Traitor's Knot by Janny Wurts Page A

upright, his brows arched with fierce incredulity. ‘That’s a perilous folly, since the Fellowship Sorcerers have already appointed the post to a reiving forest barbarian!’ This was insane precedent, set alongside the fact that the Lord Mayor would subject any man who dared to revive the old forms of crown charter law to a branding, followed up with a public gelding.
    â€˜Folly, is it?’ The ancient wheezed through a breathless laugh as she heaved herself to her feet. Fire-iron in hand, she stumped over the carpet and fetched a slender birch-rod from a hook. ‘How little you know of your blood-line, young man.’
    Sulfin Evend clenched his jaw, head turned as the crone touched the wood stave to the floor-boards. She began scribing a series of interlocked circles, her swaying steps moving widdershins.
    â€˜I won’t hear this,’ he stated. ‘I can’t. I’m aligned with the towns!’ The witch had to know: he was a mayor’s son by birth. The duties invoked by his Alliance office ran counter to all that Tysan’s
caithdein
must stand for. ‘I’m not free to swear you an oath to the land. My rank as commander of Lysaer’s war host has already claimed my pledged loyalty’
    The old woman ignored him. She sealed the last circle, invoked a charm that puckered her forearms with gooseflesh, then hefted the iron and flicked back the silk that covered the ceremonial artefacts. Dingy glow from the dips brushed the blood-stained bowl, with its dark band of incised ciphers. Thehorrid, black knife, with its slender bone-blade seemed to drink the available light.
    Enithen Tuer gave his vehement protest a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘Then bear the cost of your pride, foolish man. The ones you oppose steal the living and usurp their identities.’ As Sulfin Evend turned pale, the crone nodded. ‘Yes.’ She flipped the shielding cloth back into place without ever touching the contents. ‘They are necromancers. Unopposed, they will suck off your prince’s vitality. When he is weakened enough to succumb, they’ll replace him with another, long-dead awareness. To have any hope of standing against them, you must invoke the latent heritage of your blood-line.’
    â€˜My ancestress, the Westwood barbarian,’ Sulfin Evend snapped, startled. ‘Damn my forefather’s unbridled lust! You claim to know who she was?’
    Enithen Tuer settled cross-legged on the rag rug by the hearth. Her marble eyes remained fixed ahead, as though the far past had been written across the murk of her spoiled vision. ‘The first Camris princes were seated at Erdane. Their ancestress declined the honour of founding the lineage of Tysan’s high kingship, did you know that?’
    At Sulfin Evend’s vexed breath, the crone nodded. ‘Oh yes. There are records the vaults under the palace have lost. The Fellowship did not compel your first forebear. They would not, by the Law of the Major Balance. When their second choice, Halduin s’Ilessid, gave his willing consent to enact the blood binding for his future heirs, Iamine s’Gannley accepted his plea to stand shadow for that authority. She became the steward for Tysan’s throne. Her descendants have kept that tradition, unbroken, for well over five thousand years.’
    â€˜Ancient history, old woman. This has nothing to do with me,’ Sulfin Evend broke in. ‘Nor does it bear on the life of my prince.’
    â€˜It has everything to do with your threatened prince!’ the crone contradicted him, curt. ‘In your generation, the old line of the Camris princes has devolved into three significant branches. In primary descent is Maenol s’Gannley, oath-bound as Tysan’s
caithdein.
He has answered the Fellowship’s call for an heir. One branch, until this generation, bore the title of the Erdani earls, until its recent, importunate offspring established himself