Ahead rose a staircase of stark, chiseled granite, blackened with centuries of torch soot. Althain Tower had been raised in beleaguered haste to safeguard the records of the Paravian culture. Its library held the chronicles of the First Age, when the ravaging hordes of creatures raised to life by the drakes’ dreams had led the world to near ruin. Sealed vaults and storerooms contained old weapons from those times, rare artifacts of Paravian craftwork. Young by comparison, the heirlooms recovered from the plunder of the high king’s halls shared shelf space.
The grim stairwell between levels still reflected the primary function as a fortress. Stark, unfinished stone made a wrenching, grim contrast to the grandeur of the commemorative statues. Here, even the most unflinching pride could not evade the imprint of despair. The moan of the drafts and the squeal of a loose shutter bespoke desolation, undying reminder of tragedy and losses endured since the departure of the old races. Lysaer set his chin. He refused to give way to emotion or embarrassment, and that hardened determination to stand down Athera’s past was not missed by the Sorcerers who escorted him.
They ushered him across the first landing, past the chamber where the Koriani Waystone had been held secure since the first chaotic hour of the rebellion; they ascended to the next, where Althain’s Warden kept his living quarters. On the third level, Sethvir himself awaited, the dusty, threadbare garments he preferred put aside for state formality: a robe of maroon velvet interlaced at sleeves and collar in black cord, and belted with a girdle stitched with river pearls. His beard had been tidied. Silk cord looped his hair at his nape, and his glance of greeting came sharp as a catchlight on fired enamel. “Welcome to Althain Tower, Lysaer s’Ilessid.”
The prince’s crisp nod offered civilized replacement for the bald-faced accusation, that in his hall at Avenor, hospitality did not include being snatched off by force.
Sethvir met that unspoken fuming with a note of disquieting, pure pity. “Beware how you think in this place.”
“I fear no one’s censure,” Lysaer said, and despite his best care, the pique showed.
“Perhaps not today, but the future’s not written.” Sethvir unfolded hands like gnarled twine and flung wide a door of iron-strapped oak.
Inside, the tower’s rough stone had been paneled over in linen fold patterns of golden maple. A carpet of Cildorn weave graced the floor of a comfortable, warm chamber. The furnishings included a table of waxed ebony, standing lions back-to-back as its pedestal, and chairs upholstered in dark leather with exquisite, chased ivory finials. Beeswax candles burned, both in tall stands and sconces. Rowed beneath the paned, lancet windows, and lent the rich depth of choice dyes, the banners of Athera’s five kingdoms hung from bronze tapestry rods. The ambiance held a grandiloquent, trapped weight of history before which Lysaer paused, amazed.
“Behold, the chamber of the high kings. Here, your ancestor, Halduin s’Ilessid, knelt and swore oath to the Fellowship. That blood vow he gave became binding on his progeny, for the length of his line, and all time. No light matter.” Sethvir’s gesture encompassed the cleared space before the table, no invitation, but strict command. “Through the duration of this audience, you will stand.”
Lysaer bridled, mocked at once by Kharadmon’s mercuric chuckle. “You forget yourself, bantling. Your forefathers were crowned kings on Fellowship authority. Any claim you have to royalty originated here, ruling power granted in accord with Tysan’s founding charter.”
An added voice gruff in the grain as old bedrock lent that statement full weight. “This is not the world of your birth, to acknowledge right of arms or direct ancestry.” Unnoticed until he straightened, another Sorcerer moved from his quiet, leaning stance against the ebon pilaster that flanked the fireplace. “You walk on Athera, in the hall at Althain Tower, where blood inheritance is fully revocable!”
Tall, worn to leathery leanness by centuries of life in harsh weather, Asandir was not clad for travel. The flames’ ruddy glow touched and drowned in the velvet of robes the deep indigo of midnight. Sleeves, hem, and collar were sewn in silver braid, matching the glint of his hair. Named Kingmaker in legend for the royalty he had crowned, he looked the part: clean-shaven, with sable brows angled in lines like slashed pen strokes, his cheekbones and nose as rugged as if notched by an axe out of hardwood.
“What brings your complaint?” Lysaer assumed his place in prideful, combative challenge. “I refused Tysan’s crown. The sovereignty I shoulder is none of your making, but springs from city law and a writ drawn by Karfael’s mayor.”
“Is that how you claim your right to set chains on free men, then subject them to branding and lifeterm of forced labor on the galleys?” From the doorway behind, Sethvir sighed. “I think not.” He added, “We’re all here.” Although he moved not a finger, the iron-strapped panel slammed closed.
Lysaer gave a start, but refused to acknowledge the arrivals who filed behind him. He took their measure instead as they assumed their seats at the table. The lead figure was hooded in a full-length white mantle. The face stayed shadowed and genderless despite the sharp brilliance of candles. Lysaer recognized the collar yoke and linked runes in silver and gold which denoted a life initiate of Ath’s Brotherhood. He sucked a grim breath. His prior suspicion stood confirmed: the adepts were in sympathy with Arithon s’Ffalenn, and this delegate’s presence, an unpleasant, sure proof that their kind had joined ranks with the Fellowship against him.
As dark followed day, a fifth Sorcerer limped after, his caped cloak, short tunic, and leggings woven of somber black wool. A raven rode his shoulder, wings spread over a steel gray thatch of hair. The bird surveyed the prince and the assemblage of Sorcerers, but its mind and its thoughts were not avian. All of its master’s shrewd intelligence lay reflected in eyes the hue of ripe chestnuts.
“Traithe,” Asandir greeted. A swordsman’s swift step carried him from the mantel to draw out a chair. His care for his colleague’s infirmity held deferent respect for good reason. Traithe of the Fellowship had been crippled since the terrible day he had raised the wild forces to seal the passage at South Gate against the Mistwraith’s incursion. His sacrifice then had cut off the invasion. Though fogbound, the world had survived. If his quizzical smile and listening ear had once eased Lysaer to amity, today, all the laugh lines were stilled. Traithe’s visage looked tired, his mouth a taut fold, grim with years and old pain.
Sethvir chose the seat beneath the banner of Tysan, flanked right and left by the mismatched shades of Kharadmon and Luhaine. Between the one, rapacious as a gambler in a card parlor, and the other, staid and somber as a judge, Althain’s Warden might seem like a maundering old man, prone to openmouthed dozing. Except the eyes he raised to the prince were no dreamer’s, but a surgeon’s kept steel, to flay skin from bone on a glance.
Lysaer resisted the coward’s urge to plead. Fellowship Sorcerers were not subject to persuasion. Unlike his packs of recalcitrant mayors, they could not be swayed by sincerity. Trappings of ornament or clothing would not impress them. At will, they could strip him down to his naked spirit. To face down all five without trembling in dread required an act of main strength. Lit by the merciless flood of the candles, Lysaer felt sealed outside of time. The tower’s very presence distilled his perception into shapes too precise for forgetfulness. Grand causes and ideals were excised and diminished. The strivings of honor and the layered masks of selfhood became turned about, reduced to flat copies in reflection, a purposeless circling like movements of fish behind glass.
Lysaer clasped his hands, steeped to acid resolve. He was the hawk in the falconer’s net, and the Fellowship, deadly and powerful conspirators acting in concert with a criminal. The right was not theirs to decry his moral destiny, or to accost him with binding judgment. They could hurl their dire threats, and he could refuse. He had no stake to bargain beyond dignity and life; his sole weapon became his own staunch fiber of principle. Let the Sorcerers break him with brute force and conjury if they could. For the sake of al
l threatened and innocent people, he would do no less than extend his best effort to stand strong.
Traithe opened in shaded, soft sorrow. “You are aware, our Fellowship acts in accord with the Law of the Major Balance. We bring harm to none, nor does our practice force any man against his given will. The talk in the cities of coercive spells and rituals raised out of bloodshed is no more and no less than the ignorant bluster of fear.”
“If choice is still mine, then send me back, now.” Lysaer inclined his head, every inch the magnanimous prince. “Or prove yourselves hypocrites, since the conjury which plucked me up out of Tysan was an act done without my consent.”
“You will listen.” Asandir sat forward, his eyes the washed, pale opal of the tiercel’s, and his expression forbidding as granite. “Games of rhetoric will not serve, nor will we bandy obstructive, petty argument. Do you realize, in truth, the place mankind holds in the order of this world? Or do you even care, in your self-righteous cry of public sacrifice?”
Kharadmon flicked one finger. Like the barbed parody of a stage magician’s trick, a shadow-bane flashed and arced airborne. Asandir fielded the spinning coin in one fearfully capable hand. At first touch, as if the gold scalded, his mouth flinched into a line.
“Abomination,” murmured the adept of Ath’s Brotherhood. The soft, fluting voice was female, and young, and the shadowy hood turned a fraction. Unseen eyes bored into the prince and measured his regal stillness. “Ah, no,” she said. “A mere hedge witch’s sigil to ward against darkness could not turn the might of the Fellowship. But stronger powers lie dormant behind symbols. Beliefs cling to metals. For those reasons, the cumulative resonance of your gold rings unclean.”
Asandir held the coin cupped between his palms. Through a span of stilled silence, its cast glow of reflection seemed to light his seamed face from within. He spoke a liquid, clear word. The language he chose was the ancient Paravian, and the inflection shaped sound like struck crystal. Time stopped, suspended. The mystery in that moment held the potential to snap thought, or the latent might to rend mountains. But Asandir’s summoning framed only kindness. Lysaer knew an instant of scouring, sore grief, that he was but fashioned of mortal clay. He felt as a child shut in the cold dark, and the wrench all but felled him, that the Name gently spoken was not his.
The shadow-bane melted to that power of compassion. Both sigil and sunwheel flowed molten and smoothed. Asandir was not burned. The disk he laid down and slid back across the table was transformed to a pristine blank. The Sorcerer spread his hands flat and looked up while the prince was still nakedly shaken.
“Tricks and spells,” Lysaer gasped. “Would any man argue? At your bidding a stone might be made to wail and weep.”
“Even so, the stone weeps for choice, by our code.” Asandir’s speech stayed dispassionate, uncolored by the fabric of sheer caring he had just summoned to redeem the shadow-bane. “What code shapes your life? The deceptive diffraction of Ath’s order you encourage shall afflict miseries to span generations. You style us criminals who break lives and spill blood. Do you not do the same for a feud?”
Lysaer snatched at argument to collect himself. “Why not tell me? Did Arithon s’Ffalenn weigh the full measure of consequence when he tore buildings in Jaelot stone from stone, or placed arms in the hands of Vastmark shepherds?” Flagged confidence returned, became ringing conviction. “What of the five hundred he murdered at the Havens? Or the mountains torn down upon Dier Kenton Vale to crush tens of thousands more beneath the Wheel?”
“Those spirits lived and died in free choice within Ath Creator’s ordained order,” the adept said in metallic soft sorrow. “Their beliefs and expectations held no more than error. They fought for lies, but not faith. The course you now tread would deny the prime source from whence springs all joy and all life.”
Lysaer fielded that sentiment with contempt. “Are they any less dead for their choice or their truth? Arithon, also, can beguile to turn innocents. If I don’t oppose him, who will?”
“Beware, false prince,” Sethvir interjected, neither wistful nor diffused, but earnest in a concern that terrified for its mildness. “The fears you smooth over in the trappings of moral platitudes will counterbalance nothing. Neither can they build. You will find the just fervor you raise can save no one. In the end, your own followers will dictate your actions. Their will shall rule yours with a needy finality that you will be powerless to gainsay. We can offer no help for you then.”
“I was beyond help the moment I fell under Desh-thiere’s curse,” said Lysaer, succinct. His diamond studs flashed like ripped bits of light as he snatched his small opening for riposte. “That was supposed to be your problem. By what right do you criticize my methods before you have broached your own failure?”
A pause seized the chamber. Sethvir and Asandir stayed wrapped in glass silence; the spirits of Kharadmon and Luhaine looked pressed into the air like stamped felt. The adept made a sound, in sorrow or dismay, and clasped bronzed hands to her lips, while the candles burned on in smokeless, unreal indifference.
A baleful, black cutout given life in a scene without motion, the raven splayed its left wing feathers. Its head swiveled sidewards. One bead eye stayed fixed, a spark of buffed bronze, as it balanced to its master’s shift forward.
“There is no pretense here, Lysaer.” Traithe’s rebuke was rust swathed in velvet. “Desh-thiere’s ill works pose the true danger, a peril shared by us all. Subject to a curse to kill Arithon you may be, but that does not rule out choice and action. Mind and will can be yours to command outside of your half brother’s presence. Blind hatred can be fought.” The raven preened on his shoulder, undisturbed, as he entreated, “You are gifted to seek justice. Don’t make that a weapon for righteousness. The misery you seed in your quest to kill Arithon might live on long past your death. Claim your cause as divine, and you found a tradition that will not be lightly shaken.”
“You are swift to condemn my role as deceit.” Lysaer’s fine hair shone a pale, fallow gold beneath the flood of the sconces. When he raised his proud head, all the strain showed, his beautiful face stiff in his forced effort not to weep. “As one human ruler, I may be in error. But in all fair conscience, can I stand aside and let Arithon of Rathain turn his sorceries on an unsuspecting society? What binds him to constraint? You who claim wisdom know better than any. A mortal who commands unchecked power becomes ripe for corruption. Jaelot and Alestron have already suffered. Why beg for a large-scale disaster?”
The prince turned his head. Despite a transparent desire for privacy, he pursued his point, dogged, to its finish. “If I sacrifice one value for another, if I choose to create a balance of power, who are you to cry me down? The debt incurred becomes my personal score on the slate of Daelion Fatemaster. I am the Shadow Master’s opposite. My place is to check him. Ath have mercy on us both, for the fate brought upon us by the bride-gift of a sorcerer whose ancestor was trained by your Fellowship!”
Lysaer faced forward in blazing, brash courage and hurled his own charge in defense. “If your hand is revealed at the root of our conflict, tell me why have you not acted?”
Asandir arose, dark brows drawn down over eyes turned a forbidding, storm gray. “How dare you mistake us for the street beggars of Avenor, to try and wring sympathy by crying lame causes, then playing the puppet martyred for the grand destiny.” He leaned on the table, the veins on his hands like vines gnarled into aged oak. “Or do you hope you might finally convince yourself?” His glare flickered over the prince like crossed lightning. “We have not acted because Desh-thiere’s curse is inseparably tangled with your life aura. As Traithe said, our Fellowship does not kill.”
“You claim you would let two lives tear civilized society asunder?” Lysaer laughed, his widened eyes locked on the Sorcerers. “Then indeed, I have no hope.” Honest rage tore through his gritty resentment, for a second upsetting the ironclad duty dunned into him with royal birthright. “Ath, did you think I desired my exile to
this world? Or that I asked to become your sacrificial weapon against the Mistwraith?”
“The Fellowship has never been a force in Athera to take guiding charge of human destiny!” A creature of movement and action, Asandir thrust up from the table. He stalked to the fire, braced an arm on the mantel, while the flames at his feet snapped and flickered. Their light played a moving mapwork of lines over his hard, shuttered features.
Luhaine retrieved the lapsed dialogue. “Our purpose is rather to stand guard for the land, and to this end, you’re being asked some harsh questions. Face yourself!” The entreaty was raised, a knife blade that offered no quarter. “You embark on a dangerous precedent, even beg the ruin of your race! How dare you mask over the miracle that is the prime source! For arrogance, you put yourself on that pedestal in attempt to whitewash a curse-bound directive to end your half brother’s life. True justice plays no part. You veil truth for vendetta, for vengeance and base envy, because Arithon will not be seduced by the evil you seek to attach to his name.”
Lysaer swayed. His glittering shoulders wavered, almost bent.
The adept swept to her feet, relentless. “Unstop your ears and listen, scion of s’Ilessid. Persist on your present path, and you shall gain your desires.” As Lysaer’s blue eyes widened, she pressed him, “Oh yes. Your half brother shall walk in the shadow you create. But not before you stand blackened enough to raise despair of a force sufficient to break him. Every mortal enclave on this continent shall fall as victim to your cause. Your memory shall be sealed in the archives by violence, for nothing in creation can stand or flourish in the absence of love. Let us see, in the hour that Arithon’s blood stains your hands, whether conviction for your fellowman or overweening pride is your master.”