The Princess of Avenor stirred from her perch in the bow. Lean and brown from her months spent at Methisle Fortress, and clad like a waif in men's clothing, she and the s'Gannley clansman who tasked himself as her escort ignored their host's habit of thinking aloud. Ellaine offered the empty bucket she
held, in trade for the guardian's filled one.
'Gloves first!' Verrain chided. The melting concern within his brown eyes had once conquered the court ball-rooms of Shand, before the rebellion had torn them to ruin.
A court lady no less irresistibly charmed, Ellaine returned her shy smile and retrieved the reinforced gauntlet. 'Don't slosh that, mind!' Verrain resettled himself, poised to make a fresh capture.
Sunlight lanced through the thick air like ruled gauze as Ianfar poled the skiff across the next reed-bed.
As the princess dug wrist deep through the noisome muck, a shelled creature with needle-sharp teeth fastened over her leather-clad finger. 'Another!' she announced with cheerful good grace.
Ianfar hissed an oath and clapped a fist to his belt-knife.
A needless defence; Verrain's recoiling move reached the lady's side as her bloodthirsty catch broke the surface.
A leopard snail studded with black-and-red pincers laboured to gnaw its way through the soaked glove.
Verrain's barehanded grip pried off the disgruntled creature. 'Here, you. Let's see.' The lilted phrase was more sorrowful than disgusted, a disarming gentleness that had cozened his guests to lend help with the exhaustive task of spring inventory.
Humidity beading her hair and a smutch of slime on one cheek, the retiring princess leaned close as Mirthlvain's guardian mused, 'If you wade in here barefoot, this strain of methspawn would snip your flesh to the bone. See the mouth structure? No fangs should mean this fellow's not venomous. Still, let's be sure.'
He pinned the snapping mandibles and peered past the prod of the mollusk's serrated tongue. 'Harmless. Some others with brindle markings are not. Even worse, some have tail spikes. I've seen strains like that pack a walloping poison.'
Ianfar reset his pole. The craft bobbled forward, while Verrain released the distraught mollusk into the sable silk sheen of the water.
'Oars!' he announced. 'We're going back.'
Again, Ianfar slapped a taut hand to his knife. 'Trouble?'
'Mercy, no. At least, not from the mire.' Verrain tilted his chin in salute to the lady, inelegantly perched with sunburned shins in a rolled-up pair of old breeches. 'Princess, word's just been dispatched here from Althain's Warden. Your overdue escort is soon to arrive. That means I shall have expert help with my snails, and you might prefer the chance to retire, at least for a change of clothing. In barely an hour, you're to be given a Fellowship Sorcerer's reception.'
The draughty fortress at Methisle kept no servants. Its Second Age sprawl of masonry towers had been raised first to house detailed records: exhaustive genealogies compiled when Paravian lore-masters and Fellowship Sorcerers laboured to cleanse the dark mire of its parasitic intelligence. At the change in rule, when mankind took refuge, the aberrant wraiths called methurien had been banished from Athera for six millennia. Yet the lichen-stained citadel on its tufted knoll was still maintained in solid repair. Night and day through the turn of the seasons, Mirthlvain's watch keeper worked the age-old bindings, his charge to confine the savage array of warped creatures that, even now, interbred and gave birth to malevolent offspring.
Lady Ellaine did not feel at ease with the screeling wails, the chitterings, and the bone-chilling night whistles of the amphibians the locked gates and tight wardings restrained. If a season in Verrain's unperturbed company had shown her the misted beauty that enfolded the cypress groves and the eerie delight of the marsh lights that drifted like tufted silk through the reeds, today, her hoydenish freedom would end. Flight from Avenor had brought her to face the power of a Fellowship Sorcerer.
She felt no regret, as she set the garnet pins from Dame Dawr to tuck the tight coil of her hair. Her return to clean petticoats and elaborate skirts did not constrict her in spirit. On the contrary: raised to the demure propriety of the Westlands, Lady Ellaine took comfort, if not consolation, in the boundaries drawn by court manners.
She arose, smoothed the lace on her satin sleeves, then used a two-handed grasp to lift the massive latch that fastened her chamber-door. Cats scattered before her as she gathered layered hems and descended the worn stone stairwell. Her step stayed firm, despite trepidation. If she must, she would move to the next place of sanctuary. Not for man, or avatar, or sorcerer, would she cede her determined ground. Not until her royal husband came forward to answer for two prearranged acts of murder.
Ellaine raised her chin and swept on through the carved doubled doors that let into the upper-floor gallery. Verrain sat below, furled in a fresh robe of peat brown. Broad-shouldered and poised, Ianfar s'Gannley stood beside him in clan braid and leathers, bearing his sword, with his fingers clasped at his back. He heard the silken swish of Ellafne's entry. Faultlessly courteous, he strode to the landing, prepared to usher her to a seat.
The board trestle was empty. The stuffed chairs supported nothing but cats, watching the shadows in the deep corners with haughty, emerald eyes. Of the Fellowship escort, fore-promised for months, no trace as yet seemed in evidence. Ellaine shivered. Despite the full sunlight that streamed through the row of open-air casements, her skin felt brushed over by a 'wintry draught that appeared to have sprung out of nowhere.
'Where is the Sorcerer?' she inquired.
Ianfar drew out a carved chair, winced, and scuffed a felting of hair off the faded upholstery. 'Just arrived,' he admitted. The sparse glance flashed in Verrain's direction disclosed an unusual uncertainty. 'Traithe could not come. My lady Ellaine, you must be aware? About Fellowship Sorcerers, that some of them aren't quite -'
'Behind you!' a voice broke through with clipped pique. 'A split-second sooner, and a span to your left, and you would have trodden straight through me.'
Ellaine turned her head, startled, and found herself facing the apparition headlong. Shade or not, the Sorcerer's presence pinned the nerves like a whetted-steel needle. He was tall, and rakishly slender in pearl-studded cuffs and dapper, green velvets. A short-cropped beard sported a badger's streaked white, and his roguish attention showed merriment. 'Forgive the discourtesy, but we've no time to dawdle explaining the fact I'm not corporate.'
Gallant gesture abandoned, Ianfar s'Gannley left off dusting the chair and raised his fist to his heart in a formal salute. 'Kharadmon,' he addressed, 'as caithdein's heir, how may I best serve the land?'
'At home!' The Sorcerer's impatience rejected the bother of court introductions. 'Your cousin, Lord Maenol, must act at once on a message that carries an urgency. Your charge will be to deliver swift word. A horse to bear you at speed to the Thaldeins awaits you at Isaer's Great Circle.'
'But that site lies on the far side of the continent!' Lady Ellaine burst out, then bit her lip in crimson dismay as Kharadmon's disconcerting regard settled back upon her.
'Your steadfast clan escort will not need to fly,' the shade reassured with asperity. 'Though the prospect would shock the mortal wits from him, the logistics involved are too clumsy. He will be sent on the winds of the flux raised by Athera's magnetics. A three-lane transition across longitude might wreck his digestion, but not to the point where he will be left unfit to stand up and ride.'
Battened behind her mask of state poise, Ellaine fought to calm her quickened pulse. Deportment availed nothing: Kharadmon's intent interest reached past masking pretence and fingered the hidden fear in her heart.
'My lady, you shall not be forced back to Avenor. Ianfar's journey is asked for the realm, but I would not risk his life in a town, any more than you should be exposed to the mysteries at large within the free wilds. You cannot be sent along with this man or take shelter with the clan outpost in the Pass of Orlan.'
'Our people's bitterness can't be laid to rest,' Ianfar mad
e haste to apologize. 'My lady, your husband's execution of Maenalle s'Gannley was deemed an infamous act. She is the only caithdein in history to have been dealt a criminal's death on a scaffold.'
Ellaine locked her trembling fingers. 'If Lysaer is the killer your people have named him, I would tender your clans my apology.' Her bravery nonetheless was sufficient to challenge a Fellowship Sorcerer. 'Don't expect I'll return to a political marriage that excuses the sacrifice of a son.'
'Lysaer was innocent of what befell Kevor,' Kharadmon stated point-blank. 'Nor was your husband involved, or aware of the traitorous plot that killed Talith.' His turbulent brevity did not rest there, or disregard all tactful kindness. 'How strictly would you have me interpret the law?'
Fragile in that moment as kiln-fired porcelain, Ellaine stated, 'With honesty.'
Ianfar went still, aware of what must come, while at the table, Verrain's taut quiet held braced with compassionate pity. Kharadmon scarcely hesitated. 'The crown regency of Tysan has never been recognized.'
Through the brief, warning pause, the s'Gannley clan heir pressed a hand to his face. While the sunlight poured down with harrowing clarity, he was, after all, unable to witness a brave woman's desperate poise crumbling.
Inexorably harsh, the sentence must fall, as a Sorcerer called to deliver the truth was compelled by bound service to qualify. 'Therefore, all right to raise arms and each separate claim to serve royal justice must be declared false authority. By kingdom charter, this counts as misrule. Every life lost, and every last drop of blood spilled under Lysaer's cause, no matter to which side the dead or the injured claimed to have rendered their loyalty, must be accounted as a willfully negative impact.'
Ellaine's tears welled and spilled. Straight and pale, she held on, as Kharadmon's level voice gave the verdict. 'Straitly set, that means murder, by wrongful injury. Lysaer is descended from s'Ilessid, and of Halduin's direct lineage. But the accident of birth has never in history implied any claim to high kingship. Nor, under the law that upholds the compact, is any mortal man god sent, or due any right to impose his held principles over the lives of his fellows.'
At the end, Ellaine crumpled, while Ianfar's grasp, strong and warm, supported her shoulder. 'She cannot return,' he told Kharadmon. 'At Avenor, she will become shut away, wrapped in silk, and imprisoned in silence.'
Head held high, her sienna hair threaded with grey where the ringlets sprang from her temples, Ellaine rallied her shaken poise and bore up. 'My husband is right to cower in fear of your Fellowship's sentence and punishment.'
By her side, Verrain started. Ianfar's shocked fingers tightened.
'Fear us?' Kharadmon's semblance of form momentarily shimmered with sparkling light. 'We are not Lysaer s'Ilessid's accusers! Nor does the hand of our Fellowship mete out any torment in retribution!'
Ianfar recovered in time to redress Ellaine's frowning bafflement. 'Mankind was permitted to settle Athera beneath the mantle of the Fellowship's promise of surety. Since Lysaer s'Ilessid has declared himself above the Sorcerer's grant of protection, his witnessed refusal to answer to them means that responsibility for his injuries cannot be deferred. Nor can any power on Athera's soil offer him an intercession. He stands outside the compact, by his willed choice.'
'Then whose law will answer?' Ellaine asked, courageous.
Since Kharadmon looked tried to knife-edged impatience, Verrain's steadfast calm claimed the burden. 'No law, but the authority of free will. Athera's mysteries are her own defence. Lysaer must stand before the Paravians and speak his case in their unshielded presence.'
Ellaine swallowed. 'He survived what occurred in Daon Ramon Barrens.' At least, rumour held that a centaur had appeared on the field to oppose the trespass of his war host.
Kharadmon shook his head, charged by obligation to cut down even that misperception. 'What Lysaer faced was an incomplete presence. The Ilitharis may have seemed solid enough to the mortal troops on the field. Yet the majesty of a guardian's will can cross time as a parallel projection. This one's living thought form did not leave tracks.'
Yet a precise understanding of Athera's greater mysteries lay too far beyond Princess Ellaine's sheltered experience. She could not question further, even to know what fate might shape Lysaer's future. 'Where is the hope?' Silk rustled as she raised her hands to catch the sparkling fall of her tears. 'The son who might have salvaged the peace has been lost to us both.'
Silent as only a shade could become, Kharadmon could not offer her the least human touch to lend comfort. 'The lady must decide the course of her own fate,' he pronounced at due length. 'I am here to serve the mother of a s'Ilessid son and deliver her where she wills. Either back to mend her torn marriage in Tysan, or else to accept the inviolate sanctuary within the hostels of Ath's adepts. Nowhere else in the land would be safe. Ianfar's clans cannot extend shelter without drawing the vengeful assault of Lysaer's reorganized war host.'
'What if I wished to stay on at Methisle?' Ellaine managed a watery smile for Verrain, grateful for the antique gallantry that had supported her without stint.
'Lady, I'm charmed.' The spellbinder stirred like a mouldered leaf. His absent, scarred hand stroked a tortoise-shell cat, leaped up to parade on the trestle. 'But I can't recommend this. You already know the long winters are miserable. Hot weather brings the high season for spawning. Dangers move abroad in the summer from which I've no adequate means to protect you.'
Lady Ellaine bowed to the inevitable. Her parting words and her curtsey to Verrain showed the instinctive grace that should have shared a ruler's throne without shame. The chaste kiss she bestowed on Ianfar's rough cheek was impeccable for its sincerity.
At last she confronted the discorporate Sorcerer. Escaped from Tysan in a slop taker's cart, she stood with empty hands and the naked cloth of her dignity. 'Let me go on to the hostel at Spire,' she concluded with strained trepidation.
Kharadmon gave her wounded heart a smile like an unveiled diamond. 'My lady, let me say I'm impressed. As a jewel too rare for the hand of your husband, you are not renouncing Tysan's captivity for another term of confinement. The adepts by their nature must honour free will. They will bid you welcome and respect you with kindness for as long as you care to stay.'
Scarcely prepared for the speed of event, Lady Ellaine found herself deep in Methisle Fortress's cellar, with her hand gripped to Verrain's lean wrist. The chamber had barren brick walls, and an oddly concave floor inset with mystical patterns. Her edged nerves had no chance to settle. As the Fellowship presence commanded the raw flow of Athera's lane flux, the pale inlay of the old Paravian focus circle flared into an incandescent burst of white light. She was blinded, not burned. The dire forces scoured out vision, there and gone in an instant. The after-flash took several seconds to fade.
Restored to dank dimness, awash in the flickering glare of the spill left burning at the base of the stairwell, Ellaine shuddered. Where Ianfar s'Gannley had stood: nothing. A long exile had ended. Kharadmon's ineffable, sorcerous working had dispatched the young man on his way to his kin in the wilds of northern Tysan.
Through the ringing of tone that was not sound, but the after-shock of harmonics strung like cobweb through the charged air, Ellaine realized Verrain was speaking.
'. . . won't suffer that sense of spinning disorientation.' Lined features and wide-lashed brown eyes reflected the spellbinder's tender concern. 'Your traverse will take you through by way of the adepts' sacred grove. As you wish, you can make the crossing in sleep. You'd rest in my arms and feel nothing.'
Ellaine shivered. While the focus lines flared from blue to deep indigo, then subsided to pearlescent violet, she grappled with her rattled dignity, then set her spine straight and responded. 'Thank you, but no. If I am to walk through the heart of the mysteries, I'd rather hold on to awareness.'
'Brave one, go in grace. No traveller who enters a mystical grove leaves with the spirit untouched.' Verrain bowed, then steadied her elbow in the grasp of his dauntles
s, scarred hand. 'I bid you farewell. May Ath's lasting peace shape the change that attends you.'
Gone, the chance to renounce that decision: Kharadmon's summons flared out of the flux, and Verrain steered her uncertain step onto the focus.
Ellaine crossed the scribed circles of runes, undisturbed by uncanny sensation. Only her loose strands of hair snapped with static as she passed over the grand cross at the central axis. There, Verrain's kiss on her hand bade farewell and framed Methisle's final remembrance.
Light sheeted over her senses and form, a white fire that swallowed awareness. Ellaine plunged through a blanket of azure, then indigo, then lost herself into the deepest black-violet, which faded into full dark. A cry like song rushed through the unravelled knit of her form, then consumed her familiar senses. She tumbled, without voice, and for time beyond measure, danced to the mad gyre of a whirlwind.
Force that was naked power itself cradled her fragmented self. A fleeting recognition informed her that the touch was Kharadmon's personal signature: a taste like storm lightning, and mercuric space, stitched through by fiercely barbed humour.
Then awareness of her lost body returned. Ellaine felt her stomach turn over. Pressed downwards, too
heavy, she heard running water. Restored to her feet, she found herself standing once more upon firm ground. A streamlet burbled over a bed of white stones, under an ambient twilight. Stately trees twined a leafy roof overhead. Their crowns soared upwards, enfolding a nightingale's song, while a horned owl preened on a branch, yellow eyes wide in the half-light. A deer grazed on the dew-drenched carpet of grasses, while a fluttering snow-storm of tiny white moths dipped over the cups of pale flowers. Ellaine stared in wonderment. Her very skin appeared remade from silk, ablaze with the ghost gleam of spangles.
'Where am I?' she gasped, amazed. Her tissue of clothing seemed stuff spun from dream, shot through the mist of a milk-warm, midsummer evening.