Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon. Janny WurtsЧитать онлайн книгу.
whose unborn child’s betrayed trust in due course paid the ultimate price? Teylia was forced to salvage the brunt of your maladroit chain of ill consequence. Who else might suffer in further forfeit remains under question.’
‘Merciful Ath!’ Dakar exclaimed, trembling. His diligent years of rapt study could not be dismissed at a stroke for the sake of one bygone grievance. ‘Why wait so long to bring this to light? What raised the issue at this hour?’
His anguished question stayed brutally dangling.
‘The disastrous choices have been made already,’ Asandir declared, unequivocal. ‘My oath, set in stone, forbids further action on Arithon’s behalf for the future. What you do hereforward is your own affair. You have been released to walk away, or to find the conscience to seek a redemption.’
Dakar accepted the severance, granted no chink for appeal. He was not crushed pithless. On his way out, he paused only to fling back a cruel dart of his own. ‘Forget my thankless service! Best for you to fall back on your king-making touch to appoint the throne’s shadow, in fact!’
At Asandir’s startled glance, which all but cracked a legendary demeanour, Sethvir said in arch calm as the door slammed, ‘On that count, no one is joking, dear friend. After all, Tysan is legitimately threatened. There, actually, Fellowship auspices can snatch the initiative and declare the next successor to the s’Gannley title.’
‘Which branch?’ quipped the field Sorcerer, too astute to be surprised twice on the subject. ‘Or can you mean both at once?’
Sethvir’s eyes gleamed with the suspect sparkle of paste, buffed to pass as a swindler’s trifle. ‘How far can we bend the dictates of old law and strain the frayed cloth of tradition?’
‘Far enough,’ cracked Asandir, ‘to scald the naked pink flesh of our arses!’ He reached to fortify himself from the tray. To one who knew him, the sadness and grief afflicted by Dakar’s mean departure were poignantly visible. In truth, his return had been most tenderly expected: with faultless care, his discarded apprentice had catered to his personal preference. The delicacies of hot bread, and fresh fruit, so often missed in rough travel, accompanied Sethvir’s pot of steaming tea. The congealed plate of sausage and pickled eggs, Dakar would have arranged for himself.
The light meal Asandir wished, while at leisure, would scarcely stand him in good stead as he braced for another hard journey. Already expected to crown the new heir on the death of the High Queen of Havish, he understood Tysan’s explosive woes could not rest, shadowed under the deadlier threat of the Mistwraith’s resurgent influence.
Asandir sliced a thick slab of bread, wrapped it over the plump link of sausage, then tucked in, determined, and ate. While the Warden fleshed out the rest of the news, he chewed fast, driven by need to commit his strength to two winter errands, one nearer at hand, and the other at extreme long distance. Both added tasks must be handled at speed, without rest amid inclement weather.
For Dakar, the harsh temper of training would hold; or else break down, to the waste of centuries of unstinted effort. Today’s abrupt severance had been nothing less than a pitiless act of expediency. Every frail thread of advantage must be seized in the heat of the moment. For if a stop-gap net could not be spun to foil the Prime Matriarch’s ruthless intentions, the Fellowship Sorcerers had no other avenue left to deflect the hurtling course towards ruin.
Early Winter 5922
Departures
While the Prime Matriarch pursues her intent to thwart Elaira’s journey to seek Biedar counsel, her urgent design to trap the enchantress takes pause for fresh news from the lane watch in Tysan: that a sharp quittance by Asandir has left Dakar stranded as a free agent…
Alarmed by the uncanny failure to collar the elusive pair of condemned fugitives, the True Sect High Priest at Erdane suspends his enforced curfew, then issues a command to assemble a formal delegation to Etarra, entrusted to bear a renewed petition pleading for the reform of the Light’s renegade avatar…
On the morning that suspended road travel resumes, an apparently surly, underfed groom weaves a hand-cart piled with horse trappings through a jammed inn-yard; but as a merchant’s wagon filled with cured fleeces rolls out down the Cainford road, the dumped saddle-cloths are found in a heap, with the fellow responsible vanished, and no other to blame for one stable blanket gone missing…
Early Winter 5922
IV. Dispossessed
The driver of the cart-load of fleeces proved to be a man in love with his wine-skin. Between rapturous guzzling, he sang off-key, or mumbled obscenities in tones of encouragement to the back-turned ears of his draught mules. Stopped by the Light’s lancers for questioning, he told raucous jokes. Oblivious to rolled eyes and glares of annoyance, he folded double and whooped himself breathless with laughter at his own cleverness.
The exasperated sergeant propped him back upright with distaste. Since nothing witnessed by a drunken sot could be counted reliable, the dedicates slapped the rumps of his team and sent him on his merry way. Better that, than risk being saddled with him when he flopped into a stupor and snored off his binge amid his rancid cargo. The minion of Darkness sought by the temple examiners moved over the land without tracks. Such a fell power would not need to skulk, far less stow away where the pungency of shearling wool left the hand that inspected it reeking of sheep.
Therefore, Tarens slept undisturbed, comfortably nestled amid the grease stink of lanolin. When the tipsy driver succumbed to his spree down the road, a small, black-haired man cloaked in a horse-blanket emerged from the fleeces, took over the mules’ reins, and steered the cart southward at a brisk pace.
Hours later, the driver awoke, moaning with a bilious hangover. Naught seemed the worse for his bout of unconsciousness, except that his strayed mules had meandered off course down a derelict side lane and snagged their bridles in the rank overgrowth. The wind was rising. Lowered sun filtered through the bare trees, and a pewter scud of cloud from the north threatened to bring a fresh snowfall. Grumbling over his tender head, the carter extricated his team, muscled his stalled wagon right way around, and back-tracked towards the main trade-road.
He never saw hide nor hair of the fugitives inadvertently given safe transport. An hour gone, the pair pressed forward on foot down the unused by-way. The weedy wheel-ruts devolved to a path, embroidered with dense thickets of burdock and flanked by a leafless coppice. The wood opened at length where the tumble-down ruin of a settlement bordered the river’s edge.
The rotted lathe-walls, broken fences, and moss-capped chimney stones had lain abandoned for years, roofless crofts and a caved-in forge overtaken by bitter-sweet vine. Likely the land’s bounty had gone to neglect when the resident families fell to a virulent outbreak of fever. Tarens allowed that Efflin’s case had been lucky. More often, those stricken succumbed and died. A village might be wiped out in a season, with the hale survivors too few to maintain the legacy left by misfortune.
The fallen beams stood open to sky. Nothing moved but the secretive pheasant, flushed squawking from the weedy straggle of stems left by kitchen gardens gone wild. Where there had been children and laughter and industry, only the rustles of drab little birds foraged amid the snarled briar.
Tarens ached, dispirited. ‘What are you looking for? We won’t find a haven, here.’
Head cocked to one side, his dark-haired friend continued to listen as if hope had not gone with the vanished inhabitants. Shortly, in the yard of a tumble-down cottage, he unearthed a dry root-cellar in decent repair. The nearby well had not fallen in. Though the rusted crank-shaft had frozen, the chain stayed intact enough to replace the rotted bucket with a discarded preserves jar. The drawn water stayed sweet. Plentiful hare grazed in the overgrown pastures. Summer-fat on the unmown hay, they were easily snared with a string noose. By nightfall, before the first snow blew in earnest, the vagabond’s foraging provided a tasty leek stew, stirred with a peeled stick in a dented pot.
The frugal cookfire he built