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, terrorstruck 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 offence 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 grey, 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 laboured 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 wholedays, 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 untrammelled 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 hardwon 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:
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 fosterparent 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 dyevats…’
North, in the town of Ward, under skies still greyed by Desh-thiere’s mists, an elderly bard contains bitter disappointment as he rips down the message posted in bright hope the day before: ‘
XII. CONQUEST
The change in season brought buffeting winds to Daon Ramon 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 mould 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 expectation and a near to 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 catspaw of air through the archway sent a dry leaf scratching. Aware the disturbance marked an arrival, Asandir drew breath and addressed, ‘Ithamon is secure?’
