To Ride Hell's Chasm by Wurts Janny

Author:Wurts, Janny [Wurts, Janny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Voyager
Published: 2009-07-16T21:00:00+00:00

The seneschal paced up and down the plush carpet, a crow in dark robes against the gilt and white furnishings that appointed the salon maintained for state guests. His emphatic fingers stabbed at the air as he railed, while the high prince sat with his lace sleeves turned back, elbows braced on a marble tabletop.

The heir apparent of Devall still wore his briar-scratched boots, though servants had taken his soiled shirt at the door and reclothed him in damascened silk. They had added an earring with a teardrop ruby. The jewel dangled like snap-frozen flame, with no jaunty suggestion of swinging. Such leashed stillness, beside the seneschal’s ranting, showed a preternatural patience.

Crown Prince Kailen, who also observed, was not fooled. From the comfort of the room’s cushioned windowseat, he recognized the dangerous, self-contained fury of a hunting cat balked of its prey.

‘What you say points towards a deep-seated conspiracy,’ the Prince of Devall interjected.

The seneschal stopped short. He stared at the foreign prince, horrified. ‘Commander Taskin? Betray King Isendon or Sessalie? That’s not possible!’

The high prince tapped his fingertips one after another to a rippling sparkle of rings. ‘That’s the impression a clever conspirator would surely hope to convey. Or the opposite. Taskin might have been loyal, until something changed him. Don’t forget, he was alone in the mist with that slinking desertman. Nobody actually saw what occurred, though I’ve heard enough ugly rumours. Were there not wooden stakes strung over the ground from the practice of some unclean rite?’

The seneschal digested that statement, flummoxed as though he had just burned his tongue on a sherbet. ‘The Commander of the Guard was half killed by a sword cut, not sorcery.’ He tugged his robe about his bowed shoulders, as though brushed by a sudden chill. ‘Captain Bennent himself saw the wound.’

Devall’s heir apparent glanced towards Prince Kailen, then sighed with quiet forbearance. ‘I keep forgetting I need to explain what should be painfully obvious. Your people here have too little awareness of how a sorcerer works. Taskin possessed an upright, strong character. To bind his will and make him a subservient catspaw could be easily done if he was in a weakened state, or unconsciousness. Your desert-bred shaman would have had his trap well laid and waiting. Once he had Taskin alone and at his mercy, what better way to mask a conversion than to give his victim what looked like a life-threatening sword wound?’

‘I do find this odd,’ Prince Kailen ventured. ‘Two carriages bearing the commander’s daughter and servants passed through the Highgate an hour ago.’ Since the afternoon’s hue and cry after Mykkael, he had bathed and changed, then spent a watchful interlude easing his parched throat at a wine shop. ‘To judge by the baggage I saw strapped to the roof, the household seemed bound for retreat to the family duchy.’

‘Why send them on such a hard journey at night?’ The seneschal made way with bad grace for the servant just arrived to refresh the candles. ‘I’ve seen no sign at all that violence might arise inside the walls of the citadel.

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