At the hour past sunrise on the day appointed for Arithon’s coronation, 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 windowseat with his lyranthe lying silent across his knees, Arithon regarded the spilled velvets and silks, shot through each fold with costly metallic threadwork. 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, nor 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-grey 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 cabochon emerald set in silver that he pinned above his heart. The fabrics held no scent beyond a hint of sweetgrass that lingered from the ritual blessing 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 masterwork 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.’ Dakar stifled a chortle. ‘Asandir said wear it anyway.’
Arithon glanced suspiciously back. He raised the jewel-encrusted 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 joy-forsaken 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 spellcraft 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 forewarning he received.
Then in a rush, his seer’s talent claimed him wholly as instrument.
Trance shocked through him with such force that his mind became emptied. Dakar dropped to his knees.
A vision burned through:
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 colour 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.
