Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon

A mumbled answer, then somebody’s laugh, punched through by a derisive comment, “Well, who said an engagement with free-wilds barbarians gilds a man’s prowess with honour?”

Through splashes, a gravel voice added, “A campaign led by head-hunters? No detail for faint hearts. It’s like stalking beasts at perilous risk, rife with horrors and gutless wickedness.”

“Ah, lad, don’t be cozened,” a risen tenor cut through. “D’you suppose we’d give warning in jest? The pestilent creatures lay traps that can butcher an armed man like a noosed animal.”

Another’s grumble capped that salacious comment, “… not unjustified … the High Temple’s order dispatched The Hatchet to slaughter them to their last woman and child.”

Metallic chinks from across the dressing-room betrayed the sullen mood of the temple novices assigned to polish the dedicates’ harness. They clumped like inquisitive ferrets, adolescent heads shaved and toothpick limbs clothed in white tunics. Most had been sworn to the Light since their birth. Others were street orphans, inducted as penance for thievery. Past question, their strict sensibilities disapproved of the gossip bandied between their superiors.

Dace played blind and deaf. He reinspected his morning’s handiwork. The packed kit at his feet was immaculate, the brushed clothing hung, with fresh towels readied for the moment his liege emerged from the communal pool. Yet Dace could not shake a sharp onset of chills, or dismiss the overt reproach the acolytes nursed at his back.

A servant could not bridle his master’s audacity, while the northland days passed one by one and assumed the cadence of habit.

The master arose before dawn. Shaved and dressed, he sat for his breakfast, then left on his own, clad informally. Chores left Dace no recourse to track what transpired in the misty streets. He tidied the bed, dropped yesterday’s clothes at the laundress, fetched those cleaned, and made purchases at the market. Back by daybreak to attend daily practice at arms, he carried his liege’s light armour and sword. After the Light’s officers dispersed to their duties, Lysaer ordered a meal at one of the wine-shops frequented by the idle rich. A servant was privy to their casual talk though he was forbidden to sit at table. Dismissed to lug his master’s kit back to the boarding-house, Dace fetched water, cleaned harness, and freshened the clothes chests, wash-basin, and towels.

His liege retired in the early afternoon, closeted with his correspondence. The letters were never left at large, unsealed. Lysaer hired the couriers himself. The wax for his cover sheets was frugal brown, impressed with a flourished initial, but use of the red wax tucked in the drawer suggested a second seal, nested inside, the weightiest dispatches signed under the Lord Governor’s cartouche. Those would be destined for recipients linked into the network allied to Etarra. Exiled under alias at Miralt Head, Lysaer kept in touch with his informants elsewhere.

Dace never rifled the missives or pried in his master’s absence. The exemplary servant knew trust must be earned.

Meanwhile, the dread wracked him, deep in the night and through the agonized days while the sun baked the roof-tiles outside the dormer. His facade masked the turmoil of uncertain thought and strained ears constantly listening. To the pulse of temple processions and prayer bells, Dace memorized the back alleys and by-lanes, and tracked the overheard talk within the walled courtyards. Under noon heat, and the limp flap of the Sunwheel banners, he walked wary, past the hypnotic chants of the priests. He observed idlers, striped azure in afternoon’s shade, where dicers and craftsmen mingled over beer for the latest news from the port.

His hours of solitude could have dragged, awaiting his master’s whim. But Dace seized the chance to polish his expertise. He thoroughly knew how to maintain a wardrobe but redressed his inability to barber hair. A seamstress taught him to turn hems like a tailor. He practised the poise of a genteel valet, then callused his hands buffing buttons and boots until the temple’s burnished-gold spires dimmed against the citrine sunset. Lysaer always returned when the bell towers shivered the air with the evening carillons.

His Lordship expected his bath and a change of wardrobe. Immersed in the finicky details, Dace saw his master dressed in style for Miralt’s elite society. Whether his liege stalked the ball-rooms, or pursued the High-Temple’s secretive policy amid the crush of the aristocrats’ wine parlours, the servant who botched his personal appointments would receive short shrift and dismissal.

Grateful the close air masked his sweating nerves, Dace laced and tied off silken-cord points and blessed the simplicity of summer attire. Dagged sleeves, starched cuffs, and velvet doublets were not fashionable until autumn. Left at leisure, he could eat his frugal meal, then wash before he emptied the bath.

“You needn’t wait up,” Lysaer always said, arisen to leave in the shadow of dusk.

“My lord is too gracious.” Ever deferent, Dace clicked the door shut after his liege’s departure.

Yet he never retired to his cot in the closet under the eaves. Dace sat wakeful by the open casement and lit the lamp when his master’s tread mounted the outside stair. Silent as Lysaer undressed, he received and hung the used clothes, gleaning sparse clues from the fabric: often the musk of temple incense, combined with the dampness of tensioned sweat, or the whiff of acrid smoke ingrained from the taverns. Watchfulness gauged his master’s mood, and accounted the hours of restless sleep from Lysaer’s crumpled sheets come the morning.

The frisson of Dace’s instincts led to clenched teeth to keep his own counsel. He smothered the impulse to flinch when the pigeons winged aloft, bearing temple messages over distance.

Lysaer s’Ilessid refused to confide. A spirit bent on a vengeful mission, he acted, implacably fuelled by royal justice, and shame, haunted guilt, and the pattern of inward self-loathing. The grievance of Sulfin Evend’s demise would be driving his deep-set recrimination. To stir the poison would undermine hope and destroy what must be a precarious bid for requital.

Summer’s height brought the shimmering heat of a glass furnace, and no crack in the shield of propriety. The master pursued his pitched course, while the servant recorded the creeping change: slight differences, adequate cause for alarm as Lysaer altered his style on the practice floor, extending himself just enough to decisively win a few matches. Dace observed the most astute veterans shift their outlook, snapped short by an unforeseen depth of experience. Fair-haired and serene, Lysaer fielded their surprise. He smoothed over the stinging transition from arrogant superiority with cool wit, while a stunned hush fell over the officers’ bath, and the faces of the attendant novices resharpened to salacious suspicion.

There came the late night under candlelight when Dace found a mark scorched by Light on his master’s linen cuff. Somewhere, tonight, a select few in Miralt shared the dangerous secret of Lysaer’s identity. The only reason would be to spear-head an inside conspiracy. Frozen by dread, Dace hung the singed garment. He poured the warmed wash-water, hoping his trembling would pass unremarked in the flow of routine.

“Ath above, you’re drained white!” Lysaer lowered his hands, wet from rinsing his face in the basin.

“A man comes to care,” murmured Dace without blinking. “Should that cause astonishment?”

Lysaer regarded him, blue eyes level with frightening honesty. “No. As well as I, you must be aware I’ve been courting the leap to disaster.”

Dace proffered the towel. “What use to speak out of turn?” A single mis-step could upset the game, either through a zealot’s public exposure or by the swift back-stab of righteous betrayal.

“A man comes to care,” Lysaer shot back, shoved erect without taking the offering. Blank as a cameo, he added, “By every honourable code, I ought to dismiss you for your own safety.”

Dace’s heart-beat slammed under his ribs. “You would have to use force.”

Lysaer bridled. Paced to a nearby stuffed chair, dangerous as a spread cobra, he matched his valet’s spaniel loyalty with fury. “I expect a betrayal! Have invited the prospect. Why set yourself up as a pawn in the path of near-certain destruction?”

“Because,” Dace demurred, moved by deferent steps to resume his lapsed duties. Instinct prompted him to risk everything. “After the spying of East Bransing’s priests, I’m convinced the servant behind you cannot be a stranger.”

Under his applied towel, Lysaer’s alarmed start verified every foreboding. Dace blotted his master’s chin fast enough to stifle an argument. S’Ilessid justice demanded the uncompromised move in redress: against reason, against odds, his liege planned to challenge the might that enforced the True Sect Canon.

Against desperate stakes, Dace seized the initiative. “All I ask is sufficient notice and coin for the quiet purchase of two decent horses.” Which meek request floundered into a strained silence.

When Lysaer retired and the lamp had been snuffed, Dace sought his cot in the darkness, terrified he had overstepped.

Then only, his liege relented. “You’ll have five days. A week at the most, before my rogue dedicates defy the High-Temple and march against Erdane. I’ll give you the silver for adequate mounts in the morning.”

Late Summer 5923

Vicissitudes

Having thwarted Rathain’s clan trackers by boarding the Daenfal ferry before dusk, the Mad Prophet slips into a tavern, where, cornered, he delivers his ultimatum to Tarens, “No! I won’t safeguard your foray to Ettin. Not before I’ve contacted his Grace’s handfasted enchantress, Elaira. Tell Cosach and his henchmen the same, or burn in Sithaer and suffer the consequence …”

At Telmandir, under Fellowship guidance, High Queen Ceftwinn of Havish prepares to access the crown jewels’ heritage for the first time: “Will I meet the same end as my brother?” she asks, aggrieved for the irony, that Gestry had seemed transported by the attunement; and Asandir’s iron integrity cannot in honesty ease her concern …

On the hour The Hatchet’s primary assault draws blood to scour the clan presence entrenched in the Thaldeins, a messenger pigeon flown across Camris breaks the explosive news: the rogue avatar marches from Miralt with a company of suborned dedicates, intent on upsetting the High Temple’s decree and denouncing the True Sect Canon …

Late Summer–Early Autumn 5923

IV. Debacle (#ulink_2f2f9329-3f59-507b-9e5c-ecb8754c9425)

The scout runner who carried word of the catastrophe reached the outpost in the Thaldeins, reeling on exhausted feet. Winded beyond speech, he choked on stirred dust, forced to shoulder a path through the chaos that met his arrival.

Wailing children, foot-sore women seated upon bulky bundles, and dazed-looking elderly men crammed the inner bailey from wall to wall. The messenger cut through their heaving misery, toned in ochre and shade, with the fallow gold of full sunlight stamped against the black loom of the portal to the inner sanctuary. The noisy sprawl of refugee families choked every available cranny: still living, still safe, the heart-core of the ancient clan lineages, though immediate threat to Tysan’s blood heritage was more urgent than anyone realized.

The messenger dodged a crying toddler, clinging to a tow-headed brother’s grubby hand. The flashed recall resurged: of another child grotesquely gutted, alongside a sister no older than three. Nauseated, the scout runner pushed past, nostrils clogged still by the stench of the recently slaughtered. His anxious survey swept the moil for one angular form.

Even through turbid haze and the seethe of uprooted humanity, Saroic s’Gannley stood out. Too thin for his height, his gangling form was crowned by flaxen hair the day’s crisis left no time to braid. A young man to be charged with the outpost’s main garrison, his preferred reticence a lost indulgence, he towered, shouting for someone to unsnarl the activity jammed around the supplies.

Movement shuddered and heaved, shifting the stacked barrels and clearing the jumble of wagons and hand-carts, while another crisp order detailed the caverns to be cleared for communal shelter. Just acceded as caithdein of the realm, and yet unaware of the burden, he turned his head at the runner’s approach.

“News?” he demanded, one hand raised to defer a healer’s concern for the risk of disease under crowding.

The scout slid to his knees at Saroic’s feet. He gulped the thin air. Spoke, though his hoarse voice scarcely pierced the racket stewed inside the fortified ravine.

“My Lord Steward, ill tidings!” which phrase broached the first word of an appalling disaster. “Your grandfather’s fallen. The war band at his back is lost also, killed outright defending Orlan. Both pickets on the banks of the Valendale crumpled under a surprise attack. They failed to mislead a concerted advance, never had the numbers at hand to hold out for reinforcements. A dedicate war host pours up-country, unchecked. The enemy’s on us as never before, guided by diviners and head-hunter trackers. They have swept the deep vale. Our outlying settlements are destroyed without quarter, the food stores for winter put to the torch.”

“Survivors?” rasped an elder at Saroic’s back.

The scout bowed his head. “The women, the children, and babes – all were butchered by arrows or ridden down and razed by the sword as they fled. We’re facing a scour by a True Sect mandate, organized for extermination.”