Читать книгу Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 20

The Hatchet thumped down his mallet fist hard enough to displace the stones weighting his tactical maps. Correspondence and lists exploded in flurries from the stacks on the trestle in front of him. “Say again!”

Officers summoned for his revised orders quailed, while the mousy scribe startled out of dictation squeaked and splayed his best pen nib.

Few dared to bait The Hatchet’s ill temper. Not since the momentous disaster that routed his invasion of Havish, and never under the redoubled fury incited by unforeseen set-backs.

“My summer campaign plan’s bedevilled, thick as pests in plague-ridden batches.” Up to his nose in the scent of hot horseflesh steamed off the latest courier, the Light’s supreme commander fumed on, “Speak up, boy! Spit out whatever foul news has blown in here with the squall.”

“The galley-man you hired for transport from East Bransing has defaulted on your signed contract.” The pimpled adolescent dripping on the carpet braced rattled nerves and yanked off the sling hanging his dispatch case. “Best read the details, Lord. The vessel in question’s already sailed.”

“This happened yesterday?” The Hatchet hopped in livid distemper. “Light scorch her venal master and broil his skanking carcass! Show me the merchant captain alive who won’t duck a war-bond requisition for a bribe!”

“Not for coin, and not for apostasy this time,” the browbeaten courier dared to insist, too exhausted to cower, as The Hatchet’s cobra-quick snatch ripped the packet away from him.

The senior staff waited, trapped in the storm’s eye. Tension crackled the pause. The guttering lamps distorted the shadows of the command tent’s grisly, stuffed-animal trophies, while the gusts outside battered the torrential rain, and leaks through the canvas pavilion pattered The Hatchet’s volcanic annoyance.

He cut the soaked fastenings with his knife, ranting onwards in his bass growl, “The two companies I just force-marched into Dyshent are stalled at the dock without shelter because of your tardy disclosure.”

The courier wrung his gloves in petrified silence. His desperate urgency had lamed two mounts, and brought a rider to grief on the road. The dispatches delivered at such cost in flesh became slapped on the table. Unrolled, the official wax seals and gold ribbon should have curbed the most arrogant displeasure.

Yet the panoply of High-Temple authority failed to quench The Hatchet’s vexation. He read, lips clamped, his fuming breaths marked by the flutter and tap as moths blundered into the lamp panes. Soon enough, the gist raised his stentorian bellow. “Did you know the contents of this before you darkened my threshold?”

The courier unlocked his chattering teeth. “Rumour’s flying like bale-fire. Has your hired galley in fact been pre-empted on the pretext of divine authority?”

“Pirated, rather!” The Hatchet punched a stub finger into the salient line: ‘… her captain forced to cast off in duress, or watch his vessel burn to the waterline with all hands …’

When the next leaf disclosed the run-amok avatar’s motive, The Hatchet’s complexion turned purple: ‘… the s’Ilessid scion’s heretical pursuits have not abated … his movements were contained until he slipped the over-confident grasp of our Examiner at East Bransing … now believed to be moving to thwart your advance to eradicate unreformed clansmen …’

“Lysaer? Coming here?” The Hatchet stiffened. “Light’s havoc! No way I’ll suffer the next dose of ruin sown by that dandy’s rank cowardice!” His meaty fist banged again. Parchments encrusted with seals bounced and settled, while the stacked notes that directed supply collapsed in a slithered cascade. “The mincing flit abandoned the field when the battle turned sour at Lithmarin! I’ll hang the daisy by his curly short hairs before he befouls my tactics again!” A gesture spurned the offensive documents, while tactical diagrams and requisition slips sighed to rest in the shavings spread underfoot to sop up the puddles. “Yon High Priest’s blustering drivel is useless. We’ve no facts to plot a sound strategy, besides, thanks to that lame-brained examiner. Which way will the avatar jump, plying havoc? Back towards Rathain, or will he muck into my campaign in north Tysan?”

The nervous courier disclosed the development too sensitive to be penned under seal. “The latest informants’ reports favour Tysan. The co-opted galley weathered the storm in a cove down the coast, which suggests her course lies to the west.”

“Flimsy guess-work!” The Hatchet scraped at the stubble on his bull-dog jaw. “No one can say with authority what that whey-faced wastrel intends. He might have been out-bound for Falgaire or Morvain before heavy seas forced him to snug down.” Squat as an armoured battering ram, the Light’s first commander shoved his chair back. Kicked papers fluttered like birds in his wake as he belaboured his officers. “I want that galley overtaken and searched. Cuff every living deck-hand aboard and shake them down by rough questioning!”

Tasked with what seemed a suicidal assignment, a dismayed staffer denounced, “You believe the avatar’s elsewhere?”

“I like my targets kept tidy,” The Hatchet cracked in earnest. “If the detail you send gets scalded alive, we’re hell-bound to know, like the weathercock, which way Lysaer’s pointed for certain.”

The pavilion headquarters seethed into motion, the dismissed officers treading over the papers jettisoned under changed orders.

“I’ll have the veteran divisions split into skirmish groups. Equip the best to cross the mountains towards Valenford, then swing them north to engage the rest of my battle plan soonest. The second wave will fan out behind and muster beneath the western foot-hills.”

“Supply’s caught short-handed,” a rattled voice protested. “Rearrangements on that scale are going to take days!”

“Then improvise, quick!” retorted The Hatchet. “Hungry men can forage at need during summer. This post will be stripped. Lean troops on the march are better off than a batch of post-sitting, burned skeletons, paralysed by ineptitude!”

Against scoured silence, The Hatchet plunged on. “I’m saving our finest! Do you understand? March them out before dawn. Take what food they can carry. No wagons. No tents! I want speed. The heavy equipment left here must maintain the illusion we haven’t dispersed.”

Cooks and camp-followers were to wear surcoats and helms, while the raw recruits stayed on to keep staging drills in the practice field.

“Our dregs will form up tomorrow for Erdane to defend the High Temple against the rogue avatar.”

Another captain gasped. “They’re sheep herded to slaughter!”

“Maybe.” The Hatchet glared at his detracting officers. “Tell me, which bunch would you sacrifice?”

Only the next in command dared a protest. “Our strongest would hold that line and not break.”

“Yes, and die to a man for no purpose!” The Hatchet waved off his underlings’ outrage. “If the demoralized companies and green recruits run, weakness favours their chance of survival. Maybe the mad avatar will lack the stomach to murder a pack of puking tenderfeet.” His bark chased the stunned officers crammed at the exit. “Get on, directly! My orders won’t wait.”

Barged after them into the black pelt of rain, The Hatchet yelled for his messengers, some to ride straightaway to alert the towns and the Light’s stationed garrisons. Others would carry his notes of requisition and summary records to placate the priests.

Urgency cut no slack for the midsummer gale churning the coastal road into soup. The Hatchet returned, breathless and soaked, and lit into the scribe caught resharpening his nibs. “Sit up and take my dictation!” Given the extensive planning that Lysaer’s surprise move overturned, neither the Light’s lord commander nor his master of letters saw rest.

Cloudy dawn pierced the gloom when at last The Hatchet stood up. The campaign trestle before him was swept clean of the last revised dispatches. Smoke gritted the air, with the newest campaign plans burned to doused ash inside a commandeered chamber-pot. No evidence remained to disclose his rapid redeployment. Outside, the thinned encampment kept the boisterous semblance of an unchanged routine: troops engaged in practice bouts with enough blundering racket to maintain the appearance of numbers. A shrewd eye might discern the reduced strings of horses hitched to the messenger’s picket line; or notice that the cauldrons under the cook shack’s sagged awning served less than yesterday’s head count.

Short bones aching, The Hatchet knuckled his eyes, too restless to retire. Gadded by nature, he moved to inspect the night’s progress before his swift raid overtook the renegade vessel. Met by another obstruction, his bulled stride all but mowed down an inbound equerry.

“Messenger, sir! Bearing a High-Temple mandate, arrived under Hanshire’s banner.”

“Get the fellow in here double-quick.” The Hatchet lurched back and dropped into his chair like a sackload of bricks.

A voice murmured without, while another’s light tread squelched over the sodden ground. The figure that darkened his entry came alone: no man, but a slender, imperious female in a purple cloak banded with scarlet.

The Hatchet shoved erect as if pinked. “I’ve more pressing priorities.”

Yet evasion did not stem the woman’s impertinence. “If your urgency concerns the delinquent galley shipped out of Falgaire, my business might speed your endeavour.”

The Hatchet shrugged. “At what ruinous price?” But the witch had forestalled him. Caught at close quarters, he stared upward with blistered hostility. “I might rather know the Master of Shadow’s current activity. Ah, no! Not again,” he chided. “Don’t trouble me with a replacement for your last shady talisman. Or didn’t you mean to add spin to the failures that botched my invasion of Havish?”

“No. Our mutual aim was subverted as well. Seek due revenge upon Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn.” The Koriathain advanced with cool equanimity and placed a cedar box on the trestle. “Our token today is sent in good faith.”

Since The Hatchet failed to snatch up her gambit, the enchantress flipped the catch and raised the fitted lid. Nestled inside, a steel crossbolt quarrel scribed a bright line in cold daylight. The notched end for the cable had razor-edged fins instead of plumed fletching. When her gloved fingers eased the coffer closed, the metal’s suspect sheen imposed the after-image evoked by a latent enchantment.

The Hatchet grinned without delicacy. “You seek an assassin to slaughter a god? Find a more gullible fool. One who doesn’t mind dying in martyred flames, condemned for collusion with Shadow.”

“Soon enough, your High Priests will revise their priorities.” Shown caustic contempt, the Koriani witch returned a feline smile. “The veracity of the True Sect Canon can’t withstand the word of a living avatar. Lysaer s’Ilessid poses a liability to the purity of their creed. Unless, of course, his divine status becomes discredited. He is mortal, in fact. Fellowship sorcery grants his longevity. Wound him in public, and his divinity will be exposed as a sham.”

“I have other priorities,” The Hatchet repeated, annoyed enough to shoulder aside her insinuations.

“Do you truly?” she challenged, a post in his path. “Why not accept help? I might spare you the waste of resources, even by-pass a squalid day’s search for a commandeered ship.”

But her blandishment misfired. The Hatchet clenched his jaw as though he chewed marbles and ploughed on with insane disregard.

“Brute!” gasped the enchantress. Spurned by the rough shove that displaced her, she dropped civilized discourse for spellcraft.

For one breath-stopped instant the air seemed to burn. The Hatchet blinked, staggered backwards. By the time vision cleared and his balance recovered, the pavilion lay empty. No sign remained of the nosy enchantress beyond the latched box left behind on the trestle.

The uncanny artifact was far too dangerous to leave at large in the war camp.

The Hatchet spat a ferocious oath. Forced to secure the damnable construct under lock and key, he pursued his disrupted course of inspection in a viciously poisoned mood. Throughout, the anxiety haunted: had his late campaign in Havish been sabotaged, with a victory snatched from his grasp? Who knew what twisted wickedness motivated the Koriathain.

To be wrangled again by their wiles mocked his competence. Worse, fumed The Hatchet, the bedevilling shrew played on his fierce desire to see Lysaer s’Ilessid deposed after the shame of defeat. Hooked bait on that weakness galled his thorny temper.

“Damn your meddling Prime, I will seize my reckoning,” he snarled, then shouted outside and summoned his equerry at a frazzled sprint.

Repercussions touched off by the upset in Dyshent flared more than The Hatchet’s distemper. Across the continent, surrounded by packing crates as the Senior Circle of the Koriathain uprooted itself from their entrenched lair at Whitehold, the Matriarch vented annoyance. “The cagey snake has rejected my overture!”

“Your morning’s work was scarcely in vain,” soothed the attendant, hovering Senior. The spelled crossbolt had stayed in The Hatchet’s possession, a temptation planted in fertile ground. “The game is young. The Light’s prickly commander will surely succumb, if only to upstage the avatar.”

But Selidie’s displeasure rejected optimism. “The overblown martinet lacks respect for our order.” How dared he threaten a reigning Prime with his pipsqueak talk of retribution! She needed the man to react on his merits, not haltered in spells as a puppet.

Her bit players must all be engaged by free will. Anything less circumvented her cause to wrest the sisterhood clear of the Fellowship’s compact. But the very tools to pressure the Sorcerers carried a double-edged price: where The Hatchet’s directive to eradicate clanblood weakened the historic guardianship of the free wilds, such butchery also reduced the available pool of heritable talent. Fewer gifted candidates would survive to be inducted and replenish the order’s strength. Koriathain wrestled other perverse inconveniences: Selidie dared not risk a passage by galley to leash the Light’s mongrel commander herself. The might just restored by recovery of the Great Waystone made the amethyst too precious to hazard at sea.

Her choice to relocate to Daon Ramon imposed an inconvenient journey by land. Hence this invasion of boxes, up-ending her household just as fractious events approached a critical crux.

Lysaer’s double-blind play was exposed: The Hatchet’s over-zealous detail would shortly board a galley held under storm anchorage. When the challenge at the sterncastle door went unanswered, the lock would be smashed by war-bond authority.

Selidie knew, seated amid the echoing chaos of her windowed gallery at Whitehold: the frantic search would find an empty cabin. The Light’s delinquent avatar and his personal servant were not aboard.

On the sore subject of Lord Lysaer’s activity, her own stellar resource fell short. Repeated auguries by Koriani talent sank into murk.

Selidie chewed over her thwarted frustration, irritated by back-ground chatter, and the scrape of filled trunks dragged aside for the porters. Since the scryers tagged the Mad Prophet’s presence well to her west, today’s obfuscation most likely involved a Fellowship Sorcerer’s mark.

Asandir’s ward of guard upon Daliana might be clouding Prime Selidie’s reach. The pesky chit had vanished after her collusion with the Mad Prophet had engineered Lysaer’s abduction from the carnage at Lithmarin. Separated from the spellbinder’s protection in Scarpdale, the inconvenient young woman had never resurfaced, even under an exhaustive search backed by the order’s Great Waystone. Therefore, another bold finger had meddled. Only one other power in reach owned the main strength and audacity.

Selidie called her attendant Seniors to active duty despite the convulsive disarray. “I require an immediate circle of twelve, a cleared room, and the chest that contains the Great Waystone for the purpose of engaging Davien.”

The announcement reeled the room to shocked silence. None dared flout the Prime, no matter the peril inherent in crossing the Fellowship Sorcerers; and of the Seven, the Betrayer was unspeakably dangerous. The most experienced Seniors recalled: last time their Matriarch had wielded the might of the Waystone against him, the affray had seared her to a stub-fingered cripple.

On the moment the Prime Matriarch firmed her resolve, the renegade Fellowship Sorcerer in question stood on a rock slope in the Mathorns, red-and-white hair like a stallion’s mane tumbled over his taut shoulders. Above, like a massive stilled pendulum, a boulder half the size of a house creaked in a sling, cranked vertical by a match-stick brace of fir logs. The stone overweighted its groaning support, suspension maintained by permission and sorcery mighty enough to unravel the mountain beneath.

Being Davien, no such carelessness happened, though from an earth-linked vantage at Althain Tower, Sethvir winced for the timing as Kharadmon swooped in, bristling to level the ancient score of his grievances.

Arctic draught at the nape his first warning, Davien flexed his interlaced fingers in an artistic stretch. “What, no flowering nightshade? No hellebore? Not even the toxic flamboyance of the tiger-lily? Provocative orange would suit us both, if you still style yourself in that obnoxious green cloak.”

Clad himself in autumnal russet and brown, the coarse outdoor wool paired with calfskin boots and cordovan leathers, Davien perched on the pile of casks and provender, stored under tarps in the open. The refuge at Kewar engineered for a shade now required renovation to suit his incarnate release from the dragon’s service. The old entry, drilled out, underwent the critical step of receiving a guardian cap-stone: finicky spells and physical effort interlaced in fraught measure with fatal danger.

Insolent necessity, Davien snatched the interruption to eat. His usual satirical mockery absent, he peeled the wax from a cheese, cracked a loaf of dark bread, and with a thoughtful expression, dug in.

Kharadmon commanded the wind for his voice. The question became, not how many, but which mothballed fight he picked first.

While the shade coalesced for the opening salvo, Davien raised an eyebrow and busily chewed as the tirade unleashed. “Not mentioning your colossal mistakes that saddled us with the rebellion, or the brutal inventiveness that destroyed King Kamridian, sunk in your criminal culpability, what excuse grants you the license to fling Asandir’s gift of survival into our teeth? Also Luhaine’s sacrifice in your behalf! How deadly the irony, that his butchered flesh once paid for your mess at Telmandir, only to lend you the undeserved grace to salvage your reincarnation.”

The Betrayer said nothing. He did not belabour the pertinent truth: that Kharadmon’s culpable action had upset Asandir’s intervention, which would have disarmed Shehane Althain’s sprung defences on the historical hour that he became fatally savaged.

Yet Davien’s weighted silence failed to stem his discorporate colleague’s furious accusations.

“By your passionate claim, our use of clan blood-lines to treat with the Paravians created the schism between town-born and talent. Who’s the yapping hypocrite, now? Your accomplishment’s driven a zealot religion into the bleeding breach. If you’re not shamed by the Light’s slaughter of talent, and while you sat idle as three of us cleaned up the carnage after a drake war, I demand to hear from your lips: by our sworn covenant to protect the Paravians, why have you not stirred to explore what’s befallen the guardian at Northgate? Restored to flesh and bone, can’t you lessen the burden on Asandir? Explain now, in full! By Dharkaron Avenger, why not pursue the reason for Chaimistarizog’s absence?”

Davien straightened and jettisoned his bread-crust. “Sethvir likely knows. And if not, only Asandir has earned the right to inquire.”

Air shrieked to Kharadmon’s incensed recoil. The blast creaked the ropes, and whitened the plies a hairbreadth from flash-freezing the fibres. “Enough cagey evasions. I’ll have answers no matter the threat to your self-centred independence.”

“Some other day,” Davien dismissed.

Behind him, the guardian stone slung on its precarious ropes emitted a crack like the snap of a whip. The gryphon his artistry had yet to carve glowed briefly inside the unstructured granite, while the orb to become the watchful eye suddenly flared livid red. The precursor spell seating its protective enchantments scribed a ring of white fire around Davien’s planted stance and also encompassed the indignant swirl of Kharadmon’s indignant essence.

“What outrageous bombast!” The discorporate Sorcerer’s temper cracked before incredulity. “We’re not under attack.”

“We are, in fact.” Etched in the sharp sunlight and shade of high altitude, Davien flaunted an insolent grin. “Try a surprise visitation steered by the Prime Matriarch. She’s trying the might of the Waystone against us, backed by twelve circled Seniors.”

“You’ll have staged that charade,” Kharadmon huffed.

“Do you truly think?” The Betrayer measured the Fellowship entity pinched in the malicious breach. “If you can’t believe me, at least curb your pique. We’re stuck together for the duration. Unless, of course, you snatch your safe exit and flit?”

Kharadmon snorted. “What, turn tail and run from Prime Selidie’s wiles? Try my patience again!”

Davien laughed. “Then stay at your peril. Her sally to test me isn’t a feint.”

No toothless threat: wielded by a Prime at full strength, the amethyst focus packed force enough to endanger a discorporate Sorcerer. Particularly if the Matriarch drained her subordinates to leverage the contest.

Kharadmon’s presence snuffed out, condensed to a frosty vacuum.

Then Prime Selidie’s concerted blast struck and shattered the rudimentary wards laid into the unfinished cap-stone. Spelled ropes and unpolished granite exploded. Shards flew like knives. Planted inside the nexus with folded arms, Davien seemed unfazed as though he outfaced a social embarrassment. Yet the actualized spells that wrested the lethal missiles aside and crashed them impotently at his feet broke a sweat on his forehead.

He mocked, “A stone-throwing tantrum’s the best you can do?”

Reckless strategy, to taunt a powerful rival maimed under his past round of trickery: bolt lightning stabbed downwards out of clear air. Harm deflected just shy of electrocution, Davien held fast, caged in branched forks that scribbled scorched channels of carbon around him. Through smears of wisped smoke, he needled again, “You won’t have your way using pique for diplomacy.”

Yet his challenge just missed the dismissal of sarcasm. His straits were dire. Yield one step, and the entrance to his library would lie open to rifling trespass. Too many dark secrets were cached within: volumes of knowledge too dreadful to be shelved with the Paravian archives at Althain Tower.

Selidie had rancorous bones aplenty to pick with the Seven and a vengeful personal score outstanding against Davien for centuries. Which ferocious awareness scarcely prepared him for her next scalding strike. Dazzled nearly blind and hammered to his knees, Davien seized the moment to palm a flake of stone from the wreckage. The fragment yet retained the grant of permission to stand ward and guard for him in free partnership.

Also, within, the eidetic stamp of the violence that had snapped the harmonic working asunder. Davien tapped the mineral’s matrix and grasped the aggressive thrust of the Prime’s motivation: a fury that echoed from her past failure to best Sulfin Evend. Thwarted plots to separate Lysaer from his steadfast war-captain’s moral influence had balked her order’s intentions. Again poised with the True Sect priesthood as agent under her thumb, Selidie raged to find a new obstruction guarding Lysaer’s vulnerability. Hell-bent, the Prime sought the secret that sheltered the sen Evend heir, Daliana.

Davien sorted his counter-moves, appalled by the stakes. Barraged under the lightning shimmer and crack of the Prime’s hostile charge, he seized the split second and sounded the chip for the remnant of his burst ward. Since mineral forgot nothing, the imprint remained, a plan configured to perfection well before the disruptive attack.

But set-back dealt him an unforeseen shock: the founded circle had included no safe passage for crossing, and Kharadmon’s wise retreat had never occurred. The discorporate’s choice to take cover in hindsight posed a drastic mistake.

Davien dared not risk that appalling disclosure with his resource taxed under fire. Pitched on the defensive with the Prime unaware of his colleague’s collateral peril, he stared down disaster and pressed the end game.

The stone fragment held the template of the wardspells already designed to withstand a hostile assault. Davien wielded the pattern. A further split second’s reckless intent engaged other forces that no Fellowship Sorcerer before this had been hardened to bear.

His hands flared into unnatural fire: a shimmer azure as gas-flame, and reactive beyond all imagining. Naked flesh and blood, Davien’s finger-tips unfurled the prepotent aura possessed by Athera’s great drakes.

The phenomenon, until now kept shrouded, exposed how profoundly Dragonkind’s dreaming had changed him. The volatile power sparked to his will and ripped the air with an ozone-spiked crack. The elements screamed. The staid cliff-face before him ignited to the might of his focused desire and restored the pulverized statue. Reshaped in completed manifestation, the sentinel gryphon gargoyle engaged its guardian spells at one stroke.

Prime Selidie’s thrust tangled in the matrix.

White fire met blue with a shriek that cracked bed-rock. The ground rumbled and shook, while the elements bled light, a wild coruscation that fountained aloft and unfurled the shimmer of an aurora.

Prime Selidie’s lightnings snuffed instantaneously.

Socked by the earthquake punch of the recoil, Davien wrestled, hands locked, and vised his thoughts still. Crouched with singed hair, seared clothes smoking, he regarded the blackened ash dusting his skin.

“I’d rather the meddling Prime was not privy,” he gasped, while a land-slide of stones ploughed into the vale with a thundering roar. “Insolent shade! Were you endangered?”

“The question is moot!” Kharadmon’s presence unfurled with a whoosh. “If the Prime was desperate before, you’ve just torched the core of her insecurity.” The shade added, thoughtful, through a chattering storm of loose gravel and carbon, “I had not expected that move to protect me. If this force-majeure bequest of Seshkrozchiel’s is behind your feckless delinquency, consider my grievance reproved. Your absence from the crisis at Northgate was justified.”

“Do you think?” gasped Davien, unable to muzzle a vicious onset of the shakes. Kharadmon’s damnable perception was true. He had not stabilized even wayward control of his untoward legacy. Until he mastered himself, a drake conflict was the last conceivable place Althain’s Warden would wish to dispatch him.