Kitabı oku: «The Curse of the Mistwraith», sayfa 3

II. SENTENCE

Twenty days out of South Isle, the last unaccounted warship breasted the horizon off Port Royal; Briane backed sail and dropped anchor in the harbour of Amroth’s capital. Word of her s’Ffalenn captive overturned propriety in the decorous court of the king. Shouting wildly, the nobles presiding in the council hall abandoned themselves to celebration. Briane’s first officer emerged from his audience with a dukedom; the king’s own collar of state circled his neck, and the fingers of both hands, including thumbs, were encrusted with rings bestowed by exuberant royal advisors. When word reached the streets, angry crowds gathered: the s’Ffalenn name was anathema in Amroth. Guardsmen in ceremonial regalia set about closing the stalls on Harbour Street, and the royal honour guard marched out under the crown prince’s direct command to transfer the Master of Shadow from Briane’s hold to the security of south keep’s dungeons.

‘The bastard sorcerer is mine to break,’ said the king.

The announcement brought a frown to the face of the realm’s high chancellor. His liege’s obsession for vengeance had caused events to transpire with unnatural speed. Although the facts of the prisoner’s condition were listed in the crown prince’s report, at present that document lay scattered on the carpet under the feet of a congratulatory crowd of favourites. The prince himself had been summarily dismissed to muster guardsmen; that others who were equally informed did not dare broach the subject was predictable. The king’s ire had too often broken the heads of the innocent over matters concerning the s’Ffalenn.

Within the city of Port Royal, one man alone remained oblivious to the commotion. Arithon s’Ffalenn never knew the men-at-arms who carried him through cordoned streets to the south keep of Amroth castle. Still drugged senseless, he heard none of the obscenities shouted by the boisterous mob which choked the alleys beneath the wall. The more zealous chanted still, while a smith replaced the wire which bound his hands with riveted cuffs and steel chain, without locks that might be manipulated by magecraft. When the guardsman dragged him roughly from the forge, the rabble’s screams of spite passed unnoticed; the cell which finally imprisoned the Master of Shadow was carved deep beneath the headland which sheltered Port Royal from the sea. No sound reached there but the rustle of rats. Shut in darkness behind a barred grille, the last s’Ffalenn lay on stone salted like frost with the residue of countless floods. Hours passed. The drug which had held Arithon passive for over two fortnights gradually weakened, and the first spark of consciousness returned.

He ached. His mouth burned with thirst and his eyelids seemed cast in lead. Aware, finally, of the chill which nagged at his flesh, Arithon tried to roll over. Movement touched off an explosion of pain in his head. He gasped. Overwhelmed by dizziness, he reached inward to restore his shattered self-command.

His intent escaped his will like dropped thread. Despite a master’s training under the sorcerers of Rauven, his thoughts frayed and drifted in disorder.

Something was seriously amiss.

Arithon forced himself to stillness. He started again, tried once more to engage the analytical detachment necessary to engage basic magecraft. Even small tricks of illusion required perfect integration of body and mind: a sorcerer held influence only over forces of lesser self-awareness.

But his skills answered with supreme reluctance. Distressed, Arithon fought to damp the pain which raged like flame across his forehead. Had he misjudged his balance of power? A mage who attempted to manipulate a superior force would incur backlash upon himself at the closing moment of contact. Arithon felt a small stir of fear. A mis-cast of this magnitude could not be careless error, but an act which bordered upon suicide. Why? He drew a shuddering breath.

The air smelled stale, damp, salt-sour as flats at ebb-tide. His eyes showed him vistas of blank darkness. Unable to pair either circumstance with logic, Arithon emptied his mind, compelled himself to solve his inner turmoil first. Step by step like a novice, he cut himself adrift from physical sensation. Discomfort made concentration difficult. After an interval he managed to align his mental awareness; though the exercise took an appalling amount of effort, at last he summoned mastery enough to pursue the reason.

With balanced precision, Arithon probed his physical self and compared what naturally should exist to any detail imposed from without. A cold something encircled his wrists and ankles. The pattern matched that of metal; steel. No botched enchantment had snared him here; somebody had set irons on him. Firmly Arithon turned the implications of that discovery aside. He probed deeper, dropped below the surface sensations of chill, ache and muscle cramp. The damage he found internally made him recoil. Control broke before a tide of horror, and memory returned of the desperation that had ruled his every action since capture. He had sought the clean stroke of the sword because he had not wanted to reach Amroth alive. But now, oh now, the s’Ilessid who had taken him had no right!

Arithon expelled a whistling breath, enraged by the nausea which cramped his gut. Instead of granting death, his captors had poisoned him, drugged him with an herb that ruined body and mind just to salve their king’s demand for vengeance.

Arithon stilled his anger, amazed that so simple an exercise sapped his whole will to complete. Enemies had forced him to live. He dared not allow them liberty to unravel his mind with drug madness. As a mage and a master, his responsibilities were uncompromising: the dangerous chance that his powers might be turned toward destruction must never for an instant be left to risk. Rauven’s training provided knowledge of what steps he must complete, even as the self-possession that remained to him continued irretrievably to unravel. Already the air against his skin seared his nerves to agony. His stomach clenched with nausea, and his lips stung, salty with sweat. The stress to his physical senses had him pressed already to the wretched edge of tolerance; experienced as he was with the narcotics and simples used to augment prescience, for this onslaught, he had no space at all to prepare.

Slowly, carefully, Arithon eased himself onto his back. Movement made him retch miserably. Tears spilled down his temples and his breath came in jerks. The attack subsided slowly, left his head whirling like an oil compass teased by a magnet. Steady, he thought, then willed himself to belief. Unless he maintained strict mental isolation from the bodily torment of drug withdrawal, he could neither track nor transmute the poison’s dissolution. Should he once lose his grip on self-discipline, he would drown in reasonless, animal suffering, perhaps never to recover.

Arithon shut his eyes. Raggedly he strove to isolate his spirit from the chaos which ravaged his flesh. Dizziness ruined his concentration. His muscles tightened until he gasped aloud for air. An attempt to force will over a wheeling rush of faintness caused him to black out.

He woke to torment. Doubled with cramps and shivering violently, Arithon reached for some personal scrap of self to hook back his plummeting control. The effort yielded no haven, but opened the floodgates of despair.

‘No!’ Arithon’s whisper of anguish flurried into echoes and died. His thoughts unravelled into delirium as the past rose and engulfed him, vivid, inescapable and threaded through with the cutting edges of broken dreams.

Five years vanished as mist. Arithon found himself poised once again in a moment when a decision had faced him and he had chosen without thought for bitter consequences. Called in from a snow battle with the other apprentices at Rauven, he sat on the embroidered hassock in his grandfather’s study. Ice thawed from his boots and steamed on the stone before the hearth; the smells of ink and chalk and aged parchment enfolded him in a quiet he had appreciated too little at the time.

‘I’ve heard from your father,’ the high mage opened.

Arithon looked up, unable to suppress a flush of wilful excitement. At long last, Avar, king of Karthan, had chosen to acknowledge the existence of the son raised by sorcerers at Rauven. But Arithon held himself silent. He dared not be rude before the high mage.

The sorcerer regarded the boy at his feet with dark, passionless eyes. ‘Your father has no heir. He asks my leave to name you his successor.’ The high mage held up a hand and smiled, forestalling Arithon’s rush to reply. ‘I’ve already answered. You will have two years to decide for yourself.’

Arithon forgot courtesy. ‘But I know now!’ Often he had dreamed of inheriting his father’s crown. ‘I’ll go to Karthan, use magecraft to free the waters beneath the sand and help the land become green again. With grain growing in the fields, the need for piracy and bloodshed will be ended. Then s’Ffalenn and s’Ilessid can stop their feuding.’

‘My boy, that is a worthy ambition.’ The high mage’s voice remained reserved. ‘But you must not be hasty. Your talents are music and sorcery. Consider these, for you have great potential. A king has no time for such arts. As a man who holds judgement over others, his life belongs wholly to his subjects.’

The high mage’s warning rolled like thunder through Arithon’s dreaming mind. Fool! he raged at his younger self, you’ll go only to fail. But the drug-vision broke like storm-surf, battering protest asunder. The boy felt himself whirled ahead to another time as he entered the selfsame chamber. Then his interval of decision had passed and he knelt before the high mage to renounce the home he had known and loved for twenty years.

‘How can I stay?’ Arithon found himself saying, for the mastery he had earned had left him wiser. ‘How can I remain at Rauven studying music and books, when my father’s people, and mine, must send husbands and sons to kill for bare sustenance? How dare I ignore such need? I might bring Karthan hope of lasting peace.’

Arithon looked up at the high mage’s face and there read terrible understanding. Heed your heart, his present, drug-tortured awareness pleaded. Forget kingship Abjure your father’s inheritance. Karthan might be made fertile from shore to shore, but Amroth will never be weaned from hatred. Would you suffer s’Ilessid vengeance for your mother’s broken marriage vows?

Yet time rippled out of focus once again. Arithon heard himself utter an oath of acceptance, the strong, calloused hands of his father resting on his dark head. He rose to his feet aflame with pride and purpose, and before the weather-creased eyes of Karthan’s captains, accepted Avar’s sword as token of his heirship.

The weapon was rarely beautiful. Memory of smoke-dark steel chilled Arithon’s palms, and the chased silver inscription which twined the length of the blade caught the breath in his throat. Legend held that his father’s sword had been fashioned by hands more skilled than man’s; that moment, Arithon believed the tale. His decision became difficult to complete.

He knelt at once before the high mage. The emerald in the sword hilt glimmered green fire as he laid the weapon flat at the sorcerer’s feet. ‘Let this blade remain at Rauven to seal my pledge. I go to restore peace in Karthan.’

Arithon stood carefully, afraid to look upon his father’s face; afraid of the anger he might find there. But Karthan’s captains raised a great cheer, and Avar smiled upon his heir with something more than approval. At the time, Arithon barely heard the parting words of the sorcerer who had raised him. Now, they resounded like the horn-call of Dharkaron, mocking ruined hopes and racking him through with the knowledge of present circumstance.

‘My grandson, you chose responsibility above your inner talents. That is a difficult turning. Win or lose, you give yourself in service to others. Although men might be inspired by a bard or enchanter, they cannot be led by one. The master’s mysteries you have learned at Rauven must never be used for political expedience, however pressing the temptation. You must guide your kingdom to the same harmonic balance you once would have striven to find in those gifts you now renounce. The ballad you write, the craft you cast, must henceforth be sought in the land and the hearts of Karthan. Ath bless your efforts.’

Torn from the vision of his grandfather’s final embrace, Arithon strove to stem the forward rush of time. But the reins of delirium ripped fate from his grasp. Again he sailed, and again he endured Karthan’s wretched poverty. He wept to relive the silent anguish of the widows when the casualty lists were read, and tears spilled silver down cheeks too proud to hide the face of grief.

Arithon shouted, tormented by the image of a fleet under the leopard banner of s’Ffalenn. ‘Stop them! Somebody stop them!’ Vast, unreasoning rage lent him a giant’s proportions. He reached out with hands the size of mountains and tried to fence the brigantines in the harbour. There were sons, fathers, and brothers on board who would never return. But wind swelled the dirt-red sails; the vessels slipped free of fingers robbed of strength.

Transformation of Karthan’s spoiled farmlands had proceeded too slowly to bring rain: one last voyage had been undertaken to beg Rauven for the aid of another mage. Tortured by cruel remorse, Arithon smelled blood and murder on his flesh. He screamed aloud within the confines of his cell, while the battle that had claimed his father’s life and his own freedom opened like a wound in his mind. Sucked into a vortex of violence, cut by a guilt that seared him blind, Arithon screamed again. ‘I used sorcery, as Ath is my witness. But never directly to murder. Not even to spare my liege lord.’

His cries brought guards. The cell door crashed back, rending the darkness with echoes. The captain of the king’s halberdiers peered down at the prisoner’s contorted, quivering frame. ‘Dharkaron’s vengeance, he’s raving.’

Arithon’s eyes flicked open, lightlessly black under the lantern. Men bent over him. Mail and gold braid hung a starfield of reflections above his head. His whole sight filled with weapons forged for killing; strapped to shoulder, wrist and belt, they shone fiery as the gates of the damned. Hands in scale gauntlets reached out, touched his sweating skin.

Arithon flinched. Chain wailed across stone as he flung an arm over his face.

‘He’s fevered,’ someone said.

Arithon knew the statement for a lie. He was chilled, frosted by the winter grip of the steel which collared the wrist against his cheek. His blood seemed to shrink from the cold and slowly congeal in his veins.

‘Fetch the king’s healer.’ The voice lifted urgently. ‘Hurry!’

Mailed fingers grasped Arithon’s arms. The drug-born demon in his head screamed refusal. No man born would save him as sport for Amroth’s courtiers. Arithon thrashed and the unhinged fury of his strength caught the guardsmen unprepared. Jerked half-free of restraint, he lashed out at the nearest pair of legs. Chain whipped, impacted with a jangle of bruising force.

‘Damn you to Sithaer!’ The injured guardsman aimed a kick in vindication. His boot struck Arithon’s head and the ceiling fell, crushing torches, men and voices into dark.

The banquet to commemorate the demise of the last s’Ffalenn was an extravagant affair, though arrangements had been completed on short notice. The king presided at the feast. Sumptuous in indigo brocade, his red hair only slightly thinned with grey, he gestured expansively and urged his guests to share his enjoyment of good fortune. Crowded on trestles before his dais were bottles of rare vintage wine, one for each s’Ilessid who had died at the hands of a s’Ffalenn. Since second and third cousins had been included in the count, as well as prominent citizens, the tally after seven generations was imposing. Dispatch ships had sailed claret at speed from the cellars of the neighbouring duchy, since the king’s own stock proved insufficient.

Gathered in the great hall to feast and drink until the last bottle had been drained to the lees were Amroth’s courtiers, dressed in their finest plumage. Spirits were rarely high. By dessert, not a few lords were snoring under tables, and even the prudent had grown spirited in an atmosphere of wild celebration. At midnight came the smock-clad figure of the royal healer. Drab as blight in a flower-stall, he made his way between benches and tables and stopped with a bow at the feet of his sovereign lord.

‘Your Grace, I beg leave to speak concerning the health of your prisoner.’ The healer stood, uncomfortably aware of the courtiers who fell silent around him. He hated to interrupt the festivity with such news, but a brutal, exhausting hour spent in south keep had stripped the last shred of his patience. ‘The s’Ffalenn suffers severe drug addiction from his passage aboard the Briane.’

The king silenced the musicians with a gesture. Between the costly glitter of wax candles and gold cutlery, conversation, dancing, and laughter in the vast hall faltered, then settled to an ominous hush.

‘How bad is he?’ demanded the king. His voice was much too soft.

Warned to danger, the healer weighed his wording. Six soldiers had been needed to hold Arithon pinioned while he performed his examination. The brilliant, close warmth of the hall made the experience seem distant as nightmare by comparison. With a shudder, the healer chose bluntness. ‘Your captive’s life is gravely in jeopardy. The herb that was used to hold him passive is ruinously addictive, and an overdose such as he has endured quite often proves irreversible. Withdrawal can cause madness without remedy.’

The king’s knuckles tightened on the handle of his bread knife and the blade glanced in reflection like lightning before a cloudburst. ‘Arithon s’Ffalenn is a prisoner of the crown of Amroth. I’ll have the head of the man who dared to meddle with his fate.’

The banquet hall became painfully silent; musicians fidgeted uneasily over muted instruments, and the advisors nearest to the dais all but stopped breathing. Into that stunned silence arose the voice of the prince.

‘Briane’s healer acted under protest, my liege. I thought my report made that clear.’ Eyes turned, settled on the trim person of Lysaer as he stepped briskly from the dance floor. The prince paused only to see his pretty partner to a chair. The fair-headed image of his father, he strode straight to the dais. ‘My orders alone kept the s’Ffalenn under influence of the herb.’

‘Your orders!’ The king of Amroth regarded his son in narrow-eyed fury. ‘You insolent puppy! How dare you presume to cosset an enemy whose birth is a slight to the kingdom’s honour?’

Stillness settled over the hall and Lysaer turned tautly pale. He had seen his father angry, but never before had the king made mention of his queen’s indiscretion in public hearing. Cautioned by the precedence, the crown prince bowed in respectful ceremony. ‘Your Grace, I acted to ensure the prisoner’s safety. His shadow mastery and his training by the Rauven mages makes him dangerous. No warship on the face of the ocean offers security enough to confine such a man. The drug was the only expedient.’

A whispered murmur of agreement swept the chamber, while more than one royal advisor regarded the prince with admiration.

But as if the prince were not present, the sovereign of Amroth set down his knife. Eyes as grey as sleet turned and narrowed and fixed on the countenance of the healer. ‘If the s’Ffalenn bastard is to be salvaged, what must be done?’

Wearily, the healer shook his head. ‘Your Grace, the prognosis is not good. If the drug continues the body will waste and die. If the drug is stopped, the shock will cause agony that by now may be more than the mind can support.’

On the dais, the royal favourites waited in wary stillness, but the king only threaded ringed knuckles through his beard. ‘Will Arithon be aware that he suffers?’

Grimly, the healer understood the price of his honesty. ‘Most certainly, my liege.’

‘Excellent.’ The king signalled his page, who immediately ran for a scribe. By the time the stooped old man arrived with his inks and parchments the frown had smoothed from the royal brow. If the smile that replaced the expression eased the courtiers’ restraint, it boded ill for the prisoner.

Again the hall stilled. Slouched back with his feet on the table, the king passed judgement on the healer. ‘Arithon is to be brought before my council in a fortnight’s time, cured of addiction to the drug. You are commanded to use every skill you possess to preserve his mind intact. Success will reward you with one hundred coin weight in gold.’ The king plucked a grape from the bowl by his elbow and thoroughly mashed it with his teeth. ‘But if Arithon dies or loses sanity, your life, and the life of Briane’s healer shall be forfeit.’

The healer bowed, afraid, but far too wise to protest. Only Lysaer dared intercede. His honour repudiated, he stepped to the edge of the dais and slammed his fists on the table.

For the first time in living memory, the king spurned his firstborn son. ‘Let this be a lesson to a prince who oversteps his appointed authority.’

The scribe flipped open his lap desk. Too cowed to reveal any feelings, he scratched his quill across new vellum, inking in official words of state the terms of Arithon’s survival, bound now to the lives of two healers. Warm wax congealed beneath the royal seal, setting the document into law.

The king grabbed his flagon and raised it high. ‘To the ruin of s’Ffalenn!’

A wild cheer rose from the onlookers; but frozen in fury before his father’s chair, the crown prince did not drink.

Forced to forgo supper for south keep and the Master of Shadow, the royal healer of Amroth barred his heart against mercy. The king’s orders were final: Arithon s’Ffalenn must at all costs be weaned from the drug. Troubled by the ache of arthritic knees, the healer knelt on cold stone and cursed. A raw apprentice could see the task required a miracle. Time increased the body’s demand, and the doses given Arithon in the course of Briane’s passage had far exceeded safe limits. To stop the drug would cause anguish; if the man’s mind did not break, physical shock might kill him.

The healer lifted his hand from stressed, quivering muscle and gestured to the men-at-arms. ‘Let him go.’

The guardsmen released their grip. Beyond voluntary control, Arithon curled his knees against his chest and moaned in the throes of delirium.

Very little could be done to ease a withdrawal severe as this one. The healer called for a straw pallet and blankets and covered Arithon’s cold flesh. He ordered his staff to bind their boots with flannel to keep noise and echo to a minimum. They restrained the patient when he thrashed. When his struggles grew too frenzied, they prepared carefully measured possets. Arithon received enough drug to calm but never enough to satiate; when bodily control failed him entirely, they changed his fouled sheets.

Morning brought slight improvement. The healer sent for sandbags to immobilize the prisoner’s head while they forced him to swallow herb tea. At midday came his Grace, the king of Amroth.

He arrived unattended. Resplendently clad in a velvet doublet trimmed with silk, he showed no trace of the drunken revelry instigated at the banquet the night before. Guards and assistants melted clear as his majesty crossed the cell. His unmuffled step scattered loud echoes across the stone. The healer bowed.

Careless of the courtesy, the king stopped beside the pallet and hungrily drank in details. The bastard was not what he had expected. For a man born to the sword, the hands which lay limp on the coverlet seemed much too narrow and fine.

‘Your Grace?’ The healer shifted uneasily, his old fingers cramped in his jacket. ‘Your presence does no good here.’

The king looked up, eyes steeped with hostility. ‘You say?’ He grasped the blankets in his jewelled fist and whipped them back, exposing his enemy to plain view. ‘Do you suppose the bastard appreciates your solicitude? You speak of a criminal.’

When the healer did not answer, the king glanced down and smiled to meet green eyes that were open and aware.

Arithon drew a careful breath. Then he smiled also and said, ‘The horns my mother left are galling, I’m told. Have you come down to gore, or to gloat?’

The king struck him. The report of knuckles meeting helpless flesh startled even the guards in the corridor.

Shocked past restraint, the healer grasped the royal sleeve. ‘The prisoner is too ill to command his actions, your Grace. Be merciful.’