'Ath!' Dakar stabbed stiff fingers into the shining, dough folds of his cheeks. 'I hurt too much for this. Your cook's brandy is evil and ought to be banned from civilized consumption for eternity.'
'Well, my Shandian wine won't be much more merciful.' Parrien licked his split lip, then added, reluctant, 'We had to dose a second flask with valerian since the first one failed to put your prince's lights out.'
Dakar's hands fell. He flopped back on crushed pillows, the resolve all leached out of him, except for his eyes, which stayed piercingly wide and direct. 'Dharkaron, you're serious. His Grace wouldn't quit, even when he was beaten?'
Parrien was sour. 'My best archer's got a thumb bitten down to the bone as living proof.'
Dakar's worry intensified. 'His Grace only gets that difficult if he's desperate.'
'Or insane.' Parrien winced at the jolt to his balance as the kick of changed tide in the inlet riffled rip currents beneath the Khetienn's keel. 'When I threatened to break his arm to keep him passive, he asked me point-blank to break his leg.'
'To spare his hands for his music? Sweet Ath!' New sweat sprang and dripped down Dakar's temples. He laced sausage fingers into the screwed hair at his nape, his frown pinched to alarm. 'If Arithon said that, he's not going to be reasonable. The only way to be sure he won't act is to follow through with your threat.'
"That's barbaric!' Parrien's square face stood wide open to shock. 'An honorable man couldn't.'
'But this isn't about honor, or decency, or pity,' Dakar blazed back from his agonized prostration. 'This is about keeping the Master of Shadow away from Prince Lysaer's throat. We can't survive another curse-driven bloodbath. Are you hearing me?'
Parrien stopped raging, his blunt hands raised in a gesture of warding disbelief. 'You believe Mearn's predicament provided an excuse? That the Mistwraith's own curse could have raised this uncontrolled outburst of ferocity?'
'I don't know that for certain.' Dakar rallied sick nerves and propped himself upright. 'Except we can't risk the possibility. All the future's at stake if we judge this wrong.'
'Dharkaron's fell Chariot, you mean, break his leg?' Parrien backstepped as if the Avenger's Black Spear might fall dipped in fire to torment him. 'We don't do things like townsmen, nor cause wrongful harm to sworn friends for expediency.'
Dakar said with queer dignity, I wouldn't call preventing a needless, mad slaughter anything so simple as expedience.'
Flattened to the bulkhead, Parrien weighed that terrible truth, his circling conscience trapped and raging. 'If this happens, before Ath, we'll answer our clan blood debt to the s'Ffalenn prince up front.'
Before Dakar could smooth down the thorns of rankled pride, Parrien beckoned to his brother's prize captain of mercenaries. 'Step forward, Vhandon. Dakar needs to know you're no hireling soldier.'
In fact, the taciturn veteran was Duke Bransian's oathsworn commander at arms, bearing clan bloodlines back to the uprising. The spare phrases Parrien chose for introduction gave too little recognition for the man's impressive record on the field. 'Tell me, Vhandon,' Parrien finished, his depth of stark weariness struck through his bearing, and his eyes like the heads of iron nails. 'Is Talvish there your most steadfast man?'
'None finer.' Always grudging with words, Vhandon shot an appraising glance at Talvish, then added, 'He's a man for tight corners with the sword.' His eyes remained calm, the color of rubbed jade under the ash-colored jut of his eyebrows. The wrinkles at the corners looked quarried in granite as he held his fighting stance, feet braced against the ship's roll.
Parrien nodded, satisfied. 'Very well. Hear my orders as if they come from your duke, for his name and family honor are now yours to keep. You and Talvish will break Prince Arithon's right leg. Make a clean job. I don't want him lamed. Then you will stand by him, through convalescence and beyond. For s'Brydion good faith, you will swear this spellbinder a blood oath to serve him. Then defend him, life and limb, for as long as you are fit to bear arms or until the curse of the Mistwraith is broken.'
Dakar jerked erect, mouth opened in protest. 'You can't do this. These men have ties, surely. What of their families left in Alestron?'
But Parrien shouted him down. 'No! Don't speak. Compensation is fitting. Who else could your liege ask to take Caolle's place now?'
Into stunned silence, Vhandon's deep voice added emotionless support. 'My sons are grown, my one daughter married.' He tipped a nod to the tall, blond swordsman in the corner. 'Talvish is unattached, yet, and Earl Jieret's clans have no able lives left to spare, not since their best fell to their liege's defense by Tal Quorin. Someone must stay who has enough muscle to keep your Shadow Master flat until the affray with the Riverton shipyard reaches quittance.'
'Fine, then,' Dakar snarled. 'What if Talvish objects?'
The younger man leaned at ease against the closed doorway, his spidery hands quiet and his air of lithe stillness unruffled. 'For the s'Brydion good name, I'll serve Prince Arithon as if he were my bloodborn charge.'
'And get your thumbs bitten, too?' Dakar countered, too much in pain not to vent his distress. 'A viper's less volatile. Don't weep to me when you discover his needling temper.' Since threats and appeal gained him no satisfaction, he accosted Parrien again. 'Dharkaron wept! We're beleaguered enough by patrols and sunwheel galleys, we risk death each time this vessel takes on provisions, and his Grace himself's a damned killing nuisance, convalescent. If I've got to live through this when he wakes up, one Ath-forsaken leg won't be enough to hold him back.'
When Vhandon looked irate, Dakar explained, his round face a misery of apprehension. 'His crew will act for him. More than half were redeemed from slave labor at the oar by his active intervention. If Arithon asked for Fate's Wheel to be stopped on its axis, his officers would die in the attempt. For the sake of the peace, we might have to bind and gag him for the duration.'
Parrien looked doubtful as a dog about to slip its collar and run amok. 'His crew would support a curse-driven intent to stir up fresh mayhem in Tysan?'
'His crew would see us gutted the moment they found out we'd compromised Arithon's free will.' Dakar cracked back. 'I thought that's the disaster your outright gift of guardsmen was being offered to prevent. You don't want to discover how your innards might look strung over the Khetienn's topsail yardarm? Then blindside that wretched little desertman and shuffle your arse back into your longboat. Pull your duke's galley out with the tide, and don't even think to look back.'
In the black hour before dawn, Prince Arithon began his muddled return to full consciousness. Dakar, poised by the berth on silent vigil, read the first warning sign in the slight, taut flex of his lips. The green eyes were masked behind damp cloths to ease contusions and swelling. But the fingers, once smoothed in relaxation on the blanket, clamped closed in the dawning awareness that the brigantine's hull tossed in motion. No longer did the Khetienn ride placid at her anchorage behind the barrier isles at Sanpashir. The thundering draw of full canvas aloft bespoke someone's treasonous order to effect an immediate departure.
Dakar was ready for the first, surging thrust as Arithon pushed himself erect.
'Don't,' he murmured gently, then caught with both hands in support.
A terrible stopped breath, to choke back the scream as the body discovered its wracked agony, and convulsed in an outraged spasm of reaction. Face turned away, Arithon allowed Dakar's careful strength to lower him back against the pillows piled up for a sickbed.
'Your three ships are bound offshore. The worst has been done.' The Mad Prophet plowed on out of mulish need to stamp down his knifing remorse. 'If you lie still, I'll bring something for the pain.'
'My leg?' gasped Arithon, when the shocked breath in his chest unlocked enough to allow him civilized speech. The hand he raised trembled wildly as he explored the poultices which swathed his forehead and eyes. 'For bruises, I trust?'
Dakar swallowed. 'Your sight isn't damaged. There's a cut needed stitching. The herbs are to hold down the
swelling.'
No dignified means existed for masking helpless relief. Beneath the soaked cloth, Arithon's mouth thinned to bitterness. 'Don't ever run afoul of the s'Brydion. They keep their clan word like fell vengeance.'
A pause; then, 'We owe them.' The startling break moved beyond plain confession. 'And for more than stopping my fit of insanity this evening. You wouldn't have escaped the grasp of that crown examiner, except for Parrien's intervention. I saw the proof in one of the letters. The man's a sensitive to spellcraft, a true talent, if one without formal training. Lysaer's chosen trackers are growing more dangerous. Worse than my darkest imagining.'
'I know.' Dakar dashed away liquid which welled from his eyes. In dogged, vain hope, he clung to the banal. 'We can't use that tavern to collect dispatches again.' He fumbled, caught the bulkhead in support, then managed to grasp the cup with the elixir he had kept ready and waiting.
'A potion won't mend things,' Arithon murmured. More than pain edged his impotent fury. 'For blood at a wedding and another fleet savaged, what will be the cost this time?'
He believed they were alone. In a tactic of silenced desperation, Dakar used the cup to cut off the flooding spill of words.
But when Arithon finished, sunk back in the pillows with all of his vulnerable core stripped for the eyes of two strangers, he caught the Mad Prophet's wrist with suffering force and added the devastating finish. 'That's three times, now, Dakar.' He referred to the need to use crippling violence to deny him his willful, free choice. 'When will it end? When I'm blinded, or broken, or witless? Caolle need not have died if I could have turned to the knife in the hour before sanity left me. Now I almost made the same misstep again. The Mistwraith's curse is not manageable, not anymore. Tell the Fellowship when you see them, I beg their reprieve. Release their blood oath, and give back my option to abandon this life if I must.'
With one arm held prisoned in Arithon's grasp, and the other hand clenched to the cup, Dakar bit down on his lip to choke back his howl of naked outrage and sympathy. Words forsook him. Nor would he abandon a loyalty grown into a quandary to torture the spirit. Nothing remained except to endure through the terrible wait until the dosed wine took hold and the Shadow Master's hard fingers slackened. Too many minutes elapsed before the ragged, tormented breathing eased into the false tranquillity of drugged sleep.
Blinded in misery, Dakar arose. Oblivious to company, he blundered into the drawn, watching presence of Parrien's two clansmen, bound now into Arithon's service.
Before their stricken quiet, the canker inside of him burst. 'Well, did you think him the immoral criminal Lysaer's Alliance is wasting the countryside to kill? He's Athera's own Masterbard, and he has a true heart. Just like he won Caolle, he'll earn your deep loyalty. Nor can his Grace give you the peace he can't win for himself. You'll find this a desperate, difficult service before Daelion Fatemaster sets final seal on your record.'
Late Winter 5654
Resignation
Prince Lysaer returned to his fair city of Avenor as the thaws broke, the roads transformed overnight into a grabbing morass of slush. Splashed mud thrown up by the hooves of the royal cavalcade smeared the destriers to the hocks, and spattered the hems of the outriders' surcoats. The Exalted Prince himself was not exempt from the earth's seasonal anointing. His reentry into Avenor's central plaza occurred under standards whose streamers displayed the only unsullied silk in his company.
In reverse irony, the revived field troops from Etarra had turned out in dress ceremony to meet him. Their appointments were flawless, their sunwheel tunics without stain. The flooding, pale brilliance of the late-season sunlight starred reflections off their polished steel helms and buffed quillons.
The Prince of the Light motioned his honor guard to a halt. He let his cream charger advance to the fore; passed his paired standard-bearers, flying the gold star on blue of Tysan, and the sunwheel pennon, each with cloth-of-gold streamers, snapping full length in the day's brisk breeze, to his right and his left. A horse length ahead he drew rein. No smutching of mud could diminish the majestic figure he cut, tall and stately in a saddle wired with bullion trappings.
His eyes were the blue of a summer sky zenith, unclouded. Nor did his countenance admit any shadow as he held his station to receive formal greeting from the troop's commander, Lord Harradene.
'You will have a reason to have supplanted my garrison troops in this mundane duty, old friend.' His tone was grave, his words pitched low, that only those nearest might hear. 'Why this show of a public ceremony? My ear has always been yours for the asking. What event under sky could have altered that trust? Think carefully. I would grant you this audience in private.'
'Your Grace, welcome back.' Etarra's gruff field captain bent his knee to his sovereign, a man irremediably changed. No one who remembered the spiked, iron force of him failed to observe the startling new diffidence in his bearing. The bear's glower once turned on his recruits was no more. Under the tissue of lucid, thin sunlight, his rough-cut features were downturned in a wrenching flush of embarrassment.
The huge, mail-clad arm, which had never shown weakness in the grimmest press of battle, now raised his great sword in salute, marked by unsteady trembling. This occasion would not mark joyful reunion, nor celebrate the recovery of the troops he had led for the glory of the Light into Caithwood.
'My Lord Prince, I speak in the open,' Lord Harradene insisted. Harrowed uncertainty burred his voice as he reversed the grip of huge hands and offered his sword pommel first to his sovereign. 'Let no closed door stand between you and your people of Avenor. In plain words, in honesty, I give my confession: I can no longer serve as the terms of my oath to the Light would demand. I speak as well for the men in my company. All who stand with me today will fight no more against Shadow. Whether our lives were undone by sorcery, the future we face is not arguable. We will cause no more bloodshed. I am unfit to carry out your orders on the field, nor are these men suited to bear arms for your purpose of war against the Spinner of Darkness.'
Prince Lysaer moved no muscle. For the one, sustained instant he seemed a figure spun of glass against the backdrop of Avenor's state buildings. Under clear sky, pinned to formal duty by the unforgiving regard of public accountability, he had no choice but confront the cruel truth as given. Nor could he mediate the inflexible disposition of crown justice for these men, self-confessed to be forsworn in their oath to the Light.
Your announcement strikes like a blade to the heart,' Lysaer said, his hand taut on the rein in bitter regret for the ironies. The cream charger tossed its head. Fast reflex let him gentle his grip; no such small mercy could relieve the attentive focus he trained on the field commander from Etarra. 'No praise of mine can measure the extent of your loyal courage.'
For Lord Harradene had chosen to make the break clean. His self-respect as a strategist demanded no less; he would have no ground ceded to the blurring ambiguity of friendship. Rather than risk his sworn prince to an exposure of human weakness, he ensured his last victory to the s'Ilessid cause. Here, in Avenor's wide plaza, with the commoners his unforgiving tribunal, prince and field commander faced off in the painful, shared knowledge that the high morals of state dared not bend for the sake of personal amity.
Detached to ice, Prince Lysaer reached out. With a hand that showed the bearing of rock, he accepted the grip of the sword. 'State your case.' He inclined his head toward another of the riders, who spurred forward on command to bear witness. 'The crown seneschal shall make official record.'
Gone, the option to appeal for reprieve; Lord Harradene plowed on through a torn note of heartbreak, 'My liege, keep my steel, to break in dishonor as you choose.' If his voice did not reach the farthest edges of the plaza, his gesture left no shadow for doubt as he fell to his knees, disarmed before Lysaer's stirrup.
Nor would the intrigue of governing politics forgive the humane hesitation, as Lysaer weighed options or words. Hand closed on the sword grip, he must not shrink from the crux, or l
essen the gravity of due consequence.
'You have called your oath forfeit.' His magisterial reply carried on the chill quiet, and reached every riveted onlooker. 'I accept your blade in full recognition that your service is ended. But never in shame. Arise. Stand tall before these, the people your actions at arms have defended at Minderl Bay, at Vastmark, in Rathain's fell wilds, and not least, here on crown lands in Tysan.'
A pause, while Lysaer transferred the weapon's cold weight. He extended his hand to the man who knelt at his stirrup. As Lord Harradene was raised to his feet by divine strength, the prince's final disposition reechoed throughout the plaza. 'Let no one in Avenor speak your name in dishonor. Your service to the Light has ever upheld truth and right, and that record shall stand untarnished. Go home. Live in peace until the day you pass the Wheel. For what befell you in Caithwood, cherish my promise: I will one day deliver my revenge upon the Sorcerer who has dared to curtail a career of flawlessly dedicated service. Your sword I will keep, and bestow upon the man who succeeds you. His first charge shall be an undying pledge to break the unholy alliance between the Master of Shadow and the minions who practice the corruption of free minds through spellcraft.'
Lysaer released his gloved grip, saying softly, 'Live well, old friend.' Then he dug in his spurs and wheeled his charger, and addressed the captain of his honor guard. 'Detail someone to collect the arms of these men. Let them gather their kit. Then assemble an escort from the garrison to see them safely on their way through the city gates.'
His cavalcade moved off then, stately in the grime of their travel, with the banners bravely snapping in the wind. They vanished behind the grilled archway of the state palace bailey, while the crowds screamed and cried adulation. Throughout the short distance completing their march, neither the Divine Prince nor his guard accorded a look back at the proud, polished field troops from Etarra, honored, but stripped of trust, and excused from loyal service to the Alliance.