TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

  The high officials of Havish completed their ceremonial entry in an edged, uneasy hurry for the creature of black hair and bare honesty and desperate, devious subtleties that their court had let into its midst.

  * * *

  King Eldir's monarchy at Ostermere embarked on its fifth year of office scarcely groomed to the ways of sovereign rule, uncertain in its unity as the threads of a tapestry quarrelled over by its commissioners. Factions were emerging, but not settled. The young ladies who vied for their liege's affection had yet to be sorted into favoured candidates, though ones with no interest in scholarly discourse were relegated to the hopeful fringes. The high king's justice subscribed to Havish's first charter, written at the dawn of the Third Age by the Fellowship. His taxes were fair. But since the edict against clan raids, and the repeal of bounties that disbanded the headhunters' leagues, his authority had been sorely felt. Royal guardsmen patrolled the trade roads in force. Day labour from the cities was collected on strict schedule to restore the dilapidated paving, the slate for which dated from Paravian times. Slowly, the isolated settlements in Lanshire were being won back and brought to the order of law and commerce.

  On the central table in the king's close chamber, still subject to controversy, plans were being drawn to restore the clans from their centuries of wilderness exile. The ruins at Telmandir would be rebuilt for their habitation, and two lesser sites, reduced to weed-grown foundations that city records held no written name for, but that villagers and townborn alike still shunned in adamant dread.

  Into that stew of unresolved power, of disgruntled mayors and town trade interests all vying in cutthroat ambition to hold their pre-eminence against ancient clan claims to position, came the person of Arithon s'Ffalenn. Neutral though Havish remained on the issue of Desh-thiere's curse, no royal edict could quell nine years of wild rumour. The court might absorb Princess Talith's hot pride and Dakar's wild antics in stride. But this was the prince who had helped restore sunlight and set seals of captivity on the Mistwraith; who was sorcerer, and pirate, and mountebank and Masterbard, that had folk in four kingdoms raised to arms.

  The banquet to introduce his presence became a tilting ground of intrigue and curiosity. King Eldir received his gift of ten mares and a magnificent, silver-grey stallion to match them with the proper degree of cool courtesy. Known as he was for his indulgence in horse-flesh, he had a tenacious disposition for level thinking. Against Arithon's insouciance at the waterfront, Havish's liege exacted his grave style of revenge. He showed no favour, but settled in comfort on his dais and allowed his packs of courtiers to sate their voracious interests as they chose.

  Princess Talith could have warned of the mistake. She had observed, front and centre, nine years in the past, when Arithon had been presented to Etarra's pedigree elite as the prince sanctioned for Rathain's sovereignty. If he looked no day older for the years that had passed, his skill at evasion had sharpened. The finery he chose, then as now, was expensive, but simple to the point of severity. He wore no jewels; no leopard device. Rathain's royal colours of green, black, and silver commanded no aura of respect. He had grace, but no majesty, no overweening presence of muscular height or size. This caused the men, infallibly, to underestimate him. Their more observant women disregarded his slight stature, but looked instead at the way he filled his clothes.

  For their fawning, their advances, their unwelcome prying questions, they discovered too late the word, the fast quip, deployed in small malice like the sting of a briar masked in ivy. They found that Arithon could move through a crowd like shadow itself and shame his clumsier pursuit to embarrassment. Inside of three hours, his wishes were made clear. He invited no close acquaintance, no female company, no circle of wishful admirers. Of his gifts of shadow or his upbringing by mages on Dascen Elur beyond West Gate, he would make no display for entertainment.

  Eldir regarded the blunt failure of his retaliation and the stunning rebuff of his courtiers with his cleft chin parked on steepled fingers. His eyes stayed peat brown in thought. 'Your prince is dangerous,' he said in outright judgement to Sethvir. 'He has no heart in him at all.'

  'Do you think so?' The Warden of Althain moved veined knuckles and set a bread crust to one side, unmindful as his transition from vagueness left the ends of his beard in peril of wicking up gravy. 'I should venture, instead, what you see is a man too long hunted.'

  'My caithdein Machiel's not like that.' Eldir gestured with his meat knife as Arithon came to rest in a particularly dim corner, his back to a tapestry and his lips flat set in distaste.

  Sethvir's reply was very quiet. 'Your clan steward only stood guard for his life. This prince lies under siege for his spirit. Look, you shall see.' The Sorcerer crooked a hand and beckoned.

  Insignificant as the gesture appeared, Arithon saw. For the Warden of Althain, he came in willing, incongruous respect.

  'Ostermere's court has established no patronage,' said Sethvir as Arithon paused beneath the dais. 'The treasury's too scant and the trade ministers are uncultured. His Grace has no titled bard in residence.' Althain's Warden finished in a bracing rebuke that startled Eldir to attention. 'If you won't make conversation, I charge you by your office. You owe this court the music you were made and trained to share.'

  Arithon's carriage hardened to chiselled anger.

  In the face of s'Ffalenn rage, that a half-breath might trigger, Sethvir gave a smile that unstrung his victim for sheer pity. 'It hurts. I know this. I ask in Halliron's memory. This realm is neutral, and I believe the old master would not have your name be reviled on false grounds. You will play and leave nothing to the mercy of unkind hearsay.'

  To the king's page who hovered in mouse quiet to one side, the Sorcerer said, 'Fetch a lyranthe from the gallery.'

  Arithon accepted the beautiful, varnished instrument with a word for the boy, but no bow for the king, and scarcely a glance at Sethvir. He was shaking; no one close at hand could fail to notice. A stool was fetched. He sat mute and tuned each silvered string.

  This was not the exquisite instrument left under glass in the captain's cabin aboard his brigantine. Only Talith and Sethvir shared past knowledge of the other lyranthe, smashed in Etarra by Lysaer's hand in a fit of curse-driven violence. Here, where mishap might turn the best-laid plans, Arithon chose not to risk the treasure inherited from Halliron. The princess was aware he held rank as a bard, but had never before heard him play, like Eldir and his courtiers, the experience took her by storm.

  His skill tore their hearts, bled them white, and then bound them, effortless as wind, in haunting sweet resonance like coins thrown down through a rainfall. He made them cry tears for sheer joy. His was a talent not seen on Athera for more than a thousand years, Sethvir admitted through the salt-damp folds of his napkin. When at the last, silvered string was damped still by the bard, the court had been wooed and won over.

  They had seen the jewel in their midst in all its rare splendour, and no matter how thankless its cutting edge, nothing could make them give it up. Rathain's prince would have no surcease now, however he bristled and snapped.

  He snatched what refuge he could in rough sports.

  Hunting, hawking, matches at arms, then contests with bows on horseback: Arithon showed them a competence that humiliated, and won back his right to reserve. He handled a sword with a killing polish even the softest trade minister could respect. If Sethvir's intent was undone by a fraction, no one any longer risked baiting Rathain's prince to plumb the mettle of his intellect.

  Four days before solstice and the arrival of her ransom, Princess Talith perched in the gallery above the high king's main hall, looking down on candlelit tables and the tossing press of courtiers who languished replete from the feast. The air smelled of lilies, almond sauces and lavender, almost too cloying to breathe.

  Talith had climbed the stair to clear her head. Beside the bench she chose for refuge, swathed in borrowed cleric's robes, the Mad Prophet stood with his elbows stubbed against the marble ra
il and his knuckles matted through his beard. The irony caught the princess's notice, that the man the pair of them tracked like choice prey was the inimitable Prince of Rathain.

  Like Talith, Dakar seemed to ache for a fact intrusively, even desperately denied: that Arithon's viciousness stemmed not from cruelty but from too terrible a gift of compassion.

  'He strikes out because of his vulnerable heart,' Talith shared in dismay to the rotund prophet propped by the cushions where she sat, silk skirts farmed about her like frost over glass in stilled shimmers of pearls and embroidery. 'Why should you wish to pull him down? I have my husband's royal honour to defend. What reason do you have to hate?'

  'The same, nearly.' Dakar hunched his shoulders, her perception unwanted as the prick of a rapier at his back. 'Prince Lysaer has been my best friend.' He ducked his spaniel head, palms ground into fists for his inadvertent slip into past tense. That brush with conscience was too painful. Revile his nemesis though he would, a small girl's dying had branded itself into memory. Whatever Arithon was, or was not, his care for one child had been genuine.

  'If he's acting,' the Mad Prophet promised, 'if he takes just one step awry, he shall receive the full measure he deserves.'

  Whatever veiled threat lay behind Dakar's statement, Talith found she had no wish to find out.

  * * *

  Three days before solstice, while the candlemakers bent over their moulds through short nights to meet the demand for the festival, and children in the merchants' mansions cut paper talismans to hang behind windows and eaves, the poor quarter folk wove baskets of osiers to set on their doorsteps for alms. Wood for the dancer's bonfires was unladen from farm wagons in Ostermere's wide public squares. Through the racketing snarl of traffic as the royal kennelman took his hounds to exercise, Asandir of the Fellowship rode through the restored north postern, slick as a needle through fleece. He was flanked by a blast of unseasonal chill air which contained the entities, Kharadmon and Luhaine.

  Traithe remained downcoast in Cheivalt, aboard Lysaer s'Ilessid's state galley.

  Among the Fellowship Sorcerers, agreement was unanimous long before Arithon's warning. Through the supervised exchange of Princess Talith's ransom, the half-brothers must not come face-to-face. For the cursed pair to enter the same city, even for the span of one day, would require the most stringent precautions.

  The Mistwraith's blighting geas could not entirely be curbed. At each confrontation, its drive to seed destruction intensified. The best the Fellowship Sorcerers could expect was to lace the walls and the harbour in safeguards, then hope to shift one or the other prince to safety if unforeseen mishap should occur.

  Over tea in a squat tower keep that overlooked Ostermere's notched rooftops, spread in tiered steps to the seaside, Sethvir shared counsel with his discorporate colleagues, while Asandir stitched a silvered veil of wards over the mansion Lysaer was to occupy once his half-brother embarked a safe distance offshore in the Khetienn.

  'You've measured the hard evidence in the Shadow Master's aura. Arithon suffered far worse than a slip of control at Minderl Bay. Our theory's borne out,' Althain's Warden said sadly. 'At each encounter, the curse will unstring a little more of the grip the Teir's'Ffalenn holds on his sanity. He has implored us to require his s'Ilessid half-brother to send a delegate to receive the Lady Talith from his hand. We must listen. Wards are not enough. The risk of further damage must not be left to chance.'

  'Lysaer won't like it,' Kharadmon cracked. The restless vortex of his presence riffled over the tapestries and caused the glass in the leaded casements to sing at odd moments in stress-caught tones of vibration.

  'Lysaer's wishes don't matter,' Luhaine countered, tart with the worry they all felt. 'The harrowing of Shand is going to unhinge quite enough of the peace as things stand.'

  For no opening remained. Even Arithon's ingenuity could no longer forestall the brunt of Lysaer's muster in the south. Once the princess's ransom was accomplished, bloodshed must inevitably follow. Armies massed on the borders of Vastmark, thick as the lines of summer anvil heads. Caolle's shepherd archers set stone breastworks in the passes, and prepared points of ambush to stall the mighty army that threatened any day to roll over them.

  As a miniature wind devil upset Sethvir's quill pens for the second time in an hour, Luhaine upbraided his rival colleague. 'You're worse than an ill-mannered child! We'd all be most grateful if you could restrain your excessive energy.'

  'Oh, indeed?' Kharadmon loosed a whiplash breath of mirth. 'My excessive energy scarcely signifies.' His nasal retort a dead ringer for Luhaine's style at lecturing, he ended, 'Certainly not when your reference is childish rampaging.'

  Outside the latched-back casement, over the sullen flap of royal pennons on the walls, cracked the high, thin snap of a whip. Someone shouted. A thunder of hooves erupted from the meadow by the tiltyard, swelling to galloping crescendo.

  Arithon s'Ffalenn had fastened his interest on Eldir's blooded chariot teams, and no one had found a deterrent in time to keep him from trying the reins.

  'The last of Rathain's princes could get himself dragged and mangled, and you've the gall to waste your nattering on me.' Kharadmon huffed across the tabletop, scattering stray leaves of manuscript. 'Well, I'll stop fretting when someone makes that idiot prince give up his foolish fascination.'

  No fellow sorcerer volunteered for this office. Luhaine ventured his stuffy opinion that Arithon s'Ffalenn milled over by chariot wheels was by far not the worst that could happen, against Davien's longevity binding.

  While Sethvir watched the butterfly that alighted on his knuckle with eyes as vacant as glass, his discorporate colleagues turned on each other, haggling. Outside, beyond reach of reproach, the sore point at issue pursued his wild antics to the palpable alarm of half a dozen court onlookers.

  Havish's master of horse was himself too busy to worry. With his legs wrapped around a fast, handy pony, he bent low in his saddle, calling volumes of steady instructions.

  His pupil, though royal, was not too proud to ignore sense. Arithon steadied the ribbons to a flying whirl of wheels. In the delicate reverence of a man who loved horseflesh, he guided the team of jet horses through a wide, sweeping turn. The chariot, a lightweight affair of laced leather and wood, bounced and rocked like a chip hurled helter-skelter through a millrace. The rattle of singletrees and the creak of its oak shaft against the yoked collars of the team raised a riotous racket, not quite enough to drown out its driver's exultant whoop.

  Atop the limestone wall which bounded the mowed edge of the tourney field, the Mad Prophet sat tucked like dough in a beer keg, picking at runners of ivy. Unlike the young king who stood with shaded eyes to one side, he refused to glower at the flat-out run of the horses. His brow stayed unfurrowed by worry. Arithon s'Ffalenn would not perish crippled by mishap, as his talent for augury offered surety. Freed to ponder more devious possibilities, Dakar made spiteful comment, 'What do you suppose are the war plans behind this morning's diligent apprenticeship?'

  He received King Eldir's most penetrating gaze for the unbroken span of a minute.

  Perspiration slicked the Mad Prophet's brosy face. 'Could you expect any less, your royal majesty?' he defended, if only to escape the measuring weight of those too-level, too-grave brown eyes. 'Arithon gathers knowledge like s'Brydion collect weapons, and always for the same reason.'

  King Eldir still said nothing, but waited until his master of horse and the errant driver of the chariot had pulled up in exuberant noise. While liveried grooms rushed forward to grasp the lathered team, and three ladies released bated breaths, Arithon leaped down, his hair spiked in tangles from the heat and the play of the wind.

  The royal inquiry which met him concerning military usage of chariots was direct as a hammerblow to rock.

  He stopped, the laughter stunned from him, and regarded the young king who barred his path like an immobile post of scrap iron. 'Was that a jest?' he asked, and got no answer.

  Eldir
held his ground. Better at tolerance than temper, his patience seemed drawn to snapping. The lazy summer fragrance of meadow flowers and grass seemed crushed out by the martial tang of leather, and hot horseflesh, and oiled steel.

  A flick of irritation shot through the Prince of Rathain, just as swiftly quelled. 'Forgive me, your Grace. I see you inquired in deadly earnest.'

  Arithon gestured his dismissal to the grooms, who led the blowing team away for stabling. A suspect sparkle of enjoyment crept back. 'Even if the Vastmark valleys were not seeded over with boulders, I scarcely think chariots would be useful on a field of war. Three ransoms in bullion would be needed to buy the collective guts to man them. Fiends alive, those vehicles aren't just fragile, they're treacherous. Wilful as a half-swamped longboat, never mind that quantities of horses hitched in harness manage to agree with one another a hopeless portion of the time.'

  An accurate enough summary, Eldir reflected later in private, as his valet muddled over his wardrobe for his afternoon audience to hear complaints. A ruler who liked puzzles, and who never shied off from perplexing, obscure twists of subtlety, the king made mental note of Dakar's warning. Then, he ploughed on to mull over Arithon's peculiar choice of phrasing concerning ransoms in triplicate.