toward Diegan, who remained mystified, and Gnudsog, who kneaded the scars on his sword arm in fixed and unholy irritation. ‘Since your councilmen cannot act to calm their city, here is how we’ll do it for them.’
They marched briskly and gained the square. Gnudsog formed his men into a flying wedge and bashed through the rioting apprentices from the rear. Swords and steel-shod halberd butts made short work of wooden staves; the dray with its spilled crates of melons and string-tied half-trampled chickens afforded only minimal delay. Gnudsog’s men used polearms for levers and had the vehicle set upright in a trice. By then, combatants on both sides screamed curses, united in common cause against the soldiers.
While the fighting shifted focus, Lysaer mounted the unguarded stair, littered with torn-down snarls of bunting, and leopard banners that beleaguered torchlight re-rendered from s’Ffalenn green and silver to funereal black. Fired by righteous purpose, he paused to comfort a farm lad who knelt with his gashed cheek compressed with the wadded-up tail of a streamer. A word, a touch, a light joke, and the boy was induced to smile. Today’s ripped face would leave a scar that would win him no endearments from the tavernmaids. Another bit of ruin to swell an already vicious score. Unmindful that a curse drove his enmity, Lysaer reached the upper platform where a s’Ffalenn turned traitor to his birthright should have pledged Etarra his protection.
The Fellowship had chosen a site of favourable visibility and acoustics. Lysaer paused between the stripped and splintered awning poles, given vantage to every corner of the square.
Before him spread the city’s tragic turmoil. Picked out in pallid lanternlight, small episodes stood out: the screaming craftsmen who brandished tools and uprooted stakes from the awning ties; the drunken laughter and gyrating celebration of a raggedy band of looters; a woman clutching a torn dress. And an elderly burgher beset in extremity, his cane struck away, the rim of a broken flowerpot his last weapon to fend off his attackers.
Misgiving for their plights dispelled the disorientation that lingered since Lysaer’s reawakening. Desh-thiere’s realignment of his loyalties was irrevocably complete.
His hour under the wraith’s possession he now blamed on spells laid to daze and confuse him; that the Fellowship would act to abet Arithon’s escape was a foregone conclusion, since they had persistently refused to lend credence to any of his past crimes of piracy. That fallacy must no longer be allowed to hinder mercy. Neither could widespread riots be stopped through hard-edged action. Restored to compassionate perception, Lysaer saw he had been callous to presume that he could loose the full might of his gift and crack the pall of shadow from the sky.
A populace driven by mass panic might well mistake a violent counterstrike for an attack by enemy sorcery; no act, however well-intentioned, must lend further impetus to panic. A subtle approach would encourage reason; light must flow gently as a balm over a city whose loyalties were ripped open like bleeding wounds.
Lysaer raised his hands.
His gift had become more malleable to his will through the months of battle against Desh-thiere; further, the hours spent working in partnership with Arithon lent Lysaer every confidence that he could plumb any weaving of shadow.
The shouts, the screams, the crack of wood against steel as roisterers harried Gnudsog’s line of soldiers faded before deep concentration as Lysaer sent a subliminal tracer glow aloft. Quietly, subtly he tested the bindings of darkness the Shadow Master had set over the city.
The probe was swallowed utterly. A dark inexhaustible as ocean, as seamlessly wrapped as a death caul seemed to make mockery of his effort. Lysaer clamped down on fresh anger. No pall could be infinite. Not even the Fellowship commanded limitless power. Lysaer turned reason and objectivity against the heat of his enmity. His next probe picked up the thread of magecraft cleverly intermeshed with the shadows. Not only had the illusion tricked him to assume the night had no boundaries, Lysaer exposed a second error of presumption, that Arithon must be inside city walls.
Stay-spells anchored these shadows. A sorcerer’s training allowed the Master’s spun darkness to abide outside of his presence.
Very likely the daylight had been banished to cover a bolt to escape. Lysaer found no cause to forgive, that the attack had not been turned in direct malice against Etarra’s citizens. Riots had arisen from the upset. By royal duty, the man who should have been first to keep peace had without scruple seized the most damaging means at hand to duck his responsibility.
Justice would be served, Lysaer vowed. For each life lost, for each hurt caused by negligence, Arithon s’Ffalenn would be brought to account.
The dark-ward must be lifted straightaway. Lysaer extended his arms. A glow bloomed upward. Golden as late-day sunlight on an autumn meadow, the halo he cast from his person could never be mistaken for torchlight.
Across the rush and tumult in the square, through the barricade of raised polearms wielded by Gnudsog’s guard, eyes turned toward that source of indefinable illumination. Etarra’s traumatized citizens saw one man casting brave challenge against the dark.
Someone shouted. Hands raised in the press, pointing toward the glow that spread from the lone blond figure on the dais. The fighting nearest Gnudsog’s embattled lines faltered. Farmers stared, bricks and cart-axles torn out for bludgeons dangling forgotten in their hands as belligerence gave way to wonder. Rough men who prowled to steal and pillage spun from doorways suddenly rinsed clean of shadow. Stripped of their cover, they dodged away into side-streets to avoid arrest by the watch. Guild bands of more directed hatreds paused on their way to disadvantage rival factions. Least brazen, the craftsmen and the shopkeepers clustered in their fearful bands cried out at the rebirth of the light that would spare their property and livelihood. ‘We are saved!’
Lord Diegan answered from the dais stair. ‘By the grace of Lysaer of the Light, our city shall recover prosperity!’
‘Lysaer of the Light!’ hailed a mason with roughened hands. His chant was taken up, until the central square of Etarra rang to a thousand raised voices.
The golden circle widened, waxed brighter. Lysaer’s hands seemed bathed in a fountainhead of gilt sparks. Light burnished his hair like fine metal and glanced off the tinsel stitching banding his lace cuffs and pourpoint. The face tipped upward under that swathe of illumination showed no change at the clamour of the crowd. Fine-chiselled in concentration, the lord from the west who wrought miracles seemed an angel sent down into squalor from the exalted hosts of Athlieria.
Even Gnudsog was inspired from dourness. ‘He has the look on him, like a prince.’ Eyes dark as swamp-peat swivelled and fixed on Lord Diegan. ‘Don’t let your ninnies in the council be handing him a crown in silly gratitude.’
