The town also hosted a seasonal fishing fleet. While Lysaer’s galleys steered a bending course through the cork floats of vacant moorings, word of their arrival ran ahead. Doors banged and craftshops emptied. A burgeoning crowd lined the docks as the flagship drove in, sunwheel banners streaming.
As the oarsmen’s stroke sheared her patched hull shoreward, from rail and rambade, one could pick out the pristine white tunics of oathsworn Alliance guardsmen cutting an agitated swath through the gawkers like the mismatched gleam of thrown ice.
“Something’s afoot,” the watch officer remarked, creased eyes trained ashore. “Or why would a contingent of royal men-at-arms be billeted in force at Orlest?”
The steersman chimed in, “They would come to hold news for his Grace.”
A likely enough guess; Orlest or Tideport were the logical sites to await an inbound fleet from Min Pierens.
Lirenda tapped manicured fingers on the rail, raked over by rabid frustration. Her curtailed powers would not let her access lane auguries at a glance, and the ignominy burned. The possibility for upset could not be dismissed: her misjudgment over Caolle’s life may well have allowed Arithon s’Ffalenn to seize bold advantage on the continent.
She must have unwittingly mused her irritation out loud.
“But of course, the enemy would not stand idle through the summer.” The reply intruded a pace from her shoulder; Lysaer s’llessid had apparently crept up through her moment of self-absorbed brooding.
He also had dressed for the landfall. Offset by the delicate sheen of her silk, his presence lost none of its magnificence. His impeccable, trimmed hair shone as burnished as filigree, and his pearls were cold fire in the sunlight. He was not smiling.
Anyone less than a Koriani observer would have missed his subtle satisfaction, as he added, “Did you truly believe the Shadow Master could be driven to unchecked flight without unpleasant repercussions?”
Lirenda’s expression was fine marble veneer, impenetrable and aloof. A mere hour ago, she could have agreed without any sense of conflict. Now self-betrayed, subverted through access to her undefended quartz, she found herself battling phantoms. A masterfully tailored line of melody tugged her emotions on wild tangents, as if the imprinted perception of Arithon’s intent gave the lie to his half brother’s conviction.
Discomfited by Lysaer’s probing interest, Lirenda returned a stare like chipped amber. “Why jab in pretense?” Her impulse for vengeance sparked out as small malice. “New discord but serves you. Bring down the Master of Shadow, by all means. Should I do less than applaud the picked course of your destiny?”
Lysaer laughed in that forthright honesty which effortlessly recaptured the heart. “Lady, your barbs are magnificent, but misplaced. Let us weigh the ill tidings before we presume to salvage the fruits of disaster.”
Yet as the royal galley tied up at the wharf, no deft planning, nor calculated strategy of advance handling could smooth over the tumult which awaited the Prince of the Light.
Full night lay over the harbor, heavy as syrup with trapped warmth. Between the summer flicker of heat lightning, the rippled waters lapped like dark tarnish against the pilings, spindled with reflections from the torch pans set alight at the quayside. Amid that cast tangle of jittering light, Lysaer s’Ilessid stepped ashore.
The bystanders gathered to greet his return roared with one voice at first sight of him. Man, woman, and child, they surged against the men-at-arms who pressed to clear space for his egress. The prince took such mannerless enthusiasm in stride. All white silk and fitted elegance, he left the gangway, unhurried. As he passed down the wharf, his path became flanked by a wall of grasping, outthrust hands. The boldest strained against the cordon of soldiers, striving to touch his person for shared fortune, or to pluck at his glittering garments for a ribbon or lace to treasure as a memento.
Lirenda paced the prince one step behind, daunted by the sheer volume of noise, and by the relentless needy scramble of the crowd. The wharf narrowed past the jut of the ship’s chandlery, with its stacked hogsheds of salt pork and beef. Royal guardsmen jostled a clear path with difficulty. The enchantress found herself unable to break away, even to lend polite semblance of privacy when the royal courier stepped to the fore.
He carried urgent news for Avenor’s prince, a personal message too dire to withhold. “Your Grace, there’s been tragedy. Best hear now, and quickly.”
Caught in unwanted proximity, Lirenda shared the formal language of state which informed that his bewitchingly beautiful wife, Princess Talith, had passed the Wheel three months ago.
“By her own hand, your Lord Seneschal pronounced.” Heads turned. The cheering near at hand faltered; still the messenger had to shout to make himself heard through the clamor. “Her Grace fell to her end. Succumbed to despair for her childless state and jumped from a high tower window.”
Despite his matchless instinct for statecraft, Lysaer s’Ilessid missed stride.
For that given instant, he was no savior, no prince, no shining example to his people, but only a man, stunned by an unexpected, dark anguish. Grief exposed his humanity with leveling force. He faltered, stopped short. The flare of the firepans etched him in unmerciful light, each tremor of shock magnified by his jeweled studs and stitched seed pearls.
The sight of him humbled by wounding mortality struck Lirenda with inexplicable force.
She lost her own breath at the devastated speed with which his sustained strength came unraveled. The draw of his charisma had claimed her, unwitting, his dedicated campaign against the Master of Shadow became a mainstay she required to buoy her tripped sense of balance.
As a hapless observer, she felt strangely bereft; as if perfect quartz cracked like glass under polishing, or clouds on a whim had transformed into lead, to crush the green earth with blind force.
Lysaer seemed oblivious to the presence of an audience. Eyes closed, his ethereal majesty transformed to unalloyed sorrow, he murmured aloud in his anguish, “My dear, my dear! If not for the machinations of the enemy, I should never have strayed from your side.”
The First Senior moved on blind instinct. She would offer her mantle, try any inadequate, stopgap gesture to shield his shattered poise from the insatiable maw of public curiosity.
Yet fast as she reacted, another pushed past and reached the s’Ilessid prince ahead of her.
This one wore the sweat-stained leathers of a courier who had transferred from post horse to post horse with small break for rest or refreshment. The chalky dust of the flats lined tired features, and his person wore the smell of hot horses and urgency.
He caught Lysaer’s hand and dropped onto one knee. “Great lord, forgive me. I bring unpleasant tidings.”
The Prince of the Light raised his head, eyes open and direct, if suspiciously bright. “Speak,” he bade the man. “No tragedy of mine is so great that I cannot respond for my people.”
Then he waited in all of his shattered splendor for a second round of ill news.
Lirenda stood near enough to overhear the fact that forty of Hanshire’s finest men-at-arms had pursued Arithon s’Ffalenn into a cloudy veil of magecraft.
“That event happened some time ago. It’s not canny, to have escaped official notice this long. But the first courier sent to Avenor was waylaid by a freak accident. His report was delayed for two months.” The dazed messenger tipped his face up to the prince, torn into terrified appeal. “Search parties have swept the flats east to west, until the worst can’t be doubted. The whole company of forty has disappeared, and left not a trace on the landscape.”
Lysaer met the entreaty head-on, the shimmer of the tears he would not shed apparent to his circle of observers. “My loss, and my people’s loss is not so different.” Even in grief, his acute sense of kindness prevailed. “Had you kin among the missing?”
The messenger looked devastated. “A brother.”
He received the hand of the prince on his shoulder. “Then we sorrow together, as we
act side by side.” Lysaer summoned a voice like grained iron. “There are widows in Hanshire this day who are bereaved by the loss of a mate, as I am. For them, you will go now and arrange mounts for myself and twenty-five of my personal guard. Find a guide who knows the countryside. Tell him he may ask any sum he desires from my treasury if he will show us the place on the flats where this happened.”
When the original courier in Avenor’s city colors elbowed his way in to protest, the prince quelled his concern with hammered steadiness. “There are no remains to attend, I trust?” Since his lady’s death had occurred in the spring, he scarcely waited for affirmation that Talith’s body had long since been cremated. “Then the ceremony to celebrate my personal regard for her can certainly bide a bit longer.”
Lysaer made a painful effort to collect himself. Surrounded by darkness, beyond reach of the sultry glow from the firepans, his white tunic and jewels made him seem etched in light, a being set apart from the weathered squalor of the galley wharf. The dichotomy of his humanity hurt to behold as he raised his torn voice to explain. “I shall not return to Avenor until I have expended every effort to redeem this lost Hanshire company from the spellcraft which has spirited them from us.”
The bystanders overheard. Struck by his purposeful denial of fresh loss, several women were moved to tears. First one man, then another began raggedly to chant, “Lysaer of the Light!” until the entire crowd at the waterfront had taken up the cry.
All at once, the night reechoed with a synchronous frenzy of admiration. The awe of the multitude expressed palpable excitement, that the Prince of the Light should give himself to their need before his own deeply personal sorrow.
His gold head a glittering beacon against the looming bulk of the warehouses, Lysaer s’Ilessid beckoned to the standing officer of his royal retinue. “Ready the best and the steadiest of my guardsmen.” Over the tumult, his edged tone was the drawn sword, that would cut in fulfillment of its purpose. “We ride at speed for the Middlecross ferry!”
Very suddenly, Lirenda became the only stilled point in the maelstrom, as purposeful activity erupted around her.
Men-at-arms came forward to depart for the flats, and servants ran to gather clothing and supplies for the journey. While the fleet captains who had managed the sea campaign at Corith were reorganized for return to Avenor, the Koriani First Senior believed herself forgotten. But where an ordinary man might have overlooked her insignificance, the Prince of the Light turned about.
He took her hand in his own and eased her small difficulty with the inspired attention to detail that marked his brilliance as a leader. “You wish to be elsewhere.”
“I’ve been too long away from my order.” Lirenda took an inadvertent step back, shaken by the impact of his caring.
Her trained senses perceived far too clearly. Lysaer’s eyes were dark from the shock of his princess’s death. Nor was his grip steady. Ridden by an all-too-visible anguish, the marred grace of his features reflected a transcendent need which drew on the heart like a magnet.
Even in weakness, his presence turned lives.
Yet again, Lirenda killed her surge of instinctive response. Swept by a sharp, reckless longing to cast off all ties and follow this prince in defense, she sampled firsthand the pull which caused men to leave home and swear service for life. Her Koriani discipline was scarcely enough to stand down the temptation, and recall the stakes of the sacrifice.
Belatedly she noticed that Lysaer was speaking, his offer an invitation to accompany his royal retinue as far as the landing at Middlecross.
“Weren’t you bound for the Koriani sisterhouse in Capewell?” The diamonds at his collar flicked like held stars as he raised her fingers in a gesture of warmth and inquiry. “I presume you’d rather cross the inlet by ferry than ride the long way round through Riverton.”
His selfless solicitude struck a chord of reciprocal concern. “Listen, you must know,” Lirenda burst out in unpremeditated warning. “Those men-at-arms from Hanshire very likely entangled themselves in the bounds of a Paravian grimward. If you persist in seeking what became of them, you ride into unimaginable danger.”
“They were lost on my orders in pursuit of the Spinner of Darkness.” Lysaer’s affirmation was clear-cut dedication over the rhythmical adulation of the crowd. “None of them will be abandoned for the sake of my safety Your place is to accept my offer of escort as far as Middleton. There our ways part. Leave the fate and disposition of my people to me. You must serve your own order and bear my message on to your Prime.”
Under the lucent weight of Lysaer’s gaze, Lirenda knew no logical reason why she should feel humbled or shamed. Regal chivalry should not have overwhelmed pride. Bound into his debt by his dedicated sincerity, she could not shake the illusion that she was the lesser power. Though her poise stayed unbroken, all her wisdom and accomplishment as First Senior seemed diminished before his true grace as she accepted the gift of his kindness.
Checks and Balance
Summer 5653
The hour that Arithon’s sloop Talliarthe makes sail to cross Mainmere channel to Havish, a clan messenger departs for the sisterhouse in Capewell, in his hand a packet addressed to Morriel Prime which bears Rathain’s leopard seal: the content, with Arithon’s cordial regards, holds the First Senior’s purloined spell crystal and cryptic promise that the debt has been duly discharged for Caolle’s death…
In the central chamber of the dragon skull at the vortex of the grimward, the Sorcerer Asandir leans on the shoulder of his black horse; near blind with fatigue, exhausting his last thread of depleted concentration, he frames the clear memory of the focus circle set into the dungeon of Althain Tower…
In the mires of Mogg’s Fen, Luhaine carries tidings to the caithdein of Tysan, that Arithon is safe across the channel to Torwent, and three brigs crewed by clansmen guard Mainmere Narrows to bear the refugee families into sanctuary under High King Eldir’s justice; and amid tears and sorrow for those too late to spare, Maenol makes painful disposition that henceforward, every surviving clan bloodline will maintain a secure branch on the protection of foreign soil…
XIV. Passages
Summer 5653
The handpicked company which rode out with the Prince of the Light pressed straight on through the night. They traveled light and without fanfare for speed, with only one bannerman to announce the royal presence. The muggy, moist heat of the flatlands clung like syrup over the land. Darkness rang loud with the clicks of singing insects. The men behind the torch-bearing outriders mopped tearing eyes from streamed trailers of oily smoke. They held their formation in columns two abreast and trusted their horses to negotiate the hard-packed alkaline footing.
They thundered down to the sea inlet as fast as the posthouses could supply their urgent demand for remounts.
On that hour, the sheltered cove by the ferry wharf lay wrapped in woolly fog, the herring gulls wheeling and crying unseen against the filtered, rose blush of dawn. While horseboys still tousled from sleep in the loft led off their blown mounts, the serving girls from the ferryhouse brought them a meal of bacon, hot bread, and steamed fish. Men grown slack from their long weeks at sea cursed their new saddle blisters and stretched the kinks from their legs.
“Damnfool waste of effort, all this rush,” a fresh recruit groused to a pair of weathered veterans who lounged by the tied boats at the waterfront. Experience had long since taught them not to waste themselves fretting. They listened, noncommittal, working their way through hard cheese and buttered biscuit.
While the incoming tide slapped at the bollards, their less experienced colleague nattered on. “Those riders from Hanshire have been lost for months. Whatever dark sorcery led them astray, they’re probably dead. If not, what’s the difference? Another day, or a week are unlikely to matter.” Engrossed in self-pity, he failed to notice his companions had stiffened and stopped eating in disquiet. “If you ask me, we tire men and horses in a cross-country race to no purpose.”
/> Seemingly out of nowhere, hard fingers locked onto the whiner’s shoulder and jerked him face about toward the innyard.
“No man oathsworn to fight the shadow at my side shirks his given duty to his fellows,” cracked Lysaer s’Ilessid. The pale white of his tunic melding into the mist, he had moved up unseen.
The grief of his past night’s loss still marked him. Yet even through exhaustion and the incandescent fire of just anger, he noticed the ferryman’s youngest toddler, wandered in his wake from the guest-house. He knelt in the dust. “Go, child. The morning’s too fine to spoil with shouting when you can pick shells from the beach.”
As the girl wandered off, he straightened, confronted the miscreant, and resumed his lashing reprimand. “I will have it known beyond question that anyone needing help against the works of evil sorcery shall receive what they ask. Assistance will reach them with all the speed that crown resource can muster. My will on this matter shall brook no challenge. For today’s lack of diligence, consider yourself released from your oath of service to the Light.”
The recruit began a shocked protest.
Lysaer s’Ilessid cut him off. “Don’t trouble to speak. I won’t hear excuses.” His blue eyes as inexorable as arctic ice, he insisted, “There can be no faint hearts in my ranks. As we shoulder the coming war against darkness, every man must stand ready to give his life without question.”
“Mercy, bright lord.” The young man fell to his knees, unmanned and broken to pleading. “Don’t cast me out of your service!”
Lysaer snapped his fingers. The royal guard’s captain stepped in on smart cue and ripped the sunwheel badge from the sleeve of the disgraced recruit’s tunic.
“Leave us,” commanded the Prince of the Light. “Stay clear of our crossing. The rest of this company has a task to accomplish in defense of this land and its people.” He turned his back, let his icy regard sweep the rest of the company. “Believe this! Any man who looks back will be dismissed as well. Before threat of sorcery, we must harbor no weakness. Veer from our commitment for any man’s faults, and the victory can never be ours.”