'He'll call on Davien,' Kyrialt surmised, the saw-tooth edge of his trepidation passed beyond onlooking earshot.
Glendien's anticipation did not abate, or the hamper of herbs slow down her electrified eagerness. Sure of foot, and winding down-slope towards the willow groves flanking the river-bank, she admitted what her hunter's gift told her. 'The Sorcerer's already waiting.'
Kyrialt frowned. 'You trust him too easily, not knowing his motives.'
Yet the wife always relished encounters that promised uncertain danger. 'Predictability's boring.' Glendien slid through the last, screening trees, and bent to unlace her soft boots. 'Best strip if you don't want wet clothing.'
'Might have warned me we'd wade before I was clad,' Kyrialt groused, unhooking a thorn from his sleeve.
Glendien snorted. 'If I'd done that, we'd still be abed, gorgeous man, with no cold water to pucker your bollocks.'
'I'll watch what else puckers and take full advantage,' he threatened, peeled down to the skin. Roughened with gooseflesh, he wrapped his shed mantle over his weapons and tossed leathers and shirt across his powerful shoulders.
Then, for her insolence, he reached out and snatched, piled bundles and all, and hauled his wife backwards and kissed her. Glendien elbowed him off, spluttering with laugher. 'Randy young spike!'
They plunged into the river side by side. Gasped as the chill slapped into warm flesh and swirled without mercy, waist deep. Selkwood was not touched by frosts before winter. Still, the brisk nights braced the current that eddied and lapped at their groins. Over mud bottom and slippery stones, the couple breasted the channel. Their shuddering breaths hissed through their clamped teeth and cooled all merry impulse for dalliance.
They emerged from the shallows onto Stag's Islet, a narrow spit snagged with flowering weeds that flooded in the lush spring. Through autumn's low water, the herds of dun deer grazed the verges and locked horns in clattering rut. A confluence of flux lines crossed the low rise, magnified by the watercourse. There, on the snag of a lightning-struck pine, the silhouette of an eagle hunched against star-silvered mist.
'Davien. I told you.' More thrilled than afraid, Glendien pushed through the summer's dried reeds and melted into the shoreside coverts. 'Hurry,' she whispered. 'His Grace won't be far behind us.'
'He won't like your wanton eyes, spying,' Kyrialt chided. Yet he followed her into the brush to dry off out of sight in the darkness.
To Glendien's disappointment, Prince Arithon did not wade, half-naked, across the black water. He approached from the north, dark hair soaked from a swim, and in stinging command of his dignity. He wore briar-scarred leathers: the same ones used for the hunting excursions that had provided fresh game for two fortnights. The chase had hardened him. His fit tread made no sound. If his grooming was raffish, his linen was clean, the bow at his shoulder replaced by Alithiel's hung sheath, and the fleece bundle of his lyranthe. He also carried the gifted black cloak, draped over the crook of his forearm. Starlight glinted, thin as flecked ice, over silver-thread borders and fastenings.
As his light step brought him under the pine snag, the eagle unfurled massive wings. Form and feathers dissolved as the Sorcerer alighted, erect on two legs as a man. His very presence diminished the night. Taller than Arithon, and mantled in velvet trimmed with edging of spotted lynx, Davien towered. Tumbled hair licked over his shoulders, and his chiselled demeanour showed laughter.
'What does the cat do, but land on its feet?' he opened as informal greeting. 'I see that you've mustered the strength for the challenge you've chosen to face at Alestron.'
Arithon sustained the subsequent, measuring stare. 'The time's come to ask. I need help with the crossing.'
'Said is given,' Davien agreed, 'provided you know that your passage comes at a price.'
Amid the streaming tissue of mist, Arithon stood without flinching. "The lesson that dogs every choice in this life?'
'Until you receive the clear joy in the gift, with the spirit in which birth was rendered.' Davien sobered, his moods ever volatile. 'I can get you inside of the citadel's walls. Don't depend on me, afterwards. I can't promise to be available on the fraught hour you need to escape.'
'Fair enough.' Arithon cocked his head to one side. Through the lisping rush of the Hanhaffin's current, he sounded the Sorcerer's abrasive presence. 'And the rest? You're too quiet'
Davien's tigerish smile could all but be felt. 'You won't be alone on this journey'
The embroidery on the folded cloak flared, to the catch in Arithon's breathing. 'I've lost my argument with Lord Erlien already. We don't agree that the best of his sons should be asked to come as my liegeman.'
'His first heir, and one more.' Davien's humour met s'Ffalenn temper headlong, and the silence turned suddenly caustic. 'You object?' The Sorcerer chuckled, then lifted his narrow ringed hand and beckoned the two lurkers out of the thicket.
'So does the lone wolf howl at the moon' snapped Arithon, run out of patience. If he expected Kyrialt's battle-firm tread, nothing prepared him for Glendien.
She swayed up, insouciant, and kissed his cold lips, then mocked his stiff posture, against her. 'Ever the bane in the blessing' she teased without an apology. 'Kyrialt's speechless. We can't wait to meet your enchantress.'
That woke Arithon's hilarity. 'I won't ask how you know, since her name's not been bandied as gossip.' To the fragrance wafted off her bundles, he gouged, 'You've brought simples? The tactic's unsporting, if there are sick babes, and you hoped such a bribe might wheedle Elaira's trust.' Before Glendien's flaming tongue could retort, or her irascible nails raked his cheek, he accosted the by-standing Sorcerer. 'Shall we relocate the catfight and show the watch at Alestron a surprise fit to startle them silly?'
'That's madness fit for a man with a death-wish' Kyrialt interjected. 'Since I'm the damnfool guarding your back, I'd prefer a more decorous entry.'
'We aren't decorous' said Arithon, still entrained on Davien, who stared back with sardonic, raised eyebrows. 'Nor do I think we'll be given the choice as we make our explosive appearance.'
'I would send a harbinger,' the Sorcerer corrected, 'but in fact, your arrival's expected.'
"The enchantress?' quipped Kyrialt, as entranced as his wife by the triumph, as the Prince of Rathain swore aloud.
Then the badinage ended. Davien offered his opened palms and commanded, 'Take hold of my hands.'
The instant went strange. As though perception split off from rational credibility, each of the three saw and felt no one else in the world but themselves, and the Fellowship Sorcerer, positioned opposite. As each, individually, received Davien's clasp, the misted night quiet of Stag's Islet up-ended.
Awareness shattered into a blaze of incandescent colour. Scalded, consumed, hurled into a current that unravelled logic, the mind stumbled. For Glendien and Kyrialt, the whirling dissolution hurled them into black-out oblivion.
Arithon, mage-trained, retained his centred balance. He was braced for the absence of bodily sensation, having travelled by transfer with Davien before this. The explosive vertigo took him, self-aware. Sustained by his knowing, innate right to be, Arithon rode, awake, upon the clear thread of his consciousness. He experienced the stretched moment that looped over what seemed the unshuttered eye of eternity: when a parabolic chamber of stone sealed him into the womb of the mountain that seated the Sorcerer's overarching access to power. A spark of light, falling, from Davien's turned palm, he sensed the spring of virgin water, rushing to meet the naked point of his spirit. That welling flow slid across a carved ring, sheeting over the intricate ciphers that freed the pulsed surge of lane energy.
For that fleeting instant, the mote of his being perceived more: the stark, yellow eye of a living awareness, coiled within the stilled earth. The bottomless black pupil lurked under the pool, enclosed by a shimmering iris.
Then the descending spark of himself splashed into the unruffled water. The impression that something watched fled away. While the chamber diss
olved into rainbows and the high, singing stream of the flux, Davien's mastery, unerring, transformed to an eagle and steered a swift passage onwards to the citadel.
* * *
The meadow of Alestron's high commons was empty, except for three cows, and a few grazing sheep, whose bells clanked in dissonance. Weather had scattered the ashes where Sidir had boiled his glue-pot. The dark hours past midnight were slipping towards dawn, while the low, scudding clouds that fore-promised rain dodged past winter stars, whose names were as music in spoken Paravian. Brisk wind off the Cildein flattened the grasses and sang over the cliff-walls fronting the estuary. The lone figure who waited braced against the gusts that streamered her braid and cloak.. The glamour that brought her past the sentries, unseen, had dispersed like the dew on a cobweb.
Elaira steadied the frisson that ruffled her nerves. Primed as she was with informed excitement, keen as talent could sharpen her senses, the moment still caught her, surprised. One second the darkened terrain was unoccupied. The next, a magnificent eagle swooped down and alighted before her. Then that form erased, and another replaced it, tall and straight and sardonically smiling. The fox-brush hair, with streaked white at the temples, tossed and tangled and snapped, in the breeze.
'Elaira, anient' Davien greeted, his smoky baritone and peculiar address unchanged from their former encounter. 'I deliver your prince, and with him, two others. You'll be given your moment to greet him, alone. His escort will follow, though you'll need to wake them. The journey will leave them unconscious.'
The enchantress had no chance for a response. Take my hands,' said Davien.
As she reached, his form shimmered. Not in any way that the senses could follow. Yet the fingers that closed over hers were not the peremptory grip of the Sorcerer's.
These hands, she knew, lean and beautifully slender.
She had but an instant to focus on Arithon's face: level with hers, and untamed by the sudden infusion back into warm flesh. No grace was given to savour the sight, or measure his new-found serenity.
His urgency swept her off balance, headlong. Despite sword and lyranthe, slung at his shoulder, he bundled her into his arms. His hair was still damp from his wash in a stream. His weathered clothes yet smelled of pine from Selkwood's majestic glades. The muscle beneath was coiled and fit, beyond her last memory from Halwythwood.
Elaira gasped, overcome by sheer pleasure. Made safe from the wind, she felt his fists lock amid the spilled warmth of her hair. The silver-and-black mantle draped over his forearm slipped from his grasp and fell free.
Arithon left the rich cloth in a heap. 'Beloved.' His kiss was all fire and longing and joy, exquisite with tender reunion.
She returned the greeting in cherished trust, held him close till his presence drowned reason. Stinging cold was forgotten. The rushed blood in her thundered, aroused to white flame. Nothing within the world's compass should spoil that. Not the fact that their love dared not be made consummate, nor the ominous truth, that his arrival must bring lethal mayhem. The sacrosanct promise he kept, for Earl Jieret, meant that other, more personal oaths were going to be rent without shame.
Late Autumn 5671
First Audience
Dakar chose not to frequent the whores, despite the dragging idle hours caused by the Alliance campaign. The marked change was noticed. Gossip spread the sulky complaint from the rouged lips of an abandoned favourite, that he was grown inept. Others, more kindly, sighed and supposed that last year's bout of bingeing, to mislead Koriathain, had soured his taste for the flesh-pots.
A more sombre truth chained him: the torrid comfort of doxies no longer thwarted his errant talent. The dismal change stayed, since two Fellowship Sorcerers had commandeered him to share the ward-sealing at Rockfell. Dakar snatched what indolent ease he still could; grumbled and drank, since Alestron's old fortress was cheerlessly grim while besieged. The tension afflicting the beleaguered populace and the latent charge guarding the ancient stonewalls sparked the wild surge of his talents. Too often he wakened, reeling sick, his senses burned by impending prescience.
'Mayhem like that fairly wrecks a man's peace,' he groused to the available barmaids.
Alcohol haze bought him a forgetful peace, until short-falls in the citadel put an end to all sotted carousing. Sobriety risked him to an uncontrolled plunge into the tides of precognizant vision. The Mad Prophet fought to stay wakeful. Night after night, he crammed himself into the company of Bransian's off-duty soldiers.
Often, the hour before dawn found him dicing in a cramped, corner tavern, loud with the coming and going of men. They came in from their watch-posts to warm out the cold, or for camaraderie before turning in to their barracks. Lean as scarred wolves, and jingling with weaponry, they elbowed for space on the benches, with Dakar's bulk a wadded, brown bolster wedged between broad shoulders armoured in chainmail.
That morning also, Mearn slipped in for the cards, a habit he used to sharpen his mind before assuming duty at sunrise. The siege had stripped off his fine cloth and lace cuffs. He came bearing full arms, belted over the oiled wool of a field surcoat. A long sword replaced his favoured rapier. Fitness pared his quick slenderness to vital flame, before which larger men cleared him a place at the trestle.
Rainy weather made the tap-room a dim cave. Candle-lamps on their chains flickered low. The windows were dark, still, filmed by the clogged air, redolent of sweaty fleece and damp steel. Dice rattled, and cards slapped and slid on worn wood, while the men soaked their hard, war-time biscuits in the onion broth that simmered the salted, jerked meat into palatable gruel. Noise reigned, but no drunkenness. The muscular bar-keeper rationed the beer, and defended his tap like a jackal.
As the hand-picked messenger lately arrived, Talvish shoved through the press. He dodged offers from friends to share a hot meal and declined the ale jack allotted to serving troops. His refusal drew notice: day on day of tight rations never quite eased the growl pinching anyone's belly. Urgency brought him to Dakar's hunched shoulder as the cast dice clattered across the nicked trestle. The veteran opposite whooped in triumph, while Mearn, grey eyes sharpened, peered over his card hand with inquiry.
Dakar's immersed concentration stayed deaf. He huffed over his losing throw like a walrus, his pungent curses unveiling the fact that his gambling stake involved forfeiting two chits for beer.
Talvish bent and spoke into the frizzle of hair at the Mad Prophet's ear. 'Your Koriani enchantress has guests!'
The swearing intensified, changed target to malign a black-headed feather-wit, whose folly should favour the Fatemaster's list as a suicide.
Mearn's rapacious interest perked up. 'Is the news made official?' he called through the racket.
Blond hair rinsed by the sultry spill of the lamps, Talvish turned his bare head. 'Not yet. Just till I go on watch and report. You'll have that much delay, and no more. That's if you're minded to act, and not scramble to keep your safe distance.'
Mearn would outrace that storm, either way. His shyster's instincts disposed of his game. Before the cup passed to collect his due winnings, he rounded the trestle, slick as an eel through the pack of rough men and the inveigling of the loose women. He reached Talvish as Dakar heaved to his feet, disrupting the patrons on either side like the rolling surge of an earthquake.
Through the hubbub of oaths, ducking fists from those jostled, Mearn broached, 'Where's the forest-bred liegeman?'
Talvish fended off a hothead's rash knife. A wedged knot in the swirl, hell-bent on a mission, he breasted the crowd towards the doorway. 'Sidir's off keeping young Jeynsa in check.'
'She's not been informed?' Dakar said, his flush anxious.
'Won't be,' Talvish answered, and banged into the street, with the pair, fat and thin, at his heels in matched haste.
Outside, the raw wet cast a pall over pending daybreak. Rain slapped, wind-driven, to sting exposed flesh. Talvish finished his statement through clenched teeth. 'Not first thing, at least.' He grinned, too aware that
the spirited girl would rebel once she found herself leashed. 'I'll keep the lid on Fionn Areth, as I can. Catch him up and assign him down to the Sea Gate on my way past the barracks.'
Mearn applauded the foresight. 'If Bransian doesn't get his muscle in first, he'll be keen to chop royal bollocks for treason.'
Dakar puffed a warning, hunched against the gusts that pummelled the cobbles in torrents. 'Don't expect his Grace will give ground for protocol, or bow before Bransian's authority.'
'We're kites at that blood-bath, useless except to clean up the carrion afterward,' Talvish said, grim. They had reached the cross-roads, where he must part company.
Mearn dared not stall, even to accommodate Dakar. Irked as a cat as the wet soaked him through, the duke's youngest brother stretched his lean legs, and sprinted.
* * *
Practised at suspicion, the s'Brydion lodged inauspicious state visitors in a defensible drumkeep with one narrow entry. The access bridge overhung a ravine. Rain transformed the spring-fed sluice in the moat to a torrent that jetted seaward as an air-borne waterfall. Who came and went passed the eyes of four sentries, on routine watch at the wall. If, by Talvish's tactful phrasing, the enchantress Elaira had guests, and the duke's men were left none the wiser, then someone had used arcane means on arrival to blindside Alestron's security.
"That's sure to bristle Bransian's hackles!' snapped Mearn, surprised to discover the stout prophet had matched the pace and kept up. 'If Talvish delays his report, he's a dead man. Which means your prince better have something besides talk to launch this citadel off the defensive.'