For Arithon, the spell-wrought sleep induced by Asandir did not last undisturbed. Brushed first by a passing energy current, then immersed in a burgeoning bloom of ward radiance, his enchanter’s sensitivity reacted, even through the veil of unconsciousness. Trained reflex took over and aligned his awareness to trace the source. The vibrations pursued by his innermind assumed hazy form, and he roved a landscape like dream, but not.
Even asleep, a part of him recognized that the energy net which drew him into vision was not fancy, but a peril less forgiving than a sword’s edge.
Arithon perceived a stand of reeds thrust through the ink-still waters of a marsh, no mere bog, but a vast expanse of wetlands criss-crossed with crumbled walls. Mist and night chilled air already dank with rotting vegetation: in the absence of moon or stars, ward-glyphs glimmered above drifted fog, wraith-pale and sharp-edged as blades, their forces interlocked to form a boundary. Inside, under apparently calm pools, the swamp’s depths moiled; serpents darted and dived, fanged, venomed, and guarded by a still figure in russet. Disturbed as if startled by footsteps in a place where no man dared tread, the watcher looked up sharply.
A soundless shock jarred the vision as the eyes of the guardian and the perception of the dreamer met; then the marshlands whirled away, replaced by a lofty tower chamber, walled with leather-bound books, and centred by an ebon table upon which a brazier burned like a star. Around this charged point of power, truesight identified the signature energies of Asandir, the Mad Prophet’s muddled contradictions, and a third mage strangely shadowed and overhung by the spread wings of a raven. That moment Arithon felt his awareness gathered in by a touch of inexpressible gentleness. His vision narrowed to encompass the face of a fourth mage seated with the others.
Mildly snub-nosed, seamed like crumpled parchment, the sorcerer’s features expressed grandfatherly bemusement, lent a benign touch of frailty by a woolly shock of white hair and beard tangled for want of recent grooming. The impression of childlike senility proved deceptive. Half-buried beneath bristled brows, eyes of diffuse green-grey reflected all the breadth of Ath’s Creation.
‘Teir’s’Ffalenn,’ pronounced a voice that rang through Arithon’s mind like the sonorous stroke of a gong.
The Master of Shadow snapped awake. His eyes opened to a red-carpeted chamber warmed by a hearth of banked embers. A kettle dangled from an iron hook wrought into the serpentine loops of a dragon. Nearby stood a marble plinth, but in place of artwork or china ornament, this one held a tea canister that somebody thoughtless had left open.
Arithon blinked. Disoriented, he stirred, then recalled Asandir’s ensorcelled flask. If transfer from the power focus at Isaer had been accomplished while he slept, this place would be located in Althain Tower. He lay on a cot under blankets. His boots had been removed; also his tunic, belt and breeches. He still wore his shirt, damp yet from rain. A heartbeat shy of a curse, Arithon spied his missing clothes, slung over a chair alongside a bridle in need of mending and a snarled up twist of waxed thread. An awl jabbed irreverently upright through a sumptuous velvet seat cushion. His sword, drawn from its sodden sheath and oiled, rested against a table heaped with books, some flopped face downward. Others were dog-eared at the corners, or jammed with torn bits of vellum or frayed string pressed into service as page markers. The dribbled remains of a tallow dip lay couched in an exquisite silver candlestand, and chipped mugs, used tea spoons and mismatched inkwells filled any cranny not encroached on by clutter.
Nested amid oak-panelled walls and age-faded tapestries, the air of friendly disorder offered the weary traveller a powerful incentive to relax and rest. But charged to disquiet by the tingling, subliminal ache that partnered the proximity of thundering currents of power, Arithon felt nettled as a cat in a drawstring bag. Although Lysaer lay curled in contentment in a cot alongside, his half-brother tossed off his blankets, arose and pulled on his rain-damp clothing. Since his boots were nowhere to be found, he crossed the thick carpet barefoot and opened the chamber’s single door, a studded oaken panel strapped and barred with heavy iron. The sconce-lit stairwell beyond removed any doubt that Althain Tower had been built primarily as a fortress. Chilled by fierce drafts through the arrowslits, Arithon stepped out and closed the latch softly behind him. A moment of considered study revealed the power’s source to be above him. He set foot upon worn stone and climbed to the highest level, where he encountered a narrow portal as starkly unornamented as the first. The latch and bar were forged iron, frosty to his touch as he set hand to the grip and cracked the panel.
Inside lay the round, book-lined room from his dream. The central table was supported by ebon carvings of Khadrim, and seated there, faced away from him, were Dakar, Asandir and a black-clad stranger. Opposite sat another, robed in maroon with sleeves banded in dark interlace and rubbed thin at the cuffs. He was neither tall nor portly, but his presence had a rootedness like the endurance of storm-whipped oak and his face and eyes matched that of the sorcerer who had spoken his title and aroused him.
‘Arithon of Rathain?’ said Sethvir, Warden of Althain, in gentle inquiry. ‘Enter, and be welcome.’
Dakar swivelled around in astonishment. ‘You should be asleep and beyond reach of dreaming,’ he accused as the Shadow Master stepped through the doorway.
‘How could I?’ Aware of all eyes upon him, not least the attention of the black-clad stranger, Arithon pulled out an empty chair and sat. He rested his hands on the table edge, careful not to look directly into the brazier. More like a spark than natural flame, its blue-white blaze carved the chamber into starred, knife-edged shadows, but radiated no heat, for its source was drawn direct from the third lane. To Dakar, Arithon retorted, ‘Could you lie abed with such a grand spate of earthforce in flux just over your head?’
To Sethvir, he added, ‘I came to offer help, if you’ll accept it.’
Befuddled in appearance as any care-worn old man, the Warden of Althain said, ‘We cannot deny we’re shorthanded. But you should be aware, there is peril.’ Though mild, the look that followed searched in a manner unnervingly subtle.
Read to his innermost depths, Arithon was touched by a contact so ephemeral it raised no prickle of dread; and yet, the image conveyed to him was harrowing. The swamp-dwelling serpent he had first seen in dream recurred now in migrating thousands, possessed of an intelligence that hungered, and envenomed with a poison more dire than anything brewed up by nature. Secure within Althain Tower, Arithon felt the restlessness that drove the meth-snakes in their hordes to seek the defenceless countryside beyond the marsh. Shown the villagers, children and goodwives whose lives were endangered, he was given, intact, the knowledge of the forces currently at work to stay the migration; then, in blunt honesty, the daunting scope of energy needed to eradicate the threat.
‘Now then,’ Sethvir finished aloud. ‘You would take no shame, if you wish to retire below and sleep. A wardspell might be set to isolate your awareness, if you desire.’
Arithon measured the Warden, whose kindliness masked a razor-keen perception. After a slow breath he said, ‘If I were to retire, I’d be asking no protections where plainly none can be spared.’
As he made no move to rise, Sethvir laced together fingers blue-veined as fine marble. ‘Very well, young master. Our Fellowship would be last to deny that against the meth-snakes of Mirthlvain every resource is needful. You may stay, but these terms will apply.’ His regard pinned Arithon without quarter. ‘You will lend support to the spellbinder, Dakar, unconditionally, and from trance state. You will hold no awareness of the proceedings as they occur, and retain no memory afterwards.’
Severe strictures; Arithon understood that if the conjury went awry, his life would be wrung from his body as a man might twist moisture from a rag. He would have no warning, no control, no shred of self-will. Across the table, the sorcerer in black watched him with feeling akin to sympathy; Asandir stayed firmly nonjudgemental. If heirship of Rathain seemed no hindrance to a perilous decision, exp
ectations remained nonetheless. Whipped to resistance by that certainty, the Master moved on to Dakar, and there read fatuous contempt, for why should any trained master lend a brother’s trust to an apprentice who binged on beer to evade discipline?
Moved to black and bitter humour, the Master looked back at Sethvir. ‘I accept.’ The words were charged with challenge: if limits existed to the free will Asandir had inferred he still possessed, he would risk his very life to expose them.
The Warden of Althain rested misty, poet’s eyes upon the Master. ‘As you choose. You may set your mind in readiness at once, for meth-snakes won’t wait for second thoughts.’
Arithon bowed his head, aware through closed eyes of Dakar’s unadulterated dismay. The faintest smile curved the s’Ffalenn mouth, then faded as he engaged his self-discipline and submerged his consciousness into trance.
A great deal less gracefully, and with a martyred sigh the Master of Shadow was quite beyond hearing, Dakar gathered his own, more scattered resources.
Through the isolated interval of concentration, while the Mad Prophet assimilated the link offered by Arithon, Sethvir turned in piercing dismay toward Asandir.
‘Difficulty with the succession was an understatement, my friend.’ The Warden of Althain waved an exasperated hand at Rathain’s now unconscious prince. ‘You inferred a past history of blood feud, but this!’
At Traithe’s blank look of inquiry, Sethvir hooked his knuckles through the tangled end of his beard. ‘Our Teir’s’Ffalenn has the sensitivity imbued in his fore-father’s line, but none of the protections. His maternal inheritance of farsightedness lets him take no step without guilt, for he sees the consequences of his every act, and equally keenly feels them.’
‘That doesn’t explain his recklessness,’ Traithe said. ‘Nor such guarded resentment.’
‘No.’ Asandir answered his colleague levelly. ‘A prior conflict between ruling power and trained awareness of the mysteries has already broken Arithon’s peace of mind. An attempt on my part to ease his despair misfired and nearly earned his enmity.’
Sethvir steepled his hands, thoughtful. ‘Set him free, then. Let him pursue his gift of music, marry, and let us seek Rathain’s prince among his heirs. After the passage of five centuries, what is another generation, or even two?’
‘I beg to differ,’ Traithe broke in, his quiet, grainy voice tinged to regret. ‘If Etarra’s merchant factions are not curbed with the advent of clear sunlight, their intrigue could grow too entrenched to break.’
Silence fell, harsh under the glare of the brazier. Each of three Fellowship sorcerers pondered upon the trade city that commanded the heart of Rathain’s trade-routes. There the old hatreds ran deepest, and there misguided justice had brewed a morass of bloody politics and decadence. For Etarra, there could be no tolerance. The prince who assumed Rathain’s crown would be charged with dismantling that nest of corruption, and no chance offered better opportunity than the time of Desh-thiere’s defeat, when governors and guilds would be plunged into disarray by the return of the open sky.
‘The long-range effects bear careful study,’ Sethvir concluded. ‘We shall cast strands, when this matter of meth-snakes is resolved.’ Then, since the task of quelling serpents was dire in itself, he took brisk stock of their resources.
Two other Fellowship sorcerers rushed to the site of trouble had earlier raised a barrier ward to seal off the swamp. Their combined efforts were barely sufficient to stay the serpents’ migration, which left Mirthlvain’s guardian, the spellbinder Verrain, alone in the old watch-keep at Meth Isle. Although the fortification had been augmented with a fifth lane power focus to combat worse horrors in the past, an unaided apprentice could never man such defences without becoming charred to a cinder.
‘I see no alternative but to shape and direct the power from here.’ Sethvir sighed in naked regret. ‘What else can we try but to bend the third lane current across the continent in a reduced vibration that Verrain can safely transfer to bolster the barrier ward?’
To hear such a note of uncertainty from the Warden of Althain was enough in itself to inspire fear. By now in firm rapport with the resources lent by Arithon, Dakar shot a glance around the table. Traithe was openly sweating and Asandir sat with one fist braced in trepidation. In a stillness more eloquent than words, each sorcerer faced the appalling truth: never in five thousand years of history had they been so critically understaffed. The circle they would close for the task of saving Shand would only be as effective as its weakest link. Miserably conscious of his shortcomings, Dakar knotted clammy hands and cursed Arithon s’Ffalenn for scheming arrogance. Never mind that the Master’s magecraft held none of the shifty cunning his conscious mind affected; however he might disparage Dakar for slipshod ways, the trust he gave in trance was clear-edged and forthright as his music.
The paradox that a spirit so exactingly controlled should vengefully surrender all that he was into jeopardy jabbed like insult.
For as Sethvir described the coming trial, Dakar would become the check-rein on that awesome flow of power to be channelled through Verrain thousands of leagues away. If the spellbinder at Meth Isle should misstep, and Dakar keep less than perfect vigilance, the influx sent from Althain would merge unchecked with the fifth lane. The overload would sear the heartlands of three kingdoms to waste, while the meth-snakes that compelled such unconscionable risk would themselves evade annihilation.
Riddled through by anxiety, Dakar started at a touch upon his shoulder. Sethvir stood beside him, his manner tempered with sympathy. ‘We ask a great deal more than is reasonable of you.’
Dakar shook his head, struck mute. He had watched a man suffer death by cierlan-ankeshed venom; the memory still harrowed him in nightmares. Any stresses he might share through his link with Verrain must surely be less than the horrible invasion that threatened Shand.
‘I’ll cope,’ Dakar mumbled.
The Warden of Althain was never so easily deceived. ‘You will guard Verrain’s well-being and your own. Arithon’s strength will back you, but his safety will be mine to secure. He need never know. But as the last living s’Ffalenn, his line is too precious to risk.’
Sethvir gave Dakar a last pat in reassurance, then bent over Arithon’s limp form and with a gesture wove a protective ward that stung the eyesight to witness.
Although relieved of a burden, the Mad Prophet felt galled to no end that the Master should pass scatheless through a direct challenge of the Fellowship’s wishes. ‘It’s not as if he gave a whistle for the land, or the people, or even a spit over principles,’ Dakar grumbled as he stuffed shaky fingers in his cuffs to wedge them still.
Already attuned to larger matters, Sethvir returned a vague murmur. ‘You misunderstand the man gravely.’
But since the Mad Prophet had been engrossed beyond hearing through the Fellowship’s recent discussion, Dakar believed only that Arithon’s genius for duplicity had caused Sethvir himself to be misled. The Warden of Althain settled in his seat with a rustle of robes, and his trusting regard touched his colleagues.
No spoken signal passed between the three, yet when the Fellowship sorcerers at Althain commenced rapport, the air in their presence quickened at the call of some unseen current. Shadows swelled as the spark in the brazier condensed to a pinpoint, dim at first, then waxing as their touch bound the pulse of Athera’s third lane ever more relentlessly into focus. The light flared to piercing brilliance. Forced to avert his eyes, the Mad Prophet was awed to find the sorcerers unmoved by the dazzle. Rooted as stone, they twined the earthforces tighter still, until the chamber resonated with a palpable, mounting charge. A stinging bite of ozone eclipsed the smell of books. The tower’s granite walls lost aspect, became edgeless and transient before that vast tide of power which itself seemed to cancel time.
The atmosphere became stillness before storm, and out of pent silence, Sethvir spoke a word.
Light arced from the brazier toward Traithe.
He receiv
ed it unflinching, cast it around space and time in a manner that defeated reason. A snap sheared the air into wind as the ray honed out of earthforce bridged the wide distance to Meth Isle.
Dakar bit his lip. The salt taste of sweat seemed unreal on his tongue, as if the proximity of lane-force estranged him from bodily sensation. Then the connection completed. His thoughts were slammed to incoherence as, across the breadth of the continent, the spellbinder who was Guardian of Mirthlvain recaptured the current sent from Althain. The focus pattern on the stone floor at Meth Isle keep flashed scarlet as power lapped against power, and the fifth lane’s inherent energies surged in sympathetic resonance.
Barefoot, terrified and stripped down to animal reflex, Verrain wrested the flux apart with a cry that echoed outward into the night beyond his walls. He rocked under a buffeting slap, shared by Dakar, as the awesome, fiery rush of power deflected through his body, and on, into the deft control of the sorcerers who held the barrier along Mirthlvain’s perimeter. Although stepped down to a finer resonance by the pair Asandir and Sethvir, the current’s passage was a dry, lacerating wind of agony. Dakar drew gasping breaths and struggled. He must preserve self-identity against the burning assault of sensation experienced by Verrain, or risk himself and all who depended on him.
The powers whipped and raged. Dakar fought not to be swept from control, though he had no anchor. The chair beneath his body had no meaning, nor the stone under his feet. He was a mote in a whirlpool, flexed, twisted, shoved and driven until physical orientation seemed an illusion cast outside reality.
Sethvir sensed the Mad Prophet’s distress, even through the shaping of the third lane’s raw bands. ‘Sometimes it helps if you hold someone’s hand,’ he said gently, and offered his own.
Dakar accepted with a gratitude compounded by desperation. Like a boulder in the thrash of a millrace, the touch steadied him. Distantly he was conscious of Sethvir’s link with Asandir, and the incomprehensible strength they engaged to tame the wild pulse of the third lane. Dakar blinked tears, or maybe sweat from his eyes. Confusion enveloped him, and a duality that dizzied. He endured, held to the body seated at Althain Tower, though a part of him also stood, barefoot, chilled and blinded by the inflamed focus pattern that channelled the untapped fifth lane. Dakar suffered with Verrain as wave after wave of energies coursed through their twinned awareness, to be snatched and turned again, before they merged in ruinous concert with the native currents underfoot.