Arpeggios rippled and soared, linked by grace-notes that revealed, like unfinished tapestry, the latent promise of the bard. Cut diamonds had less clarity. The s’Ffalenn heir already possessed a skill that could pierce the heart; offered freedom to pursue his desire, and given the right master, his talent could be refined to a grace that held power to captivate.
Woodenly, Asandir pressed forward. His deerhide soles grated over stone, deliberate warning to the minstrel that solitude had been breached. Arithon glanced over his shoulder, saw his visitor and smiled. The reflexive, hair-trigger wariness that on prior occasions had hardened him never arose. As if his licence to share the risks in quelling the meth-snakes had triggered catharsis, the music flowed from him unchecked. By the lyrical, ringing undertone, no Fellowship sorcerer could mistake that this time the s’Ffalenn heir played to share unconditionally.
Asandir fought his wish to turn away, to retrace his path to the valley and leave Caith-al-Caen to the spirits and the bard; instead he steeled his will and assimilated the hurtful whole: his mage’s vision showed him the colours of Arithon’s aura shot through with absolute trust.
The final steps toward the hollow became unbearably hard to complete. Asandir managed, though the wear left by centuries of service suddenly bore down on him and the wind pried his hair and clothing like the tug of hostile hands. He reached the stone where Arithon sat and regarded the mist and the shadows until the song reached its natural end. When the last note faded into stillness, he settled at the Master’s side.
‘Why?’ he asked softly, though in depth, he already knew.
Arithon settled the lyranthe into the crook of his elbow and answered the question’s drift. ‘I finally had proof that your promise of free will was genuine.’ Green eyes turned, but Asandir could no longer meet them. Unperturbed, where in a more guarded moment he might justly have taken alarm, Arithon continued. ‘I challenged my right to self-destruction and was shown an open door.’ He paused, looked down and his hands opened. ‘You’ll forgive my cantankerous behaviour, I hope. I’m capable of better, as you’ll see.’
Asandir masked a flinch, for the words the Master had chosen had echoed those of another s’Ffalenn ancestor, caught in an equally untenable position. And in the moment when memory and pity stole speech, Asandir shared in fine-textured empathy the unshielded confidence of a friendship.
The offering itself was a rarity for a man unaccustomed to companionship: a lonely boy, raised in the company of elderly mages who had all loved him at a distance. He had grown without a mother’s affection, but hereditary compassion had turned him from resentment. He readily forgave what he did not understand, and defined his joy through his competence. Praise for his achievements kept him from discovering the depths of his isolation, the cost of that misapprehension still yet to be paid.
The true friend, the caring lover, could absolve all hurt from the growth that inevitably must be forced upon the grown man. The lesson might be learned through care and happiness, that the self-worth Arithon instinctively sought in music was a separate thing from accomplishment – had Desh-thiere and a crown not hung between.
Asandir hid bitterness. His own role disallowed mercy. Inwardly connected the Master might be, and strong as well, but along with his confidence came infinite power to wound. Asandir came close to recoil as another image touched his consciousness: a young girl’s face, with shy, smiling lips, eyes like aventurine, and ash-brown hair caught up in braids. Arithon had wanted to kiss her but women confused him; while walking in the hills to gather herbs they had spoken of music and poetry and then of things more personal. And trembling in his arms she had admitted that his powers, the given gift of Shadow he had laboured so long to master, frightened her. He had let her go, not knowing what to say.
The girl’s name had been Tennia, Asandir recalled from the clutter of past recollections he had probed after breaking the Curse of Mearth; the events themselves were not new, nor the regrets they had left marked in memory. The sorcerer’s gall and surprise stemmed instead from distinction that now, his insight into Arithon’s consciousness was openly given in trust.
Asandir watched the winds comb the dry, frost-brittle grasses with bleak eyes. This time, in keenest irony, inherited s’Ffalenn compassion had set the reins into his grasp; s’Ahelas farsight offered the whip. His mage’s perception recognized Arithon’s inner fibre, and its naked vulnerability stirred him to grief sharp as outrage: for he could, he would, and he must, manipulate this prince into voluntary betrayal of everything he held dear.
‘This place,’ Arithon said, interrupting Asandir’s inward turmoil, ‘it has a quality, a feeling, as if the rocks, the soil, even the wind, are something more than inanimate.’
‘Caith-al-Caen is aligned with an earth-lane,’ the sorcerer replied in what seemed measured calm; but a shiver flawed his composure. Mercy upon you, he thought to the prince at his side; for Arithon had unwittingly invited the opening the Fellowship in its desperate need required. Over the whisper of wind and through the multiple levels of his mage’s awareness, Asandir chose his words. ‘Here, in the past, the old races danced at the turn of each season to deflect the earth’s forces into latitudinal channels to enrich the surrounding land. So were all of Athera’s twelve lanes once interconnected in a lattice to nourish all life. The resonance that shaped the ward lingers still.’
Self-control prevailed: a voice could be compelled to sound conversational, though anguished self-revulsion stormed beneath; for the first strand of the snare would be spun, here and now, of the purest thing left to this world: the beauty and wild grace impressed upon Caith-al-Caen by the dance of the Riathan Paravians. ‘I can show you, if you like.’
It did not help to know that the ultimate course of the world depended upon this deception, as Arithon straightened in surprise. His eyes lit with pleasure, and a longing that was entirely spontaneous tipped up the corners of his mouth. ‘I would be honoured.’
Somehow Asandir unlocked numbed fingers. He reached down, picked up a lichened bit of stone and said, ‘Give me your hands.’ He offered his own, palm upward, the pebble cradled like the mythical seed of temptation in the left one.
Arithon laid his lyranthe aside. A gust fanned his hair and the coarse linen of his sleeves as he reached to engage his grip. Warm hands were given into the sorcerer’s cool ones. As if air itself were abrasive to his skin, Asandir accepted the touch.
He guided Arithon’s fingers to cup the fragment of stone, then moulded his own over the top. ‘You were taught to clear and centre your mind. Do that. But this time, include our bit of stone as if it were part of your flesh and leave me an open channel.’
Unaware of impending destiny, Arithon closed his eyes. Without looking, Asandir could sense the change as he underwent the necessary preparation and the clamour of inward consciousness settled to listening stillness. As a shepherd might lead his best lamb to slaughter, the sorcerer threaded his awareness into the fragment of stone, hooked the residual glimmer of Paravian magic and set it free, to pour through Arithon’s unshielded spirit and weave its undying line of melody.
The effect at first was subtle, little more than a sensation of warming from the stone, followed by a tingle of nerves akin to a rush of exuberance. Arithon underwent a moment of quivering, inward realignment, as if a chord had been struck in harmonic resonance with his being. Asandir felt the ripple of reaction course through the flesh under his grip: he removed his hands and watched, aggrieved and silent.
Arithon opened his eyes to the vision of unicorns dancing.
The statues of Riathan enshrined at Althain Tower might reflect an artist’s proportion and line. But perfection carved in cold marble could never capture motion, nor the lightness and flight of cloven hooves, nor the lift of tails and manes more fine than spun silk; not the spiralled twist of horns that shimmered with an energy visible to mages, nor the soaring, heart-searing sweetness of song that underlay the sigh of the wind. Caith-al-Caen rang with a purity of to
ne just beyond grasp of the mind.
Arithon dropped the bit of stone, helplessly overwhelmed. He sank to his knees before the cranny where he had sheltered. Assaulted by a rapture beyond hope, the half-glimpsed promise of limitless light, he laughed aloud and then trembled. His eyes filled with tears and over-flowed. ‘Blessed Ath,’ he managed finally, his words wrung to harshness by awe. ‘I never guessed. Yet the beauty in the sword should have warned me.’
Asandir regarded the lyrical pavane of the spirit forms, mute. Their image held power to captivate, surely; but the palliative brought only hunger, akin to the cravings of delirium. These illusions were just poor, starved shadows, an imprint like after-image left by creatures whose existence transcended mortality. The reality made pearls seem as sand. For one who had beheld the wisdom in a unicorn’s depthless eyes, for any who had once experienced the current of undefiled exultation that abided in their presence, the ghosts scribed here by trace resonance exposed only wretched emptiness. Asandir wept also, but for loss beyond words to encompass and for a future set into motion that must not now be undone.
Cut by regret and infinite pity, he bent also and gathered Arithon’s shivering shoulders into the embrace a parent might show to a child about to be orphaned. ‘You can block the visions at will by sealing off your inner sight.’
Arithon twisted against the sorcerer’s hold, his face all puzzled delight. ‘Why ever should I want to?’
Asandir released his grip as though burned. Too choked to breathe, far less speak, he whirled away and strode off. Almighty Ath, the irony wounded, endlessly, and straight to the heart. For Arithon would wish very shortly that he had never owned mage-sight, nor been attuned to the resonance of Paravian mystery.
The spirits that haunted Caith-al-Caen were as pale glimmers, their measure a dance of celebration incanted and renewed through countless turns of seasons. Here the Paravian singers had transmuted only joy. The vibrations imbued within the ruins of the traditional s’Ffalenn seat of power, Ithamon, where the Fellowship proposed to see Desh-thiere’s stranglehold over sky and sunlight broken, were not at all the same.
Amid foundations shattered by the uprising and the bones of unburied dead, the four towers raised by the Paravians still stood, their wards pristine and still radiant. The contrast between their enduring, virginal harmony and the tormented backlash of magics unleashed by the fall of the King’s Tower that coiled like a wraith through the wreckage was a thousand times more poignant than the haunting of Caith-al-Caen, and stark with the blood and tragedy of displaced lives and dreams.
Arithon might shut such clamour out, but at the cost of his bardic inspiration; and the compassion that was permanently ingrained in every scion of the s’Ffalenn line would disallow any such voluntary deafness.
Irony within irony, Asandir knew, as his feet stumbled in unabashed haste and his clothing hooked on the briars. The king for Rathain would be bought in false guilt against every dedicated principle of the Fellowship whose first task was to foster enlightenment. For the prince now entranced by the unicorn spirits lacked the hardened self-wisdom to stand down Ithamon’s past. He was too young, too strong and too much the puppet of pity to perceive that responsibilities were always self-imposed.
On fostering that lie, Athera’s need depended; and on a tender innocence paired like a curse with resilience enough not to flee.
The road across Daon Ramon Barrens was barely more than a dirt-track, half overgrown and winding between hills raked by winds that never seemed to quiet. Tired of the whisper and rattle of dead bracken, of the incessant tug and snap at his cloak hem and hair perpetually whipped into tangles, Lysaer kept good spirits, buoyed by certainty that the interval of being adrift without kingdom or purpose would end after conquest of Desh-thiere.
Never mind that, league on league, the landscape was unremittingly deserted and bare; that winter rains soaked his clothing and blankets, and Dakar’s invective worsened since the morning he woke up with iyats in his boots, and Asandir once again had to rescue him from the energy sprites’ bedevilment. No other diversions arose through weary days of travel, for their route took them far from even the most isolated initiate’s hostel: tinkers, traders and caravans did not travel the old road to Ithamon. As if the way itself, with its lichened markers and rolling, briar-grown hills was haunted, not even the ruins of farm hamlets or villages remained to remind of a prosperous past.
‘That’s because there were none,’ Asandir confided over the jingle of harness and the booming grind of the dray’s wheels over bare scarps of stone. The rain had stopped at midday and water puddled silver in the hollows. ‘Daon Ramon in the old tongue means “golden hills”. The place was the province of the Riathan Paravians and unicorns require no dwellings.’
Unwilling to let the sorcerer lapse into the forbidding silence that had gripped him since Althain Tower, Lysaer gestured toward the hillsides with their cover of bracken and thorn. ‘It seems hard to picture this place as fertile and green.’
‘It was, and beautifully so.’ Asandir urged his mount over a gully where the road had washed out and the slates lay jammed like old bones in a spongy bed of moss. His silver-grey eyes seemed to pierce the mantle of mist and peer far into distance. ‘All that you see was a grassland, rich with herbs and wildflowers. Winters were short and mild. But that changed, after the rebellion. Townsmen believed the magic of the Paravians could not abide in a land without water. They went to astonishing lengths to assuage their fears. The governor’s council of Etarra funded a force of mercenaries to dam the Severnir. A great canal was cut through the Skyshiel Mountains to divert the river at its source. The current flows east, now, and empties into Eltair Bay.’
‘That seems a mighty effort to base on a superstition,’ Lysaer commented.
Asandir rode on in troubled silence. Then he said, ‘So long as these hills remain a desert, no Paravian would return to dwell here. So you see, the townsmen’s intent was suited after all.’
The damp weather held and night fell early. By then, Asandir’s party made camp in a grotto formed by a jutting outcrop of cracked boulders. The only bit that stayed dry was the nook where the fire burned and Dakar crouched there, roasting rabbits that Arithon and Lysaer had snared before dusk. Asandir knew where to find herbs, and beside the odours of wet earth and damp horses, the air carried the savoury smell of stew.
Lysaer huddled between the slow drip of a natural spring and a falling spray of run-off, shirtless, his cloak tossed across his shoulders. With a needle and thread borrowed from the supply-pack, he was immersed in determined effort to mend a tear where a briar had torn his sleeve. Attendant on his progress was the Mad Prophet, in rare high humour at the prospect of a meal of fresh meat.
‘You’re making that thing into ruffles better suited to a tavern doxie,’ Dakar said in unasked-for criticism.
Embarrassed by his ineptness when he had been surrounded by women at their embroidery all his life, Lysaer managed a laugh. ‘If the ruffles keep out the cold, I don’t care.’
Dakar sampled the contents of his supper pot, licked the spoon, and resumed stirring. ‘Don’t jerk the stitches so tight. Everybody knows you’re irritated.’
At a loss for subtle rejoinder, Lysaer welcomed the intrusion when Arithon stirred from the shadows and insinuated himself in the fray.
‘Don’t gloat,’ the Master advised the Mad Prophet. ‘Princes don’t freely choose to keep their clothes until they rot in rags off their backs.’
Laid open to insult by his threadbare and weather-faded plaid, Dakar subsided to a glower. To his half-brother, Arithon added, ‘If you don’t mind wearing what looks like a sail-maker’s patch, there’s a better way to fix that.’
Lysaer surrendered needle and linen with a gratitude that unfailingly melted hearts. ‘These clothes would hardly impress anyone before they were torn.’ To Dakar he added quietly, ‘The s’Ffalenn bastard’s made a fool of you again. You promised a scathing show of temper after Althain Tower. Now I’m
left to wonder which of you is the more devious: Arithon, for an act that would fool a saint, or you, for a lying diversion to escape getting dressed down for rudeness.’
Dakar’s ebullience died. Rather than admit to his own bafflement at Arithon’s contrary manner, he hunkered down by his cooking-pot like a disgruntled broody hen. ‘Wait,’ he muttered morosely to the fair-haired and smiling prince. ‘Just wait till we get to Ithamon.’
After five days’ journey the hills of Daon Ramon lost their rocky crowns and became clothed and gentled by heather. Valleys that until now had been channelled with dried gullies and stunted stands of scrub-oak smoothed over into vales half hidden in fog. If the view had once been beautiful, Desh-thiere rendered everything bleak; the winds that never stilled gained the bitten edge of frost. For league upon league there seemed no living thing but grey-coated deer, rabbits furred in winter-white and the lonely, dissonant calls of hawks that sailed like shadows through the mist in search of prey.
The horses grew lean and tough, nourished more by the grain carried in by wagon than on the rank brown grass. Lysaer wearied of venison but was careful to keep the fact from his half-brother, who spent as many hours hunting as playing upon his lyranthe. As always fed up with abstinence, Dakar seized upon every opening to bemoan the dearth of beer.
Asandir kept his own counsel, forbidding as northfacing rock.
The closer the party drew to the heartland of Daon Ramon, the less the sorcerer bothered to chastise his spellbinder for whining. Well warned that such silence boded trouble, Lysaer noticed the moment when the Mad Prophet abandoned complaint. More sensitive than before to nuance, he watched for any circumstance that might find the Shadow Master discomfited.