“A victory for your nemesis,” Lirenda observed. Her laughter welled up for the lofty irony, that Lysaer’s self-righteous public scruples had led to his own comeuppance.
“For today, one might think so.” The prince’s response was too calm, too knowing, and his gesture, a courtier’s indifference as he extended his hand to recover his borrowed diamond. “The sweetest gains fall from the jaws of defeat. What seasoned galleyman could possibly believe that brig could sail clear in the teeth of a gale, except through an act of dark sorcery?”
He let that sink in, while a crook of one finger brought a page out of nowhere to secure the loose stud in his baggage. The boy blushed under his blinding smile, then retired out of earshot as the exhilarating impact of Lysaer’s attention fastened back on the enchantress. “Our departure from Min Pierens will be delayed for some weeks. Since no message can be sent until my damaged galleys are made seaworthy, my council ashore will be tied. If Maenol’s rescued clansmen strike to plunder before then, affairs back in Tysan will be primed and set for a righteous retaliation. My deferred reappearance will repay every setback. I’ll find public fervor whipped to a fever pitch the instant we make landfall on the mainland.”
Lirenda stared, while the stopped air in her chest compressed into stunned disbelief. “Ath’s mercy, you could not have intended this!”
“I will prevail, for the good of this land and the innocent people who rely on my protection.” Across the dwindling rags of the fire, Lysaer s’Ilessid resumed in a flawless and chilling sincerity. “None would have been more surprised than I to see this small venture succeed. After the slaughter at Dier Kenton Vale, what fool could presume the Shadow Master’s capture could occur without hardship and sacrifice? My inner council at Avenor is scarcely naive. Each man was selected to outlast small defeats. Between the warning your Prime dispatched to Etarra and today’s predictable setback, I have gained my sure proof to expose wider truth. Mankind’s endangerment does not spring from the Spinner of Darkness alone. The pitfalls of spellcraft pose an equal threat to society.”
Lirenda’s appalled comprehension came magnified by the telltale rustle of her mantle.
Lysaer granted her unease a statesman’s smile, laced with dangerous irony: reversal of his high-handed strategy was in fact no setback at all. His dedicated quest to bring the Shadow Master’s downfall had been expanded to eradicate the practice of great and lesser sorcery; for that cause, he would let conflict widen and foment. In due course, his call to arms could extend his control across the entire continent.
“You begin to understand,” Lysaer said, satisfied. “Davien the Betrayer’s fountain in the Red Desert has expanded the game board across the next five centuries. Time enough to usher in sweeping change. As the guilds suffer predation from s’Ffalenn ships and renegade crews, I’ll gain for Avenor and my Alliance the omnipotent support to raise standing armies across the continent. My crowning strike must be withheld until I have won the sworn loyalty of every city in Athera. Then I shall bring down the s’Ffalenn bastard, and with him, the Fellowship of Seven, and any other factions in the land who obstruct the growth of human destiny.”
Lysaer arose, the majesty he carried like an extension of his flesh made no less by a setting of uncivilized rock. “Now my warning to your Prime is explicitly clear.” His pearls and his diamonds snagged baleful lights from the coals as he stopped, and faced her, and gave his dismissive conclusion. “Be sure she hears the extent of my disappointment for her false principles.”
While the embittered calculation of Lysaer’s long-range purpose swept her damp skin into chills, Lirenda felt his eyes on her, fierce and wholly dedicated. She now had the measure of him; could sense the trapped depths. His pose of self-honesty shielded some deep and unconsoled anguish. “What will you tell your men of the sacrifice you will demand of them?”
The smoldering spark of his righteous rage struck through his quick laugh like a barb. “Should I not use the same lie you thought to foist upon me for your order’s covert conspiracy? Are we not alike, lady? Both capable of committing errors of mercy for men whose criminal acts lie outside the constraints of human decency.”
But they were not alike, First Senior Lirenda sensed in hard-core certainty; not yet. She had ordered Caolle’s survival out of hatred, with precise intent to ruin the man whose character might ensnare her through unbidden emotion of the heart; for no living being would she endure the blind agony Prince Lysaer s’llessid suffered in secret for the love he had rejected in Princess Talith. Nor did she seek the accession of prime power for the purpose of public crusade.
Lirenda seized on the opening she had gleaned to inflict the last stinging word. “On the day you command your princess’s death, your royal Grace, I invite you to present the same question again.” Then she gathered the spoiled folds of her mantle and removed herself from the grace of Lysaer’s presence.
Crossing
Summer 5653
The darkness burst into shards and smashed rainbows. Dakar recaptured the distinct impression he was screaming, while a painless distress tore him limb from limb and flayed all the meat off his bones. Through one wrenching moment, he passed the shuttered eye of time.
Then perception reassembled with a jolt that slammed like an axe at the base of his skull.
The veil ripped away to a redolence of midsummer greenery. Through somebody’s cry of hysterical terror came the shout of a stupefied clan sentry. “Avert and protect!”
Dumped headlong upon a rich fragrance of loam with a hot blanket of sun on his back, Dakar found no breath to respond. Whether he came to die for his failure, he had no choice but to let his unruly stomach take charge.
Doubled over with dry heaves and thoroughly miserable, he almost wished a clan spear in the back to resolve his shattering upset. Half-unmoored by the disorientation that racked him, he gasped in recovery. The air seemed too rich and thick; too real. Delivered from the irrational side of the veil, his return to the solid terrain of Athera came as an assault upon body and mind. Befogged faculties fumbled the sharp-edged barrage of sensation. His wits were reluctant to function. He did not want the obligation of reassembling the pieces of problems more comfortably left abandoned.
Already in dread of the consequences, he sat back on his haunches, blinking. Birdsong laced the treetops. A dragonfly lit on his forearm, unfazed by the stink of singed wool and the holes where volcanic cinders had burned through the weave of his jerkin. Dimly he realized that he wore the wrong clothes for the season. The steady, rich warmth of high summer laced sweat through his cold chills, while the rattled clan sentry slammed out of the brush and repeated his challenge again.
Eyes shut, Dakar rediscovered the function of language. “Where in the name of Sithaer’s furies are we?”
Clipped accents changed from belligerent surprise to indignant complaint. “Ath! Is that Dakar? You’re in Caithwood, as if dropped through the sky by a lightning bolt. If you planned to whisk Rathain’s prince out of Riverton by means of magecraft and thunderclaps, did you need to keep him stashed for three months? Earl Jieret half killed himself in a cross-country run through Havish. Then the Sorcerer Traithe came, and both of them vanished also. The comings and goings have been fair hard on the nerves, these past weeks.” The scout paused as he took in the sorry condition of the bay gelding, then accused, “We’ve worn out a dozen couriers trying to find all the folks who’ve gone missing, in particular since the crew of the Lance left us some liegeman’s ashes to be given the grace of last rites.”
“The Lance? Brought Caolle’s ashes?” Dakar raised his head and cracked open bloodshot eyes to find three muzzled horses with cinders in their manes regarding him in mournful reproach. “Then he didn’t die in Koriani hands at Riverton?”
“Aye, well, she did, and damn well, he didn’t.” The scout was a young man with frizzled brown hair, and foxy, irrepressible good humor. He peered over the hindquarters of Felirin’s gray. His plain leathers were soaked through, though the sky showed no rai
n in evidence.
“You’re wet,” Dakar blurted.
“Aye, well.” The scout swiped runoff from the fringes of his buckskins. “I fell arse first into the stream when your ruckus erupted from nowhere.” He blushed, still disgusted enough to try and excuse his bruised dignity. “Who wouldn’t? An arrival like yours was damnwell nothing canny. The game will be scattered for miles.”
To Dakar’s stiff and forbearing patience, he laughed. “You’re behind on events?”
The Mad Prophet scrubbed at his face with his knuckles as if a smith had forged spikes through his temples. “Last memory I have, it was springtime.”
The scout squeezed his wet braid, wrung out his cuffs, and plunged in with loquacious relish. “Lysaer’s new flagship made landfall here, but flying Rathain’s royal leopard. Came in last month with word that Caolle had killed a Koriani witch before he found grace and passed the Wheel. There’s a feat by a clansman worth a masterbard’s eulogy!”
Dakar planted his palms into grass in determined effort to ground out his giddy rise of dizziness.
The scout rattled on in excited adulation. “What a fighter, was Caolle! His pyre was laid out with full honors. The raid plans he left when he gave his last wishes won two other vessels for Prince Arithon. Then the Lance took on mercenaries and set sail for Corith. They say she burned there, but not before her crew had freed every clansman that Lysaer’s royal fleet held in chains. Under cover of a gale, they stole back the Cariadwin and left Avenor’s force stranded with holed galleys. Near two hundred clansmen sailed home to their families, and we’ve had to feed a whole pack of refugee shipwrights. They have nothing to do, but they say they won’t leave until they find out if the Master of Shadow will return with plans to employ them. Where is Rathain’s prince, anyhow?”
“I’m sorry,” Dakar said. “We’ve missed all the news.” Then feeling overcame him. He ducked his head between his knees, caught between bursting laughter and tears, and a rush of overpowering relief. Caolle had not died by Arithon’s hand after all. Nor had the men at the outpost at Corith been abandoned wholesale to the Alliance. The joy seemed unreal, that the Riverton ships were reclaimed to fight the oppression of Maenol’s clans. Life and breath suddenly became unimaginably precious. A friend could dare to hope for the reprieve those snatched victories might bring to the Teir’s’Ffalenn.
Hunched and dripping and loquaciously oblivious, the young clansman circled the nose of the gray and poked an inquisitive finger into what seemed a wadded lump of charred rags draped over the animal’s neck. The bundle shifted to expose the marble features of Felirin the Scarlet.
“What trouble did you bring us? You know this one’s out cold?” Reverted on a breath to forest-bred wariness, the scout took fast stock of the second form tied to the back of the mare. “Is the other one brought for last passage rites, also?”
“You’d better hope not!” Dakar snapped, recovered enough to scramble erect. “That’s his Grace of Rathain, and if he’s not tended, I’ll let your caithdein apologize to Earl Jieret for your mannerless lapse of hospitality.”
The scout raised his eyebrows, prepared to repeat his glib testimony that Earl Jieret had disappeared, leaving no tracks.
His words were lost to sound as a stupendous thunderclap rocked sky and earth into recoil. The horses startled. Dakar was thrown to his knees with the lead reins clutched in blistered hands. He yelled warning to the scout, who moved just in time to catch Felirin’s unconscious tumble from the saddle.
“Ath’s very grace!” The scout staggered under the minstrel’s slack weight, caught in a misstep as his sword scabbard swung and hooked the back of his knees. “Why’d you do that?”
“I didn’t.” Dakar barely managed to calm the stressed horses before their deranged instincts shredded the last patch of whole skin on his fingers. “You can lay the singer down in the grass before you trip and fall flat.”
The scout looked offended. “Is he sick?”
“I don’t think so. He probably fainted.” The Mad Prophet had no chance to see whether Arithon suffered the same problem.
The next second, a bursting flash of light erupted from behind the trees. Dakar howled as the horses shied all over again. A deafening report shivered the ground, but this time he managed to tag the signature phrase of the spellcraft. “That’s a Fellowship ward circle coming down!” he cried, before the scout lost his last wits and bolted. “Hold steady.”
A confused, milling moment, while Dakar tugged the bridle of the mare and shouldered the bay gelding from trampling his toes into stew meat. “Steady.” His assurance lacked confidence. Whatever protective binding the Sorcerer had raised was being released in blind haste. The pungency of ozone raked through the sweet scent of the meadow and a razing spin of energies puckered his mage-sense as a slipstream in time intercepted with the present, and shook like a wind through the leaves.
The horses milled in terror, despite every effort to stay them.
Then the problem was lifted from Dakar’s stripped hands as a black raven swooped down. White light trailed from its wingtips, combing disturbed energies back into alignment under the remote guidance from Sethvir’s earth-sense. The horses snorted and settled, while the wild gusts slackened, reduced to small eddies that winnowed and spiraled through the grass heads.
“Traithe?” Dakar said. Pelted by grasshoppers and the odd butterfly released from the dissipated vortex, he surveyed the wood. Presently, a familiar figure in dark clothing and a broad-brimmed black hat emerged, limping from the shadow.
At the Sorcerer’s shoulder strode another, his large hands clenched to an unbelted bundle of weapons, among them a matched set of bone-handled throwing knives. Dakar took in the tall frame and wolfish stride with a leap of glad recognition. “Earl Jieret s’Valerient!”
The caithdein of Rathain looked like a man just shaken from sleep. His clan braid was undone. The mane of red hair fanned over his strong shoulders was caught with odd tangles and small twigs. A bandage covered his right wrist. His windburned, cragged face and hawk nose wore a blank frown, and he failed to acknowledge Dakar’s greeting.
Traithe touched his wrist, directing his bemused attention to the cluster of horses in the glen. “Look there. You’ve succeeded.”
Jieret turned his head. As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes fixed and locked on the figure of his prince, still tied over the neck of the exhausted mare. His disoriented bearing transformed on a cry of alarm. “My liege!”
He cast down his weapons, uncaring, and sprinted, too centered to respond to Dakar’s reassurance that Arithon s’Ffalenn still breathed.
“He won’t for much longer if you don’t lend your help,” Traithe said, arrived in uncanny quiet to clasp the spellbinder’s elbow. “We need a fire. At once. Can you see to it?”
Dakar knew enough not to delay for questions. He surrendered the reins of the horses to Traithe, who turned his scarred fingers to unbuckling girths and bridles. He heaved off the bay’s saddle and addressed the stupefied scout, “Explanations can wait. If you have provisions, stew and a blanket would be helpful.”
“I have only jerky.” Aroused to the crisis, the clansman snapped to and stepped in to assist stripping tack. “There’s a buried cache in the glen with a cooking pot, but no meal. We always forage at this season.”
“Then go hunting, please, once these horses are turned loose. As I know Sethvir, you’ll find a deer waiting if you allow my raven to lead you.”
Traithe accepted a headstall from the scout’s hand, then slapped the bay’s rump with the gentle admonishment, “Go roll, brave heart. Eat grass and find water and rest.”
Once assured the animals would be competently handled, Traithe strode through the grass and knelt by Felirin’s prone form. He ran swift hands over the minstrel’s body, while the raven flew circles over his hat, a slice of cut nightfall set intaglio into the hazed summer brilliance of sunlight.
“How bad is he?” Dakar asked, returned strewn with leaves and
an armload of dead oak branches clutched to his chest. His plump hands left sweated prints as he shifted his hold to contain the unruly, loose wood.
“Nervous exhaustion.” Traithe moved tacit fingers above Felirin’s scorched tunic, touching unseen points in the air. A spark jumped from his fingers each time he paused. The raised power diffused into a bloom of faint light, which misted downward into the free singer’s aura, then sank and absorbed through the cloth into flesh.
“Sound sleep will set him right.” Traithe’s ministrations moved down the right arm. There, he held still, with the singer’s limp wrist clasped left-handed, as his right trailed over the grimed rags that covered the burns. “His hands are another matter,” he concluded sadly. “The fire left damage.”
“He already knows he’s lost his fingertips.” Dakar thumped the wood at his feet, too nettled to wrestle the earth’s gravity. “He’s said he can turn his bard’s talent to storytelling. Asandir suggested he’d find a warm welcome at Innish.”
Neither spellbinder nor Sorcerer belabored the tragedy, that if Traithe’s faculties were still whole, or if this crisis had been met by any other member of the Fellowship, Felirin’s disfigurement might be ameliorated.
After all that had happened, the frustration flared too hot to contain. Dakar bent and began snapping dead sticks into kindling, determined to offer what sympathy he might. “Truth lies with the fact we stand here together. Don’t count the small losses. Without your assistance, none of us would have wakened to see air and sunlight, nor walked on Athera’s soil again.”
A shadow flicked over Traithe, cast by Jieret Red-beard, who approached with the slack form of Arithon s’Ffalenn cradled like a child in his arms. “He’s cold as death and scarcely breathing.”
“I don’t wonder.” Traithe’s lined face tipped up, drawn with concern. “Lay him down in the sun and get him stripped to his skin. We’ll need his clothes. Also every cloak you can find in the saddle packs.”