Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon

Janny Wurts

INITIATE’S TRIAL

The Wars of Light and Shadow

VOLUME 9

FIRST BOOK OF

SWORD OF THE CANON

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

Copyright © Janny Wurts 2011

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-00-721782-3

Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007384471

Version: 2014-08-15

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Dedication

For Abner Stein

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I. Imprisoned

II. Vagabond

III. Change

IV. Dispossessed

V. Mis-step

VI. Haunted Wood

VII. Confrontations

VIII. Trial

IX. Throes

X. Reversals

XI. Upheaval

XII. Bind

XIII. Double Bind

XIV. Conflagration

Glossary

Acknowledgments

By the same author

About the Publisher

Third Age Year 5922

Declared Under Interdict:

THE KINGDOM OF HAVISH

For crown-sanctioned liaison with Darkness,

as the iniquitous haven for Old Blood Talent,

and for armed defense of Heretical Practice.

Henceforth, no True Sect Faithful shall traffic therein,

or flout the High Temple’s Trade Embargo.

—decreed by the Light’s Conclave, Erdane

3rd Year of the Canon • Third Age 5686

I. Imprisoned

All of his days began the same way. He awoke without any memory. Nameless, he knew nothing at all of his past. Search though he might, his thoughts churned in circles. He encountered no sense of self-purpose. Nothing beyond the fact, I exist, that might endow him with a future.

Eyes opened, he surveyed his featureless surroundings. The place did not appear to have walls. Which deception perhaps prompted his first recollection. He understood that the silvery, reflective enclosure was a prison, woven of impenetrable spells. Colourless, textureless, the barrier enveloped him in a suspended state of neutrality, neither hot nor cold, apparently without a ceiling or floor, as seamlessly sealed as a bubble. Bland, like the clothing he was given to wear: a white shirt and dark breeches stitched from a nondescript fabric, fitted comfortably to his slight frame. His diligent keepers, whoever they were, did not wish him to suffer indignity.

Unable to view his reflection, and with no outside window to relieve the monotony, he began with a survey of his own hands. Their structure at least prompted the insight that he was individual, with a claim to both history and character. His fingers were refined, almost delicate, the bones cleanly sculpted beneath his lean flesh. The left ones were tipped with calluses. Insight suggested the wear had been caused by repeated deft pressure to stop off taut strings. First epiphany, he recalled the joyful making of music. But not how he had acquired the scars.

Tentative, uneasy, though he knew not why, he traced the whitened welt, gouged across his right palm and snaked in a half twist up his right forearm, to end at the elbow. The shudder raised by his tentative touch roused an unpleasant recall of searing fire. That burn crossed other weals, surely older. Disturbed, he found that both wrists, and his ankles, bore the chafe marks left ingrained by steel shackles.

Rage stirred in him then, a formless awakening arisen from a prior trauma. Someone else had taken him captive before this. The visceral remembrance of freedom denied and the resurgent echo of rebellious anger shuddered in recoil through him. Still nameless, he knew he had broken that chain and those manacles.

Why was he here? Who held him caged, now?

But his fogged memory refused to unveil the hidden face of his enemy. The record of past violence written into his flesh failed to account for his straits. He remembered no crime, no offence enacted against humanity, to have earned him this punishing state of incarceration.

His questions chased themselves into holes, stubbornly uninformative. By then, the explosive surge of his fury lashed him onto his feet. He paced. Every day, like the trapped tiger, untamed emotion spurred his frantic steps. The blank, silver prison swallowed up his dire restlessness. Its forces encapsulated his person and absorbed his aggression without a ripple. His ire blazed deeper, an unstoppable torrent that stripped his nerves livid. How he hated the fact he was helpless! He was given no target to savage. No captor appeared on which to salve his ravening grief for the loss of his being. He had no means to wreak vengeance for the outright theft of the person he had been, and rightfully should be, since he was kept living.