TWOLAS - 06 - Peril''s Gate

  Yet the Araethurian goatherd at his shoulder had encountered no such experience. No word could prepare Fionn Areth as the surge struck the stone to a ringing crescendo. The note it sustained was downstepped in translation through the marriage of air and earth. The most subtle range of electromagnetic vibration became audible to mortal hearing. As the lane flux pealed to the chord of grand order, every formed object in Ath's creation became touched into shared celebration.

  This was the raised harmony that tore down stone walls, unhinged oaken doors, and shot green, budding leaves from the hewn beams of the rooftrees erected by humans, unaware they had trammeled its path. For the second time since the Paravian departure, the solstice tide crested, aligned to an arrow of clear force. Resistances shattered. Obstructive disharmonies became swept away, immolated in bursts of flash-point heat, or else shaken asunder by vibration. Where the spate passed, the unbridled mysteries demanded no less than a burgeoning rebirth of life.

  Spiraled into whirling dizziness, Fionn Areth felt as though his whole being would take flight through the top of his head. He swayed, no longer aware of his hands, touched to the tempering megalith. The Mad Prophet's shouted encouragement was lost. Fionn Areth saw and heard nothing else through that deluge of limitless ecstasy. The cascading tumult of sound unwound all reason and sanity. Hurled adrift, soaring beyond the earthbound ties of his moorland origins, Fionn Areth reeled as the boundaries framing his identity dissolved. Joy gripped him. Laughter burst from his throat, an irrepressible paroxysm that shook and rattled and shattered the fear in his heart.

  In the trampling rush of abandoned acceptance, he recalled where he had heard fragments of the grand chord before this: first in the spelled cry of a sword, drawn to spare him from death and fire, and later, in the timbre of a masterbard's voice, singing to heal his torn knee. Then his last scrap of cognizance shredded. He drifted, unmoored amid the vast flux that imbued Ath's creation with life.

  The suspension might have lasted one heartbeat, or closed the full arc of eternity. Fionn Areth could not finger the moment when time and space shrank him back into fleshly awareness. He understood that the lane surge was waning, the withdrawal of its tonic fire an ache beyond words to describe. He felt hollow, sucked clean, then grievously desolate, as under his hands the stone's keening cry diminished into dumb silence. The gift of its presence had been all that allowed the clay senses to share the ephemeral event. Wrenched by the dulled aftermath, Fionn Areth realized he might bear a loss for the rest of his days that his mind had no means to encompass.

  The legacy was two-edged, in the way of all wisdom. Recast in the light of compassionate truth, the note of blind discord he could not sustain was his distrust of Arithon s'Ffalenn.

  More than shaken, the scalpel cut of the wind on his face chasing an unwonted spill of tears, Fionn Areth leaned on chilled stone until his clamped knuckles bruised from the stress. 'I don't understand. Who is he?'

  Out of the dark, and the harrying storm, through the jostling warmth of wet horses, the Mad Prophet gave level answer. 'He is who he said: Rathain's sanctioned crown prince, bound to serve by his oath. As you saw, he also bears living title as Athera's Masterbard.'

  Fionn Areth swallowed. 'That doesn't explain everything.'

  'I have answers.' Dakar for a mercy met nerve storms with patience. 'They're not simple, or short, or infallible, since at heart the man beats a fiend for complexity. He's as human as you, but his motives can be by lengths more difficult to fathom. If you wish me to speak, you'll have to stay long enough to hear through the telling.'

  Fionn Areth would make no apology for an upbringing meant for the tending of goats. 'If I accept Prince Arithon's offer of protection, I deserve to know why he has criminal charges for black sorcery on record against him.'

  'Ask what you will.' Refreshed by the euphoric riptide of lane force, Dakar grasped the reins of the broad-backed roan gelding and swung his bulk into the saddle. 'What I know, I'll share freely, as long as you're willing to ride. We need to set distance between us and Jaelot while we have bad weather to cover us.'

  Fionn Areth mounted the lanky chestnut, his first question dropped as he closed his heels to the animal's steaming flanks. 'What actually happened on the banks of Tal Quorin?'

  Dakar rolled his eyes. 'You Araethurians don't mince your words, do you?' Grateful at least that Arithon's last order gave him free permission to reply, he opened an ordered recital of facts that could wring tears from blue sky for sheer tragedy.

  Yet breaking dawn cast silvery light through the diminishing veils of fresh snowfall before Fionn Areth had exhausted curiosity. He rode faced forward, staring at nothing, while the horse underneath him followed herd instinct and trailed Dakar's mount to a stop.

  Silence descended like muffling cotton, sliced by the trills of a chickadee. The sky to the east gleamed lucent aquamarine between scudded streamers of cloud. In a crook tucked amid the steep-sided foothills, beneath evergreens mantled like ermine-cloaked matrons, the Mad Prophet dropped his reins and dismounted. His words fell diminished in the bitter air as he announced his intent to set up a warded camp. 'If you want to hunt game, be advised, we can't cook. Koriathain have a knack for noticing fires. Their skilled scryers can sense a dying deer if they're vexed enough for deep sounding.'

  No reply; just a determined rustle of clothing as Fionn Areth reined his tired gelding around.

  'Where in Ath's name do you think you're going now?' Dakar cracked in ill temper.

  Echoes ranged back from the slab-sided hills and shook snow in heaps from the treetops.

  'Back.' The Araethurian herder glared over his shoulder. 'Perhaps you speak the truth. If so, I made an unpardonable mistake.' Uncertain, in daylight, whether the event at the marker stone had been a dream wrought by enchantment to turn him, he said, mulish, 'I would know if your prince spared my life in good faith.'

  'Well, you can't prove a damned thing by riding straight into the scalping knives of Jaelot's headhunters!'

  For answer, Fionn Areth dug in his heels.

  Quite able to move with astonishing speed, Dakar sprinted. In three bounding strides, he hauled horse and rider back to a stumbling halt. 'Nor will I let you blunder cross-country, asking after his Grace's true parentage. You'll only draw notice from meddlesome Koriathain, then bring his armed enemies after you. No. You'll do as your liege wished, and take Luhaine's advice, and accompany me straight on to Rockfell. That way, we'll both live to reach sanctuary. Once on board the Khetienn, you might earn the chance to ask certain questions in private. Though how you'll make up for the cost you've exacted for Arithon's bleeding kindness would leave even Daelion Fatemaster stymied.'

  Winter 5670

  Star Wards

  The discorporate Sorcerer, Kharadmon, was no spirit to wallow in setbacks. Reemerged from the labor of refounding the stressed chord of the sixth lane, he arrowed west on the winds of high altitude, his intent to resume the interrupted assistance he still owed the Guardian of Mirthlvain.

  He arrived with his spiked style of humor intact. The prospect of labor in a bog infested with the vicious aberrations spawned by Methuri left his sarcasm honed to an edge most cheerfully pitched to flay skin. 'If I owned the keys to Dharkaron's vengeance,' he announced, downstepped through multiple octaves of vibration to condense as a current of feisty awareness above the agate focus at Methisle, 'I'd wish all the iyats in creation would bedevil Morriel's corpse. The mess she contrived to throw kinks in our work seems far too unnervingly calculated.'

  'You may not have weathered the worst, yet.' His feathered blond hair lit jonquil by the ragged flame of a rushlight, Verrain stepped from the shadowed stone niche where he had stood vigil throughout the night. 'Sethvir's just sent you an urgent summons.'

  'Well, blow him a kiss.' Kharadmon puffed on an irritated gust across the chamber. 'He's aware I'm much too busy.'

  The flicked draft doused the rushlight. Verrain uttered a spell cantrip, and the rekindled flame showed a face
drawn taut and unsmiling.

  The spinning, chill nexus that was Kharadmon stalled with a snap that shocked frost over the dank walls of the chamber. 'Not about the fourth lane? I was aware Traithe needed relief.'

  Verrain wrapped his muck-splashed brown cloak closer to his lanky frame. 'Ath's Brotherhood already dispatched an adept from Forthmark to help Traithe. She won't have to trek across Vastmark on foot. There's a mackerel boat tied up at Ithish with a fishing crew willing to sail her. A friend of the Reiyaj seeress arranged it.'

  'The blind lizard still lives at one hundred and ten?' Kharadmon laughed. 'I'm amazed her brains haven't boiled, all those years she's spent staring sunward.'

  'A daughter apparently inherited her talents, and chose to maintain her tradition.' The rushlight popped, shooting a shower of sparks. Verrain flicked off the lit embers, the scabs on his hands where marsh creatures had bitten silver-stitched by the gleam of old scars. 'Things are not well at Althain.' His black eyes swung back, concerned, toward the restless air where Kharadmon's presence hovered. 'Sethvir scarcely managed the strength to recall you. His word was delivered by the north wind.'

  While the mire's pervasive, sulfurous drafts whirled off the discorporate Sorcerer still poised in a tight spin above him, Mirthlvain's guardian shrugged and addressed the concern left unspoken between them. 'Yes. The remedial spells you set for the barrier walls are going to decay over time. The flaw's not disastrous. We'll have until the spring spawning to mend them. The harsh winter's my ally. Only the mudpots need watching while the swamp's sheeted in ice.'

  Which words were a half-truth to gloss over dilemma, as very well Kharadmon knew. 'I'm gone, then,' he cracked on a gusty departure. But under the space he had occupied, his classic last word: he left a green sprig of briar replete with a perfect, red raspberry.

  Verrain completed a stalker's step forward, laughed, and ingested the jibe. His generous, wide mouth still dimpled with mirth, he turned from the focus and retrieved the worn ash staff left leaning against the arched doorway. At least, he reflected in grim practicality as he climbed the stairwell to resume his rapt watch over the creatures that slithered in Mirthlvain's bogs, Morriel's grand upset had ensured the thaws would come late.

  * * *

  Kharadmon soon shared the sorrow firsthand, that all was not right with Sethvir. He breezed into the northern latitude of Atainia and found every casement in Althain Tower's library latched tight against the onslaught of winter. The precedent jarred; always before this the Warden left one window ajar to welcome the caprice of the seasonal winds.

  A transparent presence in the washed, citrine light dawning over the Bittern Desert, Kharadmon applied for entry through Shehane Althain's wardings. Where his colleague, Luhaine, would have sheared through dense stone, he preferred dialogue with air, and slipped like a thief through one of the arrow slits cut into the turret over the gate arch. Within the defenses, dour granite welcomed him. He was ushered through the matrix of ancient stone toward Sethvir's personal quarters. There, shocked surprise nearly felled him. All the clutter had been rearranged. Old bridles and snagged socks were nowhere in evidence. Every broken old artifact, each garnered stone oddity, even to the shells of land turtles and the cracked tea mugs filled with dropped feathers; every cache of Sethvir's curios had been reordered to unprecedented neatness.

  Across an expanse of wine-colored carpet, a wizened little stranger in an adept's snowy robes sat on the carved stool by the hearth. His gnome-clever fingers were busy restitching the last torn strap of a horse harness.

  As the poured chill of the discorporate spirit fanned past him, he glanced up and blinked mild eyes. 'Kharadmon, I presume?'

  'Well, iyats don't stalk here without invitation,' said the Fellowship Sorcerer just arrived. His whirlwind review flicked the candleflames into a sputtering, pinwheel flutter. 'Were you the one who tamed raw chaos to order? If so, don't be surprised when Luhaine faints out of bliss. He's badgered Sethvir for his sloppy housekeeping for thousands of years and gained himself no satisfaction.'

  'I had the help of two sisters,' the adept admitted, embarrassed. The dimpled delight of his grin burst and vanished as he gestured toward the wicker hampers piled beneath the carved dragon legs of the writing desk. 'We had to tidy up. No one could tell us where Althain's Warden had stashed his herbals for healing.' Tactfully gentle, the brother inclined his bald head toward the door of the adjoining chamber. 'You'll find Sethvir tucked in his bed. The sisters attend to his comfort.'

  'I'm grateful,' Kharadmon said, heartfelt, then blazed an unswerving line of retreat to reach his overtaxed colleague.

  The room beyond was kindly lit by a beeswax candle set on the sill by the casement. Its softened glow toned maple furnishings in honey and gold, and nicked glimmers off the battered bronze studs of the clothes chests. The air held the false freshness of a well-kept hospice, the perfume of lavender, sage, and sweetgrass underlaid by the bite of astringent teas, and a decoction of wintergreen for sore joints. Sethvir reclined on a mound of down pillows, his thin shoulders wrapped in a goathair blanket. His beard and his hair had been combed out like lamb's fleece, bleached and carded for spinning. The sisters who had gifted that painstaking care sat one on each side, mantled in the white robes of Ath's service, bound at the hems by metallic ciphers stitched into patterns of blessing and ward.

  They arose on awareness of Kharadmon's entry, bowed their heads in greeting, then swept out to allow him his privacy.

  'Should I have brought you spring lilies for a death bier?' the discorporate mage needled in opening.

  Behind his closed lids, Sethvir was not sleeping. A comer of his mouth lifted in bleak humor, though his hands did not stir, and the eyes that flicked open were vacant as aqua glass. 'If you're going to ask flowers to bloom out of season, they prefer honesty to speculation. I'm only earth-blind to the fourth lane, now, and its branch meridians affect but one grimward.'

  'Red roses, then,' Kharadmon amended, careful to comb his tonal range free of upset. Up and down the length of Sethvir's aura, his refined perceptions measured the patchworked, golden flares where the adepts had spun careful nets of fine energy to bridge areas rubbed thin by exhaustion. With the compassionate delicacy of a master surgeon, Kharadmon applied the keen edge of his humor to refire the dulled lines leached by pain. 'Some decrepit old layabouts will try anything to lure sweet-tempered ladies to dote on them.'

  Sethvir wheezed a puffed breath, too weakened for full-throated laughter. 'Your incorrigible presence is welcome at Althain; however, the fact you've been called here when I'm unwell means the news is the black side of dire.'

  'The star wards went active? I'd already guessed.' Kharadmon settled by the bedside, a revolving nexus of chill that nettled the candle to streamered smoke. 'What can you tell me?'

  'Not much.' Sethvir twitched an irritable hand under the smothering bedclothes. 'I saw the guard glyphs flare red in first warning. We've got wraiths on the move out of Marak. How many, how far off, and what danger they pose lie beyond my stretched resource to answer.'

  Kharadmon flicked into a wind devil's spin. 'The adepts haven't said?'

  Sethvir managed a fractional shake of his head. 'If they know, they won't venture discussion. They can't intervene, regardless.'

  Better than any, Kharadmon understood the implacable stance held by the white-robed adepts: the wraiths were no less part of Ath's grand creation. Even if their aberrant nature arose out of mankind's meddling, the Brotherhood by nature embraced no conflict. 'All the thorny sorts of problem fall to our Fellowship to contain, and just as well. Given nothing to do, you'd have Luhaine's confounded lectures bothering your ears day and night.'

  Before Althain's Warden could answer that jibe, the discorporate Sorcerer whirled aloft. 'Don't fret. I'm already going.'

  'There's no one else I could call on to send,' Sethvir whispered in depleted apology. Two images followed, ragged as ink stains on parchment. If their fuzzed edges were unlike the Warden's usual crisp
sendings, their self-contained messages nonetheless carried the impacting force of slung rock: of Asandir mending an unstabilized grimward, and of Luhaine, tied down, holding the torn bindings that secured Desh-thiere's prison at Rockfell.

  'Well, that's a fitting assignment for a boring, fat windbag.' Kharadmon laughed. 'Dour old rocks are the only wise beings who can bear his prolonged company without snapping.'

  'He would say the same for your feckless badgering,' Sethvir said, his rejoinder a near-soundless breath.

  'Then loose wraiths should suit my style of venom quite well.' Kharadmon shot straight up through the ceiling, his last words a shriek left imprinted on the whipped drafts. 'No apologies needed. Marak's damned spirits were my chosen quarrel long before Morriel Prime cast her lot amid the sharp teeth of ill fortune.'

  Let out through a minuscule gap in the eaves too small for a nesting spider, Kharadmon sheared aloft. His haste burned a wake of stressed energies. A rolling boom of thunder ruptured the quiet over the Bittern's ribbed sands as the speed of his flight outstripped sound. He passed through the rarefied gases of the upper atmosphere, leaving a snag of whipped eddies in the jet stream winds of high altitude. His back trail showed a comet tail flare of split matter, excited to fugitive luminosity.

  Then the icy dark of the void closed about him. Athera receded to a jewel-toned orb, whorled with the feathery tracks of the storms that spiraled above lapis oceans. Ahead, a spun webwork of silver-point light, spread the linked seals of the star ward. The sullen spark of ruby that had snagged in disharmony across Sethvir's broadscale awareness nestled amid the coils of spun power: the telltale guard spell strung across time and space, its watch rune aglow to provide advance warning of trouble arisen from Marak.