Initiate's Trial

by Janny Wurts

  Tarens shuddered, aghast. Caught in the path of a fire-storm hell-bent to reap death and destruction, he realized he would be smashed by the rival contention of Arithon’s enemies. Lost to futility, unstrung by failure, the crofter saw the last hope he might save himself trampled. Ahead of him, beckoning, he beheld the lost shades of two nephews, untouched and radiant with joy. With them, his uncle Fiath and aunt Saff smiled and raised welcoming arms to gather him in.

  Tarens yearned towards that peaceful promise of respite. Death would free the fierce shackles of grief and release his burdensome exhaustion. But as his spirit’s cry for surrender impacted the flux stream, the song of the Masterbard’s making resurged, doubly amplified by the ethereal pulse of parallel resonance: the red-bearded clansman from Arithon’s past also had mourned for lost family. He, too, had reached for the ghostly comfort of kinsfolk departed untimely. When the acute shock of initiate passage had unstrung his magnified faculties, he had languished in the same black-out coma at the threshold between life and death.

  Heart-broken past sense for that long-ago friend, the Masterbard’s cry of denouncement had challenged the turn of Fate’s Wheel. His vehement song, then and now, raised raw power that beseeched the elements for a redemption. The shock wave unleashed. Past and present shimmered into an alignment that sheared across space and time.

  Tarens, unwitting, became rocked by that force. Where the bias of history matched the resonant stamp of his personal experience, he became milled under by the same exultant rainbows of harmony. His awareness was seized by Prince Arithon’s singing, then upended and whirled into the rift.

  Early Spring 5923

  Fusion

  Tarens did not lose consciousness. Only his senses were darkened, the void itself just another gateway of passage. Before he spun through, an ephemeral grip drew him in, then gently restrained his wandering spirit.

  ‘Not yet, friend!’ said a voice. ‘Hold on. I beg you to bide. Think carefully first, since a crossing made here becomes permanent.’

  As though restored to his natural body, Tarens blinked. Rattled to find he no longer nestled within the beached dory, he viewed instead the rough sandstone cavern taken from Arithon’s imprinted past. The draughts here wore the diamond-hard chill of the gusts whipped in off the winter Barrens. But no fire burned, as it had in the original vision. Not a glimmer seeped through the cleft to show whether the world outside lay under night stars or daylight. The eerie, half gloom that Tarens experienced was suffused by a silvery cast, apparently shed by the water-worn walls, though the layered striations seemed otherwise ordinary.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked where he stood, still clad in the muddy leathers outfitted by Caithwood’s clan scouts. ‘How on earth did I get here?’

  ‘You are not on the earth,’ the same voice replied, its timbre emerged from the shadows. ‘What you call here is nowhere, and everywhere, a reflected vibration seen only when the disembodied spirit explores the half-world opened through first-level mage-sight.’

  The speaker sat across from Tarens’s vantage, with his large, scarred hands laced over the scraped buckskin breeches that covered his knees. Red-bearded, brought living from Arithon’s past, the clansman surveyed the crofter with tender expectancy.

  ‘You!’ Tarens gestured towards the mineral walls, unknown to his personal experience. ‘This is not my own time and place. Who are you? Why have you brought me?’

  The grey-hazel eyes fixed on him were a hunter’s, seared into lines by the glare of high summer and seasons of blizzards that whipped cruel cold across Rathain’s wild heartland. On a face like a map carved lean by hardship, the skin crinkled with latent laughter. ‘This is not the past.’ The correction included a gesture too graceful to fit a man of such powerful stature. ‘You are poised between life and death, my friend, beyond the range of familiar perceptions. Your history knew me as Rathain’s Teir’s’Valerient, and we are brought together because my oath as caithdein has tied both our fates to Prince Arithon’s need.’

  Tarens flushed, unsettled to find that his mettle was being weighed up as a defender. Before such acute scrutiny exposed his short-falls, he blurted, ‘I am scarcely fit! My brother was better at slaughtering stock. Said I bungled the job. Too kind-hearted.’

  The tall clansman raised dark, level eyebrows, amused. ‘Do go on.’

  Tarens bridled, fists clenched. ‘I am nobody’s killer!’

  The clan chieftain returned an infectious grin. ‘The war-captain who trained me would’ve said, of your whining, that you only dig the pit deeper by protest. Look at you, fellow! Tell me straight, with that frame, you don’t fight like an ox!’

  Frustration sparked temper: the same accusation from Efflin would have launched Tarens to fisticuffs. Since this needling barbarian was hung with a broadsword and a ruthless array of sheathed knives, prudence suggested the impasse was more wisely defanged with contempt. ‘You realize I meant to deliver your prince into the hands of his enemies.’

  ‘He sang for you anyway,’ the old blood lordling declared, turned humourless as the crouched tiger. ‘The love in his music has not denied you. My liege and my sworn brother risked life to redeem you. Yours, now, the charge not to abandon him.’

  ‘Are you real at all?’ Tarens taunted, afraid. ‘This may be nothing more than a dream.’

  But the denial only evoked melting sorrow. ‘The moment is real,’ the s’Valerient said. ‘You and I stand at the verge of the veil where the boundaries between etheric perception and substance are thinnest. What we decide here will affect what happens, not just to your destiny, but Arithon’s. Yet not mine. I returned from this place and completed my given fate. Transcendent, at death, my loyalty answers your crisis only because your choice now might help Arithon’s survival.’

  ‘Who were you, to him?’ Tarens asked, despite himself piqued to curiosity.

  The tension dissolved to rich laughter from the apparition. ‘My liege knew me as Jieret. Hasn’t he cursed my bull-stubborn nature, or laughed over my feckless sea-voyage to Innish when he’s fallen into his cups?’

  Tarens swallowed, abashed by the overtones of an intimacy that left him stranded like a blindfolded trespasser. ‘He may not remember. You don’t know your liege suffered the loss of his past after being held captive by the Koriathain?’

  ‘Aye, the frigid, murderous parasites!’ Jieret snapped, brows pinched to a spine-chilling frown. ‘Sithaer take their meddling sigils, you won’t notice the evidence under your nose? They seek his Grace still through their filthy use of coercive spellcraft.’

  Tarens stared, blank. ‘I saw no witches. Only opportunists, faith-driven or pressured by greed, since the temple’s posted a bounty in gold as a head price.’

  ‘Don’t say you were hoodwinked!’ The clansman unfolded his rangy frame and shot off his rock perch in distress. ‘How could you miss the poisonous storm of compulsion polluting the flow of the lane flux?’

  ‘You think such overpowering urgency is suspect,’ Tarens mocked, head turned to follow the clansman. The large man paced like a predator, muscled arms crossed as if chilled. ‘Why?’ Tarens pressed. ‘You say the sisterhood’s wiles stir the pot? It seems excessive to rock the stalemate with Havish over a hunt to trap one escaped prisoner.’

  ‘Oh, the witches claim to have cause, beyond question!’ Jieret insisted, his sideward glance baleful as his ferocious strides quartered the narrow cave. ‘My liege was named the Spinner of Darkness as the author of wholesale slaughter. Truth lent the bitterest seed for the lies that have whitewashed a cursed war in religious trappings. Though, by Ath, my prince never walked the role given him. He has not embraced the ways of black practice, no matter how viciously he’s been hounded, or how bloody the field as his enemies raised their unscrupulous wars to seek his downfall, again and again. Your move might stop the next round of innocent pawns being put to the sword, as they move to provoke him!’

  ‘Arithon?’ Tarens stared back, astounded. ‘We speak of the same man? He’s
the most unassuming, compassionate healer I’ve ever met!’

  ‘Ah!’ Jieret chuckled and jabbed an admonishing finger. ‘Don’t be fooled by his kindly heart! Or worse, be disarmed by his runt appearance. Arithon s’Ffalenn is more dangerous than anyone you will ever live to encounter.’ Jieret glanced at his hands, perhaps wrenched to naked regret, as he added, ‘You’ve noticed he’s also daft over sentiment. Few are privileged to witness the frightening depth of his vulnerability. He does need a vigilant sword at his back. Since I cannot serve, would you stand at his shoulder and guard a safe return to his feal clans, in Rathain?’

  ‘I’m a steader who ploughs, scarcely qualified as your successor,’ Tarens declaimed.

  ‘You are fit,’ Jieret argued. ‘Or will you rebut the genuine loyalty that also spared your close kin? Can you claim that you killed a temple diviner by accident?’

  There, Tarens could not deny his own courage. But neither could he disown his honesty before this skilled warrior’s rapt eyes. His own hands were strong, but not those of the swordsman, scarred through hardened experience. He was not schooled to arms; could not stalk and hunt game through the life pulse of the mysteries. He was ill suited as a royal defender, far less to shoulder the role of the steadfast liegeman that Jieret implied. Tarens knew that his capable nature sprang from mulish persistence, heroic only through berserk temper in the rare moment when he was goaded.

  Jieret laughed. ‘Ath wept, man! You’ve undervalued yourself! Don’t commit to that foolish mistake. Such pigheaded modesty will see you cut dead before you can father your heirs.’

  Tarens protested, stung. ‘I can mend harness straps well enough. Swing the scythe from dawn to dusk, and even manhandle rampaging oxen. But those skills can’t shelter your liege against sorceries, or turn the armed strength that’s committed against him.’

  ‘Aye, well enough.’ Jieret grinned. ‘There’s the sore point that I’ve come to remedy. My liege and I were once blood-sworn under the auspices of his mastery. Due to the gift he also bestowed to uplift both of our latent faculties, a bridge of connection has opened between you and me. Just for this moment, that gives me the chance to bequeath you the sum of my knowledge.’

  At Tarens’s blank look, the barbarian qualified. ‘This deep in the mysteries my hands are not tied! The initiate awareness Arithon wove for you has fused with a part of my being. We can tap that connection. Forged through the lines of his Grace’s past oath, I could cede you all of my faculties. You won’t be the same man, ever again. But since you made the bold choice and fled Kelsing, what else might you dare to become?’

  Already hurtled beyond the familiar, Tarens weighed up the proposal, uneasy. He had Seen the ships, and the armies; tasted the bitter scorch of the power set in motion by the Koriathain. He sensed the measure of Arithon’s enemies, and worse, feared the flames and the scaffold he might face himself. Already condemned as a fugitive and sentenced to die as a minion of Shadow, he knew that he lacked the means to thwart the arcane pursuit of the temple diviners. And yet, hesitation still clawed him to ribbons.

  ‘You must decide quickly,’ warned Jieret, fretted to sudden impatience. ‘Once you’ve crossed the gateway towards life or death, I can no longer help you.’

  The clan chieftain was too prideful to plead. War-scarred and stern, he towered with such human presence, Tarens found the prospect of an intimate exchange with him all the more keenly disturbing. ‘You are asking me for a liegeman’s true service. Blind trust in your cause for the sake of your prince when you’ve just cautioned that I barely know him.’

  ‘I could share my deep ties of commitment to him,’ Jieret answered. Not lightly offered, such a private exposure would lay bare his heart’s very core in the flux: the grace that sustained greater mystery could not falsely glorify petty motives. ‘I won’t hide the blood on Prince Arithon’s hands,’ Jieret stated without apology. ‘But if you understood why I survived my past trial of awakening only to suffer and die for him, you might find the footing to ease your decision.’

  ‘No.’ Tarens ducked the personal embarrassment. His own upright character demanded that he stand or fall by his own merits. ‘Arithon risked all that he had to give selflessly, for both of us. And Caithwood’s folk showed me the fibre of clan honour. I believe you speak with integrity. For those reasons, I’ll shoulder your task, and do what I may, though I can’t promise your liege can be steered anyplace he refuses to go.’

  ‘Ath wept! That’s the way of him. I’ve cause to know.’ Rueful with relief, Jieret stepped forward and gripped Tarens’s forearm in his people’s traditional clasp to seal amity. ‘Fare you well, town-born, whatever befalls. Fight bravely, heart of my heart.’

  Words were finished, between them. The chieftain’s firm touch melted away, lost into a blast of white light and a peal of exquisite, grand harmony. Blinded in the deluge, deafened by ecstatic joy, Tarens became overset. Hurled momentarily beyond reach of all sorrow, he gave way to the elemental shout of celebration. Both cavern and clansman vanished; or not: somewhere in time, the cry of a master singer had awakened the exalted power made manifest by a Paravian enchantment laid into an ancient, black sword. For a sanctioned crown prince’s naked appeal to call Jieret back to himself, the bright chord that once had Named the winter stars rang through the weave of Ath’s creation. Or not; perhaps the tone woke instead to the blast of a dragon-spine horn, winded by a centaur guardian…

  The majestic note stripped away human reason. Its shattering fullness peeled Tarens’s being and laid siege to his mortal essence. The hammer-blow smashed all frames of experience. His human awareness scattered into shards, then split again, ripped down to particles of singing energy. Then whole cognizance reassembled with a gut-wrenching swoop. Poured back into the clay flesh left behind in the dory, Tarens curled helpless behind the heaped fish-nets. While time streamered like ribbon through the closed gaps, he shivered and wept as the molten core of his being reshaped and emerged from the white-heated crucible of sweeping change.

  Plain as daylight, he grasped that his last request had been disregarded. Closer than a brother, he knew how Jieret had died. And more: too much more to assimilate. Whiplashed by the rebound of stressed senses, and pierced by the unbearable, fading echoes of beauty and hope, Tarens wept for the unconsoled sorrow. The grand chord had passed its thundering crest. Nothing in life prepared him for the overwhelming loss of separation. Grief tore through the breach with a shock of agony that nearly stopped heart-beat and breathing.

  ‘How can I survive this?’ Tarens gasped in extremis.

  As the final thread of rapport diminished, he received Jieret’s last exhortation.

  ‘I offer the advice my Teir’s’Ffalenn gave, as master, when he guided me through the final stage of initiation.’ The wistful farewell the shade offered was bitter-sweet, piquant with humour and boundless affection. ‘The gifts you’ve inherited will settle with sleep.’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ Tarens mumbled back from the cod-tainted reek of the dory. Scarcely conscious, he repeated the selfsame protest once used by the shaken clansman, centuries before him.

  As the glimmer of the grand chord dispersed into the background scatter of lane flux, Tarens’s raw confusion was eased by last words, which might have been Jieret’s, or Arithon’s. ‘You will. You must. I can help, if I have your permission.’

  Since that kindly plea could not be refused, Tarens let go. Profound silence embraced him, dense as black felt and peaceful as final oblivion.

  He woke to the clash of irritable voices, immersed in hot argument over his head. Tarens could not guess how long he had rested, crammed under the fish dory’s bow seat. Filtered through the stinking cover of nets, the latest contender sawed on, ‘…pains my bollocks something worse than wicked to be robbed by a pack of cod-seiners!’

  ‘Terrified of them, are you?’ another man mocked, gruff as the grate of chewed gravel. ‘Captain should forfeit your pay share for whining, then toss you off for the sharks if y
ou can’t come to grips.’

  ‘Blight, man!’ a laconic chap intervened. ‘Yon fish-slitters aren’t mincing daisies, or harmless. Remember that drunken blow-hard who was killed on the public wharf? Got himself reamed by some clam-stinky bloke with a shark gaff. Anyone’s moon-sozzled, who thinks to knock down the buggers who’ve nabbed our mark, first. Best to take their measure and make a plan.’

  Pinned down throughout the singeing exchange, Tarens tallied the separate voices to number the sea-wolves hell-bent to take Arithon.

  The fourth on his list groused in clipped sibilants, ‘We’ve got no leeway to pussyfoot, Cayte! Not with hardened bountymen hot on our tail! More, we can’t hope to dodge those war galleys peeled off from the Sunwheel blockade.’

  Gravel-tongue gave his opinion, again. ‘What if yon fishing blokes posted a lookout? If someone’s holed up on that anchored lugger, one whistle in warning will flush their slinking shore party like stoats. The brush here could hide them for hours.’

  ‘I’m not beating the reeds in this bog to flush anyone,’ a smug fifth fellow agreed. ‘That’s begging to get us pegged by clan archers. I say we make straightaway for the spoils. Square off with that rival crew, then bolt with their prisoner. Leave here, before this place gets choked with bully-boys frothed up to kill for religion.’

  ‘Should scuttle this cockle-shell first,’ drawled the thoughtful tactician among them. ‘At least stop the nabs on that lugger from chasing our wake through the gauntlet.’

  ‘A scavenging rat could do better!’ This voice female and piercing with scorn. ‘Given the weather’s too frigid to swim? Just shove off their dory and let the ebb-tide sweep her away down the channel.’