TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (39 page)

Into the wondering triumph of the moment, as Jieret spoke the rune to seal his flawless execution of grand conjury, Arithon s'Ffalenn used his silence like weaponry to wear down resolve and compel space for second thoughts.

Jieret stayed unmoved. He tucked the spelled mica amid the packed contents of the last acorn without fumbling. 'For the love I bear you, Arithon, I return the gift of life you gave me as a boy on the banks of Tal Quorin.'

Such drilled quiet could have burned, for its baleful intensity, Jieret reaffixed the acorn's cap, careful not to mar the minute chains of ciphers scratched over the seed's oiled surface. He secured the end with pine pitch, spoke the name for the Paravian rune of ending, then wrapped the finished construct in a loose twist of silk. As he tucked the fated bundle into the breast of his jerkin, he concluded, 'You're not free to refuse, liege. Not belore you have tasted fulfillment, as I have: conceive an heir in marriage with the woman of your choice and raise Rathain's next crown prince to maturity.'

Silence, from the Teir's'Ffalenn, as the realm's acting steward arose to his lanky, full height. Sketched in the failing light of the candle stub, he loomed large as his father, his broad hands as capable, and his carriage as self-assured as he shouldered the deliberate next step.

Braggen watched, seized dumb, as Jieret struck the flint and lit the spill of herbs left bundled and waiting. He reinscribed the line of the circle holding the Teir's'Ffalenn. No vital step omitted, he cut himself separate from Arithon's ward of containment, then sealed the new circle behind him with a crisp incantation and a powdery trail of warmed ashes.

Arithon tried again, spoke Jeynsa's name with each syllable of appeal pronounced with a mas
terbard's attacking clar
ity.

Jieret fielded the strike, placid. 'On the hour my daughter swears her oath as
caithdein
she'll embrace the steel of her heritage. She has been raised strong. As the Fellowship's marked candidate for my succession, she'll rise to her inheritance and forgive us both for what comes of this day's work.'

'If she might, I won't.'
Half-unmanned by his failure, Arithon faltered, his gift for glib satire broken by strain into vindictive desperation.

'You forget,' Jieret answered. 'I know you too well. However you bristle and snap, your compassion can seed no rancor. For that, you've forgiven me already. It's your conscience that's hounding you past reach of peace. Have done, brother. For my sake, and yours, let it go.'

Inarguably firm, he aske
d Braggen to hand him Alithiel's
empty scabbard.

'I'll renounce you,'
threatened Arithon.
'Your family, your heirs, everything you stand for! I'll turn my back. If I survive, they'll watch: me walk away, forgetting the names of your father and mot
her, and
every misbegot
ten offshoot of your lineage.'

'You wouldn't, and you can't,' Jieret contradicted. 'If the truth hasn't moved me, your lies just demean you.'

Rammed against an unyielding defeat by the High Earl'l immovable courage, the conflicted presence of Arithon s'Ffalenfl whirled in raging bitterness. The fabric of his very self all bui came undone as he saw his bluff called. Never before this had hi| arsenal of threats been so savagely reduced by bare honesty. Even had Jieret not known his true heart, a blood-pacted friendship sworn under the sighted strength of his mastery was utterly beyond his present power to revoke.

He could do nothing,
nothing but rage,
as his
caithdein
laced the scabbard in the black silk cord pulled from his ripped-off shirtsleeve. Warded word, and arcane sigils laid down at each crossed junction, remade the battered leather into a spelled prison to bind him. Then the parallel lines, drawn by the birch twig, and sealed with dry ashes, framed the path that would join the connection.

Braced to finish the final stage of the ritual, Jieret asked for the sword. Deaf to pity, he sat with the blade's icy length pressed between his fixed palms. He made the incantation, flawless and sure, that traitorously transferred his liege's Named permission into the warded black metal.

Against silence like a cry, he returned the weapon to the hands of his waiting Companion. 'Braggen, on my word, you will raise the sword Alithiel and thrust her blade through the circle of ash that holds Arithon's spirit form captive.'

The victim found his voice, a peal of blazing torment that raised sympathetic resonance from cold stone. Vibration cast back in subliminal echoes, to lift the hair at the nape.
'Jieret, no, don't do this!'

Made aware by Braggen's bounding start that the plea had sheared within range of hearing, Jieret stiffened to adamance. He confronted his prince, his hewn features drained pale, and his voice racked to stark desperation. 'Even if, in my place
you know well you would do the same thing?'

'Still, I ask you,
I beg you,
don't do this. Bear the spelled sword yourself. Stay at my side as we planned.'
A stricken pause, then the admission, delivered with stripped human need,
'After you, there is no one else but Elaira. Can't you see how your loss would diminish me?'

A long look, exchanged between
caithdein
and sworn prince; a stretched second, fractured from time by pure heartbreak. In speechless communion, the locked conflict between them encompassed a love beyond words. The bonding first made with the boy at Tal Quorin had grown to mean more than blood, more than duty, more than the gift of breath and life.

The one moment was too unutterably fleeting to carry the hope and the pain that should have endured to the peaceful, quiet parting of old age.

'No,' Jieret gasped, his tone flattened and final. 'I see too well I've made the right choice. You might give too much, if I rode beside you. The temptation to spare me might drive you to jeopardize your survival. Caolle would have endorsed my fair judgment. Braggen's better with the sword, always has been.' After a frightful, shuddering pause, he mastered himself enough to manage the echo of his most wicked smile. 'You'll live to be crowned as Rathain's next king, or else leave s'Ffalenn progeny. In memory, I'll still stand beside you.'

Cruelly isolate within the spelled circle, Arithon's spirit form lashed back in emphatic rejection.
'You can still change your mind! Cast the mica construct into the running waters of the Aiyenne. Jieret, you'll have done far more than your duty to Rathain on the instant you've won a diversion.'

And again, Deshir's High Earl gave back his refusal, sealed by a
caithdein'
s irreproachable integrity. 'The crown charter we guardian can't stand on the foundation of our mortal attachments.'

'Bedamned to the law, if it strangles the care that gives our wretched existence its meaning! The weight of royal sovereignty is as much my bane as any warped destiny bound by the curse of Desh-thiere.'
Shattered, unable to weep for the fact he was helpless, Arithon recoiled at last against the tenacious thorn of his character.
'I am not reconciled,'
he insisted.

And yet, Teir's'Ffalenn and Torbrand's lineage to the very bone, he gathered the bleeding shreds of rent pride. In thankless torment, he strove to embrace the left burden of an insupportable tragedy.
'Meet my death well, Jieret. Swear to me! Promise! Make Lysaer strike you down fast and clean in the open! By the tenets of clan custom, you won't let his Alliance fanatics seize their chance to take you alive.'

'Ath keep you safe, liege,' was all Jieret said. 'On the hour, when it comes, I'll give Caolle and Steiven and the others who have loved you all of your heartsore regrets.' At the crux, only tears slipped his ironclad control. Scalding drops traced his cheeks, their soundless agony absorbed into the graying strands of red beard that had made his name the scourge of the Northern League of Headhunters.

Jieret had the rest of his nerves kept in hand as he nodded his signal to Braggen.

Nor did man or sovereign flinch through the devastating instant of parting. Eye to eye, heart to heart they endured the shearing grief as Braggen carried out his called duty.

The black sword sliced the circle. Hungry spells set into the metal by unbending design first swallowed the scintillant golden aura, then the defiant, bright spirit and vital personality of Rathain's last sanctioned crown prince.

Darkness remained, scored ghostly phosphor by the lines of spelled circles, and the less ordered flare of the struggling candleflame.

'Sheathe the weapon,' Jieret instructed. His split-gravel command splintered the horrific silence wedged like a gap in stilled air. 'The cord ties hold all the protections wrought to shield him.' Freed now to release the dammed flood of his sorrow, he fumbled with palsied hands and found the strip of fine silk torn away from Arithon's shirtsleeve. 'Hold the weapon up. The hilt must be wrapped. Otherwise, his Grace's naked presence will offer a beacon for scryers on the instant we break the outer circle.'

Braggen did as he was asked. His own need to weep all but choked the labored breath in his throat. He stood fast, while Jieret set the last wards and bindings, and swathed Alithiel's black cross guard in the frayed length of silk. Nor could he avoid a harrowed glance sidewards at the body which lay, much too still, amid its calyx of bearskin. 'You court the very edge of disaster,' he husked as he received the harsh weight of the sword.

'I know. If we fail, we lose everything.' Jieret refused to dwell on his own coming trial, but delivered his rapid instructions to the last remaining Companion. 'You have one day, and
no more than three,
to see Arithon out of this territory. Once the sword's drawn, all the spells will disperse. Our liege will awaken, restored to his flesh. Keep the blade always at hand. If Lysaer prevails, see that his Grace dies free, beyond reach of the Mistwraith's cursed madness. Keep his horse tied to yours, that if mishap befalls, you won't separate.'

Time again stole the moment to exchange speech or encouragement. In silenced efficiency,
caithdein
and Companion swept out the used circles. They picked the cavern meticulously clean of every slight sign of their presence. The herb satchel was packed, the knife oiled and restored to its place in Prince Arithon's saddle pack. When the horses were loaded, the two clansmen gathered up the limp form still wrapped in the mantle of bearskin. Together they bore their liege out of the cleft. He weighed very little, a rag doll whose touch seemed incongruously warm for the corpse-slackness of limbs and body.

Under the pallid, platinum sun, buffeted by winter that raked the land with unnatural tenacity, they securely lashed Arithon's unconscious frame on the back of the fittest gelding. Then Braggen mounted. Still stripped to his jerkin and his lightweight, studded brigandine, Jieret set foot in the stirrup as well. Only the wide
-
open sky of the barrens bore witness to their rushed parting.

'Good hunting
.'
said Braggen, self-consciously brief, and no artist with speech under pressure.

'Guard my liege well.' Jieret found no more words to send back, on the chance his Companion survived him. He had none for Jeynsa and his two sons, that the raising of them had not spoken. For Feithan, he trusted her woman's wisdom to know the strength of his lifetime affection. His prince received a swift touch on the crown of the head. No help for the fact the distanced mind would not feel or retain any trace of remembrance.

Jieret set determined heels to his horse, and reined its blazed head firmly westward.

Moved to blind tears as the animal sprang to a canter that scattered a spray of loose gravel, Braggen called out, 'Ath keep you close!'

Then, at a whisper sawn through by raw grief, he addressed the unconscious prince whose life now became his given charge to protect. 'I could not have done as he did. Perhaps for an enemy I hated beyond life, but in love, I could never have spurned the appeal torn whole from the depths of your heart.'