Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

  Thrown such scalding directness, the High Earl of Atwood was pleased to abandon the forms of state courtesy. He leaned through drumming torrent and parted the sodden door flap. 'Without fanfare, then, would your Grace go within?'

  Arithon entered the dry comfort of Melhalla's clan lodge tent, redolent of soaked horse and pattering droplets off his borrowed leathers. Caught in the flare of the lamps, he took pause, braced for a seated array of proud chieftains, and the piercing regard of a Fellowship Sorcerer. The moment might have been torn from his past: another bleak rain-storm in Strakewood had brought him before an invested caithdein , exhausted and beset by the wounded horror inflicted by Desh-thiere's curse.

  Yet in place of inimical strangers, he was greeted by an immense woman whose warm hands presumed and peeled the soaked wrap from his shoulders. 'Sit, at once,' she urged with melodic welcome. 'You should have rested before this encounter. I would send you to bed, if all that is right and true in this world was not being set on its ear.'

  Her caring defused every instinct to bristle. Badgered onto a hassock, his tired frame already yielded. Arithon raised his face to the caithdein of Melhalla, overcome by speechless relief.

  His glance met blue eyes and a brosy face. A clan braid fastened with intricate knots spilled like ripe corn across the coloured shawl draped over her ample shoulders, and her beautiful smile warmed him straight through.

  Arithon captured her pillow-soft hand, wrestling irreverent laughter. 'My dear lady! You are Teiren's'Callient? What have I done to receive such delight?'

  'Need you ask?' The power that stewarded a realm left bereft by the death of the last s'Ellestrion high king returned a chuckle of mischievous pleasure. 'As though your fractious handling of s'Brydion belligerence all these, years has not been an Ath-given gift.' She beckoned. 'Here, child. Come ahead. I swear, he won't bite.'

  Her shy youngest entered, perhaps seven years of age. Small steps, and uncertain fingers bore in a tray with hot food, and mulled wine sweetened with raisins. A raven swooped down, hard on the girl's heels, intent upon snatching a morsel. The child startled, then jerked short as Arithon's unthinking reflex shielded her face.

  Hand still outstretched, the Prince of Rathain spoke a phrase in actualized Paravian and intercepted the thieving bird on his wrist.

  'What did you say to him?' The child placed the tray on a chest by his knee. 'Your way of speech made my ears ring.' Eyes round, she glared at the bird, between bashful survey to see if the visitor was nice or forbidding.

  'That the rascal could take whatever he wished, if he waited for due invitation.' The dark stranger steadied the querulous bird. Green eyes enchanted, he added, 'You do have a name?'

  The child flushed, recalled her courtesy, and murmured, 'Maretha. I was told you were to be called by "your Grace".'

  'Address me as you please, Maretha. On my promise, nobody's going to mind.' Arithon maintained his unthreatening smile, chafed though he was by the unsettled awareness that the caithdein was not the sole form in attendance. Reflex had set one hand to the hassock. His surge to arise met his hostess's palms, bearing down on his shoulders.

  The raven fluttered, off balance, as the huge woman pinned her royal visitor in place. 'You will not rise, worn as you are, and too guarded to use formal titles.'

  Yet Arithon failed to be set at ease. 'Ath's grace on earth, what affair will not wait, that I might need to ride out before dawn-light?'

  'I did warn you, lady.' The Sorcerer Traithe emerged from the deep shadow beyond the pricket holding the tallow-dip. A snap of his scarred fingers recalled the inquisitive raven.

  ' Quork!' the bird said.

  'You can't shelter me, friend.' Prince Arithon tossed the bird off. Ignoring Traithe's shoulder, the creature flew and perched on the hide frame stretching a scraped pelt in the corner. There, dark bill flashing, the raven hackled his ruff and started to preen.

  Traithe's softened smile capped the apology, now directed between Melhalla's caithdein and the state of taut nerves vised immobile on her best hassock. 'No cosseting care in your generous heart can blunt the acuity of an initiate awareness.'

  'Dakar already knows, doesn't he?' Arithon accosted, while his intrepid benefactress let go at last and steered the charming child out of his presence. Unswerving, the crown prince's regard now tracked only the Fellowship Sorcerer. 'The spellbinder was tight as a clam with respect to complaints. I wondered what else he kept from me.'

  Clipped silver hair, and a clean-shaven face scored with laugh lines: Traithe had changed little in the thirty-four years since their first encounter at Althain Tower. Another, more recent, was no boon to dignity. Yet the echo of intimacy sharpened the moment, while brown eyes with their melting, unshakeable calm completed an unhurried assessment. 'Sethvir warned me that you have fully unleashed Dari s'Ahelas's heritage of prismatic conscience. The burden's no boon, at such moments.'

  Arithon engaged his trained discipline to relax. 'I didn't need Sight to notice the mulled wine was laced full of restoratives.' To check-rein his temper, he waited upon the caithdein's attendance before he spoke further. 'Since the late round of s'Brydion recalcitrance could also have rested till morning, I have to ask why an armed party of scouts dragged Dakar out of shelter to meet me. Did you fear I would not have come on my own?'

  'No.' Traithe crossed the lodge tent. Troubled by his stiff limp, he eased himself into a seat by a trestle piled with a parchment map, stuck flat with a set of bone-handled daggers. 'The Mad Prophet chose to go out of kindness.'

  Arithon sucked a short breath. 'I'm remiss. By all means, let us chastise my dearth of gratitude, since the recovery of a few Tiriac amethysts never required my presence.'

  Where Sethvir would have met the attack with a bracing reprimand, followed by softening care, Traithe kept his peace. Pensively silent, he folded scarred hands, while the raven spread wings and flew to his wrist, chortling to be stroked. The Sorcerer obliged the impertinent creature, while the scalding quiet extended. Trapped still on the side-lines, Melhalla's caithdein watched her offered hot meal steam, untouched. She had been too well counselled to try intervention, no matter how her nurturing instincts ached to relieve the pitched tension.

  Arithon finally buried his face in taut fingers. The apology he would not utter became his shocking, sharp cry for release.

  'What more could our Fellowship ask of you?' Traithe gently ventured, over the hiss of the tallow-dips. 'Would you feel better if we came with hot bricks and knelt to massage your sore feet?'

  The shuttered hands moved. Arithon smiled with such startling sweetness, the woman who watched lost her breath. 'I would have preferred to sing a balm to soothe your bad joints, but the lyranthe I last played was abandoned. I left her to resurrect a killed hope in Alestron. You can't want to be here. The sting of my set-back becomes yours as well.'

  'More than you know, friend.' Traithe made no mention of the Black Rose Prophecy, brought so near to the aching verge of fulfillment. Though tonight's demand must relinquish that future - would plunge this crown prince's willing accession to Rathain's throne all the more into jeopardy - the Sorcerer's bleak thought stayed shielded. Deliberately, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had never been told how his choices affected the Fellowship's hope of reunify.

  Dauntlessly, Traithe pressed ahead. 'Davien had his purpose for luring you to Kewar and granting the key to his library.'

  'A fool would suppose that he had no agenda.' Arithon broke the loaf of flat bread, then scooped the torn edge into the thick stew. 'The price has come due? Then speak, and let it be simple.'

  'Anything but.' Traithe broke his news with savage clarity. 'Asandir is immersed in a grimward, past reach, and Sethvir lies ill at Althain Tower, burning his own life-force to bind the unstable leaks from two others. Those straits have allowed dire factions the loose rein to act without our constraint. Necromancers have seized a foothold within the Light's initiate priesthood. Darkling's diviner's affected, and Jaelot's, and worse, the cabal extant at
Etarra. That branch is now lying poised to swallow the heart of Lysaer's delegate government.'

  There, the Sorcerer waited, as Arithon paled and laid down his morsel. A charged interval passed while that impacting news became marked and measured: the virulent, rogue gift of prismatic far-sight must unveil the array of wide-ranging implication. Traithe endured throughout that vicious, slow agony, watched the defiant plan of a future resistance wither, unplucked, on the vine. At one terrible stroke, his stark fact cast its shadow to crush every effort now set in play to dissociate the clans from the havoc caused by Desh-thiere's curse.

  'Which cult?' Arithon asked at scraped length.

  'The nastiest.' Traithe had no balm to mitigate grief. 'Grey Kralovir, they are called.' He need not elaborate. The devastation in those widened green eyes showed that Arithon already knew of that faction's horrific practice. A cult incursion within the Alliance would not just claim a handful of innocent lives. The blighting danger would spread, masked under the false covenant of Lysaer's religion. Unsuspecting, undefended, the towns' entire populations could come to be enslaved through an orgy of blood-rites. Such hideous corruption outlasted death. Its coercive power could unleash a rabid war host no natural armed company could withstand.

  'Darkling and Jaelot will pose little threat,' Traithe resumed in the same candid vein. 'Kharadmon and Luhaine can move in concert and clear the few trapped in corruption without undue fuss. But the newly raised battlements at Etarra are warded. As you have probably already realized, besides me, our Fellowship has no one else.'

  Arithon swiftly digested the gist. 'Your other two colleagues are not corporate,' he broke in, then, as perception leaped further, ' You need me to quell this?' His piercing whisper ripped to the heart. No kindness might spare him. Initiate master, he was too dreadfully cognizant of the ghastly price should he falter. 'How long do I have?'

  Traithe answered quickly to shorten distress. 'Enough time to plan wisely, since the first incursion has been successfully put down at Avenor.'

  That appalling, near miss was enough to choke speech. Before listening further, Arithon raised his raw will. First act of acceptance, he picked up his dropped meal and started to eat with methodical focus. The warm food was neither tasted, nor savoured. He swallowed sustenance as no less than an act of bald-faced necessity. Melhalla's caithdein observed that staunch courage and fought brimming eyes in pent silence.

  For an interval, no sound interrupted the pound of the rain or the whispered hiss of the tallow-dips. The saucy raven held itself still, a coal figure stamped out of the air by Traithe's wrist, with eyes like piercing jet buttons. At length, the Sorcerer flicked his scarred fingers, urging the Teiren's'Callient to sit down. She found a chair, while a prince whose exhaustion should have found solace regrouped hammered wits and responded.

  'If my half-brother was touched, there will be complications. I think I'd do better to hear out the list.'

  'Lysaer was wrested clear,' the Sorcerer reaffirmed. 'You'll hear details, later. The time constraint stems from the fact that our Fellowship has no clear permission to ward him. He currently bears a ceremonial knife, wrought by the Sanpashir tribes' heritage. The talisman lends him a measure of defence. But the esoteric properties have distinct limits and won't guard him from exposure indefinitely.'

  Yet again, the fierce speed of unreeling prescience let Arithon grasp the raw irony: that an active

  entanglement would force his half-brother to reject the enspelled knife's protection. 'The blade's wardings are not compatible with the workings of Desh-thiere's curse?' Now sick to his core, Rathain's prince abandoned his effort to force down the last of his meal. 'Why did no one inform me?'

  The implied betrayal stung deepest since, at any time before Lysaer sailed south, the added threat posed by a curse-driven encounter might have been deferred, or averted.

  Traithe ceded no ground for that lost opportunity. 'Sethvir held out hope Asandir would return. The issue need never have touched you. Your effort to secure lasting peace for the clans was beyond all price, and remains so. We still hold out for the chance of reprieve. The torn grimward at Scarpdale could be settled and done, up until the last moment.'

  'How long do I have? ' Prince Arithon repeated, and this round, no distraction availed him.

  'The first warning's already behind us. Lysaer suffered an incident on the moment when you first set foot in Alestron. The curse aroused, and the knife burned his hand. He's at sea, and quiescent, but depending on weather, he might make a landfall at South Strait inside of ten days.'

  'And we know from my disastrous affray at Riverton that the curse can be raised through the use of a fetch.' Arithon winced. 'Played that way, my half-brother would cast the knife off as black sorcery and not realize he had stripped his defences. But Jaelot's corrupt priest is a long way from the southcoast. Surely that leaves a wide margin to act?'

  Traithe shook his head. 'Sadly, not. You have three weeks before a messenger bearing a sun wheel seal calls upon Jaelot to muster. The Kralovir's influence must be routed out before next month's new moon. The afflicted in all three of Rathain's towns will need to be cleared and destroyed simultaneously. Luhaine and Kharadmon can time their strike to match yours. That intervention must happen ahead of the cult's opportunistic bid for expansion.'

  And again, with cruel sorrow, the Sorcerer watched prismatic far-sight impel the Teir's'Ffalenn to absorb the next shattering set-back: that no time could be spared for his planned stop at Tirans. His chance was lost, to enact the divisive subversion designed to sweep disorder through the Alliance's entrenched hold across the East Halla peninsula. The awful truth dawned, that the Light's sway in Melhalla was going to be left all too disastrously well organized. Twelve towns would be chafing for Lysaer's divine word, dry tinder stacked for the inevitable spark when the call came to raise arms for the cause.

  'This will doom Alestron,' Rathain's prince concluded. 'If the duke maintains his firm stand in refusal and will not abandon a futile defence, his citadel could face the ruinous consequence well ahead of next spring.'

  As Arithon's tortured awareness also encompassed the caithdein's distraught state, she addressed him with brusque directness. 'Whether the s'Brydion come through or not, you must go forward assured, your royal Grace. My clan chieftains will gather to shoulder what's left to be salvaged.'

  'My brave lioness!' Arithon exclaimed, fraught. 'Given the choice, I should have forgone the presumption of crossing your threshold. Surely you realize? This intervention to scour three strongholds of necromancy must incite another wave of raw fear. My hopes are as ashes. This act will force bloodshed. Etarra will be handed spectacular evidence. No matter how subtle the Fellowship's backing, the wholesale destruction of Rathain's corrupt priests is going to launch misguided fervour into explosion.'

  The Teiren's'Callient drew herself up straight, her dignity set into bed-rock. 'We will field this danger before facing worse.'

  Traithe intervened, before the flash-point tension incited more protesting argument. 'Your Grace! I will need to teach you the keys to work the Paravian circle that stands in the ruin of old Tirans. From there, you and Dakar will cross latitude to reach the focus at Caith-al-Caen.' Keen understanding acknowledged Arithon's speechless, swift gratitude, that he need not abandon his bound obligation to Jieret's widow at Halwythwood. 'Your crown right to clan backing will speed your journey northward through Daon Ramon from there.'

  Three days ride to the trade-road, a tight disguise, and a string of fast post-horses could see him through to the gates of Etarra. He must be there before the next dark moon, when Lysaer's curse-driven summons to arms would spur the cult's dedicates to bind its next string of picked victims.

  Arithon gathered himself to arise, then checked short, aware that Traithe's raven as yet made no move to return to the Sorcerer's shoulder. Stilled as carved onyx, the bird watched with jet eyes, chill affirmation that this devastating audience had not yet drawn to an end. 'We don't ride tonight for a l
ane transfer at dawn?' Now more than nettled, Arithon seized on the tepid wine-cup left untasted at the edge of the supper tray. 'That fails to explain the need for restoratives!'

  Traithe matched that edged challenge with sorrow. Since the harsh pain of his tidings could not be assuaged, he had nothing to offer but pity. 'Within Davien's library, you once refused to study the rites written inside the black grimoires.'

  Arithon stiffened. Pale before, now his skin drained utterly white. 'For the soundest of reasons.' Aghast horror lashed him onto his feet. Face on, he confronted the dark-clad Sorcerer, who wore the scars of a terrible sacrifice with a humility that burned for its seamless acceptance.

  Much younger, more volatile for the raw depth of vision that inflamed his innate compassion, Arithon pleaded. 'Such knowledge in my hands could be turned! Have you forgotten the reach of Desh-thiere's curse? Some risks,' he paused, cringing scared, and braced his fists on the trestle as the winds of probability whipped and screamed through his mind. Anguis'hed seconds passed one into the next, while the horrific images of a thousand posited massacres tore him to flinching ribbons. Arithon shuddered. 'Some risks run outside of all sanity. Spare me this burden! I beg not to bear the dread form of this knowledge.'

  'You do have a counterweight,' Traithe said with velvet-clad tenderness. 'Your royal gift grants you the soundest of safe-guards.'

  Arithon raised his eyebrows. 'Not enough! The Mistwraith's works made short shrift of the s'Ilessid endowment ofjustice!'

  'Lysaer had flaws of character to support that distortion,' Traithe argued back, unequivocal.

  'And I have none?' Arithon pealed. 'That's blind arrogance! No more and no less, I am human, just as prone to make errant mistakes!'

  'Free will!' cracked Traithe, sharp as adamant steel. 'Go in without knowledge and dare the alternative: a half-brother bound by geas, worshipped as a false avatar, and drawn under the abomination of the Kralovir's practice. His officers will fall first, then next month, or next year, such breeding horror will run rampant throughout the hapless ranks of the faithful. You face the choice, prince, for more than one kingdom, and for more than Athera's grand mysteries: to take your informed stand now, at the forefront, or to recoil and find yourself overtaken. I need not say what you already know. Only one of those paths is the master's!'