Traitor's Knot Part 4

Luhaine's disembodied quiet stunned the air to suspended intensity.

Machiel unleashed a studied string of expletives, while the council-man who guarded the venues of trade leaned forward with fired agitation. 'Dharkaron Avenger's Five Horses and Chariot! An outbreak of plague couldn't sever our rotten relations with the Alliance port towns any faster!'

King Eldir's jaundiced calm remained fixed, even dangerous, as he challenged the Sorcerer's silence. 'Are you here to tell me an estranged royal wife will be scratching at my door and begging for sanctuary?'

'No one knows what Lady Ellaine will choose,' Luhaine responded with acid delicacy. Tired of breaking Sethvir's packets of bad news, he would not give way and temporize. The straight possibility the princess might look south for safety could destroy the last, frayed thread of diplomacy between Havish and Tysan. Strained relations, on top of the ravages of famine, were going to rattle Avenor's choleric amba.s.sador harder still. 'Served with timely warning, you can field the problem with diplomacy. I remind your Grace: the lady has borne a living son to s'Ilessid. Since she won't realize her status under charter law, she could be advised of the fact she's ent.i.tled to ask our Fellows.h.i.+p for a.s.sistance.'

Before the harsh point was argued, that the Sorcerers might not have a free hand to answer in time to forestall repercussions, Machiel interrupted. 'But Lysaer's son pa.s.sed Fate's Wheel. Got himself scorched to heroic cinders by a Khadrim, so we heard.' Never fully at ease within walls, the forest-bred steward retrieved the cross-bow stock and used his skinning knife to ream out the quarrel slot. 'We were led to understand that breaking news of the tragedy was what caused his mother's crazed flight in the first place.'

'Not exactly.' The Sorcerer's shade whisked over the patterned carpet, fanning groomed heads and lace and riffling the coals in the grate to a sullen flare of heat. 'Prince Kevor's still alive. An arcane recovery, not yet widely known.' Now poised by the mantel, Luhaine's presence all but bristled the air into h.o.a.r-frost. He required to say more. But today his fond penchant for diatribe was cut short as a hammering gust battered into the latched gla.s.s of the cas.e.m.e.nt. The draught that seeped through stalled his windy voice and engendered a freezing silence.

A crowned high king attuned to all four of the elements, Eldir stood up. Braced short by his move, the wiser council-men stilled, while Machiel s.h.i.+vered outright and ceased his idle fuss with the workings of dismantled weaponry.

'Spare us!' Eldir cracked. 'If it's bad news for Havish, tell us quickly.'

Across the wrenched pause, Luhaine's shade stopped cold as the urgent summons dispatched from Althain's Warden exploded across hisawareness . . .

. . . in Erdane, amid crawling shadows in a cluttered attic, a strong man stands naked within a raised warding and lays a flint knife to his wrist. His swift stroke enacts the ritual cut. As the flow of let blood wakes a flash of raw light, his shocked outcry reflects an anguished note of betrayal.

'Oh yes, my fine man,' whispers Enithen Tuer. 'You have in fact consecrated that knife's arcane properties. A binding act, born out of necessity, since that blade alone will enact your primary line of protection! Now listen well: here are the words you will swear, sealing your oath unto your dying breath, or take warning! You will fall to a hideous fate that's far worse, and suffer the eternal consequence . . .'

Luhaine recovered himself, jaggedly frantic. The dropped thread of his audience closed with a rush that distressed those who knew his staid character. 'If the bereaved s'Ilessid mother should chance to make contact, she's best left to believe that her royal son perished.'

'Ath's Grace, Luhaine!' The king's shout chimed through the complaint of cleaned steel, as he slammed his closed fists on the table-top. 'Don't ask this! I can't! The very idea's a straight cruelty!'

The Fellows.h.i.+p spirit whirled in tight agitation, scattering maps and requisition lists, and setting goose-quills to flight like chased leaves. 'Not in this case! Had young Kevor died, he could not be any more lost to her!'

Machiel's granite features went pale. 'Dharkaron avert! A wicked turn, if the boy's in fact fallen to necromancy!'

'Mercy! No! Not in this case,' Luhaine cracked as he spun in pained haste toward the cas.e.m.e.nt. In actuality, that threat confronted the boy's father, a horror too dire to contemplate. Forced away in the face of the High King's stressed adamancy, the Sorcerer flung back on departure, 'Trust us, your Grace! In compa.s.sion, I ask you to heed Sethvir's counsel! I can't tarry to explain. Another crisis is breaking in Erdane, and I must go at once to attempt intervention!'

Late Spring 5670.

On Death and Banishment.

In the dark, musty garret, the knife that had served as her protection now gone with a loyal man to spare his prince, the ancient seeress encounters the moment foreseen as her hour of death: inside the spent lines of her guarding circles, she is whispering banishments, to no avail; the insatiable ring of cold spectres close in, sucking her failing vitality . . .

At Avenor, Cerebeld, High Priest of the Light, takes uneasy pause to blot his brow, then smooths his rich robes, descends to the ward-room, and accosts Avenor's elite palace guard, 'I want another three galleys sent out! More patrols. Sweep every road-house and country inn. Or how will you laggards respond when the Divine Prince holds inquest over the fate of his errant wife . . . ?'

One moment shy of disaster, Enithen Tuer's locked door becomes breached by a gust that bursts into scouring light; and devouring shades scatter, as Luhaine of the Fellows.h.i.+p wraps the dying old woman in veils of blue fire and calm: 'Peace, my dear. I will hold you, secure. Let your brave spirit cross over Fate's Wheel in safety . . .'

Late Spring 5670.

II. Excision.

Three hours before dawn, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend returned to the mayor's palace. Rumpled and chilled, his rapacious mood fit to stamp an impression in pig-iron, he bowled past the butler with four trusted officers, on the pretence of holding a war council. His party mounted the carpeted stair in a m.u.f.fled thunder of boots. Their stubbled faces and ready steel brooked no protest as the Lord Commander set them on guard in the ante-room of the state guest suite.

'I'm going inside. No one follows! You'll prevent any servants from leaving.' His wolfish review permitted no questions. 'Whatever you hear, whatever you think, I rely on you to stand firm. No one, I don't care who, or what rank, will cross over this threshold behind me. If I don't reappear to relieve you by dawn, your orders will proceed as follows: set fire to these chambers. Burn the contents, untouched. Let nothing and no one attempt any salvage until this whole wing has been razed to the ground! Am I clear?'

Shock stunned the men silent. Lest they bid to question their commander's sanity, the senior officer requisitioned from Etarra spoke fast to quash stirring doubt. 'He's testing our nerve, you limping daisies! The Prince Exalted's beyond that shut door. Do you honestly think the immortal Light born as flesh could be harmed by a paltry house fire?'

Still hooded, and masking the burden he carried under the folds of his cloak, Sulfin Evend doused the conjecture. 'Hold my line! On my word, if you fail, we shall see the day evil triumphs.' Forced to the grim crux, he tripped the latch and slipped into the royal apartment. The closed air within was stuffy and dim, cloyed with the herbs the distraught valet was using to sweeten the closets. At the commander's arrival, he abandoned his fussing, while the officious chamber servant shot to his feet, and the page-boy napped on in an overstuffed chair, snoring beside the lit candle.

Against the appearance of indolent normalcy, the unconscious man stretched on the bed lay ivory pale, and too still. Lysaer's blond hair gleamed on the tidied pillow, shadowed beneath the rich hangings. Devoted hands had tucked away his marked limbs, then raised the satin-faced coverlet up to his chin to lend the appearance of natural repose. Past one surface glance, the fallacy crumbled. The imperceptible draw of each shallow breath was too sluggish to be mistaken for regular sleep.

Sulfin Evend shoved back his hood. Hard mouth pressed to a line of distaste, he flung off the cloak, which still reeked of clogged smoke from the seeress's fusty attic. Then he shed his swathed bundle on a marquetry table and addressed the fidgety staff. 'Roust up the boy. Then, get out, every one of you.' Jet hair dishevelled, a steel gleam to pale eyes, he forestalled the least opening for argument. 'My armed men will not allow you to leave. You'll have to bunk down in the ante-room.'

The scared servant shook the logy page to his feet, hushed his grumbling, and steered for the doorway. The valet did not stir a finger to help. Gangling arms clasped, his grey hair fas.h.i.+onably styled above his immaculate livery, he stuck in dapper heels and refused.

Sulfin Evend met that obstinacy with frightening resolve, an uncompro-mised fist closed over his sword grip, and his unlaced, left sleeve flecked with blood-stains. 'Stand clear!'

'Someone should stay,' the gaunt servant insisted. 'Whatever foul work you intend to commit, my master will have a witness.'

'That's a d.a.m.ned foolish sentiment, and dangerous!' The Alliance Lord Commander crossed the carpet, cat quick, prepared to draw steel out of hand. 'You have no idea what vile rite's to be done here. Nor have you the strong stomach to last the duration.'

'I daresay, I don't,' said the man with stiff frailty. 'Nonetheless, I will stand by my master.'

Shown threadbare courage in the face of such trembling fear, Sulfin Evend took pause with the blistering glance that measured his troops on a battle-line. Then he sighed, moved to pity. 'Why under Ath's sky should you ask this?'

The valet swallowed and shuffled his feet. His manicured hand gestured toward the bed. 'For too long, I have watched something evil at work. You are the first who has dared to react. If your trust proves false, then I fear nothing else. His Divine Grace may be saved or lost. If I share in his fate, come what may, I will know that one steadfast friend remained at his shoulder.'

'Have your way, then, but be warned: I'll have no interference.' Sulfin Evend released his weapon, his level, black eyebrows hooked into a frown as he moved past and snapped the curtains over the cas.e.m.e.nts. 'Fail me there, or breathe a word of loose talk, and I'll have your raw liver for a league bountyman's dog-meat. What you've asked to observe can't be done clean, or dainty. If you lose your nerve, or if I fall short, this room's going to burn, taking every-one with it. My captains won't pause, or s.h.i.+rk the command. Leave now, and I won't fault your bravery.'

The valet backed a step, rammed against the stuffed chair, and sat as his spindly knees failed him. 'This time, the command not to speak is a blessing,' he said, in a quavering voice.

Sulfin Evend had no second to spare and no words to acknowledge such staunchness. Dawn approached, far too quickly. Fingers flying, he stripped off spurs and boots. His surcoat came next, then the corded twill jacket that had masked his mail s.h.i.+rt at the feast. His studded belt clashed onto the pile, followed by his baldric and several sheathed daggers. Stripped to gambeson and breeches, he crossed the chamber and peeled back the carpet. Somewhere downstairs, a kitchen dog barked. A door banged, and a shrill voice berated a scullery maid for returning late from a tryst. Sulfin Evend bit back a harried oath. The household servants were already stirring, no favour, in light of the trial lying ahead.

He built up the fire. Without the oak logs, he used only the birch, split into billets for kindling. As the flames crackled and caught, hot and sweet and fast-burning, he rifled the night-stand, set the filled wash-basin onto the floor, then cracked open the curtain and whacked the bronze latch off the cas.e.m.e.nt. He used the snapped fitting to stub ice from the sill. The chips were dumped in the bowl, where they melted, settling a fine sediment of gritted soot and caught mortar. Hefting the iron poker, he crouched by the hearth and hooked out a smouldering bit of wood. Both coal and hot metal were doused with a hiss, then laid, steaming wet, on the floor-boards.

Pinned by the valet's dubious eyes, the Lord Commander plucked the wax candle from its p.r.i.c.ket. Stuck upright, it joined the array on the floor. s.n.a.t.c.hed light cast his movement in fluttering shadow as he stripped off his gambeson, then advanced to the bed.

He tore off the blankets. Lysaer's night-s.h.i.+rt was sacrificed, next, yanked away from his wasted frame with a snarl of ripped cloth and burst laces. All but unbreathing, the victim remained slack and pale as a day-old carca.s.s. Careful, so careful, not to brush against skin with even a glancing touch, Sulfin Evend jerked the tucked sheet from the mattress and bundled his stricken liege into his arms.

Lysaer weighed little more than a parcel of sticks. His golden head dangled. Poked from the wracked linens, his bare feet showed blue veins like the crackled glaze on antique porcelain.

Sulfin Evend ignored the valet's incensed glare, for what must appear callous handling. Enithen Tuer had been adamant concerning her detailed list of peculiar instructions. Charged not to skip steps, the commander knelt. He spilled the Blessed Prince in a naked heap on the stripped surface of the parquet. Vulnerably thin, his muscles were wire, the joint of each bone pressed against parchment skin, and each cadaverous hollow a pool of jet shadow.

No life seemed in evidence, beyond the reflex as the ribs rose and fell to the draw of each shallow breath.

The lit profile alone kept its heart-wrenching majesty, pure in male beauty as form carved in light, envisioned by a master sculptor. Sulfin Evend shrank away from sight of Lysaer's face. Already savaged by inchoate dread, he refused to give rein to the rending grief that suddenly threatened to unman him. Braced against worse than the horrors of war, he swathed his grip in a wrapping of sheet and tugged the seal ring from Lysaer's limp finger. The sapphire signet was cast aside, a tumbling spark of scribed light as it fetched up against the rucked carpet. Still s.h.i.+elding his hands, Sulfin Evend grasped Lysaer by the wrists and tugged his yielding frame on a north-to-south axis. The arms he extended out to each side, at right angles to torso and shoulder. He straightened Lysaer's bare legs from the hip and arranged a cloth yard of s.p.a.ce at the ankles. A towel scrounged from the bath pillowed the unconscious man's head.

Lastly, the wadded bed-sheet was burned. While the flames in the hearth consumed the_ spoiled cloth, Sulfin Evend addressed the valet. 'Move your chair. Turn your back. You can't watch what happens. Whatever unpleasantness follows, you can't help. My life, and Lysaer's, will hang in the breach until this foul rite is completed.'

The old servant bridled, outraged protest cut off by the officer's ice-water eyes.

'I don't have better remedy!' Gruff with dread, Sulfin Evend fought to master the requisite note of authority. 'If harm overtakes us, you'll have to trust that the powers that wreak ruin will be none of mine. The last steps will be harrowing. You can't intervene. Stop your ears. Use a blindfold if you can't keep your nerves in line through the worst.'

The valet reversed the c.u.mbersome chair. s.h.i.+vering, he rea.s.sumed his perched seat, then fussed his sleeves smooth from habit. 'If you lie,' he said, 'if you darken our world with the death of the avatar given to save us, I will watch you burn with a sword through your heart, I so swear by the grace of the Light.'

Sulfin Evend shoved erect, scalded to running sweat in the glare from the dying fire. 'As I am born, if I have misjudged, my own captain will do that work for you.'

Past chance to turn back, Sulfin Evend retrieved his wrapped bundle from the table-top. He laid it alongside the poker and basin, then slipped the seeress's knife from his waistband and discarded its deerskin sheath. The stone weapon was hung from a thong at his neck. Lastly, he peeled off his breeches and hose. The ritual of excision required him barefoot. Since the act of unbinding would invoke a working of air, he could not wear metal, even so much as an eyelet. Stripped down to his small-clothes, Sulfin Evend sucked a sharp breath, wrung by a spasm of gooseflesh.

He knelt at last, swallowed fear, and shoved back his soaked hair, then picked the knotted cords off the bundle. The first layer held numerous ceremonial items given by Enithen Tuer. Beneath, still masked by the fabric of Lysaer's purloined s.h.i.+rt, were the unclean clay bowl and the bone-knife, wrought to waylay the spirit by the dark workings of necromancy, then raised active by acts of blood-sacrifice. Sulfin Evend left those covered objects untouched. The seeress had a.s.sembled two packets of herbs. One, he emptied into the fire. Laced in the fragrance of sweet-burning smoke, he ripped open the other and spilled the contents into the basin. Next, he took up the quill from the wing of a heron, long and grey as a blade, and whispered the Paravian word, An, for beginning.

Power spoke through Athera's original tongue, a tingle of force that sharpened his gift of raw talent. Brushed by the lost echoes of an ancient past, before mankind had trodden Athera, Sulfin Evend clamped down on the ancestral instincts that whirled his mind toward a blurred haze of vision. He focused his thought to define his intent, then drew the circle of Air with the feather and arranged it, point outwards, at east. West, he painted the circle for Water with a finger dipped wet in the basin. Birch charcoal, soaked cold, scribed the circle for Fire, beginning and ending at south. North, he laid the iron poker, also with the point faced out. The last ward, for Earth, must be written in blood, using the tip of the seeress's flint knife.

Now committed past help, Sulfin Evend gripped the obsidian handle and cut the dressing off his marked wrist. The blind woman's instructions rang still through his mind, their cadence exactingly wary.' 'You will make the last circle, beginning at north. Reopen the wound that you made to swear oath. The rite bound you to the land for a term of life service. Used rightly, its virtues will answer.'

Sulfin Evend traced out the glistening red line, for the fourth and last time surrounding himself and the comatose prince, stretched naked as birth on the floor-boards. Then he recited the time-honoured words that called the four elements to guard point.

'The necromancer's victim will regain his awareness, about now,' the elderly seeress had cautioned: and Lysaer had. His sapphire eyes were wide-open. His pupils, distended, were bottomless black, and his limbs, bound in iron possession. First focused by pain, the Divine Prince encountered the horrid discovery that he was utterly helpless. Deadened nerves denied him the power to move or cry out in furious protest.

'He will feel the halter of-power laid on him, but not recognize you as his saviour. Stay vigilant, young man. Set one foot awry, displace any of your circles, and all your protections lie forfeit. Fail here, and you will fall prey to the uncanny forces that bid to break through. The necromancers whose binding is threatened will strive to reaffirm their disturbed ties of possession. You stand in their way, your work seeks to defy them. They will strike you down, if a slipshod step shows them the least little sign of a weakness.'

Lysaer would be terrified. His irate stare reflected no less than the wracking shock of betrayal. His most-trusted field officer surely appeared in league with a shadow-sent sorcerer.

Unwilling to suffer that stark, anguished gaze, forbidden to speak the one kindly phrase that might mend broken confidence, Sulfin Evend ripped the silk hem of the s.h.i.+rt into strips. Wedded to his una.s.sailable purpose, he knotted a cuff around each of Lysaer's slack wrists. Then he bound each slender ankle in turn. He soaked the dried sea sponge the seeress had given, and using the cloth to avert a chance touch, washed every last patch of bared flesh with the herbal brew in the basin. He had no time to make his ablutions tender. Lysaer s'Ilessid lay supine throughout, unable to offer resistance. His birth gift of light would not rise through the bindings laid down by the knife-cut circles.

The defences were holding firm, a back-handed blessing: even minor instruction in arcane knowledge would have allowed Lysaer to snap the stay set on his will. No such knowledge informed him. Bitterly helpless, shamed beyond pride, he suffered the cavalier handling. Those gemstone eyes burned with a cognizant rage that would have raised scorching light on a thought, and blasted his tormentor down to a cinder.

Silenced by the demands of the ritual, Sulfin Evend could ask for no leave; could not for decency's sake beg understanding or forgiveness. He gathered the four copper nails from the seeress, then the granite stone pried from her hearth. His heart closed to mercy, he pierced the tied knots in the cloth and fixed his liege's cuffed limbs to the floor-boards.

Lysaer's outrage drilled into his turned back as he hammered. Sulfin Evend held steadfast. The seeress's dry voice instructed from memory, 'You must break the bowl, next. Ah, no! Foolish man, you will never unwrap it! Those sigils incised on the rim channel power. Harm could strike at you, through your uns.h.i.+elded vision, or worse. The unclean powers engendered by necromancy might open a- portal within your defensive circles. Keep the bowl veiled. Use the stone. Crush the clay through the cloth. Now, be warned. The act will cause pain, for the resonance of shed blood on that vessel will harbour far more than residual spell-craft. As the sigils are shattered, their forced bond will release. The matrix that shackles the spirit will break, and Lysaer will feel the unpleasant shock as it happens.'

Sulfin Evend braced his nerves. Rock in hand, black hair soaked with sweat, he groped through the masking layer of cloth and sorted the ugly contents by feel. Then he aimed for the bowl and brought the rock down with all of his war-hardened strength.

Pottery smashed with a m.u.f.fled thump, and Lysaer s'Ilessid screamed. High and thin as a wounded rabbit, his keening note sawed the stark fabric of silence and extended beyond all endurance. Aching, Sulfin Evend crashed the stone down again. Blow after blow, he hammered into the cloth, and pulverized the burst fragments. Lysaer whimpered and cried. He howled in agony. Contorted spasms wracked his splayed form. His back arched. The ties that entrapped him tore his fine skin, as his vibrating heels drummed the floor-boards.

Horrified, Sulfin Evend pressed on. Lysaer's distress would not ease, while he faltered. Reprieve could not happen before he enacted the full course of the banis.h.i.+ng ritual. His hand shook. His eyes blurred with tears. He exchanged the stone for the black-handled knife, and rinsed the blade in the basin.

Enithen Tuer had warned of worse yet to come. Back in her attic, Sulfin Evend believed that she mocked him. Now all but unhinged by the force of his pity, he realized she had exhorted him out of heart-felt compa.s.sion.

A wiser man might have listened and walked free: more than a life debt attended this balance. Yet the choice of that moment was forfeit, and the hour too late to turn back.

Sulfin Evend lifted the flint dagger point over his liege's navel. Lips sealed, throat locked, he cut swiftly. The small flesh wound welled scarlet: the indented scar that once tied the cord to the mother filled and ran with the blood of the child. Sulfin Evend p.r.o.nounced the birth name of his prince, then phrased the Paravian invocation for prime power. He capped his appeal with a plea that was mortal, common to all of humanity.

'I demand this man's freedom! By right of birth, by right of life, by right of spirit, by the right of the undying light that sources his greater being, let him reclaim the pure truth of his wholeness. He is, himself, sovereign, alive by free will.'

'You will then cut the cords,' Enithen Tuer had instructed. 'By your born talent, one by one, you must feel them. Leave the one you will find at his brow! You must not touch that tie! If you slip, brave man, if you strike that last bonding, even by chance, you will do worse than destroy the victim you have set your very self at risk to preserve. Not only would you bring yourself under attack, you would call forfeit Lysaer's first claim to autonomy. His will would be lost, forever enslaved through your act to the undying web of the necromancers.'

Sulfin Evend cleaned the stained knife. Left hand raised, fingers spread, he sounded the s.p.a.ce above Lysaer's straining body with testing intent. Where he detected the invisible threads of resistance, he slashed the stream of energy crosswise with the black flint. At each cut, the air thrummed with vibrations past the range of his natural hearing. Lysaer shuddered and cried. Tears streaked down his temples. He recoiled, flinching, as though each encounter that disturbed the cords left him burned. Sulfin Evend barred his torn heart. Beyond mercy, he quartered the prince's stretched flesh, up and down, across the torso, at each ear, and over the crown, then down every strained limb. Each methodical pa.s.s, he nipped the bands of spelled energy, however small and fine.

Dumb exhaustion set in, then s.h.i.+vering nausea. Sulfin Evend persisted, while Lysaer's sobs dwindled. Long before the finish, the flesh he worked over subsided to a flaccid chill. Taut skin shuddered and streamed poisoned sweat, while the pounding pulse in the stretched veins of the neck raced as though the victim was set under torture.

Sulfin Evend. swiped back his drenched hair. Thread after thread, he tested and sundered, until only the last tie remained. By then, Lysaer's breathing was broken and harsh, beaten down to the verge of extremity.

'You may think your liege is near death from shock,' the seeress had said of this jointure. 'As you love life, if you care for his spirit, I charge you not to befooled!'

Set back on his heels, Sulfin Evend regrouped. Weariness wracked him. Every nerve in his body felt sickened. The hearth-fire had subsided to a bed of dull coals, painting the chamber in textureless shadow. Inside the cut circles, the close-woven air seemed as the walls of a tomb, rippled with sullen heat and cloying with blood smell, wet charcoal, and herb smoke. The single man, striving, sensed the trembling web of the cult's powers coiled tight through the gloom. Sweat burned through his lashes and scoured his eyes, and fear coiled cold in his vitals. Come triumph, or ruin, the dread crux was upon him.

Direct touch at this stage could not be avoided, a pitfall of consummate danger. Enithen Tuer had told him, unflinching: the salvage he staked his life to complete was all but predestined to fail.

'There is no. recourse,' she explained, unequivocal. 'The necromancers snared Lysaer by willing consent. Consciously, he must revoke their foul hold. Your prince has to wield the knife by his own hand. His free choice alone can release the last binding.'

Sulfin Evend braced for the final contest. Straddled across Lysaer's helpless, stripped body, he reached for the left wrist to slice away the silk binding.

'Your loyal heart will lay open your defences,' the wise old seeress had cautioned. 'Since the first moment you severed the auric streams tapped by the cultists to siphon vitality, you will have unsealed a self-contained line of spell-craft. Touch the victim, and the imbalanced conduit will affix to you. Until the remaining cord is destroyed, your strength will be drained to replenish Lysaer. Each moment thenceforward will sap you, brave man. Your prince will revive, and you will diminish. With no effort at all, the bound victim might bring the enemy's work to completion. He need do nothing more than outlast you.'

Sulfin Evend had met her concern with his fixed choice to go forward. 'I'll trust Lysaer's innate gift of justice will lend me the opening to prevail.'

Yet words were not action. No stringent warning prepared: first contact ignited a welter of pain.

Hard resolve could not reconcile the chain-lightning jolt that slammed through mind and senses. Hurled headlong into vertigo, Sulfin Evend reeled, cut adrift, as the explosive shock flayed his awareness. On blind fear, he grappled. The parasitic evil that leached life and breath could bring him down just as fast as the rush of arterial bleeding. He could not pull back. The die had been cast. Mulish courage was not going to save him. Lysaer would be lost for his fatal mistake: the spelled creature whose savage, blue eyes reviled him would never accept a clean death, far less comprehend the chance of a self-claimed redemption.

Tonight's ruin would seed a future of ashes.

The paragon who wielded the power of Light would become a puppet, possessed by the will of reanimate shades. His suborned majesty would destroy the very Alliance whose cause was to banish the oppression of Shadow and tyranny.

Sulfin Evend locked down his jagged scream. Beyond help or resource, he cut the silk restraining his liege's left hand. Pain slowed his reflexes. With humiliating ease, Lysaer's bone-slender wrist twisted free of his sweaty grasp.

The commander deflected the fingers that jabbed at his face. War-trained to fight, he discarded the knife. A feint, a wild s.n.a.t.c.h, and he snapped a fresh hold. His two-fisted grip bore down on Lysaer's forearm, while the spells of the necromancer sucked at him like a lamprey and snapped his live tissue to agony.

Lysaer bucked under him. With one wrist and both ankles still constrained, there should not have been any contest; except that vile craft-work fuelled his manic strength, and likewise sapped his beset opponent.

'Your treason won't take me,' Lysaer gasped, enraged.

Whipped to tears, panting through lancing pain, Sulfin Evend could not s.n.a.t.c.h the resource for answer. Without words, against hope, he must mend shattered trust, before the fell forces his meddling had unleashed drained off his life and claimed both of them.

Where muscle failed, he used leverage and weight, jammed the murdering fist to the floor. He knew where the nerve ran, and jabbed, as he must. Through Lysaer's snarled curses, Sulfin Evend bore in. He matched that incensed blue stare until the wrist that he savaged went limp in his ruthless grasp. He groped, one-handed, recovered the knife.

Fury whipped through his liege's taut frame. Sulfin Evend grappled drawn wire and steel. He held on, while faintness sucked at his balance. His stomach felt yanked inside out, while his hands and feet came unravelled and dissolved into substanceless air. Every skilled art of war, all his tricks of in-fighting, ebbed away under roaring vertigo. Rushed witless, he fell back on expedience, and gouged a knee into Lysaer's exposed groin.

The prince curled, caught short by the cruel restraints. The pinched breath in his nostrils pa.s.sed, whistling.

He gasped, while his officer hefted the knife. Grainy flint blade, and sweat-printed obsidian handle: the weapon seemed made for no purposeful good. Yet its foreboding appearance could not compare with the obscene shard of knapped bone that Lysaer had used to enslave himself. The Lord Commander levelled the dagger before his liege's wracked face. Reeling, he waited. Through surge upon surge of debilitating torment, he held on until those gemstone-blue eyes showed the flicker of restored comprehension.