Elaira raised the black cloak over Arithon. Endured the moment, unflinching, while the widow stretched out in cat comfort against his limp frame.
As unsettled to uphold the part that was asked of her, Glendien kept her insouciant courage. 'Do your utmost, enchantress. If his Grace will answer the cry of your need, just bring him back to us, singing!'
Elaira masked her face in cold hands. A deep breath lent no steel to fraught nerves. Tears at this pass would not lift the uncertainty: that if Dakar's hand failed her, or if the forces unleashed by the high flux at Athir burned through every herbal decoction, an unspeakable prize might be conceived of tonight's posited union. The most dire precautions might not be enough to wrest the chance-born possibility of a child away from the Koriani Matriarch. But earnest search had uncovered no better option: for Arithon's life's sake, Elaira must finish the frightening course she had charted.
'Parrien?' she summoned, too exposed for false calm. 'Put out the torch, if you please, and come forward.'
For the reckoning demanded that she lie down in trance, then gather the resource to spiritwalk. The surgeon's link, framed by the order's seniors to map internal damage for healing, would then be engaged to fuse her awareness into tuned rapport with Glendien's body. Hours might pass, in that altered state. No one could map the fraught danger she trod. If survival relied on her partnered effort to recall Arithon's strayed spirit, someone must keep her vacant flesh warm throughout the arcane transference.
Parrien s'Brydion arrived before her, embarrassed, but prepared to return the kindness he owed her. 'Although merciful grace! I am risking my married skin. Promise! Again! That you'll gag Glendien's tongue and keep this night's work from the twitching ears of my wife.'
Elaira found laughter to lighten his scowl as she allowed her shivering form to be wrapped in his mantle and cradled in his brawny arms. 'Should I have asked Dakar to watch your fresh hands?'
Last sight, against stars, before closing her eyes, the brief flash of teeth through wire beard: Parrien grinned, his bass rejoinder rumbling the chest pillowed under her ear. 'That's the fox set to guarding the hen-house, forbye. Like the mythical silkie, just be back in your own skin before dawn. No pretty woman stays in my lap when the need calls me to stand up and piss!'
Winter 5671
Concatenation
The world turned, between breaths. The moonless spin of the stars seemed to hang suspended, momentarily sliced out of time. Farthest south, in Sanpashir, the same hush that gripped the headland at Athir also suffused the darkened desert. There, the revered who was Eldest sat amid the men of her council. Her listening patience sensed the closing cipher Elaira entrained: the glyph that permitted the spirit of one to enter into another, done as an act of shared harmony. The working was recognized from a rite her tribal people had known for uncounted millennia; and a secret that had been stolen away, from an origin that long preceded the diminished enclave now resident on Athera.
Yet the woman that an Araethurian seeress had once called Fferedon-li - the same also spoken to become the affi'enia forecast by Ath's adepts - as Koriani enchantress, she who was also named anient by Fire Hands did not impose the rogue sigil of forced mastery, as taught by her thieving order.
The freely made gift of compliant consent raised the ancient cipher to its original template. The same peaceful melding, formed in sacred ritual by the Biedar initiates to commune with the wise of their departed ancestry, now became repeated upon the Paravian grand focus at Athir.
The elder in service to Mother Dark's Chosen cried out and clapped wrinkled hands. 'Attend on this hour of the new moon! Our part draws nigh as hope for the wandering spirit becomes reborn. She who speaks for his heart must not fail! Or the gifted talent her beloved bears will not waken again in this world.'
* * *
Elaira reopened her eyes to cold darkness, clothed in warm flesh that was not her own. She steadied herself. Strove not to recoil from the unfamiliar comparison, or reject the vivid awareness of transfer. Discipline let her sink into accepting immersion. Glendien's presence was there, but cocooned in serene unconsciousness. The opened channels for senses and touch recorded her earth-bound surroundings. The beat of the surf on the headland and the whisper of winter wind were the same as ever they had been. Yet the trained reach of initiate talent that extended beyond breathing form was Elaira's, the nuance of her spirit brought across intact for the vital purpose of healing. There, she was not disoriented. Her innate sensitivity thrummed to the pulse of raw lane force, coursing across the inlaid agate pattern that charged the focus circle beneath her. Beyond eyesight, she knew the man wrapped in the cloak at her side was the bone-and-blood form of her own best beloved.
Arithon. Urgency for him eclipsed other thought, made exigent as no movement met her. His fractious embrace did not welcome her in. Instead, torpid flesh absorbed her living heat, slack limbs and stilled face unresponsive. Elaira endured that grief, as she must. Forlorn, not disheartened, she rejected fear, that their paired strength could be rendered powerless!
The unearthly rapture that drew Arithon away left him deafened to tactile caresses. Mere animate reflex could not bridge that gap or reach his unbounded experience. To recall his consciousness, the ephemeral matrix must be redrawn, then sparked to rekindle his self-awareness. Glendien's form did not matter: the drift in his subtle interface was etheric. Elaira assayed the challenge, shed the herb-scented robe and tucked naked under the silk-lining of Davien's mantle.
Come what may, she steadied to sound the attenuated layers of Arithon's aura. Where Dakar would have gathered the lane flux from the land, then commanded in summons to refire his lapsed will through blood oath and crown obligation, Elaira eschewed overriding demands. Heart and mind, she began with the whispered intimacy born of her consummate love. That terrain, Glendien's fair charms and stern heritage did not own the power to replicate. Where a stranger must wake sensuality by rote, Elaira stitched a treasured and beautiful tapestry, gilded by partnered experience.
The hand laced through Arithon's wind-tumbled hair also knew the charge of his tempestuous passion. The features she cradled with poignant care carried the more vivid recall: of his opened eyes, trained in adoration upon her. If she ran her finger-tips so, down cheek and neck, then over his chest and across his vulnerable flank, with precision she knew how he preferred her touch. Where he responded to firmness and warmth, and how he shivered, when tendered in lightness. How, engaged in resonant harmony, his initiate focus released, undone in abandon until he became dazed by raptured delirium. She recalled the sweet moment of his hitched breath, as he gathered himself for shared pleasure. Ached for the delicious, unbearable pressure, while he shuddered and laughed, raised to match what was freely given.
Always, he reclothed that stunned flood of sensation into a masterful poise: let the fiercely held flame of his ardour fly majestically wild to captivate her surrender in turn.
She had aft his murmured words of endearment; had joined into seamless rapport with the thundering force of his presence, whirled at one with the lane flux in Halwythwood.
Memories the spellbinder could never recast, except at second hand, pallid reflection. If that searing, grandiloquent spiral had been smashed short of explosive requital, the languid nights Elaira spent in Arithon's embrace at Alestron had rewoven their explicit love into a matchless mtimacy. Each moment, and each remembered caress kept, as jewel-bright, in a setting of untarnished tenderness.
Tonight's rite would not breach that trust. If Arithon woke, he would feel, first of all, the inviolate symmetry of union unbroken between them.
Now, the drastic absence of his awareness became her most daunting obstacle. The template Elaira asked his flesh to rebuild denied her the gift of his reassurance. This hour of congress could not cherish, as honey, the tactile joy of senses tuned into concert. Her welling tears must not pain him! Though she felt no trembling, exquisite tension answer the sounding board of his skin, her intent dared not waver. She st
roked him over, each fingertip certain in familiar sequence. No matter how one-sided the touch, she persisted, listening with fervent intensity. Seeking, she invited. Provocative, she extended her healer's awareness and reached, striking always to raise his reactions, but in the higher octaves of spirit light. To succeed, she had to arouse what extended beyond nerve and flesh.
'Dearest, my own,' she whispered.
Words evoked vibration, even though Arithon's displaced attention ranged beyond human hearing. The reverent appreciation described by her hands enacted a dance that also - she knew him! - spoke past his reflexive defences. His living memory, she wove as a net, until her remembrance stretched the cry of true partnership into the realm of exalted creation. The suspenseful caresses were hers, plied with a love that made her regard as the mirror to reflect his very self.
Immaculate concentration steered her, until no exquisite part of him was left cold. Hands laced through his, pressed against his warmed flank, she reached farther, to gather the name of him. Her own faculties raised to preternatural clarity, she let her pitched adoration lace over and through him. Humility mapped his being in all his splendour: embraced, but did not try to bridle the essence of what could never be tamed. She kissed him, a kindling call beyond words, forged out of her matchless devotion. As the flesh she wore for him blazed for his presence, entrained with the light that was spirit, the flux current honed through the focus at Athir infallibly imprinted her fused emotion. As mate to crown prince, the lane force flared up, called to answer the flame of its rightly tuned match. . . .
* * *
The dazzling shift in the flux streamered outward. Like the opening note struck from a taut string, raised power laced like ephemeral lightning the length of the seventh lane. Dakar saw the heightened coruscation through mage-sight; felt the prickling surge lift the hair at his nape. His awed gasp breathed hope. 'Ath above! She's called the land's current into response. Do you sense the thrill? The very ground underneath us is quickening!'
Parrien s'Brydion dared not reply. Amid winter dark, a cut shadow defined by the gleam of the stars, he cradled the enchantress's vulnerable flesh in his sheltering arms. Her courageous endeavour had to succeed. Else he would forfeit his chance for reprieve from the charge of a crown prince's murder. On Arithon's life hung his family's survival, a grace he had not held the forethought to grasp in the furious moment his sword had struck home.
Nothing must upset the spiralling song, or alter the delicate balance. The first coil of the mystery had been unleashed. Latent charge flooded the focus. The agate inlay flickered, then brightened, unveiling to sight the living pulse within the Paravian pattern. Elaira's challenge was fully joined, no avenue left for retreat.
Chilled by his knowledge as Fellowship spellbinder, Dakar trembled before growing fear. Failure now would not forgive a mistake. The grand union Elaira strove to recall must retrace without error the experience broken off in the oak glade at Halwythwood. One slip would bring chaos to burn human flesh. Nor could any protection he offered deflect the impact in consequence. The building stream of the flux woke his seer's gift, as the forces entrained by crown heritage raised the pulse of Athera's electromagnetics. The Mad Prophet felt the warning sting through his feet: sensed the hook snag the weave, as the clean emanation from Athir flagged the distant notice of unfriendly interests.
Prime Selidie had servers busy at Telzen. Their circle was tracking the lane tide, aware, and poised for a hostile counter-thrust. Should the raised chord of grand confluence command the conception of a royal heir, the Matriarch lurked to seize full advantage, and snatch her prized stake on the outcome.
Against such betrayal, Talvish's shining loyalty guarded Elaira's south quadrant. There, Dakar acknowledged a choice that outstripped ceremonial precaution. If the Warden at Althain was also entrained, the spellbinder made to stand as the Fellowship's formal witness pleaded by every power of grace! Let him not become the available instrument, hurled into the onrushing breach . . .
* * *
Far southward on the black sands of Sanpashir, the circle of tribesmen led by the crone who defended Mother Dark's Chosen also noted the sparkling leap as the flux line at Athir blazed active. The shaping event matched the weave of a prophecy, guarded in hope for millennia.
As Eldest, she gave her signal command, whisper soft as the breeze. 'We stand at the crossing. Begin.'
The men in her service accepted the charge, handed down from a history beyond living memory. Into the silence of pending event, poised on the stretched wings of destiny, they blended their gifted voices in song. The power they wound into patterned tonality braided a knowledge that predated language. With gentle reverence, the Biedar elders framed their appeal to summon the wise of their ancestry from beyond the veil. The delicate notes they sustained woke a resonance vivid as unearthly fire. At Athir, their uncanny working caused the inlaid agate focus to echo in subtle refrain.
Sound melded with light, brought to bear through the cipher Elaira had used, unwitting, that harked back to the Biedar tribe's origins . . .
* * *
The crux rested on her. She held the focal point for all moving forces, immersed, single-minded, in shaping her love as the beacon for Arithon's recovery. No other thought touched her. Her will shone, as crystal. Rapt attention guided her forward. Her regard never left Arithon's features, or she would have seen other powers evoked by her outreach: would have shared the breathtaking cry of the miracle, as the Second Age wisps of Paravian ghosts flocked towards the blaze of the circle.
There, the shades of the past gathered, shining. Limned on the night air like pearlescent floss, came the horned majesty of past centaur guardians, feathered hooves, and tall torsos muscled. They carried the massive, dragon-spine horns slung upon stitched leather cross-belts. Silenced, arms folded, they towered above the diminutive grace of the sunchildren, who whirled, care-free, underfoot. Lost in time, left as a dazzling imprint, the merry dancers spun and leaped to the measures unreeled by the surf. Their joy raised emotion that could almost be sensed, though the ethereal peal of their crystalline flutes lay centuries removed from the present. Their wisped movement still held the echo of magic. The stone focus rang to an age-old renewal, from a time that could be yet again: when, as a burning, gold river of flame, the Riathan - the unicorns - might gallop in thundering herds to the summoning, manes tossing and polished horns gleaming.
Living bridge, they had been, to the cry of Ath's glory, free as wind to embody the wildest heart of the mystery.
While Dakar wept, and Parrien sat dumb-struck, and Talvish gripped Alithiel's sheathed hilt, Elaira, rushed dizzy, knew only Arithon. For her, the man sharing Davien's mantle seemed all that existed in the wide world.
She played the dark silk of his hair through her fingers. Kissed his lips with her own, lit to burning. 'Only you. Always. Beloved.'
She rewove the essence of him, strand by sure strand, each line of his body revisited under her hands. The surge of her arousal laid him under bold claim, until singing rapture must answer. She savoured by the ineffable music of touch, until his remembrance flooded the core of her: the spare fitness that shaped profound grace when he moved, as treasured as her own heart-beat. Breathed into the reverence of undefiled memory, Elaira poured herself through the high octaves as light. Warp through weft, she gathered him into a fabric of consummate caring. While the focus beneath magnified her emotion, then burgeoned from violet to gold, she wrapped Arithon in love, until the trembling cry of her unpartnered spirit reforged the lost flame of desire.
Beneath her, through reflex, his flesh hardened and rose. She answered him, delicate. Easy and slow, her tenderness whispered, skin on heated skin, fused into surrender past bearing. She eased herself deeper, then deeper, guided by spirit into the tranced clarity that tuned her awareness to the upper registers. The act of the body now a distant echo, she lifted the song to take flight in ecstatic melding. The path was well cherished. Her hands knew the way. He had given the keys: s
hown her how to access his vulnerable core, there to unwind the spiralling shield of his innermost defences. One by one, Elaira accessed the wide-opened flux points; let her own lowered barriers spark through the breach. Drowned under the blaze of exalted embrace, she laid her cheek on his. Kissed his face with her tears and allowed her twined energies, ever so gently, to enter his unguarded heart.
Around her, beneath her, in fixed star above, the lane forces at Athir ignited to actinic fire. At one with her beloved, Elaira was sheeted in fountains of light.
There, at the crux that promised hope and joy, she stilled and asked for his inner permissions - and almost lost her grip. The insistent drive towards reflexive completion nearly whirled her over the edge. Somewhere, Elaira found purposeful strength. She resisted. Cried out, then held back the consuming plunge, his and hers, that must not achieve climax unpartnered.
'Beloved. Arithon!' She gasped the fraught plea to reclaim his awareness. Past the bittermost drive of her need, through the crucible burn that onrushed towards confluence, she must endure, yet. Gentle the savage, animal onslaught, until she poised at the hanging point of trued balance. As the lane forces fired, then towered, then blazed, she had to sustain the drawn crest by herself. Withstand the tension, wait, and hold on. She must! Shuddering, wrung heart-stopped and breathless with splendour, she fought to stay entrained without snapping until the shattering shout of raised earthforce could ground the uncanny allure of the star song.