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

by Janny Wurts

  Which bitter spiral Ciladis aimed to reverse, before loss eroded the grand arc of renewal.

  Night bled into dawn underneath tattered cloud. The Sorcerer picked his way in descent, sheltered under the ridge, which narrowed to a fissured cliff, then plunged like a giant’s spilled dominoes into the sea. Daybreak rinsed the tableau in coral and rose, the glassine rollers polished to aquamarine under the cleared zenith. Then the risen sun struck the air gold, rays airy as harp-strings strung across a crescent cove, encased by ramparts of rock. Springs plumed down the face, threaded by swooping swallows, and winnowed spray fired scintillant rainbows above the nestled emerald of a shoreside meadow. Pristine calm ruled the early hour, with the vista yet pleated in purple shadow.

  Splendour quickened Ciladis’s spirit. A being would be blind and deaf, not to be overtaken with awe. Pressed onward, the Sorcerer picked his way over slippery stone, shaken by the roar where the spring-waters leaped in cascades off the brinks. Spangled in damp, he reached the sea’s edge. Raucous gulls dipped and weaved overhead. Ever quick to delight in his presence, the sandpipers that scuttled at the petticoat hems of the breakers took wing in his wake like a streamered scarf.

  Flux sheen haloed everything under the influence of the intensified lane currents. The exuberance of heightened resonance caused the sand grains underfoot to whisper and sing. Lapped in that wild melody, the Sorcerer turned down a path folded into the rolling meadow. Ahead, vision dazzled, he moved into a blaze as intense as an undying star. His escort of shore-birds sheared away, replaced by chirping finches and the thistle-down flit of field-sparrows. Ciladis walked, wreathed in birds, towards the ethereal source, shivered bone deep by harmonics as ringingly pure as glass chimes. Presently, he encountered the veil where the senses dissolved, and mage-sight opened to wonders.

  Crossing that threshold exceeded the flesh: yet Fellowship Sorcerers wielded the powers bestowed by Athera’s dragons. The shift in vibration unfolded, for them, an alternate view of creation. Ciladis trod upon ground where plants and meadow flowers shattered into prismatic motes, their colours also expressed as toned sound. He perceived the fluoresced lattices within rocks, while around him, the commonplace birds became different, reclothed in fair semblances otherworldly and strange.

  Ciladis moved amongst thistle-down beings, airy as drifted light, while up-shifted awareness perceived a far country beyond the range of mortal experience.

  Adept enough not to be mesmerized, Ciladis reforged his incarnate identity. As Arithon had once done, unwitting through music, to resolve the last riddle in Davien’s maze, the Sorcerer imposed his core pattern of being upon the reactive energy. Shape solidified under his focused awareness. Between steps, the exotic unknown reconfigured to match the primal existence of his human origin. Rewoven to that familiar template, Ciladis trod an earthly landscape again but heightened to the brilliance of gossamer silk. The sunlight in the sheltered meadow ahead softened to pearlescent haze. Embedded within, the shimmer of an embodied consciousness ignited the flux charge to streamered, white flame.

  The experienced eye beheld the wild glory unfurled by the unicorns, dancing: the thrust and passage of exquisite, dipped horns, and the spring of cloven hooves, lifted. Sight became seared by the ripple and blaze of manes and flagged tails, and the burnished glimmer of translucent coats. Ciladis caught his breath, as anyone must, who entered the living presence. The unbridled joy of Ath’s hallows embraced him, celebrating the absolute fullness of Name. The Sorcerer received welcome for all that he was, and all that he ever would become in the arc of eternity.

  He bowed his head, overcome by a terrible beauty. Nothing aware, not even the Seven, encountered the Riathans unmoved. Might and strength availed nothing, nor seasoned experience. Ciladis masked his face, shattered by sweet rapture. He quaked, pierced by sorrow for such harmony lost to the outside world. Also, he wept for the trials left to his abandoned colleagues. No matter, that his careful labour in exile had stabilized Paravian survival. How nearly he had buried himself alive, while crucial events wracked affairs on the continent during his extended absence.

  But to mourn the omission became self-indulgence before the Riathan Paravians, whose nature embodied the conscious bridge linked to Ath Creator’s unbounded glory. Moment to moment, their ethereal pavane encompassed the requite past and the unfulfilled future. All things, born and unborn, lay unveiled in reflection. Everything, since the concussive spark of divine consciousness unfolded the grand chord across the black deep and shaped form, until the implosion of time at the ending of Ages. Their motion illumined the sweep of the infinite. The ancient smokes as Cathukodarr’s drakefire laid waste to Kathtairr mingled with the later cataclysm, when the Arch at Tolgrath crumbled before the desperate wrath of the centaur, Havkiel Haltfoot. Layer on recent layer, the True Sect burning of talent overlaid the black conflagration when Alestron’s sea-gate became breached by the zeal of Alliance besiegers.

  Shadow and light, from bleak death to exquisite exultation, the dance encompassed events large and small, even seemingly insignificant. Patience might count the separate jewels of dewdrops strung upon spiders’ filaments, or splash with the snow-melt at dawn’s light, when Cianor Sunlord was crowned. The bygone flourish of the guardians’ horns still resounded, pierced by the whistles of rapacious Khadrim knifing the frigid heights above Teal’s Gap. Princess Vicienna’s tears at the break of the cordon restraining Desh-thiere melted into the cinder-grey rain fallen on her steadfast dead; or the silent snow drifted over the slain at Taerlin Waters, where earth mourned yet for Riathan slaughtered in frenzy by drake spawn.

  Morbid peril stalked the illumined awareness. Lured to blinding ecstasy, or immersed in the throes of past grief, trained consciousness risked confounding itself in the multidimensional weave. The unwary witness might linger too long, bedazzled by the fabled wonders of Ithamon’s Second Age ascendance. Perception might delve too deep, perhaps to snap in the after-shock reverberation, when the fast citadel crowning sea-girdled Corith became cast down into ruin.

  A Fellowship Sorcerer did not court the gyre of enthralment. Ciladis stayed anchored by the raw power unleashed by the drake’s dream of summoning: still ringing in force, the cry that had drawn the Seven in meteoric descent to their destiny at Crater Lake. As the rock parting the currents of history, he viewed the actualized present before him. The Riathans’ spiral swirled widdershins, a stately wheel ruled by the spring stars. This daybreak, near the pending equinox, no Athlien singers accompanied. The absence of their crystalline flutes meant the festival of renewal would be underway in the hidden glens. The nocturnal feasts extended for a sevenday, illumined by the burning of the grass dwellings which sheltered their kind through the winter.

  The warp threads of new leaf and budded flower laced a weft weave of sorrow: no young had been begotten at solstice. Nor had any live birth increased the host of the blessed. The dearth begun by Desh-thiere’s invasion yet saw no fecund change. Such felicity remained unlikely while conflict convulsed Mankind’s affairs in the mainland.

  Ciladis had sampled that bitter current, and others, embedded in Arithon’s consciousness.

  And yet no Paravian sequestered in sanctuary had foundered beneath a morass of despair. None wasted, aggrieved, a failure deferred by Davien’s farsighted action at Kathtairr. The resonance sustaining the mysteries held, still, a beacon in the shadows of misguided turmoil, mayhem, and bloodshed. If the dark threads did not, yet, disorder the fair, a Paravian return could never withstand the outbreak of war.

  Cut off from Sethvir by the ward curtain, beyond access to outside counsel, Ciladis weighed the immediate quandary. Any plea ventured in Prince Arithon’s behalf invoked peril, against prudent sense and diplomacy. Even a cautious query would impact the Riathan dance. If interpretive augury tipped the frail balance, Arithon’s exile might become permanent. Yet not to advocate for his strengths disenfranchised his initiate mastery and the tenacity of royal character.

  The Sorcerer silenced
his inner debate as a sudden shadow raked over him, untrammelled sunlight replaced by the radiance of a Paravian presence. A tingle razed his skin like a tonic and displaced his acclimatized senses.

  “You cannot speak for his Grace of Rathain,” the Ilitharis arrival rebuked. His voice echoed, a sonorous bass that struck music across the full spectrum.

  Ciladis steadied his demeanour and arose. “Tehaval Warden! Your counsel is honoured.” He bowed, forearms crossed with respectful apology. “Have you come to say Arithon’s fate is determined?” Up-stepped yet again, Sighted vision pierced the blinding coruscation and unveiled the guardian’s form: the same being whose service at Althain Tower had been passed to Sethvir when the Mistwraith smothered the continent.

  Tehaval’s majesty towered, enriched by the history of ages. Massive as oak, nine spans high at the shoulder, he was vast power and terrible love, leashed into a balance that whispered. His hide gleamed as honed steel sheathing muscle and bone, spattered over with coin-silver dapples. Mane, bannered tail, and his feathered fetlocks glistened white as thistle-down. A black harness belted his torso, opalescent with mother of pearl, and his breastplate and bracers were midnight-blue lacquer embossed with nine stars surrounding a moonburst.

  Overwhelming as Tehaval’s magnificence seemed, a fierce glory imposed at close quarters, the mightier stature of Cianor Reborn would have cast him into eclipse.

  Ciladis waited, wise enough to quell urgency. Presently, the antlered head inclined towards him, broad brow bound with a circlet adorned with twelve heirloom moonstones, and a rainbow obsidian cut by Imarn Adaer’s peerless artisans.

  “The doom of Rathain’s crown prince is not ours to steer, even by a counsel fiat,” Tehaval declared. “The binding constraint on his destiny springs instead from your Fellowship colleagues.”

  Ciladis stared upwards at the centaur, aghast. “That I should live to endure such a wrong!” A fair morning suddenly seemed less than bright, while the paean danced by the Riathan became all the more vulnerable. “What caused my colleagues to forsake their profound obligation?”

  Tehaval yet commanded his earth-link to Athera. Sympathy moved his heart for an anguish fit to sow savage despair. He extended his massive wrist, horned head bent, and invited Ciladis’s clasp: not to offer support but to engage willing contact for a full disclosure.

  For the direct touch of Paravian consciousness imperilled a being enfleshed, an expansive impact not to be trifled with, even by a Fellowship Sorcerer.

  Sunlight streamed down, while the huge clasp of the guardian enveloped the smaller hand, once born human. Time seemingly paused. A punch-cut hole in existence divided the notes of spring bird-song. Ciladis stayed upright, apparently frail as spun smoke under Tehaval’s shadow. The centaur’s knowledge opened to him as a cascade of golden motes sown through his aura. The flecks waxed into sparks, then ignited and blazed, shearing across sensate awareness.

  Shattered by the barrage, Ciladis received parallel threads of experience compressed into a fractal moment. The surge shocked his cognizance nigh unto breaking. The Sorcerer stretched to assimilate what Sethvir’s faculties sorted in an eyeblink, unmoored until the torrential onslaught released him.

  Whiplash left him reeling. Staggered a step, he fought air into paralysed lungs and braced to recover his balance. The blast of simultaneous events confounded the plod of sequential reasoning. The Sorcerer begged Tehaval’s patience. He sat on a nearby boulder. Discipline let him tap the stone’s assets and stabilize his equilibrium. Then he grappled the relevant referents to the Fellowship’s primary directive. When Ciladis married the viewpoint garnered from Arithon’s memory into its wider context, the import of Tehaval’s warning took shape.

  A subversion of charter law had broken precedent, sprung from the Mad Prophet’s pithless mistake. At one stroke, Rathain’s crown succession and the vital key to the Mistwraith’s defeat were left subject to Koriathain. Ciladis weighed the import of Asandir’s formal oath, witnessed in force by the runes laid in stone at the Whitehold sisterhouse.

  “Father and mother of chaos!” Pummelled under the after-shock headache, the Sorcerer snapped, “We are caught in a dice throw for life-and-death stakes!”

  “Dice don’t premeditate malice,” Tehaval amended, distressed by the gravity of the predicament. “For better or worse, your Teir’s’Ffalenn has received our leave to depart without hindrance.”

  “A frail cipher upon which to hang the hard sacrifice of three Ages.” A grue chased down Ciladis’s spine. “Though few spirits alive carry his depth of integrity, his Grace’s resilience is frayed by deep loss and bitter defeats. How long before he snaps under the strain?”

  Tehaval’s regal head turned. “Even my breadth of vision cannot part the mists.” The great mysteries could stand or fail by the havoc hung on the tenacity of one mortal thread. “Your Fellowship’s surety steers the course of Mankind’s ultimate destiny.”

  Ciladis fielded the punch of inexpressible grief. Whether or not a failure of the compact called the Seven to account, and compelled the demise of humanity, the captive status of Desh-thiere’s blight burdened the scales of the current dilemma. “Let the Teir’s’Ffalenn leave, and the shielding veil here can no longer mitigate the risk to Paravian well-being.”

  The hidden knowledge of the Paravian refuge would accompany Arithon’s return to the continent.

  Tehaval extended a broad hand to the Sorcerer, this time to raise him to his feet. “Your crown prince does not lack for advocates, truly. Alithiel’s chord woke for him, which clinched the support of Ffereton s’Darian. Several more revered elders expressed steadfast faith in him. Elshian the luthier decried shame for cowardice if we let a bard of such stature fade from the world. Kadarion spoke also, as Kadierach’s last living brother. His adamance won Avileffin’s support, and with that, willing help from his shipbuilding kin.”

  Ciladis glanced up, astonished. His joy caused a passing thrush to alight on his shoulder. Transferred, fluffed, to his extended finger, its cheerful song burst through his exclamation. “You suggest the Ilitharis will raise Arithon’s foundered sloop from the shallows?”

  “We’ve done more.” Tehaval’s pleasure rippled the surrounding flux to shimmering gold. “The vessel’s sprung planks are restored, and her broken tackle, refitted. She’s afloat in the quay, seaworthy and fully provisioned.”

  The thrush took wing. Her shadow flickered across Ciladis, his ebony profile torn by regret. “Safest, I think, that I don’t meet his Grace before he sets sail.”

  Moonstones flared in the brilliance of morning as Tehaval dipped his antlers in rare homage. “Most brave!” he declared. “Such strength humbles our pithless concern that your heart might have wavered. We removed your temptation. Already, Tieriendieriel Merevalia is speeding his Grace’s passage away. Above all Athlien, she claimed the burden of easing the contact. While nothing is certain, her singers recognized Arithon’s quality when he braved the King’s Grove in Shand for deliverance.”

  Ciladis accepted the choice with conflicted gratitude. He would have traded the sun and the moon for the chance to bestow a kindly last word upon Rathain’s prince: to assure that his handfast beloved still lived, and to seek her solace before everything. His Grace’s upcoming trial should have merited a timely warning, that the score against Ettinmere’s shamans was an ill-starred pursuit better off abandoned.

  For disaster awaited Arithon in the Storlains, beyond his worst imagining.

  Yet Asandir’s binding vow to the Koriathain forbade the decency of a farewell. Ciladis’s night departure must finish in thankless abandonment; while Tehaval’s apt intervention spared the default of the Fellowship’s closure of crown debt.

  Forced to keep his wise distance, Ciladis applied his aggrieved thoughts to the present. “Sethvir will need my support to redress our affairs on the continent.”

  “But not on this day!” Tehaval stamped a fore-hoof. “Let such woes unfold as they may, unburdened by premature sorrow! T
he felicity of your release will be taken amiss by the blessed should you forsake tonight’s feast.”

  “Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn!” The imperative cry stabbed through the half-world of dream, true Name invoked with a tenderness to align the sleeper’s awareness. Arithon beheld a Sunchild’s features that his past obligation compelled him to recognize.

  She was as he remembered: midnight hair, hazed by radiance as bright as the sheen on a pearl, and skin burnished like poured moonlight. Her presence an ephemeral visitation to shield his over-stressed nerves, the song-bird’s feathers worn for her adornment did not flutter with her spritely bearing. Yet even her sending excited the flux, a prismatic shimmer surrounding her grace in translucent splendour.

  Assailed by rapture that scalded, Arithon scraped up a ragged apology. “Compromised as I am by meddling shamans, your exalted summons is wasted.”

  The arch of her brows inflected a frown. “I’ve not come to ease your passage across the veil!” Her jade glance reproached as she added, “My kind did not sing your deliverance from Desh-thiere’s curse only to see your life’s purpose abandoned, nor does crown service grant you the leave to languish and die here.”

  “I’m not quite fordone,” chided Arithon, his gallant’s reproof without heat. “Though I cannot access my forbears’ exalted transit by way of the mysteries, decency might point out the shortest path to the sea.”

  Her laughter rang like musical chimes. “That you might swim offshore with the out-bound tide and spare Ciladis the bother of your final rites? As if no favour should honour the courage that brought his deliverance!”