The words satisfied for their perfect, chill ring.
'I hear you.' The velvet tone that had shown its trust first picked up again after a moment. 'Your preference is honoured.'
But that promise mocked, set against another that demanded her iron devotion. 'You would gainsay the Fellowship's choosing?' Jeynsa stiffened, affronted. 'Or are you afraid that in cold-blooded fact I might take my next chance, and back-stab you?'
His stark pause affirmed that a caithdein's vested power would endow her with the lawful right to stand as his judge and condemn him. Arithon's response showed his razor-edged care. 'You are Jieret s'Valerient's daughter.'
No fool, he had not poured the brandy.
Wrung breathless by her resurgent pain, Jeynsa seized the cup on her half of the trestle and placed it onto its side. In case he failed to recognize that symbolic rejection, she said, 'Craven! How dare you invoke my sire's good name to beg surety!'
When Arithon ventured no token response, she hooked up the dropped cloak and scoured off the smeared trace of his blood from each of her quivering fingers. On her feet before thought, she glared downwards. In vivid impression, the insightful awareness: that he was small - light-boned as a cat before her taller stature and hardened fitness. The immediate recall cracked her equilibrium: of his expert, sharp handling, that had just imposed a demeaning submission with an ease that had made her seem childish.
I saw how my father died!' Jeynsa exploded. 'Wielding sorcery as your proxy, he choked out his last breath with your half-brother's sword through his heart. He was tortured. Crippled! Spat on by enemies before their unblessed fire destroyed his torn carcass.'
Arithon regarded her. Unwashed from his ride, with his lean face unshaven and his dark hair tousled by weather, he should have seemed raffish. A renegade reduced to his seamy humanity, flawed, and beneath her contempt: except the intensity of his focus would not dismiss. He showed no pity; did not denigrate her tear-stained cheeks or broach the outrageous precedent of her shorn hair.
His eyes spoke, all too eloquent in the whipped spill of flame-light.
Jeynsa watched him back, hardened, aching to receive the brisk quittance that his crown rank entitled through protocol.
Instead, Arithon elected to treat without artifice. 'You did not cut off your hair to spite me. You did that for grief, to acknowledge the shame that your father endured. Your act reminded you not to forget the harsh price he paid for my life, that his dying act left as a bartered legacy.'
Such relentless insight tore past all pretence. The bereft beheld her deep agony, mirrored.
'Don't ever forget, Jeynsa,' urged Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn. 'Grow back your clan braid. Let me stand in this world as your steadfast reminder for as long as I live to draw breath.'
His tactful correction struck like a slap: that the span of his days could extend beyond hers. The Master of Shadow might seem untouched by time. Yet his actual age was older than Feithan; his birth had preceded the Companions. A Sorcerer's working imposed a longevity that was going to bind him for centuries.
Stung by his poignant censure, Jeynsa scoured his features. At close quarters, she yearned to unearth the glib falsehood: the facile mask that would catch him short and lay bare underlying insincerity.
No subterfuge met her. Only the clarity of an initiate mind, voluntarily stripped of defences.
Arithon laid open his mage-sense, and touched, and the talented prompt of s'Valerient Sight arose to that calling, and answered.
Jeynsa sensed herself falling, awareness unreeled through the vaulting reach of a sorcerer's lucent experience. She was left ungrounded. Even as her father, years before this, bore the horror of Tal Quorin's massacre, she knew the encounter would not leave her unchanged. No foothold existed to save shattered balance. She could not disown Arithon's value. Shocked by the scope of his inward devastation, Jeynsa realized: the crown prince's desolate hurt outmatched hers. Jieret's death had once reft him beyond hope of healing. He still carried the scar of that crippling despair. A severance that damaged both will and integrity had left behind an unassuaged longing that, if Arithon escaped the trap of Desh-thiere's curse, must outlast her own grief for untold generations to come.
Yet unlike her, he had not yielded to pain. The unearthly calm posed by his acceptance itself was the cry that challenged her wound and pressed her for endurance to match him.
'How have you survived?' Jeynsa blurted.
'I nearly didn't.' The admission stayed level. Before her anguished, peeling regard, Arithon held himself naked. 'The crossing came hard, but need not have. In Kewar's maze, when I shared the grace of a centaur's presence, I saw Jieret's choice reconfigured by light as an act of exultant triumph. His love superseded my limitation. I could reject him, and die. Or I could embrace the gift as he meant: not as the dutiful burden of heritage, but done as an accolade, without condition.'
Jeynsa slammed the bared boards. This, she could not endure. No prince, but a man, and a stranger, offered up his core self, all the while aware that he must fall short. All that he was could never replace the father - the friend - whose courageous heart and generous strength dealt a priceless loss, shared between them.
She suffered because her father had set this one spirit ahead of a safe return to his family. Nor was Jieret's hideous death rendered empty, or foolish, or in any way the mistake of a devalued sacrifice.
Arithon had not tried to console, or excuse. He did not demean by apology. That seamless humility shaped a force too unnervingly whole to withstand.
Jeynsa clawed back her dagger. Goaded on by her ungoverned denial, she dashed the two cups aside. A second blow smashed the decanter. Shards flew. Brandy gushed and spilled. Doused by the flood,
Rathain's prince never flinched, though his lost calm revealed the fresh hurt her rejection tore through him.
Past her, he saw Steiven, and Dania, and Jieret, and the hacked bodies of four daughters, violated. Through Jeynsa, his ghosts spoke, a gale-wind from a storm that scattered the hope he might reach her.
'Go on!' whispered Jeynsa. 'Admit how I hate you, before your ripped flesh has stopped bleeding.'
Silent, he held, while she quivered and broke, spirit dashed on the wrong side of quietude.
'I can't drink,' she snarled, bitter. 'Can't swear you a welcome. I look at your face, and I hear father screaming. His burned eyes and cut tongue were the cost of your lineage. The sound of your name is accursed in my ears. The shame of his degradation will not find redress for as long as you live.'
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn inclined his head, a small move made in resignation. The tension of contact snapped in release.
Unstrung, Jeynsa bolted, heedless as a hazed deer. Hard and fast as she left him, she could not escape. In life, her father had never denied the depth of Prince Arithon's compassion. At her core, Jeynsa knew: Earl Jieret had written his own fate, that dreadful hour upon Daon Ramon Barrens. He had crossed Fate's Wheel by a choice that was given, for a love that was both right and true.
The lie did not hold. Pretence gave no shelter. The crown prince whose oath bonded her in protection remained, then and now, everything else but unworthy. No breathing creature should burn with such grace, to eclipse the ache of her abandonment.
Outside, Jieret's daughter careened into Eriegal's stout arms and howled until she was emptied.
Arithon remained within the lodge tent, his face masked behind his braced hands. The winnowed flame of a tallow-dip circled his motionless person in light. His torn, unlaced sleeve sopped up the spilled brandy amid scattered slivers, and two overset cups whose promise had failed to forge amity.
If his undressed wrist had ceased bleeding, the small wound kept its venomous sting.
And already, the tenor of the fallen quiet drew someone's inquiring notice: Sidir had not left the lodge tent. Beside Feithan through the turmoil of young Jeynsa's royal audience, he cracked the flap that divided the sleeping-quarters, then gently dared a step through. Since service in Vastmark, he h
eld to wise limits. His undisguised footfall volunteered the tact that signalled an invasion of privacy.
'You've come to inform me that Feithan's heard everything.' The phrase was split rock, for its brevity. When Arithon stirred, his glance showed disgust for the sordid mess on the trestle. He arose, sharply fast. His snatch caught the heaped cloak from the bench, then cast its folds over the wreckage. He blotted the sopped mess, raked up cloth and fragments, and thrust the disaster into the Companion's capable grasp. 'Get rid of this!'
His rushed gesture happened scarcely in time.
Behind Sidir's stance, the curtain trembled, then moved. Illumination spilled from beyond and slashed across the cleared trestle. No help for small details: the close air still wore the sickly tang of splashed brandy. Arithon could do nothing about his wrecked shirt, or the wound, which would smart like fell vengeance if he tried to mask it under his spirit-soaked sleeve.
Unable to effect kindly subterfuge, he stepped forward, all grace. Before Earl Jieret's widow, he bent his dark head, then knelt on bare earth at her feet. 'My Lady Feithan, don't speak.' He raised his upturned palms and caught the rough hands of the woman come forward to meet him. 'My condolence is too little, done far too late, and your daughter is already forgiven.'
Masterbard, he had been well schooled to rise to a difficult passage. Direct words availed little: the moment hung, anyway. Feithan was caught looking down at the disordered black hair that fronded his opened collar, and past that, to a knife-cut placed with a precision that left his wrist unimpaired. This could not be chance. Feithan trembled. Upright, she encountered the prince she had never met, while the tears she wished she could have kept from him flooded her eyes.
'You already knew,' she accused. 'About Jeynsa.'
Arithon nodded. His touch, upon hers, said all that words could not: that he had fielded her daughter's hatred, prepared, and provoked his slashed arm by design.
Sidir's sharp wits stayed unfazed by the gallantry. 'Who broke our silence?'
'No,' Feithan murmured, as Arithon bridled, his grasp locked to hers with fresh tension. 'You have done enough, your Grace.' Her narrow grip raised him.
He came to his feet with a seamless speed that almost avoided the flame-light. But the weariness scored into his face showed grim endurance, not hackled anger.
Sidir nonetheless pressed his inquiry. 'Among ourselves, we had agreed to spare you from Jeynsa's misconduct, at least until Feithan or Earl Barach could give you a suitable welcome.'
'Well, don't dress down your scouts.' Arithon flashed Jieret's widow the ghost of a smile as he watched an unflappable man stung to a rare burst of outrage. 'Sit down, Sidir. The brangle killed no one. You thought to strangle the loose tongue of rumour?'
Arithon's attention flicked back to Feithan. Her leashed-back tears did not mislead him: her vital strength possessed the bold nerve to address his wracked state of exhaustion. He thwarted her scolding, hooked the hassock, and perched, then tucked his slashed arm in his lap. 'Two warnings reached me. Dame Dawr was specific. Melhalla's caithdein, kind soul, was concerned I'd be served with a public embarrassment. The snag I foresaw, and the sole point that mattered was to make Jeynsa draw my blood willingly.'
Rasped hoarse at last, Arithon included the steadfast Companion, whose reliable insight had never once fallen short under pressure. 'I promised her father,' he informed Sidir. 'My oath was the last thing he asked, by the Aiyenne. The girl's free to hate me. I frankly don't care. Keep her clear! She'll stay living. Whatever should come to befall me hereafter, my bond of protection will try no one's poise.'
'Eriegal could mistake you,' Sidir pointed out. 'He may condemn your unkind provocation.'
Arithon recoiled, flicked to impatience. 'Let him! Don't you think I'd prefer my autonomy?' Caught aback by his overstrung nerves, he shut his teeth, fast, and stood up.
Feithan watched his approach, no less trapped by constraint. His haunted quietude suggested an urgency: he wanted the dance-steps of etiquette done, as decently fast as compassionate care would permit.
Unwilling to burden his Grace with her need, she made her brave bid to release him. 'Your enchantress was mistaken. She need not have been absent. Surely the onus of crown duty, and I, might have waited this once on your pleasure?'
But that heart-felt supposition proved to be wrong. Past resource to argue, Arithon rejected her saving excuse. He embraced the encounter, regardless. Though he wore his borrowed leathers with natural elegance, their fit was too large. Up close, he was no taller than she. That fine build deceived. His determined strength shocked through his touch as, again, he gathered her hands in his own and shouldered the force of her agony. 'Jieret was the brother I always lacked. Ask, lady. My passage through the maze under Kewar has made me far more than eye-witness.'
Her eyes searched his, stripped by grief, then with unruly sorrow, spilled over. 'I need no more than this. Did my husband suffer?'
Arithon squeezed her fingers. His sight locked with hers, he pressed her knuckles against the beat of his heart, that she could measure his unflinching sincerity. 'Jieret supported no more than he chose. His will prevailed, to the end. Had my orders been followed, he would be still living beside you, and Braggen's death would have burdened my conscience. The void that is left is too high a price. No victory, ever, can replace him.' Feithan shuddered, braced straight. 'I have no more brandy,' she lamented, her desolation as much for the stranger before her as for the absence inflicted by loss.
Arithon smiled, a brilliance of spirit that showed her a bitter-sweet glimpse of the humour her husband had shared through the sacrosanct bonds of deep fellowship.
'Jieret wouldn't mind,' said the Crown Prince of Rathain, not as royalty, but as he might have chafed a friend's sister. 'We weren't in the habit of maudlin bouts of drinking, and Dakar's all too quick to suck down raw spirits until he's a prostrate nuisance.'
Feithan shut her eyes, all at once overcome. The prince drew her in. His resilient frame was not massive, like Jieret's. She did not feel as though she leaned on the mountain that weathered all storms, immovable, until the last. Yet beyond any question, Feithan understood that Arithon's support would extend for as long as she asked for the bastion of his solace.
Yet the loss of the brandy had to be remedied, after all. The last hurdle facing the Crown Prince of Rathain was the Earl of the North's oath of fealty. Other unsworn clansfolk might come forward tomorrow. But Barach, as the inheriting chieftain, must acknowledge his sovereign ahead of them. Since clan custom also demanded the traditional cup and guest welcome, Arithon was required to maintain his poise through the course of another state obligation.
His tacit assurance reached the Koriani enchantress where she sat, immersed in light trance, in an oak grove not far from the camp. ' Soon, beloved. Dawr's word said Barach is reasonable.'
Elaira's lips turned in the faintest of smiles. Nestled in comfort against a shagged tree, she touched back, sending him patience. As well as he masked his worn nerves in the flesh, the etheric connection between them was transparent. She sensed the deepest ache of his need, overlaid by the medicinal scald of the compress that someone well-meaning had bound over his cut arm.
'Soon enough,' Elaira returned. She would dress the gash more comfortably, later; in the moment, she sustained her caress within Arithon's mind, sweetened by the exquisite thrill of a partnered anticipation.
Around her, the midnight stars burned serene through the filigree patterns of greenery. Frogs croaked from a spring in the rocks, and the dew-soaked air smelled ofj asmine. Wrapped in the peace of the woodland glade, Elaira tracked the on-going flurry of activity inside the chieftain's lodge tent.
Dakar had entered, bearing the requisite flask. His rotund bulk was trailed by Braggen's chopped stride, with the self-conscious Companion red-faced and tongue-tied to find himself asked to stand vigil in place of Rathain's absent caithdein. His hand would bear the naked sword to safeguard his crown prince's back. At one stroke, that honour ex
orcised the unresolved ghost of distrust instilled by his past misjudgements in Daon Ramon. The broad-shouldered man who entered behind would be Barach, second son born to s'Valerient, and risen to title as Earl of the North in the year before he reached his majority. Now twenty, he carried a fighting man's muscle under his fringed, buckskin leathers. His rough-cut good looks were made striking by his sire's hazel eyes, and the glossy clan braid, brown as walnut dipped into lacquer.
His affable nature had already won him Elaira's spontaneous friendship. She sent that reassurance across the twined link: knowing the serious young man who came to pledge loyalty must encounter his sovereign, sore with the outrage of his younger sister's uncivil behaviour. His determined poise could make him seem forbidding as he stepped up to offer his unsheathed blade for the ritual.
A light breeze brushed the leaves. The spring-waters burbled; flame hissed in the distant lodge tent. Immersed in the warmth of Elaira's sent peace, Arithon permitted Dakar's greater bulk to eclipse his immediate presence. Stilled at the center of purposeful movement, he shoved down the black wall of tiredness. He had not slept beyond catnaps for days. Scoured sick by a course of malevolent study, left taxed from the use of strong magecraft, he needed, each moment, to marshal his bearing. Every second of respite was valued.
' Soon,' he affirmed, while the guest cup was brought, and brandy was poured for the welcoming.
Then Braggen crossed his fists at his heart. Handed the black sword, he moved into position at his liege's left shoulder.
The young earl stepped forward, and Rathain's prince beheld him, revealed in the flood of the tallow-dip.
He looked so like Steiven! The resemblance jarred, cracking the last of Arithon's hard-set equanimity. Beset by a sorrow that laced him with dizziness, he pushed to his feet. The sharp motion failed to curb his wild talent. He stood erect, though harassed by that difficulty, striving for poise to bestow the respect that Deshir's new chieftain should merit. But the rote words he uttered felt distant and dim. Colours and noise came through muted as by-gone memories sparked the vivid array of multiple unwritten futures. Their insistent pressure slammed through and broke over him.