A pillow struck the floor, slashed to leaking feathers, close followed by a crash as the pricket was raked from the nightstand. Caolle slipped as the candle rolled under his boot. “Dakar,” he entreated through beleaguered balance, “if you aren’t injured, please Ath, I need you to move.”
Dakar scuttled clear as the fight clattered past him. He coughed sour fumes, swiped sweat from his lashes. “You’re oathsworn to Jieret!” he accosted the Teir’s’Ffalenn. “Dare you murder the very man who raised your caithdein from boyhood?”
“Never mind parley, his Grace won’t hear you!” Caolle grunted. A scorching scream tore the air as sheer force of strength cleared his blade from entrapment on Arithon’s crossed sword and dagger. The torch absorbed another lunge. Sparks flurried and peppered spilled fragments of glass with pinpoint stars of reflection. “As you love life, prophet, move your fat arse and do something to back up my light.”
Roused to the danger, Dakar winnowed up eddies of loose down in a hands and knees scrabble across the chamber.
Backdrop to his effort, a half-snarled curse as a fighter snagged in the bedhangings. Velvet tore. A hacked tassel sliced into the gloom. Dakar wrenched open a drawer, tossed out papers and pens, but found nothing of use to strike a spark. A toe gouged his calf; Caolle’s, in retreat. Again the duelists clashed in attack over the crown of his head. The puddle by the washstand slickened the footing. Caolle slipped, ejaculated a stringent oath as his guard suffered an unlucky break.
Arithon’s weapon licked in like black lighting; rang into an improvised defense. Blood flew. Caolle sustained a nick above his bracer. The whirl of his torch barely foiled the following left dagger thrust, while the jerking, snatched flame chased glints across quillon and guard.
Both men felt fatigue. The fight lagged a split second. Dakar, looking up, caught a glimpse of green eyes. The prince who was born to s’Ffalenn compassion, whose music could raise tears from stone hearts for generosity, appeared to be vanquished beyond recall. Soulless, inhuman, the creature who advanced to take down his own liegeman seemed unreal as a fetch wrought into the form of a dreadfully familiar body.
Lips peeled back in murdering ferocity, the Master of Shadow lunged again.
Dakar flung back from that killing bash of steel and cowered behind the clothes chest. “You’ll have to disarm him!” If means still existed to salvage Arithon’s mind, the Paravian defenses held dormant in Alithiel offered the last avenue for hope.
The washstand crashed over. Back and forth, the duel raged, while Caolle’s fast-pressed weapon gouged slivers from furnishings, or stabbed jagged furrows in plaster. The belling crash of swordplay roused sleepers from their beds. Someone’s raised voice shouted from the outer hallway, while weapon clashed to weapon, a tireless roulade of raw fury stitched through the descant jingle of Caolle’s mail shirt.
Dakar cursed a head still melon thick from drinking. The din drilled his ears and scattered his labored train of thought. Caolle’s cause could not be helped. That quicksilver exchange of thrust and blocking parry confounded his blurred eyesight. His effort to rise was undone by the palsied, nauseated weakness brought on by over-played talent.
Caolle fared no better. Veteran though he was, his strength was not speed, but methodical, polished execution. Rucked carpet and the hazards of upset furnishings presented countless pitfalls to defeat the reach and sweep of his weapon. Again and again he was forced to defer to the darting strikes of Arithon’s dagger.
The Mad Prophet snagged the wrapped bundle of the lyranthe, shoved her clear of the fray as clansman and prince sprang apart. Heaving rasping gulps from exertion, the pair faced off, the stolid, iron-haired veteran like a battered stone buttress, and the Shadow Master opposite, light boned and slim, and possessed of a weasel’s poured grace. Blades raised, eye to eye, they stood locked through a measuring pause.
Caolle surveyed his liege, a study that flickered over carriage and mien, and ended infallibly with the hands; a habit begun in contempt and adversity, done now as an unthinking sacrifice in behalf of a prince he had learned to respect. Then its heartbreaking counterpart: the echo of the grave, listening intentness Arithon served those who had won his most difficult trust. All his empathetic gifts of perception stood reversed by the curse. He subjected Caolle to a combing search for the first fatal weakness to exploit.
Against razor tension, some concerned citizen knocked at the door and inquired for the safety of the bard. The latch rattled, foiled by the bar Caolle had dropped as he entered.
Suspension shattered into movement. The renewed, wailing onslaught of metal beat at metal in relentless intent to draw blood. Arithon’s dagger scored once, then twice, as Caolle’s sword scythed through the bedhangings. Swagged cloth slowed his counterstroke. Again the striking main gauche sought his flank.
The clansman parried, squarely in form, but the torch cracked at last under punishment. The lit end sheared away. Shadows wheeled through its arc as the spluttering stub bounced under the clawed feet of the tipped washstand. Streamered flames lit the towels. The Mad Prophet chose not to stop the conflagration. He owed Caolle better than uncertain light. Since the Laughing Captain’s landlord required strong incentive to enforce his house rule against brawling, Dakar hooked the unlit end of the cloth and hurled its burning length across the tossed sheets on the bed.
Fire blossomed. Close walls banked the heat and flung back a hellish glare of light. Smoke billowed, licked through by the flicker of steel. The combatants met and parted in circling concentration. While the racket in the corridor changed pitch to alarm, Caolle ran out of options. Another bind; his wrists flexed in practiced response. Tempered steel shrieked and parted, leaving him pinned to the crackling blaze of the mattress.
Dakar perceived the last choice as it happened. “No! Caolle, don’t! Let the smoke haze him dizzy. We can take down your liege as he falters.”
But the clansman saw well enough how the stakes lay. He accepted the one fleeting opening and lunged. His sure stroke rammed home through Alithiel’s cross guard. Faultless in timing, steadfast in sacrifice, he recovered his stance, set both hands in leverage, and twisted.
His right side, exposed, took the thrust of the dagger he lacked any weapon to parry. His grunt as cold steel bit under his mail shirt entangled with a dissonant outcry of metal: his blade still engaged with Alithiel’s cross guard. Falling, his warrior’s reflex at last broke the Shadow Master’s grip.
The Paravian-made sword arced free.
At that instant, Dakar spoke her Name to engage the bright powers instilled by the centaur who forged her.
Light ripped the air, hard followed by sound, a struck chord to raise the wild elements to exultation. Wrought in a terrible, undying harmony, the note reshaped perception, until earthly existence seemed a shabby reflection to be suffered against loss that carried no tangible name. No one in range of that resonant, clear power proved exempt from its force. Time suspended. Thought and memory and awareness lost meaning. The shattering peal of Ath’s primal mystery shocked the tie between spirit and flésh.
Arithon screamed. “Caolle!” His voice pierced through the sword’s diminished vibrations in a transfixing agony of restored wits. “Ath’s mercy on me, Caolle!” He fell to his knees. Undone, distraught, he laid horrified hands on the bleeding wound in his stricken liegeman’s side. “Dharkaron strike me, it’s death I have dealt for your service.”
His remorse rent through the whispered harmonics of the sword’s fast-fading vibration. Flame light laid bare his terror and his tears as he labored in feverish need to stop the ebb of life beneath his fingers. “Dakar, in the clothes chest. There are shirts to staunch the wound. Hurry! Shove my sword in the fire. The blade will be needed for cautery.”
Dakar pushed erect, crossed the chamber, but not to fetch rags or follow orders. He recovered the dropped sword. For tragic and sorrowful necessity, he reversed the grip and struck Arithon a blow on the back of the neck with the pommel.
The Sha
dow Master dropped in a slackened heap of limbs across the shoulder of his dying liegeman.
“Well done,” Caolle gasped. “Now, heave him up and haul him out of here.” He paused, rendered silent by a shuddering spasm, then labored through another ragged sentence. “Take his lyranthe. He’ll be grieved if he finds we let her burn.”
“Caolle,” Dakar said. He coughed on rising smoke.
“No! Leave me! You must!” The clansman snatched Dakar’s arm in a frightful, harsh fist. “Don’t spurn my sworn duty. If Rathain’s prince is lost, I have just thrown away all I was ever born to serve.”
Dakar scrubbed sweat from his eyes and trembled with anguished denial. “Ath, if I do this, what about Arithon? You know the force of his grief could turn inward and cripple him.”
“See it doesn’t.” Caolle gasped, seized again by a quivering paroxysm. Eyes shut, jaw clamped, he forced will to prevail against the extremity of agony. “If this is my fate,” he resumed, “inform my Lord Jieret that my last service was to fight the Mistwraith at my prince’s side.” Through a horrible, wrenching lag, he wrestled to draw breath and finish.
“Tell my liege…” As though he sensed refusal in the harrowed quiet of the Mad Prophet’s attention, he grew frantic. “Tell him!” He had to speak over the yammering noise as alarmed citizens pounded at the door. “Say to Prince Arithon, when the Fellowship Sorcerers crown a s’Ffalenn descendant as Rathain’s high king at Ithamon, on that hour, he will not have failed me.”
The bar on the door burst to a flying rain of plaster. Flames fed on draft and leaped high and licked in a roar across the ceiling.
“Go!” Caolle begged. “You must, can’t you see?”
Shouts hailed from the doorway and thrown water flailed through the murk. Coughing back tears, Dakar bent, found the sword, rammed its scabbardless length through his belt.
“Daelion keep you, I won’t let your liege die.” The ripped shirt sufficed to cover the exposed s’Ffalenn features. The Mad Prophet remembered the lyranthe, then caught Arithon’s slack wrists and dragged him like deadweight through the smoldering litter of smashed furnishings.
Hands from the corridor reached to assist him. Someone astute hung the lyranthe strap which had fallen askew off of his shoulder.
Dakar snatched breath for thanks and responded to the landlord’s hysterical inquiry.
“A thief,” he improvised as someone’s servant stepped in to help shoulder his wrapped royal burden. “Broke in and knifed the bard’s servant. Smashed out the window to make his escape.” Before anyone thought to question the lie, he entreated, “My master’s man still lies in there, wounded. I beg of you, do what you can for him.”
Two bystanders arrived to help fight the fire bent at once to soak cloth and mask their faces. Dakar never knew if they managed a rescue. Slave to the demands of desperate necessity, he stumbled on toward the stairs and started down in a dumb fog of misery. To the volunteer bearing Arithon behind, he snapped, “I’ll need to borrow a cart from the stable. At once! The bard can’t be left on the street, unconscious, and someone needs must fetch a healer.”
A stableboy passed off his two slopping buckets and sprinted ahead to commandeer horses and harness. Dakar leaned on the newel, half-blinded by tears. The excuse of the cinders masked his undignified sorrow as he played arcane seals through the smoke. He ensured what he could: the fire would not spread. Through the bedlam raised by the bucket brigade, his furtive acts of conjury were certain to pass unremarked.
No one would notice his furtive escape, or recall Arithon’s precipitous departure.
Feint
Early Spring 5653
Dawn mists loured over the estuary at Riverton, stained as dirtied fleece where the gate lanterns leaked sulfur light through the gloom. The company of mud-splashed guards sent to seal the city’s north postern established their post in smart expectation of the Prince of the Light’s formal entry. The captain entrusted to seal every egress out of Riverton was a stocky, scarred veteran, flushed in the face and run to vile temper from a cross-country march beset by unimaginable difficulties.
The last men under orders reached their designated checkpoints at the docks, wharves, and gates through his incandescent drive to mow past upset plans and diversions.
The most recent and diabolically irritating of these still remained, a thorn in his side in the shape of a lean, impertinent clansman. The fellow knew field war. His laconic, whip-stinging criticism held an accuracy that shamed the men scarlet and generally fragmented morale. Flights of high temper seeded shouting between rankled officers and flustered subordinates. Bright eyed, avid, the clansman picked fights. With them since midnight, and onerously underfoot through the exhausting, last leagues of forced marching, he clung to their company like a pill on knit wool until most of the officers would have been pleased to ram unsheathed steel through his gizzard.
None did. The s’Brydion claim to alliance against shadow was unfortunately backed by a safe-conduct bearing Lysaer’s own signature.
“Horsemen, inbound,” called the watch from the tower.
The mists hoarded sound like an arras of dank felt. Strained minutes passed before the oncoming thud of hoofbeats reached the commanding captain on the battlement above the main gate.
His rank, furrowed frown raised more volunteer comment from the old blood duke’s pesky brother. “Look lively, my friend. Your luck hasn’t changed.”
“What?” The disgruntled Etarran swung his cast-iron glare from the road to the impudent speaker beside him.
Mearn s’Brydion showed him, the insolent grin he saved for his killing hands at cards. “We aren’t getting the reinforcement you expected.”
“You say!” The troop captain peered through the fog, beetled brows sequined with moisture.
“Torches,” said Mearn, his accent succinct.
Comprehension dawned as the cressets streamed in, socketed in the upraised fists of the outriders. The vaunted and glorious Prince Lysaer s’llessid would not light the column with pitch pine.
“A pity for me you’re too griped to bet,” Mearn baited. “I could’ve claimed a delightful small stake, since you’d never have imagined the women.”
The captain managed not to rout dignity and retort, since the maddening assessment was true.
Emerged like blurred tapestry through the silver-gilt tarnish of dawn, the disciplined cavalcade which reined under the archway served escort for three cowled Koriani seniors.
“Black Sithaer and Dharkaron’s bloody vengeance!” swore the captain. “What are their kind doing here? And where in creation is Prince Lysaer?”
“A very sharp question.” Mearn s’Brydion’s irksome, bright smile gave way to intent speculation.
As the captain stamped jingling toward the stair through the keep, the barbarian followed, cheerfully assured of his blood-given right to shadow Etarran authority.
At ground level, the air hung like vaporous cotton, masking the bleached hue of daybreak. Horses stamped like animated shadows to the pealing, treble chink of harness. The officer in command of the inbound party proved a stranger wearing guard’s colors from Hanshire. The name he gave back when challenged was Sulfin Evend, pitched in a snapping, aristocratic arrogance.
The mist cased the loom of the gatehouse, blurring texture from stone, and spangling the lichens in dew. Etarran men-at-arms held their stance in the turrets, defined by the bog reek of mud on their leggings, and by pebbled gray helms, pocked where the dents of late combat snagged glints from the moving torches.
While Mearn held his interested stance by the postern, the Etarran commander called puzzled inquiry. “Where’s his Grace of the Light?”
No one answered. The captain from Hanshire vaulted from his high saddle, cloak flung back like a mantled hawk. He turned his lean profile away and held bridles as the trio of women dismounted. Two bore purple mantles with scarlet-sewn borders, plain warning their errand today was not for humanitarian charity. The third wore the gray robes
and white hood of a healer.
The one with the triple-tiered bands of a seer’s rank bent and consulted a scrying crystal. The Etarran commander hissed through his teeth, ill at ease in the presence of spellcraft. More familiar with the ways of Koriani practice, the Hanshiremen played at their bridle reins to distract their mounts as the faint, tingling current of uncanny forces unreeled through the battening mists.
Two men-at-arms made signs against evil as the cowled seer finally straightened. She pronounced in a young woman’s voice, “I’ve confirmed. The Master of Shadow left Riverton before Lysaer’s cordon closed down the east gate.”
“Dharkaron avert!” the Etarran commander exploded. “That’s not possible. My men were in place before anyone here could gain word of the force sent to take him.”
“Peace on you,” said the second witch, the one wearing eighth rank, which set her seniority high enough to intimidate. “All is in order.”
Preoccupied by something she held in her hand, she murmured a staccato run of syllables that sounded like arcane ritual. The lines finished with Alt, name for the Paravian rune of ending. When she turned to stow her fetish in her saddlebag, the officer glimpsed what looked like a doll, fashioned from strips of white velvet and pearls, and twisted with strands of fair hair.
A shudder of distaste made his protest too shrill. “I can’t believe this! You expected the Spinner of Darkness to go free?”
The enchantress faced him. Her collected voice and superior bearing matched a refined oval face, silk black hair, and eyes the turned gold of aged varnish. “The trap to take the Master of Shadow is proceeding exactly as planned.”