Traitor''s Knot (epub)

  Incensed by the bald-faced effrontery that had bearded them in their own hall, the brothers s'Brydion fumed in stunned stillness. The music's wild force held them ruthlessly thralled. Compelled to hold out through the last, burning verse, they turned in lashed fury upon the bard, who had never been what he seemed: an itinerant stranger plying a free singer's art to scratch out his nondescript living.

  Black-haired, green-eyed, and stripped clear of the mage's glamour that had masked him, Arithon s'Ffalenn laid aside the lyranthe. He stood and confronted the threat of dismemberment glaring at him from the dais.

  'I tried to tell you!' cracked Parrien, incensed. 'I heard his Grace play that way once, at Sanpashir. Such talent's uncanny, and keen as a weapon, and no trick to foist upon a clan holding sworn as a friend and an ally!'

  Prince Arithon struck back with a truth that smashed rhetoric. 'And had I tried to talk, you'd have heard my speech through?'

  'Speech!' Keldmar ripped through his wife's fingers and shoved onto his feet, to a shattering crash of spilled plates. 'The man who even suggests we should run gets no word. Just my sword-thrust, straight through his liver!'

  'By damn, forget blades! My bare fists will do,' howled Parrien in savage rejoinder. 'I don't sit still for the slangs of a coward!' Yet his combative lunge to arise became jolted short. Spun with a poleaxed, irate expression, he glared at his wife, who was not eating cake. Left-handed and deft, she waged her own style of assault beneath the lace edge of the table-cloth.

  Primed to wicked interest, Mearn peered sidewards to see what new tactic had flummoxed his brother. He already knew how the duke was roped down: Liesse had his thigh pinned beneath her sleek leg. Draped like a vine over his shoulder and arm, she offered him brandy, while Bransian spluttered and roared, 'This is how you suggest we defeat an invasion? By wrecking our gates, and demolishing our battlements, and toppling our trebuchets into the inlet?'

  'We've seen no evidence there's to be a campaign,' Mearn probed. Alone of the four brothers, he stood on his wiles. Before he decided to rile his wife, he would hear through the facts that provoked such a drastic argument.

  On his feet, empty-handed, Arithon responded with chill provocation. 'The smoke from your foundry has blown on the wind. You've been recognized in Avenor.'

  'You imply someone's sold us. Who?' thundered the duke. 'Give us the name, and I'll unwind his guts for the pigs' trough!'

  Liesse snagged his elbow with tacit restraint. 'His Grace has received Dawr's ear on the matter. Perhaps we should listen before rushing to false conclusions?'

  'Listen!' sneered Keldmar. 'That's for mincing ambassadors. Mealy-mouthed words never settled a thing! You want to arrive at a lasting solution, a bran-gling fight's always quickest.' He would have fetched his sword there and then, had his partridge-plump woman not clamped his wrist and hung on with the force of a lamprey.

  'Your duke outranks you,' she murmured in warning. Then her titanic yank sat him back down before the wide eyes of his children.

  Given the floor like a morsel of bait tossed before bristling lions, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn advanced towards the dais. 'You don't need a leak. Etarra has ears within every town's walls, while the new batch of priests given charge at Avenor has been hand-picked for talented prescience. Your alliance has served me with invaluable help. Beyond any doubt, Mearn's fast wits in Tysan saved uncounted clan lives, as well as the living name of s'Gannley. But then is not now. This armed religion's become too strongly entrenched. Keep on as you have, and your irreplaceable heritage is going to face extirpation.'

  'What are you suggesting?' Mearn twirled his brandy, his sharp features intrigued. 'Let the Light's weasels slink in for tea, then scratch their backs and befriend them?'

  'Ah, no, prince!' cracked Bransian. 'My people won't have Lysaer's canting false priests! Ath's law will abide here, though we come to die for it.'

  'You will be killed,' Arithon agreed, unequivocal. 'You and Alestron's loyal inhabitants, down to the last babe in the arms of its mother. Never forget! I bear the aware gift, bred into the s'Ahelas lineage when the king's ancestry was crossed with s'Dieneval. My passage through Kewar has forced the latent traits of Dari's rogue legacy into full flower. Your defence at Alestron will be written in blood, I foresee this!'

  While the storm on the dais threatened explosion, and Keldmar and Sevrand surged to kick down the trestle and launch an assault with bare hands, Dawr raised her stick. She rapped the sounding-board of the lyranthe. The loud, booming knock broke across pandemonium, followed up by her scathing admonishment. 'Are we sunk low as townsmen, or just ravening boors! Hear his Grace through! You don't have to like what he says. He's asked for naught beyond your fair hearing.'

  Arithon inclined his head and acknowledged her. He wore no jewels. Not so much as a clasp with a pin; his neat clothes bore no concealed weapons or knives. His close-fitted doublet and tie belt had no bosses for expediency to wrap his fine knuckles for in-fighting.

  Not enamoured of his weaponless alliance one bit, Duke Bransian pent back his rage until his locked fists bent his cake fork. Too wise to press Dawr, he turned his murderous contempt on the insolent crown prince before him. 'What do you suggest beside flinging open our gates? Did my hearing deceive me? You actually think we should topple our defences down the east cliff and choke off the inlet that leads to the ocean?'

  Arithon delivered his point with taut clarity. 'I am begging the clans to make peace with the towns.'

  Before Mearn could howl his savage rejoinder, the Master of Shadow plunged on. 'The Light's religion is supported by feud. Break its line of support from the merchants, and the incentive to grow will lose impetus. Stop piracy, cease raiding, and within one generation, the need for armed conflict will wither.'

  'What! You say we should bend our necks to the mayors!' Parrien pealed in disbelief.

  Keldmar's frustrated bellow defeated the rest. 'Whose force will stop townsmen from violating the free wilds? And how will we maintain our blood lines and culture if our tradition does not stay separate?'

  Bransian stabbed his mangled fork into the table-top . The clangour of silverware jounced against plates and underscored his distemper. 'Are you done yet, prince?'

  'Shortly,' said Arithon. 'I've already garnered Lord Erlien's backing. Tomorrow, I move on to Atwood to place my appeal before the chieftains of Melhalla. Once they're amenable, I'll move on to Halwythwood and lay my proposal before High Earl Barach and his sister, Jeynsa s'Valerient.'

  Aware of a persistent, disturbed rumour from that quarter, Parrien grinned. The crocodile tickled by minnows, he said, 'What if your style of absentee charm fails to win over your vested caithdein?'

  Arithon raised his eyebrows. 'Then the final word rests. Rathain's clans by crown sovereignty have no choice but to answer to me.'

  Mearn sucked in a swift breath, forehead knit. 'To achieve that, your Grace, you'd have to submit to all of your sanctioned inheritance. You'd let the Fellowship complete the arcane attunements of a high king's coronation?' Still staring with focused intensity, he added, 'Dharkaron's aimed Spear! What under Ath's sky came to break your fixed will? Ask me, I'd have sworn that no power alive could have brought you to heel on that issue.'

  'No power alive,' stated Arithon s'Ffalenn. Against the back-drop of arrested shock, his response held tortured simplicity. 'At Kewar, I discovered the cost of shed blood upon a Paravian-wrought sword-blade. That's tied to the matter of your threatened heritage. If Alestron shoulders the part I am asking, friendship would bind me to accede to that debt.'

  Duke Bransian folded his forearm across the concealed sheath of his dagger. 'State your proposal,' he told Rathain's prince. Since the prospect of a restored crown in the north would create needed safe-guards, and shore up the clans' harried standing, he subsided to listen. 'What part must s'Brydion take to press you to invoke such a personal sacrifice?'

  Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn mounted the dais. Exposed to the risk of violent contact, he braced his hands upon th
e rucked table-cloth. He regarded the s'Brydion brothers and their wives. Then, each in turn, he acknowledged their gathered, grown children. 'You must give up your home to the cause of Ath's peace. Dismantle each battlement, stone from set stone.' As umbrage stirred, he pursued his case, speaking quickly. 'Deny Lysaer s'Ilessid the target to strike and forbid him the victory that would cede these warded walls as a future Alliance stronghold. Then join your resource with the rest of the clans living in the free wilds. From that position of reinforced, mobile strength, marry your efforts with theirs.'

  While the savage offence in s'Brydion eyes raked him over without quarter, Arithon pressed through, unflinching. 'Begin to rebuild the broken trust that has alienated the old blood lines, and dismantle the long-standing bleeding of trade that keeps the head-hunters' coffers funded against you.'

  'Never!' cried Keldmar, slammed to his feet as his gesture swept the vaulted hall. 'These gates have never been breached in defeat. We've broken the heart and ripped the marrow and sinew from every armed host ever mustered against us!'

  'Our ancestors bled and died on this ground!' Parrien added, incensed. 'How dare you suggest we slink off like whipped dogs for the sake of a few prying priests!'

  'For no priests at all,' Prince Arithon responded. 'We are talking of clan-blood's role in the compact, your long-term survival, and the threatened foundation that sustains Athera's grand mysteries! I have seen! At full strength, bound to peace, you will have a future in which to rebuild every tower of your wrecked citadel. Deny the cause that supplies the Light's doctrine, and my half-brother becomes a curse-driven fanatic without any footing to mount a resistance.'

  Shown shut faces, tight fists, and shouted down by the clamour of vicious objection, Arithon raised a masterbard's diction, pitched to raze through all deafening noise.

  'Give me Havish, Melhalla, Shand, and Rathain, free from clan strife and preda-tion, and Tysan becomes a backwater pocket. Her merchants will be helplessly landlocked by winter if High King Eldir will seal amity and join force with me, and impose a stiff policy of port sanctions!'

  Mearn's time at Avenor as s'Brydion ambassador showed him the first glimmer of merit. He smashed his glass to call halt to the racket, then rammed sane debate through the breach. 'The north doesn't have enough blue-water sail to slip through a determined blockade. Certainly, Havish could close the southcoast.'

  'He could arrest shipping, if Parrien's seamanship backs him,' Prince Arithon was swift to point out. 'My trained crews can bottle-neck Instrell Bay, and deny access through North Ward and Anglefen. Move now, with Tysan caught at a standstill and reliant on its fleet of oared galleys, we ought to be able to strangle their guild industry within a season. Scarce funds and choked trade will drive the Alliance into a bloodless submission.'

  'We could do as much without dismantling our citadel,' Bransian declared, his inimical scowl stamped into place and his clenched hands like raw beef before him.

  Arithon matched that gruelling regard. 'You could not,' he said, honest. The sorrow of his empathic understanding ripped to the bone and arrested the duchess's breath. 'Not with Kalesh and Adruin raised to arms on your door-step, and Etarra mustering troops. The instant you're stripped of the pretence of your sunwheel alliance, Alestron becomes a fixed target. You can't abide. The hour's too late. Don't underestimate the affliction of Desh-thiere's curse! Though I may have found means to master its relentless drive to seek slaughter, let's not cloud the facts! The geas still coils its hate through my vitals. For Lysaer, that urge has become overpowering, and I tell you now: subversive unrest draws him to Shand. This was my intent. We must now pin him down, hold him here as the winter sets in! That leaves Tysan cut off and vulnerable. The head of the snake can be defanged in the south, as long as there is no given cause, and no traitorous town, to serve the Alliance with the determined incentive to rally.'

  But Bransian broke patience and shoved to menacing, full height, overshadowing the slight bard before him. 'You count us cheap, prince! The might of my men-at-arms is no pittance, to dissolve at the first threat of conflict. We will not turn tail! How dare you suggest that we shrink from the battle that my captains have been bred and trained for?'

  'Courage has no bearing,' said Arithon s'Ffalenn. 'Fate's dice have been cast. By next spring, mark my words! You'll face a rising you cannot win. The hard past notwithstanding, I'm disarming a war that is bound by cursed impetus to destroy you! My lord of Alestron, listen and live! Or believe me, I'll turn my back and walk out, and never once weep for your memory!'

  Bransian received this in electrified silence. Aware of his quivering edge of leashed temper, Liesse looked on, afraid to speak, while Mearn, Parrien, Keldmar, and Sevrand awaited the hair-trigger move that would unsheathe killing steel against a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince.

  Before s'Brydion temper, a man would be foolishly mad to hold his firm ground while disarmed.

  'Don't try me,' said Arithon, his calm of a depth to strike warning.

  Bransian sucked in a taxed breath, spoke at last. 'You would spurn our amity, prince? Repudiate our resource, that has shouldered your cause, even stooped to spy on your enemy's lair at Avenor? We have provisioned your blue-water ships. Have harboured your fugitives, with no questions asked. Now you insist you should broker our surrender, based upon fear and the belief we're incompetent to defend on our own home ground?'

  Uproar threatened. Bransian brandished his fist, quelling his wolf pack of brothers. 'Go on, prince. Make yourself heard!'

  'I prize your friendship.' Torn to the thread of his honest desperation, Arithon sustained the duke's threat. 'I value true honour, none better,' he said. 'But there, I must draw my firm line. Bear witness, Bransian, before the eyes of your family! I will not endorse suicide. I refuse to back pride that will bring children to slaughter under the name of my birthright!'

  No bard, now, but a sorcerer clothed in his assurance as initiate master, the Prince of Rathain bowed to acknowledge the duke. No man stirred. None served him with violence as he gave his salute to Dame Dawr, tucked erect in her chair. Last, his back turned, standing vulnerable to the uncivilized might wrapped in rage and fine silk on the dais, he pronounced his formal release. 'On my word as Teir's'Ffalenn! The alliance is severed, that once was sworn upon the high ground at Vastmark.'

  There and then, Arithon descended the stair and walked off. Across the barren stone to the doorway, his footstep stayed firm in resolve. The men-at-arms the grandame had stationed gave him way without question. He passed through with no blade raised in challenge, and never a pause to look back.

  The oak panel boomed shut and cut off his departure as he let himself into the street.

  Left with ringing silence, nobody moved. As though glued in the draught-fluttered spill of the candles and the sickly-sweet reek of spilled brandy, the moment hung in suspended, high-strung disbelief.

  Then Liesse stirred. Pearls clicked as she leaned forward and unstuck the fork her husband had jammed through the table-cloth. 'His Grace meant every word,' she ventured, shocked pale. 'Mercy upon us! That was not any show of performer's theatrics.'

  Bransian's icy regard never shifted from Dawr's drawn face, where she sat, discomposed and erect in defiance. 'You promised him this?' The duke's wounded gesture encompassed the keep's walls, hung with their faded array of war trophies: over five thousand years of proud history reflected in dented shields, commemorative swords, and sun-faded antique banners. Sick with grief, he accosted the grandame whose harsh wisdom had never so cruelly savaged his charge to carry his forefathers' heritage. 'You think you'd survive your first winter living in a freezing hide lodge on jerked meat, and suffering harsh conditions and privation?'

  'I'm not ruling, as duchess,' Dame Dawr pointed out. She arose, leaning heavily on her silver-bossed stick. While her man-servant collected the abandoned lyranthe, she smoothed her skirts, squared trim shoulders, and for the first time, refused to meet any-one's eyes. 'My youngest grandchild is a grown man, while you
rs are still suckling at breast. I gave Rathain's prince his chance to be heard. Nothing more, since your decision will change the span of my days very little. It's your children's future,' the s'Brydion dowager said. The weight of her years wrung her to a sorrow that battered her to exhaustion. 'Either way, I won't be faced with bending my neck to that upstart popinjay and his false religion.'

  Mearn regarded his older brother, bemused. 'I don't like the taste of what's happened. Not one bit. Arithon had the brute power to coerce us. Both as Masterbard, and as an initiate sorcerer, he could have enforced our compliance.'

  'Why didn't he?' Adrift without any target, Bransian crashed his balked fist on the table. 'His Grace lives and breathes by his twisty wiles! Would he play fickle and turn on his heel if he truly foresaw our defeat?'

  'He would not disabuse himself of Ath's law,' Dawr stated. 'Remember, each day, that he hasn't. His doings henceforward are not your concern. You have but one task ahead of you now: take arms. Yours is to make certain the cost of his seer's vision does not ever come home to roost.'

  * * *

  Summer 5671

  Atwood

  Three days later, by nightfall amid drenching rain, the Prince of Rathain met the small party of clansmen posted to intercept him at the border of Atwood. He came on foot. From Alestron, he carried no more than his sword and a cerecloth cloak bestowed by a charitable stranger. The lyranthe from Selkwood remained in Dawr's chamber, its silent strings his undying reminder of the integrity that forced his renouncement.