Traitor's Knot (epub)

by Janny Wurts

  A squealed block, and a clatter aloft divided the captain's attention. 'Mind that heel-rope, you eavesdropping slackers! That mast takes so much as a scratch, coming down, you'll be varnishing spars in retirement!'

  'They need you,' said Arithon. His swift peck on her cheek disengaged her taut grip. He moved straightaway to resume his stopped course, but gossip had travelled ahead of him. As he ducked the men stowing the downed topsail yard-arm, he all but collided with Talvish.

  'It is yourself!' The lean swordsman skipped back, already braced to withstand the expected, searing rebuke. 'However did you manage -'

  Arithon cut him off. 'Later!' And, again, the stark change clutched the heart: that the smile on his face had no edge, only nakedly genuine pleasure.

  As Dakar stood, winded, he saw that familiar, dark-haired form briefly shimmer as though scattered by light. The phenomenon was not strange to him. Ath's adepts, and more rarely, Fellowship Sorcerers, might raise the fire of their being in the discharge of their auric fields. The trial of Kewar's maze had done more than break the guilt that blocked Arithon's mastery. His freed talent had soared to rare heights. A year in retreat would have let him adjust. But thrust into the pressure of intimate company, such fresh power now slipped his restraint: the expanded awareness he carried was probably just barely integrated.

  With a fiend storm descending through Selidie's sigil, that stray discharge posed the most dire liability.

  Yet even as Dakar measured the threat, the luminous flare brightened, then blinded. The scene burned away in a plunging rush, as the cloak in his arms seemed to swallow his head, and he stumbled into wild prescience. In harsh clarity, he saw: Arithon's lit form, wreathed in flame and smoke. His hand reached, imploring, to grasp Talvish, who knelt, his thin face a rictus of anguish. About his bent knees, the dead sprawled, strewn and twisted, broken by sword and by arrow. One among them still breathed. She lay, burned and battered, clutched in the clan liegeman's streaked arms with her bloodied, blonde head cradled against his mailed shoulder.

  'Dakar!' Hands braced him. Ripped by nausea, he looked up into Feylind's concerned face. 'You're sea-sick, man. Let's get you stowed in a berth.'

  Too dazed for speech, Dakar shrugged off her support. 'Go on. I'll manage.'

  Through his reeling, sick fear, he grabbed hold of the pin-rail. Before him, Arithon was still speaking in light-hearted reproval to Talvish. 'Since you wouldn't hear sense and stay with your duke, come along. I'm going to need you.'

  Cat-quick in recovery, the fair man-at-arms recontained his speechless delight. He padded in stride with Arithon's haste, then ventured his question in warning. 'You plan to free that ungrateful yokel? Vhandon won't take that move quietly.'

  'So, we'll see.' Arithon's breathless laughter broke off, as he overheard the mate's order to run a capstan-bar aloft to secure the stowed topmast rigging. Hands cupped, he offered an instant correction. 'Remove lines and tackle! Strip everything bare! Those iyats slip the knots and unravel the stays, anything loose is going to come down and hammer us to perdition.'

  The Mad Prophet snatched his moment. Thrust between the Prince of Rathain and the sworn liegeman, and crowding the narrow companionway he demanded, 'You can't sing bardic threnodies and dispel them?'

  A swift glance, his eyebrows raised in appraisal, the Master of Shadow replied, 'For how long, Dakar?'

  His point was self-evident: Prime Selidie's attack was impelled through the Waystone. A focus of power sustained through a crystal would outlast the most skilled human voice. A masterbard might sing himself hoarse, then whistle until he dropped prostrate. The displaced iyats would still remain, a spell-fed plague that would descend and reap their deferred toll of havoc.

  The spellbinder stayed planted in front of the deck-house, the bundled black cloak clutched too tight, and sweat sliding down his doughy features. 'What aren't you telling us? Speak. What else besides fiends lies in ambush?'

  'Carry on, Dakar.' Arithon's adamant grasp was too firm, and his eyes, starkly haunted, as he edged his way past. 'Start safeguarding the water stores. I'll join you as soon as I can.'

  Talvish had no mind to dismiss the exchange. 'You sighted a future?' he murmured low-voiced, as he squeezed through in Arithon's wake.

  'Fire. Smoke. Armed attack,' Dakar forced out, before the back-lashing heave locked his teeth.

  Yet the pace of Arithon's orders denied the least chance for appraisal. Talvish found himself left with the cook, strapping down pots, blunting knives, and containing such hazards in lockers. The ship's cooper was fetched, then taught to nail the lids shut in patterns that invoked protection from the cardinal elements.

  'No charm is proof against outright disaster,' the Master of Shadow instructed. 'Which is why, first thing, I will try for delay. That's where the small constructs come in.'

  'You have a plan?' the ship's steward asked. He was curled in a cranny out of harm's way, pasting small squares of paper to the wood scrap kept dry to kindle the stove.

  'I have chaos,' Arithon stated in wry admission, and summed up at speed. 'When the galley's secured, make rounds of the forecastle. All clothing gets stripped of its buttons and laces. Boot buckles also. Jack-knives, and coins -any trove of hard objects - contain them. Nail the men's personal sea chests shut. I don't care who's stashed contraband whisky. Every bottle goes overboard. No exceptions. Miss out any item that's breakable glass, somebody risks getting blinded.' Poised by the threshold, he finished. 'When those billets are tagged, take them to the chart desk. Sharpen a fresh quill. If there's a horn inkpot, leave that one.'

  Belowdecks, the wallow and pitch of the hull made every small movement difficult. The shadows swung to the roll of the lamps, which had yet to be stowed or extinguished. Thumping feet overhead marked the rush of the crewmen, still scrambling to secure yards and topmasts. Arithon made his way to the sail hold. There, one hand braced for stability, he exchanged a wrist clasp greeting with Vhandon.

  The staid, grey veteran cracked into a grin of unbridled happiness. 'You're a sight I never expected to see! We heard you'd challenged the maze under Kewar. Until now, I never believed you survived. You're going in there?' This last, with a nod tipped toward the locked door. 'Well, don't drop your guard. Your double's a kiss-arse toady for Lysaer. Need my dagger? It's best for close quarters.'

  Arithon slipped the bar, lost into swung shadow as Evenstar ploughed through a trough. 'My blade will suffice, since I don't plan to draw.' He wrenched open the door, while the gyrating lamp speared a wedge of light into darkness.

  Fionn Areth, on his feet, met his nemesis face-to-face, with no more than the overheard voices as warning. He would have the first word, outraged as he was after cavalier handling and extended months of imprisonment.

  A masterbard's diction sliced through like hot steel. 'Koriathain have cast spelled designs on this ship. Once again, you are their target. This time, do you think you can keep your steel sheathed till the heat of the crisis is over?'

  'I don't swim,' said the goatherd, miserably white. 'That's the only assurance I'll give, since no bargain you make can be trusted.'

  'Leave his meddling hands tied,' Vhandon bristled. 'That way, if we sink, the fool will go down that much faster.'

  'Dead wood makes no trouble.' Arithon reached with blurred speed and drew Vhandon's knife. His shove spun the herder face about. A stroke sliced the fish twine that bound the crossed wrists. 'Get above. See the cook. He has my instructions, should you care to help. If you don't like survival, then heave yourself overboard. You're at liberty under my sovereign word. If you hinder the crew, or endanger this ship, I'll see you delivered to Jaelot's justiciar, hog-tied and stripped for a burning.'

  Before Fionn Areth could command his cramped limbs, or turn himself back toward the doorway, Arithon had returned his liegeman's blade and moved off down the passage. Damnably facile aboard a ship, he scaled the deck-ladder as quickly.

  Tight at his heels, and scarcely less agile, Vhandon shouted his vexed
disbelief. 'You won't ask me to watch him?'

  'Why bother?' Through the work of the hull, and the bangs and thumps of hurried activity, Arithon's contempt carried clearly. 'Where will the man go? Poor though it is, my hospitality can't match the speed at which Jaelot's mayor would cut him dead on the scaffold. He'll do his part keeping this vessel afloat. Or dive off the rail, for all that I care, and pray for the Light to come save him.'

  'Then I stay behind you,' Vhandon declared. Emerged into daylight amidships, he back-stepped fast, as Arithon whirled and refused him.

  'A guard at my back will just pose a liability. The cook will show how the deck-lamps must be stowed. You'll dull your weapons like every-one else and secure them inside a nailed locker.'

  'What!' Vhandon barked. 'You'd have me disarmed?' Forearms folded like rock across his studded jack, he rebelled. 'I'd sooner walk naked among starving wolves, and besides, rampaging iyats don't kill.'

  'This plague storm's not natural,' Arithon contradicted. 'These fiends have been goaded by Matriarch Selidie's wrought sigils, then primed to cause bloodletting mischief. The perils that threaten the lives on this ship cannot be routed with weapons!'

  'You'd blunt Alithiel?' cracked Vhandon, incredulous.

  Arithon paused; shut his eyes. For one jagged moment, he fought torn composure. The reeling punch of his prismatic far-sight blurred his clear thought, and the exasperation of any well-meaning friend would just lure the fiends that much faster. 'Vhandon. The Isaervian blades were forged to curb drake spawn. Stop arguing! You're needed. Talvish is locking down knives as we speak. We don't have the time to thrash out better strategy! Someone has got to start tearing down lanterns, stowing the oil, and removing the wicks!'

  'You die here for an ignorant stripling's mad cause, far more than one ship will be foundered.' Yet the grizzled war veteran could not stand his hard ground. That locked glance stripped him naked: the chartless depths within those green eyes outfaced all his worldly experience.

  The spirit returned from the trials of the maze was not wont to regard life or death the same way.

  Vhandon spun to stalk off, jammed on his course as he all but crashed into Fionn Areth. 'What are you about, dolt! Better clear out! Keep your wise distance from our liege's back before someone wrings your damned neck.'

  As the liegeman's hand snapped to his dagger, Arithon's grip locked his wrist. 'Let the fellow go where he will. We've no hands to spare to ride herd on him.'

  Vhandon backed down. He could do nothing else. When the Master of Shadow pushed through to the chart room, the grass-lands-bred yokel showed his insolent grin and trailed after.

  Arithon ignored every petty dissension. Through the companionway, limned against the stern window, he seated himself at the narrow desk, grasped the readied quill, and uncapped the horn flask of ink. Fionn Areth took position behind him and hovered, wisely not blocking the light. The subject under his dissecting scrutiny spared not a glance, but dipped his nib and began to inscribe patterns of Paravian runes on the paper tags, glued to the billets of kindling. As each was complete, Arithon cupped his palms over the writing. Eyes closed, he sang notes that caused a man's nape hair to lift with a drilling, electrical tingle.

  Scowling through his distrust of magecraft, Fionn Areth blurted, 'You don't use any blood.'

  Ringless hands moved, baring a construct that smoked with delicate trailers of light. 'Why should I?' The crisp phrase seemed deceptively mild. Not waiting for answer, Arithon leaned forward and blew across the inked symbols.

  The air went cold. Sudden darkness fell like a blanket, then blasted away in a star-burst of wild light, there and then gone at such speed that the eye retained no after-burned image.

  Running feet pounded down the quarter-deck stair, the door banged, and Dakar burst in, horrified. 'Dharkaron's fell Chariot, what have you invoked? Death and chaos, man! You'll bring those fiends down on our necks! What you've made is a blighted beacon!'

  Unhurried, as he chose his next scrap of wood, Arithon said, 'My sealed intent is to draw them.'

  'What! Are you crazy?' Dakar yanked on his beard. 'We ought to be laying down wardings. Ciphers of go-hither, and invisible quiet, set inside a ring of tossed salt to damp down the etheric ripple of our presence.'

  'That's what you've done to safeguard the casks?' Hands poised, Arithon sang a triplet that shivered the air like a bell. More light blazed forth, then wisped away like spent smoke.

  Dakar winced. 'What I've done with the casks doesn't bear mention. Not set against the mayhem you'll wake with that working! We're square in the path of a crisis already. How much more explosive are you going to make it?'

  'The quicker the tempo, the more frantic the dance,' Arithon conceded. 'By now Talvish should have my three dozen arrows, with the points cut away, and the fletching soaked in hot paraffin. I'll need them on deck, along with that box of old corks, and the recurve the mate keeps to shoot sharks.'

  'Why not send Fionn Areth?' the Mad Prophet snapped under his breath. 'Murder and mercy, we need to talk, now. What I have to say should be kept private.'

  'He's not going to leave.' Through sharp invective, unleashed above deck as a sailhand fumbled a lashing, Arithon qualified, serious, 'Turn his back for a moment, he's convinced I'll be opening some victim's veins for dark conjury. Therefore, no secrets. The man wears my face. Whatever you say must come to bear on his fate no less than on mine.'

  'Curse the moment I said I'd help save him!' The ship rolled. Dakar snatched a fast handhold and watched with vindictive eyes.

  Sure enough, the green herder was caught off his guard. He staggered, then windmilled backwards into the oilskins packed in the hanging locker.

  The spellbinder relented, flung out a hand, and hauled him up short of entanglement. Yet his glance as he salvaged the younger man's balance stayed hard with offended contempt. 'You're a hovering vulture, discontent not to feast upon carrion.'

  Jaw clenched, Fionn Areth said nothing. Since he lacked the mature grace to help with the errand, Dakar banged outside. He would personally garner the items requested before he exposed his concerns in front of the herder's pig ignorance.

  Left with the soured pause, still immersed at the chart desk, Arithon stifled amusement. 'Dakar's that sore because, once, he behaved just like you.'

  'The feat makes you proud?' As the brig corkscrewed into another swell, Fionn Areth grabbed hold, saving himself from sliding into the lap of his nemesis. 'You get your thrills luring lesser minds to corruption?'

  Now Arithon laughed outright. 'Your logic is boggling, since Dakar's been a Fellowship spellbinder, and therefore corrupt by your posturing Light, for a few centuries more than your avatar's been alive.'

  A dry wit might have cut back with a stinging reply; Fionn Areth lacked the gift. He clamped frustrated teeth. More than the roll of the ship made him queasy. Whatever occurred under Arithon's hands, the effects made his skin crawl. Those soft, eerie notes sucked the warmth from the air. Daylight itself altered, until colours appeared dimmed, and the gusting wind seemed to comb with less force through the rigging.

  'You're draining the elements into that stick!' Fionn Areth blurted out. The discovery appalled him. The brig's movement was settling: he realized the bucking deck under his feet had quieted until he could stand without effort.

  'With due permission,' Arithon admitted. His fingers poised over the next billet with its fish-glued slip of paper and queer ciphers. 'Masks won't keep on shipboard, and I haven't lied. I'm initiate mage-trained, entitled as Masterbard, as well as birth-born to wield shadow. Those skills are now weaving this vessel's defence. Stay as you wish. Measure the evidence in front of your eyes. Just remember, when everything breaks into mayhem, and it will: I never abandoned my comfortable haven in Kewar's caverns for your sake.'

  Through the unpleasant tension that followed, Fionn Areth might as well have ceased to exist. Arithon pursued his inscrutable business. By the time the steward arrived to inform that the stripped arrows and
cork awaited on deck, Arithon's crafted works had shifted the forces of the known world off their accustomed track. Evenstar wallowed amid glassy calm. The long, ocean swell had flattened out. Each comment from the helmsman seemed unnaturally distinct. The creak and squeal of the deck-boards as crewmen secured the aft hatch sounded magnified in the harsh quiet.

  A thunderous splash from the cat-head startled the goatherd half out of his wits.

  'That will be the starboard anchor, unshackled and cut loose,' Arithon stated in swift reassurance. Done with raw conjury, he was now snipping thread: the jet glitter of his onyx buttons were passed off for the steward to secure, followed as fast by his shirt laces.

  The mate's barked command filtered down from the bow. 'Sway out and cut loose!'

  A thump, and a rattle, and more splashes followed. The steward added, for Fionn Areth's sake, 'None of the hands are abandoning ship!'

  Arithon affirmed this. 'I asked for the chain to be jettisoned also. The ballast rock is just as grievous a hazard, but the hull would capsize without it.' He arose, shed his rifled jerkin, and bundled his cache of marked sticks. While the servant moved in to dismantle the lamp, and break out the salt-crusted windows, the Prince of Rathain made his way from the chart room. He bounded on deck, met as he emerged by Feylind, anxiously frowning.

  If she wished to revile him for freeing Fionn Areth, someone had warned her with adamancy. Her gesture instead framed the ensorcelled waters, sluggish and flat as pooled mercury. 'Don't explain how you've done this. I don't care to know. You're making my seamen as jumpy as cats!'

  All wind had died also. The air hung like liquid glass. Sounds were now muffled by the oppressive calm. The creak of the ratlines, the groans as the seams worked between deck and bulkhead made the brig seem a ghost vessel, cursed by a haunting.

  'Not only your seamen.' Arithon took her cold hand, laid her chapped knuckles between his warm palms, and plumbed her concern with unnerving intensity. Vivid and vital, his face had not changed. Beside him, she had matured and grown weathered. The wear of years and a harsh, outdoor lifestyle had stamped crow's-feet in her rough skin.