Grand Conspiracy (73 page)

Luhaine retained his terrier's trait for pursuing detail without flinching. ‘If Arithon's successful, the second and third solstice tides are going to pose thorny problems.'

‘I already see that.' Still raw from the punishment of Morriel's assault, Asandir pondered the impacting turn of fresh damage, as the roused chord of world life force rolled down the sixth lane,
in concert with the seasonal energies. The primary channel was sorely distressed, still patched in chains of remedial spellcraft. The vortex of wild forces contained in the night had already sustained an increase to the thin edge of tolerance; then that fragile stasis was bombarded again by the powerful harmonics unleashed by Arithon's re-creation of the ritual tones Paravians once used to seed rebirth and renewal across latitude. The noon surge would seed the first resonance of attrition.

‘My construct can't hold beyond midnight,' Asandir assessed in foregone conclusion. Fresh crisis would break within twenty-four hours, when his stopgap protections would crumble. Because of Arithon's awakening, each tied seal of stasis must be abraded away by the absolute purity of healing forces, pitched to set right the imbalance of every disharmony that stood in their path.

Amid Luhaine's dense silence, Asandir read the unremarked danger that waited, concealed, as the release of shed chaos sought to flow to safe ground in the earth. ‘Don't say
the damned mountains
were plunged out of alignment from Morriel's meddling also!'

‘Oh yes.' Luhaine's response rang bitter with offense. ‘We'll pay all the grim price of her warped crystal resonance striking over a quartz vein. The whole southern spur of the Skyshiels was affected where her transmission ran out of mineral carrier and recoiled into sedimentary bedrock.'

Unfailing in his ability to target the root of a problem, Asandir cut in ahead of Luhaine's involved expostulation. ‘Spare us all, we have trouble if Rockfell is stressed!' When the peal of the Paravian mysteries unreeled through their ancient, lateral courses, the damage could cost the world dearly. ‘The wards on the Mistwraith might very well sunder deeply enough to be breached.'

‘Sethvir will know,' Luhaine finished in shared agony as he flanked Asandir's lengthened stride.

The grievous truth tore the heart for sheer pity: Fellowship resources were going to fall short. Nor could their help unburden Althain's Warden soon enough. Until Sethvir resumed full command of his earth-sense, their moment-to-moment grasp of affairs would stay irrepairably crippled. No one could spare either time or energy for the ritual augury of cast strands.

Asandir reached the upper stairwell at last. He found the oak door bound and locked in stiff spells, a desperate precaution made on the hour Sethvir felt his faculties failing.

He rapped out the cantrip to unbind the latch, while the following draft that was Luhaine flapped the tapestried caparisons
of centaurs and flicked points of disturbed light over the jewels of sunchildren. ‘Go on ahead,' he snapped in explosive exasperation. ‘I'll meet you just as fast as this body can be hurried to mount three more flights of stairs.'

A lone candle burned in Sethvir's quarters. Disordered light capered over the plush red carpet. The shadows danced in grotesque reverse image, thrown off the collection of sculpture and gear mounded on chairs and in corners. Horse harness with burst stitching lay draped over porcelain, and the lion's head bosses of a table. An overturned turtle's shell cupped the diminutive bones from an owl pellet and the wing feathers of a male kestrel. Sewing awls huddled with goose quill pens, poked in the necks of clay jars. Floor and tables became the repository of precarious towers of stacked books. River stones filled a sea-pitted bottle. The cellophane husks of three snake skins were twined overtop a spool of silk ribbon.

Within the confines of his personal domain, the Warden of Althain shirked his housekeeping as much as he disdained to sleep.

The first, shocking sight of Sethvir prone as a wax doll stopped Asandir cold on the threshold. The field Sorcerer caught his breath, reined back sharp alarm, and shut the oak door with a feather touch.

‘Why didn't you tell me?' He glowered toward the circle of air the dust motes disdained out of Luhaine's strict penchant for cleanliness.

For Sethvir lay in an untidy sprawl across the cot by the clothes chest. He still wore his robes. His ink-stained cuffs and unraveled hem seemed more ragged and threadbare in prostration. One fragile, veined hand was entangled in his beard, while the other, fingertips pallid with chalk dust, trailed in slack abandon on the floor.

‘In fact he collapsed first on his library table.' The discorporate Sorcerer breezed an acerbic sigh. ‘I managed to rouse him. He stayed on his feet just long enough to find his way here and lie down. What more could you have done before now, except tear yourself raw with blind worry?'

Metal chimed as Asandir shifted a chair hung with bridles to open a path to the Warden's bedside.

‘He's not sleeping,' Luhaine cautioned.

Asandir's gray eyes flicked a wide glance of startlement over
his weather-stained shoulder. Sethvir awake, but with senses closed down, meant he had engaged every trained faculty past the wise limits of self-preservation.

Warned to fresh caution, Asandir knelt. His attentive, bright survey recorded the eggshell complexion, the saucy nose, and jutted cheek that looked somehow diminished with the blue-green eyes pinched closed. At due length, he extended his callused, lean grip and tucked the Warden's chalk-marked hand back on top of the antique counterpane. Last, his butterfly touch rested over one temple, that his words not require the effort of hearing to be understood. ‘Do you wish me to help?'

A sigh fluttered through the rumpled-up wisps of white beard. ‘Asandir.'

‘I came as soon as––'

‘… possible.' Sethvir's lips flexed in a fractional curve of dry irony. ‘Two trips in one night through an unbalanced lane flux must have been mightily trying.'

‘Well, I'm going to make three,' Asandir rebutted. The rage coiled in him, entangled in bleak pity, for the cost of Morriel's intrigues. On every level of energetic vibration, his mage-sight revealed the currents of ephemeral light bleeding out of his colleague's aura. Wherever the earth lanes remained spun to chaos, Althain's Warden had no choice but to bridge past their weakness with the controlled stamina of his personal reserves. The stability of whole grimwards relied now on endurance, meted out from moment to moment with no hour in sight for reprieve.

Careful lest an inadvertent movement of his own should stir eddies in that chain of intent, Asandir stroked unruly tangles of hair away from Sethvir's nose and face. ‘I will lift the most critically damaged of the grimwards from your shoulders, but first, brace up. I'm going to make you more comfortable.'

Sethvir gave the tiniest flick of a finger to signal his moment of readiness. Still, the skin around his closed eyes pinched taut as strong and capable hands straightened his sprawled form, then folded him into soft blankets.

Through a grief that struck him down to the heart, Asandir kept his voice steady. ‘Are you thirsty?'

A thready whisper dredged up from the depths of pillows that propped Sethvir's head. ‘No.'

Asandir turned aside, his fists clamped white knuckled as he posed the thornier question. ‘Can you muster command of your
earth-sense enough to say which grimward stands in the most critical jeopardy?'

‘If I can bear to open the scope of the vision.' Those few breathless words spun off into a turmoil of painful impressions: of Khadrim flying free, setting forests and farmsteads in Tysan alight; of a pod of whales in the southern ocean beaching themselves on the diamond-bright shards of the ice cap covering the pole. Sethvir's lids flickered open. No longer dreaming, or fogged by wide thought, his eyes were turquoise enamel. ‘You're aware, the axis of Rockfell Peak has been hurled out of alignment?'

Asandir's fingers tightened. ‘Worse. I know Arithon broke the Paravian seals and raised the resonance of a confluent grand harmony.' When solstice midnight arrived, and the culminating force of that ritual pealed across latitude, the currents would inevitably touch Rockfell, most carefully situated between lanes to assure that magnetic disturbance would be minimized. ‘Kharadmon could check on the Mistwraith's prison and sound the extent of the damage.'

‘Attrition,' Sethvir breathed, labored and faint as the scrape of a scribe's nib on vellum. His resources were taxed over an appallingly widespread range of problems. Still, he managed a bridged half second of contact that encompassed the concept for Asandir.

The images framed a fleeting, grainy impression of future event, as the energies rocked from their sure, channeled track, and skewed off into disordered eddies. The residue would not die, but turn and pool, and sink at last into stagnation where the flawed transmission through the mountain failed in its natural function. Since the wards over Rockfell were calibrated to mesh with the stable emission of stone, even an infinitesimal change would admit a dangerous, weakening influence.

‘We could have days, or a month, or a year before the damage becomes threatening.' Sethvir shut his eyes, worn threadbare from even that minimal effort. ‘Or we could have only hours. I dare make no forecast. Not since the Mistwraith revealed that it knew how to act on those spells from within. Your choice, whether clearing the seals on the grimwards ought to be shouldered first.'

‘No choice at all,' Asandir said, his calm forced. In truth, an abyss yawned at their feet.

Should the seals that contained the boundaries of even one grimward let go, the very template of creation would shift. The
unbinding ruin to land and life would see destruction beyond all repair. Desh-thiere's ills, with their long-range potential to choke sunlight, could not touch the coiled power of the drake shades spelled and bound in their sealed-off pockets of warped time.

‘Eckracken's haunt, then,' Sethvir gave out after a labored silence. ‘His spite is most vengeful. When the mate interred on Kathtairr dreams of coupling during the full moon, his ghost always bids to escape.'

‘That's less than a fortnight away,' Luhaine despaired from his hovering roost in the doorway.

The grimward which prisoned the skull of Eckracken lay in the Salt Fens of West Shand, far down the southern peninsula. Asandir faced a transfer down the third lane to the ruins at Earle, followed by a desolate ride up the wind-raked winter coastline. No hostels, habitations, or inns graced that broken stretch of roadway, with its towered, gray pinnacles of limestone. Trade gave wide berth to that abandoned expanse. The last bastion of a more civilized age had gone also, the old enclave built by Ath's adepts left roofless for centuries, drained of its powers during the Third Age defense to stem the Mistwraith's incursion.

‘My black stud is well fed and rested, at least.' Asandir tugged a crimp in the coverlet straight. Unwilling to be first to broach the necessity, that all of Athera's seventeen grimwards would have to be tested to guarantee their stability, he reached out with spread hands to clasp Sethvir's temples.

His gesture was arrested by a snapped flick of air and a sensible admonishment from Luhaine. ‘Enough. You'll need every bit of your strength. I'll attend to Sethvir. Kharadmon will be called if need warrants.'

Not trusting that tone of dismissal one bit, Asandir pushed to his feet. ‘Remember this,' he said in grave parting. ‘Of the pair of us, Sethvir's not expendable.'

‘Well he can't hold the compact without help in the field!' A moment of impasse, while the dust motes streamed in chiaroscuro eddies from Luhaine's agitated presence.

Asandir said nothing, did nothing, but stood with his hands hanging empty.

‘You've always had the stubborn set of old granite.' The discorporate Sorcerer gave way at grim length. ‘Watch your back. Stay inside safe limits, or be sure, I'll kick the four chambers of Eckracken's thick skull to bedevil the unstrung wisps of your consciousness.'

Asandir tipped his head, his mouth lifted into a half smile of truce. He spoke his last words from the doorway. ‘Sethvir, keep you safe. If anything good can be wrung from disaster, at least, by clear terms of the compact, we have reason at last to put an end to Morriel's reign of self-righteous power.' On one lingering, last glance, he raised the latch and swiftly let himself out.

For a stark, silent interval, dust motes settled their stealthy patina over statues and books and the oddments of stray hardware stashed in their haphazard corners. Even the candleflame burned straight and still, as if time had paused in reflection.

‘I couldn't tell him,' Sethvir admitted to Luhaine after a tormented interval. ‘Not now. Not about Morriel's unconscionable possession of that misfortunate young initiate.'

That one stark truth canceled comfort. The Prime Matriarch's willful acts of damage against lands held in trust by the terms of Paravian generosity had been crowned by a last, diabolical masterstroke. Morriel had arranged her web too well. Fellowship authority now could not touch her. No redress could be claimed for as long as her spirit seized sanctuary inside the body of the victimized girl.

When the Fellowship Sorcerers tapped into lane force for travel, the effects were instantaneous and disorienting to a wrenching degree that always left Dakar blinded and dizzy with nausea. The effect when the power was charged active by music from the ancient Paravian ritual was different, a slow, turning, lazy spin that felt like a fabric of dream whose meaning had melted and gone formless. Through a fuzz of intense color, and a descant of clear song, Dakar was aware of the anchoring pull of the night constellations, their high, ephemeral range of vibration ringing in the advent of winter solstice. He felt beneath him the spin of Athera, her iron core driving her magnetic engine and re-creating from second to second the mighty flux of the currents which buoyed him.