“I don’t like her eyes,” Kharadmon observed tartly. “Vindictive as nightshade to stop a man’s heart in his sleep.”
“She looks that way when she’s hiding something.” Althain’s Warden considered the sorry prisoners held in chains in the cramped cell that once had confined Dakar. “The three new brigs will be diverted from crown orders by her Prime’s will to form a blockade. If our Teir’s’Ffalenn crosses through Korias without mishap, he could certainly fall to Morriel’s conspiracy as he sails his small sloop out of Mainmere.”
A wind like black ice, Kharadmon’s course riffled a stack of loose parchments weighted down by a chunk of iron meteorite. “You sent me summons. What do you ask? What else have you seen that you are so loath to tell me?”
Still reluctant to answer, Sethvir raised one finger. His soft word sang release over his suspended conjury, and the bindings inside his drawn circle let go. The sustaining, fine energies carried from the Prime Source spiraled downward. Spell-fired light sank to a pale halo, then vanished. Residual heat fanned and stirred the pale ends of the Sorcerer’s hair and beard, while spent forces dispersed, sighing away to stilled silence.
Between Sethvir’s elbows, the stone table reverted to form, seamless black as before, the sole remnant of change the upright candle, now snuffed to a febrile ember. Out of chill darkness, a stir of worn cloth as Althain’s Warden stood up. “I can’t say what tomorrow will bring. There are too many free-will choices involved to guess whether Arithon s’Ffalenn can achieve his escape into freedom. Yet one fact can’t be argued: at large or held captive in Koriani hands, he cannot long sustain a despair of self-damning proportion.”
Sethvir’s library suffered another tempestuous dusting as Kharadmon seized on the gist. Neither one of the half brothers had escaped the deranging sorrows linked to the bloodshed at Tal Quorin, Minderl Bay, and Vastmark. But where Lysaer s’Ilessid became driven to self-sacrifice for morality, ennobling his losses through a public campaign of justification, Arithon s’Ffalenn more quietly bled in compassion until his solitary resilience ran dry. No need to belabor the painful necessity, that the one threatened life held the lynchpin of the Black Rose Prophecy’s resolution. All hopes for the Fellowship’s restoration back to seven still hinged upon a crowned prince for Rathain.
“You want a mitigator,” Kharadmon burst out, his mercuric impatience the springboard to seize on the direction of Sethvir’s thinking. “Someone to reforge the bond of his trust with himself? Who’s to ask? Daelion Fatemaster wept! We’re talking of Kamridian s’Ffalenn’s direct descendant, and nothing we tried in that hour of trial turned his mind to seek self-redemption.”
“I know.” Sethvir reclaimed his tea mug and sipped its cold contents as he shared consternation and the grievous past memory of a valiant s’Ffalenn high king, driven to his doom in the Maze of Davien, where the Betrayer’s insidious coils of truth spells faced a man with his own mirror image. Arithon’s ancestor had died, torn apart by the pangs of guilt-driven conscience. The thread which had seen him undone at the last was his line’s royal gift of compassion.
“We lost King Kamri despite every conscious protection, and he had no damning entanglement with the effects of s’Ahelas farsight.” A spark jumped and grounded into the stone floor as Kharadmon vented his testiness.
“I thought you claimed Luhaine was the pessimist.” As if the dregs of his tea showed him nightmares, Althain’s Warden secreted the mug amid the snarl of old twine he scrounged when he needed a bookmark. He knew by Kharadmon’s complete lack of argument that he could not mask the bare truth. Out of today’s breeding quagmire of circumstance, the same tragedy that had ended King Kamridian’s life could be repeated with Arithon. Sethvir pondered bad odds, while outside, the wind slapped and whistled against his sealed shutters, and within, Kharadmon expended his angst in small fits that raised havoc among his belongings.
As if the innate peace of the darkness had fled, Sethvir touched the wick of the candle alight. The feeble spear of new flame creased shadows over the timeworn hollows of his face. Worry pinched his lips like cracked leather, and lent his clasped hands the transient fragility of flesh that was fallibly mortal. “I know of only two individuals with the power to lay claim to Arithon’s heart.”
Kharadmon froze into ominous stillness. “The enchantress Elaira and Earl Jieret s’Valerient.”
Sethvir nodded, brooding over the relentless perils implied by his posited remedy. “The lady could heal Rathain’s prince the fastest. Her influence would be reliable and sure, but she must first step forward in free will and transcend the limitations the Koriani Order has imposed between her and the man she would love.”
“I can’t take that risk!” Kharadmon protested, all trace of the prankster razed off by uncoiling horror. “What if she martyrs herself as a sacrifice? She might well break her vows and accept self-destruction!” The quill pens flurried airborne and circled, caught up in the shade’s consternation. “By the Avenger’s black Spear and Chariot, Traithe already questioned her once. Luhaine also. Both met the same obstacle.” Elaira had seen no truth beyond Morriel’s binding; nor did she perceive her own power to ask help to claim back her right to free spirit.
Althain’s Warden could not argue the razor-edged chances involved with breaching Elaira’s self-imposed solitude. Shoulders bowed, arms tucked to his chest, he crossed to the sill of the casement. While the storm raged with unrelenting raw violence against Althain’s spelled stone and latched glass, he did not share his caged pain, that often his wardenship weighed on his heart like lead shackles. The mighty protections of a dead centaur stonemason could offer no comfort, nor provide any haven against the pending potential for disaster Desh-thiere’s curse stewed up in south Tysan.
Nor was Kharadmon left blinded to nuance, that a discorporate spirit could accomplish the errand to Araethura with neater dispatch. His capitulation came barbed with the sardonic fire he used when he masked hurtful sentiment. “If Luhaine went once, I’ll bear that role now. At least the woman won’t have to put up with his windbag style of lecturing.”
Sethvir’s lips twitched with the barest thin irony. “Elaira stalled him point-blank with her woman’s sensibility, in fact. Take warning from that. Her superiors never did break her streetwise impudence. Airs and authority of any kind still raise her blistering contempt.”
Outside, the gusts ripped and savaged the runners of ivy latched into blunt stone. By lengths more obdurate, Sethvir laced chilled fingers under his beard, his elbows propped on the sill. His statement blurred into the dream of the earth link as he summed up his final appeal. “If you fail in Araethura, and Earl Jieret is called, his people in Rathain will be left in the hands of an infant successor. He will ask our help for safe passage. Even so, his journey will take several months. We could lose the short margin of time that is left to spare Arithon’s equanimity. Go swiftly.”
By the time the echo of the words died to silence, Althain Tower held no outside company. Sethvir was left to his own disturbed thoughts and the aimless whirl of the dust motes unmoored by Kharadmon’s soundless departure.
In distant Araethura, where the herbalist’s small cottage snugged into the, sweep in the moors, the spring downpour drummed in balked thunder against thatch netted down with twine and stout stones. Deep night wrapped the land. In velvet-grained darkness, the incessant winds rattled shutters and door, and moaned litanies under the eaves. After six years, the complaints of harsh storms were familiar enough that Elaira did not stir in her sleep.
When Kharadmon’s presence poured under the gap in her doorsill, the enchantress lay curled beneath tumbled blankets, wrists tucked to her breast. The spell crystal defensively cupped into one fist held her guard, the signature field spun off its facets like smoke hazed to a glow of spun phosphor. That shifting, uncertain luminosity picked out details a discorporate mage could perceive with no shift in vibration.
Sethvir of Althain had said for years that this woman’s hands held the thre
ads of Arithon s’Ffalenn’s future happiness. Since the fate of Athera also rode the same course, Kharadmon gave the sleeper his most exacting survey. The thin, elfin profile pillowed in waves of her deep auburn hair was serene. Her closed lips had softened from the habitual wry tilt of impertinence. Open to plain view was her heedless sensitivity, the vulnerable heart she would defend with attacking dry wit when aware.
Brushed by a finger of inquiry from behind, Kharadmon stilled. A pinpoint of cold amid the rough play of drafts, he revolved in place, amazed as the touch came again. Apparently the woman had placed small defenses on her cottage. His embarrassment stemmed from the astounding oddity that her contrary wardspells had picked out his presence before he had noticed their existence.
He swept her surroundings. The tiny cottage reflected a character too large to contain it, from the fleece-lined boots flung off helter-skelter, to the clothes lopsidedly hooked on the tine of a deer antler. Her pleasures were simple. Elaira had planted jonquil bulbs in a crock. Two quilted pillows stuffed with lavender and dried catmint seemed the gift of a moorland matron. She kept a vase filled with fallen owl and crow feathers. Three slate bits with holed centers strung on a thong hung over a black bowl lined with marble for water scrying.
The crammed trestle table where she mixed her herbals showed no trace of the frivolous dreamer. The brazier, the worn pestles and cups, the stone knife, and earthenware jars of the healer’s trade lay jumbled together with scarcely a bare space between them. More herbs dried in bundles dangled from the rafters. Last autumn’s rootstock was wrapped in willow baskets, carefully labeled, and preserved with sigils against rot. The runes and seals radiated a faint golden glow and the razor-edged haloes of energies that landscaped a spirit’s perception. Shoved by another questing emanation of inquiry, Kharadmon sent back a pure touch of compassion, and back-traced the carrier ray to its source.
Beside the wand crystal used to potentize the fine energy properties of herbs, four rounded chunks of river granite rested in alignment with the cardinal points of direction. Their awareness was raised, and glowing faint blue with the intent the enchantress had set upon them to serve her as guardian protection.
Kharadmon found their awakened perception most piquant, since practice of earth magics ran against strict form. The peculiarity spoke volumes, that a small wisdom kept by field witches and country grandmothers should find credence here, in the dwelling of an initiate Koriani. Since he was a friend, and brazenly uninvited, he held to strict manners. Each of the stones received his polite greeting in turn, phrased from the pure tones borrowed from the grand chord that sowed form in the void when sound first conceived Ath’s creation.
“The language is lyric, but scarcely an offshoot of anyone’s local dialect,” observed the woman whose cottage he had invaded. Aroused, propped on one elbow with eyes like gray smoke fixed on the blank air by her worktable, the enchantress challenged her visitor unabashed. “Nor do herders address plain stones from thin air. If your presence is honest, please show me courtesy and reveal yourself. ”
Kharadmon did her bidding, and proffered the image of a tall, dapper personage furled in a flamboyant green cloak. He had seal-dark hair swathed white at the temples, a sharp, spade-point beard, and eyes the flat jade of a cat’s. He swept into a bow, his hands clasped like a courtier’s. “No sweet language of mine could have coerced your guardian stones to betray you. The one to the east has the temperament of a crone.”
“That’s why I placed her opposite the door. She won’t bend for flattery or nonsense.” Elaira sat up, mantled in blankets and a magnificent, arrowed fall of bronze hair. “You’re Fellowship of Seven?”
For all her bravado, the import behind that query revealed a quick tremor of distress. Kharadmon straightened, still the posturing gallant. “Sweet lady, I’m the fourth to be granted the privilege of meeting with you face-to-face.”
A shiver seemed to run through the woman’s thin frame, though she masked the unease behind movement and tucked the rough wool up under her chin. “Should I thank Sethvir? Or doesn’t he usually dispatch shades to pay unannounced social calls while his victims are disadvantaged and in bed?”
Touched to delight by her quick, stabbing humor, Kharadmon raised his peaked eyebrows. “For you, like the cat born with all of its claws, there exists no inequity, lady.” His image lit with the wicked, bright smile he used to deflect Luhaine’s baiting. “I see where your stones acquired their ripe tongues.”
“Were they kind, they would have barred you from entry.” Now the tremor caught hold, let the Sorcerer read into the deep, ragged pain behind her effort of seamless composure. “If you’ve come to speak of Arithon s’Ffalenn, be warned. My Prime Matriarch is his implacable enemy, and I but a tool to her hand.”
Kharadmon flowed into pacing, carelessly letting one shin pass through an oak stool that lay in his path. “You are never a tool, lady, except by allowance or consent.” His glance darted questingly sidewards.
The enchantress had gloved both her hands in the blanket and pressed the cloth to her mouth, as if the gesture framed a bastion against her own thoughtless and desperate speech. There were tears, bright as jewels, brimming her eyelids. Yet the pride in her silence was stark iron. “I was a six-year-old fool in trouble with Morvain’s authorities,” she admitted. Her voice held its timbre through sheer stubborn strength. “Nor are four crotchety old stones from a river bottom quite proof against the might of the Skyron aquamarine. Since my vows are not revocable, why are you here?”
“Why indeed?” Kharadmon pressed, and waited, poised utterly still.
But the woman did not ask for his help to unravel the conundrum he posed her. Raised self-reliant, too resourceful to seek pity, she lowered her fingers and laced them, sure and still, on the tent of her drawn-up knees. “Say what you came here to tell me, since you’ve already stolen my peace.”
Kharadmon spun into vexed agitation, the breeze of his passage gone bitingly blunt as the frost that sang through his consonants. “Your prince has just learned that Koriani spellcraft can raise Lysaer’s essence as a fetch. In fact, your Prime Senior laid a trap to ensnare him. Her minions used that cheating, uncivil trick of spellcraft at Riverton, to sad and disastrous effect. Earl Jieret’s past war captain fell to his sworn liege’s steel.”
Elaira drew in a shaken breath, stilled as white marble in the darkness. “Ath’s mercy, Caolle? Arithon’s sword took down Caolle? Then what you have is a man torn by grief and entrapped in a web of despair. Is that why you came here? For advice to contain the Prince of Rathain’s bitter conscience?”
Kharadmon stilled again, wholly noncommittal, but the volume of his silence became mistaken for consent.
Eyes shut, her hair like wound bronze tanged with rubbed glints where the ends curled, Elaira said slowly, “As I love him, I can tell you the truth. Give him his release from your blood oath sworn at Athir.”
At Kharadmon’s specious startlement, she stared back, nerveless as coal-fired steel. “Oh, I knew of his oath on the hour it happened. You had to have seen. Since the healing spells we engaged in tandem at Merior, an empathic link still remains open between us.”
“You could use that to spare him the pitfalls, as you choose,” Kharadmon ventured in angling argument to coax fresh review of her logic.
But Elaira shook her head. “I won’t be his crutch. He needs none of my weakness. Nor will he thrive on any feminine instinct that gives him the child’s role through mothering a grown man’s mature pain. I urge you instead, return his free will. Give back his choice to own life or death. As things stand now, the very fact his hand is forced will only add coals to his anguish.” The flex in her modulation snapped for a second, and revealed all the tenderness beneath. “Ath, I know him, none better. He has strengths and depths even he doesn’t yet acknowledge. I believe with all my heart he will endure and survive even a grievous remorse such as this.”
Kharadmon pressed her. “You could risk his life on that premise?”
Elaira stared back at him, level. “I’d let him risk his life. There was no evil done. He did not succumb to the Mistwraith by choice. Nor would he endorse a forced act of insanity by turning the craven and destroying the royal heritage Caolle sacrificed himself to preserve.”
“He has lost everything,” Kharadmon pointed out.
Elaira swallowed, fighting down the passionate need to give way, to lean on the Sorcerer’s power and presence and find ease for her own stricken heartache. “His Grace of Rathain has already lost everything twice before this. What has changed since the banks of Tal Quorin?”
“Brave lady,” Kharadmon conceded, forced to yield at last before the unflinching moral fiber of her love, and her relentless display of raw courage. “I see we have also underrated your strengths. Be very sure, I shall argue against any one of us making the same mistake ever again.” His image snuffed out, leaving a turning, chill vortex of air that even the drafts treated deferentially. “With your stones’ permission, I will leave you a ward, that your Seniors not know I have been here.”
Then he was gone, in the space of a breath sped on northward, where, between Daon Ramon Barrens and the deep glens of Halwythwood his charge was to extend his appeal to Earl Jieret, caithdein of Rathain.
Behind him, he left the hollow drum of the rain and the cry of the winds on the lonely, dark moors of Araethura. Huddled in blankets, shot through with sorrows, Elaira released the hot flood of tears she would not shed in his presence. Her vows to her order left her no grace and no quarter. A child and a prophecy yet hung in the balance. Worse than death, she dreaded her inevitable fate, that on the day she next met with Arithon s’Ffalenn, in all likelihood she would be forced by her Prime to arrange for his final betrayal.