Grand Conspiracy. Janny Wurts

the staid stone and sand on the bay floor would unbind in an explosion of volatile force.

      Such was his strength, he asked none of these things.

      Gentle as a filament spun out of starlight, he aligned his intent: to see one patched Torwent fishing sloop to the far shore, his course a shot arrow of desire that blazed west-northwest and marked the wide cove where the trade road from Valenford crossed under the eaves of the forest.

      To that vectored appeal, he set mindful stays of limitation: that no life be harmed, and no bird become tossed or ruffled in flight from the recoil of contrary elements. That the tide’s rush through the estuary not falter, nor the anomaly his need would spin through the world’s wind unleash a stressed vortex that might seed a storm or drought later. He understood the flow of power, from force of element to breathing life, in all aspects of interlocked complexity. Rooted in wisdom, he shaped the offered gifts of the land with a feather touch of clean subtlety.

      Nor did he invoke any power but his own to spark his laid pattern of conjury. To an adept of his experience, the charge contained in just one grain of sand could lay waste to the entire planet; therefore, he would not disturb the spin of any one fragment of matter. A single deep breath, a precisely aimed thought, he engaged the quickened awareness of his spirit and plucked, like a harp string, the subliminal current of light and sound which gave substance its material polarity.

      Power answered through the greatest recognition of them all, the chime of affirmation that defined his own Name on the loom of unified existence.

      ‘An,’ whispered Asandir, the Paravian rune one that marked all beginnings since song first gave rise to Ath’s creation.

      A ray of touched force flicked the air like a moth’s wing and deflected a kink in the clasp of gravity that linked Athera in her partnered dance with the moon. At Asandir’s directive, the twist became a spiral that touched water and air as a tuned breath might test the highest note on a flute.

      Then change threaded through the coils of his conjury. The barest, soft shudder brushed the planks of the sloop as the bay arose in a swell of gleaming phosphorescence and nudged her. Changed breeze kissed her sails to a sullen flap of canvas, and the Torwent fisherman shot straight.

      ‘Ath’s deathless mercy!’ he gasped, shaken white as the helm went slack in his startled grasp.

      Eyes still closed, his face wholly serene, Asandir smiled. ‘Not so far from plain truth,’ he said gently.

      The wave at the sloop’s stern continued to build, rolling smooth and green, but not menacing. The small craft sheered ahead like a bead spilled down glass, her course west-northwest, though the tide roiled southward, its flow unimpeded by the loop newly wrought through its ebb. Then that first shifted breeze built into a gust that backwinded the headsail and clapped the main into banging frenzy.

      ‘Slacken the sheets!’ cried the captain to the terrified boy. ‘Move smart, don’t you see? This unnatural wind’s going to swing dead astern.’

      ‘Twenty points to starboard, in actual fact,’ said Asandir in mild correction. He opened his eyes, which shone silver-gray as a rain pool touched by the moon. ‘I thought you’d want steerage, since the standing wave we’re riding will bear us on at eight knots. You’ll get just enough breeze to keep headway.’

      ‘Aren’t like to toss supper, then.’ The fisherman rubbed his rope bracelets, his unsettled nerves transformed to trembling awe. ‘Who could’ve guessed? You’ve made us a passage so smooth a babe wouldn’t roll off the foredeck.’

      ‘We’ll make landfall by daybreak,’ the Sorcerer affirmed. His seamless act of grand conjury was dismissed as nothing outside of the ordinary. ‘Bucking the tide to windward, my spare clothes would get soaked. No one could have snatched an hour of sleep, besides.’ He folded lean arms, chin tipped to his chest, evidently prepared to take his own counsel in earnest.

      The boy hauling lines stood stunned and mute; the seasoned clan scout gripped the rail in queer exultation. His forestborn sensibilities could scarcely encompass the rolling mound of water that propelled the sloop steadily toward Taerlin.

      An hour slipped by. The moon rose in the east like yellowed parchment. Asandir dozed, while tide and wind danced, flawless, to the unseen tapestry of his will. The fisherman manned a helm that answered his touch like poured silk, and for him, the resentment cut sharply as grit ground into a wound.

      ‘How can you sit like a beggar and accept this?’ he charged the clan elder, crouched at the thwart with his hands lightly clasped to his weapon hilts.

      The younger scout spun from his contemplation of spelled water with a fierce, quelling motion for silence. ‘Mind your talk, man! Dreaming or not, yon Sorcerer hears what concerns him.’

      ‘So he does. Should that matter?’ The fisherman jabbed argumentative fingers toward Asandir’s motionless form. ‘If wind and tide can be turned on mere whim, why not act in kind to save children?’ Longtime friend of the clans, he had given passage to the pitiful bands of refugee families who fled Tysan to take sanctuary in Havish. ‘Your people deserve better help in misfortune.’

      ‘Oh, be careful,’ charged the elder, tense now as the scout, and braced with the same trepidation. He, too, had known the grief of the young mothers, and the misery of small babes displaced and chilled and afraid.

      The toll of ravaged lives brought by the Alliance campaign to drive the clan presence from Caithwood showed no sign of abating. Dogged by an outrage too sharp to contain, the fisherman would not stay silent. ‘Why not choose to spare human lives instead of a stand of inanimate trees?’

      Asandir turned his head, his cragged features not angered; yet the opened, gray eyes were tranquil no longer. ‘Our Fellowship has no license to use power to influence mortal destinies.’

      ‘That’s a damned heartless platitude!’ the fisherman shot back. ‘The ships stolen from Riverton will scarcely be enough to stem the inevitable slaughter.’

      Wholly mild, Asandir saw past temper to the seed of a deeper, more subtle anguish. ‘I see you’ve met his Grace of Rathain?’

      The fisherman responded as though goaded. ‘Our village sheltered him when he crossed out of Tysan. He came soaked to the skin, exhausted from beating a course against head winds. He’d been ill. A blind fool could see he was in no shape to make passage, and the fat prophet with him was too seasick to offer him any relief at the helm.’

      Asandir drew a slow breath, the rise of his chest the sole movement of his frame as he marshaled his patience to speak. ‘Arithon of Rathain is safely offshore where the Mistwraith’s curse cannot touch him.’

      ‘Rumor claims you opened a grimward in his behalf.’ The fisherman twisted the braided, rope talismans that circled his sun-browned wrists. ‘I say, if that’s true, you could have done more, and more still for those families hounded by Prince Lysaer’s campaign of eradication. Folk born with mage talent suffer as well. Not just forest clansmen in Tysan will be dying while you gad about sparing trees.’

      The scout gasped. ‘Merciful Ath, we’re not ungrateful! Kingmaker, forgive. Clanblood has asked for no intercession.’

      Denial or warning, the words came too late. The Fellowship Sorcerer gripped the thwart and sat up, a stark, lean shadow against the silver-webbed foam sheered up by the sloop’s sped passage. He linked his large-knuckled hands at his knees. His unshaken calm in itself framed a dangerous presence, while the waters off the stern rose green at his bidding, and the winds curved the sails, whisper light and responsive to the tuned might of his will.

      ‘Our use of grand conjury is not subject to whim,’ he stated. ‘Crowned heirs who bear royal ancestry act as our agents, under the strict terms of the compact our Fellowship swore with the Paravians.’ That intercession spanned more than five thousand years, when sanctuary had been granted to humanity at the dawn of the Third Age. As if that agreement was not all but forgotten, or its tenets misconstrued for the gain of town politics, Asandir