Since Arithon’s recent escape from Lithmarin ruled out travelling south, the inhospitable terrain to the east provided a brutal haven. The reduced chance that Lysaer might be seen forestalled the armed rescue that would come in force if word of his presence alerted the True Sect fanatics.
Daliana tossed back the damp braid pasted against her neck. “Stop lying, then. You don’t need to buy time to perfect any ward ring. You haven’t the means to fashion a shield against elemental light in the first place!”
Dakar side-stepped. “You can’t know that for certain.”
Which evasion sparked Daliana’s mercurial laughter. “I wear Asandir’s mark, or did you forget? At Morvain, tossed into the holocaust of Lysaer’s curse-driven fire-storm, even your former master’s ward wasn’t infallible.”
Trickling sweat, Dakar warned, “Be most careful. It’s a deadly folly to presume with regard to the actions of Fellowship Sorcerers. The power they wield was bestowed by the dragons. They can do the unimaginable, and without limit. Never ever forget the more dangerous list of what actions they might be withholding under some abstruse ethical preference.”
But reckless as Dakar had been in the past, Daliana shrugged off the gravity of semantics. “Whether or not a sure safe-guard exists against Lysaer’s gift, why not admit the truth? You’re past your depth. We’re here because there’s minimal brush and nothing in range that’s combustible!”
Dakar deflated, stung by the irony that had landed him on the flip side of his own argument: Lysaer could not be drugged unconscious, indefinitely. The palliative use of medicinal draughts tore away what remained of a spirit already shattered by a cursed compulsion.
“Why not stand off and allow me to handle him?” Daliana pleaded. “Could I do any worse? Your blunders have done little else but inflame the wound in his self-respect.”
Mightily worn by his shortfalls in the arena of subtle relationships, Dakar lashed back. “I should abet your impetuous ruin? What happens the next time your liege goes insane and fries the ground where you stand? Don’t tempt fate! You haven’t the strength to constrain him each time he loses his grip.”
“Then think beyond the use of brute force!” Before the spellbinder shouted her down, Daliana admonished, “After hundreds of diligent years of apprenticeship, surely you’ve learned other options!”
The spellbinder stared, moon-calf features slackened as though the heat had broiled his wits.
Daliana reached for her billet, galled enough to hammer him senseless.
She lost the chance.
From stunned windless to owlishly rapt, Dakar reversed. “I’ve got an idea.” He surged erect, slapped his forehead, and chortled. “Oh, indeed, yes. My dear! The notion is genius!”
Daliana glowered in suspicion. “What now?”
The Mad Prophet’s smile sparkled with teeth. “You’ve asked all along to stay at Lysaer’s side, a death sentence waiting to happen. But not if I stand that prospect upside down.”
The method was brilliant. Once, Asandir had done the same: wrought a punitive stay that bound Dakar to Arithon’s company with the persistence of a malediction. More, Luhaine had fashioned a similar spell, years later, an obdurate constraint on Fionn Areth’s rebellion, weaving him under protections within the spellbinder’s close proximity. Both approaches opened intriguing possibilities when combined with the homing ciphers stitched into the aura of Asandir’s stallion. Dakar flexed his fingers, empowered by enough sundry knowledge to rig an inventively nasty variation.
“What in Dharkaron’s name are you thinking?” Daliana broke in.
“Bless you, sweetling!” crowed Dakar. “I’m going to tie Lysaer’s presence to you! Give him a leash that extends for three leagues, you can duck beyond range of his rages. He might slip your guard at the whim of his curse, but not bolt out of reach without your complicity.” The spellbinder hitched up his pot-belly with venomous satisfaction. “Ath above, I can’t wait. We can leave this forsaken place, soonest. Just nip off a thread from your clothing and loan me a knife to prick his little finger.”
“No.” Daliana uncoiled from nursing her invalid. “I can’t sanction this plan.”
Dakar shrugged. “Then I’ll seal the craft-work without you.” Undeterred by the scorch of her rage, the spellbinder bore in, “How many more temple war hosts will wreck the peace for your pride? Canon Law will purge more clanbred families, and for what good end, Daliana?”
She did not stand down. Small, scuffed with dirt, and rabidly furious, the minx defended her ground. “Dakar, you can’t. This is not a solution. Your proposal does nothing to bolster my liege’s besieged integrity. Compulsion can’t mend his raw self-esteem! You’ll do naught but destroy the last shred of true spirit if you rope down a man already ridden beyond mercy.”
Dakar slid off the wagon. “Athera cannot afford your squeamish instinct to coddle Lysaer’s cursed madness. You don’t fully grasp the scope of the stakes. Stick now over principle, or hang up on your infatuation, I will the more ruthlessly clip the man’s wings.” The snatched move to unsheathe her belt knife raised only the spiteful slap of his indifference. “Don’t imagine bloodshed will stop my interference.”
“Should I worry?” Daliana retorted. “The moon will fall out of the sky on a wish before my liege grants you permission.”
The spellbinder’s crafty smile stretched wider. “A grand gift, for sure, he’s tossed out of the compact, and also that I’ve been dumped from the upright graces of Fellowship auspice.”
“You daren’t stoop to coercive extortion! That verges upon dark practice!” But as the Mad Prophet braced to take action, Daliana promised, “Try, and I will not rest until I find means to prevent you. I don’t care how many innocents you believe you’ll be saving! The back-lash you cause will strip Lysaer of his humanity and leave us with a monster.”
A man less resolved should have quailed from her smoking glare on him, except the leeway for debate was exhausted. A muffled groan from the wagon-bed warned that their charge recovered his senses.
Dakar eyed the tousled blond head sheltered by such untoward sentiment. “You wanted an ice pack to ease his bashed skull? Then strike me a fire to heat a fresh tisane. We need that valerian infusion, right quick.”
“We? No.” Daliana leaped down from the tail-board, as determined a bundle of feminine rage as ever set off to thwart destiny. “Do the scut work yourself since you fear to burn!”
Forthwith, she claimed a pair of saddle packs and began to stockpile provisions. “I’ll be taking two horses and Lysaer. You can test the mettle of Asandir’s mark and try to stop me at your peril.”
Dakar turned his back. However brave, Daliana’s resolve would not upset his decision. Neither did he revel in her misery, or cave in to the tears she swiped off her grimed cheeks as she tacked and loaded the pick of the available string. Stressed as she was by rough living, the spellbinder weighed what had to be done with a cold heart and ironclad purpose.
Forget the fair fight. Past service to Arithon s’Ffalenn gave him the long view and the scars of unpleasant experience: a sharp adversary corrupted by Desh-thiere’s geas never spurned dirty tactics. First chance, Lysaer would snatch the advantage against any fool who volunteered as his chaperone.
“Pack the valerian as you wish,” Dakar said. “Or leave me a horse and a share of the stores and drive off with the wagon.”
When Daliana spurned his effort to ease her lot, the spellbinder hunched stoic shoulders and stumped off into the dazzle of heat-waves. Discomfort compounded his sullen mood. The flint rock burned through his boot soles. Insects whirred aloft upon glassine wings from the desiccate cracks in the boulders. Through the scrape of his stumbling strides, he deafened himself to the ring of shod hooves, receding. Onwards, he plunged from the glare of midday into the abyss of shade beneath the high arch that buttressed the nearest rock stack.
The bounce of a kicked stone cracked an echo that died. Dakar sucked a vexed breath, pulled up short while hi
s eyesight adjusted. He required a flat surface, less reactive to flux charge, to lay down meticulous boundaries. Care must be taken with a work not in form: no chance influence should warp his intent.
“Did you believe your twisted bumbling wasn’t noisy enough to draw notice?” admonished a voice from the desert silence.
Brought face-to-face with the tall shadow that detached from the gloom, Dakar discerned the faint emanation flared off of uncanny embroidery. The impression of a gaunt face, framed in a streaked tumble of shoulder-length hair crossed the keyhole behind, and punch-cut the figure into silhouette.
“Davien!” the spellbinder yelped. “Did Sethvir send you as my keeper or have you come to champion Daliana’s appeal?”
The Sorcerer also known as the Betrayer took pause, a stalking lynx against the parched vista behind him. “I happened to be afoot in the vicinity.”
Dakar swallowed back his panicked consternation. Recall surfaced too late, that the dragon Seshkrozchiel had denned up in the volcanic spur of the Storlains to hibernate. The nonchalance behind Davien’s phrase distilled into visceral dread.
Lately released from the thrall of the drake, the most untrustworthy of the Fellowship Sorcerers meddled here as a radical free agent.
Amused, Davien rested his foot on a boulder, crossed his arms on his thigh, and leaned forward. “I’m not ready to answer Sethvir’s cry for peace. Here’s the pot and the kettle, both sooted black. You seem hell-bent to grant Althain’s Warden due grounds to ban you from the compact.”
Dakar forced his lungs to inflate. “After my choices killed High King Gestry, does another transgression even signify?”
“Perhaps.” Davien straightened. Not impervious, his person showed the frayed snags and cinder burns from mean travel through Scarpdale’s rough country. “Your first course of action salvaged Arithon’s life and threw no one to grief against their will. Don’t overplay your importance, besides. The strengthened potency of the flux lines was far more to blame for Gestry’s untimely demise.”
“No one else could have pressured that wild-card play,” Dakar insisted. “Since I wasn’t condemned for up-ending Asandir’s standing orders in Havish, I have reason to dread my murky call may spark the next round of catastrophe.”
“Are you trying to win my agreement?” Davien chuckled. “Or is this an attempt to stiffen your nerve?”
“Why else are you here?” Dakar snapped. “Except maybe to gloat at the on-going expense of your overtaxed colleagues.”
“I am not crowing!” Davien contradicted. The fixated glitter of black eyes and white teeth like the stoat, he slashed for the jugular. “In fact, my courtesy call is a precaution. Don’t waste your effort or your good name. Because if you proceed, I will stop you.”
“Who are you saving?” Dakar cracked, annoyed. Though his nape puckered up into gooseflesh, he pressed, “Daliana? Or Lysaer? Don’t pretend you stirred a finger to spare me. After your handling of the Teir’s’Ffalenn against the grey cult at Etarra, I’d kill myself laughing.”
Davien grinned. “You forget. The mist-bound entities locked down in Rockfell Pit are not free wraiths. If you compromise Lysaer to serve Arithon’s survival, our means to curb Desh-thiere might go down in flames.”
Dakar sighed. “Don’t play me for a gullible idiot, that you have any loyalty left to the Fellowship.”
The Sorcerer’s figure stayed dangerously still, more silent than the primordial boulder under his foot.
Soaked in run sweat, Dakar cleared his throat. “Pray, have you a better solution in mind?”
“Maybe.” Davien shrugged. “If so, the option relies upon Daliana’s cooperation.”
Dakar sat on a nearby outcrop, ribs clutched against wheezing laughter. “If your counsel will move her, by all means, try! Kharadmon failed to cool her devotion. Not even the True Sect war host, with its cohort of priests and diviners, kept her from returning to her liege’s side!”
“She has the brute courage to hammer through bed-rock,” Davien agreed. “Who says I intend to dissuade her?” Before Dakar pushed erect and rushed back towards the wagon, he added, “Don’t bestir your protective instincts to warn her against the hazards of hearing my offer.”
The spellbinder wilted. Chary of the chit’s knack with a billet, he said, hopeful, “Daliana’s already loaded her liege and gone on her way.” Bone-tired, he knuckled his inflamed eyes. “Asandir should have told you I’ve been outfaced since the day of my birth.”
When Dakar looked up, the span of the archway stood empty. Davien had gone. A glance over his shoulder confirmed: the tacked horses with Daliana were already diminished to blots in the dazzle of heat-waves. Since the spellbinder was too pudgy to give chase, he opted to bury his misery and take an oblivious nap in the shade.
Lysaer roused again to a furred mouth, vile with the after-taste of a drugged syrup. His fuddled awareness added a pounding head to the inflamed discomfort of sunburn. Hurting, he stirred, gouged by crushed pumice and tufts of razor-edged grasses. His limbs were cut loose. The breeze that stung his abraded flesh wore the chill of on-coming twilight. Another day waned in the unknown span of his prolonged captivity. If his keepers had not let him soil himself, the affront to his dignity chafed even through the haze of turned senses.
Sundown burnished the snow-capped peaks, their crumpled flanks folded into cobalt shadow, except where spewed smoke from a volcanic vent smudged the horizon. Lava sand gritted between his teeth and invaded his soiled clothing. His stubbled chin itched, and his tangled hair hung rank as the thatch on a bogman’s hovel. Propped halfway erect, Lysaer surveyed the view. Nothing moved. Only the breeze riffled the clumps of stunt thorn, their crabbed twigs darned with tattered foliage.
Lysaer dared not assume Dakar’s watch had abandoned him. Irked to have lost the civilized service of his valet, he examined his wrists, dye-stained where the straps had dug into his flesh. His hose had matching marks at the ankles.
Given freedom of movement, innate caution distrusted the impression of autonomous solitude.
“Forget Dakar’s spectacular failure,” the voice of the woman he thought he had murdered declared from behind him. “The setting’s my choice, and this isn’t my reckoning for your catastrophic behaviour at Morvain.”
Lysaer spun around, terrified. But the diminutive female who faced him in squire’s dress was not an apparition. The pert face with too-bright, tawny eyes raked him over. Her dark brown braid was no longer luxurious but roped into a wisped knot and pinned up with a hazel stick. The worse for him, she witnessed his panic: shock destroyed his prized poise as a statesman. Her intact, living presence slammed through heart and mind, a visceral blow that also hit below the belt.
While Lysaer gaped, paralysed, she attacked first. “I did not burn by your hand, as you see, and nothing between us is finished, yet.”
Lysaer twisted his vulnerable features away. Not fast enough: twice shamed as the force of his anguish unmanned him, he had no way to silence her or any word to fend off her analysis of his weaknesses.
“At least you should know why you failed,” Daliana pursued. “The rage that turned Desh-thiere’s curse against me was no fault of your character. Your demise was set up. In fact, you fell prey to the tricks of the Koriathain.”
But excuses were empty. Nothing relieved the responsible ethic demanded of his royal upbringing. His short-falls and his privacy were subject to no one’s ruthless dissection, far less any female bent on interference. Once laid open by Talith, and after the inexcusable pretence of his political marriage to Ellaine, Lysaer s’Ilessid brooked no exception. The merciful woman would withdraw as a kindness; likewise, the stout-hearted one plunged beyond her depth.
But this brazen creature respected no boundaries. Her courage possessed too much gall to salve his beleaguered spirit. The locked pause extended. Coarse with the whisper of breeze through the brush, the grey mantle of nightfall continued to leach the last colour out of the world.
Yet falling darkn
ess lent cover, at least. Lysaer torqued his facade back into the semblance of equilibrium. His voice was ice, and his nerves, armoured steel, before he tried speech. “I want you gone.”
Her calm contained the strength to eviscerate. “I won’t oblige. Leave on your own merits.”
She would not enable a coward’s retreat. Or else she understood him too well and refused the reprieve in his plea for rejection.
“Hold out in vain, then.” Lysaer gathered himself to arise, shocked by the quiver of atrophied muscle and sun-poisoned nausea. How long had he languished in drugged oblivion at the whim of his self-righteous guardians? Bitter, he wondered if he also suffered withdrawal from an addiction. Dakar knew his herbals. Given a wagon equipped to haul casualties, the slippery spellbinder could have plied him with a war-time stockpile of narcotic remedies.
Daliana addressed that transparent suspicion, aware that he sorted his appalling infirmity for evidence of further treachery. “You were not dosed with poppy.”
She extended a hand to him.
Lysaer stifled a fury that clenched his jaw, brought to his knees by sapped vitality and cruel despair. Pride refused to yield. He hoarded his right to unfettered autonomy and spurned her care though he scrabbled like a dog to buy distance.
Darkness hid his agony, while the vertigo ebbed. When in due time he commanded himself and used a boulder to claw himself upright, Daliana did not mock or step in to brace up his wracked balance. Instead, she silently offered the bridle of one of her two saddled mounts.
“If you go, the choice becomes yours alone.” Golden eyes pinned him, direct beyond quarter, though her grasp on the reins trembled with distress. “I will not leave. No matter if you succumb to the curse, or how brutal the provocation, nothing you do, alive in this world, can make me abandon you.”
Which lashed him to fury and cut him in places too harrowed to bleed in her sight.