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

If the creature had been a witch’s familiar, he stayed docile as Tarens boosted him into the wagon. He curled up by the chicken crates, knees hugged to his chest, soothed by the ponderous rumble of wheels, and contentedly pleased to watch the autumn landscape pass by. When the ox-wain trundled into the sprawling farm market, shadowed beneath Kelsing’s walls, he observed with bright eyes as Efflin hauled the ox to a stop. Before Tarens could hitch the draught beast to a rail, the fellow leaped out, saw where he was needed, and with no one’s asking, helped Kerelie unload the baskets and poultry. His small size masked an unexpected, fierce strength. He hefted the heaviest crates without difficulty and arranged them as she directed for display and sale.

While Efflin took charge and untied the bull, Tarens dug into his scrip. The last silver left to his name, he placed in the vagabond’s hand. Sadness struck him afresh, that the man’s nails were dirt-rimed, and his palm, welted over with callus.

Peculiar, how those oddities niggled. Tarens had never heard mention that Koriathain worked the land or kept destitutes for field labor. He shrugged off curiosity, aware by the heat on his back that the risen sun burned through the mist. Already he risked being late to nose-lead the beeve to its fate at the butcher’s. Loose half-wits were scarcely his problem, besides. At large in the open market, someone might recognize the mute stranger and claim him.

If not, surely the industrious fellow might find some sort of menial labor in town. Aware he was unwanted, he moved off unasked, to assist an old woman who struggled to lift hampers of yarn from a neighbouring wagon. Diligent as he seemed, the local tavern might hire him to scrub tankards and sweep.

‘He will be better off,’ Efflin snapped, and dealt Tarens a shove to break his reverie. ‘Anything here offers much better prospects than blocking the trade-road for shiftless amusement.’

Autumn 5922

Hard Reckoning

The Fellowship Sorcerer entered the order’s sisterhouse at Whitehold empty-handed, his purpose to close the terms of an ancient score, declared in an hour of bitter defeat on a morning well over two centuries ago. He came clothed in formality. His robe of immaculate indigo velvet brushed the marble floor, while the silver braid that bordered his sleeves gleamed in the early sun shafted through the hall’s sea-side windows. Pale steel were his eyes, steady as he took the measure of the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain, enthroned in state panoply to meet him.

Always dangerous, the enchantress sat above everyone else in the room. Her coquette’s beauty was regaled in the deep purple gown and red ribbons of her supreme office, and her massive chair, atop a canopied dais, over­shadowed the initiate sisters selected to witness the momentous audience. Where the Sorcerer was required to stand at her feet, his immense strength leashed in stilled patience, she glittered in extravagant triumph. Pale aqua­marine were her eyes, hard as her jewels of amethyst and diamond, and just as stone cold, while she savoured her moment to hound him to humiliation.

She had cornered his game, or so she believed. The flicker of gilt thread in the gloves worn to mask her grotesquely scarred hands all but shouted her defiant scorn. Peremptory, invigorated by the thrill of her victory, she gestured for him to open the proceedings.

‘Prime Matriarch,’ he greeted, too self-contained to sound cowed, though the grandiose hall with its stone-vaulted splendour had been staged for demeaning spite. Lean and tall though the Sorcerer was, the soaring pillars that upheld the domed ceiling diminished his upright stature. More, the silent regard of the ranked Senior sisters picked to share his Fellowship’s demise seared the atmosphere to contempt.

The weathered lines on the Sorcerer’s features might have been quarried, with his hawk’s profile straitly expressionless. ‘I have come in accord to confirm the reckoning owed by our mutual promise.’

Perfect with youth, though she was in fact aged, her vitality engineered by dark spellcraft that had repeatedly cheated mortality, the Prime Matriarch tipped her coiffed head to acknowledge his careful greeting. ‘Asandir.’ Her coral lips turned, a smile made cordial by poisonous satisfaction. ‘We accept, by your presence, the promised acknowledgement that your Fellowship’s debt is now due. The last invasive free wraith from Marak has been duly banished by Athera’s Masterbard. The event occurred yesterday. This dawn, by the covenant carved onto stone in the King’s Chamber at Althain Tower, the stay of execution your Fellowship demanded on behalf of Prince Arithon of Rathain is named forfeit. Our order’s sovereignty requires his death. By the pledge held and sworn by Crown auspices to Koriathain, and sealed by the prophet apprentice under your Fellowship’s oversight, we choose to reject a further hearing.’

Asandir said nothing.

Stung, perhaps, by his dead-pan silence, Prime Selidie sat forward and jabbed. ‘My order will seize its deferred satisfaction! Did you really believe our initial demand would be softened by your past effrontery when you forced our hand?’

Malice spiked the Prime’s anger. The sweet hour of ascendancy heated her blood, all the more rich since the vicious riposte thrust upon her by the Fellowship Sorcerers’ underhand tactic: a deadly influx of wraiths unleashed on the world as their ruthless weapon in counter-threat. Unconscionably, they had gambled! The survival of Mankind on Athera had been callously tossed on the board as their bargaining chip, with the innocent populace placed at risk under a lethal threat to buy Arithon’s chance for reprieve. Centuries she had waited for the deferred moment to exact her treasured revenge. She fully intended to relish this long-sought, moral requital.

‘Such arrogance!’ Selidie chided, drunk on the precedent that the Sorcerer stood at her mercy. ‘Did you lie awake night after night, all these years, hopeful that time would soften our committed stance?’

Asandir only inclined his head, hair glinted white in the unkind glare that stabbed down from the lancet window.

‘Well, our terms have not changed.’ The Prime restated, crisp, ‘I will have the Koriathain released from the tyranny of your compact. Grant our demand. Or Prince Arithon dies before sundown. For his life, and the continuance of Rathain’s royal lineage, how will your Fellowship plead?’

‘We choose not to plead,’ Asandir stated, quiet. ‘The old law that grants humanity’s right to exist on Athera remains intact. And enforced! We stand upon principle. My dear!’ he exclaimed, not amused as the Matriarch stiffened. ‘Should my ultimatum surprise you? This world’s future has never been mine to bequeath! Mankind dwells here by the grace of our surety. That interest is our charge to balance and never set under your order’s purview to negotiate!’

Selidie’s eyes narrowed. Her malice had roots. Beyond question, she knew: Arithon s’Ffalenn was the linch-pin on which the Fellowship’s purpose depended; also, the cipher to leverage her gain. If Asandir would not bend his terms, if his Fellowship’s stance remained obdurate, she would follow through. Arithon would be killed, and with no mercy, if only to void the old prophecy that forecast the failure of her succession.

‘I live for the day!’ the Matriarch pronounced. ‘Your stubborn ethics have just signed the death warrant for your captive prince.’

Asandir raised open hands. ‘So be it.’ Like rinsed granite, his face, as he added, ‘My course of noninterference is hereby confirmed. Expect me to remain as the Fellowship’s witness. I will stay present only until the bitter ending’s accomplished.’

Selidie regarded him, dissecting his manner to gauge the hidden depths of his discomfort. Field Sorcerer to the Fellowship, he would keep his adamant poise, along with the letter of his spoken pledge: no record in history ran contrary. Nonetheless, the air trembled, taut as a roughly plucked string. The breadth of raw power in his contained presence could have broken the natural rise and set of the sun.

Selidie laughed until the hall echoed. ‘Your Warden should have sent someone more inventive! How the collar and leash must chafe your proud neck! Or is this a novelty? A twisted attempt to pique your jaded nerves? Are you grown tired enough in your dotage to find relief as a passive observer?’

‘I am waiting,’ said Asandir, clipped impatient. ‘My word, struck in closure, is all you require.’

‘Do as I say, and be done here?’ Prime Selidie laid the swathed stumps of her hands on the purple silk over-dress, artfully draped over her lap. Her sharp focus heightened like a hunting cat’s toying with a pinned mouse. ‘Should I rush the moment? When every exchange made with you before this has demeaned our needs as a pittance?’ Emotion leaked through, the first tremor of rage, transmitted by volcanic fury. ‘How does it feel, now the tables have turned? Should I not enjoy watching your years of planned strategies flicked hither and yon, hapless as chaff in a storm wind?’

On an occasion less fraught with peril, Asandir might have smiled before he attacked. ‘Glendien’s bastard daughter threw a wrench in your works? Is it true, as I’ve heard, that every quartz crystal she ever touched became shattered to fragments? I could relieve your order of that embarrassment. If her natural father is condemned to die, you’ve no further need for a hostage to guarantee our share of the bargain. I would gladly accept on my Fellowship’s behalf if the Koriathain would release Teylia back to us.’

‘What! Leave you the means to extend your pestiferous royal lineage and seat a successor on Rathain’s vacant throne?’ Selidie gloated outright. ‘Not a chance! Teylia was wrested away from your charge. Inept or not, even aged past senility, she may find a useful place in our order yet. No. Her loyalty stays tied to me. Unless you would care to rethink your position and release your ironclad grip, binding my will to your compact?’

The Sorcerer inclined his head, his large hands with their capable callus and the worn tracery of scarred experience now lowered and quiet. ‘Impasse. I rest my case.’

No more could be said. He would not lie. Even by inference, he dared not tip his hand. His last wild card must stay invisible: that the secret truth, and all of the facts still in play with regard to Prince Arithon’s issue, were not, and never had been, made known to Selidie Prime. Terrible, the self-restraint that checked Asandir’s urge to speak his mind; overwhelming, his fury for the twisted practice that permitted the abomination he confronted on the dais to live. He capped his latent rage for the abhorrent abuses that kept Selidie’s creamy skin smooth; smothered his heart’s need to let fly with rebuke for her cruelty, which once had commanded the separation of a three-year-old girl from the arms of her widowed mother.

While Selidie drew out his agonized wait, well aware how her practice offended, Asandir checked his torrential emotions. His nerves must withstand the terrible course!

Exposed, he endured the grueling pause, as the Prime prolonged the climactic chance to snatch her long-sought recompense. Too viciously clever to act on rash eagerness, she expected to cede him a failure to trump the annals of abject defeat.

For her crowning blow, she chose insult. ‘I shall not rely on your spoken word.’ Unable to resist the temptation, she meant to bond him with the valid­ation demanded of common petitioners. Her tight gesture encompassed the gleaming white marble that paved the floor under his feet. ‘Seal your promise, Sorcerer. As was done before at Althain Tower, I would have your surety set into stone.’

An offence, past impertinent, fashioned to desecrate every clean ethic he cherished! Asandir bent his head. This was no time to give way to weakness.

‘Do this on your knees!’ Prime Selidie crowed, enraptured to vindication.

But the matter at stake did not stand or fall upon the blows to his dignity. Asandir knelt. His height made the gesture convincingly awkward. The long fingers he laid flat were a workaday labourer’s, the strong, weathered knuckles strangely naked against the pale mineral. No artifice masked his humility as he begged the stone slab to grant him forgiveness. His requisite permission was asked with apology for the betrayal: that the quarried marble came from a mountain under the sovereign charge of Rathain.

Asandir braced his will. He must proceed! The past’s cruel balance had to be served, despite the unknown course of the outcome. Nothing could be raised out of ashes if he failed to shoulder the crux. Under a loyalty commandeered by the dragons, his obligations had been fixed long before the dread purpose that brought him.

The quartz vein in the marble gave to his need, fearless in generosity. Into its patient suspension, the Sorcerer spoke a phrase tuned to yielding compassion. Light flashed. Between his spread palms, the firm slab blazed red and ran suddenly molten. No heat attended the empowered change. His flesh was not seared, while substance embraced transformation.

‘Stone as my impartial witness, behold!’ intoned Asandir, hammered steady. ‘The terms of the Fellowship’s stay of execution for Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn are withdrawn. Crown debt to Rathain, sworn at Athir, is confirmed. Koriathain are freed to determine his Grace’s fate, henceforward.’ The Sorcerer flipped back his right sleeve and bared a silver bracelet incised with runes. Deftly, he rolled the metal across the cherry red magma.

A swipe of his hand quelled the rouge glow. When he straightened, the paved floor underfoot subsided to its former polish: except the impressed string of ciphers remained as irrefutable proof of his vow.

‘I stand on my word,’ declared Asandir. ‘The hour is yours for the reckoning.’

Prime Selidie’s venomous gesture acknowledged the challenge that thwarted her passionate drive to claim unlicensed autonomy for Koriathain on Athera. Denied yet again, she would wreak the full score of havoc in retaliation and deny the Sorcerers their sole hope of requital.

‘Bring me the closed coffer!’ she commanded the enchantress in silent service behind her state chair. While the summoned Senior came forward, obedient, and proffered the requested item, the Prime’s icy study of Asandir’s face never wavered. ‘Open the lock.’

Inside, darkened to black by the sigil fashioned to end life, rested a prepared crystal. The artifact radiated a halo of dire cold. Unfazed by its unpleasant proximity, Selidie directed her female attendant to remove her embroidered mitts and place the enabled jewel into the crippled stubs of her hands.

‘Now, bring the filled basin,’ she ordered, though usually others performed her brute work to spare the fumbling embarrassment of her deformity. ‘I shall align the spell of fatality myself.’

Asandir looked on, eyes open, unbending, although the practice enacted before him wrenched horror and sickness down to his viscera. He held on, lips sealed against outcry, as Arithon’s imprint was taken from a dried blood-stain, soaked out of a ripped scrap of cloth. The same shirt, torn off on the ruinous hour the prince had been run down and captured, now framed the foul means to target him as the Prime’s victim.

By force of character, Asandir did not flinch though all could be lost! The moment brought agony as Selidie dropped the crystal with its lethal directive into the turbid solution swirled in the glass bowl…

* * *

Far to the west, in the garden of the ruined earl’s palace where the shards of another crystal had lately been buried, a black ring of energy darkened the ground. The blight spread like ink, rippling outward, then stopped, contained by the hands of a hooded crone. She who still waited in steadfast vigil spoke no word of incantation. Shrouded in nothing else but fast silence, she let the blood heritage in her own veins intercept the vile binding, then absorb the spell’s lethal directive. The hideous taint crawled up her arms. Its vicious passage blackened her flesh, then razed skin and muscle to instant corruption. Stripped to a cadaverous horror, she toppled into a grisly heap as the final breath left her lungs. Shortly, naught but a tangle of bones lay wrapped in the rags of singed clothing. Above her grotesquely murdered remains, the violent release of her spirit stirred autumn brush and rattled the frost-brittle grasses…