Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

The old man seated as Tysan’s reigning steward leaned over a trestle draped with parchment maps. The rapt company with him included his war-captain, two elderly women, and three harried selectmen from the clan council. All wore fur hats and oiled-wool cloaks since the desperate measures of tightened security risked no fire to vent tell-tale smoke from the central hearth.

      Asandir was no longer present at nightfall, when the young man who bore the fresh mark of heirship stepped in from his volunteer charge of the Sorcerer’s horse. The blizzard by then closed down with vengeful force. Despite the mauling wind and choking snowfall, word of Saroic’s changed status had blazed through the guarded settlement.

      The off-duty scouts crowded him at the entrance, exclaiming with incandescent excitement. No Fellowship Sorcerer had visited in recent memory, far less to serve them with an upset to their clan council’s choice of succession.

      ‘Did Asandir say we’d battle more True Sect purges?’ asked the puppy-dog boy, tagged at his heels since the stable.

      Saroic shrugged off the rough back-slaps and questions. Still clad in soaked leathers, worn breathless from the chest-high drifts breasted on his return, he subdued his inquisitive friends without words, then left them silenced in his wake. Across the darkened, cavernous chamber, while the snap of his footfalls reverberated a ghost’s legion of whispers around him, he stopped before the seated elders and clan chieftains gathered around the lone candle that lit the strewn charts.

      ‘I’m not celebrating,’ he informed the uncle the Sorcerer’s prerogative had seen fit to supplant.

      Older, broader, and mightily scarred from the fights that repulsed the relentless Sunwheel campaigns to rout out clan presence, the uncle rose for the traditional salute, his closed fist clapped over his heart. He wore the mantle of tested experience as war-captain, yet ambition did not stand between them. Elsewhere in seclusion, Saroic’s mother and sisters would be weeping, consoled in their grief by an aunt, who shared in equal measure the tears of joyful relief for a husband’s lot, unexpectedly granted reprieve. The caithdein’s post was an iron-hard charge bestowed on the best and the bravest. The call to that service could, and had, tried the stoutest hearts in their family’s long history. Times when the succession was Fellowship claimed, a grim threat to the realm demanded the cruel sacrifice of necessity. That the inheritance had skipped generations foreshadowed a hard plight ahead for Saroic s’Gannley.

      He would not break under the sudden shock, any more than the uncle who gave up his titled seat resented fate’s blessing, which lifted the burden.

      Saroic took the heir designate’s chair too suddenly made his by right. The seal on his forehead a star in the gloom, he saluted the erect old man, who yet carried the mantle of lifetime authority. ‘Grandsire, I hope years will pass before I’m invested. Surely the Sorcerer will answer my questions after he’s fed and settled?’

      Tysan’s caithdein measured his young nephew’s transparent uncertainty and sighed. ‘Asandir’s already gone. He left for the mountains on foot, with the promise his errand would upend every hair on the heads of the temple’s diviners.’

      Outside, the gale shrieked fit to knock the man down who ventured the exposed rock on the heights. Snow fell thick enough to blind and bury a traveller, then freeze his bones fast until spring. Yet no fury born of the world’s wild elements might gainsay a Fellowship Sorcerer. The caithdein appointed to speak for the King’s Justice in Tysan would rather have shouted against the raw might of that storm than venture one word of dissuasion. ‘Asandir will be back before dawn to collect his black horse from the stable. He’s said not to follow or upbraid the sentries if nobody sees him away upon his departure.’

      Saroic met the set-back, wavered, then bore up. ‘Did the Sorcerer mention why I was called forward, or what threat to the realm we’ll be facing?’

      ‘He told us the Master of Shadow has escaped from Koriani captivity,’ the uncle admitted, moved down the trestle to accept his ranked place as the war band’s commander. ‘We must brace to expect widespread panic and purges such as our clan presence has not seen before.’ The swoop and dip of the candle-flame shadowed gruff features not given to seams of uncertainty as he added, ‘Already, Sethvir knows the temple at Erdane is calling up a fresh muster. The High Priest’s ambition is bound to renew the Light’s quest for the conquest of Havish. Your role is bespoken, Saroic. Asandir said you will come to uphold crown law as caithdein against forces beyond any precedent. Because if Lysaer s’Ilessid should fall to the binding influence of Desh-thiere’s curse, he could try again to impose his false claim and seize sovereign rule over Tysan.’

      ‘I’m expected to defend in this breach?’ Saroic reeled, hands better suited to penmanship clenched on the boards to stay upright. Who possessed the main strength to sustain the onslaught? Aside from the zealot troops ruled by the temple canon, none but a sorcerer’s power might curb a self-made avatar, birth-gifted to wield the direct power of elemental light. ‘I am no fighter!’ he gasped, honest in the wretchedness of his misery.

      His grandfather’s hand braced his unsteady shoulder, but not for false re­assurance. ‘You were picked as my heir for your clever intelligence! Force of arms cannot hope to win our salvation. The man who knows when to run can be wise, and for that, take your place at this council.’

      The clans’ beleaguered efforts would not stand unsupported: sprung from blood lineages, each endowed with a talent to safeguard the land, everyone present sensed the sudden change that unfolded as Asandir’s remote work reached completion.