recall, graceful in completion of a difficult spell. The green eyes were deep, not dangerous. ‘I fail to find further conclusion,’ the First Senior said with reluctance.
Morriel’s cackling laugh echoed through the ramshackle warehouse. ‘But he is not clever! Not when he’s truly honest. That means the deceit Arithon so readily displays when provoked is not rooted in venal ingenuity. No. Sadly not. What drives this prince’s wit is not craftiness, but the gift of true farsight imbued in the s’Ahelas royal line.’
Lirenda considered this, while outside, something that crashed in an alley disturbed a cat from a cranny with a yowl. Roused back to herself by distraction, Morriel reached out and tapped Elaira’s hand. ‘Show us the half-brother, now.’
The image of Arithon slipped away, replaced momentarily by another. Now the s’Ilessid prince stood in the fog of a pre-dawn garden, half-lit by a shaft of lamplight that escaped through the gate from the street. He leaned against the pedestal of a statue, his lashes and cloak beaded with damp that sparked as he breathed like fine diamonds. The water was the only jewel on him: for once, his clothing held no artifice. Even his hair lay unbrushed. Although in public Lysaer maintained the flawless manners of diplomacy, here, alone, his lordly fine looks lay hagridden by doubt as he wrestled some inward dilemma his conscience could not resolve. The pain on his face, in the bearing of his shoulders and the lamp-gilded knuckles of clenched hands, was unanswerably intense. Elaira’s observance had peeled back all poise to expose him in a moment of soul-rending self-distaste.
‘Oh, Elaira, well done!’ murmured Morriel.
At her side, honed to heightened sensitivity by the fumes that trailed from the pipe bowl, Lirenda felt her being struck and jangled by that chord of conflicted emotions. She not only saw, but
His mouth in this captured instant held none of the tenderness that adoring women back in Amroth had experienced while plying him for kisses. Unyielding as tempered wire lay calculation threaded through by royal upbringing, and the machinations of Desh-thiere’s latent wraith. The result charged the nerves to disquiet; as if for one heartbeat pity were absent, and mercy an omitted concept.
‘We have seen what we must,’ the Prime announced abruptly. To Elaira she added, ‘You’re permitted to relax from your trance.’
As the image dissolved, Lirenda looked up, sparked by unsated excitement. ‘Misfortunate luck. Both princes have inherited the gifts of two royal houses.’
Discomfited at last by trepidation, Morriel tucked her arms beneath her shawls. ‘Unlucky and perilous. Arithon’s is an incompatible legacy. His mind is fatally flawed. The Fellowship should never have sanctioned his right of succession, for suffering shall dog his path as surely as seasons must turn.’
Elaira shuddered in transition back to consciousness, opened her eyes, and whitely fought the first twinge of tienelle withdrawal. ‘My Prime, you mistake him,’ she said shakily.
Amazed she should dare contradiction, Lirenda shot swift glance at the Prime.
But Morriel showed no offence for the impertinence.
Given this tacit liberty, Elaira insisted, ‘Lysaer’s the one who bears watching. Ath’s mercy, I’ve met him. He’s a living inspiration, the flesh and blood example of human kindness. The masses must flock to his standard, for his cause shall be presented in passionate and upright idealism. Then indeed there will be upheaval and suffering, since bias toward noble principles offers a weapon already fashioned for a ruler of his trained talents. All Prince Lysaer need do is pose in that mould, and set by Desh-thiere’s curse to turn his gifts toward bloodshed, he has no other course.’
‘That’s a predictable cycle,’ Lirenda interjected, annoyed beyond restraint by the Prime’s unfathomable licence. ‘We know where Lysaer will turn, and what will be the result. What can be anticipated can also be controlled or prevented. Arithon owns no such stability.’
Frustrated by narcotically enhanced perceptions, Elaira cried protest. ‘But Arithon is a man devoted to harmony, a musician with a seer’s perception. He’s conscious of his actions as Lysaer can never be!’
‘Which is precisely what makes him dangerous, Elaira,’ Morriel corrected sadly. ‘For Lysaer’s sense of justice and farsight will answer to logic, and therefore be reconciled by compromise. But since when can compassion ever be made to condone pain? S’Ahelas blood gives Arithon full grasp of cause and effect; mage-training compounds this with awareness of the forward reactions of power. These traits aligned against the s’Ffalenn gift of sympathetic empathy cancels the mind’s self-defences. The shelter of petty hatred becomes untenable. Arithon is a visionary placed at a nexus of responsibility. Desh-thiere’s curse will embroil him in violence he can neither escape nor master. Stress will prove his undoing, for the sensitivities of poets have ever been frail, and the broadened span of his thinking shall but inflame and haunt him to madness.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Elaira insisted, recalling the whiplash resilience the living man had possessed. ‘Ath be my witness, the conclusion you’ve drawn from this is wrong.’
‘Time will tell.’ Morriel motioned dismissal. ‘You are excused to rest. The widow will have a bed waiting, and a basin to wash. Remember to drink enough water, lest you take harm from the tienelle poisons.’
The traditional response all but caught in Elaira’s throat. ‘Your will.’ She dragged herself to her feet, managed a graceless curtsey, and before the cramping that marked the aftermath of tienelle usage tore her composure to shreds, contrived to walk out of the warehouse.
Outside, wrapped in darkness with the dank winds cooling her sweaty face and her back to the mildewed sill of a craft shanty, the tears came.
Elaira could not cast off the ripping, unhappy remorse, that in keeping loyalty to her order, she had effected a betrayal much deeper. Her every intent had just misfired, to expose a man’s private self, that his hidden pregnabilities should win him the protection of Koriani sympathy. Yet understanding had turned awry in her hands. Elaira ached with recognition that she had only succeeded in granting a weapon to an enemy.
In a widow’s attic bedchamber, First Senior Lirenda wakens once again, restlessly entangled in her bedclothes; and the dream that spoils her sleep is the same, of a man’s green eyes imbued with a compassion deep enough to leave her weeping and desolate in the icy chill before dawn…
As fog curls silver through the marshes flanking Tal Quorin, Deshir’s clansmen break fast on dry journey-biscuit and take up their shovels and axes; and although they speak little on the fact their crown prince has been absent since his oathtaking ceremony the previous afternoon, Steiven’s son Jieret overhears enough to become intrigued over Arithon’s whereabouts…
In the chimney-warmed garret of a north-kingdom hostel, a
