Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
whose shot sliced the rope. Lady Talith did not jump, but attempted escape on the hour she plunged to her death.’
‘Volatile paper,’ Lord Koshlin said. ‘You dare much, to risk having her murder made public.’
‘On the contrary.’ Cerebeld riffled the document, nonplussed. ‘The incumbent princess is distressed over her young son’s assignment to ride with the field patrol. Desperation and motherhood make her mood unpredictable. Her Grace might try something regrettable. I want Ellaine cowed. She’ll see how the last princess became a dead pawn, but not know the faction responsible. Fear will gag her questions. And where can this paper be taken, or shown, outside of her private chambers? She can’t leave Avenor. Her guards and her handmaids are mine, every one. Her husband’s kept his private distance since the heir’s birth. The lady has no champion to pursue her sad cause. If you stay discreet, she’ll have little choice but to retire in terrified silence.’
‘Merciful Ath!’ Asandir mused aloud. His seamed face turned grim as a scarp of chipped granite, while far off, in the High Priest’s closed chamber, the sealed parchment quietly changed hands.
Then the glass shifted scenes to reveal the tents of an Alliance patrol, horses and men encamped on the icy banks of River Melor.
‘Sethvir has divined a threat to Prince Kevor, of course,’ the Sorcerer said as his sharp glance encompassed the gold star banner flying amid the camp’s standards. The blue field displayed the heraldic crown, proclaiming the presence of the blood royal among the routine, armed cavalcade.
‘That boy’s trueborn to his s’Ilessid ancestry.’ Asandir saw clear warning, that the endowment of that line’s gifted justice might lead the boy to a disastrous confrontation with the pack of Khadrim seeding havoc and terror in Westwood.
‘Time I went to Sethvir,’ the Sorcerer announced. As the ominous record left in the glass subsided back into blankness, the silver-gray eyes raised to meet Ath’s adept were recast to the glint of forged steel. ‘If aught’s to be done, the choice must be aired well before the lane tide rises at daybreak.’
The oak door sighed open and revealed velvet darkness. Silence greeted Asandir on the threshold of Sethvir’s private quarters. The deep quiet bestowed no feeling of calm, but instead enfolded him like suffocation. The embrace of the air on his skin was too warm. Though the medicinal smell of sweet herbs was not cloying, every sense jangled warning he intruded upon something more than a sickroom.
‘He’s grown worse?’ the field Sorcerer inquired of the adept who kept ceaseless vigil by the entry.
The gentle, aged woman turned back her hood. Her lined face a mapwork of patience, she said, ‘The Warden feels no pain, nor is he unconscious. Though he might seem asleep, his state of suspension is dreamless. You may need to use Name to recall him.’
Asandir swallowed, for a moment not trusting the strength of his voice. ‘Do candles disturb him?’
‘Unshielded ones, yes.’ Wise in her way, the adept said no more, but let Asandir enter the chamber by mage-sight. Ever so gently, she closed the oak panel to grant him full measure of privacy.
Left in darkness, his guidance the smoke-haze of spirit light, Asandir made his unerring way to the bedside. Sethvir rested amid the combed billows of his beard, the gnarled, clean hands abandoned on the coverlet too far removed from splashed inkpots and mischievous life. Ath’s adepts had surpassed expectations in their meticulous care for him. The torn fissures in Sethvir’s aura were reknit, the spindled gold halo without any shadow of seam. If the glow was too scant, its radiance dwindled, the cause would be Sethvir’s willed choice. Minute to minute, he still poured out his vital forces for causes of perilous necessity.
Asandir paused. Upset by the pressures that demanded intrusion, he still groped for right words when a thready whisper arose from amid the piled pillows.
‘Asandir? Is that you?’
The Sorcerer dropped to one knee. Through mangling emotion, he managed a reply. ‘I am here. Say which grimward needs attending.’
The answer came back like a stab to the heart. ‘There are five, but of those, Alqwerik’s by Athir’s most pressing.’
‘I’ll leave on the dawn lane tide,’ Asandir promised, then drew a quick breath. ‘No, please. Don’t speak. The adepts kept their promise. I saw the unpleasant news left for me in the glass.’ He need not belabor the obvious conflict, that of the multiple crises revealed, none could take precedence over the threat of even one distressed grimward. If the worst happened, and the flawed wards at Rockfell escaped Luhaine’s vigilant guardianship, or if the wraiths questing from Marak slipped past Kharadmon’s mazed defenses, there would be no way left on Ath’s earth to recall him. No contact from Althain could cross through a drake-dream, even one spun by the ghost of a creature whose bones lay three Ages dead.
Hedged by the perils that closed on all sides, Asandir said in dire humor, ‘If I meet disaster upon my return, at least I’ll stand warned beforetime. You should rest.’
The stirred movement fanning through loose wisps of beard evinced Sethvir’s harrowed sigh. ‘No rest. Did you see? Davien’s shade has left the refuge he built in the caverns beneath Kewar Tunnel.’
‘Why should that surprise me? All else in creation seems ripe to breed chaos.’ Just as troubled by thought of Davien’s obscure motives, Asandir changed the subject. ‘I saw that you fear for Prince Kevor’s safety.’
‘Worse,’ Sethvir breathed in soft sorrow.
‘Cerebeld wants him dead, that was glaringly plain.’ Asandir leaned in close, elbow braced on the mattress. The other hand flexed to a fist on his knee, with his frown graven deep as worn leather. ‘Beset as we are, who could stand by to help?’
‘Ath’s hostel at Northstrait lies along the first lane,’ Sethvir pointed out, too enervated to be less abstruse.
Asandir weighed the statement, well aware that the Warden’s checkered thoughts masked disarmingly shrewd ingenuity. ‘Do you imply what I think?’ Sharply fast to grasp strategy, the field Sorcerer clarified, ‘You believe we could give Lysaer’s heir a spelled talisman?’
Sethvir’s eyes opened, heavy-lidded. To mage-sight, in darkness, their color shone an eerie, serene aqua that reflected a sense of vast distance. Asandir, watching, felt a bolt of black fear strike straight through him. Never before this had he seen breathing life so closely mirror the infinite. ‘Tell me in words. You need grounding. I can hope speech will help.’
‘The rock, chastising air?’ The ghost of a smile turned Sethvir’s lips as he struggled to meet the demand. ‘I’d hoped the same plan might be used to spare Arithon, but the adepts refused me the use of a talisman as a bridge. They perceive very well that his Grace of Rathain’s become too fated a cipher.’
‘No hostels remain active in Daon Ramon, anyway. Who else could have handled the problem?’ Asandir hooked a footstool, dragged it close to the cot, and assumed the unlikely perch. His lean length of limb and innate balance lent him the hunch of a wing-folded heron. ‘If Prince Arithon was refused, what grounds would grant an appeal for a boy not brought up to honor the old ways? Why should Ath’s Brotherhood offer their sanctuary to safeguard Kevor s’Ilessid?’
‘I can’t promise they would.’ Sethvir’s brow furrowed. ‘But suppose we created a talisman stone, imprinted with spells based in parallel with the powers that rule the scrying glass in the king’s chamber. Say it was delivered by a messenger who would not be heard, unless the young prince showed the honesty of his blood heritage.’
‘You mean, test him?’ Asandir leaned forward, braced on crossed forearms. The idea had merit. Heirship was sanctioned along similar guidelines. ‘If Kevor has the bare-bones humility to hear truth, and honors his heart ahead of the mores of his upbringing, I catch your drift.’