    The earth shook to a thunderous report. Throughout, straight-
shouldered and animated by the gens that enslaved him, Arithon withheld
any countermeasure. His quickest satisfaction lay with steel, and holding
Alithiel poised, he waited untouched at the apex of a singed swath of
carbon.
    'Will you fight.~' he called to Lysaer, derisive. 'Or will you stand out of
reach and play at fireworks just to waste time and show off.~'
    'Defiler!' Lysaer screamed back. His handsome face twisted. Cuts and
bruises made his expression seem deranged. 'Weaver of darkness and
despoiler of children, your crimes have renounced claim to honour!'
    Unsmiling, Arithon took a step. As the distance narrowed and
panicked headhunters scrambled from his path, he noted that Lysaer
looked peaked. The left arm beneath its muddled velvets was bandaged
and strapped as though injured. A wolfish thrill shot through him, that
the enemy before him was disadvantaged. Arithon said, 'That's your
blade? Did you really think reverse runes could charm my death?' He
flourished Alithiel, inviting, 'Find out. Come fight.'
    'Why cross blades with a bastard.~' Contempt in his bearing, a mirrored
obsession in his eyes, Lysaer shot his hand aloft again.
    Sensitized to air that flowed over his skin, Arithon felt the ingathering
of force Lysaer drew to call light. This effort would be more than a killing
bolt, as devastating as any formerly pitched to carve the Mistwraith into
submission. Shadow could still shield him, but the broad trees of
Strakewood would burn. Clansmen and game would crisp in a burst of
wildfire, and earth itself would char to slag.
    Mage-taught instincts clamoured in warning and alarm, but against the
overpowering ascendance of Desh-thiere's curse, any stir of uneasiness
lost voice. Arithon advanced. His whole being resonated hatred, his oath
to Rathain just meaningless words, the rasp of dry wind and dead intent.
So long as Lysaer was before him, he had eyes only for his enemy. Like a
puppet pulled on wires he would close with the blond nemesis leagued
against him. Over parched ground or quick, their swords would cross
until one of them died, and whatever impediments were swept aside
beforehand became simple sacrifice to ensure this.
    The air seemed to sing in its stillness. The chasing on Alithiel's dark
blade appeared bodilessly inscribed on the gloom. Since the sword was
now pointed with the grain of ill gens and enmity, its Paravian star-spell
stayed mute. More nerve worn than the curse would permit him to
acknowledge, Arithon slipped without volition into mage sight. His
vision recorded the interlocked litanies of leaves, of branches, of men
partnered in useless struggle on the fringes, embodied even while killing
in the light-dance that founded all life. The soil beneath his step shimm-
ered with the mysteries of rebirth, and even these lost their power to
redeem him.
 The drive of Desh-thiere's curse overwhelmed all.

510



    At the palm of Lysaer's raised hand, light burned and then glared, and
then erupted to a core of hot brilliance. The nexus swelled, fountained,
raged into coruscation that ravaged the forest with backdrafts. Lysaer by
now stood isolate, his headhunter allies driven back by the gathering fury
of his assault.
    Opposite him, a wind-whipped silhouette with a hand lightly gripped to
a sword's hilt, Arithon faced him in challenge. Unarmoured, clad in the
same spattered deerhides as any of Steiven's scouts, he seemed a figure
diminished; until, half-seen through lashed tangles of black hair, an
expression bent his lips that held no regret but only derisive impatience.
    The flaring brilliance lit the s'Ffalenn features to inescapable clarity.
The detached assurance, the sheer nerveless arrogance on that face slapped
back remembrance of the manipulation that had undone Amroth's king
and councilmen. Swept by a countersurge of antipathy, Lysaer shrieked his
ultimatum. 'By Ath, you unprincipled bastard, your wiles shall cause no
more damage. This time, not counting for cost, the justice of my people
will be served!'
    If such justice was wholly subverted by the workings of Desh-thiere's
curse, Lysaer endorsed usage with consent. He screamed and surrendered
to his passion, and something inside him snapped. That instant he hurled
his bolt.
    Arithon surged to meet the attack. Gripped by queer exultation, still
wakened to mage-sight, he perceived with a lucidity that damned that the
curse had overmastered his half-brother. Lysaer's offensive had erased the
bounds of sanity and self-preservation. As at Mearth, when a crossing
through a world-gate had been snatched beyond grasp by adversity, the
s'Ilessid prince now channelled the whole of his being through the
destructive aspects of his gift.
    The light of his own making would martyr him. Strakewood with its
armies and its clansmen would be immolated at a stroke. Whether Arithon
could shield himself in shadow became a point most gloriously moot.
Desh-thiere's purpose would be served.
    At least one of the half-brothers that comprised its bane would be
expunged from the face of Athera.
    Arithon howled at the irony. Swept to madness by the wraiths' savage
triumph, he flung wide his arms, taunting the light to come take him, to
lock with his shadows and let his enemy be destroyed in one fiery burst of
self sacrifice.
    In that moment of consumed self-control, that ecstatic certainty of
victory, Arithon felt his sword arm caught and his hip blunder into
something moving. Enraged, shoved off balance, he squinted through a
blooming flare of incandescence. Whoever had meddled would die for it.
    'Your Grace of Rathain, we are oathsworn!' cried a boy in shrill-voiced
terror. 'I came back as you asked, to keep you apart from your half-brother.'
 A blood oath bound and sworn by a mage set its ties to the living spirit.

511


    'Sithaer, Jieret!' Arithon shouted, his cry split from him as the exultation
of Desh-thiere's vengeance became flawed by his pact with Steiven's son.
The unholy pleasures of the instant transformed to torment as enslaved
consciousness and true will became torn between opposite masters. Then
the irony, of crippling proportion: that any shadow spun to save the boy
must also spare the s'Ilessid prince from the forge-fires of the curse's
conniving.
    Anguished between personal care and the lure of the curse's directive,
tainted by the seductive truth, that to forswear s'Ffalenn conscience and
leave Jieret betrayed would buy Lysaer's death and final freedom, Arithon
wrenched his will into alignment against Desh-thiere's geas.
    For ill or for folly, the paradox would be permitted to renew itself; Lysaer
had no training to understand or control how Desh-thiere's meddling had
twisted him. Assured of his righteousness, avowed to bring justice, he
would use his survival to labour until this day's atrocities were repeated.
That colossal futility made a mockery of will, that perhaps reprieve came
too late. One victim's lamed effort at compassion might buy only failure at
the end.
    A split second shy of annihilation, Arithon jerked Jieret inside the arc of
a sword-blade dropped sidewards to guard.
    The ache of exhaustion, the sucking drain against resources long
overstrained seemed to founder his mind and his reflexes. Obdurate,
Arithon fought. He called, commanded and savaged from his gift demands
that edged the impossible. The curse pulled and hampered him. He
wrestled its treacherous crosscurrents while his shadows flared and
snapped. Darkness arose like a howling gale, unleashed to run rampant
across torrents of unchained light. The air itself seemed to scream in white
agony as the gifts of two half-brothers collided.
    Men-at-arms wailed and fell prone, their weapons discarded as they
locked shaking arms to shield their heads. Trees tossed and rattled,
wrenched into splinters by snaking trails of wildfire. Still trapped in mage-
sight, Arithon heard the shriek of natural energies battered and tortured
out of true. He felt the frosts of his own conjury flash freeze living greens to
glassine hardness that shattered in the pound of the winds. Intermixed
were cries that were human. He groaned, wept, plundered intuition and
training to force his reserves without mercy for the power he required to
compensate. With his fists pressed to Jieret's back, his eyes blind and his
senses spinning, Arithon widened his defences.
    And as he had once done at Etarra, his conjury cloaked Strakewood in
darkness.
    He could not see to know fate's joke was actualized; that Lysaer had
collapsed from blooddoss and stress and that Pesquil and a dedicated
lieutenant now laboured to draw him clear of the conflict. Arithon could
not breathe the air for the smells of dead earth and burning. He could barely
stand upright, for the voracious demands of weaving shadow.

512


    Jieret said something. The words faded in and out unintelligibly. Then
hands caught at Arithon's arms and shoulders, lifting, cajoling, supporting
his legs that would not any longer bear weight.
    A touch that had to be Jieret's peeled his fingers away from his sword,
then clasped his hand in steady warmth.
 'Ath,' said a scout, appalled. 'You sure he isn't hurt ?'
    'Leave him be,' snapped another, maybe Caolle. 'If he loses his hold on
these shadows, every clansman in these woods will be doomed.'
    Arithon held on. He clung to consciousness and craft with a determina-
tion that bled and then raked him. Spinning impressions whirled through
him, of turning trees, and falls of water, and bodies blacked and crisped on
sere ground. That made him cry out.
    Such visions must be lent him by mage-sight; he prayed and he begged
this was so. When he could sort out no distinction, he punished drowned
senses for reassurance, that a dark deep as felt, starless, lightless, battened
Strakewood in defences that could smother any outburst of reiving flame.
    An indeterminate time later, he shivered and snatched a breath of air.
'Are they safe yet?'
    'Soon,' answered Jieret, or maybe Caolle. The word flutried without
echo through the wails of eight thousand dead.
    At some point after that, the last shred of awareness slid away from
Arithon's control. The dark and the shadows he conjured seeped through
his frayed concentration, and then he knew nothing more.

Arithon reawakened on his back, to stars set like jewels between a black
lattice of oak leaves. A soft cry burst from him as nightmare and reason
collided, and he thought at first that he looked upon a dead landscape
formed of carbon and char.
    Then his nostrils filled with the sweet scent of sap, the resins of pine not
far off. At his side, someone said kindly, 'Strakewood is green, still. Your
shadows preserved. There are clanborn survivors.'
    Arithon lacked voice for his bitterness, that what lives had been saved
must be few, with none of them a woman or a child. For a long time he
could do nothing except shut his eyes and silently, fiercely weep.
     The tears cleared his mind; no mercy. Raw as he was and helplessly
unable to barrier himself in detachment, he was forced to take full stock.
 'Jieret?' he asked first, the word a bare rasp of breath.
    'At your side,' came the answer, reassuring. 'He sleeps. Except for singed
hair, he's unharmed.'
 Arithon released a pent sigh. 'Steiven fell. Where?'
    'Dt)~s that matter?' The voice held an edge now, and a rnovement in
darkness marked out the form of a clan scout, seated crosslegged a short
distance off.
 Stubborn and silent, Arithon waited.

513



    'All right,' the scout relented. 'Caolle said make you rest, but if you're
going to be difficult, I'll tell you.'
 A sceptical quirk turned Arithon's lips. 'Caolle said nothing of the sort.'
    The stillness grew expansive with surprise. 'All right.' The scout sighed.
'Caolle cursed you. Jieret insisted you needed rest.'
    The boy, now Earl of Deshir, caithdein of a kingdom, thrust into
inheritance of Rathain's stewardship an orphan scarcely twelve years of
age. The facts were given quickly after that, starting with Steiven's
response to Arithon's first warning of disaster~ orders that his war captain
had begged on his knees to be released from: to gather and withdraw from
the fighting by force if need be three hundred hand-picked young men.
Steiven s'Valerient had then led the rest into ilbfated vengeance at the
grottos.
    'He was among the first to fall,' the scout said, his tone fiat and tired, and
his hands wrung with tension around his knees. 'A crossbow quarrel
caught him before we cleared the marshes, which was well. He never saw
the scars of the burning, or what happened to his lady in the dell.'
'I know how she died,' Arithon grated. 'Caolle broke orders, didn't he?'
Snapped past the memory of the brutalities beside the Tal Quorin, the
scout shrugged a shoulder and resumed. 'The three hundred circled wide
and approached the m~lde from upstream. As well they did. Jieret and two
wounded scouts could hardly have pulled you out alone.'
    Quiet, Arithon absorbed this. If he had done nothing else, his final
intervention with shadows had spared most of those clansmen Steiven had
selected to survive. After an interval, he prodded, 'And now?'
    'The headhunters' league are mostly destroyed and Lysaer's Etarrans in
retreat. We expect they'll regroup outside $trakewood. The ones not
nerve-broken or wounded will probably stay on and poison springs to
destroy the game and starve us out.' A breeze wafted through the trees,
edged with the acrid tang of ash. The scout drew a dagger and tested the
edge with a thumb, over and over seeking flaws. 'Caolle won't give them
satisfaction. His plan is to abandon Strakewood and join up with earl
Marl's band in Fallowmere.'
    Somewhere a wakeful mockingbird loosed a melodic spill of notes. A
hunting owl cried mournfully. !ieret stirred in the depths of some dream,
and the scout cut a stick in thick silence and nicked off a rattling fall of
chips.
    Arithon lay still and noticed other things: that his body wa~ clothed still
in blood-tainted leathers, though somebody thoughtful had bound his
cuts. In fits and starts of mage-sight he recognized the neat work as
Caolle's. By the odd flares of light that scoured the edge of his vision, and by
his current inability to keep focused on the physical aspects of reality, he
knew he still suffered the effects of overplayed nerves. His twisted misuse
of spellcraft had caused damage beyond distress to the body. His thoughts
had an odd start and hitch to them, as if pulled to the border of delirium.

514


The curse of itself had left ravages. His opposition by shadows had
plundered also, when he had wrenched that thundering torrent of
enslavement aside to reclaim his free will.
    He dared not guess how much time must elapse before he could sleep
without nightmares. A nagging ache in his bones warned how greatly his
resources were depleted. Pain and plain restlessness drove him finally to
stop circling thoughts by getting up.
    The scout abruptly stopped whittling. Knife poised, chin raised in query,
he said, 'Where in Sithaer are you off to.~'
    Over his shoulder as he departed, Arithon flipped back an insouciant
quote from a ballad. '"To free the dazed spirits, and reclothe cold flesh in
fair flowers."' Whether his line was delivered in Paravian words did not
matter; his mood was too shattered to translate.

As if nature held light as anathema, no moon shone over Strakewood in the
aftermath of Etarra's assault. Traced by faint starlight or by the fluttering,
uncertain flames of small torches, Caolle and Deshir's clan survivors
moved through the fields of the dead. They went armed. The body that
groaned in extremity might not be a kinsman's but an enemy's; the hand
that stirred in trampled mud might not reach in acceptance of succour but
instead hold a dagger thrust to maim. Scouts too tired for sound judgement
searched logs that looked like fallen clansmen and gullies that conspired to
conceal them. Through swamp and on hillside there came decisions no
repetition could ease; of whether to send for a healer or to deal a mercy-
stroke and finish an untenable suffering.
    Each call for the knife underscored the sorrow that clan numbers had
been almost decimated.
    Quiet as any man born to the wood could cover deep brush, warily as he
tried to guard his back, he sometimes flushed living enemies who for hours
had blundered through ravine and thorn thicket, lost, frightened and alone.
Townsmen caught out of their element who were jumpy and keyed to seize
retribution for their plight.
    With one valley quartered, the acres still left to patrol seemed a
punishment reserved for the damned.
    Sticky clothes, and dulled blades, and hands that twinged from pulled
tendons did nothing for Caolle's foul mood. His years numbered more than
fifty, and this had been a battle to break the stamina of the resilient young.
As he crouched over yet another corpse, a young boy in chainmail so new it
looked silver, he cursed the caprice of fate that he should be alive instead of
Steiven. The losses of friends that had passed beneath the Wheel had yet to
be tallied. Nobody wanted to number the kinsmen their own knives had
needfully dispatched.
    Ahead, jumbled and jagged against a sky like tinselled silk, the rock-
cliffs in their seams and webbed shadows narrowed toward the mouth of

515


the grottos. No wounded waited in the charred glen beyond, only dead that
rustled in the winds like any dry paper. To Halliron, who walked at his 
shoulder, Caolle said, 'You might just want to turn back.'
    As begrimed as any clansman, though his shirt was embroidered and
cuffed in fine silk and his lyranthe stayed strapped on his shoulder, the
Masterbard calmly gave answer. 'I'll not leave.' He pushed on through a
stand of low maples. 'Don't punish yourself over hindsight.'
    Caolle sucked an offended breath. 'I should have listened. We could're
scattered and separated the women.'
    'The men would still be as dead. The divided families could not survive.'
Halliron finished in quiet certainty, 'Your children would have died in
Etarra. Arithon told me. He saw their executions in the course of his
tienelle scrying.'
    Loath to be reminded, Caolle pushed past. 'Ath. If you have to tag after
me, the least you can do is to stop talking.' But the bard's tenacity
impressed him. Though no fighter, Halliron tended to show up where he
was useful. If in this fire-seared abattoir his touch with the wounded and
dying was unlikely to offer any benefit, his unstinting service had earned
him the right to go on.
    The pair moved ahead, oddly matched; the stocky, grizzled warrior in
simmering, sceptical bitterness; and the lean musician whose flared boots
and court clothing were unsuited for rugged terrain, but whose grace
stayed unmarred by the setting.
    They came across a slain Etarran pikeman. The man did not lie as he had
fallen. Someone had laid his fouled weapon aside, removed his helm, and
turned his young face to the sky. Eyes closed, he now rested straight with
his hands gently crossed on his breast.
    'Odd.' Caolle coughed out the stench of ash. 'One of ours wouldn't
bother. Fellow must've had a companion.'
    Halliron said nothing, but raised his head and peered into the murk of
the grotto.
 'You know something,' Caolle accused.
 'Maybe.' Halliron pressed on.
    After the fifth such corpse, this one a clansman's, the discrepancy
became irksome. Caolle stopped square in the moss where a dead scout had
been as tenderly arranged.
    'You never heard the ballad of Falmuir?' Halliron asked softly. 'I think
we are seeing its like.'
    'Ballad?' Caolle straightened. He scrubbed his face with his knuckles, as
if tiredness could be scraped from his flesh. 'You pick a damned odd time to
speak of singing.'
    Halliron stood also. A warm glint of challenge lit his eyes. 'And you
don't out of reflex view every man you meet, and measure his potential as a
fighter?'
 'That's different.' Caolle sighed. 'Maybe not.' He re-checked the hang of

516


his sword and his knives, and stalked from the riverbed into shadow. 'Then
what should I know about Falmuir?'
    'That two cities took arms over marriage rights to an heiress.' Halliron
slowed to negotiate a wash of dry river pebbles where a misstep could easily
turn an ankle. 'The girl,' he resumed, 'had a seer's gift. She begged her
guardian to allow her to wed an uninvolved suitor as compromise, and to
forfeit her rights of inheritance. For greed and for power her wishes were
refused. A war resulted, with losses very like this one.'
    Caolle led deeper into the defile, his disgust rendered bodiless in full
gloom. 'These Etarrans had only to mind their manners and stay home.
Their city was never assaulted.'
    Which truth could be argued, from the viewpoint of townsmen terrorized
by shadows they could hardly be expected to know were harmless. Cut off
ahead of his conclusion, Halliron pondered the clan captain's impatience.
'You suspect another treachery lies ahead?'
    'What else ?' The defile narrowed. Sturdy, as silent in motion as a predator,
Caolle drew his knife. With the river fallen behind, the thrash of white
waters diminished. In darkness now humid with dew the casualties lay
thick on the earth. Clansman and foe alike were arrayed in still rows, head to
feet aligned north to south and weapons pulled clear of folded hands.
 Caolle checked each one anyway to ascertain no body still breathed.
    Above the soft scrape of his bootsoles, Halliron said, 'You won't find what
you think.'
    'So we'll see.' Nettled as a wolf over a disturbed cache, Caolle adhered to
his wariness.
    Cautioned by the angle of the captain's shoulders, Halliron let ballads and
conversation both lapse. The ravine they trod held an unsettled feel. Where
deer should have bounded from their watering, the song of the crickets rang
unpartnered. Here only bats flitted and swooped erratic circles between the
scarred walls of the rimrocks.
    And then between steps the mosses that cushioned the trailbed were
seared to papery dryness. Trees became fire-stripped skeletons, while ahead
the grotto lay ravaged and razed to split stone filmed over with carbon.
 The air hung poisoned with taint.
    Inside the ruin where the tents had stood, limned like a ghost in soft
starlight, knelt a man.
    Breath hissed through Caolle's clenched teeth. His knife hand lifted,
caught back from a throw by Halliron.
His urgency queerly muffled, the bard said, 'Don't. That's no enemy.'
'His Grace of Rathain. I can see.' Tension did not leave Caolle's arm. 'By
Ath, I could thrash him! Why in $ithaer should he bother with corpses while
our wounded lie unfound and suffering!'
    'You misunderstand him, you always have.' The Masterbard released his
restraint, and jumped back at the speed with which the clan captain turned
on him.

517


    Recovered, Halliron stood his ground. The night breeze stirred his
white hair, and his face, deeply shadowed, stayed serene. 'This moment,
no. I think it best you don't disturb your liege.' Then, his tone changed to
awe, he added, 'It is like Falmuir. "To free the dazed spirits, and reclothe
cold flesh in fair flowers."' At Caolle's look of baffled anger, the
Masterbard said, 'Prince Arithon's mage-trained. You don't know what
that means?'
    'I'd be hardly likely to, should I?' Caolle presented his shoulder, his
profile like a hatchet cut against the soot-stained dark of the grotto.
'Killing's my trade, not fey tricks with poisons and shadows.'
    And behind the captain's harshness, in a knifeblade demarked by a
trembling thread of reflection, Halliron perceived the grief of crushing
losses: a clanlord gone, and Dania and four daughters cherished as if they
had been Caolle's own. The present was robbed and the future stretched
friendlessly bleak. A difficult task must for love be repeated all over
again; another young boy to be raised for the burden of leading the
northland clans: first Steiven and now, when a man was ageing and weary
of adversity, Steiven's orphaned son.
    That Caolle's sullen nature would greet such desertion in anger
Halliron well understood. What could not for tragedy be permitted was
that blame for Deshir's ills stay fastened on the Teir's'Ffalenn. Time had
come for the bard to ply the service he was trained for. There and then in
the darkness, amid the charred ground where the dead lay, he unwrapped
the cover from his instrument.
    Caolle snapped, 'Ath, we'll have ballads again?' He made to surge
forward and stopped, caught aback by the bard's grip on his wrist. Court
manners or not, Halliron could move nimbly when need warranted.
    'You'll not touch him,' the bard said in reference to the man, still
kneeling, who had neither looked up nor shown other sign he had heard
them. The schooled timbre of a masterbard's voice could fashion an
outright command. 'Sit, Caolle. Hear the tale of Falmuir. After that, do
exactly as you please.'
    Disarmed as much by exhaustion, Caolle gave way. If he chose not to
sit, he had little choice but to listen, as any man must when a singer of
Halliron's stature plied his craft. For a masterbard, the edges of mage-
sight and music lay twined to a single wrapped thread. The lyranthe had
been fashioned by Paravian spellcraft and under supremely skilled
fingers she evoked an allure not to be denied.
    From the opening chords, Caolle looked aside. By the close of the first
verse his stiffness was all pride and pretence. As his knife hand re-
linquished its tension, and his face eased from antipathy, he heard of the
siege of Falmuir, where a princess had walked out alone on a battlefield
where defenders and abductors lay slain. Lent refined vision by the

518


spelled weave of words and bright notes, Caolle was shown in humility the
legend of the ballad re-enacted here, in the grotto of Deshir's slain.
    His gaze at some point drifted back to Arithon. Even as a princess had
once done in grief and total loss, the Shadow Master poised amid the
burned remains of clan kindred. His fine-boned hands were filmed with
black ash for each of the corpses he had settled. His hollowed cheeks
glittered with the tracings left scoured by tears. He was speaking. Each
syllable rang with compassion, and each word he spun formed a name. He
summoned in love, and they came to him, the shades of tiny babes and
silent women, of girls and grandmothers and daughters and wives,
sundered from life in such violence that their spirits were homeless and
dazed. They formed around him a webwork of subliminal light, not
burned, but whole; no more aggrieved, but joyous, as he added words in
lyric Paravian that distanced the violence that had claimed them.
    Arithon gave back their deaths, redeemed from the horror of murder.
One by one he cherished their memories. In an unconditional mercy that
disallowed grief, they were fully and finally freed to the peace of Ath's
deepest mystery.
    In time, no more forms shone in soft light; but only a man alone, who
rose unsteadily to his feet; while the sad cadence of Halliron's voice
delivered the Princess of Falmuir's final lines: 'She went not to wed, nor to
comfort or rest, but to free the dazed dead, and to reclothe cold flesh in fair
rio wets. '
    But in this cleft of sere earth and split rock, there were neither bodies to
bury nor blossoms to seed over gravesites. Caolle blotted his cheeks with
the knuckles still clenched to his skinning knife. His gesture encompassed
his prince, as gruffly he said, 'The man was sent to bed once. If he faints on
his feet, he's like to whack his head on a rock.'
    'Let him be.' Halliron stroked the ring of fading strings into silence.
'What he does brings solace we cannot.'
    'It's healing he needs,' Caolle groused. 'Though by Daelion, I don't like
the post of royal nursemaid.'
    Attuned to the change in the captain's railing, the masterbard tied up his
instrument. Too grave to be accused of amusement, he waited while a
shamefaced Caolle noticed and then sheathed his knife. Then, unspeaking,
they trailed Arithon's progress up the grotto; they sorted out and
administered to the living, Rathain's prince to his uncounted dead.
    Night passed. The bard's face showed every sleepless hour, and Caolle
wore an expression like boiled leather. While grey dawn crept in, and the
forest rang with birdsong undisturbed by mankind's sad strivings, they
reached a dell scattered with the shafts of fallen arrows, and beyond, a
broad beech, ringed with casualties so closely fallen that one lay entangled
upon the next like tidewrack stranded by storm.
    Roused from the half trance that had sustained his passage through the
grotto, Arithon reached out sharp and suddenly, and touched Halliron on

519


the wrist. 'Let me work alone, here. There won't be any wounded among
these fallen.'
    To kill a man untimely with a blade was not the same as using magics to
twist his destiny, to overrule his fate by ill usage of the forces that endow
life. To release those spirits cut down in Jieret's defence was a costly,
exhaustive undertaking more taxing than anything accomplished previ-
ously.
    For these dead did not welcome intervention, but shrank from Arithon
in stark fear. He was more than their killer; he was a master who had
betrayed them on levels they had no conscious means to guard. To bind
them long enough to free them, he had to expose to them all that he was.
He had to lower his defences and let them shriek curses to his face. He had
to endure their pain, let them hurt him in turn, until his passivity left them
mollified and quiet.
    And when the blessing of the Paravian release let them go, the peace they
took with them was not shared. Arithon looked desolate and haunted, and
remorse had stolen even tears.
 Long before the end, Halliron found he could not watch.
    Caolle, who had no gift to know the scope of what was happening, saw
only that Arithon suffered. 'Why should he do this? Why?'
    But the answer the bard gave was inadequate, that this prince was both
musician and king. Caolle understood only that the heart of the mystery
lay beyond him.
    When the captain who thought he knew all there was to sample of
human grief could no longer abide the awful silence, he spoke the greatest
accolade he could offer. 'Arithon is greater than Steiven.'
    'You see that,' said the Masterbard. 'You are privileged. Many won't, and
most will be friends.'
    By then, the town dead had been numbered and most of the clansmen.
There remained now only Madreigh, open-eyed, his loose hands empty and
outflung and a gaping hole in his chest. Aching in body, riven in spirit,
Arithon paused in a moment of stopped breath. He looked upon the face of
one scarred old campaigner not twisted in rigor, but content with the peace
of the seasons.
    This, the man who had defended his back, while, for Jieret, he had shaped
baneful conjury. A cry wrung from Arithon's throat before sluggish
thought could restrain it. 'Dharkaron Avenger witness, you should have
had better than this!'
    Shaking in visible spasms, he brushed back grey hair, and cupped
Madreigh's face between his palms. Blind to daylight, deaf in grief, he
closed his eyes, and spoke Name; and met, not blankness or confusion but
the abiding fall of spring rains, and snow, and warm sunlight. He
encountered the peace of the trees.
    The awareness shocked him. The spell that ensnared more than fifty to
spare one had inadvertently preserved another life.

520



    Rathain's prince tilted back his head. Halliron and Caolle loomed above
him. His balance tipped toward dizziness, and what seemed the yawning
dark of Dharkaron's censure opened before his wide eyes.'This one, also, I
saved,' he said as if pleading forgiveness. 'Tend him well. I would beg that
he lives.'
    'My liege,' said Caolle. He knelt quickly; and when nerve and conscious-
ness faltered, he was there to catch Arithon in his arms.

521


First Resolution

When the tors on the plain of Araithe were raked at sunrise by the winds,
the mists still clung like combed cotton in the valleys as they had the dawn
before. Only now the tick and splash off droplets of dew-soaked rock
mingled with the moans of wounded soldiers. Wrapped in the tatters of his
surcoat, his camp blanket long since given up to alleviate the shortage of
bandaging, Prince Lysaer s'Ilessid knelt to hold the hand of yet another
lancer who shivered and thrashed in mindless suffering.
    'Delirium, this time,' the healer diagnosed: this victim raved from
wound fever, not as some of the others, in a madness brought on by terrors
of sorcery and shadows. His raw hands helpless and empty, the healer
straightened up from his patient. He had abandoned his satchel, there
being no more medicines to dispense. Needles could not suture without
thread, and last night's case-load of fatal injuries had burned him stark out
of platitudes.
    Not in a lifetime of service had he seen a war cause such damage as this
one. To the prince still determined to lend comfort, he added, 'I doubt this
lad knows why you're there. The wagons are loaded. Did you want to see
Lord Diegan on his way?'
    'I'll go in a moment.' His head bent, the damp ends of his hair flicked in
coils over his arm sling, Lysaer let the healer study him in a mix of
exasperation and approval before, fed up and weary, he finally gave in and
stalked off. One dying garrison soldier might well be past solace. But the
prince responsible for the strike into Strakewood needed the interval to
think.
    Lysaer buried his face in the hand not strapped up in bandaging. Far off,
the pop of a carter's whip sounded over someone's hoarse shouting;
another officer striving to curb the paranoia that had men drawing steel at
plain shadows.

522


No one who had tangled with Arithon's sorceries in Strakewood would
ever again view darkness as friendly.
    Grooms hauling buckets to the picket lines observed Lysaer's pose of
despair. They murmured in sympathy for his exhaustion, for all the camp
knew he had not rested. The prince had laboured with Pesquil to compile
losses too massive to list. Commanding despite his discomfort, he had
been on the riverbank to encourage each wave of tired soldiers who
emerged alive from the forest. He had walked beside litters, talking,
reassuring. Cracked bones had not stopped him from breaking up disputes,
or throwing steady light with his gift to quell massive hysterical fear.
Throughout a long and terrible night, he had chaffed frightened squires and
bloodied his hands beside the surgeon to clean and staunch open wounds.
However a man might deplore royalty, this prince had accepted no
cosseting.
    To find his ragged magnificence still among them in the cheerless grey of
the morning made men break their hearts to meet his wishes. That Etarra's
concerns were foremost in his mind, no town survivor ever questioned.
Without Lysaer's light to stay the shadows, many more would have died by
the grottos or been abandoned to the mindless distress induced by
Arithon's maze wards that had ensorcelled the troop in the west valley.
    If not for Prince Lysaer, Lord Commander Diegan himself would not
have left Tal Quorin's banks alive.
    In nervous speculation and vehement rage, Etarra's garrison made clear
whom they blamed For the carnage. Men hailed the prince, then brandished
weapons and cursed the shifter of shadows their campaign had failed to
take down.
    Unsettled by his reflections, Lysaer stirred. At his knees, the soldier
tossed and groaned, an arrow that had not quite killed lodged deep inside
his lower gut. His suffering would be prolonged and painful and a peppery
barmaid who wore his trinkets would be widowed with no parting kiss to
cold lips. Without enough wagons for the wounded the dead must be
interred where they lay, amid the flinty soil of the tots with only piled
stones for their markers.
    'I'11 see you avenged,' the prince vowed in a spiking rush of sincerity. He
touched the man's shoulder and arose.
    While darkness had lasted, the cries and the noise of arriving stragglers
had filled the camp, queerly amplified by the fog. The scope of disaster had
loomed through the night, still possible to deny. But now as day brightened
and the mists shredded away, the damages became appallingly apparent. In
a campaign planned for easy victory, two thirds of a war host of ten
thousand had been decimated in a single engagement. Lysaer walked as the
impact of sight rocked the campsite, men's voices tangled in anger and
shrill disbelief. The worn band of officers struggled yet again to rechannel
shock and grief into tasks, while others exhorted crushed and silent men to
gather for biscuit and beef around the cook fires.

523


    Raised to rule, well hardened for the trials of leadership, Lysaer shared
the burden where he could. He spoke and touched shoulders, an~ once
faced down a man who had wildly drawn a dagger and raved to anyone who
would listen that he intended to lead a foray to go reiving back into
Strakewood. Sympathetic to the men but possessed of a cool self-
containment the s'Ilessid prince reviewed the wreck of Etarra's garrison
with no incapacitating pang of conscience.
    Where he passed, his unassailable assurance touched the men and left
them silent with awe. His equilibrium could encompass seven thousand
casualties. He could feel haunted and sad that Arithon had engaged in
unscrupulous use of little children but not have lasting regrets that the
wholesale elimination of barbarian women and young had been necessary
to guard town security. No city could recoup from a defeat as terrible as
this, were they left with belief such casualties could recur again.
    'Your Grace, have you eaten?' A fat cook tagged at his shoulder, diffident
and anxious to please.
    Lysaer inclined his head in courtesy. 'I've hardly noticed I was hungry.'
He let himself be led to a fire; politely tasted the soup that was handed to
him.
    Haunted by association as his gaze became tranced by the flame, he
found himself reliving the moment when he had actually endorsed self-
destruction to buy the Shadow Master' s death.
    Although no cost could be counted too great to eradicate the s'Ffalenn
bastard before more innocent lives could fall prey to his wiles, in daylight
and cold reason, hindsight recast self-sacrifice as an impulse of hot-headed
idiocy. Lysaer shivered, set his soup bowl with a clink on the board the
cook used to stack utensils. No guarantee insisted that Arithon should
have died in that strike. He was clever enough to escape, perhaps; Rauven's
teaching lent him tricks.
    The stalking uncertainty lingered, that the inspiration to risk martyr-
dom for the cause might not have been Lysaer's own.
    Once in Briane's sail-hold, and another day in the Red Desert, Arithon
had used mage craft to turn his half-brother's mind. Plagued by doubts,
Lysaer wondered. Had the bastard plotted the same way in Strakewood?
For if mockery and goading had been paired with sorceries to eliminate the
only man with powers over light that might threaten him, the evil
inherent in such design upheld a frightening conclusion.
    How better for Arithon to win licence to toy with this world as he
pleased, than to dedicate his enemy to self-destruction? Lysaer burned
inside with recrimination. If faintness from blood loss had not disrupted
his attack, worse horrors could have visited Athera than seven thousand
dead Etarran soldiers.
 'Your Grace?' interrupted a staff messenger.
    Lysaer glanced up and identified livery with the black and white blazon
of the headhunters' league. Immediately contrite, since the boy could have

524


stood several minutes awaiting acknowledgment, he said, 'Pesquil sent
you?'
    'The wagons are ready to leave, your Grace.' Embarrassed by the
intensity of Lysaer's attention the boy regarded the grass, in this place
trampled and muddied by the grinding passage of men seeking comfort to
ease their misery. 'My lord Pesquil said Lord Commander Diegan is awake
and asking after you.'
    Lysaer dredged up energy to give a quick smile of reassurance. 'Would
you lead me to him?'
 The boy brightened. 'At once, your Grace.'
    Together, they crossed the camp. The mist was thinning quickly now.
Grooms stood in for tired messengers, since sorrowfully decimated
horse lines left them short of duties. Some of the watch fires were
doused. Between the leaning scaffolds of weapon racks and the comings
and goings from the officers' pavilions, patrols prepared to ride out. The
nearer circuits would be quartered on foot, sound mounts being precious
and few.
    Lysaer assessed all with the sure eye of a ruler and where he made
suggestions he was given deference and respect. He took care to
acknowledge every greeting with a nod, a smile, or with names, if he knew
the speaker: Pesquil's young staff-runner was overwhelmingly impressed.
    In subdued little groups, conversation underscored by the screeling hiss
of busy grindstones, the veteran pikemen mended gear. A few commiser-
ated over losses. Most others slept sprawled on wet ground, their blankets
reapportioned first for litters and then used for pallets and rough
bandaging. Past the phalanx of the supply stores, unloaded in haste from
the wagonbeds and lashed under tarps by the carters, the racket and
confusion of the night was subsiding. In sunlight, the green recruits who
had seen their companions half-butchered or drowned were less driven to
seek blind relief in scraps and hysterical boasting. Shrieks from the
campfollowers' tents raised in dissonance over the sobs of refugees from
the west valley still deranged by terror of the dark.
    The core of the army remained, Lysaer assessed. Carefully handled,
these men could be reforged into a troop of formidable strengths. All he
lacked was excuse to stay; already his authority was not questioned.
    The wagon-train bound for Etarra formed up, its escort of fifty lancers in
twitchy lines as men made last minute adjustments to tack and gear. One
of the few banners not lost in the river flood flapped erect at the column's
head. Pesquil gave instructions with rapid fire gesticulations to the
dispatch rider who would report to Lord Governor Moffett. A mule
strained at its lead rein to graze, bearing a lashed bundle in city colours;
Captain Gnudsog's remains, to be interred in the mausoleum gardens
reserved for the city's most revered.
    The rest of the wagons bore wounded, ones with privilege and pedigree
foremost. The little space remaining had been allotted to men with

525


irreplaceable skills or standing, and then grudgingly, to the staff and
supplies needful for a slow journey home.
    The cart draped in the Lord Commander's horsecloths was easy to spot.
Lysaer dismissed his young guide with a word of praise that left him
blushing. Then he crossed the open ground, threaded past an ongoing,
heated dispute and dismissed a hovering servant.
    Lord Diegan lay under blankets, dark, untidy hair emphasizing a drawn
face and eyes that wandered unfocused from soporifics not fully worn off.
He murmured in question as Lysaer's shadow fell over him, then settled as
his sight recorded a sun-caught head of gold hair.  The prince said gently, 'I am here.'
    'Your Grace?' Diegan struggled with a fuzzy smile that dissolved into
discomfort. He struggled painfully to concentrate.
  'Don't trouble,' Lysaer said. 'I shall speak for both of us.'
    'We lost Gnudsog.' The Lord Commander plucked at his blankets. 'You
knew that?'
    Lysaer captured the wandering fingers and caged them in gentle
stillness. Clearly, firmly, he said, 'Pesquil has charge of the garrison. He's
got twenty good men left who will instruct on barbarian tactics. Enough
men remain to finish our original intent. If you still want to destroy the
Deshans, Strakewood's springs will be poisoned and the game by the river
shall be hazed and killed. With nothing to hunt, the few clan survivors will
be starved out of the forest. The north will be cleared of such pests. No
disaster such as happened by Tal Quorin shall visit these northlands
again.'
    Colour flushed Diegan's cheeks in patches. 'They say you're staying
with the troops.'
    Lysaer smoothed the Lord Commander's hand and let go. 'I must. If I
cannot bear arms, I will use my gift of light to safeguard our forays against
sorcery.'
 Weakly, Diegan cursed. 'He survived then.'
    The name of the Shadow Master hung unspoken between them as an
answering grimness touched Lysaer. 'We haven't lost. The Deshir clans are
finished, there will be no next generation. And your city now knows the
measure of its enemy.'
    Lord Commander Diegan shut his eyes. A frown pulled at his brows, and
shadows of stress and fatigue seemed etched in the hollows of his bones.
'This pirate's bastard. You know we can't take him alone. Without your
gift of light, any army we send to the field would be ensorcelled and
ruinously slaughtered.'
    Lysaer weighed the wisdom of pursuing this subject with a heartsick
man who was also drugged and gravely ill. Heavy between them lay the
unspoken accusation: that Lysaer had sent Diegan into safety on Tal
Quorin's banks and by risking himself to the river had exposed them all to
unconscionable peril. Aware that Lord Diegan had rallied himself and was

526


watching in fragile-edged fury, Lysaer smiled. 'I've had all night to ponder
regrets. Here's my promise. No more exposure on the front ranks for me.
The next campaign you launch should be planned and executed to make
use of every advantage. Years will be needed to prepare. I could suggest you
have the headhunters' leagues train the garrisons, then sharpen their field
skills in small forays to eradicate barbarians. And when the army is readied
and equipped to perfection, send out heralds to recruit allies. The burden
should not fall to Etarra alone.'
 Diegan shifted in distress. 'You say nothing of yourself.'
    'I am royal,' Lysaer said, his eyes clear blue and direct. 'Once, you
thought that a liability.'
    Lord Commander Diegan swore explosively, then curled on his side in a
spasm of wrenched muscles and bitter pain. 'If I get Lord Governor Morfett
to issue an invitation under the official city seal, would you stay?'
    Lysaer smiled. 'Do that, and I shall labour with you to mobilize cities the
breadth of Rathain. Then we shall march upon Arithon s'Ffalenn, and we
shall take him with numbers no sorceries can overwhelm.'
    Lord Commander Diegan relaxed in his blankets, his eyes veiled in
drug-hazed speculation. 'I like your plan. Pesquil agrees?'
    Lysaer laughed. 'Pesquil made your scribes miserable jotting letters to
headhunters' leagues the breadth of the continent before our casualties
were tallied.' For Pesquil, the near total loss of his troop had been a sore
point, alleviated by moody bursts of elation that, after feuding years and
too little funding from city council, the Earl Steiven's dominion over
$trakewood had been decisively broken.
    'I shall have to buy manuscripts on strategy,' Diegan said in mixed
recrimination and distaste. 'They're longwinded and boring, I presume.
Hardly entertainment for the parties.' But fall season would be dreary as it
was, with so many ladies forced to mourning. Diegan drifted for some
minutes near sleep, while the prince, who knew far more about armies and
the art of command than he, attended him in tactful respect. Finally, eyes
closed, Lord Diegan murmured, 'Come back to us safely in the autumn.
My sister Lady Talith will be waiting.'
    'Tell her...' Lysaer paused, gravely pleased, while the captain at the
head of the column shouted orders, whips snapped in the hands of cursing
drovers and carts began, groaning, to roll forward. Striding alongside
Diegan's wagon, the sun in his hair like sheen on the wares of a silk
spinner, Lysaer spoke from his heart. 'I'll return to pay court to the lady. No
Master of Shadow with his darkness shall be permitted to keep us apart.'

527


Last Resolution

The deadfalls, stripped of stakes, became grave-pits to bury the fallen.
Deshir's clansmen accomplished the work in whirlwind expedience,
laying loved ones on top of dead horses or the bodies of enemies still clad in
plumed helms and mailshirts. Plunder entered nobody's mind. On a field
holding slain by the thousands there were more abandoned weapons than
living men to wield them; and by long and bitter custom, Deshir's clans
gave no time in respect for their fallen that might endanger the living.
    Of Strakewood's complement of nine hundred and sixty, scarcely two
hundred men lived, half that number wounded; fourteen boys of Jieret's
generation were all that survived Etarra's campaign against Arithon. The
Tal Quorin's waters rolled muddied and stinking, and swathe of ancient
greenwood lay razed and fire scarred and smoking.
    Unless the hunters ranged far into the mazed back glens of the river
basin, game for the stewpots was thin and scarce.
    As hungry and tired as the men who had lost their families and their
lifestyle to defend their rights of territory, Arithon s'Ffalenn raised a stone
still clotted with mud and moss and placed it against the cairn that marked
the burial of Steiven, Earl of the North, caithdein and Warden of Ithamon.
Interred at his side rested his beloved Lady Dania, whose piercing wit and
intuition would provoke and delight no man further. Silenced by remem-
brance, the Master of Shadow scuffed dirt from split fingers on the
leathers her kindness had provided him. Then he bundled an arm about the
shoulders of the boy who stood motionless at his side.
    'Your parents were fine people, Jieret. I was proud to know them. Forgive
me if I can't always match up to your memory of their example.' Under his
hands, the boy quivered.
 Arithon tactfully let him go.
 |ieret pushed back his sleeve cuffs and pulled out the whittling knife he

528


had used to carve toys for his sisters. He turned it over and over like a
talisman while, careful not to watch the boy's tears, Rathain's prince
knelt on earth still thrashed and torn from the passage of heavy destriers.
'Here,' he said, and gently removed the dagger from the boy's hand. With
a care that appeared to consume his attention, he began to scratch runes
of blessing and guard on the river slate that crowned the cairn.
    The patterns used in the ritual configuration of magic held a certain
stark beauty; each traced line captured thought in severe simplicity
which offered its own consolation. As Arithon sketched the intricate
angles, the circular curves and interlocked ciphers, he spoke. 'A kingdom
and its prince are only as strong as their warden. Caithdein, when you
come of age, I'll be honoured to swear oath on your blade. I can already
say you've served this land's prince. If not for your courage, Rathain's
royal line would be ended, and your father's fine work gone for nothing.'
    Jieret dashed his cheek with the back of one dirt-grained wrist. Red hair
sprang like wire between the folds of a bandage, cut from the silk shirt
sewn by Sethvir for the ceremony of Arithon's coronation. The peculiar
sharp attentivehess he had taken from his mother stayed trained in
unswerving contemplation of the gravestones. In words not those of a
child he said, 'Your Grace, my father's life was never wasted in your
service. He made me understand as much, when he told me he knew he
was going to die. One day, perhaps before I come of age, you will need me
again.'
    Oddly caught out in embarrassment, Arithon paused. 'Well. On that,
Ath forfend, I hope you're wrong.' The figure under his hands was
complete. He lifted the blade and studied the balanced geometrics of
patterns learned when his fingers were barely old enough to grip a chalk
stick. But unlike his childhood scrawlings on slate in his grandfather's
study, he sensed no subliminal surge of energy. Whether this mark in
Strakewood held power to ward, or whether its lines were just pretty
scratchings copied over by rote from memory he had no means in him to
tell. The odd, static flashes of mage-sight that had plagued him since
shaping the banespell had diminished, until finally he could summon no
vision at all.
    The self-discipline learned at Rauven remained; but to the craft he had
mastered, his senses had gone dumb and dead. Arithon sought the
essence of the trees and the air but perceived only as other men saw.
    Grief remained, of a depth he could share with no one. Not for the first
time since his choice to pursue his s'Ffalenn inheritance, he missed the
counsel of the cantankerous s'Ahelas grandfather who perhaps still lived
in Rauven's master tower. Dascen Elur with its wide oceans lay behind,
forever lost. Here spread a land whose sky, hills and rivers held secrets
0nly partially studied. Cut short in the midst of discovery, Arithon felt
deprived of an arm or a leg; or as an artist suddenly blinded to colour in a
hall filled with masterworks.

529


    Across the glen, through the sun-dappled pillars of lichened trunks, the
layered harmonics of a lyranthe being tested for pitch threaded the forest.
As personal as written signature, Halliron's favourite tuning phrase
spattered fifths like a running spill of coins. Each note pierced Arithon's
perception, separate as the impact of small darts. As if in counterbalance to
reft senses, his awareness of sound had grown acute. Birdsong never rang so
pure in his ears, and the clang of pickaxe and steel as graves were covered
over never clashed so wincingly dissonant.
    Still on his knees, Arithon stabbed Jieret's knife into dirt. He bowed his
head. As he had the past night laid hands to cold flesh, today he touched his
palms to old stone and stilled his inner awareness. He had personally
accomplished the ritual to free the sundered spirits of these, his lost
friends. Something of residual peace should emanate from the bones now
embraced in quiet earth.
 Nothing; he felt nothing at all.
    Arithon sighed, a tightness to his shoulders the only sign of the
ambivalence that wrenched him. Even the cairn stones were mute. Where
the least fleck of sand from the creek bed should ring in its essence with the
grand energies that defined all existence, these disparate rocks gave back
the scrape of rough edges against the uncalloused burn barely scarred over
since Etarra. Left only memory, Arithon touched nothing of the true
reality known to mages at all, but saw only the fiat spectrum of visible
light. The ghostly resonance left on this land by Paravian inhabitance, that
Asandir had attuned to his being in the hills of Caith-al-Caen, would
neither thrill nor harrow him, now. If he wished he could walk Ithamon's
ruins and not be haunted.
    Mastery of his shadows remained; but no knowledge to suggest whether
time would heal his other gifts.
    'They're starting.' Jieret touched his prince's wrist to rouse him. The
shadows had moved. An interval had passed that Arithon found difficult to
measure. Deshir's survivors at some point had set aside tools to gather into
a circle for the rite to honour their dead.
    Arithon recovered Jieret's knife from the earth and straightened up. 'I'll
listen from here.' He began to return the small blade to the boy, then
impulsively hesitated. 'Let me keep this,' he asked. 'As the steel we used to
swear bloodpact, I'd like to have it. To use. To have you know that I think
of you often.'
    'You're leaving us.' A statement; Jieret did not sound surprised. Not yet a
man, more than a boy, he had too much pride to ask why~ In a manner that
reminded painfully of Steiven, he said, 'You forget, I think, that I offered
you that same blade already.'
    Arithon tossed it, absorbed by the flash of the river pearl handle as it
turned and landed with a slap in his palm. 'When I'd finished the tienelle
scrying. I remember.'
  'That's a good knife for carving willow whistles,' Jieret said. 'I shan't be

530


needing it any longer.' And he gestured toward its replacement, a narrow,
quilloned main gauche he wore strapped to his belt. 'Ath go with you, my
prince.'
    Arithon tucked the little knife into the tight-laced leather that cuffed his
shirt. Then he pulled Jieret to him and exchanged a fierce embrace that he
broke with a quick push to send the boy off toward his people.
    Within the latticed sear of strong sun that striped through branches
singed of foliage, Deshir's clansmen in their war-stained, ragged leathers
joined hands. Their circle parted to include lieret, then unravelled a second
time as a stocky figure in studded belts and black bracers broke away.
Caolle, Arithon identified by the vehement thrust of the man's stride. The
clan captain had keen intuition, but in the absence of Dania's sisterly
intolerance, he retained all the style of thrown brick.
    At the centre of the circle, incongruous in the slashed elegance of black
silk and gold, Halliron stood in the restored splendour of his court clothing,
his lyranthe tuned in his hands. He called.
    But with Steiven dead and himself left trustee of the clans Caolle
deferred to no one. He stamped across the churned ground with his
bootcuffs slapping and his shoulders hunched up, and his whiskered chin
jutted for argument.
    Behind him, somebody said something commiserating and the clans-
men quietly closed the gap.
    Craggy from strain and sleeplessness, grazed by brush burns and patched
red from accumulated midge bites, Caolle looked ready to murder. 'You're
leaving us,' he accused.
    Suppressing a wince as his tone grated against an almost painful
sensitivity, Arithon felt no answering anger. 'I must.' He looked back in
forceful directness that forestailed Caolle's bluster. Across the thicket the
soft, sad notes of Halliron's lyranthe gentled the quiet: the opening phrases
of the ritual to sing Deshir's dead into memory. This was the first open
sentiment any clansman had shown, and would firmly and finally be the
last.
    The flight to take refuge in Fallowmere would begin immediately
following the ceremony.
    Caolle waited, fumingly impatient. Then as the poignance of Halliron's
playing touched even his bearish mood, he hooked large-knuckled thumbs
in his swordbelt. 'You can tell us why.'
    Unflinching, Arithon continued to regard him. 'I think you know.
Where I go, Lysaer's armies will follow.' He drew a breath.
    As though daring insults or evasions, Caolle clamped his hands under
taut forearms. He was a man who liked his clothing loose and his belts
tight; the blades that were visible on his person drew all the quicker, while
the invisible ones stayed unobvious. He regarded his silent liege lord, his
black eyes inimical as shield-studs.
 The Prince of Rathain gave no ground. Sincere where before he had been

531


secretive, he said, 'I can neither repay nor restore your losses. Nor would I
cheat you with promises I'm powerless to uphold. You gave me li~e and
offer a kingdom. Your lord shared a friendship more precious. In return I
give my word as Teir's'Ffalenn that I won't squander these gifts.'
    That softness covered a will like steel wire, as Caolle had cause to
respect. Touched by an uncharacteristic patience, he recalled the ballad of
Falmuir and the uncanny tableau up the grotto. Forbearance allowed him
not to rise to the hurt, that even after Etarra's armies, this prince seemed
too reticent to place his full trust in the clans.
    In the clearing, at the centre of the circle, Halliron raised voice in
cadenced expression of pure sorrow. Laid bare by the music, Arithon lost
all composure. His throat closed and he half spun away, ashamed of the
tears he could not curb. The music broke his will and his feelings for these
stern, unbending people undid him. He felt Caolle's hand close on his
shoulder, as it had many times to comfort Jieret.
    'You could be my bastion,' Arithon admitted, rarely vulnerable. 'Except
for Lysaer. Any who shelter me will become target for his armies. I would
not see your great-hearted clans exterminated for my sake. And so I ask
your leave to depart, unsupported and alone until such time as I can return
and fulfil your cherished hope, to rebuild a city in peace on the
foundations of old Ithamon.'
    'I've misjudged you.' Caolle withdrew his gruff touch, and for a long
minute the rise and fall of Halliron's beautiful voice resounded through
wood and clearing. Both men listened, each haunted by different regrets.
Then Caolle raked back his scruffy, iron-grey hair. 'I'll do so no more. But
in return, I ask your sanction to raise the clans of Fallowmere, and after
them, clansmen the breadth of the continent.'
    'I'm against it.' Arithon spun around. If his eyes blazed through a sparkle
of unshed tears, the force in him was that of a sword unsheathed. 'I wish no
more killing in my name.'
 Caolle's stiff stance rendered the short silence eloquent.
    And Arithon gave a sign that seemed wrung from his very depths. 'My
wife and children were not murdered by headhunters.' Gentled in a way
Caolle would once have disparaged, the Prince of Rathain traced the rune
on the clan chieftain's marker with fingers too fine for the sword but that
could, and had, killed in battle. 'My losses are as nothing to yours. I say that
raising an army begs a repeat of this tragedy. But I'm not cold-hearted
enough, or maybe I'm no true king at all. I haven't the nastiness to refuse
you. My blessing is yours, if not my approval. Go in grace, captain. Care for
Jieret, whom I love as my brother.'
    In token of friendship, Caolle offered his palms and accepted the prince's
double handshake. Across their clasped grip, while the song of lamentation
spiralled and dipped through the greenwood, he gave his liege a voracious
appraisal. The small build and fine bones, the green eyes with their depths
and veiled secrets; both harboured deceptive strengths. Nearly too late

532


~t

Caolle had discovered an integrity that admitted no compromise. He
would never in words be forced to admit that this scion of Rathain was
both perfectly suited and tragically paired with a fate that must waste his
real talents. 'One day you'll be grateful for our support, your Grace. We
lend ourselves gladly. One could say it's not meet for Maenalle s'Gannley
in Tysan to swear fealty to s'Ilessid unwarned.' He released Arithon's
hands and stepped back. 'Ath keep you safe from all harm.'
    'And you.' Arithon's mouth bent, a softening just short of warmth.
'We've been adversaries. I'm not sorry. If I had my choice, your sword
would go rusty for want of use. Hate me for that all you wish.'
    Caolle's chin puckered. For the sake of the mourning song still in
progress, he coughed back a raw burst of laughter. 'My sword,' he said
firmly, 'will only get rusted when I'm dead. Dharkaron break me for idiocy,
how did I come to swear fealty to a dreaming fool?'
    'You were duped.' Arithon grinned. 'Lord Steiven did that to both of us.'
He turned and with quiet lack of ceremony, strode away from the
riverbank.
    Caolle watched him go, narrow-eyed, tightness like a fist at his throat.
As Halliron struck chords for the lamentation's final stanza, the war
captain of Deshir's clansmen whispered, 'Go in grace, my prince.'
    The song dipped and mellowed, softened through its closing bars to a
brushed note that quavered and trailed away into the rustle of flame-seared
leaves. By then the Teir's'Ffalenn in his tattered black tunic had vanished
fromm sight. Whether trees had hidden him, or some trick of shadow, Caolle
found impossible to tell.

Dusk settled over Strakewood. In clear silver light, under trees like cut felt
against cobalt, Arithon sat on a beech log. His tucked up knees cradled
folded arms. His cuff laces dangled over hands without tension as he
listened to the first, uneven chorus of frogs in the marshes. He savoured the
quiet as day ebbed and softly surrendered to nightfall. The first star
appeared, a scintillating pinprick between the pines; he looked on its
solitary beauty without mage-sight to unlock its mystery.
    Later was soon enough to decide where to go. This moment content to
hang his thoughts on the sweet descending triplets of a woodthrush, he
closed his eyes and lost himself in the abiding whisper of pine tassels
stroked by the breeze.
    He had no one to answer to. Nothing burdened him but a scorched
conscience and a sword he would have given sight to have exchanged for
the lyranthe left in Etarra.
    Absorbed and relaxed, Arithon suspected nothing until a stick snapped
loudly behind his shoulder.
    He shot spinning to his feet and came face to face with a figure picked out
in sparkles of gold chain and jewels.

533


    Halliron Masterbard stood still decked out in his topaz studs, sure sign
he had ended his stay with the clans. The fine buttons that fastened his
cloak and hung his beautifully cut cape sleeves swung and glittered even in
failing light.
    Serene, his veined hands folded on the strap that slung his lyranthe, the
Masterbard said, 'It's a poor time for solitude, your Grace.'
    Arithon bridled. 'It's a worse hour for companionship with close to eight
thousand lives done and wasted.' Since the bard had presumed he was
brooding, he would foster that impression to be rid of him. 'I didn't ask for
sympathy. I thought I made my wishes clear to Caolle?'
    Halliron clicked his tongue behind spaced front teeth. 'No need to raise
your temper.' Unwilling to accept such short shrift, he seated himself on
the log the Master of Shadow had just vacated. Against his dark doublet,
his pale hair spread over his shoulders like watered silk. 'I thought it
wouldn't hurt to ask whether you'd join me on the road. Fallowmere holds
little to attract me. I've lingered overlong in the north.'
    Nettled now deeper than artifice, Arithon recoiled backward. 'Ah no.'
He sounded as if somebody had hit him, or as if he shied off from hidden
fear. 'I'll be no man's company after this. You of all men should best
understand my motive.'
    'You're not the first prince to take your oath through times of strife.'
Gold chains shivered in reflection as the bard shrugged. 'Daelion knows
you won't be the last. And you won't, though you try, put me off through a
show of self-pity.'
    Arithon stiffened. 'I think you've said enough.' The words were a
warning, which Halliron ignored by remaining in unbroken tranquillity on
the log. In the forest, the woodthrush had silenced. More stars burned
through the branches, and the frogs sang their rasping bass chorus. The
balance had fled; twilight had ebbed unnoticed, and the gloom now
swallowed even the brittle spark of the topaz studs.
    The veneer of peace so thinly established shattered suddenly beyond
recovery. Into a silence that reproached, Arithon said in breaking anguish,
'Ath help me, I had to stay. Without conjury or shadow, do you think any
clansman would have survived to hear your lament for Deshir's dead?'
    'Well, that's now behind you,' Halliron said placidly. 'Guilt is no use to
anybody. The only thing a man gains from his past is the power to ensure
his future. You can see the same circumstances are not permitted to
happen again.'
    'I was doing just that, I thought.' Arithon's anger intensified to a level
that admitted only pain. The moment still haunted and cut him, that
Lysaer's death and an end to Desh-thiere's geas had been balanced by
Jieret's life. His voice skinned and raw, the Master added, 'Will you leave?
I'm quite likely to survive without counsel.'
    'Well that may be. Except that I was the one come begging.' The
Masterbard folded his supple hands and maddeningly, solemnly regarded

534


the ground between his boots. 'If you'd unstop your ears and still your
infernal s'Ffalenn conscience, you'd see that I'm an old man. I need a strong
shoulder on the wheel when my pony cart mires in these bogs, and
somebody ought to partner my rambling on the nights when cold rains
drown my fire.' A mischievous tilt to his lips, he looked up. 'Never mind
that your talents need schooling. If those fingers of yours are ever to shape
more than promise, I'm offering the lowly station of minstrel's apprentice,
your royal Grace. Will you accept?'
    Arithon stared at him, his rigid bearing abandoned and repudiation
stupid on his face. He sat down on the deadfall, banged his elbow on a
branch and tangled his calf in the sword-scabbard he had forgotten he still
wore. Faintly breathless, he cursed.
    Mildly amused, and also queerly tense and vulnerable, Halliron
chuckled. 'The choice is that awful? You can't pretend to be surprised.'
    'No.' A choke or a strangled phrase of laughter twisted in Arithon's
throat. 'Does the minstrel Felirm have prescience?'
    'What?' the Masterbard lost his composure. His heart in his eyes, and his
knuckles clamped together in white knots, he radiated panicked trepida-
tion.
    Arithon looked back at him and grinned. 'Well, it's simple. Felirin forced
me to a promise once should you ever come to offer me apprenticeship.'
    'And?' Halliron sounded smothered. He had raised both hands to his
throat as if he needed help to keep breathing. 'And?'
    'I shall have to accept,' Arithon said. 'I've been party to all else but oath-
breaking, these days. My score with the Fatemaster's bad enough.'
    'You devil!' Halliron shot to his feet with a force that jostled a thrum of
bass protest from his soundboard. 'You let me think you'd turn me down!'
    'Well, you let me think you'd come to lecture.' Arithon laughed now
with a bursting joy that dissolved the last of his antagonism. 'Fiends take
me, I wanted to kill you for that.'
    'Well you lost your chance. You carry the greatest blade in Athera and
never once thought enough to use it.' Halliron started walking decisively.
'My pony and cart are hidden in a brushbrake somewhere up the Tal
Quorin. Once we find them, I'm fixing a strong pot of tea.'
    Then he stopped with a suddenness that caused Arithon to narrowly
miss crashing into him.
    'No,' said Halliron, his expressive voice queerly jangled. 'No. I'm
needing no tea. The truth is that's not what I'm wanting at all.' There and
then in the darkness, he unstrapped his bundle and tugged off oiled leather
coverings. 'Play me that tune I once asked for.' Not waiting for answer he
thrust his beautiful instrument into the arms of his apprentice.
    Arithon caressed the scrolled soundboard, drew a breath that smelled of
wax and resins and fine wood. He could not speak. He feared to move, lest
he disturb the frailty of his happiness. Halliron Masterbard had laid a
lyranthe between his hands and offered his heart's whole desire.

535


    Unseen in the fragrant summer gloom, the shy woodthrush. ventured a
last, lyric arpeggio. Crickets rasped undisturbed by any approaching
footstep. After a moment of fractured suspension, Arithon laid to rest his
final fear. He accepted that no one would burst from the wood in appeal for
a cause he could not for conscience fail to shoulder.
    For this night and others he was free. He could sit, set his hands to silver
strings and at long last, bend sorrow into music.

536


Reflections

In Mirthlvain Swamp, Asandir and Dakar join Verrain's patrol of black
pools, to check for resurgence of meth-snakes before the seasonal autumn
spawning: Traithe and Kharadmon arrive in $hand; and while the
Fellowship's hope for the south centres on one last prince raised in hiding,
the Warden of Althain tracks two cursed royal heirs who survive, and
awaits against hope any sign that the Black Rose Prophecy might still hold
valid...

In Korias the hour after sunrise, First Enchantress Lirenda presents report
from the lane-watch to her mistress, Morriel Prime; and the news is
unhappily received, that the initiates entrusted with scrying through fifth
lane vibrations have lost track of the Master of Shadows...

In the lightless shaft of Rockfell, sealed behind triple rings of wards, the
Mistwraith that once blocked sunlight from Athera languishes in confine-
ment; and if it knows that its grand curse to destroy two half-brothers has
once been tested and thwarted, it endures in unquiet hatred...

537



Glossary

ADON - statue of centaur king, one of the twins who founded the Ilitharis
Paravian royal line in the First Age. The carving forms one side of the arch
~)f Standing Gate on the road leading east into the Pass of Orlan, Camris,
Tysan.
pronounced: a-don, rhymes with 'hay don'
root meaning: daon - gold
ALATHWYR TOWER - one of five towers built by Paravians in the
middle of the First Age at Ithamon, principality of Daon Ramon, Rathain.
Its stonework of white alabaster is warded by the virtue, Wisdom. It stands
North, of the four towers that remain standing in the Third Age; hence the
common name used by men, being Compass Point Towers, or Sun Towers.
  pronounced: ah-lath-weer (a's to rhyme with as) emphasis on middle
          syllable
  root meaning: wisdom: alath - to know; wyr- all, sum
ALITHIEL - one of twelve Blades of Isaer, forged by centaur Ffereton
s'Danan in the First Age from metal taken from a meteorite. Passed
through Paravian possession, acquired the secondary name Dael Farenn, or
Kingmaker, since its owners tended to succeed the end of a royal line.
vcntually was awarded to Kamridian s'Ffalenn for his valour in defence of
the princess Taliennse, early Second Age.
   pronounced: ah-lith-ee-el
   root meaning - alith - star; iel - light/ray
   ALTHAIN TOWER - spire built at the edge of the Bittern Desert,
   beginning of the Second Age, to house records of Paravian histories. Third
   Age, became repository for the archives of all five royal houses of men after
rebellion, overseen by Sethvir, Warden of Althain and Fellowship sorcerer.
   pronounced: al like all, thain to rhyme with main
   root meaning: alt - last, thein - tower, sanctuary

539


    original Paravian pronunciation: alt-thein (thein as in 'the end')
AMROTH - kingdom on West Gate splinter world, Dascen Elur, ruled by
s'Ilessid descendants of the prince exiled through the Worldsend Gate at
the time of the rebellion, Third Age just after the Mistwraith's conquest.
    pronounced: am-roth (rhyme with sloth)
    root meaning: am - state of being, roth - brother 'brotherhood'
    ANGLEFEN - swampland located in Deshir, Rathain. Town of same name
    at the river mouth with port to Stormwell Gulf. One of the six port towns
that link sea trade-routes with Etarra.
    pronounced: angle-fen
    root meaning is not Paravian
    ARAETHURA - grass plains in southwest Rathain; principality of the
    same name in that location. Largely inhabited by Riathan Paravians in the
    Second Age. Third Age, used as pastureland by widely scattered nomadic
    shepherds.
pronounced: ar-eye-thoo-rah
root meaning - araeth - grass, era - place, land
ARAITHE - plain to the north of the trade city of Etarra, principality of
Fallowmere, Rathain. First Age, among the sites used by the Paravians to
renew the mysteries and channel fifth lane energies. The standing stones
erected are linked to the power focus at Ithamon and Methisle Keep.
    pronounced: araithe, rhymes with 'a wraith'
root meaning: araithe to disperse, to send; refers to the properties of
             the standing stones with relationship to the fifth lane
             forces
             ARITHON - son of Avar, Prince of Rathain, 1,504th Teir's'Ffalenn after
             founder of the line, Torbrand in Third Age year 1. Also Master of Shadow,
             and the Bane of Desh-thiere.
pronounced: ar-i-thon- almost rhymes with 'marathon'
root meaning: arithon - fate-forger; one who is visionary
ASANDIR - Fellowship sorcerer. Secondary name, Kingmaker, since his
hand crowned every High King of Men to rule in the Age of Men (Third
Age.) After the Mistwraith's conquest, he acted as field agent for the
Fellowship's doings across the continent. Also called Fiend-Quencher, for
his reputation for quelling iyats; Storm-breaker, and Change-bringer for
past actions in late Second Age, when Men first arrived upon Athera.
    pronounced: ah-san-deer
    root meaning: asan - heart; dir - stone 'heartrock'
ATAINIA - Northeastern principality of Tysan
    pronounced: ah-tay-nee-ah
    root meaning: itain - the third, ia suffix for 'third domain' original
            Paravian, itainia
ATH CREATOR- prime vibration, force behind all life.
    pronounced: ath to rhyme with 'math'
    root meaning - ath - prime, first (as opposed to an, one)

54O


ATHERA - name for the continent which holds the Five High Kingdoms;
one of two major landmasses on the planet.
   pronounced: ath-air-ah
   root meaning: ath - prime force; era - place 'Ath's world'
   ATHLIEN PARAVIANS - Sunchildren. Small race of semi-mortals,
pixie-like, but possessed of great wisdom/keepers of the grand mystery.
   pronounced: ath-lee-en
   root meaning: ath prime force; lien to love 'Ath-beloved'
   ^THLIERIA - equivalent of heaven/actually a dimension removed from
physical life, inhabited by spirit after death
   pronounced: ath-lee-air-ee-ah
   root meaning: Ath - prime force, li'era - exalted place, or land in
            harmony/li - exalted in harmony
AVAR S'FFALENN - Pirate King of Karthan, isle on splinter world Dascen
Elur, through West Gate. Father of Arithon; also Teir's'Ffalenn 1,503rd in
descent from Torbrand who founded the s'Ffalenn royal line in Third Age
Year One.
  pronounced - ah-var, to rhyme with 'far'
  root meaning: avar- past thought/memory

BRIANE - name of the warship that was crippled in the engagement
against the brigantine in command of Avar of Karthan; the vessel later
took Arithon s'Ffalenn captive and bore him to South Isle, and thence to
Port Royal on the splinter world of Dascen Elur.
     pronounced: bry-anna to rhyme with 'fry anna'
     root meaning: brianne - gull
BWIN EVOC s'LORNMEIN- founder of the line that became High Kings
of Havish since Third Age Year one. The attribute he passed on by means of
the Fellowship's geas, was temperance.
  pronounced: bwin to rhyme with 'twin', ee-vahk as in 'evocative', lorn
                as in English equivalent, mein rhymes with 'main'
  root meaning: bwin - firm; evoc - choice

CAILCALLOW- herb that grows in marshes, used to ease fevers
   pronounced: rhymes with 'kale-tallow'
   root meaning: cail - leaf, calliew- balm
   CAITH-AL-CAEN - vale where Riathan Paravians (unicorns) celebrated
   equinox and solstice to renew the athael, or life-destiny of the world. Also
   the place where the Ilitharis Paravians first Named the winter stars - or
   encompassed their vibrational essence into language. Corrupted by the
   end of the Third Age to Castlecain.
  pronounced: caydth-al-cay-en musical lilt, emphasis on second and
              last syllables; rising note on first two, falling note on last
          two.
  root meaning: caith - shadow, al - over, caen - vale 'vale of shadow'

541


CAITHDEIN- Paravian name for a high king's first counsellor; also, the one
who would stand as regent, or steward, in the absence of the crowned ruler.
    pronounced: kay-ith-day-in
    root meaning: caith -shadow; d'ein -behind the chair 'shadow behind
           the throne'
CAITHWOOD- forest located in Taerlin, southeast principality of Tysan.
    pronounced: kay-ith-wood
    root meaning: caith - shadow 'shadowed wood'
    CASTLECAIN - corrupted name for Caith-al-Caen, Vale of Shadows, see
    entry above.
   pronounced: castle-cane
CASTLE POINT- port city at the western terminus of the Great West Road,
located in the principality of Atainia, Tysan
CAL - mortal name held by Sethvir before he swore pact with the
Fellowship of Seven.
pronounced: kal
root meaning is not Paravian. (From English, Calum)
CAMRIS- north central principality of Tysan. Original ruling seat was city
of Erdane.
pronounced: kam-ris, the 'i' as in chris
root meaning: cairn - cross ris - way 'crossroad'
CAOLLE- war captain of the clans of Deshir, Rathain. First raised, and then
served under Lord Steiven, Earl of the North and caithdein of Rathain.
    pronounced: kay-all-e, with the 'e' nearly subliminal
    root meaning: caille - stubborn
    CIANOR SUNLORD- Born at Caith-al-Caen, First Age 615. Survived both
    the massacre of Leorne (caused by methuri, or hate-wraiths out of Mirth-
    lvain Swamp) in year 815, and led the Battle of Retaliation on Bordirion Plain
    (which by the start of the Second Age had been enveloped by the swamp.) In
    826 Cianor's forces were defeated at Erdane by Khadrim; Cianor retired to
    Araethura, gravely wounded. Crippled but alive, he is on hand at the arrival
    of the Fellowship of Seven, when Crater Lake was formed in First Age 827.
    Healed by Fellowship sorcerers. Appointed Keeper of the Records in 902;
    stabilized the realm after the murder of High King Marin Eliathe in Second
    Age 1542. Crowned High King of Athera in Second Age 2545 until his death
when a rise of Khadrim called him to war in Second Age 3651.
    pronounced: key-ah-nor
    root meaning: cianor - to shine
    CIERL-ANKESHED - venom of certain strains of meth-snakes, which
    causes dissolution of nerve tissue. Paralysis is almost instant, with death
    following days later. Without a known antidote, the poison is caustic and
    can be absorbed through the skin.
   pronounced: key-earl-an-kesh-id
   root meaning: cierl - nerve; ankeshed - pain/agony
CILADIS THE LOST - Fellowship sorcerer who left the continent in

542


Third Age 3462 in search of the Paravian races after their disappearance after
the rebellion.
  pronounced: kill-ah-dis
  root meaning: cael - leaf; adeis - whisper, compound, cael'adeis,
            colloquialism for 'gentleness that abides'
CILDORN - city famed for carpets and weaving, located in Deshit,
Rathain. Originally a Pararian holdfast, situated on a node of the third
lane.
pronounced: kilbdorn
root meaning: cieal - thread, dorn- net 'tapestry'
CORITH - island west of Havish coast, in Westland Sea. First site to see
sunlight upon Desh-thiere's defeat.
   pronounced: kor-ith
   root meaning: cori - ships, vessels; itha - five for the five harbours
           which the old city overlooked

DAELION FATEMASTER - 'entity' formed by set of mortal beliefs,
which determine the fate of the spirit after death. If Ath is the prime
vibration, or life force, Daelion is what governs the manifestation of free
will.
pronounced: day-ebee-on
root meaning: dael - king, or lord; i'on - of fate
DAEL-FARENN- Kingmaker, name for sword Alithiel; also, one of many
Pararian names for the Fellowship sorcerer, Asandir.
   pronounced: day-el-far-an
   root meaning: dael - king; feron - maker
   DAELTHAIN - fifth Compass Point, or Sun Tower, built by Paravians at
   citadel of Ithamon. This was the King's Tower, whose warded virtue was
   Justice. The structure fell on the eve of Marin Eliathe's murder, and
   crumbled further through the course of the rebellion. By the time of the
Mistwraith's conquest all that remained was the foundation.
   pronounced: day-ebthey-in
   root meaning: dael - king or lord; thein - tower, sanctuary
   DAELTIRI- sword carried by s'Ilessid High Kings. Forged in Second Age
   1240 by Paravian artisans to commemorate friendship on the occasion of
[aests'Ilessid's accession to the crown at Avenor.
   pronounced: day-el-tee-tee
   root meaning: dael - king, lord tieri - steel
   DAENFAL - city located on the northern lake shore that bounds the
southern edge of Daon Ramon Barrens in Rathain.
   pronunced: dye-en-fall
   root meaning: daen - clay, fa] - red
   DAKAR THE MAD PROPHET - apprentice to Fellowship sorcerer,
   Asandir, during the third Age following the Conquest of the Mistwraith.
   Given to spurious prophecies, it was Dakar who forecast the fall of the

543


Kings of Havish in time for the Fellowship to save the heir. He made the
Prophecy of West Gate which forecast the Mistwraith's bane, and also, the
Black Rose Prophecy, which called for reunification of the Fellowship.
    pronounced - dah-kar
    root meaning: dakiar- clumsy
DANIA - wife of Rathain's Regent, Steiven s'Valerient.
    pronounced: dan-ee-ah
    root meaning: deinia - sparrow
    DAON RAMON BARRENS - central principality of Rathain. Site where
    Riathan Paravians (unicorns) bred and raised their young. Barrens was not
    appended to the name until the years following the Mistwraith's conquest,
    when the river Severnir was diverted at the source by a task force under
    Etarran jurisdiction.
pronounced: day-on rah-mon
root meaning: daon - gold; ramon hills/downs
DARI S'AHELAS - Princess of Shand who fled through the western
Worldsend Gate at the time of the Mistwraith's conquest, to escape the
rebellion engineered by Davien. Sethvir trained her in the foundational
arts of power to increase her line's chances of survival. Her descendants
ruled Rauven in the splinter world of Dascen Elur.
    pronounced: dar-ee
    root meaning: daer to cut
    DAVIEN THE BETRAYER - Fellowship sorcerer responsible for pro-
    voking the great uprising that resulted in the fall of the high kings after
    Desh-thiere's conquest. Rendered discorporate by the Fellowship's
    judgment in Second Age 5129. Exiled since, by personal choice. Davien's
    works included the Five Centuries Fountain near Mearth, on the splinter
    world of the Red Desert, through West Gate. Rockfell shaft, used by the
    sorcerers to imprison harmful entities. The Stair on Rockfell Peak, and
also, Kewar Tunnel in the Mathorn Mountains.
    pronounced: dah-vee-en
    root meaning: dahvi - fool, mistake an - one 'mistaken one'
    DASCEN ELUR - splinter world off West Gate; primarily ocean with
    isolated archipelagos. Includes kingdoms of Rauven, Amroth and Karthan.
    Where three exiled high kings' heirs took refuge in the years following the
    great uprising.
pronounced: das-en el-ur
root meaning: dascen - ocean; e'lier- small land
DESH-THIERE - Mistwraith that invaded Athera from the splinter worlds
through South Gate in Third Age year 4993. Access cut off by Fellowship
sorcerer, Traithe. Battled and contained in West Shand for twenty-five
years, until the rebellion splintered the peace, and the high kings were
forced to withdraw from the defence lines to attend their disrupted
kingdoms.
   pronounced: desh-thee-air-e (last e mostly subliminal)

544


   root meaning: desh - mist; thiere - ghost or wraith
DESHANS - barbarian clans who inhabit Strakewood Forest, principality
of Deshir, Rathian.
   pronounced: desh-ee~ans
   root meaning: deshir- misty
DESHIR - northwestern principality of Rathain
   pronounced: desh-eer
   root meaning: deshir- misty
   DHARKARON AVENGER - called Ath's Avenging Angel in legend.
   Drives a chariot drawn by five horses to convey the guilty to Sithaer.
   Dharkaron as defined by Ath's adepts is that dark thread mortal men
   weave with Ath, the prime vibration, that creates self-punishment, or the
   root of guilt.
pronounced: dark-air-on
root meaning: dhar- evil; khiaron - one who stands in judgement
DIEGAN - Lord Commander of Etarra's garrison. Titular commander of
the war host sent against the Deshans to defeat the Master of Shadows.
   pronounced: dee-gan
   root meaning: diegan - trinket a dandy might wear/ornament
   DURMAENIR- centaur, son of the armourer who forged the twelve Blades
   of Isaer. Sword Alithiel was fashioned for Durmaenir, who died in battle
   against Khadrim in the First Age.
  pronounced: dur*may-e-neer
  root meaning: dir- stone; maenien - fallen

EAST WARD - city in Fallowmere, Rathain, renowned as a port that
served the trade-route to Etarra from the Cildein Ocean.
   pronounced: ward
   no Paravian root meaning as this city was man's creation
EDAL - next to youngest daughter, Steiven and Dania s'Valerient
   pronounced: ee-doll
   root meaning: e' prefix, diminutive for small; dal - fair
   ELAIRA - initiate enchantress of the Koriathain. Originally a street child,
bought up in Morvain for Koriani rearing.
   pronounced: eedayer-ah
   root meaning:e' prefix, diminutive for small; laere- grace
   ELDIR s'LORNMEIN - prince of Havish and last surviving scion of
   s'Lornmein royal line. Raised as a wool-dyer until the Fellowship sorcerers
train him for kingship following the defeat of the Mistwraith.
   pronounced: el-deer
   root meaning: eldir- to ponder, to consider, to weigh
   ELSHIAN - Athlien Pararian bard and instrument maker. Crafted the
lyranthe that is held in trust by Athera's Masterbard.
   pronounced: el-shee-an
   root meaning: e'alshian - small wonder, or miracle

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ELTAIR BAY - large bay off Cildein Ocean and east coast ot Ratt~am;
where river Sevemir was diverted following the Mistwraith's conquest.
    pronounced: el-tay-er
root meaning: al'tieri - of steel/a shortening of original Paravian
              name, dascen al'tieri which meant 'ocean of steel'
              which referred to the colour of the waves.
              ELWEDD - clansman under Steiven's rule. Wagered Halliron Masterbard
that Azithons'Ffalenn had poor swordsmanship.
    pronounced: el-wet
    root meaning: el - short weth - sight
    ENASTIR - Sunchild, Paravian High King. Son and heir of Lithorn. Ruled
in the early First Age until his death on the talons of Great Gethorn.
    pronounced: ee-nas-teer
    root meaning: e' prefix for small; nastir- warrior
    ENITHEN TUER - seeress in residence, city of Erdane. Where Asandir
stays while passing through Camris, Tysan.
    pronounced: endth-en too-er
    root meaning: en 'wethen - farsighted; tuer - crone
    ERDANE - old Paravian city, later taken over by men. Seat of Earls of
    Camris until Desh-thiere's conquest and rebellion.
pronounced: er-day-na with the last syllable almost subliminal
root meaning: er'deinia - long walls
ETARRA- trade city built across the Mathorn Pass by townsfolk after the
revolt that cast down Ithamon and the High Kings of Rathain. Nest of
corruption and intrigue, and policy maker for the North.
   pronounced: ee-tar-ah
 root meaning: e' prefix for small; taria - knots

FALLOWMERE - Northeastern principality of Rathain
    pronounced: fal-oh-meer
root meaning: fal-ei-miere literally, tree self reflection - col-
                loquialism for 'place of perfect trees'
                FALMUIR - city, once in Kingdom of Melhalla, ruined during a war of
                succession/never rebuilt. Princess of Falmuir subject of a ballad that
Halliron uses to illustrate a point to Caolle after the Battle of Strakewood.
    pronounced: fal-mu-ear
    root meaning: ffael - dark; muir - cause
FELIRIN - minstrel who joins Asandir's party enroute to Erdane
    pronounced: fell-eer-in
    root meaning: fel - red lyron - singer
    FELLOWSHIP OF SEVEN - sorcerers sworn, to uphold the Laws of the
    Major Balance, and to foster enlightened thought in Athera
FFERETON s'DARIEN - centaur armouter who forged the Twelve Blades
of Isaer, among them, Alithiel.
   pronounced: fair-et-on

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root meaning: ffereton - craftsman/master-maker

GHENT- mountainous principality in Kingdom of Havish; where Prince
Eldir was raised in hiding
pronounced: gent, hard g
root meaning: ghent - harsh
GNUDSOG - Etarra's field-captain of the garrison under Lord Comman-
der Diegan; acting first officer in the battle of Strakewood Forest
   pronounced: nud-sug to rhyme with 'wood log'
   root meaning: gianud- tough sog- ugly
   GRITHEN - last descendent, earls of Erdane. Leader of the raid on
   Asandir's party in the Pass of Orlan.
   pronounced: gri-then, rhymes with 'with hen'
   root meaning: kierth - mistake; an - one

HADIG - commander of archers, Etarra City Garrison
   pronounced: hay-dig
   root meaning not from Paravian
   HALDUIN s'ILESSID - founder of the line that became High Kings of
   Tysan since Third Age year one. The attribute he passed on, by means of
the Fellowship's geas, was justice.
   pronounced: hal-dwin
   root meaning: hal - white; duinne - hand
   HALLIRON MASTERBARD - Masterbard of Athera during the Third
Age; inherited the accolade from his teacher, Murchiel in the year 5597.
   pronounced: hal-eer-on
   root meaning: hal - white; lyron - singer
   HALMEIN - statue of centaur king, one of the twins who founded the
   Illtharis Paravian royal line in the First Age. The carving forms the left side
   of the arch of Standing Gate on the road leading east into the Pass of Orlan,
principality of Camris, Tysan.
   pronounced: hal-may-in
   root meaning: ha] - white; mein - haired
   HANSHIRE - port city on Westland Sea, coast of Korias, Tysan. Where
enchantress Elaira is stationed following her escapade at the Ravens Inn.
   pronounced - han-sheer
   root meaning: haash - sand; era - place
   HAVISH - one of the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, as defined by the
   charters of the Fellowship of Seven. Ruled by the s'Lornmein royal line.
Sigil: gold hawk on red field
   pronounced: hav-ish
   root meaning: havieshe - hawk
HAVISTOCK - southeast principality of Kingdom of Havish.
   pronounced: hav-i-stock
   root meaning: haviesha - hawk; tiok - roost

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 IDRIEN - Jieret's companion on the raid in which they take Halliron
Masterbard captive on the road south from Ward.
    pronounced: i-dree-en
    root meaning: e' - prefix for small; drien - partner
    ILITHARIS PARAVIANS - centaurs, one of three semi-mortal old races;
disappeared at the time of the Mistwraith's conquest.
    pronounced: i-li-thards
    root meaning: i'lith'earis - the keeper/preserver of mystery
    IMARN ADAER - enclave of Paravian gem*cutters in the city of Mearth,
    who dispersed in the times of the Curse which destroyed the inhabitants.
    The secrets of their trade were lost with them. Surviving works include the
    crown jewels of the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, cut as focus-stones
which attune to the heir of the royal lines.
    pronounced: i-marn-an-day-er
    root meaning: imarn- crystal; e'daer - to cut smaller
    INSTRELL BAY- body of water off the Gulf of Stormwell, that separates
principality of Atainia, Tysan, with Deshit, Rathain.
    pronounced: in-strell
    root meaning: arin'streal - strong-wind
    ISAER - power focus, built during the First Age, in Atainia, Tysan, to
source the defence-works at the Paravian keep of the same name.
    pronounced: i-say-er
    root meaning; i'saer- the circle
    ITHAMON - city built on a fifth lane powermode in Daon Ramon Barrens,
    Rathain. Originally a Paravian keep; site of the Compass Point Towers, or
    Sun Towers. Became the seat of the High Kings of Rathain during the Third
    Age and in year 5638 was the site where princes Lysaer s'Ilessid and
Arithon s'Ffalenn battled the Mistwraith to confinement.
    pronounced: ith-a-mon
    root meaning: itha - five; mon - needle, spire
    IYAT- energy sprite native to Athera, not visible to the eye, manifests in a
    poltergeist fashion by taking temporary possession of objects. Feeds upon
natural energy sources: fire, breaking waves, lightning.
    pronounced: ee-at
    root meaning: iyat - to break

JIERET s'VALERIENT- son and heir of Lord Steiven, clan chief of Deshit,
Earl of the North and caithdein of Rathain. Bloodpacted to Arithon
Teir's'Ffalenn prior to battle of Strakewood Forest.
    pronounced: jeer-et
    root meaning: jieret - thorn

KARFAEL - trader town on the coast of the Westland Sea, in Tysan. Built
by townsmen as a trade port after the fall of the High Kings of Tysan. Prior

548


to Desh-thiere's conquest, the site was kept clear of buildings to allow the
second lane forces to flow untrammelled across the focus site at Avenor.
   pronounced: kar-fay-el
   root meaning: kar'i'ffael - literal translation 'twist the dark'
            /colloquialism for 'intrigue'
KARMAK - plain located in the northern portion of the principality of
Camris, Tysan. Site of numerous First Age battles where Pararian forces
opposed Khadrim packs that bred in volcanic sites in the northern Tornir
Peaks.
pronounced: kar-mack
root meaning: karmak - wolf
KARTHAN - kingdom in splinter world Dascen Elur, through West Gate,
ruled by the Pirate Kings, s'Ffalenn descendants of the prince sent into
exile at the time of the Mistwraith's conquest.
   pronounced: karth-an
   root meaning: kar'eth 'an - one who raids/pirate
KARTHISH - from Karthan, term denoting nationality
   pronounced: karth-ish
   root meaning: kar'eth'an - pirate
   KELSING - town immediately south of Erdane, located in Camris, Tysan.
   Nearest inhabited site to the old earl's court which served as summer
   quarters for the Koriani Prime and her Senior Circle at the time of Lysaer
and Arithon's arrival through West Gate.
   pronounced: kel-sing
   root meaning: kel - hidden; seng - cave
   KHADRIM - flying, fire-breathing reptiles that were the scourge of the
   Second Age. By the Third Age, they had been driven back and confined in a
warded preserve in the volcanic peaks in north Tysan.
   pronounced: kaa-drim
   root meaning: khadrim - dragon
   KHARADMON - sorcerer of the Fellowship of Seven; discorporate since
   rise of Khadrim and Seardluin levelled Paravian city at Ithamon in First
   Age 3651. It was by Kharadmon's intervention that the survivors of the
   attack were sent to safety by means of transfer from the fifth lane power-
fOCUS.
  pronounced: kah-radomun
root meaning: kar'riad en mon - phrase translates to mean 'twisted
              thread on the needle' or colloquialism for 'a knot in the
              works'
              KIELING TOWER - one of the four Compass Point or Sun Towers
              standing at Ithamon, Daon Ramon Barrens, Rathain. The warding virtue
that binds its stones is Compassion.
   pronounced: kee-eldng
   root meaning: kJel'ien - root for pity, with suffix added translates to
           compassion

549


KORIANI - possessive form of the word, Koriathain; see entry
   pronounced: kor-ee-ah-nee
KORIAS - southwestern principality of Tysan
    pronounced: kor-ee-as
    root meaning: cor- ship, vessel; i'esh - nest, haven
    KORIATHAIN - order of enchantresses ruled by a circle of eight seniors,
    under the power of one Prime Enchantress. They draw their talent from the
    orphaned children they raise, or from daughters dedicated to service by
    their parents. Initiation rite involves a vow of consent that ties the spirit to
    a power channel keyed to the Prime's control.
   pronounced: kor-ee-ah-thain (thain rhymes with 'main')
   root meaning: koriath - order; ain - belonging to

LANSHIRE - northwestern principality of Havish. Name taken from
wastes at Scarpdale, site of First Age battles with Seardluin that seared the
soil to a slag waste.
pronounced: lahn-sheer-e (last e is nearly subliminal)
root meaning: lan'hansh'cra - place of hot sands
LIRENDA- First Senior Enchantress to the Prime, Koriani order; Morriel's
intended successor.
   pronounced: leer-end-ah
   root meaning: lyron - singer; di-ia a dissonance (the dash denotes a
            glottal stop)
LUHAINE - sorcerer of the Fellowship of Seven - discorporate since the
fall of Telmandir. Luhaine's body was pulled down by the mob while he
was in ward trance, covering the escape of the royal heir to Havish.
    pronounced: loo-hay-ne
    root meaning: luirhainon - defender
    LYRANTHE - instrument played by the bards of Athera. Strung with
    fourteen strings, tuned to seven tones {doubled). Two courses are 'drone
    strings' set to octaves. Five are melody strings, the lower three courses
    being octaves, the upper two, in unison.
pronounced: leer-anth-e (last e being nearly subliminal)
root meaning: lyr - song; anthe - box
LYSAER s'ILESSID - prince of Tysan, 1497th in succession after Halduin,
founder of the line in Third Age Year One. Gifted at birth with control of
Light, and Bane of Desh-thiere
    pronounced: lie-say-er
    root meaning: lia - blond, yellow, or light; saer- circle

MADREIGH - senior scout, Deshir clans. One of the eleven who stood to
Jieret's defence in the battle of Strakewood Forest.
   pronounced: mah-dree-ah (ah is near subliminal)
   root meaning: madrien - staunch

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MAENALLE s'GANNLEY- Steward and caithdein of Tysan.
   pronounced: may-nahl-e (last e is near subliminal}
   root meaning: maeni - to fall, disrupt; alli - to save or preserve/
            colloquial translation: 'to patch together'
MAIEN - nickname for Maenalle's grandson, Maenol.
   pronounced: my-en
   root meaning: maien - mouse
   MAENOL - heir, after Maenalle s'Gannley, Steward and caithdein of
   Tsan.
pronounced: may-nahl
root meaning: maeni'alli - 'to patch together'
MAINMERE - town at the head of the Valenford River, located in the
principality of Taerlin, Tysan. Built by townsmen on a site originally kept
clear to free the second lane focus in the ruins further south.
   pronounced: main-meer-e {e is subliminal)
   root meaning: maeni - to fall, interrupt; miere - reflection colloquial
   translation: disrupt continuity
MARIN ELIATHE - Paravian High King murdered in his own hall by an
assassin in Second Age 1542.
  pronounced: mahr-in el-ee-ath
  root meaning: marin - happening; e'li - in harmony with; ath - prime
           force behind all life
MARL - Earl of Fallowmere and clan chieftain at the time of the battle of
Strakewood Forest.
pronounced: marl
root meaning: marle quartz rock
MATHORN MOUNTAINS - range that bisects the kingdom of Rathain,
east to west.
pronounced: math-orn
root meaning: mathien - massive
MATHORN ROAD - way passing to the south of the Mathorn Moun-
tains, leading to the trade City of Etarra from the west.
   pronounced: math-orn
   root meaning: mathien - massive
   MEARA- daughter of Steiven, Earl of the North, and Dania; older sister of
   [tcret.
pronounced: mere-ah
root meaning: meara - willow
MEARTH - city through the West Gate in the Red Desert. Inhabitants all
tall victim to the Shadows of Mearth, which were created by the
fellowship sorcerer Darien to protect the Five Centuries Fountain. The
Shadows are a light-fuelled geas that binds the mind to memory of an
individual's most painful experience.
   pronounced: me-arth
   root meaning: mearth - empty

551


MELOR RIVER - located in the principality of Korias, Tysan. Its mouth
forms the harbour for the port town of West End.
    pronounced: reel-or
    root meaning: maeliur fish
    METH ISLE KEEP - old Paravian fortress located on the isle in Methlas
    Lake in southern Melhalla. Kept by Verrain, Guardian of Mirthlvain.
    Contains a fifth lane power focus and dungeons where methuri were held
temporarily captive before transfer to Rockfell.
    pronounced: meth isle
    root meaning: meth hate
    METHLAS LAKE - large body of fresh water located in the principality of
    Radmoor, Melhalla.
pronounced: meth-las
root meaning: meth 'ilass'an the drowned, or sunken ones.
METH-SNAKES - crossbred genetic mutations left over from a First Age
creature called a methuri (hatewraith). Related to iyats, these creatures
possessed live hosts, which they infested and induced to produce mutated
offspring to create weakened lines of stock to widen their choice of
potential host animals.
pronounced: meth to rhyme with 'death'
root meaning: rneth - hate
METHURI - iyat-related parasite that infested live host animals. By the
Third Age, they are extinct, but their mutated host stock continues to
breed in Mirthlvain Swamp.
pronounced: meth-yoor-ee
root meaning: meth - hate; thiere - wraith, or spirit
MIN PIERENS- archipelago to the west of kingdom of West Shand, in the
Westland Sea.
pronounced: min (rhymes with 'pin') pierre-ins
root meaning: rain - purple; pierens - shoreline
MIRTHLVAIN SWAMP - boglands filled with dangerous crossbreeds,
located south of the Tiriac Mountains in principality of Midhalla,
Melhalla. Never left unwatched. Since conquest of the Mistwraith, the
appointed guardian was the spellbinder, Verrain.
    pronounced: mirth-el-vain
    root meaning: myrthl - noxious; vain - bog/mud
    MORFETT - Lord Governor Supreme of Etarra at the time the Fellowship
    seeks to restore Rathain's monarchy following the captivity of the
    Mistwraith.
pronounced: more-let
no root meaning from the Paravian
MORRIEL - Prime Enchantress of the Koriathain since the Third Age year
4212.
   pronounced: more-real
   root meaning: moar - greed; riel - silver

552


MORVAIN - city located in the principality of Araethura, Rathain, on the
coast of Instrell Bay. Elaira's birthplace.
   pronounced: more-vain
   root meaning: morvain - swindler's market

NARMS - city on the coast of Instrell Bay, built as a craft centre by men in
the early Third Age. Best known for dyeworks.
  pronounced: harms to rhyme with 'charms'
  root meaning: narms- colour

ORLAN - pass through the Thaldein Mountains, also location of the
Camris clans' west outpost, in Camris, Tysan. Where Asandir's party is
waylayed by Grithen enroute to Althain Tower.
   pronounced: or-lan
   root meaning: irlazl - ledge
ORVANDIR - principality located in northeastern Shand.
   pronounced: or-van-deer
   root meaning: orvein - crumbled dir stone

PARAVIAN - name for the three old races that inhabited Athera before
men. Including the centaurs, the sunchildren, and the uncorns, these races
never die unless mishap befalls them; they are the world's channel, or
direct connection to Ath Creator.
   pronounced: par-ai-vee-ans
   root meaning: para - great i'on fate or 'great mystery'
   PESQUIL - Mayor of the Northern League of Headhunters, at the time of
   the battle of Strakewood Forest. His strategies cause the Deshit clans the
   most punishing losses.
  pronounced: pes-quil to rhyme with 'pest quill'.
  root meaning not from the Paravian

0UEN - halfwit who serves as door guard and servant to the Prime
Enchantress of the Koriathain, Morriel.
   pronounced: cue-en
   root meaning: quenient - witless

RATHAIN - High Kingdom of Athera ruled by descendants of Totbrand
s'Ffalenn since Third Age year one. Sigil: black and silver leopard on green
field.
pronounced: rath-ayn
root meaning: roth - brother; thein - tower, sanctuary
RAUVEN TOWER- home of the s'Ahelas mages who brought up Arithon
s'F~alenn and trained him to the ways of power. Located on the splinter
world, Dascen Elur, through West Gate.
   pronounced: raw-yen
   root meaning: rauven - invocation

553


RENWORT - plant native to Athera. A poisonous mash can be brewed
from the berries.
pronounced: ten-wart
root meaning: renwarin - poison
RIATHAN PARAVIANS - unicorns, the purest and most direct con-
nection to Ath Creator; the prime vibration channels directly through the
horn.
   pronounced: ree-ah-than
   root meaning: ria to touch; ath - prime life force ri'athon - one who
            touches divinity
ROCKFELL - deep shaft cut into Rockfell Peak, used to imprison harmful
entities throughout all three ages. Located in the principality of West
Halla, Melhalla; became the warded prison for Desh-thiere.
    pronounced: rock-fell
    root meaning not from the Paravian
    ROCKFELL VALE - valley below Rockfell Peak, located in principality of
    West Halla, Melhalla.
   pronounced: rockfell vale
   root meaning not from the Paravian

SAERIAT- name of the brigantine captained by Avar of Karthan, defeated
and burned in engagement against seventeen warships of Amroth.
    pronounced: say-tee-at
    root meaning: saer - water; iyat - to break
    s'AHELAS - family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship
    sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Shand. Gifted
    geas: farsight.
pronounced: s'ah-hell-as
root meaning: ahelas - mage-gifted
s'DARIAN - family name for a line of centaurs who were master
armourers in the First and Second Ages. Most renowned was Ffereton who
forged the twelve Blades of Isaer, Alithiel being for his natural son
Durmaenir.
pronounced: dar-ee-an
root meaning: daer'an - one that cuts
sTFALENN - family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship
sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Rathain.
Gifted geas: compassion/empathy.
    pronounced: fal-en
    root meaning: ffael - dark~ an - one
    s'GANNLEY- family name for the line of Earls of the West, who stood as
caithdein and Stewards for the Kings of Tysan.
    pronounced: gan-lee
root meaning: gaen - to guide; li - exalted, or in harmony
s'ILESSID - family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship

554


 sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Tysan. Gifted
 gcas: justice.
 pronounced: s-ill-ess-id
 root meaning: liessiad- balance
 s'LORNMEIN - family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellow-
 ship sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Havish.
 Gifted geas: temperance
 s'PERHEDRAL- line of sunchildren whose issue succeeded Athera's High
 Kingship after Enastir, who died heirless.
    pronounced: per-heed-rail
    root meaning: para - great; hedreal - oak
    s'VALERIENT - family name for the Earls of the North, regents and
 c(~ithdein for the High Kings of Rathain.
    pronounced: val-er-ee-ent
    root meaning: val - straight; erient - spear
    SEARDLUIN - vicious, intelligent cat-formed creatures that roved in
    packs whose hierarchy was arranged for ruthless and efficient slaughter of
    ~)thcr living things. By the middle of the Second Age, they had been battled
    to extinction.
pronounced: seerd-lwin
root meaning: seard - bearded; ]uin - feline
SETHVIR - sorcerer of the Fellowship of Seven, served as Warden of
Afthain since the disappearance of the Paravians in the Third Age after the
Mistwraith's conquest.
pronounced - seth-veer
root meaning: seth - fact; vaer- keep
$EVERNIR - river that once ran across the central part of Daon Ramon
Barrens, Rathain. Diverted at the source after the Mistwraith's conquest,
to run east into Eltair Bay.
pronounced: se-ver-neer
root meaning: sevaer- to travel; nir- south
SHAND - one of the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, cut by South Strait,
the portion on the western shore being West Shand.
   pronounced: shand
   root meaning: shand- two
~HANDIAN - refers to nationality, being of the Kingdom of Shand
   pronounced: shand-ee-an
   root meaning: shand- two
   5, ITHAER - mythological equivalent of hell, halls of Dhark;ron Avenger's
   iudgcment; according to Ath's adepts, that state of being where the prime
~ ibration is not recognized.
 Pronounced: sith-air
 rt~ot meaning: sid- lost; thiere - wraith/spirit
 SKELSENG'S GATE - chain of cliff caves in the foothills of the Skyshiel
 Mountains, abutting Daon Ramon Barrens in Rathain. Became a ternpot-

555


ary holding-place for the Mistwraith just after captivity.
    pronounced: skel-seng rhymes with 'tell bring'
    root meaning: skel - many; seng - cave
    SKYRON FOCUS - large aquamarine focus-stone, used by the Koriani
    Senior Circle for their major magic after the loss of the Great Waystone
    during the rebellion.
   pronounced: sky-run
   root meaning: skyron - colloquialism for shackle s'kyr'~'on - literally
           'sorrowful fate'
SKYSHIEL - mountain range that runs north to south along the eastern
coast of Rathain.
pronounced: Sky-shee-el
root meaning: skyshia - to pierce through; iel light/ray
STEIVEN - Earl of the North, caithdein and regent to the Kingdom of
Rathain at the time of Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn's return. Chieftain of the
Deshans at the Battle of Strakewood Forest.
    pronounced: stay/vin
    root meaning: steiven - stag
    STRAKEWOOD - forest in the principality of Deshir, Rathain; site of the
    battle of Strakewood Forest.
   pronounced: strayk-wood to rhyme with 'stray wood'
   root meaning: streik to quicken, to seed

TAERLIN - southwestern principality of Kingdom of Tysan
    pronounced: tay-er-lin
    root meaning: taer - calm; lien - to love
    TAL QUORIN - river formed by the confluence of watershed on the
    southern side of Strakewood, principality of Deshir, Rathain, where traps
were laid for Etarra's army in the Battle of Strakewood Forest.
    pronounced: tal quar-in
    root meaning: tal - branch; Cluorin canyons
    TALERA s'AHELAS - princess wed to the king of Amroth on the splinter
    world of Dascen Elur. Mother of Lysaer s'Ilessid, by her husband; mother of
    Arithon, through her adulterous liaison with the pirate king of Karthan,
    Avar s'Ffalenn.
pronounced: tal-er-a
root meaning: talera - branch or fork in a path
TALIENNSE - Pararian princess rescued from Khadrim attack by
Kamridian s'Ffalenn, for which the Isaervian sword Alithiel was awarded
to the s'Ffalenn royal line.
pronounced: tal-ee-en-se
root meaning: talien- precious; esia - feather
TAL'S CROSSING - town at the branch in the trade road that leads to
Etarra and south, and northeastward to North Ward.
   pronounced: tal to rhyme with 'pal'

556


~riani
~tone

rally

tern

~ of
the

he

   root meaning: tal branch
TANE - father of Grithen, heir to the earldom of Erdane.
   pronounced: tain to rhyme with 'main'
   root meaning: branch
TANE - father of Grithen, heir to the earldom of Erdane.
   pronounced: tain to rhyme with 'main'
   root meaning: tane sire, father
   TANLIE - mother of the dead child that Arithon brought in from the horse
knacker's yards in Etarra.
   pronounced: tandee
   root meaning: tun - brown; lie note struck in harmony
   TASHAN - Elder on Maenalle's clan council, present at the west outpost
at the time of Grithen's raid on the Pass of Orlan.
   pronounced: tash-an
   root meaning: tash - swift, quick; an - one
   TASHKA - daughter of Lady Dania and Steiven s'Valerient, Earl of the
North and caithdein of Rathain.
   pronounced: tash-ka
   root meaning: tash - quick/swift; ka - girl
TEIR - title fixed to a name denoting heirship
   pronounced: tay-er
   root meaning: teir's 'successor to power'
   TELIR - a sweet fruit somewhat like a cherry grown by the Pararians, from
   which they made telir brandy. Telir trees did not bear fruit after the
   Mistwraith's conquest and no new seedlings sprouted in the absence of
   sunlight.
pronounced: tel-ear
root meaning: telir- sweet
TELMANDIR - ruined city that once was the seat of the High Kings of
Havish. Located in the principality of Lithmere, Havish.
   pronounced: tell-man-deer
   root meaning: telman 'en leaning dir rock
   TENNIA - young girl from Rauven in Dascen Elur, the splinter world
   through West Gate. Deeply attracted to Arithon s'Ffalenn, though her fear
of his Shadow Mastery prevented any serious ties.
   pronounced: ten-ee'ah
   root meaning: itenia - uncertain
   THALDEIN - mountain range that borders the principality of Camris,
   Tysan, to the east. Site of the Camris clans' west outpost. Site of the raid at
   the Pass of Orlan.
pronounced: thall-dayn
root meaning: thai - head; dein - bird
TIENELLE - high altitude herb valued by mages for its mind-expanding
properties. Highly toxic. No antidote. The leaves, dried and smoked, are
most potent. To weaken its potency and allow safer access to its vision,

557


Koriani enchantresses boil the flowers then soak tobacco leaves with the
brew.
pronounced: tee-an-ell-e (e mostly subliminal)
root meaning: tien - dream; iel - light/ray
TIRIACS - mountain range to the north of Mirthlvain Swamp, located in
the principality of Midhalla, Kingdom of Melhalla.
    pronounced: tieoree-axe
    root meaning: tieriach alloy of metals
    TISHEALDI - name given to Arithon's dun mare for the irregular white
    marking on her neck.
pronounced: tish-ee-abdee
root meaning: tishealdi - splash
TORBRAND s'FFALENN - founder of the s'Ffalenn line appointed by the
Fellowship of Seven to rule the High Kingdom of Rathain in Third Age
Year One.
pronounced: tot-brand
root meaning: tor- sharp/keen; brand- temper
TORNIR PEAKS - mountain range on western border of the principality
of Camris, Tysan. Northern half is actively volcanic, and there the last
surviving packs of Khadrim are kept under ward.
    pronounced: tot-neet.
    root meaning: tot sharp/keen; nier- tooth
    TRAITHE - sorcerer of the Fellowship of Seven. Solely responsible for the
    closing of South Gate to deny further entry to the Mistwraith. Traithe lost
    most of his faculties in the process, and was left with a limp. Since it is not
    known whether he can make the transfer into discorporate existence with
his powers impaired, he has retained his physical body.
    pronounced: tray-the
    root meaning: traithe- gentleness
    TYSAN - one of the five High Kingdoms of Athera, as defined by the
    charters of the Fellowship of Seven. Ruled by the s'Ilessid royal line. Sigil:
    gold star on blue field.
   pronounced: tie-san
   root meaning: tiasen - rich

VALENDALE - river arising in the Pass of Orlan in the Thaldein
Mountains, in the principality of Atainia, Tysan.
    pronounced: val-en-dale
    root meaning: valen - braided; dale - foam
    VASTMARK - principality located in southwestern Shand. Highly
    mountainous and not served by trade roads. Its coasts are renowned for
    shipwrecks. Inhabited by nomadic shepherds and wyverns, non-firebreath-
ing, smaller relatives of Khadrim.
    pronounced: vast-mark
    root meaning: vhast bare mheark valley

558


VERRAIN - spellbinder, trained by Luhaine; stood as guardian of Mirth-
lvain when the Fellowship of Seven was left shorthanded after the
conquest of the Mistwraith.  pronounced: ver-rain
  root meaning: ver - keep ria; - touch; an - one original Paravian:
                verr~'a 'an

WARD - a guarding spell
   pronounced: as in English, ward
   root meaning, not from the Paravian

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