Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon

by Janny Wurts

  War and red slaughter would return to Rathain, fuelled by fanatical hatred.

  Rogue far-sight shattered the veneer of tranquillity. Roughshod, the horrific blast of raw prescience trampled over hard-won equanimity.

  Arithon gasped, collapsed to his knees by the rush of probable vision. Then the spun-glass bubble of his self-awareness burst altogether. Fists rammed in the dirt, he shuddered, while the stretched moment slowed time, and the ground underneath him dissolved into the primal shimmer of energies that knitted creation. He no longer recognized tangible form. The purl of the flux chafed his unshielded nerves, until the electromagnetic surge of the elements eroded his existence down to naked spirit.

  He endured, as he must. No clean release from his quandary existed until he broke the power of the Ettinmere shamans. Barraged by re-amplified sound and cast adrift in tormented distraction, Arithon grappled the slip-stream of displaced sensation, all of his precarious footing unstrung by one careless, abstract thought. Breathing too fast, he marshalled himself, the unravelled span of his attention refocused strand by laborious strand, until he re-established the boundaries of human perception.

  The set-back cost dearly.

  That evening, he mapped his cautious steps with a staff to affirm the solidity of the floor under him. He latched the storm shutters against the full moon, lest his tenuous focus should stray, mesmerized by the silvered reflections glanced off the swirling brook. He met the gad-fly demands of clothing and meals by grim rote, then retired to the worn rattan chair and thumbed through Ciladis’s field journals.

  Arithon read the collection in order and paused at the one left unfinished. Inchoate dread fed his reluctance to examine the final entry. He already knew the last leaves were blank though the faded slip-case of stamped leather was older than the completed volumes numerically titled. The flocked parchment was yellowed with years, suggesting an incomplete body of knowledge, pursued over an extended time.

  Ciladis’s known passions were healing and harmony. His signature style had breath-taking elegance, shaped by an intellect of adamant gentleness. Hope was loath to pry into the intimate mystery behind his private retreat. Arithon hesitated, afraid to broach something more ominous than a reclusive desire for sanctuary among the Paravians.

  The Seven’s affairs were no man’s to fathom, all the more at the risk of unbearable grief. The opened book might seal the terrible proof: loss of a spirit whose keenly felt absence already diminished the Seven.

  Yet the stakes riding Arithon’s crisis were desperate, with the on-coming horror of the True Sect war stacked against the integrity of his survival. No master accepted defeat under compromise. He would not cede his autonomy to the Ettinmere shamans or permit the meddling link to the former Prime Matriarch’s collaboration.

  Regret lost validity, commandeered by the mandate of a Fellowship oath to survive no matter the means or the consequence.

  Arithon lifted the journal from the shelf. If Ciladis lived, he might never forgive the personal trespass. But if Mankind’s turmoil darkened the mysteries, and discord drove a downwards spiral towards entropy, the enduring grace of the Paravians might forsake the world altogether.

  Arithon unlatched the stained cover. The calligraphy of the fly-leaf’s inscription matched no Atheran language, except for the Third Age runes underneath, which recorded the date of Desh-thiere’s incursion. He turned the page, crest-fallen, as the first entry upset his assumption. Ciladis had not written a verbal account of the Mistwraith’s invasive conquest.

  Instead, Traithe’s portrait stared out of the page, a deft rendering that captured life’s essence. The black, brimmed hat with the silver band was doffed, the bare shock of the Sorcerer’s fly-away hair wisped as though teased by a wind sprite. Strong-boned features radiated amusement. The mirthful glint in his dark eyes promised laughter, beneath wide-lashed lids not yet hooded by the ache of chronic debility. The set of the mouth showed light-hearted whimsy, unlined by the brackets of sorrow Arithon remembered. The vivid image revealed Traithe as he had been, before the crippling damage incurred by his heroic closure of South Gate.

  More drawings followed, wistful views of places and children, some done in fine ink, and others more spontaneously shaded with charcoal. Landscapes from Daon Ramon radiated an emotion delicate enough to wring tears. Ethereal silver-point depicted Riathan amid the spring wildflowers that once had flourished before the great dam diverted the River Severnir, and the lush meadows parched into scrub thicket and thorn.

  Discovery illumined each subsequent page. Cianor Moonlord’s shining nobility haphazardly faced the breath-taking chiaroscuro of towering flame that ignited a living drake’s aura. The intricate detail that revealed a snowflake’s fragility also had traced the latticed emanation of crystals. Each subject reflected a ferocious tenderness, all the rapt wit of the Sorcerer’s vision unveiled to initiate insight.

  More intimate than a diary, Ciladis’s memoire contrasted his cherished remembrance with the calamitous harm wrought by Desh-thiere’s invasion.

  The tone of the entries darkened with time, as the erosive impacts compounded. As though frenetic acts of creativity had striven to defy an insidious melancholy, Arithon viewed alphabets of intertwined capitals formed out of beasts and curled vines: prototypes for the illuminated volumes sequestered in Davien’s library. A grumpy cartoon of Luhaine caught the huffed breath that preceded his lectures. Another showed a debonair Kharadmon, eyes half-lidded in the snide sidewise glance that fore-ran his needlesome smile.

  Recipes improving the degraded dyes that afflicted the artistry of the Narms craftsmen were scrawled between poetry that trailed off into the hen-scratches of a quill nib scraped dry of ink. Arithon recognized fragments of verses, later evolved into ballads passed down through Athera’s Masterbards.

  As prolific as these idle fancies, he encountered the ruled drawings of spells, many encoded in the refined geometry preferred by the Fellowship Sorcerers. Arithon marvelled over the original ciphers that empowered Ciladis’s Sunloop, a working that defied entropic attrition. Stored at Althain Tower, the shining artifact still performed its embedded office. The tuned invocation to track the return of the sunlight at the Mistwraith’s defeat yet reflected the daily advent of dawn across the world’s compass.

  The next entries were sombre, exact drawings of fungi and wilt, then shrivelled leaves powdered with must, the decay arisen from prolonged damp and extended winters. Ciladis’s study mapped the dark veins in the auras of plants afflicted by the pall of Desh-thiere. Sketched vistas unveiled what appeared as swirled fog, until closer survey discerned subtle smears that resolved into distorted faces. Long since, Ciladis had unravelled the cankerous presence of the embedded wraiths; centuries ahead of his Fellowship peers, he recorded the deadly phenomenon certainly shared by Athera’s Paravians. The horror, perhaps, had been too great to bear, given the historical omission. While the wraiths’ maligned state thwarted scrying, no hope of reprieve existed beyond the riddle of Dakar’s West Gate Prophecy.

  As though the untenable pain poisoned quietude, Arithon encountered pictures of deformed trees, a botanist’s catalogue of maples, and oaks, willow, white birch, and spear-straight stands of ash. Yet on each page, opposite, their familiar forms had been reworked, the energies of individual species reclad in a different aspect. Arithon beheld growth that seemed taller, more stately, more achingly serene, nature’s symmetry imbued with a beauty beyond worldly vision. He took pause, a thumb hooked to mark his place in a book gently closed for further contemplation.

  Davien once had asserted that Mankind’s perception shaped Athera’s flora and fauna into conformity with racial memory. Paravians interpreted the same electromagnetic signatures differently. Arithon’s venture down the forbidden pathways linked to the King’s Glade in Selkwood had explored the perilous interface, where bodily senses and mage-sight unravelled. The light and sound underlay shifted patterns, and form rippled: like a rotated kaleidoscope, the known face of reality alter
ed. A similar transience infused the sanctuaries maintained by Ath’s white adepts, and surely, also, created the uncanny phenomenon found at the borders of Athili. The Second Age focus circles that synchronized the lanes with the flux tides and enabled the dissolute transfer across distance were also empowered by resonant memory. Davien wielded an engineer’s grasp of the principle, and archival history described Sethvir’s ability as a shape-shifter.

  Yet no Sorcerer in Arithon’s hearing ever mentioned which gateway had enabled the old races’ exodus from the continent.

  Extant record suggested Ciladis had not embarked on his search for their passage by boat. A sea-crossing would have encountered the wards, impenetrable to Sethvir’s earth-sense. Whether the journal decoded the structure, the next sequence of configured diagrams proved too dense to decipher. Arithon studied their dazzling symmetry in vain, incomplete learning unable to fathom the dragon-sourced mastery possessed by the Seven. He admired the beauty, silenced by awe, and thralled by ephemeral tingles as he traced over the inscribed parchment.

  Then the occult notation gave rise to more portraits drafted after Ciladis’s retreat. Sunchildren danced within circles of flame, their delicate faces like petalled flowers or strung pearls rendered against satin-black darkness. Stately centaurs posed, mantled in spindled light, the magnificence graven in bearing and features infused with the patience of ages. Hope blazed eternal in the forms of Riathan, trailing silvery torrents of excited flux, with the sparkle of iyats crowding their wake, blurred under shrouding mist.

  The sketches embodied much more than aesthetic exuberance. Arithon encountered sequential images of unbudded willow fronds, paired with phrases of notated melody. His Masterbard’s gift grasped the purpose written in primal harmonics. Here lay the inspired idea for the completed work on the shelf, that explored tonal means to transform through refiguring sound. Ciladis had evolved a method by which the crystalline flutes of the Athlien singers might offset Desh-thiere’s blight on the landscape.

  Which refined application still acted in force: bardic talent detected the remnant echoes, found stamped into stones and ancient trees, and wound through the chord of the flux. The imprints bespoke the work done to maintain the land’s shining health across the dismal centuries enshrouded in fog. Perhaps the last verse of the Sorcerer’s remarkable legacy: few marked pages remained before the blank signatures bound in the unfinished memoire.

  Arithon turned over the next leaf, and gasped. For the structure Ciladis had scripted raised light, a silver sheen that confounded vision, and flared mage-sight into conflagration. Momentarily blinded, Arithon shielded his face, shut the book, and breathed until his pulse steadied. He shied off from conclusion, refused the uneasy dread that had stalked his thoughts all along.

  Yet the persistent sorrow could not be dismissed. Ciladis had been recording Paravian consciousness in full glory, unshielded by limiting flesh. Strung out between an incarnate existence and the upscaled vibration of unclothed spirit, the Sorcerer may have lost himself to beguilement.

  Rather than dwell on fearful supposition, Arithon steeled his weak nerve. He thumbed forward into the section left blank, then flipped backwards to the final entry. The drawings unveiled did not dazzle him witless. The left-hand leaf showed an inked rendering of an outcrop, seamed diagonally by a stepped ledge that descended into the shadowed mouth of a cave. The right-facing page recorded a mighty working, the strength of the geometry also not rendered in actualized form. Arithon recognized the rune for elemental light embedded into the Fellowship’s complex style of shorthand. The interlocked figures were patterned for perpetuity, similar to the artful array on the Sunloop, but greater in execution and magnitude.

  Arithon pondered the heart-breaking conundrum until daybreak speckled rose light through the boughs past the casements. Ciladis might have achieved his completion with the resonant working to salvage the viability of the Paravian refuge. Sunk into despondency by his complete knowledge of Desh-thiere’s malevolence, he may have surrendered to the grace of an ethereal release. If so, the last pair of drawings shaped a cryptic epitaph.

  Or, Arithon mused through the flutter of dread, determined hope had defied grief. The diary’s contents affirmed the bent of that steadfast purpose. The Sorcerer’s diary expressed more than wistful sentiment. His persistent articulation of vibrant beauty, offset by the poignancy of fading loss, mapped the visceral gap between discord and symmetry. The contrast might aim to spark meaningful insight, silent testament of an obdurate pursuit of constructive ideas. From the smallest imbalance to large scale disharmony, each entry had been followed with an exacting remedy formulated in the numbered field manuals.

  The outcrop depicted offered a clue to the riddle of Ciladis’s disappearance. If the site lay within the warded refuge, and provided the diagrammed spellcraft on the next page was interlinked, the local flux tides ought to reflect the traces of its active presence. Arithon resolved to risk chasing the theory, although the decision was dangerous. While the accurate charts in the cottage mapped the uplands to direct his search, proximity to the Paravian presence posed him a consummate peril. Since his unstable condition disallowed a direct contact to ask for guided permission, the reckless alternative forced his reliance on immersive mage-sight.

  Arithon set off rested and fed, precautions that fortified mortal flesh, but no anchor at all against the frayed state of his spirit. The filled flask, the short bow, and the oiled cloak bundled over rolled blankets required his mindful focus, no use if strayed wits overtook him in the open.

  Which storm assaulted his unsheathed nerves before he turned inland, away from known country. The chance glitter of sunbeams on dew, the searing peridot flames of new leaves, and the liquid warble of bird-song snared his wayward attention. Spring’s bewitching cascade flooded him with the tonic of fecund rebirth, until his drugged senses strayed into the numinous vista of waking dreams.

  Entranced perception plagued his human steps, both as pitfall and warning. Where confluent wells of high resonance exceeded the threshold of tolerance, seductive beauty blazed brightest. The heady scent of the passing breeze scattered his purposeful reason. There, he must turn aside. Or like the moth drawn to flame, he could succumb to the fatal allure of Athera’s mysteries.

  Wrung dizzy, Arithon stumbled upon a pebbled lake-shore too wide to swim. He circled the verge with blindfolded eyes, his hesitant progress achieved by touch to avoid the scald of pure light off the opalescent riffle of water. Against the siren’s song of wet stones underfoot, he stripped off his shirt, until the crisp bite of the wind lost efficacy as a last measure to jab him alert. Wooed into reverie, he tripped. The fall shocked him back to awareness. Spared, he could not guess how far he had strayed, warnings missed as he veered into jeopardy.

  Pain stymied his resource, while he shuddered and retched, then slipped the muffling cloth from his face to stanch the gash in his banged forehead.

  Cleared vision revealed that the boulder that caught his toe had been recently carved, the fresh chips from the mason’s chisel scattered nearby. The incised characters were familiar: directional symbols used by centaur guardians of old to demark hallowed ground on the mainland. Arithon blinked, sobered. Evidently, the reclusive Paravians had placed a sign-post to steer him towards safer ground.

  He had no time to dwell. Sundown fired the lake to a shimmer of salmon and gold, frisked by the prank breezes that freshened at dusk. Fallen under the indigo shadow of night, with the star-song re-amplified by water, the allure of this place would be deadly. Arithon drove himself upright. His whispered gratitude acknowledged the gift of exalted assistance as he pressed forward. If solving the puzzle of Ciladis’s fate outmatched his ability, at least he had not been called out for trespass.

  His progress blurred through the following days. From twilight until the first blush of dawn, he battled his drifted senses. What fitful catnaps he snatched in duress spun him into bouts of delirium. Arithon traversed a dazzling landscape, half-stunned. Jewel-
toned rainbows fractured his mage-sight to a distraction that sapped him of purpose. He trod forests of patriarch trees that soared upwards, their broad trunks and massive, arched crowns a marvel on an isle exposed to the Cildein’s rampaging gales.

  He splashed across brooks with clear pools, rimmed in velvet moss and teeming with trout. The meander of willow-stitched banks woke amazement, burst into glory without warning where roaring falls jetted off the stepped ledges. He traversed shaded grottoes and hidden glens, charged with the oil-sheen glimmer of the unbearably heightened flux. The deer and the wildcat matched his moon-struck stare, fearless. He stumbled and fell time and again, hurled into mage-trance by the chance-met brush of bare flesh against leaves, or else bashed his shins, shocked out of his senses where vistas of scintillant light painted over the architecture of eternity.

  Arithon grappled the spiralling plunge towards insanity as his birthborn talent intensified. Refined awareness unmoored him, until his least movement rang like bronze bells through his altered perception. The flux currents danced, gold, to the sigh of the breeze, energetically reactive to his thoughts and apt to flower into illusory bouts of nightmare. A lifetime’s discipline fought to curb panic, while the heady, lush fragrance that rushed every breath wrung him to trembling ecstasy.

  Yet the flow of one day to the next, measured by the changing lane tides, was not timeless. Outside the seduction of paradise, the surge and bustle of activity elsewhere spun the grim thread of disaster. Idyllic reverie too often convulsed into farsighted visions of terror and blood, shuddered by the drum-beat of war and the wing-flaps of gravid birds settled on carrion. Thaw on the continent would be drying the trade-road under the Mathorn foot-hills. Cleared passes would unmuzzle the fury of the Light’s war host across Rathain.

  Arithon shivered, crossed from the syrup of noon sunlight into dense shade under a stand of pines. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms, perhaps from misted damp: somewhere ahead, a tumbling waterfall wafted the scent of dank stone. Or not, he mused, chilled by felted gloom that smothered clear daylight. The evergreens nestled against a sheer cliff, the vertical face entangled in vines, and streaked virid where seeped springs dripped from the clefts. Arithon shoved through the needled branches, drawn by the glimmer of uncanny rays, spun like cobweb through the gloaming ahead.