Traitor's Knot Part 25

Then the cupola loomed through the fireburst of light. The archers deployed. With the standard-bearers positioned at either flank, Sulfin Evend advanced up the dais stair at the side of the Blessed Prince. Split perception showed him the high council officials in their welcoming row, clad in scintillant finery and squinting into the dazzle of Lysaer's explosive display. Though he moved, his frame of perception seemed arrested: the twined confluence of lane flux and awareness reduced the flap of the banners to slow-motion ripples; at Althain, the knife-cut still flicked his bared wrist. Framed through sundered senses, Sulfin Evend heard Lysaer's voice, p.r.o.nouncing the accusations. Each syllable seemed unnaturally stretched out, sound suspended over the infinite well of a cognizance hurled past the veil.

In simultaneous presence, the Fellows.h.i.+p Sorcerer linked through his being spoke also: there and now and forever, Sethvir's phrases in actualized Paravian struck the air like bronze chimes and rippled a wave through the cloth of existence.

Awareness transfixed, Sulfin Evend shuddered with gooseflesh: for the Sorcerer's greater knowing arced through him. Eternity held the strung pause between words. Self-doubt burned away in the fire of willed choice. The required authority to secure the land arose from the core of his being. His consent shaped desire to partner the grand dance and see discord reworked into harmony. As Sethvir's masterful guidance touched through, Sulfin Evend let go in release; and mystery answered, unstoppable.

'. . . for the crime of conspiracy, murder, and dark practice,' the Blessed prince was p.r.o.nouncing; while through a man who stood, blood and bone, as caithdein, Althain's Warden's words wound and braided, in and between time and s.p.a.ce. '. . . for transgression of the sacrosanct freedoms held by the compact, your rights are called forfeit. . .'

Dizzied by the multiplied stream of sensation, awash in the uncanny blaze of the lane flux, Sulfin Evend reached the stair-head. He accepted the first set of shackles. Then he advanced on the creature before him. What had once been human wore gold-edged robes and fair skin. The being that bore the semblance of smiling form was not at one with life, but st.i.tched with dark lines in a scatter of ring-rippled patterns. It moved and breathed, but did neither. Its presence cried wrongness, until the very air drawn into its lungs recoiled from the aberrant state of warped flesh.

Sulfin Evend met that one's eyes, saw them narrow with sharp recognition. Braced by the powers of a Fellows.h.i.+p Sorcerer, he moved, against horror, into an aura poisoned by the trapped shades of three women and a girl-child. Wisps though they were, their piteous cries shredded the world, without sound. 'High Priest Cerebeld!' Against his bold denouncement of the accused, Sulfin Evend heard, far distant, from Althain, Sethvir's voice Name the ghosts of the women, then tenderly claim the small child. Their tears fell and fell, in yet another place; while the lane forces crested in the plaza at Avenor, crackling the winter air into bands of blue-and-violet lightning.

'You!' gasped the High Priest. His address was directed to something beyond sight, and his outraged stance seemed struck torpid. Sulfin Evend matched the cult puppet's scorching glare, unafraid: for another presence at Althain Tower also looked out of his eyes.

'You are doomed,' he felt himself prompted to say. 'The blameless spirits your masters have bound are set free, and the law of the compact declares the vessel that used them as forfeit!'

Sulfin Evend lifted the silver shackles to take charge. Other hands moved, as though covering his own. The Alliance Lord Commander had no chance for wonder. He was kneeling at Althain, and standing at Avenor: one being whose greater existence had burned into form, split by a lens of simultaneity. His fingers and Sethvir's seemed gloved in white light. In shared volition, Sulfin Evend reached out and bundled the High Priest's arms behind his back. When he snapped the locks shut over the prisoner's wrists, runes drawn by the trained might of a Sorcerer flared and sank into the metal. A brief chill swept his senses. The tormented shades dissolved out of bondage, whisked away by a s.h.i.+mmer of opalescent flame.

Sulfin Evend breasted the scour of lane flux. Each word and step guided, he shackled the next man in line, then the next. As the corrupt accused were bound into custody, he heard the distanced echo, as Althain's Warden p.r.o.nounced other names: and the spirits enslaved by the dark arts of necromancy received the mercy of their release.

Seconds lagged in suspension. Each figure set in manacles seemed a slow-moving wax doll, frozen between breath and motion. Voice spoken in Avenor and voice heard at Althain seemed two dreaming threads spun into a single twined strand. Sethvir's phrases razed a bell tone through muscle and bone, while ephemeral light scoured, and the lane flux sleeted bands of harmonics through the matrix between body and spirit.

The twelfth pair of shackles had been set in place when the noon lane tide's crest waned and subsided. The confluence of the grand mysteries receded. Streaming sweat, Sulfin Evend folded back into himself. Alone as a man, he found himself mortal, and locked eye to eye with the trapped fury of a dozen crown traitors arrested for dealings with necromancy.

'This won't end here, I promise!' snapped Amba.s.sador Koshlin with dipped venom. His acid glance s.h.i.+fted to High Priest Cerebeld, and a silent thought crossed between them. Sighted vision caught the split-second exchange, like the clash of sword steel and lightning.

'But it will end here!' Lysaer s'Ilessid stood at the dais stair, his stainless splendour hard as cut diamond as he regarded the fettered knot of conspirators. 'With a sword through the heart, and a cleansing by fire, as I stand upon the realm's justice before you. Take these murderers away! The sight of them is an offence against nature and an affront to the people of Tysan!'

The thirteenth conspirator escaped the armed cordon. No man knew how. He had been High Priest Cerebeld's least notable acolyte, and his flight went unnoticed as he slipped from the dais through the watchful ranks of the stationed guardsmen.

Left short of temper, Sulfin Evend could not wrest himself clear to give chase. Nor could he delegate. As the only man bearing a Fellows.h.i.+p warding against the fell workings of necromancy, he dared not send his eager, but uns.h.i.+elded, officers into jeopardy to run down the fugitive. Nor could he a.s.sign them to watch the chained captives already in hand. Although the creatures were stripped of the enslaved spirits that sourced their dark powers of influence, each had been suborned as a powerful tool, still linked to a practising cult master. If silver chains bound them, they were not rendered harmless. Mind and flesh, they were subsumed by dark forces that fed upon life.

Against every sane argument, their immediate execution had been rejected by Lysaer s'Ilessid.

'No man dies under my rule without trial!' Backed against principle, the Blessed Prince stayed insistent, no matter how urgently he was pressed. 'Justice under my hand is not revocable! The accused have firm rights, first among them that human dignity in this realm cannot be waived for convenience. No. Guilt will be established by means of due process, regardless of whether my tribunal holds their inquiry as a formality. I will not be denied in this matter. We shall not put down sorcery by means of dishonour, or what do you think we become?'

'Survivors with our free autonomy intact,' Sulfin Evend cracked back, and found himself excused from the royal presence forthwith.

By late afternoon, he paced like a surly, caged cat, up and down the cramped floor of Avenor's dungeon ward-room. The frustration that gnawed him had no other outlet. While the relief watch he turned away out of hand whispered that he was overwrought, the prisoners locked in detention appeared pa.s.sive. Restive senior officers delivered their reports and chafed at his insistent restraint, until their irritation bordered upon insolence.

Sulfin Evend barked back and hardened his will. The men were sent packing, although the deceptive ease of the day's public capture had sapped every warning of credibility.

The captives who importuned using civilized words, or who slumped in their spelled chains, posing the shocked stupor of innocents, were perilous beyond all imagining. Any guard in their presence would be nakedly vulnerable, once the master who ruled them sought contact. As he must: the secretive cults defended their own. The danger would intensify after dark, since the aberrant nature of necromancy shunned the balance endowed by the light.

The sh.e.l.ls of the men taken captive, meantime, could not be left unattended. Of them all, High Priest Cerebeld appeared most unresponsive. Unnaturally listless for a powerful man who had been the Light's voice in Avenor, he stayed sunk in a gla.s.sy-eyed stupor. The persistent whining arose from Gace Steward, still onerously protesting his innocence.

Sulfin Evend watched, cold. As often as he had seen stress and battle crumble men's dignity, this queer s.h.i.+ft in roles between a ranking superior and an underling disturbed his commander's instinct.

As sundown neared, and the sensible order to hasten the trial did not move the wheels of state, the Lord Commander became pitched to increasing unease. The affray in the square had left him light-headed. Not helped by the fact that he worked on short sleep, he stayed on his feet in a frazzled effort to keep overstressed senses alert.

While the ferrety palace steward launched into another bristling complaint that Talith's murder was none of his doing, Sulfin Evend flung back an acid correction.

'You are all answerable! Lives are not taken to tidy the realm's image! Talith's death was not under the high council's purview, nor any courtier's duty to carry out, ahead of state-trial and crown sentence.'

With his sallow, pocked features pressed against the barred grille, the palace official blinked rat-s.h.i.+fty eyes. 'But I did not kill the realm's former princess. No man here caused her fall. She was alone. Her plunge from that tower was a sorry act, no more and no less than a suicide.'

'No one pushed her.' Agreeable as a viper too chilled to strike, Sulfin Evend took pause. He measured the steward through Sighted eyes, but perceived nothing more than an oily coward, afraid for his mis'erable life. His strung nerves did not settle. Each time he surveyed the group in the cell, his very skin crawled with revulsion. He added, 'Talith fell during an attempt to escape, but a cross-bow bolt sheared through the rope that supported her. We have found your marksman. The payment that bought his skilled shot is already attested under a crown bailiff's signature.'

'Forgeries!' snapped Gace. 'You have been duped by the disaffected in league with the Master of Shadow.'

'Not the case. Your cross-bowman was seized by my men just past noon. His confession has matched what we have seen on paper. That seals your arraignment, and if I could choose, your execution would take place this moment.'

No flicker of reaction arose from High Priest Cerebeld; such lack-l.u.s.tre response seemed unnatural. Sulfin Evend rubbed his neck until the bones cracked. He could not shake off the nagging suspicion that an unseen current was still at play. A hidden blade that might turn in the hand, or some sly trap, perhaps set by the thirteenth conspirator. Caged here while the regent stalled for no reason, a man could do nothing but probe with lame words, hoping to jab a soft nerve. 'That escaped acolyte will be pursued. If any should shelter him, they'll be put to death along with your other collaborators.'

The upstairs door groaned. Inbound footsteps pattered over the threshold, and mingled voices rebounded downward. Yet one man's tone stood out.

Sulfin Evend froze. Shocked aware as though doused by a pail of shaved ice, he realized that Lysaer s'Ilessid was amid that company of unscheduled arrivals.

Fast as a man moved, loud as a shouted order could peal up the stairwell, the effort to salvage the lapse came too late. Sulfin Evend watched, horrified, as three prisoners in the cell slumped into collapse, then dropped in an unbreathing heap. Gace Steward snapped his jaw shut between words. Wrist chains c.h.i.n.king, he scrambled clear of the barred door, making way as Cerebeld stood up. Now, the High Priest's eyes were wide-open, glinting with uns.h.i.+elded malice. Sighted talent unveiled the hideous moment as his aura streamed unclean. This time, the leaden shadows had faces: the creature wearing Cerebeld's form had subsumed the trapped shades of three of his prostrate colleagues. Their corpses had been drained that fast, with no sign of the vile spell that enslaved them.

Sulfin Evend s.n.a.t.c.hed up the cross-bow kept loaded and ready. The quarrels were tipped with cold iron. His fast shot snapped through the sunwheel emblem on the breast of the High Priest's mantle. Heart's-blood flowered and spurted. Dead, but still animate, the creature came on, teeth bared in a feral grimace.

'Sundown,' stated Cerebeld, haughty with triumph. 'My master rules now.'

Then he wobbled, lurched forward, and measured his length, fettered wrists still linked at his back. His robes pooled on the floor, a muddle of stained white. The air around his twitching corpse seethed with ephemeral movement as a boiling rush of dull silver bled out of his dying flesh. The taint streaked from the aura, no longer bound. The rooted stream of corruption expired from emptied lungs and poured out of nose and slack lips. Like a haze of fine mercury, the reanimate forces coalesced within the locked cell.

Sulfin Evend stared, horrified, as the amalgamate shades of the corrupted dead moved on and poured into the open mouth of Gace Steward, who howled in shock from the side-lines.

Measured and marked, already prepared as the vessel of a practising necromancer, Gace's human instinct to scream became choked. His eyes strained wide open, then bulged as he gagged. The reflex retained no intelligent will: only the animal urge of warm flesh to cling to instinctive survival. The struggle lasted no more than an instant before the a.s.saulted body gave way. Gace's lungs filled. His auric field bloomed like sludge with the haze of its unclean possession, that fast.

Sulfin Evend saw, sickened. Harrowed urgency drove him. He wrestled to span the discharged cross-bow, while the shuddering frame of the palace official completed its grisly transition and became the empowered receptacle. Slack-lidded, replete, it surrendered to the addictive yoke of the master.

Gace Steward straightened to the chime of spelled chains. Infused with the presence of undead magics, he leaned on the barred door. His foam-flecked lips bowed into a smile.

'Sundown has arrived!' The evil he bore was a palpable force. 'Kill us, sweet fool. Did you realize you had left my master's minion in charge of a prearranged stable of surrogates? I have seven other gibbering sh.e.l.ls that your heroic work has sucked vacant!' Glittering, dark eyes raked over his adversary. 'Can't you see, bantling? Althain's Warden has failed you. He's left them unsealed and well bridled for riding! We'll just mount another. For each one you drop, our strength will increase! Kill the last, and we'll jump. What can you do? We'll just seize the next whole man we encounter and crush him to serve by strangling his will by main force!'

Less than a second had pa.s.sed since first contact. Repossession happened that quickly. Sulfin Evend rushed his hands, fumbling the last crank of the windla.s.s in his need to engage the trigger latch. He slotted a fresh bolt. Clammy with sweat, he already saw that his striving was useless. The spells that Sethvir had set into the chains secured no more than the body, with the opportune ending by fire and sword thrown away with the advent of night.

Why had Lysaer s'Ilessid deliberated? Worse yet, why had he broken orders and come, against every adamant warning? For his sovereign step still descended the stair, straight into a mora.s.s of danger.

Winter 5671 Gambit Sulfin Evend gave a frantic shout up the stairwell for the Blessed Prince to stand clear. Then he slammed the ward-room door in between. He could not drop the bar. The panel was designed to bolster security, and never fas.h.i.+oned to lock from within. Shoulder braced to that insecure barrier, loaded cross-bow in hand, he faced the warped creature shut inside the cell, along with four corpses and the sh.e.l.ls that seemed as men, but were no less than a deadly, suborned pack of surrogates. The wrists of each one remained cuffed in silver. Their hands would stay shackled. Stout locks were tongued through the reinforced slot in the barrier that restrained them. Unless this fell cult could walk its possessed through forged steel, the corrupted could not break out of physical containment.

'Give this up,' the Lord Commander said, steady. 'To have Lysaer, you must first go through me. Nor will I let his Blessed Grace cross this threshold while I have one resource to stop him. Posture on, you stick puppet! Rant all you like. That won't change the fact you can't touch me.'

Brave words, or more likely, the stance of a fool. Cult spells, or loosed wraiths might slip through such barriers at whim. Yet a defender with his back to a door, and no options could but hope Asandir's given word backed the truth: that free will held aligned by a Fellows.h.i.+p warding could not be displaced or fall to the crippling coercion of necromancy. For the stakes at play now risked far worse than his life. Should he die under rites, no matter how foul, Sulfin Evend stood his ground on a Sorcerer's promise that his self-aware spirit could not be denied a natural pa.s.sage across the Wheel's turning.

Behind the barred grille, the reanimate flesh that had once been Gace Steward proffered an oily challenge. 'Guard your prince if you can. Though how can you react? He has not paid heed to your warning.'

The threat was not empty. Outside, the filtered sound of raised voices moved nearer. Descending footsteps came on, undeterred in their disastrous approach down the stairwell. Then Lysaer's called inquiry affirmed that restraint had been thrown to the four winds and jeopardy. Or, perhaps not: the invidious smirk on the face of the captive suggested some form of a lure.

'What have you done?' Sulfin Evend cried, shocked. He had no mage training, could not guess what vicious mischief might have been tried to turn Lysaer's sensibilities.

A desperate, split-second remained to respond. This time, Sulfin Evend must act alone, without the mystical powers of a Paravian focus at lane crest, and with none of Sethvir's strength to back him.

He spun, shoved open the door, and plunged into the gloom of the stairwell. A kick slammed the iron-strapped panel behind him. No moment to spare, to engage bar or lock, or s.n.a.t.c.h the lit torch from the wall sconce. Ahead, through the welter of uncertain light, four men approached unaware. Only one might be saved. Sulfin Evend's live body must become Lysaer's s.h.i.+eld. Without time for outcry, past reach of sane action, the Alliance commander slapped the spanned cross-bow into his left hand. He drew his knife in the course of his pelting dash upwards.

Between the slapped echoes of his own raced strides, he heard his most competent captain call downwards in concerned inquiry.

Sulfin Evend ran silent. He had no breath for grief. Reason and words would be far too slow to deflect the on-coming disaster. He could do nothing. Just hurl himself, sprinting, up the turnpike stair, driving muscles that screamed from exertion. He kept on. Watched the curve of the walls unveil course after course of blank risers. More torches pa.s.sed. His wake set them fluttering. Warped shadows capered around him. A man who prayed might have beseeched fate. Sulfin Evend drove forward, panting. Let the distance from the closed cell be enough. He needed no less than sixty feet, with an additional margin for safety. He counted each pace, three stairs to the yard. Seventeen, eighteen, with his winded chest tight unto bursting.

Then at last, a clear view: Lysaer s'Ilessid in s.h.i.+ning white, his bare head raw gold in the flame-light. By strict orders, three trusted, armed officers accompanied him.

Frustrated agony found no release. Their Lord Commander saw his dread realized. The royal party had already drawn too close, with the tactical blunder past help to reconcile. Asandir had been ruthlessly explicit: under darkness, a cult working could encompa.s.s the energy field raised by its operant source. 'There lies the range of an enabled necromancer, and by extension, any thralled subject who has been suborned under his power.'

The abomination in the cell had attached three subordinate ent.i.ties whose drained corpses had dropped without fight. Cerebeld's death yielded four, then Gace Steward, five; attack, if it came, would be fiercely potent. Conquest might come without warning. Climbing, sides splitting, Sulfin Evend dared not gasp even a last-minute plea. He could only act to ensure Lysaer's safety by the only crude measure at hand.

He levelled the cross-bow. Aimed and squeezed the trigger. Cable spanged in release. The shot bolt hissed upwards and slapped the lead officer in the pit of his throat. His choked, surprised corpse and the discharged weapon fell and struck the stair simultaneously. As the tumbling body and discarded weapon crashed downwards, Sulfin Evend threw his small knife. The missile took the man just behind Lysaer, the blade struck stark through the eye. The kill fell, gouting blood. The dying man's weight jostled the Blessed Prince, just stiffened in shock, and now staggered forward into the last man-at-arms, who led a purposeful half-pace ahead.

While the soldier's rocked frame swayed to recover balance, Sulfin Evend leaped the thres.h.i.+ng tumble of dead limbs as his shot officer caromed down the stairwell. Gagging on bile, he charged upwards, sword drawn, and cut down Lysaer's last standing guard: his most trustworthy field veteran. The hard, upward sword-thrust rammed between ribs and pierced a true man through the heart.

Sulfin Evend met his victim's betrayed glance, eye to eye. The stabbed carca.s.s jerked, cramped to spasms of agony. His sunk blade wrenched away as he hurled the body aside. Strangling down nausea, the Alliance commander bore on. He knocked into Lysaer, slammed the white-clad form backwards and tripped his legs at the ankle. They fell, locked together. For cruel expediency, Sulfin Evend pinned his liege flat amid the splashed filth and blood that befouled the risers.

'Burn the dead!' he snapped, tortured. Though a slaughtered man voided and drummed heels at his elbow, and two others thudded in a downward plunge towards the shut door of the ward-room, he slapped down Lysaer's outrage. 'Torch them! Now! Trust me, trust my Sight! I am not possessed.'

Vivid with fury, Lysaer snarled, 'Are you not? Then why did you send for my presence?' His wrestler's response replaced accusation. He thrashed to hurl what must seem a rogue murderer over backwards down the stone stair.

Pressed to dirty tactics, Sulfin Evend snapped a knee into his liege's groin. Lysaer's resistance broke instantly. His gasping surrender could not last a moment. Even in agony, eyes pinched against tears, he shuddered and clawed to retaliate.

'd.a.m.n you, listen!' His relentless strength pinned hard overtop, Sulfin Evend s.n.a.t.c.hed a fist in splashed silk. 'I never sent, do you hear me?' He ripped the Divine Prince's collar. Rich fastenings scattered. The rebounding clatter of flung pearls echoed downwards, each pin-point impact struck like tapped gla.s.s through the shuddering throes of the dying.

'Burn my fallen!' Hands still moving, Sulfin Evend spoke fast. 'For the Light's sake! You must do as I say.'

Lysaer bucked, enraged. 'You are not yourself! Or why would you slaughter your best officers!'

His Lord Commander hardened his fists. Stressed silk tore asunder. 'd.a.m.n you, liege! Be still. Your life, or theirs, I had to choose!'

Wasted entreaty; Lysaer freed his arm. His punch slammed into Sulfin Evend's left side, hard enough to damage a kidney had the impact not clashed into mail. The Lord Commander hammered in with his knee: again felt abused flesh recoil. This time, beyond mercy, he followed up, ground an elbow into the hollow of Lysaer's shoulder with a pitiless force that would paralyse.

No more pleading leave, he grappled through the ripped tunic. His bracer gouged sc.r.a.pes into fine-grained skin. Heedless, he burrowed beneath snagging silk, seeking a hide thong and slung knife sheath. Lysaer's ragged gasps were obscured by the scream of rent fabric. Sulfin Evend bared the Biedar knife at long last and closed his desperate grip on the handle.

Already, wisps of dull shadow moved at the corner of his eye. Something unleashed by the necromancer's craft encroached on his peripheral vision. Lysaer jerked. Perhaps aware that an uncanny invasion nipped through his aura to claim him, he tried a mad wrench to break free.

'd.a.m.n you, hold!' Sulfin Evend snagged the desert-worked knife from the sheath. While his instincts cried scintillant warning of danger, he laid the flint weapon crosswise against Lysaer's throat.

Barely in time! The creeping invasion of uncanny forces coiled above the unwarded victim's nose and mouth. Past reach of finesse, Sulfin Evend bore down. He sliced a shallow nick through fair skin.

Lysaer recoiled.

Desperate to keep contact, and not cause lethal harm, Sulfin Evend pressed the warded flint against the seeping edge of the wound. 'Hold still!' he pleaded. 'You are under attack, and this blade frames your only protection!'

Lysaer shut his eyes, then grated, choked short, 'If you're not turned by the enemy, what do you See?'

'A spirit or vile sending of some sort. I'm no sorcerer! d.a.m.ned if I know what ugly powers have stirred, or what creepish force has come stalking. Don't move!' Still winded, Sulfin Evend fought each word through agonized, galling bitterness. 'Breathe the thing in, it will taint your blood. Your heart might be touched. This blade is your warding. Contact is binding your fragile protection, so sting and be grateful, your Grace. Why didn't you trust me? Under no circ.u.mstances were you to come down, far less seek this place after sunset.'

His anguish towered: three brave men were dead.

Now the horror that might yet enact a possession was arrested just barely from flooding its victim. It poised in mid air, a sinuous veil, arrested by unknown eldritch powers worked into a tribal dagger. 'A page brought your summons,' Lysaer said at strained length.

'His name?' snapped Sulfin Evend. 'One of ours, or from the palace?'

'Does that matter?' Lysaer ground out. Dispa.s.sionate ice-blue eyes raked back. 'How do I know that you're not corrupted?'

'Sithaer's d.a.m.ned! Have you heard me? My best men were killed because I had no means to defend them!' No protection existed within this bleak place that could spare them from becoming taken in thrall to a necromancer. 'You have just one knife,' the commander appealed in s.n.a.t.c.hed grief. 'I had to choose which life should be saved. Now burn my casualties! I won't see them rise! You owe them that much, for their sacrifice.'

Lysaer coughed, his tangled head jammed against the stone stair, sullied gold in the glimmer of flame-light. Whether he sensed the threatened invasion, or whether the harsh knock-down had dazed his wits could not be determined.

'You must raise your light!' Sulfin Evend insisted. 'Tysan's safety right now depends on your gift. Or your hope to rout out this corruption is ashes!'

'You have lost hope, regardless,' declared an intrusive voice from below.

Sulfin Evend froze. Through his strained breathing, he heard furtive movement, then an uncanny shuffle. One of the freshly killed corpses had stirred. Puppet to the black will of a necromancer, it would mount the stair and wreak every form of fell horror.

'Burn them!' he gasped. 'Lysaer, do it now!'

Whether or not his liege meant to comply, the reanimate body kept speaking. 'I have news of the Master of Shadow, Blessed Prince! Arithon the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has flung you a challenge!'

Which statement changed everything. A repeat of the horrific event in Daon Ramon, Sulfin Evend watched a terrible, sweeping change eclipse the reason in Lysaer's eyes. Asandir had declared the effect was a curse, laid on by the Mistwraith's malice. Cast geas, or mad principle, the effect was the same: ruling power tossed like straws on a game-board set for unbridled disaster.

'Lysaer!' Frantic, Sulfin Evend bore down until the flint blade razed into raw skin. 'You are being played for strategic diversion. Tell yourself the truth! Fight back, man. Hold your rage. Don't rise to the bait of an enemy!'

The plea fell on deaf ears. Lysaer's features contorted to a rictus of fury, while down the stairwell, an obscene aberration with a hole in its heart staggered erect and continued in monologue, 'Did you know you are betrayed? Arithon s'Ffalenn has suborned the s'Brydion of Alestron. They have sheltered your renegade s.h.i.+pwright, Cattrick, and more. Your wife, in their hands, is now being dispatched to a hostel of Ath's adepts. The master I serve could hand you the victory. The death of the by-blow who has shamed your name could be delivered into your grasp.'

'Lies!' cracked Sulfin Evend. 'Burn the dead, or we're lost!'

Lysaer heaved. An animal whipped to an insane pitch of fury, he battered to dislodge the stone-knife from his throat. Sulfin Evend wrestled the slighter prince down. His ruthless fist hardened against Lysaer's neck, now become as much a deadly liability as an indispensable stay of protection. 'Hold, liege! You must! You're being reeled in like a fis.h.!.+'

'Let go.' Implacable, Lysaer clawed to throw off restraint. 'Stand down. Or burn! I will not be thwarted.'

'I will not see you make an alliance with havoc!' Sulfin Evend used his studded bracer as a club and tried to stun his liege unconscious. The effort fell short. The knife gouged and slipped. Blood pooled in the hollow of Lysaer's throat, while the unmanageable grip of Desh-thiere's curse trampled down ethics and reason.

The crux wrung the loyal heart beyond bearing: to burn alive in Lysaer's crazed a.s.sault, or to drive home the knife like a butcher. Yet even the choice to serve death had not spared the other three officers trapped in the breach. Black spell-craft had claimed them in ruinous usage, a fate now poised to overtake the most powerful ruler in the five kingdoms. The weal of the Alliance, and who knew how many innocent lives, hung in the horrific balance.

'Lysaer!' Sulfin Evend shouted to break concentration, any effort to redirect the burgeoning rip tide of light. 'Fight your war! But not this way! Don't join hands with the dark cabal whose twisted acts drove your wife and your son into danger!'

Slammed into a riser, battered half-dizzy, the s'Ilessid prince sucked a wracked breath. 'They were p.a.w.ns. Stand aside! Don't think to obstruct me.'