TWOLAS - 06 - Peril''s Gate

  'No.' Jieret protested, to no avail. The first circle was breached. The second was already half-scrubbed away under his enemy's industrious heel. Shortly only the innermost circle remained, with the acorn construct left forlorn on its bed of weathered stone.

  'Don't.' But the caithdein's desperate plea passed unnoticed.

  The Lord Commander of the Light's faithful erased that final, frail barrier. Protective spells crumpled, a sheet-thin failing of light unveiled by the torn shreds of Jieret's mage-sight. He saw no explosion, heard no clap of backlash. Yet around him, the barrens went utterly still as the mazing runes that had masked the location of Arithon's conjured fetch broke away.

  Absorbed by his crude exorcism of spells, Avenor's Lord Commander never glanced down the hillside. The change passed unnoticed, as the white-clad figure straightened up from devastated collapse. If Sulfin Evend heard his Blessed Prince's ravaged cry, he paid no more heed than he gave the gasped warning from the barbarian chieftain his quarrel had wounded.

  As the sparking burn of Lysaer's raised light once again seared across the sky and earth, blinding Jieret's dazed sight, the Lord Commander raised his spurred boot. He stamped down on the acorn. The fragile shell smashed. Its delicate, spelled contents sprang into release, and a rune of stasis unraveled. Grand conjury met and matched preset patterns of intent, as the intricate, wound spring of Arithon's last line of defense spells unfurled, beyond any man's power to recall.

  Late Winter 5670

  Eagle's Eye View

  Shadow erupted, a scrolled spiral of jet ink that uncoiled in release from the remnants of the crushed acorn. From the eagle's high vantage, circling above, the darkness expanded, whirling into a maw that encompassed Lysaer's deluging blast like caught magma. Light, shade, and the inset directives of masterfully laid magics interlocked with a bestial howl. Unlike other clashes provoked by Desh-thiere's curse, the darkness did not seek to smother the coruscating bursts. This counterflare of shadow had been tempered by spelled ciphers that bent and funneled the light bolts with capturing force. Lysaer's assault became whirled into a needlepoint focus as it struck its intended target: the eggshell remains of the acorn, and the mica construct bound in black hair that wore the pattern of Arithon's Named essence.

  That blasting intervention became all that spared the two enemies locked in their crisis of contention. Both the Alliance commander and the clanblood chieftain shot down by the bolt from his crossbow escaped the horror of instantaneous incineration. Swathed and shielded under those veils of risen dark, they were the fortunate ones.

  For the light hammered into that conjured bait did not disperse into flash-fire heat. A crafty intervention by set wards of grand conjury grappled the aggressive impetus of Lysaer's unsheathed gift and engaged a locked glyph imprinted with its matched opposite: the barbs of compulsion Desh-thiere's curse had twisted through Arithon's aura. Hate fused with like hatred. Across space, and time, the light bolts exploded, raging. The spelled lure that drew them raised the unslaked fury of years to a storm of mindless annihilation.

  Across the winter hills of Daon Ramon Barrens, eight other acorn constructs responded. Fused into unity outside the veil, the fetches of Arithon's presence responded as one. The blindfold directive of the Mistwraith's geas could not discriminate between states of existence to separate one clever construct from the next. Nor had Lysaer's intent as he struck encompassed the possibility that his marked quarry would be split manyfold.

  Yet the eagle's lofty perspective unveiled the full breadth of the defenses wrought by Rathain's prince and his caithdein. The conjoined finesse of a master's trained knowledge, and the fresh exuberance of Jieret's wakened mage talent, diverted Lysaer's attack across time and space. The blasting coruscation smashed with obliterating force into each of the eight enspelled acorns. Their bearers, fallen, or living and hounded to flight, bore the flash-burn brunt of the impacts. Whether flying in retreat, or locked in mortal combat, men were razed, willy-nilly, where they stood.

  The sprawled, broken body of Eafinn's son ignited, along with the sly-faced tracker from Darkling, paused to harvest a barbarian scalp and cash in on the mayor's bounty. The headhunter band with him danced, set aflame, horses and humans screaming in raw-throated agony.

  Two leagues farther east, the spelled company from Jaelot became torched. Their unfortunate officer had cut Theirid's clan braid. Paused to stuff the trophy in his saddle pack, he died, blazing, along with his mounted escort. Not a dead man among them ever guessed the acorn tucked into the rag knotting the barbarian's hair had been anything more sinister than a talisman worn as a luck charm.

  Of the southbound ranks from Etarra, none perished; but the well-knit course of their advance burst into harrowed disarray as other acorns planted across their line of march erupted to rocketing sheets of white balefire. Wind-borne sparks seeded a wall of burning brush across the countryside. Some of Jieret's clan war band escaped through the gaps, saved by the opportune evasion as the enemy's scorched ranks came unraveled. Others in pitched battle seized on their chance as the roiling pall of smoke broke the nerve of well-disciplined mounts, and hazed the Alliance host into reeling retreat. Others died in the merciless, red rage of skirmish. Sword to sword, closed into a jostling ring, the townborn locked weapons with screaming clan foes left no choice but to fight to the death. Jieret's scouts stood their ground, back-to-back. They cut and slashed, grimly knowing, as the air in their midst exploded to shrieking flame and bright lightning. The ten who still stood on their weary feet burned. Irreplaceable lives set forfeit to buy the most bitter of victories: they charred, having lured their Alliance enemies to share terrible doom through their oathbound ties to the Light, and the darker obsessions of battle frenzy and bloodlust.

  Where no spelled acorn had been set to cause mayhem, the ranks of the townborn scattered in wailing fear, unsure if the levin bolts might strike them next. They cowered, or fled, or wept where they stood, unmanned by their terror of treacherous black sorcery, and the rampaging conflagrations that had unraveled their stern strength and immolated brave officers and companions.

  High above the smoke, and the fires, and the screams, where the winds blew untainted, the golden eagle still circled. His farsighted vision tracked the hellhound flight of clan riders, and singled out the furtive bearer of a spelled sword wrapped in leather. That one drove two saddled remounts at a relentless gallop, his determined course bent northwestward. A blink, and the bird watched man's doings no more, but traced the distressed lane forces purling across the smoldering vales and scorched earth. His Sorcerer's perception soon found what he sought: a dissonant, edged whine that sawed through the barren's chill silence. The eagle banked, following.

  Landscape unreeled beneath each driving wingbeat, tracing that streamer of strayed energies back to its original source. The disturbing current emanated from a gap between hills, an unclean residue left in the wake of the fires still charring the bones of Jaelot's ill-fated garrison. The geas of forced intent that had warped their behavior now drifted free, left unmoored when the slain captain's spirit crossed over Fate's Wheel.

  This time, the enchantress whose awareness rode under the eagle's protection raised thought in shocked distaste.

  'That's an uncleared remnant of a Koriani sigil! No doubt some botched effort of Lirenda's to avenge herself on Arithon s'Ffalenn. Her attempt to cause harm using preemptive spellcraft was certainly never sanctioned.'

  The eagle returned a stripped fact in reply. 'Your Prime Matriarch was displeased enough to reassign the enchantress to a stint of unranked service at Highscarp's sisterhouse.'

  'Did she?' Elaira's rejoinder shimmered with rueful amusement. 'Well then, Lirenda's unlikely to humiliate herself further by petitioning the old peeress there for the leave time to disperse these embarrassing remains.'

  Sorcerer and enchantress were both well aware those loose ends posed a potential danger. Unless ruled by a banishing, such unattached sigils could settle upon a man wit-lost in drink
, or attach to some unguarded traveler. A forge-fire spark touched the eagle's sharp eyes. His opinion came razored with sarcasm. 'Shall we provoke? I'd say your colleague deserves a comeuppance for slipshod practice and arrogance.'

  The question did not beg any grace of permission. Without pause for Elaira's considered response, the bird banked again. Icy winds keened through taut feathers as he abandoned his lazy circling. The seared, corpse-strewn landscape unreeled beneath his sharp plunge.

  A fast-moving scrap of suncast shadow, the eagle swooped down upon snow-patched hills, then over the smoldering waste of acres blackened to carbon. The steady beat of his wings whipped the brush, still streaming the sulfurous smoke of spent wildfires. His path leveled over the gulches where the maimed and the fallen still bled, writhing in nooses and spring traps, then skimmed toward the razed hillcrest where Rathain's wounded caithdein lay sprawled at the feet of an Alliance commander. In wicked certainty that Elaira's presence would be the tracked lure for Prime Selidie's scryers at Whitehold, Davien bent the roundabout course of his passage directly across the keening roil of Lirenda's illicit spellcraft.

  * * *

  In far-off Highscarp, a single lit candle challenged the gloom in the Matriarch's chamber of audience. The daylight flooding the wide, breakfront windows lay muffled behind velvet curtains, while six senior seeresses tracked Davien's flight through an oval obsidian mirror. Following each twist and turn of his progress, Selidie Prime stiffened in sudden censure.

  She expelled a hissed breath, then flicked a finger to the prioress standing as witness. 'What is initiate Lirenda's assignment on the sisterhouse duty roster?'

  'She assists our fifth-rank senior sealing fiend banes.' A small, wizened woman rendered bone thin by strict service, the aged prioress had outworn her tolerance for inferiors with rival intelligence. Years of jostling for rank had resharpened her antagonism to a consummate arsenal of tact. 'An eighth-rank's trained knowledge has been a great blessing to Saytra, whose hands suffer pain in cold weather.'

  Selidie stroked the delicate nail of her forefinger down the curve of one flawless cheek. 'Lirenda's discipline, sadly, does not match her abilities. When this scrying finishes, you'll send summons in my name and appoint another assistant for Saytra. Lirenda will be referred to me for an audience. Henceforward, I will take on the selection of her assignments.'

  'Your will,' murmured the prioress, disconcerted and unsure whether the change had gone in her favor.

  Like every ranking senior at Whitehold, she had learned to step softly before the Matriarch's quicksilver temperament. One moment Selidie might order the attentive company of a dozen seniors; at the next breath, she was likely to send them all packing with a peremptory demand for privacy. No way to forecast which way the storm blew; the clear, girlish features saffron lit by the candle were an immaculate, expressionless doll's. Selidie had depths to her no one dared touch. From the shining, pinned knot of her marigold hair, to the tip of each manicured finger, the new Matriarch bore the weighty mantle of prime power with inscrutable, adamantine authority.

  Today's close examination of events in Daon Ramon showed no sign of cessation.

  'Stay with that eagle,' Selidie commanded her assembled circle of scryers. Tight focus restored, she resettled herself on her tasseled hassock, the gleaming gold sigils stitched into her overskirt set adrift on a tissue of silver muslin. The grape-colored velvet of the garment beneath melted without seam into a darkness that swallowed her slippered toes. At the Prime's knee, surrounding the dusky polish of the scrying slab framed in its lion-foot stand, the six seniors who shouldered her bidding remained submerged in linked trance. Their faces set wax in congealing shadow, they breathed in tuned unison against a silence that hung dense as soaked felt.

  The entrained flow of images they channeled from Daon Ramon described a horrific contrast of destruction and tumult, Where the eagle's flight skimmed, the raised fires of Lysaer's wrath had fanned a scorched vista, strewn with the smoking, charred ribs of hapless small animals and deer. The seared meat of downed horses pinned the grisly, scorched corpses of riders with faces beyond recognition; men fallen with blackened, fragmented finger bones still obscenely wedded with the melted lumps of steel weapons. The worn stone of the hills had been blasted to slag, a feat not seen since the wars in the Age of Dragons.

  'Such bald-faced effrontery!' Selidie murmured. 'He won't escape consequence, this time.' The back of one hand pressed to her mouth to mask a spasm of sickened distaste, she chose not to qualify which male offender had provoked her scathing comment. She might have condemned the hand of the killer, or the ferocious cleverness of the plan that had engendered first provocation, or even, the Sorcerer masked in the form of the eagle who steered his willful course through the carnage.

  If Davien was her malefactor, he showed no concern. A powerful wingbeat drove him beyond the crest where Earl Jieret was presently being bound hand and foot by his Alliance captor.

  Neither man had come through the conflict unscathed. The obsidian mirror showed singed clothing and livid weals where exposed skin had scalded to blisters. Jieret squinted and cringed, as though blinded. The grate of the embedded bolt in his shoulder drove him near witless with pain.

  Sulfin Evend fared better, since his placement at the moment the light bolts had struck had set him at the nexus of the spell that released Arithon's contained shielding of shadow. His immediate belongings had not escaped. The wooden stock of his crossbow had subsumed to hot coals. His horse was cooked meat for the crows. The scrying mirror flung back his ripe curse, spiked with his pedigree Hanshire accent.

  'Ah, excellent, we can hear them.' Selidie's triangular smile showed teeth, and her view of the glass, a hungry cat's fascination.

  'Why not just kill me?' Earl Jieret provoked in a forced gravel whisper. 'I won't walk one step, though you force me, and I'm too awkward to pack on your back.'

  'You'll be dragged, then,' Sulfin Evend snapped, surly as he discovered his spoiled boots, holed through by hot ash and cinders. 'Death here and now is too tidy for you, Red-beard, You'll taste the fire and sword as a sorcerer, but before that day comes, we'll be bargaining. Let's see what value you bring as a hostage to reel in the Spinner of Darkness.'

  Wasted effort,' Jieret insisted, broken off by a grunt of taut pain as his enemy rolled him onto his back, then looped his tied forearms with a half hitch. 'His Grace of Rathain is far beyond reach, and unlikely to return as your sacrifice.'

  So we'll see.' Sulfin Evend adjusted the drag rope over his shoulder, then leaned into the burden of hauling the chieftain behind him as deadweight. 'If nothing else, there are merchants in Etarra who would pay in gold coin for the spectacle of your execution.'

  Selidie clapped her hands in sharp glee. 'Oh, excellent! We might see this bait taken.' She gave the Highscarp prioress's blank look the contempt of her explanation. 'If Elaira breaks down and frees Earl Jieret, she'll disarm the new threat to Prince Arithon. But then we'll have Rathain's caithdein bound to us under a Koriani oath of debt. We, and not Lysaer, will hold claim on the pawn to draw in and trap the s'Ffalenn bastard.'

  'Should we trouble?' Despite the chill in the fireless chamber, the prioress found her palms sweating. 'The wretched royal bastard's already doomed, set to flight like a rabbit in Daon Ramon.'

  'But you're wrong,' Prime Selidie contradicted. A fair spider centered within her spun web, she stroked the enamel face of the scrying glass with eager satisfaction. 'The Master of Shadow has become this world's most powerful bargaining chip. Take him, and we'll break the Fellowship's will, then wrest our order free of the compact.'

  Late Winter 5670

  Hostage

  Earl Jieret endured the jouncing, rough transit, too dazed with pain to separate the scrapes of sharp rocks from the raking gouge of razed roots as the Alliance Lord Commander towed his captive bulk over the gulches. If the thorns of furze scrub and briar ripped him bloody, the burns inflicted by his grazing encounter with Lysaer's light bo
lts overwhelmed every other sensation. The raw flesh of his face raged and stung as though put to the torch. Each slight breath of wind, even the wan spill of winter sunshine, hazed his seared skin and lashed up a flood of bright agony. Faint from shock and blood loss, Rathain's caithdein bit back shredding screams as the bite of the crossbow bolt grated and lodged deeper into the bone of his shoulder.

  The rare patch of iced snow left him scratched, soaked, and gasping. No horror of war had ever savaged him like this. The few times he blacked out, the mercy was brief. Through spinning, patched senses, his awareness ebbed and surged back into brutal, clear focus. The unending blindness did not lift. The ghastly realization undid him, that the conflagration must have spoiled his eyesight. Scouring tears welled through his shut lids like white lye, beyond any power to subdue.

  Hope died, that he could find any reprieve. The death that might save him lay pitifully beyond reach. Jieret struggled, dazed as a fish on a line. Exhaustion drained him. The unbearable interval ground on and on, filled by the abrasive buffet of wind, the unending barrage of his agony strung through by the chink of Sulfin Evend's roweled spurs.

  The cessation of movement brought no relief. Vertigo made the ground seem to heave underneath him. He lay, sick and panting, while hearing delivered snatched fragments of speech that his paralyzed mind could not fathom. More helpless with misery than any man born should endure and still keep breathing life, he sprawled limp. Every muscle felt pulled, and each tendon, flayed bare. Pain mantled him under a suffocating blanket, until the pressed weight of his suffering drilled his skull like a sieve and scattered his thoughts like spilled water.

  Then hands grasped his clothing. He was propped partly upright. The explosion of hurt left him heaving and stupid. The world spun, with his body soaked clay, nipped and tugged by demonic fingers. Cold kissed his skin, then the tip of a knife blade probed like a ruby-hot poker.