Initiate's Trial

  She had reached a cross-roads, with no place to go. Forward, she chose to bear Arithon’s legacy, his ring on her hand no false token but a commitment deep as life itself. Behind, stalked the order and Prime Selidie’s tyranny: death or much worse, if her sisterhood’s oath called down the punitive force to destroy everything she held dear.

  Alone by the roadway, Elaira shivered, a live speck amid the wild vista. No clue arose to suggest how long her solitary vigil might last. Gusts whistled around her. Snaking wind devils of sand stung her eyes and erased the last, shallow smears of her inbound footsteps.

  The waning crescent arose, a poised ivory sickle low in the east. Shortly, its pallid yellow glow became notched by a silhouette that suggested movement. Then the breeze brought a quavering fragment of song. Heralded by a clear voice without gender, nine forms crested the dune in the moon’s path, graceful as wraiths and veiled featureless.

  Elaira was met. Not by the male dartmen swathed in the black robes and the stern dignity of desert-caste warriors, but by young women, the feather-light tread of their bare feet gracefully dancing. Colourful yarn shawls swirled from their slim shoulders. Fringed hems and layered skirts jingled with trinkets that shimmered like chiming bells. Delicate hands adorned with glass bracelets thumped the hide drums of small tambourines, whose brass cymbals clashed with a timbre sweetly piercing as crystalline chimes. The odd rhythms and eerie tonalities prickled Elaira’s nape.

  As the dancers flowed towards her, then ringed her around, the singer they also had circled stepped forward. He pushed back his hood. Elaira faced a weathered, ancient man, time-worn to an ebony polish, with features as used as creased leather. Long and lean and whittled as bone, he took her chilled fingers in hot, slender hands. His speech rolled in the thickened gutturals stamped by his desert dialect. ‘Are you to be the first of your order to come here with seamless integrity? None has tried, since Jessian Oathkeeper, who gave over her life for the virtue of silence.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Elaira admitted, uneasily warned that she had missed a critical fact. ‘Who was Jessian? Should I know her? If so, I don’t recognize her by that name.’

  The old man stood, crowned in his back-drop of stars, while the wind tossed the wool hems of his layered garments. He wore no bells, not a fetish or trinket. His surrounding wheel of dancers had stopped. They now faced him, motionless. The musical clash of their charms dangled, mute, the silence woven through the presence about them thick as an invisible mantle.

  Spear-straight, perhaps thoughtful, the aged tribesman accepted her stranger’s ignorance. ‘The records of your Koriathain condemned Jessian for treason because she swore three oaths, later to find them in irreconcilable conflict. She broke the two that would have brought harm before keeping the one least convenient.’ His sharp black eyes surveyed Elaira. A harsh moment passed, perhaps as he sounded her being for the same measure of courage. Then he added, not as an afterthought, ‘This happened before our kind and yours set foot on this world, Athera.’

  Which historical reckoning spanned thousands of years. The course of the ancient events his lore referenced could not be imagined.

  When Elaira did not speak but stayed attentive instead, the old man seemed pleased to omit further conversation. ‘Follow. She awaits, our most revered Eldest. Your coming has been expected among us for far longer than anyone but the Fellowship Sorcerers have been alive.’

  The bells shivered to life as the dancers resumed their gyrations. Surrounded by that watershed of splashed sound, given nothing to assuage her raw dread, Elaira let the desert folk draw her away, into the dunescape beyond the trodden path.

  The brisk walk through the trackless, soft sand did not take her far. A few hundred yards to the east, a rough rectangle of pitted foundation-stones marked the site of a tumble-down inn. The ruin had burned, once. Though the signs of the fire were long since scoured clean, and countless seasons of wind and rot had demolished the broken, charred timbers, the subtle signature imprinted by flame stayed embedded within the range of initiate vision. Plain sight showed a tombstone of chimney-stack, drilled thumb deep with the sockets where the iron spit once turned the roasts that fed hungry travellers.

  A short distance removed, a crumbled stone ring rimmed the shaft of a derelict well. If the depths retained water, no bucket and crank-shaft remained. Abandoned, perhaps, the site was not deserted: melted into the landscape, an ancient woman perched cross-legged within the sheltered hollow.

  Her form was swathed in unrelieved black. No feature showed. Only her seamed, mahogany hands, folded motionless in her broad lap. The escort of dancers had melted away, their departure so seamless that Elaira felt dizzied by the sudden silence. She froze between steps, dismayed as the old man broke her reluctance with a gentle push forward.

  ‘There. She waits. Your spirit name is well-known to her.’ His grainy speech ruffled her flesh like a ripple beyond word or sound, that rearranged thought and impelled the uncanny remembrance: once before, she had been addressed by an adept as Affi’enia, and by an Araethurian seer as Fferedon’li.

  Which peculiar lapse into reverie rushed through and filled her with a ray of warmth. Elaira aroused like a sleep-walker, shaken. She found herself come before the wizened crone, whose piercing regard and obsidian eyes saw down to the core of her being.

  She whom the tribal man had named Eldest did not arise. Instead, she leaned forward and sifted loose sand grains between the clean joints of seamed fingers. When she spoke, her voice was the whisper of wind, fluted over edged granite. ‘Here in this place past, Meiglin s’Dieneval gave over her fate to Mother Dark’s workings, and conceived the girl child your Sorcerers’ records call Dari s’Ahelas.’

  Elaira caught her breath. These familiar names held widespread renown. Meiglin’s issue had been the ancestral cross which linked the old caithdein’s lineage of s’Dieneval with the royal heritage that endowed the High Kings of Shand. The princess, sanctioned as the surviving crown heir, had been born gifted with Sight and rogue prophecy. Dari’s willful bequest yet remained, woven into the heritage of her descendants. Most often passed down as a latent talent, in Arithon s’Ffalenn, the legacy had wakened in force in the aftermath of his passage through Davien’s maze at Kewar. Lysaer also displayed signs of the trait; who knew to what depths the errant talent exerted an influence.

  As though such mindful facts were broached aloud, the crone peered upwards, eyes crinkled to her wheezed laughter. ‘Not a rogue gift at all! The legacy bestowed upon Dari also was ours, danced into manifest focus and made flesh and blood for the purpose of Mother Dark’s service.’

  Elaira stifled her torrent of questions. Never more acutely warned before this, nor shown with such frightful precision, she grasped how the thread of Prince Arithon’s fate ran like stranded light through Biedar fingers. What part Lysaer might play in the weave, she lacked the bold wisdom to speculate.

  The old woman nodded. Privilege granted to an astute listener, she continued to speak. ‘The coupling I speak of occurred in this place almost nine hundred years ago, as your way of measure counts time. But for Biedar folk, understand, the light of the Anslien’ya’s hope shines before and afterward. The moment is now, where Meiglin’s youthful joy found fertility in the arms of Shand’s last-sanctioned crown prince. The sand here’ – gestured by the sweep of an arm – ’the stars and the air are electrically brilliant, for us yet alive to the spirit-making that shaped this event. Your beloved, Arithon, does comprehend this, although he does not acknowledge the meaning, yet.’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ Elaira said, carefully poised as a footstep set down upon glass-thin ice. ‘He’s surely told you he has enough strident factions demanding a piece of him.’

  The desert matriarch’s regard became discomfortably acute. ‘Then have you come to plead this man’s case, that Biedar Tribe should release what you view as an unfair hold on him?’

  ‘No.’ Despite herself, Elaira suppressed the inward chuckle startled by her certain awareness
of Arithon’s fiercely indignant reaction. ‘The man, as you call him, would speak for himself and strike down such an act of presumption.’

  The old woman’s deep, direct stare stayed relentless, though perhaps her seamed lips twitched a fraction. Her suggested amusement never broke through. Instead, she broached her next inquiry. ‘Say why you’ve journeyed through hardship to come to us.’

  Such aware Sight perceived with pure honesty, through all layers of willful pride and self-deception. Elaira hesitated. She weighed her response, altogether too conscious she skated the razor’s edge: of countless thousands of words she might use, the least shade of meaning must perfectly match the authenticity of her intent.

  Less had to be more, she decided, and plunged. ‘Gratitude brought me.’

  The crone’s pause stayed adamant; she demanded the whole.

  Trembling, finally, Elaira admitted, ‘Kharadmon told me the Biedar had bent time and space to accomplish the feat that allowed Prince Arithon’s release.’ The tears she’d dammed back spilled over, regardless. Forced to a wracked whisper, she finished, ‘Thank you for breaking the merciless sigils wrought by my order to keep him caged.’

  Now the ancient smiled in fact, radiant as sudden moonrise. ‘Oh, my dear! Your Sorcerer did not disclose all of the truth. In fact, your own mindful action at Athir spun the first thread for Prince Arithon’s bid to regain his freedom.’

  Elaira’s breath shuddered to a shocked stop.

  ‘You might ask for that story,’ the crone invited, eyes gleaming beneath her sable mantle. ‘You possess the right to know, not just as yourself, but also by claim of the seal ring you carry.’

  Discipline could be made to impose a recovery. Elaira clung to an effortful calm while more volatile feelings she could not suppress drained her white, then unstrung every effort to rein back her weeping. Her terror spoke foremost. ‘If the clan woman, Glendien, conceived on that night, I must plead for the sake of Arithon’s quietude, and your kindness, let me never hear!’

  When no granted promise of silence was given, Elaira sank to her knees. Beneath the sharp stars that burned nearly as brilliant as others, above frigid white sand on the fated beachhead where the ritual just referenced had called Arithon’s life back into incarnate existence over two centuries ago, she attempted to bow as the supplicant. But the Biedar’s most revered Eldest refused to leave any spirit so stranded. Dry, withered hands clasped her younger fingers and firmly arrested the move to abase herself.

  ‘Oh, bravest!’ declared the most wise of the tribe. ‘You are not so bereft! Our own male singers also helped to loom the exalted pattern begun by your spinning. For this, you are blessed! Share with me, now. Partake of the essence that your bold weaving bestowed upon this troubled world.’

  Touch alone could never unleash such a flood of harmonic brilliance. The crone’s gift of augmented sensation showered through Elaira’s awareness, then thundered into a roaring cascade. The overwhelming rip tide of bliss all but hurled her spirit out of her warm flesh. Torn wide open, then ravaged by pure experience, she cried aloud for a joy like wild fire and storm, magnificent beyond the limited scope of any mortal imagining.

  Then the peak moment ebbed. Quietly as a sigh, Elaira was spiralled back down, where a strength tough as wire supported her tremulous balance. ‘Be comforted,’ the crone said, and no more. Nothing threatened the tissue of buried secrets as she gently finished. ‘Rest at ease. Further grieving is groundless. Your act kept right covenant. Proof resides, as you saw, in the resonant purity wrought by the imprinted echo. The weave stands complete, since the free will of all parties concerned has stayed inviolate.’

  Elaira wrestled her overset equilibrium. A tactful quiet ensued until the crone loosened, and then freed her supportive clasp. The little pause finished, and her voice resumed, raspy as the sough of blown sand. ‘Against odds, your beloved was born. Beyond odds, he survives. What favour does your need ask of us?’

  ‘No favour,’ Elaira gasped, wiping her eyes.

  Swift reprimand answered. ‘We could shear away every claim imposed by your childhood vow! Do you wish to renounce your burdensome service, sworn to the Koriathain?’

  Nothing apparent had changed. But the depths to the old woman’s stare held a spark, and the solid, bleak space where she sat of a sudden felt storm-charged with danger.

  Elaira had no time to weigh her response, far less measure the yawning pitfalls. She could read only nuance. Loud as a shout, in all ways that mattered, she recognized this offer was not fashioned as a reward. Still, she was being tested. ‘I have never served the Prime Matriarch,’ she denounced. ‘Not once. Though I have done her bidding.’ Slammed through by the raced thud of her pulse, she repeated the gist, once affirmed many years ago before a Fellowship Sorcerer, while a drift-wood fire blazed in the rain on the shingle at Narms. Another moment, as tensioned as this, when dire temptation almost impelled the choice to breach her bound loyalty to the sisterhood: ‘My Prime may command my obedience. She does not, and never will own me in spirit!’

  The crone brushed the air with a dismissive hand. ‘Autonomy is yours to claim at a price. Defiance under the grip of the Koriathain did come to cost Jessian Oathkeeper her life. Would you beg a reprieve for the sake of your safety?’

  Elaira closed her eyes. Trembling, she clenched her fists, torn to conflict. For by the past counsel of Ath’s adepts, she did not stand alone to enact such a choice. Her voice was not steady, conscience saw clearly the fork in the path at her feet. ‘If I were to pose that request of your tribe, what would become of a quartz crystal joined into my personal partnership, left behind in Prime Selidie’s possession?’

  The hawk-nosed features of the Biedar ancient might as well have been carved of seamed stone. ‘The mineral structure that houses the spirit being of that steadfast friend would shatter. A light loyal to you would depart from this world, no more to shine as a beacon in darkness.’

  Elaira bent her head, torn to anguish. ‘Then, with respect, Lady Elder, in this world, I’m not free to indulge my desire. Not through the sacrificial destruction of another.’ The words carved a pit as final as doom, wide as a chasm, uncrossable. But the destined outcome was yet to be. She must live out her fate, enforced by an ethic stern enough to break the unbearably tormented spirit.

  Before Elaira, the crone sat rock still, mantled in a neutral silence that shouted of power past knowing. The dreadful pressure did not bend for her comfort. Neither was the dread interview carried to bring about release or closure. The old woman’s gaze continued to measure, black as dipped ink. ‘Your heart’s tie to Arithon is not addressed. Handfast to Rathain, what path will you take concerning your care for him? You have been told that his best protection relies on your absence. Now you tread the path of thorns with acceptance, that his trials are not yours to shoulder.’

  Elaira shivered, run through by bleak cold to make spring’s tender promise seem void. Empty-handed, she could but temporize. ‘I have trusted Arithon to survive by the strength of his own merits before. He has surmounted straits close to dire as anything he now faces.’

  The crone acknowledged. Almost as an accolade, her head dipped to a glint of the silver-white hair, netted under the night-dark hood of her mantle. ‘By that tenet, you must count his weaknesses, too, and rely on his bent towards goodness as never before. He must do the same through this passage. Will you let him? Aware of what he has become now, do you have the strength in yourself to keep faith even as he crosses under the shadow of failure? Or will you break before holding the risk, that the overwhelming mistakes from his past might yet destroy him through self-condemnation?’

  Fear itself lay unmasked by the ancient’s soft words. Elaira’s unrestrained tears fell and fell, her pallid cheeks striped with glistening ribbons, each one vivid with sting as a whip-lash. ‘What are you asking of me?’ she gasped, hoarse.

  Her plea brought no quarter.

  ‘Can you let Arithon go beyond your control?’ the crone question
ed. ‘Do you love enough to keep faith in him, even afflicted by your own loss? For he will seek his fate. If he can invent a fresh course by his wits, he will try to resolve his own happiness. Stand or fall, his life’s path shall be forged in this world. The gifts of his birthright will claim their full due. He will find himself, with or without you.’

  ‘I will not let him down,’ Elaira insisted, stripped to the steel of stark character. ‘I must back his claim to contentment first, whatever becomes of our union, which as his sworn mate, he has left in my protected keeping.’

  ‘That could cost you dearly,’ the eldest warned with a snap. ‘Would you find yourself left aged and alone, forgotten by him in obscurity?’

  ‘I might die unrequited.’ Elaira swallowed, huddled against the cruel chill that speared her through bone and viscera. ‘That is why Arithon trusted me to guard the one vulnerable flaw he knew he lacked the stern fibre to shield.’

  The ancient Biedar woman cupped her seamed palms. She might have raised an ephemeral flame that burned beyond the range of visible eyesight, or perhaps she awaited an offering with bare hands that might never be filled. ‘Your beloved would surrender himself to your Prime before letting any harm come to you.’

  Wrung past words, Elaira managed the nod for that insufferable affirmation. ‘If he should fail me, or I fail in him, the Warden of Althain assured the result would call down a disaster. I would break in two,’ she admitted, sapped dry. ‘But the hurtful stakes if I fall are not malleable. I’m not callous enough to withstand such a course. All the wrong parties would triumph.’

  The crone clapped, to a clash of the glass and copper bracelets that weighted her stick-thin wrists. For a split second, the black sands seemed rinsed white by a deluge of illumination: where the inn stood intact, a young woman emerged, bearing a laden supper tray. Her face was turned towards the hollow where a young man glistened, naked and wet from a wash at the well, his dusty clothing slung over one shoulder… then the echo raised out of sound died away. The night was the same: darkened and ordinary under the blaze of the wheeling stars. The crone pronounced, ‘You will stand the course.’