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

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      The glow enriched the gold grain of the curly maple paneling.

      A Cildorn carpet mellowed the plank floor, its vivid dyes muted before the jeweled silk of the heraldic king’s banners. Despite vibrant colors, the chamber felt cold. No fire burned in the hearth. The scrolled, ebon pilasters and marble-topped mantel gleamed untrammeled by dust, and the high, lancet windows wore the seal of deep night. Stabbed through the perfume of citrus-oil polish, the still air gave off the uncanny, frost tang of magic.

      Now wary, Asandir approached the massive ebony table, with its pedestals of standing, paired lions. His step skirted the empty oak chairs with their chased-ivory finials. Braced to neutrality, he leaned on spread hands and surveyed the circular pane of smoked glass Ath’s adepts had placed on the tabletop. A sparrow perched on a chairback took wing and eerily vanished. A field mouse sat upright on tucked hind legs, whiskers pricked and attentive, while overhead its archenemy, the horned owl, blinked in disinterest from a settled roost in the rafters. Asandir showed no surprise. Such visitations occurred wherever Ath’s adepts engaged a portal to tap the prime life chord.

      ‘The glass holds those events Althain’s Warden deemed important,’ the lady ventured, her near presence casting a more refined light than common candleflame warranted. She perched on the seat nearest the black-and-silver leopard standard of Rathain, while Asandir, standing, absorbed the grim scenes gathered within the spelled glass.

      He saw Kharadmon, far afield in the void between stars, spinning spell after spell of deflection to divert an influx of wraiths bound from Marak. ‘Mercy on us,’ he murmured in blanched shock. ‘The worst has begun. What other ill news will you show me?’

      Patient, the adept waited until Asandir had steeled his nerve to move on.

      Next, the glass gave him sight of Luhaine’s discorporate presence, guarding the damaged wards which secured Desh-thiere’s prison at Rockfell. He awaited two others: Dakar and Fionn Areth turned their mounts loose and labored on foot through the arduous southwest passage across the white-crowned range of the Skyshiels.

      He saw Arithon s’Ffalenn, asleep, huddled in a thicket; then armed companies from five cities converging on Daon Ramon, their purpose to bring war to the ancient ruin of Ithamon.

      Farther south, the Master Spellbinder Verrain stood vigil at Mirthlvain Swamp. Methspawn stirred and fought beneath winter ice, feeding one on another in bloodthirsty eagerness for the release to come with the spring thaws. Traithe had left Vastmark with intent to assist him, but a flood on River Ippash would delay him.

      Tension blanched Asandir’s knuckles to scarred ivory against the jet grain of old ebony. ‘We have no hand free to send,’ he despaired, while in the glass, the events tied to Methisle streamed into the next change of scene. In northern Tysan, where Westwood’s fringes thinned into a patchwork of hamlets, marauding Khadrim gorged upon the charred corpses of a trapper and his close family. ‘Does this sequence get any worse?’

      The adept held her counsel, aggrieved in compassion, while another view bloomed and burned across the dark face of the glass…

      In the High Priest’s chamber at Avenor, under furtive cover of night, the velvet curtains were drawn to hide the gleam of late-burning candles. There, a clandestine meeting commenced between Cerebeld and Lord Koshlin, Guild Master of Erdane, now appointed as his mayor’s delegate to serve the city’s close interests.

      ‘I’ve maintained the appearance of keeping my Lord Mayor’s instructions, and done your will without compromise,’ the sly man complained. ‘At every turn, I’ve thwarted the princess’s inquiries into the death of her predecessor. Her Grace has been diverted from finding the truth so many times, she’s justly begun to suspect my obstruction. Her trust is withdrawn. You must realize that leaves me exposed. At all costs, I can’t risk the loss of respect should the mayor, her father, hear of her reservations.’

      ‘I see that cost might prove a touch high,’ Cerebeld agreed, his purposeful attitude undaunted. ‘Therefore, we shall at one stroke change the princess’s distrust to subservience.’ He arose, crossed his chamber, and opened a locked chest. Gold rings glinted as he withdrew a sealed parchment. ‘You shall give the lady the proof that she seeks: incontrovertible evidence that her predecessor’s death was no suicide.’

      Koshlin’s saturnine features went slack. ‘Proof?’

      Cerebeld’s suave manner made his scrubbed skin seem a mask of polished enamel. ‘Proof, in the form of the sealed confession of the marksman whose shot sliced the rope. Lady Talith did not jump, but attempted escape on the hour she plunged to her death.’

      ‘Volatile paper,’ Lord Koshlin said. ‘You dare much, to risk having her murder made public.’

      ‘On the contrary.’ Cerebeld riffled the document, nonplussed. ‘The incumbent princess is distressed over her young son’s assignment to ride with the field patrol. Desperation and motherhood make her mood unpredictable. Her Grace might try something regrettable. I want Ellaine cowed. She’ll see how the last princess became a dead pawn, but not know the faction responsible. Fear will gag her questions. And where can this paper be taken, or shown, outside of her private chambers? She can’t leave Avenor. Her guards and her handmaids are mine, every one. Her husband’s kept his private distance since the heir’s birth. The lady has no champion to pursue her sad cause. If you stay discreet, she’ll have little choice but to retire in terrified silence.’

      ‘Merciful Ath!’ Asandir mused aloud. His seamed face turned grim as a scarp of chipped granite, while far off, in the High Priest’s closed chamber, the sealed parchment quietly changed hands.

      Then the glass shifted scenes to reveal the tents of an Alliance patrol, horses and men encamped on the icy banks of River Melor.

      ‘Sethvir has divined a threat to Prince Kevor, of course,’ the Sorcerer said as his sharp glance encompassed the gold star banner flying amid the camp’s standards. The blue field displayed the heraldic crown, proclaiming the presence of the blood royal among the routine, armed cavalcade.

      ‘That boy’s trueborn to his s’Ilessid ancestry.’ Asandir saw clear warning, that the endowment of that line’s gifted justice might lead the boy to a disastrous confrontation with the pack of Khadrim seeding havoc and terror in Westwood.

      ‘Time I went to Sethvir,’ the Sorcerer announced. As the ominous record left in the glass subsided back into blankness, the silver-gray eyes raised to meet Ath’s adept were recast to the glint of forged steel. ‘If aught’s to be done, the choice must be aired well before the lane tide rises at daybreak.’

      The oak door sighed open and revealed velvet darkness. Silence greeted Asandir on the threshold of Sethvir’s private quarters. The deep quiet bestowed no feeling of calm, but instead enfolded him like suffocation. The embrace of the air on his skin was too warm. Though the medicinal smell of sweet herbs was not cloying, every sense jangled warning he intruded upon something more than a sickroom.

      ‘He’s grown worse?’ the field Sorcerer inquired of the adept who kept ceaseless vigil by the entry.

      The gentle, aged woman turned back her hood. Her lined face a mapwork of patience, she said, ‘The Warden feels no pain, nor is he unconscious. Though he might seem asleep, his state of suspension is dreamless. You may need to use Name to СКАЧАТЬ