Traitor's Knot Page 22

  Rathain’s prince had not lit the sconces. Amid absolute dark in that window-less place, the time might have been night or day. A mage-trained awareness could discern which was truth. The spiralling whisper of Athera’s magnetics ran through the matrix of mineral, and plant, and also the human aura. The touch of sunlight made mountain rock speak.

  Outside of Kewar, the first blush of daybreak fired the snow-fields in carmine and orange.

  Inside, immersed in velvet silence and dark, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn exercised body and mind. He anchored his breathing to the cycles of sky and earth. In disciplined form, through a dance-step range of movement, he precisely aligned his etheric awareness.

  Sound acquired an expanded clarity, and light, a purified brilliance. The dark was not featureless, and silence was not still. The master initiate moved through the forms, enraptured and wrapped in the expanded glory of mage-sight.

  The queer shape of the vestibule allowed no mistakes. Its properties magnified every flawed thought as well as each snagging distraction. Yet Arithon had chosen the site out of preference. The vexing enhancement of untoward noise made his solitude the more difficult to breach without warning. Immersed in the web of subtle perception, he first sensed a re-arrangement of air, as though the element suddenly became more. Chameleon-like, the effect disappeared the moment he plumbed for the source.

  He stopped trying. Ruffled, he paused with closed eyes: and so captured the faintest, smoke bloom of movement that no material senses might capture. A ripple of warmth touched against the smoothed veil of his aura, and his Sorcerer host stood before him, two practice sticks gripped in his hands.

  Davien’s censure was arid as he accused, ‘You’re losing your edge.’

  Arithon smiled, eyes open and mild. ‘Am I, in fact?’

  Davien did not answer. Wrapped in pitch-dark, he tossed one of the sticks, hard.

  His targeted victim fielded the catch. The slap of the wood against his bare flesh rattled the stilled air with echoes. Warned by sharp instinct, Arithon also parried. The ferocious crack as the sticks collided destroyed the last vestige of peace. In darkness, reliant on subtle mage-sight, the Master of Shadow was compelled to match the challenge of Davien’s latest caprice. Strict schooling sustained him. The responses required for blindfold sparring had been practised to ingrained reactions since childhood. Attuned with the subtle aspects of self that expanded the range of perception, he rose to meet Davien’s fast-paced assault. He had stayed fit. His body moved with the grace of a tiger, sustained by an effortless balance.

  Where the expanded reach of his gifts might slip his grasp and whirl him into the slip-stream of prescience, Arithon stayed centered. He constrained his willed focus, pushed back the rogue trance state that unveiled the blurred imprints of what might be. Trained breathing steadied him. The sticks cracked and slid, each blow met and turned in the actual frame, born from the ephemeral moment as choice and willed movement begat consequence.

  Arithon deflected each whistling strike, his faculties stretched to the verge of that heightened awareness. Davien did not play by predictable parameters. A success never passed uncontested. Behind the straightforward sparring with sticks, there would be the arcane twist that must press mental wit, and vault the intellect to imaginative acuity.

  Braced for such tricks, Rathain’s prince was not stunned by surprise when his parry in form failed to block the Sorcerer’s descending riposte. Two-handed style came naturally as breath. As his stick encountered no clash of impact, his left hand already responded. Arithon caught the hammering swing of the wood. The opposing blow slapped into his opened palm. He locked agile fingers and captured the stick, informed by the sting that a miss or a fumble would have bruised his unpadded shoulder.

  Davien said, from the darkness, ‘Where’s your trust, Teir’s’Ffalenn? Don’t you think I could have recouped a missed blow the same way I evaded your parry?’ He stood; calmly countered the wrenching twist, just tried with intent to disarm him. ‘You should heed all my free words of warning, my friend. I didn’t try you with a bared sword.’

  The rejected suggestion to visit the armoury had not been met with complacency.

  Arithon kept his fierce hold on the contested stick, too wary to fall for distraction. ‘Why should I rush to pay court to a weapon whose purpose is blood and destruction?’

  The wood left his grasp, dissolved away to nothing. The wall sconces ignited at the same instant. Flame-light unveiled the Sorcerer’s expression of unabashed provocation. ‘You might test that presumption.’

  Rathain’s prince lowered his foolishly empty fist, his smile tried to edged humour. ‘First tell me why you think that I should.’

  Davien laughed. ‘That would be unsporting. Nor will I apologize for disrupting your privacy. Evenstar’s beating the narrows to Alestron. Three days from now, she’ll reach the s’Brydion citadel and drop anchor as the slack tide turns.’

  ‘Lysaer’s errant wife cannot be my concern.’ Lightly clad in dark hose, a loose shirt, and soft boots for wearing indoors, Arithon was a study in crisp black and white, except for his eyes, which drank in the light like sheared tourmaline. ‘One princess bagged like caught game was enough. Let this one sharpen her claws and her wit on somebody else’s forbearance.’

  An even head taller, the Sorcerer posed the more flamboyant figure, his russet jerkin and orange sleeves offset by chocolate-brown breeches. ‘You won’t meet her,’ he said. ‘Duke Bransian’s no fool. Ellaine will be sent inland to a safer refuge than Alestron’s armed walls can provide.’ The pause hung for an instant. Then, ‘It’s the volatile paper she carries that’s going to fling stones in the wasp’s nest.’

  Again, Rathain’s prince would not rise to the bait. ‘Why not grant the duke the free use of my sword? You have my permission. Deliver it.’

  Yet this time, the use of barbed insolence misfired. Davien’s eyelids swept down, masking an expression that was not anger. His form disappeared on an inrush of air that extinguished the wicks and knifed words through the sudden dark. ‘Then fly blind, my wild falcon. You are making the narrow and dangerous assumption that the sword handed down with your ancestry was ever forged for the purpose of killing.’

  Arithon started, his inrush of breath spiked through the rustling morass of echoes.

  ‘Oh yes! Now you’ll listen.’ The Sorcerer’s sharp laugh held more warning than triumph. ‘I’m not hazing you with nonsensical riddles. Is your store of trained knowledge deficient, your Grace? Then correct your ignorance! Traithe carries a knife that has never drawn blood.’

  ‘I’m not ready for this!’ said Arithon, laid open and trapped by a wall of inner reluctance.

  But he was alone. The library vestibule was empty. He stood, shivering under a film of chill sweat, with the integrated balance of body and mind undone by the race of his heart-beat.

  Too prudent to plunge headlong into deep waters, Arithon spent days immersed in odd books of esoterica. He perused the crabbed scribbles written by hedge talent on flocked sheets of vegetable paper; the smoke-scented parchments of conjurers and ceremonial healers, and the cedar boxes of slate wafers scratched with a stylus, inscribed by the desert tribes’ loremen. Of Paravian knowledge on the forging of steel, he found nothing committed to ink. Only the odd reference, amid Ciladis’s verse, of craftings done in the Ilitharan forges, then augmented by Riathan and Athlien singers. Such inferences lay past the concrete reach of thought or written words to encompass. Therefore, their access must be sought in mage-sight.

  Since his point had been taken, Davien granted Arithon’s request to borrow from Kewar’s herb stores. Bearing a braided twist of sweet-grass, his own trail-worn wallet with flint and steel striker, and a precious glass phial of rose oil, the Master of Shadow made his way to the armoury at last to confront the heirloom sword bestowed on his distant forebear.

  The Sorcerer whose riddle had prompted that step kept his meddlesome nature in hand. Rathain’s prince was alone as he braved the thre
shold past the studded door.

  The chain-hung oil wicks that streamed from the wall brackets were, thoughtfully, already lit. Ahead of him lay a circular chamber, surrounded by lacquer cabinets. Their abalone inlay gleamed in soft rainbows, patterned in the vine-leaf motif favoured by Vhalzein’s master-craftsmen. The break-front doors were closed, but not locked. A visitor might examine their contents to satisfy curiosity.

  Arithon was not tempted. He entered the armoury, barefoot, slightly shivering in the chill air. His sword, Alithiel, awaited his pleasure, hung on an upright stand.

  The steel had been cleaned. The shining black blade was stripped of the mean sheath he had used through his flight across Daon Ramon Barrens. Quiescent, the inlaid Paravian runes gleamed like opal glass. The exquisite swept hilt and emerald-set pommel gave rise to a quiver of thrill. The exceptional grace that marked centaur artistry must always catch mortal breath in the throat.

  Killing weapon, or not, the balance and temper of a sword forged at Isaer could not be equaled, or faulted.

  Arithon lit the sweet-grass. Finely trembling, he blew out the flame and fanned air on the crimson embers. Then, decisive, he stepped forward and knelt. With slow passes, he wreathed the standing weapon in smoke, a time-honoured ritual of cleansing. For generations beyond living memory, the blade had been carried and used in armed conflict. If Davien’s provocative implication held truth, such blood-letting destruction had evoked something worse than an ignorant mistake.

  When the grass had burned down, and the air was hazed blue with its lingering fragrance, Arithon closed his eyes and centered himself. He steeled his raw nerves. Then he uncorked the glass phial of rose-oil, and anointed the tips of his fingers.

  The rich fragrance enveloped him. He breathed in the scent. Ciladis’s writings had taught that the flower’s arcane properties touched the mind and entrained the emotions toward healing. Arithon embraced the response through mage-trained intent. Contrite with apology, he sat cross-legged on the stone floor.

  Then he lifted the sword and laid the black blade with reverence across his bare knees.

  A shudder rocked through him. He curbed his sharp dread. Deferral would save nothing. If this Paravian artefact had been misapprised, he could not make amends, except through the grace of an earnest, unflinching humility.

  First step to knowing, he emptied his mind. Blank as clear glass, wide-open to nuance, he murmured a Paravian phrase of apology. Then he used the pure essence of rose to dress the fine steel. His light touch ran the oil into the metal, stroking from pommel to blade tip. As he worked, he could sense the old blood, and the agonized shock of the dying. His own kills, and others, extending back through his father’s time; then the reapings enacted by an uncounted sequence of forebears. Arithon stilled further, listened more acutely. Beneath blood and pain, he encountered as whispers, embedded within the same register: the fire in the forges that had first shaped the steel, and the distanced ring of star song retained by the ore, once extracted from sky-fallen metal.

  Arithon engaged mage-sight, sounding still deeper. Patience commanded his discipline. He gentled the steel, coaxing its essence to present itself for his inquiring inspection. Such a revelation could not be forced. The elusive qualities he sought to tap would lie octaves above the range of the physical senses. Receptive to impressions beyond the veil, suspending himself in surrender, Arithon waited. He stayed utterly calm. Hands flat on the sword, he slowed his breathing and engaged the fullest extent of his initiate talent.

  The encounter began as he least expected. A light thrill brushed over him, testing.

  A shiver rocked through him. His skin rippled to gooseflesh. The ice touch of the steel seemed to burn through his body, riffling the ache of an unformed possibility along the pith of his marrow.

  ‘Mercy,’ he whispered, too well aware: he would find no reprieve, if he faltered. He resisted the primal reflex to stir, kept his mind vised in absolute quiet.

  And the touch came again, subliminally distinct. It poised for a moment, more fragile than thought. The slightest disturbance would shear its tenuous thread of connection. As Arithon held, the feeling moved, then swelled, a melting caress that seemed to shower his aura with welcome.

  His heart responded before thought. Entrained as he was to his innate compassion, he could not choke his reaction, now. Arithon felt the scald of remorse press tears against his closed eyelids. The tender touch that embraced him did not withdraw. Nor did it disbar him in judgement. Shown grace for his flaws, he shuddered, then broke, then lost separation as the veil he touched suddenly parted. He had no breath to gasp, no time to test impact.

  The living spells imparted by the Athlien singers seeped through, then flooded his naked awareness.

  No study prepared him. Not when he had expected to find the residual imprint of a forgotten ceremony: a sword-blade used as the traditional symbol to mark the east quadrant, for air element.

  Instead, his awareness was taken by storm, led into a grand unfolding. He encountered the elements, all four of them, living, imbued in the strength of forged metal. Earth, Fire, and Water embraced him like song, stitched into a tapestry of moving light. Yet of the four, Air stayed predominant: the sword Alithiel had been wrought by Paravians, who had been Ath’s living gift to the world to redeem the contention engendered by the drake spawn. They had battled, not to kill, but to hold open the gateway to love and awaken the awareness of healing intelligence.

  In the burgeoning hope sustained since the First Age, the old races had forged twelve swords at Isaer, and fashioned their metal with the primal forces to evoke an exalted beginning. Alithiel had been instilled with an aware presence. Her summons called in the essence of Air, a fourfold braiding of virtues that sourced the well-spring of inspiration: responsibility, power, freedom, and transcendence. Her presence incited the breath of new dawn and the innocence of fresh invention.

  The blade was the contained seed of creative peace. The bearer who wielded her conjured strength could draw the line across time and space that opened the way for forgiveness. Her stroke, handled under initiate awareness, would cut free the constricting, old patterns and unbind the pain of the past. The sword shaped the key to open the mind: that the flow of water could nourish; fire could burn the residual debris and spark rebirth; and earth element, finally and fully, might bind change into manifest being.

  Arithon bent his dark head and wept, for such a healing beauty abandoned to anguish. The sword on his knees was an instrument of change, razor-sharpened to slice through fear and hate, and blind violence born out of ignorance.

  The fact she had ever been misused to draw blood was no less than a tragic desecration.

  Late Autumn 5670

  Embarkation

  The rigid fact the s’Brydion men hated women’s interference in council posed Captain Feylind of Evenstar no deterrent. As set in her way as the duke’s wizened grandame, she badgered until she was shown to the door that led to the small barracks ward-room. She was challenged there by two jumpy guards. Without second thought, she blistered their ears, then barged past, ignoring their obstructive arguments.

  Once inside, she grinned, flipped her braid over her shoulder, and measured the hammer-beam chamber. Dented war shields adorned the stone-walls. The straw floor was sprawled with the duke’s fawning entourage of flea-bitten deer-hounds and mastiff. Masked by the echoes of racketing voices, Feylind closed a light fist on her cutlass, then approached the trestle, where the soldiers’ litter of cards and dice had been thrust aside by the duke’s bearish habit of leaning on his out-thrust elbows. No one glanced sidewards. Head peeled of his mail coif, his whiskered chin bristled, Bransian s’Brydion stayed immersed in his brangle with his vociferous pack of brothers.

  ‘Dharkaron’s black bollocks!’ Parrien denounced with wild venom. ‘We’ve spent all these years like damnfool curs, nosing up the fat rump of Avenor’s alliance!’ His finger stabbed, incensed, toward the duke’s face. ‘Now you’re suggesting we’ll skul
k in broad daylight, skittish as forestborn drifters?’

  Cards fluttered and dice leaped to the bang of Keldmar’s mailed fist. ‘As the Light’s affirmed allies, we dare not send less than an escort suited for royalty. Give me the armed strength of a field troop! Let my lancers mow down any sad, sorry force with the bollocks to question our honour.’

  ‘Allies?’ Mearn coughed back his hoot of deprecation. ‘After the family just spurned the priest who came knocking with ambassador’s flags from Jaelot?’

  ‘We did?’ Sheathed knives jingling against his steel byrnie, Keldmar perked out of his slouch.

  The debate over Princess Ellaine’s due escort suffered a striking break. Eyes widened with dawning, bloodthirsty interest, Parrien also accosted the duke. ‘An Alliance priest! Showed his chumbling face here?’

  Keldmar laughed. ‘What did you do, brother? Bundle the stripling in his sunwheel banner and use a trebuchet to sling his arse back where he came from?’

  ‘Who needed a weapon?’ Bransian’s shrug was all chagrined innocence. ‘Grandame Dawr got in ahead of me. She disdained the bother of using state language and showed the priest emissary and his train a shut gate.’

  ‘Well, he would have been naught but a slinking spy,’ Keldmar allowed in sharkish approval. ‘Can’t have such weasels inside our walls, slipping dispatches back to Raiett Raven. Not until we have Lysaer’s wife safely packed off to the care of Ath’s Brotherhood.’

  Mearn snatched that opening to ram home his case. ‘Which is why I should take our state galley to Spire! We don’t need to declare there’s a fugitive aboard. If our luck sours, and her presence is noticed, I’ll have my fighting strength at the oar, and our ambassador’s flags to claim honest support of her station.’

  ‘Why sweat our best seamen?’ Bransian folded his arms, set his boot on the trestle, and lounged back in his seat in sprawled comfort. ‘That’s a frank waste when we still have the deepwater keel that brought Ellaine sucking up bilge in our harbour.’