‘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.’
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 friends 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 streetside 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 governor’s 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, honour 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 judgement; 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 ploughing 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.
