Traitor''s Knot (epub)

  Jeynsa clenched her fist. Her apparent recalcitrance had sparked off her elders' exasperation, for months. Entangled in hurt and loss, driven inside herself, she had never shouldered the responsible burden by asking for their adult understanding. Only Arithon had exposed her deep grief, and beneath that, cracked the mask hiding her desperate fear. All her young life, she had never felt adequate to stand in her father's shoes. As Asandir's choice, she had no excuse to shirk her hard fate, or back down. Nor could she expect to be coddled through shame, as she surrendered her final resistance.

  The aware recognition in her prince's eyes would be all she had to sustain the sting of a public humiliation.

  Nerve steeled, teeth clenched, Jeynsa rugged the black tabard free of the satchel; while beyond the masking screen of the curtain, Braggen's combative tone sliced above the murmur of conversation.

  'I'd have expected his Grace would show up by now, given the blood-bath that's bound to erupt when this wretched affray breaks wide open. After all that Alestron has done in his name? Who could ever believe that his Grace could disown the sworn alliance of the Teir's'Brydion!'

  Shocked still, Jeynsa overheard Barach's snapped phrase, bidding Braggen to lower his voice.

  As ever, the Companion's fierce temper prevailed. 'Well then, where's your sister? More than anything his Grace will require a caithdein's support at his back!'

  'No!' Sidir objected. 'Let things stand as they are. You'll not drag Jieret's daughter into this!'

  Dakar's gruff remonstrance held out in support. 'Your prince does not wish her to know right away. The girl cannot stay the horrific course! Damn pride, will you listen? His Grace's coming work at Etarra is altogether uncanny. No, Braggen, believe me, you have no idea! The dark practice of necromancy is unclean, and by far too deadly dangerous,'

  Jeynsa let the dark tabard fall from her nerveless hands. Chilled to clammy sweat, she scarcely dared breathe. While the acrimonious debate surged ahead, her quick, silent hands gathered up her tossed leathers. Shaking, distressed, she groped for her weapons, then unhooked her storm cloak and baldric.

  '. . . naught else to do but prepare,' Sidir was insisting. 'Melhalla's been warned. We must secure the north. When this ugly news reaches the sunwheel Alliance, Alestron will wake with its walls under siege. The clans have no choice but to face that grim hour. We must act now to brace for persecution such as no chapter of history has ever foreseen.'

  Wrung white, Jeynsa dropped flat and skinned under the wall of the lodge tent. Unseen, she sprinted, then slammed into Eriegal, who had left the scout sentries and crossed the camp to find out what had delayed her.

  'Cover for me!' she gasped in his ear. 'Don't ask. I can't face the clan elders with this. Not right away. Let them think I've run off to go hunting.'

  Eriegal untangled himself from the wrack of storm cloak, flapping leathers, and baldric. He eyed the sheathed knives and sword; then the bow in her unsteady hand. 'You'll need my quiver,' he stated, nonplussed. 'I don't think you're going to want deer tips.'

  Jeynsa shut her eyes. All but ready to weep for the gift of his understanding, she accepted the horn bow and quiver. Straightened up, now possessed of her sire's iron heart, she said, tense, 'I'm not shirking my charge to safeguard the realm.'

  Eriegal gathered her trembling fingers, his eyes cool slate as he measured her. 'If you answer the call to test Arithon's character, that is not running away.' Since her inquiry concerned a devious man who was an initiate sorcerer, the Companion slipped her the heirloom amulet he carried, whose virtues were fiend bane and concealment. 'Be steadfast and safe, girl. Remember your background. You are as dear as a daughter to every father in this encampment.'

  Jeynsa shifted her burden. She let Eriegal's solicitude slip the thong over her head and tuck the worn metal amulet beneath her shirt. Still too frightened to speak, she gripped his hard wrists, then bolted headlong into the misted murk of the greenwood.

  Hours passed, while the fog lifted to a pewter overcast that spat drizzle and finally spun veils of fine rainfall. The harried gathering inside the lodge tent acquired the presence of Halwythwood's three titled elders. Barach's authority became freshly tried, as the assembly accosted the risky exposure now facing the reduced remnants of Rathain's armed strength. Since a third of the war-band had been cut down in Daon Ramon, too few hands remained for the hazards of guarding the free wilds. The redoubled fervour as Alliance politics fanned the coals of town-bred persecution could only bring more death and hardship.

  Resharpened contention was already on-going when Eriegal sauntered in through the door flap.

  His tardy appearance was given short shrift by Sidir, whose place, with increasing, unabashed familiarity, was at the side of Earl Jieret's widow.

  'Where's Jeynsa?' she asked.

  'Hunting.' Soaked from the rainfall, and predictably curt, Eriegal declined to drip at the crowded trestle. Instead, he tucked his stout frame on the floor, his back braced against the tent's center pole. 'The quarry she's stalking scarcely requires the attentive eye of an adult.'

  'Her bratty behaviour never needed any-one's shepherding in the first place,' her brother said, chafed. 'After two nights of sulking, we should applaud her initiative to supply the camp with provisions?'

  Since Eriegal had spent all of those thankless hours standing watch in the open, Feithan was not unappreciative. She stirred from beneath Sidir's tucked arm, unhooked a grass basket, and bestowed the bundle of bread and dark sausage held for the Companion's return.

  'No one will complain if you rest where you sit,' she told Eriegal. Distressed for his scars, that would ache with the rain, she refused his contrary insistence. 'We'll catch you up on the detailed news later. Barach's short-tempered because we've seen set-backs that force him to face some harsh choices. We all agreed, earlier: Jeynsa's too brittle. Until she's done grieving, she's better off gone on whatever errand she's chosen.'

  Eriegal reviewed the shut faces of Halwythwood's elders, their rancour offset by Barach's clamped jaw and Braggen's hunched glare and clenched fist. Since Sidir's steady glance begged forbearance, the younger Companion opted not to announce that Arithon's character was the targeted quarry that Jeynsa had left to pursue.

  The omission would spare the crown prince's dignity, or so Eriegal thought at the time. Jieret's daughter was trustworthy. She would rise to wear her caithdein's black with increased confidence, given the experience. Whether or not today's initiative determined Arithon's fitness to rule, someone needed to wrest the feckless creature away from his amorous dalliance.

  Shrewdly practical, Eriegal finished his overdue meal. Then he dragged up a hassock, folded his arms, and nodded off, while the council's discussion droned in the background above him.

  By midafternoon the rain fell in torrents. The trail scouts reported, wet to the skin. Then the foragers returned, complaining. They snacked on jerked meat, since the kindling outside was as uselessly soaked as their bow-strings, and game could not be tracked in a downpour. Only the sentries maintained their strict schedule, swathed in oiled leather, while the outlying patrols sheltered as they could under the wind-battered oaks.

  No one fretted that Jeynsa did not reappear. As discussion closed, and the elders arose to retire to the tents of their relatives, sly comments disparaged the Prince of Rathain's steamy passion, beyond doubt holed up in some piss-reeking den in a rock ledge claimed from a forest cat.

  Twilight's gloom had dissolved into pitch-dark when the Koriani enchantress finally came in.

  She had been gathering cat's-tail roots in the mires, to judge by the mud drawn up in rings at her hem-line and sleeves. Her sopped hair was tied back like a cart-horse's mane, and his Grace of Rathain was not with her.

  Before Feithan could address her need for dry clothes, she was accosted by Dakar's jagged state of suspended torment. 'What did he say?'

  Elaira surveyed the close-knit party of six, orange-lit by the flare of a pine knot: Sidir, seated with grave attention, a cha
rt of the kingdom inked on rolled deer-hide under his sensitive fingers; and beside him, Feithan, her dark lashes downcast. She, at least, displayed aching discomfort for the past night's inconsolable handling.

  Braggen leaned his bull frame by the door-post, great sword set aside and arms folded. If his fixed scowl wore a flush of embarrassment, High Earl Barach's candid stare implied that he might not yet know what had occurred in the glen by the Willowbrook. Also oblivious, Eriegal lay in a tucked heap by the center pole, sleeping against a scrunched hassock.

  The dearth of privacy scarcely troubled clan custom; Dakar's stricken glance refused to release her. 'Elaira, I beg you. What did his Grace say?'

  The enchantress regarded him, eyes sparked to cold fire. 'That you should have trusted him to protect me.'

  Braggen broke in with hot incredulity. 'Over Selidie's possession of your personal crystal and a babe of his lineage, defenceless?'

  'Even so.' Her resharpened censure raked the huge clansman over, not sparing him the cut-glass state of her anguish. 'His friends could have let him attend his own fate.'

  'That doesn't allow for the crux of the crisis,' Sidir stated without remonstrance. 'You imply that we should have permitted the lane flux to recoil and hurl the weal of two kingdoms to imbalance?'

  Elaira just stared at him, while her bedraggled hems dripped, and her hands locked tight on her bundled roots, collected through her hours of cathartic foraging.

  'What else under Ath's sky could we have done?' Dakar cried at last in stripped anguish.

  Elaira stirred. She glanced sidewards at Feithan, who nodded. Given that tacit leave against the sensitive uncertainty, that her Prime's meddling had not reneged the lodge tent's grant of guest welcome, the enchantress finally stepped into the light thrown by the flickering brand. There, shoulders bowed, she sat down. 'You could have allowed Arithon the gift of respect for what was held sacred between us.'

  Earl Barach proved not to be uninformed: his steady calm much too old for his years, his comment cut through without passion. 'You would have set your man's dignity above the land's health and the critical need for a bountiful harvest to redress the west's blight and famine?'

  Elaira said nothing, but covered her face with chilled hands. By the tenor of their silence, the men did not see: except for Sidir, who lifted the burden of roots from her lap and delivered his whispered apology.

  'I don't understand,' Braggen insisted, his nerves sawed as the tension extended.

  Feithan's unstinting spirit spared the enchantress the wretched need to explain. 'She means you to know that Prince Arithon would have chosen the child before he left the lane's kindled forces imbalanced or the land's needs unrequited.'

  Dakar stood, shocked white. 'That would have set him, and you, against the unleashed might of your order! You're saying we should have left him such a risk? Dharkaron's black vengeance, lady! Where are the sane limits? For a Teir's'Ffalenn's arrogance and his gift of rogue talent, we should turn our backs on all consequence? You tell us we ought to have sanctioned his ruin!'

  The Koriani enchantress uncovered her face and regarded the prophet whose ungovernable Sight had entangled too many lives in fast knots. 'I ask what you and your Fellowship will not give, in trust. Leave Arithon willing to fail on his merits!' Elaira's leashed temper gave way. 'What could have happened?'

  'Arithon's child -' began Dakar.

  'And mine!' cracked Elaira. 'His and mine! Not yours. Or your Fellowship's, or Prime Selidie's, despite what she thinks! We could have been left with the chance to look after our own, as a risk shouldered squarely between us.'

  When the spellbinder's heated stance failed to buckle, Elaira lashed back in raw shame. 'Ath's mercy! He was helpless, and I lack the power to stand down a Fellowship Sorcerer! How would you feel?'

  The Mad Prophet flushed. 'Lady, on that score, I daresay I have cause to know!'

  That forced her acknowledgement: he did not practise vice. The burden he bore from the glen was no pittance; was made worse, in chill fact, since as the free agent, he could have refused Kharadmon's ruthless expedient.

  Dakar faced away. If the humid scents of wet leather, oiled steel, and pine smoke clogged an atmosphere grown too close, there remained unavoidable details to discuss. Despite his stripped nerves and Elaira's reft heart-break, he stiffened resolve and pressed forward. 'I have to ask, lady. Has his Grace abrogated the permissions I held?'

  'No.' Elaira knotted her fingers, scarcely aware as Feithan slipped off to fetch her mulled wine and a blanket. 'That says far more for Arithon's grace of forgiveness than for the regard given a crown prince's sanctioned integrity.'

  'And now?' Language did not encompass the delicate words; Dakar could not frame the question, though she must know he could not leave that excoriating, last query unanswered: whether or not the Crown Prince of Rathain had willfully chosen to go forward and make her entangled love consummate.

  Elaira replied, now shaking as the flushed hare pressed at bay by a wolf pack. 'He would not have me endangered, he said.'

  She wept then, the silenced tears tracking down her already rain-soaked face.

  Then Feithan arrived and wrapped her cold, huddled form into an heirloom blanket. 'My dear, you're exhausted. Let's see you to bed with a cup of spiced wine and a posset.'

  Elaira did not protest the kindness and allowed the insistent clanswoman to guide her onto her feet. Checked as she stood by Sidir's tacit touch, she paused only to answer his last, gentle question.

  'Your prince consulted with Kharadmon long enough to reach an accord for the timing to enact their planned purge of the Kralovir. Just before daybreak, Arithon left. If the Aiyenne's in flood, he'll ford at Narms, and ride post down the Mathorn Road. In fair weather or foul, ten days should see his Grace through to the gates of Etarra.' For the anxiety on the Mad Prophet's face, she added, 'He said you could abandon his service, or else catch up with him as you chose. He left an address for the purpose.'

  'A trapper's relation?' Dakar shivered, then nodded, if not relieved, at least reassured he would not be shunned out of rancour. 'That makes sense. His Grace owes the man's sister a promise concerning a call of condolence.' Yesterday's fulfilled obligation to a surviving clanborn uncle had provided the information. The woman's husband had closed his cooper's shop in Eastwall and re-established his trade where the bounty of Alliance funding made business more lucrative.

  Much later, when Elaira was settled and sleeping, Eriegal stirred from his extended catnap. First informed of Prince Arithon's precipitous departure, then given the round of ill news he had missed by his choice to guard Jeynsa, he heard out the grim scale of the upset served by the Alliance's taint of cult necromancy. Sidir's account did not finish until the pine knot had burned to a coal.

  Under thin, bloody light, Eriegal rubbed at his balding head, the first uneasy sign he was troubled. 'Jeynsa went after Prince Arithon,' he admitted to Barach point-blank.

  No one worried. The girl was well able to look after herself anywhere in the free wilds. Burdened down by far weightier concerns, Barach shrugged. 'If my sister tried to follow his Grace, the rain will have spoiled her tracking.'

  'So she catches him up?' said Braggen, amused. 'Our liege is no fool. He'll shred her dignity, raise every hackle she's got, then send her young backside packing.'

  Lumped onto a hassock in jellied exhaustion, Dakar dismissed, 'If he doesn't, I'll knife him, believe it.'

  For what lay in the north was an unresolved danger cold-bloodedly vicious, and beyond the pale of any clansman's mortal imagining.

  * * *

  Summer 5671

  Bait

  Fast as Arithon could cross the wilds of Halwythwood, then engage the travellers' amenities for a swift passage by way of the trade-road, the Mad Prophet could maintain no such scorching pace. He lacked the stamina to make speed on foot. Post-horses tired beneath his stout bulk, even if his slipshod balance astride did not scour him to raw blisters. Beyond mundane discomforts, he f
ound himself loath to meet Arithon s'Ffalenn face-to-face.

  The spellbinder who had enacted a Fellowship directive had not stood, heart or mind, as a friend.

  A fortnight and two days granted too brief an interval to reconcile the hurt, or ease the fresh brunt of remorse. Hot sun, and dust, and the seasonal scourge of night-feeding insects could not eclipse the dread or distance the hollow eyes of the enchantress now left to keep desolate vigil in Halwythwood.

  But the shadow thrown by the dark practice of necromancy posed a crisis too bleak to defer. Too soon, Dakar crossed the Mathorn foothills. First wrapped in the resin-thick taint of the firs that blackened the steepening slopes, then folded under the blanketing shade thrown by the flint-crowned rims of the peaks, he cleared the last notch, while his hack puffed and lagged underneath him.

  Spread under dusty haze, amid the creak of spoked wheels and the lowing of the teamed oxen, the overlook exposed the last, rolling downs, where the wilds of Daon Ramon lapped against the furrowed pass that bisected the spurs of two ranges. All traffic bound northward funnelled up through the gap, while the diminishing ruts of the east-bound trade-road wound away towards the opposite coast. The snake-twist approach to Etarra had always dizzied, for the switched-back that curves rose in ascent to the southern gate. Yet today, the brassy fall of noon sunlight lit the sweeping changes made since the year of Prince Arithon's failed coronation.

  Dakar reined up with caught breath at the sight.

  The wedged muddle of square-cut brick battlements and knobbed towers still straddled the cleft of the pass. But the forested vales he remembered had been razed to stripped clay and bare rock. Above loomed the bleak, fitted walls of an outer array of defence-works, newly constructed by conscript labor under the arcane expertise of Elssine's masons.