by Janny Wurts
Arithon's explosive rejection lashed out like a hurled sheet of balefire. Witnessed at second hand, its natural force left Elaira shaken. Even while shocked outside his right mind, Arithon's guard could unbind the Koriani sigil of command.
Dakar caught the full brunt, whimpering in misery. By the martyred whine of his curses, the enchantress derived that the fragmented horrors of the tienelle vision had bled through his attempted contact. Smashed to reeling retreat, Dakar understood any subsequent effort to help would be hammered down with the same vengeful finality.
'Cry mercy,' Elaira whispered, wrung to sorry distress for the fact she was just as wretchedly helpless. Her own resource fell just as woefully short to scale a barrier of such vicious magnitude.
Yet where prudent talent should have known to step back, the Mad Prophet returned like a terrier. Again his attempt was mauled to lame shreds. Battered numb, hazed dizzy, well aware his slipshod technique was outmatched, the Mad Prophet hauled himself up by his bootstraps and rashly refused to give in.
Elaira tracked the decision, incredulous. 'Ath's deathless grace! Dakar, don't try. The next strike must surely shatter him!'
Yet the past was not mutable. Bound to the chain of enacted event, the fat spellbinder gathered himself, weeping, and launched off a third attempt.
The insidious progression would not stay before breaking crisis. Elaira shared Arithon's beleaguered recognition that the reliving was going to unstring him. His defenses had crumpled, that ill-fated night aboard Khetienn; Dakar's reenacted response was going to tear him wide open. For that crucial instant, he must stand as he had, inwardly stripped of protection. Past and present would intersect in Kewar Tunnel. His core self would be stripped naked and exposed to possession by Desh-thiere's curse.
Frozen to horror, Elaira looked on. The grief all but savaged her, that her power fell short to stave off the fall of disaster.
Dakar's strike shocked through vision like thundering storm, the brutalities of Tal Quorin and Minderl Bay seized and turned back as the edged weapon to stun Arithon's mind to paralysis. The tactic was deployed with icy forethought, as Arithon's awareness spiraled unchecked, entrapped in the throes of drugged nightmare.
Elaira gasped, shocked dumb as the blow fell. She scarcely tracked the surgical follow-through, made on the moment the Master of Shadow flinched into agonized recoil. Dakar attacked in dead earnest, his spearpoint the most reviling scenes ripped from his victim's cursed past.
'Oh beloved.' Bleeding with sympathy, the enchantress shuddered with each smashing impact as the Mad Prophet punched roughshod through Arithon's beleaguered identity. She could but watch, slapped numb by stark suffering, as the corrosive remorse became excised from each field of slaughter. The Mad Prophet stayed the course of that lacerating history, sealed against scruple or pity. He smashed privacy wholesale. Memory for ugly, reprehensible memory, he cut through with locked runes of binding and laid claim to Arithon's innermost mind. Each contested sequence of raw recollection, the Mad Prophet closed into the circle of his own being. There, as he hoped, a mage trained to mastery would hesitate before daring trespass.
That night in Khetienn's stern cabin, Arithon succumbed.
A stunning victory for Dakar in the past, one that had wrested Arithon's salvation from the seizures of tienelle poisoning. Yet here, relived in the Maze of Davien, embattled by the roused threat of Desh-thiere, the exposure flung wide the gates to disaster.
The balance of the world rocked in that moment.
Elaira could do nothing, nothing at all, except hide her useless presence; a shaming, sad epitaph, to leave her beloved no more than his false belief in her safety.
Yet as Desh-thiere's curse rose in force to flatten its helpless prey, Arithon's current lack of response struck a shrilling note of discrepancy.
'You have a plan?' gasped Elaira, incredulous. Limp surrender made no sense from a man who never accepted defeat, even when he was beaten.
Elaira held herself braced, too much in pain to hang her hope on a straw. Hard as she tried, she imagined no course that could buy any last-ditch evasion.
Yet as the red coils of the curse flared into blinding coruscation, the Mad Prophet had not taken wise charge as a mage, to steer Arithon's drug-inflamed consciousness back to safe harbor. Instead, swamped by inept uncertainty, Dakar relied on the absence of guilt to lift the block over Arithon's mage-sight.
All unwitting, the enchantress was caught by surprise, still linked to Arithon's consciousness.
The explosive unfurling of his restored talent struck her wards like an unshielded blast of white light. Spun into the firestorm, Elaira sensed his empowered awareness meet and grapple the curse's bid for possession. As the garroting coils of compulsion closed down, choking his access to self, the battering exchange of attack and defense came on too fast for her to assimilate.
The Mistwraith's geas had its victim stripped naked, but no longer helplessly vulnerable. On set course with his past, Arithon wielded the untrammeled gifts of his mastery; as well his maze-bound awareness redefined the event, granting unilateral vision into the crystalline web of earned consequence. He fell back on leverage and genius. His pulsed burst of rage threw wracking strain against Desh-thiere's curse-bound compulsion. Arithon engaged talent in affirmation of private identity, lent borrowed force on the strength of a Fellowship seal set under blood oath at Athir. His focused will blazed and struck through.
Final possession was narrowly denied, but not without unforeseen backlash.
The mage-trained, rigorous survey he launched to cleanse and balance his aura raked Elaira's stilled spells of concealment like the actinic slam of a lightning bolt. In present awareness, Arithon perceived the circle masked under her wards. Given unshielded vision, his bristling assessment cut through her set runes of concealment on the speed of furious reflex.
Stunned shock limned the moment in pristine silence.
On the stopped cusp of time, strung on the synapse leap between startled, first contact and the irrevocable step of conscious recognition, Arithon grasped the instinctive premonition he had stumbled against lethal peril. Davien's Maze was a Fellowship warding, a framework of spellcraft far outside his strength that would suffer no act of trespass. He realized also: only one presence in all of Athera might touch on his inner boundaries without ruffling his reflexive protections.
Arithon's reaction arrested instinct, shattered every rule of time and progression. Pressed by agonized need, he burst limitations and ripped past the veil, claiming the simultaneous intersection of past and present in the higher-range frequency of synchronous existence. Once there, he accessed grand conjury and slapped down the wardings that circled Elaira's self-contained presence, liven as Dakar had done to shield a snatched store of punishing memories, Arithon embraced his beloved's linked consciousness and enclosed her within the self-aware current of his vitality.
He wedded her at one with the inviolate love he cherished within his heart. One thread and one mind, Elaira felt herself claimed as an inseparable part of him. Not trusting such acceptance to shield her from harm, he infused her with himself, poured the inner grace of his being through her spirit in turn, until even the maze's exacting, cold wards could not unspin his meshed weave and define her autonomous existence. Within that sealed haven, that core of free will that no Fellowship Sorcerer would venture to violate, poised over a well of stopped time, Arithon took pause. Shuddering yet from his jolt of raw fear, he marveled. His care for her bloomed, illuminating the exquisite jewel of a consummate, vulnerable intimacy.
'I'm not sorry,' Elaira ventured at brief length. 'Sony's too small a word for what's happened. Since I didn't destroy us, I can only find space to be glad. Can you ever forgive me?'
'You are here,' said Arithon, still dizzied to wonderment. His stunned joy turned wry. 'And anyway, what's between us to forgive? By this I presume the chase is still on, with my carcass decried as the Prime Matriarch's prized trophy?'
'They'd prefer you caged living,' Elaira
admitted, her riposte touched to acid chagrin. Cocooned in his presence, the connection between them was wholly without shadow or subterfuge.
Arithon perceived her naked self just as clearly. She need not fear misunderstanding. In the maze, joined as one, he must unequivocally discern that her loyal priority lay with him. Given his attentive, searching focus, he had already mapped the extent of Prime Selidie's clever bind; how the treacherous release to exercise autonomy let Elaira's presence in love become the made tool of Koriani machination.
'You aren't Fionn Areth,' Arithon pointed out, stung to fraught apprehension as he further explored the extent of her vulnerability.
She chose to dig back, knowing razor-edged wit sometimes eased his shattering concern, 'Well, you smashed their last trap and made off with the bait.'
Yet this time his maudlin mood did not break. If the stakes carried too charged a peril for mirth, he matched her in lockstep for wit. 'The lesson didn't stick. A hatchling crow has better memory.'
'Crows have more brains than to peck at a wildcat, far less try the deadly trick twice. Should I trust you?'
'Ahead of your order?' Now Arithon did laugh. 'I would, but for having the Mistwraith in tow. What blandishment would entice Prime Selidie to give up?'
'She won't,' said Elaira in levelest honesty. 'It's a two-legged trait, to meddle with wildfire bare-handed. And Jaelot blistered. A shaming performance.' In fact, Arithon had played a Senior Circle selected for reliable experience for a pack of rank fools, no sort of behavior to make a proud, female order tamely tuck tail and give up. 'Though it costs blood and death, the Matriarch wants her finale.'
'Quite. It's the bitch without the bone.' Arithon's inner smile reflected his bitter recrimination. 'I've regretted that, often, in hindsight. Beloved, I'm sorry. Jaelot was a botch-up. Can you accept my apology? I would have spared having you stuck as the lynchpin turning the crux.'
'Well, there hasn't been leisure to invent another script.' Squeezed dry of humor, Elaira fell back on immutable truth. 'You are loved. That counts far more. I would rather stand at your back and do nothing than suffocate elsewhere in safety. Nor will I extend any help unless you ask me.'
Arithon shut his eyes, struck speechless with gratitude. Then he turned his head, his unseeing regard trained once again down the tunnel in wide-lashed, forced concentration. 'I would suffer any indignity of Selidie's before I allowed myself to fall prey to the curse of Desh-thiere. If I lapse into madness, take my permission here and now. Should my life become threatened, don't lie, beloved. Even had I not sworn my oath to the Fellowship, I could no more watch you die than cease breathing. My love for you will not suffer false promises. Honor my preference, but only if you are able. For myself, in plain truth, I lack the fiber to hold firm and see you take harm.'
Which meant he must live at all cost or sacrifice. More than a seal set in blood tied his life. To spare her, he would indebt himself to the Koriani Prime Council a hundred times over. Cruel hardship still confounded his best-laid intent. Kewar's maze might defeat him, regardless. 'We have Vastmark ahead. Then an affray at Riverton that made a mockery of my oath as a crown prince. Merciful Ath! I can't do a thing to spare you from sharing the raw worst!'
'Don't try,' Elaira returned, her admonishment gentle. 'You survived both. So can I. Please remember.'
He swallowed again, forced down the rogue panic, that he could not manage to make his wracked body stop shaking. 'You know I can't keep my talent to shield you. I'll be blind once again, after this phase of reliving plays itself through.'
'You will endure,' said Elaira. 'You must.' Then, anguished, she let him explore the bleeding roots of her pity. 'Oh, beloved! Can you not weep and be done? Further suffering is useless, a meaningless punishment. Have you not paid enough for the deaths of the innocents you could not prevent at Tal Quorin?'
Arithon drew in a tortured breath. He lifted his bracing hand from chill stone and crossed both forearms over his breast. Yet no gesture could rebind his torn heart, or refound his worn store of courage. 'Guilt offers no haven, since payment and suffering can never put right any loss that has already happened. Remorse can't bring back even one child. Asandir's question is answered.' He paused, buried his face in scraped palms, then stated in sorrowful, stripped anguish, 'Yet where lies the reprieve? Desh-thiere's curse will not answer the release of self-forgiveness, or any other Ath-given grace allotted to our human spirit!'
Elaira had always suspected his lost talent was self-inflicted, a defense to ensure his aptitude for grand conjury could never again be turned as a weapon to kill. 'Choose to try,' she exhorted. 'Above anyone living, I trust you. My Prime's trap has now been unmasked by your hand. Therefore, my order cannot charge you with debt. If my presence now strengthens your will to survive, the advantage comes as the consequence of your own actions.'
Which words fell short. If she came to harm through a failure of his, she saw all too clearly the blight would destroy him. Nor had he the power to unbind Davien's Maze bare-handed, or set her free of the strangling ties of a Koriani vow of life service.
'Reset your wardfield, beloved,' Arithon said, grim. 'The guard seals on this place will not forgive, and I don't trust Prime Selidie not to claim intervention if I take the first step joined to the sweet joy of your contact.'
He was right to move on. Delay would spare nothing; only make the needful but harsh separation all the more difficult to complete. Elaira could not ease his dread for the trials to come, but only release him to address his demons without grinding him down with the misery of additional forethought. 'When you master this maze, when you see sky again, I'll indulge my bound orders and find my way to your side. Surely between us we can contrive stirring escapades to balk Prime Selidie's will? In fact, the bait's willing. We, might actually drive her to hair-ripping fury if you wish.'
'Kiss under the moon till the stars fall?' Arithon smiled, the tenderness in him a radiance clean as new morning. 'My dear, my heart, for your order's comeuppance, I'll bow to your pleasure on all counts. Consider the promise as done.'
Yet to hold his word true, he first must surmount the ordeals that awaited ahead.
Still wrapped in the shelter of Arithon's protection, Elairil rewove her tight ring of wardspells. 'You will triumph,' she whispered, steady as she brought an end to an intimacy fast becoming too hurtful to sustain. By the gift of a miracle, her will remained firm as she shaped the last rune of closure. The circle joined. A flare of searing light severed her awareness back into desolate separation.
Easier, surely, to rip out her heart, than to bear the set apprehension whitening Arithon's features. Now alone in the spell-charged gloom of the cavern, he shied back from measuring the testing to come. Reflection would but tear him to lethal uncertainty. Forced by exigency to secure Elaira's safety, Arithon stepped forward with no pause at all to regroup.
The past reclaimed him, thrusting him back into the Khetienn's locked stern cabin at the moment when Dakar's stopgap sacrifice had restored his access to mage-sight. Again, he would spurn the safe course of escape. Ruled by the fist of unmalleable expediency, he rejected the decision to transmute the tienelle's potency and stand down . . .
* * *
His choice reached Elaira within her sealed wards like a dousing shock of thrown ice water. Her dismay rivaled Dakar's, as she shared recognition that her beloved intended to take up the dropped reins of his purpose, and scry the cycles of probability that attended the hour Lysaer's war host would march into Vastmark. As committed as he had been on the eve of Tal Quorin, Arithon would not meet that armed invasion blindly. He engaged his talent and single-mindedly pursued sequential auguries, each grueling course of posited choice tested to define the best tactics to grind down and starve out the enemy. Each combination was replayed, many times, at each repetition revised to bring the toll of lives down, and to ensure that the tribal archers he had hired as marksmen would not become decimated or run from their ancestral territory.
The posed cou
rse of each future unreeled as running waves of searing impressions: of men caught in traps, or shot down in passes; of townborn patrols lured onto weathered stone ledges, to perish of falls as the unstable footing gave way; of men hazed up impassable gullies, then cut off, for bowmen to shoot down at leisure. She watched her beloved test substitute tactics: to spare this shepherd an end, trapped and tortured for information; to dispatch toward safety that encampment of mothers and young children; to deflect those advances that could not be stopped. Arithon worked the disparate threads of his resource from all angles, ferreting out every method to unravel the discipline of seasoned troops. He spun out unspeakable, ugly strategies designed to break nerves and devastate tight-knit morale. Where relived experience had shattered the mold for brutal ambush and massive casualties, the Maze of Davien unveiled one thing more.
At first, Elaira thought she glimpsed a ghost imprint - the sudden, unlikely shimmer of movement brought on by overcranked tension. As adept as she was at wielding her inner senses, she found this ephemeral disturbance eluded her focused skill. Arithon's initial attempt brought no better success. Yet the next time a phantom slipped through the weave, he was on wary guard. On lightning reflex, he snapped down a ward and froze the flow of the augury in midstream.
And there, damningly inscribed, he uncovered the masked face of tragedy. Spellcraft derived from his signature style had been worked like snarled knit through his scrying. Here, strung in cobweb fine patterns, he read subtle runes of shading and masking; there, a seeded impulse to waylay the eye, as though by chance met distraction. Arithon pulled up short with stopped breath. Here, he encountered the deft nets of spellcraft he had once wrought to protect young clan children in Deshir on a carefree spring morning spent carving toy whistles.
The maze stripped away pretense. That same innocuous chain of ciphers now obscured a more sinister activity. Proof stood, unequivocal: Desh-thiere's furtive workings had in horrid fact infiltrated his mind and skewed the results of his augury.