‘Fatemaster’s mercy,’ Elaira murmured, her sausage cooling in fingers that felt sapped of nerves. ‘There’s to be war, then?’
For reply, Morriel shifted vantage to display Etarra’s host in its entirety.
Ten thousand strong, spearheaded by caparisoned rows of mounted lancers and trailed by the light cavalry under the standard of the headhunter’s league, the army advanced down switched-back roads like a serpent roused hungry from its lair. Crowds packed the city ramparts to cheer, foremost among them a tawny-haired woman in a glitter of gold-netted silk. Heralds raised trumpets emblazoned with tassels and silent fanfare sounded for the smiling, bejewelled figure of Lysaer s’Ilessid, mounted on his chestnut horse, and flanked by Lord Diegan and Etarra’s field general, the grim-faced, leonine Gnudsog.
Shocked beyond thought for protocol, Elaira accosted her supreme superior. ‘Lysaer has raised Etarra? Daelion forfend, whatever for?’
A gust hissed through the gapped warehouse, sour with the reek of dried seaweed. Lirenda braced in expectation of immediate displeasure from the Prime, but Morriel simply sighed and tugged with thin hands to rearrange the burden of her shawls. The image in the dye-vat dispersed. Drily, the crone said, ‘I believe this next image should tell you.’
She effected a second pass.
The water’s glassine surface now showed the mild haze of a mid-spring afternoon. Shadows pocked the stubble of a stripped hillside. Brown and unobtrusive against mats of hacked bark and wilted greenery, a band of barbarian scouts left the timber they had cut and packed in six foot lengths onto sledges. They gathered presently in a clearing, where the only man among them not dirtied from labour waited on his knees before the blade of his own drawn sword. A start in her nerves from recognition, Elaira beheld Arithon s’Ffalenn. Beside him, stiff-backed and vexed, stood the rangy frame of the most powerful barbarian in the north: Steiven s’Valerient, Caithdein of Ithamon and high chieftain of the clans of Deshir.
‘But this makes no sense.’ Elaira abandoned her half-eaten meal in its folds of steam-soggy paper. Just one breath away from a thunderous headache, she raised hands to rub at her temples. ‘The clans in Strakewood are no match for the might of Etarra.’
‘They believe otherwise.’ Morriel removed her jewel. The spell that fuelled her clairvoyance snapped, and woodlands vanished, leaving waters that flashed and puckered over a blood-dark silt of old dyes. ‘Three valleys along Tal Quorin’s banks have been riddled with deadfalls to that end. War is in the offing. The princes so fondly received by the Fellowship are themselves at the root and cause.’
‘No.’ Elaira raised her chin in sick protest. ‘The Seven wouldn’t—’ She stopped, fought down dread for a slip that could betray her past trust with Asandir. ‘The sorcerers must surely intervene if their princes are caught at the heart of this.’
‘Ah,’ said Morriel, her flash of discovery well hidden, though across the warehouse, Lirenda looked vindicated. ‘But the sorcerers have all fled Etarra. Like rats off a foundering ship, they abandoned their post of responsibility on the instant Desh-thiere’s curse claimed the half-brothers.’
Morriel paused. Acute, colourless eyes flicked aside to encompass Elaira’s strained face. ‘Your friend Asandir made a mis-step.’
The implication of collaborative association with a Fellowship sorcerer went unnoticed before the disclaimer that stormed Elaira’s thoughts: that the power she had encountered in the loft of Enithen Tuer’s was no likely candidate for mistakes. If the Fellowship of Seven had withdrawn, they must surely have done so deliberately.
Morriel’s eyes held her gaze like a snake’s. Exposed to the Prime’s sharp dispassion, that would see past nuance and draw out frightful truths, Elaira fought down raw nerves and dread. Too late, with both hands locked in fear to the cold stone edge of the dye vat, she waited to be denounced for far worse offence than a silly romantic entanglement.
‘Oh, yes, the truth behind your illicit visit to the Four Ravens Tavern last autumn is known to us.’ The Prime tucked her focus stone in her lap with a clicking of hooked yellow fingernails. ‘However, we deem your visit to Asandir too petty for pursuit in light of the present crisis. Since the actions of s’Ffalenn and s’Ilessid have brought Rathain’s factions to arms, a character scan must be made of both princes. Our sisterhood must know how five centuries of exile have altered the Fellowship’s royal lines.’
The blow so long suspected fell at last as Morriel gathered her skirts and stood erect. ‘You have been summoned here, Elaira, as the only initiate we have who has been in close enough contact with the royal heirs to undertake the attempt.’
Stunned as if her guts had come unhinged, Elaira thrust off from the dye-vat. The Koriani order owned her, flesh and mind, but this demand threatened to annihilate her. Perfect, unbiased recall, down to the smallest detail of the princes’ features, dress, and bearing, was required of her; or Morriel’s scrying would be useless, her delicate chains of deductions riddled with deadends and errors. Though every Koriani initiate had been exactingly trained for clear recall, reproducing images for character scan was a task given only to the most time-proven, gifted Seniors. The perils involved were no secret. The ritual unleashed emotion, could and had linked participants to depths of insight that a bond of sympathy with the subject under study became near impossible to deny. As if poised on the rim of a pit that beckoned her spirit to damnation, Elaira fought black despair. If this was the Prime Circle’s test to determine whether she had excised her attraction for Arithon s’Ffalenn, it was too much, far too cruelly soon.
Wind wailed through the boarded windows; over the white noise of breakers, a gull flew calling through the dark. Elaira shuddered, unnerved by Morriel’s regard still pinned on her.
To protest a direct order from the Prime was to beg instantaneous destruction. Hollow with dread, and hounded by Lirenda’s antagonistic wish to see her crumble, Elaira bowed to Morriel Prime. ‘Your will.’
The matriarch of the sisterhood said no more as she raised her crystal spinning on its chains and rehooked the clasp at her neck. She snapped bird-boned fingers for Quen, who hastened forward and offered Elaira a small stone pipe and a sealed tin that held tobacco steeped in water mildly infused with a tienelle extract. Less potent than the uncut, dried leaves, the mixture used by junior initiates was still toxic enough to cause multiple unpleasant side-effects.
Elaira exchanged the items for her mangled chunk of sausage, and this time found no thanks for the half-wit.
Morriel said, not unkindly, ‘Make yourself ready as you can. Do not rush. When you have achieved a trance heightened by the drug, we shall begin.’
Minutes later, as the lighted fumes from the pipe curled through the mildew-dank warehouse, Quen slept curled like a dog by the doorway. Equally oblivious, though deadly pale, Elaira sat crosslegged, her eyes closed and her back propped straight against the dye-vat. Her strength of self-discipline could not be faulted as she laid the pipe aside and drew the slow, measured breaths that indicated full surrender to the broadening, glass-sharp awareness induced by the poisons in the herb smoke.
Across a gloom deepened by the embered stubs of the torches, Lirenda stirred. ‘You were easy on her.’
Morriel sighed. Fragile under crushing layers of shawls, she crossed the floor and sank into the quilts her servant had prepared for her. ‘You think so?’ The voice so precisely edged but a moment before now sounded querulous and tired.
Belatedly, Lirenda stirred to attend her Prime’s comfort.
Yet as she reached to assist with the blankets, Morriel fended her away. ‘You pay no mind to your heart, First Senior. That is a most wasteful fault.’
Taken aback, Lirenda was forced to reconsider. ‘Then Elaira is to think she’s forgiven for falling prey to distractions of the flesh, not to mention the further possibility she has abetted the despoiler, Asandir?’
Morriel clasped skeletal fingers. Her eyes as she looked up were empty, like fog or featureless rain. ‘El
aira played a girl’s prank that placed her most woefully in a bad place at the wrong time. She is intelligent, and gifted with an insight that runs rare and true. Which strengths caused her to see the s’Ffalenn heir through to his depths and let him touch her. I venture to suggest that her reasons for attraction are real, and dauntingly powerful to any mind born female. That is why you alone were called to witness the scrying that shall take place tonight. I would shield our other Seniors from exposure to fearful temptation. There is warning for you in this. Heed the risk.’
‘You do feel sorry for Elaira,’ Lirenda observed, thrilled by discovery that Morriel had any softness left for sentiment.
The Prime denied nothing. ‘I pity the fact I have ruined her.’
Lirenda would not believe this. Planks creaked as she crossed a fallen trestle to brighten a fresh set of torches. ‘Nobody asked Elaira to create that scene in the taproom, or to seek Asandir out beforehand. The silly girl ruined herself.’
‘No. She would have recovered from the mistake. Had done so quite admirably, in fact, until I sent her afterwards to Etarra.’ Hard to her core now, and misliking the strengthened light which inked shadows in every seam of her face, Morriel drew a short breath. ‘You will learn from this, First Senior, if you covet position as my successor. Elaira is a valuable tool, a window into Arithon’s character we’re going to need sorely if we wish to track the conflict the Fellowship has set loose upon the continent. We must tenderly encourage that girl to keep discipline. She is dedicated. With judicious handling, her botched insight will prove useful for a very long time before she breaks. For as you guessed, if our order’s training had held, she should have rejected the curiosity that prompted her foray into Erdane. Elaira is a flawed instrument. But she will serve as no other can, until the day comes when she is driven to forsake her vows. Let her own shortfalls, and not your vindictive perfectionism, be the quality that throws her to destruction.’
The Prime closed her eyes to snatch an interval to meditate, indication enough that she had spent her reserves on talk. Lirenda as ever was wily enough to respect the line that was drawn; too wily, the aged Prime sometimes thought. Like many another former matriarch, she wished the last trial of initiation for the Koriani seat of Prime Power was not fatal to most every aspirant.
Lirenda was the forty-third hopeful selected to attempt the succession. Morriel battled to separate her consciousness from the ache of her brittle bones. She feared afresh to become the first to break the chain of command: to become the Prime that death would overtake before an heir survived to finish training.
Old she was, and bitterly tired. Morriel snatched what solace she could from the disciplines of her office. What Lirenda did through the minutes that passed held no concern. Years since, the Prime had ceased to invest interest in the particulars of any one candidate. The woman who succeeded – that one only she could love. Since the death of the first, the rest had been nothing but ciphers.
Informed at length by the scent of charred herbs that the pipe had been fully smoked, Morriel stirred. On the moment the narcotic peaked Elaira’s powers of recall, she shed piled blankets and arose. Lirenda had already stationed herself over the dye vat, her rapt expression clear enough indication that an image already lay in view. Careful of joints over-worn from centuries of unnatural lifespan, the Prime Enchantress crossed the warehouse to share what the waters would show.
‘A throwback,’ Lirenda murmured, as the matriarch drew abreast. ‘He could almost be Torbrand’s double.’
Humbled by Elaira’s courage, which had dared display Arithon first, Morriel said nothing. Then she looked, and her heart would not allow speech past the stunningly expressive detail in the image in the vat.
The chosen moment was one that Elaira had stolen; when the man had foolishly supposed no observer with higher interests would be present. He crouched in a filthy alley, attended by those who least cared for power, and sorceries, and bloody contentions between factions. Surrounded by a tattered pack of children, Arithon bent in the act of setting a brigantine fashioned of shadows to capture the breeze in full sails.
Elaira had caught him glancing up to see his illusion under way. His face held untrammelled peace. A laugh of delight and satisfaction lightened the corners of his mouth. His eyes were unshadowed and the sharp-angled features of s’Ffalenn inheritance had fleetingly softened to expose, in vivid clarity, the depths of generosity and caring that buttressed his musician’s sensitivity.
The effect was spirit stripped naked. The accuracy of Elaira’s recreation gave the lie to every sharp edge, every cutting word, every difficult and cross-grained reaction that Arithon had ever employed to defend this, his vulnerable inner heart.
‘Daelion Fatemaster,’ Morriel gasped. ‘The girl’s unmasked him for us, wholly. I never believed it could be done.’
Totally absorbed by the image, Lirenda never noticed that her nails had broken under the force of her tightened grip on the scaled stone. ‘He can be brought down, though. The killing will unman him, finally, for s’Ffalenn conscience must force him over time to back down.’
Morriel gave the image long study, her head cocked in unexpectedly grandmotherly fascination. ‘Look again,’ she urged. ‘War will not be what stops this prince.’ When Lirenda made no response, she added, ‘My point is subtle. But plain to be read, if you study his hands before his eyes.’
Obedient, Lirenda regarded Arithon’s fingers, which were slim and quick, and in this frozen moment of Elaira’s recall, graceful in completion of a difficult spell. The green eyes were deep, not dangerous. ‘I fail to find further conclusion,’ the First Senior said with reluctance.
Morriel’s cackling laugh echoed through the ramshackle warehouse. ‘But he is not clever! Not when he’s truly honest. That means the deceit Arithon so readily displays when provoked is not rooted in venal ingenuity. No. Sadly not. What drives this prince’s wit is not craftiness, but the gift of true farsight imbued in the s’Ahelas royal line.’
Lirenda considered this, while outside, something that crashed in an alley disturbed a cat from a cranny with a yowl. Roused back to herself by distraction, Morriel reached out and tapped Elaira’s hand. ‘Show us the half-brother, now.’
The image of Arithon slipped away, replaced momentarily by another. Now the s’Ilessid prince stood in the fog of a pre-dawn garden, half-lit by a shaft of lamplight that escaped through the gate from the street. He leaned against the pedestal of a statue, his lashes and cloak beaded with damp that sparked as he breathed like fine diamonds. The water was the only jewel on him: for once, his clothing held no artifice. Even his hair lay unbrushed. Although in public Lysaer maintained the flawless manners of diplomacy, here, alone, his lordly fine looks lay hagridden by doubt as he wrestled some inward dilemma his conscience could not resolve. The pain on his face, in the bearing of his shoulders and the lamp-gilded knuckles of clenched hands, was unanswerably intense. Elaira’s observance had peeled back all poise to expose him in a moment of soul-rending self-distaste.
‘Oh, Elaira, well done!’ murmured Morriel.
At her side, honed to heightened sensitivity by the fumes that trailed from the pipe bowl, Lirenda felt her being struck and jangled by that chord of conflicted emotions. She not only saw, but felt how s’Ilessid justice warred with the s’Ahelas farsight inherited from the distaff side of Lysaer’s pedigree.
His mouth in this captured instant held none of the tenderness that adoring women back in Amroth had experienced while plying him for kisses. Unyielding as tempered wire lay calculation threaded through by royal upbringing, and the machinations of Desh-thiere’s latent wraith. The result charged the nerves to disquiet; as if for one heartbeat pity were absent, and mercy an omitted concept.
‘We have seen what we must,’ the Prime announced abruptly. To Elaira she added, ‘You’re permitted to relax from your trance.’
As the image dissolved, Lirenda looked up, sparked by unsated excitement. ‘Misfortunate luck. Both princes have
inherited the gifts of two royal houses.’
Discomfited at last by trepidation, Morriel tucked her arms beneath her shawls. ‘Unlucky and perilous. Arithon’s is an incompatible legacy. His mind is fatally flawed. The Fellowship should never have sanctioned his right of succession, for suffering shall dog his path as surely as seasons must turn.’
Elaira shuddered in transition back to consciousness, opened her eyes, and whitely fought the first twinge of tienelle withdrawal. ‘My Prime, you mistake him,’ she said shakily.
Amazed she should dare contradiction, Lirenda shot swift glance at the Prime.
But Morriel showed no offence for the impertinence.
Given this tacit liberty, Elaira insisted, ‘Lysaer’s the one who bears watching. Ath’s mercy, I’ve met him. He’s a living inspiration, the flesh and blood example of human kindness. The masses must flock to his standard, for his cause shall be presented in passionate and upright idealism. Then indeed there will be upheaval and suffering, since bias toward noble principles offers a weapon already fashioned for a ruler of his trained talents. All Prince Lysaer need do is pose in that mould, and set by Desh-thiere’s curse to turn his gifts toward bloodshed, he has no other course.’
‘That’s a predictable cycle,’ Lirenda interjected, annoyed beyond restraint by the Prime’s unfathomable licence. ‘We know where Lysaer will turn, and what will be the result. What can be anticipated can also be controlled or prevented. Arithon owns no such stability.’
Frustrated by narcotically enhanced perceptions, Elaira cried protest. ‘But Arithon is a man devoted to harmony, a musician with a seer’s perception. He’s conscious of his actions as Lysaer can never be!’
‘Which is precisely what makes him dangerous, Elaira,’ Morriel corrected sadly. ‘For Lysaer’s sense of justice and farsight will answer to logic, and therefore be reconciled by compromise. But since when can compassion ever be made to condone pain? S’Ahelas blood gives Arithon full grasp of cause and effect; mage-training compounds this with awareness of the forward reactions of power. These traits aligned against the s’Ffalenn gift of sympathetic empathy cancels the mind’s self-defences. The shelter of petty hatred becomes untenable. Arithon is a visionary placed at a nexus of responsibility. Desh-thiere’s curse will embroil him in violence he can neither escape nor master. Stress will prove his undoing, for the sensitivities of poets have ever been frail, and the broadened span of his thinking shall but inflame and haunt him to madness.’