She looked up, shocked by the bloodless pallor of his set features. “Are you ill?”
“No.” His green eyes snapped to meet hers. Ice-cold, the fingers that guided her steps up the risers. Shadowed by the massive, chafed bollard that anchored the barge ferry’s cable, he snatched a second to right his discomposure. She lacked the means to fathom his upset: that, until now, their lake passage had buffered the graphic disclosure riffled through the land-bound flux currents: The Hatchet’s war host commanded the northerly plain. A hostile encampment surrounded Daenfal’s landward access and restricted his ease of movement.
He said only, “This town always has been unlucky for me.”
Worse than the presence of Sunwheel might, the entrenched imprint of active Koriathain infused the stonework, both past and present. Up the ancient causeway, drenched in mist from the falls, his made double once had wrestled a balky pony and matched sword-play with a burly watch officer under the squat arch of the river gate.
Steeled for trouble, Arithon faced his latest, ill-starred entanglement. “Vivet. From you, I want nothing but this: tell me what hold the Koriathain have over you. Trust my word, their binding can be safely broken. Granted the freedom to reclaim your fate, you must be aware: the glamour their seniors settled upon you was an imprint, stolen from a woman I cherish. Tell me, does Elaira still live? And if not, might you know what befell her?”
Vivet recoiled. Her palpable fear met his nailing regard, as her secretive past caught up with her present. She dared not speak. Her directive permitted no recourse: bear his natural child or else see him dead. Failure to deliver the first sealed her ruin unless he abandoned her to save himself.
A horn brayed on the water. The winch cable thrummed to the ferry’s approach, and a surly bargeman shouted, “Move along!”
And the dazed moment fled, another chance to unburden passed over for self-preservation. Arithon fielded her rudderless stress without censure and recovered his purposeful stride towards the shoreside taverns. “I will provide the room and the meal, as I’ve promised. Perhaps you’ll regain the presence to think while I’m away at the market.”
The room he selected was quiet, located in a north-facing wing, away from the racketing crush of the landing. The third floor dormer overlooked a narrow alley, puddled with the overflowed suds from a laundress’s vats. A gangling adolescent with a piled hand-cart pinned up the rinsed shirts, then collected the dried breeches and sheets flapping in the breeze funnelled between the brick-and-timber tenements. Vivet used the view to evade conversation, watching a brown tabby stalk small prey holed up in a drain-pipe. She endured the slow minutes, dreading the meal arranged during their rapid pass through the downstairs tap-room.
Yet Arithon did not linger to eat. He stayed only to see Valien settled. At the door with intent to depart straightaway, she received his clipped instructions. “Pin the latch when I’ve gone. Don’t venture out. Once the girl brings the tray, admit no one. I’ll come back with supplies before dusk, and I plead, choose for the sake of your child’s future, if not for your own.”
Vivet returned no word. Before she turned from the casement, the door swung soundlessly shut at his heels.
The delegation Vivet expected followed the simple meal, settled savourless into a cankered stomach. Footsteps crowded the hallway without, a paralysed moment’s scant notice that her dread obligation came due. No polite knock lent the pretence of privacy for a meeting she was powerless to refuse. No courtesy call, peremptory authority flung open the unlocked door.
Koriathain invaded the room. A tall woman with pinned hair and a violet mantle, banded with scarlet ribbons: Daenfal’s peeress, close followed by four other ranked Seniors, then two more hooded sisters from the local sisterhouse. The circle of seven, arrived in grim force, were not a surprise. But the white-robed figures trailing behind them flushed Vivet to clammy anxiety. The enchantresses accompanied a True Sect examiner, regaled in his gold robes of office.
Crowded at his heels, quick as rat-hunting ferrets, a pair of Sunwheel diviners crammed inside before the door closed. Servants of the Canon, they surveyed the chamber with the riveted focus of their occult faculties.
The jittery one with the frown remarked first. “Your prize quarry appears to have fled.”
The peeress gave the comment short shrift. “Of course! Wily bastard, he’s Darkness itself. No one leashes the Teir’s’Ffalenn without leverage.” Glance fallen on Valien, her brisk order followed. “Take charge of the boy, straightaway.”
“No!” Vivet’s shocked instinct reacted, too late.
Someone’s strong arm checked her outraged rush. Protests availed nothing. The avid diviner swooped past and scooped her drowsy toddler off the bed. Wakened by the rude grip of a stranger, Valien’s terrified wail cut across the enchantress’s warning. “Vivet! Take command of yourself! Resist our directive, and I’ll see your oath of service enforced, and your by-blow destroyed.” Disgusted by the child’s kicking tantrum, she urged the diviner, “Get the brat away and secure him. He’s the Master of Shadow’s accessible weakness and our guarantee of the mother’s compliance.”
The examiner’s surgical stare marked the child’s dark hair with suspicion. “That mite’s the demon’s natural offspring?”
“His name is Valien!” Vivet cried, shaking. “Let me comfort him! He is innocent.”
None heeded her plea. Examiner and Senior Koriathain locked stares, the former self-righteously bristling, while the door whisked open behind them. The harried diviner hastened away, muffling his bundled captive’s hysterical screams. While the toddler’s wails retreated through the outside hallway and dwindled down the stair, the peeress denounced the examiner with piercing contempt. “If black hair hackles your sanctimonious principles, by all means! Sound the miserable creature for talent and prove his forgettable paternity to suit yourself.”
Vivet succumbed to her jellied knees. Released from duress, she sank against the edge of the bed. Too late at this pass, to lament her failed initiative: she had squandered every available moment to provoke the Master of Shadow’s demise on her own. Valien had been thrown to the wolves for her weakness. Cheeks soaked with distraught tears, she cowered under the peeress’s questions. “When will the conniving sorcerer return? Don’t hedge your answer! He’s embraced insane risks for your bantling, already. The drive of his blood-line, and murderous pride, won’t let him change his priorities now.”
“He intended to get us away before dusk,” Vivet said, defeated. “Please! I beg you! I will see this through. Only promise you won’t harm my child!”
“The whelp’s fate belongs to the Koriathain, and don’t dare forget yourself. More than your personal future rides on the probity of your commitment.” Maternal anguish dismissed, the peeress commanded her Seniors. “Carry on with your tasks. No mistakes! We are matching wits against the mind of a fiend. You’ll have no second chance with the s’Ffalenn bastard’s volatile strategies.”
Ruby pins flared like spilled blood in coiled hair as Koriani prerogative faced down the examiner’s fatuous scepticism. “You want True Sect credit for winning the day? Then trust my Prime’s long-term experience to arrange the defeat of your criminal target.”
The temple official pursed fleshy lips, his rosy hands laced in his cuffs. “As you claim, sister. Perhaps. I’ve seen no firm evidence. Nothing here verifies the vile presence of Darkness Himself.”
The peeress brushed the quibble aside. “Not being a fool, the Master of Shadow will do nothing to draw unwanted attention. He’s a secretive man, with unique susceptibilities that our plot will use to advantage.”
The examiner inclined his groomed head. “Nothing lost, nothing gained, beyond wasted time if you’ve overstepped.” His unimpressed gaze tracked the diligent Seniors, one of whom unreeled a spool of fine copper chain from a silk bag. Two others fastened the glimmering strand with gloved hands and wood mallets, fixing its length with bronze tacks to the inside window frame. They joined the end
s under the jut of the sill and sealed their work with an incantation. Then they crossed the room and treated the doorway and its board threshold the same.
The remaining diviner ventured his stuffy opinion on the particulars. “Nothing, your Eminence. If that strand carries spellcraft for an entrapment, I detect no shed ripple of resonance.”
“Naturally not!” snapped the peeress, amused. “How else would you blindside a clever adept with initiate mastery?” Galled by her Prime’s unwanted alliance, she lectured the True Sect upstart with brittle exasperation. “The ciphers were forged in warded secrecy elsewhere. They are currently dormant. No quiver of warning must deflect the flux before the pre-set catalyst triggers our snare.”
While the temple examiner received the assurance without satisfaction, the peeress was disinclined to reveal any further details. Her Seniors completed their task in brisk order, received their due leave, and departed. The True Sect delegation stayed only to witness the peeress’s last word to Vivet. “You will remain here. When your promised escort comes to collect you, do nothing. His downfall will unfold in due course.”
To the haughty examiner in his glittering jewels, she added with minimal courtesy, “Take your party down the backstairs, exactly the same way we came. I must clear the traces of energetic residue from this inn, and follow up with a sweep of the street.” Unwithered by his supercilious scowl, she ushered him over the threshold, still talking. “No one with talent remains for the capture. None of yours, or mine, linger in the vicinity! Never forget! We stalk a master sorcerer with a crown prince’s attunement, treading upon his sovereign ground in Rathain. He will be on the alert for any arcane interference. Light save you, I’ll hound any meddler to Sithaer who crosses my prearranged plan.”
The room emptied, and the breached door closed at length, the plink of the latch final as the last nail driven home in a coffin lid.
Vivet passed the unendurable day in wretched misery. She breathed in dread of a light-footed step on the stair, and sobbed by turns, shredded over the plight of her child in the bitter event the arrival she feared never came. Tension destroyed her peace. She paced and fidgeted, her stomach clenched, while the outside heat baked the slate roof, and the dingy room went from claustrophobic to stifling.
Vivet wrung herself dry of tears, while the workaday noise from the alley racketed through the long shadows of afternoon. She huddled, dulled by exhaustion when the subdued murmur of folk homeward bound drifted through the open window. Quiet fell as commerce slowed and the lake-side wharf settled at eventide.
The Master of Shadow had not returned when the bells tolled at sunset, nor by twilight’s grey pall, filtered through the mullioned casement. Vivet fretted in a cold sweat, distraught. Surely he had come to his logical senses and taken off on his own, unencumbered. She wept, cursing his name for her faint-hearted trust. Almost, she had come to believe his false promise, that he held the power to free her. Darkness at due length erased the last light. Deaf to the laughter and raucous shouts filtered up from the water-front tap-room, Vivet lay prostrate, reduced to despair. She dared not save herself. Ruin awaited if she left her post without the sisterhood’s formal permission. No matter that the trap laid by the Koriathain had failed through no fault of her own, until Arithon’s capture, both she and her child as hostage confronted the terrible consequence.
Arithon expected the inevitable enemy bid, aware Vivet’s straits cast the net to ensnare him. Therefore, he had given the inn a wide berth on his timely return from the market. His cautious watch over the occupied room from a distance extended into the quiet past midnight. Keen senses detected no dubious figures on covert guard. No talent lurked at the tap-room door, and none of the rowdy crowd, coming or going, had shown any signs of suspect behaviour. His exhaustive survey with mage-sight exposed no markers for arcane talent, even after a pilfered rope from the water-front let him scale the inn wall for a better vantage from the peaked roof.
The lack of threatening activity did not slacken his guard. On the contrary, the tavern contained a set trap, masked under concealment during his absence.
Arithon maintained his close observation for another hour, prone on the cool slate with his arms crossed. Breeze off the lake stirred his hair and slapped rhythmic wavelets against the pier’s weedy pilings below. A heavy door slammed, and a dog barked. The town-watch on the water-front beat paused to forestall a burgeoning fight. Amid shouting complaint, several men-at-arms hauled two roaring drunks through a catcalling cluster of onlookers. More muscular men from the tap-room stopped stacking the empty beer casks, and pitched in to disperse the unruly crowd. Soon after, the tavern’s tousled potboy slouched into the street and clapped shut the dock-side shutters. A last, ousted gaggle of patrons ambled away, singing off key.
The mule-drawn slop cart clopped past, flanked by two skinny teens wielding pitchforks, then the garrulous rag-pickers crew collected the baskets of fish waste to be stewed for bait in the trap shacks. Dockside, the lamps burned low and flickered, fuzzed by a scrim of mist off the lake, when moonset at last cloaked the puddled back alley into black-velvet gloom.
The dank air thickened. Nothing stirred near at hand but the fishmonger’s cat, skulking after rats in the gutter. Arithon moved then, careful to cast no furtive silhouette against the night sky. Slung from the rope anchored to the stone chimney, he lowered himself down the tavern’s back wall, primed for trouble, and on heightened alert for any untoward disturbance. Silent as shadow, he poised beneath the jutted overhang where the lightless square of the latched-back casement marked the hired room’s dormer window. Nothing stirred. Stilled with the crosswise rope digging into his shoulder, Arithon listened.
Sound gave him the whisper of Vivet’s breathing. Beside her anxious tension, the hollow quiet suggested her child lay asleep. Which tenuous evidence supported the likely conclusion she was not being held in duress.
Arithon dared not probe any further for surety. While the building appeared not to harbour any latent trace of enchantment, to broach a threshold or sill, even by the use of his subtle faculties, invited all manner of risk. Instead, he scooped a handful of rock salt from his pocket and tossed the coarse grains into the sash.
The whispered patter of impact raised movement, then the wooden clunk caused by a stumbled collision with the interior furniture. Vivet’s startled response brought her to the window, distraught and frightened. Hope and terror charged her appeal as she registered his late arrival. “A Sunwheel examiner has taken Valien!”
Unforeseen, the development stunned him. Arithon reeled in dismay, momentarily rocked off balance. The dangling rope shifted. He flung out a hand to check the mild spin, missed the tavern’s whitewashed wall, and grazed the wood frame of the casement instead. The glancing contact with his bare skin launched the spellcraft fashioned against him.
Sultry light flared and burned. Sprung from the embedded copper inside, the enchantment noosed his careless finger-tip. He was not caught outright. His readied defences expected an ambush, forearmed by a master initiate’s ability to repel a hostile assault.
Except the strike tailored against him came barbed with a melody. Recognition of his own composition snagged his startled attention. That split second’s instinctive sympathy loosened his guard. The lyric measure from his high art once had challenged Lirenda on a bleak winter night, long ago, when his successful deflection had championed another innocent’s escape from an execution in Jaelot.
But on this vengeful hour, the coiled chain of dark sigils flicked through Arithon’s core defences.
Paralysis lanced into him faster than a snake-bite. Numbness seized his hand to the wrist, then raced up his arm and devoured the left side of his body. His tenuous grip on the rope succumbed next. Right palm burning to brake his uncontrolled fall, Arithon slid, scrabbling, down the stone building. He crashed onto the cobbles, undone, bruised, and breathless, crumpled in a limp sprawl.
He battled the brutal incapacity that swept him. The desperate fight to
uproot the entanglement drove his aware focus deep inward. Plunged towards unconsciousness, he heard nearby footsteps through Vivet’s terrified scream.
Posted watchers converged who were not Koriathain. Arithon’s fading faculties noted their talentless auras. Control of his flaccid body escaped him. He could not fend off their invasive restraint, or feel the harsh bite of the cords used to bind his slack wrists and ankles. The brisk handling that loaded him into the laundress’s hand-cart overset his patched vision and wrung him dizzy. The surge broke his last resistence as his nameless captors pushed the rattling conveyance down the night street and snuffed his adamant awareness.
Cognizance flickered, briefly, an unknown interval later. His unfocused view of a woman’s face swam in the candle-lit murk above him. Not Vivet’s uncanny likeness to Elaira: Arithon snatched the familiar impression of taupe hair, and freckles scattered across a pink nose set into round features. The glower boring into him like honed teak belonged to the independent Koriani healer, recalled from his disastrous affray at Daenfal’s necropolis.
His effort to speak met the flat of her hand. Breath hissed from his lungs, unresisting. His helpless tongue stayed unresponsive.
“Curse the day,” the witch chided, annoyed. “You’re twice the born fool to have returned to Daenfal. The bait piece from Ettin was not worth your measure! What under sky drove you to increase my burden of sorry regret?”
He heard, but felt nothing. Struggled and failed to wrest back the voice to protest when her shaking hand cut his bindings. She lifted his wrist. Deadened nerves recorded no sting as her surgeon’s blade opened his vein. He lay powerless as the hot gush of his blood spun him down into black-out unconsciousness.