The roar raised by thousands of throats slammed the air to endless thunder when the dedicate escort dragged Arithon before the multitude craning to view his demise. He felt the hammering wall of vibration drum through him, skin, bone, and viscera. Blood loss whirled his senses to vertigo and ripped unsteady vision through patches of black-out. He felt pummelled to rags, all strength and vitality sapped hollow by weakness. He could not support his own weight. Armoured dedicates braced him at both shoulders. More men behind prodded his lagging step with pole weapons, while four abreast led him, dragging the chains cuffed at his wrists and ankles.
Deafening in the maelstrom, Arithon beheld the scalding dazzle of gold, shattered off by noon sun striking the phalanx of temple dedicates who hemmed his path on both sides. The palings of the plank scaffold loomed above their plumed helms, packed by a snow-drift array of robed priests, the Exalted Examiner stationed among them. The stair upwards swam in the sweltering heat, a scant dozen yards ahead.
The sword and the burning were nigh upon him. He could not save himself. Even to salvage survival at all costs, he lacked the stamina to engage a broad-scale use of shadow. Only Valien’s plight might be bought on the gambled stake of a loophole contingency. Arithon mustered the dregs of his resource. Eyes half-lidded to mask the gleam of fierce purpose, he commanded the limited range of free will wrested back through subversive persistence. He expended that hoarded reserve at one stroke, and severed the contiguous symmetry of the healer’s sigil staunching the vein in his wrist.
Heat raced up his arm as the stay let go. He felt the spurt of fresh blood gush and run, soaking the layed bandage. A bright stream leaked through and dribbled from his hand, to shouted alarm from his keepers. Their rough grip pinioned him. Other mailed fists caught his arm. Direct pressure staunched the reopened wound, while someone called for a bystander’s handkerchief.
The contrived tourniquet lessened the stream, twisted tight until the flood ceased. But not before spattered droplets struck earth on the sovereign soil of Rathain.
Arithon languished amid the furore. Unresponsive to the epithets of the annoyed men, scarcely conscious of the brutal shoves keeping him upright, he spoke aloud under the crowd’s pandemonium with a tongue wrestled free of paralysis. His murmured phrases were short and succinct: a threefold summons, invoking Sethvir of the Fellowship, under his Crown Prince’s right. “I declare Valien as the next heir to Rathain, with full rights to royal legacy bestowed in trust, sealed by my word in sound mind, and confirmed by my blood and through invocation of my true Name.”
The charged response he relied on surged back, mercifully swift.
“Done and done!” sent the Warden of Althain. “Your testament as crown prince is granted, star-stamped and sealed into record.”
Tarens, Elaira, and Dakar that moment lurked inside the dedicates’ cordon, crouched in perilous refuge beneath the enclosed struts of the scaffold. In hiding there since the chaotic construction had hastened the structure to completion, they waited out the event, hunkered down amid the shaded gloom directly below the board platform that seated the temple’s officials in state. The Mad Prophet crouched in the gap between beams, fists rammed with deliberation against the brick pavement. His contact detected the shimmer as the flux responded to a Named crown prince’s appeal. The bold overture signalled Arithon’s bid to salvage his compromised fate. Grief born of foresight wrenched Dakar’s heart. His bent for immutable prescience exacted its cruel price: whatever move followed, the remedial effort was destined to fail.
The prophet suffered in redoubled agony for his rash lack of foresight at Athir. His choice to swear the Crown of Rathain into debt to the Koriathain bound the Seven in force, which diabolical stricture anchored the tranced augury lately unveiled in Deshir. Marked and measured, tragedy already roosted upon this day’s building calamity.
Nothing could change. The nexus point of the vision approached as the minutes raced forward.
Dakar sweated in paralysed dread. Before him, the blaze of cloudless noon sliced the square opening, sawn through the scaffold floor. There, the massive, set post stacked with faggots awaited the prisoner’s reckoning, the tang of fresh sawdust tinged by the fumes of volatile oil and turpentine. The taint poisoned the air, adding the light-headed roil of faintness to his nauseous tension.
Movement flicked, to his right. Elaira grabbed Tarens in sudden support, rendered weak at the knees by fraught horror.
Roused from torpor, Dakar thrust forward. He knelt by the woman handfast to Arithon and exhorted with low-voiced urgency. “Elaira! I’m sorry, my focus has slipped. What just happened?”
Shaking, she scrubbed fallen hair from her face. Tarens gathered her into his staunch embrace as, chin lifted, she mustered shocked wits. “His Grace has formally declared Vivet’s boy, Valien, as royal heir to Rathain.”
“And Sethvir accepted?” Dakar lost his breath. “Ath wept!” His chest felt strapped in lead. “As you promised, your crown prince has taken action.”
Elaira stared back, stricken, while the crescendo of human clamour pounded into the platform above. Dust fell, loosened by the appalling din as the crowd’s howling passion redoubled. Then armoured steps shuddered the outside stair, chased by the plinking rattle of chain as the Spinner of Darkness mounted the scaffold.
“My beloved seeks to spare Valien’s life,” Elaira explained in tormented despair. “He doesn’t know the Seven are hobbled! Nor can he imagine the intractable fact that a crown prince’s right to protection lies forfeit! Koriathain won’t flinch. They’ll seize their claim of damage in full and demand the sacrifice of the child.”
Dakar swallowed. Aghast, he interpreted Elaira’s tears, for the pain such a loss would inflict upon Arithon. The Mad Prophet had no shred of comfort to offer. Words died before the full scope of the impact unveiled by his unruly talent. For he knew: the upcoming settlement presaged far worse.
“What do you See?” Elaira demanded, alarmed by the disastrous pause. Amid the hateful, incessant noise, she yanked away from Tarens’s support, scalded to wildcat fury. “Don’t imagine you can spare me!”
Dakar bowed his head. Fright sucked him pithless as he snatched Elaira’s clenched hands and entreated, “My brave lady, through everything, you must hold firm!”
Spellbinder, seer, and master initiate, the shrinking spirit wrapped in human flesh perceived the raw quandary tossed onto the Fellowship’s shoulders. Dakar grasped their ruthless directive, none better. Which true purpose wracked him with the cruel choice: to crumple in failure again, or to stiffen his spine for unbearable stakes and hold the unconscionable line at the Sorcerers’ back.
Unstrung by sorrow, the spellbinder stared down the horror birthed by his fatal error at Athir. Hard-fought maturity gauged the terrible price, strung on a thread through the narrowest margin, by which the cost of his mis-step might be redeemed.
The enchantress deserved no false encouragement. “Tarens!” Dakar cracked. “Save us all, every one of us has to stand fast!”
The blond crofter turned his head as though trapped in a nightmare, his pummelled wits apparently dulled to the urgency driving Dakar’s appeal. Shock followed, as the Mad Prophet also shared the view that haunted his loyal heart. The same dread vision had visited him one past night at Kathtairr, birthed amid the gestalt trance of a tienelle scrying: he, too, had Seen the Sunwheel cloth spread over the altar visible through the opening above. Placed opposite to the upright post, there, the shining sword rested, etched in glare, ready for the gloved fist of the Light’s executioner.
“I know this moment,” Tarens muttered, appalled, while the pealing barrage of raw tumult stormed against the timbered bulwark. “Earl Jieret’s Sighted talent has seen this!”
“Yes! That’s why you’ll say nothing.” Dakar stifled the crofter’s outcry by ruthless necessity. “Trust me, I know! We cannot, we dare not! upset the course of Prince Arithon’s finished transaction.”
Nothing must disrupt the sequence in motion
.
“Help steady Elaira!” the Mad Prophet pleaded. “At all cost, we cannot break down and react.” Not before the Prime Matriarch’s hold on the Crown of Rathain achieved closure.
The frenzied roar of the crowd swelled to a pitch to crack nerves when Arithon reached the top stair of the scaffold. Towed forward in chains, shoved by dedicate zeal from behind, he stumbled onto the level platform, dazed stupid and pulped beyond strength.
A jostling intrusion shouldered past his armed handlers. Through vision rinsed by bouts of black-out faintness, he confronted the furious glare of the True Sect’s Exalted Examiner, attended by several agitated diviners.
Their hostile interrogation thrust against the tissue-thin barrier of his scarcely mended defences. “What Lightless coil of spellcraft did you just unleash?”
No hapless victim, but an initiate master care-worn to the bitter edge, Arithon dredged up a mocking smile. Lashes raised, he matched the Examiner’s stare, secure in his fearless belief that the Fellowship’s obligate commitment to the crown would uphold his purpose and defeat the priesthood.
“Kiel’d’maeranient,” he challenged in succinct Paravian. “Anathema! Find out. Or else spare the child and leave without scathe.”
A mailed fist in the belly silenced his insolence. Stunned momentarily, Arithon felt the electrical stab of the Examiner’s resharpened probe. He resisted, though driven nearly unconscious. Whatever the temple Canon asserted, the True Sect priesthood’s tame talents were outmatched by the training bestowed by Rauven’s s’Ahelas mages.
Blurred awareness recorded the flurried recoil, embedded amid the concussive noise. Then came the Examiner’s rattled shout, commanding the dedicates to haste before harm befell the Light’s faithful. “Have the rite over and done! No one’s safe, or delivered from evil until this black sorcerer’s pierced carcass has smouldered to ashes.”
Jostled forward, then dragged, bludgeoned by vengeful fists, Arithon reeled past the seated conclave of priests. Ahead loomed the post, spiked with the wrought-iron hook for his shackles. Beneath yawned the square-cut pit, greased fuel stacked for the pyre, with access off the raised platform bridged by a narrow plank. Too spent for more than a token resistance, Arithon endured the battering passage across. Limp weakness reclaimed him as the armoured escort manhandled his half-stripped person and strung him up for the spectacle.
Throats many thousands strong shrieked at the sight of him, thirsty for the thrill of a barbaric slaughter. Pulverized under the ravenous sound, Arithon scarcely felt the excruciate bite as the cuffs took his hapless weight. His searching glance by-passed the gleaming sword, dimmed under a cloud of incense smoke as two priests approached, swinging censers to sanctify the altar. Instead, his spinning gaze found and locked upon Vivet’s terrified, dark-haired child.
Cord lashed the toddler’s forearms to his waist. A second rope tether affixed his ankles to a ring stapled into the platform. Armoured dedicates shadowed him at each flank, while another High Priest in sparkling regalia poised behind with raised hands, his prayer exhorting deliverance from Darkness overwhelmed by the shattering din. High as a bird’s cry, the boy wailed with fear. Roughly handled by strangers and forsaken by kin, he rolled tearful eyes and located the only familiar face on the scaffold.
“Arin!” he shrieked in heart-stopping appeal. While the priest seized his shoulder and shouted for silence, his panic burst into hysteria.
“Spare the child,” begged Arithon through whitened lips. Since no Fellowship intercession could happen before he exhausted all recourse, he twisted his head in fraught appeal to the Exalted Examiner. “My own end is nothing. I cast no blame. Only spare the boy. He is harmless.”
The temple official glared back, unmoved, into green eyes stripped of all artifice. The unnerving sorrow and compassion laid bare wrenched him short, a threat to shake a lifetime of devotion. He flinched away before his conviction wavered, and base human frailty fell prey to corruption.
“The risk shall not be sanctioned lest the spawn of evil should survive in this world.” Fist raised before his howling flock, he signalled the executioner. “If the boy springs from innocent stock, let a higher authority reward his purity. The stainless child’s spirit will never perish but be welcomed into the Light everlasting.”
A figure in scalding white armour strode forward, his short stature at first beyond notice amid the seated rows of cowled priests. A crested helm topped the aggressive jut of a lantern-jawed face. Steel-rivet eyes glittered through a sweeping glance that exuded vengeful triumph. The Hatchet advanced to the altar with the jaunted strut of a spurred cockerel. He laid claim to the weapon blessed by the priests. Blade raised in exultant salute, he basked in the crowd’s screaming approval. Then he pivoted smartly to render his service under the Law of the Canon.
The child cried out at the sight of the sword. The point swept downwards in a fiery arc. No Fellowship Sorcerer arrived. No living power arose to bestow a timely intervention. Arithon gasped and strained at the post, stranded by the aghast recognition his move had been ruthlessly taken and used for an expedient sacrifice. Chained over the pit, drained near bloodless and swimmingly faint, he drove himself to react through shocked horror. He gathered the desperate shreds of his awareness and threw all he had left into voice, true pitch informed by a Masterbard’s artistry.
“Valien!” Almost, he achieved his desired intent. Very nearly, his call struck the actualized power of Name, forged in harmony with the untarnished grace of the grand chord that sustained creation.
But not quite. Flawed enough to fall short, just shy of the clear resonation Asandir’s might had achieved—the peal of infinite tenderness that once had summoned a lost spirit intact from torment by the Shadows of Mearth—Arithon’s shout still turned Valien’s head. The boy’s tearful green eyes met the man’s, of sheared emerald: and held there, diverted through the brute thrust of the sword that pierced his small, racing heart.
Valien’s choked-off cry of stunned agony crystallized Arithon’s features. Failure armoured his vulnerability. Struck dumb, he watched the little boy’s chest flutter and spasm, the bloom of seeped blood a ruby flower that opened and gushed. Master of Shadow, raised by Rauven’s stern code, he endured, graven by the godless savagery of his anguish. He bore witness as The Hatchet’s fist yanked the fouled blade free. He saw, in the speechless, blank fury born of an unimaginable betrayal, the slight form of the child become wracked head to feet by a shudder. Then young flesh barely past helpless infancy crumpled, a discarded rag shrouded in stillness and rope, in a widening puddle of scarlet.
Neither did Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn respond as the clotted blade angled to take him in turn. The Exalted Examiner’s decree announcing his doom fell more empty than wind on deaf ears.
“Go to your eternal torment!” The True Sect official raised his arms and shouted against the crowd’s insatiable uproar, “May Light’s justice speed the righteous steel that frees us from the Spinner of Darkness!”
Arithon dangled from taut wrists on the post, ribs strained as he laboured to breathe. He engaged no blanketing shadow; wrought no recoiling blast of destructive retaliation. Staring down The Hatchet’s gloating spite, the talent decried as the root of black evil made no sound at all as the stained blade plunged deep, quenching the luminous, bitter rage and draining the last stubborn spark of awareness from his fixated eyes.
The execution accomplished at Daenfal pealed a shock wave down the Fifth Lane. Ripples of recoil roiled the flux length and breadth of Athera’s inhabited continent. In the solitude of Althain Tower’s top floor, Sethvir slumped at the library table with his head bowed against his clenched hands, weeping for the inexcusable cruelty imposed under dire necessity.
The sorrowful tragedy outweighed all tears: for the child’s riven spirit yet delayed from clean passage into the peace of the infinite. Slaughtered in violence, Valien’s being had not been transformed by joyful ecstasy, raised beyond mortal pain. The Masterbard’s consummate artistry
had faltered, that could have sped the departed innocent in seamless transition across the veil.
The boy’s sundered consciousness lingered in distress, wrenched separate from flesh and trailing the dismembered streamers of animal magnetism. He drifted at the cusp of Fate’s Wheel, as the world’s balance shuddered. The irreplaceable seconds flowed onwards, a poised future rocked by uncertainty, while the drastic, untenable price paid in full to complete the Koriani oath of debt against Rathain’s crown approached final closure.
Asandir poised at the Whitehold sisterhouse, vised in suspension while the incised runes that sealed his dread oath stayed intact. Beyond compromise, the fibre that held him unflinching before the inimical eyes of the Prime’s Senior Circle gave away nothing: not the magnitude of his tearing grief nor a trace of his anguished regret.
Lirenda watched his stilled frame as the tiger marked prey, awaiting the first sign of weakness. “How does it feel to have your power bound, while all you have built goes to ruin? Morriel Prime should have lived for this hour! When, at long last, the tyranny of your great compact is smashed, and our order reclaims the unfettered span of humanity’s destiny.”
Denial required no wasted words. The scryer’s quartz showed precisely what occurred amid the packed square at Daenfal.
Asandir bowed his head, his forearms relaxed under his threadbare, grimed cuffs, beneath which his strong hands stayed motionless. A stance whose mild aspect deceived: acquiescence clothed in a dangerous quietude, as the honed sword nestled in the sheath, while westward, the grisly cascade of consequence begat by Canon Law careened forward …
Beneath the board scaffold, harrowed to desolation, Elaira shouldered past Dakar’s stunned bulk and cast her appeal to roust Tarens from paralysed despair. “We must act straightaway! Don’t you see? The blade must be drawn and the flames quenched before the priests kindle the pyre. Else my beloved will perish beyond the last reach of recovery.”