Читать книгу Traitor’s Knot: Fourth Book of The Alliance of Light - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 28

Once Lysaer s’Ilessid recovered his strength, he applied his state influence with muscular will and accessed the vault housing Erdane’s old records. The mouldering texts he perused showed how narrowly close he had brushed with disaster. A friend’s desperate courage had spared him, unscathed. If that depth of loyalty warmed his cold days, his icy resolve only hardened.

As Prince Exalted, for the common trust, he would see such dark works cleansed from the face of Athera.

Past solstice, as the flooding rains scoured the fields, and the north winds howled unabated, he took the rote steps that must guard his onward journey to Hanshire. He learned to frame lines of intent by clear thought and to bind his innate autonomy through affirmations. Fear gnawed him to doubt. The power of his naked word felt inadequate as he tired, and the vivid freight of his own memory closed in. Distorted faces sometimes appeared to gibber and leer from the shadows. He memorized Paravian cantrips to stave off the menacing nightmares that shredded his sleep in the chill hours past dark.

On sobering terms, Lysaer saw where his pride had led him to blinded folly. Sulfin Evend’s insistence on arcane defences had never been empty advice. While the Blessed Prince held his council in diamonds and silk and received the reports from his couriers, the cultists who coveted his influence would not rest. Lysaer brooded less on Shadow and sorcery and more on the treason that stalked his state hall at Avenor.

He answered correspondence and leaned without mercy upon Erdane’s treasury to regroup his campaign-shattered companies. When the roads dried, and the drays could be moved for supply, he was hale enough to wear armour and sword, and ride, surrounded by the hand-picked cadre of guards Sulfin Evend had detailed to attend him. Protected at night by herb-scented candles, he began his staged journey to Cainford, and thence to a borrowed manor at Mainmere. There, his officers mustered new recruits. Lysaer placated trade ministers, heard the blustering Mayor of Barish, and arranged for state galleys to transport last year’s surplus grain stores. As Tysan’s regent, he invoked martial law to ease shortage as blighted crops failed from the damp.

If folk blamed the weather on the Master of Shadow, no voice arose to gainsay them. Lysaer dispatched his idle troops to mend washed-out roads, and offered his powers of Light to cure the cut hay threatened by billowing rain-clouds.

While affairs on the mainland trod their mundane pace, the Lord Exalted sweated in his sheets each night. He resisted the acid-sharp prod to seek after the Master of Shadow. He paced, drained hollow, and assayed no more scryings, though the craving urge wracked him like recurrent thirst. The grey months slipped past without any word of the half-brother sequestered under the Mathorns.

Arithon himself seemed content in retreat within Davien’s impregnable sanctum. The caverns beneath Kewar blurred dawn and dusk. The underground deeps spoke of silence and dark, and the wisdom of timeless reflection. Stone measured itself, tuned to the magnetic spin of the earth, a spiral carved by orbit around a star, which itself trod the harmony of the grand dance amid the white whirl of a galaxy.

A man attuned to the depths of those mysteries might lose the boundaries of himself. For days, sometimes weeks, Davien disappeared on odd errands and left his royal guest unattended.

Rathain’s prince did not object to the solitude. The radical shifts that rode his awareness made even light conversation too difficult. Since complex thought also unchained the wild reflex that invoked his matrilineal talent, the books in the library were too steep to assay until he had reforged his quietude. Arithon began by reviewing the disciplines learned as a child novice. The exercises of mind and body, precise arts that eased contemplation toward the resharpened focus of mage-sight, let him plumb the new depths unveiled in the wake of his ordeal in Kewar. He encountered the patterns that sparked his rogue farsight and gradually learned not to tumble into the scattering current.

As though veils had been torn from his inner senses, his vantage point straddled the volatile interface between mindful will and expansive thought. Activity prompted reaction too suddenly. Emotions exploded with juggernaut force. Arithon found refuge in the blindfold repetition of sword forms using a practise stick. He slowed down his movement until he was able to fuse the balance between his mercuric inner senses and the encumbrance of his earth-bound flesh. He progressed. Atonal sound let him test each vowel, then each pitch, until he understood the flowering charge awakened by note and by cadence. Since music invoked the octaves beyond eyesight with overpowering vividness, he tried poetry. The result, more often than not, lit and burned him. The lyrical joy in Ciladis’s verse could drive him unconscious with ecstasy. As his eye tracked the beautiful script, unfolding in ancient Paravian, he sensed the power and force in each word and saw their structure as ruled lines of infinite light.

The snug chamber where Davien housed his collection was a haven of carpeted silence. Carved shelves lined with leather-bound books towered over the wrought-iron sconces. Arithon sat, curled in a stuffed chair, while the architecture of the lost Sorcerer’s thought refigured the frame of his mind. He bathed in that radiance. Touched by grace that showered the air into sound, and refined form to exalted geometry, he embarked on a waking dream that trod the far landscape of the grand mystery beyond the veil.

Arithon shivered, lifted dizzy; overcome. He paused with closed eyes, and still saw. The cry of raw light poured through his skin and sang in the depths of his viscera. Beyond hearing, the Sorcerer’s art struck the heart like the shimmering peal of tuned bells.

Immersed in harmonics, wrung speechless with ecstasy, Arithon could not have been more ill prepared for the voice, charged with hatred, that spoke from the air at his back. ‘We are well met, brother.’

Exposed, wide-open to mage-sight, Arithon recoiled out of the chair. The book tumbled, forgotten. Before it had thumped in a heap on the rug, he mapped the invasive presence: the electrical touch of an auric field that matched the imprint of his half-brother.

Hackled, the Master of Shadow met Lysaer, who faced him over the edge of a drawn sword. No shielding space spared him. No thought might respond. The curse of Desh-thiere awakened like chain lightning. Enmity surged to throttle free will, a ruthless fist in the gut.

‘No!’ In the drowning, split-second before reflex forced violence, Arithon snatched back lost discipline and tuned his mind to the chord once raised by Paravian singers to Name the winter stars.

Grand harmony snapped all chains of compulsion. The ungovernable impulse to murder checked short, leaving him trembling and weaponless. Light-bolt or sword must take him defenceless: the blue eyes fixed upon him held murder. Still, Arithon sustained his adamant choice. Shielded in sound, he suppressed the brute drive of the Mistwraith’s geas and did not lift his hand to strike out.

The next second, the fair form in front of him shimmered. Live flesh dissolved, undone by a tempest of subtle light. The auric field changed, shifted upwards to frame another pattern of frequency. Blonde hair became a roguish tumble of red locks, laced through with silver-grey. The wide shoulders lost their elegant white velvets. Reclothed in a jerkin of sienna leather, the frame of the intruder become ascetically thinner and taller. The Sorcerer, Davien, stood in Lysaer’s place, his baiting stare devilish, and his smile a satisfied tiger’s.

Arithon bit back his explosive curse. Nerve-jangled, he stepped backwards, turned his chair, and sat down. ‘That was extreme,’ he managed, unsteady. His hands stayed locked to subdue helpless trembling. ‘Another test?’

‘Perhaps.’ The speculative glint in the Sorcerer’s dark eyes implied otherwise.

Arithon released a shuddering breath. ‘Your books stood at risk,’ he said mildly.

Davien’s smile vanished. ‘Did they, in fact?’

‘I wouldn’t rush to repeat the experiment.’ Three months had changed little: Arithon was far too guardedly wise to expect he might sound this Sorcerer’s deeper motives.

Davien’s curious nature kept no such restraint. ‘I thought you should harden your reflexes.’ He surveyed his guest. The informal shirt, tailored breeches, and soft boots clothed a wary poise, and the wide-lashed, green eyes were anything else but defenceless. ‘You don’t care to ask why?’

Arithon stared back in mild affront. ‘Whatever’s afoot, didn’t you just peel my nerves to prove I could handle it?’

The Sorcerer laughed. He spun on his heel as though to pace, then vanished from sight altogether. The instantaneous transition was unnerving, from embodied man to ephemeral spirit. As closely as Arithon had observed the phenomenon, he still gained no whisper of warning. Trained awareness yet showed him the Sorcerer’s presence: a pattern of energies fused with the air, just past the limit of vision.

‘You may not thank me, now,’ Davien stated, nonplussed. ‘Later, you’ll realize you’ll need every edge to secure your continued survival.’

But Arithon refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he retrieved the dropped book, smoothed mussed pages, and traced a longing touch down the elegant lines of inked script. ‘Ciladis was a healer?’ he inquired point-blank.

‘Beyond compare.’ Davien permitted the sharp change in subject. ‘I have copies of his notes, and his herbals. Are you asking to see them?’

‘Begging,’ said Arithon. ‘Is it true, that small song-birds flocked in his presence?’

‘Near enough.’ The chill that demarked the Sorcerer’s essence poured across the carpeted chamber. An ambry creaked open. ‘Here. The texts you will want are bound in green leather. Of us all, Ciladis was the least shielded. More than finches found joy in his presence.’

Davien’s essence hovered a short distance away. When Arithon made no immediate move to accept the offered volumes, he added, ‘No traps, no more tests. Where the memory of Ciladis is concerned, the deceit would be a desecration. Any knowledge he left is yours for the taking.’

Arithon considered that phrasing, struck thoughtful. ‘Your use of past tense was what caught my attention.’ Then he added, ‘Though you don’t think your missing colleague is dead.’

‘No.’ Davien moved, the fanned breath of his passage too slight to displace the flames in the sconces. ‘The bindings laid on us by Athera’s dragons transcended physical death. As you’ve seen.’

The pause lagged. Moved by bardic instinct, Arithon stayed listening.

Then Davien said, ‘It is not spoken, between us. But the fear is quite real, that something, somewhere, may be holding Ciladis in captivity’

The beloved colleague: who had searched for the vanished Paravians and who had never come back. Since that disappearance cast too deep a shadow, Arithon again shifted topic. ‘I do realize I can’t stay in hiding, indefinitely. Nor do you act without purpose, even if your style of approach might be mistaken for devilment.’

Davien rematerialized, no trick of illusion. This time, he wore boots cuffed with lynx and a doublet of autumn-gold velvet. Beneath tied-back hair, his tucked eyebrows suggested uproarious laughter.

By contrast, his answer was tart. ‘There are factions who would play your quandary like jackstraws.’

‘The Koriathain have already tried,’ Arithon agreed without blinking.

‘Would I take the trouble to harden your nerves for that pack of hen-pecking jackals?’ Davien showed impatience.

And Arithon felt the grue of that sharpening ream a chill down to the bone. ‘Now you imply they’re no longer alone in their chess match for royal quarry?’

‘Were they ever?’ Davien’s manner shaded toward acid bitterness. ‘The compact permitted mankind to seek haven on Athera. By its terms, subject to Paravian law, the Fellowship could not limit the freedom of consciousness. Therefore, well warned, we let in the dark fears. Such things always come with the narrowed awareness that is inherent in human mortality. The imaginative mind can be dark or light. Its storehouse of terrors can spin shadow from thought. These will find fallow ground, on the fringes, and there, the compact as well as the dragons’ will binds us. Our Fellowship must continually stand watch and guard. No easy task on a world where Paravian presence demands that the mysteries remain expressively active!’

Again, Arithon sensed the subliminal chill. ‘You don’t fear for me, but my half-brother?’ As silence extended, the thin breath of cold worked its invidious way deeper. ‘Show me.’

For he did understand: if Lysaer’s convictions fell to ill use as a tool, Desh-thiere’s curse could become a weapon of devastating destruction. ‘Who else wants to play us on puppet-strings?’

‘My library might offer you certain suggestions,’ said the Sorcerer, in glancing evasion. ‘Though I can assure in advance that you won’t find such things written in the fair hand of Ciladis.’

Yet Arithon had little choice but to place the implied warning under advisement. He knew well enough: the stays just established to check-rein his farsight were too tenuous, still, to withstand an unexplored threat. ‘If there’s news, you can tell me,’ he informed Davien.

The Sorcerer’s parting smile was wolfish. ‘You cede the permission? Pray you don’t regret, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’

Through the following weeks, Arithon pursued rare texts on healing. Discoveries there prompted a deeper study of Athera’s flora and fauna, then more texts on lane tides and fault lines. He studied fish, maps, and the astonishing arcane insights revealed in a folio stuffed with Sethvir’s patterns of geometry. As promised, the Sorcerer who sheltered him brought updated word of outside events. Arithon was informed of Dakar’s and Fionn Areth’s safe arrival at Alestron, and of the pressures of famine harrowing lands to the west. In snippets of vision, shared with an eagle, he saw the Evenstar sail, laden with stores of relief grain dispatched for Havish.

If the after-effects of the equinox grand confluence had enriched the fields in the east, other developments sprung from the event had whipped up a storm of fresh discord. Aware that whole buildings and walls were left torn to havoc by the cresting of harmonic lane force, Arithon received Davien’s updated views: of skilled masons raising new fortifications and founding temples pledged to the Light. On the hazy north plains, under brass sun, the summer’s recruits sweated in training. He saw old talent burn. A fresh wave of acolytes flocked to serve Lysaer’s cause, both as oracles and itinerant priests.

All this, in the east, fell under the masterful sway of the advisor installed to rule Lysaer’s interests at Etarra.

‘Raiett Raven is no friend to the clans,’ Arithon commented, after a poignant, stiff silence. He sat, peg in hand, and one foot set in a looped wire, keeping tension, while his deft twist of the wrist wound a new lyranthe string. The day had finally come. His host had just granted him use of an instrument to try the altered well-spring that sourced his masterbard’s talent.

‘A wise distinction,’ Davien allowed. Poised under candle-flame, he stood with arms folded over a brushed leather jerkin. His boots showed spoiling traces of mud, and one sleeve wore a scatter of burdock. ‘You’ve suspected the man’s not Lysaer’s panting lackey?’

Arithon looked up and unhooked the scored wood of his winding peg. ‘That one’s eyes are too clever. He’d have noticed my actions haven’t matched the ideological agenda. I wonder what actually drives him?’

Davien did not answer.

‘No.’ Arithon coiled his shining, wrapped wire, then reached for the spool on the table. ‘I’m not interested in taking an excursion outside to find out.’

The Sorcerer laughed, short and sharp. ‘Wait too long, you’ll be fielding a holy war.’

‘With no cause to be found?’ Arithon measured out six spans in length, used a knife, and nipped off the fine-grade silver. ‘Troops will lose their edge, speaking foolhardy prayers on their knees.’

‘No cause?’ Davien shrugged. ‘My dear man, Raiett’s a snake in the grass. He will make one.’

‘Not with yokels, still sparring with padding and sticks.’ Unperturbed, Arithon finished stringing the borrowed lyranthe. When at due length, he perfected the tuning, the Sorcerer had departed.

But the undertone troubling the recent discussion struck notes that snapped like live sparks from the musician’s strings.

A wily statesman with a clever network of spies would not lack for resource to support an armed conflagration: a royal wife gone missing and a dead heir at Avenor would become reason enough for unrest.

Arithon passed the afternoon, absorbed by the glory of watching his spun lines of melody key the unseen octaves of light, now unveiled by the healed invocation of mage-sight. Made aware of the pulse thrumming from the low registers echoed back from the polished rock floor, he sensed the slip-stream of time, aligned to the dance of the season. Fully restored to initiate mastery, he reaffirmed his intent to honour Earl Jieret’s bequest: that one day he would forge the blood-binding promised to the s’Valerient daughter in Halwythwood.

The next morning, the strung lyranthe was set aside for more books, heavy tomes inscribed in the fine, flowing runes of the Athlien Paravians. The beings the Sorcerers called sunchildren, more than any, knew the mysteries encoded in air and fire. Arithon studied the properties of the energy sprites, named iyats in the old tongue. He listened through crystals to songs sung by whales, and explored older things, recorded in the pictorial symbols the dragons had used before Athera received her awakened gift of actualized language.

The black volumes bound under iron locks, and kept on warded shelves, stayed untouched. Nonetheless, the uncanny awareness pursued him: like a dousing of ice-water poured down his back, Arithon sensed that the Sorcerer urged him to ask about those, first of all.

Outside of Kewar, summer yielded the harvest. The trees turned and wore the penultimate glory of autumn, except in the west, where the scouring rains lashed their storm-tossed, stripped branches. The High King’s restored capital of Telmandir fared no better under the onslaught. Candles burned behind the steamed glass of the casements to lift the drear damp of the gloom. Outdoors, the harbour heaved like pocked lead, the beaten sea-swells surging in without whitecaps. The sluicing downpour and the hammering breakers made a trial of unlading a ship.

Feylind stood on the puddled boards of the wharf, shivering, while the streaming water seeped down the caped collar of her oilskins. The merchant brig Evenstar lay warped to the bollards, while swearing deck-hands fought the jammed hoist. Others wrestled the wind-lashed tarps, chapped raw by gusts that fore-ran a cruel season, come early. The miserable work was already behind schedule when from shoreside, Feylind heard the crash. Shouts slapped off the misted facade of the water-front. Whatever had gone wrong, the king’s customs keeper would be watching from behind his steamed glass, with his parcel of ferret-eyed clerks.

The captain’s oath could have reddened the coarse ears of the longshoremen, now clumped into a distempered knot surrounding the stopped wagons. The risk of wet grain sacks, and losing damp cargo to rot shortened tempers: arms waved, and accusing voices entangled in argument razored through the pounding rain. Since the customs keeper’s officers would wait for a riot and damages before drenching their heads to take charge, a ship’s captain who wished to leave on the tide had no choice but chase after the dock-crew.

Grumbling, Feylind wrung the sopped tail of her braid and sloshed shoreward.

A slop taker’s cart had snarled the thoroughfare. Misfortune compounded by inconvenience, the ungainly vehicle also blocked off the bridge leading down from the palace. The impasse was not going to clear in a hurry. A split wheel hub had dropped the afflicted axle amid a mess of snapped spokes. The brimful barrels in the canted wagon now leaked under the tail-gate, streaming ripe sewage into a street momentarily due to receive no less than the High King himself. Filthy weather would not deter the royal preference. His Grace of Havish would personally seal the bills of lading, and so nip the temptation of shifty dock-side officials, who might stoop to black-marketeering in a shortage.

The blistering insults surrounded the fact that no man wished to shoulder aside the broken-down vehicle.

‘You’ll shift your pissing load, yourself, damnfool boy!’ howled the overseer to the carter, who stood, reins in hand, by the steaming draft mule in the traces. ‘Won’t catch us doing your stinking job for you! We aren’t being paid to handle any low-life’s haulage o’ jakes.’

‘By the curled hair on the Fatemaster’s bollocks!’ Feylind yelled. ‘Why hasn’t some nit gone aboard and asked for a block and tackle?’ Heads turned, bearded and flushed, while the argument spluttered and died.

Feylind shoved into the sheepish press. ‘While you stand here, ankle-deep, my deck-hands are left twiddling their puds in the hold! They can man a capstan and winch this hulk aside. Move out! Smart! I’ll rip off your bollocks before I watch you bunglers start fisticuffs over a muck-heap!’ As the slackers peeled out, the captain’s invective switched target to the sopped figure clutching the head-stall. ‘You! Get that sorry donkey out of the shafts before I decide to press-gang a new hide for the trusses on my main yard-arm!’

The cowled head turned. Beneath ingrained dirt, the graceful features were no boy’s. One glance of the wide-lashed, distrustful eyes made Captain Feylind take pause: a heart-beat to realize she confronted a person in desperate trouble. Before thought, she raised a piercing whistle and summoned her trusted first mate.

No customs keeper’s sluggard, he came at a run, a solid presence arrived at her back that warmed through her sopped layers of oilskins.

‘Handle that mule,’ Feylind told him, point-blank.

Years at her side, blue eyes bright with humour, he took over the reins without question. Feylind’s grin shared her gratitude. Then, as the drover moved to sidle away, she latched on to wet cloak and dragged the stumbling creature into an alley beyond sight and earshot.

‘Don’t even try,’ Feylind said through her teeth, as her catch drew breath to cry protest. ‘I realize this mess you’ve arranged was no accident.’

The woman stopped struggling. Tense, snapped erect, she sized up the ship’s captain without cowering. Her eyes were rich brown as the gloss on an acorn. Fear, or deep-set cold, had started her trembling. Yet authority and intelligence showed behind her exhausted bravado. ‘I’m sorry for your inconvenience. But I have dire need to address his Grace, the High King of Havish.’

Her accent was north westlands, town-bred, and cultured. Feylind sized-up fine hands that belonged to no slops woman, though the skin looked the part, cracked raw by her noxious profession. Alive to the perils of dock-side rumour, the brig’s master veered away from conjecture. ‘All right. But not here. Will my ship’s cabin serve?’

The woman hesitated.

Afraid she would bolt, Feylind tightened her grip. ‘Don’t be a braying ass! There’s no man in my crew who can’t keep his mouth shut.’

As the woman’s strained features showed panic, Feylind swore. ‘You want the ear of Havish’s king? Then listen, lady, whoever you are! Hang on his stirrup, and all the whores in the district will share your misfortune. By tomorrow, you’ll be the news in the mouth of every drunk sailhand. His Grace won’t have sympathy. He detests subterfuge. Won’t stand one moment for subtlety, either. Never mind this pissing downpour, you stink, ripe as a damned slave-broker’s privy!’

The woman blinked, shamed. ‘You’re no friend of the Alliance?’

Feylind released her iron grasp and wiped her smeared palms on her breeches. ‘Damned well not! Canting bigots! I’m going belowdecks where it’s dry to have tea. If you don’t mind the fact I don’t pack skirts, at sea, you can borrow clean clothes, if you want them.’

‘Bless you, yes.’ The strange woman put aside wariness, near tears for the refuge just offered. She trailed Feylind’s stalking tread to the wharf, while the eagle who observed with living gold eyes watched unnoticed from a perch on the custom-house cornice. Head turned, fixed as the gargoyles who glared, chins on fists, right and left of its hunched silhouette, the raptor tracked the two women until they had boarded the brig. An eye-blink later, it vanished…

…to reappear farther north, soaring over a stream, where storm wrack had backed up the flood. The eagle alit on a dead-fallen limb, snagged in the rush of dammed water. There, he shook sodden wing feathers and preened. The thrusting shove as he hurled air-borne again dislodged the dead branch, and the rain-swollen current took charge. Balked water found opening, surged, then roared through as the impedance crumpled and gave way.

The eagle’s flight followed the foaming, brown crest racing in due course downstream. A small ford became temporarily impassable, and a travel-worn rider who sought passage was forced to make camp, before crossing. His curse at the delay carried on the worlds’ winds and glanced through the mind of Sethvir.

As the eagle veered east, the Warden of Althain flicked back a caustic reproof above range of audible hearing.

‘Meddler!’

The eagle fluffed its crest, eyes gold as hot sparks. The thought returned was not avian. ‘You would rather have that man ride to your tower door-step with no help at hand to receive him?’

Sethvir’s retort came, sarcastic. ‘You can hear through the rings of the Radmoore grimward?’

Had Davien been formed as human, he would have laughed. As eagle, he screamed as he rose on the frigid winds of high altitude. ‘I hear the mourning dreams of Haspastion’s living mate. Asandir will be returned to your side in five days.’

The subsequent silence was sudden and deep, engraved on the ethers with startlement.

Experience honed Arithon’s wary awareness, refining his listening senses. Yet no boundary ward he wrought, set in air, served him warning when Davien chose to steal up on him. The Sorcerer slipped past such defences at whim. No subtle shift fore-ran his uncanny arrival. Arithon leaned at last upon prescience: came to recognize the fleeting, ephemeral suspicion that something alive was listening over his shoulder.

Brushed by that whisper of premonition, Arithon closed a volume of Paravian ballads, transcribed during Cianor Sunlord’s reign. ‘You’ve been sightseeing, again. Is the news so unpleasant? The spin of the world will scarcely falter if I don’t share the plodding details.’

Davien appeared at ease by the hearth, cut in outline against the brass grilles that covered the shafts drilled for ventilation. His golden-rod cloak was adorned with black knotwork, gently ruffled by the whisper of draught. By contrast, his russet-and-grey hair seemed tumbled by an intransigent wind. ‘Your halfbrother’s in Taerlin, bound west by slow stages. A conspiracy in Avenor will keep him preoccupied. But not long enough, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’

Arithon traced the embossed spine of the book held in hand, his angular features hardened to adamancy ‘I won’t ask.’

‘You must.’ Unsmiling, Davien chose not to mock. ‘The impact might well invoke your sworn oath.’

Already tense, Arithon turned pale. ‘Which one?’

Davien advanced to the edge of the agate table, set next to the prince’s chair. ‘You shall see for yourself, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’ His citrine ring burned as flame through the air as he traced a circle on the polished slab. Seen by the extended perception of mage-sight, his touch ignited a line of white light.

Within the scribed round, stone spoke to stone: the mineral matrix of agate dissolved, revealing a view inside a seamless rock-chamber. Arithon glimpsed a closed well of granite, and a dark pool, encircled by ring upon ring of fine ciphers. Water rippled over the characters, releasing a charged mist of electromagnetic force. The play of raised energy twined in rainbow colours that shimmered like boreal lights against darkness. Then a falling droplet struck the still pool. Circlets of ring ripples fled, unleashing a pristine, clear vision, and more: the distinctive pungence of ship’s tar and varnish, sea-spray, and salt-dampened wool…

King Eldir of Havish arrived without fanfare, his solid frame an imposing presence that crowded the snug stern cabin aboard the merchant brig Evenstar. Past the cramped threshold, he peeled his wet gloves and swiped back his dripping hair. Eyes grey as the storm beyond the streaked glass fixed at once on the stranger installed on the cushioned seat by the chart table. All else seemed in order: bills of lading awaited, alongside a trimmed quill and ink flask. Not one to dismiss an uneasy detail, the High King held his ground and stayed standing. ‘What have you brought us, Captain? A foundling cast up by the sea?’

‘Evenstar ships cargoes, not hard luck passengers,’ Feylind demurred where she leaned, arms crossed by the gimballed lamp.

The blanket-wrapped presence of the woman defied that impression: the bare feet tucked under her loose trousers were raw, and her diffident voice faintly trembled. ‘I came by land, your Grace.’ Still damp, she pushed back masking wool and unveiled a crimped spill of brown hair, gently salted with grey. Care-worn eyes of a liquid, doe brown watched the royal stance, wary.

King Eldir decided her reserved poise did not match the menial callus that ingrained her small hands.

His held silence demanded.

The woman made haste to explain. ‘Captain Feylind has lent me the use of her cabin to spare the embarrassment of importuning your favour out in the public street.’

The king’s steel gaze flickered, a wordless query redirected back to the Evenstar’s master.

‘Your Grace, I have granted the privacy of my ship. Nothing else,’ Feylind clarified. ‘If you care to listen, the lady has come a long and perilous distance seeking a royal audience.’

King Eldir advanced to the chart table, then bent his head under the encroaching deck-beams. No servant attended him. Only his taciturn caithdein stood guard in the companionway, close behind. The court clerk would be detained outside, strategically snagged by the mate concerning the matter of a mislaid tally sheet. By now aware the delay was no accident, the king tossed off his soaked mantle. Beneath, he wore no regal tabard. A badge with Havish’s scarlet hawk blazon was discreetly sewn on to his sleeve. His plain leathers were cut for riding. The fillet that gleamed on his brow was thin wire, with the ruby seal upon his right hand the only royal jewel upon him.

He seated himself, his eyes on the woman who filled sailhand’s clothes with the grace of a birth-born courtier. ‘My lady, you have asked for my ear. Be assured, at this moment, you have it.’

This crowned sovereign’s demeanour did not overwhelm, or bate the breath like Lysaer’s blinding majesty. Buoyed by a bed-rock patience that appeared willing to wait, the petitioner wasted no words. ‘Your royal Grace, I have come here to beg Havish for sanctuary’

Eldir held her pinned with his level regard. ‘Under whose name?’

‘I prefer anonymity, your Grace. With good reason. My life has been threatened.’

The caught flame of reflection in the gold circlet stayed steady, unlike the bald caithdein behind, whose wary fingers closed on his knives. ‘Who has threatened your life, lady?’

She swallowed, uncertain, now unable to mask the tremors of her breaking terror. ‘The regency of Tysan,’ she whispered.

‘I see,’ said the king. Yet, he did not. The surprise that flared within those grey eyes was sudden and wide as new morning. ‘Lady, do you have proof?’

When she nodded, King Eldir commanded his caithdein without turning his head. ‘Fetch Ianfar s’Gannley At once!’

At the woman’s bounding start, he moved, caught her wrists. Fast as she set her hands to the table, he arrested her thrust to arise.

She protested, rattled. ‘Your Grace! I have asked for your ear with no outside witness at hand!’

‘Princess,’ said the king, stripping pretence away, ‘where you are concerned, there can’t be anonymity! The young man I’ve summoned is the named heir of Tysan’s invested crown steward.’ As her courage deflated, he qualified swiftly. ‘We observe the old law, here. By royal charter, Avenor’s business is his. That is as it must be, or are you not Ellaine, wife of Lysaer s’Ilessid?’ He released her, and waited.

When she sat, as she must, or go her way destitute, his commanding baritone gentled. ‘Accept your clan spokesman. He is ally, not enemy. For Havish to shelter you would be grounds for war. Your safety can’t be bought through bloodshed.’

Machiel’s shout filtered back through the strained pause, shortly broken by running footsteps. An energetic man clad in the king’s livery burst in, breathless and scattering raindrops. He was a strapping fellow in his late twenties, come into the grace of his stature. His fair hair was bound in an elaborate braid, and his eyes, dark as shadow, missed nothing. He bowed to the king, fist on chest, as the clans did, his flushed features keenly alert. ‘Your Grace?’

King Eldir referred him to the woman huddled under the blankets, in borrowed shirt and sea breeches. ‘She is Lady Ellaine.’ As the clan liegeman’s eyes widened, the king qualified, his choice of state language precise. ‘She has come here in appeal against an injustice, claimed against the pretender’s regency at Avenor.’

The clansman recovered himself, faced the woman who sat opposite, then bowed, fist to heart. To his credit, her dress and rough hands did not merit more than a curious glance. ‘Ianfar s’Gannley, my lady,’ he announced in flawless address. Then he smiled. ‘As a mother who has borne the blood royal of Tysan, freely ask of my service, as heir to my cousin’s title.’

Ellaine regarded him, taken aback. His accent was crisp as a forest barbarian, and yet, no trace of contempt or antipathy moved him. Accepted in fosterage to Havish’s court, Ianfar seated himself with aplomb, then deferred, as was right, to crowned sovereignty.

The High King was swift to make disposition. ‘My lady, the tenets of charter law must apply, here. Entrust your proof to the hand of s’Gannley’

The parchment she produced was stained, and still damp, the seal’s wax cracked from rough handling. ‘This was smuggled out, sewn into my garments,’ Ellaine apologized as she extended the unsavoury document.

‘Best take her seriously,’ Feylind declared. ‘The lady worked her way here since last winter, earning a slop taker’s wage in a refuse cart.’

‘To the sorrow of my cousins,’ Ianfar said as the soiled parchment changed hands. ‘The news of her hardship does nothing but shame us.’ He flipped open the folds, jarred to bitterness. ‘You could have appealed to the clans for help, lady. Your court at Avenor has misapprised us.’

‘As my husband’s confirmed enemies?’ Ellaine burst out, incredulous. ‘Or is your cousin not Maenol Teir’s’Gannley who has formally sworn that Lysaer is an imposter, with his life declared under forfeit?’

Ianfar flattened the parchment on the chart table, flushed with affront, and not smiling at Feylind, who had moved to brighten the wick in the gimballed lamp. ‘Maenol is that same man. The history occurred before your current marriage. Did you know he made his lawful appeal to s’Ilessid, to challenge false claim to crown title? That just inquiry provoked an infamous reprisal! For as long as our people live under an edict of slavery, my cousin has no choice but to stand in his place as the throne’s oathsworn shadow.’

Eldir intervened to smooth hackles. ‘The caithdein must serve for Tysan’s rightful successor, not Lysaer, who was never sanctioned by Fellowship authority. Charter law is explicit. Earl Maenol is the voice charged to guard the crown’s unbroken integrity’

Ianfar bent his flax head to examine the document. As he perused the opening lines, the High King watched the clansman’s demeanor shift from tense to aghast. Prerogative stayed him; he withheld his royal counsel, waited motionless, until the binding signatures with their row of wax seals had been recognized. As father of three sons, with this one raised to manhood among them, Eldir must not flinch for the horrific burden thrust upon Maenol’s heir lest he risk the innocent blood of his realm. The aching pause hung, until Ianfar straightened, and affirmed the most desperate thread of his fear.

‘The lady cannot be sent back to Tysan. If she goes, her life could be far more than threatened.’ Ianfar finished, with levelling force, ‘This document outlines the terms for a murder, and confirms every rumoured suspicion. Your Grace, Avenor’s regency is corrupt and involved in criminal treason.’

Eldir sighed. The light flickered, scoring the gouged lines of sorrow that tightened his mouth. ‘Lady Talith, I presume?’ His regard measured Ellaine. ‘Your predecessor was not driven to suicide for an unpleasant political expediency?’

‘Suicide?’ Ellaine bristled, sparked to regal outrage. ‘The former princess was brought down by a crossbolt, fired by a killer whose hire was arranged by Avenor’s high council. I can’t be certain they acted alone, though my heart tells me Lysaer is innocent. Talith’s premature death scarred him, cruelly’

‘We’re not speaking of that sort of venal corruption.’ Ianfar tapped a seal at the base of the paper. ‘This,’ he said, sickened. He appealed to Eldir, ripped to horrified dread. ‘Your Grace saw fit to warn my cousin, long since. Lord Koshlin is the suspected affiliate of a necromancer, and at work for years, cheek by jowl with the appointed high priest who governs the trumped-up regency in Lysaer’s absence…’

Within Kewar’s library, the Sorcerer Davien raised his forefinger. The image called in from the ship’s chart room flicked out, while he fixed Rathain’s crown prince with wide-open eyes and a hunting cat’s fascination. ‘Do you need to see more, Teir’s’Ffalenn?’

‘To realize that Feylind’s endangered? I do not.’ Bristled enough to stay stubbornly seated, Arithon matched the Sorcerer’s challenge. His expression revealed nothing. But the ringless, fine hands on the book were no longer relaxed. ‘Are you implying a lawful appeal to the Fellowship on Ellaine’s behalf won’t bring help?’

‘Can’t,’ Davien stated. ‘Sethvir lacks the resource. No colleague is left free to answer.’

Unwilling to test the abstruse intent behind Davien’s voluntary exile, Arithon said, ‘Then King Eldir can’t deal. He won’t risk open war, as he must, if he dares to grant Lady Ellaine his sanctuary. This event is on-going? Then you already know the sure outcome.’

‘Your mind is too sharp, prince.’ The Sorcerer would leave a pause dangling to provoke, but not trifle with cruel games of intellect. ‘There’s only one pertinent fact left unsaid. On Ianfar’s behalf, Mearn s’Brydion once signed the Teir’s’Gannley his oath of binding protection.’

Arithon mapped the logic. ‘Therefore, the caithdein’s young heir must take charge of Ellaine and appeal for an off-shore passage. Evenstar’s handy. Feylind won’t resist. She has a true heart. My half-brother’s renegade wife has no last option, except to sail east. Where else would she appeal for safe harbour, except at the citadel of Alestron?’

Davien tapped his shut lips with a restless finger.

Arithon mused on, stirred beyond grim interest. ‘Why show me that scene in the first place? Don’t claim you had any bleeding concern over my standing promise to shield Feylind. What is your stake in the Evenstar’s welfare?’

Davien’s image whisked out, his response tossed back as he drifted past the fire-place. ‘What do you know about necromancy, Teir’s’Ffalenn?’

‘Enough to raise all my hackles at once.’ Arithon tracked the Sorcerer’s presence, alarmed, though he clung to his bent of grim humour. ‘I thought you claimed Luhaine would haze you to Sithaer’s dark pit, should I sample the vile rites written into your collection of black grimoires?’

‘Not mine,’ Davien corrected, precise. ‘The author of those volumes pitched a roaring fit when he noticed his horrid memoirs had been stolen.’

‘That was your light touch?’ Arithon grinned, then laughed outright at the subsequent, mortified silence. ‘Or no. More like Sethvir’s pilfering, I see.’

Davien’s answer rebounded from the arched alcove framing the doorway. ‘What couldn’t for conscience be shelved at Althain Tower must naturally be bundled up and sent here.’ The chill that comprised his essence flowed out through the door-latch, as always ahead of his mocking last word. ‘If you don’t fancy the unpleasant reading, I suggest that you visit my armoury. The wise prince in your shoes would lay aside music and revisit an heirloom Paravian sword.’

‘Alithiel keeps her edge with no help from me,’ Arithon said, his peace shattered. Though practising forms with a stick kept him fit, the mere thought of touching war-sharpened steel moved him to blistering vehemence. ‘If I had any reason to crack a black grimoire, the temptation would likely arise from my sore need to curb your nefarious meddling.’