‘The razor’s edge must be walked, and by friends,’ Sethvir admitted, aggrieved. ‘Above everything else, save that Arithon lives, the spellbinder you trained must not fail.’
Asandir said nothing at all, but accepted his drink from Sethvir’s unsteady hand. The two Sorcerers sipped, while the night fled away, and strained quiet drowned their conversation. For the weal of the world, more than Dakar’s endeavour hung in the reeling balance. The fate of another, as brave, was bound to face trial before him. Sethvir chose not to burden his colleague with the awareness, even as his earth-sense disclosed that the enchantress Elaira sailed towards a danger past reach of the Fellowship’s purview.
On the black, pre-dawn hour, before Asandir saddled his horse to begin his rushed passage to Havish, farther east, by the southcoast of Vastmark, the pale glow of daybreak already etched the winter-bare foothills under the rim of the Kelhorn Peaks. There, in the trackless wilds, the isolate stone tower of the Reiyaj Seeress raised a thin silhouette against the bronze glow of the morning sky. The post she inherited numbered among the oldest of the Third Age powers extant in the world. Daylong, she perched in her high, gimbaled seat, blind eyes like pearl turned sunward. Immersed in deep trance, she followed the light and saw whatever the solar rays touched directly, or reflected off the night face of the moon. Born in her remote eyrie of stone, she never descended. Few knew she existed, and next to none understood her dedicate purpose.
At times, throughout ninety years of stern service, she viewed events that the Fellowship Sorcerers were wise to avoid. Her Paravian title, in fact, meant ‘to touch the forbidden.’
Life showed her squalling births and the bleeding death of heroes, the outbreaks of wars, and the fevers whose grievous cruelties broke minds and hearts. She knew secrets and perceived beyond sight. The golden flares where dragons dreamed were clear as language to her perception. Also the music, untamed, where Athera’s most unfathomable mysteries still walked the green earth.
Where the light went, the oracle’s sight followed, never with more unswerving persistence than in the dark places where secrets stayed hidden for reasons most fair, and graspingly foul. The moon’s subtle rays, turned back in reflection, had lent her the keyhole’s view through the warded shutters, behind which Selidie Prime wove her plots to upend the power of nations.
Dawn that morning, the Seeress’s keen awareness watched the Matriarch’s shadowy nexus.
Unblinking, with her seamed eyelids cupped to desiccate orbs like milkstone, the Reiyaj Seeress traced down the source of that pattern. She beheld a galley streaming the banners of a Havish registry run in her oars for a landfall at Ithish. There, the ship’s ready crew cast the docklines ashore to tie up and off-load her cargo. On deck, braced at the rail through the jerk as the longshoremen’s heave snubbed the vessel, the Reiyaj crone received her clear view of the woman about to be tested: the extraordinarily gifted, rebellious initiate the Koriani Order desired for the sole purpose of baiting a trap.
Elaira’s inestimable worth as the tool to stalk Arithon’s movements brought a circle of five ranked enchantresses to Ithish, pitched for ambush in the water-front streets. The moment the oath breaker set foot ashore, she would forfeit the protection of Havish’s crown justice. Which shift to town law made her fair game to be snatched back into the sisterhood’s custody.
As the eyes that served the Biedar eldest, the Reiyaj Seeress surveyed the moment of reckoning poised to unfold. Her insight a lens of infallible clarity, she saw a woman driven to fierce independence by the scope of her natural gifts. Bound like the jessed falcon under the constraints that crushed most child conscripts to obedient subjugation, Elaira bore the survivor’s scar of unquenchable determination. She was still self-possessed, whole and vital in spirit. But the tenets of choice remained to be seen, sprung from the deepest tap-root of her character. Just as a balance, soon to be rocked, might heal or destroy the exalted mystery that sourced Ath’s sacred gift to the world, this woman’s fate was the candle that could illuminate, or the torch that would spark mass destruction.
The threads of bound energies, touched by the sun, stripped the truth from all masks of concealment. The fey sight of the Reiyaj Seeress read into the forged lines of Elaira’s purpose and unveiled no tangle of murk; no dishonesty clouded the enchantress’s presence. Handfast as Arithon’s beloved, she had completed this rough winter passage to seek guest asylum of the Biedar tribe in Sanpashir. For that quest, and for the grand tapestry of a future yet to be written, the Reiyaj Seeress kept vigil. Appointed as visioner for the eldest of Mother Dark’s guardian hands, she launched her bid to determine which of two strands would prove to be strongest: the hatred or the merciful instinct that nurtured the heart of the healer.
Late Winter 5923
Testing
Elaira snugged her salt-fusty mantle against the chill wind, blown off the snow-fields of Vastmark. The brisk work of the deck-crew, laying out fenders, ended with a thump as the side strakes of the galley jarred into the bollards. The gangway was rigged and run out, while the first gulls climbed, weaving against a sky pebbled with gilt cloud and notched by the steep roofs of Ithish. Elaira adjusted the satchel strapped under her mantle, a precaution that foiled the quick knives of the cutpurses, and saved her bottled remedies from freezing. While the quartermaster debarked in a puff of fogged breath, ship’s papers in hand for the customs shack, the enchantress lingered aboard. Her careful survey measured the seaport and the certain prospect of danger before her.
The witch-hunt deferred on departure from Redburn would resume, sharpened by the tactical advantage lent by weeks of advance preparation. She expected no quarter. The extended delay, spent sheltered in the Cascains while the galley rode out the fury of South Sea’s black storms, would have spurred the Matriarch’s temper.
Yet daylight revealed nothing sinister awaiting her at the wharf-side. The weathered planks glistened, blotched with damp where the wool-capped men off the luggers landed their iced barrels of cod. The reek of fish-oil mingled with smoke from the salting shacks, and the shipboard taint of tar, oakum caulk, and mildewed sail canvas. First port on the east-bound passage around the twin spurs that flanked South Strait, Ithish was the plainest of the southern anchorages, a battered jumble of timbered sheds hard-worn as a supply stop and ship’s chandlery. Wealth did not settle here, coddled by the tropical current that warmed the coast farther east, where the flow of riches and jewels moved with the silk trade from Atchaz.
This rough-cut landing was not exotic with the fragrance of orange crates, or perfumed by the pitch tang of lumber. Instead, the docks sagged under the rancid weight of the wool bales, shorn raw off the Vastmark flocks. The brittle alpine cold rippled under the fumes of the smelters’ flues, where mined tin from the mountains was refined and cast into ingots. Instead of artful stained glass, tropic spices and marble statuary, the exported bounty of salt cod and goat cheese was packed in straw and sealed in stacked barrels. Burly stevedores in fleece jackets muscled the flow of goods between ship’s hold and wagon. They did not flaunt bare torsos or wear nosegays of jasmine twined into their headscarves by the teasing wiles of belled harlots. Here, the list-bearing factors went bundled in fur, not satin brocade.
Amid the patched leathers of the high-country drovers, the frayed slops of bronzed sailhands, and the coarse garb of the labourers, the order’s cosseted Senior talent would stand out like trinkets dropped into a nail keg. Hardened locals were apt to flip talent the sign for the Evil Eye, or flash temple talismans to avert wickedness. The order’s sisters were not loved at Ithish. Not since the bitter, lean times, when Vastmark’s shepherds once had been forced to sell out their talented daughters to save themselves from starvation.
Arithon’s influence had ended that past trade in flesh, a fact fallen to obscurity through ten generations of book-thumping Sunwheel advocates. But for the Koriathain stationed in Shand, the grievance stayed raw as their aged ranks thinned, deprived of that source of young talent. The sist
ers staked out to waylay the Prime’s renegade held bones aplenty to pick, and a revenge hell-bound to fall without mercy on the best beloved of Rathain’s crown prince.
Wooden shutters clattered as the dock-side shops opened for business beneath the painted swing of chained sign-boards. Any window might hide unfriendly eyes, while the shaded mouths of the alleys offered the ready cover for a hostile ambush. Elaira shivered under her mantle, hesitant as the early foot traffic thickened. More folk abroad lent no safety in numbers, with the increased bustle as likely to mask the movement of enemies.
Her foreboding became cut short as the galley’s first mate arrived with a token payment dispatched from his captain. ‘Here’s silver, with thanks for your salves to ease the oarsmen’s salt-water sores.’ Above the yaps of a stray dog from the street and the cry of the slop-taker’s boy, he apologized, ‘I’m asked to direct you ashore, if you please. We need the deck cleared to winch up the hatch for unlading.’
Elaira accepted the coins with good grace. Moved on, she considered stalling to warm her numb toes in the customs shack. But as she picked her way past the stacked crates and baled wool, and the clucked complaint of fluffed poultry in wicker baskets, she skirted a beggar, curled up in the fish-nets heaped on the wharf. If any man napped in such miserable straits, likely the Ithish officials gave the discomfort of vagrants short shrift.
Shivering beneath her wool cloak, Elaira scanned the approach to the street, obstructed by a fishwife’s parked hand-cart, and several stevedores burdened with cargo sacks. Attack would overtake her beyond the dock: Koriathain reliant on the use of charged quartz shunned the counteractive effects of salt water. They must not risk the chance she might bolt, or delay them with wards of protection.
Cautious, lest the town housed a temple diviner, Elaira opened to mage-sight and assessed the mixed swirl of life energy emanated by the passing traffic. Her healer’s eye could discern the male aura from female; differentiate the blotched taint of the hung-over sailhand from the tired grey of the blowsy whore. She could sort the red jangle of ire let off by a cheated craftsman, or the vital orange of the labourer who unloaded kegs from the brewer’s.
The joyful vitality of the children who chased the mangy dog sparkled a scintillant flare across a recessed alley, where a more sinister skein of hazed brilliance shimmered from a hidden cleft, entrained by the matrix of an active crystal.
A Koriani initiate lurked there, poised to spring. Patient, Elaira engaged in light trance. Her refined senses might sort past the back-drop patterns of brick, board, and mortar, and neatly unveil the conscious connections to expose the covert pack set against her.
Except the chased dog skidded around the baled cargo and plunged in a scrabble of claws down the dock. Its manic vitality excited the chiaroscuro tapestry of auras and lane-ripples into a cross chop of chaos. Elaira dampened her heightened faculties before the upset wracked her to nausea. She surfaced to a sharp breath of air, just as the stray bolted past her. A smiling longshoreman snatched for its scruff, but the wily animal skittered sidewards, tongue lolling. One hind paw hooked through the dumped fish-nets. Wrenched up short, the dog yelped. Its panicked struggle tugged the leg free, but the drag of the mesh also dislodged the sandbag that wedged the stacked casks. The unstabilized pile collapsed, layers tumbled apart with a deafening boom that scattered bystanders, swept over the wharf, and caromed off the bollards and crates. One barrel burst to a white puff of flour. Several others splashed into the harbour, to screams of dismay from the customs shack.
Elaira dodged clear, while two alert workers grabbed the pelting children and whisked them out of harm’s way. The only casualty was the beggar, wakened too late to respond. As the last of the casks bounced and rolled to a stop, or bobbed like corks in the tide’s race, the struck victim lay still as caught wrack amid the yanked snarl of twine.
Elaira looked on in silenced distress as the distraught dock crews gathered in sympathy. Fresh blood snaked over the man’s brow, bright against the heaped wrack of fish-net. Too well, she knew that head injuries were dangerous. Without skilled help, the luckless fellow might perish. Perhaps worse, he might suffer permanent damage, left to the ignorant handling of even such well-meaning bystanders.
Torn, she knew if she paused to assist, her Koriani enemies would refine their strategy for her capture. Wisest to move on for Prince Arithon’s sake. No one would condemn her for selfishness, with her remedy bag tucked underneath her thick mantle and no recognizable badge to mark her profession. She could slip on past with none the wiser. The stricken oldster was a penniless layabout, without a spare button to reward her services.
But impulse outpaced the clamour of reason. ‘Don’t shift him!’ Elaira blurted to restrain the well-meant concern of the dock crew. She ran, cloak flung back to access her remedies. ‘I’m healer-trained. Please, let me have a look! That person may need critical care. His condition might require a board litter before he can be moved with safety.’
The nearest longshoreman pushed back his knit cap. ‘Mistress,’ he acknowledged, then backed the oblivious gawkers aside to make way for her. ‘Bless your generosity. Tell us anything else you might need.’
She nodded. Dropped to her knees in the welter of nets, she traced light fingers over the flaccid body bundled into its noisome layers of frayed clothes. She parted the grease-shiny rags and explored the ripe flesh beneath without pause. As a child, she had known such misfortunate misery, when homeless poverty forced her to scrounge for life’s needs on the streets. Then, a canny destitute man she named Uncle had shared the poor-quarter squalor and watched over her. Had he not shaped her earliest years by his kindness, she could have been seized as a toddler, then sold by the ruthless to service the vice in the back-door brothels of Morvain.
Elaira could no more have passed this wretch by than will her own flesh to stop breathing.
‘No broken bones, no damaged spine or cracked skull,’ she declared as she fastened the mangle of mismatched buttons to restore the man’s dignity. Surrounded by curious labourers, she perched on her heels and appealed for assistance. ‘The gash from the bang on the head requires stitching. For that, I could use a pail of hot water, and another with packed ice, and a towel from one of the taverns. Best to begin straightaway, before this poor fellow wakes up.’ Unflinching, she cradled the beggar’s bloodied head. A practiced lift of each eyelid confirmed the matched reflex of his pupils, a favourable sign. The blow may not have caused a concussion.
Elaira concluded, ‘Does Ithish maintain a charity ward? Good. This man ought to be taken there and held through the night under observation.’
The requested items arrived, hauled by a flushed, cheerful barmaid who also assured that the dock-master heard of the accident. ‘None will disturb your good work. Today, divine Light’s blessed the needy, that’s certain.’
‘Human caring, in fact,’ Elaira snapped, tart. ‘I give succour for joy, before duty or dogma.’ On the open wharf, shielded inside the huddle of gawkers, she cleaned the victim’s cut forehead, then applied black-root oil to numb his nerves before she set the gut stitches. The advanced techniques learned from Ath’s adepts let her soothe the man’s traumatized aura and infuse the calmed energies with the harmonic frequencies to encourage mending.
‘By Fate’s Wheel, did you see that?’ a longshoreman marveled. ‘Treats that nameless bloke just as gently as if he was family!’
‘Wish my carping shrew had such heart. Seven years married, she’s sore in the tits as a crooked-horned milch-cow.’
‘Beats on you, does she? That’s a proper comeuppance for planting her belly with too many weans.’
Through laughter, the complaint from the hen-pecked husband ran on with rueful amusement, ‘Rails, rather, the old bag. Froths at the mouth from morning to dusk with a tongue like a rusted razor.’
‘Try bringing her flowers just once, or forgo your taste for the drink,’ Elaira suggested.
The afflicted spouse shoved a thumb under his shir
t and scratched at his navel. ‘Tide and tempest,’ he marveled. ‘Not drink! And how could a silly bundle of daisies do aught to shut the brass trap on that harridan?’
‘Dumbfound her, maybe,’ a comrade chipped in, to grins and more wisecrack advice.
Elaira finished the cleaned wound with tansy salve and firm bandages, then administered a dosed infusion to ease the pain of stiffness and bruises. She stayed on while the fellow regained his senses and ascertained he suffered no dire complications. A few minutes more saw him settled from shaken confusion. The moment he was back on his feet, the bored longshoremen broke up to resume their day’s tasks. Elaira chose not to leave before she satisfied herself that two silvers paid to the dock crew’s foreman would see her head injury escorted to a bed in the Ithish infirmary.
The scruffy dog and the children were long since gone when she cleaned her steel needles and packed up her satchel. Pallid sunlight had shortened the shadows, with the water-front dives immersed in midmorning’s brisk business. Koriathain still lurked amid the thickened crowd, strengthened by reinforcements: to Sighted vision, the nearer side alleys now crackled with the crystal-tinged blaze of their presence. Disconsolate, Elaira hunched into her cloak. Too late for regret, she faced the misfortunate penalty, that the shimmering blaze of the healer’s techniques learned from the wise at Ath’s hostelry had marked her out like a beacon.
Exposed beyond salvage, measured by enemies as if she had stripped all protection, Elaira abandoned the marginal haven lent by the open wharf. She edged into the teeming street braced for trouble. The first strike might come in straightforward assault, launched by what seemed like a commonplace ruffian. Or she could be waylaid by insidious means, her active shields breached by a spell of compulsion. Prepared for both tactics, Elaira clasped a sweaty grip on the belt knife under her mantle. With the quartz shaft of a natural Atheran crystal palmed, left-handed, she skirted a dray-load of Sanshevas molasses, ducked a matron hawking meat-pies with leeks, and side-stepped the rank splash as a shaggy cart-horse balked in its traces to urinate. Alert senses poised between subtle perception, she strained to winnow the nuance of threat from the seethe of dock-side activity. Her facile experience was hard-pressed to sort, since the taint of the charm maker’s talismans to ward drowning, and the spiced aphrodisiacs worn by the whores might also mask darker workings.