Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

by Janny Wurts

  Too swiftly for his tender condition, Dakar found himself clutching his spinning head, while his filled lungs stung from the volatile smoke. Still reeling 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. 'Drive 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 ofjoy 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 . . .

  Dakar surfaced, weeping. 'I can't do this,' he whispered. 'It's a straight violation.' The desecration of such primordial beauty surely touched on the realm of the sacred. 'You have to.' Sidir's urgent push shoved him onwards, while the tracker who knelt at the verge of the Willowbrook surveyed a tussock of moss.

  Relentless, he pointed. 'This way. We're close. They can't have gone very much farther. There's a falls and a stretch of white water, ahead.'

  Yet the gifts of the prophet, fired by tienelle, could sense the deep draw of the lane flux. The glen where the consummate act was unfolding lay well beyond those thrashed rapids. A guarded spirit who treasured his privacy, Arithon had challenged the reach of his talent to provide a setting of pristine peace.

  'Ath, please! I can't do this,' the spellbinder begged, while Sidir crouched over him, adamant. The loyal Companion dared not bend for mercy. The clay-pipe was relit, then the stem forced between the spellbinder's chattering teeth.

  The smoke was inducted, its bitter astringency stripping the spirit out of the flesh . . .

  Savoured like wine in her lover's embrace, Elaira encountered each layer of Arithon’s mage-taught defences. The stilled points of power that shielded his core were unmasked by her touch, then surrendered, the keys to their opening set into her hands.

  'Yours,' he affirmed.

  Her fingers explored and trailed down his breast. Where she stroked, those seamless protections

  gave way. Opened, the vulnerable heart-line was freed to stream into partnered connection.

  Her being responded. Fine energies interlaced between them. Ancient in renewal as the dance between sun and tide, the rarified flux of the ley burst and burned, then blazed in meteoric splendour about them.

  The shower of ecstasy shuddered through flesh: in caught breath, in raced pulse, and in spurts of electrical tingles that ravished the nerves like a tonic.

  Elaira clung to her beloved's sure strength. 'Earth and sky, Arithon! Where are you taking me?'

  His kiss brushed her ear. While his reverent clasp cradled her, he let her down onto the shift, left tumbled amid dew-drenched grasses. Athlieria, beloved,' her Teir's'Ffalenn answered. 'We'll sail through the realms of pure light, past the veil. Where else would such grandeur befitting?'

  'You need no such setting,' Elaira replied. 'The oaks and the air by themselves frame your rightness. Your being requires no adornment.'

  'By myself, I am not enough.' His inner longing verged upon desolate, as starving, he settled, and tenderly drew her against him . . .

  Ripped blind and deaf, Dakar cried out. He felt shaken and shattered in pieces. Sidir's rough fists grasped him. The hold pinched his shoulders and harried his flesh, while he raked back his scattered awareness.

  'Which way?' the Companion exhorted the scout. The white hair at his temples gleamed like thrown salt in the green-scented muddle of darkness. Dakar peered, but lost view of the man's looming face. He spun, slipped his grounding, then dissolved as pure sound, back into the coiling vortex . . .

  She lay, tucked in sublime contact against his scorching flesh, while desire built like a storm front within her. Touch answered, a courtship that advanced and retreated, a fractional step shy of requital. His hair brushed her cheek. The loose ends drank the tears of unalloyed pleasure that welled through her gently closed lashes. As her form took fire, then blazed to match the explosive need channelled through him, he called to her spirit. His phrases in lyric Paravian chiselled their empathy into exquisite refinement. Led past inexperience, Elaira traced his taut flesh. Another access point snapped like silk thread. Resistance dissolved and poured forth his light. His bright, silver ribbons of essence met hers, weaving the warp and the weft. The tension unleashed by their building union meshed into the subtle lattice interlaced through the soil beneath them.

  Twined energies sang and locked into connection. A harmonic resonance forged out of love, the match of crown prince to paired mate was acknowledged amid the grand tapestry as their living geometry conjoined with the flux. The land's mysteries welcomed their wholeness and set seal to their cadenced courtship.

  Wild light soared into expansion as their fervour awakened the upper registers that extended beyond the senses. The pattern spilled outwards, each unfurling ray netted into a spiral by Arithon's worked protection. The surge also pierced downwards, ranging into the deeps of the earth, each crystalline tone beneath hearing.

  Suspended; sustained; simultaneously lifted, man and woman awoke to themselves.

  The unquiet male spirit understood his pure silence; while Elaira's laughter ran from her like water, pure as the child's, fulfilled as the mother's, and wise as the transcendent crone's . . .

  . . . hurled off his feet, his sighted eyes dazzled, Dakar crashed to his knees in the streambed. Sharp stones bruised his shins. Chill water purled over his knuckles, and chased liquid ice through frail bone and taut sinew. 'I can't,' he protested.

  Rude hands caught his wrists. Slung back to his feet, dragged ahead like a carcass, he shivered in agonized trauma. 'They are raising a grand confluence,' he gasped to Sidir. 'If we break the warding set over their presence, the roused energies reined into a tempered eddy will run to ground with the charge of a levin-bolt. The effects will excite the entire fourth lane. The cresting wave will carry for leagues, and doubtless smash glass-work in Falgaire.'

  'You forecast a birth!' Sidir shouted, unmoved. 'Can we permit such a damaging risk? Who shoulders the price if a crown prince's child should fall to the usage of Koriathain?'

  Hauled, dripping, onto the Willowbrook's shore, Dakar panted while the scout stretched his talent to coax portents out of the game trails. A whippoor-will called through the darkened leaves. A bull-frog's bass chorus answered. The Mad Prophet crouched with his ringing head in his hands, while trembling misery wrung him to nausea. Fragments of vision scored him like rain, etching across the transparent frame that demarked his frail hold on mortality . . .
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  'Elaira, beloved. Elaira . . .'

  The spellbinder clapped his palms over his ears. Shamed as the eavesdropper caught by the scruff, he ripped out his savage rebuttal. 'No reason holds meaning before such a breach!'

  Against the unfolding pavane of the mysteries, pounding against his mazed senses, the strivings of men and the warped practice of witches fell away as noise without meaning.

  'More smoke,' Sidir commanded.

  Dakar coughed, wretched. No liegeman's persistence was going to matter. As mage or as prophet, he could not be sure the pending completion could be stopped by any-one's act of profane intervention.

  The pipe-stem touched his lips. Too beaten to argue, the spellbinder sucked in the harsh blend of tienelle and tobacco. The fumes wracked his lungs. His stabbed brain took fire.

  Far distant, he heard Sidir's urgent voice, exhorting the tracker to hurry . . .

  She touched, and another access point joined. Current unleashed through the near-complete tapestry, with only a strand left remaining. Arithon gasped. Already the shocking, bright current of pleasure streamed towards the moment of confluence. At one in mind and emotion since Merior, now, their dimensional contact merged through the etheric and sounded the down-stepped octaves of physical frequency. The cresting resonance rocked the last, imposed stay of a master's initiate restraint.

  A cascading shudder thrilled his aroused flesh. Riven through by the deluge, Arithon fought to brake the sweet, sliding rush towards unravelling ecstasy. Now, when precaution became a torment, and every faculty lay under siege by the drive towards sensual explosion, the potential for ruin was heightened.

  If Prime Matriarch Selidie had placed a hook, this would be the moment to trap him.

  He had entreated Elaira to trust him, a promise he held as sacrosanct. Adamant where he would have preferred to ease into the peace of full union, he held. Arithon summoned his mage-sense. He swept through the singing bands of fine energies that comprised their interlocked auras.