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 practise 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 vine-tangled avenue that led to the inner citadel. Ahead of his step, leaves rustled in a burst of agitation as an iyat 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 defence stemmed from Name, no spell could perfectly thwart what lay outside of the grasp of true seeing; to balk an essence 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 augured for failure. The strongest of conjured defences 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 centred 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 friezework, 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 rejoinder 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 lost his inclination to expound upon the nuance of every risk. Today, and until the upheaval augured 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 a stairwell near his feet: Lysaer’s, raised in some jocular quip, and Dakar’s reply, hotly truculent.
‘First, they don’t
‘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
Lysaer trailed Dakar onto the battlement, saw his half-brother 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 nodded absently, 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 crossfire, 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.’
