of power, the formed clay construct linked to Athera’s Name awaited the impact of change.

  Morriel delivered her final instructions in a stress-cracked whisper. ‘First, engage your powers as seer to frame a link with Lirenda. I’ll need affirmation of her success as she sways Jaelot’s mayor to our purpose.’

  ‘Your will becomes mine.’ The seeress bowed her head. Eyes closed, she cleared her mind of distractions. The quartz sphere in her hands clouded to haze, then darkened as the blurred flicker of an image took slow shape in its depths. The shadow resolved to the texture of dank stone, and the slot in a barred cell door …

  Before that small gap, Senior Enchantress Lirenda was addressing an unseen party inside. ‘You’ll never establish his innocence now. One look outside will show why, and the next hour will just bring you another lynch mob of citizens howling murder. They’ve taken to arms because there’s a run of static charges bleeding down the sixth lane. The whole sky flamed red, result of a Fellowship intervention.’ An arrogant pause, then Lirenda resumed, disdainful in her contempt. ‘Of course, the display is quite harmless. But a man accused of sorcery is incarcerated here. The panic in the streets has pinned blame on his presence. There can’t be a trial. Jaelot’s citizens would riot. The mayor has been forced to rearrange his priorities. The public execution will now take place as part of the solstice festivities.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow?’ A rustle of sharp movement through the slot inflected Elaira’s retort. ‘Never mind you know better! The scapegoat you’re letting these people revile is barely more than a boy! Don’t try to claim the Fellowship Sorcerers ever act without provocation. My hunches are screaming. Something’s gone unspeakably rotten at our core, or why would our order stoop to involvement in petty deceits and town politics?’

  Lirenda responded in freezing displeasure. ‘More’s at stake than you know.’ Rushed by the clump of a guardsman’s tread descending the upper stair, she added, ‘This place is not private. I can’t stay any longer. The mayor’s been assured my work on the walls will guard against further sorcery.’

  ‘We’re lying now, also?’ Elaira scrapped back. ‘Or have you learned some new stayspell to achieve what both of us know is impossible?’

  ‘Be still!’ Lirenda glanced over her shoulder, annoyed, since the echoes made voices carry. ‘And be grateful. The deception was necessary to spare you and the boy from another attack by men bent on bloody revenge.’

  ‘We were holding our own down here well enough.’ Elaira gripped the barred steel with blanched knuckles. ‘Why don’t you do the right thing and rescue us.’

  Lirenda stepped back, half turned to depart. ‘Don’t test my tolerance, and don’t build a mission on false hope. Tonight, Morriel has arranged a diversion to sidetrack Sethvir and the Fellowship. Her instructions to me were explicit. Fionn Areth’s the set bait for a spring trap to flush out Arithon s’Ffalenn. If the Shadow Master comes to prevent the execution, we’ll have him the moment he crosses my wards on the city walls.’

  Within the freezing enclosure of her palanquin, Morriel Prime savored her moment of deep satisfaction. Every pawn in the play she had arranged for years awaited in place for her end game.

  ‘All lies in readiness.’ With her left hand splayed over the Skyron crystal, she lifted her right and whisked the silk veil off the Waystone. Violet glints spiked her jet eyes as she flicked a peremptory finger at the seeress. ‘Once I have aligned the focus of the amethyst, you will disperse my set signal. As the initiate enchantresses in our order assume deep trance and align their powers to my cause, you must bide. Maintain the protective circles I have set. For as long as you are consciously aware, let nothing and no one intervene.’

  ‘Your will,’ said the seeress, sobered to reticence and stripped of desire to question Morriel’s grand conjury. If the clandestine whispers of rumor were true, and time had driven the Matriarch insane, the sigils of prime power made her position unassailable. No ranking senior dared gainsay her will. The individual who confronted the issue with inquiry would court a sure course of destruction.

  Too late, now, to foment a rebellion. Morriel woke the Great Waystone.

  Minutes crawled by, measured by the throaty rasp of Selidie’s sleeping breaths. Outside, the wind moaned over bare rocks and tossed the limbs of the conifers. Snow settled soundlessly into the hollows, winnowed into ribbed drifts. If there were owls, they hunted in silence.

  Denser stillness gripped the close quarters of the palanquin, where Morriel poised, her right hand capping the faceted sphere of the amethyst Waystone. Strain dragged the pleats at the corners of her mouth. Sweat stippled the bone polish of her brow. The sinews of her neck tautened to the drag of each exhalation, and her fingers were clenched, rigid claws. Her invisible battle of will with the jewel stretched the stillness like a mute scream of agony.

  Then the threshold was past. The spat flare of fires in the depths of the amethyst subsided and burned into a malevolent spark. Morriel opened lightless, dark eyes. She spoke, monotoned as a dreamer. ‘Now. Call the names of our initiates, one by one. Through the channel of the Waystone, the strength of our order shall be forged into a single, honed instrument.’

  The seeress gripped her scrying sphere in hands that would not stop shaking. She began the lengthy, arduous task of unreeling her talents again and again through the hammered lens of her discipline. When the roll call was done, dawn leaked gray light through the flaps of the
palanquin’s tied curtains. The taper had burned to a rufous glint, and the stale scents of mandrake mingled with the musk of spent tienelle and tobacco smoke.

  Morriel Prime sat in her nest of piled cushions, eyes unseeing and open. Right and left hands rested yet on the focal channels of two crystals, with her frail body in linkage between them. The Great Waystone twined the given talents of thousands of enchantresses into one. Upon that cold flux, the Prime imposed her given will. She had no sentimental attachment to Athera; on the contrary, the viability of any one planet became an expendable resource. Break the compact and the covenant of Paravian preservation, and mankind could reclaim its interdicted knowledge and remanifest the technologies of star travel.

  Taut as a crouched predator, Morriel framed the rune of beginning. Given impulse and direction, the surge of held power pulsed into the Skyron aquamarine. From there, impetus carried the flow onward into the corded meshes of the lace tied in seal after seal of configured chaos. Light bloomed and blazed down each knotted binding, the feathers recaptured the energies in resonance. Their thin, silvered auras pulsed a dull, heavy red. The power channeled on, conducted through spelled wire, to garrote the clay construct ritually created to stand proxy for the world of Athera.

  ‘Now,’ Morriel whispered. ‘Now, now, now!’ Her voice broke on a cracked note of triumph. ‘Let Sethvir of Althain know the cost of his meddling and suffer ruination for all time!’

  Each ongoing second, power charged the array, hissing into a flash point of stained light. Heat washed back, wrapped in a stressed note of sound that climbed outside the limits of hearing. As forced witness on the sidelines, the seeress cried out, sweat commingled with her salt tears. Bound by the order’s oath of obedience, she could not intervene as the Prime Matriarch’s construct seized the flux of the planet’s magnetics and drove their staid frequencies into a raging explosion of chaos.