An Arrival
Despite Asandir’s insistence that Grithen not send ahead with the news of Prince Lysaer’s arrival, his party with its escort of clan scouts was greeted at the head of the valley by no less than Maenalle herself, companioned by a ceremonial guard of outriders.
With the storm past and the cloud cover thinned, the mists of Desh-thiere prevailed still; the vale beyond the passes lay enshrouded in featureless gloom. Warned by the clear call of a horn, then by the dimmed flash of gold trappings, Grithen groaned in pained apprehension. Lord Tashan had indeed roused the camp, for no less than a Fellowship sorcerer could get Maenalle, Steward of Tysan, out of hunting leathers and into anything resembling formal dress.
A companion jeered in commiseration. ‘Who would have guessed the old earl could still skip on his shanks like a lizard?’
The young lord responsible for the disaster in the pass was not the only one taken aback. At the head of the column beside Asandir, the freshly pronounced heir to the throne of Tysan hid confusion behind princely decorum as he confronted the glittering guard from the outpost.
‘The woman who wears the circlet and the tabard with your colours is Maenalle,’ Asandir said quickly. ‘She is Steward of the Realm, last heir to a very ancient title. She and her forbears have safeguarded Tysan’s heritage in the absence of the king through the years since the rebellion. Let me speak to her first. Then you shall greet her with due respect, for all that she rules she has held in your name.’
The travel-worn arrivals drew rein before the ranks of clan outriders. This company wore no furs, but livery of royal blue velvet and swordbelts beaded with gold. The bridles of their matched bay coursers were gilt also and polished to smart perfection. The woman at the fore was boyishly slim, mounted side-saddle and fidgeting with impatience. Her habit was sable, her fur-trimmed shoulders and slender waist engulfed by a tabard bearing the gold star blazon of Tysan. In her hand she carried a sprig of briar, and her greying, short-cropped hair was tucked back under a silver fillet. She rode to meet Asandir, drew rein as he dismounted, then laughed a merry welcome as he raised his hands and swung her down.
A servant took her horse and the sorcerer’s as she raised tawny eyes and offered greeting. ‘Welcome to Camris, Asandir of the Fellowship.’ Her voice was clear as a sprite’s and younger than her face, which wore the years well on prominent cheekbones. ‘You do us high honour, but thank Ath, not often enough for me to grow accustomed to wearing skirts!’
From her hands, Asandir accepted the thorn-branch that symbolized the centuries of bitter exile. A smile touched his eyes. Smoothly as a drawn breath he engaged his arts. Green suffused the stem between his fingers. A burst of new leaves unfurled from the barren sprig, followed by a bud, then the wine-deep flush of a flawless summer rose.
While the company looked on in awed silence, the sorcerer stripped the thorns and tucked the bloom into the steward’s fading hair. ‘Lady Maenalle,’ he said gravely. ‘After this I dare say you’ll need skirts for better occasions.’ He turned her gently, raised her hand toward the rider on the chestnut who sat his saddle like a man born to rule. ‘I give you Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid, scion of Halduin the First, and by blood-descent, your liege lord.’
Lysaer looked down at the steward his kingship would supplant, a woman who radiated command in her own right through every unconscious movement; unsure of his new-found status, he anticipated a reaction of enmity, resentment, even shock. But Maenalle’s hawk-bright eyes only looked stunned for a second before they filled with tears. Then she cried aloud for sheer joy, curtseyed without thought for slushy ground and gave up her hand for his kiss.
‘My royal lord,’ she murmured, looking suddenly fragile beneath the mantling weight of state finery.
Feeling dirty, reminded the instant he smelled her perfume that he reeked of woodsmoke and sweat, the prince set his lips against a palm welted with callouses like a swordsman’s. He mastered surprise at the steward’s mannish incongruities, overcame embarrassment, and belatedly applied himself to courtesy.
‘Your arrival is the light of our hope made real.’ Maenalle smiled brightly, turned, and shouted back to her escort of men-at-arms. ‘Did you hear? A s’Ilessid! A blood descendant of Halduin himself! Lysaer, Teir’s’Ilessid has returned to reclaim the throne of Tysan!’
A mighty shout met her words. Protocol was abandoned. Men leaped from the backs of their horses and closed in ecstatic excitement around the steward and their acknowledged prince.
‘You must forgive any disrespect, your Grace,’ Maenalle shouted over the tumult as Lysaer was swept from his saddle, embraced and pummelled roundly on the back by dozens of welcoming hands. ‘Five centuries was a very long time to wait for your coming and the times in between have been harsh.’
Too breathless to manage even banal reply, Lysaer struggled to recover equilibrium. Accustomed to royal propriety, and formal even with friends, the rough-cut camaraderie of Maenalle’s discipline bruised his dignity. Thrust unwarned into inheritance of a kingdom unknowably vast, he coped with no knowledge of precedence to lend him grace.
The whole-hearted abandonment of decorum permitted no opening for questions, not about the prince’s return from Dascen Elur, nor concerning the demeaning, mishandled raid in the Pass of Orlan. Tactfully reminded by the sorcerer that the storm had kept his party travelling through two nights with scanty sleep, Maenalle called her escort back to order. Quickly, efficiently, her outriders formed up into columns and set off to hustle their prince and all his company to the comforts of the clan lords’ west outpost.
While the needs of royal guests were attended to and tired horses led off to stabling, the crude plank door of the camp cabin appointed as the steward’s privy chamber clicked gently shut behind Maenalle. She had shed the magnificence of circlet and tabard. Shadowy in the fall of her black habit, her feathered hair pale as a halo around her face, she regarded the sorcerer who warmed himself by the hearth across a cramped expanse of bare floor. Although the room functioned as an office, it held neither pens nor parchments, nor any furnishing resembling a desk. A dry wine tun in one corner was stuffed with rolled parchment maps. Past an unsanded table, the only hanging to cut the drafts through ill-fitted board walls was a wolfpelt pegged up and stretched with rawhide.
‘You wished to speak to me,’ Asandir prodded gently.
Startled to discover she had been holding her breath, Maenalle clasped her hands by her hip where her sword hilt normally rested. ‘You can tell me now what you wouldn’t say in public.’
She had always had blistering courage; warmed by air that smelled of cedar and oiled leather, Asandir peeled back damp cuffs and chafed his wrists to restore circulation. When he faced her next, he was unsmiling. ‘If your people wish to celebrate, the festivities to honour their prince’s return must be brief. An outbreak of virulently poisonous meth-snakes has arisen in Mirthlvain. They derive from migrant stock, and if they spread in widespread numbers, our departure could be urgently swift.’
Still sharp from her interview with Grithen, Maenalle said, ‘Dakar already told me: you planned to travel on to Althain Tower in any case.’ She pushed away from the door panel, pulled a hide hassock from the fireside and perched with an irritable kick at the skirts that mired her ankles. ‘Distant troubles in Mirthlvain don’t explain your cagey choice of language.’
‘You’re asking to know if you can shed your office along with your tabard?’ Asandir’s sternness loosened into a smile. ‘The Seven have not yet formally sanctioned Lysaer’s accession to Tysan’s crown, that’s true. But not because the prince is unworthy.’
‘Well, thank Ath for that.’ Maenalle arose and walked the floorboards. Though she wore hard-soled boots for riding, her footfalls out of habit made no sound. ‘If I told the camp they couldn’t celebrate, I’d probably face an armed uprising.’
Moved by her leashed note of hope, Asandir spoke honestly and fast. ‘If Lysaer and his half-brother can successfully defeat the Mistw
raith, you shall have your coronation as swiftly as injustices can be put right.’
‘Are the old records true?’ Maenalle seemed suddenly hard as sheathed steel as she propped her back against the chimney nook. ‘Was your colleague who barred South Gate against the mist’s first invasion left broken and lame by his act?’
‘Yes.’ Seeing tension quiver through her, Asandir arose, touched her elbow and gently urged her to take his chair. In contrast with her staunch strength, her bones felt fragile as a bird’s. ‘I’ll not give you platitudes. Desh-thiere is an unknown and dangerous adversary. Dakar’s prophecy promises its bane clearly enough. But no guarantee can be given that the half-brothers who shoulder the burden of its defeat will emerge from their trial unscathed. Lysaer’s official sanction for royal succession must be withheld until full sunlight is restored.’
Outside the nailed flap of hide that shuttered the window, boisterous calls and laughter set a dog yapping over the everyday screel of steel being ground on a sharpening wheel. Maenalle took a moment to recover the steadiness to trust her voice. ‘What will become of my clansmen if our s’Ilessid heir is left maimed or dead?’
Now reluctant to meet her brave scrutiny, Asandir faced the fireside. ‘If Lysaer is impaired, he will have heirs. If he is killed, we know for certain there are other s’Ilessid kinsmen alive beyond the Gates in Dascen Elur.’ To show to what extent he shared her worry, he added, ‘The kingdom of Rathain is not so lucky. Since the Teir’s’Ffalenn now with us is the last of his line, rest assured, Lady Maenalle. The Seven will guard the safety of both princes to the limit of our power and diligence.’
A Return
The journey south from Erdane to the old earl’s summer palace in the foothills ordinarily took three days for a rider travelling light. Though the return dispatches Elaira carried for the Prime were not urgent, she crossed the distance in less. A sudden freeze and the late season’s sloppy mud discouraged caravans at a time when the trade guilds had stockpiled their raw materials for the winter. Left the solitude to order her priorities, the enchantress used her travel allowance for extra post horses instead of lodging. She could hope that a late night arrival might allow her the chance for a hot bath and a rest before she faced reckoning for the Ravens.
Weather conspired to foil her. In the dark, through driving rain, landmarks became invisible and the lane leading westward from Kelsing had fallen to decay since the Mistwraith. Only the ghostly trace of wheel ruts crossed the barren hilltops; the sheltered soil in the valleys encouraged brush and thickets, and oak groves choked the washes under obliterating drifts of rotted leaves. Since the mare collected from the last livery stable was her own beloved bay, Elaira could hardly drive at speed through scrublands riddled with gullies and badger setts that could snap a horse’s legs on a misstep.
Daybreak was well past when, skin wet and sore and made cross by storm and delay, she reined in the little mare before a disused postern that let into the ruined palace gardens.
A novice initiate awaited her. Miserable in the heavy fall of rain, she announced with clipped asperity that the incoming message rider was expected to report at once to the main hall.
Elaira dismounted with a dispirited sigh. If word of her doings concerned the Prime Council, she would have been met on arrival however inconvenient the hour. Rain hammered in sheets across the flags, rinsing rivulets through the arches overhead. Elaira draped her reins on the mare’s steaming neck and started to loosen girth buckles.
‘You should call a groom for that.’ The novice was shivering, as thoroughly drenched as Elaira, except that her vigil had been performed after breakfast and a warm night’s sleep. ‘The Prime Enchantress is displeased and delay will just worsen your case.’
Elaira felt the cold go through to her marrow. ‘Morriel wants me?’ She tried and failed to hide distress. ‘But I thought—’
‘That today was the time appointed to review the orphan wards,’ the novice interrupted, prim to the point of cattiness. ‘It should be. Your doings in Erdane caused the roster to be rearranged.’
A tingle of blood suffused Elaira’s face. Already her disgrace had seeded gossip. Had she not been the daughter of a street thief before the Koriani claimed her for training, shame might have hampered the wits that allowed her to rally. ‘I’d best not wait for a page, then. If their evaluation has been put off, the boys will have time on their hands. You’ll only need a minute to find one to see my mount cooled and stabled.’
The pages were all eating dinner at this hour, and serve one junior novice right, Elaira thought as she fumbled with icy fingers to unbuckle the satchel of dispatches from the saddle rings. If the Prime herself was displeased that made for worries enough without every new snip in the order troubling to point up the fact. Before the flummoxed girl could utter protest, Elaira surrendered her reins, shouldered her burden of papers and pushed on through flowerbeds choked with bracken and hedgerows run together into moss-green tunnels snarled with creepers and thorn.
The wing to the ladies’ chambers nested amid the overgrowth like a pile of moss-rotten stone. The beams that roofed the porticos had caved, spilling slate like shattered pewter over what once had been marble mosaic. Elaira kicked down a daunting stand of weeds to reach the doorway. The original portal of cedar and filigree had long since rotted away. Bronze hinges cast in a tracery of rose leaves now hung on rough-hewn planks nailed together with a strip of boiled cowhide. Wet leaves jammed the sill. Elaira wasted minutes in prying the panel open; she persisted rather than go around the front way, would endure obstacles far worse before she traipsed in her dripping, draggled state past the eyes of her curious peers.
That prideful scruple cost her skinned knuckles and added sweat to her smell of wet horse. Militant despite Asandir’s counsel of temperance, Elaira hastened through a chain of mouldering bedchambers; if the Prime Enchantress saw fit to demand audience after an all night ride with no bath, she deserved to endure the result.
In better, idle moments, the carved wainscoting and decaying bas-reliefs that ornamented the cornices and ceilings invited daydreams of the original inhabitants. But on a morning made gloomy by cascades of falling rain, the rooms of dead earls’ ladies seemed musty with sorrowful memories. Elaira let herself out into a brick and flagstone inner corridor and proceeded through shadowed archways and around puddles let in by leaks to the anteroom where the enormous halfwit who served as Morriel’s doorguard granted her instant admittance.
The gentle man was not smiling, a distressing sign.
Left alone beneath the cavernous vaults of the great hall while the panels boomed shut on her heels, Elaira stopped short. The chairs before the friezework dais stood empty and no fire burned in the grate. The Prime Council’s review had not just been deferred, but cancelled for today altogether. No disdainful circle of seniors awaited; only two cowed-looking page-boys, scarcely twelve years of age and identically blond, bearing the paired standards and crested crane device that symbolized Morriel’s authority.
The Prime herself held audience. Aged and thin as a whip, she sat her seat of power looking faded in official purple robes and skin as translucent as antique porcelain. Yet her shoulders were not bowed; her hand on her order was unyielding as northfacing granite, hard as the diamonds that netted her bone-white hair and flashed on her blue-veined wrists. Couched amid calculating wrinkles, her eyes gleamed black as a carrion crow’s.
Clumsy at the worst of moments, Elaira tripped on the hem of her travelling cloak.
Morriel looked up at the sound, sharp cheekbones and hawk nose enhancing her bird-like rapacity. She waved her hand. The bundle of cloth by her elbow stirred upright and turned around with a feline grace. Elaira caught her breath in true fear as she identified First Enchantress Lirenda, present all the while, and whispering in the matriarch’s ear. Clad in judiciary black, veiled in muslin, she stood in attendance as Ceremonial Inquisitor.
For her late transgressions in Erdane, Elaira was not to suffer enquiry, but th
e formal, closed trial reserved for enchantresses who broke their vows of obedience.
Frowning, scared and chilled from more than damp clothing, Elaira reviewed her mistakes: she had spoken with a sorcerer, but not to betray her order’s secrets; she had gambled with a drunken prophet, but except for flouting an unwritten code of manners, she had committed no indecency. If Erdane’s officials had caught her at spell-craft, she might have burned, but no others in the sisterhood had shared her risk. Last and surely least, her talk with the s’Ffalenn heir in the hayloft had passed in absolute innocence.
Why should she be called in for judgement as if she had plotted a grand offence?
Rumpled and travel-stained before her seniors’ immaculate presence, Elaira lowered the message satchel. She slipped the strap from fingers gone nerveless and threw off her muddied cloak. Her knees shook through her curtsey, a detail made obvious by her riding leathers. Somehow she managed a level voice. ‘I stand before my betters to serve.’
Prime Enchantress Morriel inclined her head, the shimmer of her diamonds and lace netting pricked with light like new tears. She did not speak; since by custom the Prime addressed no outsiders, oath-breakers fell under the same stigma.
First Enchantress Lirenda spoke in Morriel’s stead, her enunciation as ominous as the cross of swords behind her veil. ‘Junior initiate Elaira, you were sent north with routine dispatches for the house matron outside of Erdane. Instructions did not mention taverns, or brothels, or card gambling with drunken prophets who consort with sorcerers of the Fellowship.’
Left light-headed by the pound of her fast-beating heart, Elaira returned the only excuse she could plead. ‘I was told to be observant, to bring back the news of the road.’ Dakar had told more in five minutes than lane watchers had gleaned through a month of tedious observation; yet that truth would but incense the Prime further. Elaira stared at the floor. ‘Mistakenly, I thought facts were of greater importance than the methods used to seek them.’