Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

  Arithon was first to lower his gaze. After meeting a centaur guardian, just once, he could begin to sense the grave weight of the Fellowship's intangible burden. How could man or sorcerer wish to live in a world so darkened, it might forfeit the esoteric gift of the Paravian presence? Which binding tied the heart with more fierceness: the blood charge of the dragons, to stand guard at all cost; or the bright exultation of the harmony that walked, living, in the form of Athera's blessed races?

  One dared not, in this case, press for answer.

  Yet as Arithon curbed that line of reeling thought, Davien crossed his arms, prosaic. 'Ciladis would willingly speak on that point, if you should ever chance to encounter him. Whatever he might say, the primary issue was never in doubt. Paravian survival is paramount.'

  Arithon valiantly picked up his bread crust. 'It's the pernicious question of mankind's right to upset the balance that enables this world's greater mysteries. That is what fractured the Fellowship's unity.'

  Unblinking, unmoving, Davien stated outright, 'That is also what threatens the compact.' Arithon regarded the Sorcerer, hard-braced. 'I am mortal, and human, and initiate to power, and cursed by Desh-thiere's geas to seek violence. Therefore, I also embody the potential of the wanton destruction you speak of, but on the grand scale. My doom in the maze could have simplified things.'

  'You survived, in complexity.' Davien grinned outright. 'Cursed or not, you are also the living exception.' His confounding nature seemed to find delight in the quandary of razor-edged paradox. 'Proved fit to rule, and honest enough to acknowledge your conscience. Have you a gambler's addiction for risk? You have set yourself to cast the one loaded dice throw. How will you choose, Teir s'Ffalenn?'

  'Not to kill.' The words, lit to burning, hung on the air with an oath's indelible clarity.

  Davien leaned forward, detachment quite gone, and his face pared to riveted intensity. 'The most dangerous path, and the most difficult, my friend. Strive for that, and the Mistwraith's curse will be left no other avenue except to destroy you.'

  The warning struck Arithon with splintering force. A barrier snapped. Inside him, the tissue-thin veil of reason gave way. Torn across by the scale of future event, strung through an obstacle course posed by his own sequence of cause and effect, he experienced a cascade of scalding awareness that unmoored the centre pin of his being.

  Sight hurled him too far: the course that abjured violence with such visceral need must inevitably carry a

  terrible, wide-ranging impact. Arithon reeled, eyes newly unsealed. Each decision he weighed engendered a seed, which leaped, branching, into sets of probable outcomes like an unfolding tienelle vision. His senses opened in all directions, tumbling him into an uncontrolled state of bewildering simultaneity. Cast beyond the frail shell of his flesh, he became as a light-beam split by a prism, shattered headlong down the posited avenues of overlaid future projection.

  He perceived with a clarity that scattered him, until he lost himself into the infinite.

  'You could use a crystal to anchor your focus,' Davien stated, bridging the chasm with words. The Sorcerer in his wisdom did not use touch. Compassionate restraint stayed him, and respect for crushed dignity, as his guest folded against the table-top, sickened with vertigo, and fighting nausea as his body rejected the upset frame of its balance. 'I don't recommend this, since you would not live self-contained, but create your stability in codependency.'

  Jaw locked, running sweat, Arithon gasped back, 'There are, of course, precedents?'

  Davien's mercuric chuckle implied more than wry sympathy. 'Oh, my wild falcon, there are not, in this case. The path you now walk is uncharted. You must find the way to temper your gifts.' Recognition followed, provocative, that a facet of Davien's piquant interest desired to witness the on-going experiment.

  At the earliest, right moment, the Sorcerer did rise. He rounded the table and closed a firm hand upon Arithon's shoulder, steadying him back erect. The contact soothed down his unsettled aura, for the roiling sickness subsided.

  Davien added, in dry and astonished rebuke, 'You are a s'Ahelas scion gifted with far-sight, and wakened. How novel, that you should be shocked or surprised. You are suffering visions in multiple overlay?'

  'Prismatic conscience,' Arithon agreed, still enraged. Too plainly, he could not temper the back-lash set off by his loss of stability. Nor could he quell the riled suspicion that, like the skilled surgeon, the Sorcerer had lanced the latent pressure of his unconstrained talent deliberately. Cornered too deftly, he had to acknowledge the scope of his savage predicament. 'The full range, from horror to exalted redemption.'

  'I thought so.' Davien's smile turned wicked. 'Oh, I thought so! My wild falcon, you have found flight. Now you must master the currents. Know this: each of the futures you see holds a driving thread of intent that is personal, and quite real. Those probabilities that are dim, you must defuse by withdrawing your stake in their outcome. Those that are bright, you must align and nurture. Choice will prevail as you focus. You will redefine the depth of your mastery. But to do so, you must constantly sharpen your self-honesty to discern. Each moment demands that you build on your strengths. You can no longer afford the false haven of hiding behind your shrinking weakness.'

  No course remained but to integrate the altered perceptions until their wild force could be reconciled.

  Arithon leaned upon Davien's strength, eyes shut, his strained face white to the bone. 'Just don't expect me to finish the meal,' he said, taxed to desperate humour. 'If I try, at this stage, no doubt I would slight your exemplary turn of kindness.'

  Late Spring 5670

  Resolve

  Still dazed by exhaustion, Sulfin Evend snapped out of a cat-nap at noon, disoriented by the sight of a

  ceiling adorned with vines in gilt paint. He stirred, encountered the bed, just adjacent, and Lysaer's opened eyes fixed upon him. The Lord Commander punched the overstuffed chair that embraced him and straightened his aching posture.

  Dawn's pall of overcast had scudded away to unveil a sparkling morning. The clean linens threw off a dazzling glare, making the royal face propped on the pillows seem wrapped in a fine haze of light.

  Braced to field autocratic resentment, Sulfin Evend met an expression of collected serenity that first stopped his breath, then forced him to scrape at his gritted eyes to mask his unguarded emotion.

  'You try a man's nerves, unrelenting,' he managed, the moment his tight throat released.

  Lysaer's regard remained unabashed. 'I won't ask. If my Crown Examiner at Avenor might wish to burn you for achieving my redemption, the rumours will only raise eyebrows.'

  'Hackles, more like,' Sulfin Evend snapped back. 'Don't try that again. The bit player won't stand the repeat performance.'

  No move rustled the pillows, but the smile that threatened suggested a self-conscious chagrin. Then, said with unflinching care, 'The dead priest, Jeriayish. Did his fell work with the scrying entrap me?'

  Sulfin Evend chose unsparing words in reply. 'His filthy blood ritual permitted the groundwork. But he was no master of dark arts, or necromancy. That kind do not show themselves, under daylight. The priest would have been no more than a link in a clandestine chain of suborned tools.'

  Lysaer closed his lids. 'I feared as much, as I pondered the quandary while waiting for you to awake.' The fine hands on the coverlet again wore the ring bearing Tysan's star-and-crown blazon. The seal was now paired with the diamond setting incised with the sunwheel of the Alliance. The glitter of gemstones stayed nailed in stilled light, as Lysaer pronounced with edged clarity, 'Good men died in Daon Ramon. Their loss, at my order, has surely fuelled someone's unscrupulous plotting.' The burning eyes opened. 'There won't be redress, until judgement is done.'

  'You can't dream you'll fight necromancy,' Sulfin Evend gasped, shocked. 'Do you know what I risked to achieve your release? We are lucky to be here, breathing and free! There are horrors abroad in this world that even the Fellowship Sorcerers handle w
ith wariness. I would die before watching the price of such meddling. You have no concept to measure the evil you might raise through your blindside ideals and bullheaded ignorance.'

  'More than innocents have been thrown into jeopardy, drawn by the Light into slaughter.' At rest on the pillows, Lysaer said, unequivocal,! cannot stand down. Not since an invested acolyte was involved! The integrity of the Light can't be compromised.'

  Undercut by a horrid, gut-sucking fear, Sulfin Evend refused to give pause through the stir, as the Blessed Prince signalled his valet to serve sorely needed refreshment. 'Fool! Challenge that, and you're baring your idiot neck to the knife! If your priests are corrupted, you will have to disown them! All their works are now suspect. You don't know, in your absence, how deeply their claws have been sunk into Tysan's crown council.'

  Shown no break in that regal, unwavering calm, Sulfin Evend unsheathed his temper. 'Don't put on your airs, prince! You are no god, to call down the Spear of Dharkaron's vengeance on a cult whose foul webs have been spun for thousands of years under the cover of darkness.'

  Lysaer's response came brisk, through the clink of porcelain as the valet doled out honeyed tea. 'You

  have known such corruption exists, before this?'

  'Mercy upon me, I surely have not.' Unthinking reflex let Sulfin Evend take the cup pressed into his rigid hand. 'There are nightmares too vile. Madness lies on the black side of witchcraft. The wise talent steers well clear of that morass. Respect such restraint! There are fears you can't counter through mortal awareness. Lacking the discipline of initiate mage training, no unleashed emotion is harmless. The entrapment of active attention is real. The slip of one random thought, made unguarded, can invite the fell things that poison the mind.'

  'Is this your best counsel?' Lysaer said, bleak. 'To tuck tail and hide without ever putting the question?'

  'Yes.' Sulfin Evend sipped at the scalding tea, shameless in his need to chase off the creeping, deep chill of alarm. 'Abandon Avenor. Revoke your sanctioned connections at once. Buy your war host the arcane protection it lacks, and relocate to your reinforced stronghold at Etarra.'

  'Retreat without salvage?' Thin hands moved and locked, and now the pale jewels sparked to the simmer of outrage. 'That's a brutal remedy, and a coward's expedience, to leave the botched brunt for others to bear.'

  'I did try to warn you,' Sulfin Evend said, too weary to steer the discussion away from disaster. 'Again and again, I begged you to consider a basic arcane defence.' His stance had invoked Lysaer's wrath before this, despite every logical argument, that forged weapons could never eradicate sorcery, and troops sent to battle against invoked spell-craft could not survive without any shielding bulwark.

  'I was badly influenced,' Lysaer stated. Harrowed still by the winter's unconscionable string of defeats, he did not mask his .face, or offer excuses to deny the horrific burden of full culpability.

  Sulfin Evend lost his breath. The last thing he wished was a stripping confession. Still raw with rancour, he might strike out, or inflict a worse cruelty, given his liege's torn nerves and wretched state of convalescence. He gulped down more tea to constrain his tried patience. 'Your Grace, I am earnest. You must seek protection. Walk softly and watch whom you bind as your ally. Erdane is a dangerous stew of old intrigues. I cautioned you once, and will say yet again. Beware of the factions who offer you gold without an apparent agenda.'

  'Such ones work for necromancers?' Even wrung by remorse, Lysaer's probing thrust stayed dispassionate. 'Then why should such ill-starred, slinking creatures stand in support of the Light?'

  Sulfin Evend shut his eyes, fighting lassitude. 'They want what you want,' he said with brute candour. 'Break the Fellowship's compact, kill off the clan blood lines, and eradicate the free practice of sorcery from Athera. Once that's done, initiate knowledge is sundered. Nobody's left with the masterful force to oppose what steps in through the breach.'

  Lysaer's response seemed oddly removed, as though his voice dimmed into distance. 'What about the Koriathain?'

  'The witches won't become the implacable enemy of such powers until the moment they've ceased being useful.' Sulfin Evend slid his emptied cup on the side-table. His fingers were shaking. The valet's bitter brew had done nothing at all to lift his clouding exhaustion. 'As long as the order's active enmity ties up the Fellowship's hands, none of the black cults will touch them.'

  Lysaer's inquiry continued, a relentless assault that pummelled against flagging faculties. 'Ath's adepts?' 'You know they won't practise outside of their hostels.' Sulfin braced, prepared for rebuttal, since he had

  never spoken against Lysaer's entrenched belief that Ath's Brotherhood worked in league with Shadow.

  Yet needling contention never arose. Lysaer lay quiet, if not actively hostile, at least choosing the threads of his arguments.

  Chin propped on his fists, but resistant to the overpowering need to ease his numbed feet with a bolster, Sulfin Evend marshalled his strayed thoughts and qualified. 'Some scholars suggest if this world falls to entropy, the Brotherhood will simply fade from Athera, much as the Paravian races have done since the Mistwraith encroached on the sunlight.'

  'My valet can undress you,' Lysaer said, all at once crisply smiling. 'Will you save trouble and grant him permission before you pass out in a heap?'

  Caught with his head drooping, Sulfin Evend snatched up short. The room spun around him. Porcelain rattled as he jammed his arm on the table to salvage his sudden, swayed balance. 'What have you done, prince!' But his slurred voice already affirmed the fact that the drink had masked a remedy potion. 'I don't recall giving any man leave to dose me out on valerian.'

  'Sleep,' murmured Lysaer. 'You look pounded to pulp. The least I could do was to grant you relief from a duty too harsh for the asking. Let go and rest. The matter at hand can be left to wait until you've made a recovery. As well, my friend, we'll fare best by appearance if you play the one fallen sick.'

  Sulfin Evend awakened to someone's hand, urgently shaking his shoulder. The fragrance of expensive soap let him know he had not been returned to the field camp. His eyes felt stuck with horse glue, and the coverlets were stifling. He pushed off the valet's bothersome fingers, snapped a curse, and shoved erect in a nest of down pillows.

  He was in Lysaer's bed. It was daylight. His sinews felt slackened to caramel, and every bone in his body seemed recast in lead. 'Damn you for meddling,' he said in gruff fury.

  The Divine Prince sat in the stuffed chair by the bedside, immaculately dressed. Lace cuffs masked his wrists and shadowed his rings, and a sumptuous white doublet smothered everything else up to his clean-shaven chin. The impact was one of forceful, pale elegance, composed as a sword-blade in ice. 'The soporific you drank was too weak to lay you out for as long as you've rested.'

  'How long?' croaked Sulfin Evend, then swore with invention to learn he had slept the day and night through, and lost most of the following morning. 'Why didn't somebody waken me?'

  'Somebody has.' Lysaer's prankish smile and arched eyebrows almost concealed the bruised shadows left by his ordeal. 'You are meant to be ill. Why disturb the felicitous appearance?' Still seamlessly talking, he encouraged the valet, who, undaunted, bore in with a razor and basin. 'The fibbing gets tiresome. I don't have your field captain's knack for singeing language, or your uncle Raiett's charmed gift for dissembling diversion.'

  'Raiett doesn't lie. He evades, that's his secret.' Sulfin Evend shoved back his rat's tangle of dark hair, scowling to fend off the servant. 'I don't care for charades. What's changed?'

  Succinct, Lysaer stated,! need you awake.' His piercing assessment suggested far more, as he watched his Lord Commander seethe with clenched fists amid the rumpled billow of bed-clothes. 'Are we not under threat?' Blue eyes locked with inimical steel grey, and Sulfin Evend attacked first. 'Liege, you shouldn't be upright.'

  'Appearances are everything,' Lysaer amended. 'You're in that bed, sick, upon my direct orders. The

  M
ayor of Erdane is due momentarily. He's expecting an audience. I suggest, for time's sake, that you let my valet do his work to make you presentable. Or not, of course. You may stay looking furious and degenerate, as you wish.'

  The accents of refined Hanshire breeding clashed with a phrase borrowed straight from the barracks. His hawk's profile livid, Sulfin Evend concluded,! don't fancy another man's mincing hand, gripping cold steel at my throat.'

  'Well, I don't care for strewn lather spoiling my bed,' Lysaer said with disarming delicacy. His nod summoned the valet. 'You'd make a poor job. One look, and you'd notice. Your fingers aren't steady. Allow you the razor, you'd rip your own veins without someone's outside assistance.'

  Pinned as the valet raked back his loose hair and fingered his chin with light expertise, Sulfin Evend clamped his jaw in offended forbearance.

  'I do realize, today, that I owe you everything,' Lysaer stated point-blank.

  No rage could withstand that aimed barb to the heart. Given the accolade of absolute trust, Sulfin Evend suffered himself to be handled. Combed, shaved, and tucked back like an invalid under perfumed sheets, he endured the ignominy as the Mayor of Erdane was ushered in by no less than the same callow page. Insult to injury, the rabbit-faced chamber steward also manned the ante-room door. Both had been restored to their posts, a folly too late to redress on the verge of a royal audience.

  Already, Lord Mayor Helfin ploughed in, a heavy-set man who had married into his wealth. Curled hair, a clipped silver beard, and pouched features wearing a strawberry flush reflected his choleric temperament. His quilted velvet clanked with jewelled chains, a threat to the ornate furnishings. While the steward hopped after him, rescuing candlesticks, he encountered the sangfroid glimmer of Lysaer's state dress and diamonds.

  Hot water crashed against glacial ice. Erdane's mayor took the padded chair the valet had set to receive him.