Traitor's Knot (epub)

by Janny Wurts

  Exposed, wide-open to mage-sight, Arithon recoiled out of the chair. The book tumbled, forgotten. Before it had thumped in a heap on the rug, he mapped the invasive presence: the electrical touch of an auric field that matched the imprint of his half-brother.

  Hackled, the Master of Shadow met Lysaer, who faced him over the edge of a drawn sword. No shielding space spared him. No thought might respond. The curse of Desh-thiere awakened like chain lightning. Enmity surged to throttle free will, a ruthless fist in the gut.

  'No!' In the drowning, split-second before reflex forced violence, Arithon snatched back lost discipline and tuned his mind to the chord once raised by Paravian singers to Name the winter stars.

  Grand harmony snapped all chains of compulsion. The ungovernable impulse to murder checked short, leaving him trembling and weaponless. Light-bolt or sword must take him defenceless: the blue eyes fixed upon him held murder. Still, Arithon sustained his adamant choice. Shielded in sound, he suppressed the brute drive of the Mistwraith's geas and did not lift his hand to strike out.

  The next second, the fair form in front of him shimmered. Live flesh dissolved, undone by a tempest of subtle light. The auric field changed, shifted upwards to frame another pattern of frequency. Blonde hair became a roguish tumble of red locks, laced through with silver-grey. The wide shoulders lost their elegant white velvets. Reclothed in a jerkin of sienna leather, the frame of the intruder become ascetically thinner and taller. The Sorcerer, Davien, stood in Lysaer's place, his baiting stare devilish, and his smile a satisfied tiger's.

  Arithon bit back his explosive curse. Nerve-jangled, he stepped backwards, turned his chair, and sat down. 'That was extreme,' he managed, unsteady. His hands stayed locked to subdue helpless trembling. 'Another test?'

  'Perhaps.' The speculative glint in the Sorcerer's dark eyes implied otherwise.

  Arithon released a shuddering breath. 'Your books stood at risk,' he said mildly.

  Davien's smile vanished. 'Did they, in fact?'

  'I wouldn't rush to repeat the experiment.' Three months had changed little: Arithon was far too guardedly wise to expect he might sound this Sorcerer's deeper motives.

  Davien's curious nature kept no such restraint. 'I thought you should harden your reflexes.' He surveyed his guest. The informal shirt, tailored breeches, and soft boots clothed a wary poise, and the wide-lashed, green eyes were anything else but defenceless. 'You don't care to ask why?'

  Arithon stared back in mild affront. 'Whatever's afoot, didn't you just peel my nerves to prove I could handle it?'

  The Sorcerer laughed. He spun on his heel as though to pace, then vanished from sight altogether. The instantaneous transition was unnerving, from embodied man to ephemeral spirit. As closely as Arithon had observed the phenomenon, he still gained no whisper of warning. Trained awareness yet showed him the Sorcerer's presence: a pattern of energies fused with the air, just past the limit of vision.

  'You may not thank me, now,' Davien stated, nonplussed. 'Later, you'll realize you'll need every edge to secure your continued survival.'

  But Arithon refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he retrieved the dropped book, smoothed mussed pages, and traced a longing touch down the elegant lines of inked script. 'Ciladis was a healer?' he inquired point-blank.

  'Beyond compare.' Davien permitted the sharp change in subject. 'I have copies of his notes, and his herbals. Are you asking to see them?'

  'Begging,' said Arithon. 'Is it true, that small song-birds flocked in his presence?'

  'Near enough.' The chill that demarked the Sorcerer's essence poured across the carpeted chamber. An ambry creaked open. 'Here. The texts you will want are bound in green leather. Of us all, Ciladis was the least shielded. More than finches found joy in his presence.'

  Davien's essence hovered a short distance away. When Arithon made no immediate move to accept the offered volumes, he added, 'No traps, no more tests. Where the memory of Ciladis is concerned, the deceit would be a desecration. Any knowledge he left is yours for the taking.' Arithon considered that phrasing, struck thoughtful. 'Your use of past tense was what caught my attention.' Then he added, 'Though you don't think your missing colleague is dead.'

  'No.' Davien moved, the fanned breath of his passage too slight to displace the flames in the sconces. 'The bindings laid on us by Athera's dragons transcended physical death. As you've seen.'

  The pause lagged. Moved by bardic instinct, Arithon stayed listening.

  Then Davien said, 'It is not spoken, between us. But the fear is quite real, that something, somewhere, may be holding Ciladis in captivity.'

  The beloved colleague: who had searched for the vanished Paravians and who had never come back. Since that disappearance cast too deep a shadow, Arithon again shifted topic. 'I do realize I can't stay in hiding, indefinitely. Nor do you act without purpose, even if your style of approach might be mistaken for devilment.'

  Davien rematerialized, no trick of illusion. This time, he wore boots cuffed with lynx and a doublet of autumn-gold velvet. Beneath tied-back hair, his tucked eyebrows suggested uproarious laughter.

  By contrast, his answer was tart. 'There are factions who would play your quandary like jackstraws.'

  'The Koriathain have already tried,' Arithon agreed without blinking.

  'Would I take the trouble to harden your nerves for that pack of hen-pecking jackals?' Davien showed impatience.

  And Arithon felt the grue of that sharpening ream a chill down to the bone. 'Now you imply they're no longer alone in their chess match for royal quarry?'

  'Were they ever?' Davien's manner shaded toward acid bitterness. 'The compact permitted mankind to seek haven on Athera. By its terms, subject to Paravian law, the Fellowship could not limit the freedom of consciousness. Therefore, well warned, we let in the dark fears. Such things always come with the narrowed awareness that is inherent in human mortality. The imaginative mind can be dark or light. Its storehouse of terrors can spin shadow from thought. These will find fallow ground, on the fringes, and there, the compact as well as the dragons' will binds us. Our Fellowship must continually stand watch and guard. No easy task on a world where Paravian presence demands that the mysteries remain expressively active!'

  Again, Arithon sensed the subliminal chill. 'You don't fear for me, but my half-brother?' As silence extended, the thin breath of cold worked its invidious way deeper. 'Show me.'

  For he did understand: if Lysaer's convictions fell to ill use as a tool, Desh-thiere's curse could become a weapon of devastating destruction. 'Who else wants to play us on puppet-strings?'

  'My library might offer you certain suggestions,' said the Sorcerer, in glancing evasion. 'Though I can assure in advance that you won't find such things written in the fair hand of Ciladis.' Yet Arithon had little choice but to place the implied warning under advisement. He knew well enough: the stays just established to check-rein his farsight were too tenuous, still, to withstand an unexplored threat. 'If there's news, you can tell me,' he informed Davien.

  The Sorcerer's parting smile was wolfish. 'You cede the permission? Pray you don't regret, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

  Through the following weeks, Arithon pursued rare texts on healing. Discoveries there prompted a deeper study of Athera's flora and fauna, then more texts on lane tides and fault lines. He studied fish, maps, and the astonishing arcane insights revealed in a folio stuffed with Sethvir's patterns of geometry. As promised, the Sorcerer who sheltered him brought updated word of outside events. Arithon was informed of Dakar's and Fionn Areth's safe arrival at Alestron, and of the pressures of famine harrowing lands to the west. In snippets of vision, shared with an eagle, he saw the Evenstar sail, laden with stores of relief grain dispatched for Havish.

  If the after-effects of the equinox grand confluence had enriched the fields in the east, other developments sprung from the event had whipped up a storm of fresh discord. Aware that whole buildings and walls were left torn to havoc by the cresting of harmonic lane force, Ari
thon received Davien's updated views: of skilled masons raising new fortifications and founding temples pledged to the Light. On the hazy north plains, under brass sun, the summer's recruits sweated in training. He saw old talent burn. A fresh wave of acolytes flocked to serve Lysaer's cause, both as oracles and itinerant priests.

  All this, in the east, fell under the masterful sway of the advisor installed to rule Lysaer's interests at Etarra.

  'Raiett Raven is no friend to the clans,' Arithon commented, after a poignant, stiff silence. He sat, peg in hand, and one foot set in a looped wire, keeping tension, while his deft twist of the wrist wound a new lyranthe string. The day had finally come. His host had just granted him use of an instrument to try the altered well-spring that sourced his masterbard's talent.

  'A wise distinction,' Davien allowed. Poised under candle-flame, he stood with arms folded over a brushed leather jerkin. His boots showed spoiling traces of mud, and one sleeve wore a scatter of burdock. 'You've suspected the man's not Lysaer's panting lackey?'

  Arithon looked up and unhooked the scored wood of his winding peg. 'That one's eyes are too clever. He'd have noticed my actions haven't matched the ideological agenda. I wonder what actually drives him?'

  Davien did not answer.

  'No.' Arithon coiled his shining, wrapped wire, then reached for the spool on the table. 'I'm not interested in taking an excursion outside to find out.'

  The Sorcerer laughed, short and sharp. 'Wait too long, you'll be fielding a holy war.'

  'With no cause to be found?' Arithon measured out six spans in length, used a knife, and nipped off the fine-grade silver. 'Troops will lose their edge, speaking foolhardy prayers on their knees.'

  'No cause?' Davien shrugged. 'My dear man, Raiett's a snake in the grass. He will make one.'

  'Not with yokels, still sparring with padding and sticks.' Unperturbed, Arithon finished stringing the borrowed lyranthe. When at due length, he perfected the tuning, the Sorcerer had departed.

  But the undertone troubling the recent discussion struck notes that snapped like live sparks from the musician's strings.

  A wily statesman with a clever network of spies would not lack for resource to support an armed conflagration: a royal wife gone missing and a dead heir at Avenor would become reason enough for unrest.

  Arithon passed the afternoon, absorbed by the glory of watching his spun lines of melody key the unseen octaves of light, now unveiled by the healed invocation of mage-sight. Made aware of the pulse thrumming from the low registers echoed back from the polished rock floor, he sensed the slip-stream of time, aligned to the dance of the season. Fully restored to initiate mastery, he reaffirmed his intent to honour Earl Jieret's bequest: that one day he would forge the blood-binding promised to the s'Valerient daughter in Halwythwood.

  The next morning, the strung lyranthe was set aside for more books, heavy tomes inscribed in the fine, flowing runes of the Athlien Paravians. The beings the Sorcerers called sunchildren, more than any, knew the mysteries encoded in air and fire. Arithon studied the properties of the energy sprites, named iyats in the old tongue. He listened through crystals to songs sung by whales, and explored older things, recorded in the pictorial symbols the dragons had used before Athera received her awakened gift of actualized language.

  The black volumes bound under iron locks, and kept on warded shelves, stayed untouched. Nonetheless, the uncanny awareness pursued him: like a dousing of ice-water poured down his back, Arithon sensed that the Sorcerer urged him to ask about those, first of all.

  Outside of Kewar, summer yielded the harvest. The trees turned and wore the penultimate glory of autumn, except in the west, where the scouring rains lashed their storm-tossed, stripped branches. The High King's restored capital of Telmandir fared no better under the onslaught. Candles burned behind the steamed glass of the casements to lift the drear damp of the gloom. Outdoors, the harbour heaved like pocked lead, the beaten sea-swells surging in without whitecaps. The sluicing downpour and the hammering breakers made a trial of unlading a ship.

  Feylind stood on the puddled boards of the wharf, shivering, while the streaming water seeped down the caped collar of her oilskins. The merchant brig Evenstar lay warped to the bollards, while swearing deck-hands fought the jammed hoist. Others wrestled the wind-lashed tarps, chapped raw by gusts that fore-ran a cruel season, come early. The miserable work was already behind schedule when from shoreside, Feylind heard the crash. Shouts slapped off the misted facade of the water-front. Whatever had gone wrong, the king's customs keeper would be watching from behind his steamed glass, with his parcel of ferret-eyed clerks.

  The captain's oath could have reddened the coarse ears of the longshoremen, now clumped into a distempered knot surrounding the stopped wagons. The risk of wet grain sacks, and losing damp cargo to rot shortened tempers: arms waved, and accusing voices entangled in argument razored through the pounding rain. Since the customs keeper's officers would wait for a riot and damages before drenching their heads to take charge, a ship's captain who wished to leave on the tide had no choice but chase after the dock-crew.

  Grumbling, Feylind wrung the sopped tail of her braid and sloshed shoreward.

  A slop taker's cart had snarled the thoroughfare. Misfortune compounded by inconvenience, the ungainly vehicle also blocked off the bridge leading down from the palace. The impasse was not going to clear in a hurry. A split wheel hub had dropped the afflicted axle amid a mess of snapped spokes. The brimful barrels in the canted wagon now leaked under the tail-gate, streaming ripe sewage into a street momentarily due to receive no less than the High King himself. Filthy weather would not deter the royal preference. His Grace of Havish would personally seal the bills of lading, and so nip the temptation of shifty dock-side officials, who might stoop to black-marketeering in a shortage.

  The blistering insults surrounded the fact that no man wished to shoulder aside the broken-down vehicle.

  'You'll shift your pissing load, yourself, damnfool boy!' howled the overseer to the carter, who stood, reins in hand, by the steaming draft mule in the traces. 'Won't catch us doing your stinking job for you! We aren't being paid to handle any low-life's haulage o' jakes.'

  'By the curled hair on the Fatemaster's bollocks!' Feylind yelled. 'Why hasn't some nit gone aboard and asked for a block and tackle?' Heads turned, bearded and flushed, while the argument spluttered and died.

  Feylind shoved into the sheepish press. 'While you stand here, ankle-deep, my deck-hands are left twiddling their puds in the hold! They can man a capstan and winch this hulk aside. Move out! Smart! I'll rip off your bollocks before I watch you bunglers start fisticuffs over a muck-heap!' As the slackers peeled out, the captain's invective switched target to the sopped figure clutching the head-stall. 'You! Get that sorry donkey out of the shafts before I decide to press-gang a new hide for the trusses on my main yard-arm!' The cowled head turned. Beneath ingrained dirt, the graceful features were no boy's. One glance of the wide-lashed, distrustful eyes made Captain Feylind take pause: a heart-beat to realize she confronted a person in desperate trouble. Before thought, she raised a piercing whistle and summoned her trusted first mate.

  No customs keeper's sluggard, he came at a run, a solid presence arrived at her back that warmed through her sopped layers of oilskins.

  'Handle that mule,' Feylind told him, point-blank.

  Years at her side, blue eyes bright with humour, he took over the reins without question. Feylind's grin shared her gratitude. Then, as the drover moved to sidle away, she latched on to wet cloak and dragged the stumbling creature into an alley beyond sight and earshot.

  'Don't even try,' Feylind said through her teeth, as her catch drew breath to cry protest. 'I realize this mess you've arranged was no accident.'

  The woman stopped struggling. Tense, snapped erect, she sized up the ship's captain without cowering. Her eyes were rich brown as the gloss on an acorn. Fear, or deep-set cold, had started her trembling. Yet authority and intelligence
showed behind her exhausted bravado. 'I'm sorry for your inconvenience. But I have dire need to address his Grace, the High King of Havish.'

  Her accent was north westlands, town-bred, and cultured. Feylind sized-up fine hands that belonged to no slops woman, though the skin looked the part, cracked raw by her noxious profession. Alive to the perils of dock-side rumour, the brig's master veered away from conjecture. 'All right. But not here. Will my ship's cabin serve?'

  The woman hesitated.

  Afraid she would bolt, Feylind tightened her grip. 'Don't be a braying ass! There's no man in my crew who can't keep his mouth shut.'

  As the woman's strained features showed panic, Feylind swore. 'You want the ear of Havish's king? Then listen, lady, whoever you are! Hang on his stirrup, and all the whores in the district will share your misfortune. By tomorrow, you'll be the news in the mouth of every drunk sailhand. His Grace won't have sympathy. He detests subterfuge. Won't stand one moment for subtlety, either. Never mind this pissing downpour, you stink, ripe as a damned slave-broker's privy!'

  The woman blinked, shamed. 'You're no friend of the Alliance?'

  Feylind released her iron grasp and wiped her smeared palms on her breeches. 'Damned well not! Canting bigots! I'm going belowdecks where it's dry to have tea. If you don't mind the fact I don't pack skirts, at sea, you can borrow clean clothes, if you want them.'

  'Bless you, yes.' The strange woman put aside wariness, near tears for the refuge just offered. She trailed Feylind's stalking tread to the wharf, while the eagle who observed with living gold eyes watched unnoticed from a perch on the custom-house cornice. Head turned, fixed as the gargoyles who glared, chins on fists, right and left of its hunched silhouette, the raptor tracked the two women until they had boarded the brig. An eye-blink later, it vanished . . .

  . . .to reappear farther north, soaring over a stream, where storm wrack had backed up the flood. The eagle alit on a dead-fallen limb, snagged in the rush of dammed water. There, he shook sodden wing feathers and preened. The thrusting shove as he hurled air-borne again dislodged the dead branch, and the rain-swollen current took charge. Balked water found opening, surged, then roared through as the impedance crumpled and gave way.