TWOLAS - 06 - Peril''s Gate

  Unable to call out or warn Kharadmon, Dakar felt the sudden, rushing burn of the first breach as it happened. A point in the major wardings thinned. Snagged light tore through. The Sorcerer, nerveless, countered by capping the breach with Dakar's naked hand, laid palm outward against Rockfell's granite.

  Through that whiplash instant, as Kharadmon dammed the lane's force in check through naught else but singed tissue and brute will, Dakar gasped, 'Disengage! You can't think to contain the flux with mere flesh!'

  Response was impossible. A breath, a slammed heartbeat, and the Sorcerer lost his fool's grip. The tide of the lane force rammed through, inexorable.

  Dakar screamed then, a cry flung back in strained echoes off Rockfell's black stone.

  The searing eruption of raw energies coursed through sinew and bone, scouring his nerve sheaths to fire and scraped agony. Still screaming, Dakar collapsed. Mind and thought were milled under a barrage of barbed sparks that drilled a thousand hot pins through his brain.

  And still, the Fellowship Sorcerer who partnered him did not release hold on his body. Thrashed and ravaged amid the raw pulse of the lane force, the spellbinder forgot life and breath. The span of his existence sleeted into a cocoon of strained noise, and sensation became torment distilled into suffering without hope of surcease.

  How long could the mind support senseless pain, without tumbling, lost to insanity? How long, before the heart burst, and overstrung muscle unraveled to quivering jelly? Denied the black passage into unconsciousness, forbidden the crossing of Fate's Wheel, Dakar gibbered, entangled in the wracked shreds of awareness. He felt like the butterfly battered by gales. No leverage existed to tear himself free of Kharadmon's shackling demands.

  The moment of surcease passed all but unnoticed as the aftershock memory of suffering and horror cast its imprisoning shadow over the future.

  Then, framed in white light, a Paravian rune of renewal cut through the clawing pain.

  Dakar gasped, whirled dizzy. His overturned senses restored in a rush, leaving him a crushed wad without strength. He recovered himself, folded onto his knees, doubled over with racking nausea. The snagged gaps in his sight shrank to sparks, and then faded, as the lane forces dwindled, subsiding to background quiescence.

  'Midnight lies behind us. The first crest is passed,' Kharadmon ventured, a gentle, soft touch in a mind still grazed raw, as though every synapse was blistered.

  Dakar whimpered. His palms were left scalded. The singed threads of his sleeves stuck to red, weeping flesh. Inside and out, he felt scarred and reamed, as though someone who loved torture had pumped liquid lye through his bloodstream. The air drawn into his overstressed lungs felt abrasive as sand; thought and cognizance seemed dulled to poured lead.

  'I can't do this again,' he sobbed through a throat like ripped meat.

  Kharadmon's response was inflexible. 'You must, else the world dies. Meanwhile, we have until the next surge at dawn to refit the wards and strengthen the patches holding the weak points.'

  No reprieve; no rest; even for small healing to ease the sting of seared hands. Hazed back onto his unsteady feet by the Sorcerer's driving urgency, Dakar plowed ahead. His spirits stayed low. He could not shake off his creeping anxiety, that the next onslaught would break him past mending. Warning or protest, his admission proved useless. Defeatist thoughts wrung no mercy from the brusque presence of Kharadmon.

  'You'll find the dawn tide by lengths less taxing,' the Sorcerer dismissed, impelled to join awareness with Luhaine, and assess how his colleague had weathered the first test. 'With the sun's position squared with the pulse of the lane force, the next crest won't be as defined.'

  Yet Dakar was not fooled. He found no haven in false consolation. The dawn surge, on any day, was sufficient to fire the lanes. Such natural phenomena enabled the Fellowship to effect their spelled transfers across latitude, or ignite the constructs of conjuries beyond the pale of all other orders on Athera. Seasons created a sine wave fluctuation, with the event of spring equinox framed as a harmonic balance point, raising an exponentially heightened peak resonance.

  Suffering, each step, with his muscles whipped slack and a screaming ache stabbed through each unstrung nerve end, Dakar knew the ordeal just endured had been little more than the opener. The inevitable outcome required no genius. If the dawn crest did not test his resilience so severely, the noon surge would bring the high tide mark. All but shattered by the inaugural pass, he now realized just how far his personal resource fell short. Barring a miracle, Dakar suspected he was too drained already to surmount the dawn; never mind noon, or the waning aftershocks to follow at sunset and midnight.

  The spellbinder hacked in a coarse breath to denounce the endeavor as fool's play. Kharadmon's barbed tone interrupted. 'Quit belaboring the obvious. Everyone knows you're a few feathers short of a turkey. Which point cannot signify, given the dangers, besides, you've not tapped the last of your resources yet. We're not finished, and won't be, until then.'

  Without knowing why, Dakar felt a terrible grue chase down the length of his spine. 'I don't want to go there,' he mewled. Ath's infinite pity! Why do I know I'd rather face death, first?'

  For answer, Kharadmon mustered his will like a knife, and applied himself strengthening ciphers.

  Predawn, Spring Equinox 5670

  Night Encounters

  At Althain Tower, the adepts sitting vigil at Sethvir's side watch him stir from deep trance; blue-green eyes snap open, unseeing and wide, as he gasps in stunned horror, 'Kharadmon, no! What are you thinking? How dare we draw on a resource already burdened to breaking? If the world should be lost, I beg you, don't ask Rathain's crown prince to shoulder remorse for another annihilating failure . . .

  Wearied by days of solitary, fast flight, the Companion Sidir at last reaches the clan enclave in Halwythwood; and his news meets with consternation and tears, then the rage of a grief-stricken girl, desperate to deny the Sighted dreams that foretell her accession as Rathain's caithdein: 'Jeynsa,' he says, 'I can't ease you with lies. If the High Earl still lived when we last parted, he stayed to face odds worse than dire . . .'

  Predawn, in the Mathorns, a wary clan sentry challenges two riders, one upright and alert, and the other, wrapped in a bear mantle, and slumped with exhaustion against his hill pony's neck; and the answer comes back, in old speech royal accents, 'Bless Ath! By the name of s'Ffalenn, I beg succor and sanctuary for Braggen, one of Earl Jieret's loyal Companions . . .'

  Spring Equinox Dawn

  XIII. Teirs's'Ffalenn

  To the five wary clan scouts who kept watch from the remote Mathorn outpost, and who found themselves playing startled host to unexpected s'Ffalenn royalty, Arithon made his firm disposition. 'There is no other choice to be made. I must move on, and at once.'

  The biting, harsh cold attended a brief silence. Across the windblown rags of the blaze kindled to brew water for remedies, Braggen slept like the dead. His sword cuts had been bathed and bound by his liege's own hands, with his slack, weary body finally settled amid the folds of Jieret's bear mantle. In predawn darkness, huddled in leathers and furs against the cruel chill whose grip lingered on for the season, the three scouts holding parley exchanged unsettled glances.

  The fox-haired woman slapped the stick just used to score maps in the snow against an impatient, gloved palm. 'That would cause disappointment.' Her remonstrance snapped through consonants as brisk. 'Braggen will want to go with you.'

  Arithon regarded her, features cut to sharp angles by the harried, low fire, and his green eyes hard-set against sentiment, he would pose a liability.'

  No need to belabor the core of that argument. Braggen had gone three nights with scant sleep, then exerted himself to a standstill. The man the scouts had dragged out of the saddle had verged upon total collapse. If Jieret's Companion suffered no lasting harm, sheer exhaustion must take its due toll. He was not going to awaken refreshed, but raging stiff, bruised, and sore in every taxed joint.

  Wh
ile the woman scout matched her liege lord's level stare throughout a prolonged, tensioned quiet, Arithon saluted her point with the barest, flexed smile. 'Braggen would suffer the punishment gladly, I know. But I must heed my heart on the matter. The news from Daon Ramon is already devastating. With Earl Jieret dead, this Companion's feal duty is now to survive. When he disagrees, and he will, tell him plainly: he is needed. My decision is made for young Jeynsa s'Valerient. For the good of the realm, I urge that Braggen go south and report forthwith to Sidir.'

  'You could stand on royal prerogative and make him,' suggested the white-haired scout who supported the cold with remarkable immunity. His bare fingers stayed supple at their task, cleaning and sorting the best arrows from the outpost's scant stock of armament.

  'No.' Arithon looked away, perhaps abashed, or else too grief-struck to master his sorrow for the blood just spilled in Daon Ramon. 'Let Braggen choose. He's earned the right. If fortune is kindly, I should be a day's ride to the north by the hour he wakens.'

  'Well, you won't go alone, liege.' The woman who held rank tossed her stick down, determined. The clamped set to her features would brook no more argument. She tipped the grounds from the tin mug just used to brew willowbark tea, wiped the residue clean, then tucked the implement away in the rock niche that sheltered them. 'I'm off to fetch remounts.' Arisen, lithe-limbed, she hooked the clasps on her hide jacket. 'The fittest horses we have will be ready before dawn. Machlin, attend the provisions.'

  As Arithon bristled for blazing rebuttal, the elder again intervened. 'She's right, you know, liege. These mountains are a maze for those who don't know them. You need to make time against hot pursuit? Then necessity demands that we guide you.'

  'You're asking for suicide!' Arithon snapped, goaded to vicious brevity. 'Do you have progeny safe somewhere else? Let that determine the sacrifice.'

  In fact, two scouts foisted their presence upon him when the time came to mount in cold darkness. Arithon had paused only to dress his mauled hand, reopened by the pull of the bowstring, He could eat jerky, moving, and his rest was caught up, a surplul benefit of the days just spent in extended spiritwalk.

  'Lysaer's Etarrans will be moving by daybreak,' he warned. Well aware the woman who proffered the reins of a restless gray gelding was about to exhort with entreaty. 'Fear that. I dare not allow the Mistwraith's curse to overset my last grip on sanity. Distance will save that. I have to ride now! Take my blessing in thanks, knowing your generosity has saved Braggen, and quite likely myself as well.'

  A flurry of farewells, exchanged in clan dialect as the oldest scout gave his filled quivers to the younger pair chosen to ride. The woman relinquished her best horse, approving, as her prince gave the saddle his expert, fast check. A sharp man made certain her hurried work had not left cloth or girth strap ill set, to chafe the animal sore down the trail. His Grace cared for dumb beasts above human pride; and that ingrained kindness won her over.

  'Guard your mauled hand,' she cautioned. 'Promise you'll strap it the moment you reach safety, and rest until it heals properly.'

  'Ah, lady,' said Arithon, suddenly beset. For a moment, uncertainty and stark need frayed the firm weave of his voice. 'Trust me, I made that same bond to myself, months ago in the Skyshiels. As soon as may be, I'll bow to good sense.' He sorted the gray's reins, then clasped her gloved fingers and touched her palm to his cheek in rushed salute. Then he mounted. 'I hear your caring most clearly. Take my earnest word that it matters.'

  Despite driven haste, regardless of trials that burdened his shoulders with worry, Arithon's handling was silk on the bit, and his heels, a light pressure asking the gelding's compliance.

  'Ath speed your Grace,' called the white-headed scout as the three riders wheeled in the darkness. Beside him, the clan woman had nothing to say, beyond the heart's gift of her tears.

  Unseen, the fifth scout standing sentry in the forest signaled a clear trail with an owl's call. Then the horses surged away. Night swallowed their forms. The snow-muffled thud of their hooves laded swiftly, leaving Braggen in safe and oblivious sleep before the birch-spiced warmth of the embers.

  Given fresh mounts and the scouts' expert guidance, Arithon made rapid progress. The last hours of night wrapped the land in charcoal gloom, splotched by snow-clad ravines, with shadows and trees rendered in shapes of punch-cut black velvet. The burn of cold wind on nose and cheek interspersed with the slap of iced boughs in the thickets. Beneath slab-sided ridges, over winding, sparse game trails, the clansmen pressed for speed and silence. They were well practiced at secretive cunning. Wild-born predators, they knew how to trust the horses' keen sight in rough territory, with moon and thin starlight their sole guidance. Once, they flushed the spotted khetienn stalking for ermine. Another time, set against the silver voile of a snowfield, they spotted an eagle in gliding flight.

  'No canny bird, that.' observed one of the scouts through the plaid tied over his chin as a muffler. 'Such don't fly at night, nor in these ranges at all, come to that. Not at this time or season.'

  'Sorcerer's shapechange, or a fetch, very likely.' The other scout quelled the uneasy instinct that prompted a reach for his bow. 'If it's spying for Koriathain, won't die of an arrow. Only make trouble if we try.' He shrugged, fatalistic, then used the brief pause to open his saddle pack and dole out a ration of jerky.

  But Arithon shook his head. 'No fetch, in this case.' He accepted the dried venison, and the scouts' side wise glances with pragmatic equilibrium. 'You don't need to believe me. Eagles don't fly by night, I agree. But my bard's ear will discern flesh and blood from worked magecraft. If that creature's a construct, I can't detect any whisper of resonance from the spell seals.'

  'Blasted winter's not natural itself, you ask me,' the elder scout carped through a mouthful. 'Cold as the Fatemaster's bollocks, still, and no sign of melt on the south side of Jaire Peak.'

  'Fretting won't help such,' the other said, long-faced. He shared out his dried stores, then bowed to his liege's overriding impatience and shouldered his horse to the fore.

  Already the stars overhead glimmered paler. The eastern sky showed the first pall of gray. Straight in the saddle, and until now, stark steady, Arithon suddenly gasped. Doubled over his clasped hands, he curled in on himself, racked by a shuddering spasm.

  'Your Grace?' The nearer scout sidestepped his horse and steadied his liege's bowed shoulder. 'What's wrong?'

  A fleet, wringing shiver passed under his hand. Then Arithon pressed back upright. Disheveled black hair masked clear sight of his eyes. His face in the half-light wore a distressed pallor, and his hands shook, though his stressed equilibrium appeared to be fully restored.

  'What's wrong?' the scout pressed.

  But the other first broached the dread subject outright. 'Do you fight Desh-thiere's curse?'

  'Not that. Not yet.' Arithon raked back fallen hair, puzzled himself as a dwindling frisson stormed through his braced up frame. 'I'm not sure what touched me.' Words could scarcely describe the split-second event, as though a fragmentary chord had been plucked, ringing echoes through the land underfoot.

  He tipped a frowning glance overhead. The oncoming dawn brightened second by second over the saw-toothed crests of the peaks. 'Whatever's amiss, the Etarrans won't wait. We had better ride on.'

  Upon mounts displeased to be facing the wind, over ridges of stone mottled piebald where clinging snow chalked the cracks, the small party picked their way steadily north. The terrain all the while grew steeper, rougher. Toothed summits scraped a black-violet sky, with the deep vales below shattered by time into fissures of crazed marked granite.

  As his gray slithered down a stony embankment, Arithon gave on the reins to let the beast regain its balance. His worry was less easily managed. 'Will horses be able to finish this crossing?'

  The scout in the lead glanced over his shoulder, his sharp-boned youth pronounced in the growing light. 'In thaws, they could. Given the cold, the high passes would be mired. The way over the d
ivide must often be finished on foot.'

  A steep, zigzagged course through a corrie of stunt fir, where a gaunt herd of deer flushed. The scouts paused. Still stewards of the land, despite centuries of persecution, they allowed the animals to settle and move on without wasting themselves in blind panic.

  'Aye, on now,' the clansman crooned to his horse. Red-faced in the wind, he turned back to his prince and resumed the dropped thread of his discourse. 'Won't blister your heels, though. Tomorrow eve, we're going to swing west. There's a narrow track that leads to the coast. On that we'll make time. By then, we think Lysaer and his Etarrans should be well into the mountains. They don't know the country. Zeal should drive them west also, trying to track as the crow flies. Do that, and they'll be in the spurs, sheer ramparts of rock with no crevice for passage. Men would need to swing north to get through, and by then, we should have you a wee boat. You'll be safely away to Atainia, forbye, with your enemies left as lively prey for our raiders.'

  The other scout pressed forward, a fair-skinned, middle-aged man whose hawk nose jutted from the shadow of a jaunty wolverine cap. 'Be sure Kesweth will harry them. He'll cheer their retreat with some spring traps, maybe pink a few laggards with arrows.'

  Yet his effort at humor raised no grim smile from his prince. 'Not if my half brother hammers these mountains to slag with the frustrated force of his gift.'

  'Kesweth's frustrated, too,' the younger scout demurred. 'Damned scalpers got his wife, last autumn.'

  They scaled another ridge. Around them, light and sky changed moment to moment, from deep cobalt to the lucent blue of an armorer's burnished steel. Eastward, day would already have broken over the Eltair coast. The high peaks of the Skyshiels would be gilt dipped, their gaunt shadows spiked across Daon Ramon.