Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon

Then the hour drew nigh. The ephemeral shift that occurred before sunrise prickled through mage-sense as the flux reached the neap in the lane tide. Dakar slipped into trance once again. Not for an innocuous spiritwalk this time, but to garner the requisite permissions he needed to open his bid for escape. His arrangement began with such subtle stealth, just one aware mind on Athera took notice.

Early Winter 5922

Kingbreaker

Winter travel and the fever-pitch tension of crisis saw Asandir in his habitual element. En route to the defended clan enclave tucked high in the mountains near the Pass of Orlan, he had left Althain Tower by transit to Isaer’s Great Circle, then ridden fast and hard down the westward trade-road for seven days. He rented no post-horses when his mount tired. Bred to bear him as a cherished companion, the black stallion was a wonder among the world’s mystical graces, too devoted to be put aside. The Sorcerer snatched sleep while the animal rested. Starry nights bedded both of them down in dry leaves, Asandir wrapped up in his cloak and reclined against his mount’s side for shared warmth.

But even a Sorcerer’s familiar could not travel at speed in the thin air of high altitude. The whipped drifts piled by the last blizzard bogged the pace where the old road narrowed down to a track folded into the buckled ramparts between the iced cliffs, and the high cornices swathed in white threatened the avalanches that broke away with a roar at the sound of a whip-crack. Experienced masters of caravans with their pack-trains of sure-footed mules never ventured the pass, facing winter.

Asandir went where Fellowship business took him, bold beyond care for the season. Yet this time, his iron strength and determined purpose laboured under the sorrowful heart-ache: that Arithon’s plight had compelled the terms of Dakar’s brutal dismissal. As a bone tossed into the shark’s teeth of fate, the initiate prophet could stand with heroic grace, or else fall, wasted utterly, to the murderous wiles of the Fellowship’s bitterest enemies.

Which painfully overdue word from Sethvir reached Asandir swift and straight as the flight of an arrow: ‘Our wild-card cast-off is safely away from the ambush set for him at Lorn. He’s escaped execution by the Light’s doctrine and eluded pursuit by eight Koriathain.’

The black horse stopped four-square in the road, though the rider’s hand had not moved to rein in. The Fellowship’s field Sorcerer bent his bare head. Stiff breeze tangled his silver hair through a moment of poignant humility. ‘Show me.’

As he wished, images relayed from Sethvir’s earth-sense unveiled the particu­lars from the morning’s hair-raising triumph: several dozy Lorn guardsmen had roused from a snooze to find they no longer warded the Light’s condemned minion. Worse, the fell creature’s evasion left every bit of forged steel in their dungeon, from locks and shackles to the grille on the cell, reverted back into crystallized carbon and raw clumps of unsmelted ore.

Asandir might have laughed, had the True Sect’s officious audacity not galled him to redoubled rage.

The next view showed the plump fugitive abroad in the dock-side streets in the icy darkness before dawn. By no coincidence, the spellbinder slunk down empty alleys and crossed by-ways while the town’s watchmen found their eyes turned elsewhere. Like a hot knife through butter, Dakar reached the wharf by the simplest artifice: a neat scrying told him where to be and when, down to which of the tied dories to filch from the cluster tied at the stone jetty. Black-cloaked and unseen amid blacker air, he rowed out to the sole lugger in port whose fisherman would grant him free passage.

Day broke under clouds, with no staged execution to requite the Light’s thwarted diviner. The vessel with her furtive passenger already had cast off her mooring and sailed. She clove through the bay’s open water, while more quietly, the covert circle of Koriathain cursed the salt waves that eroded their quartz-wrought enchantments…

Rinsed in fleeting gilt sunlight as a veil of cloud shredded against the obsidian spires of the Thaldein peaks, Asandir drew a cold breath of relief.

Sethvir’s laconic summary confirmed an outcome not fallen too disastrously wide of the mark. ‘Since Dakar chose not to restore his defense of Arithon’s person, at least he’s arranged a spectacular diversion to confound the hunt pressed by Erdane’s high temple.’

Asandir coughed behind his wool sleeve. ‘The priesthood is wall-eyed, suddenly saddled with two escaped minions to trace?’

Sethvir’s pleased snort all but ruffled the world’s wind. ‘The Koriathain will have a tough time puppeteering their preferred agenda, since Lorn’s diviner was given hard evidence. Dakar’s confirmed sorceries must overshadow the spurious case that tags Arithon’s heels in the south. More, our seasick prophet bargained with the fisherman for an urgent passage to Halywythwood.’

Now, Asandir’s craggy face broke and smiled. ‘Ah!’ Manfully dignified, he restrained a loud crow. ‘Which of the owed debts to crown honour does the Mad Prophet intend to invoke?’

A tight pause ensued.

Asandir’s smothered laughter did escape then, fierce and ineffably joyful. ‘Oh, better!’ Fur would fly with a vengeance in the clan chieftain’s tent when the inherited burden of shame was called due for the plot that had brokered a crown prince’s betrayal and capture.

‘Quite,’ Sethvir affirmed. ‘Your master initiate appears to have handled himself on his own rather well.’

Asandir’s thoughtful quiet allowed as much. Dakar could side-step the Fellowship’s constraint just by spreading the recent news. For the cogent fact Rathain’s royal heir had been liberated must summon the realm’s caithdein back into royal service.

When the Warden’s contact continued, unbroken, the Sorcerer exposed to the cruel chill in the Thaldeins nudged with gentle heels to prompt his horse onwards. ‘What else?’

Sethvir’s sigh could almost be felt over distance from Althain Tower. ‘There has been one set-back. Dakar blundered into a seer’s fit that forecast the death date of Havish’s queen.’ The loss to old age was nothing the Fellowship Sorcerers had not expected. But premature word sent to Erdane’s high temple would sever the terms of a treaty and reopen the arena to renew a stalemated war.

‘How long do I have to sanction her successor?’ Asandir asked, resigned that his time for a hard winter journey had to be brutally shortened.

‘Prince Gestry must be crowned and invested ahead of the winter solstice.’ Sethvir added a poor consolation in parting, ‘The outpost at Orlan expects your arrival. That should speed your errand a bit.’

Thankful for any small favour amid a relentless rip tide of trouble, Asandir forged ahead. The clansfolk in wait for him would not be glad: never in their forefathers’ memories had Fellowship Sorcerers brought them good tidings. Today’s call could not spare them in that regard. Asandir stroked his stallion’s neck with apology, then pushed the pace to outrace the blizzard that threatened to smother his passage.

The storm roared in, a dark maelstrom chased on by a gale that battened the peaks under snowfall as thick as a winding sheet. A welcoming party of two horsemen poised in wait, buffeted by the wind at the rise to the notch. Through the grey gloom, the formal gold trappings on their matched coursers shone beacon-bright, though the riders were not clad in the state dress that tradition would turn out to honor a prince. One wore undyed leathers, armed as a scout. The other, elderly, white-haired, and erect, bore the blue badge with Tysan’s crown-and-star blazon as the realm’s steward in royalty’s absence.

Asandir drew rein before them. Despite the rugged hours just spent in urgent ascent, his stallion was not lathered or winded. By contrast, the Sorcerer looked beaten to rags, his horse’s endurance sustained by the profligate gift of his personal life-force. He spoke his mind quickly. ‘Caithdein, Teir’s’Gannley, crown service requests your third grandson, just come of age.’

The old man saluted, closed fist to his chest. Beneath the soaked pelt of a wolfskin hat, his seamed expression returned no astonishment. ‘Our seer’s vision told us. Kingmaker, the lad sits as my right-hand escort, already presented before you.’

Gold flashed, as the second horse tossed its blazed head, pressed forward by the ascetic young man, flushed with cold in his workaday leathers. Not brawny enough to excel at bearing arms, he showed the anxious edge of a restless intelligence. Flaxen hair overshadowed poetic brown eyes, while the rakish jut to his shaved jaw bespoke an unfinished maturity. ‘What does the land’s need demand of me?’

Asandir skewered him with a level stare from grey eyes that dissected him, body and spirit. Behind this youthful face, the Sorcerer saw others: predecessors with illustrious names, and histories that reached back to Iamine Teiren’s’Gannley, who had in fact declined Tysan’s crown for the choice to stand shadow at the first high king’s shoulder.

How the Sorcerer read today’s gangling candidate, or what fate hung over his unwritten future, no man knew. Saroic s’Gannley endured in silenced dread, straight and pale as an ash spear. He held, as he must, through that scouring scrutiny, while the ghostly sting of every insult, each jeer, and all the derisive clouts from companions who branded him coward flamed his cheeks scarlet.

Asandir pronounced with shattering brevity, ‘Saroic s’Gannley, you are called forward by Fellowship prerogative to replace the heir apparent named by the clan council. When the hour arises, you shall inherit your grandsire’s title as steward to the kingdom’s throne.’ The Sorcerer peeled off a black glove and extended his work-worn hand. His touch on the candidate’s forehead imparted a silver glyph upon living flesh, the Fellowship’s mark of surety that would fade within a moon’s cycle.

Shock might have left anyone else disconcerted. Saroic vaulted out of his saddle, almost without turning a hair. Though helpless to banish his desperate fear, he keenly sensed the moment’s exigent priority. He offered his fresh horse for the Sorcerer’s use and volunteered to take the black’s reins. ‘I could lead your stud back to the outpost on foot and tend him myself, as you wish.’

Asandir’s smile appeared like the sun through the whipped burst of snowfall between them. ‘By your grace, I accept.’ He managed to dismount without a stumble. Swung astride the handsome, loaned courser, he leaned forward and whispered into its back-turned ear. Then, with artless abandon, he curled up and slept on the horse’s neck.

The bay knew its own way. No hand on the rein was required to guide its return to feed and dry shelter.

Tysan’s most guarded clan outpost lay tucked in the secluded recess of a hidden gorge, the access defended by fortified walls, and a double gateway whose massive blocks had been raised and sealed by the lore of the vanished centaur masons. Inside, the arches that vaulted the dry cavern rose three times the height of a man. When not hung with tapestries for guest custom and feasting, the hall rebounded with hollow echoes: on this hour, conversation with the ominous overtones predominated as the Sorcerer’s fresh news prolonged a precipitate session still in progress. The old man seated as Tysan’s reigning steward leaned over a trestle draped with parchment maps. The rapt company with him included his war-captain, two elderly women, and three harried selectmen from the clan council. All wore fur hats and oiled-wool cloaks since the desperate measures of tightened security risked no fire to vent tell-tale smoke from the central hearth.

Asandir was no longer present at nightfall, when the young man who bore the fresh mark of heirship stepped in from his volunteer charge of the Sorcerer’s horse. The blizzard by then closed down with vengeful force. Despite the mauling wind and choking snowfall, word of Saroic’s changed status had blazed through the guarded settlement.

The off-duty scouts crowded him at the entrance, exclaiming with incandescent excitement. No Fellowship Sorcerer had visited in recent memory, far less to serve them with an upset to their clan council’s choice of succession.

‘Did Asandir say we’d battle more True Sect purges?’ asked the puppy-dog boy, tagged at his heels since the stable.

Saroic shrugged off the rough back-slaps and questions. Still clad in soaked leathers, worn breathless from the chest-high drifts breasted on his return, he subdued his inquisitive friends without words, then left them silenced in his wake. Across the darkened, cavernous chamber, while the snap of his footfalls reverberated a ghost’s legion of whispers around him, he stopped before the seated elders and clan chieftains gathered around the lone candle that lit the strewn charts.

‘I’m not celebrating,’ he informed the uncle the Sorcerer’s prerogative had seen fit to supplant.

Older, broader, and mightily scarred from the fights that repulsed the relentless Sunwheel campaigns to rout out clan presence, the uncle rose for the traditional salute, his closed fist clapped over his heart. He wore the mantle of tested experience as war-captain, yet ambition did not stand between them. Elsewhere in seclusion, Saroic’s mother and sisters would be weeping, consoled in their grief by an aunt, who shared in equal measure the tears of joyful relief for a husband’s lot, unexpectedly granted reprieve. The caithdein’s post was an iron-hard charge bestowed on the best and the bravest. The call to that service could, and had, tried the stoutest hearts in their family’s long history. Times when the succession was Fellowship claimed, a grim threat to the realm demanded the cruel sacrifice of necessity. That the inheritance had skipped generations foreshadowed a hard plight ahead for Saroic s’Gannley.

He would not break under the sudden shock, any more than the uncle who gave up his titled seat resented fate’s blessing, which lifted the burden.

Saroic took the heir designate’s chair too suddenly made his by right. The seal on his forehead a star in the gloom, he saluted the erect old man, who yet carried the mantle of lifetime authority. ‘Grandsire, I hope years will pass before I’m invested. Surely the Sorcerer will answer my questions after he’s fed and settled?’

Tysan’s caithdein measured his young nephew’s transparent uncertainty and sighed. ‘Asandir’s already gone. He left for the mountains on foot, with the promise his errand would upend every hair on the heads of the temple’s diviners.’

Outside, the gale shrieked fit to knock the man down who ventured the exposed rock on the heights. Snow fell thick enough to blind and bury a traveller, then freeze his bones fast until spring. Yet no fury born of the world’s wild elements might gainsay a Fellowship Sorcerer. The caithdein appointed to speak for the King’s Justice in Tysan would rather have shouted against the raw might of that storm than venture one word of dissuasion. ‘Asandir will be back before dawn to collect his black horse from the stable. He’s said not to follow or upbraid the sentries if nobody sees him away upon his departure.’

Saroic met the set-back, wavered, then bore up. ‘Did the Sorcerer mention why I was called forward, or what threat to the realm we’ll be facing?’

‘He told us the Master of Shadow has escaped from Koriani captivity,’ the uncle admitted, moved down the trestle to accept his ranked place as the war band’s commander. ‘We must brace to expect widespread panic and purges such as our clan presence has not seen before.’ The swoop and dip of the candle-flame shadowed gruff features not given to seams of uncertainty as he added, ‘Already, Sethvir knows the temple at Erdane is calling up a fresh muster. The High Priest’s ambition is bound to renew the Light’s quest for the conquest of Havish. Your role is bespoken, Saroic. Asandir said you will come to uphold crown law as caithdein against forces beyond any precedent. Because if Lysaer s’Ilessid should fall to the binding influence of Desh-thiere’s curse, he could try again to impose his false claim and seize sovereign rule over Tysan.’

‘I’m expected to defend in this breach?’ Saroic reeled, hands better suited to penmanship clenched on the boards to stay upright. Who possessed the main strength to sustain the onslaught? Aside from the zealot troops ruled by the temple canon, none but a sorcerer’s power might curb a self-made avatar, birth-gifted to wield the direct power of elemental light. ‘I am no fighter!’ he gasped, honest in the wretchedness of his misery.