The ones who wandered, distraught, survived, barely. When the first blush of dawn touched the white-shrouded waste of the barrens, the company that had marched from the city of Darkling numbered a scant fifty-six. They cursed the name of the Spinner of Darkness. Some wept, while hurried cairns were raised over the glass-stiff, few corpses they recovered. Others sharpened their steel for revenge, oblivious to the punishing toll their defeat must exact from the thorns of s’Ffalenn conscience. The sunwheel priest led the rites for the fallen, then accosted every man still fit enough to raise steel to press the minion of evil who had veered west to avoid them.
‘We have brothers in Light marching down from Etarra. They must be warned of the ruin we’ve faced, lest they close unaware of the danger. The Divine Prince himself sweeps eastward from Narms. His power of Light will dispel these fell shadows. For the weal of the land, we must not falter now! Let our losses this night renew our dedication. Honor their memory! Redeem their sacrifice! Let us harry the Master of Shadow without letup. Drive him like vermin into the net the Alliance will cast for his downfall.’
Vision faded back into the form of the raven, poised like a live cipher on the map. It opened the midnight fan of its wings, then sidled northwestward, each mincing step an unembellished recounting of Arithon’s marathon flight. Although Earl Jieret received no encompassing visions, he sensed sharp impressions, of punishing cold nights spent without fires, and the flaying torments of east storms. He touched, like an echo, Prince Arithon’s despair, as he laired like a fox in the thickets. He shared sapping nightmares of dead men and warped music that did not dispel under daylight, but only changed form into memories as damningly punishing. The raven’s cry bespoke madness and pain, intensified by the season’s cruel hardships and the passage of days that extended to weeks of relentless solitude.
Nor did the map remain clear of enemies. Where the raven walked, Darkling’s fragmented company pursued, vengeance bent. Earl Jieret sensed their advance on the face of the parchment, the swarming specks of miniature men mounted on ant-sized horses. He beheld the more massive incursion from Etarra, then the response to Darkling’s sent courier that caused them to wheel as though choreographed. In time, a cordon closed in tight lines to box in Arithon’s position.
‘They know where he is,’ Earl Jieret surmised, stormed by gut-wrenching alarm.
The raven regarded him through its sequin left eye. Plunged through the glistening pitch of its iris, Rathain’s caithdein beheld the chilling confirmation of his hunch. The sunwheel priest sent as the Alliance diviner traced the Master of Shadow’s each move with foul arts and a blood-drenched pendulum. His scrying would synchronize three city war bands, and see Arithon s’Ffalenn hazed like a trapped beast to slaughter. While Etarra and Darkling and Jaelot closed the noose from behind, Rathain’s prince would be systematically hounded into the advance out of Narms, and into a final disastrous encounter with Lysaer s’Ilessid. The confrontation sparked to flame by the Mistwraith’s curse would end in battle and agony on the frozen banks of the River Aiyenne.
Overwhelmed by sinking despair, Earl Jieret understood that the s’Ffalenn gift of compassion was going to destroy any possible hope of reprieve. The past upheld proof. Once before, Arithon of Rathain had used the full range of his mage talents in defense of his threatened people. Though his act had staved off an annihilating loss, the toll of fallen had left him shackled in guilt. His access to talent had been blinded. On the plain of Daon Ramon, his mage-sight would stay blocked; but now, inexorable training had raised the art of his music to bridge the veil and rebuild a new framework to access the mysteries.
That power could kill; had now led men to death. Entangled in the Mistwraith’s geas of destruction, bound by blood oath to the Fellowship Sorcerers to seek survival by any expedient, Athera’s titled Masterbard would face Lysaer and the Alliance with no other weapon to hand.
Just as clearly as Jieret knew the maiming potential of steel, he foresaw that Arithon would be forced to raise music in the cause of self-defense. Even if he survived, the fierce brilliance of his bardic gift would become crippled, as stifled to silence as the born talent for mage-sight already tragically sacrificed.
Such a blow to the heart would not be sustained. Arithon denied the expression of music posed a penalty too harsh to contemplate. Jieret ached for the quandary. Aggrieved that his war band would not be enough to stem the oncoming disaster, he cast his appeal to the raven. ‘If you’re sent here to guide, then how can I help?’
The bird regarded him. Black as the void, a creature born of the uncanny fusion of feather and bone and great mystery, its gaze seemed to weigh the sincerity of his heart, if not the exact sum Daelion Fatemaster placed on his living worth. Pierced through and nailed by that measuring survey, Jieret felt his courage tested as never before. Even amid the blood heat of combat, the stripped force of his will had not given way, or threatened, as now, to unravel in weakness and fail him. Only his unyielding love for his prince held him from looking away.
‘How can I help?’ he entreated again. Surrendered long since to the perils of the dream, and to the cruel price that could be demanded to uphold his caithdein’s service to Rathain, he matched the raven’s dense scrutiny with challenge sprung like fire from the core of his being. ‘I will not choose the life of my liege, or his sanity, ahead of my bound task to shield him. I have an heir and a sanctioned successor to carry my family name after me.’
The bird bowed to him, a tribute that touched him like pain for its unexpected magnificence. Then it cawed shrill warning, and bent its dark head, and stabbed its bill through the map where the River Aiyenne turned back on itself in a south-bending, horseshoe crook.
Earl Jieret took sharp note of the site, then wept as he grasped the significance. One chance; a precious, uncertain bid for salvation, if the men in his war band were willing to throw themselves into the breach. They might engage the armed might of Lysaer s’Ilessid in the tangling brush of the river bottom. Not to triumph; they were too few to hold out any hope of a victory. But if at the critical moment they could buy a few hours’ delay, the trap jaws might be jammed from closing.
By the tightest margin, the fateful impact of Desh-thiere’s curse might be thwarted. Given the slender reprieve of his sanity, Arithon s’Ffalenn might seize his opening and slip through.
If his Grace sprinted headlong for the trade road, his northern clan allies could guide him into the Mathorn uplands. Posted scouts kept tight watch over the pulse of trade traffic, waylaying town couriers for news. Born of Fallowmere bloodlines, they were specialized, skilled raiders. No one could make better speed through the mountains ahead of hostile pursuit. They knew which fishermen could be bought, and which could be trusted to have sympathy. If Rathain’s prince could be spirited across Instrell Bay to make landfall on the shores of Atainia, he could claim refuge at Althain Tower by his royal right to ask sanctuary.
‘I accept your message,’ Jieret said to the raven, unafraid, though the losses that statement demanded would come to leave bereft families in Halwythwood.
The bird croaked out a bitten reply. Dreaming vision spun away on a breath. The flat parchment chart dissolved back into snow-clad ground, where chill gusts chased wind devils of blown ice. The stepped hills to the east wore the first, silvered blush cast by the rising moon. Jieret blinked. He tossed off the stifling weight of his bearskin and sat up to signal the watch he was wakeful.
The sight of a live raven outlined in snow shocked him still. A prickling rush of dread doused his flesh. He swallowed, locked wordless, while the bird ruffled indignant feathers against the freezing assault of the breeze. It quorked once in testy, sharp inquiry.
‘Ath, I know you!’ Jieret expelled a hissed breath in relief, aware all at once that guidance had come on his prince’s appeal to the Fellowship. Only one raven in Athera could transcend the veil and circumvent the earthbound paradox of time and space. ‘Tell the Sorcerer, Traithe, I honor his wisdom. Give him my thanks, o
n behalf of my prince, and in my name as Teir’s’Valerient.’
The bird cocked its head, returned a terse croak, then beat its spread primaries and flew. It did not take wing through earthly airs, amid the buffeting cold of Daon Ramon, but disappeared through a hole in the night that bent its flight through the heart of the mysteries.
The snow beneath its departure was not left pristine. In swept crystals fanned by the arc of stretched wings, stamped in miniaturized relief by the tread of its talons, Jieret surveyed a topographical map of Daon Ramon. One site was marked out by a smoking drop of blood. There lay the crossroads of the Mistwraith’s staged conflict, where Lysaer s’Ilessid would face Arithon s’Ffalenn with Alliance armed forces a closed door hedging his back. Symbols denoting the phases of two moon cycles marked the hour the half brothers would do battle with Light, sword, and Shadow, unless Jieret, with his war band and his trusted Companions, gave their lives to effect intervention.
No choice; Jieret would act as his father before him, and stand ground in war for his prince.
‘We ride,’ he informed the scout who arrived to call him to counsel. ‘Prince Arithon has effected his escape from Ithamon, and I have received Sighted guidance from a Sorcerer. We must go north with all speed and spend all our resource to hinder Lysaer s’Ilessid.’
The scout made no sound, no complaint, no murmur of consternation. He listened, stone steady, while Earl Jieret cracked out expedient instructions. ‘If no man in our company stands down from this task, then I appoint Sidir to go back alone, and bear these dire tidings to Halwythwood.’ A pause, while a tight throat stopped words, then the finish, ‘He’ll argue the assignment. But someone must serve my daughter as war captain. Of all the Companions, he knows Arithon best. Jeynsa will need his sound guidance beside her on the hour she’s called to shoulder my title in succession.’
Midwinter 5670
Prince Kevor
The snowball arched on a silent trajectory straight for the crown of the duty officer’s helm. It struck dead center, the dulled thump of impact giving tongue like a muffled bell. Showered under a back-falling explosion of white, the field veteran shouted and spun.
His defensive crouch and halfway-drawn sword were mocked by a chorus of pealing laughter.
‘Fiends and Dharkaron’s vengeance, we’re a sorry enough lot!’ He rammed his blade home in the scabbard and straightened, dusting chunked ice from the links of his byrnie. Caught between flushed annoyance and an idiot, boyish delight, he glowered toward the pack of miscreants who still snapped twigs in the brush. ‘We are the Light’s sword arm, sent to take down Khadrim! Just for one moment can we behave as men on a serious mission?’
The sniggers and chortling continued without letup. The suspect frenzy of rustles moved onward through the laurel and evergreen fronting the streamlet. Someone muffled an explosive whoop. Then a scuffling fracas erupted. Amid a yowled volley of oaths, a casualty went down in a sliding tumble that splashed through the ice on the freshet. The guffaws redoubled, now laced by the victim’s shrill cursing.
High spirits won out over order and discipline. The field officer chuckled. While snowmelt wicked off the ends of his hair and trickled over his earlobes, he called, ‘Who’s won the young prince’s wager, this time?’
‘Fennick, as usual,’ the loser called cheerfully, probably perched on a fallen log to empty his sloshing boots.
‘Well don’t envy him.’ The evergreens heaved and disgorged young Prince Kevor, talking over his shoulder. ‘He’ll wake up one day with a crick in the back, if he keeps his fool habit of stashing his silver inside the seams of his blanket roll.’ His appealing, quick laughter rang through winter greenwood as another man-at-arms ankle deep in the stream called something back in rejoinder.
The devilish grin that emerged as Kevor squared up his carriage bespoke the fact the soaked wretch had not dunked his best boots by accident. The young prince’s infectious temperament had won the field troop over to a man.
Nor would he escape the attentions of Avenor’s women upon his return to court. Through the winter, his features had gained an angular, sure strength. If not a match for his father’s unearthly male beauty, his looks held the stamped promise of character. Rawboned and gawky as an unbroken horse, Kevor showed in fleeting, stray moments of grace the tigerish poise he would carry in his maturity. His long-strided walk brought him through the trees toward the officer made the butt of his morning’s antics.
He stopped, his stance square and direct as the rest of him, and ran a gloved hand through his cockscomb of russet hair. Chagrin came and went in his half-stifled smile. Unspeaking, he awaited rebuke with straight patience that was anything but a spoiled child’s.
‘Young master,’ the duty officer began, embarrassed to feel like a pompous old fool before Kevor’s disarming honesty. The snapping cold morning, or maybe the pristine blue sky, were inclined to make any rank-and-file man boisterous. Despite the ice melt running fingers of cold down the laced neck of his coif, the field veteran shrugged off his stiff effort to play the harsh disciplinarian.
‘Could you lend some royal influence and get these men moving? They might, perhaps, strap on swords and get mounted?’ Their orders had been to ride deep into Westwood to spare Tysan’s people from predation. ‘Some goodwife’s babes could burn or be seized in the jaws of Khadrim while we dally.’
Kevor dropped his lanky arm to his side, the ebullience of the moment erased. In the aquamarine chill of midwinter dawn, his expression was cut steel, each line of his carriage unflinching. ‘They’re frightened. Understandably terrified, in fact.’ He expelled a plumed breath. A small tuck cut the flesh between his brows, which were fine and dark, like his mother’s.
The captain did not waste the breath to prevaricate. The best swords and mail would be little use against winged monsters that spat fire, and whose minds possessed vicious intelligence.
The young prince’s lucent blue eyes again met and matched the officer’s measuring survey. ‘If you want my help on this matter, let the men break camp on their own. They’ll find their nerves and be steadier if they’re given our trust, and not pushed.’
Such moments, it was all too easy to forget that Kevor had scarcely turned fifteen years of age. The innate majesty and insight of his lineage was as yet unformed instinct, the gifted endowment that would make a strong ruler still untempered by adult experience.
The duty officer brushed off an odd grue of chill. ‘If I grant your way in this, then you will promise to stay by Fennick and Ranne, and trust my judgment without swerving the next time you feel the need to play the young hothead.’
The spark of lit humor touched Kevor’s eyes a split second before his quick grin. ‘We’ll be last in the saddle, then. Fennick just won another ten silvers. No power on this side of the Light’s going to hurry him before he’s cached his new hoard into his blanket roll.’
‘What in the name of fell Darkness were the terms of your blighted wager?’ snapped the field officer, suspicious. Given the nature of many a former contest, he winced to imagine the snowball had been tossed for a sport involving his personal dignity.
‘You want to know?’ Kevor’s lips flexed, his smile stifled just barely in time. His merry eyes widened. ‘Grace and mercy, you do want to know. Very well.’ He glanced at the treetops, as though the first golden spatters of sun could lift his surge of embarrassment. ‘Haskin insisted you’d throw your dirk at the bushes the same way you did on the day you skewered the boar.’
The duty officer flushed, since that tale involved no wild animal at all, but a squire who had unwisely brought his sweetheart on a tryst too near to barbarian territory. ‘Go!’ He bellowed. ‘Get yourself armed and mounted, boy, and I will see after the men!’
The young prince feigned a jaunty recruit’s salute, then retired straightaway to the picket lines.
Struck by the unrepentant bounce to his stride, the officer paused. He wondered whether the mistake with the boar had been a glib ploy to dis
tract him. For Prince Kevor had gotten himself summarily dismissed without even granting his royal promise that he would not stray from the strong arm of his royal honor guard.
Nor did the troop’s overburdened commander find the chance to remedy the duty officer’s lapse, caught as he was between chastising laggards, then seeing the cook’s bread oven stowed. Argumentative as crows, the lancers mounted and formed into columns. Over the silver-foil crusting of snow, Avenor’s field patrol rode out, flanked by Karfael’s borrowed squads of crossbowmen and archers. Steel helms and the odd lance point flared under the dollops of sun, spilled through the tall firs of Westwood.
Eight leagues from the trade road, they followed the blazed trail left by trappers and woodcutters, crossed by the punched tracks of deer and the hectic prints of small sparrows. Fresh as the breeze on that new winter’s morning, the banter of the two squires who served the young prince rang over the jingle of mail, the snap of lance pennons, and the creak of saddles and gear. No one called the boys down for misconduct. The fighting clan presence had long since been cleansed from these woods. The old blood scout who still hunted here would make himself scarce, lest he find himself killed for the crown bounty. The field officers in command indulged the high spirits of the s’Ilessid heir as a boon that brightened the morale of men who rode into unprecedented danger.
Two men were entrusted to keep vigilant close watch. Fennick and Ranne had been handpicked for their post from the elite of Avenor’s royal guard. Their lives were pledged to protect the young prince, though in truth no one expected this assignment to invoke that extreme, selfless sacrifice. Before leaving the walled security of Karfael, Kevor had been made to understand he could accompany the field troop only as far as the cook’s camp. His Grace would not be permitted to ride with the patrols where Khadrim flew. For this winter’s campaign, he would observe the command at safe remove from their call to hard action.