Grand Conspiracy. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ quarterstaff. By the scars crisscrossing her knuckles, she had wielded weapons throughout a hard lifetime. Her jacket of fox fur blended her diminutive form amid the changed leaves of the maples.

      ‘How long?’ she asked him, her voice the aged quaver of water-smoothed stone, rinsed by a tumbling brook.

      Asandir paused, his gaze turned to flint beneath a fringe of dark lashes. ‘Days. Maybe five, before the first caravan from the south can use the road without leaving prone bodies. No man bearing steel will escape, even then.’ He brushed a caught leaf from his hair and firmed the reins to stall his inquisitive horse from nipping the sleeve of his shirt. ‘No victim will suffer, rest assured of that much. The awareness of trees regards time very differently. Lysaer’s troops who fell senseless will lie in stasis until they find release from the dream. Your people must take flight as soon as they may. Abide by my warnings. They’ll stay safe as long as none breaks the covenant laid down to appease the roused might of the greenwood.’

      ‘No steel and no fire?’ The grandame wheezed out a fluttery laugh. ‘Our folk know their place. We’ve laid in stores to hold us through the next fortnight.’ Before then, the last clanfolk would have slipped past Lord Harradene’s unstrung cordon. Their fighting strength would regroup in the rugged mountains in Camris. The young who had families would cross Mainmere estuary by boat to claim sanctuary in Havish. The Alliance’s campaign of persecution was this day deferred, with Tysan’s threatened bloodlines granted reprieve for continuance.

      That such survival came at a price, the old woman and the Sorcerer never doubted. Tysan’s trade route to the east was now irremediably severed from the moment northern snows closed the passes; and with slave-bearing galleys disbarred from King Eldir’s coastline, the crisis would find no relief.

      Blame for those woes would only lend impetus to Lysaer s’Ilessid’s pitched campaign of intolerance. Asandir foresaw the cost of this day’s reprieve written in bleak terms on the future: more armed troops raised for the purpose of war against mage talent and, ultimately, to hunt down and kill by the Mistwraith’s fell geas, the Shadow Master, who was Rathain’s last living prince. Too aggrieved for speech, he moved to return his borrowed horse.

      Cenwaith’s firm touch caught his wrist in restraint. ‘You’ll not be staying, Kingmaker?’

      The Sorcerer shook his head, the weariness bearing upon his broad shoulders a yoke he dared not defer for his own needs or comfort. ‘I cannot.’ He gathered himself, while her kind eyes sought and failed to plumb the extent of his urgency. ‘The troubles I forsook in Midhalla to come here have strengthened and grown in my absence.’

      Courtesy kept her from pressing with questions. Since he need not seed pointless worry at his back, he answered with direct speech. ‘The trees will lapse back into somnolence on their own, once they’re left undisturbed, and if the crown rescinds its sealed edict to enact their destruction by fire.’

      Caravan masters would eventually learn not to hack down live wood. Nor would Tysan’s leagues of armed headhunters fare reiving for scalps with their former impunity. An eerie unrest would settle and linger. In the odd, haunted glen, the oldest stands of forest would cling to isolate pockets of self-awareness. Years would pass, perhaps a century or more, before equilibrium was finally restored.

      ‘The Alliance offenders who are comatose will be carted away and cared for, if not by the crown, then by their own friends and families.’ A mote of thin sunlight struck through the chill air, and lent fleeting warmth to farseeing gray eyes as Asandir spoke his conclusion. ‘The trained men of war and those minds most firmly committed to violence may linger in trance. But unless they were sickly before this began, no lasting harm will befall them.’

      Not so easily solved were the dangers in Mirthlvain left at large in his haste to cross the continent; nor must the stout heart give way before sorrow, that the act which spared Caithwood must force Taerlin’s clanborn to forsake their beloved home territory. ‘The forest will guard itself well enough. Your people can safely return in due time. Once Sethvir finds his way back from the grimward, he will act to settle what loose ends he can. The trees here will abide by his reassurance and release those lives held in abeyance.’

      A gust raked the grove. Leaves fell, gilt and chestnut and flame red, ripped into capricious eddies. Cenwaith pressed thin hands into her fur jacket, the quarterstaff rested against the straight frailty of her stance. Her dark eyes tracked the flight of a jay and returned no reproach for fate’s cruelties. Then the locked moment ended. Her regrets stayed sealed into stoic silence. She cocked her head, her sparrow’s pert gesture infused with the implacable will to survive the onslaught of bitter storms. ‘Keep the horse, Kingmaker. May our gift of him speed you to trouble-free passage.’

      Asandir’s leashed austerity broke before a smile of revealing warmth. ‘My need is far less.’ He unwound long fingers from the leather rein and clasped hers in their place with a moth touch that promised the endurance of mountains. ‘There will be strayed Alliance war mounts trailing their bridles and hanging themselves up in thickets. There I can borrow without hardship. Let my thanks be the more for your care of me, lady. Carry my blessing with your people, and pass on my regards to your caithdein.’

      He left her then without fanfare, a reticent figure who fared forth on foot, mantled in forbidding solitude. His presence claimed no grandeur. The formal blue cloak with its loomed silver ribbon stayed bundled inside the rolled blanket he carried slung over his shoulder. His long strides bore him into the deepwood with the unconscious grace of the king stag. Nor did he look back as the grandame waved him on his way in farewell.

      Already his restless thoughts bent toward Mainmere. For stark necessity, another word of thanks he owed the reigning clan duchess there must be deferred to blind haste. The spawned horrors of Mirthlvain would wait for no niceties. Shepherds on the Radmoore downs would see their flocks slaughtered if the seasonal migration from the mire was not swiftly curtailed.

      Asandir quickened pace. Harried as he measured the hours he had lost in oblivious communion with the trees, he knew he must raise the power of the lane with the utmost dispatch and transfer his presence out of Tysan.

      The first winter snows rimed the roads when the Alliance courier bearing word back from Caithwood reached the seat of state government at Avenor. Gace Steward gave the shivering, chilled rider a weasel’s darting inspection, asked once, and was shown an authentic set of seals from the supply officer stationed at Watercross.

      ‘Come along.’ A discerning intelligence lurked behind the royal house steward’s furtive, quick carriage. He snapped narrow fingers for the servants to open the door wider. Against the scream of raw wind and the stream of the wax lights set in the sconces by the entry, he beckoned the tired courier inside. ‘Follow me. His Grace of the Light is at light supper with his Lord Commander, Erdane’s resident delegate, and eight city ministers of trade, but for news out of Taerlin, I promise you’ll have his ear.’

      Too weary to have scraped the mud and rime from his boots, even had time been given, the courier directed his stumbling step down the carpet that paved the wide hallway. The chink of his spurs cast thin echoes off the vaulted ceiling, and his cloak slapped, wet, at his ankles. His impression of gilt-trimmed opulence framed too great a contrast, after his weeks of enduring chapping gusts off the river and reeling, long hours ahorse on roads choked in wet snow and darkness. A liveried servant pattered ahead and flung open the door to the banquet hall. The light flooded outward, too bright, and packed with a heat of perfumes and rich sauces. Noise rolled into the corridor, a barrage of argumentative voices fit to stagger the exhausted courier where he stood.

      Gace Steward’s clever grip set him steady. ‘Just wait. I’ll have you inside for your audience straightaway.’ As if the prospect СКАЧАТЬ