Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Now or never,’ said Arithon, fired to unlikely humor. ‘If the spitting mayhem concerns Dame Carrigan’s loft, her shrieking will provide us as good a diversion as any.’ He cast his leg over, then lowered himself from hooked fingers. ‘The old woman keeps a still, and sells watered-down gin,’ he cast back, his amused explanation accompanied by a brief rustle of ivy as he released and set down in the street. ‘The town guard was bought off to leave her in peace. That’s why she’s busy maligning their mothers back to the sixth generation.’

  ‘You knew her?’ Fionn Areth dropped down alongside to a faint scrape of steel as his quillon clashed with a cloak button.

  ‘No.’ Arithon darted a swift glance right and left. ‘But Dakar used to swill her rotgut spirits. That made him her bosom confidant. Come on.’

  The pair sprinted across the narrow thoroughfare. Ahead, the rise of an octagonal battlement loomed against the gray screen of precipitation. A scant twenty paces distant, the arched portal at the base that housed the strapped postern which smugglers’ bribes kept unlocked. If a garrison archer lurked in the corniced embrasure overhead, the fugitives could but pray the doused torches would impair the visibility required to snap off an accurate shot. Freedom nearly within reach, neither man dared rely on fool’s luck, that the lag in patrols had extended too long to be trustworthy.

  The moment held all of their desperate commitment, and no last-ditch avenue of escape when the Koriani snare overtook them.

  The resonance of the spellcraft unfurled out of nowhere, inaudible to mortal hearing. A masterbard’s extreme sensitivity sensed the vibration through skin and bone. Given split-second warning, but no time to act, Arithon slammed to a stop.

  Fionn Areth skidded into his shoulder, his puzzled exclamation bitten off short as an explosive flare of light razed the gloom from the street. The façades of the mansions, stone battlement, and curtain wall vanished into an eye-searing glare and the whiteout dazzle of snowfall.

  ‘Stand fast,’ commanded a female voice. ‘If you move, you’ll find yourselves helpless, struck down by a seal of paralysis.’

  The noose of flung spellcraft flickered and dimmed, leaving the fired runes of a circle of ward that held the look-alike fugitives surrounded. The hazed glare thrown off those hot lines of force unveiled the enchantress who had lurked under masking seals of illusion until her chosen moment of ambush. Her exquisite beauty was jet and fine ivory, a frost maiden’s majesty cloaked in the amethyst purple worn by the Koriani Order. Cut sable against the moonstone silk lining of her hood, her pinned coils of hair crowned a carriage of aristocratic refinement.

  ‘I know you!’ Fionn Areth exclaimed. Betrayal rang through as cruel revelation unstrung the last, lingering thread of denial. ‘You promised a sword in exchange for my trust.’ He rammed forward, obstructed by the arm that Arithon raised in restraint. ‘I remember your lies! You were the one who set meddling hands on my fate, long years ago in my childhood.’

  ‘I meddled in nothing. You gave full consent.’ The enchantress dismissed his accusation with a graceful, denigrating gesture. ‘As for the sword, are you not wearing one? You’ve served your part well. Stand aside, boy. What better reward could you ask beyond this, to have helped with the capture of Arithon of Rathain?’

  ‘That’s pure arrogance!’ The prince’s hand rammed the herdboy aside. ‘The blade was my gift, freely made without strings. And, indeed, have you accomplished anything near what you claim?’ The quarry named as the enchantress’s prize stepped forward, not cowed in the least by her spelled circle or its implied threat to his person. ‘You’ve dared to address me by the s’Ffalenn royal title, madam. Will you deny that you stand in my kingdom, under my sovereign law?’

  ‘Your law, as defined by the Fellowship of Seven?’ Lirenda laughed in astounded disdain, the lit spark in her manner excited to passion by a challenge kept simmering for years. ‘Our order predates them. We answer first to our founding tenets. Those give clear priority to humanity.’

  ‘Now there, our points of philosophy differ,’ said Arithon, conversational. One easy, neat stride carried him to the circle’s edge, close enough that he could measure his Koriani antagonist in an unwanted, eye-to-eye intimacy. ‘You’ve taken a boy, one of my kingdom’s subjects, and made a mockery of his free will. For life, you have marked him. Wherever he goes, his face makes him bait for the unprincipled hate of my enemies. Where lies the humanity in the act of playing a live man as a decoy?’

  ‘One detail altered without harm to life or limb,’ Lirenda countered. Her bared fingers remained clasped to her quartz crystal, steadfast in contempt as she held the spelled circle in balance. ‘For your intervention, today, six men have died. Four others lie beyond our sisterhood’s powers to heal. Your liberty kills, prince. With Tal Quorin and Minderl Bay and Dier Kenton Vale as your testament, you have no defense left to argue.’

  ‘Where are the friends at my back to speak for me?’ Arithon’s voice struck a note that, oddly, held truthful appeal. ‘This is no fair trial of character, but only a raw bid to snatch power.’

  ‘What friend could stand surety for the madness the Mistwraith’s curse has engendered?’ Lirenda replied, assured in her righteous judgment. ‘You are taken prisoner by Morriel Prime’s will. Your fate lies at her disposition.’

  Arithon s’Ffalenn faced her, gone white to the bone. ‘For my list of dead, I will answer to Daelion Fatemaster without anyone’s appeal for intercession. Here, today, in Rathain, men have died for the cost of your political manipulation.’ His bard’s voice a textured tapestry of grief, he leveled his own accusation. ‘As subjects of the realm suborned into treason, their offense becomes mine to answer. Beware, madam. If you act out your role as a Koriani cat’s-paw, be careful of hardness of heart brought on by a flawed cause and shallow character. I swore a crown oath in mercy and compassion. Not even Morriel Prime can call me to heel like a dog and expect to receive meek obedience.’

  ‘You would resist?’ Lirenda’s surprise was a clear peal of scorn, raised to exultation for the stunning discovery that her wounding had struck to the core of him. ‘Go on. Try and move.’ The sensitivity of his bard’s gift had once left her unmoored and helpless. Now, at long last, he would share that ignominy. ‘See how far you get, belly down in the snow without control of your body.’

  Yet Arithon chose not to challenge the seals that gleamed sultry scarlet, held tuned and ready to fell him. ‘I should fear, do you think?’ Without words, soft as breath, he unfurled a small shadow. The understated finesse of his gift blanketed the quartz matrix the enchantress employed to maintain the trap’s spell-turned focus.

  The circle that pinned him collapsed into sparks.

  ‘Run for the postern!’ he urged Fionn Areth. Burst into a sprint, he did not look back. If by misfortune the gate was barred shut, he knew no more options existed. He and his double would be trapped like small game, snagged in dire spellcraft, or else brought to bay by the zeal of the mayor’s armed lancers.

  No scrap of spun shadow could keep the enchantress cut off from the focusing properties of her quartz. He had bought but a handful of seconds. His tactic was surprise, and the shock of intervention, since the dampened vibration of the crystal would inflict dragging imbalance through even an instant of interruption. Longevity bindings would be held in abeyance; that debilitating upset at best might slow down the counterwards the enchantress required to dispel the masking veil of his gift.

  Arithon flanked Fionn Areth in headlong flight to snatch back his last hope of safety. Faced ahead, thinking fast to match opportunity with circumstance if a garrison patrol should add threat of armed force to the setback, he plunged into the yawning gloom of the archway. The smuggler’s gate loomed in the echoing dark, concealed in the stone of an archer’s nook.

  Exhausted, played to the end of an endurance that had seen him through twenty-four razor-edged hours of risk, Arithon was nakedly unprepared for the last, diabolical cruelty set by the order to break him.
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  Yet another enchantress awaited before the latched postern, and escape. For his sake, and in forethought, she had a torch ready when the flurried echoes of running feet pattered toward her, snatched through with the extended, fast breaths of two men pressing the limits of exertion.

  She used a spelled sigil to ignite the pine brand. Its first, struggling flame cast her face in pale gold, the sweet curve of each feature remembered in love and framed by the wisps torn loose from a braid of unruly auburn hair.

  The sight of her presence struck like a shot arrow, straight through to his unshielded heart. ‘Ath, oh Ath, lend me mercy!’ Arithon cried. ‘You’ve been here all along as a game piece?’

  The impacting force of her living presence was too much, too soon, the nerve ends of separation ripped raw with the bonding renewed through the course of Fionn Areth’s healing. Her name was wrenched from his throat, the galvanic, blazing joy of recognition transformed to a cry of drawn anguish, ‘Elaira!’

  Years and distance had not changed the unbearable quandary. He still could not touch her, could not lay claim to his freedom and pass. Not without breaking her life vow of obedience to the Koriani Order.

  ‘Elaira, beloved.’ Hands outflung, at a loss, he ran dry of words. Every stricken plane of his face matched her tormented dismay. She had been most ruthlessly used, Lirenda’s spelled circle no more than an opening ploy of diversion. The wretched truth of his integrity imprisoned them both, that this, the insidious last coil of conspiracy, could not fail to unbind the magnificent strength of his will.

  Of all things he could be asked to endure, he could not face himself as the cause of Elaira’s destruction. Nor could she endure to let him stand steadfast. Arithon saw through to her most naked self, that neither could she shoulder the grim stakes her Koriani service had bequeathed her. He read like plain text the split-second hesitation that spanned her impulsive decision. She would move, grasp the bar, force the sacrifice herself. If he stopped her, oh, he knew, if he yielded to Morriel’s captivity with Fionn Areth’s life cast into the order’s control as a pawn, Elaira could not withstand the burden of guilt. Her eyes pleaded. Clouded conscience came at too high a cost for her true woman’s heart to support.

  And so he must stop her, who loved her beyond the breath and life he had sworn his blood oath to the Fellowship Sorcerers to preserve, no matter the means or the cost.

  ‘Don’t speak,’ he gasped, the necessity of plain speech an effort that required a reserve of deep strength he never knew he possessed. The tenderness he preferred resurged by reflex as, even under the extremity of pressure, he admired the straight honesty of her stance. ‘No, don’t speak.’ Such courage could humble, that she did not shrink or flinch through the crux of harsh circumstance that could smash like glass the priceless trust held between them.

  Unaware of Fionn Areth’s presence as witness, Arithon found the bravado to match her. ‘For my sake, sweet lady, I beg you! Don’t raise the bar. If I pass through that door, on my word and my honor, we shall both share the moment in triumph.’

  In the heightened fragility of the moment, Elaira dared not even blink. Her gray eyes held dammed rivers of tears; the torch in her closed fingers trembled. ‘What other card is between us to play?’ She swallowed, shaking harder, her fierce desperation cutting with pain to unman him. ‘Don’t presume I am innocent. Whose memory was used to transform Fionn Areth? Take the release I can offer. Go free. Let one less poisoned weapon reside in the Koriani arsenal.’

  Arithon shook his head in violent rejection. ‘Don’t speak! You can’t turn my heart that way.’ Mind within mind, they knew each other too well. Lies and half-truths made too lame an effort to blind and deceive and win distance; that gift, at least, he could grant her, born from the bonds of indelibly shared understanding.

  ‘Lady, beloved, you are as myself. No matter what happened, there has been no betrayal between us.’ In the confines of damp stone, pinned inside Jaelot’s walls, Arithon stepped forward, that the light would fall on his features. ‘Shall I prove out my faith in you?’ She could not but look at him. In his wide-open eyes, by his self-contained dignity, she must read his forthright plea of intent.

  His gaze matched to hers, that fought against tears, he gave her in snatched phrases the re-created template of logic that had framed her decision fifteen years ago. ‘Between your life and the change to Fionn Areth’s face, you weighed all the options. At the crux, I believe this, you chose for the best.’

  The torch wavered in her tortured grasp.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ A hitch, a caught breath. ‘Yes, I know you!’ As the tears, too long held, spilled ribbons of lit gold down her cheeks, Arithon reined back the violent urge to press forward and gather her into his embrace. All he owned, he would give, just to lend her the warmth of his comfort. Wrung to the marrow by a need that matched hers to close final union between them, he poured heart and spirit into the words that were all he could give her in safety.

  ‘Elaira, sweet lady, keep faith in my character. The boy’s freedom of choice, in my hands, will stay sacrosanct. I swore a crown prince’s oath to Rathain. His plight is the charge of his liege to redress! His maligned fate is the insult to my name and birthright, and a flagrant breach of charter law. You were right to entrust me! I ask you, hold firm. On my own merits, I must be left my sovereign right to win free of this coil of conspiracy!’

  The blind hope held no substance. She would know he was hamstrung; and yet, cornered, desperate, he was Torbrand’s lineage. He would not back down. Even possessed by the Mistwaith’s insanity, he had never yet conceded defeat in good grace.

  Nor was Elaira without the stark grit to encourage, and receive the forgiveness he offered. Through salt tears, her mouth bent in that wry smile she saved to level his deepest defenses. ‘You have boneheaded stubbornness. Is it true, what I heard, that Parrien s’Brydion once broke your leg to restrain you from misguided loyalty?’

  ‘Well yes,’ Arithon admitted, contrite. ‘But let’s not omit facts. I’d had the bad manners to make splinters of the salon in his brother’s state galley, beforehand.’

  Elaira laughed. ‘The wasp hazing the bull? I ought to have guessed.’ She mopped her damp chin with the back of her sleeve, then said in apology to Fionn Areth, ‘This is a man who can’t ever admit the hour he’s been fairly beaten.’

  ‘That’s likely to change,’ a chill voice intruded. Disheveled, short-tempered, no longer possessed of her seamless coiffure or composure, Lirenda arrived like the shadow of bane in the open mouth of the archway. ‘Or will you see Elaira made into a mindless husk just to maintain consistency?’

  Arithon whipped around like a wildcat to face her. ‘Keep the lady’s name out of this!’ His eyes, brilliant green, matched that tone of chill hatred with a hot-blooded, furious challenge. ‘If you would claim the victory for Morriel Prime, then sully your hands, bitch. Come take me.’

  Lirenda flicked a fallen wisp of black hair from her face, her vindictive triumph made all the sweeter by years of deferred anticipation. ‘What, no begging for me?’ She advanced, the assured clarity of privilege etched into each mocking consonant. ‘No princely gallantry? Shall I have no soft word of forgiveness? Or are my vows any less binding than Elaira’s when enacting our Prime Matriarch’s given will?’

  Braced in vised stillness, prepared to draw steel, to use any and every unforgivable expedient to defer his inevitable defeat, Arithon s’Ffalenn ceased breathing. His head tipped a startled fraction to one side. As if through his bard’s sensitivity he could hear and interpret some subtext layered through Lirenda’s fierce joy in his downfall, he suddenly straightened and laughed. ‘You believe your heart’s fiber is made sterner than hers? Oh, madam.’ He flung off his cloak. ‘Shall we take the issue to trial?’

  ‘How far you have fallen, how desperately you grasp at straws.’ Flushed to wicked enjoyment, Lirenda advanced. ‘Will you stoop to try steel against spellcraft? A dog shown the collar and leash can but bark. Do go on. Disc
ard all the pride of your training along with the manners of your royal birthright.’

  Lit to reckless delight, Arithon did not appease her taunt with the obvious. His quick hands stripped off his gloves, then followed with sword and dagger. In a debonair abandon, he tossed the sheathed weapons and clothing into the startled arms of Fionn Areth. Still regarding Lirenda, he raised both dark eyebrows. ‘Sword steel can but kill.’ His expression was poured honey stirred through with malice, and his voice, the lightning bright cadence of satire. ‘Madam, did you know Caolle?’

  Thrown off her stride, Lirenda stiffened. ‘What? Do you think to enact some petty revenge? Yes, I knew him. He died as my captive.’

  As Arithon advanced, unarmed, toward her, she fell back an unthinking step.

  ‘Caolle died free, avenged by his own hand.’ Smooth in grace, possessed of a calm to outwear chiseled granite, Arithon s’Ffalenn raised his bare hands, palm upward. ‘You once bound him like a calf, to draw me to slaughter. What’s wrong? Can you not bear to shackle me in turn?’

  Unprepared for the presence of him at close quarters, Lirenda retreated a second step on stunned reflex, her golden eyes wide in the flood of Elaira’s held torch.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Arithon. His smile opened into a genial invitation, he lilted a stunning, light phrase of clear melody.

  Lirenda snatched a swift breath. Her hand closed in involuntary defense and shielded the quartz at her breast. ‘Don’t. Not again.’

  ‘Oh, madam,’ provoked Arithon in virulent good humor. ‘Can it be that I know you?’ He sang another line. His flexible voice used the acoustics of closed stone and magnified nuance to a spellbinding presence woven of unfettered sound. His intimate words fell too softly for any but Lirenda to overhear. ‘What is a vow, after all, but a snippet of wind hobbled in words without meaning? Your heart knows a truth that your mind would deny.’

  He reached her. Framed in the velvet shadow of twilight, he extended a bare hand and entrapped the fist she held cupped to her quartz. ‘I’m no cipher, but a living man. Would you know me?’ A tug drew her to him. His second, swift move snatched the bone pin that fastened the tightly bound length of her hair. The jet coils spilled free. The long, straight length cascaded down her back, catching small snowflakes like diamonds.