by Wurts, Janny
‘If he escapes the reach of Caithwood’s raised mysteries in time,’ Asandir cracked in frustration. ‘And at an unconscionable risk to Rathain’s irreplaceable blood-line!’ Helpless to defang that intractable thorn, the field Sorcerer ploughed into his meal, and chased the suspiciously side-tracked purpose for his destination. ‘Then I’m bound back to Havish to hasten the High King’s unfinished training? That doesn’t explain the rush on my recall.’
Sethvir sighed, and admitted, ‘The throne may require the might of its crown jewels in defense.’
Asandir grunted, strong jaws busy. The bind in that political chess game was clear. If Arithon’s ill-advised effort succeeded, if he slipped past the armed blockade at Tysan’s border and brought Tarens to sanctuary under the charter law that ruled Havish, the by-play could ignite war. Reviled as the infamous Spinner of Darkness, he very well could draw the militant might of the True Sect religion.
Sethvir said with crisp delicacy, ‘You’ve a handful of days, and not weeks, to complete your task at Telmandir and withdraw, lest our Fellowship should become forsworn.’
‘But that would mean Arithon—’ Which brute gist put the torch to Asandir’s patience. ‘Dharkaron Avenge! Who’s tipped the black hand of the priests to spark a concerted invasion?’
‘The Prime herself. We granted her opening. Since Arithon’s escape, she’s used fear and suggestion, aligned with false writ to manipulate canon policy from the high temple at Erdane. She’s turned the Light’s muster to further her own ends.’ Into the snap-frozen stillness of shock, Sethvir temporized, ‘Well, we knew she was only biding her time to unseat the throne and break the compact in Havish!’
The sorry conclusion granted no quarter: for in fact the odds had been stacked for centuries, that someone’s invasive arcane manoeuvring might rekindle Lysaer’s false cause. Arithon’s fate offered the convenient linch-pin, with the poisonous plot pervasively shielded by Asandir’s stay of noninterference. Sethvir’s conclusion fell like a thunder-clap. ‘We cannot back the high king’s defense, should Arithon’s presence breach Havish’s border! You must agree that our line of intent would be clouded.’
‘I’ll have King Gestry prepared to wield the crown jewels.’ Such innocuous words, against the flash-point rage that flickered in Asandir’s eyes.
Sethvir tried and failed to recoup shattered calm amid the sharp current of tension. ‘I’ve known your heart, friend, too long and too well. It’s scarcely your nature to sit still and take this.’
Yet Asandir’s anger did not unleash. Ruggedly outlined in stars, he demanded, ‘Don’t side-step! You haven’t disclosed the worst, yet. Best give the rest, quickly. What other disastrous development must be left to run amok at my back?’
Beyond bearing now, the weighted pause stretched, filled by the delicate tingle as hoar-frost etched patterns across the slate roof.
‘You’d have the fraught list?’ Sethvir’s sideward glance of naked appeal met the chiselled rock of his colleague’s rapt focus. ‘I would prefer to slit open my veins first!’
Asandir applied himself to his meal. Overhead, silent, the silver stars turned. An owl’s plangent hoot haunted the dark, while a bloated, late moon notched the barren hills to the east and limned the stone tower in eldritch light.
Merciless, the field Sorcerer’s quiet impatience cut deep as a surgeon’s blade.
Even Sethvir’s ironclad reluctance gave way. ‘If the cascade begins, we’ll face the torrent, regardless.’ Resigned, he unburdened the damning scope of Prime Selidie’s covert plan. ‘Her insidious prompts angled for the certainty that the Light’s Hope dispatched to Etarra included a trained diviner, as well as the most influential of Erdane’s temple examiners.’
Asandir’s glance turned baleful. He grasped the design: when word broke, and the witnessed proof of Shadow’s re-emergence in Tysan reached Lysaer, the inflammatory news would incite an unguarded moment of vulnerability. ‘And the catalyst?’
Sethvir disclosed the recipe with distaste. ‘A Koriani initiate was bidden to transfer an enabled fetch into the corrupted grasp of the temple’s delegate.’ Seed for deadly mayhem, that cloth figure had been charged by a stolen lock of Prince Arithon’s hair, and the infused record of his aura, taken under the influence of Desh-thiere’s curse. Handed off to the ambitious priest, the ugly construct aimed to plunge Lysaer into the throes of the Mistwraith’s geas.
Asandir’s shove to arise met Sethvir’s cry of anguish. ‘The subversive entrainment’s already in play!’
‘When?’ Asandir shouted.
The Warden’s sent images fleshed out his cold-cast recap of the crux that unfolded at sunrise, in public, inside of a crowded tavern. Prime Selidie’s bold thrust had been thwarted when the young woman sworn to stand guard for Lysaer stepped forward into the breach at Etarra. Her accurate knife throw had destroyed the fetch on the fly without wisdom’s thought for the consequence.
Asandir flinched. ‘Daliana?’
‘Alive!’ Sethvir stated, but with the drawn sorrow that warned of events still in flux and poised to turn for the worse. He raised open hands, barely able to stem the recoil of Asandir’s anguish. ‘She’s in jeopardy, not lost. Share her straits for yourself . . .’
The Lord Mayor’s justice was ironclad law at Etarra, enforced by tyranny and the sword until Lysaer’s adamant rule forged the constancy of due process. Yet on the day Daliana stood accused of felony, sunset came and went without the established hearing and formal arraignment. The long hours spent behind bars without summons wore her to shredded nerves. She paced the tight confines of a locked cell, steps multiplied by the echoes bounced off the vaulted brick dungeon built beneath the magistrate’s ward-room. Shivering from the dank chill, Daliana fumed without recourse.
‘Damn all to the thorns of disgruntled male pride! State cause ought to trump the pitfall of embarrassment.’ Again, she shouted down the vacated corridor outside the grille. ‘Roust up your officers and bring on the temple’s stuck pig! Make the man show his cowardly face in complaint or else let me go without charges!’
But no guards arrived to conduct her upstairs. Nightfall doused the light through the sunken window well and plunged the cold air into oppressive darkness. Blindly, she counted her steps to and fro: click, click, plonk, as her fashionable winter boots rang against the metal drain cover set in the floor. Etarran justice did not endorse misery. The stone underfoot was swept bare, scrubbed often enough not to soil the pert mantle that swished at her ankles. If her fox-fur hood lay rumpled from rough handling, the town guard had not rifled her jasper clasp pin when they confiscated her weapons. Brusque efficiency had not led to incivility: jeering comments had not become threats. No one’s lewd fingers had harassed her modesty, and plain fare was provided at meal-times.
Daliana refused to be rattled by the contemptuous slangs of her gaolers. Rough men, honest about an infraction made in the presence of witnesses, they had every reason to think her conviction would be wrapped up in short order. But as the hours crawled past, the pressured anxiety over her hearing cranked Daliana near to the breaking point.
Someone’s scraped tread approached from the stairwell. Daliana whirled, incandescent with hope. Summoned before Lysaer’s overdue presence, she could deliver her warning of danger at last.
But no relief came. Not a palace official in the elite colours of the Lord Mayor’s livery. Instead, the magistrate’s garrulous warden arrived on his rounds to collect the supper tray.
If his cheerless duties did not cosset the guilty, his ornery nature softened with females. He unclenched the toothpick from his bearded jaws and chattered through the noise as his gaunt turnkey unlocked the door and removed the used crockery. ‘Can’t take your parole, sweet. It’s the bars, till your trial, and belike the same until you’ve been served with your sentence. Though our Lord Mayor’s scarcely on back-scratching terms with yon priests, I’ll admit. There’s some might applaud your raw cheek for pinking that pompous temple ambassador.’
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br /> ‘My knives hit on target when I choose to throw,’ Daliana retorted.
‘Spelled blades would do that,’ the turnkey avowed, then spat at her feet in contempt. He scuttled backwards, juggling the tray, resecured the door, and with smug finality, hooked the key-ring back onto his studded belt. ‘Should’ve realized, maybe, that the Light’s ambassador would be righteously protected before you tried murder by sorcery.’
‘Yon wee vixen’s no witch,’ the warden scoffed.
‘Is she not?’ The turnkey gave Daliana his wall-eyed inspection, and uneasily licked yellowed teeth. ‘True Sect says otherwise.’ Roughshod over her outrage for the delay that forestalled her fair hearing, he added, ‘Shouldn’t take foolish chances, myself. Or leave a chit on a black-sorcery charge down here without chains after midnight.’
‘She’s Etarran born and from a good family,’ the plump warden protested. But his beefy fingers nervously fumbled to kindle the wall sconce in the dimmed corridor. ‘And taking the mayor’s pay as we do? It’s disloyal to repeat the Light’s claptrap, that his Lordship’s their downfallen avatar.’
The turnkey shuffled ahead, immersed in his dour argument. ‘You’d risk an after-life with the damned, swayed by the cant of a heretic?’
The warden’s bass tone rumbled back through the tramp of his staid retreat. ‘I’d have to swallow the false canon, first off. Which I don’t. Lord Lysaer himself gives that nonsense no credence.’
‘But your knife-throwing snip’s a direct sen Evend descendant! Did that vicious fact slip your notice?’ The turnkey’s jutted chin swivelled under the caught flicker of flame light. His jaundiced stare raked the suspect’s locked cell with naked malevolence. ‘Besides the blood taint passed down through that lineage, I don’t trust the pretty ones. Never did. Shied from their wickedness, so I have, just. My blessed mother warned me to steer clear since I was a brat in the cradle.’
Daliana called after him, ‘That’s a lame-brained excuse for the more truthful slight, that generous women won’t have you!’
But no retort came as her gaolers retired to the snug comfort of the upstairs ward-room.
Alone behind bars, and left the lit torch out of fear that Darkness itself was her ally, Daliana fretted, beyond desperate to pass on her urgent message. Lysaer himself must conduct her arraignment or risk a state insult against Erdane’s titled ambassador. Yet night deepened around her. The hour grew late.
By the midnight change in the guard, even the warden’s apple-cheeked optimism could not dismiss the upset as routine. Daliana overheard his querulous uncertainty, badgered by the windy turnkey’s fanaticism and other snatches of unsettled gossip that filtered down to her cell as men idled through their turn of duty. Time passed. Anxiety chewed her shaken nerves ragged. Then, from outside, eruptions of shouting drifted in on the drought through the window well. Rushed footsteps warned of unrest in the street. When the marched tramp of hobnailed boots indicated a forceful muster of soldiers, Daliana broke into a cold sweat.
Nothing was right. Trouble developed, disturbingly fast, ominous as the rip at the tide’s change. Whatever Lysaer’s situation, since morning, his governance at Etarra had veered off its steadfast course. Daliana slumped against the brick wall. Forehead cradled in trembling hands, she realized her desperate effort at dawn might not have averted the plunge towards disaster. Though the threatening spelled construct had been discharged, the secretive enchantress in courier’s clothes had escaped. Dark craftwork done once could be repeated. Lysaer’s downfall might have been deferred by no more than a brief inconvenience.
‘Spare the worst,’ Daliana pleaded at a whisper. She missed the gentle advice of her father, whose reasoned calm during earliest childhood always had quelled her worst nightmares. But his past reassurance that most worries were phantoms did not avail her, or ease her brooding distress. Instead, she encountered her bleakest fears when a dozen Etarran guardsmen arrived to reinforce the watch assigned to the dungeon.
Their tumultuous news reached the prisoner’s cell as their sergeant supplanted the magistrate’s warden. ‘She’s to stay under more than lock and key. Condemned for assault on the temple’s ambassador, yes. And blamed for malign practice, too. Sorcery, aye! Why else would she turn in murderous malice against the Light’s sanctioned delegate, who bears the rank of a temple examiner?’
‘This verdict is called before an arraignment?’ the warden pealed back, incredulous. ‘Whose authority has upset the process of law? No Etarran case proceeds without a hearing. Not in anyone’s memory! Lord Mayor Lysaer will never endorse the reverse.’
‘Under seal and signature, he already has,’ another party rebutted. ‘Oh, yes! The sentence will be aired in public. Since Etarra’s governance has been granted to the Light’s Hope, the trial for sorcery is already scheduled.’
‘What?’ The warden’s electrified shock drilled the air.
‘You hadn’t been told?’ the watch officer snapped. ‘Well, here’s the straight line. His Radiance petitioned Lord Lysaer behind the shut doors of a private council. His case claimed the backing of decisive evidence, that the Master of Shadow broke from cover and attacked a dedicate troop back in Tysan.’
‘Warned as much, didn’t I?’ the turnkey sniped, gratified. ‘Repent, better had, while you’re still alive to embrace faith and follow the holy canon.’
While Daliana paled, paralyzed by dread, the relief guardsman gushed on with enthusiasm, ‘Already, the whirlwind muster’s been called. The town barracks are thrown into an uproar, there’s truth. By dawn, orders say, they’ll march east alongside the Light’s dedicate lancers. The decree was announced from the central square. Our Lord Mayor leaves for Tysan as the divine avatar for the True Sect followers. He will raise the Sunwheel banner and spear-head the war against Darkness.’
The turnkey said, smug. ‘You heard from me, first, that the righteous cause would find triumph. Believers will hunt Shadow to final destruction, then strike down the sorcerous grip of the Fellowship’s compact.’
While the excited stew in the guard-room swung from argument to speculation, several men in formal Etarran scarlet and two more clad in pristine Sunwheel surcoats secured the downstairs corridor. Temple orders posted them by the cell to contain the criminal sorceress.
Daliana stood and gripped the steel bars, beyond terrified. ‘What upstart writ has overturned justice? I have not faced a tribunal for any hearing to answer the charges against me!’
‘Your sentence will stand,’ the nearest Sunwheel dedicate corrected with stony rebuke. ‘The ceremonial trial will take place in a fortnight, with the gravity of state panoply to impress a warning on the unsanctified populace.’
‘This is Etarra!’ Daliana shot back. ‘True Sect doctrine’s unlikely to overthrow reason through brainless dogma.’
The soldier regarded her, ablaze with importance behind his gold badges and burnished mail. ‘Word is being sent through the outlying country-side that folk must attend to bear witness. Light’s justice decrees that black minions shall burn to put an end to such wickedness. Your example will be staged to turn other heretics towards their redemption.’
Daliana retreated, face masked in cold hands to hide her tears of despair. Trapped by the earthquake shift in town policy, she admitted the disastrous set-back: that a second fetch surely must have replaced the foul construct discharged by her throw in the tavern. In fact, the Light’s embassy would have garnered their access to Lysaer when His Radiance presented the formal complaint. The opportune process caused by her assault played straight into the priest’s scheming hands. For only a spell-cast illusion of Arithon’s live presence could have triggered Desh-thiere’s curse with the force to drive a whirlwind campaign to scourge Darkness from Tysan.
Lost to corrupt influence, Lysaer now supplied the volatile spark for the zealot expansion. Stripped of natural reason, and pressured by geas-born hatred, he would further the temple’s false cause. His twisted drive to underwrite justice would wed him to the True
Sect expansion.
Helpless in confinement, Daliana could do nothing to jolt his warped mind back to sanity. The pain cut, glass-edged, that she had sworn the same oath as her ancestor, Sulfin Evend, and when called, had hastened the course of her liege’s destruction and left him abandoned to dishonour . . .
* * *
A harsh grip on Asandir’s wrist smashed the vision and checked his agitated surge to arise. Regrounded, his outraged awareness snapped back into cold air and night stars, and the stone silence of Ciladis’s niche at Althain Tower.
At his side, rough as gravel, Sethvir declared, ‘I’ve sent Traithe.’
‘Ath’s mercy!’ That news propelled Asandir to tug free and launch all the way to his feet. ‘Pitted against the political might of an invested temple examiner? A straw hope!’
‘Not just yet!’ Sethvir qualified, rushed, ‘Traithe’s defense will extend the mockery of Daliana’s trial, if only to buy precious time. Enough, perhaps, for the wild-card player our own hand has tossed in the breach.’
‘Dakar!’ Asandir’s eyebrows rose with such outraged mixed feeling, the Warden of Althain chuckled aloud. Not dissembling, for once, he coughed into his beard. ‘Don’t fear for your oath to Prime Selidie, yet! I sent no veiled prompt. The ripple of pending event by itself roused the Mad Prophet’s spontaneous prescience. He left Halwythwood yesterday. Rathain’s caithdein’s been entrusted, and rightly, as the realm’s conscience. Cosach will decide what, if anything, can salvage the gift of Prince Arithon’s escape.’
Asandir glared. ‘Dakar had forewarning that s’Ilessid would become swayed through dark spellcraft? Your earth-sense unveiled this yesterday?’
‘That Etarra would fall under the thumb of the True Sect priesthood?’ Althain’s Warden clawed back a tendril of hair. ‘Yes.’ Like a faithful dog hunched to ward off a blow, he snugged his empty mug between his draped knees, then poked up the embers to brew more tea. As the water boiled with unnatural speed, he spiked the steeped leaves with peach brandy, then said, ‘Your prophet’s bound northward, sped on his way by the scout’s relay through Halwythwood.’