by Janny Wurts
Dace bridled and thrust to his feet. “Press that insulting argument further, I’ll shout down the stairs for a banishment.”
“Well, you match your master’s rank stubbornness right well.” Not amused, the discorporate Sorcerer expounded with a turbulent huff. “I can’t salvage your liege from this fire, my dear, outcast as he is from the compact. The inquisitive priests are a serious problem, and delay will draw dangerous questions.”
Kharadmon drifted closer. His interested survey noted the dark rings printed on the servant’s lined features. The eyes were Daliana’s: charged by the same reckless adamance that had fuelled her ancestor’s tenacious self-sacrifice. The discorporate Sorcerer’s brusque manner softened to pity as he acknowledged the ferocious depth of her inherited s’Gannley loyalty. “You weren’t aware your liege would survive? That with time he will recover his sight if the eye is kept clean and bandaged?”
Dace’s knees dissolved to jelly. He sat. “No. I wasn’t. At least, not for certain.” Overcome, he ran on, voice muffled by relief. “Lysaer has not reawakened. He suffers from fits since the crossbolt was drawn. The healers insist the injury to the brain is past hope. Apparently, I’m keeping a death-watch until his body quits breathing.”
Kharadmon snorted. “Those claptrap fools know nothing at all. The Five Centuries Fountain’s virtues won’t fail! However, even lent Davien’s enchantment, the severity of Lysaer’s condition will demand a harrowing convalescence.”
Dace lifted his head, hands limp in his lap. “How long?”
The reek from the bed-linens wadded in the basket declared the raw indelicacies left unsaid.
Kharadmon had no kindly words. “I’m sorry. A full recovery is bound to take years. If you stay the course, your task will be difficult.”
Dace denounced the challenge. “What blighted fate could be worse than the traumas I’ve already shouldered?”
“Oh, my dear! You have no idea.” The shade’s dapper image flicked out. Where flesh might weep, he could express nothing, nor lend any ease to the benighted spirit beyond the icy wind of a cruel prognosis.
“Left the template of health that Davien provided, nerve tissue regenerates slowly. You’ve endured the convulsions. These will continue until muscle control is restored. Vivid dreams will resurge as the drive of the emotions start to reconnect without full awareness. Nightmares may sow raving madness while Lysaer suffers the hallucinations of his fragmented past. You must steady him through the morass. He will become cognizant. Until then, he won’t understand who he is, or why he is trapped in this dreadful existence. Are you strong enough to teach him, all over again, how to walk and talk? To look after him as a half-wit? Because at first, he’ll be malleable as a puppet, unable to separate friend from enemy.”
Dace stared, appalled. “Surely the True Sect priesthood will exploit such vulnerability!”
“Yes.” Merciless, Kharadmon added, “More than the religion, Koriathain aim to use him for gain. The crossbolt that felled him was riddled with spells! Nothing that Davien’s long-term working can’t stem, but an extended recovery opens the gates to subversive manipulation. Your presence alone thwarts the prospect. Should the Prime strike again, the Sorcerers’ wards on your person offer your liege’s only protection.”
“Then no way under sky will I leave him!” Dace retorted. “I don’t give ground for conniving witches. Or abandon my friends. In his right mind, my liege would rather be dead than permit the True Sect’s creed to suborn him.”
Kharadmon’s image unfurled to a crack of wind that riffled the crests on the dedicates’ helms. He bowed. “Your free choice must be honoured. I entreat you, stand strong! For if you should falter or fail in your charge, our Fellowship will be forced to act for the sake of Paravian survival …”
Back at Althain Tower, the earth-linked connection dissolved. Sethvir’s gaze remained fixed on the obsidian table: as though stone still spoke, or the courage of Daliana sen Evend still sang through the library’s book-scented quiet. Perhaps scalded by the far-ranging ripple of probabilities, he seized on his waxed thread with a fury and whip-stitched the repair on the ancient folios until Asandir probed the question left dangling.
“Do you think we are seeing a crack in the Koriani Matriarch’s facade?” The possessed initiate’s subdued spirit survived yet. “If the girl’s original, smothered identity has pilfered a working knowledge of Prime power while in duress, she could rebel against her repression.”
A vexed frown pinched the wrinkles on Sethvir’s brow. “Perhaps. The issue’s clouded, with Morriel’s tortuous cleverness playing us for the diversion. In Lysaer’s case, I expect she hoped for a puppet-string avatar to spear-head religious upheaval. War on the grand scale to harry our resource and flush Arithon into flight.”
Rare anger bristled the field Sorcerer’s response. “If so, she’s delivered Lysaer to the vicious torment of his past.”
Which fragmented mire of unfinished guilt posed a trial more brutal than Davien’s enspelled passage through Kewar. Where the maze’s mirror of self framed an unbiased challenge for release and amelioration, Lysaer embarked upon his fraught course entangled in distorted prejudice. Worse, he lacked the rigorous advantage of any initiate discipline.
Desh-thiere’s curse warped the s’Ilessid penchant for justice to raging insanity, with Dace the frail stay in the breach: a servant’s brave will, like the fly sealed in amber, trapped alone in the bastion of temple authority.
Early Autumn 5923
Stonewall
The flung dagger sheared through leaves and air, snicked a hank of white-and-chestnut hair, and struck with a thunk in a tree trunk a finger’s width from impaling the Mad Prophet’s ear. The napping spellbinder startled awake and recoiled against the blade’s edge. Palm pressed to his tender, nicked flesh, Dakar howled.
“Cosach!” Scrambled erect, he added epithets fit to scorch hide at ten paces.
The heckler his language reviled slid from the autumn-blushed thicket. Past patience, he reached over Dakar’s shoulder and snatched his quivering steel from the oak before the hackled victim turned the weapon against him.
“You were meant to be guarding the trail to the cove!” Cosach sheathed the knife in disgust. “An ill wind over your grave-site and to Sithaer with your useless slacking. The whole world could have slipped off to sea while you snoozed. How dare you run my scouts ragged while you nod off at your post!”
“I didn’t.” Dakar dusted damp leaves off his backside and glared with long-suffering injury. Weeks spent tracking their elusive quarry had left him as sunburned as any Halwythwood clansman. Yet the flush that coloured his dimpled cheeks exposed his sheepish embarrassment: in delinquent fact, he had not been scrying to disclose Elaira’s activity.
Cosach exploded. “How under sky can that snip of a woman blindside my sentries for weeks? We should have picked her up straightaway. Nipped her in flight the moment she poked her nose into free-wilds territory.”
“She doesn’t want to be found,” Dakar snapped. And no wonder: caught in the wrong hands, the Koriathain’s reprisal could condemn Elaira to a fate far worse than death.
A third voice butted in with a flattened town accent. “Elaira hasn’t been seen because she’s expertly trained not to ripple the flux currents.” Silent as anyone forest-bred, Iyat-thos Tarens eased from the foliage behind, which rash approach nearly saw him impaled upon hot-tempered steel for rank trespass.
“Damn you, man!” Cosach sheathed his cleared sword, shoulders bunched. “Sneak up like that, and you’re likely to bleed! Why can’t you signal like everyone else?”
“Because I don’t cheep like a wren.” Tarens shrugged. “At least my attempt couldn’t satisfy your cranky huntsman.” The broad-shouldered crofter leaned on the oak, thumbs hooked in his belt and his broken face split by an insolent grin. “His fellows threatened to spit me, as well. Said not to pucker my bungling lips, or I’d get myself flensed as a Sunwheel spy. Why are you lot testy as stoats? Be gra
teful! If Arithon’s woman can fend for herself, weigh the blessing against the rife score of his enemies.”
“She’s Koriathain, which makes her exceedingly dangerous! Jieret never met her. Isn’t that so?” The caithdein bared contentious teeth. “Well, there you are. I’d stake my right arm: my blood ancestor would have slit his own throat before he trusted her compromised loyalties.” That issue quashed thoroughly as a stomped rat, Cosach belaboured Dakar again. “If I discover you’re playing us false, I’ll punch your dough-face through your skull and scrape your brains off my knuckles.”
Dakar cringed, his kicked-spaniel demeanour spoiled by a furtive glance sidewards. Cosach missed the deceit, distracted by an inbound scout’s covert signal: too shrill for a song-bird, even to Tarens’s stone ear.
The breezeless air wore a welded silence until the flustered runner shoved out of the scrub, sweating under his buckskins. “She’s slipped past us.”
“Again! Dharkaron Avenger clobber the hindmost!” Cosach fumed. “She couldn’t have!”
“I suggested she might.” Dakar rammed forward, jostling Tarens’s riveted interest. “If you hadn’t dismissed my pointed counsel, Elaira’s not merely woodwise. She studied her craft to initiate mastery under Whitehaven’s adepts.”
“You’re a slippery eel,” groused Cosach, then spat. “Be careful. You’ll face the rough score. The bay shore’s scarcely four leagues away. Smell the salt taint? Likely your quarry is swimming already, the scheming witch!” He bulled past, waved the winded scout to his side, and slipped into the gloom beneath Halwythwood’s primordial canopy. “Speak up! Be quick. I’ll hear your report on the move.”
But such juggernaut haste went nowhere fast. Cosach walloped into a tree-bole head first. He swayed. Yellow leaves spiralled down as his knees buckled. Then he keeled over and measured his length, his proud clan braid crushed beneath his slack cheek.
The scout swore, awed, and knelt to examine the goose-egg bruise on his chieftain’s brow. “Daelion Fatemaster’s witness! Our High Earl’s belted himself unconscious.”
“Has he?” Iyat-thos Tarens studied Dakar, poised a half-step behind, his expression cheerfully innocent. “You didn’t!” he scolded.
“Tweak the flux current? Yes.” The Mad Prophet ambled ahead. Wall-eyed and wary, he dodged the riled scout, then stepped over the hulk of the caithdein his sneaky prank had knocked prostrate. “Well, you have to agree the brute was insulting. Worse, his pesky distrust of my motives is a constant thorn in the arse!”
Tasked by two appalled glares, the plump spellbinder scowled. “Come along. Or stay, though I daresay a coddling touch isn’t warranted. His nibs is unharmed. He’ll recover his senses sore as a flipped snake. Kindly put, you may wish to be elsewhere.”
“Are you kidding?” The scout runner shot erect as though bitten. “Cosach’s already stirring. I say the fat prophet’s a dead man, and belike any mother’s son caught within reach will get skinned to relieve the embarrassment.”
No such sorry fool, the scout runner bolted, leaving Iyat-thos Tarens to shepherd Dakar’s escape.
Which ill-turned charge blazed a trail of bent boughs, chopped tracks, and thrashed brambles. Dakar’s stumpy strides slowed to a puffing walk in less than a bungled bowshot.
Tarens shortened step also, sensibly concerned for the injured rage left at their backs. Before the culprit sidled into the forest, the crofter snagged the spellbinder’s collar and yanked.
The Mad Prophet windmilled and sat in the mulch with a grunt.
Before he recovered, Tarens attacked. “You’re toying with Cosach! That’s extremely unwise. Beneath the tough crust, he’s kind-hearted and honest, and privately fearful he might fail his crown prince. Why scald the sore of his conflicted duty to safeguard his threatened people?”
No need to belabour the danger. The scout pickets patrolled on nervous alert, while hostility sparked by the True Sect at Etarra pitched the head-hunters’ leagues in full cry after bounties.
Dakar stalled, tugging down his ruckled shirt. “Rathain’s caithdein is a suitable match for the realm’s problems, I’m sure.” Sullen cheek bulged, he tongued the tender, nipped flesh on the inside and nursed his martyred muddle of grievance.
Tarens lost his temper. “You don’t corner an intelligent man who’s terrified scalpers could slaughter his children! All the more, if Cosach suspects that your antics are whiplashing him for avoidance.”
The spellbinder tugged his mussed forelock and clapped. “Bravo! How refreshing you know more than everyone else, including the Fellowship Sorcerers.” Pinned by the crofter’s abrasive silence, he bent his paunched gut, sat down, and picked burrs from his boot cuffs. But thick-skinned nonchalance won him no ground. “By all means, keep arguing until Cosach rams into the fight, stinging angry.”
“Not yet!” Tarens impatiently gestured behind. “The crickets yonder have restarted their song, which means no one’s shouldered the chase, yet. Ward our presence! Tweak a bend in the flux. You’ve just proven the adept ability!”
“I could slam you into a tree just as easily.” Dakar gathered short legs. Clownish rump hiked to shove himself upright, he was never the laughable dupe he appeared but a devious weasel at ducking.
Tarens struck below the belt first. “Level with me. You’re scared witless of Arithon! This stage play’s about your reluctance to find him, and not any crisis concerning Elaira at all.”
The spellbinder froze. Undignified, caught four-square like a dog, he sucked in a breath like the gust fore-running a thunder-clap. “Oh, past question, Elaira’s in trouble! Worse than she knows. Your crown prince is being obstructively hazed by a glamour wrought by the Matriarch’s influence.”
“What!” Tarens stared, aghast.
“Oh, yes, hear the brunt, if you’ll stand it.” Prickled to injury, Dakar scrubbed dead leaves off his backside and qualified. “Arithon’s being baited by an enthrallment attached to a woman Prime Selidie sent to waylay him. The binding is subtle enough to be troublesome. It enhances selective female traits, rifled intact from Elaira. While his Grace is annoyed, he’ll fight the attraction. But if his active resistance stays wounded by a loss he can’t fathom, he might fall prey to the temptation.”
Speechless, the blindsided crofter scrambled to measure the complications. While he sorted his own recollections from Earl Jieret’s inherited outrage, the sly spellbinder shifted to saunter away.
“Ah, no!” Tarens snatched hold of the Mad Prophet’s doublet. “Your timing’s too pat. We don’t need Elaira! Why not warn his Grace and disarm the problem directly from Ettinmere Settlement?”
Dakar deflated. “That’s just what I can’t do!” He squinted against the sunlight speared down through the leaves, at last distraught beyond artifice. “His Grace can’t remember Elaira, you see.”
Genuine misery released Tarens’s fist. “Don’t burden the issue with melodrama. Not against my knowledge his Grace’s stripped recall will heal in due time.”
“Mostly, that’s true.” Dakar averted his gaze, humbled by sorrow. “Arithon will regain his identity. But he can’t access any aspect of his prior relationship.”
Hush clothed the pause. A stray cloud muffled the sun, then passed, rekindling the motes that danced like fey gold in the burlap carpet of leaf mould. Bird-song resumed, but the crickets no longer chorused amid the underbrush. Oblivious, Tarens reined in his rage. “This was done for the sake of Prime Selidie’s vengeance to punish Elaira’s transgressions?”
“No.” Dakar swallowed and parked his bulk on a deadfall. “The harsh tactic was Arithon’s, seized under duress to shear the Prime’s coercive hold on him. He renounced all he knew of Elaira’s love, even her name, to spare her from becoming the fatal tool to suborn him.”
Sethvir’s archive at Althain Tower preserved the unsparing account of the tragedy. Dakar cringed, beyond language to express the appalling lengths taken to withstand an unconditional submission. How, captured by Koriathain, Arithon had grappl
ed the reckoning and ruthlessly dispatched his deepest vulnerability.
Shamed, the Mad Prophet related the terrible crux. “Arithon would not suffer the fate of becoming the cause of his handfast beloved’s torment. And Elaira agreed, aware she was the Matriarch’s most merciless weapon against him.”
If Tarens ached, the lens of a caithdein’s past insight exposed the core of Dakar’s dilemma. “Arithon cut himself off beyond recourse, and for pride, you can’t bear facing him to restore his integrity?”
“I could not if I wished.” Dakar agonized, “Those precious memories were not destroyed but transferred into Rathain’s signet, and sealed under Elaira’s sole provenance.”
Tarens withheld interruption while Dakar detailed the bitter quandary. “The Prime’s current plot for seduction rides upon Arithon’s broken recall. He has been fed the gross misdirection that his true beloved sold him out to the sisterhood under her oath-bound duty. The evidence used to deceive him was real, a fragment drawn from Elaira’s experience, damningly stripped out of context. The impact was meant to drive him to despair. His Grace won’t know that her trust is steadfast. Caught defenceless in isolation, Arithon may be emotionally unbalanced enough to succumb.”
Dakar finished, wrung hoarse with misery. “Elaira herself remains unaware that her natural rapport with his Grace is afflicted. She can’t scry his presence clearly enough to grasp the malicious distortion. Informed, she could snap the signature energy and dispel the falsified trace of herself from the decoy groomed for his Grace’s entrapment.”
Tarens straightened up in disgust. “You could set things right. Seems the least you could do, mage-trained as a master, and answerable for the grief set in motion by your wretched mis-step at Athir.”
“I can’t!” Dakar stood, shattered bloodlessly white. “Not without tearing asunder the shield of forgetfulness that guarantees Elaira’s protection.”