The Wars of Light and Shadow (9) – Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon

by Janny Wurts

  Alone in the marsh, honed to singular purpose, Arithon tapped into his mage-tuned awareness. He thrust his song downwards, flung its clarion registers into the stream of the free wilds’ lane flow. Lent wings by his gift, he released the blast of his music for Tarens! to resound throughout the life pulse of the world . . .

  Far off at Althain Tower, Sethvir shot erect as the poured light of the Masterbard’s summons tingled through his earth-gifted awareness. Distinct as a stamped signature, the harmonic melody rang the full length of the second lane, exactingly phrased to shear through the planet-wide muddle of human affliction. The Warden’s dipped quill dropped from his stunned grasp. Ink splotched the meticulous lines just penned in his miniature script. The flung spatters splashed, ebon on obsidian black, across the library’s stone table. Which small spill passed unnoticed as the Sorcerer’s turquoise eyes lost his dreamer’s reverie and kindled to flame.

  ‘Dharkaron avert!’ he gasped, swept by the chill of a pending catastrophe.

  Infallible compass, his earth-sense aligned, with all other events in the unsettled world fused into a flash-point gestalt. Sethvir’s provenance sequenced the stream, still unfolding, and plucked out the electrified points of convergency: a True Sect diviner crowed with discovery, handed the signal location of the murderer, escaped from the Light’s justice . . .

  . . . while elsewhere, a scarred veteran in dedicate’s armour took maudlin pause, and mourned the family that forced duty had made him abandon. Then, overcome, he broke into tears of lament for his second born son, last seen as a fair-haired toddler . . .

  . . . a sibling who polished brass in the True Sect temple at Kelsing gasped under an onslaught of melancholy, suddenly wrung by the loss of a brother condemned by canon law . . .

  The scar-faced sister who stitched the tapestry for a Sunwheel altar-screen shivered, ruffled as though fondly brushed by a beloved, but unseen hand . . .

  Sethvir jammed gnarled fingers through his white hair. At present, the flux ripple exposed only Tarens. The signal inflection that also marked the bard had not yet snagged the voracious interest of the Koriathain’s lane-watching scryers. Sethvir braced on his elbows, momentarily stilled in the etched fall of sunlight through the east casement.

  ‘Cry mercy,’ he murmured, heart-sore for the fact the musician’s brave effort to spare his comatose friend was predestined to fail.

  The flux stream was no place for an unsheltered awareness to wander. Its powerful cascade stretched too far past the reach of tactile sensation. First disoriented, then battered to fragmentation, the untrained mind could not cope. Tarens was utterly lost to himself. No matter how skilled the bard’s summons, the stricken man would never awake upon this side of Fate’s Wheel.

  Forewarned of that sorrow, Sethvir ached. He yearned for the moment of blessed relief, when the musician abandoned his sorrowful venture and restored the safe anonymity of silence.

  Yet the sweet, liquid spill of sound did not lapse. The hand in command of those silver-wound strings never flinched in the face of defeat. Arithon’s passion contested this loss, against which no risk seemed too reckless to contemplate.

  Far southward, exposed upon Mainmere’s wild shore-line, Arithon reached into himself, stared down ruin, and plumbed his own grace to seize fresh inspiration.

  Time itself seemed to pause, as Sethvir stopped breathing. The bookish miasma of paper and ink made the hush in the tower library closer than a sealed tomb. Suspended in dread, the Warden plumbed the moment’s appalling set-back and mapped the driven change designed to wrest hope back into the bard’s doomed endeavour. Anguish wrenched a groan of despair from the Sorcerer as he grasped where the desperate measure was leading.

  Still, Arithon played Tarens, the reactive flux used as his sounding-board. Clean as struck crystal, he sustained the resonant imprint to fuse his friend’s consciousness back into wholeness. Yet where sympathetic vibration alone could not mend the man’s tattered awareness, a deft shift in key, delicately followed by an expanded intonation unfolded an ingenious pattern, spurred by necessity. To secure Tarens’s essence, then reknit the breached boundary and seat his mortal consciousness back into his slackened flesh, the bard now extended himself.

  Sethvir jammed his fists to his temples, distraught. He could do nothing but watch while, without thought for the penalty, Arithon wove his own patterns of mastery into the skein of his harmony. He offered the bridge across the abyss: blazed the safe path back to human identity by translating the core of his personal knowledge as a bastion against the unknown. He held to that beacon. In clarion song, he presented the initiate’s template to restructure the morass of unbounded existence.

  The effect shot a lighting-flare through the flux. Any talented seer might recognize Arithon’s broadcast signature. The first would be enemies, avid to track him. Arithon understood and rejected the danger. He would not back down, but blindly trusted his own clever resource to cope when adversity forced him to run.

  With the shelter bestowed by a cruel anonymity destroyed at one heedless stroke, Sethvir cried out in anguish. Chained helpless by the bonds of Asandir’s oath, he wept as the Fellowship’s deadliest adversary detected the intimate presence of Rathain’s last crown prince.

  Three hundred and forty-one leagues due eastward across the Paravian continent, the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain also perched motionless in the slant fall of the late-morning light. Amidst the jangled cascade of changed resonance when the shift at Kathtairr raked the face of Athera, she displayed no sign of discomposure. The pearl pins that fastened her pale coil of hair lay doused in shadow beneath her violet hood. The table before her raised seat was draped under a square of featureless velvet. On its black nap, etched white in the sun, rested two shards of quartz: the wand accidentally snapped when the abrupt surge had startled a third-ranked healer, now put on trial for her careless mistake.

  Damage to a crystal brought harsh charges, even under the onset of a worldwide crisis. The stream of disaster tracked by the lane watch stayed shut outside, while the Prime sat in closed session to hear out the case.

  The miserable girl trembled, tearful and shamed, on her knees before supreme authority. ‘Prime Matriarch, I plead your forbearance. The unforeseen spike in the lane forces made the enabled wand vibrate in sympathy. Who wouldn’t have been unprepared for the shock when the excess charge shed a burst of electrical static?’

  ‘No lenience is due, here!’ countermanded the peeress, whose vigilance governed the sisterhouse. ‘Not when our basic practice to safeguard the use of a crystal was flouted! This wand was dropped, unprotected, above a stone floor!’

  Selidie listened, cold as painted porcelain, her perfect cream features expressionless. Which impersonal serenity took on a disquieting aspect of horror with the linen wraps stripped off her crippled hands. The raw glare emphasized the grotesque, claw fingers, and the welted palms, cupped beside the broken crystal. Quiet reigned throughout the Prime’s assay to sound whether the fragments should be recut, or, the worse for the terrified miscreant, decreed for the arduous process of mending.

  The chill room stayed fireless, the air choked still. A life hung upon the Matriarch’s choice, ruled by the fate of the crystal. Initiates were replaceable, as the original set of mineral tools brought to Athera when the order took sanctuary were not. Sealed under the law of the Fellowship’s compact, the precious legacy of imported matrix preserved what remained of the sisterhood’s autonomous might.

  More, the full reach of Koriani knowledge stayed proscribed for as long as the Sorcerers’ ironclad tyranny bound the terms of Mankind’s resettlement. Hobbled, the order must hoard its pure heritage, passed down across generations. Among the ranked Seniors born after the great exodus that had stranded humanity on Athera, none was more raptly aware than the Prime of the burden her office defended. The gravity of her predecessors’ directive now rested on her mantled shoulders. She alone comprehended the scope of the secrets locked down by the Fellowship’s interdict.
Only she held the guarded keys to ensure the sisterhood’s future revival.

  The steely edge of her sovereign command also gripped the twelve attendant Seniors, arrayed in subordinate silence behind the abased initiate. Hooded also, severe in demeanour, they fenced the accused like statuesque pillars, gloved in lavender silk with red ribbon. Sole sound amid the unbearable tension, the back-drop rustle off to the side, where the Prime’s enslaved puppet, Lirenda, tidied the stripped wad of bandages back into pristine rolls.

  Which task filled the pause, when the intrusive disturbance of footsteps from the outside corridor broke across the assembly’s glass quiet.

  Selidie glanced up. Her blue eyes flashed with warning displeasure, and her final settlement fell sharp as a cleaver. ‘The snapped wand shall not be recut, but turned over for healing. Remand this initiate into custody. Let her sacrifice serve as a lesson to others, that negligence will not be excused under the privilege to wield an heirloom matrix.’

  The condemned sobbed aloud. Her plight found no pity. Two fifth-ranked sisters dragged her upright. Their brisk grasp braced her stumbling retreat, while another with scarlet bands on her sleeves curtseyed to the Matriarch, then moved forward to secure the damaged crystal. The fragments were wrapped under warded silk by the time the inbound petitioner breached the closed door.

  ‘I bear urgent news, relayed here from the second lane’s watchers, in Tysan!’ the newcomer pealed. ‘Let me through!’ Her untoward haste did not pause for leave, but rammed past the escorted prisoner in bald-faced need to cross the threshold first.

  The Prime’s scalded annoyance shifted to expectancy. Only one topic, ever, forgave such an intrusion.

  A presence unnoticed as furniture, Lirenda observed from her menial seat at the end of the table. Like the caged tiger, she itched to bloody the keeper beyond lethal reach. Her hungry intelligence never slept as, fingers busy, she tracked the breathless messenger from the lane watch who sank in obeisance before the Prime’s chair.

  Breathless amid her fanned crumple of skirts, the sister blurted, ‘Matriarch, by your supreme will! I bring confirmed word of your royal prisoner, escaped from containment in Taerlin.’

  ‘Ah! At last.’ Selidie’s exclamation held more than pleased triumph. ‘Stand. Give me the report.’

  The sister dispatched by the day watch arose, head bowed with fearless respect. She unclipped a small bag from the sash at her waist, reverent as she laid the offering upon the draped square of black velvet. A nod from the Matriarch summoned Lirenda, whose dutiful service loosened the draw-string and bared the small quartz sphere, buffered inside.

  ‘Pass the crystal to me!’ commanded the Prime, lashed to snappish impatience.

  Suborned though Lirenda might be to dumb misery, her faculties stayed unimpaired. The brief contact as she transferred the seer’s crystal to Selidie exposed her to the lane watch’s momentous discovery. Her eavesdropping awareness snatched the fleeting impression of a bold phrase of music: song transmitted through the lane flux, clear as light. The brilliant pattern unveiled an artistry that promised more – oh, far more – than the urgent news just rushed to the Matriarch’s notice.

  The voracious spark kindled in Lirenda’s eyes stayed masked behind downcast lashes. Her predator’s snarl, locked silent inside, sped her pulse to exquisite excitement: that her nemesis, and likewise, Prime Selidie’s bane, at last disclosed the signature of his presence! Lirenda’s nerves quivered with anticipation. The weal of the order demanded Arithon’s pursuit, destined as he was to become the instrument to break the course of the prime succession. Selidie could not risk her position to fate, or allow any threat to the ancient knowledge guarded by her intact heritage.

  The Prince of Rathain must be brought to heel. Lirenda savoured that sweet rush of conjecture as her oppressor clutched the quartz sphere in crabbed claws and plumbed the imprint netted in the matrix.

  ‘Sweet glory!’ Selidie crowed at due length. ‘We have the s’Ffalenn bastard at last!’

  The spokeswoman sent from the lane watch clasped parchment hands and ventured out of turn, ‘Matriarch, I regret, not yet, not precisely. The Senior seeress in Tysan insists that your quarry still shelters in Caithwood. Though we’ve divined the fact that his royal significator flows through the second lane, more help is required to fix his location precisely. I’ll need three other sisters sited at a distance, strong enough to remain immersed in deep trance to tri­angulate his position.’

  ‘You shall have the resource,’ Selidie reassured, not in the least bit distempered. Entranced by the inducted record, she inclined her mantled head inclined towards the top-ranked sister at her beck and call. ‘You are assigned! Induct twenty-four of our most gifted initiates. They will convene a grand circle, directed as the lane watch in Tysan sees fit.’

  ‘By your leave, Matriarch!’ Impressed by the prodigious allotment of talent, the appointed Senior excused herself and bustled off to bear out the instructions.

  ‘This work will take time,’ the lane seeress warned, prepared to risk bracing displeasure. ‘We may be cut short, or get thrown off the trail well before our trace can achieve a finished alignment.’

  ‘Rush nothing!’ Selidie glanced up from the quartz crystal nestled within her covetous grasp. Chiselled in silhouette against the sun lit casement, her face remained shadowed. Yet the hooded gaze beneath her mantle’s stiff headband chilled like an arctic blast. ‘Arithon plays to redeem a friend who’s become mazed in the thrash of the flux. His Grace won’t forsake his interest. I know his mettle. Even under assault, his loyal sentiment will keep him engaged past the point where better sense should bow to defeat. I assure you, this prince will not relent short of death, or until his pet crofter recovers sound wits.’

  Remanded to duty, the seeress curteyed. ‘The watch serves your will, Matriarch,’ she said, and departed to execute the Prime’s command.

  No other attendant Senior was excused. None dared to breathe, while the record quartz remained couched in the Matriarch’s ravaged grip. Hush seized the closed room as their mistress savoured the crystal’s imprinted message. Few guessed the stress behind her fascination. None living recalled the old prophecy which forecast her doom at the s’Ffalenn bastard’s hand: except for Lirenda, whose long fall to ruin ferociously welcomed the tang of endangerment. For the rancorous shame that condemned her to suffering, she also wished Arithon crushed! But only after his vicious cunning toppled Selidie from the lofty seat usurped through malign practice.

  Hungry with ambition, Lirenda burned to survive the tiresome yoke of her servile punishment. Perilous, patient, she stalked for her chance to upset the Prime’s corrupt grip. Yet until the reins of the Koriani Order could be snatched from the dust of defeat, the course of blind service commanded. Selidie’s buried froth of anxiety provoked a fresh set of instructions. ‘Fourth rank! Yes, Helda, stand forward! Gather to me a circle of six. I want a seeress endowed with the talent and reach to sweep the far coast-lines of Lanshire and plumb the salt waters of Mainmere Bay. This effort calls for the Skyron aquamarine. Fetch the crystal’s locked coffer, and enable the matrix for my immediate use. By the time Arithon’s location is traced, I will have the True Sect priesthood engaged as our puppet-string allies. If need warrants, we’ll use every measure required to reclaim our custody of Rathain’s prince.’

  The shocked quiet deepened. None dared to speak. A Prime’s purpose ruled, beyond question. Yet the Senior-ranked sisters still present stifled stunned gasps at the scope of the stakes. Such draconian measures incurred an untoward risk since Asandir’s stay bound the Sorcerers’ reach only in behalf of Prince Arithon. A working that called for compulsion of innocents too likely might force Sethvir’s hand. If the Warden’s earth-linked vision caught wind of Prime Selidie’s proposed violation, such flagrant activity might provoke an enforcement of the compact. Push the Seven to respond, and no living power on Atheran soil could withstand the punitive consequence.

  ‘Such an insolent silence!’ Se
lidie lashed in contempt. ‘Do my faint-hearted sisters believe I should fear the whip-hand of the Fellowship’s tyranny?’ Bared teeth flashed beneath the hood’s velvet shadow. ‘I intend to take adequate steps for protection. Measures that will drain lives in the breach! Four newly sworn novices must stand as my proxy for all that occurs in my circle. The invocation to fuse their vitality against an outside interference will be fashioned by my attached servant.’

  The Sorcerers’ precepts did not sanction murder. Under their Law of the Major Balance, the Prime’s brazen coercion might be left to stand.

  As the linch-pin called forward to seal such defenses, Lirenda well knew her life-force might be tapped to uphold the forbidden construct. Once, she had raged against such a fate, as helpless as any oath-bound initiate called forward to be risked as a thoughtless sacrifice.

  But two centuries spent crushed under Selidie’s chokehold piqued the moment’s suicidal thrill. Perish, and Lirenda would win her release from the trial of a living death. Stay alive, and the outcome might yield her the pinnacle of great reward.