‘Your canon’s outdated,’ Dakar retorted. ‘You haven’t heard?’ He broke off and smiled, all teeth, then let fly. ‘I was booted from the Fellowship’s good graces for upstart behaviour. Correct your holy records on that point, at least! As for the spurious charges just cited, what hard proof do you have to condemn any one of the three of us?’ Still distastefully pinned by two muscular guards, Dakar waggled his hips with obscene invitation. ‘Go on, you egg-sucking albino parasites! Strip me to the skin like you did the old man! You’ll find nothing interesting tucked in my rump cheeks. Not a splinter of bone, or a plucked wisp of hair tied in cloth and infused as a fetch to bend anyone to my purpose.’
The examiner sniffed. ‘The dangerous fact that you mock such rare knowledge refutes your pat claim of innocence.’
‘Does it?’ Dakar stiffened, awkward as a gaffed trout beneath the crush of hobnailed boots. ‘I’ve been Fellowship-taught to discern the nuance between right workings and wrong. Tell me, what arcane study makes you an expert? Prayer? If Trey could be summarily searched at your whim, then bound in chains without cause, shouldn’t we watch while you turn out your own sanctimonious pockets, first?’ Forced to shout, the Mad Prophet hurled down his gauntlet. ‘Or how does the court know you aren’t twisting my will? Or anyone else’s, for that matter?’
Outrage exploded into a shocked uproar that plunged Daliana’s plight into eclipse. Even as the dedicate captain raised his sword to impale the lout heretic, Dakar turned his cheek and shrieked over the noise, ‘I demand a formal review of this case by an accredited temple diviner!’
More concerned for decorum, the Lord Examiner curbed his aggressive officer with a rebuke. ‘The Light’s blood retribution will take place in public.’ Then, unsmiling, he dismissed Dakar’s pestering plea. ‘Pity your case! The diviner attached to my train left for Tysan at the right hand of the avatar, Lysaer s’Ilessid.’ Against the barrage of unrest from the street, his remonstrance pressed yet again for swift closure. ‘Sadly for you, Etarra does not maintain a staffed True Sect temple. With no resident diviner to serve your appeal, my office determines your fate. Let the record be sealed. Have the guilty removed for immediate execution.’
That peremptory sentence unleashed the guard, who moved at once to drag the condemned to the scaffold. Since Trey offered no fight, and no fetters were struck, which dashed her last hope of escape, Daliana shivered, too parched to speak through her terror as the white-armoured dedicates closed in to take her.
No such set-back quelled Dakar’s ripe tongue. While his bucking contortions sweated his swearing guardsmen to grunts of effort, he raged, ‘Who are you pimping for?’ Mulishly kicking at armoured shins, he pealed at the officious examiner, ‘Why rush for the sword and the pyres? Or does your false doctrine fear a change of verdict if you waited for the word of a vested diviner?’
‘But I am here!’ a clear voice declaimed through the turmoil. ‘More, I’m bound by my office to declare this session a mistrial!’ Mud-stained from hard travel, the out-of-turn speaker barged through the already breached doorway. While the dedicates at the threshold gave way, the newcomer added, ‘No act of sorcery has befouled these proceedings!’
Swept down the aisle like a scud of storm-cloud, the temple diviner raked back his hood. ‘Free the prisoners at once,’ he commanded the captain.
‘On what authority?’ the examiner shrilled. ‘This is a flagrant breach of High Temple order!’
A thin man with a sensitive face and a shock of disordered, red hair, the diviner looked pithlessly trapped as he tugged off his glove. Unveiled, the ruby seal ring he wore gleamed with the mayor’s cartouche, bestowed as Lord Lysaer’s token. ‘I carry fair warning. Disobey at your peril!’
‘Corruption! Conspiracy!’ the flustered examiner howled. Through the restive roar of the crowd, he snapped contrary orders to the ranked dedicate. ‘Captain! Seize that forsworn diviner. He has been suborned by Darkness itself if he thinks to commute a criminal sentence with a counterfeit claim to be the spokesman for divine will!’
‘This is not temple ground,’ yet another arrival declaimed, whiplash curt from beyond the broached portal.
‘Seal off that entrance!’ the examiner fumed. ‘Is every free-booting protester allowed the fool’s chance to disrupt this tribunal?’
While the chastised dedicates swarmed to bar the doors, a flash-point barrage from the outer hallway crisped the wood panels to cinders and smoke. Shouting, astonished, the guardsmen reeled backwards, several beating live flames from singed surcoats. Then, as if clubbed, they sank onto their knees.
Lysaer s’Ilessid emerged through the flurry of sparks. Haloed from blond head to spurred boots in pure light, he breezed past the smelted wreck of the hinges and kicked through the last smouldering, charcoal debris. Fresh from the saddle, his scarlet mantle wafted the scent of foamed horse as he whipped back the folds and exposed the emblazoned seal of Etarra. Down the aisle he came in clipped strides, ablaze with a corona of power not raised in public sight for over two hundred years. The view shattered objective credibility. For doubters who had smirked over a myth, or scoffed at the embellished fancy of legend, denial smashed at one stroke.
The examiner blanched. His impervious poise blasted to disbelief, he darted a furtive hand beneath the breast of his Sunwheel robe.
Whatever he sought with brazen desperation prompted a shudder of dread. Prickled by a surge of blood instinct, Daliana screamed. Still chained, all but felled in the paralyzed grasp of the dumbfounded dedicates, she wrenched at her bonds, pressured by the raw need to take to her heels for survival. In concert with her terrified struggle, Dakar bellowed in warning.
Trey moved, shed his poleaxed guards by stark force and smashed shoulder down through the rungs of the prisoner’s dock railing. His forward surge ducked the belated guard. He straightened as fast and swung his cuffed forearms in a sweeping stroke that slammed into the examiner’s propped mace. The metal-shod tip skidded backwards and hooked between the official’s robed legs. Trey caught the jewelled tip. His adroit wrench torqued the examiner’s balance and tumbled him down the carpeted stair.
The object just surreptitiously palmed was flung clear. A small packet cast loose from an untied silk wrapping bounced to the floor near the Mad Prophet’s feet.
Dakar pinned the item under his heel, then yelled bloody murder until the temple’s diviner dashed forward and retrieved the crushed morsel of evidence.
Etarra’s town council beheld the construct just unveiled: a wad of scrap linen torn from a man’s shirt, twined about with a stamped copper band and fastened by a lead sigil. The spelled mark, quite deformed by Dakar’s apt weight, still clamped a hank of black hair. More than the item’s sinister appearance, its aura of wrongness pitched Daliana to clammy distress.
The mere touch stung the temple’s diviner to recoil. ‘Light Avert! That thing reeks of dark sorcery wrought with vile intent to seed ruin!’
‘Well it should,’ declared Dakar, bitterly crisp and no longer afflicted by drunk affectation. ‘The sigil configured into that seal is a bane ward wrought by a Koriani grand circle! Your priestly delegation has spear-headed a conspiracy. Behold the proof of a plot launched to usurp the mayor’s seat and ensnare Lord Lysaer as the order’s string-puppet to extend the True Sect’s influence.’
Trey shrugged free of the dedicates’ hold, shed his locked chains, and tipped back his bent hat. ‘There’s danger yet active. Let me dispose of that.’ Commanding despite the tattered wreck of his clothes, he took firm charge of the construct before Etarra’s stunned magistrate murmured a protest. Past the outflanked guards in a purposeful stride, Trey ducked down the side aisle, limped past the gawping crowd, and left through the open door.
Colder than sword steel sheathed in ice, Lysaer did not turn a hair, or remark on the irregularity of a Fellowship presence. He spared no glance at the awe-struck onlookers. Swathed yet in a blaze of adamant light, he confronted the examiner, collapsed in prostration amid his cru
mpled regalia.
‘Who carries the key to the prisoners’ shackles?’
Movement, to his right, as a trembling dedicate owned up to that responsibility.
Lysaer cracked, ‘Withdraw your men! Dakar is not guilty, and Daliana sen Evend is reprieved from this baseless charge of dark practice. Release her at once. Then answer my call to account for the harm done by this court’s ruthless case of mishandling!’
With scarcely a pause, the searing rebuke laced into the disgraced examiner. ‘How dare you sully my law by disrupting due process, then seeking to lay wrongful blame on an innocent?’ Arctic blue, the Lord Mayor’s eyes did not waver. Tangled hair and aristocratic, pale skin lost no majesty for the grime ingrained by hard travel. In whip-crack consonants, Lysaer raged onwards through a hush that gripped the air like sheared diamond. ‘That woman’s heroic stand with a knife has exposed your criminal ambition! All present have witnessed that your temple works hand in glove with the Koriathain. What blandishment did their Prime Matriarch offer your high priesthood at Erdane? Did you truly think to parade me as the front to incite the followers of your false doctrine?’
The diviner grovelled on in fraught shock, then gushed on in supplication, ‘Blessed Lord, forgive! Most of us knew nothing. Nothing! I swear by the Light. Our examiner’s grotesque corruption was enacted under tight secrecy! Let His Radiance carry the blame for his guilt, and show divine mercy to those of us in his train who have stayed righteously faithful to your god-sent cause.’
‘Faithful? To what!’ Lysaer returned a glare that smoked with fury. ‘I reject any claim to become the figure-head avatar of your religion. Your creed is hollow and nothing of mine, but a sham to entice weaker minds into slavery!’
Before the shamed diviner drew his next breath, Lysaer dismissed his plea with a roughshod demand that brooked no appeal. ‘Tell me how your priesthood would punish the act of wielding a charged construct fashioned by forbidden practice?’
The distressed diviner pressed his damp forehead to the floor and recited by rote from the temple canon. ‘The penalty for malign sorcery is death by a sword through the heart, with the body consumed to ashes by fire.’
‘Then stand erect and take charge of your own!’ Blistered past patience, Lysaer declared the verdict forthwith. ‘By your own covenant, see justice done in my town square before sundown. Make use of the readied scaffold and pyre. Then withdraw your discredited embassy. Get out of my sight, to the last mindless hypocrite, and be far beyond Etarra’s walls before your apostate’s remains have cooled. Or else forfeit the delegate’s grant of safe conduct as I challenge your Light-sotted dedicates to take arms upon my field of war!’
Late Winter 5923
After-shock
Daliana returned to the hazy awareness of close warmth and the intoxicating softness of linen bed-clothes, pressed and sweetened with herbals. A bliss lately encountered only in dreams did not shatter upon reawakening, transformed back into oppressive, dank stone, and the stiffened aches of a body beset by relentless exposure to chill.
Instead, she basked in the sweet kiss of sun spilled through sparkling glass, which bathed her shut lids in carmine. Memory recognized the spice blend of sandalwood, overlaid by the scent of the bees-wax polish that infused the Lord Mayor’s private suite. The creamy linens and fine coverlet that cosseted her smelled of the patchouli a rich man’s valet used to soothe fair skin after shaving.
Astonishment followed. She was in Lysaer’s bed: a circumstance ripely deplored by her ancestor, Sulfin Evend, when his two-fisted heroics had snatched his liege from the past jaws of disaster.
Reprieved from the scaffold, Daliana sheltered under the tenacious protection that Lysaer s’Ilessid awarded to those who defended his weakness at mortal hazard. Therefore, truth backed the legend: loyal persistence in fact could destroy his regal shell of reserve. A terrible hurdle, that few friendships crossed, since the hazardous service that guarded his back held no guarantee of survival.
Daliana smothered her vixen’s smile before that spontaneous reaction spoiled everything. She was in Lysaer’s bed! Not the outcome she had imagined, or wished, though at present, his imperious motive seemed chaste. Though the nicety of her feminine privacy did not receive the same degree of respect. Daliana noticed that someone’s gentle fingers stroked her hair, while two heated male voices clashed in debate, immediately overhead.
‘I will not rescind that order! The muster proceeds. Don’t argue! This ugly development requires an armed stand to confirm my active resistance.’
‘That’s madness!’ Gruffly pitched, less controlled, the denouncement packed sting. ‘Lysaer, you cannot ignore the dire influence you must withstand—’
Contradiction came, smoking. ‘Yes! I do know. The pressures of risk must be faced! Compromise at this pass is unthinkable.’ Movement provoked the slide of a silk sleeve, as a gesture forestalled interruption. ‘The True Sect temple’s aggressive crusade now seeks conquest by outright invasion! The priests are not allied with the Koriathain through shared interest. Their temple aims to consolidate power, a drive the Prime Matriarch steers for her own ends to recapture my half brother—’ The breathless, strained pause stretched into harsh tension before Lysaer curbed his besieged will and resumed. ‘Believe this, Dakar. I knew when the Master of Shadow was freed. Did you truly think the onslaught of the Mistwraith’s curse would escape me? Heaven’s grace! Ever seen a fox caught in a leg trap? This horror is unimaginably worse. Defy that at your peril! You can’t grapple the nightmare. Nor will I allow you. My trials won’t stand your mage-sighted conscience stumbling about underfoot.’
The clipped rejection rang with a chill most would have mistaken for enmity.
Daliana’s inborn talent for truth-sense perceived only deeply armoured defensiveness. Lysaer, afraid, retreated behind the unimpeachable facade of the statesman. Even in private, he dared not give ground. Weakness only fed the malign forces he grappled. His sharp evasion desperately sought to vent deadly pressure before the frothed pot boiled over. ‘The Mistwraith’s geas resumed on the instant my mother’s bastard recovered his liberty. Since then, the coal of irrational hatred burns in me, waking and sleeping.’
Silverware chinked against porcelain as Dakar broke off his pursuit of a meal. ‘You know you can’t hope to stand in the breach!’ he bristled in anger. ‘Don’t fool yourself, twice. That lie led to slaughter. Front a war host again, and you doom yourself to far more than your half sibling’s murder.’
The hand paused amid Daliana’s warm hair. Its trembling contact betrayed the stark struggle as her liege beat back the next surge of unnatural hatred. He dared not speak. Even the thought of his half brother’s name might tear the first breach and unleash disaster.
Lysaer drew a firm breath. Then another. His stopped fingers stirred, then combed once again through the chocolate tresses fanned over the pillow. Whether the activity lent comfort or distraction, or forced him to plumb some deep, hidden strength in the presence of female helplessness, he managed to leash the levin-bolt storm of cursed madness. Flushed to cold sweat, a bit laboured, he clarified: ‘Prime Selidie burns to reclaim her chess piece to check the Fellowship’s interests. I don’t favour magecraft. Never have. Never will. That stance sets me up as the order’s best tool, if only to pitch this world’s civilized peace into chaos. Are you listening?’ His brisk pause underscored the dull throb of unrest, where dissenting fanatics still mobbed the outside streets. ‘Against such odds, I will stand or fall! Whether or not I can rise to surmount the trials before me, I plan to step forward and fight.’
Dakar’s repressive quiet caused a tense hitch. Lysaer’s fingers bunched into a fist, then uncurled. His determined caress resumed like a litany, wedded to vigilant tenderness.
Unlike his whiplash of imperious authority. ‘Don’t expect me to turn a blind eye on the Koriani Order’s unscrupulous meddling! I will not become the Prime’s icon to spur on the priesthood’s agenda or raise my sword to unleash the temple’s d
edicate legions against Havish. My enmity has been declared in public against the True Sect religion. I must back that position with emphatic force, or else the just integrity of my word is reduced to posturing calumny.’
‘We agree,’ Dakar said, seemingly rattled frantic. His chair creaked to the sigh of squashed upholstery as he shifted his stocky frame. ‘At all costs, and on all counts! That’s why I must challenge your choice to march at the forefront of conflict. You cannot defang the Light’s canon, Lysaer! The false creed is a juggernaut, long since spun out of control. The masses who cling to such figure-head worship won’t bear restraint, or be led through your better intentions. The myth that glorifies their blind faith will defend itself against reason. Never mind kindness, or upstanding morals! If cornered, the temple priesthood will shed blood to secure the web that feeds its survival!’
‘This should stop me?’ Lysaer’s laugh followed, vulnerable with all the caring warmth of his unselfconscious humanity. ‘Such execrable power already has underwritten the execution of innocents! We’ve exposed a plot that shields itself under ambassadorial credentials for the actionable purpose of treason. The canon’s debased cause does not blush at suborning the law! More, its wickedness has conspired with tools of dark sorcery in a covert assault to break my free will! Tell me again that I have no cause to destroy the edifice of this false doctrine? These hypocrite priests do not serve mankind but manipulate secrets to fuel their ambition. Who is left to oppose that violation? I must turn this insidious tide of abuse and stand up for humanity’s born right to freedom.’