Warhost of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  Lysaer was inclined to avoid Mearn’s tactless company on a diplomatic visit in any case. The man’s nerve-jumpy habits could haze even Daelion Fatemaster to impatience. As the duke’s youngest brother fretted in his haste to be away, the prince gave him gracious dismissal. ‘I’ll have a man row across to your galley in the morning to say what I’ve found.’

  As the grooms were rousted to saddle mounts for himself and his escort to visit Ath’s initiates for inquiry, Lysaer dismissed whatever bent of s’Brydion nature moved Mearn to prankish laughter.

  Great torches burned in bronze brackets at the entry of Ath’s hostel, sure sign, as Mearn s’Brydion might have cautioned, that a royal visitor was expected. Not born to familiarity with Athera’s most time-honoured customs, Lysaer raised his hand and signalled his jingling guard to rein up. Shadows thrown off by twisted tree limbs inked crawling lines on the sigil-cut stones of the gateposts. The horses seemed undaunted by the carvings, but their mazed shapes set the attendant groom on edge. The lad hovered close to the prince’s large gelding, hands clenched white on his bundle of lead reins.

  Lysaer dismounted, uneasy himself, but too much the ruler to falter. A full moon thatched behind clots of black leaves had made the ride down the lane an eerie traverse in patched light. The building past the gateway had no windows: bounded by the oppressive, rank growth of the Scimlade’s oak hammocks and scrub forest, its shape and size were indistinct. The wind-ruffled scratch of dry weeds and the scrape of overgrown tree limbs against mossy walls lent an unsettled air of neglect. This site held no resemblance to the sacred ground Lysaer recalled from his childhood, bordered in trimmed hedges and crossed by brick walks and rows of flowering herb beds. Since the practice of the mysteries in Athera had suffered decline after the disappearance of the Paravians, Lysaer was scarcely surprised. The adepts here would inevitably lack funds to lavish on gardeners and grounds-keepers.

  On brisk presumption his visit would be short, he bid his escort to wait, then advanced to the sigil-marked portal. The information he desired at worst case might be bought for a charitable donation to relieve the hostel from poverty.

  ‘We have no use for coin,’ said a velvet alto voice near enough to make Lysaer start. A figure in a full-sleeved, hooded white robe stepped from the night shadows to greet him. ‘This place holds no threat unless beliefs in your heart make you think so.’

  Nettled to a queer flutter of nerves, and startled to be approached from the side, Lysaer replied in jewel-edged diplomacy. ‘Blessing on you, brother. When I wish the particulars of my faith to become your affair, I shall say so.’

  A smile curved the lips beneath the snowy hood. ‘Sister, in this case, may the light of the creator shine through you.’ Hands with elegant, tapered fingers turned back the deep hood. The warm leap of torchlight dusted high, bronze cheeks, a regal nose, and eyes too direct for the comfort of a prince accustomed to royal rank and deference.

  ‘Your will is ever your own.’ Gently patient in correction, the adept gestured to welcome Lysaer and his escort into the sanctum of her hostel. ‘Beyond these gates, the opinions you hold are not private. Ath’s greater mercy will rule upon your petition and touch upon your actions.’

  Lysaer kept his temper through statesman’s reflex. ‘I need not intrude on your hospitality, sister. I’m not here to petition, but to inquire after the presence of an injured man under my charge, and a woman I believe may be with him.’

  ‘Tharrick and Jinesse. You may see them inside.’ The lady initiate drew her hood back over her ebony coil of hair. She advanced like a sylph through the leaf-strained, shot beams of moonlight, self-possessed in stately grace. Her presence brushed all in the prince’s party. Every man and servant received the same close regard until she passed through the archway and vanished.

  Left cold by the torchlit gate, Lysaer faced the choice to leave, unsatisfied, or follow her inside. Since Mearn’s rat hunt down the coastline seemed the more onerous alternative, he charged his escort again to await his return, then stretched his stride to pass within.

  The concept never dawned that his authority would be upset, that when he entered the hostel’s cavernous stone edifice, his officers would dismount and disarm, then trail him into the anteroom. His order had been explicit; he had asked no one’s company. And yet every member of his retinue came on. Undistressed at his heels, even the boy groom appointed to hold his horse stared in wide-eyed fascination at the seals and sigils chiselled in flowing bands around the walls.

  The adept herself had invited them. If Lysaer wished to be annoyed by such presumption, his hostess smiled at him as a nurse might indulge an errant child. ‘You have ventured inside of our precinct. Here Ath’s law abides.’ Her speech raised limitless echoes against high, groined ceilings, and her barefoot step fell soundless over floors of tessellated marble. ‘Within our hostel, no man holds ruling privilege over any other beyond himself. Rest assured, the audience you ask will be private.’

  ‘And our untended horses?’ asked Lysaer in heroic effort not to snap. Despite all his care, the reverberation of his voice slapped back angry. ‘They’ll abide by Ath’s peace and not stray in the bogs?’

  ‘The creatures will do as their nature directs. Fear for nothing. They shan’t hang their bridles. Claithen has gone to look after them.’ In a swirl of white robes, the initiate sister breezed ahead through the rune-carved portal and led through to the inner sanctuary.

  Behind her, alone, Lysaer slammed short.

  The grand space beyond held anything but the rundown poverty he expected.

  Lysaer entered a pillared loggia. An open-air courtyard stretched beyond with a fountain playing at its centre. Outside these grey walls with their coiling, queer incised sigils, the hour was night, lit by the risen moon and ruddy torches. Here, from no source the eye could discern, lay an ice-pale twilight, all silver and lavender and the deep leafy mystery of an enormous stand of trees. These were not scrubby, storm-tattered hardwoods, nor the palms of the Scimlade peninsula, but patriarch trees with towering, high crowns and trunks as broad as the reach of five men.

  They were a living enigma, impossibly tall and wide; they should have towered through the roof of the building that housed them.

  The air beneath their branches smelled of life, a tapestry of rich growing greenery bound to tension which reminded of the unseen power of a stormfront beyond the horizon.

  ‘There,’ said the adept, her hand on Lysaer’s sleeve a feather-light, guiding touch. ‘You may sit by the fountain for your interview.’

  Lysaer took one step, two, and then faltered to a stunned halt. He braced one hand for balance against a pillar. The carved patterns beneath his palm seemed to emanate a profound sense of silence and harmony.

  He blinked hard and shivered. The clothing on his body seemed to scratch and constrict, for no sane reason an intrusion on his flesh. The sensations struck through his being had no parallel inside his experience. Not when he had expected figurines in niches and verdigris brass lamps, and the painted gilt icons of Daelion Fatemaster and Dharkaron’s Chariot. The cathedrals of Ath’s Grace he remembered from his homeland held grand, groined ceilings shafted in stirred dust. Only echoes had filled them, as solemn robed priests made their way through devotions and prayer.

  Here, beyond the pillars, spread a space with no walls, no roof, no lamps with lit candles burned for blessing. Before his amazed regard lay the creator’s primal forest, its breathing summer foliage alive with animals and birds. Peace cloaked the loam-rich air, thick as drugged sleep, but sealed into clarity like crystal. Snapped to a razor’s edge of awareness, Lysaer gave way to awe. No longer could he pay heed to the tinny voice of logic which insisted this place could not exist; or that he should show surprise at the dozing leopard he strode past as he resumed his way forward.

  Past and future fell away from him. The crisp swish of grasses beneath his step held more meaning than remembered experience. A grazing hare hopped aside for his footfalls, unfrightene
d. Beyond lay the fountain, no carved edifice, but a natural spring that welled from a stepped scarp of rock. The glassine play of water sluiced away his last fragile hold on disbelief.

  Mazed into wonder that pulled at the mind and cradled the heart in deep mystery, Lysaer lost touch with the waking awareness of his body. The forest of Ath’s adepts held a limitless, expanded reality that extolled all life in celebration. Man’s doings and causes outside came to seem a tawdry, overdressed dream, played out in gusty motion and senseless noise.

  Exotic birds in rainbow plumage perched in the alders, nestled shoulder to shoulder with hawks and ocean shearwaters. They did not fly at the prince’s approach, but watched him, bright eyed in fey wisdom.

  ‘Where are the priests?’ Lysaer whispered.

  The woman beside him laughed, mellifluous as the water’s voice, falling. ‘We have no priests, no priestesses. That would imply a hierarchy where Ath’s law bids none to exist. You come as a man, and as earth’s balance dictates, the initiate who speaks will be female.’

  ‘I need no one’s counsel.’ Lysaer rested his raised foot on the rim of the rock pool. Beneath his braced stance, rerendered in bled colours by the half-light, his reflection stared back at him, shattered as droplets rained down in random melody and scattered the illusion of his presence. Unable to feel alarmed, lost beyond reach of concern for that lack, the prince addressed his purpose. ‘I came here to seek two others in your care, an exiled guard captain named Tharrick and the widow, Mistress Jinesse, from Merior. By the gate you told me I might see them.’

  ‘So you might.’ The lilted words were patience, not promise.

  Lysaer broke his regard on the pool and stared at the porcelain-still figure beside him. She waited for him to give up something. The feeling pressed through his quietude with the force of solid touch or the chill of a storm-soaked shirt.

  His hands were empty. The magnificence of this forest reduced his plan for a bribe to the basest form of insult. Lysaer regarded the white mystic in all her dusky-skinned beauty, and could not step back as he became watched in turn by a regard taintless silver as new rain.

  An unprincely need stole through him to explain himself. The diplomat’s training dunned into him since childhood failed to restore his focus, but instead sliced his mind into unmanageable disarray. One fragment insisted his concern stemmed from desire to protect the widow’s twins from corruption. Another, unruly and traitorous, seized control: and that one urged answer first.

  ‘The man, Tharrick, knows more than he’s saying of my enemy’s intentions, and the woman’s part is crucial. She has no choice but to follow her children. When she does, she’ll guide the way for my war host.’ Against the plinked cry of springwater, over the feathered rustles as the birds ruffled and stared, the statement rang loud as a shout.

  Ever proud of his grip on discretion, Lysaer shrank in dismay, in embarrassment; then, as the grasping manipulation in his words struck home, in disgraced and annihilating shame. He stared at the face of Ath’s initiate, appalled.

  Yet her ebon brows remained smoothed beyond censure. She said, ‘The man and the woman you mention are guests here. They have their own will by Ath’s law, and they desire not to be used so.’

  Lysaer bit back impatience. He cupped his temples, strove to reconcile his splintered self-unity and banish the mad play of hallucination. But the trickle of the fountain and the soft, fluting calls of the songbirds unravelled his intent to distraction.

  Brazen and sharp, he was speaking again, this time from the half that was prince. ‘Tharrick and Jinesse have been misled, even dangerously beguiled. For the good of all people, I must hunt down the sorcerer who corrupted them.’

  The adept answered, brisk, ‘To take his life!’

  Lysaer felt hurled off centre once again, spun round and dizzied until he wanted to crack into crazed laughter. But only hot tears wet his cheeks. He clawed back to balance, but nothing was the same. By his elbow, the birds flapped alarmed wings and flew; the hare by his boot was already gone. The leopard, now alert and sprung to her feet, watched him with a huntress’s glare, her verdigris eyes open and round as a pair of weathered copper coins. The initiate’s edged speech had not upset the beasts from their peace; unsettled by chills, Lysaer understood that his refocused presence had triggered their sudden alarm.

  He wished all at once to straighten, to walk, to leave. As he moved, the pool recaptured his gaze, cast a veil of magnetic attraction. Too late, he realized a trap had closed over him. The stilled peace of the trees pressed him into a deep well of lassitude.

  At his side, the woman turned back her white hood. Her loosened hair gleamed in the pale, lucent twilight like ripples of dark-dyed silk. Her eyes were moonstone. Her lips framed the voice of Dharkaron Avenger, or the wheels of his Chariot as they turned on a thundering charge to claim the world’s due redress.

  ‘Arithon Teir’s‘Ffalenn is no enemy of yours.’

  Lysaer felt a blistering cry rip from the depths of his throat. He felt strong, whole, and gloriously clear-minded. ‘Arithon s’Ffalenn would as soon see me dead, just as I would kill him. If you doubt his intent, he has toyed with you.’

  ‘Arithon Teir’s‘Ffalenn is no enemy of yours,’ the lady repeated. She stood tall before him. Her porcelain finger scribed a seal in white fire upon the air.

  The flux of sudden light splintered between mind and spirit.

  Riven by that rushing tide of power, Lysaer flung back, tripped on the rimrock, and found himself inexplicably turned around. Both hands splashed to the wrists in icy water. He gasped from the wet and the shock. Dizzied by the sensation of split personality, laced by pain that skinned through to his bones, he was embattled by irreconcilable truths: of children trained to slit the throats of wounded men, and Arithon s’Ffalenn wholly innocent of the command that had sent them forth to cause bloodshed. Then the second, bleakly damning, of himself with his s’Ilessid gift of justice bent awry by the usage and possession of Desh-thiere’s wraith.

  Lysaer screamed aloud in split voices. ‘Ath and Dharkaron’s pity on me! The deaths at Tal Quorin were none of my choosing.’ But surcease was denied him. In the searing, deep mirror of the initiate’s regard, amid the terrible mystery of the glade, he observed his past deeds recast in a mould that condemned him. In turn, he beheld Arithon forced to the unwilling role of killer.

  The oddly skewed vision refused to relent: Lysaer saw himself, and wept for the deaths of clan wives and children brought through his given gift of light; and he saw himself in the stern role of prince, deluded by duty to enact an execution for an ignorant, blind claim of just cause.

  Lysaer howled as the awful dichotomy ran him through like snapped glass, sharpened by razor-edged conscience.

  ‘Who am I?’ he cried to his tormentor, who was not mortal flesh, but steel which cut to lay him bare.

  The adept’s voice in answer was metal just quenched from the forge fire. ‘Step back. Step into the pool. The spring will cleanse you. Ath’s mercy will allow you forgiveness.’

  The half of him that wept heard a haven in her words, and begged beyond pride for such release. The half of him that was prince saw no cleansing and no pool, but a whirling grey tide of Desh-thiere’s wraiths, jaws agape and fanged mouths slashing in hunger to rip his bare flesh.

  He cried out again, seared by the agonies of temptation. Desire made him ache to let everything go, to set aside strife and embrace his bastard half-brother in reconciliation.

  Yet suspicion resounded in faint, far-off clamour, that the notes played by the fountain and the initiate’s bright powers might lure in false promise to condemn him.

  The words of his father lashed through his turmoil and damned him for selfish wishes. ‘You were born royal, boy. A prince never acts for himself. No matter how hard, no matter how painful, regardless of how lonely the decision may be, you must rule in behalf of your people.’

  ‘Lady, there can be no quarter given in this war,’ Lysaer gasped. To yield t
o belief that Arithon was blameless was to repudiate honour: to abandon justice for the unsuspecting cities bound under s’Ilessid protection and to endorse the full-scale ruin of hapless innocence.

  ‘I will not suffer a peace to be built upon lies.’ Whole once again, snapped back to self-command with the burning focus of a glass lens poised to seed fire, Prince Lysaer regained his feet and drew himself up to full height. He raised his wet palms and blotted skinned knuckles upon the dry silk of his sleeves.

  His acts at Tal Quorin had not been misled choice. He was no man to take the lives of clan families without the most dire cause.

  This initiate was no friend to believe he could be duped to embrace his half-brother in amity. Her uncanny powers and dangerous persuasion still threatened to besiege his unsettled grip on morality. Lysaer saw he must escape, else stand at risk of casting off his very honour as a ruler. Without his gift of light, the land had no protector from Arithon’s insidious corruption.

  ‘My lady,’ he said, restored to flawless courtesy, ‘I will be taking my leave.’

  His statement seemed to rip a film off his mind, and the sanctuary’s spell lost its hold on him. Lysaer turned from the pool. Free at last to move, he hastened toward the loggia through what seemed a dream gone to tatters. The grass beneath his step had turned a crackling, dry brown; the leopard and the birds had all vanished; the soft, twilight glow beneath the towering trees had become harsh and flat, like snow piled over cloudy glass. The air wore the stale, musty leaf scent of autumn on the heels of a killing frost.

  Lysaer passed between the pillars, crossed the flagstone walk. As he stepped through the arched portal to the anteroom, a terrible shiver raked through him. For a dreadful moment, his knees went weak and his senses overturned into vertigo. He dared not look down at the sheened marble floor for the irrational fear that his body would cast no reflection. Then his men were beside him, talking, asking questions. He ignored them in his rush to be outdoors, to breathe bracing, chilly air under icy, ordinary moonlight.