This pattern would not yield its mysteries freely. Possessed of a questioning, combative nature, Davien had crafted this maze to test character and wisdom, with no crossing ever the same.
Luhaine drifted upward and flowed through the lit access point, well cognizant of peril as he crossed the initial threshold. The first grand turning presented him with a choice between an object that shimmered with limitless desire and a small, gray pebble of no distinction. Luhaine picked the stone. By experience, he knew the vast secrets of matter were recorded in the structure of minerals. The moment he claimed his unassuming acquisition, the pebble sheared into halves. One portion became a shimmering mirror, and the other, a gateway into darkness.
Luhaine entered the black unknown, too experienced to fall prey to the illusions of manifest self-importance and vanity.
The void enfolded him, an obsidian bubble that threatened to swallow his solitary presence. The Sorcerer cast away that sense of imprisonment. He upstepped his vibration beyond the realms of formed thought, reaffirming himself in the primal chord that resounded, plane to plane, and imbued the unbroken flow of life to Ath’s ever-varied creation.
Next turning, Luhaine faced the blinding promise of limitless ecstasy, opposed by the bright glyph of power. He opted for bliss, aware as he was that true power sprang out of unbridled joy. The glittering rune framed the lure for those who would dominate, a clear false step for a Sorcerer schooled to abide by the Law of the Major Balance.
Turning and turning, Luhaine made his way on the tenets of mage wisdom, his surety born of truesight and compassion where the dictates of experience fell short. Should his discipline and training prove unequal to the test, he would suffer an ignominious return, for the puzzle crossed outside of dimension and time, and stitched through the planes beyond substance. Davien’s puzzle would winnow the foolish. His spiraling noose of conundrums and traps well defended the keep’s inner sanctum. None but the accomplished adept could win through and attempt the command of the elemental forces still raised to awareness within.
Each fork in the maze marked a step toward high mystery, until form and substance fell away into streams of pure energy. Here, where naked will could rearrange manifest reality, the uncontrolled mind might forfeit the whole trial on the chance-slipped force of one thought. The last choice, the final step, was always the same. Luhaine knew his way through the mystery of chaos: he imagined himself back before the arched portal, but outside the patterning of knotwork. From that point of power, he spoke the Name of the boulder and asked a polite permission. The heart of the stone would transmute and grant entry, its staid judgment of compassionate character Davien’s penultimate obstacle.
The sentinel stone knew Luhaine well. Hailed by a sonorous bell tone of greeting, the Fellowship shade was given his access to drift through.
Disgorged from the crystallized geometry of solid mineral, he emerged into what a grand weight of history had dubbed the Hall of Gathering. The air held the pungent tang of electricity. A floor of tessellated marble gleamed like rubbed pearl, the watery reflections of white-marble pillars melted into the upside-down image of the high, groined ceiling. Had there been a dais, that structure was gone, replaced by a grotto that seemed sculpted from the unfinished strata of a cliff face. At first glimpse, the edifice appeared as a designer’s folly, carved with vines and tiered fountains and niches festooned with shell fluting. In fact, the structure was a shrine given over to the play of elemental forces.
Luhaine drifted, his homage no less for the fact he shared an unfettered existence as spirit. The air where he moved harbored conscious activity and an uncanny, intelligent awareness. Drafts flowed here in capricious disregard that no chink existed to admit them. They spun and braided in on themselves, interlaced with ribbons of intangible light and an endowed grace of sentience. Nor was that awareness sympathetic to the foibles of earthbound humanity.
A man addressed the wild elements at his peril, ever mindful of nuance and intent. The odd word or concept could cross-link like wildfire. This close to the powers that underpinned solid creation, any wayward outcome might precipitate into reality.
‘Athera has need,’ announced the Sorcerer out of respectful silence.
His fleshless whisper sighed through the incessant song of a fountain raised on a plinth. The splashing fall of the water was self-perpetuating. Mercurial showers of runoff dashed into a pool very like the ones found in the sanctuaries of Ath’s adepts. Three massive stones flanked the verge. Their rough-hewn edges were mantled with green moss, and dignity clothed them like royalty. Adjacent to the fountain, fire burned in a niche, whirled and winnowed into firefly spirals by the play of an unseen wind.
‘Athera has need,’ Luhaine repeated, this time louder. Then, in the rolling cadences of a language long since forgotten by man, he summoned four Names, by vowel and syntax shaping the primal resonance that defined the four elemental spirits.
At first, no change; then fleeting expectancy shot a shimmer of light through the air.
Luhaine waited, stone patient.
Presently the fall of the water sang with melodious laughter. A sprite’s face emerged from the ripples in the pool, neither woman nor child, but possessed of bewitching ebullience. ‘What need shall we answer?’ she trilled in a sweet, girlish treble.
Luhaine responded by providing her with an image. His portly form appeared clothed in a dignitary’s robes of gray velvet, his silver beard combed in waves to a waist cinctured in calfskin and fastened with a farmer’s wide-tanged brass buckle.
‘We know you, Defender,’ said the sprite in the pool, teasing or contemptuous; seductive or scornful: her tone as always a fractured illusion of duality the unwary found madness trying to fathom.
‘Two boons, for my asking,’ the Sorcerer replied, staid in his lack of curiosity. ‘The Fellowship desires to hold convocation in this place on the night of the summer solstice. First, I require your assistance to admit Traithe. His powers remain crippled since his stand against Desh-thiere, and he cannot undertake the trial of the maze to win right of passage on his own.’
This time, the voice of the wind sylph answered, skirling echoes from the shadowy recesses. ‘His courage was our ally when his act sealed South Gate. Rest assured, we will greet him with welcome.’
Luhaine’s image bowed in grave thanks. ‘Your forbearance is generous.’
He straightened, unsurprised to see that the sentinel stones by the pool had grown gnarled faces, the elemental earth personified in response to his summons by Name. The speech he received as a belling, subsonic vibration reflecting the deep overtones of an earthquake, and magma congealed into bedrock. ‘Has Athera’s need sprung from the blight that opens a rift like a sore on the northwestern headland of Paravia?’
‘A dragon-skull ward has been raised,’ Luhaine answered, respectful of truth, but wishing the archaic tongue he used had gentler words to soften the brunt. ‘We know the construct hides the seed of a damaging conspiracy. Sethvir of Althain would cast strands to scry warning. For the sake of that augury, he sends me as emissary. Need I explain?’
‘You need not.’ Stone’s wisdom encompassed all secrets, all conjuries, all manifestations that spellcraft could bind over matter. Earth element knew in detail how Fellowship conjury could sift the future and sound the patterns of multiple probability.
‘As the makers of form and substance,’ Luhaine petitioned, ‘we beg permission to access your mastery through the hour we shape our augury. Guesswork is too dangerous. The Mistwraith’s curse has stirred the most powerful human factions on Athera to renewed pacts of hatred and violence. Now, the dragon-skull ward blinds Sethvir to the consequences. For the sake of our duty to uphold the compact, hear our formal appeal. We ask elemental help to bend time. Allow us to view the true course of events as they come to be manifest.’
Fire replied, a crackling sibilance of sparks. ‘We cannot assist with an act of intervention that would alter the thread of the world’s fate. We serve free
will; its ordained limits are not ours to cross.’
‘Our Fellowship is bound to the Major Balance, which adheres to the selfsame Law.’ Luhaine was too wedded to patience to yield to frustration as he clarified Fellowship intent. ‘We do not seek to change destiny, but only to align our dwindled resources to the land we are sworn to guard. Dare we allow the last hope of Paravian survival to fail through some mortal brew of ill fortune? By my sworn word, our defense concerns only the compact, which mankind may transgress at their peril.’
A moment passed, weighted in silence that made the falling water seem a shout against the etched quiet of the air. The fire flared down to sullen embers, and the faces on the stones folded back into moss. When at due length Luhaine received disposition, the words shimmered with the silvery harmonics of all four of the elements combined. ‘Your request is granted, given the grounds of appeal. We will lift the veil of time for the duration of twelve years, but no more. No ward set by man will blind Sethvir’s vision, but beware: the foreknowledge you gain must not open temptation to meddle.’
Luhaine bowed, too wise to argue the limitation set on the strands’ augury. Elemental power encompassed all worlds, not just the firm earth of Athera; given the broad-ranging scope of their influence, such beings abided by their own codes of conduct. Only one force ever challenged their place on the loom of Ath’s creation: the great drakes had spun energy into matter, then endowed their artistry with renegade consciousness through the gateway of true dreams. For that transgression, the dragons had earned an enmity that reached forward and back, unto the dawning of time.
‘I thank your indulgence,’ Luhaine addressed in closing his audience with the raised minds of the elements. ‘Be sure my Fellowship will not waste your gift, nor use what we learn to alter fate’s course through prime influence.’
By sundown, the other Fellowship Sorcerers converged at the focus at Earle. Luhaine’s wraith presence was joined first by Traithe, whose leggings and boots still wore the pong of black mud and crushed fern gained crossing the Salt Fens. His raven hunched, ruffled with wet, on the shoulder of a sun-faded oilskin cloak, bought used from the hay shearers at Waterfork. The hands that slung off his wayfarer’s pack seemed too thin and worn for the season.
‘How many street beggars did you feed back in Shandor?’ Luhaine accosted, concerned.
‘All of them.’ Traithe’s coffee eyes crinkled to his sudden smile. ‘Chide all you like, you won’t find me regretful.’
He peeled off his cloak, scattering moisture over the silken sheen of the marble. For that, he tilted his silvered head in apology toward the grotto two flights upstairs, where the fountain cascaded its continuous spray of arpeggios. ‘Ama’idan, Water Sisters, I’m sorry. Forgive the small puddles, and receive instead my sincere thanks for your bounty.’
The weather had closed in with the advent of nightfall. Hard rain rinsed the headlands outside in black torrents, yet the drumming cascade could not be heard in the sealed vaults beneath Earle fortress.
Traithe warmed his stiff fingers over a wax taper scrounged from the dry depths of his pack. His colleague exchanged news. Between small conversation, and sharing a supper of raisins and jerked venison with the raven, the focus circle patterned in the stone floor awakened to crackling life.
Asandir stepped out of the glare. Sun-browned and scratched from some rugged errand pursued amid summer briar, he brought in the aromatic scents of mountain fir and long nights spent next to birch campfires. He spokea sharp word, dispersing the lane forces, and to Luhaine’s voiced greeting, replied, ‘Bad hunting indeed.’
Lips turned to distaste, he unburdened himself of a horn bow and a quiver of steel-tipped arrows, then the meticulously kept blade of his hunting knife. ‘At least where I came from, the weather was clear.’ He folded lean legs and joined Traithe on the marble step that rimmed the focus, then proceeded to pick thorns and burrs from his tunic with unhurried, large-jointed fingers.
Luhaine looked on, grumbling and anxious to begin proceedings.
‘We can’t start without waiting for Sethvir anyway,’ Traithe said, one scarred hand soothing the raven, who grew snappish as the unseen shade riffled cold through its feathers once again. When Luhaine refused answer, he plied Asandir for the latest word out of Shand.
The Sorcerer who shouldered most of the Fellowship’s field work glanced up, his eyes the silver of filled rain pools. ‘I traveled from the crystal veins in the Tiriacs, and haven’t seen a city in six weeks. But the kites believe the autumn storms will be harsh, which could increase the shale slides in Vastmark.’
Luhaine broke in then, destroying the illusion of small talk. ‘You were abroad in the Tiriacs? Then you certainly weren’t bow hunting for deer.’
‘No.’ Asandir sighed. ‘Trouble again, from the mires of Mirthlvain. Last season’s frosts caused a break in the second Paravian retaining wall. Eighteen broods of methspawn escaped in the foothills, but they maraud there no longer.’ Which explained the grain of weariness in his voice and the bramble rips in his clothing. Before Luhaine could lecture, the Sorcerer qualified, ‘The predators chose not to answer to Name. Verrain had already exhausted that chance when I got there. Next time, you can try for yourself, and before you insist we can’t continue without Kharadmon’s backing, the simple fact is, we must.’
‘I was going to ask which strain of methspawn escaped,’ Luhaine corrected, miffed.
But his question was left to hang on the air as the concave depression of the focus flared into crackling luminescence again.
A bothered oath arose amid the white sparks. Then the Warden of Althain emerged from the scintillance of roused lane force, arms overburdened with rolls of blank parchment, and pens, and an ink-dark length of plain velvet.
Asandir lunged upright and rescued those items in imminent danger of falling.
‘I should’ve brought a satchel,’ Sethvir lamented, his face eclipsed by his teetering load. ‘The problem was, all of them were full.’
‘If you plan to inscribe a formal record, we’re lacking a chair or a table,’ informed Luhaine.
‘The floor has always served well enough.’ Sethvir flashed his pixie’s grin to Asandir, whose fast reflex next fielded the horn box with the ink flask before it slithered and smashed underfoot. ‘Thank you. At least this time Luhaine won’t be the one carping over stiffened joints and sore knees.’
Luhaine returned a windy harrumph, spinning ahead through the newel posts of the balustrade some fanciful mason had carved with stylized dolphins. The raven flew, and Traithe followed, as ever too proud to resort to a staff, though his lame leg dragged on the risers. In sympathy with his silent suffering, Asandir pressed at his heels, prepared to offer his tacit support if the grace of opportunity presented. Sethvir came last, still barefoot, since he had found no spare moment to send a clan trapper to find him another black wolf pelt.
Earle Keep had been built on a grand scale, and two landings passed before the party of Sorcerers reached the Hall of Gathering. While the recent arrivals paid the four elementals their respectful greeting, the raven soared upward, to cavort in the eddies stirred by the sylphs dancing under the groins of the ceiling.
‘None of that,’ Traithe chided, laughing. ‘The hour is late. Were we outside, you’d be roosting.’ He held up his wrist. The raven swooped down and alighted, croaking an avian epithet.
‘And the same for the egg that hatched you,’ Traithe retorted.
By then, Sethvir had shed his goose quills and parchments. Embedded amid the disorderly bundles were a moth-eaten cushion and collapsible camp stool for Traithe.
The crippled Sorcerer raised surprised eyebrows, then whispered his heartfelt thanks. He claimed the stool and took brisk charge of its assembly until Asandir stopped hovering out of misplaced pity and helped Sethvir spread the square of dark velvet over the marble flooring.
Then the Warden of Althain dug through the scrip at his belt and produced two worn stubs of chalk. One he handed to Asand
ir. In wordless, paired concert, the two Sorcerers inscribed the grand circles to invoke an elemental conjury.
Traithe sat with a quartz crystal in hand, immersed in communion with his raven. The bird was no stranger to ceremonial spellcraft. It launched and soared spiraling patterns overhead, a living shuttle cast upon the unseen loom of the air. The etheric filaments of its master’s will trailed white streamers of light off its obsidian primaries.
Luhaine to all appearance had vanished, his being engaged beyond range of mortal senses. His perfectionist touch set the boundaries and wards for a conjury that would extend across time and space. If he missed Kharadmon’s acerbic wit, or the counterbalance of a partnered spirit, like Traithe, he withheld complaint.
By sundown, preparations inside the vault stood complete. Although none of the day’s dying light pierced Earle Keep’s sealed fastness, every Fellowship Sorcerer in the Hall of Gathering sensed the pending hour of twilight. They assumed their position. Silent, prepared, Sethvir took the north, to invoke the grounding heart of the earth. Asandir ranged southward, and opposite, to call fire. In the absence of Kharadmon, Luhaine held the east, and Traithe, in worn black, stood for west. The raven descended and perched on its master’s shoulder, eyes like shiny beads that perceived far more than an avian intelligence. For one tensioned instant, the air waited, mute, imprinted by the melodies of water, falling, and the voracious percussion of burst sparks.
‘Alt,’ Sethvir stated, the rune for beginning.
Unseen but for the stir of wild energies that prickled the hair at the nape, the elemental forces Luhaine had petitioned now joined with the Sorcerers’ stilled focus. The workings of invisible powers reknit the veil of the mysteries, and subtly, silently, transcended the boundaries that anchored the root of the world.