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Autumn 5922

Tidings

The enchantress already knew, aware even before the visitation sent by Althain’s Warden brought news. From extreme isolation, immersed in a healer’s work from an old ice-cutter’s hut shadowed under the aquamarine wall of the Storlain glaciers, she had sensed the profound change on the moment when shock stopped her breath in the pre-dawn chill. Her satchel of simples slipped out of her hand. All her rare herbals and specialized instruments tumbled down an alpine cliff, lost amid puffed explosions of powdery snow.

She had not paused to swear. Had scarcely cared, that her follow-up check on the trapper’s wife’s recent childbirth would be set back by the inconvenience.

Hours later, in daylight, after the long hike round the ridge to access the base of the vertical drop, she wept yet, whiplashed between unbridled release and bouts of joyous laughter. Gratitude overwhelmed her last grip on decorum. Never mind that her russet braid had torn loose. Or that her last pair of gloves became frayed to soaked holes at the finger-tips. She was heedlessly burrowing through rumpled drifts in search of her misplaced belongings when the shade of the Sorcerer tickled her presence.

A power to turn the world’s course in his own right, he slipped in softly, a breath of deeper cold against the sharp chill of high altitude.

‘He’s set free!’ the enchantress was first to declare, overcome once again. Arithon. She could not speak his name for the tears that spilled through another fierce smile of wonderment. The miracle rocked her, that she had endured: decades, then centuries, heart braced to withstand season upon season of unreconciled anguish. The onslaughts survived under crushing despair, when dreaming into the horrors he fought, she wakened each night bathed in terrified sweat, gasping for mercy from every bright power that she might live to see the impossible.

A Sorcerer come hard at the heels of reprieve triggered her most fearful question. ‘Whose help lent his Grace the chance to escape?’

A deep voice, wrought of wind, framed the Sorcerer’s reply. ‘The double-blind scheme was the careful work of the Biedar tribe of Sanpashir.’ Which was no lie, except by omission. If the enchantress sensed the gravity of the particulars that weighted the statement, she was wise enough not to broach the dangerous inquiry. ‘The tribe’s eldest wise woman and her male dreamers invoked the world’s greater mysteries,’ the Fellowship emissary to Elaira hastened to qualify. ‘Their reach extended across the veil and split time to achieve this triumph on Prince Arithon’s behalf.’

‘My Matriarch knows this,’ Elaira mused, quick to wield her trained intuition as circumspect caution required. She straightened up, turned, a slender woman with misted grey eyes, but courageous past measure to face the discorporate being sent as the Fellowship’s harbinger.

He stood, an illusion less solid than air, displayed before her as a dapper personage with tanned skin, and dark hair streaked white at his craggy temples. His extravagant dress was embroidered with lace, jaunty accents of emerald studs and silk ribbon agleam against elegant velvet. Orange satin cuffs set off his clever hands, expressive as his narrow, fox features and clipped spade-point beard: which aspects perfectly mirrored his rapacious preference for edged conversation.

‘Kharadmon,’ the enchantress greeted him, pleased. ‘Always, the suave touch. This isn’t an ambush?’

‘Since Sethvir doesn’t favour the vogue for snared hostages, no.’ The image of the Sorcerer bowed, ever delighted to flights of dry irony by her tart wit. Their last meeting, of course, had been brusquely uncivil, her reproach the piquant reminder that once he had broached her close-warded cottage and disturbed her sleep while in her bed.

Today’s underhand tactic of announcing himself from behind was also deliberate though not a discourtesy. His amused glance directed her attention downwards, where a zephyr winnowed the snow at his feet and exposed the strap of her buried satchel. His own flagrant flourish: a long-stemmed red rose, too fresh to seem real, pierced the pristine drift alongside. ‘I’m not always ungallant. Or demanding. Or rude.’

‘Intrusive,’ Elaira corrected, and laughed. Flushed, she bent and accepted the bloom, her uncovered remedies left until later. ‘Should I also thank your Fellowship for a scandalous hand in the prisoner’s release?’ Her cross-grained concern was not overlooked, however she strove to stay circumspect.

‘We broke none of our covenant!’ Kharadmon snapped. ‘Would that we had, and years earlier!’

No need to expound upon his sudden rage: on-going for millennia, the sparring enmity between Fellowship Sorcerers and Koriani Matriarchs. A foregone conclusion, that the long, vicious pitch of the order’s rivalry must entangle the pawn just wrested away from the covetous Prime’s close control.

‘You can protect him?’ Elaira pressed gently.

Kharadmon dissolved into a self-contained whirlwind that whipped up a cyclone of ice-crystals. ‘Asandir was forced to swear! He laid down an oath by the witness of stone, of Fellowship noninterference. Damn your Prime’s machin­ations to Sithaer! The terms that completed her claim of debt towards the Crown of Rathain have extracted that ruthless stay!’

Which bad news delivered a blow to weaken the knees. Elaira drew in a bracing breath. Under the astringent blue sky of altitude, chilled in the pine-scented shade of the rock scarp, she fought for the balance to curb draining fear. If few staunch spirits could match her bold strengths, none equaled the depth of her love for Prince Arithon. Or her steel endurance, as she dared to challenge the turbulent fury repressed by the Sorcerer’s shade. ‘You cannot lift even one finger to help,’ she accused in bald-faced distress. ‘What of the Biedar? Will their shamans stand guard for your prince? Now he’s freed, might they warrant his safety?’

The discorporate mage drifted to a freezing pause. ‘Who knows what might move the desert tribes to act? In this world, who dares to try them? Biedar wisdom lies outside the compact.’

Elaira gaped in dumbfounded surprise. ‘I never imagined! More tellingly,’ she added the moment her paralyzed wits sorted consequence, ‘has that sharp fact escaped the Prime Matriarch?’

‘Oh, past question, she knows.’ Kharadmon’s image unfurled again, smiling with forthright malice. ‘That sore point’s a matter of recorded history, and no secret buried at Althain Tower. The Biedar people came to Athera before the terms of the compact were struck. They set foot in Sanpashir, just ahead of the Fellowship’s promise of surety, which granted the rest of humanity’s right to fair settlement.’

‘How could that happen?’ Elaira asked, stunned. She had never envisioned the paradox!

Kharadmon’s grin displayed wicked humour. ‘Their tribe’s revered elders did not petition for leave through our Fellowship’s auspices. Are you breathing? Here’s the stinging fly in your Matriarch’s cup! Her Biedar counterpart treated for residence directly with the Paravians.’

Staggered dizzy by her upended assumptions, Elaira required more than a moment to measure the implications. She felt as if mountains had moved at a stroke, with every familiar landmark thrown into radical rearrangement. Changed truth arrived as a blast of fresh air, that the latent power possessed by the tribes far outstripped the reach of the Prime Matriarch’s bidding.

‘A bit of a quandary,’ she sympathized to the discorporate spirit, poised in rapt interest before her.

Kharadmon’s corrosive manner turned fierce. ‘Quite.’ Even his Fellowship must be hard-pressed to reconcile the salient question of sovereign authority. Should Sanpashir’s desert-folk choose to exert their enigmatic autonomy, the might behind their least action could throw any power on Athera an untoward wall of obstruction.

‘You don’t know the limits on the tribe’s intentions,’ Elaira needled, point-blank.

‘Your guess would fall under the provenance of Sethvir,’ the Sorcerer evaded with delicacy. ‘Or else be found among the lore kept by Athera’s living Paravians.’

But the creatures he referenced were lost to the world, and such know­ledge, a quest of futility. Elaira smothered a frustrated sigh. The Warden of Althain was unlikely to send her the grace of his counsel. Sethvir’s adamant silence had stayed unbroken since the desperate decision forced upon her on a lonely beachhead at Athir two hundred and fifty sad years ago. Naught remained to be said beyond dogged pursuit of what pressed Kharadmon to broach the indelicate point. ‘If the Biedar cannot be trusted to act, how will my beloved defend himself against the vicious designs of my order?’

Kharadmon raised his eyebrows. He had no glib words. Nothing of comfort to soften the blow bestowed by his shattering news. ‘There, rare lady, the inspiration was guided. The Biedar followed after the tactic his Grace himself used at the terrible crux, to spare you.’

‘They displaced his memory?’ Elaira cried, drained white, the rose fallen from her nerveless fingers. ‘Left him blind to himself? How deeply? To set him past reach of a Prime Circle’s scrying…!’ There, her appalled reason faltered.

Kharadmon stated for her, with terrible calm, ‘Arithon’s remembrance had to be stripped. Completely, without reservation. To stay undetected, safely out of sight, he could not have access to the least knowledge of his identity.’

She collapsed to her knees. ‘You’ve thrown him naked before baying wolves with nothing but his primal instincts!’

‘That, and his born gifts, which are not inconsiderable!’ Kharadmon assured, beyond ease. A Sorcerer, and powerful beyond measure, he could but watch and wait, since that bleak encouragement brought no consolation.

Gloved palms pressed to her face, Elaira shuddered as though the pressure of the icy, wet leather might shore up her frail flesh. Some hurts plunged too deep. Alone, she battled for the toe-hold to assay the shaken first step towards recovery.

The Sorcerer’s spirit ached for her struggle, insouciant sarcasm shredded away. Once, he had owned the warmth of human hands. He had loved, and known how to clasp a devastated woman and lend her raw tears the intimate patience of a warm shoulder. Helpless to offer that solace now, he gave her smashed courage his inadequate words. ‘Dear lady. Handfast to Rathain, of us all, you must not lose your heart.’

For in fact, every hope of Arithon’s hale future lay in this enchantress’s unsteady hands. More: the very thread of Athera’s grand mysteries could dwindle, or snap, or perhaps be raised to renewal through her tenacious constancy.

Kharadmon bore witness through her torment. He did not plead. Not while the balance hung trembling, and all that his Fellowship laboured to heal relied on a destiny yet to be claimed. An interval passed, filled by the wind through the snow-laden pines, and the ice-scoured scent of the Storlain glaciers. Inhospitable country, where a proud woman had nursed her solitary pain, clinging to hope with her hands tied. Unbroken then, she could crumble here, with no trusted ally to steady her.

Then Elaira contained herself. Possessed of a dignified calm that outmatched her diminutive resource, she unshuttered her hands and began to remove one soaked glove.

Before she bared her right hand, the Fellowship Sorcerer guessed her desperate retort. No poise could mask the wrench of her regret as she hardened herself to offer back what never in life, or bound service, ought to be returned.

Kharadmon spoke quickly to forestall a decision that could only launch a disaster. ‘Lady! Don’t do this. Did your best beloved not grant you that ring? And has he, since that terrible day, or in his hour of darkest despair, ever asked to rescind his left token?’

‘No,’ Elaira admitted, pinched white. ‘But you know the Prime’s use of me as her personal weapon against him was stopped when he bound his own recall of me beyond reach—’

‘Hush!’ The ghost of the Sorcerer raised a forefinger with admonishment. ‘I’ve seen how you’ve suffered in his Grace’s behalf. My dearest, yes, I know what he sacrificed for your sake! Althain’s Warden has been party to all that you’ve borne through the earth-link wrought by the Paravians. If Sethvir were here now, he would tell you the future you dread is not written, besides!’

‘Arithon doesn’t know me!’ Elaira cried, pained. ‘He may never remember. Why should he not be set free of a past that is dangerous unless it stays lost to him? Where I have the bitter-sweet joy of remembrance, he has been left nothing at all! Is my love so small that I cannot let him discover anew what happiness life has to offer? Who will he have at his side, and what caring, unless he finds joy in another companion?’

Kharadmon applied reason, profoundly relieved that his status as spirit disbarred her impulsive appeal for requital. ‘I cannot take charge of an object, except to unmake the thing, stone and setting, which would be a breach of the Major Balance. I cannot revoke your ring’s reason for being, or break the purpose for which it was wrought.’ As she stared at him, stricken, he added, ‘Put straightly, the royal signet of Rathain will not cede me due cause by permission!’

She made a choked sound, but not in protest.

Kharadmon smiled, then. ‘Elaira, lean on your instinct! That ring stays with you, with all it entrusts. Honour the covenant of Arithon’s promise, and guard his intention as sacred!’

She stayed unconvinced. ‘And if I should not?’

The Sorcerer’s ephemeral presence gentled with compassion as he spoke the truth. ‘If you honestly wish to renounce your heart’s beloved, even the Warden of Althain cannot stand as his Grace’s proxy. Should you resolve to cast Arithon off, then hear me! You must face him in person. A vow from a crown’s heir may not be released. With royal heritage invoked, there is no other course, except to return his token directly into Prince Arithon’s hand.’

Elaira stood up. Eyes filled with all of the day’s blazing light, she regarded the high mountain peaks, white and cold as a sword’s edge above her. ‘You feared to add that our paths must stay separate?’ Too well, she perceived the quandary that stifled her future happiness. ‘I dare not meet him, or touch him, or speak, lest for his life’s sake, he should he be prompted to recover his past, prematurely?’

Solitary, left only the shadow of their cherished passion for comfort, Elaira faced her core terror: for too many years, the ring’s custody had burned her lonely heart with bright longing. The withering need for Arithon’s partnership opened a constant wound of stark agony.

For how long? How many more unendurable days and nights must she tread a trackless path that led nowhere?

The Sorcerer’s fraught silence did not presume to salve her with empty platitudes.

Kharadmon bowed, instead. He could do naught else. Ever and always, Elaira’s female wisdom stayed infallible where Arithon’s welfare was concerned. ‘My dear,’ the Sorcerer murmured. ‘You are beyond compare. Among women, no other will match you.’

He recovered the perfect rose from the snow, slipped the stem through the flap on her satchel. And then his discorporate presence was gone, a tacitly bitter-sweet grant of the needful space for inviolate privacy: to weep, as she must, and to come to raw terms with the terrible trial laid on her. She had retreated for over two hundred years to the desolate hardship of these remote mountains. Held out and stayed sane, and endured the hurt of an inconsolable separation. For the world’s sake, and for a crown prince’s safety, Kharadmon could not beseech her for the exigency of his Fellowship’s need or further burden her course for a cause he had no other choice but to champion.

Nothing rested secure. Not while the Prime Matriarch bade to unhinge the compact and grasp the reins of her unconstrained mission barehanded. Arithon, freed, remained the obstructive cipher that promised her downfall. The Black Rose Prophecy still governed his fate: by himself, quite unguarded, he remained the sole stay that promised the restoration of the Fellowship of Seven.

All over again, Kharadmon could not bear to watch as Elaira regrouped her lacerated spirit. As she chose to hold firm in the face of redoubled conflict and uncertainty, she must stand or fall on her own merits.