Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

  While Dakar braced to protest, Kharadmon intervened. 'It's Prime Selidie's character that can't be trusted. On that score, Elaira, accept my sworn word. Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn stays in your charge. I will guard your space for him, personally.'

  The Fellowship Sorcerer upheld that promise.

  Under soft starlight, circled in peace, no mind on Athera saw what transpired as Dakar's crude stays of binding dissolved. No outsider stood witness. Alone with his beloved, Rathain's prince regained his shorn right to autonomy and received the sad shreds of the night's consolation.

  Summer 5671

  Loyalties

  Sunrise burned coal-red through a cotton-thick mist that did not lift off, which presaged a drizzle by eventide. Huddled on the bank of the Willowbrook with her knees tucked up to her chin, Jeynsa swore to herself and tossed another rebellious pebble into the streambed. Shining ripples fled, shattering a reflection enveloped in streaming whiteness. Trees, rocks, and underbrush appeared cut adrift, their silhouettes snipped out of shadow. The morning seemed wrapped in a hush like held breath. Even the bird-song rang muffled.

  'Still there?' Eriegal strode out of the brush, clad in dew-streaked leathers and bearing his bow and bone-handled hunting knives. His stout frame as ever moved without sound, a surprise that often dismayed the young boys, who thought they might take advantage of his apparent clumsiness. 'If I'd sat there moping without supper all night, I'd be in a sore mood as well.'

  Another insolent stone struck the shallows. The splash frightened birds, and a squirrel scuttled, scolding. Jeynsa stirred, the ends of her cropped hair tipped with moisture and her doeskin tunic littered with clinging pine-needles. 'I slept sound in a thicket, no thanks for your noise. And I was thinking, not moping.'

  'Guilty on one count, at least.' Eriegal knelt. He offered a brace of wriggling trout slung from a thong in his fist. 'If you choose a site and build us a fire, I'll overlook your bad temper and cook.'

  Jeynsa uncurled from her tight-laced crouch. She laid the last pebble back down on the stream-bank, then stood, stretched cramped limbs, and regarded the Companion who brought something more than an offer of fish. 'I didn't need you to stand guard at my back.'

  Eriegal raised his quizzical brows. That innocuous grin on his rounded face always masked convoluted intentions. 'I didn't. That's true. Not if you stayed out here for thinking.'

  A corner of Jeynsa's mouth crept up. The spark of challenge softened out of her eyes, which were a pale green flecked with silver when she was not angry. 'I suppose I owe our crown prince an apology. Damn him.'

  'His Grace doesn't want your contrition,' Eriegal agreed. He crouched with his skinning knife and began gutting his catch. 'Sidir always warned that our prince would be difficult.'

  'Not so much if you knew him.' Prepared by her innate honesty to be fair, Jeynsa rubbed her bruised arm, which had stiffened during her solitary retreat. 'Father once told me his Grace acted vicious those times when he was most vulnerable.'

  Eriegal met that opinion with silence. His blade remained busy. Blood streaked his short fingers as he sliced into rainbow-scaled bellies, and tossed the offal aside for the foxes. As the pause stretched, expectant, he finally shrugged. 'I didn't serve in the campaign at Vastmark. Sidir would know better than I.'

  Nor had Eriegal fought in Daon Ramon; the remembered argument still stung, of the bitter hour when the past high earl had enforced his last orders. Eriegal's shrewd gift for tactics had tied him to the camp to advise Barach's inexperience as war captain. 'I was too young to swear when our liege first took his crown oath before Steiven in Strakewood.' In fact, Eriegal had been an observant, shy boy. One who still recalled a sickly and temperamental prince, carving whistles to fascinate toddlers.

  What Caolle and Sidir had seen in the same man, neither one ever cared to discuss. Now, except for Braggen, and Deith, who maintained the understaffed watch in Deshir, all of the other Companions were dead.

  'We can talk as we eat,' Eriegal admonished, 'which can't happen if there's no fire.'

  This was the heartcore of Halwythwood, and close enough to the well-springs where the mysteries held resonance that no spark could be struck without ritual. Jeynsa moved off to sound for a suitable site and invoke the due steps to establish permission.

  Soon enough, she had a small blaze set against a flat boulder, and Eriegal had the fish roasting. Jeynsa sat to one side, nervously smoothing the fletching on the Companion's arrows, their filled quiver laid down with the recurve bow he had not yet warmed to unstring. The points were flanged war tips, and not the hunter's broadheads used to take deer. Under dank mist, while crows called, and the crowns of the trees dripped fizzling drops on the coals, Jeynsa broached the thorny subject that had tormented more than her for two nights.

  'When did you stop fully trusting his Grace?'

  Eriegal started. His fresh skin, pale eyes, and tarnished tousle of hair made his face seem transparently innocent. Yet the cunning that made him a deadly tactician never displayed open thoughts. 'Even for you, Jeynsa, that's a bit specious. Arithon is Fellowship-sanctioned as crown prince!'

  The Teiren's'Valerient did not back down. She stroked a striped cock-feather into a razor's edge, then twirled the shaft, uncomplacent. 'Well, who else would you have been guarding against? Sidir's had the sentry scouts tripled since the day his Grace was brought into camp.'

  Head bent, Eriegal speared a hot fillet on a stick and extended the offering to Jeynsa. 'Are you asking as Jieret's bereaved daughter, or as the realm's chosen caithdein?'

  'Should there be a difference?' Too taut-nerved to eat, Jeynsa ignored the fish. Thrown a tart glance, she insisted, 'You're the one who said you were ravenous.'

  Yet Eriegal was never so easily deterred. 'Oh, there's a difference,' he stated. 'One's a clear-cut act of crown treason. The other, a point of charter law I would be oath-bound to answer.' His steely glance nailed her, an unsparing assessment of the freshly shorn hair that even still, repudiated the ritual braid that denoted her rank and clan heritage.

  Jeynsa flushed. Only Arithon s'Ffalenn had grasped the true reason behind her emphatic renouncement.

  Yet if, like the rest, Eriegal presumed that her motive was no more than the pique of rebellion, he was not insensitive. The hard blink, then the tears that brightened her eyes were correctly acknowledged as grief. Wrapped in drifting mist, hot-blooded youth and staid Companion shared a moment of kindred distress.

  A man grown since the slaughter that reddened Tal Quorin, Eriegal could never forget. He, too, knew the horror of losing close family to Arithon's feal defence. Childhood friends, siblings, his parents and cousins: all had been lost to Etarra's war host in the course of a single day. Of his generation, only fourteen young boys had survived, named by Jieret as his Companions. Through the years following, the unbearable losses had mounted. Indomitable, irreplaceable, Caolle had fallen. His wounding on Arithon's drawn blade at Riverton had been acquitted by Earl Jieret's bound inquiry. Of the nine slain the past winter on Daon Ramon Barrens, the tenth had been Red-beard himself. Deaths even Braggen's iron disposition had forgiven, though no one still living had been eye-witness to the ruthless sorceries that Arithon had spun; that had, at such inconceivable cost, broken the death grip of the cordon closed down by Lysaer's fanatics.

  Eriegal was first to break the locked glance with his fallen chieftain's wayward daughter. 'His Grace accepted my oath upon his arrival at the circle in Caith-al-Caen.'

  Yet Jeynsa's birth-born talent was Sight, that could sense where the heart's cross-currents twisted. She voiced the chilling thought, while the silver mist ghosted between them. 'He's also a master sorcerer. One who has accepted guest welcome from Davien the Betrayer. How much more of our precious clanblood will be spilled, you are thinking, before someone dares put the question? Whom do we have who has the main strength to examine that deadly connection?'

  Eriegal sucked a sharp breath, while three trout fillets burned, and another one cooled, staked throug
h by a sharpened stick. 'Go back,' he said, firm. 'Accept your position as Asandir's choice and shoulder your charge as the realm's caithdein. Then, if you decide to open an inquiry, I'll be there to stand at your shoulder.'

  A frown pinched Jeynsa's brows, which were dark like her mother's. The war-tipped arrow was restored to its quiver, then returned, still hooked to its owner's antler-bossed belt. The stout Companion accepted the burden, then doused the fire and took up his bow.

  Yet Jeynsa could not so easily reconcile her morass of conflicted thoughts. Against all she heard, through her desolate pain, she could not dismiss the impact of her royal audience.

  The prince had attempted to treat with her fairly. Though stripped by exhaustion that overset tact, he had not belittled her vicious hostility. Nor had his initiate training been used to mask the most private core of his being: the oath of protection sworn on his blood had invoked the unimpeachable clarity of her Sighted perception. In that exposed moment, the reach and strength of his commitment had unmasked his inherent sincerity.

  Jeynsa had beheld her lost father in Prince Arithon's eyes. The pain of shared love within that encounter had held nothing of falsehood: no burden of crown duty, no tarnish of sly scheming, and no trace of shallow, political platitude.

  Reconciled to the weight of her obligation, she agreed to embrace her Named fate. But the young pride so brutally overturned would not easily bend before her s'Valerient integrity She needed Eriegal's shrewd mind and anguished uncertainty as her counterstay, lest she shame her tattered dignity beyond salvage by begging forbearance at her crown prince's feet.

  Under mist that still clung like a cloying blanket, Jeynsa approached the clan chieftain's lodge tent. Dishevelled, her leathers and arms smeared with sap from two nights spent bedded in pine needles, she flushed, caught aback by Eriegal's suggestion that she amend her neglected appearance.

  ' Caithdein, you must. Your office demands the semblance of propriety.'

  'Dharkaron's almighty bollocks!' she exclaimed, raised to a self-conscious flush. 'After putting an unsheathed dagger to royalty? If I run into Mother or Barach beforehand, they'll peel the last inch of hide off me!'

  To evade that brangling brush with authority, she entreated Eriegal to divert the sharp eyes of the sentries. Stalker's skills let her skulk through the perimeter and worm her way under the back of the lodge tent. Breathless, now muddy, she reached the shelter of her personal quarters without being seen.

  The shut cubicle was dark. Jeynsa dared not strike a light, lest the glow should alert the closed meeting in progress on the other side of the curtain. Moving by touch, she could not avoid overhearing the talk exchanged at the trestle.

  'Where in Sithaer's black pit has Eriegal got to?' Braggen's expostulation ran on unchecked, through Feithan's placating murmur. 'Well, he's overdue back! We're going to need hours to catch him up with yesterday's round of bad news.'

  '. . . can't be helped,' Sidir stated, unmoved. 'Sit down and stop pacing, will you?'

  The trestle-board creaked, through the slide of a bench, and the clunk as a weapon banged wood. 'What's his Grace doing, anyway?'

  'Still with his woman, far as we know,' said the muted voice of the night's watch scout.

  Since that particular man was renowned for sharp ears, and Sidir's keen perceptions too often sparked

  his talent for piercing insight, Jeynsa crept on cat feet. She stripped her soiled clothing, then scrounged through her satchel and hooked out her spare shirt. A hesitation, as her groping fingers encountered the weave of the garment beneath: the black tabard that once had belonged to her father, its folds already recut to fit for the investiture she had refused.

  Jeynsa clenched her fist. Her apparent recalcitrance had sparked off her elders' exasperation, for months. Entangled in hurt and loss, driven inside herself, she had never shouldered the responsible burden by asking for their adult understanding. Only Arithon had exposed her deep grief, and beneath that, cracked the mask hiding her desperate fear. All her young life, she had never felt adequate to stand in her father's shoes. As Asandir's choice, she had no excuse to shirk her hard fate, or back down. Nor could she expect to be coddled through shame, as she surrendered her final resistance.

  The aware recognition in her prince's eyes would be all she had to sustain the sting of a public humiliation.

  Nerve steeled, teeth clenched, Jeynsa rugged the black tabard free of the satchel; while beyond the masking screen of the curtain, Braggen's combative tone sliced above the murmur of conversation.

  'I'd have expected his Grace would show up by now, given the blood-bath that's bound to erupt when this wretched affray breaks wide open. After all that Alestron has done in his name? Who could ever believe that his Grace could disown the sworn alliance of the Teir's'Brydion!'

  Shocked still, Jeynsa overheard Barach's snapped phrase, bidding Braggen to lower his voice.

  As ever, the Companion's fierce temper prevailed. 'Well then, where's your sister? More than anything his Grace will require a caithdein's support at his back!'

  'No!' Sidir objected. 'Let things stand as they are. You'll not drag Jieret's daughter into this!'

  Dakar's gruff remonstrance held out in support. 'Your prince does not wish her to know right away. The girl cannot stay the horrific course! Damn pride, will you listen? His Grace's coming work at Etarra is altogether uncanny. No, Braggen, believe me, you have no idea! The dark practice of necromancy is unclean, and by far too deadly dangerous,'

  Jeynsa let the dark tabard fall from her nerveless hands. Chilled to clammy sweat, she scarcely dared breathe. While the acrimonious debate surged ahead, her quick, silent hands gathered up her tossed leathers. Shaking, distressed, she groped for her weapons, then unhooked her storm cloak and baldric.

  '. . . naught else to do but prepare,' Sidir was insisting. 'Melhalla's been warned. We must secure the north. When this ugly news reaches the sunwheel Alliance, Alestron will wake with its walls under siege. The clans have no choice but to face that grim hour. We must act now to brace for persecution such as no chapter of history has ever foreseen.'

  Wrung white, Jeynsa dropped flat and skinned under the wall of the lodge tent. Unseen, she sprinted, then slammed into Eriegal, who had left the scout sentries and crossed the camp to find out what had delayed her.

  'Cover for me!' she gasped in his ear. 'Don't ask. I can't face the clan elders with this. Not right away. Let them think I've run off to go hunting.'

  Eriegal untangled himself from the wrack of storm cloak, flapping leathers, and baldric. He eyed the sheathed knives and sword; then the bow in her unsteady hand. 'You'll need my quiver,' he stated, nonplussed. 'I don't think you're going to want deer tips.'

  Jeynsa shut her eyes. All but ready to weep for the gift of his understanding, she accepted the horn bow

  and quiver. Straightened up, now possessed of her sire's iron heart, she said, tense, 'I'm not shirking my charge to safeguard the realm.'

  Eriegal gathered her trembling fingers, his eyes cool slate as he measured her. 'If you answer the call to test Arithon's character, that is not running away.' Since her inquiry concerned a devious man who was an initiate sorcerer, the Companion slipped her the heirloom amulet he carried, whose virtues were fiend bane and concealment. 'Be steadfast and safe, girl. Remember your background. You are as dear as a daughter to every father in this encampment.'

  Jeynsa shifted her burden. She let Eriegal's solicitude slip the thong over her head and tuck the worn metal amulet beneath her shirt. Still too frightened to speak, she gripped his hard wrists, then bolted headlong into the misted murk of the greenwood.

  Hours passed, while the fog lifted to a pewter overcast that spat drizzle and finally spun veils of fine rainfall. The harried gathering inside the lodge tent acquired the presence of Halwythwood's three titled elders. Barach's authority became freshly tried, as the assembly accosted the risky exposure now facing the reduced remnants of Rathain's armed strength. Since a third of the war-band ha
d been cut down in Daon Ramon, too few hands remained for the hazards of guarding the free wilds. The redoubled fervour as Alliance politics fanned the coals of town-bred persecution could only bring more death and hardship.

  Resharpened contention was already on-going when Eriegal sauntered in through the door flap.

  His tardy appearance was given short shrift by Sidir, whose place, with increasing, unabashed familiarity, was at the side of Earl Jieret's widow.

  'Where's Jeynsa?' she asked.

  'Hunting.' Soaked from the rainfall, and predictably curt, Eriegal declined to drip at the crowded trestle. Instead, he tucked his stout frame on the floor, his back braced against the tent's center pole. 'The quarry she's stalking scarcely requires the attentive eye of an adult.'

  'Her bratty behaviour never needed any-one's shepherding in the first place,' her brother said, chafed. 'After two nights of sulking, we should applaud her initiative to supply the camp with provisions ?'

  Since Eriegal had spent all of those thankless hours standing watch in the open, Feithan was not unappreciative. She stirred from beneath Sidir's tucked arm, unhooked a grass basket, and bestowed the bundle of bread and dark sausage held for the Companion's return.

  'No one will complain if you rest where you sit,' she told Eriegal. Distressed for his scars, that would ache with the rain, she refused his contrary insistence. 'We'll catch you up on the detailed news later. Barach's short-tempered because we've seen set-backs that force him to face some harsh choices. We all agreed, earlier: Jeynsa's too brittle. Until she's done grieving, she's better off gone on whatever errand she's chosen.'

  Eriegal reviewed the shut faces of Halwythwood's elders, their rancour offset by Barach's clamped jaw and Braggen's hunched glare and clenched fist. Since Sidir's steady glance begged forbearance, the younger Companion opted not to announce that Arithon's character was the targeted quarry that Jeynsa had left to pursue.