Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Kevor, take cover!’ Fennick charged from the house, sword in hand. Ranne pounded hard at his heels. But their entreaties went unheard. One glance showed the moment’s abject futility: intervention would reach Kevor too late.

  No mortal man, no matter how dedicated, could possibly close the requisite distance in time. Nor could Avenor’s proud field troop stave off the impending tragedy.

  In that moment, also, the grisly revelation punched through. Fully and finally, Kevor acknowledged the death that descended on fang and scythed claw to take him. He was alone. Pitifully exposed in the sunlit clearing, he had no one at hand to share the dawning horror of his predicament. No coward, even now, he skidded and dodged left. He did not cry out, though heart and sinew begged for a miracle only an act of true sorcery could provide.

  The men, watching horrorstruck, never knew of his nightmare fears of the fires, recurrent since the condemned witch had burned back in Karfael.

  They did not hear his snatched prayer, that he might not scream as she had. The Khadrim’s stooping descent blackened the sky. Under its shadow, he had time to brace his sword upright. He held firm, perhaps paralyzed before jaws rowed with needle teeth, that were going to snap shut and mangle him. The futility of his stance made seasoned men weep. The jet claws and the lean, snake-thin neck must outmatch the courage of any green boy’s panicked strength.

  The Khadrim closed, more swift than the wind that foreran killing squalls, its wings folded midnight against the living, steel bolt of its body.

  Kevor tipped up his blanched face. At the last moment, he cast his azure mantle overhead, as though, against hope, the gold star and crown blazon of his s’Ilessid forebears might offer him binding protection.

  The same instant, the Khadrim gaped its scarlet mouth and spewed an engulfing torrent of fire.

  The cloak became immolated to white flame and ash, then the boy, wrapped into blinding conflagration. The Khadrim were drake spawn, and like their creators, their fire burned hotter than any wood-fueled flame. The young prince shrieked as the pain bit bone deep. His cry made no final appeal to the Light.

  Instead, in extremis, Ellaine’s son called on the gentle faith of his mother, whose love had guided his earliest childhood. ‘For Ath’s mercy save me!’

  The words, tortured ragged, choked off all at once.

  Then further view of the carnage was eclipsed, as the murdering drake spawn snapped out sail wings. The Khadrim braked in a flurry of sparks and fanned smoke, and touched down, its leviathan size imbued with a stunning, cat grace. Its forelimbs alighted amid the hissing steam of puddled snow, then the hind limbs, in bounding, sleek balance. Wings upraised, neck arched over the site of its kill, the creature shrilled its intent to gorge on live prey, then wreak savage havoc on the timber and lathe of the charcoalman’s isolated steading.

  ‘Shoot! Use crossbolts!’ Over the shrieking hysteria of the child, through the disorganized milling of stupefied men still scrambling to order their weapons, the field troop’s captain burst from the house, exhorting his archers to rally. ‘As you love life, aim for the eye!’

  Yet it was Fennick, weeping obscenities, who grabbed up a contestant’s dropped longbow. Racing full tilt for the monster in the clearing, he snatched a steel broadhead from another man’s hand. At forty yards, he threw himself sliding to his knees and snapped off a vengeful shot.

  Snake fast, the Khadrim whipped around. Its neck lunged to snap, or more likely, spit fire. By stunning luck, the launched shaft hissed through its gaping jaws, and punched through the mouth to the brain. The beast threshed and fell. Massive, clawed wings scraped up arcs of thrown snow. Talons raked frozen earth. Lashed by a paroxysm of death throes, the spiked tail clubbed like a flail through the trees, snapping off limbs and pelting the glen under a rain of sheared sticks. Most men watched, dumbfounded. Ranne sprinted on. Unable to spare Kevor, he ran the battering gauntlet of slapped wings and threshing limbs, no less likely to disembowel a man in the shudders as life ebbed and ended. In rage, in blind heartbreak, that his young charge had died before his eyes, Ranne finished the task Kevor’s bravery had started. He dodged clashing jaws and snatched the charcoalman’s wailing little girl from the tumbledown ruin of her playground.

  No man had words, as the aftermath bludgeoned them. The great hulk of the Khadrim’s carcass gasped its last steaming breath and finally quivered and stilled. The shock-stricken field troop converged, too overwhelmed to react fully to the devastating impact of sorrow. Of the young prince’s body, nothing remained, though men searched. Decency demanded some small token to send to the princess in Avenor, soon to weep for a son lost to the dedicated bravery bred into his ancestral lineage.

  However they dug through the slurry of thawed earth, they found not one melted gold button nor any charred scrap of bone. Naught remained. Only a trampled circle of seared carbon where the dread holocaust of Khadrim fire had sheared down.

  The day seemed too peaceful, and the sunlight, a bland outrage, to have borne witness to the murder of the s’Ilessid royal heir, once destined for crown rule in Tysan.

  ‘By my life, that should have been me!’ Fennick wept. Still crumpled on his knees in cold snow, oblivious to the companions who urged him to relinquish his deadlocked grip on the bow, he cast his despairing eyes skyward. ‘What in the name of the Light will we say to console his lady mother?’

  Late Winter 5670

  Mourning

  Sunlight spilled like liquefied gold through the high, lancet windows at Avenor. The deep, piled carpets with their crown and star motifs spread luxuriant azure over maple parquet, waxed to the warm hue of honey. With Prince Lysaer’s extended absence on campaign in Daon Ramon, no fawning advisors crowded the anteroom. The chinking spurs of impatient royal couriers did not echo off the vaulted ceilings, and hopeful petitioners did not line the benches with straight backs, against the carved backdrop of wainscoting. Winter mornings, while the frost traced gauze-lace patterns on the panes, the splendor of the royal chambers became the domain of the princess’s women. They perched on the hassocks and window seats, or convened in the claw-footed state chairs, bright as plumed birds in saffron silk as they chattered over their needlework.

  Lady Ellaine sat with them, set apart by her beaded aquamarine bodice, and her cincture trimmed in white lynx. Her hair had been expertly dressed. The premature gray fanned from her temples had been gently softened with cinnabar pins of carved amber. Withdrawn as she seemed from light conversation, she kept her hands busy. More than the strict deportment of her station fretted her upright posture, a manner the unobservant stranger might mistake for spiritless meekness. The short, fierce stitches laid in with her needle bespoke no such retiring tranquillity as she sewed seed pearls on a linen cap for her infant cousin in Erdane.

  The confines set on her by Prince Lysaer’s absence chafed her nerves, the precaution of state edict now enforced by High Priest Cerebeld’s veiled threats. Yet her sweet nature prevailed. She did not impose her dull spirits on the women who served as her ladies-in-waiting. They indulged in their gossip. Planning for the festival masques that enlivened the winter court occurred with the princess’s benevolent cooperation, and her surprising, mild wit, if not her heartfelt enthusiasm. Her Grace was seen to dance at the balls, but none in her close company were fooled. Her contentment was a carefully manicured lie, and her spirit, a stifled, caged songbird’s.

  Since the hour of her wedding to Lysaer s’Ilessid, Lady Ellaine had been little more than a puppet played by the strings of her powerful royal marriage.

  The court viewed her reliable manner with complacency, a mistake that resounded to widespread repercussions when a man’s booted step approached through the marble anteroom.

  Ellaine’s careful needlework dropped to the carpet, limp as a wing-shot bird. Seed pearls spilled and scattered in a dancing rain. Erect in her chair, her dark eyes like bored walnut, she addressed the tall man who paused on the threshold before her ladies quite realized he was there. ‘Yo
u are here for my son?’

  The chatter of the women cut off as the man stepped inside.

  He was dressed for the road, his boots and his spurs still mud-crusted. The mantle he wore was a swordsman’s slit cape, bearing the hammer and wheel blazon of Karfael. He glanced once at the door still ajar behind him, fair and young and uneasy, his riding gloves wrung between tortured hands. Then he gathered himself. Bowed to one knee in the chill winter light that flooded the diamond-paned casements, he addressed her sovereign query. ‘My Lady Princess, your son and heir died among the best of our troops, under assault by a winged Khadrim.’

  A rustle of thick silk, shot through by the ping and tap as the last, forlorn pearls strayed across flooring and carpet.

  The courier dared a glimpse upward. Lady Ellaine had risen, hands tucked in her skirts, while her bevy of women turned aghast faces to measure her public reaction.

  ‘Please stand,’ her Grace said, her voice level, not beaten; as though somehow she had braced in advance for an unspeakable tragedy. Only the gilt cloth edging on her collar flared to the jerk of her indrawn breath. ‘Say how my son died.’

  Before such straight courage, a man could but answer. ‘Quickly, my lady. His suffering was brief. He charged on foot with drawn sword as the monster descended, and drew it away from a forester’s strayed child. The attack caught everyone by surprise. No scout had seen signs of the predators. By sheer misfortune, his honor guard were unable to act. The girl child survived, but at sorrowful cost. Your son Kevor died as a man, a true prince of his people. There are no remains. The Khadrim fire burned and left nothing. My Lord Mayor will bear the cost of a memorial with all honors once the thaws permit a state retinue to travel.’

  Ellaine remained erect, unblinking. ‘You have told High Priest Cerebeld this?’

  ‘I have not.’ The courier swallowed, the wadded lumps of his gloves fallen slack in his tormented grasp. ‘His acolytes would not admit me. No one, they said, sees his eminence before he has opened his door to receive. I’m sorry. You should have had someone familiar to bring the sad tidings to you, but Ranne and Fennick travel back with the young prince’s squires and all that remains of his gear. I was sent ahead with all speed, lest careless word should spread damaging, premature rumors.’

  Every inch the poised princess she had never been granted the public standing to express, Ellaine held to her desperate composure. ‘Your judgment is to be applauded.’ She did not dismiss the courier, but added, ‘Since Cerebeld is otherwise engaged, and Prince Lysaer absent, I deem it fitting that you, as Karfael’s representative, and I, as the realm’s princess, take immediate steps to inform Avenor’s people of their loss.’

  ‘My lady.’ The courier bent his head in acquiescence.

  Ellaine did not see him, but looked down in dismay at the glittering aquamarine beaded silk and white fur that jarred the air like watered light for their vibrancy. ‘Meiris,’ she bade, her whisper distressed. ‘Fetch me a sable overrobe, and a sash and black mantle for mourning. Quickly!’

  Through a rustle of shocked movement as the woman did her bidding, Ellaine clasped hands that broke into shaking unsteadiness. Her grief set in eclipse by pure fear, she schooled her face to white-fired enamel and sealed her hard impulse to act. ‘Inwie, hurry. Tell my honor guard to arm for a public appearance. Then find a fleet page who won’t pause to question. Send summons with him to the duty captain of the guard. Get him here for immediate audience.’

  ‘My lady?’ the appointed woman gasped, stunned. ‘What if today’s assigned officer is––’

  ‘He will hear royal orders!’ the Princess of Avenor interrupted. Jeweled silk gleamed on her form like new ice as, bare-handed, she dared seize the reins of the power implied by her title and station. ‘We have crisis in Westwood! Whichever captain of the watch is on duty, he must serve by right of my sovereignty as the mother of this realm’s deceased heir.’

  The thunderous knock shook the shut door to the High Priest of the Light’s inner sanctum. Shrill voices clashed in deadlocked affront, the acolytes’ dissonant baritones slashed by Gace Steward’s yelping tenor.

  On his knees before his ceremonial altar, immersed in his morning devotions, Cerebeld was jarred from the depths of ecstatic trance. He blinked, confused and disoriented. The battering assault on his door gained force. Urgent shouting rattled the blown-glass sconces, and gold fringes shivered on the draped, sunwheel cloth. The water and rarefied oils trembled in the offering bowls. Only the wax effigies of the three priests from Darkling, Morvain, and Etarra suffered the invasion, mute in their cut circle of candlelight. Their pale, molded faces stared back at him, dead, a doll’s mockery of wax and cut hair, and crudely sewn snippets of silk.

  The ephemeral tie invoked out of ritual had been shocked into dissolution. No connection remained with the living men in the distant wilds of Rathain.

  Cerebeld arose, stiff in the knees, and charged to monumental displeasure. A large man, he moved with powerful speed, crossed the morning light spilled through mullioned windows, and wrenched open the door.

  The squalling argument rocked to a stop, replaced by a scalpel-cut silence. The two acolytes sank to their knees. Left exposed, the rail-thin palace steward caught the glacial brunt of the High Priest’s glower. ‘How dare you!’

  Gace squeaked an insincere apology, bony hands tucked to his liveried chest like the paws of a nervous rat.

  ‘How dare you!’ Cerebeld repeated. ‘Because of your meddling, our lord, the Exalted Prince, has been hindered in this day’s divine work.’

  ‘The princess,’ Gace gasped. His narrow frame quivered under the azure pleats of his livery as he jerked a snipped gesture toward the east-facing bank of latched windows. ‘Outside in the plaza. Go. See for yourself. Then tell me which hindrance will prove the more meddlesome to the true cause of the Light.’

  Cerebeld said nothing. He strode with clamped jaw back to his altar, snatched up undone wrappings and ribbon ties, and cast veiling cloth over his clutch of wax effigies. His slicked seal hair gleamed like satin-polished wood as he stalked to the casements overlooking Avenor’s grand palace of state.

  The plaza seethed with the variegate colors of a gathering crowd, though the daily invocation to the Light was not scheduled to occur until noon. Some townsfolk were dressed in village motley, others in sober brocades, with the journeymen and craftsmen scattered among them still aproned from work in their shops. The gilt-roofed cupola raised over the sunwheel dais sheltered nothing except a sweeper, who leaned on his idle broom, interrupted from his daily task of tidying.

  Princess Ellaine had eschewed the hallowed seat of divine office in favor of the parapet that fronted the second-story grand ballroom. She had her personal retinue and her honor guards all mantled in stark black. The captain of the day watch flanked her, jet streamers affixed to his helm. He held ten guardsmen at solemn attention, the disturbed tidings at hand evidently more pressing than keeping their post at the watch keep.

  ‘A messenger came in from Karfael,’ Gace said, lame.

  Far too controlled to show his dismay, Cerebeld flicked the latch and pushed open the lead-paned casement. ‘Say who has died.’ He cast a commanding, uncivil glance backward, the trimmed point of his beard sky cut to the profile of a billhook.

  ‘No one could find out.’ Gace swallowed. ‘The courier would not speak, except to Lady Ellaine. The boy I sent to listen at her keyhole was detained. I went myself to recover the lapse, but by then, the doors to the royal apartment were braced shut by the guard, with all of the servants inside.’

  ‘Enough!’ snapped the High Priest. Princess Ellaine was speaking, her high, clear voice riding the breezeless air. The raw gist reached the tower, broken to echoes off the saffron façades of the buildings.

  Inquisitive to the bone, Gace Steward edged past the obstructive acolytes and craned his neck over Cerebeld’s shoulder. ‘The heir,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve lost the young prince to marauding Khadrim.’

  Cerebe
ld gave a chopping, backhanded gesture. ‘Silence, you fool!’

  Snatched phrases from the princess’s proclamation winnowed through the rising breeze off the harbor. ‘… go to Karfael at once… Royal heralds are riding this moment to bear news far and wide… after the ceremony to honor our loss, Avenor will succor the northern hamlets… other women mourn loved ones, husbands or sons… in Prince Lysaer’s absence, hear my pledge! The depredations of these monsters will not be permitted to continue unchecked… in the name of the young prince, I will dispatch two companies from Avenor’s garrison… safeguard the defenseless countryside.’

  Gace Steward hissed an incredulous breath through locked teeth. ‘She’s promising armed intervention against Khadrim? Light save us all, that’s sheer madness!’

  Cheers arose from the crowd, nonetheless, a heartfelt endorsement of the princess’s selfless support.

  Cerebeld whirled from the casement, flushed livid. ‘Madness or not, we can’t stop this now. To cut her Grace down in retraction would tarnish the support of true faith, and the omnipotence of the Divine Light.’

  Gace Steward pursed his lips in fidgety agitation. ‘The Divine Prince will scarcely be pleased. Who gets to break the unhappy news, if the best of Avenor’s trained garrison get flamed for the sake of some Karfael woodsmen?’

  ‘The Light will receive their spirits in grace,’ Cerebeld assured, more concerned by the unpredictable ramifications unleashed by the princess’s wild-card bid for autonomy. ‘Fetch my formal retinue!’ he barked to the acolytes still frozen in stunned uncertainty. Muscles worked in his determined, square jaw as he snatched his white-and-gold mantle from the armoire.

  Caught flat-footed, Gace Steward scampered to keep up. ‘What steps can be taken? The princess has commandeered cooperation from the garrison troops! She’s forbidden to leave Avenor, but that sanction can’t be enforced while she’s mourning.’ His chattering monologue gained pitch and force, as he finally grasped the breathtaking scope of possible ramifications. ‘Ellaine’s authorized royal heralds to ride out! Who knows what dispatches they’re carrying?’