TWOLAS - 02 - The Ships of Merior

  Asandir spoke fast to deflect the inevitable question.

  'No, your own instrument is not safe in storage at Althain.' Braced to mete out a cruel test, he added, 'She was smashed in pieces, at Lysaer's hand, by instigation of Desh-thiere's wraith.'

  In one coiling move, Arithon shot to his feet. 'Lysaer!' The hatred behind his shocked outburst tore through and possessed him in an explosion all the more hideous for being mute. For a racking, volatile moment, exposed to a cruel glow of flamelight, the Shadow Master became the instrument of the Mistwraith's geas: a living, breathing weapon charged and driven to achieve his half-brother's death.

  Still stressed to sickness from overplayed nerves, every snarling tic naked on his face, Arithon advanced three stalking steps. By the fire's edge, he checked sharply. A quiver wrung through him. His very heart seemed to stop. The fists at his hips uncurled into shaking as he expelled his pent breath in a rasping succession of gasps.

  In still, fraught silence, Asandir measured the extreme act of will, as the Shadow Master fought his way back to sanity and coherence.

  Arithon turned his face aside, then, his first shaken words for Halliron. 'Forgive me. I'd hoped you would change your bequest once you learned I held an instrument of similar quality. My word to you was made in that belief.'

  Halliron dredged up his one-sided smile. 'Be at peace. The lyranthe I carry by tradition accompanies Athera's Masterbard. Don't say you didn't feel the change in Jaelot. True music has tuned you to empathy. The power now flows through your hands, and the title is unequivocally yours.'

  Arithon's shift into torment was sharp as a fast breaking stick. 'Ah, Ath, what have you given me if not another weapon for this feud?'

  Aware of his grief, wise enough to stop protest, Halliron pushed half-erect and achieved the timbre and inflection he once commanded to arrest men's minds in mid-sentence. 'Yes. And you will make me no promises, not to use to the fullest what you've earned.' Steadied by Asandir's quiet grasp, unfazed by the threat of s'Ffalenn fury, the bard added, 'You forget. I have lived to see the sun's re-emergence, and your part in the Mistwraith's defeat. If a masterbard's music can one day spare your life, or that of your loyal defenders, you will use it so, and without any binding ties to conscience.'

  Arithon spun away in trapped pain. 'And if I twist that power to inflict more bloodshed and murder?'

  Halliron pursued in fatherly forbearance. 'The gift was never given, but claimed.'

  A widening pause ensued, while Arithon stood and grappled with the concept through tortured, horrified reassessment. As the fire sighed and crumbled in a vermilion fall of embers, the bard gently added, 'So it was with me, and every one of my predecessors back to Paravian times. I was wrong, perhaps, not to tell you in advance. I was not wrong to nurture your talent. That is my legacy to Athera.'

  Eased back to rest by Asandir, the elderly singer closed his eyes. 'Abide this success. I'll have no oath from you. And, your royal word as given, you will accept the lyranthe that is your due.'

  Arithon jerked around. Robbed of all grace, he stumbled past the fire. As if every tendon in his knees let go, he folded beside Halliron's blankets, bent his head and embraced the musician's withered shoulders. 'You have my gratitude, always, for everything. The joy you have given can't be measured.'

  He withdrew his touch quickly, unable to master his grief, while Asandir used swift and subtle spellcraft to banish Halliron's suffering into the settled peace of sleep.

  As the bard's laboured breathing steadied and deepened, the eyes of the Fellowship sorcerer and Athera's new Masterbard met and locked. 'He's dying, isn't he?' Arithon said.

  The large-knuckled hands draped on Asandir's knees looked uncharacteristically helpless. 'Dakar has promised his return to Innish.'

  Arithon pressed, 'Was that his guilt speaking, or true prophecy?' In response to the sorcerer's glance toward the invalid, he did not resist the tactful grip that raised him by the wrist and guided him away from the fire.

  'Dakar's promise will need all my help to carry out. But that quandary must bide for the moment.' Firm that the admission was not to be dwelled on, Asandir bent, unbuckled a supply sack, and tugged out another blanket. 'Yours can't.'

  Before the musty wool could be unfurled across his shoulders, Arithon snatched its folds, stepped back, and assumed the burden of his own infirmity. He sat on the studded chest that held Halliron's court clothing, and the gesture almost looked natural enough to hide that his strength had given out.

  A corner of Asandir's mouth twitched, the reflex of a smile suppressed. 'Every s'Ffalenn prince since Torbrand preferred his dignity over comfort.' He stepped behind the little coffer and laid hands as light as air over Arithon's muffled collarbones.

  'Leave me the indignity and discomfort. Spare me the burdens of my ancestry.' A rapid, sweeping shudder coiled through the flesh under the sorcerer's touch.'

  Asandir shifted, trailed his thumbs up the sides of Arithon's neck, then resettled precisely spread fingertips. Under the damp coils of black hair, the scalp he probed burned as if wasted by fever. Over the snap of the embers and the runnels of rain over rock, he said, 'The vibrations that endow the earth mysteries are very finely attuned. Like the source that fuels grand conjury, too much exposure too fast can strike an imbalance between spirit and flesh. The rite you channelled through music in Jaelot was meant to be loosed under wards. Always in the past, the raw outflow was controlled by a circle of Paravian singers.'

  Relaxed by a tingling influx of healing that settled and then gently eased him, Arithon bent his head and sighed. Sudden sweat sparkled on his temples and painted gilt tracks across the downturned slant of his cheekbones. In a catch of breath too quick to allow hope, he said, 'Dakar warned I'd be sick. It's simple over-extension, then?'

  'Hardly simple.' Asandir flattened his hands over the crown of the Shadow Master's head and pressed down. 'But had you lost the inherent source of your mage talent, I can promise you would be dead, as any other untrained mortal would be, who bridged the path for such powers.'

  To mask the sharp tremor that ripped him, Arithon said, 'But if that's true, I have no access. The acts I committed in Strakewood have left me blank and blind.'

  'The channels that transfer the higher vibrations are still intact,' Asandir admitted, dispassionate. 'The spells of unbinding you meddled in brought their own measure of damage. The magnetic flow of your aura suffered some misalignment. Given time, you have full potential to heal. But first your spirit must win self-forgiveness past the tenets of your own s'Ffalenn conscience.'

  Arithon recoiled as though scalded. 'Ath! Not that. I am cursed. Where are the sureties? You know when Lysaer's armies find me, Desh-thiere's geas will just drive me to repeat the very same atrocities.'

  Asandir's hands reclaimed their grip and clamped down like unmerciful shackles. 'You wanted the truth. If you mend, you must find your own path back to balance.' Then, sorrowfully aware that the shudders under his hands were no longer due to cramping, but to a silent, bitter struggle against despair even weeping could not ease, the sorcerer engaged his power with stunning force, and felled Rathain's prince into sleep.

  Once the blankets were rearranged, and slack limbs laid straight and made comfortable, he looked up to find the Mad Prophet poised against the tinselled fall of rain, arms clenched through bundled loops of harness.

  'Dakar? Did you think I didn't notice you were listening?'

  The brass chime of buckles accompanied a shamefaced step forward, and a terret caught light, round and gold as a wyvem's eye. 'Arithon's blinded his mage-sight?'

  The sorcerer arose from his crouch in a spill of disturbed air. 'Did you think I assigned him your protection for mere whim?'

  'Why am I last to be informed?' Dakar tossed his load in a clashing slither beside the unloaded gear from the pony cart. 'Great Ath, I've served you both as plaything since the wintertime.'

  'I sent Rathain's prince to collect you,' Asandir corrected acidly. 'If he chose
to keep you outside his confidence, that was his privilege. Should you wish his trust, you're going to have to earn it.'

  Affronted past speech, Dakar slung off his dripping cloak. He stamped to the fire to warm his hands, the back of stooped shoulders presented toward his Fellowship master.

  But Asandir was nowhere near finished. 'Whatever anger you may feel, however sorely you take the fact that your faults make you easy to manipulate, nothing under Ath's sky can justify the promise you have groundlessly made to Halliron.'

  Dakar cringed, eyes darting rapidly sidewards in vain search for excuse to escape. 'I only said -'

  Asandir cut him off, ruthless. 'The old Masterbard will not make Innish in his current state of mind.' Trapped, the Mad Prophet continued, 'But I thought -'

  'No power inside the Major Balance can heal against the will of the spirit,' Asandir interrupted again. Chastened to nervous habit, Dakar caught up a branch and stirred the embers. Sparks flared, brightening his sweaty flush. 'But Halliron has reason to live! With all his heart, he longs to rejoin his family.'

  'A man's destiny is not ruled by desires alone, though to judge by your loose habits, you might mistakenly think so.' Sorrowful beneath his clipped tone, Asandir said, 'Mortal fate is more often subject to deeply buried human fears.'

  Obstinate with guilt and confusion, Dakar parked his bulk on the wood-pile. Outside, an owl hooted. Two spell-wrapped figures slept easy under blankets, while the rain fell and sluiced down the gully toward the hollow where the stream ran. Rasped to stripped nerves by the prick of the sorcerer's regard, Dakar jerked a birch log out from under his knee and hurled it into the fire. As draught-caught bits of ash winnowed and flared, harried upward by spiralling eddies, he said, 'Bother and fiends! Do me the kindness just once of telling me plainly where my fault lies.'

  'The music that called Halliron to leave his family is now secure in the hands of a successor.' Inscrutable behind a billowed haze of birch smoke, Asandir sat down on an outcrop near the abandoned array of navigational instruments and rolled sea charts. 'His need to reconcile with his daughter and wife is undermined by dread. Halliron worries they will blame and reject him. On that point, I could give no reassurance. The wife is deeply bitter after so unkind an absence. The daughter was a child when her father left, too young to shape a firm opinion of his character.'

  Reduced to cowering misery, Dakar said, 'Can anything be done?'

  Asandir regarded him, merciless through a span of rippled air. 'Are you asking my help to mend your thoughtless pride? Or do you truly care for Halliron's sake?'

  'Dharkaron's black Chariot!' Dakar exclaimed, shocked at last. 'What pride do I have? Had I never stepped whistling into Jaelot, the Masterbard would be hale, and by now reunited with his family!' He gulped a fast breath, jammed his knuckles in his beard, and finished in shattering defiance. 'I don't like Arithon. Punish me for that. But for what Halliron has sacrificed for me, and for my failures in his behalf, I beg you to lend him every consolation within reach of Fellowship powers.'

  'You ask a very great deal.' Dim in silhouette against the seamed grain of shale, the sorcerer weighed and prefaced his decision. 'There's only one possible option. I can defer my review of the Mistwraith's prison and drive Halliron back to Jaelot in the pony cart. From the reactivated power focus there, I can spell-transfer us both to the waste of Sanpashir, forty leagues south-east of Innish.' The last facts were listed, in dispassion as pitiless as Ath's avenging angel. 'Halliron might not survive the transfer. He could die while crossing the desert. Or he might live to have an hour in the company of his wife and his daughter.'

  The Mad Prophet made his choked plea. 'If there's hope of that much, then do it.'

  'Blind haste got you into this quandary,' Asandir cautioned. 'I cannot engage grand conjury in the middle of the mayor's palace without upsetting Jaelot's citizens. The blame for the disturbance will certainly fall to Arithon. You are his assigned protector. When the call for your service comes due, are you prepared to share the price that he must inevitably come to shoulder?'

  'If I must!' Twisty as a cornered rat, Dakar glared at his tormentor. 'But you ask the wrong man. What in five kingdoms would Arithon not give for the Masterbard's fulfilment?'

  Asandir's sudden laugh rang unpleasant as pumice scraped on steel. 'That's the first time you've judged this prince fairly.' He knelt and started bundling the scrolls and instruments sent at Arithon's request from Althain Tower. 'Very well, Dakar. At dawn, I shall leave to convey Halliron to Shand. You will stand by the Master of Shadow, and woe betide you if you fail him.'

  Preoccupied with easing off the sticks and nubs of kindling that had unkindly jabbed dents in his backside, Dakar took belated notice of the items in the sorcerer's hands. He shot to his feet amid a clattering fall of billets. 'I don't believe it!' he cried, rebounded with unmollified speed from whipped recrimination to curiosity. 'Those are Leinthal Anithael's charts.'

  'His cross staff and compass, also.' As if the instruments that had belonged to the legendary Paravian navigator were of no particular significance, Asandir tied off the fabric of each packet. 'What did you think? That Sethvir keeps his storage shelves stocked like a commonplace chandler?'

  'Never.' Dakar kicked clear of the miring faggots. 'You aren't giving those to the Shadow Master.'

  When the only reply he received was the whickering snap of the birch fire, he wisely abandoned the subject. Much later, brooding and awake in damp blankets, he saw the answer was self-evident after all.

  Begotten by a seafaring pirate prince on the splinter world of Dascen Elur, Arithon would naturally incline toward blue water. Since Athera's arts of offshore navigation had been lost with the Mistwraith's invasion, on shipboard he could steal the advantage. The armies his enemy amassed on dry land could scarcely cross trackless water to harry him.

  * * *

  After midnight, a freshening wind splattered droplets across Dakar's face. He awakened and barely in time, bit back a reflexive string of expletives. Flat on his back, eyes rolled upward in prayer, he listened.

  Nothing stirred beyond crickets, scraping musically in the rock clefts. The embers of last night's fire picked out the arched bridge of Halliron's nose, the jut of one snowy eyebrow a chalked curve against pillowing wool. His left hand trailed free of the blankets, skilled fingers that would never again grace a fretboard fanned out in looseknuckled sleep.

  Dakar clenched his jaw. Determined not to dwell on a sorrow beyond his means to remedy, he peered through the gloom. The cloak-wrapped forms which reclined beyond the bard seemed equally quiet and oblivious. To the rear of the cleft, the seep of a spring plinked an erratic melody. Through the reedy draw of the coals and the rhythm of steady breathing, the Mad Prophet judged Arithon and the sorcerer were asleep.

  He wormed forward on his elbows and tensed, stockstill. When his movement aroused no disturbance, a crafty smile split his beard. He slipped out of his bedroll, fumbled in the dark for a cloak damply redolent of horse, and groped after his boots.

  Adept enough at sneaking from his countless nightly escapades with paramours, he stole to his feet. Wishing for carpets in place of mouldered leaves, and for predictable furnishings instead of heaped crates haphazardly unloaded from the pony cart, he eased his way ahead in furtive care.

  Harness leather looped his leading ankle and roused a staccato chink of brass. Dakar paused, eyes widened as he mouthed a soundless epithet.

  Nothing happened.

  Only silence abraded his nerves. Convinced good fortune was still with him, he bypassed the obstruction and crept to the mouth of the cave. Mist grey-lit by moonglow coiled past his silhouette, framed in a backward glance of apprehension with his footgear tucked under his elbow.

  He reached the ravine undetected, jig-stepped a stride in relief, and scarcely minded as mud and bits of gravel sieved through the weave of his socks. To a slither of loose shale, he blundered through a sink hole, found a convenient rock, and sat down to don his boots.
r />   He fussed a long time with the laces. Breeze lightly spiced with green balsam brushed his hair; above the ridge, an owl hooted. Lifted to giddy high spirits, Dakar thrust upright and pursed his lips to whistle.

  A shadow barred his path: one cloaked in midnight blue and silver, that even the wind treated gently. Dakar's ditty wailed wildly off key and died in a sucking gasp of breath.

  'Avoiding nightmares?' Asandir asked in silken politeness.

  'Actually, no.' A bit too shrill, the Mad Prophet shrugged. 'I drank too much water before I slept. Could you step aside? I need to -'

  Still conversational, the sorcerer said, 'You took the money bag with you for that?'

  Through an eloquent, frustrated stillness, Dakar shut his teeth with a click. 'Merciful Ath, I hate boats! You know how I suffer from seasickness.'

  Asandir sighed over the skein of the wind through damp foliage. 'This time, you broke more than just my bidding. Your word as given, my errant prophet. You will render the service you promised.'

  Overhead, the clouds parted. Shafts of white moonlight lit the mist beneath the pine boughs and blackened the shadows into velvet. The sorcerer's spread hand seemed pale and poised as the censure of an apparition. The soundless, lightless burst of conjury that followed harrowed Dakar clean through to the pith of his bones.

  He blinked and stumbled back, struck to wordless outcry. But spellcraft speared through him and passed with out pain. In suspicion, he assessed, but nothing seemed changed in him at all.

  'What have you done to me?' Plaintive and shaken, he clenched his arms to contain the dread that yawned a sudden hollow in his chest.

  The sorcerer's reply came frigidly precise. 'Nothing, unless you break your oath of loyalty.'

  Excuses died. Dissolved to bleak honesty, Dakar stopped his hand-wringing affectations. 'You have no mercy and no heart. Why in the breadth of creation could you not see fit to assign me to Prince Lysaer's retinue? He at least was my friend!' At the sorcerer's fixed silence, the Mad Prophet ranted on. 'Arithon's a cheat and a trickster. He sent young children out to kill with Deshir's clansmen. You know this! How can you sanction the works and the cause of such a man?'