Against the cry of the wind, he produced the spelled acorns, explained how each was a proxy. One by one, he outlined their destined use. He named each appropriate bearer. Called by name, the Companions stepped forward. The moment as each man accepted his fate cut deepest, for unkindly brevity. The shared glance, the fleeting brush of warm flesh as the talisman was transferred to a competent hand. Jieret raged, the scream in him silenced, that for many this might be the last parting on the earthly side of Fate's Wheel. His sore regret was not eased, despite all that his liege had done to spare his caithdein's raw conscience.
The burden of conferring the hardest choices had been made by Arithon's command, under Rathain's vested crown authority.
For the grace of that studied gesture of reprieve, the heart must not shrink from its office. Jieret forced down the unbearable pain. He stifled his awareness of pending tragedy, the most wounding detail sealed under time's urgent pressure: that the formidable, compassionate perception which had plumbed the worthy character of each Companion in scarcely an hour of contact would not in turn be understood by these men, who must bear the realm's fate by their actions. They accepted the risk to life and limb for a prince they assumed was a stranger. Jieret bore up, cut to solitary grief by the solid affirmation that their Teir's'Ffalenn knew them. His was a mage-trained awareness, schooled to acknowledge individuality. He had raised that gift to a masterbard's empathy, that heard and embraced the unique splendor of song, braided through each man's identity. No time to explain how his Grace would mourn each one lost, all the days that his life should outlast them.
The eighth and last acorn was dispatched to Eafinn's son, just arrived with the saddled horses. 'The honor is not truly mine, but my father's,' he said as he tucked the spelled construct safely away in his scrip. Flushed faintly pink, he clasped wrists with his chieftain. 'Give his Grace my regards, if I cannot.'
The leading reins of the horses passed into Jieret's broad grasp, and the young man departed, straight as the ash spear he had inherited from the kinfolk who had died, so long past, at Tal Quorin. From the vantage by the river, his neat clan braid stood out, burnished flax against the drab buckskins of the scouts he selected to ride in his squad.
Only Braggen remained, the result of fierce dispute that his liege had resolved by enforcing his sovereign right. Of eight Companions, just the one had not received a spelled acorn. Touched through his new mage-sight by the bearing pressure of the huge man's simmering temper, Jieret secured the horses to a nearby deadfall. In the face of Braggen's blistering, stiff silence, he scuffed wet snow over the map and scrubbed the scraped lines off the rock. Tired to the bone, and anxious for what lay ahead, he held off his final set of instructions as the mounted scout plunged up the near bank of the Aiyenne and hauled his lathered gray to a headshaking stop.
'Lysaer's force approaches! They're using the available cover like ticks. Can't tell you numbers yet, but their advance is no more than six leagues off.'
'Let them come unhindered,' Jieret instructed. 'You'll answer to Theirid, he'll be on the east flank. Eat now, if you have to. The war band will be riding within the hour, split into eight squads, to bait the enemy into a mazing pursuit.'
The scout scraped at the caked mud on his face, smeared in streaks for the purpose of camouflage. He checked his sword, dubious. 'You've found a way to make the Alliance split forces?'
'Yes.' As the scout reined around and departed, Jieret shook himself out of a moment of odd, inattentive hesitation, as though his sight played untrustworthy tricks where the sunlight patterned the ridges of sandstone underfoot. He added, a near whisper under his breath, 'Just pray the plan works.'
He shook off rising dread. Through the silvery glare cast off rotten, patched ice, under slanting sunlight leached of all warmth by the rampaging, unnatural winter, he was left alone to tame Braggen's volatile mood of contention and dauntless courage.
'Was there no place for me?' the huge man asked, forlorn. Confusion sat ill on his strapping, broad frame. Accustomed to act with decisive competence, he confronted his chieftain unflinching. The shame tied him in knots, that this day found him wanting. That the other Companions must carry the hazards of crisis without him demeaned his manhood too much to bear.
And time, once again, denied Jieret the chance to measure his course with due care or finesse. 'On the contrary. Arithon asked for your service by name. We are left, you and I, to shoulder the most dangerous share of our prince's intricate strategy.'
Braggen's axe-cut features cracked to stark surprise. 'We two?' Gruff embarrassment burned a flush through creased skin. After his attacking provocation last night, he had presumed his liege would show him no more than the favor of civil tolerance. Now granted an unlooked-for forgiveness, even grounds for an unbroken trust, the Companion scrubbed his face with gloved hands. Fast as he moved, his response failed to mask the startled, bright shine of his tears.
Jieret averted his glance, stunned to awe. As always, the bard's fierce insight surpassed him. He, who had handled Braggen's irritating bluster all his life, had expected outspoken resistance.
Yet Arithon's compassion saw the overlooked truth: of all men, this one now had something desperate to prove. He would stand by his charged orders, ferocious in grit, determined not to meet the Wheel's turning stripped of the honor that sourced his self-worth.
Braced by the vehemence in Braggen's character, the last assignment became almost painless to complete. As Rathain's caithdein, shadow behind a throne to be held secure for the future, Jieret set the cold weight of Alithiel into the last Companion's stunned hands. 'By the power vested in me under charter law, as given by the Fellowship of Seven, I'll have your oath on this blade you won't falter.'
In the absence of the crowned heir, his sworn purpose was to guard the well-being of the kingdom. Jieret assumed the burden of that stewardship, spear straight, while Braggen knelt on the stony ground and set his crossed hands, then his forehead, to the black metal of Alithiel's cross guard.
'My oath, on this sword, may Dharkaron strike swiftly should I fail or fall short.' Braggen's rough, dark head remained bent in submission as the hand of his chieftain forbade him to rise.
For a chill, prolonged moment, the only voice in the world was the wind, sheeting over the brush of the barrens. Under glacial sky, the snaked bed of the Aiyenne wore its jumbled rickle of grayed ice. The two clansmen poised on the scoured rock ledge seemed diminished, resolute mortal will reduced to a mote wrapped in transient flesh against an enduring and desolate landscape.
The crown prince whose sovereign word might reverse that one moment's critical act and consequence had already passed beyond argument.
Jieret flung back the bronze length of his clan braid. Chin tipped to sky, he drew a chilling, deep breath, and sealed his final decision. 'His Grace asked you to carry the most difficult proxy of all.' The ninth and the last, bearing the number symbolic of death, rebirth, and redemption. The Earl of the North threw off his shiver of wretched foreboding. 'Yet for the good of the realm, I see fit to change his Grace's instructions. His chance of survival, and ours, will be greater if I carry forward the burden he assigned to you. Can you accept this? Will you stand in my place?'
'Your honor, my earl, has always been mine.' Braggen looked up, brown eyes stark with appeal. 'Was there ever a question?'
Jieret found courage from somewhere to smile. 'Never. Rise Braggen. In my stead, you must be the liegeman who stands guard at Prince Arithon's side.'
'He'll argue,' Braggen snapped, once again set off-balance by bristling incredulity.
'He would,' Jieret agreed. He clapped the other man's muscular shoulder, in no doubt at last that his impulse was merited. He gestured for Braggen to follow, then reentered the cleft, his voice dampened by the encroaching stone as he ducked through the narrow passage. 'His Grace is in no position, as you'll see. Nor will your service escape complications. The risks you must handle won't necessarily be the sort you can solve with brute force and
edged weapons.'
Inside the cavern, the candlewick burned down to a drowned and flickering stub. Under the uncertain, flittering light, half-mantled in crawling shadow, Braggen made out the form of the s'Ffalenn prince, tucked prostrate in the muffling fur of the high earl's favorite bearskin. The sharp s'Ffalenn profile was stilled as carved wax. The hair his caithdein had trimmed with such care spilled in onyx disorder over one angled cheekbone and the river-washed boulder that cradled his head.
Braggen paused, horrified. 'Ath, he's out cold.'
'More.' revealed Jieret from the uncertain dark. 'He worried the drive of the Mistwraith's curse might overcome his last strength. Rather than lose his will to insanity, he decided to spiritwalk. A dangerous precaution, but one he hoped would also displace his half brother's awareness of his presence.' Sensitive to the Companion's mulish uneasiness, since he harbored the same doubts himself, Jieret hastened to qualify. 'His Grace was mage-trained, remember! The risks are well-known to him. In addition, we agreed on the expedient safeguard of binding his unmoored self to Alithiel.'
Braggen regarded the sheathed steel still in hand, his hard leatures set with dumbfounded distaste, or else fear that chilled metal might burn him.
That step isn't done yet.' Jieret reassured. He resisted his sharp urge to consign the cursed twists of s'Ffalenn ingenuity to the nethermost bowels of Sithaer. As much the unwilling victim of circumstance, he withstood Braggen's riled unease and wiped sweating palms on his leathers. 'I'm sorry if you feel cast out of your depth. The truth is, the man appointed to Arithon's side must assist with the final stage of the ritual.'
Booted feet planted, Braggen clutched the black sword with the delicacy of a man who handled a venomed serpent. 'I well understood why Caolle spat curses over the subject of magecraft.'
Jieret hesitated, swallowed, forced himself steady despite a trepidation far worse, that he, with his sighted talent just wakened, must enact the distasteful conjury. 'Someone should be left to seek Fellowship help in case the spells fail.' The whelming fear was too monstrous to silence, that his inexperience presented a thousand stray loopholes. 'Dharkaron avert, I begged his Grace not to go through with this madness! The whole harebrained tactic could go wrong.'
'It won't. It can't.' Braggen folded his arms. The dulled studs on his bracers a rasped note of disharmony against the uncanny Paravian sword. Unashamed for the clay in his nature, he was first to brace up failing nerves. 'We'll just have to set trust in our liege's wisdom and follow through as he asks.'
Jieret stifled his rampaging thoughts of disaster. In punishing truth, every passing second diminished a margin that Arithon could ill afford to lose. More stressed than the hour he pledged marriage to Feithan, Deshir's chieftain made himself survey the arcane framework already laid down under Arithon's meticulous guidance. The unsealed gift of mage-sight unveiled the glimmering figures like chalked light, surrounding the prince's stilled form, then the harder, bright line of the circle of protection that shielded his naked spirit from the outreach of hostile intent. The trace smoke from the cedar burned to hallow the space still dusted the air with an ephemeral shimmer of indigo. Confined by the blazing barriers of intent that imbued the charged line of the circle, Arithon's spirit paced, naked of flesh, a translucent vessel in refined human form, hazed in the delicate, striated gold of the unshielded aura.
'You won't fail me, Jieret,' he insisted, a voice without sound heard in the mind of the caithdein whose oathbound service had enacted the defenses that both protected and bound him.
'You can't know that,' Jieret whispered, well aware the change of roles he intended would shortly make Arithon furious. Yet duty to kin and kingdom came first. 'My liege, forgive.'
His gut remained tied into battlefield knots as he began the irrevocable last steps of the safeguard that would either spart Arithon's sanity, or else strip him defenseless for the enemy sword that would seize opportunity and kill him.
'Stand there,' Jieret instructed, amazed that his voice should sound steady. With his heart locked against his prince's cry of dismay, he grasped Braggen's elbow and guided the Companion's step past the spelled lines that ungifted eyesight could not discern. 'Unsheathe Alithiel and hold the blade upright. Whatever happens from here forward, you can't let the steel touch the earth.'
Faint as the distant chiming of bells, Arithon's shade pealed wild protest. 'Jieret! My brother, we're blood bound by oath. By the mercy of Ath, don't break that trust. I hold your life sacred! Don't spurn the integrity that lies between us, not like this!'
Jieret's jaw flexed, spiking the chestnut ends of his beard. He said nothing in answer, while his steadfast Companion assumed his position three paces from the boundary that contained Arithon's scarce-breathing flesh.
'No, Jieret.' Imprisoned by the flux of preset limitation, Arithon's spirit swirled like whipped fire, spiked to savage, trapped sparks of irritation. 'I've wept for Caolle too long and too hard!'
'As you knew Caolle, you'll agree he would approve.' Deshir's adamant chieftain took up the cut-birch stick. To Braggen, who stared in perplexity, he explained, 'I'm addressing my liege, who's making his sovereign displeasure plain as scat in rough language. You don't sense him?'
Braggen shook his seal-dark head. 'I don't. The birth gift never ran strong in my family. Our women always claimed our lineage survived the Paravian presence through bear-stubborn will, and an ironclad core of stupidity.'
'Well, right now, that's your blessing,' Jieret said in chagrin. 'His Grace isn't sanguine. Had he the means to recover his talent, he'd blister my hide for presumption.'
'Then be sure I'll get flayed for your insolence later.' Braggen shot back in sour irony.
'That's Torbrand's lineage.' Jieret agreed. 'Vindictive when crossed as an iceberg-bred kraken dumped spitting into a lava pit.' His smile too grim, and his hand faintly shaking, he went on to inscribe the requisite patterns of protection.
The first circle sealed the confines of the cavern against outside interference. Jieret marked the cardinal points of direction, recited the clear words of permission and intent, then lit the cedar brand and fanned the sweet smoke to clear the laid ground of any disharmonious imprints. To the reviling oaths that sang through his mind, he said calmly, 'I have sons and a daughter raised to maturity. Consider that proof you have kept any promise you once made to Steiven and Dania.'
'Damn you!' snarled Arithon, impotent as a whirlwind balked by a pane of caulked glass. 'That doesn't excuse your obligation to Feithan, or cast off your ties as a father!'
While Braggen looked on, stunned still with embarrassment, the High Earl straightened up, stricken. The second circle was just barely complete, linking the Companion, himself, and Arithon's vacated body.
'Arithon, look at me,' Jieret insisted, his voice strangely tight. 'Yes, look! A change has been wrought.' Stripped of defenses, laid bare of subterfuge, the shift became all too apparent. The strange, distanced glint in his gray hazel eyes reflected that eerie, unworldly detachment given to those who had journeyed too far past the veil.
'Do you know what I saw in the tienelle trance?' Soft as a plea underlaid by the razor's edge of a scarcely buried suffering, Jieret addressed the space where the disembodied spirit of his prince paced in searing frustration. 'I met my sisters and mother in a place of pure light, and they were unspoiled and beautiful. There was joy in that reunion. There, I could find closure and healing for a grief that has blighted my peace for nigh onto thirty years.'
A drawn, sharp pause, while Arithon froze in shock, and Jieret gathered up an unprepossessing flake of mica.
No longer trembling, Deshir's chieftain grasped the unsheathed knife laid out for completion of the ritual. 'Don't let me end this without your understanding. A true brother would give me that much.'
'No word of understanding I could ever deliver will explain my breach of trust to your daughter.' Behind the evil, glittering line that shackled his heart's cry for action, Arithon's sorrow shone pale as crystal, etch
ed into a rebuttal that gave no ground to defeat. 'For the love that I bear you, which is all I hold for bargain, I reject this bitter gift. I withhold the grace of my royal blessing. The cost of a crown can come too high! Jieret, don't leave me the wretched legacy of a life bought in blood. I won't endorse a survival founded upon the sacrifice of our vital friendship.'
Jieret regarded his prince, no longer torn. His blunt features had refigured to a tender sorrow, bespeaking a care that extended beyond fragile ties to mortal life. Gently, he shook his leonine, head. 'For the sons of my sons, liege, you'll see that I must.'
Silence, of a depth to make the mind ring to the cry of an unexpressed agony.
Jieret used the birch stick anyway, laid down another shining circle that contained nothing more than the ringed cipher holding Arithon's shade, and himself. A small flash, as he cupped the flake of mica and asked for the permission to serve his great need. Then, unflinching, he bent and swept a gap in the primary circle that held his prince's confined spirit in separation.
One circle contained them. Caithdein and prince faced off as a pair. Jieret, in warm flesh, and Arithon, whom he had been born to serve, a bristling imprint wrought out of spirit light in the poised stance of a duelist. Yet no offensive was possible, naked spirit pitched against an entity sheathed within the protections of the body. Nor could any act his Grace might conjure revoke the free-will permissions he had left in trust with Jieret s'Valerient. His royal consent, given to his liegeman, by its nature had been unconditional. No regret, even one wrought from untenable grief, could cancel the binding set upon him.
Arithon could but watch, agonized, as, each move deliberate, Jieret tipped the flake of mica and captured the reflection of his unshielded spirit.
Steadied as steel, the Earl of the North invoked the words of binding that would marry Arithon's image into the mineral's matrix. As the Shadow Master had promised through a morning of cursory instruction, mage-sight clearly showed the moment the spell sealed and meshed. The common fleck of mica heated and flared, then burned into configured light. the mercuric blaze of its presence became augmented with the signature essence of Prince Arithon's living aura. For all intents and purposes, the mirror spell of illusion merged his live presence with the stone and made them one and the same being.