Peril’s Gate. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ Araethurian goatherd readied the stop thrust to murder the last s’Ffalenn prince. Restored to self-confidence, in strict tutored form, Fionn Areth held his unwavering focus. He tracked the raised sword that would fail to deflect him, and so missed the deft flick of Arithon’s left hand, that launched the flat, little dagger.

      The knife struck, sunk hilt deep in the goatherd’s extended shoulder. He cried out, hand gone nerveless. His sword cast free, falling, sliced a glancing gash in the high cuff of Arithon’s boot. Left the main gauche, but no space to react, Fionn Areth ended his thrust, still in balance, but unable to effect a timely recovery given the wretched footing.

      Arithon stepped close. Stripped to desperate efficiency, he struck one sharp blow. Alithiel’s jeweled pommel clubbed Fionn Areth’s exposed nape and felled him, unconscious.

      The horses gave way before Dakar’s goading. They sidled ahead in snorting excitement, while down the choked gash of the draw the charging lancers bore in on the ruined mill. Swearing in language to raise fire and storm, Dakar reached Arithon’s side.

      ‘You’ve made a right mess!’ he snapped, voice cracking as he stooped to assess the wound in the prostrate boy’s shoulder. ‘Ath on earth, man! Why did you have to choose now to indulge in a schoolboy’s folly?’

      Breathing too hard, his sword smartly sheathed, Arithon recovered the herder’s dropped weapons from the snow. He secured Fionn Areth’s bared blade through a pack strap, then reclaimed the cold burden of the main gauche. ‘No folly,’ he gasped, flat sober and strained. ‘My given promise to meet him in challenge was made in dire straits, to make him leave Jaelot without argument.’

      ‘Damn good that does, now!’ Dakar retorted, then caught his breath at the stony expression locked upon Arithon’s face. ‘Don’t mourn. He’s not dying. Just stuck like a pig at the butcher’s. He won’t bleed to death. That’s assuming our captors allow me the grace to set him in bandages before they drag us in chains to the dungeon.’

      Arithon’s relief was a palpable force. He caught the near gelding’s bridle and flung the reins over the animal’s plunging head. ‘We aren’t going to be taken.’ He reached again, snapped the packhorse’s lead out of the Mad Prophet’s stunned grasp, then vaulted into the saddle. ‘You’re to keep that boy safe! Promise me! Use every means necessary, breach my private trust as you must. Just teach him that I’m not his enemy.’

      Dakar missed his grab for the gelding’s lost lead rein. Ever and always, he failed to keep pace with s’Ffalenn cunning through a crisis. ‘Arithon, no!’

      But the oncoming riders were near, and fast closing, leaving no time to argue poor strategy.

      ‘Ward this place, now! I’ll divert them.’ Arithon closed his heels, spurred, pitched the horse underneath him from a standstill into a gallop. ‘Given shadow, I ought to manage.’ As the packhorse swerved and bolted in response, Arithon called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll find you, or meet you when Evenstar docks!’

      Both horses and rider crashed into the wood, extended in flat-out flight.

      Dakar stood his ground by the deserted mill. He extended the spells for ward and concealment by rote, while the horn call as the lancers wheeled and turned sounded all but on top of him. Nor could an untenable choice be reversed. Shouts pealed through the storm, fired by discovery as Arithon crossed a thinned patch of wood, or perhaps a woodcutter’s clearing. He would have lagged purposefully for that brief sighting, to draw the danger away after him.

      Dakar could not rejoice for the respite of safety. Naught remained but to tend Fionn Areth. That charge left the spellbinder heartsick with shame, for in fact, against the world’s peril posed by the Mistwraith, the life left in his hands was the expendable cipher. Whether moved by compassion for feckless youth, or some sense of misguided loyalty, Dakar knew his excuse for inaction fell short. He had failed the primary obligation set upon him by command of the Fellowship Sorcerers.

      Rathain’s irreplaceable, last prince now rode alone. He carried no better protection than his birth gift of shadow, and a paltry few sigils of concealment stitched into the livery hack’s saddlecloth. Whipped to zealous pursuit, the mayor’s guard from Jaelot pounded hard on his trail, swallowed at length by the fall of fresh snow and the gloved ink of solstice night.

       Winter Solstice Night 5670

      Retaliation

      On the hour before solstice midnight, the vintner’s shed where the Koriani enchantresses in Jaelot held their headquarters lay in flickering gloom, the reek of cheap tallow stewed through the tang of stirred dust. The flames in the dips hissed and dimmed to the drafts whining through ill-fitted shakes. Sifted snow let in by the cracks sheeted glittering residue in the corners. Only one of the circle of women who manned the crude outpost rejoiced for the upset to the order’s covert plotting. Well accustomed to the ramshackle joinery that made the rough shelter a misery, Elaira lay curled in her cloak. She had finger-combed the worst tangles from her damp glory of bronze hair. Undone by the relief of Prince Arithon’s escape, she slept through the first peaceful moment she had known since Fionn Areth’s unjust incarceration.

      Lirenda viewed her younger colleague’s repose with distaste. Less inured to tough setbacks, too riled to accept the wormwood of defeat, the senior enchantress paced the shed in mincing steps and balked tension. Her hands shook. Agitated reflections snapped through her rings like actinic sparks in the flame light.

      Her assigned circle of peers maintained stiff decorum. Anxious lest her shortfall brand them in shame, they endured her irritable commands in strict silence.

      Lirenda rebuffed their probing questions. She gave no explanation for the monumental lapse in propriety that had allowed Arithon s’Ffalenn to bolt through Jaelot’s cordoned walls.

      ‘You must find him!’ she exhorted her overworked seeresses, still bent in trance over a water-filled vat once more joyously used to mash grapes.

      Failure to secure the Shadow Master’s capture framed a setback of calamitous proportions. In peril of ruin, Lirenda demanded another spell-driven sweep of the countryside. Her foul mood stayed relentless, as though by persistence she could expunge the memory of the branding kiss the s’Ffalenn prince had bestowed to unravel her upright character.

      ‘You realize we waste time,’ Senior Cadgia pointed out, her steadfast patience frayed ragged.

      ‘Search wider,’ Lirenda lashed back in hissed sibilance. ‘I won’t hear your excuse for the static thrown off by a mere winter storm. The s’Ffalenn bastard can’t go far on foot in such weather. I’ll know where he shelters, no matter how thorny the setbacks!’

      Deliberate before such needling superiority, the elder seer addressed the frosted white image that rejected her skills in the scrying vat. The sigil she sketched with competent briskness did not frame the seals to generate ordered renewal. Instead, fingers snapping, she engaged the chaotic rune of dispersal.

      The spelled binding that framed the construct for tracking dispelled as a sheet of blank light.

      Ahead of Lirenda’s explosive rebuke, Cadgia let fly her long-suffering temper. ‘No! Enough of this foolery.’ She pushed to her feet as though her back ached. ‘I told you before. Your fugitives lie under Dakar’s warded protection, no easy barrier for our skills to break through, even under auspicious conditions! My circle of seeresses are all bone weary. Your fruitless schemes have exhausted their СКАЧАТЬ