officials of Etarra observed. They began to press Traithe’s back like wolves grown bold before weakness. Another moment, and the pack of them would turn as ungovernable as any mob in the streets.
‘Go,’ Traithe called. The raven arose, flapping. Air hissed across splayed feathers as it shot through the gap in the door. Arithon shouldered the panel closed, just as the foremost ranks of the guild masters broke in a rush to tear him down.
Crippled, Traithe was, but not powerless. As aggression crested around him, and elbows jostled him aside, he sensed to the second when the minds of the governor’s council became aligned in mass will to wreak violence. Traithe seized his opening through their passion. He attached an entanglement of energies and their intent to commit murder was bent aside and bridled as his warding snapped into the breach.
Shouts trailed off into quiet, cut by a sigh of rich cloth. The battering rush toward the doorway juddered to a slow fall forward as every man who wished harm to his prince folded at the knees and collapsed. No townsman at the end was left standing. Nestled in their crumpled brocades, lying across flattened hats and fur-trimmed cloaks, every official in Etarra’s high government settled where he lay, fast asleep.
Alone on his feet, one scarred, silver-haired mage regarded the rows of prostrate bodies, his heart aggrieved at too small a victory, won too late. The irony cut him, that but for Dakar’s infernal predictions concerning the Fellowship’s recovery, Arithon might now have returned here for sanctuary until the raven could summon Sethvir.
The downed councilmen snored on, oblivious.
‘May every last one of you be harrowed by nightmares for your ignorance!’ Traithe cursed in surly, sorrowful fervency. Then he straightened his wide- brimmed black hat and applied himself to the task of setting wards of guard over every door, every window, every closet and cranny in the chamber, that the ministers of Morfett’s council should stay mewed up until the course of the tragedy forecast by the strands could guarantee what hope could be salvaged for the ill-starred Black Rose Prophecy.
Lysaer closed his eyes as a third, fierce tingle played across his flesh. A still part of him analysed this, and concluded that Fellowship sorcerers must be seeking him through spellcraft. Heated elation followed. In uncanny certainty, he realized he was no longer quite what he had been; the pattern sought out by the sorcerers’ probe had ceased to match his personality. Once he should have felt alarmed by an insight more appropriate to a mage-taught perspective. Obsessed now by compulsion to serve justice, he never questioned what caused the deviation, or his odd self- knowledge of its existence.
The paradox passed unregarded, that he lurked like a fugitive in an alley, all for a promise to call his half- brother to task. To Lysaer, this moment, the urge to uncover any latent breach of faith became overridingly important.
Every quandary that tormented his conscience and broke his night’s rest with disturbed dreams had narrowed into sudden, lucent focus.
Lysaer gave a laugh in self-derision. He had fought so hard to give Arithon the benefit of the doubt that objectivity itself became obstructive. He shivered and sweated, berating his idealistic foolishness. He had only to question all along. For if Arithon was established as a liar, the ongoing weeks of heartsick recrimination might at one stroke become banished. Avar’s bastard as a proven criminal presented Lysaer with moral duty to defend the merchants and townsmen.
A resolution in favour of complaints he understood would be a frank relief.
‘I’ll find you,’ he swore to the shadows, Arithon’s name behind the vow. His tingling discomfort now replaced by fanatical resolve, he moved on.
Stray dogs that skulked across his path whined and shrank from his scent. When a braver bitch snarled and hounded his track, he dispatched a flick of light and stung her to yelping flight.
That cruelty to any animal would have been beyond him just minutes before never once crossed Lysaer’s mind. He picked his way over cracked paving and discarded bits of broken pottery and emerged from the alley into the brighter main thoroughfare.
People crowded the avenue, converging toward the square to attend the royal coronation. A sun-wrinkled farmwife stared at Lysaer’s emergence, chewing toothless gums as she leaned on a strapping, dark skinned grandson. Children darted past on both sides, tossing painted sticks in a throwing game that held careless regard for the neat clothing bestowed by their steadfast merchant parents. These, Arithon’s intended victims, Lysaer greeted courteously. He smiled at a cake vendor, and paused to help her boy push her cart across the gutter.
The servant in attendance at Morfett’s front doorway knew Lysaer by sight. Politely admitted inside, he asked and was granted leave to see himself to the guest suite on his own.
No sorcerer guarded the back stairwell: Luhaine’s wards were all faded. The room where Arithon quartered held only a still warmth of sunlight through latched, amber-tinged casements. Lysaer paused, breathing hard on the threshold. He surveyed the chamber more closely.
The callous character of its occupant stood revealed to casual inspection: in a king’s cloak left crumpled into the cushions of a divan, and the gift of a carbuncle scabbard spurned and abandoned on the floor.
Lysaer scowled, that the sacred trust of royal heritage should suffer such careless usage. Only the lyranthe lovingly couched on the windowseat gave testament to the heart of the man.
Urged by a pang so indistinct he could not fathom its origin, Lysaer crossed the echoing floor. By the time he reached the alcove, his feelings had fanned into rage. He shouted to the room’s empty corners, ‘Are Rathain’s people of less account than minstrelsy?’
Silence mocked him back. The silver strings sparkled sharp highlights, mute, but all the same promising dalliance.
Rathain’s prince would be reft from distractions; Etarra’s needs
Parchment-thin wood, spell-spun silver, all of Elshian’s irreplaceable craftwork sailed in an arc above the floor tiles. The belling dissonance of impact lost voice as the lyranthe’s sound-chamber smashed and each scattered splinter whispered separately to rest in a swathe of trammelled sunlight.
‘You cannot hide, pirate’s bastard,’ Lysaer vowed. Heat and chills racked his flesh as he spun, crunching over fragments, and burst back through the breached doorway.
The streets outside were packed by a crushing mob. Every tradesman and commoner turned out with their families now crowded toward the square before the council hall. Even a few white-hooded initiates pledged to Ath’s service had left their hospices in the wilds to attend. Lysaer let the flow of traffic carry him. He felt no remorse for his
