Elienne opened her mouth to utter a heated protest, but Ielond cut her off with rebuke.
“Should my Prince die for your dignity, Mistress?”
Elienne’s temper dissolved into tears. She had no spirit left for resistance. Ielond drew her close in his arms, and emotional exhaustion overtook her at last, like a wave dashed ragged against rock. Stroking her smooth hair with his fingers, Ielond said in her ear, “Lady, I have been seeking you through Time and Space, for thousands of years. Know that I cherish you as I would a daughter, and strive for understanding. My actions are those of a father whose only son is threatened, for I love Darion as a son.”
Elienne’s head spun. How could any man, Sorcerer or otherwise, live for thousands of years? Her mind was too numb to grapple with impossible concepts.
“I’m tired,” she said simply.
“Rest, then.” Ielond traced a symbol over her forehead with his thumb. Sleep rose in a dark tide, drowning the well of Elienne’s thoughts. She sagged against the Sorcerer’s shoulder and, hoisting her like a child, he took her up into his arms and began to walk.
* * *
Elienne dreamed. She knew a place of moonlight and rocks. The sky was starless, black as Eternity, and against its featureless, velvet expanse a crescent moon gleamed like Ma’Diere’s Scythe, the one She carries in Her Left Hand to gather in the Dead.
Elienne stood alone in that dream place and silently waited. Her body gradually assumed the fixed patience of the stone under her feet, and her mind became balanced on the needle-fine instant that comprises the present. All thought was fenced by an implacable cage of discipline and, moment to moment, she was able to contemplate only what was.
The moon traced a low arc above the horizon, dragging dawn after its lower limb. The sun rose, hot and white as the Seed of Life Ma’Diere holds in Her Right Hand, and still Elienne waited.
Her body seemed to melt and flow, conjoining with the barren gray rock. Muscles, sinews, and joints became as rigid as statuary, enduring as the stone itself. Unburdened of its transient, mobile casing of flesh, Elienne felt her mind free itself and expand. She beheld the plain where she stood as part of a round, spinning planet. The sun swelled into sphericality, and Elienne’s perception broadened further, until it embraced the stars in their multitudes and encompassed the Pivot of the Universe.
Elienne felt herself merge and become one with the vast ebb and flow, Ma’Diere’s Right and Left sides that balance Life with Death. Still she waited, until her concentrated thought honed itself into a weapon and finally shattered the taut pinpoint of the present. Consciousness broke through. Time became visible, a shining white ribbon that streamed before her across the void, until perception became dimmed by incomprehensible distance.
The stonelike rigidity released Elienne’s flesh. Compelled by impatience, she stepped onto the path of Time and began to follow its track. Her mind restlessly overtook the plodding of her feet and roved ahead, gathering speed until space, stars, and universal reality whirled past as a featureless blur. Time spun onward, sweeping Elienne’s awareness with it like thread cast haplessly from a spool. Aware its nether end passed straight through the Eye of Eternity, beyond which lay the heart of Ma’Diere’s mystery where no mortal may enter, Elienne tried to brake, to slow the rush of thought. But the effort only served to reunite her sluggish flesh with her mind.
Flung beyond control, Elienne glanced back, frantically searching for sanctuary. But instead of a haven, she found a wide, light sky peppered black with shapes. Hell’s Demons were extended in full pursuit. Beneath the straining pinions of their wings, claws and fangs gleamed like steel polished in anticipation of blood and killing.
Elienne yelled in stark fear and stumbled. Faisix and his snake-scaled horse led the Hell‘s Horde, and the creature’s forked red tongue tasted her presence. It quickened pace.
Elienne screamed again. Terror froze her thoughts. She forced herself to run. Time unreeled futureward under her, but its course was no longer straight.
Cut, spliced, and rewoven repeatedly, the Timepath’s clean line had been altered to the point where the eye could scarcely follow its spiraling tangle of convolutions.
Elienne had no chance to wonder whose hand had meddled with the thread of natural progression. Her pursuers drove her forward without mercy. She fled over the first splice in the Time-track, her only thoughts of escape.
The universe splashed into fragments. Darkness reigned between one step and the next. Reality re-formed as Elienne’s foot came down, but its shape was unrecognizable, utterly changed. Hardly had her senses encountered an impression when a second junction came upon her. Another void opened underfoot, replaced by yet another sequence of existence. But the alien reality of that Time-borne place held no comfort to human perception, and it was shortly spliced away in favor of still another.
Elienne glanced behind, saw Faisix and the Horde had fallen back. More junctions passed beneath her step. Time-track interwove with Time-track in blinding progression, until each successive reality fell into the next like a toppling row of dominoes whose faces defied counting. Then, without warning, Time’s line straightened out.
Elienne knew a world, a land with customs separate from any she had ever known, and in that place a woman. Almost it could have been herself, so fresh in the stranger’s mind was grief for a lost husband and ruined home. Elienne felt herself sift through the woman’s existence, body, mind, and emotions, striving to match character and circumstance with a pattern she found embedded like a signpost along the path she traveled. The woman failed to fit, and Time bucked underfoot, spliced into change with unarguable purpose.
A second woman waited on the other side, and beyond her, women by the thousands in tireless succession. Each had suffered the recent loss of home and lover, and each carried a newly conceived child. Elienne entered the lives of all of them, mercilessly driven by the meddler who had carved Time to fit his purpose and left his pattern at every turn.
“Release me!” she wanted to scream, yet she knew such outcry would be futile. Faisix and the Hell’s Horde were still behind, and she could stop only when a woman was found whose character and circumstance meshed with her predecessor’s requirements.
She traversed mind after mind. Her nerves became frayed by others’ pain until humanity itself wearied her, and the lives she experienced became numerous and petty as the movements of insects. Yet pursuit denied her a second’s rest.
Elienne felt her feet become heavy; every mortal instinct balked at the distance she had wandered from her proper Time. She glanced often over her shoulder, each time horrified to discover that Faisix and his Hell’s Horde had gained.
Dulled like water-polished stone by fatigue, she dragged herself over another seam in the Time-track. The woman on the other side had met despair with mulish defiance. Elienne invaded her consciousness with flat distaste, stunned by a startling discovery; the master pattem that had so long gone unsatisfied at last had found its match. A closer look at the woman who had met the Timesplicer’s qualifications shocked her anew. She faced her own self.
Elienne felt herself hurled headlong into a scene similar to one she had lived only hours earlier in the darkness of Trathmere’s dungeons, but in her dream she was present also as observer. Dirty, tear-streaked, and possessed by grief and wild anger, her former self stood braced against the prison’s barred door. At her feet knelt a Sorcerer magnificently clad in blue. He had cut through the stuff of Time with what she now saw revealed to be a focused projection of his living soul. It shone like a winter star, hard, brilliant, and blue-white. He took the severed strand of Time into his hands, and in growing horror the dreaming Elienne became aware he intended to make a loop; join it back into itself at an earlier point in its own past.
“No!” she cried, momentarily set adrift by revelation; the path just followed had been a Sorcerer’s condensed perception of five thousand years
’ search for a Prince’s bride. “You must not!” Newly wise to the laws of Time, she was aware crossing a Time-track back into itself would cause death to its wielder.
The Sorcerer, recognizable as Ielond, glanced up, his face pale with weariness. Yet beneath lay a will too strong for mortal interference.
“I must,” he said simply. “By the time I had unraveled the mysteries of Time and learned to alter its sequence, Darion had already stood before the Grand Council and been condemned. If he is to be saved, the past must be changed.”
Elienne shook her head, blinded by swelling tears. Her throat squeezed shut, trapping her protest unspoken, and the soul brilliance that drifted over Ielond’s hands distorted into starred slivers as her eyelids spilled their salty burden down her cheeks.
Ielond rose from the cell floor. The lining of his cloak echoed the red of Cinndel’s wounds as he stood before her, immovable as chiseled stone. “Elienne, you musn’t weep,” he said gently. “It is the Prince’s life or mine. I make the choice with peace in my heart.”
The words were spoken aloud, and their sound woke Elienne from sleep. Disgruntled and shaken, it was a moment before she realized that she had passed the night in Ielond’s arms. Over his shoulder, an orange sun topped the mountains at the edge of the icefield’s bleak expanse.
Elienne felt rested. Yet the dream’s impact remained irrevocably inscribed into waking memory. All she had been forced to witness through the night was sharp as direct experience, and the tears on her face were real. Elienne stared up at the sliver of light that drifted always in Ielond’s presence. No Guild Sorcerer from her own land could have disciplined self-will to a focus so precise that soul became manifest, a visible pinpoint of force.
Conscious of the Sorcerer’s gaze upon her, Elienne spoke, embarrassed to find her voice shaky with the effect of her tears. “I understand, I think. You splice Time. That is what gives you power over Destiny.”
Ielond shifted his grip and gently lowered Elienne to the ground. “I can influence all destiny but my own,” he said carefully. “It makes little difference. I have built my lifework around Darion‘s future. If he dies, my efforts have been wasted. Since I will not be alive to see them through to completion, I rely on the resources of the woman I send to Pendaire as his bride. Lady, if you fail, there can be no other after you. Are you prepared to devote your life to a man who is a stranger?”
Elienne stared at her feet, reminded by the unfamiliar jeweled slippers which covered them that Ielond’s words carried the weight of finality. A long minute passed before she answered.
“I go only to preserve a life that is dear to you, for you saved my life, and the life of Cinndel’s child.” She met the Sorcerer’s intent gaze. “I’ll give you my best effort, and my son for the royal heir. But I cannot promise I will love your Prince. Husband he may be, but only in name. My heart is not available for bargain.”
“So be it,” said Ielond. “I can ask no more.”
The Sorcerer’s attitude turned brisk. He unpinned the neck of his cloak and drew forth a heavy gold chain. A filigree pendant dangled from its end, set with a glassy, transparent gem that shone like dew on silver in the dawn light.
Ielond cupped the ornament in his hand. “This is a mirrowstone. It will react to any living substance that comes into contact with its surface. This one has been set over a strand of Prince Darion’s hair. You will see his current location reflected within, provided no other influence is touching the stone.”
He extended the gem to Elienne. “Take care when you look. Handle it only by its setting, otherwise you will see nothing but yourself.”
Elienne accepted the jewel gingerly, the gold a hard, warm weight against her palm. With an eerie sense of foreboding, she gazed within. The mirrowstone’s reflection jolted her like a physical blow.
Elienne gasped, “Ma’Diere’s mercy!” It took an extreme effort of will not to fling the object away into the snow. Framed by the ornate grace of the setting, she saw a slim, chestnut-haired man; he wore black, unrelieved by device or embroidery. Manacles adorned his wrists. Whatever emotion lay beneath the pale mask of his face was shuttered behind forced control. Hazel and wide-set, the eyes were haunted. And beyond the stiff line of his shoulder stood a hooded executioner with an ax.
“Do something!” cried Elienne. “They’ll kill him.”
“That is for you to determine.” Ielond was remorselessly curt. “Now listen, because time is precious. That stone has been interfaced by enchantment. In the locus of Pendaire, it will also act as a means of communication; you have only to touch the stone and speak, and Darion will hear you. Do you understand?”
Elienne nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
With steady hands the Sorcerer pulled the chain from Elienne’s fingers and slipped it around her neck. He then summoned his light and carefully joined the end links until no seam remained. When his work was complete, the mirrowstone could be removed only with a file.
“I am going to splice us into my personal study in Pendaire.” Ielond ran his hand over the chain one last time before letting it fall. “The time will be Summer’s Eve. You will find on my desk a sealed writ presenting you to the Grand Council as candidate for the Prince’s betrothed. My tower is situated in the west wing of the palace. You should have little trouble getting the writ from there to the chamber where the Grand Council will convene by noon the following day.”
Ielond placed his hand on the small of Elienne’s back and gently pressed her forward. “I will further alter your own Timepath to converge with Pendaire but an hour past the moment your son was conceived. This will give you a full three days for the Council to affirm your candidacy. You must bed the Prince at all costs before the close of the week.”
Elienne’s expression went wooden. The Sorcerer appeared not to notice. He strode at her side and drew breath to resume his list of instructions.
Elienne interrupted. “And you will die,” she said bitterly, and followed with a curse.
Ielond loosed an explosive sigh. “Mistress, it’s inevitable. My life has already passed through Summer‘s Eve on Pendaire. My reemergence there will create an impossible differential between past and present. The same reality cannot exist twice in a single location.”
The Sorcerer’s brisk manner plainly indicated he wished no more said on the subject. Elienne walked on in mutinous silence as, slowly, the sun’s rising disc stained the horizon yellow-gold. Disturbed more than she cared to admit that Ielond would not survive the transfer to Pendaire, she realized he had won more than cooperation during her short time in his presence. Elienne worried. Denied the stability of his presence, her wayward, outspoken manner would make it difficult to mind her promises concerning Darion. Cinndel had been entertained by her quick tongue; another man might learn to hate it.
Ielond stopped so abruptly Elienne almost bumped into him. Shaken from thought, she looked up and saw they had reached what appeared to be the uttermost edge of the world. The icefield ended almost underfoot. As though chopped by a giant’s cleaver, the plain dropped off sheer into a glassy, crystalline precipice. The base lay thousands of feet down beneath an ocean of dawn-tinted sky.
Ielond gave Elienne no time to recover her breath. “This is the point of our departure, Mistress. Time-wielding requires much space. Since we will be leaving a wide change ripple behind us, it is important the site be uninhabited.”
Elienne said nothing. She knew if she framed her thoughts into words, the useless, angry emotions damned within her mind would prevail. Ielond took a braced stance. He extended his right arm with his light cupped beneath his palm and uttered four words.
Wind sprang up. It swept in from behind, a demon’s howl of cold that clutched Elienne’s skirts wildly against her ankles and whipped her hair like a horse’s mane. The gale mounted, ice crystals driven like a scourge before its fury. Yet Ielond effortlessly bridled the forces of
his summoning and funneled the result through the pinpoint focus held balanced between finger and thumb.
The wind keened through the vortex. Faintly over the rush of noise, Elienne heard Ielond speak again. The pull of those three words tugged her soul, made her yearn to escape the confines of flesh and merge with the nexus of power that converged beneath the Sorcerer’s hand.
Ielond raised his voice a third time, and two more words built like a pyramid upon those which had preceded. Elienne experienced a physical wrench, compelled to grasp Ielond’s wrist to maintain her footing.
The light waxed brighter and blazed. Through burning eyes, Elienne saw the ice begin to alter. Fine crystals blew loose and streamed, separate as table salt, over the abyss. Tossed into empty air, the particles spread like a cloud and visibly swelled; from specks, they expanded rapidly to the size of rocks, then touched and intermeshed to form a solid, crystalline bridge whose hard facets shattered sunlight into colors. The sight was one of indescribable beauty. Yet even as Elienne paused to admire, Ielond capped the pyramid of his incantation with one final word. The light shot like a meteor from his hand, trailing a tail of fire over the gleaming arch of ice.
“Come.” Ielond took Elienne firmly by the arm and drew her onto the narrow span of the icebridge. The path was precarious, barely wide enough for the two of them to pass single file. Elienne felt as though the breadth of the sky had expanded, engulfing them like specks poised on a thread above the Eye of Eternity. The icefield fell behind. Ahead, the slender walkway led upward and disappeared through the blazing heart of lelond’s light.
“You may confide in my apprentice, Kennaird.” The Sorcerer’s words fell as a whisper in that wide space. “He will attend to the details after my death. Taroith, also, is trustworthy. He heads the Sorcerers’ League and also holds a seat in the Grand Council. Heed his advice, and look to him for guidance.”