Older memory resurged like an echo and threw him the wrenching flashback: of his lost beloved with her stays undone, poised in eager abandon before him.
The shock sheared him through. On his feet before thought, he groaned at the ache that flooded his groin. He had not touched a woman in far too long, never mind one with a shred of regard fueled by other than brazen ambition.
‘Don’t do this,’ he pleaded. Unlike before, this time Lysaer saw through the shield of delusion the curse wove to blind him. He clung to clarity through assaulted nerves. If Daliana pressed him now and forced his heated need, would she not see? He could never outlive his redoubled shame for the grotesque necessity that poisoned the purity of his affection.
Daliana did not retreat. Instead, she repeated his name in a tone that terrified for its genuine mildness.
Rage overtook him, a wave of bleak, uncontainable savagery, that any woman should ever so dare to corner him beyond recourse. Through that torn breach, lent the foothold of anger, the Mistwraith’s curse seized fell advantage. Jolted from restraint, hounded in spirit by the raw toll of hurts inflicted by his faithless mother, and Talith, and Ellaine, all of whom had abandoned him, he surged forward. The chit who annoyed him was a frail doll in his hands, a flower stem overdue for a well-deserved plucking. Lysaer wound his fist in her tumbled brown hair. He twisted her head back with aggressive fingers. Her soft lips parted anyway, ripe for his kiss, which was not going to be tender.
Her eyes stayed on him. She never blinked. He searched her face, sought the pain of resistance, and read nothing there but pity and sorrow, and love deep enough to embrace his most criminal failures.
The honesty behind that pliant surrender struck Lysaer like a cold-water slap. He loosened his death grip. Flung her away, turned his back, and cried hoarsely, ‘Cover yourself. Leave the room. If you tempt me or taunt any further, your victory is certain to seal my bane. I will lose control. The curse shall tear me asunder and unleash the vicious side of my nature. Let me go before I destroy you that way. I would rather die like a cur on the run, before having to live like a coupling beast.’
He waited hard-breathing, gazed fixed on the lamp-flame, ears trained for the least scrape of movement. He heard the sigh of cloth over skin and hoped beyond the reach of salvation that she restored her unfastened clothing. Distressed over the fact she had slashed her laces, he untied his doublet one-handed. He tugged the sweat-damp garment over his head and extended the crumpled cloth like an offering. Face averted, eyes shut, he insisted, ‘Borrow my points. I won’t have you go out unseemly with your linen and bodice undone.’
The floor-boards creaked to her cautious step. He felt every riffle of air through his pores as the doublet was tugged from his fingers.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she declared from behind. When she laid her cheek against his thin shirt, he quivered. A cry ripped from his throat. Wordless, he could not escape the weakness of his injury to fling off the velvet embrace she wound over his torso. Pressed close, she would not miss the tremors that raked him; or avoid the embarrassment, that he was weeping.
Firmly determined, she reached lightly and unstrung his shirt. ‘I want this, liege. No matter how ugly you think Desh-thiere’s curse might drive you to become, that horror’s not real. I don’t believe you are cruel at heart. More, I would be guilty of worse than neglect if I should abandon the passion I offer you, freely. Once, Sulfin Evend stood firm for your sake. He appealed to your better nature for love. Why should I do less for the blameless fact I am female?’
Tensioned to reject her by force, despite the handicap of his sore collar-bone, Lysaer argued, ‘You know nothing of me! Or my forsaken sense of royal pride, that the curse would use beyond conscience to bring your destruction.’
Daliana firmed her ardent grip. ‘I don’t care what past nightmares, or what crimes your curse-driven weakness pushed you to commit! Those memories are yours alone, and the past. This is my present, also yours, free to choose. I am here at your side, alive, and no ghost. Let beauty and care forge the weapons tonight. Let us build a strong bridge between us, together. Give my steadfast devotion the chance to defeat the murderous urges that plague you.’
He shifted her clasp, then. Caught her warm hand, turned and pulled her close as he let himself face her. He was undone. Almost ripped beyond gentleness as he bent his head to hers and laid his wet cheek on her forehead. Her own ragged breaths fanned his throat as he stroked his unsteady palms downwards over the lustrous warmth of her. She straightened his chin with cupped palms and held his wide eyes. Trapped him with her gaze until he saw that she recognized all of his tortured depths. She did not pull away or deny his mortified stress, as the Mistwraith’s geas continued to tear at him.
‘My dear,’ he said, ragged, ‘you are much too brave.’ Lost to his wracked need, but not past self-control, he raised unsteady fingers and smoothed down the tangles his abusive grip had rumpled through her hair. ‘Please understand this! I can’t trust myself. Not compromised, not this way. The treasure you offer to me without strings is too likely to crush you under the weight of my doom.’
Daliana leaned full length against him. The raced beat of his heart slammed like caged thunder beneath her pliant weight. ‘You cannot trust yourself,’ she agreed, bed-rock calm. ‘Therefore, let go. Seize life and place trust in me.’
Her hands moved and lowered unasked, in an exquisitely urgent appeal for surrender. Where she touched, he shuddered, beyond turning back. Constrained for too long as the ruler, cut off by conscience from the sweet vulnerability of unconstrained union, Lysaer crushed his fists into her soft, unbound locks and let the wave of ecstatic sensation consume his awareness. He allowed her bold claim, cast adrift by desire that drowned out the siren’s cry of Desh-thiere’s design.
‘Daliana?’ Her name shocked a gasp that exposed his core agony, fast buried under a kiss that tasted of tears. Hers or his own: neither knew in the deluge which one of them, broken, was joyously weeping. The flash-point of fused passion rocked Lysaer off balance long before she unstrung his rifled trousers. To stay upright became an unbearable trial. The unleashed torrent built to a cascade that flooded him towards blinded ecstasy. Lysaer freed his sound arm from their twined embrace. He groped for the bedstead behind him. But the hand he flung out to cushion their dizzied plunge towards sublime release never found the surcease of the mattress.
In residence at Whitehold, entrained in rapport with her senior scryer, Prime Selidie fell back on the tactical counterstroke to heighten the assault by the Mistwraith’s curse. Its ascendant hold would launch her planned triumph. Prepared against need, she sent word to the poised circle of Seniors on call at East Bransing. Received over distance, her command unveiled the wrought fetch, charged by a clipping of Arithon’s hair preserved from his term of imprisonment. The black lock was twined through a second gold strand, secretively purloined from Lysaer centuries before. One word activated a drawn sigil, which in turn activated a fetch infused with the resonance of Arithon’s direct presence . . .
The spell-wrought effect struck the compulsion of Desh-thiere’s curse like a hammer’s fall, ringing on red-heated steel. Run through in an instant, his grip on sane will ripped asunder, Lysaer screamed. A stricken animal lashed into madness, he stiffened, then shoved free of the woman whose clasped arms roped him down with insufferable constraint.
Equally desperate, thralled to the rip tide of shared passion, Daliana gripped his sleeve as his move in rejection burned through her grasp. Reflex pitted her wiry strength in a useless attempt to restrain him.
That thoughtless small error respun his perception and realigned her as his enemy.
Lysaer turned on her, reverted to savagery. The curse distilled the venomous pain of every prior betrayal. The crippled core left by a mother’s desertion, then fat to the fire, the loss of a cherished first wife that bulwarked his vulnerable dread: the same defensive need to shield himself from intimacy also had poisoned the next bond of wedlock, made
only to produce his lawful heir by Ellaine.
Reflexive self-loathing sparked hatred to flash-point. Lysaer raised his hands against Daliana. As though to fend off a mortal blow, he kindled raw light to destroy the threat she posed to his integrity.
The levin bolt struck her naked breast, tossed her head over heels, and torched the small chamber. Wreathed in explosive flame, her disheveled clothes smouldering, she slammed into the rug. A blue halo of warding spindled her form: the grace of Asandir’s mark alone spared her from instant immolation. Yet the protection did nothing to cushion the violent impact. Tumbled over and over, Daliana fetched up against the rickety washstand. Slopped water exploded to steam. The crockery basin toppled and fell, bashed her forehead, and shattered. Lit cherry red, the half-smelted fragments shot through the crackling inferno. Blood welled through her hair, the mahogany strands despoiled and singed, but not burned to cinders.
Her survival lashed Lysaer to tormented fury. ‘I should have guessed the Fellowship Sorcerers would send their string puppet to thwart me!’
Daliana’s winded effort to move was seized short by the stab of burst ribs. Her cry strangled to a choked whimper.
‘Was the curse of your lineage on me not foretold?’ Lysaer ranted in demented agony. ‘Was I not promised the arrow from the shadows, poison in my cup, and a knife at my throat from s’Gannley? I should have expected the underhand cruelty before any act of cold murder!’
Daliana stared into the face of stark madness, unable to help since his malign reference to some distant forebear escaped her. ‘Lysaer!’ she croaked hoarsely, ‘Fight back. A work of dark spellcraft has clouded your mind.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed, ‘the enchantment of love!’ Veiled in whirled cinders, soul-wracked beyond salvage, he clutched his hurt shoulder as though pain alone stayed him from battery. ‘But never again. I won’t be misled by female wiles. Your false trap of affection will tempt me no longer.’
Light discharged from his hand, pitched for wrack and ruin.
The dazzle deluged Daliana’s last sight: of Lysaer’s silhouette, stamped against a hellish curtain of fire. Horror undid her as consciousness wavered. She coughed, scalded by bitter ashes and smoke, and grieved for the scope of her failure. Desh-thiere’s geas had triumphed. In a port town ignited by feverish zeal, the demonstrative outburst of Lysaer’s gift would align the True Sect followers like a beacon. Willed choice had no chance: curse-bent impetus would cavil at nothing to wreak the Master of Shadow’s destruction. Under thrall once again, reclaimed as the Light’s avatar, the Divine Prince would rally the faithful to spear-head the Sunwheel cause.
Cleared awareness returned to dull pain and thick fumes, and a nearby voice that exhorted her with piercing urgency. ‘Get up! Daliana, you must! The roof is blown off, and the fire has charred the support beams. I can’t hold the floor under you, or save the plank stair when the walls collapse, without drawing hostile notice. Your escape must be masked amid the confusion before this building burns to the ground.’
A hacked cough grated snapped bones and knifed stabbing pain through her chest. Sickened by the reek of singed hair, Daliana moaned and stirred, the sting of salt tears like lye on her blistered cheek.
‘On your feet! Now!’ An icy gust dealt her an impatient buffet. ‘Follow me.’
The maelstrom of red flame swirled and parted, a vortex of clear air drilled across the puddled expanse of scorched carpet. Daliana peered through the gap, apprehensive. ‘Daelion’s fist!’ she croaked in frustration. ‘I can’t see you.’
‘That’s because I’m a shade!’ shrilled her testy ally, past patience. ‘If you don’t rise and march, I’ll be forced to take drastic action. That outright folly would see you condemned, and scare every witness in range to embrace the Light’s godless religion.’
Daliana shoved herself tenderly upright. Wrist over her mouth, she gasped gruffly, ‘Which Sorcerer?’
‘Kharadmon, at your service, my dear. Step leftwards. The stair is still sound, only a few paces this way.’
Stumbling, wracked double by billowed smoke, Daliana tugged up her sooty chemise and winced as she trod on a coal. No word of thanks emerged from her lips, but a curse for her savior’s tardy appearance.
‘I could not spare Lysaer!’ Kharadmon snapped, galled just as much by the chanting and shouts that hailed the Light’s glory from the outside street. Mighty cheers praised the faith’s restored avatar, loud even through the thunderous roar of the blaze that gutted the tavern.
‘My liege is lost to the priests’ unholy doctrine,’ Daliana accused. ‘He feared that downfall above anything. Could you do nothing to spare him, or shield the last shred of his besieged intellect?’ Rattled past sense, she lamented, ‘I had his better nature secured!’
Kharadmon cut short her agonized ranting. ‘Our Fellowship cannot help since Lysaer’s choice revoked charter law. His obstinacy forced us to cast him from the compact sworn as surety for Mankind’s protection.’ A chill breeze that harried her this way and that on an unsteady course towards the stair, the discorporate Sorcerer softened. ‘Your staunch courage delayed today’s deadly breakdown. In fact, you held out far longer than Asandir believed anyone could.’
A sob ripped from Daliana’s raw throat, seized short by the wrench of cracked ribs. ‘Was there never hope, Sorcerer? I’ve served only to fail?’
‘Every hope survives, surely. You are alive, with no hurt to your body that cannot mend.’ Limned in murk through a tunnel of flame, the landing loomed ahead like the gates of Sithaer’s inferno. Kharadmon wrapped her battered form in a bracing draught that hastened her unsteady steps towards the tap-room. ‘Don’t short-change yourself. Your best years lie ahead.’
Tough enough not to dwell on self-pity, Daliana scrubbed blood and tears from her pummelled face. Sparks nettled her skin like flung acid. Reduced to a hobble by wrenched joints and bruises, she threaded her way through the vacated trestles, and took bewildered stock of her wrecked resources. Her scorched leathers were torn and scoured with holes. The rucked bodice cinched by her belt dangled, laceless, with the grimed rags that remained of her blouse unfit to cover her nakedness.
Kharadmon mimicked a polite cough. ‘For your dignity, have I leave?’
‘Too little, too late.’ But her resilient spirit did not stand on pride. Her disconsolate nod gave permission.
Time stopped. The fringed tongues of fire that chewed through the tavern’s exposed beams froze in place, while the clogged air momentarily brightened. Undone by heart-ache, beaten and sore, Daliana became enveloped in tenderness that dissolved her benighted distress. The torments that plagued her abused body melted. Soothed down by a tingle that sang through her bones, her battered frame knitted as though touched by light. Her purpled abrasions subsided. Remade, uplifted, she cried for the sorrows which ran deeper than hurt to the flesh. ‘I should have known better than to try to hold him!’
‘Perhaps. Though in truth, you were overfaced.’ Kharadmon added in gentle reproof, ‘Behold your worth, lady.’ His airy conjury combed through the ravaged room and borrowed substance from the abundance of wreckage. Respun, the essence of ash became transformed to shining threads coloured robin’s egg blue, and bright gold, and cinnamon. These replaced her torn linen, and re-clothed her form with artful abandon.
Daliana yelped with surprise, regaled in jacquard silk and tinselled brocade fine enough to bedazzle a queen. A girdle of stamped velvet held sheaths for her throwing knives, and the laced boots on her feet felt sturdy enough to withstand hard use in the stirrups. More, her singed hair was restored, its lustrous length twisted into filigree loops and fixed with fine pins, each strung with a jaunty pearl dangled on tiny gold chains.
‘Are you quite done?’ Daliana lifted an irritable hand to yank out the ball-room jewellery. When a rankled breeze batted off her contempt, the effrontery sparked her to outrage. How paternal, how male, to presume her distress could be tamed by flattery and vain fripperies.
‘I’ve al
ways preferred lavish gifts to adorn a beautiful woman,’ mocked the Sorcerer, unrepentant. The illusion of his person shimmered into view: lean, dark, and dapper in emerald silk, he flicked out lace cuffs with wicked delight and bowed before her like a courtier. ‘Are you not impressed?’ The breeze mocked her outrage with buoyant laughter, while his last gallant’s flourish unfurled a plain brown cloak overtop her extravagant finery.
Then, impervious to the rich slap he deserved, the discorporate Sorcerer snuffed out his dandified image. His pretentious levity vanished. ‘Fair as you are, I don’t act on a whim. Unruffle your feathers and look straight ahead.’
Beyond the smashed doors, the bucket brigade had abandoned their effort to quench the wild fire that consumed the tavern. Rather than address the risk the blaze posed to the adjacent shops on the thoroughfare, the gathered mob chanted the canon’s litanies in rapturous praise to the Light. Still more joined the packed surge towards the dock side. Upended by the awe-struck excitement sown in the divine avatar’s wake, young men and craftsmen abandoned their tools to fight for the Light’s glory and take down the Spinner of Darkness.
To the watch-dog spirit attached as her escort, Daliana asked, heart-broken, ‘Why did this happen? What evil design pushes Lysaer to embrace this rampant destruction?’
Kharadmon deferred her inquiry, terse. ‘Pull up your hood. Let me see you away from here.’
She bundled her frown beneath nondescript wool, too stubborn to budge without answers. ‘My liege mentioned a curse laid on him by s’Gannley. Did a past entanglement tied to my ancestry spur him over the edge?’
‘No.’ The flick of a gust urged her to quit the unstable shambles of the burning tap-room. ‘Lysaer recalled the old sentence leveled against him generations ago for his criminal execution of Tysan’s caithdein. You know Desh-thiere’s curse will use any expedient? But this time, his demise was created. Lysaer fell to the wiles of the Koriathain.’