Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  ‘He did all that earthblind?’ Asandir understood that disaster had struck. He had not imagined an impact of such broad scope and depth. ‘Then all seven lanes on the continent deranged? Even the ones in the west?’ Given Luhaine’s whispered affirmative, he balked to imagine what the effort had cost Althain’s Warden in sacrifice.

  Asandir pushed back his cuffs, the frayed hems scorched ragged from bare-handed encounter with forces inimical to flesh-and-blood contact. ‘How many lanes are still left to reconfigure?’

  ‘Three.’ Luhaine said, his maddening habit of lectured detail this once cut away to terse urgency. ‘Ath’s adepts are helping. They set anchors into the first lane on the hour of Morriel’s intervention. The second and third lanes are now retuned and stable.’ Not modesty, but embarrassment caused the discorporate Sorcerer to pass over his prodigious accomplishment. Perfectionist to the core, and resentful his work came too late to prevent the Khadrim from escaping into free flight, Luhaine rushed on with particulars. ‘As we speak, Traithe sits on a peak in the Cascains. He says he can hold the wobble in the fourth lane in check until one of us can be spared to assist.’

  The fifth, Asandir had set stable himself; quelling those wildfires of rampaging energies had left him drained to a husk. His own stopgap spells of balance set over the sixth should have lasted. Although his rough seals had not been tempered for a cataclysm, the warding rings held safeguards enough to contain the worst of the damage.

  Luhaine dispelled that niggling doubt. ‘Your construct over the Skyshiels endures.’ Kharadmon, he affirmed, yet labored at Athir to reset the frequencies of the seventh, with Ath’s adepts on the Scimlade peninsula standing anchor to keep the fields of leaked energy stable.

  ‘Damn the interfering witches and their bothersome urge to manipulate.’ Asandir flexed his hands and winced at the sting as the movement pulled at his blisters.

  ‘They intended much more. We were lucky,’ Luhaine amended.

  ‘Now there’s a pessimist’s warped sense of logic.’ Asandir glanced up, bemused, then laughed aloud at his colleague’s convoluted opinions. ‘If perversity matters, then on one count at least, you’ve scored a telling point.’

  The Koriani powers were based in spells of forced mastery, enacted through direct transmission and contained inside the boundary of linear time. By remorseless intent, Morriel had designed to cut into the planet’s magnetics. On one count, she miscalculated. The seals she configured into steel-bearing thread could not span the breadth of the oceans. Not while whales and dolphins ranged free to intercept and realign those warped frequencies into harmony by resonance. Their songs could compensate for destructive shifts in vibration, and salt waters by their nature absorbed and dispelled the energetic ties which drove conjuries whose powers were amplified through the spiral of quartz crystal matrices.

  Asandir shook his head, by turns grieved and grateful. The Prime never shifted her adamant stance, that human interests reigned supreme. Her prejudice rendered the study of elements and fish an insignificant afterthought, and for that oversight, the lanes whose channels ran outside the continent had escaped her debilitating mischief.

  On thrifty, past habit, Luhaine moved from sconce to sconce, neatly snuffing out wicks. Darkness followed on cat feet. For each flame that died, the cold, steady light of the Paravian circle hazed a glow like rinsed silver on the satin-veined marble of the walls.

  The matching reflection in Asandir’s eyes was unforgiving, gray steel. Braced for a fresh onslaught of rapid-fire bad news, he tackled his colleague’s delicate omission with all of his sledgehammer bluntness. ‘Tell me what else has gone wrong with the sixth? I know well enough the wards I left there were not shaped to withstand an assault of this magnitude.’

  They had reached the open stairwell. Luhaine’s presence ascended the narrow turnpike with the whipping agitation of a dust devil. ‘You won’t like this one bit.’ He paused, moved to powerful, knowing compassion.

  Asandir stopped. With one hand braced against fitted stone, he took painstaking care and again reviewed the brutal array of stark facts. His dread ran the gamut of encroaching possibilities, since two Ages of experience with natural forces had taught him the flux of Athera’s magnetics could never be a dissociated phenomenon.

  Life formed a vast tapestry, with each myriad thread of consciousness interconnected. Birds in their seasonal migration moved the fine energies of creation here and there in the deep, knowing harmony of their existence. To a Sorcerer’s sight, their flight paths traced glowing lines through the element of air, and spun subliminal links of harmony from treetop to treetop. The land’s disparate mantle of quickened awareness was not an unstructured chaos of live forms, but a whole cloth meshed into a fine, lockstepped balance, and tied by vibrations of light.

  Plants, trees, and fungi interfaced air and earth in a blanketing tapestry of tuned energy. Nor were minerals inert. Their frozen imprint of individual signatures could be mapped through refined mage-sight. Even in their most humble manifestation, stones and sand acted as placeholders, keeping in timeless, faithful trust the calibrated tones which anchored the chord of world life force. Rivers, rain, the oceans themselves moved the grand currents of elemental power. Weather cycles cleansed the world’s firmament and refreshed the planetary aura.

  By wracking the frequencies of lane force out of true, the Koriani had wrought a cascade of damage past the range of mortal perception. Led by Morriel’s spiteful pride and a vengeful bid for supremacy, their spellwork this night had bled chaos into all things under sky and rocked the root of the Major Balance.

  Asandir reviewed each unraveled loop in creation. The implied enormity of one possible slipped thread made even his iron nerve falter.

  ‘Don’t hold back. I can guess well enough where the trouble lies.’ He let his grazed knuckles fall loose to his side, grateful nonetheless for the one thoughtful moment of reprieve.

  Luhaine broke the news gently. ‘Arithon used music to reawaken the Sanpashir focus. Dakar provided the sigils of passage in rash certainty that Sethvir would be free to intervene.’

  ‘Of course, Morriel timed her ploy with that end in mind. Then prince and prophet will reach Jaelot before daybreak?’ Asandir resumed his interrupted ascent, to all outside appearance restored to equanimity. ‘Best say where Lysaer is, and quickly.’ His stride lengthened. Worn features seemed lined in lead by the daylight filtering down from above.

  Luhaine grappled for means to lighten the ominous portents. ‘Sethvir says the s’Ilessid will be crossing the strait to Atainia.’

  ‘Bound on to the Kingdom of Rathain?’ Asandir’s words spiraled away into echoes as he emerged through the narrow trapdoor.

  ‘He’d expressed his intent to seek passage to Narms before the lanes misaligned,’ Luhaine huffed, spinning over the polished floor between statues.

  ‘Then count on his landing inside the next fortnight. He won’t stay ignorant of Arithon’s return. The witches will make sure of that.’ Already Asandir’s thoughts leaped ahead. ‘Which brings us to Arithon’s untimely choice to wake the Paravian mysteries. I suppose we’re left to gauge the measure of his prowess if he reaches Jaelot without mishap?’

  ‘We can’t access that knowledge,’ Luhaine contradicted. ‘Lirenda’s on-site with a circle of senior initiates, and they’ve set the whole city under seal.’

  Under the stone gaze of carved centaur guardians, the two colleagues shared the silenced, sharp anguish, that spellbinder and prince would spring Morriel’s trap with no hope of outside assistance.

  ‘Mercy on us,’ Asandir said at last. ‘The fall of Dharkaron’s aimed Spear surely would have been kinder.’

  Athera was in crisis. By the terms of the compact, the Fellowship’s first charge remained clear: the needs of the land must come first. Bound to that priority, the Sorcerers were already too pressured to divert every critical disaster. Losses were happening, moment to moment, each one a small sorrow with far worse pending if immediate steps were
not taken. The smashed links of the containment spells the vanished Paravians had left to hold drake spawn would require the most desperate attention.

  Luhaine retained his terrier’s trait for pursuing detail without flinching. ‘If Arithon’s successful, the second and third solstice tides are going to pose thorny problems.’

  ‘I already see that.’ Still raw from the punishment of Morriel’s assault, Asandir pondered the impacting turn of fresh damage, as the roused chord of world life force rolled down the sixth lane, in concert with the seasonal energies. The primary channel was sorely distressed, still patched in chains of remedial spellcraft. The vortex of wild forces contained in the night had already sustained an increase to the thin edge of tolerance; then that fragile stasis was bombarded again by the powerful harmonics unleashed by Arithon’s re-creation of the ritual tones Paravians once used to seed rebirth and renewal across latitude. The noon surge would seed the first resonance of attrition.

  ‘My construct can’t hold beyond midnight,’ Asandir assessed in foregone conclusion. Fresh crisis would break within twenty-four hours, when his stopgap protections would crumble. Because of Arithon’s awakening, each tied seal of stasis must be abraded away by the absolute purity of healing forces, pitched to set right the imbalance of every disharmony that stood in their path.

  Amid Luhaine’s dense silence, Asandir read the unremarked danger that waited, concealed, as the release of shed chaos sought to flow to safe ground in the earth. ‘Don’t say the damned mountains were plunged out of alignment from Morriel’s meddling also!’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Luhaine’s response rang bitter with offense. ‘We’ll pay all the grim price of her warped crystal resonance striking over a quartz vein. The whole southern spur of the Skyshiels was affected where her transmission ran out of mineral carrier and recoiled into sedimentary bedrock.’

  Unfailing in his ability to target the root of a problem, Asandir cut in ahead of Luhaine’s involved expostulation. ‘Spare us all, we have trouble if Rockfell is stressed!’ When the peal of the Paravian mysteries unreeled through their ancient, lateral courses, the damage could cost the world dearly. ‘The wards on the Mistwraith might very well sunder deeply enough to be breached.’

  ‘Sethvir will know,’ Luhaine finished in shared agony as he flanked Asandir’s lengthened stride.

  The grievous truth tore the heart for sheer pity: Fellowship resources were going to fall short. Nor could their help unburden Althain’s Warden soon enough. Until Sethvir resumed full command of his earth-sense, their moment-to-moment grasp of affairs would stay irrepairably crippled. No one could spare either time or energy for the ritual augury of cast strands.

  Asandir reached the upper stairwell at last. He found the oak door bound and locked in stiff spells, a desperate precaution made on the hour Sethvir felt his faculties failing.

  He rapped out the cantrip to unbind the latch, while the following draft that was Luhaine flapped the tapestried caparisons of centaurs and flicked points of disturbed light over the jewels of sunchildren. ‘Go on ahead,’ he snapped in explosive exasperation. ‘I’ll meet you just as fast as this body can be hurried to mount three more flights of stairs.’

  A lone candle burned in Sethvir’s quarters. Disordered light capered over the plush red carpet. The shadows danced in grotesque reverse image, thrown off the collection of sculpture and gear mounded on chairs and in corners. Horse harness with burst stitching lay draped over porcelain, and the lion’s head bosses of a table. An overturned turtle’s shell cupped the diminutive bones from an owl pellet and the wing feathers of a male kestrel. Sewing awls huddled with goose quill pens, poked in the necks of clay jars. Floor and tables became the repository of precarious towers of stacked books. River stones filled a sea-pitted bottle. The cellophane husks of three snake skins were twined overtop a spool of silk ribbon.

  Within the confines of his personal domain, the Warden of Althain shirked his housekeeping as much as he disdained to sleep.

  The first, shocking sight of Sethvir prone as a wax doll stopped Asandir cold on the threshold. The field Sorcerer caught his breath, reined back sharp alarm, and shut the oak door with a feather touch.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He glowered toward the circle of air the dust motes disdained out of Luhaine’s strict penchant for cleanliness.

  For Sethvir lay in an untidy sprawl across the cot by the clothes chest. He still wore his robes. His ink-stained cuffs and unraveled hem seemed more ragged and threadbare in prostration. One fragile, veined hand was entangled in his beard, while the other, fingertips pallid with chalk dust, trailed in slack abandon on the floor.

  ‘In fact he collapsed first on his library table.’ The discorporate Sorcerer breezed an acerbic sigh. ‘I managed to rouse him. He stayed on his feet just long enough to find his way here and lie down. What more could you have done before now, except tear yourself raw with blind worry?’

  Metal chimed as Asandir shifted a chair hung with bridles to open a path to the Warden’s bedside.

  ‘He’s not sleeping,’ Luhaine cautioned.

  Asandir’s gray eyes flicked a wide glance of startlement over his weather-stained shoulder. Sethvir awake, but with senses closed down, meant he had engaged every trained faculty past the wise limits of self-preservation.

  Warned to fresh caution, Asandir knelt. His attentive, bright survey recorded the eggshell complexion, the saucy nose, and jutted cheek that looked somehow diminished with the blue-green eyes pinched closed. At due length, he extended his callused, lean grip and tucked the Warden’s chalk-marked hand back on top of the antique counterpane. Last, his butterfly touch rested over one temple, that his words not require the effort of hearing to be understood. ‘Do you wish me to help?’

  A sigh fluttered through the rumpled-up wisps of white beard. ‘Asandir.’

  ‘I came as soon as––’

  ‘… possible.’ Sethvir’s lips flexed in a fractional curve of dry irony. ‘Two trips in one night through an unbalanced lane flux must have been mightily trying.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to make three,’ Asandir rebutted. The rage coiled in him, entangled in bleak pity, for the cost of Morriel’s intrigues. On every level of energetic vibration, his mage-sight revealed the currents of ephemeral light bleeding out of his colleague’s aura. Wherever the earth lanes remained spun to chaos, Althain’s Warden had no choice but to bridge past their weakness with the controlled stamina of his personal reserves. The stability of whole grimwards relied now on endurance, meted out from moment to moment with no hour in sight for reprieve.

  Careful lest an inadvertent movement of his own should stir eddies in that chain of intent, Asandir stroked unruly tangles of hair away from Sethvir’s nose and face. ‘I will lift the most critically damaged of the grimwards from your shoulders, but first, brace up. I’m going to make you more comfortable.’

  Sethvir gave the tiniest flick of a finger to signal his moment of readiness. Still, the skin around his closed eyes pinched taut as strong and capable hands straightened his sprawled form, then folded him into soft blankets.

  Through a grief that struck him down to the heart, Asandir kept his voice steady. ‘Are you thirsty?’

  A thready whisper dredged up from the depths of pillows that propped Sethvir’s head. ‘No.’

  Asandir turned aside, his fists clamped white knuckled as he posed the thornier question. ‘Can you muster command of your earth-sense enough to say which grimward stands in the most critical jeopardy?’

  ‘If I can bear to open the scope of the vision.’ Those few breathless words spun off into a turmoil of painful impressions: of Khadrim flying free, setting forests and farmsteads in Tysan alight; of a pod of whales in the southern ocean beaching themselves on the diamond-bright shards of the ice cap covering the pole. Sethvir’s lids flickered open. No longer dreaming, or fogged by wide thought, his eyes were turquoise enamel. ‘You’re aware, the axis of Rockfell Peak has been hurled out of alignment?’

  As
andir’s fingers tightened. ‘Worse. I know Arithon broke the Paravian seals and raised the resonance of a confluent grand harmony.’ When solstice midnight arrived, and the culminating force of that ritual pealed across latitude, the currents would inevitably touch Rockfell, most carefully situated between lanes to assure that magnetic disturbance would be minimized. ‘Kharadmon could check on the Mistwraith’s prison and sound the extent of the damage.’

  ‘Attrition,’ Sethvir breathed, labored and faint as the scrape of a scribe’s nib on vellum. His resources were taxed over an appallingly widespread range of problems. Still, he managed a bridged half second of contact that encompassed the concept for Asandir.

  The images framed a fleeting, grainy impression of future event, as the energies rocked from their sure, channeled track, and skewed off into disordered eddies. The residue would not die, but turn and pool, and sink at last into stagnation where the flawed transmission through the mountain failed in its natural function. Since the wards over Rockfell were calibrated to mesh with the stable emission of stone, even an infinitesimal change would admit a dangerous, weakening influence.

  ‘We could have days, or a month, or a year before the damage becomes threatening.’ Sethvir shut his eyes, worn threadbare from even that minimal effort. ‘Or we could have only hours. I dare make no forecast. Not since the Mistwraith revealed that it knew how to act on those spells from within. Your choice, whether clearing the seals on the grimwards ought to be shouldered first.’

  ‘No choice at all,’ Asandir said, his calm forced. In truth, an abyss yawned at their feet.