Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Could I guess?’ Lysaer mused. ‘The seneschal’s persnickety secretary has been overset by the justiciar’s packet from Shand?’ The firm line of his mouth also twitched with curbed laughter. ‘Bring the man on. Then just watch me.’

  Prodded by impulse and evil delight, Sulfin Evend notched a fresh shaft to his string. He pulled to full draw, then released.

  The arrow arched out. An etched sliver under the broiling sun, the deadly missile whined upwards. Slowed as the shaft reached the peak of its arc, the shot lost its impetus over the hats of the contingent of approaching council-men. Sulfin Evend saw movement as one of them pointed. Several heads swivelled. Another peered skyward, eyes shaded by visored fingers.

  The flustered officials were all male, in douce accord with the bias of town law, and the rigid practice of westlands propriety. No voice in Tysan would raise questions of gender. Yet Sulfin Evend was privy to Lysaer’s private nightmares. He knew of the damage incurred by betrayal: a mother, a beloved wife, and now, Ellaine had abandoned this s’Ilessid prince. Since each one had crossed without shame to an enemy, Lysaer’s distrust of women would not suffer the opening to tear at the deep-buried scars of such wounds.

  Above the greensward, the trembling arrow tipped, then spun point down and rushed earthward.

  ‘Should I presume you are also displeased?’ Lysaer remarked with stripped humour. Awake to the prank just barely in time, he launched the razor-thin flash of his gift into the arrow’s sped course. The shaft torched. Its residue puffed a roil of black smoke over the poleaxed council-men.

  Hazed to a sharp halt, Avenor’s crown governance collectively bristled. Then, their state velvets snagging up dust, the shark pack regrouped, determined to vent scalded nerves on the grace of the divine presence.

  The beak-faced trade minister shoved in first. ‘This storm of dissent that’s inflamed the far south shows no sign of abating! There have been debauched acts—’

  The surge of declaiming interruptions lost wind to the rotund minister of the treasury. Annoyed by the ruin of his best calf-skin shoes, he elbowed in front, moist chins quivering. ‘My scribes are accounting our losses twice weekly. We’ve had recruiters’ tents shredded by riots, stolen wine and mislaid stores, never mentioning the tally of damaged—’

  ‘The missing white silk for the new priest initiates!’ a red-faced crown acolyte burst in, at once shouted down by his beak-faced superior, ‘Oh, that’s scarcely the worst! Today we’ve had word that the gilded fittings for the new temple at Ishlir have gone missing. Every one of our inventoried wagons arrived filled by crates crammed with rocks! The stone for the marble facing’s been lost under still more nefarious circumstances—’

  ‘It sank, actually,’ the palace accountant upbraided in stuffy correction. ‘A bridge collapsed on the trade-road. Four drays tumbled into the river. The carters were forced to go swimming to rescue their floundering oxen.’ He sniffed, then concluded, ‘Barbarian work, surely. Their pillaging raids have increased.’

  Sulfin Evend stayed poised behind Lysaer’s shoulder, primed for the moment his blindfold liege would be hounded from regal complacency.

  Lysaer snapped imperious fingers, instead. ‘Next arrow,’ he commanded.

  Straight-faced, Sulfin Evend bent his yew-bow, while the yammering council-men stumbled awkwardly backwards, still ticking off points on their fingers. ‘Four strayed shipments of gold, the tribute chests lifted from a company of guards, not to mention the pestilent scourge of indecent ballads and satire—why have we no edicts to curtail the bards? Their lying tongues are a galling obstruction!’

  The bow cracked in release. Its launched shot sheared upwards into the blue, where a snapped burst of brilliance destroyed it.

  Coughing out the taint of singed fletching, Avenor’s justiciar clung yet to the rags of diplomacy. ‘We have thefts going unpunished, and desertions applauded by riff-raff.’

  Here, the gifted clairvoyant who trained for the high priesthood thrust forward to cite the fresh case. ‘Last fortnight, a temple’s newly blessed floor was defiled by a crofter’s escaped herd of swine! The doors were barred shut. No muddy pigs could have entered unless a malingerer herded them in.’

  The justiciar restrained the fuming priest by the shoulder, and strove to restore court decorum. ‘Our efforts to bring justice to bear on that incident turned your most competent officers into a laughingstock. Serious inquiries could not be held while jeering hecklers turned every magistrates’ hearing into an act of low comedy! The dock-side at Shaddorn foments open insurgency. An outbreak of mud-slinging begun by the whores was abetted when waterfront craftsmen opened their shops and let the guilty escape the town watch.’

  Beneath the gleaming, fair hair and rag blindfold, Lysaer’s mouth showed no change of expression. ‘Arrow,’ he stated in peremptory calm.

  Sulfin Evend well knew when to follow an order. He nocked, drew, and released on demand, then observed to see how s’Ilessid ingenuity would field the mounting unpleasantness. There would be a design: Avenor’s self-styled prince always played his tensioned lines with tenaciously brilliant resolve.

  The next shaft whined aloft.

  ‘How do you suggest the Light should respond?’ Lysaer flicked his wrist. The seemingly casual gesture released a burst of ball lightning. The explosive energy consumed its frail mark, wisping another pall of spent carbon.

  Avenor’s shrewdest trade minister cleared his wattled throat. ‘Lord Exalted, your losses are happening. The longer we deliberate, the more chance we’ll be faced with enforcing a drastic solution.’

  ‘Your Divine Grace.’ Avenor’s crown steward ventured his case, his prudish, tucked hands ill at ease with the new-found mantle of his authority. ‘Since the spring, the holy treasury has been robbed of twenty-eight thousand gold royals. Thrice that in hard silver coin weight. That’s not accounting for vandalized property or the fines that are, daily, being waived by south shore officials whose moral fibre has been swayed by malicious sabotage. We are losing hard-won support by the hour, and to what? Indecorous behaviour, malign gossip, and life-sworn men-at-arms shamed into defection. I suggest that money and resource don’t vanish by accident. Rumours on this scale do not sprout unsown. We know the bards who are singing the satires don’t answer to the same description, however, the Spinner of Darkness has a most subtle hand. Surely this must be his work?’

  ‘Arrow,’ said Lysaer. ‘A high, ranging arc, aimed for drift and wind, due south-west.’

  A cold-blooded order, most softly spoken: yet the crack of its emphasis cried challenge. Sulfin Evend stilled his pricked conscience, bent his powerful bow, and sighted the shot’s angle above the flagged towers of the palace.

  When he loosed, the shaft arced upwards without interruption. It slowed, losing impetus at the height of its arc. A needle of sunlight glanced off varnished wood. Then the point turned, and gravity took charge. The missile plunged, aligned towards the heart of Avenor’s inhabited court plaza.

  As though no hapless bystander risked being skewered, Lysaer turned his masked face towards the cluster of dismayed council-men. ‘You think I should act?’

  The arrow whined earthward, its lethal broadhead a distant twinkle of steel nicked through the blanketing haze.

  One fretful council-man moistened parched lips. ‘Your Blessed Grace, for the Light’s justice, you must.’

  No one moved. The shaft’s flight sped unchecked, raising stifled gasps from the onlookers.

  ‘Must?’ stated Lysaer s’Ilessid, and this time, his held fury lashed his governors a cringing step backwards.

  ‘Innocents are suffering!’ The acolyte priest sank to his knees, broken to desperate pleading. ‘Intercede. I beg you, my lord. For wanton cruelty, would you chance an innocent’s death as the price of our forward presumption?’

  ‘You would not forget at the cost of a burial.’ Lysaer’s forefinger flicked. Light erupted. The explosive blast slammed the dead air like a thunder-clap. The descending arrow was
annihilated, and more: the guildhall roof peak showed a smoking scar where melted lead had scoured through to expose the underlying support beams.

  As dreadfully edged, the Divine Prince’s restated question: ‘How do you suggest that the Light should respond?’

  The acolyte swallowed. The trade ministers hedged. Hatted heads dipped, and pinned feathers nodded, while the egg-bald town-gatekeeper peered at his toes as though his best shoes might sprout answers.

  Sulfin Evend assessed the collective distress, silenced to burning contempt as no man of courage came forward.

  Their blindfold avatar stood his unabashed ground. The soaked rag and the heat should have spoiled his grandeur: no sovereign majesty should rise above the wilted grass of a tourney-field. Yet Lysaer’s innate presence engaged his shocked dignitaries as though he sat enthroned, while the tension built higher, stretched to the bleak pitch of a storm front. When at last Lysaer chose to speak, his response only shocked for its mildness. ‘Ill-gotten, worse spent. The Master of Shadow shall receive the sour fruit of such petty conniving.’

  The gruff seneschal tripped over himself to chime in. ‘We have matched the creature’s slinking ways often enough. All that is good, he will seek to desecrate. His works cloud the truth, defame and tear down.’

  Lysaer showed the untoward outburst his tolerance, then resumed with astringent dignity, ‘I have heard each insult, each injury, each death. I have not responded in anger. Never presume this has not been a choice! My restraint is not to be mistaken as fact, that I am resigned or complacent.’

  ‘Then guide us,’ entreated the harried Lord Treasurer. ‘How do you propose to redress rifled coffers? We require some tangible means to offset the depletions of theft and these constant, draining expenditures!’

  Lysaer’s imperious gesture enjoined his Lord Commander to unstring the long-bow. Then he hooked off the blindfold, unveiling eyes turned steel-hard by the pain of experience. ‘The Spinner of Darkness has done naught but feint. He taunts. He withdraws. He wears at our flanks, not with lethal threat, but with laughter. What does he wish to provoke, but a cheap and undisciplined clamour for vengeance?’

  The clipped pause was not gentle as Lysaer tossed his rag with the last, forlorn arrow in the sand bucket. ‘On your feet!’ he cracked to his kneeling acolyte. ‘This cause we are bound to serve with our lives is not petty. It is not about anger, or antics, or a little rage, done to put down mean acts and desecrations. We are allied to serve the needs of a people and defend their born right to freedom. In our hands, the design must be shaped to liberate this world from the threat of tyrannical sorcery. You insist I should act.’

  Lysaer’s drilling stare raked each face, as if searching for something found wanting. ‘Then where do I start? By hanging a false tailor? By arresting the dock-side bawds of Innish for the crime of a naked priest’s blushing embarrassment? Do I disrobe the trade council of Southshire because they succumbed to a fraud arranged by a covert conspiracy?’

  ‘You risk an impotent image if you do nothing,’ the candidate for the high priesthood pointed out, while the treasurer’s clutched list of deficits crackled between his nervous hands. ‘Injustice demands restitution.’

  Lysaer sighed, above rancour. ‘Would any such act reduce the threat imposed by the Master of Shadow? Would his actual strength be diminished? The degree to which we embroil ourselves will only debase our long-term credibility. Lose impetus to revenge, and we just defer the hour of lasting triumph. I will not rise! Nor will the Light stoop to the gutter over a skirmish of slanging and insults!’

  ‘That’s all very well.’ Shamed, but not cowed, the Minister of the Treasury drew breath to broach the issue of critical short-falls.

  The Blessed Prince cut him off. ‘This is my word, and your given will, as you cherish your grace under heaven. Gird yourselves for war. The conflict you desire is imminent. Forge weapons and raise arms in the name of Light. Recruit every able young man. Do your work well, without pause for effrontery. Never bow to outrage or embarrassment! For tomorrow, I shall sail east by fast ship and lay the groundwork for a true reckoning.’

  Lysaer unveiled his purpose, a flung stone amid the tense quiet. ‘I go to pursue two counts of rank treachery. Proof has reached my hand. My princess is at Spire in the hands of Ath’s adepts, and Duke Bransian s’Brydion of Alestron has engaged in a treasonous collaboration with no less than the Master of Shadow.’

  ‘The fell demon’s escaped Kewar!’ someone gasped, shocked.

  ‘For some months,’ Lysaer s’Ilessid avowed. ‘I had cautioned you all this would happen.’

  Amid reeling upset as Avenor’s high councilors fought back the wind to regroup, the Blessed Prince closed with crisp force. ‘Let us see if the south can sustain its insurgency with my hand on the reins of Shand’s politics.’

  Enraged to have been played in the dark alongside Avenor’s fresh council-men, Sulfin Evend did not scramble in stunned step to accommodate Lysaer’s brazen announcement. Instead, he strode off the tourney-field, placed the whirlwind muster of escort and honour guard in the hands of a competent officer, and returned to the royal suite. There, he ordered his crack team of sentries to retire into the ante-room. Still armed, and grimed with dusty sweat from his extended hours of archery, he bowled through the frantic servants who lugged trunks and scurried to pack the state wardrobe. Undaunted by protests, he shouldered past more attendants with towels and barged into the regent’s bath chamber.

  The Blessed Prince relaxed in the huge marble tub, sunk hip deep in the glass-tiled floor. His soaked head reclined on a sandbag of linen, while a manservant sponged lather over a torso sculpted with fit layers of muscle.

  ‘Out!’ snapped Sulfin Evend.

  The man-servant bristled, prepared to retort.

  Yet Lysaer’s genteel word affirmed the dismissal. The attendant waded out of the tub, his poisonous glare raking the vulgar intruder as he stalked through the doorway.

  Undaunted, Sulfin Evend overshadowed the replete form of his liege. ‘You’re not wearing your knife,’ he accused, while the steam whorled up in ghostly eddies between them.

  Lysaer at last deigned to open his eyes. Surrounded by pristine white tile and set against bloodless, fair skin, the gaze burned with lapis intensity. Unspeaking, he raised a hand from the suds. The flint blade was clenched in his fist.

  Which curt response did not disarm Sulfin Evend’s combative mood. ‘You toy with good men,’ he attacked. ‘That disrespect shows a lack of trust that deeply shames and demeans them.’

  The Blessed Prince maintained his hard stare. ‘You’re here to take issue? Then level the field. Strip off your armour and join me.’

  ‘I’m not here to play games!’ Sulfin Evend cracked back.

  Lysaer shoved up straight. He stretched his arm, hooked the cord for the knife sheath, and looped it back into place with the blade hung over his breastbone. ‘I don’t play games. Nor will I argue with a man wearing a sword, itching in his rank sweat while he’s irritable. If we’re going to face off with honest intent, you’ll sit just as naked beside me.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Sulfin Evend removed his baldric and surcoat, then peeled off his chain-mail and gambeson. His boots, his belt, then his breeches and hose were soon heaped on the bench by the towel-rack. Stripped to his scars, and the uncanny pattern a Fellowship Sorcerer’s touch had left impressed like a watermark over his heart, he slipped into the hot, scented water.

  The bath was waist-deep and sumptuous enough to admit his fighting man’s brawn without crowding. He sank to his chest, doused his head under, then snatched the dropped sponge and sluiced into the grime ingrained from his bout on the practise field.

  Too late, he recalled: his liege had never seen the protection bestowed on him at Althain Tower. The stilled pause took on weight as the mark came under Lysaer’s probing survey. Seen through water, the warding became more pronounced, sparkling with glancing light at odd moments, or when direct vision drifted.

&nb
sp; ‘Don’t ever let my Lord Examiner discover the fact you’ve been spirit-marked,’ the Blessed Prince pronounced at last.

  Sulfin Evend knew when not to rely on the passionless poise of the statesman. He submerged, then lounged back, while the fragrance of rare oils infused the steam that coiled over his collar-bones. ‘You would stand silent and let your fanatics drag me to a sorcerer’s death?’

  ‘I would save the embarrassment,’ Lysaer said without heat. Then, ‘You didn’t come here, or strip to the skin to retread the threats posed by necromancers. Nor have I given you reason to doubt my intent to stay clear of the morass surrounding Etarra. My recruiting will be confined to the south. Have I wakened suspicion to question this?’

  ‘Not yet.’ A man not sworn to the cause of the land would have let matters rest, strongly warned. Sulfin Evend assessed the dangerous, male creature whose innate majesty could not be trusted, then said, ‘You did not disclose the contents of those dispatches. Your seneschal has not seen them either. If you want my backing, you will not conceal pertinent documents from your high council.’

  Lysaer’s tempered poise kept its mildness. ‘You would dictate terms?’

  Sulfin Evend sucked a reflexive, quick breath. ‘I would order the ship you board sunk at the dock before I set sail for a falsehood.’

  ‘A death warrant, for the men who obeyed you,’ said Lysaer. He did not seem perturbed, a signal red flag. ‘How dare you enact the presumption?’

  ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, I don’t have to.’ His courage a brazen act of imprudence, Sulfin Evend held firm. ‘Don’t try me. If you win, the regret would become your destruction.’

  ‘How dramatic’ Lysaer tipped back his soaked head, the picture of congenial amusement. ‘You would have applauded my guileless grace if I had exposed names for your uncle’s close contacts?’ Highly placed, inside officials employed by town mayors had sold themselves as Raiett’s spies. ‘A self-righteous, clean breast on that score would have earned us some interesting enemies.’