Traitor's Knot by Janny Wurts

Evend owned no last stock of resource. He braced, streaming sweat, wracked hoarse by the rush of his breathing. Throughout, the victim of necromancy watched him, deadly and poised as a predator.
    Naught else could be done, except tip back his chin, shut his eyes, and invite the quick strike to the throat.
    Caithdeinen
offered their lives to test princes, if no other means lay at hand.
    Stung by that edged truth, the doomed man might have laughed, had the irony not robbed him of dignity. Chance ruled the moment, as he embraced his fate in sacrificial surrender.
    Through that last, drawn second, while risen darkness choked down swimming vision, Sulfin Evend tracked the pattern of Lysaer’s forced breaths, brokenly rising and falling. His own chest ached to bursting. Every joint hurt. The spurred beat of his heart stabbed pangs through his breast, while his ears rang with the memory of his own voice, swearing the time-worn oath by which every sanctioned prince of the realm had been tested. He clung, while life trembled upon the snapped thread of a mad prince’s forgotten mercy.
    Crippled, exposed as bait for a necromancer, Sulfin Evend felt the cold ribbons of sweat stripe his back through fast-fraying awareness. He measured the acid-etched stir of the air, as Lysaer firmed his grip on the knife. No coward, the commander opened his eyes and welcomed the stroke that would take him.
    The aimed point of the dagger snatched short in mid air. Sulfin Evend stared full into Lysaer’s face, while the tears he could no longer contain spilled and ran down his cheek-bones. His terror could not be masked, or his pity, sustained in the locked stare between them. He bowed his head, waited, and again sensed the move as the knife settled trembling. Razor-edged flint pressed the side of his neck.
    Sulfin Evend lost his will to move. Resigned beyond even wrenching despair, he could no longer endure the crazed light in his liege’s eyes. Nor would he reason with suborned insanity. Undone by weakness, trembling with terror, heswayed under the dissolving pull of the spells. At the last, the frail stay that kept his upright posture was the bruised and tenuous trust he owed for the discharge of life debt and service.
    The blade moved. Sulfin Evend lifted his chin, just in time to see the black knife drop down. The stroke followed through and slashed across the last binding, rooted at Lysaer’s forehead.
    An electrical snap sheared the air. Pain followed. The tearing onslaught as the spell sundered arched Lysaer violently upwards. The knife left his contorted grasp and flew wild, while Sulfin Evend ripped in a cramped breath and gasped the Paravian word,
Alt!
His scraped whisper finished the ritual, one split-second shy of disaster.
    Then the hurled knife crossed the fourfold line of the circles. Dimmed hearing rushed back, shot to crystalline focus. The embers in the grate seemed the blaze of a holocaust, and the chamber, hurtfully solid enough to confound the overstrung senses.
    Yet the peril was over.
    Sulfin Evend felt the crushing weight of dissipation lift away. Retching, still dizzy, he raised his marked hands and caught Lysaer’s thrashing head. If his strength was spent, he could still lend support. Weeping, he could muffle Lysaer’s fraught screams against his shoulder and chest.
    â€˜Here!’ he pitched his hoarse command toward the chair, where the valet presumably still kept his vigil. ‘Fetch dry towels and a blanket.’
    As the commander’s battered awareness slid back into focus, he flexed his left hand and picked at the knots confining Lysaer’s right wrist. Holding the Blessed Prince propped upright against him, he let the valet assist with the cloth that collared the bone-slender ankles. Then he waited, recovering, as towels were brought, one thoughtfully soaked in cool water.
    â€˜Make up the bed,’ Sulfin Evend ground out, while a competent touch wrapped the prince’s flushed