by Janny Wurts
‘Sheathe the weapon,’ Jieret instructed. His split-gravel command splintered the horrific silence wedged like a gap in stilled air. ‘The cord ties hold all the protections wrought to shield him.’ Freed now to release the dammed flood of his sorrow, he fumbled with palsied hands and found the strip of fine silk torn away from Arithon’s shirtsleeve. ‘Hold the weapon up. The hilt must be wrapped. Otherwise, his Grace’s naked presence will offer a beacon for scryers on the instant we break the outer circle.’
Braggen did as he was asked. His own need to weep all but choked the labored breath in his throat. He stood fast, while Jieret set the last wards and bindings, and swathed Alithiel’s black cross guard in the frayed length of silk. Nor could he avoid a harrowed glance sidewards at the body which lay, much too still, amid its calyx of bearskin. ‘You court the very edge of disaster,’ he husked as he received the harsh weight of the sword.
‘I know. If we fail, we lose everything.’ Jieret refused to dwell on his own coming trial, but delivered his rapid instructions to the last remaining Companion. ‘You have one day, and no more than three, to see Arithon out of this territory. Once the sword’s drawn, all the spells will disperse. Our liege will awaken, restored to his flesh. Keep the blade always at hand. If Lysaer prevails, see that his Grace dies free, beyond reach of the Mistwraith’s cursed madness. Keep his horse tied to yours, that if mishap befalls, you won’t separate.’
Time again stole the moment to exchange speech or encouragement. In silenced efficiency, caithdein and Companion swept out the used circles. They picked the cavern meticulously clean of every slight sign of their presence. The herb satchel was packed, the knife oiled and restored to its place in Prince Arithon’s saddle pack. When the horses were loaded, the two clansmen gathered up the limp form still wrapped in the mantle of bearskin. Together they bore their liege out of the cleft. He weighed very little, a rag doll whose touch seemed incongruously warm for the corpse-slackness of limbs and body.
Under the pallid, platinum sun, buffeted by winter that raked the land with unnatural tenacity, they securely lashed Arithon’s unconscious frame on the back of the fittest gelding. Then Braggen mounted. Still stripped to his jerkin and his lightweight, studded brigandine, Jieret set foot in the stirrup as well. Only the wide-open sky of the barrens bore witness to their rushed parting.
‘Good hunting,’ said Braggen, self-consciously brief, and no artist with speech under pressure.
‘Guard my liege well.’ Jieret found no more words to send back, on the chance his Companion survived him. He had none for Jeynsa and his two sons, that the raising of them had not spoken. For Feithan, he trusted her woman’s wisdom to know the strength of his lifetime affection. His prince received a swift touch on the crown of the head. No help for the fact the distanced mind would not feel or retain any trace of remembrance.
Jieret set determined heels to his horse, and reined its blazed head firmly westward.
Moved to blind tears as the animal sprang to a canter that scattered a spray of loose gravel, Braggen called out, ‘Ath keep you close!’
Then, at a whisper sawn through by raw grief, he addressed the unconscious prince whose life now became his given charge to protect. ‘I could not have done as he did. Perhaps for an enemy I hated beyond life, but in love, I could never have spurned the appeal torn whole from the depths of your heart.’
Late Winter 5670
Observations
Darkness extended beyond measure, a limitless binding that swallowed awareness of time and identity. Elaira fought down rattled panic. Her streetwise tenacity rejected the defeatist belief that she had been trapped unaware. She held Prime Selidie’s promise of noninterference. Ath’s adepts had assured her, again and again, that no hostile spellcraft might cross the wardings that guarded the sanctuary of their precinct.
Plain logic insisted the black void engulfing her must originate from inside her circle of intent.
Pure night surrounded her. Its environs revealed no loophole, no form, impenetrable and featureless as black glass. Elaira reclaimed her slipped hold on deep patience. She banished her terror, one clinging strand at a time. When no solution presented itself out of calm, she formed the desperate mental image of a sigil asking for guidance.
At last, through the murk of undermining uncertainty, she heard a far-off voice, faintly calling her name.
She turned toward the sound, traced its musical resonance like a drowning soul thrown a rope.
The stark blackness wavered, then shattered into light. Elaira found herself restored to the warm, sun-washed alcove that Ath’s adepts used for their stillroom. Nothing appeared out of place. Her shaken, deep breath brought the heady, ripe fragrance of sweetgrass and dried flower petals. The rows of brass canisters gleamed with brilliant polish above the marble font kept continually filled with fresh water. The wall, banked with herb drawers, each bearing its neat scripted label, and the scales, mortars, and pestles remained, every one, in right order. Nothing threatened from the shelves where the unfamiliar ingredients were stored. As well as exotic roots and distilled salts, the white brotherhood employed recipes of advanced complexity involving crushed minerals, essences pressed from the oils of fresh plants, and ritual infusions of words set in light, absorbed from the sun or the moon.
To her intense disgust, Elaira discovered her collapse had upset the pestle she had been using to crush powdered charcoal for ink. Her wrist, sleeve, and cheekbone wore striking black smears. The lay brother on duty noted her riled disarray, his bearded lips turned with barely stifled amusement.
‘Don’t dare say I fainted,’ she stated, hot in defense since she had no reason at hand to explain her peculiar behavior. The queer upset had subsided. Elaira repressed the rank urge to swear, braced back to stability by the spiced scents of willow bark and astringents. The remedies still steeped in the warm paraffin and suet used as base for the salves being packed into tinware containers.
‘You didn’t faint,’ the lay brother agreed. His white teeth flashed through his close-cropped beard as he gave way to acerbic merriment. ‘If you had, I couldn’t have recalled you by Name.’
He stopped smiling, warned as Elaira froze in the act of wiping her smeared cheek on her sleeve cuff. Prepared for her stopped catch of breath, he tracked her dismay as she recovered the source of the blackout that had suddenly ruined her morning.
‘Dharkaron’s black bollocks!’ she burst out, her exalted company forgotten as the shock struck through. Her empathic link to Arithon s’Ffalenn had cut off, vanished away into nothing. Unthinking as reflex, she hurled her mind inward, seeking; and again, the suffocating dark erupted from nowhere and engulfed her searching awareness.
This time, the lay brother moved fast enough. Lunging past the trestle, he caught her wrist and stayed her collapse before she spiraled away into the yawning expanse of the void. His voice, ever gentle, held sympathy as he urged, ‘Elaira! Let go. Pull back.’
‘Arithon!’ she gasped, awash in raw dizziness. ‘What’s happened?’ All night long, she had sensed the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s signature patterns ebb and resurge. She had tagged the flux as involvement with magecraft, no cause for concern. Rathain’s prince had been rigorously trained. The intensity of focus that distanced their shared linkage had affirmed the engagement was made by free will. No warning had presaged the wrenching, sharp horror of feeling his presence cut off. Distressed to a panic that scraped her tone raw, she added, ‘Had his Grace died, I should have felt his transition as he passed over Fate’s Wheel!’
‘Sit,’ urged the lay brother. Inarguably firm, he guided her into the secure nook of a diamond-paned window seat.
She could not stop shaking. The flooding warmth of the sun seemed unreal. The nub of the wool tapestry cushion beneath her felt insubstantial as mist.
‘What’s happened?’ Elaira demanded, unable to settle. Equilibrium failed her. Despite years of experience, and the well-practiced discipline of restraint, tension hardened her hand to a stranglin
g grip over the lay brother’s sleeve cuff.
‘Be at peace. We’ll know shortly. I’ve summoned an adept who will help you.’ He gently disengaged the grasp of her fingers. ‘You’ll want a restorative, meantime.’ The lay brother left her, selected an herb mix, then lifted the honey flask from the trestle. He drizzled a dollop into a flagon of cool water, then stirred in a selective pinch of crushed leaves.
Elaira accepted the draught, unsteady as she assayed a small sip. ‘Thank you. For this, and for the calling. If you hadn’t responded, no doubt I’d have battered myself to gibbering shreds.’ For a mercy, the remedy eased her terror a fraction. She was able to think, and compose her fraught nerves, though very little could be done for the charcoal dust that blackened her tumbled bronze hair.
‘What herbs did you choose?’ She asked as much to gain knowledge as to ground herself through the balm of workaday detail. Raw leaves without heat to effect their release made too weak an infusion to explain the draught’s heady potency.
‘I used betony and starflower,’ the lay brother explained. ‘The essences lie in the oils. That’s why they act quickly. Those particular plants have fine energy properties that address the disharmonies in the aura.’
Too disturbed to pursue the bent of her interest, Elaira declined to sound the contents of the flagon for precise understanding of the trace energies binding the restorative’s efficacy. Six weeks of applied study at the hostel had expanded her natural vision. Her work with free crystals had extended and deepened her knowledge of spellcraft, and daily chores in the stillroom had enriched her skills as a healer. The inhabitants of Whitehaven sanctuary practiced a refined lore far beyond the specialized teaching once gained from the sisters at Forthmark. The adepts’ understanding of life and regeneration surpassed the reach of the wisest Koriani herbalists, even those who had worn their gray-banded sleeves over centuries of hospice service.
Throughout the winter, while gales spun snow like smoke off the bleak upper scarps of the mountains, Elaira had seized on the rare opportunity to heighten her craft. Now ripped by a shiver of gut-deep unease, she wondered whether the lure of such learning had caused her to shelter too long.
‘The passes through Eastwall are icebound anyway,’ the lay brother pointed out in response to her gnawing uncertainty. Settled as pooled rain in his slate-colored robes, he resumed his interrupted task at the trestle, weighing packets of herbs on a balance scale of antique, verdigris bronze. ‘No one can pass westward by land until spring.’
If his words implied other means of travel existed, Elaira’s agitation foreclosed her usual curiosity. Chilled through her fleeced-leather leggings and wool smock, she huddled in full sunlight, sipping watered honey and herbs in fraught silence and strained apprehension.
At length, the promised adept ascended the tower stair in spry steps. He burst into the stillroom, a willowy old man clad in flowing white wool who shed radiance like autumn sunlight. The silver and gold ciphers stitched on his hood scattered the chamber with small rainbows and ambient reflections. ‘Your prince is unharmed,’ he assured without query, his olive-skinned features crinkled with laugh lines. ‘Nor is he endangered, at present.’ Aware his raised hand could not stem the tortured rush of Elaira’s questions, he smiled. ‘Come along. You can see for yourself. One waits for you beside the sacred spring. As you wish, you might ask him for help.’
Elaira abandoned her perch on the window seat and replaced her emptied flagon on the trestle. ‘Another adept? But I thought your Brotherhood didn’t use power to act.’ If her question was impertinent, she hoped the old man would forgive. Words could not express how profoundly distressing she found the prospect of a return visit to the spring.
‘Your visitor is not one of us,’ the elder chastised as he held open the door. He watched closely, assured as her color returned in the icy draft of the stairwell. Though no crisis could warrant a white brother’s intervention, he kept stride alongside Elaira, guarding her fragile state of balance throughout the winding descent.
‘Well, what might befall the Prince of Rathain while I visit the spring in your grove? How do I know I won’t fall unconscious like I did the first time?’ Breathing the thin, icy air in swift gulps, Elaira balked on the lower landing. ‘I awoke three days later, and still can’t recall where I went.’
The adept paused also, a scintillant presence who chased the deep gloom from the base of the stairwell. Patience stilled his gnarled hand on the latch that fastened the outer doorway. ‘Brave lady, you must walk alone in this matter. Our creed will permit nothing else. The spirit your need has drawn to our hostel has been known in the past as a meddler. Yet he in his wisdom would be first to agree: only you can decide whether to go, or to stay. Free choice remains yours. You can embrace or refuse congress with those forces called into the fate you create by your actions. This arrival is yours, though its cause and effect may lie outside the scope of your present understanding.’
Elaira swallowed. The awareness bore down, that time taken to ponder the adept’s abstruse counsel might deliver an unforseen cost in grave consequences. ‘Lead on, brother.’ Of all things she feared, the unforseen at least held the potential to defer the paralyzing despair of rank helplessness. ‘I may as well take the easy plunge into hot water. Whatever I’ve called here, I’ll find strength from somewhere to face it.’
The adept nodded, tripped the latch, and ushered her into the sun-washed glare of the courtyard. ‘You have a true heart. The power drawn in by the cry of your need would be most unwise not to grant you every due measure of respect.’
Arrived at the end of the marble loggia, the adept stopped and bowed. ‘Lady, at this point I must leave you. Proceed on your own as you choose.’
The black-stone pillars loomed just ahead, darker than midwinter night. The uncanny patterns incised on their surface flared and glittered, randomly bright as the rainbowed glints chipped off of sun-caught diamond. Elaira surveyed the threshold between. From two steps away, the archway led into what seemed an innocuous cupola, apparently lit by unseen skylights cut through the dome overhead. The high polish of the tessellated marble floor appeared impeccably solid. Yet Elaira had learned to grant no credence to the untrustworthy illusion of eyesight. To advance was to cross an invisible boundary and forfeit all earthly experience.
Suddenly unsure, she drew breath to ask questions. But the adept had gone, unseen and unheard, leaving a silence as sealed as a tomb. Turn back, and he might reappear to escort her. Ahead resided the heartcore of a mystery beyond mortal understanding. Threatened by sudden, rushing vertigo, Elaira reached out to brace herself; a mistake. The carved patterns altered the very nature of substance. Her touch met a riling, sharp tingle of energy, as though her hand had dissolved into stone to the wrist.
Her startled outcry cast back no echoes, an eerie anomaly in this place of groined ceilings and high-gloss marble floors.
No choice, but to go forward alone. Heart pounding, Elaira regrouped her frayed nerves. She closed her fingers around the three coins worn for luck since her childhood days as a street thief.
‘By Ath, prince,’ she muttered. ‘Whatever scrape you’ve fallen into, you’d better pull yourself clear before we all find ourselves entrapped into debt by my order, or worse: waken some dire power better left undisturbed like the sleeping dog out of proverb.’
She stepped forward, resolute. Just as before, her senses betrayed her. The transition that dissociated both space and time closed down without seam or bias. She emerged through the arched portal into the sweet mildness of a midsummer night. A forest glade surrounded her, moon-washed grass dipped pearlescent with dew. The shadows cast by the soaring crowns of the trees lay as deep as razor-cut velvet. A fountain burbled over white stones, juddered with star-caught reflections.
Against the silvery fall of clear water, a man’s figure stood out like a displaced fragment of autumn.
Expecting her, he arose. The burnt orange and sienna cloth of his doublet rustled, a flame back
drop for his fox brush hair, streaked at both temples with white. He was clean-shaven. Neat in movement, fastidious in each detail of dress and grooming, he had peat-dark eyes, and a presence of ruthless, clear focus as he greeted, ‘Elaira anient?’
Jarred as much by his soft, smoky baritone as by the queer, Paravian phrasing, Elaira responded with a startled question. ‘Why call me “the one”?’
‘For truth.’ He gathered her hand in long fingers, his touch warmly confident. She noticed a ring inset with citrine, and a trifold insignia of crescents that flared to a mercuric flash of caught moonlight. Up close, his angular features showed dichotomy: the enigma of a secretive presence, touched by a smile that was electric, and brimming with inquisitive curiosity.
‘Sorcerer,’ she whispered, her perception alive to the leashed power in him, an unstated air of subtle command shared by none but the Fellowship. Revelation burst through, couched in shock like a dousing of ice. ‘Ath above!’ Elaira gasped. ‘You could be no less than––’
‘No!’ His interruption came sharp. ‘Have a care. In all caution, let’s leave that identity unspoken.’
He released his grasp, not before she had encompassed the impression of flawless flesh and bone vibrancy. ‘You are quite the master of convincing illusion.’
‘Am I?’ Fleeting bitterness sliced through, self-defined as his stance in cool grass. While he sat at his ease once again on the piled white stone rimming the lip of the spring, his eagle’s gaze tracked her, unswerving.
‘Only a fool would respond to that sort of baiting question.’ Pragmatic under the bearing assault of the Sorcerer’s observation, Elaira advanced. ‘Everyone said you were rendered discorporate.’
‘Truth,’ her controversial visitor allowed. He laced his long fingers over his knee, his posture nonchalant, and his honesty a dagger of sly insolence.