TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (27 page)

* * *

A white moon rode the sky, three nights past full. Winter stars framed the hour, precisely.

A gaunt man dipped a glittering bronze pendulum in fresh blood and uttered unclean incantations through the drug-scented smoke of a brazier. One hot, scarlet droplet spattered the map, and ignited a scene of pandemonium.

'Rise!' screamed a priest in a sunwheel robe, standing guard at the site where the bloodstain had marred the inscribed terrain of Daon Ramon. His fanatic's glazed eyes beheld auguries in fire, and his shouts awoke horn calls that shattered the night calm.

'Rise and ride!' he exhor
ted. The banner he flourished in
frenzied excitement showed the tower and mountain blazon of
Darkling. 'In the name of the Divine Prince, the faithful are called to raise swords for the cause of the Light!'

Rousted by his cries, men stumbled from sleep. They cursed, and groped through cold darkness for weapons and harness, and untied nervous horses from the picket lines. Trained hands yoked the six-in-hand teams to the supply sledges while the visionary priest bellowed his urgent tidings.

'Our allies from Jaelot drive the Spinner of Darkness in flight across Daon Ramon Barrens! For the mercy of the world, we are charged to take arms. Blessed is the steel that cuts down the enemy without quarter, and blessed the man who sends his black spirit to Dharkaron!'

On edge and watchful, Darkling's task force of three hundred advanced, westbound and primed for engagement. Through the eye of the raven, they appeared nondescript, a tinker's scrap of pins and steel filings, cast across moonlit dales. The defiles swallowed the shrill gleam of their steel. Gusting wind masked the snorts of their horses. Ahead, alone under the vast bowl of night sky, the Master of Shadow turned before them. He lashed his band of stolen geldings to flight, a tactic of graceless necessity.

Darkling's three hundred had caught him, exposed. They spurred their fresh mounts and gave chase. Vision showed their charge into the dry gulch of the Severnir. Relentlessly trapped, Arithon responded. The white moon showed his face, wrenched to wild-eyed grief, as he engaged his born gift and wrought shadow.

The bursting wave of the enemy advance plunged headlong into a well of spun blackness. The dark showed them no mercy, nor the ancient, water-smoothed boulders scabbed over with rills of green ice. The horses floundered. Rank upon rank, they tripped, and snapped legs, catapulted head over heels while their riders sprawled, dashed and broken among them. The rear guard reined back from the treacherous ravine. Valiant officers regrouped them. A brave few pressed ahead and picked out a safe crossing, only to find the unnatural darkness sucked the life and warmth from their bodies.

The terrain proved no ally, but winnowed them separate. First scattered, then cut down to groping, small groups, men blundered and circled and cursed the blanketing blindness until their wretched mounts shivered beneath them. The balking arrivals were driven on, whip and spur, until the iron bit rings froze fast lo the flesh of their muzzles, and tore them to headshaking agony. Frightened riders drew rein and halted. The prudent who paused to seek wood and strike fire met their doom before moonset. The stones in the riverbed sang them to sleep, and the shadowing chill stopped their hearts.

The ones who wandered, distraught, survived, barely. When the first blush of dawn touched the white-shrouded waste of the barrens, the company that had marched from the city of Darkling numbered a scant fifty-six. They cursed the name of the Spinner of Darkness. Some wept, while hurried cairns were raised over the glass-stiff, few corpses they recovered. Others sharpened their steel for revenge, oblivious to the punishing toll their defeat must exact from the thorns of s'Ffalenn conscience. The sunwheel priest led the rites for the fallen, then accosted every man still fit enough to raise steel to press the minion of evil who had veered west to avoid them.

'We have brothers in Light marching down from Etarra. They must be warned of the ruin we've faced, lest they close unaware of the danger. The Divine Prince himself sweeps eastward from Narms. His power of Light will dispel these fell shadows. For the weal of the land, we must not falter now! Let our losses this night renew our dedication. Honor their memory! Redeem their sacrifice! Let us harry the Master of Shadow without letup. Drive him like vermin into the net the Alliance will cast for his downfall.'

* * *

Vision faded back into the form of the raven, poised like a live cipher on the map. It opened the midnight fan of its wings, then sidled northwestward, each mincing step an unembellished recounting of Arithon's marathon flight. Although Earl Jieret received no encompassing visions, he sensed sharp impressions, of punishing cold nights spent without fires, and the flaying torments of east storms. He touched, like an echo, Prince Arithon's despair, as he laired like a fox in the thickets. He shared sapping nightmares of dead men and warped music that did not dispel under daylight, but only changed form into memories as damningly punishing. The raven's cry bespoke madness and pain, intensified by the season's cruel hardships and the passage of days that extended to weeks of relentless solitude.

Nor did the map remain clear of enemies. Where the raven walked, Darkling's fragmented company pursued, vengeance bent. Earl Jieret sensed their advance on the face of the parchment, the swarming specks of miniature men mounted on ant-sized horses. He beheld the more mass
ive incursion from Etarra, then
the response to Darkling's sent courier that caused them to wheel as though choreographed. In time, a cordon closed in tight lines to box in Arithon's position.

'They know where he is,' Earl Jieret surmised, stormed by gut-wrenching alarm.

The raven regarded him through its sequin left eye. Plunged through the glistening pitch of its iris, Rathain's
caithdein
beheld the chilling confirmation of his hunch. The sunwheel priest sent as the Alliance diviner traced the Master of Shadow's each move with foul arts and a blood-drenched pendulum. His scrying would synchronize three city war bands, and see Arithon s'Ffalenn hazed like a trapped beast to slaughter. While Etarra and Darkling and Jaelot closed the noose from behind, Rathain's prince would be systematically hounded into the advance out of Narms, and into a final disastrous encounter with Lysaer
s'Ilessid
. The confrontation sparked to flame by the Mistwraith's curse would end in battle and agony on the frozen banks of the River Aiyenne.

Overwhelmed by sinking despair, Earl Jieret understood that the s'Ffalenn gift of compassion was going to destroy any possible hope of reprieve. The past upheld proof. Once before, Arithon of Rathain had used the full range of his mage talents in defense of his threatened people. Though his act had staved off an annihilating loss, the toll of fallen had left him shackled in guilt. His access to talent had been blinded. On the plain of Daon Ramon, his mage-sight would stay blocked; but now, inexorable training had raised the art of his music to bridge the veil and rebuild a new framework to access the mysteries.

That power could kill; had now led men to death. Entangled in the Mistwraith's geas of destruction, bound by blood oath to the Fellowship Sorcerers to seek survival by any expedient, Athera's titled Masterbard would face Lysaer and the Alliance with no other weapon to hand.

Just as clearly as Jieret knew the maiming potential of steel, he foresaw that Arithon would be forced to raise music in the cause of self-defense. Even if he survived, the fierce brilliance of his bardic gift would become crippled, as stifled to silence as the born talent for mage-sight already tragically sacrificed.

Such a blow to the heart would not be sustained. Arithon denied the expression of music posed a penalty too harsh to contemplate. Jieret ached for the quandary. Aggrieved that his war band would not be enough to stem the oncoming disaster, he cast his appeal to the raven. 'If you're sent here to guide, then how can I help?'

The bird regarded him. Black as the void, a creature born of the uncanny fusion of feather and bone and great mystery, its gaze seemed to weigh the sincerity of his heart, if not the exact sum Daelion Fatemaster placed on his living worth. Pierced through and nailed by that measuring survey, Jieret felt his courage tested as never before. Even amid the blood heat of combat, the stripped force of his will had not given way, or threatened, as now, to unravel in weakness and fail him. Only his unyielding love for his prince held him from looking away.

'How can I help?' he entreated again. Surrendered long since to the perils of the dream, and to the cruel price that could be demanded to uphold his
caithdein'
s service to Rathain, he matched the raven's dense scrutiny with challenge sprung like fire from the core of his being. 'I will not choose the life of my liege, or his sanity, ahead of my bound task to shield him. I have an heir and a sanctioned successor to carry my family name after me.'

The bird bowed to him, a tribute that touched him like pain for its unexpected magnificence. Then it cawed shrill warning, and bent its dark head, and stabbed its bill through the map where the River Aiyenne turned back on itself in a south-bending, horseshoe crook.

Earl Jieret took sharp note of the site, then wept as he grasped the significance. One chance; a precious, uncertain bid for salvation, if the men in his war band were willing to throw themselves into the breach. They might engage the armed might of Lysaer
s'Ilessid
in the tangling brush of the river bottom. Not to triumph; they were too few to hold out any hope of a victory. But if at the critical moment they could buy a few hours' delay, the trap jaws might be jammed from closing.

By the tightest margin, the fateful impact of Desh-thiere's curse might be thwarted. Given the slender reprieve of his sanity, Arithon s'Ffalenn might seize his opening and slip through.

If his Grace sprinted headlong for the trade road, his northern clan allies could guide him into the Mathorn uplands. Posted scouts kept tight watch over the pulse of trade traffic, waylaying town couriers for news. Born of Fallowmere bloodlines, they were specialized, skilled raiders. No one could make better speed through the mountains ahead of hostile pursuit. They knew which fishermen could be bought, and which could be trusted to have sympathy. If Rathain's prince could be spirited across Instrell Bay to make landfall on the shores of Atainia, he could, claim refuge at Althain Tower by his royal right to ask sanctuary.

'I accept your message
.'
Jieret said to the raven, unafraid, though the losses that statement demanded would come to leave bereft families in Halwythwood.

The bird croaked out a bitten reply. Dreaming vision spun away on a breath. The flat parchment chart dissolved back into snow-clad ground, where chill gusts chased wind devils of blown ice. The stepped hills to the east wore the first, silvered blush cast by the rising moon. Jieret blinked. He tossed off the stifling weight of his bearskin and sat up to signal the watch he was wakeful.

The sight of a live raven outlined in snow shocked him still. A prickling rush of dread doused his flesh. He swallowed, locked wordless, while the bird ruffled indignant feathers against the freezing assault of the breeze. It quorked once in testy, sharp inquiry.

Ath, I know you!' Jieret expelled a hissed breath in relief, aware all at once that guidance had come on his prince's appeal to the Fellowship. Only one Raven in Athera could transcend the veil and circumvent the earthbound paradox of time and space. 'Tell the Sorcerer, Traithe, I honor his wisdom. Give him my thanks, on behalf of my prince, and in my name as Teir's'Valerient.'

The bird cocked its head, returned a terse croak, then beat its spread primaries and flew. It did not take wing through earthly airs, amid the buffeting cold of Daon Ramon, but disappeared of rough a hole in the night that bent its flight through the heart of the mysteries.

The snow beneath its departure was not left pristine. In swept crystals fanned by the arc of stretched wings, stamped in miniaturized relief by the tread of its talons, Jieret surveyed a topographical map of Daon Ramon. One site was marked out by a smoking drop of blood. There lay the crossroads of I lithe Mistwraith's staged conflict, where Lysaer
s'Ilessid
would face Arithon s'Ffalenn with Alliance armed forces a closed door hedging his back. Symbols denoting the phases of two moon cycles marked the hour the half brothers would do battle with Light, sword, and Shadow, unless Jieret, with his war band and his trusted Companions, gave their lives to effect intervention.

No choice; Jieret would act as his father before him, and stand pound in war for his prince.

'We ride
.'
he informed the scout who arrived to call him to counsel. 'Prince Arithon has effected his escape from Ithamon, and I have received Sighted guidance from a Sorcerer. We must go north with all speed and spend all our resource to hinder Lysaer
s'Ilessid
.'

The scout made no sound, no complaint, no murmur of consternation. He listened, stone steady, while Earl Jieret cracked out expedient instructions. 'If no man in our company stands down from this task, then I appoint Sidir to go back alone, and bear these dire tidings to Halwythwood.' A pause, while a tight throat stopped words, then the finish, 'He'll argue the assignment. But someone must serve my daughter as war captain. Of all the Companions, he knows Arithon best. Jeynsa will need his sound guidance beside her on the hour she's called to shoulder my title in succession.'