Grand Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lysaer would not recall his crack troops from the field. Not without one last flourish to bring Caithwood’s clan defenders to their knees.
    Luhaine slipped through the wards that secured the trapdoor leading to Althain’s dungeon. His annoyance raised hoarfrost on the black-iron pull ring, and the oiled chains and counterweights geared to move the massive slab sang back in disturbed notes of dissonance. Sieved through by uneasy, ozone-rank air, Luhaine flowed down another stairwell. He emerged in the blue-tinged glow cast by the third lane focus circle the Paravians had inlaid in white quartz and onyx over a bedrock foundation.
    With candles unlit, and the vaulted ceiling in darkness, the pale marble walls loomed like a veil of merle smoke. The spiraling flux of the lane’s background flow raised tingling eddies against Luhaine’s unshielded spirit. He passed the carved gargoyle that overlooked the east radiant, its beeswax candle left untrimmed by Sethvir in his rushed hour of departure. Luhaine claimed his favored perch on the statue that stood watch pointing north. Between its curved horns and the bronze socket for the taper, he poised, a distilled point of cold amid the faint web of light swirling from the pattern’s vortex.
    Ath help the Fellowship’s straits, risk of fire in Caithwood left no other option than to recall Asandir from the field.
    Luhaine spun thought and imprinted the fine energies like a spider spinning in light. His summoning ward stitched ephemeral frequencies into Name for the colleague he wished to contact. A Fellowship ward seal tied the call to the east wind, for guidance. The construct of bound energies would disperse down the third lane, then be picked up in turn by the seasonal breezes that ranged across latitude, driving the currents that spawned the cyclonic winter gales. The shed leaves of turned trees and birds in migration would imprint the resonance of the spell and expand its range, until the designated Sorcerer heard his Name in the air and responded.
    Small use to mourn, that no such broad summoning had managed to locate Ciladis.
    Brooding to the bent of his maudlin thoughts, Luhaine cast free his small binding. The Paravian rune circle flared delicate gold as the field magnetics of Athera accepted the minuscule burden of its signature. Last anyone knew, Asandir was at Methisle fortress to help contain another outbreak of methuri . Unless the aberrated creatures held the isle under siege, the Sorcerer should return to Althain Tower on the tide of the lane surge at dawn.

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    Autumn 5653  
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Pawn
    On the moors of Araethura, the stars wheeled their inexorable passage across the black arc of the zenith. Midnight gave way to the small hours of night when the child, Fionn Areth, stirred and opened his eyes, unsure what dream had awakened him. The loft he shared with his siblings hung in darkness. Two older brothers had filched the wool blankets. Left to snuggle in a tangle of stale sheepskins, the younger ones lay twined like two mop-headed puppies.
    Outside, the winds scoured over the moorlands. Drafts hissed through the boards where vermin had hollowed out nests in the thatch. The rafters smelled of damp, musty broomstraw, and the grease left from boiled mutton stew. Fionn Areth shoved back his tangled black hair. The ends needed cutting, an embarrassment he resisted, since his mother would use the same shears she kept sharp to fleece the steading’s herd of goats. Ungroomed as the wind-tousled ponies on the moor, the boy levered himself up on one elbow.
    â€˜Pisshead,’ grumbled the small brother he disturbed. ‘D’you have to thrash about like a nanny with the gripes?’
    â€˜Stuff your face,’ Fionn whispered. While his sibling muttered and subsided back to sleep, he listened, certain that someone nearby had just spoken and called him by name.
    Below the loft ladder, the banked embers in the grate flared sullen orange