Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light

Inside that prison of crystalline walls, Elaira stepped forward. The spectral light made her features seem strained. The rich, russet highlights in her hair were erased, as if she had become but a shadow of herself in that place of carved ice and moonlight. ‘I am saddened, Fionn. The time’s come when I’m asked to give over your birth debt to the higher power of the Koriani Order. This cannot be done without your consent, but Lirenda insists you are old enough. She would have you speak and arrange for the terms of your sacrifice.’

‘What do I say?’ Fionn Areth asked, plaintive. ‘I could give her my knife, but Father told me if I lost it, I couldn’t have another for a year.’

Elaira wiped leaking eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘Keep your knife, Fionn. The lady wants nothing more than your word. Say if the Koriani Order may lay claim to your fate in my stead.’

Fionn Areth’s eyes narrowed. ‘She wants this, the lady?’ He considered with the gravity of a child too young to respond as an adult. ‘My mother would say to give nothing for free. What will the Koriathain trade in return?’ His voice firmed as he stiffened his small spine. ‘I’m going to need an expensive, sharp sword.’

‘You shall have the very best, fabricated by the hand of a master armorer.’ Lirenda gestured encouragement with the magnanimous assurance of one who had never eaten someone else’s table scraps or missed a night in cosseted comfort. ‘Not only that, but a tutor at arms will be sent to Araethura to school you. Give your consent, and our bargain is sealed.’

‘Do I get a scabbard too?’ Fionn Areth said, distrustful enough to be shrewd.

‘A scabbard, of course, child.’ Impatient with young ones, Lirenda tapped her foot. ‘You have only to give your consent.’

‘Then yes!’ Fionn Areth followed his shout with a whoop that rattled his dream to echoing exuberance.

But for Lirenda’s twisted plot, plainspoken speech was insufficient. ‘Swear, then. Heart and mind, give me your formal permission for the record to be set in crystal.’

Elaira turned away, unable to watch, as, still fearless, the boy gave away his autonomy. The words of his oath rang through the frost-cloaked silence of the night. In too brief an instant, the act stood complete.

Tied by consent to a Koriani quartz focus, Fionn Areth now belonged to the order as irrevocably as any young initiate inducted for vows of life service.

In the orchard, released from the grip of spelled dreams, Fionn Areth’s body fell limp inside the fleeces of Elaira’s borrowed jacket. For a drawn-out moment, the unnatural trance kept his pupils dilated, their depths an uncanny, fathomless black in the frigid spill of the moonlight. Then Lirenda inscribed the seal for deep sleep. The boy’s wide, staring eyes hazed from focus and fluttered closed. His lips parted in a sigh, while an uncaring breeze bearing winter in its weave flicked the jet ends of his hair. A pen stroke ruled against darkness, the beam of pale light from the crystal seemed to drill through his unmarked forehead.

‘He’s sworn oath of debt.’ Lirenda’s satisfaction held triumph, a chilling indication that Morriel’s command matched the grain of her personal involvement. In a guarded move, she raised lily-scented hands and tugged the hood of her mantle to shelter her high-cut cheekbone. ‘Not even the Fellowship of Seven can argue the validity of a vow sworn and sealed as a bargain.’

‘You should be proud.’ Elaira made no effort to curb her raking sarcasm. ‘Your victim is only six years of age, and a tutor and a sword are a paltry return for enslavement.’

‘Given the choice of a life raising goats, I much doubt the child’s going to care.’ Lirenda’s rose lips bent upward in secretive satisfaction. ‘Don’t think you’re finished here.’

Elaira huddled, shivering. She knew very well that the coming spells of transformation should not require her presence. This spiteful play to force her participation framed a more than disturbing oddity. Raised on the street as an orphaned child, Elaira had never welcomed authority. Now, her deep, primal instinct gave warning: the strained relationship shared with her senior had somehow grown beyond the surface disparities of social station and character.

A closer study of Lirenda’s demeanor revealed where rice powder and eye paint could not quite mask her evident strain. The flesh over its beautiful template of bone seemed fine drawn, as though for weeks her sleep had been restless and her thoughts a turmoil of distress.

In a sure burst of insight, Elaira said, ‘What has Arithon s’Ffalenn ever done to antagonize you?’

Lirenda recoiled. Her amber pale eyes flicked up in a match flare of rage. ‘How dare you!’

Chilled as she was, and sick with self-loathing, Elaira damped a grin of ripe devilment. ‘Touché. He’s difficult. I know far better than any. Was his influence why Morriel set you aside in disgrace?’

‘That’s none of your business!’ Lirenda’s frustration rankled, that she no longer wielded the ranking prerogative to quash prying questions and insolence. ‘My right to the privileges of prime succession shall not stay in question for long. Have a care. Cross me again, and your lot could be miserable.’

‘I’m miserable now,’ Elaira pointed out. ‘You’ll need to threaten with more imagination if you’re expecting me to act cowed.’

Lirenda stroked manicured fingers along the inverted base of the quartz point. ‘You will provide the focal point for this shapechange.’ Her catty, three-cornered smile showed teeth. ‘As you once did for Morriel’s scrying at Narms, you will shape me a reflected image of Prince Arithon’s features. Your memory will provide the template to guide Fionn Areth’s transformation until the last seal is complete.’

‘Touché,’ Elaira repeated with self-derogatory bitterness. ‘Beware whom you cross. The s’Ffalenn royal line has never taken kindly to meddling interference from anyone.’

‘I know.’ Lirenda turned away and began to link the first sigil. ‘If you’re worried for the child, the strength of our order will eventually come to shelter him. His skill at arms can be turned to training the boy orphans for posts in the garrisons and the trade guilds’ guard.’

‘A fine, useless talent,’ Elaira bit back, her pain and her rage too large to mask behind shallow insults or platitudes. ‘If Arithon’s to become the Matriarch’s captive, and Lysaer’s Alliance clears the woods of the clanblood who harry the trade routes, pray, who will be in the market to pay hired swords? No one will have enemies to burn out and kill.’

‘That’s enough!’ Lirenda’s stiffened posture gave warning. ‘We have a task to finish.’

Elaira tossed her a gesture to begin, one that on street terms doubled as obscenity. ‘You first. The opening sigil is yours, thank blazes. I’ll enjoy the moment to the fullest when the fire of s’Ffalenn vengeance grabs you by the throat and strikes at every one of your weaknesses.’ She knelt in chill grasses, arms wrapped to her chest, then closed her eyes to recall the male face that had long since become a branded part of her being. Before she took the irrevocable last step, she let fly the full force of her anguish. ‘Just so you understand, when we’re done, I’m going to buy gin from the first herder I see and drink myself blind, heaving drunk.’

A knifing blast of north wind shrieked over the byre and rattled the trees in the orchard. Elaira engaged the focusing properties of the small quartz crystal at her neck. Then, with the cold roaring through her like a cataract, she framed Arithon’s likeness with all the detail she remembered: the fall of sable hair and the sharp angles of cheekbone and jaw. The lips which smiled too seldom, and the eyes, their green depths masked by ironies and a guarded defense too wary for most minds to fathom. Through a hazing shimmer of tears, she set perfect recall of the Shadow Master’s features into the ice veils of the crystal suspended over Fionn Areth’s face.

She tried to hear nothing else but the wind, to let the thrash of whipped branches batter all thought from her mind. But her fickle ears gave her clarity instead: every rolling, studded consonant and silver-toned vowel of the shapechanger’s incantation. She clamped her fists against her clenched jaw, torn screaming inside by the insidious progression of the spell. Lirenda remained unmoved throughout, her diction as carved frost while the crystal came alive at her bidding. Hard bars of light beamed from the quartz point. These fell and diffused a spectral mask over the unformed features of the child. The dichotomy burned: through the light-cast image of Arithon’s face, a sleeping boy’s innocence, forced passive under ties of cold sorcery. In despair born of horror, Elaira stood witness as the webwork of whorled power matched spell rune to set seal, then sank like ribboned wire under blameless skin and bone, there to seed the slow elements of change.

Small differences which would not conform over time struck her now with wounding impact. As if in this one, trapped moment of existence, she must relive each nuance of Arithon’s form and measure the particulars anew: these grubby boy’s hands would mature to match the broad, sturdy frame of the herder stock of his birth; fingers that would never spin the filament of bardic melody from the wire of a lyranthe’s string. The unmarked right forearm and small, callused palm, to stay unmarred by the welt from the light bolt which had seeded the geas of Desh-thiere’s curse. The wrists and the ankles that would remain unscarred, never torn by the welded shackles and chain imposed by the blood feud with s’Ilessid begun on the worlds beyond West Gate. Elaira could but ache for the discrepancies that enemies would miss in the engrossing, blind fervor of hatred.

Through revulsion that mounted into lacerating pain, she knew that Arithon’s likeness could never make even a second-rate substitute for the character that was the living man.

Long before the finish, when the flare of blue light sealed the ending cipher, her eyes spilled shamed tears. Undone at long last by her pity for the boy and her remorse for the suffering her decision must come to cast upon the grown man, Elaira knelt with blinded eyes. The hot bloom of power extinguished in the heart of the crystal; the small star of light vanished from the center of Fionn Areth’s forehead. Elaira knew the critical moment was past. The shapechange to replicate Arithon’s appearance had been accomplished beyond any chance of reprieve. Years might elapse before this night’s work reached completion, but the final outcome was set.

Grief for that irrevocability lanced her. Sickened for the part her vows had forced her to play, Elaira missed the odd look of riveted fascination Lirenda fixed on the template image of the Shadow Master still imprinted within the focal matrix of the dimmed quartz.

The portrait was one drawn by love, in each accurate detail a true map of Arithon’s character. Through the interval while Elaira recovered herself, Lirenda beheld the features of the man as few others living had seen him. Hooked to inadvertent, rapt fascination, she strove to brand the s’Ffalenn likeness in mind for a later, more leisurely study.

Night by then had waned to the charcoal hour before dawn. The moon rode the horizon like yellowed ivory, with all but the brightest stars faded. The grasses lay rimed and bearded with new frost, and the wind dropped, leaving the air gripped fast in a stilled and penetrating cold.

Elaira awakened to the fact she was shivering. ‘We should be gone before the herd dogs awaken.’

Lirenda stirred, gathered up the chill quartz, and folded the supporting rods. ‘We can’t abandon the boy to find his way home.’

Galled that anyone should think her so callous, Elaira stood up. ‘I’ll carry him. A veiling of stayspells over the house would be a kindness as I take him inside. The wife’s goodman sleeps lightly, and there’s a crippled old sheep dog who sleeps on the rug by the hearth.’

‘No doubt the stair squeaks as well?’ Lirenda said, scornful.

‘They’ll have a ladder,’ Elaira corrected. ‘These are simple folk, who trust a dog before locks and keys to safeguard their threshold.’ She shook out damp leathers and knelt to gather up the sleeping child. ‘The cottage that has stairs isn’t found on these moors. Babes sleep with their mothers until they’re old enough to climb.’

‘Well, don’t leave your jacket behind out of pity,’ Lirenda dismissed, an acerbic lift to her brows. ‘I’d prefer that nobody knows we were here.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Elaira straightened up, a set to her jaw that betrayed her cutting distress. ‘The last thing I want is to acknowledge our night’s work to anyone with a conscience.’

She turned toward the hay byre, the boy’s limp form cradled awkwardly in her arms. His face was his own. No trace showed yet of the profile he would bear at maturity. Through the course of those years, Elaira resolved, she would be far from Araethura. And she had misjudged, when she warned her senior that she would get puking drunk. The sickness inside her need not wait for spirits. Once Fionn Areth was tucked safely back in the loft with his sleeping siblings, she was going to snatch shelter in the nearest thicket and heave her guts inside out.

She reached the cottage doorway, churned-up with self-loathing that made her long for oblivion. As she freed a stealthy hand to raise the string latch, she wondered whether the boy would ever learn that his face was the gift of Koriani intervention, or if he would someday come to know the s’Ffalenn prince he was designed to decoy to captivity.

Autumn 5653

Daybreak

Still infirm, confined by her weakness to her wide bed in the Capewell sisterhouse, the ancient Prime Matriarch receives word from her lane scryer that the first step in the plan to take Prince Arithon captive is in place; Lirenda’s task in Araethura is accomplished, and Fionn Areth’s transformation a sealed future …

Clad in muddy leathers and a green reek of bog mire, the craggy Sorcerer, Asandir, rummages through Sethvir’s pantry at Althain Tower; over rinds of molded cheese, stale bread, and one forlorn sack of rice that hosts a new litter of field mice, he makes disposition to Luhaine, ‘Since I can’t survive on air and conundrums, that settles our dispute. You’ll stay. I’ll go to Caithwood and serve due redress against townsmen who believe trees can burn for the cause of misguided politics …’

Just returned from an errand in the Kingdom of Havish, Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother and envoy of the clanborn Duke of Alestron, makes landfall at Middlecross; informed there that Prince Lysaer plans a royal inspection of the Riverton shipyards, he smiles in sharkish pleasure, then chooses to play the advantage of timing and let his demand for an inquiry coincide …