Initiate's Trial

by Janny Wurts

  No answer was given. Instead, with a hiss of stymied frustration, the enchantress who blocked the harbour gateway stepped back. As though hazed by poison, she raised a hand in aversion and collapsed the spelled net staged to seal a third-rank initiate’s capture. Animated by the Prime’s snarl of fury, she promised, ‘This will not end here!’ Selidie’s words, on her lips, rang vicious with crystal-sent brevity. ‘You will pay dearly and for far worse than your flagrant oathbreaking!’

  ‘Choke on your failure, first!’ Elaira shouldered past the Prime’s sigil-turned minion and nipped through the gate to the wharf. She did not look back at the defeated sisters or question whether her stroke of fortune stood for good or ill. Later, in safety, she could pause to ponder whose might had stymied the Koriani Matriarch.

  The rest of the night saw her huddled against the storm on the open deck of the docked galley. No attack ever came, and no other invasive presence disrupted her vigil of bitter misery. When solstice dawn brightened the rags of spent cloud, and the blizzard abated to the azure sky of a diamond-bright morning, the boat’s crew arrived at long last to set sail at the change of the tide. They chaffed their early passenger as a land rat and a layabout, before the cook offered her shelter in sympathy and gave her the welcome of a hot breakfast.

  Warmed up and fed, Elaira leaned on the rail when the ice-crusted lines were cast off the dock. She heard the bells of Redburn toll twelve times for the death of a queen, then peal the carillons to celebrate the coronation of Havish’s new High King.

  Her own piquant mystery remained unsolved. No speculative cogitation on her part revealed whose hand may have acted to spare her. Though the suspicion rested: quite likely the answer might lie on the far desert shore of Sanpashir.

  Winter 5922–3

  Solstice Day

  With dawn yet to break on the eastshore at Whitehold, Selidie Prime rages, stymied over the shock of an unforeseen defeat; and her bitter tirade that reviles the order’s most ancient enemy concludes, ‘Elaira is declared forsworn and condemned! She and the Biedar tribe must never meet! At all costs, and by any means, stop her from reaching Sanpashir alive…!’

  Rocked by the confirmed proof of a rising of Darkness and threatened by two minions of havoc at large, the True Sect high priest at Erdane’s temple decides to send a Light’s Hope to Etarra out of season: and the delegate ambassador he selects to petition the apostate avatar is not the usual political embarrassment but the most aggressively astute candidate among his talent examiners…

  While the Sunwheel dedicates redouble their patrols up and down Tysan’s trade-roads, two affable farm-hands in travel-stained clothes trade several raw hare pelts for eighteen silvers; and if the fair man’s face is suspiciously battered, and his dark-haired companion refuses to speak, greed seals the exchange with a southbound teamster eager to seize a quick profit from the portside jackleg who sews charms against drowning for sailhands…

  Winter 5923

  V. Mis-step

  Tarens knotted the coins into his belt pouch, uneasy under bright sun in the open, while the tinker’s wagon rumbled away around the next bend in the southbound trade-road. ‘That crafty dealer will sell us both out,’ he warned, the jingle of silver a bad trade against his shaken confidence.

  ‘He will.’ Arin tucked up his jacket collar against the blast of wind that lashed his tangled hair against his raw cheek. ‘But I think, not immediately.’ The shifty carter’s sidelong glances had been fearful, behind the gleam of his mercantile avarice. Arin’s tuned senses suggested their betrayal would happen, but only at a safe distance.

  ‘Then why aren’t we bolting for cover?’ chafed Tarens, the pink scars from his ordeal just barely knit, and still too vividly obvious.

  ‘Run where?’ Arin’s gentle truthfulness always eased any sting of reproach.

  Tarens cursed, that holed boots and the agonized threat of frost-bite had driven their need to bargain with the wily trader. If the man’s skilled repairs had patched his torn soles and eased his traumatized feet, the respite did not change the untenable fact that the terrain ahead exposed them to greater hazard. The wood-lots opened into the inhabited flats by the river-course, where the pastures and fields were well kept. The few stands of timber had been thinned for board wood and fence-posts, and cleared of the thickets essential for shelter.

  Their hunted course lay flanked on the right by the sparkling rush of the Silberne, cowled in shelves of grey ice at the verges, with the frigid current a diamond-bright race, too fast and deep for two men with no boat. By nightfall, their progress slowed down, each league stolen in covert spurts. The farther they skulked down the eastern bank, the more the attentive villagers’ husbandry hampered their forward course. Thorn-hedges gave way to fenced pens for livestock, and hurdles of woven withies kept browsing deer off the barley. Tilled earth left fallow for winter held tracks, and the frosted ruts bogged every footstep.

  Safety beckoned in the dense scrub and thatched briar that choked the opposite shore-line. But without any viable crossing, the fugitives risked being sighted and pinned where the crook in the Silberne flanked the southbound trade-route. Nor would their prospects improve over distance. Beyond Cainford, a stonewalled tow-path with ox teams dragged the laden barges up-stream from Valenford. Caravan teamsters and rowdy rivermen thronged the thoroughfare by day, and frequent, packed inn-yards handled the constant traffic that bustled to and from the port docks at Mainmere.

  Tarens wiped sweaty palms on his grimed cuffs. ‘How can we slip the law’s capture through there?’ His desperation referred to the Sunwheel troop encamped by the road, complete with boys beating drums by the verge to muster new soldiers. The stir that meant war might resume against Havish had the provost’s patrols out in force. Mounted men swept the hedgerows for deserters each night, another obstacle against the long odds the two could creep past the company’s outposted sentries.

  The big crofter’s natural patience turned snappish, beset by constant hunger and cold, and short sleep from the ache of his injuries. ‘We’re going to be set upon. Hazed like vermin caught in the corn-crake with those dedicate search parties hot on our tail.’

  ‘Not if we join the ranks,’ Arin said, reasonable.

  ‘What?’ Tarens stopped short and stared. Had his brother ventured that frivolous crack, Efflin would know to duck the quick-tempered fist swung to flatten him.

  Yet Arin’s calm gaze glinted with wicked irony. ‘Were you a lance captain on your high horse, decked out in flashy accoutrements, would you leap for the yap of a tinker concerning the presence of evil itself?’

  Despite himself, Tarens snorted. ‘I’d be more likely to collar an underling to chase down such unlikely facts.’

  ‘Then, what if your inquiry turns up the suspicious yokels in line to enlist, nicely yanking their hayseedy forelocks?’ Arin broke off and laughed. ‘Ath above! Or, rather, the Light’s blinding truth, the unlikely threat we pose to temple authority should fall apart under scrutiny.’

  Such insane enthusiasm proved too infectious. Tarens choked and gave in to a smile. ‘Any braw farm-hand could’ve banged up his face caught out by a kick from a milch-cow?’

  ‘Or better,’ topped Arin, ‘What ingrate son doesn’t get walloped by his mother for larking off to the glory of war?’

  Which forthright boldness stole Tarens’s breath, until better sense unravelled the lunatic notion. ‘How long, do you think, before I’m recognized? Perhaps you might get by, since nobody but Grismard caught sight of you. But I’m too well-known about Kelsing. With my name condemned and marked with a head price, any dispatch sent north to check on my origins would turn up some nosy neighbour. One honest man’s word would have me back in chains to burn as a minion of Darkness!’

  ‘We need less than two days,’ said Arin, quite earnest. ‘During that time, we march in the open, fed and rested among the recruits. We buy our way past the most dangerous ground without getting flushed on the run. Thirty leagues by road gets us up to the fo
rk where the bridge crosses over to Taerlin—’

  ‘Where we desert?’ Tarens broke in, unexcited. ‘We would be ridden down by trackers with hounds, and if no one told you, the country that fringes the free wilds of Caithwood is desolate!’

  ‘Yes,’ Arin agreed. ‘But the clansfolk who dwell there do not love the canon that upholds the True Sect religion.’

  ‘They would kill us on sight should we dare to trespass,’ Tarens snapped, heart-sore. Each step he took led away from his family. From fire and death, he had won survival, but at such a cost, every path led to nothing. The idea of throwing himself at the brutal mercy of an insular society of barbarians seemed a blow-hard’s short cut to suicide.

  ‘Clan scouts on patrol would hear our case, first,’ Arin ventured, insistent. ‘Surely they might if I addressed them with due respect in Paravian.’

  ‘Why do I feel as though an ill wind just bristled the hair at my nape?’ Tarens’s bitterness rang in the brittle chill. The stone he kicked in frustration startled up a scolding mob of grey-and-black chickadees. ‘I might die on the point of a clan scout’s javelin quicker than by the sword on a temple scaffold. Show me how I’m not a buck-naked target if your cocky idea chucks the rock in the wasps’ nest.’

  ‘This could be a wrong steer,’ Arin agreed. ‘If so, do you trust me to rescue you?’

  Tarens found nothing further to say, since the hell-bent zeal of the Sunwheel lancers seemed likely to corner them anyway. For better or worse, he had no choice but to walk in uncanny company. After seven rootless weeks on the dodge, he resented the harsh recognition: left on his own, he would not be alive. Whatever Arin had been in the past, the courageous initiative that drove his odd loyalty knew how to thrive in adversity. This brash proposal to hide in plain sight was not made by a man who tamely accepted defeat.

  The bold course prevailed, since retreat was impossible. Turn back, and they would be trapped from behind, chased to earth like starved foxes.

  The Light’s recruiting officer stationed himself at the centre of the armed encampment. Perched at a plank trestle braced overtop the branded crates used for supply, he cheerfully processed his line of straggling aspirants. Dressed to impress, his meaty bulk strained the thread on his gleaming gold buttons. The fleshy smile he posed to all comers dimpled his jovial features. Up close, his porcine eyes were not merry. Arrived at his pleasure, Tarens was reamed by a steel-hard stare primed to pounce upon lying discrepancy. The officer’s sword was field-sharp and deadly, casually rested under a fist horn-callused by veteran service. Beside him, a spindly clerk dipped the pen to list birthplace and name, and notate the trained skills of each applicant. Four more strapping fellows flanked the makeshift post, starched to parade pomp and armed to the teeth in bedazzling gold accoutrements.

  Tarens’s sensible nerve should have crumbled before he stepped up with a falsified claim.

  If Arin experienced any such qualms, he was busy upsetting their option of subtle retreat. Trailed after his friend at a discreet distance, he embarked on an outrageous string of lame blunders that raised consternation and ripples of outraged dismay. The rumpus included a runaway horse, then a trip snagged over a guy-rope that flattened a tent, to spectacular yells from the half-smothered occupants. Next, an overset slop bucket rolled downhill and leveled the lance sergeant’s weapons rack. An equerry’s obscene curses chased Arin’s heels into the recruiter’s fold, where two more brutes recoiled with stomped toes, to louder oaths of annoyance. As the affronted parties piled in to add fisticuffs to the chorus of injured complaints, the rash of turned heads and annoyance thickened like summer flies on hot dung.

  Arin seemed oblivious. Wedged beyond reach amid the thronged hopefuls, he cloud-gazed in the midst of a loud altercation as several braw fellows fresh off the farm debated whether or not fallen acorns griped horses to colic and caused them to founder – hooked into their talk, Arin ventured a comment. The effect aroused knee slaps and laughter. With a half dozen regulars itching to strangle him, and a cohort of bystanders amused enough to cheer on his frisky mayhem, nobody noticed Tarens’s bowed head, far less commented on his smashed nose. Even the recruiter’s ruthless glance bent towards the magnetic diversion.

  ‘Set your mark here!’ The brusque clerk stabbed a forefinger into the log sheet next to the ink-pot and quill.

  For once, Tarens welcomed the bigoted presumption that his country dress and big hands made him simple. Clammy with nerves, he scrawled an illiterate’s X on the line beside the fake name written out for him.

  ‘Move along, then!’ The bark of dismissal brought little relief, with Arin left on his own to withstand the galled officer’s scrutiny.

  Called forward in turn, he shambled up to the trestle, shamefaced, nondescript, his frame too slight to seem fully grown in the jostle of robust company. The Light’s officer surveyed him, then sneered in contempt, ‘Give me one good reason why I should let a failure like you sign onto my rolls.’

  Eyes downcast, Arin straightened the dirty, holed cap found as a discard in a wayside snow-bank. Brow knitted, he mumbled, ‘Lordly men prefer not to clean their soiled boots. They don’t peel vegetables. Or empty their jakes.’

  ‘A servant, were you?’ The answering glower of purse-lipped disgust could have curdled an egg. ‘No doubt you crawled here to cadge a free meal. Were you cast off for incompetence?’

  Arin stiffened, astonished. ‘I swear not. My lord.’

  The recruiter showed teeth through his bristled beard. ‘Then, little rump-licker, what was your position?’

  The dejected sigh that emerged showed affront. ‘I was a musician,’ Arin declared. ‘But as you see, I was turned out to starve without livelihood, lacking an instrument.’

  ‘Run out for light fingers? Hard drink? Got caught rampant and naked in the wrong bed, or were you just tiresome, warbling your soppish drivel too far out of key?’ The recruiter laughed off the indignant response. ‘Light’s blinding glory! I don’t sit through anyone’s sappy excuses. If you think yourself fit to serve with this company, you’ll prove what you’re worth to my captain’s standards!’ Aside, to the clerk, came the stiff ultimatum. ‘Put this daisy down for a trial review. He’ll have three days to back up his limp claim that he isn’t a lovesick disaster.’

  The upright stick with the captain’s sash ordered the recruiter’s trestle packed up within the next hour. His push to march southward resumed straightaway, with most of the troop’s mounted lancers at the forefront with the Light’s standards. The banners beneath identified the company as Tysan’s Eighteenth True Sect Mounted and Foot, its badges of valor and streamers of past victories borne by its liveried bearers. Behind came the signal flag-man, then the drum corps beating the pace, positioned alongside the horn blowers and trumpeters, whose clarion blasts told the message runners where to locate the officers during an engagement at the battle-front.

  Behind tramped the stalwart veteran foot, ranked into squares ten by ten with their pennoned pikes shouldered upright in bristling formation. Breathing their inglorious dust came the new comers just attached by the muster, bullied into the semblance of a matched step by a drill-sergeant’s bellowed threats. After them straggled the cook wagons and baggage train, the camp women, and the insolent draggle of by-blows chased from lagging by the rear-guard. These last were mounted career men, campaign-scarred or aged, valued for disciplined training of the fractious officers’ sons. They mentored the boys not yet fit to bear arms but whose privileged birth started them out as squires in charge of the lancers’ equipment and remounts.

  The column’s progress was grindingly slow, mired further as cloudless sun softened the road to a welter of wheel-ruts, dropped manure, and churned slush. Most of the recruits tramped in caked boots, chafed raw at the heels by the sodden leather. Soon the most unfit limped in carping exhaustion, bullied like dogs if they slowed down the ranks.

  Near asleep on his feet, Tarens slogged through the morning, careful not to jostle the men nearest when the sou
py footing caused him to stumble. Arin, behind him, nursed no such intent, to judge by the staccato scatter of oaths and on-going cracks of amusement.

  ‘Light above! Keep that nuisance away from sharp objects!’

  ‘On the contrary, why not hand him your knife? Let the idiot skewer himself straightaway and rid us of the bumbling nuisance.’

  ‘Forgive!’ Arin gasped. ‘I’m sorry!’ His glib appeal sounded pathetic enough to disarm the most fierce irritation. Tarens experienced a sudden chill, unsettled as Kerelie’s past admonitions ruffled gooseflesh over his skin: ‘Don’t place undue trust in mild appearances.’ And much later, ‘Either your creature’s as daft as the moon, or we’re watching a sorcerer work.’

  Set under the pressured scrutiny of armed men, the simplistic show of incompetence assumed a sinister aspect.

  Tarens’s qualm was more than the offshoot of anxiety. Unaccustomed to lies, distressed by the deception of his honest fellows, he wrestled the uncomfortable fact he knew nothing of Arin’s past background. The man showed enough evidence of true talent to condemn him as a sorcerer out of hand. If yesterday’s kindness was just as effortlessly feigned as today’s show of bumptious stupidity, the pitfalls loomed deep beyond measure.

  Which jagged concern could not be addressed on the march in a snake-pit of militant dedicates. No bald-faced ruse, however disarming, could shield him from the horror of fire and sword if a diviner’s Sight unmasked signs of a renegade talent. Tarens stayed in step and withstood his frayed nerves. Pitifully as his companion might plead, the forced march carried on without let-up. The wretched toll of fatigue shortened tempers. The brutes who got bashed each time Arin tripped became less inclined to humour him. Trickled sweat itched under thick woolen clothes, and squelched steps through soft footing pressed the least hardened men to puffed breath and leaden exhaustion. When Arin’s inept balance jostled two neighbours into a puddled pot-hole, the splash doused the bull-necked fellow in front. Despite the drill sergeant’s annoyed reprimand, the sprayed victim swung a furious fist at his fly-weight offender.