Читать книгу Fugitive Prince: First Book of The Alliance of Light - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 8

Far distant from Araethura’s wind-raked downs, in a wainscoted anteroom trimmed in gilt and agleam with pristine wax candles, an immaculate steward in blue-and-gold livery bowed to King Eldir’s ambassador. “His Grace, the Prince of the Light, will see you now.”

The visiting dignitary on the cushioned bench arose at the royal summons. A middle-aged man of spare bones and blunt demeanor, he seemed unremarkable for his post. Nor did he display the stylish, warm manner which trademarked the gifted statesman. Clad still in the travel-splashed broadcloth he had worn from the mired winter harborside, he followed the servant through the massive, carved doors, then down the echoing corridor which led to Avenor’s hall of state. Cold light, reflected off a late snowfall, streamed through the lancet windows. Here, no stray sound intruded beyond the measured tap of footsteps upon satin-polished marble.

The palace sanctum where Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid plied the reins of his government lay far removed from the chopped mud of the practice yard, where the handful of veterans returned from campaign drilled their surviving field troops.

No secretaries murmured behind closed doors. A lone drudge polished rows of brass latches, her labors methodically silent. The hush felt inert as the vault of a tomb. Three weeks was too soon for the city to assimilate the impact of a fresh and unalloyed tragedy. The burgeoning industry of Avenor, so magnificently restored, seemed stalled; as if even the very resonance of power stood mute, stricken numb by the news that even now rocked the five kingdoms.

Of the forty thousand dedicated men sent to war in the rocky scarps of Vastmark, all but ten thousand had died of the strategy unleashed by the Master of Shadow.

The declared neutrality of King Eldir’s realm made those casualties no easier to grapple. The ambassador sent by his liege to shoulder today’s dicey audience was a man appointed for patience, and valued for his skeptical outlook. The outraged grief and shocked nerves he encountered made even simple needs difficult. Since the hour of his arrival, he had weathered a brangle with the seneschal’s undersecretary, and before that, a harbormaster’s flash-point temper, to secure his state galley a close anchorage. He chafed at the pressure. To miscall any small point of diplomacy could spark an unforgiving train of consequence.

For the stakes ran beyond mere potential for bloodshed. The dead-locked struggle between the Prince of the Light and his enigmatic, sworn enemy had widened. Arithon’s works now polarized loyalties, and compromised trade in four kingdoms. Folk named him Spinner of Darkness since Vastmark. Fear of his shadows and rumors of fell sorcery attached to his secretive nature.

Sensitive to the pitfalls in the tidings he carried, the High King’s ambassador reviewed his firm orders. Then his sovereign lord’s entreaty, unequivocal and clear, given upon his departure: “Your loyalty may come to be tested, and sorely. Lysaer s’Ilessid can be disarmingly persuasive in pursuit of his hatred of Arithon. But the Fellowship Sorcerers grant no credence to his war to destroy the Crown Prince of Rathain. Your errand may well be received in disfavor. Should you find yourself compromised, even imprisoned under wrongful charges, you must keep my realm of Havish uninvolved.”

If the ambassador regretted the burden of his mission, the moment was lost to back down. The steward escorted him through the arched portals which led to Avenor’s state chambers. Masking unease behind a lift of dark eyebrows, for the credentials from his king had been public and formal, the dignitary found himself admitted through a less imposing side door.

In the smaller room used for closed hearings, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid awaited. He was alone. A less imposing man, unattended, might have been overlooked on the dais, with its massive oak table, hedged by tall chairs with their carved and gilded finials, then these dwarfed in turn by the star and crown tapestry, device of Tysan’s past high kings. The woven device masked the east wall, gold on blue beneath the spooled rail of the second-floor gallery.

Limned by a flood of cold, winter sunlight, this sovereign’s presence filled that lofty well of space as a jewel might rest in a reliquary.

The dignitary from Havish discovered himself staring, forgetful of protocol or the ingrained polish of court ceremony.

Fair, gold hair seemed tipped in leaf silver. The eyes were direct, the clear, unflawed blue of matched aquamarine. Where Lysaer s’Ilessid had always owned a powerful, charismatic male beauty, the Vastmark campaign left him changed. Now, his majesty went beyond poise. As steel smelted down and reforged could emerge from the punishment of hammer and anvil to carry a keener edge, the pain of a massive defeat had tautened his flesh over its framework of bone. Less given to smiling platitudes, he wore the tempered, private stillness of the veteran who has squinted too long over hostile terrain. The strong southland sun, the cruel weather, the indelible grief imprinted by the loss of thirty thousand lives had but rekindled this prince’s resolve; like a lamp set burning on a fuel of sheer faith, to illuminate where a lesser flame would fail.

The ambassador shook off stunned paralysis. He tendered the bow that acknowledged royal bloodline, but implied no stature of rank. The detail struck him as curious: the prince had eschewed to display the sovereign colors of Tysan. Instead he wore a tabard of white silk, trimmed with gold cord, and fastened at the neck with stud diamonds.

Lysaer s’Ilessid began in a brisk form quite altered from the effortless courtesy which trademarked his single, past visit to Havish. “You may sit. I will make no apology. This meeting must be short and private. A gathering of kingdom officials and outside delegates is scheduled to take place after this one. Those who attend have been discreetly handpicked. I hope you’ll consent to be present, both as an independent witness, and as King Eldir’s representative.”

“It is to his Grace of Havish such apology is due.” Blunt features immersed in shrewd thought, the ambassador wondered whether his equerry might have talked over beer in a tavern. Had word of his business reached Lysaer beforetime, today’s air of secrecy boded ill. He perched on a bench, a touch on edge, his words like thin acid before the autocratic whims of royal privilege. “In fact, my appointment concerns an errand for the Fellowship Sorcerers, entrusted to Havish’s keeping.”

“Indeed?” An unexpected irony raised Lysaer’s eyebrows. “That being the case, all the better if our discussion is kept close.” He stepped around his state chair and settled. The stillness in him now went deeper than patience, went past mere endurance, or the blustering confidence a beaten man raised in game effort to shrug off defeat.

About Lysaer s’Ilessid lay a quiet that towered. His immutable, restrained force made the glare through the casement seem displaced, the hard scintillance of his gold trim and diamonds jarring as a master painter’s slipped brushstroke.

He said, “I make no secret of my bias. The doings of Fellowship mages are no longer welcomed in Tysan.”

The ambassador rejected political wrangling. “Any tie to the Sorcerers is indirect, you shall see. My case concerns the first ransom in gold, raised to free your lady wife. The one which vanished during transit across Mainmere Bay this past summer.”

“Five hundred thousand coin weight,” Lysaer mused with unswerving mildness. “My merchants, who raised the bullion, remember that setback too well.” In phrases wiped clean of residual anger, he added, “That sum was purloined by the Master of Shadow. You bring me word of the contraband? I’m amazed. The Fellowship Sorcerers were nothing if not in cahoots with that blatant act of piracy. Go on.”

The ambassador folded stiff fingers inside the lace of his cuffs. Too circumspect to pass judgment on the doings of mages, he picked his way cautiously. “Your lost gold was returned by Prince Arithon’s hand, and surrendered under Fellowship auspices. By appointment as neutral executor, the crown of Havish will restore the full sum to your Grace’s treasury. The incident, as you claim, went beyond simple theft. The Master of Shadow waylaid your lady’s ransom as a tactic to stall your war host from invasion of Vastmark.”

“Five hundred thousand coin weight in exchange for the time to arrange for thirty thousand deaths.” Lysaer never moved, his seamless detachment enough to raise frost on hot iron. “What price, for the blood that was spilled in Dier Kenton Vale?”

The ambassador sidestepped that baiting insinuation. “The treasure is guarded aboard my state galley, counted and bound under seal by his lordship, the Seneschal of Havish. Upon my receipt of signed documents of discharge, the gold can be consigned to the care of Avenor’s state council.”

No need to prolong the particulars; a writ of acceptance could be drawn up and sent to the harbor by courier. Avenor’s strained resource could scarcely spurn funds, however embarrassing their origin. Havish’s envoy straightened, in haste to exchange due courtesy and depart. He had no authority to stay on as witness to the afternoon’s clandestine council.

Yet before he could draw the audience to an end, the royal steward flung wide the door. A tightly bunched cadre of trade ministers filed in, their clothes trimmed in furs and jewelled braids. Costly, dyed plumes cascaded from their hat brims; their hands flashed, expressive with rings.

The prince had staged his private meeting to converge with the ambassador’s presence. Eldir’s delegate settled back on his seat, out-maneuvered by the forms of diplomacy. While the trade worthies vied like rustling peacocks for the places close to the dais, he waited in guarded resignation for the play of Lysaer’s strategy.

This would be a volatile, partisan gathering to judge by the seals of high office displayed by the men who attended. Trade background let the ambassador identify at least a dozen of Tysan’s ruling mayors, united in their distrust of Arithon. Other delegates with complaints against the Shadow Master had been summoned from extreme long distance, as shown by the black-and-gold lion of Jaelot emblazoned on a dignitary’s tabard.

Another who wore plain broadcloth and boots seemed displaced, all fidgety with nerves as he moved through the trappings of wealth and the suave, mannered men of high power. The table filled, then the seats arranged by the side walls. The liverish governor of the Western League of Headhunters hunched uncommunicative beside two stolid commanders at arms with the broad, southcoast vowels of Shand. These would have suffered direct losses on the field, or borne firsthand witness to the devastating sorceries wrought from illusion and shadow.

Rathain’s foremost headhunter, Skannt, sauntered in with his gleaming collection of knives. He chose to stay standing, arms folded, in the cranny by the gallery landing. At his shoulder, companionable and stout chested, Lord Commander Harradene chuckled over some pleasantry. To him fell the captaincy of the disheartened remnants of Etarra’s decimated field troops. The chair left vacant by Lord Diegan’s death stayed unclaimed to Lysaer’s right hand. As yet no replacement had been named to command Avenor’s elite garrison. Nearest to the prince, faced bristling across four feet of oak table, a muscled, tight-lipped mercenary traded glares with Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother of a clanborn duke from the eastshore kingdom of Melhalla. The scruffy little cleric in scholar’s robes placed between them stared through the window, oblivious to the smoldering hatreds entrenched through five centuries of bloodshed.

The men Lysaer s’Ilessid had drawn to his cause were of disparate backgrounds and loyalties, too fresh in alliance to mingle in comfort, and too volatile a mix to leave standing too long without war to harness their interests. They crowded the small chamber like rival wolves, the martial devices of the field captains’ surcoats bold as game pieces beside the padded silk pourpoints of city ministers.

Lysaer called the meeting to order. He might wear no coronet of royal office, yet the absent trappings of rank stole no force at all from his majesty. His opening phrase slashed the crosscurrents of ambition and froze them forcefully silent. “We are gathered this hour to resolve my claim to the powers of crown rule, offered to me by legitimate blood descent, and sealed into edict by Tysan’s independent city councils.” His hand, bare of rings, moved, reached, and lifted a heavy document weighted with state seals and ribbons.

All eyes in the room swung and trained on the parchment. Against the expectant, stalled quiet, something creaked in the gallery, behind and above the seated audience.

A snap of air flicked across a taut bowstring, then the whine of an arrow, descending.

Its humming flight scored through Captain Skannt’s scream of warning, and above these, the shout of the archer, in sheared, clanborn accents, “Such claim is unlawful!”

A sharp crack of impact; the four-bladed point impaled the parchment and skewered it to the table. The chink of shattered wax became lost in the noise as the dignitaries chorused in panic, “Barbarian! Assassin!”

Pandemonium rocked through the room. Scribes bolted for cover. Overdressed trade magnates and timid mayors ducked, trembling and frightened to paralysis. Entangled and cursing, war-hardened commanders surged erect and charged, bowling over spilled hats and cowering figures. They heaved empty benches before them as shields and pounded for the stair to the gallery.

“I want him alive!” Lysaer cried through the clamor. Uncowed and looking upward, he wrested the arrow from the tabletop. The lacquered red shaft gleamed like a line of new blood against his stainless white tabard. The hen fletching also was scarlet, the cock feather alone left the muted, barred browns of a raptor’s primary.

“That’s a clan signal arrow. Its colors are symbolic, a formal declaration of protest.” The speaker was Skannt, the headhunter from Etarra, his lidded eyes bright in his weasel-thin face, and his interest dispassionate as ice water. “In my opinion, the archer struck what he aimed at.”

Lysaer fingered the mangled parchment, slit through its ribbons and the artful, inked lines of state language. He said nothing to Skannt’s observation. Motionless before his rumpled courtiers who crowded beneath the shelter of tables and chairs, he awaited the outcome of the fracas in the gallery. Five heavyset war captains rushed the archer, who stood, his weapon still strung. He wore nondescript leathers, a belt with no scabbard, and soft-soled deerhide shoes. In fact, he was unarmed beyond the recurve, which was useless. He carried no second arrow in reserve. As his attackers closed in to take him, he fought.

He was clanborn, and insolent, and knew those combatants who brandished knives bore small scruple against drawing blood to subdue him.

Fast as he was, and clever when cornered, sheer numbers at length prevailed. A vindictive, brief struggle saw him crushed flat and pinioned.

“Bring him down,” Lysaer said, the incriminating arrow fisted between his stilled hands.

Scuffed, bleeding, his sturdy leathers dragged awry, the clansman was bundled down the stairs. He was of middle years, whipcord fit, and athletic enough not to miss his footing. Space cleared for the men who frog-marched him up to the dais. He stayed nonplussed. Through swelling and bruises, and the twist of fallen hair ripped loose from his braid, his forthright gaze fixed on the prince. He seemed careless, unimpressed. Before that overwhelming, sovereign presence, his indifference felt like contempt.

Through the interval while rumpled dignitaries unbent from their panic, to primp their bent hats and mussed cuffs and jewelled collars, his captors lashed his wrists with a leather cincture borrowed from somebody’s surcoat. The clansman never blinked. He behaved as though the indignity of bonds was too slight to merit his attention.

“Slinking barbarian,” a man muttered from one side.

Another snapped a snide comment concerning the habits of clan women in rut.

No reaction; the offender held quiet, his breath fast but even. His patience was granite. The royalty he had affronted was forced to be first to respond.

“If you wanted a hearing, you have leave to speak,” Lysaer s’Ilessid said, forthright. “Consider yourself privileged to be given such liberty.” A tilt of his head signaled a scribe to snap straight, find his pens, and smooth a fresh parchment in readiness for dictation. “Set this on record,” Lysaer resumed. “To bear arms in the presence of royal authority carries a charge of treason.”

“Your authority, royal or otherwise, does not exist,” the clansman replied in his clear, antique phrasing, too incisive to be mistaken for town dialect. “Since my arrow isn’t struck through your heart, you have proof. I haven’t come for your death.” He lifted his grazed chin. “Instead I bring formal protest. This writ signed by townsmen to grant sovereign power in Tysan is invalid by first kingdom law. The tenets of this realm’s founding charter hold my act as no crime. Your claim to crown rule is in flagrant breach of due process.”

“I need no sanction from Fellowship Sorcerers.” Lysaer laid down the arrow, unruffled. Winter sun through the casement spanned the stilled air and exposed him; even so, he gave back no shadow of duplicity. For a prince who had lost untold lives to clan tactics, then his best friend and commander to covert barbarian marksmen, this unconditional equilibrium seemed inspired. His reproof held a sorrow to raise shame as he qualified, “I must point out, your complaint as it stands is presumptuous and premature. This writ from Tysan’s mayors has not been sealed into law. I have not yet accepted the mantle of kingship.”

To the stir of surprise from disparate city mayors, the murmured dismay from trade factions, and the outright, riveted astonishment of King Eldir’s ambassador, Lysaer gave scant attention. “As for treason, let this be your trial.” He gestured past the clansman bound before him. “The men assembled here will act as your jurors. No worthier circle could be asked to pass judgment. You stand before the highest officials of this realm, and the uninvolved delegates from five kingdoms. Nor are we without a strong voice from the clans. Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother of Alestron’s reigning duke, may serve as your voice in defense.”

“I speak for myself!” the barbarian insisted over the scraping disturbance as upset chairs were rearranged, and the attendant men of government refocused their interest through the rustle of settling velvets. “Let there be no mistake. Since the murder of Maenalle s’Gannley, caithdein and steward of Tysan, her successor, Maenol, has appointed me spokesman before witnesses. Upon false grounds of sovereignty, for the act by which you mustered armed force to make war for a wrongful claim of injustice, hear warning, Lysaer s’Ilessid. Forsake your pursuit of Arithon s’Ffalenn. Or no choice remains for the good of this realm. The response from my kind must open a clan declaration of civil war.”

“I think not.” Lysaer set down the arrow. A small move, made with unemotional force; barely enough to stem the explosive outrage from the merchants who had lost profits to the Shadow Master’s wiles, and from veteran captains his tactics had broken and bloodied on the field. Lysaer’s blue eyes remained stainless, still saddened. His regard upon the captive never wavered. “Rather, I believe your clan chieftain would resist me as an act of insurrection. His grandmother died a convicted thief on the scaffold. He will see worse, I can promise, if he persists in rash overtures of violence. Woe betide your people, should you let your clans be bound in support of a proven criminal. To abet the Master of Shadow against me is to threaten the safety of our cities.”

“This is a strict issue of sovereignty!” the clansman pealed back through the sawn and inimical silence. “Your royal inheritance has been disbarred by the Fellowship of Seven because your fitness to rule has been compromised. We serve no cause outside of our land’s founding charter! This war you pursue against Arithon of Rathain is engendered by the curse laid on you both by the Mistwraith.”

The Lady Maenalle s’Gannley had said the same words in the hour of her execution. The heavyset Mayor of Isaer might have borne witness, since she had been tried and condemned in his city, under his justiciar’s tribunal.

Havish’s ambassador himself could confirm that the statement held more than a grain of hard truth. But his king’s will kept him silent, even as the other dignitaries expressed their searing disbelief. Ill feeling already ran hot on both sides. However the thundering crosscurrents of hatred bent truth to imperil the prisoner, Havish’s representative could do naught but observe.

Lysaer’s control was not absolute. Despite his impressive majesty, no matter how staunch his self-command, distrust of old blood royalty made his claim to the throne controversial; more telling still, the question just raised against the morality of his dedicated conflict. Fresh losses still stung. Inside one year, the campaign he pursued against the Master of Shadow had seen the eastshore trade fleet sundered and burned at Minderl Bay, then the clash as the armed might of four kingdoms ended in an abattoir of spilled blood at Vastmark.

As new uncertainty threaded tension through the gathering, all eyes fixed on the prince in his tabard of flawless white and gold.

His stance held straight as an arrow nocked to the drawn bow. He perused the assembled dignitaries, nestled like plumed birds in roped pearls and winter velvets; acknowledged the military captains with their muscled impatience; then diverted, to touch last on the single man in the chamber born to a laborer’s status. One whose stiff, uneasy stillness stood apart from languid courtiers like a stake hammered upright in a lily bed.

“How I wish the threat posed by the Master of Shadow were due only to the meddling of Desh-thiere.” A disarming regret rode Lysaer’s pause. Then, as if weariness cast a pall over desperate strength, he relinquished his advantage of height, sat down, and plunged on in bald-faced resolve. “But far worse has come to bear on this conflict than rumors of an aberrant curse. This goes beyond any issue of enmity between the Shadow Master and myself. Hard evidence lies on record in the cities of Jaelot and Alestron. Twice, unprovoked, Arithon s’Ffalenn wielded sorcery against innocents with destructive result. Now, in the course of the late war in Vastmark, a more dire accusation came to light. Since it may touch on the case here at hand, I ask this gathering’s indulgence.”

The prince beckoned for the plain-clad man to mount the stair to the dais. “Your moment has come to speak.”

The fellow arose to a scrape of rough boots, his occupation plain in his seaman’s gait and hands horned in callus from a lifetime spent hauling nets. Too diffident to ascend to the level of royalty, he chose a stance alongside the accused clansman. His embarrassed gaze remained fixed on his toes, unscuffed and shiny from a recent refurbishing at the cobbler’s.

“I was born a fisherman at Merior by the Sea,” he opened. “When Arithon’s brigantine, the Khetienn, was launched, I left my father’s lugger to sign on as one of her crewmen. Under command of the Master of Shadow, I bore witness to an atrocity no sane man could sanction. For that reason, I deserted, and stand here today. Word of his monstrous act at the Havens inlet must be told, that justice may come to be served.”

Then the words poured from him, often halting, tremulous with remembered horror. Too desperately, he wished to forget what had happened on the summer afternoon as the Khetienn put into one of the deep, fissured channels, where the high crags of Vastmark plunged in weather-stepped stone to the shoreline of Rockbay Harbor. Today, pallid under the window’s thin sunshine, the seaman recounted the affray, when two hundred archers under Arithon s’Ffalenn had dispatched, without mercy, a company five hundred and thirty men strong.

“They were murdered!” the sailhand pealed in distress. “The vanguard were cut down in ruthless waves as they scrambled, exposed on the cliff trails. More fell while launching boats in retreat. They were dropped in their tracks by volleys of arrows shot out of cover from above.” The long-sighted seaman’s eyes were raised now, locked to a horrified memory. As if they yet viewed the steep, shadowed cliffs; the wave-fretted channel of the inlet; the still-running blood of men broken like toys in the brazen, uncaring sunlight. As though, beyond time, living flesh could still cringe from the screams of the maimed and the dying, scythed down in full flight, then tumbled still quick in their agony into the thrash of the breakers.

“Such slaughter went on, unrelenting.” Before listeners strangled into shocked quiet, the damning account unfolded. Impelled now by passionate outrage, scene after scene of inhumane practice were described in the fisherman’s slow, southcoast accent. “Those wretches who fled were killed from behind. Any who survived to launch longboats did so by shielding their bodies behind corpses. Their valor and desperation made no difference. They were cut off as they sought to make sail. Every galley turned in flight was run down and fired at the mouth of the inlet. No vessel was spared. Even a fishing lugger burdened with wounded was razed and burned to her waterline. Mercy was forbidden, at Arithon’s strict order. By my life, as I stand here, and Dharkaron as my judge, the killing went on until no man who tried landfall was left standing.”

The fisherman stirred, came back to himself, and shifted his feet in self-consciousness. “All that I saw took place before the great rout at Dier Kenton Vale.”

The last line trailed into appalled, awkward stillness. City officials sat in their numbed state of pride, pricked down the spine by an incomprehensible fear. Their poise like struck marble, every veteran commander sweated inwardly, forced to accept that the wretched, slaughtered companies could as easily have been their own men.

The moment hung and then passed. Deep breaths were drawn into stopped lungs. Bodies shifted and hat feathers quivered, and humid hands fumbled through scrips and pockets in quest of comforting handkerchiefs.

Then the floor loosened into talk all at once.

“Ath show us all mercy!” The minister of the weaver’s guild fanned a suety face with the brim of his unwieldy bonnet. “What sickness of mind would drive a human being to command such a letting of blood?”

“The killing appears to have been done for no reason,” the Khetienn’s deserter stressed mournfully. “No one who landed at the Havens survived. The wyverns there scavenged the corpses.”

But the ambassador from Havish weighed the sailor’s lidded gaze, that darted and shied from direct contact. Instinct suggested this witness had withheld some telling fact from his speech. For malice, perhaps, or personal rancor against his former captain, he might slant his account to spark vengeful impetus to Lysaer’s ongoing feud.

“But Arithon s’Ffalenn never acts without design.” The passionate impact of Lysaer’s rebuttal spun electrifying tension in contrast. “No man alive is more clever, or sane. This Spinner of Darkness would have his reason, cold-blooded, even vicious, to have timed and effected such slaughter.”

Lysaer stood, fired now by conviction which no longer let him keep still. The light shimmered across his collar yoke of diamonds, template to his distress. “We know the scarps above Dier Kenton Vale were splintered into a rock fall. Earth itself was suborned as a weapon to break the proud ranks of our war host. If the rim walls in that territory are prone to slides, the ruin rained down on our troops was a feat beyond all bounds of credibility. What if more than exploitation of a natural disaster were the cause? Could sorcery in fact have been used to cleave a new fault line? Even weaken the structure of the shale?”

Disturbed murmurs swept the benches. Feathers rippled and velvet hats tipped, as men shared their fears with their neighbors.

“Arithon s’Ffalenn was born to mage training!” Prince Lysaer exhorted above the noise. “Through his seemingly wanton slaughter at the Havens, could he not have tapped the arcane power to rend the very fabric of the earth?”

On orchestrated cue, the shriveled little man in scholar’s robes started up from his unobtrusive dreaming. “The premise is not without precedent,” he affirmed in a drilling, treble quaver. “There are proscribed practices that herb witches use to tap forces of animal magnetism.”

A stunning truth. Every common man-at-arms who ever bought an illicit love philter had observed the filthy practice.

“These distasteful creatures will slay a live animal, then cast binding spells from the spilled effervescence of its life essence. How much more potent the power to be gained, if the sacrificial victims were human?” The scholar cast his accusation above an uneasy, incredulous anger. “Be sure, the massed deaths of five hundred spirits would be enough to cleave the very mountains in twain to wreak that unconscionable destruction on our troops!”

“The question is raised,” Avenor’s deep-voiced justiciar sliced through the uproar. He nodded in respect to his prince, then addressed the bound clansman. “If the Master of Shadow engages dark magecraft, the preeminent arcane order on this continent has not stepped forth to denounce him. The Fellowship Sorcerers have not spoken. Nor have they acted to curb his vile deeds. The Warden of Althain himself is said to feel each drop of blood spilled in Athera. Every death at the Havens would be known to him. Why should he let this atrocity pass?”

A mayor in the front row raised an imperious fist. “The opposite has happened, in practice!”

A scathing point; more than once, the Sorcerers had stood as Arithon’s spokesmen.

Havish’s royal ambassador stiffened, then stamped down his urgent protest. In even-handed fairness, hard against their better judgment, the Fellowship Sorcerers had also endorsed today’s return of the princess’s purloined ransom. Lysaer’s avoidance of that truth was duplicitous. Pained by the loyalty due his own king, the ambassador endured through the unjust malignment, while Avenor’s justiciar widened the charges in his sonorous, gravelly bass.

“What is the Fellowship’s silence, if not evidence of collaboration? By this lack of intervention, events would suggest that the Sorcerers may support all of Arithon’s actions against us.”

“They gave their vaunted sanction to Rathain’s crown prince,” Etarra’s Lord Harradene allowed. “If the Fellowship stands together as the Shadow Master’s ally, the consequence can’t be dismissed. They may have become corrupted. If they deem the use of dark magecraft as no crime, Prince Lysaer, as the public defender of the innocent, would naturally be obstructed in his legitimate claim to rule Tysan.”

The clan prisoner’s sharp protest became shouted down by another voice as accented as his own. “Now there’s a braw, canting spiel, well fitted for a mealymouthed lawyer!”

Mute on the benches, the ambassador from Havish shut his eyes in relief.

Volatile as spilled flame in the red-and-gold surcoat of Alestron’s unvanquished clan dukes, Mearn s’Brydion, appointed delegate of his brother, sprang up in pacing agitation. “While you bandy conjecture in mincing, neat words, let us pay strict attention to procedure! If this slaughter at the Havens ever happened, where’s hard proof?” He cast suspicious gray eyes toward the sailhand, impervious himself to the looks turned his way by townsmen distrustful of his breeding. “Or will you sheep dressed in velvets let yourselves be gulled by the word of a man disaffected?”

As the deckhand surged forward, flushed into outrage, Mearn raised a finger like a blade. “I’ve not said you’re a liar! Not outright. Arithon’s a known killer, that much I grant. I witnessed the debacle he caused in our armory. But whether his slaughter of these companies at the Havens took place as a blood crime, or some cruel but expedient act of war, the killing was done on the soil of Shand. Can’t mix your legalities for convenience. Town law won’t apply to a kingdom. Under sovereignty of Shand’s founding charter, as written by the Fellowship of Seven, Prince Arithon’s offense is against Lord Erlien, High Earl of Alland. As caithdein of that realm, the Teir s’Taleyn is charged to uphold justice in the absence of his high king. The question of Prince Arithon’s guilt falls under his province to determine.”

“What is the old law to our city councils?” cried the plump, ribboned spokesman from Isaer. “Just hot wind and words! The caithdeins’ authority was broken when the uprising threw down crown rule. And even if our mayors cared to bow to dead precedents, has this new evidence against Arithon not tainted the clans’ legal claim? What if the Fellowship’s morals are debased? Shall we wait and watch our cities become victimized?”

Talk rose, scored through by a treble run of panic. Even the sallow, bored Seneschal of Avenor thumped his stick fist to be heard. “Should we risk being deceived, or stay willfully blind, then suffer the same ruin that leveled whole buildings in Jaelot?”

From all quarters of the chamber, heads turned. Ones bare and close cropped to accommodate mail, and others fashionably coifed. Earrings swung, and jewelry chinked, as every face trained on the Prince of the Light. He alone could speak for both factions, through hard-won respect and ties to an old blood inheritance.

Yet it was Lord Shien, joint captain of Avenor’s field troops, whose remark stormed the floor into quiet. “If the barbarian before this council was sent as an envoy to declare his chieftain’s enmity, we have sure trouble here at home!” A large man, with meaty, chapped knuckles and a frown that seemed stitched in place, he raised the bull bellow he used to cow recruits. “And whether or not the Master of Shadow has embraced wickedness, or sacrificed lives to buy power, dissent from the clans will give him a free foothold here to exploit. We dare not allow such a weakness. Not before such dire threat.”

Attention swung back. Like blood in the water amidst schooling sharks, men fastened their outrage upon the offender held bound within reach. “Sentence the archer! Condemn him for treason! Let him die as example to his brethren!”

“Do that,” interceded the long-faced justiciar, “and according to town edict, he dies on the scaffold, broken one limb at a time.”

“He was sent to contest a legitimate point of law!” Mearn s’Brydion warned. “Take his life in dishonor, and your clans here will never be reconciled.”

“A child knows better than to break into state chambers bearing arms!” a southcoast mayor bristled back.

Inexorably, sentiment aligned. The delivery of the chieftain’s message had been insolent, a mockery of civilized practice. No townsman remembered the bygone tradition, when a ceremonial arrow gave symbolic exchange of a high king’s censure from his liegemen. Where those old ways once forestalled needless bloodshed, now, they were seen as provocation. The trade guilds had suffered too many losses in clan raids to trifle with forgotten forms of etiquette. Nor was Lord Shien inclined toward forgiveness. Not when his divisions had been held home in Tysan, guarding the roads from the spree of vengeful ambushes launched after Lady Maenalle’s execution. His blood burned in balked rage for those companies marched south, every comrade in arms to perish untimely of a sorcerer’s fell tactics in Vastmark.

Only the ambassador from Havish regarded the clan prisoner with pity. The man waited, his stance easy. His attention never shifted from the face of the prince on the dais.

Lysaer s’Ilessid withheld intervention. Serene as smoothed marble, his form touched in light like the finished planes of a masterpiece, he allowed the dissonant chaos of argument to roll and rebound and gain force. He listened for the moment when his disparate factions became unified, their imprecations a shouted resonance of passion, crying for blood in redress.

Then he held up one hand. A spark snapped from his palm, the smallest manifestation of his gift. But the flare of illumination cracked like a whip through raw noise and engendered immediate silence.

Before venomous animosity, he stayed detached, his diamonds like frost on a snowfield. Then he inclined his head to the captive before him. “You’re fully aware, a vote cast now will condemn you. Town law has small mercy. You could suffer a brutal public maiming before death.”

The clansman said nothing.

Lysaer used the pause. While the atmosphere simmered in fierce anticipation, his study encompassed every minister, hard breathing in velvets and furs. The officers of war endured his regard, unflinching, then the mayors, with their gnawing, hidden fear. The prince they had signed into power was royal, closer in ties to clan ancestry than they wished. The price of their protection from the Spinner of Darkness might come at the cost of their coveted autonomy.

Yet to refute the traditions of city law outright, Lysaer had to know, he would flaw the amity of their support. Foremost a statesman, he showed no hesitation. “The case of your clans might have fared best by waiting. Before you shot down your colorful ultimatum, you could have heard out my answer to this document.” He fingered the torn scroll of parchment in unfeigned regret, as he added, “For you see, I have no intent to accept the burden of crown rule at this time.”

After the first, indrawn gasp of surprise, a stunned stillness, as if the overheated air had hardened to glue, with every man gaping at the prince.

Lysaer showed long-suffering equanimity. “There are truths to this conflict against the Master of Shadow even I have withheld from general knowledge. I wish above all to avoid seeding panic. After the failure of our late campaign, we need order more than ever to rebuild.”

He had his factions riveted, the ambassador saw, struck by a surge of admiration.

“Arithon s’Ffalenn may have been born a man, but he has foregone his humanity,” Prince Lysaer resumed. “His birth gift presents an unspeakable threat. This, paired with his use of unprincipled magic, redoubles our peril before him.” Lest the quiet give way to fresh altercation, Lysaer delivered his solution. “I sit before you as this criminal’s opposite, my gift of light our best counterforce to offset his shadow. For this reason, I must decline Tysan’s kingship. My purpose against Arithon must stay undivided for the sake of the safety of our people.”

The logic was unassailable. Defeat on a grand scale had shown the futility of choosing one battlefield for confrontation. The inevitable striving to forge new alliances, to restore shaken trust after broadscale ruin, then the wide-ranging effort to buy a mage-trained enemy’s downfall, must draw this prince far afield from Avenor.

He said, “For the stability of this realm, I suggest that a regency be appointed in my name, answerable to a council of city mayors. This will serve the crown’s justice and bind Tysan into unity until the day I have an heir, grown and trained and fit beyond question for the inheritance of s’Ilessid birthright.”

The stroke was brilliant. Havish’s ambassador noted a spark of comprehension hood the eyes of Mearn s’Brydion.

Though the prisoner pointed out in acerbity that the realm’s caithdein held an earlier appointment to the selfsame office, but without formal ties to city government, his case was passed over. Old hatreds lay too long entrenched. Throughout the chamber came a squeaking of benches, a nodding of hats, as guarded interest eased the tensions of mayors and guild magnates. The most hardened eye for intrigue, the most shrewd mind for statecraft, must appreciate that Lysaer gave up nothing beyond the trappings of crown and title. Sovereign power would largely reside in his hands. Except townborn pride would be salved. The uneasy transition back into monarchy could proceed with grace and restraint.

City mayors would keep their veneer of independence. By the time they left office, their successors would wear the yoke of consolidated rule as comfortably as an old shoe.

“We shall have a new order, tailored for this time of need. Past charter law forbids the cruelty of maiming. And this is Avenor, where my dominion is not in dispute.” Lysaer stepped to the edge of the dais, pale as lit flame against oncoming storm as clouds choked the sky past the casement. Whether his gifted powers of light touched his aura, or whether his gold trim and diamonds shimmered in unquiet reflection, the effect was magnificence unveiled.

The ambassador from Havish forced himself to look away from the brilliance, the drawing pull of a gifted man’s charisma, as the prince’s fired, clear diction pronounced final sentence upon the clan archer.

“Here is your fate, by my word as s’Ilessid. Your hand shed no blood. But an ultimatum against me was tendered by your caithdein, Lord Maenol s’Gannley. For that, you go free as my spokesman. My safe conduct will see you outside the city gates. Tell Maenol this: he may come to Avenor before the spring equinox and present himself before me on bent knee to beg pardon. Let him swear fealty in behalf of his clan chieftains, and no one suffers redress. But if he refuses, should he declare open war, I will enact sanctions in reprisal for treason against all the people of your clans.”

A murmur swelled from the benches, slammed still by Lysaer’s brisk shout. “Hear the rest! I have funds at hand to rebuild the eastshore trade fleet. Every galley and vessel which burned in my service at Minderl Bay will be replaced at Avenor’s expense. I promise that every merchant who receives restitution will suffer no more raids at sea. The Master of Shadow and his minions will think twice about attacking with fire, since the newly launched ships shall be manned at the oar by chained convicts. Condemned men fairly sentenced as Arithon’s collaborators, and as of this hour, take warning: Maenol’s own people, if he fails to bind his clansmen under my banner to take arms against Arithon of Rathain.”

To the headhunters’ stiff-backed dismay, Lysaer granted swift reassurance. “Bounties will not be repealed for renegade clan scalps. But if Maenol s’Gannley refuses his allegiance, double coin will be tendered for each male barbarian captured and brought in alive.”

For a moment, as if deafened by a thunderclap, the clan archer did not move. Then he drew breath like a rip through strained cloth and gave answer in blazing contempt. “If any small blessing can be prised out of tragedy, I thank Ath my Lady Maenalle never lived to see this. I will return to her grandson, caithdein of this realm, and tell him you threaten us with slavery.”

Nothing more did he say as his bonds were released, and guardsmen were dispatched to see him on his way through the gates.

The ambassador from Havish used the confusion to slip through the ranks of halberdiers. Outside in the corridor, he ducked into a window niche, while the sweat dewed his temples and curled the short hairs of his beard. This was not his fight. And yet, even still, his mind seemed loath to relinquish the pull of Lysaer’s seductive delivery.

The prince owned a terrifying power of conviction. Thirty thousand lives gone and wasted in Vastmark had left his dedication unshaken. Nor would his adherents awaken and see sense, tied to his need as they were through inherited blinders of prejudice.

The tramp of the men-at-arms and the clansman they escorted dwindled, then faded away beyond hearing. Outside, white on gray, new snow dusted downward. The wind’s biting cold seemed to seep through the casement and strike an unmerciful ache in the heart. The ambassador shook off the memory of Mearn s’Brydion’s thin features, seething in stifled restraint, his clanborn outrage no doubt throttled silent by some stricture from his brother, the duke.

Worn from the effort of leashing his own temper, the ambassador from Havish shook out his linen cuff and blotted his dampened face. The word he must bear home to his liege boded ill.

On both sides, the corridor was deserted, its white marble arches bathed chilly silver by stormlight. Lysaer’s voice carried through the opened door in fiery address to his council. “We are gathered here today to begin the long work of uniting all kingdoms against the Master of Shadow. Given his acts of evil, there exists no moral compromise. Our task will not ease until no dwelling remains on this continent where ignorance will lend him shelter. We are come, in this hour, to found an alliance to act against terror and darkness.”

Steps pattered across the council room as someone inside moved to remedy the door left ajar. Sickened, tired, afraid for the future and anxious to embark on his downcoast run back to Havish, King Eldir’s ambassador hastened away, too burdened to risk hearing more.