TWOLAS - 06 - Peril''s Gate

  Yet a fox run to ground could still snarl defiance. It would use teeth and claws as the hound pack bore in and grappled to tear out its throat. Arithon pressed upward, stooped by cramped muscles as the Mistwraith's directive gained dominance. The urge to turn back raised a clamor of conflict. His sinews were stapled in knots. Compulsion gnawed at him, body and mind, until he could scarcely force one clumsy step after another.

  The way he crashed from gargoyle to railing, Elaira knew his eyesight was marred. Perhaps ripped through by the harsh pound of his blood, and the laboring strain to his heart; or perhaps shut down by the unbearable pressure that mounted, second by second. If Arithon saw the brief flare of roused power as the starspell in Alithiel flickered warning, he was too spent to react.

  The anomaly posed a riddle Elaira lacked time to consider, riveted as she was by the convergence about to unfold in the quartz sphere.

  The last, bending curve of the stair, then four steps; three; two. Arithon tripped. On the impetus snatched from falling momentum, he pitched himself toward the black maw that demarked the entry to Kewar Tunnel.

  Below him, dismayed shouting burst from his pursuit. In balked fury, they realized their quarry would pass through; had in fact planned the unthinkable to outwit them. The dread site where his daring had led them ripped their resolve to divisive fear.

  Arithon had no moment to acknowledge that irony. He could not spare even one thought for his future. His tumbling fall cast him sprawling against the top stair where the archway loomed into darkness.

  Light burst again from the valley, as though Lysaer s'Ilessid somehow understood that his chase would end in futility. The discharge raked open the sky overhead.

  Thunder slammed.

  Arithon screamed as the Mistwraith's curse ripped through him, skin, bone, and viscera. His body convulsed. Unspent momentum cast him rolling across the threshold to Kewar Tunnel. Nor had the air emptied from his wracked throat before the ranging, dire spells that ruled all who trespassed seized and entangled his flesh. A moment of clarity splintered through chaos, permitting the gift of clean choice: to go forward, and rise to the Betrayer's dark challenge, or turn back, and succumb to the soulless violence engendered by Desh-thiere's cursed vengeance.

  His decision was immediate, a razor's bright edge held resolute against the unknown.

  'My victory, beloved,' Arithon gasped in last salute to the enchantress who watched through the quartz sphere. Then he gathered scraped limbs and thrust to his feet. Firmly and finally, he stepped across peril's gate.

  The quartz sphere went dark. The tied link of empathy snapped away also, as the warding forces that guarded the cavern closed over Arithon s'Ffalenn. That severance of contact was utterly irrevocable. His being was claimed, body and spirit, consigned to an unknown fate. Free will had been held inviolate, in accord with the Major Balance. Not even another Fellowship Sorcerer could breach that sealed threshold, now.

  Elaira collapsed. Shaking with sobs running too deep to stifle, she scarcely felt the hands of the adept who caught her limp shoulders in support. Reduced to a child's need for blind comfort, she allowed the quartz sphere to be lifted out of her paralyzed grasp.

  'Kamridian s'Ffalenn died of his royal conscience,' she murmured, dazed by wild grief, while other hands pressed a clear elixir to her lips, and soothing voices urged her to swallow. She was helped to her bed. Then the calming soporific took hold and eased the circling pain of stunned thought.

  * * *

  The air changed, across the threshold to Kewar. That detail struck Arithon first where he lay, unable to do more than recover his overtaxed breath.

  If the spells of protection set over the gateway had broken the drive of the Mistwraith's directive, the ruinous price of exhaustion remained. His strength was spent, utterly. His unsheathed sword rested where she had fallen across the cool flagstone floor. The limp fingers slackened across her wrapped grip could not flex and close with authority. Eyes closed, panting against the trip-hammer race of his pulse, Arithon sampled the astringent, dry atmosphere. In this place, he detected no smell of dank moss, no silted traces of dust. Only the mineral scent of clean stone, against which the sweat-crusted taint of his clothes seemed a bestial intrusion.

  Silver-tinged daylight filtered up from the entry, several steps lower than the level that sheltered him. Sprawled in battered prostration, Arithon listened. He strove to recapture the rich chord of the guard ring just crossed, whose fell powers now bought him a haven. Yet the sound had cut off as he reached the top stair. Even the memory eluded him.

  He could not discern what unknown fate he had traded, for the known one, so narrowly avoided.

  The shouts of the Etarrans seemed excised from existence. No sound passed the archway behind him. Nor could he hear the whine of the wind, or the sullen drip of the melt seeping from thawing drifts. The silence that wrapped him was absolute, cut by the shrill rasp of his breathing. He did not feel cold. Each scrape and scratch that abraded his skin set up a chorus of stings against the deep ache of strained joints. Arithon knew he should move, make some sort of effort to rub down tired muscles before his stressed limbs seized with stiffness. But the effort required to drag himself upright was going to cost far too much.

  Easier to languish in total stillness and savor the drugged sweetness of respite. Arithon understood very clearly he could not run any farther. If enemies followed, he could mount no defense. The sword at his hand was too heavy to lift, a point rendered totally meaningless. All sense of danger seemed remote. He felt sealed off by pervasive solitude, which wrapped him like close, felted wool.

  The impression followed, distinct as engraving: if threat to his life lay coiled and waiting, it would not arise at the hands of his enemies. No force lay in ambush; he would not be attacked. Not here, where the very set of stilled stone bespoke power beyond understanding.

  He longed for mage-sight, then caught back the hurt for the blank, inner barrier that smothered his talent in blindness. The stark pain of loss still cut far too deeply. Unhealed grief ran him through like a sword of regret, and left him trembling with weakness.

  Even blocked as he was, the deep quiet touched him. The poised flow of power eluded the senses, not crude or restless, but gently subtle as mirror glass that would show no movement outside of reactive reflection. Arithon lay still, tensed and waiting for something. Yet his bard's ear caught none of the tonal harmonics touched off by a chord of grand conjury. He detected no trace of any force moving, felt no tickle of vibration from the high frequencies past the range of sensory hearing. He was too weary to indulge curiosity. Thought and reason bled away, diffused as drifted cloud after hours of pounding stress. He had endured too many months of cranked worry, with every raw nerve end poised for fast flight, and every thought pitched for adversity. His reserves were all spent, with no resource left to plumb riddles of wily complexity.

  His drowning exhaustion dragged him under at last, defeating his better intentions. His breathing steadied. Running pulse slowed to rest. Arithon surrendered to lassitude. His eyes drifted closed. Across an imperceptible transition, waking consciousness slipped beyond reach. The last Prince of Rathain finally slept as he lay, prone on the slate floor of Kewar Tunnel; and so lost his chance to turn back.

  Soft, silent, more subtle than spider silk, the wardspells wrought by Davien the Betrayer wove him round, as they had every being, humanborn, or Paravian, who had crossed that dread threshold ahead of him. As they had his ancestor, High King Kamridian, who had died here, broken and screaming.

  'May Ath Creator stand at your shoulder with every bright power of guidance,' the clan scouts had wished Arithon in parting that morning. Now, in fast refuge at Althain Tower, with tears welling from distant eyes, Sethvir of the Fellowship shaped the same blessing with all his brave power of conviction.

  Early Spring 5670

  Gone to Earth

  The instant after the Spinner of Darkness eluded the Etarran patrol by crossing the entry to Kewar, L
ysaer s'Ilessid felt the driving pull of his enemy's presence fray away into nothing. Reined up short by the momentous event, an outcome of appallingly unseen direction, he called an immediate halt to the advance of the Etarran main company and its rear guard.

  The sunwheel banners flapped in the shifting, sullen wind. The men stood in stilled formation, uneasily silent, or talking in unsettled phrases. Discipline held them facing rigidly forward, while their Blessed Prince conferred with his officers and issued his change of orders.

  After that, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend rode up and down the ranks like a hazed hornet, gathering a specialized, small troop, then selecting the cream of the royal guard. The reduced company went armed, but carried no burden of banners or supplies. Chosen for speed and responsive mobility, they lathered good horses to rejoin the advance guard, sent into the high ground ahead of them.

  Amid their sharp company, Lysaer s'Ilessid reached Davien's stair in the late afternoon. Daylight by then had just started fading. The gray scud of cloud lidding the vale had dispersed to streamed tatters, with thicker mists hooding the peaks. The land wore its ragged cloaking of snow in splotches of pearl and gray, interlocked with upthrust stone outcrops. By evenfall, the lucent patches of aquamarine sky would deepen to cobalt and amethyst.

  The stair wore the light like watermarked glass, the sheen cast off its cut angles reflective as marbled satin. The effect was eerie, a contrast of masterfully worked stone set against the savage, split rock of the ledges; as though Davien's works had slashed natural law to a razor-cut break in continuity.

  Regarding that vista, his hands pinched on his reins while his mount sidled irritably under him, Sulfin Evend thought of his uncle, Raiett Raven, whose shrewd mind and keen insight now advised the mayor's council at Etarra. Even that renowned statesman might lose his objectivity before such an unsettling marvel. In framing his entrance to Kewar Tunnel, Davien had fashioned a bold statement of force that challenged the mind's arrogance and compelled man's separatist nature into a disquieting self-examination.

  The first impulse to look away, to deny, became overridden by morbid curiosity. The eye found itself as helplessly riveted as steel filings drawn to a magnet.

  'Are you planning to spin cloud wool, or have you decided to take the role of a stone statue?' Lysaer arrived at his horse's head, gold and white and commanding. A diamond flashed, scintillant, as he caught the beast's bridle and restrained its restive pawing. 'Your horse wants its comforts, whatever you choose, and the men require your attention.'

  Sulfin Evend dismounted, a wind-ruffled hawk unhooded and deadly. 'If that is the bolt-hole that shelters the bastard, our swords will be woefully useless. You mean to go forward?'

  'I'm astonished you think there's a choice in the matter.' Lysaer passed the horse to his hovering squire. The glance that sized up his Lord Commander was sapphire cool, couched in a majestic self-reliance that, against such a setting, seemed the effrontery of a fool's arrogance.

  Or else such a bearing of seamless assurance hallmarked an avatar of the divine. 'Have your sharp wits all fled, bewildered by spells?' Lysaer smiled. His kindly humor robbed the sting from a ribbing that could have rankled his wellborn officer. 'Or by chance, have you lost your excellent hearing?'

  Sulfin Evend roused as though kicked from a dream, made aware of the distant, raucous noise rebounding amid pristine quiet. 'Father and mother of all coupling fiends!' he ripped out in acid irritation.

  For the light horse patrol he had entrusted to run down the Spinner of Darkness appeared to have jettisoned discipline. The whoops, the explosive, bursting laughter of a manic celebration carried downslope to the site where the horses were tethered, and where the small company forming the royal escort had also been forced to draw rein. 'What stark, raving madness has turned them possessed?'

  'Fear. Courage too long held, that is trained not to bend, set against the minion of darkness.' In place of self-righteous fury and frustration, Lysaer displayed openhanded pity, and tolerance that granted magnanimous forgiveness for foibies and human shortfalls. 'Left a challenge beyond mortal bearing to face, they may have resolved their distress by assuming the trappings of victory.'

  'Well, someone up there better have a dead body triced up for a ritual burning!' Sulfin Evend's snapped gestures masked shame as he adjusted his sword belt for climbing. 'No other cause under sky could give those wretches a reason to slack off their duty, rejoicing.'

  'They don't have a dead body,' Lysaer s'Ilessid pronounced. Awarded his Lord Commander's piercing disbelief, the Light's minion was frost and iron, the braced prospect of failure leashed into regal restraint.

  Sulfin Evend dispatched a clipped order, and his officer rushed to ease girths and tie up the horses. While other men mustered to stay on as escort, his impatient survey combed over the slope risen in tiers of stepped ledges. 'Do I gather you think the flasks in the saddlebags have been freely shared in our absence?'

  'Well, the other alternatives aren't so inviting.' Lysaer kept his tone low as the reduced company re-formed foot ranks within earshot. 'Would you rather your men had been reft of intelligence, spell-touched and maybe possessed?'

  Sulfin Evend adjusted his rust-streaked, scaled gauntlets. His grim gesture inviting the Blessed Prince to proceed at the forefront, he said, 'I suggest we go up and find out.'

  The scrambling ascent was accomplished in spare efficiency and silence, the crunch as hobnailed boots cracked through refrozen slush interspersed with terse words of command. Lysaer did not set himself apart from the superb teamwork of the men. As often as not, it was his grip that steadied, or the interlaced fingers of his white-gloved hand, offered to cradle a rank-and-file climber's foot. True to the letter of his earlier promise, he left Sulfin Evend in charge. In tacit deference, the Light's Lord Commander gave his divine liege no demeaning task or direct order.

  Yet the punctilious humility with which the Blessed Prince answered the need of the moment caused his guard to surpass themselves. Inspired by the exalted touch of one they held as god sent, they shouldered each trial with alacrity. Yet their efficiency could not halt time. Day was fast fading around them. Freshened gusts from the north refroze sunken drifts into granular ice, lending a hazardous edge to an ascent already steep enough to be treacherous. Despite difficulty, their progress was swift. The lead climbers reached the self-abandoned party of their fellows with no fanfare to forewarn of a royal arrival.

  The light horse patrol whose lapsed quest had unraveled into debauched celebration never noticed. The most aware of them proved scarcely able to stand upright. Their less sober comrades lay in prostrated heaps. Others swayed singing, arms linked over the shoulders of their unsteady fellows. Still others lolled at ease, their surcoats unlaced, passing the dregs of broached spirits between them. Their boasts roused sniggering bursts of drunk laughter. Slurred insults described the minion of evil's tail-whipped last run into the guts of the mountain. Others rambled through wistful dreams of hot women and high living, anticipating the sumptuous crown reward awaiting their honorable discharge.

  Sulfin Evend's stunned outburst cracked through the genial mayhem like the thunderbolt fall of Dharkaron Avenger's first spear cast. 'Honorable discharge? For you lot? That's laughable! Unless you have charge of the Spinner of Darkness as a stiff corpse? Sure as sluts whelp, you're no sort of guard I'd entrust to secure a live prisoner!'

  The troop's flushed officer fumbled erect. Spurs jingling, he staggered, tugging at his disarranged surcoat and sword belt in a pitiable effort to restore his parade-ground decorum. He swiped a hand over his smiling face, then slapped his breast in snide imitation of the salute exchanged between clansmen. 'We have no live prisoner, nor even a dead one. Just eyewitness proof. No man need fear the Spinner of Darkness from now to the ending of time.'

  His expansive gesture toward Davien's stair head needed no further embellishment. Thought of crossing the archway beyond was a peril no right-thinking man would dare contemplate.

  The Bl
essed Prince proved the exception.

  'Show us.' Two whiplash, shaming words of command, delivered in velvet-clothed patience; Lysaer s'Ilessid stepped to the fore. The spun gold of his hair gleamed like sunlight unveiled against the gloom of the Mathorn landscape. His face was wind-burned as any man's, his white surcoat begrimed and creased. Yet amid that trail-weary company, his fired edge of determination bespoke a dimension outside of humanity.

  His steady blue eyes showed no flare of censure. Beside Sulfin Evend's rankled impatience, the equanimity cut from such lordly restraint raised the Etarran to livid embarrassment.

  He bowed, if not sober, then dignified by a pride beyond oathsworn service or loyalty. 'Lord Exalted, mount the stair. You shall see. This day has brought the Light a great victory.'

  'I'm going along,' Sulfin Evend insisted. 'No other,' he declaimed, as the captain of the royal escort moved to join them. Then, wiser than most to the perils of spelled ground, he gently suggested that Lysaer s'Ilessid shed every one of his weapons. 'I'll carry the blade for us both, and shoulder the consequences if bearing steel calls down a sorcerer's penalty.'

  Lysaer's attention fixed on him, immediate. The wide-open, blue eyes displayed limpid sincerity, unfailing reassurance that any belief, no matter how strange, would be heard and weighed without prejudice. 'You entertain that possibility?'

  'I questioned the guard the light horse's captain left posted on watch at the picket lines.' The pale steel of Sulfin Evend's returned glance was like the wild falcon's, that would strike to defend on pure reflex. 'The man said he saw a crossbow quarrel hammered to sparks by a wardspell. If the stonework carries embedded protections, let me be the one to risk springing the snares we can't see.'