When buffeting flurries greyed out visibility, he kept close: caught her wrist, when she stumbled, and slackened his pace as her breathing grew laboured. His cagey gallantry revealed nothing. No behaviour suggested the concealed knowledge, that he walked the knife’s edge in defiance of her suspect standing. Whether he planned the demise of a string puppet played by Koriani intent, or if innocent, uninformed altruism moved him to shepherd her conflicted spirit to freedom, Ettin’s pursuit over rugged terrain bound their fates into brittle alliance.
Vivet fought for emotional distance. His soaked clothes and waif’s build were quick to wring sympathy. Fine hands reddened with chill, and piercing concern for her welfare too readily chafed at the directive stayspells enacted to break him. Vivet hardened her heart, while the cruel snow thickened, and pelting wind taxed the strength prodigiously spent to shield Valien. Forget at her peril: he was Master of Shadow, and dangerous, and inhuman centuries older than his appearance.
Vivet endured, masked behind hollow eyes. Huddled in her damp mantle, she gasped in the thin air and weathered the pinched hunger from days of scant rations. Fatigue played havoc with her perceptions, until the keening gale seemed to endlessly shriek her brother’s recriminations. She breathed in snow and coughed, her throat raw, while each step battled the endless, white maelstrom.
Nightfall hurled them into charcoal oblivion, ripped to further misery by jagged outcrops of lava that shredded boot-soles and clothing. Fingers ached and went numb. Exposed cheeks chapped and stung. Arithon limped on feet swathed in blood-stained tatters, when at last they scraped through the zigzagged, slit access into a ravine that sheltered their backs from the blasting gusts. The rock-walls narrowed, clad in ice by the steam risen off a hot spring farther below. Cumulative freezing had roofed the cleft, with sufficient space to snatch refuge.
Valien was wakeful and crying past remedy. Vivet shivered, hobbled by her sodden skirts. While she sought in vain to comfort her son, Arithon gathered their soaked cloaks, then requested the use of her shawl. He wadded the cloth at the entry to block off the frigid draught. When trapped heat from below fogged the cavern in warmth, he stripped his jerkin and shirt, and fashioned a nest for the traumatized child. “He’ll settle once he’s had something to eat.”
Vivet dug into the supply pack, found a dry heel of bread, and broke off a crust. “Here, Valien.” The boy took the morsel two-handed, stopped wailing, and gnawed, softened into contentment.
Arin withdrew the cloth-wrapped support of his hand. “I can soak the smoked meat in snow-melt, and cook millet in the pannikin, given a nearby blow-hole to boil the water.” His oversight while she shook crusted snow from her skirt made Vivet feel like a stalked bird. Prolonged absence had changed the dynamic between them. Despite the prepotent glamour laid on her, his gaze no longer held sexual interest.
“What are we to you?” Vivet dropped her wrung hems, afraid of him as never before. “Why shoulder an obligation to us you never desired in the first place?”
The blizzard’s shriek outside sufficient to risk conversation, he countered, “What made you leave your Ettin kinfolk before this? I think the honest beginning starts there.”
But that question broached the vulnerable opening for an interrogation. Vivet bent her head, worrying the soaked cord knotting her bodice. Averted sight scarcely blunted her awareness of him, heightened by the pernicious effect of the spellcraft engaged in close quarters. Dim light through the curtaining fabric defined the elegant musculature sculpted over neat bone, the fine skin mottled with bruises and scabbed from the shamans’ mishandling.
Terrified of the way she had come to be used, Vivet deflected the subject. “You can’t very well traipse about over pumice before tending your feet.”
“I’d not planned on walking.” Arin tossed aside his damp shirt, his amused glance spiked in sudden reflection as something flashed on his left hand. Not jewellery: Vivet knew he wore nothing for personal vanity. While he had avoided conjury in her presence, he had backed Roaco’s cabal down to a standstill, then had broken them by a method beyond her ken. Vivet fought to steady her breath, defencelessly out of her depth.
Arin removed the bright rings and tucked them inside his clenched fist. Then he cast away what seemed to be emptiness, until a stiff breeze whined past Vivet’s ear, lashed her hair and prickled her nape.
“Iyats!” she gasped.
“Yes. I culled them from the storm. If you’ll fill the pannikin with clean snow? They’ll return engorged and discharge thermal heat.” Arin’s brief smile failed as a reassurance. “After I’ve dressed my feet, I might snag a few more. If they can be wrangled, an experiment with refined possession might dry our clothes.”
Vivet shuddered. “That’s Sithaer’s unnatural work, bidding fiends. Tanuay’s said more than once, you’re a demon.”
She braced for the flaying retort her brother would have received, but Arin only leaned forward. His mild reach hooked the supply pack. He fished out the pannikin, then braved the outside chill with bare arms and returned with a dollop scooped from a nearby drift. While his uncanny method prepared an unremarkable supper, he said, “Have you never risked all for something you loved? My lunatic artistry was contrived in a pinch to spare friends from a hostile attack. Sithaer’s influence, you are quick to accuse. An unholy blaze, to fight fire with fire, except your small son can’t withstand more exposure. Which earthly ethic means more to you?”
She had relaxed too soon. Waylaid by reason that carved altogether too close to the bone, Vivet dared not answer, cornered as she was by inflexible straits. One mistake, and Valien’s welfare might become as expendable as the trapper’s. Shame burned her cheeks. Unable to meet Arin’s level regard, she discovered that Valien slept, the chewed bread-crust gone soggy in his slackened hand.
The storm raged with a fury to pen them for days, a strain wont to try any man with a known aversion to intimate company. Vivet stood on her guard, edgy as never before with the secret of her duplicity. Pretended innocence could not salvage the stakes sprung upon her by Arin’s undeclared identity. Like the fool who groped to cage a stray mouse and encountered a den full of weasels, she had no retreat from the back-stab of justified vengeance, or the frightful prospect of fielding his verbal dissection. Much too late, Vivet wished she had not birthed an innocent to the hapless role of a game-piece.
Yet if Rathain’s prince planned a scathing riposte, or whether he toyed with a cornered victim’s distress, he deferred his reprisal, while nightfall leaded the niche in mute tension. Vivet watched, without recourse, the fine, chilblained fingers fill and light her little clay oil-lamp. The hellish, fluttering flame exposed the effort applied to the comforts of shelter and food. In due course, Valien slept in her lap, warm and properly fed for the first time in days. Vivet fought her own heavy lids. She watched Arin scour the pannikin, still wakeful when he surrendered to exhaustion. Denied the tinder for her distrust, at due length, she also succumbed and sank into dreamless sleep.
The next morning, the storm howled outside with no sign of abatement. Handed breakfast upon waking, Vivet amused her son, while the dread Spinner of Darkness methodically soaked his festered soles in hot compresses dipped in the mineral spring’s salts. She suffered through the sulphurous fumes, then the bandaging, thoroughly done. Her attempt to provoke, using sarcasm, became drowned by the shriek when Valien tripped, and skinned his knee.
Song, then a story, spun for the boy’s ear, led to a game with loose threads that finished with Valien tucked up for a nap. Then the renegade sorcerer, done with looking raffish, proceeded to shave. Afternoon came and dragged on into tedium. Vivet sat, while with expert stitches, her maddening companion mended his clothes. When he settled, eyes shut, with no courteous overture made to invite conversation, her frayed patience snapped.
Voice raised over the snarling tempest, she prodded, “I know who you are.”
That opened both eyes. Pinned under a considering gaze that blistered for its bland indifference, she stiffened.
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“Do you, in fact?” said the man who was Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, beyond question. Bored lids fell and shuttered his unkind dismissal. “By the second hand taint of public opinion, no doubt, and in the dearth of my confidence.”
The sally struck home; and owned up to nothing. Stung, Vivet attacked. “And is your bard’s gift of sincerity false? I have heard you sing for Valien’s comfort.”
A smile of irony bent the hard mouth. Then Arithon said, “Valien wants to be care-free from pain.” The lean body, reclined against cruel stone, stayed sapless, while his comment thrust for the viscera. “Since when have you given me any glimpse of sincerity from which to work a true note?”
Weather enforced their confinement throughout the night and relentlessly, all of the next day. By the time the gale spent its fury and tranquil weather returned, clear and cold, Vivet faced defeat, having exhausted, by every means, her directive to crack his facade. The bite of his worldly wit outmatched her. His patience outlasted her relentless efforts to pry. Where her badgering only lulled him to sleep, he could infuriate her with a word, then dissolve her affront with the weapon of Valien’s laughter. But then, her task always had been unfair, doomed as she was under a yoked obligation, with her child the chip cast into a harsh bargain, sealed by her regrettable ignorance.
When the bitter dark brightened to a sparkling dawn, she broached the more mundane pitfall. “We’ll need to restock our provisions.”
Which announcement unexpectedly sparked his virile temper. Quick fingers, perhaps guilty of sorcerous murder, hooked the pack’s lashings from her: as though her slack rationing might have leveraged the dearth of supply to create the unforeseen delay.
Vivet stated the painfully obvious. “I can’t quiet Valien’s crying if he becomes pinched with hunger.”
Her target glanced up, dulcet humour restored. “Alas, freedom comes at a price. Coin for the toll, we’ll take the troll’s slog through the bog, and not the promenade into the sunset.”
The terrain lay against them. The vertical ridge to the west blocked quick access to the forested glens, where a set snare could bag game. The milder path from the barren heights turned downwards into the vales, a stepped descent leading into the flatlands of West Halla. Once below the timberline, they could not return to the direct route, at altitude, before Ettin’s archers seized the high-ground advantage. Ambush at the notch through the Storlain divide barred safe access to sanctuary in Elkforest.
Which finished Arithon’s plan to secure High Queen Ceftwinn’s justice, under charter rights, at the border of Havish. Pressed eastward instead, birthborn claim to free will relied upon ground where the old law ruled, crownless, by accredited stewardship. Flight to reach Melhalla’s caithdein in Atwood must cross a hundred leagues of wide-open plain, under armed interdict by the Light’s Canon, and then run the gamut of trade traffic moved by road and by river to Shipsport and Pellain.
Summer 5925
Displacements
At dawn in Daon Ramon Barrens, Dakar the Mad Prophet and Iyat-thos Tarens share dismay for the set-back unveiled by Elaira’s tranced scrying: “As we feared, Arithon’s been driven east,” which raises the prospect of crossing The Hatchet’s dedicate war host, and forces her drastic suggestion, “I see only one way for us to proceed …”
An invisible presence on posted watch over the affairs of Lirenda Prime, Kharadmon fumes over the message, just relayed to the peeress at the Daenfal sisterhouse: “The storm deflected over the Storlains has won our desired result, with the key pieces in motion to avenge our Prime Circle’s criminal destruction …”
Southbound at the vanguard of the Light’s war host, The Hatchet receives a dispatch from a horse courier’s hand, cracks a ruby seal with a swan cartouche, and reads with a satisfied crow, “Fetch the Lord High Examiner and his diviners! Our chase to hound the Spinner of Darkness will run him to ground in Daenfal …”
Summer 5925
XII. Exigencies
The quarry marked for Prime Lirenda’s retribution crossed the Tiendarion with his entourage of woman and child, driven before the persistent fury of the Ettinmen’s vengeful pursuit. Loss of the settlement’s bound raptors had not impaired their skilled archers. A flight loosed from the high ground would kill at extreme range without discrimination. Running targets, the vulnerable boy or the mother might fall prey, even an innocent life declared forfeit over the shame bestowed on a scandalized family.
Arithon laughed in the teeth of the threat, eyes sparked to baleful hilarity. “Sithaer take the hindmost, we still own the initiative. Roaco’s pack-dogs have no recourse left but to tail-chase our lead and trip over the consequence.”
“You say!” Vivet bristled, her russet braid a snaked tangle, and one harassed fist twined in Valien’s shirt to curb his fixated poke at a scuttling millipede. “Given we have no bows on our side to retaliate, the trackers against us won’t face fatal stakes.”
“Don’t they?” Arithon lashed in rebuke.
The implications posed by his identity by far too dire to broach, Vivet recoiled, exasperated. “You haven’t a weapon to carry the fight if we’re harried into close quarters.” They had only the kitchen knife snatched from her hearthstone, a short blade with a wood handle better suited for jointing a chicken. “We’ve the means to whittle a sharpened stick! Nothing to shield us against bodkin points aimed with a downhill advantage.”
“Well, by glory, tipped odds haven’t murdered us yet. Only the cast-iron fool believes lethal force is the only option.” Manner irreverent and black hair dishevelled, the s’Ffalenn bastard dismissed her fear. “Imagination exceeds limitation. I’ll deliver the proof. Stylish invention can outmanoeuvre the mob strategy of superior numbers.”
“Black craft-work and devil’s tricks!” Vivet retorted, caution abandoned. “You’d set the dark arts against innocent men, some of whom are my cousins?”
“No.” Arithon sobered, his wicked glance bleak. “I should think child’s play better suits your kinfolk’s cold-hearted sentiment.”
Valien whimpered under restraint. While he filled his lungs for an ear-splitting howl, the sorcerer half the world wanted dead scooped him up and nestled a whisper into his ear. “I need round pebbles. Lots of them. Can you find enough to stuff both of your jerkin pockets?”
Vivet cut across the frivolous distraction. “What unnatural cruelty will you contrive? Are blameless men to be gutted in those dreadful traps used by the forest barbarians?”
“How delightful that murdering curs keep your sympathy,” countered Arithon. “You’ve a cake of tallow soap in that pack?” Her furious nod woke a grin like a shark. “No ravening slaughter, by your express wish. Though if I cede my claim to a nasty revenge, we’ll attach formal terms to the contest. You’ll owe me an answer to my chosen question as forfeit if nobody dies.”
“You have nothing to lose,” Vivet retorted, flouncing the fir needles out of her skirt. “If you fail, and my countrymen perish, what paltry sop rewards me at the outcome?”
Smiling, Arithon surged to his feet. “The point’s moot, for my part, since I’d be dead also. You’d be sadly left to console the survivors and cash out the Light’s bounty on Valien’s behalf.”
Argument crushed, he set a cracking pace, shepherding his dependents under a close rein that took no chances. Noon came and went through Vivet’s clammed stand-off. The toddler napped, borne on Arithon’s back, cheeks striped in the shadows sieved through the scrub, with its chorus of chattering bird-song. Overhead, clouds sailed across a lapis sky, whisked by a breeze baked amid the sun-beaten rock of the heights. Sound carried, at altitude, magnified where freak echoes bounced off the slopes. Vivet walked with her skirt kirtled up, entreated by gestures to duck the low branches and by-pass the deadfalls without snapping sticks.
Yet efficiently as their small party travelled, the encumbrance of Valien slowed them. Ettin’s pursuit outmatched all exemplary effort. Snatches of conversation drifted through the ear-splitting buzz of cic
adas, cut by the sharp cracks of pebbles, dislodged and bouncing down-slope as the enemy trackers steadily closed.
Vivet ached. Her tired feet blistered. Dusk’s purpled shadow crept across the creased vale and at length snuffed the flame of the afterglow. She sank, grateful, onto a wayside boulder, snatched short of rest by Arithon’s unsympathetic grip on her elbow.
“Not here, not yet,” he murmured, steering her into the next switched-back, dizzy descent.
She endured, muscles trembling, while nightfall clapped down like the lid on a pot, sugared by profligate stars. Pressed onwards by touch through the warm velvet dark, they inhaled the verdant breath of the mists, lapped like cotton batts over the low country. Flight maintained under an urgent silence, they broke past the crabbed stands of dwarf evergreen and climbed down, like stairs, the roots of the stunted hardwoods. The dappled trail became licked by the late rise of the yellow, half-moon. Vivet carried on in a daze, splashed wakeful by the cold springs that gushed, leaping, from ledge to ledge, and plunged swirling into a rock-pool. Arithon followed the tumbling freshet, a jagged seam carved into the face of the mountain, broken where they forded the smoothed-granite basins, lapped in icy foam to the knees.
“Not far now,” he murmured, aware of Valien’s whimpers under the splash of the falls.
Vivet offered a twist of meat jerky and stroked the child’s tousled head. He quieted, sucking on the tidbit, a stop-gap distraction at best. “I can’t quiet his complaints for much longer,” she warned, her own stamina long since spent.
Steps mechanical, arms and back in strung knots, she pressed onwards in chilled exhaustion, her wet hem dragged against her shins and ankles as the little stream swelled, and tugged every footstep with gathering force. The ground shook to the roar where the confluence of a second, larger cascade jetted over the brink. The falls thrashed the humid air into gusts, whipped to frothing lace where the spray sheeted into a glassine pool far below.