TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

  'He can't last an hour,' the Sorcerer reassured. A downbeat of wings skimmed him on a quarrel's straight course through a gust. 'If you want, we can wager when he'll collapse. Double stake, if Sulfin Evend can manage to catch him before he lands on his face.'

  Yet even the bite of corrosive humor failed to raise any quip in response. Elaira's anguished attention remained fixed on the blanketed form strapped over the drooping horse.

  Distance and altitude failed to mask the details of Jieret's relentless defeat. He still wore his leathers, the soft buckskins Feithan had tanned with such love streaked and torn where the light bolt had grazed him. Bloodstains blotched his wounded shoulder, bound up in frayed strips of rag. The russet braid that had once rallied his war band like a banner dangled down, clawed to napped tangles by each grabbing thorn branch. Wind flicked and snapped the stained ends of the dressing bound over his ruined eyes.

  The ignominious certainty must sting like rubbed salt in the sore of his misery, that shortly his cut clan braid would be nailed to Lysaer's sunwheel banner as flaunting proof of his capture. In a day, Lysaer's cause had undone a lifetime's unassailable dignity. A s'Valerient son who should never have failed in his charge as Rathain's caithdein, his proud build and stag's strength had been purposefully broken. The horse bore him on like a ragpicker's haul, bundled for two-penny salvage.

  While the snow swirled and winnowed, and the eagle sustained its grim vigil, Elaira's held presence erupted to fury for Lysaer's self-righteous cruelty. 'Ath's deathless mercy, I dare not move to help him! How much worse, as caithdein if he became forced to betray Arithon under the obligation of a Koriani oath of debt?'

  The eagle bristled the hackles on its crest. 'Meddle in the fate of a sanctioned crown prince? No Prime Matriarch ever dared!'

  'You've been out of touch,' Elaira revealed, her acid thought shaded to sorrow.'Selidie's predecessor already set precedence. Morriel laid claim to Cattrick that way, and spoiled Arithon's machinations at Riverton.' She had the respect not to press home the point, that Koriani politics had grown more aggressive through the years, with Fellowship numbers and resource left erosively curtailed.

  The eagle shook out its ruff. The sharp lift of the wind screamed through taut pinions as it circled. 'You've the same flaying tongue as Kharadmon, even if female wit is more subtle.'

  A spark of grim humor leaped through the contact, a flicker that might have been laughter had Elaira's awareness been couched in its housing of flesh. 'I've no guile at all, as your colleague Kharadmon already had the poor grace to find out.' A pause, while the snowfall thickened to pearl. The wind-whipped procession below stalled for parley, then turned off the trail to seek shelter and rest in a gully. While the gelding shook the caked ice from its mane, and the captive was unlashed from its saddle, Elaira bit back in acerbic honesty, 'Are you going to act?'

  The eagle folded broad wings and plunged in a whistling descent. He leveled off mere yards above the iced tips of the brush. The veiling scrim of the snowfall that obscured a clear view of the valley scarcely troubled his silken glide. 'I am guile itself. Knowing that, and informed of my reputation, would you care to strike a bargain?'

  Elaira's self-contained pause wound into taut trepidation. 'This won't be a contest concerning how long the s'Ilessid takes to fall down.'

  The Sorcerer's silence seemed an ominous affirmation.

  Below, the horse slipped and scrambled down a bank of loose scree. A bloom of bright red showed that Jieret's ripped shoulder had opened and started to bleed.

  'The choices are ugly,' the enchantress returned, agonized. Yet the fierce heartbreak engendered by pity ruled her more powerfully than fear. 'Speakfirst. I can't weigh the decision without knowing your terms.'

  Davien flapped, the strength in his wingbeat no natural bird's, that drove without effort through the rough gusts of low altitude without buffeting. Nor did his yellow, predator's eyes show emotion as he fixed on the party of three men and the horse, now jammed into a huddle in the thicketed lee of an outcrop. 'As caithdein of Rathain, Earl Jieret is entitled to ask Fellowship help. I can, perhaps, arrange the opportunity for the man to enact that fine point of law in free will. In return, I require your presence. You need do nothing else, lady. No act of yours shall touch Jieret's fate. Just lend me your company as living witness for the duration.'

  Elaira knew better than to ask what stakes might be played by a Sorcerer named as Betrayer; rankest folly to think she could second-guess the least clue to Davien's underlying motivations. Pragmatic by necessity, she considered the clan chieftain, and the devastating cost that would be extracted for his untimely survival. 'Can you assure me that Jieret will see release and live out his days a whole man?'

  No liar, Davien did not play on false hope. 'I can promise nothing concerning a mortal man's destiny. Earl Jieret's own choice must prevail. What can be restored is his power to act. He alone must decide how he'll use it.'

  Wrenched by the sight of the limp form being manhandled off the steamed horse, aching for the crimson stain slowly soaking through the ill-tied layers of wool bandage, Elaira cut off debate. For Arithon's sake, as well as Earl Jieret's, the stakes riding on her refusal posed the more deadly predicament.

  The misery of inaction would torment her far worse than flinging all caution into the winds.

  'Very well, here's my word.' Brought up driving hard-handed bargains with thieves, the enchantress phrased her matching bid in shrewd language. 'If there's a chance Earl Jieret can escape the entrapment of serving as bait to draw Arithon, I accept.'

  Late Winter 5670

  Near and Far

  Crouched over her scrying mirror at Highscarp, Prime Selidie gasps in stunned joy to the prioress, 'Mother fortune, we've been blessed! Davien the Betrayer has just made a serious misstep. He can't know we've reclaimed our Great Waystone from Sethvir's keeping at Althain Tower, or he'd never dare seal a bargain with an initiate who's bound under my sigils of prime power. He's vulnerable, don't you see? The great amethyst can entrap his discorporate spirit, lent access to him through Elaira . . .'

  At Avenor, High Priest Cerebeld addresses the Light's inner cabal, his gold-and-white robes tainted crimson by the failing light through the tower casement, 'I know there's been war, with blood spilled on both sides. The Master of Shadow is flushed, but not taken. Further word from Etarra's high priest says that our blessed Prince moves to join the dedicated arm of his sunwheel companies, and renew the pursuit with sharp vigor . . .'

  On Daon Ramon Barrens, under lashing snowfall, the scattered survivors of Earl Jieret's war band huddle in fireless cold, unable to know how many kinsmen their desperate strategy has kept living; and they pray that abroad in the howling darkness, a sword-bearing liegeman still braves the storm, driving three horses and standing staunch guard on the cloak-wrapped burden of Rathain's unconscious crown prince . . .

  Late Winter 5670

  X. False Step

  The storm churned the night to a black maelstrom, snow lashed horizontal by howling winds armored with flaying, chipped ice. Harried in flight by the fury of the elements, the eagle banked in descent. He folded long wings and settled to roost on the gnarled root of a deadfall. Ephemeral as a shadow cast on dark felt, he fluffed gold-tipped feathers and kept unseen watch on the campsite a stone's throw away.

  There, Lysaer s'Ilessid sat huddled before the whipped warmth of the fire that Sulfin Evend maintained with hard labor and dogged persistence. Dry hardwood was scarce on the barrens; green sticks of hazel and ice-crusted rowan would not take a spark in such weather. The blaze was kept fueled by scrub evergreen needles and a scavenged collection of pine knots, streaming vile smoke and shot sparks from the high content of volatile resins. Naught else could withstand the blizzard's wild onslaught. Twice in an hour, Lysaer roused and shook piled snow from his shoulders.

  Despite his meticulous care to mask weakness, he showed all the suffering signs of a backlash provoked by overextension. The massive flux of energies he
had channeled in blind rage had upset his auric balance. Vertigo skewed his senses. He started at ghost movement and sprang tense as phantom sounds grazed his hearing. Subject to bouts of spinning faintness, followed by shuddering palsy, he handled himself with eggshell tenderness and kept still as much as he could.

  The gloved fingers tucked in his lap were still trembling. Nor did the incursion of Paravian haunts fade for the sake of infirmity. Lysaer felt them, sometimes pressured by an intimacy that made him gasp as they grazed his sensitized skin. His untrustworthy vision failed to dismiss the discomfort, but tended to remake the darkness and blown snow into patterns of leering ghosts. Minute to minute, the day's toll of dead seemed to hound his presence in reproach. Their hands, clothed in wind, plucked at his clothes, and their gaping mouths moaned for vengeance.

  Lysaer rejected their burden of grief. The ruler who bogged himself down with past failings inevitably lost his vision. A man's death, or a company's, must be measured by how many others their sacrifice could keep safely living. The Shadow Master pinned under pursuit in this wasteland meant the blameless, walled cities were spared. The strong heart must not falter in chastisement of evil. Only stern measures could wrest the future away from the influence of fell shadows and sorcery.

  The Narms headhunters had not given their lives to no purpose. Today's slaughtered dead had sprung the first line of the Master of Shadow's defenses. A vigorous scouring of Light had cleared the landscape of lurking barbarians. Now, arcane subterfuge broken, the quarry was stripped of defenders. Lysaer huddled under the damp silk of his mantle and counted the effort a victory. If his searing assault had spared any clansmen to stand in the enemy's defense, they would be scattered and few. Set on the run, they would lack the stamina and resource to turn the flower of the Alliance: crack troops he had groomed from a decade's summer musters, and marched well equipped from Etarra.

  Sustained on taut nerves and anticipation, Lysaer regarded the gust-snatched streamers of flame. If his trembling sickness relented a little, his blue eyes burned too fearfully focused and bright. While the drive of his cause consumed every thought with an addict's obsessive intensity, he weighed the tactical worth of the captive, tucked against the rock outcrop.

  The clan chieftain still lay where his knees had buckled. His great frame shuddered in a shivering daze, listless since Sulfin Evend had bound his ankles. More stout lashings anchored his wrists. Stretched spread-eagled between two stunted alders, he could not crawl away. The afternoon's stint on horseback had exacted a punishing cost. Despite the Lord Commander's brusque ministrations, and a second round of cautery to stop the fresh flow of bleeding, Jieret languished. The throb of his injuries pressed him to silenced misery. By the fireside, Lysaer could have counted each one of his laboring breaths.

  'Relax and stop frowning, he's not like to die on you.' Wet and tired himself, pitched to a moody alertness that promised no tolerance for setbacks, the Alliance Lord Commander slogged in from his latest scavenging foray into the brush. 'Give him a night's rest to let his wounds close, he'll be past the worst danger of bleeding.'

  Sulfin Evend unburdened his bundle of cut pine boughs; then the prize of his search, a twisted branch snapped from a scrub oak. While Lysaer tracked each movement with eyes like chipped sapphire, his officer brandished the stick like a wand and inscribed a circle around the fire. Lips moving as though in prayer or incantation, Sulfin Evend sealed the crude figure that enclosed himself and the Blessed Prince.

  'What foolery is this?' The rough indignity of the setting stole nothing from Lysaer's regal authority.

  'Protection, plain and simple.' Sulfin Evend poked the stick upright into the flank of the snowdrift beside him. 'Koriani witches employed by my father say a circle drawn with cut oak, and spoken over with words, will turn aside the simpler forms of dark spellcraft.'

  Prince Lysaer bridled, his attack the strung reflex of a spider caught on a jerked strand of web. 'You feel yourself threatened?'

  Sulfin Evend paused. Cat tense on his feet, he snapped a gesture toward the chieftain he had bound captive. 'He's clanbred, and sired as well by a bloodline not to be trifled with.'

  When that terse explanation failed to lift Lysaer's censure, the Lord Commander beat the ice from the folds of his mantle, and sat, riled to a pang of rare temper. 'What, did you think I would cut a man's tongue for sheer spite?' He sustained his prince's displeasure and pressed back in deliberate sarcasm. 'You can't believe that I buckled before the trifling fear that some fool might be swayed from the Light by a spurious claim that the Spinner of Darkness could possibly be your close kin?'

  Lysaer averted his face, a sharp break that gutted the offensive from the bearing assault of his scrutiny. 'But the enemy is my half brother, more's the pity. The sordid fact's not well-known.'

  Sulfin Evend's determined jaw sagged, stupidly open with shock. Then he closed his mouth, gathered himself, and strove to assimilate the impact of what he had heard.

  A gust dulled the flames. For one fickle second, storm and illusion prevailed: the wet hair plastered against Lysaer's turned cheek appeared tarnished, his invincible shoulders bowed down by the ache of a grinding human weariness.

  On a ragged note far strained from his usual poise, the avatar who bore title as Prince Exalted delivered his distasteful explanation. 'The infamy happened when I was three years of age. My mother was raped by a brigand. Her get of that union became a living aberration, raised and trained at the knee of an unprincipled sorcerer. At the outset, the nightside of power was needed. You'll have heard how my gift of light was interwoven with spelled shadow to restore Athera's choked sunlight.'

  'I was a child,' Sulfin Evend admitted. 'The news we received at Hanshire was embellished, a wild tale of supernatural acts, bought in blood sacrifice and enacted by foul pacts with demons. Most folk believed such. For a year or more, my nurse scared me silly by using the sun as a threat to forestall my penchant for mischief.'

  'She'd claim that overexposure to light would eat into your flesh until nothing remained but a skeleton? I heard that one as well, though in my case, from irate citizens who blamed my hand for the frightening change in the weather.' Lysaer's warmed, lifting humor ebbed away, unveiling a gravity as jagged with pride as chipped flint. 'No bloodshed happened, in fact. No one's act of conjury raised demons. But the use of black practice engendered corruption. The s'Ffalenn bastard proved as morally derelict as the blackguard who fathered him. When the mist was defeated, he cozened the Fellowship Sorcerers to endorse his claim to royal birthright. In conspiracy with his clever machinations at Etarra, they sought to insinuate a reign of terror and darkness.'

  The damped embers rebounded. In the gold wash of flame light, Lysaer's determined composure seemed touched to etheric sorrow, the fallible mold of bone and flesh sustaining a spirit that burned too pure for the clay of mortality. 'What use to weep? My gift of light became rededicated as this world's hope and shield.' His scarred past sustained by a reserve of stark courage, he finished, 'Athera is now threatened, and kin ties lie forfeit. My given charge is to destroy an aberrated creature who should never have seen birth, or lived to draw breath in the first place.'

  The tragic history, so long silenced, had been presented uncolored by melodrama. Annealed by his years of solitary shame, Lysaer never softened his commitment to defend. His staunch quiet, disallowed the inner ache of betrayal; before the festering sore of a mother's violation, he displayed no weakness of human character. He met stoic self-sacrifice with matchless grace, until the observer who shared his secret burden of pain could nol escape feeling awestruck.

  Lysaer was Light, a being of quickened inspiration whose magnificence was not dimmed, but lent force and weight by the contrast of tawdry blankets, and the earthbound drape of his snagged and cinder-burned clothing.

  Unshrinking, the Blessed Prince faced his Lord Commander. With the attentive humility that melted stone hearts, he gave his sad past a swift closure. 'I surely owe you an apology.'

&
nbsp; His blue eyes maintained their unwavering sincerity as he unlaced the gloved fingers locked over his tucked-up knees. 'Athera is not the world of my birth.' His contrite gesture encompassed the marked circle in the snow that earlier had raised his contempt. 'I've disparaged your effort, presuming clan rule was deposed for reasons of tyranny. The sorry practice of raiding and headhunting led me to believe the atrocities were the offshoot of feuding hatreds handed down since the uprising. Your action, tonight, bespoke more than prejudice, and your remark on clan heritage perhaps sprang from a threat that's outside my awareness. What has you concerned? If your fear has substance, then why has the reason been quietly held in obscurity?'

  'Avenor's records were destroyed.' Discomposed to embarrassment by the sympathy in Lysaer's diligent regard, Sulfin Evend took an awkward moment to rise to the change in subject. 'Like most old towns, the royal seat of s'Ilessid was burned. Later, in case any fugitives survived, armed zealots came back and leveled the walls, stone by stone.' He cast an uneasy glance at the barbarian prisoner, roped like a steer by the outcrop. 'Wait. First let me dose Red-beard with a posset. Sorcerers and seers always hear what concerns them. If we're going to broach ancient history in depth, I don't want to feel that one's eyes boring holes through my back.'

  'Seers?' Lysaer's startled wariness raised a shiver that ran, head to foot, through his seated frame.

  Sulfin Evend raised ice-flecked eyebrows, unamused, while the tireless wind whirled snow like white gauze between them. 'You never suspected? Barbarian lineage inevitably carries a strong latent measure of mage talent.'