TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

  'What will you do, then? Ride out buck naked? Let the Mistwraith's curse take you, alone against Lysaer's Alliance?' Jieret grinned. 'I don't think so. To leave this grotto, you'd first have to kill me. If you managed that much without use of your sword hand, you're a fool. Your style with a main gauche cannot defeat the best fighting blood of my war band.'

  A dangerous, sheared glitter awoke in green eyes. 'Jieret. Don't provoke me. Desh-thiere's curse isn't malleable.' As though each word was drawn, white-hot, from a forge flame, Arithon forced through the finish. 'When you threaten to stand between me and my half brother, you make yourself into a nameless obstacle that exists to be struck down. With Lysaer this close, I can hold self-restraint for only so long. Don't spark the fell fire that burns me.'

  Jieret found the good grace to break that locked stare first. Though his instinct, his love, and the yoke of ancestral duty rebelled from the pitiless fact, he affirmed the unpleasant necessity. 'I don't disagree. You will ride alone. Our task is to buy you the distance you need to stay sane as you bolt for the mountains.'

  Some of the cruel tension left Arithon then. Under the snugged bearskin, his shoulders eased slightly. While the wind off the barrens fluttered the failing flame of the lamp, the rare, wry smile reserved for close friends turned the firm line of his mouth. 'I forget, you're not Dakar, but Steiven's grown son, with Dania's sharp mind to grasp nuance. This much you can trust, on my word as your crown prince. Against pride, against preference, I must accept the opening for survival you offer. You'll have my cooperation. Even if I wasn't bound by a blood oath to the Fellowship Sorcerers, Caolle's life left a debt I will honor. While in my right mind, I won't squander the s'Ffalenn lineage he spared to restore a crown presence in Rathain.'

  The released surge of hope blazed too blindingly bright. Jieret shut his eyes to stem his shocked tears of relief. 'Thank you for that promise. Might I ask, will you marry?' The plea was ripe folly, an impulse regretted as he braced for a scalding rebuttal.

  But the letdown came gentle from Arithon, this night; as ominous an admission, that this meeting between friends might very well be the last. 'Fionn Areth's ill usage at Jaelot should show you my reason why not.'

  The chill in that moment bit to the bone, breathed in through the cleft off the winter white hills, where Paravians had not danced for five centuries; and perhaps, never would, in the course of an unstable future. Jieret laced chapped knuckles over his bent knee, resigned to his prince's harsh reasoning. Unthinkable, the prospect that a blood s'Ffalenn heir might be taken and used as the pawn of political expedience. For as long as Desh-thiere's curse fed the fervor of townbred hatreds, no babe born of Torbrand's lineage could grow to adulthood in safety. Fionn Areth's chance likeness had proved beyond doubt: Arithon of Rathain had too many enemies seeking just such sure leverage to entrap him.

  'Any child of yours could invoke Fellowship protection,' Jieret burst out as, again, his raw longing outpaced prudent thought.

  'With his fate proscribed, as a virtual prisoner!' Since his nakedness canceled the grace of retreat, Arithon used rage to buy distance. 'I'll have no get of mine entangled by the dictates of kingship and destiny. Not for a land torn to arms by the Mistwaith's cursed war, not even for the needs of the Sorcerers' compact, to save what remains of the order the Betrayer's rebellion pulled down.'

  In the dim, enclosed grotto, frozen silence remained, a misery beyond the suffering imposed by the brutality of the season.

  Painted in the carmine glow thrown off the embers, the caithdein of Rathain faced his prince. 'Even so. Or else tomorrow our shed blood will come to mean nothing.'

  'Ath Creator show mercy, Jieret!' Raked on the exposed nerve of his helplessness, Arithon gave back his very self. 'I'm a man, heart and mind, not a vessel begotten to reseed the Fellowship's tailor-made bloodline. If I ever breed heirs, they will grow up in love. Sons or daughters, I would see them raised by their mother, cherished and protected by my right arm, and the guaranteed trust of my sanity.'

  'Then you'll answer to Jeynsa,' Jieret flared, as the bared vulnerability of that naked confidence backlashed against his sworn duty to Rathain. 'Don't expect my apology, for hoping her children won't have to suffer their whole lives under threat of persecution by headhunters.'

  But Arithon rejected argument, the flash burn of his fury broken to nettled impatience. 'My clothes will stay wet at least until dawn? Then we have that long to design precise tactics. I won't see you martyred. Not while there's one chance to foil the Alliance's field troops and keep you and your war band alive.'

  Caught openmouthed, his adrenaline raised for a murderous row, Jieret felt as though a huge hand slapped the air clean out of his chest. From any other man, that brash-handed statement would have been needling arrogance.

  Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn glared back from wrapped fur, his fox features stamped by razor-edged exasperation.

  Jieret quashed the piqued reflex to scoff in disbelief. He dragged in a deep breath; cooled his boiling temper. Repossessed of his caithdein's dignity, he regarded his prince long enough to unravel the lacerating entreaty twisted through the coils of s'Ffalenn conscience. He shook his head, aching. 'Caolle died, believe me, I know how that hurts.'

  Arithon turned his face, the scraped shreds of his anguish buried behind the left fist still clenched in a wadded bastion of damp bearskin. 'You aren't listening.'

  Chilled to a stalker's caution, Jieret tested the unspoken long shot. 'You have a plan that can save us, and still mire the Alliance advance long enough to win your clean escape?'

  Still bent away, the royal profile of his ancestors all struck angles against the encroaching dark, Arithon shivered. As though weariness and uncertainty lashed a small storm through his flesh, he said, 'One chance. Not a good one. But worth giving serious thought.'

  His burden of pain stayed written in silence, that too many lives had been sacrificed since the hour he had given his crown oath in Strakewood. Another friend's loss would not be endured without willful protest and fight. While the keening draw of air through hot embers scribed the midnight quiet, Jieret waited. The depths of this quandary lay outside his experience. He had no Fellowship Sorcerer at hand, to ask if his prince's reticence was straight fear, or how much was provoked by berserker's rage, that would cast away prudence before bending pride to embrace the cold wall of futility. Touched by a prickling stir of unease, he kept a cast-iron grip on his patience.

  Tradition bound them. Caithdeinen gave their lives in the testing of princes, if no other means lay at hand.

  Nor was Arithon sanguine, as he wrestled a glaring reluctance to finish. 'You are gifted with Sight. That implies birth-born talent.' The level, green eyes lifted, the dread in them unflinching. 'We might try to waken that latent potential. If we can, I haven't forgotten my training. A few simple cantrips my grandfather taught me might serve to offset the Alliance advantage of numbers.'

  'Wield sorcery? Me?' Jieret shot to his feet, slammed his head on low rock, and swore as the pain whirled him dizzy.

  'For your life, and the safeguard of your war band,' said Arithon, no whit complaisant, but cornered by grief, that a friend must weigh such a wild-card decision. His stripped apprehension matched the horror in the red-bearded chieftain who towered over him; who, as a boy of eleven years, had been bound by a sorcerer's oath to be spared from the slaughter at Tal Quorin. Twice since that day, he had stood down the brunt of the Mistwraith's possession, when Desh-thiere's curse had overwhelmed his prince.

  The passage of time had not loosened that bonding. To the grown man, the sovereign prince gave his honesty, delivered with personal care and sincerity few spirits alive ever witnessed. 'No choice to make lightly. If we try this, and by sheer courage we prevail, the end play will still carry terrible risks. Not least, you could find yourself burned for black spellcraft on some crown examiner's pile of faggots. I might be oathbound to Asandir to use every means to survive. But Dharkaron stand witness, in this, I can't speak as your crown p
rince. First, as my friend, you would have to be willing. I won't undertake the first step of initiation without your wholehearted consent.'

  Jieret swallowed, resisting the battlefield impulse to suck on a pebble to dampen a mouth dry with fear. He looked at his hands, well taught by Caolle to wield honest steel, and thickened with callus from rough, outdoor living. 'It's a difficult service I have of you, prince.'

  Arithon's mouth flexed with the rueful trace of a smile. 'You'll recall, at the outset, I tried to avoid it.'

  But Jieret found no refuge in banter. A practical man who respected his own limits, his courage was defined by self-confidence. At home in the wilds that framed his domain, he towered like rooted oak, unbowed by grief or adversity. The sure carriage and maturity earned through a lifetime of sound leadership came undone in that moment. Dreadful uncertainty creased new lines in his windburned face, while a gust through the defile fanned the gray streaks at his temples. Hung on the cusp of grave responsibility and a hope strung on madness and folly, he measured the chasm that yawned at his feet.

  He must not tread the abyss without thought, though at Traithe's behest, in behalf of this prince, he had experienced arcane powers once before. 'I don't regret any day in your company. On the contrary. You've always done right by my trust. Do you have any sureties to offer me?'

  'None at all.' Arithon absorbed the recoil that shocked through the glance held between them. 'To awaken your talents, we would first invoke chaos. Break down the mental patterns of resistance, lose the ties to your flesh, until you had no equilibrium left to perceive without taking charge of your talent. True Sight is the conscious landscape of dream. An awareness read by the inward eye, not the dense illusion that governs the outer. You would be cast adrift to unriddle the mysteries. All power moves through the higher vibrations, past reach of the physical senses. But the lowest of frequencies by their physical nature always invoke the higher harmonics. I'd give you my music to guide you.'

  A ribbon of sweat licked down Jieret's neck. 'Unlike my father, I haven't been shown the day and the hour of my death.' He braced through a moment of wrenching uncertainty, then made his resolve with the same rugged character that had sustained the hard years of his chieftainship. 'I will shoulder the risk for the lives of my war band, and for my daughter, Jeynsa. Let her not swear her caithdein's oath to Rathain ahead of her twentieth birthday.'

  * * *

  Two hours before dawn, the temperature plunged, with the snow fine as ice-tipped powder. In the grotto by the Aiyenne, new spangles of hoarfrost etched the sandstone ledges in lacework traceries of leaded silver. Reclad in his own faintly damp shirt and the ribboned silk doublet first chosen to mingle in Jaelot, Arithon looked displaced, the nonchalant elegance of his dress at sharp odds with the predatory, lean face of the fugitive. Then he pulled on his freshly brushed jacket, laced up the leathers beaten soft by the riverside, and strapped on his boots, his small knife, and the tinder kit on its hide-and-cord strap, that he kept in remembrance of the dead trapper. No fine silk showed through as he knelt and stirred up the dying coals. He could have been overlooked as a younger clan scout, prepared to range out on a routine patrol, or to lay traps for marauding headhunters.

  Winter in Daon Ramon wore down all men alike. The diet of dried stores and lean game melted off summer's flesh, until bone and muscle pressed through taut, windburned skin. Touched in faint outline by the ruddy glow off the embers, Arithon seemed neither clever or dangerous as he prodded the saturated clumps of tobacco spread to dry in the warmed, iron bowl of the pannikin. The natural grace of his movements lacked symmetry. Each simple task he performed became hampered by his injured hand, its bundled wrapping held cradled from harm's way in the crook of his left elbow.

  Jieret observed the course of his halting progress, unable to sleep where he lay, curled in the restored warmth of his bearskin. A liegeman forgot at his peril that this prince had been trained to a sorcerer's mastery.

  Memory too often forgave the sharp edges. The Crown Prince of Rathain was nothing if not a creature of shadow and subtlety. He might appear too slight for his clothing, the left hand's clean fingers too finely bred for the sword. Yet the semblance of youthful fragility was misleading. On that day, Arithon s'Ffalenn was in fact fifty-five years of age. His black hair showed no dusting of gray. Beneath every mark of his mortal frailty ran the thread of uncanny design: his Grace had drunk from the Five Centuries' Fountain, enspelled by Davien the Betrayer to endow an unnatural longevity. The mysteries had once opened to his power of command, until the slaughter done in defense at Tal Quorin seared out the vision that accessed his talent.

  Seventeen years had elapsed since the summons to Caithwood, when caithdein and prince had last exchanged words face-to-face. The spellbinder who had partnered the intervening absence was not here to lend counsel or valued perspective.

  Blind faith remained, for a blood-bonded loyalty flawed by the Mistwraith's curse.

  The trust that Earl Jieret held for the man was now asked to transcend human reason and cognizance. He could not comprehend the uncanny dangers he might face. Nor would the seasoned skills he possessed afford any shred of protection. Arithon had explained with unvarnished clarity: once started, there could be no chance to turn back.

  Now, while nerve faltered, Jieret clamped his jaw hard. He thought instead of his daughter. Despite all the fire and verve of her character, she was too young for the weight of a caithdein's inheritance. The difficult morass of this prince's trials was no fit burden to lay on a green girl. Let Jeynsa enjoy her carefree, sweet innocence, before she must shoulder the brute course of learning that would lead her to Rathain's stewardship.

  'Jieret?' Arithon inquired gently. 'The infused leaves are now dry enough to burn. Are you certain you want to go through with this?'

  Words came, with none of the heart's hesitation. 'I'm in your hands, liege.' Earl Jieret threw off the mantling bearskin and sat up, annoyed that his effort to rest had bought nothing but disgruntled misgiving and the ranging, dull ache of stiff muscles. He linked his broad hands, stretched his shoulders until his tight joints popped in protest. Weather change coming, he noted by the twinge in the forearm that had once taken a headhunter's arrow. He felt light-headed, hungry, but his prince had advised against having anything to eat. 'Let's have this thing over with.'

  'I'll stand with you, each step.' Arithon scraped the dried tobacco from the pan and packed the crushed leaves into a carved stone pipe. 'I believe in your strength.'

  Jieret rubbed clammy palms on the thighs of his leathers. He felt no such certainty, though the rest of the items his prince had prepared seemed deceptively unprepossessing: a handful of acorns peeled apart and hollowed out; a green length of birch twig; the hoarded stub of a beeswax candle; a flake of clear mica picked from the gravel by the riverbed. Shaved bark, rolled for spills, and a handful of quartz pebbles had been gleaned from the drift-mantled countryside. A hollowed depression in the rock held a puddle of snowmelt, and beside that, a clod of black earth still spiked with hoarfrost. The deer-antler stylus Theirid used to scratch tallies had been borrowed and resharpened into an awl.

  Arithon pressed the packed pipe into Jieret's unsteady hand. 'Take this, sit down, and hold back for my signal. Certain ritual safeguards will need to be set before we can begin in earnest.' He paused, expectant, while his caithdein settled near the fire pit.

  The coals had burned low. A bearding of ash damped the warmth that arose from the heated stone underneath. Jieret blotted the beading of sweat that sprang on his forehead and temples. 'I'm sorry,' he admitted, discomposed as Arithon's concerned gaze read and weighed each sign of his unquiet turmoil. 'Only a fool does not fear the unknown.'

  'The fine line that separates idiocy from courage.' Arithon grasped his friend's shoulder in sympathy. 'I share the same doubts.' Each safeguard he set must be done from memory, with no sighted guidance to know whether an obstruction deflected his course of intent. 'We both must walk blind.'

 
Jieret clasped the royal wrist in stark affirmation of an honesty that commanded his respect. The clean-breasted admission that hope was uncertain served to buttress his determination. He would not back down, could not so lightly abandon the lives of his war band and his Companions. Their brave stand must confront the Alliance of Light on the field. If they took the shock of Lysaer's assault, he would risk himself first, that death not be granted the least invitation to triumph.

  'For Jeynsa and Feithan, I'll see you come through this.' Arithon turned his hand, completing the traditional grip shared between adult clansmen. 'Not for my life's sake would I forfeit the bonding first sworn to spare Steiven's son at Tal Quorin.'

  The winter winds spoke through the interval while the two men sustained the wrist clasp of amity. Neither one wished to break free. The past at their backs held too much strife and bloodshed, with the future before them a landscape of thorny uncertainty. Too many hopes rode upon tonight's stakes, and too many failures would cascade from false steps or misjudgment.

  Then Arithon said, 'I have one wish, that we stand side by side on the hour of Jeynsa's royal oath swearing.'

  Jieret tightened his hold, gripped by sudden, raw need. 'Make me one promise, that after my death you honor my daughter with the same pact you gave me as a child in Strakewood.'

  'Ath!' Arithon released his hold as though burned, his skin raised to a startled, bright flush. 'She's a woman! One day she'll marry. If her man dislikes me, a blood oath of friendship would force closer ties than a kinship.'

  'Even so.' Jieret smiled, a spiked twist to his humor. 'She's a vixen, sure enough, all sharp tongue and brash courage. When I'm gone, you'll become her charge as Rathain's sanctioned crown prince. As the girl's father, I'd leave her in no other hands than your own. Your first pledge was given for Steiven and Dania. Let this one be done for me.'