Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  'That and worse,' Sethvir grumbled. 'They've unearthed the whole pile of scrolls on the known genealogies as well.'

  Lysaer s'Ilessid, called Divine Prince, was said to be ensconced in the seaport haven at Capewell. The fact was whispered about in the taverns, and debated in the cozy, private salons of the rich. Yet where merchants bemoaned losses, frustrated by commerce slowed to a crawl by the savage weather, the outlying crofter whose barren fields languished was forced to endure the pinch of privation and scarcity.

  In town, the Light's Prince Exalted might succour the weak, and comfort the disaffected. But the working-man who built his house with his hands, and who lived by his sweat in the Korias Flats watched his family grow gaunt with despair.

  The traps set at need had long since claimed the last of the summer's importunate young hares. A father come home empty-handed again did not expect to encounter a white horse, tied up with six outriders' mounts in the churned-up mud of his yard. Amid lashing rain, the gold-stitched bridles and sunwheel saddle-cloths gleamed blindingly spotless and bright.

  However improbable, the visitation was real. The simple man blessed by the royal avatar's presence could not offer a traveller's hospitality. Shamed to the quick by his poverty, he could do no more than creep with embarrassment across his own threshold.

  The smells struck him first: of hot sausage, and cinnamon-spiced mead, and the fragrance of newly baked barley cakes. Afraid he was dreaming, he heard the music of his youngest child's squealing laughter. The man shed his soaked mantle and made his dazed way into a kitchen transformed by the startling brilliance of candles. His rough trestle was crammed with strange faces: imposing men wearing sunwheel surcoats and a self-assured air of cold competence. Yet their gleaming mail and spired helms were thrown into eclipse by the fair-haired figure in scintillant white, on fire with gold ribbon and diamonds.

  Divinity perched on the stool by the hearthstone. Such magnificence should have seemed displaced amid the rough setting. The rude board walls, and mortared stone hob of the farm-stead glorified nothing.

  Yet Lysaer s'Ilessid displayed no airs. His gilded head bent in artless collusion with the crofter's tiniest daughter. Clad in muddy rags, her drawn cheeks like paper, she clung to his upraised knee and clamoured to tug at his rings.

  The father stood, stunned, his breath stopped in his throat, as the white-clad avatar looked up. The attentive clarity in his blue eyes could have pierced a man through to the heart. Despite his lordly bearing, the speech that followed was not condescending. 'Please forgive the fact we've arrived, unannounced.'

  The crofter stared, tongue-tied. He had no grace, and no courtesy to fit the astounding occasion.

  Lysaer's ease was effortless. He scooped the ragged child into his arms and passed her off to the wife as though the best part of his privileged life had been spent dandling mannerless toddlers. The little girl wailed, grubby fingers still straining to snatch at the shine of his jewellery.

  Lysaer's smile held laughter. Burned into the air by a beauty that scorched the senses like fire and ice, he wrested off his largest diamond setting and handed the ring to the child. 'See that she doesn't spoil her teeth by gnawing the stone from her dowry.'

  Then, as though magnanimous gifts had no strings, he confronted the stupefied crofter.

  'He's asking for Edan,' the wife blurted, afraid. Two years past, in agonized grief, they had dedicated their older daughter to the Order of the Koriathain. Better, they felt, to lose her alive than abide the risk that her gift might draw notice from Avenor's Crown Examiner.

  The crofter swallowed, defiant. 'Edan's a man grown. Come of age, this past year. Neither I nor the wife can speak for him.' Lysaer s'Ilessid missed no small cue. His smile stayed woundingly genuine. 'A party come to make an arrest does not bring food, or leave diamonds. Your young man is quite safe. He will choose for himself. Withhold his consent, and I'll leave you in peace. Your child keeps the ring, since it pleases her.'

  In a croft crammed with men wearing chain-mail and swords, that statement seemed beyond reason. More than gemstones flecked that form in starred light. The crofter reeled, his breaths rushed too fast, and his fists clenched with sweating terror.

  'Sit down, good fellow.' Lysaer strode forward. His warm, steering grip eased the crofter's stunned frame past the grinning sprawl of his outriders, and into the better chair by the fire-place. No father should weigh his son's lot in soaked clothes, on the misery of an empty stomach. Your wife's told me that Edan's out mucking the barn? Then bide your time. Let him finish his chores. You'll have enough time to measure your feelings and question my motivation.'

  The elegant creature moved on and perched a casual hip on the trestle. The rough plank might as well have been a throne, the way his regal bearing still blinded. The crofter found even the simplest speech painful. 'What brings your exalted self to us, asking?'

  'You can't guess? Because Edan's a sensitive.' Those sapphire eyes stayed direct, though the answer entailed an explosive disclosure. 'The Light is calling for talent to serve. Your son's gift will soon be sorely needed.'

  'Why?' The question burned. Grief for the lost daughter was still too raw to broach the sore subject, headlong.

  The wife was less reticent. 'Your Crown Examiner burns talent!'

  'My Crown Examiner guards against misuse that harms innocents,' Lysaer corrected with unflinching

  candour. 'He destroys the potential minions of Shadow, wherever such pockets of depravity exist. And they are wide-spread. I carry firm proof: an evil faction has made inroads against us. Corrupt men who ply the dark arts have poisoned my regency at Avenor. I'm bound by realm law to see justice done. Would your son stand up with a hand-picked few? The most gifted among them will receive training to fill the seats of high office. The Light's cause will not pander to wealth or ambition! I would have staunch young blood at my back to lend oversight in my absence.'

  'He will go,' said the crofter. 'For that honest cause, we will spare him.'

  The wife dropped the spoon in the kettle with a clang. 'You're that certain?'

  Yet in a starved household with no crops to harvest, the change of fortune offered an unparalleled gift of opportunity. 'Let him go, Vae. Where better? You know in your heart, wishful thinking won't make him a farmer.'

  The wife bent her head. She would have to agree. What prospects could the young boy expect among neighbours who distrusted talent? Sworn to Lysaer's banner, Edan would no longer be shunned. Nor would he be tempted to fall into wrong company and undertake harmful practice. 'He will go to the Light,' the crofter repeated. Over the bounty of the hot meal, he heard through the Divine Prince's straightforward terms. When the boy came in, redolent of the cow-byre, the grant of consent had become a formality.

  One had but to look at his young, unmarked face: the avatar's presence struck the living spark that ignited to incandescent resolve.

  The sunwheel outriders arose and moved out to collect the horses tied up in the yard. They mounted Edan on a fine, dappled mare, while the family he would leave sonless behind him was signed onto the rolls by the hand of Prince Lysaer, himself. They received the sealed parchment, promised a dedicate's crown stipend that would keep them in comfort for life.

  As the glittering cavalcade clattered through the sagged gate, and the cruel wind blew the cold rains of a premature winter, the wife blotted tears for her departed child, now destined for wider horizons. 'How did those men find us?'

  The crofter hugged her stooped shoulders, just as fiercely inclined to weep. 'Need you put such a question, or give way to doubts? That creature who chose him was god sent.'

  Late Autumn 5670

  Sword

  Immersed in a physical exercise learned at Rauven to sharpen reflex and balance, Arithon stood, eyes closed, in the peculiar little six-sided chamber that centered Kewar's private library. Each wall was cut by an open arch. The portals led off into separate rooms, filled floor to ceiling with books and scrolled maps, and bronze cornered
chests crammed with arcane paraphernalia. Davien's tastes were eclectic. His fascination with architecture infused all his works. In this place, the domed ceiling amplified sound with precise and unnerving clarity.

  Rathain's prince had not lit the sconces. Amid absolute dark in that window-less place, the time might have been night or day. A mage-trained awareness could discern which was truth. The spiralling whisper of Athera's magnetics ran through the matrix of mineral, and plant, and also the human aura. The touch of sunlight made mountain rock speak.

  Outside of Kewar, the first blush of daybreak fired the snow-fields in carmine and orange.

  Inside, immersed in velvet silence and dark, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn exercised body and mind. He anchored his breathing to the cycles of sky and earth. In disciplined form, through a dance-step range of movement, he precisely aligned his etheric awareness.

  Sound acquired an expanded clarity, and light, a purified brilliance. The dark was not featureless, and silence was not still. The master initiate moved through the forms, enraptured and wrapped in the expanded glory of mage-sight.

  The queer shape of the vestibule allowed no mistakes. Its properties magnified every flawed thought as well as each snagging distraction. Yet Arithon had chosen the site out of preference. The vexing enhancement of untoward noise made his solitude the more difficult to breach without warning. Immersed in the web of subtle perception, he first sensed a re-arrangement of air, as though the element suddenly became more. Chameleon-like, the effect disappeared the moment he plumbed for the source.

  He stopped trying. Ruffled, he paused with closed eyes: and so captured the faintest, smoke bloom of movement that no material senses might capture. A ripple of warmth touched against the smoothed veil of his aura, and his Sorcerer host stood before him, two practice sticks gripped in his hands.

  Davien's censure was arid as he accused, 'You're losing your edge.'

  Arithon smiled, eyes open and mild. 'Am I, in fact?'

  Davien did not answer. Wrapped in pitch-dark, he tossed one of the sticks, hard.

  His targeted victim fielded the catch. The slap of the wood against his bare flesh rattled the stilled air with echoes. Warned by sharp instinct, Arithon also parried. The ferocious crack as the sticks collided destroyed the last vestige of peace. In darkness, reliant on subtle mage-sight, the Master of Shadow was compelled to match the challenge of Davien's latest caprice. Strict schooling sustained him. The responses required for blindfold sparring had been practised to ingrained reactions since childhood. Attuned with the subtle aspects of self that expanded the range of perception, he rose to meet Davien's fast-paced assault. He had stayed fit. His body moved with the grace of a tiger, sustained by an effortless balance.

  Where the expanded reach of his gifts might slip his grasp and whirl him into the slip-stream of prescience, Arithon stayed centered. He constrained his willed focus, pushed back the rogue trance state that unveiled the blurred imprints of what might be. Trained breathing steadied him. The sticks cracked and slid, each blow met and turned in the actual frame, born from the ephemeral moment as choice and willed movement begat consequence.

  Arithon deflected each whistling strike, his faculties stretched to the verge of that heightened awareness. Davien did not play by predictable parameters. A success never passed uncontested. Behind the straightforward sparring with sticks, there would be the arcane twist that must press mental wit, and vault the intellect to imaginative acuity.

  Braced for such tricks, Rathain's prince was not stunned by surprise when his parry in form failed to block the Sorcerer's descending riposte. Two-handed style came naturally as breath. As his stick encountered no clash of impact, his left hand already responded. Arithon caught the hammering swing of the wood. The opposing blow slapped into his opened palm. He locked agile fingers and captured the stick, informed by the sting that a miss or a fumble would have bruised his unpadded shoulder.

  Davien said, from the darkness, 'Where's your trust, Teir's'Ffalenn? Don't you think I could have

  recouped a missed blow the same way I evaded your parry?' He stood; calmly countered the wrenching twist, just tried with intent to disarm him. 'You should heed all my free words of warning, my friend. I didn't try you with a bared sword.'

  The rejected suggestion to visit the armoury had not been met with complacency.

  Arithon kept his fierce hold on the contested stick, too wary to fall for distraction. 'Why should I rush to pay court to a weapon whose purpose is blood and destruction?'

  The wood left his grasp, dissolved away to nothing. The wall sconces ignited at the same instant. Flame-light unveiled the Sorcerer's expression of unabashed provocation. 'You might test that presumption.'

  Rathain's prince lowered his foolishly empty fist, his smile tried to edged humour. 'First tell me why you think that I should.'

  Davien laughed. 'That would be unsporting. Nor will I apologize for disrupting your privacy. Evenstar's beating the narrows to Alestron. Three days from now, she'll reach the s'Brydion citadel and drop anchor as the slack tide turns.'

  'Lysaer's errant wife cannot be my concern.' Lightly clad in dark hose, a loose shirt, and soft boots for wearing, indoors, Arithon was a study in crisp black and white, except for his eyes, which drank in the light like sheared tourmaline. 'One princess bagged like caught game was enough. Let this one sharpen her claws and her wit on somebody else's forbearance.'

  An even head taller, the Sorcerer posed the more flamboyant figure, his russet jerkin and orange sleeves offset by chocolate-brown breeches. 'You won't meet her,' he said. 'Duke Bransian's no fool. Ellaine will be sent inland to a safer refuge than Alestron's armed walls can provide.' The pause hung for an instant. Then, 'It's the volatile paper she carries that's going to fling stones in the wasp's nest.'

  Again, Rathain's prince would not rise to the bait. 'Why not grant the duke the free use of my sword? You have my permission. Deliver it.'

  Yet this time, the use of barbed insolence misfired. Davien's eyelids swept down, masking an expression that was not anger. His form disappeared on an inrush of air that extinguished the wicks and knifed words through the sudden dark. 'Then fly blind, my wild falcon. You are making the narrow and dangerous assumption that the sword handed down with your ancestry was ever forged for the purpose of killing.'

  Arithon started, his inrush of breath spiked through the rustling morass of echoes.

  'Oh yes! Now you'll listen.' The Sorcerer's sharp laugh held more warning than triumph. 'I'm not hazing you with nonsensical riddles. Is your store of trained knowledge deficient, your Grace? Then correct your ignorance! Traithe carries a knife that has never drawn blood.'

  'I'm not ready for this!' said Arithon, laid open and trapped by a wall of inner reluctance. But he was alone. The library vestibule was empty. He stood, shivering under a film of chill sweat, with the integrated balance of body and mind undone by the race of his heart-beat.

  Too prudent to plunge headlong into deep waters, Arithon spent days immersed in odd books of esoterica. He perused the crabbed scribbles written by hedge talent on flocked sheets of vegetable paper; the smoke-scented parchments of conjurers and ceremonial healers, and the cedar boxes of slate wafers scratched with a stylus, inscribed by the desert tribes' loremen. Of Paravian knowledge on the forging of steel, he found nothing committed to ink. Only the odd reference, amid Ciladis's verse, of craftings done in the Ilitharan forges, then augmented by Riathan and Athlien singers. Such inferences lay past the concrete reach of thought or written words to encompass. Therefore, their access must be sought in mage-sight.

  Since his point had been taken, Davien granted Arithon's request to borrow from Kewar's herb stores. Bearing a braided twist of sweet-grass, his own trail-worn wallet with flint and steel striker, and a precious glass phial of rose oil, the Master of Shadow made his way to the armoury at last to confront the heirloom sword bestowed on his distant forebear.

  The Sorcerer whose riddle had prompted that step kept his meddlesom
e nature in hand. Rathain's prince was alone as he braved the threshold past the studded door.

  The chain-hung oil wicks that streamed from the wall brackets were, thoughtfully, already lit. Ahead of him lay a circular chamber, surrounded by lacquer cabinets. Their abalone inlay gleamed in soft rainbows, patterned in the vine-leaf motif favoured by Vhalzein's master-craftsmen. The break-front doors were closed, but not locked. A visitor might examine their contents to satisfy curiosity.

  Arithon was not tempted. He entered the armoury, barefoot, slightly shivering in the chill air. His sword, Alithiel, awaited his pleasure, hung on an upright stand.

  The steel had been cleaned. The shining black blade was stripped of the mean sheath he had used through his flight across Daon Ramon Barrens. Quiescent, the inlaid Paravian runes gleamed like opal glass. The exquisite swept hilt and emerald-set pommel gave rise to a quiver of thrill. The exceptional grace that marked centaur artistry must always catch mortal breath in the throat.

  Killing weapon, or not, the balance and temper of a sword forged at Isaer could not be equaled, or faulted.

  Arithon lit the sweet-grass. Finely trembling, he blew out the flame and fanned air on the crimson embers. Then, decisive, he stepped forward and knelt. With slow passes, he wreathed the standing weapon in smoke, a time-honoured ritual of cleansing. For generations beyond living memory, the blade had been carried and used in armed conflict. If Davien's provocative implication held truth, such blood-letting destruction had evoked something worse than an ignorant mistake.

  When the grass had burned down, and the air was hazed blue with its lingering fragrance, Arithon closed his eyes and centered himself. He steeled his raw nerves. Then he uncorked the glass phial of rose-oil, and anointed the tips of his fingers.

  The rich fragrance enveloped him. He breathed in the scent. Ciladis's writings had taught that the flower's arcane properties touched the mind and entrained the emotions toward healing. Arithon embraced the response through mage-trained intent. Contrite with apology, he sat cross-legged on the stone floor.