Authors: Janny Wurts
The Earl of the North bit back a yelp, the steel hilts of his weapons
turned hot to his hand. He blinked, wits recovered, to find himself standing in a dusty, flat compound, scattered with tents sewn from sailcloth. Nor was Corith any longer untenanted. A circle of sailhands hunkered in the shade of a gnarled cedar. The ones near at hand looked aside at him, bored, then resumed quarreling over a dice throw, the winning stakes a collection of sticks notched with tally marks. The crescent knife used to keep count flashed in the fist of a prune-skinned little desertman, who stabbed air and hurled his scathing invective at a ship’s boy for rigging the odds.
“The defense spell is spliced reflection,” Dakar said, smug. “Those cliff rocks, and that span of ocean were borrowed intact from a site halfway down the north slope.” As the fracas erupted into knee-slapping mirth over the ship’s boy’s scurrilous rejoinder, the spellbinder admitted, “Of course, the noise was more difficult to mask.”
Case in point, a shout pealed out like steel put to the hammer.
The urchin shot erect from amid the pack of dicers. All coltish brown limbs and angular grace, the creature had blond hair tied in a glistening, long braid. The end was cross-laced with a frippery of ribbon bleached to rust. A second glance at a body clad in scruffy sailhand’s cottons showed the first, shy curves of a girl at the threshold of maturity.
“Arithon wasn’t on that fishing craft?” she shrilled across the brassy wash of sunlight.
At Dakar’s headshake, she crowed her wild triumph. “Well then you owe me six royals! He wasn’t to embark ‘til the winds changed, and the weather’s stayed contrary this season.”
“There are still three days left before solstice,” Dakar hurled back. “Your silver’s not won before then.” Soured by the prospect of forfeited coin, he confided to Jieret, “That’s Feylind, the pest. I misspoke myself teaching that girl to wager. She attached herself to Arithon at Merior by the Sea, and for her talent, your liege thought to train her. She’s gifted at navigation and seamanship when she isn’t cheating numbers on the dice.”
“She has spirit, give her that.” Jieret watched her spin back to defend her hoarded spoils, then realized: this girl must be one of the twins that Arithon had spoken of granting his oath of protection. Years passed. Feylind had grown beyond childhood; nor would her brother Fiark remain beardless much longer, wherever his own fate had sent him.
“Come on,” Dakar urged. “If the heat isn’t making you die for a drink, I want all your rumors from the mainland.”
Dusk softened over the broken spires at Corith. The sea beyond the breakwater spread a flat, purple disk. The seasonal squall line rumbled off the coast, stalled through afternoon by the chancy, winnowing breezes. Cloud ramparts loomed off the islands, their sulfurous rims stained by the afterglow. When Jieret refused outright to say what drew him from Rathain, Dakar parked his bulk upon the creaking rope pallet he had strung in the shelter of a tumbledown drum tower. The furnishings consisted of axe-cut fir, lashed at the jointures with twine. A water jug, a basin, and a clump of holed socks lay cached in the niche of an arrow slit. Beneath this, a sea chest in use as a table held a spellbinder’s clutter of bundled herbs, and an edged pair of shearwater’s flight feathers. Jieret chose to sit on the stone floor through the exchange of desultory small news.
They suffered but one interruption; the desertman burst in without word or apology, and left a meal of smoked fish and greens. The last of the day slowly fled. The ragged old walls were roofed with a haphazard patchwork of sailcloth, worried to threads and gaps by the wind until stars could be counted in constellations. Outside, the sailhands had laid off their dicing. Someone returned from trapping, and coals were laid in to roast conies. No stranger to the nuance of leading men, Jieret listened. Through spirited slangs and the odd burst of laughter he noticed the underlying worry.
Arithon’s absence weighed on them all, though the subject stayed scrupulously unmentioned. Even the Mad Prophet’s prying, sly talk circled to evade the sore topic.
The temperature cooled. Jieret cracked his knuckles and suddenly ran out of patience. “Why should my liege be alone on the mainland?”
Silence; the fallen summer darkness cut by a yelp as a sailhand burned careless fingers at the spit. Dakar against custom had not touched his food. He regarded his laced fingers, as if he just realized his soft, dimpled knuckles were wearing a stranger’s rough callus. He was not drunk. His clothing was mended, and his beard, trimmed neat, as if dogged grooming might suppress the misery that impelled his anguished admission. “His Grace sought Cattrick. That huge master joiner he used to employ back in Merior.”
“Dharkaron avenge!” Jieret cried. “His Grace went to
Shand?”
“I already know,” Dakar supplied. “Official books of grievances have been opened on the southcoast. Lord Erlien’s clansmen sent warning. Any town citizen can make claim of injury against Arithon. No proof is required. Just a sealed statement from the plaintiff. Those women left widowed at Vastmark have wasted no time recording all
manner of spurious spite. The pages are filled to the margins, and the mayors have promised to appeal for redress at Avenor.”
“This Cattrick,” Jieret snapped. “Is his loyalty secure?”
“Arithon believed he’d be able to win back the craftsman’s trust.” As this fueled a more alarming shift into fury, the Mad Prophet cringed, and cried out, “You
know
your liege!”
Jieret showed the fat spellbinder no quarter, but drew up his legs and busied his hands working the ringed salt from his buckskins. No need to reiterate the plain fact: that Dakar’s intent was equally well suspect, outspoken as he had been in the past concerning the Shadow Master’s ethics.
A thunderclap boomed over the ocean. Echoes shook the ominous flat air, and growled through the Mad Prophet’s explanation. “Once Arithon heard that his half brother had signed formal sanction for slave labor, his temper lit off like fell sparks. No reason moved him. He would go ashore, use his Masterbard’s talent and ply the southshore taverns. He meant to recall his craftsmen and recruit those who dared on some devious scheme to stall Avenor’s injustice.”
Jieret glanced up, his eyes chill hazel. He asked to borrow an oiled rag and a whetstone, then deliberately tended the steel of his quilloned dagger. Dakar, who had once known the
caithdein’s
father, knew better than to interrupt. The clan chieftain took his time, then stabbed the blade upright in the rush seat of a footstool. He gave his considered opinion. “Had I been here, I would have fought my liege bloody, even bundled him in irons to hold him.”
“Oh, you could have tried,” Dakar rebutted. “His Grace knows the tricks of his Masterbard’s title. Even if he couldn’t sing triplets to turn steel, the problem’s not simple or straightforward. Arithon has changed. The campaign brought to ruin at Dier Kenton Vale left him marked, sometimes too deeply to reach. You don’t want to tangle with his temper.”
But that had been true far and long before the devastating war in Vastmark. Every one of Jieret’s ancestors had lived with the peril of challenging s’Ffalenn royalty head-on. The clan chief probed, “You haven’t mentioned the Havens.”
A sudden, fierce gust slapped the sailcloth overhead. Dakar flinched. Brown eyes slid away in discomfort. “Your war captain, Caolle, saw everything.”
Jieret stared back in rancorous bitterness. “My war captain? Who came back to us changed? He resigned his post, did you know that? Said he would lift a sword for nothing else except to train our young scouts sharper skills. But no more to kill. He won’t say what took
place.” Jieret paused, snorted through the high bridge of his nose in mixed admiration and disgust. “For stubborn, close secrets, a clam’s less lockjawed than Caolle.”
Beyond stiff disquiet, the wind raked the night, deepened by clouds until the stars at the zenith were blackened. Dakar raised no smile as, in boisterous consternation, the sailhands scurried for shelter. His gaze tracked the broken, white line of the breakers creaming the reefs far below. Each crest came unraveled in driven, wild splendor against shores nothing like another blood-soaked shingle he wished he could raze out of memory.
He said softly, “If Caolle can’t speak, then neither will I. Trust my word. What went wrong between the Havens and the clash with Lysaer’s war host lies beyond spoken words to explain. Hear advice from a friend. Don’t ask your prince. I beg you, keep clear and don’t pry. Let Arithon explain if he chooses.”
“If he’s still alive, and not roasted for sorcery on some mayor’s pile of lit faggots.” Jieret shot out a fist and grabbed the stout spellbinder by the collar. “By Ath, prophet! Where my prince is concerned, I’m more than a friend. We’re bloodbond! I’ve twice risked my life to guard his mind from Desh-thiere’s curse.” Pain, naked and deep as a canker burst through. “Dharkaron avenge!” cried Jieret. “I’ve drawn his very
blood
to spare his sanity. What happened on that shoreline, in his right mind or not, could scarcely come to surprise me.”
Strangely uncowed by the clansman’s fierce strength, Dakar tore away. “It’s not what you could bear, nor what I could!” Just anguish blazed through and reclothed his rumpled dignity. “Nor do you question a man’s conscience alone, but a masterbard’s empathy turned under siege by the Fellowship’s imposed royal gift of compassion. Let Arithon be, if you have any mercy.”
Hemmed in by the howling descent of the squall line, Earl Jieret went obstinate to the bone. “That one thing I can’t do. In this, I am not my own master, but the oathsworn
caithdein
of Rathain. I
am
the realm’s conscience in matters of the law! And Lysaer’s charges of dark sorcery are too weighty to drop without question or inquiry.”
The tempest broke over the cliff top. Wind screamed, and the billowed, dry dust became trampled under the cloudburst. The sky above Corith split apart in actinic tangles of lightning. For a drawn span of minutes, thunder slammed through the old fortress. Jieret hung waiting, racked to naked appeal; he first presumed Dakar had left him. Against the white gush of the leaks through the sailcloth, his agonized words had only the storm’s voice for answer.
Then from the tempestuous wail of the elements, the Mad Prophet
served his opinion. “Well thank Ath, it’s going to be you. Your liege would mangle anyone else who challenged his integrity this time.”
“How nicely opportune,” a silvery, smooth voice issued unbidden from the rain. “I can see I’ve returned just in time to play my own part in the satire.”
Dakar gasped an oath, and Jieret, spun in one surge to his feet, faced the doorway.
Lightning flared like a rip in black silk, to limn the arrival standing there. The man was slight boned, soaked as a seal in plain cotton. Temper smoked through each stabbing vowel as he added, “I’m back from the mainland, blown in with a spate of foul weather. Don’t cheer,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn. He stepped forward, reduced once again to a voice clothed over in darkness. “Cattrick didn’t sell my killed carcass to the mayors, though assuredly, he had to be wooed.”
Dakar’s stupor unlocked all at once. He splashed sliding through a puddle, and rummaged after oiled rags and a wet length of kindling. Nerves interfered. When his hands dropped the flints, he resorted to a cantrip, spell driven. A spark erupted in a ripe flare of sulfur. New flame snagged the torch, fought into tormented brilliance by the gusts. Its flittering glow bronzed the first thing to hand, the bent crown of Jieret’s head.
He had knelt. Taller than his sovereign, a muscled tiger before a wraith, he stumbled through the ritual greeting,
caithdein
to his sworn prince.
Black haired, green eyed, pale as if chipped from veined quartz, the Master of Shadow poised on braced feet with his crossed arms wrapped to his chest. He was shivering. Shed droplets rocked off the plastered folds of his shirt and scribed rubied flecks through the torchlight. “There’s a parchment,” he prompted, succinct. “Let me see it.”
At Jieret’s upflung glance of distress, the prince’s brows angled higher. “You can hear? Good. Than arise and stop looking amazed. Your mission’s no secret. Every forest scout I met crossing Falwood said a writ had been passed to my
caithdein’s
charge. If I’m not over-joyed to find Rathain’s left stewardless, at least I’ll see why no clansman in Havish seemed eager to look me in the face.”
Jieret stood erect, his every movement cautious. That his prince was unarmed made no difference. The royal presence framed warning like the gleam on a lake of black ice. The pair of them were bloodbond, and yet, here stood a stranger masked in the features of a friend. This diamond-edged malice held a febrile, strung focus more volatile than Jieret remembered. While thunder boomed and
shook the ancient foundations, and the rain thrashed in demented torrents, he became aware of Dakar’s tense stillness, as if even the whisper of a wrongly drawn breath might trigger the spring of a predator.
Jieret’s hand did not shake in its office as he said, “I would soften this, liege, if I could.” In the uncanny, grave style inherited from his father, he drew the bundled document from the breast of his leathers and passed it across to his prince.
Arithon stiffened at first sight of the seals: the crown and star blazon of the purloined s’Ilessid device, and another, stamped in a lozenge of champagne wax, the rayed sunwheel adopted since Vastmark. The Shadow Master flipped open the folded leaves, then tipped them to capture the torchlight.
He read. His skin went from pale to transparent, and his very heart seemed to stop. Then he stirred. A word passed his lips, the staccato lilt of consonants framed in the grace of old Paravian. He hurled down the indictment as though its mere touch burned his flesh. Then he whirled, bent, and in a move of pure fury, plucked Jieret’s quilloned knife from the stool seat.
“Caithdein
of Rathain,” he intoned in chiseled, formal language. “The truth, on my word as your crown prince. If that’s not sufficient, you’ll have your sure proof through a death seal set into the lifeblood spilled from my body.”