Grand Conspiracy. Janny Wurts

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ were shorthanded, with one of them crippled, and another, even now, gone past the veil into mystery. Blunt-nosed, ever-practical Luhaine settled, a viselike well of cold coiled around the sunloop’s filigree stand. A nimbus of light clung and shimmered off the delicate metalwork. The cast-gold circle still held the unearthly elegance that set Ciladis’s character apart. Abalone inlay threw off misted rainbows where the far-flung spells of vision ranged dormant, a whisper of suggestion smothered within a cruel and unanswering silence.

      As always, the radiant grace of the sunloop made Luhaine feel coarse as old smoke. Still worse, the faint sense of shame and betrayal, as he tapped into the gossamer web of fine energies and changed the significating rune from a figure of joy to one that harkened to discord. Light plunged into darkness as the spell’s focus reversed its original polarity.

      The scene that formed in the loop’s clouded center showed him the prelude to ruin …

      The visioning revealed the white-marble floors of Avenor’s grand hall of state, rebuilt from ruin in Tysan. Under the costly, clean glow of wax candles, two high officials conferred.

      One hulked solid as weather-beaten rock from his hard-bitten years of field service. An unshakable presence, with his clipped beard and wedged forehead, Lord Harradene had served as Etarra’s Lord Commander at Arms since the death of his predecessor at Valleygap. The other beside him, who flourished a sealed requisition, was dark haired and neat as a ferret. His gold-trimmed surcoat might be cut fine as a courtier’s, emblazoned with the sunwheel of Avenor’s royal guard, but the sword and steel dagger that hung at his waist showed the battered, dull scars of hard fighting. Young for his high position at court, he spoke with a brisk, sharp-tempered confidence, to which the older veteran deferred.

      ‘I presented your petition.’ A furtive flash of teeth, though the eyes remained inimically still as poured nickel. By the sliced vowels of the man’s accent, Luhaine identified Sulfin Evend, lately invested as the supreme commanding officer to spearhead Prince Lysaer’s armed offensive.

      The speaker resumed with a focus that matched his purposeful bearing. ‘His Grace of the Light has heard your appeal. Your men will not quit the field before winter without chance to snatch back the victory.’

      Lord Harradene’s thatched eyebrows rose, dislodging a scowl like a logjam. ‘We’ll get more troops? That’s laughable! They can’t possibly arrive before the cold weather puts fodder in critical shortage.’

      Sulfin Evend’s nerveless response affirmed his reputation for sharp swordplay and vicious strategy. ‘His Grace won’t send troops.’ Light shifted like misted pearl over his silk as he strode past the niche of a casement.

      Harradene flanked like a shambling bear, canny enough not to waste words.

      But Sulfin Evend quickened for challenges; his razor-sharp smile provoked. ‘Avenor’s treasury’s too tight. The trade guilds all know it. They’ve seized up their ears and their purse strings. The ones with paid spies are all squalling like stoats. Can’t be more funding until our Prince of the Light inspects his shipyard at Riverton and sets the launchings there back on schedule.’

      Before Harradene’s bull-roaring protest gained force, the lean fingers, with their ancestral gold ring, snapped up the sealed state parchment. Sulfin Evend’s grin widened, oiled as the fox with a chicken clamped in its teeth. ‘Don’t let your joy spoil the fun. The Prince Exalted has granted you means to roust out your pesky clan renegades. You now hold permission to set fire to Caithwood to clear out the cover that hides them.’

      Lord Harradene’s beard split in half as his jaw dropped. Then he shouted and clapped Sulfin Evend on the shoulder. ‘Tell your Exalted Prince I’ll be more than delighted to oblige.’

      Uncoiled like fluid ice from the gleam of the sunloop, Luhaine flounced in agitation. ‘Prince Exalted,’ he muttered. ‘Aren’t we getting high-and-mighty, and just a bit large for our breeches?’ He spun off the shelf, rattling the wired fastenings of Sethvir’s oak-paper tags. ‘And burn Caithwood?’ Luhaine seethed on toward the locked and barred door, hurled his essence through the keyhole with a force that raised a shrill whistle. ‘Just try, you self-righteous, arrogant ignoramus! It gives me great satisfaction at last to be handed the Ath-given license to stop you.’

      Past the stubs of the candles in their wrought-iron sconces and down the foot-worn spiral stair, Luhaine ranged like a self-contained wind devil. He passed the commemorative statues of departed Paravians arrayed on the tower’s ground floor. The poised flutes of sunchildren lent fretful voice to his passage. Stone unicorns reproached with their fixed, sightless eyes, the shine on raised horns like the gleam of dropped tinsel in the late-day glare through the arrow slits. Massive, carved centaurs endured in marble majesty; their jeweled caparisons and linked chains and gold braid rippled to Luhaine’s distress.

      The Sorcerer despaired for the timing.

      Threat to Caithwood must perforce overshadow his concern for Koriani malfeasance in Araethura. Sethvir was beyond reach, gone to stabilize the protections that guarded the grimward in Korias. Since time flowed differently inside that dire vortex, no one could predict his return. Disdainful of oaths, Luhaine whined past a carved cornice.

      A blind fool would have realized Prince Lysaer would not recall his crack troops from the field. Not without one last flourish to bring Caithwood’s clan defenders to their knees.

      Luhaine slipped through the wards that secured the trapdoor leading to Althain’s dungeon. His annoyance raised hoarfrost on the black-iron pull ring, and the oiled chains and counterweights geared to move the massive slab sang back in disturbed notes of dissonance. Sieved through by uneasy, ozone-rank air, Luhaine flowed down another stairwell. He emerged in the blue-tinged glow cast by the third lane focus circle the Paravians had inlaid in white quartz and onyx over a bedrock foundation.

      With candles unlit, and the vaulted ceiling in darkness, the pale marble walls loomed like a veil of merle smoke. The spiraling flux of the lane’s background flow raised tingling eddies against Luhaine’s unshielded spirit. He passed the carved gargoyle that overlooked the east radiant, its beeswax candle left untrimmed by Sethvir in his rushed hour of departure. Luhaine claimed his favored perch on the statue that stood watch pointing north. Between its curved horns and the bronze socket for the taper, he poised, a distilled point of cold amid the faint web of light swirling from the pattern’s vortex.

      Ath help the Fellowship’s straits, risk of fire in Caithwood left no other option than to recall Asandir from the field.

      Luhaine spun thought and imprinted the fine energies like a spider spinning in light. His summoning ward stitched ephemeral frequencies into Name for the colleague he wished to contact. A Fellowship ward seal tied the call to the east wind, for guidance. The construct of bound energies would disperse down the third lane, then be picked up in turn by the seasonal breezes that ranged across latitude, driving the currents that spawned the cyclonic winter gales. The shed leaves of turned trees and birds in migration would imprint the resonance of the spell and expand its range, until the designated Sorcerer heard his Name in the air and responded.

      Small use to mourn, that no such broad summoning had managed to locate Ciladis.

      Brooding to the bent of his maudlin thoughts, Luhaine cast free his small binding. The Paravian rune circle flared delicate gold as the field magnetics of Athera accepted the minuscule burden of its signature. Last anyone knew, Asandir was at Methisle fortress to help contain another outbreak of methuri. Unless the aberrated creatures held the isle under siege, the Sorcerer should return to Althain Tower on the tide of the lane surge at dawn.

СКАЧАТЬ