Fugitive Prince: First Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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Название: Fugitive Prince: First Book of The Alliance of Light
Автор: Janny Wurts
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Книги о войне
isbn: 9780007346929
isbn:
Jieret quailed before apprehension. This was no stranger he confronted, but his crown prince, scarred and haunted by the trials brought down by the Mistwraith’s dire curse. The spring’s prophetic dream lodged too vividly in recall, with its wrenching potential for tragedy. The vision was terrifying, final: the wide square paved in brick, centered by its cordon of guardsmen and the unpainted rise of the scaffold, pennoned in the dazzling glitter of gold cord and sunwheel banners. His very pulse seemed to throb to the chant of packed onlookers. He shook off the mesmerizing hold of remembrance, in thought or utterance unwilling to grapple the silver-bright length of the executioner’s sword, then the scream of this same prince, fallen.
“I had an augury on your Grace’s life,” he rasped, torn by his need to be finished.
“Oh, how merry!” Arithon exclaimed, sardonic. “My fate’s already wound in auguries like tripping strings. No. Don’t plod through the hysterical details. Let me have just the bare facts.”
“You must listen!” cried Jieret, frightened by the dismissal. “After the slaughter at Tal Quorin, would you take my gifted dreams lightly?”
“But I don’t.” Unrepentant, Arithon accepted a blanket from Dakar that was combed free of furtive seals to bring sleep. He flicked the wool across his wet frame, winced as he fumbled a one-handed clasp, then stepped back to forestall more assistance. “I can manage. Am doing so, in fact. Your Sight does run true, more’s the pity. But for the sake of Rathain, I’d have preferred to be spared the unnecessary favor. As my oathsworn caithdein, your presence here can’t improve my wretched odds of surviving.” He spun, tripped over the stool in a startling turn of spoiled grace. “Now give me the details without any melodrama.”
“The time seemed high summer,” Jieret resumed, ferociously bland. “A public execution, under town auspice, with every appropriate trapping.”
“How splendid and trite. How predictable!” Arithon gasped back shrilling laughter. Perhaps goaded on by his caithdein’s sharp recoil, he bit back like salt in a sore, “All right, my sworn lord, your duty’s been met to the last grasping letter of the law. By kingdom charter, I’ve been properly tried and warned. Now for love of the realm, you are free. Return to Rathain. The fishing sloop that brought you sails tomorrow for Carithwyr on my personal orders. Her captain was told to expect you on board. You will cross High King Eldir’s neutral realm of Havish to reach your homeland, and avoid another tangle with Tysan’s headhunters.”
“Go,” Dakar urged, cued by a mix of dread and epiphany, since every shred of bad news out of Tysan would have emerged through that prior exchange with the fishermen. Arithon was not sanguine for very good reason, beside being too spent to cope. The Mad Prophet grabbed Jieret’s elbow, wide-eyed and imploring. “Come away. What you’re seeing’s not temper, but a mannerless plea to be alone.”
The clansman stayed fixed, his bleak, considered gaze upon the motionless form of his prince. He looked as if he might speak.
The Mad Prophet plugged his ears, shut his eyes, and cringed like a dog that expected a kick.
Yet Jieret held silent. When no explosion came from the figure under the blanket, the spellbinder cracked one eye open.
“For mercy’s sake, Dakar, just get him out,” Arithon stated in hoarse, deadened misery.
Like an obedient, fat ninepin bowling down a young oak, the Mad Prophet plowed Rathain’s young caithdein into prudent retreat through the doorway.
Summer 5648
The squall passed. Above the swept rocks of the fortress at Corith, stars emerged from the cloud cover. Sea winds combed the headland and slapped through the sailcloth roofed over the ruined north drum keep. Bronzed by the smoking stub of the oil cresset lit to treat Arithon’s hand, Dakar sat awake, keeping watch. Long since, the spooled silk and needles used to close up the gash had been tidied and put away. On the pallet, stone quiet, the Teir’s’Ffalenn lay sprawled in exhausted sleep.
The Mad Prophet listened to the call of the night-flying owl, mournful between the irregular tap of twine lacings. He waited, alert for the moment of inevitable aftermath. No man mentioned the Havens inlet in the Shadow Master’s hearing that dreams did not come and goad the prince screaming from sleep. Grateful that foresight had seen Lord Jieret dismissed before the inevitable backlash, Dakar settled his chin on plump wrists.
An hour passed, uneventful. The night smelled of puddled rock, mingled near at hand with the astringent bite of medicinal herbs. Gusts thrummed sighing through the cedars down the slope, cut by the whistle of a sentry, come back from the headland to roust his relief watch. Dakar traced out a fine rune. His trained talent as spellbinder raised an appeal to the air, then bent the element’s given consent to work a small construct of deflection. When the sailor just wakened in the compound raised a noisy string of complaint, no ripple of disturbance crossed the line of soft conjury to upset Arithon’s rest.
Somewhere in the thickets a fox barked. The midsummer stars arced across the black zenith, their dance unchanged through the centuries since man first inhabited Athera. Against their seasonal harmony, a whispered rustle of discord: on the pallet, one fine-boned hand spasmed closed. The Master of Shadow curled into a locked huddle and loosed a harsh breath through his teeth.
Dakar crossed to the pallet. He murmured a cantrip to ground his inner strength in the ageless stone of the headland. Then, as Arithon moaned, twisted sidewards, and thrashed, he grasped the slighter man’s shoulder. He caught the fist that snapped up toward his chin, winced for the abuse to new bandages, then pressed down in firm restraint. The prince he resisted might be sorrowfully thin, but his struggles were inventive and difficult. Dakar required main force to prevail. He turned the sharp s’Ffalenn features into the blankets and stifled the rising, agonized groan into the muddle of bedding.
“Wake,” he murmured. “Arithon, throw off the dream and come back.” He barbed each word in spell-turned clarity. “This is Corith, and everyone is safe.”
Dakar waited, spoke again. He absorbed the next onslaught of redoubled, blind fight as the Shadow Master tried to bludgeon free. Against his undignified need to cry out, the Mad Prophet held steadfast, until the corded tension under his hands dissolved through a spasm of transition. The Teir’s’Ffalenn in his care passed from nightmare into living remembrance of a horror no passage of time might erase. Then, as often happened, Dakar waited, silent, while the Master of Shadow softly wept.
The cresset by then had dwindled to a coal. Rinsed by ruby light, the Mad Prophet stayed his sympathy, while Rathain’s crown prince cocked an elbow and pushed himself upright. The single-handed sail to slip pursuit from the mainland had worn him. The resilience never recovered since Vastmark had abraded further in the months spent ashore. Terrors of guilt and conscience dulled the green eyes that regarded Dakar through the gloom, left them lusterless as sea-battered glass. The expressive, fine bones of the Masterbard’s hand rested slack on the coverlet, bundled flesh sapped of small grace.
“Daelion Fatemaster forgive me for the way I treated Jieret,” were the first words the Shadow Master said. He looked fevered. Minutes passed as he steadied СКАЧАТЬ