Grand Conspiracy (52 page)

The room seemed to take far too long to stop spinning. Fretful, impatient, she gasped a command for her pages to leave her in private.

The boys bowed, too intimidated to offer an argument. All but stumbling over their slippered feet, they hastened out of her chamber.

Left utterly alone, Morriel clutched the inlaid cedar box to her breast. Words whispered over her personal spell crystal unkeyed a hidden lock. She slid open a secret compartment in the lid and
removed four bundles, cloth-wrapped and tied with dark thread that seemed spun from the mapless void between stars.

‘Rue, wormwood, salt,' she whispered under her breath as she unwound the ritual wrappings. ‘Tienelle to loosen the bindings of time and space, and lend force and spin to my banespell.'

She turned next to the scrying bowl and tapped on the stone edge with a long, trembling nail. ‘Araethura, Fionn Areth,' she rasped. Bound by the rune of subservience to her will, the stilled water inside obliged her by re-forming the image of the herder's son, who currently perched on a sun-warmed boulder, working with an oiled rag and a whetstone to clean nicks and rust from his practice sword.

Fionn's brow was untroubled. Jacket sleeves unlaced to reveal sturdy wrists, he smiled often, and whistled snatches of a jig tune, a quarter tone out of key. Nor did his carefree manner show change as Morriel Prime raised her spell crystal and traced the first rune of discord above the dark crown of his head.

She cast a pinch of salt over the image in the water, then formed the sigil that would strip the boy's aura of any natural protection afforded by blessings or amulets. The incantation passed her lips in a near-soundless stream of syllables as she sprinkled the three herbs on the water in the timeworn, ritual patterns. The language she used was no tongue native to Athera. The crystal responded and took focus through resonant sound, its properties linked to the finespun character of the plants to sow argument, discontent, and restlessness.

The seal of closure that knit the Prime's intent into form also robbed her last vestige of strength. Morriel rested, flesh and bone nested in her throw of white ermine, and her eyes like chipped beads of jet. A faint smile of victory quirked her lips. Her spell of disharmony would not be stopped now, joined as it was with its victim.

Lent that added spin of dark impetus, Fionn Areth would take leave of his family in Araethura two fortnights before Lirenda could possibly set her more restrained plan in motion. With the boy gone abroad on his own initiative, the disgraced First Senior must scramble and rush to enact the array of detail that would close her net over Arithon s'Ffalenn. Lirenda would be given no moment to spare to examine Morriel's own interests.

The Prime Matriarch clapped her hands to recall her pages from their post outside of her chamber. Once the boys had burned the wrappings and the stray leaves of spilled herbs, telltale evidence
would be eradicated. No one in the order would be likely to notice that a temporary bane-ward had been cast over young Fionn Areth.

Morriel snuggled deep into her furs, confident as a spider in a web. The diversion that arose when the boy left Araethura would allow her full license to complete the personal plot she had prepared in secret through the course of long, lonely years.

Autumn 5669

Seething inside for the fact she must importune help from a seer, Lirenda carries out the order set on her by Morriel Prime: ‘I require a message sent to the sisterhouse at Morvain. By the Matriarch's will, the initiate Elaira is to be recalled from her independent practice and given direct assignment to serve as the Mayor of Jaelot's personal healer …'

Far out in blue waters on the Cildein Ocean, untroubled, the brigantine
Khetienn
and her companion fleet change course to sail back to the verge of known waters; despite the completion of seventeen voyages that have crisscrossed the seas of Athera, she and her clanborn complement of crewmen have encountered no trace of the vanished Paravians …

The Sorcerer Kharadmon sends word to Althain Tower from his posted watch amid the ward circles set against wraiths, and his message is received by Sethvir to a grim repercussion of echoes. ‘I know we've seen nothing to cause an alarm in the quarter of a century I've stood sentinel. That's the problem. I don't trust the peace in the silence …'

D
usk veiled the windswept moorlands of Araethura, seeding stars across an indigo sky. Fionn Areth gritted his teeth, splashed the filled bucket over his head, and, shivering, groped for the lye soap his mother had left on the stone lip of the well. To shed the hateful, oily reek of the goats, he scrubbed and scoured until his skin flamed. Two more icy dousings rinsed off the suds. He snatched up the towel, snagged it over the soaked skin on his shoulders, then raked up the filthy pile of shirt, breeks, and boots. He juggled the load, dodging the puddles of runoff, and padded barefoot through the croft door.

Wind banged the panel shut on his heels. The noise raised a sharp glare from the younger brother braiding goat collars but left no impression on the shrilling quarrel in progress between his two older sisters.

Aching, still bruised from his sparring that morning, Fionn Areth basked in the smell of lamb soup. While the fire-heated air burnished the chill from his skin and dried off the last clinging droplets, his mother called from the hearth.

‘Fionn? Breta forgot to throw corn to the hens.' She gathered her cleaver, cutting board, and wooden ladle, her hair stuck in rings to her temples. ‘Can you do that?'

‘Like this?' Fionn Areth dropped his soiled clothing on the floor,
while his sisters burst into a peal of giggles at his nakedness. ‘Why not ask Lachonn? He hasn't yet washed.'

‘Because I asked you.' His mother shed implements with a clatter and scooped up the youngest of his nephews, who had tripped on the poker and skinned a knee. ‘Hush, child, there.' Through the toddler's rising wails, she scolded, ‘Stop carrying on and dress yourself, Fionn! Those hens don't thrive, we won't have an egg to be seen come the spring.'

Which was too much, for a son come into his manhood. ‘Eggs?' Fionn Areth exploded. ‘Let them go to Dharkaron! I won a bout with my swordmaster today. Why should I stay to see spring?'

‘I heard that,' interjected a gravelly voice.

Fionn Areth shut his jaw, cheeks flaming. He had been a rank fool not to notice his father come in from sharpening the scythe in the shed.

‘You'll feed the hens as you are, young man, and stay stripped after that for a strapping. No son of mine treats his mother with disrespect under the roof of her house.'

Nor did the misery end with the sting of the weals his mother brought herb grease to soothe come the evening.

‘I couldn't see to you any sooner than this.' The candle lamp mapped her thin, careworn face in planes of ink and gold as she knelt to tend his striped back. ‘Your father took a long time to sleep soundly.'

Fionn Areth lay prone on the loft's bare wood floor, chilled speechless. The rough wool blankets and ticking were abrasively harsh on raw flesh, and his pride, too tender to seek a child's solace, burrowed amid the huddled warmth of his brothers.

A rustle of skirts, then the chink of crimped tin as his mother pried the lid off the ointment. ‘Your swordmaster's dismissed, boy.'

Her son said nothing. His head remained tucked into the crook of one elbow, the hair like black silk looped in tangles over young flesh.

His mother's deft fingers began salving his hurts. She could not help but feel the coiling tension sweep through him, though he tried to lie slack and unfeeling. He would not ask, so she told him. ‘'Twas not for punishment, Fionn. The swordmaster came in after supper to be sure we heard you weren't boasting. He's taught all he knows. Your father said, let him go, since your learning would seem complete. No need, now, to act as though life here was less than what you were born to.'

Her ministrations grazed over a raw patch. Fionn Areth sucked air between his locked teeth.

‘Ah, boy,' his mother murmured. ‘The thrashings seem ever to go worse for you.' Whatever blessed ancestor had bequeathed him his face, the least glance always hackled his father's quick temper. Her Fionn had a set to his cheekbones and brows that gave even his most honest apologies an air of deliberate insult.

‘There's virtue in humility, one day you'll see,' she lied, as aware as he that her sensible counsel fell short. Her sigh brushed his shoulder as she pressed the lid back on the salve tin. ‘Try not to cross your father, Fionn. He's gruffer most times than he means to be, and life on these moorlands is bitter enough without flaunting the fate that must part you in time from the family.'

A last squeeze on the wrist; she hooked up her candle lamp and quietly left him, thinking and chilled in the darkness.

Old enough to act with adult patience, Fionn Areth waited until his back healed enough to bear the chafe of the heavy fleece jacket he needed to break the raw winds. Then he caught a pony from the band on the moors and left her tied in the scrub behind the orchard. After dark, while the moon snagged the mist and silver-lit rims of the clouds, he bridled the mare with a twine hackamore. Since the family owned but one saddle, he fashioned a buckle surcingle, to which he tied a leather pack filled with snares and what provender could be spared from the larder – cold waybread, hard cheese, and sausage. His snug herder's cloak would have to serve him as bedding and shelter from the elements. Nor did he worry about bandits or barbarians, his felt boots being his only worthwhile possession. Since the swords used for practice had all gone with the arms master, he purloined his father's skinning knife to gut coneys and shave kindling. Resolved to go forward and claim his own destiny, Fionn Areth turned his back on the steading he had known since his birth. He vaulted astride and nudged the mare east, toward the River Arwent and the trail that wound south toward Daenfal.

A hundred leagues westward, the Koriani seer dispatched with the message from the lane-watcher picked her way through the waterfront stews of Morvain to the bait shack where Elaira had established her stillroom. The woman's abrupt entry came with no warning, was graced by no courteous knock. She did not consider herself a visitor, she snapped, as she perched her ample behind on the only available stool.

Elaira wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, one palm and three fingers being blackened with charcoal. Damp hair clung in whorls to her temples and neck. Of all possible days, she had chosen this morning to render the fat to mix her emollients. Her quarters were stifling. The cauldron hissed and spat, belching a noisome stench of hog suet. The kettle of steeped rose petals could not compete. Despite the fresh air let in by the roof leaks, and neglected gaps in warped planking, the waste from the knacker's prevailed.

Since the nearest public well was a brisk walk away, Elaira rinsed her hands in the rusted bucket she kept dipped full of fresh seawater. ‘Is this a summons?' she demanded point-blank.

The seer broke off her staring survey of the shack, and replied through the sleeve pressed against her disdainful nose. ‘How do you bear this?' A flap of her elbow encompassed the rude table, its paraphernalia of the herbalist's trade spread over boards sliced and stained by the knives a past generation of fishwives had used to gut cod and split mussels. The damp off the wharves never tired of resurrecting the stink.

Elaira laughed, her gray eyes direct. ‘Perhaps I've never liked the sort of company who insisted on a neat house.'

The seeress stiffened to instant formality. ‘I have brought a summons. You're to leave inside the hour, dressed to ride. Pack only what you will need for the road. A novice will come for your things here.'

Her hands foolishly dripping in chapping air, Elaira sighed. ‘And my destination? Do you know?'

A faint shrug lifted the seeress's shoulders, rustling lavender silk. ‘Daenfal, at all speed, and then on to Jaelot. The mayor there suffers from crippling gout. By the Prime's will, you've been appointed to serve as his personal healer.'

Elaira shut her eyes, the fear like a leaden yoke on her shoulders. Unbidden, she sensed the dire change in the wind. The city of Jaelot was Prince Arithon's implacable enemy; her forced change of residence could only mean Lirenda's cruel plan to use Fionn Areth's destiny could not but hang in the balance. She had cast all her trust upon the Shadow Master's cleverness; now the hour approached for the payoff. Either Arithon s'Ffalenn could prevail against fate, or Fionn Areth would be played as the pawn to draw him into a Koriani snare.

‘You must make haste,' the seeress insisted. ‘The Prime's command requires you to reach Daenfal inside the next fortnight.'

‘But that's a hundred leagues distant!' In despair, Elaira daubed her hands on her skirts. ‘To reach there will cost me a fortune in post mounts.' Her sarcasm bit as she gestured. The dilapidated walls of her current abode could scarcely safeguard any treasure from the beggars and desperate, crippled seamen who wandered these squalid back alleys. ‘What coppers the whores can pay for my emollients scarcely see me through a day's bread.'

‘We live to serve. If snow closes the Skyshiel passes, the mayor's suffering will extend through the winter, untreated.' The seeress arose. ‘Coin from the order's coffers will cover the additional expenses to speed your journey. A saddled horse awaits you at the Morvain sisterhouse. You may pick up the purse when you claim him.'

Denied choice or argument, and unable to share her suspicion that her assignment entailed more than the routine charity of dispensing trained herb lore, Elaira watched the Koriani seeress depart in an immaculate sweep of crisp silk. The door slammed on a gusting breeze off the bay, rude closure to a forced ending.

She fought the lump that arose in her throat as she surveyed her still and her herb jars, now to become part of the common stores under charge of the Morvain sisterhouse. Her life, her home, the mean livelihood she had carved for herself, in trade for a traveling purse and a nondescript gelding to be exchanged for a fresh horse at the first inn on the edge of Halwythwood. She ought to have known, when she met the s'Ffalenn prince, he would come to cost all her peace.

Elaira shook off self-pity, then laughed aloud at her maundering, to be sniveling like some cantankerous grandmother before her hair had turned gray. Only one route led to Daenfal from the coast, and that, the old towpath which laced high and dry along the granite slabs channeling the thrashing flow of the River Arwent. The season was brisk. Maples and oaks would be frost touched to a tangling riot of color. She had two hundred leagues of open-air travel to enjoy before she reported for duty at the mayor's palace in Jaelot.

As Elaira rummaged in her chest after her thick cloak and riding leathers, she embraced the bare truth. She was tired of city crowding and the mud reek of tideflats. A headlong gallop through the brambles of Halwythwood would serve to clear out her head, before the jaws of the trap started closing.

All ways to Daenfal eventually converged to parallel the great
river. From the moorlands of Araethura, the undulating hills converged into a high plateau. Here, the winds swept like waves through a sea of high grass and black scrub. The bared, burled granite of the earth scuffed through where the weathering of ages had winnowed away its thin covering of loam. Thirsty, hungry, and blistered across the fingers from resisting his pony's persistent efforts to graze, Fionn Areth followed a path cut by the meandering tracks of wild goats. Fifteen days after leaving his father's steading, he reached the Rim, where the snaking torrent of the Arwent smoked down the gorge at the border of Daon Ramon Barrens. The land fell away into a series of stepped bluffs capped by rustling yellow grass, or else dropped sheer from granite escarpments, into ledges with trees clinging at desperate angles, their roots like exposed, gnarled hands. Sixty spans down, the river roared and muttered, tossing silvery coils of spume.

On the Araethurian side, a trail continued south, slotted with the confused prints of livestock driven to the lakeshore markets. On the river's far bank, the gentle crests rolled away toward the great basin once drained by the south-flowing Severnir, until townsmen had dammed and diverted its course to empty into Eltair Bay. Late-autumn sun burnished the famed hills, which in these times bore little resemblance to the silver-tipped grassland of legend. Fionn Areth regarded the swept, mottled scrub, cross-laced with briar, and burned from the frosts etched by the whistling north winds. The trail on the north bank wore the scarred ruts of the wagons that rolled the goods upland from the barge docks, where the towpath through Halwythwood ended.

Poised on the brink with the chill kiss of winter ruffling through his dark hair, his first freedom sweeter than wild honey, Fionn Areth could encompass nothing but the grand vista of the view. His herder's background gave him no letters, no education, and no knowledge of lore to encompass the ages gone before. He heard the cry of hawks and the scream of the winds, and did not mourn the deep notes of past centaur horn calls. Nor did he guess that the ledges notched over the tumbling waters had once held the rookeries of predatory wyverns.