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

by Janny Wurts

  A month since the invocation at Fiaduwynne, when the King’s Grace had raised the Paravian focus and gathered the flux to prepotency with intent to ward the free wilds of Ghent and Carithwyr. The abrupt change in plan to restage for attack kept those volatile forces bound in reserve. Throughout the march, the uncanny charge built, a wound spring held compressed by barehanded will. A feat royal character was fit to endure, but not without cost to the bearer.

  Dakar mapped the heightened course of the strain ingrained in live flesh like a water-mark. As the human channel for the land’s power, wound in check week upon week, Gestry had to be strictly reminded to eat. Under constant, pent pressure, his restless nights passed nearly sleepless. The least sound in his ears would ring painfully loud, while the impact of daylight flared hurtfully bright and dazzled his sight into shimmers and rainbows. He moved as a creature with one foot past the veil, strung up and suspended. The dichotomy he suffered estranged him from the comforts of commonplace fellowship.

  Kings who invoked the unbridled might of crown power were, none of them, destined for long reigns. Dakar had been an indifferent historian. But longevity and exposure to Althain Tower’s archives confirmed that no heir within living memory had withstood such a trial. The inked lines of the ancient record endured: near ten centuries ago, through the bitter effort to stay the Mistwraith’s incursion at Earle, manuscripts detailed the graphic price bought in bone and blood by the royal lineages. Demand had expended the pool of available heirs until the choice of succession devolved to the handful of survivors: then that irreplaceable heritage had been brought to the brink of extinction by murder under the knives of revolt.

  Which gravity of tradition did nothing to ease today’s brutal burden.

  ‘The wait can’t be much longer,’ Dakar encouraged. ‘Your Grace, are you prepared?’

  Gestry turned his face, skin burnished to an egg-shell patina that almost shone eerie silver with the corona of flux, even under full sunlight. His wide eyes were enormous, the tight, pin-point pupils fixed as starless night under unblinking lashes. ‘Who could be?’ His faint smile emerged, sweetened by an unbearable chagrin. ‘Don’t mourn the exigency. Asandir told the truth. I have been lifted quite beyond pain. My spirit will rise to meet whatever comes. End your fear. No shame will befall the name of my ancestry.’

  ‘That never concerned me.’ Dakar’s voice failed, choked off by grief. Atheran high kings before this one had wielded their birthright and risked all they were to the crucible, unflinching. S’Lornmein forebears had stood beside Fellowship Sorcerers and stemmed the Mistwraith’s incursion at South Gate. They had battled ravenous drake spawn, and died in the bale-fires of dragons gone rogue. But never before had a newly crowned sovereign risked the raw brunt of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s mastery of elemental light. Twisted under curse for unbridled destruction, that potential for widespread disaster lay past the measure of Dakar’s experience. Rightly or wrongly, the outcome for the endeavour lay at his feet.

  The sting of regret could not stop the deadly commitment set into motion. Paralytic dread peaked like a stopped breath, filled by the inchoate howl of fury as both forces closed for the reckoning. The roar broke to a shattering crash of edged steel as the shock of first impact struck home.

  Dakar was not brave. At the crux, he lacked the staunch nerve that shaped heroes. Nor was he sustained by the selfless service demanded of an old blood lineage. His coward’s plea trembled between frail hope and prayer as Havish’s mismatched assault smashed against the white gleam of the True Sect’s locked shield wall. For agonized minutes, the wave battered and bowed the enemy’s drilled formation. The clangourous din quavered with screams as lances struck home and blades rose and fell, clotted scarlet. Then the mass of sheer numbers steadied, and pushed, and ground Havish’s centre backwards. Step by agonized step, while the ranks were carved down and trampled under the unstoppable pressure, King Gestry held back.

  His effort must not stem the bitter retreat, fought by unbearable inches. No replacements remained to shore up the frayed lines, and no backup relief force existed to plug the breached gaps where the butchered lay fallen. Locked into a fight never staged for a victory, the defenders of Havish sustained the unconscionable trial of fatal attrition. How many died meant less than how long they could stem the True Sect’s zealous slaughter.

  Throughout, the horns wailed. If the drums boomed still, their rhythm was drowned by the dissonant snarl of combat. The sun burned above an arena of blood, and the wind blew corrupt with the abattoir reek of mass carnage. And still, Gestry stayed firm through the horror: watching his best and his bravest cut down without hope of quarter.

  Dakar wiped his soaked face, teeth clenched against the visceral shudders that ripped him. The mage who loved peace should be far removed, where the plunge of cold steel rent vital organs and threshed the life essence of men in prime health, all untimely. Eyes opened to mage-sight would show the faint mist of shocked spirit light, torn ragged and streamed in a roiled half state of transition.

  Aware of the near sounds of restive horses, and the staccato bursts of the war-captain’s orders between the breathless sprints of the messengers, the spellbinder stationed at Gestry’s side could do naught but endure the havoc that pummelled his stressed faculties. The tienelle’s influence proved a fatal mistake. He could not stay focused. The ruthless state of overload spurred his volatile talent out of control. With subtle awareness held in duress, Dakar overlooked the critical moment when the profound shift swept over the warfront.

  Warned first by the sidle of the king’s mount in response to a sharply gripped rein, he murmured, ‘Steady. Hold fast, your Grace. If your sequestered might is released prematurely, all of your valiant fallen will have wasted their lives to no purpose.’

  ‘Our tactical thrust to draw fire has failed,’ Gestry stated without hesitation. ‘Our best company of light horse cannot withstand the headlong blast from the avatar without my support.’

  Dakar guessed which trial before the king rose in his stirrups and pointed.

  Past the wracked commotion of snarled steel bloomed the first dazzling star-burst of light. The flare sheeted into a bale-fire plume for an impact targeted eastward. Lysaer’s cursed directive had not been foiled by Havish’s rush at the forefront. Already detached from The Hatchet’s centre company, he struck to immolate the small band of cavalry, placed to thwart the east flank’s breakaway charge to take down the Master of Shadow: a man Dakar once counted as his best friend, alone on the run and without any memory of whose broken trust had betrayed him.

  If the hedonist’s preference for comfort and life cried out to turn tail and run, Dakar’s final chance to shirk fate became forfeit as Gestry released his mount’s reins and lifted crossed wrists. A flare of caught sun rinsed the rubies coal red as he touched the bracelets together against the rune-marked circlet worn at his brow.

  The Warden of Althain, perhaps, perceived what would happen: the crown’s legacy responded to each individual high king differently. When the royal intent to stand guard for the land interlocked with the pooled reservoir pulled from the flux, force became manifest through the matrix the Paravian gem cutters fashioned into the crown jewels. Every sovereign to invoke the realm’s might before this surely had a Sorcerer at his right hand, placed at need to temper the primal ferocity of the first full engagement.

  Gestry had none but a master spellbinder, wracked witless, and expelled by the Fellowship for misconduct.

  Dakar was not fit or prepared for the explosive, deafening peal of vibration. Power released with the galvanic plunge of a boulder hurled into a well. The concussive splash rippled outward beyond the speed of his mage-taught reflex. The pure burst of energy, past sight and sound, hit the Mad Prophet’s chest like a shattering blow and hurled him straight into black-out un­consciousness.

  Spring 5923

  Crescendo

  A league from the site of King Gestry’s defense, the concussive force of the conjured event burst wit
h a shock to hurl a grown man off his feet. The firm ground did not shake. Not a leaf stirred. The blow that unstrung mortal nerves was etheric, and painless, a ripple that snatched at the heart-strings and stopped breath, then upended balance to whirling dizziness. Least endowed with born talent, Khadrien suffered scarcely an instant of black-out. Ears ringing, rattled to a summary burst of euphoria, he was the excitable first of his stunned companions to recoup his shocked senses and surge to his feet.

  ‘Great Ath, what was that?’ He swiped back the sweaty strands wisped from his clan braid and shed a caught flurry of twigs and dry leaves in his scrambled rush forward to peer past the verge of the trees.

  ‘Idiot!’ Esfand moved, at risk of upset equilibrium and launched after his impulsive friend. His testy grip snagged Khadrien’s shoulder and tumbled them both in a heap. ‘Jump towards the fire, one day you’ll burn.’

  ‘Not this time.’ Siantra sat, groggy. She knuckled her forehead, thrashed her wits into sensible focus, and said, muffled, ‘We’re already caught inside of the threshold, and that was only the opening wave just unleashed.’ She surveyed their surrounds, chafed to unease by the pent hush fallen over the greenwood. All bird-song silenced. Not a breath of wind trembled the glassine air. The sun streamed through the leaf canopy in welded rays, dusted with lit pollen, but no longer cluttered by the frenzied shimmer of swarming insects. ‘Where’s Iyat-thos Tarens?’

  ‘Over here.’ His deep voice emerged from the edge of the trees where he stood, his intent gaze trained outward. Upright and restored back to calm self-command, his fortified poise stayed the most firmly seated after the blast of raised resonance. Fitter than most for uncanny encounters since his initiate ordeal in Taerlin, he added, ‘Whatever’s coming, it’s too late to flee. High King Gestry’s engaged the crown jewels of Havish.’

  Rampant fascination made Khadrien jerk free of Esfand’s restraint. Which callow outburst made Siantra wince: as if the suspension that locked the tense stillness might smash like a hammer-blow to a snapped stick.

  Yet nothing upset the anxious, strung pause. Esfand rubbed his wrenched wrist, twitched his leathers to rights with a rueful shrug, then offered his hand to Siantra. ‘We’re neck deep, anyway. Might as well watch.’

  She dropped pride, for once. Entrusted the welts on her newly healed palm to his clammy grip and let his sinewy strength tug her erect. Together for comfort against the unknown, they burrowed into the dense thicket beside Khadrien and the unfathomable stranger, Iyat-thos Tarens.

  Through the dipped emerald window of shaded leaves, morning sun shone from a robin’s egg sky. Day buffed the undulant nap of wild heath that textured Scarpdale’s southern bounds in tasseled weeds of taupe and fallow gold. The weighted air smelled of ozone, cranked to the tension fore-running a violent storm front. Then a subliminal glimmer arose, most noticeable in the patched blots of shadow cast by the drift of wisped clouds. Like cracks shot through the glaze on old porcelain, the electrostatic oddity brightened, roused to the blue-violet shimmer of ground lightning as the raised flux lines crackled alive. The channels inherently laced through the landscape burgeoned into currents of visible light. Where the pathways converged, a fountained gush of hurled sparks merged into a torrent and swept towards the mercury glitter that marked the True Sect’s armed advance. Where, in pockets, the bannered squares of ranked dedicates still chewed into the tossed wrack of Havish’s blood-soaked retreat. The distanced, steel seethe of their pebbled helms suggested the hurly-burly contortion of battle. Yet the clangour of weapons, the raised screams, and the roar of engagement seemed wrung oddly silent, the boom of the drums not muffled, but mute. The brass horns of the officers nicked the tableau with sun-caught reflections, just as stifled to uncanny quiet.

  That moment the witnesses at the side-lines noticed the ominous, bass swell of sound: a subliminal surge of vibration no longer below hearing but risen to a pervasive hum that utterly cancelled the tinker’s din raised by the living. Power rolled through the solid earth underfoot, until the shock rippled through the scrub brush and the grass tips trembled as the bed-rock beneath rang under the excited flux like hammer-struck steel. Soon that singing cry razed through flesh and bone, and buzzed the clenched teeth of the poised observers.

  ‘Hang tight,’ Tarens whispered, instinctively braced.

  For only the leading edge of the warfront stayed dead-locked. A stir quickened the True Sect’s rear-guard as a sparkle erupted into a levin-bolt stab of pure light. The discharge cracked skywards to a report that slammed echoes like the clapped peal of close thunder.

  Siantra cried out, seared to agony by the resharpened gift of her truesight. ‘Lysaer, driven under curse by Desh-thiere! Gestry’s doomed.’

  ‘Cover your eyes,’ Tarens cautioned. ‘Protect your hands and faces.’ Jieret’s memory informed him: the unshielded backwash of such an assault could blister skin, even blind the unwary. But talented vision embraced no such frailty. Initiate awareness recorded the impact that naked sight could not withstand. Through the shimmer of stress-heated air, the glare of the false avatar’s aggressive retort exploded to bale-fire brilliance. The flash scourged the elements to a luminous blast fit to raze everything in its path to flash-point immolation. Carbon and ashes would sublimate, with naught left but glazed slag, while a landscape carved over millennia came unravelled on the rage of an instant.

  ‘Run!’ Tarens gasped, terrified. ‘Find the nearest stream and immerse yourselves!’ For the recoil would ignite the forest like kindling: Earl Jieret had barely escaped such a wild fire, knocked down out of harm’s way by a crossbolt in the grisly debacle that raked Daon Ramon’s conflict several centuries ago.

  Except back then, no crowned royalty had stood in defense against Lysaer’s attack.

  The electrical flare of Lanshire’s flux lines glittered like earth-bound chained lightning, its power released through the pin-point focus that was High King Gestry, attuned by his sovereign ritual to the land. The pent stream unfurled, a geyser of force that pin-wheeled a nexus of gossamer streamers outward through the air. The tinted-rainbow veils netted over Lysaer’s elemental assault. His raw light knifed that delicate stay of restraint and unravelled to a concussive bang that shocked like the grind of an avalanche.

  Light died. For a smothered instant, the world quivered, snuffed to primordial darkness. Whether human senses momentarily failed, or if the wrench of stopped time unshuttered the deep of the void, no man knew.

  The heart-beat of life resurged to reveal a sunlit vista, untouched except where adamant battle had reaped desecration, dimmed beneath a palled scrim of whipped smoke. The aroused blaze of the flux lines had quenched. Faint paths traced the scrub where the torrent had passed, scorched leaves and twigs left dusted in charcoal.

  Poised at the immaculate verge of the wood, Tarens and the three clanborn youngsters remembered to breathe. Alive, disbelieving, they blinked dazzled eyes. The aftermath horror took seconds to register, that the threat of bloodshed was not ended.

  Faint against the stunned quiet, the manic shouting of shocked men called the orders for Sunwheel troops to regroup. The break at their centre by an arcane conjury rekindled and fanned the fuel of religious conviction. Lancers and pikemen thrown down on the flanks were called to arise and close the gaps in the devastated main battle-line. A horn sounded. Then dogged, the drums picked up and firmed the beat to resume the advance.

  Combat rejoined with a tinny clash. Dauntless, the True Sect fanatics stormed onwards to finish their righteous butchery of Havish’s battered survivors.

  No answering glimmer arose from the flux, which suggested King Gestry’s held power was spent, courageously wielded to little avail matched against the inflamed faith of dedicate thousands. Worse, the unvanquished fitful flare, as Lysaer’s gift spat forth a tentative levin bolt. Rallied into a partial recovery and cruelly cursed, he drove on to renew his assault. But not to march forward: the urgent blast of an officer’s horn sounded a treble command to wheel the temple
’s unfazed reserves.

  ‘They are turning!’ gasped Tarens. ‘East, surely guided by Lysaer’s geas to close upon Arithon’s position!’

  Esfand responded, his caithdein’s heritage bred into his bones. ‘Then we have to get there ahead of them.’

  ‘Not possible.’ Tarens cursed fate for the failure: the True Sect’s vigorous reengagement cut off their approach. ‘Even if we had a chance to get through, we’re too few to make any difference.’

  ‘We go nowhere,’ Siantra broke in. ‘Don’t you hear the whine?’ She blocked Khadrien’s hot-headed reach to draw steel, and yanked Esfand’s sleeve to catch his attention.

  ‘You suggest the flux lines are active, still.’ The blunt warrior’s frown taken after his sire lifted into fierce hope. ‘King Gestry’s intent still directs the pulse of the land?’

  Siantra shook her head, fighting tears for the heart-break. ‘I’m not sure. Whatever he’s doing, the response is weak.’

  ‘No.’ Tarens paused, intent. ‘Not weak. His Grace is working too far above the range of our human senses.’