Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
Читать онлайн книгу.
Bransian’s iron gaze narrowed. ‘Caithdein of Rathain, are you officially here to depose a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince?’
‘No. Better yet.’ Jeynsa brushed off Liesse’s startled alarm and knelt with bent head to the duke. ‘Alestron, for need, has only to ask. By your leave, I can bring him.’
‘What foolery is this?’ exclaimed Talvish, astonished.
Mearn gave the girl his most fixated stare. ‘Do say how you plan to bid that wild spirit! Even the Fellowship can’t rein Arithon in. Or I daresay events would have taken a different, safe route through his recent affray at Etarra.’
Bransian’s roar overruled his wife’s chiding. ‘Say again, you insolent chit!’ His ice-grey eyes raked with dismissive contempt. ‘Shadow behind Rathain’s throne, you may be, girl, but no possible loop-hole in charter law appoints you the right to command your crown prince’s presence. No sovereign charge can force his defence inside the realm of Melhalla!’
Flushed purple, now dangerous, the duke advanced, while Liesse’s protesting grasp locked his wrist, and Talvish tensed, a hand closed on his sword for a suicidal prevention.
Yet the girl spoke first.
‘No sovereign charge,’ Jeynsa agreed, uncowed before brittle tension. ‘I hold the sworn bond of Rathain’s prince. Last month, in Halwythwood, he sealed a mage’s blood pledge that binds him to my protection.’ Insolent, aware she stopped everyone’s breath, Jeynsa hooked the nearest empty chair. She sat down, not caring that Liesse trembled, or that Mearn’s whiplash loquacity was finally shocked still. Behind her stiff back, even Talvish’s aghast face had drained white.
Jeynsa shrugged, while the duke’s menace loomed over her. ‘I need do nothing at all but stay here. His Grace will hear word. When the siege closes, his sworn debt will come due. Prince Arithon must come for me if I’m endangered.’
The point was inarguable: a mage-trained master constrained by life-oath would have no other choice.
Liesse found her voice. ‘My lord, you won’t! We can’t stoop to extortion, far less on a sanctioned crown heir!’
‘That’s risky business!’ cracked Mearn. ‘We’d call down the wrath of a Fellowship Sorcerer for sure!’
Jeynsa’s eyes stayed upturned on the duke. ‘There will be no opening,’ she insisted, too crisp. ‘Sethvir is gravely ill. Paravia is not endangered. The prime tenet of the Major Balance itself will allow for no grace of appeal.’
Mearn’s fast wit flanked her. ‘Alestron’s governed by town charter, that’s true enough.’
Outside the free wilds, unless the compact was threatened, the Fellowship would not effect a direct intervention. By written code, no Sorcerer dictated the fates of a people inside of established town boundaries. Excited, Bransian snatched a chair, spun it backwards, and straddled the seat. An unholy glee transformed his distress as he grappled the wicked obstruction. ‘You were chosen as heir. Jeynsa s’Valerient, are you here to tell us you never stood for your investiture as Rathain’s caithdein?’
The girl raised her chin. ‘My sire’s murder gave reason enough to stand back. For Arithon’s sake, my father died under torture.’ Trembling at the edge of exhausted hysteria, she added, ‘Should you cavil at honour? Clan tradition would mediate the loss to my family. Would you not say the prince owes a life debt?’
‘Dharkaron’s Black Chariot and Spear!’ Mearn swore.
‘That’s scarcely fair play,’ Liesse interjected. ‘If a just call for a clan injury exists, your lady mother should be the one to sue for redress!’
‘It’s survival!’ Duke Bransian contradicted. ‘And a compensation that’s due to us, after Mearn’s faithful years of spying on s’Ilessid policy.’ Arisen again, he gestured to a dissonant clash of steel weaponry. ‘Let’s not omit our provision for supply and shelter. Or our staged withdrawal, that reversed Arithon’s straits back in Vastmark.’
While Fionn Areth watched, wide-eyed, and Talvish clamped teeth to keep his own counsel, Liesse blotted damp palms. ‘Such questionable policy will go hard with Dame Dawr. Ath wept, who will dare broach this news to her?’
The duke’s beard split into a sharkish smile. ‘What possible point could the old besom raise?’
A nitpicking magistrate must back the sweet gist: no investiture meant that a steward’s oath did not yet tie Jeynsa’s feal service in direct line to the Fellowship’s compact. Therefore, her case devolved to royal justice, through the dictates of charter law.
‘A damnable irony,’ Mearn crowed, despite himself moved to triumphant amazement.
‘Victory!’ roared Bransian, rubbing his hands. ‘By Sithaer’s black pit, our weaselly masterbard’s leashed. Legally snagged by his short hairs, in truth, and may Daelion Fatemaster spit on the hindmost! We will win the day, and see Lysaer’s cause forced to a cringing standstill.’
The scried image that unreeled in the quartz sphere flicked out, leaving a breathless stillness. Afternoon at the Forthmark hospice, the southern heat was oppressive, closed behind the domed chamber’s leaded windows. Rippled patterns cast by the lozenge glass washed across the clandestine gathering. The four robed enchantresses might have been trapped in amber, for their stunned lack of movement and noise.
The order’s wizened senior healer laced her narrow fingers at length. ‘You named this an augury?’
Few others might question the Koriani Prime, just twenty years of natural age, and scarcely seasoned since her accession. The young woman stared back in her formal state dress, a willowy coquette who seemed displaced in her high seat of office. Yet a steely authority wrapped her slim form. Flame from the bronze brazier at her feet spat glints through her traditional tiara of amethyst and diamond.
‘Our preparations for compassionate relief are in force,’ the sisterhouse peeress prompted gently. That on-going activity jammed the courtyard outside, with snappish drivers handling the mule-teams cut through by the voices of boy wards packing the wagons with supplies. For days, the sisters in grey robes of charitable service had assembled chests of crystals, philtres, and remedies, set coughing under the sulphurous smoke, as the first-rank initiates wrought the copper talismans to repulse iyats and settle the unquiet dead, soon to be sundered by violence.
‘Why rush our departure,’ the peeress ran on, ‘or squander more of our resource over clan politics? The siege is inevitable. This forecast could extend the damage, but may not come to pass as we’ve seen it.’
‘This pact with Duke Bransian is fated to happen,’ Prime Selidie contradicted. Fair as frost on ripe wheat, she tipped an imperative nod to the seeress, who dutifully veiled the blanked quartz sphere that fire-scarred hands were too crippled to tend. ‘Past question, Jeynsa’s revenge will prevail. The duke is desperate. The dowager duchess may cringe over principle. But preservation of the s’Brydion lineage must force her support in the end. We’re forewarned and poised to act on this opening.’
The Teir’s’Ffalenn would stand in defence against Lysaer, and the curse of the Mistwraith would unleash a debacle.
‘Prescience is not proof,’ the old healer insisted. ‘You would move our order to prying acts for a feckless spellbinder’s maundering?’
‘This time, we have a true prophecy.’ The matriarch’s smile was peaches and cream. ‘Dakar awakened from his errant trance, and could not remember his vision.’
There, even Forthmark’s sceptical seniors lost their last footing for argument. The spellbinder’s gift was a wild talent. The intuitive leaps that outpaced his consciousness always held dazzling accuracy. Even the Fellowship Sorcerers had never fathomed the reason. Despite years of scrutiny at Althain Tower, Dakar’s precocious Sight remained one of the world’s