Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  As Gace Steward drew wind to cry protest, Kevor rounded on him with stunning speed and a shaming, collected dignity. ‘How dare you set my safety above my born charge! Crown law in Avenor is at risk! If you have no courage to do right by her people, then I will invoke Tysan’s royal justice and take your life here and now as a traitor who acted against the well-being of the realm.’

  The captain glanced in frenzied despair through the jostled ranks of his cordon. ‘But the riots––’

  And again, Prince Kevor cut him short. ‘If Avenor’s people embrace bloodshed and violence, they will do so over the dead meat of my corpse, and that of the ten you pick as my escort! Choose them well. Send no cowards who might break and run. Nor will you, or any others who lack heart, hinder my duty as the son and sole heir of the Blessed Prince who is your sworn regent.’

  Young Kevor drew his sword. In astonishing, inspired loyalty, his bared steel was joined by the unsheathed blades of the two honor guards.

  The watch captain dropped his jaw. ‘You men! End this foolishness! Put up your steel. You must know you risk your careers.’ When the guards remained steadfast, he straightened, shook his head with stunned amazement, and delivered his ultimatum to Gace Steward. ‘I cannot raise steel against the Blessed Prince’s born son! Nor can I dishonor two stout men for offering themselves as his bodyguard. Tysan’s young heir is not wrong, besides. This crisis demands his immediate attention. For the sake of Avenor, he must be permitted to pass. The encouragement of his presence is the best chance we have to keep peace, may the divine Light grant him the grace of protection.’

  ‘Choose my guard, Captain,’ Kevor s’Ilessid insisted before the palace steward could muster an argument. Then he smiled. The scintillant power of his bloodline shone through the unfinished gawkiness of youth. The direct, steady warmth of his gratitude was no spoiled boy’s exultation, but a force that branded the heart of each man-at-arms with its brave and boundless sincerity.

  Watching, Princess Ellaine lost her composure to a flood of pride and tears. Despite strain, faced by the overwhelming conviction that the forthcoming venture into Avenor’s packed square would be unimaginably dangerous, the moment also lifted her to an exalted recognition: that her son was more than the fruit of her loins, but endowed as well with the gift of s’Ilessid royal justice. He was born and bred for the seat of high kingship, a spirit who had unexpectedly revealed the true cloth of his heritage. That leap had vaulted him far beyond her claim to maternal love and ties of kinship and family.

  Nor were the onlookers oblivious to the change. The watch captain drew himself up, then gave a bow. ‘Your Grace, it’s my pleasure to serve for the well-being of Avenor and the higher good of the realm.’

  Yet before he could address the issue at hand, one of the hard-bitten veterans from the gate guard cried out over the tumult, ‘I’ll go, your Grace.’

  ‘And I!’ called another.

  Then, swept along by a wave of inspired feeling, the whole line of men who stood within earshot volunteered to escort the young prince. Their number fast swelled beyond ten.

  Flushed red with embarrassed pleasure, Kevor found his poise and once again rose to the occasion. ‘My mother is with me. As princess, she would be entitled to guardsmen to attend her in her own right. Therefore, we shall take an escort of twenty.’ He nodded to the watch captain. ‘Make your selection from those who are willing, but have them understand. We will march disarmed! The people must be shown living proof that we rest our faith in our belief of the Divine Prince’s protection. Instead of weapons, each man who accompanies shall bear a lit candle for the Light.’

  Past the first, gripping instant of dismayed consternation, the grizzled veteran set down his halberd. He unfastened his baldric and handed his sword to a hesitant companion. ‘Hail Kevor, son of the Prince of the Light!’ Head high, he stepped up to the closed gate to affirm his place with his young liege.

  Ellaine shook off the torpor of nerves. Spun to marshal the stunned servants behind her, she snapped, ‘Open one of the store chests. Quickly! We’ll need to break out the candles.’

  As though mollified by the brave display of the gate guard, the palace lackeys obeyed. The man in the lead laid down his strapped chest, flung open the lid, and passed a tied bundle to his princess.

  Ellaine ripped off the binding string. She wielded the flint striker, resolute despite the flooding terror that palsied her hands. Somehow, she found the grit to ignore Gace Steward’s glowering rancor. She stepped forward and passed the lit candle through the wrought-iron bars of the gate and into the bold hand of the veteran. ‘Bless you for courage and generosity. By the good grace of men such as yourself, Avenor will be redeemed from mindless panic.’

  The royal escort became assembled in short order. Twenty volunteer guards stripped of their weapons and formed up wearing only their blazoned surcoats. Their mailed hands shielded the flames of their candles against the fitful north gusts as the gate was unlocked and cracked open. Princess Ellaine stepped out with the heir to the realm, flanked by his honor guard of two, wearing the royal colors. The procession of crate-bearing servants followed after, wide-eyed and grumbling their apprehension. The watch captain took personal command of the small company, his first sergeant left in charge with Gace Steward. His emphatic instructions said no man was to leave his post in defense of the palace, even if Kevor’s effort in the square met disaster.

  ‘If violence breaks out, you will hold this gate shut! The young prince won’t be pulled down, so long as I live. Your task is to preserve the sanctuary at our backs and keep loyal service to Lysaer s’Ilessid.’

  The chosen ranks re-formed around Princess Ellaine and her laden train of servants, with Prince Kevor firmly insistent that he should march at the fore with the watch captain. ‘I’m not here for protection, but to let our people bear witness to the promise their danger will be met by higher powers.’ More false lightning flicked over his head. The flaring burst illuminated no exalted son of incarnate divinity, but a boy in the glory of his human courage, his hair a dull russet beneath a gold circlet and the mantle emblazoned with Tysan’s crown and star too massive for the unfinished breadth of his shoulders.

  He assumed his place spearheading the advance despite his apparent frailty and took the candle from his mother’s hand with the awkwardness of a child stepped into a frightening burden of adult responsibility. Yet his grip did not shake. His step as he faced the seething wrath of the crowd remained resolute, a shining example of triumph as inner spirit took charge over the shrinking shortfalls of the flesh.

  The mob surged and bellowed under the manic flash as more portents crazed the night sky. Lit by the merciless white crack of each discharge, the expressions on that wall of howling humanity ran the emotional gamut, from rage, through resentment, to ungoverned terror. Kevor never flinched. Candle held shielded by his ungloved hand, he marched forward into the press.

  ‘Where is your faith?’ he demanded of the stout craftsmen who shook workworn fists in his face. ‘Or does fear loom so large, you believe the Divine Prince will abandon his promise of protection?’

  ‘He’s not here!’ a matron in threadbare woolens howled back. ‘Or why does he not show his face?’

  Kevor handed her his candle, then accepted the replacement touched alight by the watch captain without a half second’s glance sidewards. ‘The illumination of my father’s blessed gift opposes the darkness, even as we must. Carry your share, madam, as I carry mine.’

  He pressed past her, stopped again as a crying girl child crossed in front of him. Too small to be alone, she had probably been torn away from her mother in the press. Driven by instinctive kindness, Kevor bent and scooped the mite into his arms. ‘Here, it’s all right.’ The fact she was filthy and sloppily clothed did not take him aback. ‘We’ll find your family. Trust me, they haven’t abandoned you.’ He passed the candle into her tear-streaked hands, saying, ‘Hold the light high. Your mother will see your face, or you will find hers. So
meone who loves you will come forward and take you home to your bed.’

  The tear-stained girl hiccuped, one wet fist clamped in his mantle. Ragged as she was, and redolent of the fire smoke that pervaded the homes of the poor, Kevor’s smile was genuine as he hoisted her onto his shoulder. ‘Lift that candle. Yes! Just like that. I’ll bear you over there, to the dais. Do you see? At the top of the steps, we’ll stand taller than everyone.’

  The child forced a brave nod, her smudged chin puckered, and her wide, round eyes still brimming. She lifted the candle.

  ‘Let’s go, tiger.’ Prince Kevor stepped ahead, swallowed into the tossing maelstrom of packed flesh. Here and there, bared steel skittered in hard-edged reflection. Other malcontents wielded bricks, or billets of wood purloined from a forester’s wagon. Before the threats screamed into his teeth, Tysan’s royal heir carried forward. His youthful, brave innocence, paired with the fear of the toddler he carried, formed an incandescent presence of humanity. Rage melted before him. The breeding fires of panic took pause. Shouting women stood back, abashed, and men lost their will to vent the helpless terror raised by portents they did not understand.

  Into that swirling shock zone of calm, Ellaine handed out candles. ‘For the Light. Show your faith. The Blessed Prince will not fail you.’

  Flames blossomed in the hands of the people, small, tentative flickers of carnelian and yellow yet outmatched by the dazzling bolts that snapped and seared overhead. Families drew together. Fathers set down their heirloom weapons, their oak staves, and their makeshift bludgeons. United by the focus of purposeful prayer, the crowd surged and pressed, an uneasy current breasted by the steadfast progress of the watch captain’s wedge of guardsmen.

  Ellaine passed out candles. Hands shaking, her heart pounding, she scarcely dared glance aside to see how her son fared. Kevor moved unprotected. Nothing else shielded him but the resolve of his bearing, a caring commitment to Avenor’s well-being that would not back down before danger. He carried a wax light and a commoner’s child and pressed forward, into the very maw of unrest, as the town’s citizens vented their rage and hysteria. He showed no dread of sorcery, no shrinking nerves, only the steadfast truth of his being, as the bloodborn heir of his ancestors.

  ‘There. My lady Princess,’ a man encouraged, ‘we’ve arrived. You’ll need to mount the stair to the dais.’

  Ellaine looked up, saw the blue surcoat of one of the young prince’s honor guard. He held his fluttering wick in one hand, with the other outstretched to assist her. ‘Never mind.’ Touched out of nowhere by an unlooked-for courage, she declined the false trappings of safety. ‘I’ll stay here.’ She passed another candle to the next reaching hand, then accepted its replacement from the servants. ‘I beg you, watch Kevor. Stay at his back.’

  On the dais, rinsed now by strong light as the guardsmen kindled the pine torches on the cupola, Avenor’s young prince stood in the very footsteps of his father. He lacked Lysaer’s finespun fair hair, nor would he ever own the sculptured masculinity of his sire’s feature and form. No glow of divine presence washed him in gossamer haloes. Yet the human clay that comprised him held no lesser majesty as he raised his voice, and called, ‘Will the mother of this strayed child please present herself!’

  Spellbound by the force of unassuming compassion, the crowd near at hand stilled and quieted.

  ‘Her name is Teis!’ Kevor shouted. ‘Will one of her family step forward and claim her?’

  An answering cry resounded from a shop front across the square. A woman called out, and the child screamed, overjoyed. Heads turned, then more heads, as one, then another person became caught up by the manageable drama of a mother’s reunion with her daughter. The temper of the crowd softened while the matron was let through, and the toddler passed from the prince’s hands into her tearful embrace.

  Through that hard-won interval of calm, Ellaine distributed candles one after another. She reached, sensed the lag as the servant with the striker pushed an emptied crate aside, and asked his fellows to pry the lid off another. The supply was not limitless. Spurred to fresh dread as she realized the palace stores coerced from Gace Steward were going to fall short, Ellaine asked breathless questions.

  She heard the bad news, that the chests brought by the cook’s boys were all exhausted but the last, and the bundles in that one barely minutes from being depleted.

  Beyond the shoulders of the guardsmen who cordoned the dais stair, the watch captain caught her frantic signal. Field trained, he foresaw the looming disaster. He spoke to Kevor, his quick gestures suggesting time had come to effect a prudent retreat. The prince shook his head in emphatic rejection, raised his arms and his voice, and shouted across the packed square. ‘Who here owns a chandlery? Unlock your doors, now! Let every citizen bear a flame for the Light!’

  ‘The crown will grant recompense!’ Princess Ellaine reassured. ‘Any goods given out in donation will be paid from the treasury by Lord Eilish!’

  ‘Here then!’ a goodwife called back from the crowd. ‘My husband’s a chandler. I’ll open his shop, but the apprentices are all scattered.’

  ‘Never mind.’ The watch captain cut four dependable men from the cordon. ‘My guards will be dispatched to help you.’

  Princess Ellaine dispensed the last candle. Shivering in sudden awareness of the cold, she straightened. Her back was a bar of welded tension. From the dais above, Kevor smiled back at her, his triumph a glow that reforged the adolescent shape of his face. For the miracle had happened. The ravening noise, the shouts, the raw tumult had all calmed. Around her, under a night sky scintillant with stars, the square of Avenor held a sea of rapt faces, bejeweled with a thousand small flames.

  The moment of Kevor’s victory proved short-lived. Aware of a murmuring disturbance at her back, Princess Ellaine glanced over her shoulder. Against the hulking mass of the watch tower, revealed in the full glory of white vestments and gold, High Priest Cerebeld advanced through the square. He was attended by seven priest-acolytes. They carried a sunwheel standard and a brilliance of oiled rag firebrands. The swath of illumination washed their ceremonial garments into etched and glittering clarity.

  As the Voice of the Light, the High Priest’s entrance was untimely. The peak moment of crisis had passed. Avenor’s gathered populace had refounded their confidence in the presence of the young s’Ilessid heir. He was all that his exalted father was not: gawky, unfinished, a crude replica of the luminous personage Lysaer presented through maturity. Yet, in the boy, the fallible honesty of his youth gave rise to the possibility of something more. His birthright as the scion of generations of high kings inspired a glimpse of the gifted ruler he would someday become. On that fated hour, Kevor displayed the untarnished potential of his s’Ilessid ancestry, bright as the flame in his hand. Humanity had supplanted the presence of divine promise. Salvation had come through the example of a boy’s steel-clad courage and the ordinary kindness he had shown to a craftsman’s tearful strayed child.

  Thrown into inadvertent eclipse, High Priest Cerebeld reached the line of guards surrounding the dais. When they did not immediately stand aside, he demanded his right of admittance. The look of resentful fury he directed toward the young prince cast a chill through Ellaine’s raced blood.

  The love and respect fairly earned from the hearts of Avenor’s people had made Cerebeld the boy’s implacable, lifelong enemy. Overcome by a mother’s instinct to cry warning, the princess gathered her mantle. She whirled to mount the dais stair, caught back as she turned by restraining hands. A self-important young priest made overzealous use of his orders to clear the way for his master’s grand entrance. Ellaine yanked free of untoward interference, but too late. Cerebeld had already swept past her.

  In an overwhelming show of ceremonial majesty, he stepped under the high dome of the cupola. Kevor’s stance became lost in the influx of white mantles, the glitter of citrine and diamond and gold foil all but dazzling as the High Priest assumed charge in his place. There, framed in c
enter stage by the glaring flood of torches born by his coterie of acolytes, Cerebeld opened his arms to be heard.

  His orator’s voice boomed over the throng, boundless in reassurance. ‘Behold! The portents have ceased! I am come before you to announce the given Word of the Light! The Blessed Prince bids me tell you that he travels eastward with his finest troop of officers to encounter the Master of Shadow. By our faith in his gifts, the land will be spared from the depredations brought by the Spinner of Darkness. Let us pray in this hour for victory! Let Lysaer of the Light deliver the weak from the power and deceptions of true evil!’

  Winter Solstice Eve 5669

  New Day

  Far south, in the cliff-walled harbor beneath the Second Age ruin at Sanpashir, the brigantine Khetienn furls sail under the hands of her crewmen; her dropped anchor splashes into the shallows while her mate gives command for her longboat to be unlashed for the party bound ashore with the Master of Shadow …

  Clad in his ruby crown and fur-trimmed scarlet mantle, High King Eldir of Havish sits his throne at Telmandir in stern judgment, before him a triumvirate of firebrand mayors who had attempted a rebellion during the night’s portents; their spurious, false charges of dark spellcraft done by the mage-gifted refugees, and their frightened conspiracy to overturn charter law and the kingdom’s set policy of sanctuary earns them a sorrowful arraignment for treason and a lifelong sentence of banishment …

  At dawn in the Skyshiels, inside the curtained palanquin next to the dead seeress, the ancient Prime’s corpse slumps over the incinerated ash of her construct; both spell jewels lie quiescent, recontained, and in an unprecedented change, the initiate successor still asleep on the pallet is no longer one and the same spirit consigned to drugged rest the night before …