Read Online Traitor's Knot by Janny Wurts - Free Book Online

and much more: if he foundered now, the core balance of the planet would shift. The forces of expansive renewal would shrink, and the spiral would sink into entropy. Ath’s initiates had extended their constant attendance ever since the Koriani Prime’s insane bid to seize power distressed the flow of earth’s lane flux. Although that imbalance was swiftly restored, the disruption deranged an array of spelled boundaries, including the ungoverned wells of raw chaos constrained by Athera’s grimwards.
    That black hour at midnight, while the wick burned serene, the most critical of these had been rededicated. Three yet remained, with the Sorcerers’ resources strapped to the verge of paralysis.
    Sethvir kept the crippling vigil at Althain. Day to day, moment to precarious moment, he endured, while the insurgent trend of town politics moved apace to exploit the lapse of the Fellowship’s oversight. No colleague owned the breadth of vision to counterbalance the triplicate breach. The slow burn of stressed wards consumed him, relentless, while Asandir braved the perilous work in the field, realigning torn ciphers and weaving the boundaries back to their former stability.
    Sethvir lay prostrate to mask the stressed pain that leached at his innate vitality. Drawn flesh over bone, his stilled face seemed winnowed beyond substance, and his form, wrought of gossamer spirit light. The ivory hands tucked over the coverlet seemed naked without their archivist’s spatter of ink stains.
    Tonight, as the lane tides surged toward solstice, Sethvir’s office as Warden of Althain demanded active use of his earth-sense. The adepts on watch as he asked for assistance numbered an even six.
    Four were arrayed at the cardinal points to protect his weakened aura. Two more steadied a pane of polished obsidian, Sethvir’s preferred tool to reflect the impressions garnered from current events. The combed fall of his beard streamed over his chest, scarcely stirred by his shallow breathing. His far-seeing eyes remained closed. If the tension pinching his parchment lids seemed the sole sign of his living awareness, he did not stint the demands of his task.
    The images that unreeled like smoke over glass stayed meticulously clear as an etching…
    â€¦in the mountains near Eastwall, an auburn-haired enchantress lays a quartz sphere aside, while her mind rides a day-dream in longing search of a black-haired, green-eyed man…who, in a place far removed, looks up from an opened book and smiles an affirmation. ‘Soon,’ he assures, as her tender thought touches him. ‘Brave heart, I’ll fulfill my sworn promise to meet you…’—while far to the south, riding the turquoise swells off the Scimlade, a blonde-haired captain on an ocean-bound brig paces over her tossing decks, for not knowing the same man’s location…while elsewhere, another clad in the nine-banded robes of the Koriani Prime Matriarch nurses her fire-scarred hands and commands an avid circle of scryers to search for the selfsame spirit…
    Beloved, or friend, or inveterate enemy, all would find their desires deferred: Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn seemed content to extend his earned sanctuary in the caverns beneath Kewar’s mazes.
    Without judgement, Sethvir recorded. The male adept on station at south glanced up in concern at his counterpart, on guard at north. ‘He’s drastically weakened. Much longer’s unwise.’
    She inclined her hooded head in response, the silver-and-gold thread-work stitched into her mantle glinting through the hazed light of her presence. Her hands moved, gently cradled the Sorcerer’s head, and touched reverent thumbsto his brow. ‘Sethvir is aware. His senses are tracking a formative current that demands his listening attention.’
    In the dark glass, meantime, the sequential ripples sown by Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn flowed one after the next,