Peril’s Gate. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ numbed hands. A frown marred her ivory forehead, while her mind turned in bitter calculation. The events were too perfectly aligned for less than a calculated endgame. She saw, for all time, that she had become the duped butt of Morriel’s manipulation. The old Prime had set her up, blindsided her with distractions, even played upon her flaws to ensure she would be distant and preoccupied through the crucial change in succession.

      Lirenda reviewed the irregular facts, doused by the needling, certain awareness that her presence at hand would have posed a sure threat. Only a former First Senior could have known of Selidie’s outright incompetence. The young woman had never been remotely capable of surviving a second-level initiation, far less the rigors of the ninth test required of all aspirants who had achieved the seat of Prime office.

      ‘What have you done?’ Lirenda demanded of the departed spirit of the crone who had wrangled and cheated her. ‘Ath, oh Ath, what was your grand plan, that you dared not risk me as a witness?’

      The wind gusted, rattling the door on its hinges. Snow crystals scattered in driven bursts against the gapped board walls. Inside, ignited to towering fury, Lirenda paced, the dust lashed to billows at her back. Her cloak snagged a hook on the bottle rack. She snapped the hem free, uncaring as the lining tore with a scream of ruined silk. Her skirts with their elaborate layers of gold stitching flared to her agitation like the charge in an oncoming squall line.

      No human balm could absolve her deep pain. The hate scalding through her lacked target or recourse. One stroke had cut off the prize she had pledged her whole life to pursue. The ignominy galled. Her initiate’s vow to the Koriani Order would permit no release into freedom. All her days, she would suffer in dog-pack subservience for the sake of a kiss in an alley. Arithon’s unconscionable intervention sealed her fate. Her name would now wear the same taint of disgrace that Elaira had borne for three decades.

      ‘May you scream, chained in Sithaer, prince and Spinner of Darkness!’ Lirenda swore under her breath. Even still, his near memory scalded her mind. She relived the branding, hot passion, unwilling, of her lips against his, pliant with ecstatic surrender. Damned for all time for a liaison of the heart, she reviled the love she could neither banish nor conquer.

      She would suffer Morriel’s most wretched revenge for that failing. Another ignominy piled on the first, when impatient ambition had driven her to break the original grand construct designed to snare the Master of Shadow.

      She had not righted one shred of the balance. Arithon s’Ffalenn still ran free. Ever and always, the cipher that damned was her drawing fascination for his royal gift of compassion. His triumph had fashioned her insufferable downfall, and oh, she knew, might easily do so again.

      Lirenda clamped her fists in frustration. She was condemned to mediocrity, but scarcely helpless. If Arithon’s wretched play on her heartstrings had destroyed her brilliant career, she had a lifetime left to exact her retaliation.

      Two steps, three, her skirts snagging cobwebs from the staves of half-rotted wine tuns, Lirenda paused between strides. Miracle of miracles, amid avalanching setbacks, the tools for her use already lay in her hand.

      Earlier that day, she had imprinted a sigil of command on the captain of Jaelot’s garrison when the man’s gruff competence had to be steered clear of her delicately plotted affairs. Yet the construct wrought at need on the street still remained fully active. Renew that one cipher of manipulative control, then key it to a geas of obsession, and Lirenda could draw the mayor’s captain on puppet strings. Add a tangling net of spells, and Prince Arithon’s flight could be hounded beyond reason and sanity.

      The s’Ffalenn bastard would suffer for the snatched kiss that had condemned her to final failure. Lirenda vowed to seal his demise. How easily she could make him the beset hare in the path of a bloodletting hunt.

      The idea took firm shape. A warm thrill curled through the enchantress’s black rage. ‘Oh yes, your royal Grace, you’ll pay well for your ill-gotten freedom.’

      Lirenda began by inscribing eight ritual circles to cloak her act in deep secrecy. The craft she invoked must not perturb the lane flux. Like the spider who stole from a rival’s web, she worked outside strictures that governed her trained use of power. Rage snapped all restraints. In furtive steps, she laid down the sigils which ensured that the backwash of shed resonance would be absorbed within her own body. A few days of sick weakness would be worth the satisfaction of seeing Arithon s’Ffalenn hunted down like a forest barbarian.

      Protections in place, Lirenda knelt by the vat last used for Cadgia’s scrying. Welded to the cause of unvarnished spite, she caught the silver chain and cleared her spell crystal from her high collar.

      ‘An,’ she whispered, the Paravian rune for one, which opened the first stage of ritual. She traced the primary rune of binding over the membrane of ice on the water, then added in sequence the chained string of ciphers that claimed a man’s will beneath the threshold of consciousness. A breath through her crystal infused her sketched symbols. The construct pulsed active, shedding harsh purple light that could burn to blindness the eyes of the careless. Drawing from the passionate well of her hatred, Lirenda laid the grand patterning, the weave of each strand and interstice as knotted silk over the maw of the vat. Fire was her natural element. The lit ruby lines of her sigil of summoning clashed into ice, scalding up whistling steam. Thawed water exploded to roiling froth, then flattened, subservient to her bidding.

      The enchantress laid her dire work onto the blank sheen of its surface. Eighth-rank initiation lent her powers an edge her less-accomplished sisters would envy. She knew the forbidden lore; the annals of chaos, where natural force could be spun in linked seals to cause harm. Sign and countersign paired, each rune and sigil enchained to dark purpose, Lirenda raised a field of charged air over the mirroring water. Her will reigned supreme inside that masked space, and there, she pronounced a Name the ritual three times in summoning. An image resolved, showing the blunt, weathered features of Jaelot’s veteran field captain.

      An impatient man, sharpened with years to a deep-set, suspicious awareness, he handled his troops through exacting perception and a brusque, no-nonsense competence. A hard man to know, his trust was infallible. The barbed coils of a Koriani sigil of binding were going to require a specific opening to exploit.

      Lirenda gave that hindrance no second thought. Like any born human, the man would have weakness. To an enchantress schooled in the high arts of observation, the seamed lines of the face formed a map of the captain’s innermost character. His secrets could be gleaned through devouring survey, from the measure of resilience that sustained his vitality, to his most stubborn virtues, and his hidden pockets of vice. Each facet of self became hers to entrain in the tailor-made geas to drive him.

      A flick of wrought power upstepped the spell’s resonance. Lirenda surveyed the man’s unveiled aura with its chiaroscuro imprint of personality. She unraveled each shadow, the petty dishonesties and shortfalls shot like mean yarn through the bright strands of courage and dedication. The unseen cords of bound energy let her interpret the bonds held between family and kinfolk. She sorted each diverse thread, the lesser ties drawn in friendship, or in strength, or in bullying authority, and gained private insight into the men who comprised the captain’s command.

      A half smile curved Lirenda’s lips. Before her, the loom upon which she would weave her curse upon Arithon’s destiny.

      Quartz in hand, the enchantress entrained its spiraling axis as the focusing needle for her intent. She began stitching sigils and ciphers into the spell-summoned guard captain’s aura. Ideas would seed thoughts, which would spin urgent plans, until the creature she claimed as her cat’s-paw would rise and muster his troops, then press them to pursue the prey of her choosing.

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