Peril's Gate Page 3

  Emerged from the ruin with the horses on lead reins, the Mad Prophet watched the exchange with worried eyes and five centuries of jaded outlook. He had seen Rathain’s liege through stresses and hardship, and the bitter immediacy of forced slaughter. This unfolding encounter was a bald-faced farce. Each contemptuous movement was delivered in the snapping, crisp sarcasm that marked Arithon’s inimical mockery. Nor was Dakar surprised when the moment arrived to pair action with needling satire.

  ‘Very good, boy.’ Arithon effected a lightning-fast disengage. Fionn Areth lurched through an embarrassing stagger as the expected resistance melted away and left him overextended. ‘We’ve practiced each one of the basic attack patterns. Does your repertoire extend to intermediate skill? Go on. Come ahead. Shall we see?’

  Backed off, breathing through tight concentration, the younger man threw off distraction. ‘You won’t bait me into losing my temper.’

  ‘Bait you?’ Tap! Tap! Arithon’s sword struck, controlled to precision that mocked. ‘Shall we pick up the pace?’

  Fionn Areth met the devastating rush of the next lunge, wary, not yet thrown on the defensive. ‘You haven’t been fighting,’ he accused through the clamor as his response hammered Arithon’s brisk parry.

  ‘Oh, I’m fighting,’ assured the Prince of Rathain, his statement a ribbon of provocation. ‘The ground’s not ideal. What’s the point, if I were to push my sweet luck? I might fall on my arse! This duel is serious. Where would the dignity be for the hero? No ballad could applaud you for striking a man when he’s down, freezing the blood from his bollocks.’

  ‘Save yourself!’ Fionn Areth snarled back. Pride nettled him after all. This was his moment, his foreordained destiny. The criminal he battled should be left without leeway for crack comments on his killer’s reputation. ‘Indeed,’ snapped Fionn Areth, ‘let’s pick up the pace and settle things that much more quickly.’

  Through gusts and flurried snowfall, his rapid offensive battered his quick-tongued opponent into gratifying retreat toward the streambank.

  Giving way before that driving rush, Arithon let his defending sword yield again and again, the resistance of his earlier style remade into a wall of substanceless air and fast movement. He skipped backward, melting away from hard contact. Fionn Areth thrust and stabbed in frenetic response to each of a dozen snatched openings. The attacks met no target. Back and back in scissor-fast footwork, Arithon gave precious ground. Behind loomed the locked mill wheel, armored in ice, a fixed barrier to choke off his options.

  Gauging the distance in one snatched glance, Fionn Areth misjudged his footing. The streambank sloped gently downward, and the extended stride of his lunge landed him on a swept patch of glare ice. Sprawled to one knee, sword flung wide for balance, the herder cried out in consternation. The strong counterblow must inevitably dispatch him before he could salvage his victory.

  Yet Arithon merely stood fast and waited, the dark sword in his grasp poised and still.

  ‘You’re not fighting!’ Fionn Areth scrambled back upright, humiliated and stressed by the blazing pain of a pulled hamstring. ‘Damn you to Sithaer’s bleakest of pits! You give me no contest at all.’

  ‘You wanted to fight,’ said Prince Arithon, equivocal. ‘I promised you one chance to test me.’

  Dakar, by the mill, caught his breath as the scalding invective struck home.

  ‘I never once gave my word I’d strike back to cause harm,’ Rathain’s prince added, spitefully reasonable. Then, as the goatherd hammered back in offense, he parried, sidestepped, and lagged a half beat to stoop and fling a snatched snow clod. ‘So far, boy, you haven’t shown me the least little cause to feel threatened.’

  Struck square in the eye, Fionn Areth hissed a blasphemy. He charged up the streambank. Pressed to animal ferocity, he extended himself to deny his antagonist the chance to regain the high ground.

  He encountered instead the breathtaking-fast reflex that trademarked the s’Ffalenn prince’s offensive. ‘No gain without sweat,’ Arithon taunted. ‘You wanted to make an end quickly?’

  At each punitive step, through each phase of encounter, Fionn Areth’s convictions were made laughingstock. He was being mauled, mouse to Arithon’s cat, for sheer malice and flippant amusement. The insult struck home, fully and finally; Fionn Areth let fly the chokehold he kept on his temper.

  The screaming cry of steel locked to steel filled the draw like the language of vengeance. Theirs was no longer a battle in form, restrained by the dictates of prudence. In snow and darkness, the paired blades carved wild arcs. Dakar, by the mill, mopped sweat from his brow and endured the unbearable, drawn tension. He eschewed use of mage-sight. His weak stomach refused the exactitude of his refined perceptions, lest chance death or injury drag him into the entangling fabric of tragedy. In the absence of light, the duel’s progress became marked by the clangor of parries; of gasped breaths and the rasp as stiff boot soles scuffed over treacherous ground seeking purchase.

  Nor had Arithon surrendered his arrogant stance. On a grievous, missed step, in irretrievably marred balance, Fionn Areth’s guarding blade swung too wide. The Shadow Master jerked back his following lunge, and forwent lethal closure yet again.

  ‘Fight, damn you!’ gasped the enraged Araethurian.

  A glib jab in verse, then a love tap with the blade’s flat served him Arithon’s blistering rejection. ‘Kill me, or quit the field outright. You’re not Lysaer, stripling. Desh-thiere’s curse doesn’t bind me. Your blood on my hands would be a cheap thrill, and I don’t like hunting sparrows for sport!’

  Fionn Areth bore in, finesse abandoned. Though he felt the searing burn of each breath, the spelled wine blunted fatigue. He smashed his clamoring, brutal attack into Arithon’s graceful, quick parries. Weight and force would carry the contest in the end. Persistence must eventually wear down the blithe turn of speed that, time and again, bought evasion. The impact of steel striking steel numbed his ears. His eyes stung with running sweat. The featureless night and fine, veiling snowfall reduced his opponent to a light-footed shadow that went and came to the relentless demand of his swordplay.

  The change in the match occurred without warning. In the space between heartbeats, the Shadow Master’s light-handed style ripped away, immolated by driving brilliance.

  Fionn Areth gasped. Scrambling to maintain a classic defense against an onslaught of innovative genius, he at last understood the prelude had been a bald sham all along. This was a master swordsman he faced. Anytime, even now, the dark blade could slice in and take him at will. He lived and moved on his enemy’s sufferance, with no prayer for reprieve if he faltered. Gone were the mocking phrases as well, vanished like silk over flame. Lashed by a whistling, furious offensive, Fionn Areth heard Dakar shouting.

  Then he shared the reason for his enemy’s unveiled form: the thunder of oncoming horsemen. An armed company of Jaelot’s guard charged the mill, drawn on by the belling notes of swordplay.

  Rushed to elation, that despite his failed skill the sorcerer would receive his due punishment, Fionn Areth took heart. He pressed on in fixed purpose to sustain his defense until the mayor’s pursuit overtook them.

  Just as obstinate, Arithon extended his will to bind up his steel and disarm him. The slide of rushed footfalls scuffed off the thinned snow. Locked now in true combat, the Shadow Master and his double circled and feinted and thrust across an arena of pebbled, gray ice. Panted breath and marred balance tore gaps in technique. The raging clang of each closure sang ragged where one or the other combatant scrambled to regain slipped footing.

  And still, two opportune openings came and went; even threatened with capture, Arithon abjured the disabling stroke.

  Dakar shoved both fists against his shut teeth to stifle a screamed exhortation. One trip, one distraction could precipitate a fatality. Too wise to stress Arithon’s rapt concentration, he recognized the moves that led into the wicked reverse stroke, and disarmament. The same sequence had once downed Lord Erlien of
Alland, in a trial fought years past in Selkwood. Fionn Areth, still green, could only withstand the attacking diversion, without clue his defeat was self-evident.

  But this night, on the winter-cold banks of the millstream, Arithon’s skilled tactic went wrong. That stunning, last bind became slowed by a skid, then a misstep caught short of recovery. His dark steel jerked downward, unpartnered, while his left toe gave way underneath him.

  Fionn Areth’s missed thrust drove on, unhindered. Given no option to avoid a stabbed chest, Arithon guarded with the back of Alithiel’s quilloned grip. Dakar shouted as steel screamed and slid through. Yet no outcry could arrest the following force of Fionn Areth’s stripped hatred. The sword rang between Alithiel’s wrought rings, and impaled her s’Ffalenn bearer’s right hand.

  Footing recaptured, Arithon sprang backward. Blood slicked the grasp of fingers gone strengthless. As he switched grip and fell back on a left-handed style, he was going to miss the next parry.

  Yet Fionn Areth showed stubborn mettle and withheld the lunge that would have pressed the advantage. ‘You have a main gauche,’ he said, raging bitter. ‘Why haven’t you thought to use it?’

  Arithon stood, hard-breathing and stilled, while the blare of a horn clove the night. An officer’s bellow spurred the pounding hoofbeats on a converging course down the draw. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘But let’s not spoil the odds, my two blades to your one.’ He flicked back his cloak, drew the evil, quilloned weapon from the sheath at his hip. ‘You take the main gauche,’ he invited Fionn Areth. ‘I prefer my small dagger.’

  As if no company of guardsmen closed in, a fast toss shied the weapon, grip first.

  Fionn Areth fielded the catch in astonishment.

  ‘Ath, no!’ pealed Dakar, wide-awake to fresh danger even before his tuned mage-sense seared warning across his overcranked nerves.

  This was the same main gauche that had struck Caolle down one wretched night seventeen years ago. Its steel still harbored the horrific stamp of past dissidence: the cruel death and bloodshed of a liegeman fallen for true loyalty, and a wounding of conscience that to this day stood unrequited. In an enemy’s hand, fed by hot temper and the high stakes of extremity, that grievous, dark imprint might refire. In lingering resonance, old grief could allow such raised dissonance the opening to cloud Arithon’s better judgment. Charged by s’Ffalenn guilt, a self-abnegating justice might complete that blade’s accursed history.

  But the fight disallowed any pause to broach reason. Fionn Areth bore in, sword leveled, the main gauche couched in a determinedly competent left hand.

  Arithon met him, his sword tip unsteady in his maimed clasp. The weapon he retained for his left-handed guard was a suicide’s choice, a slender poignard for eating. Its tanged blade had no cross guard, no length, and no leverage to outmatch the swung impetus of a sword stroke.

  Dakar’s rush to intervene was dragged short by four horses, planted by herdbound instinct. With raised heads and pricked ears, their curiosity had snagged upon Jaelot’s approaching destriers. Dakar snarled words concerning maggot-infested dog meat.

  While undaunted in the clearing, the Araethurian goatherd readied the stop thrust to murder the last s’Ffalenn prince. Restored to self-confidence, in strict tutored form, Fionn Areth held his unwavering focus. He tracked the raised sword that would fail to deflect him, and so missed the deft flick of Arithon’s left hand, that launched the flat, little dagger.

  The knife struck, sunk hilt deep in the goatherd’s extended shoulder. He cried out, hand gone nerveless. His sword cast free, falling, sliced a glancing gash in the high cuff of Arithon’s boot. Left the main gauche, but no space to react, Fionn Areth ended his thrust, still in balance, but unable to effect a timely recovery given the wretched footing.

  Arithon stepped close. Stripped to desperate efficiency, he struck one sharp blow. Alithiel’s jeweled pommel clubbed Fionn Areth’s exposed nape and felled him, unconscious.

  The horses gave way before Dakar’s goading. They sidled ahead in snorting excitement, while down the choked gash of the draw the charging lancers bore in on the ruined mill. Swearing in language to raise fire and storm, Dakar reached Arithon’s side.

  ‘You’ve made a right mess!’ he snapped, voice cracking as he stooped to assess the wound in the prostrate boy’s shoulder. ‘Ath on earth, man! Why did you have to choose now to indulge in a schoolboy’s folly?’

  Breathing too hard, his sword smartly sheathed, Arithon recovered the herder’s dropped weapons from the snow. He secured Fionn Areth’s bared blade through a pack strap, then reclaimed the cold burden of the main gauche. ‘No folly,’ he gasped, flat sober and strained. ‘My given promise to meet him in challenge was made in dire straits, to make him leave Jaelot without argument.’

  ‘Damn good that does, now!’ Dakar retorted, then caught his breath at the stony expression locked upon Arithon’s face. ‘Don’t mourn. He’s not dying. Just stuck like a pig at the butcher’s. He won’t bleed to death. That’s assuming our captors allow me the grace to set him in bandages before they drag us in chains to the dungeon.’

  Arithon’s relief was a palpable force. He caught the near gelding’s bridle and flung the reins over the animal’s plunging head. ‘We aren’t going to be taken.’ He reached again, snapped the packhorse’s lead out of the Mad Prophet’s stunned grasp, then vaulted into the saddle. ‘You’re to keep that boy safe! Promise me! Use every means necessary, breach my private trust as you must. Just teach him that I’m not his enemy.’

  Dakar missed his grab for the gelding’s lost lead rein. Ever and always, he failed to keep pace with s’Ffalenn cunning through a crisis. ‘Arithon, no!’

  But the oncoming riders were near, and fast closing, leaving no time to argue poor strategy.

  ‘Ward this place, now! I’ll divert them.’ Arithon closed his heels, spurred, pitched the horse underneath him from a standstill into a gallop. ‘Given shadow, I ought to manage.’ As the packhorse swerved and bolted in response, Arithon called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll find you, or meet you when Evenstar docks!’

  Both horses and rider crashed into the wood, extended in flat-out flight.

  Dakar stood his ground by the deserted mill. He extended the spells for ward and concealment by rote, while the horn call as the lancers wheeled and turned sounded all but on top of him. Nor could an untenable choice be reversed. Shouts pealed through the storm, fired by discovery as Arithon crossed a thinned patch of wood, or perhaps a woodcutter’s clearing. He would have lagged purposefully for that brief sighting, to draw the danger away after him.

  Dakar could not rejoice for the respite of safety. Naught remained but to tend Fionn Areth. That charge left the spellbinder heartsick with shame, for in fact, against the world’s peril posed by the Mistwraith, the life left in his hands was the expendable cipher. Whether moved by compassion for feckless youth, or some sense of misguided loyalty, Dakar knew his excuse for inaction fell short. He had failed the primary obligation set upon him by command of the Fellowship Sorcerers.

  Rathain’s irreplaceable, last prince now rode alone. He carried no better protection than his birth gift of shadow, and a paltry few sigils of concealment stitched into the livery hack’s saddlecloth. Whipped to zealous pursuit, the mayor’s guard from Jaelot pounded hard on his trail, swallowed at length by the fall of fresh snow and the gloved ink of solstice night.

  Winter Solstice Night 5670

  Retaliation

  On the hour before solstice midnight, the vintner’s shed where the Koriani enchantresses in Jaelot held their headquarters lay in flickering gloom, the reek of cheap tallow stewed through the tang of stirred dust. The flames in the dips hissed and dimmed to the drafts whining through ill-fitted shakes. Sifted snow let in by the cracks sheeted glittering residue in the corners. Only one of the circle of women who manned the crude outpost rejoiced for the upset to the order’s covert plotting. Well accustomed to the ramshackle joinery that made the rough shelter a misery, Elaira lay
curled in her cloak. She had finger-combed the worst tangles from her damp glory of bronze hair. Undone by the relief of Prince Arithon’s escape, she slept through the first peaceful moment she had known since Fionn Areth’s unjust incarceration.

  Lirenda viewed her younger colleague’s repose with distaste. Less inured to tough setbacks, too riled to accept the wormwood of defeat, the senior enchantress paced the shed in mincing steps and balked tension. Her hands shook. Agitated reflections snapped through her rings like actinic sparks in the flame light.

  Her assigned circle of peers maintained stiff decorum. Anxious lest her shortfall brand them in shame, they endured her irritable commands in strict silence.

  Lirenda rebuffed their probing questions. She gave no explanation for the monumental lapse in propriety that had allowed Arithon s’Ffalenn to bolt through Jaelot’s cordoned walls.

  ‘You must find him!’ she exhorted her overworked seeresses, still bent in trance over a water-filled vat once more joyously used to mash grapes.

  Failure to secure the Shadow Master’s capture framed a setback of calamitous proportions. In peril of ruin, Lirenda demanded another spell-driven sweep of the countryside. Her foul mood stayed relentless, as though by persistence she could expunge the memory of the branding kiss the s’Ffalenn prince had bestowed to unravel her upright character.

  ‘You realize we waste time,’ Senior Cadgia pointed out, her steadfast patience frayed ragged.

  ‘Search wider,’ Lirenda lashed back in hissed sibilance. ‘I won’t hear your excuse for the static thrown off by a mere winter storm. The s’Ffalenn bastard can’t go far on foot in such weather. I’ll know where he shelters, no matter how thorny the setbacks!’

  Deliberate before such needling superiority, the elder seer addressed the frosted white image that rejected her skills in the scrying vat. The sigil she sketched with competent briskness did not frame the seals to generate ordered renewal. Instead, fingers snapping, she engaged the chaotic rune of dispersal.