Читать книгу Peril’s Gate - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 19

Dedicated to his post in far-distant Tysan, Cerebeld, High Priest of the Light, was a disciplined early riser. Candles burned in his chamber before the glimmer of daybreak lit the roofs of Avenor the colors of pewter and poured lead. For the watch, shivering through the bitter misery of the night, the carmine glow from the priest’s tower windows infallibly signaled the final hour before dawn. The taciturn pair of novices who attended his eminence had learned not to trouble his solitude. Cerebeld refused to have servants assist with his dress. He donned his layered white robes on arising, and arranged the seven roped chains of high office. Washed, face and hands, in the chill basin filled for his use the past evening, he followed his rigid habit of keeping devotions until after sunrise. None dared cross his threshold before his sharp clap summoned the hot bread he preferred for his breakfast.

No aspirant who demanded an earlier audience would be admitted into his presence. The novices turned petitioners away regardless of rank, no matter their reason or urgency.

Yet predawn on this day, six men-at-arms clad in royal blue tabards with the eight-point gold star of Tysan delivered an irresistible force of persuasion. The steel-strapped oak door to Cerebeld’s chamber crashed back. The lead pair held the novices pinned to the wall, their mailed gauntlets and battle-trained strength overriding the howled chorus of protest. The ruffian in front still brandished the mace just used to mangle the door latch. With a flash of white teeth, the burly henchman who had rammed the locked panel refused any grace of apology. He offered his arm, inviting someone else poised in the stairwell across the High Priest’s breached threshold.

A suave power who matched brute force with calculation, Cerebeld arose from the sunwheel cushion that enthroned him in meditation. He knew who had come. With Prince Lysaer away on campaign in the east, only one voice dared command the elite royal guard from the garrison.

‘Her Grace, the Princess of Tysan,’ announced the rogue who intruded, his sneer for the effete scent of sandalwood wafted from the priest’s inner quarters.

Cerebeld looked down his axe-blade nose, his eyes colorless as rimed ice. His dark hair was slicked as a seal’s coat with ambergris. Even this early, he was ceremonially clothed, his sunwheel vestments of stainless white mirrored in the wax-polished floor. The gray bristles of his beard were trimmed to a point, accent to the wrought gold of yoked chains whose links were interlocked dragons. His beeswax complexion showed no flush of anger. Erect, unblinking, he displayed a sangfroid intimidation more effective than bluster or speech.

On that cold, predawn morning, the Princess of Tysan swept into his presence, unfazed. She shed her cloud of ermine cloak into the hands of her armed attendants. The candles on Cerebeld’s locked aumbries lit her crisp dazzle of sapphire silk and wired jewelry. For this audience, the lady wore formal state trappings, the stamped brilliance of gemstones and shining gold circlet a blaze of royal authority. Unasked, she sat in the chamber’s sole chair. Her skirts pooled around her demurely crossed ankles, damascened blue against her ringed hands, clasped in graceful deportment in her lap.

Doe brown eyes matched Cerebeld’s hauteur with a mutual bristle of antagonism. ‘I’m here on account of the prince, my blood son.’

The High Priest’s plum lips thinned with distaste. ‘The boy’s doings are none of my affair, your Grace, unless he strays into liaison with unwholesome powers of darkness.’

Ellaine firmed her chin. Her spring-rose beauty had lost its fresh dew. The small, timeworn lines tooled into her complexion by year upon year of resignation today underscored her striking determination. ‘The heir apparent of this kingdom has left for Karfael with the guard. I find your seal of approval gave him leave. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy. In the company of veteran field troops, he goes armed with only a ceremonial blade, and a head full of dreams that don’t match his strength, or his inept grasp of tournament swordplay. If that’s not a meddling interest in his welfare, I’ll see you clapped in irons for deceit.’

Cerebeld linked taloned hands at his waist. ‘Princess, your accusation is pure hearsay.’

‘The palace steward’s a weasel at evasion, but he draws clear distinction against lying.’ Ellaine pinned the High Priest without quarter, her retiring nature ignited to flash-point resolve. ‘Gace insists that your writ gave the prince due permission to accompany the troops out on road watch.’

A presence of razor-cut, glittering white against the night-darkened panes of the casements, the High Priest of the Light checked his sigh of exasperation. ‘The boy is this realm’s heir apparent, if not yet a man. He can’t learn to rule in Avenor sequestered behind the skirts of your chattering women.’ The sharp flick of a glance cut and measured the uncowed, closed hands and tense flush of the lady seated before him. The tragic fact that the princess’s late predecessor had died of a suicidal leap from the battlements above had plainly not served to intimidate. Outraged motherhood was not going to back down. ‘No,’ Cerebeld stated in quelling authority. ‘Stay your hand-wringing, you’re quite wrong. The young prince’s permission arose from a higher authority than mine.’

‘What, the Word of the Light?’ Ellaine’s contempt raked him. ‘For your posturing sham of serving divinity, you’ve dared send my son on a winter campaign?’

‘A routine patrol,’ High Priest Cerebeld corrected. Attacks never ruffled him. He unclasped his jeweled fingers, his serenity built on the granite of utter conviction. ‘Have you ever known me to speak false concerning your husband’s divine will? My task while I wear the grace of this mantle is to hear and act for the Light. I say again, permission was served through the mouth of my office, not by my personal preference. Your son was sent to Karfael to mature his experience. He remains in the field until his royal father sees fit to send word and recall him.’

Ellaine clamped back a furious retort, too seasoned to battle the High Priest’s righteous duty head-on. The brute rigors of politics had tested his primacy. Time and again, Lysaer s’Ilessid had affirmed the man’s power to deliver his royal state edicts. Even Avenor’s most avaricious trade ministers bowed to Cerebeld’s decrees concerning the will of the Divine Prince.

Taut-faced, white-knuckled, Ellaine refused setback. ‘If the heir apparent rides for Karfael, then I go as well. My train and escort will include his Grace’s tutors. Two pages from Avenor’s prominent families will serve the young prince as companions. Let my royal husband understand this: I will not have our son in the forests of Westwood haring after the scalps of barbarians!’

‘You will not leave for Karfael, or anywhere else.’ Cerebeld’s velvet-clothed certainty shot dangerous currents through the spice-burdened air of the room. The edged play of the light on his sunwheel emblems gained sharpened menace as he served his ultimatum. ‘The last princess before you left this city with war pending. She fell victim to the Spinner of Darkness. The Blessed Prince will not see her tragedy repeated. Dear lady, by my oath of service to the Light, you will not pass the gates of Avenor.’

Spark to struck tinder, Ellaine surged to her feet. ‘Spinner of Darkness? What is he, but the name of an absent threat? I have never met him, never seen him! Nor have I stood witness to one concrete act that was his, and not some machination used to further the interests of politics. What is Arithon s’Ffalenn but convenience and hearsay that feeds the excuse for trade factions to raise arms and curb the predations of barbarians!’

‘But the Master of Shadow is no longer in hiding,’ Cerebeld explained after the gravid, barbed pause he used to lend weight to his arguments. ‘The enemy is back in Rathain at this moment, and your husband is across Instrell Bay, raising town garrisons to challenge him.’

The High Priest waved aside Ellaine’s rebuttal, that deep winter would hamper the muster. ‘These are dangerous times, princess. The straits that could bring terror and woe to the innocent are just as you say: that the ports and the passes are closed in the north. No speedy warning can call cities to take arms. The years the s’Ffalenn sorcerer has lurked in obscurity have blunted the memories of his atrocities.’

Which fact was a truth without contest: beyond a bare handful, the aged veterans of Vastmark had retired from the ranks of field service.

Straight as a doll in her jeweled state garments, her bravado reduced to cosmetic paint over paraffin, Ellaine never swerved from her purpose. ‘If as you say Rathain’s bastard prince has returned, and the eastlands face a new war, I insist, my son should be here and not set at risk with fighting men posted to Karfael.’

For the first time in her presence, Cerebeld broke his glacial mask of objectivity. ‘My lady, let me warn you.’ His advancing step was a pantherish stalk, glancing candlelight struck off his silk-and-gold robes like the shimmer of sun-bathed quartz. ‘Against the grand conflict of Light against Dark, nothing and no one shall come in between the Exalted Prince and his divine destiny. He is the world’s ray of hope. Before his glory, and the cause that he stands for, you and your son are expendable.’ A glance toward the north bank of casements lent his point stabbing edge. ‘Your predecessor, the past Princess Talith, pushed that truth too far and bought tragedy. Try the same thing at your peril.’

The scrape of a hobnailed boot sole recalled the royal guards still standing in dutiful attendance. Their ranking officer cleared his throat, then ventured, ‘My lady, your Grace, pay heed to the High Priest. No man in the guard can escort you to Karfael. Not now.’ His ranks had not known the Divine Prince had gone to stand in defense against Shadow. Ruddy features averted in embarrassed apology, the officer added, ‘You may not know the unhappy history. But when Princess Talith was abducted by the enemy, the captain of the royal honor guard lost his life in reparation. We are charged with the greater burden of your safety, and our loyal oath to your husband sets us in conflict. To support your desire to escort your son could land us with charges of treason.’

Ellaine held her fixed glare of hostility upon the impervious High Priest. ‘I understand well enough that your duty has no heart, and no shred of human compassion. If my son goes to Karfael for the sake of the Light, and harm comes to him, on my word, I will hold both you and my husband responsible.’ A cascading rustle of azure silk saw the Princess of Avenor to her feet. She paid no respects. Spun face about, she swept out with an urgency that suggested suppressed tears, but that actually curbed her rebellious need to cast off westland manners and spit on the High Priest’s spotless carpet.

Cerebeld watched his royal guest leave, dispassionate as the sated snake permitting choice prey to go free. While the jingling tread of the attendant men-at-arms receded down the stairwell, he bade the rattled novices on the landing to shut the door to his chamber. Restored to solitude, the Grand High Priest of the Light murmured a purifying prayer, then resumed his morning devotions.

He thumbed open a receptacle in his wrought-dragon chain, removed the filigreed key, then turned the lock on his aumbry. ‘Praise be the Light,’ he murmured as he knelt. His questing touch tripped the recessed latch concealed amid the embossed gold panel. A cavity had been cunningly set into the joinery behind the whale-ivory facing glued to the cupboard door. Inside, shallow niches in a grid were labeled with the names of each city in Rathain. Most remained empty in this hour of need. But the ones for Etarra, Morvain, and Jaelot sheltered small bundles bagged in silk. Cerebeld plucked these out, his handling as reverent as though their contents were living, and irreplaceably fragile.

He transferred the cache to his personal altar, where beeswax candles, sweetened with sandalwood, burned. Four alabaster bowls held his offerings of clear water, cut herbs, and rarefied oil, and the residue of the blood shed in ceremony to reaffirm the sacrificial pledge of his person to the purpose of divine will and Light. Each day, cast prostrate across the sunwheel cushion as he begged intercession and guidance, he renewed his eternal vow.

Fervently trembling, he unwrapped the sacred bundles and withdrew their three figurines of cast wax. Each held a carved likeness, the hair real, snipped from the heads of the persons they represented. Eyes closed in prayer, Cerebeld licked his thumb. He dampened the wax face of each doll with a touch, then stilled, building the receptive inner quiet through which he would channel the Word of the Light. Minutes passed, sealed in the airborne scents of rare oils and the fragrant musk of hot candles. Predawn stillness suspended him, textureless as hung felt, until his mind unfolded into an effortless state of suspension.

Cerebeld waited, patient as the blank pool stilled to mirror the infinite.

Time brought his reward. The first tug of contact was drawn in by the ritual unreeled through the focal point of the wax dolls. Cerebeld hooked the presence of the nearest man first, the young priest who served truth in Morvain. The man slept yet, entangled in dreams, while the sea winds buffeted his casements. Awareness of the Etarran priest reached through next, tinged with the scent of patchouli he used to freshen his linen. That one was wakeful, his thought stream a sibilant murmur of prayer. The third priest, most recently dispatched to Jaelot, remained stalled in Darkling, caught in midjourney when early storms closed the passes. Asleep in a tangle of fusty wool blankets, his need to stretch travel funds kept him stranded in the smoky, dimmed chamber of a second-rate inn built for drovers.

Cerebeld cupped each separately summoned awareness within the stilled vault of his mind. Then he opened the channel that rode with him, always, through unstinting dedication to the Light.

The fervent call of Avenor’s High Priest rode the failing, last shadow of night. His appeal bridged the black waters of Instrell Bay, and, searching beyond, touched the aura of Lysaer s’Ilessid.

Cerebeld immersed in the bliss of divine presence, no longer aware of the body before his draped altar in Avenor. The yawning abyss of human need, all his limiting fears of mortality fell away as he slaked his insatiable thirst for the sacred and became recharged with uplifted purpose. The Divine Prince was spark to his unfired clay. Through self-surrender, his yearning spirit escaped the torpid separation of the flesh. All dread of the Dark, and all terror of sorcery receded; lips parted with unconscious ecstasy, Cerebeld tapped into the radiant source of his avatar’s strength. Abandoned to a fervor that bordered obsession, he basked in the diamond-pure stream of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s just presence.

His tranced mind experienced the same agitation as his Exalted Self paced the plush carpets in the Mayor of Narms’s private guest suite. Quivering now, enthralled in joined vision, the High Priest sent dutiful greeting. ‘Exalted Prince? The hour is come to place the arrow of your will into the hands of your servants.’

The reply returned by Lysaer through the link resounded with pleased satisfaction. ‘My command calls for war. The minion of Shadow has dared to turn west through the Skyshiels.’

Dropped prostrate before his altar, Cerebeld savored the intimate surge of impressions, then responded. ‘Your priests stand ready at Etarra and Morvain. The one bound for Jaelot is stranded in Darkling. He is prepared to act for you there. Shine the Light of your presence through me as your conduit.’

From the distant, closed privacy of the guest suite at Narms, the Exalted Prince raised his hand. Cerebeld trembled. Expectancy exploded to peak exultation as Lysaer s’Ilessid called down power and engaged his divine gift of light.

Seared through the eye of his inner mind, Cerebeld rocked to the surge of blind bliss. Primal pleasure burst the fragile template of identity, until Lysaer’s voice rang through every chamber of his opened mind. ‘Let the forces allied against Shadow arise and muster to arms! The minion of Darkness has returned to Rathain. He travels over the Baiyen from Jaelot, no doubt to lair up where the sorcerous powers still bind the old keeps at Ithamon. For the weal of the land, our duty is clear. We must launch a forced march across Daon Ramon and close ranks in strength to stop him.’

At Avenor, the High Priest let the message channel through him with all of its deluging glory. Unmoored by the blasting passage of pure Light, he was the nexus point, fulfilled by the dictates of Lysaer’s urgent purpose. The current coursed through him, aligned to arouse three other human vessels also pledged to eradicate Darkness…

In Morvain and Darkling, amid shadowed bedchambers, two priests of the Alliance snapped out of sleep, touched by the dazzling burst of divine vision. The summons resounded with Lysaer’s command to rise to arms and converge upon Daon Ramon Barrens. Wakeful, in Etarra, the third priest fell into a spiraling seer’s dream, spun on the airy crochet of the smoke that curled off a lit stick of incense. Swept head to foot with delirious joy, he embraced the clarion call of the Light. Through his office, the Exalted Prince’s will would be done. Etarra’s garrison would march south with all speed to pursue the minion of Darkness…

The Light ebbed, then dwindled, then died. Sprawled prone on the pillow before his altar at Avenor, Cerebeld shuddered in release. As always, the limp aftermath caught him defenseless.

He bit back a cry, ripped to desolation as his mind was cast into separation.

By now, he knew there existed no remedy for the dimmed prison of mortal limitation. He could only endure, drawn onward by the obdurate steel of his faith. One ritual to the next, he breathed for the moments when the exalted presence entered and claimed him as instrument.

At length, he gathered himself and arose. He felt hollow, diminished, a lackluster shell that stepped through the motions of living. Dry duty sustained him. The needs of the faithful required teaching and guidance. Their prayers must be led by rote. Amid the drab, puppet players he ministered, Cerebeld moved like the addict, perpetually craving the next golden dawn, when his being could rise and rejoice once again in communion with divine rapture.

Winter 5670