Читать книгу Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 19

Prime Selidie granted the unscheduled audience to review the captured lane imprint just picked up from the Fellowship Spellbinder. More, she called in her seniormost staff: opportunity walked in Dakar’s slipshod vigilance, given his tight association with the crown prince targeted as her sisterhood’s quarry.

‘We have gleaned forewarning of a momentous event that will shift the course of the Alliance campaign at Alestron,’ the duty watch seeress pronounced. If her ambitious claim at first raised disbelief, the purloined content of Dakar’s late vision unfolded with clear vindication as she unveiled her imprinted quartz. There, etched in light through a west-facing arrow-slit, the scene foretold to occur would take place inside what should have been a warded keep within Alestron’s citadel …

There, the duke glowered across an oak table left grooved by the ropes that strapped spies for interrogation. Prophetic sight showed the scarred boards spread across with a chart, salt-stained from last use on a galley. The corners were weighted with Parrien’s whetstone, a tankard with dents left by Sevrand, and two impaled stilettos, pinched from Mearn. The youngest brother s’Brydion never relinquished such prizes, except under bitter duress. Mearn presently stood, decked out as the dandy, a negligent shoulder braced to the stonewall. His claret doublet agleam with seed pearls, he held the drawn blade from his shirtsleeve in hand, paring his nails like a dilettante.

That warning, no one who knew him misjudged: Mearn’s affectations infallibly masked the murderous bent of his rages.

The duke’s wife, Liesse, was advised to tread softly. Her mere female presence an invasion of male authority, she had positioned her raw-boned frame in between her quarrelsome spouse and his snake-tempered younger brother.

‘You want the truth?’ Mearn contended. ‘We’re pickled.’

Bransian sweated in mail shirt and helm. Brows knitted, he leaned upon planted fists, spitting nails over the tactical map, which already reflected the blood-letting frenzy touched off by the grey cult’s demise at Etarra. The inked shore-line of the East Halla peninsula lay inundated by the enemy. Black blocks representing the massed Alliance force threw long shadows across the wood plugs used as counters to mark the defenders: two veteran strike companies in the field under Vhandon, and the garrison troops entrenched by Keldmar’s directive to safeguard Alestron’s unharvested crops. Longer shadows striped the Cildein’s scrolled waves, cast by the carved hulls representing Parrien’s fleet of armed galleys. While they matched the sea-going might of Kalesh and Adruin, their numbers were too sparse to counter the warships inbound from Durn and Ishlir.

The advent of autumn could only bring worse. Elssine and Telzen downcoast flew the Sunwheel. Their standing companies would flood in, hard followed by spearmen and horse from Shaddorn. Then that menace soon to be augmented by Sulfin Evend’s massed muster, sweeping the towns on the southcoast under the false avatar’s banner.

Tottering piles of blocks sketched the outcome: the duke’s men would be hard-pressed to hold their field entrenchments long enough to secure the harvest.

While Liesse laced tight fingers, too canny to comment, Mearn flipped a nail paring out of the arrow-loop, and glared, slit-eyed, at his brother. ‘Stewed,’ he insisted, ‘and for stiff-necked pride. On the hour you jettisoned Arithon’s goodwill, we might have attempted to reason with him.’

‘Reason? With a bastard stripling whelped on foreign ground, witch-bred in descent from no less than Dari s’Ahelas?’ The duke bristled, his wiry beard shot with grey, except for the side singed to frizz during yesterday’s testing of fire shot. ‘Fiends plague! You forget. Parrien fought the wretch to a bleeding standstill, and still had to break his damned leg.’ Bransian swiped at the offensive document that had launched his tactical argument: a ribboned edict, dispatched from Tirans, and stamped with the Sunwheel. The flourished signature was no delegate secretary’s, but Lysaer s’Ilessid’s own hand.

The parchment fluttered towards the stone floor, its language demanding Alestron’s surrender, upon charges of s’Brydion conspiracy in concert with powers of Darkness. The elaborate seal cracked off as it struck, crushed to powder by Bransian’s boot-heel.

His baleful glance accosted his duchess, composed in her rose linen and shimmering cincture of pearls. Her hopeful expression pushed him to snipe first. ‘Don’t bother advising a plea for apology! We don’t know where among Dharkaron’s damned the Master of Shadow might be!’

‘His Grace doesn’t shift his fixed principles, anyway,’ Mearn reminded. ‘Thinks all his strategies through in advance. Like a plague-bearing weasel bashing a hornets’ nest, you don’t tend to notice his damages while you’re bent double, nursing the stings. I should know. I spent enough time as his captive at Vastmark to learn how he works from his captains.’

Liesse awarded such carping short shrift. ‘You could be wrong, this time. When Arithon delivered his ultimatum, he had no idea he would become summoned to rout a cult cabal out of Etarra. Given he has set that spark on dry tinder, don’t you think civil words might make him reconsider?’

‘Send my wits ahead of my carcass to Sithaer!’ Bransian swore, while Mearn straightened.

‘Besides the bald fact we’ve no clue where to look?’ The duke’s younger brother sheathed his vicious, small knife. ‘As soon try conversing with Daelion himself, to wheedle your way past due reckoning. His Grace would rightfully tell us straight out to suck eggs in our well-soiled nest.’

Dame Dawr’s cross-grained assessment agreed, that s’Brydion had spurned their last chance. Liesse pressed a taut hand to her lips. Regrets salvaged nothing. If the duke had abandoned the citadel as Arithon had asked, today’s mustering cry to retaliate would have left Lysaer’s cursed rage no fixed target. Now, the bone-crushing silence extended. The black blocks and red counters opposed on the map lent vicious hindsight to the Prince of Rathain’s urgent argument.

‘Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks,’ cracked Bransian, pinned under the pleading calm of his wife. ‘I’m no weathercock ditherer, to spin about at each puff from the arse of town-bred politicians! No, don’t start again!’ He had made his grim point: the Fellowship’s come-lately offer of sanctuary would have laid Alestron’s civilian population open to attack on forced march to old Tirans, if not see another third slowly starved from inadequate stores through the winter. Aware of the tears Liesse held in check by the mulish set to her chin, Bransian hammered a fist, sending counters and tin ink-wells flying. ‘We fight, and survive without grubbing for a miserable existence in the free wilds! You’ll not see me kiss this false avatar’s boots. Nor should I recant and risk getting burned for the skins of a handful of fainthearted relatives!’

‘I’m loath to bring comfort with difficult facts,’ a cooler voice interjected. ‘But the roads at this point are no longer an option, either for children or cavalcades.’

While Liesse startled, and Mearn grinned like a fox, more words spiralled up from the stairwell outside. ‘Don’t forget that Lysaer once burned his own troops in a curse-driven fit in Daon Ramon. Such madness as that can’t be trusted by anyone.’ Paused, breathless, at the last landing, the inbound newcomer added, ‘Recant or not, none of ours would gain quarter. The damned fanatics can’t rest till this citadel has been sacked, with every clan blood-line eradicated.’

Footsteps presently crested the stair-head, and Talvish strode in, road-dusty and redolent of hot horseflesh, cinders, and goose grease. ‘You’re one counter short,’ he admonished the duke. ‘We’ve more smoke-hazed enemies scuttling our way from Pellain.’

‘Show me!’ snapped Bransian, an arm clamped to secure his mail shirt as he bent and pawed under his chair for his scattered markers.

The lean swordsman advanced to the table. He snapped a courtesy nod to the duchess, then scrounged two spare broad-heads from his gear and used them to replace Mearn’s knives as corner pins holding the map. ‘More than enemy troops happened by the west road,’ he provoked, quick enough to avoid the duke’s youngest brother’s rabid snatch to recoup his weaponry.

Mearn’s face lit. ‘Trouble you can’t trust with Vhandon’s division?’

Talvish tipped his fair head towards the door, where other footsteps and more conversation flurried echoes up from below. ‘Judge for yourself.’

At least one of the voices was recognized. Duke Bransian shoved back upright, distempered, and snatched the pinched hairs of his beard from the links as his chainmail resettled. ‘If Arithon’s dimwit double tried running away, I’m astonished that you didn’t help him.’

Talvish stood dead-pan, with Mearn at his side perked to a weasel’s fixed interest. As the duke dumped the counters and began to restate the array of the Alliance deployment, Liesse unwound her laced fingers, and said, ‘That’s a maid’s voice, with Fionn. Whose daughter?’

‘Earl Jieret’s and Feithan’s,’ Talvish murmured, then shook his head, crushing out revived hope that the Teiren’s’Valerient might bear an official reconciliation from the Prince of Rathain. ‘Jeynsa was bound for East Halla, unaware that the borders were closed into Atwood.’

Then trouble itself strode through the door, the girl’s rangy form clad in holed boots and forest leathers that broadcast her need for a bath. Too thin, she moved with instinctive grace, the ruthlessly cropped hair fronding her face as rich brown as her scattered freckles. Eyes the sparkling, pale brilliance of aventurine dismissed every person who was not the duke. To Bransian, bow and bone-handled knives rattling, she bent her proud head and offered the crossed wrists at her breast by which clanborn acknowledged titled rank.

‘Jeynsa, Teiren’s’Valerient, Lord,’ she opened with point-blank formality.

While Mearn watched, avid, and Talvish stayed neutral, Liesse tucked her impulse to frown behind the bland stare she used on suspicious ambassadors.

Bransian slapped down a block for the vengeance-bent company riding the Pellain road, then flicked the red plug for Vhandon’s reserves to harry their bristling advance. His inimical stare raked the tall girl, without deigning acknowledgement of Fionn Areth’s come-lately arrival, behind her. ‘You look like a stick dragged in by a dog, and for what? By Dharkaron’s Spear, you have some strong nerve! What kind of fool would dare soil my presence, whose ungrateful liege washed his finicky hands of our years of unbroken service and loyalty!’ While Jeynsa faltered, outfaced, Bransian surged forward in anger. ‘Where is his Grace, anyway?’ accosted the duke. ‘I have some choice words to blister his ears concerning the enemies his doings have pitched like hazed rams against our defences.’

Liesse spoke, fast, her warning meant to deflect the girl’s brazen approach. ‘Child, be at peace. My husband has already heard that Prince Arithon was dispatched by the Fellowship to destroy a cabal of necromancy. Bluster though he will, Bransian knows a Sorcerer’s summons could not be refused.’

Jeynsa flushed, shamed for no obvious reason. ‘So Talvish told me,’ she admitted. Threatened by Bransian’s livid affront, almost anyone would have cowered. This sprig squared her shoulders with mulish bravado. ‘I have seen your walls, your gates, and your fortress, and heard the ground-swell of complaint in your streets,’ she addressed the duke. ‘I make no excuse for my liege’s defection from sharing Alestron’s defence.’ Jeynsa lifted her chin. Gaunt from the trail, irresolute in herself, the core of her stayed determined. ‘As Rathain’s chosen steward, I say his Grace was wrong to hand you his callous desertion.’

‘Toss us a tit-bit we don’t already know,’ Mearn snapped, disgusted. ‘Can you tell us where your skulking prince went when he left his charged task at Etarra?’

Jeynsa tossed her head, no. Grubby hands to scraped leathers, she looked as she was: a half-starved child called onto the carpet by strangers for a thoughtless escapade. Except the steel in her glanced as the weapon’s trued edge, whetted and deadly past compromise. ‘I don’t care where his Grace has hidden himself. Your cause was ill served. I won’t sanction his choice, which leaves innocent families at risk before Lysaer’s raised armies.’

Bransian’s iron gaze narrowed. ‘Caithdein of Rathain, are you officially here to depose a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince?’

‘No. Better yet.’ Jeynsa brushed off Liesse’s startled alarm and knelt with bent head to the duke. ‘Alestron, for need, has only to ask. By your leave, I can bring him.’

‘What foolery is this?’ exclaimed Talvish, astonished.

Mearn gave the girl his most fixated stare. ‘Do say how you plan to bid that wild spirit! Even the Fellowship can’t rein Arithon in. Or I daresay events would have taken a different, safe route through his recent affray at Etarra.’

Bransian’s roar overruled his wife’s chiding. ‘Say again, you insolent chit!’ His ice-grey eyes raked with dismissive contempt. ‘Shadow behind Rathain’s throne, you may be, girl, but no possible loop-hole in charter law appoints you the right to command your crown prince’s presence. No sovereign charge can force his defence inside the realm of Melhalla!’

Flushed purple, now dangerous, the duke advanced, while Liesse’s protesting grasp locked his wrist, and Talvish tensed, a hand closed on his sword for a suicidal prevention.

Yet the girl spoke first.

‘No sovereign charge,’ Jeynsa agreed, uncowed before brittle tension. ‘I hold the sworn bond of Rathain’s prince. Last month, in Halwythwood, he sealed a mage’s blood pledge that binds him to my protection.’ Insolent, aware she stopped everyone’s breath, Jeynsa hooked the nearest empty chair. She sat down, not caring that Liesse trembled, or that Mearn’s whiplash loquacity was finally shocked still. Behind her stiff back, even Talvish’s aghast face had drained white.

Jeynsa shrugged, while the duke’s menace loomed over her. ‘I need do nothing at all but stay here. His Grace will hear word. When the siege closes, his sworn debt will come due. Prince Arithon must come for me if I’m endangered.’

The point was inarguable: a mage-trained master constrained by life-oath would have no other choice.

Liesse found her voice. ‘My lord, you won’t! We can’t stoop to extortion, far less on a sanctioned crown heir!’

‘That’s risky business!’ cracked Mearn. ‘We’d call down the wrath of a Fellowship Sorcerer for sure!’

Jeynsa’s eyes stayed upturned on the duke. ‘There will be no opening,’ she insisted, too crisp. ‘Sethvir is gravely ill. Paravia is not endangered. The prime tenet of the Major Balance itself will allow for no grace of appeal.’

Mearn’s fast wit flanked her. ‘Alestron’s governed by town charter, that’s true enough.’

Outside the free wilds, unless the compact was threatened, the Fellowship would not effect a direct intervention. By written code, no Sorcerer dictated the fates of a people inside of established town boundaries. Excited, Bransian snatched a chair, spun it backwards, and straddled the seat. An unholy glee transformed his distress as he grappled the wicked obstruction. ‘You were chosen as heir. Jeynsa s’Valerient, are you here to tell us you never stood for your investiture as Rathain’s caithdein?’

The girl raised her chin. ‘My sire’s murder gave reason enough to stand back. For Arithon’s sake, my father died under torture.’ Trembling at the edge of exhausted hysteria, she added, ‘Should you cavil at honour? Clan tradition would mediate the loss to my family. Would you not say the prince owes a life debt?’

‘Dharkaron’s Black Chariot and Spear!’ Mearn swore.

‘That’s scarcely fair play,’ Liesse interjected. ‘If a just call for a clan injury exists, your lady mother should be the one to sue for redress!’

‘It’s survival!’ Duke Bransian contradicted. ‘And a compensation that’s due to us, after Mearn’s faithful years of spying on s’Ilessid policy.’ Arisen again, he gestured to a dissonant clash of steel weaponry. ‘Let’s not omit our provision for supply and shelter. Or our staged withdrawal, that reversed Arithon’s straits back in Vastmark.’

While Fionn Areth watched, wide-eyed, and Talvish clamped teeth to keep his own counsel, Liesse blotted damp palms. ‘Such questionable policy will go hard with Dame Dawr. Ath wept, who will dare broach this news to her?’

The duke’s beard split into a sharkish smile. ‘What possible point could the old besom raise?’

A nitpicking magistrate must back the sweet gist: no investiture meant that a steward’s oath did not yet tie Jeynsa’s feal service in direct line to the Fellowship’s compact. Therefore, her case devolved to royal justice, through the dictates of charter law.

‘A damnable irony,’ Mearn crowed, despite himself moved to triumphant amazement.

‘Victory!’ roared Bransian, rubbing his hands. ‘By Sithaer’s black pit, our weaselly masterbard’s leashed. Legally snagged by his short hairs, in truth, and may Daelion Fatemaster spit on the hindmost! We will win the day, and see Lysaer’s cause forced to a cringing standstill.’

The scried image that unreeled in the quartz sphere flicked out, leaving a breathless stillness. Afternoon at the Forthmark hospice, the southern heat was oppressive, closed behind the domed chamber’s leaded windows. Rippled patterns cast by the lozenge glass washed across the clandestine gathering. The four robed enchantresses might have been trapped in amber, for their stunned lack of movement and noise.

The order’s wizened senior healer laced her narrow fingers at length. ‘You named this an augury?’

Few others might question the Koriani Prime, just twenty years of natural age, and scarcely seasoned since her accession. The young woman stared back in her formal state dress, a willowy coquette who seemed displaced in her high seat of office. Yet a steely authority wrapped her slim form. Flame from the bronze brazier at her feet spat glints through her traditional tiara of amethyst and diamond.

‘Our preparations for compassionate relief are in force,’ the sisterhouse peeress prompted gently. That on-going activity jammed the courtyard outside, with snappish drivers handling the mule-teams cut through by the voices of boy wards packing the wagons with supplies. For days, the sisters in grey robes of charitable service had assembled chests of crystals, philtres, and remedies, set coughing under the sulphurous smoke, as the first-rank initiates wrought the copper talismans to repulse iyats and settle the unquiet dead, soon to be sundered by violence.

‘Why rush our departure,’ the peeress ran on, ‘or squander more of our resource over clan politics? The siege is inevitable. This forecast could extend the damage, but may not come to pass as we’ve seen it.’

‘This pact with Duke Bransian is fated to happen,’ Prime Selidie contradicted. Fair as frost on ripe wheat, she tipped an imperative nod to the seeress, who dutifully veiled the blanked quartz sphere that fire-scarred hands were too crippled to tend. ‘Past question, Jeynsa’s revenge will prevail. The duke is desperate. The dowager duchess may cringe over principle. But preservation of the s’Brydion lineage must force her support in the end. We’re forewarned and poised to act on this opening.’

The Teir’s’Ffalenn would stand in defence against Lysaer, and the curse of the Mistwraith would unleash a debacle.

‘Prescience is not proof,’ the old healer insisted. ‘You would move our order to prying acts for a feckless spellbinder’s maundering?’

‘This time, we have a true prophecy.’ The matriarch’s smile was peaches and cream. ‘Dakar awakened from his errant trance, and could not remember his vision.’

There, even Forthmark’s sceptical seniors lost their last footing for argument. The spellbinder’s gift was a wild talent. The intuitive leaps that outpaced his consciousness always held dazzling accuracy. Even the Fellowship Sorcerers had never fathomed the reason. Despite years of scrutiny at Althain Tower, Dakar’s precocious Sight remained one of the world’s greater mysteries, the source he tapped far beyond the veil, past the limit of cognizant reckoning.

‘Jeynsa’s extortion will leave us free rein.’ Prime Selidie savoured the moment, the ruined, claw fingers masked under silk a gall she would never forgive. At long last she was granted the wedge to sunder clan hierarchy and thwart the Fellowship’s compact. ‘Make my palanquin ready. I intend to lead the order’s relief for the war in East Halla myself.’

Forthmark’s peeress gasped, swept to epiphany as the telling facts behind Selidie’s eagerness finally slid into place. ‘S’Brydion never sundered the terms of the charter!’

‘I should live for the day!’ Selidie loosed a satisfied laugh. ‘This time, my sisters, the Fellowship Sorcerers have fully and finally tied their own hands.’

Asandir’s lawful sanction had affirmed Rathain’s prince. The royal oath of succession, and the formal, initiate ceremony at Etarra had sealed the authority of crown rule. Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn, and no one else, possessed the right to prosecute Jeynsa’s betrayal.

Soon after Jeynsa s’Valerient made her fateful pact with Alestron, the Master of Shadow left the black dunes of Sanpashir behind. He journeyed alone, his mood knife-edged from the delicate persuasion needed to detach his escort of tribal dartmen. Fourteen days on foot through inhospitable terrain had done little to restore his hale strength. Still thin, worn yet in spirit, he bought their protective release by accepting a quiver of darts and a blow-tube. The knife at his belt was for hunting, not ambush. For cover, he preferred to weave shadow.

Few ventured the brush to the east of the waste. Where tribal tradition bordered upon the proscribed territory kept under clan vigilance, the road-bound silk caravans went heavily armed. Town dispatches were carried by pigeon.

Arithon crossed into those wilds, unseen. The dusky weave of his borrowed robe melted into the scrub. He carried his lyranthe slung from a strap and paced his progress with patience. At twilight, he buried the tribe’s gifted weapons, and more carefully disposed of the poison phial, transmuting the toxin through magecraft. Then he crouched in a thorn brake, seized his moment, and slipped unnoticed across the baked ruts of the trade-road that carved inland towards the walled settlement at Atchaz.

By nightfall, the evergreen fringes of Selkwood closed over him. The milder breeze lost its flint, reclothed in the pungency of pine resin. Arithon lit no torch. Light-footed by nature, he moved without sound over the dense mat of needles. Such care bought no safety. The most furtive intrusion would draw the rapacious notice of Alland’s patrolling clan scouts.

Since Arithon was tired, and efficiency mattered, he leaned on a tree by a game trail and settled to wait.

He was seen by starlight in under an hour, then challenged at weapon’s point by three strapping men and a woman bristling with knives. To judge by the game bag bulging with pigeons, the party was inbound from a raid to intercept Alliance dispatches.

Arithon showed empty hands and gave them his name.

The armed scouts stood down. Unlike his previous visits to Shand, his slight stature received their combative respect.

‘Not Kyrialt,’ they admitted, when he asked whose gossip had made free with his reputation. ‘It’s the vixen wife with the runaway tongue. If you’re wanting to flay her for that, we’ll take wagers.’

Arithon laughed. ‘With odds on the woman, dare I suggest?’

A flash of teeth in the surrounding dark, as the rambunctious speaker grinned back. ‘What, trust a redhead for mild behaviour?’

The ringleader bearing the day’s feathered trophies added his rueful shrug. ‘The she-fox has scarcely been married two months. No sign yet, the husband can handle her.’

Night-singing crickets filled the slight pause. Still being measured, and fighting the stress of foot travel that spent his reserves, the Master of Shadow forestalled further by-play. ‘I bring urgent news for your High Earl. A guide to his lodging at speed would be welcomed.’

He was not to be humoured. Too many pairs of sharp eyes assessed him. A soft swish of leather bespoke a hand signal exchanged out of sight. Then the ranking scout said, ‘The outpost is four days’ brisk journey from here. We will rest in the open and send on a runner. Can I hazard a guess that you’re famished?’

Lent such grace, Rathain’s prince gave his grateful assent. He managed the league’s hike they could not spare, for safety, to a ravine deep enough to risk fire. While the scouts shed their gear, Arithon sat. He fell asleep, tucked up in the folds of his tribal robe, before the coals roasted the day’s by-catch of messenger birds.

Much later, he wakened. The rocky surrounds, curtained over with ivy, glinted dull orange by flame-light. His escort of four now had additional company. A milling commotion of horses mingled with the muted talk of the arrivals. They already knew they were hosting a prince: from the awkward instant he opened his eyes, they were on him like hawks, falling over themselves to share their savoury stew and hard biscuit.

‘Luhaine advised us you might not be hale,’ somebody mentioned, then hastened, ‘We have been told, your Grace. The cost of your victory came hard, at Etarra.’

Arithon recoiled from hands that would help him erect. Swore under his breath and tossed off the blanket a presumptuous nurse-maid left tucked around his thin shoulders. Embarrassed by the attention fixed on him, to see how he meant to respond, he bent his head and accepted the hot food with a nod, since his voice was not going to be trustworthy. Bad enough, that the lady who offered the bowl could not miss the humiliation. His fingers were chilled to the bone, and not steady, despite the sultry air of high summer.

He managed to spoon down the broth without shaking. The meat was fresh venison, not tough shreds of pigeon, which bespoke a skilled hunter’s foraging. Only a churl would not finish the meal. When the bowl was scraped clean, the raw streak of dawn glimmered through the trees above the ravine. Eager hands had his lyranthe strapped to a saddle ring. Another scout steadied the horse. Someone else, deferent, hovered nearby should the prince need assistance to mount.

Arithon stood. He shook out his robe, swung astride without help, took the reins with a nod to the handler. He delivered his thanks with a masterbard’s tongue. Then he salvaged his chafed dignity by clapping his heels to the gelding and setting a brutal pace.

The forest clans that served Alland’s free wilds were practised at seamless efficiency. They kept swift horses, sited throughout the forest for riding fast relays. Noon saw them remounted for the third time, while zealous youngsters stripped the gear from their spent string, now blowing and streaming white lather.

Each rider was handed a pouch of jerked meat and dried fruit. They ate astride and shared a flask of Sanshevas rum, driving on at speed through the sun-slashed pines, with the chatter of sparrows stilled in the midday heat. At the fourth change of horses, Arithon lost his balance on dismount. Only the fist in his mare’s steaming mane kept him on his unsteady feet.

‘Your Grace,’ a deferent voice ventured, behind. Someone else’s hand gripped his robe and braced his awkward weight upright.

‘Do you make the same allowance for toddlers?’ Arithon gasped through clenched teeth.

The scout laughed. ‘Would you rather sit down arse first in fresh horse-piss? I thought not,’ he added, as the prince’s knees gave.

Past rejoinder, the Teir’s’Ffalenn slid into strong arms, dropped as though felled by a potion.

They installed him under the shade of a tent and eased fevered flesh with a compress. An elder whose lineage was practised with herbals was summoned away from the watch-post. She arrived with her remedies, measured his pulse, and, with talented hands, scanned his aura. His collapse was declared the effect of exhaustion, foolishly pushed past the edge. ‘Whoever attended this man in Sanpashir ought to have chained him in bed.’

‘Tried, no doubt,’ said the captain of horse, his head poked in through the tent-flap. ‘Simpler to rein in Dharkaron’s Black Chariot. If we paused for rest, that devilsome royal threw away sense and outstripped us.’

The kind, white-haired woman jerked shut the strings on her satchel. ‘Next time, use a net. Bring him down. Such strain as he’s seen lays him open to risk. Keep on, we’ll be treating an illness.’

‘I do know my limits,’ the victim protested, flat prostrate. Eyes shut, he remained wrung ghastly white. ‘We have come halfway. Your scout raiders won’t sleep. Or aren’t they bearing a hot packet of tidings purloined from an Atchaz guild’s dispatches? Among the batch news, your mettlesome High Earl will hear of my presence by sundown. Expect his quick response. Our history’s too rife with contention.’

The healer snorted and made her way out, while the scout at the entry said nothing. His suggestive pause stretched, the hushed calm before thunder-storm.

Then the invalid raised his black eyebrows. ‘You’re deaf to the gossip? His lordship’s irked with my matrilineal heritage. I dislike the concept of dynastic reign. But the bone in the craw gets picked all the same. My hackles rise with caithdeinen who try to impose their crown sovereignty over my choices.’

Through springing sweat, Arithon’s lips flexed. Almost, that smile of combative malice matched the warning the scout had been primed to expect.

‘For my part,’ finished the Prince of Rathain, ‘I’ll need the recovery to master your High Earl’s fractious audience by morning.’

‘Maybe Lord Erlien will eat you alive?’ The watch scout eased back the tent-flap, and chuckled. ‘Ath above, let’s see who stirs the pot first. I think we should bet. Odds on, you offer more sport than the vice of the town-born, who bait a chained bear with riled dogs in a pit.’

In fact, Arithon was on his feet sooner, arisen in the late afternoon with none of his keepers the wiser. His time in the desert had left him unkempt. Unnerved as he was by the fuss of the scouts, he enforced his preference as initiate master. A moment’s working masked him well enough to leave the stifling tent and slip through the wood to a stream-bank. There, he indulged in the solitary ease beyond his reach in the waste of Sanpashir.

The Prince of Rathain slipped off his soiled robe, washed his clothes, and himself, in a trout pool. The languid sun striped his damp skin as he basked. Firm earth and clean daylight cleared his rifted aura, and burned away the residual imprint of terror. Since wet cloth eased the heat, he donned his sopped robe, then settled beneath an ancient willow, whose thick, gnarled roots laced the river-side. Immersed in healing peace, he let the slow swirl of the current and the breeze through leafed fronds work their effortless tonic upon him.

Whether Arithon intended to fall back to sleep, the lesser warding to hide his presence had not been fashioned to last. Since his secluded hollow was sheltered from the campsite, he did not hear the stir as more horses arrived, hard-ridden as the relay mounts now loosed to graze in concealment. His being stayed wrapped in the calm of the willow; lulled by the eddy of free-flowing water. Vulnerable, he lay oblivious when the woman rounded the tree bole and happened upon him.

Her inquisitive step paused. Sultry eyes widened, surveying her find. ‘Fatemaster’s blessed weaving of chance!’

Poised as a vixen, she parted the greenery and dared a stalker’s step closer.

To her delight, and his provocation, those exquisite, fine limbs and musician’s fingers remained sprawled on the moss in abandon. Arithon’s repose stayed unbroken, though she did the unthinkable: invaded his haven and stood over him. The casual drape of the damp, tribal robe hid nothing from her avid stare. Not the bronzed skin of desert exposure, or the welted scars he always kept hidden by natural reticence. His seal-black hair had dried, ungroomed. Tangled strands nested his unshaven cheek, softening his angular profile.

‘Where is your vaunted dignity, prince?’ Her vibrant smile exposed even teeth. Bold as a weasel, she flicked back fiery hair, crouched at his side, and dared to extend a pared nail to trace the old burn, seared down his right forearm from elbow to wrist by the strike of his half-brother’s light-bolt.

Her touch never closed. Aroused and aware, no more dulled by exhaustion, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn opened his eyes. ‘Glendien, for shame! The same tricks, again?’ With malicious speed, he recoiled, caught the robe closed before she could snatch, then folded his knees and sat up.

She had tiger’s eyes, hot for teasing mischief, or else the taste of fresh blood.

Telling which could be murderously difficult. Arithon stifled his first impulse to wound. No grace for surprise, or the awkward timing: he would be a match for her challenge; or not. If their last, memorable encounter had left him the advantage, too apparently his wit still intrigued enough to provoke her.

‘Should a wedding have tamed me?’ Glendien licked her teeth, her linen blouse halfway unlaced in the heat, and the sweet skin beneath lightly freckled. ‘This round, I’m not the one compromised.’

‘You say.’ Arithon smiled. With enviable quickness, he surged to his feet and offered an open, clean hand. ‘Where do I look for your husband?’

‘Kyrialt?’ She accepted his grasp. ‘Too bad he’s not here to divert you.’ Latched hold, she dealt Arithon’s knuckles a lingering kiss. Her busy mouth burned, while her loosened hair slithered over his wrist like spilled lava.

‘My dear!’ chided the Prince of Rathain, his trapped hand unresponsive to her steamy attention. ‘Is there no charity in Alland, that such beauty as yours should go hungry?’

‘Invalid! You’ve been laid so low?’ Her throaty laugh mocked as he tugged her erect. ‘Or is the excuse to gloss over the claim there’s no pith to Rathain’s royal lineage? You’re still bloodlessly cold as iced fish-bait.’

‘To a fish, that’s a banquet. You have a rank tongue. Here’s your husband to lick the sauce off you.’ And again, his evasion came fast enough. Her lightning pounce missed the robe that protected his modesty.

All insolence, he presented his back just in time to greet the mate who raced to catch up with her.

Glendien’s muscled match was distempered and flushed from hard riding. Dark brown hair laced into a traditional clan braid no longer acknowledged the pattern awarded by paternal birthright. Arithon had time to notice that much, as the young man just thrashed through the screening willow fronds slammed to a panting stop.

‘Shame hasn’t died. She’s been at you again,’ Kyrialt said, shedding all decorous royal courtesy. Hot, fully armed, he dropped to one knee. The fist at his heart nonetheless gave his liege the welcome his sworn service demanded. ‘Some wicked creatures don’t take the hint. You have to give more than a scalding.’

‘And some, like the salamander, find their piquant sport by taunting the temper of dragons. Which are you?’ Arithon reached out and raised Kyrialt. Then, his bright glance amused, he seized Glendien’s wrist. His sudden yank toppled her forward. Now wickedly smiling, he stepped clear and watched the salvage as the bride stumbled into her husband’s embrace.

‘Best leave us,’ quipped Kyrialt, ‘since this wench seems to want her clothes wrestled off for a dousing.’

Glendien nipped his ear, tossed back her flame hair, and ducked her shirt off one nubile shoulder. ‘Why struggle at all? I mean to bathe, anyhow.’

She had pearlescent skin, spangled with sun, and a ripe swell of breast, tipped a delicate, rose-petal pink. Yet if Glendien intended to gripe Rathain’s prince, or inflame him red with embarrassment, she failed.

Her sidelong glance met no stunned or admiring eyes. The cool canopy of the old willow was empty. Only her husband succumbed to the lure, which was as she had intended. The game had been about taking the Teir’s’Ffalenn down a peg. She would not bide content. Not until he acknowledged to her satisfaction that he was male, and no better than fallibly human.

Greenwood and running water had recharged the loss of vitality. Restored to the scouts’ camp, reclad in borrowed leathers trimmed down for his slighter frame, Arithon shared their plain meal. Trail fare consisted of hardened bread, spread with a salt paste made from raisins, split nuts, and smoked meat. Loose talk caught him up on the news as he ate, terse phrases reporting the erratic progress of the Alliance’s southcoast muster.

‘No sense to the plan,’ remarked the female scout, her toughened fingers twisting strands of deer gut into a new bow-string. ‘Last week, we nabbed a requisition dispatch under the Lord Commander’s own seal that turned galleys back to Innish for transport. No sense,’ she repeated. ‘At slack season, the trade there sends its hulls east to the shipyards for refit and careening. No reason they shouldn’t be crammed full of troops. Unless some slick official’s lining his pockets.’

‘Not Sulfin Evend,’ another scout quipped. ‘That one’s got hawk’s eyes and a nose for corruption to make an exciseman bleed on his silk.’

‘How many armed companies have embarked round Scimlade Tip?’ Arithon asked.

‘None, yet. An incompetence even a man without brains would find worrisome.’ The boisterous opinion was Kyrialt’s, carried uphill from the stream-side. Next moment, the young man hove into view, soaked and covered by nothing but shirttails. By unself-conscious clan habit, he flopped his shed leathers and weaponry over a branch, then wrung out his dripping clan braid. All the while, his tight survey tracked Rathain’s prince. A pleased grin emerged. ‘Your escort short-changed their report, busy man. Fit or not, you’ve leashed Lysaer’s southcoast officers up by their short hairs.’

‘Fiark’s agents did, mostly,’ Arithon amended. ‘They retired on orders after my personal interview with the Alliance Lord Commander.’

‘You came face-to-face and let that one live?’ Kyrialt snapped, surprised. His direct stare unbroken, he reached behind and fished for his small-clothes, smartly followed by his hide breeches.

Arithon watched, also unblinking. ‘Since the man was the guest of the Sanpashir tribesmen, neither one of us carried a dagger.’

‘That shouldn’t have stopped you.’ Kyrialt stuck his sheathed blades through his belt, then slung on the bossed baldric that hung his plain sword. ‘Am I wrong, then? This was the same dog who caused Jieret s’Valerient’s torture, followed up by the ignominy of a sorcerer’s execution.’

‘I deemed Sulfin Evend more helpful, alive.’ Still without armament, Arithon stood. He should have lost forceful ground, since the strapping young liegeman topped his height by six fingers, and outmatched him in muscle and strength. His phrasing seemed too mild, as well, for the fact he delivered a warning. ‘If you meet the man, you’ll acknowledge my thanks. His orders alone have bought Alland its margin of safety.’

That shocked the scouts.

Amid their stiff silence, Glendien reappeared, wet and thankfully already dressed. Without a glance towards her, the Prince of Rathain briskly addressed the scout who managed the horse relays. ‘The rest must wait for the ear of Shand’s caithdein. Might we ride, and spare your High Earl a night in the saddle to cover the distance?’

Rest by the stream-bank had wrought its strange alchemy. The Master of Shadow withstood the harsh pace that Kyrialt set in response. They covered rough ground through the afternoon heat, until even Glendien’s sharp tongue lost its edge to the lathered press of necessity. Sundown’s fire faded into a grey twilight. The pines moaned to the lash of a rain squall. Through biting insects, and sultry damp, the small cavalcade thrashed their steady way north-eastward.

By a tortuous route, marked by stones and faint game trails, they entered the heartland of Selkwood. One month had passed since last dark moon. The scouts crossed the forested hills under glimmer of starlight. Guided by woods lore, the party changed horses at speed and passed through a hidden series of check-points.

The country-side was more than just tightly guarded, with the clan women and children withdrawn deep inside protected territory. The precaution gave Arithon the comfort to breathe. Alland’s ruling council of chieftains had not chanced their families’ safety to the climate of pending war. When midnight came, he reined up in a clearing, nose to nose with another mounted company who had not spared their horseflesh to reach them.

Arithon awaited no man’s formal leave. At the first sight of Lord Erlien’s tall frame and imperious white head, amid the tight cluster of outriders, Rathain’s prince dropped his reins and dismounted. He strode forward, leaving his horse unattended, and dropped to one knee: even in darkness, none could mistake the traditional bow of deference offered by royal blood to caithdein.

Kyrialt sprang from his saddle, remiss. The liegeman’s courtesy that commanded his place at his prince’s back came too late. Resentment nursed from the day’s rebuke withered, as Arithon’s greeting to the High Earl struck even the hardest scout silent.

‘Lord Erlien s’Taleyn, I am not your crown prince. Yet my actions have drawn the adder to Shand, with none of the support I fore-promised. I will stand at your side for the reckoning. All that I have, with all that I am, I will do what I can to defend here.’

Autumn 5671