Peril's Gate

  ‘I won’t traffic in prejudice,’ Lysaer said, firm.

  And Sulfin Evend snapped back, ‘You already have.’ Confronted by Lysaer’s inimical outrage, the Lord Commander had no choice but to outline the truth. ‘Erdane is a stewpot of secretive, old hatreds. Best look to the men who come to your court smiling, and bearing gold as ambassadors.’

  Chilled as the impersonal mask of vested sovereignty shuttered Lysaer’s blanched face, Sulfin Evend risked his life for addressing sedition: he set brazen truth before nicety and ripped the decorum off the underlying canker of his doubt. ‘The cream of your priesthood is already gifted. If you want spells and sorceries expunged from Athera, you’ll one day be faced with turning on friends and cleansing an innocent populace.’

  Lysaer sat back down. Even in rage, civil grace did not leave him. He accepted the bannock, halved its crumbling crust, then loosed a startling, sharp gasp of laughter. ‘You and Raiett have the testing guile of snakes. Is this your latest attempt at persuasion? If I don’t plan to stamp out all the offshoots of talent, you want me to use fire to fight fire?’

  ‘You’ll have to,’ Sulfin Evend forced out, his throat bound in desperate tightness.

  Lysaer flicked crumbs from his glove, his fastidious gesture at odds with the fury forced into civilized speech. ‘You think I should found my own coterie as a weapon of self-defense and hurl enemy sorcerers to perdition?’ He bit into the charred gob of dough, his glance like honed steel, and as dangerous.

  Sulfin Evend could not match that damning, bright gaze. He speared the other bannock, then selected his words with the care of a man crawling headfirst down a wolf’s den. ‘An assault by shadows and black spellcraft has just slaughtered our company to a man. If we join the Etarrans, what good can that do? How else can you hope to stop the same evil from destroying their best troops tomorrow?’

  ‘Light prevails over darkness,’ Lysaer reminded. ‘By my law, which is just, only those born with talent who practice their craft upon innocents need fear the sword and the fire. My priests, who are trained, use their skills for the purpose of tracking the Master of Shadow. If they might one day raise wards to protect, the first guiding rule cannot change. Their oath to the Light is made punishable by death, should they stray and use magecraft for harm’s sake.’

  Sulfin Evend expelled his pent breath. Versed in hard statecraft, war trained to respond under pressure, he moved deliberate, swordsman’s fingers and rolled out another wad of dough. ‘Then you won’t raise a campaign of extirpation to cull all trace of talent from Athera?’

  ‘You fear I would put all your relatives to the sword? Surely not.’ Lysaer tossed the gritted crumbs of the bannock into the heart of the fire. His expression stayed graven with offense as he said, ‘I am the Light and the just arm of defense sent here to protect the innocent. Whether or not the Paravians ever return, whether mankind could be driven to madness among them, as you claim, I would not see born talent wantonly slaughtered. Quite the contrary. Those gifted with mage-sight who embrace the Light shall be nurtured. When the minions of Shadow are cast down in defeat, we’ll need their help to break the yoke of the compact. Our people must stand to enforce their right to claim the free wilds for their children.’

  Sulfin Evend yanked back singed fingers from the coals, too incredulous to pause for a lapse into carelessness that may well have blistered his sword hand. ‘You would take arms and challenge the might of the Fellowship Sorcerers?’

  Sugared snow flew as Lysaer resettled his tucked blankets. ‘For the welfare of civilized settlement, yes, I will wrest those proscribed lands out of sanctuary.’ His back braced against the saddle to doze, he shut his eyes, and said, sanguine, ‘Lives must be held sacred. No farmsteader will freeze for want of cut wood. I would see no child starve for the sake of a grasslands that could have been plowed up for barley.’ The crowning point was delivered with astonishing assurance. ‘Today’s losses will fire outrage. Enough outcry will finally mow down the objections and reverse the town councils’ distrust of magecraft. Never fear. Once the mayors prove ripe for acceptance, my high priests will have their skills ready.’

  ‘We adapt in reaction,’ Sulfin Evend said, bitter, his strategist’s instinct for constructive aggression given no outlet to vent his frustration. ‘Are we always to lag one dance step behind the enemy’s deadly innovation?’

  Lysaer shook his head. His expression of repose unmarred by the rancor that had, seconds past, made him dangerous, he offered his startling confidence. ‘The man who learns by example never turns. Our enemy has no scruple, and his clan following is bound to his cause by survival. Set against such dedication we need an Alliance annealed beyond reach of politics. I will match that challenge. At my back, I will have total commitment, an unbreakable unity forged by a threat irrefutably defined in blood and lives, as need be.’

  Then the wounding retort, as Sulfin Evend’s weary grief ripped restraint. ‘Then I can no longer shoulder this command!’

  Unspoken, the censure he had carried since the dark night in Camris, when he had witnessed the unsuspecting inhabitants of Avenor cast into jeopardy as a ploy to loosen the purse strings of frightened guild councils.

  ‘My foresight proved sound.’ Lysaer opened his eyes. Their blue depths were terrifying for their serenity, and the confidence self-contained in his presence, a force to leave lesser men cowed. ‘No trade ministers were browbeaten. The coin that will fund our future campaign will be freely given, not pried from tight fists by a tax.’

  Wildly angry, Sulfin Evend stood his ground. Although Avenor’s merchants had been hazed into emptying their coffers for the cause, today’s fallen had been thrown to the mercy of poor planning. Their families deserved honesty, first, and a better memorial than a ploy to recast them as victims of abstruse manipulation. ‘Well, I’m tired of seeing red-blooded men killed for the sake of arse-kissing politics!’

  That snapped Lysaer’s patience, though his resting hands kept their stillness under the blanket. ‘We are all no better than game pieces given the illusory power of choice.’ His censure held no rage, only a wretched weariness that seemed sprung from the marrow of his bones. ‘If you think you are different, or you know a better way, then walk in my shoes! Tomorrow, the Etarran troops will be yours. Command as you please. I will follow. Let’s see you bring the Spinner of Darkness to his knees by the vivid heat of mortal inspiration.’

  While Lysaer settled into an exhausted sleep, Sulfin Evend paced the camp, attending small chores to stay wakeful. He repacked the saddlebags. Since thick snowfall now blanketed the available fodder, he poured out a ration of grain for the horse. Last, he checked on the prisoner. Each small move he made was marked by the eagle, unseen and still perched with unnatural vigilance on the cragged root of the deadfall.

  The great bird watched with the vision of a Sorcerer, which saw beyond form and shadow.

  The electromagnetic surge of the storm filled the air with sparkling currents. Against the bright, static spray of falling snow, the warding circle traced out by the oak branch cast a faint lavender glow, smeared dark where the Lord Commander’s busy footsteps had crossed its ephemeral boundary.

  The eagle shifted weight from one mailed foot to the other. He clashed his armored beak, impatient, until the Koriani enchantress whose consciousness partnered him posed her perplexed observation. ‘Why should you want him to refresh his scribed line? He’s not trained to the discipline of focused intent.’ Her disparagement stemmed from the fact that the warding raised by Lysaer’s officer could deflect very little beyond a hedge witch’s charm of ill favor.

  ‘Bide with me.’ The eagle roused his feathers to dislodge tickling snow, then surveyed the campsite, first through his right eye, then through the left, his avid analysis a clear indication the changed viewpoint carried significance. ‘The circle’s potency scarcely matters. My purpose requires only that it should exist.’

  Less given to patience than to the intuitive hunch that she had been subtl
y warned off, Elaira shied from disturbed recollection: of the Sorcerer’s gaze, meeting hers in Ath’s hostel. His eyes had been shadowy, fathomless brown, their secretive depths well beyond her Koriani skills of analysis. Elaira quashed back her insatiable urge to ask questions. Her word had been given. She had sealed her commitment. For the sake of Rathain’s caithdein, she had chosen to follow a Sorcerer’s lead into the irrevocable unknown. If she would unmask the Betrayer’s intent, she must stay the course of unfolding event.

  No change seemed imminent. Storm lashed the night with a hag’s chorus of wind and a torn lace curtain of snowfall. The drifts sifted deep in the lee of the rocks. A whiteout blanket smothered the char in the valleys. An hour crawled past, while Sulfin Evend scrounged more fuel to nurture his lagging fire. He sat down and meticulously oiled his sword, then secured the salvageable parts of his crossbow, and in due course progressed through a lethal collection of knives. The white horse dozed with its head down. Lysaer stirred in and out of unsettled dreams and broken sleep.

  Daon Ramon’s stark savagery relented for no man. If peace could be garnered amid the rampaging splendor of the elements over untamed landscape, the invasive certainty that the Master of Shadow lurked abroad stalked the heels of each unguarded thought.

  Sulfin Evend exhaustively polished his weapons. He wiped down the horse harness to the last strap, then cast about for something else to occupy purposeful fingers. By that hour, the blizzard had started to slacken. Lysaer, between dozes, raised the suggestion that his Lord Commander would spoil his judgment by morning unless he stood down to rest.

  Gray, falcon’s eyes swept the golden-haired prince in the blankets, meting out critical inspection. ‘You’re not fit to keep watch.’

  Lysaer rolled onto one elbow and gave a suggestive shrug. ‘Against what? If the Spinner of Darkness ventures this way, my inner guidance will warn me. Should barbarians ambush, the snow cover’s too thick to hear their murdering footfalls. The horse will smell the presence of enemies before we do, and the fire can be left to burn out.’

  ‘Sunrise can’t be far off.’ Sulfin Evend measured commonsense wisdom against the clamor of his strategist’s instincts, and gave in. For far too long, he had battled the depleting fog of deep weariness. Since the gale was relenting, he appropriated one of the prisoner’s blankets, then recovered his oak stick and recast the circle around his immaculate campsite.

  Earl Jieret lay motionless as before, his form cut outside the ephemeral tracery, faint as a ribbon of lavender foil dropped glimmering over the snow.

  ‘Now, we play chess,’ the eagle pronounced on a devilish frisson of pure joy. He did not wait for Sulfin Evend to lie down, but unfurled broad wings in the darkness and launched himself off his perch.

  ‘Now, in truth,’ echoed the Koriani seeress. Stationed in the Prime’s private chambers at Highscarp, she tracked the same scene, avid as any huntress set after cunning winged prey with poisoned bait and a net. She stroked her quartz scrying sphere, teasing out the full range of its virtues, then scribing fresh sigils to fine-tune her surveillance to utmost, ruthless clarity. ‘The Betrayer has started making his move.’

  As the night advanced, more than the sisterhouse peeress stood attendance on Selidie Prime. Now the chamber accommodated a joined ring of twelve seniors, already settled into deep trance where they knelt in formation on the wooden floor. Inside their linked circle, the parquet had been chalked with a massive array of twined sigils. Their combined force sustained an inner quadrant demarked by four more enchantresses, stationed at the cardinal directions. The least of these wore four bands of earned rank on her sleeves, colored scarlet to denote their administrative service. Each clasped an enabled quartz wand the length of a tapered candlestick.

  Prime Selidie crouched at the center of the conjury, a gown of eggplant purple puddled over her slippered feet. Her blonde hair had been braided into a rope, laced with lavender ribbon. Immersed in a state of forbidding concentration, she completed the lines of an elaborately protected squared circle. She exchanged the white chalk for a black wax stylus, then laid down the eightfold sigils of binding at each corner. To the enchantress on vigil at the scrying sphere, she announced, ‘The trap is almost complete.’

  Reassurance came back, whispered through shadow grained with the smoke of burned herbs, and the more acrid bite released by tobacco spiked with a tienelle infusion. ‘The Betrayer appears to be in no hurry.’

  In fact, the seeress went on to explain, he had made ingenious use of Sulfin Evend’s crude ward to evade infringing the Law of the Major Balance. Lysaer’s Lord Commander had drawn the ring with intent to deflect an outside interference; Davien perforce had respected free will. The quartz sphere reflected his avian form, a gliding dark shuttlecock on the loom of the air. Each pass threaded spellcraft, knitting a clever veil of illusory affirmation that nothing untoward should transpire inside the rim of the circle.

  Outside, the Sorcerer could do as he liked, beyond concern that either Lysaer s’Ilessid or Sulfin Evend should perceive his industrious activity.

  ‘He’s alighted on the outcrop above Earl Jieret,’ the seeress gave dutiful report.

  The coral curve of Selidie’s lips showed delicate satisfaction. She crossed the last cipher, set the rune of ending, then laid aside the wax stylus. Flushed by the sped pulse of excitement, she arranged a silver, lion-foot tripod just above the rim of her construct. Last, she unwrapped the amethyst Waystone.

  Its bared facets unleashed a flood of chill air, and the warning, charged scent of ozone. The bronze candlestand with its burning wick shot tangles of ruby reflection through the shadowy heart of the stone. Each movement reverent, the Prime settled the sphere in the wrought ring with its sigils of warding and guard. She fussed, bringing its central axis to alignment above the geometrical figures of binding restriction. She rotated the jewel widdershins in its cradle, testing and tuning its position by increments until she ascertained its optimum orientation.

  Lastly, she checked: the silk scarf sewn with the ninefold copper sigils of imprisonment lay within instant reach, tucked underneath her left sleeve cuff.

  The last steps were complete. Despite trained restraint, Selidie Prime shuddered to the raw thrill of anticipation. She embarked on a feat no Koriani Matriarch before her had ever dared to attempt. If she met success, within the next minutes, she would hold a Fellowship Sorcerer pinned under the power of the Great Waystone.

  ‘Stand ready to anchor me,’ she bade the four wand-bearing seniors awaiting, their even breaths settled in preparedness.

  A final exhale, and Selidie engaged her own iron discipline. Her mind spiraled downward into deep calm. Eyes closed, she cupped her palms over the Waystone. The amethyst’s cool surface became faintly clouded with moisture under her animal touch. Quiet settled, as though a sealed bubble surrounded her person through the eerie suspension as the jewel awoke to her presence.

  That stillness deceived, the velvet glove concealing the knife. As always, the jewel’s awareness slammed active with no warning, a buzzing wasp storm of rage that lashed through every sensitized nerve. Selidie endured, her resistance passive. Fear and bright agony ripped past without foothold as the Waystone’s barbed spite spewed like a maelstrom through her mind.

  The flood tore at her, shrieking, a ferocious, seeking assault that pried to find foothold in weakness. Should the torrent breach even a pinhole flaw, or hook any chink of insecurity, Selidie would be lost. Her consciousness would drown in that roiling, mad spate, bound hostage along with many another matriarch who had failed the stone’s testing before her.

  The jewel laid traps, offered false turnings and ambush; it lured and lulled, teasing her guard with illusory bouts of quiescence. As often as the Matriarch had threaded the maze, no passage was ever the same. Dewed with perspiration, she withstood blows and blandishments, until the wave of the great amethyst’s malice reached a crest. On the poised instant between flood and ebb, she threaded the precisely tuned sigils that subo
rned wild might into mastery.

  Peace descended, a bursting jolt of pure ecstasy that never failed to stun the mind for the space of a heartbeat. Selidie smiled, ceded a focus of clear power that would act on the breath of her whim.

  Her living palm wielded the poised axis of a force that could imprison the shade of a Fellowship Sorcerer. No talent on Athera could move to prevent her. Davien had betrayed his colleagues before. His seclusion within the caverns at Kewar had extended for centuries, a withdrawal so deep, his colleagues were unlikely to miss him. Selidie aligned the Great Waystone to the Prime’s sigil of command, the symbol that held mastery over every initiate sworn to the Koriani Order. At her call, Elaira must answer. The Betrayer was discorporate, his sealed word a direct and binding attachment to his unshielded spirit. His promise to Elaira would hold him in linkage; and like the jessed raptor tied to a creance, the Matriarch could reel him in.

  Her figured square with its sigils of confinement had been well laid to receive him. Selidie’s smile displayed perfect, white teeth. Ripe for the challenge, she addressed the seeress, ‘Davien’s still engaged? Excellent. He’ll be taken unaware. For safety, the moment has come to disperse your spells of scrying.’

  Silk rustled across the hushed chamber as the seeress bent to her quartz sphere. Her raised hand overshadowed the scene it depicted, of the great golden eagle, landed in the soft snow beside the stilled form of Earl Jieret. Her traced cipher of release dispelled the connection. As the image faded, Davien’s musing thought to Elaira bled through, a ghost’s whisper carried across time and space as the contact dwindled, ‘When this is over, you’ll just have to trust me to safeguard the life of your prince …’

  ‘The connection is severed,’ the seeress confirmed.

  Selidie drew herself erect, then raised her right hand from the Waystone’s chill surface. Eyes closed, her left palm still in contact, she extended her forefinger and traced the cipher of prime domination over the facet framed by her touch. The crystal responded. A spiraling wind of raised force filled the chamber, tuning the air like a soundless chord and lifting the hair at the nape to a clamor of instinctive warning.