Arithon delivered his point with taut clarity. 'I am begging the clans to make peace with the towns.'
Before Mearn could howl his savage rejoinder, the Master of Shadow plunged on. 'The Light's religion is supported by feud. Break its line of support from the merchants, and the incentive to grow will lose impetus. Stop piracy, cease raiding, and within one generation, the need for armed conflict will wither.'
'What! You say we should bend our necks to the mayors!' Parrien pealed in disbelief.
Keldmar's frustrated bellow defeated the rest. 'Whose force will stop townsmen from violating the free wilds? And how will we maintain our blood lines and culture if our tradition does not stay separate?'
Bransian stabbed his mangled fork into the table-top . The clangour of silverware jounced against plates and underscored his distemper. 'Are you done yet, prince?'
'Shortly,' said Arithon. 'I've already garnered Lord Erlien's backing. Tomorrow, I move on to Atwood to place my appeal before the chieftains of Melhalla. Once they're amenable, I'll move on to Halwythwood and lay my proposal before High Earl Barach and his sister, Jeynsa s'Valerient.'
Aware of a persistent, disturbed rumour from that quarter, Parrien grinned. The crocodile tickled by minnows, he said, 'What if your style of absentee charm fails to win over your vested caithdein?'
Arithon raised his eyebrows. 'Then the final word rests. Rathain's clans by crown sovereignty have no choice but to answer to me.'
Mearn sucked in a swift breath, forehead knit. 'To achieve that, your Grace, you'd have to submit to all of your sanctioned inheritance. You'd let the Fellowship complete the arcane attunements of a high king's coronation?' Still staring with focused intensity, he added, 'Dharkaron's aimed Spear! What under Ath's sky came to break your fixed will? Ask me, I'd have sworn that no power alive could have brought you to heel on that issue.'
'No power alive,' stated Arithon s'Ffalenn. Against the back-drop of arrested shock, his response held tortured simplicity. 'At Kewar, I discovered the cost of shed blood upon a Paravian-wrought sword-blade. That's tied to the matter of your threatened heritage. If Alestron shoulders the part I am asking, friendship would bind me to accede to that debt.'
Duke Bransian folded his forearm across the concealed sheath of his dagger. 'State your proposal,' he told Rathain's prince. Since the prospect of a restored crown in the north would create needed safe-guards, and shore up the clans' harried standing, he subsided to listen. 'What part must s'Brydion take to press you to invoke such a personal sacrifice?'
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn mounted the dais. Exposed to the risk of violent contact, he braced his hands upon the rucked table-cloth. He regarded the s'Brydion brothers and their wives. Then, each in turn, he acknowledged their gathered, grown children. 'You must give up your home to the cause of Ath's peace. Dismantle each battlement, stone from set stone.' As umbrage stirred, he pursued his case, speaking quickly. 'Deny Lysaer s'Ilessid the target to strike and forbid him the victory that would cede these warded walls as a future Alliance stronghold. Then join your resource with the rest of the clans living in the free wilds. From that position of reinforced, mobile strength, marry your efforts with theirs.'
While the savage offence in s'Brydion eyes raked him over without quarter, Arithon pressed through, unflinching. 'Begin to rebuild the broken trust that has alienated the old blood lines, and dismantle the long-standing bleeding of trade that keeps the head-hunters' coffers funded against you.'
'Never!' cried Keldmar, slammed to his feet as his gesture swept the vaulted hall. 'These gates have never been breached in defeat. We've broken the heart and ripped the marrow and sinew from every armed host ever mustered against us!'
'Our ancestors bled and died on this ground!' Parrien added, incensed. 'How dare you suggest we slink off like whipped dogs for the sake of a few prying priests!'
'For no priests at all,' Prince Arithon responded. 'We are talking of clan-blood's role in the compact, your long-term survival, and the threatened foundation that sustains Athera's grand mysteries! I have seen ! At full strength, bound to peace, you will have a future in which to rebuild every tower of your wrecked citadel. Deny the cause that supplies the Light's doctrine, and my half-brother becomes a curse-driven fanatic without any footing to mount a resistance.'
Shown shut faces, tight fists, and shouted down by the clamour of vicious objection, Arithon raised a masterbard's diction, pitched to raze through all deafening noise.
' Give me Havish, Melhalla, Shand, and Rathain, free from clan strife and predation, and Tysan becomes a backwater pocket. Her merchants will be helplessly landlocked by winter if High King Eldir will seal amity and join force with me, and impose a stiff policy of port sanctions!'
Mearn's time at Avenor as s'Brydion ambassador showed him the first glimmer of merit. He smashed his glass to call halt to the racket, then rammed sane debate through the breach. 'The north doesn't have enough blue-water sail to slip through a determined blockade. Certainly, Havish could close the southcoast.'
'He could arrest shipping, if Parrien's seamanship backs him,' Prince Arithon was swift to point out. 'My trained crews can bottle-neck Instrell Bay, and deny access through North Ward and Anglefen. Move now, with Tysan caught at a standstill and reliant on its fleet of oared galleys, we ought to be able to strangle their guild industry within a season. Scarce funds and choked trade will drive the Alliance into a bloodless submission.'
'We could do as much without dismantling our citadel,' Bransian declared, his inimical scowl stamped into place and his clenched hands like raw beef before him.
Arithon matched that gruelling regard. 'You could not,' he said, honest. The sorrow of his empathic understanding ripped to the bone and arrested the duchess's breath. 'Not with Kalesh and Adruin raised to arms on your door-step, and Etarra mustering troops. The instant you're stripped of the pretence of your sunwheel alliance, Alestron becomes a fixed target. You can't abide. The hour's too late. Don't underestimate the affliction of Desh-thiere's curse! Though I may have found means to master its relentless drive to seek slaughter, let's not cloud the facts! The geas still coils its hate through my vitals. For Lysaer, that urge has become overpowering, and I tell you now: subversive unrest draws him to Shand. This was my intent. We must now pin him down, hold him here as the winter sets in! That leaves Tysan cut off and vulnerable. The head of the snake can be defanged in the south, as long as there is no given cause, and no traitorous town, to serve the Alliance with the determined incentive to rally.'
But Bransian broke patience and shoved to menacing, full height, overshadowing the slight bard before him. 'You count us cheap, prince! The might of my men-at-arms is no pittance, to dissolve at the first threat of conflict. We will not turn tail! How dare you suggest that we shrink from the battle that my captains have been bred and trained for?'
'Courage has no bearing,' said Arithon s'Ffalenn. 'Fate's dice have been cast. By next spring, mark my words! You'll face a rising you cannot win. The hard past notwithstanding, I'm disarming a war that is bound by cursed impetus to destroy you! My lord of Alestron, listen and live! Or believe me, I'll turn my back and walk out, and never once weep for your memory!'
Bransian received this in electrified silence. Aware of his quivering edge of leashed temper, Liesse looked on, afraid to speak, while Mearn, Parrien, Keldmar, and Sevrand awaited the hair-trigger move that would unsheathe killing steel against a Fellowship-sanctioned crown prince.
Before s'Brydion temper, a man would be foolishly mad to hold his firm ground while disarmed.
'Don't try me,' said Arithon, his calm of a depth to strike warning.
Bransian sucked in a taxed breath, spoke at last. 'You would spurn our amity, prince? Repudiate our resource, that has shouldered your cause, even stooped to spy on your enemy's lair at Avenor? We have provisioned your blue-water ships. Have harboured your fugitives, with no questions asked. Now you insist you should broker our surrender, based upon fear and the belief we're incompetent to de
fend on our own home ground?'
Uproar threatened. Bransian brandished his fist, quelling his wolf pack of brothers. 'Go on, prince. Make yourself heard!'
'I prize your friendship.' Torn to the thread of his honest desperation, Arithon sustained the duke's threat. 'I value true honour, none better,' he said. 'But there, I must draw my firm line. Bear witness, Bransian, before the eyes of your family! I will not endorse suicide. I refuse to back pride that will bring children to slaughter under the name of my birthright!'
No bard, now, but a sorcerer clothed in his assurance as initiate master, the Prince of Rathain bowed to acknowledge the duke. No man stirred. None served him with violence as he gave his salute to Dame Dawr, tucked erect in her chair. Last, his back turned, standing vulnerable to the uncivilized might wrapped in rage and fine silk on the dais, he pronounced his formal release. 'On my word as Teir's'Ffalenn! The alliance is severed, that once was sworn upon the high ground at Vastmark.'
There and then, Arithon descended the stair and walked off. Across the barren stone to the doorway, his footstep stayed firm in resolve. The men-at-arms the grandame had stationed gave him way without question. He passed through with no blade raised in challenge, and never a pause to look back.
The oak panel boomed shut and cut off his departure as he let himself into the street.
Left with ringing silence, nobody moved. As though glued in the draught-fluttered spill of the candles and the sickly-sweet reek of spilled brandy, the moment hung in suspended, high-strung disbelief.
Then Liesse stirred. Pearls clicked as she leaned forward and unstuck the fork her husband had jammed through the table-cloth. 'His Grace meant every word,' she ventured, shocked pale. 'Mercy upon us! That was not any show of performer's theatrics.'
Bransian's icy regard never shifted from Dawr's drawn face, where she sat, discomposed and erect in defiance. 'You promised him this?' The duke's wounded gesture encompassed the keep's walls, hung with their faded array of war trophies: over five thousand years of proud history reflected in dented shields, commemorative swords, and sun-faded antique banners. Sick with grief, he accosted the grandame whose harsh wisdom had never so cruelly savaged his charge to carry his forefathers' heritage. 'You think you'd survive your first winter living in a freezing hide lodge on jerked meat, and suffering harsh conditions and privation?'
'I'm not ruling, as duchess,' Dame Dawr pointed out. She arose, leaning heavily on her silver-bossed stick. While her man-servant collected the abandoned lyranthe, she smoothed her skirts, squared trim shoulders, and for the first time, refused to meet any-one's eyes. 'My youngest grandchild is a grown man, while yours are still suckling at breast. I gave Rathain's prince his chance to be heard. Nothing more, since your decision will change the span of my days very little. It's your children's future,' the s'Brydion dowager said. The weight of her years wrung her to a sorrow that battered her to exhaustion. 'Either way, I won't be faced with bending my neck to that upstart popinjay and his false religion.'
Mearn regarded his older brother, bemused. 'I don't like the taste of what's happened. Not one bit. Arithon had the brute power to coerce us. Both as Masterbard, and as an initiate sorcerer, he could have enforced our compliance.'
'Why didn't he?' Adrift without any target, Bransian crashed his balked fist on the table. 'His Grace lives and breathes by his twisty wiles! Would he play fickle and turn on his heel if he truly foresaw our defeat?'
'He would not disabuse himself of Ath's law,' Dawr stated. 'Remember, each day, that he hasn't. His doings henceforward are not your concern. You have but one task ahead of you now: take arms. Yours is to make certain the cost of his seer's vision does not ever come home to roost.'
Summer 5671
Atwood
Three days later, by nightfall amid drenching rain, the Prince of Rathain met the small party of clansmen posted to intercept him at the border of Atwood. He came on foot. From Alestron, he carried no more than his sword and a cerecloth cloak bestowed by a charitable stranger. The lyranthe from Selkwood remained in Dawr's chamber, its silent strings his undying reminder of the integrity that forced his renouncement.
The fine clothing that she had gifted in turn had been soaked to sad rags by the downpour. Two nights on the road by a caravan's fire had grimed the silk ribbons and voile cuffs. Folded shivering into the anxious press of the scouts assigned charge of his safety and welfare, Arithon allowed them to hasten him into the cover of their rough-hewn shelter.
There, the Mad Prophet pushed through to greet him, his brosy face worried, and his jerkin redolent of the birch coals that made up their scant, woodsman's fire.
'You're earlier than we'd hoped.' Attuned to Arithon's dispirited quiet and distressed beyond care for exposure, Dakar raised the dripping panes of the candle-lamp. Mottled light showed him the haunted face of a man set stalking for lethal quarry. 'You've lost your vital backing at Alestron, I see.'
'Give the wives time,' came the wearied response. While the scouts gave them space and helpfully dug through their packs to scrounge a spare change of clothing, Arithon knelt and warmed his chilled hands. 'Alestron's women are unlikely to view the issue as settled. If I lost my first move to dissolve troop morale by sowing uncertainty in the barracks, I did gain Dawr's backing. Although she wasn't entirely convinced, she did not close her mind. My word of unequivocal severance, set against the hard build-up of enemy troops may be all we have left to shift Bransian's rock-stubborn pride.'
'An outside hope.' Dakar sighed. 'You knew failure was likely.'
Arithon's swift upward glance held the pain a fellow seer recognized all too well. 'That's a mean comfort, isn't it?'
Dakar's preferred remedy, to seek refuge in drink, was not going to succour the cruel edge of this man's initiate awareness. The scouts also kept their respectful distance. No one need mention the outright disaster: that lacking the support of Alestron's ships, its stockpiled weapons and armed strength, with the discipline of its field-trained captains, no peace with the towns was going to be possible. Unequally matched, the forest-based clans could never risk the long-term price of a coexistence that might erode their vital heritage by assimilation.
A gust battered the wood, whisking a barrage of soaked leaves under the flimsy hide shelter. Arithon shook out his sodden sleeves, swiped back his wet hair, and stood. Under the close scrutiny of Melhalla's scouts, he refused the last word in defeat. 'If your caithdein will hear me, I'll present my case. We're not lost, as they say, until bloodshed.'
That moment, the oddly strained air of expectancy ruffled his mage-trained awareness. 'What's wrong?'
The scout nearest blurted, 'Your Grace, we have a Sorcerer already here to meet you on Fellowship business.'
'Which one?' asked Arithon, attentively stilled. The return of poached crystals would never merit the pitched urgency that now surrounded him.
'Traithe was the only one they could spare,' Dakar admitted with dismal reluctance. 'This isn't about amethysts, though the news could have waited until you were dry and had a chance to snatch something to eat.'
'We have horses waiting,' the lead scout persisted, relentlessly scornful of pauses for comforts that could be expedited, astride. His sceptical distaste measured the pleated sleeves and crushed velvet that remained of the fancy court clothing. 'Your liegemen gave us their word of assurance that your Grace required no coddling.'
'Vhandon and Talvish? They're not my keepers, and Dame Dawr's taste in cloth was designed to please women, not handle the elements in the free wilds.' Arithon stripped his rich dress and allowed their solicitude to replace doublet and knee-breeches with dry leathers for riding, and a suitable oilcloth
rain-cloak. He was rested enough, and could eat on the move, he pronounced with clipped irritation. Then, just as sharply, 'Does any-one know what bad business has come to demand a Fellowship audience?'
'Traithe would not say,' the scout captain replied. 'He awaits your presence twenty leagues from this place, under the roof of the
caithdein's lodge tent.'
If Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn preferred not to present himself before Melhalla's royal steward on the edge of defeated exhaustion, he had the resilience to manage the set-back. He followed the scouts' lead and ducked into the rain, prepared to ride through the night. The storm worsened. Scouring wind lashed the downpour in cold torrents, blinding the scouts and draping their path with a barrage of wet-laden branches. The oak forest of Atwood drowned them in dark like spilled ink at every miserable stage of the journey. Without lanterns, the riders could not make speed. Wet to the skin and chafed by drenched saddles, they reached the most guarded encampment in East Halla in the dismal hour before dawn.
Helping hands caught the reins of their steaming mounts in the flare of torch-light that rinsed the black trees. Arithon misliked the disquieting precedent, that unshielded flame had been kindled to greet him. Nor had dousing weather or hard travel dulled the curious scouts who delivered him. Their critical eyes followed him into the hands of the spry old earl who presented state visitors to Melhalla's caithdein.
Whatever that taciturn worthy expected, the slight, bundled form arrived at the lodge failed to match the appalling freight of renown. 'Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn?'
The shadowed face under the cloak hood inclined, the barest grant of acknowledgement. The prince's neat step and unassuming poise might have belonged to any forest-bred clan scout, except that Dakar's slipshod manners reflected a resharpened respect in his presence.
Arithon himself was too weary to temper the misconceptions already engendered by his, two liegemen's sealed discretion, and the volatile storms Fionn Areth's hot-tempered comments were wont to provoke. 'As you see, I don't bring the fair winds the open heart might have hoped for. Bad news comes in batches. By the busy reception, I've gathered a Sorcerer's wanting an audience?'