Diegan interrupted and took up what had been a bristling argument. ‘But the children who work in the warehouses are not the get of the free poor, as your puppet-prince led you to think.’ Etarra’s commander of the guard set down the crystal goblet that he had toyed with for the past half hour. His wine sloshed untasted as he said, ‘These wretches that Arithon would champion are in fact the offspring of condemned criminals, clanblood barbarians who have harassed the trade-routes with thievery and murder for generations.’
Heat chased cold across Lysaer’s skin. He resisted an urge to blot his brow, willed aside his unsettled condition and studied the city’s Lord Commander, whose finery and intellect made him more courtier than soldier and whose words fanned up like dry cobwebs the clinging spectre of past doubts.
S’Ffalenn pirates on Dascen Elur had repeatedly manipulated political sore points to stir unrest and further their marauding feud against Amroth.
Lysaer snapped back to present circumstance with an inward lash of chastisement. This was Etarra, not Port Royal and Arithon was not as his ancestors. More musician than buccaneer, he had been the sworn heir of a murderer in a past that no longer mattered. Fair minded, Lysaer pushed off his uneasiness. ‘Do you suggest Rathain’s prince would lie to discredit the city council?’
‘I suggest he’s in league with the Fellowship’s intent, to see Etarra given over to barbarians.’ Diegan leaned forward. Diamond studs sparkled across his shoulders as he planted his elbows on his knees. ‘For that end, would he not act as the sorcerers’ purpose demanded?’
Never at ease with Arithon’s mage-trained evasiveness, Lysaer re-examined matters from that angle. Only this morning, Dakar had staggered in from his rounds of the taverns and attested in slurred certainty that Arithon had not spent last night drinking in any man’s company. ‘Wherever he was, only Daelion knows. His Grace himself’s not saying.’
Lysaer blinked, pricked by association. This day’s musician, who begged to be spared from royal position, was one and the same man as the chained sorcerer who had burned seven ships, then baited Amroth’s council at trial with his own life offered as gambit.
‘I can see you have reservations,’ Lady Talith observed. Her tight-laced taffeta rustled as she crossed her ankles; the terrier displaced by her movement whined and jumped plaintively down. ‘For our part, if this coronation is to be stopped, there’s little time left to take action.’
In fact, there remained but an hour before the noon ceremony. Lysaer snapped to, the odd bent of his thoughts cut off by his ingrained habit of fair play. ‘Don’t think to suggest a conspiracy. I’ll not be party to treason. The Fellowship’s intentions toward your city are certainly not harmful, and Arithon’s rights of inheritance are not in my province to deny.’
‘But you doubt him,’ Talith pressed.
There, most squarely, she scored. Honour demanded that the integrity of any ruler should be challenged over issues of social justice. Repelled as if brushed by something dank, Lysaer arose. Good manners concealed his private qualms as he gathered his velvet cloak and offered his hand to Talith. Her beauty might bedazzle his vision but never his inborn integrity. He drew her suavely to her feet. ‘Lady, on behalf of your city, I’ll question your prince. Arithon is secretive, crafty and not always forthright about his motivations. But given direct confrontation, I’ve never known him to lie.’
Diegan jangled the bell for the maid to collect the crystal and the wine-tray. To Lysaer, he added, ‘You’ll tell us your findings before the coronation begins?’
Cold now, and unsure what should motivate him to undertake such a promise at inconveniently short notice, Lysaer found himself saying, ‘You have my formal word.’
The room, the wine and the company seemed suddenly too rich. Lysaer strove to recoup his composure. Sleepless nights and troubled dreams had sown his mind with unworthy confusion. For even if Arithon’s sympathies were misguided, the thorns in seeing justice done remained: the labourers enslaved in guild service were still children, ill fed, inadequately clothed and poorly housed. Although for simplicity’s sake it would relieve a vicious quandary to fault them for the crimes of their ancestors, their plight deserved unbiased review. If Arithon would champion their cause, he must defend his decision to repudiate the city council’s policies. Lysaer dodged the terrier that playfully circled his feet and strode with firm purpose for the door.
‘My lord, my lady,’ he said in parting.
A bang and a thump sounded in the passage outside.
The inbound commotion came accompanied by Dakar’s voice, plaintively arguing with a servant. Protests were cut by Asandir demanding to know what was amiss.
Lysaer pressed his thumb on the doorlatch. The fastening seemed queerly to have jammed. A violent wrench failed to dislodge the obstruction.
Lord Diegan shoved the maid away from the wine-tray in his haste to reach Lysaer’s side. Their combined attempt to free the door caused the scrolled brass to spark white light. Heat followed, intense enough to raise blisters.
Lysaer noticed instantly that his skin took no mark from the encounter. No stranger to the effects of small sorceries, he cried out a reflexive warning. ‘Spellcraft!’
Diegan regarded him intently, while inexplicable heat and chills chased through his body once again.
This bout proved more fierce than the last. Lysaer swayed. For an instant the surrounding room seemed to flicker in and out of existence. His vision quickly steadied, but his ears were left buzzing with unnameable, untraceable sound. Rage touched him. The emotion came barbed with a thought so clearly delineated, it seemed more solid than the lintel he caught to brace his balance. Who but Arithon would have dared to interfere; the poisoned conclusion followed, that if the s’Ffalenn bastard was to blame, distrust of Etarra’s council was emphatically misplaced.
Vindicated by Lysaer’s dismay, Diegan said, ‘We’re betrayed!’ He matched a grim glance with his sister.
The servant in the outside corridor had fallen silent; the chambermaid cowered in a corner. Dakar’s reply to Asandir breached the sealed parlour with damning, irrefutable clarity. ‘But of course I set wards to bind the doorlatch! Arithon begged me at all costs to keep him separate from Lysaer!’
‘Where’s the prince of Rathain?’ The sorcerer must have glowered fearsomely, for Dakar’s answer rose to a pitch very near to hysteria.
‘He went out. Into the streets, to look for you. If Luhaine’s ghost still guards him, it’s being obstinately close-mouthed. Didn’t you see either one of them on your way over here?’
‘No.’ Asandir’s step approached the closed doorway. ‘Too late, now, to wish differently. Your prophecy bars us from action. You say Lysaer’s inside?’
In mutinous self-defence, Dakar said, ‘Diegan’s servants insist he never left.’
Lysaer felt a hand on his forearm, Talith’s, pulling him quickly aside. A shock like a spark ripped through him; not for her beauty, which could stun any man, but for her unmannerly presumption. Before he had space to question his oddly irascible reaction, the feeling became swept aside and an urge he also could not trace prompted him to fast speech. ‘I promised I’d find Arithon and ask him for the truth. Can you get me out?’
Diegan grinned. ‘Every house in Etarra has a closet exit, and hidden stairs to an outside alley. Talith will show you. I’ll delay the sorcerer.’
‘You’ll try.’ Lysaer surrendered his hand to the lady, who breathlessly hurried him forward. ‘Be careful. No Fellowship sorcerer has compunctions against prying into your private thoughts.’
If the warning gave Diegan reservations, Lysaer was not to find out. Talith sank her nails into his wrist and bundled him through a doorway that had miraculously opened through the back wall. Thrust into a musty stone passageway, Lysaer heard only Talith, softly cursing the dust that grimed the gold hem of her dress before she dragged the panel closed and shut them in cobwebs and darkness.
In the parlour, the terrified maid began to sob. Balked
from following its pretty mistress, the terrier’s yapping changed pitch to barks and growls. The next instant the latch on the hallway door discharged a static shower of sparks. The dog bounded sideways, trailing ribbons, while the panel explosively burst inward.
Asandir slammed into Lord Diegan’s guest parlour with Dakar hard on his heels. They were met by the commander of the guard, blandly seated, the decanter of wine he had been on the verge of pouring frozen in his hand in mid-air.
His typically Etarran urbanity made no impression upon the sorcerer, whose gaze flicked to the other set of goblets that rested on the tray, their half-consumed contents abandoned. As the terrier subsided snarling under the nearest stuffed stool, Asandir studied Diegan with a chilling, unpleasant intensity. ‘Where has Lysaer gone?’
To the amazed admiration of Dakar, Diegan’s nerve never faltered. He replaced the wine crystal on its tray with a faint, controlled clink. ‘Your man left to have words with his crony, the Teir’s’Ffalenn. Should that disturb you?’
‘We’ll know shortly.’ Asandir stepped past the casement. His shadow swept over the commander of the guard, dimming the glitter of gemstones that studded his ceremonial pourpoint. Before Diegan’s magnificence, the sorcerer’s dark robe hung sheenless as a pauper’s cheap felt. ‘I want you to think, and answer carefully. While in your presence, did Lysaer show a loss of awareness? Did his attention seem to drift, even for a second?’
As Diegan made to brush off the question, the sorcerer advanced again and forestalled him. ‘I said, answer carefully. For if you noticed such a lapse, your friend could be endangered. One of Desh-thiere’s separate wraiths may have evaded captivity. If, unbeknownst to us, such a creature came to possess Lysaer, all of Etarra could be threatened.’
Diegan gave the matter his dutiful consideration, then raised his goblet to curled lips and sipped. His eyes reflected black irony as he said, ‘When Lysaer left this chamber, he seemed in perfect self-command.’
‘And before then?’ Asandir sounded worried.
‘Never mind the commander of the guard,’ Dakar burst out. ‘He’s got lying written all over him.’
‘Then keep him here under house-arrest!’ Asandir stalked on across the carpet. ‘We don’t need a call to arm the garrison to complicate disaster any further.’ He paused at the far wall, studied the bookshelf and after a second’s hesitation reached out and thumbed the hidden catch. The false panel swung open, wafting telltale traces of Talith’s lavender perfume. After an irritated glance toward Lord Diegan, Asandir departed in Lysaer’s footsteps, through the bolt-hole that led to the street.
‘Fiends take you!’ Dakar yelled after his master. He charged to the panel and wedged it before it could quite fall shut. Though the gloom beyond by now held only drafts, he shouted anyway. ‘Will somebody bother to tell me what in Ath’s creation I have prophesied?’
He received no answer; just a rip in his hose from the terrier, which in a belated fit of courage scuttled out from hiding and bit his ankle. Dakar’s defensive kick cleanly missed. The door fell to with a thud. As the dog retreated to snarl over its pillaged shred of stocking, Diegan hefted his decanter toward the invader still left in his parlour. ‘Share a drink to soften misfortune?’
Dakar groaned. Already riled beyond sense by the effects of clairvoyance and a hangover, he pressed fat palms to his temples. ‘Wine won’t help. The entire universe has gone crazy.’
Diegan offered a chair and pressed a filled goblet upon the Mad Prophet. ‘Then let’s forgo sanity also and both get rippingly drunk.’
No sooner had the curtains been lowered over the windows of Etarra’s great council hall, than a hammering rattled the main entry. Despite the fact Traithe had sealed the doors with a minor arcane binding, one heavy panel cracked open. A raw streak of daylight slashed the foyer, raising a sparkle like a jewel-vault across the agitated assemblage of officials in their wilting feathers, dyed furs, gold chains and gem-studded sashes of rank.
Since none of Etarra’s citizens held magecraft to challenge his warding, Traithe straightened hurriedly from the prostrate body of the Lord Governor. The raven on his shoulder kept balance to a flurry of wingbeats as he turned around to confront the disturbance.
Arithon’s voice pealed out through the gloom. ‘Where’s Asandir?’
Rapacious to recover their plundered advantages, every Etarran official not overawed by Morfett’s collapse pressed forward, blinking against the sudden daylight. The few who were closest recognized the dishevelled figure through the glare; the rest saw and identified the shining circlet that betokened Rathain’s rights of royal sovereignty.
‘Sorcery!’ someone cried from the fore. Heads turned, hatted, bald and formally beribboned and jewelled. ‘Here’s the prince, burst through spells of protection. All the dread rumours are true!’
A surge crossed the gathering like a draft-caught ripple through a tapestry.
More muttering arose. ‘It’s him. Teir’s’Ffalenn. A sneaking sorcerer, after all. His Grace of Rathain.’
The prince in the doorway called again. ‘In Ath’s name, is there any Fellowship sorcerer present?’
Traithe thrust through the press that jammed the foyer, his attention narrowed to include only Arithon’s pale face. Though loath to create a public spectacle, he had no choice but bow to need. ‘Asandir’s gone to find your half-brother. Sethvir’s at the south gate armoury. The streets are not at all safe.’
Heartsick to realize he could not beg help, denied even privacy to speak plainly, Arithon called back, ‘I can’t stay here!’
Assuredly, he could not. The high council was keyed to animosity. If Traithe’s presence momentarily stayed bloodshed, that abeyance would not long suffice. Every minister’s layers of lace and brocades held hidden daggers and jewelled pins that could be turned in a moment to treachery; not a few would have in attendance paid assassins masquerading as secretaries.
Having interposed his own person between the threatened prince and the dignitaries in the chamber at large, Traithe sorted limited options. That Luhaine seemed nowhere in evidence was sure indication that the nexus of change forecast in the strands at Althain Tower had fully and finally been crossed. The wrong intervention now might displace the sequence of events that framed Dakar’s Black Rose Prophecy. Traithe raged at his impaired powers; unlike his colleagues, he could not gauge the broad import of this crisis at a glance. The best he could offer was a gesture. ‘My bird will lead the straightest course toward Sethvir.’
The raven might have been a lifeline to salvation, for the relief that touched Arithon’s face. This, the governing officials of Etarra observed. They began to press Traithe’s back like wolves grown bold before weakness. Another moment, and the pack of them would turn as ungovernable as any mob in the streets.
‘Go,’ Traithe called. The raven arose, flapping. Air hissed across splayed feathers as it shot through the gap in the door. Arithon shouldered the panel closed, just as the foremost ranks of the guild masters broke in a rush to tear him down.
Crippled, Traithe was, but not powerless. As aggression crested around him, and elbows jostled him aside, he sensed to the second when the minds of the governor’s council became aligned in mass will to wreak violence. Traithe seized his opening through their passion. He attached an entanglement of energies and their intent to commit murder was bent aside and bridled as his warding snapped into the breach.
Shouts trailed off into quiet, cut by a sigh of rich cloth. The battering rush toward the doorway juddered to a slow fall forward as every man who wished harm to his prince folded at the knees and collapsed. No townsman at the end was left standing. Nestled in their crumpled brocades, lying across flattened hats and fur-trimmed cloaks, every official in Etarra’s high government settled where he lay, fast asleep.
Alone on his feet, one scarred, silver-haired mage regarded the rows of prostrate bodies, his heart aggrieved at too small a victory, won too late. The irony cut him, that but for Dakar’s infernal pred
ictions concerning the Fellowship’s recovery, Arithon might now have returned here for sanctuary until the raven could summon Sethvir.
The downed councilmen snored on, oblivious.
‘May every last one of you be harrowed by nightmares for your ignorance!’ Traithe cursed in surly, sorrowful fervency. Then he straightened his wide- brimmed black hat and applied himself to the task of setting wards of guard over every door, every window, every closet and cranny in the chamber, that the ministers of Morfett’s council should stay mewed up until the course of the tragedy forecast by the strands could guarantee what hope could be salvaged for the ill-starred Black Rose Prophecy.
Lysaer closed his eyes as a third, fierce tingle played across his flesh. A still part of him analysed this, and concluded that Fellowship sorcerers must be seeking him through spellcraft. Heated elation followed. In uncanny certainty, he realized he was no longer quite what he had been; the pattern sought out by the sorcerers’ probe had ceased to match his personality. Once he should have felt alarmed by an insight more appropriate to a mage-taught perspective. Obsessed now by compulsion to serve justice, he never questioned what caused the deviation, or his odd self-knowledge of its existence.
The paradox passed unregarded, that he lurked like a fugitive in an alley, all for a promise to call his half-brother to task. To Lysaer, this moment, the urge to uncover any latent breach of faith became overridingly important.
Every quandary that tormented his conscience and broke his night’s rest with disturbed dreams had narrowed into sudden, lucent focus.
Lysaer gave a laugh in self-derision. He had fought so hard to give Arithon the benefit of the doubt that objectivity itself became obstructive. He shivered and sweated, berating his idealistic foolishness. He had only to question all along. For if Arithon was established as a liar, the ongoing weeks of heartsick recrimination might at one stroke become banished. Avar’s bastard as a proven criminal presented Lysaer with moral duty to defend the merchants and townsmen.