Grand Conspiracy (47 page)

Feylind gripped Elaira's forearm in profound understanding and thanks. ‘Your word will be sent on through trusted hands. Leave the method for me to arrange.'

Only brisk and impersonal details remained to finish a routine transaction. ‘My fee for the healing is ten Morvain silvers or the same weight in another town's coinage,' Elaira said. ‘You may discharge the debt to the matron who sells fish by the landing. What I send, she will use to feed beggar children.' In parting, the enchantress caught Feylind's callused hand, her sure touch now undone by trembling. ‘Go safely. Give the Prince of Rathain my sweet blessing, but hear me: if Daelion Fatemaster shows us Ath's mercy,
he must not meet me again in this lifetime
.'

‘What do you know that's too dreadful to tell me?' Feylind pressured in whispered dread.

But Elaira shook her head. She chivvied the larger frame of the
Evenstar
's captain firmly on past her worktable and toward the shack's single doorway.

The ship's mate understood well enough the enchantress was desperately compromised; he bent to the cot and hefted the unconscious deckhand over his capable shoulders. ‘Feylind, come away. Any more that you say could be dangerous.'

‘Go at once. Your mate's sensibilities are most wise. Trust me, I'm content as things are. It's enough that you bear word for Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn.' Elaira unlatched the plank door and stood back, her gut a clenched stone for the inevitable fact, that if her beloved paid heed to her warning, if he steered clear of danger as she pleaded, then the boy, a goatherd's son from Araethura, might be left to die for the sacrifice.

That dichotomy brought torment, two-edged as cut glass. Yet the love she bore the man demanded her honor. News of High Priest Cerebeld's twisted practices must reach Arithon, come what might. He already shared her unquiet apprehension. Through the thrummed cord of tension transmitted across the
gulf of an unendurable separation, he must sense her conflicted integrity. The extreme, forceful phrases she had imparted to Feylind would let him extrapolate much more. If he had access to scrying, his own mage-schooled insight might forewarn that Morriel's snare of conspiracy against him had grown to embrace an appalling, dark practice that transgressed every limit of decency.

Given the context of Feylind's message, Arithon would be granted the gift of awareness to assess the grave peril which faced him. He could call upon Dakar's wise counsel to guide him. If he chose not to listen on the hour the trap became sprung, he would come prepared, with guarded knowledge in advance of the danger.

Summer 5667

From his vantage tower eyrie at Avenor, Cerebeld, High Priest of the Light, leans on his windowsill, brooding while the late-night festival brands burn to coals, and Gace Steward brings news of the words too closely guarded to overhear between the grandame s'Brydion and Lysaer s'Ilessid's princess; the meeting prompts his immediate disposition: ‘High time Alestron receives an Alliance representative who wears the sunwheel seal of a man sworn and bound to the Light …'

In the chill hour before dawn, Princess Ellaine of Avenor sits at the window seat of her private apartment, firm in her resolve to expose the faction that arranged for the murder of her predecessor; and an impulse in forethought prompts her to cast a charitable gold coin to the slop taker's woman, whose wagon pulls up at the curbside below to collect refuse and night soil from the palace …

Far east, under the massive vaulted dome of Etarra's council hall, a gathering of officials assembles to hear the first minister of the city, who announces, ‘As you all know, our Lord Governor Supreme is failing in health. Therefore, time has come to set seal to his document of succession and approve the candidate he sets forth to defend his seat for the challenge of the public vote …'

D
awn the day after the solstice festival saw Dame Dawr s'Brydion out and about before the city lampsmen began their rounds to douse the lights at the watch change. She paid her parting respects to the duke's posted envoy over breakfast. Then she gathered her silver-and-ebony stick and departed with a packet of sealed dispatches bound to destinations south and east. The new-risen sun burned pale gold through the sea mist while her escort of clan guard assembled in the yard. She spurned the envoy's kindly meant offer of a litter in scathing language, and set off on foot for the harbor.

Her six retainers knew better than to smile over her irascible independence. Dame Dawr was tough as old boot leather, and even more stubbornly set in her ways. She traveled nowhere in sedan chairs, not when she could still manage a saddle; and she never rode when brisk walking was more sensible. Here in Tysan, a livery mount cost a coin tax for the Light, which offended her belief in Ath's natural order, as well as her ingrained ancestral respect for dumb beasts.

‘No horse I know would become willing party to the backstabbing stupidities of town politics.' The black stick jabbed air to nail home her point, driving an inadvertent trio of bystanders to leap with a splash of dismay into the gutter. Dawr bade them
good morning in frosty clan accents, then resumed her diatribe in the same breath. Lysaer s'Ilessid's pretty fortress of Avenor, she insisted, was small enough that an insolent boy could spit from one wall and strike the sunwheel surcoats of the garrison sentries who stood rounds of duty on the other.

The old lady reached the harborside, her prickly high spirits undimmed. The early air warmed, thick and tepid as new milk, as the mist thinned and broke off the waterfront. Sweating, bare-chested stevedores ferried the piled boxes and bales to the docked trade galleys before the burgeoning heat steamed the last dew off the cobbles. Dying embers from the festival fires painted the smoky scent of ash and carbon through the seaside taints of drying fishnets and tide wrack. The crushed garlands dropped by the dancers and celebrants wilted, the perfume of bruised blossoms mingled with the damp oak miasma of salt barrels bound for the stockyards.

Dame Dawr waded into the bustle, undaunted. She thumped her stick on the boards of the dock as though testing for rot or unsoundness. Her shrewd glance took note of the quantity and quality of the trade goods and provisions awaiting transport. Only her guard respected her whetted acumen enough to realize her mental survey missed nothing. She might learn more on a short, morning stroll than Avenor's ranking guildsmen could glean from their closeted ledgers. Men respected Grandame Dawr, as wary in her presence as unarmed boys who faced a berserker gone amok with naked steel. Experience branded that caution into them. Duke Bransian's grandmother saw like a hawk, and played deaf as a post anytime she saw fit to indulge in her scathing, inimical temperament.

That her vicious moods marched hand in glove with keen wits gave the s'Brydion retainers sharp reason to humor her. Another five strides, and the petulant twist to her lips warned them of pending trouble.

‘Dharkaron's immortal bollocks!' Dawr snapped under her breath. A virulent rap of her stick punctuated her abrupt stop. ‘Will you look at that fool, yapping lapdog?'

Several yards down the wharf, where the deepwater ships berthed, half-hitched to the gray, weathered bollards, the target of her insult stood unsuspecting, his sunwheel robe a scream of bright white against the sun-faded red tunics of two stolid s'Brydion men-at-arms. These had planted themselves in determination across the gangway to the Duke of Alestron's state galley.

Dame Dawr straightened frail shoulders. ‘We'll just see what sort of mannerless numskull seeks to board our decks uninvited.'

‘That's an ally,' the hard-bitten captain of her escort reminded in a low voice.

‘Aye, an ally, you insist.' A brimstone glint of joy lit Dawr's dark eyes. ‘Then we agree. We'll have to leave weapons out of this.' She tipped up her chin and bored in with a swirl of silk skirts straight down the throat of the argument.

Arrived like a pestering black gnat, she placed a hand on the arm of the sunwheel acolyte. ‘Young man,' she announced in grandmotherly sympathy, ‘you must be misguided or lost. This galley takes no paying passengers.'

The victim spun and glared. His jaw clenched tight with renewed irritation as he realized he could not dismiss the mistress of the duke's ship or brush off her senseless nattering.

Dawr smiled. ‘I see you're distressed.' She patted his hand, all pearl teeth and daft kindness. ‘Will you accept my assistance? One of the duke's men would be pleased to take you to the harbormaster's, where a list will be kept of those vessels prepared to sell transport.'

The man flushed to his eyebrows. His combed, satin hair wisped in the breeze as he curbed bursting temper and mastered his first impulse to snatch back his arm. ‘I seek no paid passage, madam.' All icy civility, he made introductions. ‘I'm Acolyte Cowill, sent here by appointment of Cerebeld, High Priest of the Light, to return as ambassador to your duke.'

Dawr's pity melted into concern. ‘No coin, did you say? How misfortunate.' She turned, craned her neck, then beckoned to the closest man of her guard and told him to empty her purse of small silver. ‘Clan custom,' she piped, cheerful as she returned her bright, sparrow's gaze to her victim. ‘We refuse no one alms. Brings in ill luck if beggars are slighted, and the needy are left to go hungry.'

The acolyte glanced in flustered appeal to Dawr's escort. ‘Tell your mistress her silver's not asked. Please explain. Avenor has appointed me to serve the Light's glory in the duke's court at Alestron.'

Dame Dawr observed this exchange, eyebrows raised in obstructive epiphany. ‘You want guest passage to appeal to my grandson, Bransian Teir's'Brydion?' A doddering step marched her into the acolyte's face, where, nonplussed, she reached out
and gave his biceps a testing, firm pinch. ‘Scrawny, I'd say. Definitely too weak, if you're asking to train for the field troops. That's nothing a few shifts at the oar won't set right. But I'd advise you, throw out that doublet. We're bound south through Havish. King Eldir's officials have no love of priests. White-and-gold cloth with that upstart blazon will certainly set you on the wrong foot with the locals.'

While the grandame regarded him with benign expectation, the acolyte shrugged, then drew breath to restate his request to her guardsmen.

He managed no words.

Dame Dawr banged her stick on the wharf timbers with a thunderous report that startled every uninvolved party within earshot. ‘Well, what under sky are you waiting for, young man? Do you ask for guest passage to Alestron, or not?' Not content with waspish railing, Dawr prodded him square in the chest with her stick. ‘If you're coming along, then by Dharkaron's Black Chariot and Spear, I'm too frail to carry you aboard! March yourself onto the galley at once. Ath's tide won't wait while we stand here.'

Dealt the unceremonious choice of being left flat-footed on the dock, the acolyte fled up the gangway.

The s'Brydion matriarch and her escort crowded onto the deck at his heels. The last pair of men-at-arms hauled in the gangway with a speed that suggested they forestalled his last means of escape.

Dawr snapped the ship's master a curt nod of greeting. ‘Cast off. Then see the new recruit settled.'

When the old woman departed for the privacy of her cabin, the young priest addressed the nearest captain at arms. ‘Is the lady always this difficult?'

The man's bearded face split into a grin. ‘Oh, aye. There's times when you humor her, no questions asked.'

A horn blast cut off further chance for conversation. Given cracking strings of orders to see the galley under way, Duke Bransian's crews reacted with war-tuned efficiency. Every man, including the ones who had served as Dawr's escort, appeared to have something important to do. In breathtakingly short order, Alestron's sleek vessel was set under oars and beating a steady, swift stroke from the harbor.

As the work seemed to slacken, no crewman fell idle. The sunwheel acolyte politely awaited his moment to request a
guest envoy's accommodation. To his dumbfounded outrage, the chance never came to seek civilized words with the captain. The galley's bare-chested mountain of a mate stepped up and collared him first. ‘Ye're to be assigned a shift at the oar, and a berth in forward quarters with the crew.' He laughed at the acolyte's steamed spate of protest. ‘Old lady's orders. Nobody crosses her, it's that or swim. And she says that white tunic's to go also.'

The priest spat scalded outrage.

The mate folded his massive arms and just shrugged, the puckered white scars inscribed by past wars glistening sweat in the sunlight. ‘Small difference, whether the old bat's gone daft or not. She's dead set on the notion you want a place in the guard. You'd risk both of your bollocks and even your life trying to change her mind. If you were dismissed from her presence alive and ungelded, Duke Bransian still won't allow us to haul deadweight. His policy forbids paying passengers, since our enemies would likely use such an opening to saddle us with spies. Envoy or recruit, you'll row, or you'll swim. Your choice. Which is it to be?'

A glance right and left showed a gathered ring of deckhands, every one of them muscled and welted with the calluses of a veteran field mercenary. Since Cerebeld's acolyte was an indifferent swimmer, and the tide in the channel ran full ebb, he yielded to sense. The white tunic, perforce, was surrendered. The fine fabric was no sooner snatched from his grasp, when some whooping barbarian appeared with a ballast rock. To jokes and rough laughter, the sunwheel emblem of Lysaer's brave order was bundled and knotted, then cast off to sink under the thrashed froth of the wake.

A credit to his staunch determination to carry out his mission for the Light, the priest acolyte blistered his hands at the bench, rowing down Tysan's west coastline. He shared meals with the crew, suffered their ribald chaffing of greenhorns, and fell into dreamless, exhausted sleep in the salt-musty twine of a hammock. The work in the slow, turgid air of high summer could wear even a seasoned man surly. When the galley's beet-faced quartermaster insisted that he also turn out for weapon drill, none were surprised when Alestron's guest acolyte jumped ship in the sailor's stews of Tideport. His desertion was timely, since the docks there offered the last port of call before the duke's ship left the crown territory of Tysan.

No man to bemoan the loss of a whiner, the ship's captain
ordered the vessel's oar ports sealed off. On experienced guesswork and instinct, he judged his best run of weather and cast off for a risky, offshore passage to Cheivalt.

Dame Dawr was informed of the acolyte's defection over the brown bread, butter, and jam she preferred for her breakfasts at sea. By then, the men had lashed the stowed oars inboard. A following wind rammed the galley through the swell, to smoking bursts of spray off the prow beak.

‘No loss,' she admitted to the mate who delivered the report. Her pursed lips unpleated to a cackle of delight as she invited him to strip off his baldric and cutlass and eat. ‘We gave Cerebeld's whelp his brief taste of the fate the s'Ilessid pretender decreed for the clanborn forced captive in Tysan. He can now run home to his kennel and yap. Whatever amends are demanded through state recourse, I say the fool's gotten off kindly with a sore back and a healthy few blisters. Suppose he'd survived the course of this voyage and arrived to set foot in Alestron? One canting spiel on the Light of true justice, and Bransian would likely have lopped off his misguided head.'

While the sunwheel acolyte made his disgruntled way back to complain to his high priest at Avenor, and the s'Brydion galley sped downcoast to exchange courtesy with King's Eldir's court at Telmandir, the dust kicked up by the Alliance summer muster cast ocher haze over the encampments spread beneath the squat towers of Etarra. There, each year, boys just sprouting beards and young men of ambition and prowess gathered to enter their names as candidates for service to the Light. As equals, they stripped to the skin. Those found in sound health, without flaw or deformity, were issued saffron-dyed hose, a hemp sash, and a coarse linen tunic. Sorted by age, they were assigned to a drill sergeant and given a cot in a stifling barracks tent.

Through the long, hot days, under blazing sun, they would train and be tested for fitness: trials of strength, of coordination and fast reflex, of endurance; other exercises challenged them for mental acuity. The contests were unforgiving. Some applicants shattered bones, others broke nerves; a few misfortunates lost their lives, and so earned their place on the Light's list of fallen, with a stipend sent to placate their grieving families. By season's end, no longer equal, but ranked according to merit, the candidates might swear their oath to the Light and sign for a term of Alliance service.