CURSE OF THE MISTWRAITH

The Wars of Light and Shadow

	By JanNY Worts

 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 Shadows, 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 Shadows 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, or 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.

 All for the waste of Karthan's lands the Leopard sailed the main.

s'llessid King then cursed s'Ffalenn, who robbed him, gold and grain.

-stanza from a ballad of Dascen Elur

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 fully 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 compass man 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 labored 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 halfdrowned 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
bone.  of pain and surprise, his wrist opened stark to the "Ath, he's
Karthan's," someone shouted.

The longboat'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 epithets,
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 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 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; after hours of thankless
labor, 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.

"Cuter 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.  At 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 burn, 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
brow line 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 kingdom's honor
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 slaughter, Arithon, Master of Shadows 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.

Jostled 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 dispersed
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 dead 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 Shadows
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
unrecognizable beneath the soot and stains of battle.

The first officer swallowed, his throat dry with nerves.

"Lock him up in the chart room."

The mate narrowed faded eyes and spat.  "That's a damned fool place
to stow a 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
commented.  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 harbor at Port Royal lay over seventeen 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 pounding 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 flame 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.

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 chart room door.

Teak panels exploded into slivers.  The first officer carried forward
into blackness dense as calligrapher's ink.  Sounds of a furious
struggle 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 stumbled, 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
needlefine 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 dived 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 front the window.  Struck across
the chest by a hard, contorted body, the first officer groped blindly
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 sideward into a
bulkhead, the first officer gasped.  He felt as if he handled a
careening maelstrom of fury.  A thigh sledgehammered 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 to the deck 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.

Desperate, 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 color high and the pulse angry and fast
behind his ripped collar.  The first officer avoided the accusation in
the older seaman'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
beleaguered crew in the chart room, 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.  Flame light 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.  Chart room'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 labored yet with the task of removing the broad
head 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 belabor the obvious: that Arithon's presence 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 seaman exclaimed and flung back.  The first
officer swung in time to see the captive stir and awaken.  Eyes the
color of new spring grass opened and fixed on the men who crowded the
chart room.  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 timberland rigging filled an unpleasant silence.  Crewmen
shifted uneasily 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 toward the door.

"And by Dharkaron's vengeance, stay on guard.  The king wants this
captive kept 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
chart room.

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 whispered 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 from the hold.

Arithon recovered awareness shortly afterward.  Dragged upright
between the stout arms of his captors, he took a minute longer to
orient himself.  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 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.  Flame light 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 experience 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 rib cage.  "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 from 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
sprinted 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 behavior makes civilized treatment
impossible."

"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
desperation.  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 harbor, 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 His Grace shoulder the task of getting
his mother's bastard presented to the king."  a The healer sighed and
reached for his satchel, forced to accede to the plan.  Five days of
strong possets would cause discomfort but no permanent 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 judgment, even in matters of blood feud, was
dependably, exactingly fair.

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 harbor 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
ill favor.

The prince noticed the man's arrival immediately.  Sword engaged in a
parry, he flung back coin-bright hair, then winked in friendly
acknowledgment.  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 honor, 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 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 halfbrother.  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
honor 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.

Anxious to please, the nobleman snapped his fingers at the servant
who waited with the swords.  "Send for the pnnce'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
favored 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 sorrowfully 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 to 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 The 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 of 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
antagonism 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 defenses.  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 honor.  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 steadily looked more rumpled and
weary.  A day spent managing an over-exubert ant three-year-old had
taxed his dignity sorely.

The royal nursemaid lifted the child from the floor.'Deft as she was
with little ones, still, the boy managed to twist in her arms and
tangle his nightshirt around his neck.  "Here," she scolded.  "Want to
choke yourself to death?"

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 jeweled tapestries glittered in
candlelight abnormally dim for the hour.  The chamberlain hesitated.

Warned of something amiss, he set the prince down; and 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 a raw quality of 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 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 shadows 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 firelight.

The king laughed.  "The s'Ffalenn will curse your lovely, gifted
children from the bottom of the sea."

The queen struggled.  Blond 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'llessid, 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 backward 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 anymore!"

The king started, spun, and saw his son in the entry.  His face
contorted like a stranger's.  "Get out of here.  " "Not" 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 breech, that long-forgotten maelstrom
of suffering, Arithon s'Ffalenn cast shadow.

An image pooled on the deck before the prince.  Sanded wood
transformed to a drift of silken sheets, upon which two figures twined,
naked.  Lysaer felt the breath tear like fire in his throat.  The man
was dark-haired and sword-scarred, unmistakably Avar s'Ffatenn; 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
collection?"

Lysaer's hand closed hard on his sword.  His mother and her illicit
lover blinked out like blown candles, and left, like an afterimage, 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 backward.  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 flat of the blade," he managed between
whistling breaths.  "Why not try the edge?"

But Arithon's voice missed his usual vicious note entirely.

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 want 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 clamor of echoes
dwindled, Arithon stirred and shut his eyes.  A shudder swept him.
That brief instant his control slipped, to reveal tearing grief and a
shocking depth of desperation.  Then, his mask of indifference
restored, he said, "I sailed as first officer on board the Saeriat.

The brigantine was my father's command."

The crown prince of Amroth drew breath, wrung by terrible
understanding.  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 fettered 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, I promise, the feud between s'Ffalenn and
s'llessid 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."

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 practiced
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, driven almost to nausea by
the intensity of his sympathy, the crown prince of Amroth gripped the
companionway rail.

"Fatemaster's judgment, 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 honor.  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 judgment 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."

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 royal retribution, tell him and every man of Briane's crew
that I'll sail along with them to intercede."

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
consciousness.  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 tfle
expression on his master's face, he became one of the few to discover
how deeply the high 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, mold, 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
aging 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 @ transgressions might fall upon
the hapless flesh of her son?

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 first born."

"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.

 Fragments

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....

Sentence

wenty days out of South Isle, the last unaccounted warTship breasted
the horizon off Port Royal; Briane backed sail and dropped anchor in
the harbor of Amroth's capital.

Word of her s'Ffalenn captive overturned propriety in the decorous
court of the king.  Wildly shouting, the noes 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 advisers.

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 Harbor Street, and the royal honor guard marched
out under the crown prince's direct command to transfer the Master of
Shadows from Briane's hold to the security of the 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 favorites.  The prince himself had been summarily dismissed to
muster guardsmen; that others who were equally informed did not dare
broach the subject was predictable.  Over matters concerning the
s'Ffalenn, too often the king's ire had broken the heads of the
innocent.

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, he heard none of the obscenities shouted by the
roisterous 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 Shadows 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 grille,
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 chill 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 over, tried again to
engage the analytical detachment necessary to engage basic magecraft.
Even small tricks of illusion required perfect integration of body and
mind; a sorcerer only held influence over forces of lesser
self-awareness.

But his skills answered with supreme reluctance.  Distressed, Arithon
fought to dampen 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 flats 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 chill, ache, and muscle cramp.  The
damage he found internally made him recoil in shock.  Control broke
before an overwhelming tide of horror, and memory returned of the
driven 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'llessid 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.  Rauven'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 beyond his power to subdue.  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 flurried into echoes and died.

His thoughts unraveled 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 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 willful 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, forestalling
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'llessid 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 judgment 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 selfsame 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, callused hands of his father
resting on his dark head.  He rose to his feet aflame with pride and
purpose, and before the weathercreased eyes of Karthan's captains,
accepted Avar's sword as token of his heirship.  a The weapon was
rarely beautiful.  Memory of smoke-dark steel chilled Arithon's palms,
and the chased silver inscription which twined the length of the blade
made the breath catch 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
limmered green fire as he laid the weapon flat 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 had barely heard the parting words of
the sorcerer who had raised him.  Now, they resounded like the horn
call of Dharkaron, mocking 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 harwould have striven to find in those
The ballad you write, the craft you sought in the land and the hearts
of efforts."

of his grandfather's final embrace, 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 harbor.  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 farm lands had proceeded too
slowly to bring rain; one last voyage had been monic balance you once
gifts you now renounce.

cast, must henceforth be Karthan.  Ath bless your Torn from the
vision Arithon strove to stern 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 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 shrink 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 gray, 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
wines, one for each s'llessid 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
neighboring 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 higher.

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 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 went painfully silent; musicians fidgeted uneasily
over muted instruments, and the advisers 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.

Then, the fair-headed image of his father, he left her and 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 honor?"

Stillness deepened 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 make 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 adviser regarded the prince with admiration.

But as if the prince were not present, the sovereign of Amroth set
down his knife.  Eyes as gray 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 favorites 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 signaled his page, who immediately went
running 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 judgment 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.  Justly angry that his personal honor had been
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 boisterously raised it high.  "To the
ruin of s'Ffalenn," he toasted.

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 Shadows, 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 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 hands 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 unmuffled 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
in his jacket.  "Your presence does no good here."

The king looked up, blue eyes steeped with hostility.  "You say?"

He grasped the blankets in his jeweled fist and whipped them back,
exposing his enemy in 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 his enemy thrash,
the flushed print of his fist stark against bloodless skin.  Tendons
sprang into relief beneath the 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 unraveled 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 bed linen 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, rutched linens and kneaded his
patient's contorted muscles until their quivering eased off 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 selfrestraint 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 sorry sympathy.  Then he left to seek audience with the
king.  All along he had expected to regret his dealings with the Master
of Shadows, 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 favor with his father.  Although the ignominy stung,
that his chair as the kingdom'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 highborn heads
turned to stare.

Lysaer studied the Master of Shadows 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
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 jeweled 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 center 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 gone beefy with outrage, but the lunge he began in
retaliation was forestalled 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 mean 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 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
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 gemstones and gold as his fingers tightened around the
grip.  "You exist this moment because I wish to see you suffer."

Arithon's reply came fast as a whip crack.  "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'llessid seamen.  Your reason will interest us all, since Lysaer never
sailed with a war fleet.  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
counseled 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
candleflame 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 guardsmens' blows tumbled his unresisting flesh
over and over before the dais, raising a counter-strophe 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
through the crowd to the antechamber.  His undyed cotton tunic hid any
marks of the halberdiers' 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 became 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.

Something 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 out as Arithon dragged himself back to his feet.

His upturned face sticky with blood, he confronted the king with acid
apology.  "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 the 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 became arrested by the sight of the
prisoner's outflung arm.  The fine fingers were limp, relaxed.

Memory of that same hand all splayed and stiffened 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, honorless 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.

A shadow appeared in the empty air.  The blot darkened, then resolved
into the image of a woman robed in the deep purple and gray 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 n'nging scream of sound.  The halberdiers
abandoned Arithon; with leveled 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 clamor.

"An illusion 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 stared 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 gray-bordered hood and spoke words that
carried to the farthest 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 hangings 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 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 smoldered 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 rose
from the assembled courtiers.

Lysaer stood stunned through the uproar, his attention arrested by
the sight of Arithon s'Ffalenn with all subterfuge gone from him.

Surprise and an emotion Lysaer could not place showed briefly on the
prisoner's battered face.  Then a halberdier 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 adviser
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 torn 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, fairhaired 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?"

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 Icing'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."

Ocean world Dascen Elur Left unmatched for five score years Shall
shape 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 probe 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 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 mad man'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.

 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'llessid, 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 gray 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 silently cursed.  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 ElurILeft unwatchedforfive score years..  . he recited,
obligingly quoting himself.

Crisply, Asandir stole the following lines.  " 'Shall shape from High
Kings of MenlUntried 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 whooped and flopped backward into a milkweed thicket.  Pods
exploded, winnowing a flurry of seeds.

These were not fluffy white with clean health, but musted with the
mildews the 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'llessid?"

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'llessid 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'llessid, 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 rancor.  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
banelfree 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.

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-colored 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....
 Who drinks this water Shall cease to age five hundred years Yet
suffer lengthened youth with tears Through grief, death's daughter
-inscription, Five Centuries Fountain Davien, Third Age 3140

111.  Exile

The crown prince of Amroth awoke to a nightmare of buffeting surf.

Muddled, disoriented, and unaccountably dizzy, he discovered that he
lay facedown on the floorboards of an open boat.  The fact distressed
him; he retained no memory of 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; constellations 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.

"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.

Consciousness 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.  Hefted 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 goose flesh 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 Aniroth 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 rat's 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.

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 of 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 honor 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
Arithon's tone stayed inhumanly detached.  "The differences in our
parentage 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 favored 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 invoke Rauven's
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'llessid 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 boot soles 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."
Lysaer sprang.  Never for an instant off his guard, Arithon fended
clear.  He ducked the fingers which raked to twist his collar into a
garrot.  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 wrist bone with the jeweled
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.  Leary 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 quarreling."

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 risk.  Have you any other
alternative?"

Alien sunlight blazed down on dark head and fair through a wary
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 five bundles of food and four water flasks.  Last, 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-defense.

"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."

Despising the diabolical sincerity of this latest of s'Ffalenn wiles,
Lysaer showed bitterness despite his effort to match the Master's
control.  "I'd rather take my chances than live on an enemy's
sufferance."

"No, brother."  With unhurried calm Arithon slung the sack across his
shoulders.  He buckled on the sword which once had been his father's
and said, "You'll have to trust me.  Let this prove my good faith."  He
neatly reversed the knife and tossed it at the prince's feet.

The jeweled handle struck earth, pattering sand over goldstitched
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 word is good."

Lysaer cursed and struck again.  Blood ran, spattering droplets over
the sand.  His enemy's sword hilt jabbed @is 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 Shadows
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 counter
hold.  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
shower of grit stung the prince's eyes.  Blinded, shocked to
involuntary hesitation by dirty tactics, Lysaer felt his enemy's hand
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
expression 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 by Ath, 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 plowed 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.

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 traveled 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.  Tried by the day-long trek more than
dignity would admit, Lysaer hiked through a haze of exhaustion.

His mouth was 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.  Yet 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 water flask 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."

Distrustfully the prince complied.  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
aggravated 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 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'llessid 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'llessid trust too often to admit any pardon.

With nothing of royal birthright left beyond integrity, selfrespect
demanded he endure his plight without shaming the family honor.  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
meager 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 shortlived.  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 smoldered through halos of airborne dust.  .

Lysaer and Arithon walked half bent with their faces swathed in rags.
Wind-whipped particles drove through the 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.

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 his lady left at South Isle seemed a pleasure
invented by delirium as reality became defined and limited by the agony
of each single step.

No thought remained for emotion.  The enemy at Lysaer's side seemed
form without meaning, a shadowy figure in windblown rags who walked
half obscured by sifted 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 gray 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
armorer's mallet, he had recovered equilibrium enough to hate.

The subject of his passion sat cross-legged 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 bloodyminded mistrust?"

A faint smile cracked Arithon's lips.  He caught the water flask by
his elbow with scabbed fingers and offered refreshment to the prince.
"Three swallows, Your Grace."  Only his voice missed his customary
smoothness.  "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 sandladen 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 "and gouged creases around reddened,
sunken eyes.  Ragged and gaunt himself, Lysaer observed that the
sorcerer's discipline which fueled 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 judgment.

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
Arithon 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 savored 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 sensation.  Neither did he waken as
Lysaer snatched the weapon from his lap.

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 pnnce smiled in quivering triumph.  Almost, he had acted
without the satisfaction of seeing his enemy suffer before the end.

"Tired, bastard?"  Lysaer shoved the loose-limbed 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 flat 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,
conscious 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 sword point
against his enemy's wracked 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.  I 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."

Arithon ignored the bite of steel at his throat.  "Foqr princes
entered this wasteland by another gate, one the records claim may be
active still.  Look east for a ruined city ...

Mearth.  Beyond lies the gate.  Beware of Mearth.  The records
mention a curse ... overwhelmed the inhabitants.

Something evil may remain .. ."  Arithon's words unraveled 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 armored 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 stiffened 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 at an execution's simplicity;
exquisitely balanced, the tempered edges designed to end life instead
offered testimony in Arithon's behalf.

The armorers 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 fathomed through
guesswork.  Honor did not act on ambiguity.  Piqued by a flat flare of
anger, he flung the sword away.

Steel flashed in a spinning arc and impaled with a thump 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 water flasks.  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 wea@, pain-wracked
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 had come 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.  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 judgment, 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?"

Gauntletted hands leveled the spear point at Arithon's breast-and now
the surrounding ocean teemed and sparkled with Amroth's fleet of
warships.  These 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 accoustics 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
shook him.  His chest exploded with insupportable agony.  A whistling
scream escaped his throat, blocked by a gritty palm.

"Damn you to Sithaer, hold still!"

Arithon opened glazed eyes and beheld the face of his s'llessid
half-brother.  Blood smeared the hand which released his lips.  Shocked
back to reason, the Master dragged breath into ruined 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."

A.rithon cursed faintly.  The prince knotted the corners 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 rustled; 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 ruined 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'llessid 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.

Silver and still as polished metal, water filled the basin to the
edge of a gilt-trimmed rim.  Lysaer cupped his palms, 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 roused instantly.  His muscles tensed like bowstrings under
Lysaer's arm, and his eyes opened, dark and hard as tourmaline.

He gasped.  Then a paroxym of trembling 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, 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 center.

The prince watched, alarmed by his thoroughness, as Arithon rustled
through the ivy which clung to the rim of 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
incomprehensible 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 by the irony, he said, "If these words
spell truth, Daelion Fatemaster's going to get a fair headache over the
records before the Wheel turns 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
ajoyless burden.

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 faintly 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."  a
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.  Recklessly 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 color.

Elaira restrained a heady urge to laugh.  Though she found the sight
of her senior's 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
resentment.  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 meager 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 state of the old earl's courtyard gleamed like steel underfoot,
marred across 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 fish pool, 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 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 lichensplotched arch of a World Gate.  Elaira dutifully recorded
their presence and moved on....

 Curse of Mearth

Tumbled past semblance of design, the ruins of Mearth thrust walls
like jagged teeth through dunes of rust-colored 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 scant 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 kill,
surely."

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
centered upon a crown he would never inherit.  As exiled prince, he
would be a man 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
honorless 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
chiseled the defenses 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, unequaled 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."  a 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, shadow-like, along the
crumbling curve of a cistern; the phenomenon was partnered by no
visible object.

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 halfbrother'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, flame light 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 recognized 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 powerfully 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 wellspring 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, compulsionbound 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 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 defense.  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 defenses, 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 necessity, the prince plumbed the source of his talent and struck.

Light cracked outward.  Unexpectedly blinded by a flat sheet of
radiance, Arithon cried out.  Sand, barrier, and shadows roared up in a
holocaust 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 flickered 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
defenses 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 half-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
signaled weakness, the shadows closed and battered against his barrier
with inexhaustible persistence.

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 outward.  Sand fused into glass.

Winds raised by the backlash gusted, howled, and flung Arithon like a
puppet against his halfbrother'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, flittering darkness.

Pressed on by the awful conviction that his banishment rendered him
powerless, Lysaer took a reckless step and channeled 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.

 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 gray
ash....

Clad in leather and fur, a band of armed men lie in ambush beside a
bearded captain, while a pack train 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....

IV.  Mistwraith's Bane he silvery sheen of West Gate rippled, broke,
and spilled Ttwo bodies into the foggy wilds of Athera.  Blond hair
gleamed like lost gold through the cross-thatched fronds of wet
bracken.

"S'llessid!"  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 hair
and a dark stubble of beard, Asandir saw enough to guess the eyes, when
they opened, would be green.

When neither traveler 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 lip% 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 ruined.  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'llessid.  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.  But 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'llessid prince he sheltered was heir to the throne of Tysan,
yet not so much as a hearth fire 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 beating 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 weighted 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 flame light, 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'llessid.  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 stiffened muscles.  Chilled, damp, and wearied through, he
failed to appreciate why Asandir wasted time with a servant when the
West Gate prophecy in all probability stood completed by the s'llessid
heir in the 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 Paravian 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 sunchildren, 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."  And flinching in
anticipation of well-deserved rebuke he added, "Can't you tell me
straight just once in a century?"

Yet, 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, anytime, 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 humor.

How had a royal son of s'Ffalenn come by the abuse so cruelly marked
into youthful flesh?  The sight was an offense.  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
surgeon'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 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 barriered, and his
strength considerable if his defenses 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'llessid 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 destiny.

The Sorcerer's surprise roused opposition.  Asandir dodged his
charge's challenge, shaped his will as a mirror, and deflected
Arithon's defense back upon itself The Master countered.  Before the
Sorcerer could lose his awareness in a maze of reflected self-hood, he
let up, 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
surprise.  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 an arrow lodged between neck
and heart.  The labored 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 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 flurried against his father's bloodied skin, extinguished
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 a]ready."  But rough,
seaman's hands reached from behind and wrenched the torch from his
grasp.  Flame spattered 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'll get crushed by the gaff."

But instead Arithon dropped to his knees beside his father.

He strove in abject denial to stanch 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 outright, 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 defense
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
systematically to the present.  The result wrung his heart.

Arithon was a man of multiple gifts, a mage-trained spirit tailored
by grief to abjure all desire for ruling power.

Scarred by his severe s'Ffalenn conscience, 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 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 intolerable proved tragedy 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 expenence 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 inconsolable grief of spirit engendered by a sand spit 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 reestablished 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 gray 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'llessid 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.  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 farm wife 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 chiseled 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 dived 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.  Earlier, the Mad Prophet had not noticed the rune
cut into the face of the emerald.  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, impossible.  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.  Flame light 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 cross guard.

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, "What!"  He watched accusingly as the Sorcerer pushed tangled
bridles aside and seated himself on the settle.

"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 dis'.

tall 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, after 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 of illusion.  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 flurried 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 belting clamor 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
vengeance 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
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 unpleasantly pricked 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 halfbrother'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
candleflame.  "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 disliked the thought he must rely on charity and a
former enemy's judgment.  "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."

Lysaer paused, half clad.  "I hear you."  The glare he turned upon
his half-brother all but made the s'Ffalenn flinch, so clearly did the
look recall the unpleasantness of Amroth's council chamber.  A moment
passed, charged with tension.  Then the prince swore softly and some of
the anger left him.  "By the Wheel, I'm tired of being shoved in beyond
my depth!"

"Your judgment isn't lacking."  But Arithon averted his face lest his
expression 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 the peaked beams of the ceiling, their
fragrance mingled with woodsmoke.  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 grind-stone
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 became 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.  Lysaer's hand supported his
elbow.  Steadied by the touch, Arithon forced back vertigo to respond.

"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."

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 tavern keeper 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 responded 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 storm front.

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 stew pot clanged onto the boards.  "Daelion's Wheel!"

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 pretense 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 centered 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.  Lysaer's expression masked a
statesman's dismay, and for a prolonged moment the curl of steam rising
from the stew pot became the only motion in the room.

Throughout, Asandir showed no surprise.  But his economy of movement
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 halfbrother 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, numbed 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 aftereffect from the geas of Mearth," Dakar was
saying.  Yet Arithon caught a look of calculation on the prophet's
clownish features.  The platitude masked an outright lie.

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, braced
for disappointment.  "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 itself
had 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
grandmother," 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
sharpness 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 had a strong premonition.  But I couldn't bear to see five
centuries of hope destroyed on the day of fulfillment."

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 defense.  "If they are going to fight, let me be the very last to
find out!"

 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 snow line,
ruffling 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 Canuis came dear.  But unlike
the mayor who now ruled the earl's castle in Erdane, Gfithen 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 the High King's fall....

A tambourine had clashed in the minstrel's hands, 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 head hunter's born.

When Grithen was three, the ballad recounting the fall of the house
of Erdane had scalded his 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 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 traveled from seaside.  A brand on a cask confin-ned.

Eight wagons passed beneath the ledge.  Gfithen 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
motionless, 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, quietly, he explained.  "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."

Color drained from Grithen's cheeks at the insult.  Although the
scout placed little faith in the prophecy which claimed the return of a
s'llessid high king, he would defend clan honor with his life.  There
lay the true measure of his birthright.  "As you will, Lord Tashan."

The elder nodded with curt satisfaction.  But Grithen followed him
from the ledge with rebellious resolve.  The next townsmen to cross the
pass of Odan would @ expertly plundered, and neither bards, nor elders,
nor force of arms would preserve them.

Preview

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 close by along 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.  Flurried 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, bejeweled.

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'llessid?"

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 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 judgment.

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 rift between townsman and
barbarian.

Concerned lest any former rivalry imperil the suppression of Athera's
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.

Envoys

The Prime Enchantress of the Koriathain calls a messenger north to
Erdane, and since late autumn promises unpleasant traveling, Lirenda
suggests Elaira in hopes the journey might blunt the edge of 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 of a bodiless Fellowship colleague, arrived to deliver a
warning: "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.

. .

Pide 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 woolen 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 mist-bound,
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 gray morning that dragged 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,
and twistedly stunted by lack of sunlight.

Gnarled, overhanging trees trailed hoary mantles of fungus.

Root beds 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 contrasted by the bright red crests of the males.

Unsettled by the taints of mold and damp-rotted bark, and by the
whispered 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 dominion keeps Dakar?  Even allowing for
the drag of his gut, he should have returned by now."  The prince
scratched the welts which already marred his fair skin, then cursed as
his fingers drew blood.

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 halfbrother 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
imposed 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 sword belt.  "I'll tell him the truth.  Silver to bread
crusts we find our prophet facedown 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
where he tolerated the shower of water that rained 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 bread crumbs," 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-flat
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 gray stone, their roof lines motley
with gables, turrets, and high, railed balconies.  The defenses 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.  Since the Mistwraith had repressed navigational arts, the
great ships no longer made port.  The merchants' mansions were
inhabited now by fishermen, and the wharfs 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, scuffed 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 traveling mounted, he dodged the muck and splatter
thrown up by rolling wagons with a diligence not shared by other
footbound travelers.  Ingrained to an enchanter's preference for
remaining unobtrusive, Arithon noted with unspoken relief that the
clothing given them to wear seemed unremarkably common.  Amid the
wayfarers bound for West End, he and his half-brother passed the guards
who lounged beside the lichen-crusted 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 whose purpose was 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 buff.  "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
exclamation, 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, 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 sausage seller.
"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 stiffened to deliver a civil retort, but Arithon, light as a
cutpurse, interjected his person between.  He caught the sausage
seller's waving fork and flashed a hard glance at the girl.  "No
offense 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 taD for the sunless climate and waited.

The girl softened first.  "Go right, through the weavers' 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, carven doorways and curious regard of strangers that he was no
longer heir to any kingdom, Lysaer swallowed 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.

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 a most 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 and said, "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 woolens 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 his pointedly unblemished
set of 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 centerpiece for a festival, and the stalls that
normally housed the fish market were hung with banners and ribbon.

Picket lines 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 needed tuning very badly.

Wary since the incident with the sausage seller, the halfbrothers
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 wine seller'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 butcher'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 yer clan
from trading next year."

The hag amid the jam boxes raised her chin and mumbled an obscenity,
while the colorfully 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 halfbrothers,
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, who, except for Lysaer, now stood
isolated as the farmers on either side backed away.  The drifter
answered back in offense.

"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
ownership 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 consider 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 gray 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 forestalled 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 a butcher'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 maintained 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 tile 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?"

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."

The Sorcerer 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
contemplate.  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 metalcolored dun
with an odd splash of white on her neck.  His own mount trailed behind,
a black with one ghost 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 sheep fleece pads and girth.

Asandir gave the oversight short shrift.  "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 sidestep
to stay underneath 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."

The company of three departed the instant the halfbrothers gained the
saddle.  Asandir led, and did not add that his choice in horses had
been guided by intent; he wanted Arithon kept preoccupied.  From an
urchin by the gates, the Sorcerer collected a pony laden with blankets
and leatherwrapped 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 done as
little for the snores.  Dakar rasped on unbated as Asandir drove the
cavalcade at a trot through West End's east-facing gate.

Once the farm lands surrounding the town fell behind, the road proved
sparsely traveled.  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 crisscrossed muck in the wheel
ruts grew rooster tails of weed.  The mists pressed down on a landscape
relentlessly flat, 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
isolated clink as horseshoes scraped rock offered lonely counterpoint
to the whirring 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?"

Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred
of his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways.  "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.  Arithon maligned her as the drag of the reins tore his scabs,
but his curses betrayed an admiration born of sympathy for her wayward
spirit.

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 misunderstanding."

Lysaer drew breath to inquire further, but the Sorcerer forestalled
him.  "Teir's'llessid," he said, using an oldlanguage 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 saddle bow, the Mad Prophet 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.

"lyats," Asandir said shortly, then qualified as his mouth turned
upward in unmistakable amusement.  "What folk here most aptly name
fiends."

Dakar swiveled his head and eyes, and with the aggrieved
determination of a bound man whose face dangled upsidedown, 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?"

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 Lyats.  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 midair.

While Lysaer and Arithon stared in stupefied astonishment, Asandir
calmly regarded 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 Lyat-borne puddle sloshed after-until the
Sorcerer snapped his fist open, and the mass lost cohesion and exploded
in a spatter of grit-laden 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-gray eyes on his errant apprentice and shook his
head.  He said gently, "I think it would be appropriate if you spent
the next hour contemplating the result of your untimely little 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 instructions?"

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 aftereffects of
strong drink.  Deaf to the moans from his apprentice, Asandir answered
Lysaer's avid question, and assured that the lyat would not be
returning to plague them.

"They feed upon natural energies-fire, falling water, temperature
change-and 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, gray afternoon.

Although 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 settled in a
sulk by the camp fire and immediately fell asleep.  Tired themselves,
and worn sore by unaccustomed hours in the saddle, Arithon and Lysaer
retired after supper.

They 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 tent pole, 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 in 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 honor
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 prince concentrated on the need in this
world, and the Mistwraith his new fate bound him to destroy.

Eventually he fell asleep.

The following days passed alike, except that Dakar rode astride
instead of roped like a bundled roll of cloth goods.

The dun mare steadied somewhat as the leagues passed; her bucks and
crab steps and shies arose more in spirited play than from any reaction
to fear.  But if Arithon had earned a reprieve from her taxing demands
on his horsemanship, 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 more
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 gray of misty weather, no one
was inclined toward talk.  Even Dakar's chatter subsided to silence.

"This wood was a meriy 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 away 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 deepest pulses that bind land and soil to Ath's harmony, they
left stones such as these to show which 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
sorrowfully shook his head.  "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 a 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 travelers, 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 buffed 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 hole 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 share the road also, 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 in staring at 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 laugh
lines and a stubble of half-grown beard.  The hazel eyes were merry
despite the swollen purple weals that marred him, forehead and cheek.

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 in the bargain."

Asandir cast a glance toward Arithon; if argument existed in favor 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-head, grayeyed one.

Change-bringer, storm-breaker; Asandir, Kingmaker "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 harbored 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 traveled 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 rumors in the taverns.
And should I be aware of another way into Camris beyond the road
through Tomir 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.

 Pealzs of Tornir

The caravan that had stranded Felirin 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 camp fires 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
challenge 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, and despite Lysaer's genial charm in
conversation, 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.

"The hands are cold and stumbling over grace notes."

Dakar predictably complained.  "You aren't quitting, Felirin, not so
soon.  Better we freeze to a misplayed tune than abide our sobriety in
silence."

The bard feigned 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."

Watching through peripheral vision, Felirin saw Arithon turn 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 practiced 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 closemouthed 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 awkwardness 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 camp 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 unequivocally
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?"

Green eyes flashed up, and almost immediately 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 gift, 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 lightheartedness.  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'llessid 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 Tomir 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 danping as he drew alongside
the Master.  "Did the two of you plan to split the take?"

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 saddle bow and spoke so 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
barbed remark to the Mad Prophet 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 gray 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 spellwrought, 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.

"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.

"I 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 gray.  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 added, rueful 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 armor 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?"

The 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, that's right!"

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 regarded 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 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 unreliable 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 desperate footholds.

Here the slate paving showed the abuse of harsh winters, split and
heaved crooked by frosts.  The horses picked carefully over uneven
footing, and the air took on the reek of cinders.  When they rounded a
switchback they saw why.

The stud balked, snorting with alarm.  Ahead, between the smoking
wreckage that remained of two dozen wagons, the drovers of the caravan
that 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 disinterested 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 armored
breastbone to each outstretched, claw-spurred tip.

"Stay close," commanded Asandir.  He reached across one-handed and
calmed Felirin's sidling gray with a touch, then scanned the sky with
worried eyes.

"There are more of them, and not far off," Dakar said with an odd and
unusual briskness.  a That moment a shrill whistle split the mist
overhead.  The sound was eerie, rich and complex with harmonics that
seemed to tantalize the edge of 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 h@ banged against the wreck, and a welter of cloth
goods 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 arched down as a spear might fall, red-eyed and forktailed, 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 armored 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.

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 midair and roared in 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 Shadows 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 the likes of this.

Arithon had been awed by the nearly cataclysmic forces held in check
within Asandir; for all the Sorcerer's perfectly schooled strength, his
powers seemed a brute statgment compared with the energies laid down in
perfect stillness in a span of tempered steel.

Arithon had known magework, but never, ever 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 tearingly 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, give you explanation for
the sword."

Past the stupefied bard, Dakar the Mad Prophet raised a hand and
touched the shoulder of 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."

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 evidenced 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
Tomir Peaks.

The shelter was often used by summer caravans, and passing
generations of wagoners 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 leveled 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 travelers.  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 traveled
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 the Sorcerer's words described.  "It must have been
hard, seeing your civilization shrink to a shadow of its former
greatness."

Asandir paused, his hands settled on his knees.  His eyes turned,
piercing into distance.  "Harder than you know, young s'llessid.  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 gray stallion's 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 Shadows."

Asandir settled back, his face washed gold by flame light.

"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 resembling
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 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 armorer,
Ffereton s'Darian, from the cinder of a fallen star.

"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' labor, 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
or battle could never 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 an answering flare of silver traced his touch.
As if the light somehow gentled him, his manner softened into
reverence.  "Riathan, the unicorns, sang the great spells of defense.
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 into the scabbard.  "The enchantment
was balanced to peak in defense 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, who was 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.

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.  Afterward
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 at his reaction.  "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, DaelFarenn, or Kingmaker, 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 Alithiet to a man, for valor in defense 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 armorers 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 labor.  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 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 Shadows;
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 uncomplicated 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, reflexively prepared for retreat.  If Dakar or the
Sorcerer had followed him, he wanted no part of their inquiries.

But the accents that maligned the roots and the dark in timeless
fragments of verse were the bard's.  A bump and er snapped stick ended
the loftier language.  "Daelion's judgment, 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 gray,
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?"

Felirin returned a dry chuckle.  "Don't change the subject.

You can't hide your anger 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, and 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, I ask for your oath you'll accept."

Silence; then 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 fence boards 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.

Felirin 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.

Back Trail

On the downs of Pasyvier, by the flames of a drifter's fire, a seer
speaks sharply to a grand 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 judgment 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 Tomir, 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....

 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 grayed 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
anklelength skirts, but their soles were not made for walking.  Her
hands were callused from the bridle rein, and her eyes a clear and
disturbing gray.

But the captain of the watch barely glanced up from his dice game,
and the teenage 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 pretense 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 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 cognizant of the risks.  She kept her knotworked hood
pulled 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 from the mosscrusted planks
of half-rotted, open-air stairways, and from spell-charmed strips of
tin nailed up to ward off Lyats.  Unlike many such talismans, these
held true power to guard.

Elaira could sense the faint resonance of their protection 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 wine shops 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 E@-dane's mayor sorely wished to
eradicate@xcept 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 sidetracked.  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 spell-craft, to pause here, even for a
second, was to become lost in a mage-worked 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 rumor.  If she was right,
the mayor's most persistent nightmare was already halfway 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."

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
rundown 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 halfcompleted game of chess.

Elaira's eyes widened.  They were here!  And unmistakably royal, the
blood lines perpetuated over many generations still apparent as the
nearer one rose to meet her.  Light from sconces edged pale s'llessid
hair in shining gold.  The one possessed an elegance that went beyond
his hands and face.  His eyes were jewel blue.  He carried his wellknit
frame with the dignity of a man schooled perfectly to listen, and a
pride unselfconscious 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.

Elaira thanked him with a haste that sprang from embarrassment.

Unused to male solicitude, she 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, but also
something else: the still, small shock of an awareness that recognized
power.  Elaira repressed stark surprise, while the s'llessid 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, 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?"  said Asandir of
the Fellowship of Seven.

"She wasn't sent," the seer interjected.  A palsied nudge sent the
enchantress 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 workplace that smelled of herbs and waxed
wood and oiled wool; a basket of carded fleece was 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 grays, 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 muddied 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 chair back and tried to
assimilate the particular that, unlike a Koriani senior, this Sorcerer
would pass no judgment upon her; no debt would be set on her demands.

She gathered her nerve and blurted, "I 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 on nothing unless she pressed him.

Her betters insisted 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 humor.  "I intend to give you answer, Elaira, but in the
expectation you will treat the information with a foresight your
superiors might hold in contempt."

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
explanation; 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?"  Asandir arose from the stool, an understated strength
inherent in even his simplest movement.

"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."

In response to his note of finality, Elaira arose 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 door latch.  "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 gentle 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 narrowminded."

Elaira quailed before the thought that Asandir had credited her with
far too balanced a mind.  She was not impartial where her seniors were
concerned, 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 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 analyze the interview
in retrospect, she realized how easily Asandir had tuned her
expectations, lulled her sense of canwith a touch of human fragility
and an air of attentive itude.  Now aware in the chill of the alley how
subtly 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, unsettled 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 obstruction.

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 rumor 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.

 The Four Ravens

After Erdane's gates closed at dusk, the taproom at the Inn of Four
Ravens was a rough and ill-considered place for a woman to linger by
herself.  Located in the disreputable wall district, the tavern was the
nightly hangout of headhunters, coarse-voiced laborers, and a
hard-bitten, boastful contingent of off-duty garrison soldiers.  The
air reeked of overheated humanity and spilled beer and unscrubbed
layers of cooking grease.  The hearth smoked.  By the quantity of
large-busted barmaids and the sleek look of the innkeeper, the upstairs
rooms were obviously rented for activities other than lodging.

The Ravens' gathering of ruffians were habitually too deep in their
cups to discriminate 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 hand 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."  More to the point, he knew that Asandir
would disapprove.

Elaira said nothing, but waited in persistent determination.

She dared not reach for her focusing jewel.  Even a fool would not
try spell-work in this place-not to bring clarity to Dakar's muddled
mind, or to drive off unwanted male advances.  Erdane's citizens had
aversions that ran to violence when confronted 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 lower lip until
Elaira wanted desperately to shake him.  "Arithon," Dakar said at last,
in snarling, petulant concession.

Elaira bit back triumph.  A neatly timed dirust 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
plowed 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 tAe 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 favors, 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 signaled the barmaid.

"No ale, no bets."  Dakar managed a beatific smile.

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 slammed up straight.  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 full 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.

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'llessid, 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 center.

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 sidestepped
the first swung fist.  As his first 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 half a 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!  Yer 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 footed the width of the taproom, target for a cross fire 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 followthrough mired two pursuers in the folds.  The
casualties tangled and crashed in a clatter of dropped knives and wool.

Stripped to shirtsleeves 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 eye blink, he spun his purloined implement
like a quarterstaff and rapped the legs from 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 melee flung a dagger.

Warned by a silvered 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 instantly 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 long
swords engaged him.  The clang of thrust and parry rang dissonant over
the shouting.  Elaira saw Arithon sidestep and swing to position a wall
at his back.  Wholly engaged in self-defense, 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
nakedly worried nod, she made a ward sign against misplaced trust and
begged a favor of a total stranger.  "Make me a diversion."

The scarlet-clad minstrel rose to the occasion with a floorshaking
shout of discovery.  "Ath perserve us, there are clansmen outside the
windows!"

A dozen attackers abandoned Arithon and rushed to assess this new
threat; in the moment while the fracas stood diverted, one frightened
witless enchantress centered 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 and dented pewter and sanded
floorboards.  Had anyone amid the Ravens' tumult paused and actually
searched for her, she would have instantly been spotted.  As it was,
the press of the brawl directed Arithon's aggressors everywhere else
but toward her.  The enchantress slipped rapidly across the taproom,
unnoticed as she skirted upset trestles, and 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 a silver
chain.  She cupped the jewel in her palm and munuured litanies to
refocus her innermind.

Her hand shook.  So did her voice.  She ignored impending panic and
prayed instead that the junior initiate on lanewatch would not choose
this moment to expose her; far from an afterthought, she added her plea
that no swordsman 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 scattered 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, 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 helter-skelter as
five men 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 with only
the stub of the sheared-off handle.  Elaira caught her balance and
retreated as the fight erupted wholesale into the pantry.  Bruised
against corners 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 defense.  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, Elaira 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 over to appear.

Yet grudges in Erdane ran obsessively deep.

Startled by female intervention, and emotionally charged from
adrenaline, the furious ones were easiest to deflect.

Elaira's mazework of confusion hooked their anger and carved out a
foothold for change; in something like sheepish embarrassment men
glanced at the prince behind her knees.

Their minds recalled no barbarian imposter, 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.  11

The slur raised a wave of scattered laughter.

"Sithaer, now," Elaira added, somehow through terror and an unstable
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 common room 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 hardearned 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 dog meat in 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 shudderingly 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 saved Arithon's 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 mischiefs"
Elaira thought quickly.  "The hayloft, please."  Since the gates closed
at sundown, no mounted travelers could be expected to arrive or depart
from the tavern until daylight; the grooms would be carousing, and the
horse boy 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 swollen 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 lo her stay-spell than
to the head blow staged to disguise her blatantly foolish use of magic.

Why then was she reluctant to free him?

Elaira regarded Arithon's still face, its severe planes and angles
unsoftened 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
judgment, 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 woke, Arithon, High Prince of Rathain, was bound to be
mettlesomely, royally enraged.

Elaira blotted flour off a miraculously ungrazed set of small
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 rentiss 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 jackknifed 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 like 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
therhselves and pressed the compress to his wound.  "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 body weight 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."

Arithon 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.

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 unbinding, 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 jewel, 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 Paravians 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 humor.  "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?"

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 lighting, 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 "Asandir won't have
expected me to break through a trick of that magnitude."  Hay rustled
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 succor, my lady.  There's a 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
chaperon 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 a bald effort to shake his
complacency.

He just looked at her, his clothing mussed over and his face a bit
worn, and his reticence underhandedly reproachful.  He had not been
defenseless.  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 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 pretense was abandoned, the
junior initiate on lane-watch stumbled clumsily across Elaira's
presence.

The enchantress stiffened as the energies of her distant colleague
passed across her, identified her, and responded with a jab of
self-righteous indignation.  The backlash hurt.

"Sithaer'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 offenses than visiting Sorcerers of the
Fellowship, or even engaging in card games with disreputable apprentice
prophets; by the repercussions sensed in the background, Elaira
understood that speaking with princes in haylofts after midnight was
undeniably 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.

"Farewell, lady enchantress."  Then he was gone, leaving her alone
with a larger dilemma than the one she had found in the room at Enithen
Tuer's.

 Guardian of Mirthivain

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 overrun bulwark.  Grievously shorthanded as the Fellowship
Sorcerers had been through the years since the Mistwraith's conquest,
never for an instant was Mirthlvain Swamp left unmatched.

The master spellbinder Verrain crouched on a precarious span of
stonework with his elbows braced on his knees.  A rust-colored 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 flurried fitfully against the decayed wall, disturbed by
something 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@xcept 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."

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 zigzagged 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, Verrain
transformed thought into power.  His palms began faintly to glow.  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; its
tail flicked a silver fin of water into the tangled banks of reed.  8,
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, the
creature 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 vapors 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-knitted spells.  The mesh unraveled 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, odorless 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 had ever smiled.  He had
expected this serpent might be a fresh variation; the creatures bent
into mutation in past ages to serve as hosts for methuri, or
hate-wraiths, interbred with persistent success.  Although the
Fellowship of Seven had exterminated the last of these Lyat-related
parasites five thousand years back, Mirthlvain Swamp continued
relentlessly to brew up leftover crossbreeds.

Diamond-throated meth-snakes cropped up in many forms, ranging from
harmless to virulently poisonous.  This one Verrain had snared as a
normality, 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 and finely shaking, 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,
Verrain 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 the 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.

 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 broadbrimmed 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 clan destine 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 methsnakes with cierl-ankeshed venom
confined in Mirthlvain Swamp ......

VII.  PASS OF OPLAN The morning following Arithon's escapade at the
Four TRavens, Asandir recalled the horses from the smithy where they
had been reshod, then rousted a hungover Dakar from the brothel that
had sheltered him through the night.

Whether the Mad Prophet had been sober enough to enjoy the doxie
whose bed had warmed him appeared dubious; he sat in the paint's saddle
with a pronounced list.  Yet the malaise that unstrung his balance
seemed not to dampen his complaints.

"When I pass beneath the Wheel, Dharkaron Avenger's going to seem
like an angel of mercy."  He crooked his reins in one elbow, cradled
his head, and managed with wellpracticed grumpiness to direct his
injury toward Asandir.

You said we'd be in Erdane for two more days."

The Sorcerer replied too softly to overhear, but the effect upon
Dakar was profound.

His cheeks went white as new snow.  Suddenly straight in his saddle,
he swung the paint's head and promptly spurred down the lane toward the
gates.  No further protest escaped him, even when the party clattered
out of Erdane and turned eastward at a pace guaranteed to inflame his
hangover.

Lysaer for once forbore from teasing.  Aware that his halfbrother had
stolen out last night by himself, and disappointed not to have been
asked along, he gained no chance for tactful inquiry; Arithon's
nighttime outing remained unexplained.  No mention was made of the
tunic which a peculiarly wakeful Enithen Tuer had snatched off to wash
before dawn.  Asandir's mood seemed preoccupied and brisk, and had been
so since daybreak.  Had Dakar felt inclined to be talkative, he might
have offered a fellow miscreant fair warning: with a Fellowship
Sorcerer, silence on any topic boded trouble.

Yet Arithon was disinclined to worry in any case.  With the mystery
behind his mind block resolved, the cutting edge eased from his
reserve.  Left less wary than watchful now that he understood the
stakes involved a kingship, he trusted time and circumstance would show
him an opening to overset Asandir's prerogatives.  Until then he rode
at his halfbrother's side, and not even his restive mare diverted him
from rapid-fire conversation.  Lysaer welcomed the entertainment.

Since too much quiet let him brood over the undermining losses of his
banishment, he fielded Arithon's quips in a spirited enthusiasm that
outlasted interruptions by fastriding couriers, and packed farm drays,
and once, a dusty band of cattle whose herd boys yipped and goaded
their charges to market.

Then, as with West End, the farmlands thinned and ended.

One hard day's travel beyond Erdane, the way became wild and
untenanted.  The brush-clothed scrub lands of Karmak gave rise to
forested downs laced with streamlets.  The mist seemed alive with the
rush of running water, and the air keen and brittle with coming snow.

More than once the party startled deer from the thickets.  If the
bucks were royally antlered, their incoming winter coats were flat and
lacking gloss; even after summer's forage, the does were sadly thin.

The mist's blighted legacy afflicted more than creatures in the wild.

After nightfall, perhaps due to the chill, Asandir relented and
engaged a room at a rundown wayside tavern that in better times had
been a hospice tended by Ath's initiates.

"What became of them?"  Lysaer asked.

"What happens to any order of belief when its connection to the
mysteries becomes sullied?"  Asandir chose not to entrust his tall
stallion to the ill-kempt groom, but attended to his saddle girths
himself.  "Desh-thiere's darkness disrupted more than sunlight on this
world.  The link that preserved was lost along with the Riathan
Paravians."

The pent-back sorrow in his statement did not invite further inquiry;
and if the carved gates at the innyard were still intact, the
beautiful, patterned sigils of ward had lost any power to guard.  The
tavern's musty attic proved to be riddled with Lyats, which perhaps
explained the dearth of clientele.

By the time the Sorcerer banished the pests, the hour had grown late;
the common room with its great blackened beams stood lamentably empty.
While here the accents of outland strangers did not provoke
hostilities, still the stooped old innkeeper took care not to turn his
back.  He served his odd guests in silence, while his wife stayed
hidden in the kitchen.

The fare was bland and too greasy; Lysaer left his plate barely
touched.  Arithon had seen worse on a ship's deck.

After sighs and a martyred show of eye rolling, Dakar righteously
forwent ale for mulled cider and a bowl of the inn's insipid stew.  The
bread had no weevils that he could see, so he ate it, and Lysaer's
portion, too.  Then he stalked from his emptied bowls to a bed that he
swore would have lice and mildew in the blankets.

This failed to secure him permission to retire in the hayloft.

Perhaps as a precaution, Asandir sat the night through in the
hallway, his back against the door panel.

"Unforgiving as a reformed priest," Dakar commiserated to Arithon;
yet whether the Sorcerer stood vigil to curb the excesses of his
apprentice, or to curtail further outings by the Master of Shadows, or
whether he simply wished space for clear thought, the Mad Prophet was
too wise to ask.  He flopped crosswise on a mattress of dusty ticking,
and his chain reaction of sneezes changed into snores that would have
done credit to a hibernating bear.

Busy scooping ice from the enameled ewer of wash water, and striving
to rise above low spirits, Lysaer regarded the sleeping prophet with a
mix of laughter and distaste.  "If he weren't apprenticed to a
Sorcerer, he would have made a splendid royal fool."

"What a curse to lay on a king," Arithon observed from the corner,
where, stripped down to his hose, he spread out his blankets on bare
floor.  A cockroach scurried up from a crack near his foot; he reacted
fast enough to crush it, changed his mind, and let it race to safety
under the baseboard.  "Not mentioning that every princess within reach
would have her bottom pinched to bruises."

Lysaer splashed frigid water on his face, gasped, and groped for his
shirt, that being the nearest cloth at hand; the innkeeper was too
stingy to provide towels.  The prince chafed his half-brother, "I'd say
that upbringing by mages left you cynical."

By now half muffled under bedclothes, Arithon said in startled
seriousness, "Of course not."

Lysaer rested his chin on his fists and his damply crumpled shirt.

Statesman enough to guess that the meat of the matter sprang from
Arithon's ill-starred heirship of Karthan, and not eased that the
thrust of s'Ffalenn wiles were now bent toward contention with Asandir,
he gently shifted the subject.  "Well, the loss of your roots doesn't
bother you much."

One corner of Arithon's mouth twitched.  After a moment the
expression resolved to a smile.  "If it takes sharing confidences to
prove that you're wrong, there was one young maid.  I was never
betrothed, as you were.  Sithaer, I barely so much as kissed her.  I
think she was as frightened of my shadows as I was of telling her my
feelings."

"Perhaps you'll find your way back to her."  The wind whined
mournfully through the cracks in the shutters and a draft stole through
the small room; touched by the chill, Lysaer shrugged.  "At least we
could ask Asandir to return us to Dascen Elur once we've defeated the
Mistwraith."

"No."  Arithon rolled over, his face turned unreadably to the wall.
"Depend on the fact that he won't."

"You found out something in Erdane, didn't you," Lysaer said.  But
his accusation dangled unanswered.  Rebuffed and alone with his
thoughts, and hating the fate that left him closeted at the whim of a
Sorcerer in the fusty lodgings of a second-rate roadside tavern, he
shook out his damp shirt and blew out the candle for the night.

Two days later, the riders in Asandir's party reached Standing Gate,
a rock formation that spanned the road in a lopsided natural arch.
Centaurs in past ages had carved the flanking columns into likenesses
of the twins who had founded their royal dynasty.  Since before the
memory of man the granite had resisted erosion; the kings Halmein and
Adon reared yet over the highway, their massive, majestic forelegs
upraised in the mist and their beards and maned backs stained the
verdigris of old bronze with blooms of lichen.

Mortal riders could not pass beneath their shadow without
experiencing a chill of profound awe.  Here the footfalls of the horses
seemed to resound with the echoes of another age, when the earth was
fresh with splendor and Paravians nurtured the mysteries.  Standing
Gate marked the upward ascent to the high valley pass of Orlan, sole
access through the Thaldein mountains to Atainia and lands to the east.

But even under the frosts of coming winter, in the years since the
fall of the high kings, travelers who fared through Standing Gate never
passed unobserved.

Asandir's party proved no exception, as Arithon discovered in a pause
to water his mare on the bank of a fastflowing creek.  Muffled against
the stiff breeze, he sat his saddle with both stirrups dropped and his
reins slipped loosely through his fingers.  Suddenly the dun flung her
head up.  Her rider did not see what spooked her; the woolen hood of
his cloak masked his peripheral vision as she snapped sideways and
wheeled.  Stalled from bolting by an expert play on the reins, the mare
crab-stepped, stopped, and blew noisily.  Her sable-edged ears pricked
toward a stand of scrub pine that rattled and tossed in the gusts.

Nothing moved that did not appear to belong there.

Yet when Arithon urged the mare on, she stamped and rigidly resisted.
Warned by her keener senses, he recovered his stirrups and stroked her
neck in pretense of coaxing her away; at the same time he centered his
mind and cast an enchanter's awareness over the thicket.

A man crouched there, motionless, clad in jerkin and leggings of sewn
wolf skin.  Weather had roughened his face beyond his years, and his
ruddy hair was tangled from the wind.  The consciousness Arithon
touched held a predator's leashed aggression paired with tempered
steel: a matched set of long knives and a javelin with a braided
leather grip.

Although to face away from the thicket as if no armed man watched his
back was a most unwelcome exercise, Arithon pressed his mare forward in
earnest.  The instant the rocky footing allowed a faster pace, he
trotted his horse and caught up with the others.

Dakar regarded him slantwise as the dun overtook his paint.  "How was
the assignation?  Or did you dawdle to swim?"

"Neither."  Arithon returned a grin of purest malice.  "Remind me to
recommend you as chaperon for some jealous pervert's catamite."

He ignored the Mad Prophet's thunderous scowl and disturbed Asandir's
preoccupied silence.  "We're being watched."

The Sorcerer's gaze stayed trained ahead, as if he saw beyond the
misty road which wound upward between steepening rocky outcrops.

"That's not surprising."

Wise to the subtleties of mages, Arithon withheld unwelcome
questions; presently the Sorcerer's steely eyes turned from whatever
inward landscape he had been contemplating.

"This is the townsmen's most dreaded stretch of highway.

The clans that ruled Camris before the rebellion make their stand
here.  If we were a caravan bearing metals or cloth goods, we would
require an armed escort.  Not being townborn, our party has little to
fear."

"The Camris clans were subject to the high king of Tysan?"

Arithon asked.

Asandir returned an absent glance.  "The old earls of Erdane swore
fealty.  Their descendants will not have forgotten."

Unfooled by the Sorcerer's apparent inattention, Arithon reined in
his mare.  As she curvetted and recovered stride by the shoulder of
Lysaer's chestnut, the green eyes of her rider showed a glint of veiled
speculation.  Covered by the clang of hooves on cleared rock, he said,
"We're going to see action in the pass."

Lysaer rubbed a nose nipped scarlet by the chill, his expression
turned gravely merry.  "Then someone better tell Dakar to tighten his
saddle girth.  Or the first quick move his paint makes will tumble him
over on the rocks."

"I heard that," interjected the Mad Prophet.  He flapped his elbows,
his reins, and his heels, and contrived to overtake the half-brothers
without mishap.  To Lysaer he said, "Let's be sporting and wager.  I
say my saddle stays put with no help from buckles, and you'll kiss the
dirt before I do."

Brown eyes slid craftily to the Shadow Master.  "And one thing
further-there won't be any trouble in the pass."

"Don't answer," said Arithon to his half-brother.  "Not unless you
fancy pulling cockle burrs from your saddle fleeces."

"That's unfair," Dakar retorted, injured.  "I only cheat when the
odds are hard against me."

"My point precisely."  Arithon ducked the swing the Mad Prophet
pitched in his direction, then sidled his mount safely clear as the
paint's saddle slid around her barrel and disgorged her fat rider in an
ignominious heap on the trail.

By the time the commotion settled and Dakar had righted the paint's
maladjusted tack, flurries eddied around the rocks.  The snowfall
thickened rapidly.  Within minutes all but the nearest landmarks became
buried in whirlwinds of white.  The storm that had threatened through
the past day and a half closed over the mountains, whipped in by a
dismal north wind.

The riders continued over ever more steepening terrain.

Bothered by Arithon's mention of trouble, Lysaer urged his horse past
a stand of boulders to find opening to speak with Asandir.

"When we reach the next town, might I sell my jewels to buy a sword?"

The Sorcerer returned a look like blank glass, his cragged brow
sprinkled with settled snow.  "We'll cross no more towns before arrival
at Althain Tower."

More forthright than his half-brother, Lysaer persevered.

"Perhaps we could find a tavern keeper with a spare blade available
for purchase, then."

Asandir's vagueness crystallized to piercing irritation.

"When you have need of a weapon, you shall be given one."

The Sorcerer urged his mount on with speed.  Concerned lest the road
become mired too deeply for travel, he allowed no stop until dusk, and
then only for the barest necessities.

The riders fed their horses and swallowed a hasty meal.  Sent out to
assess conditions, Lysaer returned to report that, even should the
blizzard slacken, the gusts had increased; drifting might render the
mountains impassable by daybreak.

"We'll be through the pass before then," Asandir stated flatly.

Despite outspoken resentment from Dakar, the Sorcerer quenched the
fire and ordered the horses resaddled.

The riders pressed eastward through a long and miserable night.

All but blind in the blizzard, they made torturous headway through
the dark.  The road narrowed to a trail hedged by knife-edged
promontories and sheer drops, each dip and ditch and gully smoothed
innocently over by drifts, Horses floundered through heavy footing or
clattered perilously across ice-sheened rock.  The winds buffeted all
the while with relentless ferocity.  Manes and cloaks became mantled in
ice.  The driving sting of snow crystals needled any exposed patch of
flesh, and hands and feet ached from the penetrating cold.

The horses forded the icy current of the Valendale and emerged,
dusted with hoarfrost from spume thrown off by the waterfalls.  In
times before the Mistwraith, the cascades could be seen falling like
ribbons of liquid starlight as the feed springs of hundreds of freshets
tumbled over clefts into the gorge.

Daybreak saw the riders deep into the pass of Orlan.  By then the
snowfall had eased, but Desh-thiere's mists sheathed the saw-toothed
ridges and the wind still cut like a sword.  The riders traversed the
high notches submerged in whipping snow devils as gusts stripped the
black rock of the Thaldeins and harried across a desertscape of drifts.

At times visibility closed until only the mage-trained could maintain
sure sense of direction.  Asandir and Arithon broke trail by turns,
relieved on occasion by Dakar; yet despite the cold and the rough,
floundering gait of his horse through the snow, the Mad Prophet
unreliably tended to fall asleep in his saddle.  Since a rider who
blundered over a precipice was unlikely to be found before the thaws,
and Asandir stayed wrapped in his silences, the chance to take fate by
the horns became too tempting for Arithon to resist.

He chose his moment to volunteer, then pressed his dun to the fore.
Throughout the next hour he drew gradually ahead, until a lead of fifty
paces separated him from the others.

Here, at the storm-choked heart of the pass, the road dropped sheer
on the north side, cliffs of trackless granite fallen away into a gulf
of impenetrable mist; south, escarpments towered upward to summits
buried in storm.  The drifts lay chest-deep and packed into layers by
the gusts.

Curtained in wind-whirled snow, Arithon spoke gently to his mare as
she shouldered tiredly ahead.  His deadened hands gave rein as she
stumbled; he balanced her, coaxed her forward with the promise of
shelter and bran as she clawed toward a scoured expanse of rock.  Stung
by a gust that watered his eyes, Arithon ducked his face behind his
hood just as the mare struck out off packed footing.  Her legs skated
wildly.  Pitched against her neck as she scrambled, Arithon kicked free
of the stirrups and dismounted.  He flung his cloak over her steaming
back and freed his dagger.  When the mare steadied he lifted a foreleg
and chipped out the ice hall that had compacted in the hollow of her
hool The res snows had long since scoured away the preventive of grease
applied on the banks of the ford.

When a glance backward showed the others halted to tend their own
mounts similarly, Arithon straightened.  Hopeful the barbarians were
still watching, he hooked the dun's reins and led her off without
troubling to dust the accumulated snow from his shoulders.  His jerkin
had soaked through in any case, with his cloak left draped across the
flanks of his mount.  The mare was dangerously weary and chilled, and
if her reserves became spent, the pass offered no shelter.

Arithon crossed the cleared patch, battered by blasts of driven ice.
Beyond, where the gale's direct force was cut by an overhanging rock
spur, the drifts lay piled and deep.  The mare sank to her brisket and
floundered to an uncertain halt.

While the weather continued to howl outside this one pocket of
stillness, a voice called challenge from above.

"Don't move."  The accents were crisp, commanding, and by town
standards, purely barbarian.  "Make one sound and you'll gain a dead
horse."

The dun snorted in hotheaded alarm.  Grasping for advantage in mired
footing, Arithon dug his knuckles in her ribs.

As she shied face about toward the cliff, he snatched the cloak from
her flank, cracked the cloth to fan her alarm, then let the force of
her spin fling him sideways.  The mare was a fast-moving target when
the barbarian made good his threat.  An arrow shot from a niche
overhead nicked a gash across her shoulder, then buried with a hiss in
rucked snow.

The sound and the sting undid the dun.  She bolted in panic, -her
gallop striking sparks from exposed stone as herd instinct impelled her
to backtrack.  She hit the last expanse of drifts in a white explosion
of snow clods, then disappeared completely as a gust roared like smoke
across the trail.

Sheltered under cover of the eddies, Arithon dropped his cloak, drew
Alithiel, and flattened his back against the underhang.  The wind
lulled.  Tumbling snow winnowed and settled to unveil chaos as the mare
charged through the oncoming riders.  Her loose reins looped the nose
of the chestnut and spun him plunging in a spraddle-legged stagger.

Lysaer kept his seat through skilled horsemanship, but could.

not avoid collision with Asandir's black.  Both mounts floundered
sideways.  Nose to tail just behind, the paint and the pack pony
rocketed back on their hocks.  Pans clanged and a poorly tied tent
flapped loose.  The pony ripped off a buck that scared the paint, and
caught sound asleep in the scramble, Dakar toppled headfirst into a
snowdrift.  He flopped back upright shouting epithets referring to
bitch-bred donkeys; while bearing their food stores and necessities,
the pack pony joined the paint and the dun in headlong stampede down
the trail.

Arithon seized the moment while the others were delayed and took
swift stock of his surroundings.  In a cranny above his sheltered
hollow, he caught his first glimpse of his attacker: a gloved hand, a
sleeve trimmed in wolf fur, and the dangerously leveled tip of a deer
arrow, the broad, fourbladed sort designed to rip and kill by internal
bleeding.

Arithon repressed a shiver through a moment of furious reassessment.
Chance had favored him; his horse had escaped without worse damage than
a scratch.  But if his spurious ploy was not to bring disaster, he
would have to do something about Lysaer.  Like the spirited dun, the
prince had too much character to meet any threat with complacency.

The drawn broadhead abruptly changed angle; Arithon jammed himself
tight to the rock as the archer's torso momentarily reared against the
sky.

The man wore leather and undyed wolf pelts.  Hair spiked with frost
fringed the rim of his brindled cap, and an impressive breadth of
shoulders matched the recurve bow held poised at the rim of the
abutment.  Motionless, afraid to exhale lest the plume of his breath
disclose his position, Arithon grinned outright as his adversary took
painstaking aim down the defile.

"Move away from the rocks," the archer called.  "I have you covered."
The moan of a rising gust drove him to urgency.  "Move out!

Now!"

The wind peaked.  Snow sheeted in a blanketing shower and the
barbarian fired blind.  As the shaft slashed through his discarded
cloak, Arithon scaled the rock face.  Sobered by discovery that
clansmen balked at killing not at all, he kicked through a cleft and
sought the lair of the bowman before his reckless ploy had time to
backfire.

The gust passed and the air cleared.  As the archer leaned out to
account for his hit, the Master stalked, his footfalls silenced by
snow.

The archer discovered his error, cursed, and whirled to cover his
back.  He caught his erstwhile quarry in the act of a counter ambush.

Unfazed by surprise and fast for his bulk, he nocked another arrow.

Arithon's thrown dagger sliced his bowstring in mid-draw.  The bow
cracked straight in backlash.  Snapped around by a severed end of
cordage, the arrow raked the clansman's wrist.

"Fiends!"  the scout cursed.  He disentangled his arm from his
disabled recurve, not quite soon enough.  Arithon closed his final
stride and poised Alithiel for a fatal thrust through the throat.

Brown eyes met green through a tigerish instant of assessment.

Though larger by a head and doubly muscled, the barbarian chose not
to risk a grab for his dagger; the blade at his neck was by far too
nervelessly steady.

"Try not to be foolish," Arithon said.  He looked up at his bulkier
adversary with an expression implacably shuttered.

"By the love of the mother who bore you, I urge you to think.  Ask
why I would do a thing, then forfeit all I had gained."  Slowly,
deliberately, he turned his blade and dropped it point downward between
the cross-laced boots of his captive.

Steel sliced through snow and stood quivering, the dark metal with
its striking silver tracery the dangerous invitation to a riddle.  The
clansman bridled his fury with an effort.  A moment passed, filled by
the howl of wind and the wet swirl of snow, and the slow drip of blood
from the fingers of a weapon-callused hand.  The smoke-dark steel in
the drift stayed untouched amid gathering spatters of scarlet.  Then,
as if nothing untoward had just happened, the barbarian's lips twisted
into a vexed and humorless smile.  "Move and you die," he told Arithon.

"Behind you stand six of my companions, every one of them armed."

Arithon felt a prick at his lower spine.  At bay on the point of a
javelin, his complacency remained unshaken.  "I'm required to surrender
twice?"

His unforced clarity of speech caused a stir through the band that
had trapped him.

The bowman alone stayed unmoved.  "Take the upstart," he snapped.

"Grithen, you're wrong," somebody protested-the voice sounded female.
"This catch is certainly no townsman."

"You say?"  The redheaded ringleader swore.  "Do you see clan
identification anywhere on this bastard?  Accents can be faked.  If
this man were clan born, but in league with'the mayors, he'd know
better than to leave town walls."

Arithon looked at Grithen, calm through an uncomfortable blast of
wind.  "And if I am neither?"  His indecipherable expression stayed
with him.  "What then?"

"Well, whoever values your foolhardy hide will pay us a bountiful
ransom."  Grithen signaled left-handedly, and this time his henchmen
responded.

Arithon found himself pitched forward into the snow.

Hands searched his person for weapons, found none, and pinioned with
a thoroughness that hurt.  Arithon twisted his head sideways.

"Furies of Sithaer!"  he exclaimed in derisive and blistering
consternation.  "Had I wanted a fight, don't you think I'd have knifed
something more than a bowstring?"

"Then why trouble with decoy and ambush in the first place?"

Wolfishly contentious, Grithen exacted payment for the shame of his
earlier misjudgment.  "Bind him."

Jerked to his feet, Arithon watched with a sailor's appreciation as
the scouts cut their rawhide laces and expertly tied up his wrists.

Then he averted his gaze, spat blood from a cut lip, and endured an
ignominous interval while more cords were looped tightly around his
ankles.  "The heart of the dilemma," he conceded to Gfithen in a final,
acid afterthought.  "Did I act out of purpose or folly?  You'd better
figure out which, and quickly."

Down the trail, Asandir's party had successfully recovered their
strays; they were starting back up the pass with obvious urgency and
concern, and though no one appeared to watch them, their progress was
covertly marked.

"Suppose I had a companion too prideful to submit to a threat."

Arithon looked keenly at his captor, who was frowning and flicking
blood from his leathers.  "Say my friend had no fear of danger, and he
forced you to harm him to make your capture.  That might be a pity.

His skin is pricelessly valuable."

Grithen whistled and shot a triumphant glance at his henchmen, one of
whom was indeed a scarred and grimfaced woman.  Then his leonine beard
parted in a grin of forthright appreciation.  "Which one is he?

I assure, we'll handle him as delicately as a flower."

Arithon raised his brows.  "Flower he isn't, but don't worry.  If he
doesn't cooperate and surrender, my life will surely be forfeit."

Gfithen caught up the hilt of Arithon's relinquished blade and tested
the balance, his smile turned suddenly corrosive.

"You're a boy lover," he concluded in disgust.  "That's why you gave
yourself up.  To protect your beloved."

"By Dharkaron," Arithon murmured, "how you'll wish that was true."

He showed no rancor at the insult, and at long last his barbarian
captor saw past his hostage's wooden expression.  The wretch he ordered
manhandled and tied and dragged toward the edge of the outcrop was
desperately struggling not to laugh.

"Mad," Krithen concluded under his breath.  He traced the sword's
edge with a fingertip and flinched as the steel nicked flesh.  Uneasy,
but too rabidly committed for retreat, he whistled the call of the
mountain hawk and alerted the band still in hiding to initiate the next
stage of his ambush.

The dun mare shied back, snorting over the jingle of bit rings and
gear as the riders approached the promontory where their companion had
lately come to grief.

"Whoa," Lysaer soothed gently.  Astride his disgruntled chestnut and
leading his half-brother's mount by the bridle, he slacked rein as the
mare jibbed backward.  "Whoa now."

The patience in his voice overlaid a worry that burned his thoughts
to white rage.  Obstinate the Master of Shadows might be, and most
times maddeningly reticent, yet as Lysaer combed through wind-whipped
snow for a man perhaps fallen and injured, he did not dwell on past
crimes or piracy.  However cross-grained, no matter how secretive or
odd a childhood among mages had made him, Arithon's motives before
exile had likely not been founded in malice.

He was kin, and the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled
that Lysaer had been born a prince.

The mare shied again, hauling the chestnut a half pace sideward.

Fixed and diligent in his search, Lysaer kept his seat out of reflex.

He swept the gray rocks and the trampled spread of drifts and finally
sighted the cloak, crumpled in a shallow depression and pinned by the
black shaft of an arrow.  His breath locked in his throat.  The dun had
not come by the gash on her shoulder through mishap, and now he had
proof.

Tautly controlled as a clock spring, Lysaer looped the dun's lead
through a ring on his saddle and crisply addressed Asandir.  "Arithon
suspected trouble in these mountains.

Why?"

Before the Sorcerer gave answer, shouts cut the misty pass.  The
abutments came alive with archers.

"Halt!"  called a bearded ruffian from the cliff top.  "Dismount and
throw down your arms!"

Lysaer spun in his stirrups, his bearing of command unthinking and
wrath like torchflame in his eyes.  "What have you done with my
half-brother?"

"Shot a hole in his cloak, as you see."  Accustomed to arrogance from
the mercenaries hired to guard caravans, the barbarian dared an
insolent grin.  "If you're minded to protest, I can add to that."

He rapped orders to someone in position over his head.

There followed a flurry of activity, and a bundle appeared, suspended
over the cliff face by a swinging length of rope.  As the wind lulled
and the snow settled to clear the view, Lysaer recognized Arithon,
bound hand and foot, and suspended face first over a drop that vanished
straight down into mist.  The brutes had gagged his mouth.

Provoked to instinctive reaction, Lysaer forgot he no longer held
royal authority.  Very pale but with unassailable dignity, he accosted
the raiders on the ridge.  "Lend me a blade.  For the sake of the life
you threaten, I'll set honor above cowardly extortion and offer trial
by single combat as settlement."

"How very touching!"  The barbarian ringleader raised up a
dark-bladed weapon, unmistakably Arithon's Alithiel, and set the
sharpened edge against the hanging cord.  One ply gave way, loud as a
slap in the silence.  "You mistake us for our ancestors, who perhaps
once affected such scruples.  But as long as mayors rule, there are no
fair fights in this pass.

Who will hit ground first, you?"  The ruffian dismissed Lysaer and
dipped the sword toward the hostage who dangled without struggle over
the abyss.  "Or this one, who provoked us by drawing first blood?"

"Would that Arithon had done worse," Lysaer cried back in
indignation.  "Unprincipled mongrel pack of thieves!  Had I an honor
guard with me, I'd see the last of you put to the sword!"

A hand restrained his arm, Asandir's, restoring Lysaer to shattering
recollection that his inheritance was forever lost; in cold fact he
owned nothing but a poignard to manage even token self-defense.

"Dismount as they wish, and quickly."  The Sorcerer did so himself,
while more barbarians armed with javelins closed in a ring from the
cliff.

Stiff with wounded pride, galled enough to murder for the brutality
which had befallen his half-brother, Lysaer watched in seething
compliance as Asandir threw the reins of his black to his apprentice
and confronted the cordon of weapon points.

"Who leads this party?"  the Sorcerer demanded.

"I'll ask the questions, graybeard," said the red-bearded young
spokesman who descended in a leap from the outcrop.

Cocksure, even ruthless with contempt, he strode through the circle
of his companions.

"Ask then," Asandir invited in a silken politeness that caused Dakar
to wince outright.  "But take care, young man.

You might gain other than you bargain for."

"You overstep your value, I think," the barbarian said, while the
wind parted the furs of his jerkin and cap and spun the fox-tail
trappings on his belt.  "The advice of old men is widespread as the
mist and as easily ignored."  He gestured a bloodied fist at the
hostage strung over the Mountainside.

"For his life, and yours, some grandchild or relative had better come
up with a ransom."

"It's not gold you want."  Asandir surveyed the barbarian from his
red-splashed boots to the crown of his wolf-pelt cap.  "For your sake,
you should have heeded the wisdom of your elders!  Vengefulness has
lured you into folly."

The raid leader drew a fast breath.  He found no words.

The Sorcerer pinned him in a regard like deathless frost, then killed
off refutation with a command.  "Lysaer, come forward and remove your
hood."

The barbarian gave way to blind outrage.  "The next man who speaks or
moves will wind up butchered on my signal!"

"Not so easily," rebutted the one who stepped forth, a figure muffled
in ordinary wool, whose fingers bore neither ring nor ornament as he
slipped off his gloves and raised his hands; but a man so unconsciously
sure of his position that every clansman present paused to stare.

Dark cloth slipped back to reveal honey gold hair, blue.

eyes still glacial with fury, and features that reflected a bloodline
not seen in Camris for centuries, but recognizable to every clan along
the Valendale.

"S'llessid!"  exclaimed the scar-faced woman at the fore.

"By Ath, he's royal, and who else could be his spokesman but the
Kingmaker himself, Asandir?"

Jolted as if he had been struck, Lysaer saw the Sorcerer return the
barest nod.  "At least one among you recalls tradition.  I bring you
Prince Lysaer, Teir's'llessid, scion of the high kings of Tysan, and by
unbroken line of descent, your liege lord."

The snow seemed suddenly too white, the air too painfully thin and
cold to breathe; stunned by the impact of astonishment, Lysaer stood as
if paralyzed.

The raid leader went from ruddy to waxen pale.  First to react, he
stepped back, undermined by horrified, weak-kneed humility.  "Merciful
Ath, how was I to know?"  He set Arithon's sword point down in the snow
at Lysaer's feet and dropped to his knees.  "My liege," he said in
strangled apology.  "I place myself and my companions at your mercy."

"At last you recall the manners of your forefathers, Grithen, son of
Tane."  Asandir's cool regard passed over the barbarian to encompass
the shocked ragged circle of aggressors as bows and javelins were
lowered, then let fall with a clatter onto the trail; more movement
followed.  All the scouts in the company prostrated themselves before
their prince until only the Sorcerer, Dakar, and a stunned, speechless
Lysaer remained standing.

For a half-dozen heartbeats, nothing stirred on the exposed spine of
the ridge but swirls of gale-whipped snow.

The revealed heir to Tysan's high kingship kept his feet and his
bearing only through unbending royal pride.

Then, encouraged by a smile from Asandir, the reflex of command
reasserted; the prince raised a voice of stinging authority.  "Restore
my half-brother to firm ground and set him free."

A pair of scouts scrambled to their feet, sped by the mention that
the captive they had manhandled was royal also.

Lysaer showed their consternation little mercy, but swept up
Arithon's sword.  "You," he said coldly.  He touched the naked blade
against the nape of Grithen's neck.  "Mayors might rule in Erdane, but
honor shall not be forgotten.  Remain on your knees until my
half-brother is returned safely to my side.  Then, since anger might
bias my fair opinion, I leave your fate in the hands of Asandir."

"That won't be necessary," the Sorcerer interjected.  "The Fellowship
of Seven passes no judgment upon men , but Maenalle, Steward of Tysan,
will properly perform this office.  She is qualified, having dispensed
the king's justice in the absence of her liege most ably through the
last two decades."

Chilled through his leggings by melted ice, and shamed by the steel
which revoked his last vestige of dignity, Grithen submitted without a
whimper; if the s'llessid prince was displeased by the rashness of his
scouts, Maenalle was going to be mortified.  Her verdict was certain to
be ruinous, and no comfort could be gained from the fact that Lord
Tashan, clan elder and Earl of Taerlin, had opposed the attack from the
start.  No doubt the old fox had recognized a true Sorcerer, Grithen
thought in despair; word of Asandir's party had perhaps crossed the
passes already.

Stilled with dread, acutely suffering from cramped muscles, Grithen
silently cursed his sour luck.  Given Maenalle's hard nature, he would
not be the least bit surprised if he became disbarred from his
inheritance as a result of this one ill-favored raid.

 An Arrival

Despite Asandir's insistence that Grithen not send ahead with the
news of Prince Lysaer's arrival, his party with its escort of clan
scouts was greeted at the head of the valley by no less than Maenalle
herself, companioned by a ceremonial guard of outriders.

With the storm past and the cloud cover thinned, the mists of
Desh-thiere prevailed still; the vale beyond the passes lay enshrouded
in featureless gloom.  Warned by the clear call of a horn, then by the
dimmed flash of gold trappings, Grithen groaned in pained apprehension.

Lord Tashan had indeed roused the camp, for no less than a Fellowship
Sorcerer could get Maenalle, Steward of Tysan, out of hunting leathers
and into anything resembling royal dress.

A companion jeered in commiseration.  "Who would have guessed the old
earl could still skip on his shanks like a lizard?"

The young lord responsible for the disaster in the pass was not the
only one taken aback.  At the head of the column, beside Asandir, the
freshly pronounced heir to the throne of Tysan hid confusion behind
princely decorum as he confronted the glittering guard from the
outpost.

"The woman who wears the circlet and the tabard with your colors is
Maenalle," Asandir said quickly.  "She is Steward of the Realm, last
heir to a very ancient title.  She and her forebears have safeguarded
Tysan's heritage in the absence of the king through the years since the
rebellion.  Let me speak to her first.  Then you shall greet her with
due respect, for all that she rules she has held in your name."

The travel-worn arrivals drew rein before the ranks of clan
outriders.  This company wore no furs, but livery of royal blue velvet
and sword belts beaded with gold.  The bridles of their matched bay
coursers were gilt also, and polished to smart perfection.  The woman
at the fore was boyishly slim, mounted side-saddle and fidgeting with
impatience.  Her habit was sable, her fur-trimmed shoulders and slender
waist engulfed by a tabard bearing the gold star blazon of Tysan.  In
her hand, she carried a sprig of briar, and her graying, short-cropped
hair was tucked back under a silver fillet.  She rode to meet Asandir,
drew rein as he dismounted, then laughed a merry welcome as he raised
his hands and swung her down.

A servant took her horse and the Sorcerer's, as she raised tawny eyes
and offered greeting.  "Welcome to Camris, Asandir of the Fellowship."
Her voice was clear as a sprite's and younger than her face, which wore
the years well on prominent cheekbones.  "You do us high honor, but
thank Ath, not often enough for me to grow accustomed to
wearing'skirts!"

From her hands Asandir accepted the Thorn branch that symbolized the
centuries of bitter exile.  A smile touched his eyes.  Smoothly as a
drawn breath he engaged his arts.  Green suffused the stem between his
fingers.  A burst of new leaves unfurled from the barren sprig,
followed by a bud, then the wine-deep flush of a flawless summer rose.

While the company looked on in awed silence, the Sorcerer stripped
the thorns and tucked the bloom into the steward's fading hair.  "Lady
Maenalle," he said gravely, "after this I dare say you'll need skirts
for better occasions."  He turned her gently, raised her hand toward
the rider on the chestnut who sat in his saddle like a man born to
rule.

"I give you Prince Lysaer s'llessid, scion of Halduin the First, and
by blood descent your liege lord."

Lysaer looked down at the steward his kingship would supplant, a
woman who radiated command in her own right through every unconscious
movement; unsure of his newfound status, he anticipated a reaction of
enmity, resentment, even shock.  But Maenalle's hawk-bright eyes only
looked stunned for a second before they filled with tears.  Then she
cried aloud for sheer joy, curtsied without thought for slushy ground,
and gave up her hand for his kiss.

"My royal lord," she murmured, looking suddenly fragile beneath the
mantling weight of state finery.

Feeling dirty, reminded the instant he smelled her perfume that he
reeked of woodsmoke and sweat, the prince set his lips against a palm
welted with callus like a swordsman's.

He mastered surprise at the steward's mannish incongruities, overcame
embarrassment, and belatedly applied himself to courtesy.

"Your arrival is the light of our hope made real."

Maenalle smiled brightly, turned, and shouted back to her escort of
men at arms.  "Did you hear?  A s'llessid!  A blood descendant of
Halduin himself!  Lysaer, Teir's'llessid, has returned to reclaim the
throne of Tysan!"

A mighty shout met her words.  Protocol was abandoned.

Men leaped from the backs of their horses and closed in ecstatic
excitement around the steward and their acknowledged prince.

"You must forgive any disrespect, Your Grace," Maenalle shouted over
the tumult as Lysaer was swept from his saddle, embraced, and pummeled
roundly on the back by dozens of welcoming hands.  "Five centuries was
a very long time to wait for your coming, and the times in between have
been harsh."

Too breathless to manage even banal reply, Lysaer struggled to
recover equilibrium.  Accustomed to royal propriety, and formal even
with friends, the rough-cut camaraderie of Maenalle's discipline
bruised his dignity.  Thrust unwarned into inheritance of a kingdom
unknowably vast, he coped with no knowledge of precedence to lend him
grace.

The wholehearted abandonment of decorum permitted no opening for
questions, not about the prince's return from Dascen Elur, or
concerning the demeaning, mishandled raid in the pass of Orlan.

Tactfully reminded by the Sorcerer that the storm had kept his party
traveling through two nights with scanty sleep, Maenalle called her
escort back to order.

Quickly, efficiently, her outriders formed up into columns and set
off to hustle their prince and all his company to the comforts of the
clan lords' west outpost.

While the needs of royal guests were attended, and tired horses led
off to stables, the crude plank door of the camp cabin appointed as the
steward's privy chamber clicked gently shut behind Maenalle.  She had
shed the magnificence of circlet and tabard.  Shadowy in the fall of
her black habit, her feathered hair pale as a halo around her face, she
regarded the Sorcerer who warmed himself by the hearth across a cramped
expanse of bare floor.  Although the room functioned as an office, it
held neither pens nor parchments, nor any furnishing resembling a desk.
A dry wine tun in one corner was stuffed with rolled parchment maps.
Past an unsanded split-plank table, the only hanging to cut the drafts
through ill-fitted board walls was a wolf pelt pegged up and stretched
with rawhide.

"You wished to speak to me," Asandir prodded gently.

Startled to discover she had been holding her breath, Maenalle
clasped her hands by her hip where her sword hilt normally rested.

"You can tell me now what you wouldn't say in public."

She had always had blistering courage; warmed by air that smelled of
cedar and oiled leather, Asandir peeled back damp cuffs and chafed his
wrists to restore circulation.

When he faced her next, he was unsmiling.  "If your people wish to
celebrate, the festivities to honor their prince's return must be
brief.  An outbreak of virulently poisonous meth-snakes has arisen in
Mirthlvain.  They derive from migrant stock, and if they spread in
widespread numbers, our departure could be urgently swift."

Still sharp from her interview with Grithen, Maenalle said, "Dakar
already told me: you planned to travel on to Althain Tower in any
case."  She pushed away from the door panel, pulled a hide hassock from
the fireside, and perched with an irritable kick at the skirts that
mired her ankles.

"Distant troubles in Mirthivain don't explain your cagey choice of
language."

"You're asking to know if you can shed your office, along with your
tabard?"  Asandir's sternness loosened into a smile.  "The Seven have
not yet formally sanctioned Lysaer's accession to Tysan's crown, that's
true.  But not because the prince is unworthy."

"Well, thank Ath for that."  Maenalle arose and walked the
floorboards.  Though she wore hard-soled boots for riding, her
footfalls out of habit made no sound.  "If I told the camp they
couldn't celebrate, I'd probably face an armed uprising."

Moved by her leashed note of hope, Asandir spoke honestly and fast.
"If Lysaer and his half-brother can successfully defeat the Mistwraith,
you shall have your coronation as swiftly as injustices can be put
right."

"Are the old records true?"  Maenalle seemed suddenly hard as
sheathed steel as she propped her back against the chimney nook.  "Was
your colleague who barred South Gate against the mist's first invasion
left broken and lame by his act?"

"Yes."  Seeing the tension quiver through her, Asandir arose, touched
her elbow, and gently urged her to take his chair.  In contrast with
her staunch strength, her bones felt fragile as a bird's.  "I'll not
give you platitudes.  Desh-thiere is an unknown and dangerous
adversary.  Dakar's prophecy promises its bane, clearly enough.  But no
guarantee can be given that the half-brothers who shoulder the burden
of its defeat will emerge from their trial unscathed.  Lysaer's
official sanction for royal succession must be withheld until after
full sunlight is restored."

Outside the nailed flap of hide that shuttered the window, boisterous
calls and laughter set a dog yapping over the everyday screel of steel
being ground on a sharpening wheel.

Maenalle took a moment to recover the steadiness to trust her voice.
"What will become of my clansmen if our s'llessid heir is left maimed
or dead?"

Now reluctant to meet her brave scrutiny, Asandir faced toward the
fireside.  "If Lysaer is impaired, he will have heirs.  If he is
killed, we know for certain there are other s'Ilessid kinsmen alive
beyond the Gates in Dascen Elur."

To show to what extent he shared her worry, he added, "The kingdom of
Rathain is not so lucky.  Since the Teir's'Ffalenn now with us is the
last of his line, rest assured, Lady Maenalle.  The Seven will guard
the safety of both princes to the limit of our power and diligence."

A Return

The journey south from Erdane to the old earl's summer palace in the
foothills ordinarily took three days for a rider traveling light.

Though the return dispatches Elaira carried for the Prime were not
urgent, she crossed the distance in less.  A sudden freeze and the late
season's sloppy mud discouraged caravans at a time when the trade
guilds had stockpiled their raw materials for the winter.  Left the
latitude to order her priorities, the enchantress used her travel
allowance for extra post horses instead of lodging.

She hoped that a late-night arrival would allow her the chance for a
hot bath and a rest before she faced reckoning for the Ravens.

Weather conspired to foil her.  In the dark, through driving rain,
landmarks became invisible, and the lane leading westward from Kelsing
had fallen into decay since the Mistwraith.  Only a ghostly trace of
wheel ruts crossed the barren hilltops; the sheltered soil in the
valleys encouraged brush and thickets, and oak groves choked the washes
under obliterating drifts of rotted leaves.  Since the mare collected
from the last livery stable was her own beloved bay, Elaira could
hardly drive at speed through scrub lands riddled with gullies and
badger setts that could snap a horse's legs on a misstep.

Daybreak was well past when, skin wet and sore, and made cross by
storm and delay, she reined in the little mare before a disused postern
that let into the ruined palace gardens.

A novice initiate awaited her.  Miserable in the heavy fall of rain,
she announced with clipped asperity that the incoming message rider was
expected to report at once to the main hall.

Elaira dismounted with a dispirited sigh.  If word of her doings
concerned the Prime Council, she would have been met on arrival however
inconvenient the hour.  Rain hammered in sheets across the flags,
rinsing rivulets through the arches overhead.  Elaira draped her reins
on the mare's steaming neck and started to loosen girth buckles.

"You should call a groom for that."  The novice was shivering, as
thoroughly drenched as Elaira, except that her vigil had been performed
after breakfast and a warm night's sleep.  "The Prime Enchantress is
displeased, and delay will just worsen your case."

Elaira felt the cold go through to her marrow.  "Morriel wants me?"
She tried and failed to hide her distress.  "But I thought-" "That
today was the time appointed to review the orphan wards," the novice
interrupted, prim to the point of cattiness.

"It should be.  Your doings in Erdane caused the roster to be
rearranged."

A tingle of blood suffused Elaira's face.  Already her disgrace had
seeded gossip.  Had she not been the daughter of a street thief before
the Koriani claimed her for training, shame might have hampered the
wits that allowed her to rally.  "I'd best not wait for a page, then.
If their evaluation has been put off, the boys will have time on their
hands.

You'll only need a minute to find one to see my mount cooled and
stabled."

The pages were all eating dinner at this hour, and it would serve one
junior novice right, Elaira thought as she fumbled with icy fingers to
unbuckle the satchel of dispatches from the saddle rings.  If the Prime
herself was displeased, that made for worries enough without every new
snip in the order troubling to point up the fact.  Before the flummoxed
girl could utter protest, Elaira surrendered her reins, shouldered her
burden of papers, and pushed on through flowerbeds choked with bracken
and hedgerows run together into mossgreen tunnels snarled with creepers
and Thorn.

The wing to the ladies' chambers nested amid the overgrowth like a
pile of moss-rotten stone.  The beams that roofed the porticos had
caved, spilling slate like shattered pewter over what once had been
marble mosaic.  Elaira kicked down a daunting stand of weeds to reach
the doorway.  The original portal of cedar and filigree had long since
rotted away.  Bronze hinges cast in a tracery of rose leaves now hung
rough-hewn planks nailed together with a strip of boiled cowhide.  Wet
leaves jammed the sill.  Elaira wasted minutes in prying the panel
open; she persisted rather than go around the front way, and would
endure obstacles far worse before she traipsed in her dripping,
bedraggled state past the eyes of her curious peers.

That prideful scruple cost her skinned knuckles and added sweat to
her smell of wet horse.  Militant despite Asandir's counsel of
temperance, Elaira hastened through a chain of moldering bedchambers;
if the Prime Enchantress saw fit to demand audience after an all-night
ride with no bath, she deserved to endure the result.

In better, idle moments, the carved wainscoting and decaying
has-reliefs that ornamented the cornices and ceilings invited daydreams
of the original inhabitants.  But on a morning made gloomy by cascades
of falling rain, the rooms of dead earls' ladies seemed musty with
sorrowful memories.  Elaira let herself out into a brick and flagstone
inner corridor and proceeded through shadowed archways and around
puddles let in by leaks to the anteroom where the enormous halfwit who
served as Morriel's door guard granted her instant admittance.

The gentle man was not smiling, a distressing sign.

Left alone beneath the cavernous vaults of the great hall while the
panels boomed shut on her heels, Elaira stopped short.  The chairs
before the frieze-work dais stood empty, and no fire burned in the
grate.  The Prime Council's review had not just been deferred, but
cancelled for today altogether.  No disdainful circle of seniors
awaited; only two cowed-looking pageboys, scarcely twelve years of age
and identically blond, bearing the paired standards and crested crane
device that symbolized Morriel's authority.

The Prime herself held audience.  Aged and thin as a whip, she sat
her seat of power looking faded in official purple robes and skin as
translucent as antique porcelain.  Yet her shoulders were not bowed;
her hand on her order was unyielding as north-facing granite, hard as
the diamonds that netted her bone-white hair and flashed on her
blue-veined wrists.  Couched amid calculating wrinkles, her eyes
gleamed black as a canion crow's.

Clumsy at the worst of moments, Elaira tripped on the hem of her
traveling cloak.

Morriel looked up at the sound, sharp cheekbones and hawk nose
enhancing her bird-like rapacity.  She waved her hand.  The bundle of
cloth by her elbow stirred upright and turned around with an
unmistakably feline grace.  Elaira caught her breath in true fear as
she identified First Enchantress Lirenda, present all the while, and
whispering in the matriarch's ear.  Clad in judiciary black, veiled in
muslin, she stood in attendance as Ceremonial Inquisitor.

For her late transgressions in Erdane, Elaira was not to suffer
enquiry but the formal, closed trial reserved for enchantresses who
broke their vows of obedience.

Frowning, scared, and chilled from more than damp clothing, Elaira
reviewed her mistakes: she had spoken with a Sorcerer, but not to
betray her orders' secrets; she had gambled with a drunken prophet, but
except for flouting an unwritten code of manners, she had committed no
indecency.  If Erdane's officials had caught her at spell-craft, she
might have burned, but no others in the sisterhood had shared her risk.

Last and surely least, her talk with the s'Ffalenn heir in the
hayloft had passed in absolute innocence.

Why should she be called in for judgment as if she had plotted a
grand offense?

Rumpled and travel-stained before her seniors' immaculate presence,
Elaira lowered the message satchel.  She slipped the strap from fingers
gone nerveless and threw off her muddied cloak.  Her knees shook
through her curtsy, a detail made obvious by her riding leathers.

Somehow she managed a level voice.  "I stand before my betters to
serve."

Prime Enchantress Mor-riel inclined her head, the shimmer of her
diamonds and lace netting pricked with light like new tears.  She did
not speak; since by custom the Prime addressed no outsiders, oath
breakers fell under the same stigma.

First Enchantress Lirenda spoke in Morriel's stead, her enunciation
as ominous as the cross of swords behind her veil.  "Junior initiate
Elaira, you were sent north with routine dispatches for the house
matron outside of Erdane.  Instructions did not mention taverns, or
brothels, or card gambling with drunken prophets who consort with
Sorcerers of the Fellowship."

Left light-headed by the pound of her fast-beating heart, Elaira
returned the only excuse she could plead.  "I was told to be observant,
to bring back the news of the road."  Dakar had told more in five
minutes than lane-watchers had gleaned through a month of tedious
observation; yet that truth would but incense the Prime further.

Elaira stared at the floor.  "Mistakenly, I thought facts were of
greater importance than the methods used to seek them."

Morriel twitched a finger at Lirenda, her nail a yellowed claw
against thin-skinned fairness.  "Ethics do not matter?"

The First to the Prime elaborated upon the matriarch's dry statement,
"Dakar sober would hardly reveal his master's purposes.

Drunken, he is incapable of separating fact from fancy.  Not in
collective memory has our order stooped to scouring brothels and
taprooms for knowledge of events.  To your shame, you're the first
initiate who has tried."

The Prime rapped her knuckles against the ebony arm of her chair.

Done with lecturing, Lirenda stepped to a side table.  She fetched
back a steel-bound coffer secured by a mesh of interlaced wardspells
that shed a resonance to wring dread from even the least talented
perception.  The pageboys behind Morriel's chair shifted in wide-eyed
discomfort as the First Enchantress laid the box on the silk-covered
lap of the Prime.

The Koriani matriarch released the wards one at a time.

As protective enchantments gave way with snaps like overwound harp
strings, Elaira fixed desperately on the young pages.  Though their sex
disbarred them from training, the children had spent their early lives
surrounded by arcane mysteries.  Whatever they had witnessed concerning
that coffer's contents made them quake to the soles of their feet.

Lirenda accepted the unsealed box from the Prime and raised the lid.
Inside, the focus jewel of Skyron glittered cold blue as an ice shard.
Although this crystal could not channel anyhere near the same degree of
power as the amethyst Great Waystone, lost since the rebellion, any
enquiry directed through its matrix would be impossible for Elaira to
defy.

Only the thinnest tissue of secondary circumstances masked her
forbidden interview with Asandir.  One straight fact, one opening to
invite a direct question concerning her doings in the earlier evening,
and her paper-thin weaving of subterfuge at the Ravens would collapse.

"Begin," Morriel commanded, her eyes fixed darkly on her Inquisitor.

"Look into the crystal, Elaira," Lirenda instructed.  "Surrender your
will absolutely."

The accused must show immediate compliance, or else condemn herself
outright by refusing a direct command.

Consumed with anxiety, aware that if she was judged guilty, the
self-awareness that defined her individuality would forever become
forfeit, Elaira bent her mind into the crystal's twilight depths.  She
locked her teeth against protest and lowered her inner barriers.

Arcane restraints blazed over her mind like the slamming jaws of a
trap.  Her senses swam through a moment of vertigo; then the gloomy
expanse of the hall became seared away by an indigo force that
smothered her will to quiescence.  Elaira drifted.  Dissociated wholly
from her surroundings, she did not hear Lirenda's voice asking
questions, nor did she frame verbal replies.  Instead, like some tired,
played-over script, past scenes were pried out of her memory and picked
through in embarrassing detail.

She saw the face of Arithon s'Ffalenn, framed by a cloak hood wrung
in the grip of white knuckles; again and again until she ached, she
braved the smoky taproom of the Ravens and waited while Dakar spoke a
name.  Time froze, looped back, paused again while the moment was
analyzed, her tiniest reflections jabbed out and examined.  Somewhere
in a locked-off corner of her mind she was screaming in frustration and
fear, but the inquest continued inexorably.

The past became present.  Again she wrought spells to stem the mob of
headhunters, and again she made her stand amid the cluttered shelves of
the Ravens' pantry.  Since the enchantress on lane-watch had discovered
her in the hayloft, her business at Enithen Tuer's and her interview
with Asandir were mercifully left overlooked, but the particulars of
her encounter with Arithon were exhaustively tracked and studied, until
the brief moment he had touched her hand, and brush of his fingers
removing straw from her hair sawed her nerves like pain.

Every word he had spoken, every line she had replied, was replayed,
dissected to underlying nuance, and then cross-checked against her
later reflections in the course of her return journey south.

By the time her tormentors released her will from the shadowed blue
confines of the focus jewel, Elaira was no longer merely tired but
physically hurting from exhaustion.

Emotionally ragged, all but reduced to tears, she recovered
self-awareness in fragments.  Hearing returned first and gave her
Lirenda's voice emphatically expounding a point.

" .  . . for this I remain unconvinced.  She's possibly hiding
something.  I strongly advise a deeper probe."

The Prime's reedy voice interjected, while Elaira struggled to
overcome draining dizziness.  Aware of a hard chair beneath her, of
ice-cold feet cased in tight-laced, sodden boots, she dragged a breath
against the sensation of weight that bound her chest.  Even through
confusion she realized she had not betrayed Asandir's trust, because
her inquisitors had combed only those events where her overriding
concern for Arithon s'Ffalenn had eclipsed any thought of her
interview.  Left in dread of a possible second inquest, Elaira knew
that chance could not possibly spare her twice.

Lacerated in nerve and mind, she was driven at last to rebellion.

"What earthly purpose can another interrogation prove?"  Her eyesight
came and went, rent by patches of darkness.  "I'm aching with
weariness, and so stiff it's a trial just to sit here.  If I'm
disgraced, name my punishment and be done, for nothing else prompted my
doings in Erdane beyond an ill-advised quest after knowledge."

"Tell her to be silent!"  Morriel's immutable eyes fixed on the space
above Elaira's head.  "The initiate has no cause for impertinence.
Plainly she had inclinations toward a personal entanglement with the
Teir's'Ffalenn, but she is so emotionally disorganized she seems
unaware of her lapse.  Let me remind that as Koriani she is pledge to
avoid involvement with any man, no matter how exalted his bloodline."

Elaira bowed her head.  A Sorcerer of the Fellowship haj entrusted
her to be wise; trapped by his steel-clad expectation, she stifled an
impetuous retort and overlaid defiance with submission.

The hush in the chamber grew prolonged.

Lirenda seemed faintly disappointed.  After an interval, Moniel said,
"I withhold judgment.  Infon-n the accused."

The First Enchantress removed her veils, her manner stiff with
thwarted vindication.  "You are warned, Elaira.  Dissociate yourself
from the prince of Rathain.  Cleanse your thoughts of his memory and
dedicate your heart to obedience.  You are charged to be mindful.  Your
actions henceforward shall be weighed until the Prime sees fit to issue
verdict."

Morriel inclined her head.

Frostily, Lirenda interpreted.  "You are declared on probation and
hereby excused from this audience."

Elaira pushed upright and curtsied before the dais.  Measured by the
carrion-bird scrutiny of the Prime, watched enviously by the duty-bound
pageboys, she beat a quick retreat from the hall.  Relief left her weak
in the knees.  Lirenda might cling to suspicions, but Morriel seemed
satisfied that a card game had prompted her sojourn into Erdane; there
would be no more enquiries, no deeper truth search by crystal, not
unless she incited further cause.

Adroit enough to dodge her communal quarters and the questioning
curiosity of her peers, Elaira slipped out to the stables to check on
her travel-weary mare.  Surrounded by horses, the near to mystical
quiet of their presence scented by straw and oiled leather, she groomed
the bay's dampmatted coat with unseeing, mechanical efficiency.  In the
yard outside, a boy ward whistled as he split kindling for the
kitchens, but the ordinary peace of the moment failed to settle her
composure.

By now recovered enough to think, Elaira reviewed the ramifications
of Morriel's suspended verdict.  Her unease increased.

In cold reflection, the accusation concerning Arithon no longer
seemed silly and far-fetched.  The restraints of probation felt
unpleasant to the point of suffocation, and the shadowed stillness of
the stables offered no refuge at all.

Not when the smell of hay and warm horses reminded inescapably of the
man.

Stung by a pitfall that should never, ever have entrapped her, Elaira
threw aside brush and curry and let herself out of the stall.

The mare shoved a friendly nose over the door, her nudge for
attention unnoticed.  Her young mistress saw nowhere but inward.  With
the ritual phrase, "You stand warned," ringing in cold echoes through
her mind, Elaira cursed for a long and breathless minute in the gutter
dialect of her early childhood.

The words of Enithen Tuer returned to haunt her.  "You don't need a
seer to tell your future's just branched into darkness.  " Shivering in
her damp and crumpled leathers, Elaira fled into the misty afternoon.
Four hours and an eternity ago, a warm bath and bed had been all the
earthly comfort she had desired.

 Portents

On the marshy banks of a sink pool, a serpent with blooddark eyes
pauses, flicks its tongue, then slithers purposefully through a crevice
in a crumblingly ancient stone wall; it is followed a moment later by
another and another, until soon a horde of its fellows seethe after,
breaking eddies through murky waters and shivering pallid ranks of
reeds.  . . .

North and west, under a hide tent pitched in misty forest, a
scarfaced barbarian chieftain tosses in sweat-soaked furs; yet before
his lady can waken him from the grip of prescient dreams, he has seen
the face of his king, and the blood of his own certain death....

In a wild stretch of grasslands, on the crest of a windswept scarp,
four tall towers loom above a ruined city, while rainfall gentle as
tears rinses the shattered foundations of a fifth....

VIII.  Clans of Camris ysaer awoke at dusk to strangely carved walls,
a warm Lfire, and blankets of softest angora that wrapped his sweating
limbs in clinging, suffocating heat.  He tossed away the coverlets,
rose naked from the feather mattress, and paced across fine carpet to a
casement paned with glass.

Outside, clustered around a snow-trampled compound spread the tents,
stone huts, and rough, log-timbered buildings that comprised the
permanent mountain outpost maintained by the clans of Camris.  Amid
falling gloom the descendents of Tysan's aristocracy set about their
evening chores as they had through five centuries of exile.  They
carried cressets, because lanterns were scarce.  Most wore the leathers
and furs of wilderness scouts.  Grim in aspect as occupants of a war
camp, or a settlement too long under siege, no one walked without arms,
even those few who were women.  If any of the tents housed families,
Lysaer sighted no children, though he lingered unseen at the window to
study his new subjects while they were yet unaware.

Shouts arose from two hunters who dragged in the carcass of a deer.
A woman called back in derision, and laughter dissolved into banter
that coarsely disallowed even token respect for her gender.

Lysaer rested his coin-bright head on his wrists.  He did not feel
refreshed.  Nightmares had dogged his sleep and the expensive scents of
sandalwood oil and rare spices upon his skin left him faintly queasy.

The beautifully appointed furnishings at his back gave no comfort;
gold-embossed chests and patterned carpets were far too much an anomaly
in-this bleakest of mountain settings.

"We give you the King's Chamber, " Maenalle had said matter-of-factly
as she opened a door to a room that held the atmosphere of a lovingly
maintained shrine.  The manservant who brought water for the royal bath
had explained that every clan encampment in Tysan kept similar
quarters, perpetually held in readiness for the day of their
sovereign's return.

Deferentially left to his privacy, unused to being worshiped as a
legend come to life, Lysaer needed badly to speak with Asandir.

But the Sorcerer had gone off with the clan chiefs while he, as
acknowledged royal heir, had been spirited off for food and rest.

Where Arithon might be was difficult to guess; presumably, Dakar
would have found oblivion in some ale barrel by now.  Lysaer scrubbed
clammy palms across his face, distressed to be left at a loss in a land
where civilized merchants would slit the royal throat and barbarians
who preyed on the trade roads welcomed their prince with open arms.

"Your Grace?"  said a youthful voice by the doorway.

Lysaer started, spun, and only then noticed the pageboy who hovered
past the edge of the candlelight.

"I'm Maenalle's grandson, Maenol s'Gannley, Your Grace."  Barely
eleven, his livery too large over breeches of cross-gartered hide, the
boy bowed with a confidence that any senior courtier might have envied.

"I've been sent to assist with your dressing."

Unable to foist his bleak thoughts on a child, Lysaer returned the
charm that had endeared him to other foot pages back in Amroth.  "What
have you brought, Master Maenol?"

The boy grinned, showing a broken front tooth.  "People call me
Maien, which means 'mouse' in the old tongue, Your Grace."  His grin
widened and his small, tabarded shoulders straightened with pride.

"What else would I bring but your hose, surcoat, and arms?"

The boy stepped toward a stool and chest where an array of courtly
clothing had been laid out.  The sword in its sapphire scabbard was
gilded steel, adorned by blue silk tassels, and in its way as venerable
as Alithiel.

"Daeltiri," Maien said in response to his prince's admiring glance.
"The blade of the kings of Tysan.  When the city of Avenor was
desecrated, one part of the royal regalia was entrusted to each clan
lord for safekeeping.  Until today the earls of Camris have faithfully
held your sword."  The boy crossed the chamber, impatience reflected in
the toss of his ash brown hair.  "But hurry, Your Grace.  The banquet
in the main hall cannot begin until you're ready."

Lysaer slipped into the silken hose, lawn shirt, and finely
embroidered tabard with a relief that bordered on shame.  He had not
appreciated the comforts of rich clothing until he had been made to do
without.  Humbled by the honest recognition that he desired the throne
these clansmen offered at least as desperately as their disunited realm
needed sound rule, he laced gold-tipped points and fastened
mother-ofpearl buttons and tried to dismiss his suspicion such luxuries
might have been dishonestly procured.  As Maien buckled the sword
Daeltiri at his side and handed him the matching chased dagger, Lysaer,
Prince of Tysan, felt whole for the first time since exile through
Worldsend.

He quieted his creeping doubts over the lifestyle of the realm's
subjects until he could know them better.  Under fair consideration, he
might find the differences between Athera's wild clansmen and Amroth's
more sophisticated courtiers were just reflections of profoundly
changed perception.  He was no longer the pampered prince who had been
haplessly tossed through the Worldsend Gate.  In a rakingly perverse
turn of conscience, he wondered which promised the sounder reign: the
cosseted and idealistic royal heir he had been before banishment, or
the more self-sufficient man who needed a crown to feel complete.

Outside, the temperature had fallen severely.  Chilled through his
fine velvets, Lysaer followed Maien's lead across the compound and
through the midst of brisk activity as a company muffled in furs and
armed with bows and javelins prepared to depart on patrol.  Faces
seamed by weathered scars lit at the sight of their prince.  The men
and two women offered him brisk salute while they checked laces and
shouldered weapons, then slipped quietly away into the gathering
mountain dusk.

"Where are they going?"  Lysaer asked.

Maien regarded his prince slantwise.  "Out to the pass on flight
watch, Your Grace."

"To raid caravans?"  Almost, Lysaer let slip the contempt he held for
such thievery.

"Partly," said the grandson of Tysan's steward, brazenly unabashed.
"They guard the camp as well."

The pair skirted the blood-spattered snow where the deer carcass had
lately been butchered.  The prince received a smile and a wave from
another sword-bearing woman who carried yoke buckets toward the horse
pickets.  Past the tiedback flap of a tent, a man whistled over the
scrape of a blade on a whetstone.  Maien turned down a much trampled
path that led through a final stand of cabins, threaded into a
steep-sided defile, and dead-ended before the shadowed double arch of a
gateway cut into the mountain.  The doors Were armored.  Stonework
barbicans built against the rocks on either side lent the
impregnability of a fortress.  If the place had ever seen battle, any
scars had been painstakingly repaired; four fur-clad sentries stood
duty, the leather-wound grips of their javelins worn shiny from hard
use.  They dressed weapons in smart salute at the approach of their
liege.

Maien spoke a password at a niche.  Lysaer heard the clank of a
windlass and a dismal rattle of chain; then the great portals ground on
their hinges and cracked open.

Asandir strode from the gap.  "Good, you've arrived."  He dismissed
the prince's young escort with a smile.  Maien darted ahead to alert
the herald as the Sorcerer ushered Lysaer from the cold, into the
torchlit vault of an outer hall.

Walls and floor of rough-hewn stone sheared his voice into echoes as
he said, "Maenalle awaits you."

Above the din as the defense works were laboriously cranked closed,
Lysaer said, "You might have given me warning."

"I might have done the same for Grithen's clansmen," Asandir
returned.  "I chose not to."

Stonewalled, and for no apparent cause, Lysaer reined back annoyance.
"Is this a kingdom that encourages lawlessness?"

Asandir regarded the prince with eyes like unmarked slate.  "This is
a land afflicted by mismanagement, greed, and vicious misunderstanding.
The clans rob caravans to ease a harsh existence, and the mayors pay
headhunters to exterminate as a means to ease their terror.  Your task
is not to judge but to set right.  Your royal Grace, justice must be
tempered by sympathy if the unity of the realm is to be restored.  So I
did not explain, because words cannot substitute for experience."

The heavy doors boomed shut, leaving a ponderous quiet.

Asandir gestured toward the light and warmth that spilled through a
second set of arches.  "Go in," he urged while ahead, in cultured
accents, Maenalle's appointed herald announced the royal presence.

"For these people you are the living embodiment of hope.  Listen to
their woes and understand what they've sacrificed to preserve their
lives and heritage."

Lysaer squared his shoulders under his exquisitely embroidered
tabard.  What Asandir expected of him was a great deal more than
tolerance; he could return no less than his best.

"You are favored with the gifts of your ancestors," Asandir reassured
as they walked side by side into a chamber transformed since afternoon.
"If the Seven believed you incapable, you would never have stood
before these clans as a candidate fit to rule."

The drab rock walls beyond the threshold were covered over by
tapestries, masterful weaving and bright dyes depicting a kingly
procession that celebrated the first greening of spring.  Lysaer stared
in delight.  For an instant he seemed to view through a window into a
prior age, when Paravian habitation had graced hills unsullied by
Desh-thiere's mists.

Here in shining glory lay the centaurs' fire-maned majesty, spritely
dancers wreathed in flowers who were the fairformed sunchildren, and
mystical as moonlight on water, the snowy grace of unicorns.
Entranced, caught into thrall by emotion, Lysaer blinked-and the spell
snapped.  The weaving on the wall became just a fabric of ordinary
thread, worked with extraordinary artistry.  Left dazed by splitsecond
bewilderment, Lysaer shook off gooseflesh and continued after Asandir
and Maien, over patterned carpets imported from far-off Narms.  Torches
were replaced by tiers of wax candles, and glittering in their
smokeless light were the clan born of the west outpost, descendants of
Camris's aristocracy.

They looked the part, Lysaer thought in astonishment.  Divested of
furs and weapons, reclothed in velvets, dyed suedes, and jeweled
brocades, one could almost forget that most of the women carried sword
scars, or that the wrists of young and old alike were lean as braided
sinew from the hunt.

Maenalle waited at the head of a delegation of clan lords.

Regally gowned in black and adorned with silver interlace, she wore
only a badge of rank to denote her office.  "Colors are never worn in
the royal presence," she explained in response to Lysaer's compliment
that a brighter wardrobe would become her.  "By tradition, the Steward
of the Realm wears sable, since the true power of governance lies in
the crown.  Before the rebellion, my office was sometimes called
caithdein, or shadow behind the throne."  She regarded the prince at
her side, her tawny eyes fierce in a face too weathered from outdoor
living.  "Liege, I am proud to become so once again."

There was no envy in her, Lysaer observed, while she steered him
through introductions to the officers and elders of her council
currently in residence at the outpost.  As the self-contained, able
woman guided him past a bowing honor guard and rows of candlelit,
damask-covered trestles toward the dais at the head of the hall, he
watched with a ruler's perception.  Maenalle did not resent yielding
leadership to a younger, unknown man; in steady, unquestioned, and
understated confidence she placed absolute faith in the selessid name.

Prepared for the eventual trial of winning loyalty from these fierce
and independent clansmen, of proving his fitness to rule, Lysaer found
the gift of her trust unnerving.

He was shown to the seat of honor at the center of a trestle covered
by fine linen and set with an earl's ransom in crested silver and
crystal.  Asandir was placed on his right, Arithon and Dakar to the
left, while Maenalle and the elder clan chiefs assumed the places
opposite, between their prince and the lower hall as surety for their
hospitality.  Since potential threat must first pass through their
ranks, any retainer who sought harm to a guest must first commit public
treason and strike his sworn lord in the back.  Visitors' rights had
not been forgotten in the wildest reaches of Camris, although in the
towns, old ways had been replaced by the fashion of placing important
persons at the head of the boards.

"Insult as well as folly," Maenalle admitted sadly.  "A guest seated
there is isolated, a target for foul play should a turncoat defile the
lord's house.  What respect can a host claim who would expose another
in place of himself?"

Hiding discomfort, Lysaer watched Maien pour the wine.

Amroth's court had kept no such elaborate custom, and rather than
risk insult out of ignorance, the prince forebore to comment.

A touch on his forearm recalled his thoughts: Asandir, with reminder
that the hall expected a guest oath.  That ritual at least was
familiar.  Lysaer rose to his feet.  The glittering array of gathered
clansfolk stilled deferently before him as he raised his goblet in
fingers too proud to tremble.

"To this house, its lady, and her sworn companions, I pledge
friendship.  Ath's blessing upon family and kin, strength to your
heirs, and honor to the name of s'Gannley.

Beneath this roof and before Ath, I share fortune and sorrow as your
brother, my service as steadfast as blood kin."

Maenalle arose, smiling, to complete the ancient reply.

"Your presence is our grace."  She raised her callused hands, took
the prince's goblet, and drank a half portion of the wine.

Lysaer accepted the cup back from her, drained it, and laid it firm
downward on the table between.  "Dharkaron witness," he finished
clearly.

Maenalle faced around toward her following.  "Honor and welcome to
s'llessid!"

As prince and steward took their seats to thunderous cheers from the
clan scouts, the banquet began in earnest.

Accustomed to court fare as Lysaer was, he could not help being
impressed.  Surrounded by all but barren rock, caught at impossibly
short notice, the Camris barbarians proved as warmly hospitable as any
grand fete held in Amroth.  But although in manner and bearing these
people seemed flawlessly refined, their high-table conversation better
reflected the temper of the culture underneath.

"The arrogance of the townsmen swells beyond belief," the eldest
chief, Lord Tashan, confided over his soup.  "We confiscated a wagon
recently.  Among the goods were paper documents dividing land into
portions and alotting coin value to each."  The spry old lord laughed
hugely.  He set aside his spoon and fingered his goblet without
drinking, concern threaded through his amusement.  "Next they'll be
trying to tax the air a man breathes, do you guess?"

"Mortals have been known to presume far worse,".

Asandir interjected.  A sharp glance warned Lysaer to silence as he
added, "What was done with those papers?"

"We burned them," Lord Tashan said in disgust.  Now he did take a
swallow, a deep one.  "Without ceremony, as tinder to kindle a watch
fire.  It's an affront against Ath's creation to number a mountain
among one's possessions.  Thrice damned to Sithaer, and Dharkaron's
curse on the mayor who started the infamy.  If he dares to cross Orlan,
we'll speed the Wheel's turning for him, and send the blooded arrow to
his heirs."

Asandir locked eyes with the older noble.  "The matter is beyond
yourjurisdiction, and the mayor's life subject to the king's justice."

The chieftain bowed to the rebuke, but his outrage smoldered hot as
the candle-caught glint of his rubies as he turned in appeal to Lysaer.
"I ask pardon, my prince.  Avenor has been five centuries in ruins,
and as many years have passed since a royal heir has graced our land.
Survival has forced a harsh code of law, and from habit, I forgot my
place.  Judgment remains the king's right.  But I'm confident you'll
resolve the matter firmly on the day your high council reconvenes."

Lysaer hid unsettled thoughts by toying with the meat on his plate.
Land owning, an inalienable tradition on Dascen Elur, appeared to be
bloodletting violation in Tysan.  The prince held the concept daunting
and uncivilized, that he might one day be expected to punish a man for
laying claim to the farmland he tilled.  If Tysan's charter of
governance denied the security of home and hearth rights, small wonder
the townsmen had let sedition from a spiteful sorcerer incite them to
bloody rebellion.  Anxious to change the subject, if not the injustice
of such laws, Lysaer admired the exceptional beauty of the tapestries.

Lord Tashan chuckled with relish.  "They were the unwilling donation
of the first mayor of Erdane, damn his memory."

"Stolen?"  Lysaer prompted.

The old chief's smile faded.  "Not precisely, my liege.  The weaving
was originally done by the masters at Cildom, before the old races
vanished from the world.  The clan chief, of Taerlin paid fair price
for the art, though the records that prove this burned when their
holdings were stripped in the uprising.  The more valuable spoils were
sent north, catalogued as tribute.  As a protest, my kinsmen in
Caithwood saw fit to lighten the mayor's wagons.  The bloodstains
washed out well enough.  But the forest caves turned dismal with mildew
since the mists, so the Paravian tapestries were brought here for
preservation."

Lysaer measured the cavernous grotto surrounding him with new eyes:
ruffians who lived by the sword would have small use for grand
celebrations.  The chamber where these barbarians feasted had not
originated as a guest hall; more likely it had been fashioned as a
storehouse, a vault carved into mountain rock to safeguard generations
of plunder.

Maeiialle's eldest son, and Maien's father, went on to describe the
particulars of that historical first raid.  Tashan's comment concerning
bloodstains had been no understatement.  Trapped in public scrutiny,
Lysaer hid his disgust like a diplomat.  Nobly born or not, these folk
endorsed outright robbery.  Filled by dismay, the prince who must one
day rule them understood that the fine cloth, the jewels, even the
plates and cutlery that graced the table, were no less than the spoils
of generations of ambush and murder.  Upright trade did riot exist
among these clansmen-only knowledge of arms and tracking, and a
predatory penchant for raiding.

Alarmed to find his hands shaking, Lysaer set down his fork.

His adroit attempt to change the subject became foiled by his
half-brother, whose forthright laughter encouraged further tales of
thievery from their hosts.

Unpleasantly reminded of the past, Lysaer lost interest in the food.
Arithon had sailed with Karthish pirates; naturally it followed that he
had no sensibilities to offend.  That he showed no rancor for the rough
handling inflicted upon his person in the pass seemed a perverse and
unlikely reaction for a man whose intense preference for privacy seemed
the cornerstone for an unforgiving character.

Objective, selfhonest in his standards, Lysaer unflinchingly pursued
his conclusion.

The musician who had played Felirin's lyranthe by the fireside
possessed the skills of a consummate actor, for such depths of
sensitivity could surely not sanction tonight's callous enjoyment of
violence.  Left heartsick and isolated by the temper of Tysan's
clansmen, Lysaer strove without success to rally his equanimity; he had
seen the hardworking merchants in Amroth suffer the butt of s'Ffalenn
effrontery too many times for complaisance.  The blight on s'llessid
justice remained, and the bitter taste of outrage was transferred to
any brigand who presumed to rob for gain.

Lysaer endured the meal; guest courtesy forbade him to do otherwise.
Distant, even majestically polite, he listened to the rounds of wild
stories until the boards were drawn for the revels.

Then, without compunction, he sought counsel from Asandir.

"How can I rule these clansmen?"  he demanded.  "The townsfolk are no
less Tysan's subjects than they.  In all fairness, is it right to set
brigands and thieves as overlords above the very same craftsmen they
have victimized?"

Asandir broke off contemplation of something in the chamber's far
corner, and weighed the prince's distress with silver, imperious eyes.

"Have tolerance, Your Grace, at least until you've sat at a mayor's
table and listened to the boasts of his headhunters.  For where a
townsman has lost riches, the clans have paid with the blood of kinsmen
and heirs.

These whom the townborn name barbarians have seen their children
slaughtered like game deer, their wives, sisters, an(] daughters
mercilessly raped and murdered.  They inhabit the wastes and the wilds
because everywhere else they are persecuted."

Hands clenched hard in his lap, Lysaer drew breath to temporize.

The Sorcerer cut him off.  "Do not presume that I justify the
lifestyles of clansman or townborn.  I only point out the dissent that
has plagued this land through the centuries since Davien's rebellion.

When sunlight is restored, we must all strive for peace.  You'll have
time to study the problems before then, and no end of encouragement and
counsel at the time you finally assume your crown."

Further discussion was curtailed by the evening's entertainment, a
superlative demonstration of knife throwing, followed by sword dancers
who performed an intricate display to no other accompaniment than the
rhythmic chime of crossed steel.  Lysaer applauded their performance in
admiration, for although he had watched similar gymnastics in Amroth,
the dancers had never been female.  The steps exhibited for his
pleasure in Camris had been dangerously more demanding, and performed
at frightening speed.

Warmed by the prince's enjoyment, Maenalle apologized for lack of the
gentler arts.  "We don't risk our bards in the mountains.  Masters of
the lyranthe remain in the foothills with our families, that our
children learn grace before hardship."

Lysaer's surprise must have showed.

"I forget you weren't raised among us," Maenalle apolozed.  "We're
not entirely the barbarians the townsmen name us.  Our women serve with
the scouts until marriage, and after that only by choice.  The
experience at arms is necessity, for in the event of attack, some of
the mothers must defend while the households are taken to safety."

Left self-conscious by his steward's perception, Lysaer "Your hall
need not did his best to return her direct courtesy.

go tuneless this night.  My half-brother is accomplished on the
lyranthe."

"But I have no instrument," Arithon protested, as if all the while
his ear had been tuned to the exchange.  Having somehow evaded the
ceremony due the half-brother of a prince, he wore his plain tunic and
much worn scabbard still.

Though conspicuous in his lack of finery, his preferences had been
humored without offense until Maenalle saw fit to correct matters.

"You shall have your pick of instruments," she announced, and waved
over one of her captains.  "Escort the prince's half-brother to the
vaults and let him choose a lyranthe that suits him."

Servants rolled one of the smaller tapestries aside, and a key was
brought that fitted the grilled doorway behind.

Arithon and the leather-clad captain took candles and disappeared
within, while Lysaer, who had not missed proof that his surmise
concerning treasure stores was accurate, involved himself praising the
knife dancers.

An interval later, Arithon returned.  Rested in the curve of his arm
was a lyranthe so battered and plain it almost looked fit to be
discarded.  The tuning pegs were chipped and not one string remained
intact.

"He would have none of the jeweled ones," the officer who escorted
him explained hastily.

Maenalle's gaze turned stormy.  "Do you mock us?"  At her tone the
knife dancers melted away; nearby clansmen broke off conversations and
went very suddenly still.

Arithon looked up from the instrument on his arm.  "I chose the
best," he said, bemused beyond thought for deceit.

"Listen, lady."  He whistled very softly over the sound boaro just
ahead of the bridge.  The wood in his hands caught the tone and
responded in a resonance of absolute, dusky purity.

The sound caused Asandir, involved in discourse with Lord Tashan, to
turn full around and stare.  "Ath in his mercy," the Sorcerer
exclaimed.  "Allow me to examine that lyranthe."

Clansmen stepped aside as the Sorcerer approached and lifted the worn
old instrument from Arithon's hands.  Asandir ran his fingers down the
wood, scraped grime off one tarnished fret, then turned the neck in his
hands to view the back.  There, begrimed under layers of yellowed
lacquer lay a single Paravian rune, inlaid in abalone that somehow
through the years had not chipped.

"Well, here we are," the Sorcerer murmured.  He scraped the inlay
with a fingernail and bared a rainbow glimmer of fine pearl.  "There
was truth to the tale that a second lyranthe crafted by Elshian
remained behind on the continent."  He returned the instrument to
Arithon with reverence.  "One is held in trust by Athera's Masterbard,
Halliron.  The other now belongs to you, by courtesy of Camris
generosity.

Guard her well.  The sunchild Elshian was the most gifted bard known
to history, and an instrument made by her hands sings more beautifully
than all others."

Maenalle laughed in flushed triumph at Arithon's evident dismay.

"Return us the gift of your playing," she said, then dispatched Maien
to the tents to fetch wire.

But Asandir raised a hand in restraint.  "Wait, lady.  Brass strings
will break on that instrument."  He considered a moment, then added,
"If you provide a few ounces of silver, I can refit her as the maker
intended."

Without hesitation Maenalle removed her left bracelet.

"Any bent spoon would do as well," Asandir said gently.

Maenalle's eyes flashed.  "Mine the honor, Kingmaker."

The Sorcerer inclined his head, accepted the heavy, interlaced band,
and cupped it between his palms.  The clansmen crowded closer to watch
as, unmindful of his audience, Asandir bowed his head.  No other move
did he make, but a power sang upon the air.  The bracelet in his hands
shimmered, then flashed incandescently white.  The watchers nearest to
Arithon felt a sear of heat on their faces.  Yet the Sorcerer's flesh
did not burn.  His hands moved, and the light grew blinding, and the
ones who dared the dazzle saw the metal in his grip glow red.  As if he
handled nothing in the least beyond the ordinary, the Sorcerer twisted
the ore between his fingers and drew out a glowing filament.

The task took scarcely a minute; then light and magic faded and the
Sorcerer opened unmarked fists.  He held half an arc of silver knotwork
and a shiningly perfect length of wire.

As if the ruined symmetry of Maenalle's bracelet prompted him to
further inspiration, he gave a mischievous glance to the lady steward,
then murmured, "Indeed, it is not meet that so great a gift should keep
such mean appearance.  11

And spell-light rinsed his hands once again as he reached out and
cupped the fragment of interlace to the unadorned fretboard of the
lyranthe.

A snap like a shock whipped the air.  When the Sorcerer released the
old wood, the silver knotwork remained, its pattern transmuted into the
ebony as though stamped there from the day of creation.  Arithon ran
his fingertip over the result.

He felt not a single raised edge; the inlay had fused with the
surface beyond any hint of a flaw.

When the lyranthe was restrung with the Sorcerer's spelltempered
wire, the virtue of Elshian's craftwork became apparent from the
instant Arithon struck the first note for tuning.  The scratched wood
in his hands came alive with a tone that touched the farthest recesses
of even that cavernous stone hall.  Harmonics seemed to shiver and melt
upon the air, and every conversation faltered to a hush.  Speakers
forgot their next words, and listeners heard nothing beyond the dance
of Arithon's fingers, and the languid, gliding sweetness of the strings
as he turned each peg to true the pitch.

When his work was done and the first full chord rang out under his
hands, he stopped breathing, bowed his head, then dropped the
magnificent sound to silence.

"Lady Maenalle," he said, in his voice a jar like heartbleak, "this
lyranthe is too fine for me.  Let me play this one night and return her
for your master bards in the lowlands."

But the Steward of Lisan dismissed his conscience with an imperious
lift of her chin.  "I don't begrudge you my bracelet," she called
across the quiet.  "And our bards, every one of them, passed over that
instrument for another of prettier appearance.  Since they chose by
their eyes and not their ears, I call their claim forfeit."

Arithon's hand remained frozen against the glittering bands of new
strings.

"If the word of a prince carries weight, I stand by Maenalle's
judgment."  Lysaer chose a seat and by example all.  in the chamber
followed suit.  "Brother," he said on a strange edge of exasperation,
"will you have done with moping and play'?"

Lacking the knowledge of Athera's lore, Arithon chose a sea ballad
from Dascen Elur, a lively recap of a pirate raid in which a wily
captain reduced three merchanters to ruin.

Although the names of the vessels were changed in deference to his
half-brother, Lysaer remembered the incident well; the merchanters had
died badly, the seamen's widows and their families forced to beg
charity to survive.  Yet singer and lyranthe wove their spell deftly.

The clan lords responded to the tale in raucous and wholehearted
enjoyment.

No one beyond the performer ever guessed how the laughter stung their
prince's pride.  In fairness, Lysaer could not blame Arithon; his duty
was to please his hosts, and in a camp without wives or sweethearts, he
had performed with a minstrel's true insight, his choice most apt for
the setting.

Yet the thievery that delighted these barbarians had roots in a past
that reminded how terribly wide lay the gulf between subjects and
sovereign.

Lysaer took his leave early, pleading weariness.  He retired to the
small chamber with all its comforts, but hours passed before he
undressed and went to bed, and the peace of sound sleep did not visit
him.

Confrontation

The hour grew late.  Candles burned low in the hall by the time
Arithon plucked the closing bars to his last dance jig of the evening.

Although admiring listeners still surrounded him and the exultant
flush remained high on his face, he silenced the rich tones of
Elshian's instrument with something very near to relief.

"Another drinking song!"  called a roisterer from the back.

Arithon shook his head and set the lyranthe gently down on the boards
of an empty trestle.  "My fingers are shot, my voice long gone, and
I've a kink in my back from too much sitting."

"Have a beer, then," a younger woman invited.

"What, and spoil my head for clear thought?"  Arithon rose, grinning
with the abandon of a thief.  "I've swallowed enough to ruin me
already.  Too much praise has done the rest.  Have some mercy and let
me retire while I still have the wits to find my bed."

"She'd likely show you to hers," somebody quipped from the sidelines.

 i 1

But the admirers nearest at hand perceived the musician's weariness.
Reluctantly they parted to give him passage between the bare trestles,
the last few occupied chairs, and the boys who cleared away goblets and
gathered up the linens from the feast.  Though the clansmen of Camris
had entertained lavishly, there were no drunks on the floors.  The
celebrants who lingered in the late hours were alert enough that an
alarm from a messenger could see their finery exchanged for weapons at
short notice.  Quietly, unobtrusively, Arithon crossed the expanse
before the arch.  He disappeared into the gloom of the outer hallway
without drawing Maenalle's notice; but slumped in a heap with one hand
still curled around an ale mug, Dakar opened one eye.  He saw Asandir
break off his discourse with a clan chieftain and take purposeful
strides toward the door.

"I thought so," the Mad Prophet mumbled through his knuckles.

"Our Master of Shadow is going to catch an ungodly dressing-down."

Dakar licked his lips and smiled before he slipped back into stupor;
but his self-righteous prediction proved slightly premature.

Asandir did not follow Arithon immediately, but visited the quarters
of Tysan's prince for a lengthy interval first.  Afterward, as the
winds sang cold off the heights and the mists of Desh-Thiere obscured
the early blush of coming dawn, the Sorcerer let himself out to find
Arithon.

The Teir's'Ffalenn was alone at the horse pens, his back to the
inside rails and his hands busy working tangles from the black forelock
of the dun.  Asandir approached without sound across the compound of
trampled snow.  For all his care, he was noticed.  Arithon spoke as the
Sorcerer paused behind his shoulder.

"Elshian's lyranthe should remain here."  Pain threaded a voice worn
rough by extended hours of performance.  Too spent for nuance, Arithon
added, "Better than I, you know how little she will be played."

Asandir folded his arms on the top rail of the fence.

Cloakless and hoodless in the cold, the wind stirred his silver hair
and the night-darkened fabric of his tunic.  "Much can change in the
course of five centuries."

Arithon at this moment preferred to forget the legacy left him by
Davien's enchanted fountain; he shrugged.  "Quite a lot has not changed
at all in the course of five centuries " At which point, directly
confronted with the purpose of his visit, Asandir abandoned tolerance.

"Did you believe me unaware of what happened in the loft of the
Ravens' stableyard?  Or that, the other day in the pass of Orlan, you
baited Grithen and his scouts with intent to force my hand and expose
your half-brother's inheritance?"

"Lysaer has what he longs for: a crown and the cause of truth and
justice."  The dun blew softly through her nostrils, stepped back, and
left Arithon's hands empty.  The cold made him wish he had his gloves.

Asandir seemed impervious to the wind's cruel bite.  "Let me tell you
a thing, Teir's'Ffalenn.  You were left to your devices because the
mindblock I set was never intended to bend your will."

"Was it not?"  Arithon retaliated fast and hard as a blow.

"Then why bother setting any ward at all?"

The Sorcerer did not rise to anger.  Measured and wholly mild, he
said, "Would you warm a man just tortured by fire before an open
hearth?  The memories of your failures in Karthan were all too
hurtfully recent."

Arithon flinched.  The Sorcerer pressed on, remorseless, though he
never once sharpened his voice.  "MaenaRe was to receive the Prince of
Tysan today.  The Fellowship had already decided.  She would have been
informed of his lineage in private, that Lysaer not learn of his
heritage until he had experienced the atrocity of the mayors firsthand.

Except that your meddling with events caused your half-brother an
unpardonable shock, and Gfithen has been sent in shame to the camps in
the low country.  He may be denied his inheritances Now Arithon went
still as fire-hardened stone.

Asandir resumed, quietly precise as the tap a gem cutter might use to
shear diamond.  "Grithen is the last living heir to the late Earl of
Erdane.  Since his two siblings died on a headhunter's spears,
yesterday's affray in the pass could disrupt a succession that has
endured since the years before the uprising."

Arithon did not leap to claim the implied responsibility.

Inflectionless as the windborne scrape of loose ice, he said, "You're
telling me things that might all have been prevented."

"If the Fellowship were to use power to compromise 4

man's destiny, yes."  Asandir regarded the knuckles left at rest on
the midnight cloth of his sleeves while Arithon absorbed implications:
that his fate was neither absolute nor proscribed.  That he might cross
the corral, saddle the dun mare and ride out, and not be pursued,
except by townsmen who mistook him for a clan-born barbarian.

Or he might take up the superlative lyranthe given him by Maenalle
and study under her bards in the lowlands to the advanced senility of
old age.

Arithon faced around and met the Sorcerer's eyes, which were clear as
mirrors and as matchlessly serene.  "You would let me go that simply?"

"I would."  The Sorcerer added, "But let us be accurate.

Would you let yourself."  Struck on a nerve left raw since Dascen
Elur, Arithon could no longer curb bitterness.  "Dharkaron, Ath's
Avenger might show more mercy."

"Who will speak for the clansfolk of Rathain?"  Asandir said, a dark
and terrible weight of sorrow behind his words.

"For them, what mercy will there be when the sun returns, and the
townsmen order killings caused by fear of a king who is not there?"

Arithon made a sound halfway between a sob and a curse.

The biting sarcasm he used to deflect unwanted inquiries would not
serve, but drive through Asandir's tranquillity like a spear cast
through seawater: passion dispersed without trace by the infinite.  The
Sorcerer watched his struggle with neither cruelty nor challenge, but
only an understanding as steady and deathless as sunlight.

Through a throat racked by tears he refused to acknowledge, Arithon
said, "You give me Karthan all over again."

"The man would not stand here, who did not choose Karthan first.

" "Oh, Ath."  Arithon let go a twisted laugh.  "The bitterest enemy
is myself, then."  For the open-handed freedom set before him was no
choice at all: just the repeat of a fate poisoned through by an
unasked-for burden of human suffering.

"I asked only that you to travel with me to Althain Tower," Asandir
said.  "Wherever else will you find the guidance to reconcile your
powers as a mage with the responsibilities of your birthright?"

The compassion in his torte was a terrible thing, a whip and a
scourge upon a mind already mauled by the quandaries of duty.  Arithon
spun away, weeping regardless, and cursing the light hand of his
tormentor.

One threat, one compulsion, one word spoken with intent to bind,
would have given him opening to escape.

But Asandir closed the net with a pity that shattered and crucified.
"If you finish the journey, your case will be brought before the
Fellowship.  I can make no promise.  But if a compromise can be found
to release you from kingship, I will plead in your favor."

"The last nail in the coffin lid," Arithon managed.  "Of course under
protest, I accept."  The air ached his lungs and his head hurt.

His back to the Sorcerer, his eyes on the shifting shadows of the
horses, he clung to the fence, mostly to keep his hands from violence.

Asandir looked at him and did not miss the murderous undertones of
conflict.  "For Desh-thiere, the Mistwraith, the Fellowship has no
other choice."

"Ath," Arithon said.  He managed a savage jab at humor.

"Dakar would be crushed if we wrecked his precious prophecy.  But
against the Mistwraith, I do recall giving my word."

"Of the two, your kingdom is equally important."  The Sorcerer might
have departed then, his movements masked by a gust from the north.

Yet Arithon sensed his intent.  Not yet ready for solitude, he
whirled around, met the endlessly deep eyes, and planted a barb of his
own.  "Then we understand each other all too perfectly well."

Given clear warning that Arithon remained ambivalent concerning his
inheritance, Asandir showed no annoyance.  Rueful instead, he listened
to the sigh of the wind across the compound as though it held answer to
all suffering.  "I'd like to know," he said at last to the prince who
waited in jaggedly prideful silence, and who was far too wise to vent
frustration through belief that the Fellowship Sorcerers were his
enemies.  "If our roles were reversed, what would you do?"

Arithon hesitated barely an instant.  "Find the Paravians."

Asandir sighed.  A sadness settled over him as oppressive as the
mists on the mountains.  "We tried," he said bleakly.

"Ciladis of the Fellowship took on that quest, for he treasured the
old races most of all."  A minute stretched painfully through silence.
"He never returned."

As if the night were suddenly too dark, or the cold off the peaks too
penetrating, Asandir abandoned the subject.  He strode back toward the
lights of the outpost, leaving Alithen to the company of the horses and
a moil of frustrated thoughts.

 Traithe

Set on a knoll above the scrub-covered dunes that bordered the
Bittern Desert, the spire of Althain Tower endured winds that never
eased.  Time and seasons might change, but in snowfall or sultry
summer, drafts moaned through the shutters on the highest floor,
riffling the corners of parchments caught between musty stacks of
books.

Unwashed tea mugs nested between the piles like abandoned eggshells
in straw; walled around by clutter, surrounded by unstoppered ink wells
and a row of meticulously sharpened quills, Sethvir of the Fellowship
minded his cataloguing.  While his awareness ranged far and wide beyond
his tower eyrie, tracking events and portents that encompassed the
grand movements of armies to the change of polliwogs into frogs, he
penned neat script onto parchment and recalled candles only as an
afterthought.  Darkness came and went in its daily rhythms, unmarked by
sleep or lighted sconces.

And yet amid the wail of a gust off the fells, when something
flurried at the casement as slight as the scuffle of a A mouse, Sethvir
lifted his head.  His poet's eyes lost their vagueness as he laid aside
his quill pen.

"Traithe?"  he said, on his feet in an instant.  A six-day
accumulation of dust billowed up from his robe as he shoved between
chairs heaped with scrolls and opened the shutters on a predawn sky
coiled with mist.

Rewarded the next moment by a downward rustle of wings, the
Sorcerer's pensive frown melted.  "Welcome back, little brother," he
greeted the raven that alighted on the knot-worked border of his cuff.

The bird croaked.  It cocked a pert head and blinked an eye intent
with intelligence.

Sethvir shut the casement, a detail he intermittently neglected.

"Did you bring your master, little one?"

The raven hopped to his shoulder and reproachfully preened its left
primaries.  When Sethvir responded by waiting, it shifted its feet and
spoke again, sharply impatient.

The Sorcerer chuckled.  "All right, I'm on my way."

Forgetful that wet ink now hardened on his favorite nib, the Warden
of Althain bore the bird from the copy chamber and down the bare spiral
stairwell that accessed the tower's nine stories.  Shadows of past ages
lingered thickly here, but no place more than at ground level, where
the mist-filtered gleam of first light etched the marble-carved statues
of centaurs, sunchildren, and unicorns.  Jeweled eyes and gilt
trappings flashed at Sethvir's passage, wakened to glittering
reflections as he brightened the torches by the tower's sole entry.  At
the foot of a shallow flight of steps, Sethvir caught a ring from a
recessed socket and slid aside gold-chased panels of red cedar.

The dusty smells of books and old tapestries gave way before the
sharper tang of oiled steel, while new flame light threw grim
highlights over a clockwork array of counterweights and chain.  The
raven unfurled its wings for balance as the Sorcerer set hands to the
windlass.

He cranked back the bars on two massive, metal-bound gates, which
opened on a vaulted sally port cut through the base of the tower.

Here the drafts sang in dissonance through arrow loops and murder
holes.  Sethvir touched ink-stained knuckles to a secondary barrier of
carved oak; the arcane bindings he released next collapsed in a
blue-white sheet of clean fire, letting in the moist scents of grasses
and mist and damp earth.

Sethvir paused, fleetingly touched by regret.  That Althain Tower had
ever needed its antiquated, Second-Age defense works was sorrowful
enough, but that he should require wards, and that he should need to
unbind such protections to admit another Sorcerer of the Fellowship
went beyond tragedy.

The guard spells that Sethvir had dissolved on a thought, that he
could have stepped through with little more difficulty than breathing,
lay beyond the grasp of Traithe, who, at cost of the greater share of
his powers, had singlehandedly sealed the south Worldsend Gate in the
hour of greatest peril.  For the Mistwraith that afflicted Athera was
but one splintered portion of a vaster whole; had Traithe not limited
its access, Desh-thiere's rank coils would have strangled more than
sun, and choked off all life on the planet.

The raven flapped irritably.

"All right, little brother."  Harried back to duty, Sethvir unbarred
the wooden doors.

Outside, beyond the battered barrier of a final portcullis, stood a
Sorcerer, his deeply lined face and hooked nose shadowed under a
wide-brimmed hat.  A patterned silver band and straight-cut
silver-white hair were the only bright aspects about him; the rest of
his clothing including scuffed boots was fashioned of unadorned black.

The raven did not wait for Sethvir, but bounded through the grille to
light on its master's shoulder.

"Welcome," murmured the Warden of Althain, the usual misty distance
restored to his blue-green gaze.  "I trust your passage was swift?"

Traithe of the Fellowship shrugged, his iron-clad stoicism shaded
ineffably toward disgust.  "I was only in Castle Point."

The clang of the outer winch re-echoed through the arch while the
portcullis ground ponderously upward.  Traithe shouted over the din.

"I searched for six days before I found a captain still willing to
sail the coastline!"

The portcullis stopped.  Sethvir ejected a rude word that rang
isolated across fallen silence.  Then he said, "That frustration won't
last, my friend.  Banish Desh-thiere, and you can restore the lost arts
of navigation."

"But that would take-" Traithe's somber mien transformed before a
smile of wounding hope.  "The prophecy of West Gate?  Is this why you
called me?  A prince has returned from Dascen Elur?"

"Princes," Sethvir said succinctly, "s'llessid and s'Ffalenn, on
their way here with Asandir."

Traithe chuckled outright.  "Even better!  Ath, I was going to
grumble about sore feet, and here you'll have me dancing on them
instead."  He reached down, lifted the saddle and bridle heaped by his
boots as though he no longer felt the miles he had ridden through the
night.

Determinedly bent to mind the winch, Sethvir took no brightness from
his tidings.  That Traithe, who had sacrificed more than any to avert
the desecration of Desh-thiere, who was most vulnerable to harm if town
factions should discover his identity, who through these late and
troubled years was most resilient over his failures-that of the Seven,
Traithe must wait weeks and travel miles to receive news that Asandir,
Kharadmon, and Luhaine had all known on the wings of the moment itself
was a grievous injustice.

Through the passage, Sethvir reset gates and defense wards with the
motions of long habit, while Traithe regarded the statues commemorating
old-race heroes of a past that now seemed febrile as a dream, though
the jeweled settings were polished brightly and the caparisons on the
centaurs hung rich as if fresh from the loom.

"However the world comes to suffer, the sanctity of Althain remains
unbreached.

Your wardenship rests lightly here."

Mildly pleased, Sethvir returned a vague gesture.  "The upstairs is a
shambles.  If you ask for tea, we'll need to scrounge for clean cups."

Traithe made his way in halting steps toward the stairwell.

"Well, you do have more on your mind than all the rest of us put
together."

"Sometimes."  Pursued by echoes, forgetful of lamps, the Warden of
Althain began the ascent.  Through the pause as Traithe deposited his
horse gear in the armory, he added, "Right now, just Mirthlvain."

Traithe tripped on a doorsill, and not because of his limp.

For Mirthlvain Swamp to command his colleague's undivided attention
meant trouble of fearful proportions.  The raven resettled disturbed
balance with an indignant ruffle of feathers while, worn from travel
and oppressed by the mistsg Traithe felt the frost go through to his
bones.  He fumbled at his.  belt, hooked the thong that hung his flint
striker and seeded a spark in the sconce by the storage level.

In the sulfurous flare of new lamplight, Sethvir's gaze glinted hard
and immediate as chipped glass.  "Forgive me," he said.  "The tea must
wait.  Meth-snakes have bred with cierlan-ankeshed venom, and Verrain
has just now sent word: there are many of them, and a mass migration is
imminent."

Unsurprised that a disaster of such shattering proportions should be
announced in the midst of banalities, Traithe said, "And the others?"
Worry eclipsed his weariness.  If these meth-snakes spread beyond
Mirthlvain, country folk from Orvandir to Vastmark could be decimated
in a matter of days.

"I've called them."  Sethvir's voice seemed to echo beyond the
confines of Althain's stairwell, to bridge the wide leagues that
separated the far-scattered members of the Fellowship.

"Well, at least I'm at hand to be helpful," Traithe added, and this
time his bitterness showed.

Still focused and fully attentive, Sethvir surveyed his companion
from lined, dark eyes to scarred hands, to the limp and travel-stained
cloak that the raven had torn threadbare at the shoulders.  "There was
never a time that you failed us, old friend."

Then, as if Desh-thiere's desecrations were trivial, and large-scale
catastrophe from Mirthlvain did not threaten the kingdom of Shand, the
Sorcerer clapped both hands to his temples in contrition.

"Dear me.  There must be a thousand or so books heaped in the upper
library, and Ath's own jumble of inkwells lying about without caps.  By
nightfall we're going to be needing the table underneath."

"Well," said Traithe benignly.  "Between you and the spawn of the
methuri, we've got a dashed handful to tidy UP."

"Mess?"  Fixed on the underlying concept, Sethvir raised bristled
eyebrows.  "There's really no mess.  Just not enough corks for the
inkwells, that's what drives me to chaos."  He whirled and rushed up
the stairs.

Traithe followed.  In the deliberate, sure-footed manner that masked
the worst of his infinities, he lit sconces the entire height of
Althain Tower.  Asandir might not need them, nor would Kharadmon and
Luhaine; but the two princes arrived from Dascen Elur were bound not to
welcome a mage's disregard of the dark.

Summons

Far off, where daybreak has long since brightened Deshthiere's
oil-thick murk, cold winds wip across grassgowned hills of Araethura,
stirred by the essence of a Sorcerer who whirls his way south in grave
haste....

South and west, with the ease of an entity long discorporate, a
second Sorcerer, once called the Defender, rides the force of the
flooding tide in response to a distress call from Althain....

Under gust-swept peaks in Camris, wrapped in dawn-lit mist, the
Sorcerer Asandir pauses as if listening on the threshold of his
quarters in the barbarian outpost; a moment passes, then he whirls at a
run for the guard post to prepare for immediate departure....

IX.  Althain Tower

ccustomed to threats and fast action, Maenalle's scouts Ahad horses
saddled and provisions secured on the pack pony only minutes after the
urgent summons from Althain Tower reached the west outpost and Asandir.
Lysaer emerged from his quarters looking hollow-eyed.

Secretly relieved to be quit of the company of subjects he found
disturbing, he remained in flawless command of his manners, a trait
young Maien admired as he held the stirrup for his prince to mount.

Not all men would be so pleasant to serve after being rousted at dawn
on the heels of a rowdy celebration.

Arithon sat his dun looking murderous.  He had not rested.

Neither had he been so far into his cups the evening before that
indulgence should have spoiled his sleep.  As Asandir swung into the
black's saddle, the Master said, "I should have liked to ask for
audience with Lady Maenalle."

The Sorcerer adjusted his reins without reply, and while the wind
chased a cloak-snapping blast of cold off the heights, his reason for
silence became apparent.

"If you wanted to speak for young Grithen, spare the trouble,"
announced Tysan's lady steward, present all the while as observer.

Dressed like her scouts, her hair bundled under the hood of a sewn
hide cloak, she had passed unnoticed in the bustle.

Grudging to show surprise beyond a fractional rise of one brow,
Arithon greeted her.  As close to apology as Lysaer had ever seen him,
he said, "Surely I have reason to plead the man's case."

Maenalle's features stayed hard.  "Tysan's scouts do not act for
personal vengeance.  No matter what the provocation, they are forbidden
to take hostages.  We are not like Rathain's clans, to extort coin and
cattle for human lives.

For breaking honor, Grithen must answer.  The fact he was invited
into his temptation and that his action also threatened his liege bears
very little on his punishment.  The code that condemns him is one that
upholds clan survival."

The dun sidled under Arithon's hand as he fielded the nuance in
challenge.  "You disapprove of your counterparts to the east?"

Maenalle's lips tightened.  Though aware that the dun's combative
crab steps reflected the mood of the rider, she responded with the
bluntness that abashed the most brash of her scouts.  "Unlike your
subjects in Rathain, my following need not contend with the trade city
of Etarra.  Feud between clanborn and townsman is pitiless there.  In
the eastlands the governors' council can execute a man for the offense
of singing the wrong ballad.  Play your lyranthe in those halls with
caution, young prince."

The Shadow Master said, "Spare the title, lady.  I might never
acknowledge any claim to the city you speak of."

Again Maenalle matched his offensive.  "Would you risk the perception
that inspires your talent by hardening your heart against need?"

And Arithon suddenly laughed, his anger absolved by admiration for
her unflinching toughness.  He bent in his saddle, raised Maenalle's
hand, and kissed it sincerely in farewell.  "Were you caithdein of
Rathain, I might find myself sorely oppressed.  Dare I suppose that
Etarra's governors would also find their ways compromised?"

Strikingly free of vindictiveness, Maenalle said, "If you want my
earnest opinion, there can be no remedy for Etarra except to raze it
clean to the ground."

Piquant as her remark was, the chance was lost to pursue it as Dakar
emerged from his cabin, stumbling in the grip of two scouts.

They had needed to shepherd him into his clothes, for his voice arose
in complaint that his britches were laced inside out, and both his
boots on wrong feet.  His keepers only sniffed at his protests and
hoisted him toward his waiting horse.  Maenalle disengaged her hand
from Arithon's grasp and took hurried leave of her sovereign.  If
Lysaer's response was coot with propriety, the reason became lost in
the rush.  The instant the Mad Prophet's bulk was stowed astride,
Asandir wheeled his stallion and, urged his party to the road.

"Ath's mercy," Dakar cried in vociferous injury.  "What disaster
brings this uncivilized change of plans?  I thought I could nurse last
night's hangover under dry blankets for a change."

Asandir answered between the snow-muffled thunder of hooves.  The
words Mirthlvain and meth-snakes carried forth with incisive clarity,
and Dakar's recalcitrance withered.

Lysaer observed this.  Despite an ambivalence resharpened by last
night's ballads, he spurred abreast of the dun mare.

If the unaccustomed rub of Maenalle's lyranthe left the creature
wayward and spooked, the Master was seasoned to her tricks.  Aware his
half-brother would respond though his hands were full, the prince
called over her rebellious snorts.

"The page who wakened me said our Sorcerer had received emergency
summons from Althain.  What horror in this land do you suppose might be
worse than Khadrim?"

The Master grinned back in speculation.  "We do seem in a hurry to
find out."  He did not add that Maenalle's scouts had shown him maps;
Althain Tower lay ninety leagues distant, a six-day journey over roads
sparsely stationed with posts for adequate remounts.  Yet Asandir
spurred toward the foothills at a pace not intended to spare
horseflesh.

After scrambling descent of a rock-strewn slope, the riders clattered
onto a level stretch flanked by wind-stunted cedars.

The footing softened to frost-crusted mud, safe for a prudent trot.
Asandir shook his black to a canter, and conversation dwindled before
the need to duck clods spattered up by its hooves.

The peaks lost altitude as the Sorcerer's party progressed.

Under muted daylight, the heavy snows of the passes thinned to slush
sluiced by ribbons of runoff.  Lowland damp blunted the cold to a
miserable ache, and the horses streamed lathered sweat.  The dun
abandoned her antics, her wind and energy consumed entirely by running,
and still Asandir pressed on, the stride of his rangy black unflagging
through league after passing league.

"By the Wheel," Lysaer called in distress.  "Is he going to run our
horses till they founder?"

Dakar roused from his misery, surprised.  "Asandir?

Never."  Morosely he added, "One could wish the Sorcerer spared some
pity for the aching head of his apprentice."

"Magecraft," Arithon explained as Lysaer questioned such unnatural
display of endurance.  "Touch your horse and you'll feel the energy."

Lysaer stroked his chestnut's steaming neck, and snatched back from
the tingling warmth that surged in a wave from his fingertips.

Nettled to be alone in his ignorance, he glanced across whipping
strands of mane.  "Could you make such a spell?"

Arithon regarded his brother with eyes unnervingly thoughtful.

"Not for so long, and not without harm.  A balance must be
maintained.

If the horses don't suffer, the Sorcerer must stand as their proxy."

Curiosity overshadowed Lysaer's distrust.  "Then Asandir depletes
himself to replenish the strength of our mounts?"

"In effect, yes."  As if reluctant to elaborate, Arithon faced
forward into the wind as they thundered on into the lowlands.

Morning wore on toward noon.

The countryside steadily flattened, and the road improved to a span
of stone paving scored white by the passage of cartwheels.

Asandir pressed the horses to gallop through gentle hills and
vine-tangled orchards, stopping only once at a wayside tavern to buy
raisins, sausage, bread, and spirits for refreshment.  While his
companions ate and swallowed dry whiskey, horse boys toweled lather
from the horses and checked their hooves for loose shoes.  Within
minutes, the company was back in their saddles, still cold, still sore,
but none more haggard than the Sorcerer, who seemed a figure pinched
out of clay as they clattered back onto the thoroughfare.

"How much longer can he keep this up?"  Lysaer asked as his horse
picked up a brisk trot.  The pause at the tavern had not refreshed him.

His muscles had stiffened, wet breeches had chafed his knees raw, and
he owned no mage-trained detachment to set such discomforts out of
mind.

Dakar glanced wistfully over the gates of a farmstead; smoke from the
chimney carried an aroma of roast ham.

Lighted cottage windows glimmered through bare trees and birch
copses, their cheery shelter as useless as mirage to travelers harried
by rain, and mounts hard-driven over slate gray and glistening with
puddles.  When Lysaer repeated his query, the Mad Prophet shrugged like
a sodden crow.  "Who can fathom the limits of a Fellowship Sorcerer?

I've studied to r centuries, and I daren't."

Lysaer was too spent to question whether magecraft or lying
cussedness gave rise to the Mad Prophet's claim to unnatural longevity.

Cantering again, they crossed a blacksmith's yard.

Blocked by a packed herd of sheep across the roadway, Asandir wheeled
his black into the weed-choked ditch by the wayside.  His party
followed, raked by branches, while the ewes beaded up in alarm against
the far bank and the abused shepherd's shouted invective faded behind.

The rain fell harder and farmsteads thinned away into wilderness
before the Sorcerer at last drew rein.  Engrossed in miserable
discomfort, Lysaer jounced against the chestnut's crest as it clattered
to a halt underneath him.

"We leave the road here," Asandir called while Dakar and Arithon
pulled up.  "Dismount and stay close.  Every minute counts."

Saddle-galled and sore, Lysaer managed not to stagger as his numbed
feet struck ground.  He swiped back wet hair and surveyed a site that
seemed unremittingly desolate.  "Here?"

Asandir turned the black's bridle and shouldered without reply into
holly and briars that hooked and snagged threads from his cloak.

A stone's throw back from the verge, the brush subsided.  Trees eaten
hollow by age choked the light, and faint depressions and upthrust
stone curbs revealed the ruin of an older road.  Asandir pointed out a
canted megalith traced over with weather-worn carving.

"That stone marks the third lane, one of twelve channels of
earthforce we will tap for swift travel to Althain.  The soil itself
sings with power here."

As if the land's living pulse could also be drawn to sustain him, the
Sorcerer quickened pace.

Forced to keep up, Lysaer and the others stumbled over lichen-capped
stones and splashed through bogs, their roadweary mounts trailing
droop-tailed and tired over hummocks browsed short by deer.

The failing day dimmed the mist in louring veils, broken ahead by a
wall that once had been dressed white marble.  The eroded pillars of an
arch yet stood where they had originally passed through.  Beyond,
patched with bracken and a crisscrossed stitchery of game trails, the
land sloped into a bowl-shaped hollow too symmetrical to be natural,
and ringed by oaks scabbed over with ancient blotches of lichen.

Footfalls silenced by wet leaves and moss, the party moved through
the green-tinged twilight of the grove.  In places of thinned
vegetation, iron-shod hooves clanged across weathered black agate.

Runes were inset in the halfbared slab, fashioned from a
light-reflective mineral.

Passing seasons had matted debris across the design, but the artistry
in those fragments left visible roused an uncanny prickle across the
skin.

Lysaer tugged his wet cloak around his shoulders, while Arithon
scuffed away sticks and leaves to lay bare the ringed pattern of a
cipher.  "A power focus," he mused in an awed whisper.

Asandir stopped his horse.  "Yes.  We stand at the center of the
Great Circle of Isaer, built in the First Age to channel earthforce to
guard the halls of the earliest Paravian kings.

Those defense works are long vanished, yet the Circle itself was
maintained, at least until the conquest of Desh-thiere."

Arithon passed his reins to his half-brother and took an entranced
step forward.

"Don't stray," Asandir cautioned.  "In fact, you might wish to rest,
This will be your last chance before we relocate to Althain Tower."

Arithon regretfully contained his curiosity.  "Are there any Paravian
cities left standing?"

Sorrowfully the Sorcerer shook his head.  "Unlike mortal men, the old
races seldom built, and then only through necessity.  What hold-fasts
remained from the First Age were laid waste in the course of the
rebellion, except the towers of the citadel in Ithamon.  Those stand
protected by mighty wards, and the armies who came to desecrate could
not enter."

But mention of the city ruled by s'Ffalenn ancestors withered
Arithon's interest.  He retrieved his horse and subsided into thought
while Asandir fetched a flask from his saddle bag and offered a round
of strong spirits, Too late Arithon noticed Dakar's unusual abstinence.

He ran his tongue over his lips, but detected no trace of an
aftertaste, or any sweetness that might mask the suspect taint of
drugs.  His knees turned weak despite this.  He had time to see Lysaer
slump forward before his own senses whirled into vertigo.  In the
maddening space of a heartbeat, and despite his most desperate anger,
he collapsed on wet stone in ag oblivious heap beside his brother.

"That was a dirty trick," Dakar observed.

Asandir shoved the stopper in the flask of ensorcelled spirits, his
eyes gone steely with urgency.  "Necessary, my imprudent prophet."

Through arcane manipulation of an earth lane, Arithon's inquisitive
awareness and Lysaer's ignorance of grand conjury were complications
best avoided to save delay.  "Meth-snakes are stirring across
Mirthlvain even as we speak, and I need you to quiet the horses."

Dakar caught the reins the Sorcerer threw him, then haltered the
drifter-bred chestnut.  Pale from more than his headache, he coaxed
four lathered mounts into a huddle, then squeezed his eyes stoically
closed while the paint rubbed her headstall against his chest, and the
insolent dun lipped his cloak hood.  "Keep doing that," he murmured,
over and over like a litany.  "Just keep on, and pay no mind to the
wizardry."

The last time he had been told to steady horses through the
topsy-turvy disorientation of a lane transfer, he had suffered a
dislocated shoulder.  Unless Sethvir had much changed his ways, there
would be a dearth of hard spirits in Althain Tower's cupboards, even
for medicinal emergency.

For Arithon, the spell-wrought sleep induced by Asandir did not last
undisturbed.  Brushed first by a passing energy current, then immersed
in a burgeoning bloom of ward radiance, his enchanter's sensitivity
reacted even through the veil of unconsciousness.  Trained reflex took
over and aligned his awareness to trace the source.  The vibrations
pursued by his innermind assumed hazy form, and he roved a landscape
like dream but not.

Even asleep, a part of him recognized that the energy net which drew
him into vision was not fancy, but a peril less forgiving than a
sword's edge.

Arithon perceived a stand of reeds thrust through the inky, still
waters of a marsh, no mere bog, but a vast expanse of wetlands
crisscrossed with crumbled walls.  Mist and night chilled air already
dank with rotting vegetation; in the absence of moon or stars, ward
glyphs glimmered above drifted fog, wraith-pale and sharp-edged as
blades, their forces interlocked to form a boundary.  Inside, under
apparently calm pools, the swamp's depths moiled; serpents darted and
dived, fanged, venomed, and guarded by a still figure in russet.

Disturbed as if startled by footsteps in a place where no man dared
tread, the watcher sharply looked up.

A soundless shock jarred the vision as the eyes of the guardian and
the perception of the dreamer met; then the hlands whirled away,
replaced by a lofty tower chamber walled with leather-bound books, and
centered by an ebon table upon which a brazier burned like a star.

Around this charged point of power, truesight identified the
signature energies of Asandir, the Mad Prophet's muddled
contradictions, and a third mage strangely shadowed and overhung by the
spread wings of a raven.  That moment Arithon felt his awareness
gathered in by a touch of inexpressible gentleness.  His vision
narrowed to encompass the face of a fourth mage seated with the others.

Mildly snub-nosed, seamed like crumpled parchment, the Sorcerer's
features expressed grandfatherly bemusement, lent a benign touch of
frailty by a wooly shock of white hair and beard mussed for want of
recent grooming.  The impression of childlike senility proved
deceptive.  Half buried beneath bristled brows, eyes of diffuse
green-gray reflected all the breadth of Ath's Creation.

"Teir's'Ffalenn," pronounced a voice that rang through Arithon's mind
like the sonorous stroke of a gong.

The Master of Shadows snapped awake.  His eyes opened to a
red-carpeted chamber warmed by a hearth of banked embers.  A kettle
dangled from an iron hook wrought into the serpentine loops of a
dragon.  Nearby stood a marble plinth, but in place of artwork or
porcelain ornament, this one held a tea canister that somebody
thoughtless had left open.

Arithon blinked.  Utterly disoriented, he stirred, then recalled
Asandir's ensorcelled flask.  If transfer from the power focus at Isaer
had been accomplished while he slept, this place would be located in
Althain Tower.  He lay on a cot under blankets.  His boots had been
removed; also his tunic, belt, and breeches.  He still wore his shirt,
damp yet from rain.  A heartbeat shy of a curse, Arithon spied his
missing clothes, slung over a chair alongside a bridle in need of
mending and a snarled-up twist of waxed thread.  An awl jabbed
irreverently upright through a sumptuous velvet seat cushion.  His
sword, drawn from its sodden sheath and oiled, rested against a table
heaped with books, some flopped face downward.  Others were dog-eared
at the corners, or jammed with torn bits of vellum or frayed string
pressed into service as page markers.  The dribbled remains of a tallow
dip lay couched in an exquisite silver candle stand, and chipped mugs,
used teaspoons, and mismatched inkwells filled any cranny not
encroached on by clutter.

Nested amid oak-paneled walls and age-faded tapestries, the air of
friendly disorder offered the weary traveler a powerful incentive to
relax and rest.  But charged to disquiet by the tingling, subliminal
ache that partnered the proximity of thundering currents of power,
Arithon felt nettled as a cat in a drawstring bag.  Although Lysaer lay
curled in contentment in a cot alongside, his half-brother tossed off
his blankets, arose, and pulled on his rain-damp clothing.  Since his
boots were nowhere to be found, he crossed the thick carpet barefoot
and opened the chamber's single door, a studded oaken panel strapped
and barred with heavy iron.  The sconce-lit stairwell beyond removed
any doubt that Althain Tower had been built primarily as a fortress.

Chilled by fierce drafts through the arrow slits, Arithon stepped out
and closed the latch softly behind him.  A moment of considered study
revealed the power's source to be above him.  He set foot upon worn
stone and climbed to the highest level, where he encountered a narrow
portal as starkly unornamented as the first.  The latch and bar were
forged iron, frosty to his touch as he set hand to the grip and cracked
the panel.

Inside lay the round, book-lined room from his dream.

The central table was supported by ebon carvings of Khadrim, and
seated there, faced away from him, were Dakar, Asandir, and a
black-clad stranger.  Opposite sat another, robed in maroon with
sleeves banded in dark interlace and rubbed thin at the cuffs.  He was
neither tall nor portly, but his presence had a rootedness like the
endurance of storm-whipped oak, and his face and eyes matched that of
the Sorcerer, who had spoken his title and aroused him.

"Arithon of Rathain?"  said Sethvir, Warden of Althain, in gentle
inquiry.  "Enter, and be welcome."

Dakar swiveled around in astonishment.  "You should be asleep and
beyond reach of dreaming," he accused as the Shadow Master stepped
through the doorway.

"How could I?"  Aware of all eyes upon him, not least the attention
of the black-clad stranger, Arithon pulled out an empty chair and sat.
He rested his hands on the table edge, careful not to look directly
into the brazier.  More like a spark than natural flame, its blue-white
blaze carved the chamber into starred, knife-edged shadows, but
radiated no heat, for its source was drawn directly from the third
lane.

To Dakar, Arithon retorted, "Could you lie abed, with such a grand
spate of earthforce in flux just over your head?"

To Sethvir, he added, "I came to offer help, if you'll accept it."

Befuddled in appearance as any careworn old man, the Warden of
Althain said, "We cannot deny we're shorthanded.  But you should be
aware, there is peril."  Though mild, the look that followed searched
in a manner unnervingly subtle.

Read to his innermost depths, Arithon was touched by a contact so
ephemeral, it raised no prickle of dread; and yet, the image conveyed
to him harrowed.  The swamp-dwelling serpent he had first seen in dream
recurred now in migrating thousands, possessed of an intelligence that
hungered, and envenomed with a poison more dire than anything brewed up
by nature.  Secure within Althain Tower, Arithonfelt the restlessness
that drove the meth-snakes in their hordes to seek the defenseless
countryside beyond the marsh.  Shown the villagers, children, and
goodwives whose lives were endangered, he was given, intact, the
knowledge of the forces currently at work to stay the migration; then,
in blunt honesty, the daunting scope of energy needed to eradicate the
threat.

"Now then," Sethvir finished aloud.  "You would bear no shame if you
wish to retire below and sleep.  A wardspell might be set to isolate
your awareness, if you desire."

Arithon measured the Warden, whose kindliness masked a razor-keen
perception.  After a slow breath he said, "If I were to retire, I'd be
asking no protections where plainly none can be spared."

As he made no move to rise, Sethvir laced together fingers
blue-veined as fine marble.  "Very well, young master.

Our Fellowship would be last to deny that against the methsnakes of
Mirthlvain, every resource is needful.  You may stay, but these terms
will apply."  His regard pinned Arithon without quarter.  "You will
lend support to the spellbinder, Dakar, unconditionally, and from
trance state.  You will hold no awareness of the proceedings as they
occur, and retain no memory afterward."

Severe strictures: Arithon understood that if the conjury went awry,
his life would be wrung from his body as a man might twist moisture
from a rag.  He would have no warning, no control, no shred of will.
Across the table, the Sorcerer in black watched him with feeling akin
to sympathy; Asandir stayed firmly nonjudgmental.  If heirship of
Rathain seemed no hindrance to a perilous decision, expectations
remained nonetheless.  Whipped to resistance by that certainty, the
Master moved on to Dakar, and there read fatuous contempt, for why
should any trained master lend a brother's trust to an apprentice who
hinged on beer to evade discipline?

Moved to black and bitter humor, the Master looked back at Sethvir.
"I accept."  The words were charged with challenge: if limits existed
to the free will Asandir had inferred he still possessed, he would risk
his very life to expose them.

Sublimely untroubled by such byplay, the Warden of Althain rested
misty, poet's eyes upon the Master.  "As you choose.  You may set your
mind in readiness at once, for meth-snakes won't wait for second
thoughts."

Arithon bowed his head, aware through closed eyes of Dakar's
unadulterated dismay.  The faintest smile curved the s'Ffalenn mouth,
then faded as he engaged his selfdiscipline and submerged his
consciousness into trance.

A great deal less gracefully, and with a martyred sigh the Master of
Shadows was quite beyond hearing, Dakar gathered his own, more
scattered resources.

Through the isolated interval of concentration, while the Mad Prophet
assimilated the link offered by Arithon, Sethvir turned in piercing
dismay toward Asandir.

"Difficulty with the succession was an understatement, my friend."

The Warden of Althain waved an exasperated hand at Rathain's now
unconscious prince.  "You inferred a past history of blood feud, but
this!"

At Traithe's blank look of inquiry, Sethvir hooked his knuckles
through the tangled end of his beard.  "Our Teir's'Ffalenn has the
sensitivity imbued in his forefather's line, but none of the
protections.  His maternal inheritance of farsightedness lets him take
no step without guilt, for he sees the consequences of his every act,
and equally keenly feel them."

"That doesn't explain his recklessness," Traithe said.

"Nor such guarded resentment."

"No."  Asandir answered his colleague levelly back.  "A prior
conflict between ruling power and trained awareness of the mysteries
has already broken Arithon's peace of mind.

An attempt on my part to ease his despair misfired and nearly earned
his enmity."

Sethvir steepled his hands, thoughtful.  "Set him free, then.

Let him pursue his gift of music, marry, and let us seek @,Rathain's
prince among his heirs.  After the passage of five centuries, what is
another generation, or even two?"

"I beg to differ," Traithe broke in, his quiet, grainy voice tinged
to regret.  "If Etarra's merchant factions are not curbed with the
advent of clear sunlight, the grow too entrenched to break."

intrigue could Silence fell, harsh under the glare of the brazier.

Each of three Fellowship Sorcerers pondered upon the trade city that
commanded the heart of Rathain's trade routes.  There the old hatreds
ran deepest, and there misguided justice had brewed a morass of bloody
politics and decadence.  For Etarra there could be no tolerance.

The prince who assumed Rathain's crown would be charged with
dismantling that nest of corruption, and no chance offered better
opportunity than the time of Desh-thiere's defeat, when governors and
guilds would be plunged into disarray by the return of the open sky.

"The long-range effects bear careful study," Sethvir concluded.

"We shall cast strands when this matter of methsnakes is resolved."

Then, since the task of quelling serpents was dire in itself, he took
brisk stock of their resources.

Two other Fellowship Sorcerers rushed to the site of trouble had
earlier raised a barrier ward to seal off the swamp.

Their combined efforts were barely sufficient to stay the serpents'
migration, which left Mirthlvain's guardian, the spellbinder Verrain,
alone in the old watch keep at Meth Isle.

Although the fortification had been augmented with a fifthlane power
focus to combat worse horrors in the past, an unaided apprentice could
never man such defenses without becoming charred to a cinder.

"I see no alternative but to shape and direct the power from here."
Sethvir sighed in naked regret.  "What else can we try but to bend the
third-lane current across the continent in a reduced vibration that
Verrain can safely transfer to bolster the barrier ward?"

To hear such a note of uncertainty from the Warden of Alth.ain was
enough in itself to inspire fear.  By now in firm rapport with the
resources lent by Arithon, Dakar sh' of a glance around the table.

Traithe was openly sweating, and Asandir sat with one fist braced in
trepidation.  In a stillness more eloquent than words, each Sorcerer
faced the appalling truth: never in five thousand years of history had
they been so critically understaffed.  The circle they would close for
the task of saving Shand would only be effective as its weakest link.

Miserably conscious of his shortcomings, Dakar krioited clammy hands
and cursed Arithon s'Ffalenn for scheming arrogance.  Never mind that
the Master's magecraft held none of the shifty cunning his conscious
mind affected; however he might disparage Dakar for slipshod ways, the
trust he gave in trance was clear-edged and forthright as his music.

The paradox jabbed like insult, that a spirit so exactingly
controlled should vengefully surrender all that he was into jeopardy.

For as Sethvir described the coming trial, Dakar would become the
check-rein on that awesome flow of power to be channeled through
Verrain thousands of leagues away.  If the spellbinder at Meth Isle
should misstep, and Dakar keep less than perfect vigilance, the influx
sent from Althain would merge unchecked with the fifth lane.  The
overload would sear the heartlands of three kingdoms to waste, while
the meth-snakes that compelled such unconscionable risk would
themselves evade annihilation.

Riddled through by anxiety, Dakar started at a touch upon his
shoulder.  Sethvir stood beside him, his manner tempered with sympathy.

"We ask a great deal more than is reasonable of YOU."

Dakar shook his head, struck mute.  He had watched a man suffer death
by cierlan-ankeshed venom; the memory still harrowed him in nightmares.
Any stresses he might share through his link with Verrain must surely
be less than the horrible invasion that threatened Shand.

"I'll cope," Dakar mumbled.

The Warden of Althain was never so easily deceived.

"You will guard Verrain's well-being, and your own.

Arithon's strength will back you, but his safety will be mine to
secure.  He need never know.  But as the last living s'Ffalenn, his
line is too precious to risk."

Sethvir gave Dakar a last pat in reassurance, then bent over
Arithon's limp form and with a gesture wove a protective ward that
stung the eyesight to witness.

Although relieved of a burden, the Mad Prophet felt galled to no end
that the Master should pass unscathed through a direct challenge of the
Fellowship's wishes.  "It's not as if he gave a whistle for the land,
or the people, or even a spit over principles," Dakar grumbled as he
stuffed shaky fingers in his cuffs to wedge them still.

Already attuned to larger matters, Sethvir returned a vague murmur.
"You misunderstand the man gravely."

But since the Mad Prophet had been engrossed beyond hearing through
the Fellowship's recent discussion, Dakar believed only that Arithon's
genius for duplicity had caused Sethvir himself to be misled.

The Warden of Althain settled n his seat with a rustle of robes, and
his misty-eyed regard touched his colleagues.

No spoken signal passed between the three, yet when the Fellowship
Sorcerers at Althain commenced rapport, the air in their presence
quickened at the call of some unseen current.  Shadows swelled as the
spark in the brazier condensed to a pinpoint, dim at first, then waxing
as their touch bound the pulse of Athera's third lane ever more
relentlessly into focus.  The light flared to piercing brilliance.

Forced to avert his eyes, the Mad Prophet was awed to find the
Sorcerers unmoved by the dazzle.  Rooted as stone, they twined the
earthforces tighter still, until the chamber resonated with a palpable,
mounting charge.  A stinging bite of ozone eclipsed the book smell.

The tower's granite walls lost aspect, became edgeless and transient
before the vast tide of power which itself seemed to cancel time.

The atmosphere became stillness before storm, and out of pent silence
Sethvir spoke a word.

Light arced from the brazier toward Traithe.

He received it unflinching, cast it around space and time in a manner
that defeated reason.  A snap sheared the air into wind as the ray
honed out of earthforce bridged the wide distance to Meth Isle.

Dakar bit his lip.  The salt taste of sweat seemed unreal on his
tongue, as if the proximity of lane force estranged him from bodily
sensation.  Then the connection completed.  His thoughts were slammed
to incoherence as, across the breadth of the continent, the spellbinder
who was Guardian of.

Mirthlvain recaptured the current sent from Althain.  The
focus.pattern on the stone floor at Meth Isle keep flashed scarlet as
power lapped against power, and the fifth lahe's inherent energies
surged in sympathetic resonance.

Barefoot, terrified, and stripped down to animal re Verrain wrested
the flux apart with a cry that echoed ward into the night beyond his
walls.  He rocked under a buffeting slap, shared by Dakar, as the
awesome, fiery rush of power deflected through his body, and on into
the deft control of the Sorcerers, who held the barrier along
Mirthlvain's petimeter.  Although stepped down to a finer resonance by
the pair Asandir and Sethvir, the current's passage was a dry,
lacerating wind of agony.  Dakar drew gasping breaths and struggled.

He must preserve self-identity against the burning assault of
sensation experienced by Veffain, or risk himself and all who depended
on him.

The powers whipped and raged.  Dakar fought not to be swept from
control, though he had no anchor.  The chair beneath his body had no
meaning, or the stone under his feet.

He was a mote in a whirlpool, flexed, twisted, shoved, and driven
until physical orientation seemed an illusion cast outside reality.

Sethvir sensed the Mad Prophet's distress, even through the shaping
of the third lane's raw hands.  "Sometimes it helps if you hold
someone's hand," he said gently, and offered his own.

Dakar accepted with a gratitude compounded by desperation.  Like a
boulder in the thrash of a millrace, the touch steadied him.  Distantly
he was conscious of Sethvir's link with Asandir, and the
incomprehensible strength they engaged to tame the wild pulse of the
third lane.  Dakar blinked tears, or maybe sweat, from his eyes.

Confusion enveloped him, and a duality that dizzied.  He endured,
held to the body seated at Althain Tower, though a part of him also
stood, barefoot, chilled, and blinded by the inflamed focus pattern
that channeled the untapped fifth lane.  Dakar suffered with Verrain as
wave after wave of energies coursed through their twinned awareness, to
be snatched and turned again, before they merged in ruinous concert
with the native currents underfoot.

Beyond moss-streaked keep walls, and across the silvered waters of
Methlas Lake, the mists of Desh-thiere muted a dance and flash of blue
light, as the last two Sorcerers in the chain fused with the borrowed
powers to stabilize their defense ward.  The critical moment arrived,
when the vast and intricate matrix had been strengthened enough to be
passed to the control of one Sorcerer.  Apprehension stirred the circle
gathered at Althain.

"Steady, hold steady," Asandir said aloud.

Traithe returned a sharp nod.

Dakar felt Sethvir's fingers tighten over his own.  He had no chance
to wonder if stress or reassurance prompted the gesture, for Veffain's
recoil as the power flow shifted unbalanced him as well.

Through a terrible, precarious interval the Mad Prophet battled for
cohesion, the will that held him to cognizance gone febrile as a
spider's silk stretched against a gale.  By the time the onslaught
eased, Luhaine, once known as Defender, now contained the serpents'
migration, bolstered by assistance from Althain Tower.  With one mage
less in the link, every risk lay redoubled.  Dakar's mouth felt packed
in ash.  Should the energy flow from Althain to Meth Isle keep fail
now, Luhaine's barrier would crumple, and meth-snakes in teeming
thousands would descend like a plague upon the countryside.

Yet such perilous preparation had at last freed the other Sorcerer on
site at Mirthlvain to act.  Ruthless as Ath's avenging angel, Kharadmon
brought his powers to bear upon the boglands.  Stale pools lashed up
into foam as a living torrent of serpents seethed, pursued out of
cranny, mud pool, and reed bed by a corona of killing light.

The serpents writhed in futile flight, turned at bay against
Luhaine's ward.

They struck at air, at wind-lashed hummocks, and in a madness of
frustrated fury, at each other's struggling flesh, while the night
passed and their hordes were pared back relentlessly by the efforts of
the Fellowship's circle.

Then Verrain faltered at Meth Isle.  The fifth-lane focus there
crackled to a blaze that signaled cataclysm.

Caught without warning, Dakar felt his senses upend into vertigo.

All his control unraveled.  His teeth clenched and every muscle
cramped, and his body twisted as if he tumbled in a fall from a great
height.

Warned by Dakar's groaned shout, Sethvir sensed the disaster.  As
though he was not enmeshed in rapport with Asandir, the whole untamed
force of the third lane whipped to submission between, he severed the
power transfer.

Snapped out of range of all pain, the Mad Prophet slammed back in his
chair.  His composure dissolved into ugly, racking sobs that were the
best he could manage for breathing.

"Ath," he gasped, half unhinged.  "I feel like every hangover I ever
earned has joined force in triplicate to plague me.  Swept by giddy
hysteria, Dakar jammed a fist in his mouth to stop his babbling tongue.
His vision had gone patchy and his ears boomed to a surf-roll of
sound.  Somewhere in the echoing, hollow void where thought seemed to
flurry and vanish, he re-encountered the current channeled in from the
Master of Shadows, reduced now to an ember, but pitched with the same
rock-steady vibration that had marked its presence from the start.

Merciless in his need, Dakar seized upon that glimmer.  He tapped
Arithon's source to anchor failing senses and recover the strength to
look up.

"Luhaine's ward!"  he cried out, pierced by a raw blade of fear.

A stark silhouette against the blue-white glare of lane forces, and
the pallid gray light beyond the casement, Asandir caught his shivering
shoulders.  The Sorcerer's fingers were not steady, but the grip they
delivered bruised bone.  "Bide still, Dakar, it's all right."

The supporting hands fell away, and the Mad Prophet slumped forward,
his cheek cradled on crossed forearms.

Beside him, a haggard Traithe had done likewise.  Through ears
muddied with bell tones of ringing sound, Dakar heard Sethvir's voice
assure that before the defenses failed, the meth-snakes had been
reduced to manageable numbers.

Kharadmon could track down and eradicate the survivors with a fair
chance of success.

Verrain's collapse had been due to exhaustion and overextension.

Luhaine would tend him, and keep watch at Mirthlvain until the
Guardian spellbinder's recovery.

Like a shell sucked clean of meat, Dakar allowed himself to be
ushered to his feet.  He was aware of jostling, of movement, as the
Sorcerers bore him up along with the limp form of Arithon s'Ffalenn.

Perversely vindicated that at least such damnably arrogant
self-discipline had just limits, Dakar inclined toward a rich
laugh-except the crushing intensity of his headache permitted only
breathless speech.  "The prodigy overreached himself Bothersome
meddling mind of his will have no choice but to sleep off the reaction
now."

"Indeed," Sethvir responded in remarkable pique.  "Our Teir's'Ffalenn
won't escape his bed for at least the next few days."

The Sorcerer said something more in the lilting cadence of the old
tongue, but the words escaped comprehension.

Poised at the head of the stairs, Dakar swayed precariously.

His knees let go all at once.  As a falling rush of darkness claimed
him, he fuzzily concluded that drunken binges befuddled a body less
than overindulgence of magecraft any day.  Most urgently he needed to
remember to clarify that point with Asandir.

 Strands

Eventide saw the Fellowship Sorcerers, Asandir, Sethvir, and Traithe,
gathered once more in Althain Tower's upper chamber.  The blaze of the
brazier lent crispness to profiles already hardened by the demands of
the times.  Conversation stayed light as they waited upon their
colleagues Kharadmon and Luhaine, both of whom were discorporate
spirits, able to cross the continent from Meth Isle at whim.  Certain
topics were avoided; as unflinchingly as any Fellowship Sorcerer still
physically embodied had weathered the setbacks engendered by
Desh-thiere and Davien's rebellion, none cared to count how many places
would stand empty tonight.  In better years, at other summons, the
ebony table had seated the full Fellowship of Seven, five high kings,
and a representative from the three Paravian races; apprentice
spellbinders had not been required to shoulder responsibilities beyond
their training to fill, and mist had not smothered the land to the harm
of the fruitful earth.

Sethvir sought his usual solace, scrounging in his cupboards for tea,
when Traithe's raven raised wings and he was disturbed by a draft that
spilled through the east ent.  The sudden inrush of wind carried a
distinctive scent of grasslands spiked with frost.

Poised with his hands full of crockery, Sethvir addressed what seemed
vacant air.  "Kharadmon?  You're not too spent to project an image?
The Mad Prophet, I think, would be appreciative."

As the eddy swirled to stillness, the tower chamber rang with deep
laughter.  "Where is Dakar?"  said a voice in resonant Paravian that
issued from a point inside the shutter.

A shadow coalesced in the spot, resolving into the slender form of a
Sorcerer in sable and green.  A cloak lined in orange silk spilled from
elegantly set shoulders; the face inside the hood was an elfin
arrangement of angles, accented by a spade-shaped beard, a glib smile,
and a hooked nose.  The apparition raised tapered hands and pushed the
cloth back, smoothing black-and-white-streaked hair.  Freed from
shadow, the eyes were pale green and direct as a cat's.  The visual
projection of the discorporate mage Kharadmon skimmed a glance over the
assembled company and, in thoroughly changed inflections, repeated,
"Where is Dakar?"

"On his way."  Asandir gave a boyish grin.  "Though I fear a bit the
worse for drink.  Sethvir had cider in his cupboard, and our prophet
drank it dry to blunt the aches of exhaustion."

Kharadmon's smile widened to show foxy, even teeth, and features that
had no substance in reality flashed a look of pure deviltry.

Two stories below Althain's topmost chamber, the Mad Prophet roused
from dreamless stupor with a start that cracked his knee into Sethvir's
chess table.  Ivory and ebony counters cascaded to the floor, the
clatter of their upset entangled with Dakar's peevish oath.

"Dharkaron's chariot!"  He catapulted from the armchair that had
supported his untimely nap, slammed into the table again, and slipped
and skated across rolling pawns through several unbalanced steps.  A
spectacular trip landed him belly down across a footstool and a racked
set of fire tongs.

"Blessed Ath," Dakar wheezed on the breath bashed out of his lungs.
"I'm coming!"

Moments later, the Sorcerers upstairs were disrupted by the solid
thud of a body against the iron-bound door to their chamber.  The latch
rattled sharply but did not unfasten; after an interval of fumbling and
swear words, Dakar burst in from the stairwell, his face beet red under
a tangled nest of hair.

"I came as fast as I could."  The Mad Prophet licked a bruised
knuckle, tugged at his rumpled tunic, and glowered at Asandir.  "Your
gift of a nightmare was bad enough without setting stay spells on the
latch."

Sethvir clutched his tea mugs, innocuously intrigued, while the
Sorcerer so addressed sat back in his seat, his smile gone and one
silvered brow tipped upward.  "How thoughtlessly quick you are with
accusations."

Dakar yanked out a chair and dumped himself in a miffed heap.

"Only Kharadmon would have-" Suspicion congested his round features.

"Greetings, Mad One," said the discorporate Sorcerer.

Dakar shot straight, wildly searching, but his gaze surveyed the room
repeatedly without enlightenment.  As the other Sorcerers gave way to
amusement, his injury flattened to disgust.

He announced scathingly to no one, "If you're going to bait me,
ghost, you might be sporting and show me a visible target."

The spirit returned unbridled laughter, and Dakar's eyes found focus
at last as the illusion that marked the Sorcerer's presence became
revealed to him.  "You're beyond your depth, anyway, my prophet."
Kharadmon pulled out a7 chair, carelessly sliding the seat through his
thigh and a fold of green cloak.  Since tormenting Dakar was a favorite
diversion, he might have added more, but Sethvir broke in to ask after
Luhaine.

Kharadmon's eyes went veiled.  "On his way, this moment."  Blandly he
added, "I always best him at travel, argument, and cards."

As if whipped to instability by his words, the torches in the sconces
by the doorway streamed and flickered, and though no breeze had arisen
to partner the disturbance, one blinked out.

"I protest that statement," a bass voice said in reproof.  A second
discorporate materialized alongside the table, this one wizened and
bald, a beard as broad as a waterfall fanned across his chest.  His
corpulent form was robed in blue-gray.

Apple-round cheeks were capped by brows peaked in prim inquiry, and
eyes sharp and black as an irascible scholar's were trained upon the
elegantly seated image of Kharadmon.

More than usually petulant, the newcomer announced, "Your claim is
unfounded, unjust, and entirely unforgiven.  We shall contest it
later."

"Luhaine," Sethvir interrupted, "could we dispense with tired
rivalries and get started?"

The second of the disembodied Sorcerers transferred his vexation to
the Warden of Althain.  "You asked to determine the impact of
Desh-thiere's bane upon Athera.  Might I know what's gone amiss?"

Belatedly, Sethvir recalled his clutch of crockery; he deposited the
lot with a sigh on the last bit of uncluttered shelf, while Asandir
leaned forward, his robe lit indigo by the brazier.  In car elul
phrases, and as much for Dakar's sake, he described the backgrounds and
personal attributes of the pnnces from Dascen Elur whose shared talents
comprised the heart of the West Gate prophecy.  His words were received
in grim quiet, even Luhaine moved to silence as he summed up.

"The powers the half-brothers command are unquestionably direct, and
evenly split.  The risks are self-evident.

Lysaer and Arithon are opposites in character and upbringing.

Both inherit the gifts of two royal lines, which makes an uneasy
legacy.  Should their past heritage of feud become renewed, the
consequences could be ruinous.  Since Dakar has been troubled by
precognizance to that effect, it seems wise to cast strands and seek a
clear course for the future."

Luhaine's image blinked out and reappeared, seated with fingers laced
on the tabletop across from Kharadmon.  His assent followed,
instantaneous and emphatic since elemental mastery of any sort was
potentially limitless.  Set at odds, Lysaer and Arithon between them
could wreak havoc on a scale not seen since Davien the Betrayer roused
the five kingdoms to rebellion.

Quiet as shadow, Traithe arose from his chair.

"Cupboard underneath the Lanshire histories, third shelf," Sethvir
murmured distractedly.  He dissipated the spark of lane force that
burned in the brazier.  Asandir removed the bronze tripod, while
Kharadmon extinguished the other sconce.  Unhindered by total darkness,
Traithe found the place designated and retrieved a square of black
Velvet, which he shook out and spread across the table.

Luhaine's brow creased as the cloth passed unimpeded through his
elbow.  "Has Dakar mastered the effects of tienelle yet?"

The Mad Prophet rolled his eyes and groaned.  "I'd feel better after
a draught of deadly nightshade."  Then, on a plaintive note to Asandir,
"Is seersweed truly necessary?

Last night was awful enough.  Today I don't feel in the least like
volunteering to ruin my health all over again."

The rare, high-altitude herb he wished to avoid at all costs.

Valued for its mind-expanding properties, tienelle's narcotic was
also a poison that caused cramps, headache, and a sudden onset of
dehydration that could end in coma and death.  Spellbinders were
schooled to transmute its toxicity, for need occasionally arose for
them to perceive complexities beyond their training to encompass.

Asandir measured his apprentice with a calm that disallowed pity.

"Had you not dropped a sword, once, to disrupt your native gift of
prescience, you would not be required to attend this session."

Dakar slammed his palms on the tabletop, his frustration damped to an
unsatisfying thump by the heavy velvet covering.  "Ath, you won't
forget a detail, not even once in a century."

"Under the north window seat, in the coffer," Sethvir interjected in
apparently idle afterthought.

The Mad Prophet was not fooled.  If Asandir's memory forgave nothing,
Sethvir knew the precise location of every unwanted item in Ath's
creation.  Since Traithe would not trouble to fetch and carry for an
apprentice, and Kharadmon's whetted interest promised mischief, Dakar
heaved to his feet.  Too lazy, or too obstinate, to engage the
selfdiscipline for mage-sight, he noisily smacked shins and knuckles in
the dark and searched out the herb stores for himself.  He clumped back
to his chair clutching a stone pipe and a carved wooden canister, and
busied himself with a martyred sigh.  Most pointedly he ignored the
Fellowship Sorcerers as they prepared for a ritual undertaken only at
direst need.

Power gathered in the hands of Asandir.  Above the dark velvet he
spun a rod of energy, a glimmer like a line of veiled starlight.  To
this he added a second, then a third, each for the triad of mysteries
that embodied Prime Power and underlay all Athera's teeming life.  Next
he added twoscore lesser lengths, to which Sethvir assigned Names in a
Paravian ritual that summoned the essence of the ruler, place, or
power, and stamped its quickened current on the spell.  The strands
assumed identity and altered, each according to assigned nature.  The
governors' council in Etarra manifested as hurtfully bright, a hedge of
scintillant angles; the trio for the Paravian races interwove to the
evocative beauty of lacework before fading to a near subliminal
glimmer; the spark that captured the collective spirit of the clansfolk
in their exile scribed an enduring sweep of arc.  To cities, and human
consciousness, and natural forces were added individuals; and after
these, plants, animals, and natural elements, until a geometric lattice
glimmered above the velvet backdrop, an entire world's interlinked
complexity recorded in precise proportion and line.

The visionary mind of a Fellowship Sorcerer could interpret such at a
glance.  Where other methods of precognizance might sound only
broad-scale highlights, the strands were superlatively sensitive.  Each
would react as its nature dictated, mapping even minute shifts of
balance with pinpoint accuracy.  The futures that might spring from
alternate sets of events could be assessed instantaneously, even the
least nuance made plain.  To read the analog set down into pattern
without laborious mathematical analysis, Dakar packed his pipe with the
notched, silver-gray leaves of tienelle.  The scent of the herb
permeated the room, sharp, bitter, and edged as a winter wind.

The pattern over the tabletop reached completion, shedding radiance
like summer moonlight over the faces of the surrounding Sorcerers.
Dakar accepted a spark off the finger of a sardonically smiling
Kharadmon to ignite his pipe.

"Commence," Sethvir said softly.

The Mad Prophet sucked hard on his pipe stem, filling his lungs with
aromatic smoke.  Vertigo spun his awareness, followed by a kick akin to
adrenaline; his senses cartwheeled and slammed back into focus,
enhanced to painful sensitivity.  His ears recorded sound with
unnatural nuance, and his vision assumed a razor-edged clarity.  The
strands that reflected the power balance of the living world lost their
random shapes, became a comprehensible whole.  Configurations of lines
and angles spread out like tapestry, the fates of kingdoms intertwined
with the births and deaths of field mice.

Yet across the rhythms of this grand design, disharmonies stood out
like botched tangles in string.  Here lay a twist that told of a
mayor's prejudice, jealousy, and greed; there a warped line revealed a
sapling stunted by the unending mists of Desh-thiere.  Where the
shining braid of Paravian presence had once enhanced the central axis
of the prime vibration, Ath, a channel of emptiness remained, like
notes lost from a bar of flawless counterpoint.  Dakar wrestled to stem
a flood of tears.  Another pull from the pipe, and the tienelle honed
sorrow into a blade that harrowed his heart.  His time sense blurred.

Over the shining lines of Athera's present, he sensed changes wrought
over the ages, the strengthening of some aspects and the splitting,
weakening, or dissolution of others.  He suffered knowledge of all
pasts and possible futures in their thousands, until awareness of
Asandir's eyes upon him pierced through his strayed concentration.

His mind might soar through a spiraling flight of enlightenment, but
at a price.  He must not neglect self-awareness.  Even as the drug
freed his thoughts, its poisons ravaged his body.

Death could overtake him if he forgot to guard his physical health.

The moment when the Sorcerers raised power came as an icy chill that
flowed the length of Dakar's spine.  The strands became suffused with
terrible light as the Fellowship sought futureward and called forth the
events that might occur as a result of the works of two princes from
Dascen Elur.

Desh-thiere's fall became manifest as an explosion of new lines of
power.  Forests, fields, and all of the natural landscape brightened to
an ascendence of recovered vigor.  The politics of the trade guilds
whipped into kinks of recoil, and a new axis sheared through their
sundered town councils: Lysaer, Dakar perceived in wide surprise.  The
s'llessid prince would one day unite the towns, make war to claim all
the wildlands for the mayors, and subdue and finally eradicate the
barbarian clans.  Arithon's part appeared not in Rathain, but as a
figure of self-contained elegance that flowed from place to place,
dedicated wholly to music.  Yet the art he created was framed by a
backdrop of unprecedented persecution.

The Sorcerers' unadulterated dismay disrupted the flow of
probability.  Dakar stole the moment to regroup, then scrambled to keep
up as, vehemently fast, the strands unreeled to a new sequence.  The
Fellowship traced out the only alternative at hand to thwart that turn
toward disaster: let the Mistwraith's hold over sky and sun abide
unbroken, while the powers that offered its sole downfall, two princes'
inherited gifts of Light and Shadow, became sundered by their hand to
preserve the peace.

Shocked through change by a rippling cascade of forecasts, the
pattern hardened.  The motif that represented the Paravians dimmed to
invisibility, then vanished away into darkness.

The spell froze.  Stunned shock passed between the Sorcerers; the
impact of their collective dismay threatened to stop Dakar's breath.

The disappearance of the old races had been sorrow enough to endure;
the potential for their irrevocable extinction became as a tear in the
fabric of Ath's creation, an insupportable loss to any who had known
their living presence.  Although Dakar had been just a boy when the
last of the creatures had vanished, childhood memories of one encounter
had left him marked for life.  Tears ran unchecked down his face.

That such shining beauty should pass beyond memory into legend could
not be borne.  Distinct from his own experience, Dakar shared poignant
memories from the Sorcerers; and the one that cut deepest was that of
unicorns dancing under starlight in the vale of Caith-al-Caen.

The blighted patch of dark amid the strands, which had personified
the penultimate grace, warned of a harm beyond healing.

"So much for allowing events to run their course untouched, " snapped
a thought from Traithe across silence.

As one, the Fellowship Sorcerers rallied crushed hopes.

Devastated by necessity, grimly wedded to purpose, they recast an
alternative sequence they had earlier hoped to avoid.

The strands flickered, interlaced, clean curves and sharp angles
reformed to show a coronation at the trade city of Etarra.  Charged by
the Fellowship to accept Rathain's crown, Arithon's line bloomed into a
jagged nexus of anguish that peaked and peaked repeatedly yet endured;
and still the axis of Lysaer's power roused the townborn to war.

A great schism tore the width of the continent, with strife
predominant.  Yet the cipher that reflected Paravian survival glimmered
on wanly, preserved.

Sethvir's observation cut between.  "Desh-thiere.  The Mistwraith
itself lies at the root of this.  " He need not belabor his frustration
that the entity inflicted upon Athera by the worlds beyond South Gate
could not be directly tracked; as a thing un-Named and foreign in
origin, it had no signature energy that could be set into the pattern.

The strands could only reflect its effects.

As the Sorcerers refocused their resolve, Traithe's face showed a
drawn look of anguish.

Again the pattern flowed into change, with discord harrowing all
order.  Futures in their myriad thousands described a legacy of battle
and bloodshed.  Dakar stared at violence until his eyes burned, and
Kharadmon's image became partially transparent with negligence.  The
strands flicked and interwove above the velvet, their motion unbroken
but for the split second needed by the Fellowship to assess the impact
of each destiny.  And still the patterns forecast war.  The room grew
stale with pipe smoke.  Beyond the window, night gave way to hazy dawn,
while the Sorcerers pursued cascading trains of circumstance,
unsatisfied.  Their persistence unveiled no solution.  The strands
unraveled over and over into strife.  Thwarted in their search for a
peaceful expedient, the Fellowship sought answer in the far distant
future.  Despite the expanded awareness of the tienelle, Dakar was left
hopelessly behind.

Midday washed the chamber in dull gray before the strands stilled,
freezing to a last blazing pattern that faded away like afterimage.

Sethvir raised eyes reddened from smoke haze.  Kharadmon's coloring
was dimmer, and Luhaine had lost detail.  No face present escaped the
impact of the quandary spelled out in the strands.  Dakar tapped ash
from his pipe into the lid of the tienelle canister, and as though
roused by the sound, the Warden of Althain spoke.

"Never in memory have the patterns converged so strongly to a path of
alternatives this narrow.  We are forced to unpleasant choices."

The strands foretold, unequivocally, that Lysaer and Arithon would
oppose, with full and bitter consequences.  To strip them of their
inborn powers as a deterrent in all cases yielded Desh-thiere's
continued dominance.  That in itself promised changes in the natural
order, none of them to the good; but to deny the vanished Paravians a
return to natural sunlight was to take the role of executioner.  Men
might engender war and suffering, but over the course of ages, even
fanatical hatreds must fade.  To act for immediate peace was to seal
the extinction of a mystery beyond mortal means to restore.

"If we only knew where they had fled, we might shelter them," Traithe
said on clear note of anguish .

"Desh-thiere caused their disappearance from the continent," Luhaine
pointed out.  "If the old races allow themselves to be found at all,
the Mistwraith's fall must come first."

The last avenue of debate became Arithon's royal inheritance.  No
longer able to follow nuance, Dakar hunched in a stupor in his chair.

His head was beginning to pound, and his stomach tightened with the
first unpleasant symptoms of tienelle withdrawal.  Through a haze of
mounting discomfort, he gathered the Fellowship inclined toward freeing
Arithon from obligation to Rathain's throne.  If schism between the
half-brothers must occur, best the powers of sovereignty were not
involved.  Dakar lost the thread of concentration.

Words whirled in and out of his pain-laced thoughts, unheeded.

Hounded by rising nausea and dripping poisoned sweat, he knew he
should rise and find drinking water.  His mouth was bitter with the
burnt taste of tienelle; his awareness rolled like a ship on oily
billows, jumbled and buffeted by after-visions.  No mage in the chamber
was more surprised than he when the name of the outcast Sorcerer whose
works had engendered the rebellion fell through his thoughts like a
stone.

Davien.

Dakar shoved straight as his gummy, clogged perception broke, before
a cold wave of prescience, and prophecy claimed his tongue.

Though churning sickness tugged at his gut, his words fell in solemn
clarity on a sudden, arrested silence.

"Davien the Betrayer shall hear no reason, nor bow to the Law of the
Major Balance; neither shall the Fellowship be restored to Seven until
the black rose grows wild in the vales of Daon Ramon."

"Black rose!"  Sethvir shot upright, intent as a hunting falcon.

"But none exists."

"There will be one," Dakar gasped, slammed by a second precognizance
that blazed through him like lightning etched across darkness.  "The
briar will take root on the day, that Arithon s'Ffalenn embraces
kingship."

A dismayed round of glances crossed the table, for the strands had
not deviated on one point: that if Arithon were left to free will, he
would live and die as a bard.  Only under duress would he accept the
sovereignty of Rathain, and not even then with sincerity.

"Arithon's freedom must be sacrificed," Traithe said.

"The choice is a foregone conclusion."

That moment, amid strained and unsettled apprehension shared between
Fellowship Sorcerers, Dakar gave way to the sickness brought on by the
tienelle.  Doubled over with dry heaves, he all but tumbled from his
chair.  By the time his spasms eased, he retained no memory of the
prophecy, and confronted by disappointment at every turn, he managed a
dogged apology before illness rendered him speechless.

Unlikeliest of benefactors, it was Kharadmon who moved to the Mad
Prophet's side and eased his suffering.  As Asandir ushered his ailing
apprentice downstairs to bed, the remaining Sorcerers grappled with the
new prophecy like starving dogs thrown a Marrowbone.  The judgment and
exile of Davien had been their most tragic expedient, and the
disappearance of their seventh colleague, Ciladis, in his search for
the Paravians had become their most mourned loss.  The prophecy
entangled with Dakar's black rose offered the first tangible hope that
the reverses that had disrupted the Third Age might one day be righted.

Traithe, least likely advocate of individual sacrifice, had spoken
rightly.  Even without the fates of the two absent Sorcerers thrown
into jeopardy, the loss of the old races could not be risked.  By the
time Asandir had returned from seeing Dakar safely settled, several
distasteful resolutions had become final.

For the sake of Paravian survival the princes who held Desh-thiere's
bane between them would use their gifts to restore sunlight, regardless
of the wars to follow; and Arithon would be crowned High King of
Rathain at the trade city of Etarra, to open the channel of probability
that gave rise to Dakar's Black Rose prophecy.

There remained only the task of setting safeguards, where such could
be done, to limit the scope of the damage.  If Lysaer went on to claim
sovereignty in Tysan, he would act without Fellowship sanction.

The townsmen's loyalty he might win on his own, but that of the clans
must be held in reserve, leaving Tysan's steward, Maenalle, free to
safeguard her people as she could.  And if the fabric of four realms
was to be torn apart by conflict, the fifth must be granted firm
leadership.

"The heir to Havish must be brought out of hiding," said Sethvir.

"He will need to be educated, for the day he comes of age, we must
see him securely on his throne."  In one of the kingdoms, at least,
town factions and barbarian clans would not be abandoned to disunity.

Little else was exchanged in speech after that, as the Sorcerers
divided up the tasks at hand.  Bleak as the future might become, the
land would not be thrown wholesale to the bloodshed interlinked with
Desh-thiere's defeat.

The Fellowship concluded their conference well past midafternoon.

Kharadmon was first to depart, his wild laugh and ready smile fading
through the casement as he swept south on the desert breeze.

Luhaine's image dissolved in pursuit, a score left to settle
concerning his colleague's cavalier boasts.

Traithe shoved to his feet.  His limp turned pronounced by
exhaustion, he descended the stairs to guard Dakar through tienelle
withdrawal, and to offer Lysaer when he woke the hospitality due to a
prince.

Left alone with Asandir, Sethvir stood by the opened casement, his
eyes veiled in contemplation.  The tea mugs he had belatedly arisen to
recover stayed empty as he said, "We have an immediate problem.  The
crown jewels of Rathain."

Asandir sighed.  "I'd not forgotten."

The gems included in the heritage of past high kings had been cut by
the Paravian artisans of Imam Adaer, each one a power focus tuned to
respond to the descendants of their respective royal lines.  But the
master's training given Arithon by Dascen Elur's mages already enabled
his finer perceptions; augmented by the crown jewels' attributes, his
gifts could potentially become unmanageable.

The focusing properties of the stones would not be annulled by
recutting; future generations would need them, even had the artisans of
Imam Adaer not been long dead, their knowledge gone to dust in the
desecration brought by the Curse of Mearth.  Sethvir and Asandir
instead sought a ward to conceal the stones' arcane nature from the
s'Ffalenn prince who must hold them for the duration of his reign.

The project took the remainder of the day.

Dripping sweat, tinged greenish by reflections thrown off an untidy
hoard of cut emeralds, the two Sorcerers locked glances as they emerged
from combined trance.

"Ath Creator," the Warden of Althain murmured in disgruntled
vehemence.  "You realize the Teir's'Ffalenn and his confoundedly
sensitive perception has brought us one damnable fix?"

Asandir raked silver hair from his temples.  "Today I don't need the
reminder.  I only hope we set our safeguards deep enough."

Sethvir arose and scooped the gems into a battered coffer.

"Take no chances.  Set a geas to avert scrutiny when Arithon first
sets hand to the royal regalia.  If I'm any judge, he'll notice the
resonance of the wards."

"I had that hunch," Asandir confessed.  "And I'm still concerned.

The man has little vanity.  Emeralds by themselves won't impress him,
and would you want to try to convince him that his jewelry shouldn't be
traded for something inherently more practical?"

Sethvir laughed.  "I should have guessed, when we decided the latent
s'Ahelas talents should be trained, that Princess Dari's descendents
might cause us a fearful set of headaches.  She argued the entire time
I tutored her."  The Warden of Althain planted the coffer with its
irreplaceable contents amid a clutter of unshelved books, then revived
the dropped thread of inquiry.  "I'd much rather brew tea, and
challenge you to chess, than persuade any s'Ffalenn prince against his
natural inclinations."

Artifacts

Lysaer burrowed out of a comfortable muddle of bedclothes to find
himself in a chamber lamplit against the gloom of falling dusk.  The
air smelled of sealing wax and parchment.

Relieved to be free of open-air campsites and barbarian hospitality,
he took in the scholarly clutter of books and pens, the scarlet carpet,
and the mismatched array of fine furnishings, and decided the pallet
where he lay must be inside Althain Tower.  The room was not deserted.

By the settle sat a black-clad stranger, his hands busy with awl and
waxed thread, mending a broken bridle.  A raven perched on his shoulder
swung its wedge-shaped head at Lysaer's movement, ruffled knife-edged
feathers, and fixed the prince with a gaze of bead-bright intelligence.
As though given warning by a sentry, the man stopped stitching and
looked up.

Lysaer's breath caught.

The stranger's eyes might be soft brown and his clipped hair silvered
with age, but the implacable stamp to his features and the profound
stillness about his presence unmistakably marked him as a Fellowship
Sorcerer.  "You must be famished," he opened kindly.  "My name is
Traithe, and in Sethvir's stead I welcome you to Althain Tower."

Lysaer forced his fingers to release their cramped grip on the
blankets.  "How long have I been here?"

The raven cocked its head; Traithe knotted his last stitch like a
farm wife and nipped off the thread with his teeth.

"Since yesterday evening."  At Lysaer's raised brows, he added
blandly, "You were very tired."

Discomfited by more than his saddle sores, Lysaer surveyed the form
of his half-brother, sprawled on the adjacent pallet in unprecedented
and oblivious sleep.  Struck that Arithon's pose seemed less than
restful, and more a jumble of limbs folded like knucklebones in a
quilt, Lysaer turned away.  This once determined to keep the edge, and
not feel pressured to keep pace with his half-brother's fast
perceptions and trained awareness of mages, he slipped clear of the
covers and hooked his breeches and shirt from a nearby chair.  He
dressed with princely unself-consciousness, inured to the lack of
privacy imposed by the lifelong attentions of servants.

The Sorcerer in black was too tactful to seem cunous in any case.

He moved like a swordsman bothered by old injuries as he pushed aside
his mending, shed his raven in an indignant flurry of wings onto the
settle, and rose to build up the fire.  As disturbed embers flared to
sudden flame, Lysaer glimpsed palms and wrists ridged with scars that
would have left a lesser man crippled.

Unable to picture the scope of a calamity that could harm a
Fellowship Sorcerer, the prince averted his glance.  Devoted to
politeness, he set about lacing his sleeve cuffs.  His awkwardness as
always caused the ties to knot.  Embarrassed that even so simple an act
as dressing could still make him ache for the comforts lost with exile,
he jerked at the snarl.

Rather than succumb to expletives, he wondered if any place existed
in this Ath-forsaken land where there was gaiety, laughter, and dancing
in streets not guarded by sentries.  He missed the gentle company of
women, and his betrothed left beyond Worldsend most of all.

Pride forbade the weakness of recriminations.  Still, mastering
self-pity took all the effort of a difficult sword form, or the
thorniest problem of state ever assigned to his charge as royal heir.

When the contrary laces were set straight, the prince had recovered
his poise.  He looked up to find Traithe finished tending the fire.
Still as shadow, limned in that indefinable mystery that clung to
spirits of power, the Sorcerer regarded him intently.  His features
were less chiseled than marred by hard usage to wrinkles like cracks in
fine crystal.  Laugh lines remained, intertwined through others cut by
sorrow.  As if moved by caprice, Traithe said, "We're not all
relentless taskmasters like Asandir, you know."  He flipped the poker
back on its hook with a playful flourish and smiled.

Startled to reckless impulse, Lysaer said, "Prove that."

"I should have expected you'd ask."  Traithe turned back, shamefaced
as a dog called down for misconduct.  "The Sorcerer to answer should be
Kharadmon.  But he left this morning, reckless ghost that he is.  As
fool, I'd make a sorry replacement."  Betrayed by a weariness that had
not at first been apparent, Traithe settled back into his chair.  A
snap of his fingers invited the raven back to its accustomed perch on
his shoulder, where, out of habit, he raised a crooked knuckle and
stroked its breast.  "We could mend bridles," he suggested hopefully.
"Enough worn ones are strewn about, though Ath only knows where Sethvir
collects them.  Unless Asandir or I happen by, the stables here shelter
only mice."

Amazed at how smoothly he had been set at ease, Lysaer gave back the
smile he kept practiced for difficult ambassadors.  "I'm a poor hand
with a needle."

"Any man would be who'd eaten nearly nothing for a day and a half."
Traithe pushed back to his feet.  He had the build and the balance of a
dancer, and the shuffling hesitation in his stride made harsh contrast
as he crossed to the doorway.

"Shall we see what Sethvir has bothered to stock in his pantry?"

He pushed the panel open, and the raven launched off and flew ahead
into the torchlit stairwell beyond.

Lysaer set aside the unbuttered sweet roll he had long since lost
interest in eating.  Across the narrow, cushioned cranny that Sethvir
kept for a supper nook, Traithe elbowed his own crumb-littered plate
aside.

"You feel bothered that Arithon should still be asleep," he surmised.

Unsettled enough without having the thoughts in his head voiced
outright, Lysaer flinched.  His bread knife clashed against the china,
and startled the raven on the Sorcerer's shoulder to a flurried flap of
wings.  While Traithe reached up to soothe it, Lysaer looked down and
away, anywhere but toward the whitened scars that crisscrossed the
Sorcerer's knuckles.  The nook might be cozy, and the cutlery rich
enough for a king's boards, but the cruciform openings in the walls had
originally been cut as arrow slits.  The drafts through the openings
were icy, the view beyond drab gray.

Civilized, sunlit comforts heretofore taken for granted seemed
unreachable as marvels in a child's tale in this world of unending
mists and bleak minds schooled to mysteries.

"We've been here since nightfall yesterday."  Princely manners showed
a hint of acid as Lysaer challenged, "You don't find it strange that a
man should still be abed after twenty-four hours of rest?"

Particularly one like the Master, who tended to recoil out of nerves
from his blankets at every two-point shift in the wind.

Traithe showed no break in affability as he hissed at the raven,
which edged down his sleeve toward the table, its sideward-tipped eye
greedily fixed on the butter.  Careful to turn his disfigurements from
the prince's angle of view, he shoved the candle stand between the bird
and temptation.

Through halos of disturbed flame light, he regarded the s'llessid
half-brother.  "Had Arithon been unwell, your concern would be shared
by the Fellowship."

The black-clad Sorcerer volunteered nothing else@xcept his easy
manner invited questions.

Lysaer gave rein to curiosity.  "Would you mind telling me what
happened?"

Traithe shrugged.  "An outbreak of poisonous serpents in the kingdom
of Shand took a forceful show of sorcery to eradicate."

The last was understatement, Lysaer determined, since the mage's
expression went suddenly inscrutable as his raven's.

Piqued to be left out when momentous matters were afoot, he said, "I
might have liked to help."

"Your half-brother was used," Traithe stated baldly.  "His power was
channeled from him like wine from a vessel of sacrifice.  When he
recovers enough to reawaken, he'll retain no memory of the event."

Mindful of this prince's staunch loyalty, the Sorcerer added,
"Arithon volunteered at the outset."

The raven chose that moment to try a furtive sidle toward the butter.
Traithe batted it aside without ceremony.  Through its outraged croak
and the breeze fanned up by its wing beats, he said, "Has no one ever
thought to school you to understand your birth-given gift of light?"

Touched on a lifelong source of bitterness, Lysaer spoke fast to keep
from hitting something.  "No one considered it necessary."

The raven retreated to the top of the doorjamb and alit on a gargoyle
crown piece.

"All."  Traithe set his chin on his fist.  "For a prince in direct
line for a crown, such judgment was probably sound.

But you've been brought here to battle a Mistwraith.  That alters the
outlook somewhat."

But Lysaer worried at his hurt with the persistence of an embedded
Thorn.  "Why did Asandir not suggest it?"

Traithe chuckled.  "Did you think any one of us is omnipotent?

Asandir has Dakar for an apprentice.  Teaching that scatterbrain
anything would frustrate the patience of bedrock."  Then, to smooth the
dismay that might spring from an unmentioned depth of commitment, the
Sorcerer pushed out of the window seat.  "I've an errand to complete in
the storerooms.  Perhaps you'd care to come along?"

Lysaer brightened and stood.  "I'd welcome the chance."

He trailed Traithe through the pantry, while at their backs the raven
swooped to the tabletop, folded wings like a furtive scholar, and
hopped onto the plates to scavenge crumbs.

"Sethvir lets the butter go rancid in the larder, anyway," Traithe
confided as he let himself into the stairwell.  "He thinks eating a
bother, but run out of tea and he's desolate."

Not eased to learn that mages seemed heir to human foibles, Lysaer
followed his host into the tower's lower levels.

Even without arcane perception, Althain's starkly plain construction
and rough-cut granite bespoke haste and stop-gap desperation.

The air smelled of books, wet firewood, and the indefinable tang left
over from spell-craft.  Somewhere high above, the wind jostled a
shutter against its pins.  Lysaer found himself wondering whose feet
had rubbed the edges from these stairs, and the hands of which crowned
rulers had polished the axe-hewn oak rail.  He had heard Asandir's
reverence for the old races; yet in this place, under low, vaulted rock
beams blackened by centuries of torch smoke, there lingered only a
forlorn sense of ending.  Any past enshrined within Althain seemed
faded to desolation and a haunting'resonance of perished hope.

The mist beyond the arrow slits concealed the view that might
indicate the floor of the threshold where Traithe finally stopped.  He
unlatched a crude door and disappeared into total darkness.  "Use your
gift to light your way," he suggested to the prince, who hesitated at
his heels.  "Sethvir is haphazard about candles, always.  I might need
a moment to find one."

Self-conscious as he had not been while rising from bed stark naked,
Lysaer engaged his powers.  Not easily, and not without trepidation, he
summoned a silvery spark; but if the Sorcerer thought his method crude,
no comment was given on the matter.

The chamber revealed by the witch-light was larger than its doorway
suggested.  Timber racks lined walls that curved into shadow, crates
piled in tiers picked out by the glint of hobnail-studded leather or
brass hasps.  The stores reeked of oil and old dust, yet when the
Sorcerer touched flame to the torch in the wall sconce, the
pitch-soaked rags caught and unveiled a clean-swept stone floor and
shelving kept clear of cobwebs.  The stores had been tended
unstintingly, except for labels.  Those bales and boxes that were
catalogued bore crumbling tags marked in antique script that time had
faded illegible.

Traithe paused in the center of the chamber, rapt in manner as his
raven.  "I doubt much has changed since the Paravians left."

Intrigued beyond awkwardness, Lysaer said, "What are we looking for?"

"Sethvir could have described which of the twenty odd coffers on the
third shelf by the north wall, at least."  Stirred from vexation,
Traithe gave a rueful smile.  "We're looking for rubies, and the
circlet worn by the princes of Havish in ceremonial affirmation of
their rights of succession."

"You have a surviving heir?"  Lysaer inquired, starved for
information on Athera's royal lines.

"Tucked away in the hut of a hermit who dyes wool, yes.

Traithe sighed.  "The boy's just twelve, and about to learn there's
more to life than bartering for alum to color fleeces."

Lysaer fingered an intricate pattern of vine leaves tooled into what
looked like a highborn lady's dower chest.  "Where do we start?"

"Here, I think."  The Sorcerer singled out two boxes and a crate
stamped with a hawk sigil that might in years past have been red.  "At
least, I would expect to find the regalia of the kings of Havish in a
chest with the royal seal."

Lysaer offered his assistance, and found himself handed the smaller
crate.  As his hands closed over ancient wood, he shivered in
anticipation.  His forebears had ruled a high kingdom; piqued by the
thought that relics of his own heritage might be cached here with the
antiquities, Lysaer unlatched heavy bronze catches that slid easily
despite heavy dents from rough usage.  The Warden of Althain had not
been lax in his care, for the hinges also turned without a creak.

The odor of leather and parchment immediately identified the
contents: document scrolls looped in musty ribbons, and books with
illuminated bindings and titles inscribed in the old tongue.  The
covers were not jeweled or clasped with gold, but darkened and scuffed
with age.  Regretful the words between lay beyond his schooling, Lysaer
fingered the pages in fascination.

"The packages we're looking for won't seem very interesting," Traithe
said, his features eclipsed by the dome of the adjacent trunk.

"You'd best check beneath those journals before you go any further."

Lysaer closed a rust-flocked cover.  "What are these?"

"Ancestral records that trace the line of the kings of Havish, back
to the founder, Bwin Evoc s'Lommein."  Yet if the Sorcerer meant to
elucidate, a shuffling step and a carping voice interrupted from
outside the doorway.

"Did you have to set that raven loose to rampage through the butter?"
Green-faced and suffering what looked to be a punishing hangover, the
Mad Prophet traipsed into the storeroom.

Traithe barely spared him a glance.  "I'm encouraged to see you've
recovered enough to have an appetite."

"I wake up because I was starving."  Dakar fumbled with the strap of
his belt, which was buckled but not tucked in its keepers, and
immediately resumed accusations.  "Sethvir's too lazy to stock much
beyond plain tea."  The Mad Prophet winced, abandoned the particulars
of his clothing, and cradled his brow as the echoes of his own
vehemence played havoc with his sore head.  "And olives preserved in
oil sit poorly on a queasy stomach."

Busy unfurling an object swathed in linen, Traithe was cheerfully
unsympathetic.  "That didn't keep you from bating them, I see."

Dakar clammed up rather than admit culpability.  Neither did the
misery of his bellyache stop him from quartering the chamber, randomly
fingering the varied contents of the shelves.  "Sethvir chose like a
ragpicker when he decided what should be salvaged."  A bored gesture
encompassed a lumpish bundle wrapped in leather tied with twine.

"I wouldn't handle that," Traithe warned, already too late.

The Mad Prophet's meddlesome fingers triggered a burst of blue-violet
light.  A crack shocked the air, capped by Dakar's yell of pain.  He
recoiled, still howling, while the bundle he had disarranged rolled
precipitately off the shelf.

It struck the floor with a note like sheared glass, and another
blinding flash seared away the leather wrappings.

Blinking through a veil of afterimage and an acrid puff of ash,
Lysaer saw a melon-sized violet jewel bounce and roll across the flags.

The facets blazed and fountained sparks at each contact with the
stone.

"Fiends plague it!"  Dakar licked smarting knuckles and turned a
baleful glare upon Traithe.  "That's the Waystone of the Koriathain!"

"Obviously so."  Shadows swooped in the flame light as the Sorcerer
pushed aside.his opened chest, leaned down, and matter-of-factly
fielded the rolling crystal.  The sparks died.  No punitive sting met
his touch.

"Morriel would sell her virginity to know where that thing went!"

Mollified, Dakar added, "She and her pack of witches have been
searching for centuries, and Sethvir's kept her Waystone here, hidden
all this time?"

Traithe turned the huge amethyst in his hands, absorbed by the
captured light that spiked through its purple-black depths.  "Since
nobody asked your crude opinion, I shall tell you once: the Prime
Enchantress had only to inquire after the Waystone's location."  His
eyes flicked up, piercingly sharp.  "Naught but Morriel's stubborn
pride kept the jewel at Althain."

But nuance was wasted upon Dakar, who loosed a boyish whistle.

"The bitches will be hot when they learn."

The prospect of a scandal none but a fool would precipitate spurred
Traithe to reproach.  "We would all be better served if you would go
and ask Sethvir for scrap leather that would do for replacement
wrappings."

Too wily to cross a Sorcerer who used that tone of voice, Dakar
departed grumbling obscenities.  Left in the company of an undesirably
curious prince, Traithe made an end of the matter.  "The Waystone was
mislaid during the rebellion.  As you observed, it is perilously
warded.  The Koriani Senior Circle was negligent to leave so powerful a
talisman unguarded."

Traithe did not add that the loss of their great focus had also
curtailed the order's propensity for interfering in affairs beyond
their understanding.  Sethvir was unlikely to volunteer the Waystone's
location to the Prime Circle, which craved its recovery.  The Warden of
Althain could be guileful as Davien the Betrayer when he chose; never
mind that he appeared as honest as a clear glass of water.

Traithe fixed Lysaer with a gaze impenetrable as ink.  "If you'll
finish unwrapping this bundle, I think you'll find what we came for."

And he set aside the great Waystone and tossed across one of two
items half-swaddled on the lid of the trunk.

Lysaer caught the packet and stripped off the final layers of linen
to bare a thin gold circlet, unornamented beyond a thready, age-worn
line of runes.  The smaller item undone by Traithe proved to be a
hexagonal tortoise shell box.  Inside, nested in sheepskin, sparkled a
matched collection of rubies.

At least a dozen in number, the set was cut to a perfection beyond
reach of mortal artisans.  The gems required no setting to impress;
their depth of color glinted like live fire in the flare of the torch
by the doorway.  Lysaer gasped, dazzled by the legacy that awaited the
dyer's lad soon to be unveiled as the crown prince of Havish.

"The regalia was melted down for bounty gold," Traithe remarked
sadly.  For an instant he seemed less than wizard and more a lame, very
worn old sword captain lost in reminiscence of ill times.  "The
desecration was a great pity.  But Telmandir was the first of the royal
seats to be sacked and set to the torch.  Only the jewels and the
king's youngest child could be saved."

Lysaer noted the Sorcerer's regret, but only distantly.

Starkly plain though the circlet in his hands might be, it was old;
its nicks and dents bespoke modest origins.  Diminished to realize how
very ancient were the high kingdoms of Athera, and given sense of the
wide span of generations the bloodlines handpicked by the Fellowship
must have ruled, Lysaer was moved to awe.

The battered circlet of the princes of Havish, and the rubies torn at
need from a regalia whose magnificence could only be imagined, implied
a stability shattered wholesale; and sacrifice akin to the straits that
had caused the Paravians to build Althain Tower in the bleak hills of a
wilderness to safeguard an irreplaceable tradition.

Lysaer felt humbled.

His inheritance as s'llessid on Athera was vast in comparison to the
tiny island kingdom left behind on the world of his birth.

The pomp, the wealth, every ceremonial pageantry that had seemed part
and parcel of kingship abruptly became rendered meaningless: he
perceived how narrow was his experience, and how limited his vision.

The presumption shamed him, that he had dared to set judgment on the
lives of the Cannis barbarians.  Their plight must be better understood
to be fairly handled-a stricture that must start with rebuilding trust
with his half-brother.  Brought to painful self-honesty, Lysaer
realized that to do right by the kingdom of Tysan, he must embrace a
new concept of justice.  The tinker's workmanship in the old circlet
and the uncanny loveliness of Havish's crown jewels compelled a cold
and difficult review of his mortal strengths and talent.

Lysaer returned the artifact to Traithe, gentled by diffidence he had
shown no one living.  "I'm thankful for your offer to school my gift of
light.  But I see very clearly: a mage's training is not my course to
pursue.  My part in confronting the Mistwraith is but the prelude to
healing the rift between townborn and clansman.  The greater good of
Tysan must demand my total dedication."

Struck by the depths of sincerity that prompted this prince's
self-sacrifice, Traithe closed his hands, quenching the blood-fire of
the rubies.  His sorrows as Sorcerer were compounded with fierce
foreboding for the future spelled out by the strands.  Like the great
Waystone the Koriani enchantresses ached to recover, the cache of
sapphires that were the crown jewels of Tysan must remain in Sethvir's
trust at Althain.  That this gently reared descendant of Tysan's kings,
whose shining talent was inspired rule, should one day through the
Mistwraith's machination refute the fine intentions that now moved his
mind and heart seemed an impossibly cruel twist of fate.

Harbingers

In the cold light of dawn, a dark horse with a black-clad rider
canters south, for Ghent, in the kingdom of Havish; beneath the hunting
bow and trap lines of a forester's trade, he bears a concealed set of
rubies and a circlet, while a raven swoops on a following breeze over
his silver-banded hat....

High above land, outside even the coiling fogs of Deshthiere, the
discorporate Sorcerer Kharadmon arrows east on the winds of high
altitude, his intent to measure and map the power base of the
governors' council of Etarra....

Too obdurately frugal to hurry, Luhaine drifts west into Camris,
bearing tidings and grave portents for Maenalle, Steward of Tysan....

X.  Daon Ramon Barrens or a confirmed hedonist and established late
riser, Dakar Fclimbed Althain Tower's central stair in suspiciously
buoyant spirits.  Enjoying the early hour without a hangover, he barged
into the room where the half-brothers slept with a clang of the bar and
a shove that swung the oaken door to a thunderous boom against the
stops.

The racket rivaled the impact of a siege engine.

Accustomed to solicitude, courtly deference, and a chamber valet
selected for quiet habits, Lysaer squinted through a hurtful flare of
torch flame.  He buried his face in his pillow, nettled enough to curse
when rude hands grasped his shoulder and shook him.

The assault on his person ended with a raw hoot of laughter.

Lysaer faced around.  He endured the ache until his eyes adjusted to
the sudden fullness of light and made out the form of his tormentor.

Bent double and gripping his belly as if he hurt, Dakar wore a shirt
that needed washing, a leather tunic ripped ragged at the hem, and a
plaid sash so sun-faded the only recognizable color was gray.

The glare of princely displeasure left his paroxysms unfazed.

Lysaer propped himself on one elbow.  Made aware as he flicked back
tangled hair that the view beyond the shutter was night black, he said,
"I don't see any humor in being wakened before dawn by a maniac."

Dakar sat on the adjacent cot.  The frame gave a squeal of leather
and wood at the load, and the mattress canted.  Its slumbering occupant
slid like a dropped puppet in the direction gravity dictated.  Blocked
from tumbling to the floor by the planted bulk of Dakar, Arithon showed
no sign of awakening.

"Well?"  Lysaer fixed glacial eyes upon the Mad Prophet.

"Are you going to share your joke?"

"Joke?"  Dakar hiccupped and looked aggrieved.  "I made none.  But
I'll bet you never used that many filthy words in one breath before."

"Meaning I forgot my manners."  Recovered enough to find tolerance,
Lysaer gave back a wicked grin.  "My reputation's hardly spoiled.  You
don't look to me like a lady I need to impress."  Before Dakar could
throw back rejoinder, he added, "Try that last move on the Master, and
see what sort of words he uses."

"Oh?"  Dakar twisted, reached out, and pinched Arithon's cheek, but
failed to raise any response.  Arithon never twitched an eyelid.

Prosaically the Mad Prophet said, "Won't be waking up this morning,
not at all.  Too used up still, and better so.  Asandir wants him
napping."

Warned by a hint of recalcitrance that purpose underlay Dakar's
remark, Lysaer got up and reached for his breeches and shirt.  "We're
leaving Althain today?"

"Tonight.  The sun's not up yet."  All cow-eyed innocence, Dakar
heaved off the cot.  He regarded his knuckles, still nicked with scabs
since his encounter with the door panel stuck shut by Kharadmon.

Against all better sensibility, he could not resist adding more.

"We go within the hour.  But against any natural inclination, we
won't be making passage across Instrell Bay by boat.  The Sorcerers
have decided we're in a rush."

Lysaer measured his shirt laces against each other to even them up
for tying.  "Why?"

Transparently reluctant to answer, Dakar crooked a finger in an end
of his tangled beard and shrugged.  "Daelion Fatemaster himself
couldn't fathom ways of the Fellowship."  Impelled to neglected duty,
he abandoned his affectations and launched off toward a nearby chest,
where he scooped up Arithon's clothing.  Onto the heap he tossed boots,
hose, cloak, and belatedly, the sword Alithiel, which still lay naked
against the table.  "Didn't this come with a scabbard?"

Lysaer unhooked the Master's baldric, which hung in plain sight from
a chair back, and handed it over without comment.

Still grumbling, Dakar shed his armload of garments onto Arithon's
chest.  He then sheathed the blade, dumped that on top, and announced,
"Right now I've got other problems, like lugging your bastard brother
down five courses of stairs.

"Half-brother," Lysaer corrected.  Regarding the Mad Prophet's
ministrations askance, and grateful to be alert enough to attend
himself, he retrieved his weapons and cloak from the armoire.  "I'm not
so fordone I don't recall we're only four flights above ground level."

Nonplussed, Dakar said, "I can count properly when I'm sober.  We
aren't leaving by the gate.  Sethvir's got a thirdlane focus pattern in
his dungeon, and Asandir's of a mind to hurry."

By now acquainted with Athera's geography through Sethvir's
collection of charts, Lysaer paused in the act of fastening his
baldric; the distance inferred was well over two hundred leagues, with
a span of open water in between.

"We're traveling on to Daon Ramon Barrens by sorcery?"

Dakar smiled, mooncalf features all innocence.  "You're going to
witness wonders.  That is, unless you get disoriented and lose your
breakfast on the way.  Personally, I find lane transfers across
latitude nearly as lousy as sailing.  But then my stomach tries to get
seasick in a bathtub."  A last, hasty inspection showed nothing
indispensable had been forgotten from his collection of Arithon's
things; the Mad Prophet in prosaic efficiency rolled both Shadow Master
and belongings up in the blankets he slept on.

As Lysaer took up station at the foot of the cot to help lift the
inert body, Dakar confided, "Our boy here's going to be mad as blazes
when he finally does wake up."  A pause ensued as prophet and prince
hefted their load and shuffled out of step around Sethvir's clutter
toward the doorway.  Dakar elbowed the panel aside, backed through, and
cheerfully began the descent.  "Angry as a rock-bashed snake."

"Maybe that has something to do with Asandir's sudden haste?"

Lysaer suggested, hoping to pry loose an explanation.

"All of that."  Dakar grinned, perversely uninformative.

"Your half-brother's going to be furious."

Lysaer shifted his grip on the blankets, which were an impractical
way to handle a comatose body down a stairwell.

Since pressing the issue might make him the butt of Dakar's next
prank, he maneuvered past the first landing.  The draft swirled
unpleasantly across his shoulders; somewhere a loosened shutter grated
sullenly in the wind.  The steepness -of the risers stalled
conversation until something Dakar saw as he rounded the bend doused
his overweening mood of smugness.

Caught on the uphill end of a precarious and unwieldy load, Lysaer
discovered in embarrassment that Sethvir stood on the landing, the
voluminous cuffs of his sleeves for once shaken clean of dust.

Sight of the Teir's'Ffalenn trussed in his bedclothes caused the
Warden of Althain to blink like an owl exposed to sunlight.  "I asked
you to bring him down," he murmured in vague reproof.  "Did you have to
bundle him up like stolen goods in a carpet?"

"Next time you carry him," the Mad Prophet retorted between wheezes.

Sethvir hurried ahead down the corridor, maroon robes flapping around
feet tucked hoseless into ridiculously oversized fur buskins.

His reply trailed back with all the daft overtones of a hermit caught
talking to himself.  "Teir's'Ffalcnn are well able to right their own
injustices, this one better than most.  He's Torbrand's descendant,
after all, every inch of him touchy.  You're welcome to his revenge by
yourself, tool prophet."

To this Dakar spoke phrases that cast biological doubt tilion
Arithon's already illegitimate ancestry.  Sethvir gave hick a blank
glance and traipsed ahead into darkness.  Their course meandered,
stopped, backtracked, and circled between ranks of Paravian statuary
faintly visible, as sparkles of gold weave and gemstones caught
glancing torchlight from the stairwell.  Lysaer lost count of how many
times he stubbed toes, or whacked his elbows and shins; the muscles of
his arms and shoulders ached unmercifully.  That his discomforts might
have been staged as a lesson did not dawn, until the Sorcerer paused
and, without any fumbling, hooked an inset steel ring in the floor.  A
counterweighted trapdoor sprang open and raw light flooded upward to
show features as blithe as a pixie's.  Lysaer recalled with a snap of
annoyance that mages saw perfectly in the dark.

Sethvir's blue-green eyes held a twinkle.  "Go ahead.

Asandir has the horses waiting below."

"Horses!"  Lysaer eyed the narrow stairwell that spiraled downward
toward a glow too steady to be lamplight.  His skin crept, even as the
nuance of his gift confirmed the play of unnatural energies.  "How did
he ever get them down here?"

Dismissing the question as irrelevant, Sethvir beckoned prince and
prophet and the unconscious bundle carried between them on ahead.

"Where you're going, you'll be glad not to walk."  He closed the
trapdoor after himself with barely a whisper of a creak.

The air radiated a tang like a blacksmith's forge intermixed with the
charge of inbound storms.  Lysaer checked, while behind him, Dakar
snarled in annoyance that princely fainthearted hesitation was going to
wind up tripping him.

Lysaer sucked a quick breath and pressed ahead into burgeoning light.
Assured by now that the Fellowship's grand magics would not harm him,
his reluctance stemmed as much from indignity.  Accustomed to
responsibility as a king's heir, he found the Sorcerer's secretive
authority deeply irritating.  Had he been apprised of their plans one
step beyond the immediate, or been granted some insight to their
motivations, he might have felt less unnerved.  Traithe alone had
addressed this need, but the black-garbed mage had ridden off to tutor
the heir to Havish, and some event since arrival at Althain had turned
Asandir bleak as chipped granite.

The stairs ended.  Circular and doorless as a vault, the deepest
chamber of Althain Tower was incised into seamless white marble.  A
floor of polished onyx held eight leering gargoyle sconces arrayed on
pedestals at the compass points.

No torches burned in their sockets; the light emanated from a webwork
of lines scribed across a wide, bowl-shaped depression.  The patterning
shaped three concentric circles, edged in Paravian runes and centered
by an intricate, looping interlace that hurt the eyes to follow.
Asandir waited in the middle, on a starburst formed by the intersection
of five axes, his shadow merged in the silhouette of a massive,
high-wheeled mason's dray.  Dakar's paint mare was harnessed between
the shafts, and the other mounts tied to the tail boards stamped and
blew in nervous snorts.  The rap and clang of shod hooves raised no
echoes in that windowless, enclosed space, and for all that hellish
glare, the air retained no warmth.  The draft that wafted off the
pattern was charged with unnatural, arctic cold.

Touched to spine-tingling uneasiness and soaked in icy sweat, Lysaer
shivered.  He started at a touch on his shoulder and spun around to
meet the myopic, inquiring eyes of Sethvir.

"You're looking at a power focus, charged and enabled with the
natural forces that flow in lines across the earth," said the Warden of
Althain in measured reassurance.  "The energies gathered here will
allow Asandir to effect a direct transfer to the ruins west of Daon
Ramon Barrens."

Lysaer shut his eyes against patterns that glared and sparked like
fireworks against enigmatic black stone.

Through an odd and unpleasant ringing in his ears, he heard Dakar's
petulant interruption.  "Why not go straight to the focus at Ithamon?"

Sethvir replied, imperturbed.  "For Arithon's sake you'll travel
overland from the focus at Caith-al-Caen."

"The Vale of Shadows!"  As if the translation shoved home a violation
of something sacred, Dakar cried, "Why protect him?"  As if the
unconscious man in the blanket was a curse he felt driven to shed, he
rounded in disgust on Sethvir.  "Arithon showed you how lightly he
regards your commitment to Rathain.  After his insolence at the
summons, do you think he gives a damn for your solicitude?"

"Suppose with all his heart that he wished he did not?"

Sethvir interjected.  To Lysaer, who listened in confusion from the
lip of the bottom stair, the Sorcerer added, "The floor is solid, and
certainly safe to step on."

The oblique shift in subject silenced Dakar.  Since Arithon's dead
weight had long since tired his arms and shoulders, Lysaer proceeded
forward.  For all his apprehension, the pattern's burning lines caused
no sensation beyond a queer tingle as he stepped over and around them.

Dakar of necessity straggled after, muttering mutinous curses that
attributed Ath's angels to acts of scatological impossibility.

Still by the stair, Sethvir said nothing.  Something in his quiet
shamed Lysaer to recrimination.  Dakar's outrageous attitudes
notwithstanding, he had shown callousness unworthy of a prince when he
had failed to defend his halfbrother's dignity.  a Asandir was less
restrained when the pair with their burden slung between them crossed
the last circle of the focus.  Eyes bright and ruthless as sword steel
flicked over blankets, belongings, and the head that dangled backward,
black hair trailing within inches of the rune-scribed floor.  "Lay the
Teir's'Ffalenn behind the buckboard and see him comfortably arranged.

No reason this side of the Wheel can excuse the extra care you should
have taken to fix a litter."

"I'd sooner coddle a viper," the Mad Prophet unwisely retorted.

"Why rush to stir up disaster?"

"Arithon gave his trust into your hands without terms the other
night," Asandir snapped back.  "Is that how you thank him?"

Low-voiced, he added something else that made Dakar cringe like a
kicked dog.

Then the Sorcerer's glance snapped to Lysaer, driving home a rebuke
not solely directed elsewhere.  Stung for his lapse into pettiness,
Lysaer hefted Arithon into the dray.  He attended his half-brother's
needs with a servant's humility, while around him the vault became
preternaturally quiet.

The horses stopped sidling and stood glassy-eyed, their ears and
tails hanging limp.  The pattern in the floor began to sing in a tone
just outside of hearing, and the air gained a charge that lifted the
hairs on their backs.

"Get into the wagon and hold on," Asandir commanded.

Dakar leaped the buckboard and scrambled to snatch up the reins.

Lysaer scrambled over the high sides behind the wheel, while the
Sorcerer strode forward, grasped the paint's bridle, and positioned his
feet precisely upon the nexus of the focus.

Sethvir called out in farewell, and the vault burst asunder in an
explosion of unbearable blue light.

Darkness ripped down hard after, relentless as the void between the
Veil.  If Lysaer cried out, his ears recorded no sound.  His senses
overturned, as if he, the rough wood he sat on, even the horses tied by
their bridle reins, overturned in a gut-twisting series of somersaults.

Too late he recalled Dakar's flippant comment; but having no
breakfast in him to lose, only bile burned the back of his throat.

Thrilled and frightened by the pull of forces beyond understanding,
Lysaer clung to the fast-fraying shreds of selfcontrol.

Then a jolt slammed the boards beneath his body.  Wind was compressed
from his lungs, and his stomach plummeted back into his middle in a
wrench fit to tear a gut.  The unsprung dray hit earth with a crash
that jarred the supplies in back, Arithon's limp form, and everyone
else's teeth with undivided viciousness.  Pebbles spanged out from
under the iron-rimmed wheels, and with an appalling creak, and a
clatter of hooves from panicked horses, the vehicle lurched and rolled
as natural order intended.

Winter wind slashed through Lysaer's hair.  He recovered a ratcheting
breath, discovered his eyes squeezed shut and his hands locked rigidly
to the side boards.  When he mastered the wits to risk a look,
disbelief shocked him like ice water.  Tower, vault, and pattern were
wholly swept away.

Through a dissolving haze of blue sparks and an after-stink of ozone,
he beheld a changed landscape and mist silvered with new day.

Under a brooding gray sky, gusts raked through feathered brown grass,
stripped trees, and black, striated rock that gouged through soil and
dead briar.  Lysaer felt dizzied, sick, and disoriented.  He was still
battling to reconcile his shaken nerves when the impossible solidity of
the land, the rutted dirt lane the dray thundered down, and the flying
clods gouged up by the horses, who raced ahead in stark fear@verything
preternaturally made real by the loosening coils of grand magic-tilted
hard sideways and overturned.

"You're going to faint," Asandir said with incisive clarity from a
point somewhere inside the wagon.

Vertigo swallowed Lysaer's sight.  He sensed no pain as his
gold-thatched head banged into a sack of iron cooking pots, but heard
only the clang of impact melded with words made blurred through a
distance of fading awareness.  "Ath's mercy on you, Prophet, for I'll
show none if the s'llessid heir falls out."

The Paravians called the place Caith-al-Caen, Vale of Shadow, by the
dawn of the Second Age.  Common usage corrupted the name of the ruin
there to Castlecain, though from a vantage halfway up a mist-cloaked
hillside, the reason seemed obscure.  The site never held any fortress.
All that remained of the clay and thatch croft where Cianor Sunlord
had been born were hummocks where orchards had stood.

Yet as Asandir wound his way over ground that once had held gardens
of scented, flowering trees, his eyes saw beyond bleak mist and sere
landscape.  Did he look with him% mage's vison, the shadows, the
memories, that abiding resonance of mystery that lingered wherever the
old races had cherished the earth skeined like starlit thread through
the cross-laced, dead canes of briar.

Ballads held that a place beloved by unicorns never quite lost the
aura of their presence.  At Caith-al-Caen, the adage held true; while
Asandir strode through weeds napped like velvet with dew, his
peripheral vision and the limits just beyond hearing entangled him in
echoes of the past.  Here, when the splendors of the Second Age were
yet young, the Riathan had gathered each solstice to renew the
earthpowers and to rejoice in the turn of the seasons.  The ecstacy in
their music had marked the very soil, and now wind itself mourned the
loss.  Even after a thousand years, the land remained blessed with a
grace that haunted.  An energy coursed through the soil that glorified
life; even under Deshthiere's curse, the hills each spring put forth a
knee-high carpet of flowers, and rowan still thrust through the
bracken.

Now, under winter's frosts, only the spirits lingered, ethereal as
shadings in silverpoint, their dance songless and silent.  The Sorcerer
walked, careful not to look too closely to either side.  The memories
of too many friends watched his back with pity and reproach.  Sorrow
had scribed too many creases around his eyes, and hope had eased too
few.

"Dael-Farenn, kingmaker!"  lisped the wind as it curled through his
hair.  "What have you done with your hope, your dreams, your joy?

The dance is not ended, not yet.  For the song will renew with the
sunlight."  Could Asandir close his ears, he would have, but the
hearing of a mage went beyond reliance on the flesh.  The voices and
the spirits dogged his innermind at each step; he would answer their
pleas, but at a cost that harrowed him to contemplate.

He crested the rise.  Beyond spread the hollow where the Ilitharis
Paravians had first Named the winter stars.  The place retained a
serenity that would abide through ages still to come, however much
strife marred the world.  Informed of the Master's presence by a
bright-edged spill of lyranthe notes, Asandir stopped dead.  His hands
and his throat tightened.  As though touched by his sharp trepidation,
the voices on the wind palled to murmurs and the spirits swirled away,
brilliance dimmed; while through a perception that threatened to unman
him, Asandir heard Arithon play Maenalle's gift with a touch unfettered
by bitterness.

Arpeggios rippled and soared, linked by grace notes that revealed,
like unfinished tapestry, the latent promise of the bard.  Cut diamonds
had less clarity.  The s'Ffalenn heir already possessed a skill that
could pierce the heart; offered freedom to pursue his desire and given
the right master, his talent could be refined to a grace that held
power to captivate.

Woodenly, Asandir pressed forward.  His deerhide soles grated over
stone, deliberate warning to the minstrel that solitude had been
breeched.  Arithon glanced over his shoulder, saw his visitor, and
smiled.  The reflexive, hair-trigger wariness that on prior occasions
had hardened him never arose.

As if his license to share the risks in quelling the methsnakes had
triggered catharsis, the music flowed from him unchecked.  By the
lyrical, ringing undertone, no Fellowship Sorcerer could mistake that
this time the s'Ffalenn heir played to share unconditionally.

Asandir fought his wish to turn away, to retrace his path to the
valley, and leave Caith-al-Caen to the spirits and the bard; instead he
steeled his will and assimilated the hurtful whole: his mage's vision
showed him the colors of Arithon's aura shot through with absolute
trust.

The final steps toward the hollow became unbearably hard to complete.
Asandir managed, though the wear left by centuries of service suddenly
bore down on him, and the wind pried his hair and clothing like the tug
of hostile hands.  He reached the stone where Arithon sat, and regarded
the mist and the shadows until the song reached its natural end.

When the last note faded into stillness, he settled at the Master's
side.

"Why?"  he asked softly, though in depth he already knew.

Arithon settled the lyranthe into the crook of his elbow and answered
the question's drift.  "I finally had proof that your promise of free
will was genuine."  Green eyes turned, but Asandir could no longer meet
them.  Imperturbed, where in a more guarded moment he might justly have
taken alarm, Arithon continued.  "I challenged my right to
self-destruction, and was shown an open door."  He paused, looked down,
and his hands opened.  "You'll forgive my cantankerous behavior, I
hope.  I'm capable of better, as you'll see."

Asandir masked a flinch, for the words the Master had chosen had
echoed those of another s'Ffalenn ancestor, caught in an equally
untenable position.  And in the moment when memory and pity stole
speech, Asandir shared in finetextured empathy the unshielded
confidence of a friendship.

The offering itself was a rarity for a man unaccustomed to
companionship: a lonely boy, raised in the company of elderly mages who
had all loved him at a distance.  He had grown without a mother@
affection, but hereditary compassion had turned him from resentment.

He readily forgave what he did not understand, and defined his joy
through his competence.  Praise for his achievements kept him from
discovering the depths of his isolation, the cost of that
misapprehension still yet to be paid.

The true friend, the caring lover, could absolve all hurt from the
growth that inevitably must be forced upon the grown man.  The lesson
might be learned through care and happiness, that the self-worth
Arithon instinctively sought in music was a separate thing from
accomplishment-had Desh-thiere and a crown not hung between.

Asandir hid bitterness.  His own role disallowed mercy.  inwardly
connected the Master might be, and strong as well, but along with his
confidence came infinite power to wound.

Asandir came close to recoil as another image touched his
consciousness: a young girl's face, with shy, smiling lips, eyes like
aventurine, and ash brown hair caught up in braids.  Arithon had wanted
to kiss her, but women confused him; while walking in the hills to
gather herbs, they had spoken of music and poetry, and then of things
more personal.  And trembling in his arms, she had admitted that his
powers, the given gift of Shadow he had labored so long to master,
frightened her He had let her go, not knowing what to say.

The girl's name had been Tennia, Asandir recalled from the clutter of
past recollections he had probed after breaking the Curse of Mearth;
the events themselves were not new, nor the regrets they had left
marked in memory.  The Sorcerer's gall and surprise stemmed instead
from distinction that now his insight into Arithon's consciousness was
openly given in trust.

Asandir watched the winds comb the dry, frost-brittle grasses with
bleak eyes.  This time, in keenest irony, inherited s'Ffalenn
compassion had set the reins into his grasp; S'Ahelas farsight offered
the whip.  His mage's perception recognized Arithon's inner fiber, and
its naked vulnerability stirred him to grief sharp as outrage: for he
could, he would, and he must, manipulate this prince into voluntary
betrayal of everything he held dear.

"This place," Arithon said, interrupting Asandir's inward turmoil.

"It has a quality, a feeling, as if the rocks, the soil, even the
wind, are something more than inanimate."

"Caith-al-Caen is aligned with an earth-lane," the Sorcerer replied
in what seemed measured calm, but a shiver flawed his composure.  Mercy
upon you, he thought to the prince at his side, for Arithon had
unwittingly invited the opening the Fellowship in its desperate need
required.  Over the whisper of wind, and through the multiple levels of
his mage's awareness, Asandir chose his words.

"Here, in the past, the old races danced at the turn of each season,
to deilect the earth's forces into latitudinal channels to enrich the
surrounding land.  So were all of Athera's twelve lanes once
interconnected into a lattice to nourish all life.  The resonance that
shaped the ward lingers still."

Self-control prevailed; a voice could be compelled to sound
conversational though anguished self-revulsion stormed beneath, for the
first strand of the snare would be spun, here and now, of the purest
thing left to this world: the beauty and wild grace impressed upon
Caith-al-Caen by the dance of the Riathan Paravians.  "I can show you,
if you like."

It did not help to know that the ultimate course of the world
depended upon this deception, as Arithon straightened in surprise.  His
eyes lit with pleasure, and a longing that was entirely spontaneous
tipped up the corners of his mouth.  "I would be honored."

Somehow, Asandir unlocked numbed fingers.  He reached down, picked up
a lichened bit of stone, and said, "Give me your hands."  And he
offered his own, palm upward, the pebble cradled like the mythical seed
of temptation in the left one.

Arithon laid his lyranthe aside.  A gust fanned his hair and the
coarse linen of his sleeves as he reached to engage his grip.  Warm
hands were given into the Sorcerer's cool ones.

As if air itself were abrasive to his skin, Asandir accepted the
touch.

He guided Arithon's fingers to cup the fragment of stone, then molded
his own over top.  "You were taught to clear and center your mind.  Do
that.  But this time, include our bit Of stone as if it were part of
your flesh, and leave me an open channel."

Unaware of impending destiny, Arithon closed his'eyes.

Without looking, Asandir could sense the change as he underwent the
necessary preparation, and the clamor of inward consciousness settled
to listening stillness.  As a shepherd might lead his best lamb to
slaughter, the Sorcerer threaded his awareness into the fragment of
stone, hooked the residual glimmer of Paravian magic, and set it free,
to pour through Arithon's unshielded spirit and weave its undying line
of melody.

The effect at first was subtle, little more than a sensation of
warming from the stone, followed by a tingle of nerves akin to a rush
of exuberance.  Arithon underwent a moment of quivering, inward
realignment, as if a chord had been struck in harmonic resonance with
his being.  Asandir felt the ripple of reaction course through the
flesh under his grip; he removed his hands and watched, aggrieved and
silent.

Arithon opened his eyes to the vision of unicorns dancing.

The statues of Riathan enshrined at Althain Tower might reflect an
artist's proportion and line.  But perfection carved in cold marble
could never capture motion, or the lightness and flight of cloven
hooves, or the lift of tails and manes more fine than spun silk; not
the spiraled twist of horns that shimmered with an energy visible to
mages, or the soaring, heart-searing sweetness of song that underlay
the sigh of the wind.  Caith-al-Caen rang with a purity of tone just
beyond grasp of the mind.

Arithon dropped the bit of stone, helplessly overwhelmed.

He sank to his knees before the cranny where he had sheltered.

Assaulted by a rapture beyond hope, the half-glimpsed promise of
limitless light, he laughed aloud, and then trembled.  His eyes filled
with tears and overflowed.  "Blessed Ath," he managed finally, his
words wrung to harshness by awe.  "I never guessed.  Yet the beauty in
the sword should have warned me."

Asandir regarded the lyrical pavane of the spirit forms, mute.

Their image held power to captivate, surely; but the palliative
brought only hunger, akin to the cravings of delirium.  These illusions
were just poor, starved shadows, an imprint like an afterimage left by
creatures whose existence transcended mortality.  The reality made
pearls seem as sand.

For one who had beheld the wisdom in a unicorn's depthless eyes, for
any who had once experienced the current of undefiled exultation that
abided in their presence, the ghosts scribed here by trace resonance
exposed only wretched emptiness.  Asandir wept also, but for loss
beyond words to en IL compass, and for a future set into motion that
must not now be undone.

Cut by regret and infinite pity, he bent also and gathered Arithon's
shivering shoulders into the embrace a parent might show to a child
about to be orphaned.  "You can block the visions at will by sealing
off your inner sight."

Arithon twisted against the Sorcerer's hold, his face all puzzled
delight.  "Why ever should I want to?"

Asandir released his grip as though burned.  Too choked up to
breathe, far less speak, he whirled away and strode off.

Almighty Ath, the irony wounded, endlessly, and straight to the
heart.  For Arithon would wish very shortly that he had never owned
mage-sight, or been attuned to the resonance of Paravian mystery.

The spirits that haunted Caith-al-Caen were as pale glimmers, their
measure a dance of celebration incanted and renewed through countless
turns of seasons.  Here the Paravian singers had transmuted only joy.
The vibrations imbued within the ruins of the traditional s'Ffalenn
seat of power, Ithamon, where the Fellowship proposed to see
Deshthiere's stranglehold over sky and sunlight broken, were not at all
the same.

Amid foundations shattered by the uprising, and the bones of unburied
dead, the four towers raised by the Paravians still stood, their wards
pristine and still radiant.  The contrast between their enduring,
virginal harmony, and the tormented backlash of magics unleashed by the
fall of the King's Tower that coiled like a wraith through the
wreckage, was a thousand times more poignant than the haunting of
Caith-alCaen, and stark with the blood and tragedy of displaced lives
and dreams.

Arithon might shut such clamor out, but at the cost of his bardic
inspiration; and the compassion that was permanently ingrained in every
scion of the s'Ffalenn line would disallow any such voluntary deafness.

irony within irony, Asandir knew, as his feet stumbled in unabashed
haste and his clothing hooked on the briars.  The king for Rathain
would be bought in false guilt, against evr cry dedicated principle of
the Fellowship, whose first task was to foster enlightenment.  For the
prince now entranced by the unicorn spirits lacked the hardened
self-wisdom to stand down Ithamon's past.  He was too young, too
strong, and too much the puppet of pity to perceive that
responsibilities were always self-imposed.

On fostering that lie Athera's need depended, and on a tender
innocence paired like a curse with resilience enough not to flee.

The road across Daon Ramon Barrens was barely more than a dirt track,
half overgrown and winding between hills raked by winds that never
seemed to quiet.  Tired of the whisper and rattle of dead bracken, of
the incessant tug and snap at his cloak hem, and hair perpetually
whipped into tangles, Lysaer kept good spirits, buoyed by certainty
that the interval of being adrift without kingdom or purpose would end
after conquest of Desh-thiere.

Never mind that, league on league, the landscape was unremittingly
deserted and bare, that winter rains soaked his clothing and blankets,
and Dakar's invective worsened since the morning he woke up with Lyats
in his boots and Asandir once again had to rescue him from the energy
sprites' bedevilment.  No other diversions arose through weary days of
travel, for their route took them far from even the most isolated
initiate's hostel; tinkers, traders, and caravans did not travel the
old road to Ithamon.  As if the way itself, with its lichened markers
and rolling, briar-grown hills, were haunted, not even the ruins of
farm hamlets or villages remained to remind of a prosperous past.

"That's because there were none," Asandir confided over the jingle of
harness and the booming grind of the dray's wheels over bare scarps of
stone.  The rain had stopped at midday, and water puddled silver in the
hollows.  "Daon Ramon in the old tongue means 'golden hills.' The place
was the province of the Riathan Paravians, and unicorns require no
dwellings."

Unwilling to let the Sorcerer lapse into the forbidding silence that
had gripped him since Althain Tower, Lysaer gestured toward the
hillsides with their cover of bracken and Thorn.  "It seems hard to
picture this place as fertile and green."

"It was, and beautifully so."  Asandir urged his mount over a gully
where the road had washed out and the slates lay jammed like old bones
in a spongy bed of moss.  His silver-gray eyes seemed to pierce the
mantle of mist and peer far into distance.  "All that you see was a
grassland, rich with herbs and wildflowers.  Winters were short and
mild.

But that changed after the rebellion.  Townsmen believed the magic of
the Paravians could not abide in a land without water.  They went to
astonishing lengths to assuage their fears.

The governors' council of Etarra funded a task force of mercenaries
to dam the Sevemir.  A great canal was cut through the Skyshiel
Mountains to divert the river at its source.  The current flows east
now and empties into Eltair Bay."

"That seems a mighty effort to base on a superstition," Lysaer
commented.

Asandir rode on in troubled silence.  Then he said, "So long as these
hills remain a desert, no Paravian would return to dwell here.

So you see, the townsmen's intent was suited after all."

The damp weather held, and night fell early.  By then Asandir's party
made camp in a grotto formed by a jutting outcrop of cracked boulders.
The only bit that stayed dry was the nook where the fire burned, and
Dakar crouched there, roasting rabbits that Arithon and Lysaer had
snared before dusk.  Asandir knew where to find herbs, and beside the
odors of wet earth and damp horses, the air carried the savory smell of
stew.

Lysaer huddled between the slow drip of a natural spring and a
falling spray of runoff, shirtless, his cloak tossed across his
shoulders.  With a needle and thread borrowed from the supply pack, he
was immersed in determined effort to mend a tear where a briar had torn
his sleeve.  Attendant on his progress was the Mad Prophet, in rare
high humor at the prospect of a meal of fresh meat.

"You're making that thing into ruffles better suited to a tavern
doxie," Dakar said in unasked-for criticism.

Embarrassed by his ineptness when he had been surrounded by women at
their embroidery all his life, Lysaer managed a laugh.  "If the ruffles
keep out the cold, I don't care."

Dakar sampled the contents of his supper pot, licked the spoon, and
resumed stirring.  "Don't jerk the stitches so tight.  Everybody knows
you're irritated."  a At a loss for subtle rejoinder, Lysaer welcomed
the intrusion when Arithon stirred from the shadows and insinuated
himself in the fray.

"Don't gloat," the Master advised the Mad Prophet.

"Princes don't freely choose to keep their clothes until they rot in
rags off their backs."

Laid open to insult by his threadbare and weather-faded plaid, Dakar
subsided to a glower.  To his half-brother, Arithon added, "If you
don't mind wearing what looks like a sail maker's patch, there's a
better way to fix that."

Relieved to be rescued from his ignorance, Lysaer surrendered needle
and linen with a gratitude that unfailingly melted hearts.

"These clothes would hardly impress anyone before they were torn."

To Dakar, quietly, he added, "The s'Ffalenn bastard's made a fool of
you again.  You promised a scathing show of temper after Althain Tower.

Now I'm left to wonder which of you is the more devious: Arithon, for
an act that would fool a saint, or you, for a lying diversion to escape
getting dressed down for rudeness."

Dakar's ebullience died.  Rather than admit to his own bafflement at
Arithon's contrary manner, he hunkered down by his cooking pot like a
disgruntled broody hen.  "Wait," he muttered morosely to the
fair-haired and smiling prince.

"Just wait until we get to Ithamon."

After five days' journey, the hills of Daon Ramon lost their rocky
crowns and became clothed and gentled by heather.  Valleys that until
now had been channeled with dried gullies and stunted stands of scrub
oak smoothed over into vales half hidden in fog.  If the view had once
been beautiful, Desh-thiere rendered everything bleak; the winds that
never stilled gained the bitten edge of frost.  For league upon league
there seemed no living thing but gray-coated deer, rabbits furred in
winter white, and the lonely, dissonant calls of hawks that sailed like
shadows through the mist in search of prey.

The horses grew lean and tough, nourished more by the grain carried
by wagon than on the rank brown grass.  Lysaer wearied of venison, but
was careful to keep the fact from his half-brother, who spent as many
hours hunting as playing upon his lyranthe.  As always fed up with
abstinence, Dakar seized upon every opening to bemoan the dearth of
beer.

Asandir kept his own counsel, forbidding as north-facing rock.

The closer the party drew to the heartland of Daon Ramon, the less
the Sorcerer bothered to chastize his spellbinder for whining.  Well
warned that such silence boded trouble, Lysaer noticed the moment when
the Mad Prophet abandoned complaint.  More sensitive than before to
nuance, he watched for any circumstance that might find the Shadow
Master discomfited.

But snow fell, and the days passed in anticlimax.  Arithon did not
oblige Dakar's expectations and grew darkly moody.

He asked companionable questions of Asandir, and spent hours
regarding ice-scabbed trees, stunted brush, and the white-clothed
shoulders of the hills as though his magetrained sight showed him
wonders.

"The Riathan Paravians," Dakar whispered upon Lysaer's puzzled
inquiry.  "Unicorns ran in these hills and bore young in the meadows
here.  The mystery of their presence lingers even now."

Wide-eyed, skeptical, Lysaer peered through dripping bangs.  An
unseasonal thaw had softened the trail to muck, and slush seeped
rivulets of wet down slopes like tucked old burlap.  As far as the mist
would allow, nothing met his gaze but bleak landscape that lacked the
redeeming comfort of a single man-made structure.

Perched on the dray's hard buckboard, Dakar slapped the reins over
the paint's steaming back and jogged her abreast of the chestnut
gelding.  Swaddled like a vegetable in wet cloaks, a derisive grin
splitting his beard, he called over the rumble of rolling wheels.

"Don't try to look with your eyes, but use your feelings."

"To find what?"  Lysaer shrugged to vent frustration.  "Every morning
I wake up as though eyes are on my back, watching me, and each night I
step away from the camp fire, I get chills that have nothing to do with
the cold.  This place is hauntingly, hurtfully deserted, as far as I
can tell."

"That's the point."  Dakar puffed up his cheeks and looked smug.

"Asandir and Arithon might appreciate what's missing from this
Ath-forsaken wasteland, but I suspect like me, you'd rather be in a
crowded tavern knocking back mugs of spiced ale."

Although Lysaer did not precisely share Dakar's sentiment, he would
have welcomed any human presence to allay the aching, hollow something
that tugged at his nerves like pain.  At each bend in the road, behind
every storm-stunted bush, he seemed to see the lady he was to have
married, her eyes liquid with tears, and her hands held out in
entreaty.  He remembered how her auburn hair had blown in the sea
breeze off South Isle, and echoes of her lost laughter ached his heart.

No noble dedication to purpose could ease his longing for home in
this wilderness.  His suffering stayed silent out of pride; and until
the Mad Prophet had spoken, he had not guessed that his depression
might arise from a source outside himself.

At noon riders and wagon paused for a cold meal beside a spring whose
waters rose bubbling through a cleft in milky quartz rocks.  Snow
rendered the site gray on white, crossstitched with the arched-over
stems of dead briars.

Sent down to the pebbled edge of the pool to refill water flasks,
Arithon returned whitely shaken.  He looked as a man who fended off
pleas from the spirits of murdered children, his lips pinched shut to
stifle outcry.  "You might have warned me," he lashed at Asandir in
tones dragged flat by upset.

The Sorcerer did not answer, but accepted the dripping flasks to stow
back into the wagon.  Then, as if in response to a spoken word of
address, he turned eyes as chilly as the weather upon the s'llessid
prince who watched the exchange, and offered an unasked-for and edged
explanation.

"A centaur was beset during the rebellion and pulled down here.

Moss does not grow where his blood spilled.  The sunchildren sang a
lament to commemorate his passage, and the words and the melody still
ring upon the wind, to any with sensitivity enough to listen."

Stung by what felt like rebuke, Lysaer straightened in affront, then
doubled over with a gasp, robbed of his royal dignity by an elbow in
the ribs from the Mad Prophet.  Finished graining the horses, Dakar
thrust himself headlong between Sorcerer and s'llessid with oat chaff
bristling from his hood.

"What was that for?"  Lysaer demanded, outraged.

"To quiet your foolish tongue, Prince."  As Asandir turned away about
his business, the Mad Prophet winked sidelong in conspiracy.

"For a sorcerer, this place is hurtful to walk past, let alone stop
and linger."

"That Fellowship mage has feelings?"  Lysaer shot back, his eyes
following Asandir's hands as they laced and jerked tight the lashings
that secured the oiled canvas over the supplies in the wagon bed.

Dakar picked a seed head from his sleeve and looked thoughtful.

"My ever so powerful master is doing his best at this moment to keep
from weeping outright."

"You say."  A billow of mist rolled past, rendering horses, men, and
dray as featureless as silhouettes.  Lysaer raised his eyebrows.

"Well," the Mad Prophet amended, "I've lived with Asandir for
centuries, my friend.  I know this place bothers him, and I'd wager one
thing further.  He stopped here on purpose, to use its effect as a
weapon.  If you think I'm lying, look at your half-brother" The prince
forgot his pique and did so.

Still dead pale, his eyebrows snarled into a frown, Arithon had
remounted his dun mare.  He hunched against the wind as if he were
wounded and bleeding, and tears traced silver down his face.

Embarrassed as if caught at eavesdropping, Lysaer spun back to face
Dakar.  "Why don't you feel anything?  Why don't I?"

The Mad Prophet clawed back an untidy lock of hair.

Cold had reddened the tip of his nose, and his eyes looked
unwarrantedly bloodshot; yet a chilling and dignified majesty cloaked
him all the same as he said, "Do you want to?"

The question hit hard.  Driven to see into himself with uncanny depth
and clarity, struck naked before his own judgment, Lysaer perceived
that the confusion that had harried him since exile held a core of ugly
truth.  No longer did the glamor of noble purpose veil fact: that his
brave resolve to Traithe in Althain's storeroom had been rooted in
vanity and pride.  He had renounced a difficult path of study, and
vowed instead to redress the wrongs of a kingdom for his own personal
glory.  As though revolted by a foul taste, Lysaer sucked in a fast
breath.  He could hope his self-disgust was not exposed on his face,
but Dakar regarded him strangely.

"Do you feel nothing?"  The Mad Prophet slapped the straw from his
cloak with sudden, biting sharpness.  "I'd venture not.  I'd say this
place moves you as deeply as the rest of us."

Lysaer looked back, unflinching.  However this spirit-, cursed place
afflicted others, his ingrained sense of fairness forced honesty.

"My true heart stayed behind in Port Royal, I see, with my love, and
my family, and my people.  If that is a failing, it's at least no more
than human.  The problems that beset this land are not mine.  Yet I
will do my best to help right them."

The prince's conviction rang so far at odds with the future forecast
by the strands that Dakar shied back, baffled.  To cover his
foreboding, he clambered back behind the dray's buckboard and sorted
his tangled loops of rein.  "Ath in his mercy, but I could use a flagon
of dark beer and a fire," he groused to no one in particular.

"That makes two of us, friend."  Lysaer remounted his chestnut
gelding, unsure whether the lingering traces of Paravian tragedy or the
unendingly dreary landscape caused him to hurt as if the chill cut his
flesh to the marrow.

At Asandir's word, wagon and riders pressed onward through an
afternoon that wept cold drizzle.  Now the trail wound like tattered
ribbon between Daon Ramon's vales and downs, intermittently flanked by
stone markers capped with lichens and moss.  No trees grew, but only
bracken and tasseled grasses beaten down by wind and early storms.

Dirtied ice lay scabbed in the hollows.  Braced in his saddle against
the cold, and resigned to yet another sleepless night on soaked ground,
Lysaer did not realize their destination lay in sight until, rounding
the crest of a hill, Arithon gasped and yanked his dun mare to a halt
in the roadway.

She danced a piaffe at his roughness, her hooves clanging loudly on
slate.  Jostled in his saddle as his own mount bunched in reaction,
Lysaer looked ahead.

Looming in eerie outline through the mantling mist rose Ithamon, city
of legend, and seat of the high kings of Rathain.

The sight was one to stop the breath, even through the fog of
Desh-thiere.  No previous feature of landscape could prepare a traveler
for the broad sweep of valley slashed across by a rock-strewn scar of
dry riverbed.  At one time, walls of rose gray stone had arisen from
the banks, but what remained lay torn to wreckage.

Landslides left less ruin.

The greensward beyond was overrun with briar, what had been orchards,
gardens, and tourney fields now choked by weed and bitterroot vine.  A
second wall had bounded the inner edge of the common.

Embraced within gapped, halfgutted watchkeeps, the tumbled shells of
town houses clung to the hillside's ever steepening pitch.

Dismembered foundations marked off a tangle of narrow lanes and
briar-ridden courtyards.  As if a mighty army had once razed the
buildings stone from stone with battering rains, the craftsmen's
cottages, market stalls, and merchants' mansions all lay jumbled into
chaos.  Gabled roofs had caved inward, beams rotted away in the sunless
damp of Desh-thiere.  A scatter of fallen slates in what may have been
a market court reflected the rain like coins thrown out for a beggar.

The devastation of the lower tiers was total, a memorial to unbridled
violence.  Yet as if moved by some powerful unseen force, the viewer
found his sight drawn upward, where, slightly north of center, the
native granite of the earth sheered up through soil and rock into a
nearly vertical outcrop.  The triangular summit on the cliff top was
encased by embrasures of seamless, blue-black granite.  Inside, an
unkempt eyrie of broken walls and spires marked the site of the inner
citadel, the castle where generations of Paravians and, after them, the
s'Ffalenn high kings had held court.

There the eye hung captive, unable to draw away.

Amid that graveyard of ravaged splendor, of artistry spoiled by war
into a cataclysmic expression of hatred, arose four single towers, each
as different from the other as sculpture by separate masters.

They speared upward through the mist, tall, straight, perfect; their
existence held wonder that made sunlight seem murky, and beauty, a
blindness to be endured.  Somewhere between silence and sight, they
exemplified the antithesis of cruelty.  The very incongruity of their
wholeness against the surrounding wreckage shaped a dichotomy fit to
maim the soul.  For their lines were harmony distilled into form, and
strength beyond reach of time's attrition.

The rain still fell relentlessly into soggy earth; the wind keened
and stung like a dulled skive in a cobbler's shop.  No one noticed.

Even the horses seemed strangely content to be stopped in their
tracks in the roadway.  The sordid, everyday miseries of winter and
weather lost meaning, became less than the mumbles a half-wit might
utter in solitude.  Into that suspended silence Asandir began to speak.

"Ithamon was raised by Paravians in the First Age of Athera.  The
outer walls were leveled twice by Seardluin, hostile creatures native
to this world that by the Second Age had been battled to extinction.

The old races abandoned the city then, for its purpose as a fortress
had been fulfilled.  The lower tiers stayed in ruins until the dawn of
the present age, when Men rebuilt the double wars upon the remains.

The third tier wall left standing and the four surviving keeps were
part of the original city.  Built by the centaurs, refined by
sunchildren, they were Name-bound and warded by the unicorns."

"Don't say anymore!"  Arithon cut across, his bard's voice queerly
strangled.  "I beg you, don't!"  Bloodlessly pale, his hands clenched
and shaking on the rein, he sat his mare and regarded the site where
his ancestors had ruled as if he were held chained and in thrall.

"Please," he finished in a whisper.

But Asandir might as well not have heard.  "The Paravian towers have
withstood three ages of strife, eighteen thousand years of history.
Mortal men have called them the Sun Towers, or Compass Points, for
their alignment and their dizzying height, but the ancients who laid
their stones had separate names for each.  The white one with the
alabaster combing is Alathwyr, and its strength is Wisdom.  The east,
the black one, is endurance, which represents the Paravian concept of
Honor.  The south, of rose quartz, is Grace, and the last, of green
jasper symbolic of renewal, is Kieling, Compassion.  When civilization
has abandoned any of these qualities, its respective tower will fail,
for the power that binds their structure is the force of each virtue,
renewed.

Ithamon means 'Five Spires' in the old tongue, and once this was so.
Daelthain, the King's Tower, for Justice, originally crowned the
highest knoll in the city.  That one cracked on the day his royal
grace, Marin Eliathe, was murdered in his hall by an assassin.  The
last of it crumbled during the rebellion.  Now just the foundation
remains."

Asandir's speech ended, leaving the moan of the lonely wind to fill
the emptiness.  Lysaer discovered he must have been gripping his saddle
too hard for some time; both his arms ached to the elbows.  He released
his hands and shivered, moved by desire like ardor to wish the city's
spoiled symmetry restored, to see the unearthly beauty of the Paravian
towers returned into sunlight, and inhabited as they had been in past
ages.

Arithon looked tortured to his very core.  Shoved hard against the
unwanted heritage of his ancestry, and struck blind and deaf by the
chord of Paravian mystery first tuned to his awareness in
Caith-al-Caen, he had wheeled his mare in the roadway.  His wide green
eyes were fixed upon Asandir.  A betrayal too fresh to have sparked
resentment tautened the planes of his face, and his voice was gravel as
he said, "Ath's own mercy, how am I to suffer this?"

The Sorcerer sat his black stallion with the straightbacked formality
of Daelion, Master of Fate.  "I will answer when you ask out of care,
Prince of Rathain."

Arithon recoiled in a high us.  No need to answer at all, Sorcerer.

Everywhere I turn, it seems I get saddled with sand kingdoms.

Well, pity has torn out my heart far and long before this.  I bear
the ache already, like a bad scar."

Explosively murderous, cocked on a hair-trigger edge of
unconscionable violence, he drove his heels into the mare.

Her nerves frayed into a white-rimmed roll of eyes and she reared.

Arithon gave rein, kicked her again, and screamed what sounded like
an obscenity ripped through by tears.  His hands jabbed at the reins,
and his mount clattered around in the roadway and shot blindly forward
at a gallop.

Horse and rider thundered across the crumbling span that bridged the
dry course of the Sevemir at reckless speed and vanished into the ruin.

Dakar said something bitten under his breath, and the paint mare
stamped.  Shaken by his half-brother's savagery and pricked by
cross-currents he lacked the background to grasp, Lysaer spun to
confront the Sorcerer.  "Why did you push him?"

His mildness shaped by grief, Asandir said, "This city has weathered
seven major tragedies and three ages of history.

So much dust to you perhaps, but to those of us who have borne
witness, it means wisdom painfully gained, paid for by men who bled and
died, and Paravians who weathered mortal failings time and again until
the rifts in their world grew too wide to endure.  Shall all that has
been go wasted because Arithon dislikes responsibility?  Athera's
civilizations struggle on the brink of imbalance, with Desh-thiere's
coming defeat.  A restoration of just rule must follow.  The reinstated
prince who subdues Etarra must descend from the old kings if he is to
close the rift between townsman and clan barbarian."  The Sorcerer
finished in bald-faced regret.

"Put simply, Arithon's recalcitrance is a luxury the times can ill
afford."

"You've made an enemy of him," Lysaer observed coldly.

"Merciful maker, I would that were all I had done!"

Closer to giving way to anguish than any mortal man had ever seen
him, Asandir shook out his reins.  He pressed his black stallion ahead
against the rain, and did not speak or look back the whole way through
an afternoon of ascent through the ruins.

They found Arithon standing beside his horse within the broken circle
that marked the old foundation of the King's Tower.  His face was hard
set, and his temper, brittle as icedover current.

By now recovered from the outburst upon the riverbank, Asandir
addressed him, whip-lash curt.  "We shall camp in a tower, They are
sound, comfortable, and dry.  Which shall it be, my prince?"

"Kieling," Arithon said, determinedly blithe and uncaring.

"Compassion."

Caithdein

The vast stone hall at the west outpost in Camris held only a
solitary figure, but the fire had been built high in expectation of a
momentous event.  Wax candles burned in sconces and candelabra, and
still, deep shadow darkened the corners.

Winter had settled in.  Winds moaned across the mountainside without,
and drafts rippled the Cildom tapestries, even the largest ones by the
hearth.  Slim and straight in her chair of state on the dais, and clad
formally in Tysan's goldbordered tabard over her traditional black,
Maenalle s'Gannley, Steward of Tysan, fingered the gilt-tipped pen
handed down through twenty generations to sign kingdom documents.  The
ornamental plume, though replaced at measured intervals, showed the
ravages of last season's moths; yet the nib in its cloisonne barrel
remained sharp and unworn.  Since the fall of the last crowned
sovereign, special word passed between clan chiefs by spoken courier,
or not at all, for parchment could fall into the hands of townsmen if
the messenger chanced to be captured.

Maenalle smoothed the feather's tattered fibers, her sharpplaned face
taut with excitement.  In the absence of written record, she wondered
whether tonight was the first time since the desecration of the royal
seat at Avenor that all of Tysan's clan lords would be gathered beneath
one roof.  She smiled fiercely, savoring the news she would deliver,
that a true-born heir had returned through West Gate to claim the high
king's throne.

Elder Tashan was giddy as a boy with anticipation, and young Maien,
unable to contain nervous jitters for fear he might be clumsy and spill
the wine-this after he had waited upon his prince without mishap.  No
scout from the west outpost had breathed a word of the royal arrival;
Maenalle held cocky pride in them for that.  Her announcement would
completely surprise lords who had journeyed long, inconvenient
distances through hostile country at her summons.

A sudden, preternatural stillness gripped the chamber, as if the
insatiable mountain gales had forgotten to gust, or fire ceased for an
instant to flicker.

Possessed of a scout's reflexes, Maenalle stiffened a heartbeat ahead
of the logic that warned of something amiss.  A second later, and
without the fanfare of breezes carried in from far places affected by
Kharadmon, the discorporate Sorcerer Luhaine flicked into existence.

His image was robed austerely as a scholar, and posed with round face
furrowed in concern as he gazed up at Maenalle in the high seat.

"Lady, I bring tidings."

The Steward of Tysan felt her carefree mood evaporate.

She regarded her visitor, aware never more than this moment that
Fellowship Sorcerers did not pay visits for trivial reasons.  Luhaine
by preference was a recluse; his last appearance in Camris had been in
her grandfather's time.  "Tell me quickly," she said, afraid of the
worst, and anxious most of all to recover her shattered solitude.

Luhaine returned a shake of his head.  His heavy robes were not
stirred by the drafts, and his eyes followed hers, aggrieved.  "I
cannot.  Wards must be set first in precaution."

Maenalle shot to her feet.  "Wards?  Here?"  Affronted that the
vigilance of her scouts might be questioned, she gripped the heirloom
pen with a fierceness that threatened to snap the quill.  "Whatever
for?"

A palm-downward gesture from the Sorcerer negated the implied insult.
"Necessary, Caithdein of Tysan."  His image flicked out, but a
strange, weighted feel to the air evinced his continued presence and
industry.  Maenalle snatched the interval to recover herself and sit
down.  Since impatience only fueled her uneasiness, she laid the
antique pen safely aside.  But the wait turned out to be short.  The
flames in the sconces flared with sudden, hurtful brilliance, and ozone
sharpened the smell of oiled wood and hot wax.  Then Luhaine's image
reappeared, round-shouldered and contrite, in the center of a
subliminal corona of light that extended over himself and the
shield-hung perimeter of the dais.

By then the steward had guessed why arcane protections might be
called for.  "Koriani," she surmised, her annoyance a shade less acid.

"But why fear the enchantresses?  This outpost is between power
lanes, and their watchers see little in these mountains."

"Morriel has set a circle of seniors to scrying."  Luhaine's image
poised bird-like, as if on the edge of sudden flight.

"Perhaps she searches once again for the lost Waystone."

His frown deepened.  "Worse and more likely, one of her seers caught
wind of the future the Fellowship read in the strands."

Pricked by a ripple of chills, Maenalle tugged her tabard tighter
around her shoulders.  "What have you come here to tell me, Sorcerer?"

Luhaine's deep eyes turned frosty.  "Dire portents, lady.

After the Mistwraith's conquest will come war.  Lysaer s'llessid will
cast his lot with townsmen, to the detriment of the loyal clans."

Maenalle's hands recoiled into fists and fine linen crumpled,
unheeded, as she shoved her weight forward in her chair.  "Why?"  Her
voice came out a tortured whisper.  "Our own prince will betray us?"

Never had the Sorcerer regretted his status as a disembodied spirit
more than now; his mild face twisted in anguish alcin to Maenalle's
own, that he could not soften the impact of his words with the warmth
of a comforting touch.

"Cathdein," he murmured in compassion, "I cannot help.

The Seven cast strands.  We see the evil that will set s'llessid
prince against s'Ffalenn will be prompted by the Mistwraith.

But how such schism will come to pass is beyond our powers to know."

Thin-lipped, tight-jawed, and miserably fighting tears, Maenalle
stared ahead without seeing.  "I thought that was not possible."

"Yes, and paradoxically, no."  Perpetually prepared with a lecture,
Luhaine qualified.  "Desh-thiere's nature is opaque to us.  We have no
insight into it as a cause, but only can read its effects since, from
origins outside of Athera, it lacks Name to embody its essence.  The
Riathan Paravians quite wisely would not encompass its energies for
interpretation.

Traithe did, at need, when he sealed South Gate against the invasion.
But the greater portion of his faculties withered in the process.
Whatever enormity he discovered concerning the Mistwraith that besets
this world, he is left unable to say."

Silent, saddened, Maenalle pondered this revelation.

"Then our princes are your only recourse against Deshthiere?"

Luhaine made as though to pace, stopped himself wasting effort for
the sake of appearance, and equally sparely answered.  "Events have
forced us to choose between certain war and restoration of sunlight."

Blanched now as sun-whitened ivory, Maenalle stirred and sat back.

"No choice at all," she allowed.  Dwarfed by the grand chair of
state, she laced fine-boned fingers on the table edge, restored to her
usual dry irony.

Luhaine bowed to honor her courage.  "My colleagues felt you should
know at once that Lysaer shall not be sanctioned for inheritance.  Yet
you must not lose heart.  There will be royal heirs, in time, that are
not encumbered in Desh-thiere's moil of ills.  Until then you must be
more than the shadow behind the throne tradition dictates.  Whatever
comes, Tysan's heritage must continue to be preserved for those
generations yet unborn."

Very straight and fragile, Maenalle inclined her head.

"Rest assured, and tell your colleagues.  The clans of Tysan shall
endure."

"I never doubted."  In better times Luhaine's image might have
smiled.  "Only handle this confidence with great care.

The Koriani witches must not hear of this break in the succession
beforetime.  From the moment sunlight is restored to the continent, the
balance of events becomes precarious.  Every action, every word, will
carry weight.  The interval is most vulnerable to dangerous, even
horrifying digressions."

Whatever the strands had foretold imprinted wary trepidation upon a
Sorcerer renowned for staid propriety.

Unable to conceive of a blight worse than war and the loss of Tysan's
prince to the cause of townsmen, Maenalle returned an assurance that
rang shallow as banality to her ears.

Cold to the heart, she watched unseeing as Luhaine's image dissolved
away into air.  For a long while afterward, she stared into the space
his presence had occupied.  She did not worry, at first, which words
she would find to deliver ill tidings to the clan lords who would
assemble within the hour; instead she agonized over what she would tell
her young grandson, Maien.

For since the elegant, blond prince had left the outpost, the boy had
spent his every waking minute in earnest emulation of the man's
faultless manners and royal poise.

"Damn his s'llessid grace to the darkest torments of Sithaer!"

Maenalle cried at last in an anguish that echoed and re-echoed off
the tapestried walls.  "More than the child's poor heart will be
broken!"

m

 Scryers The chamber that had served the ladies of the old earl's
court as solar smelled of dried lavender still, and of the birch logs
that burned in the grate.  Yet where the room in bygone years had been
bright with light and laughter, now the shadows lay deepest in the
lovers' nooks.  Drapes of dense felt sealed out the drafts and also any
daylight let in by ceilinghigh arched windows.  Curtains veiled the
lion-head cornices, and the paintings of nymphs and dolphins, flaking
now from damp and mildew.  Only the rose, gold, and gray marble that
patterned the floor in geometries remained visible to remind of a
gentler past, before the Koriani Prime Enchantress had chosen the site
for her day quarters.

Morriel eschewed the comfort of carpets.  Candles she counted a
distraction from her meditation.  Austere as new-forged steel, she
straightened from the unupholstered alcove she preferred for
contemplation, her head raised in expectation.  A tap sounded at the
door.  The Prime gave a self-satisfied nod, the diamond pins netting
her coiffure fire-points in the dimness as she commanded, "Allow the
First Senior to enter."

The nearer of-two pageboys hastened from the corner and unbarred the
door.

Lirenda swept past as though the liveried child were furir niture.

She curtsied with a brisk swirl of silk, alert for the twitch of
Morriel's hand that allowed her permission to rise.

Exhilaration flushed her cheeks as she shed her cloak with its
ribbons of rank sewn in bands at hood and hem.  As the remaining boy
took her garment, she dared a direct glance at her superior.  "It has
begun."

"Show me."  Spider still amid the arranged folds of her skirts,
Morriel closed lightless black eyes.  For a space the chamber held
little sound and movement beyond the crackle of flames in the hearth.

The page avoided clumsy noise as he set the latch on the armoire door
and crept back to his place.

Lirenda cupped the crystal strung from a chain at her throat,
dampened her thoughts, and dropped her inner barriers to permit her
superior free access.  Power flowed like current from mind to mind,
focused to frame recall of two images gathered through lane-watch....

Half a world away, across an expanse of ocean, sudden sunlight lances
through a tear in streaming mist and shatters into sparkles against the
wave crests.  Ancient enough to hive living memories of the natural
world before Deshthiere's conquest, Morriel did not gasp aloud.

As if the vision were empty of wonder, she pressed on workmanlike, to
a later view of moonrise over an islandfortress whose roofless keeps
notch an indigo sky....

"Corith," Lirenda identified, breaking trance in the solar of' the
old earl's palace.  "In the isles of Min Pierens to the West."

Morriel checked the interruption with a raised finger.  "I see as
much."  On an edge of sharpness she said, "Our fifthlane watcher has
reported an increased concentration of the mist overhanging the site of
Ithamon?"

"Exactly."  The First Enchantress pressed eagerly to concluSion.

"The Fellowship's royal proteges must have set Desh-thiere's -hold
under siege from there.  Why else should its grip loosen elsewhere?"

Morriel disregarded the insolence.  Three weeks had passed since the
princes with Asandir had taken up residence in ruined Ithamon; here
came first proof of their doings there.  With the last attempted
scryings on their activities an unmitigated failure, that the
Mistwraith should now show signs of weakening offered exciting
developments.  But to rejoice over supposition would be blindness akin
to folly.  "I suggest our duty lies in knowing how the princes who are
responsible come by their powers."  Morriel's brow furrowed in
speculation.  "After all, they accomplish a feat their Fellowship
benefactors cannot duplicate."

Lirenda's eyes brightened.  "You suggest we try another scrying into
Asandir's affairs at Ithamon?"

A cracked laugh issued from the alcove.  "The idea suits you, does
it?"  For an interval Morriel stared into distance.

"It pleases me to try."  A snap of dry fingers called a page to
attend her.  "Fetch the chest that contains the focus jewel of Skyron.

Be quick."

Unremarked by a glance from either enchantress, the boy bowed and let
himself out.  As his nervous footsteps dwindled down the corridor,
Morriel stroked her chin with a fingernail.  "I would tap the fifth
lane and trace the eddies created by the events at Ithamon, yes.  But
subtlety is needful.  Our efforts must blend with the pulse of the land
itself, until chance affords us opening and Asandir leaves the princes'
presence."

"But they work from one of the Compass Point Towers," Lirenda
objected.  "What source of ours can breach Paraviari safeguards?"

The old Prime's look sparked daggers.  "A defeatist attitude ill
becomes your office."

Lirenda inclined her head.  "I stand corrected before my better."

Morriel made a move of disgust.  "Don't be a hypocrites In a shift of
weight that eddied the scents of herbs and moth poison upon the air,
she folded crabbed hands in her lap.

"For all your diligence, your ambitions overstep your knowledge."

The chamber abruptly seemed chilly as a tomb.  Disadvantaged by her
posture of obeisance, Lirenda stifled irritation.

The Prime was apt to be querulous on days when the weather ached her
bones; and only the foolish bridled at truth in her presence.

Lirenda held herself in submission until her senior at length
relented.

"Were you not keen to replace me, you would be of worthless
character.  But if it is envy of the Fellowship's Dower that drives
your desire to humble Asandir, beware.

;You will earn yourself the misstep such weakness deserves.

You may rise."  Rings flashed as Moniel motioned for her First
Enchantress to be seated on the footstool by the hearth.

The chamber offered no other chair; the pages, as they waited, knelt
on bare floor.  But Lirenda suffered the inconvenience; wedded to
supremacy the Prime might be, but her mind was quick and devious.

Across a quiet dense with the scent of lavender, the aged crone
tartly qualified.  "We shall defeat the Paravian wards by simplicity,
First Enchantress.  Our weapon shall be compassion."

Lirenda tautened to eagerness.  "Arithon chose the tower Kieling,"
she mused unthinkingly aloud.

"Precisely."  Rather than take umbrage at the lapse, Morriel said,
"The Teir's'Ffalenn unknowingly ceded us opening since initiate
Elaira's escapade at Erdane.  The enquiry we made concerning her
misconduct in the Ravens' hayloft has left us a faultless imprint of
innocent, unconditional love."

There lay the clue Lirenda had overlooked, and in honesty, would
never have thought to examine.  She cursed her shortsightedness as
logic unfolded the method's diabolical symmetry.  Asandir could not
stand watch every hour that his princes fought the Mistwraith.

Overawed as Fellowship mages were wont to be over any and all things
Paravian, he would expect Kieling's wards to shield out unwanted
scryers in those intervals while he minded his other affairs.  The
richest innuendo of all was that his princes should have been
untouchably secure; and so they would be, except for anomaly.

"Kieling's defenses will detect no threat if our probe is masked
behind our record of Elaira's care for Arithon.  We will win through,"
Morriel concluded, her lips pursed, her eyes hooded, and her hands
still as claws in her lap.  "So long as we observe only and make no
move to interfere."

All along Morriel had anticipated the advantage that.

El@tira's misplaced feelings might provide.  The admiration Lirenda
gave her Prime was enraptured and pitiless as a predator stalking to
kill, for the stakes of this hunt were as deadly.  Envy could not color
fact: that the Fellowship of Seven had held ascendancy over affairs on
the continent for far and away too long.

"Yes," Morriel said in uncanny response to pure thought.

suits me to try their authority.  This time.  When you're through
acting dumbstruck, we may start."

A flush touched Lirenda's cheeks, for the pageboy had returned from
his errand.  He stood before her, fair-faced and formal as an icon, the
iron-bound box that held the focus crystal of Skyron offered in
trembling hands.

"Lead the probe" came Morriel's nettled instruction.

"This is your test, if you think yourself fit to succeed me."

Excitement overrode Lirenda's distaste for the role she had been
commanded to execute.  She accepted the coffer, keyed the release of
the wards, and lifted the crystal that lay like an ice shard inside.

Tawny eyes fixed on the jewel, she stilled her inner consciousness
until the room and its shadows fell away, swallowed by the stone's
pellucid depths.

Her awareness settled.  Poised into tranquility that allowed the
creation all possibility and none, her selfhood encompassed paradox.

Lirenda became both the spark to seed holocaust and the ice to quench
all heat.  She was light that could sear away sight, or darkness of a
depth to crack rock; hers was the oblivion of the Veil between the
void: perfect peace or ultimate stagnation.  She was nothing, all
things, every pitch and vibration that formed the warp and weft of
Ath's Creation.

The Skyron focus framed her into a discipline that banished personal
opinion.  And yet, controlled as she was, demanding of excellence as
her ambition required, she had to fight not to shudder as the Prime
joined the link and connected her through the matrix to the crystal's
reservoir of stored energies.  Elaira's trial record was drawn forth,
and a set of personal emotions overrode Lirenda's selfliood with an
intimacy as stifling as suffocation.

Unable to speak or escape, she could only feel.  The sensation forced
upon her became a turbulence that transported-to a cheerless cellar in
a fire-scarred inn where Elaira had lived through early childhood.  In
raw and cruel detail Lirenda experienced the misery of a hovel shared
with beggars and scabby, disease-ridden prostitutes....

Shivering in noxious rags and the sour, shedding leathers of spoiled
furs, she remembered wakeful nights spent listening to the wet, tearing
coughs of the old man who looked after her as he lay wasting of lung
sickness.  Friends were all the wealth a child of the streets might
possess.  Food, shelter, and belongings could be wrested away; as an
orphan, disciple of thieves, Elaira well knew how easily.  But love and
good memories could outlast misfortune, even death.

Until the hour her fledgling talents had led her into straits with
the town constable, who sold her into Morvain for rearing in Koriani
fosterage, Elaira had made her life rich with caring.

Entangled in the Skyron link, Lirenda felt the mannered austerity she
had cultivated as a rich man's daughter give way before simpler joys
that lured her toward destruction like a siren's song.  Wrenched awry
by distaste, she forced her violated senses not to pull back and break
trance.  Her burning ambition to gain a prime's ultimate power and
knowledge lent her strength.  She embraced disillusion, accepted the
forge fire of emotion that comprised Elaira's nature for her own, as
Morriel and the demands of the scrying into Kieling Tower required.

Across a haze of distance, the matriarch's prompt reached her.

"Nicely done.  Be ready.  I shall tie into the lane force now."

Morriel's praise reaffirmed concentration.  Though prepared for a
shift in perspective, the touch of the fifth lane's powers did not
kindle as Lirenda expected.  Trapped in Elaira's persona, she
experienced, as the girl would have done, a sensation as wretchedly
unpleasant as a drenching cloudburst.  Fighting abhorrence and
instinct, Lirenda endured this shocking, alien perspective of a spirit
attuned to spell-craft through water, when she herself was all fire,
unalterably opposed.  She must not falter, or even flinch in disgust,
even as self-identity became immolated by Elaira's unruly passions.

As trance discipline reduced the fifth lane's energies to a
shimmering play of static, Lirenda drifted, embraced by the high, sweet
vibration of earthforce.  Since Morriel manipulated the scrying, her
First Senior's altered consciousness could not track the flow of time.

The next sensation Lirenda experienced was a view of translucent blue
twilight over snow-clad hills.

The merlons of an embrasure jutted upward in silhouette; illuminated
by what she first took for torchflame, three figures clustered in a
semicircle.  Two stood, while the other crouched with hands tucked
under the elbows held pressed to his sides.  By dint of clothing
concocted from what looked like frayed layers of rags, Elaira's
awareness identified the stout person of Dakar the Mad Prophet.  The
light proved not to be flame but a spark that seemed fueled by nothing
beyond empty air.

Presented with a view of dark cloaks and hoods harried close by wind
to hide the faces inside, Lirenda by herself could not differentiate
between the royal half-brothers.

Elaira's more exacting perception discerned at once that one figure
was taller.  A twist of blond hair flicked loose by a gust established
and dismissed him as s'Ilessid.  Fixed at once on the smaller man, the
imprinted pattern that comprised Elaira's subjective reaction became
swept by an ungodly thrill.

Framed by magelight and a backdrop of louring fog that imposed false
dusk upon the scene, Arithon raised his head and looked around.

Recognition suffused his glance, as if, impossibly, he could sense
the Koriani contact bridged through from Camris by crystal.

As acting surrogate for Elaira, Lirenda felt scorched by that gaze.
But the rapport that would have quickened her sister initiate to
excitement only tantalized the First Enchantress as elusively as the
receding edge of a dream.  She shivered.  As if touched to recoil by
empathy, the s'Ffalenn prince on the parapet frowned.  He tossed back
his hood in sudden tension as a man might measure an opponent.

Through a space while the winds whipped his dark locks into tangles,
his hand flicked a gesture to Dakar.  Captivated by the movement's
instinctive grace, and spontaneously struck by stray recall, Lirenda
shared a past memory of those very same fingers plucking straw from her
hair with a tenderness impossible to forget.

Morriel's voice jabbed through the diversion in a whiplash tone of
command: "Do not get involved, First Enchantress!"

Lirenda struggled to bridle Elaira's fascination, as Arithon knelt
before Dakar.

Whispered words passed between them.  Then the Mad Prophet's face
rearranged in pure deviltry.  "You'd never dare.

A lift of Arithon's chin gave challenge as he rose back to his feet.
"Ah, but I would."  Beneath laughter, his voice held a dissonance like
mallet-struck iron.  Were Lirenda in control, she would immediately
have severed contact, but Elaira's entrancement hampered judgment.  The
scrying enchantress dwelt a second too long, and Arithon s'Ffalenn
seized his opening.

He called to Lysaer, who raised his hands.  For a heartbeat the
half-brothers centered a gathering vertex of pent-up power.  Then light
speared skyward, virulent as summer lightning.  The hollow, booming
report of heat-stressed air thundered outward over ruined Ithamon.

Lirenda saw the Mistwraith boil clear with a howling clap of wind, to
be razed aside by shadow that iced its vapors into a spindrift fall of
new snow.

Then, impossibly, Koriani safe-wards crumpled, and the concatenation
of reaction surged past shields and into the Skyron focus.  Lirenda was
tossed physically head over heels.  She had no chance to feel bruises.
A second surge erupted from Lysaer's clenched hands, followed by
another and another, until her eyes were dazzled sightless and hearing
became stunned by rolling waves of crescendoed sound.

The link between the earl's court and Ithamon buckled into
pinwheeling chaos as the lane connection surged into backlash.

Lirenda barely felt the jerk as the Skyron crystal was wrested from
her grip.  Her awareness of Kieling Tower shattered, and Elaira's
persona ripped away, shocking body and mind beyond reach of coherent
sensation.  Lirenda never felt the cyclone of turbulence that scoured
Morriel's chamber.

Cushions exploded like confetti, and chests tumbled, and the rose and
gray marble flooring erupted into a thousand eggshell cracks that
showered sharpened fragments through the hangings.  Daylight sliced in
through rent felt, and Lirenda came back to herself.  She lay unable to
move, winded, befuddled, and half blind from the afterimage of multiple
bolts of pure light.

"Ath, most merciful Ath," her own voice cried across confusion, the
envy in her heart unmasked: "They hold command of elemental mastery,
both of them."  a Through drumrolls of fading thunder, and a headache
that blossomed like a starburst, Lirenda heard Morriel's shrill
outburst.  "Imbecile!

Fool!"

A dry palm cracked her cheek.  The sting to her flesh and her dignity
negated any lingering afterimage of Elaira's tender sympathies.

Limp as rags on the floor, the First Enchantress recovered her
rightful sense of outrage.  Her vision swam back into focus, marred by
embarrassing tears.  Through their blur, and the wan light that seeped
through slashed drapes, she beheld a chamber that looked to have
suffered the mangling brunt of an earthquake.  Wreckage lay everywhere.

The pageboys crouched beneath the tumbled-over splinters of the
armoire, holding each other and shaking.

Lirenda could not have eased their terror even had she been of a mind
to.

Morriel Prime towered over her, lividly displeased, the Skyron focus
clutched in her claw-like grasp.  "Were you blind and witless not to
see?  The s'Ffalenn bastard's been trained to power!  However else
could he and Dakar have collaborated to upset our scrying?  Mischief
and misery!

What unconscionable recklessness prompted the Fellowship to loose
this abomination upon our world?"

Lirenda propped herself upright, then pressed scratched and bleeding
fingers to her pounding temples.  She felt hollow as a drum and
strangely reft; the banished intensity of Elaira's susceptibilities
left her drab and spiritless in spaces she had never known existed.

She distanced such discomfort in a show of self-righteous propriety.

"Elaira may have known of the Fellowship's intent beforehand.

That would account for her stubbornness throughout our probe into her
escapade in Erdane."

But Morriel's priorities were wholly concerned with the future.

"Recall the girl!  Do it now!  For pity us all, we're going to need
analysis of both these princes' characters.  If there's any hope of
setting a counterbalance to the trouble they're bound to create, Elaira
must find us an opening."

First Enchantress Lirenda arose, bowed stiffly to the Prime, then
departed to fulfill her directive.  Joylessly intent, she took no
pleasure in the miracle revealed by the scrying: that the princes
promised by prophecy did battle against Desh-thiere from the Kieling
Tower.

In the remotest reaches of Athera, the Mistwraith no longer ruled the
sky.  Sunlight touched earth and ocean for the first time in five long
centuries.

Triad In Erdane, drowsing in her chair over knitting, the seer
Enithen Tuer snaps awake with a cry, for dreams have shown her stars
and moon against a backdrop of indigo darkness....

Caught treed like a monkey in an orchard where she prunes dead
growth, Elaira stiffens as Lirenda's arcane summons slices her
awareness like a whip; that Morriel should demand her presence on the
heels of last season's disgrace means trouble, she knows, and she
curses in language that draws grins from the boy wards who gather her
cuttings up for firewood....

On a faraway isle, amid waters never charted, a unicorn stands
sentinel as Desh-thiere's mists part; yet she does not dance for joy
under the lucent sky-a horn-toss of inquiry displays her puzzlement as
tree-filtered sunshine glances across a cave mouth and a weakened
shimmer of ward-light fades back-to quiescence without rousing the
Sorcerer sealed under sleep spells within....

 XI.  Desh-thiere

n Daon Ramon's heartland, atop the battlements of Kieling itower, the
ongoing battle to reduce the Mistwraith suffered an unscheduled
interruption as rapport between the royal half-brothers frayed away
into nothing.  Lysaer broke concentration with a quizzical expression.

His hands fell slack, and the last surge of energy he held poised to
send a light bolt skyward dissipated as a harmless dance of sparks.

He snapped a tangle of hair from his eyes and said irritably, "Will
one of you please share the fun?"

No one answered.

Dakar remained curled on his knees, doubled helplessly in a fit of
laughter.  Arithon seemed no more capable, close as he was to choking
as he stifled an explosive whoop in the crumpled cloth of his cloak.

Neither Shadow Master nor prophet recovered sobriety even when
Asandir emerged at a run from the stairwell.  His brows were drawn down
at an angle that would have been forbidding had his eyes not held a
glint of amused sympathy.

"I heard," he addressed without preamble.  "Sethvir informed me from
Althain that you two have upset the Koriani Prime and her First Senior.
Tell me what prank you pulled, and quickly, since we may now
anticipate a round of angry repercussions."

Although Arithon was quickest to rally, Dakar answered, through tears
and outbursts of chuckles that he manfully strangled back to wheezes.
"Damned witches tried meddling."  He mopped streaming eyes, slapped his
knees, and started over.  "Morriel sought another scrying on the
princes, through Lirenda and the Skyron focus.  It was too obvious-"
Here speech failed and the Mad Prophet relapsed into a paralyzing spasm
of hiccups.

The Sorcerer shifted hopefully to Arithon.  "So you hooked into the
Koriani scrying, and allowed their matrix to absorb the energies you
had gathered against Desh-thiereT' Wiser to his limits than Dakar, the
Master of Shadows simply nodded.

"Ath!"  Lysaer interrupted, mortified by his half-brother's
bald-faced confession.  "You redirected our gifts at the enchantresses?

You reckless fool!  Somebody could have been killed!"

Arithon raised hands in denial, still grinning.  "Not likely.

The ladies had wards up.  Nobody got hurt.  Only curtains were
shredded, and a lot of old stonework went flying to bits where their
shields couldn't dampen the counterforce."

"Dakar!"  cracked the Sorcerer across the schoolboyisb mood of
jubilation.  "Tell me now!  However did the Koriani Prime gain foothold
to scry across Kieling's wards?"

The Mad Prophet shot straight as if smacked.  "I haven't a clue.

Ask your prince."

Arithon's exuberance vanished, his mien gone abruptly blank and
implacable as a wall.  The strained relations between himself and
Asandir returned suddenly and in force, and knowing any query the
Fellowship might pose would get rebuffed, the Sorcerer abandoned
further questions.

His mage-sight offered means to find clear answers.  Not even the
murk of Desh-thiere could dim the abrupt unshielding of his will as he
scrutinized the Master's taut stance.  The effect was as merciless to
the victim as a field surgery performed with cut glass.  Out of
stubborn, irate pride, Arithon neither flinched nor hid his face.  This
despite the shame that even to an uninvolved witness, the feelings
bared to view were revealingly personal.  Avidly watching, Dakar
sweated outright; Lysaer found himself discomfited to the point where
honor compelled him to avert his eyes rather than witness a violation
of his half-brother's privacy.

But neither Sorcerer nor Master of Shadows had notice to spare for
any onlookers, locked as they were in the absolute intimacy of their
conflict.

"Compassion," the Sorcerer mused at length, his tone as apparently
casual as a man counting facts on his fingers.

"The Riathan Paravians set their wards in perfect surety.

They never mistake false evidence, for theirs is the perception of
Ath Creator.  Kieling Tower may admit no force except unconditional
love-" Asandir broke off, his face abruptly drained colorless.  "The
lady enchantress in the hayloft at the Ravens," he surmised, a spike to
his tone that caused Lysaer to shiver where he stood.

Now Arithon did speak, his antagonism barely held in check.  "The
Prime used her.  Elaira herself was absent, and had neither knowledge
nor consent.  Now say to me, and mean it, that her thieving pair of
seniors didn't deserve the comeuppance they got."

Confused by a name he could not place, Lysaer watched Asandir weigh
the comment, then allow its ferocity to pass.

The look he trained upon Arithon held entreaty commingled with pity.
"You must never, ever in your life allow Elaira to indulge in her
feelings where you are concerned.  Her care is real enough, and
generous, but to acknowledge her in any way would lead her to ruin.

The Koriani creed she is bound to obey is unnaturally opposed to
human nature."

"And yours is not?"  Arithon spun on his heel and braced his hands on
Kieling's embrasure.  The mist that streamed past strung droplets in
his hair, but the rigidity of his shoulders had nothing to do with its
chill.  "If I'm to be made a crowned puppet to drag this wasteland out
of darkness, I'd hardly entangle a lady along with me."

"See you don't," Asandir snapped back.  "Where Elaira is concerned, I
shall hold you to your word of honor, Prince of Rathain."

Arithon drew a slow breath, then spun back with the brightest of
smiles.  "You'll hold me to nothing against my will, Sorcerer.  Elaira
is secure from my attentions, most certainly, since I'd die before I'd
give your Fellowship even one chance of getting an heir."

At this, Asandir released a bright laugh.  "Five centuries is a very
long abstinence, my prince.  And if you want me to think that you hold
the enchantress in light regard, you'll need better subterfuge than
lying."

"Touche," Dakar murmured from the sidelines.  His quip was ignored.

For an instant Arithon looked murderous.  Then his green eyes went
wide, and he spoke with a candor meant only for the Sorcerer.  "What
caused you to abandon the resolve you made to me after Maenalle's
banquet in Camris?"

The promise of the free will that he was persistently being hounded
to abandon stayed unspoken through the gust that raked the battlements.

Already pale, Asandir turned death white.  For the first time Dakar
could recall, the Sorcerer looked as if he wanted to retreat.  He
answered instead, though he suffered for it.

"You shared for yourself the echo of the mystery that gentles the
vales at Caith-al-Caen.  Could you bear to see what originated that
resonance fade forever from this world?  If prescience revealed such a
thing might happen, could you stand aside and take no action in
prevention?"

"Oh, Ath!  Not that!"  Arithon gripped the parapet as if warded
stonework might steady a universe that rocked under his feet.  "Do you
say that my kingship over Rathain is connected to recovery of the
Paravians?"

"More and worse."  Dakar could not resist his chance for vindication.
"Refuse your crown, and you seal their final disappearance."

Asandir stayed silent, but the sorrow in his gaze denied nothing.

"Truth or lies!"  Arithon exclaimed, suddenly savage.

"The needs of.  this land are killing me, do you understand?"

The desperation to his stance caused Dakar regret for his outburst.
Lysaer wished passionately to be any place else in Athera, but pity
locked his limbs against movement.

Asandir stared down and appeared to ponder his boots, which were wet
and caught with brown bits of gorse from his walk upon the hills of
Daon Ramon.  "Even so, Teir's'Ffalenn."  His gentleness held an
implacability that damned as he added, "I had to choose.  Now so must
you."

"Merciful maker, you call murder a choice?"  Arithon's anguish
rejected sympathy, enough that none dared to stay him as he spun away
toward the stairwell.

Dakar shuffled his feet through the poisoned, abrasive stillness that
remained.  "I'm surprised you held him to that," he challenged, brash
enough to fly in the face of the sorcerer's brittle mood.

But it was Lysaer this time who provoked.  "Less than the truth would
not bind him, is that it?"

Asandir stirred as if from contemplation of a topic that held
ugliness personified.  "Truth is like a gem with many facets-reflection
and illusion from every outward angle."

His damp hair blew in the wind, and his hands hung helplessly as he
finished, "The one unsplintered view can only be found from within."

Against all natural inclination, the Sorcerer chose not to correct
Lysaer's misapprehension.  Truth by itself would not condemn the
Paravians to extinction, as Arithon had so harshly presumed; but their
exile might indeed become permanent, for by the uncompromising Law of
the Major Balance, the old races were not any man's concern unless he
embraced them for his own.  Truth, Asandir reflected sadly, was the one
principle in existence that could release the musician from blood ties
to kingly heritage; but the barbs of the trap first closed in
Caith-al-Caen had set full well and deeply.

No comfort could be gained that Arithon was physically absent
throughout the struggle as his personal desires warred and lost to the
burden of guilt-induced duty.  Asandir sensed to the second when the
Shadow Master's aspect became set.

Brooding stillness claimed the Sorcerer as his mage-sight stung him
with awareness: for he saw the thread of probability that held all of a
gifted man's contentment fray away into nothing.  The moment passed,
and the chance died, that Arithon could become the bard the strands had
promised at Althain, a musician cherished across the continent for his
generosity and warmth of perception.  The legacy of a beloved master
singer, whose equal had not been seen since Elshian, for need had been
cancelled out.  In his place walked a prince whose competence would
come to be feared, and whose gifts would be whetted by adversity to a
cruelly focused edge.

Arithon would not now refuse the crown that waited at Etarra.

Consolation was nonexistent; through embittered years to come, the
Fellowship must hope the man whose dream they had spoiled might become
reconciled to the fate he had been coerced to undertake.  Paravian
survival might be bought with restoration of sunlight and war, but that
the old races could be returned in joy to the continent, and the
Fellowship be restored back to Seven, was by no means certain.  The
particulars of Dakar's Black Rose prophecy remained in question still.

Asandir shivered in an icy blast of wind.  He tugged his cloak closer
to his shoulders and discovered himself alone on the battlements of
Kieling.  Lysaer and Dakar had abandoned him to solitude, to the
depthless mist that sheathed a glowering twilight sky.  The Paravian
towers seemed to brood through the gloom, lightlessly and empty and
dark.

Elsewhere in Ithamon's ruins, Arithon perched on the curve of a
fallen corbel, his lyranthe resting silent on his knee.  He had chosen
his vantage site at random.  The littered courtyard before him in
prosperous years had served the merchants who supplied broadcloth to
the tailors.  Those slates not scabbed over with grit and moss showed
wheel scars from the drays that had carried imported velvets and
brocades from weavers in Cildom and Narms.  But Arithon gave that past
no thought where he sat, his hands clasped limp on his soundboard, and
his eyes pinched closed in frustration.

His every nerve end was raw.

Music, which had always been his first solace, this day came to him
soured.  He could not play.  Each time he set fingers to strings, the
perception that inspired his art left him defenseless against the
insatiable whirl of spirit life imbued within ruined Ithamon.

Ancestors winnowed past his innermind, calling his name and
imploring.

Those whose ends had come untimely in the upheaval of the rebellion
troubled him less than others born of an earlier era, when Paravians
had inhabited the surrounding hills and diversion of the Sevemir's
waters had not rendered all the land barren.

Spirits whose passage through time had left no regrets to sigh in
descant between the winter winds; these had touched rock and soil and
the weathered remains of fine carving with resounding vibrations of
content.  Their fragile, lost chord of celebration ached an uncrowned
prince the most, for in the absence of heritage and inhabitants, their
song cried out for restoration of the city that lay splintered in ruin.

Hounded to sadness by misfortune that he alone was empowered to
redress, Arithon sighed.  He should have chosen a sword to accompany
his mood in this place, not the instrument he cradled in a silence that
painfully accused.  Stubbornness held him rooted.  He would deaden his
ear and strike notes that were feelingless, even false, before he
opened himself to sorrows that had utterly reft his peace.

A fool he was, to have disdained Asandir's warning in Caith-al-Caen!'
Mage-taught wisdom reproached him: any gift of power was two-edged.
The awareness of Paravian beauty he had accepted in blithe carelessness
now chafed him like a thousand raw sores.  But to do without, to close
off that channel of inner vision, was to render himself pitiful, to
blind himself to hope, and what he now recognized for the shining,
enduring truth that set the spirit outside time and mortal decay.  @ I
Sooner would he bind himself to the misery promised by the crown of
Rathain.  Ties of kingship, after all, were only temporary.  Death
would free him at the end.

Dusk blurred the pewter edges of broken stone.  Light bled out of the
mist, leaving murk as dense as musty felt.  Arithon hunched against the
chill, his arms crossed over Elshian's superlative lyranthe, unaware.
If he heard the step that approached, he dismissed it along with the
spirit forms that plucked incessantly at the conscience he held closed
and barred against them-and others, more sinister, that reached as if
to tear his living flesh.

"Blessed Ath, here's twice I mistook you for a statue," Lysaer called
through the muffling layers of the scarf he had wound at his neck.  The
temperature had dropped since afternoon, and the air smelled of snow.
"You must be freezing."

Arithon opened his eyes and saw that full night had fallen.

He changed grip on his lyranthe, discovered his fingers were numb,
and flipped down his cuffs to shelter his knuckles from the tireless
bite of the wind.  A musician's instincts died hard, to preserve the
hands from the elements.

"Move over, will you?"  Lysaer demanded of the halfbrother who
appeared to have forgotten him.  "I'd like to sit down."

Arithon inclined his head in belated greeting.  He shifted aside, his
tunic snagging on edges of chipped fretwork.  As he braced his shoulder
against the broken door post at his back, a gust sang through the
lyranthe's exposed strings.

Unsettled by the mournful ring of harmonics, and by the close-bound
air of desolation, Lysaer crowded in and attempted without success to
settle comfortably.  "You pick the most miserable sites for your
brooding.  Is it perversity, or a masochistic effort to drive away
unwanted company?"

Arithon faintly smiled.  "Probably both."  He did not ask what
brought his half-brother out into a dismal winter night when Dakar had
slaughtered the ewe bought from a migrant herder.  A savory mutton stew
was sure to be bubbling over the fire in Kieling's lower ward room,
where, uncommon to stone buildings anyplace else, drafts did not chill
a man's blood.

Unsurprised to be offered no opening, Lysaer picked at the lichen
rooted deep in old carving and said, "I wanted to ask.  Did you notice
this place is haunted?"

Arithon loosed a bark of sharp laughter.  "Did I notice?"

Lysaer stayed his impulse to draw away.  He might not share his
half-brother's inclinations to set music before the needs of kingdom
and people, but he had sworn to try to understand.  Since Asandir had
done little by way of kindness to compensate for unwanted burdens,
Arithon's pique was forgivable, if not entirely just.

His eyes on the grain of the marble revealed under his fretful touch,
Lysaer tried a fresh approach.  "I don't have a mage's sensitivity.
Where you and Asandir see mysteries, I find only broken stone that
fills me with an unmanly urge to weep."  He gestured toward the
interlace his hands had cleared of debris.  "Except for the remains of
their artistry, the Paravians to me are just a name, and the wistful
feeling that's left of a dream after waking."

A sidelong glance showed Arithon's manner still inclined toward
abstraction.

Reluctantly aware he must reveal himself to establish rapport, Lysaer
pressed on.  "I think of home and am not comforted.  Somehow I sense
that Amroth would disappoint me if I were to find my way back.

As if this place holds a truth that taunts and eludes me."

Arithon turned his head.  He was listening with no trace of his
earlier, corrosive sarcasm.

Yet the captured quiet of the Master's attention became no more
reassuring; a mage's mystery backed his calm, indefinably poised, and
though it might not overtly threaten, it observed in ruthless detail.

Lysaer put aside his fear of seeming foolish and forced himself to
continue.  "The haunting I speak of is not at all the same.  I notice
it when we are outside the protection of the tower.  It seems to grow
stronger, more suffocating, the longer we battle the Mistwraith.  I
wanted to know if you felt anything similar.  Do you think the
sensation could be connected?  With Desh-thiere, that is, not Ithamon."

' Now Arithon shivered once, violently, as though his prolonged
exposure to the cold all at once caught up with him.  His reply came
dryly in the darkness.  "Why not ask Asandir?"

Lysaer held to patience.  "I did."

Arithon only closed his eyes.

The s'llessid prince had no choice but to sustain the conversation by
himself.  "Our Sorcerer contacted Sethvir immediately.  The Fellowship
sensed nothing amiss, and Dakar was too busy butchering sheep to have
an opinion."

Somewhere downslope in the ruins a fox barked.  A field mouse rustled
through dry grass seeking seeds, and the mist coiled close, despite the
wind.  Arithon unfolded from his huddle, set his lyranthe carefully by
his ankle, and rubbed his temples, disturbed.

Lysaer knew relief, that after Sethvir and Asandir had drawn blanks,
the Master did not dismiss his concern as groundless fancy.

In fact, Arithon's disquiet was all personal.  To open his mage's
perception and sound for whatever uneasy presence had troubled Lysaer
was to invite laceration from within.

The very timing was a curse.  The fullness of Ithamon Is spirit
legacy was too painful to be sorted so soon after Asandir's revelation
concerning the old races' survival.  Paravian wards did indeed dampen
the sting from Idiamon's hauntings; yet since Kieling's protections
were framed of compassion, and Arithon took hurt from his exposure, he
had never thought to look deeper.  Not once had he paused to question
whether something else inherently harmful might have sourced the grace
of the wards' surcease.  Now that Lysaer had spoken, he berated himself
for carelessness.  Repeatedly the Rauven mages had stressed that
assumptions were the weakness of the learned.

"Asandir and Sethvir found nothing, you say."  The statement mused
upon fact, and did not ask for answer.

Unsettled by the moist cling of Desh-thiere, Lysaer stopped worrying
at the old carving.  "You feel it, too," he accused.

Arithon shook his head, emphatic.  "Just now I feel nothing.  By
choice, you understand.  If I were to open myself, allow even a chink
through my defenses, I'd be helpless and probably crying."  He sighed,
slapped his hands into his lap, and tilted his crown back into the
stone that braced up his spine.  "Did you by chance bring a
handkerchief?"

"My valet always carried mine for me," Lysaer apologized.  He
shrugged in wry humor.  "Will my shoulder do for a substitute?"

The offer was friendly and genuine-also painful as a slap to a man
who wished no ties, at this moment, to anyone outside himself.

Pressured to reflexive antagonism, Arithon curbed his anger.  A
threat that might stem from Desh-thiere was too dangerous a development
to be sidelined for personal hurt; never mind that his half-brother
lacked perception to understand that he did not care at any cost to
drop his inner barriers to use mage-sight in this place.

When nothing moved beyond Arithon's clothing in the ceaseless sweep
of the wind, Lysaer said, "You need not act on my word alone."

Arithon cut off protestations.  "On the contrary.  Given your nature,
only a fool would ignore your worry.  This begs to be seen to at once."

Now Lysaer shot up straight in dismay.  "Here?  This minute?"  It was
night and stingingly cold, never mind that the ruins themselves were
unnerving in the extreme.

Clammy and chill, the mist had closed down like a shroud.  Objects a
half stride away were invisible, and the air smelled of damp decay.

The s'llessid prince tried humor to shake off a rising uneasiness.

"I always supposed you were crazy.  Should I be amazed that you want
to freeze our balls to marbles in a ghost hunt?"  Arithon's hand shot
out and clamped his half-brother's wrist.  "Don't speak."  He reached
down and recovered his lyranthe with a haste that caused Lysaer alarm.

Amid the dark ruins, the wind had suddenly dropped.

Their perch on the corbel abruptly and for no sane reason seemed
precarious.  Lysaer resisted a nearly overpowering urge to grab, for
the weapon he had stupidly left behind in the tower.  He stifled his
need to ask what was wrong, while his half-brother poised, stone still
and apparently listening.

The mist held their surroundings pent in gloom.  Hearing recorded
only an eerie quiet that, under scrutiny, became suspect.  No owls
called.  The mouse in the grass had frozen or fled in fear, and the
very air seemed to have gone scentless, the frosty edge of snow and
pending storm dissipated into cold that had no character.

Arithon's grip tightened on his half-brother.  Just on the point of
speaking, the tension that held him seemed to snap.

He shot without words to his feet, dragging his half-brother after
him.  As if something he alone could perceive gave, pursuit from the
depths of the ruins, he pitched into a run.

Lysaer was jerked headlong into flight across the courtyard and
onward into a cross alley.  Broken walls slapped echoes of their
footfalls and shadows closed over the ink.  A fallen oak barred their
exit; Arithon bashed through like a hunted animal, unmindful of the
scrape of bare branches as he turned his shoulder to spare his
lyranthe.  Unsure why they should be fleeing, and perversely suspicious
that he might have been spooked by a prank, Lysaer asked to slow down
before their dash through the ruins wound up ripping good clothes.  But
his breath came too fast for speech, and the hold on his wrist hauled
him onward.

A moment later, he lost inclination to argue.

Though the breeze had utterly died, on their back trail, the limbs of
the downed tree rustled: someone or something was following.

"If I made a mistake, I just compounded a second one," Arithon said,
making Lysaer start.  "I should have removed our conversation to one of
the warded towers."

"What mistake?"  Apprehension drove Lysaer to interpret past
mage-trained obtuseness.  "Our talk was noticed?  Do you guess that
some aspect of Desh-thiere is alive?"

"More than that."  Arithon tugged him to the left, past the pit of a
caved-in cellar.  "This mist we've been given to subdue could be an
intelligent entity, and hostile."

Alarmed, Lysaer said, "Asandir didn't know?"

They turned down a thoroughfare slippery with mossedover stone, and
laced with weeds and briar.  Bits of what may have been pottery
skittered and chinked underfoot.  Perturbed, absorbed, and strangely,
invisibly harried as they hacked through hammocks of ivy and tripped
uphill toward Kieling Tower, Arithon gasped back, "Likely not."  Given
time, he might have qualified, but a clear and sudden jab of energy
against defenses he had never let down urged him to cry out a warning.

"Call light from your gift, now!"

For retreat was no longer an option.

Whatever invisible entity had attracted Lysaer's notice had flanked
them and circled their position.  Arithon slammed to a halt, jerking
his half-brother to him.  He spun in a half turn, his shoulder set to
Lysaer's as he fought to dredge up wards laced of shadow and what
magery he had learned from Rauven.

On faith, Lysaer matched his efforts.  Brilliance speared outward,
dissolving darkness in-a magnesium glare of white heat.  Crackled into
turbulence by conflicting fields of shadow, close-bound coils of mist
recoiled with a shriek of steam.  Over the hiss the prince said,
"What's happening?

Are we under attack?"

"I fear so."  Encumbered by his instrument, Arithon sidestepped,
jostling Lysaer through a portal and into a weed-choked yard.

"Do you know from what?"  Outside the thin blue ring that glimmered
in manifestation of his half-brother's hastily wrought ward, Lysaer
could see little beyond mist and cracked stone and darkness.  He
brightened his gift.  Light picked out the ragged brick of a forge
chimney and a quenching trough blackened with moss.  Lysaer banged his
hip as he scraped past.  He tripped and recovered his footing in time
not to stumble over the sharpening wheel that lay canted before a
rust-flaked stockpile of scrap.

Arithon came back with a curse.  "We face nothing friendly.

Beyond that, I won't probe.  It's spirit-formed, and unraveling my
defenses as fast as I can maintain them.  I'm not about to drop
barriers to see what seeks to get in."  He ripped off his cloak,
tearing clasps, and wrapped up his precious lyranthe.  Regret marked
his face in the flash and dazzle of ward-light as he stooped and
abandoned his instrument on the flagstone.  "I'd hate to fall and see
her break."

Distressed that his half-brother should abandon his most priceless
possession, Lysaer asked, "Where are you taking us?"

"Here.  The armorer's."  Arithon veered toward a pitted anvil,
visible in silhouette against the corona thrown off by his protections.

"If Desh-thiere's aspects are an earthforce, iron may help turn them
back."

But the explanation fell on deaf ears.  Lysaer was beyond response.
The scintillant hedge of light he had raised to drive back the mist
snapped out at the next step.  Darkness returned, impenetrable, and
without a sound raised in warning, the s'llessid prince crumpled at the
knees.

Iron did nothing to divert the advance of whatever bleak force moved
against them.

Aware too late that his primary wards were ineffective,.

Arithon grabbed his half-brother's clothing to brake his fall.

Through a fast-fading glimmer of failed spell-craft, he perceived a
ghostly circle of faces.  They closed in, leering with bloodthirsty
ferocity.  Sweat-drenched with fear, Arithon caught a fleeting
impression: their image was wrought of seething mist and their strength
was that of a multitude.

These were no part of Ithamon's troubled spirits, but something
separate and wholly evil.

Unbalanced by Lysaer's sagging weight, and frightened to outcry by
the suffocating sense of closing danger, Arithon let go his mage-formed
barrier and lashed out in a fury of shadow.

Night became blackness distilled.

The ever narrowing band of hostile entities winnowed into a dusting
of new snow, the mist that clothed their form pared away.

Their essence of ferocity stayed untouched.  A probe lanced Arithon's
mind.  He screamed, repulsed, his knuckles spasmed tightly in his
half-brother's cloak.  Lysaer was dead weight, unconscious, injured, or
worse.  Just how the attacking Mistwraith had pierced arcane
protections to strike could not be figured.  In moments Arithon saw his
own reserves would crumple.  He would be helpless as his halfbrother.

Horrified and desperate that not even shadow brought protection, the
Master found himself cornered without remedy against an aspect whose
resources dwarfed his awareness.

In denial of acknowledged human frailty, he strove to fashion another
barrier ward.  Counter-forces ate at his efforts like a school of
feeding sharks.  His guard spells were chopped up piecemeal, his
concentration too slow to recoup.

Only freak luck had spared him, the protective inner block he had
initially raised to distance the haunting of Ithamon's ruins.  That
shield of itself was under siege, then giving way before an onslaught
as relentless as the tides.

Arithon gritted his teeth.  He grasped after fraying concentration,
panting in the throes of an effort that taxed him like physical pain.
Still, the entity streamed past.  It cut against his awareness with the
pressure of a dull knife driven by the weight of all the world.  As he
tried and failed again to grapple the disembodied beings that pressed
him, he at last knew the scope of the enemy.

The Mistwraith was more than just aware.  It was intelligent and bent
on retaliation against the princes who were its sure bane.  But how it
had hidden its multiply faceted nature, even from the Fellowship of
Seven, Arithon lacked resource to determine.  Battered to the bitter
edge of consciousness by an assault his skills could never stem, he
staggered.

Light flashed.

Harsh, searing glare rinsed away the dark.  Running footsteps sounded
over the wind-rush of foundering senses, and a shout echoed through
Ithamon's ruins.

Beaten to his knees in wet moss, Arithon ripped out a reply.  His cry
brought help.  A ward circle slashed into existence with a fountainhead
of purple-white sparks.  Hands caught his shoulders in support, and
Asandir's voice said, "Let go.  Dakar has hold of Lysaer."

Awash in dizziness, shocked off balance by the proximity of forces
beyond imagining, Arithon loosed his grip.  "Deshthiere," he gasped
out.  "It's self-aware.  More dangerous than any of us guessed."

"Let me turn my shields against it," said the Sorcerer.  No loner
leashed, his power radiated from him until the air in his-presence
blazed light, a flash and dazzle of force too piercing for fleshly
endurance.  Vibrations of palpable current caused inert rock to ring
with shared resonance until the earth itself sang in answer.  Arithon
braced against shock from the contact as Asandir towed him to his feet.

But the Sorcerer's touch stayed surprisingly human and warm, until
the moment sensation itself became cancelled by the annihilating surge
of the wardfields.  Asandir's protections unfurled around beleaguered
flesh like a deluge of rays from a beacon.  Arithon felt the invading
pressure against his innermind relent with a soundless howl of rage.

Disparity remained, a sting in the mind that raised puzzlement.

For Desh-thiere was not repulsed.  It did not join in conflict with
Asandir's bared might, but with disorienting and baffling speed, seemed
to fade beyond the pale of dimensional awareness.

The repercussions of this anomaly blurred as Arithon collapsed
against the Sorcerer's shoulder.

There came no respite even then.

Harsh fingers seized his arm, spun him remorselessly around.  He was
aware of steel gray eyes and Asandir's implacable will boring into his
consciousness with the directness of an awl piercing cloth.  He had no
reflex left to flinch.

"I'm all right," he managed to convey, through the roaring cyclone of
wardforce.

"We'll see," Asandir replied.  To Dakar he added, "Drag Lysaer, or
carry him.  But we must get back to Kieling as quickly as we may."

"Lysaer?"  Arithon asked weakly.  He felt sick.  The ground seemed to
twist and buckle under his feet.

Asandir's response came back clipped.  "Alive.  Can you walk?"

The Master took a step and stumbled.  Hands caught him up before he
fell, cruel in their hurry to keep him moving.

He managed to find his balance before the Sorcerer lost patience and
lifted him, but he remembered little of the journey back through
Ithamon's twisted lanes to the safety of the upper citadel.

Arithon's next impression was sight of the interlaced carving inside
the double arches of Kieling Tower's lower entry.

The runes seemed reversed and upside-down, an angle of view that
disoriented him until he realized: Asandir had needed to carry him
after all.  He had a raging headache.  The searing brilliance of
magelight that had sourced the Sorcerer's protections had gone,
rendered unnecessary by the ringing, subliminal vibration that marked
the bounds of Paravian wards.  A quietude as abiding as the heart rock
of the earth enfolded around the party in Asandir's protection.

The calm brought surcease, but no ease of mind.

The nearly cataclysmic forces the Sorcerer had raised against attack
remained stamped indelibly into memory.

Awe remained.

It was one thing to sense past shielded resonance to the potential of
a Fellowship mage; quite another, to experience such potency unveiled
in the close-pressed immediacy of action.  Flame from the wall sconces
showed Asandir's face etched to the planes of his bones by passage of
the powers channeled through him.  That a spirit of such vast resource
should still be walking, clothed in humanity and flesh, defied
comprehension.  And yet the mage was himself.  His expression reflected
no grand depths, but only selfrecrimination as he turned his head and
saw Arithon had recovered awareness.

"My prince, I'm sorry."  This admission played no part in the
conflict that, only hours before, had sealed a prince to an unwanted
destiny.

Disarmed, even shamed by the affection in Asandir's concern, Arithon
evaded the personal.  "How did you know Lysaer and I needed rescue?"

Driven off by banality, the poignancy of the moment fled.

Asandir said, "I was given warning.  The wards in your sword,
Alithiel, went active and all but set fire to your clothes chest."  The
Sorcerer helped Arithon to a chair by the hearth, tossed him a blanket,
then moved briskly to assist Dakar with Lysaer, who was unconscious
still, and pale as a carving in wax.

Kieling Tower's wardroom no longer held the bleakness of an edifice
standing whole amid a ruin.  Its worn plank floor was made cheerful by
a spread of Narms carpet, hauled from Althain Tower in the dray.
Asandir's books lay piled near a wrouht brass candle stand on an ebony
inlaid table.

Four chairs, without cushions, had been salvaged from a dusty upper
chamber.  In the pot over the flames, stew still bubbled as though all
in the world were yet ordinary.  Burrowed in blankets and handed a mug
of bitter tea, Arithon lay settled and still, content to let the
resonance of the Paravian defenses permeate his awareness.  He drew in
the smell of cedar from the delicate, patterned panels that adorned the
wardroom walls.  To mage-trained eyes the interlaced carvings of vines
and animals sang with vibrant inner resonance.

Whatever Paravian artisans had done the reliefs had instilled true
vision in the work.  To behold them was to share an echoed reflection
of the great mystery that endowed the land with life.  Slowly the chill
that had invaded the inner tissues of Arithon's body flowed away into
warmth.  He released a last violent shudder.  As if called by that
movement from across the room, Asandir arose, leaving Dakar to watch
the s'llessid prince, who was sleeping, perhaps under spell.

A second later, the Sorcerer knelt at Arithon's side in concern.

"You look steadier.  Can you tell me what happened?"

Haggard as though he had stepped intact out of a nightmare, Arithon
considered the muddled impressions that remained.  "You saved our lives
and didn't see?"

The Sorcerer rested slack hands on his knees and stared aside into
the fire.  The play of bronze-gold light deepened the creases around
his mouth and other finer lines that arrowed from the corners of his
eyes.  "I know you were assaulted by a manifestation of Desh-thiere.

I'm not clear why, or how.  Even Sethvir was fooled into belief the
creature wasn't sentient."  If the admission humbled him, it did not
show; his gaze remained lucent as sun-flecked crystal beneath the jut
of his frown.

Arithon closed his eyes, hands that had not stopped shaking clamped
hard on his tea mug.  "You were looking for an entity that had just one
aspect?"  he suggested, for the moment no prince but a mage sharing
thoughts with a colleague.

Across a chamber whose unearthly symmetry was made squalid by the
smell of mutton grease, Dakar stowed his bulk by the settle, surprised.

"But there's no living spirit in existence that a Fellowship mage
cannot track!"

Arithon fractionally shook his head.  Desh-thiere had proven the
exception: a thing wrought of who knew what malice, in the sealed-off
worlds beyond South Gate.

Asandir maintained a charged stillness.  As if perplexed by a twist
in a puzzle, he only appeared detached as he said, "Whatever the Name
of the Mistwraith, it maimed Traithe's continuity of function.

Are you telling me the creature has spirit, and that it encompasses
more than one being?"

"Try thousands," Arithon whispered.  He opened his eyes.

"Too many to number separately, and all of them bound captive in
hatred.  Our efforts with light and shadow here have been
systematically reducing the mist and the area that confines them,
nothing else."

"Ath's eternal mercy" was all the Sorcerer said.  Yet as a shifting
log in the fireplace fanned a spurt of flame, shadows shrank to show
alarm on a face seldom given to uncertainty.

"But that can't be possible," Dakar interjected.  "If it were, how
could Desh-thiere's vapors cross Kieling's wards at will?"

"Easily," Arithon murmured, unnerved also but applying himself to the
problem through habit and years of selfdiscipline.  "The mist is no
more than a boundary wrought of dampness.  The entities I encountered
move within it, selfcontained.  Paravian defenses bar them entrance,
but not the fog that imprisons their essence."

Asandir did not contradict the Master's supposition.  At some point
his awareness had faded from the room, diffused outward into a net that
expanded over the ruins.

Arithon was seer enough to catch impressions in resonance.  Under his
grandfather's tutelege at Rauven, he had studied the close-woven
relationships that conjoined all worldly things.  As he had traced the
paths of his teacher's meditations into the nature of such
interconnectedness, so he followed Asandir's scrying now.  Yet where
the Rauven mages had known how to feel out the paths of the air, to
read in advance the wind-spun flight of dry leaves; how to sense warmth
amid mist-chilled trees, and recognize a bird asleep with head tucked
under wing; how to link with the weighty turn of the earth, the limning
of frost crystals on grasses raked dry by the season; the perception of
a Fellow@hip Sorcerer saw deeper.

Fully aware of Arithon's attentiveness, Asandir hid nothing.  And
like the unfolding of a painted fan, or a span of fine-spun tapestry
shown whole to a blind man through miracle, Arithon saw familiar
natural forms wreathed about with the silver-point etchings of their
energy paths.  The sheer depth of vision overwhelmed him.

Asandir did not see stone but the crystalline lattices that matrixed
its substance, and beyond that to the delicate, ribbon-like glimmers
that were the underpinnings of all being, that stabilized vibration
into matter.  More, as a man might know his most treasured possessions,
the Sorcerer recognized everything he scried, not according to type but
in Name, that unique understanding of every object's individuality.  He
held the signature of each plant, from the seed that had thrown up its
first sprout, to the days of sunlight and storms that marked its
growth, to the twigs and every turned leaf ever shed by the grown tree.
One oak he would know from every other oak, living or decayed or
unsown, on the basis of just one glance.

Stresses, disease, or the robustness of perfect health were
delineated plainly to his eye.  He knew frost crystals, not as frozen
water but as single and separate patterns in all of their myriad
billions.  Their Names were as visible to him as signatures.  He knew
the pebbles of the dry watercourse, each and every one by touch, and
the tangles of bundled energies that signified each grain of sand.  The
detail, the sheer magnitude of caring such depth of perspective
demanded, dwarfed the watching spirit.

Arithon found himself weeping.  Not only for himself and the deadness
of his senses, but for the beauty of common weeds and the unendurable
complexity of the shed husk of a beetle's wing.  He saw again, through
finer eyes, the resonance of Paravian presence, and saw also that the
coarseness in a clod of horse dung was held into balance by the same
singing bands of pure energy.  In Asandir's pass across the ruins of
Ithamon, Arithon realized just how shallow was his own knowledge, and
how inadequate.  With punishing clarity he understood the scope of just
what he had abandoned when he had left Rauven and yielded himself to
another will, another fate, another calling; now, most bitterly, the
loss would repeat and compound, as he assumed a second unwanted crown.

Then Asandir closed down his field of concentration.  Released from
that terrible mirror of truth which embodied a Fellowship mage's
awareness, Arithon came back to himself and recalled the dangers that
had prompted the search.

For all its awesome depth, the scrying disappointed.  Tumbled
stonework had harbored nothing untoward, only the mindless tenacity of
lichens living dormant under the mantle of winter night.  The Sorcerer
had unreeled his probe past the city's edge, across untold miles of
Daon Ramon's heartland, but no sign had he encountered anywhere of
those aspects of Desh-thiere that had launched attack with such
startling virulence.

No movement could be found but the flight of nighthunting owls; no
death beyond the grass roots grazed by hares; no sound but the play of
wind through dry brush.  The Mistwraith's fog was just that-mist coiled
cold in the hollows, lifelessly damp and inert.

Asandir snapped off the last of his vision in a curtness born of
frustration.  "I cannot find it."  His voice held a scraped edge of
pain, not for humiliation that his resource seemed short for the task,
but for failure and heart-sore apology that the Fellowship's oversight
had emperiled two princes whose safety was his charge to secure.

"But how can that be?"  Dakar cried, his hands too cramped to pick up
the spoon to stir the stew pot.

And Arithon wondered the same.  The arts of grand conjury were
wrought from the force that quickened the universe.  Asandir's vision
had but confirmed Rauven's teaching: that all things were formed of
energy, arrangements of bundled light that were subject to natural law.

The awareness of this truth, defined to absolute perfection, granted
the mage-trained their influence.  To know a thing, to encompass its
full measure in respect was to hold its secrets in mastery.  Life force
was the basis of all power; as a confluence of collective entities,
Desh-thiere's consciousness should have been vividly plain.  That its
nature could in any way stay hidden seemed outside sane comprehension.

To anyone trained to the subtleties of power, it felt as if an evil
of unknown proportions had sown chaos across the fabric of natural
order.

His plaintiveness a mask for desperation, Dakar said, "What in Athera
could escape the vigilance of the Seven?"

"Nothing of Athera."  Arithon shifted gaze to the Sorcerer, his
earlier antagonism set in abeyance.  "I was blind to the Mistwraith's
aspects also, until the moment they chose to attack."

Asandir stirred.  "Neither strands nor seer can read Deshthiere, only
its effects.  That this trait may also apply to the moment we know as
the present is dangerous enough, but pursuit of the reason must wait.
My first concern stems from need to build sound defenses, that our
efforts don't call down some worse threat."

Dakar watched, afraid to move, as Fellowship mage and s'Ffalenn
prince shared a deep understanding.  Jolted to fey sight by the
combined effects of exhaustion and fear and disillusion, for a split
second Dakar perceived the scintillant brilliance of Asandir's being in
mirror image, alike except in dimension to the pattern that was
Arithon.

Then the trickster play of firelight and the fusty smell of drying
wool overrode the spellbinder's fickle talent.  The tableau shrank back
to the unremarkable: a careworn, weatherbeaten old man in a rumpled
mantle bent over a younger one left limp and tired.

To the Master so narrowly delivered from the malice of the Mistwraith
he had pledged to subdue, Asandir said, "Sleep.  Let the problem bide
in my hands until morning."

A gentle edge of spell-craft laced the words.  Calm to a depth that
transcended pity, Asandir waited for the prince he had betrayed to sort
his feelings.  Although the offering of serene rest might have been
rebuffed by a thought, Arithon capitulated with a gratitude that gave
the Sorcerer startled pause.  Despite the new depths of yearning
unveiled through tonight's shared scrying, no grudge remained in this
prince who had been shackled in guilt to a fate he had not wanted.

The very s'Ffalenn compassion that sealed the trap in the end
prevailed to bring absolution.  The wounding begun in Caith-al-caen,
that no effort at indifference might heal, would be carried into
kingship in selfless silence.

Humbled by a forgiveness he had never expected to receive, Asandir
stood stunned and still.  Then he smiled as if touched by light,
reached out with hands that could wring raw force from bedrock, and in
a visible effort not to fumble, rearranged the blankets around the
Master of Shadows.

He tucked the musician's fingers with their contradictory scars and
calluses into the warmth of dry wool, and set a binding of peace upon
his handiwork.

When at length he straightened to address his apprentice, his face
had assumed the bleakness of glacier-scarred granite.  "We have a full
night ahead.  Lysaer had none of his half-brother's protections, and we
must not presume him unharmed.  Luhaine has been called to our aid.

Kharadmon is already back at Althain, since Sethvir believes our
princes' encounter could key insight into how Traithe came to be
crippled.  If we cannot unmask the nature of the enemy, we must
determine what lets it slip at will through any but Paravian
safe-wards.  Otherwise, there can be no restored sun, for we'll have no
means to contain the part of Deshthiere that is spirit."

From his refuge on a bench by the settle, Dakar caught the poker from
its peg.  Clumsy in movement, his stocky calves dangling above the
floor, he leaned to stir up the fire.  The fact he had neglected to
mind the supper pot this once in his life did not irk him.  "If the
thing is alive," he surmised in reference to the Mistwraith, "we cannot
follow through and kill it, can we?"

"If it is alive," Asandir corrected, impatient as if drawn on wire.
"If the life forces we witnessed were not born of illusion, if it is a
being or beings embodied into mist, think, Dakar.  We let our princes
kill' it, reduce its confining vessel of fog, what then will be left?"

Hunched as a terrified child, the poker dangling from deadened hands,
Dakar whispered.  "Pure spirit.  Ath's mercy, we'd actually be setting
the thing free."

"So I fear, my prophet," Asandir allowed.  "If, like our disembodied
colleagues of the Fellowship, the creature as unfettered spirit could
shift its vibration and continue to manifest in this world, so I most
desperately fear."  He followed with swift instructions that called for
another trip out into the inclement night to set more wards of guard
over the inner citadel.

Dakar glared at the stew pot, and the hot supper that must, of
necessity, be eaten in savorless haste.  With his chin cupped in his
hands, and the ratty muffler he felt too chilled to shed trailing in
twists about his ankles, he looked morose as a vagabond evicted from an
alehouse.  "Now, why couldn't I have chosen to be a tinker?"  he
demanded of the leaping fire.  "Fixing holed pots would be better fun
than banishment of invisible ghosts at night in a wind-plagued ruin."

"I agree," snapped Asandir.  "Now get moving."  Crisper than a whip
crack, the Sorcerer stepped to where Lysaer lay under tidy heaps of
blankets.  "If we don't make certain this prince took no hurt from
Desh-thiere, the leaky pots in this land aren't going to matter very
much."

 Baclksearch

The blizzard whirled in off the bittern desert and eddied snow
through the casement fanned a diamond dusting of ice across the carpet
in Althain Tower's copy chamber.  Sethvir's ink pots had frozen with
their quills stuck fast where they stood, yet the Sorcerer appeared not
to care.  Clad in rumpled robes, his hair raked into tufts like some
itinerant roadside fortune-telter's where he had savaged it with his
knuckles, he glared at the dregs in his tea mug, cooled now to a mush
of bitter leaves.  As though the turnings of the world could indeed be
read in the floating debris, he addressed a chamber that appeared to
hold only books.  "The damage, if that broad a term can apply to an
attack of such focused proportion, has already been done."

Kharadmon's voice replied out of empty air, near a hearth heaped with
ash that had not been raked since Asandir's departure.  "But then the
disturbance left by the Mistwraith's meddling should be obvious.

To wit, a contradiction: Luhaine and Asandir found nothing amiss with
Prince Lysaer."

"They checked in depth, I know," Sethvir said, brusque since the past
night's report from Ithamon left him frus-growth and maturation of
character, trated.  Barring self Lysaer was, spirit and flesh, the same
young man who had entered Athera through West Gate.

The Warden of Althain cocked his wrist, idly swirling his tea leaves
as if the point in debate were not dire, demanding of his closest
attention.  To Kharadmon he admonished, "You're analyzing the nature of
the universe, based on one view through a keyhole."

"Analogies again?"  Cold air swirled snowflakes across the chamber;
when embodied, Kharadmon had tended to pace, and as spirit, his
restlessness was constant.  "Which keyhole, then?  Back your theory."

A rise of tufted eyebrows evinced Sethvir to be miffed.

"Hunch," he corrected.  He set the tea mug aside with contradictory
care, as if soggy herbs could change nature at whim, and become brittle
and subject to shatter.  "My keyhole is resent time, and Traithe's
plight should bear out my conjecp ture."  His ink-staided fingers
cupped air.  An image flickered to life as defined as a flame on a
freshly lit candle.  The reflected scene was not new.  Time after weary
time, in strands and in fire, the Fellowship Sorcerers had reviewed the
moment of South Gate's closing, and the fate of the colleague who had
singlehandedly stemmed the disaster...

The porphyry pillars of South Gate reared white-edged in the static
flash of stressed energies.  Weather forces skewed out of balance and a
storm-charged sky raked the earth with lightning.

Thunder slammed, and rain sheeted like a fall of slivered needles
through the hellish play of light.  Even after five centuries, the view
could still inspire dread, as Deshthiere erupted through the portal
between worlds.  It came on, gale-dilven masses of fog like the
boiled-over brew from a witch's cauldron.  Toward the streaming influx
at the gate, a lone figure plowed its way forward: Traithe, fighting a
cyclone of disturbed air that twisted his robes and harried his
progress to a standstill....

There the image poised, with Traithe's face obscured behind the
wind-flagged fabric of his sleeve.  One hand raked out to fend off what
seemed empty air, or perhaps a questing tendril of mist.  Even locked
against motion, the recalled moment from the past was confused by the
violent extremes of the light.

"We interpreted the turbulence as wind shear," Sethvir murmured,
"caused by the current through the gate.  Now I think differently."

"An attack by Desh-thiere?"  Kharadmon's stillness was telling.

"The vortex centers upon Traithe, true enough, but its content is no
more than mist.  Sentient life force is nowhere in evidence."

"Apparently."  Sethvir loosed his binding, and the vision continued
forward once again.  The sting of its following sequence hurt no less,
for being a foregone conclusion....

The revealing sleeve cracked away as Traithe raised his hands.

His expression no longer reflected the calm of a sorcerer in control
of his craft, but revealed a man in abject agony.  Thunder
reverberated, cut through by his scream as storm and mist tightened
down into a whirlwind that battered him to his knees.  He rallied in an
extremity of effort.

Power answered Raw, white, and wild as elemental lightning, it
stabbed down at his call, wrapping like light-jagged wire around his
wrists and arms.  It flowed untrammeled into his embrace, flowering
into dazzling brilliance that slapped the eyes like a nova, blinding,
impenetrable, and wholly dedicated to ruin.  The Mistwraith recoiled,
radiant with an afterglow of live charge.  Its coils rolled back and
separated, to lay bare the pearlescent span of South Gate.  During the
moment while its invadingflow was interrupted, a charredfigure in
spark-shot robes dragged itself up from prostration.  It raised hands
seared with burns and traced a seal of binding upon the air Broken with
agony, Traithe croaked out the Names that composed the chant of ending.

And like a sling cord releasedfrom great tension, spells sheared
asunder, the webwork of time bonds and energies that enabled South Gate
as a grand portal parted like singed silk and dissipated.

The Mistwraith's connection was severed, its vapors denied further
invasion.  Rain lashed across the soil between the dead gate.  It
pocked light-edged arrows in the puddles that interlaced into
streamlets of runoff.  Traithe remained, a cramped silhouette that
could have passed for a pile of discarded rags, but for the fact that
he wept with the deep, shaking sobs a child might utter in pain and
terror And Again the image paused, and like a file scraping rust from
old steel, Sethvir's commentary resumed.

"What if the backlash that maimed Traithe was not the mishandling of
grand conjury we first supposed?  By intent, our colleague may have
caused his own binding to be grounded through his flesh.  The sacrifice
makes sense, if in desperation he sought to burn out an incursion of
the enemy."

Cryptic as always, and now on the far side of the chamber, Kharadmon
said, "You suggest Desh-thiere's aspects besieged his mind."

"Yes.  Traithe opened himself to its essence, to find its Name, and
gain ascendancy over it.  He should not have been vulnerable, unless
the beings he sounded were out of phase from our time sense, removed
from our present a half step into the future."

Kharadmon seized the logical progression.  "Traithe would naturally
raise wards.  But his countermeasure perforce would have been a fatal
fraction too slow, perpetually behind the leading edge of Desh-thiere's
attack."

"So I surmise."  Sethvir stared at the space where the spirit of his
colleague now rested.  Neither of them spoke the painful truth, that to
know a true Name in all of its individual ramifications was to hold
power to unmake its being.  Paradox, and at times cruelest irony, that
mages who survived to gain such depths of wisdom were disbarred by
understanding of the universe from use of the spells of Unbinding.

Sethvir fixed again on the image he had raised from five hundred
years past, and resumed the dropped thread of conversation.  "I
postulate that Traithe seared away half of his awareness, truncated his
own vision by blasting it out with raw power, that Desh-thiere could be
stopped from enslaving him.  He burned it out as a hill warrior might
hack off a limb with a septic wound, by his own hand rendering himself
crippled."

had Traithe lost memory in the process, and the greater vision that
founded his faculties, and all trace of the Name of the being that had
brought him to the brink of total ruin.

In a pass made savage by sorrow, Sethvir waved away his conjured
image.  "We are warned too late.  Last night in Ithamon, Desh-thiere's
aspects did not challenge Asandir's wards.  Neither did they retreat;
they simply passed elsewhen.  Into another time.  That implies their
purpose was complete.  My guess is our Teir's'llessid shows no sign of
disparate change because the moment when tonight's damage shall
manifest is still yet to come, and of a surety chosen most carefully."

"Arithon's coronation in Etarra," Kharadmon summed up grimly.  "It
will be there.  Desh-thiere's intervention caused the strands to
converge without digression."

Ferociously grim, all without words, Sethvir and Kharadmon shared
their night's surmises: that if Desh-thiere's aspects were advanced
enough to slip the constraints of time, the Fellowship as it stood
could do little more than bind temporary wards against recurrence.

"A bit like closing the barn door after the cattle have been raided,"
Kharadmon raged, and snowflakes whirled like dust devils from one side
of the carpet to the other.

"Restored back to Seven, we could resolve this."  Sethvir sighed.

As papers and parchments started to flap and whirl across the
disarray of his writing table, he grabbed frozen ink pots and pressed
them into service as paper weights.

"Either still yourself, or stop the natural wind by closing the
casement.  My belongings cannot handle both at once."  Sorrowfully
mild, the Warden of Althain added, "We are as ants, scurrying in vain
to stay a rock slide.  You know that if we are ever to see an end to
this threat, the coronation at Etarra must be permitted to run its
disastrous course."

"I was aware, and wondering why rats and Dakar's prophecies were ever
let into Ath's creation."  The casement swung closed with a bang, and
brass latches snicked into their settings.  Left ringing across
windless silence was Kharadmon's sardonic parting statement: "Like the
raven in advance of the war, I go to call Traithe to the bloodletting."

Dispatch

The fenlands of southeast Tysan were a deserted and miserable
wilderness to be caught in a snowfall on the shortened days past
solstice.  On foot in the mire, deep in a thicket of leafless willows
and marsh maples Elaira braced an arm on her mare's steaming shoulder.

She scraped ice from a lock of hair that had escaped her hood, while
flakes flecked with sleet whirled and rattled across frozen pools and
the stalks of last season's cattails.  Called away by Morriel's summons
from the Koriani hostel by Hanshire, she had avoided the trade roads
along the coast.  The Prime Circle by this season would have resettled
in winter quarters near Mainmere, where a ruined fortress deserted
since the fall of the high kings of Havish overlooked the coast.  The
southern pass through Tomir Peaks offered the safest route, since the
marshes and sink-pools that edged the high country were too sparsely
settled to interest the headhunters who ranged through Korias and
Taerlin seeking Caithwood's clansmen as trophies.

However more secure the boglands might be, amenities for travelers
were nonexistent.  The mare had cast a shoe in sucking mud, and if she
was to escape going sore on the rockier ground in the highlands, Elaira
was obliged to find a smith.

"As if any right-thinking craftsman would choose to keep shop in a
swamp," she complained to the sedges that hooked her ankles and her
only live companion, the horse.  The bay nosed her hood, her breath a
warm cloud in the damp.

"Why couldn't you rip off your shoe in the drifters' country?"

The enchantress squelched over a hummock.  "Better horsemen aren't
born in Athera.  Here we'll be lucky to find a trapper who knows how to
work iron."

The mare stamped, and the skin of frozen water overtop of oozing mud
chinked like shattered glazing over the knees of the oak roots.

"All right, we'll go on, then."  Elaira picked her way to the next
hummock without any thought to remount.  Footing was chancy in the
fens, where falling snow and fog could blend with Desh-thiere's mist
and turn visibility to a wall of featureless white.  A traveler could
stray from the trail between one step and the next, and stay lost, to
die of starvation or drowning.  Sometimes old bones resurfaced in the
sinkholes, clean-picked by scavenger fish.

Elaira slogged through a hollow, her boots already sodden from the
iced-over, peat brown puddles that never quite managed to take her
weight.  The cold was so bitter, it hurt.

To take her mind off discomfort, she noted the plants as she passed:
the fibrous, half-rotted stems of marsh mallow, and sword-blade stands
of cattails.  Her riaind catalogued them all, from the renwort, whose
berries brewed poison, to the cailcallow and willow bark, valued to
ease fevers.  She saw through winter's sere mantle where watercress
would flourish, and which hollows, clear of snow, held hot springs that
might harbor green felscrine.  Healing herbs were part and parcel of
Koriani learning, and lately Elaira had devoted herself to memorizing
tedious recipes for tisanes.

As if the annals of granny lore and crumbled texts passed down by
generations of dead herbalists might help her to bury the memory of one
inopportune encounter in a tavern hayloft.

So intense was her concentration, and accustomed as she had become to
the startling, raucous calls of marsh pheasants and the whir of their
wingbeats as they flew from her step, that she failed to notice the
children until they were nearly upon her.

A motley band of seven, they were flying across the frozen streambeds
on skates, clad in the same buff and browns as any other native
creature of the fens.  Yelling, screaming for pure pleasure, they raced
and jostled through the stands of willow and mudbrake, until the mare
shied back from their exuberance.

The snort of a horse where strangers seldom passed startled them.

Heads turned, half seen through the stands of silver-barked,
vine-choked maple; then a chickadee's trill cned warning.  Their play
ended in a scraping slide of bone runners as they whirled into hiding
behind the thickets, hushing the youngest, who was frightened and
starting to cry.

"It's all right!"  Elaira's call raised no echo across what now
seemed empty marsh.  The pools lay pewter gray against peat black
verges, and the snow, like salt rime on the hummocks; the sleet had let
up to a whisper.  Through streaming shreds of mist, even the sedges did
not rustle.  "I won't harm any of you.  I don't even carry a weapon."

"Show us," shouted a boy whose voice had just finished changing.

"Throw off your cloak."

Elaira swore under her breath.  Wet as she was, the cold would cut
through to her skin.  She unhooked her ring broach and shed the heavy
wool, in time to get a drenching as the ungrateful mare shook her mane.

The enchantress wore no belt beyond a sash of knotted wool.  The only
metals on her were three talisman buttons fashioned of copper coins,
charms she still wore out of sentiment from her days as a street thief,
for luck; and the hunting knife last used to strip branches for snares
that most maddeningly had trapped nothing.  Yesterday's supper pot had
stayed empty.

"Turn around," said the boy.

Elaira held her arms outstretched and did so, though briars caught at
her clothing.  "I could use a dry place to sleep, and fresh supplies."
Fighting a shiver that made her teeth chatter, she added, "I can pay."

Around her, the children had begun to creep from concealment.

They ranged in age from ten years to late teens, the bloom on their
cheeks the only bright color about them.

Their clothing was fashioned of leather, small furs stitched
together, and the woven fibers of fenland flax, all undyed.  If most of
them were dirty, their hair was brushed or braided, and each one
carried little talismans of feathers, believed to be ward against
drowning.  Elaira threw on her cloak, which had fully had time to grow
cold.  She confronted a closing ring of wide, curious eyes, and said,
"Of course, you do have a village?"

They led her off the trail, their shyness loosening into chatter.

By their accent Elaira guessed them to be descendents of farmers
displaced by the rebellion; survivors sometimes banded with exiles,
outcast from the coastal settlements for some petty misdeed committed
forgotten generations in the past.  Refuge could be found in the fens,
or the mountains, or the wilds too open or too barren to support the
more numerous clanborn.  Forage in such backlands was scarce, and the
trust of the inhabitants, reserved; yet they understood the grace of
hospitality more than rich families in the towns.  By the time Elaira
had reached the circle of huts built of mud brick and thatch, her mare
carried two boys and a girl, all solemnly trying in their excitement
not to spur the beast who bore them with the bone-bladed runners of
their skates.

"Traveler!"  shouted the oldest boy, and out of the huts came the fen
folk.

Reed thin, gnarled as swamp roots, they looked unremittingly dour.

Their generosity was not.  Like their young ones, they made Elaira
welcome once assured she was unarmed.

Within an hour, her mare was settled in a pen of woven withies, and
she, blessedly bathed and dry, sat before a peat fire sipping tea
brewed from plants she had heretofore tOrn clothes on.  The children
stayed clustered around her, asking questions and staking buttons on
the game of knucklebones she had taught them.  Too young to be
fascinated by gambling, the youngest squatted on the furs at her feet,
picking up the unlaced ends of her bootlaces and trying to stuff them
in his mouth.

"Come away."  Elaira reached down through the press to raise the baby
clear of temptation.  "I don't think the mud will help the taste."

The thwarted child shrieked.  His noise did nothing to obscure
another, louder scream, this one issuing from outside.

Elaira was startled to her feet.  The cry repeated, now identifiably
the voice of the hut matron, gone out at dusk to haul in fresh water
for the stew pot.

Elaira set the boy child aside on the stool, while the others ran
like rabbits into the crannies between tied coils of basket reed.

Trouble was no stranger to them, and even the little ones did not
whimper.  Grasping the crystal that hung at her neck, the enchantress
leaped over the boys' abandoned knucklebones and burst out into icy
winter air.

There she poised.  Behind her, the hut door, creaked closed on
leather hinges.  While the slush slowly numbed her dry toes, she
struggled to fathom the source of the trouble.  For off in the fens
where the springs rose warm from the ground, the woman still screamed,
wrenchingly, piercingly panicstricken.

The sleet had stopped; the wind smelled oddly sharp.

Elaira blinked.  Her eyesight was all wrong.

The shadows, everywhere, lay crisp as knives and too blue.  The
diamond whiteness of the drifts hurt the eyes.

Against them, reeds and winter-stripped thickets seemed to leap out,
starkly honed as sword edges.  Maples, swamp oaks, and willows showed
their details in unnatural sharpness, their top branches delineated
like entangled skeins, or blown ink.  Elaira gulped a quickened breath.
The mist had gone.  Vanished.  Around her, the night was fogless and
bright.  The spell crystal slipped forgotten from her fingers as she
tipped her head, wondering, to view the sky.

There, between the black frames of bare branches, for the first time
in life she saw stars: more beautiful than Morriel's diamonds, adrift
in an indigo field that looked deep and vast as forever.  Elaira was
swept by a primal shiver of elation that transformed to a pealing shout
of joy.  "They've done it!

Bless the blood royal of Athera, the West Gate prophecy is
accomplished!  Come out and look!  Desh-thiere is beaten to retreat!

But the door to every wattle and mud hut stayed fast.shut.

Elaira's wonderment was rudely knocked short as the howling,
terror-struck fen wife clawed past in a headlong dash to reach safety.

Elaira picked herself out of the mud in resignation.  The rank smell
of swamp was an offense she would not be escaping for some while yet to
come.  Disenchantment still could not touch her.  Euphoria and the
undreamed-of beauty in the sky lent her boundless capacity to forgive.
The soft, silvery light that limned the fens was a wonder, more miracle
than magic, less substantive than breath.  Elaira's honest nature could
not shirk the truth: if not for Asandir's gift of trust, and without
her privileged access to Koriani archives, she would have been as
ignorant of the sky behind Desh-thiere as these fenlanders who cowered
in abject terror.

For the rest of the evening, she tried to make amends.  She rescued
stew pots from burning to char over abandoned fires; she wore herself
hoarse cajoling the fen folk out from under blankets, or barricades of
upended furniture thrown hastily against doorways and root cellars.
She used her crystal, set seals of peace and of calm until her fingers
ached from making sigils in the air with the precision an enchanter's
art required.  Her success at such efforts was debatable.

The settlement's headman found solace in a pottery jar of crude
spirits, while one elderly grandmother continued to shriek and weep
obscenities from under a mountain of bedclothes.  Grateful to be spared
from the wider-spread bedlam that must have afflicted the towns, Elaira
finally yielded to weariness and answered her own need for quiet.

She threw on her cloak.  Outside, in solitude, she stared at the
miracle of unveiled stars in an amazement that renewed with each
passing moment.

The deep-bound silence of the fenlands that always before had
oppressed her now invited exploration of new mystery.

Trees looked different, dappled in subliminal shadow and the
fine-spun subtleties of starlight.  Ice looked more silver than gray,
and hollows, soft in their shadows as rich men's velvets.  The amazing
acuity of outdoor vision she absorbed in sheer delight.  Other avenues
of thought she forbade through brute force of will.

Discipline like iron let her look upon beauty and never once
contemplate a desolate site in Daon Ramon, where a black-haired prince
labored with his half-brother to bring such a miracle to pass.

Morriel's warning was serious, and had in sober fear been taken to
heart.  For whole days Elaira had succeeded in allowing no chink for
regret.  She prided herself on unshaken performance through this
supreme test, of bared skies and her first sight of stars.

She trembled, excited to imagine how untrammeled sunlight was going
to look.  Envy did not sting her as she realized that those sister
initiates assigned the quieter duty of lane-watch most likely already
knew.  Elaira wrapped her hands in her leathers.  Contented despite
cold, and loneliness, and the desolation of the marsh by midnight, she
awaited the advent of dawn.

During that hard-won moment of balance, the message from the First
Senior reached her.  It smote her through the pulse of the second-lane
energies, and its directive shattered all peace: "To Elaira, revised
orders from the Prime Enchantress: upon the Mistwraith's defeat at
Ithamon, the Fellowship of Seven has plans to arrange the high king's
coronation at Etarra.  You are commanded to journey there, to bring
back for Koriani scrutiny your most intimate insights into the royal
princes' characters."

 Ciuard, Ward, and Bard

The gusts that sweep the broken outer walls of Ithamon join force
with a second current, not natural, that twists the dead grasses and
kicks up dry leaves in drifts; looking to the eye like a wind devil,
the discorporate Sorcerer Luhaine lays wards against Desh-thiere that
cut across time as well as worldly dimension.

When sunlight breaks finally over Havistock, the Sorcerer Traithe
takes his leave of the craftsman who stands as foster parent to the
growing heir to Havish: "Prince Eldir will assume his inheritance after
Rathain's succession has been settled in Etarra.  But let us be clear
that until then, his studies continue.  He is not to be excused from
the dye vats."

North, in the town of Ward, under skies still grayed by Desh-thiere's
mists, an elderly bard contains bitter disappointment as he rips down
the message posted in bright hope the day before: "Auditions for an
apprenticeship to be held, beginning the following noon.  Apply to
Halliron at the tap in the Straw Cock Tavern."

XII.  Conquest

The change in season brought buffeting winds to Daon RaTmon Barrens,
even as every spring had before the loss of sunlight to the mist.  In
past years, turbulent gusts mingled the fragrances of wildflowers and
sweetgrass that mantled the backs of the greening hills.  Unicorns had
rejoiced with the quickening earth.  But that had been before man's
meddling had diverted the Severnir's waters from their natural course,
Asandir reminisced as he stood vigil under the lichened span of
Ithamon's wrecked southern gate.

The valleys outside were robbed of their carpet of flowers.

Saddened by the taint of mold and rot that Desh-thiere's hold had
lent to the seasonal breezes, the Sorcerer trained his mage's
perception upon the land until physical form became overlaid by the
vision of his innermind.  Before him all things stood revealed in
primal patterns of light.

Beyond the imbalance marked upon the landscape by centuries of warped
weather, he sensed something else: a more subtle wrongness, built of
pent-up expectation and a near subliminal tingle, as if between air and
the solidity of the earth, violence lay coiled in ambush.  Asandir
delved deeper.

The anomaly faded before his probe, eluded him so thoroughly that for
a moment he stood disoriented, unsure if he had chased some spectre of
his own uncertain thoughts.

He released his focus, frustrated.  His feet were clammy in dew that
natural sunlight would long since have burnished dry.  Asandir sucked
in a deep breath.  His fears loomed real enough, perhaps, to corrupt
even true seeing.  And yet he remained unconvinced that the sick things
half sensed between the shimmer of life force were phantoms inferred by
apprehension.

This day began the chain of events that must culminate in a s'Ffalenn
king's coronation at Etarra.  During the next hours, and spanning the
course of several weeks to follow, Desh-thiere's meddling would skew
the world's fate beyond reach of augury or strands to reflect any
certain outcome.

With luck and persistence, these hills could be restored to their
former fairness.  Yet although the moment had come to complete the
Mistwraith's defeat, Asandir remained grim.

Contrary to nature, his cloak hung in straight folds off his
shoulders: winds that should have whipped in off the downs to strafe
the ruined wall walks were this moment quelled by a barrier ward
fashioned by his discorporate colleagues.

When complete, the spell worked by Luhaine and Kharadmon would be a
masterwork that twisted even time to subservience.

A cat's paw of air through the archway sent a dry leaf scratching.

Aware the disturbance marked an arrival, Asandir drew breath and
asked, "Ithamon is secure?"

Kharadmon replied from the mist-murky shadows, a sulky note to his
tone.  "Luhaine's not satisfied."  A pause ensued.

"There's clear sunlight not a dozen yards above the mists at the
outer walls."

Asandir flicked back damp cuffs to chafe blood back into cool hands.
"So Lysaer said.  He sensed as much through his gift.  That excited him
to the point where he took himself off to practice sword forms.  Dakar
is still finishing the breakfast the others were too tense to eat."

Amid stillness, and a chill that gripped more than cracked stonework,
Kharadmon's amusement whetted to anticipation.

"You want your apprentice rousted from his comforts?"

"Not by your methods, ghost."  In a lighter moment Asandir might have
chuckled.  "I've no patience today for soothing prophets with bruised
dignity, particularly one griped by a bellyache brought on through
overindulgence."

"And Arithon?"  The discorporate Sorcerer's sarcasm blurred in
reverberation through the gateway.

Asandir broke his pose of quietude and strode up the vinetangled
avenue that led to the inner citadel.  Ahead of his step, leaves
rustled in a burst of agitation as an Lyat skulked out of his path.

"Right now the Shadow Master's tuning his lyranthe with an intensity
better suited to a man whetting steel for bloody vengeance.

You're welcome to provoke that one by yourself."

Kharadmon barked a laugh and kept pace, an unseen flow of cold air.
"A formidable weapon, Elshian's lyranthe."

"In Arithon's hands, not just yet," Asandir snapped.  Then he sighed.
"You've caught me as testy as Luhaine this morning."  But the wards by
themselves were enough to have done so without Kharadmon's provocation.
Since the effectiveness of any arcane defense stemmed from Name, no
spell could perfectly thwart what lay outside of the grasp of true
seeing; to balk an essense wrought of mist and multifaceted sentience
posed a nearly impossible task, like trying to fence darkness with
sticks.  Despite the combined efforts of four Sorcerers, Asandir could
not shake a sense of helplessness.  The strands had angered for
failure.  The strongest of conjured defenses might well prove
inadequate to contain Desh-thiere's many entities.

Its mist might be confined and Athera's weather restored only if
nothing went wrong, only if the princes who centered the hope of two
vital prophecies could be protected through the wraiths' final binding.

Not so preoccupied as he seemed as he picked steps over fragmented
frieze work, Asandir pursued the topic sidelined earlier by his
colleague.  "Luhaine's not satisfied, you say."

Cold air became a snap of frigid wind near in vehemence to an oath as
Kharadmon said, "Last I saw, Luhaine was upending rocks in the
rivercourse and rousting up salamanders in droves."

"Would that were all," cracked a rejoiner from the entity Kharadmon's
blithe tones just maligned.  Arrived in time to defend himself, Luhaine
said indignantly to Asandir, "We can't make a ward to plug every
Ath-forsaken bolt hole in the earth!"

"Meaning?"  Asandir frowned toward the matrix of energies that
mage-sight picked out as the essence of the spirit he addressed.

If Luhaine intended answer, Kharadmon stole the initiative.  "Even
spread over three acres, Desh-thiere's concentration of malice is the
most powerful threat we've ever handled.  To pare it down further will
add to its unpredictability.  What happens when the princes cut it to a
scrap, a shadow, small enough to scatter and hide?"

Asandir spoke the unpleasant thought outright.  "Nameless, it cannot
be traced."  His mouth thinned.  "Find another choice, I'd embrace it."

Kharadmon returned no glib comment.  Luhaine Icist his inclination to
expound upon the nuance of every risk.  Today, and until the upheaval
angered for the time of Arithon's coronation, perils could not be
avoided.  All things, including lives, must be considered expendable,
except one: the continuance of the great mystery imbued in earthly
form, the survival of the Paravian races.  The silence of Asandir's
discorporate colleagues stretched the more ominous in the absence of
the seasonal winds.

The battlement atop Kieling Tower stayed wrapped in the same dire
stillness when Asandir took stance alongside his discorporate
colleagues.  Voices echoed from the stairwell near his feet: Lysaer's,
raised in some jocular quip, and Dakar's reply, hotly truculent.

"First, they don't have telir brandy in Etarra.  Mention spirits
distilled from fruits that the mist has turned sour for centuries, and
the governors' minister of justice will howl, then see you staked
through the arse.  They're hysterically scared of hearing legends."

Dakar paused to puff.  The staircase was very long and steep.

Still bitter, he added, "Sorcerers are regarded even worse.  Admit
you ever saw one, and they'll roast you whole without a hearing.  I'm
bored of this wasteland as you are, but damned if I'm eager to rush on
to that stew of corruption and prejudice!"

"Well then," said Lysaer, stubbornly and spiritedly agreeable, "when
Desh-thiere is vanquished, and we get there anyway, I'll buy the beer
till you're passed out in your CUPS."

"You can try."  Dakar's tousled brown head emerged into the mist,
twisted aside for rejoinder down the stairwell.

"First, when it comes to knocking back drink, I'll have you under the
table, Prince.  Next, Etarrans don't brew beer worth pissing.  They
like gin, from which half the populace gets headaches.  You'll find
their governors' council badtempered."

Lysaer trailed Dakar onto the battlement, saw his halfbrother already
poised between merlons with his knees tucked under folded arms.

He called greeting.  "Let's hurry and set the last of this fog under
a cork."

Arithon absently nodded, then addressed what seemed like vacant air.
"We're not going to finish this here, are we?"

Blocked by Lysaer's shoulder, Dakar craned his neck to follow this
exchange until something unseen in between prompted a string of fervent
curses.

Caught in the cross fire, and unconvinced that epithets which mingled
blasphemies with the properties of fresh cow dung should be rightfully
applied to his person, Lysaer said, "I seem to be missing some point."
His good nature remained stiffly in place as he rounded to face his
tormentor.

"Could you stay the abuse until after you've explained?"

Dakar rolled his eyes, while behind Lysaer's back, the ghost-silent
images of Luhaine and Kharadmon manifested upon the battlement.  Each
in their way looked inconvenienced: Luhaine's rotund figure and
schoolmasterish frown at perpetual odds with Kharadmon's cadaverous
slenderness.

Still puzzled, Lysaer turned around again, to find himself confronted
by strange Sorcerers.  Only royal poise curbed his startled recoil.
Creditably courteous in rebound, he said, "We've not been introduced, I
believe."

Kharadmon raised tapered fingers and flipped back his hood.

Streaked piebald locks tumbled over his caped cloak as he swept
through a courtier's bow.  "My prince, we are colleagues of the
Fellowship, members in spirit since the day that flesh suffered
mishap."  And he arose, confronting Lysaer with cat-pale eyes that
studied in sardonic provocation.

Luhaine tucked his thumbs into a belt stout enough to halter a
yearling bull.  As flesh, he had always been careful to regale his
portliness with restraint; as spirit, he forwent adornment as a
frivolous waste of conjury.  Against an appearance unrelentingly prim,
his words seemed weighed like insult as he said, "The buffoon who
speaks is Kharadmon, Your Grace of Tysan."

"Buffoon?"  Kharadmon curled his lip.  "Luhaine!  Can your wit be
that tired, to find you floundering for epithets?"

"After two ages suffering your lame taste, such failing would carry
no shame."  His eyes joylessly reticent, Luhaine measured the blond
prince whose dignity made light of unpleasantness.  Given Lysaer's
staunchness of character, it seemed unnatural that the strands should
unremittingly forecast war.  Aggrieved that such beautifully trained
poise might come to be channeled toward deceit, Luhaine turned sharp.

"You think we should get on with defeating Desh-thiere?"

He flicked a thick finger in reproach.  "I say it's a fool who would
rush to meet danger."

Taken aback, Lysaer flushed.  Asandir set a hand on his shoulder and
spared him from further embarrassment.

"Kharadmon and Luhaine have worked nightlong to establish
protections."  He shot a pained look at both spirits.

"Excuse their rudeness, please.  Their labors have left them
disagreeable."

Motionless up until now, Arithon abruptly stood.  He did not speak,
and Lysaer, unsmiling, found grit to ignore Kharadmon's challenging
regard.  "Since the last attack by Desh-thiere's aspects, I thought
your Fellowship determined its hostilities couldn't be warded?"

Asandir said in honest discomfort, "We can't be sure."

Lysaer glanced at his half-brother.  But Arithon stayed quiet as
Luhaine shed his disapproval to explain.

"Permit me.  What spirits the Mistwraith embodies cannot pass the
tower safe-wards.  Should your efforts with shadow and light drive its
vapors to final extinction inside Paravian protections, the self-aware
essence would become sundered from the bounds of the fog that enshrouds
it.  In brief, its wraiths would be winnowed separate, even as kernel
from chaff."  Warmed to his topic, Luhaine raised spread palms.

"After that, our Fellowship cannot be sure whether natural death
would banish such spirits.  Should the entities have ways to evade
Ath's law and continue existence as free wraiths, they might go on to
possess our world's creatures with dire and damaging results."

"The methuri that plague Mirthlvain Swamp were created by a similar
calamity," Asandir pointed out.  "That might lend you perspective."

"Indeed, yes."  Now set for a scholarly diatribe, Luhaine opened his
mouth, then caught a glare from Kharadmon.

Nettled, he said, "I must sum UP."

Kharadmon hitched up an eyebrow.  "Do go on."  He tipped his palm in
invitation as a courtier might, to defer to a lady in a doorway.

Luhaine stiffly turned his back and resumed with his speech to the
half-brothers.  "To counter the risk of loosing free wraiths, you must
drive Desh-thiere to captivity outside of arcane protections.  The
wards set over Ithamon must serve as your bastion, and also as defense
for the land in case of mishap."

"Brief, did you say?"  accosted Kharadmon.  Despite an image that
stayed fixed in serenity as a painting, his impatience was plain as he
said, "We waste time."

Unperturbed, Asandir gave the half-brothers his quiet reassurance.

"The perils are not insurmountable.  On faith, we have Dakar's
prophecy, and the strands' further augury that the Mistwraith can be
conquered.  Yet there won't be satisfaction if we stall over details
until sundown."  He tipped his head at Lysaer.  "Prince?"

Relieved to be excused from the friction between a ghost pair of
Sorcerers who deeply unsettled him anyway, Lysaer called power through
his gift.  Light sheeted from his raised fist, a crackling,
broad-banded flash that shook the murk overhead.  Desh-thiere hissed in
recoil.  A backwash of steam fanned Kieling Tower, torn short as
Arithon's shadow-wrought counter thrust sliced across the breach.

Dark flicked the air and the temperature plunged.  Snow flurried over
the battlement, struck gold by filtered sunlight as the mist layer
seared nearly through.  The heavens moiled like dirtied water as
Desh-thiere surged to choke the gap.

Barriers of wrought shadow razed it short, and ice dusted the hollow
before the crenels where the image forms of Luhaine and Kharadmon had
vanished away, unremarked.

The half-brothers broke off the first-stage assault, breathing hard,
and as always, the moment they snatched in recovery cost them.

The mist massed in upon itself.  Purple-gray and sinister as
thunderheads, Desh-thiere battened the winds in dank darkness and
seethed over the patch of true sky.  Lysaer's fair nature turned grim.

Always the fog became thicker and more troublesome to manage after
the initial attack.  Charged to resentful revenge, grown adept at
shaping his craft as a weapon, Lysaer hammered killing power into the
gloom that oppressed the landscape.

The grease-thick miasma above the tower flared white, then burned to
incandescence as the charge struck.  Shadow ripped out in reply, and
snow crystals scoured by the gusts slashed across the exposed stone
parapet.  The mists bulked denser, poisonously thick as poured oil.

Lysaer's tunic dampened with sweat, and Arithon's hair whipped to
tangles against dripping temples.

The half-brothers fought, while morning gave way to afternoon.

Slowly, grudgingly, the Mistwraith's bounds were harried inward.

Sunlight speared down and silvered the Ithamon's knoll with its
interlocked stubble of foundations.

Notched battlements and broken walls drowned the, next minute under
yet another counter surge of fog.  Light and then shadow punched back.
Again a ragged hole appeared.

Sky appeared over Kieling Tower, besieged at once by rolling curtains
of murk.  Arithon cried out as the wraithdriven mists burst his
barriers.  Stonework shook to a thunderous report as Lysaer extended to
heroic lengths to shock back the break in the attack line.

His light slashed into gloom that churned, congested as a
blood-gorged bruise.  Shadow answered him strongly.  Snowfall snatched
up into whirlwinds as stress-heated air snapped and shrieked through
pocketed blizzards of ice.

And then a sudden and peculiar twist of change: interwoven through
the violent play of energies, something tugged subtly out of balance.

Across the concussive boom of backlash and a gale like a rising
scream, Arithon shouted to Asandir.  "We're in trouble!"

Less trained to nuance, Lysaer saw no cause to pinpoint.

A third charge gathered in his hands, his sight congested by measure
a darkness dense enough to suffocate, he groped to define his
uneasiness.

Aware of voices, but cut off from the others by the mist, he closed
his fists.

And knew terror, for his gifted powers failed to dissipate.

Lysaer reached to recover control, but another will struggled against
him, as if the mists had changed nature, without warning turned from a
stubborn, resistant barrier that needed ever to be driven, into
something repellently uncanny; a creature voracious and alive, which
now fed off the very energies summoned to achieve its defeat.  Lysaer
felt the graze of unseen presences across his flesh.  Things seemed to
twist at his clothing and hair, while a heaviness dragged his thoughts.

Then a surge of overweening elation displaced all trace of alarm.

They had triumphed!  Desh-thiere now collapsed in a sucking rush
toward annihilation.

A shout from Asandir ripped through that giddy unreality.

Lysaer's mad urge to crack the sky with his powers became dashed as
someone's hands snatched his wrists apart.  Spell force slapped over
his unshed light like soaked woolens thrown down to douse a wildfire.

No victory had been imminent on Kieling.  Lysaer gasped in recovery.
Murk wrapped him, dank as marsh vapors, and his body dripped sour
sweat.  "What happened?"

"Desh-thiere," cried Asandir above winds that keened like death
angels whetting their armory of scythe blades.  "It's hurled itself
into the breach for a purpose!"

Magelight flashed and the air cleared, or seemed to.  Only a circle
closed off by some boundary of sorcery answered to Asandir's will.
Beyond Kieling's walls pressed darkness, damp and impenetrable as
shroud felt.  Lysaer blinked streaming eyes, Brushed by settling snow,
he noticed the winds no longer buffeted his body.  Instead he felt
crowded by noxious warmth the characterless temperature of shed blood.
Pressured by nameless foreboding, Lysaer braced to continue, then
flinched as Asandir cruelly tore his wrists apart again.

- Affronted by the physical handling, Lysaer tensed to strike off
restraint.  Asandir met his glare, wordless, until reason displaced
princely pride.  Shaken to discover how near vanity had come to eclipse
his good sense, Lysaer squared his shoulders to apologize.

Asandir forestalled him.  "I'm not offended, and you were never rude.
This Mistwraith has aspects that can turn the mind, and now you are
warned.  Stay guarded."

Upset and humiliated, Lysaer strove to pick sense out of chaos.

"The .  mist flung itself on us like a suicide."

From across the battlement, Arithon said in a voice scraped and
hoarse, "That last assault sheared out more vapor than we ever burned
away through a half day.  I presume the damage is done?"

"We'll see.  Luhaine!"  His hold still tight on Lysaer's wrists,
Asandir cracked out.  "How diminished is the radius of the fog?"

The discorporate mage forwent his tendency to patronize.

"Only Kieling Tower remains enveloped, which leads me to suppose we
have problems.  If Desh-thiere's entities were subject to natural
death, why should they rush their destruction?"

Kharadmon agreed.  "It's too dangerous now to finish outside the
tower.  Whether our wards are found wanting or not, to cut the mist
down on open ground is to beg a bid for escape.  These ruins offer a
thousand crannies.  If the wraiths slip their bindings, they'll surely
scatter and hide."

"That's Desh-Thiere's intention, no doubt," Luhain'e snapped.  "Or
wouldn't it just lure us to take an outside stand, then make the two
princes its target?"

"It could be attempting to do both."  Asandir looked like a man faced
with torture as his hands slackened, then at last released Lysaer.  "We
have a second choice of action."

"No!"  cried Dakar in protest, half forgotten where he huddled on the
sidelines.  He strode to the center of the battlement.  Nose running,
eyes bloodshot, his hands bunched in fists before his chest, he
bristled like a fat bantam rooster.

"You wouldn't dare sully the wards of compassion on this tower!

Merciful Ath, how could you think to disarrange the irreplaceable
work of ages, and draw evil inside these protections?"

Asandir visibly hardened.  "I would do so of sheer necessity."

His look blazed back at his apprentice.  "These wards are all that
can dependably fence the Mistwraith.  I will open them, and let
Desh-thiere be driven inside, and see this land safe under sunlight.

For the survival of the Riathan Paravians who sanctified this haven,
you'll lend your strength to that cause."

Shocked, shaking, visibly afraid to hold his ground, nonetheless
Dakar stayed stubbornly rooted.

"Desh-thiere has three times shown us guile," said Luhaine, his image
indistinct through the turmoil of darkness and mist.  "We could be the
ones driven, and purposefully, to try just such a desperate action."

"The risk must be taken."  Lysaer came forward.  "Of us all, I'm the
least fit to weigh risks.  Yet I cannot set my life above the need to
confine this monster.  Kieling's protections will not fail the land.

Though we all were to die here, sunlight for Athera would be
secured."

His hair like drowned gold in the gloom, he deferred to Asandir.

"I prefer to trust you can protect us from the wraiths, as you did on
the night my half-brother and I were attacked."

That mishap had occurred well before Desh-thiere's teeming entities
had been crowded inside shrunken boundaries; yet Asandir kept dread to
himself as he switched his most merciless regard back to the
Teir's'llessid.  "So be it, Lysaer.

But let your heart not falter.  When I call, you will act, and do so
without question, to the utter dregs of your strength.

Your gift of light will partner A-rithon's shadows, and burn mist
until all of Desh-thiere's entities are driven inside of ward
boundaries."

The words and their depth of commitment struck Lysaer with strange
force and finality, as if magic would be bound to his consent.  Though
warned he must forfeit any later change of will, he scraped up a ragged
smile.  "What resources I have are freely yours."

Wary though he remained, Asandir showed sincere respect.  "Ath's
blessing on you, s'llessid prince.  You do seem to understand the
stakes."

Ever the pessimist, Luhaine said, "Let Dakar leave the tower now,
then.  Should the worst befall, someone must stay outside to guard
until Sethvir can set seals on this tower to permanently block chance
of re-entry."

"I'll get my nose sunburned and blistered for nothing, waiting for
you to come out!"  Yet in his eagerness to quit the site of conflict,
Dakar tripped over his feet in the stairwell.  His peeved oaths faded
with his hurried steps, first muffled by the close-pressed mists, and
finally drowned by the moan of the eddying winds.

Desh-thiere swathed Kieling's battlements in unremitting gloom as the
Sorcerers made preparations.  Kharadmon appointed himself the task of
safeguarding Lysaer.  Luhaine's image dissolved also, but wearing an
acerbic expression that cautioned Arithon to restraint.

Whether moved by precocious knowledge or by edgy s'Ffalenn
temperament, any attempt to broach Fellowship guardianship would be
handled with flat intolerance.

Lysaer wiped sweating palms.  Before he could imagine what arcane
defenses might demand of him, a circle of bluewhite force cracked
around him.  His eyes were flashblinded, and his senses tipped spinning
into vertigo.  The wards set over his person by Kharadmon not only
laced the surrounding air, they invaded and flared through his most
private self with a persistence that raised primal rebellion.

Lysaer felt every hair on his body stab erect.  For a horrible,
drawn-out moment his mind and flesh lay outside selfcommand, frozen in
subjugation to another will.  The unpleasant feeling soon faded.

Magelight no longer etched his body to incandescence.  Lysaer
stretched in reaction.  He flexed his hands, then his toes, relieved to
find them not locked in paralysis.  Then he tried a breath, and felt,
like a spike hammered through the grain of growing wood, the ward's
immutable presence.

He retained bodily control, but only as Kharadmon's protections
allowed.

Moved to consternation by the scope of the strictures imposed by his
open consent, Lysaer had no chance to wonder how Arithon reconciled
such a pact.  Above the moan of the wind, and through the ear-stinging
pitch of ward resonance, Asandir delivered fast instructions.

"Once I've merged awareness with Kieling Tower's protections, I won't
be able to respond.  Should trouble arise, the discorporate Sorcerers
who are linked with you will sense your needs and give help as the
situation requires."  Asandir paused.

His eyes, light, brilliant, piercing, studied the halfbrothers, who
for the cause of restored sunlight and Paravian survival were about to
place body, mind, and spirit into jeopardy.

Pressed by unspoken anxieties, Asandir added, "I'll seek to key an
opening in the wards and signal you when that's accomplished.  Engage
the Mistwraith then.  With all of your strength and will, drive it
inside the tower's protections.

Once the last bit of fog is drawn in, I'll reseal the wards.

After that, Luhaine and Kharadmon will strive with you to fend off
Desh-thiere's hostile entities.  If Paravian spell-craft can be plumbed
for inspiration, and if forces of compassion that were created to be
unconditional can be made to yield to necessity, I'll try to fashion a
containment of wardspells.  With luck we can imprison Desh-thiere and
keep this tower unsullied."  He hesitated, then finished off, "Hold to
this through the worst: the auguries cast at Althain Tower did not
forecast any deaths here."

But dying was hardly the worst fate to suffer, Lysaer reflected;
possession was more to be dreaded.  Kharadmon's apprehension thrummed
as a deep, subliminal tingle through his flesh.  This host of
mist-bound wraiths that their party of five must incarcerate owned the
malice that had disabled Traithe.

"I wish you all sure hands and good hunting."  A figure of shadow
against the charcoal roil of the fog, Asandir bent and slipped off his
boots and hose.  Barefoot in the cold, he scuffed through the crust of
sleet and arranged his stance on freezing stone.  Then he raised his
hands.  Rigidly still, his eyes a chill vista of emptiness, he held
motionless for an interval that stretched Lysaer's nerves to the
snapping point.

To stave off morbid misgiving, the prince cupped his hands and
fiercely concentrated to muster back will to use his gift.

A concussion of air smacked his face and a high-pitched ping like
pressure cracks cold-shocked through a glacier ripped the sky.  The
tower seemed rinsed in white light.  Lost in a dazzle that blinded,
Asandir cried out in what could have been ecstacy or the absolute
extremity of mortal pain.

Then darkness opened in the brilliance, virulently black, and
stonework that had stood firm through two ages shuddered under waves of
vibration.

"Now!"  screamed Asandir.  The joined jasper of tower and battlement
seemed to jar into brittleness with his cry.

Lysaer released light in a concatenation of sparks.  Heated wind
seared his cheeks.  Black fell, velvet-dense, then a buffet of frigid
air that he attributed to backwash from Arithon's counter thrust of
shadow.  Next a subliminal purple glow bathed Lysaer's skin, driving
before it a sting like a thousand venomed needles.  He struggled to
breathe, to think, while Karadmon slapped a goad through his mind to
gather his strayed wits andfight.

Lysaer struck at the encroaching mists in bursts of force like bright
knives.  He battled, though entities leered from the fog, gnashing
fanged jaws and milling through darkness to reach and then claw him
down.  Savaged by the killing fields of energy demanded from his gift,
Lysaer flung up lattied walls of lightning.  Flash fire burned the
wraiths back.  his eyes were left stunned and sightless.

"Now!  Again!"  exhorted Kharadmon.

The battlements seemed wildly to tilt.  Wrung out and disoriented,
Lysaer could not tell if the stonework dissolved from beneath him, or
whether natural law still held firm.

Past the ongoing blaze of the wards, he sensed Luhaine and, teamed
with him, Arithon, still slamming the Mistwraith with shadow spun
frigid as the void before Ath's creation.

Lysaer choked on a breath that was half snow.  Frost bit his lungs
and kicked off an explosion of coughing.  The air was all strange, too
thick and still to pass his nostrils.  Gusteddied ice raked his face.

He ached with a sensation like suffocation, while Kharadmon pressed
him to resume.

Driven to expend himself through his gift until he became as a living
torch, Lysaer cried out.  Charge after charge of pure light raked from
him until his flesh felt mauled and reamed through, a bare conduit to
channel his gift.  The light torn out of his center slashed from him, a
brilliance of chiseled force that the one mote of consciousness
undrowned by the torrent recognized for the work of a stranger.

No more than a puppet impelled by a Sorcerer's whim, Lysaer felt
stripped and crushed.  The darkness and vertigo that assailed him were
no longer solely the effects of spellwards and Mistwraith.  His body
was starved for breath to the point where he barely stayed conscious.

And still the light ripped from him in crackling, searing white
torrents.

His disorientation tripped off panic.  While instinct screamed that
he was being immolated, consumed by a scintillant spell-craft pressured
outside of sane control, he clung in desperation to his willing consent
to the Fellowship, and the honor that bound his given oath: to battle
the Mistwraith for as long as he held to life.

Yet his endurance was only mortal.

Undercut by sharp anguish, that royal blood, and pride, and heartfelt
integrity of purpose were not enough by themselves to sustain him,
Lysaer lost grip on dignity and wept.

And then there was no thought at all, only gray-blackness more
neutral than mist, more terrible than the dark door of death.

A harrowing interval passed.  Sound reached Lysaer in a burst like
tearing fabric.  Then came voices, shouting above a roar like a
millrace in his ears.

Vague pain resolved into bruises on shoulder, knee, and cheek.

Evidently he had collapsed on his side, for he lay facedown in thin
snow.  Too shaken yet to move, Lysaer shivered.  Through air that
pressed down like sulfurous smoke, voices whined and gibbered, moaning,
mewling, and countless as Sithaer's damned.  It hurt to breathe;
tissues of his throat and lungs stung as if rasped by ground ice.  Then
hands were gripping him, tugging him urgently to rise.

"Get up," cracked Asandir.

Wasted and haggard, the Sorcerer was gratingly hoarse, as if he, too,
had been screaming.  Or else the powers he had engaged to reconfigure
Kieling's protections had required focus through multiple incantations.

The winds had ominously stilled again.

Lysaer gained his knees.  "The wards," he gasped.  "Did you open
them?"  As dizziness slowly released him, he glanced about.  "My
half-brother.  Is he all right?"

"Over there."  Asandir pointed.

Arithon rested a short distance off, his back propped straight
against the battlement.  Had expenditure of shadow also drained him to
a husk?  Lysaer could not tell.  Heavy mist blurred clear sight.

"Well done," the Sorcerer added, his tone a touch less rough.  "We
have the wraiths' collective presence contained inside Kieling, and the
ward energies safely resealed.  If the virtue that founds this tower's
strength is not to be abandoned to desecration, we'll have to confine
the creatures further."

On his feet now, and shaky as if wasted by a fever, Lysaer tried a
light stab at humor.  "I'm spent enough already that I wouldn't have
the spark to charm a maid.  The Mistwraith I hope needs less tact."  At
a sidewise glance from the Sorcerer, his foolery dissolved.  "You'll
have my best effort, in any case."

But even before Asandir looked away, the prince recalled: Kharadmon's
presence was quiescent within him but not withdrawn.  The Fellowship
would have more than his best effort, though final cost became his
life.

Mortified by doubts that the strain yet to come might break him,
Lysaer snatched back the initiative.  "What next?"

Asandir flung him a harried smile.  "Let no one ever question that
the strengths of s'llessid are not yours.  The most difficult trial
lies -ahead."  And he gestured toward a narrow stone flask that rested
amid a dip in the stonework that floored Kieling's upper battlement.

Lysaer shoved back awareness that his courage had been frayed to
undignified, whimpering shreds.  Neither the container nor the
declivity where it rested had existed previously.  Its cylinder seemed
wrought from the same grained jasper that framed Kieling's
fortifications.

"Yes, the vessel to imprison Desh-thiere was cut from the rock of
this tower," said Asandir in unprompted explanation.

"Its wards were patterned from Paravian bindings, and there lies the
heart of our challenge.  The Mistwraith is self-aware enough to
recognize its peril.  We can expect a bitter fight to send it into
final captivity."

Arithon offered no comment.  Given his trained grasp of his gift, his
quiet gave rise to trepidation.  Lysaer hugged his arms across his
chest.  If he thought, if he hesitated, he could, not in cold sanity
continue.  Dread sapped the dregs of his nerve.  Raised to inflexible
duty, he had learned at his father's knee that a king must always act
selflessly.  The needs of land and people must come first.  If at heart
he was human, and terrified, the justice that ruled the s'llessid royal
line now prisoned his conscience like shackles.  Lysaer raised hands
that he wished were not trembling.  From the core of him that was
prince, and steadfast, he let go control and selfpreservation, and
surrendered himself wholly to his gift.

The raised light stung him in answer, as though his flesh balked at a
talent that demanded too much.  The eerie dark eclipsed time sense.  It
could be afternoon or well past sundown, or days beyond the pall of the
world's end.  The louring smoke-faces that comprised the Mistwraith
veiled the tower, impenetrably dense with roused evil.

"Try now," urged Asandir.  "You'll get no better chance.

When your strength is gone, Desh-thiere will stay free inside
Kieling.  Ath help us all if that happens, for the flask and its wards
of confinement cannot be locked into stability until we complete the
final seal."

Touched to quick anger that yet another personal frailty jeopardized
this dire expedient, Lysaer forced speech.

"Brother, are you ready?"

For reply, Arithon wrought shadow.  It sprang from his hands like a
net, laced, Lysaer could see, with fine-patternee@ rune chains and
sigils.  Together the Master and Luhaine entwined spell-craft to
augment their assault against the mist.

Desh-thiere churned into recoil like steam dashed against black ice.
Its wraiths lashed virulently back.  Even as Lysaer kindled light, the
demonic aspects embodied by the fog writhed and twisted, tearing and
swirling around him.  Their touch stung his skin as if corrosive, and
each gust felt edged in slivered glass.

"Now!"  Arithon shouted.

And Lysaer struck, his light a goad to impel the accursed fog down a
gauntlet of shadow toward the flask.  As glare scoured his sight, he
sensed Kharadmon twining spell-craft into his effort.  The fog burned,
acid-rank, and the faces gnashed hideous teeth.  Claws seemed to rake
his person, and voices to whisper in his head.  Lysaer shivered in a
cold sweat.

"Again!"  shouted Arithon in jagged stress.

Lysaer punished his body to response, though shadows and fog marred
his vision and the churn of the wraiths obscured the flask.

Guessing, he slashed out spears of lightning.  Faces recoiled,
hissing, and Arithon's warding shadows wavered like curtains in a
draft.

Elusive as air, the Mistwraith surged to spiral clear.  Lysaer
blocked it, panting, his gut turned queasy from the spellwork
contributed by Luhaine.  He called light, and light again, white sheets
that had no flaw for the sinuous wraiths to exploit.  And still
Desh-thiere's entities danced free.  Spell and shadow hammered what
looked like nothing, but resisted like immovable granite.  Through the
gust-ripped air and the acrid, burning presences that hedged the neck
of the flask, Asandir called encouragement.

Keep driving!  The endurance of the wraiths is not limitless.  In
time they must yield to fatigue."

Lysaer felt emptied, a brittle husk.  The demands of the attack were
insatiable.  No oath could prepare for a harrowing such as this, that
exhausted reserves and cut past, to the uttermost unraveling of spirit.
The mists battled viciously back.  The lessons of survival imposed by
the Red Desert became as a mere inconvenience before the suffering
required Lysaer fuel his gift.

"There," shouted Asandir.  "It's retreating!"

A dull ache suffused Lysaer's inner being.  The light that left his
hands seemed force bought in blood, fueled at cruel cost to mortal
flesh.  Impersonal no longer, Kharadmon's presence hammered into him,
viciously taking to keep the light coming in torrents.

But Desh-thiere was at last giving way.

Eyes stung by salt, or maybe tears, Lysaer discerned a brightening in
the air about the tower.  Arithon's barriers of shadow showed clearly
now, skeined about with purple interlace that were spells lent his
efforts by Asandir.  Into a cone fashioned out of darkness and
suspended over the mouth of the flask, Desh-thiere's coils were chased
and burned and funneled onward by flailing tails of light.

Lysaer had no spark left for exultation that the Mistwraith verged on
defeat.  He could only heave air into lungs that felt scorched, and
obey the rapacious demand of Kharadmon, who forced him past endurance
to shape light.

The mist-wrought wisps whipped and darted in retreat past the spelled
maw of shadow.  Lysaer felt drained to his core.  Wholly under duress,
the summoned force sprang from.

his hands, screaming through air like rage given over to pure malice.
A blinding flash sheared the murk, to lash the possessed mists inside
the barriers.

Arithon's net of shadows wavered in recoil.  The outlines blurred,
softened, distended, as the trapped vapors inside tried to escape.

The desperate strength of two mortal men and three Fellowship mages
shrank to a pittance before the rage of thousands of meshed entities.

Lysaer saw the ward shadows bulge, thin, and threaten at a stress
point to crack.

One leak and Desh-thiere would burst loose all over again; only now
mortal limitations had reached an irreversible crux.  Lysaer understood
that a second assault could not be mounted.  Played out, undone by
weariness, the defenders found themselves beleaguered as Desh-thiere's
uncountable wraiths recoiled at bay and attacked.

To lose grip on the barriers above the flask was to die, and leave
Kieling Tower forever defiled.

Arithon knew.  Or perhaps the controlling essence of Luhaine
compelled his hoarse shout to his half-brother to fire off another
blast of light.  Asandir had no encouragement to offer, besieged as he
was within coil upon coil of defense seals.  Though Lysaer desired with
all his heart to respond, he found his spirit beaten listless by the
overextended forces of his gift.  Only Kharadmon's iron grip bore him
upright and lent him the grace to respond.

Lysaer raised his hands and called light.  The effort sheared through
him as agony, leaving trembling that Would not ease.  His hands flared
white, then dazzled.  His palms stung to the rush of raw power as,
ruled unequivocally by a Sorcerer, he bent to his knees before the
flask.

In the moment he lifted his arms, he felt himself released to free
choice.  Gloved in fiery light, Lysaer fell back on a river he never
knew he possessed.  Driven by need to the sacrifice, he reached to
smother the impending break in the shadow wards with the incandescent
flesh of his hands.

He touched not a moment too soon.  The barrier underneath unraveled
and the wraiths ripped hungrily through.

Mist met light with a virulent shriek.  Unwarded, the illumination
his inadequate protection, Lysaer cupped his hands to cap the breach.

A raging sting blistered his palms.  The!: the wraiths were on him,
inside him, a legion of needles in his brain.

Light answered, a hedging dazzle of wards thrown up by Kharadmon.

Trailing a half beat behind, the Sorcerer's protections failed to
guard.  Lysaer suffered jumbled impression, that overwhelmed the hurt
to his hands.  The tumult within left him screeled to a whirlwind,
scattering memories like debris .

Through a ripped-up jumble of impressions he sensed Fellowship
spell-craft flash lines of fire through past and future, hounding the
Mistwraith's assault.

The chase re-echoed down every channel of Lysaer's being.

Impressions surged and recoiled, his own mixed with others too alien
for comprehension.  Past moments snapped out of recall with edged
clarity: the Lady of South Isle's lips on his, and her warm fingers
twined in his hair ... a night from early childhood when he had sat on
the palace battlement with the chancellor's arm around his waist, as he
recited the names of winter stars.

Then, in punishing detail, a later experience wrought of harsh sun
and burning winds, and a diirst in his throat like to@.

Dissociated wholly from the present, cut off from joined conflict
with the Mistwraith, Lysaer tumbled facedown once again in the
scorching sand of the Red Desert.  Arithon stood over him,
blood-streaked features contorted with Long forgotten antagonism.

"Get up!"  the command a lash across a mind pinned by a vise grip of
sorcery.  Pain followed, lacerating the last bastion of conscious will.

"Get up!"

Then himself, a prince born royal, broken and screaming as personal
dignity became trampled down and violated by the listar-el half-brother
who was ever and always Amroth@ enemy.

Lysaer shuddered, racked once again by annihilating han-(:d for the
s'Ffalenn born to mastery of shadows.  Only now, in forced reliving,
righteous s'llessid fury was shared and fanned hotter by a ravening
horde of demon spirits.

The pain this time raged redoubled as sorcery flared and sparked in
an effort to hack the wraiths away.

The psyche in torment turned to tricks.  Spiraled down a tunnel like
delirium, Lysaer glimpsed another place, a railed wooden gallery atop
an outdoor staircase that overlooked a vast public square.  The space
between brick-faced halls and corridors was packed with a seething mob,
and amid that multitude one face: of a black-haired enemy who was
wholly and unforgivably s'Ffalenn.

The scene folded in on itself and vanished.  Fire blistered.

Lysaer's hands.  He screamed for a torment more terrible' still, of
sorcery scourging his inner mind.  The invading hordes of wraiths
shrieked and gibbered inside his skull.

Their cries stormed together, tangled, then merged to a mindless
blast of noise.  Raw force answered their wail, a barrage of sparks as
thick as scalding rain.  The wraiths broke and threshed into spinning
flight like singed leaves.

Lysaer felt sucked under by tides of faintness and confusion.

Voices that were human turned distant, broken, then surged back
clearly as a hand strongly steadied his elbow.

"Well done!"  The tones, Asandir's; the touch, that of a Sorcerer
enfleshed.  Kharadmon's enslaving presence had withdrawn.

Lysaer leaned into the support, breathing hard and dizzied past reach
of self-control.  His mind felt scoured empty.  Even his gifted sense
of light seemed deadened, consumed as flaked ash in a smelter's pit.
Fragments of nightmare flitted through his grasp and faded even as he
grasped to recall them.  A frustrated urgency remained, disrupted as
Asandir spoke again.

"Lysaer?  You've been party to a miracle.  The Mistwraith's captivity
is accomplished."

Belatedly aware he still breathed, that his palms stung with blisters
that could heal, Lysaer at last managed speech.

"It's bottled?"

For answer, Asandir drew him gently to his feet and forward two
stumbling steps.

The narrow jasper cylinder still rested upright on the battlement.

Ward light shimmered over its contours, which now showed no opening
at all.  The container was permanently sealed seamless, and the sky,
cloaked in natural darkness, showed a terrifying tapestry of stars.

They were hard white, blue, and stinging violet, too bright by half
to be mistaken for the heavens of Dascen Elur that Lysaer had known
throughout childhood.  None of the constellations matched any taught
him by the chancellor.

The meaning took a long, sweaty moment to register.

"Desh-thiere," Lysaer croaked.  "It's banished."  And his handsome,
weary face showed the grace of relief before he crumpled in exhaustion
against Asandir.

For a moment the Sorcerer who supported him showed an expression of
unalloyed sorrow.

Then, roused to purpose, he called a brisk command to the Shadow
Master braced against the wall.  "Help me get your brother down to
shelter.  After that, if you can manage the lower stair, call Dakar in.

He's going to be needed to doctor burns."

Legacy

The evening after Asandir had ridden south with his discorporate
colleagues to better secure the imprisoned Mistwraith, Lysaer sat with
his back to the lee of a stone embrasure that once had been favored as
a trysting place by generations of s'Ffalenn princesses.  Between hands
swathed in bandages and healing unguents rested a flask of telir
brandy, left as a courtesy by the Sorcerer before his departure.

The contents were already half consumed.

Disappointed to have slept through the first day of restored
sunlight, the s'llessid prince applied himself to belated celebration
as he pondered Athera's savagely brilliant constellations, strewn in
cloudless splendor overhead.

"To our victory," he toasted, and offered the flask to his
half-brother, who paced too quietly for his step to be heard through
the ongoing sigh of the winds.

Arithon paused, a dark silhouette against a million points of light.
"No," he said softly.  "I'd drink instead to the crown that awaits you
in Tysan.  You've fully earned your right to royal privilege."

The expected note of bitterness was absent from his halfbrother's
manner.  Taken aback that the Shadow Master's quirky nature should
relentlessly continue to confound him, Lysaer smiled as Arithon
accepted the brandy, took a token swig, and gently handed back the
flask.

"You can't be looking forward to Etarra," Lysaer pressed.

"There's more on your mind than you let on."  He touched the bottle
to his lips.  The telir brandy went down with hardly a burn in the
throat; the warmth came later, a glow like a bonfire in the belly.

"You might feel better if you drank."

Arithon returned a quiet chuckle.  "I don't feel bad.  Just
monstrously tired.  Still."

"Still what?"  The liquor was subtle; it undid barriers as a rake
would seduce a prim virgin.  When Arithon forbore to respond, Lysaer
frowned in mildly euphoric irritation.

"You'd think, after Desh-thiere's defeat, the almighty Fellowship of
Seven could reward you by finding a replacement hero to shoulder
Rathain's throne in your place."

Arithon turned smoothly and set his hands on the wall.

For a time he, too, seemed absorbed by the stars.  "They won't
because they can't, I suspect."

"What?"  Lysaer elbowed up from his slouch, setting off a gurgle of
sloshed spirits.  "What do you mean by that?  I hate to match sweeping
leaps of logic while I'm tipsy."

A disturbance sounded from inside the roofless chamber that fronted
the flagstone terrace.  "Dakar," Arithon observed, though he had not
turned to look.  "Hot on the scent of the brandy, no doubt."

Sounds of a stumble and a muffled curse from the ruins affirmed his
idle supposition.

Yet Lysaer on a hinge could be bullishly stubborn; in judgment
impaired further by fatigue, he resisted the interruption.  "You're
implying, friend, that our Fellowship of Seven might not have a choice
as to whose head they crown at Etarra?"

Not exasperated but only lingeringly weary, Arithon said, "I think
not.  My best guess being that, with or without our ancestor's
knowledge, somebody meddled with our family history."  Silent, perhaps
frowning, he tipped his head sideward in inquiry.

"Consent was given," affirmed Dakar from the depths of the archway
that let to the terrace.  "On behalf of your line, sealed in blood by
Torbrand s'Ffalenn, on the day Rathain's charter was drawn by the
Ciladis of the Fellowship."

"There you are," Arithon said in light irony to his halfbrother.

He accepted the brandy that s'llessid diplomacy offered out of
instinct to console; after a deep swallow and a sigh, he relinquished
the flask and ended, "I leave you all the joys of the night.  I'm
certainly too spent for witty company."

The Shadow Master vanished into the archway even as the Mad Prophet
emerged, wearing an unlikely combination of ragged tunics layered one
over another like sediment.  These were topped by Asandir's cloak, the
silver-banded hem of which dragged on the flagstones around Dakar's
stocky ankles.

Lysaer studied the Mad Prophet's choice of wardrobe with raised
eyebrows, while Dakar, vociferously defensive, slouched against the
wall that Arithon had lately vacated.

"I'm getting a cold," he said in excuse for the purloined cloak.

Since the timbre of Dakar's voice held no sign of a stuffy head,
Lysaer sensed a lecture coming on the effectiveness of telir brandy as
a medicine for pending coughs.  He forestalled the diatribe by offering
the flask, and stuck like a terrier to his topic.  "What did Arithon
mean, and what consent did his ancestor give at the writing of
Rathain's charter?"

Caught in mid-swallow, Dakar choked.  He recovered himself, began
afresh, and sucked at the flask until forced to stop and gasp for air.

Then he sniffed.  "You don't know what you're asking."

"Obviously not."  Too bone-tired for finesse, Lysaer hooked the
brandy bottle back.  He regarded Dakar's spaniel eyes and said equably,
"I need not inquire if that were true."

Dakar started to blot his dribbled chin with the cloak hem, then
recalled the garment's true owner in time to use his sleeve cuff for
the purpose.  "Damn and damn," he said softly.

"Once for the brandy, which I won't share unless you speak," Lysaer
surmised.  "The other for the trouble you'll have earned when Asandir
discovers you've borrowed his best cloak without leave."

"All right."  Dakar shrugged in resignation.  "The 'royal bloodlines
are irreplaceable, as Arithon already guessed."

"Due to prophecy?"  Lysaer swished the flask suggestively.

"No."  Peevish, Dakar gazed fixedly on the brandy.  "The Fellowship
chose three men and two women to found Athera's royal lines.

They were selected, each one, for a dominant trait that would resist
corruption and other pressures that power brings to bear on human
nature.  It is a grave thing, to alter, or to influence, unborn life.

Yet that is what the Sorcerers did, to ensure fair rule through
generations of dynastic succession.  They set a geas ward that would
fix those chosen virtues in direct line of inheritance.

Your ancestor gave them consent, for all the good that does you."

Here Dakar's own bitterness showed for an apprenticeship that more
times than not seemed the result of manipulation.

Always smooth, Lysaer passed over the flask.  Information desired
from Dakar on the nature of the Fellowship's workings was invariably
touchy to extract.  "What does that mean for Arithon?"

Brandy vanished down the Mad Prophet's gullet in prodigious swallows,
and this time Asandir's best cloak did not escape usage as a napkin.
"Ah, well," sighed Dakar.  "It means that our arrogant Master of
Shadows can never escape his nature."

This time Lysaer wrapped his arms around his knees, content to let
the spirits work their magic.  The breeze whispered softly over the
terrace, and the terrible, alien constellations burned fiercely through
the interval that followed.

In time Dakar took another pull from the flask.  He peered mournfully
into the dregs.  "Torbrand s'Ffalenn was a man of natural empathy, a
master statesman, because he could sense what motivated his enemies.
He ruled as duke in Daon Ramon, and the compassion of the Riathan
Paravians formed the guiding light of his policies.  Which means, my
friend, that Arithon will forgive the knife that kills him.

He cannot do otherwise.  To understand and to sympathize with the
needs of every living thing is his inborn nature, the forced gift of
the s'Ffalenn line as bequeathed by the Fellowship of Seven."

Lysaer took a moment to sort a cascade of revelations.

This penchant for s'Ffalenn forgiveness explained many of the quirks
of his half-brother's personality-behavior he had considered wayward
until he was given the key to understanding.  It explained why Arithon
would be vicious in contention, up until the moment of defeat; how he
could effortlessly shed any grudge for his balked desires, to embrace a
crown he absolutely did not want without sign of bitterness or rancor.
Lysaer stared at his hands, which were cold beneath their dressings.
The blisters throbbed, but he had ceased to dwell on their discomfort.
He badly wanted to beg back the flask of telir brandy, for in a
heartbeat his cheerfulness had vanished.  Yet courage in the end became
his failing.  He had to ask.  "And s'llessid?  What gift from my
ancestor do I carry?"

Morose, Dakar said, "You will always seekjustice, even where none can
be found."

A moment later, Lysaer felt the flask pressed back into his poulticed
hands.  Careful not to fumble through his bandages, he swallowed brandy
in gulps.  Abruptly his euphoria over Desh-thiere's defeat had faded.
Now he wanted to get drunk, to embrace the oblivion of forgetfulness
before his busy mind could exhaust itself in perverse and futile review
of past events.  He could study a whole lifetime and probably never
determine which actions were of his choosing and which others may have
been influenced by those virtues bound by magecraft to his bloodline.

"Arithon was wise to seek his bed," the prince concluded.

"I'm certainly too tired for this."

Generously leaving the last of the spirits for Dakar, he set the
flask clumsily on the flagstones, rose to his feet, and took his leave.

Dakar remained in solitude.  Night breezes worried his unkempt hair,
while he picked in turn at the immaculate wool of Asandir's cloak.  The
Mad Prophet could wish until his heart burst that the flask by his
elbow was still full, or that he knew a spell to conjure rotgut gin out
of air.  Any crude alcohol would have served to get him drunk enough to
forget the nerve that had made him question the burns on Lysaer of
Tysan's hands.  Maybe then he could sleep with the knowledge Asandir
had revealed in the hour before his departure.

Dakar shut his eyes before the stars his prophecy had seen restored
could blur through a welling flow of tears.  "Daelion Fatemaster take
pity," he cried in sympathy for the departed prince of Tysan, "why, my
friend, did you have to be the one used to block the Mistwraith's
assault bare-handed?"  But Asandir on that point had been unequivocally
clear: in the hour of final conflict, when Desh-thiere had threatened
to break free, Lysaer had been Kharadmon's selection for the sacrifice.
Dakar still agonized over Asandir's heartless assessment after the
irrevocable event: "Dharkaron, Ath's Angel of Vengeance, may damn us
for the act, but Dakar what else could be done?

Of us all, Lysaer was least trained to the mysteries.  If contact
with the flesh allowed Desh-thiere's wraiths to access the mind, which
of worse evil could we allow?  To let such beings touch knowledge of
true power might have led them to threaten all the universe.  Sad as it
is, tragic as the future must become, Lysaer's exposure offered the
lesser risk.  Weep with us all, the decision was never made unmourned."

"Unmourned, by Ath, that's not enough!"  Alone on the windswept
terrace, Dakar reached in sudden fury and hurled the flask and its
priceless dregs away.  It smashed against the wall, an explosion of
flying shards that raked through air and settled to unsatisfying
stillness.  The events of the Mistwraith's confinement would never on a
prayer end in bloodless quiet in Ithamon.  Reproached by the sweetish
smell of telir that evaporated away on the wind, Dakar buried his face
in dark wool and wept until his chest ached.

"You heartless, unprincipled bastard," he shouted finally, in a
vicious hope that Sethvir would overhear and channel all his rage
straight back to his Fellowship master.

For the seeds of evil had been sown, well and deeply.  All the telir
brandy in Athera could never soften the chaos still to be reaped at the
ill-omened coronation in Etarra.

Insurrection

True sunlight blazed down upon the city of Etarra, whose squat red
walls and square bastions had known only the gray dankness of mist
since the day the first footings were raised.

The merchant guilds hailed the event as a catastrophe.

Trade stalled from the moment the lampblacks raced yelling to the
watchkeeps with word that the east sky dawned red like running blood.

Sentries reported the same from forsaken posts of duty on the walls.

Terror-struck citizens huddled indoors waiting to die of
Ath-knew-what sort of sickness as day brightened to a fearful white
dazzle.  The phenomenon had to be sorcery: the sky was blue, and the
light burned harshly enough to make the eyes ache.  Rumors ran rampant,
and legends from the time before the uprising were whispered behind
shuttered windows stuffed with blankets.  By night, the city
apothecaries opened their shops and fattened their purses on profits
wrung from unguents to ward off blindness.  When by the next day the
herders holed up in their crofts failed to drive livestock to the
butcher, city folk went hungry.  Flour ran short.  The rich resorted to
bribes until the enterprising poor began to rifle guild warehouses.

Nobody died of exposure.

The meanest of beggars suffered no impairment of vision, though the
burglaries were accomplished in streets ablaze under sunlight.

Ministers whose guilds suffered losses howled for justice, while
dispatching assassins on the sly; trade consortiums took advantage of
the chaos to bash rivals, and given no lawful satisfaction, robbed
merchants resorted to lynchings.

Already corrupt, Etarra grew dangerous in unrest.

Since the uncanny sky showed no sign of clouding back to normal,
Morfett, Lord Supreme Governor, prepared with a martyr's stoicism to
restore order and industry to his city.

He dug out from under a massive heap of quilts, shed the clinging
arms of his wife, and forced his trembling, weeping house steward to
press his collar of state.  When a morning spent sweating under the
naked sun failed to inspire warring factions to resume commerce, he
called Lord Commander Diegan to muster the city guard.  At lance point
the most recalcitrant citizen would be forced to accept the risk of
roasting under the Sithaer-sent scourge of harsh sunlight.

For some days, awnings sold at a premium.

Still, bribes were needed to get the crofters and the caravan drovers
to brave the open country.  The tax coffers dunned for the headhunters'
bounties by the end of that fracas stood empty.  Lord Governor Morfett
bolted comfits to ease his agitation.  Pounds settled on his already
ample girth and added pouches to his layers of sagging chins.

On the brink of restored equilibrium, worse happened.

A Fellowship Sorcerer appeared on the city's inner battlement.

No one had admitted him.  He simply materialized, robed in maroon
velvet, his eyes mild as pond water over a beard like frizzled fleece.

The last thing he resembled was a power remanifested out of legend.

The duty guard mistook him for somebody's misdirected grandfather
until a kindly effort to offer an escort home earned him a list of
outrageous amendments to be appended to the city's ruling charter.

Summoned in haste from his supper, Lord Governor Morfett stood
thunderstruck in cold wind with his napkin still flapping in a tuck
behind his collar ruffles.

"You will also air out the guest suite reserved for state visitors,"
Sethvir said with an aplomb that disallowed reality; the Lord Governor
had already repeated that his first petition was preposterous.

"If it's lodging you want," Morfett protested, and stopped.

The words he had intended to utter concerning dispensation of charity
were forgotten as the napkin in his collar suddenly seemed to bind up
his throat.

The Sorcerer said nothing, but only gave back a maddening, poetic
smile that somehow looked slick as a cat's.

And though he insinuated himself into Morfett's private dining hall
for the duration of the Lord Governor's lunch, of a sudden everything
went wrong.  The crofters locked themselves indoors all over
again-naturally without offer to return the city's funds.  The trade
guilds set up a yelping chorus of accusations and touched off
repercussions like a fall of political-dominoes.  The poor in the
streets threatened riots.  Morfett only belatedly discovered that two
more Sorcerers had joined the first.  More guest rooms were aired in
the Lord Governor's private palace.  His kitchens were cast into
turmoil, and upon inquiry his own house steward informed him that his
cooks were ransacking the larder in preparation for feasting royalty.

Livid could barely describe Morfett's reaction.  He had eaten too
much for days, and now, under pressure, regretted it.  His throat
swelled, his lungs filled, and his fat jiggled as he prepared to
countermand everything.  But rage rendered him incoherent a fatal
second too long.

Two more Sorcerers materialized at his elbows, one portly and bearded
and the other green-clad, elegant, in his eyes an unrighteous gleam of
amusement.  Before Morfett could recover speech, he found himself
whisked without benefit of doors or stairs to his chambers.

There, Sethvir politely offered him cold tea, and with perfect
diction, recited the list of Morfett's titles, a feat the city herald
only managed occasionally without mistakes.  Morfett choked.  There was
ice in his goblet, the crystal of which was finer than any piece in his
wife's dower cupboards.  As three Sorcerers regarded him with the
piercing interest a bug netter might show a rare insect, he sketched a
sign against evil and collapsed in a faint upon the carpet.

"You'd think there'd need to be a backbone to support such a grand
weight of lard," Kharadmon said tartly.  ' He ignored the black look
shot him by Luhaine, while Sethvir by himself lifted a Lord Governor
better than twice his size and weight, and deposited his unconscious
bulk upon an equally overstuffed sofa.

From his labors, the Warden of Althain raised eyes sparkling with
glee.  "Be careful.  When Morfett recovers his wits, he has a fast and
crafty knack for hiring assassins."

Kharadmon gave back a toothy grin.  "Then, colleagues, we have every
sane excuse to keep him flustered."  Devilish in speculation, he said,
"Do you think him a match for Arithon s'Ffalenn?"

Sethvir laughed.  "We're going to find out all too quickly."

Upon his awakening, Morfett was told that he would be swearing fealty
to a s'Ffalenn king within a fortnight, and that governance of Etarra
would be made to conform to Rathain's original royal charter.

The Lord Governor's pouched eyes narrowed.  "Over my dead body."

"If need be," Kharadmon said, unblinking.

Acute enough to differentiate a threat from a promise, Morfett gave
unctuous agreement, then launched on a vicious course of subterfuge.

Two days of intrigue yielded no satisfaction.  Bribes failed to budge
even the greediest factions.  Worse than implacable, the farmers had
somehow become obsessed by the idea that guild overlords no longer
owned land rights.  They bandied legalities like barristers and backed
their petition with threat of strikes.  When hired assassins failed to
silence their spokesman, Morfett discovered why.  A soft-spoken
stranger who wore a black hat had sown insurrection among the country
folk with a tact that confounded.  The city seneshal scribed a writ for
the man's arrest, only to find that he was a Sorcerer also.

The incident left the Lord Governor indisposed.

He lay ill on silk sheets while, in disregard of politics or loyalty,
his wife and daughters surrounded themselves with seamstresses who
labored over sarcenets, brocades, and pearl fringework to create a
whole wardrobe of new gowns.

"But this is the sensation of the season!"  his wife hollered
indignantly through the bedchamber doorway.  "If we're going to be
hosting blooded royalty, everybody important shall come calling.  This
prince might be welcomed as the devil, but your daughters would surely
become laughingstocks were we all wearing last spring's fashions!"

Morfett clapped his hands over his ears and groaned.  His city and
his household had slipped his control.  Held miserably supine by his
churning stomach, he concluded that Etarra's citizens had been
bewitched; only foul sorcery could corrupt them from five centuries of
crownless rule.  Storms, strikes, a plague of fiendr even the
manifestation of Dharkaron's divine chariot, would have been kinder
than this infestation of mages.  The thought of kneeling before royalty
caused Morfett to howl at his body servant to attend him at once with
the chamberpot.

He got instead the imposing, blue-clad Sorcerer Asandir, who cured
his upset stomach directly and sent every servant within earshot
scurrying to fetch official clothing.

"Get up!"  This mage evinced none of Sethvir's vague charm.  "The
council and trade ministers are convened in the oratory, and most of
Etarra's populace crowds the trade square in hot anticipation of your
speech."

The Lord Governor hauled his bulk upright and found himself stuffed
unpleasantly fast into an embroidered shirt with gold clasps.

He might have feigned the return of his cramps had Asandir's steely
manner not been impervious to falsehood.

Regaled in tasteful colors for the first time since his birth,
Morfett, Defender of Trade, Protector of Justice, and Lord Governor
Supreme of the Northern Reaches, lumbered like a disgruntled bear from
his lair to initiate due process to reestablish monarchy in Rathain.

scarce in the markets there.  The post riders all say the same.

Farmers won't sell to the townsmen, and talk of sorcerers and
monarchy has the trade guilds lathered into an uproar .....

Overviews

In a hall of gilt and alabaster, Lirenda, First Koriani Enchantress,
delivers her report to the Prime: "Desh-thiere's remains have been
sealed under ward and imprisoned in the caves at Skelseng's Gate.  This
disposition is intended to be temporary.  When royal rule is
re-established at Etarra, the Fellowship will transfer the Mistwraith
to a place of more permanent captivity.  We might learn then why they
faltered at the end and preserved the fell creature alive.  .

.

Under the Strakewood's evergreens in the northern reaches of Rathain,
the clan gathering to celebrate new sunlight extends for a fortnight;
bored with the feasting, too young yet to dance, a pair of barbarian
boys break away from the festivities to play at raids on Etarra
merchants.  . . .
In a tavern yard shadowed by the snow-capped peaks of the Mathoms,
Elaira waters her bay mare while the horse master offers well-meant
advice: "If it's on to Etarra you're bound, let the cook fill your
saddle bags.  Provisions are

 XIII.  Etarra

The Lord Governor Supreme of Etarra was never a man to worry off
weight in a crisis.  On the morning the royal heir was to arrive, he
found his carnelian-studded belt pinched his waist.  His best boots
were tight around the calves, and the bunions on his feet grown much
worse.

Small annoyances became major aggravations when one was forced to
stand on display under sunlight too warm for brocades.  Jostled by
anxious city ministers who crowded the road and the verges before
Etarra's southern gate, Morfett squeezed another sigh past the
constriction of his pearlstudded collar.  Today the Sorcerer riding
herd upon his obligations was Sethvir.  Offended that the Warden of
Althain should flaunt his own demands concerning finery by wearing a
robe as threadbare and ink-stained at the cuffs as the one he had first
appeared in, Morfett silently fumed.  His head ached, made worse by the
nuisance that his gold-sewn scarlet clashed offensively with maroon.

At least the post was not filled by Asandir, who was altogether less
forgiving over matters of personal sensitivity.

"Asandir will be escorting the prince," the Warden of Althain
announced in uncanny response to private thought.

He turned dreamy eyes upon the fidgeting person of the Lord Governor.
"The ballads from times before the mists name him Kingmaker, because
every royal head in the history of humankind has been crowned by his
hand."

"How uselessly sentimental."  Morfett tugged at his jacket, the
buttons of which pinched his breath.

The outer gates of Etarra overlooked a steep slope, the city itself
wedged across the gap between the Mathorns' eastern foothills and a
west-jutting spur of the Skyshiels.

Accessed by five roads, the approach from Daon Ramon was a
switched-back conglomeration of mud bricks and shoring fladened the
original pack trail enough for the passage ons.  What level ground
remained before the gate was already uncomfortably crowded, a forced
stir through packed bodies indicating the arrival of still more city
officials.  The turnout commanded by the Sorcerers was thorough enough
to impress.  Beside guild ministers, trade officials, and council
governors, many had brought along their perversely curious wives.

Still sore in the throat from the shouting required to keep his
spouse and daughters properly at home, Morfett said, "The governors'
council will never acknowledge your pretender's right to rule."

Sethvir gave back his most wayward an maddening smile.  "Give them
time."

Somebody coughed.  Morfett twisted around and saw a lady in pearls
and a gown edged in snow lynx raise a quick hand to her mouth.  Her
tissue-clad shoulders still shook, which betrayed her smothered
laughter.  At her side, cloaked in white ermine and official city
scarlet, and bedecked with a dazzle of diamonds and gold chains, her
brother Diegan, commander of the guard, looked stiffly furious.  Oh no,
concluded Morfett, neither time nor bloodshed would soften his city's
stance.  The prince Etarra's governors had been rousted out to greet
was going to be driven from his grab to restore the monarchy with
tucked tail like a mongrel cur.

The Sorcerer.  in his tawdry robe incongruously began to chuckle.

"Dharkaron's chariot," he swore mildly.  "I can't wait to see what
happens when you meet your roya lege.

"A boy, just barely grown," Morfett sneered.  "He'll be sorry to find
that bribes won't buy him sovereignty."

At this, Sethvir seemed stunned speechless.

Lord Governor Morfett stroked his chins and fatuously gave himself
the victory.

The prince's party must have rounded the last switchback then, for
shouts arose from the countryfolk gathered along the lower roadway.

Their cheers were boisterously joyful, after the Sorcerers' promise
to pry croft rents away from the land guilds.  Since the ministers
whose authority had been bypassed had ratified no such relinquishment,
of course, the blandishment was false.  Morfett sweated in irritation.

Though nothing could be seen yet from his vantage point before the
gatehouse, the officials all began to elbow and press in their
eagerness.  Shorter than his peers by a head, Morfett had to crane his
neck like any bumpkin to retain his view of the valley.

He anticipated a cavalcade, resplendent with jeweled trappings and
trailing banners, and wagons with silk streamers and canopies.  That
was what one would expect of a prince, or so his wife had speculated in
her gossip with cronies for a week.  Since pomp in Etarra established
status, a royal retinue would impress only if it was blindingly,
ostentatiously lavish.

Morfett saw just four horsemen, unattended, on mounts that wore no
caparisons.  They carried no banners or streamers; neither did they
prove to be outriders for another larger party.  Asandir was the one
astride the black; at least, the dark, silver-bordered cloak that
billowed in the gusts was unmistakably his austere style.  The fat man
in russet on the paint looked too undignified for a prince; his
companion, a fair man, owned the bearing, but though his velvets were
cut from indigo deep enough to raise envy from the cloth guild, he wore
no royal device.

That left the slight, straight figure on the dun with the irregular
marking on her neck.

Morfett's narrowed eyes fastened upon that last rider with the
keenness of a snake that measures its distance to strike.

A green cloak with the silver heraldic leopard of Rathain muffled the
man and most of the horse.  The hands that gripped the dun's reins were
spare as any boy's, and skilled.

The dun was inventively difficult.  From a distance, the face of the
rider looked fine-chiseled, and the black hair Morfett heard was
distinctive of s'Ffalenn blew uncovered in the breeze.

The Lord Governor smiled in viperish glee.  "A child," he exulted.

His supposition to Sethvir fortuitously seemed confirmed: the
pretender to Rathain's throne was a green youth, and Etarran politics
would devour him.

Expansive, nearly happy, the Lord Governor bestowed a dimpled smile
upon the Warden of Althain, who now looked distractedly deadpan.

"Sorcerer," Morfett mocked, "here's my sanction.  Let the affirmation
ceremony for this prince's right of ancestry take place on Etarran
soil.  His Grace has my leave to chill his feet in our dirt, may he
grub the worms' favor from the honor!"

Chuckles rippled through the ranks of Etarra's officials.

Women tittered while, like the boom of a storm surge against the
slope below the walls, cries of redoubled welcome arose from the
riffraff of farmers.

"Come forward," Sethvir invited over the noise.  "Your word as given,
Lord Governor, we'll proceed to acknowledge Rathain's prince."

"Then I don't have to kiss his royal cheeks until he's barefoot?"

Morfett roared with laughter; by Ath, he would retain the upper hand.

"As you wish, Sorcerer!  Let us go on to the courtyard of the
fountains, and let your puppet prince forgo this sham of receiving my
welcome at the gate!"

Flushed as he enjoyed his huge joke, Morfett parked his rump on the
combing of a terra cotta retaining wall.  The pruned-off stubble of
rosebushes that hitched at his goldstitched jacket scarcely merited
attention, the charade to be enacted in the flowerbeds being far too
rich to miss.  In signal unconcern for their silks and their ribbons,
high city officials and the pedigreed curious who were last to arrive
jockeyed for position between rows of potted trees and greening
topiary.  The prince's party entered.  Jeers blended with the trickle
of the fountains, while Asandir caught the dun mare's reins to foil her
spirited sidle.  Her royal burden dismounted.

Up close, the green cloak more than ever overwhelmed the lightly knit
frame of the prince.

"Do you suppose he's inbred to be so delicate?"  muttered Diegan to a
stifled explosion of hilarity.  Somebody passed a flask of wine.

Fanned by Morfett's bold sarcasm, the mood of Etarra's well-born
displayed the viciousness gloved in gaiety that would have enlivened an
out-of-season garden party.  The courtyard's eight-foot-high mortised
walls reflected the women's disparaging remarks with the clarity of an
amphitheater.

The dun's reins were passed to an unseen attendant, while the
fair-haired companion in his elegant velvets unclasped the green cloak
and bared the royal shoulders.

Morfett moistened plump lips and lingeringly assessed his enemy.

To Etarran eyes, the prince who stood revealed was plainly clad to a
point that invited ridicule.  His tunic and shirt were cut of unadorned
linen that anyone less lazy than a peasant at least would have bothered
to bleach white.  The natural fibers emphasized a complexion that
looked tintless and porcelain pale.  When Asandir faced the prince and
took slender fingers into his own to escort his royal charge forward,
Morfett could have crowed.  The s'Ffalenn wore no jewelry.  The only
gemstones on him were the emerald in his sword hilt, which, though well
cut, could not be called large, and an ordinary white gold signet ring
that showed the battering of hard wear.

"Plain as a forest barbarian," jibed the minister of the weaver's
guild.

Sethvir raised his eyebrows in reproof.  "Every s'Ffalenn to be
sanctioned for succession came to his ceremony unadorned."

But the spirit of exuberant contempt by now had infected the whole
gathering.

The prince's poise showed stiffness as he removed his boots.  He
assumed his place in the flowerbed, ankle deep in black soil hoed up by
the gardeners and awaiting the sprouting of spring lilies.  Asandir
kept hold on his hands and intoned a ritual in a softly sonorous voice.

None of Etarra's elite cared to hold still enough to listen.

Diegan's sister was loudly pointing out to the half-deaf seneschal of
the treasury that the royal ankles had scars exactly like marks made by
felon's shackles.  The subject was snapped up in speculation by a
junior clerk who gasped out improvised doggerel between whoops and
snorts of stifled laughter.  Morfett saw no need to offer reprimand.

The damned Fellowship mages had been duly warned how his council felt
toward monarchy.

The prince knelt on cue.  His Sorcerer chaperon bent with him and
scooped a double handful of earth, which he lifted above wind-ruffled
raven hair.

Morfett choked back a grin.  Less restrained, Diegan murmured from
behind, "Ath, did anybody check whether pig's dung and ditch waste had
been spread in for fertilizer yet?"

The Sorcerer must have overheard.  He cupped his burden nonetheless
and his voice echoed back from sandstone walls, cutting through the
busy buzz of satire.  "Arithon, Teir' s'Falenn, direct line descendant
of Torbrand, first High King of Rathain, I affirm your right of
succession.  As this realm will be yours to guard, so are you bound to
the land."

Diegan's chuckles choked off, replaced by blank rage.

"Right of succession?  Who sanctioned this?"

Caught weeping tears of suppressed mirth, Morfett rounded in a
dawning explosion of anger.  Without care for the dearth of privacy, he
loudly upbraided Sethvir.  "You said the royal bastard was only to be
affirmed in his ancestry!"

But the Warden of Althain had all too conveniently vanished.

While the Lord Governor wildly sought to find him, his peripheral
vision caught a bluffed flash of light.  He whirled again to face the
garden.  There knelt the prince, and crowned, but not with soil or
pig's dung.  A circlet of shining silver crossed his brow that had been
nowhere in evidence before.  Asandir's hands fell away and then
steadied him back on his feet.

"Ath!"  someone shouted in shaky awe.  "Did you see?

That Sorcerer changed dirt into silver!"

Sethvir chose that moment to reappear.  "It is done, the circlet of
sanction wrought from the soil of Rathain, my Lord Governor.  Time has
come to congratulate your acknowledged prince."

"I gave no such consent!  What has passed was done on false
pretense!"  Morfett dug in his toes, his chin out-thrust like a
bulldog's.  Yet no Sorcerer of the Fellowship forced him forward.

Instead, Rathain's prince came to him.

All his adult life, Morfett had battled the misfortune that short
stature forced him to peer up at even his lowliest scullion.  The shock
of meeting green eyes that were level with his own caused him an
involuntary step back.

"You need not kneel," informed the silver-crowned personage whose
face turned out not to be delicate, but as bloodless and defined as if
chipped from white quartz.  "I have not accepted your fealty."

"Nor will you!"  Trembling with mortification for the fact he had
been duped in public, Morfett curled his lip.  "The governors' council,
of which I am head, refuses to acknowledge your existence."

A breeze rattled the dry canes of the roses and flicked a twist of
black hair from the circlet.  Too late Morfett saw that this prince had
the look of a sorcerer: eyes that were piercing and level and
strikingly devoid of antagonism.  Like those Fellowship colleagues
whose nefarious machinations had produced him, he could answer a man's
unspok@ thoughts.  "If you and your council rule justly, you need have
no fear of me."

The officials surrounding Morfett were belatedly iecognizing the
legalities behind Asandir's late speech.  From all sides, their ribald
commentary was replaced by murmurs of incredulity and rage.

"You have not been given any right of sovereignty in this city!"

Diegan, commander of the guard, interposed from behind his Lord
Governor's shoulder.

"True."  Arithon's gaze left Morfett to encompass the courtier who
had spoken out of turn, and whose dandyish cloak was thrown back to
reveal a hand clenched on a sword hilt.  The weapon was flashily
bejeweled; if the steel behind its gold-chased quillons was something
more than ceremonial, Arithon dismissed the threat.  His brows twitched
up in flippant challenge.  "But if this contest were a footrace, the
outcome would hardly merit contest.  Do you bet?"

"All that I have," Diegan answered thickly.  "That should warn you."

"Oh, I was warned," said Arithon with poorly concealed impatience.

"Too well, too late, and in rich and tedious detail.  In some things
I've had less choice than you have."

Too fast for verbal riposte, and in total disregard for the captain's
aggressive posture, he whipped around to address Asandir.

"You've had your display.  Whether or not the person who took charge
of my boots reappears with intent to return them, I would be pleased to
retire."

The exchange ended so quickly that Morfett was left with his mouth
open.  The prince was whisked off amid his circle of Sorcerers, but the
edged and dangerous antagonism he had sown among the townsmen remained,
festering and unsatisfied.  Diegan stared after the departed royal
party with his jaw clenched.  Amid widening circles of loud talk,
guildsmen in brocades were shaking fists or banded together in
disturbed groups.  Etarra's three fraternities of assassins were going
to profit, to judge by the speed with which curses transformed into
whispering.  As husbands bandied plots like vigilantes, wives and
daughters were being unceremoniously bundled back home.

Livid and speechless, and left no target for his outrage, the Lord
Governor leaned gratefully on the hand that answered his need for
support.  "The effrontery of the bastard!"

he spluttered when he finally recovered his breath.  "Footrace,
indeed!  Does he think us a pack of rank schoolboys?"

"He can be difficult," an impressive personage with pale gold hair
volunteered in commiseration.  "But I have never known him to be
anything less than fair."

That instant Morfett realized that his benefactor was gently
attempting to draw him apart from his councilmen.

He yanked back, bristling fury.  "Who are you?"  Blue velvet clothing
might fail to jog his memory, but the green heraldic cloak folded over
the stranger's arm at once identified the prince's blond-haired
companion.  "Never mind," Morfett snapped.  "You're one of the royal
cronies, and assuredly no help to Etarra."

Still smiling, Lysaer said, "Quite the contrary.  I'm the one royal
crony who's not a sorcerer, and also, the only friend you have who
understands the cross-grained nature of your prince."

The commander of the guard perked up instantly.  "I know a tavern, 11
he invited, and grumbling, Morfett allowed him self to be swept along
into their wake.

The heavy door boomed closed.  Tired to his bones, Arithon s'Ffalenn
leaned back against uncomfortable, brassstudded panels.

Muffled, the voice of the Lord Governor's wife nattered after him
from the outside hallway.  "Do make yourself comfortable, Your Grace.

Of course, my house staff and servants will eagerly attend to your
needs."

Arithon replied in tones of steel-clad politeness.  "Your kindness is
generous.  I shall be content to sleep undisturbed."  The decorative
studs that gouged his back impelled him to straighten as he finished
his survey of the guest chamber.

The glitter made his head ache.  Glass beading riddled the paneled
walls, and gilt casements with rose-tinted panes clashed unmercifully
with a floor laid out in tiles.  These also were patterned, a blaring
assemblage of lozenges done in saffron, amber, and violet; the
furnishings had raised knots in gold, every padded edge decked in silk
twist and fringe.

Even the carpets sported tassels.

A sortie from the bed to the privy would require lighted candles to
forestall hooked toes and whacked shins.

Arithon shut his eyes and wished back the stark hills of Daon Ramon.
The windswept ruins there at least kept the tatters of dignity.

"You haven't seen the fur quilts yet," Asandir invited in dry humor
from the other side of the room.  Against the chamber's blinding
opulence, his preferred midnight blue and silver made him grim as an
aspect of Dharkaron dispatched to punish mortal vanity.

"Excuse me."  Arithon wished only to forget his first sight of
Etarra; with copper-clad domes clustered thick as warts behind square
bastions, the city resembled a fat toad squatted between weathered
slate mountains.  He sighed and reopened his eyes.  "I presume Sethvir
brought the records?"

"If you can make out lettering between the flourishes affected by
Etarra's clerks," groused the Warden of Althain.

Surrounded by leather-bound ledgers heaped in stacks in an alcove, he
looked nothing less than besieged.  "I hate to pain you further."

He waved a haphazard scroll case toward a pair of cherubs whose
carved curls sprouted indigo candles.  "But the lady of the house
brought these when I asked for more light."

"Burn them, and the archives, too!"  Arithon's laughter took on a
baleful edge.  "We'd save a lot of bother if we could level this
atrocity and build a new city from the rubble."

Sethvir waggled a quill pen at him.  "Don't imagine we haven't been
tempted!"  Then he blinked and looked vague and snapped his fingers:
both cherub candles sprouted flame.

The wax as it heated gave off a cloying perfume.  A casement perforce
was unlatched, and in the draft the new light wavered over features
shaded toward concern.  "A nasty night of reading for us both.

You won't like it.  Etarran guilds resolve their disputes on the
blades of hired assassins."

Not too exhausted to field subtleties, Arithon hooked off his silver
circlet.  "How many wards of guard did you need to set over this room?"

Sethvir and Asandir exchanged a glance, but neither one gave him
answer.

"Never mind."  Arithon hurled the royal fillet into the nearest
padded chair.  "If the governors' council wants a knife in my back, by
morning I'll make them a reason."

But reason had already been given, as the Sorcerers had cause to
know.  They did not discuss the three paid killers that had earlier
been unobtrusively foiled.  The viper's nest of factions that ruled the
city stood united in their cause to see the s'Ffalenn royal line killed
off.  Vigilance over Arithon's safety could never for a moment be
relaxed.

For the rest of the afternoon and well on into evening, the prince of
Rathain and the Sorcerers remained in seclusion, poring over old
records.  Dakar came back.  An exhaustive tour of the taverns had
affirmed his opinion that Etarra brewed terrible ale.  Dispatched,
staggering, to the scullery, he fetched back a light meal, chilled
wine, and candles from the servants' wing that thankfully did not merit
any scent.

His errands finished, he sprawled full-length on the fur quilts, the
boots he had forgotten to remove sticking through the rods of the
bedstead.

At midnight, Lysaer stepped in, lightly flushed, a satisfied smile on
his face.  He hooked Arithon's circlet off the chair, set it safely on
a tortoiseshell side table, and sat.  "Ath, this room is as
overdecorated as the taproom I just came from."

He sniffed and, grinning, added, "It reeks in here like a brothel
madam's boudoir."

Arithon baited blandly, "You should have been here when the candles
were fresh.  They would've given you an erection.  And anyway, I'm
surprised you can tell."

At Lysaer's mystification, Sethvir said, "You smell like you bathed
in cheap gin.  By that, dare we presume you accomplished your
assignment and lasted for the duration?"

Lysaer laughed.  "When I retired, the elect of the guilds were
banging their tankards on the table.  The foppishlooking fellow who's
commander of Etarra's guard was singing war songs off-key, and the
barmaids were hoisting the Lord Governor into a brewer's wagon to be
delivered to the arms of his wife.  Gentlemen, what news I have is
good.

Tomorrow would have brought foul and secret machinations against our
prince, except the messengers entrusted to spread word of the
arrangements met with mishap.  Kharadmon has an unsubtle touch, I must
say, since one of them slipped in horse dung and apparently broke his
elbow.  His yelling disrupted half the prostitutes in the shanty
district.  The names he chose to curse at the top of his lungs were a
frank embarrassment."

"That must have upset Commander Diegan's sensibilities," Sethvir
ventured, his head disappeared behind the pages of yet another yellowed
ledger.

"Oh, yes."  Lysaer forgot his distaste for orange tassels and tipped
his head back into the chair cushions.  "The Lord Commander of the
Guard rousted out his head captainGnudsog, is it?  The squat fellow
with the muscles and the scars.  He silenced the uproar with a battle
mace by breaking the messenger's jaw.  The bone setters are still busy.

To mend appearances, Etarra's council will convene tomorrow morning
behind barred doors, to formalize reformed laws to ban the monarchy.

The guild ministers already bicker like fishwives.  Hung over as
they're likely to become, they'll lock horns over the language until
noon."

"Oh, dear."  Sethvir forsook the accounts to jab fingers through a
cock's comb of stray hair.  "Are you saying you got them all in their
cups?"

Dakar answered from the bed with his eyes still closed.

"They were irked enough to dance on the tables, anyway.

All Lysaer did was keep them filling their tankards."

"Who paid for the gin?"  asked Asandir.

"That's the beauty of it," Lysaer said, infectiously lapsed into
merriness.  "The tavern was owned by the vintner's guild, and drinks
were declared on the house."

Lord Governor Morfett set the massive gold seal of the city into
puddled scarlet wax.  Then, while the guild ministers added their own
signatures and ribbons, he shoved his knuckles into a fringe of damp
hair and cradled his splitting head.  A servant had to touch his sleeve
twice before he realized: the pounding came from the doorway, echoing
the throb inside his skull.

"Let them in," he said through his palms.  "The damned Sorcerers can
raise a commotion all they like.  Our edict is signed into law, and
their prince will be in irons by afternoon."

A hag-ridden secretary scurried to unbar the door.  He was all but
knocked down as the panels burst inward and a flood of agitated
barristers barged through.

The newcomers started shouting all at once.

From the governor's chair on the dais, Morfett screamed for order.

By the time he made himself heard, his head was splitting.  The
councilmen around him were sweating, or vainly covering their ears to
ease their hangovers.  Not a few looked ready to be sick.

When the men could be made to speak in more orderly fashion, their
complaints added up to disaster.

The Sorcerers and their prince had spent an industrious morning,
beginning with a review of Etarra's condemned.

By the tenets of Rathain's royal charter, it transpired that
two-thirds of the city's prisoners were wrongfully tried and sentenced.

"Pardons and reprieves from execution!"  Morfett howled.

"Worse," a clerk interrupted.  "The prince has also vouched treasury
funds for reimbursement of unfair fines."

"His erring royal grace can't do that!"  Morfett jumped to his feet.
"A Teir's'Ffalenn has no right to set his seal to any documents unless
and until there's a coronation.  The decrees are false!  No such
ceremony has been ratified!"

"No," corrected Etarra's seneschal sadly.  He looked and sounded like
a kicked hound.  "But he could, and did, post documents that name the
prisoners to be acquitted on the day he's invested'as high king."

"Along with which laws will be repealed, which taxes eliminated, and
how many public servants shall be relieved from their posts without
pay!"  This inveigling was worse than the feud ongoing between the iron
mongers and the furniture joiners, who captured and tortured each
other's apprentices to blackmail concessions for trade secrets.

Morfett slammed his fists on the high table, spattering ink and
official wax over mother-of-pearl inlay.  "Is this what you've come
here to tell me?"

Amid cringing rows of officials, not one met their Lord Governor's
furious outburst.

"Dharkaron take you for a pack of piddling puppies!"

Morfett stuck out his hand toward his commander of the guard.

"Give me our new writ!  Then go at once and tell Gnudsog to muster a
squad of enforcers.  I'll see that s'Ffalenn bastard in chains and
flogged for fomenting insurrection.

Fiends and Ath's fury, no meddling Fellowship Sorcerer's going to
raise a hand to stop me!"

"No sorcerer will, but your people might," a voice volunteered from
the entry.  Sethvir stepped inside, bemused as a philosopher given new
audience for his theories.  "Have you been listening?"  And he pushed
the outer door panels open.

A wave of sound reverberated into the council hall.  The mob in the
streets beyond the antechamber was not outraged but cheering, and
against any law of nature, Sethvir's mild tone carried clearly over the
din.  "Rumors spread that your ministers met to outlaw the royal
charter.  To keep an irate mob of farmers from storming your doors and
tearing your councilmen limb from limb, the First City Alderman
suggested the contrary: that the documents being drawn were in fact an
abdication of the guilds from ruling power, and an affirmation of
s'Ffalenn right of sovereignty.  Craftsmen and laborers have taken to
the streets in celebration.

The north gate bell towers play carillons, and the shanty district
whores are throwing posies.  If you end this session without a writ for
a royal coronation, your people of Etarra are going to riot."

"Let them!"  Diegan's rebuttal rang like a whip crack over the noise.
"I'd rather find myself lynched than bend my knee to any high king."

He made as if to push past, but the dignitaries beside him caught his
wrists.  There were others of the council not so staunch.  Should the
mobs turn lawless in the streets, the city guard could not stay them.
Looting would be followed by bloodshed, and the damage to trade would
be incalculable.

Pressured to give in by a mournful flock of peers, the Lord Governor
of the city waved for Diegan to subside.  Then he sat down abruptly
with his knuckles jammed against his teeth.  Today the Sorcerers'
timing had them beaten.  But the Fellowship could hardly shepherd the
stew of Etarra's politics indefinitely.  Best to accept this defeat and
save resources to upset s'Ffalenn rule another day.  On the floor,
trodden under the milling feet of the pedigreed elect of Etarra, the
morning's brave warrant to arrest the prince came to an ignominious
end.

Diegan tugged free of the dignitaries, unpacified.  "It won't be that
easy," he lashed at Sethvir.  "The rabble might love the idea of a high
king today.  But when unrest drives them to turn, no blandishments your
prince can offer will appease them."

"Blandishments?"  Sethvir looked thrilled as a madcap apothecary
prepared to make gold from plain clay.  "I rather thought His Grace
would give them back their chartered freedom."

Diegan's lip curled in a snarl.  Blithe as the Warden of Althain
could appear, as much as he seemed a doddering elder of a stripe to
knot strings around his wrists to nudge a senile memory, he was no such
vague old fool.

He had Etarra's council at bay, and he knew it.

But his position was dangerously precarious.  Moment to moment, any
of a thousand missed details could erupt into bloody uprising as
upheaval gave rise to panic.  The citizens outside the council hall
were far from tranquil, nowhere near under control.  Only the poor and
the disaffected roamed the streets.  Sensible citizens of stature had
barricaded their families inside their houses in dread.  The
Fellowship's straits were not invisible.  They could not be everywhere.

Even as the governors' council drafted their formal abdication,
Diegan continued to collect reports.

Guilds were seizing the disruption as cover to wage less covert
rivalries; five men of good families lay dead from unmarked knives.

Asandir was busy protecting the moneylender who funded the treasury's
bottomless capacity to dispense bribes from a stone-throwing mob, who
protested paying taxes for usury.  Traithe, at the south ward armory,
barred Gnudsog's deputies from the spare weapons stores, while,
impervious to attempts by all three fraternities of assassins, Arithon
was being fitted for dress boots by Etarra's most fashionable cobbler.

The discorporate mages Kharadmon and Luhaine assuredly were behind
the royal luck.

Before the wax on the writs that confirmed s'Ffalenn right of
sovereignty grew cool, and despite the frustrated opposition of a
governors' council hazed like smoke-driven wasps, His Grace emerged in
princely splendor to read the Royal Charter of Rathain in the square
before the guild halls.  This time the ceremony was engineered with
enough glitter to make even Etarran excess seem drab.

Afterward, the populace could speak of nothing else.

The only man in the city less pleased than the Lord Governor and
Etarra's commander of the guard was Arithon s'Ffalenn himself.  Set on
display before the throng, he had managed his part as a musician might
play to a rowdy taproom.  Viewed as savior by the poor, unrelentingly
hated by the trade guilds, he weathered the feast that followed less
masterfully.  Mantled in the green, black, and silver of the s'Ffalenn
royal blazon, he mingled awkwardly with a merchant aristocracy of
faddish extremes.  The fine food and wines did not distract them from
their newest pleasure, which primarily consisted of prince baiting.

Intrigue poisoned the simplest word of courtesy, and while some wives
and ladies battled for the chance to ingratiate, they had.

sharp, cunning minds that searched also for weaknesses to exploit.

This was a city where children were urged to select their playfellows
according to their parents' rank and importance, and who were often as
not sent out visiting with instructions to overhear all they could of
the affairs of their schoolmates' fathers.

Arithon handled the pressure with the jumpy nerves of a cat caught
unsheltered in a rain shower.

Amid an obstacle course of laden tables, heavy with gold appointments
and pearl-stitched bunting, he needed his swordsman's footwork to
escape becoming entangled.  At his elbow, steady in support, was
Lysaer, who deflected social ripostes with a wit that invited friendly
laughter.  Less skilled at diplomacy, Arithon buried distaste behind
blandness.  He escaped being targeted by insults by never for a minute
staying still.  He did not trust these people, in his presence or out
of it.  He most carefully followed conversations that took place behind
his back.  Hounded as quarry set after by beaters, he saw openings.
Even Diegan's hostility revealed ways to breach the arrogance, the
mistrust, even the depths of antagonism that fenced him round.  But the
political complacencies such changes would demand of him played false
to his musician's ear.

Karthan, at least, had not been riddled with such viperish greed in
brocades; though piracy was no honest trade, its thievery had been
straightforwardly presented.

"You don't look well," murmured a female voice in his ear.

Rathain's prince turned to acknowledge the source: Diegan's
tawny-haired sister, who could drive a man silly with her looks, but
who was poised in her carriage as a snake.

Arithon inclined his circlet-crowned head.  Physically graceful in
discomfort, he offered his hand.  "Too much rich food.  Your city's
cooks have outdone themselves.  Shall we dance?"

She took his fingers, and her fine, arched brows sketched a frown
that swiftly erased.  She had not expected his calluses.  The
tightening around her eyes made plain that the discovery would be
passed to her brother: that despite the appearance of delicate build,
this prince's palms were no stranger to the sword.  "I find
conversation more interesting."

"How disappointing, for both of us.  Too much talk has been driving
me mad."  Arithon returned a regret as impenetrable as chipped quartz.
"For clever conversation with a lady, I must defer to Lysaer's charm."
Gently, firmly, he deposited her on the arm of the blond companion, who
disengaged from discussion with two ministers with a panache any
statesman must envy.

"Lord Commander Diegan's sister, Talith," Arithon introduced, and his
grin came and went at his half-brother's blank instant of appreciation.

The lady in her black-bordered, tawny brocades was enough to disrupt
conscious thought.

"My lady, Lysaer s'Ilessid."

"Commander Diegan mentioned you," said Talith in chilly politeness.
She turned her head quickly, but Arithon was gone, melted into the
crowd neatly as a fugitive Lyat.  Her annoyance this time' creased her
forehead.  He had defeated her before she had quite understood that her
methods were under attack.  Her stung pride would show if she put aside
dignity and chased him.  No prince should have been able to vanish that
swiftly, burdened as he was in state clothing.

The gossips might be right to name him sorcerer.

"Allow me," Lysaer interrupted her thought.  "Poor substitute though
I may be, in truth, his grace can be terrible company."

Talith turned back to find her pique met by a surprisingly earnest
concern.  Lysaer's elegant good looks did nothing to ease her thwarted
fury.  "He said he wanted to dance.  I should have accepted."

Lysaer set her down on a chair and as if by magic, a servant appeared
to pour wine.  "Arithon anticipated your refusal."  Smiling in the face
of her crassness, he added, "Given his perverse nature, and his
penchant for solitude, that's precisely the outcome he desired.

He's much easier to collar when alone.  Will you take red wine or
white?"

"White, please."  Talith accepted the offered goblet and raised it.
"To his absence, then."  She drank, surprised to discover herself
mollified.  Lysaer's sympathy held nothing of fawning.  He appreciated
her misjudgment and refrained from questioning her motives, suave
behavior that was piquantly Etarran.  Gauging the interested sparkle in
his eyes, she smiled back.  One missed opportunity could as easily be
exchanged for another.  From Lysaer she could glean as.

much, or perhaps more, to help the city's cause than from the irksome
s'Ffalenn prince himself Not until very much later, when her brother
the commander of the guard visited her chamber to ask what she had
garnered, did she realize how thoroughly she had been beguiled.

Throughout the evening spent with Lysaer, she had done most of the
talking.

"His charm is tough to resist," her brother grumbled.  He loosened
the amethyst buttons of his collar with fingers much softer than the
prince's, and smoothly unmarred by scars.  "Damned fair-haired conniver
is a diplomat down to his shoes.  Too bad he wasn't born townsman.  We
could've used one with his touch to restore our relations with the
farmers."

At council the following morning, the acknowledged prince of Rathain
was conspicuous by his absence.  Worn by the tact needed to smooth down
mutinous factions of councilmen, and strung up from picking apart
intrigues that clung and interwove between the guilds like dirtied
layers of old cobwebs, Lysaer decided he needed air.  Of late he had
been troubled by a succession of fierce headaches.  Threatened by
another recurrence, he begged leave of the proceedings when Sethvir
called recess at noon.

Lysaer seemed the only one bothered enough to pursue his
half-brother's irresponsibility.

A hurried check on the guest chambers at Lord Governor Morfett's
mansion revealed Arithon nowhere in evidence.

The bed with its orange tassels had not been slept in; the servants
were quick to offer gossip.  Laid out in atrociously warring colors
over the divan by the escritoire were the gold-worked shirt and green
tabard that should have attired the prince.

Alone with his annoyance in the vestibule, Lysaer cursed softly, then
started as somebody answered out of the empty air.

"If you want your half-brother, he's not here."

"Kharadmon, I suppose," Lysaer snapped; the morning's dicey diplomacy
had exhausted his tolerance for ghosts in dim corners who surprised
him.  "Why not be helpful by telling me where else he isn't?"

Equably the discorporate Sorcerer said, "I'll take you, unless you'd
rather charge about swearing at empty rooms."

"It's unfair," Lysaer conceded, "but I'm not in the mood to
apologize.  Help find my pirate bastard of a half-brother, and that
might improve my manners."

Kharadmon obliged by providing an address that turned out to be
located in the most dismal section of the poor quarter.

"You don't seem concerned about assassins," Lysaer noted, his
crassness now equally due to worry.

"Should I?"  Kharadmon chuckled.  "You may have a point, at that.

It's Luhaine's turn for royal guard duty."

Etarra's back district alleys looped across themselves like a botched
mesh of crochet.  The paving was slimy and frostheaved.  Lysaer ruined
his best pair of boots splashing through sewage and spotted on his
doublet the dubious fluids that dripped from a brothel's rotted
balconies.  He lost his way twice.  The street of the horse knackers
where he arrived at last reeked unbearably of rancid tallow and of the
waste from unwholesome carcasses.

He wanted to kick the next beggar who solicited him for coins; he had
already given all he had, and against his promise to Kharadmon, his
temper had done nothing but deteriorate.

Blackly annoyed for having volunteered responsibility for this
errand, he stalked around the next corner.

Laughter lilted off the lichen-stained fronts of the warehouses, as
incongruous in that dank, filthy alley as the chime of carillon bells.

The sound stopped Lysaer short.  The joy he recognized for Arithon's,
as joltingly out of character for the man as this unlikely, dreary
setting.

Pique replaced by curiosity, Lysaer edged forward.  Past the bend,
under the gloom of close-set walls, he saw a band of raggedy waifs, his
errant half-brother among them.  The prince of Rathain had spurned fine
clothes for what looked like a ragpicker's dress.  The elegant presence
of yesterday had been shed as if by a spell, leaving him noisome as his
company, whose unwashed, cynical faces were enraptured by something
that transpired on the ground.

Lysaer stepped cautiously around a maggot-crawling dump of gristle
and tendons.  His step disturbed older bones.

Flies buzzed up in a cloud, and his eyes watered at the stink..

He covered his nose with his sleeve just as a brigantine fashioned of
shadows scudded out from between one child's bare legs.  Of unknown sex
under its rags and tangled hair,' the creature screamed in delight,
while the ship caught an imaginary gust in her sails and heeled, lee
rail down, though a gutter of reeking brown runoff.

But the smell was forgotten totally as Lysaer also became entranced.

The little vessel cleared the shoals of a clogged culvert, rounded,
and curtsied over imaginary waves.  Banners flying, she executed a
saucy jibe, and with the breeze now full astern, surged on a run
straight for the mouth of the alley.

Lysaer's presence blocked her course.  Caught by surprise, Arithon
lost his grip on the complex assemblage of shadows that fashioned her
planking and sails.  His beautiful little vessel unraveled in a muddied
smear of colors that dissolved half a second before impact.

Heartsick to have spoiled the illusion, Lysaer looked up.

To the children, his silks and fine velvets had already marked him
for a figure of upper-crust authority.  Huge eyes in gaunt faces
glowered at him in accusation.  Arithon showed a flat lack of
expression.  The moment's overheard laughter now seemed passing fancy,
a dream put to rout by abrupt and unnecessary awakening.  Had Lysaer
not sensed the entreaty most desperately masked behind each hostile
expression, he might have felt physically threatened.

One of the taller figures in a tatterdemalion blanket sidled away
into shadow.  A second later, running footsteps fled splashing through
a side alley too narrow to be seen from Lysaer's vantage.

Trapped in the role of despoiler, he gave way to irritation.

Although Arithon had not spoken to inquire what brought him, his
opening came out acerbic.  "Do you know I've been smoothing over your
absence from the governors' council all morning?  The guild ministers
here are slippery as sharks, and just as quick to turn.  The commander
of the guard and his captain would wind your guts on a pole for mere
sport.

There cannot be a kingdom where now there is discord if you don't
show them a prince!"

"Such affairs are your passion, not mine," Arithon said in desperate,
forced neutrality.  Several more children bolted despite his
denouncement.  "Why ever didn't you stay there?"

He had not denied his origins.

The accusing stares of his audience were quick to transfer to him.

The girl nearest his side recoiled in betrayal, that the man who had
thrilled with his marvels was other than the beggar he appeared.

Arithon reached out and cupped her cheek.

His attempt at reassurance was pure instinct, and remarkable for its
tenderness, since every other sinew in his body was pitched taut in
unwished-for challenge.

Rebuked by such care for the feelings of a vermininfested urchin,
Lysaer relented.  "Arithon, these governors are your subjects, as
difficult in their way to love as thieving children are to the wealthy
whose pockets they pick.  Show the councilmen even half the
understanding you've lavished here, and you'll escape getting knifed by
paid assassins."

Arithon abandoned his effort to hold his audience; their fragile
trust had been broken and one by one they slipped off.  Deserted in his
squalid clothes amid a welter of stinking refuse, Arithon's reply came
mild.  "This bunch steals out of need."

"You feel the governors' lackeys don't?  That's shallow!

You're capable of truer perception."  Lysaer shut his eyes, reaching
deep for tact and patience.  "Arithon, these merchants see in you an
anathema made real.  Records left from the uprising have been passed
down grossly distorted.

Etarrans are convinced the Fellowship Sorcerers mean to give them an
eye for an eye, cast them from their homes, and expose their daughters
to be forced by barbarians.  They need so very badly to see the
musician in you.  Show them fairness they can trust.  Give to them.

They'll respond, I promise, and become as fine a backbone for this
realm as any king could ask."

"Well, why come here and trouble me?  You seem to understand
everything perfectly!"  Arithon visibly resisted an urge to hammer his
fist against a shanty wall.  "You've stated my fears to a
fare-thee-well, that this city will ingratiate itself to become my
indispensable right hand."

"What in Athera can be wrong with that?"  Whipped on by Arithon's
expert touch at provocation, Lysaer lost to exasperation.

"This!"  Arithon gestured at the mildewed planks that enclosed the
back of the knackers' shacks.  "You socialize amid the glitter of the
powerful, but how well do any of us know this city?  Did Diegan's
lovely sister tell you the guilds here steal children and lock them in
warehouses for forced labor?

Can I, dare I, stroke the Lord Governor and his cronies, while
four-year-old girls and boys stir glue pots, and- tenyear-olds gash
their hands and die of gangrene while tendering half-rotten carcasses?

Ath's infinite mercy, Lysaer!  How can I live?"  The fury driving
Arithon's defense snapped at last to bare his nerve-jagged, impotent
frustration.  "The needs of this realm will swallow all that I am, and
what will be left for the music?"

Lysaer stared down at the dirty rings that crawled up his gold-sewn
boots.  "Forgive me."  He allowed his contrition to show, for after
all, he had been presumptuous.  "I didn't know."

Arithon's sorrow subsided to a gentleness surprisingly sincere.

"You shouldn't want to know.  Go back.  I appreciate your help with
the diplomacy, but this problem is mine.

When I'm ready, never doubt, I'll give it my best effort."

Indiscretion

Dusk thickened the shadows over the forested roadway that led
southward out of Ward.  This stretch of highway, which snaked like a
chalk scar over the frost-bleak hills toward Tai's Crossing, was the
dread of every Etarra merchant.  Caravans passed between the northern
principalities of Rathain heavily armed, or they failed to reach their
destinations.  Yet a raid by marauding barbarians seemed not to concern
the solitary old man who guided his pony cart over the cracked
flagstones laid down by the decree of long-dead s'Ffalenn kings.

His conveyance was open, low-slung, and in sorry need of fresh paint;
the beast between the shafts, a glossy buckskin with a tail like black
wire and a feisty dislike of boy grooms.
He carried his ears cocked back, as if listening for excuse to

flatten them down in displeasure.  &

By contrast, the driver was ascetically thin.  He sat atop his
jolting board seat with a slouch that gave with the bumps; if his
narrow face was creased by eight decades of life, the fingers laced
through the reins were clean, supple, and sure.  He whistled between
widely spaced front teeth, and his jaunty melody carried over the creak
of harness and cartwheel to a pair of barbarian children lying flat in
the brush above the verge.

Twelve years of age and bold as coin brass, Jieret puffed a
rust-colored tangle of hair from his lips.  He frowned in stormy
concentration.  Bored of long feasting, impatient since the returned
sunlight had disrupted the passage of caravans to raid, he elbowed his
younger companion.  "Ready, Idrien?"

The other boy shifted a sweaty grip on the stick he had sharpened for
a javelin.  Sneaking out of camp had been Jieret's idea.  When their
play at scouting had surprisingly turned up a victim, the excitement of
plunder and ransom somehow lost their dashing appeal.  A touch scared,
Ldrien wished himself back at the feast, tossing out nuts to the
squirrels.  "You know, his relatives might not be so rich."

Jieret grinned through another unruly red curl.  "You saw the topaz
brooch that fastens his cloak.  Are you chickening on me?"

Wide-eyed, Ldrien shook his head.

"Well, come on, then."  Jieret wormed from the thicket, too brash to
care if he snapped twigs.

ldrien followed, cautious in his uncertainty.  Appearances could
deceive; the man's jewel might only be glass.  Yet already Jieret
scrambled to his feet and charged full tilt down the hillside.  Clan
honor demanded that his companion not shirk him support.

Jieret slithered into the open roadway, hampered by a bouncing fall
of stones.  His jerkin had torn and slipped over one shoulder, and his
javelin wavered despite his determination to threaten the elder in the
cart.  "Halt, as you value your life!"  He shrugged up his deerskin to
unburden his throwing arm, then fought for balance and decorum as
ldrien plunged down the bank and crash-landed into his back.

The whistled melody ceased.  Under threat of two sharpened sticks,
capable hands tightened on the reins.  The buckskin bared teeth and
rolled eyes as it sidled and stopped between the shafts.  Keeping tight
hold on its mouth, the raid victim bent his light, startled gaze upon
the dirty, briarscraped pair of boys.  His lips pulled crooked in a
smile, and silver-tipped brows twitched up underneath his hood.

"Get out of the cart arid disarm.  Slowly!"  Jieret elbowed ldrien to
take the pony's bridle.

The old man hesitated.  Then he released the reins and stepped
carefully down, the gold silk lining of his cloak a fitful gleam in
failing light.  As if ready for ldrien's howl as the buckskin snaked
its head down to nip, he shot out a fist and hammered the pony with an
expert blow at the juncture of shoulder and neck.  The creature grunted
in curbed belligerence and sullenly shook out its mane.  Its master,
nonplussed, removed an ornamental dagger from his belt, turned the
blade, and offered the handle to Jieret.  He stood quietly while
ldrien's grubby fingers rifled his rich clothing in a vain search for
concealed weapons.

At length, threatened by his own knife as well as the brace of
whittled sticks, he offered up fingless hands.  "Whose captivity have I
the honor of accepting?"  His voice was pleasantly pitched, unmarred by
the quaver that characterized the very old.

Jieret scowled.  Hostages ought to show fear, not make genial
greetings.  Since the pony was demonstrably nastytempered, he settled
for binding its owner's hands with the reins, then made him lead the
miserable beast.  He and Ldrien clambered onto the buckboard and
directed their mismatched draft team to haul the cart off the road.

The boys punched each other's sides, intoxicated by their success.

A man taken for ransom-the clan lords would surely praise their
prowess!  The stranger might fetch the price of a sword, or better, a
horse.  Then, in consternation, the raiders recalled they had neglected
to choose cover beforehand.

"Stupid," Jieret whispered, crestfallen at the lapse.  "We can't drag
a cart through the forest."

ldrien sucked his lower lip.  "Drive to the dell and unhitch?"

"Maybe."  Jieret nicked bark off his stick in serious thought.

"Wind smells of rain.  Our booty could get a good soaking."

At this point the captive good-naturedly interrupted.  "A stonn won't
hurt.  The tarps are new enough not to leak.".

"Quiet!"  Ldrien glanced around in fresh worry.  "Too much chatter
will fetch the scouts."

Their captive considered this, his long, lean legs quick to
compensate for the buckskin's short-strided trot.  "Young raiders don't
have their own scouts?"  He might have been laughing; or not, dusk had
deepened too much to tell.

Jieret skinned his knuckles in a belatedly frantic search, but found
neither socket nor driving whip.  He tried to hasten the pony's pace by
flapping his arms.  The buckskin snapped up its round quarters.

Hooves banged vengefully against the buckboard.  Smacked through the
soles of his boots and stinging mightily, ldrien scowled.

Jieret clung grimly to propriety.  "Our scouts are off to find other
marks," he lied grandly.  "If you hope to stay alive to be ransomed,
keep silent."

For all their unplanned excitement, the boys guided the little cart
swiftly through the darkness.  In a natural declivity between chalk
bluffs, they ordered the pony unhitched.

ldrien held the old man at stick point, while Jieret piled brush to
conceal their booty.  Then, smothering back whoops of exhilaration, the
boys chivvied their captive through the forest to the clan gathering
they had forsaken to seek adventure.

Control broke on the camp perimeter.  Jieret burst into shouting,
while ldrien startled the dancers into an uproar by casting his toy
javelin straight into the central fire.  Sparks flew; the celebration
unraveled in confusion as leather-clad scouts scrambled to grab
weapons, and others on guard patrol converged from the wood with drawn
steel.

Blinking against the shifting glare of torches, the captive stumbled
to a halt.  Jieret braved the buckskin's teeth to grasp a fistful of
black and gold cloak and drag his catch a reluctant step closer to the
fires.

"Here!"  He waved to the tallest of the approaching men.

"A sure ransom we've brought, Father, and a pony for Tashka."

Steiven, reigning regent of Rathain, was a hard man to miss, even in
uncertain light amid his pack of leather-clad scouts.  Lanky,
dark-headed, he ran with the grace of a deer.

His eyes, deep hazel, were wary as any forest creature's whose kind
has been too long hunted.  His hands were large and strongly made; his
clean-shaven chin was square.  The bones of his face hinted at a
rough-cut, handsome beauty, an impression spoiled at first sight by a
scar that grooved his cheekbone and jaw, to end in a ridged knot of
flesh above his collarbone.

A wild boar's tusk might have ripped such disfigurement; in fact,
Steiven's looks had been ruined by a harness buckle heated red-hot by a
caravan master when, at ten years of age, he had chased the wagon that
carried his brothers' scalps for credit as a bounty hunter's kill.

He had been fortunate to escape with his life.

The sight of his half-grown son gamboling into camp with a captive
clad in town clothes gave Steiven a start that had much to do with
memories that recurred in nightmares.  Yet he was a man for listening
before action; half a lifetime of chieftaincy had taught him to be
exactingly fair.  Though his heart beat too fast, and he wanted to
strike his boy for this latest insanely foolish prank, he forced
himself to think and to walk; and then the captive raised his head.

Spaced front teeth flashed in a smile, and a snag of white hair
escaped his hood.

Steiven stopped cold, the drift of Jieret's chatter disregarded.

His fists uncurled.  "Bare your head," he commanded.

For answer, the old man half turned.

The clan chief's ruddy complexion turned pale.

"Dharkaron, forgive us."

At his tone, Jieret faltered into silence.  Sweating, aware he had
earned himself a hiding, he stared wide-eyed as his father drew his
dagger and, with shocking diffidence toward a townborn, cut the ties
from the captive's wrists.

The elder raised his freed hands and pushed back his hood.  Black
cloth lined in yellow silk fell away to expose a knife-blade nose and a
spill of shoulder-length silver hair.

"Grant us pardon, master," Steiven said softly.  Then he rounded in
fury on his son.  "You captured no merchant, foolish boy!  Shame you've
brought your clan, not ransom.

You stand before the Masterbard himself."

"Him?"  Jieret's insolence rang defensively loud as he gestured with
his sharpened stick.

Steiven ripped the makeshift weapon out of his child's hands.

"Didn't you find the lyranthe when you reviewed his possessions for
arms?"

Jieret started to tremble.

"Ah," said Steiven.  He caught the Masterbard's desperate; attempt to
hide amusement, and regained his own equilibrium.  He affected a
ferocious scowl anyway.  Not only did you raid the wrong man, you also
...

Somebody giggled on the sidelines: Jieret's older sister Tashka.

Humiliation would serve the boy better than a strapping in private.

Steiven decided to pass off the affair as a stupidity beneath the
notice of grown men.  "Apologize at once, and offer Halliron your
hospitality.  Or else amend your insult by meeting his demand for
honor-gift, and give him escort back to the road for the stupid bit of
nuisance you've caused."

Jieret looked wildly around, but ldrien had seized his chance to
vanish.  Crestfallen but still brazenly unapologetic, he straightened
before the tall minstrel.

"Don't speak," Halliron said with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

"Instead, I'll thank you to care for my pony, and fetch back my
lyranthe from the cart."  And he solemnly surrendered his buckskin's
hacked-off reins into the hands of the miscreant.

At Jieret's first tug at the headstall, the pony snapped back
black-tipped ears.  A forehoof flashed up in a snake-fast strike, and
the boy, yelling curses better suited to a caravan drover, jumped back
to escape getting whacked.

"He can handle cross-grained horses, I trust?"  said Halliron to the
father, only to find the huge man sitting down without warning in wet
leaves.  Steiven's arms were clutched to his ribs as though he might
tear a gut stifling laughter.  "Fair punishment," the regent of Rathain
snorted between wheezes.  "A pony for Tashka, indeed!  That creature
would as likely rip his poor sister's hand off."

"Probably not."  Halliron smiled, watching thoughtfully as bystanders
scattered and the buckskin's striped rump bucked and sidled through the
leaping ring of torchlight.  "The little imp only hates boys.  And,
truth to tell, I'm not sorry.  A storm rides the wind, can you smell
it?  Not even an initiate's hostel graces this stretch of forest.  I
expected to endure a nasty night."

When the weather finally broke, young Jieret was hours in bed, and
Halliron, comfortably settled on cushions in the lodge tent of the
regent of Rathain.  Although no one had asked the Masterbard to
perform, he had generously offered his talents to the clan chieftain's
family until nature's fury defeated even his trained voice.  The storm
struck Strakewood from the south, battering with windy fists and
rattling rain over oiled hide with such force that the crack and roll
of thunder could barely be heard above the noise.

Steiven came in wet from helping the scouts secure the horse lines.
"Strange," he mused as he peeled his sodden jerkin and swiped dripping
hair from the unmarred side of his face.  "We don't often get squalls
from the south.  Usually they spend themselves over the Mathoms and
rattle the mansions in Etarra."

"Greater changes are afoot than mere weather since the return of true
sunlight."  Halliron hooked the final ties on the fleece-lined case
that protected his lyranthe, and took wine from the hand of Steiven's
lady.  "You're too kind," he thanked her, and raised the flagon in
tribute to clan hospitality.

Clad in rare finery, her magnificent, heavy russet hair braided with
sequins worn for dancing, Dania shone with pleasure.  "We're blessed.
Your singing is a treasure unequaled."

Her warmth sparked sorrow from the bard, who seemed suddenly absorbed
with savoring the taste of his wine.

"No successor yet," the lady sympathized with an insight that tended
to disorient grown men.  She shared a quick glance with her husband,
who knelt and tugged a fresh shirt from a chest alongside the wall.

Halliron sighed.  "Not for want of trying, lady.  I've auditioned
candidates by the thousands.  Many had talent.  Yet I was never
satisfied.  Something indefinable seemed lacking."

He tried and failed to shrug off a bitterness at odds with a nature
smoothed over by advanced years.  "I've earned the reputation of an
overbearing old crank.  Perhaps justly."

But the bard's face by candlelight showed only heart-sore regret.

Halliron's tragedy, Dania thought, that no apprentice had been found
to inherit his title, perhaps the deepest regret of his long and gifted
life.

"Dania," Steiven said gently.  "Bring out the telir brandy and refill
the Masterbard's cup."

The lady moved with the lightness of forest-bred caution to fetch the
cut crystal flask, while the bard's attention strayed toward the
shadows that dimmed the rear of the lodge.  Lord and lady followed his
gaze, to find Jieret slipped from his bedroll, the heavy curls that
matched his mother's tousled still from sleep.

"Afraid of the lightning, are you?"  Halliron said in gentle satire.

"Like Dharkaron he is."  Steiven straightened up in annoyance.

Muffled by a thick layer of linen as he belatedly donned his dry
shirt, he said, "Jieret, haven't you stirred up trouble enough for one
night?"

The boy licked his lips.  As he took a hesitant step closer, the
light fell full on him and revealed his alarming pallor.

Shaking, he announced, "Father, I had a dream."

"Ath, it's the Sight," Dania exclaimed.  Sequins sparkled like
wind-harried droplets as she sprang across the carpets and swept her
young son in her arms.  "Steiven, he's cold.

Find a blanket."

The bard was on his feet with a speed that belied his age.

He flung the lady his own silk-lined cloak, then stood aside for
Steiven, arrived in a flurry of untied laces.  He lifted the boy from
his wife and bundled him to the chin in rich black wool lined with
silk.

Halliron helped the shaken mother to find a seat upon the scattered
cushions.  "The forevision runs in your line, my lady?"

Trembling now as violently as her son, a woman who was seasoned to
disasters, and who had sword scars on her from past raids, gasped
against the bard's shoulder.  "Steiven's line.  He has the gift also."

She swallowed, her dark, fine eyes fixed worriedly on the crown of
red hair that poked through the folds of the cloak.  "The visions are
too often bloody."

Halliron recovered his flagon, refilled it with brandy, and pressed
Dania's icy fingers around the stem.  "You need a blanket also."  He
fetched one, while the lodge poles rattled to a booming crash of
thunder.

Throughout, the murmur of Steiven's voice never faltered.

"What did you see?  I know you're frightened, son, but tell me.

Jieret answered unsteadily that he had seen the king ride from
Etarra.

"Blessed Ath."  Steiven pressed his scarred cheek into his boy's
crown to hide eyes that flashed with suspect brightness.  After a
moment, muffled by fox brush hair, he said, "And how did you know him
for your king?"

"He wore a silver circlet, and a tabard with the leopard of
s'Ffalenn."  Ever an observant child, Jieret added, "His face matched
the portrait of Torbrand that you keep in the cave with the sceptre."

Steiven swallowed.  Fighting to keep his tone light, he said, "You're
a scout reporting for a raid.  I want the particulars, carefully and
accurately."

"His grace was alone," Jieret said.  "Armed with only a sword, and
shorter of stature than Caolle.  He rode in haste.

His horse was winded almost to death, and by his handling of the
reins, his right palm or wrist was likely injured.  He was pursued."

The boy stopped, wrung by a fresh bout of trembling.

"Who pursued?"  pressed Steiven.  He stroked the boy's back with a
firm enough touch, but his eyes, when he raised them, were hard as
rain-rinsed granite.

Doggedly, Jieret finished.  "Twoscore lancers, Etarra city garrison."

"That has the ring of true vision."  Steiven set the boy back on his
feet.  "Did you happen to recall if it was raining?"

Dania held her breath.  Halliron reached out and patted her hand as
the boy across the lodge tent frowned in tight concentration.  At
length Jieret raised eyes intent as his father's and said, "Funny,
that.  I saw snowfall.  But the trees were green with new leaves."  His
chin raised, determinedly defiant.  "I'm not lying.  What I dreamed was
real."

"Then dress yourself and fetch Caolle," Steiven instructed his son.
in response to Dania's startled cry, he managed a bitter-edged smile.
"Lady, would you have our king catch us sleeping?  If snow is going to
fall on spring leaves, and Etarra's guard fares out hunting, the future
is going to bring trouble.  Warning must be carried to Fallowmere, and
the scouts assigned road watch must be doubled."

 Introspections

Lysaer jerked awake in a tangle of sodden sheets.  The nightmare that
had ripped him from sleep still lingered, a sense of terror just beyond
grasp of his consciousness.  He slugged a heavy feather pillow out of
his face in a choked-back fit of frustration.  Guard spells set by the
Fellowship might avert those threats that were tangible, but not the
formless ills that harrowed his dreams.  This was not the first night
since Desh-thiere's defeat that he had awakened to a pounding heart and
skin running with sweat.

Unsettled, caught shivering in the grip of reaction, he kicked free
of his bedclothes.  Though the casements showed no hint of brightening
dawn, he arose and flung on yesterday's discarded clothing.

He needed to move, to walk; even veiled in darkness, the close
opulence of the bedchamber oppressed him.  Having learned that one of
the discorporate Sorcerers maintained a guarding presence over the room
at all times, he announced, "I'm going out.  Into the garden,
probably."

Luhaine's reproving tone answered.  "You'll want your cloak.

There's heavy fog."

Lysaer raised his eyebrows in surprised question.  "You'd allow
dreary weather on the eve of Arithon's coronation?"

"There should have been rain," Luhaine admitted, a touch curt.

Although he allowed for the need to avoid any sort of bad omen, he
liked disturbing nature even less.  "But Kharadmon diverted the storm
northward.  The ground mist will burn off before noon."

As Lysaer fumbled a course toward the wardrobe, he passed other beds
in the chamber whose fur quilts lay undisturbed.  Dakar would be out
drinking.  Despite his insistence that Etarrans brewed terrible hops,
he was willing enough to remedy the lapse with gin; and if the prince
of Rathain chose to spend his last night before lifetime commitment to
a troubled kingdom in his cups, no friend would fault him for
indulgence.

Still overheated, Lysaer tossed his cloak over one shoulder and
quietly let himself out.

The high-walled garden that adjoined the guest chamber lay silvered
and fringed with dew.  Chilled to gooseflesh as dampness hit his wet
skin, Lysaer sucked in a deep breath.

The air brought no refreshment.  The heavy oils burned in the street
torches threw off dense smoke which stung his nose and throat.

Mingled scents from the incenses used to mask the stench from the
sewers also overwhelmed the natural fragrance of earth and unfurling
spring lilacs.  Two dogs snarled in the distance; a woman shouted
shrill imprecations, while nearer at hand, running steps pattered ahead
of a night sentry's tramp.  Despite Lysaer's preference for cities,
Etarra possessed an evasive, disturbing restlessness.  The more
determinedly he strove to grasp the deep currents of intrigue, to
empathize with the needs of the guild ministers who held the reins of
power, the greater his reflected unease.  As little as he had liked
Ithamon's desolation, he felt still less at home here.

He made his concession to the damp finally, and flicked his cloak
over his back.  Where he had been overheated, now his discomfort
derived from chill.  Certainly he held no envy for the kingship that
Arithon was pledged to inherit.

Slowly, insidiously, Etarra's corruption had grown to haunt Lysaer in
ways that undermined his beliefs.

Aching from too many sleepless nights, he parked his shoulder against
a pedestal that supported the bust of a dignitary.  Crickets cheeped in
the flowerbeds; beyond them, the woman's shouting faded and finally
ceased.  The distant dogfight dwindled to yelps, and the sentry passed,
grumbling, around the corner of the street-side wall.  Lysaer absorbed
the sounds of an unfamiliar world, and bitterly reflected upon how
deeply the children in the street of the horse knackers had upset his
priorities.

As prince on Dascen Elur, he had held his people's trust.

Their needs had become one with his own, taken into his heart as
fully as he had striven to embrace understanding of Etarra's governors'
council.  The high officials were responding; even Lord Commander
Diegan had softened his stance to proffer an easy friendship.

Confidence in his ability to mete out fair treatment had always
before given Lysaer the focus to satisfy his inborn drive to seek
justice.

Up until today, honor had seemed a tangible, changeless absolute that
made each choice clear-edged.

The urge to pace, to storm across the dark garden to escape the
entanglement of some unseen trap, became nearly too strong to deny.

Lysaer forced himself to stillness.  He sucked in the perfume of the
lilacs and made himself examine why five minutes in the poor quarter
should shatter his viewpoint's simplicity.  The dilemma held multiple
facets.

One could not serve the guilds without destroying the children
enslaved in the workhouses; the merchants' rights to safe trade could
not be enforced without condoning headhunters and the butchery that
visited bloodshed upon the woodland clansmen.

Whose cause took priority?  In this world of divisive cultures and
shattered loyalties, no single foundation of rightness existed.

The Fellowship Sorcerers withheld opinion.  They would use their
formidable powers to set a prince on a throne, and yet would enact no
judgment; they did not guide or expect, but encouraged their chosen
royal heir to rule by his gifts and his conscience.

That stock of responsibility became suffocating.  Lysaer laid his
head against the stonework that supported his shoulders and agonized
over a justice no longer obvious.  Principles were what a man made
them.  Sheltered since birth by the cares of a straightforward kingdom,
he found himself painfully lost at formulating law for himself.  Etarra
tormented him by plowing up doubts and possibilities: his own lost
realm of Tysan might bear equal measure of thorny, insoluble suffering.

He had been taught his statesmanship there, and had perhaps never
seen beyond the walls of his palace to notice.

"Daelion Fatemaster, what a muddle!"  he exploded in tight
frustration.

He believed himself to be alone.  When a woman's voice answered from
the gate trellis, he started and banged his shoulder against the
scrolled beard of the statue.

Surprise caused her words to escape him.  "What?  Who's there?"

He looked but saw no one in the foggy murk between the topiary.

"Not an enemy."  Her voice was cool and pleasantly modulated, her
crisp accent, other than Etarran.  She moved, appeared out of the mists
on the path as a silhouette muffled in cloaks-not elderly by her grace,
but impossible to judge as to age.

"Who are you?"  Vaguely familiar as she seemed, Lysaer could not push
past recent memories of Talith to place where he may have encountered
her.

"We've met, but so briefly you might not recall.  In the house of
Enithen Tuer."  She had better night sight than he; at least, she sat
without groping on a stone bench set invisibly in a cranny beside the
hedge.  A passing dray's lantern shot fuzzed diamonds of light through
the latticed gate.

Stray beams brushed copper glints in the hair that trailed loose from
her hood.

"The enchantress," Lysaer said in recognition.  He added, accusing,
"but Arithon knew you better than I."

A nighttime visit to the hayloft in the Ravens' tavern hung
unmentioned between them.  Elaira tucked her hands beneath her cloak so
that Lysaer might not see her nerves had been shaken.  "You don't
approve of your half-brother's midnight excursions.  Her guess was
accurate-also, on the tail of his selfexamination, hurtfully near the
meat of his recent uncertainties.  Unsure whether she toyed with him,
Lysaer pushed away from the pedestal.  He crossed the gravel path to
gain a better view of her features.  The layers of her hoods kept her
veiled.  He decided to risk honest answer.  "I'm not sure.

Arithon takes unconscionable risks, looking for pearls among beggars.
I prefer the simpler reality, that the means to uplift the
misfortunate are better controlled from the council chamber.  A man can
feed the hungry and clothe beggars all his life, and not change the
conditions that make them wretched."

The lady considered a moment, then offered, "Your vision and
Arithon's are very different.  As a spirit schooled to power, his
perception stems from one absolute.  Universal harmony begins with
recognition that the life in an ordinary pebble is as sacred as
conscious selfhood.  Both views are equally valid."

Lysaer responded in stifled antagonism.  "And just what's your stake
in all this?"  He felt hag-ridden enough without her unasked-for
exploration of his conscience.

She was stung; her sigh was drawn out and hinted at diffidence.

Still, she did not shy back from the truth.  "I was sent.  Direct
orders from my superiors: to seek out the princes given sanction to
rule, and to interact enough to test their mettle."

He stepped back, felt the dripping lip of a second stone bench, and
sank down facing her.  Fiercely he said, "What have you found?"

"That Etarra offers entanglement enough to torture any man, and
suffering very clearly bares the spirit.  As a prince must, you place
love and care for the masses before individual suffering."  Her hood
moved; perhaps she looked down in embarrassment for her snooping.

Arithon trapped under such scrutiny would have cut off further
inquiry through sarcasm; Lysaer more civilly chose silence.  Drawn to
shared sympathy by his tact, Elaira said, "I saw your half-brother
earlier, when he made ships out of shadows in the knacker's alley."

Lysaer could not stem his curiosity, nor did he hide his concern for
the strain on Rathain's prince that even the Sorcerers could not ease.
"Arithon spoke to you, then?"

"No."  She was sharp.  "I dressed in disguise as a lad.  He was never
allowed to see my face.  And please, I would mind very much if you told
him."

The vehemence she could not quite curb sparked Lysaer to exclamation.
"You were the lady he acted to defend when Koriani scryers tried to
spy out our affairs in Ithamon!"

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about."  She forestalled his
impulse to explain, angry or intensely afraid.

"Keep still.  If it concerns the Koriani Senior Circle, I'm far
better off left ignorant."

"Arithon cares for you," Lysaer said, his first impulse to soften her
distress.

"He weeps for the grass that he treads on."  Elaira stiffened,
indignant at his solicitude.  "You should know, as a scion of
s'llessid, that the s'Ffalenn royal gift is forced empathy!"  She stood
in a reckless haste that showered dew from the bushes as her cloak
caught.  "I have to go."

"But your errand."  Lysaer stood also.  Effortlessly considerate, he
bent and unhooked the snagged cloth without touching her.  "Surely your
purpose is incomplete?"

Elaira shook her head as he straightened.  The dark had begun to lift
with the earliest glimmer of dawn; the eyes that met his from under
voluminous layers of clothing sparkled, filled with tears that only
magnified their intensity.  Yet when she spoke, her voice was hammered
and level.  "I have what I came to this garden for.  You do not, if you
left your bed to find calm."

Lysaer gently took her arm.  "I'll see you to the gate," he said
politely.

Relieved to discover he was gentleman enough not to pry, she smiled
in piercing gratitude.  In a sympathy tuned so closely to his inner
dilemma that this time no sensibilities were offended, she said,
"Speaking strictly for myself, I would spill blood to release those
clan children from slavery in the knacker's yard.  But then, female
instinct drives me to condemn exploitation of the young.  A man might
arrange his priorities differently."

Lysaer steered her past the spears of the spring's sprouting lilies,
his hand warm and sure on her arm.  "It is not what you would do or
what I would.  Pity Arithon, for as he said, tomorrow Etarra becomes
his problem.  I only pray that the guildsman don't murder him before
he's had his chance to act at all."

They had reached the gate, Lysaer's touch dropped away as he raised
the latch and opened the panel to let her through.

Elaira passed beneath the trellis.  "What this realm will kill for
certain is your half-brother's musical talent.  Mourn that."

And then she was gone, a shadow vanished into foggy streets that no
lantern could fully illuminate.

 Preparations

As dawn silvers the cloud cover above the forested hills of Deshir,
relays of barbarian couriers race at speed through thinning rains,
bearing the call to arms for clan encampments to the north and east....

Guarded from outside interference, sealed in a seamless stone flask,
the uncounted entities that comprise the Mistwraith, Desh-thiere, brood
upon two half-brothers whose gifts have seen them doomed to
oblivion....

Gray seas heave off the north coast of Fallowmere, where a rainstorm
spends the torrents that should have fallen upon lands far south; while
skies brighten flawless aquamarine and citrine above the square
bastions of Etarra, the Sorcerer responsible for nature's violation
touches runes of wellbinding upon plants, soil, and wild creatures, and
begs their forgiveness for his act....

XIV.  Coronation Day he hour past sunrise on the day appointed for
Arithon's Tcoronation, the door to Morfett's guest chamber banged open.

Dakar sallied in from the hallway, his head and torso eclipsed behind
a towering mound of state clothing.  He tottered across the tile floor,
shed his armload across the nearest divan, and announced, "These are
yours.  Asandir's orders."  Gloating, insouciant, rumpled from a
night's hard drinking and the full-blown effects of a hangover, he
added, "I'm told to watch you dress to make sure that you leave nothing
out."

Curled in the window seat with his lyranthe lying silent across his
knees, Arithon regarded the spilled velvets and silks, shot through
each fold with costly metallic thread work.  Dead sober, if a touch
haggard from lack of sleep, he made a study of Dakar and grinned.

"Silver to broom straws, your master's orders were directed toward
you as well.  Anyway, you don't deck out in pearl buttons and brocades
by any choice I ever saw."

Dakar scowled, ashamed to discover that his offering also held
garments of brown broadcloth too generously cut for anybody's frame
except his own.  "Get on with this."  He folded his arms across his
chest.  "Or by Dharkaron's vengeance, I swear, I'll call Morfett's
valets in to help!"

Arithon raised his cheek off the curve of his lyranthe and said, "You
couldn't get them.  The entire household is too busy keeping the master
from falling prostrate into his breakfast plate."

"Well, let's say your accession to Rathain's throne isn't a balm to
anybody's temper!"  Still distressed over Lysaer's endangerment at the
time of the Mistwraith's confinement, Dakar vented his resentment upon
the prince at hand.

"Where were you last night?"

"Not drinking, or with a woman."  Lightly, lovingly, Arithon dusted a
finger across his strings.  A haunting minor chord sighed forth; then,
since even that slight sound galled like salt in an open sore, he laid
his instrument aside.  The eyes he turned upon Dakar were sharp and
terrible for their emptiness.  "Is there anything else?"

But the Mad Prophet refused to be baited.  "If you were gallivanting
again in the poor quarter, you'd better have taken a bath."

"What?  The velvets aren't perfumed?"  Arithon arose and stretched
linked hands above his head.  The linen he wore was plain, not dirty.

He advanced through the flare of sunlight that fell through the amber
lozenged windows, and Dakar saw in relief that the hair at his collar
was in fact still damp.

Arithon stripped off his shirt.  Marked yet by the physical scars
from his past failed effort at sovereignty, he surveyed the array of
kingly trappings in bright-eyed, self-mocking distaste.  "Let's have
this over with."

He dressed himself, while Dakar passed garments in roughly the
appropriate order: silver-gray hose, white silk shirt, black tunic with
leopard fur edging.  Next, the ceremonial accessories that symbolized a
sovereign's tie to the land: the belt of wooden discs inlaid with royal
seals in abalone; the deer-hide boots studded with river stone and tied
with feather-tipped thongs; the cabohon emerald set in silver that
pinned above his heart.  The fabrics held no scent beyond a hint of
sweetgrass that lingered from the blessing ritual worked an hour
earlier by the Fellowship.  The fine-stitched tracery of interlace
borders, the ribboned cuffs and hems, bespoke tailoring unmatched in
Etarra.  When and where such master work had been done, Arithon refused
to ask.

Dakar volunteered, just to needle him.  "Sethvir sews superbly, don't
you think?"

"Ath," said Arithon in flat vehemence.  "Not this, I hope."

He raked through the garments still left and hooked out the ugly bit
that jarred: a heavy, lacquer-worked sword sheath, hung from a baldric
bossed with carbuncles.

Dakar looked sourly on.  "Not that."

"The stones look heavy enough to sink a four-days bloated carcass."
Arithon dangled the item aloft, his combativeness blunted by
resignation.  "This wasn't, by chance, a gift from the ladies of
Etarra?"

"Bang-on right."  Dakar stifled a chortle.  "Asandir said wear it
anyway."

Arithon glanced suspiciously back.  He raised the jewelencrusted
leather to his nostrils and immediately laughed.

"Damn you!  It doesn't smell of sweetgrass.  Is this your prank, to
curse me with an ill wish in addition to this joyforsaken realm?"

"Well," said Dakar, shrugging, "leave it out, and the ladies will be
offended for sure.  How could they know they'd made their contribution
too late for the Fellowship's blessing?  No ward I've heard of could
make that thing look less hideous."  Philosophically he added, "Bear
up.  You've got the tabard and sash yet to go before you need concern
yourself with weapons."

"That thing is a fit weapon to strike a man blind at first sight."

Arithon discarded the atrocity, and at Dakar's urging took the
damask-lined velvet of the tabard.

The heraldic leopard sparkled as he pulled it over his head.  Its
weight of rich cloth seemed to burden his shoulders, while Dakar bound
on the black sash with its silver wire wrapping.  As if to delay the
moment when he must gird on the tasteless scabbard, Arithon took up the
circlet that Asandir's spell-craft had fashioned from Rathain's earth.

Symbol of an unwanted succession, he gripped the cool metal with a
tension that whitened his knuckles.  Regret played across his
expression.  Then, firmly silent, he raised the fillet and pressed it
over his black hair.  It rested with deceptive lightness across his
brow, as a crown yet to come never would.

Dakar chose that moment to look up.  Imprinted against the amber
casement, he saw Arithon's face crossed by the shining band that
preceded Rathain's vested sovereignty.

Chills roughened the Mad Prophet's flesh.  One split second of
vertigo was all the warning he received.

Then in a rush, his seer's talent claimed him wholly as icstrument.

Trance shocked through him with such force that his mind became
emptied.  Dakar dropped to his knees.

A vision burned through: of a square milling with people, among them
Arithon, who drove in heedless, driven panic between tight packed
factions of Etarra merchants.  The image formed fully and shattered,
buried by a static blast of whiteness as a second shock slammed Dakar's
innermind.

Vaguely aware that his voice shouted meaningless phrases, the Mad
Prophet felt himself falling.  His downward rush into darkness was
suddenly and sickeningly arrested by a hand that caught and yanked him
back.

He returned to himself with a wrench that left him disoriented.

His face dripped sweat.  Released to a welter of dizziness, he
waited, panting, until orderless color resolved into the orange and
purple tiles that floored the Lord Governor's guest chamber.  Arithon
had an arm around his shoulders.

That support was all that held Dakar upright as he swayed, helplessly
unbalanced.

"Ath," the Mad Prophet gasped as vertigo progressed into nausea.

"Whoever named farsight a gift had the warped inclinations of a
torturer."

"You should lie down."  Arithon strove to lift him toward the divan.

Powerless to assist as his frame was shaken by spasms, Dakar doubled
over.  His breakfast stayed down, barely; the accomplishment seemed
moot.  He felt wretched.  As Arithon helped him to straighten, he saw
his morning's work wasted.

The royal tabard was rucked askew.  Both of the prince's silk sleeves
were blotched with perspiration.  Whatever slight tolerance Arithon had
attained toward kingship appeared on a moment to have fled.

Against skin shocked to pallor, the hair dragged flat beneath the
circlet crossed his forehead like pen strokes scribbled upon parchment.

Wild-eyed as any cornered animal, the Shadow Master half forced, half
propelled Dakar across the floor.

Too miserable to resist, the Mad Prophet collapsed across the divan.
He had no strength to care for crushed velvets.

That the scabbard with its carbuncles gouged his backside mattered
less; the ugly gift from the dignitaries' wives now seemed some poor
jest from a nightmare.  "What happened?"

he gasped; but the gut-sick aftermath of major prophecy was much too
familiar to support pretense.  "For Ath's sake, tell me what I said."

Arithon withdrew his hands, which were shaking.  "You foretold an
absolute disaster."

Terror hit Dakar in the pit of his unsettled stomach.  He fought
another twisting cramp as every formless uncertainty that had agonized
his imagination since Ithamon replayed as a possible reality.  "Lysaer.

Desh-thiere has some hold on him, doesn't it?"

Mere supposition drove Arithon to an explosive step back.

"Would that were all."  He snatched up the sword, which rested
unsheathed near the regalia he had not yet put on.

"Where's the Sorcerer who should be here on guard?"

But a search of the dimmest alcoves where a discorporate mage was
wont to lurk showed Luhaine nowhere in evidence.  In dread that some
dire facet of Dakar's prophecy had compelled the Fellowship guardian to
abandon him, Arithon spun back toward the divan.  "Where's Asandir!"

Dakar pressed his hands to his temples.  Still trapped on the cusp of
major prophecy, he cradled a skull on fire with headache.  His thoughts
dragged, too dim to keep pace with events, far less attach meaning to
questions.  Dully he repeated, "What in Daelion's province did I
predict?"

Fast movement blurred his eyesight.  The next second he was slapped
by a blow that seemed to come out of nowhere.

He crashed backward into the folds of the royal mantle.

Over him towered Arithon, so consumed by dread he seemed possessed.
The black and silver length of Alithiel pressed enpointe against the
Mad Prophet's throat.

Shielded from bared steel by nothing beyond his shirt collar, Dakar
shrank back.  "Have you gone crazy?"

"Not yet."  The words seemed lucid, but the insouciance Arithon
usually flaunted in the face of trouble was swept away by his ragged
fast breaths.  "Where I can find Asandir!

I have no moment to waste!"

Dakar measured the steel, then the terror that racked the man behind
the sword grip.  "Asandir's in the council hall.

Keeping the city ministers from revolt before your processional."

The weight of the weapon lifted.  Arithon spun on his heel, stopped;
came back.  The heraldic leopard worked into his tabard flashed as if
tainted by unclean light as he jerked the plain cloak intended for
Dakar from under its owner's supine bulk.  He cast the garment over his
finery as he bolted headlong for the doorway.

"Arithon!"  Dakar shoved up on one elbow.  "What .  did I see in that
trance?"

For a split second it seemed Rathain's prince would not stem his
frantic rush.  But as the latch wrenched open under his hand, he threw
back in anguished haste, "Dakar, as you love peace.  If you care for my
half-brother, keep him from me!  For if we're brought face to face, the
terms of your prophecy shall be met.  The result will end in a
bloodbath."

"What happened?"  Dakar exploded off the couch.  The black-lacquered
scabbard hooked on his knuckles and fell in a clattering spin across
the floor.  He rushed forward, caught his toe on a carbuncle, and
crashed shoulder down into an armchair.  Too winded to curse, he
pressed on, though the backlash and dizziness from prescience had yet
to fully release him.

"It's not what's happened, but what will.  Desperate steps must be
taken."  Arithon ducked out.

Dakar gained the entry just as the door panel slammed in his face.

"Fiends take you!"  He hammered unyielding wood until his fists
bruised before reason caught up with the obvious: that if Arithon had
dispatched him to protect Lysaer, the outside latch would not be
braced.

The next thought hit with more significance, that Luhaine had neither
answered nor intervened to curb Arithon's distress.

Dakar kicked open the door and abruptly ran out of energy.  Pinned by
another wave of faintness, he thumped to rest against the door frame
and sweated over implications he had no fit way to assess.  His second
spontaneous prophecy now entangled with the conditional forecast made
earlier, the Black Rose prophecy that tied all the threads of future
hope to the event of Arithon's accession.  Luhaine's absence meant much
more than the half-brothers' safety had been cast to the four winds and
jeopardy.

The vaulted council hall of Etarra was no longer stuffy and
cavernously curtained as it had been kept throughout Morfett's
clandestine councils to thwart the return of Rathain's monarchy.

Bedecked now for the coronation, the lofty chamber with its white
marble frieze work and gilt pillars stood transformed.  The faded,
dusty trade guilds' banners stood jostled aside on their rods,
overshadowed by the leopard blazon of s'Ffalenn.  Lancet windows once
darkened behind dagged scarlet drapes were flung open to the morning
air.  Light rinsed floors freshly sweetened with wax; sun IL beams
warmed the graining of maple parquet, and sparked reflections in the
gems and tinseled silks donned for the occasion by the city's ranking
ministers, who clustered whispenng in their cadres and cast nervous
glances to all sides.

But the Fellowship Sorcerer in attendance for once had no care for
overhearing their seditious talk.  Bleak as storm in dark velvets,
Asandir presided over the aisle before the raised dais.

Morfett measured his stillness as he would have stalked an asp
through his grape arbor.  Let Arithon s'Ffalenn but once be caught
unguarded, and the interfering Sorcerers who sheltered him would find a
knife in his royal ribs.

"Where's Lord Diegan, anyway?"  the minister of justice complained.
"Odd that he should be late."

"Not at all."  Morfett twitched at his cuffs, which were buttoned
with pearls and too snug.  Snappish with venom, he said, "Our commander
of the guard invited that fair-haired flunky, Lysaer, for an
after-breakfast social.  His sister's infatuation with the man has
delayed them both, no doubt."

Sourly the Lord Governor eyed the damask-draped chair set up to
enthrone the coming prince.  Such panoply would hardly matter, any more
than a white-gold crown set with emeralds could shield against
mortality.  Today, tomorrow, or next year, the Teir's'Ffalenn would be
overthrown.  Etarra would never bow to royal rule.  Never.  Wishing ill
on the day's proceedings, Morfett saw Asandir spin around.  The
Sorcerer gave no nod to smooth over the officials left gaping in
offense at the abrupt presentation of his back.

Morfett smiled.  Trouble, the Lord Governor wished fervently; upon
the heads of the Fellowship, most ruinous, plan-befouling bad luck.

Asandir offered no apology, but turned on his heel again and pressed
in visible agitation through the councilmen still clustered in shared
outrage.  His rush to reach the doorway left a moil of rankled
dignitaries whose robes were raked askew by his passage.

Morfett sailed into the gap left opened in the Sorcerer's wake.

He arrived in the foyer just after Asandir passed the outer door,
caught the ring pulls as the panels swung closed, and shamelessly
pressed an eye to the crack.

On the marble stair outside the entry, he saw Asandir flag down
Traithe.

"Call your raven," the Sorcerer instructed his colleague.

"The bird may be needed to relay messages."

The shorter mage in black and silver replied too low to overhear.

Asandir returned a slight nod.  "Go inside.  Smooth tempers, avert
uneasiness, and above all, let nobody hear we have problems.  Sethvir's
just now sent warning: Lysaer's in serious trouble.  The pattern that
encompasses his Name has drifted.  Worse: Luhaine reports that Dakar's
been alarmed by premonition.  Both events indicate that our s'llessid
heir may harbor one of Desh-thiere's wraiths, picked up through the
moment of confinement.  If so, the crisis forecast by the strands is
upon us.  One mistimed judgment and we'll have no crowned king, or a
restored Fellowship, just panic and bloodshed in the streets."

"Ath speed you."  Denied by impaired faculties to share further
details through magecraft, Traithe touched his colleague's shoulder
before both went their separate ways.

Morfett straightened up from his eavesdropping and faced around.

Prepared to announce the Fellowship's quandary to every official
within earshot, his excitement overshadowed small descrepancies: that
the doors at his back failed to latch, and that his rush of elation
overwhelmed him to the point where his utterance choked in his throat.

He hopped forward a step and filled his lungs to shout.

His effort emerged as a gargle, since Traithe slipped through the
cracked door panel, clamped a gloved hand from behind, and gagged his
mouth.

"Ah, but you won't," the mildest-mannered of the Sorcerers murmured
into Morfett's left ear.

The Lord Governor moaned.  His eyes bugged out and he ground out a
smothered growl.  He elbowed and kicked backward at his assailant, but
managed to strike only air.

He bit down next on black glove leather, and got back a dig that shot
paralyzing pain through his larynx.

Traithe called out cheerfully to those bystanders just turned to
stare open-mouthed at the scuffle.  "Could I beg your help?"

The stir widened; polite conversation faltered.  Before Morfett's
wheezes and moaned curses could impact the fastspreading stillness,
Traithe carried on in blithe chatter.

"Your Lord Governor seems overcome.  Is he prone to fits?

Maybe he's prostrate from the heat.  Anybody might faint under such
fashionable layers of heavy velvet."

Pulled off balance, then downed by an ungentlemanly jab at the back
of his knees, Morfett collapsed, mutely struggling, to the floor.

A raven flapped down and lit on his chest.  At least, that was the
last thing his eyes recorded before he sank, dropped senseless by
spells, upon carpets laid down for Arithon to tread in formal
procession to the dais.

Invited for wine after breakfast in the richly appointed parlor of
Etarra's commander of the guard, Lysaer suddenly flushed.  A wave of
heat swept through him, followed by bone-deep chill.  Quickly he set
down his goblet, before his unsteady hand sloshed the contents.

Alarmed that he might have succumbed to sudden fever, Lysaer touched
his forehead.  A second wave of disorientation passed through him.

He stiffened, transfixed by fear; for an instant he felt as if his
mind spun to blankness, his self-awareness overturned by a will other
than his own.

The sensation cleared a heartbeat later.  Lysaer shivered in silly
relief.  He was just tired, not quite himself.  Arithon's coronation
presented no crisis; his momentary faintness surely had been due to
nerves and imagination, a residual distress left by the nightmares that
had plagued him off and on since Ithamon.  As the patterned brocade
chair that supported him swam clearly back into focus, Lysaer looked
up.

Lady Talith's ringed hands had stilled in the curled fur of her
terrier.  She, her brother Diegan, and the beribboned lapdog all
regarded him in polite and expectant silence.

What had he just said?  Lysaer struggled to recapture the thread of
conversation.  A gap seemed torn from his memory.

Inattention could not explain this.  Embarrassed for a lapse that in
hindsight seemed faintly ridiculous, he stumbled to fill in with
banality.

Diegan interrupted and took up what had been a bristling argument.

"But the children who work in the warehouses are not the get of the
free poor, as your puppet prince led you to think."  Etarra's commander
of the guard set down the crystal goblet that for the past half hour he
had toyed with His wine sloshed untasted as he said, "These wretches
that Arithon would champion are in fact the offspring of, condemned
criminals, clan-blood barbarians who have harassed the trade routes
with thievery and murder for generations."

Heat chased cold across Lysaer's skin.  He resisted an urge to blot
his brow, willed aside his unsettled condition, and studied the city's
Lord Commander, whose finery and intellect made him more courtier than
soldier, and whose words fanned up like dty cobwebs the clinging
spectre of past doubts.

S'Ffalenn pirates on Dascen Elur had repeatedly manipulated political
sore points to stir unrest and further their marauding feud against
Amroth.

Lysaer snapped back to present circumstance with an inward lash of
chastisement.  This was Etarra, not Port Royal, and Arithon was not as
his ancestors.  More musician than buccaneer, he had been the sworn
heir of a murderer in a past that no longer mattered.  Fair-minded,
Lysaer pushed off his uneasiness.  "Do you suggest Rathain's prince
would lie to discredit the city council?"

"I suggest he's in league with the Fellowship's intent, to see Etarra
given over to barbarians."  Diegan leaned forward.

Diamond studs sparkled across his shoulders as he planted his elbows
on his knees.  "For that end, would he not act as the Sorcerers'
purpose demanded?"

Never at ease with Arithon's mage-trained evasiveness, Lysaer
re-examined matters from that angle.  Only this morning Dakar had
staggered in from his rounds of the taverns and attested in slurred
certainty that Arithon had not spent last night drinking in any man's
company.  "Wherever he was, only Daelion knows.  His Grace himself is
not saying.  " Lysaer blinked, pricked by association.  This day's
musician, who begged to be spared from royal position, was one and the
same man as the chained sorcerer who had burned seven ships, then
baited Amroth's council at trial with his own life offered as gambit.

"I can see you have reservations," Lady Talith observed.

Her tight-laced taffeta rustled as she crossed her ankles; the
terrier displaced by her movement whined and jumped plaintively down.

"For our part, if this coronation is to be stopped, there's little
time left to take action."

In fact, there remained but an hour before the noon ceremony.

Lysaer snapped to, the odd bent of his thoughts cut off by his
ingrained habit of fair play.  "Don't think to suggest a conspiracy.

I'll not be party to treason.  The Fellowship's intentions toward
your city are certainly not harmful, and Arithon's rights of
inheritance are not in my province to deny."

"But you doubt him," Talith pressed.

There, most squarely, she scored.  Honor demanded that the integrity
of any ruler should be challenged over issues of social justice.
Repelled as if brushed by something dank, Lysaer arose.  Good manners
concealed his private qualms as he gathered his velvet cloak and
offered his hand to Talith.

Her beauty might bedazzle his vision, but never his inborn integrity.
He drew her suavely to her feet.  "Lady, on behalf of your city, I'll
question your prince.  Arithon is secretive, crafty, and not always
forthright about his motivations.  But given direct confrontation, I've
never known him to lie."

Diegan jangled the bell for the maid to collect the crystal and the
wine tray.  To Lysaer he added, "You'll tell us your findings before
the coronation begins?"

Cold now, and unsure what should motivate him to undertake such a
promise at inconveniently short notice, Lysaer found himself saying,
"You have my formal word."

The room, the wine, and the company seemed suddenly too rich.

Lysaer strove to recoup his composure.  Sleepless nights and troubled
dreams had sown his mind with unworthy confusion.  For even if
Arithon's sympathies were misguided, the thorns in seeing justice done
remained: the laborers enslaved in guild service were still children,
ill fed, inadequately clothed, and poorly housed.  Although for
simplicity's sake it would relieve a vicious quandary to fault them for
the crimes of their ancestors, their plight deserved unbiased review.

If Arithon would champion their cause, he must defend his decision to
repudiate the city council's policies.  Lysaer dodged the terrier that
playfully circled his feet, and strode in firm purpose for the door.

"My lord, my lady," he said in parting.

A bang and a thump sounded in the passage outside.

The inbound commotion came accompanied by Dakar's voice, plaintively
arguing with a servant.  Protests were cut by Asandir, who demanded to
know what was amiss.

Lysaer pressed his thumb on the door latch.  The fastening.

seemed queerly to have jammed.  A violent wrench failed to dislodge
the obstruction.

Lord Diegan shoved the maid away from the wine tray in his haste to
reach Lysaer's side.  Their combined attempt to free the door caused
the scrolled brass to spark white light.

Heat followed, intense enough to raise blisters.

Lysaer noticed instantly that his skin took no mark from the
encounter.  No stranger to the effects of small sorceries, he cried out
a reflexive warning.  "Spell-craft!"

Diegan regarded him intently, while inexplicable heat and chills
chased through his body once again.

This bout proved more fierce than the last.  Lysaer swayed.

For an instant the surrounding room seemed to flicker, in and then
out of existence.  His vision quickly steadied, but his ears were left
buzzing with unnameable, untraceable sound.  Rage touched him.  The
emotion came barbed with a thought so clearly delineated, it seemed
more solid than the lintel he caught to brace his balance.  Who but
Arithon would have dared to interfere; the poisoned conclusion
followed, that if the s'Ffalenn bastard was to blame, distrust of
Etarra's council was emphatically misplaced.

Vindicated by Lysaer's dismay, Diegan said, "We're betrayed!"  He
matched a grim glance with his sister.

The servant in the outside corridor had fallen silent; the
chambermaid cowered in a corner.  Dakar's reply to Asandir breached the
sealed parlor with damning, irrefutable clarity.

"But of course I set wards to bind the door latch!  Arithon begged me
at all costs to keep him separate from Lysaer!"

"Where's the Prince of Rathain?"  The Sorcerer must have glowered
fearsomely, for Dakar's answer rose to a pitch very near to hysteria.

"He went out.  Into the street, to look for you.  If Luhaine's ghost
still guards him, it's being obstinately close-mouthed.

Didn't you see either one of them on your way over here?"

"No."  Asandir's step approached the closed doorway.

"Too late now to wish differently.  Your prophecy bars us from
action.  You say Lysaer's inside?"

In mutinous self-defense Dakar said, "Diegan's servants insist he
never left."

Lysaer felt a hand on his forearm, Talith's, pulling him quickly
aside.  A shock like a spark ripped through him; not for her beauty,
which could stun any man, but for her unmannerly presumption.  Before
he had space to question his oddly irascible reaction, the feeling
became swept aside and an urge he also could not trace prompted him to
fast speech.

"I promised I'd find Arithon and ask him for the truth.  Can you get
me out?"

Diegan grinned.  "Every house in Etarra has a closet exit and hidden
stairs to an outside alley.  Talith will show you.

I'll delay the Sorcerer."

"You'll try."  Lysaer surrendered his hand to the lady, who
breathlessly hurried him forward.  "Be careful.  No Fellowship Sorcerer
has compunctions against prying into your private thoughts."

If the warning gave Diegan reservations, Lysaer was not to find out.
Talith sank her nails into his wrist and bundled him through a doorway
that had miraculously opened through the back wall.  Thrust into a
musty stone passageway, Lysaer heard only Talith, softly cursing the
dust that grimed the gold hem of her dress before she dragged the panel
closed and shut them in cobwebs and darkness.

In the parlor, the terrified maid began to sob.  Balked from
following its pretty mistress, the terrier's yapping changed pitch to
barks and growls.  The next instant the latch on the hallway door
discharged a static shower of sparks.  The dog bounded sideways,
trailing mussed ribbons, while the panel explosively burst inward.

Asandir slammed into Lord Diegan's guest parlor, with Dakar hard on
his heels.  They were met by the commander of the guard, blandly
seated, the decanter of wine he had been on the verge of pouring frozen
in his hand in midair.

His typically Etarran urbanity made no impression upon the Sorcerer,
whose gaze flicked to the other set of goblets that rested on the tray,
their half-consumed contents abandoned.  As the terrier subsided
snarling under the nearest stuffed stool, Asandir studied Diegan with a
chilling, unpleasant intensity.  "Where has Lysaer gone?"

To the amazed admiration of Dakar, Diegan's nerve never faltered.

He replaced the wine crystal on its tray with a faint, controlled
clink.  "Your man left to have words with his crony, the
Teir's'Ffalenn.  Should that disturb you?"

"We'll know shortly."  Asandir stepped past the casement.

His shadow swept over the commander of the guard, dimming the glitter
of gemstones that studded his ceremonial pourpoint.  Before Diegan's
magnificence, the Sorcerer's dark robe hung sheenless as a pauper's
cheap felt.  "I want, you to think, and answer carefully.

While in your presence, did Lysaer show a loss of awareness?  Did his
attention seem to drift, even for a second?"

As Diegan made to brush off the question, the Sorcerer advanced again
and forestalled him.  "I said, answer carefully.  For if you noticed
such a lapse, your friend could be endangered.  One of Desh-thiere's
separate wraiths may have evaded captivity.  If, unbeknownst to us,
such a creature came to possess Lysaer, all of Etarra could be
threatened."

Diegan gave the matter-his dutiful consideration, then raised his
goblet to curled lips and sipped.  His eyes reflected black irony as he
said, "When Lysaer left this chamber, he seemed in perfect
self-command."

"And before then?"  Asandir sounded worried.

"Never mind the commander of the guard," Dakar burst out.  "He's got
lying written all over him."

"Then keep him here under house arrest!"  Asandir stalked across the
carpet.  "We don't need a call to arm the garrison to complicate
disaster any further."  He paused at the far wall, studied the
bookshelf, and after a second's hesitation, reached out and thumbed the
hidden catch.  The false panel swung open, wafting telltale traces of
Talith's lavender perfume.  After an irritated glance toward Lord
Diegan, Asandir departed in Lysaer's footsteps, through the bolt hole
that led to the street.

"Fiends take you!"  Dakar yelled after his master.  He charged to the
panel and wedged it before it could quite fall shut.  Though the
stone-walled gloom beyond by now held only drafts, he shouted anyway.

"Will somebody bother to tell me what in Ath's creation I have
prophesied?"

He received no answer, just a rip in his hose from the terrier, which
in a belated fit of courage scuttled out from hiding and bit his ankle.
Dakar's defensive kick cleanly missed.

The door fell to with a thud.  As the dog retreated to snarl over its
pillaged shred of stocking, Diegan hefted his decanter toward the
invader still left in his parlor.  "Share a drink to soften
misfortune?"

Dakar groaned.  Already riled beyond sense by the effects of
clairvoyance and a hangover, he pressed fat palms to his temples.

"Wine won't help.  The entire universe has gone crazy."

Diegan offered a chair and pressed a filled goblet upon the Mad
Prophet.  "Then let's forgo sanity also and both get rippingly drunk."

No sooner had the drapes been lowered over the windows of Etarra's
great council hall than a hammering rattled the main entry.  Despite
the fact Traithe had sealed the doors with a minor arcane binding, one
heavy panel cracked open.

A raw streak of daylight slashed the foyer, raising a sparkle like a
jewel vault across the agitated assemblage of officials in their
wilting feathers, dyed furs, gold chains, and gemstudded sashes of
rank.

Since none of Etarra's citizens held magecraft to challenge his
warding, Traithe straightened hurriedly from the prostrate body of the
Lord Governor.  The raven on his shoulder kept balance to a flurry of
wingbeats as he turned around to confront the disturbance.

Arithon's voice pealed out through the gloom.  "Where's Asandir?"

Rapacious to recover their plundered advantages, every Etarran
official not overawed by Morfett's collapse pressed forward, blinking
against the sudden daylight.  The few who were closest recognized the
disheveled figure through the glare; the rest saw and identified the
shining circlet that betokened Rathain's rights of royal sovereignty.

"Sorcery!"  someone cried from the fore.  Heads turned, hatted, bald,
and formally beribboned and jeweled.  "Here's the prince, burst through
spells of protection.  All the dread rumors are true!"

A surge crossed the gathering like a draft-caught ripple through a
tapestry.

More muttering arose.  "It's him.  Teir's'Ffalenn.  A sneaking
sorcerer, after all.  His Grace of Rathain."

The prince in the doorway called again.  "In Ath's name, is there any
Fellowship Sorcerer present?"

Traithe thrust through the press that jammed the foyer, his attention
narrowed to include only Arithon's pale face.

Though loath to create a public spectacle, he had no choice but bow
to need.  "Asandir's gone to find your half-brother.

Sethvir's at the south gate armory.  The streets are not at all
safe."

Heartsick to realize he could not beg help, denied even privacy to
speak plainly, Arithon called back.  "I can't stay here."

Assuredly, he could not.  The high council was keyed to animosity.

If Traithe's presence momentarily stayed blood' shed, that abeyance
would not long suffice.  Every minister's layers of lace and brocades
held hidden daggers and jeweled pins that could be turned in a moment
to treachery; not a few would have in attendance paid assassins
masquerading as secretaries.

Having interposed his own person between the threatened prince and
the dignitaries in the chamber at large, Traithe sorted limited
options.  That Luhaine seemed nowhere in evidence was sure indication
that the nexus of change forecast in the strands at Althain Tower had
fully and finally been crossed.  The wrong intervention now might
displace the sequence of events that framed Dakar's Black Rose
prophecy.

Traithe raged at his impaired powers; unlike his colleagues, he could
not gauge the broad import of this crisis at a glance.  The best he
could offer was a gesture.  "My bird will lead the straightest course
toward Sethvir."

The raven might have been a lifeline to salvation for the relief that
touched Arithon's face.  This the governing officials of Etarra
observed.  They began to press Traithe's back like wolves grown bold
before weakness.  Another moment, and the pack of them would turn as
ungovernable as any mob in the streets.

"Go," Traithe called.  The raven arose, flapping.  Air hissed across
splayed feathers as it shot through the gap in the door.

Arithon shouldered the panel closed, just as the foremost ranks of
the guild masters broke in a rush to tear him down.

Crippled Traithe was, but not powerless.  As aggression crested
around him, and elbows jostled him aside, he sensed to the second when
the minds of the governors' council became aligned in mass will to
wreak violence.  Traithe seized his opening through their passion.  He
attached an entanglement of energies, and their intent to commit murder
was bent aside and bridled as his warding snapped into the breach.

Shouts trailed off into quiet, cut by a sigh of rich cloth.

The battering rush toward the doorway juddered to a slow fall
forward, as every man who wished harm to his pnnce folded at the knees
and collapsed.  No townsman at the end was left standing.  Nestled in
their crumpled brocades, lying across flattened hats and fur-trimmed
cloaks, every official in Etarra's high government settled where he
lay, fast asleep.

Alone on his feet, one scarred, silver-haired mage regarded the rows
of prostrate bodies, his heart aggrieved at too small a victory, won
too late.  The irony cut him, that but for Dakar's'infernal predictions
concerning the Fellowship's recovery, Arithon might now have returned
here for sanctuary until the raven could summon Sethvir.

The downed councilmen snored on, oblivious.

"May every last one of you be harrowed by nightmares for your
ignorance!"  Traithe cursed in surly, sorrowful fervency.  Then he
straightened his wide-brimmed black hat and applied himself to the task
of setting wards of guard over every door, every window, every closet
and cranny in the chamber, that the ministers of Morfett's council
should stay mewed up until the course of the tragedy forecast by the
strands could guarantee what hope could be salvaged for the ill-starred
Black Rose prophecy.

Lysaer closed his eyes as a third, fierce tingle played across his
flesh.  A still part of him analyzed this, and concluded that
Fellowship Sorcerers must be seeking him through spell-craft.  Heated
elation followed.  With uncanny certainty he realized he was no longer
quite what he had been; the pattern sought out by the Sorcerers' probe
had ceased to match his personality.  Once he should have felt alarmed
by an insight more appropriate to a mage-taught perspective.  Obsessed
now by compulsion to serve justice, he never questioned what caused the
deviation, or his odd self-knowledge of its existence.

The paradox passed unregarded, that he lurked like a fugitive in an
alley, all for a promise to call his half-brother to task.  To Lysaer,
this moment, the urge to uncover any latent breach of faith became
overridingly important.

Every quandary that tormented his conscience and broke his night's
rest with disturbed dreams had narrowed into sudden, lucent focus.

Lysaer gave a laugh in self-derision.  He had fought so hard to give
Arithon the benefit of the doubt that objectivity itself had become
obstructive.  He shivered and sweated, berating his idealistic
foolishness.  He had only to question, all along.  For if Arithon was
established as a liar, the ongoing weeks of heartsick recrimination
might at one stroke become banished.  Avar's bastard as a proven
criminal presented Lysaer with moral duty to defend the merchants and
townsmen.

A resolution in favor of complaints he understood would be a frank
relief.

"I'll find you," he swore to the shadows, Arithon's name behind the
vow.  His tingling discomfort now replaced by fanatical resolve, he
moved on.

Stray dogs that skulked across his path whined and shrank from his
scent.  When a braver bitch snarled and hounded his track, he
dispatched a flick of light and stung her to yelping flight.

That cruelty to any animal would have been beyond him just minutes
before never once crossed Lysaer's mind.  He picked his way over
cracked paving and discarded bits of broken pottery and emerged from
the alley into the brighter main thoroughfare.

People crowded the avenue, converging toward the square to attend the
royal coronation.  A sun-wrinkled farm wife stared at Lysaer's
emergence, chewing toothless gums as she leaned on a strapping,
dark-skinned grandson.  Children darted past on both sides, tossing
painted sticks in a throwing game that held careless regard for the
neat clothing bestowed by their steadfast merchant parents.  These,
Arithon's intended victims, Lysaer greeted courteously.  He smiled at a
cake vendor, and paused to help her boy push her cart across the
gutter.

The servant in attendance at Morfett's front doorway knew Lysaer by
sight.  Politely admitted inside, he asked, and was granted leave, to
see himself to the guest suite on his own.

No Sorcerer guarded the back stairwell; Luhaine's wards were all
faded.  The room where Arithon quartered held only a still warmth of
sunlight through latched, amber-tinged casements.  Lysaer paused,
breathing hard on the threshold.

He surveyed the chamber more closely.

The callous character of its occupant stood revealed to casual
inspection: in a king's cloak left crumpled into the cushions of a
divan, and the gift of a carbuncle scabbard spurned and abandoned on
the floor.

Lysaer scowled, that the sacred trust of royal heritage should suffer
such careless usage.  Only the lyranthe lovingly couched on the window
seat gave testament to the heart of the man.

Urged by a pang so indistinct he could not fathom its origin, Lysaer
crossed the echoing floor.  By the time he reached the alcove, his
feelings had fanned into rage.  He shouted to the room's empty corners,
"Are Rathain's people of less account than minstrelsy?"

Silence mocked him back.  The silver strings sparkled sharp
highlights, mute but all the same promising dalliance.

Rathain's prince would be reft from distractions; Etarra's needs
would be served.  Lysaer reached out and struck the instrument a flying
blow with his forearm.

Parchment-thin wood, spell-spun silver, all of Elshain's
irreplaceable craftwork sailed in an arc above the floor tiles.

The belting dissonance of impact lost voice as the lyranthe's sound
chamber smashed, and each scattered splinter whispered separately to
rest in a swath of trammeled sunlight.

"You cannot hide, pirate's bastard," Lysaer vowed.  Heat and chills
racked his flesh as he spun, crunching over fragments, and burst back
through the breached doorway.

The streets outside were packed by a crushing mob.  Every tradesman
and commoner turned out with their families now crowded toward the
square before the council hall.  Even a few white-hooded initiates
pledged to Ath's service had left their hospices in the wilds to
attend.  Lysaer let the flow of traffic carry him.  He felt no remorse
for his destruction of Arithon's lyranthe; besieged by his drive to
right injustice, he gave full rein to the ingrained gallantries of his
upbringing.  Lysaer touched shoulders, and patted the cheeks of
children, and offered kind words to the plain-clad people in the
streets.  They stood aside for him, gave him way where the press was
thickest, and smiled at his lordly grace.

Rathain's prince must be like him, they said; tall and fairspoken and
pledged to end the corruption in Etarra's trade guilds and council.

Lysaer did not disabuse the people of their hope.  The whispered
turbulence of his thinking bent wholly inward as the untroubled faith
of Etarra's common folk caused him to measure his own failing.  He too
had allowed himself to be misled by the prince of Rathain; he, Amroth's
former heir, who had lost blood kin to s'Ffalenn wiles, should at least
have stayed forewarned.

A touch upon his arm caused Lysaer to start.  He glanced in polite
forbearance at the matron with the basket of wrinkled apples who gave
him a diffident smile.  "Did yo I u lose track of your folk, sir?"

"Madam, no."  Lysaer smiled.  "I'm alone."

Abashed by his extreme good looks, the woman gave a little shrug.

"Well, even by yourself, sir, you'd get a better view from the
galleries."  She raised a chapped hand from her knot-worked shawl and
pointed.

Lysaer squinted against sunlight so pure it seemed to scour the air
with its clarity.  From his vantage at the edge of the square, the
balconies of the guild ministers' mansions arose in tiers above street
level.  Their wood and wroughtiron railings striped shadow over a
singing knot of cordwainers who boisterously shared a skin of spirits.

As their least tone-deaf ringleader paused to take his swig, their
ditty drifted cheerfully off key.  "I have no invitation," Lysaer said
above the noise.  "And anyway, by now the best places are all spoken
for."

"Well, that may be."  Made bold by his friendliness, the matron gave
him a swift appraisal.  "But I've a cousin who has lodging at the front
of the square.  At my asking, a bit of space could be found."

Lysaer did not ask if the cousin perhaps had a marriageable daughter
and fond hopes to attract a wealthy suitor, Neither did he accept on
false grounds as he clasped the woman's wrist and kissed her palm.
"You're most kind."

The dreams and the lives of just such honest folk were the first
things Arithon's machinations would tear asunder.

Lysaer gently captured the matron's basket.  "Let me.  Any burden
must hamper you terribly in this press."

"Not so much."  But her fingers surrendered the wicker handle.

Won to trust by his sincerity, the matron took his arm.  "Come on.

Hurry or we'll miss the procession."  Minutes later, squeezed between
the granddaughters of a furniture maker and three strapping cousins who
wore guild badges as vintners, Lysaer took the place he was offered.

From a third-story gallery accessed by an outdoor stairway, he gazed
over the square's gathered thousands, which eddied below like currents
pressed counter by fickle winds.

The jeweled and feathered finery of the rich mixed uneasily with
poorer fare, common laborers and beggars still clad in their jetsam of
motley.  Angry, outraged, curious, or joyful, the factions mingled
uneasily.  Etarra had turned out for Arithon's coronation in a welcome
well leavened by enmity.

The atmosphere on the gallery where Lysaer came to roost was festive.
The lads had been staked a cask by their master, and wine was freely
passed around.  The sharpness of red grapes mingled with the sweeter
scent shed by apples doled out to the children.

Courteous but aloof, Lysaer smiled and offered compliments when the
inevitable pretty daughter was presented.

After that, though the girl in her neat paint and layered silk
dresses shot him admiring glances filled with hope, he spared her
little attention as he engaged in a predatory survey of the crowd.

Her little sister was more forthright.

She toddled forward and plucked at his rich sleeve.  With her dimpled
chin dribbled with apple juice, she demanded, "Who are you looking
for?"

Behind her, older cousins were whispering, "It's him.  The very one
who's companion to the prince.  Nobody else in Etarra wears indigo
velvet like that."

The child with her fruit-sticky hands was pulled back to allow the
exalted guest space.

Lysaer gave the family who hosted him scant notice as his gaze caught
and fixed on an anomaly: above the sun-washed square with its heaving,
raucous throng, a raven flapped, deep as shadow against the cloudless
brilliance of the sky.

Heat and cold flashed through Lysaer, and a tremor coursed his flesh.
Then the bird, sure harbinger of Traithe and the doings of the
Fellowship, at the next heartbeat ceased utterly to matter.

Beneath the raven's flight path, a lone man shoved through the press.

Lysaer noted details in preternatural clarity.  The fugitive had
shirt cuffs worked in ribbons of green, silver, and black, and edged
with bands of leopard fur.  A plain cloak thrown on to conceal a
heraldic tabard had been torn, and thread work glistened through the
holes.  The royal blazon might not show, but in his haste Arithon
s'Ffalenn had neglected the circlet of inheritance that even still
crossed his brow.

The face beneath was taut with a desperation that touched Lysaer to
stark anger.  "He's running away!"  he murmured incredulously.

"Breaking his commitment to the realm."

"Who's running away?"  cried the vintner's drayman, full of red wine
and brash fight.  & Heat and cold and chills merged into scalding
resentment.

"Your prince," Lysaer snapped back.  "The truth must be told.

Your promised Teir's'Ffalenn is a criminal and a pirate's bastard,
raised and corrupted by sorcerers."

The youngest children were staring, their half-gnawed apples in their
hands.  To Lysaer, the innocence in their faces reflected a whole
city's deluded defenselessness.

Something inside of him snapped.

"Get the little ones inside, they're not safe here!"  His command was
instinctive, and charged with a regal prerogative that none on the
balcony dared gainsay.  A grandfather helped the house matron bundle
her young through a side door.

The confused wails of the children, the scrape of a door bolt, the
sudden cringing deference shown by family members still left on the
gallery, made no impression upon Lysaer.  From his unobstructed place
at the rail, he drew himself up to full height.  Delineated by a nimbus
of sunlight, his hair gleamed bright gold, and his presence seemed
charged with righteous wrath as any angel sent from Athliefia to scour
the land of bleak evil.

Lysaer raised his hand and singled out the slight, disheveled
fugitive that elbowed and shoved to escape the square, then lifted his
voice in a thunderous shout.

"People of Etarra, behold the prince you would crown king and hear
truth!  Your lands have been restored to fair sunlight, yet one lives
who can wield darkness more dire than any mist!  Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn
is full Master of Shadow, a sorcerer who would succor barbarians and
waste your fine city to ashes!"

The roar of the multitude overwhelmed any further accusation, but the
velvet-clad figure on the balcony drew notice.

People thronging the great square stopped and tipped their faces up
to stare.  Lysaer's pointing finger and the circling flight of
Traithe's raven drew notice to the other figure in that strange,
partnered tableau.

Arrested in mid-flight by the grasp of two stolid merchants, Arithon
cast a fraught glance at the bird.

To Lysaer, watching, the gesture affirmed s'Ffalenn guilt.

A prince who was innocent of machinations would never count a dumb
beast above his subjects or his own threatened fate.  Jolted to savage
antagonism, unaware he was the manipulated instrument of Desh-thiere's
fugitive wraith, Lysaer raised rigid hands to call his gift....

Buffeted by the crowd that streamed through a side street, an
illusion cast over his person that lent him the semblance of somebody's
benevolent grandfather, Asandir ceaselessly scanned the grand square.

Then an odd flare of light drew his eye to the rail of a nondescript
balcony.  "There!"  he whispered, his word too quiet to be overheard.

His thoughts framed the image he saw: of Lysaer, poised in an
unmistakable effort to summon light.

Although nowhere near the tumultuous scene by the council hall,
Sethvir picked up the communication.  He could do nothing, embroiled as
he was in his own difficulties.  His head cocked, one hand braced
against the doors of the south gate wardroom, the Warden of Aithain
sent back acknowledgment.  Under his palm stout planking shuddered and
bounced, assaulted from without by a ramming squad under Diegan's
acting captain.  Ordered to disrupt the coronation, Gnudsog had pulled
every sentry from the gatehouse with intent to breach the sealed
armory.  Busied with stayspells and bindings to withhold more weapons
from the chaos in the street, Sethvir had no chance to express relief.

Quartering the city mobs for Lysaer had been worse than seeking a
needle in a haystack.  Where steel and straw could at least be winnowed
separate by Name, the wraith that Desh-thiere had insinuated into the
matrix of Lysaer's spirit posed a quandary.  Without means to command
its true essence, no stopgap spell of transfer could rescue the
possessed victim from his stance of attack upon the balcony.

Sorrow and grief the strands foretold, were the Fellowship to stand
restored to Seven, but with a second, unanticipated forecast entangled
on top of the first, the validity of Dakar's Black Rose prophecy stood
threatened.  Caught in the critical crux, the Fellowship raged with
tied hands.  They dared use no power to divert, but could only
inadequately observe the blow as, inevitably, it must fall.

"We can't even shift Arithon to safety, " chimed in a sending from
Luhaine, who yet tracked the s'Ffalenn prince's progress on the outside
chance that the coronation might still be salvaged.  "Two interfering
merchants have grabbed hold of him.  " From his stance on the street
side, Asandir loosed one of Dakar's randiest oaths; an offended mother
glared in his direction and scooped her toddler beyond earshot.

On the balcony above the crowd, Lysaer's hands bunched to fists.

A crack split the air, and light flared raw brilliance across the
sky.

"No!"  Arithon's horrified cry tangled with Lysaer's scream of
triumph.  The Shadow Master, under attack, tore his forearm out of a
man's grip, twisted, and thrust up his sword.

Silver-white light flared in a star burst that dazzled and blinded:
Alithiel's Paravian-wrought protections sheared out a chord of pure
heartbreak, sure proof the defending cause was just.  Asandir saw and
despaired.

The light bolt that speared from the balcony was wholly the work of
Desh-thiere's vengeance, and the wraith that now fully possessed
Lysaer.

Arcane energies collided in wrenching dissonance high over Arithon's
head.  He thrashed, but despite a madman's contortions failed to evade
the vigilantes who tackled him across shoulders and knees.

His sword arm was seized and torn downward.

That he might have turned his blade and cut to kill never seemed to
occur to him-as if the only peril that held meaning lay in Lysaer's
unprovoked assault.

Asandir's hand was forced, the full might of his protections engaged
to shield helpless bystanders from harm.  He cursed fate, agonized that
Dakar's new vision had upset the strands' forecast and precipitated
crisis too soon.  No coronation could take place now.  On every side of
the square, people were screaming, flash-blinded and whipped to
stampede in raw terror that their city was being savaged by sorcery.

As light bolt and sword flash sheeted through the maze of his own
conjury, Asandir mourned that Alithiel's bright magic would offer
Arithon no shred of defense.  The spells of Raithan Paravians were
never wrought to take life, but only to dazzle an opponent and divert
or deflect unjust attack.

Lysaer's was full command of light; his sight would be unimpaired by
a ward that flashed just to blind.

The revenge engendered by Desh-thiere's possession arced on toward
its targeted victim.

Isolate from the ward-light that shielded the chancecaught
bystanders, Arithon yanked a wrist clear of encumbrance.  He no longer
held his sword.  Only shadow cracked from his spread fingers: for
defense of Traithe's raven, Asandir saw in split-second, grief-sharp
perception.

Uncaring who noticed, the Sorcerer wept as Desh-thiere's offensive
hammered down.

The bolt struck Arithon's raised palm and snaked in a half twist down
his forearm.  Scalded flesh recoiled in agony.

Worse horror bloomed upon impact, as conjury well beyond Lysaer's
means burst from his killing band of light.

Arithon screamed.

Red lightning jagged over his body.  The merchants who struggled to
bear him down were tossed away like ragdolls, leaving the Shadow Master
a figure alone, strong through and threshed by patterns like tangled
wire.

Asandir gasped in sick shock.  The inconceivable had happened:
Desh-thiere's wraith had delivered a banespell against the half-brother
beyond reach of possession.  Transferred by Lysaer's bolt of light, the
evil mesh of its geas entangled in Arithon's aura.

Thunder pealed.  For a heartbeat the packed square was rinsed
scarlet, a tableau borrowed from nightmare.  As Deshthiere's curse
claimed its foothold, Arithon's expression shifted from resistance and
pain to a hatred that abjured all redemption.  In purest,
bloody-hearted passion, he howled and wrought shadow in answer to
Lysaer's betrayal.

The air stung under a savage bite of frost, and darkness slammed over
Etarra.

Night swallowed all without distinction, from Traithe's raven that
yet flew unharmed on its faithful, straight course for Sethvir, to four
vigilante merchants exposed to the backwash of murdering force shed
from the Shadow Master's person.  Cut down in sudden death, they lay
twitching and seared amid smoldering brocades.  Citizens scattered in
fear from a carnage past grasp of sane experience.

Blackness dropped also like a curtain over the most illstarred victim
of them all, the s'llessid prince enslaved and ruined by the usage of
Desh-thiere's loose wraith.  Emptied by the powers that had driven him,
Lysaer folded at the knees and collapsed against the gallery rail.

A last peal of thunder rattled the mansions that edged the square and
boomed off the scarps of the Mathoms.

"Now," Sethvir sent in sorrow, "the cusp that rules the prophecy has
passed.  We can try to heal the smashed pieces.

 Backlash

The armory that adjoined the south gate wardroom became the
Fellowship's site to regroup after Desh-thiere's machinations struck
the half-brothers.  Sethvir by then had secured the stout doors to both
chambers.  Ongoing assault from the outer bailey by Gnudsog's squad of
besiegers became reduced to muffled thunder by thick oak.  Should the
shearedoff lamp posts pressed into service as rams at length splinter
down the braced panels, enchantments would remain that none but the
mage-trained might cross.

Inside, ill lit by a single torch, oil and leather and the staleness
of old sweat sullied the air with the leftover grimness of past wars.
Dust from dry-rotted fletchings filmed the floors, smeared by tracks
left from Sethvir's pacing and other marks scoured by the arbalists and
pitch barrels he had dragged to clear space between the close-stacked
stores.

After, his robe like old blood in the dimness, Sethvir stilled.

As if, overcome by reverie, he had forgotten to move between steps.
In contrary fact, his appearance masked a concentration so keen,
nothing alive could escape him.  Beyond distraction from the ram's
thudding impacts, he unreeled his awareness beyond keep walls to
measure the pulse of all Etarra.

Like individual currents in a cataract, he sensed the mobs that
rampaged through streets battened black under shadow; restive city
guardsmen who formed bands and drew steel to skewer any sorcerer they
could search out and harry to final reckoning.  Sethvir knew families
mewed up in locked houses; he touched the spilled blood of the
innocent, heard the cries of the raped, knew the rage and despair of
the looted.  Need left scant space for grief.  He could set only small
seals of peace.

The effects were infinitesimal: amid dusty cobwebs in a wine cellar,
an infant hidden by its parents ceased its hysterical crying.

Three huddled siblings quieted in relief, their terror of the dark
given surcease; while in the air high above, Traithe's raven was
rescued from blind circling and guided through black sky to safe roost.

Yet of thousands of woes the Warden of Althain encountered, he eased
but a very few.  His greater reserves of necessity stayed poised as,
stone patient, he scanned the welter of Etarra's disgruntled humanity,
inset with the odd pool of calm that was Traithe's spell of ward upon
the governing officials, asleep and barred inside their council hall.

Sethvir might have found humor in their predicament had the signal he
awaited not chosen that moment to manifest.

"Reach," the Warden of Althain responded.

On a balcony in the darkened main square, Asandir acknowledged, then
stepped into a net of forces held ready to receive him.  His foot left
the platform of a gallery redolent with spilled wineskins and bruised
apples, passed through a nexus of spatial distortion, and came down in
dust and steel filings on the floor of the south keep armory.

Sethvir stepped clear as the shadows cast by the weapon racks
rearranged to embrace his colleague's tall form.  In his arms Asandir
cradled Lysaer s'llessid, unconscious.  One jeweled, silk-clad wrist
dangled down, and hair fanned gold strands across the shoulder of the
Sorcerer's dark robe.

Clear-cut as a cameo, the prince's profile reflected the inborn
nobility of his lineage; no shadow showed of the evil that had blighted
life and honor.  Unwitting pawn of ill circumstance, Lysaer had yet to
waken and feel the change that disbarred him from royal inheritance.

Sethvir avoided Asandir's eyes, which were steel-bleak.

The hands, too fierce in their grip, that crinkled fine lace and blue
tinsel; his stance, forced and graceless from the sorrows unspoken
between them: that after today's unconscionable sacrifice, the
s'Ffalenn coronation had not happened.

The result did not bear mention, that the precarious Black Rose
prophecy, which keyed Davien the Betrayer's repentance and the return
of Ciladis the Lost, should be left unresolved and in jeopardy.

Desh-thiere had been allowed its ugly vengeance, yet the
reunification of their Fellowship they had traded Athera's peace to
guarantee had escaped its conditional link to the future.  The drum
boom of the siege ram disallowed space for regret, that every atrocity
that swept Etarra's streets might have been set loose in vain.

"Lay him there."  The Warden of Althain indicated the weathered
canvas litter he had braced off chill flooring with upended casks of
catapult shot.  Asandir shed his burden and knelt to rearrange blue
velvets before they became.  napped with grime and oil.

"You cannot blame yourself," Sethvir said quickly.  He did not add
empty platitudes, that Arithon might one day rise beyond the day's
betrayals and change heart to embrace his inheritance; that Rathain's
mismanagements and hatreds, now vastly worsened, could somehow be
healed without scars.

Left bleak and empty-handed, Asandir slipped his dark cloak and
covered the fair-haired prince still left in their charge.  Soft as a
fall of shadow, heavy wool veiled the glitter of rich thread work that
proved Lysaer still breathed.

"We were remiss not to look for possession," Asandir said finally.

"Across time?"  Sethvir closed his eyes, savaged by awareness that
continued to span the warp through weft weave of reactions that marked
a city's plunge into turmoil.  The strain did not just leave him vague;
today he looked whitely haggard.  "Had we Name for the one wraith
responsible, we might have unriddled its intent.  But prevent?  The
conflict etched by the strands has not altered.  And Arithon is in
retreat, not dead."

Which was close as he could bear to come to pleading faith in a major
miracle.

In answer to unvoiced forebodings, the torch flame streamed in its
bracket, then extinguished as Luhaine's presence unfurled with untoward
violence in the armory.  "I've lost him," he announced in reference to
Arithon.  The ongoing thud of the rams clipped his words as he added,
"I managed to track him across the square, but his life pattern's
drifted severely.  I mislike the evidence, that Desh-thiere's wraith
wrought black sorcery whose taint has afflicted both half-brothers."

"It's accomplished more than possession, we've confirmed."

Sethvir's admission came tired as he joined Asandir beside the litter
and cradled both hands under Lysaer's head.

"But not what," Luhaine fired back.

"Let Cal work, and he'll tell you."  That Asandir used Sethvir's
ancient and all but forgotten mortal name laid bare the depth of his
distress.

Luhaine disregarded the lapse.  "No one of us can afford to stand
idle while you check!"  He departed in a whip snap of wind more
Kharadmon's style than his own.

Fibers of dry-rotted fletching spiraled away on the draft, faintly
visible to mage-sight against a chiaroscuro of dark.

"It's bad," Asandir concluded softly.  "How bad?"

"Ah, the unsuspected craftiness of the creature."  Sethvir's voice
seemed blurred to distraction as his awareness realigned with his
flesh.  "Desh-Thiere's plot has been deviously thorough."  He sighed
and smoothed the rutched laces of Lysaer's formal collar.  "It
understood that its bane was comprised of paired strength.  What better
protection than to sunder our princes through hatred, and set their
gifted talents against each other?"

"It cursed them to enmity, so."  That implied long-range planning, a
chilling fact.  Asandir shared Sethvir's unsettled wariness, that the
wraiths left under ward at Skelseng's Gate were far from secure as they
stood.

But that complication must wait.

"What else?"  Asandir prompted gently.

Abject in misery, Sethvir released his findings.

Not surprisingly, the Mistwraith's malice had begun that night when
the half-brothers had been cornered outside of Paravian protections at
Ithamon.  Cognizant of them as its enemy, Desh-thiere had imprinted
their personalities then.

The Fellowship's nightlong search to uncover damages in the aftermath
had been wasted effort: the wraiths had done no meddling, not then.

In shock and raw pain Asandir voiced the appalling conclusion.

"Desh-thiere had already encompassed the scope of Arithon's training
in that first split second of contact!"

Fenced by battered racks of weapons, the Warden of Althain propped
his forehead on laced knuckles.  "Worse."

His words fell deadened against his sleeves.  "The wraiths withheld
from action, brooding upon what they had learned."  And then when
language failed him, he set his ugly findings into thought.  Deep
damage had not occurred until Lysaer's bare-handed, heroic exposure, in
the throes of the last struggle to confine the entities at Ithamon.

New knowledge reshaped the decision to shield Arithon's learning to a
tragedy of broader proportions.

"Our protections were wrongly aligned," Asandir whispered, anguished.
"We sought harm too soon, and protected craft teachings too late."
Woe to Lysaer, his integrity left ruthlessly forfeit to an enemy that
took him defenseless.  The irony wounded, that Arithon's schooled
protections might have deflected the attack, or at least sensed the
presence of an invading wraith before it could move to possess.

"Dharkaron damn us for fools, we threw the wrong prince into
jeopardy."

Too late in hindsight to reverse a choice miscalled through crisis
and desperation, Sethvir closed dry, chapped fingers over his
colleague's wrist.  "Without Desh-thiere's true Name, we were blinded.

And still are."  Gently, despondently, he clarified: that a stolen
memory from Lysaer's trials in the Red Desert had offered foothold for
Desh-thiere's revenge; when for the sake of survival, Arithon had once
resorted to magecraft to break the recalcitrance of a halfbrother whose
hatred eclipsed hope of reason.

"The Mistwraith seized upon discord, then borrowed deeper knowledge
from the bindings Kharadmon attached to Lysaer's consent on Kieling
Tower," Sethvir said.  "The spell curse just cast interlinks with the
half-brothers' life-force.

To dissolve or countermand its hold would separate spirit from
flesh."

"Death," Asandir mused bitterly.  His remorse did not lighten for
past mistakes.  While the Mistwraith's entities encompassed such grasp
of the mysteries, the Fellowship and two princes from Dascen Elur had
achieved no small feat to bind and confine all but one.  There remained
the unresolved menace of Lysaer's possession, and an entity that must
of necessity be exercised now.

"Are you ready?"  Sethvir asked.  Though the eyes of his colleague
mirrored trepidation, the two Sorcerers took position across the
makeshift pallet and placed hands upon the prince's brow and chest.

Around them the gleam of a thousand weapons lay quenched in darkness,
kept keen for blooding mortal flesh.  Yet against a phantom entity,
steel offered only brute ending: the sharp, final agony of the mercy
stroke that exchanged live suffering for the grave.

Cruel comfort.  Asandir snatched a shaky breath.  "You know, if we
fail, we'll have to kill him."

Sethvir chose not to answer.  At some point the shivering boom of the
ram had stopped.  Deep quiet spread over the armory until a sorcerer's
profound concentration could pick out the sigh of each settling dust
mote.  Aimless air stroked the blades in their racks, and rang from
them tone that sang of death.  Distanced from such distractions,
Sethvir stilled into trance.  His awareness merged into Lysaer's to
ferret out the elusive energies which made up the enemy wraith.

No simple exorcism, this delicate unraveling of spirits, since the
entity they sought to extricate stayed unnamed.

To Asandir fell the task of safeguard.  Submersed in Sethvir's
labors, he paced a hunt through the complex, interlocking auras that
composed Lysaer's spirit.  Like inventory, each strand and loop and
whorl of light became mapped; those that belonged to s'llessid were set
under ward by Asandir.  Any that felt alien Sethvir marked aside.  The
nuances of identity were perilous, slight-in some cases outside logic
or intuition.  A wrong choice would cause a fragment of the victim to
splinter off, an amputation of the soul more permanent than the most
devastating bodily mutilation.  Yet without Name to compel the invasive
spirit out of its entrenched possession, the Fellowship had no other
recourse.  The risk of error widened with the taint of the spellcurse
that bound the half-brothers into enmity.  At first hand Asandir was
forced to share the anguish of Sethvir's prior assessment.  For the
hatred instilled into Lysaer for his halfbrother was so thoroughly
intermeshed with his life force that it defeated outside help to
unravel.  The geas to take down Arithon both was, and was not, a part
of the s'Ilessio prince's essence.  To miscall just one twist of its
bindings would be to condemn Lysaer to death.

Sweating, frustrated, intermeshed in life threads complex enough to
fray reason to the bittermost edge of bewilderment, Asandir grasped why
Sethvir had met his last statement in silence.

More likely their attempted exorcism would go awry and kill the
victim than any aspect of an unnamed wraith be left at large to require
an execution.

Time lost meaning.  The paired Sorcerers submerged in the immensity
of their task made countless, agonized choices.

Near the end, in ragged exhausion, they examined their respective
progress.

The patterns that contained the known wraith were layered too thinly
to be credible.

"That can't be all of it, " Sethvir sent in ringing despair.

"Where in Ath's name can it be hiding?"

They began afresh, untangled Lysaer's memories strand for strand.

Some rang false-far too few.  The wraith's entirety yet escaped them.

Sick with trepidation, Asandir said, "We had better reexamine what
was artificial at the outset."

Sethvir's grief came back barbed with white anger.  That
Desh-thiere's aspect might attach its possession to the given gift of
the s'llessid royal line was unthinkable.  And yet there it was: the
rest of its meddling essence enmeshed so subtly with Fellowship sorcery
that their own review had missed it out.

"Dharkaron, Angel of Vengeance!"  Sethvir all but wept.

"No wonder the ill creature had him!  It gained entry through the one
avenue of conscience he was spell-charged never to question.  " The
fault and the weakness were never Lysaer's, but the Fellowship's own,
for sorrowful lack of foresight.

That moment a key rattled in the outside lock to the wardroom.

Gnudsog's bass shout cut off on somebody's testy command, this
followed by a mortal yelp of pain.

Dakar said, his diction slurred and quarrelsome, "Well, I warned you
there'd be wards.  Let me."

Sethvir sighed.  "Company.  We had better finish this quickly."

The rush sat poorly with Asandir.  But if the panic-driven bloodshed
in Etarra's streets was to be curbed, Lysaer's talents would be needed
to dissolve Arithon's barrier of shadows.  Crisis allowed no time to
triple-check steps that at best were uncertain business anyway.

Asandir steadied the defenses set to shelter Lysaer's spirit.

Then, braced as if for a cataclysm, he said, "Go.

Sethvir unleashed counter-bindings like a trap over the parasitic
wraith.  Light crackled over Lysaer's body.  A convoluted mesh traced
like fire upon the air, reflected in sword steel and pole arms.

Asandir felt a burn of force tear against his wards as the wraith
interlaced through its victim's being thrashed to maintain its hold.

The pull increased, terrible as the tug of a rip tide or the wrench
of barbed grapples from seasoned oak.  Asandir resisted.  To lose grasp
on even one strand of the pattern was to cede a bit of Lysaer with the
wraith.

Sethvir's draw spells sharpened.  Stress points flared cold blue, and
the lines over Lysaer's body blurred and spiked where they dragged one
against another, like entangled wires pried to separation.

The wraith clung, obdurate.

Sorcery peaked to compensate.  On the litter, Lysaer spasmed taut.

The pain of the forced unbinding cut even through unconsciousness,
and a harrowing wail tore from him.

The cry as well had been Asandir's, for the prince's torment became
shared.  No resource could be spared for small healing, absorbed as the
Sorcerer was in holding spirit united with flesh.  Even as powers
twisted and flashed at his directive, he could not shed the feeling
that this exorcism was going too hard.  As if the wraith had sunk fangs
into some part of Lysaer, it seemed intent upon ripping him asunder
rather than relinquish its possession.

And then on the heels of that uncertainty, the wraith came unraveled
from Lysaer's being so abruptly that recoil hit like a slap.

Spell-craft sheared the last connections and pinned the creature down
in midair.  For good or ill, the deed was done.  The trapped wraith
froze, burning in malice like a marsh candle; the freed man lay dazed
senseless on the litter.

The Sorcerers braced at his side regarded each other, beaten and
drained from their labors.  Between them passed understanding: that
cost had been set upon this unbinding.  The s'llessid gift of true
justice, bent to ill usage by the wraith, had suffered untold further
damage.

Asandir ventured hoarsely, "The curse that sets Lysaer against
Arithon had sullied the s'llessid gift in any case."

Hunched with his chin on clasped knuckles, Sethvir sighed.  They
dared correct nothing now.  Not without risk of disturbing
Desh-thiere's binding and chancing the s'llessid prince's life.

"There's always the next generation," he said sadly.  "The wraith, at
least, is defeated."

The barest hitch to Sethvir's statement snapped Asandir to keen
scrutiny.  The Warden of Althain avoided contact, his mind held
shuttered and dark.  His eyes stayed stubbornly averted.  Asandir said,
"There's more.  You've got Name for the ill-starred being, don't you?"

Now Sethvir did look up, bleak as ice on spring blossoms in the
sickly glimmer shed by the wraith.  "Once the creature was human."

Stunned by cascading implications, scraped raw by a forced
reassessment of the countless doomed spirits imprisoned under wards at
Skelseng's Gate, Asandir lost speech.

Dread burdened him as each wraith's disfigured humanity set his
Fellowship too bleak a quandary.  A Sorcerer's judgment was not Ath's
authority, to trap unconsenting spirits in a limbo of indefinite
imprisonment.  Neither could the riddle of Desh-thiere's nature be
unwound to free those damned thousands until the Fellowship stood at
full strength, their number restored back to Seven.

All and more swung in pivot upon one chancy cipher: the life of the
last s'Ffalenn prince.

As Sethvir and Asandir shared this final, most vivid disclosure
compounded of miscalculated risks and urgency, immediate troubles
returned to roost.

The bar on the armory door clanged up.  A stayspell flared dead and
steel hinges wailed open as, bemoaning a headache in a carping
counterpoint, Dakar pitched sideways into the breach.  The shoulder
that hit against the lintel became the only scrap of luck that kept him
upright.

"It's dark!"  Diegan's complaint shivered the still air with echoes.
"Dharkaron take your drunken whimsy, I heard no screams.

Nobody's in here."

"Oh, yes."  Dakar launched off and rocked two tipsy steps across the
threshold.  "They're here.  Trust me.  Sethvir just forgets to light
candles."

Suspicious, still bristling from the force required to stand down
Gnudsog and his squad at the ram, Diegan sniffed.  An acridity like
cinders yet lingered, as if a torch had gone out not long since.

"There."  Dakar swayed on braced feet, forgetful that darkness masked
the area where he pointed.

The space proved not to be empty.  Clipped and grainily hoarse,
Asandir said in ghostly rebuke, "You call this keeping Etarra's captain
of the guard under house arrest?"

Diegan started nearly out of his jeweled doublet.

Dakar lost his balance and sat.  "The wine," he admitted on the tail
of a soulful grunt.  "We drank both flagons, and Diegan pleaded.

Where's Lysaer?"  Then, as muddle wits or his eyesight recovered, he
noticed the nearly subliminal glow fixed under ward before Sethvir.

Dakar squinted, identified the configurations for a seal of
imprisonment, and inside, a whirling, twisted light that made his
stomach heave.

Not the aftereffect of indulgence, this sickness, or the clench of
impending prophecy; his nausea stemmed instead from reaction to
something warped outside of nature.

Dakar's stupor cleared.  "You knew!"  he accused.

Asandir's correction was instant.  "Suspected.  Without command of
Name, we had no means to foresee how Deshthiere's harm would choose to
manifest.  And with your second bout of prophecy made in conflict with
the first, we had no clear path to choose."

"I don't even know my second prophecy."  Deflected by personal
injury, Dakar looked down as if to make sure of the floor.  That led
him to cast about for something solid to lean on, until sight of Lysaer
on the pallet refueled his disrupted train of inquiry.  "So you did
nothing," he berated his Fellowship masters, and rage bled away into a
sorry, drunken grizzle.  "Ah, Ath, like us all, Lysaer trusted you."

Through the cracked-open panels of two siege doors beat the roar of
an enraged populace, cut across by Gnudsog's bellowed orders.  Words
carried faintly, reviling mages and royalty.  The rabble had begun to
chant.

Against that backdrop of ugliness, Diegan confronted two Sorcerers.
"So, will you also do nothing now?"

Sethvir arose.  At his wave, flames burst afresh from the torch stub.
Hot light flooded across the armory, snagged to sparks on the metal
filings scattered in swaths from the sharpening wheel; on the racked
gleam of blades that soon would run dull with new blood; and on the
amethysts and diamonds sewn on Diegan's doublet, which jerked to his
passionate breaths.

Mild as sun-faded velvet before the whetted weapons that ringed him
round, the Warden of Althain blinked.  "Do you wish our help?"

"I wish Dharkaron's curse upon you all, never more fervently than
now!"  Diegan shoved briskly forward; bullion fringes snapped at his
boot cuffs as he stopped and stared down at Lysaer.  "What have you
done to him?  Killed him?

Because he spoke out against your prince?"

"They wouldn't harm him," Dakar interrupted.  "Lysaer's gift of light
will be needed to lift off Arithon's blight of shadows."

"So, it's true!"  Diegan's black eyes flicked from Sethvir to
Asandir.  "The king you tried to foist on us is one of you, a sorcerer
born and trained.  You forced our governors to stand down, on threat of
riots.  Well, we have them now regardless.

Guild houses are afire.  The minister's palace and governors' hall
are being stormed this moment by the rabble."

To every appearance unruffled by Diegan's accusations, Sethvir
fingered his beard.  Of Lysaer he said to his colleague, "I do regret
to release him before we know Arithon's fate."

"We don't have any choice."  Asandir set his hands to the blond head
of the prince on the litter and engaged a gentle call to awaken.

Sethvir's appalling disclosure of one wraith's botched humanity had
overturned every priority.  The disposition of Desh-thiere to safer
captivity at Rockfell perforce must take precedence, and Etarra survive
its own course.

The Lord Governor's standing had been undermined past the point where
his authority could be salvaged.  Lysaer alone could burn off Arithon's
stranglehold of shadows and stop the spread of panic and misdirected
bloodshed, even if, afterward, Desh-thiere's curse would drive him to
turn the city garrison as a weapon against his half-brother.

The strands, after all, had converged in this forecast of war.

"You shall have what you asked for."  Asandir met Diegan's rancor
with a calm made terrible by perception.  "Battle, misunderstanding,
and a cause to perpetuate bitter hatred."  Under his ministrations
Lysaer stirred and moaned.

Diegan quickly knelt and shook the s'llessid prince's arm.

"Are you all right?  Friend, did they hurt you?"

Lysaer opened his eyes.  He looked lost for a moment.

Then he turned his head, frowned, and focused clearly upon Asandir.
"Ath forgive me," he whispered.  "I had a nightmare.  Or is it true,
that I smashed Elshian's lyranthe?"

Asandir all but flinched; his glance of inquiry hardened to misery
as, from the sidelines, Sethvir gave sad affirmation.

Pity roughened his words as he said, "Whatever you recall was no
dream.  Etarra has been yen to not.  Since your actions have
discredited Rathain's prince, your talents are needed immediately to
restore the city to order."

The grinding noise of the mob only then reached Lysaer's notice.

He sat up, saw Diegan, then flushed as other memories flooded back.

"Arithon.  Whatever I said, he's caused mayhem, set shadows and
terror in the streets."  Then, his inflection so changed that it
jarred, he added, "Where is he?"

"You speak of your half-brother," Sethvir rebuked, hoping against
chance to shock back some buried spark of conscience.

But Desh-thiere's curse had imbedded irrevocably deep, and old malice
resurfaced in force.  "He's bastard born, and no relation of mine."

"III feeling cannot alter fact, Teir's'Ilessid," Asandir cracked
back.  "You go to spill a kinsman's blood."

Lysaer was unmoved.  "I go to redress an injustice.  Mark this.

When I find your lying get of a s'Ffalenn pirate, I'll see him dead
and thrown in pieces to the headhunter's pack of tracking dogs!"

"Then we have no more to say."  Asandir arose, cold to his core.

He stepped over Dakar, who drowsed in an inebriated heap.

Lord Diegan, commander of Etarra's garrison, was first to move toward
the door the Sorcerer swung open.  Tight-lipped in vindication, he said
to Lysaer.  "I admire your ambition.

But first, my friend, we have to hunt down this prince of shadows."

"He's prince of nothing!  And finding him should be simple."

Lysaer matched step beside the elegant Lord Commander.  Urgently
speaking, he departed without a backward glance.

From the wardroom, Lord Diegan's shout cast back echoes.

"Gnudsog!  Forget about the spare arms.  Assemble a patrol double
quick!  Dispatch them to the warehouse district to scour the alleys.

If fortune favors, the Master of Shadows will be there.  Hustle, and
we'll take him in the act of freeing convicts!"

The wardroom doors boomed closed.  Shut off from the din in the
streets, a contrary draft eddied between bowstaves and halberds and
showered red sparks from the torch flame.

Left amid crawling shadows and the slowly falling dust of the armory,
Asandir sat on a shot cask.  The glance he cast after the vagrant
breeze was balefully focused and grim.

"Arithon's been and gone from the warehouse quarter, I trust."

Luhaine's staid tones answered.  "I couldn't be sure.  The child
convicts were released within the hour.  The locksmith and the wagoners
hired to free them were paid off with gold gotten from the pawn of a
crown emerald.  The gem took some trouble to recover."

"The children?"  Sethvir cut in.  For a fast check into the district
had revealed the same wagons overturned by the fury of the mob.

"Disbursed.  They'll hide like rabbits, then bolt for open country as
they can."  Luhaine resumed his report.  "Arithon's horse is gone from
the stables.  A half canister of the narcotic herb tienelle was taken
from Sethvir's saddle packs."

The Warden of Althain brightened.  "Let Arithon keep it.

He's not unschooled in its use, and against Etarra's armed garrison
he's going to need every advantage."

"So I thought also."  Luhaine paused.  "I contacted Kharadmon."

"To reverse the storm?"  Sethvir sucked in his cheeks to stifle a
harried, madcap smile.  "But that's brilliant!  If Diegan's going to
roust out the garrison, let his search parties rust their gear to a
fare-thee-well in a cold, northeasterly downpour."  Next moment, his
expression distanced into selfsatisfied relief.  "Bless Ath, he's shown
sense."

"Arithon?"  Asandir cut in.  "You found him?"

No small bit irked, Luhaine said, "How?  Where?"

Long used to untwisting the myriad affairs of five kingdoms, the
Warden of Althain tugged out a tangle he found in his beard.  "There's
but one dun mare in this region with a white splash marked on her
neck."  Then, in delight undimmed by the reproof of expectant
colleagues, he answered the original question.  "She's past the main
gate, and driving at speed down the north road.  Which means Arithon
eventually must ride into the patrols of Steiven, Regent of Rathain."

"That's no good news," Dakar grumbled from his pose of flat-out
prostration.

Luhaine was swift in agreement.  "Steiven has just one ambition, and
that's to collect every Etarran guild master's severed head."

Sethvir threw up his hands.  "Bloody war's a fine sight better than
the s'Ffalenn royal line cut dead by a sword in an alley!"  He subsided
in belated recollection that Luhaine was yet uninformed; the revised
priorities forced on them by the Mistwraith's warped ties to humanity
had yet to realign ,his opinion.

While Asandir in tart chastisement jabbed a toe in the ribs of his
apprentice, who seemed inclined to drop off snoring.

"Arithon dead, don't forget, would doom your Black Rose prophecy to
failure."

"You want Davien back?"  The Mad Prophet opened drink-glazed eyes in
martyred affront.  "That's fool rotten logic, when his betrayals were
what dethroned your high kings in the first place!"

 Muster

Shadow lay thick over Etarra's streets, the torches in their rusted
brackets smothered to halos of murky orange.  The strife, the cries,
the clash of steel weaponry, and Gnudsog's gruff oaths sounded eerily
muffled, as if the unnatural darkness lent the heavy air a texture like
wet batting.  Kept insulated from the jostle of the mobs, embedded like
fine treasure amid the fast-striding tramp of armed escort, Diegan
regarded the ally but lately forsworn from the Fellowship Sorcerers'
grand cause.

Lysaer looked angry pale: white skin, gold hair, bloodless lips.

His expression remained remote as they passed some rich man's door
page being bullied by ruffians from the shanties.  The curve of
Lysaer's nostrils did not flare at the stench of spilled sewage that
slimed the cobbles.  His wide, light brows never rose at the measures
the guard escort used to clear a rampaging gang of masons who had
smashed a butcher's door to steal cleavers.  Torches and halberds cut
reflections on those eyes; but their gem-stone hardness stayed
untouched.

From a side alley too squalid for lanterns, a woman cried entreaties.
A man's bellowed curses quit with the sound of a smack against flesh,
and a cur with raised hackles raced into the vanguard ranks, caught a
boot in the flank, and tumbled yelping.  The advance guard turned
another corner in their progress toward the town hall, and Lysaer
stepped over the crippled dog with barely a flicker of a glance.

Diegan fastened his braided cloak ties against a shiver of
discomfort.  "Is it true?"  he asked softly.

That splintered sapphire gaze disconcertingly turned on him.

"What?"  Lysaer blinked, and seemed partially to come back to
himself.

"Is what true?"

Cold eyes, warm voice; Diegan steeled himself.  No coward despite his
dandy looks, he forced the necessary inquiry.

"Your lineage.  Are you royal?  Does that sorcerer's upstart really
share your blood as half-brother?"

Lysaer's look went straight through him.  "Would you claim kinship
with a byblow forced upon a queen by abduction and rape?"  The little
falsehood came easily, that his mother's flight to embrace her
s'Ffalenn paramour had never extended through a year of willing
dalliance.  A frown marred Lysaer's features as he wondered upon the
memory that once he would have spoken differently; that he had in some
other time challenged his royal father to intercede for the pirate
bastard's comfort.

That event seemed distant, as cut off as a stranger's memory.

Brave, Lysaer had seen himself then; honorable and just.  Now his
past pity seemed the puling naivete of a fool, to have invited his own
downfall, and thrown away heirship in Amroth for adherence to one
painful truth.  A lie cost so little in comparison; and by today's
outcome, his losses being permanent, and Arithon having shown his true
nature, the fib to Diegan as well had been the plain truth.  Feeling
giddy and light, as if the burden of heaven's arch had been unyoked
from his shoulders, Lysaer almost laughed.

"You're royal as he, then," Diegan murmured in dark conclusion.

He caught Lysaer's fierce flare of mirth and reassessed: both
hysteria and the queer lack of emotion were quite likely the effects of
profound shock.  Moved to sympathy, the Lord Commander softened his
accusation.

"That's difficult.  Most awkward."

"Not at all."  The next lie came easily to Lysaer's tongue.

"I may be a king's son, and legitimate, but not on Athera's soil.

What inheritance I could claim by birthright lies beyond the span of
a worldgate, unreachable, reft from me by the doings of s'Ffalenn."

"A prince in exile, then?"  pressed Diegan.

Lysaer's smile was sudden as thaw in spring snow.  "No prince at all,
friend.  I was formally disinherited, a victim of sorcerer's wiles, as
you are.  Etarra's people shall have my help for their own sake.  Rest
content.  I find just vengeance sufficient."

They passed the juncture of another alley; Diegan scanned the cross
street out of ingrained habit, since such sites were prime places for
high-bred officials to be ambushed.  "Then your mother was not
s'Ffalenn?"

"No, can't you guess?"  Lysaer grimaced on an edge of pain deep
buried from childhood.  "My mother, may Dharkaron Ath's Avenger visit
judgment on the seed of her shame, was the sadly ravished queen."  It
Ahead loomed the market square, its arched entry ghostlit by the lamps.

In the strange and strangled light, the luck shrines tucked under
carven gables were grotesquely clotted in wax from the candles left lit
by ambitious merchants.  The little tin talismans that should have
jangled to warn of Lyats hung silent, gripped fast in the windless
dark.

The mob pressed thicker, where farmers won over to the cause of
restored monarchy hurled insults and loose bricks at guild tradesmen.

Now and again the cross fire of debris would clang off the face of a
targe.  More soldiers had bolstered Diegan's escort.  These newcomers
brought the firecaught glint of gilt trappings, and the weapons they
brandished to clear headway were still streamered in ceremonial colors.

Drawn from the squads originally posted to keep order through the
coronation processional, their splendid appointments lent Gnudsog with
his scars and nicked field gear the hard-bitten look of a felon.

Disturbance ruffled the ranked columns.  A messenger in governor's
livery burst through, breathing hard, his cheek disfigured by a bruise.

He cried above the din for Lord Diegan.

"Here's news!"  bellowed Gnudsog to his commander.

"You can't want it now, lord.  Better to hear inside sanctuary after
we reach the council hall."

"No!"  The courier's voice cracked in terror.  "Not there!

The hall's been locked fast by fell sorcery."

"Traithe," Lysaer said tersely.  At Diegan's taut-jawed flare of
outrage, he raised a placating hand.  "The ministers inside won't be
harmed."

Amethysts and diamonds spat glints through murk as the commander of
the guard spun around.  "Send the man through.  I'll hear him now."

Soldiers gave way to admit the courier.  His shirt was torn at the
shoulder, and the knuckles of one hand were skinned raw.  "I'm lucky to
have reached you at all, lord.  Looters have kicked down the lamp posts
for quarterstaves, with three city aldermen battered dead."

"You have news?"  Diegan yanked the man up by his collar.

Just then aware of who attended his Lord Commander's right hand, the
messenger gasped and flung away.  "But, my lord!  That blond man is
lackey for the sorcerers!"

High-tempered, about to hail Gnudsog to end the fool's dithering by
blows, Diegan started at a touch upon his arm.

He swung, restrained by the steady gaze of Lysaer.

The prince who had abjured all fights to royal rank said gently, "No.
After Arithon's betrayal, any man's enmity is fair.  Let me prove
myself worthy of trust, his, yours, and Etarra's."  The prince in his
tinsel velvets showed a proud, unpracticed majesty, and the result of
unprepossessing humbleness clothed in grace and shining wealth combined
to powerful effect.

The messenger was moved to stand down.  "Your pardon, great lord."

He bent to touch his forelock and stopped, aghast at his dripping
knuckles.

Lysaer startled him from embarrassment with a kindly clap on the
shoulder.  "Forget titles.  Against the Master of Shadows, we are equal
in station, you and I."  Then, as if screaming, rampaging mobs were not
being thumped by Gnudsog's soldiers, as if no darkness choked sight, he
probed with gentle questions for information.

Diegan watched, awed, as the messenger stopped quaking and answered.
Very quickly they learned that Traithe's spells disbarred the council
lords from action.  Surly as an old, scarred tiger, Gnudsog allowed
that while his squads could, batter down door panels well enough, wards
of sorcery were another matter.

"Then we won't use force," Lysaer said equably.  To the courier he
added, "You've crossed the main square by the council hall.  What's
become of the grand dais built for the s'Ffalenn pretender's speeches?"

The courier rolled his eyes.  "Rioters been having at it, sure
enough.  A pack of guild apprentices came with pry bars and staves to
tear it down, but there's farmers with drays blocked it off, flying
leopard banners and swearing they'll enforce the crown charter for
their land rights."

"Extremists from both factions?"  Lysaer grinned.  "That's perfect."
He laughed and turned shining, exultant eyes toward Diegan, who
remained mystified, and Gnudsog, who kneaded the scars on his sword arm
in fixed and unholy irritation.  "Since your councilmen cannot act to
calm their city, here is how we'll do it for them."

They marched briskly and gained the square.  Gnudsog formed his men
into a flying wedge and bashed through the rioting apprentices from the
rear.  Swords and steel-shod halberd butts made short work of wooden
staves; the dray with its spilled crates of melons and string-tied
half-trampled chickens afforded only minimal delay.

Gnudsog's men used pole arms for levers and had the vehicle set
upright in a trice.  By then combatants on both sides screamed curses,
united in common cause against the soldiers.

While the fighting shifted focus, Lysaer mounted the unguarded
stairs, littered with torn-down snarls of bunting and leopard banners
that beleaguered torchlight re-rendered front s'Ffalenn green and
silver to funereal black.  Fired by righteous purpose, he paused to
comfort a farm lad who knelt with his gashed cheek compressed with the
wadded-up tail of a streamer.  A word, a touch, a light joke, and the
boy was induced to smile.  Today's ripped face would leave a scar that
would win him no endearments from the tavern maids.

Another bit of ruin to swell an already vicious score.  Unmindful
that a curse drove his enmity, Lysaer reached the upper platform, where
a s'Ffalenn turned traitor to his birthright should have pledged Etarra
his protection.

The Fellowship had chosen a site of favorable visibility and
acoustics.  Lysaer paused between the stripped and splintered awning
poles, given vantage to every corner of the square.

Before him spread the city's tragic turmoil.  Picked out in pallid
lantern light, small episodes stood out: the screaming craftsmen who
brandished tools and uprooted stakes from the awning ties; the drunken
laughter and gyrating celebration of a raggedy band of looters; a woman
clutching a torn dress.  And an elderly burgher beset in extremity, his
cane struck away, the rim of a broken flower pot his last weapon to
fend off his attackers.

Misgiving for their plights dispelled the disorientation that
lingered since Lysaer's reawakening.  Desh-thiere's realignment of his
loyalties was irrevocably complete.

His hour under the wraith's possession he now blamed on spells laid
to daze and confuse him; that the Fellowship would act to abet
Arithon's escape was foregone conclusion, since they had persistently
refused to lend credence to any of his past crimes of piracy.  That
fallacy must no longer be allowed to hinder mercy.  Neither could
widespread riots be stopped through hard-edged action.  Restored to
compassion@tic perception, Lysaer saw he had been callous to presume He
could loose the full might of his gift and crack the pall of shadow
from the sky.

A populace driven by mass panic might well mistake a violent counter
strike for an attack by enemy sorcery; no act, however well
intentioned, must lend further impetus to panic.  A subtle approach
would encourage reason; light Must flow gently as a balm over a city
whose loyalties were ripped open like bleeding wounds.

Lysaer raised his hands.

His gift had become more malleable to his will through the months of
battle against Desh-thiere; further, the hours spent working in
partnership with Arithon lent Lysaer every confidence that he could
plumb any weaving of shadow.

The shouts, the screams, the crack of wood against steel as
roisterers harried Gnudsog's line of soldiers, faded before deep
concentration as Lysaer sent a subliminal tracer glow aloft.  Quietly,
subtly he tested the bindings of darkness the Shadow Master had set
over the city.

The probe became utterly swallowed.  A dark inexhaustible as ocean,
as seamlessly wrapped as a death caul, seemed to make mockery of his
effort.  Lysaer clamped down on fresh anger.  No shadow pall could be
infinite.  Not even the Fellowship commanded limitless power.

Lysaer turned reason and objectivity against the heat of his enmity
and reassessed more carefully.  His next probe picked up the thread of
magecraft cleverly intermeshed with the shadows.'Not only had the
illusion tricked him to assume the night had no boundaries, Lysaer
exposed a second error of presumption, that Arithon must be inside city
walls.

Stayspells anchored these shadows.  A sorcerer's training allowed the
Master's spun darkness to abide outside of his presence.

Very likely the daylight had been banished to cover a bolt to escape.
Lysaer found no cause to forgive, that the attack had not been turned
in direct malice against Etarra's citizens.

Riots had arisen from the upset.  By royal duty, the man who should
have been first to keep peace had without scruple seized the most
damaging means at hand to duck his responsibility.

Justice would be served, Lysaer vowed.  For each life lost, for each
hurt caused by negligence, Arithon s'Ffalenn would be brought to
account.

The dark-ward must be lifted straightaway.  Lysaer extended his arms.
A glow bloomed upward.  Golden as late day sunlight fallen over an
autumn meadow, the halo he cast from his person could never be mistaken
for torchlight.

Across the rush and tumult in the square, through the barricade of
raised pole arms wielded by Gnudsog's guard, eyes turned toward that
source of indefinable illumination.

Etarra's traumatized citizens saw one man who flung brave challenge
against the dark.

Someone shouted.  Hands raised in the press, pointing toward the glow
that spread from the lone blond figure on the dais.  The fighting
nearest Gnudsog's embattled lines faltered.  Farmers stared, the bricks
and the cart axles torn out for bludgeons dangling forgotten in their
hands as belligerence gave way to wonder.  Rough men who prowled to
steal and pillage spun from doorways suddenly rinsed clean of shadow.

Stripped of their cover, they dodged away into side streets to avoid
arrest by the watch.  Guild bands of more directed hatreds paused on
their way to disadvantage rival factions.  Least brazen, the craftsmen
and the shop keepers clustered in their fearful, worried bands cried
out at the rebirth of the light that would spare their property and
livelihood.  "We are saved!"

Lord Diegan answered from the dais stairs.  "By the grace of Lysaer
of the Light, our city shall recover prosperity!"

"Lysaer of the Light!"  hailed a mason with roughened hands.  His
chant was taken up until the central square of Etarra rang to a
thousand raised voices.

The golden circle widened, waxed brighter.  Lysaer's hands seemed
bathed in a fountainhead of gilt sparks.  Light burnished his hair like
fine metal, and glanced off the tinsel stitching that banded his lace
cuffs and pourpoint.  The face held tipped upward under that swath of
illumination showed no change at the clamor of the crowd.

Fine-chiseled in concentration, the lord from the west who wrought
miracles seemed an angel sent down into squalor from the exalted hosts
of Athlieria.

Even Gnudsog was inspired from dourness.  "He has the look on him,
like a prince."  Eyes dark as swamp peat swiveled and fixed on Lord
Diegan.  "Don't let your ninnies in the council be handing him a crown
in silly gratitude."

Not entirely mollified as the chanting swelled to rattle the farthest
windows of the square, Etarra's Lord Commander gave back a grim grin.
"What Lysaer wants for his service is the head of the prince of
Rathain."

"Good."  Gnudsog smiled.  On his grizzled features the expression
made no improvement; the scars and chipped teeth from past scraps made
him baleful enough to inspire prayers of deliverance from a headhunter.

"For that, on my sword, he'll have my help."

The subject of Etarra's adulation alone remained oblivious; Lysaer's
engagement with Arithon's sorceries required total concentration.  Even
under barrage by pure light, the shadows proved stubborn to shift.
Like an ink stain set in pale felt, they resisted with a fierceness
that at times made them seem to push back.  Again, Lysaer stepped up
his counter measure.  Time passed.  As the light poured steadily from
him, he tracked only the retreat of the dark.

Blind to all else, deaf to Diegan's encouragement, he missed the
exultant moment when Etarra lay lit from wall to wall by the fiery glow
of his gift.  Lamps and torches brightened even the dimmest back alleys
where Gnudsog sent patrols to quell any unreformed rioters.

By afternoon, the merchants unlocked their mansions.

Drawn by wild rumors and by the burning, continuous flow of light,
people from all quarters of the city re-emerged to pack the main
square.  The chanting subsided and later died into an awestruck
silence.

Locked in his private crusade against the dark, Lysaer did not stir
when the city governors reawakened to discover their council hall doors
were fastened closed by nothing beyond everyday bolts and latches.

At some point, unseen, the Sorcerer Traithe had departed.

Humbled as they heard of the s'llessid prince who had shouldered
their cause against monarchy, Etarra's high officials gathered on the
dais.  Amid splintered laths and ripped silk they stood vigil at
Lysaer's side.

Lost to their presence, bathed in a blinding dazzle, Lysaer wrestled
the frustration that Arithon's greater training had defeated him.
Determination held him steadfast.  Etarra's plight would be spoken for
until his last strength became spent.  The shadows by now were beaten
back outside the walls.  Beyond hearing that the bloodshed had ended,
driven past the point of caring by the curse-born obsession to
obliterate the works of his half-brother, Lysaer hammered out light in
single-minded ferocity.

Diegan was closest when the widespread arms began to shudder.  The
light-rinsed hands finally spasmed to fists in the extremity of
advanced exhaustion, and a tremor racked Lysaer's body.  He swayed on
his feet, and there at his side was Etarra's Lord Commander to lend him
support as he crumpled.

Lysaer's eyes flicked open then, agonized in abject defeat.

Moved to compassion, Lord Diegan said, "Lysaer, it's all right.

The riots are ended.  You've done well enough to stop the bloodshed,
and the shadows are cleared past the gates," "All is not right!"  His
next line a whisper of unrequited fury, Lysaer collapsed in Diegan's
arms.  "Nothing is ended.

Neither dark nor the prince of darkness shall rule in Rathain while I
live."

Spoken from the dais where a crowned king should have sworn oath to
uphold the royal charter, the acoustics arranged by the Fellowship
picked up the softest words.  The passion in Lysaer's promise carried
clearly to the edges of the square.

Silence reigned for perhaps a dozen heartbeats.  Then the air itself
seemed to shatter as the gathered mass of Etarra's thousands released
its pent-up breath and cheered in fullthroated approval.  The roar of
the accolade shook the earth.

Yet the prince who had won their reprieve from pure terror heard no
sound at all, having fainted in Diegan's embrace.

The shadows set over Etarra by Arithon s'Ffalenn cleared shortly
after midnight of their own accord.  By then the popuLace had become
enamored of the hero in their midst; or attributed deliverance to the
blond-haired prince from the west.  The last band of looters languished
in irons.  Too taciturn to show satisfaction for a long day's work well
done, Gnudsog sat enthroned in the window seat alcove of Lord Governor
Morfett's best guest suite.

He looked out of place as a botched carving amid violet and gold
tassels and amber cushions.  Stripped of his field gear, clad still in
the sweaty fleece gambeson he preferred to wear under chain mail, he
slugged wine from a huge brass tankard.  His peat-bog eyes watched,
brooding, as the city's governing elect crowded the rest of the room's
furnishings and argued in overheated elegance over disposition of his
troops.

Their wilted ribbons and sadly creased sarcenets lent the chamber the
feel of a second-rate bordello.  Couched in their midst, resplendent as
any in his velvets and the frost-point fire of his sapphires, Lysaer
s'llessid lay unconscious or dead asleep in the aftermath of
exhaustion.  The healer who had examined him said to let him rest, then
left without daring a prognosis.

Apt to be ambivalent over fine points, Gnudsog drank.  He cracked his
knuckles in rank impatience.  The cant of the councilmen irked him.

Repeated searches had established beyond doubt that every Fellowship
Sorcerer appeared spontaneously to have vanished; squads had turned the
warehouse district inside out to no avail.  The meat knacker's
conscripts had scampered.  Little could be done to further justice
until one shadow-bending criminal could be traced in his flight and
eventually arraigned for execution.  To which end Gnudsog ran the house
steward's pages breathless, sending dispatches to his lieutenants and
to his far-flung network of scouts.

When the long-sought news came back to him, along with
incontrovertible proof that Arithon's trail had been picked up, no one
heard him through the din of raised voices.

Gnudsog lost his temper.

He cracked his tankard down with such force that wine geysered over
the brim.  Silence fell.  The governing elector Etarra turned heads,
balding, curled, and hatted with felts pearled and feathered, to glare
down superior noses at the author of untimely poor manners.

Sublimely untroubled by protocol, Gnudsog wiped his stubbled chin on
the back of one hirsute wrist.  "As I said, he is found.  Your
shadow-meddling little sorcerer has fled down the north road.  By now
he has five hours' lead, on straight course for the clans of Deshir."

The pronouncement launched the room into uproar.  The minister of the
dyers and spinners guild fired off into maundering monologue, while the
mayor of the south quarter flailed his chair arm with his bonnet in a
vain attempt to recall order.  His thumps were overwhelmed by an
excited jabber of speculation, shrilly over-cut by the governor of
trade's expostulation.  "Ath preserve us!  We are lost!  Against
sorcery and shadows, our best troops will be cut to bleeding dog meat.

What use are good swords unless the Prince of Light can be convinced
or coerced to give us aid?"

The heads swiveled back, belatedly covetous of the jeweled asset
ensconced in their midst.  Only now the blue eyes were opened.  Lysaer
had wakened to their bickering.

Gnudsog chuckled at the speed with which Etarra's high officials
rearranged themselves in solicitude.  The most prideful and disdainful
of pedigreed high-bloods bent to their knees at the side of their
intended savior.

Amused a bit by their pandering, Lysaer sat up.  Thoughtful, frowning
through disheveled gold hair, he said seriously, "My support was never
in question."  Declaiming voices stilled to listen.  "You have my help
as long and as much as you need it.  But Etarra must act without
hesitation.  There will be war if Arithon survives to win allies.  With
the northern clans behind him, he could escape justice altogether."

"The barbarians may be troublesome, but they can't mount a serious
threat," interjected Pesquil, sallow and lean in the sable sash that
denoted top rank in the northern league of headhunters.  "Our city
garrison could wipe out the clans.

That much was never at issue.  For years we've mapped the campaign.
We know the barbarians' campsites, their bolt holes, even the location
of their caches.  What was ever and always the deterrent was allocation
of funds to send troops."

Lord Governor Morfett blotted streaming temples on the bedraggled
lace of his cuffs.  "After today's display of sorcery and shadows, I
much doubt the treasury will stint."

As the minister of city finances cleared his throat to argue, Lysaer
s'llessid arose.  "Ath spare us the war, why wait?"  He caught Diegan's
nod of approval and added, "Strike now with a mounted division, and we
might need nothing more than a block and a scaffold for execution."

"Twenty lancers already ride."  Across the chamber, Gnudsog was
smiling as the officials again heeded his presence.  "They left the
north gate half an hour ago."

Lysaer regarded the grizzled captain with engaging concern and
respect.  "Your city could be indebted for your foresight, but lancers
might not be enough.  Arithon s'Ffalenn is as wily and ruthless as the
pirate who fathered him.  The more time he gains, the more dangerous he
becomes.  If we are not to be taken unaware, we must assume now that he
will evade your patrol and reach the northern barbarians.  Gentlemen,
for all your safety, I urge your city to muster immediately for war."

"We have a quorum," Diegan cracked out from his perch of cat comfort
amid the fur quilts.  "Shall we take the issue to vote?"

Hands were raised, a count taken, and Gnudsog's smile became
voracious.  He redirected the outgoing stream of pages to scare up
scribes and ink.  The city seals were sent for as an afterthought.

Within the hour, Morfett's ornamental tables were pressed into
service as desks, and Gnudsog's horny fists became weighted with
requisitions for provisions, arms, and draft teams.  Throughout, Lysaer
paced the chamber, consumed by restless passion, haranguing reticent
officials and cajoling the minister of finance to yield up the keys to
the treasury.  "Strike thoroughly and at once," he stressed.  "Or I can
promise, you'll have trouble on a scale your histories have never
seen."

In all of Athera, he was the sole man qualified to measure the
damages that s'Ffalenn wiles could inflict.  His greatest fear was in
making the Etarrans understand just how perilous an enemy they had
against them.

Just past dawn, Gnudsog's troop of light cavalry clattered into the
citadel's north bailey.  Tired riders dismounted amid the noisy,
uprooted industry of a city arming for war.  By then the governors'
council looked toward one savior for guidance.  The patrol's weary
officer was sent apace to Lysaer with news that his riders had failed
in their mission to capture Arithon.

Presented across a table littered with crumb-scattered plates and
charts spread helter-skelter with the inked-over marks of evolving
strategy, the young lancer finished his report.  "We could not overtake
him, my lords.  The Shadow Master had a wide lead already, even without
Sithaer's own darkness and a cold that dropped snow to hide his tracks.

When we learned he'd snatched a remount from a caravan, we had no
choice but turn back.  To continue was useless, with our horses winded
near to foundering."

Sunlight slanted across creased layers of parchments that crackled as
Diegan leaned on them; that sound, and the rasp as Lord Governor
Morfett scratched his fleshy, stubbled jaws, filled an interval of
stillness.  None of the men had refreshed themselves, or slept,
throughout a night spent planning.

The lance captain shifted from foot to foot, justly nervous.

"Why didn't you commandeer fresh horses from the caravan's road
master?"  Diegan demanded at length.

"My Lord Commander, the merchant who owned the pack train wasn't
under Etarran jurisdiction."  Still bitter, the captain added, "Even
so, we might have had help, had we been able to bribe his road master a
tenth as generously as the renegade."

Lysaer frowned.  Beaten pale by fatigue, long past finesse or
politeness, he said, "But you claimed that Arithon stole the horse."

"He did."  The captain clamped his teeth against frustration.

"Your Shadow Master dared not attempt a fair offer as his speech,
like yours, begging pardon, my lord, is very like the barbarians'.

Rather than risk being skewered the instant he opened his mouth, he
fired a supply tent for diversion, brought his shadows down, and made
off with a cart horseAsked no man's leave, mind, but left a cloak pin
fixed to the picket line set with emerald big enough to choke on.

The road master was sick drunk on beer by the time my lancers had the
story.

The hired troop guarding the caravan were Sithaer bent on having a
holiday, and in no mood for chasing any fugitive."

Lysaer slammed both hands into the clutter.  Crumbs bounced, and an
ink flask tottered to the chime of a disarranged butter knife.  "How
like the bastard, Dharkaron Avenger take s'Ffalenn cunning."

At the prince's expostulation, Lord Diegan showed the fashionable
bland interest, while Governor Morfett started the act of dabbing
smeared butter from his chin.  "I beg pardon, my lord?"

saer's glance flashed anger.  "Arithon is quick, innovative as a
fiend, and aware of our weaknesses to a fine point.

I've seen his family's work before.  Given any chance, he will play
us one against another until we are driven to spoil our own cause for
the havoc.  But this time will be different.

Arithon's twisted strategies will be turned back against him.

When that happens, Daelion grant that I be on the field to break
him."

Roused from obsession by the lance captain, who cringed in his
dust-streaked cloak and sweaty boots, Lysaer softened to sympathy.  "I
see you're tired.  Rest assured, your competence in this matter was
never for an instant in question."  As naturally as if loyalty were his
due to praise, he finished, "Should all of Etarra arise against the
prince of shadows with service as willing as yours, his death will be
swiftly accomplished."

 Sojourns

Lane-watch report reaches Prime Enchantress Moniel, that Etarra
musters for war; her summons to her First Senior is immediate, and her
orders, stingingly curt: "The Fellowship Sorcerers have misplayed the
s'Ffalenn succession.  Arithon is in flight as a fugitive, and your
guess was apt: if Elaira was forewarned of this development, her
escapade at Erdane held more than infatuation.  Recall her westward to
Narms, and pack for travel.  We shall meet her there with all speed."

Bearing the last wraith exercised at Etarra across the deepest wilds
of Daon Ramon, Asandir and the Mad Prophet press on toward Skelseng's
Gate with intent to remove Desh-thiere to a place of better security;
while across the sky at their shoulder, sunset burns angry scarlet on a
snarl of storm clouds that Kharadmon has unleashed, to close over lands
to the north....

While on the plain of Araithe, pounding at a gallop away from the
city of Etarra, a fugitive mounted on a stolen draft horse rides
hunched against the falling slash of rain....

XV.  Straitewood

The last of the equinox storms that Kharadmon released to Tpass
southward encountered the fierce dark of Arithon's shadows some leagues
to the north of Etarra.  The result warped nature.  For a time, snow
fell like a madman's tangle of lacework and patterned lands barely
clothed by green spring.

Covered by darkness, given a clear road by the biting, unnatural
cold, Arithon spread spells of illusion and concealment over the
hillsides he traveled, until his reserves burned dry within him.  His
protections lifted finally because fury and strength were spent to
lassitude.

The snowfall thawed to sleet, and then to rain that slashed in
blinding torrents; soaked soil heaved porous by frost churned up to a
froth of mud and puddles.  The deep footing made his horse labor.  All
gaits past a walk became a rolling, sliding misery that begged for torn
tendons and lameness.

Out of pity for the dun mare, Arithon turned her loose to wander the
sedge-grown downs before she stone-bruised or crippled herself.

Her markings made her far too conspicuous to keep anyway; for all the
good sense in his decision, her relinquishment stung him, which
surprised.  Since Ithamon and Etarra, he had not expected he had any
place left in him for sentiment.

The cart horse he stole to replace his spent mare fared worse.

shod and less sure-footed, it stumbled and careened until Arithon at
last dropped the reins and let it go forward as it could.

He had abandoned his saddle, the dun',s girth being too short to
accommodate a draft breed.  Rain soaked both mount and rider to the
skin, the only warm patch shared between them the place where human
seat and thigh made contact with steaming wet horse.

Contrary to belief in Etarra, Arithon had not chosen the north road
by design.  He had gone that way because he had been driven, and
because south there lay only Ithamon.

Three days and two nights of blind flight had left him so wrung by
exhaustion that when the scouts sent by Steiven to intercept him closed
in a ring to bar his way, he had neither strength nor inclination to
wheel his head-hanging mount and try even token resistance.

They brought him under escort to a camp in a copse between the hills
which channeled a river that wound its course north toward the sea.
Dawn had broken, the storm by then slackened to drizzle.  A silvery
patter of droplets off leaves and budding twigs interlaced with bright
notes of birdsong.  Except for small sounds, the chink of bits, and
soft snorts from an inbound scout's mount, sign of human habitation
remained scant.  No smoke trailed from any fire pits, and no dogs
whined or barked.

Confirmed in his suspicion of an encampment in enemy territory,
Arithon dismounted.  The wet ends of his cloak dragged streaks through
the muddied lather caked to the gelding's heaving sides.  Barbarian
hands steadied him as he swayed on his feet.  The draft horse was led
away, while a scout pointed toward a hide tent pitched a short distance
off through the trees.

"Lord Steiven awaits you within, Your Grace," she said.

Arithon followed her direction, too weary to disclaim the royal
title.  To move at all required daunting concentration.

His hips felt on fire, and extended hours astride had left him a
jelly-legged mess of hurting muscles.  He stumbled into the lodge tent,
bringing the scents of skinned grass and fusty wet wool into an
atmosphere of warmth, tinted in autumn colors by fine-patterned carpets
and candlelight.  As the tent flap slapped shut on his heels, he stood
blinking, vaguely aware that a cluster of people regarded him
expectantly.  A rustle of motion shifted their ranks.

Belatedly he understood that they had not simply sat down at the low
table scattered across with quill nibs, tin flagons, and battered rolls
of parchment.  Instead they were kneeling behind the clutter, all four:
one young man, one middle-aged female, and two elders.  The fifth, a
dramatically imposing man who wore a russet leather brigandine, said in
deepvoiced command, "Honor and welcome to s'Ffalenn, Your Grace."

Arithon flinched.  A right-handed gesture of denial spattered
droplets from pleated cuffs and laces sadly ingrained with dirt.  His
left arm held something bulky cradled amid the spoiled and wadded wool
of his cloak, while, touched to hard highlights in the candle glow, the
circlet of Rathain gleamed forgotten through a rain-plastered swath of
black hair.  He spoke finally, in a rasp that sounded dredged from his
boot soles.  "I ask guest welcome as a supplicant and a stranger.  None
here owes me any fealty."

His eyes were adjusting to the dimness, but the dazzle of candles
defeated what clarity of sight he regained.  The speaker arose, smiling
in welcome, and in a nerve-stressed flash of intuition Arithon beheld
his aura as a mage would.

This man with his scarred face and arresting dignity had a seer's
gift.  Forevision had revealed this moment to him, and his manner held
no fear for compromise as he said, "You are Teir's'Ffalenn, and
sanctioned for succession by the hand of Asandir.  I am sworn to serve
your line, as my forefathers before me were appointed regents of the
realm until return of Rathain's true high king."

"Caithdein, " Arithon whispered, white-lipped.

A stir swept the others at his use of the old tongue, but the phrase
for "shadow behind the throne" merely caused the large warrior's smile
to broaden.  "I've preserved Rathain's heritage and fighting strength
only in the absence of a royal heir.  Claim your inheritance, my
prince.  My regency is ended."

Arithon clamped his teeth against anger.  "Tell your clansmen to
stand up."  He was too tired for this.  The light hurt his eyes, and
his head spun, and the burden wrapped up in his cloak could not be put
off for much longer.  "I'm a bastard son," he added desperately.  "I
lay claim to no man's loyalty."

"Your Grace, that does not matter."  The aristocratic elder at the
clan chieftain's shoulder was silver-haired, and attired as if for
court in a black tunic elegantly slashed and lined in gleaming saffron
silk.  Sure in stride and bearing, he left his place and crossed the
piled carpets to bow in quiet style before the prince.  As he rose,
wing-tip eyebrows turned up.  A mouth seamed deep by gentle humor
revealed a flash of spaced front teeth.  "Birth cannot negate your
birthright.

Illigitimacy has never before deterred the line of s'Vfalenn
succession.  Back to Torbrand's time, direct descent has always ranked
above the claims of cousins or siblings by marriage.  I can name a
dozen ballads as quick example."

Arithon stared at the straight-backed, spare-voiced old man, and
weariness spread across his steep features.  "Who are you?"  he
whispered.

The gentleman ignored his question and instead raised a voice too
flawless to be mistaken for anything less than a singer's.  "You are of
s'Ffalenn blood, and the Fellowship of Seven themselves have marked you
heir."

"Who are you?"  Arithon repeated, strain setting edges to a tone
already rough.

"I'm called Halliron and I, too, have claimed guest welcome of the
clans of the north."

Color drained from Arithon's features.  The irony hit him like pain:
before him stood the Masterbard, the single individual in Athera's five
realms who could grant his heart's first desire, had an unwanted throne
not spoiled opportunity.

A candle burned on a staked brass stand not a foot from Arithon's
elbow.  He reached out and pinched the wick, a half second too late;
light had already betrayed his naked longing to every stranger present.

He seized his only diversion and unfurled the wadding of his cloak.
"Take her," he said as veiling cloth fell away from the blue-tinged
corpse of the child he had carried in his arms since Etarra.  Perhaps
five years old, she was stunted and drawn by starvation.  The bony arm
curled and stiff across her breast showed the ravages of a wound gone
septic, and the hand half hidden by its stained shreds of bandage
reeked overpoweringly of corrupted flesh.

Those clan councilmen not already standing shot to their feet in
distress.

"She died in the night," Arithon said.  "She was one of yours,
conscripted to serve Etarra's horse knackers.  Others enslaved with her
were freed to make their way home as they could.  This one was too sick
to walk."

Someone spoke an oath in the old tongue.  Someone else hurried
forward to relieve him of the dead child's weight.

This last was a woman clad in the leathers of a scout, and in more
ways than her hardness reminiscent of Maenalle of Tysan.  "It's
Tanlie's girl, can't be doubt.  No other had that mole on her earlobe."

Caught aback by the sudden change in his balance, and the loosening
of an arm bound by cramps, Arithon fought a wave of sorrow.

"Please, then, offer Tanlie my sympathy.  Her girl died bravely, none
better."  He slipped the sodden velvets of his tabard and offered
Rathain's leopard blazon for her shroud.

The woman accepted with tears in her eyes.  Before the shock could
pass, Arithon rounded on the others, who advanced as a body to surround
him.  "I bring you no legacy but strife!"

His cry halted nothing.  Quite the contrary; their tall, scarfaced
chieftain said firmly, "Tanlie's girl is no grief we've not seen, and
many times, in the generations since Ithamon was torn to ruins."

"No.  Not this grief."  Arithon broke through hoarseness to achieve a
tone that finally, mercifully, checked them cold.

"I've been bound and spell-cursed by Desh-thiere to fight my
half-brother, Lysaer s'llessid.  There is no sanity in the hatred that
drives us both, only unbridled lust to kill.  Lysaer has raised Etarra
against me, and their garrison will march within days.  Would you spend
your lives for a stranger not even born in this world?"

Concern rather than force shaded the clan chieftain's rebuke.

"Townsmen have held our lives cheaply since centuries before your
birth, and for less cause than butchering horseflesh.  Tanlie's girl
lived for naught if she failed to teach you that."  His glance toward
the snuffed candle betrayed his suspicion that his liege's inveigling
tactics hid infirmity.  "By right of Rathain's charter, the northlands
clans have cause to stand in your defense."

"Will you listen?"  Arithon lost grip on his temper.  "Oppose Lysaer,
and you'll call down certain ruin on your loved ones.  Rights are not
at issue.  Causes are fallacy.  We are speaking of geas-driven
obsession, a madness that holds to no limits.  Against my half-brother
I have no shred of conscience.  For that most basic fact I refuse the
responsibility.

Your clans would become no defense for me, but just another weapon to
be squandered."

A stir rippled through the gathered clan lords, while a sough of
breeze spattered raindrops across the tent rool The storm outside might
be ending; the one brewing inside threatened to break into open
contention.  The fugitive arrived among the clans was unquestionably of
s'Ffalenn blood, but he spoke with the forevision of a sorcerer,
reminding uncomfortably that his were the powers of the West Gate
prophecy that had banished Desh-thiere from the sky.

He might wear Torbrand's image, yet he was a stranger, unknown and
unnamed, promising disaster and pleading release from his birthright.

Hotly awaited though his arrival had been, lives hung in the balance.

The council would be wise to listen.

Blunt-faced, his hair grayed as worn steel by years of ambush and
skirmish, Caolle urged his chieftain to stay wary.

The rest marked his words in respect, for the toughened veteran
presented opinions few others cared to voice.

Steiven was moved, but not to caution.  He left his place by the
council table and took stance beside Halliron.  His rangy frame dwarfed
the Masterbard, who was not short, and his hazel eyes shone bitter as
he admitted, "I have Sight.  For years I have lived with foreknowledge
of the moment and manner of my death.  There is no option, Your Grace
of Rathain, elders.  Etarra will march upon the northlands whether or
not a Teir's'Ffalenn is given sanctuary among us."  He half turned to
face down Arithon, his large hands hooked in the lacing that clasped
his belt with its row of black-hafted throwing knives.  "My liege, our
destiny is to defend you.  The city garrison will campaign against us,
and we must stand to fight.  Your choice is simple.  Shall we die for
an empty title or a living, breathing sovereign?"

Arithon measured the taller man.  His stillness bespoke distaste, for
the claim upon his conscience was shamelessalso double-binding as
Sithaer's traps for the damned, since the plea gave proof of the clan
chief's supreme dedication.

Only the tap of the rain across canvas, and the whispered hiss of hot
wax as draft fanned the candle flames, lent sound to the tense
atmosphere.

Arithon's response, when it came, was pitched for the chieftain's
ears alone.  "My lord.  Ath and Daelion Fatemaster have conspired.

They should have sent me a regent I could hate, a man drunk on power
and tied to petty interests.

Where the unlucky accident of my birth would never bind me, your
courage leaves me humbled and tied.  As the sovereign cause of your
death, what is left?  It's a shabby, spiritless gesture to beg in
advance your forgiveness."

"That you have," said the clan chieftain of Deshir, neither
speechless nor subdued.  "But in exchange I ask your friendship,
Arithon of Rathain."

The prince managed to curb his recoil at the unexpected judge of his
name.  "Did your dreams spoil all of my ?"  And then strain and
sleeplessness undid him.  He a to cover his face with both hands to
mask his unbidden emotion.  "What are you called?"  he said through his
fingers.

"Steiven s'Valerient, Earl of Deshir."

A shudder jarred the prince.  The oddly singed silk of his
shirtsleeve slithered back to reveal a seared weal that snaked the
length of his right forearm, to vanish under cloth at the elbow.

Arithon ignored the murmurs that broke out among the clan lords as,
through blistered, shaking hands, he swore guest oath.

"To this house, its lord, and his sworn companions, I pledge
friendship.  Ath's blessing upon family and kin, strength to the heir,
and honor to the name of s'Valerient.

Beneath this roof and before Ath, count me brother, my service as
true as blood kin.  Dharkaron witness."

Arithon's fingers fell away to uncover features as hollowed as
stripped bone.  "You've seen this before," he accused.

Steiven laughed.  From his towering height he embraced his royal
liege like a son.  "I've lived for it."

Then, aware that Arithon's extreme exhaustion threatened collapse, he
shouldered the prince's weight as he had done for his own spent scouts,
and in peremptory command sent his clan elders packing to fetch bath
water, hot food, and dry blankets.

The war council resumed upon the moment his bon's needs had been
attended.  Etarra was capable of mounting an invasion force ten
thousand strong, and with an understanding shaded to grimness by five
long centures of hatred, Steiven dared not assume that the army sent
after Arithon would be one man less than full muster.

Etarran lives would be counted cheaply for the ruin of the s'Ffalenn
royal line.

"I'll need another message run through the relay," said the gaunt old
earl of Fallowmere, his single, unclouded eye fixed like a gimlet on
his regent.  "By tomorrow every scout I have of fighting age will march
to support your Deshans."

"Well, they'll get here too damned late!"  Caolle drove his poniard
into the rough-split wood that planked the table.

"You know that the princeling is right.  If we stand, we're going to
have a massacre."

"If we don't stand, we'll be slaughtered on the run, or else die of
rot and fever in the boglands of Anglefen by summer."  Quietly, Steiven
added, "We'll fight.  But the field must be chosen to our advantage."

"Biggest, blood-spilling raid we'll ever stage," said the last Earl
of Fallowmere.  "For myself, I wouldn't miss it."

Caolle glared.

And in a warmth of brotherly bickering, the strategies were argued,
discarded, and reworked, chart after chart unrolled and shoved aside
until parchments layered the carpets like quilting.  A site was finally
chosen, in a range of valleys along the Tai Quorin, where the current
ran wide and shallow between a grassy verge of low banks.

"All right, then."  Steiven raised his corded arms, the dull studs on
his brigandine winking in sequence as he stretched.

"Roust last night's patrol.  All our camps must relocate east to the
river site.  The first arrivals will need to start cutting timber to
build the traps.  "And the prince?"  Caolle demanded.  His chapped lips
thinned at the softening he saw on his chieftain's scarred face.

"Ah, no, my lord, you're not thinking to wait out His Grace's
infirmity.  This is unsafe territory, and we need to break camp before
nightfall."

There followed a moment where clan lord and war captain clashed
glances across the candle tops.  In Deshir the custom was unbending:
any scout unfit for travel was given a mercy stroke and abandoned where
he lay by the trail.  In lands ranged by Etarra's headhunters, litters
for the wounded and the lame endangered those men still hale; and no
man, however minor his injury, was ever left at risk of captivity.

"You wake him," Steiven invited with a fierce flash of teeth.  "I
warrant he'll walk just to spite you.  It's the gray he rode in on
we'll likely be leaving for crow bait."

Arithon came half awake as a warm weight settled over his knees.

Something else, perhaps soft fingers, tugged at his hair, and another
touch trailed across the knuckles of the hand not bandaged, that lay
outside of the blankets.

He drew breath and stirred, and the stiffness of his body caught him
up in an ache that made him gasp.

"You woke him up," a child's voice piped anxiously.

"Didn't," said another, fast as echo, from the other side of the
pallet.

Arithon opened his eyes.

"Did too, see?"  said a brunette perhaps six years old, with
tea-colored eyes and dimples, who lounged against the ticking by his
shoulder.  "He might get mad."

Exactly what he chose to do next became the focus of four pairs of
eyes, from the auburn-haired angel astride his knees to the tallest,
regarding him with preteen dignity from the bedstead, to the least of
them, as dark-haired as the father she resembled, sucking on two
fingers and staring shyly from behind her eldest sister.

Arithon elbowed himself halfway upright, and froze as the slide of
the blankets warned he was naked underneath.  His sluggish thoughts
scrambled to reorient and to integrate hide walls and the patch-worked
fur coverlets of a sleeping cubicle with his last waking memory, of an
inadvertent nap in the saddle that had ended in a fall from a moving
horse.

"You aren't mad, are you?"  said the sable-haired ten-year-old with
another bounce against his knee.

He hurt everywhere.  He was too tired still by half, and if he wanted
to be annoyed, he lacked the will.  Outnumbered, and pinned beneath the
coverlets by a weight of small admirers, he adjusted his tactics to
accommodate.

A short interval later, Steiven's wife, Dania, peeked into the
alcove.  She carried a bowl of bread dough braced against her hip, and
was fumingly prepared to dress down daughters warned all morning to
leave their guest in peace.

The miscreants had found a length of rawhide.  Five heads bent
together over a puzzle that, with the help of tiny hands and much
patient instruction from the prince, was forming into an intricate lace
of knotwork.

Dania's reprimand died unspoken.  Quietly, carefully, she moved to
slip the privacy flap closed.  But he had heard her, involved as he
was, even through the giggles of the girls.

"It's all right.  Tashka has told me the camp is to move this
afternoon.  I should have been wakened soon in any case?"

Green eyes turned in question toward the doorway, made the more vivid
by close proximity of the oldest child's fiery hair.

"You have beautiful daughters, lady.  They are yours, I see,.

and Lord Steiven's?  The resemblance is too striking to overlook."

The bread bowl suddenly seemed an encumbrance.  Aware that as her
sovereign he deserved a semblance of courtesy, Dania froze with the
intuition that if she curtsied, she was going to see him angry.

Her youngest displaced one awkwardness by creation of another.

"Mama, look!"  Edal called, and pulled her hands too fast from the
hide lacing.  Oblivious to her sisters' cries of dismay as the pattern
collapsed into tangles, she seized Arithon's wrist in chubby hands and
said loudly, "Look, the prince has scars."

"Everybody who escapes from Etarra has scars, Edal," Dania scolded in
gentle exasperation.  "But it's never polite to speak of them."  She
raised the bread bowl as if it were a shield before her breast, and
delivered a succession of orders that set pretty daughters to flight
like butterflies.  As the last one vanished through the privacy flap,
she discovered the prince still regarding her.  He did have scars, she
knew from attending him the night before, ones not in keeping with his
station, and except for the queer burn on his arm, too old to have
happened in Etarra.

The awkwardness remained.  Unused to strangers, far less ones born
royal, Dania wished her curiosity could be deflected as easily as her
daughters', by a ploy with a scrap of hide string.

He found words that had equal effect.  "I should like to help with
the packing."

Gracefully turned to practicalities, Dania said, "Your clothing is
still wet from being washed.  There are leggings and a tunic that
should fit you in the chest by the wall.  When you're dressed, we'll
see about food."

"The Masterbard," asked Arithon in the same light tone of
conversation.  "Is he still with the clans?"

"Yes."  Despite her diffidence Dania smiled.  The expression lifted
cares from her face and softened the seams of hard living and weather.
"Halliron groused too much to refuse.  Danger, he said, went hand in
hand with history.  At his age, he claimed he'd expire from impatience
before he'd hear news at second hand."

Something retreated behind Arithon's expression, though his eyes like
shadowed emerald never shifted in their framework of gaunt flesh.

It stung her not to know why the Masterbard's presence should cause
upset; aside from prodigious talent as a musician, Halliron was the
very soul of kindness.  When Arithon graciously dismissed her with his
thanks, Lady Dania was relieved to escape to undertake the much tidier
frustration of punching bread dough.

Arithon arose and stiffly dressed in the black-dyed leathers offered
for his use from the chest.  These were sewn of deerhide, beaten soft,
and adorned with pale thread work at collar, shoulder, and hem.  The
silk needlework was finely embroidered, and the thought occurred that
silver lacing had not been used for a purpose.  In Deshir's forest, one
did not wear garments that might inadvertently flash or catch light.

Dania's mention of damp clothing was likely an excuse to wean away
the coronation finery that was utterly ill suited for the trail.

Arithon emerged from the alcove to find, embarrassed, that the only
clan lodge tent still standing had been the one under which he
sheltered.  Every other hide dwelling sat on the beaten earth in a pine
clearing, furled tight as puffballs just sprouted after a rainfall.  A
team of children appeared immediately to begin striking the s'Valerient
tents.  Dania's daughters were everywhere under the feet of the boys
who yanked stakes and unreeled spun cordage to coax collapsing hide to
fall in folds.  They all carried knives, though the eldest among them
looked not a day past fourteen.

Nowhere did Arithon encounter signs of grief or burial of the dead
child he had borne from Etarra.  At first impression, these clanfolk
seemed more hardened even than Maenalle's, more scarred, more grim,
more ingrained by desperate necessity.  By overhearing stray comments,
Arithon gathered the men had marched ahead of the camp to the site on
the southeast edge of Deshir forest, where pitched battle would be
fought with Etarra's army.

Found at her baking over an open-air trestle, Dania pushed a fallen
coil of hair from her cheek with the back of one floury wrist.

"We'll need journey cakes for the trail.

These are hard and savorless, so I've made sweet bread that's soft.
Edal's gone to the ovens so you can have yours hot."  She turned her
head, prepared to call, when a tardy daughter reappeared with steaming
bread in a linen napkin.

"Eat," Dania urged, still absorbed with the batter that clung to the
bowl.  "You must be famished."

He was.  Three days and four nights with too little food had left him
faint to the edge of sickness.  Arithon took the linen and lifted the
bread, forced despite his hunger to pick at it slowly.  Even bland
sustenance sat uneasily in his painfully empty innards.  To hide that
discomfort, he addressed the other, inescapable recognition that he was
being treated as an invalid.  "Last night."  His voice was very soft.

"What happened?"

Dania banged her hands down so hard the wooden bowl close to cracked.
"Ath, you would ask."  Although her back was turned, motherly instinct
pinpointed little Edal's eager regard.  Dania reflexively packed her
daughter off to fetch back a bucket of clean water.  "You were too
tired to ride.

Any fool could have seen.  But the men, they've lived with troubles
for so long that I sometimes think we've come to value all the wrong
sort of things."

"I didn't ask for excuses," Arithon interrupted mildly.

"What happened?"

She was blunt.  "You fell off your horse.  My Lord Steiven took you
up across his saddle bow."

That jogged his recall.  Fragments came back to him of Caolle's
sarcastic comment that he should be left in the mud by the trail, that
the clans had outgrown any need for royal sovereignty; of somebody else
in drier tones suggesting he should be lashed to a packhorse like
deadwood, that the scars chafed on his wrists were enough indication
that this sort of happenstance might not be new.

Dania began to stack up dirtied spoons and bowls to allow him the
chance to let down his odd barrier of silence, maybe broach what had
hounded him out of Etarra in the first place with only clothes fit for
feasting on his back.

When his stillness became prolonged, she risked a peek and found him
gone, the napkin filled with crumbs abandoned in neat folds upon the
rock where he had been sitting.

The clouds and the rain had passed and left the air redolent with
evergreen, underlaid by the mustier wet of shed needles.  Arithon
strolled the hard-beaten paths of what had once been a long-term
campsite.  He should have been unobtrusive in his soft black leathers,
under sun-striped shadows beneath the trees; the fact he was one man in
a company of older women, bearing mothers, and young children made him
not.  Busy enough with securing leather bundles, or sealing wrapped
belongings in oaken casks, they seldom gave more than a glance at his
approach.  Behind his back, they were all wont to stare.

He allowed them, of a mind to make observations himself.

Small birds with gold-banded wings foraged, pecking at the dirt where
the lodge tents had set.  They took off in fanshaped flocks, wove and
wheeled, to alight again just ahead.

A small girl told him they were pine sparrows.  Arithon thanked her
and moved on.

Like the last, this camp kept no dogs.  Infants rode on their
mothers' backs; toddlers too young for chores laughed at their play,
but did not stray into the pine woods.  Half clad, or wearing leather
patched with motley, they tussled at sticks and ball between mounds of
household goods left stranded by the furled lodges.  The casks, the
chests lashed in protective layers of oiled leather, the thick-woven
carpets with their bright colors hidden in rolls, all were tied and
stacked in piles, to be carried off to a warren of hidden root cellars
dug into the woodland floor.  The bitter conclusion was inescapable.

The site the clans were leaving was a home of sorts, familiar and
often revisited.  The place they were going on account of their prince
was bare and temporary, and necessities would be carried on their
backs.

Arithon fingered the little tin canister purloined from Sethvir's
saddlebags.  He had not hesitated to take the tienelle in the heat of
his escape from Etarra; still less did he regret the theft now.

Against Lord Diegan's army, the defenders of Strakewood Forest would
be outnumbered nine to one.  That quandary added weight to the ache of
total weariness.  Should he shy from using his talents, directed by
every scrap of augury he could draw from the herb's narcotic visions,
the people who sheltered him must rely upon chance for survival.  But
to smoke the leaves to sound the future, he required absolute privacy.

In that he was already thwarted.

Even had there been a refuge among the bustle where no one would
disturb or remark on him, the packers were hurrying to complete their
tasks by afternoon.  Aware that two boys had sneaked up on him, to dog
his steps in exaggerated imitation of his carriage, Arithon regarded
the rain-matted detritus of pine needles that his boots passed across
without track.  A thought and a chill ran through him; he might escape
by becoming too visible.  At once, with some savagery,.

he scuffled his heels to foster false impression of his ignorance,
that these folk needed less than a secretive caution necessary to
survival in the wild.

The contempt the boys copied from their elders, that Rathain's royal
scion was weak, or maybe helpless, was a trait that might suit him to
foster, Arithon thought.  The frustration he had leashed behind forced
and mild courtesy perhaps was a perverse sort of kindness.

Nights and days in the saddle had worn his body; in spirit, the
wrenching realignment that had taken place in the course of
Desh-thiere's curse lay compounded by reckless overuse of spell-craft.

Resisting the creeping and insidious urge to turn back to Etarra and
attack Lysaer claimed further toll upon his strength.  His depleted
grip on self-command made mastery of the herb's ill effects too risky
to try until he rested; in the throes of the poison's withdrawal
symptoms, Arithon knew he would be lucky to be able to walk.

Better for his future if these clansmen believed him overbred to the
point of uselessness.  Once they had repulsed Etarra's invasion, his
shadows and his aid would not be needed.  Their disdain might drive
them finally to release him from the blood bonds of Rathain's
sovereignty.

Finished with pacing, charged with perverse and bitter humor, Arithon
left the canister's deadly contents for later.  He retrod his course
through wheeling pine sparrowq to Lady Dania, where, seemingly overcome
by her distressed protestations, he allowed himself to be talked out of
his earlier insistence that he help with a share of the packing.

In the course of the next four days, Arithon let slip the stern
barriers imposed by a lifetime of mage training.  For his puzzles and
his oddments of sleight-of-hand illusion, he won the undying adulation
of Dania's daughters, who had never known a grown man to play games
with them.  The clan boys stayed aloof, until he captivated the
smallest with a whistle carved of beechwood and given voice with shaved
shims of river reed.  After that, Arithon spent every waking hour the
domestic camp was not moving on the trail seated by someone's fireside,
whittling.

For a morning, their going was made raucous by the young, hooting on
their new toys and laughing at their daring, to be making noises
unnatural to the wakened wood.

The whistles were confiscated, and Arithon, chastised by a
weatherbeaten woman who would have born arms alongside the fighting men
had she not been near term with a pregnancy.  "You'll have headhunters
on us with your addle ted, frivolous ways.  Our boys are needing no
such silly nonsense!"

Arithon regarded her hardness with green-eyed, languid resignation,
and murmured soft apology.  The woman left in disgust.

"Royal he may be, but what use have the clans for a dreamer!"  he
heard her exhorting some others in a rest stop farther down the trail.

He let the comment pass, though heads turned to see whether he had
overheard and what would be his reaction.

He gave them back his closed eyes, and crossed hands behind his head,
to all appearance asleep with his back against a tree so rough, the
bark had turned silver with dried moss.

The whistles had drawn no headhunters, because he had set arcane
defenses against any outside seeker who should chance to track their
company.  The entrapments were subtle, a fooling of the eye to make
sight linger on the flick of a leaf in the breeze, or deflect thought
into futile reflection to read meaning in some willow's gnarled roots.

Dania had to shake him out of trance when the time came to move on.

Nights by the fireside, with one or another of Dania's daughters
fallen asleep across his lap, Arithon immersed himself in Halliron's
music.  The Masterbard had an exquisite, expressive style upon the
strings, and he did not shy from imparting passionate emotion into his
playing.  The lyranthe he carried was ancient and ornate in a sparely
elegant way.  Her voice was so like the one that Arithon had been
forced to abandon at Etarra that she, too, might have been crafted by a
Paravian maker.  Arithon dared not touch her fretboard to look for
Elshian's rune.  The feel of polished wood, of responsive, silver-toned
strings, would have overcome his defenses like drugged wine.  The hope
could hurt too much, that the chance of reprieve from kingship seemed a
scant step closer.

Those evenings by the fireside, Halliron's ballads wove their mystery
as though just for him.  He chuckled at their merriness and let the
tears track unabashed down his face.

The whispers this created suited his purpose.  By daylight, while he
walked abandoned to reverie down the trail, he replayed in his mind
Halliron's exquisitely polished arpeggios, his trills of ornamentation,
his clean, meticulous cadences whose simplicity itself shaped naked
force.  Such times, when the stares of Deshir clanswomen turned aside
in disgust, he would draw the eyes of the bard.

Halliron had depths of subtlety well disguised by his congenial
nature.  Since the oddity intrigued him, that the prince so taken with
his music had never sought closer acquaintance, he took pains to hide
his interest.

The domestic camp moved by night and rested only after full daybreak.
On the morn they were to reach their destination, the mantling mists
of early dawn ripped and dispersed into tatters, cut by slanted shafts
of white sunlight.  The birds were loud at their nesting calls.  Like
strands of silvered silk wound through its green forest tapestry, the
river Tai Quorin re-emerged in a bend, to flow once again beside the
trail.

The thin, acid soil of the heights gave up its black mantle of pines.
The fertile trough of the watershed here lay broken into long,
irregular valleys.  Winding through hollows and glens, the river
current lisped over glacial deposits of smoothed granite, and skeined
eddies around willow roots like the nobbled knees of old men.  The
demise of Deshthiere had bought change.  Little plants pressed up
through moss and pine needles, and opened colored petals for the first
time in five centuries untrammeled by the sooty prints of fungal
spores.

Steiven's daughters clung to Arithon like shadows as, together, they
enjoyed discovery of each new bud and petal; where the wildflowers
matched those he remembered from Rauven's deep woodland glens, he gave
their names.  Where they did not, he knelt, the sun mantling warmth
across his back, and shared wonders otherworldly and strange in drifts
of dew-drenched leaf mold.

His absorption was not so complete that he overlooked the faint, sour
ring of steel that threaded through the trilled cries and fast-beating
wings of disturbed marsh flickers.  Halliron's fascination had not quit
at appearances, for all that the camp women had already dismissed their
prince as a fanciful dreamer.  Only the bard remained observant enough
to spot the brief frisson that shocked through the prince's bearing.

Puzzled, Halliron tossed damp hair from his temples, the better to
watch as Arithon straightened up from contemplation.  Swift words from
him, and the children ranged eagerly ahead to scout their next find on
their own.  Arithon hung bea shadow in dark leathers under the
light-flecked s of a hazel thicket.

From the crest of an unseen hillside, the axe blows reached a ragged
crescendo.  The tree bole under punishment gave a juddering crack and
fell to earth in a whipping tangle of greenery that hissed like a rip
through warm air.  Arithon recoiled.  He turned as if jabbed by sharp
pain, an is eyes passed unseeing across the bard standing not twenty
feet behind, with the forest shade hatching his elegant court velvets
that stood out too plainly to be missed.

Another tree cracked and fell.  Exposed full face to an observation
he would have avoided, Arithon paled in the grip of some deep,
introspective discomfort.

And Halliron caught his breath in comprehension.  Acquainted with the
Warden of Althain, befriended by Asandir, he saw into this prince and
recognized like a watermark in fine paper, the stamp of a mage-trained
awareness.

Arithon's interest in trailside wildflowers had been a ruse to mask
an attention linked to the deeper mysteries of the forest.  Caught as
he was in partial trance, the axe-cut, dying trees sent a scream of
pain across his nerves.  Shaken to his core, an unprepared part of him
was bark and leaves and running spring sap, slashed untimely from its
taproot by blows from sharpened steel.  The shock momentarily upset his
mastery.  He struggled, stumbling slightly, to tear his stung
consciousness free.

Pushed by reflex before thought, Halliron hastened forward and caught
the prince by an elbow to support his unsteady step.

The touch caused Arithon to snap stiff.  His head came up, around,
and in green eyes the Masterbard caught a flare that looked like
smothered anger.  The impression was false.

Halliron saw past hostility to what perhaps was an envy sprung from
offense; indisputably the resentment was directed fully and personally
toward him.

Halliron's startlement caused him to let go, simultaneous with
Arithon's instinctive jerk backward, with the result that sensitive
musician's fingers recorded an instant impression.

The forearm under its covering of water-spoiled silk wag wiry and
fit, not at all the constitution of the fine-drawn dandy the prince
purported to affect.

Arithon spun away to hide an expression Halliron would have bribed in
gold to have read.  Between the two men lay a silence heavy with
secrets, and as if their burden were at once too much, the prince
abruptly sat down.  He fingered the edge of a rock hoarded like some
hoary, moss-crusted jewel between the miserly grip of old roots.  "I'm
sorry."  His apology was too quick and cold.  "I believed I was alone."

Halliron absorbed this display with narrowed, tawny eyes.

He observed on intuition, "You had wards set, and not just to hide
the notes of whistles."

"If so, that's no business of yours."  Arithon let his knuckles fall
loose in dry grass, left wind-broken from winter's snowfall like the
bundled small bones of dead birds.  He had regained control.  At least,
he no longer shivered as the axe falls rang.  Only the earth seemed to
shudder in vibration as each quick trunk slammed the ground.

After a moment the bard said, "If you want Deshir's clans to disown
you, desert them."

That touched a nerve.  Arithon's smile at the barb was fulllipped and
brimmingly, off-puttingly merry.  "Desert me, instead.  Your
perceptions feel like a tinker's spilled needles: a punishing trap for
false steps."

Halliron was not easily irritated.  Years of settling vain, even
senile patrons and short-tempered, envious peers had taught him to
treat with human nature sparely, to unwind misunderstanding like a
snarl in fine-spun wool.  Intrigued by Arithon's reticence, he gave no
ground, even as the man pressed to escape and regain untrammeled access
to the trail.

There was no gap to squeeze past.  Halliron had him boxed between a
stand of dense brush and the seamed, ungiving face of another rock.

Spoiled as his behavior suggested, the Teir's'Ffalenn did not have
the nerve or the anger in him to shoulder an old man aside to have his
way.

"I could ask," Halliron said in the Shandian drawl that seeped back
occasionally from his boyhood.  "Why, when you first met me, did you
react as if I were a threat to you?"

"Because," Arithon began, and on impulse, switched liquidly to the
Paravian, "cuel ean i murdain el dath-tol no soaren, " which
translated, "you are the enemy I never expected to meet."  His accent
was flawless.  And the coiled hardness in him this time would not be
denied.  Halliron moved aside before he was indeed shoved physically.

Undeceived by the show for a moment, the Masterbard watched the scion
of Rathain's murdered high kings stride The man was not angry.

However desperately he tried to foster that impression, to a bard's
ear for nuance, it was obvious that Arithon was unbearably distressed.

Halliron resumed his walk in pensive thought.  For some pernicious
reason he felt guilty for even this slight an intrusion into the
Teir's'Ffalenn's altogether raptly guarded privacy.  If anything left
the bard irked, it was his suspicion that Steiven's daughters were
entrusted with an honesty nobody else in the camp seemed to merit.

The clans of Deshir were altering the landscape in the valleys to
either side of the Tai Quorin's watercourse.  The woods rang with the
noise of their feverish haste, of axes and falling timber and the
grinding over stones of makeshift sledges.  A party of raiders had
stolen draft teams.  The chink of chain and harness fittings blended
with drovers' calls.

Even Halliron's pony was pressed into service, hauling hampers of cut
brush.

Upon arrival, the women left tents and belongings still furled in
their packs in a clearing.  Every free hand was set to work, while the
children and the elderly were sent out to forage or dress the game sent
in by the hunting parties who ranged the glades farther afield.  The
racket had scattered the deer, the birds, and even the beavers were
driven into hiding by rafts of cut logs sent downstream.

Lord Steiven was south, below the white-water rapids where the river
fanned into sheets of open water between grassy greenswards of marsh.
There he oversaw the remaking of innocent landscape into traps to mire
Etarra's army.  Arithon did not join him.  Neither did he lend his
strength to the shifting of logs and stones.  Conspicuous for his
idleness, for even the Masterbard had volunteered to help the cooks,
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn sat in the shade through the morning, apparently
taking a nap.  Nobody saw him move, or as much as open an eye.

When the work crews returned to eat at midday, he was still there and
had to be wakened for the meal.

And yet he had to have stirred.  A scout who passed through the
armory lodge found the tactical maps disturbed.

Penned in the margins of a supply draft in fussy, overornamented
script were concisely drawn summaries of the weapon and training
profile of Etarra's garrison troops, along with names, numbers, and
insightful characteristics of most of its ranking officers.

Since the prince neither mentioned nor arose to claim credit for this
contribution, the matter became overshadowed.  The contempt of the
clan's womenfolk became all the deeper entrenched by Arithon's current
absorption, of drawing puzzles in the dirt with the toddlers.  His
laughter tangled with the talk of the men at the boards and the scrape
of knives as they sawed and hammered the dry waybread into chunks to
soften in hot gravy.  Veiled looks of incredulity were cast at the
prince between bites.  The younger scouts began to sound bitter, while
the most campaign-scarred grew silent.  Steiven was not present to stem
the quietly acid speculation, which Arithon joyously ignored.  His mood
stayed isolate, as thoroughly unshakable as if he were deaf or a
half-wit.

Afternoon saw the Teir's'Ffalenn kneeling amid the patchwork shadows
of a beech grove to receive oath of fealty from the fighting scouts of
the clans.  The timing of the ceremony had been at Steiven's orders;
men grumbled in dour, closed knots, that the roster might have been
changed if their earl had come back from the lower valley in time to
hear gossip from his wife.

But delayed until the last minute, Steiven arrived still winded from
his hurry to reach the glen.  That Strakewood's clansmen had gathered
in his absence, half stripped and muddy, or sweating in leathers still
grimed from their labors on the defense works, was in tribute to the
loyalty given their chieftain rather than respect for the prince about
to become their liege lord.

Steiven assumed position a half step to one side of the s'Ffalenn
prince.  Except for recovery of Asandir's circlet that was proof of his
sanction for succession, Arithon still wore the black suede tunic and
leggings that had once belonged to Lady Dania's younger brother.  As at
the earlier ceremony in Etarra, Arithon carried no ornament beyond his
father's signet.  The smoke-dark blade forged by Paravian mastery was
struck upright into the earth at his elbow, the emerald in the pommel a
hard green sparkle underlying the reflections of the foliage.  Already
in place, on one knee in the crumbled detritus of last season's fall of
copper leaves, he met no one's interested glance.  His attention seemed
absorbed more by the cheep of nesting wrens in the branches than in the
greeting murmured by his regent.

For a moment Lord Steiven knew regret, that occasion as momentous as
this should be held at short notice in the greenwood.  The last such
ceremony would have taken place in Ithamon, under beautiful vaulted
ceilings rich with jeweled hangings and banners.  Customarily held on a
prince's twentieth birthday, past events had been preceded and followed
by grand celebration and feasting.

Saddened by the somberness of this gathering, and moved to a crush of
emotion that would barely allow speech, that he had lived for this day,
that he, of all his exiled ancestors, should be the one to stand
witness to the returned s'Ffalenn scion, Steiven drew breath to renew a
ritual many thousands of years old.

"I, Teir's'Valerient, appointed Regent of the Realm and Warden of
Ithamon, through my father, and his fathers, back to the last crowned
sovereign, bring before you Arithon, son of Avar, sanctioned heir and
direct descendant of Torbrand 'Ffalenn, founder of the line appointed
by the Fellowship of Seven to rule the principalities of Rathain.  Let
any man who questions the validity of this prince's claim now stand
forth."

Feet shifted, deadened from sound by damp earth.  The shrill cry of a
hawk hung loud upon silence.

Steiven resumed.  "Arithon, Teir's'Ffalenn, turn your back.  A prince
who would accept oath of fealty must trust those he would lead and
defend.  If any among this gathering have earned your ill will, state
their names for all to hear, that they may be excluded."

Seeming delicate as porcelain before his regent's scarred height,
Arithon tipped up his face.  "I bear no man grudge."

The words were clear, for all that his eyes were barriered.  As if he
fought back panic, his fingers shook as he gripped and pulled
Alithiel's blade from the earth.  "I appoint you my guardian against
treachery."  His raised knee shifted; he pivoted and neatly, still
kneeling, turned his back.

According to time-worn ritual, Steiven positioned himself at
Arithon's shoulder, facing the waiting company.  "Let, those who would
be real companions of Arithon, son of Avar, step forward and present a
weapon in pledge of service and defense."

The clan chieftain then drew his own sword and ran it point to into
the ground.  One by one, his scouts and his fighting men, his hunters,
and his women who had no family representative to swear for them, filed
forward.  They passed with bent neck beneath the unsheathed threat of
Alithiel guarding the royal back, and left knives, daggers, poniards,
or heirloom swords in token of their trust.  When the last of them had
returned to their place, Arithon was permitted to turn around.

But not, even yet, to arise.  On his knees, white now as any mayor's
bleached linen, he bowed his head before that hedge of steel and
crossed hands that looked fragile over the hilt of the nearest sword.

Thin and weary as a fox run to earth, he drew breath to renounce
personal claim to the life he had found in Athera.  "I pledge myself,
body, mind, and heart to serve Rathain, to guard, to hold unified, and
to deliver justice according to Ath's law.  If the land knows peace, I
preserve her; war, I defend.  Through hardship, famine, or plague, I
suffer no less than my sworn companions.  In war, peace, and strife, I
bind myself to the charter of the land, as given by the Fellowship of
Seven.  Strike me dead should I fail to uphold for all people the
rights stated therein.  Dharkaron witness."

"Arise, Arithon, Teir's'Ffalenn and Crown Prince this moment of
Rathain."  Steiven stepped back, smiling, as his liege at last gained
his feet.  "Ath grant you long life and sound heirs."

Arithon laid hand on the chieftain's huge bastard sword and drew its
weight from the earth.  He offered the weapon back to Steiven with his
royal blessing.  And one by one, for what seemed like an hour, other
weapons were returned in like fashion, binding their owners to loyal
service.  The steel was their oath; the burden of their lives and
safety, now and forever, Arithon's, as he was now theirs until death.

The muttering over his weaknesses cut off sharply as Steiven's barked
orders sent each team back to felling trees and digging pitfalls for
the incomplete defense works.

As the clearing rapidly emptied, Arithon met his Lord Regent's
regard.  His green eyes not quite yet rinsed to bleakness, he said, "My
first act will be the rending of that oath."

Steiven's easy humor vanished as he proffered Alithiel to his prince.
"I've heard.  The talk doesn't fool me.  And you dwell on the matter,
Your Grace, like one blind to the lay of the weather.  Etarra's hatreds
smolder hot enough that it takes no spark at all to set them burning."

Arithon accepted back the icy weight of Alithiel.  The haste with
which he had fled his coronation had kept the blade without a sheath;
he was obliged to slide her bared length through a belt that was nicked
and sliced from such usage, and the force as he rammed the weapon home
roused an angry ring from the steel.  "Lysaer is not fit to be judged .

tional men.  He has been cursed, as I have, and feuds or W@ Py ra
justice have no bearing on his actions.  I would not see your clansmen
become the tool that Etarra's garrison has."

He brushed past before Steiven could answer.  Without further word to
anyone, Arithon left the clearing in the opposite direction of the
camp.

Steiven started after him, but a hand on his forearm caught him back.

"Let him go," murmured Halliron in that musical gentleness that could
and had stopped killing fights.  "My heart tells me this prince knows
all too clearly what he's about.

You cannot shoulder what troubles him."  A smile revealed the sly gap
in front teeth.  "Besides, if he's touchy as the ballads name his
forebears, he'll tolerate no man's interference."

Steiven swore explosively.  "I know that.  You know that.

But likeness to his ancestors isn't going to satisfy my clansmen.

If this womanish brooding continues, my war captain has vowed he'll
strip the royal person to his short hairs to find out if they hide a
castration.  By Ath!"  the former regent ended with rare and
exasperated fierceness, "if Caolle tries, it's on my mind I'm going to
let him!"

 Attraction

Etarra prepared for war.  The clangor of the armorers' mallets rang
from the smithies day and night, counterpointed by the whack and slap
of practice staves as last year's recruits were drilled to professional
polish.  Almost overnight it seemed that every young man of fighting
age appeared in the streets wearing half armor.

Not all would be leaving for battle.  The highborn elite, those whose
pedigrees traced back without taint to the original burghers who had
overthrown the old monarchy, found themselves sidelined in the bustle
created by the renegade prince.  Their exploits, their mischief, and
their profligate debts born of gambling were no longer the talk of the
ladies' parlors.  Arithon's name had supplanted them, and out of fear
of his shadows, mistresses and favored courtesans turned fickle in
sudden preference for strapping big fellows with less refined manners
and swords.

The parties of the rich and young grew the more frenzied to
compensate.  From Diegan, Lady Talith heard details: of how the
bluest-blooded and brashest had drunk claret until they staggered, and
then staged a race up the alarm tower to see who could be first to
swing from the bass bell's clapper.

The winner had emerged miraculously unscathed.  Those less lucky,
judged by the nature of their scars, became heroes, or the butt of
scathing jokes, which was the fashionable way to test their chann.  One
gallant had twisted an ankle.  Another had fallen through a railing and
suffered two broken wrists.

He appeared in splints at the soirees and bragged that the ladies
could kiss him on both cheeks at once, as he lacked a sound hand to
fend them off.

Once Lady Talith would have sat front and center, to egg on admirers
and dare foolish feats to gain her favor.  She would have laughed at
the cleverest wit and gleaned all the gossip, to unravel the fierce
tapestry of intrigue that underlay the glitter of Etarran society.

But this night found her separate from the festivities, breathing in
the outdoor airs that perfumes inside the ballroom behind her were
selected with care to overpower.

There was nothing attractive by night in damp stone; starlight, to
her, was too uncomfortably new to feel safe.  The laughter, the
dancing, and the delicate sparkle of light through the pierced
porcelain of a thousand candle shades should have drawn her back like a
moth to flame.  Her gown of costly damask was new and her jewels simple
but dazzling.

But the parties now seemed silly shamming.  She resisted the creeping
ennui to no avail and just as fiercely fought to deny its cause, to
avoid setting name to the day, no, the moment, when the wild antics of
the men had become reduced to just games, and empty ones at that.

Diegan had experienced a similar change.  Though brother and sister
had not compared thoughts, his humor had been flat for days.

Where once he would have battled jealously to retain his circle of
admirers, now they were deserting his side like ebb tide, with himself
the one least dismayed.  It felt, Talith decided, as if somebody had
entered her childhood home and maliciously rearranged all the
furniture.

She could not flee the recognition that her life seemed dreary since
Lysaer s'llessid had stepped into it.

Talith leaned over the balustrade.  Never before then haa she known
admiration that did not arise from flamboyance; humor that did not
belittle; power not bought through'brutish intrigues or bribes.

The man's direct nature had cut through Etarra's convoluted greed and
excesses like a sharpened knife through moldy rinds.

A breeze whispered through the garden and loosed a small blizzard of
petals that almost masked the footfalls approaching from across the
terrace.  She was annoyed.  She had fended off four dandies on her way
to the doorway.

"Go away."  Cold, disastrously discourteous, she refused to look
aside and so much as acknowledge the identity of the man she dismissed.

The footsteps stopped.

Warm hands reached out and gently gathered the twist of hair that
trailed down the nape of her neck.  She stiffened, dismayed to realize
she could not spin and deal a slap for the impertinence.  His fingers
had tightened too firmly; like a boat, she was effectively moored.

"They insisted inside that you had grown tired of the party," Lysaer
s'llessid said in greeting.

She shivered.  Then blushed; and would have slapped him then for his
boldness, that had wrung from her such a reaction.  She was
unaccustomed to being played like a fish.

He let her go.  Cool air ruffled through the strands his fingers had
parted.  Mulberry blossoms showered in a swirl of white, and eddied in
the lee of the railing.

Talith stepped around, prepared to use her pretty woman's scorn to
drive him off balance.  He deserved as much for his confidence, that
everywhere he went he would be welcomed.

Wonder stopped her cold.  Strung in his hands was a chain of lights,
delicate as flame hung on bead wire.

Lysaer smiled.  His eyes sparkled with reflections; his face, struck
out in shadow and soft light, held a beauty to madden a sculptor to
fits of missed inspiration.  The pale, fine hair that just brushed his
collar was his sole ornament.

The effect stopped Talith's breath.

"Do you want me to leave?"  Lysaer teased.

Pique snapped her out of entrancement.  "You haven't been invited to
stay."  But her glance betrayed her as she marveled at the shining
string that quivered and danced between his hands.

His smile deepened at the corners.  "No jewel can compare$ He looked
down at the bauble, made it gleam and spit sparks like stirred embers.
"This cannot compares It's a poor, phantom.  A worthless illusion
sprung from light.  But insist on hiding in the darkness, at least if
you wear it, you'll be gilded."  He reached up, stepped closer, and
with a gesture that brushed the bared skin of her collarbones, settled
his spell around her neck.

The lights were neither warm nor cold; in fact, their presence
against her flesh raised no tactile sensation at all.  That for an
oddity made her ache.  As if, like a gem or a pearl, she should feel
something tangible from his gift.

"Gold suits you," Lysaer murmured.  He watched in quiet pleasure as
she experimented with his handiwork, let it spill like captive
fireflies through her fingers.

And then, too suddenly, he gave the reason for his coming.  "The army
marches out on the morrow."

She looked up, her head tipped provocatively sideways; the necklace
of lights brightened her chin to fine angles.

"Should that trouble me?"

Lysaer paused, thoughtful.  He seemed not offended or set back.

"I don't think anyone in this city understands the threat in the man
we leave to cut down."

"Arithon?"  Talith tossed back her mane of hair, about to say,
disparagingly, that even allied to barbarians the deposed prince could
hardly challenge a fortified city.

Lysaer stepped to her suddenly and caught her arms below her bared
shoulders.  He did not shake her.  Neither did he raise his voice to
chastise.  His touch stayed soft and the eyes that stared down into
hers were wide open, very blue, and anguished only with himself.

"Lady, I fear for your city, for your safety, for your happiness.

And about Arithon s'Ffalenn, I can make nobody comprehend "What else
is there to know?"  She looked back at him, graceful as some tawny cat
assured of its power to captivate.

Lysaer slid his palms down her arms lightly as a breath.

He backed away, set his hands on the balustrade, and stared out over
the darkened garden.  He was troubled, deeply, and she realized with a
snap of vexation that her allure had not even touched him.  He gave her
no chance to retaliate, but said quickly, "I grew up in a land that was
terrorized by the predations of the s'Ffalenn.  We in Amroth had
wealth, good ships, skilled men with quality weapons to defend us.

We should have triumphed easily, for the Isle of Karthan the pirate
kings ruled was little more than a sandspit.  The people were poor,
with few resources, fewer men.  But what they had, they used with the
cleverness of demons."

He stilled for a moment.  Talith saw that his hands had balled into
fists.  Unsure whether his tension might be troublesome to cross, she
waited, patient because his lordly display of dedication was novel
enough to intrigue her.

Presently, Lysaer spoke again.  "The killing and the grief went back
for generations, through my great grandfather's time.  Both of my
uncles were lured into traps and sent back to us pickled for burial.

Grief left my father unreasonable, even mad.  He lost a wife before
my mother.  Two daughters died with her, who would have been my
half-sisters had I known them.  No one told me they existed until I was
twelve, when I forced my father's seneschal to say why the royal crypt
held an unmarked vault."

Lysaer took a breath.  "All my life, I remember the campaigns, the
fleets, and the generals sent out to eradicate the s'Ffalenn.  We
accomplished little for great efforts.  We managed to burn villages,
poor shanties whose loss seemed scarcely to hurt.  Karthish lookouts
would spot the inbound fleets and warn the people to escape.  Men sent
ashore to track refugees would scour the desert to no avail.  Sea
engagements went as badly.  Our ships were lured into exhaustive
chases, wrecked in shoal waters because the artisans who drew our
charts had once been fed false information.  Our captains and crews
died fighting against lee shores in gales.

They died of thirst, hunger, mutiny, and fire, because the weapon of
the s'Ffalenn was ingenuity that seemed inexhaustible as the tides.

The pirate princes reveled in feuding.

Their trickery never repeated itself, and they sailed to no
predictable pattern."

Remembered anguish drove Lysaer to straighten from the balustrade.

"These past captains were only men, clever and hungry for bloodshed.

The last of their line, the s'Ffalenn heir bequeathed to Athera, is
far more.  He was born to an enchantress, raised to the ways of power.
A sorcerer, a shadow master, his tricks will come barbed in spells."

His eyes at last turned and met Talith's, dreadfully deep and
revealing.  "Arithon fooled even me, lady.  He drew me to believe he
was harmless, then cozened true friendship from me.  If not for your
brother's apt questions, if not for the doubts he reawakened, no one
might have acted in time.

Arithon might never have stood before Etarra and revealed his true
nature in the square."

Lysaer ended in harsh and personal discomfort.  "That is what I
cannot teach your people to know and fear."

Caught up in fascination exotic enough to make her shiver, Talith
said, "But you are lord over powers of light.

You can defend against witchery."

"I'm a man," Lysaer amended.  "Men fail."

Uncertainty flawed Talith's entrancement.  She had been affected
inside, and surprised by that recognition, she wanted his hands on her.

"You'll come back.  Diegan's army will win that black sorcerer's
head."

Breeze stirred a drift of mulberry petals between them.

They dusted Talith's cheeks and caught in her hair and on the abalone
tips of lacquered pins.  With a gentle hand he brushed them away.  "We
can try.  We can hope."  He cupped her face, bent and kissed her with
maddening lightness.

She reached to pull him closer, but the slithering drag of her caped
sleeves warned him in time to draw back.  From a safe half pace away he
smiled at her.  "No.  Not now.  You'll wait for me, lovely lady.  When
Arithon s'Ffalenn is vanquished and your city is safe, I'll return.  If
your desire for my presence still endures, we shall build something
great between us then."

She swallowed back her annoyance, the more amazed because he did not
mock her frustrated passion as Etarran men mi-ht have done.  "What if
you don't come back?"

[lis lightness vanished.  "Then you'll be left to find out why Etarra
Is army lost.  In my memory, you'll use such Knowledge to warn your
people so that Arithon's predations don't catch them unprepared when
the time comes to fight him again."

"You can't believe you'll be defeated!"  Talith cried, forgetting in
distress to be artful.

"I can't be so cocky as to think for a second I might not."

He gave a stiff shrug in apology.  "S'Ffalenn pirates in the past
have ruined better men than me."

"You're all we have."  Talith corrected herself with passionate
sharpness.  "All I have."  & Inside the ballroom the musicians struck
up a merry tune.

Past the opened double doors dancers gathered, formed lines, and
began to tread the first measures.  Their movements seemed meaningless.

Mute in her appeal, Talith saw with a relief that made her tremble
that Lysaer would not, after all, depart without thought for her
happiness.

"One dance."  The s'llessid prince laughed gently and gathered her,
silk, pearls, and ruffled, layered skirts as delicately as if she were
a blown bit of thistledown captured in the circle of his arms.

Deduction

Under a breeze from the east, the soured mud of bare tide flats and
the dye works of Narms swept a reeking pall over the town, which
consisted of box-fronted wooden mansions, one-story warehouse sheds,
and a harbor.  A craft center from first to last, the place recognized
no elegance beyond the bustling purpose of commerce.

Up coast, where the beautiful yams spun and dyed in these wind-raked,
ramshackle shops were woven into famed rugs and tapestries, Cildom's
stone buildings held the deeper mystery of more ancient sites; a
resonance that lingered from Paravian inhabitance still drew the
earth's forces to flow very near to the surface.  For the advantage
such powers lent to spell-craft, the Koriani Prime would have preferred
to conduct her errand there.  But since the Fellowship's gross
misjudgment over Arithon's failed coronation, Elaira could make Narms
with better speed.

The building let for Morriel's use was owned by the widow of a former
Koriani boy ward.  Since his death, hard times and slatternly
management had caused his dye works to fail.  Long abandoned to the
whims of stray Lyats, the yard stood cluttered with cracked buckets
silted wrist deep in dead leaves.  The shop, crudely shuttered, lay
sandwiched between a brewery and the mudflats.  Storms in winter
sometimes flooded the warehouse.  The building smelled now of moldered
rags and worm-rotted planking, underlaid by the taint of hops and fish.

One lingering fiend had to be chased from the rafters.

Then the sole vat not cursed with slow leaks was dragged inside by
Morriel's servant, wedged level on packed sand flooring, and filled now
for scrying.  A yarn rack propped up and sumptuously padded with quilts
had been prepared; but the Koriani matriarch disdained the seat.

Hunched under shawls like a crow draggled down by wet plumage, she
waited in the flickering light of the resin torches with a patience her
First Senior could not match.

Sustained by voracious ambition, Lirenda reveled to be the only one
chosen for active duty.  Though the time was well past midnight and her
fellow Seniors had long since retired, for pride she would not show
weariness and sit in the presence of her Prime.

Sharing attendance upon Morriel's needs was the huge half-wit who
stood as her door guard.  Witness to more secrets than any living
Koriani Senior, the man sat crosslegged in a corner, drooping in his
effort to stay awake.  The streets outside were mostly quiet.

Sometimes a late worker from the brewery strode whistling by.  The
stillness in between magnified the hiss of burning resin and the
distant beat of combers off Instrell Bay.  A sudden clatter of iron as
a horse arrived outside caused the half-wit to startle from his doze
and hasten to unbar the door.

Elaira's voice carried in on the gust that swept the threshold as she
dismissed the livery groom who would return her mount to the stable.
She entered a moment later.  Hair blown loose from her braid was
screwed into wisps by the seaside humidity, and her skin was like chalk
with exhaustion.

She had ridden a hundred leagues in under three days.

Chafed raw at the knees from leathers stiffened with horse sweat, her
ragged state showed as she made obeisance to the Koriani matriarch.

The formal words of greeting came courageously steady from her lips.

Lirenda watched, avid, as Morriel beckoned Elaira closer.

Under browless hoods of bone, the Prime's deep-set eyes did not
merely study, but raked the rider who stepped awaiting on command.

Lxposed full figure in flame light, Elaira withstood the inspection.
Awareness left her flushed, that the sisterhood's arts of observation
would take in all, from the scuffs on her boots left by pebbles kicked
in impatience at post stables too slow to tack her remounts, to the
stains on her cloak where a drunk in a wayside tavern had upset the
broth she could not stay to have replenished.

The Prime observed, "Your journey was trying, I see."

Eased by the unexpected kindness, Elaira straightened sore shoulders.
"Not so bad."  In wry humor that Lirenda found particularly grating
she added, "If the inns had lice in the bedclothes, at least I escaped
finding out."

Morriel's lips twitched, perhaps in the ghost of a smile.

"Your spirits are intact, I can see.  When did you last eat?"

Elaira paused for thought, which gave answer enough in itself.

The crone gestured to her half-wit.  "Quen, go next door to the
brewers and buy some bread and sausage."  To Elaira, in disarming
solicitude, she added, "Do you wish beer?"

Not so tired she failed to sense a trap, Elaira shook her head.

"On the heels of an emergency summons, I think not, thank you.

Unless I have leave to go to bed?"

"You have not."  But the Prime's approval was apparent, that the girl
had kept sharp wits.  "Though you deserve the rest, surely.  I'm not
unaware that you had to bid against the trade guilds' couriers, jammed
as the livery stables have been with bearers carrying ill news."

Inordinate numbers of state messengers had crowded the roads as well,
but Elaira had been too pressed to hear gossip.

"Worse happened since I left Etarra?"

"A great deal."  Fog curled through the door as Quen slipped back in
with a steaming parcel.  As the torches hissed and spat in the damp,
Morriel motioned toward the vat.

Bring your meal while you study the water.  I would see you brought
current with events, that you understand the importance of the demands
you've been called to attend."

To thank Quen for any service was to invite an embarrassment of
obsequious gratitude.  Elaira patted his rough hand and took the food,
half braced in pity in case his raw ning should displease the Prime.

But Quen only ducked his head in pathetic ecstacy for her kindness,
then retired back to his corner.

Elaira unwrapped greasy coils of sausage and trailed after her
mistress toward the vat.

Lirenda knew bitterness, that the order's most incorrigible junior
initiate should be casually stuffing her mouth, while beside her,
Morriel Prime prepared to admit her to the highest level of Koriani
affairs, and for no better cause than a disobedient escapade with a
man.

With no thought spared for Lirenda's disaffection, Morriel hitched up
one hip and with a drag of thick woolens, perched on the rim of the
vat.  Graced by a balance at odds with her years, she unhooked the
crystal that hung on fine chains at her neck and informed Elaira, "The
images you will observe reflect events that occurred today."

Morriel dangled her jewel above the ruffled water, then completed a
pass that engaged spell-craft.  Elaira leaned over a surface bound into
mirror smoothness, while the vision induced by the Prime's clairvoyance
overlaid the madderstained depths....

Morning sun tinted the square brick turrets of Etarra's watch keeps
and struck shafts through the dust billowed up by the garrison that
tramped outbound from the northwestern gate.  Its columns were narrowed
by the flanks of the Mathom pass, and rank after rank of raised pikes
and lances gridded the pale, hazed sky.  Windowed in water, men marched
like toy figurines given life, the gold and red banners of the City
Guard cracking in the breeze like snipped cloth.

"Fatemaster's mercy," Elaira murmured, her sausage cooling in fingers
that felt sapped of nerves.  "There's to be war, then?"

For reply, Morriel shifted vantage to display Etarra's host in its
entirety.

Ten thousand strong, spearheaded by caparisoned rows of mounted
lancers and trailed by the light cavalry under the standard of the
headhunters' league, the army advanced down switched-back roads like a
serpent roused hungry from its lair.  Crowds packed the city ramparts
to cheer, foremost among them a tawny-haired woman in a glitter of
goldd silk.  Heralds raised trumpets emblazoned with tassels, silent
fanfare sounded for the smiling, bejeweled figure of Lysaer s'llessid,
mounted on his chestnut horse, flanked by Lord Diegan and Etarra's
field general, the grim-faced, leonine Gnudsog.

Shocked beyond thought for protocol, Elaira accosted her supreme
superior.  "Lysaer has raised Etarra?  Daelion forfend, whatever for?"

A gust hissed through the gapped warehouse, sour with the reek of
dried seaweed.  Where Lirenda braced in expectation of immediate
displeasure from the Prime, Morriel simply sighed and tugged with thin
hands to rearrange the burden of her shawls.  The image in the dye vat
erased.  In dry conversation, the crone said, "I believe this next
image should tell you."

She effected a second pass.

The water's glassine surface now showed the mild haze of a mid-spring
afternoon.  Shadows pocked the stubble of a stripped hillside.  Brown
and unobtrusive against mats of hacked bark and wilted greenery, a band
of barbarian scouts left the timber they had cut and packed in six-foot
lengths onto sledges.  They gathered presently in a clearing, where the
only man among them not dirtied from labor waited on his knees before
the blade of his own drawn sword.  A start in her nerves from
recognition, Elaira beheld Arithon s'Ffalenn.  Beside him, stiff-backed
and vexed, stood the rangy frame of the most powerful barbarian in the
north: Steiven s'Valerient, Caithdein of Ithamon and high chieftain of
the clans of Deshir.

"But this makes no sense."  Elaira abandoned her halfeaten meal in
its folds of steam-soggy paper.  Just one breath away from a thunderous
headache, she raised hands to rub her temples.  "The clans in
Strakewood are no match for the might-of Etarra."

"They believe otherwise."  Moffiel removed her jewel.

The spell that fueled her clairvoyance snapped, and woodlands
vanished away, leaving waters that flashed and puckered over a
blood-dark silt of old dyes.  "Three valleys along Tai Quofin's banks
have been riddled with deadfalls to that end.  War is in the offing.

The princes so fondly received by the Fellowship are themselves at
the root and cause."

"No."  Elaira raised her chin in sick protest.  "The Seven wouldn't-"
She stopped, fought down dread for a slip that could betray her past
trust with Asandir.  "The Sorcerers must surely intervene if their
princes are caught at the heart of this."

"Ah," said Morfiel, her flash of discovery well hidden, though across
the warehouse, Lirenda looked vindicated.

"But the Sorcerers have all fled Etarra.  Like rats off a foundering
ship, they abandoned their post of responsibility on the instant
Desh-thiere's curse claimed the half-brothers."

Morriel paused.  Acute, colorless eyes flicked aside to encompass
Elaira's strained face.  "Your friend Asandir made a misstep."

The implication of collaborative association with a Fellowship
Sorcerer went unnoticed before the disclaimer that stormed Elaira's
thoughts: that the power she had encountered in the loft of Enithen
Tuer's was no likely candidate for mistakes.  If the Fellowship of
Seven had withdrawn, they must surely have done so deliberately.

Morriel's eyes held her gaze like a snake's.  Exposed to the Prime's
sharp dispassion, that would see past nuance and draw out frightful
truths, Elaira's fought down raw nerves and dread.  Too late, with both
hands locked in fear to the cold stone edge of the dye vat, she waited
to be denounced for far worse offense than a silly romantic
entanglement.

"Oh, yes, the truth behind your illicit visit to the Four Ravens'
tavern last autumn is known to us."  The Prime tucked her focus stone
in her lap with a clicking of hooked yellow fingernails.  "However, we
deem your visit to Asandir too petty for pursuit in light of the
present crisis.

Since the actions of s'Ffalenn and s'llessid have brought Rathain's
factions to arms, a character scan must be made of both princes.  Our
sisterhood must know how five centuries of exile have altered the
Fellowship's royal lines."

The blow so long suspected fell at last as Morriel gathered her
skirts and stood erect.  "You have been summoned here, Elaira, as the
only initiate we have who has been in close enough contact with the
royal heirs to undertake the attempt."

Stunned as if her guts had come unhinged, Elaira thrust off from the
dye vat.  The Kofiani order owned her, flesh and mind, but this demand
threatened to annihilate her.  Perfect, unbiased recall, down to the
smallest detail of the princes' features, dress, and bearing, was
required of her or Morriel's scrying would be useless, her delicate
chains of deductions ridden through with dead ends and errors.  Though
every Kofiani initiate had been exactingly trained for clear recall,
reproducing images for character scan was a task given only to the most
time-proven, gifted Seniors.  The perils involved were no secret.  The
ritual unleashed emotion, could and had linked participants to depths
of insight that a bond of sympathy with the subject under study became
nearly impossible to deny.  As if poised on the firm of a pit that
beckoned her spirit to damnation, Elaira fought black despair.  If this
was the Prime Circle's test to determine whether she had excised her
attraction for Arithon s'Ffalenn, it was too much, far too cruelly
soon.

Wind wailed through the boarded windows; over the white noise of
breakers, a gull flew calling through the dark.

Elaira shuddered, unnerved by Morriel's regard still pinned on her.

To protest a direct order from the Prime was to beg instantaneous
destruction.  Hollow with dread, hounded by Lirenda's antagonistic wish
to see her crumble, Elaira bowed to Morriel Prime.  "Your will."

The matriarch of the sisterhood said no more as she raised her
crystal spinning on its chains and rehooked the clasp at her neck.  She
snapped bird-boned fingers for Quen, who hastened forward and offered
Elaira a small stone pipe and a sealed tin that held tobacco steeped in
water mildly infused with a tienelle extract.  Less potent than the
uncut, dried leaves, the mixture used by junior initiates was still
toxic enough to cause multiple unpleasant side effects.

Elaira exchanged the items for her mangled chunk of sausage, and this
time found no thanks for the half-wit.

Morriel said, not unkindly, "Make yourself ready as you can.  Do not
rush.  When you have achieved a trance heightened by the drug, we shall
begin."

Minutes later, as the lighted fumes from the pipe curled through the
mildew-dank warehouse, Quen slept curled like a dog by the doorway.

Equally oblivious, though deadly pale, Elaira sat cross-legged, her
eyes closed and her back propped straight against the dye vat.  Her
strength of selfdiscipline could not be faulted as she laid the pipe
aside and drew the slow, measured breaths that indicated full surrender
to the broadening, glass-sharp awareness induced by the poisons in the
herb smoke.

Across a gloom deepened by the embered stubs of the torches, Lirenda
stirred.  "You were easy on her."

Morriel sighed.  Fragile under crushing layers of shawls, she crossed
the floor and sank into the quilts her servant had prepared for her.
"You think so?"  The voice so precisely edged but a moment before now
sounded querulous and tired.

Belatedly, Lirenda stirred to attend her Prime's comfort.

Yet as she reached to assist with the blankets, Morriel fended her
away.  "You pay no mind to your heart, First Senior.  That is a most
wasteful fault."

Taken aback to be criticized, Lirenda was forced to reconsider.

"Then Elaira is to think she's forgiven for falling prey to
distractions of the flesh, not to mention the further possibility she
has abetted the despoiler Asandir?"

Morriel clasped skeletal fingers.  Her eyes as she looked up were
empty, like fog or featureless rain.  "Elaira pulled a girl's prank
that placed her most woefully in a bad place at the wrong time.  She is
intelligent, and gifted with an insight that runs rare and true.  Which
strengths caused her to see the s'Ffalenn heir through to his depths
and let him touch her.  I venture to suggest that her reasons for
attraction are real, and dauntingly powerful to any mind-born female.

That is why you alone were called to witness the scrying that shall
take place tonight.  I would shield our other Seniors from exposure to
fearful temptation.  There is warning for you in this.

Heed the risk."

"You do feel sorry for Elaira," Lirenda observed, thrilled by
discovery that Morriel had any softness left for sentiment.

The Prime denied nothing.  "I pity the fact I have ruined her."

Lirenda would not believe this.  Planks creaked as she crossed a
fallen trestle to brighten a fresh set of torches.

"Nobody asked Elaira to create that scene in the taproom, or to seek
Asandir out beforehand.  The silly girl ruined herself."

"No.  She would have recovered from the mistake.  Had done so quite
admirably, in fact, until I sent her afterward to Etarra."  Hard to her
core now, and misliking the strengthened light which inked shadows in
every seam of her face, Morriel drew a short breath.  "You will learn
from this, First Senior, if you covet the position as my successor.
Elaira is a valuable tool, a window into Arithon's character we're
going to need sorely if we wish to track the conflict the Fellowship
has set loose upon the continent.  We must tenderly encourage that girl
to keep discipline.  She is dedicated.  With Judicious handling, her
botched bit of insight will prove useful for a very long time before
she breaks.  For as you guessed, if our order's training had held, she
should have rejected the curiosity that prompted her foray into Erdane.

Elaira is a flawed instrument.  But she will serve as no other can,
until the day comes when she is driven to forsake her vows.  Let her
own shortfalls, and not your vindictive perfectionism, be the quality
that throws her to destruction."

The Prime closed her eyes to snatch an interval to meditate, stiff
enough indication that she had spent her reserves on talk.  Lirenda as
ever was wily enough to respect the line that was drawn-too wily, the
aged Prime sometimes thought.  Like many another former matriarch, she
wished the last trial of initiation for the Koriani seat of prime power
was not fatal to almost every aspirant.

Lirenda was the forty-third hopeful selected to attempt the
succession.  Morriel battled to separate her consciousness from the
ache of her brittle bones.  She feared afresh to become the first to
break the chain of command: to become the Prime that death would
overtake before an heir survived to finish training.

Old she was, and bitterly tired.  Morriel snatched what solace she
could from the disciplines of her office.  What Lirenda did through the
minutes that passed held no concern.  Years since, the Prime had ceased
to invest interest in the particulars of any one candidate.  The woman
who succeeded-that one only she could love.  Since the death of the
first, the rest had been nothing but ciphers.

Informed at length by the scent of chaffed herbs that the pipe had
been fully smoked, Morriel stirred.  On the moment the narcotic peaked
Elaira's powers of recall, she shed piled blankets and arose.  Lirenda
had already stationed herself over the dye vat, her rapt expression
clear enough indication that an image already lay in view.  Careful of
joints overworn from centuries of unnatural lifespan, the Prime
Enchantress crossed the warehouse to share what the waters would show.

"A throwback," Lirenda murmured as the matriarch drew abreast.

"He could almost be Torbrand's double."

Humbled by Elaira's courage, which had dared display Arithon first,
Morriel said nothing.  Then she looked, and her heart would not allow
speech past the stunningly expressive detail instilled in the image in
the vat.

The chosen moment was one that Elaira had stolen: when the man had
foolishly supposed no observer with higher interests would be present,
he had crouched in a filthy alley, attended by those who least cared
for power, and sorceries, and bloody contentions between factions.

Surrounded by a tattered pack of children, Arithon bent in the act of
setting a brigantine fashioned of shadows to capture the breeze in full
sails.

Elaira had caught him glancing up to see his illusion under way.

His face held untrammeled peace.  A laugh of delight and satisfaction
lightened the corners of his mouth.  His eyes were unshadowed, and the
sharp-angled features of s'Ffalenn inheritance had fleetingly softened
to expose, in vivid clarity, the depths of generosity and caring that
buttressed his musician's sensitivity.

The effect was spirit stripped naked.  The accuracy of Elaira's
recreation gave the lie to every sharp edge, every cutting word, every
difficult and cross-grained reaction that Arithon had ever employed to
defend this, his vulnerable inner heart.

"Daelion Fatemaster," Morriel gasped.  "The girl's unmasked him for
us, wholly.  I never believed it could be done."

Totally absorbed by the image, Lirenda never noticed that her nails
had broken under force of her tightened grip on scaled stone.

"He can be brought down, though.  The killing will unman him finally,
for s'Ffalenn conscience must force him over time to back down."

Morriel gave the image long study, her head cocked in unlooked-for,
grandmotherly fascination.  "Look again," she urged.

"War will not be what stops this prince."  When Lirenda made no
response, she added, "My point is subtle.

But plain to be read if you study his hands before his eyes."

Obedient, Lirenda regarded Arithon's fingers, which were slim and
quick and, in this frozen moment of Elaira's recall, graceful in
completion of a difficult spell.  The green eyes were deep, not
dangerous.  "I fail to find further conclusion," the First Senior said
with reluctance.

Morriel's cackling laugh echoed through the ramshackle warehouse.

"But he is not clever!  Not when he's truly honest.  That means the
deceit Arithon so readily displays when provoked is not rooted in venal
ingenuity.  No.  Sadly not.

What drives this prince's wit is not craftiness, but the gift of true
farsight imbued in the s'Ahelas royal line."

Lirenda considered this, while outside, something that crashed in an
alley disturbed a cat with a yowl from a cranny.  Roused back to
herself by distraction, Morriel reached out and tapped Elaira's hand.

"Show us the halfbrother now."

The image of Arithon swept away, replaced momentarily by another.

Now the s'llessid prince stood in the fog of a pre-dawn garden, half
lit by a shaft of lamp light that escaped through the gate from the
street.  He leaned against the pedestal of a statue, his lashes and
cloak beaded with damp that sparkled as he breathed like fine diamonds.

The water was the only jewel on him; for once his clothing held no
artifice.  Even his hair lay unbrushed.  Although in public Lysaer
maintained the flawless manners of diplomacy, here, alone, his lordly
fine looks lay hagridden by doubt as he wrestled some inward dilemma
his conscience could not resolve.  The pain on his face, in the bearing
of his shoulders and the lamp-gilded knuckles of clenched hands, was
unanswerably intense.  Elaira's observance had peeled back all poise to
expose him in a moment of soul-rending selfdistaste.

"Oh, Elaira, well done!"  murmured Morriel.

At her side, whetted to heightened sensitivity by the fumes that
trailed from the pipe bowl, Lirenda felt her being struck and jangled
by that chord of conflicted emotions.  She not only saw but felt how
s'llessid justice warred with the s'Ahelas farsight inherited from the
distaff side of Lysaer's pedigree.

His mouth in this captured instant held none of the tenderness that
adoring women back in Amroth had experienced while plying him for
kisses.  Unyielding as tempered wire lay calculation threaded through
by royal upbringing,' and the machinations of Desh-thiere's latent
wraith.  The result charged the nerves to disquiet, as if for one
heartbeat pity were absent, and mercy an omitted entry.

"We have seen what we must," the Prime announced in jarring
abruptness.  To Elaira she added, "You're permitted to relax from your
trance."

As the image dissolved, Lirenda looked up, sparked by unsated
excitement.  "Misfortunate luck.  Both princes have inherited the gifts
of two royal houses."

Discomfited at last by trepidation, Morriel tucked her arms beneath
her shawls.  "Unlucky and perilous.  Arithon's is an incompatible
legacy.  His mind is fatally flawed.  The Fellowship should never have
sanctioned his right of succession, for suffering shall dog his path as
surely as seasons must turn."

Elaira shuddered in transition back to consciousness, opened her
eyes, and whitely fought the first twinge of tienelle withdrawal.  "My
Prime, you mistake him," she said shakily.

Amazed she should dare contradiction, Lirenda shot a swift glance at
the Prime.

Only Morriel showed no offense for the impertinence.

Given this tacit liberty, Elaira insisted, "Lysaer's the one who
bears watching.  Ath's mercy, I've met him.  He's a living inspiration,
the flesh-and-blood example of human kindness.  The masses must flock
to his standard, for his cause shall be presented in passionate and
upright idealism.  Then indeed shall the towns upheave and suffering
result, since bias toward noble principles offers a weapon already
fashioned for a ruler of his trained talents.  All Prince Lysaer need
do is pose in that mold, and set by Desh-thiere's curse to turn his
gifts toward bloodshed, he has no other course."

"That's a predictable cycle," Lirenda interjected, annoyed beyond
restraint by the Prime's unfathomable license.  "We know where Lysaer
will turn and what will be the result.

What can be anticipated can also be controlled or prevented.

Arithon owns no such stability."

Frustrated by narcotically enhanced perceptions, Elaira cried
protest.  "But Arithon is a man devoted to harmony, a musician with a
seer's perception.  He's conscious of his actions as Lysaer can never
be!"

"Which is precisely what makes him dangerous, Elaira," Morriel
corrected sadly.  "For Lysaer's sense of justice and farsight will
answer to logic, and therefore be reconciled by compromise.  But since
when can compassion ever be made to condone pain?  S'Ahelas blood gives
Arithon full grasp of cause and effect; mage training compounds this
with awareness of the forward reactions of power.  These traits aligned
against the s'Ffalenn gift of sympathetic empathy cancels the mind's
self-defenses.  The shelter of petty hatred becomes untenable.  Arithon
is a visionary placed at a nexus of responsibility.  Desh-thiere's
curse will embroil him in violence he can neither escape nor master.

Stress will prove his undoing, for the sensitivities of poets have
ever been frail, and the broadened span of his thinking shall but
inflame and haunt him to madness."

"You're mistaken," Elaira insisted, recalling the whiplash resilience
the living man had possessed.  "Ath be my witness, the conclusion
you've drawn from this is wrong."

"Time will tell."  Morriel motioned dismissal.  "You are excused to
rest.  The widow will have a bed waiting and a basin to wash.

Remember to drink enough water lest you take harm from the tienelle
poisons."

The traditional response all but caught in Elaira's throat.

"Your will."  She dragged herself to her feet, managed a graceless
curtsy, and before the cramping that marked the aftermath of tienelle
usage tore her composure to shreds, contrived to walk out of the
warehouse.

Outside, wrapped in darkness with the dank winds cooling her sweated
face, and her back to the mildewed sill of a craft shanty, the tears
came.

Elaira could not cast off the ripping, unhappy remorse, that in
keeping loyalty to her order, she had effected a betrayal much deeper.

Her every intent had just misfired, to expose a man's private self,
that his hidden pregnabilities should win him the protection of Koriani
sympathy.  Yet understanding had turned awry in her hands.

Elaira ached with recognition that she had only succeeded in granting
a weapon to an enemy.

Daybreak

In a widow's attic bedchamber, First Senior Lirenda wakens once
again, restlessly entangled in her bedclothes, and the dream that
spoils her sleep is the same, of a man's green eyes imbued with a
compassion deep enough to leave her weeping and desolate in the icy
chill before dawn....

As fog curls silver through the marshes flanking Tai Quorin, Deshir's
clansmen break fast on dry journey biscuit and take up their shovels
and axes; although they speak little on the fact their crown prince has
been absent since his oathtaking ceremony the previous afternoon,
Steiven's son Jieret overhears enough to become intrigued over
Arithon's whereabouts....

In the chimney-warmed garret of a north kingdom hostel, a caravan
master nurses a flagon of spirits; in between gulps and recriminations,
he cannot fathom what possessed him to give over the horse thief's
jeweled pin to that dreamyeyed graybeard in maroon who had met him in
the alley and simply asked for the gift, as if adorn-sized emeralds
were proper to claim as charity from an absolute stranger...

In a place of his own choosing, well removed from the activities of
the clans, Arithon disengaged mage-trained senses from the webs of
subliminal energy that delineated the surrounding forest.  Gently the
awareness bled from him, of living leaves and dappling sunlight; of
roots rejuvenated by the Mistwraith's defeat groping warmed soil in new
growth; and of birds that flicked in bursts through the branches as
they gathered small twigs for their nesting.  His touch upon the land's
pulse had been thorough but light; even the secretive night lynx had
not been disturbed where she slept denned up with her young.  Arithon
opened his eyes at last to the fluting calls of thrushes and the
light-shafted haze of midmorning.

Absent since his oath taking the previous afternoon, Rathain's new
crown prince laced his fingers and stretched kinks from his shoulders
and back.  Worry he would have masked before others sat all too plain
on his face.

Deep trance had absorbed him for twelve unbroken hours, a necessary
interval to ensure that this small, streaxn-side glen would stay
isolated enough for the arduous scrying that lay ahead of him.

Game deer within his proximity browsed untroubled by hunters, the
paths they tracked never trodden by clan children sent out to forage
for herbs and firewood.

Muscles released from the demand of perfect stillness cramped as
Arithon arose.  The gimp in his movement dismayed him, forced a
reckoning for a self-discipline sadly slackened since his
apprenticeship at Rauven.  No small bit wrung by trepidation, he knelt.

Alone beside one of the Tai Quorin basin's many streamlets that bent
in dark courses through towering oaks and tangled thickets of witch
hazel, he dipped his hands and drank.

Icy water hit his empty stomach and shot a quiver through him.

While he rested on his heels for an interval to allow his body to
settle, a half smile tugged at his mouth.  His unexplained night in the
open had hopefully confirmed the reckless character he had fostered
among Deshir's clansmen.  Let them think he went off to mope.  Unless
he shied clear of Lady Dania's sharp perception, and Halliron
Masterbard's meddlesome curiosity, he could never have fasted to purge
his system without becoming embroiled in a Sithaer-bent mess of
unwanted inquiries.  No frivolous excuse could mask the unbending
requirements of spell-craft.  Let the clans suspect he was
mage-trained, and every deception he had played to win his freedom
would be irremediably spoiled.

Concealed in place and purpose, Arithon engaged his mastery and
methodically centered his will.

If the clans of the north were determined to war against Etarra's
army, his oath to Rathain bound him to make sure that no man's life be
needlessly endangered.  Given means to tap prescient scrying through
Rauven's teaching and the tienelle filched from Sethvir, Arithon took
out the stolen canister.  Fearfully aware of risk to himself, he
unwrapped the stone pipe inside and packed the bowl with silvery,
notched leaves that sheared the forest air with their pungency.

Narcotically expanded senses might sound whether Caolle's battle
strategies would deflect Lysaer's assault, but the perils could not be
ignored.  Until the drug's influence faded, the scryer's awareness
would be hyper-sensitized, every nerve left unshielded before the risk
of chance-met interference.  This was not Rauven or Althain Tower,
ringed around with defenses and intricate wardspells that would protect
the unshuttered mind.  And Arithon had cast away the second safeguard
instilled by his grandfather's tutelage: that trance under influence of
tienelle never be attempted while alone.  If he lost his iron
self-command, if his concentration became shaken by the maze of
drug-induced visions, no one stood by to realign his frayed
concentration.

Arithon smoothed a last leaflet into the pipe and rammed it firm.

More than his personal hope of happiness held him adamant.  Events
may have cornered him against an inborn compassion he could not shed,
but the deeper danger still stalked him.  He could not evade the
certainty that his oath to Deshir was a fragile thing before the curse
Desh-Thiere's wraith had left embedded and coiled through his being.

The endangerment to Rathain's real vassals must be shouldered, while
every minute the temptation to take and twist clan trust into a weapon
to bring down Lysaer ate like a darkness at his heart.  Only a mage's
sensitivity allowed Arithon to separate that poisoned urge from active
will, and the passage of days wore him down with the draining, constant
effort such distinction took to maintain.  Until he won free of royal
obligation and could dissociate himself from any claim to sovereignty,
the double-edged burden would continue to chafe at his control.

No cause must jeopardize the image of weakness so painstakingly
fostered among the clans.  Though_Halliron had breached that pretense,
the Masterbard was one that Rathain's new crown prince least wished to
admit into confidence.  The wild need to seize upon false escape, to
accept companionship and release through musical indulgence, could too
easily lure him into misstep.

Finished preparing the pipe, Arithon arose.  He braced his back
against a massive old oak and took a full breath, clean scented with
growing greenery and the sharper pungence of evergreens.  He invited
the peace of the forest to calm him.

Absorbed by the lisp of current over moss-capped rocks and calls of
chipmunks in a fallen log, he stilled his clamor of self-doubt and drew
on his mastery to create a spark.

The herb in the pipe bowl ignited.  Silver-blue smoke trailed and
twined like ghost spells on the breeze.  Touched to a frisson of
apprehension by the sting of acrid fumes, Arithon collected his will.

He set the pipe stem to his lips and drew poisoned smoke deep into
his lungs.

Vertigo upended his physical senses.  Well prepared, he pressed
against the tree and let live wood reaffirm his balance.  The kick as
the drug fired his nerves was harder by far to absorb and master.  He
gasped in near pain at the explosive unreeling of his innermind as
sights, smells, and sensations launched him through a spiraling
hyperbole.

He was immediately grateful he had seen through the precaution of
fasting.  The plants Sethvir had dried at Althain were fiercely potent
and pure.

The trickle of the stream by Arithon's feet became an avalanche of
sound in his ears, the squall of a jay a torment that flicked his
hearing like a whip.  Battered to the verge of bewilderment, he
clenched his right hand, let the dig of his nails in half-healed burns
anchor his scattered concentration.

The instant he had firm control, he cast his mind ahead into the
many-branching avenues of possible happenstance.

Reeling holocaust met him.  Fire and smoke swallowed all, while the
higher-pitched vibration of dying trees screamed across his lacerated
senses.  Arithon cried out in forced empathy.  Through a wilderness of
chaotic sensation he groped, and finally separated the cause: Lysaer's
army, waiting until the tinder-dry days of midsummer, then firing
Strakewood, that the wind-caught blaze drive the clans out of cover to
be rounded up and slaughtered.  Vistas followed of razed timber and
dead men, blackened with ash and feeding flies.  Clan children marched
in ragged collies, then died one by one in a public display that packed
Etarra's square with vicious, screaming onlookers.

Arithon's stomach wrenched at the smell of the executioner's
excitement, charged and whelmed to a sickness of ecstasy by rivers of
new-spilled blood.

The Master of Shadows bit back horror and physical distress, and in
forced effort as difficult as anything he had undertaken throughout
training, transmuted revulsion to the icy detachment necessary to
reimpose control.  The hideous sequence was arrested, only to slip his
grasp again as sensitized perceptions careened off on a tangent.

He saw a hillside strewn with corpses; banners fallen and snarled by
the trampling passage of horses; and beyond these a clearing that held
townsmen who were also Rathain's subjects, hideously disembowled and
hung by their ankles from game hooks.

"No!"  Arithon ground the heels of his hands in his eye sockets, then
ripped in a shuddering, clean breath of air.

Whirled by a firestorm of prescience, he grappled to recover mental
balance, to reach past the reeling crush of nightmare for the single
thread dictated by Caolle's prudently laid strategyControl escaped him.

Harrowed by atrocities that deluged his mind in shock waves, Arithon
bent double in dry heaves.  Gagged by the taste of bile, he sucked in
another fast breath.  Sweat poured off him in tunnels.  His sensitized
flesh recorded the slide and fall of each salty drop.

Another breath, this one deeper; his mind cleared fractionally.

He managed to pry his consciousness away from the herb-induced
barrage of farsight.

He had been right to fear!  One wrong choice, one misplaced scout or
mistimed attack, and all he had envisioned might be realized.

Faint and sick, Arithon watched the Deshans left alive at suit.

juncture become herded into slaughter to a man.

Arithon tightened his hold on concentration, then locked@ @ Attempts
to forestall their fate by assassinating Pesquil onto the sequence he
desired.  His hand trembled as he saw three scouts dead under torture.
Whether fated by luck lowly drew on the pipe.

Prepared this time for raw carnage, )r by Daelion, the man would
remain in command on the he traced through the spinning nexus of
possibilities that morning that battle commenced.

deluged his innermind to follow the single one that mattered Sad
recognition followed, that even the gravest misuse of Caolle planned to
lure Etarra's thousands up the Tai shadow mastery and sorcery could not
clinch a fourth effort.

Quorin's creek bed.  Upstream, where the river shoaled and-,Pesquil's
Etarran paranoia made him carry a talisman, an arfanned out into reed
beds and swamp, the tight phalanxes of@W@ tifact passed down since the
rebellion that would ward townsmen would be compelled to split their
ranks.  The terrain as they progressed would divide them farther, until
two rising, parallel ridges parted the garrison three ways.  As battle
became joined with the clan scouts, Arithon reviewed the unfolding
engagement with deliberate slowness, while tienelle-inflamed awareness
touched off in branching visions the thousands of alternate outcomes
each action in due course might take.

Natural and man-made barriers would successfully disadvantage two of
Etarra's split divisions.

Archers placed in earth-bank embrasures Caolle hoped would disable
the third.

Arithon paused to steady himself.  The bowmen would be enough, he
saw, as prescience swooped and spun to a grim chain of disasters.

Etarra's guardsmen slaughtered clan scouts like meat behind overrun
embankments until the screams of dying men gave way to the croak of
sated crows, all because the left flank of Etarra's army would be
commanded by a man whose lifetime obsession had been the study of
barbarian tactics.

The butcher had grizzled gray hair and hands that were narrow and
expressive.  The face with its pocking of scars and out-thrust jaw was
that of Pesquil, Mayor of Etarra's League of Headhunters.  His were the
orders that sent city officers upslope like terriers to secure the
ridge tops.  Etarra's west division of pikemen would split two ways,
then weaken the cohesion of barbarian resistance by storming both ends
of the ridge.  Then the light horse cohort dispatched single file
through a ravine to the east would circle back and eventually bottle
the valley from the north.  They would crush the barbarian right flank
and rejoin Gnudsog's troops in time to effect rescue of the main
columns bogged in the Tai Quorin marshes.

against mischance by magic.

Arithon wept then for sure knowledge: that his hope and ture were
forfeit.  Left to their own resource, his preferred fu the clans were
destined for ruin.  Whether he left them outright or played through his
charade of weak prince and carried his sword at Steiven's shoulder made
no difference.  Did he fight as a man and not a sorcerer, his own
corpse would be part of the carnage.

He yanked himself clear to escape a second reliving of the aftermath
and the children's executions in Etarra.

Shivering, wrung by a storm of guilt and grief, Arithon rallied wits
enough to realize his pipe bowl held only ashes.

Though his body ached for reprieve, he could not let go yet.

The sweat on his lips mingled with a dampness salty enough to be
tears as he forced unsteady hands to move and function.  He pried the
lid off the canister, repacked the pipe, then sucked in a redoubled
dose of the herb to use trance to sound an alternative.

Back to the initial deployment, he reran the sequence of Caolle's
battle plan.  Only this time, before Pesquil's catcunning strategies
could unravel clan defenses, Arithon added pertinent contributions of
his own.  Inspired to terrible invention by the breadth of tienelle
awareness, he gave his whole mind, bent the talents his grandfather had
nurtured to full-scale killing.  Wrought of magecraft, and shadow
mastery, and devious cunning, he tested strategies that brooked no
conscience.  He toyed with the visions, slanted and skewed them to tens
and thousands of variations.  He weighed and recombined results,
counted the dead and the wounded with a will locked hard against any
acknowledgment of suffering.  To feel, to think at all, was to lose the
mind to sorrow.  Dogged, driven half mad by his oath-taken weight of
responsibility, he inhaled more tienelle and threshed through each
chain of happenstance in exhaustive review for blind errors.

By the end, spent to a weariness that soaked in dull pain to his
bones, he had garnered a handful of tactics that might yield the lowest
toll of lives.  His work would hold only if no unforeseen circumstance
arose to upset his tested effect patterns, if against odds he had
managed to circumvent all possible avenues of probability.

He was not Sethvir, to be tracking a scope of events as wide as the
chance interaction that could happen between eleven hundred human
lives.  He could only try his best and leave his frailties to hope.

The tienelle was finished off in any case, Arithon blew his lungs
clear of the last, spent smoke.  He sank on his heels and let the empty
canister drop between his feet.  At the edge of mauled senses, he
sensed the quick, running tremors of withdrawal that must be damped and
subdued before they built and racked through his body.  He held
motionless.  Unlike the drug that had nearly ruined him in Amroth,
tienelle's toxins were not addictive.  Once he had regained inner
stillness, he could use mastery to annul the poisons.  The torment
would pass without craving.  Arithon bent the lingering influence of
the drug's sensual enhancement toward steadying himself until his
awareness could stabilize and let time reassume natural proportions.

The liquid call of a lark trilled through the glen.  Eyes closed,
Arithon savored the sorrowful melody.  He had done well, he knew.  Amid
odds so bleakly tipped toward defeat, he had plowed an alternate path.

Bitterness squeezed his heart for what felt like a tragic failure.

To the farthest-flung limit of his abilities, a scant third of
Steiven's clansmen could be kept alive.  How could a prince, mage or
otherwise, brook the scale of such sacrifice?  Etarra would suffer
greater losses, but the cost would be cruel for a stalemate,
particularly when mishap could yet play a hand and snatch back the
chance of even that.

No trick of magecraft could fully anticipate bad luck.  All
guarantees had been forfeit since the day Etarra's garrison marched
upon the north.

Arithon rapped the ashes from the pipe bowl.  The slightest attempt
at motion now shot lancing pains through his skull.  Warned to pay heed
to common sense, he took swift stock of his condition.

His clothing lay wrung with damp sweat and his flesh was drawn from
dehydration.  Since tienelle could kill if its lesser poisons were not
rinsed from the body, he bent at once and tried a swallow from the
stream.

The water hit his stomach and set off a rolling bout of nausea.

He clamped his hands to his mouth, unsettled by the fight he
underwent to keep the precious moisture down.

Worn through a brutal and difficult scrying, he recognized his
judgment had blurred.  Had he considered with his full wits about him,
he should never have dared try this much tienelle in one session, far
less in total seclusion.  He needed herbal tea, and a bed, and the
presence of another mage to ward the thought paths that yet lay
vulnerably open.  Lacking such comforts, he had no choice left but to
wait.  The herb must be allowed time to fade.  Only when his senses
released from its burning scope of vision would he be able to transmute
the residual poisons the water could not flush through.

Until then he could tolerate no human company.

Twilight fell.  Birdsong stilled, and the boughs overhead became
sprays of black lace against a sky pricked by pale stars.  Engaged in
private struggle against the fevers of withdrawal, Arithon sat with his
head tilted back against an oak bole that kindly performed its
appointed function and kept his body propped upright.  The dark tunic
lent by Lady Dania melted his form into shadow, while stray spurts of
drug-born intuition stung him with unwanted revelation: that the
clothing on his back had belonged to the lady's younger brother, fallen
wounded in a raid at fifteen.  Caolle's hand had delivered the mercy
stroke that gave the boy clean death.  Arithon round his knuckles in
his eyes to drive off the scents of a forest clearing and blood fallen
hot on green ferns.  Too beaten to avert the bounding starts of
truesight that flickered like delirium through his consciousness, he
schooled his thoughts to rough order by labored, exhaustive reviews of
long-winded ballads.

Engrossed in Dakar's favorite drinking song, which was long and lewd
and only funny if both singer and listeners were flat drunk, Arithon
groped through the first stanzas.  He might be stretched thin, but he
did not lack the fiber to master himself.  Yet when between the fifth
and sixth chorus his whispered recitation went ragged, he stumbled to
shivering silence and realized.  Someone had invaded his retreat.

Arithon felt his ears whine and his sinews draw tight under the
eddying, electrical pull of another mind.  Unlike the nearly mystical
calm radiated by birds or wild animals, this presence was unmistakably
human.  Its excitements, un-@ certainties, and randomly chaotic
energies tugged, burned.@ and rebounded through the channels still
defenselessly opened by the herb.

"Come around where I can see you," he managed in a tone dragged husky
by discomfort.  Grateful that the falling darkness would conceal the
worst of his weakness, he waited.

Sticks cracked.  A stand of hazels shivered, parted, and disgorged
Jieret, who emerged looking sheepish from the depths of a nearby
thicket.

"How did you know I was there?"  Peevish to find himself discovered,
Steiven's son approached, bent down, and with a curiosity that brazenly
challenged, hooked up the empty tienelle canister from the verge of the
stream bank.  He sniffed the pungent odor that lingered inside, curled
his lip, and darted a sidelong glance toward Arithon.

The boy expected a reprimand, Arithon knew; also he repressed the
curious urge to ask if his prince was some sort of addict.  His liege
obliged him by saying nothing.  Politeness triumphed.  Jieret shrugged
and set down the container, then fixed the man with an accusation quite
spoiled for the fact that his tunic was plastered with damp leaves.  "I
made no noise."

Arithon concealed a shudder of dry heaves behind a chuckle and lied
outright.  "The mosquitoes told me.  "But I didn't swat even one!"

Jieret objected.

"Next time, don't scratch," the Master of Shadows advised.  A flinch
escaped his restraint at the boy's explosion of laughter.

"You don't miss much, Your Grace."  The implication remained
unspoken, that drugs or drink should deaden the senses.

"You will use no title when you address me," said Arithon.  "Your
blade was not one I swore oath over yesterday afternoon.  You owe me no
homage at all."

"But I was too young!"  Jieret dropped to his knees.

"Here."  He groped at his belt and proffered the knife he kept for
whittling.  "Take my steel now.  I'll be of age next season."

Arithon forced a smile over a discomfort that riled him to dizziness.
The razor-edged perception of herb prescience kept him humble,
presented him bluntly with recognition that Jieret's impetuous offer
held no hero worship.  A piercingly observant child, his knife was a
boy's way of testing the mettle of a prince his clan elders but
pretended not to scorn.

Tenderly as his condition would allow, Arithon chose his answer.

"Lad, you've a good ten years to grow yet before you can cross your
father's will.  If Steiven forbade you to swear vassalage, I cannot
dishonor his judgment.  We can share friendship if you wish, but
nothing more weighty than that."

Jieret recoiled in affront and sheathed his knife.  "I'll be twenty
in just eight more years."  His presence a blur amid thickenin gloom,
he added, "Tashka says I'm large for my age.  But she's my sister, and
what do girls know?"  His chin tipped up at a cocky angle his mother
would have viewed with trepidation.  "I'll fight with the men at your
side, Prince, when Etarra's army invades our forest."

The visions, soaked in blood, still threatened.  Arithon dragged back
wandering attention.  "I forbid you."

But it's custom!"  Jieret rebounded to his feet.  "Friends always
fight together.  And Halliron bet Elwedd you're even be't'ter with a
sword than Caolle is."

"The bard will lose his silver, then," Arithon snapped, and at once
regretted his outburst.  Unbalanced by his pounding head, he labored to
restore his pose of harmless indecision.

"You can serve me best by staying aside to protect your little
sisters."

Jieret sneered.  "Caolle's right, you think like a townborn.

Clan girls don't need protection, a chief's daughters least of any.
Except for Edal and Meara, my sisters will be in battle, too, disarming
the fallen and catching the enemy's loose horses."

Arithon gasped.  Hurled into an explosion of prescience like a
bloodbath, he reeled, caught back from toppling only by the tree at his
back.  His mind, his heart, the very breath in his throat, all but
stopped as involuntary foresight seared, through him: of women and
girls lying gutted in pitiful death.  The peace of forest night became
cancelled by the din of future screaming.  Shocked to hot tears and
futile fury, Arithon struggled to recover, while the moss dug up by his
spasmed fingers seeped warm red with the blood to be reaped by the
vengeance of Etarra's steel.

Consciousness dwindled despite his best effort.  He fought in a
breath that became a choked-off cry as his mind was wrenched and then
jarred back to focus by Jieret's grip tugging his arm.

"My prince."  The boy regarded at him anxiously.  "Are you ill?"

"No."  Arithon shuddered, his pain reinforced and compounded by
Jieret's unwitting solicitude.  While nightmare futures sawed through
him, he had only enough constraint to be gentle as he disengaged from
the child's touch.  "If I'm boring, that's because I'm worried.  Take
me back to your father, boy.  I have news of grave importance he needs
to hear."

Dubious and critical as any scout on reconnaissance, Jieret looked on
as Arithon bent by the spring and swallowed water in sucking gulps.

The prince looked sick-was in fact shaking and running with sweat
that smelled of fear.  But Jieret had not lost sight of the fact that
he trespassed; by nature too canny to contradict, he accepted the
conclusion that Halliron's wagered coin would end up in Elwedd's purse.

The water and the walk seemed to help.  Arithon breathed more freely
as movement and increased circulation eased the worst of his
withdrawal.  Through the hour's hike back to camp, he regained at least
the semblance of his accustomed equilibrium.

Which was well, because the mother of a boy who has lit off into open
forest with no word of explanation was bound not to wait with
complaisance.  Lady Dania intercepted her miscreants at the flap of
Steiven's lodge.  She had shed her daytime leathers for a tight-sleeved
dress of lilac blue.  Russet hair that Arithon had never seen unbraided
trailed like undone crochet down her back.  The effect of softened
femininity hit him like a blow, and he stopped, struck briefly
speechless.

But his momentary awkwardness escaped notice as Dania latched onto
her errant son.  "Jieret!  What possessed you?  It shames me to see a
boy of twelve behaving with less care than a toddler!"

Recessed in the shadow beyond the entry, Arithon interrupted.

"The boy was with me, and quite safe."

Lady Dania shot him a scorching glance.

Awed by the briskness with which she abandoned her scolding and
ordered him off to bed, Jieret saw that, prince or not, Arithon was
going to suffer all of his mother's thwarted temper.  Wary of his fate
should he linger, the boy beat an escape through the curtain that
separated the nook he shared with his sisters.

Dania cracked back the tent flap, cross to her core from the license
of intemperate royalty.  She bent a severe gaze upon the culprit, who
escaped her by standing stone still in the darkness.

Reminded afresh that Arithon could be disquieting and difficult, and
that Caolle had warned earlier he might have remedied his nerves since
the oath taking with drink or some other indulgence, Dania too said
nothing, but busied herself lighting candles.

While new flame fired the delicately embroidered patterns that
bordered her bodice and hem line, and sparked a brighter warmth of
color in her hair, she barbed her subtlety in a smile of sweetened
welcome.

"Steiven will be back shortly," she offered.  When Arithon's
reticence remained, she dared him to try sheer bad manners.  "Come in.

Sit.  Be comfortable while we wait for him."

Appreciative of her heroic effort not to nag, and piquantly aware she
would rifle what deductions she could from his appearance, Arithon
slipped through the door flap.  Her mind matched his measure far too
often to make him comfortable.

He half smiled to see that her rearguard attack had defeated him; not
a cushion in the lodge remained in dimness enough for concealment.

He countered her candles by an absolute refusal to settle.  While
Dania ducked past the privacy flap to make sure of young Jieret and
tuck him with canny firmness into bed, Arithon gave rein to
restlessness and paced.

This lodge was not as fine as the one left in storage at the last
camp.  Bereft of tapestries, fine carpets, and permanent furnishings,
the dwelling still displayed evidence of civilized inhabitance.  One
corner was flaked with wood chips and bark where Jieret had whittled
toys for his sisters.  An opened book rested on a woven reed mat, a
half-spent candle close by.  The text in the surfeit of lighting
flashed as he stepped, with bright colors and gilt illumination.  The
wall behind had been painted over with an elaborate scene of a stag
hunt.  In the corner, cushioned on a pallet stuffed with@ evergreen,
Halliron's lyranthe lay abandoned.

Silver strings strung reflections like beads, numerous and
scintillant as the candle flames.  Arithon set his teeth, but could not
quite manage to turn aside.  Topaz settings and small emeralds beckoned
for his attention amid the carved and inlaid bands that laced from the
scrolled base to the peg head with its rows of ebony tuners.

Before thought could stop him, he had seated himself.  He extended a
finger and tentatively, lightly brushed the strings.

The timbre that answered wrung his heart, so perfectly did it match
the voice of the instrument left and lost in Etarra.

The maker's rune stamped in pearl inlay on the back of the soundboard
was not visible, but tone was all the signature Arithon required to
identify Elshian's handiwork.

The temptation became too much.

Framed against a painted backdrop of deer hounds frozen in full cry,
he lifted the lyranthe, set his hand to silver frets, and began very
softly to play.

The burns where Lysaer's light bolt had seared his right palm and
wrist had barely started to heal.  Tripped up as the pull of the wound
marred his timing, Arithon struck out a rough and moody line of notes.

Lost to his irritation, half unmoored by light-headedness, he had
space in him only for song.  He flexed his stiff hand, cursed mildly as
the scab cracked, and launched off in a run that seemed to banish hide
walls and let in space like cloud-blown sky.

Notes trilled and spattered across quiet in a statement that through
unsullied expression of beauty negated his uncertainty and pain.

Newly returned from Jieret's bedside, Lady Dania was arrested by the
sound.  Unwitting party to something not meant to be shared, she poised
stock still with the fringed end of the privacy curtain forgotten
between her clenched hands.

A soaring arpeggio introduced a change in key like an epiphany.

Major chord to minor, the lyranthe rang through a boldly personal
statement that flashed with a grace like edged swordplay.  Stirred
through the stuffy, airless heat trapped inside hide walls, Dania
shivered in delight.  This prince could bind spells with his playing.

Entranced beyond fear of impropriety, she smiled her appreciation and
advanced.

The privacy flap smacked shut like a slap, but her attempt 9

warning passed unnoticed.  The notes built and blended md sprang
separate while Arithon laid his cheek against the curve of resonating
wood.  His eyes were closed, his whole being intertwined with the notes
that danced under his hands.

A slipped finger shattered the spell.  There came a pause while his
wrist lifted.  Then his hands dipped again through akjarnng, heavily
plucked statement that skirted the edge of discord.

Arithon silenced the strings with an impatient caress, then turned
his hand to find his cut split and a bead of blood welling through.

Dania discovered herself half dizzied from some reasonless urge to
hold her breath.  She moved another step just as the prince looked up.

The emotion in his eyes struck her with the force of a storm front
alive with the beat of summer thunder.

She gave way and sat across from him.  "I didn't intend to eavesdrop.
But I have to admit you have a gift even Halliron must envy."

Mention of the Masterbard pricked Arithon to an irritable glance
down.  Had the instrument in his hands not awed him, he mi-ht have
answered his first impulse and flung it away as though his skin hurt.

"Lady, your praise is far too generous."

He did not blot the burst burn on his tunic.  A tiny start unsettled
her as she wondered if somehow he knew: the garment had been her
deceased brother's.  His eyes were on her again.  He saw, and she
realized too well, that her intuition set keen challenge against his
intentions.

Dania absorbed the awkward moment by rearranging the skirt over her
knees.  Blue cloth settled a ring of twilight over a tawny landscape of
flax hassocks, and her hands, like paired birds, nestled together in
her lap.  Arithon ducked quickly forward and hoped his fallen hair
would shade his face.  His breathing was harder to temper; Steiven's
wife had a vivid, magnetic beauty beneath the wear of hard living and
the fullness lent by childbearing.  The fact she tracked his mind
without effort evoked an intimacy that played havoc.

with drug-heightened senses and provoked him to shameless response.

Preternaturally conscious of her quick, timid glance toward his face,
he turned his head.

"Something troubles you," she said.  "Is that why you seek my
husband?"

Her voice had that velvety timbre associated with wind through high
grass.  A fine-grained tremor shook him, and he shut his eyes fast as
the dregs of the tienelle fanned a bursting flare of heat through his
veins.

"Some things are best to let lie."  He stamped down the flicker of
vision too late.  Prescience arose, full-bodied and ugly enough to
choke him, of Lady Dania sprawled in black leaf mold, the leathers she
wore for workaday ripped down to expose muddied thighs, and her throat
slashed open by a sword stroke.

Dimly he realized she was speaking.  "If it were up to me, I would
drop every weapon in Etarra into the bogs of Anglefen, and hire you as
hard of Deshir."

Arithon opened his eyes, flashed her a glance hot and molten as brass
tailings stirred in a crucible.  He said no word, but hooked back the
lyranthe with an urgency concealed behind languidness.

Dania was not deceived.  Neither could she deny the compulsion that
drove him, rooted as it was in the gentleness that tonight for some
reason he could not mask.  The music he loosed with his hands held a
spirit that gave easy surcease from talk.

He took the release she allowed him with gratitude that sang through
E major, then plunged, in sliding falls, to tread deeper measures that
rang lyrically placid and dark.  He tempered his impatience in the
mathematical progression of schooled notes.  Pinched between physical
discomfort and the horrific pageant of images inflicted at random upon
his innermind, Arithon longed for Steiven to come, that he could finish
this business and be alone.  He wanted the forest, with the calls of
whippoorwills and running water to smooth his abraded nerves.  He
needed delicate, exacting concentration to unbind the residual taint
within his body.

Yet the urgency of the final revelation which had shown him clan
girls and wives lying slaughtered disbarred the solitude he required.

Arithon channeled himself into music as a substitute for thought
until steps at the door flap spoiled his cadence.

"Must you deal behind my back?"  Halliron's demand shattered the
spell before the last note had quite faded.
Dania started and jerked her scented skirts aside to allow

the bard space to take a seat.  "How long have you been

here?"

Arithon damped the dwindling ring of silver strings and proffered
Elshian's lyranthe to her master.

Halliron took back his instrument, derisively abrupt.  "I heard it
all.  The fragment preceding as well."  Pale, hard eyes touched the
prince in a look as inimical as a knife thrust.  "I know the voice of
my lyranthe better than that of my own child.  She would call me, you
should have known.

Did you lack the guts not to speak to me beforehand?"

"I'm sorry."  Arithon's hands balled up.  He forgot his torn scab,
and tension rimmed one fingernail brightly scarlet.  "I was
thoughtlessly selfish.  Here's my promise not to meddle after this."

"Meddle!"  Dania had never heard the bard's voice so charged with
fury.  "You arrogant, manipulative young fool!

Don't insult my intelligence by playing your falsehoods on me.

It's an Ath-given talent you've been hiding.  I say it here, you've
no right to see that strangled."

Arithon sat backward sharply, discomfort plain upon his face.  The
bard had managed to shock him as nobody else ever had, and his recovery
lacked courtesy or grace.  "That was not my intent."  For once too
upset to try pretense, he hitched his shoulders in dismissal.  "Of
course, I'm touched by your regard.  But I saw no reason to inflict my
inadequate fingering upon you."  The sarcasm used in desperation
bloomed now to drive back tearing anguish.  "My sword, you'll recall,
is now wedded to the cause of a kingdom."

Halliron shrugged off the protestation.  "The mechanics of your
playing can be improved upon, definitely."  He cradled the lyranthe
against his shoulder, set fingers to strings, and repeated several bars
of Arithon's work.  Beneath his skill, melody emerged refocused into a
rendition to make the heart leap for pure pain.

The effect left Dania with her fingers pressed to her lips, and the
prince of Rathain dead white.

Halliron damped the strings with a slap the exquisite soundboard
magnified like a shout.  "With work you shall.

surpass me.  Study, apply yourself to life training, and no one alive
could match your style."  The Masterbard pressed, his instrument back
into Arithon's lap.

"if, if, if!"  Arithon spurned the invitation in a recoil that
dragged air in a whine across strings as he thrust the instrument
aside.  "Where is Steiven?"

"Stop evading."  Incensed, Halliron held to his subject.

"I've searched all my life and never heard the equal of your natural
ability."

Arithon whipped taut with a speed that belied the indolence he had
perpetrated since his arrival.  The weave of moving shadows as he
thrust to his feet plunged the painted stag into darkness, leaving
hounds with bared muzzles exposed to the merciless candlelight.  To
Dania he said crisply, "If Caolle is available, I'll speak to him
instead."

Dismayed, the lady instinctively forestalled him.  "You haven't
eaten, Your Grace.  Let me bring wine and fresh bread."

Arithon abruptly shook his head.

He was a man who never used gestures when a verbal backlash would
serve better.  Alarmed, Dania surveyed his face.  "You're unwell."

"Which is not your concern, dear lady."  Arithon caught her hands and
kissed her knuckles, inspired to ruthless certainty that his clammy
sweat and fine trembling would set her off balance enough to quiet her.

"Caolle or your husband, it doesn't matter which.  But I must speak
with one of them immediately."

Silence followed his demand, a rugged war of wills that Halliron
finally broke because he disliked risking Deshir's lady to the edged
temper the s'Ffalenn heir was wont to vent when his depths of
vulnerability became encroached upon.

"Steiven and Caolle are closeted in the tent that serves as armory.
They're taking inventory and probably won't mind the interruption."

Arithon gave the bard a smile of astonishing gratitude.

Then he kissed the lady's hands again.  "My respect, and my thanks
for your hospitality."  Need before gentleness commanded him as he
released his touch and departed.

The lodge flap sighed closed on his heels, and infused the close tent
with the night scent of dew-soaked evergreen.

Lady Dania stared blindly across an emptiness left brilliant with
candles, her arms hugged forlornly across her chest.

"He tries hard to make us think he takes us lightly."

Wordless in sympathy, Halliron caught her shoulders.  He turned her,
sat her down, and fetched her wine.  This once in his life unwilling to
seek music to quiet an uneasy mind, he poured a second goblet for
himself "It's fate that's his enemy, not ourselves."  He drank deeply,
to dull a grief he could not bear, that his search for a successor had
found its match in a man who had no use at all for an apprenticeship.

Underlit by the glow of a single candle, the war captain of Deshir's
clans crouched, counting unfletched arrows in their "bins while Steiven
marked numbers on a talley.  Caolle was first to look up at the
disturbance when the tent flap stirred and admitted a drift of night
air.  A smile broke through his weathered scowl.  "Well, well.

Look who's come."

Arithon stepped through the entry.  Burdened with a rolled set of
parchments, and in no mood to be subtle under needling, he had done
nothing to ease his withdrawal symptoms beyond a pause to drink at the
river.  The water had not settled well.  By that, he knew he had very
little time to make his point before weakness forced him to retire.

Driven to fast movement to conceal a resurgence of cramps, he chose a
table arrayed with swords set aside for the armorer'S attention in the
morning.  These he swept aside with a belling clangor that made Steiven
jump to his feet.

"Your Grace?"  The clan chieftain left his captain, the tally slate
abandoned in his haste.

Caolle tossed aside an arrow, lifted the candle, and followed.

His distaste intensified as Arithon shed a cascade of scrolled
documents and whipped them flat across the tabletop.

The parchments so callously handled were the tactical maps that
culminated painstaking labor and days of vociferous debate.

Annoyed enough that his gorge rose, Caolle's steps became deliberate.
"If you're finished with moping for the day, perhaps you'd care to
tell us the name of the man presently in command of Etarra's reserve
corps of archers!"  Braced against the table to steady a nasty rush of
dizziness, Arithon tried to answer.  His throat was already bone dry.
The drink at the river had not been sufficient to satisfy the demands
of withdrawal.  Warned that his neglect had now set him on dangerous
ground, that the effects of herb poisons would have him unconscious if
he pushed without care, he looked but saw no place to sit down.

"Or have the sulks clouded your memory," Caolle goaded.

"You need not trouble.  Our plans have already been set."

Arithon returned an impatient lift of his head.  "The commander's
name is Hadig.  And you're going to have to change tactics."

Caolle gave a gruff, low laugh and at once confronted his clan chief
"This womanish daydreamer suggests that our councils have been wasted.
Do we leave our arrows uncounted just to let him show us better?"

Arithon neither acknowledged the insult nor allowed Steiven's puzzled
regard any interval to unravel his personal state.  He reached with a
hand forced to steadiness and swept across an inked arc of symbols that
his fickle mind twisted into bodies, bent and broken and bathed in
congealed blood.

"Here," he half gasped.  "And here.  I'll suffer no man's mother or
child in the path of Etarra's armies."

Lip curled in contempt, Caolle said, "You think us gutless as
townsmen."

"I took an oath!"  Arithon locked eyes with him.  "I speak out of
concern."

Caolle set down the candle and leaned on bunched hands across the
charts.  "You'd make a prime town governor."

"You'll listen," Arithon returned, a jab of command in his tone.

"Would you ruin your people for sheer pride?  My objection has no
grounds in sentiment."

"Sentiment?  Fiends, are you blind?"  Caolle's scarred fists crashed
onto the tabletop, jarring sword blades in ringing counterpoint while
the candle guttered and spattered hot wax across the maps.

"There are nine hundred sixty of us of age to wield weapons.  That
includes every man of the northeast forest clans who will not, cannot,
even with Ath's help, get here in time to make a difference.  Ten to
one odds, had you counted.  Dharkaron Avenger couldn't balance such
stakes.

And you've the puking gall to fly in my face with objections?"

"Caolle!  Recall you address your sovereign lord."  Steiven
reappeared out of shadow with camp stools salvaged from a field kit.

He distributed the seats around the table and said as sharply, "Your
Grace, if you wish changes, speak your reason.  Argument serves no
purpose here."

The clan lord sat down then, and in iron-clad example directed his
attention to the maps.  If a night of communion with nature had jolted
Arithon out of apathy, he would never ridicule the change.  This
prince's hand had helped to banish Desh-thiere; if the powers used then
could help now, he must be encouraged to offer them.  Yet, confronted
by Arithon's unsteady bearing as he pulled up the stool and sank onto
it, Steiven wondered silently if Caolle's supposition had been right,
and his liege had retired from the oath taking to get himself royally
drunk.

Arithon rested his chin on folded fingers.  "I've had warning," he
opened without preamble.  "The lives of every clan woman and child will
be lost if they are sent out to stand against Lysaer.  Butchery best
describes the method.  I could sound no alternative sequence."

Caolle for a mercy stayed silent, while Steiven adjusted to this
implied application of mage-schooled prescience with a care he might
have used when taking aim on a half-startled buck.  "Can you be more
specific?"

"Unfortunately not."  Arithon resumed a tone beaten level by an
unpleasant ringing in his ears.  "Your son disrupted my scrying.  Small
talk of his sisters provoked a precognition.

His presence masked further development.  I suggest, and not lightly,
that you take full heed and arrange safeguards."

Steiven regarded his prince and desperately suppressed the thought
that rose inside him like a scream: that his own life already had been
pledged.  It seemed most cruelly unjust that loyalty to this
Teir's'Ffalenn might claim his wife and five young ones as well.  He
said only, "You wish me to remove the women and younger children from
the lines?"

"At the very least."  Arithon sounded strained.

"Suicide," Caolle interrupted.  He stuck broad thumbs in his belt and
licked his teeth.  "We cannot act in fear of who will die.  If we hold
back any one resource, where do we stop?  We'll have no need at all for
fussy strategy if our lines get overrun and all of our fighting
strength falls jack dead on the field!"

"There are alternatives," Arithon interjected.  At his word, the
candle flicked out, though no hand had moved to pinch the flame.

When Caolle leaned out to test the wick, Steiven stopped him on
instinct.  "Don't.  Snuffed candles usually smoke.  I smell none, which
must mean the light is still burning."

"The sun can be-blackened as easily," Arithon's voice resumed out of
dark.  "Mine is full command of shadow.

Though I am loath to kill by trickery, the night can be a formidable
weapon."

He released the captive candle as abruptly, and in a steady,
undisturbed spill, flamelight glinted in multiple reflection on the
helms and scale brigandines of a dozen men at arms, conjured from
nowhere and arrayed behind the prince's chair.

Caolle broke his chief's hold.  He surged erect.  His hands in
frenzied urgency sorted through the weapons that weighted the map ends
for just one blade with a serviceable edge.

Until Arithon's grating laughter stopped him cold.  "Illusion only,"
the prince admonished.  His magery disbursed into thin air, with Caolle
left blinking and foolish, his fists interlocked behind the cross guard
of an ill-balanced antique broadsword.

The prince said with stinging coolness, "I'm hardly the green boy you
imagined.  By the grace of my grandfather's upbringing, I hold the sole
alternative.  Listen and live.  Or I'll step back, reject my oath, your
real defense, and every last trace of your memory."

As if taunting the temper that, in one move, could finish a swing up
to gut him, the Shadow Master held the clan captain's gaze in
tight-lipped, bristling antagonism.  Until, suspicious that the prince
might not be drunk but rather driving for the opening to provoke,
Steiven intervened.  "Caolle, put down that blade.  Whether or not
you've been mocked, I can tolerate no violence against a guest who's
sworn at my hearth."

Caolle settled, hunched as a mastiff forced to give ground.

He watched with hot eyes as Arithon applied a stick of charcoal to
the map and reformed the deployment of Deshir's forces.  As the fine,
unsteady hands revitalized the plans with new strategy, the irascible
veteran became forced to revise his impression of the s'Ffalenn heir.

The prince was impressively clever, if weak.  His hands trembled, and
the green eyes burned beneath slack lids, as though driven to fever by
high-strung nerves.  Battle experience might toughen him enough to make
him a passable sovereign, Caolle thought, but he kept his opinion to
himself.

Near the end, they suffered interruption.  Framed suddenly against
the torchless blackness of the doorway, a scout in weapons and leathers
made a hasty entrance.  "Your Grace.

Lord, Caolle.  The lady Dania requires the presence of her husband.
Young Jieret has had another nightmare, and is out of his senses with
grief."

"Forgive me," Steiven blurted, on his feet and gone in a bound that
riffled stacked maps in his wake.

Relieved to be quit of his message, the scout came "inside and
settled on the stool his chief had vacated.  He gave Caolle an
apologetic shrug.  "Ath ease his suffering, poor young one."  For
Arithon's benefit he explained, "Jieret has Sight, as his father does."

"Jieret has natural prescience?"  Hunched over crossed arms on the
tabletop, Arithon snapped straight in wild-eyed, sweating attention.

"Ath's mercy, why did nobody think to tell me?"

Cynical before this unlooked-for burst of concern, Caolle drummed his
knuckles on his sword belt and watched, while the scout, less dour, let
out a sigh.  "No kind gift for a boy, to be sure.  Whatever he's
dreamed broke his heart."

"I'll tell you what he saw."  Arithon shot a vicious glance toward
Caolle.  "The slaughter of every living relative.  If I'd known that
child had Sight, I'd never have allowed him to stay near me.  I was
still half tranced from a tienelle scrying, and my defenses at the time
were wide open.  If he's gifted, he'll have picked up the sequence from
me.  Mine's the blame if he's taken any harm."

Magecraft and jargon left no impression upon Caolle, who disdained
outbursts of any sort.  He pulled his skinning knife from his boot
sheath, and in the extreme and failing candlelight expertly shaved off
a hangnail.  "You worry for nothing," he said to Arithon.  "Deshir's
young are hardly fragile.

Any such weakness in clan bloodlines, town headhunters have long
since stamped out."

The reassurance appeared to settle Arithon's mind, for by this time
the captain looked up to sheath his blade, the prince had apparently
fallen asleep.  His black hair feathered a pillk)wing wrist, with the
other hand outflung across the map, if he had started to surge to his
feet, then surrendered the inclination.

If arcane scrying had exhausted the prince to the same degree as his
recent flight from Etarra, the man was a fool who tried to roust him.
The scout said as much, his long face gloomy in disgust.

For his part, Caolle gave grudging credit for Arithon's contribution
to the defense strategy; he did not curse his liege lord's failing out
loud, but in tones of mulish reserve, requested help to shift Arithon
back to Steiven's lodge tent.

"That's twice in a week our chief's left us to haul deadweight like
deer dressers," the scout grumbled.  The candle fluttered at his
movement as he kicked back Steiven's stool, leaned over, and hooked his
forearms under Arithon's shoulders.  "Phew.  What's he got on his
clothes?  Smells like burnt spice or something."

Caolle shrugged.  The finicky habits of mages being outside his
province to fathom, he hefted the royal legs without comment.

As both men maneuvered their prince around the chartstrewn table, the
scout gave a breathless, short laugh.  "Well, he's small enough, Ath be
thanked.  Easy to sling as a puppy.

If I have to strain a sword hand for my liege, I'm glad to know I'll
do it killing townsmen."

"Ye'll do it standing extra turns at duty!"  Caolle snapped, moved at
last to vent the spleen he had too long bent aside to please his
chieftain.  "Get back to your post where you belong, and leave yon
princeling's nursing to me."  The mettlesome captain of the Deshans
shouldered the unconscious prince like a game carcass and huffed on
alone to Steiven's lodge tent.

Dania's extravagant expenditure of candles by this hour had burned
low; those few wicks that still struggled alight fed on drafts, half
drowned in puddled wax.  Other candles snuffed to conserve resources
stood tall white in a gloomy play of shadows.  As conscious of their
cost as of the life in the burden he carried, Caolle took care not to
knock against them as he bore Arithon toward the cushions in the corner
where Halliron's lyranthe lay propped, unshrouded still, if not
forgotten.

Caolle shucked his load, tugged straight a twist in his tunic, and
considered his duty to his sovereign completed.  He raised a forearm to
blot his brow, caught a whiff of his leather bracers, and nearly spat.

The exotic reek from whatever rite of magery the prince had trifled
with had transferred itself to his person.  Moved to seek fresher air
outside, Caolle spun to depart but checked halfway to the door flap as
Steiven re-emerged from the alcove set aside for his children.

To forestall answering for the prince, Caolle asked, "Is Jieret
settled?"

Steiven sighed, strolled crunching through scrolls of dry birch bark,
and uncorked the wine flagon his wife had left out for the Masterbard.
"He's coherent.  Halliron's telling him a story.  If we're lucky, he'll
choose something boring that will ease the boy back to sleep."

"The nightmare was truesight, then?"  Ruled by habit, Caolle braced
broad shoulders against the king post and regarded the master he had
first raised and now served without question.  Neither man could have
named the day when duty had deepened to respect; the nuance of who was
master had never mattered between them.  "Did Jieret say what he
dreamed?"

Caught in mid-swallow, Steiven parked the flagon on is forearm.

He shook his head.  "Dania says he told nothing beyond the name of
Fethgurn's daughter.  Though what Teynie has to do with an ugly
precognition, Daelion Fatemaster knows.  My boy cannot tell us.

Whatever Jieret dreamed, it's too much for him to bear.  His mind has
closed to recall, as mine did once."  And he stopped, knowing Caolle
would remember; it had been the captain's gruff hands that had soothed
him the night before his father found his death.

A shiver swept over Steiven.  His regard upon his captain lay heavy
with understanding that, too soon, Etarra's troops would invade these
valleys.

Wordless, Caolle extended his hand for the flagon.

Steiven watched while his first captain drank, his eyes as deep with
worry as his oldest confidant had ever seen them.

"We must withdraw the girls and women as Arithon wishes.

Seer or not, his objections and Jieret's nightmare are too close to
be a coincidence."

"The boys over ten years of age will have to disarm the fallen then,"
Caolle insisted, his eyes beneath the crag of his brow line deepened to
pits as the candle by his elbow fluttered out.  "Those few absolutely
can't be spared."

Steiven nodded, took back the wine, and paused with the neck of the
flagon half raised.  As if he expected a rejoinder, he glanced around
and across the darkened tent.  "Where's the prince?"

Caolle jerked his chin past his shoulder.  "There.  Fell asleep on
the tactical maps, so I brought him."  Deshir's war captain folded
thick arms in expectation of Dania's scolding as she and Halliron
emerged from soothing Jieret into bed.

"Ah, well."  Steiven sighed, aware how little reprimand would
accomplish with his war captain planted like a bull.

Finally, softly, he set the flask aside.  "Our Teir's'Ffalenn's
entitled to his comforts, I would guess, if he spent last night
smacking midges in the open."

A rustle of skirts and more flickering from spent candles, and Lady
Dania reached her husband's side.  "Arithon ought to sleep," she said
tartly.  "When he left here, he was unwell."

Caolle smiled.  While the Masterbard crossed the lodge to fetch his
instrument, the captain stole the moment to bait her by hooking back
the flagon.  "A man can be unwell and not be the least bit sick."

He drank, his eyes on hers.

Dania gave no ground.  The captain's blistering insolence she
suspected held a hint of jealousy; at least, Caolle had never subjected
her to teasing before the day she -had wed.

Her lord shied well clear, since better than anybody else, his lady
could keep the war captain in his place.

Dania's mouth tautened in conclusion that Caolle's antagonism toward
Arithon was the same: that he would treat even a dog with contempt if
it dared to claim Steiven's affection.  As though the grizzled captain
were an overbearing brother, she reached out and slapped the flagon
from his mouth.  "Now what would his grace be drunk on, stream water?"

Caolle choked to kill an untimely burst of laughter.  "He has a weak
head, our royal heir, or maybe just a weak stomach?"

The discussion just then was cut short as Halliron cried out from the
corner.  "Ath Creator, how long has he been like this?"

Steiven spun around on reflex; Caolle, with considering deliberation.
Half lost in the maze of deepened shadows, the Masterbard bent over
Arithon, one hand clasped over the royal wrist and feeling in concern
for a pulse.

"Sithaer's fires, man."  Caolle rubbed his eyes, which were stinging
tired from too much stress.  "You act as if he's dying.  He only
dropped off to sleep."

"He could be dying," Halliron said, his performer's voice bladed to
satire.  "Did none of you notice the smell on him?"

"Is something wrong?"  Steiven released the hand that cupped his
wife's waist as Dania moved to light candles.

Halliron made a sound of exasperation.  When Caolle looked brazenly
blank and Steiven's expression failed to clear, the Masterbard raised
Arithon's other wrist and hauled him into a half-reclining posture that
needed several pillows to support.  As his fingers untied the prince's
shirt cuffs, he said, "Have you ever read anything on herb lore?  In
particular on the leaves of the mountain flower called tienelle?"

"Seersweed?"  Shocked to quick action, Steiven yanked the flagon from
Caolle's grasp and crossed the tent.  "Ath preserve us.  Not the
narcotic used by mages .  . ."  He knelt, touched the prince's clammy
flesh, and bits of remembered trivia fell together with an alarming,
unpleasant feel of truth.

The prince had spoken of scrying.  If tienelle had been part of his
method, it would indeed induce visions, followed by illness from toxins
that had no listed antidote.  Enraged at the prince's reticence and
then by his own slow perception, Steiven ripped out a word he had never
used under his own roof pole, or in the presence of his wife.

"He told us he was trained!"  Caolle protested.

"And so he must be.  I much doubt he would leave us by suicide."

Steiven withheld his sympathy, while Caolle started to pace.

Halliron continued his ministrations, aggrieved to a depth that none
but Lady Dania understood.  Her hands trembled on the striker as for
the second time that night she lit wick after wick in succession.

The Masterbard resumed condemnation.  "How long did you go on
questioning his manhood?"  delay him, badgering and.  . . " "Never mind
that," cut in Steiven.  "Just tell us what's to be done."

The Masterbard's smile was white-lipped and merciless, and directed
to stop Caolle between strides.  "Wake him up and ask," he invited.
"I'm no mage at all.  My tunes and your prowess at war in this case are
no foil for fatal poison."

"Well, His Grace volunteered for the sacrifice," Caolle snapped.

"Don't make me slap him back to consciousness.

I'd be too much tempted to break his neck."

Nobody answered that outburst.  Dania stood with the striker wrung
between her fingers.  Halliron steadied the prince's head, while
Steiven raised the flask and began forcing wine down the flaccid royal
throat.

Arithon roused, bent in half by a cough that immediately progressed
to nausea.  Between spasms, he gasped for water.

A basin was proffered.  He drank and was sick.  He drank again, his
hands locked one on another in a torment that left Dania silently,
desperately weeping.

This time the liquid stayed down.  When the Master of Shadows raised
green eyes rinsed blank by the force of will he needed to command his
reflexes, no one present could escape recognition of the mettle he had
masked behind laziness.

Arithon knew as much.  Even through pain, his manner suggested the
chagrin of a joke undone as his gaze locked level with Caolle's.

Caught on his knees by the sick bed, the captain of Deshir's defense
said no word, but gripped the basin as if blunt metal might sprout legs
and kick him in the stomach.

The deep s'Ffalenn eyes never flickered, but the mouth twitched in a
pinched-off, flippant smile.  "I'll try you at foils on the morrow,"
Arithon challenged, prepared to take bruises for his falsehood.

Grudgingly forced to revise his assessment of the s'Ffalenn prince
yet again, Caolle snarled, "Save your steel for the heart blood of
Etarra's city guard."

Work on the defenses continued without relenting as Arithon rested
from his debilitating bout with the tienelle.

He did not rise to cross foils with the clan captain, but on
Steiven's enforced orders kept to his bed.  He heard in thinlipped
silence the ultimatum, that the participation of boys in the battle was
a matter beyond his royal right to question.

If his initial reaction was too quiet, his response came typically
obstinate.  He waited until Dania's back was turned, called young
Jieret to his bedside, and with the blade of a boy's knife for carving,
nicked his left wrist.  There and then he swore a blood pact of
friendship with his caithdein's only son.

Confronted minutes later by the father's anger, Arithon gazed up from
his pillows, peaceful with grieved affection.

"That is the best I can do for you, whom I love as my brother.  I can
see your heir survives this war to continue your line and title."

Struck speechless by emotion, Steiven whirled and left the prince's
presence.  With his own death already a sealed fate, the Earl of the
North could have asked no better parting from this life, save the
chance to better know the spirit of the man who had graced him.

"Ath lighten your burden, my prince," he murmured.  And stumbled on
blindly across the lodge tent into the arms of his wife.

Dania exclaimed in dismay at his kiss.  She tasted sad tears on
Steiven Is lips.  Drowned in silent, close embrace, she pulled half
loose and caught his hand, and guided him to the laces on her bodice.

Steiven accepted her invitation.  In the sun-warmed air of ieir
sleeping nook, he allowed her quiet touch and hot flesh ) absorb his
bitter brew of sorrow.  But the pleasure of this was saddened by the
knowledge that this moment was to be among the last.

 Incarceration

Dakar the Mad Prophet stopped cold in his tracks, wiped his streaming
forehead, and glared askance down a sheer rock drop toward a valley
spread like quilting between a dizzying array of black peaks.

Fresh sweat rolled off his temples.  Left faint and sick from the
effects of exertion and extreme altitude, he complained to a point of
empty air.  "You call this a trail?  I say it's a death trap.  And I
hope you have defense wards set.  If a fiend chances by and possesses a
loose stone, it's sure to make mischief and trip me."

Made the more mutinous as his outburst drew no response, Dakar
plucked at the straps of his knapsack, which bulged from his back like
the shell of some malformed turtle.  "And anyway, I'd think you
Sorcerers wouldn't chance my taking a fall, not lugging this, anyway.

And I don't see why I was appointed to act as the Fellowship's pack
mule in the first place!"

A breeze flicked through a fan of alpine flowers adjacent to Dakar's
feet, perhaps provoked by Kharadmon's invisible presence.

"Oh, come on!"  Dakar griped.  "A miser in a poorhouse has more to
say than you!  Why not admit you know why Asandir has stuck me with
packing his Ath-forsaken Mistwraith to the summit of Rockfell Peak."

"You need the exercise?"  Kharadmon quipped.  A daisy fell out of
nowhere and brushed past Dakar's left ear.

The flower might as well have been a fly the way the Mad Prophet
swiped it away.  He scraped forward, his shoulder pressed to the
mountain, until the narrow ribbon of trail reached a switchback half
blocked by boulders.  There he seized the opportunity to plump himself
down.  The perch he chose was moss-grown.  Seepage from a glacial
spring made him grimace and huff like a walrus, yet laziness triumphed.

A soaked rump notwithstanding, he bent at the waist and shucked off
the knapsack.  Inside, girdled in tingling spells of guard, lay the
flask that bottled Desh-thiere.  "I should heave this off the nearest
precipice, and see you all juggle spells to catch it back," the Mad
Prophet suggested nastily.

"Try," Kharadmon invited.

Dakar's glower deepened.  "A damned Lyat has more sense of fun than
you."

"I should hope so."  Below their vantage, the slowly falling speck
that was the daisy winked out.  A second later, Kharadmon's image
unfurled, extravagantly poised in midair.  "Else I'd throw you off the
cliff, and see how far and long you'd bounce."

"Do that."  Dakar sighed.  "Break my back.  I'd like to lie down and
rest for six months or maybe a year."

A stickler for exhibition, Kharadmon stroked the spade black beard
that thrust from his chin.  Piebald hair streamed on the winds that
whipped off the snow fields higher up, and his green eyes glinted,
shrewd.  "You're thinking your master has misused you?"

"Not me," Dakar snapped.  "I said so before, Prince Lysaer."

Cautious not to try Kharadmon's impatience, he heaved to his feet,
and with a martyred roll of his eyes, resettled his pack on sore
shoulders.

"Sithaer take your Fellowship's grand plans, you used a good man and
then broke him."

"All."  Kharadmon flicked away into nothing.  A cold draft at odds
with nature, he flowed upslope against the wind.

Dakar resumed inching up a track better suited for small goats.

"You don't agree," he said sourly.

The discorporate mage surprised with an answer.  "You've seen Asandir
take deer for the supper pot."

"He never hunts anything I ever saw."  The Mad Prophet bent, clawed
out a pebble that had worked its way into his boot top, then
sidestepped through a hairpin bend, his buttocks pressed to sheer rock
while his beer gut jutted over sky.  "Asandir just goes out and sits in
a thicket somewhere.

Eventually a buck happens along, lies down, and dies for him."

"He projects his need and asks," Kharadmon corrected, a tart sting to
his tone.  "The deer chooses freely, and its fate and man's hunger end
in balance."

"You're not saying Lysaer volunteered," Dakar protested.

The trail doubled back, its frost-split stone scoured lifeless except
for mustard and black flecks of lichen.  From ahead, Kharadmon sent
back, "No.  Your prince answered circumstance according to his innate
character.  The Fellowship imposed nothing outside his natural will and
intentions."

Dakar viewed the next span with trepidation, and ended scrabbling
forward on hands and knees.  Gravel loosened by his passage slid and
bounced, and rocketed finally into the abyss that was Rockfell Vale.

Between stertorous panting he gasped, "You can't claim ...

Desh-thiere's wraith ... submits to any Law of the Major Balance."

"Where opening did not already exist, the creature could not have
gained foothold," said Kharadmon.

Squatted now on his hams and blowing harder, Dakar squirmed to shift
the bite of the pack straps.  Already blistered on his heels, his
temper had abraded to match.  "But Sethvir as much as admitted the
s'llessid inborn gift was at fault.  Had Lysaer not been driven to seek
perfect justice, the wraith would have found nothing to exploit."

Frostily unmoved, Kharadmon said, "If so, our Fellowship has a
reckoning to answer for."

Dakar took a second to recognize capitulation.  "Well, then," he
cried, and closed for the kill, "why in Ath's name did you surrender
Lysaer knowing he'd have no defense?"
The flicks and slaps of breeze that expressed Kharadmon's displeasure
died into ominous stillness.  Even the winds off the ridges dared not
cross the imposed circle of his silence.  "Because," his reply cracked
back at length, "Ath Creator himself did not insist that his works
spring perfectly formed from the void.  We are permitted our
mistakes,

for which, my fat prophet, you should kiss the earth daily

and be grateful."

Dakar refused to be humbled.  Hunkered like a bear on damp haunches,
he prepared to argue further.  But a second voice admonished from
below: "Best give less thought to Lysaer's business and more to your
own, which is jeopardized.  The outcrop where you've chosen to
pontificate is not terribly well anchored to the scarp."

The Mad Prophet ejected a filthy word.  Sweating over more than bad
footing, he scooted forward and cautiously peered downward.

Soundless, graceful, in a stroll that disallowed fourteen thousand
feet of vertical drop, Asandir ascended the switchback just below.

Gray hair, gray cloak, with both wrists adorned by talisman bracelets
runed in white metal, he was silver from head to foot.

"Where did you disappear to this morning?"  Dakar shot back.  "I
cooked some breakfast and found you gone, and never a word of
instruction as to what you wished me to do."

Asandir stopped.  His brows lifted.  The mouth underneath never
moved.  He looked at Dakar and said acidly, "That's no reason to
threaten to pitch Desh-thiere off any handy vertical precipice."

"Ah, fiends," moaned Dakar.  "A man can't say one word without you
hearing it."  He resignedly hugged the cliff face and hauled himself
back upright.

"Sethvir heard you, too."  By then Asandir had hooked the loops of
the knapsack.  As the Mad Prophet obligingly shucked straps, the
Sorcerer reappropriated custody of Deshthiere's flask.

Lightened enough to try boldness, Dakar stole a glance slant-wise at
his master.  "What were you doing, anyway?"

Asandir attended the pack straps, in need of commodious readjustment
to fit his slimmer anatomy.  "What did you use here, spider's knots?"
He abandoned the tangle and more efficiently called a spell to clear
the ties.

"I'm no sailor, to be handy with strings or a sewing awl.".

It served any sorcerer properly, Dakar thought, to have left him in
charge of such matters.  He watched, envious, as the rawhide slithered
free of itself with a sinuous ease of living snakes.  "How did you do
that?' Silver-gray eyes now flicked up, keenly bright in their
scrutiny.  "Which question did you actually want answered?"

Hopeful, Dakar said, "Both."

But Asandir's mood since Etarra had not been the least bit forgiving.
"When a peak such as this has served through two ages as a prison,
prudence would dictate a check to be sure the rock is still willing to
absorb the antagonism of the entity we wish to confine."

"And how does one bribe old stone into becoming a sewer for human
refuse?"  Dakar smirked in thick sarcasm.

Asandir looked back at him, serious.  "Rocks outlast all our doings.
Longevity gives them great respect for politeness, a tendency you would
benefit from copying."

"You can have your stones and your trees, and your communion with
both for permissions," Dakar retorted.  "I'll save my appreciation for
a paid woman, if we don't break our necks on this peak."

A warning shift in Asandir's regard prompted Dakar to spin around and
resume clambering up the trail.  As stones gouged his knees, he avowed
under his breath that henceforth he would restrict his inquiries to
spells that could untie string.  Then the next time he attracted a pack
of mischiefbent Lyats, he need not cut his laces to pry his boots off.

The ledge faded out at the snow line.  Confronted by a rock face
cracked into vertical ladders and packed under scabs of blue ice, Dakar
swallowed.  "We're not going up that."

Nobody answered.  He blinked, rubbing sweat from his eyes.  "Well,
I'm not going up that.' "You could spend the night here,:, Asandir
agreed.  "You might even be comfortable, before the storm."

"What storm?"  Dakar studied the sky, which deepened now toward clear
aquamarine.  Sunset was nigh, but the air smelled of glacier, not snow.

I could spit and hit the moon."  "There aren't any clouds!

Asandir kept climbing.  The Mad Prophet fidgeted from foot to foot
while arcanely frigid air eddied upward as Kharadmon also passed him
by.

Dakar scrubbed his face on his tunic sleeve, then reviewed his
position.  The pitch they had already climbed was frightful, Rockfell's
southeastern exposure a needle to split the wind.  The nethermost spine
of the Skyshiels nipped the horizon all around, while below, hulking as
somnolent dragons, two ridges hoarded the valley between.  Farthest
down, dark tarnish in a gloom of cut-off sunlight, river Avast's
ice-fed streamlets wound through forested ravines napped and ledged
like rumpled velvet.

Just looking made Dakar's head spin.  He could wait, but if he nodded
off to sleep for one second, he would tumble off the cranny that marked
the trail head.  Above, sharp rocks as bleak as nightmare swooped up,
lost in clouds gilthemmed by failing daylight.  Asandir had already
disappeared.

Beaten at last to resignation, Dakar stuffed his fat hands in a cleft
and inched upward toward fog that was powdered with whirling snow.  He
inhaled the flakes repeatedly as he climbed.  Eyes squeezed shut, he
spoke through teeth clamped against a sneeze, and hoped to Sithaer that
Asandir would take pity on him.  "How much farther?"  His muscles felt
wrapped in hot wire.

Kharadmon's chuckle answered.  "Not far at all.  Unless you prefer to
keep scrabbling along by your fingernails?"

Suspicious of some prank, Dakar risked a look.

Then he, too, laughed aloud.  Not half a pace to his left, some
capricious carver had fitted a staircase into the rock face.  Elegant
to the point of absurdity, the risers were black marble adorned at edge
and corner with leering, haughty gargoyles.  An extravagance of
scrolled newel posts had once supported railings, until weather had
scoured the brass away.

Now only fastening holes remained.

Damn me," exclaimed Dakar.  "What fool engineered that?"

"Davien."  As if bemused by the quirks of his mountebank colleague,
Kharadmon qualified.  "Fifteen centuries back, when he fashioned the
pit into Rockfell, Davien insisted the stone of the mountain might
decide one day to shrug him off.  He was right to assume that anyone
who braves the ascent this far does a mage's business here anyway."

Crabbing sideways across the face, Dakar was ill inclined to argue
with the Betrayer's skewed sense of logic.  He caught a post, swung
onto the stair, then bit back his relief as the inimical gazes of
gargoyles seemed hungrily to follow his progress.  He tested the risers
in suspicion.  Everything else Davien had built was untrustworthy and
clever with traps; if this stairway was either harmless or safe, it
should be the glaring exception.  Almost, Dakar wished he was clinging
like a bug to wild rock.

Dewed with clammy fog, the Mad Prophet broke through the cloud layer.
Ahead, the last sunshine glared off Rockfell's knife-point summit.
Suspended between that pinnacle which supported heaven and a
netherworld floored in combed cotton and shaded rose and purple by the
encroaching twilight, Dakar sucked in a nervous breath.  Dire cold
froze the hair in his nose.  He coughed, which caused Asandir to beckon
impatiently from the ledge where Davien's stairway ended.

The pack by then rested at Asandir's feet, a lump of weather-stained
canvas that Dakar gave a wide berth upon his arrival.

The thing might appear as innocuous as somebody's bundled picnic, but
even an apprentice's awareness could sense the hedging sting of guard
wards from two paces away.

Asandir poised before a vertical slab of black rock, his ear pressed
to its mirror-smooth polish and his palms rested flat on either side.
He seemed prepared to spend motionless hours that way, while his
apprentice shivered, abandoned to boredom.

A whining snap split the air.

'Kharadmon, Asandir commanded, and suddenly, sharply, stepped back.

Dakar smelled ozone, then all but fell over as a bolt stark as
lightning seared across the blank stone.  A mapwork of convoluted
spell-craft flared across the face, chiseled with charged lines of
runes.  Lit blue by a chained might that dazzled and dwarfed him,
Asandir stood unmoved, while from below, the fog moiled up in disturbed
billows to hedge Rockfell around with anvil formations like
thunderheads.

Though only nature responded in reaction to the proximity of
energized coils of power, the likeness to the moving mists of
Desh-thiere left Dakar hollow with dread.  The sun had dipped low.

What sky remained visible glowed aquamarine, the moon a burning disk
as fey in its light as the daggeredged fire of raw spells.  But these
rang in high, subliminal vibration, haloed by silver-blue veilings of
disturbed fog.

Then, abruptly as the power had been raised, it flickered, flared
violet, and faded.

Where rock had been lay a door.

Dakar gaped.  "How did you do that?"

Asandir muttered words about physical rearrangement and briskly
hooked up his pack.  A second later he vanished into the square black
vault that formed the unsealed entrance to Rockfell.

Flash-blind and blinking, Dakar advanced more cautiously.

Swallowed at once by the dark, he felt oppressed to the point of
suffocation.  But the air came and went from his lungs, unrestricted.

The innards of the mountain were dry, and bone cold, and smelled like
metal filings and dust.  The doorway at his back seemed a cube rinsed
with light, as dangerously transient as a tienelle vision.  "You didn't
happen to bring candles?"  Dakar asked wistfully.

Out of pity, Kharadmon made a light.  His glow punched through gloom
to reveal a bare chamber carved on floor and walls in complex patterns
and runes of guard.  At the center rested a slab, set askew to reveal a
pit that contained a bottomless well of blind dark.  The cobwebbed
rungs of a ladder poked through, its origin swallowed in shadow.

Asandir hefted the sack with the flask and started down.

Before he had gone three steps, dry wood gave way beneath his boot.
Slivers whispered falling through air, and long seconds elapsed before
their impact echoed back, proving the shaft had a bottom.

The well was dreadfully deep.

Unfazed at being poised on rotten footing over what amounted to an
abyss, the Sorcerer said, "Kharadmon?

You'll need to strengthen the ladder or Dakar will surely break his
neck."

"I'm not going down there!"  The Mad Prophet folded his arms across
his chest and obstinately planted his toes.

"If you don't, you're quite likely to freeze."  Pragmatic, Asandir
waited while the rungs under his hands flared red under Kharadmon's
binding.  He moved on, his hair stirred by air currents that funneled
down into the pit.

Dakar steeled himself and swung onto the ladder that dropped away
into the unknown.  His hands left sweat marks on wood still warmed from
enchantment.  He forced himself to start down, while Kharadmon's light
traveled with him until he moved encircled by stone walls.  The descent
seemed to go on forever.  His calves quivered as overstressed muscles
bore his weight.  The Mad Prophet could not shake the impression that
the well had been cut deeper than the roots of Rockfell Mountain
itself.

The jar as his foot struck bottom about startled him out of his skin.
He looked about.  The shaft ended in a five-sided cell, scrawled with
entangled sigils and spiraling lattices of power that made the eyes
burn and the head swim in vicious, twisty dizziness.

"Don't stare," Asandir cautioned.  "The patterns here both dazzle and
bind.  You could lose your mind in this maze of wards to the point
where even I can't call you back," Such were the safeguards upon the
chamber that the Sorcerer's warning fell dead against the air.  Even
the echoes were trapped.  Dakar ripped his gaze away, then knuckled his
eyes until they teared.  "What was the last thing confined here?"

Kharadmon snorted in contempt.  "You might better ask what last
escaped.  Everything ever shut in here eventually worked its way out."

"Not the Lyats," Asandir contradicted.  He ran his fingers over the
walls.  His touch raised uneasy vibrations in the air that riled the
skin but made no sound.  Green sparks danced from the contact that
caused Dakar to grit his teeth.  Unfazed, the Sorcerer added, "Those
were released, you'll remember, to add havoc to Davien's rebellion."

"We're not going to sleep here," Dakar interrupted.  He felt
claustrophobic, and strongly inclined to throw up.

Asandir glanced abstractedly over one shoulder.  "I advise you to
try.  You'll feel less ill with your eyes closed, and rechecking the
symmetry of these wards will likely take most of the night."

"You didn't need me," Dakar retorted.  "Why insist that I come?"

"But Kharadmon told you already."  Impatient, Asandir abandoned the
intricacies of his spellwork.  He turned fully around and gave Dakar a
regard that was testy enough to peel skin.  "Your body needed the
exercise."

Which point incensed Dakar to black rage.  He filled his lungs to
shout imprecations.

No word emerged.  His jaw opened, shut, and opened again like a
fish's.  His eyes bulged.  Then, in some odd fit of difficulty that had
no visible cause, his features crumpled in frustration and his knees
buckled.  His Fellowship master caught him before he collapsed.

Laughing, Asandir lowered the Mad Prophet's bulk the rest of the way
to the floor.  "How timely."

Kharadmon's ripe chuckle answered.  "Quite."  His image unfurled,
posed in satisfaction over Dakar.  "He'll sleep through the night.

Good.  That should leave us some peace in which to work."

The first thing Dakar knew, Asandir was shaking him awake.

"Get up," the Sorcerer insisted.  "You're lying across space we need
for the final defense ward."

Dakar grumbled and finally yielded to the prodding that urged him
back to his feet.  His bones ached from hours spent on hard and chilly
stone, and his eyes felt bored through by a blast of unbearable light.

He determined after a moment that the glare emanated from the
centermost area of the pit.  He blinked, squinted through hurting
vision, and at the heart of the dazzle, barely made out the shadowy
outline of the flask that contained the Mistwraith.

About then he noticed that his skin tingled as if drenched by a
tonic, and all of his body hair had lifted.  Throughout his service
with Asandir, he had never witnessed such a presence of raw force.  For
once in his life awed to silence, he gaped.

From behind him, Asandir's voice rose and fell in incantation.

The words, Dakar noticed uneasily, were not in any language ever
spoken upon the soil of Athera; and the halo of light that netted
Desh-thiere's flask was not solid, but seemed as he stared to be
composed of flecked light that shuttled in convoluted, interlocking
spirals that ached the eye's attempt to follow.

Then a grip closed on his wrist and tugged him back.

"Cover your face.  At once," Asandir commanded.  "Else the energy
flare as Kharadmon sets the ward will leave you blind."

Dakar began to comply, then paused.  "Wait," he said on impulse.

"Let me help."

"You can't."  Asandir's curtness stemmed from weariness.

He worked to soften his delivery as he added, "I can't.  The energies
involved would vaporize flesh.  The final binding must be sealed by
Kharadmon alone."  4

Eyes shielded, Dakar heard Asandir give his colleague word.  A
violent crack cut the air.  Heat flashed across the pit, stinging
exposed skin, and accompanied by spitting rains of sparks that left
behind an acrid scent of brimstone.

"It's safe to look," Asandir said presently.

Dakar lowered his hands, to find the flask at the center of the pit
encircled by a cold blue halo.  If the light was subliminally faint,
its effects upon the mind were not; just standing within the ward's
proximity caused a bone-deep, aching discomfort.  Whatever arcane
unpleasantness the Fellowship Sorcerers used to fashion their prisons,
Dakar refused to know.

Asandir also seemed reluctant to endure the ward's resonance, since
he started immediately up the ladder.  Dakar hastened after, glad to be
quit of Rockfell with its dread overtones of magic and the supremely
dangerous entity left there in incarceration.

Morning sunlight washed through the opening to the outside by the
time Dakar crawled off the ladder.  Never so pleased to breathe in cold
air in his life, he did not even mind the prickle against his skin as
the icier draft that was Kharadmon flowed from the well on his heels.

"Are you entirely clear?"  Asandir asked his discorporate colleague.

Kharadmon shot off a phrase in the old tongue that surprised Dakar to
incredulity.  Before the Mad Prophet could take stock and appreciate
the discorporate mage's use of expletives, Asandir said, "Help me drag
the cover back over the well."  He indicated the massive round slab
that rested ajar across the opening.

Dakar glared at the offending rock.  "Don't be saying I need the
exercise," he griped before Kharadmon could bait him further.

"You know," Kharadmon observed in blithe enthusiasm, as Dakar grunted
and heaved and the stone grated, and slowly gave way to brute force.
"Be careful how you place that.  I much doubt you can see around that
beer gut of yours to tell if you're going to crush your toes."

Caught with every muscle straining and the veins in his neck about to
burst, Dakar could do naught but grind his teeth.  When at length the
pit was covered over, he was too breathless to effect a rejoinder.

His pique lasted all the way through the setting of the secondary
wards.  Hours passed.

By the time the Fellowship mages finished raising spells and guard
circles to assure permanence, the chamber floor showed no flaw to
indicate the existence of any pit.

Outside, Dakar expected, fully exposed to the weather, the pair would
repeat the exhaustive process until the cliff face was impenetrable.
"By Ath," he commented sourly.  "You've taken precautions enough to
repel Dharkaron himself.  One would hope after this, that Rockfell pit
would prove more secure than ever it has in the past."

Asandir cast a jaundiced eye at his apprentice.  "It might, you know,
if we tried dark practice and chained a slain spirit to stand as
sentinel."

"Oh, no."  Dakar backed up a step and crashed heavily into spelled
stone.  "You'd hardly drag me up mountains for exercise if you'd wanted
to make me a sacrifice."  Nonetheless, he moved his fat bulk with
alacrity through the portal onto the outside ledge.  While the
Fellowship Sorcerers resumed painstaking labor, and set their final
seal over the rock at the head of Davien's stair, he remained
inordinately quiet.

By noon, Rockfell Peak was secured.  The trio of visitors departed,
leaving behind them the Betrayer's watching gargoyles and serried banks
of clouds that drifted to the play of frigid winds.

Confined the Mistwraith might be, but its toll of damages upon their
world remained yet to be measured.

For down in a lightless pit of rock, sealed behind fearful rings of
wards, Desh-thiere's wraiths brooded in confinement, awaiting the
vengeance curse laid on two half-brothers to burgeon into bloodshed and
war.

 Warning

Unsettled through the days since the scrying in the dye-yard
warehouse, Elaira walked the tide flats of Narms.  Around her, twilight
cast gray veiling over wind-ripped clouds and fine drizzle.  Here the
rush of incoming waves dampened the bay-front clamor, of barking dogs
and the hurried curses of wagoners who threaded low-slung fish carts
back from market.  A stiff breeze off the water carried away the
endless bickering of children and singsong cries of wood venders and
the boys who sold buckets of steamed crabs layered in straw to keep
them hot.  Ahead, a meandering shadow against gloom, a beggar scavenged
the tidemark for cork floats or broken slats from fish crates that
could be salvaged for firewood.

Elaira heard only the waves and the crying gulls who dipped and
whirled, scant minutes away from night roosting.

Troubled already in spirit, she was wearied from playing at pretense.
She would not return to a meal with Morriel's entourage at the hostel,
to pick at food when she had no appetite.  She refused to retire, to
huddle frustrated under blankets tuched dank by the salt-laden fogs
that smothered Narms after dark.  This one night she would resist the
demands of sleep, would not close her eyes and dream again of
finechiseled s'Ffalenn features that reproached her in aggrieved
accusation.

What could not be forgiven, she had done.  The repercussions could
not be reversed.  The Prime Circle had sealed their final decision;
formal verdict would be sent out at midnight, when the lane tides ran
least disturbed by static thrown off by the sun.  The Prime's decree
concerning the latent danger Arithon presented to society allowed for
no mitigating circumstance: his moves were to be exhaustively tracked.

Wherever his intent could be hampered and dogged, Koriani would act
to disadvantage him.

Elaira sidestepped a patch of seaweed thrown up in tangles on pale
sand.  Ahead, the beggar paused to rest on a rock, the rags that tied
his hooded head flapping in the wind.

She passed him by without greeting, which was unlike her, since his
kind had replaced her family through early childhood.

She rounded a jumble of boulders, then picked her way over the
breakwater that protected Narms harbor from the sea.  Sheltered there,
fishing smacks and trader galleys loomed at anchorage, or sat low on
their marks, made fast to the bollards at the wharf.  Deck lanterns
threw greasy orange streaks across waters pocked with light rain.  At
the taffrail of the nearest vessel, a woman crooned a melody, her knees
tucked up under a fishing tarp as she peeled vegetables for her supper.

Down the docks a bent grandfather trundled a wheelbarrow of cod
toward the street, while a boy and his brother mended nets.  The reek
of fish offal and the squabble of the gulls that dipped and dived
through dank pilings checked Elaira as if she had run against a wall.

She deliberated, aware that to go forward was to tread the safer
path.  What she wanted more was seclusion-and a salt pool left behind
by the tide that she could use to attempt forbidden scrying.

Under her damp cloak she shivered.  The intention that lurked at the
edge of her thoughts was dangerous, foolish..

Still, she turned back toward the beach.

She found herself alone with temptation.  The beggar had gone, the
rocks where he had perched glistening with barnacles burnished like
carbuncles in the torchlight off the street.

The bayside surf was overlaid by deeper thunder as two stout brewers'
boys rolled tuns from an ale dray parked outside a tavern.

Sailors caroused in the side alley, laughing, while the shrieks of a
bawdy woman taunted them to sport their prowess in her bed.  The din of
workaday humanity seemed remote and far off, without any overtones of
comfort.  Made aware that her months in the fenlands of Korias studying
herb lore had retuned her nature to prefer silence, Elaira sighed.

Change had overtaken her too fast since her unlucky foray to meet
with Asandir.  She picked a spot where the breeze blew clean off the
water, and sat, her head propped in her hands.  She watched the
incoming surf, but tonight no Lyats rode the waves to refuel their
energies on the forces of winds and tides.

Night fell gloomy and damp.  At her feet, ruffled over in
pewter-edged ripples, lay the tide pool she longed for.  Torn by
indecision, she wondered which of her loyalties she should suffer for:
the one, to Arithon, already breached; or the other, now cruelly
strained, which tied her to Kofiani service through sworn bond to a
spell crystal that Morriel would certainly use to break her.

Eyes closed, her hearing awash with the seethe of salt foam, Elaira
reviewed the unalterable absolutes that imprisoned her in misery.
Where once she could have lightened her mood with flippant behavior and
sarcasm, now the frustrated, circling grief of knowing a man with
indelible intimacy ate at her, night and day.  The surcease of physical
release was denied her.  That one act of spirited curiosity had caused
her to be culled, and now used, as Morriel's personal instrument to map
Arithon's motivations could neither be escaped nor avoided.

But interlinked with this were other trusts acquired in her visit to
Enithen Tuer's Erdane garret.

"Girl, you're shaking, and not at all from the cold," said a kindly
voice from the shadows.

Elaira started, then exclaimed aloud as a hand lightly grasped her
shoulder.

The beggar had not left her but stood, guarded from prying eyes and
wind by an overhang of sea-beaten rock.  His earlier appearance had
deceived.  Clad all in black, he wore no ornament.  None of his
clothing lay in tatters.  What had first been mistaken for a frayed
head cloth was revealed now a raven, hunched and damp on its master's
shoulder, repining her with eyes too wise for a bird's.

"Who are you?"  Elaira blurted.  But before he gave answer, she knew.
His eyes upon her were too still and deep to encompass any less than
the vision of a Fellowship Sorcerer.

. A wave that was larger than most hurled and broke against the
shore.  Fingers of foam clawed up the rocks, then splashed back in
silver lace foam.  His voice as he addressed her held the same ageless
timbre as the sea.  "I am Traithe, sent by Sethvir to give you a
message from the Fellowship."

As Elaira moved to speak, he restrained her.  Though his step was
careful and lame, his hands could grip hard enough to bruise.  "No.

Say nothing.  You're aware, the wrong words could set your vows to
your order into jeopardy."

She stilled, shocked by his bluntness.

Traithe said, "Understand, and clearly, that my purpose here is to
shield you from any such breach in your loyalty."

Stung still by guilt-ridden thoughts, Elaira's sensibilities fled.

She wrenched off Traithe's hold and stepped back.  "My Prime might
command my obedience.  She does not own me in spirit!"

"Well spoken."  Traithe sat, which irritated the raven to a testy
flapping of wings.  He raised a scarred knuckle to soothe its breast
feathers, then peered slant-wise at her, chagrined as a grandfather
caught in a bout of boy's mischief.

"Hold on to that truth, brave lady."

Yet his affirmation of natural order could not undo vows sealed to
flesh through a Koriani focus stone.  A piece of herself had been given
over into Morriel's control that Elaira was powerless to call back.

Her ambivalence toward the traps that Traithe most carefully never
mentioned gave rise to an outraged admission.  "Ath's mercy, I was six
years old when the Prime Circle swore me to service.  They claim,
always, that power must not be given without limits.  But lately I
suspect my Seniors prefer their trainees young, the better to keep
their talent biddable."

Traithe reached out and touched her, a bare brush of fingers against
her hand.  Yet warmth flowed from the contact, and a calmness that lent
her surcease to think.

Unsure his kindness did not mask warning like a glove, Elaira chose a
rock and sat also.  "Courage saved nothing two days ago."  She laced
unsteady hands around her knees, self-conscious in the Sorcerer's frank
regard.

"If you speak of Arithon, he doesn't need any man's saving."

Petulant and ready to roost, the raven sidled and clipped its master
a peck on the ear.  Traithe called it a rule word, which prompted
Elaira to smile.

"Better."  The Sorcerer had a crinkle to his eyes that bespoke a
readiness to laugh.  "The occasion wasn't meant to be solemn."  He
pushed his bird from his shoulder, then watched with what seemed his
whole attention as it croaked in indignation and finally settled in a
nook and tucked its head under one wing.  "Let me say what I was sent
for, and see if your heart doesn't lighten."  As Asandir had done once
before to ease her nerves, Traithe bent down and made a small fire.

The kindling he used was a beggar's gleaning of broken cork floats
and bits of jetsam.  Flame caught with a hiss in the dampness, and shed
fine-grained halos in the drizzle.

Oddly content to be still, Elaira wondered whether some spell-ward of
quietude had been set along with the flames.

Traithe answered as though she had spoken.  "What peace you feel is
your own, but it may perhaps be helped by the ward of concealment
placed over this space between the rocks."  He grinned in gleeful
conspiracy.  "To your sisterhood this fire doesn't exist."

Elaira said, "Then you know about-" He sealed her lips fast with a
finger.  "Let me say what we know.  Otherwise," he stopped, let his
hand fall.  Inscrutable as a stone in a millpond, he studied her a
moment with his head cocked, then yielded before her straight strength
to his impulse.  "Otherwise, Sethvir was most plain, the misery of
remorse will later drive you to use this tide pool.  In salt water that
will fail to protect you from discovery, you will attempt to send
warning of your sisterhood's doings to the one of my colleagues who
might listen."

On her feet before she could react rationally, Elaira backed at bay
against the rocks.  Even her lips were white.

As if she had not budged, Traithe continued.  "Which act would be
treason against your Prime Senior's directive."  He tipped up his face,
sharply and brutally blunt.  "Unnecessary treason, brave lady, which is
why you will sit back down.

Morriel may not own you in spirit, but she does command your absolute
obedience.  The Fellowship can shield from her what happens by our
actions, but not what you undertake in free will."

The rush of waves through sand and stone seemed to consume all the
air for the moment while Elaira poised, half on the edge of panicked
flight.  In the end, she sat because her legs gave out; and because
Fellowship Sorcerers would hardly stand back and allow the
half-brothers to commit a whole kingdom to war without some
emphatically sound reason that Koriani intervention of any kind might
shortsightedly come to disrupt.  In a croak more like the raven's than
human speech, Elaira capitulated.  "Say your piece."

"Well," said Traithe.  Less solemn in his ways than Asandir, he was
smiling.  "For one thing, you need not warn us of an event that Sethvir
already knows.  Moriiel doesn't breathe these days without some sort of
surveillance from Luhaine."

"You shouldn't confide in me," Elaira said in a gasp of smothered
surprise.

As if she had piqued him with a riddle, Traithe's brows rose.

"Morriel's aware of the fact.  It's a sore point she won't tell
Lirenda, so I much doubt she'll challenge you to make it public."  He
went on, his manner as piquant as any matron sharing gossip at a well.

"Furthermore, if your Prime has chosen to meddle with Arithon
s'Ffalenn .  .."  The gleam in his eyes hot with mischief, the Sorcerer
shrugged ruefully.

"Let's by all means stay plain.  I'm not saying she's resolved on
such an action.  But if she should, her pack of conniving Seniors will
be richly entitled to the consequences."

,You imply that Arithon is defended?"  Intrigued despite her better
judgment, Elaira edged closer to the fire.

Traithe tucked back a flap of her cloak that the breeze pushed
dangerously near the sparks.  "I'm saying the Teir's'Ffalenn himself is
well able to guard his own interests."  When Elaira looked dubious, he
gave back a look that happily embraced shared conspiracy.

"Fatemaster's judgment, lady, the Fellowship itself had a tough time
trying to shepherd that spirit!  Let me tell you what happened once
when Morriel tried a scrying on Arithon."

His hands stuck out to warm near the fire like any innocuous old
man's, the Sorcerer went on to describe in satirical detail exactly
what transpired the day the wards over Kieling Tower had been breached
during conflict with the Mistwraith.

Traithe gave the telling no embellishment, but used humor and
bluntness like scalpels to bare a rotten truth.  He spared nothing.

Not Lirenda's furious humility or Morriel's' arrogant overconfidence.

Least of all did he avoid Arithon's vicious reaction to the fact that
Elaira's private feelings had been used as a tool for unscrupulous
prying.

Choking and spluttering through a mirth just shy of a seizure, Elaira
tried and failed to picture Lirenda upended in her own tangled skirts.
"A worthy prank."  She caught her breath finally, stung from her
laughter by real grief.  "I'm a game piece."  She, who most questioned
Koriani tenets and practices, had unwittingly become their most
indispensable cipher in the course of the coming conflict.

"Arithon knows that," Traithe said, equally serious and plain.

"He doesn't like it.  Should Morriel cross him again on those
grounds, he's going to hit her back with far more than a harmless
warning.

Have you access to the histories of the high kings?"

As she nodded, he said, "Good.  Read them and see what happens when
past scions of s'Ffalenn were pressed to embrace open enmity.

Make no mistake when I tell you, Arithon has inherited all of his
line's rugged loyalty.  He's got Torbrand's temper, too, intact as I've
ever seen it."

The scanty bits of fuel had burned now to a scarlet nest of embers.
Across a rising puff of smoke, Elaira looked at the Sorcerer whose
forthcoming nature came and went like broken clouds across sunlight.
Traithe had turned reticent again.

Though his eyes never shied from her regard, and his kindly air of
listener remained intact, his stillness invited her to question him on
her own.  "You're asking me to trust Arithon's judgment?"

"I ask nothing," Traithe amended gently.  "I offer only the
observation that Arithon is qualified to defend himself from any
Koriani interference that originates through you.  And he will do so,
never asking your preference on the matter."

Hands clasped hard beneath her cloak, Elaira chuckled.  "I see.

He breaks none of my vows in the process, and therefore I won't get
hurt.  Very neat.  I shall allow him to act as my protector, and
endeavor to be the dutiful initiate."  She gathered,her skirts to rise,
a lump in her throat brought by surety: this time the Fellowship's
intervention had diverted her from breaking Koriani mores.  But in
fact, the measure was a stopgap.  Traithe's concerns had the more
firmly grounded her self-knowledge, that the vows of her order were as
unsuited to her nature as crown and kingdom were to the music that fate
had forced Arithon to stifle.

Which of the pair of them would be first to break?  she wondered as
she watched Traithe douse the sparks of their fire with effortless
spell-craft.  The incoming tide would sweep off the ashes and leave
sands smoothed clean of footprints.

Traithe stood and roused his raven, which croaked like a drunk with a
hangover and hopped sullenly to its master's wrist.  Never so absorbed
by his bird as he appeared, the Sorcerer said suddenly, "You're not
alone, brave lady.  Nor are you entirely Morriel's plaything.  Not
since the day you chose to seek out Asandir in Erdane."

"Ath," said Elaira in a futile effort to bury her anguish behind
toughness.  "Now didn't I think that one escapade touched off my
troubles in the first place?"

The Sorcerer returned a look that drilled her through and gave no
quarter.  "Never sell yourself so short!"

"Take care of him," she blurted in heartfelt reference to the
s'Ffalenn prince.

Poised to leave, unobtrusive as the beggar she first had mistaken him
for, Traithe reached out and stroked her cheek, as the father she had
never known might have done to reassure a cherished daughter.  As his
hand fell away, she cupped the place he had caressed, and now the tears
fell and blinded her.

"Lady, great heart."  He sighed gently.  "The love within you is no
shame.  And since you fear to ask, I'll tell you: there is no secret to
be kept.  The Fellowship stepped back at Etarra because the grace of
spirit we know as life lay in danger of permanent imbalance.  Asandir
urged but never forced your beloved.  Arithon chose his kingdom ahead
of music by his own free will."

"What?"  Elaira stared back in ice-hard fury and disbelief.

"Why would he?"

Suddenly bleak as the clearest winter star field, Traithe said,
"Because he would not be the one man to stand in the path of the
Paravians' return to this continent."

"Well," said Elaira wretchedly.  "For his sake, I hope the creatures
prove worth it!"

"That you must judge for yourself."  A wistfulness haunted Traithe's
manner.  "I can tell you as fact that the Riathan Paravians are the
only unsullied connection we have to Ath Creator, and that their return
is the cornerstone for the future harmony of this world.

But words impart meaning without wisdom.  To understand, you and
Arithon must both survive to experience a unicorn's living presence."

A wave broke.  Driven on by rising tide, salt spray showered down,
mixed in coarser drops with the drizzle that never for an instant
ceased to fall.  "I must leave you now, brave lady.  The fire is out,
and the wards on this place will soon dissipate."

Elaira blotted a dripping nose and tried through resentment to
recover courtesy.  "I owe you thanks."

Seamed features lost beneath cloth that the raven sidled under to
take shelter, Traithe shook his head.  "Take instead my blessing.  You
need the consolation, I suspect.  I was sent to you because an augury
showed the Warden of Althain that, for good or ill, you're the one
spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best.  Should
your Master of Shadows fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call
down disaster."

Elaira resisted an ugly, burning urge to stop her ears.

"And if neither of us fails?"

Traithe soothed his bird with his fingers, that being the only
comfort he could offer to any breathing creature at this juncture.

"All, lady, we've been entrusted with this world and free will, which
certainly cancels guarantees."  He touched her hand in aggrieved
farewell.  "Never doubt.  At the Ravens', your action was right and
fitting."

He turned and departed, while wind and thin rain reduced him to a
fast-striding shadow against smothering fog and white sea.  Elaira
stayed on alone until the waves that surged with flood tide encroached
on the rocks and soaked her feet.

Dragging wet skirts above her ankles, she felt ready to return to her
colleagues.  The depression that had weighed on her earlier had lifted,
replaced by milder sadness shot through by the bold and heady challenge
of exhilaration.

Mor-riel might conunand her to Koriani loyalty and obedience, but
where Elaira chose to give her heart was a choice reclaimed for her
own.

Eventide His hook-nosed profile hard-lined in shadows and torchlight,
Gnudsog of the Etarran guard brings word from the war council held at
the border of Strakewood Forest: "Diegan and Lysaer are reconciled," he
informs his captains who wait in the meadow.  "We take the sure route
tomorrow, poison the river and the springs to kill the game, then
methodically starve out each campsite.  Pesquil's plan is best.
Children are the future of the clans, and without women the wretched
breed will die......

Deep under the eaves of the forest, in a valley riddled with traps,
clansmen under Steiven s'Valerient sharpen their swords and their
knives, and for the last time, wax their bowstrings; while on a
lyranthe the last of its kind, Halliron Masterbard plays ballads and
bright songs from better dayS, to inspire their hearts to a valor he
grieves will be futile....

Returned to his post at Althain Tower, Sethvir bends his regard
toward Rockfell Peak to check the wards which bind the Mistwraith; he
finds no flaws, and a small ease of mind, for though Arithon could
build on his training and possibly unravel those securities, having
suffered to subdue such an evil, Rathain's prince was least likely to
meddle in foolishness....

XVII.  March upon Strahewood Forest ressed out in clean tunics edged
in city colors of scarlet Dand gold, gleaming under polished helms and
smart trappings, and bearing on their backs and in their scabbards the
newly wrought arms and chain mail purchased by the merchant's treasury
at cost of eight hundred thousand coinweight, fine gold, the men of
Etarra's garrison formed up and marched just past dawn.  Set like a
sapphire in their midst, Lysaer sat his bridleless chestnut.  Lord
Commander Diegan and Captain Gnudsog were positioned at either flank,
while the banner bearers of the greater trade houses and message riders
on their lean-flanked mounts clustered in formation just behind.  Four
companies of standing army and reserves paraded after, in disciplined
units twenty-four hundred strong.

Lysaer made no conversation.  Groomed as befitted his past stature,
every inch the princely image of restrained pride, he was disinclined
to trivialize his first foray against the s'Ffalenn who had demolished
a fleet on Dascen Elur.

Fighting was ugly business.  No pennons, no style, and no fanfares
could mask that these men in their brilliance and finery marched, some
to die in blood and suffering.  Still, a heart not made of stone must
thrill to the muffled thunder of war destriers.  Each tight square of
troops boasted ninety mounted lancers, four hundred crossbowmen and
archers, and a perimeter of pikemen numbering nearly two thousand.

Deep within their protection rolled the supply wagons and' support
troops, and rearward, the additional thousand light cavalry under the
black kite standard of the northern league of headhunters.

Weather was also in their favor.  The last spring rains had finally
lifted; the rivers ran placid and shallow.

Sunlight pricked the horizon, edged to the east by the black trees
that rimmed Strakewood Forest.  For a time as the air warmed, the
companies marched knee deep through mists that swathed the meadows in
blue-gray.  These disbursed last from the hollows to bare rolling hills
and the dew-spangled grass of early summer, bespattered and dappled
with patches of red brush bloom and weathered rock.  A craggier
landscape than Daon Ramon, the plain of Araithe wore the season like a
cloak of rippling new silk, lush and sweet with flowers, overwhelming
the senses in living green.

Lysaer gazed across the vista, untrampled yet by the advancing mass
of his army.  In his birthland of Amroth, such rich forage would have
been grazed short by sheep.  He promised himself that if barbarian
predation were to blame for the lack of shepherds, his campaign against
Arithon would amend this.  Then, in belated reassessment he realized
that had these hills been used once as pastures, they should be
crisscrossed by remains of stone fences and sheepfolds.

There were none, or any foundations of ruined cottages.

These acres had possibly stayed untouched by man's industry through
the ages since Ath's first creation.  Why such obviously prime
pastureland should go wasted puzzled Lysaer, until his thought was
broken off by the hoofbeats of an outrider returning at a gallop.

The scout wheeled his mud-splashed mount and reined into step beside
Gnudsog.  "Lord," he saluted to Diegan, and then his commanding field
officer, "Captain."  But he looked at Lysaer as he delivered his
report, which was startling enough to call a halt to the advance.

Six barbarian children had been spotted, practicing javelin casts in
a glen just upriver of the ford across the Tai Quorin.

"A stroke of luck, Your Grace," Diegan said.  To avoid embarrassment,
he allowed Lysaer the titular courtesy due his birthright.  Since no
honorific at all implied a laborer's stature, and thus demeaned both
parties in conversation only socially acceptable between equals, other
Etarran officials lad followed suit.  "To find barbarians so easily,
and they, overtaken unaware."

Stolid on his horse as a figurehead, Gnudsog scowled his annoyance.
"Clan scouts are never so careless!"

"Elders, surely," Lysaer agreed.  His clear gaze swung toward the
scout.  "But children?  What would you guess were their ages?"

The answer held no hesitation: the largest had looked no more than
twelve.

"Rat's get all, and bad cess to them."  Gnudsog slapped a fly that
landed but had no chance to bite his horse.  "They'll know every inch
of this country, Deshir's scouts.  Likely as not, they're part of a
camp that's laid in an ambush farther on."

"Against an army?"  Diegan grinned, the gilt scroll work on his
helmet and the plumes on his bridle and harness the fashion of the
daredevil gallant.  "The odds would hardly be sporting."

"Barbarian's don't play at odds" came a querulous interruption from
the sidelines.  "In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened
stakes, and spring traps that rip out a man's guts or tear the axles
off wagons."  Smart in a black and white surcoat over chain mail dulled
with grease and years of polishing, Pesquil rode up to determine the
cause of the delay.  At the head of the column, he jerked short his
brush-scarred gelding that he liked best for its toughness.

"So you chase those children thinking to find an encampment of scouts
you can surprise, eh?  Well, try that.  Then find yourselves bloody."

Lysaer regarded the dip of the hills that unfolded in curves toward
the ford.  Chilly in courtesy he said, "Would you send your
ten-year-old son out as gambit before the weapons of a war host?"

"Perhaps.  If the stakes were arranged in my favor."  Sallow,
pock-scarred, and quick with nervous energy, Pesquil shrugged.  "For
sure, I've known clanborn chits who'd dangle out their newborns if they
thought any gain could be wrung from it.  The slow plan we follow is
safest."

But Diegan was ill-pleased to spend a summer swatting insects and
enduring rough camp in the open when a bolder victory might be
possible.  "Send in a small troop of light riders," he ordered Gnudsog.

"See where the children flee, and let the army follow if it's safe."

Pesquil reined around so hard his mount grunted in pain from the bit.
"Fools," he muttered.  "Idiots."  And he spurred to a canter back
through the lines to his headhunters.

Gnudsog watched him go, his huge hands crossed at his saddle pommel.
Then his eyes, black as rivets, swung to Lysaer.  "What do you think,
Prince?"  From his lips, the title implied insult.

Lysaer raised his head in genteel challenge.  "Send in your riders,"
he suggested.  "If a trap exists, then spring it with fewest losses."

"You don't think it's a trap."  Diegan soothed his restive destrier.
Then, his regard in speculation upon Lysaer, he raised a gauntlet
chased in glittering gold to signal the columns to rest at ease.
"Why?"

"Because I saw Arithon in a back alley with a band of knackers'
conscripts once, when he didn't think he was being watched."

Fair-skinned as an ice figure in the early sunlight, the prince
stroked the black-handled sword newly forged for his use in the field.

Rumor held that the blade had been engraved with Arithon's name in
reverse runes, which may have been the armorer'S insistence for shaping
a blade to kill a sorcerer.  Lysaer did not look superstitious or
afraid, but only pragmatic as he said, "The Shadow Master has few
scruples.  But I know him well enough to hedge that he'd sanction no
ambush that involved any use of small children."

At this, even Gnudsog reconsidered.  "You could be right."

Supporting evidence lay with the arrangements for the escape of the
knackers' brats.  Arithon's bribes had been lavish enough that hard
measures had been needed to pry loose the ield names of which parties
had treated with him.  Etarra's f captain scraped an itch underneath
his right bracer.  "Let's prove Pesquil a sissy."

Forty riders were dispatched to track the children.  From the rear of
the column, Pesquil watched them go, his narrow lips clamped in
disdain.  "Those lordly fops Gnudsog has to nursemaid didn't listen.

We'll keep our distance, then."

The mounted lieutenant at his elbow stopped fingering the scalp locks
that fringed his saddle, and widened seamed eyes at his commander.
"They're going in with the army, you think?  And you'd send our league
riding after?"

"Any trap laid by Deshans is bound to be placed deep in Strakewood."
Head cocked in consideration, Pesquil picked his teeth with a
fingernail.  "We'll go in, yes."  He clipped , ut a breathy laugh.
"With two whole divisions of garrison troops ahead, and another pair
blundering on each flank, whatever surprise the barbarians fixed'Il be
sprung before we try the trail.  Even Steiven's dirty tactics can't
murder ten thousand troops without exposure.  We'll win our bounties in
the mop-up."

"I hope your score's well squared with Daelion Fatemaster."

lieutenant adjusted studded reins in laconic resignation.

"They say we fight a sorcerer who weaves darkness.  For myself,
Sithaer, I'd always planned I'd die rich."

As Etarra's two score light riders crested the rise above the ford,
six young boys snatched up javelins and bolted like hares for the
forest.  Whether they had defied their parents to play in the open or
been posted in plain view for bait became moot as the riders drove
their mounts and charged after them.  They were quarry, and fear for
their lives spurred reensward, enemies their flight.  Flat out across
dew-tracked g with drawn blades swept down at their heels.  The boys
made straight course for shelter, vaulting the switched-back curves of
marshy streamlets on the butts of their toy wooden weapons.

They were small and light, and shod in deerhide that made little mark
on the hammocks, while the steel-rimmed hooves of the horses bit deep
through the soft turf and sank.  The riders were forced to take a
zigzagging course over firm ground or tear their mounts' tendons in the
bog.  They shouted and whipped on their horses and brandished sabers in
a show of bloodthirsty frustration, their orders plain.  The clan boys
were to be routed, not killed.  Pursuit must hound them into Strakewood
until they tired, then slack off and appear to give up.  Trackers would
take over from there.  The youngsters would be followed in stealth back
to their parents' encampment: a sensible plan, which pleased the
garrison's light horsemen, carefully chosen as fathers who might
condone the slayings of headhunters, but who had little inclination
themselves for the horror of skewering youngsters.

Hard-bitten to bitterness by the atrocities of his profession,
Gnudsog was not given to foolish chances.

His forty light riders crashed into the hazels and saplings that
edged the forest just seconds behind the last straggler.

Thickly tangled summer scrub swiftly isolated children from hunters.
Crows startled up from feeding on blackberries flapped away with
raucous calls of warning.  Squirrels scattered chattering in alarm.
Raked by briars and low branches, the horsemen determinedly pressed
onward.  Their mudflecked mounts gouged through dead sticks and moss,
the odd hoof fall a dissonant chink of steel against buried scarps of
granite.

Ahead, all but invisible in their deerhides, the barbarian children
raced in fierce silence, the one towhead among them picked out in the
gloom by the chance-caught flicker of filtered sunlight.

Intent on keeping him in sight, the lead rider never saw the wooden
javelin left braced at an angle in his path.  His mount gathered stride
and cleared a rotten log, then crashed, shoulder down, impaled.

Its scream of mortal agony harrowed the dawn-damp wood, while the
rider, thrown headlong, struck a bough at an angle and broke his neck
First casualty of the Deshir barbarians, he died with his eyes still
open and the taste of blood on his tongue.

Attracted to the site by the thrashing convulsions of dying
horseflesh, the survivors gathered and pulled up.  With spur and rein
they stayed their mounts' panic, while the first man in called the
verdict.

"He's stopped breathing."

A still, stunned moment progressed to passionate contention over
whether to stop now and call the army, or to ride down verminous whelps
whose parents had trained them for murder.

"Dharkaron's Spear!"  raged one rider.  "I'd say there's no clever
trap waiting!  Or the Sithaer-begotten brats would just draw us on and
not bother stopping to kill!"

That outcry was silenced, and grimly, by an officer given his
authority through Etarra's pedigreed elite.  "We stick with orders and
track.  One man will go back as spokesman.  Lord Diegan's no
coin-grubbing headhunter.  He may roust up the garrison.  Else risk
finding himself laughingstock as craven."

Which recast the affair as rank insult, for a boy's prank with a
wooden spear to have killed a man before the armed might of Etarra.

Shouts of agreement endorsed this plan, while the dismounted
volunteer asked for help.  Willing hands lifted the slain man and tied
him over the saddle for transport back to the main troop.

.6

Fled in swift silence up the marshy course of Tai Quorin, the
children were long since lost to sight.  But in the beds of green moss,
under the sills of the sedge clumps, water pooled in a flurried
progression of footprints.  These the ironclad hooves of the destriers
milled under as the main strength of Etarra's garrison plowed past.

The ground was left harrowed to brown mud that sucked and spattered,
causing the horses to stumble and the riders to curse as their tassels
and trappings became begrimed.  Lances hooked in e greenbfiar, and the
foot troops slogged silently to the rear.

The supply wagons perforce had stayed behind.  If Gnudsog had opposed
the decision to turn the main army up the riverbed, he knew better than
to belabor the mistake.  His m slash in his hardened leather face, he
brought mouth a gfi his lancers forward with professional
determination.

Noon passed.  No ambush seemed in evidence.  The fall of the
floodplain sloped more steeply, and the ground firmed, though the soil
beneath its canopy of deep wood still reeked strongly of bog.  Swarming
gnats remained in force.  The heavier shade at least curbed the growth
of brambles, and as the footing improved, so did spirits and eagerness.

Aware for some time that the hemming effect of the hillsides was
crowding his troops along the bank, Gnudsog consulted with Lord Diegan
and received permission to regroup.

"I mislike the feel of this entirely," he grumbled, his eyes on his
men as their ranks wheeled and reformed to order despite the unsuitable
terrain.  The garrison split and regrouped, two companies to divide and
cross the ridges on either side.

These would advance up adjacent valleys and flank the main force
along the river.  Gnudsog kept ruminating in monologue.  "Too easy."

At his side, stripped of his helm to adjust a crest plume disarranged
by low branches, Diegan raised his eyebrows.

"Does everything have to be difficult?"

"Here?  Against Steiven's clans?"  Gnudsog curled his lip and spat.
"Yes."

"But the clan chief might not be in command," Lysaer pointed out, his
regard, chilly blue, on the veteran captain, "Well."  Gnudsog cleared
his throat.  "Yon thieving little stoat of a sorcerer's clever enough,
if your cant to our council held truth."  Unfazed before lordly
affront, he grinned through his yellow, broken teeth.  "You and my Lord
Com and his hands, lightly crossed, on his sword.

mander will ride behind with the second division.  And if we go back
proving you hazed the city ministers like the ninnies they are, so much
the better.  I like my killing quick, with the advantage of superior
numbers.  Should things fail to get grim, you can always strip me of
rank.  It's my pension I'm risking, not your necks."

His helm half raised, his reins looped over one forearm, Lord Diegan
stiffened in the costly glitter of his accoutrements.

Aware the Lord Commander would protest, and quick to see Gnudsog was
earnest in a concern he lacked any polish to express, Lysaer
diplomatically intervened.  "No one loses pensions for good sense."  He
stroked his horse's neck, smiled, and said to Diegan, "Since I spoke
truth to your council, we'll ride behind.  Whether or not this clan
encampment is taken by surprise, should Arithon s'Ffalenn be with them,
we must expect counter thrust by sorcery.  Our presence may well become
needed to bolster the middle ranks."

"My sister will call you fainthearted," Diegan warned.

"She may."  Lysaer's smile never faltered.  "Better that than have
her weep for me dead."  He nudged his horse around and made his way to
the river's verge to find a place when the second column passed.

Diegan jammed on his helm, disgruntled, and hastily rearranged his
streamered reins.  When the Lord Commander of Etarra's guard had
trotted his horse beyond earshot, Gnudsog spat again, this time in rare
admiration.

"Dresses like a daisy, like they all do who sport pedigree," he
confided to the sergeant who awaited the order to march.  "But yon
royal puppy is canny at handling men.  He might be a priss at his
swordplay, still, I don't think I'd want him for my enemy."

Unable to find an appropriate reply to criticism involving his
betters, the sergeant complained instead about the gnats.

"Well," cracked Gnudsog, out of patience.  "Sound the horn for the
advance!  Clansmen are waiting, I know it so we might as well call them
to the bloodbath."

In moving waves of pennons and lances that juddered and cracked
through the greenwood, the army surged on upriver.

Half lost in the creak of armor and the jingle of stirrup and bit, a
jay squalled in raucous complaint.

Up the valley, a second jay answered.  Striped in shadow behind a
paling of saplings, charcoal smeared in patterns across his face,
Caolle hustled six breathless children past him and on upslope toward
safety.  To the runner crouched at his elbow, he whispered a hasty "All
clear."

-Soundless in his boots of beaten deerhide, the messenger @departed.
Branches slithered back into place across the, thicket, and through
slits between trembling leaves, Caolle measured the advance of Etarra's
thousands as they crashed up the riverbed below his vantage.

The last cohort passed and, carefully counted, the last rank.

Two divisions, in line with every hope and plan.  The other pair had
parted ways from the main troop to quarter the valleys to either side.
Caolle smiled.

A third jay called from the marshes.

"Now," Caolle mouthed.  The hand he held raised for the signal dipped
and raised, and then fell.

The command was seen and relayed upriver by a dozen scouts in
concealment, until it reached the head of a dried streambed that sliced
like a scar across the hill.

"Hie!"  yipped a barbarian teamster.  His whip fell with a crack like
the snap of a quick-broken twig, and four horses slammed weight against
their collars.  Ropes whipped taut through oiled blocks.  As the strain
transferred, mechanically redoubled, the huge logs which braced a
timber dam sucked and shifted in mud settings.  Again the clansman
urged his draft team.  Veins bulged in the necks of the horses, and
their hooves bit deep as they strained.

A brace gave; others canted, and the dam bowed, its log joints
streaked black with the first jetting trickles of leaked water.  While
the structure creaked and gave outward, the clansman slashed his team
free and drove them to a canter up the bank.

The dam burst apart on their heels.  Timbers flew like splinters,
driven by the loosed force of waters held in check through the last
weeks of northland spring rains.  The torrent reclaimed its balked
course with a roar, fanged in its froth by a burden of sharpened
stakes.  The clansman soothed his draft team to a halt just barely out
of reach.  While the torrent swept by like a demon, tearing up mats of
elder and.

birch, his pulse leaped in excitement.  The thunder of racing waters
was answered from five other sites throughout the valley, where other
holding ponds in Tai Quorin's watershed were simultaneously released to
rampage through rockstepped courses by the weight of held gallons and
gravity.

The plain alongside the riverbank in moments became gouged maelstrom
of boulders and white flood.

On the banks of the river Tai Quorin, the birds in the marshes fled.
A herd of deer took bounding flight over mallow and cattails, then
veered in fresh panic as they caught wind of the oncoming army.

About then the lead horses began to snort and sidle and shy, while
men cursed, and spurs dug, and Gnudsog raised his chin listening.

Too late he heard what animals sensed ahead of him: the booming growl
of thunder, with no cloud visible overhead.

The sound was deep, and oncoming, and weighty in voice to shake the
earth.  His fist on his destrier's reins like iron, even as the forward
scout outriders crashed shouting and gesticulating through the brush,
Gnudsog spun his horse on its haunches and slammed sideways into the
lighter mount of his message bearer.

"Ride!"  he screamed.  "Find Lord Diegan and the prince, and tell
them to seek cover on high ground."  Next, he barked orders for the
troops to wheel, though ranks were disordered and broken, and half the
war horses were mindless with fear, jammed one on another in herd
instinct to bolt.

Locked against motion by the weight of their own vast numbers, the
lead ranks saw the flood coming.

It rampaged over a snake-twist curve in the river, a towering,
tumbling brown wall jagged with logs, uprooted trees, and slashed
greenery.  The vanguard of Etarra's proud army was allowed a split
second of terror but no escape.

The water hit.

Men, mounts, and bright pennons crumpled as if struck by the
log-mailed fist of doom.  Horses screamed, upended, their cries as one
with their riders, who were crushed, and scythed under, and drowned.

The foaming jaws that crested over Tai Quorin's banks thrashed on in
a welter of chaos to cut down everything standing, to smash living
flesh without quarter, and to turn the snapped shafts of the lances
against those maimed, to impale, and gut, and club unconscious with a
force more furious than man's.

The passage of the flood was cataclysmicly swift, and it dragged on
its course the mangled destriers, the rent and sodden banners, and the
dismembered, drowned, and dying men of all but the extreme flanks of
Etarra's first division.

Given warning by the dispatch of Gnudsog's staff messenger, Lord
Diegan did not turn tail and abandon his second company in a bolt for
higher ground.  In a rapid-fire string of orders, he commanded four
reliable men to escort Lysaer out of danger, then called to muster the
ranks behind for a speedy retreat from the riverbank.

The ground was soggy.  The suck and splash of many horses and men
drawn to a halt in one place foiled the most effective shout; and
Diegan lacked Gnudsog's bull bellow.

So that when the soldiers he had dispatched to attend the prince
closed instead around his own horse and insistently grasped the bridle,
he thought his first orders had been mistaken.

"The prince!"  he cracked out in white anger.  "I said, you escort
His Grace, Lysaer."

The men continued to seem deaf.

Lord Diegan spun in his saddle, suspicion in his eyes as bright as
the glint on his jewels.

And Lysaer met him, harder still.  "Go!  This was my error.

My fight.  Let me save what I can.  For I fear the worst still awaits
us."

Enraged and far from willing to desert his post of command, Lord
Diegan hauled to wheel his horse.  Between his hands the reins recoiled
into slack; his own men had cut the leather at the bit ring, and were
traitorously goading his mount to trot away from the river and his
troops.

"Damn your royal effrontery to Sithaer!"  cried Lord Diegan.

Lysaer gave him back an insouciant wave, while he directed cracking
strings of directions that effected a miracle of smooth deployment
among the troops.  As Lord Diegan was dragged up the rise toward the
forest, his last, venomous thought was that no man alive should be
blessed all at once with looks, and toughness, and such surpassing
talent for leadership; grudging resignation followed that perhaps this
was why the Fellowship had insisted on restoring royal rule to start
with.

Three-quarters of the men were clear of the river course when the
spate gushed from the narrower channel of the upper valley and raced to
claim the marshy stretch of flatland.

Tai Quorin's fury was less spent than engorged on its burden of
disemboweled horses and wracked men.  Laced in dirty foam, encumbered
by stripped caparisons and bodies both thrashing and lifeless, the
flood bore down upon the second division of Etarra's city garrison.

Lysaer heard the hiss and splash, felt the thunderous shake of the
pummeled earth translate from the ground through his horse.  He did not
turn.  Although every nerve in his body was keyed to the disaster about
to overtake him, he continued in his clear, even voice to issue concise
instructions to convey the next cohort of pikemen to safe ground.

The men who dragged Diegan by force up the rise from the marshlands
watched helpless as the waters closed, threshing down.  They saw the
fear scribed on the faces of their front-rank companions, impossibly
trapped; they saw and could do nothing to stem the disordered burst of
panic and the tragic unraveling of an order that against odds had held
until now.  And they saw, some of them weeping, the prince on his
magnificently trained chestnut struggle with spur and seat to hold his
ground.

The Lord Commander they had spared from destruction ceased in that
moment to fight them, but drove his fist again and again in balked fury
against the mailed flesh of his thigh.  No man could do aught now but
watch.  The gelding was schooled to the sternest standards by the
best-gifted horsemen in the continent.  But as the waters crashed
hungrily down, bridleless, it reverted to instinct.  The Lord Commander
and his escort in the wood saw it rear and then bolt like an arrow
through straw, straight into the pressed ranks behind.  The army
seethed in a mass stampede of berserk flight.  Footmen were trampled,
and companions shoved and even stabbed as soldiers clawed to reach the
high ground.

Then the flood closed over all with a slap that diminished the
screams, the shouts, and every other futile mortal protest, Because the
pair, mount and rider, were moving with the flow, the crest did not at
once immolate them.  Heads surfaced, upflung in struggle, noble
chestnut with an eye rolling white, the other sleeked wet and shining
blond.  Lysaer had discarded his helm, but could do nothing to shed the
chain mail that could drown him.  Then the unseen thrust of a log, or
maybe a submerged corpse entangled in shed loops of harness, battered
and encumbered the swimmers.  The horse rolled and went under in the
sucking rush of current.  Of the rider they saw no more sign.

Lord Diegan's fury went cold.  "You and you!"  he said through
clenched teeth to the men who still held his horse's bridle.  "Knot my
reins to the bit!"  He snapped the severed leather in their faces
without caring if he took out an eye.

Then he spurred down the bank and reclaimed his post with a shout
that carried even over the gush of Tai Quorin's black torrent.

"Etarrans!  To me!  Reform ranks."

Somewhere upstream lurked the clansmen who had arranged this
disaster.  They would die very messily, Diegan swore as he reviewed for
losses and discovered still wider calamity.  Of the first and second
companies of Etarra's guard, scarcely a quarter remained standing.

These waded, dripping, toward the bank.  They towed the maimed and
the dying; still, these were the luckier ones, since horror did not end
with the flood.  For the troops Lysaer's considered logic had sent
clear in advance of the waters, the hillsides now offered poor haven.

Where the riverbanks appeared most solidly inviting, the footing lay
undermined in a maze of deadfalls and traps.  The ground give way
beneath the lancers' destriers.  Their screams rent the air as they
fell twisting into pits lined with sharpened stakes.

"Stay in the shallows!"  Diegan cried.  He muscled his mount by main
force off dry ground, then plowed girth-deep through rushing waters to
rally his straggle of survivors.  The horse cloths wicked up water,
dragging his mount at each step.  He cut them away.  Since they bore
his house blazon and badges of rank, a grazed and bleeding lieutenant
lashed them up crudely to a pike pole.  Around that dripping,
swamp-sodden standard the second company struggled to reform denuded
ranks.  They gathered, hauling in their moaning wounded, and killing in
deft mercy those horses unable to rise.  The flood torrent crested and
passed to leave a foamlaced train of muddy rapids, pocked into rills
and potholes that were not caused by rocks but by the flesh, bone, and
sinew of Etarra's brave fighting force, with its eighteen hundred
lancers, its silk pennons, its handpicked recruits, and its chain mail
and arms, bought new from the merchants' levy.

As the diamond lines of stiff current eased into slack ripples, the
river receded to yield up its toll of carnage and dead.  Of the body of
a drifter-bred chestnut gelding there was no sign, nor had any man of
Diegan's company seen trace of its royal rider.

Of Lysaer no one spoke, but his absence weighed on the calm that fell
as the roar of Tai Quorin diminished.  On the bank, a band of archers
fussed with spoiled fletching and stretched bowstrings.

Knee-deep in muck and flattened sedges, pikemen drew daggers and
slashed the drenched pennons that unbalanced their pole arms in
desperate, grimfaced need to seek out clan enemies and kill.  Hardly a
man was not bleeding.  Scarcely a horse was not lame.

The only outcry to be heard was the cross scream of jay.

Something whipcracked through the foliage.  A standing man staggered
and collapsed and around him, others started shouting.

The clanborn were firing off arrows.

Another man buckled against Diegan's horse.  He fought the beast's
sideward shy; felt a whisper of wind flick his cheek.  The flights came
not in volleys but singly, shot at leisure from a point of heavy cover
up the slope.  The shafts snicked and cracked through pale birches.

They whined through windless air to smack with the malevolent skill
of scout marksmen into the stranded ranks in the marshes.

Diegan cried orders for the sensible counter move, to retreat and
duck shoulder-deep in water, to seek bulwarks behind hammocks and the
brush-caught mounds of dead horses.  As he used the flat of his sword
to belt his bucketing mount into the reed beds, only a seasoned few
followed.

Unmoored by a lust for blood and vengeance, the hotterblooded men and
fresh recruits charged at the origin of the cross fire.

The deadfalls, the spring traps, and the slip nooses set in waiting
all claimed their inevitable toll of lives.  Steiven's scouts owned a
gristly ingenuity, and their toil's harvest laced the greenwood yet
again with the agonized screams of townsmen who died, slaughtered,
without one blow struck in defense.

Four hundred yards downstream, creeping silent and unmounted through
marshes flash-flooded under waters rinsed opaque with yellow clay,
Captain Mayor Pesquil's advance scouts found Lysaer s'Ilessid.

Stranded on a sandbar with swift waters sheeting past on either side,
he stood skin-wet and shivering, one forearm bathed in blood.

His face was grazed, his clothing ripped.  His sword also was
scarlet, though the right hand gripped white to the pommel showed no
wound.

Half unmoored from thread settings, sapphires hung like clots from
his surcoat, each sparking cold fire at the ripping jerk of each
breath.  At the prince's feet, mud-caked as his boots, sprawled the
corpse of a fine chestnut gelding with a log staked through its lean
barrel.  Its throat had been cut.

Questing flies already sucked its filmed eyes.

Knee-deep in a current still treacherous with debris, the scout who
encountered the pair discreetly queried, his voice a bare breath above
a whisper, "Your Grace?"

Lysaer whipped around.  He had a black bruise on his chin.

The rest of his face was white to the bone, and his eyes, bright and
empty as his jewels.  Clumsily stanched with a knotted rag, his arm
seeped from a nasty gash.  Faced forward, the reason for his unsteady
breathing was disclosed by the plum-colored swelling pressed against
the burst rings of his mail.

No stranger to injuries, the scout added, "You appear to have broken
your collarbone."

He received no answer.  A nearly imperceptible tremor swept the man
before him from head to foot.

"It is shock.  You must sit."  The scout stepped forward fast,
prepared for the chance his charge might faint.

"Not here."  As if the drowned and disemboweled corpses wadded like
rags in the sullied waters did not exist, Lysaer shifted his regard
back to the horse at his feet.  "Never here."

Beyond him, a clot of logs and brush rolled in the current.

Sunlight silvered the crescent bill of a pike, its sodden streamers
fanned across the cheek of a corpse left in openmouthed surprise: his
jaw had been fully torn away.  Lysaer dropped his sword, raised his
hand, and masked the side of his face between the arch of his
forefinger and thumb.

Since he looked on the edge of collapse, the scout presumed and
gripped the royal elbow in support.

A shudder jarred the prince in recoil.  Lysaer's head snapped up.

He wrenched free, and the scout saw in dawning horror that His Grace
suffered no confusion at all but a self-revulsion so deep it shocked
the watching spirit to behold.

"I was wrong," Lysaer said with the same, self-damning clarity.

"Daelion's pity upon me, every man who has died in this place has
been ruined for a misplaced belief and my idealistic folly."

Pesquil's scout stumbled to find a banal reply.  "Clan tactics are
ever without honor, Your Grace."

But it was not the barbarians' touch at warfare that had splintered
Lysaer's heart into rage; it was the knowledge, delivered on two
companies' ruthlessly massacred bodies, that he had been masterfully
deceived.

Arithon was a trickster to make his s'Ffalenn forebears in Karthan
seem as mere simpletons in comparison.  For this trap to have been
baited with children meant the scene over the shadow brigantine in
Etarra's back alleys had all been a sham, most carefully engineered,
most exactingly executed.

Here, over the corpse of a horse, amid a riverbed swollen still in
carnage, Lysaer understood that the joy, the compassion, the agonized
self-sacrifice Arithon had shown toward the brats conscripted to the
knackers' yards had been nothing, nothing at all.  Just another ruse,
another play of diabolical sleight of hand and seamless guile.

This man, this bastard of shadows, had no scruple, but only an unholy
passion for lies of a stripe that could cajole human sympathy and then
turn and without conscience rend all decency.

Quite aside from Desh-thiere's curse, Lysaer rededicated himself to
moral purpose.  His half-brother, so gifted in magecraft and so
superior in unprincipled cunning, was a blight and a threat to society.

With a continent riddled with encampments of barbarians, each one a
ready weapon for his hands, no bound existed to the havoc Arithon might
choose to create.

Lysaer stirred.  Seared to numbness by the enormity of his mistake,
he bent, closed his hand, and retrieved his sword.

The blade he cleaned on his surcoat, and the scout's banality he
ignored.  "My horse is dead," he said crisply.  "I shall need another."

"No man goes mounted with my headhunters," interjected a severe voice
from the side.  Unseen, unnoticed, Captain Mayor Pesquil waded the last
strides toward the sandspit, several scouts arrayed at his heels.  The
interruption in his patrol had been noticed, and reported with a zeal
that suggested his underlings knew what their posts were worth.

Lysaer disregarded the impertinence.  Wide and unflinching in candor,
his eyes transferred to the commander of Etarra's league of
headhunters.  "This was my mistake.  Since my ignorance has led to
disaster, I'm ready to listen.  But in one thing I will not be swayed.

Arithon s'Ffalenn will be stopped.  And killed.  And if you deem it
necessary to slay children to keep a weapon such as Steiven's clansmen
from his hands, I shall no longer obstruct you."

Pock-scarred and twitchy with a flame of nervous energy, Pesquil's
black eyebrows arched.  If he was startled, his mocking inquisitiveness
stayed unblunted.  "Did my Lord Diegan survive?"

"I hope so.  I sent him to cover on the bank with all of the men I
had time to send out of danger."  Tartly polite, Lysaer added, "Is the
interrogation finished?"

Now Pesquil was astonished, and not quite glib enough to hide it.

Urbanely defensive, Lysaer said, "If my judgment was lacking, my
first duty was to see the men didn't lose their commander by it.

The lanky, curled braid that Pesquil wore for battle slapped his
cheek as he jerked his head.  "To Sithaer with your honor.  I would
ask, rather, how you got any pedigreed scion of Etarra to agree to take
orders from anybody."

Now Lysaer's expression turned arch.  "Simply put, there are certain
advantages to being born and raised a king's heir."  A heartbeat later,
he smiled.  "The nasty-minded sort of arrogance that stops a man being
gainsaid is one of them."

"Hah!"  Pesquil slapped his thigh in contempt, but around him, the
men who knew him best hid grins.  Lysaer saw as much, and understood
they had reached an agreement.  And so he kept his humor when Pesquil
added, "Well, then, Prince.  There won't be much advantage if you
choose to keep up bleeding and wind up keeled over on that horse."

Stiffly, for his dignity balked at public handling, Lysaer extended
his badly wrapped arm that by now dripped messily scarlet.

The man Pesquil signaled stepped forward, and with a deft expertise
took charge.  The binding and slit bracer beneath were pulled away, the
gash examined and bandaged.

Of the men, only Pesquil dared comment.  "You're lucky.

The cut is deep, but it runs with the line of the muscle.

You'll scar, but have no loss of function."

Neither grateful nor relieved, Lysaer half turned his face as his
collarbone also was examined, the arm he did not need for a sword slung
and strapped immobile.  Beneath the hauberk at his neck as they had cut
away the padding to probe the bone, his pulse could be seen, heavy and
rapid with anger.  He said in a tone almost level, "How many do you
think survived this?"

"None."  Pesquil squinted across muddied waters, while snarls of
brush drifted by and a corpse trailed, moored by a wrack of ripped
trappings.  "There would have been deadfalls, of course.  Pits and
spring traps that rip to disembowel.

These are Steiven's clans you have marched on."

When Lysaer endured this, still steady in silence, Pesquil's lips
quirked in a sneer.  "Ah, Gnudsog, you are thinking.  Why not say so?

The veteran who saw fit not to question, despite his years and
experience .  . ."  The officer who had led Etarra's headhunters
through a career of blazing obsession studied Lysaer with pity.  "You
should know about Gnudsog that his brother and young son died at the
hands of barbarians.  They fell with a merchant's train on their way to
East Ward to attend a cousin's wedding.  Etarra's great captain got his
start hunting heads, as anyone would readily tell you.  He stopped
because he loved it too much.  Dearer than his own life, he once told
me."  Irked now, and bristling because this prince was listening
sincerely, as no scion of fine pedigree would deign to do, Pesquil
curled his lip.  "If he thought he could kill a few barbarians, old
Gnudsoywould've thrown every soldier he had to Daelion and the Pits of
Sithaer."

"I was the one who did that," Lysaer corrected with quick acerbity;
the scout finished with his dressings and withdrew, embarrassed as the
discussion went on as if both men Were private.  "I thought I was
waiting for you to say what was left to be done.  We still have the
companies on our flanks."

Pesquil laughed, but softly.  "Do we?"

And across from him, Lysaer's gaze wavered as cold remembrance
touched him: that bad as the river had been, they had yet to encounter
any shadows.  He collected himself in a breath.  "Are you afraid to
find out?"

"No."  Come to his decision, Pesquil disbursed his scouts on a hand
signal.  As they fanned out, efficiently soundless, and vanished in
pursuit of lapsed duty, their leader backstepped into the shoaling
waters of Tai Quorin.  "Come, then, Your Grace," he invited.  "But this
time we hunt Deshans my way."

In stealth they worked upriver; past the sprawled dead with their
eyes and their mouths clogged with mud; past scarlet-rinsed puddles and
broken swords and destriers, the urve of their bellies like whales on a
beach, but for the straps of breastplate and saddle girth or the
brush-jammed arch of a stirrup.  Lysaer did not flinch from the
carnage.

When Pesquil demanded that he rip the jewels from his surcoat to kill
their chance sparkle in the sunlight, he obeyed, for clansmen were
stationed in these woods.  Upstream, less faintly as they progressed,
they could hear sounds of shouting and the high, shrill screams of
dying horseflesh.

The barbarians were still at their slaughter.

From pale, Lysaer had gone sick white.  It took every shred of
self-control and a humility more demanding than courage to keep still,
to stay with Pesquil, moving silent from a thicket of reeds to the
shadowy pool beneath a deadfall, keeping each step shallow, so their
boots did not break water and cause a splash.

They stopped again.  Lysaer clenched his teeth against the pain of
his cuts and contusions, and the flaring stabs that resulted when his
side or his collarbone was jostled.  Movement came, ever so soft, in
the fronds of a willow by the riverside.  A scout returned.  Head bent,
Pesquil received the report.

Lyster could not hear the words, though in the forest, no birds
called.  The rush and tumble of high waters had receded also, and the
gnats were swarming, bloodthirsty.  They bounced off his nose and his
ears in maddening circles, and inhaling, he had to struggle not to
sneeze.

From upstream also came silence.

Ankle-deep in flat water, Lysaer gripped himself hard to keep from
shivering in a paroxysm that had nothing to do with cold or shock.

Several moments passed before he became aware that Pesquil stared at
him from under halfclosed lids.

Under that piercing scrutiny, court training alone enabled him to
speak with no reflection of urgency.  "You have news?"

Pesquil's upper lip twitched, then relaxed in a one-sided smile that
held no shred of joy.  "Shadows," he said clearly.

"Shadows and traps, to the west of us.  More traps and archers, over
the ridge to the east.  The flanking divisions have, not passed
unscathed.  But unlike those drowned by Tai Quorin, there are numbers
enough to stand, fighting."  Arithon was here.  Confirmation triggered
in Lysaer a timultuous anticipation.

In a vise of self-control tighter than anything he needed previously,
the prince stayed his sword hand ripping blade from scabbard in a
curse-driven lust to rend and kill.  Etarra's troops were still dying
of his mistakes.

Their needs claimed his first responsibility.  "Up this valley there
were living men left just a bit ago."

"I know."  Pesquil surged ahead, lightly mocking to hide admiration.
"We'll pass upstream first, never worry."

The sun beat down, and the flow of falling water subsided.  Here and
there, marsh reeds pricked out of beds slicked into herringbone
patterns, dulled with a velvet of drying silt.  The air hung thick and
quiet.  Lysaer chafed at their progress, which stayed slow since
Pesquil insisted their advance remain cautious and covert.  Tossed
across the sheen of bared flats like wads from a ragpicker's pack lay
the limp dead of Etarra's garrison, conspicuously lacking both wounded
and living horses.  Not all had perished of drowning; not all bore
macerating wounds.  Lysaer paused in the act of stepping over the body
of a petty officer, and the jolt of what eyesight recorded transferred
like a blow to his belly.

The man's throat had been cut.

Choked by an explosion of nausea, Lysaer felt a hand chop the small
of his back and propel him forcibly onward.

"Such surprise," Pesquil said sourly.  "You didn't really think, did
you, that the river could've done for them all?"

The heat, the swimming reflections off wet mud, the fall of drops
from draggled cattails, all conspired to turn Lysaer's head.  He fought
back the dizziness, enraged at how long he needed to recapture the
semblance of self-command.

"Whoever did this could not have murdered two divisions without
suffering a single loss."

"Damn near," murmured Pesquil, paused to receive yet another report
from a scout.  "Lord Diegan is alive, at least.

He's downriver, safe but unable to fight.  My surgeon is just now
picking an arrowhead and sundry bits of chain mail out of the gristle
of his flank."

But the news that Etarra's Lord Commander had survived brought Lysaer
little reprieve.  "I've seen no barbarian dead."

"I have."  The scout had silently vanished.  Pesquil now scanned the
wood ahead intently.  "But precious few, my prince.  No clansman will
fight when he can ambush.  He will not leave cover until his killing is
accomplished, and even he'll do so warily.  To catch him and engage
him, you must creep close and never let him sight you.  And then you
must lie in wait with the patience of almighty Ath."  Pesquil suddenly
froze and caught Lysaer back by the shoulder.

"Don't answer," he breathed sharply; and as the prince stiffened to
his touch, "Don't move."

His attention was trained into the shadows, away from the lit expanse
of flats.  Lysaer too watched the forest.  Past the sun-flecked dances
of gnats, under the silvered boughs of beeches that upheld their
vaultings of copper leaves, he saw gaping holes torn in the ground, and
the slashed earth that marked where horses had struggled as the footing
gave under their forelegs.  He saw the white gleam of a fallen sword,
the gilt fringes torn off a caparison; he saw too the bundled dead,
with arms outflung or hands slackly curled over the shafts of the
arrows that had killed them.  Through the raw beat of pulse through his
veins, and a fury too bitter for expression, Lysaer forced himself to
exhaustive search, and to read, beyond omission, in ripped brush and
scarlet tipped stakes and desecrated flesh, the fates of the men who
had fled the river.

Steiven's clansmen had been nothing if not thorough.

A man whimpered, unseen in the gloom.  Lysaer tensed to rise,
prepared to succor survivors.  Pesquil snatched him back with a grasp
that jarred the broken ends of his collarbone, and also the cracked
ribs in his left side that the scout who strapped him had not found.

Next, Pesquil's horny palm closed over his face, stifling even the
hissed air that was all his expression of pain.

On a breath scented in garlic, Pesquil mouthed in his ear, "Keep
silent.  The wrong move, the slightest noise, and you kill us all."  He
maintained his suffocating grip while, in cruel vindication of his
warning, the unseen soldier's suffering became cut off in mid-cry.

There followed a bubbling sigh whose cause could not be mistaken.

Somewhere very close by, barbarians were yet about their business of
slitting the fallen men's throats.

Slowly, deliberately, the headhunter captain released his restraint.
Lysaer blotted his cheek where the studs of Pesquil's bracer had gouged
a scab, the look he returned a blast of stifled frustration.

Snake silent, the commander of Etarra's headhunters dispatched a
series of hand signals to the hidden ranks of his scouts.  Then he
touched Lysaer's wrist and crept deeper into the forest.

Progress was more cautious than before.  Since deadfalls and traps
might lurk unsprung between the trees with their matted mantles of
creepers, Lysaer learned a headhunter'; way of probing the soil with a
weapon before inching forward, and to stalk head down, careful to leave
undisturbed any brush or vine or loose root that might hide the trigger
for a spring trap.  The scents of burgeoning summer foliage hung
unsettled with the reek of recent death, and often the tufted mosses
squelched under hand or knee with the wet heat of fresh-spilled blood.

The gloom deepened.  Ahead, his attention trained forward, Pesquil
poised.  With fingers pinched to steel to damp stray sound, he slowly,
silently drew his blade.

Lysaer crept abreast and followed his guide's line of sight.

Through a lattice of birches and black firs, a light-footed squad of
boys busied themselves among Etarra's fallen.  clad in deerskin,
furtive in movement as wild creatures, the@ were there to pilfer
weapons, Lysaer presumed-until his eye was arrested by a telltale
glimmer of steel.  Horrified incredulity shook him.  The shaded depths
of the thickets no longer masked the fact the boys' hands were bathed
to the wrists.  Small fingers and sharp daggers ensured that town-bred
wounded never rose.  Before his stunned eyes he saw a son of Deshir's
clans end a man pleading for mercy with a practiced slash across the
windpipe.  Other victims, who sprawled unconscious or moaned facedown
in their agony died as fast, of a well-placed stab in the neck.  The
butchery was done in speed and silence, and ruthless efficiency without
parallel.

"The little fiends!"  Lysaer gasped softly.

"Vengeance," Pesquil whispered.  "This time we have them.  There
won't be another trap waiting."

Etarra's league of headhunters deployed with oiled care, and at
length the little rise lay triply ringed with poised men.

When Pesquil signaled the attack, only the inner rank charged.

They cut directly for the kill and did not mind if a child or two
slipped past.  The outer lines would mop up any fugitives.

At the forefront of the strike force, Lysaer thrust his sword inside
the guard of youngsters' daggers with no more hesitation than a man
might feel who stabbed rats.  This was not war but execution, the lives
he destroyed of tainted stock.

,Royal requisites inured a man to cruel decisions; if they sickened
him, it must not show, and if they softened him, he was no fit vessel
to rule.

If Arithon s'Ffalenn used children for his battles, the scar upon the
conscience must be his.

 First Quarry

On a thicketed knoll amid the valley adjacent to Tai Quorin, the
half-brother that Lysaer had sworn to kill sat in a brush brake
alongside five of Steiven's archers.  Young Jieret knelt restlessly at
his shoulder, wielding a bow with a nervous prowess the equal of any
grown man's.  Arithon himself bore no weapon.  Empty-handed, he perched
with his legs drawn up, his wrists dangled lax on his knees.  Head bent
and eyes half lidded, he appeared on the lazy edge of sleep.

In fact, he kept his immediate senses detached out of bleakest
necessity.

Clan runners had earlier confirmed that the s'llessid prince had
marched with the doomed divisions that advanced up Tai Quorin's banks.

His fine chestnut horse had been seen to go down, but that its rider
survived both flood and deadfalls was never for an instant in doubt.

The burning urge of Desh-thiere's curse continued insidiously to gnaw
at Arithon's inner will.  He felt it always, a tireless pressure
against reason, an ache that pried between every thought and desire.

The knowledge of Lysaer's presence played on his nerves like a
craving, volatile as a spark fanned dangerously close to dry tinder.

The nightmare was too substantial, that he could not encounter his
half-brother alive and retain his gtip on self-will.

Had Deshir's clans not relied upon his gifts for survival, he should
have been far from this place.

"Here, Jieret," one of the scouts chided as the boy retested the
tension of his bow and at full draw pretended to take aim.  "Don't be
wasting your shots, boy.  Use up those arrows that suit you for length,
and we've not got spit for replacements."

"I know that."  Jieret glowered, his fingers running up and down, up
and down the new gut string of his recurve.  He wore his hair tied back
in a thong like the men, and tried brazenly hard to hide dread.

Ever since the prescient dream that slipped his recall, he had been
moody and difficult to manage.

A word from Arithon might have eased him.  But the Master of Shadows
this moment had no shred of perception to spare anyone.  No mage would
willingly broadcast his finer vision across a field of war.

The wrench as quickened spirits were torn from life in the bursting
pain of mortal wounds could and had unhinged reason.

Barriered as tightly as he had ever been through his nerve-haunted
stay at Ithamon, Arithon engaged his talents with the delicate
precision of a clock maker winding the coil for a mainspring.

Throughout the previous night, he had walked the valley barefoot,
crossing and recrossing familiar ground as he laid in spell and
counterspell and anchored them in fragile tension to the subliminal
pull of the compass points.  This oak, and that stone, and eastward to
west, a sentinel line of brush and saplings and old trees; a thousand
points of landscape became his markers.  Now he played his awareness
across the fine-spun net of his night's labor; he tuned his wards, or
moved them, or cajoled them from strength to dormancy, the results all
balanced to a hairbreadth to spin a maze-work of shadows across the
vale.  To this, the strategy painstakingly wrought from the fruits of
his tienelle scrying, he layered energies to warp air and deflect the
natural acoustics.

If he did not engage his talents in direct intervention to take life,
the distinction was narrowly made.

By his hand, the neat ranks of Etarra's right flanking division
blundered abruptly into darkness.  The rocks, the mires, the twisted
stands of runt maples, broke their advance into chaos.  Calls of
inquiry rebounded between distressed soldiers, while the orders of
officers to rally split to untrustworthy echoes and sent whole cohorts
stumbling awry through rock-sided ravines and marshy dells.

The shadows themselves defied nature.  A townsman who spun around to
backtrack would see his path open to clear sunshine.  If he yielded to
fright and instinct and fled that way in retreat, he encountered no
further hindrance.  But any Etarran soldiers high-hearted enough to use
that reprieve to IF@ recover their bearings at next step became
swallowed by darkness.

Blinded and lost to direction, they thrashed through branches and
bogs, twisted ankles and bruised shins on an unkindness of rocks and
crooked roots.  The terrain funneled them north, where they floundered,
battered and disoriented, into a dazzling brilliance of sudden
sunlight.

Arrows met them in whispered, even flights loosed off by hidden clan
marksmen.  Soldiers screamed, and crumpled, and died; others warned of
ambush by the cries of their fallen ducked back toward the cover of the
shadows, to be cut down in turn by companions too rattled to
distinguish town colors from the deerskins of enemies.

Bewildered shouts and groans of agony, all rebounded into echoes,
recaptured by webs of complex conjury.  Arithon sensed like ebb tide
the continuous draw on his resources.

Like a killing frost out of season, the spell-craft taught by his
grandfather mixed uneasily with murder.  The line was most critical
where magecraft subsided, and dying men spasmed like seines of dredged
fish, gasping their final breaths.  As though he wound silk past raw
flame, Arithon worked to a perilous paradox: attuned to the outermost
demands of sensitivity, while sealed still and deaf within selfimposed
strictures of silence.  He heard but did not answer the quips between
the archers as they sorted fresh arrows, or passed around waterskin and
dipper.  Pressed by doubt, and by knife-edge awareness that townborn
enemies must be allowed to break through only in manageable numbers,
Arithon beat back the weariness that pressed aches to the core of his
flesh.  Should he slip, lose track and grip on just one lancer or foot
cohort, Steiven's clansmen could be swiftly overrun.  Engrossed in
concentration that must target exactly which victims to release, he
sensed nothing momentous as, by the river course over the east ridge,
the lifeblood of Deshir's young sons soaked on the banks of Tai Quorin.

But young Jieret, who had Sight, cited aloud.  "Ath, Ath, it's
Teynie!"  He threw down his bow and tugged Arithon's shoulder in
dawning, agonized horror.  "Hurry!  She's going to betray them all."

Dazed and burdened with his interleaved mesh of mazewoven shadows and
defense wards, Arithon neither heard the words nor felt the boy's
urgent touch.  He roused anyway.

The oath lately sworn with Steiven's son had been a blood ritual, and
for the mage-trained such things became binding beyond a mere promise;
his life and the boy's were subtly twined.  Like a man slapped out of a
coma, he mustered back full awareness and moved, but not in time.

Lost to panic and raw grief, Jieret shoved past the archers and
vaulted the paling that served as cover.

No chance existed for second remedy.  Arithon dropped hold on the
spells, let them collapse in a tangling cascade of frayed energies.

The shadow barriers being easiest to stabilize, he locked a lightless
pall across the valley that would partially hamper Etarra's troops.

"You're on your own," he informed in clipped apology to the archers.

"Stand or retreat as you will, but at least send a runner to warn
your fellows."

Then he was over the breastworks and after Jieret with his sword
sliding clear in midair.

Of the scouts posted with him, half remained.  The rest grabbed up
weapons and bows and jumped after, hailing companions as they went.

"Jieret's run off, the prince after him.  Divide your numbers and
come, they'll need support."

Dodging through elders and thin brush, Arithon spared no thought for
regret.  Had Jieret's spurious talent recaptured the vision that led to
the slaughter of Deshir's innocents, any futures traced through his
tienelle scrying would now carry unknown outcomes.

If Deshir's clans were beyond saving, he had vowed that Steiven's son
be spared.

He poured all his heart into running, slammed through a last stand of
birch, and at last overtook the fleeing boy.  Once abreast, he made no
effort to stop, but matched stride and gently guided, bending the
child's flight toward the thicker stands of forest on high ground.

"Easy.  Up here.  That's better.  Fewer pikemen, and don't forget the
swamp."

Jieret choked back a sob and plunged through a gully in a furious
rush that tripped him up.

Arithon caught him as he stumbled, steadied him through the
moss-slicked rocks up the bank.  Between heaving breaths he kept
talking.  "Explain.  What about Teynie?  We're blood-sworn.  It's my
oath to help."

"The tents!"  Jieret pushed through a stand of witch hazel, whose
downy spines powdered his jerkin.  "She's going to lead headhunters to
the tents!"

Slammed by a wave of foreboding, fending off branches that raked his
face, Arithon squeezed the boy's hand.  "Don't talk," he gasped.

"Just think in your mind what you dreamed and imagine that I can see
it, too."

But panic had already impelled the vision to the forefront of
Jieret's awareness.  The instant Arithon opened a channel to test the
boy's distress, the ties of the blood pact took over.

Jieret's terror became his own.  The prescient vision that tienelle
scrying had snatched back in fragments unfolded now in entirety.  The
scrub-grown hillside seamed with weather-stripped gullies blurred out
of vision as mage-sight unveiled another place....

... of torn earthworks and slaughtered bodies, where Pesquil's
advance troop of headhunters tracked prints across blood-rinsed earth.

In swift, efficient silence they exchanged swords for daggers and cut
scalps to claim bounty for their kills.

The corpses raised by the hair for the knife cut were small, the
faces smudged in leaf mold and gore unlined by life and years....

Boys, Arithon realized with a choke that all but stopped his heart.
He tripped hard on a stone, felt the tug of Jieret's grip save his
balance.  Present awareness slapped back, along with anguished
recognition of total helplessness.  The deed was done, the sons of
Deshir dead.  All hacked and disfigured were the little ones Caolle had
insisted be sent to dispatch the enemy wounded because men for that
task could ill be spared-amid whose company Jieret would have been, if
not for a blood pact of friendship.

"Jieret, they're gone," Arithon gasped out in defeat.

"We're too late."

But Jieret's mute and furious head shake forced back unwanted
recollection that the appalling scene by the riverside had failed to
include the fated girl.  At what point does the strong mind falter?

Arithon wondered in a cascade of renewed despair.  The feud between
Karthan and Amroth had inspired atrocities enough to wring from him all
tolerance for suffering.  Between townborn and clan, the hatred ran
more poisonous still.

Ground creepers tore at his footfalls as he fought toward the crest
of the ridge.  At his side, Jieret was laboring, his eyes stretched
sightless and wide, as if he viewed vistas of horrors but lacked any
breath to cry protest.

At what point should the strong heart shy off and preserve itself
from wanton self-destruction?  To go on was to risk every shred of
integrity to the mad drives of Desh-thiere's curse.  Arithon swore in
fierce anguish.  He tightened grip on his sword, braced tired nerves,
and cast off the protective barriers that confined his sight to
Jieret's dream.  Every prudent precaution he had taken was tossed away
as he reached out directly with his mage-sight.

Disciplined, efficient, too well versed in the ways of forest
clansmen to suffer delay or needless noise, Pesquil rattled off orders.

His men crammed dripping trophies in their game bags.  Nearby, wiping
a sword whose blade bore chased patterns of reversed runes, a strong,
straight man in a ruined surcoat clenched his jaw against the hurt of
cracked bones.

Framed in that place, over the bodies of slain children, that man's
lone figure imprinted stark as flame against a scorch mark, and wakened
the pattern of Desh-thiere's curse.

Backlit by a slanted shaft of sunlight, the soft, feathered greenery
of pine boughs knit a backdrop for disordered blond hair and a regal
profile grazed and scratched, but unmarred in expression by any furrow
of remorse....

Arithon gasped as if hit.  His stride faltered despite Jieret's
efforts, shouting and tugging, to urge him on.  He heard nothing, felt
nothing beyond nerves pitched and twisted to a geas-driven impulse to
attack.  a Vision and reflex merged.  Alithiel's blade sang through
air.  The sour, belting whine as sword steel sheared through sticks and
green bracken jolted turned senses back to reason.

Arithon stood, breathing hard, the sweat drenched over him in
runners.  He caught one breath, two, the hand gripped white to his
sword hilt trembling in waves of reaction.  Fingers could be relaxed
into stillness.  The mind could be forced to shake off madness.  Eyes
closed, quivering as if racked by a fever, Arithon called every shred
of his training to repress the screaming urge to fling aside Jieret and
bolt, not to rescue but to kill.  Through and through him ran the sick
recognition that he had tasted worse than his fears.  He had fatally
near underestimated the havoc that even indirect scrying on his
half-brother could unleash through the core of his being.

Half undone by despair, for there existed no escape from this
quandary, he gathered self-command and looked up.

Attending him in staunch readiness were Jieret and eleven clansmen
who had without questions left their defense works to support him.

Enmeshed as he was in sorry fears and the unmistakable throes of
wrecked dignity, their kindness offered temptations a curse-marked
spirit could ill afford.

Enraged as a scalded cat by the flaw that twisted through his
character, Arithon's first impulse was to let fly with words and send
them packing, away from his reach lest he wantonly compromise their
safety.  Humility stayed him, and grief.  If Deshir's wives and
daughters were still threatened, these men owned their right to defend
them, and he must find courage to see how.

Wordless, he turned his grip on Alithiel and pressed the hilt into
Jieret's startled hands.  Then he stripped off his sword belt and
thrust it toward the nearest of the scouts.

"Take this.  Bind my ankles.  Somebody else, unbend a bowstring and
lash my wrists tight behind my back."

The clansman regarded him, stupefied.

"Do it!"  Arithon snapped.  Salt sweat burned his eyes, or maybe
tears.  "Dharkaron take you, it's necessary."

The belt buckle swung from his fingers, flaring in bursts of caught
sunlight.  No one made a move to take its burden.

"Mercy of Ath, tie my hands!"  cried their prince, his voice split
and baleful with anguish.  "I've a scrying to try that's very
dangerous, and I can't say what might happen if I'm free."  He waited
no longer but spun toward Jieret.  "I beg you, do as I ask."

"Don't put such a task on a boy!"  A blunt, scar-faced man shoved to
the fore, prepared in hot outrage to intervene.

Arithon bit back a retort that worse things had been asked and done
already.  "Loop it tight," he insisted as the man bent and tentatively
began to lash his ankles.

"You've gone mad," someone murmured from the sidelines.

Arithon, eyes blazing, said, "Yes."

He had no time to explain.  To Jieret, standing braced with the black
blade cradled flat across his forearm, the Master said emphatically and
calmly, "You're oath-sworn.  Now listen to me.  I'm going to try
sorcery to find out what's amiss on the riverbank.  You must keep my
sword and hold it ready.  If my body is taken by a fit, call my name.
If that fails to rouse me, or if any of these restraints breaks away,
you must cut me deep enough to bleed."

"But why?"  a man pealed in protest.

Arithon's attention never shifted from the child.

Under that sharpened scrutiny, Jieret s'Valerient did not waver.

The steel rings sewn to his boy's brigandine flashed in time to rapid
breaths, and his eyes, gray hazel, never turned.  Of them all, only he
and Arithon yet knew of the butchery that drenched the moss by Tai
Quorin.  Between blood-pacted prince and young prot6gd an understanding
passed, that word of the atrocity must be kept from the men.

The small, square chin, so like Steiven's, and the dark red hair that
was Dania's caused Arithon a spasm of griel "Will you trust me?"

he asked.  Man to boy, he made no effort to hide his misgiving.

"For your family's sake, can you do this?"

Jieret answered him, faintly.  "I'll try."

For a second the severely steep planes of the s'Ffalenn face eased;
straight lips bent almost to a smile.  Then Arithon crossed his wrists
behind his back and waited in stiff impatience while a clan archer
diffidently tied him.  "For your very lives," he finished in soft
threat.  "Don't any of you change my instructions."

The bowstring was knotted tight and tested.  Far off, a wood thrush
trilled a liquid cascade of arpeggios.  The breeze fanned trembling
through fern and birch and pale elder, and the smell of pine mulch and
soil filled the senses like a mother's embrace.  Torn by the pull of
such comforts, Arithon squeezed his eyes closed.  He let go into trance
in skittish haste, lest nerves and strength both forsake him.  The men
close-gathered around him ceased to matter, nor did he feel the touch
and slide of light-patterned leaves that raked his body as his knees
loosened and gave way.  He slipped unceremoniously to the ground,
conscious only of another place....

Buried from sight behind a thicket of fir, someone gave a retching
cough.  Bent over the corpse of a boy with talisman thongs braided at
his neck, Pesquil jerked erect and froze listening.  Around him,
spattered like reivers in a stockyard, his jubilant headhunters did
likewise.  The sound did not repeat itself.  Never patient with
waiting, and apprehensive of being spotted by an unseen patrol of
Steiven's scouts, Pesquil deployed his lieutenants to secure the area
and beat the brush.

Before the ring closed, a child bolted into the open, running hard.
This one carried no dagger.  In place of a leather jacket sewn with
rings or bone discs, this youngster wore a tunic smutched with river
mud and briars.  Barely seven years of age, he ran in gasping panic
away from the headhunters with their terrible crimsoned swords.

A man-sized fox cap offered a fleeting glimpse of cinnamon as it
bobbed from mottled light to forest gloom.

"Give chase," Pesquil clipped out.  His teeth flashed in a smile that
became a low whistle as the new quarry ducked a trailing vine.

The fur hat was snatched off to free a rippling banner of dark hair.

"Daelion's Wheel," exclaimed Lysaer.  "That's a girl!"

"Obviously."  Pesquil hefted his sword.  "Come on.  A scalp isn't
valued by sex, and if I'm right, we're about to find the camp Gnudsog
died for."

"She shouldn't be here, then?"  Lysaer braced his bandaged forearm
against his side in readiness to run.  "Not even as some sort of
lookout?"

"She probably tagged after her brother."  Fired to haste, an unholy
spark behind his humor, Pesquil gave the prince a pock-flecked leer.
"Are you going to just talk or join the fun?"

Lysaer clamped his jaw against the ache of ribs and collarbone and
grimly matched pace with the headhunters.

The scrying shattered.

A scream of crazed frustration ripped from Arithon's throat.  Pain
lanced his shoulder, followed by a coruscation of white light.  A
ringing, pure chord of harmony exploded insanity with a shock that
sieved through his bones.

back, weeping and panting, unprepared for tearing heartbreak as the
thundering brilliance of Paravian spellcraft ebbed away, leaving him
hollow and desolate.

The earth felt fragile underneath him as he opened his eyes to the
fast-fading glimmer of the star-spell inlaid in the blade of his own
weapon.  Alithiel was poised above him like a bar of smoked glass,
edged in his own bright blood.

Jieret held the grip in shaking fingers, tears tracked in streaks
across his cheeks.

"It's all right."  Aghast to find his larynx torn raw, Arithon need
not meet the scouts' embarrassed faces to derive that he had howled
like an animal.  He could tell by the burn of fresh abrasions that he
had flipped and wrenched against his bonds.  And nothing was right,
nothing at all.  The wasted lives by Tai Quorin were only the prelude
to disaster.  In this, his second encounter with Lysaer by scrying,
only his sword's arcane defenses had arrested his reaction to
Deshthiere's curse.  For the moment he commanded his wits.  As long as
he kept his distance and strictly eschewed the use of mage-sense, he
could hold against the urge that coursed through him, driving,
needling, hounding him to rise and to run-to find his half-brother and
call challenge and fight until one or both of them lay dead.

Jieret had quieted.  Silent, straight, he regarded his sovereign
prince in haunted trust, while a contrite scout knelt to lend
assistance.  The movement as Arithon was helped to sit pulled at his
shoulder, but the scratch was neat and shallow, a credit to the boy's
determination.

"The bonds can be loosened," Arithon said gently.  He added
instructions to be sent at speed to Caolle, and tried not to let them
see it mattered!- that nobody cared to meet his eyes.

"Your hands, they're ripped bloody," said the man who attended his
wrists.  "At least, these scars."  He faltered, then burst out, "You've
done scryings like this one before?"

The note of awed epiphany in his voice incensed Arithon to revulsion.
"Ath, no!"  He did not qualify, but kicked the loosened belt from his
ankles, surged to his feet, and tookback the burden of his sword.

"Run," he snapped, and then did so, fighting off acid futility.

They were too far from the grotto where Deshir's girls and women were
hidden, too hopelessly distant to bring reprieve.  But knowing
Pesquil's headhunters were hot in pursuit of Fethgum's daughter, he had
to make the attempt; for when Deshir's clansmen discovered the extent
of their losses, the grief of husbands, kin, and fathers would for a
surety touch off another bloodbath.

Last Quarry

The girl flushed by Pesquil's headhunters led them on an arduous
chase upstream.  Above the initial site of the ambush, the valley
narrowed.  Tai Quorin's bed sliced Strakewood in a steep-walled ravine,
while springs that fed white-water currents splashed in plumed falls
from high gullies.  Here the late afternoon shadows slanted through
serried banks of broken, sunlit rock.

Pesquil disliked any country where the least chance noise would
reverberate to a dance of wild echoes.  Crannies between buttressed
cliffs devolved into narrow, crooked grottos, any of which might
contain a hidden camp.  To search each one with a strike party would be
fool's play.

"Noise and numbers would wreck all our chance of surprise," he
complained in dry annoyance to Lysaer.  "Clansfolk holed up in this
place won't be waiting about cowering like mice."

While Pesquil debated over a dozen nooks where.  clan sentries could
be posted, Lysaer fought drifting concentration.  He felt faint.

His bruises had settled into stiffness that cased the steady ache of
cracked bones.  The strapping on his wrist showed a damp patch of red,
and he wondered how much blood he had lost.  The ferocity had not
blunted from his anger, quite the contrary; but his reserves were worn
away and temper by itself was no longer enough to sustain him.

Resolved on his course of precautions, Pesquil prepared for the
moment when the fleeing girl crossed back into open ground and brought
his best man with a crossbow to the fore.

"Shoot clean," he whispered softly.  "I want her to seem like she
tripped."

The marksman set his quarrel with a steadiness Lysaer could only
envy, aimed his weapon, and lovingly squeezed the trigger.

The click and hiss of the bow's release blended with the susuration
of tumbling water.

Upslope, the running child missed stride.

"Perfect shot!"  Pesquil said.

The bolt had struck her lower back in the soft flesh between ribs and
hip.  Her outcry rang and rebounded, multiplied from rock to rock as
she folded to her knees.  A dragged escort of small stones marked her
fall in flat arcs and dust, swept off in the leaping rush of rapids.
But the girl snagged on an outcrop at the water's edge and hung there,
one limp arm swinging.

From the vantage in the thickets, her dark hair could be discerned,
fanned back from her face with the trailed ends sleeked by the spray.

"Damn!"  Pesquil wiped sweat from his cheeks, then rubbed his palms
on his leathers.  "Bad luck.  If she'd hit the river, they might not
suspect an assassin."

Lysaer s'llessid stifled any flicker of revulsion.  As strategy,
Pesquil's move was unassailable; nor had his effort been wasted.  High.

in the rocks, a leather-clad woman left cover to rescue what looked
from above to be the wounded victim of a misstep.

Poised in tense stillness the more explosive for the fact he dared
not fidget, Pesquil spent a moment in furious thought.

He waited until the clan scout negotiated the most precanous segment
of her descent, then touched his marksman on the wrist.

"Again," he whispered.  "Messier this time.  Have this one die
hollering."

The bowman muffled the ratchet of his weapon under a borrowed surcoat
and wound it cocked.  Smooth-faced and taciturn in concentration, he
selected and slicked the feathers of another bolt.

Weapon raised, he nervelessly fired again.

The clan woman windmilled into space, gut-struck and screaming in
agony.

"Move!"  Pesquil signaled his men.  "Hurry, fan out, and keep close
watch on the rocks."  Beside him, the young marksman readied another
quarrel, his instruction to dispatch the woman fast if her howls showed
any sign of coherency.

Sweated and chafed under the quilted gambeson tucked in wet wads
beneath his mail, Lysaer gritted his teeth and refrained from comment.

Revulsion did not excuse responsibility.  Toward his sworn purpose of
destroying Arithon s'Ffalenn, he had sanctioned Pesquil's foray against
the clansfolk.  No matter how unpleasant, duty demanded that he see the
action through.

Again the crossbowman loosed his trigger.  Quiet restored, the hiss
and splash of the river once more swirled over sinkholes and rocks.
Pesquil picked a green stick while reports from his scouts were relayed
in.

Movement had been sighted three different places along the rocks.

Crouched beneath an undercut bank whose tree trunks angled drunken
reflections on broken waters, and chewing a scraping of sour bark,
Pesquil sent stalkers to reconnoiter.  Based on their findings, he used
his stripped twig to sketch a crude map between his knees.  "Here's how
we'll deploy."  The instructions he gave his lieutenants erased the
last doubt he may have earned his command through any nicety of Etarran
politics.

At a speed Lysaer found inconceivable, headhunter parties were called
up from downriver and dispatched in wide, covert patterns that lined
the canyon rims with crossbowmen.

Pesquil's design unfolded like well-oiled clockworks: the frontal
attack designed to distract; the word at first engagement that the
grottos held only female defenders and small children; then Pesquil's
smirking comment to Lysaer before they crossed the river on strung
ropes.  "Man, don't expect an easy victory.  Clan bitches fight like
she-devils."

On the far bank, the men split into teams to scale the rocks.  In
deference to Lysaer's strapped arm, Pesquil dispatched scouts to find
him an easier route.  Pain and exhaustion by now had outstripped the
first numb shock of injury.

Lysaer moved with gritted jaw, his skin gray.  He would not let the
men ease the pace.  Slipping, sliding, grunting, he labored upslope,
past stunted cherry trees with their wild fruits green on the stern;
over weather-split granite and twisted brush, and washed-out gulches
where the gravel turned under his boots and the jar of every wrong step
made his breath jerk and spasm in gasps.  The headhunters who
accompanied him as escort might have disdained their assignment at
first, but when at last they reached the ridge top and rejoined their
commander, Lysaer's determination had earned their guarded respect.

By then, action in the steep-sided glen was nearly wrapped up, the
initial attack supported from behind by the stationed crossbowmen, who
now cast about for the last living targets trapped against the walls of
the canyon.  Down through the fronds of ferns and cross-laced trailers
of hanging ivy, Lysaer saw the sprawled bodies, bloody and hacked
beyond anything recognizably female, or else nearly unmarked except for
feathered bolts that left flowering stains on the backs of deerskin
jerkins.  Half sick from his hurts, too spent for strong emotion, the
prince felt wretched and maudlin.  For the first time in his life he
understood his royal father, who also had been provoked to require
annihilating attacks on villages allied to the s'Ffalenn.  That such
forays had mostly come to nothing drove his sire to lifelong
frustration.  Lysaer, who in distant lands and exile had not failed,
looked upon his dead with flat eyes and tried not to fret whether any
of the corpses had been pregnant.

A headhunter lieutenant touched his shoulder.  "Come.

The able-bodied fighters are beaten down and our scouts say the tents
are surrounded."

They would fire the hides, Lysaer gathered.  He braced his sore side
and stiffly moved on.  Of the hike up, the canyon rim he remembered
little.  The lowering sun hurt his eyes and patchy bouts of dizziness
made progress difficult Pesquil seemed in rare high spirits.

He spat his wad of bark and playfully tossed his bone-hilted dagger
with its peculiar blade, curved and sharp on both edges.  Since the
need had passed for surprise and silence, he grew expansive, calling
boisterous jokes to his lieutenants.

The men, too, seemed ebullient.  Too drained to attend to their talk,
Lysaer gave cursory study to the high ground where they stopped.

The sun's angle had lowered, throwing the ravine into premature
twilight.  Under shaded rim walls and deeper cover of palings and
thickets clustered the painted hide walls of the clan tents.  Faintly,
from the inside, came the wailing cry of an infant, swiftly muffled.

Lysaer found a broad old maple and rested against the trunk while the
men whistled and laughed and kindled fires.

Too battered to join the activity, he stayed, while the arrows were
wrapped, and the bows strung, and the wool tips set soaking in oil.

"All right."  Hands on hips, his lantern jaw out-thrust in broken
profile against the shimmers of black smoke on the wind, Pesquil
delivered his order.  "Fire them out."

Lots were drawn.  The losers, grumbling, chose bows.

Fighting an insidious detachment that felt like the onset of
delirium, Lysaer hardly noticed the arrows crack down until the reek of
burning hide wafted out of the ravine.  The tents were well aflame.

Heat beat in waves from the fissure.  Orange light played across the
rocks, and above the grotto, green leaves began to shrivel and wilt.

Lysaer closed his eyes against the glare, vaguely aware of screaming.

The archers now fired to kill infants, and the cries of bereaved
mothers beat and shrilled against his ears.

Pesquil's tart sarcasm punched through.  "You seem just a touch
overcome."

Lissaer pushed straight and forced his eyes back to clear focus.  In
fact, there was a lot of screaming, in pitch and timbre quite different
than hand-to-hand battle had caused earlier; neither were these the
uncomprehending cries of newborns.  Sickness fled before anger.

"You aren't killing them cleanly," Lysaer accused.  He shoved hard
away from the tree.

"Killing them?"  Pesquil grinned, startled to savage delight.

"That wasn't quite the idea.  Not for the pretty women, anyway.

My men accomplished what Etarra's garrison couldn't.  Do you think
they haven't earned their bit of sport?"

Lysaer pushed past toward the rim rocks.  The sound of a slap
ricocheted up from the canyon.  A man guffawed while a woman's voice
wept obscenities.

"Better gag her," someone advised in cheerful encouragement.

"She'd gnaw your face off for sheer spite."

A glance was enough.  Lysaer wheeled back, white to the lips, and
possessed by a frightening control.  Coldly, clearly he said, "Call
them off."

Pesquil stood and stroked his crescent knife.  "In due time, Prince.
Not to worry.  My men aren't picked for sentiment.

They can kill well enough when their pleasure's met.  We won't be
bringing home any doxies."

More laughter erupted, and sobbing cries that seemed barely more than
a child's.  Lysaer never flicked a muscle.

"Call your men back."  He took a fast breath.  "Or I will."

"Such scruple!"  Pesquil crooned.  Then, as Lysaer broke from
stillness, the captain's mockery fled and his manner abruptly went
stony.  "Man, man, you're serious."  He reached out in swift purpose
and snatched back the shoulder tightly strapped under wrappings the
exact instant Lysaer called out.

Bone grated under his fingers.  Lysaer doubled with a gasp, his eyes
wide black with pain and fury.

"My men wouldn't take your command," Pesquil warned.

The crescent knife remained in his right fist, its angle now openly
threatening.  "Prince."

Lysaer chopped with his good arm and broke the head- hunter captain's
hold.  The blade at his midriff as well had been air for all the
attention he spared it.  "Call them off!"

"Ath, you soft fool."  As if he reasoned with an idiot, Pesquil said,
"You want the barbarian clans dead, do you not?  And the neck of one
black-handed sorcerer?  Well, leave my men to their business!  If they
don't force the girls and make plenty of noise, how else d'you think
we're going to draw their eight hundred odd fathers and brothers Out of
cover and into reach of our weapons?"

"You've done this before," Lysaer gritted, wrenched by the spasm of
abused muscles.

"Oh, many times.  Though I admit, never in quite such choice
quantity."  The sneer was back.  Touched with sweat, Pesquil's
pockmarks glistened orange.  On the floor of the ravine, the tents
threw up shimmering curtains of flame.  Nothing alive remained inside
their cover.  Beyond the fires fringing the guy ropes, outside a circle
of red-soaked and motionless bundles, men whooped and tore buckskins
with abandon.  Pesquil's gaze lowered to his knife, still pointed at
the prince.  "It's a time-proven tactic, Your Grace."

Lysaer straightened, breathing hard.  Sunlight through the tree
crowns played over his gold head, and a breeze-flickered mote touched
his grazed cheek to gilt.  The mauling ie had taken had spoiled his
elegance.  Nothing distinguished remained about his ripped surcoat and
mud-crusted mail, or --- bruises glazed with sweat that darkened neck
and chin and temple.  Yet a forceful sense of majesty clothed him all
the same, that made even Pesquil reassess.

The s'llessid prince laid no hand on his sword in dispute.

He weighed his case and made judgment in the solitary arrogance of a
king.  Then he turned his back on crescent blade and called upon his
birth-born gift of light.

His bolt sheared the grotto like bladed lightning and flamed in
bursting brilliance through the charred and blackened leather of the
tents.  Flash fire exploded.  Sparks and a barrage of deep-throated
thunder smote the air.

There hides had flamed, nothing burned any longer.  If no one had
been harmed by the blast, still the ground showed black, seared circle,
while toppled king posts flaked with trailed sullen smoke over the
previously broken bodies little children.

From the grotto, the screaming had ended.  Men in the act of lust
felt engorged flesh shrivel from the heat of ravished girls, while in
stunned terror they scrambled back and took stock of wisped hair and
blisters and outer clothing lightly singed upon their bodies.

Into stupefied stillness, across someone's low whimpers of fear,
Lysaer delivered crisp orders.  "Townsmen!  Cover your nakedness and
stand aside.  Let any who are clad form a shield ring and herd every
girl and woman inside.  Let none of your company handle them except as
necessary.  For peril of your lives, do as I say."

"You can't let them go," Pesquil protested.  A tremor threaded his
voice, and all his sour mockery had vanished.

Lysaer looked at him.  "No."  As devoid of contempt as Dharkaron
Avenger, he added, "But I will end them cleanly."

"To what purpose, Your Grace?"  Stubborn in recovery, Pesquil flung
his knife hilt deep into the dirt.  "We've clan menfolk still left to
deal with."

"They'll come."  Lysaer's dispassionate regard flicked back to the
grotto and stayed there as the half-stripped girls and women were
shoved tightly into one group.  "I'll draw in Steiven's barbarians.

When I do, be sure of this, the s'Ffalenn bastard with his shadows
will be unable not to, come with them."

:of Etarra's beleaguered garrison fighting mad and unimpeded to
regroup and engage the handful of clan enemies who no longer can
shelter behind sorceries to inflict damages and death with impunity....

Three Valleys

Streaming sweat from an arduous sprint, the runner sent from the west
valley arrives at the breastworks where Caolle and the bulk of Deshir's
clansmen fight unassisted by sorceries or flooded rivers against
Etarra's right-flanking division, who outnumber them three to one.
"Tell Lord Steiven," he cries, gasping, "I've come from our liege.
Arithon said you would know what he meant, that the disaster he foresaw
has not been stopped.  . .

Plunging through woods toward the grotto where the women and young
hide for safety, Arithon, Jieret, and eleven clansmen hear screams and
male shouting cut off as a burst of light shears through the trees;
lost in a groundshaking report of fell thunder is Arithon's abject
denial, "Lysaer, oh Ath, Lysaer, no!"

In the vale to the west of Tai Quorin, a shadow-wrought barrier ward
shatters and lifts, which leaves half a company She went not to wed,
or to comfort or rest, But to free the dazed dead, and to reclothe
coldflesh in fair flowers.
-last stanza, ballad of the Princess of Falmuir

III.  Culminat'ion

hunder cracked the air to whirlwinds as light bolts ripped Tthe
grotto in sheets that immolated trees to flayed skeletons.  On
protected ground some distance from the rim rocks, checked by flares
etched like lightning through gaps in forest greenery, Arithon caught
the back of Jieret's brigandine.

In a despair too horror-struck for expression, he yanked the boy cold
from his run and bundled him into an embrace.

Around their locked forms the coruscation flared and died.

Gusts spent themselves to a fall of unmoored leaves, while echoes
raged on in vibrations that slapped and slammed through Tai Quorin's
chain of ravines.  Arithon pressed his cheek to red hair, while under
his tight hands the orphan he had sworn blood pact to protect convulsed
into sobs against his shoulder.

As clansmen they had outstripped in their rush caught back up,
nothing could be done except end their hope quickly.  "It's over.

We're too late.  Stay here."

The reverberations from the blast rumbled and faded into quiet.

Arithon stared unseeing as three older men caught back a teenager
whose berserk rage impelled him to plunge ahead toward the grotto
regardless.

Held arm-locked and struggling, the young scout pealed in wild
protest to his prince.  "They can't all be killed, some were
sword-trained."

Arithon, icy, cut him off.  "They are dead, every one.  You can't
help them."

No one could; the brutality of Jieret's vision had been graphic, of
bodies tossed and charred, flash-burned in an instant to flaked carbon
and bones crisped beyond all recognition.  To the scout still driven to
argue, Arithon said baldly, "It's your clansmen we'll have to save
now."

Against him, Jieret moved impatiently.  "Our liege speaks truth."

Though muffled by the cloth of his prince's sleeve, the boy's dull
pronouncement was still clear enough to be heard.  "I had Sight.  None
in the grotto survived."

The scout subsided to stunned quiet, and guarded companions let him
go.  In response to Jieret's push, Arithon also loosened his arms.

He cupped the boy's chin in the hand not blackened by Alithiel and
gave him a searching study.

Jieret had seen, in merciless, involuntary prescience; three sisters
burned, and one forced, and a mother lying bloody in the leaves.  The
dream's memory stamped his child's face with a hardness that might not,
now, ever leave him.

"I would have spared you if I could," Arithon said in a voice so
racked not a man in the company overheard him.

Jieret looked up into green eyes that held no barriers to him.

They Offered depths and mysteries whose difficulties were beyond him,
he could answer just one shared pain.

"My liege lord, behold, you have done so."

Arithon's touch jerked away.  "Ath," he said on a strangled note of
pure rage.  "Just don't let me close with my halfbrother."

lo the scouts who saw only rebuff, uncomprehending in scope and
viciousness just how far Desh-thiere's curse might turn him, the Master
of Shadows said plainly, "Run.  Back downstream and find Caolle.  Keep
the men out of the canyons.  "I'll go."  The younger scout pushed
forward, desperate to distance grief with action.  "On the way I can
recall the boys."

Jieret made a sound of protest; pressed past tact, Arithon shook his
head.  "Forget them.  Just go straight to your captain."

"Forget them!"  Raw with emotion, the scout rushed him.

"What are you saying?"

"That they're beyond help."  Not a quiver of reflex changed Arithon's
stance.  Weariness tautened his face, and he seemed not to care whether
or not he was assaulted.  He said, "I'm sorry.  Just go now and stop
thinking."

The scout drew up short of striking him because Jieret interposed
himself between.  Shamed by the boy's stiff loyalty, and by the
disbelief that paralyzed his fellows, he regarded his prince, who had
drawn, as he warned, the might of Etarra to the clans.  "Sorry!  Sorry
isn't enough."  He spun away and blindly sprinted.

"Don't mind him."  White-haired and scarred to stoic toughness, the
scout Madreigh offered brusque sympathy.

"That boy's not bad-hearted, only sore.  Next month he was to marry."
The others were content to leave him as spokesman as he tactfully
fingered his sword edge.  "We should send another runner after
Steiven?"

Arithon moved not at all, but only closed tortured eyes.

"Ath!"  said Madreigh.  "Forget I ever asked."  Then, in a queer
catch of breath, he caught Arithon's wrist and clamped down.

"Trouble's here."

A metallic click cut the quiet.  The scout just sent off reached a
distance of fifty paces, then pitched in a spinning fall, a crossbow
bolt through his neck.

Arithon broke free and flung Jieret violently behind him.

"Boy, stay out of this.  As your sovereign, I command you."

His sword whistled up to guard point while he backed behind the
thickest tree to hand, an old beech raked rough where bucks had shed
their summer velvet.  He pinned Steiven's heir with his body as shield,
while the clan scouts fell in around him to enclose the boy.

Their rush to reach the beleaguered women could have drawn them to
spring the perfect trap.  Hidden troops could lie anywhere in ambush.

The crossbows were their greatest liability, shadows their surest
defense.  But Arithon dared not try his gift openly lest he pinpoint
his presence to Lysaer, and invite an uncontrolled confrontation with
the compulsions of Desh-thiere's curse.

Three clansmen still armed with recurves and full quivers began to
climb the tree to snipe for the crossbowman.

Arithon gave the shortest one a boost.  Fast and furiously thinking,
he said, "They have quarrels, why wait?  Why don't they drop us where
we stand?"

"They're bounty men."  Madreigh showed a grim flash of teeth.

"Arrow kills make fights over scalp claims."

Quite probably the headhunters' best marksmen would still be
stationed on the rim rocks, or deep in the chasms of the grotto, where
orders would shortly recall them.

"The bolt had red fletching," Jieret added.

"It's Pesquil's league that's against us," another scout picked up in
explanation.  "We'll be surrounded already.

They'll attack us with numbers, hand to hand."  He jerked his
stubbled chin toward the exquisite weapon held steady in his liege
lord's grip.  "I hope you're good with that."

"We'll know in a moment."  Arithon withheld encouragement that his
sorceries might offer them salvation.  Any ward against combined
assailants required time and concentration to arrange.  No moment was
given for response.  From the glen that led toward the rim rocks,
shadows flitted, and occasional chance gleams of metal.  These fits and
starts of movement resolved into a wave of charging foes.  The instant
before they closed, Arithon noticed worse: shouts, then the distant
clash of steel as a skirmish broke out in the river gully farther
downstream.

"Caolle's men?"  Alan-ned, Madreigh added, "Ath, what could press
them to strike openly?  Etarra's garrison's still behind them.  They'll
be engaged on two fronts and torn apart."

Inarguable fact, as Arithon knew.  But even Caolle's blunt savvy
could hardly stay fathers just come from discovery of the scalped and
slaughtered bodies of their sons; clansmen who tracked the reivers
upstream to find headhunters awaiting them in force, and who attacked
without the knowledge that their families in the grotto were past
saving.

"If you pray, beg Steiven's division won't be with them," Arithon
said.

Then the enemy was upon them.  A rough face, a sword, and a fouled
set of gauntlets absorbed all of Arithon's attention.  Alithiel whined
once, twice, in flurried parries.  His opponent was large and
heavy-handed.  Arithon lunged, there blocked another thrust.  His
riposte was controlled, an understated springboard for the feint which
followed.  A disengage on the next thrust finished the attacker.

Arithon yanked Alithiel clear, sidestepped the headhunter's dying
thrash, and in speed that blurred, caught the next man behind in a stop
thrust.

Hard-pressed himself, the adjacent clansman turned his shoulder to
cover Arithon's extended body through the moment of recovery.

"Elwedd's wasted a wager, I see.  How'd the Masterbard know you were
gifted at blade work?"

"Escape this, and we'll ask him," Arithon said.

Though joyless, the scout's grin gave endorsement that his liege was
capable enough to be entrusted with full share of Jieret's defense.

Which fine point would shortly mean nothing, with the headhunters too
thick to beat off and more of them coming by the second.  Arithon saw
this.  Braced against the tree, forced to close quarters, his style was
cramped.  Crushed moss and roots hampered footwork, and fallen enemies
were adding to the hazard.  The archers up the tree were less
encumbered, but one of them already dangled, head down and dead in the
branches.  The headhunter crossbowman was still busy.  Arithon could
not see past the heave of the fighting to approximate his location.

Another bolt whapped through green leaves and torn shreds of foliage
spiraled down.

Inevitably more crossbowmen must arrive, and Caolle's men could
hardly drive a foray through to rescue Steiven's heir since they could
not know he was pinned down.  Arithon beat aside a blade that thrust at
him and fought a slipping stance in wet leaves.  A friendly arrow from
above dispatched the brute in the conical helm who shoved in to
grapple, and Arithon escaped with a bruise and a graze.  Behind him,
Jieret had out his dagger, determined to enter the fray.

"Not now," said Arithon.  "Jieret, this isn't your fight."

Three swords came at him.  He ducked one, felt the flat of a second
jar his cut shoulder, and met the third in a screaming bind.

Locked steel to steel with an enemy, exposed on his left side to
fate, he saw his choices reduced to the one that, in Karthan, had
undone him.

He must use magecraft to kill, or allow Jieret and Steiven's
grief-crazed clansmen to die as victims of Deshthiere's curse.

Arithon turned the wrist above Alithiel's guard, felt his steel catch
his opponent's cross guard.

The headhunter anticipated the wrench that would leave him disarmed.
A burly man and well trained, he gave with the pressure, then grunted
in surprise as Arithon's rightfooted kick added force to his counter
move and staggered him sideways.  He crashed across other headhunters
who thrust through an opening no longer opportune.  Slashed and half
skewered through the side, he went down, two men's steel mired in his
fall and a third man bashed off balance into the tight-pressed advance
of his fellows.

While the knot in the fighting swirled momentarily backward, Arithon
dropped his blade, leaped, and caught a tree branch, then swung hard.
His boot lashed another attacker and upended him over the foeman who
engaged Madreigh.

"Guard Jieret," ordered Arithon.  "What needs to be done, I can't
accomplish from here."

"You've got spells for a miracle?"  grunted the clan scout, his blade
busy.  He sidestepped into his prince's vacated position, feinted low,
and cut.  Blood pattered down, filming the leaves, the tree trunk, and
Jieret, buffeted and jostled by his defenders as he watched his liege
lord hoist himself after the archers who were now, all three, dead of
crossbow bolts.

Another quarrel snicked bark by Arithon's head.  He ignored it, gave
a quick smile downward to Jieret which held more worry than
reassurance.  A sailor's move and a slither saw him up and then prone
on a tree branch.

Below him, Madreigh fought half blind from a gash that trickled blood
off his brow and right eye.  Arithon drew his belt knife, threw, and
took down an opportunist who bent for a low stab at Jieret.

Madreigh finished the action by stomping the fallen man's face.

He said, blade harried, "If you know something that'll save us, just
do it!"

Already two more clansmen lay dying, with another one wounded about
to follow.  Tom that such bravery should go wasted, Arithon stilled his
nerves and focused his mind to cold purpose.  The crossbowman perforce
must come first.

He cast about the wood, but could not pinpoint the man's cover.

That was bitterest setback, since his purpose must be accomplished
without broad-scale use of shadows or any wide sweep of illusion that
might terrify an army into rout.

Unless he maintained his anonymity among the clans, everything that
mattered would go for naught.

Amid a battle that assaulted concentration, Arithon distanced his
senses, walled off awareness of everything outside a discrete sphere of
air that innnediately surrounded his person.  The ward snare he shaped
was risky and difficult, an amalgamation of illicit magelore and
inspiration he would on no account have attempted to save himself, nor
had he to spare his own father.

But to Deshir's clansmen, he was oath-bound.  Steiven's people would
never have faced annihilation if not for his tie to Rathain.

The forces he tapped were forbidden by any right-thinking mage.

The tiniest miscalculation, just one slipped step, and the vortex he
fashioned could rend himself, the tree, and the last of Jieret's
defenders.  Arithon pitched the far fringes of his knowledge against
dependency that with his person offered as target, the town bowman
would shoot to kill.  The attention must be poised like strung wire; he
must not feel his cut shoulder, must not rouse at the choke of dying
men, or even spare thought to question whether his clansmen might
already lie slain.  Ringed in perilous energies, Arithon touched the
air, became the air, as one with its currents and small breezes that
skeined through uncounted spaded leaves.

Air did not feel death; it registered screams only as rhythms,
intricately concentric as ring ripples spread through a pool.  There
was peace, and the terrible beauty of Ath's order, until a tip of
turbulence bored through, swift and barbed for death as only man-made
ingenuity could contrive.

Arithon closed the net of a ward just finished but not yet tested for
weaknesses.  Too fast for care, too late for regrets, too utterly final
to abort, the headhunter's quarrel whistled in.

A small thing, the dart, composed of a hand span of wood and steel,
wound string, glue, and dyed feathers; but a shaft notched and barbed
that sped with a force to pierce mail.

Each particle of its substance had Name, each grain of its mass an
energy signature for which Arithon had subverted Ath's order and
patterned a banespell.

By nature, any snare of unbinding held a lawless compulsion to
annihilate.  Counter to the Major Balance and in parallel with chaos,
frail strictures bent to harness the ungovernable were wont to spin
dangerously awry.

In raw fact, Arithon I s effort was only plausible though a tangle of
tricks and paradox, a loophole in the world's knit that hinged on a
theoretical blend of fine points: that the object to be ovennastered
was itself made for death, and that its uninterrupted natural action
must set forfeit the conjurer's life.

Everything, everything, depended upon the headhunter crossbowman
having scored a lethal hit.

And if the man was such a marksman, and his aim did not drift, and
the baneward successfully intercepted his bolt before the instant it
broached living flesh, the result offered perilous instability.  The
safeguards contrived to limit the unbinding's ill effects were by no
means infallibly sure.

Doubts were all Arithon had, and stark fear, when the quarrel hissed
into his defenses.

To unmake any particle of Ath's Creation came at hideous cost.

Arithon shuddered, then blocked a scream with his knuckles as the
mote he had captured exploded in a battering burst.  Tied to his
conjury, his body convulsed in a spasm that seemed to crush out his
marrow as law and matter unraveled in a whistling rush of wild
energies.  Arithon felt the nexus of his uncreation graze his
protections, burning for entry to twist, tear, and unravel his whole
flesh as well as any other thing that lay within range of its reach.

Inflamed as though he noosed magma, he flung out the shielding second
stage of his counterspell.

He deflected his ugly package of wrecked order through air, back
along the disturbed eddies traced by the quarrel's first flight path,
then trailed with a stop ward set to the resonance of wrought steel.

A hiss arced through space above the skirmishers that partnered no
physical projectile.  Arithon opened his eyes, running sweat and winded
as if he had been whip-struck.

With every nerve screaming, he waited.

Until, behind a thin screen of alder, the crossbow exploded in the
hands of its wielder.

Splinters and wound wire and metal burst like shrapnel and flayed the
headhunter's face.  He dropped, choking, holes torn through his chest
and his abdomen, and blood spattered like thrown ink across the
bleached trees.  The only bit of his weapon not fragmented was the
trigger latch, the first steel to contact the spell and engage it
limited safeward.

That stricture at least had worked and cancelled the unholy
destruction.  Arithon shivered in relief.  Let there be no, more
archers among the enemy, he hoped, gasping as he clung to the tree
branch.  If there were, then Deshir's clans were finished.  He lacked
stomach to repeat those defenses.

Tom by nerve-sick reaction, he regretted the victim, whose death was
not needed but who could not in the pinch of the moment be distanced
from the means that destroyed his weapon.

Below the beech tree, fighting still raged.  Casualties mounted
ferociously.  Only five clansmen remained standing.

Madreigh battled on one knee, his right arm useless and his blade in
his left hand, parrying.  Jieret had taken up Alithiel in braced
readiness for the moment when his last adult defenders should be cut
down.

Again, Arithon stamped back the temptation to grasp at the easiest
expedient.  Whoever he might spare by using shadow, he could later kill
without compunction in the grip of Desh-thiere's curse.  No risk was
worth the chance he might draw Lysaer.  Hedged by untenable choices,
Arithon recouped a concentration that felt as if sloshed through a
sieve.  Need drove him again to abjure safe limits and to further
violations of integrity that were going to cost bitterly later.

He must not think of that.  Now all that mattered was the
preservation of Jieret's life, and after him, any other clansman who
could be saved.

Clammy with chills, hollowed by weakness that sapped like the
aftermath of fever, Arithon rested his cheek on the tree limb.  He
closed his eyes, inhaled the peppery scent of damp bark, and let that
fuse with his being.  He quieted.  His clasped hands settled and
sensitized to the languorous flow of sap.  His thoughts became the
whisper of leaves, the sunlit flight of pollinating bees, the unfurling
of green shoots that thickened with each season's turn into stately
crown and mighty wood branches.  His consciousness spiraled down to
encompass the thick black depths of earth, the firm anchored network of
taproots.

Through the irreproachable pith of the living tree, Arithon twined
his spell.  Like the buds, the leaves, the branches, all groping
outward for new growth, he spun the fine tendrils of his wards away
from the trunk, that any defender who used its bulk to shield his back
would be spared.  But any attacker facing inward would find his eyes
drawn and subtly captured, while his thoughts slowed to syrup, then to
the languid drip of.sap.

A human mind ensnared in the consciousness of a tree will sleep,
immersed in slow dreams that measure time in stately rhythms, of clean
sun and silvered snow and seasons that slide one into another like the
rain-kissed drift of autumn leaves.

Which meant, Arithon knew, that any Deshan still standing would
slaughter his victims in the half second their reflexes dragged and the
hand on driving blade faltered.  Unlike the Etarrans entrapped by the
shadow maze in the adjacent valley, these townsmen were given no
reprieve.

Mastery of their fate was reft from them, with no offered moment of
free will in which they could choose to turn aside.

Against a powerful temptation to shelter with them in sunwashed
oblivion, Arithon disentwined his consciousness from the tree's green
awareness.  He opened his eyes too soon.  The part of him still paired
to heart sap and earth peace ripped away into noise and the blood reek
of animal carnage.  Below him, the beech roots were mulched over with
dead men, their wide-open eyes still dreaming, imprinted with
sky-caught reflections of bark and boughs and leaves.

Arithon retched, then forced a tight grip on raw nerves.

He clasped the branch in sweated hands and through guilt and
revulsion, took charge of the fruits of his conjury.

Madreigh was down and wounded, Jieret at his shoulder with Alithiel
bloodied in his hand.  Two clansmen, both injured, were still on their
feet, while outside the canopy of the beech tree, enemies crumpled to
their knees, lost to mind and awareness.  Beyond these, more
headhunters checked in fear of the bane that had invisibly struck down
their fellows.

Outrage would soon overcome their apprehension and drive them to
vigorous retaliation.

"Don't face inward, don't look at the tree," Arithon instructed the
surviving clansmen.  He then asked numb limbs to move, and proved
shaking hands could still grip.  Somehow he swung to the ground.  Hands
tried to steady him as he swayed.  He pushed them impatiently away.

"Don't trust what you're going to see.  The reinforcements will all
be mine."  He caught his sticky blade from Jieret's grasp.  "Just run,
and don't for any reason turn back."  To the boy's alarmed look, he
added quickly, "I'll be with you.  Go."

He punctuated his instruction with a light slap on Jieret's shoulder.
Then, leaning on Alithiel to keep balanced, he knelt, bent his head,
and spun illusion.

Even depleted as he was, his inborn gift would always an m swer.

Now he was alone and the risks were to himself, he dared risk shadow
in limited counter measure.  Darkness flowed freely to his use as water
might beat from a cataract.

And as he had done another night in Steiven's supply tent, he bent
conjury into the shape and form of warriors.

They emerged from brush and thicket with weapons gleaming and bows
nocked with broadheads in their hands.

If their faces lacked character, if their step was inhumanly silent,
discrepancy was covered by the scream and clash of fighting that echoed
from the grottoes by Tai Quorin.  Since the appearance of reinforcing
clansmen befitted a strategy to cover the flight of three fugitives,
any headhunters not turned by the sleep snare were scarcely minded to
pause in analytical study.  Caught inside arrow range when Arithoti's
shadow men knelt and pulled recurves, most wisely Pesquil's men who
still had wits and footing broke and dived under cover.

Their panicked haste might have amused had the arrows when they arced
not been made up of fancy and desperation.

Arithon stirred, looked up, and tried to muster resource to rise and
continue after Jieret.  He managed neither.  His miscalculation was not
surprising after the strictures he had broken.  Before the foot and the
knee that failed his will lay Madreigh, a tear in his chest that welled
scarlet over his buckskins at each gasp.

"Ath," Arithon said.  He sat.  Stupid with weakness, he met the eyes
of the man, which stayed lucid through a suffering that should have
eclipsed recognition.

"My liege."  Madreigh drew a scraping breath.  "Go on.

After the boy.  You're oath-bound."

A scathing truth, one Arithon understood he had to answer for.

Except he was drained to his dregs from misused expenditure of
magecraft.  Since he could not immediately master himself, he did as he
wished and snatched up Madreigh' wrist.  In a whisper that seemed the
utterance of a ghost he said, "I also took oath for Rathain, and see,
you die for it."

Beyond speech, Madreigh looked at him.

Arithon spread the clansman's limp fingers and pressed them, already
chilled, against the hole of the beech tree.  He closed his own hands
overtop.  Then in a gesture that lanced blackness and sparks through
his mind, he wrenched back the fast-fading glimmer of his spell-craft
and let it flow like a mercy stroke over the clansman's consciousness.

Sleep took Madreigh's tortured frame.  His face under its grit and
gray hair gentled, all sorrows eased into the sundrenched serenity of
ancient trees.

Empty with remorse, Arithon opened his fingers.  Half tranced from
exhaustion, he regarded his circle of quiet dead, clad in leather and
blood, or wearing city broadcloth and chain mail pinched with weed
stalks and dirt.  The only censure for the mage-trained, he sadly
found, was adherence to truth and self-discipline.  No mind with vision
was exeiiipt; creation and destruction were one thread.  One could not
weave with Ath's energies without holding in equal measure the means to
unstring and unravel.

The blood had left his head.  He understood if he tried to move, he
would only spectacularly fall down.  Oblivious to the shouting and the
battering scream of killing steel, he cupped his chin and surrendered
to the shudders that racked him.  He had acted outside of greed or
self-interest, had to the letter of obligation fulfilled his bound oath
to the Deshans.  Duty did not cleanly excuse which lives should be
abandoned to loss or which should be taken to spare others: Steiven's
clansmen, last survivors of savage persecution, or Pesquil's
headhunters, still heated from their spree of unlicensed rapine and
slaughter.  No answer satisfied.  No law insisted that justice stay
partnered by mercy.

The day's transgressions abraded against s'Ffalenn conscience like
the endless pound of sea waves tearing bleak granite into sand.

Through a fog that forgot to track time, Arithon noticed the rhythmic
well of fluid from Madreigh's chest had slowed or stopped.

Whether this was death's doing or the endurance of sap laid deep for
long winter, he had no strength to examine.

He managed to recover his sword, and after that, his footing, before
the disorientation that distanced him bled away and snapped his bemused
chain of thought.  His senses reclaimed the immediate.  The belting
clang of battle had now overtaken and surrounded him, and arrows
sleeted past in flat arcs that gouged up trails of rotted leaves.

Not shadows this time.  The beech tree was solid at his hip.  None
too steady, Arithon backed against it.  Though re-, awakened to his
needs and obligations, his mind stayed bewildered and unruly.

Disjointed details skittered across ' his awareness: that the sun had
lowered; that copper leaves in red light trembled as if dipped in
blood; that the brawling and the noise were distracting because they
were caus-6d by fighters, not shadows dressed up as illusion.  Clansman
and headhunter and disheveled knots of city garrison were engaged in
annihilation as ferocious as a scrap between mastiffs.

Caolle had not sent reinforcements.  The clansmen Arithon recognized
were Steiven's division, and they battled to a purpose that was
anything else but haphazard.  For their wives, their children, for
their sons sadly slaughtered by the riverside, they were vengeance-bent
on killing headhunters.

Though it cost them their last breathing clansmen, Pesquil's league
would not live to leave Strakewood to c@isli in their loved ones'
scalps for bounties.

Waste upon waste, Arithon thought, brought to sharp focus by anger.
As Rathain's sworn sovereign, he would stop them, separate them, ensure
that Jieret had a legacy left to grow for.

Careful only not to tread on fallen bodies, Arithon launched himself
into the skirmish that ringed the trees.

knotting and twisting through undergrowth and hammock, the lightning
flicker of sword stroke and mail like thrown silver against falling
gloom.  He engaged the first headhunter to rush him, inspired beyond
weariness by necessity.  He fought, parried, killed in rhythmic reflex,
all the while searching the melee for sight of just one of Steiven's
officers.  Given assistance, he held half-formed plans of using
magecraft to stage some diversion, that locked combatants might be
separated.  He would control the berserk clansmen, bully them, or fell
them wholesale with sleep spells if he must.  Though as his stressed
muscles stung with the force of a parry, he recognized the last was
pure folly.  His earlier unbinding had left damage, and he was lucky to
stay on his feet.

"Arithon!  My liege!"

The call came from his right, toward the downslope that devolved
toward the grottos.  The Master of Shadows beat off an attacker and
spun.  The patter and hiss of sporadic bowfire creased the air and
snatched through veilings of low foliage.  Through a drift of cut
leaves and air dusky with steep shafts of sunlight, Arithon searched
but never found who had shouted.

His gaze caught instead on a clustered squad of headhunters led by a
pock-scarred man in muddy mail; then another, tall, straight, of
elegant carriage in a ripped blue surcoat, gold-blazoned and bright as
his hair.

lysaer They saw each other the same instant.

Arithon felt the breath leave his chest as if impelled by a blow.

Then Desh-thiere's curse eclipsed reason.  He was running, the air at
his neck prickling his raised hair like the charge of an incoming
storm.  Sword upheld, lips peeled back in atavistic hatred, he closed
to take his half-brother without heed for what lay between.

A baleful flash brightened the trees.  Lysaer, as cursebound as he,
had called on his given gift of light.

Arithon expelled a ragged laugh.  They were matched.  No bolt, no
fire, no conflagration, lay past reach of his shadows to curb.

Strakewood could burn or be frozen sere as barren waste, and
supporters and armies would be winnowed like chaff in the holocaust.

The end would pair Lysaer and himself across the bared length of
steel blades, with no living man to intervene.

Lysaer raised his right hand and the headhunters around him fanned
out.

Savoring eagerness, Arithon slowed.  He felt someone grasp his
shoulder, heard shouting like noise in his ears.

Driven by the curse, he shook off restraint, then backhanded Whoever
had interfered.

When the light bolt cracked from Lysaer's fist, he let it a snapping
whip of lightning that parted the wood like ciearn.

Through its glare Arithon saw the men around kneel and raise
white-limned weapons to their shoulders.  Crossbows, he realized in
undimmed exultation.

Arithon toyed with them, used mage-schooted finesse to twist shadow
with a subtlety his enemy could never match.

The headhunters who aimed were struck blind to a degree that negated
they had ever walked sighted.

Some screamed and threw down their weapons.  The rest fired a barrage
of wild shots.  Quarrels whined through a rising bloom of
incandescence.

Arithon laughed and let the fire of Lysaer's own making.

char the bolts to oblivion.  Then he cancelled the force aranged
against him with a veil of neat shadow, even as he once had deflected
the fires of a Khadrim's fell attack: He barely cared that he trembled
in a backlash of overstressed nerves, but reveled in his powers to
smother all light to oblivion.

The earth shook to a thunderous report.  Throughout,
straight-shouldered and animated by the geas that enslaved him, Arithon
withheld any counter measure.  His quickest satisfaction lay with
steel, and holding Alithiel poised, he waited untouched at the apex of
a singed swath of carbon.

"Will you fight," he called to Lysaer, derisive.  "Or will you stand
out of reach and play at fireworks just to waste time and show off?"
"Defiler!"  Lysaer screamed back.  His handsome face twisted.

Cuts and bruises made his expression seem deranged.  "Weaver of
darkness and despoiler of children, your crimes have renounced claim to
honor."

Unsmiling, Arithon took a step.  As the distance narrowed and
panicked headhunters scrambled from his path, he noted that Lysaer
looked peaked.  The left arm beneath its muddied velvets was bandaged
and strapped as though injured.  A wolfish thrill shot through him,
that the enemy before him was disadvantaged.  Arithon said, "That's
your blade?  Did you really think reverse runes could charm my death?"

fit.

flourished Alithiel, inviting, "Find out.  Come fight."

"Why cross blades with a bastard?"  Contempt in his bearing, a
mirrored obsession in his eyes, Lysaer shot his hand aloft again.

Sensitized to air that flowed over his skin, Arithon felt the
ingathering of force Lysaer drew to call light.  This effort would be
more than a killing bolt, as devastating as any formerly pitched to
carve the Mistwraith into submission.

Shadow could still shield him, but the broad trees of Strakeforest
would burn.  Clansmen and game would crisp in a burst of wildfire, and
earth itself would char to slag.

Mage-taught instincts clamored in warning and alarm, but against the
overpowering ascendance of Desh-thiere's curse any stir of uneasiness
lost voice.  Arithon advanced.  His whole being resonated hatred, his
oath to Rathain just meaningless words, the rasp of dry wind and dead
intent.  As long as Lysaer was before him, he had eyes only for his
enemy.

Like a puppet pulled on wires he would close with the blond nemesis
leagued against him.  Over parched ground or quick, their swords would
cross until one of them died, and whatever impediments were swept aside
beforehand became simple sacrifice to ensure this.

The air seemed to sing in its stillness.  The chasing on Alithiel's
dark blade appeared bodilessly inscribed on the gloom.

Since the sword was now pointed with the grain of ill geas and
enmity, its Paravian starspell stayed mute.  More nerve-worn than the
curse would permit him to acknowledge, Arithon slipped without volition
into mage-sight.  His vision recorded the interlocked litanies of
leaves, of branches, of men partnered in useless struggle on the
fringes, embodied even while killing in the light dance that founded
all life.  The soil beneath his step shimmered with the mysteries of
rebirth, and even these lost their power to redeem him.

The drive of Desh-thiere's curse whelmed all.

At the palm of Lysaer's raised hand, light burned and then glared,
and then erupted to a core of hot brilliance.  The nexus swelled,
fountained, raged into coruscation that ravaged the forest with back
drafts.  Lysaer by now stood isolated with his headhunter allies driven
back by the gathering fury of his assault.

opposite him, a wind-whipped silhouette with a hand lightly gripped
to a sword's hilt, Arithon faced him in challenge.  Unarmored, clad in
the same spattered deerhides as any of Steiven's scouts, he seemed a
figure diminished; unfit, - half seen through lashed tangles of black
hair, an expression bent his lips that held no regret but only derisive
impatience.

The flaring brilliance lit the s'Ffalenn features to inescapable
clarity.  The detached assurance, the sheer nerveless arigance on that
face, slapped back remembrance of the manipulation that had undone
Amroth's king and councilor.  Swept by a counter surge of antipathy,
Lysaer shrieked his ultimatum.  "By Ath, you unprincipled bastard, your
wiles shall cause no more damage.  This time, not counting for cost,
the justice of my people will be served!"

If such rationale was wholly subverted by the workings of
Desh-thiere's curse, Lysaer endorsed usage with consent.  He screamed
and surrendered to his passion, and something inside of him snapped.

That instant he hurled his bolt.

Arithon surged to meet the attack.  Gripped by queer exultation ,
still wakened to mage-sight, he perceived with a lucidity that damned
that the curse had overmastered his half-brother.  Lysaer's offensive
had erased the bounds of sanity and self-preservation.  As at Mearth,
when a crossing through a worldgate had been snatched beyond grasp by
adversity , the s'llessid prince now channeled the whole of his being
through the destructive aspects of his gift.

The light of his own making would martyr him.  Strakewood with its
armies and its clansmen would be immolate(] at a stroke.  Whether
Arithon could shield himself in shadow became a point most gloriously
moot.  Desh-thiere's purpose would be served.

At least one of the half-brothers that comprised its banc.

would be expunged from the face of Athera.

Arithon howled at the irony.  Swept to madness by the wraiths' savage
triumph, he flung wide his arms, taunting the light to come take him,
to lock with his shadows, and let his enemy be destroyed in one fiery
burst of self-sacrifice.

In that moment of consumed self-control, that ecstatic certainty of
victory, Arithon felt his sword arm caught and his hip blunder into
something moving.  Enraged, shoved off' balance, he squinted through a
blooming flare of incandescence.  Whoever had meddled would die for it.

"Your Grace of Rathain, we are oath-sworn," cried the boy in
shrill-voiced terror.  "I came back as you asked, to keep you apart
from your half-brother."

A blood oath bound and sworn by a mage set its ties to the living
spirit.

"Sithaer, Jieret!"  Arithon shouted, his cry split from him as the
exultation of Desh-thiere's vengeance became flawed by his pact with
Steiven's son.  The unholy pleasures of the instant transformed to
torment, as enslaved consciousness and true will became torn between
opposite masters.  Then the irony, of crippling proportion: that any
shadow spun to save the boy must also spare the s'llessid prince from
the forge fires of the curse's conniving.

Anguished between personal care and the lure of the curse's
directive, tainted by the seductive truth that to forswear s'Ffalenn
conscience and leave Jieret betrayed would buy Lysaer's death and final
freedom, Arithon wrenched his will into alignment against Desh-thiere's
geas.

For ill or for folly, the paradox would be permitted to renew itself;
Lysaer had no training to understand or control how Desh-thiere's
meddling had twisted him.  Assured of his righteousness, avowed to
bring justice, he would use his survival to labor until this day's
atrocities became repeated, That colossal futility made a mockery of
will, that perhaps reprieve came too late.  One victim's lamed effort
at compassion might buy only failure at the end.

A split second shy of annihilation, Arithon jerked Jieret inside the
arc of a sword blade dropped sideward to guard.

The ache of exhaustion, the sucking drain against resources long
overstrained, seemed to founder his mind and his reflexes.

Obdurate, Arithon fought.  He called, commanded, and savaged from his
gift demands that edged the impossible.  The curse pulled and hampered
him.  He wrestled its treacherous crosscurrents, while his shadows
flared snapped.  Darkness arose like a howling gale, unleashed to run
rampant across torrents of unchained light.  The air itself' seemed to
scream in white agony as the gifts of two brothers collided.

Men at arms wailed and fell prone, their weapons dropped as they
locked shaking arms to shield their hands.

Ti-ecs tossed and rattled, wrenched into splinters by snaking
-Ll-@tils of wildfire.  Still trapped in mage-sight, Arithon heard the
shriek of natural energies battered and tortured out of time.  He felt
the frosts of his own conjury flash-freeze living beacons to glassine
hardness that shattered in the pound of the wilds.

Intermixed were cries that were human.  He groaned, weighing
plundered intuition and training to force his reserves without mercy
for the power he required to compensate.

With his fists pressed to Jieret's back, his eyes blind and his
senses spinning, Arithon widened his defenses.

and as he had once done at Etarra, his conjury cloaked the wood in
darkness.

He could not see to know fate's joke was actualized; that Lysaer had
collapsed from blood loss and stress, and that Pesquil and a dedicated
lieutenant now labored to draw him clear of the conflict.

Arithon could not breathe the air for the smells of dead earth and
burning.  He could barely stand upright for the voracious demands of
weaving shadow.

Jieret said something.  The words faded in and out unintelligibly.

Then hands caught Arithon's arms and shoulders, lifting, cajoling,
supporting his legs that would not any longer bear weight.

A touch that had to be Jieret's peeled his fingers away from his
sword, then clasped his hand in steady warmth.

"Ath," said a scout, appalled.  "You sure he isn't hurt?"

"Leave him be," snapped another, maybe Caolle.  "If he loses his hold
on these shadows, every clansmen in these woods will be doomed."

Arithon held on.  He clung to consciousness and craft with a
determination that bled and then racked him.  Spinning impressions
whirled through him, of burning trees and falls of water, and bodies
blacked and crisped on sere ground.  that made him cry out.

Such visions must be lent him by mage-sight; he prayed and he begged
this was so.  When he could sort out no distinction, he punished
drowned senses for reassurance that a dark deep as felt, starless,
lightless, battened Strakewood defenses that could smother any outburst
of reiving flame,.

An indeterminate time later, he shivered and snatched a breath of
air.  "Are they safe yet?"

oon," answered Jieret, or maybe Caolle.  The word hurried without
echo through the walls of eight thousand dead.  At some point after
that, the last shred of awareness slid away from Arithon's control.
The dark and the shadows conjured seeped through his frayed
concentration, and then he knew nothing more.

Arithon reawakened on his back, to stars set like jewels between a
black lattice of oak leaves.  A soft cry burst from him as nightmare
and reason collided, and he thought at first that he looked upon a dead
landscape, formed of carbon and char.

Then his nostrils filled with the sweet scent of sap, the resins of
pine not far off.  At his side, someone said kindly, "Strakewood is
green still.  Your shadows preserved.  There are clanborn survivors."

Arithon lacked voice for his bitterness, that what lives had been
saved must be few, with none of them a woman or a child.  For a long
time he could do nothing except shut his eyes and silently, fiercely
weep.

The tears cleared his mind; no mercy.  Raw as he was, and helplessly
unable to barrier himself in detachment, he was forced to take full
stock.

"Jieret?"  he asked first, the word a bare rasp of breath.

"At your side," came the answer, reassuring.  "He sleeps.

Except for singed hair, he's unharmed."

Arithon released a pent-up sigh.  "Steiven fell.  Where?"

"Does that matter?"  The voice held an edge now, and a moment in
darkness marked out the form of a clan scout, stated cross-legged a
short distance off.

Stubborn and silent, Arithon waited.

"All right," the scout relented.  "Caolle said make you rest, but if
you're going to be difficult, I'll tell you."

A skeptical quirk turned Arithon's lips.  "Caolle said nothing of the
sort."

The stillness grew expansive with surprise.  "All right."

the scout sighed.  "Caolle cursed you.  Jieret insisted you needed
rest."

The boy, now Earl of Deshir, caithdein of a kingdom, first into
inheritance of Rathain's stewardship an orphan scarcely twelve years of
age.  The facts were given quickly after that, starting with Steiven's
response to Arithon's first warning of disaster, orders that his war
captain had begged on his knees to be released from: to gather and
withdraw from the fighting by force if need be three hundred handpicked
young men.  Steiven s'Valerient had then led the rest into ill-fated
vengeance at the grottos.

"He was among the first to fall," the scout said, his tone fit and
tired, his hands wrung with tension around his knees.  "A crossbow
quarrel caught him before we cleared the marshes, which was well.  He
never saw the scars of the burning, or what happened to his lady in the
dell."

"I know how she died," Arithon grated.  "Caolle broke orders, didn't
he?"

Snapped past the memory of the brutalities beside the Tai Quorin, the
scout shrugged a shoulder and resumed.  "The three hundred circled wide
and approached the melee from upstream.  As well they did.  Jieret and
two wounded scouts could hardly have pulled you out alone."

Quiet, Arithon absorbed this.  If he had done nothing else, his final
intervention with shadows had spared most of those clansmen Steiven had
selected to survive.  After an interval, he prodded, "And now?"

"The headhunters' league are mostly destroyed and Lysaer's Etarrans
in retreat.  Outside of Strakewood, we expect they'll regroup.

The ones not nerve-broken or wounded will probably stay on and poison
springs to destroy the game, and starve us out."  A breeze wafted
through the trees, edged with the acrid tang of ash.  The scout drew a
dagger and tested the edge with a thumb, over and over seeking flows.

"Caolle won't give them satisfaction.  His plan is to abandon
Strakewood and join up with Earl Marl's band in Fallowmere."

Somewhere a wakeful mockingbird loosed a melodic spill of notes.

A hunting owl cried mournfully.  Jieret stirred in the depths of some
dream, and the scout cut a stick in the silence and nicked off a
rattling fall of chips.

Arithon lay still and noticed other things: that his body was clothed
still in blood-tainted leathers, though somebody thoughtful had bound
his cuts.  In fits and starts of mage'sight, he recognized the neat
work for Caolle's.  By the odd flares of light that scoured the edge of
his vision, and by his current inability to keep focused on the
physical aspects of reality, he knew he still suffered the effects of
overplayed nerves.  His twisted misuse of spell-craft had caused damage
beyond distress to the body.  His thoughts had an odd start and hitch
to them, as if pulled to the border of delirium.  The curse itself had
left ravages.  His opposition by shadows had plundered also, when he
had wrenched that thundering torrent of enslavement aside to reclaim
his free will.

He dared not guess how much time must elapse before he could sleep
without nightmares.  A nagging ache in his bones warned how greatly his
resources were depleted.  Pain and plain restlessness drove him finally
to stop circling thoughts by getting up.

The scout abruptly stopped whittling.  Knife poised, chief raised in
query, he said, "Where in Sithaer are you off to?"

Over his shoulder as he departed, Arithon flipped back an insouciant
quote from a ballad.  " To free the dazed deal], and reclothe cold
flesh in fair flowers."  Whether his tune was delivered in Paravian
words did not matter; his mood was too shattered to translate.

As if nature held light as anathema, no moon shone over Strakewood in
the aftermath of Etarra's assault.  Traced by faint starlight or by the
fluttering, uncertain flame of small torches, Caolle and Deshir's clan
survivors moved through the fields of the dead.  They went armed.

The body that groaned in extremity might not be a kinsman's, but an
enemy's; the hand that stirred in trampled mud might not reach in
acceptance of succor, but instead hold a dagger thrust to maim.  Scouts
too tired for sound judgment searched logs that looked like fallen
clansmen and gullies that conspired to conceal them.  Through swamp and
on hillside, there came decisions no repetition could ease; of whether
to send for a healer or to deal a mercy stroke and finish an untenable
suffering.

Each call for the knife underscored the sorrow that clan numbers had
been close to decimated.

Quiet as any man born to the wood could cover deep brush, warily as
he tried to guard his back, he sometimes flushed living enemies, who
for hours had blundered through ravine and Thorn thicket, lost and
frightened and alone.

Townsmen caught out of their element who were jumpy and K-eyed to
seize retribution for their plight.

With one valley quartered, the acres still left to patrol seemed a
punishment reserved for the damned.

Sticky clothes, and dulled blades, and hands that twinged from pulled
tendons did nothing for Caolle's foul mood.  His -years numbered more
than fifty, and this had been a battle to @reak the stamina of the
resilient young.  As he crouched over yet another corpse, a young boy
in chain mail so new it looked silver, he cursed the caprice of fate,
that he should be alive instead of Steiven.  The losses had yet to be
tallied, of friends that had passed beneath the Wheel.  Nobody wanted
to number the kinsmen their own knives had needfully dispatched.

Ahead, jumbled and jagged against a sky like tinseled silk, the rock
cliffs in their seams and webbed shadows narrowed toward the mouth of
the grottos.  No wounded waited in the charred glen beyond, only dead
that rustled in the winds like dry paper.  To Halliron, who walked at
his shoulder, Caolle said, "You might just want to turn back."

As begrimed as any clansman, though his shirt was embroidered and
cuffed in fine silk, and his lyranthe stayed strapped on his shoulder,
the Masterbard gave answer.  "I'll not leave."  He pushed on through a
stand of low maples.  "Don't punish yourself over hindsight."

Caolle sucked an offended breath.  "I should have listened.

We could've scattered and separated the women."

"The men would still be as dead.  The divided families could not
survive."  Halliron finished in quiet certainty.

"Your children would have died in Etarra.  Arithon told me.

He saw their executions in the course of his tienelle sciiing."

Loath to be reminded, Caolle pushed past.  "Ath.  If you have to tag
after me, the least you can do is quit talking."

But the bard's tenacity impressed him.  Though no fighter, Halliron
tended to show up where he was useful.  If in this fire-seared abattoir
his touch with the wounded and dying was unlikely to offer any benefit,
his unstinting service had earned him the right to go on.

The pair moved ahead, oddly matched: the stocky, grizzled warrior in
simmering, skeptical bitterness and the lean musician whose flared
boots and court clothing were unsuited for rugged terrain, but whose
grace stayed unmarred by the setting.

They came across a slain Etarran pikeman.  The man did not lie as he
had fallen.  Someone had laid his fouled weapon aside, removed his
helm, and turned his young face to the sky.  Eyes closed, he now rested
straight with his hands gently crossed on his breast.

"Odd."  Caolle coughed out the stench of ash.  "One of ours wouldn't
bother.  Fellow must've had a companion."

Halliron said nothing, but raised his head and peered into the murk
of the grotto.

"You know something," Caolle accused.

"Maybe."  Halliron pressed on.

After the fifth such corpse, this one a clansman's, the discrepancy
became irksome.  Caolle stopped square in the moss where a dead scout
had been as tenderly arranged.

"You never heard the ballad of Falmuir?"  Halliron asked softly.

"I think we are seeing its like."

"Ballad?"  Caolle straightened.  He scrubbed his face with his
knuckles, as if tiredness could be scraped from his flesh.

"You pick a damned odd time to speak of singing."  Halliron stood
also.  A warm glint of challenge lit his eyes.

"And you don't out of reflex view every man you meet and measure his
potential as a fighter?"

"That's different."  Caolle sighed.  "Maybe not."  He rechecked the
hang of his sword and his knives, and stalked from the riverbed into
shadow.  "Then what should I know about Falmuir?"

"That two cities took arms over marriage rights to an heiress."

Halliron slowed to negotiate a wash of dry river pebbles, where a
misstep could easily turn an ankle.  "The girl," he resumed, "had a
seer's gift.  She begged her guardian to allow her to wed an uninvolved
suitor as compromise, and to forfeit her rights of inheritance.  For
greed and for power, her wishes were refused.  A war resulted, with
losses very like this one."

Caolle led deeper into the defile, his disgust rendered bodiless in
full gloom.  "These Etarrans had only to mind their manners and stay
home.  Their city was never assaulted."

Which truth could be argued, from the viewpoint of townsmen
terrorized by shadows they could hardly be expected to know were
harmless.  Cut off ahead of his conclusion, Halliron pondered the clan
captain's impatience.  "You suspect another treachery lies ahead?"

else?"  The defile narrowed.  Sturdy, as silent in "What motion as a
predator, Caolle drew his knife.  With the river fallen behind, the
thrash of white waters diminished.  In darkness now humid with dew, the
casualties lay thick on the earth.  Clansman and foe alike were arrayed
in still rows, head to feet aligned north to south, and weapons pulled
clear of folded hands.

Caolle checked each one anyway to ascertain no body still breathed.

Above the soft scrape of his boot soles, Halliron said, "You won't
find what you think."

"So we'll see."  Nettled as a wolf over a disturbed cache, Caolle
adhered to his wariness.

Cautioned by the angle of the captain's shoulders, Halliron let
ballads and conversation both lapse.  The ravine they trod held an
unsettled feel.  Where deer should have bounded from their watering,
the song of the crickets rang unpartnered.  Here only bats flitted and
swooped erratic circles between the scarred walls of the rim rocks.

And then between steps the mosses that cushioned the trail bed were
seared to papery dryness.  Trees became firestripped skeletons, while
ahead, the grotto lay ravaged and razed to split stone filmed over with
carbon.

The air hung poisoned with taint.

Inside the ruin where the tents had stood, limned like a ghost in
soft starlight, knelt a man.

Breath hissed through Caolle's clenched teeth.  His knife hand
lifted, caught back from a throw by Halliron.

His urgency queerly muffled, the bard said, "Don't.  That's no
enemy."

"His Grace of Rathain.  I can see."  Tension did not leave Caolle's
arm.  "By Ath, I could thrash him!  Why in Sithaer should he bother
with corpses while our wounded lie unfound and suffering!"

"You misunderstand him, you always have."  The Masterbard released
his restraint, and jumped back at the speed with which the clan captain
turned on him.

"And you don't?"  Caolle enforced incredulity with a whistling
gesture of his knife.

Recovered, Halliron stood his ground.  The night breeze stirred his
white hair, and his face, deeply shadowed, stayed serene.  "This
moment, no.  I think it best you don't disturb your liege."  Then, his
tone changed to awe, he added, "It is like Falmuir.  ""To free the
dazed dead, and reclothe cold flesh in fairflowers.  " At Caolle's look
of baffled anger, the Masterbard said, "Prince Arithon's mage-trained.
You don't know what that means?"

"I'd be hardly likely to, should I?"  Caolle presented his shoulder,
his profile like a hatchet cut against the sootstained dark of the
grotto.  "Killing's my trade, not fey tricks with poisons and shadows."

And behind the captain's harshness, in a knife blade demarked by a
trembling thread of reflection, Halliron perceived the grief of
crushing losses: a clan lord gone, and Dania, and four daughters
cherished as if they had been Caolle's own.  The present was robbed,
and the future stretched friendlessly bleak.  A difficult task must for
love be repeated all over again; another young boy to be raised for the
burden of leading the northland clans: first Steiven and now, when a
man was aging and wearied of adversity, Steiven's orphaned son.

That Caolle's sullen nature would greet such desertion in anger,
Halliron well understood.  What could not for tragedy be permitted was
that blame for Deshir's ills stay fastened on the Teir's'Ffalenn.  Time
had come for the bard to ply the service he was trained for.  There and
then in the darkness, amid the charred ground where the dead lay, he
unwrapped the cover from his instrument.

Caolle snapped, "Ath, we'll have ballads again?"  He made to surge
forward and stopped, caught aback by the bard's grip on his wrist.

Court manners or not, Hallironcould move nimbly when need warranted.

"You'll not touch him," the bard said in reference to the man, still
kneeling, who had neither looked up nor shown other sign he had heard
them.  The schooled timbre of a masterbard's voice could fashion an
outright command.  "Sit, Caolle.  Hear the tale of Falmuir.  After
that, do exactly as you please."

Disarmed as much by exhaustion, Caolle gave way.  If he chose not to
sit, he had little choice but to listen, as any man must when a singer
of Halliron's stature plied his craft.  For a masterbard, the edges of
mage-sight and music lay twined to a single wrapped thread.

The lyranthe had been fashioned by Paravian spell-craft, and under
supremely skilled fingers she evoked an allure not to be denied.

From the opening chords, Caolle looked aside.  By the close of the
first verse his stiffness was all pride and pretense.  As his knife
hand relinquished its tension and his face eased from antipathy, he
heard of the siege of Falmuir, where a princess had walked out alone on
a battlefield where defenders and abductors lay slain.  Lent refined
vision by the spelled weave of words and bright notes, Caolle was shown
in humility the legend of the ballad reenacted here, in the grotto of
Deshir's slain.

His gaze at some point drifted back to Arithon.  Even as a Princess
had once done in grief and total loss, the Shadow Master poised amid
the burned remains of clan kindred.  His fine-boned hands were filmed
with black ash for each of the corpses he had settled.  His hollowed
cheeks glittered with the tracings left scoured by tears.  He was
speaking.  Each syllable rang with compassion, and each word he spun
formed a name.  He summoned in love, and they came to Win, the shades
of tiny babes and silent women, of girls and grandmothers and daughters
and wives, sundered from life in such violence that their spirits were
homeless and dazed.

They formed around him a webwork of subliminal light, not burned but
whole; no more aggrieved but joyous as he added words in lyric Paravian
that distanced the violence that had claimed them.

Arithon gave back their deaths, redeemed from the horror of murder.
One by one he cherished their memories.  In an unconditional mercy that
disallowed grief, they were fulLY and finally freed to the peace of
Ath's deepest mystery.

In time, no more forms shone in soft light, but only a man alone, who
rose unsteadily to his feet, while the sad cadence of Halliron's voice
delivered the princess of Falmuir's final lines: She went not to wed,
or to comfort or rest, but to free the dazed dead, and to reclothe cold
flesh in fair flowers.  But in this cleft of sere earth and split rock,
there were neither bodies to bury nor blossoms to seed over grave
sites, Caolle blotted his cheeks with the knuckles still clenched to
his skinning knife.  His gesture encompassed his prince as gruffly he
said, "The man was sent to bed once.  If he faints on his feet, he's
like to whack his head on a rock.

"Let him be."  Halliron stroked the ring of fading strings into
silence.  "What he does brings solace we cannot."

"It's healing he needs," Caolle groused.  "Though by Daelion, I don't
like the post of royal nursemaid."

Attuned to the change in the captain's railing, the Masterbard tied
up his instrument.  Too grave to be accused of amusement, he waited
while a shame-faced Caolle noticed and then sheathed his knife.

Then, unspeaking, they trailed Arithon's progress up the grotto; they
sorted out and administered to the living, Rathain's prince to his
uncounted dead.

Night passed.  The bard's face showed every sleepless hour, and
Caolle wore an expression like boiled leather.

While gray dawn crept in and the forest rang with birdsong
undisturbed by mankind's sad strivings, they reached a dell scattered
with the shafts of fallen arrows and, beyond a broad beech, ringed with
casualties so closely fallen that one lay entangled upon the next like
tidewrack stranded by storm.

Roused from the half trance that had sustained his passage through
the grotto, Arithon reached out sharp and suddenly, and touched
Halliron on the wrist.  "Let me work alone, here.

There won't be any wounded among these fallen."

To kill a man untimely with a blade was not the same as using magics
to twist his destiny, to overrule his fate by ill usage of the forces
that endow life.  To release those spirits cut down in Jieret's defense
was a costly, exhaustive undertaking more taxing than anything
accomplished previously.

For these dead did not welcome intervention, but shrank from Arithon
in stark fear.  He was more than their killer; he was a master who had
betrayed them on levels they had no conscious means to guard.

To bind them long enough to free them, he had to expose to them all
that he was.  He had to lower his defenses and let them shriek curses
to his face.  He had to endure their pain, let them hurt him in turn,
until his passivity left them mollified and quiet.

And when the blessing of the Paravian release let them ,o, the peace
they took with them was not shared.  Arithon looked desolate and
haunted, and remorse had stolen even tears.

Long before the end, Halliron found he could not watch.

Caolle, who had no gift to know the scope of what was happening, saw
only that Arithon suffered.  "Why should he do this?  Why?"

But the answer the bard gave was inadequate, that this prince was
both musician and king.  Caolle understood only that the heart of the
mystery lay beyond him.

When the captain who thought he knew all there was to sample of human
grief could no longer abide the awful silence, he spoke the greatest
accolade he could offer.

"Arithon is greater than Steiven."

"You see that," said the Masterbard.  "You are privileged.

Many won't, and most will be friends."

By then the town dead had been numbered and most of the clansmen.

There remained now only Madreigh, openeyed, his loose hands empty and
outflung and a gaping hole in his chest.  Aching in body, riven in
spirit, Arithon paused in a moment of stopped breath.  He looked upon
the face of one scarred old campaigner not twisted in rigor, but
content with the peace of the seasons.

This, the man who had defended his back while, for Jieret, he had
shaped baneful conjury.  A cry wrung from Arithon's throat before
sluggish thought could restrain it.  "Dharkaron Avenger witness, you
should have had better than this!"

Shaking in visible spasms, he brushed back gray hair and cupped
Madreigh's face between his palms.  Blind to daylight, deaf in grief,
he closed his eyes and spoke Name; and met not blankness or confusion,
but the abiding fall of spring rains, and snow, and warm sunlight.  He
encountered the peace of the trees.

The awareness shocked him.  The spell that ensnared more than fifty
to spare one had inadvertently preserved another life.

Rathain's prince tilted back his head.  Halliron and Caolte loomed
above him.  His balance tipped toward dizziness, and what seemed the
yawning dark of Dharkaron's censure opened before his wide eyes.  "This
one, also, I saved," he said as if pleading forgiveness.  "Tend him
well.  I would beg that he lives."

"My liege," said Caolle.  He knelt quickly, and when nerve and
consciousness faltered, he was there to catch Arithon in his arms.

]Pirst Resolution

When the tors on the plain of Araithe were raked at sunrise by the
winds, the mists still clung like combed cotton in the valleys as they
had the dawn before.  Only now the tick and splash of droplets off
dew-soaked rock mingled with the moans of wounded soldiers.  Wrapped in
the tatters of his surcoat, his camp blanket long since given up to
alleviate the shortage of bandaging, Prince Lysaer s'llessid knelt to
hold the hand of yet another lancer who shivered and thrashed in
mindless suffering.

"Delirium this time," the healer diagnosed; this victim raved from
wound fever, not as some of the others in a madness brought on by
terrors of sorcery and shadows.  His raw hands helpless and empty, the
healer straightened up from his patient.  He had abandoned his satchel,
there being no more medicines to dispense.  Needles could not suture
without thread, and last night's case load of fatal injuries had burned
him stark out of platitudes.

Not in a lifetime of service had he seen a war cause'such damage as
this one.  To the prince still determined to lend comfort, he added, "I
doubt this lad knows why you're there.  The wagons are loaded.  Did you
want to see Lord Diegan on his way?"

"I'll go in a moment."  His head bent, the dams ends of his hair
flicked in coils over his arm sling, Lysaer let the healer study him in
a mix of exasperation and approval before, fed up and weary, he finally
gave in and stalked off.

One dying garrison soldier might well be past solace.  But the prince
responsible for the strike into Strakewood needed the interval to
think.

Lysaer buried his face in the hand not strapped up in bandaging.

Far off, the pop of a carter's whip sounded over someone's hoarse
shouting: another officer striving to curb the paranoia that had men
drawing steel at plain shadows.

No one who had tangled with Arithon's sorceries in Strakewood would
ever again view darkness as friendly.

Grooms hauling buckets to the picket lines observed Lysaer's pose of
despair.  They murmured in sympathy for his exhaustion, for all the
camp knew he had not rested.  The prince had labored with Pesquil to
compile losses too massive to list.  Commanding despite his discomfort,
he had been on the riverbank to encourage each wave of tired soldiers
who emerged alive from the forest.  He had walked beside litters,
talking, reassuring.  Cracked bones had not stopped him from breaking
up disputes or throwing steady light with his gift to quell massive,
hysterical fear.  Throughout a long and terrible night he had chafed
frightened squires and bloodied his hands beside the surgeon to clean
and stanch open wounds.  However a man might deplore royalty, this
prince had accepted no cosseting.

To find his ragged magnificence still among them in the cheerless
gray of the morning made men break their hearts to meet his wishes.

That Etarra's concerns were foremost in his mind, no town survivor
ever questioned.  Without Lysaer's light to stay the shadows, many more
would have died by the grottos, or been abandoned to the mindless
distress induced by Arithon's maze wards that had ensorcelled the
troops in the west valley.

If not for Prince Lysaer, Lord Commander Diegan himself would not
have left Tai Quorin's banks alive.

In nervous speculation and vehement rage, Etarra's garrison made
clear whom they blamed for the carnage.  Men hailed the prince, then
brandished weapons and cursed the shifter of shadows their campaign had
failed to take down.

Unsettled by his reflections, Lysaer stirred.  At his knees the
soldier tossed and groaned, an arrow that had not quite killed lodged
keep inside his lower gut.  His suffering would prolonged and painful,
and a peppery barmaid who wore leis trinkets would be widowed with no
parting kiss to cold lips.  Without enough wagons for the wounded, the
dead list be interred where they lay, amid the flinty soil of the tors
with only piled stones for their markers.

"I'll see you avenged," the prince vowed in a spiking rush oi'
sincerity.  He touched the man's shoulder and arose.

While darkness had lasted, the cries and the noise of arriviiig
stragglers had filled the camp, queerly amplified by the tog.  The
scope of disaster had loomed through the night, still I),)ssible to
deny.  But now as day brightened and the mists shredded away, the
damages became appallingly apparent.  In @t cai-npaign planned for easy
victory, two-thirds of a war list of ten thousand had been decimated in
a single engagement.  Lysaer walked as the impact of sight rocked the
campsite, men's voices tangled in anger and shrill disbelief.  The
remaining band of officers struggled yet again to rechannel shock
returning to tasks, while others exhorted crushed and silent men to
gather for biscuit and beef around the cookfires.

Raised to rule, well hardened for the trials of leadership, Lysaer
shared the burden where he could.  He spoke, and toLICiled shoulders,
and once faced down a man who had wildly drawn a dagger and raved to
anyone who would listen that he intended to lead a foray to go reiving
back into Strakewood.  Sympathetic to the men but possessed of a cool
self-containment, the s'llessid prince reviewed the wreck of Etarra's
garrison with no incapacitating pang of conscience.

Where he passed, his unassailable assurance touched the men and left
them silent with awe.  His equilibrium could encompass seven thousand
casualties.  He could feel haunted and sad that Arithon had engaged in
unscrupulous use of little children, but not have lasting regrets that
the wholesale elimination of barbarian women and young had been
necessary to guard town security.  No city could recoup from a de@ feat
as terrible as this were they left with belief such casualties could
recur again.

"Your Grace, have you eaten?"  A fat cook tagged his shoulder,
diffident and anxious to please.

Lysaer inclined his head in courtesy.  "I've hardly noticed I was
hungry."  He let himself be led to a fire, politely tasted the soup
that was handed to him.

Haunted by association as his gaze became tranced by the flame, he
found himself reliving the moment when he had actually endorsed
self-destruction to buy the Shadow Master's death.

Although no cost could be counted too great to eradicate the
s'Ffalenn bastard before more innocent lives could fall prey to his
wiles, in daylight and cold reason, hindsight recast self-sacrifice as
an impulse of hotheaded idiocy.  Lysaer shivered, set his soup bowl
with a clink on the board the cook used to stack utensils.  No
guarantee insisted that Arithon should have died in that strike.  He
was clever enough to escape, perhaps; Rauven's teaching lent him
tricks.

The stalking uncertainty lingered, that the inspiration to risk
martyrdom for the cause might not have been Lysaer's own.

Once in Briane's sail hold, and another day in the Red Desert,
Arithon had used magecraft to turn his half-brother's mind.  Plagued by
doubts, Lysaer wondered.  Had the bastard plotted the same way in
Strakewood?  For if mockery and goading had been paired with sorceries
to eliminate the only man with powers over light that might threaten
him, the evil inherent in such design upheld a frightening conclusion.

How better for Arithon to win license to toy with this world as he
pleased than to dedicate his enemy to selfdestruction?  Lysaer burned
inside with recrimination.  If faintness from blood loss had not
disrupted his attack, worse horrors could have visited Athera than
seven thousand dead Etaffan soldiers.

"Your Grace?"  interrupted a staff messenger.

Lysaer glanced up and identified livery with the black and white
blazon of the headhunters' league.  Immediately contrite, since the boy
could have stood several minutes awaiting acknowledgment, he said,
"Pesquil sent you?"

"The wagons are ready to leave, Your Grace."  Embarrassed by the
intensity of Lysaer's attention, the boy regarded the grass, in this
place trampled and muddied by the grinding passage of men seeking
comfort to ease their misery.  "My lord Pesquil said Lord Commander
Diegan is awake and asking after you."

Lysaer dredged up energy to give a quick smile of reassurance.

"Would you lead me to him?"

The boy brightened.  "At once, Your Grace."

Together they crossed the camp.  The mist was thinning quickly now.
Grooms stood in for tired messengers, since sorrowfully decimated horse
lines left them short of duties.

Some of the watch fires were doused.  Between the leaning scaffolds
of weapon racks and the comings and goings from the officers'
pavilions, patrols prepared to ride out.  The nearer circuits would be
quartered on foot, sound mounts being precious and few.

Lysaer assessed all with the sure eye of a ruler, and where he made
suggestions he was given deference and respect.  He took care to
acknowledge every greeting with a nod, a smile, or with names, if he
knew the speaker; Pesquil's young staff runner was overwhelmingly
impressed.

In subdued little groups, conversation underscored by the screeling
hiss of busy grindstones, the veteran pikemen mended gear.  A few
commiserated over losses.  Most others slept sprawled on wet ground,
their blankets reapportioned first for litters and then used for
pallets and rough band@ig'ng.  Past the phalanx of the supply stores,
unloaded in haste from the wagon beds and lashed under tarps by the
carters, the racket and confusion of the night was subsiding.

In sunlight, the green recruits who had seen their companiotis half
butchered or drowned were less driven to seek blind relief in scraps
and hysterical boasting.  Shrieks from the camp followers' tents raised
in dissonance over the sobs of refugees from the west valley still
deranged by terror of the dark.

The core of the army remained, Lysaer assessed.  Carefully handled,
these men could be reforged into a troop of formidable strength.  All
he lacked was excuse to stay; already his authority was not questioned.

The wagon train bound for Etarra formed up, its escort of fifty
lancers in twitchy lines as men made last-minute adjustments to tack
and gear.  One of the few banners not lost in the river flood flapped
erect at the column's head.  Pesquil gave instructions with rapid-fire
gesticulations to the dispatch rider who would report to Lord Governor
Morfett.  A mule strained at its lead rein to graze, bearing a lashed
bundle in city colors: Captain Gnudsog's remains, to be interred in the
mausoleum gardens reserved for the city's most revered.

The rest of the wagons bore wounded, ones with privilege and pedigree
foremost.  The little space remaining had been alotted to men with
irreplaceable skills or standing, and then grudgingly to the staff and
supplies needful for a slow journey home.

The cart draped in the Lord Commander's horse cloths, was easy to
spot.  Lysaer dismissed his young guide with a word of praise that left
him blushing.  Then he crossed the open ground, threaded past an
ongoing, heated dispute, and dismissed a hovering servant.

Lord Diegan lay under blankets, dark, untidy hair emphasizing a drawn
face and eyes that wandered unfocused from soporifics not fully worn
off.  He murmured in question as Lysaer's shadow fell over him, then
settled as his sight recorded a sun-caught head of gold hair.

The prince said gently, "I am here."

"Your Grace?"  Diegan struggled with a fuzzy smile that dissolved
into discomfort.  He struggled painfully to concentrate.

"Don't trouble," Lysaer said.  "I shall speak for both of us .

"We lost Gnudsog."  The Lord Commander plucked at his blankets.

"You knew that?"

Lysaer captured the wandering fingers and caged them in gentle
stillness.  Clearly, firmly, he said, "Pesquil has charge of the
garrison.  He's got twenty good men left who will instruct on barbarian
tactics.  Enough men remain to finish out original intent.  If you
still want to destroy the Deshans, Strakewood's springs will be
poisoned, and the game by the river shall be hazed and killed.  With
nothing to hunt, the few clan survivors will be starved out of the
forest.  The north will be cleared of such pests.  No disaster such as
happened by Tai Quorin shall visit these northlands again."

Color flushed Diegan's cheeks in patches.  "They say you're staying
with the troops."

Lysaer smoothed the Lord Commander's hand and let go.

"I must.  If I cannot bear arms, I will use my gift of light to
safeguard our forays against sorcery."

Weakly, Diegan cursed.  "He survived, then."

The name of the Shadow Master hung unspoken between them as an
answering grimness touched Lysaer.  "We haven't lost.  The Deshir clans
are finished, there will be no next generation.  And your city now
knows the measure of its enemy."

Lord Commander Diegan shut his eyes.  A frown pulled at his brows,
and shadows of stress and fatigue seemed etched in the hollows of his
bones.  "This pirate's bastard.  You know we can't take him alone.

Without your gift of light, every army we send to the field would be
ensorcelled and ruthlessly slaughtered."

Lysaer weighed the wisdom of pursuing this subject with a heartsick
man who was also drugged and gravely ill.

Between them lay the unspoken accusation: that LYsaer had sent Diegan
into safety on Tai Quorin's banks, and by risking himself to the river,
had exposed them all to unconscionable peril.

Aware that Lord Diegan had rallied himself and was watching in
fragile-edged fury, Lysaer smiled.  "I've had all night to ponder
regrets.  Here's my promise.  No more exposure on the front ranks for
me.  The next campaign you launch should be planned and executed to
make use of every advantage.  Years will be needed to prepare.  I could
suggest you have the headhunters' league train fit garrisons, then
sharpen their field skills in small forays that eradicate barbarians.
And when the army is readied and equipped to perfection, send out
heralds to recruit allies.  The burden should not fall to Etarra
alone."

Diegan shifted in distress.  "You say nothing of yourself."

"I am royal," Lyasaer said, his eyes clear blue and direct.

"Once, you thought that a liability."

Lord Commander Diegan swore explosively, then curled on his side in a
spasm of wrenched muscles and bitter pain.

"if I get Lord Governor Morfett to issue an invitation under the
official city seal, would you stay?"

Lysaer smiled.  "Do that, and I shall labor with you to mobilize
cities the breadth of Rathain.  Then we shall march upon Arithon
s'Ffalenn, and we shall take him with numbers no sorceries can
overwhelm."

Lord Commander Diegan relaxed in his blankets, his eyes veiled in
drug-hazed speculation.  "I like your plan.  Pesquil agrees?"

Lysaer laughed.  "Pesquil made your scribes miserable jotting letters
to headhunters' leagues the breadth of the continent before our
casualties were tallied."  For Pesquil, the near total loss of his
troop had been a sore point, alleviated by moody bursts of elation that
after feuding years and too little funding from the city council, the
Earl Steiven's dominion over Strakewood had been decisively broken.

"I shall have to buy manuscripts on strategy," Diegan said in mixed
recrimination and distaste.  "They're long-winded and boring, I
presume.  Hardly entertainment for the parties."

But fall season would be dreary as it was, with so many ladies forced
to mourning.  Diegan drifted for some minutes near sleep, while the
prince, who knew far more about armies and the art of command than he,
attended him in tactful respect.  Finally, eyes closed, Lord Diegan
murmured, "Come back to us safely in the autumn.  My sister Lady Talith
will be waiting."

"Tell her .  .."  Lysaer paused, gravely pleased, while the captain
at the head of the column shouted orders, and whips snapped in the
hands of cursing drovers, and carts began, groaning, to roll forward.
Striding alongside Diegan's wagon, the sun in his hair like sheen on
the wares of a silk spinner, Lysaer spoke from his heart.

"I'll return to pay court to the lady.  No Master of Shadows with his
darkness shall be permitted to keep us apart."

Last Resolution

The deadfalls, stripped of stakes, became grave pits to bury the
fallen.  Deshir's clansmen accomplished the work in whirlwind
expedience, laying loved ones atop of dead horses, or the bodies of
enemies still clad in plumed helms and mail shirts.  Plunder entered
nobody's mind.  On a field holding slain by the thousands, there were
more abandoned weapons than living men to wield them; and by long and
bitter custom, Deshir's clans gave no time in respect for their fallen
that might endanger the living.

Of Strakewood's complement of nine hundred sixty, scarcely two
hundred men lived, half that number wounded; fourteen boys of Jieret's
generation were all that survived Etarra's campaign against Arithon.

The Tai Quorin's waters rolled muddied and stinking, and swaths of
ancient greenwood lay razed and fire-scarred and smoking.

Unless the hunters ranged far into the mazed back glens by the river
basin, game for the stew pots was thin and scarce.

As hungry and tired as the men who had lost their families and their
lifestyle to defend their rights of territory, Arithon s'Ffalenn raised
a stone still clotted with mud and moss and placed it against the cairn
that marked the burial of Steiven, Earl of the North, caithdein and
Warden of Ithamon.  Interred at his side rested his beloved lady Dania,
whose piercing wit and intuition would provoke and delight no man
further.  Silenced by remembrance, the Master of Shadows scuffed dirt
from split fingers on the leathers her kindness had provided him.  Then
he bundled an arm about the shoulders of the boy who stood motionless
at his side.

"Your parents were fine people, Jieret.  Ones I was proud to know.

Forgive me if I can't always match up to your memory of their
example."  Under his hands the boy quivered.

Arithon tactfully let him go.

Jieret pushed back his sleeve cuffs and pulled out the whittling
knife he had used to carve toys for his sisters.  He turned it over and
over like a talisman, while, careful not to watch the boy's tears,
Rathain's prince knelt on earth still thrashed and torn from the
passage of heavy destriers.

"Here," he said, and gently removed the dagger from the boy's hands.
With a care that appeared to consume his attention, he began to scratch
runes of blessing and guard on the river slate that crowned the cairn.

The patterns used in the ritual configuration of magic held a certain
stark beauty; each traced line captured thought in severe simplicity
which offered its own consolation.  As Arithon sketched the intricate
angles, the circular curves and interlocked ciphers, he spoke.  "A
kingdom and its prince are only as strong as their warden.

Caithdein, when you come of age, I'll be honored to swear oath on
your blade.  I can already say you've served this land's prince.  If
not for your courage, Rathain's royal line would be ended, and your
father's fine work gone for nothing."

Jieret dashed his cheek with the back of one dirt-grained wrist.

Red hair sprang like wire between the folds of a bandage, cut from
the silk shirt sewn by Sethvir for the ceremony of Arithon's
coronation.

The peculiar sharp attentiveness he had taken from his mother stayed
trained in unswerving contemplation of the grave stones.  In words not
those of a child, he said, "Your Grace, my father's life was never
wasted in your service.  He made me understand as much when he told me
he knew he was going to die.  One day, perhaps before I come of age,
you will need me again."

Oddly caught out in embarrassment, Arithon paused.

"Well.  On that, Ath forfend, I hope you're wrong."  The figure under
his hands was complete.  He lifted the blade and studied the balanced
geometfics of patterns learned when his fingers were barely old enough
to grip a chalk stick.  But unlike his childhood scrawlings on slate in
his grandfather's study, he sensed no subliminal surge of energy.
Whether this mark in Strakewood held power to ward, or whether its
lines were just pretty scratchings copied over by rote from memory, he
had no means in him to tell.  The odd, static flashes of mage-sight
that had plagued him since shaping the banespell had diminished, until
finally, he could summon no vision at all.

The self-discipline learned at Rauven remained, but to the craft he
had mastered, his senses had gone dumb and dead.

Arithon sought the essence of the trees and the air, but perceived
only as other men saw.

Grief remained, of a depth he could share with no one.

Not for the first time since his choice to pursue his s'Ffalenn
inheritance, he missed the counsel of the cantankerous s'Ahelas
grandfather who perhaps still lived in Rauven's master tower.  Dascen
Elur with its wide oceans lay behind, forever lost.  Here spread a land
whose sky, hills, and rivers held secrets only partially studied.  Cut
short in the midst of discovery, Arithon felt deprived of an arm, or a
leg; or as an artist suddenly blinded to color in a hall filled with
masterworks.

Across the glen, through the sun-dappled pillars of lichened trunks,
the layered harmonics of a lyranthe being tested for pitch threaded the
forest.  As personal as written signature, Halliron's favorite tuning
phrase spattered fifths like a running spill of coins.

Each note pierced Arithon's perception, separate as the impact of
small darts.  As if in counterbalance to reft senses, his awareness of
sound had grown acute.  Birdsong never rang so pure in his ears, and
the clang of pickaxe and steel as graves were covered over never
clashed so mincingly dissonant.

Still on his knees, Arithon stabbed Jieret's knife into dirt.

He bowed his head.  As he had the past night laid hands lo cold
flesh, today he touched his palms to old stone and stilled his inner
awareness.  He had personally accomplished the ritual to free the
sundered spirits of these, his lost friends.  Something of residual
peace should emanate from the bones now embraced in quiet earth.

Nothing; he felt nothing at all.

Arithon sighed, a tightness to his shoulders the only sign of the
ambivalence that wrenched him.  Even the cairn stones were mute.  Where
the least fleck of sand from the creek bed should ring in its essence
with the grand energies that defined all existence, these disparate
rocks gave back the scrape of rough edges against the uncallused burn
barely scarred over since Etarra.  Left only memory, Arithon touched
nothing of the true reality known to mages at all, but saw only the
flat spectrum of visible light.  The ghostly resonance left on this
land by Paravian inhabitance, that Asandir had attuned to his being in
the hills of Caith-alCaen, would neither thrill nor harrow him now.  If
he wished he could walk Ithamon's ruins and not be haunted.

Mastery of his shadows remained, but no knowledge to suggest whether
time would heal his other gifts.

"They're starting."  Jieret touched his prince's wrist to rouse him.
The shadows had moved.  An interval had passed that Arithon found
difficult to measure.  Deshir's survivors at some point had set aside
tools to gather into a circle for the rite to honor their dead.

Arithon recovered Jieret's knife from the earth and straightened up.
"I'll listen from here."  He began to return the small blade to the
boy, then impulsively hesitated.  "Let me keep this," he asked.

"As the steel we used to swear blood pact, I'd like to have it.

To use.  To have you know that I think of you often."

"You're leaving us."  A statement: Jieret did not sound surprised.

Not yet a man, more than a boy, he had too much pride to ask why.

In a manner that reminded painfully of Steiven, he said, "You for
get, I think, that I offered you that same blade already."

Arithon tossed it, absorbed by the flash of the river pearl handle as
it turned and landed with a slap in his palm.

"When I'd finished the tiencile scrying.  I remember."

"That's a good knife for carving willow whistles," Jieret said.

"I shan't be needing it any longer."  And he gestured toward its
replacement, a narrow, quilloned main gauche he wore strapped to his
belt.  "Ath go with you, my prince."

Arithon tucked the little knife into the tight-laced leather that
cuffed his shirt.  Then he pulled Jieret to him and exged a fierce
embrace that he broke with a quick push to the boy off toward his
people.

Within the latticed sear of strong sun that striped through branches
singed of foliage, Deshir's clansmen in their warstained, ragged
leathers joined hands.  Their circle parted to include Jieret, then
unraveled a second time as a stocky figure in studded belts and black
bracers broke away.  Caolle, Arithon identified by the vehement thrust
of the man's stride.  The clan captain had keen intuition, but in the
absence of Dania's sisterly intolerance, he retained all the style of a
thrown brick.

At the center of the circle, incongruous in the slashed elegance of
black silk and gold, Halliron stood in the restored splendor of his
court clothing, his lyranthe tuned in his hands.  He called.

But with Steiven dead and himself left trustee of the clans, Caolle
deferred to no one.  He stamped across the churned ground with his boot
cuffs slapping and his shoulders hunched up, and his whiskered chin
jutted for argument.

At his back, somebody said something commiserating, and the clansmen
quietly closed the gap.

Craggy from strain and sleeplessness, grazed by brush burns, and
patched red from accumulated midge bites, Caolle looked ready to
murder.  "You're leaving us," he accused.

Suppressing a wince as his tone grated against an almost painful
sensitivity, Arithon felt no answering anger.  "I must."  He looked
back in forceful directness that forestalled Caolle's bluster.  Across
the thicket the soft, sad notes of Halliron's lyranthe gentled the
quiet: the opening phrases of the ritual to sing Deshir's dead into
memory.  This was the first open sentiment any clansman had shown, and
would firmly and finally be the last.

The flight to take refuge in Fallowmere would begin immediately
following the ceremony.

Caolle waited, fumingly impatient.  Then as the poignance of
Halliron's playing touched even his bearish mood, he hooked
large-knuckled thumbs in his sword belt.  "You could tell us why."

Unflinching, Arithon continued to regard him.  "I 'think you know.

Where I go, Lysaer's armies will follow."  He drew a breath.

As though daring insults or evasions, Caolle clamped his hands under
taut forearms.  He was a man who liked his clothing loose and his belts
tight; the blades that were visible on his person drew all the quicker,
while the invisible ones stayed unobvious.  He regarded his silent
liege lord, his black eyes inimical as shield studs.

The prince of Rathain gave no ground.  Sincere where before he had
been secretive, he said, "I can neither repay nor restore your losses.

Nor would I cheat you with promises I'm powerless to uphold.  You
gave me life, and offer a kingdom.  Your lord shared a friendship more
precious.  In return, I give my word as Teir's'Ffalenn that I won't
squander these gifts."

That softness covered a will like steel wire, as Caolle had cause to
respect.  Touched by an uncharacteristic patience, he recalled the
ballad of Falmuir and the uncanny tableau up the grotto.  Forbearance
allowed him not to rise to the hurt, that even after Etarra's armies,
this prince seemed too reticent to place his full trust in the clans.

In the clearing, at the center of the circle, Halliron raised voice
in cadenced expression of pure sorrow.  Laid bare by the music, Arithon
lost all composure.  His throat closed, and he half spun away, ashamed
of the tears he could not curb.

The music broke his will, and his feelings for these stern, unbending
people undid him.  He felt Caolle's hand close on his shoulder, as it
had many times to comfort Jieret.

"You could be my bastion," Arithon admitted, rarely vulnerable.

"Except for Lysaer.  Any who shelter me will become target for his
armies.

I would not see your great-hearted clans exterminated for my sake.

And so I ask your leave to depart, unsupported and alone, until such
time as I can return and fulfill your cherished hope, to rebuild a city
in peace on the foundations of old Ithamon."

"I've misjudged you."  Caolle withdrew his gruff touch, and for a
long minute the rise and fall of Halliron's beautiful voice resounded
through wood and clearing.  Both men listened, each haunted by
different regrets.  Then Caolle raked back his scruffy, iron gray hair.

"I'll do so no more.  But in return, I ask your sanction to raise the
clans of Fallowmere, and after them, clansmen the breadth of the
continent."

"I'm against it."  Arithon spun around.  If his eyes blazed through a
sparkle of unshed tears, the force in him was that of a sword
unsheathed.  "I wish no more killing in my name."

Caolle's stiff stance rendered the short silence eloquent.

And Arithon gave a sigh that seemed wrung from his very depths.

"My wife and children weren't just murdered by headhunters."

Gentled in a way Caolle would once have disparaged, the prince of
Rathain traced the rune on the clan chieftain's marker with fingers too
fine for the sword, but that could, and had, killed in battle.  "My
losses are as nothing to yours.  I say that raising an army begs a
repeat of this tragedy.  But I'm not cold-hearted enough, or maybe I'm
no true king at all.  I haven't the nastiness to refuse you.  My
blessing is yours, if not my approval.  Go in grace, Captain.

Care for Jieret, whom I love as my brother."

In token of friendship, Caolle offered his palms and accepted the
prince's double handshake.  Across their clasped grip, while the song
of lamentation spiraled and dipped through the greenwood, he gave his
liege a voracious appraisal.  The small build and fine bones, the green
eyes with their depths and veiled secrets: both harbored deceptive
strengths.  Nearly too late Caolle had discovered an integrity that
admitted no compromise.  He would never in words be forced to admit
that this scion of Rathain was both perfectly suited and tragically
paired with a fate that must waste his real talents.  "One day you'll
be grateful for our support, Your Grace.  We lend ourselves gladly.

One could say it's not meet for Maenalle s'Gannley in Tysan to swear
fealty to s'llessid unwarned."  He released Arithon's hands and stepped
back.  "Ath keep you safe from all harm."

"And you."  Arithon's mouth bent, a softening just short of warmth.
"We've been adversaries.  I'm not sorry.  If I had my choice, your
sword would go rusty for want of use.  Hate me for that all you wish."

Caolle's chin puckered.  For the sake of the mourning song still in
progress, he coughed back a raw burst of laughter.

"My sword," he said firmly, "will only get rusted when I'm dead.

Dharkaron break me for idiocy, how did I come to swear fealty to a
dreaming fool?"

"You were duped."  Arithon grinned.  "Lord Steiven did that to both
of us."  He turned and with quiet lack of ceremony, strode away from
the riverbank.

Caolle watched him go, narrow-eyed, tightness like a fist at his
throat.  As Halliron struck chords for the lamentation's final stanza,
the war captain of Deshir's clansmen Whispered, "Go in grace, my
prince."

The song dipped and mellowed, softened through its closing bars to a
brushed note that quavered and trailed away into the rustle of
flame-seared leaves.  By then the Teir's'Ffalenn in his tattered black
tunic had vanished from sight.  Whether trees had hidden him, or some
trick of shadow, Caolle found impossible to tell.

Dusk settled over Strakewood.  In clear silver light, under trees
like cut felt against cobalt, Arithon sat on a beech log.

His tucked-up knees cradled folded arms.  His cuff laces dangled over
hands without tension as he listened to the first, uneven chorus of
frogs in the marshes.  He savored the quiet as day ebbed and softly
surrendered to nightfall.  The first star appeared, a scintillating
pinprick between the pines; he looked on its solitary beauty without
mage-sight to unlock its mystery.

Later was soon enough to decide where to go.  This moment content to
hang his thoughts on the sweet descending triplets of a wood thrush, he
closed his eyes and lost himself in the abiding whisper of pine tassels
stroked by the breeze.

He had no one to answer to.  Nothing burdened him but a scorched
conscience and a sword he would have given sight to have exchanged for
the lyranthe left in Etarra.

Absorbed and relaxed, Arithon suspected nothing until a stick snapped
loudly behind his shoulder.

He shot spinning to his feet and came face to face with a figure
picked out in sparkles of gold chain and jewels.

Halliron Masterbard stood still decked out in his topaz studs, sure
sign he had ended his stay with the clans.  The fine buttons that
fastened his cloak and hung his beautifully cut cape sleeves swung and
glittered even in failing light.

Serene, his veined hands folded on the strap that slung his lyranthe,
the Masterbard said, "It's a poor time for solitude, Your Grace."

Arithon bridled.  "It's a worse hour for companionship with close to
eight thousand lives done and wasted."  Since the bard had presumed he
was brooding, he would foster that impression to be rid of him.  "I
didn't ask for sympathy.  I thought I made my wishes clear to Caolle?"

Halliron clicked his tongue behind spaced front teeth.  "No need to
raise your temper."  Unwilling to accept such short shrift, he seated
himself on the log the Master of Shadows had just vacated.

Against his dark doublet his pale hair spread over his shoulders like
watered silk.  "I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask whether you'd join me
on the road.

Fallowmere holds little to attract me.  I've lingered overlong in the
north."

Nettled now deeper than artifice, Arithon recoiled backward.

"All, no."  He sounded as if somebody had hit him, or as if he shied
off from hidden fear.  "I'll be no man's company after this.  You of
all men should best understand my motive."

"You're not the first prince to take your oath through times of
strife."  Gold chains shivered in reflection as the bard shrugged.

"Daelion knows you won't be the last.  And you won't, though you try,
put me off through a show of self-pity."

Arithon stiffened.  "I think you've said enough."  The words were a
warning, which Halliron ignored by remaining in unbroken tranquility on
the log.  In the forest, the wood thrush had silenced.  More stars
burned through the branches, and the frogs sang their rasping bass
chorus.  The balance had fled; twilight had ebbed unnoticed, and the
gloom now swallowed even the brittle spark of the topaz studs.

The veneer of peace so thinly established shattered suddenly beyond
recovery.  Into a silence that reproached, Arithon said in breaking
anguish, "Ath help me, I had to stay.  Without conjury or shadow, do
you think any clansman would have survived to hear your lament for
Deshir's dead?"

"Well, that's now behind you," Halliron said placidly.

"Guilt is no use to anybody.  The only thing a man gains from his
past is the power to ensure his future.  You can see the same
circumstances are not permitted to happen again."

"I was doing just that, I thought."  Arithon's anger intensified to a
level that admitted only pain.  The moment still haunted and cut him,
that Lysaer's death and an end to Desh-thiere's geas had been balanced
by Jieret's life.  His voice skinned and raw, the Master added, "Will
you leave?

I'm quite likely to survive without counsel."

"Well, that may be.  Except that I was the one come begging."  The
Masterbard folded his supple hands and maddeningly, solemnly regarded
the ground between his boots.  "If you'd unstop your ears and still
your infernal s'Ffalenn conscience, you'd see that I'm an old man.  I
need a strong shoulder on the wheel when my pony cart mires in these
bogs, and somebody ought to partner my rambling on the nights when cold
rains drown my fire."  A mischievous tilt to his lips, he looked up.

"Never mind that your talents need schooling.  If those fingers of
yours are ever to shape more than promise, I'm offering the lowly
station of minstrel's apprentice, Your Royal Grace.  Will you accept?"

Arithon stared at him, his rigid bearing abandoned, repudiation
stupid on his face.  He sat down on the deadfall, banged his elbow on a
branch, and tangled his calf in the sword scabbard he had forgotten he
still wore.  Faintly breathless, he cursed.

Mildly amused, and also queerly tense and vulnerable, Halliron
chuckled.  "The choice is that awful?  You can't pretend to be
surprised."

"No."  A choke or a strangled phrase of laughter twisted in Arithon's
throat.  "Does the minstrel Felirin have prescience?"

"What?"  The Masterbard lost his composure.  His heart in his eyes,
and his knuckles clamped together in white knots, he radiated panicked
trepidation.

Arithon looked back at him and grinned.  "Well, it's simple.

Felirin forced me to promise once, should you ever come to offer me
apprenticeship."

"And?"  Halliron sounded smothered.  He had raised both hands to his
throat as if he needed help to keep breathing.

"And?"

"I shall have to accept," Arithon said.  "I've been party to all else
but oath breaking, these days.  My score with the Fatemaster's bad
enough."

"You devil!"  Halliron shot to his feet with a force that jostled a
thrum of bass protest from his soundboard.  "You let me think you'd
turn me down!"

"Well, you let me think you'd come to lecture."  Arithon laughed now
with a bursting joy that dissolved the last of his antagonism.

"Fiends take me, I wanted to kill you for that."

"Well, you lost your chance.  You carry the greatest blade in Athera,
and never once thought enough to use it."

Halliron started walking decisively.  "My pony and cart are hidden in
a brush brake somewhere up the Tai Quorin.  Once we find them, I'm
fixing a strong pot of tea."

Then he stopped with a suddenness that caused Arithon to narrowly
miss crashing into him.

"No," said Halliron, his expressive voice queerly jangled.

"No.  I'm needing no tea.  The truth is that's not what I'm wanting
at all."  There and then in the darkness, he unstrapped his bundle and
tugged off oiled leather coverings.

"Play me that tune I once asked for."  Not waiting for answer, he
thrust his beautiful instrument into the arms of his apprentice.

Arithon caressed the scrolled soundboard, drew a breath that smelled
of wax and resins and fine wood.  He could not speak.  He feared to
move lest he disturb the frailty of his happiness.  Halliron Masterbard
had laid a lyranthe between his hands and offered his heart's whole
desire.

Unseen in the fragrant summer gloom, the shy wood thrush ventured a
last, lyric arpeggio.  Crickets rasped undisturbed by any approaching
footstep.  After a moment of fractured suspension Arithon laid to rest
his final fear.  He accepted that no one would burst from the wood in
appeal for a cause he could not for conscience fail to shoulder.

For this night and others he was free.  He could sit, set his hands
to silver strings, and at long last bend sorrow into music.

Reflections

In Mirthlvain Swamp, Asandir and Dakar join Verrain's patrol of black
pools to check for resurgence of meth-snakes before the seasonal fall
spawning; Traithe and Kharadmon arrive in Shand; and while the
Fellowship's hope for the south centers on one last prince raised in
hiding, the Warden of Althain tracks two cursed royal heirs who
survive, and awaits against hope any sign that the Black Rose prophecy
might still hold valid....

In Korias the hour after sunrise, First Enchantress Lirenda presents
report from the lane-watch to her mistress, Morriel Prime; and the news
is unhappily received, that the initiates entrusted with scrying
through fifth-lane vibrations have lost track of the Master of
Shadows....

In the lightless shaft of Rockfell, sealed behind triple rings of
wards, the Mistwraith that once blocked sunlight from Athera languishes
in confinement; and if it knows that its grand curse to destroy two
half-brothers has once been tested and thwarted, it endures in unquiet
hatred....

Glossary

ADON-statue of centaur king, one of the twins who founded the
Ilitharis Paravian royal line in the First Age.

The carving forms one side of the arch of Standing Gate on the road
leading east into the Pass of Orlan, Camris, Tysan.

pronounced: a-don, rhymes with "hay don" root meaning: daon-gold
ALATHWYR TOWER-one of five towers built by P .  aravians in the middle
of the First Age at Ithamon, principality of Daon Ramon, Rathain.  Its
stonework of white alabaster is warded by the virtue, Wisdom.  It
stands North, of the four towers that remain standing in the Third Age;
hence the common name used by men, being Compass Point Towers, or Sun
Towers.

pronounced: ah-lath-weer (a's to rhyme with as) emphasis on middle
syllable root meaning: wisdom: alath-to know; wyr-all sum ALITHIEL@ne
of twelve Blades of Isaer, forged by centaur Ffereton s'Darian in the
First Age from metal taken from a meteorite.  Passed through Paravian
possession, acquired the secondary name Dael-Farenn, or Kingmaker,
since its owners tended to succeed the end of a royal line.

Eventually was awarded to Kanuidian s'Ffalenn for his valor in
defense of the princess Taliennse, early Second Age.

pronounced: ah-lith-ee-el root meaning: alith-star; iel-light/ray
ALTHAIN TOWER-spire built at the edge of the Bittern Desert, beginning
of the Second Age, to house records of Paravian histories.  Third Age,
became respository for the archives of all five royal houses of men
after rebellion, overseen by Sethvir, Warden of Althain and Fellowship
Sorcerer.

pronounced: al like "all," thain to rhyme with "main" root meaning:
alt-last; them-tower, sanctuary original Paravian pronunciation:
alt-them (them as in "the end") AMROTH-kingdom on West Gate splinter
world, Dascen Elur, ruled by s'llessid descendants of the prince exiled
through the Worldsend Gate at the time of the rebellion, Third Age just
after the Mistwraith's conquest.

pronounced: am-roth (rhymes with "sloth") root meaning: am-state of
being; roth-brother "brotherhood" ANGLEFEN-swampland located in Deshir,
Rathain.  Town of same name at the river mouth with port to Stormwell
Gulf.  One of the six port towns that link sea trade-routes with
Etarra.

pronounced: angle-fen root meaning is not Paravian ARAETHURA-grass
plains in southwest Rathain; pnncipality of the same name in that
location.  Largely inhabited by Riathan Paravians in the Second Age.

Third Age, used as pastureland by widely scattered nomadic shepherds.

pronounced: ar-eye-thoo-rah root meaning: araeth-grass; era-place,
land ARAITHE-plain to the north of the trade city of Etarra,
principality of Fallowmere, Rathain.  First Age, among the sites used
by the Paravians to renew the mysteries and channel fifth lane
energies.  The standing stones erected are linked to the power focus at
Ithamon and Meth Isle keep.

pronounced: araithe, rhymes with "a wraith" root meaning: araithe-to
disperse, to send-, refers to the properties of the standing stones
with relationship to the fifth lane forces ARITHON-son of Avar, Prince
of Rathain, I,504th Teir's'Ffalenn after founder of the line, Torbrand
in Third Age Year One.  Also Master of Shadows, and the Bane of
Desh-thiere.

pronounced: ari-thon-almost rhymes with "marathon" root meaning:
arithon-fate-forger; one who is visionary ASANDIR-Fellowship Sorcerer.

Secondary name, Kingmaker, since his hand crowned every High King of
Men to rule in the Age of Men (Third Age).  After the Mistwraith's
conquest, he acted as field agent for the Fellowship's doings across
the continent.  Also called Fiendquencher, for his reputation for
quelling Lyats; Stormbreaker, and Change-bringer for past actions in
late Second Age, when Men first arrived upon Athera.

pronounced: ah-san-deer root meaning: asan-heart; dir-stone
"heartrock" ATAINIA-northeastern principality of Tysan.

pronounced: ah-tay-nee-ah root meaning: itain-the third; ia suffix
for "third domain" original Paravian, itainia ATH CREATOR-prime
vibration, force behind all life.

pronounced: ath to rhyme with "math" root meaning: ath-prime, first
(as opposed to an, one) ATHERA-name for the continent which holds the
Five High Kingdoms; one of two major landmasses on the planet.

pronounced: ath-air-ah root meaning: ath-prime force; era-place
"Ath's world" ATHLIEN PARAVIANS-sunchildren.  Small race of
semimortals, pixie- like, but possessed of great wisdonv keepers of the
grand mystery.

pronounced: ath-lee-en root meaning: ath-prime force; lien-to love
"At@ beloved" ATHLIERIA@quivalent of heaven/actually a dimension
removed from physical life, inhabited by spirit after death pronounced:
ath-lee-air-ee-ah root meaning: ath-prime force; ll'era@xalted place,
or land in harmony; ll@xalted in harmony AVAR s'FFALENN-Pirate King of
Karthan, isle on splinter world Dascen Elur, through West Gate.  Father
of Arithon; also Teir's'Ffalenn I,503rd in descent from Torbrand who
founded the s'Ffalenn royal line in Third Age Year One.

pronounced: ah-var, to rhyme with "far" root meaning: avar-past
thought/memory BRIANE-name of the warship that was crippled in the
engagement against the brigantine in command of Avar of Karthan; the
vessel later took Arithon s'Ffalenn captive and bore him to South Isle,
and thence to Port Royal on the splinter world of Dascen Elur.

pronounced: bry-anna to rhyme with "fry anna" root meaning:
brianne-gull BWIN EVOC s'LORNMEIN-founder of the line that became High
Kings of Havish since Third Age Year One.

The attribute he passed on by means of the Fellowship's geas was
temperance.

pronounced: bwin to rhyme with "twin," ee-vahk as in 4'evocative,"
lorn as in English equivalent, mein rhymes with "main" root meaning:
bwin-firm; evoc@hoice CAILCALLOW-herb that grows in marshes, used to
ease fevers.

pronounced: rhymes with "kale-tallow" root meaning: call-leaf-,
calliew-balm CAITH-AL-CAEN-vale where Riathan Paravians (unicoms)
celebrated equinox and solstice to renew the athael, or life-destiny of
the world.  Also the place where the Ilitharis Paravians first Named
the winter stars-or encompassed their vibrational essence into
language.  Corrupted by the end of the Third Age to Castlecain.

pronounced: cay-ith-al-cay-en, musical lilt, emphasis on second and
last syllables; rising note on first two, falling note on last two.

root meaning: caith-shadow; al-over; caen-vale "vale of shadow"
CAITHDEIN-Paravian name for a high king's first counselor; also, the
one who would stand as regent, or steward, in the absence of the
crowned ruler.

pronounced: kay-ith-day-in root meaning: caith-shadow; d'em-behind
the chair "shadow behind the throne" CAITHWOOD-forest located in
Taerlin, southeast principality of @san.

pronounced: kay-ith-wood root meaning: caith-shadow "shadowed wood"
CASTLECAIN@orrupted name for Caith-al-Caen, Vale of Shadows, see entry
above.

pronounced castle-cane CASTLE POINT-port city at the western terminus
of the Great West Road, located in the principality of Atainia, Tysan.

CAL-mortal name held by Sethvir before he swore pact with the
Fellowship of Seven.

pronounced: kal root meaning is not Paravian.  (From English, Calum)
CAMRIS-north-central principality of @san.  Original ruling seat was
city of Erdane.

pronounced: kain-ris, the "i" as in "chris" root meaning: cairn@ross;
ris-way "crossroad" CAOLLE-war captain of the clans of Deshir, Rathain.
First raised, and then served under Lord Steiven, Earl of the North
and caithdein of Rathain.

pronounced: kay-all-e, with the "e" nearly subliminal root meaning:
caille stubborn CIANOR SUNLORD-born at Caith-al-Caen, First Age 615.
Survived both the massacre of Leome (caused by methuri, or hate-wraiths
out of Mirthlvain Swamp) in year 815, and led the Battle of Retaliation
on Bordirion Plain (which by the start of the Second Age had been
enveloped by the swamp).  In 826 Cianor's forces were defeated at
Erdane by Khadrim; Cianor retired to Araethura, gravely wounded.

Crippled but alive, he was on hand at the arrival of the Fellowship
of Seven, when Crater Lake was formed in First Age 827.

Healed by Fellowship Sorcerers.  Appointed Keeper of the Records in
902; stabilized the realm after the murder of High King Marin Eliathe
in Second Age 1542.  Crowned High King of Athera in Second Age 2545

until his death when a rise of Khadrim called him to war in Second
Age 3651.

pronounced: key-ah-nor root meaning: cianor-to shine
CIERL-ANKESHED-venom of certain strains of methsnakes, which causes
dissolution of nerve tissue.  Paralysis is almost instant, with death
following days later.  Without a known antidote, the poison is caustic
and can be absorbed through the skin.

pronounced: key-eart-an-kesh-id root meaning: cierl-nerve;
ankeshed-painlagony CILADIS THE LOST-Fellowship Sorcerer who left the
continent in Third Age 3462 in search of the Paravian races after their
disappearance after the rebellion.

pronounced: kill-ah-dis root meaning: cael-leaf; adels-whisper,
compound; cael'adeis, colloquialism for "gentleness that abides"
CILDORN@ity famed for carpets and weaving, located in Deshir, Rathain.

Originally a Paravian holdfast, situated on a node of the third lane.

pronounced: kill-dom root meaning: cieal-thread; dorn-net "tapestry"
CORITH-island west of Havish coast, in Westland Sea.

First site to see sunlight upon Desh-thiere's defeat.

pronounced: kor-ith root meaning: cori-ships, vessels; itha-five for
the five harbors which the old city overlooked DAELION
FATEMASTER-"entity" formed by set of mortal beliefs, which determine
the fate of the spirit after death.  If Ath is the prime vibration, or
life force, Daelion is what governs the manifestation of free will.

pronounced: day-el-ee-on root meaning: dael-king, or lord; i'on@f
fate DAEL-FARENN-Kingmaker, name for sword Alithiel; also, one of many
Paravian names for the Fellowship Sorcerer, Asandir.

pronounced: day-el-far-an root meaning: dael-king; feron-maker
DAELTHAIN-fifth Compass Point, or Sun Tower, built by Paravians at
citadel of Ithamon.  This was the King's Tower, whose warded virtue was
Justice.  The structure fell on the eve of Marin Eliathe's murder, and
crumbled further through the course of the rebellion.  By the time of
the Mistwraith's conquest all that remained was the foundation.

pronounced: day-el-they-in root meaning: dael-king or lord;
them-tower, sanctuary DAELTIRI-sword carried by s'llessid High Kings.

Forged in Second Age 1240 by Paravian artisans to commemorate
friendship on the occasion of Jaest s'llessid's ascension to the crown
at Avenor.

pronounced: day-el-tee-ree root meaning: dael-king, lord; tieri-steel
DAENFAL-city located on the northern lake shore that bounds the
southern edge of Daon Ramon Barrens in Rathain.

pronounced: dye-en-fall root meaning: daen@lay; fal-red DAKAR THE MAD
PROPHET-apprentice to Fellowship Sorcerer, Asandir, during the Third
Age following the Conquest of the Mistwraith.  Given to spurious
prophesies, it was Dakar who forecast the fall of the Kings of Havish
in time for the Fellowship to save the heir.  He made the Prophecy of
West Gate which forecast the Mistwraith's bane, and also, the Black
Rose prophesy, which called for reunification of the Fellowship.

pronounced: dab-kar root meaning: dakiar@lumsy DANIA-wife of
Rathain's Regent, Steiven s'Valerient.

pronounced: dan-ee-ah root meaning: deinia-sparrow DAON RAMON
BARRENS@entral principality of Rathain.  Site where Riathan Paravians
(unicorns) bred and raised their young.  Barrens was not appended to
the name until the years following the Mistwraith's conquest, when the
river Sevemir was diverted at the source by a task force under Etarran
jurisdiction.

pronounced: day-on-rah-mon root meaning: daon-gold; ramon-hills/downs
DARI s'AHELAS-Princess of Shand who fled through the western Worldsend
Gate at the time of the Mistwraith's conquest, to escape the rebellion
engineered by Davien.

Sethvir trained her in the foundational arts of power to increase her
line's chances of survival.  Her descendants ruled Rauven in the
splinter world of Dascen Elur.

pronounced: dar-ee root meaning: daer-to cut DAVIEN THE
BETRAYER-Fellowship Sorcerer responsible for provoking the great
uprising that resulted in the fall of the high kings after
Desh-thiere's conquest.  Rendered discorporate by the Fellowship's
judgment in Second Age 5129.  Exiled since, by personal choice.

Davien's works included the Five Centuries Fountain near Mearth, on
the splinter world of the Red Desert, through West Gate; Rockfell
shaft, used by the Sorcerers to imprison harmful entities; The Stair on
Rockfell Peak; and also, Kewar Tunnel in the Mathom Mountains.

pronounced: dab-vee-en root meaning: dahvi-fool, mistake; an-one
"mistaken one" DASCEN ELUR-splinter world off West Gate; primarily
ocean with isolated archipelagos.  Includes kingdoms of Rauven, Amroth,
and Karthan.  Where three exiled high kings' heirs took refuge in the
years following the great uprising.

pronounced: das-en el-ur root meaning: dascen@cean; e'lier-small land
DESH-THIERE-Mistwraith that invaded Athera from the splinter worlds
through South Gate in Third Age Year 4993.  Access cut off by
Fellowship Sorcerer, Traithe.  Battled and contained in West Shand for
twenty-five years, until the rebellion splintered the peace, and the
high kings were forced to withdraw from the defense lines to attend
their disrupted kingdoms.

pronounced: desh-thee-air-e (last "e" mostly subliminal) root
meaning: desh-mist; thiere-ghost or wraith DESHANS-barbarian clans who
inhabit Strakewood Forest, principality of Deshir, Rathian.

pronounced: desh-ee-ans root meaning: deshir-misty
DESHIR-northwestern principality of Rathain.

pronounced: desh-eer root meaning: deshir-misty DHARKARON
"ENGER@ailed Ath's Avenging Angel in legend.  Drives a chariot drawn by
five horses to convey the guilty to Sithaer.  Dharkaron as defined by
Ath's adepts is that dark thread mortal men weave with Ath, the prime
vibration, that creates self-punishment, or the root of guilt.

pronounced: dark-air-on root meaning: dhar@vii; khiaron@ne who stands
in judgment DIEGAN-Lord Commander of Etarra's garrison.  Titular
commander of the war host sent against the Deshans to defeat the Master
of Shadows.

pronounced: dee-gan root meaning: diegan-trinket a dandy might wear/
ornament DURMAENIR@entaur, son of the armorer who forged the twelve
Blades of Isaer.  Sword Alithiel was fashioned for Durmaenir, who died
in battle against Khadrim in the First Age.

pronounced: dur-may-e-neer root meaning: dir-stone; maenien-fallen
EAST WARD@ity in Fallowmere, Rathain, renowned as a port that served
the trade-route to Etarra from the Cildein Ocean.

pronounced: ward no Paravian root meaning as this city was man's
creation EDAL-next to youngest daughter of Steiven and Dania
s'Valerient.

pronounced: ee-doll root meaning: e' prefix, diminutive for small;
dal-fair ELAIRA-initiate enchantress of the Kofiathain.  Originally a
street child, bought up in Morvain for Kofiani rearing.

pronounced: ee-layer-ah root meaning: e' prefix, diminutive for
small; laeregrace ELDIR s'LORNMEIN-prince of Havish and last surviving
scion of s'Lommein royal line.  Raised as a wool-dyer until the
Fellowship Sorcerers trained him for kingship following the defeat of
the Mistwraith.

pronounced: el-deer root meaning: eldir-to ponder, to consider, to
weigh ELSHIAN-Athlien Paravian hard and instrument maker.

Crafted the lyranthe that is held in trust by Athera's Masterbard.

pronounced: el-shee-an root meaning: e'alshian-small wonder, or
miracle ELTAIR BAY-large bay off Cildein Ocean and east coast of
Rathain; where River Sevemir was diverted following the Mistwraith's
conquest.

pronounced: el-tay-er root meaning: al'tieri-of steel/a shortening of
original Paravian name; dascen al'tieri-which meant "ocean of steel"
which referred to the color of the waves.

ELWEDD-clansman under Steiven's rule.  Wagered Halliron Masterbard
that Arithon s'Ffalenn had poor swordsmanship.

pronounced: el-wet root meaning: el-short; weth-sight
ENASTIR-sunchild, Paravian High King.  Son and heir of Lithom.  Ruled
in the early First Age until his death on the talons of Great Gethom.

pronounced: ee-nas-teer root meaning: e' prefix for small;
nastir-warrior ENITHEN TUER-seeress in residence, city of Erdane.

Where Asandir stays while passing through Camris, Tysan.

pronounced: en-ith-en too-er root meaning: en'wethen-farsighted;
tuer-crone ERDANE-old Paravian city, later taken over by Men.  Seat of
Earls of Camris until Desh-thiere's conquest and rebellion.

pronounced: er-day-na with the last syllable almost subliminal root
meaning: er'deinia-long walls ETARRA-trade city built across the
Mathorn Pass by townsfolk after the revolt that cast down Ithamon and
the High Kings of Rathain.  Nest of corruption and intrigue, and policy
maker for the North.
pronounced: ee-tar-ah root meaning: e' prefix for small; taria-knots

FALLOWMERE-northeastern principality of Rathain.

pronounced: fal-oh-meer root meaning: fal-el-miere-literally, tree
self-reflection, colloquialism for "place of perfect trees"
FALMUIR-city, once in Kingdom of Melhalla, ruined during a war of
succession/never rebuilt.  Princess of Faimuir subject of a ballad that
Halliron uses to illustrate a point to Caolle after the battle of
Strakewood.

pronounced: fal-mu-ear root meaning: ffael@ark; muir@ause
FELIRIN-minstrel who joins Asandir's party enroute to Erdane.

pronounced: fell-eer-in root meaning: fel-red; lyron-singer
FELLOWSHIP OF SEVEN-sorcerers sworn to uphold the Laws of the Major
Balance, and to foster enlightened thought in Athera FFERETON
s'DARIAN@entaur armorer who forged the twelve Blades of Isaer, among
them, Alithiel.

pronounced: fair-et-on root meaning: ffereton@raftsman/master-maker
GHENT-mountainous principality in Kingdom of Havish; where Prince Eldir
was raised in hiding.

pronounced: gent, hard "g" root meaning: ghent-harsh GNUDSOG-Etarra's
field-captain of the garrison under Lord Commander Diegan; acting first
officer in the battle of Strakewood Forest pronounced: nud-sug to rhyme
with "wood log" root meaning: gianud-tough; sog-ugly GRITHEN-last
descendant, earls of Erdane.

Leader of the raid on Asandir's party in the Pass of Orlan.

pronounced: gri-then, rhymes with "with hen" root meaning:
kierth-mistake; an-one HADIG@ommander of archers, Etarra City Garrison
pronounced: hay-dig root meaning not from Paravian HALDUIN
s'ILESSID-founder of the line that became High Kings of Tysan since
Third Age Year One.  The attribute he passed on, by means of the
Fellowship's geas, was Justice.

pronounced: hal-dwin root meaning: hal-white; duinne-hand HALLIRON
MASTERBARD-Masterbard of Athera during the Third Age; inherited the
accolade from his teacher Murchiel in the year 5597.

pronounced: hal-eer-on root meaning: hal-white; lyron-singer
HALMEIN-statue of centaur king, one of the twins who founded the
Ilitharis Paravian royal line in the First Age.

The carving forms the left side of the arch of Standing Gate on the
road leading east into the Pass of Orlan, principality of Canuis,
Tysan.

pronounced: hal-may-in root meaning: hal-white; mein-haired
HANSHIRE-port city on Westland Sea, coast of Korias, Tysan.  Where
enchantress Elaira is stationed following her escapade at the Ravens
Inn.

pronounced: han-sheer root meaning: hansh-sand; era-place HAVISH@ne
of the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, as defined by the charters of the
Fellowship of Seven.  Ruled by the s'Lommein royal line.  Sigil: gold
hawk on red field pronounced: hay-ish root meaning: havieshe-hawk
HAVISTOCK-southeast principality of Kingdom of Havish.

pronounced: hay-i-stock root meaning: haviesha-hawk; tjok-roost
IDRIEN-Jieret's companion on the raid in which they take Halliron
Masterbard captive on the road south from Ward.

pronounced: i-dree-en root meaning: e'-prefix for small;
drien-partner ILITHARIS PARAVIANS-centaurs, one of three semimortal old
races; disappeared at the time of the Mistwraith's conquest.

pronounced: i-ll-thar-is root meaning: i'lith'earls-the
keeper/preserver of mystery IMARN ADAER-enclave of Paravian gem-cutters
in the city of Mearth, who dispersed in the times of the Curse which
destroyed the inhabitants.  The secrets of their trade were lost with
them.  Surviving works include the crown jewels of the Five High
Kingdoms of Athera, cut as focusstones which attune to the heir of the
royal lines.

pronounced: i-main-a-day-er root meaning: imam@rystal; e'daer-to cut
smaller INSTRELL BAY-body of water off the Gulf of Stormwell, that
separates principality of Atainia, Tysan, from Deshir, Rathain.

pronounced: in-strell root meaning: arm'streal-strong-wind
ISAER-power focus, built during the First Age, in Atainia, Tysan, to
source the defense-works at the Paravian keep of the same name.

pronounced: i-sayer root meaning: i'saer-the circle ITHAMON-city
built on a fifth lane power-node in Daon Ramon Barrens, Rathain.

Originally a Paravian keep; site of the Compass Point Towers, or Sun
Towers.  Became the seat of the High Kings of Rathain during the Third
Age and in year 5638 was the site where Princes Lysaer s'llessid and
Arithon s'Ffalenn battled the Mistwraith to confinement.

pronounced: ith-a-mon root meaning: itha-five; mon-needle, spire
IYAT@nergy sprite native to Athera, not visible to the eye, manifests
in a poltergeist fashion by taking temporary possession of objects.

Feeds upon natural energy sources: fire, breaking waves, lightning,
pronounced: ee-at root meaning: Lyat-to break JIERET s'VALERIENT-son
and heir of Lord Steiven, clan chief of Deshir, Earl of the North and
caithdein of Rathain.  Bloodpacted to Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn prior to
battle of Strakewood Forest.

pronounced: jeer-et root meaning: jieret-Thorn KARFAEL-trader town on
the coast of the Westland Sea, in Tysan.  Built by townsmen as a trade
port after the fall of the High Kings of Tysan.  Prior to Desh-thiere's
conquest, the site was kept clear of buildings to allow the second lane
forces to flow untrammeled across the focus site at Avenor.

pronounced: kar-fay-el root meaning: kar'ill ael-literal translation
"twist the dark"/ colloquialism for "intrigue" KARMAK-plain located in
the northern portion of the principality of Camris, Tysan.

Site of numerous First Age battles where Paravian forces opposed
Khadrim packs that bred in volcanic sites in the northern Tomir Peaks.

pronounced: kar-mack root meaning: karinak-wolf KARTHAN-kingdom in
splinter world Dascen Elur, through West Gate, ruled by the Pirate
Kings, s'Ffalenn descendants of the prince sent into exile at the time
of the Mistwraith's conquest.

pronounced: karth-an root meaning: kar'ethan-one who raids/pirate
KARTHISH-from Karthan, term denoting nationality.

pronounced: karth-ish root meaning: kar'ethan-pirate KELSING-town
immediately south of Erdane, located in Camris, Tysan.  Nearest
inhabited site to the old earl's court, which served as summer quarters
for the Koriani Prime and her Senior Circle at the time of Lysaer and
Arithon's arrival through West Gate.

pronounced: kel-sing root meaning: kel-hidden; seng-cave
KHADRIM-flying, fire -breathing reptiles that were the scourge of the
Second Age.  By the Third Age, they had been driven back and confined
in a warded preserve in the volcanic peaks in north Tysan.

pronounced: kaa-drim root meaning: khadrim-dragon KHARADMON-Sorcerer
of the Fellowship of Seven; discorporate since rise of Khadrim and
Seardluin leveled Paravian city at Ithamon in First Age 365 1. It was
by Kharadmon's intervention that the survivors of the attack were sent
to safety by means of transfer from the fifth lane power focus.
pronounced: kah-rad-mun

IL

I root meaning: kar'riad en mon-phrase translates to mean "twisted
thread on the needle" or colloquialism for "a knot in the works"
KIELING TOWER-one of the four Compass Points or Sun Towers standing at
Ithamon, Daon Ramon Barrens, Rathain.  The warding virtue that binds
its stones is Compassion.

pronounced: kee-el-ing root meaning: kiel'len-root for pity, with
suffix added translates to "compassion" KORIANI-possessive form of the
word "Koriathain"; see entry.

pronounced: kor-ee-ah-nee KORIAS-southwestern principality of Tysan.

pronounced: kor-ee-as root meaning: cor-ship, vessel; i'esh-nest,
haven KORIATHAIN@rder of enchantresses ruled by a circle of eight
Seniors, under the power of one Prime Enchantress.

They draw their talent from the orphaned children they raise, or from
daughters dedicated to service by their parents.  Initiation rite
involves a vow of consent that ties the spirit to a power channel keyed
to the Prime's control.

pronounced kor-ee-ah-thain (thain rhymes with "main") root meaning:
koriath-order; ain-belonging to LANSHIRE-northwestern principality of
Havish.  Name taken from wastes at Scarpdale, site of First Age battles
with Seardluin that seared the soil to a slag waste.

pronounced: lahn-sheer-e (last "e" is nearly subliminal) root
meaning: ian'hansh'era-place of hot sands LIRENDA-First Senior
Enchantress to the Prime, Koriani order; Morriel's intended successor.

pronounced: leer-end-ah root meaning: lyron-singer; di-ia-a
dissonance (the hyphen denotes a glottal stop) LUHAINE-Sorcerer of the
Fellowship of Sevendiscorporate since the fall of Telmandir.  Luhaine's
body was pulled down by the mob while he was in ward trance, covering
the escape of the royal heir to Havish.

pronounced: loo-hay-ne root meaning: luirhainon-Aefender
LYRANTHE-instrument played by the bards of Athera.

Strung with fourteen strings, tuned to seven tones (doubled).  Two
courses are "drone strings" set to octaves.  Five are melody strings,
the lower three courses being octaves, the upper two, in unison.

pronounced: leer-anth-e (last "e" being nearly subliminal) root
meaning: lyr-song; anthe-box LYSAER s'ILESSID-prince of Tysan, 1497th
in succession after Haiduin, founder of the line in Third Age Year One.

Gifted at birth with control of Light, and Bane of Deshthiere.

pronounced: lie-sayer root meaning: lia-blond, yellow, or light;
saer@ircle MADREIGH-senior scout, Deshir clans.  One of the eleven who
stood to Jieret's defense in the battle of Strakewood Forest.

pronounced: mah -dree-ah ("ah" is near subliminal) root meaning:
madrien-staunch MAENALLE s'GANNLEY-steward and caithdein of Tysan.

pronounced: may-nahl-e (last "e" is near subliminal) root meaning:
maeni-to fall, disrupt; alii-to save or preserve/ colloquial
translation: "to MAIEN patch together" -nickname for Maenalle's
grandson, Maenol.

pronounced: my-en root meaning: maien-mouse MAENOL -heir, after
Maenalle s'Gannley, Steward and caithdein of Tysan.

pronounced: may-nahl root meaning: maeni'alii-"to patch together"
MAINMERE-town at the head of the Valenford River, located in the
principality of Taerlin, Tysan.  Built by townsmen on a site originally
kept clear to free the second lane focus in the ruins farther south.

pronounced: main-meer-e ("e" is subliminal) root meaning: maeni-to
fall, interrupt; mierereflection; colloquial translation: "disrupt
continuity" MARIN ELIATHE-Paravian High King murdered in his own hall
by an assassin in Second Age 1542.

pronounced: mahr-in el-ee-ath root meaning: marin-happening; e'll-in
harmony with; ath-prime force behind all life MARL-Earl of Fallowmere
and clan chieftain at the time of the battle of Strakewood Forest.

pronounced: marl root meaning: marie-quartz rock MATHORN
MOUNTAINS-range that bisects the Kingdom of Rathain, east to west.

pronounced: math-from root meaning: mathien-massive MATHORN ROAD-way
passing to the south of the Mathom Mountains, leading to the trade city
of Etarra from the west.
pronounced: math-from root meaning: mathien-massive MEARA-daughter of
Steiven, Earl of the North, and

pronounced: mere-ah

Dania; older sister of Jieret.

root meaning: meara-willow MEARTH-city through the West Gate in the
Red Desert.

inhabitants all fell victim to the Shadows of Mearth, which were
created by the Fellowship Sorcerer Davien to protect the Five Centuries
Fountain.  The Shadows are a light-fueled geas that bind the mind to
memory of an individual's most painful experience.

pronounced: me-arth root meaning: mearth-empty Tysan.  Its mouth
forms the harbor for the port town of MELOR RIVER-located in the
principality of Korias, West End.

pronounced: mel-or root meaning: maeliur-fish METH ISLE KEEP-old
Paravian fortress located on the isle in Methlas Lake in southern
Melhalla.  Kept by Verrain, Guardian of Mirthlvain.  Contains a fifth
lane power focus and dungeons where methuri were held temporarily
captive before transfer to Rockfell.

pronounced: meth isle root meaning: meth-hate METHLAS LAKE-large body
of fresh water located in the principality of Radmoor, Melhalla.

pronounced: meth-las root meaning: meth'ilass'an-the drowned, or
sunken ones.

METH-SNAKES-crossbred genetic mutations left over from a First Age
creature called a methuri (hate-wraith).

Related to Lyats, these creatures possessed live hosts, which they
infested and induced to produce mutated offspring to create weakened
lines of stock to widen their choice of potential host animals.

pronounced: meth to rhyme with "death" root meaning: meth-hate
METHURI-Lyat-related parasite that infested live host animals.  By the
Third Age, they are extinct, but their mutated host stock continues to
breed in Mirthlvain Swamp.

pronounced: meth-yoor-ce root meaning: meth-hate; thiere-wraith, or
spirit MIN PIERENS-archipelago to the west of Kingdom of West Shand, in
the Westland Sea.

pronounced: min (rhymes with "pin") pierre-ins root meaning:
min-purple; pierens-shoreline MIRTHLVAIN SWAMP-boglands filled with
dangerous crossbreeds, located south of the Tiriac Mountains in
principality of Midhalla, Melhalla.  Never left unmatched.

Since conquest of the Mistwraith, the appointed guardian was the
spellbinder, Veffain.

pronounced: mirth-el-vain root meaning: myrthl-noxious; vain-bog/mud
MORFETT-Lord Governor Supreme of Etarra at the time the Fellowship
seeks to restore Rathain's monarchy following the captivity of the
Mistwraith.

pronounced: more-let no root meaning from the Paravian MORRIEL,Prime
Enchantress of the Koriathain since the Third Age Year 4212.

pronounced: more-real root meaning: moar-greed; riel-silver
MORVAIN-city located in the principality of Araethural Rathain, on the
coast of Instrell Bay.  Elaira's birthplace.
pronounced: more-vain root meaning: morvain-swindler's market

NARMS@ity on the coast )f Instrell Bay, built as a craft

center by men in the early Third Age.  Best known for dyeworks.

pronounced: narms to rhyme with "charms" root meaning: narms-color
ORLAN-pass through the Thaldein Mountains, also location of the Camris
clans' west outpost, in Canuis, Tysan.

Where Asandir's party is waylaid by Grithen enroute to Althain Tower.

pronounced: or-Ian root meaning: irlan-ledge ORVANDIR-principality
located in northeastern Shand.

pronounced: or-van-deer root meaning: orvein@rumbled; dir-stone
PARAVIAN-name for the three old races that inhabited Athera before Men.

Including the centaurs, the sunchildren, and the unicorns, these
races , never die unless mishap befalls them; they are the world s
channel, or direct connection to Ath Creator.

pronounced: par-ai-vee-ans root meaning: para-great; i'on-fate or
"great mystery" PESQUIL-Mayor of the Northern League of Headhunters, at
the time of the battle of Strakewood Forest.  His strategies cause the
Deshir clans the most punishing losses.

pronounced: pes-quil to rhyme with "pest quill" root meaning not from
the Paravian QUEN-halfwit who serves as door guard and servant to the
Prime Enchantress of the Kofiathain, Morriet.

pronounced: cue-en root meaning: quenient-witless RATHAIN-High
Kingdom of Athera ruled by descendants of Torbrand s'Ffalenn since
Third Age Year One.  Sigil: black and silver leopard on green field.

pronounced: rath-ayn root meaning: roth-brother; them-tower,
sanctuary RAUVEN TOWER-home of the s'Ahelas mages who brought up
Arithon s'Ffalenn and trained him to the,ways of power.  Located on the
splinter world, Dascen Elur, through West Gate.

pronounced: raw-yen root meaning: rauven-invocation RENWORT-plant
native to Athera.  A poisonous mash can be brewed from the benies.

pronounced: ren-wart root meaning: renwarin-poison RIATHAN
PAR"IANS-unicoms, the purest and most direct connection to Ath Creator;
the prime vibration channels directly through the horn.

pronounced: ree-ah-than root meaning: ria-to touch; ath-prime life
force; ri'athon-one who touches divinity ROCKFELL-deep shaft cut into
Rockfell Peak, used to imprison harmful entities throughout all three
ages.  Located in the principality of West Halla, Melhalla; became the
warded prison for Desh-diiere.

pronounced: rock-fer root meaning not from the Paravian ROCKFELL
VALE-valley below Rockfell Peak, located in principality of West Halia,
Melhalia.

pronounced: rockfell vale root meaning not from the Paravian
SAERIAT-name of the brigantine captained by Avar of Karthan, defeated
and burned in engagement against seventeen warships of Amroth.

pronounced: say-ree-at root meaning: saer-water; Lyat-to break
s'AHELAS-family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship
Sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Shand.

Gifted geas: farsight.

pronounced: s'ah-hell-as root meaning: ahelas-mage-gifted
s'DARIAN-family name for a line of centaurs who were master armorers in
the First and Second Ages.  Most renowned was Ffereton who forged the
twelve Blades of Isaer, Alithiel being for his natural son Durmaenir.

pronounced: dar-ee-an root meaning: daer'an-one that cuts
s'FFALENN-family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship
Sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Rathain.

Gifted geas: compassion/ empathy.

pronounced: fal-en root meaning: ffael@ark; an@ne s'GANNLEY-family
name for the line of Earls of the West, who stood as caithdein and
stewards for the Kings of Tysan.

pronounced: gan-lee root meaning: gaen-to guide; ll@xalted, or in
harmony s'ILESSID-family name for the royal line appointed by the
Fellowship Sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of
Tysan.  Gifted geas: justice.

pronounced: s-ill-ess-id root meaning: llessiad-balance
s'LORNMEIN-family name for the royal line appointed by the Fellowship
Sorcerers in Third Age Year One to rule the High Kingdom of Havish.

Gifted geas: temperance s'PERHEDRAL-line of sunchildren whose issue
succeeded Athera's High Kingship after Enastir, who died heirless.

pronounced: per-heed-rail root meaning: para-great; hedreal@ak
s'VALERIENT-family name for the Earls of the North, regents and
caithdein for the High Kings of Rathain.

pronounced: val-er-ee-ent root meaning: val-straight; erient-spear
SEARDLUIN-vicious, intelligent cat-formed creatures that roved in packs
whose hierarchy was arranged for ruthless and efficient slaughter of
other living things.  By the middle of the Second Age, they had been
battled to extinction.

pronounced: seerd-lwin root meaning: seard-bearded; luin-feline
SETHVIR-Sorcerer of the Fellowship of Seven, served as Warden of
Althain since the disappearance of the Paravians in the Third Age after
the Mistwraith's conquest.

pronounced: seth-veer root meaning: seth-fact; vaer-keep SEVERNIR@ver
that once ran across the central part of Daon Ramon Barrens, Rathain.
Diverted at the source after the Mistwraith's conquest, to run east
into Eltair,Bay.

pronounced: se-ver-neer root meaning: sevaer-to travel; mr-south
SHAND@ne of the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, cut by South Strait, the
portion on the western shore being West Shand.

pronounced: shand root meaning: shand-two SHANDIAN-refers to
nationality, being of the Kingdom of Shand.

pronounced: shand-ee-an root meaning: shand-two SITHAER-mythological
equivalent of hell, halls of Dharkaron Avenger's judgment; according to
Ath's adepts, that state of being where the prime vibration is not
recognized.

pronounced: sith-air root meaning: sid-lost; thiere-wraith/spirit
SKELSENG'S GATE-chain of cliff caves in the foothills of the Skyshiel
Mountains, abutting Daon Ramon Barrens in Rathain.  Became a temporary
holding place for the Mistwraith just after captivity.

pronounced: skel-seng rhymes with "tell bring" root meaning:
skel-many; seng@ave SKYRON FOCUS-large aquamarine focus-stone, used by
the Koriani Senior Circle for their major magic after the loss of the
Great Waystone during the rebellion.

pronounced: sky-run root meaning: skyron-colloquialism for shackle;
s'kyr'i'on-literally "sorrowful fate" SKYSHIEL-mountain range that runs
north to south along the eastern coast of Rathain.

pronounced: sky-shee-el root meaning: skyshia-to pierce through;
iel-light/ray STEIVEN-Earl of the North, caithdein and regent to the
Kingdom of Rathain at the time of Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn's return.

Chieftain of the Deshans at the battle of Strakewood Forest.

pronounced: stay-yin root meaning: steiven-stag STRAKEWOOD-forest in
the principality of Deshir, Rathain; site of the battle of Strakewood
Forest.

pronounced: strayk-wood to rhyme with "stray wood" root meaning:
streik-to quicken, to seed TAERLIN-southwestern principality of Kingdom
of Tysan.

pronounced: tay-er-lin root meaning: taer@aim; lien-to love TAL
QUORIN-river formed by the confluence of watershed on the southern side
of Strakewood, principality of Deshir, Rathain, where traps were laid
for Etarra's army in the battle of Strakewood Forest.

pronounced: tai quar-in root meaning: tai-branch; quorin@anyons
TALERA s'AHELAS-princess wed to the king of Amroth on the splinter
world of Dascen Elur.  Mother of Lysaer s'llessid, by her husband;
mother of Arithon, through her adulterous liaison with the Pirate King
of Karthan, Avar s'Ffalenn.

pronounced: taler-a root meaning: talera-branch or fork in a path
TALIENNSE-Paravian princess rescued from Khadrim attack by Kamridian
s'Ffalenn, for which the Isaervian sword Alithiel was awarded to the
s'Ffalenn royal line.

pronounced: tai-ee-en-se root meaning: talien-precious; esia-feather
TAL:S CROSSING-town at the branch in the trade road that leads to
Etarra and south, and northeastward to North Ward.

pronounced: tai to rhyme with "pal" root meaning: tai-branch
TANE-father of Grithen, heir to the earldom of Erdane.

pronounced: tain to rhyme with "main" root meaning: tane-sire, father
TANLIE--mother of the dead child that Arithon brought in from the horse
knacker's yards in Etarra.

pronounced: tan-lee root meaning: tun-brown; lie-note struck in
harmony TASHAN-Elder on Maenalle's clan council, present at the west
outpost at the time of Grithen's raid on the Pass of Orlan.

pronounced: tash-an root meaning: tash-swift, quick; an@ne
TASHKA@aughter of Lady Dania and Steiven s'Valerient, Earl of the North
and caithdein of Rathain.

pronounced: tash-ka root meaning: tas@uick/swift; ka-girl TEIR-title
fixed to a name denoting heirship.

pronounced: tay-er root meaning: teir's-"successor to power" TELIR-A
sweet fruit somewhat like a cherry grown by the Paravians, from which
they made telir brandy.  Telir trees did not bear fruit after the
Mistwraith's conquest and no new seedlings sprouted in the absence of
sunlight.

pronounced: tel-ear root meaning: telir-sweet TELMANDIR-ruined city
that once was the seat of the High Kings of Havish.  Located in the
principality of Lithmere, Havish.

pronounced: tell-man-deer root meaning: telman'en-leaning; dir-rock
TENIA-young girl from Rauven in Dascen Elur, the splinter world through
West Gate.  Deeply attracted to Arithon s'Ffalenn, though her fear of
his Shadow Mastery prevented any serious ties.

pronounced: ten-ee'-ah root meaning: itenia-uncertain
THALDEIN-mountain range that borders the principality of Camris, Tysan,
to the east.  Site of the Camfis clans' west outpost.  Site of the raid
at the Pass of Orlan.

pronounced: thall-dayn root meaning: thai-head; dein-bird
TIENELLE-high altitude herb valued by mages for its mind-expanding
properties.  Highly toxic.  No antidote.

The leaves, dried and smoked, are most potent.  To weaken its potency
and allow safer access to its vision, Koriani enchantresses boil the
flowers then soak tobacco leaves with the brew.

pronounced: tee-an-ell-e ("e" mostly subliminal) root meaning:
tien-dream; iel-light/ray TIRIACS-mountain range to the north of
Mirthlvain Swamp, located in the principality of Midhalla, Kingdom of
Melhalla.

pronounced: tie-ree-axe root meaning: tieriach-alloy of metals
TISHEALDI-name given to Arithon's dun mare for the itregular white
marking on her neck.

pronounced: tish-ee-al-dee root meaning: tishealdi-splash TORBRAND
s'FFALENN-founder of the s'Ffalenn line appointed by the Fellowship of
Seven to rule the High Kingdom of Rathain in Third Age Year One.

pronounced: tor-brand root meaning: tor-sharp, keen; brand-temper
TORNIR PEAKS-mountain range on western border of the principality of
Camris, Tysan.  Northern half is actively volcanic, and there the last
surviving packs of Khadrim are kept under ward.

pronounced: tor-neer.

root meaning: tor-sharp, keen; nier-tooth TRAITHE-Sorcerer of the
Fellowship of Seven.  Solely responsible for the closing of South Gate
to deny further entry to the Mistwraith.  Traithe lost most of his
faculties in the process, and was left with a limp.  Since it is not
known whether he can make the transfer into discorporate existence with
his powers impaired, he has retained his physical body.

pronounced: tray-the root meaning: traithe-gentleness TYSAN-one of
the Five High Kingdoms of Athera, as defined by the charters of the
Fellowship of Seven.  Ruled by the s'llessid royal line.  Sigil: gold
star on blue field.

pronounced: tie-san root meaning: tiasen-rich VALENDALE-river arising
in the Pass of Orlan in the Thaldein Mountains, in the principality of
Atainia, @san.

pronounced: val-en-dale root meaning: valen-braided; dale-foam
VASTMARK-principality located in Southwestern Shand.

Highly mountainous and not served by trade roads.  Its coasts are
renowned for shipwrecks.  Inhabited by nomadic shepherds and wyverns,
non-firebreathing, smaller relatives of Khadrim.

pronounced: vast-mark root meaning: vhast-bare; mheark-valley
VERRAIN-spellbinder, trained by Luhaine; stood as guardian of
Mirthlvain when the Fellowship of Seven was, left shorthanded after the
conquest of the Mistwraith.

pronounced: ver-rain root meaning: ver-keep; ria-touch; an-one
original Paravian: verria'an WARD-A guarding spell.
pronounced: as in English root meaning: not from the Paravian

R

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