Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ in the Storlains surged clear, and Elaira suffered the intimate view through Arithon’s dumbfounded eyes. She echoed the recoil of his clubbed surprise. Wept, while the noisy, exuberant crowd received him as one of their own.

      Child-right, in Ettinmere, involved more than the rearing of offspring. The horror dawned late, that his earnest consent saddled him with a nuptial celebration. The happy crowd hazed him and plucked at his clothes. Crude laughter and jokes herded him towards a hut to bed Vivet as though joined in marriage.

      Dakar recognized the set to Arithon’s shoulders. The Teir’s’Ffalenn met his unwanted bride like the chained dog jerked towards the kennel.

      Then the evil belt of the gin did its work; or else static noise broke Elaira’s empathic connection. Cognizant vision dissolved like dashed foam off a breaker.

      Dakar crumpled into a slovenly heap, the plunge into drunken unconsciousness welcomed. While his awareness dimmed, alone in Atainia, a last witness followed the turbulent thread of event closed at Ettinmere Settlement.

      Warden of Althain, immersed in broad-scale earth-sense, Sethvir beheld Arithon’s vehement rejection of Vivet’s possessive embrace.

      “Would you shame her in public?” a shocked celebrant cried, alike enough to be a sibling.

      Arithon returned a vitriol glare. “Your customs,” he cracked, “have the delicacy of rats baked into a wedding cake. I’ve accepted guardianship for the child. After that, who sleeps under your kinswoman’s roof is not my affair. Or your business.”

      “And if her brat’s yours?” the fellow pursued.

      “No difference. Her babe is mine until he reaches puberty,” Arithon blistered in correction. “Sworn to my name by your council of elders and sealed before the eyes of your shaman. Best you Ettinfolk never forget that!”

      The flare sprung off the vehement statement struck Sethvir as a spark touched to flame. If Vivet and her kin believed Arithon’s spirit could be leashed, they soon would find their net snagged on the thorn in the blossom of Torbrand’s descent. The Sorcerer winced. Almost, he pitied the Ettin elders, subject to the wicked explosion their repressive culture deserved.

      Indeed, the bleak hour had come, forecast over two hundred and fifty years ago: the dimming of Arithon’s psyche, engineered by Koriathain through the tactical severance of Elaira’s influence. Once, on a damp tide-flat by a drift-wood fire, Traithe had served the enchantress due warning: “… for good or ill, you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster …”

      Sethvir bowed his head. Tangled hair like shaved ice in the moonlight streamed through the library casement, he listened with every hair prickled erect.

      No whisper arose from the absent colleague whose silence stayed adamant: Davien ventured no overture towards a contrite return to his colleagues. Yet Althain’s Warden sensed the first whisper of avalanche. That dire wave of fore-running impetus, set off and gathering force, that could see the riven Fellowship of Seven restored back to unity at their full strength. Or else tonight’s consequence tripped their downfall. If destiny’s card came to shatter their covenant, entropy must not be allowed to unravel the harmonic that bridged the arc of Athera’s mysteries.

       Summer 5923

       Provocations

      The Hatchet thumped down his mallet fist hard enough to displace the stones weighting his tactical maps. Correspondence and lists exploded in flurries from the stacks on the trestle in front of him. “Say again!”

      Officers summoned for his revised orders quailed, while the mousy scribe startled out of dictation squeaked and splayed his best pen nib.

      Few dared to bait The Hatchet’s ill temper. Not since the momentous disaster that routed his invasion of Havish, and never under the redoubled fury incited by unforeseen set-backs.

      “My summer campaign plan’s bedevilled, thick as pests in plague-ridden batches.” Up to his nose in the scent of hot horseflesh steamed off the latest courier, the Light’s supreme commander fumed on, “Speak up, boy! Spit out whatever foul news has blown in here with the squall.”

      “The galley-man you hired for transport from East Bransing has defaulted on your signed contract.” The pimpled adolescent dripping on the carpet braced rattled nerves and yanked off the sling hanging his dispatch case. “Best read the details, Lord. The vessel in question’s already sailed.”

      “This happened yesterday?” The Hatchet hopped in livid distemper. “Light scorch her venal master and broil his skanking carcass! Show me the merchant captain alive who won’t duck a war-bond requisition for a bribe!”

      “Not for coin, and not for apostasy this time,” the browbeaten courier dared to insist, too exhausted to cower, as The Hatchet’s cobra-quick snatch ripped the packet away from him.

      The senior staff waited, trapped in the storm’s eye. Tension crackled the pause. The guttering lamps distorted the shadows of the command tent’s grisly, stuffed-animal trophies, while the gusts outside battered the torrential rain, and leaks through the canvas pavilion pattered The Hatchet’s volcanic annoyance.

      He cut the soaked fastenings with his knife, ranting onwards in his bass growl, “The two companies I just force-marched into Dyshent are stalled at the dock without shelter because of your tardy disclosure.”

      The courier wrung his gloves in petrified silence. His desperate urgency had lamed two mounts, and brought a rider to grief on the road. The dispatches delivered at such cost in flesh became slapped on the table. Unrolled, the official wax seals and gold ribbon should have curbed the most arrogant displeasure.

      Yet the panoply of High-Temple authority failed to quench The Hatchet’s vexation. He read, lips clamped, his fuming breaths marked by the flutter and tap as moths blundered into the lamp panes. Soon enough, the gist raised his stentorian bellow. “Did you know the contents of this before you darkened my threshold?”

      The courier unlocked his chattering teeth. “Rumour’s flying like bale-fire. Has your hired galley in fact been pre-empted on the pretext of divine authority?”

      “Pirated, rather!” The Hatchet punched a stub finger into the salient line: ‘… her captain forced to cast off in duress, or watch his vessel burn to the waterline with all hands …’

      When the next leaf disclosed the run-amok avatar’s motive, The Hatchet’s complexion turned purple: ‘… the s’Ilessid scion’s heretical pursuits have not abated … his movements were contained until he slipped the over-confident grasp of our Examiner at East Bransing … now believed to be moving to thwart your advance to eradicate unreformed clansmen …’

      “Lysaer? Coming here?” The Hatchet stiffened. “Light’s havoc! No way I’ll suffer the next dose of ruin sown by that dandy’s rank cowardice!” His meaty fist banged again. Parchments encrusted with seals bounced and settled, while the stacked notes that directed supply collapsed in a slithered cascade. “The mincing flit abandoned the field when the battle turned sour at Lithmarin! I’ll hang the daisy by his curly short hairs before he befouls my tactics again!” A gesture spurned the offensive documents, while tactical diagrams and requisition slips sighed to rest in the shavings spread СКАЧАТЬ