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

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      Sethvir actually smiled. ‘Impasse. I can leave.’ As Sulfin Evend shifted forward to engage the guard, he added, ‘Don’t make your men party to an embarrassing mistake. No mere unsheathed steel can gainsay me.’

      ‘I will find your weakness. Take that as my warning.’ The Lord Commander’s burning gaze took weight and measure of Sethvir’s timeworn features before he signaled his men to lower their weapons and stand down. ‘Go from this place. Make your way back to your tower in Atainia empty-handed. We can afford to lose every man who lies here in the cause of true service to the Light.’

      Again Sethvir raised tangled eyebrows. This time his inquiry focused on the smooth countenance of the one crown councilman, whose silence was now striking, and whose masked intelligence bespoke deeper motives behind unobtrusive restraint.

      ‘Every living man’s sword counts in this war against shadow,’ that glittering personage contradicted. ‘Nor will your evil works claim even one who lies stricken for the sake of another’s stiff pride. You may dictate your terms,’ he said to the Sorcerer. ‘Rest assured, I hold the authority to sign documents in the absence of his Grace, the Blessed Prince.’ Wholly contained, his hair combed silk under the uncertain flutter of candlelight, he finished in unruffled majesty. ‘Make no mistake. This is not capitulation. We are large enough in the strength of our faith to meet your demands and recover.’

      ‘You can’t yield,’ Lord Examiner Vorrice interrupted, his breath thickened to fury. ‘Prince Lysaer would never bow to a threat, nor give this enemy any footing for demand.’

      ‘Peace, Vorrice,’ murmured the high councilman, unperturbed, his collar of jewels like pinned points of ice hung on a nerveless wax statue. ‘There is no demand our Alliance cannot grow to overcome, given time.’ To Sethvir, he assured, ‘My writ will be honored. The secretary and the clerks can draw up a document in state language, and the ring on my hand will stand as the seal for Prince Lysaer’s personal bond.’

      ‘A parchment inscribed with your signature will do,’ Sethvir said, neither set back nor moved by that claim to a regent’s high sovereignty. ‘True intent of the heart can be read from such things, and a tree has small use for wax-impressed symbols and words penned in noble formality.’

      ‘This is pure outrage!’ Crown Examiner Vorrice ground out, hissing loud, whispered protests, even as his rival councilman snapped ringed fingers to a secretary, who responded out of trained habit. ‘No Sorcerer should be cozened! Fire and sword would make a fit ending––’

      ‘But not at the cost of six hundred lives,’ that glacial personage cut in. His eyes were steel filings snap-frozen in ice, and his voice chilling as he spoke in ultimatum to Sethvir. ‘Your hour will come, if not in my lifetime, then in that of my appointed successors. Light will stand firm against sorcery and darkness without making martyrs over principle.’

      While the secretary shuffled parchment, then offered the pen for the endorsement, he signed with no trace of regret. His fulsome, flowery cursive spelled out name and title, Cerebeld, First High Priest to the Prince of the Light, Alliance precinct of Avenor.

      In flawless, cast calm, he stepped forward. His own hand relinquished the document to Sethvir. ‘If the forest clan families will ally with the Shadow Master, if they continue to molest honest trade through bloodshed and raiding, rest assured, the Divine Prince and right action will annihilate them. Faith and sheer numbers must tell in the end. Lord Harradene of Etarra will no doubt be pleased to rededicate his city garrison for the purpose.’

      Sethvir rolled the new edict into a scroll, his delight rebounded to an unwonted solemnity. ‘Dear man, you might hold an office granted by the hand of usurped mortal power. That gives no license to make choices Ath Creator would spurn for the sake of respect. Always ask before you make foolish promises concerning another man’s free will.’

      The full truth, Prince Lysaer’s high priest would discover in due time: that a man who had once dreamed the peace of the trees was unlikely to return to a soldier’s life of trained violence. Of the crack Etarran troops imported to clear Caithwood of its meddlesome enclave of barbarians, not a one would arise in fit state to resume the way of the sword. They would garden, or farm, or live disaffected; some few would find their way back to waking contentment in the disciplines of Ath’s Brotherhood.

      After knowing the tranquil awareness of the trees, Lysaer s’Ilessid’s war-bent call to religion would move them to open abhorrence.

      Sethvir turned his back on Avenor’s delegation. In complete disregard of the magistrates’ dismay, the Lord Commander’s smoldering fanaticism, and the outrage of Lord Vorrice and the guards, he smiled to the master healer, who waited unforgotten on the sidelines. ‘See to your charges,’ he instructed, even as the first ripple of movement stirred through the stricken men on the cots. ‘They are released now, and waking, and will need human comfort as they find their way back to awareness.’

      Someone groaned in the dimness outside the lit circle of candles. Feathers twitched, and fine fabric sighed to the sharp shift in tension as the magistrates craned heads to observe. During that one unguarded moment, the Fellowship Sorcerer slipped away. No one saw his departure. That single, uncanny second of suspension should not have allowed him the time he required to step out.

      And yet he was gone. The outer door to the warehouse gaped open. Chill winds bored in, admitting a vindictive blast of snowflakes until a testy official barked for the page boys to shoulder the huge panel closed. Through the yammering complaint of Lord Vorrice’s indignation, Commander Sulfin Evend made incisive, dry comment that the old herb witch in her coat of rag motley had apparently disappeared also.

      ‘Sorcery! Evil practice engaged in our very presence!’ Vorrice gasped, his face red, and his indignant, ham fists clenched in his sunwheel cloak. He demanded an immediate hue and cry, until High Priest Cerebeld touched him silent.

      ‘Patience,’ said the man who was the Voice of the Light in Avenor. ‘Evil will not be banished in a day. Nor will our trial against darkness be won through pursuing one Sorcerer prematurely.’ His gaze of notched ice raked over his disgruntled officials, then the royal guardsmen, left empty-handed and shamed. ‘No one failed here.’ His fervor rang, end to end, through the warehouse, fired with faith and invincible conviction. ‘I charge you all, let the timing be Prince Lysaer’s. Tysan needs an heir to ensure the succession. Once the throne is secured, hear my promise. Our Alliance campaign will carry the Light forward. By the grace of divine calling, the minion of righteousness will see an end to sorcery and oppression. On that blessed hour, every city on the continent will rise under the sunwheel standard!’

      By the advent of dusk, Avenor still seethed with the mounted patrols rousted out by the Alliance Lord Examiner. Men-at-arms had spent a long afternoon displacing indignant families. Their search swept street by street, and ranged down every midden-strewn back alleyway, seeking a renegade Sorcerer and an escaped convict named as an herb witch.

      Evening closed in, gray under the swirling, thin snowfall that had dusted the city through the day. The west keep watch blew the horn that sounded the closing of the gates; the lamplighter made rounds with his torch. Neither fugitive was found, despite a posted crown reward, and the pointed fact the Fellowship Sorcerer was said to be wearing a conspicuous maroon velvet robe. As darkness deepened, and the keening wind blasted flaying gusts down the streets from the sea quarter, the guardsmen retrod old ground like balked hounds. They endured shrill abuse from shopkeepers and matrons, and dodged the rime thrown off the wheels of drays bearing cord wood, and live chickens caged in tied baskets of withies.

      Bedraggled and wet, a mounted СКАЧАТЬ