Traitor’s Knot: Fourth Book of The Alliance of Light

5648-9—For endorsing slave labor, Lysaer is cast out of the Fellowship’s compact, which allows Mankind the right to inhabit Athera.

5649—The Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain confronts the Fellowship Sorcerers to lift restrictions imposed on her sisterhood and the use of their grand focus in their Waystone. The petition meets with refusal, sealing her determination to take Arithon captive and use him as leverage to force the Sorcerers to accede to her order’s demands.

5652—Arithon fails in his search for the Paravians. He returns to the continent and discovers Lysaer is enslaving the clanborn. This leads him to infiltrate Lysaer’s shipyard at Riverton, to steal vessels and assist the clansmen in their effort to escape the persecution of Lysaer’s Alliance by fleeing to sanctuary in Havish.

5652-3—The Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain sets a trap to take Arithon by suborning his covert colleagues at the Riverton shipworks, only to have her grand plan undone by ambitious meddling on the part of her sole candidate for succession, Lirenda. The trap springs, but Arithon escapes into a grimward, chased by a company of men allied with Lysaer, under the captaincy of Sulfin Evend.

5653—Lysaer’s wife Talith is murdered by a covert conspiracy in his own council, with her death made to appear as a suicide. Sulfin Evend survives the grimward and is appointed to the rank of Alliance Commander at Arms.

The Koriathain fail to forge an alliance with Lysaer against Arithon, and in disgrace for her meddling, Lirenda decides to use the life debt owed by Fionn Areth to Elaira. The child is shapechanged to mature as Arithon’s double, to be used as bait in a second, more elaborate trap to achieve his capture.

5654—Of their own accord, the Duke’s s’Brydion brothers, against Arithon’s better judgement, decide to avenge the mishap at Riverton. When their argument leads to injury, Arithon is awarded the service of two trusted s’Brydion retainers, Vhandon and Talvish.

5654—Lysaer marries Lady Ellaine as a political expedient. On the day of the wedding, the s’Brydion vengeance plan destroys Lysaer’s fleet and his shipyard at Riverton. Sulfin Evend’s uncle, Raiett Raven, joins Alliance service as Lysaer’s advisor and is eventually appointed as High Chancellor of Etarra.

5655—Lysaer and Ellaine’s child, Prince Kevor, is born.

5667—Ellaine learns that her predecessor, Princess Talith, died as a victim of murder, arranged by Lysaer’s council at Avenor.

5669—The Koriani plot to trap Arithon using Fionn Areth sends the boy into the town of Jaelot, where he is taken and condemned to death, mistaken for the Master of Shadow. Arithon is drawn ashore to prevent the death of an innocent accused in his stead. On winter solstice day, Fionn Areth is snatched from the scaffold. The Koriani conspiracy fails, with Lirenda disgraced and Elaira exonerated.

Now desperate and dying, with no available successor, the Prime Matriarch seizes her moment and distracts the Fellowship Sorcerers by inciting a sweeping upset of the energetic balance of the world. Although she fails to take Arithon captive, she successfully resolves her predicament by taking over a younger candidate, Selidie, in possession. As ‘Selidie’ assumes the mantle of Prime power, the Sorcerers’ hands are tied. The upset has left the Mistwraith itself on the verge of escaping from containment, and other, equally dangerous predators left by the absent Paravian races pose further dangers.

As the terrifying portents unleashed by Morriel’s meddling cause sweeping panic, young Prince Kevor settles the riot that erupts in Lysaer’s absence at Avenor. The brilliant statesmanship earns the young prince the love of the populace and the undying enmity of Lysaer’s High Priest, Cerebeld.

5670—Fionn Areth’s idealistic belief that Arithon is a criminal spoils the free escape from Jaelot. Alone, under pursuit by Alliance troops and Koriathain, Arithon is set to flight over the mountains and into Daon Ramon Barrens.

Young Prince Kevor is entrapped by the machinations of High Priest Cerebeld, and although he survives to become an adept of Ath’s Brotherhood, his presumed death sends his mother Ellaine into flight to escape Lysaer’s corrupt council at Avenor.

While Dakar and Fionn Areth are diverted to Rockfell Peak to assist the short-handed Fellowship Sorcerers’ recontainment of the Mistwraith, the clans of Rathain, under Jieret, are left to face the combined Alliance war host, under command of Lysaer and Sulfin Evend. With their help, Arithon escapes the troop cordon that has closed to take him, but at cost of seven Companions’ lives and Jieret’s capture and execution by Lysaer.

To evade capture, Arithon is driven into the dread maze under Kewar cavern, built by the Sorcerer Davien the Betrayer, whose hand originally caused the uprising that unseated the high kings and heated the conflict between town and clanborn. Arithon survives the arduous challenge of the maze, achieves mastery over the Mistwraith’s curse, and recovers his mage talent. He takes sanctuary there, under guest welcome of Davien.

Defeated, since none dare follow Arithon’s passage through the maze, Lysaer and the disheartened remains of his troop depart for Avenor.

After the successful reconfiguration of the wards containing the Mistwraith, Dakar and Fionn Areth resume their trip south to rendezvous with Feylind’s ship, with intent to sail and rejoin Arithon’s retainers, Vhandon and Talvish, who await them at Duke Bransian’s citadel at Alestron. The year is Third Age Year 5670.

I. Wayfarers (#u5ae3dd89-0dbe-502c-89dc-c756a40c63e2)

Inside the Kittiwake, randiest of the dock-side taverns in Shipsport, two hunted men were unlikely to find the space for anonymous privacy. Raucous sailhands and sweaty stevedores jammed every nook, accosted by swindling tricksters, and the steamy blandishments of the whores. Rumours and gossip spread faster than plague. If the venue posed risks, Dakar, the Mad Prophet, need only eavesdrop to learn that the merchant brig, Evenstar, had weighed anchor from Tharidor and resumed her run down the eastshore last fortnight.

‘Well, what did you expect? We’re a month overdue.’ Fionn Areth shoved back from the trestle, chafed raw. One shout from a sailhand might see him exposed. The wide-brimmed hat just acquired from a riverman scarcely masked his striking, sharp features and black hair. The prospect of extending their journey for two hundred more leagues, over roads mired to mud by spring thaws, would but worsen his already desperate straits. ‘We should be leaving. Now.’

Yet the spellbinder stayed planted in moon-calf complacency. Slumped in his uncivilized, travel-stained jerkin, a pitcher of beer tucked in hand, Dakar crossed his mud-caked boots at the ankles. His stout bulk stayed wedged between a soused party of chandlers and a tattooed longshoreman amused by two doxies, who both vied for a perch in his lap.

Their giggling raised Dakar to soulful envy. Lacking the coin to indulge his male itch, but with no dearth of copper for drinking, he tugged his snarled beard. The cinnamon strands now showed silver roots. He would soon be grey-headed. The legacy of his trials on Rockfell Peak: a harrowing entanglement in Fellowship magecraft that five brimming tankards still failed to erase from recalcitrant memory.

Already busy demolishing the sixth, Dakar swiped foam from his moustache. His jaundiced attention refused to acknowledge the anxious companion across from him.

Fionn Areth’s impatience exploded. Above the tap-room’s racketing noise, he let fly in his broad moorland accent, ‘If Evenstar’s gone, then where in the name of thrice-coupling fiends do we go to seek news of your master?’

Heads turned. Laughter, dart games, and ribald conversation faltered at the teeming trestle. The Kittiwake’s roisterers were always impressed by the prospect of a picked fight.

A fool’s move, to draw notice, since the subject just broached involved a despised royal fugitive. The towns feared Prince Arithon of Rathain as a sorcerer who practised fell rites and dark magecraft. On suspicion, his associates were likely to burn, condemned out of hand as collaborators.

‘Want to visit Sithaer’s eighth hell without setting foot out of Shipsport?’ Dakar gripped his tankard. He gulped down the contents, then topped up Fionn Areth’s half-pint. ‘Drink,’ he urged, hoping the young idiot would take the safe hint and succumb to a glassy-eyed stupor. ‘Trust me on this! You don’t want to risk disrupting the peace. The shoreside magistrate’s got a dungeon more wretched than anything you saw back in Jaelot. Spring tides flood the cells farthest down. You haven’t touched misery until you’ve languished neck deep, with hordes of rats scrambling onto your head to save themselves from a drowning.’

‘Given the untrustworthy company you keep, should I be surprised that you’ve sampled every Ath-forsaken gaol on the continent?’ Fionn Areth shoved the filled vessel aside. ‘As for Sithaer’s favours, I’m not getting sotted. Keep on as you are, and your fat skin could be stewed into soup grease right where we sit!’ The moorlander caught hold of Dakar’s moist wrist. ‘I’m using the good sense my grandame taught the goatherd. Will you haul your arse up and get out of here?’

By now, intrigued onlookers shouted for bets. Coins flashed, to the patter as someone made odds on which brawler was going to swing first. Here at the Kittiwake, fisticuffs and mayhem were counted as prime entertainment.

‘Young fool!’ the fat spellbinder snarled. Now jostled as enthusiasts totted up wagers, he nursed his pitcher and, with sullen deliberation, refilled his dry tankard. ‘I’ll wring your neck, you dirt-stupid Araethurian, before I move even one step.’ Ignoring the whores, who stopped kissing to crane, and the growl from their displeased patron, Dakar nattered on. ‘Press me further, yes, beware! You’ll see trouble on a scale you can’t possibly imagine. Enough to make a verminous sink-hole seem blithe as a nurse-maid’s picnic. Now, shut your mouth. Sit on your temper and swallow the beer set in front of you.’

‘Damn you to Sithaer before I take a drop,’ Fionn Areth retorted.

The rabid pack of gamblers shoved back to make space.

Dakar shut his eyes. He sucked a martyred breath. Then in one lightning move, he elbowed erect and dumped his brimming tankard over his tangled head.

The run-off doused the longshoreman, to ear-splitting shrieks from his harlots. They hiked up scarlet petticoats and fled. Their swain’s irate bellow clashed with the clerks’ howls and rattled soot from the Kittiwake’s rafters.

Dakar freed his captive arm. While the trestle skidded, upsetting the pitcher and smashing two lightermen’s dinner plates, he skinned through the clerks’ snatching grasp and used his tankard to parry the stevedore’s battering fist.

Crockery smashed. Fragments pelted over the dicers crammed elbow to elbow on the seat just behind.

Yelling murder, and unnaturally quick for a stout man grown tight on the Kittiwake’s twopenny brew, Dakar ducked a dock-walloper’s left hook. Then he lost his balance and sat. The brute’s knuckles hammered into the clerks’ outraged charge. The leading one crashed with a bloodied jaw, and flattened two of his fellows. Their thrashing upset the adjacent trestle. Bowls and hot chowder went flying. The four brawny fishermen deprived of their meal unsheathed flensing knives, screamed, and plunged in. Their vacated bench upset with a bang, toppling a drunk, who bowled into a circle of overdressed merchants. Lace tore; spilled food and spirits rained over fine velvets. The outraged peacocks redoubled the noise, bewailing their despoiled finery.

Trapped in the breach, Fionn Areth clambered upright. Disaster overtook him. Bedlam exploded like froth on a pot, and the Kittiwake’s tap-room erupted.

Tankards sailed. Broth splashed. Elbows and fists smacked against heaving flesh. Beneath the soaked tits of a gilded figure-head, an agile pack of sail-hands laid into their neighbours with marlinspikes, knuckle-bones, and clogs. Their sally encountered the longshoreman’s kin, who had levelled a trestle for use as a ram. Card games whisked air-borne. Stew bones and cutlery showered the brick floor, stabbing toes and tripping combatants. Three prostitutes scuttling for cover went down, then another man, who became mired in their skirts. Their squeals drew the lusty eye of a galley-man, who dived in to lay claim to the spoils. While the landlord at the tap screeched threats and imprecations, the three heavies the Kittiwake employed to toss drunks at last stirred themselves to take charge. Brandishing cudgels, they waded in, dropping bodies like beef at a knacker’s.

By then, Dakar had vanished, swallowed into the battering press.

Fionn Areth found himself trapped, all alone, mashed against the rocked edge of the trestle. The burgeoning riot cut off his escape, a rip tide that raged without quarter. The Kittiwake’s brawlers were a Shipsport legend, vicious with drink and seething with the age-old bad blood between galley-men and blue-water sailors. Crews seized on the chance to hammer their rivals. Enraged coopers shied bottles at all comers, while a reeling topman snatched lit candles from the sconces and flung them at random targets. Sparks flurried and ignited a puddle of spirits. Beset by fire and windmilling fists, the Kittiwake’s strongmen yelled to summon reinforcements. The cooks, the pot-boys, and two muscled butchers burst out of the kitchen, armed with bludgeons and cleavers. Their vengeful flying wedge suggested an experience well primed for this afternoon’s frolic.

At risk of being crippled, or knocked senseless for arrest, Fionn Areth grabbed the rolling pitcher as a weapon. But the body he slugged was a knife-bearing rigger, who whirled around, swore, and accosted him. His sally was backed by his ship’s bursar, and another sailor swinging a belaying pin.

Fionn Areth fell back on sword training, ducked the club, and used a guarding forearm to parry the wrist of the dirk-wielding assailant. The slash missed his gut and deflected upwards, the follow-through skewered his hat brim. He snatched, too late. The snagged felt whisked away. Bare-headed, and wearing the flawless, spelled features of a notorious criminal, the moorlander panicked.

His last feckless brawl had sent him to a scaffold, mistakenly condemned as a sorcerer. A blade through the heart, followed by fire would give the most stalwart man nightmares.

Haunted by dread since that narrow escape, Fionn Areth ducked in blind terror. He dodged the swift stab of a marlinspike, desperate. Unless he recovered the hat, now impaled on the point of a maniac’s dagger, he risked being falsely arraigned once again as the most wanted felon on the continent.

No one would believe the fact he was innocent. The uncanny likeness he wore was too real, a permanent imprint aligned by the wiles of the Koriani enchantresses. They had altered his face, then played him as bait. Their crafting was seamless: even his mother presumed the change was no less than his natural birthright. His late capture in Jaelot might have seen him dead for the deeds of his look-alike nemesis.

Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, known as Spinner of Darkness, was too well renowned for obscurity. His horrific record of wanton destruction had dispatched fifty thousand armed men, sworn to serve the Alliance of Light.

‘Furies take Dakar for a witless wastrel!’ Fionn Areth gasped, sorely beset. Both marlinspike and dagger thrust in concert to maim him. He dodged the first, caught a gash on his forearm. His dive for the hat ran afoul of the brute with the cudgel dispatched to clear out the tap-room.