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 offence 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’Ilessid heir may harbour 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 judgement and we’ll have no crowned king, nor 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 discrepancies: 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 doorpanel, 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 bulged 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 paralysing pain through his larynx.
Traithe called out cheerfully to those bystanders just turned to stare openmouthed at the scuffle. ‘Could I beg your help?’
The stir widened; polite conversation faltered. Before Morfett’s wheezes and moaned curses could impact the fast-spreading 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 parlour 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 he had toyed with for the past half hour. His wine sloshed untasted as he said, ‘These wretches that Arithon would champion are in fact the offspring of condemned criminals, clanblood 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 dry 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?’
