Luhaine listed each shortfall he saw in his colleague’s character, then plowed on to include notable past instances when he had been abandoned to tidy disagreeable details. No answer came back. Only the impersonal, high chime of remote constellations. Already, Sethvir had moved on, his listening presence retuned to Athera, and thence, across the long leagues into Shand to make contact with another Sorcerer.
The discorporate presence of Kharadmon breezed into the royal chambers at Avenor a comfortable interval before noon. His entry raised no notice, passed off, perhaps, as an errant winter draft breathed through the swagged velvet curtains. The room was appointed in rich carpets and gold. Wax candles shone from glass sconces. Against the satin glow of varnished hardwoods, the young valet who served the Prince of the Light fussed to set Lysaer’s last diamond stud.
“How right you were, your Grace.” Head tipped, the servant stepped back to measure the dazzling effects of his handiwork. “Gold trim was excessive. You shall shine like a star in full sunlight.”
Lysaer laughed. “Here, don’t feed my vanity.” He flicked the last pleats in his cuffs into place, his form all pale elegance, and his features cut marble beneath a molten ore cap of combed hair. “I don’t need such show. For the gift of my bullion, the beggars will be suitably awed.” Then he smiled at his valet, his unearthly, pure beauty transmuted to intimate warmth.
The boy blushed. He bobbed a clumsy bow, then stammered an apology as his elbows jostled the palace officials who waited, clothed in stiff-faced magnificence. Each one wore a new sunwheel tabard, cut of shining champagne gold-and-white silk.
The realm’s chancellor and the Lord High Justiciar forgave the boy’s gaffe in cool tolerance. They advanced to attend their prince in full ceremony, paired as if cued to a stage drill. The dense, beaded threadwork on their garments somehow looked soiled beside Lysaer’s stainless presence. In his shadow, they swept toward the doorway. There, four silent guards dressed their weapons and joined them, two ahead, two behind. No man looked askance at the unseen arrival which breezed on the heels of the royal train.
A second, more tangible obstruction awaited to waylay the prince. The young boy who served as the royal bannerbearer could scarcely take position while a willowy form traced in sparkling jewels blocked off the arch to the vestibule. She had the prowling smooth stride and rich coloring of a lioness, and for today’s prey, she stalked in chill rage.
“Princess, Lady Talith.” Lysaer touched the foremost guardsman’s shoulder as signal for him to keep station. Hunter’s spear to her unsheathed claws, he eased past, on an instant the solicitous husband. He clasped his wife’s hand, drew her into the light, and lost his breath a split second, as he always did.
First sight of Talith’s beauty unfailingly stunned a man foolish. She had finespun, tawny hair, and features refined to the delicate texture of rubbed ivory. Her dress skimmed over her devastating curves, for this meeting, a calculated, flowing confection of damascened silk and jet buttons, cross-laced at wrist and bodice with silk ribbon.
“My dear, you look magnificent.” The words framed an effortless courtesy, since his glance significantly avoided the cascade of yellow citrine which sparkled like poured honey into the tuck of her cleavage. Her smallest move and breath chased teasing reflections over her pearl-studded bodice, until the eye became trapped, then arrowed downward into a girdle fitted tight enough to hitch the air in the throats of Lysaer’s waiting attendants. “I’m delighted of course, but won’t your need keep? I promise I’ll see you directly after I’ve finished my appearance in the plaza.”
Lady Talith narrowed dense, sable lashes over eyes like razor-cut bronze. “The beggars can wait for their alms without suffering.” Risen to the challenge, she smiled. Her flawless, fine skin flushed for the joy of a stabbing duel of wits. “Better still, let your chancellor dispense the day’s coin in your stead. Dismiss your train. Now. I’ll never settle for begging court appointments, or standing in line for an audience.”
“I can’t dismiss my train. My chancellor is no fit replacement.” In grave, caring tenderness, Lysaer clasped her wrist to draw her clear of the doorway. “If privacy matters, we’ll save our discussion for an hour when I’m not committed.”
“Bedamned to privacy.” Talith tested his hold, felt the steel in his fingers, and laughed in a sheared peal of scorn. “Why play at pretense?” She aimed her next barb with all the sugared venom her Etarran background could muster. “My pride wasn’t stung by three months in Arithon’s company.” She smiled, digging him with threat and innuendo, even daring his temper, since he had not shared his shameful secret with his courtiers at Avenor. They were never told that the Master of Shadow was in true fact begotten when Lysaer’s mother cuckolded her marriage in liaison with his father’s most hated enemy.
Gratified by the vengeful jab of his fingers through her sleeve, Talith lifted one porcelain shoulder in a shrug. At her throat, the jewels flashed, enticed, trembled in liquid invitation. “Why not say aloud what every servant in your palace already whispers behind your back? That time enough has passed since my ransom. A year and a half gone, and all your court watching my belly like a pack of starved midwives. What pretense is left? My time in captivity was innocent of dalliance.”
Unlike your faithless mother, her swift, weighted pause suggested. Locked eye to eye, his arctic blue to her molten amber, Talith said, “Since you can’t claim avoidance for a nonexistent bastard, what keeps you from sharing my bed?”
Lysaer stroked a light finger beneath her chin, while a frown of consummate puzzlement came and went between his brows. “My love, you’re distraught.” By an act of brazen sympathy he behaved as if they stood alone, though the guardsmen behind exchanged discomfited glances. They knew well enough his nights were spent in the royal suite, since their ranks supplied the watch set over the prince’s apartments.
“No doubt, you have cause for distress,” Lysaer temporized. “I realize how desperately you desire to conceive. But chasing me about in a lather is unlikely to help your fertility.”
Talith hissed out a breath at this vicious twist. “How dare you!” Her lashes swept down, a black veil for a murderous flare of hatred. “You’ll never be able to bury your lapse with state excuses, or claim I am flawed or infirm. If I’m barren, my ladies-in-waiting all know, it’s because your elaborate show of appearance masks the fact that you won’t couple with me. Tell me, your Grace, what are you hiding? A mistress? Boy lovers? Revulsion on the chance I fell victim to incest?”
“Here, I’ll be late. Your troubles must bide for a little bit.” As she snapped breath to sink her barb of victory, Lysaer cupped her face, slipped a quick kiss on her lips, then handed her off to his ranking man-at-arms. His low, rapid orders cunningly disarmed her most brilliantly raking response. “See my lady to a healer for a posset to soothe her nerves. Say I’ll return to check on her the earliest instant I am free.”
She threw him a withering epithet.
In pained sorrow, the prince shut his eyes: as if by flat denial he could pretend for a heartbeat such beauty did not harbor so vile a contempt. Then he roused himself, straightened. Every regal inch of him contained into painful, mannered sympathy, he reassumed his place with his chancellor and Lord Justiciar. Despite Talith’s glare like an auger at his back, he expanded the circle of his confidence.
“I’m sorry for the scene.” His hushed voice carried backward as his party advanced through the echoing, high vaults of the hallway. “The loss of her brother at Dier Kenton Vale so soon after the months she was kept in duress by the Spinner of Darkness have left Talith strained and unsettled. We must all be patient. Give her care and understanding. I’m certain the moment we manage to conceive our first child, her usual staunch nature will prevail.”
The chancellor murmured banal commiseration. Less suave, the guardsmen showed pity, while the red-faced valet who watched from the dressing chamber gave the princess the gawky, bold stare that admired for sheer, brainless loveliness.
Talith swept off with the appointed guardsman, chin raised in smoldering rebellion. Born a pedigree Etarran, she was too well seasoned to the ways of court infighting to augment Lysaer’s strategy with protests. If he sought to discredit her as a woman undone by harsh circumstance, he had to know, the new-forged, burgeoning spite in her heart would admit no defeat while she breathed.
“On my life,” she called after her royal husband in a tone like dulcet poison, “I’ll birth you an heir to make the s’Ilessid name proud, even as your lady mother did before me!”
Appalled by the sharp, sudden pallor that blanched his prince’s face, the Lord Justiciar of Avenor’s state council tipped his gray head in assurance, “Give her time. She’ll weather her disappointment over children. Women do.” He pursed his lips, prepared to continue his fatherly advice.
But Lysaer raised a hand and touched him silent. “Not here.”
The royal train reached the outer postern. Composed and brittle as an artwork in glass, the Prince of the Light mastered the short ceremony while a heavy box of coins changed hands from Avenor’s Minister of the Treasury into the care of his chancellor. He stepped with his retinue through the outer doorway into the blast of winter wind. The cold nipped his cheeks back to color. Against the luminous, aquamarine sky, his hair gleamed like the tinseled weave shot through a ripple of Atchaz silk. His poise, now restored, was steel masked in felt as he dealt his justiciar a swift and shaming rebuke. “A year and a half is criminally soon to say whether my lady’s unfit to bear an heir. Discretion is called for. Her Grace’s distress will fare all the worse if unkind rumors start to circulate.”
Beside the bronze finials of the palace gate spread the circular plaza which centered the city of Avenor. This site retained its design since the Paravian ruin underwent Lysaer’s restoration. His master masons had found the proportions and placement too pleasing to disrupt. The facades of the formal state buildings had arisen on the rims of Second Age foundations. The ancient worn slates, with their cracked channels of queer inlay, were now paved over in amber-and-white block incised with a sunwheel pattern. The vista with its innate grandeur presented the ideal setting for Lysaer’s noon practice of dispensing largesse to the poor.
Since the crushing defeat in Vastmark, the coins struck for this purpose were embossed with the new order’s blazon upon one side, and stamped on the other with a sigil of ward against darkness. Dubbed shadow-banes by their recipients, merchants in Tysan took them in trade, then resold them as amulets for more than their value in gold.
No edict was signed to curtail the practice. “Why sap the foundations of the common people’s hope?” Prince Lysaer gave instruction to his council. “For as long as the Shadow Master lives at large, their terror is real and justified. Let folk grasp whatever comfort they may. Suffering and losses could harm them soon enough. Folk will fare better for not feeling helpless in their worry.”
Speculation became rooted into belief. The name of Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn was anathema, and feared, and the coins, dispensed with the blessing of Lysaer s’Ilessid himself. They could not be other than talismans infused by his blessed gift of light.
Prince Lysaer never walked in the public eye without due presence and ceremony. His daily custom of charity became a dazzling display of royal pageantry, while the poor and the downtrodden elbowed forward to claim the trinkets which held the reputed power to protect them.
This day, the plaza was packed to capacity, despite the bracing wind that snapped the fringed banners on their poles. The out-of-town merchants and the bored rich who thronged to observe from the balconies clutched their caped cloaks and furred hoods. Below, in jostling chaos, the waving, cheering supplicants pressed to catch sight of their savior. More than the city poor and village crofters shouted and surged against the guardsmen’s cordon. Petitioners now traveled from far-distant cities to receive Avenor’s royal alms. A second row of pikemen ringed the central dais to keep order, their polished buckles and appointments backed by white silk bunting tied up with gilt cord and tassels.
Lysaer stepped through the gateway just before the advent of noon. The wind’s icy buffet ruffled his ingot gold hair. His white-clad person seemed etched into air, set off from the commonplace sea of dark woolens like a mote struck into incandescent purity by the silver-ice fall of winter sunlight. The welcoming roar which greeted Prince Lysaer rocked echoes off the high, amber brick of the watch-towers. Engulfed in a mounting crescendo of noise, he ascended the dais stair, his honor guard and high council ministers a parade pace behind him.
The thronging stew of voices grew hushed as Lysaer s’Ilessid took his place. He accepted the bullion coffer from his chancellor, then addressed the adoring crowd. “Hail the Alliance of Light! Through the dedication of all people, moral strength shall prevail against darkness!” He tipped up his face. As though his appeal was presented to heaven, he summoned the powers of his gift. A dazzling shaft speared down from the zenith to lend grand display to his beneficence.
Yet this time, the flaring, fired brilliance which answered was not completely his own.
The two officers nearest sensed something amiss: as if the light were too fine, too potent, charged through by an effervescence of force outside the range of mortal senses. They called in consternation, saw their prince jerk up short. His calm shattered before irritation and astonishment as his frosty, white finery spun awry in a flux of uncanny, cold air.
Unseen, unheard, the Sorcerer Kharadmon linked his subversive conjury to the tide of the solstice noon. An actinic blast of heatless illumination exploded over the dais. The ranking royal bodyguards were rocked back and dazzled. They strove to reorient, unsure if they should draw weapons, or what form of enemy might manifest. Through an inrush of winds like a rip in clear air, they heard the crash of the coin chest, fallen from the prince’s grasp. Then the cascading treble as the shadow-banes burst free, clanging and scattering across the dais. Plucked off the boards like a captured chess piece, Lysaer s’Ilessid no longer stood among them. The circle of light just made manifest shimmered empty, while his chancellor and bodyguard gaped in terrified astonishment.
For Lysaer, seized fast by a presence that disallowed protest, the upset plucked him bodily and hurled him through the howling eye of chaos. He felt torn in half, upended, spun. Nausea threatened to rip up his guts. He battled to cope in riled anger. Led once before through a spell transfer across longitude, he recognized the forces of outside conjury just before the disembodied voice of Kharadmon informed him, “You are bound at this moment for Althain Tower in answer to summons by the Fellowship.”
Then transition ended. The wheeling cascade of disorientation snapped away. Lysaer felt his person restored to firm stone, but not in the plaza at Avenor. The smells in this place were ozone and dust, coiled through an elusive, dark tang of oiled metal. He shielded his eyes, made out a black onyx floor underfoot. The fierce play of light streamed from inlaid strings of ciphers, arrayed in disquieting patterns, concentric circles and interlocked rune lines yet limned silver-white in the fast-fading shimmer of spent energies. He recognized he stood at the apex of the power focus laid out in the keep’s lower dungeon. Its seamless walls were pale marble. Gargoyle sconces crouched leering at the major points of the compass. Lysaer’s flesh crawled with chills, gift of Luhaine’s nearby presence; then that cold intensified as Kharadmon flanked him as invisible escort to prod his stiff step toward the stairwell.
“You won’t get away with abducting me,” Lysaer ground out in low fury. “Nor can raw power absolve Arithon’s bloody crimes, nor the secret of your dirty liaison.”
“You’re no one’s prisoner,” Luhaine said, unperturbed. “As for keeping propriety, this meeting you attend shall be bent outside time. Your absence at Avenor will last no more than the wings of an instant.” He led up the stair shaft, his spirit reclothed as a courtesy in the image of a corpulent bald man from whose dimpled chin hung a cataract of silver beard. His stooped shoulders were robed
in the dusty slate cloth favored by scholars and clerics, and his sandals fussed to a waxed shine.
Behind, manifest as a slim, dapper form cloaked in extravagant green velvet with slashed sleeves and linings of flame orange, Kharadmon showed his foxy smile. “Nor need you waste effort maligning your half brother.” He wore a black mustache twisted to raised tips like crossed scimitars. His beard was a spade-point goatee. The rest of his hair fell loose and long to his collarbones, argent combed through jet at the temples. He surveyed Lysaer’s pique with eyes a sardonic, pale green. “The only man’s fate held at issue today will be yours, scion of s’Ilessid.”
Every inch the born prince, Lysaer stayed unruffled by the Sorcerers’ cavalier handling. His tread on the worn, concave stair was assured, his bearing never less than a masterpiece of cool statecraft. He filed after Luhaine through the trapdoor to ground level, into the fragrant tang of cedar and the polished, frozen ranks of Paravian statuary. Though past high kings before him had cried aloud for sheer wonder at the antlered, stone majesty of the centaurs that raised hooves and towered above human height, Lysaer would not turn his head. Royally assured, he displayed no catch of breath. Nor did he marvel at the unearthly, stopped splendor of the unicorns, posed in dancing steps, with their spiraled horns struck soft pearl in the muted gleam through the arrow slits.
That veneer of indifference soon became forced. The willful, steel nerve he sustained throughout taxing state councils in this place chafed thin, made brittle as a mask of varnished paper. Lysaer fought the poignant, swift tug at the mind that moved prior visitors to weep. He refused for staunch pride to unbend. The Spinner of Darkness was the Fellowship’s minion; moral duty compelled him to stand strong. No matter the price, he dared not let the unworldly grace of a dead past beguile him into weakness. He walked as a man sealed deaf to temptation, while to the right and the left, the joyful, inspired artistry of the smallest ones, the sunchildren, ripped his heartstrings and begged him for laughter.