Elaira sensed the frenetic wave as it crashed: that this man might have been Jieret's father, reborn to an unscarred youth. The fresh glow of his presence did not blaze with hatred. No gouging burns disfigured his face, and no vicious hunt to pursue town-born reivers yet hardened the set of his mouth. Upcoming events at Etarra would change that. The required foray to curb practising necromancy could not help but rekindle the fire and storm to launch more butchering head-hunters into the field. The ache was too much, that the unspoiled nobility of the next generation must come to reap the hideous price of that cleansing.
Arithon shut his eyes, swayed, his stance salvaged by Braggen, who braced him with a touch from behind. Then Barach uttered the formal greeting, clan chieftain to sanctioned crown prince. The contact that bridged Arithon's subtle link with the grove ripped into sparkles and drowned, slashed apart by a burst of raw prescience.
Heart pounding, peace destroyed, Elaira snapped out of trance. She was breathing too fast. Her frame was still pressed to the ancient tree. She enacted due courtesy: acknowledged its calm, and whispered swift thanks to the elements. Then she surged to her feet, as soon became now with a cry of exigent urgency.
Elaira ran. Her step trampled no underbrush. Inside the guarded bounds of the free wilds, the forest itself was aware; no matter how rushed, one did not fare heedlessly. She made haste with the delicate sense of a tracker, ducking beneath branches and runners of vine and easing her way through the thickets. Her tread did not crush the green moss in the hollows, but touched over stone, root, and hummock at speed, scattering only dew. Between strides, she snagged the impression: of Arithon, once again kneeling. The oath-taking had started.
Now entangled by time-honoured etiquette, the prince must turn his back to demonstrate his trust for the liegeman about to swear service. Elaira caught snatches of the opening affirmation, declaring Braggen's appointment as guardian, then the metallic ring as the Paravian sword was drawn and poised overhead as impeccable surety. Then came Arithon's wretched tremor of chill, as the past wove its thread, warp through weft with the present: now, Steiven's grandson would be bending his neck beneath that bared blade to give his edged weapon to seal pledge of loyalty.
The moments flowed one into the next: she sensed the cold cross-guard of Barach's dagger, clasped between unsteady hands. Against the cruel flare of prescient imagery, through the cross-currents of battered awareness, Arithon raised his response on the strength of his Masterbard's training. 'For the gift of feal duty, Barach s'Valerient. . .'
Over a shallow brook, scored by the faint gleam of starlight, the enchantress raced for the lodge tent. The scouts on the outer perimeter had already detected her rapid approach. They closed, weapons lowered. One glimpse at her face, and they listened. She was waved through. A signal arrow sped from somebody's bow, forewarning the next defence cordon that she was inbound, and acknowledged to pass without challenge.
Under the wavering flame of the tallow-dip, the crown's spoken oath was just barely ending. 'Dharkaron witness,' Arithon stated.
His equilibrium was still shattered. Elaira sensed his reeling distress. As he locked eyes with the clansman standing above, swept faint by the rip tide of Sight, the metered phrase of the ritual sustained him. He laid one word after the next with precision to carry him through the abyss. 'Take back this blade as token of my trust, and with your true steel, my royal blessing.'
He rose, as he must, without Braggen's help. On the trestle, he discovered the cup for the guest oath. There, the too-earnest help of his friends had done his worn condition no favours. Arithon stifled his flare of dismay for the Mad Prophet's relentless bad habits: the reprobate had naturally brought the heftiest vessel to be found in the Halwythwood camp . . .
'Damn the man!' Elaira gasped, angry. She sprinted flat out, with no pause for rest, through the damp summer foliage. A few minutes would bring her to Arithon's side. The interval yawned like eternity.
Barach affirmed the clan's welcome first.
' Speak,' Elaira prompted, driven by need to maintain a clear contact. To avoid affront, Arithon should respond with the time-honoured invocation. Wrung breathless, she encouraged and cued his next phrase through the shearing web of his awareness. ' To this house, its earl, and his sworn companions, I pledge friendship . . . '
The flame-light was too brilliant, and the close air, too dense. Arithon battled his ripped concentration. The next line, and the next, he neared the end. He pronounced the last, ceremonial words as a man who fought for wind, drowning. Dharkaron witness.'
Elaira dashed welling moisture out of her eyes. Racing against time, she plunged through the dark wood, while the on-going ritual proceeded: Barach would now lift the tankard and consume his half-share of the brandy. Custom demanded: in declaration of amity, the guest of the lodge must drain the vessel and replace it rim down on the trestle. There, the affront set by Jeynsa's late tantrum left no ambiguous grace. Arithon had no choice but to finish. Fail, and he risked seeding the flawed implication of a fatal distrust of the clans.
He grasped the huge tankard, somehow without fumbling. Though the reeling rush as the s'Ahelas gift wracked his mind in the smoke of ungovernable, overlaid futures, he hefted the vessel. There came a small shock, as the unsteady rim collided against his locked teeth.
Drink, Elaira begged as she broke through screening evergreen, sprang over split rocks, and plunged into a narrow ravine. At the draw, the inner line of clan sentries stood back and let her pass through without slacking. 'Drink, beloved!'
Arithon could not afford carelessness. The last drop of brandy would have to be drained.
Well aware that an incident might launch disaster, Arithon propped his bandaged wrist on the trestle. The sting scarcely cleared his stressed senses. Elaira felt his deep breath, then the brutal will that caught back the dropped reins of his talent: for the hard complication could not be helped. His gift left him desperately sensitive. As the raw spirits seared down his throat, the potent kick scalded, racing through his rushed blood. He paused, though wracking weariness and the incipient fever caused by a virulent back-lash hobbled the trained skills he required to transmute the effects of the alcohol.
Gut roiling, Arithon tipped up the tankard and swallowed the volatile contents. Fire upon fire, he could scarcely stand up. The ground spun under his planted feet.
Elaira watched, caught helplessly distant, as his besieged control slipped his grasp, and his tenuous hearings up-ended.
No light glimmered ahead. Clan encampments were kept darkened for safety. Elaira pounded through the closed circle of tents, leaping pegged ropes to reach the lodge at the center. Already, Sidir heard her inbound step. Infallible guardian, he kept watch to avert an untoward intrusion. Since the enchantress's presence would not be gainsaid, he moved aside and lifted the flap for her entry.
Elaira burst through into flickering light. She arrived the same moment the tankard was banged, rim downwards onto the boards. No spill marred that closure. As she rounded the trestle, too stressed for relief, she noticed that Braggen was weeping. His massive grasp closed, caught his liege as he folded. Young Barach proved to be just as quick. He had already turned at his sovereign's side, shifting the bench underneath him. Joined in evident conspiracy, he helped the Companion lower his prince and settle him onto the seat.
No fool, Elaira glared in censure at Dakar, hanging on the side-lines like a whipped hound in an attempt to stay inconspicuous.
'We all agreed!' the Mad Prophet exclaimed in defence. 'The large cup was chosen by us in advance.' Fat though he was, he could move lightning fast when singed by a wrathful woman. As Elaira brushed past, he rushed his excuses. 'You weren't here! The prince was not biddable. He was burning his reserves like a creature possessed, and what else could his closest friends do for him?'
'Ask!' snapped Elaira.
She closed the last step, all but staggered as the explosive resurgence of vision whipped distress like bale-fire through Arithon's aura. Her hand clos
ed on his shoulder. She felt damp, heated skin through the textures of leather and linen.
Despite masking clothes, her live touch jarred through him, a piercing arrow of sensation that raked him
from head to feet. He ached, he burned, and he bled, that the brandy's cheap numbness undid him. Elaira sank down on the bench, close behind. She wound her arms around Arithon's shoulders and rested her cheek at the base of his neck.
'Never mind,' she murmured. She resharpened her inward focus, the better to reach through disorder and lend a more intimate edge to the contact. ' You can let go in peace. Your friends meant you well, though they failed to realize their trick set no safety net under you.'
Initiate talent infallibly sped the body's responses to volatile drink, a vulnerability exploited with vicious intent to ensure that the victim was flattened. The effect hazed the prince under with demeaning speed. Past question, Arithon was already beyond the grace of coherent response. Her giving nature begged him to release and fall the rest of the way into darkness.
'I'll be at your side when you waken.' Her promise sang through him, a weaving of water to quench unchecked Sight and snuff the live embers of prescience.
The Prince of Rathain stirred under her, anyway. Lifted his head; clasped his fingers to hers, then twisted. Eyes open, he beheld the sight of her fully. She saw his face, then his change of expression as he drank in each treasured detail.
The dark auburn hair, spilled loose from its tie, and grey eyes that met his, exquisite in their attentiveness. Her aware being would have changed, since her time at Ath's hostel: Elaira saw her heightened state of self-assurance mirrored back in his drowning regard. She felt his melting pleasure for her flushed skin, and the woods scents ofjasmine and leaves brought in with her clothing. She shivered, in tune with his boundless delight, as the warmth that rushed through her vibrant touch resharpened the linkage between them.
The shock as his clasp tightened caught short her breath and forged a kinetic expansion. There would be no boundary. Scarcely able to separate which sensation was hers, and which current was sourced within Arithon, Elaira realized the brandy was not acting fast enough. He was going to weep. Not as the result of exhaustion, or stress, but from the unbridled joy that soared upwards and burned towards exaltation. With that purest ecstasy came wild rage, that he could not command the least of his faculties. The gift of her presence spilled through his grasp, falling away like dropped pearls in a deluge.
Elaira felt the helpless surge of his anguish. He would have had no watching eyes mar their union. Though desperately tired, he should have received her solace without interruption. His explosive emotion ripped through him like storm, that she was also compelled to crush back the blaze of her unshielded welcome.
'Privacy! Now!' she cried in appeal.
But Sidir had already acted. Braggen and Barach were pressured to leave, while Dakar took charge of Alithiel. Feithan made the gift of the bed in her quarters. The curtain at the rear of the lodge tent was already open and waiting.
'Here,' Sidir offered. 'I'll bear him up. It's all right. You can trust. Our history extends back to Vastmark.'
Summer 5671
Twining
Indomitable will could not break all limits. Arithon succumbed to the brandy. Elaira felt the thinned trace of his awareness slip away before Sidir set his liege down. His Grace of Rathain was laid, quite unconscious, onto a pine-stuffed mattress thrown over with softened deer-hide.
'Do you wish my assistance?' the Companion inquired, his courtesy dauntless as he ascertained the candle was fresh, with spares close at hand, that the enchantress would not require the later indignity of asking.
'Thank you, no,' said Elaira. 'I need only two errands. My satchel, which I left by the spring on the north bank of the Willowbrook, and a bucket and basin for washing.'
Sidir straightened and faced her. His tall frame loomed over her, shadowing the auburn spill of her hair, torn loose from her sprint through the brush. He measured her eyes, of a rain-washed grey that just now bordered on lilac, then her wrists, with the workaday scrapes from her herb-gathering. Koriani sister, oath-bound to her prime, she might pose the realm's prince an unknown measure of danger. Sidir weighed her presence, not willing to hurry. His clan lineage carried the true talent for insight. As a man, he prized listening and honesty.
Discernment showed him a woman whose desire was forthright: every line of her wished his departure. Nonetheless, his grave survey held out until his peerless assessment was satisfied. 'I will get what you need.' Then he smiled, head tipped towards his prostrate liege. 'He is in the best hands. You shall not be disturbed. I'll drive the pack off until daybreak.'
'He's going to need longer.' Elaira sank down on the pine-needle bed, fingers clasped to Arithon's wrist. 'The brandy was a foolish mistake. He was already run to the edge and verging on back-lash from the handling of unrefined lane flux.'
Sidir knelt, touched her sleeve till she faced him. His pale eyes stayed level, unfired to rage by the animosity that accused him. 'The brandy was not the best tactic, perhaps. But without it, we couldn't have bought him an hour. Half the men in the camp, and most of the women, have yet to meet their crown prince in person. We don't have closed doors here, unless someone's sick. Our children come and go as they please. They greet strangers by climbing all over them.'
'I hadn't noticed,' Elaira said, crisp.
Again, Sidir stood to full height and gazed down at her. 'You wouldn't,' he answered, his caution unmasked. 'Enchantress, they were afraid of you.'
Gone on that word, he shut the privacy flap. Elaira was left alone at long last. Hers, the task to salvage the damage that exhaustion and strong drink had wrought with a barely tamed gift of raw prescience. Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn lay senseless beneath the glow of the candle. Though his numbed state was brought on by alcohol, his pulse was too fast, and his skin held the flush of a border-line fever.
Those symptoms stemmed from an imbalanced aura. Elaira attended them first. She loosened his clothing, stripped off his leathers, his boots and breeches, then slipped the stained shirt off his shoulders. Unwilling to impinge upon his helpless dignity, she left him the modesty of his small-clothes. His body was adjusted for comfort, face-up, with each of his limbs laid out straight.
Lean as fine sculpture, he was beautifully made, except for the scar where the light bolt had struck, and the older marks left by shackles. Where the woman might linger, admiring, the healer dared not show indulgence. Elaira combed her fingertips just above his bared skin. She tracked the kinetic flow of his life-force and sounded the snarled energies left by overplayed talent and ragged distress. Though her skills could have righted his traumatized shock within a matter of moments, she dared not incur the risk. Not when the price of her order's knowledge might bind him into an oath of debt.
Denied stronger remedies, she relied upon touch, lightly stroking to resettle the flux points that sustained the flow of his vitality. Release came in stages. As she coaxed subtle energies back into alignment, his strung sinews warmed through and relaxed. The heart-beat slowed down, and the breath became regular. She checked his eyes, often. By the time her fresh water and herbals arrived, Arithon's pupils had lost their blackened state of dilation.
The nightmare waves of prescience would be subsiding. If Arithon dreamed, he was no longer hag-ridden to shock by the uncontained burst of wild talent.
Only then did Elaira stir from his side. She recovered her satchel, then the bucket and basin already brought in and left within reach of the curtain. Constrained to simple remedies, she used oil of lavender to scent the wax candle. Then she made a compress of cold water and herbs, and laid the cloth over Arithon's closed eyes. A sigh shuddered through him, relief as cool darkness soothed his taxed senses.
While the subtle blending of fragrance transformed the enclosure into a haven of quietude, Elaira made an infusion of hot water, chamomile, and wintergreen for a bracing tonic. With gentle care, she sponged off the dirt lef
t ingrained from his overland journey. Inch by cherished inch, she explored his stilled form, an acquaintance enacted in a flame-lit silence unmatched for its vulnerable intimacy.
More than once, Elaira sat back on her heels,, overcome: her beloved was here, in the care of her hands. Yet the spirit she held as close as life itself ranged too deep to respond. He was present, but unaware of her. The odd thought occurred, that their roles had reversed. Arithon must have felt much as she did now, when she had been undone by a difficult healing in a cottage in Merior twenty-six years ago. The desperate length of her wait to be near him let her savour the interval for its peace. Her contentment unfolded, moment by moment, now that he moved out of danger.
Brought to the last detail, Elaira stripped the compress off Arithon's arm. She rinsed away the medicinal salves, since they only posed a further hindrance. Ath's adepts had guided her to a deeper awareness. Where once, she would have used sigils and force, now she invoked by harmonic intent, and a partnered rapport with the elements. The wound healed. Not invisibly, not all at once: Elaira eschewed applied use of her talent. Her connection stayed sourced within Arithon's innate balance, until the gash closed to a hair-line scab. From there, the tissues would knit without pain, clear of any scarring infection.
Sleep must finish the rest. As his weariness lifted, Arithon would recover the use of his arcane faculties. Since the soporific effect of the brandy would not hold him under for long, Elaira stripped down to the loosened strings of her shirt, then tucked in on the mattress beside him. In the warm, summer air, wrapped in fragrance of lavender, she indulged herself, and let the low candle burn. While her heart-beat twined into rhythm with his, she drifted asleep to the sight of his dark hair, nestled amid a pillow of balsam-stuffed deer-hide.