Traitor''s Knot (epub)

  Feylind turned her head, fast, her braid whipped in the breeze that ruffled the harbour to whitecaps. 'What! Instructions were clear! Those two swordsmen were meant to resume their old posts, and stay in Alestron's service.'

  'Well, the duke sent them back.' Parrien set his boot on the thwart and launched the tender away from the wharf. 'Don't argue, woman! You're going to need them. Somebody sharp had better stand guard, or that botched-up work of Koriani witchery will be sticking a dagger into your back.'

  'The made double?' snapped Feylind, incredulous where she stood, fists braced on hips, and one toe jammed on the stern seat to balance against the jerk as the drifting boat caught the rip tide. 'Damn your scampish family! What unsavoury fact has his lordship kept from me?'

  Since Dakar was rendered unable to speak, the reply carried across the widening span of roiled water. 'Fionn Areth's determined to help Lysaer's Alliance spit your prince on a sword, then light up the pyre to burn him.'

  Purple with chill by the time the Evenstar's sailhands had hauled him on board at the end of a halyard, Dakar was dragged, stumbling, into the stern cabin. He dared expect no comforts. The cramped space was furnished with the spare practicality common to sea-going ships. As straightforward in her lack of apology, Feylind unsheathed her cutlass. She snipped off his bonds, then tossed him a blanket and shoved him arse down on a locker.

  'Was that the truth?' she demanded, annoyed. 'Fionn Areth's a canting sunwheel fanatic?'

  Dakar chafed numbed fingers, then caved in to necessity and cradled his pounding head. 'How should I know? The poor wretch spent five months locked in Bransian's dungeon, and -'

  'No, butty!' Feylind slammed her bared steel back home in the scabbard. 'Stow the lame-brained excuses. Your jiggling paunch tells me you kept yourself drunk, and lazed about whoring the whole time.' A clipped stride carried her under the hatch grating, where she bellowed for the mate to cast off and set Evenstar under way.

  'Feylind, no.' Dakar had to fight to make himself heard through the raced footfalls of the deck-crew and the clanking pawls of the capstan. 'I had my sound reasons. You'll just have to trust. We need to exchange some serious talk before you depart from this anchorage.'

  'And let Alestron's duke heap the pressure back on to haul about and sail west?' Feylind spun, furious. 'Not on your life, Dakar! I am not sheltering Lysaer's errant wife back downcoast, or on any-one's roundabout jaunt into Spire!'

  Itched by stiff wool after months in silk sheets, and fighting turned senses that would shortly render him prostrate with nausea, Dakar shouted, 'This has nothing to do with the safety of Avenor's runaway princess!'

  'Damned straight it doesn't!' Feylind stalked to the locker behind the companionway and snatched her oilskins down from their peg. 'Are you so certain of s'Brydion loyalty? Kalesh and Adruin fly the sunwheel's standard, did you know that? When we ran the strait to get in here, we all but had to dip flags and declare for the Light. How long can the duke's service to Arithon last, if he can't pass his ships through Lysaer's allies to reach open water?'

  'My concern's not for politics,' Dakar forced out, hitched short by his roiling belly. 'I beg you to stay inside the citadel's defences for other reasons entirely.'

  'Huh.' Feylind peered down at his green, sweating face. 'I'll believe you that far. At sea, you can't drown your wits in a bottle or slink off and hide when I pitch the unpleasant question. Where's the Master of Shadow? Why didn't he stay in your company, beyond Jaelot, and what in the name of Sithaer's fell fires made you miss your scheduled rendezvous last spring?'

  Too wretched to shoulder the touchy diplomacy to broach that round of ill news, Dakar shut his eyes and hunched under the blanket. His head spun like sloshed froth. The vertigo seemed much too virulent, despite the swirling kick of the tide that hissed under Evenstar's keel. About to heave, he could do little else but clamp his teeth and look miserable.

  'Too skin-tight to speak?' Feylind slung on her foul weather gear, jerked open the companionway, and stamped out.

  Dakar recovered his voice too late, as the door slammed. 'Feylind, damn you, come back! I'll explain.'

  His shout availed nothing. Once on deck, the brig's captain yelled to summon the thug who served as her quartermaster. 'Here, straightaway! Haul that drunk to the sail hold. Lock him in with a bucket and leave him. Oh, he'll howl and threaten red murder all right. There he stays, by my order, until he's come sober.'

  Denied his last chance to lodge urgent protest, Dakar cursed the rough handling that bundled him belowdecks. Worse, his sensible choice to hide Arithon's activity was wasted. The brig's cross-grained captain could not be deferred. She would hear all the rancourous news soon enough from the lips of Fionn Areth.

  Evenstar, meantime, would stay under way. Practised at enduring the disastrous mix of strong drink and the miseries of sailing, Dakar hunkered down with his head in his hands and sought the oblivious solace of sleep.

  That respite escaped him. His dream of lush women and soft, scented sheets broke apart as the door to the sail hold scraped open. Dissident voices shouted outside. Then something banged. A struggling, bound body crashed in and landed with bad-tempered curses across him.

  Dakar choked, gagging on the fust of mildew puffed out of his nest of spare canvas. Slammed by an elbow, then punched by a knee in the gut, he curled on his side,, dumbly retching.

  Fionn Areth stopped yelling. Aware he had landed on some wretch's body, he wormed to one side, then said, 'Light scorch the black bastards, they've locked me in, too!'

  Dakar hugged his griped belly, too ill to swear back. 'Just keep on invoking Lysaer's false religion, you'll find yourself chucked off for shark-bait.'

  'The brig's captain's a maniac!' To judge by the random rustles and thumps that jerked through the rumple of sailcloth, the yokel was struggling to loosen the wrists just lashed up by Feylind's sailhands.

  'She's Arithon's passionate ally, you dimwit.' Since Dakar was too damaged to call up his mage-sight, he settled for shutting his eyes. 'What did you expect? I'd have thought, after five wretched months in a dungeon, you'd have more brains than to spew your fanatical opinions in public.'

  'I didn't speak to her.' Fionn Areth lashed an ineffectual kick that billowed more dust from the canvas. 'Not one word. The uppity bitch wouldn't grant me the time of day for a hearing.'

  Feet thumped overhead. Lines squealed through the blocks. Feylind's cried orders were obscured by the whump as more sail was unfurled aloft. Dakar lurched to the kick as the hull slammed the waves, smoking up spray as she gathered way in her trampling run down the estuary.

  'What landed you here, then?' he asked point-blank. 'We aren't unbrailing topsails for drill on this vessel. Don't claim you didn't spill all the news of Prince Arithon's flight into Kewar.'

  'I wasn't asked,' Fionn Areth said, injured. 'The captain was collared and given the worst by Vhandon and Talvish already.'

  Dakar's bursting laugh was choked short by a wince, as pain lanced his tender head. 'No kind reference to vouchsafe your character, I see. Get used to confinement. Feylind's got the mind and long memory of a first-rate off-shore navigator, which is a boon, except when it comes to offenders who ruffle her loyalties.'

  'She holds a mean grudge?'

  'Like a jilted shrew,' Dakar stated, morose. 'Even so, you should hear my advice, and try not to judge her too harshly.'

  'Why not?' Fionn Areth stopped his useless chafing at bonds that were not going to yield to necessity. 'She behaves like a pirate who connives hand in glove with Arithon's marauding clansmen.'

  'That's part of the problem,' Dakar admitted. 'How sorely she wishes to run interference on Lysaer's Alliance and their filthy practice of manning their galleys under chained slavery' As his comment provoked scathing disbelief, the spellbinder turned his head, beaten weary. 'Yes, Avenor puts captives for sale at the block. And that last is pure nonsense! Evenstar's registry's kept above-board and clean by Arithon's adamant order.'

  'What for?' s
napped Fionn. 'His Grace needs the sanctioned front to move his henchmen's lifted trade goods?'

  'No!' Dakar sighed, too sore to stay sharp. 'Arithon's stood in for Feylind's dead father since she and her brother were children. He's kept Evenstar honest for the sake of an oath he once swore to their widowed mother.'

  'What did he promise?' Fionn Areth shot back, aflame with salacious speculation.

  'A binding of honour to hold them both safe from the perils attached to his name. Which is why you'll stop claiming their patron's a criminal. I don't care if you fake a contrite change of heart. You will smile and apologize until Feylind's convinced to unlock the bolt holding us prisoner.'

  Tackle creaked. The brig hauled her wind, then slammed, bucking against the tidal race in the channel. Dakar gasped, clinched tight as a clam as nausea clawed at his vitals. Every natural instinct insisted that the Evenstar should have bided inside of Alestron's snug harbour. While Fionn Areth discovered the horrid discomfort that attended blue-water sailing, Dakar endured, sunk in silence.

  He misliked the crawling itch in his bones. With time, the nagging sensation grew worse. Some unseen force seemed at work on the brig, an insidious wrongness he could not pin down in his undone state of distress. Days might pass before he could scry, wracked as he was with sea-sickness and the price of dissolute indulgence.

  * * *

  Late Autumn 5670

  Transits

  'It's all settled, my dear,' said Dame Dawr s'Brydion, tea-cup laid aside as she arranged disposition for Lysaer's unsettled princess, 'the duke's escort will deliver you to Methisle Fortress, into the care of the Fellowship's master spellbinder. From that safe haven, when need permits, a Sorcerer will see you the rest of the way to Ath's hostel in the city of Spire . . .'

  Stinging yet from the cut lately made to reframe his oath by the rite of the Fellowship's auspices, Sulfin Evend arrives in a blaze of raw light at the focus circle in Avenor; and Asandir's swift instructions remain in his mind, as the lane forces fade and release him: 'I have business elsewhere, you must fare on alone. Ride straight through to Hanshire, speak to none that you meet, and your face will stay masked by my warding . . .'

  As Asandir refires the lane flux to speed his urgent journey to remedy the damaged grimward in Scarpdale, far east and south, at the hostel in Forthmark, Prime Selidie calls in the attendance of twelve seniors, her purpose to snatch the opportune opening to launch her bid to seize the merchant brig, Evenstar . . .'

  * * *

  Previous Chapter Contents Next Chapter

  Late Autumn 5670

  VI. Counterploy

  Chin braced on clasped fingers, Arithon turned the page of an obscure text on the Paravian practice of working masonry without mortar. The hour was late morning. Clad for comfort, he wore an unadorned shirt, and a laced jerkin of black suede. A silver-edged belt clasped his whipcord-lean frame. Though he had not ventured outside of the mountain for nigh onto a year, Davien's quirky habit of issuing challenge had forced him to maintain peak fitness. If he missed the sun, or the frisk of the wind, he showed no fidgeting restlessness.

  That discipline was not wasted. A day begun without expectations changed fast as a prickle of energy brushed at the bounds of his aura.

  He stood at once, wary. The candles were streaming, a striking departure from form: never before had Davien's arrivals abandoned the high art of subtlety.

  He dared a soft inquiry. 'We have trouble pending?'

  A voice answered out of the ruffled air. 'More than you know, Teir's'Ffalenn.' Davien's living form assumed substance, his fine-grained skin flushed from the cold. He wore a black mantle edged with silver embroidery. The hood was tossed back, a sign of recent impatience since the salt-and-russet tumble of hair was neatly constrained by a tie of dark leather. 'Your associates on Evenstar have put to sea,' the Sorcerer opened. 'They've cleared the narrows from Alestron, bearing south-east, and Koriathain have unleashed a spring trap.'

  Arithon said without flinching,'I trust I'll have time to gather my sword?'

  The Sorcerer laughed. 'In fact, you do not.' He unfurled the thick cape and extended the weapon as offering. The black steel had been sheathed in a sturdy new scabbard and hung on a bronze-studded baldric.

  'You know me too well.' Arithon accepted the blade's icy weight. Without pause for argument, he armed himself, not astonished as the tang of the buckle slid into a hole punched for an accurate fit. 'Princess Ellaine's no longer aboard?'

  'No.' For once, the Sorcerer was not inclined to try games. 'The brig's captained by Feylind, her mate and crew. For passengers, she carries Dakar, your double, and your clanborn honour guard.'

  'Vhandon and Talvish stayed on?' Arithon's glance was balefully sharp. 'My order released them back to their duke's service. They were instructed to remain ashore!'

  'And so you should, also, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

  'What will I be facing?' Arithon surveyed those stilled, night-dark eyes, and encountered a spark of unease. 'Since you didn't ask whether I wanted to go, and unspecified warnings aren't useful, I trust you've a way to transport me?'

  Davien raised his eyebrows. 'Even your vaunted nerves will require a shielding.'

  'Permission to stand guard and act in my behalf? You have it.' Arithon stepped forward without hesitation. He met and matched the Sorcerer's troubled regard with a trust that was woundingly genuine.

  From a stiff, poignant pause, which startled them both, Arithon stated, 'Have we not shared guest oath? If you wished me harm, I would be dead. Your nature is not to beg any-one's help. Therefore, I stand, freely offering.'

  Davien's surprise vanished behind masking reticence. 'As you've asked, then don't curse the messenger, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

  Arithon stood firm, despite that hurled challenge. He did not flinch at the Sorcerer's approach. Nor did he recoil from the touch, when it came, though the contact held nothing physical. Davien's power arose like a well of poised force. Seamless crystal, its silence enclosed him. Sealed inside its ring of forged purpose, mind and awareness were gathered, intact, then whirled upwards and out of his body. Enveloped in sudden, devouring darkness, Arithon re-emerged through a shower of light.

  He sensed air, then wind, then the vault of sky, at one with the flight of an eagle.

  Cold rushed across the sleek vanes of his feathers. The ice of high altitude burned pumping lungs. Arithon rode, gloved in the bird's form, wrapped inside the matrix of Davien's consciousness. All remembrance of his human form was gone, a feat that had happened too blindingly fast to reverse.

  Past the threshold of change, the Sorcerer's thought picked up the question left dangling. 'I can't say what you face. Not yet. Prime Selidie has kept her intent tightly guarded. Now that she's launched the close plot she's been hatching, we'll see the design set in play.'

  Arithon regrouped his shifted perception, while cloud streamers spun past, and the gusts whistled over the pinions of outstretched, taut wings. Spread below, a crazy-quilt pattern of hills lay seamed by ice-crusted ravines. Such low scrub and briar, snagged with rock at the crests, identified the frost-blasted heath of Daon Ramon. A wing stroke, more clouds, a sensation like dizziness: beneath, now, were snow-dusted vales. Furrowed ledges rose up to white summits that flashed like a crumple of enamel and glass. The bird threaded a tortuous pass through the Skyshiels, a transition that smashed every concept of impossibility. Arithon fought his distracted mind steady. Threat by Koriathain left no option except to pursue the subject at hand. 'You can't guess the extent of Selidie's plan?'

  'Beyond a sigil for tracking set in Evenstar's keel, no,' Davien admitted point-blank.

  The eagle's head turned. His far-sighted gaze scanned the lay of the land, and pin-pointed a summit for navigation. A banking arc steered though a slipstream of air, over the glimmering surge of the fifth lane. Then another vigorous, downsweep of wings. Water now flashed beneath, pocked by a brass sun, amid the indigo ruffles of wave-crests. Eltair Bay; Arithon identified the distinctive shore-
line from a vantage heretofore only seen inked on charts.

  'The Fellowship can't act, nor can I intervene without seeding a cycle of damaging vindication.' The Sorcerer's shared musing bespoke undertones deeper than balked frustration or open regret. 'The Koriathain ought to be curbed. Prince, you'll have to win through on your merits.'

  Arithon weighed his immediate answer, then probed with the utmost wry delicacy. 'You are not your colleagues' ally, in this?'

  Davien's brittle irony suggested that this time, the nettlesome prick of exposure found him as the unwitting victim. 'You have grown to know me too well, Teir's'Ffalenn.' He conceded, not hedging,'I bear the other six Sorcerers no malice. If their choice was to stand, I had to fall. They had committed too much to revoke their position. I expected no more, and no less than the fate their hand dealt me before I chose exile.'

  Another wing-beat, and another plunge into the white-out sheet of a cloud-bank. Arithon realized this was no natural mist, formed out of crystallized moisture, but a transverse pass through some unknown frame of conjury that unreeled across dimensional distance. When the eagle broke through, they now soared above the East Halla peninsula, slashed by the mud road that led into Tirans, with the broken walls of the Second Age ruin nestled into the fringes of Atwood, due south. Bound at such a pace, they would cross over the open ocean within a matter of minutes.