The Curse of the Mistwraith


By the same author

The Cycle of Fire Trilogy

 1. Stormwarden
 2. Keeper of the Keys
 3. Shadowfane

   Sorcerer's Legacy
The Master of Whitestorm

and with Raymond E. Feist

 Daughter of the Empire
 Servant of the Empire
 Mistress of the Empire


Jann y Wurts

OF

  THE CURSE
THE MISTWRAITH

The Wars of Light and Shadows:
        VOLUME 1

HarperCollinsPublishers


HarperCollinsPublishers,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
    1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Copyright c Janny Wurts 1993

The Author asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

ISBN 0 00 224070 X
       0 00 224071 8 {Tpb)

    Set in Tromp Mediaeval at
The Spartan Press Ltd, Lymington, Hants

Printed in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.


Acknowledgements

Curse of the Mistwraith kicks off a massive project whose inception has
been smoothed by guidance and expertise and generous gifts of time.
Thanks to the following friends, whose professions and hobbies and
suggestions added touches of reality between the magic.

Jane Johnson, editor extraordinaire; David E. Bell, Mike Floerkey, Mickey
Zucker Reicheft, Suzanne Parnell, Raymond E. Feist, Rosemary Prince,
and of course, Don Maitz, my husband, without whom the sheer weight
and scope of the project probably would have flattened me.


,/





 cities
 Paravian Ruins
 cities unaffected by the rebellion
 World Gates
 standing stones
.... kingdom boundaries
~ rivers
 ~ forests
~ swamps
 ;.: '.. wastelands
~old roads
travelled roads
mountains


      For Gladden Schrock,

guiding ligh. t for dreams and closet albatrosses
         here is one that flew.


Col1 ten t$

Prologue

I
II
III
IV
v
vI
VII
viii
IX
x
xI
xII
xIII
xIv
xv
xvI
xvII
xvIII

Captive
Sentence
Exile
Mistwraith's Bane
Ride from West End
Erdane
Pass of Orlan
Clans of Camris
Althain Tower
Daon Ramon Barrens
Desh-thiere
Conquest
Etarra
Coronation Day
Strakewood
Augury
March Upon Strakewood Forest
Culmination

Xlll

  1
 25
 47
 73
 93
123
147
173
193
227
259
287
315
345
389
425
465
499

Glossary                                            539



Prologue

The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera,
the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that
time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through
five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion
founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity
incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark
powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole
arbiters of truth.
    Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly
aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the
entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint
and mystic instead.
    Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend
and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past,
and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all
expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor
even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide
oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur.
    This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine
the good and the evil for himself.

xiii



All for the waste of Karthan's lands
  the Leopard sailed the main.
s'Ilessid King then cursed s'Ffalenn,
 who robbed him, gold and grain.
 stanza from a ballad of Dascen Elur

I. CAPTIVE

The longboat cleaved waters stained blood-red by sunset, far beyond sight
of any shore. A league distant from her parent ship, at the limit of her
designated patrol, she rose on the crest of a swell. The bosun in command
shouted hoarsely from the stern. 'Hold stroke!'
    Beaten with exhaustion and the aftermath of battle, his crewmen
responded. Four sets of oars lifted, dripping above waters fouled by oil and
the steaming timbers of burned warships.
    'Survivors to starboard.' The bosun pointed toward two figures who
clung to a snarl of drifting spars. 'Quick, take a bearing.'
    A man shipped his looms to grab a hand compass. As the longboat dipped
into the following trough, the remaining sailors bent to resume stroke. Oar
shafts bit raggedly into the sea as they swung the heavy bow against the
wind.
    The bosun drew breath to reprimand their sloppy timing, then held his
tongue. The men were tired as he was; though well seasoned to war
through the feud which ran deadly and deep between Amroth and
Karthan's pirates, this had been no ordinary skirmish. Seven full-rigged
warships in a fleet of seventeen had fallen before a single brigantine under
the hated leopard banner. The bosun swore. He resisted a morbid urge to
brood over losses; lucky, they were, to have the victory at all. The defeated
brigantine's captain had been none other than Arithon s'Ffalenn, called
sorcerer and Master of Shadow.
    The next swell rolled beneath the keel. Heaved and lifted on its crest, the
longboat's peaked prow momentarily eclipsed the castaways who
struggled in the water. Afraid to lose sight of them, the bosun set the
compassman as observer in the bow. Then he called encouragement while
his oarsmen picked an erratic course through the splintered clots of
planking and cordage which wallowed, treacherous as reefs upon the sea.


The crew laboured in dead-faced silence. Not even the scraping bump of
the corpse which passed beneath the keel caused them to alter their stroke.
Horror had numbed every man left alive after the nightmare of fire, sorcery
and darkness that Arithon had unleashed before the end.
    The boat drew abreast of the survivors. Overtaken by a drift of wind-
borne smoke, the bosun squinted through burning eyes. Only one victim
looked to be conscious. He clung with whitened fingers to the nearer end of
the spar, while at his back, another sailor lay lashed against the heaving
pull of the waves. The knots at this one's waist were half loosened, as if,
seeing help on the way, his companion had clumsily tried to free him.
    'Ship oars!' Gruffly, the bosun addressed the man in the water. 'Is your
friend wounded?'
    The wreck victim raised listless, glassy eyes, but said nothing. Quite
likely cold water had dulled the fellow's wits. Weary of senseless ruin and
the rescue of ravaged men, the bosun snapped impatiently, 'Bring him in.
We'll get the other second, if he still breathes.'
    A crewman hooked the spar with his oar shaft to steady the boat. Others
leaned over the thwart to lift the half-drowned sailhand aboard.
    The victim reacted with vengeful speed and doused his rescuers with
seawater.
    Stung nearly blind by the salt, the nearer oarsman yelled and lunged. His
hand closed over a drenched mat of hair. The man in the water twisted
against the restraint. He kicked clear of the spar, ducked and resurfaced, a
flash of bare steel in one fist. The oarsman recoiled from him with a scream
of pain and surprise, his wrist opened stark to the bone.  'Ath, he's Karthan's!' someone shouted.
    The lonboat's crew erupted in confusion. Portside, those seamen
within reach raised oars like clubs and retaliated. One blow, then another
struck the enemy sailor's head. Blood spilled from his nose and mouth.
Chopped viciously on the shoulder, he floundered. His grasp loosened and
the dagger dropped winking into the depths. Without even a curse of
malediction, the Karthish sailor thrashed under, battered and finally
drowned by the murderous hatred of enemies.
    'Man the oars!' The bosun's bellow restored order to the wildly rocking
longboat. Men sank down at their benches, muttering, while seawater
lapped tendrils of scarlet from the blades of the portside looms. Too tired
even to curse, the officer tossed a scarf to his wounded oarsman. Then he
pointed at the unconscious survivor who drifted still lashed to the spar. By
now the smoke had cleared enough to see that the Karthish dog still
breathed. 'Fetch that one aboard. The king will want him for questioning,
so mind you handle him wisely.'
    Sailors sworn to the pirate king's service seldom permitted themselves
to be taken alive. With one casualty wrapping his wrist in the stern, no
man rushed the task. Amroth's seamen recovered the last crewman of
Karthan's brigantine from the sea with wary caution and dumped him

2


face-down on the floorboards. The bosun regarded his prize with distaste.
Barefoot, slightly built and clad in a sailhand's patched tunic, the man
seemed no one important. Only the silver ring on his left hand occasioned
any notice at all; and after hours of thankless labour, the oarsmen deserved
reward for their efforts.
    'Beer-booty,' invited the bosun. He bent, caught the captive's wrist, and
tugged to pry the ring from a finger still swollen from the sea.
'Cut 'er free,' suggested the crewman who nursed his slashed forearm.
Feud left no space for niceties. The bosun drew his rigging knife. He
braced the captive's hand palm upward against the stern seat, and lifted his
blade to cut. That moment the longboat rocked. Dying sunlight caught and
splintered in the depths of an emerald setting.
    The bosun gasped. He snatched back his knife as if burned, for the ring he
would steal was not silver, but white gold. The gem was carved with a
leopard device, hatefully familiar.
    'Fate witness, he's s'Ffalenn!' Shocked and uncertain, the bosun
straightened up. He had watched the enemy brigantine bum, her captain
sprawled dead on her quarterdeck; but a glance at the black hair which
dripped ignominiously in the bilge now belied that observation. Suddenly
hand and ring were tugged from his grasp as an oarsman reached out and
jerked the captive onto his back.
    Bared to the fading light, the steeply-angled features and upswept
browline of s'Ffalenn stood clear as struck bronze. There could be no
mistake. Amroth's seamen had taken, alive, the Master of Shadow
himself.
    The sailors fell back in fear. Several made signs against evil, and
someone near the fore drew a dagger.
    'Hold!' The bosun turned to logic to ease his own frayed nerves. 'The
sorcerer's harmless, just now, or we'd already be dead. Alive, don't forget,
he'll bring a bounty.'
    The men made no response. Tense, uneasy, they shifted their feet.
Someone uttered a charm against demons, and a second knife sang from its
sheath.
    The bosun grabbed an oar and slammed it across the thwarts between
sailors and captive. 'Fools! Would you spit on good fortune? Kill him, and
our liege won't give us a copper.'
    That reached them. Arithon s'Ffalenn was the illegitimate son of
Amroth's own queen, who in years past had spurned the kingdora's honour
for adultery with her husband's most infamous enemy. The pirate-king's
bastard carried a price on his head that would ransom an earl, and a
dukedom awaited the man who could deliver him to Port Royal in chains.
Won over by greed, the sailors put up their knives.
    The bosun stepped back and rapped orders, and men jumped to obey.
Before the s'Ffalenn bastard regained his wits, his captors bound his wrists
and legs with cord cut from the painter. Then, trussed like a calf for

3


slaughter, Arithon, Master of Shadow and heir-apparent of Karthan, was
rowed back to the warship Briane. Hauled aboard by the boisterous crew of
the longboat, he was dumped in a dripping sprawl on the quarterdeck, at
the feet of the officer in command.
    A man barely past his teens, the first officer had come to his post through
wealth and royal connections rather than merit or experience. But with the
captain unconscious from an arrow wound, and the ranking brass of
Briane's fighting company dead, none remained to dispute the chain of
command. The first officer coped, though shouldered with responsibility
for three hundred and forty two men left living, and a warship too crippled
to carry sail. The bosun's agitated words took a moment to pierce through
tired and overburdened thoughts.
  The name finally mustered attention.
    'Arithon s'Ffalenn!' Shocked to disbelief, the first officer stared at the
parcel of flesh on his deck. This man was small, sea-tanned and dark;
nothing like the half-brother in line for Amroth's crown. A drenched spill
of hair plastered an angular forehead. Spare, unremarkable limbs were
clothed in rough, much-mended linen that was belted with a plain twist of
rope. But his sailhand's appearance was deceptive. The jewel in the signet
bore the leopard of s'Ffalenn, undeniable symbol of royal heirship.  'It's him, I say,' said the bosun excitedly.
    The crew from the.longboat and every deckhand within earshot edged
closer.                                                      ,
    lostled by raffish, excitable men, the first officer recalled his position.
'Back to your duties,' he snapped. 'And have that longboat winched back
on board. Lively!'
    'Aye sir.' The bosun departed, contrite. The sailhands disbursed more
slowly, clearing the quarterdeck with many a backward glance.
    Left alone to determine the fate of Amroth's bitterest enemy, the first
officer shifted his weight in distress. How should he confine a man who
could bind illusion of shadow with the ease of thought, and whose capture
had been achieved at a cost of seven ships? In Amroth, the king would
certainly hold Arithon's imprisonment worth such devastating losses. But
aboard the warship Briane, upon decks still laced with d~ad and debris,
men wanted vengeance for murdered crewmen. The sailhands would
never forget: Arithon was a sorcerer, and safest of all as a corpse.
    The solution seemed simple as a sword-thrust, but the first officer knew
differently. He repressed his first, wild impulse to kill, and instead prodded
the captive's shoulder with his boot. Black hair spilled away from a profile
as keen as a knife. A tracery of scarlet flowed across temple and cheek from
a hidden scalp wound; bruises mottled the skin of throat and chin. Sorcerer
though he was, Arithon was human enough to require the services of a
healer. The first officer cursed misfortune, that this bastard had not also
been mortal enough to die. The king of Amroth knew neither temperance
nor reason on the subject of his wife's betrayal. No matter that men might



get killed or maimed in the course of the long passage home; on pain of
court martial, Briane's crewmen must deliver the Master of Shadow alive.
    'What's to be done with him, sir?' The man promoted to fill the dead
mate's berth stopped at his senior's side, his uniform almost unrecogniz-
able beneath the soot and stains of battle.
    The first officer swallowed, his throat dry with nerves. 'Lock him up in
the chartroom.'
    The mate narrowed faded eyes and spat. 'That's a damned fool place to
stow such a dangerous prisoner! D'ye want us all broken? He's clever
enough to escape.'
    'Silence!' The first officer clenched his teeth, sensitive to the eyes that
watched from every quarter of the ship. The mate's complaint was just; but
no officer could long maintain command if he backed down before the
entire crew. The order would have to stand.
    'The prisoner needs a healer,' the first officer justified firmly. 'I'll have
him moved and set in irons at the earliest opportunity.'
    The mate grunted, bent and easily lifted the Shadow Master from the
deck. 'What a slight little dog, for all his killer's reputation,' he com-
mented. Then, cocky to conceal his apprehension, he sauntered the length
of the quarterdeck with the captive slung like a duffel across his shoulder.
    The pair vanished down the companionway, Arithon's knuckles
haplessly banging each rung of the ladder-steep stair. The first officer shut
his eyes. The harbour at Port Royal lay over twenty days' sail on the best
winds and fair weather. Every jack tar of Briane's company would be a rich
man, if any of them survived to make port. Impatient, inexperienced and
sorely worried, the first officer shouted to the carpenter to hurry his work
on the mainmast.
    Night fell before Briane was repaired enough to carry canvas. Clouds had
obscured the stars by the time the first officer ordered the ship under way.
The bosun relayed his commands, since the mate was too hoarse to make
himself heard over the pound of hammers under the forecastle. Bone-
weary, the crew swung themselves aloft with appalling lack of agility.
Unbrailed canvas billowed from the yards; on deck, sailhands stumbled to
man the braces. Sail slammed taut with a crash and a rattle of blocks, and
the bow shouldered east through the swell. Staid as a weathered carving,
the quartermaster laid Briane on course for Amroth. If the wind held, the
ship would reach home only slightly behind the main fleet.
    Relieved to be back under sail, the first officer excused all but six hands
under the bosun on watch. Then he called for running lamps to be lit. The
cabin boy made rounds with flint and striker. Briane's routine passed
uninterrupted until the tlame in the aft lantern flicked out, soundlessly, as
if touched by the breath of Dharkaron. Inside the space of a heartbeat the
entire ship became locked in darkness as bleak as the void before creation.
The rhythm of the joiners' hammers wavered and died, replaced abruptly
by shouting.

5


    The first officer leaped for the companionway. His boots barely grazed the
steps. Half-sliding down the rail, he heard the shrill crash of glass as the
panes in the stern window burst. The instant his feet slapped deck, he
rammed shoulder-first into the chartroom door. Teak panels exploded into
slivers. The first officer carried on into blackness dense as calligrapher's ink.
Sounds of furious straggle issued from the direction of the broken window.
    'Stop him!' The first officer's shout became a grunt as his ribs bashed the
edge of the chart table. He blundered past. A body tripped him. He stumbledr
slammed painfully against someone's elbow, then shoved forward into a
battering press of bodies. The hiss of the wake beneath the counter sounded
near enough to touch. Spattered by needle-fine droplets of spray, the first
officer realized in distress that Arithon might already be half over the sill.
Once overboard, the sorcerer could bind illusion, shape shadow and blend
invisibly with the waves. No search would find him.
    The first officer dove to intervene, hit a locked mass of men and felt
himself dashed brutally aside. Someone cursed. A whirl of unseen motion
cut through the drafts from the window. Struck across the chest by a hard,
contorted body, the first officer groped blind and two-handedly hooked
cloth still damp from the sea. Aware of whom he held, he locked his arms
and clung obstinately. His prisoner twisted, wrenching every tendon in his
wrists. Flung sidewards into a bulkhead, the first officer gasped. He felt as if
he handled a careening maelstrom of fury. A thigh sledge-hammered one
wrist, breaking his grasp. Then someone crashed like an axed oak across his
chest. Torn loose from the captive, the first officer went down, flattened
under a mass of sweaty flesh.
    The battle raged on over his head, marked in darkness by the grunt of
drawn breaths and the smack of knuckles, elbows and knees battering into
muscle. Nearby, a seaman retched, felled by a kick in the belly. The first
officer struggled against the crush to rise. Any blow that connected in that
ensorcelled dark had to be ruled by luck. If Arithon's hands remained bound,
force and numbers must ultimately prevail as his guardsmen found grips he
could not break.
    /Bastard!' somebody said. Boots scuffled and a fist smacked flesh.
Arithon's resistance abated slightly.
    The first officer regained his feet, when a low, clear voice cut through the
strife.
  'Let go. Or your fingers will burn to the bone.'
'Don't listen!' The first officer pushed forward. 'The threat's an illusion.'
A man screamed in agony, counterpointed by splintering wood. Desper-
ate, the first officer shot a blow in the approximate direction of the speaker.
His knuckles cracked into bone. As if cued by the impact, the sorcerer's web
of darkness wavered and lifted.
    Light from the aft-running lamp spilled through the ruptured stern
window, touching gilt edges to a litter of glass and smashed furnishings.
Arithon hung limp in the arms of three deckhands. Their faces were white


and their chests heaved like runners just finished with a marathon.
Another man groaned by the chart-locker, hands clenched around a
dripping shin; while against the starboard bulkhead the mate stood
scowling, his colour high and the pulsebeat angry and fast behind his
ripped collar. The first officer avoided the accusation in the older sea-
man's eyes. If it was unnatural that a prisoner so recently injured and
unconscious should prove capable of such fight, to make an issue of the
fact invited trouble.
    Anxious to take charge before the crew recovered enough to talk, the
first officer snapped to the moaning crewman, 'Fetch a light.'
    The man quieted, scuffled to his feet and hastily limped off to find a
lantern. As a rustle of returned movement stirred through the be-
leaguered crew in the chartroom, the first officer pointed to a clear space
between the glitter of slivered glass. 'Set the s'Ffalenn there. And you,
find a set of shackles to bind his feet.'
    Seamen jumped to comply. The man returned with the lantern as they
lowered Arithon to the deck. Flamelight shot copper reflections across
the blood which streaked his cheek and shoulder; dark patches had
already soaked into the torn shirt beneath.
    'Sir, I warned you. Chartroom's not secure,' the mate insisted, low-
voiced. 'Have the sorcerer moved to a safer place.'
    The first officer bristled. 'When I wish your advice, I'll ask. You'll stand
guard here until the healer comes. That should not be much longer.'
    But the ship's healer was yet engaged with the task of removing the
broadhead of an enemy arrow from the captain's lower abdomen. Since
he was bound to be occupied for some time yet to come, the mate
clamped his jaw and did not belabour the obvious: that Arithon's pres-
ence endangered the ship in far more ways than one. Fear of his sorceries
could drive even the staunchest crew to mutiny.
    That moment one of the seamen exclaimed and flung back. The first
officer swung in time to see the captive stir and awaken. Eyes the colour
of new spring grass opened and fixed on the men who crowded the
chartroom. The steep s'Ffalenn features showed no expression, though
surely pain alone prevented a second assault with shadow. Briane's first
officer searched his enemy's face for a sign of human emotion and found
no trace.
    'You were unwise to try that,' he said, at a loss for other opening. That
the same mother had borne this creature and Amroth's well-beloved
crown prince defied all reasonable credibility.
    Where his Grace, Lysaer, might have won his captors' sympathy with
glib and entertaining satire, Arithon of Karthan refused answer. His gaze
never wavered and his manner stayed stark as a carving. The creak of
timber and rigging filled an unpleasant silence. Crewmen shifted un-
easily until a clink of steel beyond the companionway heralded the
entrance of the crewman sent to bring shackles.


 'Secure his ankles.' The first officer turned tox~atd the door. 'And by

alive.'
    He departed after that, shouting for the carpenter to send hands to repair
the stern window. Barely had the workmen gathered their tools when
Briane plunged again into unnatural and featureless dark. A thudding crash
astern set the first officer running once more for the chartroom.
    This time the shadow disintegrated like spark-singed silk before he
collided with the chart table. He reached the stern cabin to find Arithon
pinned beneath the breathless bulk of his guards. Gradually the men sorted
themselves out, eyes darting nervously. Though standing in the presence of
a senior officer, they showed no proper deference. More than a few whisp-
ered sullenly behind their hands.
  'Silence!' Crisply, the first officer inclined his head to hear the report.
    'Glass,' explained the mate. 'Tried to slash his wrists, Dharkaron break
his bastard skin.'
    Blood smeared the deck beneath the Master. His fine fingers glistened red,
and closer examination revealed that the cord which lashed his hands was
nearly severed.
    'Bind his fingers with wire, then.' Provoked beyond pity, the first officer
detailed a man to fetch a spool irom the hold.
    Arithon recovered awareness shortly afterward. Dragged upright be-
tween the stout arms of his captors, he took a minute longer to orient him-
self. As green eyes lifted in recognition, the first officer fought a sharp urge to
step back. Only once had he seen such a look on a man's face, and that was
the time he had witnessed a felon hanged for the rape of his own daughter.
  'You should have died in battle,' he said softly.
    Arithon gave no answer. Flamelight glistened across features implacably
barred against reason, and his hands dripped blood on the deck. The first
officer looked away, cold with nerves and uneasiness. He had little experi-
ence with captives, and no knowledge whatever of sorcery. The Master of
Shadow himself offered no inspiration, his manner icy and unfathomable
as the sea itself.
    'Show him the king's justice,' the first officer commanded, in the hope a
turn at violence might ease the strain on his crew.
    The seamen wrestled Arithon off his feet and pinioned him across the
chart table. His body handled like a toy in their broad hands. Still the Master
fought them. In anger and dread the seamen returned the bruises lately
inflicted upon their own skins. They stripped the cord from the captive's
wrists and followed with all clothing that might conceal slivers of glass. But
for his grunts of resistance, Arithon endured their abuse in silence.
    The first officer hid his distaste. The Master's defiance served no gain, but
only provoked the men to greater cruelty. Had the bastard cried out, even
once reacted to pain as an ordinary mortal, the deckhands would have been
satisfied. Yet the struggle continued until the victim was stripped of tunic


and shirt and the sailhands backed off to study their prize. Arithon's chest
heaved with fast, shallow breaths. Stomach muscles quivered beneath
skin that wept sweat, proof enough that his body at least had not been
impervious to rough handling.
    'Bastard's runt-sized, for a sorcerer.' The most daring of the crewmen
raised a fist over the splayed arch of Arithon's ribcage. 'A thump in the slats
might slow him down some.'
    'That's enough!' snapped the first officer. Immediately sure the sailhand
would ignore his command, he moved to intervene. But a newcomer in a
stained white smock entered frbm behind and jostled him briskly aside.
    Fresh from the captain's sickbed, the ship's healer pushed on between
sailor and pinioned prisoner. 'Leave be, lad! Today I've set and splinted
altogether too many bones. The thought of another could drive me to drink
before sunrise.'
    The crewman subsided, muttering. As the healer set gently to work with
salve and bandages, the s'Ffalenn sorcerer drew breath and finally spoke.
    'I curse your hands. May the next wound you treat turn putrid with
maggots. Any child you deliver will sicken and die in your arms, and the
mother will bleed beyond remedy. Meddle further with me and I'll show
you horrors.'
    The healer made a gesture against evil. He had heard hurt men rave, but
never like this. Shaking, he resumed his work, while under his fingers, the
muscles of his patient flinched taut in protest.
    'Have you ever known despair?' Arithon said. 'I'll teach you. The eyes of
your firstborn son will rot and flies suck at the sockets.'
    The seamen tightened their restraint, starting and cursing among
themselves.
    'Hold steady!' snapped the healer. He continued binding Arithon's cuts
with stiff-lipped determination. Such a threat might make him quail, but
he had only daughters. Otherwise he might have broken his oath and
caused an injured man needless pain.
 'By your leave,' he said to the first officer when he finished. 'I've done all I
can.'
    Excused, the healer departed, and the deckhands set to work with the
wire. As the first loop creased the prisoner's flesh, Arithon turned his
invective against the first officer. After the healer's exemplary conduct,
the young man dared not break. He endured with his hands locked behind
his back while mother, wife and mistress were separately profaned. The
insults after that turned personal. In time the first officer could not contain
the anger which arose in response to the vicious phrases.
    'You waste yourself!' After the cold calm of the Master's words, the
ugliness in his own voice jarred like a woman's hysteria. He curbed his
temper. 'Cursing me and my relations will hardly change your lot. Why
make things difficult? Your behaviour makes civilized treatment imposs-
ible.'

9


 'Go force your little sister,' Arithon said.
    The first officer flushed scarlet. Not trusting himself to answer, he
called orders to his seamen. 'Bind the bastard's mouth with a rag. When
you have him well secured, lock him under guard in the sail-hold.'
    The seamen saw the order through with a roughness born of despera-
tion. Watching, the first officer worried. He was a tired man with a
terrified crew, balanced squarely on the prongs of dilemma. The least
provocation would land him with a mutiny, and a sorcerer who could also
bind shadow threatened trouble tantamount to ruin. No measure of
prevention could be too drastic to justify. The first officer rubbed
bloodshot, stinging eyes. A final review of resources left him hopeless and
without alternative except to turn the problem of Arithon s'Ffalenn back
to Briane's healer.
    The first officer burst into the surgery without troubling to knock. 'Can
you mix a posset that will render a man senseless?'
    Interrupted while tending yet another wound, the healer answered
with irritable reluctance. 'I have only the herb I brew to ease pain. A
heavy dose will dull the mind, but not with safety. The drug has addictive
side-effects.'
 The first officer never hesitated. 'Use it on the prisoner, and swiftly.'
    The healer straightened, shadows from the gimballed lantern sharp on
his distressed face.
    The officer permitted no protest. 'Never mind your oath of compassion.
Call the blame mine, if you must, but I'll not sail into a mutiny for the
skin of any s'Ffalenn bastard. Deliver Arithon alive to the king's
dungeons, and no man can dispute we've done our duty.'
    Daunted by the raw look of fright on the first officer's face, the healer
called his assistant to finish bandaging his patient. Then, too wise to be
hurried, he rummaged among his shelf of remedies. 'Who will answer if
the young man's mind is damaged?'
    The first officer drew a ragged breath. 'Dharkaron, angel of vengeance!
We'll all be executed, even to the cabin steward, if our sailors get
panicked and slit the bastard's throat. He's crazed enough to provoke
them. How in the name of the king can I be on hand every minute to stop
disaster?'
    Jars rattled under the older man's hand. He selected one, adjusted his
spectacles to read the label, then said, 'We're twenty days' sail from Port
Royal, given weather and luck. No man can be drugged into a coma that
long without serious risk of insanity. I've read texts which claim that
mages possess training to transmute certain poisons. To make sure of
your Shadow Master would call for a dose of dangerous potency.'
    'We'll land at South Island harbour, then.' Saved by sudden inspiration,
the first officer blotted his flushed and sweating brow. 'The crown prince
is there for the summer, to court the earl's daughter. That's only five
days' sail, given just middling wind. Drug Arithon only until then, and let

10


his Grace shoulder the task of getting his mother's bastard presented to the
king.'
    The healer sighed and reached for his satchel, forced to accede to the
plan. Five days of strong possets would cause discomfort, but no perma-
nent harm; and Prince Lysaer's custody was perhaps the wisest alternative
for the pirate heir of Karthan. His Grace's inborn gift of light was a match
for sorcery and shadows, and his judgement, even in matters of blood-feud,
was dependably, exactingly fair.

11


Crown Prince

The tap and clang of swordplay rang from the sun-washed sand of the earl's
practice yard. The courier sent up from the harbour heard the sound and
slowed his pace to a walk. Lysaer, crown prince of Amroth, had guested at
South Isle often enough that even the servants knew: a man did not
interrupt his Grace at sparring if the weapon of choice was steel.
Accordingly, the messenger paused in the shaded archway of the portico.
He waited, though the news he carried was urgent enough that delay might
earn him ilbfavour.
    The prince noticed the man's arrival immediately. Sword engaged in a
parry, he flung back coin-bright hair, then winked in friendly acknowledg-
ment. He did not seem distracted. Yet on the next lunge his opponent
executed an entirely predictable disengage that somehow managed to
disarm him. The royal sword drove a glittering arc in the sunlight and
landed, scattering sand.
    Laughing, generous, handsome enough to make maidens weep, the
prince flung up his hands. He turned the dagger he yet held en gauche and
flung it, point first, into the soil beside the sword. 'There's silver won for
your lady, my lord, Ath bless the heir she carries.'
    Unexpectedly presented the victory, the dark-haired nobleman
straightened on the field in astonishment. 'Highness, the Fatemaster
himself doesn't know so much of my affairs. Who told you?'
    The prince laughed again. 'About which, the bet or the baby?' He reached
up to tidy his shirt laces, then started for the courier in the portico.
    The nobleman suspiciously regarded the sword and the still quivering
dagger. 'You cheated to give me the honour, curse me if you didn't.'
    Lysaer, first son of the king of Amroth, stopped dead between strides. He
widened surprised blue eyes. 'Did I? Well then, I'll buy your lady a pearl and
we'll fight on the morrow to decide who pays for the setting.' Then, the

12



smile still on his face, the prince acknowledged the courier. 'You bring
news?'
    The runner in the earl's livery bowed and pointedly glanced at the
servant who attended the prince from the sidelines. 'For your ears, only,
your Grace.'
    The prince sent the servant to retrieve his discarded weapons, then
stepped into the shadow of the arch, his manner immediately sober. 'My
pathetic cripple of an auntie hasn't fallen from her bed and died, now has
she?'
    The jest was too graceless to amuse, but the prince had gauged the effect
to a nicety. The courier visibly relaxed. 'That Lady is well, your Grace. The
first officer of his majesty's warship Briane sends compliments instead.
I'm advised to tell you that he has in his custody the pirate-king's bastard,
Arithon s'Ffalenn.'
    Lysaer stopped as if struck. The flush of recent exertion drained from his
face and his hands clenched white at his sides. 'Alive,' he said softly.
    Seven generations of bloodshed between Amroth and Karthan's pirates
had never seen a moment to match this. Lysaer suppressed a primal surge
of triumph. The vendetta had threaded discord and grief through his
earliest memories; an altercation before his birth had killed the realm's
first queen and a daughter no one near the king dared to mention. All
Lysaer's life the court had lived in dread of his father's rages, and always
they were caused by s'Ffalenn. Still, the prince fought the irrational hatred
the name reflexively inspired. The prisoner in Briane's hold was his half-
brother. Whether he was also a criminal deserving of the cruelty and death
that the royal obsession for vengeance would demand was a distinction no
man of honour dared ignore.
    Trapped in an awkward silence, the courier held his breath; as if his
discomfort were a catalyst, the prince tossed off dark thoughts. He touched
the fellow's shoulder to reassure. 'You need not worry. The fate of my
mother's bastard is a problem too weighty for any but the king's justice.
The commander of Briane's company was quite right to entrust his
custody to me.'
 The courier bowed with evident relief.
    'The kitchen staff will give you refreshment,' the prince insisted. 'A page
from my retinue can run down to Briane to inform that I wish to see the
prisoner.'
    Excused with more grace than a man with difficult news might expect,
the courier bowed again and departed. The prince lingered briefly in the
corridor. His blue eyes stayed deep and intense, even as his sparring partner
stepped to his side in curiosity.
  'Your Grace? What has passed?'
    The crown prince of Amroth started as if from a trance. 'Trouble,' he said
briefly. His frown changed to chagrin as he recalled his dusty, sweat-damp
clothes.

13


    Anxious to please, the nobleman snapped his fingers at the servant who
waited with the swords. 'Send for the prince's valet.'
    'And the captain of the earl's guard,' Lysaer added quickly. 'Admit him
to my private chambers. If he curses the rush, tell him directly that I'll
pour him another beer.'

The key turned stiffly in the lock. Greeted from within by the acid-sharp
consonants of a curse, the first officer pushed wide the wooden door. He
hung his lantern from a spike in the beam overhead, then gestured for his
prince to pass ahead of him.
    Briane's sail-hold was stifling in the noon heat. The air reeked of
mildew and damp; though the ship rode at anchor, the hatch overhead
was battened down as if for a gale. The lantern threw long, starred
shadows which swung with each roll of the swell.
    Nervous to the point of jumpiness, the first officer pointed to the
darkest corner of the room. 'There, your Grace. And be careful, he's
roused from the drug, and dangerous.'
    Resplendent in gold silk and brocade, glittering with the sapphires of
royal rank, Lysaer of Amroth stepped forward. 'Leave us,' he said gently
to the officer. Then, as the door creaked shut at his heels, he forced back a
tangle of emotional turmoil and waited for his eyes to adjust.
    Dead still in the uncertain light, Arithon s'Ffalenn sat propped against
a towering pile of spare sail. Biscuit and water lay untouched by his
elbow. A livid swelling on the side of his jaw accentuated rather than
blurred the angled arrogance of features which decidedly favoured his
father. His eyes were open, focused and bright with malice.
    The look chilled Lysaer to the heart. Hampered and unsettled by the
dimness, he lifted the lantern down. The light shifted, mercilessly
exposed details that up until now had stayed hidden. The queen's bastard
was small, the prince saw with a shock of surprise. But that slight stature
was muscled like a cat, and endowed with a temper to match; the flesh at
wrists and ankles had been repeatedly torn on the fetters, leaving bruises
congested with scabs. The hands were wrapped with wire and crusted
with blood. The prince felt a surge of pity. He had heard the first officer's
report; the fright of the sailors was understandable, yet after fetters and
chain the added restraint of the wire seemed a needless cruelty.
    Embarrassed, Lysaer replaced the lantern on its hook. He drew breath
to call for the bosun, a sailhand, any ship's officer who could bring cutters
and ease the prisoner's discomfort.
 But Arithon spoke first. 'We are well met, brother.'
    Fhe crown prince ignored the sarcasm. A blood-feud could continue
only as long as both sides were sworn to antipathy. 'Kinship cannot
pardon the charges against you, if it's true that you summoned shadow
and sorcery, then blinded and attacked and murdered the companies o~

14


seven vessels. No rational purpose can justify the slaughter of hapless
sailors.'
    'They happened to be crewing royal warships.' Arithon straightened
with a jangle of chain. His clear, expressive voice lifted above the echoes.
'Show me a man who's harmless, and I'll show you one stone dead.'
    Lysaer stepped back, set his shoulders against the closed door to mask a
shiver of dismay. The first officer had not exaggerated to justify the
severity of his actions. In silence, the crown prince regarded a face whose
humanity lay sealed behind ungoverned viciousness.
    '"Kill thou me, and I shall helpless be."' Arithon capped his quote with a
taunting smile. 'Or perhaps you're too squeamish to try?'
    The crown prince clamped his jaw, unsettled by the depths of antagon-
ism such simple words could provoke.
    Arithon pressured like gall on a sore spot, his accent a flawless rendition
of high court style. 'By the rotted bones of our mother, what a dazzle of
jewels and lace. Impressive, surely. And the sword. Do you wear that for
vanity also?'
    'You'll gain nothing by baiting me.' Determined to learn what inspired
the prisoner's unprincipled attacks, Lysaer held his temper. 'Except,
perhaps, a wretched death I'd be ashamed to give a dog.'
    'But you offer a dog's life,' Arithon shot back. He twisted suddenly, and
wire-bound fingers knocked over the water bowl. Cheap crockery rattled
across the boards and a trail of puddles spilled and widened with the
motion of the ship. 'I chose not to lap like an animal from a dish. And bait
you? Innocent, I haven't begun.'
    Arithon's eyes sharpened. A sudden sting of sorcery pierced the prince's
awareness. Too late, he recoiled. In one unguarded instant the Master of
Shadow smashed through his defences. A probe like hot wire flashed
through the prince's mind, sorting, gathering, discarding in an instant all
the fine intentions that acted for fairness and compassion. The s'Ffalenn
bastard repudiated honour. He ransacked his brother's past to barb his
insatiable malice, and into his grasp like a weapon fell the recall of a
childhood memory far better left forgotten...

The young prince was much too lively to sleep. Overindulged with sweets,
and stirred to nervous excitement by the festivities in celebration of his
birthday, he ran on short legs and tumbled, laughing, on the carpet. 'Want
to see mama!' he shouted to the chamberlain, who looked steadily more
rumpled and weary. A day spent managing an over-exuberant three-year-
old had taxed his dignity sorely.
    The royal nursemaid lifted the child from the floor. Deft as she was with
the little ones, still the boy managed to twist in her arms and tangle his
nightshirt around his neck. 'Here,' she scolded. 'Wont to choke yourself to
death?'

15


 The prince crowed with laughter. 'Want to see mama.'
    Exasperated, the nursemaid set his mussed clothing to rights. 'If I say yes
and you stay only long enough for a kiss, will you close your eyes and lie
still until you fall asleep?'
    The boy smiled in the way that never failed to melt the hearts of his
attendants. 'I promise.'
 'Now, a prince never breaks his word,' warned the nurse.
 Young Lysaer returned a solemn nod.
    'Well, see that you don't, young man.' The nurse ruffled his gold hair,
then returned him to the long-suffering arms of the chamberlain. 'Take
him down, sir. He's a good boy, usually, and on his birthday the queen
won't mind.'
    The prince chattered all the way down three flights of stairs. Though an
elderly man, the chamberlain's hearing was excellent. His ears rang by the
time he reached the royal apartments, and with the prince squirming in
energetic anticipation against his neck, he missed the warning gesture of
the guard.
    Beyond the embroidered hanging, the Lady Talera's anteroom lay
ominously deserted; chests and jewelled tapestries glittered in candlelight
abnormally dim for the hour. The chamberlain hesitated. Warned of
something amiss, he set the prince down; but the child, too young to notice
nuance, tugged his hand free and ran ahead.
    The moment Lysaer crossed the threshold to his mother's chambers, he
sensed something wrong. His father sat with the queen, and both of them
were angry.
    'You'll use no child of mine as an axe in your feud with s'Ffalenn,' said
his mother in a tone Lysaer had never heard before. His bare feet made no
sound as he shrank in the shadows, uncertain. Trapped helplessly in the
foyer, the chamberlain dared not risk the king's temper. He knotted his
hands in white hair, and prayed the young prince had sense enough to
withdraw.
    But Lysaer was frightened, and too small to understand arguments. He
stayed still as a rabbit in the corner, while the queen spoke again. The lilt of
her Rauven dialect lent her words raw force. 'Our son's gift is no weapon.
Dare you abuse him? By Ath, I swear if you try, you'll get no second child
from me.'
    Lysaer frowned, tried to sort meaning from the adult words. He knew
they spoke of him and the sparkling lights he could make in the air
whenever he wished, or dreamed of the sun.
    The king rose abruptly from his chair. His shadow swooped in the
candlelight as he bent and seized the queen's wrists. 'Woman, defy me, and
I'll make you wretched with childbearing. Blame your father. He should
have made your dowry more accessible. Sorcery and babies made a
misfortunate mix.'
 Bracelets clashed as the queen wrenched free. Her elbow struck a side

16


table and a crystal bowl toppled, scattering the carpet with glass and
sugared nuts. Lysaer whimpered, unnoticed by the doorway. He wanted to
run, but the chamberlain was nowhere in sight.
    The king jerked the queen to her feet. 'You've been indisposed long
enough, you royal witch. I'll bed you now, and every night afterward until
you conceive the Master of Shadow I was promised.'
    Gems sparkled on the king's sleeves as he locked his arms around his
consort. She fought him. He crushed her roughly against his doublet. Silk
tore like the scream of a small animal between his hands, baring her slim
back in the fire light.
    The king laughed. 'The s'Ffalenn will curse your lovely, gifted children
from the bottom of the sea.'
    The queen struggled. Blonde hair tumbled from diamond pins and
snagged on the man's rough fingers. From the doorway, Lysaer saw tears
in his mother's eyes, but her voice stayed ringingly steady. 'Force me,
and by the stones of Rauven Tower, I'll even the stakes. The s'Ffalenn
pirates will share my bride gift to s'Ilessid, and grief and sorrow will
come of it.'
    'Curse me, will you? Dharkaron witness, you'll regret this.' The king
struck her. Flung off balance, the queen crashed backwards across a table.
Linen rumpled under her weight and a carafe toppled, flooding wine like
blood across the cloth.
    Traumatized by the violence, Lysaer at last cried out. 'Father! Don't hurt
her any more!'
    The king started, spun, and saw his son in the entry. His face contorted
like a stranger's. 'Get out of here!'
    'No!' The queen pushed herself erect and extended a trembling hand.
'Lysaer?'
    The frightened, hysterical child ran to his mother and buried his face in
her warmth. He felt her shaking as she held him. Muffled by the cloth of
her gown, the prince heard the king say something. Then the door
slammed. The queen lifted Lysaer and stroked hair as bright and fair as her
own.
 She kissed his cheek. 'It's all over, little one.'
    But Lysaer knew she lied. That very night she left Amroth, never again to
return...

With a crack like a split in crystal the sail-hold spun back into focus. Lysaer
shuddered in shock at the change. Tears wet his face. Whipped into fury by
the pain of childhood betrayal, he forgot two decades of maturity. Into that
breach, that long-forgotten maelstrom of suffering, Arithon s'Ffalenn cast
shadow.
    An image pooled on the deck before the prince. Sanded wood trans-
formed to a drift of silken sheets, upon which two figures twined, naked.

17


Lysaer felt the breath tear like fire in his throat. The man was dark-haired
and sword*scarred, unmistakably Avar s'Ffalenn; beneath him, couched in
a glory of gold hair, lay Talera, Queen of Amroth. Her face was radiant with
joy.
    Abruptly, Arithon withdrew from the prince's mind. He smirked
toward the couple on the floor. 'Shall I show you the rest of the col-
lection?'
    Lysaer's hand closed hard on his sword. His mother and her illicit lover
blinked out like blown candles and left, like an after-image, the face of the
bastard's shameless scorn. Seared by rage like white fire, Lysaer saw
nothing in the son but the fornicating features of the father. The lantern
swung, echoed his motion in a frenzy of shadows as he drew and struck a
blow to the side of the prisoner's head.
    The impact slammed Arithon over backwards. Wired wrists screeched
across sail hanks as he toppled and crashed to the deck. Loose as an
unstrung puppet, he lay on his side, while blood twined in ribbons across
his jaw.
    'What a superb effort, for the fiat of the blade,' he managed between
whistling breaths. 'Why not try the edge?' But Arithon's voice missed his
usual vicious note.
    Jarred back to reason, and burned by a shame that left him soiled, Lysaer
strove for control. In all of his life he had never struck a helpless man; the
novelty left him aching. Breathing hard, the lifted edge of the sword poised
over his enemy, he said, 'You wan t me to kill you!' Sickened to discover his
hand shaking, he flung away his weapon. 'By' Ath, I deny you that
satisfaction. Your father's lust for vengeance will fall on some other head
than mine.'
    The blade struck crosswise against the door. As the clamour of echoes
dwindled, Arithon stirred and shut his eyes. A shudder swept him. That
brief instant his control slipped, to reveal tearing grief and shocking
desperation. Then, his mask of indifference restored, he said, 'I sailed as
first officer on board the Saeriat. The brigantine was my father's com-
mand.'
    The crown prince of Amroth drew breath, wrung by terrible understand-
ing. Briane's original log entry had been correct: Saeriat's captain had
burned with his brigantine. The pirate king of Karthan was dead. Here,
helplessly lettered and pleading to die, was his sole heir, the last s'Ffalenn
left living.
    Arithon did not miss the change in his half-brother's manner. He raised
himself on one elbow, head flung back. 'Loan me your knife. As one prince
to another, ! promise, the feud between s'Ffalenn and s'Ilessid will end here
without any more cause for bloodshed.'
    'I cannot.' Lysaer stared down at the mauled face of the captive and
qualified with sympathy that cut. 'Your death would ruin every man on
this vessel, by my father's decree.'

18


    Arithon responded with damning sarcasm. 'How admirable. Don't
neglect to mention the gold which rewards the virtue of such loyalty.'
Green eyes flicked up, pinned by lamplit highlights. 'You preserve me
solely for the king of Amroth. In his hands, I become a puppet for him to
torment, a target for the hatred inspired by our mother, my father, and
seven generations of captains who practised piracy before me.' Arithon
lowered his gaze. 'I beg not to be forced to that role. Let me take my life.
That will spare me and your family further shame.'
    The bare simplicity of the appeal caught the crown prince like a blow.
Left no breath to speak, he avoided answer by retrieving his fallen sword.
He rammed the blade into the scabbard with a violence born of raw nerves.
The original purpose of his visit seemed tawdry, a meaningless, arrogant
charade that unmasked a hypocrite player. Unable to trust his reactions, he
backed out of his half-brother's presence and shot the bolt on the door. A
few short minutes of madness had nearly brought him to murder, to
sacrifice the lives of loyal sailors to end the misery of a criminal. Shaking,
the crown prince of Amroth gripped the companionway rail. 'Fatemaster's
judgement, you deserve what you get,' he murmured to the closed door
behind him.
    'Your Grace? Are you all right?' Briane's first officer had remained on
guard in the passage, but with the lantern left in the sail-hold, darkness had
hidden his presence.
    Lysaer started in surprise. He had thought he was alone, and the sudden
discovery of company embarrassed him. 'I'm all right,' he said quickly.
    The first officer was too much a courtier to offer comment. Instead he
fetched the light from the sail-hold, then reset both bar and lock with
studied concentration.
    Lysaer pushed away from the bulkhead, self-conscious in his sweat-
damp silk. The sting of s'Ffalenn manipulation seemed still to pry at his
thoughts. Uncertainty weakened the tenets of honour. Worse yet, he still
felt pity. Arithon's plight at the hands of the king would be unpleasant and
prolonged. For the first time in his life, Lysaer fully understood his father's
deranged hatred of s'Ffalenn: to the last son left living, they were a breed of
fiends.
    Aware of the first officer quietly awaiting instruction, the prince raked a
hand through his hair. 'I'm all right,' he repeated. At least his voice had
stopped shaking. 'Send down the healer, and be sharp about it. I want the
prisoner drugged unconscious and this ship under sail for Port Royal before
the turn of the tide.'
    The first officer raised frightened eyes to his prince. 'Your Grace, that's
not wise. Prolonged overdose of the herb is sure to cause madness.'
    Lysaer raised eyes gone hard as the cut sapphires at his collar. 'Ath's
grief, man, I know that! But insanity will surely be a mercy beside the
judgement and sentence our prisoner will receive as s'Ffalenn. Let this pass
beneath the Wheel be an easy one for him, for in truth, he is the last.'

19


The first officer looked up in surprise. 'The pirate-king died also?'
Lysaer nodded. 'That should please my father well enough. If the healer
fears ~oyal retribution, tell him and every man of BrJane's crew that I'll
sail along with them to intercede.'

2O


Tracer

Daybreak glimmered through the arches of Rauven Tower and outlined
the concerned face of the high mage in silver and deepest shadows. He had
stopped pacing the floor. His tired eyes studied the listener who sat at his
feet, but the tranced man's form showed no stir of returning conscious-
ness. The farseer's features remained remote; fragile hands stayed folded
and limp in the lap of his bordered robe as they had since sundown the day
before.
    The high mage wrestled extreme impatience. No sign hinted whether
the images gathered by the listener's delicate talent were terrible or
benign.
    'What has happened to my grandson?' The words escaped before the high
mage realized he had spoken aloud; but worry allowed no chink for regret.
The gaunt old sorcerer waited in stillness with the breath stopped in his
throat.
    The listener opened distant eyes. By the outburst and the expression on
his master's face, he became one of the few to discover how deeply the higl~
mage loved his daughter's s'Ffalenn bastard. He phrased his answer with
extreme tact.                                                  ~
    'I see a place in constant motion, but lightless. It smells of canvas, mould
and damp.' But the listener mentioned nothing of the pain, hunger and
thirst also encountered in that place. Why grieve a lonely man's heart
when for hours Arithon's condition had not altered, except for a brief visit
by a prince who wore the gold on blue of Amroth?
    The listener closed his eyes once more. What words could tell an ageing
man that his beloved grandson had tried to provoke his own death? Did
phrases exist that could soften the despair behind such an act; that a
king' s blind hatred for a wife's transgressions might fall upon the hapless
flesh of her son?

21


    The listener misliked delivering ill news without a promise of hope. He
slipped back into trance, braced to endure Arithon's misery until he
gleaned some small fact to lighten the grandfather's distress. Far off,
beyond the shudder of ship's planking and the foaming splash of seawater,
the high mage's restless steps resumed.

Sunrise shone livid red through the tower windows. Gaunt as a crow in his
dark robe, the high mage stopped with his heart chilled by foreboding.
    The listener stiffened. Brown eyes sprang open in a face blanched like
fine linen. 'Dharkaron have mercy.'
  'The news is bad,' said the high mage. 'Tell me quickly.'
    The listener drew a shaking breath and looked up. His hands knotted
helplessly. 'Arithon is imprisoned aboard a warship of Amroth. He tried
with all his will to avoid surrender to the king's justice alive. His effort
failed. His captors have drugged him senseless. They intend to keep him
passive until their ship can deliver him to Port Royal.'
    The features of the high mage hardened like a carving blasted by wind.
Behind blank, stunned eyes, his mind locked on the memory of a black-
haired boy at the moment he mastered his first lesson of illusionary magic.
    'But it works like music!' Alight with the wonder of discovery, a
grandson's trusting joy had absolved in an instant all the anguish of a
daughter's youthful death.
    The high mage clung to the rough stone of the sill. 'Arithon is the most
gifted apprentice I have ever trained.' The listener's hand settled lightly on
the elder man's shoulder in comfort. The touch was shrugged off in
irritation. 'Do you know what that boy renounced when he left to accept
his father's inheritance?'
    The high mage directed his words through the window, as if the breakers
which crashed on the rocks beneath could hear and respond to his pain.
Harshly, he continued. 'If Arithon suffers harm, Amroth's king will wish
Fate's Wheel could turn backward, and past actions be revoked. I will repay
every cruelty, in kind, on the mind and body of his firstborn.'
    'Who is also your grandson!' cried the listener, frantic to avert the anger
behind the high mage's threat. But the entreaty fell upon ears deaf to all but
the sigh of the breeze off the sea.

22


Fragrnents

Summoned by the officer on sea watch, Amroth's senior admiral counts
sails as his returning war-fleet breasts the horizon beyond Port Royal; and
when the tally reaches nine, he curses s'Ffalenn for eight more delayed,
destroyed or captured...

Aboard the warship Briane a healer sucks greedily at a rum flask in a vain
attempt to dull the screams as drug-induced nightmares torment the man
held captive in the sail-hold...

Under misty skies, in another place, a world awaits with a prophecy five
centuries old, and not even its most wise yet know that a prince and a
prisoner hold all hope for deliverance between them...

23




II. SENTENCE

Twenty days out of South Isle, the last unaccounted warship breasted the
horizon off Port Royal; Briane backed sail and dropped anchor in the
harbour of Amroth's capital. Word of her s'Ffalenn captive overturned
propriety in the decorous court of the king. Shouting wildly, the nobles
presiding in the council hall abandoned themselves to celebration.
Briane's first officer emerged from his audience with a dukedom; the
king's own collar of state circled his neck, and the fingers of both hands,
including thumbs, were encrusted with rings bestowed by exuberant royal
advisors. When word reached the streets, angry crowds gathered: the
s'Ffalenn name was anathema in Amroth. Guardsmen in ceremonial
regalia set about closing the stalls on Harbour Street, and the royal honour
guard marched out under the crown prince's direct command to transfer
the Master of Shadow from Briane's hold to the security of south keep's
dungeons.
  'The bastard sorcerer is mine to break,' said the king.
    The announcement brought a frown to the face of the realm's high
chancellor. His liege's obsession for vengeance had caused events to
transpire with unnatural speed. Although the facts of the prisoner's
condition were listed in the crown prince's report, at present that
document lay scattered on the carpet under the feet of a congratulatory
crowd of favourites. The prince himself had been summarily dismissed to
muster guardsmen; that others who were equally informed did not dare
broach the subject was predictable. The king's ire had too often broken the
heads of the innocent over matters concerning the s'Ffalenn.
    Within the city of Port Royal, one man alone remained oblivious to the
commotion. Arithon s'Ffalenn never knew the men-at-arms who carried
him through cordoned streets to the south keep of Amroth castle. Still
drugged senseless, he heard none of the obscenities shouted by the

25


boisterous mob which choked the alleys beneath the wall. The more
zealous chanted still, while a smith replaced the wire which bound his
hands with riveted cuffs and steel chain, without locks that might be
manipulated by magecraft. When the guardsman dragged him roughly
from the forge, the rabble's screams of spite passed unnoticed; the cell
which finally imprisoned the Master of Shadow was carved deep beneath
the headland which sheltered Port Royal from the sea. No sound reached
there but the rustle of rats. Shut in darkness behind a barred grill, the last
s'Ffalenn lay on stone salted like frost with the residue of countless floods.
Hours passed. The drug which had held Arithon passive for over two
fortnights gradually weakened, and the first spark of consciousness
returned.
    He ached. His mouth burned with thirst and his eyelids seemed cast in
lead. Aware, finally, of the chili which nagged at his flesh, Arithon tried to
roll over. Movement touched off an explosion of pain in his head. He
gasped. Overwhelmed by dizziness, he reached inward to restore his
shattered self-command.
    His intent escaped his will like dropped thread. Despite a master's
training under the sorcerers of Rauven, his thoughts frayed and drifted in
disorder.
 Something was seriously amiss.
    Arithon forced himself to stillness. He started again, tried once more to
engage the analytical detachment necessary to engage basic magecraft.
Even small tricks of illusion required perfect integration of body and mind:
a sorcerer held influence only over forces of lesser self-awareness.
    But his skills answered with supreme reluctance. Distressed, Arithon
fought to damp the pain which raged like flame across his forehead. Had he
misjudged his balance of power? A mage who attempted to manipulate a
superior force would incur backlash upon himself at the closing moment
of contact. Arithon felt a small stir of fear. A mis-cast of this magnitude
could not be careless error, but an act which bordered upon suicide. Why?
He drew a shuddering breath.
    The air smelled stale, damp, salt-sour as fiats at ebb-tide. His eyes showed
him vistas of blank darkness. Unable to pair either circumstance with logic,
Arithon emptied his mind, compelled himself to solve his inner turmoil
first. Step by step like a novice, he cut himself adrift from physical sensation.
Discomfort made concentration difficult. After an interval he managed to
align his mental awareness; though the exercise took an appalling amount
of effort, at last he summoned mastery enough to pursue the reason.
    With balanced precision, Arithon probed his physical self and compared
what naturally should exist to any detail imposed from without. A cold
something encircled his wrists and ankles. The pattern matched that of
metal; steel. No botched enchantment had snared him here; somebody
had set irons on him. Firmly Arithon turned the implications of that
discovery aside. He probed deeper, dropped below the surface sensations of

26


chill, ache and muscle cramp. The damage he found internally made him
recoil. Control broke before a tide of horror, and memory returned of the
desperation that had ruled his every action since capture. He had sought
the clean stroke of the sword because he had not wanted to reach Amroth
alive. But now, oh now, the s'Ilessid who had taken him had no right!
    Arithon expelled a whistling breath, enraged by the nausea which
cramped his gut. Instead of granting death, his captors had poisoned him,
drugged him with an herb that ruined body and mind just to salve their
king's demand for vengeance.
    Arithon stilled his anger, amazed that so simple an exercise sapped his
whole will to complete. Enemies had forced him to live. He dared not allow
them liberty to unravel his mind with drug madness. As a mage and a
master, his responsibilities were uncompromising: the dangerous chance
that his powers might be turned toward destruction must never for an
instant be left to risk. RauYen's training provided knowledge of what steps
he must complete, even as the self-possession that remained to him
continued irretrievably to unravel. Already the air against his skin seared
his nerves to agony. His stomach clenched with nausea, and his lips stung,
salty with sweat. The stress to his physical senses had him pressed already
to the wretched edge of tolerance; experienced as he was with the narcotics
and simples used to augment prescience, for this onslaught, he had no
space at all to prepare.
    Slowly, carefully, Arithon eased himself onto his back. Movement made
him retch miserably. Tears spilled down his temples and his breath came
in jerks. The attack subsided slowly, left his head whirling like an oil
compass teased by a magnet. Steady, he thought, then willed himself to
belief. Unless he maintained strict mental isolation from the bodily
torment of drug withdrawal, he could neither track nor transmute the
poison's dissolution. Should he once lose his grip on self-discipline, he
would drown in reasonless, animal suffering, perhaps never to recover.
    Arithon shut his eyes. Raggedly he strove to isolate his spirit from the
chaos which ravaged his flesh. Dizziness ruined his concentration. His
muscles tightened until he gasped aloud for air. An attempt to force will
over a wheeling rush of faintness caused him to black out.
    He woke to torment. Doubled with cramps and shivering violently,
Arithon reached for some personal scrap of self to hook back his
plummeting control. The effort yielded no haven, but opened the
floodgates of despair.
    'No!' Arithon's whisper of anguish fiurried into echoes and died. His
thoughts unravelled into delirium as the past rose and engulfed him, vivid,
inescapable and threaded through with the cutting edges of broken dreams.
    Five years vanished as mist. Arithon found himself poised once again in
a moment when a decision had faced him and he had chosen without
thought for bitter consequences. Called in from a snow battle with the
other apprentices at Rauven, he sat on the embroidered hassock in his

27


grandfather's study. Ice thawed from his boots and steamed on the stone
before the hearth; the smells of ink and chalk and aged parchment enfolded
him in a quiet he had appreciated too little at the time.  'I've heard from your father,' the high mage opened.
    Arithon looked up, unable to suppress a flush of wilful excitement. At
long last, Avar, king of Karthan, had chosen to acknowledge the existence
of the son raised by sorcerers at Rauven. But Arithon held himself silent.
He dared not be rude before the high mage.
    The sorcerer regarded the boy at his feet with dark, passionless eyes.
'Your father has no heir. He asks my leave to name you his successor.' The
high mage held up a hand and smiled, forestailing Arithon's rush to reply.
'I've already answered. You will have two years to decide for yourself.'
    Arithon forgot courtesy. 'But I know now!' Often he had dreamed of
inheriting his father's crown. 'I'll go to Karthan, use magecraft to free the
waters beneath the sand and help the land become green again. With grain
growing in the fields, the need for piracy and bloodshed will be ended. Then
s'Ffalenn and s'Ilessid can stop their feuding.'
    'My boy, that is a worthy ambition.' The high mage's voice remained
reserved. 'But you must not be hasty. Your talents are music and sorcery.
Consider these, for you have great potential. A king has no time for such
arts. As a man who holds judgement over others, his life belongs wholly to
his subjects.'
    The high mage's warning rolled like thunder through Arithon's
dreaming mind. Fool! he raged at his younger self, you'll go only to fail. But
the drug-vision broke like storm-surf, battering protest asunder. The boy
felt himself whirled ahead to another time as he entered the self-same
chamber. Then his interval of decision had passed and he knelt before the
high mage to renounce the home he had known and loved for twenty years.
    'How can I stay?' Arithon found himself saying, for the mastery he had
earned had left him wiser. 'How can I remain at Rauven studying music
and books, when my father's people, and mine, must send husbands and
sons to kill for bare sustenance? How dare I ignore such need? I might bring
Karthan hope of lasting peace.'
    Arithon looked up at the high mage's face and there read terrible
understanding. Heed your heart, his present, drug-tortured awareness
pleaded. Forget kingship. Abjure your father' s inheritance. Karthan might
be made fertile from shore to shore, but Amroth will never be weaned from
hatred. Would you suffer s'Ilessid vengeance for your mother's broken
marriage vows?
    Yet time rippled out of focus once again. Arithon heard himself utter an
oath of acceptance, the strong, calloused hands of his father resting on his
dark head. He rose to his feet aflame with pride and purpose, and before the
weather-creased eyes of Karthan's captains, accepted Avar's sword as
token of his heirship.
 The weapon was rarely beautiful. Memory of smoke-dark steel chilled

28


Arithon's palms, and the chased silver inscription which twined the
length of the blade caught the breath in his throat. Legend held that his
father's sword had been fashioned by hands more skilled than man's; that
moment, Arithon believed the tale. His decision became difficult to
complete.
    He knelt at once before the high mage. The emerald in the sword hilt
glimmered green fire as he laid the weapon fiat at the sorcerer's feet. 'Let
this blade remain at Rauven to seal my pledge. I go to restore peace in
Karthan.'
    Arithon stood carefully, afraid to look upon his father's face; afraid of
the anger he might find there. But Karthan's captains raised a great cheer,
and Avar smiled upon his heir with something more than approval. At
the time, Arithon barely heard the parting words of the sorcerer who had
raised him. Now, they resounded like the horn-call of Dharkaron, mock-
ing ruined hopes and racking him through with the knowledge of present
circumstance.
    'My grandson, you chose responsibility above your inner talents. That
is a difficult turning. Win or lose, you give yourself in service to others.
Although men might be inspired by a bard or enchanter, they cannot be
led by one. The master's mysteries you have learned at Rauven must
never be used for political expedience, however pressing the temptation.
You must guide your kingdom to the same harmonic balance you once
would have striven to find in those gifts you now renounce. The ballad
you write, the craft you cast, must henceforth be sought in the land and
the hearts of Karthan. Ath bless your efforts.'
    Torn from the vision of his grandfather's final embrace, Anthon strove
to stem the forward rush of time. But the reins of delirium ripped fate
from his grasp. Again he sailed, and again he endured Karthan's wretched
poverty. He wept to relive the silent anguish of the widows when the
casualty lists were read, and tears spilled silver down cheeks too proud to
hide the face of grief.
    Arithon shouted, tormented by the image of a fleet under the leopard
banner of s'Ffalenn. 'Stop them! Somebody stop them!' Vast, unreasoning
rage lent him a giant's proportions. He reached out with hands the size of
mountains and tried to fence the brigantines in the harbour. There were
sons, fathers, and brothers on board who would never return. But wind
swelled the dirt-red sails; the vessels slipped free of fingers robbed of
strength.
    Transformation of Karthan's spoiled farmlands had proceeded too
slowly to bring rain: one last voyage had been undertaken to beg Rauven
for the aid of another mage. Tortured by cruel remorse, Arithon smelled
blood and murder on his flesh. He screamed aloud within the confines of
his cell, while the battle that had claimed his father's life and his own
freedom opened like a wound in his mind. Sucked into a vortex of
violence, cut by a guilt that seared him blind, Arithon screamed again. 'I

29


used sorcery, as Ath is my witness. But never directly to murder. Not even
to spare my liege lord.'
    His cries brought guards. The cell door crashed back, rending the
darkness with echoes. The captain of the king's halberdiers peered down at
the prisoner's contorted, quivering frame. 'Dharkaron's vengeance, he's
raving.'
    Arithon's eyes flicked open, lightlessly black under the lantern. Men
bent over him. Mail and gold braid hung a star field of reflections above his
head. His whole sight filled with weapons forged for killing; strapped to
shoulder, wrist and belt, they shone fiery as the gates of the damned. Hands
in scale gauntlets reached out, touched his sweating skin..
    Arithon flinched. Chain wailed across stone as he flung an arm over his
face.
 'He's fevered,' someone said.
    Arithon knew the statement for a lie. He was chilled, frosted by the
winter grip of the steel which collared the wrist against his cheek. His
blood seemed to shririk from the cold and slowly congeal in his veins.
  'Fetch the king's healer.' The voice lifted urgently. 'Hurry!'
    Mailed fingers grasped Arithon's arms. The drug-born demon in his head
screamed refusal. No man born would save him as sport for Amroth's
courtiers. Arithon thrashed and the unhinged fury of his strength caught
the guardsmen unprepared. Jerked half-free of restraint, he lashed out at
the nearest pair of legs. Chain whipped, impacted with a jangle of bruising
force.
    'Damn you to Sithaer!' The injured guardsman aimed a kick in
vindication. His boot struck Arithon's head and the ceiling fell, crushing
torches, men and voices into dark.

The banquet to commemorate the demise of the last s'Ffalenn was an
extravagant affair, though arrangements had been completed on short
notice. The king presided at the feast. Sumptuous in indigo brocade, his red
hair only slightly thinned with grey, he gestured expansively and urged his
guests to share his enjoyment of good fortune. Crowded on trestles before
his dais were bottles of rare vintage wine, one for each s'Ilessid who had
died at the hands of a s'Ffalenn. Since second and third cousins had been
included in the count, as well as prominent citizens, the tally after seven
generations was imposing. Dispatch ships had sailed claret at speed from
the cellars of the neighbouring duchy, since the king's own stock proved
insufficient.
    Gathered in the great hall to feast and drink until the last bottle had been
drained to the lees were Amroth's courtiers, dressed in their finest
plumage. Spirits were rarely high. By dessert, not a few lords were snoring
under tables, and even the prudent had grown spirited in an atmosphere of
wild celebration. At midnight came the smock-clad figure of the royal

                ~ ~ 30


healer. Drab as blight in a flower-stall, he made his way between benches
and tables and stopped with a bow at the feet of his sovereign lord.
    'Your Grace, I beg leave to speak concerning the health of your prisoner.'
The healer stood, uncomfortably aware of the courtiers who fell silent
around him. He hated to interrupt the festivity with such news, but a
brutal, exhausting hour spent in south keep had stripped the last shred of
his patience. 'The s'Ffalenn suffers severe drug addiction from his passage
aboard the Briane.'
    The king silenced the musicians with a gesture. Between the costly
glitter of wax candles and gold cutlery, conversation, dancing, and laughter
in the vast hall faltered, then settled to an ominous hush.
'How bad is he?' demanded the king. His voice was much too soft.
Warned to danger, the healer weighed his wording. Six soldiers had been
needed to hold Arithon pinioned while he performed his examination. The
brilliant, close warmth of the hall made the experience seem distant as
nightmare by comparison. With a shudder, the healer chose bluntness.
'Your captive's life is gravely in jeopardy. The herb that was used to hold
him passive is ruinously addictive, and an overdose such as he has endured
quite often proves irreversible. Withdrawal can cause madness without
remedy.'
    The king's knuckles tightened on the handle of his bread knife and the
blade glanced in reflection like lightning before a cloudburst. 'Arithon
s'Ffalenn is a prisoner of the crown of Amroth. I'll have the head of the man
who dared to meddle with his fate.'
    The banquet hall became painfully silent; musicians fidgeted uneasily
over muted instruments, and the advisors nearest to the dais all but
stopped breathing. Into that stunned silence arose the voice of the prince.
    'Briane's healer acted under protest, my liege. I thought my report made
that clear.' Eyes turned, settled on the trim person of Lysaer as he stepped
briskly from the dance floor. The prince paused only to see his pretty
partner to a chair. The fair-headed image of his father, he strode straight to
the dais. 'My orders alone kept the s'Ffalenn under influence of the herb.'
    'Your orders!' The king of Amroth regarded his son in narrow-eyed fury.
'You insolent puppy! How dare you presume to cosset an enemy whose
birth is a slight to the kingdom's honour?'
    Stillness settled over the hall and Lysaer turned tautly pale. He had seen
his father angry, but never before had the king made mention of his queen's
indiscretion in public hearing. Cautioned by the precedence, the crown
prince bowed in respectful ceremony. 'Your Grace, I acted to ensure the
prisoner's safety. His shadow mastery and his training by the Rauven
mages makes him dangerous. No warship on the face of the ocean offers
security enough to confine such a man. The drug was the only expedient.'
    A whispered murmur of agreement swept the chamber, while more than
one royal advisor regarded the prince with admiration.
 But as if the prince were not present, the sovereign of Amroth set down

31


his knife. Eyes as grey as sleet turned and narrowed and fixed on the
countenance of the healer. 'If the s'Ffalenn bastard is to be salvaged, what
must be done?'
    Wearily, the healer shook his head. 'Your Grace, the prognosis is not
good. If the drug continues the body will waste and die. If the drug is
stopped, the shock will cause agony that by now may be more than the
mind can support.'
    On the dais, the royal favourites waited in wary stillness, but the king
only threaded ringed knuckles through his beard. 'Will Arithon be aware
that he suffers?'
    Grimly, the healer understood the price of his honesty. 'Most certainly,
my liege.'
    'Excellent.' The king signalled his page, who immediately ran for a
scribe. By the time the stooped old man arrived with his inks and
parchments the frown had smoothed from the royal brow. If the smile that
replaced the expression eased the courtiers' restraint, it boded ill for the
prisoner.
    Again the hall stilled. Slouched back with his feet on the table, the king
passed judgement on the healer. 'Arithon is to be brought before my
council in a fortnight's time, cured of addiction to the drug. You are
commanded to use every skill you possess to preserve his mind intact.
Success will reward you with one hundred coin weight in gold.' The king
plucked a grape from the bowl by his elbow and thoroughly mashed it with
his teeth. 'But if Arithon dies or loses sanity, your life, and the life of
Briane's healer shall be forfeit.'
    The healer bowed, afraid, but far too wise to protest. Only Lysaer dared
intercede. His honour repudiated, he stepped to the edge of the dais and
slammed his fists on the table.
    For the first time in living memory, the king spurned his firstborn son.
'Let this be a lesson to a prince who oversteps his appointed authority.'
    The scribe flipped open his lap desk. Too cowed to reveal any feelings, he
scratched his quill across new vellum, inking in official words of state the
terms of Arithon's survival, bound now to the lives of two healers. Warm
wax congealed beneath the royal seal, setting the document into law.
The king grabbed his flagon and raised it high. 'To the ruin of s'Ffalenn!'
A wild cheer rose from the onlookers; but frozen in fury before his
father's chair, the crown prince did not drink.

Forced to forgo supper for south keep and the Master of Shadow, the royal
healer of Amroth barred his heart against mercy. The king's orders were
final: Arithon s'Ffalenn must at all costs be weaned from the drug.
Troubled by the ache of arthritic knees, the healer knelt on cold stone and
cursed. A raw apprentice could see the task required a miracle. Time
increased the body's demand, and the doses given Arithon in the course of

32


Briane's passage had far exceeded safe limits. To stop the drug would cause
anguish; if the man's mind did not break, physical shock might kill him.
    The healer lifted his hand from stressed, quivering muscle and gestured
to the men-at-arms. 'Let him go.'
    The guardsmen released their grip. Beyond voluntary control, Arithon
curled his knees against his chest and moaned in the throes of delirium.
    Very little could be done to ease a withdrawal severe as this one. The
healer called for a straw pallet and blankets and covered Arithon's cold
flesh. He ordered his staff to bind their boots with flannel to keep noise and
echo to a minimum. They restrained the patient when he thrashed. When
his struggles grew too frenzied, they prepared carefully measured possets.
Arithon received enough drug to calm but never enough to satiate; when
bodily control failed him entirely, they changed his fouled sheets.
    Morning brought slight improvement. The healer sent for sandbags to
immobilize the prisoner's head while they forced him to swallow herb tea.
At midday came his Grace, the king of Amroth.
    He arrived unattended. Resplendently clad in a velvet doublet trimmed
with silk, he showed no trace of the drunken revelry instigated at the
banquet the night before. Guards and assistants melted clear as his majesty
crossed the cell. His unmuffied step scattered loud echoes across the stone.
The healer bowed.
    Careless of the courtesy, the king stopped beside the pallet and hungrily
drank in details. The bastard was not what he had expected. For a man born
to the sword, the hands which lay limp on the coverlet seemed much too
narrow and fine.
    'Your Grace.~' The healer shifted uneasily, his old fingers cramped m his
jacket. 'Your presence does no good here.'
    The king looked up, eyes steeped with hostility. 'You say?' He grasped
the blankets in his jewelled fist and whipped them back, exposing his
enemy to plain view. 'Do you suppose the bastard appreciates your
solicitude? You speak of a criminal.'
    When the healer did not answer, the king glanced down and smiled to
meet green eyes that were open and aware.
    Arithon drew a careful breath. Then he smiled also and said, 'The horns
my mother left are galling, I'm told. Have you come down to gore, or to
gloat?'
    The king struck him. The report of knuckles meeting helpless flesh
startled even the guards in the corridor.
    Shocked past restraint, the healer grasped the royal sleeve. 'The prisoner
is too ill to command his actions, your Grace. Be merciful.'
The king shook off the touch. 'He is s'Ffalenn. And you are insolent.'
But the sovereign lord of Amroth did not torment the prisoner further; as
if Arithon had spent his strength on his opening line, the drug soon
defeated his resistance. The king watched him thrash, the flushed print of
his fist stark against bloodless skin. Tendons sprang into relief beneath the

33


Master's wrists. The slim fingers which had woven shadow with such
devastating cleverness now crumpled into fists. Green eyes lost their
distance, became widened and harsh with suffering.
    Avid as a jealous lover, the king watched the tremors begin. He lingered
until Arithon drew a rattling breath and cried out in the extremity of
agony. But his words were spoken in the old tongue, forgotten except at
Rauven. Cheated of satisfaction, the king released the blanket. Wool
slithered into a heap and veiled his enemy's mindless wretchedness.
    'You needn't worry,' said his majesty as the healer reached to tidy the
coverlet. 'My court won't have Arithon broken until he can be made to
remember who he is.'
    The instant the king departed, the healer called an attendant to mix a
fresh posset. The remedy was much ahead of schedule, but the prisoner's
symptoms left no option.
    'I can manage without, I think.' The words came ragged from Arithon's
throat, but his eyes showed a sudden, acid clarity.
 The healer started, astonished. 'Was that an act?'
    A spark of hilarity crossed the prisoner's face before his bruised lids slid
closed. 'I gave his Grace a line from a very bad play,' came the faint, but
sardonic reply. For a long while afterward, Arithon lay as if asleep.
    The royal healer guessed otherwise: he called for a chair and prepared for
an unpleasant vigil. He had treated officers who came to endure the
secondary agony of dependence after painful injuries that required
extended relief from the drug. They were men accustomed to adversity,
physically fit, self contained, and tough; and like Arithon they began by
fighting the restless complaint of nerve and mind with total stillness. An
enchanter's trained handling of poisons might stall the drug's dissolution~
but as hallucinations burned away reason, the end result must defeat even
the sternest self-discipline. The breath came quick and fast. First one, then
another muscle would flinch, until the entire body jerked in spasm. Hands
cramped and knotted to rigidity, and the head thrashed. Then, as
awareness became unstrung by pain, and the mind came unravelled into
nightmare, the spirit at last sought voice for its agony.
    Prepared, when the pinched line of Arithon's mouth broke and air
shuddered into lungs bereft of control, the healer muffled the hoarse,
pealing screams under a twist of bedlinen with the gentleness he might
have shown a son. An assistant rushed to fetch a posset. In the interval
before Arithon blacked out, his eyes showed profound and ragged
gratitude.
    The healer smoothed the damp, rucked linens and kneaded his patient's
contorted muscles until their quivering eased into stillness. Then, bone-
weary, he pushed his stiff frame erect. Informed by his assistant that the
sun had long since set, he exclaimed aloud. 'Ath's merciful grace! That
man has a will like steel wire.'


By morning, the drug was no longer necessary. Through the final hours of
withdrawal, Arithon remained in full command of his wits. Although such
raw, determined courage won him the healer's devoted admiration, no
strength of character could lessen the toll on his health. Bereft of strength
and depleted to the point where bone, muscle and vein stood in relief
beneath bloodless skin, Arithon seemed a man more dead than alive.
    When he woke following his first period of natural sleep, the healer
consulted him. 'The king shall not be told of your recovery until absolutely
necessary. You need as much time as possible for convalescence.'
    The prisoner reacted unexpectedly. Weary distaste touched the face of a
man too spent to curb emotion. 'That's a costly risk. The king would
execute you for daring such sentiment. And I will suffer precisely as long as
mind and body remain whole enough to react.' Arithon turned his head
toward the wall, too fraught to frame his deepest fear: that grief and despair
had unbalanced him. That his fragile grip on self-restraint might snap
under further provocation and tempt him to an unprincipled attack
through magecraft. 'If I'm to be scapegoat before the court of Amroth, let
me not last an hour. Free of the drug, I believe I can achieve that.' He ended
on a wounding note of irony. 'If you wish to be merciful, tell the king at
once.'
    The healer rose sharply. Unable to speak, he touched Arithon's thin
shoulder in sympathy. Then he left to seek audience with the king. All
along he had expected to regret his dealings with the Master of Shadow; but
never until the end had he guessed he might suffer out of pity.

Resplendent in silks, fine furs and jewels, officials and courtiers alike
packed the marble-pillared council hall on the day appointed for Arithon
s'Ffalenn to stand trial before the king of Amroth. The crown prince was
present despite the incident at the victory feast that had set him out of
favour with his father. Although the ignominy stung, that his chair as the
kingdora's heir apparent would stand empty on the dais, his ingrained
sense of duty prevailed. Seated in the gallery normally reserved for royal
guests, Lysaer leaned anxiously forward as the bossed doors swung open.
Halberdiers in royal livery entered. The prisoner walked in their midst,
bracketed by the steely flash of weapons. A sigh of movement swept across
the chamber as high-born heads turned to stare.
    Lysaer studied the Master of Shadow with rapt attention and a turmoil
of mixed emotions. The drug had left Arithon with a deceptive air of
fragility. The peasant's tunic which replaced his torn cotton draped loosely
over gaunt shoulders. Whittled down to its framework of bone, his face
bore a withdrawn expression, as if the chains which dragged at wrists and
ankles were no inconvenience. His graceless stride betrayed otherwise;
but the hissed insults from the galleries failed to raise any response. As
prisoner and escort reached the foot of the dais, Lysaer was struck by an

35


infuriating oddity. After all this s'Ffalenn sorcerer had done to avoid his
present predicament, he showed no flicker of apprehension.
    Dazzled by the tiered banks of candles after long weeks of confinement,
Arithon stood blinking before the jewelled presence of the court. Stillness
claimed the crowded galleries as his sea-cold gaze steadied, passed over
banners and richly*dyed tapestries, swept the array of dignitaries on the
dais, then fixed at last on the king.
    'You will kneel,' said the sovereign lord of Amroth. He had yearned
thirty years for this moment.
    At the centre of the cut-marble flooring, Arithon stood motionless. His
eyes remained distant as a dreamer's, as if no spoken word could reach him.
A rustle of uneasiness swept the packed rows of courtiers. Only Lysaer
frowned, troubled again by incongruity. The cold-handed manipulation he
had escaped in Briane's sail-hold had certainly been no coincidence. If a
clever, controlled man who possessed a sorcerer's talents chose a senseless
act of bravado, the reason could not be trite. But the king's gesture to the
halberdiers arrested the prince's thought.
    The ceremonial grandeur of the chamber left abundant space for free
movement; banners and trappings rippled in the disturbed air as nine feet
of studded beech lifted and turned in a guardsman's fists. Steel flashed and
descended, the weapon's metal-shod butt aimed squarely at the s'Ffalenn
back. Yet with uncanny timing and a grace that maddened the eye, Arithon
dropped to his knees. The blow intended to take him between the shoulder
blades ripped harmlessly over his head.
    The halberdier overbalanced. The step he took to save himself caught,
sliding, on links of chain. He went down with a jangle of mail in full public
view of the court. Somebody laughed. The guardsman twisted, his face
beefy with outrage, but the lunge he began in retaliation was forestailed by
Arithon's rejoinder.
    'The wisest of sages have said that a man will choose violence out of
fear.' The Master's words were expressive, but cold, and directed toward
the king. 'Is your stature so meap that you dare not face me without
fetters?'
    A flurry of affront disturbed the council. The king responded without
anger, a slow smile on his lips. The courtiers stilled to hear his reply.
'Guardsman, you have been personally shamed. Leave is given to avenge
yourself.'
    The halberdier recovered his feet and his weapon with the haste of a
bad-tempered bear. The stroke he landed to restore his dignity threw
Arithon forward on his face. Hampered by the chain, the prisoner could not
use his hands to save himself. His cheek struck the marble edge of the stair
and blood ran bright over pale skin. With the breath stopped in their
throats, Amroth's finest noted the royal gesture of dismissal. The
halberdier stepped back, his eyes still fixed on his victim.
 Lysaer searched the sharp planes of the s'Ffalenn face, but found no

36


change in expression. Arithon stirred upon the floor. Subject to a thousand
inimical stares, he rose to his feet, movements underscored by the
dissonant drag of steel.
    The king's hand dropped to the sceptre in his lap. Candlelight splintered
over gem stones and gold as his fingers tightened round the grip. 'You exist
this moment because I wish to see you suffer.'
    Arithon's reply came fast as a whipcrack. 'That's a lie! I exist because
your wife refused you leave to use mastery of shadow as a weapon against
s'Ffalenn.'
    'Her scruple was well betrayed then, when you left Rauven.' The king
leaned forward. 'You sold your talents well for the massacre of s'Ilessid
seamen. Your reason will interest us all, since Lysaer never sailed with a
warfleet. He never wielded his gift of light against Karthan.'
    Lysaer clamped his fists against the balustrade, stung to private anger by
the remark. No scruple of the king's had kept him ashore, but Rauven's
steadfast refusal to grant the training that would allow him to focus and
augment his inborn talent.
    If Arithon knew that truth, he did not speak. Blood ran down the steep
line of his cheek and splashed the stone red at his feet. Calm, assured and
steady, he did not chafe at his helplessness; neither did he act like a man
distressed for lack of options. Bothered by that cold poise, and by the
courtiers' avid eagerness, Lysaer wrestled apprehension. Had he sat at his
father's side, he could at least have counselled caution.
    'Well?' Gems flashed as the king raised his sceptre. 'Have you nothing to
say?'
    Silence; the court stirred, softly as rainfall on snow. Lysaer swallowed
and found his throat cramped. Arithon might have engaged sorcery or
shadow; the fact he did neither made no sense, and the unbroken
tranquillity reflected in his stance failed to match the earlier profile of his
character. Annoyed by the incongruity, Lysaer pursued the reason with the
tenacity of a ferret burrowing after rats.
The king shifted impatiently. 'Would you speak for your freedom?'
Poised between guardsmen, unmercifully lit by the massive bronze
candelabra, Arithon remained unresponsive. Not an eyelash moved, even
as the royal fingers clenched and slowly whitened.
    'Jog his memory,' said the king. Sapphires sparked blue in the
candle flame as he let the sceptre fall.
    This time the captive tried no last-minute trick of evasion. The
halberdiers bashed him headlong onto his side. Arithon struck the floor
rolling and managed to avoid the step. But after that he might have been a
puppet mauled by dogs, so little effort did he make to spare himself. The
guardsmen's blows tumbled his unresisting flesh over and over before the
dais, raising a counterstrophe of protest from the chain. Not yet ready to
see his enemy ruined by chance injury, the king put a stop to the abuse.
 Arithon lay on his back adjacent to the carpeted aisle that led back

37


through the crowd to the antechamber. His undyed cotton tunic hid any
marks of the halberdier's ministrations. The guards had been careful to
avoid crippling damage; which perhaps was a mistake, Lysaer thought.
The bastard's insufferably remote expression remained unchanged.
    Except to glance at the king, Arithon spoke without altering position.
'The same sages also wrote that violence is the habit of the weak, the
impotent and the fool.' His final word was torn short as a guardsman
kicked his ribs.
    The king laughed. 'Then why did you leave Rauven, bastard? To become
impotent, weak and foolish? Or did you blind and burn seven ships and
their crews for sheer sport?'
    Again Arithon said nothing. Lysaer restrained an urge to curse. Some-
thing about the prisoner's defiance rang false, as if, somehow, he sought to
tune the king's emotions to some unguessed at, deliberate purpose.
    'Speak!' The king's bearded features flushed in warning. 'Shall I call the
healer? Perhaps a second course of drugs would improve your manners.'
    Arithon spread his hands in a gesture that might have suppressed
impatience. But Lysaer's spurious hope that the prisoner's control might
be weakened died as Arithon dragged himself to his feet. His upturned face
sticky with blood, he confronted the king. 'I could talk the fish from the
sea, your royal Grace. You would hear nothing but the reflection of your
own spite.' Forced to lift his voice over swelling anger from the galleries,
Arithon finished. 'Still, you would remain impotent, weak and a fool.'
    The king succumbed to fury. He shouted to the guardsmen, and mailed
fists smashed Arithon to his knees. More blood spattered the tiles, while
Amroth's aristocracy vented its approval with cheers.
    Lysaer sat frozen through the uproar. Unsettled by the turn of events, his
thoughts churned like a millrace. A halberd spun. Arithon's head snapped
with the impact. Black hair fanned over the toe of a guardsman's boot. The
man-at-arms laughed and pinned it beneath his heel. The next blow fell
full on the prisoner's exposed face, while onlookers howled their approval.
    Sickened by the violence, Lysaer was arrested by the sight of the
prisonerJs outflung arm. The fine fingers were limp, relaxed. Memory of
that same hand all splayed and stiflened with agony rose in the prince's
mind. Revelation followed. The odd calm which had puzzled Lysaer
throughout was nothing else but indifference. Quite likely, Rauven's
training enabled Arithon to divorce his mind from his body; certainly now
he felt no pain at all.
    The conclusion followed that the halberdiers might kill him. If death
was the goal Arithon had striven with such cunning to achieve, this time
no man could be blamed but the king. The feud would be ended in a messy,
honourless tangle of animal savagery. Shamed to find himself alone with
the decency for regret, the crown prince of Amroth rose sharply to leave.
Yet before he could duck through a side door, a deafening crackle of sorcery
exploded over the dais steps.

38


     A shadow appeared in the empty air. The blot darkened, then resolved
 into the image of a woman robed in the deep purple and grey worn by the
 Rauven sorcerers. With a horrible twist, Lysaer made out the fair features
 of his mother under the cowled hood. If Arithon chose to repeat his tactics
 from the sail-hold in full public view of the court, his malice had passed
 beyond limit. Alarmed for the integrity of the king, and this time in
 command enough to remember that his gift of light could banish such
 shadows, the crown prince reversed his retreat and shoved through the
 press of stupefied courtiers. Yet his dash for the throne was obstructed.
     Around him, the council members shook off surprise. A yammering cry
 erupted from the galleries. The king drove to his feet. The sceptre hurtled
 from his hand, passed clean through the apparition's breast, and struck tile
 with a ringing scream of sound. The halberdlets abandoned Arithon; with
 levelled weapons they converged at a run to surround the ghostly image of
 the queen.
    'She's only a sorcerer's sending!' From his pose of prostration on the
floor, Arithon pitched his voice cleanly through the clamour. 'An illu-
sion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed
force.'
    Lysaer was blocked by a well-meaning guard; slowly the panic subsided.
Silence blanketed the chamber. The bastard rolled and pushed himself
upright, while the king glared at the image of his wife, his face stamped
with alarming and dangerous animosity.
    Arithon reached his feet. No guard restrained him as he moved against
the drag of his chains to the base of the dais. Before the spectre of the queen,
he stopped and spoke a phrase in the ancient language used still on Rauven.
When the woman did not respond, Arithon tried again, his tone fiercely
commanding.
    The image remained immobile. Taut with uncertainty, Lysaer watched
as Arithon shifted his regard to the king. Wearily, the Master said, 'The
spell's binding is keyed to another. I cannot unlock its message.'
    The king sat down abruptly. With an irritable word, he dispatched a page
to retrieve his sceptre; and the sound of the royal voice brought the
apparition to life.
    The queen tossed back her grey-bordered hood and spoke words that
carried to the furthest recesses of the galleries. 'To his Grace of Amroth, I
bring word from Rauven. Flesh, bone, blood and mind, you are warned to
treat my two sons as one.'
    The king stopped breathing. His florid features paled against the gold-
stitched hanging at his back, and his ringed hands tightened into fists. He
ignored the sceptre offered by the page as if the subjects who crowded his
hall had suddenly ceased to exist. At length, his chest heaved and he
replied. 'What does Rauven threaten if I refuse?'
    The queen returned the quiet, secretive smile which even now haunted
her husband's dreams at night. 'You should learn regret, my liege. Kill

$9


Arithon, and you murder Lysaer. Maim him, and you cripple your own heir
likewise.'
    Chilled by apprehension, the crown prince ducked past the guard. He
leaped the dais stair in a rush and knelt by his father's knee. 'This sorcery
might be no threat from Rauven, but a ruse designed by the bastard.'
    His words went unregarded. The king acknowledged no advice, but
answered only his past wife in words that smouldered with hatred. 'And if
your accursed offspring remains unblemished?'
    'Then the crown prince of Amroth will prosper also.' Like a shadow
excised by clean sunlight, the queen's image vanished.
    The king's brows knotted into a scowl. He snatched his sceptre from the
page with unwarranted force, while an ominous mutter of anger arose from
the assembled courtiers. Lysaer stood stunned through the uproar, his
attention arrested by the sight of Arithon s'Ffalenn, all subterfuge gone
from him. Surprise, and an emotion Lysaer could not place showed briefly
on the prisoner's battered face. Then a halberdJet seized the Master's
bruised shoulder. Arithon started, rudely recalled to his circumstance.
  'Turn and hear your sentence, bastard,' the guard said unpleasantly.
  Now frantic, Lysaer had no choice but to stand down. No advisor cared
  to question whether the sending was a wile of the Master's, or a genuine
  ultimatum from Rauven; most showed deep disappointment that a
  vendetta which had raged through seven generations could be abandoned
  in a few short seconds.
    The king leaned forward to speak. 'Arithon s'Ffalenn, for the crime of
piracy, in reprisal for seven ships and the lives of the men who crewed
them, you will suffer exile through the Gate on the isle of Worldsend.' The
king clapped his hands, lips drawn taut with rage. 'Return the bastard to
confinement until escort and a ship can be arranged. Let me not set eyes on
him again.'
    Halberdiers closed in, eclipsing Arithon's dark head. Weapons held at
the ready, they hurried the prisoner away through the tense, resentful
stillness of a crowd whose hungers remained unsatisfied. Lysaer stood tom
with uneasiness. Reprieve of any sort had seemed inconceivable, just a
scant moment before. Afraid, suddenly, that events had turned precisely to
the whim of the Master, the prince braced his composure and touched his
father's sleeve.
    'Was that wise?' His blue eyes searched the face of the king, as he begged
to be heard without prejudice. Whatever passed the Worldsend Gate's
luminescent portal never returned; not even the sorcerers could answer
the enigma, and Rauven's power was great. 'What if Arithon's exile
becomes my own as well?'
    The king turned venomous eyes toward his eldest, fair-haired son, who
right now bore unbearable resemblance to the traitorous sorceress who had
borne him. 'But I thought this sending was a ploy, engineered by the
cunning of s'Ffalenn?'

4O


    The prince stepped back in dismay. His warning had been heard; yet the
moment was past, the sentence read. Little gain would result if he qualified
what had already been ignored. In silence, the prince bowed and took his
leave.
    The king's bitter words echoed after him. 'You worry for nothing, my
prince. Rauven's terms will be held to the letter. The s'Ffalenn bastard will
go free without harm.'

41


Ocean world Dascen Elur
    Left unwa tched for five score years
Shall sha12e from High Kings of Men
Untried arts in unborn hands.
These shall bring the Mistwraith's bane,
  Free Athera's sun again.

  Dakar's prophecy of West Gate
  Third Age 5061

Prelude

On a high, windswept terrace at Rauven a robed man stirred from trance
and opened troubled eyes.
    'The King of Amroth has chosen to banish Arithon through the
Worldsend Gate,' the listener announced to the high mage. Neither knew
his words were overheard by a second mind incomprehensibly distant...

In a world of fog-bound skies another sorcerer in maroon robes paused
between dusty tiers of books. Misty, distracted eyes turned sharp and
immediate as a falcon's. Sethvir of the Fellowship had kept records at
Althain Tower since the Mistwraith had overturned all order and banished
sunlight five centuries earlier. Events sifted past his isolation like
snowflakes beyond glass; as the fancy struck him, he penned them into
manuscript and catalogued them for the archives. Although the listener's
phrase was one of thousands which intruded upon his thoughts hourly, the
sorcerer focused his attention instantly to prove its origin.
    Power great enough to shatter mountains answered Sethvir's will.
Faultlessly directed, it bridged the unimaginable gulf between worlds and
retrieved the vision of the starlit embrasure where a mage sat with a sword
of unearthly beauty clenched between his hands. The blade bore patterns
of silver inlay, and a spindle of green light blazed in a gem set at the hilt.
The mage regarded the weapon with a raw expression of grief, while the
clairvoyant tried vainly to comfort him.
    Sethvir recognized that blade. Memories of past events aligned like
compass needles, pairing fact with circumstance whose significance
shattered a calm that was legendary. Sethvir of the Fellowship whooped
like a boy. In the time before the Mistwraith's curse, that same weapon had
been carried by an Atherian prince through the Worldsend Gates to the

42


west. Three other royal heirs had fled with him, seeking sanctuary from a
rebellion which threatened their lives. Then the Mistwraith's conquest
banished all sunlight; the Gates were directionally sealed on the promise
of a madman's prophecy, and the princes' exile became permanent. Yet if
the royal heirs had been abandoned to their fate, they had not been
forgotten. At last, Sethvir beheld the first sign that the princes' betrayal
had not been in vain.
    The sorcerer released the image. Blue-green eyes softened with a reverie
that masked keen thought. The mage who held the sword had also seemed
no stranger; Sethvir himself had trained the man's ancestor in the
foundational arts of power. Only one possible interpretation fitted such
coincidence: the sorcerer witnessed the birth-pangs of the great West Gate
Prophecy, the one which forecast the defeat of the Mistwraith and the
return of Athera's banished sunlight.
    Sethvir's exuberance drove him to run from the library. Disturbed air
raised dust from the shelves as he banged through the door and raced up the
stairwell beyond; but his thought moved faster still, spanning a distance of
leagues to deliver the news to his colleagues in the Fellowship of Seven.

43


Interlude

In another place, amid the weedy tangle of a fog-shrouded field, water
dripped sullenly down the stems of last summer's bracken.
 'I bring news of Dascen Elur,' said an intrusive, familiar voice.
    Dakar the Mad Prophet started in surprise where he sat, drunk and
soaked to the skin. A sigh escaped his bearded lips. Luck was a witch, to
have abandoned him with the ale jug barely emptied. Dakar rolled sour,
cinnamon eyes toward the sorcerer who approached. He tried to forestall
the inevitable. 'The prince who returns will be s'Ilessid, or I drink only
water for the next five years,' he announced with slurred finality.
    The sorcerer, who was Asandir of the Fellowship of Seven, stopped still
in his grey tunic and blue cloak. Wind ruffled silver hair over features that
split with amusement. 'You speak of the West Gate Prophecy?' His tone
was deceptively polite.
    Dakar felt his stomach heave, and cursed silently. Either he was too
sober to handle fear of the reprimand he knew must come, or he was too
drunk to master the urge to be sick. Asandir was seldom lenient with his
apprentices. Nevertheless, Dakar managed a sloppy grin. '"Ocean world
Dascen Elur, Left unwatched for five score years... "' he recited,
obligingly quoting himself.
    Crisply, Asandir stole the following lines.'"Sh all sh ape from High Kings
of Men, Untried arts in unborn hands."' Hands capable of restoring order
to a world that had known barbarous dissolution, decadence and blighted,
misty weather for half an age. Asandir smiled, tolerant still. 'But the
foreordained hands are unborn no longer, my prophet. The time of
deliverance is at hand.'
    The reference took a muddled moment to sink in. When Dakar caught
on, he crowed and flopped backwards into a milkweed thicket. Pods
exploded, winnowing a flurry of seeds. These were not fluffy white with

44


clean health, but musted with the mildews of sunless damp endlessly
fostered. 'Where?' demanded Dakar, and followed immediately with,
'Who? s'Ahelas, s'Ellestrion, s'Ffalenn, or better, because I've a whopping
wager, s'Ilessid?'
    But Asandir's lapse into levity ended. 'Up with you. We leave for West
Gate at once.'
    Dakar inhaled milkweed seeds and sneezed. 'Who? I've a right to know.
It's my prophecy,' and he grunted as Asandir's boot prodded his ribs.
    'Come with me and see, my sotted seer. I just heard from Sethvir. The
Worldsend Gate out of Dascen Elur was breached only this morning. If
your s'Ilessid is on his way, he currently suffers the ninety and nine
discomforts of the Red Desert. Assuming he survives, that leaves us five
days to reach West Gate.'
    Dakar moaned. 'No liquor, no ladies, and a long nasty ride with a
headache.' He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a short, plump man with a
clever face and seed-down snagged like feathers in his stiff red beard.
    Asandir appraised him with a stare that raised sweat on cheek and
temple. 'No s'Ilessid, and you're pledged to five years' sobriety.'
    'Next time remind me to swallow my tongue with my ale,' murmured
Dakar. But the phrase held no rancour. Behind heavy lids, his cinnamon
eyes gleamed with excitement. At last the wait would end. Through West
Gate would come a descendant of Athera's royal houses, and with him
wild, unknown talents. '"These shall bring the Mistwraith's bane, Free
Athera's sun again."' Grapes would sweeten again under a cleared sky and
the vintner's vats would no longer turn spoiled and sour... Dakar
chuckled and hastened toward the dripping eaves of the tavern stables.
    Agelessly sure, Asandir fell into step beside him. The austere fall of his
cloak and bordered tunic offered sharp contrast to the stained russet which
swathed Dakar's rotund bulk.
    'Prudence, my prophet,' the sorcerer rebuked. 'The results of prophecies
often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.' But if Asandir was
yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were
enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.

45


Three Worlds

At Amroth Castle, a king celebrates the exile of his most bitterly hated
enemy, but fails to notice the absence of his own heir until too late...

In a dusty hollow between dunes of rust-coloured sand, twisted trees shade
the ivy-choked basin of a fountain from the heat of a scarlet sun...

A world away from fountain and wasteland, an enchantress observes an
image of a sorcerer and a prophet who ride in haste through fog, and
droplets fly from the bracken crushed beneath galloping hooves...

46


    Who drinks this water
Shall cease to age five hundred years
Yet suffer lengthened youth with tears
Through grief, death' s daughter.

  inscription, Five Century Fountain
  Davien, Third Age 3140

III. EXILE

The crown prince of Amroth awoke to a nightmare of buffeting surf.
Muddled, disoriented and unaccountably dizzy, he discovered that he lay
face-down on the floorboards of an open boat. The fact distressed him: he
retained no memory o.f boarding such a craft. Through an interval of
preoccupied thought, he failed to uncover a reason for an ocean voyage of
any kind.
    Lysaer licked his lips, tasted the bitter tang of salt. He felt wretched.
His muscles ached and shivered and his memories seemed wrapped in
fog. The bilge which sloshed beneath his shoulder stank of fish; con-
stellations tilted crazily overhead as the boat careened shoreward on the
fist of a wave.
    The prince shut his teeth against nausea. Frustrated by the realization
that something had gone amiss, he tried to push himself upright. A look
over the thwart might at least identify his location. But movement of any
kind proved surprisingly difficult; after two attempts, he managed to catch
hold of the gunwale. The boat lurched under him. A stranger's muscled
arm bashed his fingers from the wood, and he tumbled backward into
darkness...

The prince roused again as the boat grounded. Gravel grated against
planking and voices called in the night. The craft slewed, caught by the
drag of a breaker. Lysaer banged his head on the sharp edge of a rib. Shouts
punched through the roar of the waves. Wet hands caught the boat, dragged
her through the shallows and over firm sand to the tidemark. The bearded
features of a fisherman eclipsed the stars. Then, callously impatient, two
hands reached down and clamped the royal wrists in a grip that bruised.
Limp as a netted fish, Lysaer felt himself hauled upright.

47


    'D'ye think the Rauven mage would care if we kept the jewels on 'im?'
said a coarse male voice.
    The prince made a sound in protest. His head whirled unpleasantly and
his stomach cramped, obscuring an unseen accomplice's reply. The grip on
him shifted, then tightened, crushing the breath from his lungs. Lysaer
blacked out once more as his captors dragged him from the boat.

His next lucid impression was an inverted view of cliffs silhouetted against
the sea. Breakers and sky gleamed leaden with dawn. Slung like a sack
across a back clad in oilskins, Lysaer shut his eyes. He tried desperately to
think. Facts slipped his grasp like spilled beads, and his train of thought
drifted; yet one fragment of memory emerged and yielded a reason for his
confusion. Whatever drug his abductors had used to subdue him had not
entirely worn off. Although the effects were not crippling, the prince felt
inept as a newborn.
    His captor slipped. A bony shoulder jarred Lysaer's stomach. Conscious-
ness wavered like water-drowned light. Shale rattled down a weedy slope
as the man recovered his footing. Then his accomplice gripped the prince,
and the sky spun right side up with a sickening wrench. Herted like baled
cargo, Lysaer felt himself bundled into a cloak of rancid, oiled wool. He
twisted, managed to keep his face uncovered. But clear sight afforded no
advantage. High overhead rose the chipped arch of an ancient stone portal;
between the span swirled a silvery film, opaque as hot oil spilled on glass.
The proximity of unnatural forces raised gooseflesh on Lysaer's skin.
Shocked to fear and dread, the prince recognized the Worldsend Gate.
    He struggled violently. Too late he grasped the need to escape. His
enemies raised him with merciless force, cast him headlong into
mother-of-pearl whose touch was ice and agony. Lysaer screamed. Then
the shock of the Gate's forces ripped his mind to fragments. He plunged
into fathomless dark.

The crown prince of Amroth roused to the sting of unbearable heat. Bitter
dust dried the tissues of his nostrils at each breath and strange fingers
searched his person, quick and furtive as rats' feet. Lysaer stirred. The
invading hands paused, then retreated as the prince opened his eyes.
    Light stabbed his pupils. He blinked, squinted and through a spike of
cruel reflection, made out the blade of his own dagger. Above, the eyes of
Arithon s'Ffalenn appraised him from a face outlined in glare.
    'We're better matched this time, brother.' The bastard's voice was rough,
as though with disuse. Face, hands and the shoulder underneath his torn
shirt showed flesh frayed with scabs and congested still with the purpled
marks of abuse.

48


    Sharply aroused from his lethargy, Lysaer scrambled upright. 'What are
you waiting for? Or did you hope to see me beg before you cut my throat?'
    The blade remained still in Arithon's hand. 'Would you have me draw a
brother's blood? That's unlucky.'
    The words themselves were a mockery. A wasteland of dunes extended to
an empty horizon. Devoid of landmark or dwelling, red, flinty sands buckled
under shimmering curtains of heat. No living scrub or cactus relieved the
unrelenting fall oI white sunlight. The Gate's legacy looked bleak enough to
kill. Stabbed by grief that his royal father's passion for vengeance had
eclipsed any care for his firstborn, Lysaer clung wretchedly to dignity.
Shaken to think that Amroth, his betrothed, every friend, and all of the royal
honour that bound his pride and ambition might be forever reft from him, he
drew breath in icy denial. 'Brother? I don't spring from pirate stock.'
    The dagger jumped. Blistering sunlight glanced off the blade; but
Arirhon's tone stayed inhumanly detached. 'The differences in our paren-
tage make small difference, now. Neither of us can return to Dascen Elur.'
    'That's a lie!' Rejecting the concept that his exile might be permanent,
Lysaer gave way to hostility. 'The Rauven sorcerers would never permit a
favoured grandson to wither in a desert. They'll reverse the Gate.'
    'No. Look again.' Arithon jerked his head at the iron portal which arched
behind. No curtain of living force shimmered there: the flaking, pitted posts
framed only desert. Certainty wavered. This gate might truly be dead, sealed
ages past against a forgotten threat, and beyond any power of the Rauven
mages to restore. Lysaer battled shattering panic. The only living human
who remained to take the blame was the s'Ffalenn bastard who crouched
behind a knife in studied wariness.
    'You don't convince me. Rauven spared you from execution.' He paused,
struck cold by another thought. 'Or did you weave your shadows to shape
that sending of the queen as a plot to seek your own vengeance?'
    The blade hung like a mirror in the grip of dirty fingers~ inflectionless,
Arithon said, 'The appearance of the lady and your presence here were not of
my making.' He shrugged to throw off wry bitterness. 'Your drug and your
chains left small room for personal scores.'
    But the baiting of the king had been too bloodlessly thorough to inspire
s'Ilessid trust. 'I dare not believe you.'
    'We're both the victims of bloodfeud,' Arithon said. 'What's past can't be
changed. But if we set aside differences, we have a chance to escape from this
wasteland.'
    As crown prince, Lysaer was unaccustomed to orders or bluntness; from a
s'Ffalenn whose wretched misfortune might have been arranged to deprive a
kingdom of its rightful heir, the prospect of further manipulation became
too vicious to bear. Methods existed to disarm a man with a dagger. Sand
warmed the prince's bootsoles as he dug a foothold in the ground. 'I don't
have to accept your company.'
 'You will.' Arithon managed a thin smile. 'I hold the knife.'

49


    Lysaer sprang. Never for an instant off his guard, Arithon fended clear.
He ducked the fingers which raked to twist his collar into a garrotte. Lysaer
changed tack, closed his fist in black hair and delivered a well-placed kick.
The Master twisted with the blow and spun the dagger. He struck the
prince's wristbone with the jewelled pommel. Numbed to the elbow by a
shooting flare of pain, Lysaer lost his grip. Cat-quick in his footwork,
Arithon melted clear.
    'I could easily kill you,' said the hated s'Ffalenn voice from behind. 'Next
time remember that I didn't.'
    Lysaer whirled, consumed by a blind drive to murder. Arithon evaded his
lunge with chill poise. Leafy of the restraint which had undone Amroth's
council, the prince at once curbed his aggression. Despite his light build,
the bastard was well trained and fast; his guileful cleverness was not going
to be bested tactlessly.
    'Lysaer, a gate to another world exists in this desert,' the Master insisted
with bold authority. 'Rauven's archives held a record. But neither of us will
survive if we waste ourselves on quarrelling.'
    Caught short by irony, the prince struck back with honesty. 'Seven
generations of unforgiven atrocities stand between us. Why should I trust
you ? '
    Arithon glanced down. 'You'll have to take the risk. Have you any other
alternative?'
    Alien sunlight blazed down on dark head and fair through a wa.w interval
of silence. Then a sudden disturbance pelted sand against the back of
Lysaer's knees. He whirled, startled, while a brown cloth sack bounced to
rest scarcely an arm's reach from him. The purple wax that sealed the tie
strings had been fixed with the sigil of Rauven.  'Don't touch that,' Arithon said quickly.
    Lysaer ignored him. If the sorcerers had sent supplies through the Gate,
he intended to claim them himself. He bent and hooked up the sack's
drawstring. A flash of sorcery met his touch. Staggered by blinding pain,
the prince recoiled.
    Enemy hands caught and steadied him. 'I warned you, didn't I?' said
Arithon briskly. 'Those knots are warded by sorcery.'
  Riled by intense discomfort, the prince shoved to break free.
     'Stay still!' Arithon's hold tightened. 'Movement will just prolong your
 misery.'
     But dizzied, humiliated and agonized by losses far more cutting than the
 burns inflicted by the ward, Lysaer rejected sympathy. He stamped his heel
 full-force on Arithon's bare instep. A gasped curse rewarded him. The
 offending hands retreated.
     Lysaer crouched, cradling his arm while the needling pains subsided.
 Envy galled him for the arcane knowledge he had been denied as his enemy
 loosened the knots with impunity. The sack contained provisions.
 Acutely conscious of the oven-dry air against his skin, the prince counted

5O


five bundles of food and four water flasks. Lastly, Arithon withdrew a
beautifully-crafted longsword. Sunlight caught in the depths of an emerald
pommel, flicking green highlights over features arrested in a moment of
unguarded grief.
    Resentfully, Lysaer interrupted. 'Let me take my share of the rations
now. Then our chances stand equal.'
    Arithon's expression hardened as he looked up. 'Do they?' His glance
drifted over his half-brother's court clothing, embroidered velvets and fine
lawn cuffs sadly marred with grit and sweat. 'What do you know of
hardship?'
    The prince straightened, furious in his own self-defence. 'What right
have you to rule my fate?'
    'No right.' Arithon tossed the inventoried supplies back into the sack
and lifted his sword. 'But I once survived the effects of heat and thirst on a
ship's company when the water casks broke in a storm. The experience
wasn't very noble.'
    'I'd rather take my chances than live on an enemy's sufferance.' Despising
the diabolical sincerity of this latest s'Ffalenn wile, Lysaer was bitter.
    'No, brother.' With unhurried calm, Arithon slung the sack across his
shoulders. He buckled on the sword which once had been his father's.
'You'll have to trust me. Let this prove my good faith.' He reversed the
knife neatly and tossed it at the prince's feet. The jewelled handle struck
earth, pattering sand over gold-stitched boots.
    Lysaer bent. He retrieved his weapon. Impelled by antagonism too
powerful to deny, he straightened with a flick of his wrist and flung the
blade back at his enemy.
    Arithon dropped beneath the dagger's glittering arc. He landed rolling,
shed the cumbersome sack, and was halfway back to his feet again at the
moment Lysaer crashed into him. Black hair whipped under the impact of
the prince's ringed fist.
    Arithon retaliated with his knee and returned a breathless plea. 'Desist.
My w6rd is good.'
    Lysaer cursed and struck again. Blood ran, spattering droplets over the
sand. His enemy's sword hilt jabbed his ribs as he grappled. Harried in close
quarters he snatched, but could not clear the weapon from the sheath.
Hatred burned through him like lust as he gouged s'Ffalenn flesh with his
fingers. Shortly, the Master of Shadow would trouble no man further,
Lysaer vowed; he tightened his hold for the kill.
    An explosion of movement flung him back. Knuckles cracked the
prince's jaw, followed by the chop of a hand in his groin. He doubled over,
gasping, as Arithon wrested clear. Lysaer clawed for a counterhold. Met by
fierce resistance and a grip he could not break, he felt the tendons of his
wrist twist with unbearable force. He lashed with his boot, felt the blow
connect. The Master's grasp fell away.
 Lysaer lunged to seize the sword. Arithon kicked loose sand, and a

51


shower of grit stung the prince's eyes. Blinded, shocked to hesitation by
dirty tactics, Lysaer felt his enemy's hands lock over both of his forearms.
Then a terrific wrench threw him down. Before he could recover, a hail of
blows tumbled him across the ground.
    Through a dizzy haze of pain, Lysaer discovered that he lay on his back.
Sweat dripped down his temples. Through a nasty, unspeakable interval,
he could do nothing at all but lie back in misery and pant. He looked up at
last, forced to squint against the light which jumped along the sword held
poised above his heart.
    Blood snaked streaks through the sand on Arithon's cheek. His expres-
sion flat with anger, he said, 'Get up. Try another move like that and I'll
truss you like a pig.'
  'Do it now,' the prince said viciously. 'I hate the air you breathe.'
    The blade quivered. Lysaer waited, braced for death. But the sword only
flickered and stilled in the air. Seconds passed, oppressive with heat and
desert silence.
    'Get up,' the Master repeated finally. 'Move now, or byAth, I'll drive you
to your feet with sorcery.' He stepped back. Steel rang dissonant as a fallen
harp as he rammed the sword into his scabbard. 'I intend to see you out of
this wasteland alive. After that, you need never set eyes on me again.'
    Blue eyes met green with a flash of open antagonism. Then, with
irritating abandon, Arithon laughed. 'Proud as a prize bull. You are your
father's son, to the last insufferable detail.' The Master's mirth turned
brittle. Soon afterward, the sand began to prickle, then unpleasantly to
burn the prince's prone body.
    Accepting the risk that the sensation was born of illusion, Lysaer
resisted the urge to rise. The air in his nostrils seared like a blast from a
furnace, and his hair and clothing clung with sticky sweat. Wrung by the
heat and the unaccustomed throes of raw pain, the prince shut his eyes.
Arithon left him to retrieve the thrown dagger. He gathered the
fisherman's cloak which had muffled Lysaer through his passage of the
Gate and stowed that along with the provisions. Then the Master walked
back. He discovered the prince still supine on the sand and the last of his
patience snapped.
    Lysaer felt his mind clamped by remorseless force. Overcome by the
brilliant, needle-point focus in the touch which pinned him, he lost his
chance to resist. The blow which followed struck only his mind, but a
scream of agony ripped from his throat.
    'Get up!' Sweat ploughed furrows through the dirt on Arithon's face. He
attacked again without compunction. The prince knew pain that seared
away reason~ left nothing beyond an animal's instinct to survive, he
screamed again. Peal after peal of anguish curdled the desert silence before
the punishment ended. Lysaer lay curled in the sand, shaking, gasping and
angered beyond all forgiveness.
 'Get up.'

52


    Balked to speechless frustration, Lysaer complied. But wedged like a
knot in his heart was a vow to end the life of the sorcerer who had forced his
inner will.

The half-brothers from Dascen Elur travelled east. Red as the embers of a
blacksmith's forge the sun swung overhead, heating sand to temperatures
that seared exposed flesh. Arithon bound his naked feet with strips torn
from his shirt and urged the prince on through hills which shimmered and
swam in the still air. By midday the dunes near at hand shattered under a
wavering screen of mirage. The Master tapped his gift and wove shadow to
provide shade. Lysaer expressed no gratitude. Poisoned through by
distrust, he alternated between silence and insults until the desert sapped
his fresh energy.
    Arithon drove on without comment. The prince grew to hate beyond
reason the tireless step at his heel. In time, the Master's assumption that
he was his father's son became only partially true; the rage which
consumed Lysaer's thoughts burned patient and cold as his mother's.

The heat of day peaked and waned and the sun dipped like a demon's lamp
toward an empty horizon. Lysaer hiked through a haze of exhaustion, his
mouth bitter with dust. The flinty chafe of grit in his boots made each step
a separate burden. Yet Arithon permitted no rest until the desert lay
darkened under a purple mantle of twilight. The prince sat at once on a
wind-scoured rock and removed his boots. Blood throbbed painfully
through heels scraped raw with blisters, but Lysaer preferred discomfort to
the prospect of appealing to the mercy of his enemy. If he could not walk,
the Master could damned well carry him.
  'Put your hands behind your back,' Arithon said sharply.
    Lysaer glanced up. The Master stood with his sword unsheathed in one
hand and an opened waterflask in the other. His expression remained
unreadable beneath clinging dust and dried blood. 'You won't like the
outcome if I have to repeat myself.'
    The prince complied slowly. Steel moved with a fitful gleam in the
Master's hand. Lysaer recoiled.
    'Stay still!' Arithon's command jarred like a blow. 'I'm not planning to
kill you.'
    Angered enough to throttle the words in his enemy's throat, Lysaer
forced himself to wait while smoke-dark steel rose and rested like a thin
line of ice against his neck.
Arithon raised the flask to Lysaer's lips. 'Take three swallows, no more.'
The prince considered refusing but the wet against his mouth aggravat~a
his craving past bearing; reason argued that only the s'Ffalenn bastard
would benefit from water refused out of pride. Lysaer drank. The liquid ran

53


bitter across his tongue. Parched as he was, the sword made each swallow
seem an act of animal greed. Although Arithon rationed himself equally,
the prince found neither comfort nor forbearance in the fact.
    Moved by the hatred in the eyes which tracked his smallest move,
Arithon made his first unnecessary statement since morning. 'The virtues
of s'Ilessid have been justice and loyalty since time before memory. Reflect
your father's strengths, your Grace. Don't cling to his faults.'
    With a slice of his sword, the Master parted the twine which bound a
wrapped package of food. His weapon moved again, dividing the contents
into halves before his battered scabbard extinguished the dull gleam of the
blade. Arithon looked askance, his face shadowed in failing light. 'Show
me a rational mind, Prince of Amroth. Then I'll grant you the respect due
your birthright.'
    Lysaer hardened his heart against truce; s'Ffalenn guile had seduced
s'Ilessid trust too often to admit any pardon. With nothing of royal
birthright left beyond integrity, self-respect demanded he endure his plight
without shaming the family honour. Lysaer accepted cheese and
journey-biscuit from Arithon's hand in silence, his mind bent on thoughts
of revenge in the moment his enemy chose to sleep.
    But the Master's intentions included no rest. The moment their meagre
meal was finished, he ordered the prince to his feet.
    Lysaer wasted no resentment over what he could not immediately hope
to change. Driven outside impulsive passion, he well understood that
opportunity would happen soonest if Arithon could be lulled to relax his
guard. With feigned resignation the prince reached for his boots only to
find his way blocked by a fence of drawn steel.
    Sword in hand, Arithon spoke. 'Leave the boots. They'll make your feet
worse. Blame your vanity for the loss. You should have spoken before you
got blistered.'
    Lysaer bit back his impulse to retort and stood up. Arithon seemed edgy
as a fox boxed in a wolf's den; perhaps his sorcerer's self-discipline was
finally wearing thin. Sapping heat and exertion would exact cruel toll on
the heels of a brutal confinement. Possibly Arithon was weak and unsure
of himself, Lysaer realized. The thought roused a predator's inward smile.
The roles of hunter and hunted might soon be reversed. His enemy had
been foolish to keep him alive.

At nightfall, the sky above the Red Desert became a thief's hoard of
diamonds strewn across black velvet; but like a beauty bewitched, such
magnificence proved short-lived. The mild breeze of twilight sharpened
after dusk, swelling into gusts which ripped the dry crests of the dunes.
Chased sand hissed into herringbone patterns and the alien constellations
smouldered through haloes of airborne dust.
 Lysaer and Arithon walked half-bent with their faces swathed in rags.

54


Wind-whipped particles drove through gaps at sleeve and collar, Stinging
bare flesh to rawness. Isolated by hatred and exhaustion, Lysaer endured
with his mouth clamped against curses. His eyes wept gritty tears. At
every hour his misery grew, until the shriek of sand and wind seemed the
only sound he had ever known. Memories of court life in Amroth receded,
lost and distant and insubstantial as the movements of ghosts. The sweet
beauty of a lady left at South Isle seemed a pleasure invented by delirium as
reality was defined and limited by the agony of each single step.
    No thought remained for emotion. The enemy at Lysaer's side seemed to
be a form without meaning, a shadowy figure in windblown rags who
walked half-obscured by drifts of sand. Whether Arithon was responsible for
cause or cure of the present ordeal no longer mattered. Suffering stripped
Lysaer of the capacity to care. Survival forced him to set one sore foot ahead
of the other, hour after weary hour. Finally, when the ache of muscle and
bone became too much to support, the prince collapsed to his knees.
    Arithon stopped. He made no move to draw his sword, but stood with his
shoulders hunched against the wind and waited.
    The sand blew more densely at ground level. Abrasive as sharpened
needles, stony particles scoured flesh until sensitized nerves rebelled in
pain. Lysaer stumbled back to his feet. If his first steps were steadied by the
hands of an enemy, he had no strength left to protest.
    Daybreak veiled the stars in grey and the winds stilled. The dust settled
gradually and the horizon spread a bleak silhouette against an orange
sunrise. Arithon at last paused for rest. Oblivious to hunger and thirst,
Lysaer dropped prone in the chilly purple shadow of a dune. He slept almost
instantly, and did not stir until long after daylight, when mirage shimmered
and danced across the trackless inferno of sand.
    Silence pressed like a weight upon the breezeless air. Lysaer opened
swollen eyelids and found Arithon had propped the hem of the fisherman's
cloak with rocks, then enlarged the patch of shade with his inborn mastery
of shadow. The fact that his makeshift shelter also protected his half-
brother won him no gratitude. Though Lysaer suffered dreadful thirst, and
his muscles ached as if mauled by an armourer's mallet, he had recovered
equilibrium enough to hate.
    The subject of his passion sat crosslegged with a naked sword propped
across his knees. Hair, clothing and skin were monochromatic with dust.
Veiled beneath crusted lashes, green eyes flicked open as Lysaer moved.
Arithon regarded his half-brother, uncannily alert for a man who had spent
the night on his feet.
    'You never slept,' the prince accused. He sat up. Dry sand slithered from
his hair and trickled down the damp collar of his tunic. 'Do you subsist on
sorcery, or plain bloody-minded mistrust ?'
    A faint smile cracked Arithon's lips. He caught the waterflask by his
elbow with scabbed fingers and offered refreshment to the prince. 'Three
swallows, your Grace.' Only his voice missed his customary smooth*

55


ness. 'Last night was the first of many to come. Accept that, and I'll
answer.'
    Lysaer refused the challenge. The time would come when even Rauven's
advantages must yield before bodily weakness. Conserving his strength for
that moment, the prince accepted his ration of water. Under the watchful
gaze of his enemy, he settled and slept once again.

The three days which followed passed without variation, their dwindling
supplies the only tangible measure of time. The half-brothers spent nights
on the move, fighting sand-laden winds which permitted no rest. Dawn
found them sharing enmity beneath the stifling wool of the fisherman's
cloak. The air smelled unrelentingly like baked flint, and the landscape
showed no change until the fourth morning, when the hump of a dormant
volcano notched the horizon to the east.
    Lysaer gave the landmark scant notice. Hardship had taught him to hoard
his resources. His hatred of Arithon s'Ffalenn assumed the stillness of a
constrictor's coils. Walking, eating and dreaming within a limbo of
limitless patience, the prince marked the progressive signs of his enemy's
fatigue.
    Arithon had been thin before exile. Now, thirst and privation pressed his
bones sharply against blistered skin. His pulse beat visibly through the veins
at neck and temple, and weariness stilled his quick hands. The abuse of sun
and wind gouged creases around reddened, sunken eyes. Ragged and gaunt
himself, Lysaer observed that the sorcerer's discipline which fuelled
Arithon's uncanny alertness was burning him out from within. His
vigilance could not last forever. Yet waking time and again to the fevered
intensity of his enemy's eyes, the prince became obsessed with murder.
Rauven and Karthan between them had created an inhuman combination of
sorcery and malice best delivered to the Fatemaster's judgement.

On the fifth day since exile, Lysaer roused to the cruel blaze of noon. The leg
and one arm which lay outside the shade of the cloak stung, angry scarlet
with burn. Lysaer licked split lips. For once, ^rithon had failed to enlarge the
cloth's inadequate shelter with shadow. Paired with discomfort, the prince
knew a thrill of anticipation as he withdrew his scorched limbs from the
sun. A suspicious glance showed the bastard's hands lying curled and slack
on the sword hilt: finally, fatally, Arithon had succumbed to exhaustion.
    Lysaer rose with predatory quiet, his eyes fixed on his enemy. Arithon
failed to stir. The prince stood and savoured a moment of wild exultation.
Nothing would prevent his satisfaction this time. With the restraint the
Master himself had taught him, Lysaer bent and laid a stealthy hand on the
sword. His touch went unresisted. Arithon slept, oblivious to all sensa-
tion. Neither did he waken as Lysaer snatched the weapon from his lap.

56


    Desert silence broke before the prince's cracked laugh. 'Bastard!' Steel
glanced, bright as flame as he lifted the sword. Arithon did not rouse.
Lysaer lashed out with his foot. Hated flesh yielded beneath the blow: the
Master toppled into a graceless sprawl upon the sand. His head lolled back.
Exposed like a sacrifice, the cords of his neck invited a swift, clean end.
    Irony froze Lysaer's arm mid-swing. Instead of a mercy-stroke, the sight
of his enemy's total helplessness touched off an irrational burst of temper.
Lysaer's thrust rent the fisherman's cloak from collar to hem. Sunlight
stabbed down, struck the s'Ffalenn profile like a coin face. The prince
smiled in quivering triumph. Almost, he had acted without the satisfac-
tion of seeing his enemy suffer before the end.
    'Tired, bastard?' Lysaer shoved the loosedimbed body onto its back. He
shook one shoulder roughly, felt sinews exposed like taut wires by
deprivation. Even after the abuses of Amroth's dungeon, Arithon had been
scrupulously fair in dividing the rations. Lysaer found the reminder
maddening. He switched to the fiat of his sword.
    Steel cracked across Arithon's chest. A thin line of red seeped through
parted cloth, and the Master stirred. One hand closed in the dust. Before his
enemy could rise, Lysaer kicked him in the ribs. Bone snapped audibly
above a gasp of expelled breath. Arithon jerked. Driven by mindless reflex,
he rolled into the iron-white glare of noon.
    Lysaer followed, intent upon his victim. Arithon's eyes opened, con-
scious at last. His arrogant mouth stretched with agony, and sweat
glistened on features at last stripped of duplicity.
    The prince gloated at his brutal, overwhelming victory. 'Would you
sleep again, bastard?' He watched as Arithon doubled, choking and starved
for breath. 'Well?' Lysaer placed the swordpoint against his enemy's
racked throat.
    Gasping like a stranded fish, Arithon squeezed his eyes shut. The steel
teased a trickle of scarlet from his skin as he gathered scattered reserves
and forced speech. 'I had hoped for a better end between us.'
    Lysaer exerted pressure on the sword and watched the stain widen on
Arithon's collar. 'Bastard, you're going to die, but not as the martyred
victim you'd have me think. Sithaer will claim you as a sorcerer who
stayed awake one day too many, plotting vengeance over a bare sword.'
    'I had another reason.' Arithon grimaced and subdued a shuddering
cough. 'If I failed to inspire your trust, I could at least depend upon my own.
! wanted no killing.'
    The next spasm broke through his control. Deaf to his brother's
laughter, Arithon buried his face in his hands. The seizure left him
bloodied to the wrists, yet he summoned breath and spoke again. 'Restrain
yourself and listen. According to Rauven's records the ancestors who
founded our royal lines came to Dascen Elur through the Worldsend Gate.'
    'History doesn't interest me.' Lysaer leaned on the sword. 'Make your
peace with Ath, bastard, while you still have time for prayer.'

57


    Arithon ignored the bite of steel at his throat. 'Four princes entered this
wasteland by another gate, one the records claim may be active still. Look
east for a ruined city... Mearth. Beyondlies the gate. Beware of Mearth. The
records mention a curse... overwhelmed the inhabitants. Something evil
may remain... ' Arithon's words unravelled into a bubbling cough. Blood
darkened the sand beneath his cheek. His forearm pressed hard to his side, he
resumed at a dogged whisper. 'You've a chance at life. Don't waste it.'
    Though armoured to resist any plea for the life under his sword, the prince
prickled with sudden chills: what if, all along, he had misjudged? What if,
unlike every s'Ffalenn before him, this bastard's intentions were genuine?
Lysaer's hand hesitated on the sword while his thoughts sank and tangled in
a morass of unwanted complications. One question begged outright for
answer. Why had Arithon not knifed him straightaway as he emerged,
drugged and helpless from the Gate?
    'You used sorcery against me,' Lysaer accused, and started at the sound of
his own voice. The aftershock of fury left him dizzied, ill, and he had not
intended to speak aloud.
    The Master's features crumpled with the remorse of a man pressured
beyond pride. Lysaer averted his face. But Arithon's answer pursued and
pierced his heart.
    'Would anything else have stiflened your will enough to endure that first
night of hardship? You gave me nothing to work with but hatred.'
    The statement held brutal truth. Lysaer lightened his pressure on the
sword. 'Why risk yourself to spare me? I despise you beyond life.'
    The prince waited for answer. Smoke-dark steel shimmered in his hand,
distorted like smelter's scrap through the heat waves. If another of Arithon's
whims prompted the silence, he would die for his insolence. Nettled, Lysaer
bent, only to find his victim unconscious. Trapped in a maze of tortuous
complexity, the prince studied the sword. Let the blade fall, and s'Ffalenn
wiles would bait him no further. Yet the weapon itself balked an execution's
simplicity; exquisitely balanced, the tempered edges designed to end life
instead offered testimony in Arithon's behalf.
    The armourers of Dascen Elur had never forged the sword's equal, though
many tried. Legend claimed the blade carried by the s'Ffalenn heirs had been
brought from another world. Confronted by perfection, and by an inhuman
harmony of function and design, for the first time Lysaer admitted the
possibility the ancestors of s'Ffalenn and s'Ilessid might have originated
beyond Worldsend. Arithon might have told the truth.
    He might equally have lied. Lysaer could never forget the Master's
performance before Amroth's council, his own life the gambit for whatever
deeper purpose he had inveigled to arrange. The same tactic might be used
again; yet logic faltered, gutted by uncertainty. Torn between hatred of
s'Ffalenn and distrust of his own motives, Lysaer realized that Arithon's
actions would never be fathorned through guesswork. Honour did not act on
ambiguity. Piqued by a fiat flare of anger, he flung the sword away.

58


    Steel flashed in a spinning arc and impaled itself with a thump in the
fisherman's cloak. Lysaer glowered down at the limp form of his half-
brother. 'Let the desert be your judge,' he said harshly. Aroused by the
blistering fall of sunlight on his head, he left to collect half of the supplies.
    Yet beneath the ruined cloak, irony waited with one final blow: the
sword had sliced through the last of the waterflasks. Sand had swiftly
absorbed the contents. Barely a damp spot remained. Lysaer struck earth
with his knuckles. Horror knotted his belly, and Arithon's words returned
to mock him: 'What do you know of hardship?' And, more recently,
'You've a chance at life. Don't waste it...' The sword pointed like a finger
of accusation. Lysaer blocked the sight with his hands, but his mind
betrayed and countered with the vision of a half-brother lying sprawled in
pitiless sunlight, the marks of injustice on his throat.
    Guilt drove Lysaer to his feet. Shadow mimed his steps like a drunk as he
fled toward empty hills, and tears of sweat streaked his face. The sun
scourged his body and his vision blurred in shimmering vistas of mirage.
    'The wasteland will avenge you, bastard,' said Lysaer, unaware the heat
had driven him at last to delirium.

Arithon woke to the silence of empty desert. Blood pooled in his mouth,
and the effort of each breath roused a tearing stab of agony in his chest. A
short distance away the heaped folds of the cloak covered the remains of
the camp he had shared with his half-brother. Lysaer had gone.
    Arithon closed his eyes. Relief settled over his weary, pain-racked
mind. Taxed to the edge of strength, he knew he could not walk. His
sorcerer's awareness revealed one lung collapsed and drowned in fluid. But
at least in his misery he no longer bore the burden of responsibility for his
half-brother's life. Lysaer would survive to find the second gate; there was
one small victory amid a host of failures.
    The Master swallowed, felt the unpleasant tug of the scab which crusted
his throat. He held no resentment at the end. Ath only knew how close he
came to butchering a kinsman's flesh with the same blade that symbolized
his sworn oath of peace. Cautiously, Arithon rolled onto his stomach.
Movement roused a flame of torment as broken bones sawed into flesh. His
breath bubbled through clotted passages, threatened by a fresh rush of
bleeding. The Master felt his consciousness waver and dim. A violent
cough broke from his chest and awareness reeled before an onslaught of
fragmenting pain.
    Slowly, patiently, Arithon recovered control. Before long, the Wheel
would turn, bringing an end to all suffering. Yet he did not intend that fate
should overtake him in the open. Death would not claim him without the
grace of a final struggle. Backing his resolve with a sorcerer's self-will,
Arithon dragged himself across the sand toward the fisherman's cloak.
 Blood ran freely from nose and mouth by the time he arrived at his goal.

59


He reached out with blistered fingers, caught the edge of the wool and pulled
to cover his sunburned limbs. As the cloak slid aside, his eyes caught on a
smoky ribbon of steel. Cloth slipped from nerveless fingers; Arithon saw his
own sword cast point first through the slashed leather of the water flask.
    A gasp ripped through the fluid in his chest. Angry tears dashed the
sword's brilliance to fragments as he faced the ugly conclusion that Lysaer
had rejected survival. Why? The Master rested his cheek on dusty sand. Had
guilt induced such an act? He would probably never know.
    But the result rendered futile everything he had ever done. Arithon
rebelled against the finality of defeat. Tormented by memory of the lyranthe
abandoned at Rauven, he could not escape the picture of fourteen silver-
wound strings all tarnished and cobwebbed with disuse. His hopes had gone
silent as his music. There stood the true measure of his worth, wasted now,
for failure and death under an alien sun.
    Arithon closed his eyes, shutting out the desert's raw light. His control
slipped. Images ran wild in his mind, vivid, direct and mercilessly accusing.
The high mage appeared first. Statue straight in his hooded robe of judge-
ment, the patriarch of Rauven held Avar's sword on the palms of his upraised
hands. The blade dripped red.
    'The blood is my own,' Arithon replied, his voice a pleading echo in the
halls of his delirium.
    The high mage said nothing. His cowl framed an expression sad with
reproach as he glanced downward. At his feet lay a corpse clad in the tattered
blue and gold of Amroth.
 Arithon cried out in anguished protest. 'I didn't kill him!'
    'You failed to save him.' Grave and implacably damning, the vision
altered. The face of the high mage flowed and reshaped into the features of
Dharkaron, Ath's avenging angel, backed by a war-littered ship's deck. By
his boots sprawled another corpse, this one a father, shot down by an arrow
and licked in a rising rush of flame.
    As the sword in the Avenger's grip darkened and lengthened into the
ebony-shafted Spear of Destiny, Arithon cried out again. 'Ath show me
mercy! How could I twist the deep mysteries? Was I wrong not to fabricate
wholesale murder for the sake of just one life?'
    Gauntleted hands levelled the spear-point at Arithon's breast; and now
the surrounding ocean teemed and sparkled with Amroth's fleet of war-
ships. 2'hese had been spared the coils of grand conjury, to be indirectly
dazed blind through use of woven shadow, their rush to attack turned and
tricked by warped acoustics to ram and set fire to each other until seven of
their number lay destroyed.
Dharkaron pronounced in subdued sorrow, 'You have been judged guilty.'
'No!' Arithon struggled. But hard hands caught his shoulders and shool
him. His chest exploded with agony. A whistling scream escaped his throat,
blocked by a gritty palm.
 'Damn you to Sithaer, hold still!'

6O


    Arithon opened glazed eyes and beheld the face of his s'Ilessid half-
brother. Blood smeared the hand which released his lips. Shocked back to
reason, the Master dragged breath into mined lungs and whispered,
'Stalemate.' Pain dragged at his words. 'Did Ath's grace, or pity bring you
back?'
    'Neither.' With clinical efficiency, Lysaer began to work the
fisherman's cloak into a sling. 'There had better be a gate.'
    Arithon stared up into eyes of cold blue. 'Leave me. I didn't ask the
attentions of your conscience.'
    Lysaer ignored the plea. 'I've found water.' He pulled the sword from
the ruined flask and restored it to the scabbard at Arithon's belt. 'Your life
is your own affair, but I refuse responsibility for your death.'
    Arithon cursed faintly. The prince knotted the comers of the cloak,
rose and set off, dragging his half-brother northward over the sand.
Mercifully, the Master lost consciousness at once.

Shaded by twisted limbs, the well lay like a jewel within a grove of
ancient trees. The first time Lysaer had stumbled across the site by
accident. Anxious to return with his burden before the night winds
scattered the sands and obscured his trail he hurried, half-sliding down
the loose faces of the dunes then straining to top the crests ahead. His
breath came in gasps. Dry air stung the membranes of his throat. At last,
aching and tired, the prince tugged the Master into the shadow of the
trees and silence.
    Lysaer knew the grove was the work of a sorcerer. Untouched by desert
breezes, the grass which grew between the bent knuckles of the tree roots
never restled; the foliage overhead hung waxy and still. Here, quiet
reigned, bound by laws which made the dunes beyond seem eerily
transient by comparison. Earlier, need had stilled the prince's mistrust of
enchantment. Now Arithon's condition would wait for no doubt. The
well's healing properties might restore him.
    At the end of his strength when he drank, Lysaer had discovered that a
single swallow from the marble fountain instantly banished the fatigue,
thirst and bodily suffering engendered by five days of desert exposure.
When the midday heat had subsided, and the thick quiver of mirage
receded to reveal the profile of a mined tower on the horizon, the prince
beheld proof that Mearth existed. Though from the first the Master's
protection had been unwanted and resented, s'Ilessid justice would not
permit Lysaer to abandon him to die.
    The prince knelt and turned back the cloak. A congested whisper of air
established that Arithon still breathed. His skin was dry and chill to the
touch, his body frighteningly still. Blood flowed in scalding drops from
his nose and mouth as Lysaer propped his emaciated shoulders against
the ivy-clad marble of the well.

61


    Silver and still as polished metal, water filled the basin to the edge of a
gilt-trimmed rim. Lysaer cupped his hands, slivering the surface of the
pool with ripples. He lifted his hand. A droplet splashed the Master's dusty
cheek; then water streamed from the prince's fingers and trickled between
parted lips.
    Arithon aroused instantly. His muscles tensed like bowstrings under
Lysaer's arm and his eyes opened, dark and hard as tourmaline. He gasped.
A paroxysm shook his frame. Deaf to the prince's cry of alarm, he twisted
aside and laced his slender, musician's fingers over his face.  Lysaer caught his half-brother's shoulder. 'Arithon!'
    The Master's shielding hands fell away. He straightened, his face gone
deathly pale. Without pause to acknowledge his half-brother's distress, he
rolled over and stared at the well. Settled and still, the water within shone
unnatural as mirror-glass between the notched foliage of the ivy.
     Arithon drew breath and the congestion in his lungs vanished as if he had
never known injury. 'There is sorcery here more powerful than the Gate.'
  Lysaer withdrew his touch as if burned. 'It healed you, didn't it.~'
    The Master looked up in wry exasperation. 'If that were all, I'd be
grateful. But something else happened. A change more profound than
surface healing.'
    Arithon rose. Brisk with concentration, he studied every tree in the
grove, then moved on to the well in the centre. The prince watched,
alarmed by his thoroughness, as Arithon rustled through the ivy which
clung to the rim o3 the basin. His search ended with a barely audible
blasphemy.
    Lysaer glimpsed an inscription laid bare beneath ancient tendrils of vine;
but the characters were carved in the old tongue, maddeningly incompre-
hensible to a man with no schooling in magecraft. In a conscious effort to
keep his manners, Lysaer curbed his frustration. 'What does it say?'
    Arithon looked up. Bemused, he said, 'If these words spell truth, Daelion
Fatemaster's going to get a fair headache over the records before the Wheel
tums on us. We appear to have been granted a five hundred year lifespan by
a sorcerer named Davien.' The Master paused, swore in earnest, and
ruefully sat on the grass. 'Brother, I don't know whether to thank you for
life, or curse you for the death I've been denied.'
    Lysaer said nothing. Taught a hard lesson in tolerance after five days in
the desert, he regarded his mother's bastard without hatred and found he
had little inclination to examine the fountain's gift. With Dascen Elur and
his heirship and family in Amroth all lost to him, the prospect of five
centuries of lengthened life stretched ahead like a joyless burden.

62


Transgression

Lirenda, First Enchantress to the Prime, glared wrathfully at the junior
initiate who sat across the worktable, her hands clenched and idle amid
bundled herbs, glass jars and the mortar and pestle set out for the mixing of
simples. In a quiet broken by the distant shouts of boys who raced to
capture chickens for the butcher, the senior's face slowly reddened
beneath netted coils of black hair. 'What misbegotten folly do you suggest
now, miss?'
    Elaira, whose bronze locks perpetually escaped even the stiffest of pins,
stared stubbornly aside through rain-washed glass, though fog had marred
the view since centuries before her birth.
    Her senior ranted on. 'Asandir rides the west road in haste. Every
sorcerer in the Fellowship is alerted, and you tell me, "the second lane
requires no watch duty." A toad has better perception.'
    Elaira transferred her gaze from the window to Lirenda's livid face.
'Sithaer take the second lane watch!' She pushed impatiently at the half-
made charm between her hands, this one a shepherd's ward to guard young
stock from the lung-sickness that stunted newborn lambs. 'That's not
what I meant.' She need not elaborate, that Asandir on the road with Dakar
in tow could well indicate the resolution of the great West Gate Prophecy.
If sunshine was restored, the diseases she mixed talismans to prevent
would be banished along with the fog that had fostered them. Yet Koriani
enchantresses had no oracle but guesswork derived from images. Reck-
lessly rebellious, Elaira restated in bluntness beyond any tact to forgive.
'Why shouldn't we ask Sethvir to locate the lost Waystone? If we recovered
the great crystal the Prime Enchantress would know what was afoot
without this tedious idiocy of nitpicking details.'
    Lirenda gasped and her smooth, porcelain face drained of colour. Elaira
restrained a heady urge to laugh. Though she found the sight of her senior's

63


distress rare enough to be funny, she had already defied protocol by
broaching the two most unmentionable subjects known to the Prime
Circle.
    Misplaced since the chaos of the Mistwraith's conquest, the spherical
crystal known as the Waystone could encompass the powers of one
hundred and eighty Koriani enchantresses and bind them into a single
force. Probably Sethvir knew the gem's location, but the sisterhood by
tradition regarded the Fellowship of Seven with deep and bitter resent-
ment. Elaira despised her seniors' silly pride, which forbade a request for
assistance; but never until now had she been brash enough to say so.
Through the hush while the First Enchantress recovered her poise, Elaira
wished her impulsive words unsaid.
    'You'll learn prudence.' Lirenda tilted her head with the grace of a cat
stalking prey. 'Since you daydream through the task of making hearth-
cures, and disparage your order's means of tracking news, you will stand
eighteen hours of second lane watch, without relief. If I hear any complaint
from the senior in charge, I'll take the matter before the Prime.'
    Lirenda whirled and left the workroom, silk skirts rustling above the
hammering fall of rain against the casement. Left alone with the fusty
smells of herbs and old dust, Elaira cursed in frustration. Eighteen hours,
and there would have to be a storm, she thought miserably; a pity her
talents did not encompass all four of the elements or she might have
performed her task in flame, warm and dry. But water minded her meagre
skills best. Angrily leaving the candle alight, and the jars on the table
untidied, Elaira yanked her cloak from its peg, kicked open the planked
outer postern and stamped down worn steps into the chilly afternoon.
    The slate of the old carl's courtyard gleamed like steel underfoot, marred
with moss-choked cracks. Low walls that once bordered flowerbeds now
leaned under hedges of burdock and a rank explosion of briars burned
brown by early frost. The sunless fogs clipped short the seasons, to the
waste of the earth's rightful harvest. The hardened black stalks of spoiled
berries rattled wizened fists in the wind. A crow stretched dark wings over
the dripping lip of a fishpool, then took flight at Elaira's approach.
Resigned, the enchantress perched herself in the space the bird had
vacated. She gazed down into brackish, leaf-lined depths.
    With trained resolution, she blocked the surface sensations of rain and
chill and annoyance from her mind. The details of her surroundings
receded, replaced by the poised stillness of perfect inner balance. Presently
a thin, pulsating whine struck across her mind; Elaira recognized the siren
song of the second lane, one of twelve channels of magnetic force which
arrayed Athera's world. She tuned her consciousness into harmony, then
blended, ranging north pole to south, sustained by the current of the lane's
narrow band.
    Droplets beaded her hair and trickled icily down her collar. Elaira
shivered, unaware. With the finesse of practiced control she linked the

64


deflections in the second lane's resonance to a net between mind and
water. A shadow appeared on the pool's rain-pocked surface. The form
sharpened, spindled, and resolved into an image; a silver-haired sorcerer
and a fat prophet reined lathered mounts before the lichen-splotched arch
of a World Gate. Elaira dutifully recorded their presence, and moved on...

65


Curse of Mearth

Tumbled past semblance of design, the ruins of Mearth thrust walls like
jagged teeth through dunes of rust coloured sand. Lysaer walked into the
shadows cast by lowering sunlight and wondered what manner of folk
would build a city in a wasteland. Arithon remained largely silent, except
to say that heat probably posed less danger than Mearth in the hours after
dark. Accordingly, the half-brothers had left the grove under the full glare
of noon, and exchanged small conversation since.
Arithon broke the silence. 'Lysaer, what do you know of your gift?'
Braced for mockery, the prince glanced at his half-brother. But the
Master's gaze rested uninformatively on a gap in the crumbled brick rubble
which once had been Mearth's west postern. 'How well can you focus
light? I ask because we may be needing a weapon.'
    Though Lysaer preferred to leave the question unanswered, the perils
ahead forced honesty. 'I had none of your training. Except for the practice of
healing, the king banned the elder lore from court after his marriage failed.
I experimented. Eventually I learned to discharge an energy similar to a
lightning bolt. The force would surely kill.'
    Years of solitary practice lay behind the prince's statement. Control of
his inborn gift had come only through an agony of frustration. That
Arithon should absorb the result without comment roused resentment.
    Lysaer considered the man who walked at his side. Delicate as his hands
appeared, they bore the calluses of a master mariner. Wherever ships
sailed, Arithon could earn a place of respect. Lacking that, his quick mind
and enchanter's discipline could be turned to any purpose he chose. If a
new world waited beyond the Red Desert's gate, the Master would never
lack employ.
    Lysaer compared his own attributes. His entire upbringing had centred
upon a crown he would never inherit. As exiled prince, he would be a man

66


with a commander's skills but no following, and neither birthright nor
loyalty to bind one. In peace, he might seek a servant's position as fencing
tutor or guard captain; and in war, the honourless calling of mercenary.
Hedged by the justice demanded by fair rule and sound statesmanship,
Lysaer shrank in distaste at the thought of killing for a cause outside his
beliefs. Anguished by a gnawing sense of worthlessness, the prince
brooded, studied and silent.
    The sun lowered and Mearth loomed nearer. Centuries of wind had
chiselled the defences left behind, until bulwark, wall and archway lay like
tumbled skeletons, half-choked with sand. The citadel was not large; but
the size of the fallen blocks from the gate towers suggested builders
mightier than man.
    Arithon crested the final rise. 'According to record, Mearth's folk were
gem-cutters, unequalled in their craft. The fall of a sorcerer is blamed for
the curse that destroyed the inhabitants. Beggar, tradesman, and lord, all
perished. But Rauven's archives kept no particulars.' He glanced with
fleeting concern at Lysaer. 'I don't know what we'll find.'
    Lysaer waded down the steep face of the dune. 'The place seems empty
enough.'
    Remarked only by the voice of the wind, the half-brothers reached the
tumbled gap that once had framed the outer gateway. A broad avenue
stretched beyond, bordered by a row of columns vaulted over by empty sky.
Nothing moved. The air smelled harsh from hot stone. Their shadows
flowed stilt-legged ahead of them as they entered the city, breezes sighed
across a thousand deserted hearth stones.
    Arithon skirted the torso of a fallen idol. 'Empty, perhaps,' he said
finally. 'But not dead. We had best move quickly.'
    Lacking a sorcerer's awareness, Lysaer could only wonder what inspired
the precaution. He walked at his half-brother's side through a chain of
cracked courtyards, past defaced statuary and fallen porticoes. Stillness
seemed to smother his ears, and the whisper of his steps between crumbled
foundations became a harsh and alien intrusion.
    Suddenly the Master's fingers gripped his elbow. Startled, Lysaer looked
up. Broken spires thrust against a purple sky, rinsed like blood by fading
light. Beyond rose the scrolled silhouette of a World Gate; a silvery web of
force shimmered between its portal, unmistakable even from a distance.
    'Daelion Fatemaster, you were right!' Elated, Lysaer grinned at his
companion. 'Surely we'll be free of the Red Desert by sundown.'
    Arithon failed to respond. Nettled, Lysaer tugged to free his arm. But his
half-brother's grip tightened in warning. After a moment Lysaer saw what
the Master had noticed ahead of him.
    A blot of living darkness slipped across the sand, uncannily detached
from the natural shade cast by a fallen corbel. Even as the prince watched,
the thing moved, shadowdike, along the crumbling curve of a cistem; the
phenomenon was partnered by no visible object.

67


    Arithon drew a sharp breath. 'The curse of Mearth. We'd better keep
going.' He hastened forward. The shadow changed direction and drifted
abreast of him.
    Chilled by apprehension, Lysaer touched his half-brother's arm. 'Will
the thing not answer your gift?'
    'No.' Arithon's attention stayed fixed on the dark patch. 'At least not
directly. What you see is no true shadow, but an absorption of light.'
    Lysaer did not question how his half-brother divined the nature of the
darkness which traced their steps. His own gift could distinguish reflected
light from a direct source, flamelight from sunlight and many another
nuance. No doubt Rauven's training expanded Arithon's perception
further.
    The shadow changed course without warning. Like ink spilled on an
incline, it curled across the sand and stretched greedily toward the first
living men to walk Mearth's streets in five centuries.
    Arithon stopped and spoke a word in the old tongue. Lysaer recog-
nized an oath. Then the Master extended his hand and bunched slim
fingers into a fist. The shadow convulsed, boiling like liquid contained
in glass.
    'I've pinned it.' Arithon's voice grated with effort. Sweat glistened in
streaks at his temples. 'Lysaer, try your light. Strike quickly and power-
fully as you can manage.'
    The prince raised clasped hands and opened his awareness to a second,
inner perception which had permeated his being since birth. He felt the
reddened sunlight lap against his back, tireless as tidal force and volatile as
oil-soaked tinder to the spark his mind could supply. But Lysaer chose not
to redirect the path of existing light. Against the shadow of Mearth, he
created his own.
    Power rose like current to his will. From an inner well-spring beyond his
understanding, the force coursed outward, its passage marked by a thin
tingle. Aware of deficiencies in his method, but unsure how to correct
them, Lysaer grappled the energy with studied concentration, then opened
his hands. A snap answered his motion. Light arced, brilliant, blinding, and
struck sand with a gusty backlash of heat. When flash-marked vision
cleared, no trace of the shadow remained.
    Arithon released a pent-up breath. The face he turned toward his half-
brother showed open admiration. 'You did well. That shadow contained a
sorcerer's geas, compulsion bound by enchantment. Contact would have
forced our minds to possession by whatever pattern its creator laid upon it.
Dharkaron witness, that one meant us harm. There's not much left of
Mearth.'
    Warmed by the praise, Lysaer moved ahead with more confidence. 'What
makes the spell susceptible to light?'
    Arithon lengthened stride at the prince's side. 'Overload. The geas
appears as shadow because it absorbs energy to maintain itself. But the

68


 balance which binds its existence isn't indestructible. A sharp influx of
 force can sometimes burn one out.'
     Lysaer had no chance to ask what might have resulted had his handling
 of his gift failed them in defence. A pool of darkness twin to the first
 seeped from beneath a jumbled heap of masonry. After a moment, the
 thing was joined by a second.
    Arithon aligned mastery with will and raised a barrier against them.
Green eyes intent, he watched the blots of blackness weave against his
ward. Even as he strengthened his defences, another trio stole around an
overturned pedestal.
    'Ath's grace, the place is riddled with them.' Lysaer glanced nervously
to either side, fighting to hold the calm necessary to focus his gift.
Arithon said nothing. Although the Gate lay no more than a stone's
throw away the distance between seemed unreachable. Pressed by neces-
sity, the prince plumbed the source of his talent and struck.
    Light cracked outward. Unexpectedly blinded by a fiat sheet of radi-
ance, Arithon cried out. Sand, barrier and shadows roared up in a holo-
caust of sparks. Wind clapped the surrounding ruins like a fist as hot air
speared skyward in updraft. Stunned for the span of a second, Lysaer
swayed on his feet.
    Hard hands caught his shoulder. 'Keep moving.' Arithon pushed him
forward.
    Lysaer managed a stumbling step. When his senses cleared from the
explosion, his eyes beheld a vista of nightmare. Arithon's ward extended
like a bubble overhead; shadows battered the border, licking and
wheeling and insatiably hungry to pry through to the victims inside. The
prince glanced at his half-brother. Tense, sweat-streaked features flick-
ered as shadows crossed the afterglow of sunset. Arithon looked whitely
strained. If he became pressured past his limit, Lysaer feared they might
never live to reach the Gate. Second by second, the shadows thickened.
At each step, his half-brother's defences became ever more taxing to
maintain.
    Lysaer gathered strength and lashed out. Light flared, blistering white,
and seared the horde of shadows to oblivion. The prince trod over ground
like heated metal. Determined to escape Mearth's sorcerous threat he
ran, narrowing the distance which separated him from the world portal.
At his side, Arithon erected a fresh barrier. For still the shadows came.
From cracks in stone and masonry, from chinks in the sand itself, the
scraps of darkness poured forth. Forced back to a walk the brothers moved
within a vortex of flitting shapes.
Breath rasped in Lysaer's throat. 'I think the light energy draws them.'
'Without it, we're finished.' Stripped to bleakness by fatigue, Arithon
missed stride and almost stumbled. As if his loss of balance signalled
weakness, the shadows closed and battered against his barrier with
inexhaustible persistence.

69


    Lysaer caught his brother's wrist. He gathered himself, pressed forward,
smashed back. Mearth shook with the blast. Stonework tumbled, glazed
with slag. Desperation drove the prince to tap greater depths. Light
hammered outwards. Sand fused into glass. Winds raised by the backlash
gusted, howled, and flung Arithon like a puppet against his half-brother's
shoulder. Their next step was completed locked in mutual embrace.
    'Sithaer, will they never relent?' Lysaer's cry burst from him in an agony
of exhausted hope. Though the Gate lay a scant pace ahead, his eyes
discerned nothing beyond a horrible, fiittering darkness. Pressed on by the
awful conviction that his banishment rendered him powerless, Lysaer
took a reckless step and channelled the whole of his awareness through his
gift.
    Arithon caught his half-brother at the moment of release. 'Easy, Lysaer.'
He tempered the wild attack with shadow, but not fast enough to deflect
its vicious backlash.
    Light speared skyward with a report like thunder. Sand churned in the
fists of a whirlwind and scoured the surrounding landscape with a shriek of
tormented energy. Lysaer's knees buckled. Arithon caught him as he fell.
Barriers abandoned, he locked both arms around his half-brother and threw
himself at the bright, mercurial shimmer of the Gate.
    Darkness closed like a curtain between. Conscious still, Arithon felt icy
chills pierce his flesh. Then the geas snared his mind. A shrill scream left
his lips, clipped short as the white-hot blaze of the Gate's transfer
wrenched him into oblivion.

7O


Predators

A man traverses a misted maze of bogland; slime pools ripple into motion
as he passes, and footfalls pad at his heels, yet he pays no heed, prodding the
hummocks as he steps with a staff of plain, grey ash...

Clad in leather and fur, a band of armed men lie in ambush beside a bearded
captain, while a packtrain laden with silk and crystal emerges from a
valley banked in fog...

A black, winged beast narrows scarlet eyes and dives off a ledge into cloud,
and a long, wailing whistle summons others into formation behind its
scale-clad tail...

71



IV. MISTWRAITH'S BANE

The silvery sheen of West Gate rippled, broke and spilled two bodies into
the foggy wilds of Athera. Blond hair gleamed like lost gold through the
cross-hatched fronds of wet bracken.
    'S'Ilessid!' Dakar's exuberance shook raindrops from the pine boughs
overhead as he swooped like an ungainly brown vulture to claim his prize.
    The sorcerer Asandir followed with more dignity but no less
enthusiasm. 'Careful. They might be hurt.' He stopped at Dakar's side and
bent an intent gaze upon the arrivals from Dascen Elur.
    Dirty, thin and marked by cruel hardship, two young men lay sprawled
on the ground unconscious. One fair-skinned profile revealed s'Ilessid
descent. Though the other face was blurred by tangled hail and a dark
stubble of beard, Asandir saw enough to guess the eyes, when they opened,
would be green.
    When neither traveller stirred with returning life, Asandir frowned in
concern. He bent and cupped long, capable fingers over the nearest
sunburned forehead. Misted forest and Dakar's chatter receded as he
projected awareness into the mind of the man under his hands. Contact
revealed immediate peril.
    The sorcerer straightened. Questions died on Dakar's lips beneath the
sheared steel of his glance. 'They've been touched by the shadows of
Mearth. We must move them to shelter at once.'
    Dakar hesitated, his tongue stilled before a thorny snarl of implications.
The shadows' geas bound the mind to madness: already Athera's hope of
renewed sunlight might be mined. Sharp words prodded the Mad Prophet
back to awareness.
    'Attend the prince, or your wager's lost.' Quickly Asandir unpinned his
cloak and wrapped the dark-haired man in its midnight and silver folds.
A pale, uncharacteristically sober Dakar did likewise for the s'Ilessid.

73


Then he forced his fat body to run and fetch the horses from their
tethers.

Asandir had requisitioned use of a woodcutter's cottage the day before.
Since the Mistwraith's conquest of sky and sunlight, men shunned the old
places of power. West Gate proved no exception; the woodcutter's
dwelling lay five leagues from the site, seven hours' ride on mounts doubly
laden, and night fell early over the fog-shrouded forest.
    Dakar cursed the dark. Branches clawed him, wrist and knee, as his
horse shouldered through trackless wilds. Rain splashed down his collar.
Though chilled to the marrow, the Mad Prophet refrained from complaint,
even though his cloak had been lent to another. The five-hundred-year
hope of all Athera rested with the unconscious man in his arms. The
s'Ilessid prince he sheltered was heir to the throne of Tysan, yet not so
much as a hearthfire would welcome his arrival to the kingdom he should
rule. The woodcutter was away to West End for the autumn fair; his
dwelling lay vacant and dark.
    Night gave way to dawn, cut by misty reefs of pine trees. Sorcerer and
prophet at last drew rein inside the gabled posts of the dooryard. The
cottage inside was dry and functional, two rooms nestled beneath a steep,
beamed roof. Asandir placed the refugees from the Red Desert on blankets
before the hearth. When he had a fire lit and water set heating in an iron
kettle over the flames, he knelt and began stripping sodden clothing from
the nearest body.
    The door banged. Finished with bedding the horses in the shed, Dakar
entered, his arms weighed down with a dripping load of tack. 'Why didn't
you start with the Prince of Tysan?'
    Asandir did not look up. 'I chose according to need.' Tattered cloth
parted under his hands, revealing a chest marred across by an ugly scab.
Older weals glistened by flamelight, and scarred wrists showed evidence of
recent and brutal captivity.
    'Ath's mercy!' Bits jingled against stirrups as Dakar dumped his burden
on the settle. 'Why? Is he outcast or criminal, to have been punished like
that?'
  'Neither.' The sorcerer's brisk tone discouraged questions.
    Concerned, Dakar bent over the s'Ilessid. To his immediate relief, the
prince had suffered nothing worse than desert exposure. With a feverish
efficiency quite outside his usual manner, Dakar saw his charge bathed
and moved to the comfort of a pallet in the next room. When he returned to
the hearth, he found Asandir still preoccupied.
    Dakar pitched his bulk into the nearest chair and grimaced at the twinge
of stiflened muscles. Chilled, damp and wearied though, he failed to
appreciate why Asandir wasted time with a servant when the West Gate
Prophecy in all probability stood completed by the s'Ilessid heir in the

74


other room. After a brief struggle, impatience triumphed over prudence~
Dakar interrupted. 'Is he truly worth such pains?'
    The sorcerer's glance returned warning like ice-water. Apt to be
maddeningly oblique, he said, 'Did you notice the blade he carries?'
    Dakar extended a foot and prodded the discarded heap of clothing by
Asandir's elbow. Frayed cloth tumbled to expose the smoky gleam of a
sword hilt. Above the graceful curve of quillon and guard, an emerald
glimmered in a setting too fine to be mistaken for anything crafted by man.
Dakar frowned, more puzzled than enlightened. Why would a peasant
carry a blade wrought by Pararian hands?
 'Why indeed, my Prophet?' Asandir said aloud.
    Dakar swore in exasperation. His mind was clumsy from lack of sleep.
All three Paravian races, unicorns, centaurs and sun children, had
vanished since the Mistwraith's foggy conquest. The sword was an
impossible paradox. With a sizeable wager and his most coveted prediction
as yet uncertainly resolved, the Mad Prophet succumbed to annoyance.
'Dharkaron take you, I'm tired of being baited. Can't you tell me straight
just once in a century?'
    Incredibly, his outburst drew only silence. Cautiously, Dakar looked up
and saw his master's head still bent over the renegade from Dascen Elur.
Firelight bronzed both figures like statuary. Shown all the signs of a long
wait, Dakar settled back with a sigh and stretched aching feet toward the
hearth. Practicality yielded better reward than prophecy and time, and
since Asandir had chosen quarters of reasonable comfort for a change,
Dakar refused to waste time fretting. With hedonistic simplicity, he
nodded in his chair and slept.

When the first reedy snore escaped the Mad Prophet's lips, Asandir's
forbidding manner softened. His fingers smoothed black hair from a profile
all too familiar, and his smile widened with amusement. 'So, our Prophet
thinks you a servant, does he?'
    Sadness weighted the sorcerer's phrase, even through his humour. How
had a royal son of s'Ffalenn come by the abuse so cruelly marked into
youthful flesh ? The sight was an offence. Dascen Elur must have changed
drastically in the years since the Fellowship sealed the Worldsend Gate for
the cause of Athera's drowned sunlight.
    Asandir studied burned, peeling features and silently asked forgiveness
for the past. Then he shut his eyes and focused his awareness to know the
mind beneath. Swift, direct and deft as a surgeoh's cut, his probe should
have pierced the surface layers of memory undetected by the will within.
But against all expectation, the s'Ffalenn cried out. His body twisted
against the sorcerer's hold and his eyes opened blindly.
    Asandir withdrew, startled. 'Peace,' he said in the old tongue. The word
closed like a snare, blanketing all sensation of roused awareness. Intent as

75


a falcon, the sorcerer waited until eyes as green as the promise of a sword's
emerald misted over and closed.
    Calculation framed Asandir's thoughts. Somewhere, this prince had
received training in the arts of power: his mind was bartiered, and his
strength considerable if his defences extended beyond waking perception.
Gently, the sorcerer straightened the scarred limbs. He had no choice but
to break through, and not only to heal the damage wrought by the curse of
Mearth. Upon this man, and the s'Ilessid heir with him, rested the hope of
an age.
    Asandir steadied himself and began again. He blended shallowly with
the mind beneath his hands, as water might soak dry felt. Despite his
subtlety, the s'Ffalenn scion noticed. Uneasiness transmitted across the
link, and the sorcerer felt the skin under his touch roughen with
gooseflesh.
    'Easy.' Asandir kept his contact fluid, melting away whenever the mind
he explored tried to grapple his hold. He did not possess, but waited,
patient as stone. Eventually the man raised his own identity against
intrusion of the unknown. Arithon; the word brought Asandir to sharp
attention. Whoever had named this prince had known what they were
about, for the Paravian root of meaning was 'forger', not of metals, but of
destiny.
    The sorcerer's surprise roused opposition. Asandir dodged his charge's
challenge, shaped his will as a mirror and deflected Arithon's defence back
upon itself. The Master countered. Before the sorcerer could lose his
awareness in a maze of reflected selfhood, he yielded to apparent passivity.
But across his wary mind lay a will whetted keen as a knife. Against him,
Asandir released a word tuned entirely to compassion. 'Arithon.'
    Nothing happened. Taken aback, Asandir paused. This prince could not
be other than mortal. Logic paralleled his initial surmise. Suffering could
alter a mind, Ath knew, and Arithon had known more than any man's
share. With abrupt decision, the sorcerer pitched his second attempt with
the force he would have accorded a near equal.
    Resistance broke this time, but not as Asandir expected. The Master
drove across his own barriers from within, as if recognition of his
opponent's strength inspired a desperate appeal for help. Through the
breach stormed images poisonously barbed with s'Ffalenn conscience, and
also, incredibly, s'Ahelas foresight, which linked cause to consequence!
yet the revelation's enormity barely registered.
    Bound into sympathy with Arithon's mind, the sorcerer knew a
quarterdeck littered with corpses. Through a sheen of tears he watched a
father's streaked fingers worry at an arrow lodged between neck and heart.
The laboured words of the dying man were nearly lost in the din of battle.
'Son, you must fire the brigantine. Let Dharkaron take me. I should never
have asked you to leave Rauven.'
  Fire flared, crackling over the scene, but its presence seemed ice beside

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the cataclysmic rebuttal in the mind which guided the torch. 'Fate witness,
you were right to call me!' But Arithon's cry jarred against a canker of self-
doubt. Had he avoided the constraints of Karthan's heirship, he need never
have faced the anguished choice: to withhold from misuse of master
conjury, and to count that scruple's cost in lives his unrestricted powers
could have spared. Sparks flutried against his father's bloodied skin, extin-
guished without trace like Karthan's slaughtered countrymen.  'Fire her, boy. Before it's too late... let me die free... '
    'No!' Arithon's protest rang through a starless, unnatural night. 'Ath have
mercy, my hand has sealed your fate already.' But rough, seaman's hands
reached from behind and wrenched the torch from his grasp. Flame spat-
tered across the curves of spanker and topsail. Canvas exploded into a
blazing wall of inferno, parted by a sudden gust. Debris pinwheeled, fell,
then quenched against wet decking with a hiss of steam; but the mizzen
burned still, a cross of fire streaming acrid smoke.
    'Move, lad,' said the seaman. 'Halyard's burned near through. Ye'11 get
crushed by the gaff.'
    But instead Arithon dropped to his knees beside his father. He strove in
abject denial to staunch the bleeding loosed by that one chance-shot shaft.
But the same hands which had snatched the torch jerked him away.
    'Your father's lost, lad. Without you, Karthan's kingless.' Weeping out-
right, the brigantine's quartermaster hurled him headlong over the rail into
the sea.
    There followed no respite. Guided by pitiless force, the scene began to
repeat itself. Yet by then, Asandir had gained control enough to recognize
the pattern of Mearth's curse. Originally created to protect the Five
Centuries Fountain from meddlers, Davien's geas bent the mind into
endless circles around a man's most painful memories. The effect drove a
victim to insanity, or, if he was rarely tenacious, to amnesia, since the only
possible defence was to renounce recall of all but innocuous past experience.
    Asandir snapped the cycle with a delicacy born of perfectly schooled
power. Released, the mind of Arithon s'Ffalenn lay open to his touch. With
gentleness tempered by compassion, the sorcerer sorted through his
charge's memories. He began with earliest childhood and progressed syste-
matically to the present. The result wrung his heart.
    Arithon was a man multiply gifted, a mage-trained spirit tailored by grief
to abjure all desire for ruling power. Scarred by his severe s'Ffalenn con-
science and haunted past healing by his mother's s'Ahelas foresight,
Arithon would never again risk the anguish of having to choose between the
binding restraints of arcane knowledge and the responsibilities of true
sovereignty. Asandir caught his breath in raw and terrible sympathy.
Kingship was the one role Athera's need could not spare this prince.
    Descended of royal lines older than Dascen Elur's archives, Arithon was
the last living heir to the High Kingship of Rathain, a land divided in strife
since the Mistwraith had drowned the sky. Although Arithon's case begged

77


mercy, Asandir had known the separate sorrows of generations whose
hopes had endured for the day their liege lord would return through West
Gate. That the s'Ffalenn prince who arrived might find his crown intoler-
able seemed tragic beyond imagining.
    Asandir dissolved rapport and wearily settled on his heels. Years and
wisdom lay heavy on his heart as he studied the dark head in the firelight.
Arithon's freedom must inevitably be sacrificed for the sake of the
balance of an age. Direct experience warned the sorcerer of the depths of
rebuttal a second crown would engender. He also understood, too well,
how mastery of shadow, coupled with an enchanter's discipline, granted
Arithon potential means to reject the constraints of his birthright. Athera
could ill afford the consequence if the Mistwraith that afflicted the world
was ever to yield its hold on sunlight.
    Asandir stifled the pity aroused by slim, musician's fingers whose
promise begged for expression even in stillness. Arithon's fetter marks no
longer moved him, awakened as he now was to the unconsolable grief of
spirit engendered by a sandspit called Karthan. Asandir sighed. If he could
not release this prince from kingship, he might at least grant peace of
mind and a chance for enlightened acceptance.
    'Ath's mercy guide you, my prince,' he murmured, and with the
restraint of a man dealing a mercy-stroke, he re-established contact with
Arithon's mind. Swiftly the sorcerer touched the links of association
which made kingship incompatible with magecraft and set those
memories under block. His work was thorough, but temporary. The Law
of the Major Balance which founded his power set high cost on direct
interference with mortal lives. Asandir controlled only recognition, that
Arithon be spared full awareness of a fate he would find untenable until
he could be offered the guidance to manage his gifts by the Fellowship of
Seven.
    Afternoon leaked grey light around the shutters by the time the sorcerer
finished. The fire had aged to ash-bearded coals, and Dakar at some point
had abandoned his chair for a blanket spread on the floor. His snores
mingled in rough counterpoint with the drip of water from the eaves.
    Asandir rose without stiffness. He lifted Arithon and carried him to the
next room where an empty cot waited. Sleep would heal the exhaustion
left by the geas of Mearth. But Asandir himself was not yet free to rest.
Directed through the gloom by a coin-bright gleam of gold, he knelt at the
side of a s'Ilessid prince whose destiny was equally foreordained.

Dakar woke to darkness. Hungry and cold, he shivered and noticed that
Asandir had allowed the fire to die out. 'Sorcerers!' muttered the Mad
Prophet, and followed with an epithet. He rose and bruised his shins
against unfamiliar furnishings until he located flint, striker and kindling.
Nursing annoyance, Dakar knelt on the empty blanket and set to work.

78


Sparks blossomed beneath his hands, seeding a thin thread of orange
against the wood.
    With bearish haste, the Mad Prophet moved on to the woodcutter's
root-cellar. He emerged laden like a farmwife with provisions; but the
whistle on his lips died before any melody emerged. New firelight flickered
across imperious features and the folds of a bordered tunic: Asandir stood
braced against the mantel, imposing as chiselled granite.
    'Well.~' Dakar dumped cheese, smoked sausage and a snarl of wrinkled
vegetables onto the woodcutter's trestle table, then winced over the words
uttered in bad temper only moments before. ~How long have you been
waiting?'
 'Not long.' The sorcerer's voice revealed nothing.
    Dakar disguised a shiver by rattling through the contents of a cupboard.
He knew better than to expect Asandir would forgive his latest slip of
tongue. With obstinate concentration, the Mad Prophet selected a knife
and began slicing parsnips. A second later, he yowled and pressed a cut
finger to his mouth.
    Asandir seemed not to notice. 'Daelion's Wheel, what a tangle your
prophecy has spun!'
    Dakar lowered his hand, startled. No hidden veil of meaning emerged to
chastise his impudence. Complex and awesomely powerful as a Sorcerer of
the Fellowship was, Asandir seemed wholly preoccupied. Too lazy to
bother with amazement, Dakar dove in with a question. 'Now will you
explain why a serf carries a Paravian blade?'
    Asandir's brows rose in sharp surprise. 'Is that all you saw? Best look
again.'
    Hunger forgotten, Dakar abandoned the vegetables. The sword still lay
on the floor beside the hearth, the glitter of its jewel like ice against the
rags. The Mad Prophet had not noticed the rune cut into the face of the
emerald earlier. Now, the sight made his fat face crease into a frown.
Absently blotting his bloodied thumb on his tunic, he moved closer. No, he
thought, irnl~ossible. Anxious for reassurance, Dakar closed sweaty hands
over chill metal and pulled.
    The weapon slipped free of its scabbard with the dissonant ring of perfect
temper. Flamelight sparked across the silver interlace which traced the
blade~ but the steel itself glimmered dark as smoked glass.
    Dakar's cheeks went white. 'No!' Outrage, then disbelief crumbled as he
read the characters engraved on the crossguard. Confronted by undeniable
proof he spun and faced Asandir. 'Ath! That's Alithiel, one of the twelve
swords forged at Isaer from the cinder of a fallen star.'
    Asandir stirred. 'That should not surprise you. Arithon is
Teir's'Ffalenn.'
    Stunned by the translation, which meant successor and heir, Dakar said,
'Wha t!' He watched accusingly as the sorcerer pushed tangled bridles aside
and seated himself on the settle.

79


'You might at least have told me. If my prophecy's disproved, I'd like to
know.'
    'The Prophecy of West Gate is valid.' Asandir loosed a long breath.
'Blessed Ath, quite more than valid.' This time, Dakar managed restraint
enough to stay silent.
    'You predicted the Mistwraith's bane, surely enough, but only through
an aberration of every law designated by the Major Balance.' Asandir
looked up, bleak as spring frost. 'Our princes are half-brothers through
s'Ahelas on the distaff side. The affinity for power Sethvir once nurtured in
that line has evolved unselectively on Dascen Elur, to the point where
direct elemental mastery was granted to unborn children, all for a bride's
dowry.'
    Dakar swallowed and found his mouth gone dry. Sworn spellbinder to
Asandir, he had trained for half a century before learning even the basic
craft ~3~ ~ll~sion. Elemental mastery lay beyond him still, for such power
was limited only by the breadth of a wielder's imagination. 'Which
elements?'
    'Light,' said Asandir, 'and shadow, granted intact upon conception.
That's enough to destroy the Mistwraith, but only if the half-brothers
work jointly. I'll add that our princes are opposites with a heritage of blood
feud between them.'
    Sensitized to the cold, deadly burden of the weapon in his lap, Dakar
shivered. 'Do the princes understand their gifts?'
    'One does.' A log fell. Sparks flutried across an acid silence. Then
Asandir reached down and tested the sword's cruel edge with his finger.
'Athera's sunlight might be perilously bought.'
    Suddenly stifled by the uneasy, hollow feeling that often preceded
prophecy, Dakar surged to his feet. Steel flashed, fell, struck stone with a
helling clamour which shattered the very air with discord. Dakar turned
widened eyes toward the sorcerer, beseeching reassurance. 'Have we any
other choice?'
    'No.' Asandir lifted the sword. Emerald light spiked his knuckles as he
restored the blade to the sheath. 'Man's meddling created the Mistwraith.
By the tenets of the Major Balance, mortal hands must achieve its defeat.'
The sorcerer set Alithiel aside, his bearing suddenly gentled. 'The risk is
not without counterbalance. The royal lines retain their founding virtues,
despite five centuries of exile on Dascen Elur.'
    Dakar managed a wry grin. 'Teir's'Ffalenn! I must have been stone
blind.'
    'Hasty,' Asandir corrected. 'Some days I fear Dharkaron's own venge-
ance couldn't make you notice what's in front of you.'

Arithon returned to awareness in the confines of an unfamiliar room.
Burned low in an iron bracket, a tallow candle lit a shelf jumbled with

8O


whittled animals; a badger's muzzle threw leering shadows across walls of
rudely-dressed timber. Rain tapped against shingles, and the earthy smell of
a packed dirt floor carried a sickly tang of mildew.
    The Master stirred. A wool coverlet pricked unpleasantly at his naked,
half-healed flesh. Lysaer lay on an adjacent cot. Cleansed of dirt and dust,
blond hair fell like flax across a sun-darkened cheekbone. Arithon shivered,
but not from chill. He threw off his blanket and arose.
    Someone had laid out clothing on a chest in one corner. Arithon fingered
linen cloth and frowned; such generosity seemed at odds with the poverty
evidenced by the cabin's rude furnishings. As a penniless exile, Arithon
wondered what price might be demanded in exchange. The thought raised
recollection of Mearth and nightmare; and the fearfully focused mastery in
the hands which had restored his troubled mind. Recognition of power
greater than any he had ever known stirred the hair at Arithon's nape. He
dressed swiftly in breeches and shirt too large for his thin frame.
    Lysaer stirred while he fussed the laces tight. The prince opened blue eyes,
gasped and rolled over. Startled by his surroundings, he drew a quick breath.
    Arithon dropped his half-tied points and stopped the prince's outcry with
his hands. 'Speak softly,' he warned in a whisper.
 Past his initial shock, Lysaer ducked his half-brother's hold. 'Why?'
    'Whoever gave us shelter does so for more than kindness' sake.' Arithon
dumped the second set of clothes on his half-brother's chest.
    Lysaer shot upright. He snatched with both hands as neatly folded linen
toppled. 'How do you know?'
    Arithon shook his head. He stared unseeing at the wan flicker of the
candle flame. 'Our benefactor is a sorcerer more powerful than any on
Dascen Elur.' One strong enough to found a World Gate, or bind added
lifespan arcanely into water; but Arithon shied from voicing the thought.
    Alarmed nevertheless, Lysaer shoved out of bed, disturbing an avalanche
of cloth. Arithon stopped his brother's rush with forceful hands. 'Bide your
time! Power on that scale never moves without purpose. We have no choice
but to act carefully.'
    Naked unless he accepted the clothing at his feet, Lysaer battled his pride.
Suspicious of sorcerers and bereft of kingdom and inheritance, he misliked
the thought he must rely on charity and a former enemy's judgement. 'What
do you suggest?'
    Arithon considered his half-brother's dilemma and tried through his own
uncertainty to ease the damage tactless handling had created. 'Power
without wisdom eventually destroys itself. This sorcerer is old beyond
estimate. At present, I think we might trust him.'
    Lysaer retrieved the fallen shirt. In silence he rammed taut fists into
sleeves plainer than those he had known as crown prince.
    Arithon watched, mildly exasperated. 'Since neither of us has suffered
any harm, I advise caution. Maintain your manners at least until our host
reveals a motive.'

81


Lysaer paused, half-clad. 'I hear you.' The glare he turned upon his half-

     'By the Wheel, l'm tire~l oi'l~e~mg s~ovetl~n'~eyonh
         'Your judgement isn't lacking.' But Arithon averted his face lest his
     express~on betray the truth: Lysaer's ignorance was insignificant, and all of
     Rauven's learning a fevered dream before the presence which resonated
     against his awareness. Hounded to restlessness, Arithon paced to the door.
         Orange light gleamed between crudely joined panels. The Master
     pressed his cheek to the gap and peered into the room beyond. Stacked logs
     cast drifts of shadow against mud-chinked walls. Herbs hung drying from

     Before the hearth, on a stool of axe-hewn fir, a short man stirred the
     contents of a kettle; a rumpled tunic swathed his bulging gut and his hair
     was a nest of elflocks.
         Arithon shifted, his hands gone damp with apprehension. On the settle
     sat a second man, so still his presence had nearly been overlooked. Silver
     hair gleamed against the curve of a grindstone wheel. A log settled in the
     fire; light flared, broken into angles against the man's face. Arithon
     glimpsed dark, jutting brows and an expression of unbreakable patience.
     Though lean and stamped by time, the stranger himself defied age.
     Touched again by the impression of power, Arithon felt his breath catch.
       'What do you see?' Lysaer leaned over his shoulder, expectant.
       Unready to share his suspicions, Arithon stepped back from the door.
       Nothing could be gained if he allowed his mage-schooled perception to
       overwhelm his wits with awe. He shrugged to dispel his uneasiness. 'The
       plump fellow will probably do the talking. But watch the other.'
         Yet quietly as the Master raised the door-latch, the bearded man noticed
     at once..He looked around with the alertness of a fox and his plump hands
     paused on the spoon handle. 'Asandir?'
         The older man lifted his head. Eyes light as mirror-glass turned upon the
     two young men in the doorway. 'Be welcome. Your arrival is the blessing of
     Athera.'
         He phrased his words in Paravian, known to Dascen Elur as the old
     tongue. Lysaer frowned, unable to understand. But at his side, Arithon
     gasped as if shocked by cold. The sorcerer's scrutiny caught him with his
     own awareness unshielded, and what self-possession he had left was
     rocked by a thundering presence of leashed force. Control failed him.
     Firelight and solid walls dissolved as his perception imploded, pinpointed
     to insignificance by the blinding presence of the infinite.
     Lamely, the Master struggled to speak. 'Lord, we thank you for shelter.'
     'The cottage does not belong to me,' Asandir rebuked; but his expression
     reflected amusement as he rose from his place at the settle. 'I hold no land,
     neither do I bear title.'

Dizzie

82


     Dizzied to faintness, Arithon responded the only way he could manage.
 'I know. I beg forgiveness.' He knelt abruptly and his following line
 struck through a stunned and sudden silence. 'I had not intended to slight
 you.'
     'Arithon!' Lysaer's exclamation was followed by the clatter of a
 wooden spoon upon the hearth. Unable to contain himself, the fat man
 capped the uproar with an astonished yell. 'Dharkaron!' Then he clamped
 both palms to his mouth and blanched like a split almond.
    Asandir gave way to laughter. 'Have you all gone mad?' In a stride he
reached Arithon's side and firmly raised him to his feet. 'You must
forgive Dakar. Your arrival has fulfilled his most important prophecy.
Though he's wagered enough gold on the outcome to founder a pack
mule, I've forbidden any questions until after you've had a chance to eat.'
    The sorcerer paused, embarrassed by Lysaer's blank stare. He shifted
language without accent. 'Come, be welcome and sit. We'll have time
enough for talk later. If our greeting lacks courtesy, I hope our hospitality
will remedy the lapse.'
    Relieved not to be excluded from conversation, Lysaer relaxed and
accepted the sorcerer's invitation. He pulled out the nearest bench and
seated himself at the trestle. But beside him, the Master hesitated.
    Dakar swung the pot from the fire and began to ladle stew into crockery
bowls. From tousled crown to boots of crumpled 'leather, he looked more
like a village tavernkeeper than a gifted seer. Yet the curiosity which
simmered beneath his unkempt appearance whetted Arithon to fresh
wariness. He took his place next to his half-brother with carefully hidden
foreboding.
    Dakar's interest suggested higher stakes than gold at risk on a wager.
Unsettled by evidence that supported his initial concern, Arithon re-
sponded with firm inward denial. Karthan had taught him a bitter lesson:
his magecraft and his music would not be sacrificed to the constraints of
duty a second time. Though sorcerer and prophet held every advantage
Arithon intended to keep the initiative, if only to cover his intent with
distraction. With the food yet untouched in his bowl, he caught the
sorcerer's attention and asked the first question that sprang to mind.
'Who is Davien?'
    Dakar gasped. He froze with the ladle poised over air and broth dripped
unnoticed on the clay brick of the hearth. Lysaer looked on, stiff with
uncertainty, as tension mounted round his half-brother like a stormfront.
    Asandir alone showed no reaction. But his answer was sharp as a rapier
at guard-point. 'Why do you ask?'
    Arithon clenched his jaw. Luck had provided him opening; he had not
guessed his query would rouse such a disturbed response. Though he had
urged Lysaer to avoid confrontation, he recklessly snatched his chance to
provoke. 'I think you already know why I ask.'
 The stewpot clanged onto the boards. 'Daelion's Wheel!'

83


    Asandir silenced Dakar's outburst with a glance and turned impervious
features upon Arithon. 'Davien was once a sorcerer of Athera's Fellowship
of Seven, as I am. Contrary to the rest of us, he judged mortal man unfit to
reign in dynastic succession. Five and a half centuries ago, Davien stirred
the five kingdoms to strife, and the order of the High Kings was
overthrown. There has been no true peace since. By his own choice, Davien
was exiled. Does that answer you?'
    'Partly.' Arithon strove to keep his voice level. Though he knew all
pretence was wasted on Asandir, Dakar observed also, rapt as a merchant
among thieves. The Master spread his hands on the table to still their
shaking. Prophecies rarely centred upon individuals with small destinies.
Arithon gripped that fear, voiced it outright as a weapon to unbalance his
opposition. 'Are Lysaer and I promised to restore the prosperity Davien
destroyed?'
    This time Dakar was shocked speechless. For a prolonged moment the
curl of steam rising from the stewpot became the only motion in the room.
    Throughout, Asandir showed no surprise. But his economy of move-
ment as he sat forward warned of ebbing tolerance. 'A Mistwraith covered
all Athera soon after the fall of the high kings. Its withering blight has
sickened this world, and no clear sky has shone for five hundred years.' The
fire's sibilant snap dominated a short pause. 'A prophecy as old tells of
princes from Dascen Elur who will bring means to restore sunlight to heal
the land. You and your half-brother are that promise made real. Does that
answer you?'
 Arithon caught his breath. 'Not directly. No.'
    Amazingly, it was Lysaer who slammed his fist on the table with such
force that stew splattered from the bowls. 'Ath's grace, man, did you learn
nothing of diplomacy as heir of Karthan?'
Arithon turned upon his half-brother. 'The lesson Karthan taught me--'
But the sentence died incomplete; a gap widened in the Master's mind as
Asandir's block took him by surprise. Memory of Karthan's conflict
dissolved into oblivion. Puzzled by quenched emotions, Arithon pursued
the reason with full possession of his enchanter's reflexes.
    Haziness barriered his inner mind. The Master drove deeper, only to find
his self-command stolen from him. The anger which exploded in response
was reft away also, humbed and wrapped against escape like an insect
poisoned by a spider. Arithon lashed back. The void swallowed his struggle.
Brief as the flare of a meteor, his conscious will flickered into dark.

Arithon woke, disoriented. He opened his eyes, aware that Lysaer
supported his shoulders from behind.
    '... probably an after-effect from the geas of Mearth,' Dakar was saying.
Yet Arithon caught a look of calculation on the prophet's features. The
platitude masked an outright lie.

84


  Lysaer looked anxiously down. 'Are you all right?'
     Arithon straightened with an absent nod; confusion ruled his thoughts.
 He recalled Mearth's geas well. But strive as he might, he found nothing,
 not the slightest detail of what had caused his momentary lapse in
 consciousness.
  'You had a memory gap,' said Asandir quietly.
     Arithon started and glanced up. The sorcerer stood by the fire, his
 expression all lines and fathomless shadows. 'You need not concern
 yourself. The condition isn't permanent. I promise you full explanation
 when our Fellowship convenes at Althain Tower.'
     That much at least was truth. Arithon regarded the sorcerer. 'Have I
 any other choice?'
    Asandir stirred with what might have been impatience. 'Althain Tower
lies two hundred and fifty leagues overland from here. I ask only that you
accompany Dakar and myself on the journey. Firsthand experience will
show you the ruin caused by the Mistwraith which oppresses us. Then
the destiny we hope you've come to shoulder may not seem such a
burden.'
    Arithon buried a reply too vicious for expression. The room had
suddenly become too oppressive for him to bear. Stifled by dread of the
sorcerer's purpose, the Master rose and bolted through the door. Stout
planking banged shut on his heels, wafting the scent of wet autumn
earth. Lysaer stood, visibly torn.
  'Go to him if you wish,' said Asandir with sympathy.
    Shortly a second bowl of stew cooled, abandoned on the table. When
the Mad Prophet also moved to follow, the sorcerer forbade him. 'Let the
princes reach acceptance on their own.'
    Dakar sat back against the boards, his restriction against questions
forgotten. 'You placed the s'Ffalenn under mind-block, or I'm a grand-
mother,' he accused in the old tongue.
Asandir's eyes hardened like cut-glass. 'I did so with excellent reason.'
His bleakness made the Mad Prophet start with such force that he
bruised his spine against the planking. Unaware of the anguish behind his
master's statement Dakar misinterpreted, and attributed Asandir's sharp-
ness to mistrust of Arithon's character.
    The sorcerer startled him by adding, 'He didn't like it much, did he?
I've seldom seen a man fight a block to unconsciousness.'
    But with his dearest expectations thrown into chaos by intemperate
royalty, Dakar was disgruntled too much for reflection. He seized an iron
poker from its peg and jabbed sourly at the fire. 'They'll come to odds,
half- brothers or not.'
    Asandir's response cut through a spitting shower of sparks. 'Is that
prophecy?'
    'Maybe.' Dakar laid the poker aside, propped his chin on plump
knuckles and sighed. 'I'm not certain. Earlier, when I held the sword, I

85


had a strong premonition. But I couldn't bear to see five centuries of hope
destroyed on the day of fulfilment.'
    The sorcerer's manner turned exasperated. 'So you dropped Alithiel to
distract yourself.'
    'Dharkaron break me for it, yes!' Dakar straightened, mulish in his own
defence. 'If they are going to fight, let me be the very last to find out!'

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Overview

In a cleft overlooking a mountain pass, Grithen, fourteenth heir of a
deposed earl, huddled closer to the ledge which concealed his position
from the trade-route below. Wind whipped down from the snowline,
raffling bronze hair against his cheek as he stared down the misty defile
where the caravan would cross. Though his body ached with cold, he
remained still as the stone which sheltered him. Hedged by storm and
starvation, survival in the wilds of Camris came dear. But unlike the
mayor who now ruled the earl's castle in Erdane, Grithen had not forgotten
his origins: he kept clan etiquette despite the leggings and jerkin of laced
wolf-hide which differentiated him from the courtly elegance of his
ancestors.
    A metallic clink and a creak of harness sounded faintly down the trail.
Grithen's knuckles tightened on his javelin. The jingle of weaponry always
roused memories, few of them pleasant. As a boy, Grithen had learned of
the uprising which had swept Erdane in the wake of tone High King's fall...

A tambourine had clashed in the minstrel's hand, even as mail, swords and
bridles did now. The ballad began with the slaughter of the earl in his bed.
In clear minor tones, the singer described a castle bailey splattered red by
torchlight as the mob claimed the lives of council and family retainers.
Atrocity had not ended there. With dusky emotion the bard sang on, of
refugees who struggled for survival in the wilds, hounded through winter
storms by the headhunter's horn.
    When he was three, the ballad recounting the fall of the house of Erdane
had scalded Grithen's eyes with tears. At seven, the murder of his two
brothers on the stag spears of the mayor's hunting party stamped hatred in
his heart for any man born within town walls. While most clansmen

87


served scout duty in the passes by lot, Grithen stayed on by choice. No
comfort in the lowland camps sweetened his mood like vengeance.

The caravan's advance guard rounded the outcrop, featureless as ivory
chess pieces in the close grip of the mist. The men-at-arms marched two
abreast, weapons clasped with joyless vigilance. Five centuries past, such
men might have served Grithen as retainers. Now, they rode as his prey.
Product of his violent heritage, the young scout had marked this caravan
for raid.
    Iron-rimmed wheels grated over stone as the carts rounded the bend. A
teamster cursed a laggard mule in coastal accents. Forgetful of the chill,
Grithen studied wares well-lashed under cord: his eyes missed no detail.
Bundles wrapped in oiled canvas would contain tempered steel if the
caravan travelled from seaside. A brand on a cask confirmed this.
    Eight wagons passed beneath the ledge. Grithen smiled with predatory
glee yet made no other move. Caution meant survival. Town officials still
paid bounties and a scout discovered by guardsmen was unlikely to die
cleanly. The caravan passed well beyond earshot before Grithen rose.
Preoccupied, he withdrew from his cranny and beat his arms and legs to
restore circulation. A movement on the cliff above startled him motion-
less, until he identified the source.
    An elderly clansman descended from the heights. Wind tumbled the pelt
of his fox-fur hat and his weathered features were pulled into a squint by a
scar.
  Grithen bent his head in deference. 'Lord Tashan.'
    Silent through a lifetime of habit, the elder gestured at the road, empty
now except for mist. 'There can be no raid.' A smile touched his lips as he
explained quietly, 'A bard rides with the baggage. He's friend to the clan,
protected by guest oath.'
    Chilled, stiff and disgruntled, Grithen scowled. 'But he plays for
townsmen now, and I saw tempered steel on this haul.'
    Tashan spat. 'Earl Grithen? You speak like a mayor's get, born lawless
and bereft of courtesy! Next, you'll be forgetting how to greet your liege
lord.'
    Colour drained from Grithen's cheeks at the insult. Although the sc~)u~
placed little faith in the prophecy which claimed the return of a s'Ilessic
high king, he would defend clan honour with his life. There lay the tru~
measure of his birthright. 'As you will, Lord Tashan.'
    The elder nodded with curt satisfaction. But Grithen followed him fr~ ~n-
the ledge with rebellious resolve. The next townsmen to cross the pass ot
Orlan would be expertly plundered, and neither bards, nor elders, nor force
of arms would preserve them.

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With an expression abstract as a poet's, Sethvir of the Fellowship sat amid
opened piles of books and penned perfect script onto parchment. Suddenly
he straightened. The quill trailed forgotten from his hand and his cuff
smeared the ink of his interrupted sentence.
    I send word of the Mistwraith's bane. Asandir's message bridged the
leagues which separated Althain Tower from the forests in Korias near
West Gate.
    'Words alone?' Sethvir chuckled, rearranged the contact and drew forth
an image of the clearing where Asandir stood, heavily cloaked against the
damp. Dakar waited nearby with two others of unmistakably royal
descent.
    The blond prince raised one arm. Light cracked from his hand, sharp-
edged as lightning. As the mist overhead billowed into confusion a black-
haired companion raised darkness like a scythe and cut skyward. Fog
curdled in the shadow's deadly cold. Flutried snow danced on the breeze.
    The Mistwraith recoiled. Murky drifts of fog tore asunder and revealed a
morning sky streaked with cirrus. Sunlight lit the upturned faces of
sorcerer, prophet and princes, and for an instant the drenched ferns under
their feet blazed, bejewelled.
    Then the Mistwraith boiled back across the gap. Light died, pinched off
by miserly fingers of fog.
    Sethvir released the image and absently noticed the remains of his quill
buckled between his fists. 'Have you mentioned anything of the heritage
due s'Ffalenn and s'Ilessid?'
    No. Reservation hedged Asandir's reply. Dakar had a premonition. The
princes derive from a background of strife which may lead to trouble with
the succession.
 'Well, that tangle can't be sorted in the field.' Pressured already by other

89


troubles this further complication would not speed, Sethvir buried ink-
stained knuckles in his beard. 'You'll be coming to Althain, then?'
    Yes. Asandir's touch turned tenuous as he prepared to break rapport.
We'll travel across Camris by way of Erdane. The perils of an overland
journey will give the princes a powerful understanding of the problems
they must inherit before sovereignty clouds their judgement.
    Sethvir drew the contact back into focus with a thought. 'Then you
think the heirs are worthy of kingship?'
    Asandir returned unmitigated reproof. That's a broad assumption, even
for you. Gravely serious, he added, Difficulties have arisen that will need
tender handling. But yes, if their past history can be reconciled, these
princes might mend the riff between townsman and barbarian.
    Concerned lest any former rivalry should imperil the suppression of the
Mistwraith, Sethvir absorbed the spate of fact and speculation sent by his
colleague across the link. Behind eyes of soft, unfocused turquoise, his
thoughts widened to embrace multiple sets of ramifications. 'Mind the
risks.'
 The words faded into distance as Asandir's contact dissolved.

9O


Envoys

The Prime Enchantress of the Koriathain calls a messenger north to
Erdane, and since late autumn promises unpleasant travelling, Lirenda
suggests Elaira in hopes the journey might blunt the edge from her
insolence...

A raven released from Althain Tower flies southeast over the waters of
Instrell Bay, and each wingbeat intensifies the geas which guides its
directive...

In the deeps of the night, an icy draft curls through the cottage where
Asandir sits watchful and awake; and the disturbance heralds the presence
o~ a bodiless Fellowship colleague, arrived to deliver a waming: 'Since you
mean to cross Tomir Peaks by road, know that Khadrim are flying and
restless. The old wards that confine them have weakened. I go to repair the
breach, but one pack has already escaped... '

91



V.  RIDE FROM WEST END

The overland journey promised by Asandir began the following morning,
but not in the manner two exiles from Dascen Elur might have anticipated.
Rousted from bed before daybreak and given plain tunics, hose and boots
by Asandir, Lysaer and Arithon hastened through the motions of dressing.
This clothing fit better than the garments borrowed from the woodcutter;
lined woolien cloaks with clasps of polished shell were suited for travel
through cold and inclement weather. The half-brothers were given no
explanation of where such items had been procured; in short order, they
found themselves hiking in the company of their benefactors through wet
and trackless wilds. In the fading cover of night, Asandir conducted them
to a mistbound woodland glen at the edge of the forest and baldly
commanded them to wait. Then he and the Mad Prophet mounted and
rode on to the town of West End, Dakar to visit the fair to purchase
additional horses, and Asandir to complete an unspecified errand of his
own.
    Dawn brought a grey morning that dragged interminably into tedium.
Arithon settled with his back against the whorled trunk of an oak.
Whether he was simply napping or engrossed in a mage's meditation,
Lysaer was unwilling to ask. Left to his own devices, the prince paced and
studied his surroundings. The wood was timelessly old, dense enough to
discourage undergrowth, twistedly stunted by lack of sunlight. Gnarled,
overhanging trees trailed hoary mantles of fungus. Rootbeds floored in
dank moss rose and fell, cleft in the hollows by rock-torn gullies. Strange
birds flitted through the branches, brown and white feathers contrasting
with the bright red crests of the males.
    Unsettled by the taints of mould and damp-rotted bark and by the drip of
moisture from leaves yellow-edged with ill-health, Lysaer slapped irritably
as another mosquito sampled the nape of his neck. 'What under Daelion's

93


dominion keeps Dakar? Even allowing for the drag of his gut he should
have returned by now.'
    Arithon roused and regarded his half-brother with studied calm. 'A visit
to the autumn fair would answer your question, I think.'
    Though the smothering density of the mists deadened the edge from the
words, Lysaer glanced up, astonished. Asandir had specifically instructed
them to await the Mad Prophet's return before going on to make
rendezvous by the Melor River bridge when the town bells sounded
carillons at noon.
    Arithon said in distaste, 'Would you stay and feed insects? I'm going in
any case.'
    Suddenly uneasy, Lysaer regretted his complaint. 'Surely Asandir had
reasons for keeping us here.'
    Arithon's mouth twisted in a manner that caused his half-brother a pang
of alarm. 'Well I know it.' A madcap grin followed. 'I want to know why.
Thanks to Dakar's tardy hide, we've gained a perfect excuse to find out.
Will you come?'
    Uncertainty forgotten, Lysaer laughed aloud. After the restraint im-
posed by arcane training he found the unexpected prankster in his half-
brother infectious. 'Starve the mosquitoes. What will you tell the
sorcerer?'
    Arithon pushed away from the tree trunk. 'Asandir?' He hooked his
knuckles in his swordbelt. 'I'll tell him the truth. Silver to breadcrusts we
find our prophet face-down in a gutter, besotted.'
    'That's a gift not a wager.' Lysaer shouldered through the thicket which
bounded the edge of the woodland, his mood improved to the point at
which he tolerated the shower of water raining down the neck of his tunic.
'I'd rather bet how long it takes Dakar to get his fat carcass sober.'
    'Then we'd both eat breadcrumbs,' Arithon said cuttingly. 'Neither of us
have silver enough to wait on the streets that long.' Enviably quick, he
ducked the branch his brother released in his face and pressed ahead into
the meadow.
    Fog hung leaden and dank over the land but an eddy of breeze unveiled a
slope that fell away to a shoreline of rock and cream fiat sands. An inlet
jagged inward, flanked by the jaws of a moss-grown jetty. Set hard against
the sands of the seacoast, the buttressed walls of West End resembled a pile
of child's blocks abandoned to the incoming tide. Looking down from the
crest, the half-brothers saw little beyond buildings of ungainly grey stone,
their roofs motley with gables, turrets and high, railed balconies. The
defences were crumbled and ancient except for a span of recently
renovated embrasures which faced the landward side.
    'Ath,' murmured Lysaer. 'What a wretched collection of rock. If folk here
are dour as their town no wonder Dakar took to drink.'
    But where the exiled prince saw vistas of cheerless granite, Arithon
observed with the eyes of a sailor and beheld a seaport gone into decline.

94


Since the Mistwraith had repressed navigational arts, the great ships no
longer made port. The merchants' mansions were inhabited now by
fishermen and the wharves held a clutter of bait barrels and cod nets.
    The mist lowered, reducing the town to an outline, then a memory.
Lysaer shivered, his spurt of enthusiasm dampened. 'Did you happen to
notice where the gate lets in?'
    'West. There was a road.' Arithon stepped forward, pensive; as if his
timing was prearranged, bells tolled below, sounding the carillon at noon.
'Our prophet is late indeed. Are you coming?'
    Lysaer nodded, sculled caked mud from his heel with his instep, and
strode off hastily to keep up. 'Asandir's going to be vexed.'
    'Decidedly.' Arithon's brows rose in disingenuous innocence. 'But hurry
or we might miss the fun.'
    A cross-country trek through sheep fields and hedgerows saw the
brothers to the road beneath the gates. There, instead of easier going,
Lysaer received an unpleasant reminder of his reduced station.
Accustomed to travelling mounted, he dodged the muck and splatter
thrown up by rolling wagons with a diligence not shared by other
footbound wayfarers. Ingrained to an enchanter's preference for remaining
unobtrusive, Arithon noted with relief that the clothing given them to
wear seemed unremarkably common: he and his half-brother passed the
guards who lounged beside the lichen-crested gate without drawing
challenge or notice.
    The streets beyond were cobbled, uneven with neglect and scattered
with dank-smelling puddles. Houses pressed closely on either side, hung
with dripping eaves and canting balconies, and cornices spattered with gull
guano. Tarnished tin talismans, purpose unknown, jangled in the shadows
of the doorways. Confused as the avenue narrowed to a three-way
convergence of alleys, Lysaer dodged a pail of refuse water tossed from a
window overhead. 'Cheerless place,' he muttered. 'You can't want to stop
and admire the view here?'
    Arithon left off contemplation of their surroundings and said, 'Does that
mean you want the task of asking directions through this maze?'
    Lysaer pushed back his hood and listened as a pair of matrons strode by
chattering. Their speech was gently slurred, some of the vowels flattened,
the harder consonants rolled to a lazy burr. 'The dialect isn't impossible.
On a good night of drinking I expect we could blend right in.'
    The crisper edges to his phrasing caused one of the women to turn. The
expression half-glimpsed beneath her shawl was startled and her exclama-
tion openly rude as she caught her companion's elbow and hastened past
into a courtyard. Rebuffed by the clank of a gate bar, Arithon grinned at the
prince's dismay. 'Try being a touch less flamboyant,' he suggested.
    Lysaer shut his mouth and looked offended. More practiced with ladies
who fawned on him, he stepped smartly past a puddle and approached a
ramshackle stall that sold sausages. Sheltered under a lean-to of sewn hide,

95


and attended by a chubby old man with wispy hair and a strikingly pretty
young daughter, the fare that smoked over a dented coal brazier seemed
smelly enough to scare off customers. At Lysaer's approach, the proprietor
brightened and began a singsong patter that to foreign ears sounded like
nonsense.
    Caught at a loss as a laden sausage-fork was waved beneath his nose, the
prince tore his glance from the girl and offered an engaging smile. 'I'm not
hungry, but in need of directions. Could your charming young daughter, or
yourself, perhaps oblige?'
    The man crashed his fist on the counter, upsetting a wooden bowl of
broth. Hot liquid cascaded in all directions. The fork jabbed out like a
striking snake, and saved only by swordsman's reflexes, Lysaer sprang back
stupefied.
    'By Ath, I'll skewer ye where ye stand!' howled the sausageseller. 'Ha dare
ye, sly faced drifter-scum, ha dare ye stalk these streets like ye own 'em?'
    The girl reached out, caught her father's pumping forearm with chapped
hands and flushed in matching rage. 'Get back to the horse fair, drifter!
Hurry on, before ye draw notice from the constable!'
    Lysaer stiflened to deliver a civil retort, but Arithon, light as a cutpurse,
interjected his person between. He caught the sausageseller's waving fork
and flashed a hard glance at the girl. 'No offence meant, but we happen to be
lost.'
    The vendor tugged his utensil and lost grip on the handle. Arithon stabbed
the greasy tines upright in the ramshackle counter, and despite penetrating
stares from half a dozen passersby, folded arms unnaturally tan for the
sunless climate and waited.
    The girl softened first. 'Go right, through the Weaver's lane, and damn ye
both for bad liars.'
    Lysaer drew breath for rejoinder, cut off as Arithon jostled him forcibly
away in the indicated direction. Whitely angry, the prince exploded in
frustration. 'Ath's grace, what sort of place is this, where a man can't
 compliment a girl without suffering insult out of hand!'  'Must be your manners,' the Master said.
  'Manners!' Lysaer stopped dead and glared. 'Do I act like a churl?'
     'Not to me.' Arithon pointedly kept on walking, and reminded by the odd,
 caryen doorways and curious regard of strangers that he was no longer heir to
 any kingdom, Lysaer swallowed his pride and continued.
     'What did they mean by "drifters"?' he wondered aloud as they skirted a
 stinking bait-monger's cart and turned down a lane marked by a guild stamp
 painted on a shuttlecock.
     Arithon did not answer. He had paused to prod what looked to be a beggar
 asleep and snoring in the gutter. The fellow sprawled on his back, one elbow
 crooked over his face. The rest of him was scattered with odd bits of garbage
 and potato peels, as though the leavings from the scullery had been tossed
 out with him as an afterthought.

96


    Mollified enough to be observant, Lysaer did an incredulous double-
take. 'Dakar.~'
    'None else.' Arithon glanced back, a wild light in his eyes. 'Oh, luck of
the sinful, we've been blessed.'
    'I fail to see why.' Lysaer edged nervously closer, mostly to hide the fact
that his half-brother had crouched among the refuse and was methodically
searching the untidy folds of Dakar's clothing. 'You'll have yourself in
irons and branded for stealing.'
    Arithon ignored him. With recklessness that almost seemed to taunt, he
thrust a hand up under the tunic hem and groped at Dakar's well padded
middle. The Mad Prophet remained comatose. After the briefest interval,
the Master exclaimed on a clear note of triumph and stood, a weighty sack
of coins in his fist.
    'Oh, you thieving pirate.' Lysaer smiled, enticed at last to collusion.
'Where do we go to celebrate.~'
    'The horse fair, I think.' Arithon tossed the silver to his companion. 'Or
was that someone else I heard cursing the mud on the road below the
gatehouse?'
    Lysaer let the comment pass. Thoughtful as he fingered the unfamiliar
coinage inside the purse, he said, 'This must be a well-patrolled town, or
else a very honest one, if a man can lie about in a stupor and not be troubled
by theft.'
 Arithon skirted the sagging boards of a door-stoop.
 'But our prophet didn't leave anything unguarded.'
    Lysaer's fingers clenched over the coins, which all of a sudden felt cold.
'Spells?'
    'Just one.' The Master showed no smugness. 'From the careless way the
bindings were set, Dakar must have a reputation.'
    'For being a mage's apprentice?' Lysaer tucked the pouch in his doublet
as they passed the front of a weaver's shop. Samples of woollens and plaids
were nailed in streamers to the signpost but the door was tightly closed and
customers nowhere in evidence.
    'More likely for scalding the hide off the hands of any fool desperate
enough to rob him.' Arithon tucked unblemished fingers under his cloak as
if the topic under discussion was blandly ordinary.
    They arrived at the end of the alley, Lysaer wondering whether he could
ever feel easy with the secretive manner of mages. A glance into the square
beyond the lane revealed why activity on the gateside quarter of town had
seemed unnaturally subdued: West End's autumn horse fair became the
centrepiece for a festival and the stalls that normally housed the
fishmarket were hung with banners and ribbon. Picketlines stretched
between and haltered in every conceivable space were horses of all sizes
and description. Urchins in fishermen's smocks raced in play through
whatever crannies remained, scolded by matrons and encouraged by a
toothless old fiddler who capered about playing notes that in West End
passed for a jig. To Arithon's ear, his instrument very badly needed tuning.

97


    Wary since the incident with the sausageseller, the half-brothers spent a
moment in observation. Except for a pair of dwarf jugglers tossing balls for
coins, the folk of the town seemed an ordinary mix of fishermen, craftsmen
and farm wives perched upon laden wagons. The customers who haggled to
buy were not richly clothed; most were clean, and the off-duty soldiers clad
in baldrics and leather brigandines seemed more inclined to share drink
and talk by the wineseller's stall than to make suspicious inquiries of
strangers. Still, as the brothers ventured forward into the press, Arithon
kept one arm beneath his cloak, his hand in prudent contact with his sword
hilt.
    A confectioner's child accosted them the moment they entered the fair.
Though the half-brothers had eaten nothing since dawn, neither wished to
tarry for sugared figs, even ones offered by a girl with smiling charm. Lysaer
dodged past with a shake of his head, and in wordless accord Arithon
followed past a butchef's stall and an ox wagon haphazardly piled with
potted herbs. Beyond these sat a crone surrounded by crates of bottled
preserves. Tied to a post by her chair stood a glossy string of horses.
    Lysaer and Arithon poised to one side to examine the stock. Nearby,
ankle-deep in straw that smelled suspiciously like yesterday's herring
catch and surrounded by a weaving flock of gulls, a farmer in a sheepskin
vest haggled loudly with a hawk-nosed fellow who wore threadbare linen
and a brilliantly dyed leather tunic.
    'Seventy ra'el ?' The farmer scratched his ear, spat and argued vigorously.
'Fer just a hack? That's greedy overpriced, ye crafty drifter. If our mayor
hears, mark my guess, he's sure to bar yet clan from trading next year.'
    The hag amid the jam boxes raised her chin and mumbled an obscenity,
while the colourfully-dressed horse dealer ran lean hands over the crest of
the bay in question. 'The price stands,' he finished in a clear, incisive
speech only lightly touched by the local burr. 'Seventy royals or the mare
stays where she is. Just a hack she might be, but she's young and soundly
bred.'
 'Ath, he's hardly got an accent,' Lysaer murmured in Arithon's ear.
    The Master nodded fractionally. 'Explains a great deal about the way we
were received.' All the while his eyes roved across the animals offered for
sale. His half-brother watched, amused, as his interest caught and lingered
over a broad-chested, blaze-faced gelding tied slightly apart from the rest.
    ~I like that chestnut too,' Lysaer admitted. 'Nice legs, and he's built for
endurance.'
    The old woman twisted her head. She stared at the half-brothers, intent
as a hawk and unnoticed as the farmer departed, cursing. Before another
bidder could come forward, Arithon stepped into the gap and said, 'What
price do you ask for the chestnut?'
    The horse trader half spun, his features wide with astonishment. His
glance encompassed the bystanders, confused, and only after a second
sweep settled on Arithon and Lysaer, who now stood isolated as the

98


farmers on either side backed away. 'Daelion's hells! What clan are you from
brother, and is this some jest, you here bidding like a townsman?'
    Arithon ignored both questions and instead repeated his query. 'How
much?'
    'He isn't for sale,' snapped the trader. 'You blind to the tassels on his halter
or what?'
 That moment the crone began to shout shrilly.
    Unnerved as much as his brother had been at finding himself the target of
unwarranted hostility, Arithon cast about for a way to ease the drifter's
temper.
    Before he could speak, a smooth voice interjected. 'The tassels of owner-
ship are obvious.' Townsmen on either side heard and started, and hastily
disappeared about their business; and the grandmother by the jam bottles
stopped yelling as the sorcerer, Asandir, touched her shawl and strode
briskly in from behind. To the man he added, 'But the finer horses in the fair
are sold already and my companions need reliable mounts. Will you con-
sider an offer of three hundred royals?'
    The drifter met this development with raised eyebrows and a startled
intake of breath. He took in the weathered features, steel grey eyes and
implacable demeanor of the sorcerer with evident recognition. 'To you I'll
sell, but not for bribe-price. Two-hundred royals is fair.'
    Asandir turned a glance quite stripped of tolerance upon the princes who
had disobeyed his command. 'Go,' he said. 'Untie the chestnut and for your
life's sake, keep your mouths shut while I settle this.' To the drifter the
sorcerer added, 'The horse is your personal mount. Take the extra hundred
to ease the inconvenience while your next foal grows to maturity.'
    The drifter looked uncomfortable, as if he might argue the sorcerer's
generosity as charity. But the grandmother forestailed him with a curt jerk
of her head: Asandir produced the coin swiftly. Before the culprits who had
precipitated the transaction could attract any closer scrutiny he cut the
tassels of ownership from the gelding's halter and led his purchase away.
Lysaer and Arithon were swept along without ceremony.
    The sorcerer hustled them back across the square. Fishermen turned
heads to glare as chickens flapped squawking from under his fast-striding
boots. They passed the butchef's stall, crammed with bawling livestock and
strangely silent customers. The chestnut shied and jibbed against the rein,
until a word laced with spell-craft quieted it. Dreading the moment when
such knife-edged tones might be directed his way in rebuke, Lysaer main-
tained silence.
 Arithon perversely rejected tact. 'You found Dakar?'
    The sorcerer flicked a look of focused displeasure over one blue-cloaked
shoulder. 'Yes. He's been dealt with already.' Asandir changed course
without hesitation down the darker of two branching alleys. Over the ring of
the chestnut's shod hooves he added, 'You've already left an impression
with the drifters. Don't cause more talk in West End, am I clear?'

99


    He stopped very suddenly and tossed the chestnut's leading rein to
Lysaer. 'Stay here, speak to no one, and simply wait. I'll return with
another horse and a decent saddle. Should you feel the urge to wander
again, let me add that in this place, people associated with sorcerers very
often wind up roasting in chains on a pile of oiled faggots.'
    Asandir spun and left them. Watching his departure with wide and
unmollified eyes, Arithon mused, 'I wonder what fate befell Dakar?'
    That subject was one that his half-brother preferred not to con-
template. Suddenly inimical to the Master's provocations, Lysaer turned
his back and made his acquaintance with the chestnut.
    Asandir returned after the briefest delay, leading a metal-coloured dun
with an odd splash of white on her neck. His own mount trailed behind, a
black with one china eye that disconcertingly appeared to stare a man
through to the soul. Piled across its withers was an extra saddle allotted
for Lysaer's gelding.
    'You brought no bridle,' the former prince observed as he undertook a
groom's work with fleece pads and girth.
    'The drifters of Pasyvier are the best horse trainers in Athera, and that
gelding was a clan lord's personal mount. It won't require a bit. If you're
careless enough to fall, that animal would likely side-step to stay under-
neath you.' His say finished, the sorcerer tossed the dun's reins to
Arithon. 'She's not a cull, only green. Don't trust her so much you fall
asleep.'
    From an urchin by the gates, the sorcerer collected a pony laden with
blankets and leather-wrapped packs of supplies. Attached to its load by a
rope length was the paint mare belonging to Dakar. The Mad Prophet
himself lay trussed and draped across her saddle bow. Someone had
dumped a bucket of water over his tousled head, and the damp seeped
rings into clothing that still reeked faintly of garbage. The wetting had
been as ineffective on Dakar's snores: he rasped on unabated as Asandir
drove the cavalcade at a trot through West End's east-facing gate.
    Once the farmlands surrounding the town fell behind, the road proved
sparsely travelled. The surface had once been paved with slate, built firm
and dry on a causeway that sliced a straight course through the boglands
that flanked the coast. Centuries of passing wagons had cracked the thick
stone in places; the criss-crossed muck in the wheebruts grew rooster-
tails of weed. The mists pressed down on a landscape relentlessly fiat and
silver with the sheen of tidal waterways edged by blighted stands of reed.
The air hung sour with the smell of decomposed vegetation. The chink of
bits and stirrups, and the clink of horseshoes on rock offered lonely
counterpoint to the wingbeats of waterfowl explosively startled into
flight.
    Reassured that the sorcerer had yet to denounce anyone for the illicit
visit to the West End market, Lysaer spurred his horse abreast and dared a
question: 'Who are the drifters and why do the people dislike them?'

100


    Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred of
his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways. The company of
three departed the instant the half-brothers gained the saddle. Asandir
led, and did not add that his choice in horses had been guided by intent; he
wanted Arithon kept preoccupied. 'Since the rebellion which threw down
the high kings, the drifters have been nomads. They breed horses in the
grasslands of Pasyvier and mostly keep to themselves. The townsmen are
wary of them because their ancestors once ruled in West End.'
    The party crossed the moss-crusted spans of the Melor River bridge
while the mare bounced and clattered and shied to a barrage of playful
snorts. Masked by the antics of the dun, Asandir added, 'There are deep
antipathies remaining from times past, and much prejudice. Your accents,
as you noticed, allied you with unpopular factions. My purpose in asking
you to wait in the wood was to spare you from dangerous misunderstand-
ing.'
    Lysaer drew breath to inquire further but the sorcerer forestailed him.
'Teir's'Ilessid,' he said, using an old language term that the prince lacked
the knowledge to translate. 'There are better times for questions and I
promise you shall be given all the answers you need. Right now I'm
anxious to set distance between the town and ourselves before dark. The
drifters are not fools and the folk who saw you will talk. The result might
brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.'
    Lysaer considered this, his hands twisting and twisting in the chestnut's
silken mane. Less than sure of himself since the loss of his heirship, he
regarded the dismal, alien landscape, and tried not to smile as his half-
brother battled the flighty, scatter-minded dun through one disobedient
rumpus after another.
    The incessant clatter of her footfalls at first overshadowed Dakar's
moans of returned consciousness. These soon progressed to obscenities,
also ignored, until a full-throated yowl of outrage brought the company to a
precipitous halt.
    A look back showed that the Mad Prophet's distress was not solely
caused by his hangover: tied still to the paint's saddlebow, Dakar kicked in
a red-faced, fish-flop struggle that stemmed from the fact that his cloak had
somehow coiled itself around his neck and more peculiarly appeared to be
strangling him.
    'Iyats,' Asandir said shortly, but his mouth turned upward in unmistak-
able amusement. 'What folk here most aptly name fiends.'
    Dakar swivelled his head and eyes, and with the aggrieved determina-
tion of a bound man whose face dangled upside-down, gagged out, 'You
planned this.'
    Possessed by an energy sprite native to Athera, the cloak slithered
inexorably tighter around his throat. The fullness of the Mad Prophet's
cheeks deepened from red to purple. 'Tortures of Sithaer, are you just going
to watch while I choke?'

I01


    Asandir urged his black forward and drew rein with ineffable calmness.
'I've warned you time and again to restrain your emotions when dealing
with iyats. Your distress just goads them on to greater mischief.'
    Dakar spluttered and gasped through a tightening twist of fabric. 'That's
fine advice. You aren't the one under attack.'
    As if his sarcasm sparked suggestion, the cloak very suddenly went limp.
The whoop as Dakar sucked in a starved breath quite wickedly transformed
into laughter as a puddle peeled itself away from the ground and floated
upward, precariously suspended in mid air.
    While Lysaer and Arithon stared in astonishment, Asandir calmly re-
garded the churning, muddy liquid that threatened to douse his silver head.
Without any change in expression he raised his hand, closed his fingers, then
lowered his fist to his knee. As if dragged by invisible force, the iyat-borne
puddle followed; until the sorcere~ snapped his fist open, and the mass lost
cohesion and exploded in a spatter of gritdaden droplets.
    Well drenched by the run-off, Dakar uttered a bitten obscenity. 'That's
unfair,' he continued on a strained note that stemmed from the fact he was
overweight, and sprawled face downward over a saddle that for some while
had been galling his belly. 'You've a reputation for quenching fiends and
they know it. They don't go for you in earnest.'
    Asandir raised one eyebrow. 'You make a fine mark for them. You won't
leash your temper. And they know it.'
    Dakar squirmed and failed to settle his bulk into a more accommodating
position. 'Are you going to cut me free?'
    'Are you sober enough to stay mounted?' The sorcerer fixed impervious,
silver-grey eyes on his errant apprentice and shook his head. 'I think it would
be appropriate if you spent the next hour contemplating the result of your
untimely binge. I found our two guests at large in the horse fair at West End.'
    Dakar's eyes widened like a hurt spaniel's. 'Damn, but you're heartless.
Can I be blamed because a pair of newcomers can't follow direct instruc-
tions?'
    Asandir gathered the black's reins. Silent, he slapped the paint's haunches
and passed ahead without turning as the animal lurched into a trot that
threatened to explode Dakar's skull with the after effects of strong drink.
Deaf to the moans from his apprentice, Asandir answered Lysaer's avid
question, and assured that the iyat would not be returning to plague them.
    'They feed upon natural energies- fire, falling water, temperature change
- that one we left behind is presently quite drained. Unless it finds a
thunderstorm, it won't recover enough charge to cause trouble for several
weeks to come.'
    The riders continued westward through a damp, grey afternoon. Al-
though they stopped once for a meal of bread and sausage from the supply
pack, Dakar was given no reprieve until dusk when the horses were
unsaddled and the small hide tents were unfurled from their lashings to
make camp. By then exhausted by hours of pleas and imprecations, he

102


settled in a sulk by the campfire and immediately fell asleep. Tired
themselves and worn sore by unaccustomed hours in the saddle, Arithon
and Lysaer crawled into blankets and listened to the calls of an unfamiliar
night bird echo across the marsh.
    Despite the long and wearing day, Lysaer lay wide-eyed and wakeful in
the dark. Clued by the stillness that Arithon was not sleeping but seated on
his bedding with his back to the tentpole, the prince rolled onto his
stomach. 'You think the sorcerer has something more in mind for us than
conquest of the Mistwraith, Desh-thiere.'
    Arithon turned his head, his expression unseen in the gloom. 'I'm sure of
it.'
    Lysaer settled his chin on his fists. The unaccustomed prick of beard
stubble made him irritable; tiredly, resignedly, he put aside wishing for his
valet and considered the problems of the moment. 'You sound quite
convinced that the fate in question won't be pleasant.'
  Silence. Arithon shifted position; perhaps he shrugged.
    Reflexively touched by a spasm of mistrust, Lysaer extended a hand and
called on his gift. A star of light gleamed from his palm and brightened the
confines of the tent.
    Caught by surprise, a stripped expression of longing on his face, Arithon
spun away.
    Lysaer pushed upright. 'Ath, what are you thinking about? You've
noticed the sickly taint the fog has left on this land. In any honour and
decency, could you turn away from these people's need?'
    'No.' Arithon returned, much too softly. 'That's precisely what Asandir
is counting on.'
    Struck by a haunted confusion not entirely concealed behind Arithon's
words, Lysaer forgot his anger. There must be friends, even family, that the
Shadow Master missed beyond the World Gate. Contritely, the prince
asked, 'If you could go anywhere, be anything, do anything you wanted,
what would you choose?'
    'Not to go back to Karthan,' Arithon said obliquely, and discouraged
from personal inquiry, Lysaer let the light die.
    'You know,' the prince said to the darkness, 'Dakar thinks you're some
sort of criminal, twisted by illicit magic and sworn to corruption of the
innocent.'
    Arithon laughed softly as a whisper in the night. 'You might fare better if
you believed him.'
    'Why? Wasn't one trial on charges of piracy enough for you?' That
moment Lysaer wished his small fleck of light still burned. 'You're not
thinking of defying Asandir, are you?'
    Silence and stillness answered. Lysaer swore. Too weary to unravel the
contrary conscience that gave rise to Arithon's moodiness, his half-brother
settled back in his blankets and tried not to think of home, or the beloved
lady at South Isle who now must seek another suitor. Instead the former

103


princc concentrated on the need in this world and the Mistwraith his new
~..~ n. I~ n m d him to destroy. Eventually he fell asleep.

The tollowing days passed alike, except that Dakar rode astride instead of
roped like a bundled roll of clothgoods. The dun mare steadied somewhat
as the leagues passed: her bucks and crabsteps and shies arose more in
spirited play than from any reaction to fear. But if Anthon had earned a
reprieve from her taxing demands, the reserve that had cloaked him since
West End did not thaw to the point of speech. Dakar's scowling distrust
toward his presence did not ease, which left the former prince of Amroth
the recipient of unending loquacious questions. Hoarse, both from
laughter and too much talk, Lysaer regarded his taciturn half-brother and
wondered which of them suffered more: Arithon, in his solitude, or
himself, subjected to the demands of Dakar's incessant curiosity.
    The road crooked inland and the marsh pools dried up, replaced by
meadows of withered wildflowers. Black birds with white-tipped feathers
flashed into flight at their passing and partridge called in the thickets.
When the party crossed a deep river ford and bypassed the fork that led to
the port city of Karfael, Dakar took the opportunity to bemoan the lack of
beer as they paused to refill their emptied water jars.
    Asandir dried dripping hands and killed the complaint with mention
that a merchant caravan fared ahead.
    'Which way is it bound?' Dakar bounded upright to a gurgle and splash of
jounced flasks.
'Toward Camris, as we are,' Asandir said. 'We shall overtake them.'
The Mad Prophet cheerfully forgot to curse his dampened clothing. But
although he badgered through the afternoon and half of the night, the
sorcerer refused to elaborate.
    On the fourth day the roadway swung due east and entered the forest of
Westwood. Here the trees rose ancient with years, once majestic as
patriarchs, but bearded and bent now under mantling snags of pallid moss.
Their crowns were smothered in mist and their boles grown gnarled with
vine until five men with joined hands could not have spanned their
circumference. Daylight was reduced to a thick, murky twilight alive with
the whispered drip of water. Oppressed by a sense of decay on the land, and
the unremitting grey of misty weather, no one inclined toward talk. Even
Dakar's chatter subsided to silence.
    'This wood was a merry place once, when sunlight still shone,' Asandir
mused, as if his mage's perception showed him something that touched off
maudlin thoughts.
    They passed standing stones with carvings worn until only beaded
whorls of lichens held their patterns. Aware that Arithon studied these
with intent curiosity, Asandir volunteered an explanation. 'In times past,
creatures who were not human tended these forests. Attuned to the

104


deepest pulses that bind land and soil to Ath's harmony, they left stones
such as these to show what ground and which trees could be taken for
man's use, and which must stay whole to renew the mysteries. Once, the
protection of sacred ground was the province of the high king's justice.
Pastures and fields were cut only where the earth could gracefully support
them. But now such knowledge is scarce. The name for the guardians who
dwelled here meant giants in the old tongue.' But the huge, gentle beings
Asandir described were more clearly a breed of centaurs.
    When Lysaer inquired what had become of them, the sorcerer shook his
head sorrowfully. 'The last of the Ilitharis Paravians passed from the land
when Desh-thiere swallowed sunlight. Not even Sethvir at Althain Tower
knows where they have gone. Athera is the poorer for their loss. The last
hope of redeeming their fate lies in the Mistwraith's defeat.'
    Dakar glanced aside and caught Lysaer's attention with a wink. 'Small
wonder the old races left these parts. No taverns, no beer and wet trees
make lousy company.'
    Fed up with rain and nights of smoking fires and bedding down on
dampened ground, the former prince could almost sympathize. He joined
Dakar in questioning the existence of Asandir's caravan, and was almost
caught off-guard when they overtook the fugitive by the wayside.
    The man wore brilliant scarlet, which spoiled his attempt to escape
notice by the approaching riders. The hem of his garment was sewn with
tassels. One of these caught on a briar and flagged the attention of Asandir,
who reined up short in the roadway and called immediate reassurance.
'We're fellow travellers, not bandits. Why not share our fire if you're
alone?'
    'On that, I had no choice,' came the chagrined reply. The man spoke
rapidly in dialect, his accents less burred than the prevailing variety in
West End. Rangy, tall and carrying what looked like a grossly misshapen
pack, he stepped out from behind the moss-shagged bole of an oak. 'A
supposedly honest caravan master already relieved me of my mount, so
luck has forsaken me anyway.' He approached at a pained gait that revealed
that his boots were causing blisters, and the hand left white-knuckled on
his sword hilt betrayed distrust behind his amiable manner.
'You may also share the road if you can keep up,' Asandir offered back.
Dakar assessed the oddly bulky pack for the possible presence of spirits,
and was first to announce the stranger's trade. 'You're a minstrel!' he burst
out in surprise. 'By the Wheel man, why are you starving in the wilderness
when you could be singing comfortably in a tavern?'
    The man did not reply. Close enough now to make out details and faces,
he was engrossed by Asandir. 'I know you,' he murmured, half awed. He
pushed back his hood and a shock of wavy hair spilled over his collar. The
revealed face showed a mapwork of laughlines and a stubble of half-grown
beard. The eyes were hazel and merry despite the swollen purple weals that
marred him, forehead and cheek.

105


    Asandir's sharpness cut the forest silence like a whiplash. 'Ath in his
mercy, we are come on ill times. Who in this land has dared to abuse a free
singer?'
    The minstrel touched his battered skin, embarrassed. 'I sang the wrong
ballad. After being stoned from an inn on the coast I should have learned
better. Tales of old kingdoms are not appreciated where mayors rule.' He
sighed in stoic dismissal. 'This last one cost me my horse and left me
stranded into the bargain.'
    Asandir cast a glance toward Arithon: if argument existed in favour of
shouldering responsibility for restoring this world to sun and harmony,
here walked misfortune that a fellow musician must understand. Before
the sorcerer could emphasize his point, the minstrel raised his trained
voice in a mix of diffidence and amazement.
    'Fiend-quencher, matched by none; white-headed, grey-eyed one.
Change-bringer, storm-breaker; Asandir, King-maker.'
    'You,' the minstrel added, and his theatrical gesture encompassed
Dakar. 'You must be the Mad Prophet.'
    Aware of a sudden guardedness behind Arithon's stillness, Asandir
responded carefully. 'I won't deny your powers of observation, Felirin the
Scarlet. But I would urge that you use more caution before speaking your
thoughts aloud. There were innocents burned in Karfael last harvest upon
suspicion they had harboured a sorcerer.'
    'So I heard.' The bard shrugged. 'But I learned my repertory from
barbarians and something of their wildness stayed with me.' He looked up,
his swollen face bright with interest. 'There must be good reason for a
Fellowship sorcerer to take to the open roads.' And his gaze shifted to the
half-brothers who travelled in Asandir's company.
    Dakar opened his mouth, quickly silenced by a look from the sorcerer,
who interjected, 'This is no time to be starting rumours in the taverns. And
should I be aware of another way into Camris beyond the road through
Tornir Peaks ?'
    Felirin understood a warning when he heard one. He shifted his bundle,
prepared to fall into step as the sorcerer's black started forward; but
Arithon abruptly dismounted and offered the reins of the dun.
    'You have blisters,' he observed, 'and I have sores from the saddle that an
afternoon on foot might improve.'
    The excuse was a lie. Dakar knew. He watched the Master's face and saw
the buried edge of something determined; but the shadowed green eyes
held their secrets.

106


Peaks of Tornir

The caravan that had stranded Felm'1~ the bard stayed elusively ahead
through the coming days of travel. Dakar diverted his frustration each
evening by badgering incessantly for drinking songs. As a result, the
campfires through the eastern quarter of Westwood became rowdy as a
dockside tavern, and many a nocturnal predator went hungry due to the
din. When Dakar became too hoarse to frame an intelligent request, the
bard would delve into his store of ancient ballads that told of times before
the Mistwraith. When pressed, he admitted he did not believe in the sun as
the woodland barbarians did; but lore and legend fascinated him and he
collected old tales as a curiosity. None could deny that the melodies set to
such fancy were lyrically complex, a dance on fret and string that a
musician could devote a lifetime of skill to perform.
    As the hills steepened and the winds of increased altitude caused the
company to huddle closer to the fire for warmth, more than once Felirin
caught Arithon studying his hands as he played. After days of cleverly
rebuffed questions Arithon's fixation with the lyranthe was the only
opening the bard had managed to discern. Inspired by a fractional
movement of the dark-haired man's fingers as a fallen log fanned up the
flames, Felirin silenced his strings in mid-stanza and rubbed his knuckles
on his jerkin. 'Damn the weather,' he said.
    Dakar predictably complained. 'You aren't stopping, Felirin, not so soon.
Better we freeze to a misplayed tune than abide our sobriety in silence.'
    The bard reigned a yawn to hide his smile. 'Arithon plays,' he said in sly
suggestion. 'Why not ask him for a song?'
    'Arithon?' Dakar puffed up his cheeks. 'Play music?' He darted a glance
to either side; with Asandir off to check the picket-lines, he dared a
whisper in conspiracy. 'I'll bet you silver he doesn't.'
 Felirin watched through peripheral vision and saw Arithon become

107


utterly still. Lysaer sat up and took interest. 'How much would you stake
me ?' asked the bard.
    The Mad Prophet laced his hands across his paunch. 'Ten royals. Double
as much if I'm wrong.'
    Felirin chuckled, and still smiling, extended his instrument toward the
cloaked figure to his left. 'Indulge me. Give us a tune.'
    Arithon returned a dry chuckle. 'I'll establish your mastery by contrast,'
he threatened. But Felirin had plotted to a nicety: after days of unmerited
provocation, Arithon took his chance to humble Dakar.
    His movements as he lifted the soundboard to his shoulder were
recognizably reverent. Arithon poised tentative fingers, sounded a shower
of practised harmonics, and found an interval off. He corrected the pitch,
neatly and precisely. When he looked up, his eyes were laughing.
    Dakar muttered something stinging concerning close-mouthed brigands
who betrayed a comrade to wasted silver. Lysaer politely held back
comment, and Felirin silently congratulated his powers of intuitive
perception. Then all three of them lost track of surface thoughts as Arithon
started to play.
    The first chords rang across the firelit dell with a power of sheer
captivation. Arithon tested and quickly found the instrument's mettle; at
once he broke his opening into an intricate theme that threaded, major to
minor in haunting sweeps across keys. By then no one remembered this
magic had been instigated by an interchange of grudges and a bet.
    Startled into rapt concentration, Felirin realized he had discovered a
treasure. Whoever Arithon was, whatever his origins and his purpose in
accompanying a sorcerer, he had been born with the natural gift to render
song. There were rough patches in his fingering and fretwork that could be
smoothed over with schooling; skilled guidance could ease some awk-
wardness in his phrasing. His voice lacked experience and tempering. But
even through such flaws, the bard could appreciate his raw brilliance. With
Lysaer and Dakar, his heart became transported from the discomforts of a
drafty campsite and led on a soaring flight of emotion as a tale of two lovers
unfolded like a jewel in the firelight.
 Arithon stilled the strings at the end, and the spell shattered.
 'Young man,' the bard demanded. 'Play again.'
    Arithon shook his head. 'Collect your winnings from Dakar.' If he had
regrets, they stayed invisible as he slipped the instrument back into the lap
of its owner. 'Your lyranthe is very fine. She plays herself.'
    'That's foolishness!' Felirin reached out more demandingly than he
intended, and caught hold of Arithon's sleeve. The wrist beneath his touch
was trembling. To ease what he took for self-consciousness, the bard
added, 'You're gifted enough to apprentice.'
    Arithon shook his head and moved to disengage, but Felirin's grip
tightened angrily. 'How dare you waste such rare talent? Can't you accept
your true calling?'

108


    Green eyes flashed up, and almost - only Lysaer could recognize it -
Arithon drew breath for rebuttal in the same vicious style he had used at
his trial by Amroth's council. Then confusion seemed to flicker behind his
eyes. The Master looked away. He worked gently free of the bard's fingers.
'Daelion turns the Wheel. One cannot always have the choice.'
    He arose, quietly determined to retire, and managed to avoid Asandir,
returned from his check on the horses.
    The bard turned his puzzlement on the sorcerer. 'What did the lad mean
by that?'
    Asandir sat on the log that the Master had just left vacant and settled his
dark cloak around his knees. 'That these are troubled times for all of us, my
friend. Arithon has the gi. ft, none can doubt. But music cannot be his first
calling.'
    Dakar suggested hopefully that spirits could ease the most wretched of
life's disappointments. His quip was ignored. No one inclined toward light
heartedness. Felirin abandoned the fireside to pack away his lyranthe,
followed by the crestfallen prophet. Only Lysaer lingered. Aware of the
steel beneath Asandir's stillness, and unwarmed by the wind-fanned
embers by his feet, the s'Ilessid recalled his half-brother's reaction to a
past, insensitive query. 'Never to go back to Karthan' Arithon had said in
unresponsive wish to kill the subject. Lent fresh perspective by tonight's
discovery, his half-brother shared insight into a misery that no heroic
calling could assuage. Some men had no use for the responsibilities of
power and renown. The coming quest to suppress the Mistwraith that
restored meaning to Lysaer's life became a curse and a care for Arithon,
whose gifted love for music must be sidelined.

Morning came. Hunched against a wind that whined through tossing
branches, the party passed into the foothills of Tornir Peaks. The great
trees of Westwood thinned in concert with the soil, and the road wound
between stripped, rock-crowned promontories sliced by stony gullies.
Sleet had fallen during the night, and the slate paving was icy in patches,
treacherous even at a walk. Arithon led his flighty dun by the bridle. Lysaer
flanked him on foot, while Felirin took a turn in the chestnut's saddle.
    The cold and the cheerless landscape buoyed no one's spirits, but
Dakar's irrepressible tongue stayed unaffected. 'Damn you for a thief,
Felirin, I swear you conspired against me to win that bet last night.'
    The bard twisted back and checked the ties which secured his lyranthe
to the saddle for the third time since he had mounted. Balked yet by
Arithon's reticence, his reply came back clipped. 'Forget the bet. Just buy
me an ale when we get to Erdane.'
    'Now there speaks a guilty man,' the Mad Prophet pronounced. He
kicked his paint forward and set the dun dancing as he drew alongside the
Master. 'Did the two of you plan to split the take?'

109


    Jerked half off his feet as his mare skittered sideways, Arithon returned a
quick laugh. 'Why bother? As I remember, I needed no rigged wagers to part
the silver from your belt.'
    Reminded of his mishap in the alley in West End, Dakar turned purple. He
bent over his saddlebow and spoke so that Felirin could not hear. 'You'll pay
for that.'
    'You say.~' Arithon brought the dun under control by rubbing her ear to
distract her. When she settled he slapped her fondly and added a remark
concerning slipshod spells.
 Dakar deflated in moody silence.
    'You've made a clam of him,' Lysaer observed with a smile. 'Thank Ath.
My ears were tired.'
    But the friendliness in the comment did not warm. Apart from the others,
and keenly wishing an hour of solitude to sort through troubled thoughts,
Arithon strode at the dun's shoulder while a round of banter designed to bait
Dakar developed between Felirin and Lysaer.
    The party rounded a bend where the road snaked beneath an overhang, and
the talk suddenly died. A driving clang of hoofbeats echoed down from the
rise ahead. A horse approached through the mist at a headlong gallop that
begged for a fatal fall. The bridleless chestnut flung up its nose and neighed.
  'Hold here!' called Asandir.
    The next instant, a riderless grey stallion thundered into view through the
fog. He Clattered downslope in lathered, wild-eyed terror, his reins flying,
broken, from the bit rings. The smoke-dark mane was fouled and dripping
blood. Dakar's paint caught the scent first. It spun and tried to bolt. Arithon
cursed with eloquent force and fought his shying dun; Lysaer stepped
hurriedly to aid him.
    Astride the quivering but obedient chestnut, Felirin recognized the
martial style of the runaway animal's tack. 'Hey, that's one of the horses
from the caravan guard!'
    Only the black that bore Asandir seemed immune to alarm. Under the
sorcerer's guidance it advanced in spell-wrought, nerveless calm, swung
across the road and blocked the way. The riderless animal checked in a
sliding scrabble of hooves, then stood with lifted tail, blowing hard and
rolling white-rimmed eyes. Asandir dismounted, slowly. He held out his
hand and spoke a word, and the frightened horse appeared to settle. Then, his
own black left unattended, the sorcerer advanced and with perfect lack of
ceremony captured the stallion's bridle.
    'Maybe he should have a turn at Arithon's dun,' Lysaer suggested. But no
one appeared to be listening.
    Dakar had lost his impertinence and Felirin showed open alarm. As
Asandir approached, leading both the black and the stallion, all could see a
shallow, ragged gash in the animal's neck. Deeper marks clawed through the
seat of the saddle, and bloodstains marred the leather that had not been left
by the horse.

110


    'Daelion Fatemaster,' Lysaer swore. 'What sort of predator caused
that ?'
    'You don't want to hear,' said Felirin. He raised his voice and called to
Asandir. 'There are Khadrim in the pass, yes?'
    'I fear so.' The sorcerer halted the horses. With quick fingers he
unbuckled the reins from the black's bridle and hitched them to the
caught stallion's bit. Then he cut off the ends of the broken pair and
offered the animal to the bard. '! want everyone mounted.'
    The remark included Arithon, who looped his reins over the dun's ears,
while Felirin slid off Lysaer's chestnut and accepted possession of the
grey. The bard asked, and received permission to leave his lyranthe where
it was; no sense in trusting a strange horse with an awkward and
unaccustomed burden. 'This was the guard captain's mount,' the bard
said ruefully as he adjusted the leathers for his much longer legs. 'This
fellow is probably trained handily for war but damn, his saddle was made
for a man with narrow buttocks. What little stuffing the Khadrim might
have left has blown away on the wind.'
    'Sit down too hard on the armour studs and you'll find yourself singing
soprano,' Dakar retorted smugly.
    The bard shot him a dark look and dabbed at drying bloodstains before
he set foot in the stirrup and mounted. 'At the end of this day's ride, I'll be
thankful to count only bruises.' He settled his reins and addressed
Asandir. 'I presume we're going to be crazy and continue on, not turn
back?'
    ~he sorcerer nodded. His gaze fixed on the half-brothers through a
brief, measuring moment. 'There could be danger, but the risk will stay
manageable if nobody loses their head. Keep together, whatever happens.
Arithon when I tell you, and only when, draw your blade.' The Mad Prophet slapped his forehead. 'Ath!'
    Asandir's eyes went wide with incredulity. 'Dakar! You scatterbrain,
don't tell me you'd forgotten the sword?'
    'I did.' The Mad Prophet returned a pouting scowl. 'Small wonder, with
the rest of you conspiring to rig my bets.'
    The sorcerer disgustedly turned and remounted his black. 'Remind me
never, ever, to rely on your memory in a pinch.' He noticed and answered
Arithon's look without pause to turn his head. 'Boy, your sword was
forged ten and a half thousand years past, expressly for war against the
Khadrim.'
 'War,' interjected Lysaer. 'Then the creatures are intelligent?'
    Arithon barely heard Asandir's affirmative reply; he ignored Felirin's
curious query and the hilt which protruded from the scabbard at his hip
with absolute, icy detachment. Whatever curiosity he might once have
held for his inherited weapon, he had never owned an inkling that the
blade might be so ancient. That he carried spell-wrought steel was
undeniable, though the nature of its powers had escaped the wisdom of

111


Dascen Elur's mages. The chance the sword might bind him further to a
duty he wanted no part of became just another weight upon his heart.
    Having lost his royal inheritance, Lysaer would treasure the chance to
bear a great talisman; Arithon caught the suppressed flash of envy in his
brother's blue eyes. Yet before the Master could offer his last true
possession as a gift, Asandir came back with rebuttal.
'You can never relinquish that blade, except to your own blood heir.'
Arithon knew an inward surge of protest, a fleeting, angry impression
that he had cause to take exception to the sorcerer's words. Yet as had
happened before when Felirin had pressured him over music, the Master
could not quite frame the concept. As he tried, his thoughts went vague,
and his perceptions scattered, disoriented. By now he had learned that if
he stopped fighting back, the confusion would quickly pass; the unrelia-
ble dun distracted him sufficiently in any case. Yet each successive
incident left Arithon less satisfied with Asandir's explanation in the
woodcutter's cottage. The gaps in his memory were not natural: that
Dakar watched him with predatory speculation each time he recovered
lent evidence to justify suspicion. Arithon guessed some telling fact had
been withheld from him. Before he could be cornered in a position he
could not escape, he determined to find out what and why.
    Beyond the draw where they captured the runaway horse the road
steepened sharply. The crags on either side reared up to ever more jagged
promontories, their lofty, looming summits lost in mist. Patches of early
snow mottled the northern faces, cut by rockfalls and boulder-choked

ravines where vegetation clawed
paving showed the abuse of harsh
frosts. The horses picked carefully
on the reek of cinders. When they
saw why.

 desperate foothold. Here the slate
winters, split and heaved crooked by
over uneven footing and the air took
rounded a switched-back curve, they

    The stud balked, snorting with alarm. Ahead, between the smoking
wreckage that remained of two dozen wagons, the drovers of the caravan
who had ousted Felirin lay strewn across the way like dirtied rags. Man
and mount and cart-mule, there were no survivors. Corpses littered the
ledge. Charred clothing clung to exposed bones and whatever flesh
remained had been mauled to ribbons by something not interested in
hunting for the sake of sustenance. Lysaer cupped a hand to his mouth,
sickened by the sight of an eviscerated woman and a horse with half its
hindquarters seared to stinking, blackened meat. Something with
monstrous jaws had snapped the head off the neck.
    Stung into memories of strife and battle by the bodies of so many slain,
Arithon looked quickly beyond. What drained the blood from his face was
something black and scaled that lurked, half-glimpsed in the mist: a
creature straight out of legend, with silvery, leathered wings that
extended an impossible sixteen spans from the ridge of the armoured
breastbone to each outstretched, claw-spurred tip.

112


    'Stay close,' commanded Asandir. He reached across one-handed and
calmed Felirin's sidling grey with a touch, then scanned the sky with
worried eyes.
    'There are more of them, and not far off,' Dakar said in an odd and
unusual briskness.
    That moment a shrill whistle split the mist overhead. The sound was
eerie, rich and complex with harmonics that seemed to tantalize the edge
~)f understanding. Other whistles answered, echoing from a gallery of
unseen cliffs. A huge, shadowy form shot above the roadway and the acrid
breeze of its passage set every horse in the company trembling outright in
fear.
    'Now, Arithon,' Asandir said quietly. 'Give yourself space and draw your
steel.'
    The dun mare surged forward the instant her rider gave rein. Arithon set
his back against her and curbed her hot impulse to bolt; but the mare was
too wild to settle. She skittered sideways, carved an angry pirouette by the
overturned hulk of a wagon and bucked. One rebellious hind hoof banged
against the wreck and a welter of clothgoods spilled loose from the torn
canvas cover. The edges of the bolts were singed and horribly spattered
with blood. The sudden movement and the smells of death and burned
silks caused the mare to rip into a rear.
 'Arithon!' shouted Asandir. 'The sword!'
    His cry was cut by a screeling bellow from the mist directly above. The
sound reverberated with stinging incalculable fury that wounded the ears
with subsonics. The dun mare arched higher, striking the air with her
forelegs. There she swayed, ears flattened and tail clamped to her croup in
taut panic. Arithon pressed into her neck and soothed with hands and
voice to coax her down.
    That moment while horse and rider struggled vulnerably to regain
balance, the Khadrim stooped to the attack.
    It descended in a rush of furled wings, a bolt of killing black streamlined
from the dagger-claws of fang and talon. It arced down as a spear might fall,
red-eyed and fork-tailed, and purely bent on murder. Arithon glanced up.
Through the mare's streaming mane, he saw the nightmare in its
earthward rush to take him.
    'The sword!' screamed Asandir. Violet light flashed as he raised his
hands to shape wizardry.
    The Khadrim saw the spell, snapped out wings broad as sails and sliced
into a bank. Before the sorcerer could strike it from the sky its neck curved
back, blackly scaled and sinuous as a venomous snake. For an instant the
monster's red eyes turned unwinking on the man and the horse standing
separate. Then the armoured jaws opened and a torrent of fire spat forth.
    Flame roared in a crackling whirlwind and entirely engulfed the dun
mare. Her rider became an indistinct silhouette, then a shadow lost utterly
in the heart of the conflagration.

113


    The Khadrim clashed closed its jaws. Hot, seared air dispersed in a coil of
oily black smoke, fanned away under the wingbeat of the terrible creature
as it swooped and shot back aloft.
     On the roadway, within a seared circle of carbon, Arithon sat his
quivering, mane-singed mare, untouched and cursing in annoyance.
  Felirin screamed out a stupefied blasphemy.
    The Khadrim doubled back in mid-air and roared its frustrated rage;
while Arithon freed a fist from the reins and finally set hand to his sword.
    The dark blade slipped from the scabbard with a sweet, cold ring. From
the instant the tip cleared the guard-loop, Arithon was touched by a
haunting sensation like song, like loss, like a peal of perfect harmony set
vibrating upon the air. His ears rang to a timbre so pure his heart flinched;
and the sword in his hands came alive. Light ripped along the silvered lines
of inlay, blindingly intense, a shimmer like harmony distilled to an
exultation of universal creation.
    The Khadrim shrieked in pain. Like some great, broken child's kite
tossed in the grip of a gale, it flung sideways and crashed with a threshing
flurry of wings against the mountainside. The forked tail lashed up rocks,
hurled stunted bits of vegetation downslope in a rattling fall of flung
gravel. Then its struggles ceased, and it wilted to final stillness, a black-
scaled, hideous monstrosity couched in a bed of bloodied snow.
    For a moment longer, the sword in Arithon's hand flashed through a
silver glare of spells. Then the phenomenon faded to a glimmer and died
away. The Master of Shadow stared at plain black steel chased with
patterns that no longer appeared familiar. There were tears in his eyes,
dripping unheeded down his cheeks.
    None of the wisdom at Rauven had approached this. Arithon had been
awed by the forces held in check within Asandir; for all the sorcerer's
perfectly-schooled strength, his powers seemed a brute statement com-
pared with the energies laid down in perfect stillness in a span of tempered
steel. Arithon had known magework but never had he touched a force that
left him feeling bereft, as if the world where he stood had grown coarser,
more drab, somehow clumsy and lacking in a manner that defeated reason.
Arithon stared at the blade in his hand and felt lacerated for no reason
under sky he could name.
    'The Khadrim have gone,' Asandir called; and the wounding stillness
was broken. 'You may sheath your weapon.'
    'Dharkaron, avenging angel,' Felirin swore in falsetto. 'Who is that man,
to pass unscathed through living flame, and what in Sithaer made that
sword?'
    Asandir turned bland eyes upon the much-shaken minstrel. 'He is
Arithon, Master of Shadows, and if you'll help raise a cairn over the
unfortunate dead from your caravan I'll give you explanation for the
sword.'
 Dakar the Mad Prophet raised a hand and touched the shoulder of

114


Arithon's utterly crestfallen half-brother. In a voice of conspiratorial
conciliation he said, 'Lysaer, don't feel slighted. Your moment will come
in due time.'

115


Alithiel' s Story

The five riders bound for Camris suffered no second attack by Khadrim,
though for safety's sake through several of the narrower defiles, Asandir
asked Arithon to ride with his sword unsheathed in his hand. The blade
evinced no glow of warning, and then the pass fell behind. The pitch of the
road became less rugged and the jagged crags rounded to hills. At twilight
the company made camp in a cave on the far slopes of Tornir Peaks.
    The shelter was often used by summer caravans and passing generations
of wagoneers had built in some comforts over time. Benches of split logs
surrounded a rock-lined fire-pit and a crude stand of fencing had been
erected beneath the underhang of a natural outcrop. In places, moss-grown
remnants of stone walls showed where sheds and an earlier inn had been
levelled in some forgotten past conflict. Once the horses were unsaddled,
and Dakar sent off to gather wood, Asandir crouched down with kindling
and chips and began clearing away the ashes left by last season's travellers.
He gestured through the failing light as Lysaer knelt to help. 'If the mist
were to lift off the valley you could see lights from here, wayside inns on
the plain of Karmak. The roads of north Korias might have gone wild, but
the trade-routes from Atainia cross Camris. The lands are better travelled
there, and on the east shore ships still ply the bay.'
    Lysaer stared out into gathering darkness but his eyes saw only mist.
Descended from an island culture, he could not imagine the vast spread of
continent described by the sorcerer's words. 'It must have been hard,
seeing your civilization shrink to a shadow of its former greatness.'
    Asandir paused, his hands quiet on his knees. His eyes turned piercing
into distance. 'Harder than you know, young s'Ilessid. But the sun will
shine over us again.'
    Felirin and Arithon entered, adding the smells of healing herbs and wet
leaves to the dusky scent of dry charcoal. The wound on the grey stallion's

116


neck had been washed and cared for. The bard carried a handsome, silver-
bossed saddle, his own, recovered that day from the corpse of his former
palfrey. Asandir had retained a replacement set of reins, but the rest of the
wagons and goods they had burned, lest unwitting passersby linger for
salvage and tempt the Khadrim to further massacre.
    Outside the cave the wind picked up, moaning through a stand of
stunted pines. 'Winter's coming early,' Felirin observed. 'Seems to move
in a little sooner every year.'
    Unaware that such shifts in the seasons were the ongoing effects of
Desh*thiere, he dumped his saddle over a log bench and sat, the skirt-flap
a welcome backrest after exhausting hours astride. As Asandir's efforts
graced the cave with a curl of pale flame, the bard inspected his hands and
cursed. The fingernails he needed to pluck his strings were split to the
quick from shifting rocks. Arithon's were no whit better and made bold
by shared commiseration, Felirin gathered nerve and made inquiry. 'I don't recall any stanzas that mention a Master of Shadow.'
    Asandir settled back, his face washed gold by flamelight. 'That song has
yet to be written.' Gently as an afterthought, he added, 'Felirin, it would
not do to speak of this yet in the taverns. But you could see stars and sun
within your lifetime.'
    The bard gaped in astonishment, his glibness at a loss for reply. Asandir
allowed the import of his words a moment to sink in. Then he said,
'Lysaer and Arithon are the potential of a restored sky made real, the
Mistwraith's bane promised five centuries ago by Dakar's Prophecy of
West Gate.'
    Caught dumbfounded, Felirin struggled to recover something re-
sembling equanimity. He swore once, hoarsely. Then, left only his
performer's dignity, he said, 'How many of the old ballads are not myth,
but true history.~'
    'Most of them.' Asandir waited, his look gravely steady, as this became
assimilated through another shaken interval of silence. 'You are one of a
chosen few who know.'
    Dakar picked that moment to return, puffing under an armload of damp
faggots. He had not bothered to shear off the dead branches and his
laziness had torn his better shirt. The ordinary intensity of his irritation
became an anchor upon which Felirin hung sanity. Informed that his
whole world stood poised on the brink of upheaval and change, the bard
caught a shivering breath. 'For the sake of one commonplace mortal, save
the rest until after we've had supper. I'm hungry enough to hallucinate,
and hearing the impossible doesn't help.'
    Later, warmed by leek stew and the coals of a generous bonfire, the
sorcerer gave the history of Arithon's sword. The tale was lengthy,
beginning ten and a half thousand years in the past when twelve blades
were forged at Isaer by the Paravian armouter, Ffereton s'Darien, from the
cinder of a fallen star.

117


    'Ffereton was Ilitharis, a centaur,' Asandir began. 'The Isaervian swords
were his finest, most famed creation, wrought at need to battle the vast
packs of Khadrim that were the scourge of the Second Age. The histories
that survive claim each blade took five years' labour, a full decade if one
were to count the sorceries that went into the sharpening. When Ffereton
finished, the steel held an edge that time nor battle could blunt.'
    Here, the sorcerer paused and asked Arithon to bare his blade from the
scabbard. 'You'll see there are no nicks, no flaws from hard usage. Yet
Alithiel has known the blows of two ages of strife.' Asandir turned the
quillons between his hands and firelight flashed on the inlay which twined
the dark length of the blade.
    'The swords were given over to the fair folk, called sunchildren, for
finishing. It was they who made the hilts and chased the channels for the
inlay, no two patterns the same. But perhaps the greatest wonder is the
metal set into the runes themselves.' Asandir ran a finger over the
inscriptions and as an answering flare of silver traced his touch, his voice
softened into reverence. 'Riathan, the unicorns, sang the great spells of
defence. Masters of the lost art of name-binding, they infused the alloy
with harmonics tuned to the primal chord of vibration used by Ath Creator
to kindle the first stars with light. Legend holds that twenty-one masters
took a decade to endow Alithiel alone.'
     Asandir slipped the sword back in the scabbard with a soft sigh of sound.
 'The enchantment was balanced to peak in defence of the sword's true
 bearer, dazzling the eyes of his enemy, but only if the engagement was just.
 Very few causes that drive a man to kill are righteous ones. Probably
 Arithon's father never knew the nature of the weapon he left to his son.'
     Arithon confirmed this with a nod but did not speak. Haunted by his
 encounter with the sword's arcane powers, he feared to betray the dread
 that partnered such mystery: that some role waited to be asked of him to
 match such a grand weight of history. Determined to control his own fate,
 the Shadow Master sat with locked hands while, with the skilled
 resonance of a storyteller, Asandir continued: 'The Isaervian blades were
 crafted for the hands of six great Lords of the Ilitharis and the six exalted
 lines of the sunchildren. Alithiel was the oddity. She was forged for
 Ffereton's son, Durmaenir, a centaur born undersized. The blade was
 tailored to match his proportions, from the length to the balance of the
 grip. In the wars that followed thousands of Khadrim died, their last
 memory the flaring brilliance of an Isaervian sword's enchantment. Sadly,
 Durmaenir was one of the fallen. His grieving father passed Alithiel to the
 king's heir.'
     Arithon heard this and restrained a forcible wish to stop his ears, walk
 away, even shout nonsense; any reaction to halt this brilliant, weighty
 tapestry of names and sorrows far more comfortably left to the ghosts of
 forgotten heroes. Yet the stilled powers in the sword by their nature
 commanded his respect; he could not bring himself to interrupt.

118


  If Asandir noticed Arithon's distress, he held back nothing.
    'The prince at that time was a sunchild, and true to type for his kind, he
stood just one span in height. The sword's length reached nearly to his
chin. He had a shoulder scabbard fashioned for ceremonial appearances
and took up the traditional king's blade upon accession at his predecessor's
death. Alithiel was given over to the line of Perhedral. They too were
sunchildren, ill-suited to the weight of a large weapon. When King Enastir
died childless the Teir's'Perhedral claimed the kingship. Since another
sword accompanied the crown, Alithiel remained in the treasury until
another rise of Khadrim threatened peace. A centaur lord wielded her
through the war that followed, but the blade handled like a toy in his huge
grip. Afterwards, the sword Alithiel changed owners again, this time
becoming the property of the high king's cousin by marriage. It passed
through his heirs to Cianor, who earned the honorific of Sunlord.'
    This drew a gasp from Felirin who knew at least a dozen ballads made in
praise of the Sunlord's long reign.
    Asandir smiled. 'May the memory of those days never fade. Yet Cianor
Sunlord did little but possess the sword. He assumed the Paravian crown in
Second Age 2545, and as others before him, took up the king's blade out of
preference. By then Alithiel carried a second name, Dael Farenn, or king-
maker, because three of her bearers had succeeded the end of a royal line.
    'But if the sword brought kingship to her wielder, she never became a
cherished possession. Awkward size made her handling a burden and
though the Isaervian blades that survived the mishaps of time were
coveted, no Paravian lord cared to claim one that carried a tragic
reputation.
    'Cianor eventually awarded Alithiel to a man, for valour in defence of his
sister, Princess Taliennse. Her Grace was rescued from assault by Khadrim
in the very pass we just crossed.' Here Asandir nodded in deference to
Arithon. 'The emerald in your sword was cut by a sunchild's spells. The
initial in the leopard crest changes with the name of the bearer, and since
the blade fits the hand of a man to perfection, each heir in your family has
carried her since.'
    Asandir folded long hands. 'Arithon, yours is the only Isaervian blade to
pass from Paravian possession. To my knowledge, she is the last of her kind
on the continent.'
    Lysaer regarded the polished quillons with rueful appreciation. 'Small
wonder the armourers of Dascen Elur were impressed. They held that
sword to be the bane of their craft, because no man could hope to forge its
equal.'
    Asandir rose and stretched like a cat. 'The centaur Ffereton himself
could not repeat the labour. If, in truth, he still lives.'
    Felirin raised dubious eyebrows. 'Did I hear right? Could a centaur be
expected to survive for ten and a half thousand years?'
 The sorcerer fixed the bard with a bright and imperious sadness. 'The old

119


races were not mortal, not as a man might define. The loss of the sun
touched them sorely, and even my colleagues in the Fellowship can't say
whether they can ever be brought to return. The tragedy in that cannot be
measured.'
    A stillness descended by the fireside, broken by Asandir's suggestion
that all of them turn into their blankets. The weather was shortly going to
turn, and he wished an early start on the morrow. Arithon alone remained
seated, the sword handed down by his ancestors braced in its sheath across
his knees. The flames flickered and burned low and subsided at last to red
embers. Hours later, when the others seemed settled into sleep, he put the
blade aside and slipped out.
    Mist clung in heavy, dank layers beneath the evergreens, and the
darkness beyond the cave was total. Yet Arithon was Master of Shadow:
from him, the night held no secrets. He walked over rocks and roots with a
cat-sure step and paused by the rails that penned the horses. 'Tishealdi,' he called softly in the old tongue. 'Splash.'
    The name fell quiet as a whisper, but movement answered. An irregular
patch of white moved closer and a muzzle nosed at his hand; the dun, come
begging for grain. Arithon reached out and traced the odd marking on the
mare's neck. Her damp coat warmed his cold hands and the uncompli-
cated animal nearness of her helped quiet the turmoil in his mind. 'We
can't leave, you and I, not just yet. But I have a feeling we should, all the
same.'
    For he had noticed a thing throughout Asandir's recitation: while in the
presence of the bard, the sorcerer took care to avoid any mention of his, or
Lysaer's surname.
    The mare shook her head, dusting his face with wet mane. Arithon
pushed her off with a playful phrase that died at the snap of a stick. He
spun, prepared for retreat. If Dakar or the sorceror had followed him, he
wanted no part of their inquiries.
    But the accents that maligned the roots and the dark in breathless frag-
ments of verse were the bard's. A bump and another snapped stick ended
the loftier language. 'Daelion's judgement, man! You've a miserable and
perverse nature to bring me thrashing about after you and never a thought
to carry a brand.'
    Arithon loosened taut muscles with an effort concealed by the night. 'I
don't recall asking for company.'
    Felirin tripped and stumbled the last few yards down the trail and
fetched against the fence with a thud that made the boards rattle. The dun
shied back into the snorting mill of geldings, and the grey, confined
separately, nickered after her.
    The bard looked askance at the much-too-still shadow that was Arithon.
'You're almost as secretive as the sorcerer.'
    Which was the nature of a spirit trained to power, not to volunteer the
unnecessary; but Arithon would not say so. 'Why did you come out?'

120


Felirin returned a dry chuckle. 'Don't change the subject. You can't hide
your angst behind questions.'
    Arithon said nothing for an interval. Then with clear and deliberate sting
he said, 'Why not? You know the ballads. Show me a hero and I'll show you
a man enslaved by his competence.'
    The bard took a long, slow breath. A difficult man to annoy, he had
neatly and nearly been goaded to forget that Arithon's mettlesome nature
defended a frustrated talent. 'Listen to me,' Felirin said quickly. An honest
desperation in his entreaty made Arithon ease off and give him space.
'Promise me something for my foolishness. There's a singer, a Masterbard,
named Halliron. If you meet him, I beg you to play for him. Should he offer
you an apprenticeship, ! ask for your oath you'll accept.'
    Silence; the footfalls as curious horses advanced from the far side of the
corral. Then a chilly gust of air rattled through the trees. Arithon pushed
off from the fenceboards and cursed in an unfamiliar language through his
teeth. 'Like sharks, you all want a part of me.' His voice shook; not with
fury, but with longing.
    Felltin smiled, his relief mixed with guilt-tinged triumph. 'Your oath,'
he pressured gently. 'Let me hear it.'
    'Damn you,' said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was
laughing. 'You have it. But what's my word against the grandiloquent
predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?'
    'Maybe everything,' Felirin finished gently. 'You're too young to live
without dreams.'
    'I wasn't aware that I didn't.' Lightly firm in his irony, Arithon added,
'Right now, I wish to go to bed.' He walked away, left the bard to thwarted
curiosity and the crowding attentions of the horses.

121


Backtrail

On the downs of Pasyvier, by the flames of a drifter's fire, a seer speaks
sharply to a grande dame returned from the autumn horse fair. 'Say again,
you saw a sorcerer? And with him a blond-haired stranger who spoke the
speech of the true-born? I tell you, if you did, there will be war...

In the hall of judgement in West End, seated on his chair of carved oak and
carnelian, a town mayor listens, sweating, to a similar description from the
half-wit who played fiddle in the square...

Under mist in the Peaks of Tornir, a wild, screeling wail calls Khadrim in
retreat back to spell-warded sanctuary; and the harmonics ring of death by
spell-cursed steel not seen for a thousand years...

122


VI. ERDANE

The walls of Erdane had been raised at the crossroads two ages before the
uprising which threw down the high kings had bloodied its maze of narrow
streets. Now, five centuries later, the city wore change like a tattered,
overdressed prostitute. Guild flags and a mayor's blazon fluttered over the
Grand West Gate, built by Paravian hands of seamless, rose-veined quartz.
The stone at street level was left pitted and scarred by siege-weapons, and
greyed by the passage of uncounted generations of inhabitants. Had the
sentries in the mayor's guard been as vigilant as their counterparts in times
past, they would have challenged the woman in the shepherd's cloak who
passed the gatehouse, hooded. Boots of sewn sealhide showed beneath her
ankle-length skirts, but their soles were not made for walking. Her hands
were calloused from the bridle-rein, and her eyes a clear and disturbing
grey.
    But the captain of the watch barely glanced up from his dice game and
the teenaged soldier who lounged on his javelin stayed absorbed by a
whore, who paraded her bedizened attractions for the eyes of a loud-voiced
drover.
    Elaira, Koriani enchantress and message-bearer for the Prime, entered
Erdane unremarked between a wagon bearing three sows and the rumbling
wheels of an ale-seller's dray. She was the first of her kind to pass the city
gates for close to four hundred years and the only one to try without any
sanction from her seniors. Had she been recognized for what she was, she
would have been stripped and publicly burned after barely a pretence of a
trial.
    Other women had suffered that sentence inside the past half-decade. If
the mayor of Erdane suspected the charges against those accused were
false, his conscience never bothered his sleep. What troubled his guild-
masters and council to cold sweats was the fear that powers from the past

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might arise out of legend and claim vengeance. For unlike the commoners
and the craftsmen, the Lord Elect of Erdane had access to archives that
detailed a history of conspiracy and murder. To him, to his council and his
general of armies, the sun was no myth, but a harbinger of sorcery and
certain doom.
    Elaira was cognizent of the risks. She kept her knot-worked hood pulled
low over her forehead and took care not to pass between the flirtatious
whore and her sources of male attention. When the ale dray pulled up
precipitously to avoid a running urchin, the enchantress ducked out of the
main thoroughfare. She hastened down streets of marble-fronted guild-
halls, threaded across the artisans' district, then turned through a moss-
dark arch.
    The alley beyond was barely wider than a footpath. Fallen slates and rat-
chewed ends of bone clogged the gutters. Seepage dripped in mournful
counterpoint to the moss-crusted planks of half-rotted, open-air stairways;
and from spelbcharmed strips of tin nailed up to ward off iyats. Unlike
many such talismans, these held true power to guard. 1aira could sense
the faint resonance of their protections as she wound her way past ill-
smelling puddles and locked shutters.
    This slum by the edicts of town law should never have managed to
survive: it had no wineshops or pot-traders on the lower levels. Dirty
children did not play in the gutters, and drunks did not snore off binges;
whores sought no customers here, nor did headhunters with old campaign
scars loiter between assignments to boast of kills. This was a street whose
inhabitants Erdane's mayor sorely wished to eradicate; except that in the
teeming maze of the wall district, its location was most difficult to know.
Wayfarers came seeking the archway and found themselves inexplicably
side-tracked. They might blink and miss the entry, or be distracted by a
noise or a thought; and before they had grasped they had missed
something, they would have passed on by.
    For anyone untrained in spellcraft to pause here, even for a second, was
to become lost in a mageoworked tangle of deception.
    Elaira found the stairwell with carved gryphons on the newels. This was.
the house; here. She had all but sold her jewel for directions. For the
Koriani matron who had received the scrolls from the Prime had been
garrulous enough to repeat rumour. If she was right, the mayor's most
persistent nightmare was already half-way realized: a Fellowship sorcerer
and two old-blood princes were temporarily in residence within Erdane.
    Elaira mounted the alarmingly shaky stairway and paused on the
landing at the top. With a shiver of sinful anticipation she knocked and
asked for entry. 'Is this the home of Enithen Tuer?'
    A muffled clang, then the ring of a bar being drawn back; the door
cracked and a white-lashed milk-pale eye peered through. 'Ath's Avenger,
it's a witch,' rasped a reedy, aged voice. 'Girl, you're very brave or just
stupid.'

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     Elaira tightened her grip on her cloak laces. 'Probably stupid.' She held
back a nervous laugh. 'Are you going to let me in?' The eye blinked. 'I will. You may be sorry.'
    'I will be sorry.' Elaira threw an unsettled glance over her shoulder; the
alley remained empty, dimming rapidly in the falling dusk. Nobody
watched from the rows of shuttered windows. Still, her proscribed visit
would be noticed very fast if she tarried too long in the open. As the door
creaked wider, Elaira stepped through in a rush that betrayed apprehension.
    A tiny, hunchbacked crone bounced backward out of her path. 'Yeesh.
Came here without sanction, did you ?'
    Elaira pushed back her hood. The room did not match the alley's run-
down squalor but was snug and comfortably furnished. Candles lit the
enchantress's face like a cameo against the purple-black silk of a second
cloak concealed underneath the rougher wool. Inside, somewhat mussed by
the muffling layers, coiled a braided knot of bronze hair. 'Maybe I just want
my fortune told.'
    The crone grunted. 'Not you. And anyway, you don't need a seer to tell
your future's just branched into darkness.'
    'Sithaer.' Elaira sucked an unsteady breath. 'So soon?' She fumbled at the
ties of her wraps and caught sight of two young men who watched her,
interested, over a half-completed game of chess.
    Elaira's eyes widened. They were here! And unmistakably royal, the
bloodlines perpetuated over many generations still apparent as the nearer
one rose to meet her. Light from the sconces edged pale s'Ilessid hair in
shining gold. The prince possessed an elegance that went beyond his
handsome face. His eyes were jewel-blue. He carried his well-knit frame
with the dignity of a man schooled perfectly to listen, and a pride unselfcon-
scious as breathing.
    'Lady, may I ?' he asked in courtly courtesy; and hands tanned dark by alien
suns reached out and slipped the shepherd's cloak from her shoulders.
    Unused to male solicitude, Elaira blushed and evaded his smile, and found
her sight drawn to the other prince, whose black hair at first glance had
caused him to blend into shadow.
    This one regarded her with eyes of s'Ffalenn green, and something else:
the still, small shock of an awareness that recognized power. Elaira re-
pressed stark surprise, while the s'Ilessid prince said something polite that
her mind interpreted as background noise.
    Before she could recover the poise to apply her trained skills to draw
intuitive deductions through observation, the seer, Enithen Tuer, caught
her elbow. Crabbed hands spun her toward a doorway which opened to
reveal the Fellowship sorcerer she had defied her order's strictures to visit.
    Asandir proved taller than Elaira had expected from images garnered
through lane-watch. Lean as toughened leather, he wore plain clothing with
a bearing she had always before thought imperious. In person, she revised
that to a stillness that brooked no wasted motion. His hands were still also,

125


the straight, tapered fingers clean as bleached bone on the latch. The face
beneath the trimmed silver hair was carved by years and experience to a
fierce mapwork of lines. The eyes in their deep-set sockets regarded her
with a serenity that unnerved and exposed.
    'What brought you here, Elaira of the Koriathain.Z' said Asandir of the
Fellowship of Seven.
    'She wasn't sent,' the seer interjected. A palsied nudge sent the
enchantress forward toward the imposing figure in the doorway.
    'I see that.' As if aware that the leashed force in him intimidated, Asandir
caught Elaira's elbow and steered her toward a chair. His touch was light as
a ghost's, gone the instant it was noticed as he stepped back and away and
closed the door.
    Elaira sat for lack of the nerve to do otherwise. Feeling nakedly foolish,
she buried unease in a study of her surroundings. The room was crowded
with shelves, a work-place that smelled of herbs, and waxed wood and
oiled wool; a basket of carded fleece sat in one corner, beside the worn
frame of a spinning wheel. The woven rug underfoot had faded with age to a
muddle of earth tones and greys, and the walls were piled high with crates
of yarn and old junk.
    'What brought you here, lady?' the sorcerer asked again. He bent with a
servant's unobtrusiveness and began to build up the fire. Flame brightened
as the birch logs caught and lined his hard profile in light.
    Elaira stared down at her boots and the muddled hem of her skirts which
now gave off faint curls of steam. All the excuses, every elaborate and
reasonable-sounding word she had rehearsed through the afternoon fled in
the rush of her fast-beating heart. She was out of her depth. She knew it;
before she could think, she spoke honestly. 'I was curious.'
    Asandir straightened up. Stern, but not unkindly, he looked at her, from
her splashed skirts to her open, angular face. His eyes were penetrating, yet
utterly without shadow. The awful strength behind his presence spoke of
purpose rather than force. He reached out, hooked a stool from beneath the
spindle and sat with his back to the lintel by the grate. Then, hands folded
on his knees, he waited.
    A hot rush of blood touched Elaira's cheeks. With utmost tact and
patience, he expected her to compose herself and qualify on her own.
Oddly released from her awe, she unlaced shaking fingers. She slipped the
violet cloak of her order over the chairback and tried to assimilate the
particular that, unlike a Koriani senior, this sorcerer would pass no
judgement upon her; no debt would be set on her demands.
    She gathered her nerve and blurted, '! wanted to see, to know. If the
Prophecy of West Gate was filled, and whether Desh-thiere's Bane has
come at last to Athera.'
    Asandir regarded her, unblinking. 'You passed its substance on the way
in.'
He would elaborate nothing unless she pressed him. Her betters insisted

I26


 as much, endlessly: Fellowship sorcerers gave up nothing freely. Eager to
 test that platitude for herself, Elaira dared a question. 'I observed that the
 Teir's'Ffalenn has been initiated to the disciplines of power. Is this what
 gives him ability to dominate the Mistwraith?'
     Asandir straightened, sharpened to sudden attention. 'That took both
 initiative and courage, neither one a praiseworthy attribute in the
 entrenched opinion of your sisterhood.' He smiled in gentle humour. 'I
 intend to give you answer, Elaira, but in the expectation you will treat
 tb.e information with a foresight your superiors might hold in con-
 tempt.'
    Elaira suppressed astonishment, that a Fellowship sorcerer in his
multiple depths of power might share frustration with her colleagues'
preoccupation with the present.
    But her interest was cut short as Asandir said, 'In the times of the
rebellion, when four of the high kings' heirs were sent to safety through
West Gate, the Fellowship granted foundational training to the
Teir's'Ahelas to increase her line's chances of survival. Her descendants on
Dascen Elur continued her tradition but forgot certain of the guidelines. In
the course of five centuries of isolation, the mages there achieved what the
Seven could not.'
  'Is that possible?' Elaira interjected.
    Asandir's silvered brows tipped up. 'What is possible does not always
coincide with what is wise.'
  Instantly Elaira felt stupid.
    And yet, perversely, instead of rebuke for her thoughtless words, Asandir
chose to explain the bride-gift which granted two men an inborn command
of elemental mastery. 'Together, our princes can vanquish Desh-thiere.
Separately, you must know, their gifts might potentially inflict greater
harm than the wraith their powers must defeat.'
    Arrogance did not admit fallibility and reticence did not offer explana-
tion; about the Fellowship, the Koriani Senior Circle was emphatically
mistaken. Just accorded the insight of a colleague or an equal, Elaira sat
stunned and still.
    'You have noticed in the Teir's'Ffalenn a familiarity with the inner
disciplines,' Asandir continued, his eyes turned down toward his hands.
'He spent his boyhood with the s'Ahelas mages, and their teaching was not
wasted on him. One can hope that the sensitivity inherent in his lineage
will keep his eyes opened to responsibility. In that, he will have all the
support the Fellowship can offer.'
    Floundering through a quicksand of overturned beliefs, Elaira said,
'Then the success of Dakar's prophecy is not assured?'
    'Could it be? Men created Desh-thiere. The hands of men must bring it
down. Exchanges of power on that scale are never bought without peril.
Athera must endure the price. And your question has been answered now, I
think.'

127


    In response to his note of finality, Elaira rose from her chair. She gathered
her violet cloak, her normally impertinent nature repressed behind a frown.
    As if attuned to her thoughts about him, Asandir said, 'Your order has ever
been dedicated to intolerance.'
    Elaira steeled herself and looked up into those terrifying, unruffled eyes.
'My seniors hate to admit to incompetence.'
    'Lesser strength does not add up to uselessness.' The sorcerer crossed the
room.
    The enchantress followed, reluctant. 'Our First Enchantress to the Prime,
Lirenda, would disagree.'
Asandir regarded her as he lifted the doorlatch. 'But you are different.'
He warned her. Elaira understood as much as he guided her through the
door with the same feather-touch that had admitted her; as if his hands
innately knew their capacity to unleash cataclysm, and in wariness adhered
to gende opposite. She would do well to apply the same principle and curb
her outspoken brashness.
    'You have a clear eye for truth,' the sorcerer said. 'Don't replace one
mistaken set of principles for others as narrow-minded.'
    Elaira quailed before the thought that Asandir had credited her with far
too balanced a mind. She was not impartial where her seniors were con-
cerned; and yet that seemed what this sorcerer expected her to become. She
crossed the outer room, where the chess board had been set to rights and two
chairs now stood empty. The seer Enithen Tuer sat in her rocker, blinking
clouded eyes through the smoke of an aromatic pipe. If the crone saw past a
dark and tangled future, she offered no advice as the younger enchantress
gathered up her shepherd's cloak and quietly let herself out.
    Night had fallen, dense in the absence of any lamps. Elaira's progress
down on the moss-caked stair became careful and slow with uncertainty.
She had taken on more than she bargained for. As she applied the nuances of
her training to analyse the interview in retrospect, she realized how easily
Asandir had tuned her expectations, lulled her sense of caution with a touch
of human fragility and an air of attentive solicitude. Now, aware in the chill
of the alley how subtly she had been pushed to think beyond her limits, the
enchantress shivered outright. The sorcerer had not used her. But he could
have, deftly as a potter turning unformed clay on a wheel.
The Prime Circle's obstinate fears were not in the least bit unfounded.
Elaira roused herself, mechanically continued until she reached the base
of the stair. Asandir had warned of consequences. Through queasy, unset-
tled nerves, the enchantress who had dared the unthinkable sorted out the
single thread that mattered. A Fellowship sorcerer had trusted her. Why
remained a mystery, but were she to reveal what she had learned - that the
Mistwraith's bane rested solely in the hands of two men bred to rule, and
that the Fellowship itself could not directly limit the result - the Koriani
Prime Circle would be roused to bitterest anger, or worse, outright obstruc-
tion.

128


    Elaira kicked a loose piece of slate; her boots sloshed through puddles
with only minimal awareness of the wet. She could not escape a
reprimand; if under questioning by her seniors she were to conceal that her
knowledge of the two princes had derived from a confidence shared by
Asandir, some other escapade must replace it. Before the enchantress on
watch duty touched her presence she must contrive another circumstance
to match the surface facts. Or else the larger truths that she had most
unwisely asked to know could not possibly be kept hidden.
    'Daelion, Master of the Wheel,' she swore to the ink-dark night. 'What in
Dharkaron's conscience can I do that's more outrageous than meeting
with a sorcerer of the Fellowship?' She paused a second, her breath
clouding in the close and misty dark.
    Struck by sudden inspiration, Elaira spun around. She left the alley by
way of another arch and asked after the Inn of Four Ravens. There, if
ramour and luck held good, she would find Dakar the Mad Prophet
drowning his miseries in mead; for word went that the taskmaster Asandir
had hurried his charges across the breadth of Karmak and not spent one
night in a tavern.

129


The Four Ravens

After Erdahe's gates closed at dusk, the taproom at the Inn of Four Ravens
was a rough and ilbconsidered place for a woman to linger by herself.
Located in the disreputable wall district, the tavern was the nightly
hangout of headhunters, coarse-voiced labourers and a hard-bitten, boast-
ful contingent of off-duty garrison soldiers. The air reeked of overheated
humanity, spilled beer and unscrubbed layers of cooking grease. The
hearth smoked. By the quantity of large-busted barmaids and the well-
sleeked look of the innkeeper, the upstairs rooms were obviously rented
for activities other than lodging.
    The Ravens' ruffians were habitually too deep in their cups to discrimin-
ate between those girls who were goods and others who might be paying
customers. Wedged between a drover who smelled like his mules and a
bone-skinny journeyman cobbler, Elaira jerked her braid out of the indigo
fingers of a dyer who leaned across three dicers to proposition her. She
looked into the moist brown eyes of Dakar and said, 'You've lost. Again.'
    She turned the last battered cards in her hands face-up on the sticky
trestle.
    Dakar blinked, stirred from his stupor and glared intently at painted
suits and royalty. 'Damn t'Sithaer.'
    A stir erupted to Elaira's left as her blue-handed admirer tried to shoulder
through the press to crowd closer. As if he did not exist, the enchantress
leaned across the table toward the Mad Prophet. 'Your forfeit. Answer my
question. Tell the name of the dark-haired man who shares your travels
with Asandir.'
    Dakar shoved straight. 'I'm drunk,' he announced with injured cunning.
'Can't remember.'
    Elaira waited with persistent determination. She dared not reach for her
focusing jewel. Even a fool would not try spell-work in this place: not to

130


 bring clarity to Dakar's muddled mind, nor to drive off unwanted male
 advances. Erdane's citizens had aversions that ran to violence when con-
 fronted by any form of witchery; a disproportionate mix of the most zealous
 seemed to patronize the taproom at the Ravens. Dakar was crazy to come
 here at all; except that his sorrowfully rumpled appearance did not equate
 with his station as apprentice to a Fellowship sorcerer.
     Artlessly innocuous, he huddled like a lump on his bench, his cheeks
 crumpled up under eyes like dreamy half-moons. He leaned on stump-
 fingered fists and sucked on his lpwer lip until Elaira desperately wanted to
 shake him. 'Arithon,' Dakar said at last, in snarling, petulant concession.
     Elaira bit back triumph. A neatly-timed thrust of her elbow interrupted
 the dyer's amorous swoop. Gouged in a place that made him grunt, he
 backed off and was fortuitously rescued by a bar wench. Laughter arose, and
 a smattering of ribald comment, as the pair ploughed a path toward the
 stairway.
    Sweating, tired and faintly queasy from nerves and smoke, Elaira raked
the cards in a pile. What relief she might have felt was cancelled twice over
by aggravation. The junior enchantress assigned lane watch was lazy: she
should have disclosed the location of her errant colleague hours since and
dutifully reported to her senior. Until the gambling match needed for an
alibi became substantiated, Elaira of necessity could not depart.
    The minstrel in the corner stopped playing and laid aside his lyranthe.
One of the listeners who arose from his circle would doubtless come pawing
for favours, this man more drunken and lecherous than the last. Trapped,
Elaira shuffled the dog-eared pack and began to deal another hand.
    Dakar reached out and hooked her sleeve before the first card hit the
trestle. 'Tankard's dry.'
  Elaira looked for herself and resignedly signalled the barmaid.
  'No ale, no bets.' Dakar managed a beatific sm';le.
    The tavern door opened. A chill wafted through stale air as the crowd
jostled to admit a newcomer. Roused by the draft from outside, the Mad
Prophet laced his fingers across his paunch. He swayed a moment, hiccuped
and suddenly shot upright. Something he saw over Elaira's shoulder caused
his eyes to show round rings of white. Distinctly, he said, 'Like the tax
collector, here comes trouble.'
    Then the excitement and the drink undid him all at once, and he slumped
on his face and passed out.
    Elaira cried a frustrated epithet. Left no partner for a stake ostensibly set
up to explain what she knew from Asandir, she threw down her cards and
shoved from her seat to kick the Mad Prophet from his stupor.
    Yet something in the quality of the disturbance at her back made her
pause. She turned around and craned her neck over the jostling press of male
bodies, and her eyes went wary as Dakar's.
    Arithon, Teir's'Ffalenn and Prince of Rathain, had entered the Ravens
unaccompanied.

131


    He stood just three paces inside the doorway. His hood lay half turned
back from his face, the knuckles of both hands clenched on the fabric as if
he had frozen in mid-gesture. Elaira traced the direction of his gaze and
realized at once what transfixed him. Nailed to the grease-darkened rafters
above the bar was a banner all torn and faded with years, its blazon the
gold-on-blue star that times past had been sigil of s'Ilessid, sovereign
dynasty of Tysan. In Erdane, since the rebellion, the taproom's coarse-
minded celebrants had used the standard for target practice. Two arrows, a
tatty collection of darts and more than one rusted throwing knife skewered
the artifact dead centre.
    Arithon stared at the desecrated banner, a look of shocked confusion
whitening the planes of his face. He took a step toward the bar, caught his
weight on his hands as if dazed and unwittingly jostled someone's elbow.
    The bump slopped beer from a tankard, for which the owner snapped a
furious obscenity.
    Arithon apologized like a diplomat and the edged clarity of his accent
turned every head in the room.
    Conversations died to blank silence. Arithon's chin jerked up. His
confusion fled as he recognized his error and his danger, both disastrously
too late.
    A headhunter slammed back his chair and shouted. 'Ath defend us, he's
barbarian!'
    Someone else threw a tankard, which missed; the wench behind the bar
ducked for cover. Then the whole room surged into motion as every
besotted patron in the Ravens leaped to lay hands on the intruder. They
thought the man they chased was an old-blood clansman who had dared to
come swaggering inside town walls.
    A moment ago, Arithon might have been dizzy, as well as dangerously
ignorant; but he was cat-fast to react under threat. He side-stepped the first
swung fist. As his aggressor overbalanced and stumbled against the rush of
Surging bodies, he dodged through a fast-closing gap and nipped behind the
nearest trestle table. Plates, hot soup and chicken bones flew airborne as he
upended the plank into his attackers.
    Curses and yells erupted as the foremost ranks were borne backward.
Diners still seated on the bench made a grab at the wretch who had upset
their meal.
    Arithon was already gone, raised by his arms and a half-kick into a
somersault over the ceiling beams. He descended hard on a soldier,
slammed the man's jaw against his breastplate and sprang off as his victim
went down.
    'Hey!' an ugly voice responded. 'Turd who was born through his
mother's asshole! Yet gonna die here, an' not by the mayor's executioner.'
    Hotly pursued, Arithon jumped and caught hold of a wrought iron
torch-sconce. As hands grabbed for his heels, he hoisted himself up out of
reach into the cross-braced timbers of the rafters. Nimble as a sailor, he

132


looted the width of the taproom, target for a crossfire of crockery. He
somehow shed his cloak between sallies. With the fabric he netted a plate
and sundry items of cutlery before'a toss accomplished on a follow-through
mired two pursuers in the folds. The casualties tangled and crashed in a
clatter of dropped knives and wool. Stripped to shirt-sleeves and tunic,
Arithon ran; and his enemies saw he was unarmed.
    Elaira knew sudden, draining fear. The irreplaceable heir to a kingdom
could be pulled down, beaten to his death by these roistering, ignorant
townsmen. Dakar snored away in drunken oblivion, and the only soul in
the taproom who had the decency to look concerned was the scarlet-clad
singer by the fireside.
    Arithon had no allies to call on for rescue. The Ravens' enraged riffraff
swarmed onto trestles and benches, the most maddened and aggressive
among them bearing down from two sides on the bracing beams. Arithon
leaped across air to the adjacent span of rafters. Cornered against the far
wall, he laughed at the mob and called challenge. Elaira fretted over the
chance that he might resort to shadow mastery or magic; but better sense
or maybe instinct restrained him. He crouched instead and seized a pot-
hook from the peg beside the chimney. Back on his feet in an eyeblink, he
spun his purloined implement like a quarterstaff and rapped the legs froin
under his closest pursuer. The man toppled into an arm-waving plunge
that ripped down a swaying knot of combatants.
    Arithon reversed stroke and jabbed. The next soldier in line nearly fell as
he windmilled back out of range. Arithon moved to press his hard-won
advantage. Then someone in the m~l~e flung a dagger.
    Warned by a flash of steel, Arithon swung the pot-hook. The blade
clanged against iron and deflected point-first in a plunge that grazed the
forearm of a bystander. At the sight of his own running blood, the afflicted
broke into shrill screams. The mood of the mob changed from ugly to
murderous. The headhunters pressed now for revenge instead of bounty
and the off-duty guardsmen drew swords. Everyone else abruptly seemed
to acquire weapons, and all without exception converged on the prince
poised vulnerably in the rafters. Aware he was exposed, Arithon dropped.
    His pot-hook blurred in a stroke that whistled the air and intimidated
space on the floorboards. He landed and two men with longswords engaged
him. The clang of thrust and parry rang dissonant over the shouting. Elaira
saw Arithon side-step and swing to position a wall at his back. Wholly
engaged in self-defence, he appeared not to notice that his stand had been
made against a doorway.
     'Merciful Ath,' cried the minstrel from the fireside. 'Someone in the
 scullery's going to sally from the pantry and skewer him.'
     Elaira spun in her tracks and fastened in desperation on the bard. 'That
 entrance connects to the kitchens, back there?' Answered by a worried
 nod, she made a ward-sign against misplaced trust and begged a favour of a
 total stranger. 'Make me a diversion.'

133


The scarlet-clad minstrel rose to the occasion with a floor-shaking shout
of discovery. 'Ath preserve us, there are clansmen outside the windows!'
    A dozen attackers abandoned Arithon and rushed to assess this new
threat; and in the moment while the fracas stood diverted, one
frightened-witless enchantress centred her mind in her focusing jewel. She
cobbled together a glamour of concealment and disappeared.
    Elaira did not physically vanish, but assumed an aura of sameness, one
that mirrored the grain of worn pine, dented pewter and sanded floorboards.
Had anyone amid the Ravens' tumult paused and actually searched for her,
she would instantly have been spotted. As it was, the press of the brawl
directed Arithon's aggressors everywhere else but toward her. The enchant-
ress slipped rapidly across the taproom, unnoticed as she skirted upset
trestles, bands of fist-waving craftsmen and barmaids who scuttled on
hands and knees in a frantic attempt to rescue crockery.
    Elaira reached the side door undetected. The lamp there had gone out:
screened by convenient shadows, she fumbled at her collar and pulled out
the white crystal she wore tethered to her neck by silver chain. She cupped
the jewel in her palm and murmured litanies to refocus her inner mind. Her
hand shook. So did her voice. She ignored impending panic and prayed
instead that the junior initiate on lane watch would not choose this moment
to expose her; far from an afterthought, she added her plea that no swords-
man had attention to spare beyond Arithon's fast-moving pot-hook. Acting
with unconscionable recklessness, Elaira closed her gathered energies into a
hard rune of binding.
    Tiny, violet sparks snapped across the hinge-pins at Arithon's back: the
doorway stood secured. By then, Elaira was sprinting in a breathless charge
that carried her headlong through the scullery. Cooks and pot-boys scat-
tered from her path. She dodged the swing of the knife-waving drudge by the
spit, slipped someone else's grasping hands, then tripped over a pastry rack
and stumbled through a rain of falling scones to snatch up the rolling pin that
lay in a bowl of dough beyond. Before the befuddled kitchen staff could catch
her, Elaira darted into the pantry closet, trailing a dusting of flour. The
scrambles at her back became more frantic. All but within reach of her goal,
she gasped, 'Ath, stand back! There's a riot out there, can't you hear?'
    Then she elbowed through a hanging string of onions and reached the
narrow doorway to the taproom. A barrage of threats and thuds issued from
the opposite side. Elaira recovered her wind, reassured. The s'Ffalenn prince
still fought vociferously for his life. The wood under her palms bounced and
vibrated to the rasping clash of swordplay, then the thump of a body fallen
and somebody's bitten-off oath. Elaira tripped the latch, readied her stolen
bludgeon, then snapped the spell-bindings on the hinges with a shuddering
whimper of fright.
    The door crashed open and shoved her staggering as Arithon's shoulder
bashed the panel inward under force of a narrowly-missed parry. A sword
blade whined through string: onions bounced helterskelter as five men

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harried the prince backward. Their eagerness hampered their weapons,
which ironically worked to help spare him: the pot-hook had long since
fatigued under punishment and Arithon defended himself with only the
stub of the sheared-off handle. Elaira caught her balance and retreated as
the fight erupted wholesale into the pantry. Braised against comers of
shelving, she received an impression of furious faces, a battering circle of
steel and the tense, hard-driving brilliance of Arithon's close-pressed
defence. Then she caught her enchantress's jewel in a grip that gouged her
palm and struck the pastry roller on the crown of the prince's dark head.
    He folded at the knees, eyes widened in a moment of shocked surprise.
His look became what might have been prelude to laughter before the
charm Elaira wrought to fell him blanked his mind. He collapsed on the
floor at the enchantress's feet. She jumped past, committed beyond heed
for further risks. Her crystal burned against her skin as once again she
raised power. Her hastily-wrought net of spells caught and strained to stay
the mob who now surged to butcher an unconscious victim.
'Stop!' Elaira shouted clearly. 'This one's mine. I claim his life as spoils.'
The front-rank aggressors rocked to a stupefied stop, hostility stamped
on every red and sweating face; the swords flashed at angles still eager for
slaughter. Trembling before that hedge of raised weapons, 1aira held her
ground. Should even one man control hatred enough to see reason, the
whole crowd would discover she was not the painted doxie her glamour
made her appear.
 Yet grudges in Erdane ran obsessively deep.
    Startled by female intervention and emotionally charged from
adrenalin, the furious ones were easiest to deflect. Elaira's mazework of
confusion hooked their anger and can, ed out a foothold for change: in
something like sheepish embarrassment men glanced at the prince behind
her knees. Their minds recalled no barbarian impostor, but instead saw a
wine-raddled street-rat who had carelessly offended someone else.
    The few who had sustained injuries were far less easily diverted. Some of
these shoved forward, waving bludgeons of snapped-off chair legs; not a
few still wielded knives and the fellow who had tumbled from the rafters
was howling in self-righteous indignation. Sweating, Elaira strove to
extend her spell of influence. But her fragile fabric of illusion only thinned
and shuddered near to breaking: she had no more resource left to spare.
    Beyond hope, past all recourse, she faced defeat. Erdane's ongoing feud
with the past was going to end her life and that of the prince she had rashly
tried to rescue.
    Then like a miracle, the voice of the minstrel offered surcease. 'Let the
doxie have him and be done! Dharkaron knows, he's filthy enough to
disgust a hog. Probably going to leave her with the Avenger's own pox to
remember him by.'
 The slur raised a wave of scattered laughter.
 'Sithaer, now,' Elaira added, somehow through terror and an unstable

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grip on two spells finding a note that approximated disgust. 'It wasn't my
bed I'd be offering him!'
    A weatherbeaten captain toward the fore loosed a bellowing guffaw.
'Leave him to her!' he said. 'She'll probably scald his ears well enough.' He
shrugged to unlock a battered shoulder, then sheathed his steel; around
him, other off-duty companions backed off smiling. The most rabid of the
headhunters wavered and in that instant of reprieve, Elaira hooked the
door adjoining pantry and commonroom and slammed the panel closed.
For the benefit of the kitchen staff who gawked in the path of her retreat,
she jabbed her fallen prize in the ribs, then launched into spiteful
imprecations.
    'Daelion mark ye in the hereafter for stinking bad habits! Ye wasted
lump of a lout, ye dare te be stealin' my hard-earned coin fer spendin' on
tankards at the tap!'
    The cook stepped into the breach and shook Elaira's arm. 'Wench, if
you're minded to scold, spare us some peace and do it elsewhere.'
    The enchantress whirled in crazed fury. 'How will I, with himself
sprawled there with the onions and limp as dead dogmeat into the
bargain?'
    She waved the fist with the pastry roller and set a row of canisters
tottering. The cook snatched the implement away from her, jerked his
greasy bangs toward his staff, then barked a command to lift the
unconscious object of this madwoman's scorn and forcibly heave him out.
    The pot-boys grinned and lent their efforts to the cause. Arithon was
hefted under the armpits, dragged through dustings of spilled flour and the
grease-scummed runoff from the dish tubs and ejected through an exit that
led to the rear of the tavern.
    Elaira followed, crying curses. She swore with redoubled vehemence
upon discovery they had pitched her hard-won royalty headlong into the
midden.
    She shrilled at the fast-slamming door, 'Dharkaron break ye for rogues,
now I've got te wash his blighted clothing!'
 The panel banged shut and a bar dropped in place with a final, sour clank.
 Elaira subsided, shaking.
    The alley behind the Four Ravens was dark and damply cold. Feeling the
chill to her bones, the enchantress sucked a breath past her teeth that came
shuddenngly near to a choke as she gagged on the rank stench of garbage.
'Sithaer and Dharkaron's Five Horses,' she muttered to the form at her feet.
'What in this life am I to do with you?'
    The prince sprawled limply in a nest of wilted carrots returned an
involuntary groan; then, from the shadow to one side, a sane voice
proffered reply: 'Where do you think he would be safe?'
    Startled, Elaira spun and released a hissing gasp. The speaker proved to
be the singer, leaning against the alley wall with the prince's salvaged
cloak draped on his wrist. He smiled in quick reassurance. 'You probably

136


saved his life back there. He'd better thank you properly for the risks you
undertook. If he doesn't, make sure to break all his fingers, then tell him I
gave you permission.'
    Weak in the knees with relief, Elaira slumped against the midden door.
'You know this man?'
    'We're acquainted.' The bard picked his way through the compost and
crouched to check the victim's prone body. Satisfied to find no lasting
damage, he clicked his tongue. 'Now where are you wanting to hide him?
Or do you trust him so much you'd have him wake up alone and maybe
blunder into further mischief?'
    Elaira thought quickly. 'The hayloft, please.' Since the gates closed at
sundown, no mounted travellers could be expected to arrive or depart from
the tavern until daylight; the grooms would be carousing and the horseboy
predictably asleep.
    'All right then,' the bard said agreeably. 'Help me lift him before some
churl inside sits up and notices I didn't duck out to use the privy.'

The loft above the Ravens' innyard was dusty with the meadow-sweet
scent of hay and warm from the couriers' mounts and coach-horses stabled
in stalls down below. Couched in a cranny between haystacks and the
high, windowless north wall with Arithon sprawled by her knees, Elaira
bent over a bucket and wrung out a strip of linen torn at need from the
lining of her shepherd's cloak. Lit by a glimmer from her crystal, the
enchantress dabbed caked dirt and sweat from the unmistakably s'Ffalenn
features of the prince. Belatedly, she discovered blood in his hair. His scalp
had been split by the pastry roller.
    She bit her lip, chagrined. She had surely not struck him so hard: his
current unconscious condition was more due to her stay-spell than to the
head blow staged to disguise her foolish use of magic. Why then was she reluctant to free him?
    Elaira regarded Arithon's still face, its severe planes and angles unsoft-
ened by her jewel's faint radiance. Under her hands she felt the corded
tautness of him, the light-boned, lean sort of strength that was easiest of
all to underestimate. His handling of attackers and pot-hook had proved
him no stranger to violence; and the raw new scars that encircled his wrists
hammered home the recognition that only his bloodline was familiar. The
man himself had a past and a personality unknowably separate. He had not
even been raised on Athera.
    The intuitive deduction that marked Koriani origins shot Elaira's
uneasiness into focus. She had been mistaken to bring this prince here,
alone. Even incapacitated his person bespoke a man wayward in judge-
ment and decisively quick to take action. The association that had set him
off-balance when he entered the Four Ravens must run deeper than a
defaced kingdom banner: he had not expected to be attacked. When he

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woke, Arithon, High Prince of Rathain, was bound to be mettlesomely,
royally enraged.
    Elaira blotted flour off miraculously ungrazed knuckles: the fingers
seemed too finely made for the offensive delivered by the pot-hook. She
tossed aside her rag as if it burned her. The remiss young junior on lane
watch still had not touched her presence; worse yet, Elaira had no clue how
she should handle the man, or herself, when the moment came to wake
him up.
    Arithon stirred on his own in that wretchedest moment of uncertainty.
Elaira had time to panic and jack-knife clear as the heir apparent to a high
kingship gathered his wits and sat up.
    An immediate grimace twisted his face. He reached up, touched the
swollen cut in his scalp, and looked at her. 'Which wheel from the afterlife
did you spare me from, Daelion Fatemaster's or those of Dharkaron's
Chariot? I feel as if I've been milled under by something punishing from
the Almighty.'
    'How could you be so utterly, unbelievably stupid!' Elaira burst out.
Damn him, he was laughing! 'They could have killed you in there, and to
what purpose?'
    Arithon lowered his fingers, saw blood and thoughtfully hooked the rag
she had discarded. He folded the frayed edges neatly over on themselves
and pressed the compress to his scratch. 'Now that's a question you might
answer for me.'
    'Dharkaron, Ath's avenger!' Elaira was fast becoming exasperated.
'You're in Erdane! Your speech patterns are perfectly barbarian. And the
Ravens is a headhunters' haunt!'
 Very still, Arithon said, 'Whose heads are the hunted?'
    His curiosity was in no wise rooted in insolence. Filled by creeping
disbelief Elaira said, 'Asandir never told you.~ They pay bodyweight in gold
for the fugitive heirs of the earls. Half-weight for clan blood and probably
every jewel off the mayor's chubby daughters for anything related to a
prince.'
    Anthon lazed back on one elbow in the hay, his face tipped unreadably
forward as he knotted the cloth around his head. 'And what do you know of
any princes?'
    Elaira felt her heart bang hard against her ribs. 'Do you mean to tell me,
that you don't know who you are?'
    His response came back mocking. 'I thought I did. Has something
changed ?'
    'No.' Elaira gripped both hands in front of her shins: two could play his
game. 'Your Grace, you are Teir's'Ffalenn, prince and heir-apparent of the
crown of Rathain. All that pompous rhetoric means true-born son of an
old-blood high king. Every able man in this city, as well as the surrounding
countryside, would give his eldest child to be first to draw and quarter you.'
 A sound between a choke and a gasp cut her short.

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    Elaira glanced up to find Arithon's hand fallen away and his head thrown
back. The face beneath the black hair was helplessly stripped by confusion.
    He had not been baiting her: he had plainly not been told. That was not
all; around Arithon's person Elaira sensed a gathering corona of power,
invisibly triggered and unmistakably Asandir's. She had a split-second to
note that the forces that rang in opposition to Arithon's will were in fact an
ingeniously-laid restraint~ then the gist of what she had said lent an
impetus that provided him opening. He reacted with a practiced unbind-
ing, and the fabric of the ward sheared asunder. A snap like a spark whipped the air.
    Then Arithon did get angry, a charged, blind-sided rage that left him
wound like a spring and staring inward. 'Teir's'Ffalenn,' he said flatly. His
Paravian was accentless and fluent and the repeated term translated to
mean 'successor to power'. In the glow of the iewel the ratty twist of rag
around his head lent the shadowed illusion of a crown. 'Tell me about
Rathain.'
    His command allowed no loophole for refusal; afraid to provoke an
explosion, Elaira chose not to try. 'The five northwestern principalities on
this continent were territories in vassalage to Rathain, whose liege lord
once ruled at Ithamon.' She shrugged wretchedly. 'Since sovereignty of
Athera passed from Pararians to men, the high king crowned there by the
Fellowship has always, without exception, been s'Ffalenn.'
    Arithon moved, not fast enough to mask a flinch. He ripped the rag from
his head as though it were metal and heavy, and an anguish he could not
bury needled his reply to sarcasm. 'Don't tell me. The people of Rathain are
subject to misery and strife and Ithamon is a ruin in a wasteland.'
    In point of fact he was correct; but even rattled to shaking, Elaira was not
fool enough to say so. There had to be a reason why Asandir had kept
knowledge of this prince's inheritance a close secret.
    Arithon arose from the hay. He paced in agitated strides across the loft
and barely a board creaked to his passing. At length he spun about, his
desperation sharp as unsheathed steel. 'What about Lysaer?'
    Elaira tried for humour. 'Oh well, there's a kingdom waiting for him too.
In fact, we're sitting in the middle of it.'
    'Ah.' Arithon's brows tipped up. 'The banner in the Ravens. And perhaps
such unloving royal subjects were the reason for Asandir's reticence?'
    Careful to suppress other more volatile suppositions, the enchantress
nodded placating agreement. She watched the's'Ffalenn prince absorb this
and wondered what enormity she had caused, what balance had shifted
while Arithon went from tense to perceptively crafty.
    'I can keep this fiasco from Asandir,' he said in answer to the very
thought that had made her bite her lip.
    Elaira widened her eyes. 'You?' Merciful Ath, had he failed to perceive
the awful strength in the ward she had accidentally lent him leverage to
unbind ? 'How ? Are you crazy?'

139


    Arithon inclined his head in the precise direction of the Ravens, though
the barn wall before him had no window. 'Lady, how did you get across the
taproom?'
    Elaira reached up and smothered the light of her jewel in time to hide her
expression. In the taproom, diverted by fighting, he could not have seen
through her glamour.
    A breath of air brushed her face out of darkness: Arithon was moving
again, restless, and his words came turbulently fast. 'Asandir won't have
expected me to break through a block of that magnitude.' Hay restled as he
gestured, perhaps with remembered impatience. 'Sithaer's furies, I'd been
trying to achieve its release for long enough. Trouble was, if I pushed too
hard, I went unconscious.'
    Elaira turned white as she connected that the banner in the taproom had
initiated Arithon's compulsive moment of unsteadiness. 'I wonder why
the sorcerer didn't tell you?'
    Hands caught her wrists; deceptively and dangerously gentle they pulled
her fingers away from the jewel. Light sprang back and revealed Arithon on
one knee before her, his expression determinedly furious. 'Because I
happen not to wish the burdens that go with a throne!'
    He let her go, shoved away as though he sensed her Koriani perceptions
might draw advantage from his stillness. 'Kings all too often get their
hands tied. And for what? To keep food in the mouths of the hungry?
Hardly that, because the starving will feed themselves, if left alone. No. A
bad king revels in his importance. A good one hates his office. He spends
himself into infirmity quashing deadly little plots to make power the tool
of the greedy.'
    Elaira looked up into green eyes, frightened by the depth of their
vehemence. She argued anyway. 'Your friend Lysaer would say that
satisfaction can be found in true justice.'
    Arithon stood up and made a gesture of wounding appeal. 'Platitudes
offer no succour, my lady. There's very little beauty in satisfaction and
justice rewards nobody with joy.' He lowered his hands and his voice
dropped almost to a whisper. 'As Felirin the Scarlet would tell you.'
    He referred to the minstrel in the Ravens who had abetted his narrow
escape. Not the least bit taken in by his show of surface excuses, Elaira
drew her own conclusion. Arithon had slipped his sorcerer chaperone
and ventured abroad in Erdane looking expressly to provoke. He might
not have known the townsmen's pitch of antagonism; or he might have
simply not cared. His wildness made him contorted as knot-work to
decipher.
    In a typically rapid shift of mood, he managed a civilized recovery. 'I owe
you, lady enchantress. You spared me some rather unpleasant handling,
and for that you have my thanks. Someday I hope to show my gratitude.'
    Which was prettily done, and sincere, but hardly near the point. 'I saved
your life,' Elaira said in bald effort to shake his complacency.

140


    He just looked at her, his clothing in disarray and his face a bit worn, and
his reticence underhandedly reproachful. He had not been defenceless.
The pot-hook was only a diversion, since he had both training and
shadow-mastery carefully held in reserve. Touched by revelation, Elaira
saw that indeed he had not been backed against the passage to the pantry by
any accident but design.
    Beginning to appreciate his obstinacy, Elaira choked back a snort of
laughter. 'You were on course for the midden in any case?'
    Arithon smiled. 'As the possibility presented itself, yes. Have you
lodgings? I'd like to see you back safely.'
    'Oh, that's priceless,' Elaira gasped. Her eyes were watering. She hoped it
was only the dust. 'You're a damned liability in this town.'
    'In any town.' The Shadow Master paid her tribute with a bow. 'You
shouldn't worry over things that I'm too lazy to bother with.'
    'That's the problem exactly.' Elaira allowed him to take her hand and
draw her up to her feet. His strength was indeed deceptive, and he seemed
to release her fingers with reluctance. She said, 'I can find my way just fine.
The question is, can you?'
    She did not refer to the wards that concealed the location of the seeress's
house where he lodged.
    Her deliberately oblique reference did not escape him. 'Asandir knows I
went out for air.' Arithon made a rueful face at the odiferous stains on his
clothing. 'There are several suitably smelly puddles in the alley near
Enithen Tuer's. And dozens of hazardous obstacles. A man prone to odd
fits of dizziness might be quite likely to trip.'
    He reached out and began with light hands to pluck the loose hay
from her hair. That moment, when all care for pretence was abandoned,
the junior initiate on lane watch stumbled clumsily across Elaira's pres-
ence.
    The enchantress stiflened as the energies of her distant colleague passed
across her, identified her and responded with a jab of self-righteous
indignation. The backlash hurt. 'ithaer's furies, not now!' Elaira capped
her dismay with a fittingly filthy word.
 Taken aback, Arithon stepped away. 'I beg your pardon?'
    'You did nothing,' Elaira assured, her mind only half on apology.
Apparently there were worse offences than visiting sorcerers of the
Fellowship, or even engaging in card games with disreputable apprentice
prophets: by the repercussions sensed in the background, Elaira under-
stood that speaking with princes in haylofts after midnight was undeni-
ably one of them. Yet to explain the particulars of her crisis would take by
far too much time. 'I have a scrape of my own to work out of- my personal
version of Asandir.'
    Arithon grinned and melted unobtrusively into the shadows. 'Then I
commend you to subterfuge and a fast, soft landing in a midden.'
 She heard his soft step reach the ladder.

141


    'Farewell, lady enchantress.' Then he was gone, leaving her alone with
a larger dilemma than the one she had found in the loft at Enithen
Tuer'8.

142


Guardian of Mirthlvain

Cupped like a witch's cauldron between the jagged peaks of the Tiriacs and
the north shore of Methlas Lake, Mirthlvain Swamp was not a place where
even the boldest cared to tread. Submerged under vaporous mists, the pools
with their hummocks of spear-tipped reeds spawned horrors in their
muddy depths that the efforts of two civilizations had failed to secure
behind walls. Yet a man did dare the dangers and walk here, on the
crumbling stone causeway that remained of an ancient and long over-run
bulwark. Grievously short-handed as the Fellowship sorcerers had been
through the years since the Mistwraith's conquest, never for an instant
was Mirthlvain Swamp left unwatched.
    The master spellbinder Verrain crouched on a precarious span of
stonework with his elbows braced on his knees. A rust-coloured cloak lay
furled at his feet and untrimmed blond hair fringed his collar with beads of
accumulated damp. He had poised for a very long time, motionless, his
large, capable hands with their puncture scars from old bite wounds curled
over an equally battered staff.
    Wavelets flutried fitfully against the decayed wall, disturbed by some-
thing that lurked unseen in the depths; then the waters subsided to oily
stagnation. A line creased Verrain's brows and one ivory knuckle twitched.
Black eyes regarded blacker water, both invisibly troubled.
    The misted sky reflected in the pool shivered faintly, as if bubbles
sprang from the muck underneath and rose in a sequin shimmer; except
that no trapped air broke the surface. Verrain pursed lips that a very long
time in the past had been the delight of Daenfal's barmaids. He loosed a
hand from his staff and slowly, carefully, extended his arm above the
pool.
    He spoke in accents as antiquated as the doxies, who were all six
centuries dead. 'Show yourself, spawn of the methuri.'

143


Then he closed his fingers. The ribbon of power he held leashed in
readiness uncoiled through lightless fathoms.
    Ripples bloomed to a curl of froth as a whip-thin tail sliced the surface,
splashed and vanished.
    'Ah,' said Verrain thoughtfully. 'I am not so easily evaded.' He
murmured a word that unbound a restraint: a force like an arrow speared
through the murk in pursuit of a creature that zig-zagged in patterns of
wild flight.
    Muck flurried up from the depths. Then the peaty waters moiled and
burst into spray as a serpentine shape slashed through. The snake was
narrow, its head the distinctive wedge of a viper. The eyes it pinned on its
tormentor were scarlet as jewels, and malevolent.
    The spellbinder forced himself not to recoil. Though aware the sculling
serpent was fully capable of a strike, he traced a symbol upon the air. A
shimmer remained where his finger passed.
    The snake stayed trained upon the ward glyph as, crouched on the heels
of worn boots, and bare of any artifice or talisman, Vetrain transformed
thought into power. His palms began to glow faintly. He handled raw
energy as though it were solid and twisted it into a strand. The serpent
hissed, fighting the ward that held it bound and its tail flicked a silver fin of
water into the tangled banks of reed.
    Verrain's forehead ran with sweat. Faster now, his fingers wove spell-
thread into a snare which he cast over the creature that knifed the water.
    The pool exploded into spray. Unnaturally vocal for its kind, it screamed
like a rabbit as the ward clamped over its coils.
    The hair prickled on Verrain's neck as it twisted. He blocked its attempt
to dive. The snake screamed again. The spellbinder's nostrils flared against
the yapours thrown off by churning water. Grim with concentration and
braced as if for a blow, he released the rest of the energies he had pooled
throughout motionless hours of waiting.
    Light pulsed across his fine-knit spells. The mesh unravelled in a flash
and the serpent's cry ceased as if pinched. A last reflexive surge shot it full
length from the marsh before it fell back, limp.
    Verrain snatched up his staff. Fast as a swordsman, he hooked one flaccid
coil before it could sink beyond sight. A practiced snap of his wrist flipped
the serpent clear of the pool. Its dripping four-foot length spilled with a
slither on the moss-rotten stone of the wall.
    Exposed to full view, it gleamed sleekly black. A row of barbs ridged the
length of its spine. Verrain prodded the head into profile. The red eyes were
slitted like a cat's. An ivory diamond patterned the throat; the rest of the
underbelly was dark. Verrain pried open the mouth and extended the fangs
from their membrane sheaths. Venom seeped out, odourless and diamond-
clear; but the drop that splashed the rock left a caustic, smoking stain.
    Verrain scrambled back beyond reach of the fumes. His wide, expressive
mouth lost all trace of the fact he ever smiled. He had expected this serpent

144


might be a fresh variation; the creatures bent into mutation in past ages to
serve as hosts for rnethuri, or hate-wraiths, interbred with persistent
success. Although the Fellowship of Seven had exterminated the last of
these iyat-related parasites five thousand years back, Mirthlvain Swamp
continued relentlessly to brew up left-over crossbreeds.
    Diamond-throated meth-snakes cropped up in many forms, ranging
from harmless to virulently poisonous. This one Verrain had snared as a
formality, never suspecting its bite might carry a cierl-ankeshed toxin. He
shuddered to think of the risk he had taken, to Name-trance the creature
bare-handed. Weak in the knees, he leaned on his staff and thanked Ath
Creator he was unharmed and still standing upright.
    Even skin-contact with that deadliest of poisons caused a wasting of the
nerves, a screaming firestorm of agony that resulted in twitching paralysis.
His body might have lain on this wall and suppurated for days before the
life finally left it.
    Aware through Sethvir that the Fellowship was taxed thin by an
outbreak of Khadrim and the development of the West Gate Prophecy,
Vetrain frowned. His discovery was not going to please; cierl-ankeshed
was a threat that his masters securely believed had been eradicated.
    Suddenly drained by his weariness, the spellbinder who was Guardian of
Mirthlvain straightened. He shook out his rust-brown cloak, raised up his
staff and nudged ~he dead snake from the wall. The corpse fell with a splash
but did not sink. Even as Verrain moved away, his footsteps cautious on
the unstable stone of the wall, the ink-black waters behind him boiled up
in a froth as scavengers converged in a frenzy to devour the meth-snake's
remains.

145


Observations

In the city of Castle Point, a raven drops out of misty sky and alights on the
shoulder of a sorcerer who wears black, and whose dark, sad eyes are
shadowed further by a broad-brimmed hat with a patterned silver band...

Southward, beneath the shattered spires of the old earl's court, the
enchantress of the watch bears report to the Prime that Elaira has
culminated an illicit visit to Erdane with clandestine meetings with a
prince in a tavern hayloft...

Sethvir, sorcerer and archivist at Althain Tower to Asandir, in residence at
the home of Enithen Tuer: 'Cross Camris promptly. Trouble pending:
migrant strain of meth-snakes with cierl-ankeshed venom confirmed in
Mirthlvain swamp... '

146


