Initiate's Trial

by Janny Wurts

  ‘I feel like the goose crated up for the butcher,’ Daliana said under her breath. ‘How many converts do you suppose have sworn to the canon in the past few weeks?’

  ‘Enough to brand either one of us heretics if we don’t spout the right slogans.’ Lysaer skirted the midden in the back alley just taken to by-pass the mob at a shop-front sermon.

  At least the sea quarter suffered less damage where the quaint taverns and older stone boarding-houses were built under the precepts of charter law. Beneath broken clouds and wan sunlight, the sign-boards creaked in the wind off the wharf, drenched to the gloss of dipped lacquer. Cargo, baled and boxed and in barrels, lined the harbourfront breastwork, also crammed chock-a-block with oared ships, and laced through the press by the soprano horns blared for right of way by the lightermen. The congested activity showed little concern for the perils of seasonal storms.

  The duty officer at the excise house shrugged as he listed the vessels prepared to cast off with the tide. ‘This far south of the narrows off Blackshear Isle, the shoals pose less hazard for westbound mariners.’

  Yet a morning spent in determined wrangling failed to buy a quick passage to Tysan. The hard-bitten galley-men tied up in port might be undaunted by nature’s fury, but the back-lash lately evoked by the intensive outbreaks of visions and madness pinned them under the thumb of the True Sect religion. War-bond requisition ruled those captains with flags under Tysan’s registry. Everywhere, the wharves were stacked up with delayed supply bound for the campaign to eradicate Darkness.

  ‘It’s a lash-up stampede to cleanse the corruption sheltered by the Crown of Havish,’ admitted the last galley’s master they interviewed. ‘We’re taking on recruits to fight for the cause ahead of civilian passengers.’

  At the end, an exchange of hard coin moved the flash-fire blaze of devout fervour. Passage was secured for unfavourable terms, with no likelihood of improvement. ‘No berths for the night before sailing,’ the captain insisted. He wished the dock cleared and the hold’s lading finished, before any landlubbers boarded.

  Lysaer paid the extortionate rate without haggling. He could do little else. Even the roughest dock-side dives displayed the seal talismans blessed by the priests. White rosettes fashioned from petticoat ribbons fluttered over the brothel doorways, and crackpots sold gimcrack amulets against sorcery alongside their stock of aphrodisiacs. Vigilantes prowled the streets. Worse, the charred taint on the landward breeze lingered from the latest Sunwheel purge.

  Daliana shivered, in close step at her liege’s heels. This racketing trade town was swayed by its guild-halls, and not ruled as Etarra, tempered by law to just tolerance. What talent walked here wore white for the canon. An outbred clan heritage surely might see her condemned by a mob frenzied by self-righteous redemption.

  ‘I’d feel better if you covered your hair,’ she urged Lysaer, who breasted the bustle bare-headed.

  Her remark met deaf ears, or else went unheard as a rowdy pack of dyers shoved past. Sunwheel tokens on blessing chains glinted through the unlaced collars above their splotched leather aprons. Sloshed on cheap beer to piss in the vats, they bellowed obscene snatches of doggerel. A merchant in lace cuffs cursed their loud impudence and jostled the comely blond traveller.

  ‘Light bless you, I’m sorry,’ he apologized without the least flicker of awe.

  Lysaer’s chapped features no longer displayed the courtier’s immaculate polish. Stripped of his liveried escort, and with tailored finery exchanged for a commonplace wayfarer’s oiled wool, he cut through the workaday clamour without recognition.

  Daliana stretched to match his brisk pace, forced to dart in front of a loaded dray bound for the joiner’s. The crossed carter’s invective shrilled through the mallet strokes from the forge, where sweaty men pounded out barrel hoops.

  The deafening clangour failed to dampen the rival charms of two trollops, who cut her off in an obstructive attempt to snag Lysaer’s attention. Daliana pushed through them, propositioned in turn as an idle sailhand whistled at her with raised eyebrows.

  She jerked up the hood of her mantle and ran, while her liege lengthened stride, surely quite as unnerved as she at the prospect of lodging ashore. The sailhands’ hostel that sheltered their baggage was dingy and cramped, each of its narrow rooms filled past capacity without a premium charge to stay private. If the galley’s sly master slipped his hawsers without them, Lysaer’s vented threat to torch her with all hands carried the ring of hard warning.

  ‘Slow down, will you?’ Daliana dodged a boy with a hand-cart of oak billets. Ducked breathlessly under a weaver’s rate board, she clawed sample streamers of silk from her eyes just as Lysaer pitched to his knees in her path.

  The arm she flung out to brake her collision barely avoided his injured shoulder.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she gasped. He would fling off her touch. At every turn, he enforced his cool distance, no doubt in the adamant hope she might one day recover her senses and leave him.

  Except the hard shudder under her palm destroyed any pretence of clumsiness. Desh-thiere’s curse had engaged him in force. Stricken speechless, he battled for sanity.

  Daliana knelt at his side, beyond frightened. Every alley held eager temple informants, alert for the least sign of malign behaviour. ‘Lysaer, can you stand if I lend my help?’

  The strangled snarl wrenched from his throat raised the hair at her nape. Too many inquisitive heads turned to stare, hardened to slit-eyed suspicion.

  Daliana sprang for the jugular, first. ‘Get up!’ she railed like a hussy. ‘I don’t care how much you drank! Rise and walk like a man. If you flop in the gutter, by Light, you’ll stay down, because I’ll kick your bollocks clear through your front teeth.’

  Relieved laughter broke out. Workmen’s mallet strokes faltered.

  ‘Lass!’ an aproned journeyman called. ‘Want the loan of a rope? I’ve got several feisty apprentices who’d help dunk your sot in the brine till he sobers.’

  ‘Has he paid?’ jibed a chandler, to knee slaps and guffaws. ‘Leave him lie, sweetheart. Pick a livelier stud for your bounce in the sheets.’

  Fury blistered Lysaer erect. ‘You have no limits,’ he snapped to Daliana, ablaze with humiliation.

  ‘Quite the contrary!’ She tugged at his sound wrist until his testy weight stumbled into her. Bent to his ear, she capped her rejoinder through the bystanders’ jeering. ‘How much credible dignity would you have left if the Mistwraith’s compulsion takes you in public?’

  Which steadfast truth stung his pride beyond bearing. His statesman’s charisma resurged as he bridled.

  But her shrewish tirade trampled his rebuff. ‘Fiends take you! Go on then. Wallow here in the mud. Snore through your stupor. I’d bless the relief, since in bed, you’ve got nothing to show me.’

  The insult seared through the pull of the curse as Lysaer flamed with embarrassment. A born prince, well armed against flattery, he was peerless at disarming female attention: but not scorn. Only Talith had dared to challenge his male integrity by insinuation. Since that ill-advised love nearly brought him to ruin, no woman ever addressed him like this, far less mocked his prowess before the amusement of gawking craftsmen.

  Daliana stared down his wild anger and laughed. ‘Stand tall. Take your licks.’

  Genteel protest would skewer him with derisive hoots. Should he force her silent, dozens of burly, cock-sure admirers would defend her coarse tongue with their fists. Which left Lysaer no recourse except to retreat to the tavern in tongue-lashed ignominy.

  The greasy tap-room at the Gull and Anchor languished in the lull at midmorning. Two crapulous idlers smoked over dice, while a slatternly drudge with hiked-up skirts and a bucket rasped a scrub brush over the trestles. The Mistwraith’s assault had not abated. Lysaer careened straight for the stairway without the intended pause to arrange for separate quarters. Trembling beneath Daliana’s braced hand, pale and clammy with sweat, he had little choice but to lean on her strength to stay uprig
ht. He felt her gaze on him. Knew the sconce that illumined the dingy upper landing disclosed pupils distended with shock. The rigid clench to his jaw barely bit back the harrowed screams he suppressed. Warned that this onslaught outstripped every prior encounter on the Mathorn Road, he let her steer his tortuous steps into the dubious haven of the rented room.

  He lunged free, once inside. Daliana slammed and barred the oak door, then braced her back against the stout panel: not for the explosive retaliation her cruel tactics deserved but against the feral current of danger that undoubtedly savaged her ancestral instincts.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ Lysaer said, straightaway.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Daliana demanded instead, and surveyed him with headstrong acuity.

  Lost to civil argument, he met her presumption with a steely glare. The tactic proved a vicious mistake. The rich walnut hair wind-blown to tumbled tangles recalled his other lost wife. Ellaine, whose wrongs were as far past his reach to redress as Talith’s untenable murder. The sucker punch of old guilt, crushed but never assuaged, hurled him onto the defensive. ‘Get out, Daliana!’

  She remained planted. ‘How bad, my liege?’

  The room was abruptly, unbearably cramped: scarcely more than a closet with one narrow bed and a mildewed blanket. The battered side-table held a dented lamp, its wick and reservoire left dry of oil to wring extra recompense for the bothered chambermaid. The gentleman’s close stool was no longer padded, what forlorn wisps remained of the frayed leather seat torn away from tarnished copper tacks. But the chipped washstand supported a freshly filled basin, and the board floor was swept clean. The warmth from the stone chimney did just as little to relieve his feverish vertigo.

  He unlocked his fists, edged backwards and sat to a twinge from his mending collar-bone, and a ripe squeal from the slats that suspended the tired straw mattress. ‘How bad is what?’ He would not make this easy. She accosted Desh-thiere’s curse, and not him. But her weapon of choice was his private conscience, an attack too perniciously savage for banal forgiveness.

  Daliana wiped anxious palms on the outdoor mantle tossed over her rider’s leathers. ‘I can’t help you fight with polite finesse if you shut me out of your confidence.’

  ‘I would shut you out,’ Lysaer blazed back, ‘if there were a single personal barrier that your crass tactics respected.’

  ‘Oh?’ Daliana bent and unlaced her damp boots, redolent of the harbour-side puddles. ‘I should bow to ethics? How, when the curse compromises free will and lays claim to your mind and your person? Let’s not cloud the issue of which is your bane!’

  Had she been a man, he would have sprung, goaded to violence by curse-fanned annoyance. Readily, he might have struck another female of hardened experience. But not this one. Her tender innocence stymied his bleak rage. Lysaer could not lay hands on her. Not without raising the ghost of the shame from his second bride’s ill-fated wedding night. No penance on his part could ever redress the raw wound wreaked upon her, bedded by force at seventeen years of age.

  His harsh self-revulsion had curdled with years. Safest to answer this girl’s meddling question than reopen that abhorrent canker. No matter whether the geas had held sway: some despicable acts would haunt him forever. Always, evasive revolt made him deflect all threat to his unconscionable vulnerability.

  ‘I can tell you the bastard’s in flight for his life on the run by the wastes of Scarpdale.’ Lysaer sat erect as a sword sheathed in ice. He fought the pull as the geas burned in him, its drive an unquenchable fire. Its wakened, coiled power flickered charge down his nerves like bolt lightning, relentlessly fanned by the straits that pressed Arithon, until speech by itself posed a reckless endangerment. ‘He’s using hard Shadow against close pursuit. The presence of him never leaves my awareness but flares ever more sharply as we fare south.’

  Daliana measured his tension, unfooled. She knew his nature would not let him disclose the brute will he required to keep his composure. His fierce grasp of statecraft was too ingrained. He would not bend, or plead for help in resistance. The stalker’s aggressive instincts were wakened, which made him hair-trigger dangerous. Pity could not appease his affliction, but only provoke the lethal response any predator showed towards weakness.

  Unfazed, she approached his problem, prosaic. ‘How long can your half brother run before he’s exhausted? One day, two, perhaps? Three at the most? We only have to outlast his endurance to defend the bulwark of your integrity.’

  Lysaer dismissed the suggestion, impatient. ‘You speak of a man trained to mastery by mages. He can wield Shadow, even asleep. I’ve seen him withstand the need for rest, days on end through his filthy practices.’

  ‘Not set to flight by fanatics, I’ll wager,’ Daliana insisted. ‘He will break.’

  ‘I will crack sooner,’ Lysaer snapped, distressed. ‘Do you think I can stay under siege for that long? Don’t even try to trifle with card games. I’m pushed past the point where I can stay focused on trivia.’

  ‘Then I’ll send for hot brandy.’ Her grin lit with mischief. ‘What if you drink until you can’t stand up? I’ll shoulder the vigil. It can’t be too hard to make sure you stay comatose.’

  Lysaer inhaled, to a chatter of teeth. ‘You don’t know what you risk.’

  ‘That’s no reason to pack up before the pitched fight.’ She stared down his fraught terror, unflinching. ‘What chance for the victory if no one stays beside you to hold the line?’

  ‘You don’t know what you risk!’ Lysaer repeated. Cornered, torqued still by stark desperation, he scrubbed a palm over his streaming face. ‘I don’t want you hurt.’

  ‘Is this gallantry?’ Daliana cut him no slack. ‘If so, then you cannot afford it.’

  That she dismissed basic manners, and even his deepest integrity, woke an ire that lifted his shuttered hand. Vision dissolved into perilous sparks. Jabbed by the murderous force of the curse, Lysaer breached the tissue-thin veil of civility first. ‘Did you know that I raped my second wife?’ He pushed on and killed her shocked interruption. ‘Yes, in cold blood! With the help of a belt of strong brandy, beforehand.’

  Recoil made her blink. Entrained on her person like a hazed lynx, Lysaer saw the clasped fist in the folds of her mantle clench to white knuckles. He pressed the cruel advantage to drive her from him before he shattered. ‘Ellaine had your hair colour, child! Don’t think Desh-thiere’s geas will not prey upon that similarity. Go away, and don’t martyr yourself over misfit kindness for my sake.’ He drew in a shuddering tormented breath, at a loss when she did not retreat.

  Her stiff silence ground out the deeper admission, wretchedly stripped to bare fact. ‘Then don’t dismiss my sorry attempt at protection. This is no banal platitude, Daliana. Never believe that I could abide such heroic abuse of your innocence!’

  She swallowed. The tremulous glitter that clung to her lashes at last revealed her stifled weeping. ‘I understand,’ she said gently. Then moved, not to leave. Her hands shook very little as she unclasped the ring brooch that fastened her mantle. ‘We’ll disarm the dread in your worst fear, directly. Accept my consent. I am willing.’

  ‘I’m not!’ Lysaer shouted, aghast. ‘Don’t assume that I want you at all! I prefer my bed partners experienced.’

  She laughed. ‘Do you then?’ Her challenge was brass. ‘Let’s put that blow-hard claim to the test.’ Careless and quick, she drew her knife. The small blade flashed, a stroke that risked skin as she slashed through her bodice laces. Chin raised, eyes on him, she reached towards her throat. While his pulse slammed and raced, she nipped the draw-string tie at her collar. Her blouse slithered open. The loosened cloth slipped off her shoulders before he could react. Bared to view, her pert young breasts stole his senses. Like two rubbed pearls, tipped in delicate pink, with her eyes watching his transfixed entrancement black-lashed and golden: grace save him, exactly like Talith’s.

  Older memory resurged like an echo and threw him the wrenching flashback: of his lost beloved wi
th her stays undone, poised in eager abandon before him.

  The shock sheared him through. On his feet before thought, he groaned at the ache that flooded his groin. He had not touched a woman in far too long, never mind one with a shred of regard fueled by other than brazen ambition.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ he pleaded. Unlike before, this time Lysaer saw through the shield of delusion the curse wove to blind him. He clung to clarity through assaulted nerves. If Daliana pressed him now and forced his heated need, would she not see? He could never outlive his redoubled shame for the grotesque necessity that poisoned the purity of his affection.

  Daliana did not retreat. Instead, she repeated his name in a tone that terrified for its genuine mildness.

  Rage overtook him, a wave of bleak, uncontainable savagery, that any woman should ever so dare to corner him beyond recourse. Through that torn breach, lent the foothold of anger, the Mistwraith’s curse seized fell advantage. Jolted from restraint, hounded in spirit by the raw toll of hurts inflicted by his faithless mother, and Talith, and Ellaine, all of whom had abandoned him, he surged forward. The chit who annoyed him was a frail doll in his hands, a flower stem overdue for a well-deserved plucking. Lysaer wound his fist in her tumbled brown hair. He twisted her head back with aggressive fingers. Her soft lips parted anyway, ripe for his kiss, which was not going to be tender.

  Her eyes stayed on him. She never blinked. He searched her face, sought the pain of resistance, and read nothing there but pity and sorrow, and love deep enough to embrace his most criminal failures.

  The honesty behind that pliant surrender struck Lysaer like a cold-water slap. He loosened his death grip. Flung her away, turned his back, and cried hoarsely, ‘Cover yourself. Leave the room. If you tempt me or taunt any further, your victory is certain to seal my bane. I will lose control. The curse shall tear me asunder and unleash the vicious side of my nature. Let me go before I destroy you that way. I would rather die like a cur on the run, before having to live like a coupling beast.’