Janny Wurts - Pass Of Orlon

Wurts, Janny - Pass Of Orlon.TXT

VII. PASS OF ORLAN

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The morning following Arithon's escapade at the Four Ravens, Asandir

recalled the horses from the smithy where they had been reshod, then

rousted a hung-over Dakar from the brothel that had sheltered him

through the night. Whether the Mad Prophet had been sober enough to

enjoy the doxie whose bed had warmed him appeared dubious; he sat the

paint's saddle with a pronounced list. Yet the malaise that unstrung his

balance seemed not to dampen his complaints.

'When I pass beneath the Wheel, Dharkaron Avenger's going to seem

like an angel of mercy.' He crooked his reins in one elbow, cradled his head

and managed with well-practiced grumpiness to direct his injury toward

Asandir. 'You said we'd be in Erdane for two more days.'

The sorcerer replied too softly to overhear; but the effect upon Dakar

was profound.

His cheeks went white as new snow. Suddenly straight in his saddle, he

swung the paint's head and promptly spurred down the lane toward the

gates. No further protest escaped him, even when the party clattered out of

Erdane and turned eastward at a pace guaranteed to inflame his hangover.

Lysaer for once forbore from teasing. Aware that his half-brother had

stolen out last night by himself, and disappointed not to have been asked

along, he gained no chance for tactful inquiry; Arithon's night-time outing

remained unexplained. No mention was made of the tunic which a

peculiarly wakeful Enithen Tuer had snatched off to wash before dawn.

Asandir's mood seemed preoccupied and brisk and had been so since

daybreak. Had Dakar felt inclined to be talkative he might have offered a

fellow miscreant fair warning: with a Fellowship sorcerer, silence on any

topic boded trouble.

Yet Arithon was disinclined to worry in any case. With the mystery

behind his mind-block resolved, the cutting edge eased from his reserve.

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Left less wary than watchful now that he understood the stakes involved a

kingship, he trusted time and circumstance would show him an opening to

overset Asandir's prerogatives. Until then, he rode at his half-brother's side

and not even his restive mare diverted him from rapid-fire conversation.

Lysaer welcomed the entertainment. Since too much quiet let him brood

over the undermining losses of his banishment, he fielded Arithon's quips

in a spirited enthusiasm that outlasted interruptions by fast-riding

couriers and packed farm-drays, and once, a dusty band of cattle whose

herd-boys yipped and goaded their charges to market.

Then, as with West End, the farmlands thinned and ended. One hard

day's travel beyond Erdane the way became wild and untenanted. The

scrublands of Karmak gave rise to forested downs laced with streamlets.

The mist seemed alive with the rush of running water and the air keen and

brittle with coming snow. More than once, the party started deer from the

thickets. If the bucks were royally antlered, their incoming winter coats

were fiat and lacking gloss; even after summer's forage, the does were sadly

thin.

The mist's blighted legacy afflicted more than creatures in the wild.

After nightfall, perhaps due to the chill, Asandir relented and engaged a

room at a run-down wayside tavern that in better times had been a hospice

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tended by Ath's initiates.

'What became of them.~' Lysaer asked.

'What happens to any order of belief when its connection to the

mysteries becomes sullied?' Asandir chose not to entrust his tall stallion

to the ill-kempt groom, but attended to his saddle girths himself. 'Desh-

thiere's darkness disrupted more than sunlight on this world. The link that

preserved was lost along with the Riathan Paravians.'

The pent-back sorrow in his statement did not invite further inquiry;

and if the carved gates at the innyard were still intact, the beautiful,

patterned sigils of ward had lost any power to guard. The tavern's musty

attic proved to be riddied with iyats, which perhaps explained the dearth of

clientele.

By the time the sorcerer banished the pests the hour had grown late;

the commonroom with its great blackened beams stood lamentably

empty. While here the accents of outland strangers did not provoke

hostilities, still the stooped old innkeeper took care not to turn his back.

He served his odd guests in silence, while his wife stayed hidden in the

kitchen.

The fare was bland and too greasy; Lysaer left his plate barely

touched. Arithon had seen worse on a ship's deck. After sighs and a

martyred show of eye-rolling, Dakar righteously forwent ale for mulled

cider and a bowl of the inn's insipid stew. The bread had no weevils that

he could see, so he ate it, and Lysaer's portion, too. Then he stalked

from his emptied bowls to a bed that he swore would have lice and

mildew in the blankets.

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 This failed to secure him permission to retire in the hayloft. Perhaps as a

precaution, Asandir sat all night in the hallway, his back against the door

panel.

'Unforgiving as a reformed priest,' Dakar commiserated to Arithon; yet

whether the sorcerer stood vigil to curb the excesses of his apprentice or to

curtail further outings by the Master of Shadow, or whether he simply

wished space for clear thought, the Mad Prophet was too wise to ask. He

flopped crosswise on a mattress of dusty ticking and his chain reaction of

sneezes changed into snores that would have done credit to a hibernating

bear.

Busy scooping ice from the enamelled ewer of wash-water, and striving

to rise above low spirits, Lysaer regarded the sleeping prophet with a mix of

laughter and distaste. 'If he weren't apprenticed to a sorcerer he would have

made a splendid royal fool.'

'What a curse to lay on a king,' Arithon observed from the comer where,

stripped down to his hose, he spread out his blankets on bare floor. A

cockroach scurried up from a crack near his foot; he reacted fast enough to

crush it, changed his mind and let it race to safety under the baseboard.

'Not mentioning that every princess within reach would have her bottom

pinched to bruises.'

Lysaer splashed frigid water on his face, gasped and groped for his shirt,

that being the nearest cloth at hand; the innkeeper was too stingy to

provide towels. The prince charred his half-brother, 'I'd say that upbringing

by mages left you cynical.'

By now half-muffled under bedclothes, Arithon said in startled serious-

ness, 'Of course not.'

Lysaer rested his chin on his fists and his damply crumpled shirt.

Statesman enough to guess that the meat of the matter sprang from

Arithon's ilbstarred heirship of Karthan, and not eased that the thrust of

s'Ffalenn wiles now bent toward contention with Asandir, he gently

shifted the subject. 'Well, the loss of your roots doesn't bother you much.'

One corner of Arithon's mouth twitched. After a moment, the expres-

sion resolved to a smile. 'If it takes sharing confidences to prove that you're

wrong, there was one young maid. I was never betrothed, as you were.

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Sithaer, I barely so much as kissed her. I think she was as frightened of my

shadows as I was of telling her my feelings.'

'Perhaps you'll find your way back to her.' The wind whined mournfully

through the cracks in the shutters and a draft stole through the small room;

touched by the chill, Lysaer shrugged. 'At least, we could ask Asandir to

return us to Dascen Elur once we've defeated the Mistwraith.'

'No.' Arithon rolled over, his face turned unreadably to the wall.

'Depend on the fact that he won't.'

'You found out something in Erdane, didn't you,' Lysaer said. But his

accusation dangled unanswered. Rebuffed and alone with his thoughts,

and hating the fate that left him closeted at the whim of a sorcerer in the

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fusty lodgings of a second rate roadside tavern, he shook out his damp shirt

and blew out the candle for the night.

Two days later the riders in Asandir's party reached Standing Gate, a rock

formation that spanned the road in a lopsided natural arch. Centaurs in past

ages had carved the flanking columns into likenesses of the twins who

founded their royal dynasty. Since before the memory of man the granite had

resisted erosion: the Kings Halmein and Adon reared yet over the highway,

their massive, majestic forelegs upraised in the mist and their beards and

maned backs stained the verdigris of old bronze with blooms of lichen.

Mortal riders could not pass beneath their shadow without experiencing a

chill of profound awe. Here the footfalls of the horses seemed to resound

with the echoes of another age, when the earth was fresh with splendour and

Pararians nurtured the mysteries. Standing Gate marked the upward ascent

to the high valley pass of Orlan, sole access through the Thaldein mountains

to Atainia and lands to the east.

But even under the frosts of coming winter, in the years since the fall of the

high kings travellers who fared through Standing Gate never passed unob-

served.

Asandir's party proved no exception, as Arithon discovered in a pause to

water his mare on the bank of a fast-flowing creek. Muffled against the stiff

breeze, he sat his saddle with both stirrups dropped and his reins slipped

loosely through his fingers. Suddenly the dun flung her head up. Her rider did

not see what had startled her; the woolien hood of his cloak masked his

peripheral vision as she snapped sideways and wheeled. Stalled from bolting

by an expert play on the reins, the mare crab-stepped, stopped and blew

noisily. Her sable-edged ears pricked toward a stand of scrub pine that

rattled and tossed in the gusts.

Nothing moved that did not appear to belong there.

Yet when Arithon urged the mare on she stamped and rigidly resisted.

Warned by her keener senses, he recovered his stirrups and stroked her neck

in pretence of coaxing her away; at the same time he centred his mind and

cast an enchanter's awareness over the thicket.

A man crouched there, motionless, clad in jerkin and leggings of sewn

wolfskin. Weather had roughened his face beyond his years and his ruddy

hair had tangled from the wind. The consciousness Arithon touched held a

predator's leashed aggression paired with tempered steel: a matched set of

long knives and a javelin with a braided leather grip.

Although to face away from the thicket as if no armed man watched his

back was a most unwelcome exercise, Arithon pressed his mare forward in

earnest. The instant the rocky footing allowed a faster pace, he trotted his

horse and caught up with the others.

Dakar regarded him sl antwise as the dun overtook his paint. 'How was the

assignation? Or did you dawdle to swim?'

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 'Neither.' Arithon returned a grin of purest malice. 'Remind me to

recommend you as chaperone for some jealous pervert's catamite.'

He ignored the Mad Prophet's thunderous scowl and disturbed Asandir's

preoccupied silence. 'We're being watched.'

The sorcerer's gaze stayed trained ahead, as if he saw beyond the misty

road which wound upward between steepening rocky outcrops. 'That's not

surprising.'

Wise to the subtleties of mages, Arithon withheld unwelcome ques-

tions; presently the sorcerer's steely eyes turned from whatever inward

landscape he had been contemplating. 'This is the townsmen's most

dreaded stretch of highway. The clans that ruled Camris before the

rebellion make their stand here. If we were a caravan bearing metals or

clothgoods we would require an armed escort. Not being town-born, our

party has little to fear.'

'The Camris clans were subject to the high king of Tysan?' Arithon

asked.

Asandir returned an absent glance. 'The old earls of Erdane swore fealty.

Their descendants will not have forgotten.'

Unfooled by the sorcerer's apparent inattention, Arithon reined in his

mare. As she curvetted and recovered stride by the shoulder of Lysaer's

chestnut, the green eyes of her rider showed a glint of veiled speculation.

Covered by the clang of hooves on cleared rock, he said, 'We're going to see

action in the pass.'

Lysaer rubbed a nose nipped scarlet by the chill, his expression turned

gravely merry. 'Then someone better tell Dakar to tighten his saddle girth,

or the first quick move his paint makes will tumble him over on the rocks.'

'I heard that,' interjected the Mad Prophet. He flapped his elbows, his

reins and his heels, and contrived to overtake the half-brothers without

mishap. To Lysaer he said, 'Let's be sporting and wager. I say my saddle

stays put with no help from buckles, and you'll kiss the dirt before I do.'

Brown eyes slid craftily to the Shadow Master. 'And one thing further -

there won't be any trouble in the pass.'

'Don't answer,' said Arithon to his half-brother. 'Not unless you fancy

pulling cockle burrs from your saddle fleeces.'

'That's unfair,' Dakar retorted, injured. 'I only cheat when the odds are

hard against me.'

'My point precisely.' Arithon ducked the swing the Mad Prophet pitched

in his direction, then sidled his mount safely clear as the paint's saddle slid

around her barrel and disgorged her fat rider in an ignominious heap on the

trail.

By the time the commotion settled and Dakar had righted the paint's

maladjusted tack, fiurries eddied around the rocks. The snowfall thickened

rapidly. Within minutes all but the nearest landmarks became buried in

whirlwinds of white. The storm that had threatened through the past day

and a half closed over the mountains, whipped in by a dismal north wind.

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 The riders continued over ever-steepening terrain. Bothered by

Arithon's mention of trouble, Lysaer urged his horse past a stand of

boulders to find opening to speak with Asandir.

'When we reach the next town, might I sell my jewels to buy a sword?'

The sorcerer returned a look like blank glass, his cragged brow sprinkled

with settled snow. 'We'll cross no more towns before arrival at Althain

Tower.'

More forthright than his half-brother, Lysaer persevered. 'Perhaps we

could find a tavern keeper with a spare blade available for purchase then.'

Asandir's vagueness crystallized to piercing irritation. 'When you have

need of a weapon, you shall be given one.'

The sorcerer urged his mount on with speed. Concerned lest the road

became mired too deeply for travel, he allowed no stop until dusk, and then

only for the barest necessities. The riders fed their horses and swallowed a

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hasty meal. Sent out to assess conditions, Lysaer returned to report that

even should the blizzard slacken, the gusts had increased; drifting might

render the mountains impassable by daybreak.

'We'll be through the pass before then,' Asandir stated flatly. Despite

outspoken resentment from Dakar, the sorcerer quenched the fire and

ordered the horses resaddled.

The riders pressed eastward through a long and miserable night. All but

blind in the blizzard, they made tortuous headway through the dark. The

road narrowed to a trail hedged by knife*edged promontories and sheer

drops, each dip and ditch and gully smoothed innocently over by drifts.

Horses floundered through heavy footing or clattered perilously across

ice-sheened rock. The winds buffeted all the while with heavy, relentless

ferocity. Manes and cloaks became mantied in ice. The driving sting of

snow crystals needled any exposed patch of flesh and hands and feet ached

from the penetrating cold.

The horses forded the icy current of the Valendale and emerged, dusted

with hoarfrost from spume thrown off by the waterfalls. In times before the

Mistwraith, the cascades could be seen falling like ribbons of liquid

starlight as the feed springs of hundreds of freshets tumbled over clefts into

the gorge.

Daybreak saw the riders deep into the pass of Orlan. By then the snowfall

had eased, but Desh-thiere's mists sheathed the saw-toothed ridges and the

wind still cut like a sword. The riders traversed the high notches

submerged in whipping snow-devils as gusts stripped the black rock of

the Thaldeins and harried across a desertscape of drifts.

At times visibility closed until only the mage-trained could maintain

sure sense of direction. Asandir and Arithon broke trail by turns, relieved

on occasion by Dakar; yet despite the cold and the rough, floundering gait

of his horse through the snow, the Mad Prophet unreliably tended to fall

asleep in his saddle. Since a rider who blundered over a precipice was

unlikely to be found before the thaws, and Asandir stayed wrapped in his

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silences, the chance to take fate by the horns became too tempting for

Arithon to resist.

He chose his moment to volunteer, then pressed his dun to the fore.

Throughout the next hour he drew gradually ahead, until a lead of fifty paces

separated him from the others.

Here, at the storm-choked heart of the pass, the road dropped sheer on the

north side, cliffs of trackless granite fallen away into a gulf of impenetrable

mist; south, escarpments towered upward to summits buried in storm. The

drifts lay chest-deep and packed into layers by the gusts. Curtained in wind-

whirled snow, Arithon spoke gently to his mare as she shouldered tiredly

ahead. His deadened hands gave rein as she stumbled; he balanced her,

coaxed her forward with the promise of shelter and bran as she clawed

toward a scoured expanse of rock. Stung by a gust that watered his eyes,

Arithon ducked his face behind his hood just as the mare struck out off

packed footing. Her legs skated wildly. Pitched against her neck as she

scrambled, Arithon kicked free of the stirrups and dismounted. He flung his

cloak over her steaming back and freed his dagger. When the mare steadied

he lifted a foreleg and chipped out the ice ball that had compacted in the

hollow of her hoof. The relentless snows had long since scoured away the

preventative smear of grease applied on the banks of the ford.

When a glance backward showed the others halted to tend their own

mounts similarly, Arithon straightened. Hopeful the barbarians were still

watching, he hooked the dun's reins and led her off without troubling to dust

the accumulated snow from his shoulders. His jerkin had soaked through in

any case, with his cloak left draped across the flanks of his mount. The mare

was dangerously weary and chilled, and if her reserves became spent, the

pass offered no shelter.

Arithon crossed the cleared patch, battered by blasts of driven ice. Beyond,

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where the gale's direct force was cut by an overhanging rock spur, the drifts

lay piled and deep. The mare sank to her brisket and floundered to an

uncertain halt.

While the weather continued to howl outside this one pocket of stillness,

a voice called challenge from above.

'Don't move.' The accents were crisp, commanding, and by town stand-

ards, purely barbarian. 'Make one sound and you'll gain a dead horse.'

The dun snorted hot-headed alarm. Grasping for advantage in mired

footing, Arithon dug his knuckles in her ribs. As she shied face-about toward

the cliff, he snatched the cloak from her flank, cracked the cloth to fan her

alarm, then let the force of her spin fling him sideways. The mare was a fast-

moving target when the barbarian made good his threat. An arrow shot from

a niche overhead nicked a gash across her shoulder, then buried with a hiss in

rucked snow.

The sound and the sting undid the dun. She bolted in panic, her gallop

striking sparks from exposed stone as herd instinct impelled her to

backtrack. She hit the last expanse of drifts in a white explosion of

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snow-clods, then disappeared completely as a gust roared like smoke across

the trail.

Sheltered under cover of the eddies, Arithon dropped his cloak, drew

Alithiel and flattened his back against the underhang. The wind lulled.

Tumbling snow winnowed and settled to unveil chaos as the mare charged

through the oncoming riders. Her loose reins looped the nose of the chestnut

and spun him plunging in a spraddle-legged stagger. Lysaer kept his seat

through skilled horsemanship, but could not avoid collision with Asandir's

black. Both mounts floundered sideways. Nose to tail just behind, the paint

and the pack pony rocketed back on their hocks. Pans clanged and a poorly-

tied tent flapped loose. The pony ripped off a buck that scared the paint, and

caught sound asleep in the scramble, Dakar toppled head-first into a

snowdrift. He flopped back upright shouting epithets referring to bitch-bred

donkeys; while bearing their food*stores and necessities, the pack-pony

joined the paint and the dun in headlong stampede down the trail.

Arithon seized the moment while the others were delayed and took swift

stock of his surroundings. In a cranny above his sheltered hollow he caught

his first glimpse of his attacker: a gloved hand, a sleeve trimmed in wolf-fur

and the dangerously levelled tip of a deer-arrow, the broad, four-bladed sort

designed to rip and kill by internal bleeding. Arithon repressed a shiver

through a moment of furious reassessment. Chance had favoured him: his

horse had escaped without worse damage than a scratch. But if his spurious

ploy was not to bring disaster, he would have to do something about Lysaer.

Like the spirited dun, the prince had too much character to meet any threat

with complacency.

The drawn broadhead abruptly changed angle; Arithon jammed himself

tight to the rock as the archer's torso momentarily reared against the sky.

The man wore leather and undyed wolf pelts. Hair spiked with frost

fringed the rim of his brindled cap and an impressive breadth of shoulders

matched the recurve bow held poised at the rim of the abutment. Motion-

less, afraid to exhale lest the plume of his breath disclose his position,

Arithon grinned outright as his adversary took painstaking aim down the

defile.

'Move away from the rocks!' the archer called. 'I have you covered.' The

moan of a rising gust drove him to urgency. 'Move out! Now!'

The wind peaked. Snow sheeted in a blanketing shower and the barbarian

fired blind. As the shaft slashed through his discarded cloak, Arithon scaled

the rockface, sobered by discovery that clansmen balked at killing not at all.

He kicked through a cleft and sought the lair of the bowman before his

reckless ploy had time to backfire.

The gust passed and the air cleared. As the archer leaned out to account for

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his hit, the Master stalked, his footfalls silenced by snow.

The archer discovered his error, cursed and whirled to cover his back. He

caught his erstwhile quarry in the act of a counter-ambush. Unfazed by

surprise and fast for his bulk, he nocked another arrow. Arithon's thrown

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dagger sliced his bowstring in mid-draw. The bow cracked straight in

backlash. Snapped around by a severed end of cordage, the arrow raked the

clansman's wrist.

'Fiends!' the scout cursed. He disentangled his arm from his disabled

recurve, not quite soon enough. Arithon closed his final stride and poised

Alithiel for a fatal thrust through the throat.

Brown eyes met green through a tigerish instant of assessment. Though

larger by a head and doubly muscled, the barbarian chose not to risk a grab

for his dagger; the blade at his neck was too nervelessly steady.

'Try not to be foolish,' Arithon said. He looked up at his bulkier

adversary with an expression implacably shuttered. 'By the love of the

mother who bore you, I urge you to think. Ask why I would do a thing, then

forfeit all I had gained.' Slowly, deliberately, he turned his blade and

dropped it point downward between the cross-laced boots of his captive.

Steel sliced through snow and stood quivering, the dark metal with its

striking silver tracery the dangerous invitation to a riddle. The clansman

bridled fury with an effort. A moment passed, filled by the howl of wind

and the wet swirl of snow, and the slow drip of blood from the fingers of a

weapon-calloused hand. The smoke-dark steel in the drift stayed un-

touched amid gathering spatters of scarlet. Then, as if nothing untoward

had just happened, the barbarian's lips twisted into a vexed and humour-

less smile. 'Move and you die,' he told Arithon. 'Behind you stand six of my

companions, every one of them armed.'

Arithon felt a prick at his lower spine. At bay on the point of a javelin, his

complacency remained unshaken. 'I'm required to surrender twice?'

His unforced clarity of speech caused a stir through the band that had

trapped him.

The bowman alone stayed unmoved. 'Take the upstart,' he snapped.

'Grithen, you're wrong,' somebody protested~ the voice sounded female.

'This catch is certainly no townsman.'

'You say?' The red-headed ringleader swore. 'Do you see clan identifica-

tion anywhere on this bastard? Accents can be faked. If this man were

clan-born but in league with the mayors, he'd know better than to leave

town walls.'

Arithon looked at Grithen, calm through an uncomfortable blast of

wind. 'And if I am neither?' His indecipherable expression stayed with

him. 'What then?'

'Well, whoever values your foolhardy hide will pay us a bountiful

ransom.' Grithen signalled left-handedly and this time, his henchmen

responded.

Anthon found himself pitched forward into the snow. Hands searched

his person for weapons, found none and pinioned with a thoroughness that

hurt. Arithon twisted his head sideways. 'Furies of Sithaer!' he exclaimed

in derisive and blistering consternation. 'Had t wanted a fight, don't you

think I'd have knifed something more than a bowstring?'

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 'Then why trouble with decoy and ambush in the first place?' Wolfishly

contentious, Grithen exacted payment for the shame of his earlier

misjudgement. 'Bind him.'

Jerked to his feet, Arithon watched with a sailor's appreciation as the

scouts cut their rawhide laces and expertly tied up his wrists. Then he

averted his gaze, spat blood from a cut lip and endured an ignominious

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interval while more cords were looped tight around his ankles. 'The heart

of the dilemma,' he conceded to Grithen in a final, acid afterthought. 'Did I

act out of purpose or folly? You'd better figure out which, and quickly.'

Down the trail, Asandir's party had successfully recovered their strays;

they were starting back up the pass with obvious urgency and concern, and

though no one appeared to watch them, their progress was covertly

marked.

'Suppose I had a companion too prideful to submit to a threat.' Arithon

looked keenly at his captor, who was frowning and flicking blood from his

leathers. 'Say my friend had no fear of danger and he forced you to harm

him to make your capture. That might be a pity. His skin is pricelessly

valuable.'

Grithen whistled and shot a triumphant glance at his henchmen, one of

whom was indeed a scarred and grim-faced woman. Then his leonine beard

parted in a grin of forthright appreciation. 'Which one is he? I assure you,

we'll handle him as delicately as a flower.'

Arithon raised his brows. 'Flower he isn't, but don't worry. If he doesn't

co-operate and surrender, my life will surely be forfeit.'

Grithen caught up the hilt of Arithon's relinquished blade and tested the

balance, his smile turned suddenly corrosive. 'You're a boy-lover,' he

concluded in disgust. 'That's why you gave yourself up. To protect your

beloved.'

'By Dharkaron,' Arithon murmured, 'how you'll wish that was true.' He

showed no rancour at the insult; and at long last his barbarian captor saw

past his hostage's wooden expression. The wretch he ordered manhandled

and tied and dragged toward the edge of the outcrop was desperately

struggling not to laugh.

'Mad,' Grithen concluded under his breath. He traced the sword's edge

with a fingertip and flinched as the steel nicked flesh. Uneasy, but too

rabidly committed for retreat, he whistled the call of the mountain hawk

and alerted the band still in hiding to initiate the next stage of his ambush.

The dun mare shied back, snorting over the jingle of bit rings and gear as

the riders approached the promontory where their companion had lately

come to grief.

'Whoa,' Lysaer soothed gently. Astride his disgruntled chestnut and

leading his half-brother's mount by the bridle, he slacked rein as the mare

jibbed backward. 'Whoa now.' The patience in his voice overlaid a worry

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that burned his thoughts to white rage. Obstinate the Master of Shadow

might be, and most times maddeningly reticent; yet as Lysaer combed

through wind-whipped snow for a man perhaps fallen and injured, he did

not dwell on past crimes or piracy. However cross-grained, no matter how

secretive or odd a childhood among mages had made him, Anthon's

motives before exile had likely not been founded in malice.

He was kin, and the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled

that Lysaer had been born a prince.

The mare shied again, hauling the chestnut a half-pace sidewards. Fixed

and diligent in his search, Lysaer kept his seat out of reflex. He swept the

grey rocks and the trampled spread of drifts and finally sighted the cloak,

crumpled in a shallow depression, and pinned by the black shaft of an

arrow. His breath locked in his throat. The dun had not come by the gash

on her shoulder through mishap: now he had proof.

Tautly controlled as a clock spring, Lysaer looped the dun's lead through

a ring on his saddle and addressed Asandir crisply. 'Arithon suspected

trouble in these mountains. Why?'

Before the sorcerer gave answer, shouts cut the misty pass. The

abutments came alive with archers.

'Halt!' called a bearded ruffian from the cliff-top. 'Dismount and throw

down your arms!'

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Lysaer spun in his stirrups, his bearing of command unthinking and

wrath like torchflame in his eyes. 'What have you done with my half-

brother?'

'Shot a hole in his cloak, as you see.' Accustomed to arrogance from the

mercenaries hired to guard caravans, the barbarian dared an insolent grin.

'If you're minded to protest, I can add to that.'

He rapped orders to someone in position over his head. There followed a

flurry of activity and a bundle appeared, suspended over the cliff face by a

swinging length of rope. As the wind lulled and the snow settled to clear

the view, Lysaer recognized Arithon, bound hand and foot and suspended

face-first over a drop that vanished straight down into mist. The brutes had

gagged his mouth.

Lysaer forgot he no longer held royal authority. Very pale, but with

unassailable dignity, he accosted the raiders on the ridge. 'Lend me a blade.

For the sake of the life you threaten, I'll set honour above cowardly

extortion and offer trial by single combat as settlement.'

'How very touching!' The barbarian ringleader raised up a dark-bladed

weapon, unmistakably Arithon's Alithiel, and set the sharpened edge

against the hanging cord. One ply gave way, loud as a slap in the silence.

'You mistake us for our ancestors, who perhaps once affected such

scruples. But as long as mayors rule there are no fair fights in this pass. Who

will hit ground first, you?' The ruffian dismissed Lysaer and dipped the

sword toward the hostage who dangled without struggle over the abyss. 'Or

this one, who provoked us by drawing first blood?'

157

 'Would that Arithon had done worse!' Lysaer cried back in indignation.

'Unprincipled mongrel pack of thieves! Had I an honour-guard with me, I'd

see the last of you put to the sword!'

A hand restrained his arm, Asandir's, restoring Lysaer to the shattering

recollection that his inheritance was forever lost; in cold fact he owned

nothing but a poignard to manage even token self-defence.

'Dismount as they wish, and quickly.' The sorcerer did so himself, while

more barbarians armed with javelins closed in a ring from the cliffside.

St~ff with wounded pride, and galled enough to murder for the brutality

which had befallen his half-brother, Lysaer watched in seething compli-

ance as Asandir threw the reins of his black to his apprentice and

confronted the cordon of weapon-points.

'Who leads this party?' the sorcerer demanded.

'I'll ask the questions, greybeard,' said the red-bearded young spokesman

who descended in a leap from the outcrop. Cocksure, even ruthless with

contempt, he strode through the circle of his companions.

'Ask then,' Asandir invited in silken politeness. 'But take care, young

man. You might gain other than you bargain for.'

'You overstep your value, I think,' the barbarian said, while the wind

parted the furs of his jerkin and cap and spun the fox-tail trappings on his

belt. 'The advice of old men is widespread as the mist and as easily

ignored.' He gestured a bloodied fist at the hostage strung over the

mountainside. 'For his life, and yours, some grandchild or relative had

better come up with a ransom.'

'It's not gold you want.' Asandir surveyed the barbarian from his red-

splashed boots to the crown of his wolf-pelt cap. 'For your sake, you should

have heeded the wisdom of your elders! Vengefulness has lured you into

folly.'

The raid leader drew a fast breath. He found no words. The sorcerer

pinned him with a regard like deathless frost, then killed off refutation

with a command. 'Lysaer, come forward and remove your hood.'

The barbarian gave way to blind outrage. 'The next man who speaks or

moves will wind up butchered on my signal!'

fNot so easily,' rebutted the one who stepped forth, a figure muffled in

ordinary wool, whose fingers bore neither ring nor ornament as he slipped

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Wurts, Janny - Pass Of Orlon.TXT

off his gloves and raised his hands; but a man so unconsciously sure of his

position that every clansman present paused to stare.

Dark cloth slipped back to reveal honey-gold hair, blue eyes still glacial

with fury and features that reflected a bloodline not seen in Camris for

centuries, but recognizable to every clan along the Valendale.

'S'Ilessid!' exclaimed the scar-faced woman at the fore. 'By Ath, he's

royal, and who else could be his spokesman but the Kingmaker himself,

Asandir?'

Jolted as if struck, Lysaer saw the sorcerer return the barest nod. 'At least

one among you recalls tradition. I bring you Prince Lysaer, Teir's'Ilessid,

I58

scion of the high kings of Tysan, and by unbroken line of descent your

liege lord.'

The snow seemed suddenly too white, the air too painfully thin and

.cold to breathe; stunned by the impact of astonishment, Lysaer stood as if

paralysed.

The raid leader went from ruddy to waxen pale. First to react, he

stepped back, undermined by horrified, weak-kneed humility. 'Merciful

Ath, how was I to know?' He set Arithon's sword point-down in the snow

at Lysaer's feet and dropped to his knees. 'My liege,' he said in strangled

apology. 'I place myself and my companions at your mercy.'

'At last you recall the manners of your forefathers, Grithen, son of

Tane.' Asandir's cool regard passed over the barbarian to encompass the

shocked ragged circle of aggressors as bows and javelins were lowered,

then let fall with a clatter onto the trail; movement followed. All the

scouts in the company prostrated themselves before their prince until

only the sorcerer, Dakar and a stunned-speechless Lysaer remained

standing.

For half a dozen heartbeats nothing stirred on the exposed spine of the

ridge but swirls of gale-whipped snow. The revealed heir to Tysan's high

kingship kept his feet and his bearing only through unbending royal

pride.

Then, encouraged by a smile from Asandir, the reflex of command

reasserted; the prince raised a voice of stinging authority. 'Restore my

half- brother to firm ground and set him free.'

A pair of scouts scrambled to their feet, sped by the mention that the

captive they had manhandled was royal also. Lysaer showed their con-

sternation little mercy, but swept up Arithon's sword. 'You,' he said

coldly. He touched the naked blade against the nape of Grithen's neck.

'Mayors might rule in Erdane, but honour shall not be forgotten. Remain

on your knees until my half-brother is returned safely to my side. Then,

since anger might bias my fair opinion, I leave your fate in the hands of

Asandir.'

'That won't be necessary,' the sorcerer interjected. 'The Fellowship of

Seven pass no judgement upon men, but Maenalle, Steward of Tysan, will

properly perform this office. She is qualified, having dispensed the king's

justice in the absence of her liege most ably through the last two decades.'

Chilled through his leggings by melted ice, and shamed by the steel

which revoked his last vestige of dignity, Grithen submitted without a

whimper: if the s'Ilessid prince was displeased by the rashness of his

scouts, Maenalle was going to be mortified. Her verdict was certain to be

ruinous, and no comfort could be gained from the fact that Lord Tashan,

clan elder and Earl of Taerlin, had opposed the attack from the start. No

doubt the old fox had recognized a true sorcerer, Grithen thought in

despair; word of Asandir's party had perhaps crossed the passes already.

Stilled with dread, acutely suffering from cramped muscles, Grithen

159

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Janny Wurts - Pass Of Orlon

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