Grand Conspiracy (71 page)

‘Here then!' a goodwife called back from the crowd. ‘My husband's a chandler. I'll open his shop, but the apprentices are all scattered.'

‘Never mind.' The watch captain cut four dependable men from the cordon. ‘My guards will be dispatched to help you.'

Princess Ellaine dispensed the last candle. Shivering in sudden awareness of the cold, she straightened. Her back was a bar of welded tension. From the dais above, Kevor smiled back at her, his triumph a glow that reforged the adolescent shape of his face. For the miracle had happened. The ravening noise, the shouts,
the raw tumult had all calmed. Around her, under a night sky scintillant with stars, the square of Avenor held a sea of rapt faces, bejeweled with a thousand small flames.

The moment of Kevor's victory proved short-lived. Aware of a murmuring disturbance at her back, Princess Ellaine glanced over her shoulder. Against the hulking mass of the watch tower, revealed in the full glory of white vestments and gold, High Priest Cerebeld advanced through the square. He was attended by seven priest-acolytes. They carried a sunwheel standard and a brilliance of oiled rag firebrands. The swath of illumination washed their ceremonial garments into etched and glittering clarity.

As the Voice of the Light, the High Priest's entrance was untimely. The peak moment of crisis had passed. Avenor's gathered populace had refounded their confidence in the presence of the young s'Ilessid heir. He was all that his exalted father was not: gawky, unfinished, a crude replica of the luminous personage Lysaer presented through maturity. Yet, in the boy, the fallible honesty of his youth gave rise to the possibility of something more. His birthright as the scion of generations of high kings inspired a glimpse of the gifted ruler he would someday become. On that fated hour, Kevor displayed the untarnished potential of his s'Ilessid ancestry, bright as the flame in his hand. Humanity had supplanted the presence of divine promise. Salvation had come through the example of a boy's steel-clad courage and the ordinary kindness he had shown to a craftsman's tearful strayed child.

Thrown into inadvertent eclipse, High Priest Cerebeld reached the line of guards surrounding the dais. When they did not immediately stand aside, he demanded his right of admittance. The look of resentful fury he directed toward the young prince cast a chill through Ellaine's raced blood.

The love and respect fairly earned from the hearts of Avenor's people had made Cerebeld the boy's implacable, lifelong enemy. Overcome by a mother's instinct to cry warning, the princess gathered her mantle. She whirled to mount the dais stair, caught back as she turned by restraining hands. A self-important young priest made overzealous use of his orders to clear the way for his master's grand entrance. Ellaine yanked free of untoward interference, but too late. Cerebeld had already swept past her.

In an overwhelming show of ceremonial majesty, he stepped under the high dome of the cupola. Kevor's stance became lost in the influx of white mantles, the glitter of citrine and diamond
and gold foil all but dazzling as the High Priest assumed charge in his place. There, framed in center stage by the glaring flood of torches born by his coterie of acolytes, Cerebeld opened his arms to be heard.

His orator's voice boomed over the throng, boundless in reassurance. ‘Behold! The portents have ceased! I am come before you to announce the given Word of the Light! The Blessed Prince bids me tell you that he travels eastward with his finest troop of officers to encounter the Master of Shadow. By our faith in his gifts, the land will be spared from the depredations brought by the Spinner of Darkness. Let us pray in this hour for victory! Let Lysaer of the Light deliver the weak from the power and deceptions of true evil!'

Winter Solstice Eve 5669

Far south, in the cliff-walled harbor beneath the Second Age ruin at Sanpashir, the brigantine
Khetienn
furls sail under the hands of her crewmen; her dropped anchor splashes into the shallows while her mate gives command for her longboat to be unlashed for the party bound ashore with the Master of Shadow …

Clad in his ruby crown and fur-trimmed scarlet mantle, High King Eldir of Havish sits his throne at Telmandir in stern judgment, before him a triumvirate of firebrand mayors who had attempted a rebellion during the night's portents; their spurious, false charges of dark spellcraft done by the mage-gifted refugees, and their frightened conspiracy to overturn charter law and the kingdom's set policy of sanctuary earns them a sorrowful arraignment for treason and a lifelong sentence of banishment …

At dawn in the Skyshiels, inside the curtained palanquin next to the dead seeress, the ancient Prime's corpse slumps over the incinerated ash of her construct; both spell jewels lie quiescent, recontained, and in an unprecedented change, the initiate successor still asleep on the pallet is no longer one and the same spirit consigned to drugged rest the night before …

A
board the brigantine
Khetienn
, rocking gently at anchor in the cove beneath the grim cliffs of Sanpashir, Dakar watched like a cobra, the creases at his eyes tightened in concert with a grave collection of frown lines. He had to use mage-sight, since the lamps were unlit. Across a thickened, premature gloom cast by the battened-down hatch of the stern cabin, Arithon picked through his chest of bard's clothing and chose the black velvet jacket trimmed at the shoulders with fur from the elusive northern leopard.

Like a man under threat of a fight on slick footing, Dakar assayed questions cautiously. ‘Isn't rare fur a shade overdressed for a visit to share small talk with tribesmen? I never yet saw the desertman who valued a pearl ahead of a spool of spun goat hair.'

Arithon tipped up his eyebrows. ‘I have a point that needs making.'

Vague suspicion firmed into dreadful, ripe certainty. ‘Not with the tribesmen.'

‘No.' On that casual syllable, Arithon slipped on the jacket. He threaded the eyelets and adjusted the looped waistline over his belted, plain hose and a baldric already hung with his sword, and a main gauche that carried an unbearable history.

‘Not that blade,' Dakar whispered under his breath. ‘Any other
sharpened length of steel under sky, but for Ath's blessed pity, that one should be thrown in the ocean.'

His entreaty ignored, he added, ‘Damn you!' as the Master of Shadow flicked up the latch on the hanging locker and picked out the one cloak inside that was dyed a true emerald green. ‘Step out wearing that, and every loon who sees color will be handed the gift of your bloodline.'

‘A prize observation.' Arithon tossed the garment over the too-elegant jacket, then tucked back the hood until the dove gray silk lining became less blatantly visible. His hose and ankle-high boots for a mercy were plain enough to be any man's. The cut of the cloak included no ornament, a choice orchestrated to blur the distinctions of class. In maddening character, Arithon prefaced the outrageous with a smile to wear the edged facets off diamond. ‘Some things won't change. The mayor's upper-crust cronies in Jaelot still measure a man by the worth of his clothing.'

The last trace of color blanched from Dakar's curved cheeks.

‘Weak nerves?' quipped the Shadow Master. ‘I'm surprised.' Ripe sarcasm warned of his shortening temper, and the futility of further argument. ‘Given such an elaborate invitation, we already know I'm expected. Since the Koriani took this much trouble to draw me, they might as well get what they've bargained for.'

Dakar swallowed, raked by the unpleasant, sweaty awareness that only one method existed by which he and Arithon could reach Jaelot before the execution preordained to occur on the solstice. ‘Well, you've grossly underestimated my part in your plan. I can't harness lane flux. Nor have I even the flimsiest hope of raising the power to enable a transfer across distance. The operant works of a Paravian circle lie far outside the scope of my experience as a Fellowship spellbinder.'

Arithon paused. The directness that marked his most volatile mood lit sparks like filed iron in his glance. ‘But you do know the runes and ciphers and permissions the Sorcerers use to harness the raw force once it crests.'

The Mad Prophet let fly, his exasperation masking sharp fear. ‘Don't
think
to try meddling on that scale of magnitude. For one thing, the Warden of Althain would take umbrage.' Touched by the ice-cold remembrance that Asandir had taken elaborate care never to let Arithon witness such mysteries, Dakar stood up too fast. His crown thumped the jut of the overhead deck beam hard enough to jelly his brainpan.

Swearing only added to the vicious burst of pain. One hand
clamped on a goose egg bruise, the Mad Prophet railed on with his list of sensible remonstrances. ‘We're both past our depth. Last night, the entire
lane
went unstable. The pulse patterns might appear to have settled, but planetary magnetics deranged by main force have been known to recoil in backlash. Static interference has upset my contact with Althain Tower. That speaks volumes for the packet of trouble that's afoot. If you think the root cause isn't Morriel's doing, nothing else in five kingdoms has even the basic, brute resource!'

‘I agree.' No whit less obstinate, Arithon opened the glass-fronted cabinet and unlashed his lyranthe, then hooked up a dark bundle of cloth already set waiting against the aft boards of his berth. ‘That's why we're going to raise power in that circle and ride the solstice surge north into Jaelot.'

Eyes squeezed shut against tears of frustration, Dakar sifted through his last statement for the ill-fated word which had opened the loophole to allow contradiction.

‘Dakar, it's because of Morriel's extraordinary effort.' Arithon freed a kink from the strap that hung his fine instrument at his shoulder. As he scooped up the sealed pages of orders he had penned for the
Khetienn
's mate in his absence, he volunteered, ‘Why else would she frame her opening move as an outright attack on Athera? Her feud's not with me. She's more likely just presented her demand that the restraint on the Waystone be lifted and reversed by the Fellowship.'

‘Not entirely,' the Mad Prophet shot back before thought.

The pause afterward shredded a handful of seconds.

Poised against the light-filtered square of the companionway, his cloth bundle at rest against the wrapped neck of his lyranthe, the s'Ffalenn prince no longer smiled. ‘
Then what else do you know
?
In what way could my doings leave the Fellowship Sorcerers vulnerable?'

‘The idea is nonsense,' Dakar agreed, a transparent lie that would surely come back to haunt him. His own vision of prophecy had cast Arithon s'Ffalenn as the indispensable linchpin; on his life and sanity turned the Sorcerers' hopes for their restoration back to seven.

Arithon knew only that he had jabbed and blindly encountered a weakness. ‘Then for
nonsense
you'll help me achieve a lane transfer to Jaelot. At the Fellowship's insistence, I vowed to stay alive. But my blood oath to them gave no sanction for my name to be used to lead innocents to slaughter as the
pawns of political byplay. While the Koriani Prime stoops to setting such traps, I shall disarm them, with or without your assistance.'

Inexpressibly angry, Dakar flared back. ‘Well, whatever you do, I won't parade into Jaelot prinked and jeweled like an effete townsman! Not for the sake of your arrogant pride, which could spring an unbridled disaster.'

Arithon already strode toward the main deck. A blurred outline against the molten gold of a midwinter southland sunset, he said in brass calm, ‘Lysaer's in Tysan, smugly counting his assets. If you won't join the party in feathers and brocade, you'll just have to pass as my servant.'

Dakar bit back retort, canny enough to cut losses before he became mauled beyond recourse. Lysaer in Tysan was sheer supposition; and Arithon's comeuppance would be served soon enough by the hand of a Fellowship Sorcerer.

‘Just waken that circle, and see what you get,' the Mad Prophet warned as he trailed his charge out of the stern cabin. His own memories of chastisement under Asandir's authority still made him cringe and sweat. A puffing bear to the prince's cat grace, he heaved his bulk down the ship's side battens and into the
Khetienn
's poised longboat. ‘I swear on my dead mother's virtue, you'll be sorry as the fool who pissed on a flagstaff in a thunderstorm.'

No man who dared trifle with the flux of the earth escaped censure from Sethvir himself.

The wind blew cutting and thin from the north, sifting through the ruin on the cliff top. Hunched like a turtle under three layers of cloaks, Dakar blew a sigh of resignation. The chalk in his hand seemed a sliver of ice. Where drifts of blown sand had not buried the old rune lines, dry stalks of weeds taken root in cracked stone clawed at his shins through each stride. Nor did his gut-deep uneasiness abate with the choice to let Arithon's willful nature run the course of inevitable consequence.

Fellowship reproach at its mildest form was an experience no sane man repeated.

Nor did Parrien's two liegemen fare better in their effort to divert Rathain's prince from disaster. The blistering argument which kept them aboard the
Khetienn
could have hazed solid bedrock to give way. The reasons Arithon used to ram home his point made sound enough sense, until one recalled he intended
to spring a Koriani trap with only an apprentice spellbinder's backing.

The sole avenue left was complaint, and the bloodletting sting of rife insult.

‘I can configure old ciphers until we both freeze,' Dakar snapped as he jammed his toe on yet another fragment of loose rock. ‘That still won't raise enough lane force to shift the arse end of a gnat.'

‘We'll see,' rebutted Arithon, bent over his lyranthe with his ear laid against the ebony and pearl inlaid soundboard. He tweaked the peg of a bass string, then tested its pitch by striking a glass-clean harmonic. ‘I won't ask for miracles. Just have the last figure in place before midnight.'

‘Ask or not, you expect the impossible all the same.' Dakar set down his foot, fed up with wrenched tendons. ‘When you come to suffer the sorry results, don't say I didn't warn you.'

He shifted the offending stone out of his path and scuffed at the detritus of lichens. The fragment of inlaid white agate he laid bare framed a curve that raised the small hairs on his nape. Excitement coursed through him, despite his misgivings. He had found the grand axis of the pattern.

Dakar faced the east, his next steps taken softly as he sensed the fine current which married the live lane force into the pattern's tuned spiral. ‘I doubt these old runes have spun power for centuries. You're fully aware that just one broken line could hurl us both to perdition?'

Arithon stifled a sharp crow of laughter. ‘Asandir's right. Your memory's as holed as a sieve.'

Dakar flushed, embarrassed. The reminder of the late Masterbard's death hurt far too much. The roots of that tragedy led back to Jaelot, a sorrow he would have paid blood to erase. Nor was Arithon's jabbing, cruel humor aught else but an effort to mask the same lingering grief.

‘You're forgiven, for that,' the Mad Prophet said. ‘I just don't want to die with another grand blunder on my already overworked conscience.' Under stems of dry sage, his questing fingers had found the east interstice. He knelt, swept a clean space over black agate, and wielded the chalk to scribe the rune for the element of air. ‘Damn you, Teir's'Ffalenn, are you
sure
you have to go through with this?'

No reply from the bard, perched on a broken drum tower's foundation; westward, the day-old sliver of new moon dusted
the black landscape of dunes in weak silver. Six hours remained until midnight. Dakar would need every minute to complete an array that Asandir could invoke with precision inside a half dozen heartbeats. Mounded sand on the pattern would have posed no impediment; for a Fellowship presence, the bedrock underneath would volunteer its deep secrets in homage.

Ripped on the hand by a runner of thorn, Dakar swore aloud. He glared at the prince, whose trained background included all the constraints of wise conjury about to be broken. ‘You know that boy has small odds of being saved. You'll risk everything anyway, and not one damned thing I can say will shake you out of this folly.'

‘There are limits.' Arithon struck a fierce minor triplet into the teeth of the wind. ‘Find another way to bring my double out of Jaelot before he gets torched on false charges.'

None existed. Dakar licked the seeped blood from his knuckle and grimly set to with the chalk.

Night deepened. Winter stars replaced the low moon. The wind keened over the clifftop ruin, sweetened by the lyric, plucked strains of Arithon's lyranthe. Dakar sat huddled in the lee of the foundation, his work with the ciphers completed. Amid the sparkling runs and snatched crotchets of grace notes, he picked out isolate fragments of the melody Arithon had once captured by intuition to waken the old circle in Jaelot. Knees hugged to his chest, the Mad Prophet cherished the mean consolation that perhaps Sethvir's intervention would not fall on their heads after all.

Carefully, quietly, he masked smug relief, that the music sung by Paravian dancers to channel the life chord across latitude had not been accomplished by means of a single composition. To raise lane force to peak magnitude, the orchestrated balance of vibration and tone must be tailored to match each disparate location. The keys sung for Jaelot would not waken Sanpashir. No matter how perfectly Arithon played, his rescue was foredoomed to failure.

Complaisant that sunrise would find them still on the cliff top, Dakar settled into his cranny of stone. He tucked his bearded chin on his forearm and snored himself into sound sleep.