Peril’s Gate. Janny Wurts

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      Fionn Areth resisted, given short shrift as Dakar vented his leftover tension through scolding. ‘I’m damned glad you’re alive and still standing to greet me, boy. That won’t lift the blight of Daelion’s curse off the bone-headed folly that spared you! Your prince won’t have mentioned, but the risk undertaken to snatch you from Jaelot takes the prize for catastrophic stupidity.’

      At next step, they crossed into the ring of set guard spells. Fionn Areth cried out as a sharp tingle raked his skin. He nearly sprained the Mad Prophet’s wrist in his panicked effort to bolt.

      ‘Dharkaron’s bleak vengeance!’ Dakar exploded. Fingers locked in the Araethurian’s wet cloak, he held on, his corpulent bulk no more bothered than if he had bagged a struggling game fish. ‘Koriani witches changed your whole face through black use of their sigils of force. What’s a middling weak veil of concealment going to do, except save your skin from execution? Find the sweet reason that Ath gave your goats! Get yourself warm and dry enough to think clearly before you decide we’re your enemies.’

      Fionn Areth flushed, grumbled an apology in his backcountry dialect, then relented enough to let Dakar lead him into the shelter of the tumbledown mill.

      The roof had caved in to a rickle of slate, but the beamed track of the log carriage for the saw still stood. The planked platform winnowed the worst of the snow. In the single dry corner, cut off from the wind, Dakar had lit a neat fire. A pot of gruel bubbled over the flames. Four horses munched hay, tied by neck ropes to the skewed post of the mill shaft, its base secured by the massive runnerstone that had ground countless harvests of barley. The animals’ warmth blunted the edge from the cold. Beside three heaped saddles, acquired by means of forged requisitions and subterfuge, Dakar had blankets and cloaks and thick boots lined with lamb’s wool. The collection included two buck knives, a hunting bow, and provisions fit for a trek across mountain terrain.

      ‘Oh, well done, Dakar.’ Arithon unhooked the iced clasps on his mantle, hung the sopped cloth on the sacklift, and accepted the blanket tossed into his numbed hands. Swathed like a wraith, he resumed his expert inspection. ‘Where are the spirits?’

      Dakar chuckled. ‘Here was I, wishing the troublesome brains had been frozen clean out of your head. I’ve got spiced wine laced full of restoratives. If you drink too much, don’t damn me tomorrow. You’ll feel like your innards got packed with wet sand, with river rocks jammed in your eye sockets.’

      Between helping Fionn Areth, the Mad Prophet unslung a cord from his neck and passed over a stoppered skin flask.

      Arithon fumbled his effort to draw the cork. He grimaced, used his teeth, then shut his eyes in distaste and belted a hefty draught. The offensive sting made his eyes water. A husked burr of betrayal roughened his voice. ‘You didn’t mention lye-stripping the tissue off my poor vocal cords. I won’t sing a true note for a week.’

      ‘And right blessed that misfortune will be!’ Dakar shot back, scathing. ‘Given the powers you’ve roused up in blind ignorance, we’re lucky not to be cinders scattered over the Ath-forsaken dunes of Sanpashir!’

      He snatched up Fionn Areth’s discarded shirt, wrung out the cuffs, and hung the linen to dry. ‘You’ll find a clean tunic and smallclothes in the saddle pack.’ At the young man’s hesitation, his moon features knit into a glower fit to torch silk. ‘Don’t even think to protest obligation. You’re the guest of your crown prince. He’s oathbound by law to provide you his best hospitality.’

      ‘We’re touchy,’ observed Arithon, his thoughtful gaze on the Mad Prophet’s back. He rolled a sawn log closer to the fireside. As though his balance might desert him without warning, he perched. ‘Has your pending fit of prescience not lifted since sundown?’

      Bent over, rummaging through saddle packs like a corpulent thresher, with Fionn Areth hovering with bad humor and crossed arms, Dakar grumbled through his beard. ‘I’m hungover. Jaelot’s gin is a grade below horse piss – that much hasn’t changed in twenty years.’

      ‘I’m remiss.’ A wry grin lit Arithon’s fox features, tinged orange in the flicker of firelight. ‘Why not sample your vile restorative?’ He passed back the flask, while the tireless wind skirled snow devils across the darkened gap of the tailrace.

      The Mad Prophet ignored both comment and offering. Straightened up burdened to the chin with bunched clothing, he foisted the pile without apology on Fionn Areth. ‘Put those on.’ He accepted the flask and slapped its gurgling bladder on top of a sheepskin jacket. ‘As soon as you’re dressed, drink up. We’ve got to be moving before midnight.’

      Fionn Areth gaped, his arms clutching his third change of raiment since morning. ‘Why can’t we rest here?’

      Dakar threw up his hands, eyes rolled to white rings. ‘Because this is solstice, and the lane tides were unleashed to deliver your crown prince to Jaelot.’

      When Fionn Areth looked blank, Arithon ventured a more civil explanation. ‘This ruin sits on a natural watercourse. At midnight, a cresting flow of raw power will rip through the site like a conduit. Without the Paravian rituals to mitigate, the flood will rattle and shake any structure not blessed into alignment with the flow of Ath’s greater mystery.’

      ‘This mill tore to wreckage in the last causal event. And before you ask, yes, it was Arithon who sang the same powers active in Jaelot twenty-five years ago.’ Nakedly worried, Dakar stowed his bulk on a saddle pack. ‘The repeat performance to break your captivity might easily fell the last stones in these walls. You want to sleep under the rubble?’

      ‘I won’t sleep at all where there’s sorcery afoot,’ Fionn Areth retorted. Having suffered the brunt of mistaken identity, only narrowly spared execution for the selfsame sorceries raised by the hand of his nemesis, he gave each fold of clothing his suspicious inspection. If he expected copper-thread sigils worked through the seams of the hems, he encountered nothing amiss. Only sturdy, stitched hemp and plain cerecloth linings. Defeated at last by the merciless chill, he burrowed into a shirt and tunic better suited to his build than the castoffs garnered from the lady’s servant who had helped them evade close pursuit.

      While sorcerer and prophet shared out gruel and brisk talk, the herder buckled on his sword, then donned jacket and cloak. Leaned on a post, determined to stand guard, he declined to eat, wary lest he fall sound asleep among enemies.

      The contents of Dakar’s flask had a faint, metallic aftertaste. Fionn Areth drank deeply, too parched to realize that the spellcraft he reviled was in fact bound into the spirits. Grasslands ignorant, he gave no thought to question, even as the pungent restorative burned through his body and revitalized flagging, sore muscles. Restored to clear focus, warmed and eased back to comfort, he followed the conversation ongoing between the Mad Prophet of legend and the prince whose appearance the goatherd shared.

      ‘The Fellowship knows, then?’ Arithon asked concerning the defeated plot that entwined them.

      ‘Once you crossed through Jaelot’s outer wall, you broke through the ward the witches had set to forestall Sethvir’s earth-sense.’ Preoccupied with securing the saddle packs, Dakar shrugged. ‘Better worry more for Jaelot’s patrols. If I couldn’t scry you, then the Koriani seers are going to be hobbled as well.

      Their clairvoyants can’t act in full force for as long as the snow keeps falling.’ The water element in the storm would maze the transmission of spells set through a quartz focus.

      Arithon paused with his spoon half-raised, СКАЧАТЬ