‘You have not abandoned your care,’ Sethvir added. ‘Or why else did you break your sealed silence in Kewar? Why, on the very moment that Lysaer s’Ilessid first let his blood with a tainted bone-knife?’
That perceptive statement caused the tight-knit thread of contact to resolve into a standing figure. One with flame-and-salt hair tumbled over proud shoulders, and clad in a tunic of russet, accented with sable embroidery. Davien’s long stride brought him up to the colleague who sat tucked as an invalid in the stuffed chair.
‘Your words are too generous,’ the renegade Sorcerer said. Flesh and blood, breathing, he stood his cold ground with authority, but not repentance. ‘Who could defy the charge that we seven stand guard for?’
Eyes still closed, although the live flame of his visitor’s aura beat against his exposed skin, Sethvir smiled. ‘You cared too much, rather.’ A raw effort of will, he turned a rested hand palm upwards: no reconciliation, but a gesture of bare supplication. ‘In fact, what has changed? The Kralovir hope to root a cult branch at Etarra. Their dedicate cause to eradicate clanborn will move forward under the sunwheel banner. One might hope your concern will prompt you to assist. Or else why respond to my summons?’
Davien stared downwards, eyes hard as lacquered walnut. ‘I left you a capable weapon to address this. You do have the means to respond.’
‘Arithon!’ Sethvir’s lids flicked open. He stared back, incensed. His failing frame might be swathed in a blanket, yet that burning gaze masked the power of nova and cataclysm, leashed quiescent by an endurance that ran beyond time. ‘Ath’s grace on earth! Will you never stop your invidious scheming?’
‘A double jeopardy throw,’ pronounced Davien. ‘Let’s see which priority rules your choice this time. Our binding made under the will of the dragons to preserve the mysteries for Paravian survival, or else the bleeding-heart clemency that gave rise to the threat allowed in by the compact.’
Ingrained beyond words, the contention that had chafed to unreconciled argument, then the wounding fracture that had rocked the world to the brink of disaster. The silence cut, while the far-distant stars spun their undying splendour across the black arc of the deep.
‘We both care,’ admitted the renegade Sorcerer, first to snap off that locked stare. ‘But we do not agree.’ Restless as a wind-driven leaf that crossed and recrossed the smooth floor, Davien paced. ‘Not over the risk of a human presence kept within bounds through your vaunted charters. We’ve been through this before. Shall I try again? Your system of clan intercession, based in a law administered by the high kingships, is unstable. I have no desire to labour for ages, with failure the axe blade poised over my neck.’
Sethvir sighed. ‘Are you angling to shatter our ties with Athera? If so, at what price? Beneath all the layers of gimmick and subterfuge, do you actually wish to be finished, or are you just yearning to snap the drakes’ hold on our hearts and go free?’ Althain’s Warden stirred, closed his fingers until the knuckles gleamed bloodless as ivory against scarlet wool. ‘Would you abandon the grace of the mystery that gave us our release and redemption?’
‘Would? Or could?’ The glance that Davien shot over his shoulder revealed peaked eyebrows and a piquant irony. ‘The question beckons, Sethvir, does it not? Can you say in the depths of your tormented dreams you have not pursued the temptation? To just walk away? Cross Fate’s Wheel and be done? Leave Athera’s fate to fall or to languish—why not let the flow of the mysteries fail? Death is the mask that drives the illusion. Why not let the darkness unveil its own light, and resurrect its next hope of salvation?’
‘Ciladis could not,’ Sethvir whispered. Anemone pale in the thin flood of starlight, he kept up his laboured speech. ‘After one armageddon and its cost of deliverance in slaughter, I believe he would finally go mad.’ Older than the drakes’ dream of summoning, the Seven’s ties of sworn fellowship: not to risk another division of forces or a parting of common agreement. One such failure had brought downfall to a mighty civilization, strung between far-flung worlds. ‘Would you finally tear us asunder, Davien, and seal this planet’s entropic destruction?’
‘Ah, that’s too weighty an anguish, my friend. No grandiose causes, please. We’re past dealing.’ Stopped short with his artisan’s fingers flattened against the stone window-sill, Davien finished his thought. ‘Let in the bad cards, I always argued we’d lose the first hand. Scrub the second, then the third, perhaps sweat through a fourth, a protracted game makes no difference. We’ll still wind up forced to destroy the rag-tag remnant of humanity, instead.’
‘We are not discussing the fate of mankind,’ Althain’s Warden reminded. ‘The matter is necromancy and our destined charge of attending Paravian survival.’
Davien spun on his heel, cat fast, now offended. ‘For that, you have Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, trained and fit.’ His citrine setting flared as he capped his flourish with the low parody of a performer’s bow. ‘A transcendent initiation in the maze under Kewar, and a year of erudite knowledge have prepared him. Have I not answered? Your crown prince has been formidably well groomed to take up your thrown gauntlet at Etarra.’
Sethvir’s sorrow filled all the room, which tonight might as well have stayed empty. ‘You are no friend to his Grace, if that’s your best answer. One last time, I will ask. Why not make the choice to assist us?’
But Davien shoved away from the casement, his mercuric rejection recalcitrant to the bone. ‘Why now? Give me one sterling reason!’
With this colleague, Sethvir was wiser than to tender his argument straight on. ‘Of us all, Asandir has the most cause for resentment. Now his life’s in jeopardy once more. He’s had to restabilize four grimwards without any thought of rhetorical hesitation.’
‘Spare me your line, that he just soldiers on! You’ve leaned on our knowledge for your ends before.’ From the far wall, turned on his heel once again, Davien cracked from behind, ‘Why should I change principle and come back to heel now?’
Althain’s Warden regarded his ringless, thin hands. ‘To spare Arithon.’
‘For what?’ Davien’s stinging mockery came back, untamed. ‘Pray tell, Calum Kincaid, for what? A future that brings us mankind’s execution? Armageddon, again, because the drakes chose us for the staggering task of lifting their legacy of remorse?’
Turquoise eyes slipped into far-sighted distance, until snow-white lashes swept down and veiled them. Images unreeled behind Sethvir’s closed lids. The dizzying array of mapped possibility revealed the structured course of the war host now re-forming under the sunwheel banner. The Sorcerer’s awareness discerned the raising of two armed forces. One inspired by the fervour of false faith, arising out of the west, and another, more sinister, about to be birthed through the pull of cult influence, that would sow the whirlwind by storm in the east.
Etarra, not Avenor, would shape the policy that sharpened the lethal edge on the axe.
The sole path to disarmament lay in Arithon’s guile: and the intricate, visionary plan he had forged to defuse fanatical conflict. A course one man could never hope to accomplish without the full backing of a Fellowship intervention. A Sorcerer’s hand would be required to clear the Kralovir from Etarra.
‘The Teir’s’Ffalenn must not be asked to exert his trained strength in the open,’ Sethvir finished in toneless exhaustion. ‘Such a move, even made for expedience, would destroy his intent for a bloodless denouncement. Ask him to strip the mask off the Kralovir, and all of the north will be driven to recoil! Misguided terror will only spark a more vicious persecution.’
Sethvir foresaw the site where the hammer would impact the anvil: where the fury and blind fervour would ignite into flame and strike against the immovable pride of Arithon’s staunchest supporters. Afraid for Alestron, the Warden’s final line of appeal remained his implacable silence.
‘You’ll have to choose, won’t you?’ Davien closed at length. ‘Which structure to spare: Rathain’s monarchy or the compact?’ No ripple of air marked the
shift as the renegade Sorcerer dissolved his bodily form for departure. His last word impressed the stillness with cruel clarity. ‘Don’t wait too long. The more you waver before you decide, the more perilous the stake on the outcome.’
At Althain Tower, the rise of the moon brightened the sands of the Bittern Desert: where once, in a past that predated history, two dragons had fought and scorched hills and glades with their wasting breath. Where later, Paravians had bled and died in failed sacrifice for redemption. Here, the murmur of wind bespoke an undying cry of lament.
Tonight’s sorrow was no less bitterly fierce. In the space where a centaur warden had once stood, facing the same bleak hills with their grievous burden of bones, the whisper of light fell as kindly over Sethvir’s crinkled face. The rays silver-lit the slow well of tears that slid through the hacked gap in his beard.
After dark on the roadway bound from Sanshevas, a bonfire threw a torrid glow over the wind-raked stand of the broom. Sultry flares cast the shadows of irritable men and lit the stirred backs of disgruntled beasts. Wrapped in the smoked-tainted breath of close heat, echoing across the tangle of mussed goods and wracked wagons, raised voices marked the seething frustration of the guarded caravan, whose journey to Southshire had come to disaster. Dissent raged over whether to build up the blaze or douse the last embers outright. Half the armed men feared attracting more iyats, while the road-master swore by the grey in his beard that a darkened camp would invite stealth and murder by Selkwood’s marauding barbarians.
Factions splintered the argument: the tradesmen and drivers wished to turn tail and limp all the way back to Atchaz.
‘Torn silk can be sold for cost to the quilt-makers,’ the road-master insisted, morose. ‘Get into Sanshevas ahead of the rains, we’d at least avoid mildew beneath those ripped tarps. Catch bad weather, and we’ll be left stirring pots for the ragmen who bleach out the dyes to make paper.’
‘You can’t sell for salvage,’ snapped a head-hunter tracker, hunkered down to sharpen his knives. ‘Damn you man, think ahead. What’s left but wreckage to save our good name? We don’t show something to prove we were fiend-plagued, we’ll have no evidence to escape a criminal case with the magistrates.’
The troop of lancers now answerable for the Light’s vanished tribute supported Ganish league’s adamant stance. Shouting, they insisted the hard luck party should remain intact to corroborate their bizarre mishap. ‘Stay the course of Southshire’s gruelling inquest. If we don’t stay together to back up the truth, we’ll all be charged as collaborators.’
Into the tempest, by no chance at all, strode the itinerant bard and the button-seller. They were blameless wayfarers bound downcoast for Sanshevas, they explained, while the head-hunter skirmishers prodded them in, and several lancers pinned them at weapon point.
‘Just let us lay our bedrolls down for the night. We could share our goat cheese and raisins,’ the stout button seller offered hopefully. ‘Your camp-fire’s what kept us walking since dark. We thought we’d be safer in company’ When the lance points stayed fixed, he shrugged with fidgety apprehension. ‘Less chance we’d be stalked by barbarians, though I’m sorry to see we’ve misjudged. Clan brigands might sneak in and pilfer tin buttons. But chop no green wood, they don’t cut your throat. You fellows here seem worse-tempered.’
As one lancer bristled, the minstrel laid a restraining finger on the crowding tip of the weapon. ‘My friend means no harm.’ A slender, cloaked figure, he engaged a smile and flicked the canvas strap hanging his lyranthe. ‘I could offer my touch on the strings for a tune.’ As the caravan’s road-master shoved to the fore, he added, ‘You’ve suffered a mishap? Those wagons look wrecked. You actually do seem in need of an hour of light entertainment.’
‘That might keep your mad Ganishmen from drubbing my drivers!’ the grizzled professional felt moved to point out. ‘Since you rock-heads won’t back down and let us cut losses, why not pass the evening with music?’
The sunwheel guard relented and lowered their steel, if only to seize on the chance to escape the debate on their festering predicament.
Button seller and free singer soon sat by the fire. They ate their rough meal, while listening through the recounted plague of rogue iyats that had spoiled the townsmen’s caravan.
‘It’s not canny, what happened,’ confided a field archer in dismal distress. ‘Who’s going to believe we didn’t spin the wild tale to cover a robbery? By all that’s true! Who but a Shadow-blind fool would make off with the tribute gold bound for Avenor?’
The singer twisted the grass stem just plucked to clean out his teeth. ‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘A troublesome iyat’s more reasonable, surely, than a pack of grown men who’ve worked themselves dizzy running in fear of the dark.’
A stunned pause ensued. Through the gasp of more than one intaken breath, the lance captain rapped off a question. ‘You have no faith in the cause of the Light?’
‘And why should I?’ The singer stared back, eyes of an indeterminate hazel turned suddenly vivid with mirth. ‘Is this avatar so almighty powerful? If he hates the idea of darkness that much, why not birth the miracle of a new sun? That way he could rid himself of the night. You lot could work double shift, chasing heretics. Or, perhaps not. That might cost his holiness too pinching much, since each man would be owed twice the pay share.’
Outrage, shock, then the cracking pressure of long days spent chasing lost coin on a fruitless search through the brush: the weight proved too much. A muffled snigger disturbed the quiet. Then the lance captain broke and guffawed.
‘Oh, please!’ the raffish minstrel objected. ‘This issue is serious. Some flattering daisy’s named himself divine. What does that mean? Should rats in the sewers pay him respects? Will they sell off his night-soil for perfume, do you think, or does immortal virtue in fact grunt and void straining bowels like the rest of us?’
‘Watch your tongue, friend,’ the button seller warned. ‘You might cause offence. After all, if the rag on yon captain was a sunwheel surcoat, the dedicate soldier beside you is probably one of those life-sworn.’
‘How pious.’ The free singer leaned back, stretched an arm, and tugged the cover off his lyranthe. ‘To me, the whole bunch look like worried men. Next week, they could face a branding as criminals in front of a Southshire magistrate. Can’t a god sent immortal distinguish a truthful man from a sneaking thief and a liar? Seems plain to me, actually. This idea of tribute smells a bit suspect. If heaven’s minion needed to traffic in gold, should he not clap his hands and call down a shower of bullion from his supreme connections on high?’
‘His Divine Grace hates clansmen,’ a hatchet-faced head-hunter commented. ‘That’s good enough cause to suit me.’
The minstrel smiled. ‘Very good.’ His fingers stabbed a spray of notes from the strings he began tuning by absent habit. ‘But why should his exaltedness keep paying your bounties, when the whole country-side’s turning out elite troops to slaughter old blood lines for nothing?’
Shot erect, now outraged, the lance captain puffed up to take issue.
Before he spoke, the insolent singer dug an elbow into the button seller beside him. ‘Friend, these grunts are too glum. You’ve still got those brandy crocks tucked in your pack? Pop the corks. Why not share? If something’s not done to lift this sour mood, every last errant fiend will come back. You might not value your shrivelled equipment. But I’m tender and young. Not a bit ready to ruin my sport in the blankets! Or didn’t you look? These poor wretches are scratching themselves raw through ripped clothing! Makes me wince, just to think of risking the breeks that keep gnat bites from welting my bollocks!’
The brandy, exhumed, was exceptionally sweet. Perhaps even suspiciously potent. The jugs passed hand to hand, while the minstrel’s satire kept its keen edge, catchy enough to invite uproarious laughter and knee-slapping rounds of shared choruses. The lyrics maligning the Light became insidiously infectious. Although singer and button seller moved on at dawn
, they left every man from the disarrayed caravan singing into the morning.
Beyond any doubt, the minstrel’s bold repertoire would survive and spread through the port brothels of Southshire. In the mouths of the head-hunters and drivers, the scurrilous verses would travel on and take the stews of Sanshevas by storm.
‘You’re evil incarnate,’ Dakar accused, well away and sweating his hangover through a waist-deep slog across a tidal marsh. They had left the road under the cover of mist to make rendezvous with a fishing smack. ‘My brash singer, do you realize how near you came to earning a lancer’s steel through your guts?’
‘As close as the salvation in your spelled flasks of brandy’ The bard’s teeth flashed beneath the lyranthe he balanced on top of his sable head. ‘I’m not dead. Nor was the binding of Davien’s longevity put to the test on a goring. We’re ahead of the game, actually. I’d hazard the guess: a few sunwheel dedicates will defect rather than cling to an idiot’s honour and moulder in irons at Southshire. Aren’t you eager to tackle the morass we’ll find down the coast at Shaddorn?’
‘Not if you’re stoned out of town by a mob,’ Dakar puffed, flailing to haze off humming insects and the chaff sifting down from the bulrushes.
‘What a fine lack of faith you place in the ridiculous,’ stated Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn. He strode forward, nonplussed; perversely still merry since he had been too busy with playing to sample Dakar’s doctored drink. ‘I thought the objective was to turn the mob with the stones on the tents of the sunwheel recruiters?’
‘No more swamps,’ Dakar grumbled. ‘Or I swear on my blood, I’ll hoard the drink for myself and join ranks with the pious offenders.’
The fishing smack hired to board two soggy passengers breasted a brisk chop and made rendezvous with a merchant brig, hanging off shore just past the horizon. The boat grappled her lines long enough to relinquish the contents of her hold, which consisted of contraband goods wrapped in tarpaulin and concealed beneath the glistening shine of the night’s catch of mullet. For two extra silvers, her skipper was also persuaded to part with his small barrels of spoiled mackerel, stewed to reeking as bait for the crab trappers whose skiffs worked the shallows inside the reefs.