Fugitive Prince: First Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

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      Black haired, green eyed, pale as if chipped from veined quartz, the Master of Shadow poised on braced feet with his crossed arms wrapped to his chest. He was shivering. Shed droplets rocked off the plastered folds of his shirt and scribed rubied flecks through the torchlight. “There’s a parchment,” he prompted, succinct. “Let me see it.”

      At Jieret’s upflung glance of distress, the prince’s brows angled higher. “You can hear? Good. Than arise and stop looking amazed. Your mission’s no secret. Every forest scout I met crossing Falwood said a writ had been passed to my caithdein’s charge. If I’m not over-joyed to find Rathain’s left stewardless, at least I’ll see why no clansman in Havish seemed eager to look me in the face.”

      Jieret stood erect, his every movement cautious. That his prince was unarmed made no difference. The royal presence framed warning like the gleam on a lake of black ice. The pair of them were bloodbond, and yet, here stood a stranger masked in the features of a friend. This diamond-edged malice held a febrile, strung focus more volatile than Jieret remembered. While thunder boomed and shook the ancient foundations, and the rain thrashed in demented torrents, he became aware of Dakar’s tense stillness, as if even the whisper of a wrongly drawn breath might trigger the spring of a predator.

      Jieret’s hand did not shake in its office as he said, “I would soften this, liege, if I could.” In the uncanny, grave style inherited from his father, he drew the bundled document from the breast of his leathers and passed it across to his prince.

      Arithon stiffened at first sight of the seals: the crown and star blazon of the purloined s’Ilessid device, and another, stamped in a lozenge of champagne wax, the rayed sunwheel adopted since Vastmark. The Shadow Master flipped open the folded leaves, then tipped them to capture the torchlight.

      He read. His skin went from pale to transparent, and his very heart seemed to stop. Then he stirred. A word passed his lips, the staccato lilt of consonants framed in the grace of old Paravian. He hurled down the indictment as though its mere touch burned his flesh. Then he whirled, bent, and in a move of pure fury, plucked Jieret’s quilloned knife from the stool seat.

      “Caithdein of Rathain,” he intoned in chiseled, formal language. “The truth, on my word as your crown prince. If that’s not sufficient, you’ll have your sure proof through a death seal set into the lifeblood spilled from my body.”

      From the corner, Dakar gasped. Before Jieret could decry the necessity, Arithon closed an unsteady hand on the blade, over steel just meticulously sharpened. Scarlet welled from his palm, spilled through lean fingers, and ribboned slick tracks down his wrist. He inclined his head to the spellbinder.

      “You have my consent. Lay down the binding, my life as surety that nothing I speak is a falsehood.”

      Dakar arose. Raised to a grave majesty sprung from stark fear, he clasped Arithon’s wet fist. The spell rune he framed burned in lines of cold light, then twined like barbed ribbon through the rich flood flowing from the knife cut. “Beware,” he cautioned. “What you ask is done. One word of deceit will destroy you.”

      By ancient custom, the last scion of s’Ffalenn then knelt before his caithdein.

      The Shadow Master said in metallic distaste, “The deaths at the Havens are all mine, every one. But this charge of dark sorcery has no ground. No spell was spun, light or dark at that inlet. There were no fell tricks. No engagement occurred beyond arrows and steel, nor even the use of my birth-born mastery of shadow.” Still trembling, he regarded the spreading, red stain on his shirt cuff and finished his venomous delivery. “What happened was simple, cold murder.”

      He laughed then, wide-eyed, and spun the slicked blade. The point now angled against his own breast, its chased silver pommel a reckless invitation to serve judgment. “Are you horrified? Caolle thought treason and threatened to spit me with bared steel.”

      Jieret swallowed, stunned blank and sickened. Five hundred forty lives had been taken in cold blood: the truth forced out in a naked confession that asked neither quarter nor pity.

      “You can’t find the gall to ask why?” pressured Arithon, still venting pain into anger. “Or are you waiting for a Fellowship Sorcerer to gainsay a testimony made under truthseals?”

      “Almighty Ath, that’s enough!” Dakar launched himself across his clutter of belongings and with a competence few would have credited, snatched the knife from Arithon’s grasp. He discarded the blade and clutched the prince’s soaked shirt in both hands. To Jieret, caught aback as the Shadow Master swayed on his feet, the Mad Prophet cried in rebuke, “What more must you have? Kingdom law has been satisfied. Daelion himself! A crown prince’s blood oath alone should have satisfied that the charge of dark sorcery was false. Your duty could have demanded far less, since Caolle himself stood as witness.”

      With no gap for reply, he turned his invective toward the prince braced upright in his hands. “By Sithaer, you’re freezing! Where’s Cattrick? Wasn’t anyone aboard to share the watch on your sloop? How long were you out there, manning the helm in the storm?”

      “Galleys,” said Arithon, abruptly too worn to fuel his own manic fury. “Seven, with registry flags out of Capewell. I lost them six days ago, off the shoals of Carithwyr.” Against every precedent, he failed to resist as Dakar pressed him to sit. The drum of the rain nearly canceled his speech. “Cattrick’s still on the mainland. I meant him to stay. He’s agreed to return to my employ.”

      “He’s a fool, then.” Dakar shoved past Jieret, who felt awkward and in the way. Displaced wing feathers fluttered helter-skelter as the spellbinder cleared the trunk and flung up the rickety lid. “I won’t ask what you promised him.”

      Folded on the pallet, Arithon said nothing. His face did not show, his head being bent and resting on his knees. The fire in its makeshift bracket across the drum tower had finally ignited the oiled rags. Golden light limned his appalling exhaustion. His loose, sailhand’s cottons hung off his gaunt frame, except where heavy wet had slicked the cloth to his flanks. His wrists showed each ridge of old scars and taut sinew, and the cut on his hand bled too freely.

      “Liege, let me help,” Jieret begged.

      “Find him a blanket,” Dakar ordered, terse, then rummaged through his things, and snatched out linen strips and tied a pressure wrap over Arithon’s gashed hand. “Idiot,” he murmured. “You used that damned blade like a butcher. Got tendons laid bare. When the bleeding’s controlled, you’ll need to be sewn, or risk scarring that may mar your music.”

      “My throat isn’t cut. I can sing.” Arithon lilted a slurred line of doggerel taken from a dockside ballad. Then, as Jieret bent down to swaddle him in wool, his maundering humor fled before desperate focus. “Why are you here?” he demanded. A deep tremor racked him. He locked his teeth through the spasm, then ground on in unswerving logic, “Had that parchment reached your hand in Rathain, Dakar’s right. Caolle could have refuted those charges.”

      “My liege, not now.” Jieret scarcely noticed the tug as Dakar snatched the blanket from his fist. “The other news that brought me can wait.”

      “Ah, no!” Arithon shoved off the wool the Mad Prophet sought to drape over him. His eyes raked up, fever bright. “I won’t have that sleep spell you’ve slipped through the weave.” He shot to his feet, restored to command through animate, blistering irritation. “By your oath as caithdein, Jieret, speak.”

      The moment hung, its tension spun out in maniacal wind and the СКАЧАТЬ