Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ Order may lay claim to your fate in my stead.’

      Fionn Areth’s eyes narrowed. ‘She wants this, the lady?’ He considered with the gravity of a child too young to respond as an adult. ‘My mother would say to give nothing for free. What will the Koriathain trade in return?’ His voice firmed as he stiffened his small spine. ‘I’m going to need an expensive, sharp sword.’

      ‘You shall have the very best, fabricated by the hand of a master armorer.’ Lirenda gestured encouragement with the magnanimous assurance of one who had never eaten someone else’s table scraps or missed a night in cosseted comfort. ‘Not only that, but a tutor at arms will be sent to Araethura to school you. Give your consent, and our bargain is sealed.’

      ‘Do I get a scabbard too?’ Fionn Areth said, distrustful enough to be shrewd.

      ‘A scabbard, of course, child.’ Impatient with young ones, Lirenda tapped her foot. ‘You have only to give your consent.’

      ‘Then yes!’ Fionn Areth followed his shout with a whoop that rattled his dream to echoing exuberance.

      But for Lirenda’s twisted plot, plainspoken speech was insufficient. ‘Swear, then. Heart and mind, give me your formal permission for the record to be set in crystal.’

      Elaira turned away, unable to watch, as, still fearless, the boy gave away his autonomy. The words of his oath rang through the frost-cloaked silence of the night. In too brief an instant, the act stood complete.

      Tied by consent to a Koriani quartz focus, Fionn Areth now belonged to the order as irrevocably as any young initiate inducted for vows of life service.

      In the orchard, released from the grip of spelled dreams, Fionn Areth’s body fell limp inside the fleeces of Elaira’s borrowed jacket. For a drawn-out moment, the unnatural trance kept his pupils dilated, their depths an uncanny, fathomless black in the frigid spill of the moonlight. Then Lirenda inscribed the seal for deep sleep. The boy’s wide, staring eyes hazed from focus and fluttered closed. His lips parted in a sigh, while an uncaring breeze bearing winter in its weave flicked the jet ends of his hair. A pen stroke ruled against darkness, the beam of pale light from the crystal seemed to drill through his unmarked forehead.

      ‘He’s sworn oath of debt.’ Lirenda’s satisfaction held triumph, a chilling indication that Morriel’s command matched the grain of her personal involvement. In a guarded move, she raised lily-scented hands and tugged the hood of her mantle to shelter her high-cut cheekbone. ‘Not even the Fellowship of Seven can argue the validity of a vow sworn and sealed as a bargain.’

      ‘You should be proud.’ Elaira made no effort to curb her raking sarcasm. ‘Your victim is only six years of age, and a tutor and a sword are a paltry return for enslavement.’

      ‘Given the choice of a life raising goats, I much doubt the child’s going to care.’ Lirenda’s rose lips bent upward in secretive satisfaction. ‘Don’t think you’re finished here.’

      Elaira huddled, shivering. She knew very well that the coming spells of transformation should not require her presence. This spiteful play to force her participation framed a more than disturbing oddity. Raised on the street as an orphaned child, Elaira had never welcomed authority. Now, her deep, primal instinct gave warning: the strained relationship shared with her senior had somehow grown beyond the surface disparities of social station and character.

      A closer study of Lirenda’s demeanor revealed where rice powder and eye paint could not quite mask her evident strain. The flesh over its beautiful template of bone seemed fine drawn, as though for weeks her sleep had been restless and her thoughts a turmoil of distress.

      In a sure burst of insight, Elaira said, ‘What has Arithon s’Ffalenn ever done to antagonize you?’

      Lirenda recoiled. Her amber pale eyes flicked up in a match flare of rage. ‘How dare you!’

      Chilled as she was, and sick with self-loathing, Elaira damped a grin of ripe devilment. ‘Touché. He’s difficult. I know far better than any. Was his influence why Morriel set you aside in disgrace?’

      ‘That’s none of your business!’ Lirenda’s frustration rankled, that she no longer wielded the ranking prerogative to quash prying questions and insolence. ‘My right to the privileges of prime succession shall not stay in question for long. Have a care. Cross me again, and your lot could be miserable.’

      ‘I’m miserable now,’ Elaira pointed out. ‘You’ll need to threaten with more imagination if you’re expecting me to act cowed.’

      Lirenda stroked manicured fingers along the inverted base of the quartz point. ‘You will provide the focal point for this shapechange.’ Her catty, three-cornered smile showed teeth. ‘As you once did for Morriel’s scrying at Narms, you will shape me a reflected image of Prince Arithon’s features. Your memory will provide the template to guide Fionn Areth’s transformation until the last seal is complete.’

      ‘Touché,’ Elaira repeated with self-derogatory bitterness. ‘Beware whom you cross. The s’Ffalenn royal line has never taken kindly to meddling interference from anyone.’

      ‘I know.’ Lirenda turned away and began to link the first sigil. ‘If you’re worried for the child, the strength of our order will eventually come to shelter him. His skill at arms can be turned to training the boy orphans for posts in the garrisons and the trade guilds’ guard.’

      ‘A fine, useless talent,’ Elaira bit back, her pain and her rage too large to mask behind shallow insults or platitudes. ‘If Arithon’s to become the Matriarch’s captive, and Lysaer’s Alliance clears the woods of the clanblood who harry the trade routes, pray, who will be in the market to pay hired swords? No one will have enemies to burn out and kill.’

      ‘That’s enough!’ Lirenda’s stiffened posture gave warning. ‘We have a task to finish.’

      Elaira tossed her a gesture to begin, one that on street terms doubled as obscenity. ‘You first. The opening sigil is yours, thank blazes. I’ll enjoy the moment to the fullest when the fire of s’Ffalenn vengeance grabs you by the throat and strikes at every one of your weaknesses.’ She knelt in chill grasses, arms wrapped to her chest, then closed her eyes to recall the male face that had long since become a branded part of her being. Before she took the irrevocable last step, she let fly the full force of her anguish. ‘Just so you understand, when we’re done, I’m going to buy gin from the first herder I see and drink myself blind, heaving drunk.’

      A knifing blast of north wind shrieked over the byre and rattled the trees in the orchard. Elaira engaged the focusing properties of the small quartz crystal at her neck. Then, with the cold roaring through her like a cataract, she framed Arithon’s likeness with all the detail she remembered: the fall of sable hair and the sharp angles of cheekbone and jaw. The lips which smiled too seldom, and the eyes, their green depths masked by ironies and a guarded defense too wary for most minds to fathom. Through a hazing shimmer of tears, she set perfect recall of the Shadow Master’s features into the ice veils of the crystal suspended over Fionn Areth’s face.

      She tried to hear nothing else but the wind, to let the thrash of whipped branches batter all thought from her mind. But her fickle ears gave her clarity instead: every rolling, studded consonant and silver-toned vowel of the shapechanger’s incantation. She clamped her fists against her clenched jaw, torn screaming inside by the insidious progression of the spell. Lirenda remained unmoved throughout, her diction as carved frost while the crystal came alive at her bidding. СКАЧАТЬ