Peril’s Gate. Janny Wurts

his bones sting like struck glass.

      ‘Do you know,’ said the Sorcerer, Luhaine, offended, ‘just how high the price of your rescue might come to be worth?’

      ‘Should I care?’ Shivering, Fionn Areth glared back. The apparition was a sorcerer. Nothing alive could mistake such a presence. The spirit regarding the herder in return was not patient, his stature restrained to a self-contained power that would stand down bared steel on a glance. Hackled by his own reckless fear, Fionn Areth lifted his chin. ‘If I was a Koriani pawn before this, what am I now, but a plaything held captive by the fell forces of darkness?’

      ‘You are much less than that,’ Luhaine pronounced in frigid correction. ‘Just how much less, I hope by Ath’s mercy your family never finds out. The Crown Prince of Rathain might well die for his choice to indulge your adolescent ingratitude. If he does, this world could lose sunlight again without any chance of reprieve.’

      That statement snapped Dakar’s complacency. ‘Not Rockfell!’ He shoved off the gelding that butted his chest, ice melt and snowflakes snagged in his beard, and his anxiety suddenly piercing. ‘Luhaine, don’t say the wardspells holding the Mistwraith have somehow been thrown into jeopardy.’

      ‘The very truth.’ Image though he was, Luhaine shared the gravity of the old, leaning marker stone crusted with lichens at his back. ‘When the lane tide crests barely minutes from now, the recoil set loose by Morriel’s upset will dissolve Rockfell’s outer defense rings. I must be well away before then. No one else could be spared to stand guard when the wards in the shaft go unstable.’

      ‘No one?’ Cracked to shrill disbelief, Dakar tugged his cloak off a thorn. ‘Where’s Asandir?’ Rocked by the scope of unsaid implication, he advanced on the Sorcerer who faced him. ‘Ath, your field strength is compromised. That’s why you need me?’

      ‘To travel to Rockfell with all speed, yes,’ Luhaine admitted. His focus upon Dakar stayed too acute to spare second thought for Fionn Areth. ‘You do understand.’

      Dakar shook his head, bludgeoned to blunt terror. ‘How I wish that I didn’t.’ He stamped his feet, fumbled the lead reins, and regarded the horses’ trusting stance as though their placidity could soften his appalled disbelief. No such escape could negate the harsh truths. The defenses containing the Mistwraith were wrought to a strength born of frightening complexity. Their locked rings of power crossed on both sides of the veil. Such duality by nature required the skilled work of two Sorcerers: one in a stable state of free spirit, and one who still walked incarnate.

      ‘Asandir’s beyond reach, attending the emergency containment of Eckracken’s haunt.’ Luhaine’s agitation shook the capped snow off the megalith as he delivered the shattering setback, that Sethvir’s active resource became all that bound five other deranged grimwards to stability. ‘To safeguard Desh-thiere’s prison, we are left with a last, very desperate expedient: to stand a spellbinder as placeholder for Kharadmon to act through.’ A stilled silhouette against the storm that roared through the tops of the fir trees, he measured Dakar’s pained suspension. ‘Given your help, the wards over Rockfell might be fully restored. The Fellowship asks for the partnered possession of your body, loaned for our use in free will.’

      ‘Why not choose Verrain?’ Dakar begged, tautly sober. He had witnessed the working when Asandir and Kharadmon had last sealed those dire defenses. Even the memory of what he had glimpsed sickened him to the bone. Those ranging vibrations were laid counter to spirit, counter to harmony, a dissonance coiled and barbed to revile every last linking facet of life. That cutting, mindless edge of bound chaos transcended the bounds of mortality; crossed the safe limits of solid existence to challenge the weave of creation.

      Luhaine’s stillness affirmed the stark fact the Guardian of Mirthlvain could not be spared from his posted vigil at Methisle. Why else would the Fellowship countenance the expedient of leaving Arithon s’Ffalenn unprotected?

      ‘No one’s watching the star wards, either,’ Luhaine said, a bald-faced admission that finally imparted the shattering scope of the crisis. He was no willing messenger, to lay this crux upon Dakar’s unprepared shoulders. Morriel’s plots had brought desperate straits, and a peril beyond speech to encompass. The Fellowship lacked enough hands to avert the appalling cascade of fresh damages. ‘Khadrim fly and kill in Tysan, as well.’

      ‘Oh, you have my cooperation,’ Dakar burst out, bitter. ‘That’s given. I’ll act before letting the Mistwraith escape. Who wouldn’t, knowing the price of its capture?’ The dread in him stemmed from the wider concern that his scant resources might prove inadequate.

      Luhaine gave such uncertainty short shrift. ‘Believe it, those of us who have tuned Rockfell’s wardings all suffer the selfsame doubts.’

      ‘That’s consolation?’ Dakar crowded into the warmth of the geldings, wishing their straightforward animal contact could lessen the chills that speared through him. Between the shrilling, furious gusts, and the shearing hiss of thick snowfall, he sensed the winding tension leading the advent of midnight. Lane forces flared and shimmered along the edge of peripheral vision. The Paravian marker stone cast a pallid corona that razed through the veil, and roused his awareness to mage-sight.

      With solstice tide imminent, the Fellowship Sorcerer’s need to depart pitched his instructions to urgency. ‘Go to Rockfell by land. Take the route through the passes. I will wait there, holding guard, and Kharadmon will join us on your arrival.’

      ‘What about Fionn Areth?’ Unvarnished disgust for the herder’s welfare the bone that stuck in the throat, Dakar added, ‘I gave Arithon my word I’d look after him.’

      Luhaine’s cast image reflected no change, and yet his icy regard encompassed the Araethurian still standing stiff witness to what would seem an incomprehensible conversation. Too rushed to scold through a long-winded lecture, the Sorcerer made disposition. ‘You are perfectly free to do as you please. Fare on with Dakar, and he’ll keep his promise to Rathain’s prince. Provided the problem at Rockfell can be solved, you can travel downriver to Ship’s Port next spring, and reach your safe harbor at Alestron. Or you can set off alone, Fionn Areth. Should you take your own path, mind well: you will be disowned. Your liege’s protection from that hour will become forfeit under my Fellowship’s auspices. My personal seal will ensure the Teir’s’Ffalenn never sees you this side of the Wheel. The sorry plight the Koriathain have set on you becomes yours alone to resolve. I’ll take the onus of breaking the word of your death to Prince Arithon when the time comes.’

      ‘That will tear out his heart!’ Dakar objected.

      But Luhaine had no mercy to spare for anything past bare necessity. ‘Athera can withstand his Grace of Rathain’s broken heart. She will never again bear the risk of his compromised safety. Remember that, herder. Prince Arithon’s life is a singular thread that can bind this world back to balance. Why else should Morriel design for his capture, or Desh-thiere wreak ill for his downfall?’

      ‘He’s a criminal,’ Fionn Areth insisted, but softly, as though the ultimatum thrown to his discretion had sown a seed of uncertainty.

      ‘He’s a prince under curse by a Mistwraith to kill, or be killed in turn, by his half brother.’ Luhaine set the stress on each syllable for emphasis. ‘All of his acts, then and now, must be counted a desperate act of survival.’

      ‘Half brother?’ Fionn Areth glowered at the Sorcerer, confused. ‘I never heard tell of any half brother.’

      ‘Lysaer s’Ilessid shared the same mother,’ Dakar explained, brutally short. He could not ignore the spiraling build of the lane forces prickling his nape. ‘You know nothing at all, goatherd. Only the lies the Alliance presents to make puppets out of the ignorant.’ To Luhaine, he added, ‘Go. Now! You must. The young man will choose. I’ll meet you at Rockfell as soon as I may by crossing the peaks of the Skyshiels.’

      ‘Fare swiftly and well.’ Luhaine’s image dispersed, leaving darkness and snow, and the bite of a wind sharpened with winter misery.

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