The Wars of Light and Shadow (9) - INITIATE'S TRIAL: First book of Sword of the Canon

by Wurts, Janny

  The upright woman accepted his offer. ‘Then help me pull these people together. I’ll settle the children. You might number the sick and the injured, and catch what loose stock you can halter to bear them. We must leave this place and flee southward at speed. Our picked men are away to seek Havish’s war host and beg for the High King’s protection. We dare not rest until we’ve caught up. No survivor will ever be safe, here.’

  The hay-barn would burn to the ground before sundown. Once the coals cooled, the temple would send head-hunters to tally the charred skulls under the ashes. No bones would be found: only tumble-down stones, streaked soot black as the shadow that had spared the wives and the offspring of Torwent’s old blood-lines.

  Iyat-thos Tarens shouldered the cheerless task of shepherding stragglers through the hardship of a forced march. He comforted youngsters, helped catch scattered horses, and spoke to encourage the elderly and the desolate. He understood the loss of close family too well. His severance from Kerelie cut him to the quick as he grieved for the suffering of the bereaved.

  The more unbearable burden stayed silenced, for the friend left alone in the path of two opposed war hosts. Arithon fled with no other protection than The Hatchet’s stolen armour and chariot. Tarens wrestled the anguish. He had mishandled the charge bestowed by the shade of a steadfast liegeman. Hag-ridden remorse did not ease the mistake. When Rathain’s prince cast off the one stalwart man pledged to stand fast at his back, far more than a defender’s true sword had been lost. The summary dismissal had banished the gift of Earl Jieret’s memories, as well. Unknowingly, his Grace had cut the vital tie to a past that might cost his life if he failed to remember.

  Early Spring 5923

  Falls

  ‘I’ll wind that meddling sorcerer’s guts on a post!’ The Hatchet cracks, upright with a blacked eye and contusions, but too late to redress the tumultuous sabotage that upends his battle plan; and the poisonous irony stings, that naught else but his rigorous standard of discipline led his captains to take an imposter’s orders without question . . .

  Nursed by the kindness of a passing merchant after the spill that collapsed his exhausted horse under him, Lysaer s’Ilessid awakes to a cracked collar-bone, a bashed head, and the far uglier reckoning: that only luck and a timely bout of unconsciousness broke the madness engendered by Desh-thiere’s curse . . .

  Hours after the blinding, sheet-flash of light that crosses Asandir into Athili, the distressed black stallion his departure leaves masterless buckles into collapse amid the diamond-dust sparkle of bone, once the past site of a grimward; while on the far side of the world, the event makes a dragon at rest open sun yellow eyes, her crest bristled as she rears rampant . . .

  Early Spring 5923

  XII. Bind

  W

  hile Asandir’s relentless passage traversed the proscribed ground at Athili, the convergent events that steered Athera’s future also swung the Fellowship’s fate in the balance. The flux lines thrummed, strained into excited suspension like a breath withheld past the breaking point. Alone in the world, the Warden at Althain Tower owned the broadscale power to track every subtle connection. The vast spate of images sparked and flared through Sethvir’s earth-linked awareness, parsed into continuous, myriad currents, sourced from the grand chord of the infinite. The onslaught streamed in unabated, although he stood with preoccupied hands, mixing ink at the work trestle inside the scriptorium stores closet. The narrow cranny with its board shelves and limed walls serviced the top-floor library. No lamp burned there, where an errant spark might threaten the trove of artifacts preserved since First Age Year One. The unshuttered arrow-slit overhead pierced the gloom with a blade of ice light, dusty with the exotic mélange of the dried plants and insect wings ground to create the luminous pigments beloved by Paravian archivists. The burnished strength of the wards in that place spared the aged dyestuffs in their muslin sacks from time’s pillage of rot.

  Human enough to have tucked his large feet into cozy fur buskins, Sethvir rubbed his nose, senses steeped in the ancient perfume of dried flowers and the bite of grain alcohol; and also the rimed sweat of a stallion, black coat gritted diamantine white by the bone-shard sand where it lay in the wasteland of Scarpdale.

  Asandir’s imperative need had left the proud creature in collapse at the site of a banished grimward: where, once, the field Sorcerer had stood fast himself for a loyalty that risked total sacrifice. His unflinching fortitude then had granted the leverage to settle the terrible fury of a drake’s unquiet shade. Deadly tumult no longer haunted the site, close by the River Darkshiel’s head-waters. The beloved stud suffered without pain in extremis. Soothed into spelled sleep, it dreamed of green meadows under the grace of the Sorcerer’s protection.

  But no such calm infused the sealed runes of appeal left imprinted like a water-mark in the faltering animal’s aura. The obligation invoked the might of a living dragon, whose victory over the past’s deranged ghost had been won through the Sorcerer’s influence. To draw a drake’s notice, quickened or dead, was a desperate measure that invoked chaotic uncertainty.

  Sethvir listened for change, while the bellows heave of the stallion’s taxed lungs threaded through the thump of his mortar and pestle. The counterpoint rhythm echoed bloodshed and rage, as he powdered the blend of charcoal and oak-galls used for his archival ink.

  Sorrow spoke too, as the percussive beat against the granite bowl matched the laboured pulse of the great horse’s heart; and also entrained to the clack of the looms in the craft shops of Morvain, which fronted the wayside apothecary’s shop where Lysaer s’Ilessid winced under the ministration of the bone-setter who strapped up his cracked clavicle. The grind of stone upon stone rang as well for the sorry destruction of trees farther east: there, a woodman’s axe split pitch pine for yet another pyre decreed by the temple canon. Sethvir’s industry also re-echoed contentment in the creak of a cradle, rocked elsewhere to a young mother’s lullaby.

  The crunch as the Warden pulverized charcoal whispered over the demise of seeds, gnawed with relish by pilfering mice; and also rang to the carnage, where men’s bones were milled under the wheels of the Light’s southbound war-chariots: in Lanshire, The Hatchet’s troops wheeled volte-face from their misled retreat. The invasion to rout the Spinner of Darkness from Havish resumed to the dolorous boom of the drums, while priests in costly bullion regalia demanded redress for the Light. Eyes pinched shut, Sethvir mourned: for the horror inflicted on the seasonal landscape, and for the downtrodden bud of spring’s growth as more companies of foot spanned the melt-swollen Darkshiel with log bridges and breached the heath on the farther shore. Proscribed ground that Asandir might have defended, had the Teir’s’Ffalenn not been the proclaimed cause for the war upon turf demarked as a free-wilds sanctuary.

  The day’s violent trespass would incur a Fellowship reckoning; but not for as long as Arithon’s fate stayed entangled.

  Sethvir turned the mortar and added more galls. His smudged sleeve cuffs rustled to each purposeful move, while his spidery fingers with short nails rimmed in black resumed the grind of stone upon stone, surly as the growl of thunder in the pause before the summoned storm. Incited by the turmoil of war, or called by the fate of a stallion, the irreversible vortex began, that also cried hope and rage! and explosive peril! Sethvir sensed the distanced crack of sail membranes where a dragon’s wings and spiked tail vanes sheared through the ice-crystal winds of high altitude. The great drake Seshkrozchiel came, a shot arrow of gold that plumed flame like damascened silk across the indigo zenith. Her swift approach spiked ripples of warning through the weave of unborn probability.

  A moment already pregnant with stress seemed unfit to bear the fresh onslaught. Sethvir was not fooled, or complacent, but poised with ferocious expectancy when the enemy play he most dreaded stole through his awareness.

  The Koriathain were active, again. Timed for the opportune Fellowship weakness, whatever bold feint they planned this time came drenched in the
reek of raw violence.

  Sethvir froze, wreathed in a disturbed haze of dust. In the pause that measured what might become the last breath of a dying horse, and on the instant a dragon’s wings lifted in flight, the sonorous cry of Athera herself struck a dissonant note through his earth-linked awareness.

  The Warden’s rapt focus pounced on the source with predatory precision. ‘Like wound rot draws jackals, of course!’ The vengeful witches sought to refound the mastery of their Great Waystone.

  Sethvir braced to pay the reckoning for the long-standing flaw run through his former stay of protection: a troublesome change to the amethyst’s matrix imposed by Davien’s brilliant, but impulsive, cleverness. Unnoticed for centuries, the small breach posed the loop-hole to strike at the crux of Fellowship interests. The Warden shut his misted turquoise eyes, anguished by the murderous timing.

  He made himself breathe; while elsewhere the dragon’s outstretched wings descended; an expiring horse sawed through another inhale. Immersed in the stream of the world’s flux, unerring, the Warden of Althain plucked the most disagreeable thread from the world’s tapestry of causation.

  He was armed for the challenge when a blaze of destructive wards obstructed his passage. Though the Koriathain crafted their most rigorous defenses to blind his inbound perception, Sethvir never blinked. Two glaring weaknesses faulted the sisterhood’s guarded perimeter. He gained first access through the plume of citrine burned like gold flame into the amethyst Waystone, then anchored his eavesdropping probe through an old fragment of song once spun by the Masterbard: the wrought promise of love, rendered matchless by Arithon to prompt the downfall of Lirenda. Sethvir seized on her active resentment and infiltrated the prison of her indiscriminate hatred.

  Fuel for his purpose, he tested the enchantress’s implacable passion. Mad as a beast pinned under duress, Lirenda ached to disrupt the entrenched rule of the Matriarch. Her mute desperation welcomed in Sethvir’s spying, eager to seize upon any advantage that might disrupt the sigil that shackled her.

  Undetectably subtle, her eyes and ears became the Sorcerer’s tools by her malicious consent . . .

  . . . which perception unveiled the ward-sealed chamber at Highscarp, muffled behind velvet curtains. The miasma of suffering clogged the close air. Shattered wisps of spirit light coiled through the dense odor of expelled excrement. Except for the pallid glow of the lamp that lit the scribed circle consecrated for Selidie’s craftwork, no other flame blunted the unnatural cold that emanated from the unveiled Great Waystone. The depths beneath its faceted surface spiked by a glint of dark purple, the amethyst sphere lay cradled in a gold-wire rim on a tripod. The crystal’s matrix reverberated yet with the terrified cries of the lately departed: a young girl whose sheeted corpse was being lifted onto a litter by two deaf-mute male servants. Her flesh shuddered still with the seizures that stormed the nerves after violent death.

  A third mute in neat livery unbarred the door. Brief daylight sliced in from the outside corridor as her body was removed for disposal.

  The bright influx glanced across gold-ribboned, lace cuffs, stitched with beads, where Prime Selidie sat enthroned between two poised female attendants. Her wheat hair was coifed in an elaborate knot, the pins studded with ruby and amethyst. More stony than these, her half-lidded eyes remained fixed on the hooped sphere before her. Devoid of regret, she addressed her right-hand underling. ‘Send a replacement. This time, select from the best of our third-rank initiates. Record the names of the candidates below her and have them ready as needed.’

  The appointed messenger stepped forward and curtseyed. ‘Your will, Matriarch.’ Bound to unquestioned obedience, she rose and swept out on her errand.

  Lirenda observed every move as a puppet presence. Stifled to a thought, her elated crow packed enough venom to sear even the listening presence of Althain’s Warden.

  Sethvir repressed his eavesdropper’s qualms, while, black-on black silhouettes in their dark robes, a duty-bound ring of Senior enchantresses steadied the Matriarch’s secretive conjury. These upheld their duty in absolute quiet.

  Except for one fifth-rank, short-sighted enough to voice reservations, or else brave beyond measure to challenge a seated Prime’s judgement. ‘Dare I suggest that our order cannot benefit from the destruction of more young initiates?’

  ‘We can, and we must,’ a crone interjected to derail the foolish impertinence. Carved to skeletal bone by her years of enspelled longevity, only the Eldest Senior held standing to salvage the gaffe without punishment. ‘Before your time, my dear, our tradition was different. Koriathain were not forced to scour the gutters for the cast-off remnants of outbred clan talent. Once, parents freely offered their daughters to us for training. We expect to restore this felicitous custom. Thanks to the lane shift induced by Davien’s partnership with the dragon, fresh purges decreed by the temple’s examiners will condemn those unfortunates opened to their latent gifts. Mothers will send us their threatened children to shelter them from the burnings.’

  Prime Selidie added with clipped impatience. ‘And Havish, besides, holds the scattered offspring of ten generations of exiled clansfolk. War creates orphans. We’ll also glean the green prospects we need in the wake of the True Sect’s invasion.’

  The door opened. The mute servants returned with the emptied litter, followed by the dispatched Senior and her chosen, a slender, middle-aged woman with eyes as clear grey as her robes. The silver ribbons sewn on her sleeves denoted the third rank in charitable service. Summoned without warning, she shivered in the dire cold thrown off the Waystone. Training alone kept her white face expressionless as she bent in supplication before her superior. ‘Your will, Matriarch.’

  Selidie wasted no breath on acknowledgement. She extended the horrific, crabbed stub of a finger, touched the subordinate initiate’s forehead, and invoked the Prime’s master sigil. Without sound, beyond hope of resistance, the woman buckled, dropped into black-out unconsciousness.

  ‘Prepare her as the others!’ The Prime tucked her deformed hand in her lap, a vanity that seemed monstrously displaced as her attendant Seniors collected the senseless victim sprawled on the carpet.

  They laid her comatose weight on the trestle, and tied her slack limbs with her head aligned underneath the tripod that suspended the cut-crystal sphere. The plume of citrine left by Davien’s past trickery glimmered above her closed eyes, while the unspoiled, amethyst facets cast lavender stains across her pale features.

  Detached as a porcelain statue, the Prime decreed, ‘Proceed with the sacrifice.’ Only the Sorcerer’s acute awareness detected the masked thrill as she admonished Lirenda. ‘No carelessness, this time! A third-rank initiate ought to withstand the strain. Don’t let the husk’s bodily functions shut down prematurely again.’

  No objection was possible although the command involved a cold-blooded murder. Lirenda seethed without recourse. She perched on the wooden stool next to the trestle and laid her ringless, aristocrat’s fingers on the strapped victim’s solar plexus. Settled into deep trance, she opened an advanced initiate’s cross-linked awareness. One by one, she invoked the imperative sigils that reduced the strapped sister to a live shell.

  The resentment that flared from the doomed initiate burst into explosive panic. Helpless to withstand the intimate contact, Lirenda endured the ghastly process at first hand as the Prime’s imposed will compelled her to violate another woman’s most private self. Through memories unfolded like a painted fan, she knew a cosseted childhood with doting parents and lavish comforts. Yet where Lirenda had traded her family ties for power and boundless ambition, this tender child had eloped for the dream of innocent love. Too pampered and pretty, she had been lured from her father’s roof by pink pearls, rich clothes, and silk ribbons, an easy mark for the lust of a faithless suitor. When the jilted girl faced the shame of her social ruin, the promise of shelter for charitable service had cozened her into the Koriani order.

  Vows of selfless obedience brought her to l
ife’s end, pierced through by the Waystone’s cruel cold. Implacably shredded by Lirenda’s ministrations, but not yet consigned to oblivion, the oppressed spirit struggled to shield the last spark of rebellious will. But an eighth-rank talent outmatched her strength. Slowly, she smothered. The nuances that illumined her character were crushed out, while the Seniors posted beside the Prime’s chair watched expressionless and unmoved.

  They presumed her personality perished, unremarked in sealed isolation. Except that a Fellowship Sorcerer bore hidden witness to all that transpired . . .

  . . . distanced in the closet at Althain Tower, the rhythmic thump of Sethvir’s pestle ceased. Charcoal and gall dust plumed like acrid smoke as he met the woman’s agonized fate with a shout of purest rage. ‘Ath’s bright mercy!’

  Pacing, the hem of his robe flapping against his fur buskins, he swore with a fury that snarled through the tower’s fast silence. Above all things, Sethvir hated the hideous practice of necromancy! The wicked working beneath the Prime’s aegis steamed his blood to a boil.

  ‘Of course, the witch has ensconced herself like a blood-sucking spider at Highscarp!’

  Town-governed beneath charter-law jurisdiction, there Mankind’s acts of free will fell under the purview of crown justice, authority which devolved in this case to the sanctioned Prince of Rathain. Though Fellowship power ever enforced the eradication of necromancy, this woman’s sad plight could not be redressed: not without Arithon’s direct complicity, and never against her conscious consent, sworn under the sisterhood’s oath.