by Janny Wurts
Dakar unhooked the small-clothes snagged on his ear. Spitting out the taste of horse-urine and sour nausea, he stood and jammed on his trousers. He refused to suffer the ghastly mistake; could not bear watching Rathain’s prince swear child-right at Ettinmere by the Prime Matriarch’s dastardly scheming. Without looking, the Mad Prophet knew how a crystal shard had been imprinted to spring Arithon’s downfall: how not, tricked into falsified belief that his cherished enchantress had betrayed him, with his steadfast love wielded as a tool by a dutiful Koriathain.
No recourse, for the misery: the record was true. A past Prime’s directive once had sought to turn Elaira’s affection against him. But the partial view had shaped a tactical deceit, deliberately planted for Arithon’s search of her cabin. The impact shook the deep bulwark of a trust yet held flawless between them. But only the uncut perspective of the complete incident could refute the invidious fragment of evidence.
Dakar ground his teeth, ridden by the benighted vision of Arithon’s reciting his oath before the Ettinmere elders. No recall of his Masterbard’s knowledge of law had served the gravity of due warning. To his Grace, bludgeoned into numbed bitterness, the sacrificed years while a child matured seemed a meaningless pittance, where by a more callous measure, the stakes should have hurled Vivet’s venal dilemma off the nearest cliff.
“Once in your life, just this once, Arithon!” Dakar fumed. “Be the natural bastard, scrap ethics and fly into a rage! Don’t indulge every damned self-righteous idiot who tweaks your bleeding heart! Lash out! Dharkaron Avenger wept, don’t shoulder the load for a wanton git who’s been gaffed by Selidie’s filthy directive!”
Yet Arithon checked his prickly temper and let himself become shackled.
Dakar winced, as the ceremony of child-right concluded. Stuffed back into his shirt, uncaring the garment was inside out, he ploughed into the marshy breeze off the lake and sought the first lit casement. Shoved into the rowdiest waterman’s dive, he perched like a glum toadstool and ordered a jug of cheap gin. He popped the cork. Swallowing down the raw liquid, he begged sorry fate for the grace to pass out before prescience disclosed the outcome.
Yet even Backwater’s rot-gut gin failed to grant him oblivion fast enough.
Dakar felt the visceral, glass edge of pain as Arithon stepped from the timbered building. Vivet met him on the plank stair, crowned by a wreath of flowers. Pulled forward and pounded on the back by her jubilant relatives, he found himself prodded by too many hands, then seized and kissed by chattering sisters. Revolted, in leashed fury, he endured the embrace of her brothers and cousins, gathered into the circle of family.
Prophet, accursed with true Sight, Dakar caught the wretched reaction twofold: as the fickle flux in the Storlains surged clear, and Elaira suffered the intimate view through Arithon’s dumbfounded eyes. She echoed the recoil of his clubbed surprise. Wept, while the noisy, exuberant crowd received him as one of their own.
Child-right, in Ettinmere, involved more than the rearing of offspring. The horror dawned late, that his earnest consent saddled him with a nuptial celebration. The happy crowd hazed him and plucked at his clothes. Crude laughter and jokes herded him towards a hut to bed Vivet as though joined in marriage.
Dakar recognized the set to Arithon’s shoulders. The Teir’s’Ffalenn met his unwanted bride like the chained dog jerked towards the kennel.
Then the evil belt of the gin did its work; or else static noise broke Elaira’s empathic connection. Cognizant vision dissolved like dashed foam off a breaker.
Dakar crumpled into a slovenly heap, the plunge into drunken unconsciousness welcomed. While his awareness dimmed, alone in Atainia, a last witness followed the turbulent thread of event closed at Ettinmere Settlement.
Warden of Althain, immersed in broad-scale earth-sense, Sethvir beheld Arithon’s vehement rejection of Vivet’s possessive embrace.
“Would you shame her in public?” a shocked celebrant cried, alike enough to be a sibling.
Arithon returned a vitriol glare. “Your customs,” he cracked, “have the delicacy of rats baked into a wedding cake. I’ve accepted guardianship for the child. After that, who sleeps under your kinswoman’s roof is not my affair. Or your business.”
“And if her brat’s yours?” the fellow pursued.
“No difference. Her babe is mine until he reaches puberty,” Arithon blistered in correction. “Sworn to my name by your council of elders and sealed before the eyes of your shaman. Best you Ettinfolk never forget that!”
The flare sprung off the vehement statement struck Sethvir as a spark touched to flame. If Vivet and her kin believed Arithon’s spirit could be leashed, they soon would find their net snagged on the thorn in the blossom of Torbrand’s descent. The Sorcerer winced. Almost, he pitied the Ettin elders, subject to the wicked explosion their repressive culture deserved.
Indeed, the bleak hour had come, forecast over two hundred and fifty years ago: the dimming of Arithon’s psyche, engineered by Koriathain through the tactical severance of Elaira’s influence. Once, on a damp tide-flat by a drift-wood fire, Traithe had served the enchantress due warning: “… for good or ill, you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster …”
Sethvir bowed his head. Tangled hair like shaved ice in the moonlight streamed through the library casement, he listened with every hair prickled erect.
No whisper arose from the absent colleague whose silence stayed adamant: Davien ventured no overture towards a contrite return to his colleagues. Yet Althain’s Warden sensed the first whisper of avalanche. That dire wave of fore-running impetus, set off and gathering force, that could see the riven Fellowship of Seven restored back to unity at their full strength. Or else tonight’s consequence tripped their downfall. If destiny’s card came to shatter their covenant, entropy must not be allowed to unravel the harmonic that bridged the arc of Athera’s mysteries.
Summer 5923
Provocations
The Hatchet thumped down his mallet fist hard enough to displace the stones weighting his tactical maps. Correspondence and lists exploded in flurries from the stacks on the trestle in front of him. “Say again!”
Officers summoned for his revised orders quailed, while the mousy scribe startled out of dictation squeaked and splayed his best pen nib.
Few dared to bait The Hatchet’s ill temper. Not since the momentous disaster that routed his invasion of Havish, and never under the redoubled fury incited by unforeseen set-backs.
“My summer campaign plan’s bedevilled, thick as pests in plague-ridden batches.” Up to his nose in the scent of hot horseflesh steamed off the latest courier, the Light’s supreme commander fumed on, “Speak up, boy! Spit out whatever foul news has blown in here with the squall.”
“The galley-man you hired for transport from East Bransing has defaulted on your signed contract.” The pimpled adolescent dripping on the carpet braced rattled nerves and yanked off the sling hanging his dispatch case. “Best read the details, Lord. The vessel in question’s already sailed.”
“This happened yesterday?” The Hatchet hopped in livid distemper. “Light scorch her venal master and broil his skanking carcass! Show me the merchant captain alive who won’t duck a war-bond requisition for a bribe!”
“Not for coin, and not for apostasy this time,” the browbeaten courier dared to insist, too exhausted to cower, as The Hatchet’s cobra-quick snatch ripped the packet away from him.
The senior staff waited, trapped in the storm’s eye. Tension crackled the pause. The guttering lamps distorted the shadows of the command tent’s grisly, stuffed-animal trophies, while the gusts outside battered the torrential rain, and leaks through the canvas pavilion pattered The Hatchet’s volcanic annoyance.
He cut the soaked fastenings with his knife, ranting onwards in his bass growl, “The two companies I just force-marched into Dyshent are stalled at the dock w
ithout shelter because of your tardy disclosure.”
The courier wrung his gloves in petrified silence. His desperate urgency had lamed two mounts, and brought a rider to grief on the road. The dispatches delivered at such cost in flesh became slapped on the table. Unrolled, the official wax seals and gold ribbon should have curbed the most arrogant displeasure.
Yet the panoply of High-Temple authority failed to quench The Hatchet’s vexation. He read, lips clamped, his fuming breaths marked by the flutter and tap as moths blundered into the lamp panes. Soon enough, the gist raised his stentorian bellow. “Did you know the contents of this before you darkened my threshold?”
The courier unlocked his chattering teeth. “Rumour’s flying like bale-fire. Has your hired galley in fact been pre-empted on the pretext of divine authority?”
“Pirated, rather!” The Hatchet punched a stub finger into the salient line: ‘… her captain forced to cast off in duress, or watch his vessel burn to the waterline with all hands …’
When the next leaf disclosed the run-amok avatar’s motive, The Hatchet’s complexion turned purple: ‘… the s’Ilessid scion’s heretical pursuits have not abated … his movements were contained until he slipped the over-confident grasp of our Examiner at East Bransing … now believed to be moving to thwart your advance to eradicate unreformed clansmen …’
“Lysaer? Coming here?” The Hatchet stiffened. “Light’s havoc! No way I’ll suffer the next dose of ruin sown by that dandy’s rank cowardice!” His meaty fist banged again. Parchments encrusted with seals bounced and settled, while the stacked notes that directed supply collapsed in a slithered cascade. “The mincing flit abandoned the field when the battle turned sour at Lithmarin! I’ll hang the daisy by his curly short hairs before he befouls my tactics again!” A gesture spurned the offensive documents, while tactical diagrams and requisition slips sighed to rest in the shavings spread underfoot to sop up the puddles. “Yon High Priest’s blustering drivel is useless. We’ve no facts to plot a sound strategy, besides, thanks to that lame-brained examiner. Which way will the avatar jump, plying havoc? Back towards Rathain, or will he muck into my campaign in north Tysan?”
The nervous courier disclosed the development too sensitive to be penned under seal. “The latest informants’ reports favour Tysan. The co-opted galley weathered the storm in a cove down the coast, which suggests her course lies to the west.”
“Flimsy guess-work!” The Hatchet scraped at the stubble on his bull-dog jaw. “No one can say with authority what that whey-faced wastrel intends. He might have been out-bound for Falgaire or Morvain before heavy seas forced him to snug down.” Squat as an armoured battering ram, the Light’s first commander shoved his chair back. Kicked papers fluttered like birds in his wake as he belaboured his officers. “I want that galley overtaken and searched. Cuff every living deck-hand aboard and shake them down by rough questioning!”
Tasked with what seemed a suicidal assignment, a dismayed staffer denounced, “You believe the avatar’s elsewhere?”
“I like my targets kept tidy,” The Hatchet cracked in earnest. “If the detail you send gets scalded alive, we’re hell-bound to know, like the weathercock, which way Lysaer’s pointed for certain.”
The pavilion headquarters seethed into motion, the dismissed officers treading over the papers jettisoned under changed orders.
“I’ll have the veteran divisions split into skirmish groups. Equip the best to cross the mountains towards Valenford, then swing them north to engage the rest of my battle plan soonest. The second wave will fan out behind and muster beneath the western foot-hills.”
“Supply’s caught short-handed,” a rattled voice protested. “Rearrangements on that scale are going to take days!”
“Then improvise, quick!” retorted The Hatchet. “Hungry men can forage at need during summer. This post will be stripped. Lean troops on the march are better off than a batch of post-sitting, burned skeletons, paralysed by ineptitude!”
Against scoured silence, The Hatchet plunged on. “I’m saving our finest! Do you understand? March them out before dawn. Take what food they can carry. No wagons. No tents! I want speed. The heavy equipment left here must maintain the illusion we haven’t dispersed.”
Cooks and camp-followers were to wear surcoats and helms, while the raw recruits stayed on to keep staging drills in the practice field.
“Our dregs will form up tomorrow for Erdane to defend the High Temple against the rogue avatar.”
Another captain gasped. “They’re sheep herded to slaughter!”
“Maybe.” The Hatchet glared at his detracting officers. “Tell me, which bunch would you sacrifice?”
Only the next in command dared a protest. “Our strongest would hold that line and not break.”
“Yes, and die to a man for no purpose!” The Hatchet waved off his underlings’ outrage. “If the demoralized companies and green recruits run, weakness favours their chance of survival. Maybe the mad avatar will lack the stomach to murder a pack of puking tenderfeet.” His bark chased the stunned officers crammed at the exit. “Get on, directly! My orders won’t wait.”
Barged after them into the black pelt of rain, The Hatchet yelled for his messengers, some to ride straightaway to alert the towns and the Light’s stationed garrisons. Others would carry his notes of requisition and summary records to placate the priests.
Urgency cut no slack for the midsummer gale churning the coastal road into soup. The Hatchet returned, breathless and soaked, and lit into the scribe caught resharpening his nibs. “Sit up and take my dictation!” Given the extensive planning that Lysaer’s surprise move overturned, neither the Light’s lord commander or his master of letters saw rest.
Cloudy dawn pierced the gloom when at last The Hatchet stood up. The campaign trestle before him was swept clean of the last revised dispatches. Smoke gritted the air, with the newest campaign plans burned to doused ash inside a commandeered chamber-pot. No evidence remained to disclose his rapid redeployment. Outside, the thinned encampment kept the boisterous semblance of an unchanged routine: troops engaged in practice bouts with enough blundering racket to maintain the appearance of numbers. A shrewd eye might discern the reduced strings of horses hitched to the messenger’s picket line; or notice that the cauldrons under the cook shack’s sagged awning served less than yesterday’s head count.
Short bones aching, The Hatchet knuckled his eyes, too restless to retire. Gadded by nature, he moved to inspect the night’s progress before his swift raid overtook the renegade vessel. Met by another obstruction, his bulled stride all but mowed down an inbound equerry.
“Messenger, sir! Bearing a High-Temple mandate, arrived under Hanshire’s banner.”
“Get the fellow in here double-quick.” The Hatchet lurched back and dropped into his chair like a sackload of bricks.
A voice murmured without, while another’s light tread squelched over the sodden ground. The figure that darkened his entry came alone: no man, but a slender, imperious female in a purple cloak banded with scarlet.
The Hatchet shoved erect as if pinked. “I’ve more pressing priorities.”
Yet evasion did not stem the woman’s impertinence. “If your urgency concerns the delinquent galley shipped out of Falgaire, my business might speed your endeavour.”
The Hatchet shrugged. “At what ruinous price?” But the witch had forestalled him. Caught at close quarters, he stared upward with blistered hostility. “I might rather know the Master of Shadow’s current activity. Ah, no! Not again,” he chided. “Don’t trouble me with a replacement for your last shady talisman. Or didn’t you mean to add spin to the failures that botched my invasion of Havish?”
“No. Our mutual aim was subverted as well. Seek due revenge upon Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn.” The Koriathain advanced with cool equanimity and placed a cedar box on the trestle. “Our token today is sent in good faith.”
Since The Hatchet failed to snatch up her gambit, the enchantress flipped the
catch and raised the fitted lid. Nestled inside, a steel crossbolt quarrel scribed a bright line in cold daylight. The notched end for the cable had razor-edged fins instead of plumed fletching. When her gloved fingers eased the coffer closed, the metal’s suspect sheen imposed the after-image evoked by a latent enchantment.
The Hatchet grinned without delicacy. “You seek an assassin to slaughter a god? Find a more gullible fool. One who doesn’t mind dying in martyred flames, condemned for collusion with Shadow.”
“Soon enough, your High Priests will revise their priorities.” Shown caustic contempt, the Koriani witch returned a feline smile. “The veracity of the True Sect Canon can’t withstand the word of a living avatar. Lysaer s’Ilessid poses a liability to the purity of their creed. Unless, of course, his divine status becomes discredited. He is mortal, in fact. Fellowship sorcery grants his longevity. Wound him in public, and his divinity will be exposed as a sham.”
“I have other priorities,” The Hatchet repeated, annoyed enough to shoulder aside her insinuations.
“Do you truly?” she challenged, a post in his path. “Why not accept help? I might spare you the waste of resources, even by-pass a squalid day’s search for a commandeered ship.”
But her blandishment misfired. The Hatchet clenched his jaw as though he chewed marbles and ploughed on with insane disregard.
“Brute!” gasped the enchantress. Spurned by the rough shove that displaced her, she dropped civilized discourse for spellcraft.
For one breath-stopped instant the air seemed to burn. The Hatchet blinked, staggered backwards. By the time vision cleared and his balance recovered, the pavilion lay empty. No sign remained of the nosy enchantress beyond the latched box left behind on the trestle.
The uncanny artifact was far too dangerous to leave at large in the war camp.
The Hatchet spat a ferocious oath. Forced to secure the damnable construct under lock and key, he pursued his disrupted course of inspection in a viciously poisoned mood. Throughout, the anxiety haunted: had his late campaign in Havish been sabotaged, with a victory snatched from his grasp? Who knew what twisted wickedness motivated the Koriathain.