He was less able to mask his sharp flinch as the cloth scraped the blisters raised by rained cinders across his shoulders and arms. ‘My dear, you know that hot water’s going to sting like the eight blazes of Sithaer.’
The adept clicked her tongue and stepped back, leaving her male fellows to unlace the Sorcerer’s smallclothes. ‘The water is necessary to soothe your torn aura. We can reweave the ripped pattern fastest through that element. Unless you would rather be patient and rest?’ Her laughter was liquid and silver, dancing antidote to Asandir’s ripe flush. ‘I’d thought not. If you wish to recover and ride out by dawn, you’ll just have to sting, with our help.’
‘How many of your Brotherhood have transferred to Althain?’ Asandir asked, the concern in his tone gruffly testy.
‘Six.’ The female adept fetched cloth and soap, while her male henchmen helped his reeling step over the tub’s rim and through the unpleasant shock of immersion. ‘Bide and let go. Your colleague Sethvir is not left unattended. You shall receive a full summary of events just as soon as you regain your vitality.’
A scant hour later, refreshed and restored, Asandir dressed in a clean shirt and dark tunic, and his least-mended set of spare riding leathers. Neatly shaven, his hair a silver cascade on broad shoulders, he mounted Althain Tower’s worn stair to pay a visit to the king’s chamber. He went at the urgent behest of the adepts, before he looked in on Sethvir. Only the white-robed lady accompanied him. By time-honored custom, if the querent was male, a woman stood spokesman to reflect the balance inherent in Ath’s creation.
‘Sethvir is too taxed to share what he sees through direct link with his earth-sense,’ she explained, her peppery accent spiking echoes throughout the drafty shaft of the stairwell. She wore her hood raised, the entwined ciphers of silver and gold casting soft radiance about her. ‘Although in grace, our Brotherhood cannot use power to alter the way of the world, we can reflect the shape of events with the clarity of Ath’s truth.’ Arrived on the landing, she lifted the wrought-iron door latch. ‘Go in. Behold the picked scenes Sethvir left in trust for you. As I can, I will answer your questions.’
Asandir reached out, gathered her sun-browned fingers into a hand as capable and callused as a laborer’s. ‘Dear lady, you’ve all done enough. I am grateful.’ His understated touch as he ushered her aside bespoke an ironclad dignity. He was himself, his core power leashed to a presence as enduring as seamed granite. Wholly autonomous, he pushed back the oak door and entered the chamber himself.
The adept bent her head in frank homage as he passed, then trailed him inside and lit the wax tapers in the claw-footed candelabra.
The glow enriched the gold grain of the curly maple paneling.
A Cildorn carpet mellowed the plank floor, its vivid dyes muted before the jeweled silk of the heraldic king’s banners. Despite vibrant colors, the chamber felt cold. No fire burned in the hearth. The scrolled, ebon pilasters and marble-topped mantel gleamed untrammeled by dust, and the high, lancet windows wore the seal of deep night. Stabbed through the perfume of citrus-oil polish, the still air gave off the uncanny, frost tang of magic.
Now wary, Asandir approached the massive ebony table, with its pedestals of standing, paired lions. His step skirted the empty oak chairs with their chased-ivory finials. Braced to neutrality, he leaned on spread hands and surveyed the circular pane of smoked glass Ath’s adepts had placed on the tabletop. A sparrow perched on a chairback took wing and eerily vanished. A field mouse sat upright on tucked hind legs, whiskers pricked and attentive, while overhead its archenemy, the horned owl, blinked in disinterest from a settled roost in the rafters. Asandir showed no surprise. Such visitations occurred wherever Ath’s adepts engaged a portal to tap the prime life chord.
‘The glass holds those events Althain’s Warden deemed important,’ the lady ventured, her near presence casting a more refined light than common candleflame warranted. She perched on the seat nearest the black-and-silver leopard standard of Rathain, while Asandir, standing, absorbed the grim scenes gathered within the spelled glass.
He saw Kharadmon, far afield in the void between stars, spinning spell after spell of deflection to divert an influx of wraiths bound from Marak. ‘Mercy on us,’ he murmured in blanched shock. ‘The worst has begun. What other ill news will you show me?’
Patient, the adept waited until Asandir had steeled his nerve to move on.
Next, the glass gave him sight of Luhaine’s discorporate presence, guarding the damaged wards which secured Desh-thiere’s prison at Rockfell. He awaited two others: Dakar and Fionn Areth turned their mounts loose and labored on foot through the arduous southwest passage across the white-crowned range of the Skyshiels.
He saw Arithon s’Ffalenn, asleep, huddled in a thicket; then armed companies from five cities converging on Daon Ramon, their purpose to bring war to the ancient ruin of Ithamon.
Farther south, the Master Spellbinder Verrain stood vigil at Mirthlvain Swamp. Methspawn stirred and fought beneath winter ice, feeding one on another in bloodthirsty eagerness for the release to come with the spring thaws. Traithe had left Vastmark with intent to assist him, but a flood on River Ippash would delay him.
Tension blanched Asandir’s knuckles to scarred ivory against the jet grain of old ebony. ‘We have no hand free to send,’ he despaired, while in the glass, the events tied to Methisle streamed into the next change of scene. In northern Tysan, where Westwood’s fringes thinned into a patchwork of hamlets, marauding Khadrim gorged upon the charred corpses of a trapper and his close family. ‘Does this sequence get any worse?’
The adept held her counsel, aggrieved in compassion, while another view bloomed and burned across the dark face of the glass…
In the High Priest’s chamber at Avenor, under furtive cover of night, the velvet curtains were drawn to hide the gleam of late-burning candles. There, a clandestine meeting commenced between Cerebeld and Lord Koshlin, Guild Master of Erdane, now appointed as his mayor’s delegate to serve the city’s close interests.
‘I’ve maintained the appearance of keeping my Lord Mayor’s instructions, and done your will without compromise,’ the sly man complained. ‘At every turn, I’ve thwarted the princess’s inquiries into the death of her predecessor. Her Grace has been diverted from finding the truth so many times, she’s justly begun to suspect my obstruction. Her trust is withdrawn. You must realize that leaves me exposed. At all costs, I can’t risk the loss of respect should the mayor, her father, hear of her reservations.’
‘I see that cost might prove a touch high,’ Cerebeld agreed, his purposeful attitude undaunted. ‘Therefore, we shall at one stroke change the princess’s distrust to subservience.’ He arose, crossed his chamber, and opened a locked chest. Gold rings glinted as he withdrew a sealed parchment. ‘You shall give the lady the proof that she seeks: incontrovertible evidence that her predecessor’s death was no suicide.’
Koshlin’s saturnine features went slack. ‘Proof?’
Cerebeld’s suave manner made his scrubbed skin seem a mask of polished enamel. ‘Proof, in the form of the sealed confession of the marksman whose shot sliced the rope. Lady Talith did not jump, but attempted escape on the hour she plunged to her death.’
‘Volatile paper,’ Lord Koshlin said. ‘You dare much, to risk having her murder made public.’
‘On the contrary.’ Cerebeld riffled the document, nonplussed. ‘The incumbent princess is distressed over her young son’s assignment to ride with the field patrol. Desperation and motherhood make her mood unpredictable. Her Grace might try something regrettable. I want Ellaine cowed. She’ll see how the last princess became a dead pawn, but not know the faction responsible. Fear will gag her questions. And where can this paper be taken, or shown, outside of her private chambers? She can’t leave Avenor. Her guards and her handmaids are mine, every one. Her husband’s kept his private distance since the heir’s birth. The lady has no champion to pursue her sad cause. If you stay discreet, she’ll have little
choice but to retire in terrified silence.’
‘Merciful Ath!’ Asandir mused aloud. His seamed face turned grim as a scarp of chipped granite, while far off, in the High Priest’s closed chamber, the sealed parchment quietly changed hands.
Then the glass shifted scenes to reveal the tents of an Alliance patrol, horses and men encamped on the icy banks of River Melor.
‘Sethvir has divined a threat to Prince Kevor, of course,’ the Sorcerer said as his sharp glance encompassed the gold star banner flying amid the camp’s standards. The blue field displayed the heraldic crown, proclaiming the presence of the blood royal among the routine, armed cavalcade.
‘That boy’s trueborn to his s’Ilessid ancestry.’ Asandir saw clear warning, that the endowment of that line’s gifted justice might lead the boy to a disastrous confrontation with the pack of Khadrim seeding havoc and terror in Westwood.
‘Time I went to Sethvir,’ the Sorcerer announced. As the ominous record left in the glass subsided back into blankness, the silver-gray eyes raised to meet Ath’s adept were recast to the glint of forged steel. ‘If aught’s to be done, the choice must be aired well before the lane tide rises at daybreak.’
The oak door sighed open and revealed velvet darkness. Silence greeted Asandir on the threshold of Sethvir’s private quarters. The deep quiet bestowed no feeling of calm, but instead enfolded him like suffocation. The embrace of the air on his skin was too warm. Though the medicinal smell of sweet herbs was not cloying, every sense jangled warning he intruded upon something more than a sickroom.
‘He’s grown worse?’ the field Sorcerer inquired of the adept who kept ceaseless vigil by the entry.
The gentle, aged woman turned back her hood. Her lined face a mapwork of patience, she said, ‘The Warden feels no pain, nor is he unconscious. Though he might seem asleep, his state of suspension is dreamless. You may need to use Name to recall him.’
Asandir swallowed, for a moment not trusting the strength of his voice. ‘Do candles disturb him?’
‘Unshielded ones, yes.’ Wise in her way, the adept said no more, but let Asandir enter the chamber by mage-sight. Ever so gently, she closed the oak panel to grant him full measure of privacy.
Left in darkness, his guidance the smoke-haze of spirit light, Asandir made his unerring way to the bedside. Sethvir rested amid the combed billows of his beard, the gnarled, clean hands abandoned on the coverlet too far removed from splashed inkpots and mischievous life. Ath’s adepts had surpassed expectations in their meticulous care for him. The torn fissures in Sethvir’s aura were reknit, the spindled gold halo without any shadow of seam. If the glow was too scant, its radiance dwindled, the cause would be Sethvir’s willed choice. Minute to minute, he still poured out his vital forces for causes of perilous necessity.
Asandir paused. Upset by the pressures that demanded intrusion, he still groped for right words when a thready whisper arose from amid the piled pillows.
‘Asandir? Is that you?’
The Sorcerer dropped to one knee. Through mangling emotion, he managed a reply. ‘I am here. Say which grimward needs attending.’
The answer came back like a stab to the heart. ‘There are five, but of those, Alqwerik’s by Athir’s most pressing.’
‘I’ll leave on the dawn lane tide,’ Asandir promised, then drew a quick breath. ‘No, please. Don’t speak. The adepts kept their promise. I saw the unpleasant news left for me in the glass.’ He need not belabor the obvious conflict, that of the multiple crises revealed, none could take precedence over the threat of even one distressed grimward. If the worst happened, and the flawed wards at Rockfell escaped Luhaine’s vigilant guardianship, or if the wraiths questing from Marak slipped past Kharadmon’s mazed defenses, there would be no way left on Ath’s earth to recall him. No contact from Althain could cross through a drake-dream, even one spun by the ghost of a creature whose bones lay three Ages dead.
Hedged by the perils that closed on all sides, Asandir said in dire humor, ‘If I meet disaster upon my return, at least I’ll stand warned beforetime. You should rest.’
The stirred movement fanning through loose wisps of beard evinced Sethvir’s harrowed sigh. ‘No rest. Did you see? Davien’s shade has left the refuge he built in the caverns beneath Kewar Tunnel.’
‘Why should that surprise me? All else in creation seems ripe to breed chaos.’ Just as troubled by thought of Davien’s obscure motives, Asandir changed the subject. ‘I saw that you fear for Prince Kevor’s safety.’
‘Worse,’ Sethvir breathed in soft sorrow.
‘Cerebeld wants him dead, that was glaringly plain.’ Asandir leaned in close, elbow braced on the mattress. The other hand flexed to a fist on his knee, with his frown graven deep as worn leather. ‘Beset as we are, who could stand by to help?’
‘Ath’s hostel at Northstrait lies along the first lane,’ Sethvir pointed out, too enervated to be less abstruse.
Asandir weighed the statement, well aware that the Warden’s checkered thoughts masked disarmingly shrewd ingenuity. ‘Do you imply what I think?’ Sharply fast to grasp strategy, the field Sorcerer clarified, ‘You believe we could give Lysaer’s heir a spelled talisman?’
Sethvir’s eyes opened, heavy-lidded. To mage-sight, in darkness, their color shone an eerie, serene aqua that reflected a sense of vast distance. Asandir, watching, felt a bolt of black fear strike straight through him. Never before this had he seen breathing life so closely mirror the infinite. ‘Tell me in words. You need grounding. I can hope speech will help.’
‘The rock, chastising air?’ The ghost of a smile turned Sethvir’s lips as he struggled to meet the demand. ‘I’d hoped the same plan might be used to spare Arithon, but the adepts refused me the use of a talisman as a bridge. They perceive very well that his Grace of Rathain’s become too fated a cipher.’
‘No hostels remain active in Daon Ramon, anyway. Who else could have handled the problem?’ Asandir hooked a footstool, dragged it close to the cot, and assumed the unlikely perch. His lean length of limb and innate balance lent him the hunch of a wing-folded heron. ‘If Prince Arithon was refused, what grounds would grant an appeal for a boy not brought up to honor the old ways? Why should Ath’s Brotherhood offer their sanctuary to safeguard Kevor s’Ilessid?’
‘I can’t promise they would.’ Sethvir’s brow furrowed. ‘But suppose we created a talisman stone, imprinted with spells based in parallel with the powers that rule the scrying glass in the king’s chamber. Say it was delivered by a messenger who would not be heard, unless the young prince showed the honesty of his blood heritage.’
‘You mean, test him?’ Asandir leaned forward, braced on crossed forearms. The idea had merit. Heirship was sanctioned along similar guidelines. ‘If Kevor has the bare-bones humility to hear truth, and honors his heart ahead of the mores of his upbringing, I catch your drift.’
Sethvir’s eyes closed, his flesh like worn parchment beaten by storm to its craggy template of bone. ‘We could at least be sure the adepts at the hostel were made aware of his fate. Their compassion would mark his innocence, even if for a moment.’
‘But a moment might suffice.’ Lifted beyond pity by a glimmer of hope, Asandir traced the complex thread of logic himself. In extremity and need, the young prince might raise enough emotion and desire to engage the innate talent of his ancestry.
Given the birthright of s’Ahelas descent, in theory, Kevor could tap that stream of raw power himself.
‘Assuming that boy’s gift is strong enough.’ In desperation, or extreme pain, he might unwittingly waken his own talent and tear through the veil into mystery. If so, conscious forces pooled within the sanctuary might answer and draw him to safety. A desperate long shot. Asandir shook his head. ‘Even if all those unlikely conditions were met, you know, in the hands of Ath’s Brotherhood, we must lose him.’
Althain’s Warden dredged up his reply, whisper faint. ‘We’ve already lost him, entangled as he is in town politics and the thorns of Avenor
’s false doctrine. At best, through a talisman, Lysaer’s son might be given a slim chance to claim his redemption. Would you lay the conjury into the stone as a boon, done for me?’
‘You’ve already culled a volunteer messenger? Since I won’t have to ride the west trade road in winter, I’ll have the work done before daybreak.’ Asandir gathered the limp hands which rested in disarray on the blanket, then gave back his firm reassurance. ‘One of the river pebbles you’ve cached in the library will surely be willing to give us the necessary service.’
He arose on the promise he would bid farewell ahead of his departure at dawn.
Yet before he could go, the outer door cracked. A female adept he had not seen earlier asked her permission to enter. ‘A message has come from our hostel in the Skyshiels.’
Asandir straightened, half-braced. ‘More bad news from the east?’
The adept shook her head. ‘Rest easy, no. The Warden’s desire was met. One of our Brotherhood went to Elaira. Her spell quartz has been sent to her peeress, uncleared.’ Which meant the order was not yet the wiser for the fact the imprinted longevity bindings on the enchantress’s life had been supplanted by Fellowship crafting.
Asandir stood, eyes shut through a moment of welling gratitude. Then he regarded his prostrate colleague and sensed the frail but mischievous encouragement sent by thought across the blanketing darkness. Sparked into hope too fierce to be guarded, he dared to frame the bold question. ‘You had an adept make contact with Elaira?’
‘Better still,’ the adept ventured, unoffended by his insolence.