‘He’s not here,’ Kerelie insisted, past tears. She wiped her scarred cheek, undone with relief that Tarens was off to haul fire-wood and not underfoot with his ready fists. ‘Since no one knows where the odd fellow’s gone, your questions cannot be answered.’
‘Nothing’s been found?’ the lance captain snapped to the temple’s baffled diviner. ‘No item sufficient for an arcane scrying?’ Failure at last would press him to withdraw his men. While they trampled through the wrack of upended belongings and formed up outside for departure, he would leave the distraught woman with an emphatic warning. ‘Keep your door closed to strangers. The high priesthood at Erdane says Shadow is rising. A minion of Darkness is wakened and walking abroad, we’ve been told . . .’
Shuddering breaths pulled between his locked teeth, the fugitive huddled in the icy wood as the bout of slip-stream vision tattered to smoke and receded. He grasped what he saw well enough to perceive the precarious veil of innocence that shielded his benefactors. If authorities sought him, perhaps he was a criminal, although he could not remember the enormity that branded him as an outlaw. At least his shoddy rags were untraceable, burned down to ash in the cottage grate. Nothing he owned remained behind for a hostile talent to seize as proof, or use to track his subtle essence. Keep scarce and stay hidden, and he risked no one’s safety. Cold and privation could be surmounted. He had the resourceful, inquisitive intelligence to survive the bleak onset of winter. Steadied once more, in command of himself, he pushed upright to seek a snug bolt-hole for shelter and sleep . . .
But the haven created by his reasoned calm eluded the enchantress, cross-linked as his helpless observer. For her, Arithon’s momentary, insightful vision lashed her to alarm: the True Sect’s diviners were unleashed to run down a minion of Darkness. Initiate-trained, the Light’s examiners dispatched their servants abroad. Primed for an arraignment, such armed dedicates would harrow the country-side, played on the puppet strings of their creed and the canon law rigidly enforced from Erdane’s high temple by a susceptible priesthood.
Whose secretive ploy had provoked such a search?
Elaira suspected the Prime Matriarch’s ambition manoeuvred this cleanse to root out her fugitive quarry. Worse yet, the Fellowship’s stay of constraint gave free rein to permit that unholy alliance. The religion’s fanatics subsisted on faith since their grand avatar’s abdication. Wracked into factions by the theosophers’ jostling debates, and pitched by self-interest to extend the firm reach of the temple’s influence, the Light’s zealots and their righteous, false cause lay ripe for seduction as Selidie’s diligent tool.
Hounded already, Arithon could be hunted across Tysan anywhere he tried to flee.
Nothing might turn the relentless adversity he might be driven to face. Aching, exhausted, while her distant beloved also braved a frigid night, Elaira gathered her courage, dried her eyes, and wrapped herself in her lonely bedroll. More than ever before, if she slept, she must ward her dreaming awareness. Under stress, reluctant, she sought shelter behind the endowment left to her in Arithon’s ring.
More than symbolic of blood-line and royalty, the white-gold signet had been worn by Rathain’s crown heirs back to the lineage’s founder. The inside bore the engraved inscription: ‘To my sons, from their forebears, back to Torbrand.’
Elaira cupped the emerald setting. Immersed in a seer’s trance, she focused her faculties into the mineral matrix. The imprinted tapestry of the ring’s history flowed over her opened perception. She sank slowly into the depths of the stone, aware of its multilayered legacy. Kings and sanctioned princes far and long before hers had stamped the whispers of their bygone lives in the ring. Unlike the focus stones wielded by the Koriathain, kept uncleared to preserve intact records, this jewel retained its past impressions under Fellowship precepts: its crystalline nature served human purpose by choice, in exact harmonic alignment. Elaira’s descent through its lattice became a light journey, untrammelled by conflict. Not every aspect contained within the jewel setting was laid open to her inspection. Wise enough for respect, Elaira bypassed those boundaries set under Sorcerer’s seals. The private memories from Arithon’s forebears stayed beyond her purview to access.
Her deep reach instead sought the gateway framed by the emerald’s inclusions, keyed only to her. A specific phrase, spoken three times by a man’s unbounded regard for her unlocked what no other could access. Chosen mate to the Prince of Rathain, Elaira alone could match and complete the bias of calm that once had enveloped a sea-side cottage in the impassioned moment of Arithon’s discovery that his pure feelings for her were returned.
She, only, recalled the arduous passage when the very same phrase was repeated: as a Sorcerer’s maze reforged their joined selves and scoured out all false reflections, man and woman had blended again, inseparable in mind and heart.
Worse, Elaira relived the last time, arisen on the wrenching hour when a false liegeman had betrayed Arithon into captivity. The moment revisited her in darkest nightmares, as the same outcry unleashed in extremity became their love’s bittermost affirmation. When Selidie Prime threatened Elaira’s life as the wedge to break Arithon’s integrity, third and final, his protest rang, still: ‘. . . Give me torture and loss, give me death, before I become the instrument that seals your utter destruction. Of all the atrocities I have done in the past, or may commit in the future, that one I could never survive.’
The echo, stone-graven, tumbled Elaira back into the moment she had faced death at Prime Selidie’s hands. Defenseless but never resigned, she could not fault the tragic choice, made while the throes of unbearable torment forced a desperate act, in resistance.
Shattered, yet defiant, Arithon spared her life. Saved her, by remaking as hers all the intimate joy shared between them. He ceded her everything: each cherished thought and every gathered memory of her encompassed within his experience. That sweetness of presence, treasured and true, was surrendered into her sole possession. Emptied himself, his given will yielded the part of his core self that was hers alone. Cut off and separate, he ensured that never again could the Koriani Order wield her mortality as the sure weapon to break him.
Royalty’s ring on her hand kept the record of Arithon’s grace within its inviolate sanctuary. An artifact of Rathain’s founding heritage, wrought under the sacrosanct auspices of Fellowship purpose, the signet’s protection predated the crown’s bond of debt to the Koriathain, which Asandir’s witnessed oath at long last had discharged. Within its safe haven, Elaira could let down her guard and dream past the reach of the order’s design.
The double-edged gift surrendered her senses to an unbearably vivid immersion. All that Arithon was, and everything they had been together enraptured her starved spirit and wrapped her in a state of exquisite tenderness.
Always, visceral sorrow reopened the wound. When night passed, and she woke to cold wind, snow, and solitude, the past remained hers, unsullied still. But the glory of the sacred dance was sundered, the unparalleled harmony of their union broken to spare her. If Arithon survived, he might recover the lost identity sheared from him to safeguard his freedom. Yet the part of his being conjoined with Elaira, sequestered for safety within Rathain’s seal ring, could not become reconnected. His enchantress retained her forlorn charge of the fact his male existence had once celebrated his true match. Unless the stake held by the Biedar at Sanpashir lent fresh insight to resolve the quandary, her heart’s future stayed hopelessly bleak.
Late Autumn 5922
Ripples
Warned by her balked scryers that Elaira’s resistance seeks contact with the Koriathain’s most ancient enemy, the Prime orders the enchantress stopped, at all cost, before she sets foot in Sanpashir; then she announces her boldest step yet to pin down the elusive fugitive: ‘We’ll engage the infallible use of a fetch and stir Desh-thiere’s curse to dog Arithon’s trail . . .’
The same night, torn from sleep in the Lord Mayor’s suite at Etarra, a fair-haired man thrashes awake in soaked
sheets, chilled by the shadow of prescient nightmare: shivering, alone in the dark, he fears most to stand his frail ground against the consummate evil coiled inextricably through his being . . .
Days later, still troubled by dire portents, the Light’s High Examiner responds to the news that the search for the minion of Darkness near Kelsing turns up nothing but rumours of an elusive herbalist: ‘He left no object for a diviner to trace? Even a flask or a tie-string? That’s suspicious! Hold the croft that sheltered him under covert watch and deploy more dedicates to quarter the country-side . . .’
Late Autumn 5922
III. Change
E
fflin’s recovery did not progress despite the efficacy of the remedies that broke his runaway fever. Constant dosing with cailcallow infusions, and the use of strong wintergreen poultices eased his wet cough for a time, even helped soothe his laboured breathing. Yet each hard-fought improvement failed to take hold. Days of diligent care did not lift his spirits or unseat the entrenched grip of his lethargy. Night after night, his reddened eyes dulled, until the once-vibrant spark in them faded to absence. Since Tarens could not win this fight with his fists, he vented his helpless rage in the field, where hard labour behind the ploughshare granted his fury a harmless outlet. When the ox balked in the traces past sundown, he returned to the cottage, sore and snappishly tired.
Kerelie shouldered the burden of nursing, as well as the tiresome task of heating the gruel and bread sops for the listless invalid. Mostly, the trays returned to the kitchen with their picked-over contents untouched. Desperation led her to swap a precious crock of summer jam for a marrowbone from a neighbour. She soaked barley meal in the enriched broth in a hopeful effort to perk Efflin’s flat appetite.
The beef in the soup became equally spurned. Driven fuming out of the kitchen, Kerelie smashed the clay bowl against the back step in a fit of exasperation.
‘He’s not trying!’ she ranted to Tarens, drawn by her noise at a breathless sprint, with a stick snatched up as a cudgel to beat off a hostile assault.
But the only rescue his sister required was respite from an onslaught of tears.
‘Unlike you and me, Efflin’s not fighting!’ Swept headlong into her brother’s embrace, she pounded his arm in despair. ‘Why, Tarens? Why? He knows our family inheritance cannot be salvaged without him!’
Tarens held her close. Heedless of the barley mush strewn down her skirt, he pressed her marred cheek against a worn jerkin that smelled of sweat, harness leather, and turned earth. ‘I don’t know, Kerie.’ He let her sob, quite aware of the clean spoon and napkin that told over the source of her grief. Painfully wretched himself, he had little comfort to offer. ‘Efflin’s not been right for quite some time. Not since the misfortune came on us. But whatever afflicts him isn’t your fault, Kerie. He’s a grown man. Maddening as his behaviour can be, as hurtfully as his wasting straits try us, while he won’t speak, there’s no helping him.’
Kerelie sniffed, caught aback by the hiccup muffled into his sleeve. ‘I’d rather you whacked him outright with a fence-post for acting the brainless fool!’
‘Chin up,’ Tarens chided. ‘I’d prefer to keep the pasture intact and just break his head with my knuckles.’
Clinging to each other in harrowed dread, sister and brother stifled the thought that Efflin might easily die of the rancour sealed beneath his stark silence. Life, meantime, would not pause for his obstinacy, nor would Kelsing’s mayor forgo the debt set against their name on the town tax-rolls.
Kerelie’s exhausted weeping ran dry. While thin sun bleached the frost-burned grass in the yard, and the gusts scattered raced leaves between the straggled stakes in the fallow garden-patch, Tarens sighed and circuitously broached the idea that nagged at his uneasy mind.
‘Survivors don’t quit without reason,’ he said.
Somehow Kerelie sensed the root of the tension that upset his natural complacence. ‘Don’t even say what you’re thinking!’ she snapped.
When Tarens returned no argument, she pushed him off, angry, her raw cheeks flamed pink and her swollen eyes bright as north sky. ‘You daren’t tell me I’ve driven away the one person who might have changed Efflin’s condition!’
Tarens set his strong jaw. Prepared in his way to smooth her nettled anguish, he pointed out, ‘You have eyes. Tell me you haven’t seen the same evidence? Or haven’t you noticed that the scrawny hen we dragged back from the market is now eating her silly head off? She’d bring double the price now, restored to good flesh.’
‘Doesn’t mean the useless fowl will ever lay, or hatch a new brood come the spring.’ Kerelie belatedly dabbed her wet lashes on the inside of her cuff.
‘Well, the sheen on the bird’s feathers belies that.’ Tarens dug into his breeches pocket and offered his crumpled handkerchief. ‘Here. Don’t mess up your blouse. You’ll bleed the dye out of your pretty embroidery, and if not that, we’ve all heard in steamed language how much you love ironing wrinkled linen.’
‘You’re dead right. I hate laundry, never more than while Efflin’s flat on his back and quite busy wrecking what’s left of our sorry lives!’ Kerelie honked noisily, huffed, and shoved a frizzled wisp of hair behind an ear the chill had buffed scarlet. Then she pinned her critical gaze on her brother. ‘How could we have hidden that vagabond, anyhow? Did you honestly think he was innocent? By the rude way we were questioned, the high temple’s examiner sent that diviner to ferret the poor creature out. If we chanced to harbour a heretic, wherever he is, you have to agree he’s better off gone and, safest of all, well forgotten!’
Tarens looked away.
Kerelie’s eyes narrowed. Fists set on her hips, she stared at her brother until his blunt silence piqued her suspicion. ‘You know where that man is!’
‘No.’ Tarens blinked through his unkempt forelock. ‘I swear on the graves of our dead, I do not.’
‘Then what aren’t you telling me?’ Kerelie crushed up his soggy linen and hurled it down like a duelist’s thrown gauntlet.
‘I’ve not seen the fellow, hide nor hair!’ Tarens protested. ‘Not since the evening we aired our crass fears bare-faced in his living presence.’ Stung, he poised for a wary retreat: his sister in a high fettle was wont to clout back with the first handy object within reach. The soup-bowl was broken. Left nothing else, she would pitch the available cutlery at him before the innocuous napkin.
Yet Efflin’s wasting illness had sapped the spunk from Kerelie’s spirit. ‘Tarens!’ she pleaded, wrung beyond fight, ‘at least grace me with a civil answer.’
She would give him no peace. Warned by raw experience, Tarens sat down on the step and laced his big hands over his patched knees. ‘I don’t know where the little man went. But you’re right. He has not gone, exactly.’ The admission emerged in careful words: of fences repaired in the dark of the night; of water drawn to fill troughs for the livestock and small repairs done in the barn; of the fruit trees and vines pruned with expert skill where the untended tangle of last season’s growth threatened to choke the next harvest.
More, Tarens acknowledged the signs of a talent beyond anything known to farm husbandry. ‘If you saw the mends in the hedge by the wood, you’d see he’s got yew twining into itself with a purpose that’s frankly uncanny. That’s not done without use of the secret lore kept by the charm makers.’
‘Few dare that practice, far less in the open.’ Kerelie shoved the sick tray aside with her foot. Frowning, she gathered her splattered skirts and settled next to her brother. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Tarens regarded her with wide-lashed candor. ‘What would you have done, Kerie? Driven him out? Or could you lie to a temple examiner if one returns with more suspicious questions? Worse, could I lay us open to blackmail, that any unscrupulous suitor might pressure us for your hand in marriage? I couldn’t abide the chance that might happen! But without Efflin’s help, in flat honesty, I can’t work the croft by myself!’
Kerelie stood. Tight with hurt
, she spun and picked up the tray. The clean spoon beside the untouched cloth napkin sharpened her to accusation. ‘You were risking our landed heritage, Tarens.’
‘Set against Efflin’s life? Does our titled right to till these miserable acres even signify?’
‘More than our brother’s health may be at stake,’ Kerelie pointed out, tart. ‘Or does the fact each of us was declared for the Light since our birth have no meaning?’
There, even her brother’s mild nature lost patience. ‘Your prim faith in the True Sect’s canon serves naught. The temple preaches a loveless morality that cares not one jot for the plight of our livelihood. The priests are fat parasites, theosophizing on their rumps while folk like us break our backs, milked dry by their tithes and their rote obligations. Where does their doctrine show the least concern for our chance to enjoy the fruits of our happiness?’
Kerelie banged down the tray and confronted her brother, her work-worn hands as chapped as his own, and her eyes just as smudged with relentless fatigue. ‘Do you honestly believe that mad vagabond has the gift, or the knowledge to enact a deep healing? Even the Light’s priesthood don’t flaunt such arrogance! They warn against undue interference. Could you take the risk that an invasive power of Darkness might ensnare a man’s defenseless soul? Or that a madman with a rogue talent could invasively damage a wounded spirit?’
‘That fellow is not crazy!’ Blushed under her censure, Tarens amended in heart-felt conviction. ‘No, I don’t know everything. The Light’s policies confuse me. But if Efflin dies, our family holding is lost to us anyhow. Should we act on our unseen fears before the virtue of human kindness? Who’s given us more, the Light’s faith or that stranger? And if you choose to reject generosity, then what standing do we have left in this world, or in the hereafter, for that matter?’