Never at ease with Arithon’s mage-trained evasiveness, Lysaer re-examined matters from that angle. Only this morning, Dakar had staggered in from his rounds of the taverns and attested in slurred certainty that Arithon had not spent last night drinking in any man’s company. ‘
Lysaer blinked, pricked by association. This day’s musician, who begged to be spared from royal position, was one and the same man as the chained sorcerer who had burned seven ships, then baited Amroth’s council at trial with his own life offered as gambit.
‘I can see you have reservations,’ Lady Talith observed. Her tight-laced taffeta rustled as she crossed her ankles; the terrier displaced by her movement whined and jumped plaintively down. ‘For our part, if this coronation is to be stopped, there’s little time left to take action.’
In fact, there remained but an hour before the noon ceremony. Lysaer snapped to, the odd bent of his thoughts cut off by his ingrained habit of fair play. ‘Don’t think to suggest a conspiracy. I’ll not be party to treason. The Fellowship’s intentions toward your city are certainly not harmful, and Arithon’s rights of inheritance are not in my province to deny.’
‘But you doubt him,’ Talith pressed.
There, most squarely, she scored. Honour demanded that the integrity of any ruler should be challenged over issues of social justice. Repelled as if brushed by something dank, Lysaer arose. Good manners concealed his private qualms as he gathered his velvet cloak and offered his hand to Talith. Her beauty might bedazzle his vision but never his inborn integrity. He drew her suavely to her feet. ‘Lady, on behalf of your city, I’ll question your prince. Arithon is secretive, crafty and not always forthright about his motivations. But given direct confrontation, I’ve never known him to lie.’
Diegan jangled the bell for the maid to collect the crystal and the wine-tray. To Lysaer, he added, ‘You’ll tell us your findings before the coronation begins?’
Cold now, and unsure what should motivate him to undertake such a promise at inconveniently short notice, Lysaer found himself saying, ‘You have my formal word.’
The room, the wine and the company seemed suddenly too rich. Lysaer strove to recoup his composure. Sleepless nights and troubled dreams had sown his mind with unworthy confusion. For even if Arithon’s sympathies were misguided, the thorns in seeing justice done remained: the labourers enslaved in guild service were still children, ill fed, inadequately clothed and poorly housed. Although for simplicity’s sake it would relieve a vicious quandary to fault them for the crimes of their ancestors, their plight deserved unbiased review. If Arithon would champion their cause, he must defend his decision to repudiate the city council’s policies. Lysaer dodged the terrier that playfully circled his feet and strode with firm purpose for the door.
‘My lord, my lady,’ he said in parting.
A bang and a thump sounded in the passage outside.
The inbound commotion came accompanied by Dakar’s voice, plaintively arguing with a servant. Protests were cut by Asandir demanding to know what was amiss.
Lysaer pressed his thumb on the doorlatch. The fastening seemed queerly to have jammed. A violent wrench failed to dislodge the obstruction.
Lord Diegan shoved the maid away from the wine-tray in his haste to reach Lysaer’s side. Their combined attempt to free the door caused the scrolled brass to spark white light. Heat followed, intense enough to raise blisters.
Lysaer noticed instantly that his skin took no mark from the encounter. No stranger to the effects of small sorceries, he cried out a reflexive warning. ‘Spellcraft!’
Diegan regarded him intently, while inexplicable heat and chills chased through his body once again.
This bout proved more fierce than the last. Lysaer swayed. For an instant the surrounding room seemed to flicker in and out of existence. His vision quickly steadied, but his ears were left buzzing with unnameable, untraceable sound. Rage touched him. The emotion came barbed with a thought so clearly delineated, it seemed more solid than the lintel he caught to brace his balance. Who but Arithon would have dared to interfere; the poisoned conclusion followed, that if the s’Ffalenn bastard was to blame, distrust of Etarra’s council was emphatically misplaced.
Vindicated by Lysaer’s dismay, Diegan said, ‘We’re betrayed!’ He matched a grim glance with his sister.
The servant in the outside corridor had fallen silent; the chambermaid cowered in a corner. Dakar’s reply to Asandir breached the sealed parlour with damning, irrefutable clarity. ‘But of course I set wards to bind the doorlatch! Arithon begged me at all costs to keep him separate from Lysaer!’
‘Where’s the prince of Rathain?’ The sorcerer must have glowered fearsomely, for Dakar’s answer rose to a pitch very near to hysteria.
‘He went out. Into the streets, to look for you. If Luhaine’s ghost still guards him, it’s being obstinately close- mouthed. Didn’t you see either one of them on your way over here?’
‘No.’ Asandir’s step approached the closed doorway. ‘Too late, now, to wish differently. Your prophecy bars us from action. You say Lysaer’s inside?’
In mutinous self-defence, Dakar said, ‘Diegan’s servants insist he never left.’
Lysaer felt a hand on his forearm, Talith’s, pulling him quickly aside. A shock like a spark ripped through him; not for her beauty, which could stun any man, but for her unmannerly presumption. Before he had space to question his oddly irascible reaction, the feeling became swept aside and an urge he also could not trace prompted him to fast speech. ‘I promised I’d find Arithon and ask him for the truth. Can you get me out?’
Diegan grinned. ‘Every house in Etarra has a closet exit, and hidden stairs to an outside alley. Talith will show you. I’ll delay the sorcerer.’
‘You’ll try.’ Lysaer surrendered his hand to the lady, who breathlessly hurried him forward. ‘Be careful. No Fellowship sorcerer has compunctions against prying into your private thoughts.’
If the warning gave Diegan reservations, Lysaer was not to find out. Talith sank her nails into his wrist and bundled him through a doorway that had miraculously opened through the back wall. Thrust into a musty stone passageway, Lysaer heard only Talith, softly cursing the dust that grimed the gold hem of her dress before she dragged the panel closed and shut them in cobwebs and darkness.
