The mere thought of killing while gifted with mage-sight posed a desecration beyond horror to contemplate.
Shaken, and badly, Jieret shivered again. He forced his eyes open, made himself look up into the dazzling presence of the man who braced him in steadfast calm. 'I never understood, until now, what my father asked of you when he charged you as Rathain's prince to uphold our defense at Tal Quorin.'
'The Fellowship knew.' Arithon said, his reassurance swept clean of rancor. 'Don't forget, they were first to take my oath of accession, binding me to the kingdom.' Some concepts lay utterly beyond words to express, among them, the terrible reverse, that Earl Jieret must soon endure the same nightmare for the sake of his liege's escape.
Arithon shifted, caught a horn dipper of water, and added a pinch of powdered root from his remedies. Then he raised Jieret's head in support and offered the bittersweet contents. 'Drink until you can't take any more. The marshwort will cause sweats. The tienelle poisons must be flushed from your body, or you're going to be wretchedly ill.'
The ice touch of the water raised an explosion of sensation, actinic as lightning flung in branching arcs across Jieret's already traumatized eyesight.
'It's all right.' Arithon soothed, his grip eased to allow the recoil as his chieftain yanked back from the contact. 'Water carries strong electromagnetic properties, a useful tool for a mage who knows how to harness them.'
'Fatemaster's mercy!' Jieret exclaimed. 'The whole damned world's gone crazy.'
'It's been that way all along,' Arithon contradicted. 'Enveloped in the flesh, most of us simply never sharpen the ability to see.' He offered the water again, not quite smiling in sympathy as his chieftain mastered tight nerves, propped himself on one elbow, and drank. 'Rest if you can. Everything's raw, and too fresh to integrate. The gifts you have wakened will settle with sleep, and the aftereffects of the tienelle won't lift for another hour.'
'I don't think I can sleep,' Jieret protested, hating the thin, lost tone of his voice, slapping back forlorn echoes from the sandstone walls of the cavern.
Arithon caught his hand and gripped back in encouragement. 'You will. You must. I can help.' Spent though he was from his earlier effort, he engaged his bard's gift and cast song into phrases that gently compelled the overtaxed mind into quietude.
Jieret wakened, disoriented. Lapped in a languid, warm peace that left his limbs battened in lassitude, he had no wish to move, though his shirt and hose were glued to his body by a film of sticky sweat. The prodding need to empty his bladder at length made him open his eyes.
The sandstone cavern seemed awash in a silver-gray light that rendered his surroundings desolately colorless. Disjointed by grief, as though something priceless had been jerked beyond reach, Jieret caught his breath with a cry. The sudden, stabbing Kurt ran clear through him, for a world turned unexpectedly dull and lifeless as ashes. Caught by the throat by a fierce urge to weep, he said through locked teeth, 'I thought you said sleep would help me adjust!'
'It has.' Arithon's solace was immediate, and nearby, a razor's edge of alertness. 'If you think you've gone blind, look again. You'll see I've extinguished the candle to save wax.' As Jieret blinked in disoriented confusion, he phrased his explanation with delicate care. 'It's barely past dawn, and no light shines in here. If you find you're not in total darkness, what you're seeing are the spirit forms of your surroundings.' A movement of clothing sighed to the left as Rathain's prince shifted position. 'That's astral mage-sight, Jieret. You've triumphed.'
'But the colors,' Jieret gasped, still wrung by their loss. He felt reft, his heart all but shredded with yearning to somehow restore them.
'Not gone.' Arithon's reply carried an imprinted echo of shared pain, that for him, his forfeited access was permanent. 'You've shed the augmented influence of the tienelle, which lends the illusion things have changed for the worse. In fact, you'll be able to exert self-command. Once you've calmed down, I'll show you. With practice and discipline you'll soon perceive the higher levels of vibration at will.'
'Well, such lofty happenings will have to wait until after I've gone out to piss.' Jieret cast off the mantling bearskin, then wrinkled his nose at the reek of sour sweat in his shirt. 'Dharkaron's Five Horses, I stink as though I've slept all night in a midden.'
'Your sense of smell has been sharpened,' Arithon agreed. His caithdein's ripe oath clashed with his laughing devilment as he added, 'The gift isn't always an advantage.'
'If you die with no issue, prince, believe this,' Jieret grumbled. 'My curse will ride Fate's Wheel and hound you on the other side of the veil.' Still manfully swearing, he stepped out, one hand braced against the rock cleft, and the legs underneath him shaky and unreliable as a newborn's.
The Earl of the North felt stronger by the time he returned, shirtless and dripping from a bracing scrub in the river. If his physical well-being seemed somewhat restored, his mental equilibrium still suffered an array of unsettling tricks. His vision stayed strange. All solid objects wore a phosphorescent haze, lending their appearance an eerie double image. When light touched their edges, he found himself dazzled, as strange flares of reflection fractured into unexpected, prismatic rainbows.
Inside the cleft, cut off from sunlight, he sensed other powers alive in the earth clamoring at his raw senses. He strove to bear up, aware as he rose to the unfamiliar challenge that he felt no piercing regret. Truth walked in the mysteries. Now that the film had been lifted from a blindness suffered since birth, he shuddered to think of the price to be paid, should he ever be forced to step back into the dimmed realm of common perception.
Again, the swift recognition of grief, that Arithon of Rathain had met such a fate and found strength to go on living. Jieret walked softly, moved to awed respect as he rejoined his prince's presence.
Arithon had kindled the candle stub. The finer blaze cast off his aura seemed like spindled gold wire amid the hot orange glow of the flame light. Jieret had to squint to discern his friend's purposeful hands, busy cleaning the meats from the acorns that Theirid had been sent to gather last night. Sundry other items rested amid several packets of dried herbs from his healer's stores, those the least reassuring: silk threads unraveled from Arithon's frayed sleeve cuff now tied the cuttings of black hair into neatly laced bundles.
Chilled by more than the frost on the air, Jieret wrung icy water from the end of his clan braid. He forced his numbed fingers to work and began dragging the snarls from wet locks. 'What fell bit of craft are you spinning with that stuff?'
Arithon's glance lit to a glint of pure wickedness. 'In theory, Morriel's ugly little tactic with a fetch can be used in reverse, against Lysaer.'
Jieret locked his hands in the soaked auburn tangles. Through the spiking, sweet moment, while an almost unbearable hope pierced his heart, he somehow held on and recovered the calm to restart his breathing. 'You mean you can haze the enemy into the mistaken belief there's actually more than one of you?'
'I can't. You will. The setting seals must be yours, since my sighted talent won't answer.' Arithon picked up one of the quartz pebbles, then reached out and unsheathed his main gauche. 'I don't like the method, but in case Lysaer's scryers use blood magic, we'll choose the one that's reliable.' He set the blade to the inside of his wrist and jabbed a small nick. The stone was dabbed with a small drop of blood, then thoughtfully nested inside the hollowed-out shell of an acorn.
Touched by a queer grue, that a line had been crossed beyond which no safety existed, Jieret held silent and finished replaiting his clan braid.
'I chose eight, for the symbolism,' Arithon said. 'In all workings of craft, such things by their nature lend clarity to intent.' The admission sparked an evil ring of irony as he qualified his decision. 'That's the dread number of Sithaer's blackest pit, and also the closing note in the octave whose resonance, amplified, lets demons take solid form on this side of the veil.'
'Ath bless!' Jieret threw off his unease long enough to grin through his beard. 'Tha
t's bound to seed unholy mayhem with your half brother's arse-kissing priests!' He shook out his damp shirt, undecided if he dared take the time to hang-dry it. 'You'll force the Alliance to split forces?'
'Well, I can hope so.' Arithon coiled one of the tied strands of hair, packed it over the smeared quartz, then jammed the cap of the acorn back into place over the contents. Lastly, he secured the small package with pine pitch and a pliable strand of silver wire filched from Alithiel's scabbard. 'Plants pass on their qualities, when used in a construct. In this case, I picked oak for its strength, endurance, and longevity.'
Jieret snorted. 'You're thinking to teach me the ways of such fell tricks?' He grimaced, hesitated, then decided to pull on the damp cloth of his shirt. Outside, the sun was still too low on the horizon to have warmed the hoarfrost from the scrub brush. Enemy troops now closed on three sides, with the watchful eyes of their front-running patrols far too near to risk even a scout's tidy fire. Under clear sky, a spire of smoke would be seen for leagues in every direction.
Left clammy by worse than the clasp of wet linen, Jieret pressed, 'What needs to be done, we'd better get started. My perimeter guard already argues we've been in one place for too long.'
Arithon looked up, his green eyes piercing. 'We have maybe two hours.' A frisson of chill seemed to rip through his frame. His masking effort as he reached for the next acorn made an insufficient diversion to offset his caithdein's sharp scrutiny. 'After that, I can't guarantee any leeway. Let my half brother come too close, and the driving pressure of Desh-thiere's curse will swell to unmanageable proportions.'
'You feel him already?' Jieret demanded, aware as he spoke that the shadow of something unwholesome swept across Arithon's aura.
At least his liege had the grace not to lie. 'A constant thorn in my side.' He paused, as though snagged into vicious inner conflict. Only a man who knew him to his depths could observe the near-to-invisible struggle as he battled and reaffirmed his precarious hold on self-possession. After a fraught moment, his aura burned clear. A shade paler, his hands a trifle less steady, he resumed packing the next acorn. His glance of bright inquiry took in the distress behind Jieret's scowling expression.
'You saw that?' Too mortified to suffer the inevitable reply, he shrugged off what, for him, had to be an excoriating storm of embarrassment. 'As you say, time grows short. Please, don't interrupt. You aren't going to like the strategy I've planned, but while you were sleeping, I measured the options. Here's how I believe we must play this.'
Long before noon, the scouts who kept watch from the hilltops overlooking the Aiyenne dispatched runners with urgent word. The first advance columns of townsmen approached, plowing their arduous way down the vales to the north and east. The contingent from Narms, closing off free escape to the west, was led in by the savvy experience of headhunters.
'No sign of them yet, but that's a false reckoning,' gasped the rider sent back to the riverside camp with the news. Given the league's specialized knowledge of the land, an approach spearheaded by seasoned professionals was bound to be cunningly circumspect. 'May not spot them at all, till they're crawling all over us.' Dismounted to ease his laboring mount, the man tucked his reddened hands out of the wind and cast an anxious glance backward. 'Theirid's had all the ponies brought in. They've been saddled, in case, and the war band's armed also. Everyone's waiting for Jieret's orders.'
Still on guard at the mouth of the cleft, crouched on his knees on swept stone, Eafinn's son squinted down the shining edge of the blade he had just finished resharpening. 'High Earl will give orders whenever he's ready.' As glacially cool under pressure as the father whose loss the past spring had cost the war band its most wily captain, he flipped back a fallen hank of pale hair, then deliberately slid the weapon home in its sheath. 'At his Grace's pleasure, he'll come out.'
The messenger scout cracked in jangled impatience. 'I don't care blazes what they're doing in there!' The fringes on his stained buckskin jacket snapped to his vehement gesture. 'If we don't move out fast, our prince risks disaster. Do you want him trapped like a rat in that grotto? Then pass him my message in warning.'
With long-limbed, quick grace, Eafinn's son stood. 'I was charged to guard his Grace's privacy.' Under late-season sunlight that hoarded its warmth, his bare head shone like burnished platinum. The competent fingers clasped to Alithiel's black hilt stayed as nervelessly set in their purpose. 'My prince holds my promise. No way I'll let you risk crossing his will after what happened last night.'
'See sense, man!' The scout runner spun, his agitation increased as his keen ear detected the inbound drumroll of hooves. He scanned the mottled hills, patched brown and gray where weathered outcrops of sandstone punched through the ice-crusted mantle of snow. He pointed to the low ground at the verge of the river, left flattened by the silted burden of sediment laid down each year in spring flood. 'That's our rider, inbound. I'd lay spit against the red blood of my ancestors he'll bring word that the head hunter troop with s'Ilessid has been seen on our western flank. Press things any later, we won't have a chance. It's haul our liege out by the scruff of his neck or get speared like stoats defending the ground where we stand.'
Loose stone chinked as Eafinn's son planted his stance. 'Even so.' he insisted, though he had not missed the disturbing fact that the inbound rider slid his horse on its hocks down a gravel bank rather than lose precious minutes on a safe but more roundabout route. 'I'm not the man to judge what's at stake. Don't ask me again to break my given word or ignore the command of Rathain's sovereign prince.'
'That won't be necessary.' Earl Jieret interjected from behind, as he squeezed his way through the cleft. Reclad in his studded brigandine, and armed with his father's belt and throwing knives, he looked bleak enough to scale iron at twenty paces. To the overwrought rider, now flushed to embarrassment, he snapped, 'No questions! I need the Companions here, now!'
The rider vaulted astride in relief, wheeled his mount, and pounded away on the errand.
Rathain's caithdein stepped from the rocks. Fully emerged into daylight, he stretched his broad shoulders as though to throw off binding cramps. The leonine bristle of his beard failed to mask the startling change undergone during the night. He looked something more than worn to distraction: a fey, wild spark lit his glance from within. Through his frowning pause as he ascertained that the camp on the riverside was packed and ready to move, the otherworldly light in his gray hazel eyes took on a glint like the reflection off rain-beaten metal.
Struck that he looked like a man who kept too slight a hold on breathing life, Eafinn's son found himself moved to a queer stab of pity. 'Don't say his Grace had no plan to save us.'
'He has a plan.' Jieret affirmed, agonized. Through the distanced clatter as the inbound rider reined across the icebound span of the riverbed, he added his heartsick opinion. 'If this war band is spared, it will happen because Arithon will have courted disaster and taunted the turn of Fate's Wheel ahead of us.'
'Then how can I help?' Eafinn's son asked, sharply driven to try to relieve some the source of the tension.
'Leave the sword in my care.' As Alithiel's burdensome weight changed hands, Jieret delivered a bitten string of instructions. 'Fetch the horses his Grace brought in last night. They're faster than our ponies. Check them for soundness. If Cienn reshod them as I asked, bring them here. Have the three fittest ones saddled and bridled.'
'You want supplies also?' Given his chieftain's clipped nod of assent, the young man evinced the resilience of his family heritage. 'I'm gone, then.'
His light step scarcely stirred the loose rocks as he ran downstream on his errand. Jieret drew in a deep breath. He was given no moment of privacy, nor space to contain his trepidation before the Companions arrived: Theirid with his black-fox tails streaming in the stiffening gusts from the north; squat, muscular Cienn, replacing a snapped tie on his bracer; Braggen, his heavy brows bristled, and his short, scrappy steps reflecting a pique like dammed magma. The others checked weapon
s, or swore at the uncooperative, clear sky. Two-legged and dangerous, they were a leashed wolf pack, fretful of the delay, and explosively primed for an action they knew must court failure.
'My brothers,' Rathain's caithdein addressed as he met each man's eyes in bleak honesty. 'The charter law of the realm, your children's future, and the guardianship of the free wilds stands or falls upon how we carry the day. Prince Arithon has given all in his power, and more, to lessen the odds set against us. If his strategy prevails, some will survive. Whether you face life or death for his cause, by your oath of fealty as his clanborn liegemen, I ask that you not fall short.'
No time, for lingering last words or commiseration over shared risks; no time to seek praise or encouragement that might bolster morale or raise heart; no time at all to acknowledge or honor the binding, close ties of a lifetime. Nor did one Companion among them complain of the lack. Jieret in that moment could have wept for the gift of their outright trust. He battled his sorrow, that such shining strength of character should become nothing more than a ready weapon on this hour, upon which hung all the hopes of the next generation. These eight true spirits, who had known grief and bloodshed too young, as grown men could reliably perform without sentiment.
Wrung by the urgent necessity that must see them sent out, some to die in the maneuvering sacrifice of game pawns, Jieret knelt. He drew his knife, and scratched a crude map on the sandstone. From somewhere he mustered the necessary speech. 'Here is what your prince asks of you.'