‘Because there’s no truth to the claim,’ Sidir said, twining thong with near-mystical patience. ‘Otherwise, I would be dead, and all of my people along with me. Arithon’s acts spared our clans at Tal Quorin. Etarra’s attackers fell in harsh numbers, but the same terms that killed them granted survival for two hundred lives on our side. Town-born will overlook that accomplishment. Yet a fact ignored by the cause of the victor cannot be refuted for convenience.’
‘Why not?’ challenged Fionn. ‘A death is a death. A thousand cut down to save one is too steep a price, no matter whose sons filled the grave-sites.’
Sidir yanked his knots tight, in no hurry. But his eyes were steel as he glanced up. ‘Should such townsmen have invaded the free wilds to start with? Whose warmongering choice brought them on us, but Lysaer’s? Why raise Etarra to arms against the pledged terms of the compact? There are boundaries set to curb merchant trade, and town factions who desire them broken.’
‘Your old ways, maintained at what cost to humanity?’ pressed Fionn Areth, unsatisfied. ‘Should anyone die for a law that’s defunct? Your people prey on the roadways as thieves, and no more Paravians inhabit Athera!’
‘I can guarantee that they do,’ Sidir said. ‘Or I would not be here, engaged in a theoretical debate over a justice our royal lineages have pledged to protect.’
Fionn Areth hooted, and pounced. ‘You can’t know for certain!’
‘I haven’t the vision,’ Sidir agreed. ‘Not to gainsay the Fellowship Sorcerers, whose binding purpose preserves the old races’ line of survival. The crown our Teir’s’Ffalenn must uphold is the fulcrum that maintains the care-taking balance between human need and the mystery that nurtures a living Paravian awareness. The trade-guilds have long overstepped charter rights! Clan heritage serves the free wilds, and the high kingship is the marriage of human flesh with the creative matrix of Athera’s existence. For this, Prince Arithon was acknowledged by Fellowship hands to carry the terms of our fealty.’
‘His defence claimed your family,’ Fionn Areth bore in. ‘For the sake of an abstract you’ve never experienced, I want to know why don’t you hate him.’
‘But I do,’ Sidir contradicted. Raw flame licked the bowstaff. The heat-dried sinew popped and crackled, cranked under the stresses of tightening.
Through the shocked pause, Fionn Areth should have crowed. Instead, he gaped beyond speech.
Sidir turned the bow. The fresh weals on his wrists shining with scar tissue, he stated, ‘I hate his Grace for each of my beloved kinsfolk, gone from this life for his defence. For all of the times he deserted our clans. Left us on the run from the knives of the scalpers, who feed on trade greed and Alliance corruption. Who despoil our clan women and innocent girls under the dog-pack brutality that infests the head-hunters’ leagues.’
‘But –’
‘Such events are not myth!’ Sidir interrupted. Into Fionn Areth’s disbelieving, set teeth, he said more. ‘My sister was gutted and raped, at Tal Quorin. My aunt in Fallowmere, staked out on cold ground, while eight men with league badges took turns forcing her till she died, bleeding. My mother, I won’t further defile.’ He added, ‘I don’t weep in your presence! Those I loved dearest are quite beyond pain. Now, their justice relies on the merciful rule of my prince, who ought to be crowned at Ithamon.’
Fionn Areth fired back, his frustration ringing within the closed chamber. ‘And was his Grace’s mercy what brought down the mountain upon twenty-five thousand, at Dier Kenton Vale?’
‘His sore desperation, entrapped by the geas of Desh-thiere,’ Sidir responded, unmoved. ‘I lived that horror. It still threads my dreams, for the dread power contained by that one, fragile vessel. How fragile, I realized. My hand was one that helped shore up the cracks.’
‘Then you acknowledge a crime was committed against nature, and for naught but cold-blooded mass murder,’ accused Fionn Areth, while Talvish, cat still, attended the scene in braced stillness. ‘What cause can justify cruelty on that scale?’
‘No cause. Ever. And for Vastmark, no false cloth of reason at all! Both parties were cursed. They engaged by consent. Arithon, to defang a war host that had nowhere to turn, except to target his friends. Lysaer, to destroy one man that a geas-borne belief posed as his arch-enemy. In defeat, the s’Ilessid salved his losses through conceit. He claimed to speak for Ath Creator. In victory, my Teir’s’Ffalenn wept for the wounding, arisen from the flawed nature of his convictions.’ Sidir lifted the bow frame away from the fire and tested the wrap with quick fingers. ‘Our hatred is easy, for each time his Grace’s strength lets us down, and for the clay that reminds us he shares our humanity.’
Fionn Areth stared, speechless, though always with him, such deflated pauses were brief. ‘If you knew Arithon might commit such atrocities again, why didn’t you kill him?’
‘Best ask why I love him,’ Sidir answered back, and looked up with his features stripped naked.
The sheer, caring depth of adult vulnerability caught Talvish’s breath in his throat. He resisted the raw urge, to grab the glib grass-lander’s shoulder and shake him. Though his swordsman’s instincts cried out to act, before lancing such pain caused explosion, he understood why Arithon had picked this steadfast clansman as his personal spokesman. Fionn Areth must decide for himself: whether to sort out his conflicted loyalties, standing upon his own merits. Or whether to cashier respect and ask Sidir to lay bare his soul in a way that must open him down to the viscera.
‘I see that I can’t lean on another man’s values,’ the Araethurian declared, sounding shaken. The Companion’s raw courage, exposed at close quarters, had seared off his protective bluster. ‘Direct principles count,’ he finished, subdued. ‘Since the features I wear weren’t ever my own, I’m caught in the turbulence sown by your crown prince.’
‘That’s why Arithon insists that you matter,’ Sidir agreed. ‘And why he fears most for your safety. Do you find his wish to safeguard you so hard?’
‘Yes, since the price is my freedom!’ The Araethurian slammed to his feet. ‘I don’t have the option of choosing my way! Even if, s’Brydion tempers forbid, my sympathies lie with your enemies.’
‘And do they, in fact?’ Sidir asked, tautly poised. ‘Is self-honesty what you’re afraid of? Are we thrashing out Arithon’s short-falls, or yours?’
‘Mine, of course,’ snapped Fionn Areth with venom. ‘The duke runs a clan stronghold. Should I invite another six months, shut in with the rats in Alestron’s dungeon?’ The goatherd stomped out. Shed fleece from his gambeson whirled on the disturbed air, sucked in by the draw of the hearth and lit to sparks in the updraft.
‘Volatile,’ said Talvish. ‘But too right.’ He stretched, unkinking the knots in his shoulders. ‘If Arithon’s the criminal posed by the Alliance, that young man can’t leave without losing his neck over principle.’
‘Well, he has got a spine underneath all the muddle.’ Sidir covered the pannikin of hot glue. Thoughtfully fatalist, he hefted his afternoon’s handiwork under his critical eye. ‘Like this bow, and choice wood, we won’t know if yon goatherd shoots straight or contrary until the moment he’s strung and tested against the mark.’
Talvish himself did not relish patience. ‘Then let us all hope that the moment occurs when no one around him is caught under pressure.’
The clansman gathered his lean frame and stood. Across the reddish glow of the flames, grey eyes met green in a moment of locked understanding. ‘You’ll keep the watch with me?’
‘Always,’ said Talvish, quite aware that the subject was no longer the double, but the unbroached burden of confidence this liegeman had carried since Vastmark. ‘You know Arithon’s coming?’
Sidir nodded. ‘In that way, Elaira’s infallible.’ He offered his arm for the wrist clasp that sealed amity. ‘Heed my fair warning, once my liege arrives. If he loses the nasty edge on his tongue, by that sign you’ll know he’s endangered.’
The new moon came and went, which heralded
the month of late autumn. And as Selkwood’s wizened seeress had foretold, the hour arrived for departure. Informed by the uncanny tingle that raked through his bones and warm flesh, Kyrialt s’Taleyn tossed off his sleeping furs. He sat up, aware that Glendien had arisen ahead of him. No secret escaped her. The innate talent of her clan lineage sensed pending change like a weathercock.
‘I’ve packed already,’ she declared from the dark, her voice charged to vibrant excitement.
‘Packed?’ Kyrialt stood, the bite of cold air heightening his jangled nerve ends. ‘Woman, what on Ath’s earth does a man take to war, beyond his trained skill and his weapons?’
‘Medicinal herbs, salts for physics, willow bark, and wild rose hips,’ Glendien retorted. ‘My bundles will ease hurt and spare lives, while you clean your sheathed weapons more often for rust in a siege.’ She sounded too smug, that sickness from crowding was more likely than steel to bring the duke’s troops to their knees.
‘That’s presuming without Bransian’s hot-headed temper, to sit when he’d rather be fighting.’ Kyrialt padded across the chill lodge tent and began dressing at speed, as a scout would do, by rote touch.
‘That’s presuming,’ Glendien retorted, dead crisp, ‘that your Teir’s’Ffalenn’s not a fit match for bullish entitlement.’
Kyrialt laughed. ‘The pair are hell-bound to lock horns. Shall we wager how soon?’
‘Rough sport,’ said his wife. ‘You’re actually guessing how long it takes for s’Brydion wit to learn how to corner the gad-fly.’
‘Or us, for that matter.’ For everything had changed, since the night in the King’s Grove. Kyrialt belted on the boiled-hide tunic he kept for hunting amid winter briar. As he reached for his arms, he found Glendien’s hands there, ahead of him.
‘Mine, the wife’s honour, husband.’ She did not have to ask which blade to gird on him. The sword with the ancestral inset of Shand would not be carried afield to Alestron. The plain steel would go, and the baldric with the carved bosses. As Shand’s gift of honour, the High Earl’s son went, pledged under the Crown of Rathain. The farewells to friends and kinsfolk had been said, in private tears and bitter-sweet celebration. Kyrialt sat on a stool made of stag’s horns, while the agile fingers of the woman he loved bound his dark hair into the pattern of the s’Taleyn clan braid. After, he arose and threw on his cloak, then snatched the moment, while she handled the fastenings of hers, to steal the kiss he preferred to welcome the morning.
They left his lodge tent together and stepped into the windless dark. Fuzzed stars shone through the scudding clouds that would bring drizzling rain before dawn-light. Kyrialt followed Glendien, past the banked ash of the camp’s central fire and the skeletal frames of the drying racks. They slipped through the bounds observed by the sentries, and exchanged wrist clasps with the outlying scouts. No one asked awkward questions. Everyone accepted that Kyrialt’s destiny took him from Shand. The chosen path led away from the picket lines, since he and Glendien would not be travelling mounted. A departure from Selkwood, with the marker stones roused, bespoke the power of a Fellowship Sorcerer.
‘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 temp
er 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.