Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts
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intrusion.
They hauled his bulk upright. Efficient and quick, they disarmed him, then prodded his person at weapons’ point down the precarious, switched-back trail into the ravine. Met at the river’s edge by Esfand, and spoken for over the thundering rapids by Siantra’s passionate argument, he found himself blindfolded and hoisted on a sling across the white race of the Arwent. Forced, stumbling, over the slippery rocks on the far bank, then from chilly shade into sunlight, he smelled grass, ears deafened by the shrilling of summer cicadas in the parched scrub underfoot. He endured more brisk handling. Another tussle, that ended with him in duress, lashed by a stout rope on horseback. By then, his captors’ exasperated forbearance suggested his fight, or Siantra’s insistent appeal, had been heard.
“Rest easy, fellow!” the scout captain snapped. “You’re under our escort for a clan hearing.”
If Jieret’s inherited wisdom approved of the ruthless precautions, Tarens endured a pace that blistered his knees, painful sacrifice for the blessing of speed. His imperative charge to reach Halwythwood’s council scalded his nerves to unease. Each passing hour since the past evening, the gut wrench of his instincts screamed warning. Wherever Arithon fared in the Storlains, whatever his current activity, Tarens sensed that a crucial dynamic had turned for the worse.
Family ties, before Sighted urgency, shaped the High Earl of the North’s explosive response to the news of the prodigal children’s return. The message relay that sent word by notched arrows flagged him down where he stood in tense conference. Cosach ran out on the council’s debate over the True Sect hazard brewing at Etarra.
Burst into the lodge where his fair-haired wife nursed their four-month-old infant, he grinned ear to ear through his wiry beard and lunged for his weapons. “Esfand’s back at last!” Aware of her tears as she surged to arise, he kissed her forehead and resettled her before the babe lost its suckle and howled. “I’m going myself.” Busy with buckles, he answered her thought. “Laithen’s heard. She’s already away. When you’ve done with the wean, take over the reins and talk common sense to the chieftains. A few flaming maniacs think we can repel the Canon’s blood purge with a war band.”
The door flap slapped to his vigorous exit, through Jalienne’s bemused rejoinder, “I’m not the best choice to keep order in there. Ask me, our warmongering dolts should be cooled like a dog scrap with pails of flung water.”
“If only that worked,” Rathain’s caithdein lamented over his shoulder. A scrambled thud of hooves saw him mounted and gone, swiftly enough to meet the inbound scouts enroute from their post by the Arwent.
As usual, Laithen s’Idir’s stringent sense outpaced everyone else. Her advance dispatch saw a hide tent pitched in wait, tucked under the dappled shade at the southern fringe of Halwythwood.
Late-afternoon sunlight seeped through the tied-back entry when Cosach stalked in. He found pine torches staked in place, but unlit, beside a plank trestle surrounded with grass-stuffed hassocks. Surprised to raised eyebrows by the banner of Rathain, hung behind, his glance met the whipcord-tough woman who emerged from the shadows. “I’ve received state visitors with much less fuss. My son won’t be cowed. Are you trying to wake the fear of Dharkaron’s vengeance in your only daughter?”
“As if anyone could,” Laithen said, too blunt for his blustering. “Our youngsters may come in hungry and tired. Let’s welcome them home and hear their report. In formal quiet, before they are mobbed for details by a raucous audience.”
“Well.” Cosach gestured askance at the curtain strung to provide private quarters. “Jalienne will skin me alive if I stall our boy overnight.”
Laithen’s mouth quirked. Slender in restraint as a planted spear, she countered the feint. “They aren’t children, no matter they’ve not come of age. After this, you don’t think they deserve the respect of an adult reception?”
Cosach snorted. “Maybe.” He fumed, bunched broad shoulders, and swore with bad grace, then shucked his sword and filled the cramped tent with his restless anticipation. Ever the model of cool sobriety, Laithen leaned on a support pole to quell her impulse to pace.
A woodpecker’s tap pocked the stillness from the humid depths of the forest: no bird’s industrious foraging but a signal from a concealed sentry. Cosach froze between steps, while Laithen let go and shoved forward. Muscular High Earl and mercurial woman barely avoided collision as the outriders reined up lathered mounts in the glen. Both anxious parents poised with stopped breath until the boisterous commotion sorted itself out, and the dismounted pack of scouts swirled and parted.
The son whose rash exploits had sent him too dangerously far afield emerged first. Esfand was no longer the unfinished stripling, all elbows and knees with the gawky neck of adolescence. Taller, fleshed out, he advanced with confidence, his seal-dark clan braid secured with grass twine, and his leathers the worse for hard wear. Intent hazel, his eyes locked on the father poised at the tent’s entry.
Then mature poise shattered. Esfand surged forward in naked relief and burst out, agonized, “Khadrien—”
Cosach swept the lad into a bear hug. Gruff with pride for the young man in his clasp, he said, “Never mind. Later. We already know. Your mother’s well, and you have a new sister to welcome. Cordaya.”
Hard at Esfand’s heels came Siantra. Grown as well, but fretted rail thin, her coltish frame still moved with incongruous grace, but no more in impetuous innocence: under charcoal brows bunched into a frown, her enormous, pale eyes held an unearthly light. Met by her diminutive mother, she burst out, “I’m sorry! The black sword, Alithiel—”
“We’re aware of that, also.” Laithen embraced her daughter, tearful and smiling. “Khadrien’s exploits can be discussed later.” Overjoyed though she was by reunion, the fair-skinned outsider the scout guards hauled in blindfolded had not escaped her. “That won’t be his Grace. Who else have you brought us?”
Cosach scowled at the bound stranger, which prompted the patrol to present the unplanned arrival forthwith. “Inside,” he snapped, then, “You, as well,” to the son just reassessed at arm’s length. “Sit with us. I’ll hear your report once this trespasser’s case is settled to my satisfaction.”
Siantra and Esfand exchanged a tense glance, not canny enough to duck Laithen’s quicksilver intelligence. “Not now!” The jerk of her chin towards the tent implored them to retire without argument.
Commanded to the side-lines, the youngsters watched, silent, as the scouts dragged Tarens from horseback and hauled him to the tent for summary judgement. Laithen settled at the end of the trestle, overshadowed by Cosach, who stalked in and retrieved his sword. The baldric hung in place at his shoulder when the stranger’s person was manhandled before him and shoved onto his knees in the dirt.
“He’s unarmed?” Cosach cracked. “Then cut the wretch free. I would see a man’s face while he’s questioned.” Through the bustle as the scout escort wrestled their trussed prisoner back upright, the High Earl repeated Laithen’s clipped inquiry. “What have you brought us?”
Siantra’s swift assessment, called out of turn, “An ally who knows Prince Arithon better than we do!” entangled with Esfand’s appeal, “Let the fellow speak for himself.”
“Ally!” Surprise never softened High Earl Cosach to leniency. He kicked a stuffed hassock towards the armed scouts. “Sit the trespasser down.” Arms braced on the board at his back, he watched slit-eyed, while the scouts prodded their charge as directed, spring-wound to strike at the least provocation. They severed the knots at the intruder’s roped wrists, then whisked off the cloth bundled over his head.
Blond hair in need of a trim pasted the fellow’s flushed features: a visage moulded by country-bred honesty, handsome before the welted scar that disfigured his broken nose. Weathered to creases by sunburn, blue eyes blinked in the dazzle of sunlight shafted through the open tent flap.
A poised threat recessed into gloom, Cosach sized up the scouts’ catch at stilled leisure. His own stance stayed hackled