The temple’s talent wagged a waspish finger. “Consummate evil would make the dead walk!”
“Well, nothing’s down there beyond buttons and bones,” quipped a cheerless dedicate, emerged from the stairwell.
The diviner’s gimlet glower brushed past him and measured the vaults. “We’ve not checked the sealed tombs.”
“Are you frothing mad?” The Koriani enchantress shoved to the fore. “That’s desecration!”
The priesthood’s official dismissed her outrage. “I will have the Spinner of Darkness flushed out! No one’s blameless remains will be exhumed, provided you don’t interfere.”
“Uncivilized swine!” The enchantress presented her back, while six burly dedicates braced up for the onerous duty.
“East to west, buckos! Let’s take the biggest ones first.” Grunting with effort, they hefted a thick slab, burdened at each corner by the outstretched wings of marble angels, entwined and weeping. Stone shifted with a grate. A patter of dust sifted into the cracked vault.
Through grunts of gut-busting effort, a man’s gritted gasp, “Where’s the forsaken torch-bearer?”
A bystander’s scuffed footstep, and wavering flame-light spilled into the dank darkness within. Etched against appalled silence, somebody gagged. Then the massive lid slipped from another man’s nerveless grasp. The rest loosed their hold, and the stone lid dropped with a boom.
A man swallowed noisily. “Somebody else can open the rest.” Then he gagged, clutched his middle, and spewed, while his revolted fellows leaped away, cursing.
“No blighted fugitive’s holed up in there,” remarked a disgusted companion. “Lie in with those worms, he’d go screaming insane. We’ll all heave up our collops if we keep at this.”
“You spurn the work of your salvation under the Light,” the diviner retorted. “The Master of Shadow would lair up without qualm in the bosom of vile corruption.”
“Well, he might, supposing the wee scoundrel could raise such a stone, never mind he’s been wounded. Damn my sorry shade along with him if he’s stuffed himself in a blighted coffin.”
The rebellious man shrugged and looked to his superior, while his blanched companion wiped his fouled mouth and shoved past the insistent diviner. “The dead may rot on their own, and you with them, that’s my last word on the matter!”
The officer gauged his sullen, exhausted company and chose not to pressure them further. He declared the search finished and retired to the courtyard, where his captain accepted the closure of his crisply delivered report.
The diviner lingered on amid the fallen gloom. “Don’t assume for a moment that I’ve been deceived!” His insectile finger stabbed at the enchantress. “You’ve meddled here. Righteous men have been swayed from their path by your unwholesome influence. If you’ve harboured the Master of Shadow, I won’t rest until your last sisterhouse burns under the Law of the Canon.”
“You threaten the Order of the Koriathain?” she said, the chill in her presence no empty warning.
The horn call that signalled the company’s withdrawal relieved the outfaced diviner. He stifled his fuming reply and took his thwarted fury into the noisy commotion outside, where the mounted company swept him into their ranks and formed up for immediate departure.
While their cavalcade clattered off down the carriage-way, the enchantress kept watch amid the reproachful silence of the carved monuments. Around her, the embers of the spent torches dimmed and winked out. Dewfall silvered the faces of glistening stone under a risen half-moon, and the eddied air within the mausoleum relinquished its freight of stirred dust. She roused only after the diviner’s Sight had passed beyond range, and with shaking fingers, retrieved the crank key and released the lid of the sarcophagus.
She found her dangerous fugitive not only living but conscious. He stirred, a bit clumsy from prolonged chill and stiffened limbs. Tangled black hair emerged over the tomb’s rim, then his face, disarmingly split by a debonair grin. “You worked a deception under the nose of a talent diviner. I’d give you a kiss if I didn’t feel darned together through the pores of my skin.”
He had beyond any doubt sensed her sigil, unleashed when the searchers scuffed through her sand circle.
His perilous saviour smiled regardless, unable to govern her sympathy. “The lancers actually did my work for me, helped on by a mirror spell folding their dread back upon them.”
Arithon clambered out of the tomb, painfully nursing his leg, which had bled unchecked through his agonized, motionless waiting. “What of the Light’s faithful who suspect your defection?” But his abstruse question regarding her motive lost impetus, the squelch of soaked cloth not quite masked by his breathlessly charming apology. “I’m afraid I’ve anointed death’s door prematurely.”
Swung downward, he gripped the tomb like a limpet, too light-headed to stand.
The enchantress supported his unsteady frame. “Did you plan to bleed yourself out like a pig?”
“Me?” Arithon’s rejoinder quite failed to distance his helpless distress. “No. The brute with the chestnut beard and unshakeable aim with a longbow.”
But the back of his shirt and his breeches were sodden. “Ath wept!” she snapped. “You don’t have to pretend you’re immortal!”
“The True Sect’s conviction left you unconvinced?” Contrite apology fading, he swayed. “They insist I’m personified evil itself.” Collapse overtook him. He slid to his knees, smearing a scarlet swath down the verses graven across the vault’s pedestal.
“I’m sorry.” The tears she could no longer stem striped her cheeks as she eased him down at her feet.
Arithon lost his adamant grip, still fighting defeat at the last.
Her conflicted regret chased his release into gentle unconsciousness. “Damn the self-righteous stupidity of blind faith! Had those pious fools not disclosed your identity, honesty might have let me free your spirit through credible ignorance.”
Late Summer 5924
Ramifications
Awakened to enervated weakness, captive under the adept ministrations of the Koriathain who binds him to life, Arithon answers her anguished apology lately addressed to him in extremis: “I don’t hold you to blame for your choice of loyalty. The Light’s Canon would have enforced my execution. My ambivalent hope prefers the gamble your Matriarch’s purpose wants me alive …”
Deep into the night, Sethvir paces the library at Althain Tower, second by agonized second tracking the surge of unfolding event: while earth-sense shows Elaira’s desperate move, outwitting a dedicate sentry to bolt northward into the mountains to Kewar; and the critical value Prime Selidie assigns to Arithon’s survival dangles in the balance …
Rainy sunrise puddles the corpses of the dedicate lance company attached to the temple diviner, struck down, man and beast, on the Daenfal Road without any sign of trauma: and the constable’s hysterical dispatch to The Hatchet, overseen by a True Sect priest, blames the unnatural slaughter on sorcery spun by the Master of Shadow …
Late Summer 5924
VIII. Fifth Upset
Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn lay insensate for days, held submerged in dreamless oblivion by the Prime Matriarch’s urgent directive. The same orders moved him, against the indignant objection of the healer who removed the arrow-point from his leg. Inert and strapped to a plank to prevent a relapse into uncontrolled bleeding, he felt nothing throughout the transit that hefted him into a waiting wagon. Tucked like a bolster beneath bales of broadcloth, he was driven off, eastward, amid the stacked freight of an indebted guildsman. Coin changed hands to appease the crooked exciseman, whose squint eye assessed the haulage tax levied on the lake-shore causeway. For a cask of white spirits, the tower guard winked and ignored what seemed a harmless caper staged by petty smugglers.
The bribed officials never suspected their complacency stemmed from a spell-crafted influence. The lance company slaughtered to silence the Koriani collusion atop the necropolis kept the temple’s inquiry preoccupied els
ewhere when the laden wagon paused between post-stations. A brief rendezvous saw the comatose Master of Shadow shrouded under blankets and tarpaulin, then installed in a jouncing horse-litter. Under a sky clouded like pebbled iron, the guileful skills of three Senior enchantresses spirited him into the wilds of Daon Ramon.
Their Matriarch’s explicit instructions were met: to divert the scouring search for his person driven by True Sect decree, and to wield every binding sigil at hand to keep Arithon unconscious. The strategic cover of a bramble thicket let his escort tighten their arcane stays. They proofed their scribed spells against spitting rain, by then most concerned with ensuring their secured charge stayed disabled.
Haste and rough handling exacted a toll, and the set-back of recurrent bleeding. The leg wound fared poorly, damp weather followed by blistering sun compounding the complication of wound fever. But the sensible rest to let blood-vessels knit invited far greater peril, not least the Prime’s signal displeasure. Delivered at speed as a dangerous liability to the remote field camp in the Barrens, Arithon breathed at the Matriarch’s mercy, brought in due course under canvas and installed in the privacy of her pavilion.
The furore caused by his arrival escaped him, as the terrified boy wards directed to shift furnishings flinched under the proximal range of the ward sigils stitched through the carpet spread underfoot. The tingle of that arcane containment lanced into the depths of unconsciousness and stung the flicker of surfaced awareness. Bedevilled by pain, hazed under strong drugs, Arithon felt the bump as his bearers couched the plank on the trestles positioned to cradle his pithless infirmity.
Close air and trapped heat wore the rancid taint of summer-warm canvas, but no saffron tint filtered through his closed eyelids. His surrounds were curtained in gloom, with his wheeling dizziness and nausea derived from the back-lash of stayspells wrought by the Koriathain. Sickness weakened him further. Ambient sounds rang too loud, as though he was feverish.
He leashed rank impatience; tempered with caution his muddled fight to reorient his scattered focus. A furred tongue and dry lips bespoke the enervation of severe blood loss.
He lay bound hand and foot to a surgeon’s plank. The animal reek of his person included the whiff of clotted linen and medicinal astringents, and worse. Humiliation encountered the helpless indignity veiled under a dusty blanket. Arithon quenched his explosive fury. His straits had not been victimized by neglect. The deep ache of his leg wound explained the necessity keeping him prostrate. Patience mapped the extent of the damage. The drawn arrow-head had breached the wall of the artery, the grazed vessel and torn muscle precariously closed by festering stitches. Straps immobilized him at chest and thigh, bound overtop of the dusty scout’s leathers none had dared, or snatched time, to remove. Unattended, the injury would have been mortal: his right legging, sliced away at the hip, bared skin that recorded the expert support of a field bandage. More sigils placed there for regenerative healing rasped his inflamed nerves and played havoc with his effort to concentrate.
A life salvaged by enemy interests did not bode well. Arithon clung to the pretence of unconsciousness, sweating out his drugged torpor and striving to wring meaningful sense from the nearby activity.
A laden servant’s deferent footfalls dispensed cool water freshened with citrus peel. Over the clink of porcelain, a derisive remark sliced the whispers of onlookers crowded to gawk. “For a creature as pitiful as a soaked cat, he’s caused us a sack full of trouble.”
“A fool’s risk, to invite the sort of perilous trick that blindsided the Ettinmere shamans.” Through an agitated sigh of fine silk, the dominant speaker insisted, “I say put the bastard to death straightaway and be quit of his mettlesome spirit.”
“Execution has merit,” rasped a gravid alto, a cool pace removed. “The blow would cripple Fellowship interests. Why fuss? The mute man-servant could drag in a barrel and drown him without drawing blood.”
Seated to the sigh of squashed cushions, a wheezy colleague agreed. “The sorcerer’s too viciously wily for our further use as a game-piece.”
Another sister disparaged, “You seriously think he’d let himself be caged as a brazen tactic?”
“The chance can’t be ignored,” declaimed a different initiate’s fluttery treble. “You’d think differently if you knew how often he’s played my best scryers along like rank fools.”
Arithon had foiled their most advanced workings: more than once, tagged wild hawks with his personal imprint. A misleading strand of hair noosed to a taloned leg, or a blood-stain set into a feather had caused errant chases down avian flight paths for weeks.
“Well,” huffed the fatuous sister called down, “he can’t provoke mayhem under restraint!”
Which vapid prattle met caustic silence. Too many Seniors had cringed under first-hand experience: Arithon’s sleight-of-hand acts of incapacity always presaged his most vicious ripostes.
While collective debate caught its breath, the Prime’s entry crushed further discussion. “Get out! Every one of you, leave.”
Her command cleared the pavilion forthwith, to a brisk bustle of skirts. Arithon’s dread swelled at the speed of the onlookers’ departure. He was unfit to mount a defence. His senses swam under the harsh flare of daylight, snuffed into thick gloom and stagnant air as the curtain partition whisked shut.
A frantic attempt to manage his faculties crashed against spell-wrought barriers. Head spinning, he gasped for breath, while raced pulse and the punitive recoil of powerful sigils scraped his nerves to sparkling agony. Taxed vision recorded the oppressive blur of a female face hovering over him. Through the strained impression of bedazzling jewels and state dress, he grasped the heightened pallor of excitement and animosity, expertly obscured by cosmetics.
Selidie’s presence itself thrust an icicle pall through the heat of broad daylight. No delusion to mage-sense: the pervasive chill stemmed from a clinging nimbus of darkness attached to her form. Something more than the spells that maintained her longevity dimmed the natural stream of the flux. When her clubbed forearm hooked the draped blanket away to examine her prize, Arithon shuddered from her touch with revulsion.
The Matriarch wrinkled her nose. Two days, perhaps more, of prostrate infirmity would tax even a slattern’s lack of hygiene. Which caustic embarrassment wrung Arithon to a breathless laugh. “Behold, the creeping blight’s sullied the rose-bed. Your healer neglected to detail the nicety? Intractable bleeding has always required restraint and prolonged immobility. Since I’m delivered from blissful unconsciousness, I’m expected to blush with embarrassment?”
Annoyed as the fumbled blanket slithered into a heap at her feet, the Prime snapped, “Don’t waste undue gratitude!”
“And no thanks for the meddling favour, since I’m alive to voice the objection,” jabbed Arithon.
Prime Selidie applauded. Gross deformity muffled by wraps of lace gauze satirized the indignity of his position. “The assumption, in your case, that surcease exists is delusional madness.”
“Knowledge has limits. Imagination does not.” Arithon turned a face white with strain. “Since when has your order done other than rot, suffocated beneath a secretive hierarchy that kills innovation?”
“Why chase the seduction of useless debate?” The ferocity behind the Prime’s wide-lashed stare prickled chills over his clammy skin. “Did you honestly think I’d reward you with death?”
Mired in nightmare antagonism, the bound victim stared down stark defeat. “Hope does not surrender. Even for you.”
Bluster saved nothing: his bluff would be called. The spelled templates blocking his access to Shadow were impenetrable, perfected during his prior captivity. Selidie’s gesture dismissed toothless threats and summoned Lirenda’s assistance. “Secure his tied wrists with the warded shackles.”
Arithon flinched from the cipher-stamped chain. Spurred by visceral memories of horror, he thrashed as the cuffs of wrought copper and glass clasped his flesh. The blazing pain struck as the sigils took
hold. Recoil wracked him to convulsions. The scream ripped from his throat choked off as the pins locked in place and demolished resistance.
Arithon lay, a puppet with clipped strings, hard-breathing and still, the flame of awareness crushed by the tailor-made spells that subdued him. He could not prevent the subduction of will, or marshal his body for useless fight.
His rage stumbled, mute, while his spinning descent into darkness echoed with Selidie’s victory crow. “Imagination serves naught, in your case. The Fellowship Sorcerers forsook your royal blood-line and sealed my absolute claim on your destiny.”
The dark thinned and broke to smeared light like grey cobweb, acid with the burn of clamped sigils whose grip disbarred access to talent. An attempt to swallow rasped Arithon’s dry throat. His abused frame felt gelid as flotsam. Bound flat on a table, his arms ached with cramps, wrists painfully gouged by the anchoring tension of glass cuffs and warded chain. His oblivion had lasted just long enough to secure his captive survival. The regenerative spells on his leg had released, the scabbed-over weal closing naturally.
Which vital recovery saw his handlers setting the Prime’s final plan into motion. Movement wafted the air at close quarters. An industrious sister’s rustled silk breathed the musty scent of pressed rose-petals, cedar, and lavender, as she aligned a bronze tripod with a hooped rim above his brow.
Memory raised the spectre of the atrocity suffered when his consciousness was imprisoned in crystal.
The galvanic reflex to wrench himself free smashed against cruel restraint. Arithon seethed, seized immobile, while the hapless course of his fate moved apace, directed by the avid voice of the Prime Matriarch.
“No!” Charged with desire, Selidie qualified. “We stand to gain knowledge beyond precedent. Arithon’s experience settling free wraiths has enabled him to unlock direct access to Athera’s mysteries. I’ve witnessed proof. His Masterbard’s gift, refined through his land-sanctioned royal attunement, can resurrect ancient patterns and fuse the old workings of Fellowship Sorcerers. More, he thwarted our invasion of Caithwood when he harnessed those forces in tandem with prior enchantments wrought by the Paravians.”