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

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СКАЧАТЬ come at the Warden of Althain’s behest.

      ‘Sethvir believed that I needed protection. Since he acted to stop me from clearing my quartz, I need to see much more clearly. Can you lend understanding? There are complexities involved with this issue that I’m not wise enough to address.’

      The adept inclined his head. ‘Brave lady, had you cleared your crystal, there would have been trouble indeed. I came here as Sethvir’s emissary, but I must serve as Ath’s order demands. Your quartz deserves freedom, except its own will has granted you deference. It prefers to remain a Koriani tool, that you may preserve your given trust with the one known as Arithon s’Ffalenn. Stone is patient. It bides lightly in time. Count yourself honored. This crystal spirit has given you the accolade of naming you as a companion. Therefore, since you planned to relinquish your claim, I suggest you let me take the burden of carrying out its preferred intent. With your permission, I will bear the quartz back to your sisterhouse. Let it remain in the peeress’s hands until you can safely resume your oathbound charge of its keeping.’

      ‘I would be grateful, as well as content.’ Self-conscious and flushed, Elaira pursued her dropped bread crust. Through the moment she required to recover her aplomb, the adept vanished without sound.

      She started, glanced up, searched the shadowy space he had occupied. No visible trace remained of his presence, only a tactile patch of left warmth where he had sat on the coverlet. No small bit shaken that her spell crystal was also gone, Elaira swore like a fishwife. She had scarcely begun to ask questions.

      Then, practical enough not to wallow in self-pity until the fish soup got cold and lost savor, she addressed the task of finishing off the perishable portion of her supper.

      In hindsight, the adept had ceded her with fertile ground for new thought. Not all of her power derived from Koriani teaching. In the course of expanding her study of healing, independence had brought her odd bits of hedge lore. She had once learned a hill grandmother’s method of setting up wards using field stones. In principle, that knowledge might apply to a quartz, though the ranging of vibration directed by crude cantrips would become glass clear, and far stronger. By morning, the sphere in the salt bucket would be cleansed. She could borrow upon knowledge shared from Arithon’s trained mastery and attempt to engage its Named spark of awareness. In addition, she had the untapped potential in the crystal point given by the talisman maker in the market.

      If the adepts’ store of wisdom might open an alternative way to access her natural-born talent, she must gather fresh courage, and against every obstacle, shoulder the risk in pursuit.

      ‘Fiends plague and Dharkaron’s fell Chariot, but Selidie Prime and Lirenda are going to be furious!’

      Raised to devilish good cheer by the prospect of being a thorn in the side of high-caste Koriani authority, Elaira mopped the last broth from her bowl. She devoured the plate of stewed apples. Then, wildly reckless, she commandeered her last cloth length of linen for bandaging and packed the leftover victuals into her satchel.

      Outside, the silver-plate gleam of last daylight was already rapidly failing. Black runners of storm cloud drove in off the sea. The first, gale-force gusts slapped and battered the dormer’s dilapidated shutters. The racket drummed a demon’s tattoo against the bass-note pound of the surf boiling into the seawall.

      At least savage weather would discourage the sisterhouse peeress from rousting the poor quarter for a renegade. Elaira stifled her wild burst of laughter as she imagined the outrage raised by Ath’s adept when he knocked to deliver her spell crystal. Too bone weary to lug buckets for a hot-water bath, she steeled herself and settled for a bracing, cold wash from the basin.

      Then she curled up under the blanket on the pallet and let her thoughts spiral toward sleep.

      Before midnight, the storm broke. Elaira started out of unsettled dreams. She lay wakeful, strained and wary at each muted call of the watch from the street three stories below. Her overkeyed nerves would not let her rest. Worry circled her core of frustration. Over the whine of wind-driven ice, she ached for Arithon and Fionn Areth, one set on the run and exposed to cruel weather high in the Skyshiel passes, and the other gone outside her ken. While the dark fed anxieties that chafed her resolve to defeat the Prime’s Matriarch’s new plot, Elaira lamented her lowly third-rank status.

      She had no means to access the Skyron aquamarine; nor could she breach its warded box and drag its dire weight through the gates of a hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood.

      If she traveled the high road to Eastwall and claimed temporary sanctuary, then Ath’s order and the Law of the Major Balance might honor her born right to freedom. But the measure of reprieve from the Prime’s reach and power could last only while she was sequestered. As long as the major focus crystal of the order held the bound record of her oath, she could not clear her imprinted Name from the matrix. The autonomy she had sworn into Koriani service would stay subject to Selidie’s power.

       Winter 5670

      Tidings

      Asandir’s night return to Althain Tower occurred without greeting or fanfare. He emerged from the flaring blue static of the focus circle to find the candles cold on their gryphon stands. His horse stood, still saddled, beside him. That fact served him rough warning: the pact Sethvir kept with the land’s fey spirits, which normally assisted his arrivals, had fallen into neglect. He could not have encountered a more certain sign that Althain’s Warden remained unwell. As the lane flux subsided to background quiescence, Asandir scanned the dungeon’s chill silence. No wardings had faltered. Yet, in line with his bleak foreboding, no colleague stepped forth to greet him.

      The play of raw lane force under his feet spoke of winter. He had been gone for weeks. He could but hope the supplies in the stable had not been despoiled by mice. Beyond exhausted, his rangy, tall frame was now chiseled lean from channeling the extreme, dire forces required to mend a torn grimward. He stroked the black shoulder of his equally tired horse, then gathered the reins between cinder-burned fingers. Underlit by the phosphor pallor of the runes that channeled the thrust of the lane tides, he slapped out a persistent, smoldering spark still raising smoke from his sleeve cuff. Then he addressed an eloquent apology in Paravian to his long-suffering mount, whose tail and mane had been singed to the same sorry state as his rider’s tattered clothing.

      Shod hooves clanged on the agate floor. The stallion trailed the Sorcerer’s step off the inlaid patterns which scribed the grand rings of the focus circle. By the sidewall, Asandir unbuckled girth strap and bridle. He bundled his holed cloak and mopped the foam from the animal’s face and lips, then rubbed down the sweat-drenched chest and flank, and the whorled hair left matted down from the saddle. The minor burns on fetlocks and cannon bones, he soothed with the healing of his spelled touch. When he straightened and strode into the portal which fronted the stairwell, the stallion pricked black ears and followed.

      At the base of the stair, Asandir asked a permission. He spoke the true Name for his horse. The stallion whickered as though in reply, and stone responded, yielding up its fast secret.

      An arched doorway melted into what had apparently been a seamless marble wall.

      Beyond lay Althain Tower’s snug stable, and an underground passage mazed with spelled gates that led to the fells outside. Aware he was home, the stallion shouldered eagerly over the threshold. The portal was guarded. Paravians had laid wards through the grain of the stonework. Life and movement awoke the soft sheeting flare of those latent powers. A misty light winnowed the animal’s form as though testing each hair one by one. Despite mild appearance, the spell was not harmless.

      Had СКАЧАТЬ