Читать книгу The Ships of Merior - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 15

Committed as an impulsive donation by Etarra’s Governor Supreme to the ruined city Prince Lysaer undertook to restore, Lord Diegan, ex-commander of the garrison, sat his glossy bay warhorse and glared through the pennons that cracked at the head of the unwieldy column bound for Avenor. The gusts off the Mathorn’s high slopes still bit like midwinter; as unforgiving were Lord Diegan’s eyes, bleak and flat as black ice.

He wore the trappings of an Etarran dandy; intrigue still drove him as naturally as each drawn breath, but five summers spent in the wilds on campaign against forest barbarians had tempered him. He knew when boldness would not serve him. Yet masterfully as a man could contain himself, last night’s argument had flared too hotly to be masked behind banality. Lord Diegan found himself glaring once again at the blond-haired prince who rode to his left.

Clad for travel in blue-dyed suede and a cloak of oiled wool, his hair like combed flax under the gold-stitched velvet of his hat, Lysaer s’Ilessid adjusted his reins in gloved hands and suddenly, generously smiled. Still looking forward, as if the roadway behind were not packed with a chaos of groaning, creaking wagons and the whip snaps and epithets of bored carters, he said, ‘Still angry? At least that way you’ll keep warm.’

Too raw not to rise to provocation, Diegan felt his horse startle and jig. Annoyed to have dug in a thoughtless spur, he snapped, ‘I still can’t believe you’re dragging my sister Talith into this.’

Lysaer turned his head. Eyes as brilliant as glacial ice touched Diegan, then flicked away. ‘Be careful. Don’t let me think you believe I take her so lightly as to cast her into needless danger.’

Had Diegan not needed both hands to settle his sidling mount, he could have struck the prince in exasperation. ‘Ah, Ath, why won’t you listen?’ No need to repeat those facts already thrashed through: that town mayors in the kingdom of Tysan had never seen the horrors of the Shadow Master’s powers; to them the massacre that broke an army in Strakewood forest was history told at second hand. Of more immediate concern were the fragmented archives which survived the ancient uprising that first overthrew Athera’s high kings. If few guilds and merchants recalled the truth, that the same barbarian clans who plundered their trade goods once had ruled their cities, Erdane’s mayor was not among them. Scathing letters from his barristers on the subject outlined the ramifications: s’Ilessid blood made Lysaer the last legitimate royal heir and no city in Tysan cared to risk a return to crown rule.

Heated now beyond restraint, Diegan burst out, ‘You know you’ll be arrested and condemned as a dissenter? In Isaer, likely as not, they’ll throw you to the headhunters’ mastiffs. Sithaer’s Furies, man, just for some mouldy historical right to lay claim to clan fealty, you’re the living embodiment of these peoples’ fear of insurrection. I don’t care to see two hundred Etarran soldiers give up their lives to keep you from being savaged by a dog pack!’

‘Well then,’ Lysaer said equably. ‘The Etarran division will be sent home before any political misperception can arise to start any bloodshed.’ In maddening, single-minded majesty, he looked straight ahead as he added, Diegan, this issue is greater than me, more important than Tysan’s disorders. Somewhere in hilling, the Master of Shadow weaves plots. Sitting secure in Etarra flushing out barbarian encampments is never going to make him show his hand.’

To which Lord Diegan could do nothing but clench his jaw, wheel his courser out of line, and pound off at a canter to review the order of his troops. Speechless in frustration, he wished he had a lance in his hand and a living target to skewer. For it was never Lysaer’s dedication to the cause of killing Arithon s’Ffalenn that had been under contention; only the folly of allowing the Lady Talith to believe herself secure amid the troop who rode out to renew s’Ilessid claim to Avenor’s charter.

Prince Lysaer’s cavalcade travelled westward at a pace its seasoned war captains concurred was better suited to the staging of an invalid’s retinue. Those mercenaries with prior experience of moving troops complained mightily to their superiors, then arranged rough drills in the open camps to keep their cohorts smart. Unused to being fresh and idle, their men at arms diced and got fractious with each pause. Settlements and towns along the Mathorn road were favourably disposed toward Lysaer’s retainers, since the barbarian raids out of Halwythwood that distressed their trade had eased through Etarra’s campaigns. Lord Diegan grew accustomed to state dinners followed by exhaustive mornings of fielding grievances.

For the royal cavalcade grew longer, more massive, more weighed down with gifts with every city it passed. If the Prince of the West journeyed into his ancestral kingdom to win allies against the Master of Shadow, each mayor and guild left inside Rathain’s borders set themselves to ingratiate. However they might disparage royalty, they needed Lysaer’s goodwill lest the dreaded sorcerer think to turn on them with impunity once the prince who had defended Etarra was gone. The aftermath became familiar unto habit. Diegan sat in some draughty tent with a lap-desk, grim-faced as he battled the breezes that snatched at his lading lists and tiresome tallies of wagons. From Narms, they had five loads of carpets and woven silk, sumptuously coloured; from Morvain, downcoast, wool bales profitably traded for crystal from the famed glassworks at Falgaire. They had lanterns in wrought brass, barrels of rare wines and brandies, and from some beneficent farmer, foundation stock for a pig herd.

Lord Diegan came to wince at the creatures’ squeals, much as he did when the camp followers shrieked obscenities at cheating customers. Whatever Lysaer believed, a war camp was no place for anybody’s pedigree sister.

Since the baggage train made transport by water impractical, the prince’s retinue crept by road around the shoreline of Instrell Bay. Caught by a late-breaking ice storm, they crawled over the low pass at East Bransing, which parted the weathered summits of the Storlains from the furze-cloaked hills that northward gave rise to the loftier spur of the Thaldeins.

Despite Lord Diegan’s forebodings and a hostile letter of warning delivered by mounted courier from Erdane’s reigning mayor, the cavalcade crossed with the thaws into the realm of Tysan, past seat of the s’Ilessid high kings.

Camped in pastures, quartered in hay byres, they bought wood, milk and early greens from red-cheeked country matrons. To Diegan’s everlasting uneasiness, the company blatantly proclaimed itself to the eyes of every passing shepherd. The bellying, bullion-fringed standard with its brilliant blue cloth bore a sigil not seen for five centuries: the royal twelve-pointed star of pale gold. The curious came out to stare in droves. Whatever the sentiments held by city governments and their mettlesome packs of trade guilds, the crofters of Tysan lent tacit trust once assured the prince’s captains would pay for provender. Young boys watched the marching men in their helms, shining mail, and the bright, sharp steel of their longswords, and dreamed; or else turned up in holed boots and motley tunics, reeking of cow dung from the tilling and begging to be taken on for training.

Lysaer s’Ilessid turned none of them away.

‘Why leave them on the farms where their families must struggle to feed them?’ Oblivious to the squalor, he sat by the hearthside cracking nuts for Lady Talith in a peasant’s croft near Dyshent. Crickets chirruped in the smoke-grimed shadows of the corners and round-eyed children peered through the boards of the cattle stalls, where the matron had locked them for safety. Outside, amid a glitter of campfires, the fighting force sprawled at their ease in the mild night, while the off-duty watch laughed and cast bets, and the day’s new recruits dug pits for latrines behind the thorn fence of a sheepfold. Attentive to the timbre of the officer’s calls that wafted through opened shutters, Lysaer added, ‘These boys’ skills will be sorely needed later. Any unsuited for our fighting force will be given land of their own to husband, once Avenor’s rebuilt.’

‘If we ever get there,’ Lord Diegan grumbled acidly. Dark where his sister was leonine, he dug his knuckles into eyes gritted raw from the dust thrown up by his prince’s ridiculous train of wagons, columns of light horse and pack-mules. The rains ended earlier since the banishment of Desh-thiere’s mists; if the past plagues of bloodsucking insects were lessened, the air hung as close as new summer. ‘We’ll need to cut tents out of carpets, at this pace. Next winter’s frost will catch us before we can raise a roof to keep the rust from our weapons stores.’

‘Spend the cold season in Erdane with Talith, then,’ Lysaer said, and grinned in suave provocation. He wore neither doublet nor shirt. Since his offer to sling yoke buckets in from the dairy, the matron had carped until he stripped off his fine silk. Afterward, nobody remarked that his lack of finesse in the farmyard had left him bespattered with milk. Unjustly magnificent in fitted breeches of blue suede embroidered with seedpearls, he leaned down and scooped another nut from the poke by his ankles.

Across the cottage, the farmwife’s daughter thumped her chum, her gaze never leaving the beautiful prince, except to stab in envy at the tawny-haired lady who curled like a cat at his knee.

‘Or else go back to your Lord Governor in Etarra,’ Lysaer resumed, well aware of his captain’s coiled tension as he flipped up and fielded a nut-meat. ‘The Etarran division will return as I promised, once we reach the crossroad to Camris.’

‘You can’t be serious about that!’ Lord Diegan’s sharp movement rucked the braided hearth-rug and upset the little sack, and nuts cascaded into the embers. ‘You’re carrying the endowment to found a city, and -’

‘And what?’ Lysaer stretched and pecked a kiss on Talith’s cheek, letting her retire before the debate could encompass the Master of Shadow. Left to the censure of her brother, the prince stayed unmoved. ‘This is Tysan. My ancestors ruled here.’

‘For which Erdane’s mayor sent an edict to draw and quarter you!’ Hot in his velvets, Lord Diegan endured discomfort rather than let the dairy girl make unflattering comparisons. ‘The fanatics on his council will have troops out to slaughter your bodyguard before you’ll gain passage through his town.’

Lysaer looked back in reproach. ‘These are my people, Diegan. However I have to win my way past Erdane, whether my troops come to shelter under carpets or wind-breaks cut from our best murray silk, I won’t cross this land in such haste that I cannot understand the land’s needs.’

‘Sithaer take your royal principles, I’d do better arguing with a half-wit!’ Lord Diegan stood, the jingle of his spurs cut by the crunch of scattered nuts as he stalked past the fire and escaped to nurse his pique outside.

The cavalcade pressed on at its snail’s crawl upcoast to Dyshent, over roads rutted deep by the passage of the season’s last lumber sledges. While the chip fires used to season beech blocks skeined dusky smoke above the houses, the prince’s guard troop quartered in yards piled with bark for the tanner’s, or between their own laden wagons, parked amid stacks of green planks. In complete disregard for the craftsmen who spat in the path of his retinue, Lysaer visited the guild halls and the town ministry. Gold saw his officers billeted in the sheds used to season rare woods, and his lordly good manners won over the councilmen’s wives.

Diegan waited, edgy as the captains who lost sleep to stop their men from making trouble; but the deep-seated resentments toward Tysan’s royal blood failed to spark into contention.

Lysaer took leave of Dyshent’s council and rode out in proud form before his cavalcade.

Unappeased, Lord Diegan forced his mount to pace Lysaer’s. ‘This isn’t Isaer, or Erdane, where a few costly gifts can turn heads.’

The peaked roofs of the city’s mills were by then lost to sight. Ahead stretched league upon league of wild downs. Rounded, scrub-clothed hills cradled the stones of a Second Age ruin, and chipped old arches lay throttled under greening trailers of bitter vine. There, where wispy marsh-lights flocked the fogs on dank nights and the spirits of long-dead Paravians were rumoured to wander abroad, no town-bred company cared to linger. Astride his steaming, mud-spattered courser, Lysaer drew firm rein, while behind, in a welter of belatedly shouted orders, his massive column blundered to a stop.

Straight-shouldered in a hooded cloak pinned with a sapphire, the prince waited, while the mists licked through the air between. ‘Are you for me, or against?’ he asked softly.

Lord Diegan ignored the chill that grazed the length of his spine. He strove to stay angry, to outmatch that worldly gaze which caught and pierced him to the heart. But like an onset of sudden pain, emotion wrung the truth from him. ‘I fear for you, friend. You’re the only man we have whose gift of light can match the Shadow Master’s sorceries.’

‘Then give me your trust,’ Lysaer said. ‘Worry does nothing, after all, but undermine morale and abet the cause of an enemy ruthlessly prepared to exploit every one of our weaknesses.’

The next day, they reached the crossing of the Great West Road. Against every reasonable inclination, Lord Diegan presided over commands shouted through a misery of rainfall as the crack Etarran divisions he had personally selected to protect his prince were split off and turned back to Rathain.

Afterward, with the downpour a fringe of silver off his mantle, Lord Diegan huffed through the runnels that channelled through his moustache. “By Ath, I’ll trust you have a plan. Would it strain your royal pride too much to share it?’

‘You couldn’t guess?’ As sodden as the house staff and officers who attended him in gloomy huddles, but oddly outside of their misery, Lysaer shook back wet hair and laughed. ‘My Lord, your Etarrans are too loyal. All filled with brash courage and intent to ruin Arithon, which is just what we’ll do on a battlefield. But since then-numbers are too small to flush out the Shadow Master, just now their sentiments could cause problems. For our safety and theirs, they can’t be risked.’

The long-faced secretary intended for the post of Avenor’s seneschal looked ready enough to offer protest had the prince not spurred his mount to a trot. Any mercenaries who groused over his dispersion of troops found themselves reassigned drover’s work. In rainfall and mud, the caravan slogged its way westward under half its original armed escort.

The trouble Lord Diegan expected found them soon after the Etarran cohorts had passed from sight. A body of lancers swept down on Lysaer’s company in fast moving formation from the north. Through trailing curtains of rain, the men set as watch scouts squinted to make out their banner; the wet rendered everything colourless, except for the axe-blade sigil done in silver, and encircled by a linked wheel of chain.

‘That’s a headhunter company out of Isaer!’ identified an inbound rider. ‘Here under orders to spill the guts of a royal pretender, I shouldn’t doubt.’

The doleful secretary spun in agitation to the prince. ‘Fiends plague your Grace’s stubbornness, your captain at arms tried to warn you. The bounty offered for s’Ilessid blood won’t have changed for the past five centuries.’

Silent and whitely bitter, Lord Diegan spurred his horse to try against weather and odds to assemble a defensive deployment from mercenary captains now scattered throughout the caravan.

But Lysaer’s fist on the bridle rein jerked the Lord Commander’s move short. ‘No, Diegan. Stay. Have your officers hold their position. You’ll start a pitched battle if our troops draw their weapons and I don’t want anybody killed. Not when I’d hoped to be asked to pay respect to his Lordship, the Mayor of Isaer.’

Then the moment for organized defence was lost as the headhunter lancers thundered down and swarmed like bad-tempered hornets around the liveried horsemen and banners that surrounded Prince Lysaer.

‘We’ve come for the upstart who styles himself heir to s’Ilessid!’ The captain who shouted was bald, had a torn ear, and wore chainmail and bracers set with wrist spikes. The huge grey gelding who bore him was ugly, but unscarred, and taken by a sudden, poisonous aversion to standing still. The beast backed and sidled in half circles, gouging up spatters of soaked turf. Its rider sawed reins and cursed, while the younger of Lysaer’s liveried page boys approached and bowed, then announced in his clear child’s treble that his Grace the prince was pleased to accept invitation to call on the Lord Mayor of Isaer.

‘Invitation!’ The captain hammered his mount’s neck with a fist, then hauled its nose around to his stirrup to forestall a bucketing rear. ‘What gall! There’s been no invitation!’ His ire found no other outlet; underneath him, his warhorse went berserk.

Ears flattened to streaming neck, it bit the air, crow-hopped and danced sideways on bunched hindquarters. The headhunter captain stayed astride by dint of determined fury, while the neat ranks of his riders were bashed out of formation by the unravelling temper of his mount. Lances dipped, wavered and cracked into a cursing tangle of men and disgruntled horseflesh.

Too cynical for surprise, Lord Diegan glanced aside to find Lysaer watching the affray, his unruffled, wide-eyed dignity at odds with innocent intentions. The older page half-hidden by his horse cloths was deviously engaged with a handful of smooth pebbles and what looked like a rawhide bird sling.

A lifetime of Etarran politics lent Diegan the presence to mask astonishment. He was prepared and listening for the low-voiced string of orders from his prince. ‘The headhunter captain’s horse is shortly going to bolt. Before it does, I’ll need an honour guard assembled, a delegation from our guild representatives and city officers, and the wagon bearing Lady Talith and her servants. This will be a state visit to Isaer, I shall make it so. But warn the men: on pain of punishment, and despite the most grievous provocation, they must hold their tongues and their tempers.’

No fool, Lord Diegan did as he was bidden; and so he missed the moment when the headhunter’s huge grey at last tore free of restraint and exploded kicking and snorting into a tail-streaming run. Somebody dispatched an equerry at speed to chase after the luckless captain. Before the sergeant left as second in command could restore the wrecked order of the troop, Lysaer rode forward to meet him.

‘Never mind the formalities,’ the prince opened, magnanimously forgiving, and sure enough in stature to shake the confidence of a struck bronze monument. He followed with a phrase that caused several lancers to break into laughter. While the sergeant was torn between outrage, uncertainty, and an explosive attack of pure mirth, Lysaer managed with light-hearted, lordly arrogance to make several sensible suggestions.

The headhunter lancers sorted themselves back into order, to find themselves seamlessly joined by the prince’s personal honour guard, a wagon bearing a woman beautiful enough to leave a man staring and silly, and a dozen trade dignitaries who were fed up with rain, and expressing thanks for the Mayor of Isaer’s timely consideration.

At the sergeant’s stirrup rode Lysaer, at patent length and diffidence inquiring what sort of silk would compliment his Lord Mayor’s colouring; the other gifts, he added hastily, were less personal. Unless the mayor’s lady wife had the misfortune to disdain Falgaire crystal?

Thoughtful, bemused, not entirely without sympathy for the sergeant who stammered answers to the royal inquiries under Talith’s distracting regard, Lord Diegan rode silent through the rain. In a humour that was piquantly Etarran, he watched Lysaer’s masterful diplomacy take the city of Isaer by storm.

There followed six days of formal dinners and protracted hours spent touring guild sheds where last year’s flax harvest lay hackled for bleaching. Lord Diegan followed the talk as he once had ravished the courtesans he seduced from the beds of wealthy patrons.

Yet even under close scrutiny, these discussions pursued the same topics as others in cities to the south, once Isaer’s mayor recovered from the flustered irritation of being hazed into guesting the very same prince he had dispatched his headhunters to set shackles on. The city’s guild ministers in circuitous politeness inquired whether Lysaer intended to launch from Avenor the same campaign he had spearheaded at Etarra: raise a garrison to meld forces with the headhunters’ leagues to clear Tysan’s wilds of barbarians. Trade with Camris, they said, suffered unduly from raids in the Thaldein passes.

Lysaer heard their woes in rapt sympathy. When the banquet was finished and the fine brandies poured, he graciously ventured opinion. ‘The clans of Rathain were stamped out by Etarra because they fell to ill usage by the Shadow Master.’ A frown marred his brows. The glitter of his hair and his jewels hung still in the lamplight as he paused in disturbed reminiscence. ‘Your difficulties in the passes of Orlan must be approached carefully.’ In the face of poisoned fear - that as scion of s’Ilessid he might lay claim to clan loyalty and upset rule in the towns - he said outright, If a way can be found to avoid outright slaughter, I would seek that before war.’

Silence fell, tensioned with threat.

While inimical stares from the councilmen sharpened around the table, and the Mayor of Isaer whispered something to a servant that brought guardsmen in full mail to block the doorway, Lord Diegan groped to draw the hidden dagger in his sleeve.

The prince acknowledged none of this, but centred upon a careworn alderman who fluttered his napkin in dismay. ‘You can’t suggest a treaty with the clanborn! Ath! There’s no way to reason with such, uncouth as they are. Like animals.’ While the mayor’s fat steward retreated without refilling the wine goblets, he added with whispered distaste, ‘ ‘Tis said of Maenalle s’Gannley that she wears uncured animal skins.’

For a moment Lysaer looked blandly mystified. Then he roused and said in forbearance, ‘Forgive me. I can’t support such hasty thinking.’ Under the table, his hand clamped hard on Diegan’s arm, locking the little knife in its sheath. ‘What would an armed campaign accomplish except to drive Tysan’s clans to share grievance with their brethren in Rathain? No. Blood-hunts are too dangerous an option, and Arithon s’Ffalenn too wily an adversary to risk driving allies to his cause. Of all things, I dare not draw his interests to your land to threaten the industry of your cities.’

With a deftness that seemed natural chance, the discussion was deflected to threats of shadow and sorcery; Lord Diegan swept into passionate description of the heinous slaughter that occurred on the banks of Tal Quorin, when a grisly chain of traps had savaged Etarra’s proud garrison.

The telling set him in a cold sweat. Deshir’s clansmen had always been killers; allied with Arithon s’Ffalenn and his demonic touch at spellcraft, they had narrowly been stopped from threatening civilized Rathain. Hands clenched on his cutlery, Lord Diegan spoke; as if the roar of Tal Quorin’s flood still battered his ears, and the screams of those troops swept away. Sucked back into memory like nightmare, he heard the crack of arrows striking through foliage and flesh; the ripping of timber and earth as concealed spring traps and deadfalls left his lancers gutted and bleeding out their lives in whimpering agony. Death did not account for all the losses. Some men were permanently deranged by the maze wards and shadows Arithon had used to bind them into confusion; others had been broken in spirit, prone to fits and raving when relivings wrenched them from sleep.

By itself, the account of the battle the Shadow Master had launched in Strakewood was enough to inspire terror. Isaer’s council ministers departed mollified; by direct command of their mayor, the men at arms tactfully dispersed.

Later, lighted by perfumed candles in a tapestried upper chamber, Lord Diegan chose his moment and cornered Lysaer before the prince called his valet to retire. ‘What are you playing at? I thought we agreed at Etarra that barbarian havens anywhere were too ready a tool for the Master’s use and design!’

‘You’re worried?’ The brandy had been particularly fine; yet an edge of irritation burned through the prince’s flush as he crossed the guest suite’s floral patterned carpet. Contained as smoothed marble, he said, ‘Then rest content, the raids in the passes will be ended. One way or another. By armed force as a last resort.’

Lord Diegan met and held those blue eyes, that could seem inhumanly assured in their candour. ‘Pretty manners and slick language might disarm the mistrust in Isaer. But tonight’s talk at supper would get you bloody and dead on the other side of the passes. Don’t fool yourself. Erdane’s mayor won’t be stood off with sweet talk and gifts.’

A frown knitted Lysaer’s brows. ‘I thought as much.’ He sighed and stifled a yawn behind a blaze of sapphire rings. ‘It’s inconvenient, I admit, but we’re going to need every city’s loyalty against Arithon. We’ll just have to find something else to ease the Lord Mayor of Erdane’s antipathy.’

To which Diegan could say nothing, but only turn on his heel and retire to a bed where sleep did not ease him.

The following morning, the royal retinue left Isaer to rejoin its abandoned caravan, now moved thirty laboured leagues to the west. After the escorting honour guard trailed four ox-wains crammed full of pottery, patterned linen and dyed feathers. The mules bearing the last crates of Falgaire crystal took a dislike to the ox teams, which occasioned much swearing from the drovers.

Surrounded by confusion that stirred a third of the cavalcade into a brew of bawling animals and stopped wagons, Talith’s suave brother screamed orders until his teeth grated from inhaling airborne grit. He ignored the ragged crofters who had paused at their sowing to stare. If he also missed the hoofbeats that approached through the din made by children beating clappers to scare flocking sparrows from the seed grain, Diegan obstinately faced forward as the rider arrived and fell in alongside.

‘Stop sulking.’ Lysaer laughed to his uncommunicative future brother-in-law. ‘When the snow comes, we can haul the fancy feathers out for mattress stuffing.’

‘Did you look in those sacks?’ Diegan reined around his dust-caked mount, his calf gloves fringed with hanging threads where use had torn off the beadwork. ‘They hold goose quills. Stiff ones, for pen nibs. If you can coax my sister to sleep on those, I’ll pick you nettles to plump your pillows.’

Caught on a hill crest against sky, his gold hair wind-ruffled against racing fleeces of spring clouds, Lysaer regarded the riled profile of Avenor’s Lord Commander at Arms. He said in teasing merriment, ‘That merchant’s vixen daughter refused you, I see.’ Which comment got him shoved from his saddle into dung-spread furrows in just and indecorous vengeance.

From astride his snorting charger, Lord Diegan glared down at his prince, who accepted his demise without rancour for mud-spoiled velvets.

‘In Erdane, the headhunters’ league is lawfully sanctioned to torture clanborn captives for public amusement. As a prince in line for the succession, they’d hold a festival over your ripped carcass.’ Hurting in his affection as if his liege were an endangered brother, Diegan finished, ‘Will nothing I say dissuade you?’

Lysaer picked himself up, dusted loose earth from his breeches and cloak, then ascertained that one of his pages had recaptured his cantering horse. His eyes still pinned into distance, he said, ‘Wherever the Mister of Shadow lies hidden, whatever his current machination, he’s unlikely to be exposed without risks. I set out to bring these lands protection from his sorceries.’ Wide as sky, the blue eyes lifted to regard Avenor’s captain at arms. ‘Diegan, don’t ask me to reject a whole city just because its governor is petty, and terrified, and convinced royal blood can harm his position. We will ride through Erdane. Should I come to die there, then Tysan will require no prince. A townborn man like yourself will go forward to rebuild Aveuor and unify this kingdom in my name,’

The last time Lysaer crossed the Thaldeins by way of the Orlan Pass, the mountains had been mantled in mist and blizzard. Hastened then in the company of a Fellow-ship sorcerer, he recalled no landmarks beyond drifts and treacherous abutments of seamed rock. With the visible sky 4 ribbon of blue overhead, the scarp traversed today under knives of morning sunlight looked savage and strange, a tableau of broken slate overhangs, wind-chiselled ridges, and stands of gnarled evergreen slashed and skewed with the boulder-strewn scars of old slides. The road wound and jagged between buttressed peaks, a mere lip in places over vast, windy chasms of cold air. The forested valleys unfolded below like creases in a painted silk fan, delicately blued in haze and crisscrossed by the gliding flight of hawks.

Here, a raffish band of barbarian scouts had once dangled Arithon s’Ffalenn upside down from a rope over a precipice. Lent abrasive reminder of a deceit that had once beguiled his trust and friendship, Lysaer gazed down a cliff wall bared of snow and jumbled with bone-grey, splintered timber and stone shards. He could wish now that the knots in the noose had failed.

Had the Shadow Master fallen to his death on that day, seven thousand Etarrans would still be alive with their families.

Over the bends and the rises, the wagons rattled and groaned, their hubs scraping rocks scarred by a thousand such impacts, while the opposite wheel rims flicked gravel in clattering spurts over the sheared edge of the verge. On the approach to the high pass, the carter’s quips echoed through the narrowing way, until Diegan sent outriders ahead to clear the road. Once committed, the drays could neither turn nor manoeuvre; caught between their lumbering bulk, horses and mules could not pass, should wayfarers meet them head on.

Merchants who hauled goods through the pass of Orlan for that reason eschewed use of carts. Informed of the risks, Lysaer had ignored all advice. Mounted, exposed in the vanguard, he looked least surprised when three riders positioned abreast approached and blocked off the trail.

Their mounts were a matched set of bays in gold-beaded bridles; silken manes and tails, and caparisons of loomed wool fluttered and tugged in the wind. Annoyed to see his advance guard had lapsed in their duty to detain so small a party until the prince’s retinue cleared the narrows, Lord Diegan flicked his boot with his crop and began to swear.

His imprecations trailed tamely into silence as he noticed the leader of the trio was mounted sidesaddle. A woman; a boy in his late teens and an elderly man her sole escort, she carried straight shoulders impertinently mantled in a tabard bearing Tysan’s royal blazon. The habit underneath was of flowing black silk, her grey hair, close-cropped as any campaign-bound mercenary’s. Slung at a practised angle beneath her belt lay a baldric and a gleaming sword.

‘Fiends plague us all,’ Diegan said crossly. ‘Who in Sithaer is she?’

Lysaer raised a hand to halt his column in the roadway. ‘The lady is Maenalle s’Gannley, chieftain of the clans of Camris, and if her records can be trusted for accuracy, empowered Steward of Tysan.’ Then, his lips curved in welcome, he spurred his gelding forward to greet her. ‘To judge by the hang of her blade, I’d hazard a guess it’s the living hides of Isaer’s merchants she hunts to furnish her wardrobe. I’ve been expecting her most of the morning.’

‘You know her? You’ve met her before this?’ Belatedly pressed to neaten his wind-crumpled mantle, Lord Diegan expelled a breathless laugh. ‘You do have a plan!’ Lost to confounded delight, he urged his horse into step.

Fifteen paces beyond his honour guard, Lysaer drew rein. Uncrowned beyond the majesty of his sunlit gold hair, he seized royal prerogative and spoke first. ‘Lady Maenalle, well met.’ His nod acknowledged the elder, whom he recalled as her seniormost peer, Lord Tashan; his friendly smile was for the youngster, now grown, who had attended him as pageboy through his past brief visit, before he had joined his gift of light with an enemy’s shadows to banish Desh-thiere’s mists from the sky. In brisk invitation, Lysaer addressed the lady chieftain who had impressed him with her iron-willed fairness. ‘I go to raise Avenor out of ruin and hope you take joy in my tidings. Will you come, and bring your clans out of hiding to join in rebuilding the sovereign city of old Tysan?’

‘Alliance!’ Shocked to white-faced incredulity, Lord Diegan rounded upon the prince. ‘Are you mad? The realm’s mayors will never condone this!’

In the clan chief’s party, the grizzled aristocrat looked incensed. The young man seemed torn by a longing that drove his gaze sidewards and away; while the lady resplendent in Tysan’s state colours held her emotions so savagely in check that the sun-caught gold in her tabard flashed only once and fell still.

Lysaer inclined his head toward his outraged commander at arms. ‘Why waste the resource to retrain our new garrison to fight and manoeuvre like headhunters?’ He added in compelling reason, ‘The clansmen these delegates represent are masters at wilderness tactics already.’

Maenalle’s mount recoiled as her hand snapped taut on the rein. Amber-pale eyes centred in black like a hawk’s never left the features of the prince. Unlike the young grandson who wore his heart in plain view, and despite an unsettled royal bodyguard forestalled by the interposed body of their own liege from stringing short bows to take her down, she showed neither nerves nor defiance. ‘There has been no oath of fealty sworn here, nor any sanction for crown sovereignty given by the Fellowship of Seven.’ The fine-grained lines on her face stayed unsoftened. ‘How dare you speak of annexing my clans as a fighting force? We have no cause to support your wars.’

‘Do you not?’ The significance of her dress, with the colours of kingdom authority overlying the caithdein’s plain black, had not escaped Lysaer’s notice. Diminished a little by sadness, he crossed his hands on his saddle pommel and sighed. ‘Let me pray, then, that you haven’t been beguiled into giving your loyalty elsewhere. That would grieve me. The clans of northern Rathain were all but wiped out for abetting the Master of Shadow.’

They defended their sanctioned prince,’ Maenalle corrected.

‘With children sent out to stab men in the back who were down and wounded,’ Lysaer shot back in bitter truth. ‘With sorceries and traps that slaughtered seven thousand souls in a day. The scion of Rathain is a trickster without morals, a sorcerer who preys on the innocent.’

‘That’s not how the Fellowship phrased it.’ Unflinching as swordsteel, Maenalle never glanced at her grandson, white-faced and stiff at her side. ‘Nor Jieret s’Valerient, Steiven’s heir, whose parents and sisters all died because of Etarra’s invasion.’

‘Who were these people but deluded allies?’ Lysaer’s attentiveness shifted to the boy. ‘If you doubt me, my Lady, look to your own, who is of the right age to be influenced.’

The young man raised his chin. Silent, near to weeping from betrayal, he touched his mount with his heels. Hooves cracked like a shout against silence as his horse obediently turned, presenting the straight back of its rider to the man who once promised just sovereignty.

‘Oh, but Maien was influenced,’ Maenalle said, as drawn now as the grandson at her side, who held his station, trembling and flushed. ‘But not by Arithon of Rathain. The boy’s loyalty was yours, and his love, until Desh-thiere’s curse wrecked the peace. Let us not confuse our issues and deny the sad facts of this feud. You seek to kill a man who is your half-brother, who has these last six years made no effort to outfit a war host against you. My clansmen cannot support your towns against him. Nor may we acknowledge false claim to Avenor. Our allegiance is to be held in reserve for the one of your heirs that the Fellowship endorses to be crowned.’

A cat’s paw of breeze fluttered the sigil on Maenalle’s tabard. Fresh with ice-scent and evergreen, the air seemed too sharp to breathe. Locked separate by nothing beyond glacial cold and state etiquette, Lysaer and the lady steward regarded each other through a charged and measuring silence.

‘We’re to be enemies then?’ the prince said finally. ‘I’m sorry. That outcome isn’t what I’d have chosen. Let me be clear, for your clans’ sake: you are free at any time to change your mind.’ Magnanimously regal, Lysaer finished, ‘If that happens, send me word. And until then, may Ath show you mercy.’

Maenalle’s bold laugh sheared in flat echoes off the rocks. ‘The Creator need not concern himself. As a guest who swore oath at my table, you will be allowed to leave this place without being stripped of your horse and arms. The same can’t be said for your escort.’

‘That’s insolence.’ Prepared to add more, Lord Diegan lost the chance as the wizened old clansman snapped off a hand signal.

The rock abutments by the roadside sprouted movement, followed by a hissed thrum of sound. The draught team harnessed to the lead wagon abruptly slacked backward in their traces and collapsed with a whistling, surprised grunt of air. The drover at their lines took a moment to start shouting; then every man within earshot shared his anger, that each fallen horse lay spiked through its crest with the feathered shaft of a barbarian broadhead. Creased by flawless marksmanship, the animals died in quivering spasms that sent small pebbles clattering off the brink.

Erect and exposed in his saddle, provoked to lordly affront, Lysaer raised his hands.

He would engage his given gift of light, Diegan saw, dazzled by the lightning flare of power summoned at his prince’s fingertips. One blanketing discharge, and the crannies that sheltered clan archers could be scorched by immolating fires. Prepared to seize the initiative, Lord Diegan drew his blade in a scream of steel. He called swift commands to his mercenaries. Prompt action could see Lady Maenalle and her party taken hostage; Erdane’s mayor would pay a rich bounty for their trial and execution.

But before the Prince of the West unleashed his annihilating burst, a second flight of arrows sang down. The barbarian volley chipped stone in splintering explosion under the belly of his mount. The powerful horse shied back on bunched haunches. Forced to nurse the reins and jab in spurs to curb a rear which threatened to toss him over the ledge, his royal rider lost concentration. The light-bolts he shaped dispersed in flat sheets that threw off a harmless burn of heat.

Above the scrambling hatter of hooves, Lady Maenalle voiced her ultimatum. Don’t think to try killing with your powers, Lysaer s’Ilessid. Tell your men who draw steel to stand down. Or a next round will fly and take every life in your company.’

‘Isn’t that what you planned?’ Diegan shouted, his rage torn through strangling mortification. Fighting the horse that shied under him, he snatched a glimpse down the switch-back. The trailing wagon in the column had wrenched crooked, its ox-team folded at the knees, as cleanly arrow-shot as the horses. The prince’s brash cavalcade was hemmed in from both ends and trapped at the mercy of barbarians. In a cry that rebounded through the winds above the valleys, Diegan cried, ‘What are you, woman, but the pawn of the Shadow Master, after all?’

‘I am sworn only to Tysan,’ Maenalle said, her calm like snap-frozen ice. ‘As appointed steward of the realm, my duty upholds the crown’s justice until such day as the Fellowship sorcerers declare a lawful successor.’

Lord Diegan whipped his horse straight. ‘Where’s the equity in robbery and murder?’

‘Don’t resist and no lives will be taken.’ Maenalle tipped her chin at the elder, who dismounted and passed his reins to the boy. Still vigorous despite his weathered looks, he took charge, while scouts in dust-grazed leathers deployed in fierce order to plunder. Their lady commander ended in brevity that rang like a sentence after trial: ‘Only weapons will be confiscated, and those goods offered as bribes by town mayors. Be assured, any gold that might be used to outfit an army for persecution of clan settlements will be turned to a worthier cause.’

Blade clenched in hand, Diegan dug in his spurs. His horse belted sidewards in a crab-step, frustrated and dragged offstride by a rough-looking girl with scarred hands who had managed to dart in and snatch its bridle. She jerked her head for him to dismount, while someone else with painful force laid hands on his person to disarm him.

Try a dagger in my ribs, you’ll die with me,’ Diegan gasped, struggling.

Don’t be a fool, Lord Commander,’ the prince said in glass-edged urgency. ‘I need you alive!’

The commander at arms cast a smoking glare at Maenalle. Unable to speak as the muscles in his jaw spasmed taut, barely able to breathe for the blow to his pride, he swung from his saddle. The last, grinding irony hurt the most, that the horses and the mules could not be manoeuvred past either one of the disabled wagons. Even had he wished to risk engagement, his men at arms could not bolt over sheer cliffs to find cover. While scouts poured like rats from the ridge top and divested him of jewels and purse, he hurled back insults in sweating, savage bursts. They ripped off his cloak and took the beautiful, chased belt knife bought to match his confiscated sword. Down-trail, the venomous oaths of the mercenaries marked the loss of weapons well proven in battle. The more seasoned officers curbed combative tempers before excuse could be found for barbarian arrows to make bloody end to dissent.

Maenalle’s scouts were thorough, immune as wild goats to steep rocks and bad footing. At masterful speed, Lysaer’s disabled caravan and fighting company found itself weaponless and wagonless, then abandoned afoot in the rim walled gorges that led through the ford of the river Valendale. Bitterness replaced their purloined baggage. Although no man suffered harm, and Maenalle’s matchless discipline had prevented anything worse than wisecracks and whistles to befall Lady Talith, no one inclined toward forgiveness.

The wainloads of goods that had been cursed every league across Atainia now became cause for mortal affront.

Pacing at Lord Diegan’s side, his affianced lady astride the one mount that guest oath had held sacrosanct, Lysaer stayed withdrawn. In boots not fashioned for hiking, he blistered his feet with the rest on the wretched, frost-cracked stone. That he carried the only sword among two hundred seasoned fighting men seemed not to concern him unduly. While the shadows swallowed the cliff walls and the day eased to cobalt twilight, Diegan chafed at the silence. His worried glance at his prince was met and matched by a sidelong flicker of mirth.

In no mood for jokes, he spun with such force that a fir branch switched him in the cheek. ‘Fiends and Sithaer’s fury, your Grace, whatever are you thinking?’

‘You’ve got evergreen needles in your velvets,’ Lysaer observed. He broke into a shocking, sunny smile. ‘Do you miss your horse all that much?’

Avenor’s weaponless commander at arms stared, stupefied. His spurs jangled as he kicked at a moss-coated rock, then recouped sufficient dignity to glare at the prince to whom Etarra’s lord mayor had so high-handedly awarded his service. When Lysaer absorbed his pique in brazen merriment, he frowned. ‘Ath! I’ve seen you blast trees to charcoal at the merest flick of a thought.’

Lysaer said nothing.

Jabbed to suspicion, Diegan added, ‘You pulled your strike against those archers on the slope! You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?’

A dying thread of sunlight bloodied sparkles in gold hair as Lysaer gave back the barest shrug. ‘Not precisely.’ His levity vanished and his eyes went suddenly hooded. ‘You might say I expected things might happen as they have. If I tried for a happier outcome, the end result isn’t setback. No one can say, now, that Tysan’s clans weren’t fairly offered their chance to lay due claim to s’Ilessid loyalty.’

But the issue went deeper than that, Lord Diegan saw in awed respect. As the impoverished victim of a clan raid, Lysaer s’Ilessid had bought footing for condolence. Bound on to Erdane as a charity case, not even the city’s irascible mayor might question his need to raise troops. Far from feeling threatened by the muster, his guilds would be moved to endorse it: the prince’s cause would win aid out of congenial commiseration and sympathy. Etarran enough to appreciate a master turn of statecraft, Lord Diegan laughed in the teeth of the wind.

‘By Ath,’ he said in exultant admiration. ‘You’ll have your kingship of this realm, then your army to harry out the Shadow Master. After the scale of today’s losses, the guilds and the town councils will fall over themselves to lend you their funds to raise a garrison.’