Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ her drawing fascination for his royal gift of compassion. His triumph had fashioned her insufferable downfall, and oh, she knew, might easily do so again.

      Lirenda clamped her fists in frustration. She was condemned to mediocrity, but scarcely helpless. If Arithon’s wretched play on her heartstrings had destroyed her brilliant career, she had a lifetime left to exact her retaliation.

      Two steps, three, her skirts snagging cobwebs from the staves of half-rotted wine tuns, Lirenda paused between strides. Miracle of miracles, amid avalanching setbacks, the tools for her use already lay in her hand.

      Earlier that day, she had imprinted a sigil of command on the captain of Jaelot’s garrison when the man’s gruff competence had to be steered clear of her delicately plotted affairs. Yet the construct wrought at need on the street still remained fully active. Renew that one cipher of manipulative control, then key it to a geas of obsession, and Lirenda could draw the mayor’s captain on puppet strings. Add a tangling net of spells, and Prince Arithon’s flight could be hounded beyond reason and sanity.

      The s’Ffalenn bastard would suffer for the snatched kiss that had condemned her to final failure. Lirenda vowed to seal his demise. How easily she could make him the beset hare in the path of a bloodletting hunt.

      The idea took firm shape. A warm thrill curled through the enchantress’s black rage. ‘Oh yes, your royal Grace, you’ll pay well for your ill-gotten freedom.’

      Lirenda began by inscribing eight ritual circles to cloak her act in deep secrecy. The craft she invoked must not perturb the lane flux. Like the spider who stole from a rival’s web, she worked outside strictures that governed her trained use of power. Rage snapped all restraints. In furtive steps, she laid down the sigils which ensured that the backwash of shed resonance would be absorbed within her own body. A few days of sick weakness would be worth the satisfaction of seeing Arithon s’Ffalenn hunted down like a forest barbarian.

      Protections in place, Lirenda knelt by the vat last used for Cadgia’s scrying. Welded to the cause of unvarnished spite, she caught the silver chain and cleared her spell crystal from her high collar.

      ‘An,’ she whispered, the Paravian rune for one, which opened the first stage of ritual. She traced the primary rune of binding over the membrane of ice on the water, then added in sequence the chained string of ciphers that claimed a man’s will beneath the threshold of consciousness. A breath through her crystal infused her sketched symbols. The construct pulsed active, shedding harsh purple light that could burn to blindness the eyes of the careless. Drawing from the passionate well of her hatred, Lirenda laid the grand patterning, the weave of each strand and interstice as knotted silk over the maw of the vat. Fire was her natural element. The lit ruby lines of her sigil of summoning clashed into ice, scalding up whistling steam. Thawed water exploded to roiling froth, then flattened, subservient to her bidding.

      The enchantress laid her dire work onto the blank sheen of its surface. Eighth-rank initiation lent her powers an edge her less-accomplished sisters would envy. She knew the forbidden lore; the annals of chaos, where natural force could be spun in linked seals to cause harm. Sign and countersign paired, each rune and sigil enchained to dark purpose, Lirenda raised a field of charged air over the mirroring water. Her will reigned supreme inside that masked space, and there, she pronounced a Name the ritual three times in summoning. An image resolved, showing the blunt, weathered features of Jaelot’s veteran field captain.

      An impatient man, sharpened with years to a deep-set, suspicious awareness, he handled his troops through exacting perception and a brusque, no-nonsense competence. A hard man to know, his trust was infallible. The barbed coils of a Koriani sigil of binding were going to require a specific opening to exploit.

      Lirenda gave that hindrance no second thought. Like any born human, the man would have weakness. To an enchantress schooled in the high arts of observation, the seamed lines of the face formed a map of the captain’s innermost character. His secrets could be gleaned through devouring survey, from the measure of resilience that sustained his vitality, to his most stubborn virtues, and his hidden pockets of vice. Each facet of self became hers to entrain in the tailor-made geas to drive him.

      A flick of wrought power upstepped the spell’s resonance. Lirenda surveyed the man’s unveiled aura with its chiaroscuro imprint of personality. She unraveled each shadow, the petty dishonesties and shortfalls shot like mean yarn through the bright strands of courage and dedication. The unseen cords of bound energy let her interpret the bonds held between family and kinfolk. She sorted each diverse thread, the lesser ties drawn in friendship, or in strength, or in bullying authority, and gained private insight into the men who comprised the captain’s command.

      A half smile curved Lirenda’s lips. Before her, the loom upon which she would weave her curse upon Arithon’s destiny.

      Quartz in hand, the enchantress entrained its spiraling axis as the focusing needle for her intent. She began stitching sigils and ciphers into the spell-summoned guard captain’s aura. Ideas would seed thoughts, which would spin urgent plans, until the creature she claimed as her cat’s-paw would rise and muster his troops, then press them to pursue the prey of her choosing.

      Since Arithon’s safest line of retreat would lie in the realm of blue water, she arranged sharp prerogatives to send Jaelot’s troops to sweep the Eltair seacoast. North and south, they would quarter the flat ribbon of shoreline. Each smuggler’s cove and wooded haven would be combed by sharp-eyed patrols. Reserves would be called up for active duty. Seasoned divisions would work hand in glove with the headhunters’ league’s best skilled trackers. Lirenda laid her linked seals like tight slipknots, ensuring which steps would be taken. Dawn would see a trained pack of hounds and mastiffs, backed by two companies of veteran field troops, set upon Arithon’s back trail. Her victim would be driven due west, away from the bay, and into the Skyshiel uplands.

      In winter, without resource, Rathain’s prince would be coursed by hardened men who clung to his heels like the damned. If he escaped them, if he had the tenacity and cunning to survive the blizzards that raked the cruel wilds, he would find no rest and no respite. Lirenda twined layers of interlaced spellcraft to assure that his enemies would stay unshaken. No longer men, but instruments tuned to her scouring need for revenge, they would dog Arithon’s trail past the limits of human endurance. They would press him through storm and ice and closed passes with the dauntless persistence of demons.

      Against their harrying onslaught, Arithon would suffer exhaustion and frostbite and privation. Lirenda meshed her dark seals like linked chain. Black hatred ruled her. She would destroy his music. All the bright gifts of his s’Ffalenn heritage would be scoured away into mindless, animal instinct.

      Until Jaelot’s troops perished, expended like candles, they would not flag in the grip of the geas Lirenda spun through their commanding captain. They would dance their last steps to the tune of her passion, that Arithon s’Ffalenn would draw his last breath in desolate solitude. Let him rot without trace, unrecognized and uncomforted, on the wretched ground ruled by his ancestors.

      Lirenda traced the last seal of closure over the construct imprinted in the vat. Moved by the venom distilled in her heart, she whispered her ultimatum. ‘May you die alone, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn. Let your accursed seed wither, and your line finish, heirless. May your feal clansmen fall to woe while your bones become stripped by the crows in the peaks of the Skyshiels.’

       Winter Solstice Night 5670

      Delirium

      Two hundred twenty-five leagues west of Jaelot as the crow flew, the Fellowship Sorcerer who served Athera as Althain’s СКАЧАТЬ