Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  Bewildered blue eyes gazed vacantly upwards, tracing the decorative patterns of vines twined in gilt on the vaulted ceiling. ‘That barbaric knife has blistered my hand.’

  ‘Had you not tried to kill, you’d be scatheless.’ Instead of relief that demanded his anger, Sulfin Evend felt nothing but scouring shame, that the wretched exchange must stay public.

  As bruised as his own, that porcelain-fair skin; the contrite sorrow that ravaged the face on the pillow was all too woundingly genuine. Since care could not bind up that shattered nobility, he shouldered the gruff explanation. ‘The flint blade is a talisman wrought for arcane protection, not use as a weapon of murder. Had I been given the chance to cry warning, I doubt that you would have heard me.’

  ‘The Mistwraith’s fell vengeance.’ Lysaer sounded torn. ‘You insist I am cursed? That my half-brother’s crimes are all innocent?’

  Sulfin Evend was too wise to attempt a reply. Along with six horrified witnesses, he watched: as the warning, hard spark rekindled and cancelled the soul-searching depths of a just man’s innate awareness.

  Lysaer’s jaw tensed. He worked fevered hands in manic distress underneath the silk coverlet.

  Not about to let silence betray him again, Sulfin Evend chose phrasing to placate. ‘I can’t speak on matters of innocence or guilt. Too many have perished on both sides, my liege. I won’t try to excuse that, or hide what has happened. I can’t find my comfort in righteousness.’

  Lysaer turned away. With his face masked from sight, his fine, tangled hair lay like snarled gilt on damp linen. ‘Have you thrown away conscience?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Sulfin Evend all but winced for the irony, that his bound oath made that virtue irrevocable. Empty-handed and aching, and pierced through the heart, he could not do less than speak honestly. ‘My service is given for friendship, not cause. If your burden comes to break you, my liege, remember it’s going to take both of us.’

  The supine form in the blankets gave way. Hands bound up in ignominious cloth, Lysaer s’Ilessid turned his face into the pillow to silence his onslaught of weeping.

  Sulfin Evend heard the soft scrape of steps. Unasked, the guard sergeant mustered his men, then slipped out, latching the door closed for privacy. The valet fetched out herbs to treat Lysaer’s burns. He sat, mashing paste for a poultice, while Sulfin Evend wrapped himself in a spare sheet. Then he subsided back in the chair with his split knuckles loose in his lap.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Lysaer said. His plaintive tone might have been a lost child’s, craving a world that was rinsed clean of blood and the spectre of curse-driven nightmares.

  Sulfin Evend saw further, and heard the stamped pain inflicted by repeated loss: first Diegan and Talith, then a young son, burned to death by the bale-fire of a Khadrim. He realized the question was not as it seemed, but pertained to a plea very different.

  ‘You won’t stop me,’ he murmured. ‘Go to Shand, or wage war, I will be the man standing steadfast next to your shoulder.’

  Lysaer flinched, cut to anguish. ‘By the grace of your name, save yourself. Please abandon me.’

  Yet when the valet came with dressings and remedy to succour the raw, blistered fingers, Sulfin Evend remained unmoved in the chair. He sat there still, but armed and reclothed, when Lysaer s’Ilessid relaxed his fraught nerves and drifted at last into sleep.

  The valet did not speak, but returned the Lord Commander’s pressed surcoat and shined boots. To such selfless valour, he awarded the same, unstinting service he had just granted to his royal master. Between the Lord Commander, with his baleful, hawk’s carriage, and the servant, lined as an old hound, no banal words of hope were exchanged. No platitudes eased the regret.

  On the morrow, the Light’s Prince Exalted would sail, bound for the Kingdom of Shand. The stark challenge remained to forestall Lysaer’s curse-ridden drive to assault the Duke of Alestron. War must be stopped, or at least averted until the Fellowship Sorcerers could curtail the Kralovir cult’s vile workings. For an armed host was building behind friendly walls from a poisoned core at Etarra. Disaster loomed, if the sunwheel fanatics should march before the core incursion of necromancy could be exposed and routed.

  Summer 5671

  Stand Down

  When the bard who was Master of Shadow gained entry to the guarded citadel at Alestron, he did not give his name or flaunt his sanctioned rank to be presented to the reigning duke. He played in the rough taverns by the barracks gate, until his provocative repertoire drew the shrewd notice of the indomitable s’Brydion matriarch.

  Presented with a note by a liveried page whose inscription was velvet phrased over steel, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn quashed the urge to laugh out loud for the blood-letting sport of sheer challenge. Since refusal would bring him a squad of armed men bearing an ultimatum, he accepted the clan dowager’s invitation with the same style of combative grace. He did not change his clothes, or cut his hair, spilled in blond locks to his shoulders. Since Dakar had been dispatched ahead into Atwood, Rathain’s prince stood at once and bade the young servant to guide him. Bearing no more than his lyranthe and sword, and a change of shirt in a knapsack, he entered the street and, with a nod to the footman, stepped into the waiting carriage.

  The plush seats were crammed with mail-clad men-at-arms. Arithon displaced one to accommodate his instrument. His affable smile like the rose on the briar, he disarmed the rampant hostility that clenched their hardened fists to their weapons. ‘You aren’t going to need the ring in the nose. For today, I’ve agreed to lead willingly’

  The vehicle rolled uphill, its occupants disinclined to share conversation. Arithon tapped whistle tunes out on his forearms, until the matched team was reined to a halt. A lackey built like a retired drill-sergeant opened the carriage door and ushered him out. Past the arch of a covered entry, Arithon glimpsed the buttressed walls that cradled the upper citadel. The conveyance had stopped in the mid-town, in front of the palatial residence that housed the s’Brydion clan seat. He was chivvied inside. His escort clinked like mailed wolves at his heels, as the servant directed him through windowless corridors hung with shields like a barracks ward-room.

  By contrast, Dame Dawr’s apartment was a haven of sunlit comfort, tucked in a south-facing eyrie. Her taste ran to soft furnishings and saffron silk, with fine paintings preferred over the maces and edged weapons displayed on the panelled walls elsewhere. Led in by the servant, Arithon faced the formidable grandame herself. She had no attendants, but sat on a straight-backed, gryphon-carved couch, tucked like porcelain into an embroidered gown. White-haired, erect, she wore her ninety-eight years with paper-fine skin and distinguished character. If she walked with a stick, her rivet-bright eyes denounced her aged frailty with an air of emphatic impatience.

  The lackey required no order to leave. The men-at-arms also remained in the ante-room, while the door-panel clicked firmly shut.

  Left alone, drab as blight in a garden, Arithon set his lyranthe down on the carpet. Expectant, he laced relaxed fingers.

  ‘You may sit,’ said Dame Dawr.

  A stool was left waiting, with squat lion feet and an embroidered heraldic cushion.

  ‘I refuse the insult,’ denounced the Prince of Rathain. He shook back the deceiving, dandified ringlets and dropped off his masking glamour.

  Shown seal-black hair and the face of s’Ffalenn royalty, Dame Dawr displayed no surprise. Long since, she had guessed his identity. ‘Wise man, to insist on no falsehood between us.’

  Arithon’s smile displayed the joy of the tiger, peerlessly faced with its match. He came forward, bent his head and his knee, and with genuine grace, kissed her fingers. ‘Few are given the unlooked-for pleasure. My balladry caught your attention?’

  Impressed by sheer mettle, Dame Dawr raised him. ‘Despite the license allowed a free singer, satires that ridicule Alestron’s defences are going to try someone’s limits.’ Not put off one bit by the tavern reek from his clothes, or his raffishly insolent grooming, she locke
d his grasp in her brittle, ringed hand. ‘Charter law is not proof against s’Brydion temper.’

  ‘I feared as much,’ Prince Arithon said. ‘But reprisal is not what concerns me.’

  Reassured that he grasped her innuendo quite well, the grandame offered the stool once again, though this time with sharkish engagement. ‘I gather you’ve come to provoke as a warning?’

  Arithon sat, flushed to naked relief. ‘By Ath, you’re a gift that might save us a war. Shall I honestly tell you the reason?’

  He spent the next several days closeted with Dame Dawr. She allowed him a room with a bath, and a bed, and had her seamstress redress his rough clothing. In return, he seemed willing enough to abide without testing the fact he was kept as her guarded prisoner. To the listening ears of the servants, he played as a bard for her private amusement. Between entertainment, he also engaged in piercingly deep conversation. If her verbal by-play stabbed for the viscera, his courtesy scarcely faltered. When the s’Brydion clan grandame dozed in her chair, he seized no ungallant advantage. At her invitation, he spent those intervals browsing through books and reading the ancient, hand-scripted accounts of her family’s illustrious history.

  Four days of her adroit quips and snide fencing failed to wear him to exhaustion. If her guileful traps at times forced him silent, she never unleashed his temper.

  ‘You won’t be dissuaded,’ she stated on the fifth morning, when, backed into a stand-down, she confronted him over breakfast.

  Arithon passed her a toast point with jam. ‘You can’t see the merit of lending support? Your hatched offspring are going to outnumber me.’

  Dame Dawr snorted, accepting the plate. Her glance could have cowed a starved jackal. ‘If the merit’s past question, my spurred cockerels are full-grown. I’m too cagey to argue a cause I can’t win. My grandsons aren’t sensible on their home turf. Don’t chance the mistake that might bait them.’

  Rathain’s prince watched her, prepared in his way to match her disdain against his listening stillness.

  Since mage training could outreach her caustic, crone’s patience, she harried him, stubborn as pig-iron. ‘The worthy opponent knows when he’s outfaced.’

  His green eyes showed amusement. ‘I still have to try. The cynic alone claims to know all the answers. At least let me make my fool’s bid worth your blessing.’

  ‘On my terms,’ said Dame Dawr. ‘Else I’ll turn you out. I won’t have your death on my conscience.’

  Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn inclined his head, his sable hair barbered back to trim elegance and his wit never less than hard-edged. ‘Asandir’s gone before you. He holds my bound oath, sworn over a knife-cut at Athir.’

  Dame Dawr rejected that protest, no matter how starkly he phrased his demand to be left his due right to autonomy. ‘You will go as a bard under shield of my patronage. I’ll arrange for the wives to be present.’

  That won her his striking, spontaneous smile, which warmed for its depth of intensity. ‘“Who spits against heaven, it falls in his face.” I’ll accept your offer of backing in skirts. Without women, how could a man triumph?’

  ‘You would,’ the s’Brydion grandame replied, ‘though at far higher cost, and seldom without weapons and bloodshed.’

  Duke Bransian handled his grandmother’s whims the way his hunting mastiff scratched fleas: by routing the itch with vigorous claws until the pest was scoured off his skin. To be rid of Dame Dawr, one acceded forthwith. The faster a man gave in to her wish, the sooner he could be done with her.

  Tonight, the old tyrant demanded a family gathering, formally arranged with refined entertainment and cake. That meant doffing chain-mail and sword, without which any s’Brydion male felt exposed as a babe on its birthday. Tricked out in velvet, Bransian glared at the boots with the pearl-stitched cuffs just offered to him by his wife. ‘I’ve got to wear those, for the sake of a singer who probably warbles in tremolo? No!’ The Duke of Alestron folded his arms, hampered by his jingling cuff-ties. ‘That pair has no hobnails, and besides, I already glitter and clink like some simpering maiden’s court jewel-box.’

  ‘Be glad I decided to leave out the hat,’ said his duchess with arid equanimity. A raw-boned woman who fought like a ram, she plonked the reviled foot-wear into the hands of a servant. ‘Just get them on him.’ She tucked a fresh clove into her reticule, then smoothed her silk bodice, and added, ‘I’d rather be tortured for one day a month than hear more of your yapping complaints.’

  ‘My tongue’s not so much to put up with,’ groused Bransian. ‘It’s your snoring that drives me insane.’ Crammed into the boots, and flushed to black humour, he refused the pressed ribbons to pleat the silk sleeves that billowed over his elbows. ‘Too much like the prize bullock prinked for the fair. Keep at this, we’re going to be late.’ Chin tucked in offence, he stalked towards the doorway, while the duchess’s shrewd glance continued to bore unappeased holes in his back.

  ‘You’re not wearing that horrid old dagger again, strapped underneath your clean sleeve!’

  ‘Damned well, I am!’ Duke Bransian snapped. ‘Dawr’s pet minstrel could be an assassin.’

  Since the towns of Kalesh and Adruin had been known to try murder by blowdart and poison, no s’Brydion lady who valued her marriage could argue the need to go armed. The stalemate quelled Liesse long enough to see both of them down to the hall.

  There, Dawr’s tame bard was installed by the dais on a stool of Paravian workmanship. Both sleeves and his knee-breeches nipped tight with cord, he wore high court fashion with natural elegance. Despite his nondescript colouring, the duchess’s hitched breath said plainly enough that the creature was matchlessly handsome. The Duke of Alestron spared him no second glance. Beside Dawr’s upright posture, he seemed but a mouse, pretty hands too soft and refined to bear any serious weapons. If he carried poison, his dainty bones would be crushed. Even the wine steward’s boy looked to be more than a match for him.

  Liesse pressed a hand to her husband’s elbow. ‘Your grandame will expect you to take the state chair.’

  Since grumbling now was a profitless waste, Bransian crossed the carpet, mincing in his tight boots, and mounted the low stair with his duchess. He assumed the carved seat of familial authority, though with Dawr on the muscle, better than any, he knew that assumption held pitfalls. Fiercely scowling, he watched his three younger brothers arrive. Each brought his glittering, combative wife, and their packs of direct offspring who were unrecognizable, done up in jewels and silk.

  Only Mearn looked at ease, most likely because he had three poniards sewn into the seams of his doublet. Agile as a snake in new skin, he seated his pregnant wife, then surveyed the proceedings with slit-eyed suspicion. ‘Why’s the old lady down there with the bard?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Parrien itched the burned skin left by a shave too hastily done with his dagger. ‘Like the south wind, she veers each time you try to read her.’

  ‘Trend-setting fashion?’ suggested his wife, snatching his wrist with both hands before his irritable scraping drew blood. ‘Or else just her roustabout style of insisting on nonconformity’

  Keldmar shook his head, snatched off the hat that made him look like a spaniel, and tossed the crushed velvet onto the table. ‘Old dame’s getting deaf. About time, you ask me. She’s got her stirring fingers poked altogether too far into the hot coals of politics.’

  ‘Deaf!’ Bransian snorted.

  ‘You wish in your dreams,’ added Mearn. ‘She’s got something afoot, the conniving fiend.’ About to add more, he clamped his jaw shut and went suddenly silent.

  ‘Has your wife kicked you under the table again?’ asked Parrien with needling interest. ‘Mine tried that, once. Couldn’t shut my trap. I roped her in bed and—’ Shot stiff with a grunt, he glared at the petite brunette, all demure sweetness beside him.

  ‘She’s sharpened her hairpins,’ Liesse whispered in smiling response to Bransian’s raised eyebrows.

  Conjecture ceased as Dawr’s sti
ck banged the floor. Her punctilious serving-man brought the lyranthe for the bard, while more liveried staff served cake, and a syrup-thick brandy in delicate snifters.

  ‘That’s drink for a toddler,’ Sevrand griped from his place down the table.

  Dawr sat at last and arranged her severe skirts, while the over-bred singer fussed his strings into tune with harmonics that stung for their clarity. Bransian poked at his cherry confection in distaste, shut his eyes, and prepared to be bored.

  The first, ringing chord slashed the quiet like a sword, whetted to gleaming temper. All question of faulty hearing aside, Dawr possessed stringent taste. Her patronage had delivered a master. The choice of ballad was no effete romance, but a martial tale styled in clarion phrasing. Parrien shot straight. All but stretched across Liesse’s lap, he badgered to say something urgent.

  The duke shoved him off. ‘Douse your sniping cant! Let me listen.’

  After that, the tapestry of woven sound stole the breath for its power of raw captivation. The brothers s’Brydion ceased their clamour, drawn in, while the singer wielded voice and string with an artistry to storm the spirit. His matchless rendering described a war host that built on two fronts, then marched to besiege an isolate citadel. The story carried two posited endings: in one, the defenders died—woman, child, and man overwhelmed by relentless numbers. The other told of a triumph through courage and loss as the fortress’s ruler ordered his own stronghold torn down and destroyed. Stone was pulled from stone; battlements were tumbled; the massive defence-works and timber gates burned. The invaders were ceded a field of wracked rubble, while their quarry stole away in unvanquished survival to enact a subversive campaign that undermined and wore down, and at last claimed the victory through long-term engagement.

  Incensed by the bald-faced effrontery that had bearded them in their own hall, the brothers s’Brydion fumed in stunned stillness. The music’s wild force held them ruthlessly thralled. Compelled to hold out through the last, burning verse, they turned in lashed fury upon the bard, who had never been what he seemed: an itinerant stranger plying a free singer’s art to scratch out his nondescript living.