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

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СКАЧАТЬ query passed unheeded as the old man burst into the inner circle, quashed the sullen, smoking coal in the brazier with a bare-handed touch, then faced the herb witch head-on.

      ‘My lords, beware!’ snapped the Alliance Lord Commander, spurred to an explosive rush forward. ‘This newcomer wields true magecraft.’

      The old man in his motley turned not a hair, despite the scrambling retreat of crown officers, then the Lord Examiner’s outraged order to stand firm, and the subsequent cry for the royal guards to form a defensive cordon.

      ‘The stick,’ the stranger demanded. Each word fell distinct through the wail of bared steel. As though disconnected from the surrounding consternation, his attention remained fixed on the woman as he extended his hand. ‘I’ll dispose of it safely.’

      ‘This is a rank outrage!’ Avenor’s Lord Examiner elbowed past the dumbstruck secretary and clerks, his slab jowls jerked to a tic. ‘Who are you?’

      The old man smiled, the turn of his lips beneath beard and hood disarming as new butter. ‘Someone you’d dearly enjoy burning, no doubt.’ Still focused on the hag, he asked, ‘Woman, what do you fear?’

      ‘No fear!’ shrilled the crone. ‘Not of you! None for him.’ Her distraught gesture encompassed the diamond-still presence of the state official who had thus far not deigned to speak. The moment of impasse gained force and momentum, while the crone clutched the stick, and a cold like spun current ran off its incised runes and shaved the air brittle with danger. The court magistrates stopped their clamor; the guards froze to a man. Lord Examiner Vorrice turned his nose sharply, a hound on a scent, then snarled at the Lord Commander at Arms, whose hard restraint trapped his wrist.

      ‘What do you fear?’ the old man repeated. His entreaty held a note of compassion that belled through explosive stillness.

      The woman’s gaze fell. ‘I fear to burn. You know this.’ The stiff, clawlike hand clasped to the artifact spasmed to trembling frailty. Whatever malevolent force the stick channeled seemed poised, unstable as the suspended cling of a waterdrop.

      The old man surveyed her desperate stance and discerned deeper meanings behind her simple admission. ‘You’re cold. The winter is cruel where folk are made fearful of those who sell the old remedies. You may take my word for your safety and the promise of shelter.’ He shed his rag coat in one fluid motion. ‘Go to freedom in Havish in exchange for leaving that stick.’

      ‘You have no right to release a crown convict!’ pealed the Crown Examiner in flushed rage.

      ‘But I have, in this case.’ Underneath the drab motley, in startling transformation, the old man wore wine red robes with edged borders of black interlace that looked newly made from the tailor’s.

      ‘Your bond, I can trust,’ the crone relented. Her short laugh held an unlooked-for delight as she yielded and curtsied, and let him accept the stick from her unsteady grasp.

      The pending sense of danger built and trembled on the air. Though the candles burned straight in the draftless atmosphere, the stone floor seemed to rock without movement.

      With no fanfare, no warning, the old man ran his gnarled palm hard down the length of the wood. The staff spoke, a chilling vibration of sound like the wail of a terrified child. In shattering contrast, the light that bloomed under his sure touch was wrought out of limpid clarity. A wash of bound energies whined past and dispersed. The candles streamed then, and the scentless backwash ruffled the feathers and damp hats of the magistrates, and shot queer, starred pulses off the steel of the guards’ helms and weaponry. Nor was the staff scatheless. The carved runes dissolved in a spatter of red sparks, licking scintillant fire through the odd, silent courtier’s pale ermines and exquisite linked diamond studs.

      What remained in the old man’s hand was an oak stick, polished and plain, now innocuous as a countryman’s walking cane.

      ‘Thank you, grandmother.’ The elder returned the stick to the crone with unstudied, gallant courtesy.

      At his back, the Examiner’s outrage inflamed the bunched mass of courtiers.

      ‘You’ve no right to grant a reprieve to crown prisoners!’ Lord Vorrice burst out. To Avenor’s taciturn Lord Commander at Arms, he ordered, ‘Restrain him, at once.’

      The guards moved. The metallic notes struck off their mail and edged weapons splashed echoes the full length of the warehouse.

      The old man glanced up, droll. ‘Are you foolish?’ He engaged the masked gaze of Lord Commander Sulfin Evend, even as the royal guards closed and surrounded him.

      Amid the official party, the sleek crown councilman seemed the only other man to appreciate the irony of the challenge.

      Nor was Sulfin Evend either hot-blooded or rash, to rise to the old man’s baiting. His calm called a halt on the guardsmen’s aggression, and his speech stopped them cold between strides. ‘Sethvir of Althain,’ he addressed, his formality reamed through by corrosive sarcasm. ‘Why have we the pleasure?’

      The named title electrified the gathering to fear. A hairsbreadth from bloodshed, guardsmen gripped their weapons, and the magistrates shrank, feathered hats and jeweled finery shuddering to the beat of sped pulse.

      The person revealed as a Fellowship Sorcerer stepped away from the crone, his fingers clasped behind his back like a child caught out stealing sweetmeats. ‘Oh, shall we bandy words, now, instead of engaging with weaponry?’ He winked at Sulfin Evend. ‘For one thing, there will be young wives in Etarra who want living husbands brought safely home to their hearthstones.’

      ‘The crown would be grateful,’ Sulfin Evend agreed, as cutting as any unsheathed steel in this surprise ambush of courtesies. ‘Though your charitable thought is of questionable standing since your colleague was the one who cursed these men to enchanted sleep in the first place.’

      Sethvir raised mild eyebrows, offended. ‘Asandir did no such thing. He merely allowed Caithwood’s live trees to respond to an unfair endangerment. Or did you not make your eloquent case in Lysaer’s state council to sue for a decree of burning and destruction?’

      ‘This is rubbish!’ broke in Vorrice. ‘A tree can bind three whole companies of fighting men into a lethal coma? What an asinine flight of fantasy!’

      ‘Actually, no. They prefer not to kill.’ Sethvir sidled another half step, disarmingly patient. ‘Nor will they, if everyone stays reasonable.’ While the crone snatched her chance to melt into the shadows, he coughed politely, craned his neck, then raised his hand to fend off the converging bristle of pole arms. ‘How uncivilized we are,’ he chided. ‘After taking the trouble to travel in winter, I’d rather not step out beforetime.’

      Under Sulfin Evend’s unflinching regard, the guards stiffened their weapons and held their ground.

      Sethvir shrugged. ‘Have things your way.’ He dismissed the Lord Commander as he might have abandoned an instant’s idle survey of a fly. ‘You overdressed blunderers make a splendid display, intimidating all the wrong people.’ All devilment, he beckoned to the cowering royal secretary. ‘Come forward, man. Stop shaking as well. Nobody’s going to skewer someone’s liver on a pike. Your wooden-faced high councilmen are merely going to set royal seal to an edict that pledges the heartwood of the forests Lysaer’s grant of protection, for all time.’

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ