collarbones, settled his spell around her neck.
The lights were neither warm nor cold; in fact, their presence against her flesh raised no tactile sensation at all. That for an oddity made her ache. As if, like a gem or a pearl, she should feel something tangible from his gift.
‘Gold suits you,’ Lysaer murmured. He watched in quiet pleasure as she experimented with his handiwork, let it spill like captive fireflies through her fingers.
And then, too suddenly, he gave the reason for his coming. ‘The army marches out on the morrow.’
She looked up, her head tipped provocatively sideways; the necklace of lights brightened her chin to fine angles. ‘Should that trouble me?’
Lysaer paused, thoughtful. He seemed not offended or set back. ‘I don’t think anyone in this city understands the threat in the man we leave to cut down.’
‘Arithon?’ Talith tossed back her mane of hair, about to say, disparaging, that even allied to barbarians the deposed prince could hardly challenge a fortified city.
Lysaer stepped to her suddenly and caught her arms below her bared shoulders. He did not shake her. Neither did he raise his voice to chastise. His touch stayed soft and the eyes that stared down into hers were wide open, very blue and anguished only with himself. ‘Lady, I fear for your city, for your safety, for your happiness. And about Arithon s’Ffalenn, I can make nobody comprehend.’
‘What else is there to know?’ She looked back at him, graceful as some tawny cat assured of its power to captivate.
Lysaer slid his palms down her arms lightly as a breath. He backed away, set his hands on the balustrade and stared out over the darkened garden. He was deeply troubled and she realized with a snap of vexation that her allure had not even touched him. He gave her no chance to retaliate, but said quickly, ‘I grew up in a land that was terrorized by the predations of the s’Ffalenn. We in Amroth had wealth, good ships, skilled men with quality weapons to defend us. We should have triumphed easily, for the isle of Karthan the pirate kings ruled was little more than a sandspit. The people were poor, with few resources, fewer men. But what they had, they used with the cleverness of demons.’
He stilled for a moment. Talith saw that his hands had balled into fists. Unsure whether his tension might be troublesome to cross, she waited, patient because his lordly display of dedication was novel enough to intrigue her.
Presently, Lysaer spoke again. ‘The killing and the grief went back for generations, through my great- grandfather’s time. Both of my uncles were lured into traps and sent back to us pickled, for burial. Grief left my father unreasonable, even mad. He lost a wife, before my mother. Two daughters died with her, who would have been my half-sisters, had I known them. No one told me they existed until I was twelve, when I forced my father’s seneschal to say why the royal crypt held an unmarked vault.’
Lysaer took a breath. ‘All my life, I remember the campaigns, the fleets and the generals sent out to eradicate the s’Ffalenn. We accomplished little for great efforts. We managed to burn villages, poor shanties whose loss seemed scarcely to hurt. Karthish lookouts would spot the inbound fleets and warn the people to escape. Men sent ashore to track refugees would scour the desert to no avail. Sea engagements went as badly. Our ships were lured into exhaustive chases, wrecked in shoal waters because the artisans who drew our charts were once fed false information. Our captains and crews died fighting against lee shores in gales. They died of thirst, hunger, mutiny and fire because the weapon of the s’Ffalenn was ingenuity that seemed inexhaustible as the tides. The pirate princes revelled in feuding. Their trickery never repeated itself and they sailed to no predictable pattern.’
Remembered anguish drove Lysaer to straighten from the balustrade. ‘These past captains were only men, clever and hungry for bloodshed. The last of their line, the s’Ffalenn heir bequeathed to Athera, is far more. He was born to an enchantress, raised to the ways of power. A sorcerer, a shadow master, his tricks will come barbed in spells.’
His eyes at last turned and met Talith’s, dreadfully deep and revealing. ‘Arithon fooled even me, lady. He drew me to believe he was harmless, then cozened true friendship from me. If not for your brother’s apt questions, if not for the doubts he reawakened, no one might have acted in time. Arithon might never have stood before Etarra and revealed his true nature in the square.’
Lysaer ended in harsh and personal discomfort. ‘That is what I cannot teach your people to know and fear.’
Caught up in fascination exotic enough to make her shiver, Talith said, ‘But you are lord over powers of light. You can defend against witchery.’
‘I’m a man,’ Lysaer amended. ‘Men fail.’
Uncertainty flawed Talith’s entrancement. She had been affected inside, and surprised by that recognition, she wanted his hands on her. ‘You’ll come back. Diegan’s army will win that black sorcerer’s head.’
Breeze stirred a drift of mulberry petals between them. They dusted Talith’s cheeks and caught in her hair and on the abalone tips of lacquered pins. With a gentle hand he brushed them away. ‘We can try. We can hope.’ He cupped her face, bent and kissed her with maddening lightness.
She reached to pull him closer, but the slithering drag of her caped sleeves warned him in time to draw back. From a safe half-pace away he smiled at her. ‘No. Not now. You’ll wait for me, lovely lady. When Arithon s’Ffalenn is vanquished and your city is safe, I’ll return. If your desire for my presence still endures, we shall build something great between us then.’
She swallowed back her annoyance, the more amazed because he did not mock her frustrated passion as Etarran men might have done. ‘What if you don’t come back?’
His lightness vanished. ‘Then you’ll be left to find out why Etarra’s army lost. In my memory, you’ll use such knowledge to warn your people, so that Arithon’s predations don’t catch them unprepared when the time comes to fight him again.’
‘You can’t believe you’ll be defeated!’ Talith cried, forgetting in distress to be artful.
‘I can’t be so cocky as to think for a second I might not.’ He gave a stiff shrug in apology. ‘S’Ffalenn pirates in the past have ruined better men than me.’
‘You’re all we have.’ Talith corrected herself with passionate sharpness: ‘All I have.’
