Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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he added, ‘Nor will they guess we’ve an ally waiting to shield us. If fortune favors, they’ll keep the belief we’re given to aimless flight.’ For prudence, he chose not to mention that Dakar would likely need spellcraft to further mislead their pursuit.
Inured to harsh weather by his moorland upbringing, the young herder stumbled onward. The overwhelming speed of events had left him too numbed to think. Through bitter necessity, he trailed Arithon’s lead through the banked snow of the sheepfold. Another deep ditch, and a slippery crossing over the logs of a stile, then partial respite as they plunged into the fir copse beyond.
Fionn Areth tripped twice before his dulled mind made sense of his jumbled impressions. In fact, they had covered more ground than he thought. The open land of the farmsteads lay behind them.
An evergreen canopy closed on all sides. The sky was blank pitch. Each gust shook crusted snow from the spruce, a mere clutch of seedlings before the towering growth that ruched foothills to the west. The tumbled chimney of a cottar’s house jagged under the pillowing drifts, the broken yard gate a mute testament to some cataclysmic misfortune. Beyond the old steading, a ravine razed the dell, where the annual spring snowmelt roared in white cataracts to egress in Eltair Bay.
Despite the hard freeze, the crossing was arduous, the undercut banks being ice clad. Jutted rocks caved away at each step. Wet to the knees, and wrung wretched with shivering, Fionn Areth cursed the cold rivulets that chased down his boot cuffs and collar. His gloves had soaked through, the fingers inside chilled to lumps of shrill agony. Close on Arithon’s heels, he panted uphill and crossed the exposed crest, harrowed each step by the howling winds off the seacoast. Descent proved as difficult, the stony soil overgrown with young firs cased in glaze ice, and uncut by even a deer path. Raked and slapped by needled boughs, Fionn Areth broke through to a clearing, too miserable to care that Arithon had reached his obscure destination.
An abandoned mill loomed on the swept shelf of snow, crooked in the oxbow bend of a stream. Its unroofed, square shell carved the gusts into dissonance. The rotted wheel canted in a rimed tumble of frozen waterfall. Nor was the ruin deserted. A stout, muffled figure emerged from its gloom, its waddling stride on the uncertain footing as ungainly as a discomposed duck.
‘Dakar!’ hailed Arithon, sounding weary at last. ‘I want––’
‘You bastard, you just about killed me with worry! Old storm rips my fixed wardspells to static, and you take a fiend’s sweet time to make rendezvous!’ Halted in huffing distemper, the fat prophet who served as the Shadow Master’s henchman scowled.
Blown snow frosted his ginger brows and his unkempt bristle of beard. ‘You don’t hear the horn calls? The Mayor of Jaelot’s sent lancers abroad. I had just about written you both off as meat for the headhunter’s mastiffs.’
‘Dakar,’ Arithon broke in, wrung by a shiver. ‘Did you bring horses?’
‘Dharkaron’s black bollocks! Are you both soaked as rabbits?’ The Mad Prophet flicked his irritated glance from one alike face to the other, spell-carved to match the same chiseled angles under wind-snagged sable hair. Unerringly able to discern the original, he thrust out a forearm to support young Fionn Areth. ‘Yes, I managed to meet your request. We have four geldings, three hacks, and one knock-kneed packhorse. Come in. There’s also a fire and hot gruel, and before you ask, yes. I’ve set masking runes, and have maze wards running against the mayor’s riders at each of the four quarters.’
Arithon winced at the mention of ward sorceries, which, predictably, balked Fionn Areth.
Dakar jerked the boy forward in unvarnished exasperation. ‘Ath preserve idiots with misaligned scruples, come on! His Grace of Rathain might prefer to stay outside and brood, just show me an Araethurian herdsman born with warm-blooded good sense.’
Fionn Areth resisted, given short shrift as Dakar vented his leftover tension through scolding. ‘I’m damned glad you’re alive and still standing to greet me, boy. That won’t lift the blight of Daelion’s curse off the bone-headed folly that spared you! Your prince won’t have mentioned, but the risk undertaken to snatch you from Jaelot takes the prize for catastrophic stupidity.’
At next step, they crossed into the ring of set guard spells. Fionn Areth cried out as a sharp tingle raked his skin. He nearly sprained the Mad Prophet’s wrist in his panicked effort to bolt.
‘Dharkaron’s bleak vengeance!’ Dakar exploded. Fingers locked in the Araethurian’s wet cloak, he held on, his corpulent bulk no more bothered than if he had bagged a struggling game fish. ‘Koriani witches changed your whole face through black use of their sigils of force. What’s a middling weak veil of concealment going to do, except save your skin from execution? Find the sweet reason that Ath gave your goats! Get yourself warm and dry enough to think clearly before you decide we’re your enemies.’
Fionn Areth flushed, grumbled an apology in his backcountry dialect, then relented enough to let Dakar lead him into the shelter of the tumbledown mill.
The roof had caved in to a rickle of slate, but the beamed track of the log carriage for the saw still stood. The planked platform winnowed the worst of the snow. In the single dry corner, cut off from the wind, Dakar had lit a neat fire. A pot of gruel bubbled over the flames. Four horses munched hay, tied by neck ropes to the skewed post of the mill shaft, its base secured by the massive runnerstone that had ground countless harvests of barley. The animals’ warmth blunted the edge from the cold. Beside three heaped saddles, acquired by means of forged requisitions and subterfuge, Dakar had blankets and cloaks and thick boots lined with lamb’s wool. The collection included two buck knives, a hunting bow, and provisions fit for a trek across mountain terrain.
‘Oh, well done, Dakar.’ Arithon unhooked the iced clasps on his mantle, hung the sopped cloth on the sacklift, and accepted the blanket tossed into his numbed hands. Swathed like a wraith, he resumed his expert inspection. ‘Where are the spirits?’
Dakar chuckled. ‘Here was I, wishing the troublesome brains had been frozen clean out of your head. I’ve got spiced wine laced full of restoratives. If you drink too much, don’t damn me tomorrow. You’ll feel like your innards got packed with wet sand, with river rocks jammed in your eye sockets.’
Between helping Fionn Areth, the Mad Prophet unslung a cord from his neck and passed over a stoppered skin flask.
Arithon fumbled his effort to draw the cork. He grimaced, used his teeth, then shut his eyes in distaste and belted a hefty draught. The offensive sting made his eyes water. A husked burr of betrayal roughened his voice. ‘You didn’t mention lye-stripping the tissue off my poor vocal cords. I won’t sing a true note for a week.’
‘And right blessed that misfortune will be!’ Dakar shot back, scathing. ‘Given the powers you’ve roused up in blind ignorance, we’re lucky not to be cinders scattered over the Ath-forsaken dunes of Sanpashir!’
He snatched up Fionn Areth’s discarded shirt, wrung out the cuffs, and hung the linen to dry. ‘You’ll find a clean tunic and smallclothes in the saddle pack.’ At the young man’s hesitation, his moon features knit into a glower fit to torch silk. ‘Don’t even think to protest obligation. You’re the guest of your crown prince. He’s oathbound by law to provide you his best hospitality.’
‘We’re touchy,’ observed Arithon, his thoughtful gaze on the Mad Prophet’s back. He rolled a sawn log closer to the fireside. As though his balance might desert him without warning, he perched. ‘Has your pending fit of prescience not lifted since sundown?’
Bent over, rummaging through saddle packs like a corpulent thresher, with Fionn Areth hovering with bad humor and crossed arms, Dakar grumbled through his beard. ‘I’m hungover. Jaelot’s gin is a grade below horse piss – that much hasn’t changed in twenty years.’
‘I’m remiss.’ A wry grin lit Arithon’s fox features, tinged orange in the flicker of firelight. ‘Why not sample your vile restorative?’ He passed back the flask, while the tireless wind skirled snow devils across the darkened