Grand Conspiracy (8 page)

Asandir looked up, his eyes bleak with remembrance and his shoulders too straight against the moving weave of the wavecrests. ‘We had only the
methuri
left to attend. They posed a minor threat, and Ciladis, who hoped to transmute their warped offspring, saw no need to hasten their final disposition. We all
failed to foresee how our obligation would compound on the hour that refugee humanity discovered this world of Athera.'

Now the fisherman looked puzzled. Perhaps out of weariness, the Sorcerer chose to unveil the depth of the Fellowship's tragedy. ‘The terms of the compact reinstated the drake's binding all over again.'

‘But why?' The fisherman's incredulity clashed like snarled thread with the Sorcerer's shaded, soft sorrow.

‘Because once, we were a large part of the reason why humanity needed refuge in the first place.' The confession was a bald-faced statement of fact, devoid of self-pity or guilt. Long since reconciled to the horrors of past history, Asandir seemed a figure carved out of oak. The sliding foam of the wake, and the stitched needles of reflection the night's moon and stars streaked across heaving waters were made to seem transient by comparison. ‘We impair no man's free will by the Law of the Major Balance, that we are charged never to violate. But our peril in these times holds a razor's edge. For you see, if the Mistwraith's curse that drives the two princes to hatred wreaks havoc enough to break the compact, the guiding charge of the dragons will reclaim us.'

The pall of the quiet held nothing of calm, as the old fisherman shrank at the helm of his boat, and the boy slept, oblivious, curled in oilskin. The elder clansmen for decency averted his face, aware as his younger scout was not of the weight of admission forthcoming.

‘You don't understand, still?' Asandir's remonstrance came gentle, grief and tears bound in iron that must meet the crucible unflinching. ‘It's the fear we live and breathe with each waking hour since the Mistwraith breached South Gate five centuries ago. If mankind upsets the balance, if the grand mystery that quickens renewal and life here ever comes to be threatened, then the Paravians who are Ath's blessed gift to heal the dragons' transgressions will fade from Athera forever. Our Fellowship will be called to act ere that happens. We will be forced to carry out the directive the drakes set upon us,
to ensure Paravian
survival no matter the cost of the sacrifice
.'

All the subtle, deft power that now cajoled wind and tide potentially turned to destruction, even to arranging the extinction of the one race whose wants and ambitions brooked no restraint. Spoken language fell short of expression; renewed anguish seemed chiseled by the unconscionable memories stamped into the Sorcerer's lined face.

Yet no resonance of bygone sorrow could prepare for the impact as Asandir concluded in stripped pain, ‘We could be forced to call forfeit our redemption, don't you see?
If the compact
is broken, then our Fellowship must enact the annihilation of humanity
all over again
.'

Only this time, they would be compelled to the act of mass slaughter in full cognizance, causation set into a lens of awareness refined by ten thousand years of arcane wisdom. Sympathy faltered, and language became inadequate to express that stark weight of remorse. No mercy could soften the cruel edge of the paradox. Nor did means exist on a boat under way for the Sorcerer to recoup his privacy.

Sorry at last for the temerity of his questioning, the fisherman wept at the helm. The clan scouts maintained staid and dignified silence, while Asandir showed the grace of a humbling courage to grant them release from embarrassment. In unstudied diplomacy, he settled back on his blanket roll and slept.

He stirred once, at slack tide, to fine-tune the draw of the water that propelled the sloop on her heading. No one spoke to interrupt his dialogue with the elements. The boy was rousted up to handle the lines, and the sails were hardened upon the opposite tack to steady the keel against the shift in the current. When the last sheet was cleated, the Sorcerer moved his blanket roll to windward. Again he dozed, his large hands abandoned like driftwood in the hollow of his lap.

Dawn brightened the waves to opaque, leaden gray. Gulls dipped and called against a sky like smoked pearl, layered with shredding drifts of light fog. The merciless light touched the Sorcerer's face and revealed his exhaustion, demarked in pinched lines, and sharp angles where the bone pressed against his thinned flesh. No one rushed to be first to awaken him, even when the shoreline of the estuary loomed ahead, notched with the torn sable outline of the forest he had come to spare from the torch.

Asandir needed no prompting in any case. Cued by the lift of the swell as his binding drove the sloop toward shoaling waters, he spoke the Paravian rune of ending and dismissed his ties of grand conjury. Wind and wave subsided. The small craft bobbed in the chop of a north breeze, freed to make landfall under the skill of her helmsman. In the rush toward shore, Asandir proved he knew how to handle a line. Nor was he proud. When the sloop reached the shallows, he thanked the fisherman for his passage
and traced a ward sign of blessing on the craft's planks and tackle. Then, with no fanfare, he stripped his dark leathers alongside the two clansmen and breasted the waist-deep surf to set foot on the beach of Taerlin.

The first ray of sunrise spun the mists to raw gold as the party of three pressed into the deep shade of Caithwood.

A day on foot carried the Fellowship Sorcerer and the two clan scouts across seven leagues of wilds to the grooved rut of the Taerlin trade road. Sheltered by brush that rattled in stiff, northern gusts, the small party took covert stock of the Alliance encampment, tents and picket lines and supply wagons packed like a logjam along the verge of the thoroughfare. Here, the patrols of headhunters that swept Caithwood requisitioned their supplies, and caravans en route to Ilswater and Quarn picked up Alliance outriders and the armed escort they needed to ensure their safe passage through the forest.

‘They've dug in tight as ticks, since the summer,' the older clansman said, bitter for the timber that had been cut to raise the rough quarters to shelter townborn officers.

The land bore the scars of that thoughtless inhabitancy from the trampled, bare quadrangles cleared for field drills to the grass and vegetation milled into pocked dust by the voracious foraging of livestock. The surrounding ravines had been picked clean of firewood. Streamlets ran turbid from the bucket brigades sent to fetch cooking and wash water, and everywhere, the slanting, low sunlight glanced off the war-polished steel of weapon and helm and horse armor.

‘They keep a company of heavy cavalry,' Asandir said, surprised. ‘Why? Lancers can't be much use in the deepwood.'

‘Those are assigned to move slave coffles.' The elder spat on the clean, growing earth. ‘Double bounties are still paid for male clansmen, when they can be captured alive. You didn't know? There's an established auction at Valenford, now, where galleymen go to buy oarsmen.'

A chilling, subtle change swept the Sorcerer's bearing. He knelt, all grim purpose, and untied his blanket roll, while an oblivious horn call sounded below and signaled the change in the watch. Several chattering grooms in sunwheel livery led a clutch of saddled remounts to water, unaware that their routine was watched.

‘You don't plan to go down there,' the young scout broke in,
his hands gone damp from overtaut nerves as he watched the Sorcerer shake out his formal mantle. The deep blue wool and fine silver ribbon stood out like a shout in the sun-filtered shade at the tree line. ‘Archers and crossbowmen guard the perimeter with standing orders to kill. We've lost lives, trying to fire the grain stores in that accursed encampment.'

‘We aren't going down there,' Asandir reassured. ‘But I find I have a point to make, and that changes the grounds upon which we borrow three horses.'

The young scout sucked in a startled breath, while the elder expressed disbelief. ‘What use could we possibly be to your cause?'

‘Why should you devalue your worth?' Asandir glanced up, his eyebrows bristled in rebuke. ‘Innate power walks in a company of three. Your presence joined to mine cannot but add depth to the impact of my demand.'

Done tying up knots, the Sorcerer straightened. He cast his long mantle around his broad shoulders, then issued his instructions, the lit gray of his eyes turned baleful as storm, and his purpose no mortal's to gainsay. ‘Forget you bear weapons. We go empty-handed. I am going to raise a sphere of resonance that will forestall every aspect of violence. Its force will protect, but cannot discriminate. On your peril, remain at my back. Say nothing. Do nothing, no matter what threat arises. The solidarity of our defense will be underwritten by no other power than peace. Above anything else, I need you to stand fast. You must not give way to your hatred.'

Impatient, he broke from the dappled verge of the wood and strode down the slope in plain view. The two clansmen followed. Their bold disregard for enemy sentries with crossbows posed an affront that brooked no appeal.

They were spotted at once, set in sharp relief by the sunlight that poured molten brass over the browned stubble of the hillside. The first surprised shouts were cut through by an urgent challenge. ‘Halt, you! Hold fast and declare for the Light!'

Asandir paid the officer in authority no heed. Straight as Dharkaron's Spear in his blue-and-silver cloak, he continued another three strides, his uncovered head like lit ice against the shadowy backdrop of evergreen, and his hands hanging loose at his sides. He stopped as he pleased. His falcon's stare fixed on the party of horses and grooms, at large on the bank of the streamlet.

Down the mild grade, the Alliance crossbowmen knelt and notched quarrels in flurried alarm. They brought weapons to bear, the bitten reflections off lethal, aimed steel chipped glare through the dust-hazed afternoon.

‘Stand firm,' the Sorcerer reminded the sweating clansmen beside him. He did not glance at the archers, but maintained his obstinate survey of the grooms' innocuous activity on the streambank. ‘On my word, you will come to no harm when they fire.'

‘Release at will!' cried the officer, in determined adherence to duty.

The discharge of the trigger latches mangled the drawn stillness, creased by the waspish whine of launched quarrels. Asandir made no move to cast spells. He uttered no word of invocation. Yet the air in his presence acquired a sealed calm, as potent as the tensioned silence that channeled the strike of bolt lightning. The quarrels arched up; descended in deadly convergence. Ten paces before the Sorcerer's stilled form, they crossed the unseen boundary of his influence. The steel tips blurred out of focus, then shocked the charged air into spherical halos of gold sparks. All impetus died. The metal sang out in a queer, wailing dissonance, then dropped like shot stone back to earth.

At the same moment the horses led to drink at the streambed flung up their heads in excitement. Eyes rolling white, they reacted with one mind and shied sidewards. Hooves bit the muddied earth like balked thunder as they ripped their reins from the stupefied grasp of their grooms and bolted upslope toward the Sorcerer.

One last quarrel burst into a splash of fine static and crashed, limp, at Asandir's feet. No others followed. In the crease of the valley, the outraged captain who ordered a second volley toppled out of his saddle. His ranked rows of crossbowmen crumpled also, fallen facedown in a faint. The freed horses hurtled past their sprawled bodies. Glossy and fit, the beasts pounded uphill. Their initial madcap dash unraveled into a brisk trot, and equine ears perked forward, inquiring.

‘Choose yourselves a mount,' Asandir instructed the two clansmen. Their appalled uncertainty awoke his swift smile, then a near laugh as a shouting, pointing knot of men convulsed the Alliance camp to fresh turmoil. A wedge of mounted lancers disgorged from their midst, still strapping on their snatched armor and grabbing weapons from squires and page boys. Their
rush was spearheaded by an officer in a streaming, loose surcoat. Ahead of his company, he spurred his bay gelding upslope in a howling charge.

Asandir held his ground. Unconcerned, he addressed the loose horses. The sound of his voice soothed their volatile nerves. Reins trailing, the mare in the lead subsided back to a walk. She ambled the closing, final strides to nuzzle his outstretched hand, her equine disregard all but flouting the mounted Alliance horsemen boring in at an earthshaking canter. Forced to swing wide to avoid trampling downed archers, the irate captain lost nerve, if not outrage. He dragged his gelding to a headshaking halt, half-strangled by the folds of his unbelted garment.

‘We're borrowing these horses,' Asandir informed. ‘They'll come back sound and cared for.' Behind him, the two scouts caught trailing bridles and checked girths, then vaulted astride.

The Alliance officer yanked an arm from snagged silk and gestured an impatient advance. ‘Surround them!' The men at his heels reined aside, fanned out, then circled and closed in, lances leveled at the intruders. Reassured as his cordon settled in place, the officer vented his temper. ‘What's harm to three hacks, when you've dropped our best squad of archers in their tracks by means of black sorcery?'

‘They're sleeping,' Asandir corrected point-blank. He flipped the reins over the mare's chestnut neck, tightened the girth, then adjusted the stirrups two holes downward to accommodate his lean length of leg. As the captain at arms clapped a fist on his sword hilt, he added, ‘I'd advise you not to try violence.'

‘To Sithaer with your counsel!' The captain closed his mailed fingers and hauled steel in a screeling wail from the scabbard. ‘Take them down, on my signal.'

Time hesitated, blurred, and for one binding moment, a flushed heat like a wind passed through the nerves and flesh of every man in the Sorcerer's presence.