by Janny Wurts
Dimly, he realized something was wrong. This prepotent beguilement could not be natural. In fact, his adamant outrage spoke true: a narcotic herb, unknown to his training, swirled through the trapped smoke in the cabin.
Disgust restored reason. Arithon shed Vivet’s clinging embrace. Plunged back to the window, he sucked a clean breath. Then he bent and retrieved the loose knife. Moved on, revolted, he dodged Vivet’s lunge and snapped the axe out of her reach. One stroke smashed the latched shutter opposite. He thrust the helve through, hurled the weapon into the ravine, beyond recovery until morning.
Arithon secured his abandoned sword next. Chest bursting, he surged to the hearth, where he hooked the hot iron damper with the quillon and reopened the draw of the flue. His kick scattered the poisonous coals. Tainted smoke swirled. He backed in retreat. Braced at the gapped window, he leashed his fired nerves. Inhaled the fresh air, again and again, while the restored draught cleared the fumes of Vivet’s potent aphrodisiac.
Streamed sweat and reaction by then made him shiver. Bitterly chilled, Arithon waited until his mage-trained reflex threw off the intoxication. In sharp command, fully guarded at last, he turned back and regarded the pitiful woman huddled in distraught collapse.
She would be freezing, unclad as she was. Arithon stirred to locate her shucked cloak. Minded as well to recover his jacket, he kept knife and black sword in hand, as much to shave tinder and rebuild the fire as to foil another attempted suicide.
Vivet flinched from his step. Weeping, she shouted, “I meant you no harm!”
Arithon granted her histrionics no sympathy. “Don’t prevaricate!” He hooked up the mantle from her rumpled bed. “I know my butchery better than that.” The cloth he shook out flicked over her shoulders, without human contact. “Why, Vivet? How could a planned seduction mend a rift with your family?”
He extended no hand to raise her up. No touch assuaged her limp pathos.
While the icy breeze leached the warmth from the cabin, Arithon retrieved his profaned shirt. Distasteful of the narcotic residue ingrained in the fabric, he proceeded with riveted patience to lay a fresh fire with kindling and birch. “I will listen,” he said, “when you’ve regained composure. Let’s discuss your problem with adult sense, or else forfeit my pledge to assist a safe return to your kinfolk.”
Althain Tower blazed with light from top floor to sallyport, a rare sight in the misty dark, where little but wind whipped the lichened rocks, gusts moaning a constant dirge through the stunt scrub and briar. Travellers seldom paused on Atainia’s bleak heath, bald hills heaped against the desolate Bittern, once laid to waste in a Second Age battle. Yet this night’s observer was not mortal.
Discorporate Sorcerer, summoned in haste, Kharadmon viewed with alarm the glow smeared through the fog from the library’s unshuttered arrow-slits. Sethvir’s normal, daft habit neglected the sconces, unless crisis threatened. Kharadmon reassessed the scale of the trouble behind this display, come already enraged by a train of events that defied credibility.
A cold gust embedded in summer’s northern chill, the Sorcerer’s vexed passage snarled the brush like jerked knit. His shade entered the tower with a gale-force shriek that rattled the panes in the casements.
Sethvir, Warden of Althain, peered up from his vigil, the black onyx table under his spidery hands cleared of pen nibs and clutter. Without his bastion of books and loose parchments, pocked with uncorked ink-wells and tea-mugs, he looked lost. The neglected beard tufted as a mouse nest overpowered his wizened features. But not his pale eyes, which tracked Kharadmon’s entry with piercing focus.
Keen as steel unsheathed, he did not prevaricate. “Don’t start, with Davien! We have worse afoot than his capricious obstinacy.”
“The Betrayer can jump with his eyes crossed and hang himself!” Kharadmon’s gusty essence prowled the chamber, candleflames guttering in his wake. “Was Luhaine stark crazy? Why should he shoulder the crass bargain with Seshkrozchiel to spare the Betrayer’s restored skin from decay? Am I meant to applaud him for back-handed genius? The wind-bag stickler is exquisitely fit to bore a great drake out of its skull, if the fool’s move had not seen him entombed for as long as that dragon’s sequestered in hibernation!”
Harangued to whipped elf-locks, Sethvir straightened to interrupt the tirade.
“Ah, no,” Kharadmon ranted, “you’re too cleverly glib! Don’t try again to excuse Davien’s back-stabbing games or brush off his baggage of vengeful neglect. Isn’t the criminal practice of the Koriani Matriarch busting our bollocks enough? That’s if our Fellowship has got a virile pair left intact between us!”
While the Warden of Althain stared, owlish, Kharadmon delivered his blistering grievance. “Well, you must have seen how that web-spinning crone’s blindsided Elaira’s perception.”
Sethvir did not flinch, which spoke volumes. “Do you think,” he lamented, “that current awareness of Arithon’s straits could do aught but destroy her last peace of mind?”
The wind devil seethed up by Kharadmon’s ire spiked hoar-frost across polished stone. “She would be free to act if her sight were not compromised!”
Althain’s warden blinked. “Free? At the risk of breaking her crown prince’s trust?”
Which unmalleable point should have reined a more sensible colleague’s rant up short: for Arithon’s need to secure Elaira’s safety, the enchantress who loved him had sworn she would keep his past liaison with her under a seal of secrecy.
But no appeal to moral nuance tamed Kharadmon’s agonized tirade. “Just what is Prime Selidie masking from view?”
Sethvir blinked again, and doggedly side-stepped. “You’re needed elsewhere. Traithe must be escorted away from Rathain. Yes, with all speed! He’s at dreadful risk. Twice, he’s been hounded by True Sect diviners since he challenged the trial for witchcraft as Daliana’s advocate.”
Which bitter heroic had failed, in the end, to prevent the True Sect usurpation of Lysaer’s governance of Etarra. Kharadmon stilled his arctic tantrum to object.
“No! Forget Asandir.” Sethvir shoved erect. “He’s posted back to Havish directly to finish the High Queen’s instruction.” Past argument, the risk of King Gestry’s tragic sacrifice must not be repeated. “If the next ill turn calls a crowned sovereign to rise to the kingdom’s defence, we don’t have another grown s’Lornmein heir strong enough to bear the succession!”
“But Havish lies under no threat, tonight!” Kharadmon blasted in rejoinder. “And if, in fact, Traithe was in serious jeopardy, you’d have dispatched me there directly without this hopscotch summons through Althain Tower.”
Sethvir crumpled and sat, his eyes glacial turquoise. “You can’t break charter law. Or kite off to beard the Prime Matriarch without touching off a mass catastrophe.”
Kharadmon snorted with freezing contempt. “Thwarted by your shell game of diversion? I might wish instead Davien’s treasonous anarchy would smash Asandir’s unholy pact with the sisterhood at a stroke! Someone should obliterate that nest of harpies.”
“I know.” Sethvir foresaw all the bleak probabilities. The Seven’s hamstrung resource could scarcely stem the bleeding breach as Selidie’s plots pitched their guardianship of Athera to shambles. Tough as nails amid building disaster, he folded veined knuckles and temporized. “The short-term defeat may not lose us the war. And I lit up the tower on the outside chance Davien might take notice. A token show of his support at this pass might give the Prime wary pause.”
But even provoked a third time, Kharadmon never swerved. “What rankling ploy is that she-spider hatching?”
“Today? Another manipulation against us.” Sethvir picked a loose thread from his sleeve and sighed. “Her mission is desperate. Either she must snare a talented candidate strong enough to survive the succession, or she has to defeat the compact and fall back on her order’s cache of proscribed secrets. For one cause, or both, she’s playing a puppet initiate from Deal as the woebegone victim of rape.”
&nb
sp; “And?” Kharadmon prompted, while the anguished pause stretched to the whicker of candleflame.
Sethvir glanced up, desolate. “The chit’s being used as the baited trap to exploit the glaring flaw in Prince Arithon’s character.”
The discorporate Sorcerer recoiled, aghast. “To acquire his blood-line?”
“Or break him,” Sethvir said, unflinching. “Either convenient happenstance suits the sisterhood’s cause.”
The worrisome scene tracked by the Althain’s Warden unfolded in the Storlains, well into the nadir of night. The old ice-cutter’s cabin by then was snug, even cozy under latched shutters. Lit rushes spilled softer light over the makeshift trestle, littered with wintergreen sprigs shorn of berries to compound a liniment.
Vivet refused the astringent paste, mashed to soothe her livid bruises. “I’ll not touch the rank stuff!” She puffed a vexed breath. “It stings, and the smell makes me queasy.”
Seated opposite, his bowl of spurned remedy a strained declaration of tension between them, the Crown Prince of Rathain measured her sullen regard, too canny to rise to the bait. A woman scorned, Vivet well might try rejection as her next inveigling weapon. Braced by the tingling scent of crushed herbals, he matched her complaint with cool silence and did not volunteer to poultice her injuries.
Vivet slapped down her comb. Reclothed, erect in the tatters of her dignity, she began with crisp yanks to rebraid her hair. Arithon watched, careful to dampen the outrage smouldering beneath his leashed temper. As deeply betrayed by another woman, even yet beloved beyond measure, he dared not lose his grip on the embedded hurt that clouded his mage-sighted discipline. Vivet’s pique perhaps stemmed from misdirected pain and not venal manipulation.
Mindful of his thoughtless power to wound, Arithon waited for accurate insight, while she eyed him sidewise, unchastened. Empathy forgave her contrary behaviour, given how little he knew of the crisis she battled. Trauma alone would not drive an intelligent young woman to fling herself on him, try suicide, then irrationally neglect the physical marks of abuse.
Initiate restraint must outlast moody tumult. Tidied himself, reclad in his marred shirt, and in charge of both knife and his shoulder-slung sword, Arithon perched on the makeshift log seat.
He could do nothing else.
Althain’s Warden witnessed, in full, the invidious thread of Prime Selidie’s design. An innocent female, cast as victimized pawn, paired with the damning, implied falsehood sown by an incomplete record left planted crystal, had skewed Arithon’s internal boundaries. The mix spelled disaster. Vivet’s straits grappled his vulnerability, abrasive as slivered glass on torn nerves in the confines of the remote cabin.
The blood-bound tenets of Rathain’s crown heritage disallowed comfort, or distance. S’Ahelas foresight stayed silent, as well, while Arithon’s recoil sought the blind solace of an outside distraction: easier for him to redress Vivet’s woes than to bear his own desolation.
Sethvir’s flash-point acuity plumbed the abyss of uncertainty caused by the prince’s blocked memory. Stripped of Tarens’s steadfast loyalty, Arithon’s purposful character lost firm direction. Where safety and solitude would have granted space for mage training to master the impasse, Arithon endured in resigned suspension, his innate faculties entrained on another’s behalf.
The battered victim in front of him trembled, too damaged to function. Sent as she was on a mission to ensnare him through her human weakness, Vivet leaned, and commanded his strength.
“What if my future is ruined?” she confided in jagged distress.
Arithon measured her lustrous hair, the blemished symmetry of temple and cheek, then the expressive eyelashes and pert chin. Against her dispirited anguish, he said, “You are individual as a melody sung once, then lost in a storm. Calm will refound the cadence again. Beauty survives, and healing demands a fallow time for renewal.” His tender entreaty insistent, he added, “I promise you this. The harm you have suffered is an affront to all that is right in the world. You will find the joy that eludes you tonight. But only if you gather your courage, stay the course, and live in the present.”
Vivet convulsed with sobs. He did not gather her misery close or smooth back the hair slicked to her swollen cheeks. And yet, though his intimate trust remained shaken, he did not disown her suffering.
“Your affection is not a gift to be squandered over a night’s inflamed passion.” The bitter edge underneath his straight speech eluded her wounded perception. “Entanglement now would upset better choices. Do you understand, Vivet? Your worth is greater than any male stranger’s thankless, quick toss in the sheets.”
Blinking through tears, she fastened on his promise of requite. “You’ll still see me home?”
“Better,” said Arithon. “I’ll make sure of your welcome. If your kin cast you out for what happened, we’ll leave them. Your fortune will thrive in a different place, among kindly folk who deserve, and appreciate, the unique grace of your company.”
Vivet mopped her face, encouraged to venture a tentative smile. “Then you don’t spurn belief in chance-met fate?”
“That upsets don’t happen by accident?” Arithon shrugged. “I’m too tired to hazard the question.” Slight as shadow itself, green eyes lowered, he stirred to retire.
Reluctant to release him, Vivet blurted, “My mother told futures. She taught me the art. What will happen is marked in the lines of your palm.” Flushed slightly, she seized his right wrist, poised on the trestle between them. Arithon curbed his recoil. He suffered the touch to appease her and let her uncurl his long fingers.
Shiny white, the old knot of scar tissue exposed to the rush-light. Apologetic, Arithon freed her shocked grasp. “I’ve no past and no future where you are concerned. Wiser for you to remember that.”
Yet the gathered probabilities of Sethvir’s earth-sense foreshadowed no simple release from his tacit engagement and no turning away. Bred to heal fractious conflict in whatever form, and royally gifted with the insight to forge unity between Mankind’s wayward factions and the mystical presence of Athera’s Paravians, Arithon could not resist his born nature or callously force disentanglement.
A snarling blast of frigid wind yanked the Warden’s distanced awareness back to Althain Tower.
“The hussy is pregnant!” Kharadmon snapped. Two shelved books toppled and smacked into the floor, while precipitate moisture crackled and froze under his ferocious outburst. “Not by Arithon, either, mark that!”
Sethvir caught the whip-cracked ends of his beard and peered through the gyre of snowflakes. “Two days ago, yes. I observed the conception. The woman is bearing the dead trapper’s get.”
“Our prince can’t ascertain that!” Kharadmon fumed.
Which nailed the strategic quandary behind Vivet’s attempted seduction. Sethvir kept his own counsel. Nothing could be salvaged. The Prime’s aimed directive ascertained the by-blow’s paternity would stay blurred until the misfortunate birth.
More, the discorporate tempest of Kharadmon’s rage already vaulted beyond that festering obstacle. “You suggest the Prime’s long-term desire seeks to breed the latent talent from Dari s’Ahelas’s line of descent? Then why hasn’t Selidie fashioned a second campaign aimed at Lysaer s’Ilessid?”
“I can’t say that she won’t; although at the moment, Lysaer’s better guarded.” Quick to divert Kharadmon’s inquisitive prodding, Sethvir pounced with the gambit. “You have Davien’s unlicensed genius to thank since the bold masquerade he staged for Daliana just made Selidie’s prospects immeasurably more difficult.”
Predictably nettled, and roundly upstaged, the discorporate Sorcerer abandoned debate, blew out the latched shutter, and blustered away on his assigned errand.
Summer 5923
Machinations
The three-storey merchant’s house Lysaer rented for residence in East Bransing fronted the bustle of Broad Street, where the port town raised by Mankind encroached upon the Second Age sea-wall, and the crescent breakwate
r erected by Paravian masons once protected the delicate, moored boats of Sunchildren. No ruin remained of the rope ferry that had crossed the river at the harbour’s inlet. The present-day view from the upstairs casements showed a jumble of sandstone and brick shops stacked against the grade of a cobbled street. The eaves of the tenements notched pleated silhouettes against the tarred rigging that cross-hatched the quay-side. Square built of grim, Blackshear granite, the mansion lacked filigree rails and tiled galleries. Only plain cornices brightened with whitewash inflected its genteel elegance.
Inside, the décor was antique and restrained, the comforts of the gentleman’s chambers served by fusty staff corridors and backstairs with scuffed treads.
Servants came with the house. The master’s privacy was guarded by a tyrannical steward, which stymied a newcomer without proper references, attached from the street at his Lordship’s whim.
Called by Dace Marley, the elderly fellow was viewed askance as an opportune pilferer. Tasked with the kitchen staff under the sharp-eyed cook, Dace endured the smirks that implied no upright valet ever dirtied his hands. Decency should drive off a true man of quality before he stooped to sweating buckets, or lugging the butcher’s cuts for the spit.
Since the Fellowship’s mandate left no slack for snobbery, Dace rose to his wretched lot, swearing.
“His nibs wants you run out, mark my word,” the cook confided with smug hypocrisy. Given a diligent worker in place of the indolent lad, Quince, just unsuitably promoted to the gentleman’s chamber, the man swiped his greasy hands on his apron, and added, “My fuel bin’s low. Get me split hardwood, mind! None of that rubbish pine kindling for cheap. A pitch fire in the stove chimney could burn down the house.”
Dace stifled comment and shouldered the sling. Such mean errands let him survey the town and sift through gossip in the market. A servant in livery might tally the numbers of armoured dedicates in their white surcoats unnoticed, or spy upon True Sect diviners and priests.