Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  Sent a seeress’s message concerning an unusual shimmer of resonance striking down the fourth lane, Prime Selidie stifles a secretive smile, then appoints Lirenda to fetch the wrapped box from Highscarp containing Elaira’s wrapped crystal…

  Summer 5671

  XIII. Confluence

  If the Mad Prophet had not been blissed prostrate on brandy, the onset of prescient talent would not have taken him unaware. Sprawled in a dimmed corner of the clan chieftain’s lodge tent while two of the Companions sat in subdued conference, his walrus bulk passed unnoticed all day. He stayed unmolested, until his resounding snores drew smiles and raised eyebrows from the scouts who arrived to deliver the sundown report to Sidir. The novel amusement also was discovered by an inquisitive boy, which started a bout of giggling mimicry from the camp’s younger children.

  When a sturdy toddler decided to bounce on the spellbinder’s chest, Feithan gave the offender a scolding and ran the young rascals outside. They whooped as they scuttled. Such wild noise was unwise. Despite the unaccustomed excitement surrounding the return of crown-sanctioned royalty, a mindful adolescent shoved his gangling frame up from the trestle and ducked through the flap to correct them.

  Only Sidir’s relentless alertness tracked the gist of Dakar’s sotted mumbling. A fragmented phrase snapped him onto his feet with the speed of a dart-shot wolf.

  Across the tent at a bound, with his hardened grasp shaking the befuddled spellbinder by the collar, he demanded, ‘What did you say?’

  Riled to rattled teeth, Dakar squeezed his eyes shut. His complaining grumble was ripped short by a belch. For that, he received Sidir’s grip on his chin. Iron fingers twisted his face towards the tallow-dip, snatched in fierce haste off the trestle.

  ‘Damn you, speak clearly! What sight? Which vision?’

  ‘Pesk you with lice!’ Dakar stated, thick. ‘Douse that fiends-plaguing light in a bucket.’

  Sidir’s response was to shove the flame close, within risk of singeing clamped lashes. ‘Talk,’ he insisted, while Braggen uncoiled from his seat and offered to help torch some hair.

  Aware he was not going to wrest back his peace, the Mad Prophet dredged through his splintering hangover and coughed up his fast-fading augury. ‘The babe will be a girl-child.’

  Braggen’s bearded face split into a grin. ‘Whose?’ he asked, laughing, while Sidir’s ruthless fingers threatened to tear skin from bone on the force of resharpened impatience.

  Dakar rolled spaniel eyes. Sullen and already sliding towards stupor to escape his galvanic headache, he slurred, ‘Whose do you think?’ His mumble trailed off as he succumbed to turned senses. ‘Arithon’s; Elaira’s; conceived on this night.’

  The racketing cheers from the scouts at the trestle put the children’s rash outburst to shame.

  When Feithan strode over to quiet their foolishness, she was indignantly told of the posited chance there might be an heir for Rathain. She did not celebrate, but shouted for silence, and rushed to Sidir with expostulation.

  ‘The prophet’s all wrong. This is premature nonsense.’ Instantly flustered to jagged distress, she backed up her claim with bleak evidence. ‘No one planned for child-birth. I helped the enchantress prepare the decoction to prevent a conception myself.’

  ‘So I thought, also.’ Self-possessed and steel calm, Sidir fetched the small bucket kept to soak whetstones and doused the contents across Dakar’s face. ‘Where’s his Grace? Speak quickly! We haven’t got time to wait out your miserable stupor.’

  Dakar spluttered, rammed erect, and coughed through the streaming droplets. Spurred by Feithan’s glower, he declared with offence, ‘By Daelion Fatemaster’s immortal bollocks! Did you have to soak me to perdition?’

  ‘He’ll do it again,’ threatened Braggen. ‘Talk quickly. We’ve got to find Arithon.’

  ‘Find him yourself,’ Dakar grumbled, peevish. ‘Your liege will have potent defences laid down.’ He slapped off restraint, rolled clear of the puddle, and cursed until stopped by a hiccough. Since no Companion ever backed down, and Feithan’s ire promised far worse than a cold water bath from a bucket, the Mad Prophet let his unsteady frame be hauled upright. ‘Don’t you think your liege should be private? His enchantress is not going to thank you for meddling.’

  Feithan lost patience. ‘She’ll thank us less should your foresight prove true, and her gift of virginity brings her a birth that hasn’t been of her devising!’

  ‘She’s under life vows to a childless order,’ groused Dakar with planted complacency. ‘Stop fretting. We have an accord. Arithon’s not intending to father—’

  Sidir recaptured soaked cloth in both fists and braced the Mad Prophet’s swayed balance. ‘Well, vaunted seer, you’ve just stated otherwise!’

  Dakar squirmed in discomfort. ‘I’ve forecast a child?’ He broke off, brow furrowed, and ransacked his memory once more. Whatever mislaid image the concept recalled, his brosy cheeks drained. ‘Dharkaron, black angel of vengeance! Not this way!’

  ‘How?’ Feithan cracked, in no mood for maundering. ‘I would have sworn by Ath’s grace that Elaira had no deceit in her.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’ Dakar swallowed. ‘Damn her Prime for creating a blindsided noose.’ Sickness notwithstanding, he did not argue as the pair of Companions chose action and hauled him headlong past the trestle. While Braggen rousted the stupefied scouts, the Mad Prophet exposed the bleak fallacy. ‘We all thought Prime Selidie intended to snare Rathain’s prince by means of the order’s practice of debt.’ Shin barked on a footstool, he yelped as Sidir forced his stride to careening haste. ‘Instead, the devious witch has seeded an inactive string of spelled ciphers. She’s hidden that spring trap within the ephemeral energy of Elaira’s aura.’

  ‘She didn’t notice?’ said Feithan, a half-pace ahead and clearing obstructions away from the drunkard’s stumbling feet.

  Dakar shook his head, by now rallied enough to sweat himself green with distress. ‘Elaira’s will is bound into enslavement. Her Prime’s master sigil would have been used, set over a powerful cipher to hide the awareness the craft-mark was ever there. Since the working knots through her initiate’s oath, Arithon himself can’t detect its presence. He won’t foresee any pending entrapment. He can’t, while the spell chain’s inactive. Its directive isn’t going to engage until the lovers reach union. The release that completes tonight’s consummation will trigger a fertile conception.’

  ‘Dharkaron avenge!’ Braggen swore with scraped anguish. ‘By now, we could be too damned late.’

  The sundown report reaffirmed that assessment. Since the eager couple had slipped past the encampment’s defences before dusk, the off-watch scouts found themselves shamefaced. Despite dire stakes, they could not name the path their liege had taken to ensure his privacy.

  ‘He’ll have been running wards,’ the Mad Prophet gasped, wretchedly nauseous as his bulk was man-handled out of the lodge tent. He snatched a gulped breath, enfolded in sultry darkness, dense with the scents of white oak and pine resin. Against the fierce pressure of expectation, he could give only bad news.

  ‘Arithon’s a talent with initiate mastery! You must realize he outmatches my utmost trained strength. I hold your liege’s bond of permission in trust for emergency use in defence. But skin-tight on spirits, my vested knowledge is going to be little use.’

  The acute pause clipped short as Sidir took charge. ‘Then your gift of prophecy needs must suffice. We’ll augment your powers by means of a weakened infusion of seersweed.’

  Unsympathetic for the dismal result, that even a dilute dose of the toxic herb would inflame dissolute sickness into a wrenching state of torment, Sidir assigned Braggen to dispatch the scouts. Feithan rushed back for the treated tobacco, while the lodge sentry sprinted to summon a man whose lineage carried the inborn gift for subtle tracking.

  Too swiftly for his tender condition, Dakar found himself clutching his spinning head, while his filled lungs stung from the volatile smoke. Still reeli
ng on brandy, he succumbed all at once. His mind up-ended at plunging speed and hurtled him into tranced vision.

  ‘Find Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn!

  The relentless demand smashed his unmoored awareness and dropped him headlong, into a starlit clearing…

  …where, surrounded by silence, and ringed by a sentinel circle of oaks, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn paused on the bank of a stream. His arm rested over Elaira’s tucked shoulder, and his firm grasp was twined with her hands. The ground underfoot seemed new-made for lovers, a kindly hollow of green grass and mosses. While their pulses beat to the most primal desire and excitement raced through shared awareness, he smiled.

  ‘My dear, my beloved, let it be here.’

  Mage-sight unveiled the moment in all of its rarefied splendour: Elaira’s acquiescent reply unleashed an anticipation that flared like pearlescent mist through the stilled summer clearing.

  Arithon stepped back. Pleased speechless, he bowed to her. Then, a slight tremble marring his touch, he slipped his cuff-laces and peeled off his shirt. The cloth was let fall with abandon…

  Dakar coughed out the bitter stream of pent smoke. His disjointed perception met a strong, weathered face, set into the night’s humid darkness.

  ‘What did you see?’ Sidir’s voice demanded.

  The sound slashed through sensitized ears like a blade. Ripped witless with nausea, the Mad Prophet caught the Companion’s forearm and tugged. ‘That way. Go north. There’s a freshet with a pool. Hurry’ Yanked into a stumbling run, Dakar was aware of the tracker’s arrival and of someone talking with urgency. Then all solid sensation plunged away, folded into a dance wrought of light, laced into an eddying circle…

  …a crown prince’s soft, yet imperative phrasing asked for a line of permission. The trust he received was granted, then renewed with each of his unshod steps. His reverent progression caressed the land and called forth a synchronous balance. His enchantress looked on from the center of the gyre, aware of the spell-craft his presence enacted through talented sight and crown-sanctioned integrity. Heart and mind braided with water and air; stone and starlight framed a linked partnership with human bone and the fire of will. Naked, the man walked the bounds of the glen. His step stitched in and out of the streambed, and over the verdant ground. His wholeness of being fashioned the instrument that stroked the ephemeral flux into a spiralling vortex…

  Dakar shuddered, wrenched away from the vista of dream by hard fingers, bracing him upright. He sensed Sidir, bent close to hear his torn phrases. He snatched cognizance out of the wheeling haze, spun from the dangerous blend of raw alcohol and a poisoned, narcotic trance. ‘Arithon’s invoked his sovereign tie to the land to lay down a stay of protection.’

  Despair threaded through. The crushing impact of enhanced emotion doubled him over with dry heaves. Before Dakar recovered, Sidir had the clay-pipe repacked, with the bowl ignited to serve him.

  Shocked by the imperative behind such demand, the spellbinder gasped a strained protest. ‘Ath on earth! Even sober, I couldn’t breach a ward of such power and strength.’

  ‘Then get Fellowship backing,’ Sidir snapped, terse. ‘You cannot do less! A birth of the blood royal in Koriani hands would unleash a certain disaster.’

  The pipe-stem was jammed between Dakar’s teeth. He sucked deep. The intake of smoke flensed him out of his flesh and scattered him, skin, bones, and viscera…

  Far distant, tucked in his chair by the open casement at Althain Tower, Sethvir glanced up, alert. The tingling spill of fine energies set off by the grand warding enacted in Halwythwood already touched the strung web of his earth-sense. He knew what transpired. Though he could have invoked Athera’s awareness and arrested the stayspell’s completion, he held. His choice was firm, to guard the depleted reserves that secured the cracked seals that contained the last damaged grimwards. While sundown in Atainia stained the western sky crimson, he also received a concerned thought from Luhaine: specific facts tagged to a crystal that changed hands, plucked from a locked coffer at Forthmark.

  The next moment brought him the ragged alarm dispatched by Dakar’s distress call.

  Since the wind’s transmission would be far too slow, the Warden of Althain called on a risen star. Light from its vortex became the willing carrier for his intent and relayed his need to another point lying south; and then on again, bearing his message farther east, across the swept downs of Radmoore…

  …while, deep under the steaming black mire of Mirthlvain, a needle of self-contained indigo light paused on its hunting course.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Verrain queried out of the dark, where he leaned on his stave by a sinkpool. Touched aware by a star that crossed the misted zenith, then invited to share in ephemeral communion, he shivered. Splashed mantle tugged close, he listened with care as a far-distant crisis was revealed to the discorporate Sorcerer immersed in the bog.

  ‘I will manage,’ he stated in firm reassurance. ‘Return as you can. A few escaped migrants are not going to threaten a major breach of the compact.’

  The light in the waters died off as though pinched, and an icy breeze riffled the sedges. ‘Even one is too many,’ Kharadmon said. ‘Who will console a mother who wakens to find her slain child, bitten to death in its blankets?’

  Yet Prime Selidie’s plot to enslave the unborn heir to a crown prince demanded remedial action. The Sorcerer abandoned his labour of lancing the warped larvae burrowed into the mud-flats. He unfurled from the sediment in the marsh and departed on a blast of scorched haste…

  Dakar drifted. He saw stars like salt, and minnows like sequins, darting amid black-pearl current. Nearby, a scout’s hurried phrases described a glen carved out by a curve in the Willowbrook. A pipe-coal glowed red. Smoke plumed into his lungs. The pungent bite hit and unravelled his gut, then scattered his mind to oblivion. He did not stay lost. Drawn as to a beacon, his expanded awareness was gathered into a gyre, spun like a glorious coil of ribbon through the matrix of unseen light. The weaving stirred the undying flow of the mysteries, interlacing a Named thread into the subtle pattern that sustained Athera’s firmament. Dakar tumbled into the winding drift. Softly, he eased through the stay that a crown prince had spun to bridle the lane flux…

  …and there, Arithon stepped naked out of a pool, dripping under pale starlight. Water streamed from his obsidian hair. Droplets trickled over his skin, then scattered as lit sparks and diamonds. Unabashed, the spirit whose heritage embodied the realm stood for his enchantress’s inspection.

  She, a queen in her own right, surveyed him. Fully clothed, stilled as the earth’s hidden mystery, Elaira awaited his invitation on the mossy rise of the bank.

  Her beloved laughed and offered his hand.

  Elaira stepped forward to meet him, gowned in the unadorned cloth of her shift and a cascade of auburn hair. Her smile was radiance, and her eyes were grey dusk, lit as though caught by moonlight.

  Wild as storm amid sultry heat, beneath the crowned oaks of high summer, Arithon enfolded her into his arms. Breath lost, she sighed her contentment. Cool as the brook that had lately embraced him, he nestled against the linen that draped her. His damp lips brushed hers. Against him, she trembled, her eager warmth blossomed. The land underneath their partnered, bare feet received the thrill of that sensuous contact. A sparkle of light flared above their bent heads. Then Arithon’s clasp tightened. A whisper of tension thrummed the night air, prelude to the first, struck note of a song that had languished for long generations…

  Dakar cried out, wrenched back into his ungainly flesh by the frantic bite of Sidir’s fingers.

  ‘What do you see?’ The demand shot glass-edged echoes through his gapped mind and sliced across his stripped senses.

  The seer lost his vision. Weeping and sick from the tienelle’s influence, Dakar sagged against the Companion whose dauntless strength kept him upright.

  ‘No more seersweed,’ he mumbled. The acidic tang of ash on his tongue revolted his sensitized nerves. ‘Dr
ive me under too far, I’ll pass out and succumb to the deadly effects of the toxins.’

  ‘The decoction’s too weak,’ someone remarked, to his left. ‘The wastrel’s a slinking coward.’

  ‘He was drunk,’ Sidir stated. ‘Never make the mistake of believing Asandir would apprentice a fool.’

  ‘North,’ Dakar gasped. ‘They are farther upstream.’

  If the mazing effect of the gentle stay obscured the couple’s location, the whirlpool kink in the natural flux might as well have been a lit compass. Its pulsing course tugged the dense flow of the blood. To overstrung talent, the chord of plucked energies rang and shimmered like lightning-struck bells.

  The beckoning call pulled, then wound shattered vision into its revolving matrix…

  Arithon’s fingers slipped under dry linen and eased the shift off Elaira’s shoulders. Under dappling shade, her unexplored flesh glimmered satin, alive to his stroking touch. She melted. When the cloth, unattended, slithered down to her hips, then dropped at her feet, she stepped free. The dew in the grass lapped her ivory ankles. She heard his breath catch in wonder, and smiled.

  ‘Yours,’ murmured Elaira. ‘You can plunder at will. The day’s lasted too long. If you were intending to bind me through abstinence, don’t think for one second I’ll bear it.’

  Arithon laughed. He refused to be hurried. His eyes savoured the unveiled gift of her beauty. Then his hands moved again and, with sweet abandon, gathered the lush fall of her hair. He reeled her in. Then he laid claim to her parted mouth with a flooding, passionate tenderness.

  Light fired and burned, as bared skin met and touched. One spark jumped, then another as the flux points of their auras interfaced, and entwined. At each connection, a frisson of pleasure shocked through. That tingling, effervescent tonic of joy spun out shining tendrils of energy. These wove themselves into the lattice of sound and light sustained by the primal chord. Harmony rippled a glittering wave through the myriad stream of creation…