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

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СКАЧАТЬ bowl. Blood swirled in pink patterns, stirred by the bone knife. When the mixture blended to translucent pink, the diviner placed the vessel at the center of the tactical map. He floated a wafer of cork on the water, then rubbed a steel needle with a square of black silk until it acquired a charge. There followed another incantation, an invocation to divine Light, while the magnetized needle was arranged on the cork float. The construct revolved on its bed of stained water, then stalled to oscillation on a north-to-south axis. The strangled quiet magnified the rustle of the diviner-priest’s silk sleeves. Finished praying, he cupped the fluid-filled bowl. Chain mail clinked in partnered response, as Sulfin Evend adjusted the lay of the tactical map. When the poised needle and the compass rose matched up in cardinal alignment, he reset the abused table cutlery and secured the curled corners of the parchment.

      The mayor strangled his self-righteous protest. Stilled as the men-at-arms, and as morbidly curious, he edged in to observe the proceedings. Tension heightened the senses. The magnified sound struck by every small movement cast echoes off stripped-stone walls. The puddled snowmelt tracked in from the street smelled dankly sharp, and the chill hung pervasive, as though the log fire in the hearth failed to cut through the cloth of a suspended reality.

      Faint as the draw of air through screened silk, the diviner’s sped breaths, as his fluttery hands opened a pearl-inlaid coffer and drew out a filament of gold chain. He touched his smeared lips to the copper cone affixed to the end. Blood and spittle dulled its metallic shine as he deployed the tuned weight above the map as a pendulum.

      ‘Prince Exalted, by the blessed Light of Truth,’ he intoned. ‘Ask. State your divine will.’

      Lysaer s’Ilessid regarded the spread parchment, his eyes honed to steel-edged purpose. ‘Find the location of the Spinner of Darkness and show us his course of intent.’

      Around the plank trestle, the onlookers hung rapt as the diviner-priest bowed his head. His delicate hand ceased its trembling. Settled into a trance like carved rock, with pale eyes blanked into vacancy, he quieted the listening lens of his mind. Now made the clear conduit for Prince Lysaer’s destiny through the ritual link of the blood magic, he allowed the unconscious deflections of nerve and sinew to drive the dangling pendulum. The copper weight rocked to quivering life at the end of its tether of chain. Its point danced over the parchment’s inked landmarks as the priest of the Light swept its progressive arcs above the mapped features of Tysan.

      ‘Oh, come,’ snapped Sulfin Evend, his annoyance a whip through awed stillness. ‘We haven’t just crossed Instrell Bay in dead winter to seek a quarry holed up on our back trail!’

      The priest sniffed, offended. ‘The Master of Shadow is the get of a demon. As prime servant of evil, he could be anywhere.’

      As the Lord Commander drew breath to sneer, Lysaer s’Ilessid intervened with a glance. ‘When the time comes for warfare, would you ask a diviner to sharpen your steel?’

      ‘Point taken.’ Sulfin Evend backed off, thumbs hooked like talons in his sword belt.

      If his Hanshire-bred arrogance accepted dark practice in stride, the Mayor of Narms poised between welded fascination and the urge to give way to panic-struck flight. Despite creeping dread, he could not tear his gaze from the consecrated pointer tracking across the spread map. The transition struck him to a gut punch of fear when the random gyre of movement twitched into a smooth, defined swing. The diviner-priest tested, edged the chain gently northward. The arc slowed, died out; then disintegrated into unsettled shivers. Passed southward once more, the movement regained its east-to-west rhythm, as if questing the source of perturbation. Over the barrier range of the Tiriacs, along the western trade road, the copper weight’s arc became agitated.

      Drawn across the inked site of the city of Karfael, it changed motion again, reversed in an arc toward Avenor. There, it settled at last to a rhythmically circular spin over Tysan’s royal seat.

      ‘False reading,’ the priest murmured. ‘Blood will call to blood, foremost through the tie of close kinship. Your royal son will shortly be bound for Karfael, did you know this?’

      A dazzle of jewels marked Lysaer’s drawn breath, as light nicked the studs on his doublet. ‘He’s fifteen years of age. Old enough to start cutting his mother’s apron strings, I would say. Nor can a prince gain a ruler’s discernment by staying too close to home. My garrison commander at Karfael is competent. If he can’t be trusted to steer a headstrong boy from youthful high spirits and folly, we are lost before we ever raise arms against the true minion of darkness.’ Through a smile of grave humor, the prince signaled for his priest to proceed with the scrying. ‘Quarter the Kingdom of Rathain, if you please.’

      The priest moistened his stained lips. Seized in ecstatic trance, he wet his fingers with a freshened mix of blood and saliva, then reanointed the copper weight. The chain whined, disrupted. Like a hound pulled untimely from a hot scent, the weight thrashed and trembled in confused little jerks that zigzagged without clear direction. The diviner carried on with unruffled calm, in exacting, small increments, casting across every detailed feature of Rathain. When the forest-clad coves along Instrell Bay showed him no quiver of alignment, he combed over the wastes of Daon Ramon Barrens. Next he quartered the ice-clad peaks of the Skyshiels. There at last, the pendulum deflected, then thrummed into an agitated spin.

      ‘He’s there! Oh, well done!’ The Divine Prince shot erect. Shared excitement stirred through his men like a storm charge. Even Narms’s mayor hung with pent breath as his Grace accosted his priest for more facts. ‘Can you see where the demon is headed?’

      ‘He won’t escape this time in deepwater ships. No. You will catch him landlocked and vulnerable.’ The diviner-priest hovered over his pendulum and map, consumed by the command of his sovereign to glean every detail he could from his art. ‘Since landfall in Jaelot, the Master of Shadow has apparently turned inland. He’s cutting a path through the Skyshiel foothills, on an angle just north of the city.’

      ‘You know of the forbidden road that leads through that country into Daon Ramon Barrens?’ Sulfin Evend supplied. ‘Baiyen Gap was the ancient name for the pass. Copies of early Second Age record show the Paravian way running straight to Ithamon as the crow flies.’

      While the priest rinsed and dried his paraphernalia, the rawboned headhunter showed his contempt. ‘There’s no clan presence there. The site is a ruin. Why would the Spinner of Darkness be bound into such desolate territory?’

      Lysaer tapped the parchment where the line of the Severnir’s dry gulch snaked south toward Daenfal Lake. ‘Don’t for a second misjudge this fiendish creature’s resourcefulness. He knows of the ensorcelments laid into the stone watch towers that stand whole amid those smashed revetments. Who can guess what evil may spring from his wiles? What if he intends to lay claim to the site and rebuild the crown seat of his forebears?’

      ‘That’s no pleasant thought,’ Sulfin Evend allowed, his lean features peaked to hawkish interest. ‘Those towers outlasted the assault of the rebellion. Legend holds that outsiders still need a blood prince’s word to unkey the wards for admittance. The s’Ffalenn defenders besieged there in the past were said to starve to a man, their bones picked by ravens behind unbreached gates. If the Master of Shadow restores the old fortress, he could bid to revive the earth magic. We might see a canker set into our midst that could cost us dear to rout out.’

      The weasel-faced captain with the axe at his belt slapped his thigh to a rasp of steel mail. ‘Then we stop him. Cut off his access before he can reach his objective.’

      Narms’s mayor set flat palms on the trestle to brace up his spine in objection. ‘It’s deep winter,’ he argued. ‘No mounted courier СКАЧАТЬ