Traitor's Knot by Janny Wurts Read Free Book Online

stammered. ‘His Divine Grace swore us to silence.’
    â€˜Blazing Sithaer, I don’t care what you were told!’ Sulfin Evend strode forward. He tugged off his gauntlets, snatched up the pricket, then bent to assess the shocking extent of Lysaer’s condition. The porcelain-fair profile on the pillow never stirred at his touch. The icy, damp flesh was not fevered. Alarmed, the Alliance commander raked back the disordered gold hair. No reflex responded as he pried back the flaccid, left eyelid. The unshielded flame lit a glassine, comatose stare, and a pupil wide black with dilation.
    â€˜Answer me now! How long has his Divine Grace languished like this?’
    The equerry quailed before that steel tone. ‘My lord, we don’t know when this wasting began. Grief would blunt the appetite, one might suppose, so soon after the loss of a son.’
    That honest uncertainty seemed reasonable, since the train of personal attendants initially brought from Avenor had all died in the course of Daon Ramon’s campaign. Sulfin Evend shoved back the rucked coverlet and continued his anxious survey. The prior disaster did not bear thought, against this one, sprawled senseless before him.
    â€˜Do you actually fear someone poisoned him?’ the equerry ventured from the side-lines.
    Sulfin Evend said nothing—just thrust the candle back toward the page. ‘Hold this.’ While the whipped flame cast grotesque shadows about him, he grasped Lysaer’s arm. Unnerved by the grave chill to the limp wrist, the Alliance commander held out in grim patience while the light steadied, and unveiled the dread cause of the malady.
    Up and down milk pale skin, in recent, scabbed cuts and old scars, Lysaer wore the tell-tale marks of a man being leached by the dire magics of a blood ritual. Sulfin Evend leashed his stark fear. The nightmarish course of this sapping addiction scarcely could have occurred under Lysaer’s informed self-command.
    Nor would such a complex and dangerous binding be invoked by rote or the lore of a fumbling novice.
    â€˜Those scabs aren’t infected,’ a new voice declaimed. The prince’s long-faced valet had emerged from the closet where he kept his pallet. Barefoot, still plucking his livery to rights, he padded up to the bed.
    The Lord Commander waved him back, wordless. Peril stalked here for the unwary. Bearing a taint of clanblood in his ancestry, he owned a birth-born talent, if an untrained one. Though that unsavoury history was nothing he wished to make public, he had little choice. Erdane’s mayors had burned the mage-gifted for centuries. Since that policy was also held in force by the Alliance of Light, and the sealed mandate of Tysan’s regency, no initiate healer could be summoned here without causing political havoc.
    Exposed to risk, uneasily aware that his lack of knowledge laid him open to an untold threat, Sulfin Evend ran a tacit, spread palm above Lysaer’s livid wounds. Eyes closed, he sounded the range of awareness outside his immediate senses. The horrid grue all but crawled up his wrist, as his seeking hand ruffled across what felt like a chill flow of wind, ripped with tingles.
    Beyond question, an arcane influence was draining the Blessed Prince of his vitality. Worse, the debilitating tie was entrenched to the point where a recovery might lie beyond reach.
    Sulfin Evend addressed the hovering staff, dangerously level and low. ‘First, how often does his Divine Grace undertake the foul ritual, and next, where are the knife and the bowl?’
    Blank stares from the servants; Sulfin Evend met their stone-walled quiet with fury. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I speak of! Your master has cast his life into jeopardy, and I won’t stand down until you give me a straight answer.’
    â€˜But my lord,’ protested the equerry. ‘His Blessed Grace said not to’—which words clashed with the