Traitor’s Knot: Fourth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ lane flux were not granted licence to enter.

      The quarters where Sethvir of the Fellowship languished stayed sealed to inviolate calm. There, the wax light burned straight and true, as flame must, in the presence sustained by the white-robed adepts of Ath’s Brotherhood.

      Here, where tranquillity reigned absolute, the frail fulcrum that balanced the fate of the world trembled, poised, at the brink of disaster.

      When Paravian presence had ebbed from the land, the Fellowship Sorcerers had shouldered the task of guarding Athera’s mysteries. Heir to the last centaur guardian’s gift of earth-sense, Sethvir provided their eyes and ears and much more: if he foundered now, the core balance of the planet would shift. The forces of expansive renewal would shrink, and the spiral would sink into entropy. Ath’s initiates had extended their constant attendance ever since the Koriani Prime’s insane bid to seize power distressed the flow of earth’s lane flux. Although that imbalance was swiftly restored, the disruption deranged an array of spelled boundaries, including the ungoverned wells of raw chaos constrained by Athera’s grimwards.

      That black hour at midnight, while the wick burned serene, the most critical of these had been rededicated. Three yet remained, with the Sorcerers’ resources strapped to the verge of paralysis.

      Sethvir kept the crippling vigil at Althain. Day to day, moment to precarious moment, he endured, while the insurgent trend of town politics moved apace to exploit the lapse of the Fellowship’s oversight. No colleague owned the breadth of vision to counterbalance the triplicate breach. The slow burn of stressed wards consumed him, relentless, while Asandir braved the perilous work in the field, realigning torn ciphers and weaving the boundaries back to their former stability.

      Sethvir lay prostrate to mask the stressed pain that leached at his innate vitality. Drawn flesh over bone, his stilled face seemed winnowed beyond substance, and his form, wrought of gossamer spirit light. The ivory hands tucked over the coverlet seemed naked without their archivist’s spatter of ink stains.

      Tonight, as the lane tides surged toward solstice, Sethvir’s office as Warden of Althain demanded active use of his earth-sense. The adepts on watch as he asked for assistance numbered an even six.

      Four were arrayed at the cardinal points to protect his weakened aura. Two more steadied a pane of polished obsidian, Sethvir’s preferred tool to reflect the impressions garnered from current events. The combed fall of his beard streamed over his chest, scarcely stirred by his shallow breathing. His far-seeing eyes remained closed. If the tension pinching his parchment lids seemed the sole sign of his living awareness, he did not stint the demands of his task.

      The images that unreeled like smoke over glass stayed meticulously clear as an etching…

       …in the mountains near Eastwall, an auburn-haired enchantress lays a quartz sphere aside, while her mind rides a day-dream in longing search of a black-haired, green-eyed man…who, in a place far removed, looks up from an opened book and smiles an affirmation. ‘Soon,’ he assures, as her tender thought touches him. ‘Brave heart, I’ll fulfill my sworn promise to meet you…’—while far to the south, riding the turquoise swells off the Scimlade, a blonde-haired captain on an ocean-bound brig paces over her tossing decks, for not knowing the same man’s location…while elsewhere, another clad in the nine-banded robes of the Koriani Prime Matriarch nurses her fire-scarred hands and commands an avid circle of scryers to search for the selfsame spirit…

      Beloved, or friend, or inveterate enemy, all would find their desires deferred: Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn seemed content to extend his earned sanctuary in the caverns beneath Kewar’s mazes.

      Without judgement, Sethvir recorded. The male adept on station at south glanced up in concern at his counterpart, on guard at north. ‘He’s drastically weakened. Much longer’s unwise.’

      She inclined her hooded head in response, the silver-and-gold thread-work stitched into her mantle glinting through the hazed light of her presence. Her hands moved, gently cradled the Sorcerer’s head, and touched reverent thumbs to his brow. ‘Sethvir is aware. His senses are tracking a formative current that demands his listening attention.’

      In the dark glass, meantime, the sequential ripples sown by Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn flowed one after the next, unobstructed.

      …as in Halwythwood, alone, a younger girl weeps, and bitterly curses the name of the prince whose enemies destroyed her father… then that image dissolved, to another, showing a fat prophet and his dark-haired charge, asleep in the brush by the fringes of Atwood…

      That instant, a static spark cracked across the polished face of the glass. The image sheared off, and re-formed to another: a view focused with the exquisite detail invoked by the blaze of true magecraft.

       …in the close gloom of a candle-lit garret, a fighting man worn whipcord lean from campaign stands naked inside a scribed circle. At his side, a bent crone whispers quavering cantrips and calls the four elements to guard point!

      Sethvir’s eyes snapped open, their cerulean depths as vacant as fired enamel. ‘Luhaine!’ His whisper carried an imperative edge, and his gaunt hands locked on the coverlet. ‘Luhaine! You are needed! Go to Erdane, at once! Our pledge to protect an old friend has come due.’

      Yet the summons, once sent on the flicker of thought, today lacked the force to imprint the stream of the lane flux.

      ‘He’ll need to use quartz.’ The adept at the Sorcerer’s feet moved forthwith. Though by nature, he would not raise power to affect the way of the world, on request, he could fetch and carry for the infirm. Beyond the scarlet carpet, he delved into an ambry tucked in an embrasure that once had served as an arrow-slit.

      ‘The clear point,’ Sethvir prompted, his voice gravel rough. ‘The one charged last week in the midday sun, that’s wrapped up in fleece and black silk.’ He shut tortured eyes as the unpolished crystal he required was laid into his anxious hands.

      He cupped the base, traced its contours in welcome, while candlelight flared through its streamered veils and fired the shimmer of rainbow inclusions. As the stone warmed and awoke to the Sorcerer’s touch, he acknowledged its conscious presence. A flash of joy answered. Moved to a faint smile in response, Sethvir lifted his trembling grasp and puffed a soft breath to charge the front-facing facet. Then he placed his thumbs overtop and aligned his determined awareness.

      The quartz matrix imprinted his patterned thought, amplified his intent, and recast its frequency as a beacon. Sethvir’s appeal rode the magnetic tides and ranged outwards, bearing summons to his distant colleague…

      Far southward, gusty winds spattered rain on the glass of the fire-lit hall where the crowned sovereign of Havish kept late hours in council with his weather-beaten caithdein, Machiel, and three other seasoned advisors. The hand-picked foursome were not known for soft words. Under King Eldir’s ringless, broad hands, the tally sheets lately compiled by the clerks showed the wear of a tactical chart spread for a siege. Machiel had a cross-bow disassembled on the table. His mood egg-shell brittle, he oiled and scoured the rust from the trigger latch, while his neighbours in their spotless brocades observed, wall-eyed, caught in the breach.

      Yet the enemy confronting the restored realm of Havish wielded no concrete weapon.

      As the imbalanced weather kept its savage grip, the sown crops were struck cold in the fields. The rich, coastal lowlands fared no better, as frost left the ground, and the driving storms drowned the farm-steads under sheet-silver puddles and ice melt. Swollen rivers СКАЧАТЬ