Traitor's Knot Read online

  ‘I want Fionn Areth,’ the Prime opened at length. ‘He has been left at large for too long. I require him taken back in hand and placed under our order’s protection.’

  The peeress wearing the fourth band of red rank responded with veiled trepidation. ‘By your will, Matriarch, your command shall be served, though with all due respect, the boy is still kept under lock and key inside warded walls at Alestron. We lack the duke’s confidence, and the merchants we hold under our sworn oath of debt have not succeeded in buying his ransom.’

  ‘This could change, shortly,’ Selidie said, crisp. Where, as Morriel, she would have dispatched subordinates with an impersonal snap of her fingers, now, her change of persona compelled her to address them by name. ‘Marisette! Prepare an array for a grand scrying. Lirenda, take charge of my keys and fetch the Great Waystone from the compartment beneath my state chair.’ On afterthought, she added, ‘You look hot. If you like, my page can take charge of your mantle as you let yourself out.’

  Reduced to a miserable, subservient gratitude, Lirenda swept out on the errand. By the time she returned, shrouded jewel in hand, Forthmark’s skilled seeress had completed her protective chalked circles. The quartz sphere for her scrying had been aligned to receive the Prime’s influx of tuned spell-craft.

  Lirenda placed her wrapped burden in the Matriarch’s lap. Under orders, she had to kneel on the tile, then set up the shielded tripod with its forged ring of containment. Next, her fingers were needed to untie the jewel’s silk wrappings. She unfolded the cloth, taking desperate care not to graze the perilous contents. The bared presence of the order’s great amethyst puckered her skin with unpleasant chills. Worse torment still, she sustained the dazzling proximity of its powerful presence as she used shielded touch, and seated the sphere into its cradle.

  Longing seared her to obsessive desire. To be this close to the penultimate might of the order outmatched every concept of cruelty. Lirenda steamed, become little more than the acting hands for a position that should by due right have been hers. A helpless slave, she stepped clear as ordered, while the onlooking seniors took position to one side, and the active seeress settled herself into trance. Then the usurping Prime leaned forward and rested her brow against the faceted jewel. The southern air chilled to ice as she woke the dire force of the Waystone’s focus.

  Lirenda sensed the harrowing flux of stirred energy as the great amethyst engaged. She shuddered to its contrary tides of charged malice as its matrix was tuned and locked into submission. Once the stone’s wayward forces were bound, firmly under the Matriarch’s command, Lirenda was asked to enact the sigils to connect the grand focus to a smaller quartz sphere, preset by the seeress for scrying. Harnessed as thoroughly as the massive amethyst, she must act in strict concert, her neat, puppet gestures entrained with the Matriarch’s invocation.

  When the poised sigils meshed, a thread of hot light burned through the stilled air, there and gone, as the paired crystals equalized their resonance.

  ‘Now,’ said Prime Selidie.

  The seeress invoked her high art, made the dedicate vessel to her Matriarch’s will.

  A saffron streak of sunshine speared through the quartz sphere. As the image resolved fully, the need to empower the Great Waystone became obvious: this scrying bridged an expanse of salt water, prying into the gloom of a ship’s cabin lit by the checker-board glare from an open hatch grate. Further, the vessel carried a powerful protective talisman: the view came through scattered with flecks as the cipher warding the hull diffused the imperative of the Prime’s sigils. The specialized training of Lirenda’s lost rank let her interpret the signature of the lane tide and divine the ship’s east-bound course, south-west of the Cascain Islands.

  ‘Merciful grace!’ murmured Forthmark’s titled peeress. ‘ I never knew such a potentized scrying could be done in an ocean setting!’

  Selidie’s secretive lips framed a smile. ‘The Evenstar has carried our tag for some time. We had a ship’s chandler on our rolls. He discharged his due debt by embedding our wrought-copper sigil under her sheathing when she was careened.’

  The elderly senior showed dismayed interest. ‘The merchant brig bearing an Innish registry that’s been shipping relief to the west? Don’t say her mission hides covert motives.’

  ‘Listen, you’ll see,’ Prime Selidie responded. ‘The ship’s records might appear spotlessly clean. But her captain has been a loyal supporter of the Master of Shadow since childhood.’ Under her direction, Lirenda fine-tuned the array of sigils. The increase in power, upstepped by the Waystone, pressed the air into palpable tension. The scene in the quartz sphere flickered to life and unveiled two figures engrossed in a scathing argument…

  ‘…won’t put in at Innish, to try would be madness!’ Feylind’s long braid flicked like rope in the shadow, to the adamant toss of her head. ‘A ferreting customs keeper’s forced inspection could land us in trouble over our heads!’

  Her first mate’s remonstrance bounced back, through the irritable clomp of his sea-boots. ‘Because of our passenger? Sithaer’s deathless fires, Captain! The crew isn’t partial. They’d see your live contraband thrown off for bait before they would sail to Alestron without putting in for provisions. We’ll be down to stale water and salt beef with maggots. Run out of spirits, besides, you’ll see your best sailhands swim for Shaddorn’s brothels the moment we wear ship to round Scimlade Tip!’

  ‘Oh, “Captain”, is it? Formal title, but no respect for my orders?’ Feylind chose a word she had learned in the stews rousting laggards. ‘The bullheaded crew on this hulk is well paid. They’ll use their brains, not their bollocks!’

  ‘You say?’ Before she launched into the rest of her tirade, the mate grinned, caught her close, and pinned her mouth under his challenging lips.

  Wrung breathless, half-laughing, Feylind wrenched free. ‘That ploy isn’t going to soften me, this time.’ She pushed him off, only to find her body assaulted more thoroughly. The hand wound in her shirt front jerked her to a stop. Two buttons tore loose. She was bare underneath. ‘Alestron,’ she gasped, as her mate cupped her breast. He kissed her again, and through the busy interval, expertly began to unbreech her.

  ‘What about your twin?’ Neat, sun-browned, and sculpted with muscle, her longtime lover tasted her ear, then her throat. ‘Fiark will gut you if you break a schedule that’s been kept as dependable as the turn of the tides.’

  ‘Fiark can howl himself inside out—’

  Smothered again, Feylind pounded the mate’s back as he lifted her onto the berth.

  ‘Stop biting,’ he grumbled into her neck. ‘This tub stops at Innish, as scheduled. The runaway woman can be dressed up in slops. Hands chapped like that, and scrubbing a deck, she wouldn’t be given a second glance.’ A pause, a heave, and a burst of soft laughter. ‘Feylind, you wild cat, why not just give in and enjoy this!’

  Her reply emerged muffled from behind his broad chest. ‘Randy stud horse! Why don’t you give up? I won’t forget how we dumped standing orders to transfer a specific party of hot fugitives onto the Khetienn, off shore.’

  That persistent subject engendered a sharp pause. The mate rolled onto his back, Feylind caught against him, her slender waist fanned by the crimped gold of her braid, which, rifled of its tie, came undone. ‘Dharkaron’s Spear and Black Horses, woman! Will you never let loose? Fiark will have dispatched a fishing lugger long since to sail that bunch out to rendezvous.’

  Feylind slugged the blanket beside the mate’s ear. Her man never flinched, only shifted his shoulders and kneaded languorous fingers into her nape.

  ‘He didn’t,’ Feylind retorted, though with less heat. ‘Dakar hates fishing boats, and the rescue in Jaelot was a Koriani game-piece. Did you know that the witches spell-crafted a grass-lands goatherd for bait? He’s said to look like Arithon’s double. Dakar’s too wily to play loose with that quarry. I’ll lay you six coin weight, gold, to a toss in the sheets, that the spellbinder will have stayed stran
ded in port before entrusting his charge to a bought captain and a strange vessel.’

  ‘Here’s my toss in the sheets, and without your pestering contest,’ the mate murmured, complacent. His grin flashed in the gloom, then vanished again, to nibble another sweet patch of flesh.

  Feylind gasped and recoiled, just once. Then she flushed and subsided against him. ‘I’ll show you exactly what you can toss…

  ‘Oh?’ Her man tucked her close as tenderness crumbled down her resistance. ‘Keep your gold, minx. I’ll make you a bargain better than that. Stop at Innish, as scheduled. I’ll back your case against Fiark. You’ll have that east-bound cargo you’re craving—’

  Feylind squirmed, caught his shirt-tail, and jerked the cloth over his head with indulgent pleasure. ‘One bound for Alestron, you randy goat. Or trust me, the next time you cozen me this way, I’m likely to reach for my rigging knife and put an end to your shameless distraction…’

  Selidie snapped a wrapped hand across the Waystone, cutting off the entrained thread of the scrying. The quartz sphere went dark. While the heart of the amethyst glimmered with sullen needles of light, idle and still perilously active, the Matriarch addressed the hospice peeress. ‘If Evenstar puts in at Innish, you will carry out my orders. Review our books for oaths of debt. I want a port exciseman to call for an impoundment, and a cooper that swims to access that brig in the course of her cargo inspection. The marked sheathing strip we have under the hull shall be augmented with a sigil of tracking. I will create the new ciphers, myself. They will be tied, but inactive, and shielded to be overlooked by the Fellowship’s spellbinder.’

  The Forthmark peeress clasped fretful hands. ‘We may not have an exciseman on the Innish rolls. What then?’

  Selidie stared back, unblinking. ‘You will get one.’

  The peeress stiffened. Uneasy with the implied demand to use duress, she glanced away and attempted to hedge. ‘You can’t guarantee that your doctored brig will finally reach port at Alestron. Or that, once there, Dakar and your targeted quarry will be available to go aboard.’

  ‘If Evenstar sails east, we’ll stand prepared.’ Selidie raised her imperious chin, her dismissal including the seeress.

  Through the rustle of skirts as the circle disbanded, the peeress strove one last time to relieve her distress. ‘Wouldn’t we be wiser to let the young double go? He’s least apt to see harm if he stays among Arithon’s active associates.’

  ‘We will leave no loose ends!’ Stilled in her chair, aligned with the roused Waystone, the Prime forced the subject to closure. ‘Fionn Areth owes a binding life debt to our sisterhood. As Lirenda’s feckless creation, would you insinuate we’re not responsible for safeguarding the course of his future?’

  The Forthmark peeress bent her knee and curtseyed in contrite obeisance. ‘Your will be done, Matriarch. You shall have your two men and your plan to waylay the brig.’

  Lirenda fumed, left alone with the Prime, who had just served her with a vicious, back-handed betrayal: Morriel herself had sanctioned the act of Fionn Areth’s transformation. Forced to stand in the disturbing coronal discharge thrown off by the active Waystone, Lirenda could raise no word to defend the implied burden of her disgrace. Instead, all her skill and initiate knowledge were put to ruthless use. Since the Matriarch was crippled, the ill-set chain of sigils for Evenstar must be framed, here and now, by her captive hand.

  The cipher was not beyond reach of her expertise. As an eighth-rank initiate, Lirenda had no equal within the order, excepting the Prime, who alone had survived the ninth test. When Selidie dictated the central pattern, Lirenda realized at once the design was too powerful: this chained sequence would do more than straightforward tracking. The outer ring of characters was sequenced for summoning, in force and limitation attuned to shape what seemed an insidious trap. Prime Selidie intended to recover Fionn Areth. Yet Lirenda could not escape the intent as the last layers of strung energies were appended. Methodology forced the surprise revelation: the runes for lawlessness, excess, and chance twined through the squared sigil that was used for binding stray iyats.

  No fool, Prime Selidie noted her comprehension. Alone, without witnesses, the usurper could not resist a self-satisfied smile. ‘We’ll call down a storm of fiends at the moment of my choosing. The spellbinder has a known weakness, there. His feckless emotions will never cope. Risk of damage must turn Evenstar’s course back to shore, where an Alliance ambush will be lying in wait. The brig will be boarded, and we’ll snatch our prize. More than one, to be sure. The Fellowship’s still tied hand and foot, knitting grimwards. Who will come to answer Dakar’s cry for rescue?’

  Lirenda could not comment. Obliged to stitch sigils one after the next, helpless as any other trapped pawn played into Selidie’s design, she could not escape sensing the unspoken afterthought: that Fionn Areth’s recovery was, in fact, nothing more than a surface distraction. The true target behind today’s ploy would be the blonde-haired captain who carried Prince Arithon’s sworn bond of protection.

  Feylind and her brig; Lirenda would have gasped for the bold revelation. For Dakar’s predicament was certain to draw the Teir’s’Ffalenn away from his impregnable refuge in Kewar.

  The underlying motive dangled almost within reach, that a second round of stalemate could be broken. If the Master of Shadow came into the open, initiate Elaira would be compelled to resume the lapsed burden of her Prime’s directive. She would have no choice but leave her sanctuary in the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood, and pursue her deferred involvement with Arithon’s close affairs.

  Selidie’s next instruction disrupted the thread of Lirenda’s rapt speculation. ‘Add the quadrangle runes of chaos, then close out the sequence with Alt, but specifically leave the cross on the stave open-ended.’

  The Matriarch watched with half-lidded eyes, while the hand of her pawn fashioned the sigil with its incomplete rune of ending. The result would leave the spell’s pattern stable, but dormant, until the hour Selidie willed its completion. Secretive, silent, the Prime wielded the order’s supremely powerful gemstone, while raised power flowed into the work of Lirenda’s subordinate fingers.

  Yet under the mask of those porcelain-fair features, the usurper’s control was not perfect. When the last cipher was scribed, and the ritual incantation released the charged might of the Waystone, her glance flashed like a stalking predator’s.

  Lirenda knew that expression, had witnessed the same ferocious intensity when the past Prime had plotted her vicious double entendres.

  ‘What else?’ raged Lirenda, scalded by a frustration that hammered the closed walls of her mind. ‘What else is afoot, you unscrupulous imposter?’

  The sly intrigues of this Matriarch spanned a millennium of machination. Some snare of artful subtlety would be lurking to trip the s’Ffalenn bastard. A covert entanglement far more invidious than the traditional threat of a binding made in recompense for Koriani services, that, by surface appearances, Elaira had been sent to extract.

  No clue suggested what pitfall awaited the crown prince that Prime Selidie wove her wiles to entrap.

  Lirenda seethed, impotent, as the Matriarch’s sweet treble remanded her to the role of a servant. ‘Veil the Waystone, at once. Then send for my pages. They’ll fetch pen and paper, and the lap desk from my chamber. You’ll write my correspondence, while the cook’s boy brings sweet cakes along with my morning tea.’

  Autumn 5670

  Dispatches

  Closeted with his chancellor to address the influx of devotees from Avenor who come seeking converts to follow the Light, King Eldir of Havish adds the sealed parchment bearing Princess Ellaine’s witnessed statement and a copy of the proof that condemns Lysaer’s false regency at Avenor, saying, ‘I realize the errand is dangerous, but this missive must reach Tysan’s caithdein, Lord Maenol, by way of the clan scouts who stand guard in Caithwood…’

  When a network informant sends a reliable report that Lysaer’s errant wife has boarded an east-bound s
hip for Alestron, High Priest Cerebeld relays orders to his acolyte at Jaelot: ‘You will approach Duke Bransian s’Brydion as the Light’s envoy, and acquire hard evidence of his collaboration in Princess Ellaine’s abduction…

  In the black deeps of the void between stars, hard-pressed by a ravening horde of free wraiths and facing the threat of a redoubled assault by a new wave just arisen from Marak, the Sorcerer Kharadmon unleashes a cry of distress to warn Sethvir, back at Althain Tower…

  Autumn 5670

  V. Convolutions

  Asandir abandoned his uneasy town visitor in Althain Tower’s first-floor guest suite, closed the door on a promise to return in the morning, then bolted at speed up the unlit stairwell. The sky past the arrow-slits now showed scattered stars. Yet if the gusts blew, scoured clear after rain, another storm brewed past the rim of the world that threatened a large-scale invasion. The Sorcerer ascended two stairs at a stride, impelled by the force of raw urgency.

  Scarcely twelve hours returned from a grimward, with no chance for rest or recovery, he faced another breaking disaster.

  A glimmer of gold light glazed the King’s Chamber landing, two levels above. Since the torch set burning for Sulfin Evend’s arrival had long since spent its fuel and gone out, this light was sourced by a female adept clad in the white cowl of Ath’s Brotherhood.

  ‘Another swarm of free wraiths from Marak, I’ve picked up the damaging gist.’ As Asandir’s hurried pace brought him abreast, she fell in at his side, unruffled as he continued his clipped accusation, ‘Sulfin Evend’s a s’Gannley descendant with the latent gift of his great-grandame’s precocious talent. He sensed the impacting distress in your call! Since no one has time to soothe his raw nerves, you might have thought to come down for me.’