Arithon gasped. Hurled into an explosion of prescience like a bloodbath, he reeled, saved from toppling only by the tree at his back. His mind, his heart, the very breath in his throat all but stopped as involuntary foresight seared through him: of women and girls lying gutted in pitiful death. The peace of forest night was swallowed by the din of future screaming. Shocked to hot tears and futile fury, Arithon struggled to recover; while the moss dug up by his spasmed fingers seeped warm red with the blood to be reaped by the vengeance of Etarra’s steel.
Consciousness dwindled despite his best effort. He fought in a breath that became a choked-off cry as his mind was wrenched and then jarred back to focus by Jieret’s grip tugging at his arm.
‘My prince.’ The boy regarded him anxiously. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No.’ Arithon shuddered. While nightmare futures sawed through him, he had only enough constraint to be gentle as he disengaged from the child’s touch. ‘If I’m boring, that’s because I’m worried. Take me back to your father, boy. I have news of grave importance he needs to hear.’
Dubious and critical as any scout on reconnaissance, Jieret looked on as Arithon bent by the spring and swallowed water in sucking gulps. The prince looked sick; was in fact shaking, and running with sweat that smelled of fear. But Jieret had not lost sight of the fact that he trespassed; by nature too canny to contradict, he accepted the conclusion that Halliron’s wagered coin would end up in Elwedd’s purse.
The water and the walk seemed to help. Arithon breathed more freely as movement and increased circulation eased the worst of his withdrawal. Through the hour’s hike back to camp, he regained at least the semblance of his accustomed equilibrium.
Which was well, because the mother of a boy who has lit off into open forest with no word of explanation was bound not to wait with complaisance. Lady Dania intercepted her miscreants at the flap of Steiven’s lodge. She had shed her daytime leathers for a tight-sleeved dress of lilac blue. Russet hair that Arithon had never seen unbraided trailed like undone crochet-work down her back. The effect of softened femininity hit him like a blow and he stopped, struck briefly speechless.
But his momentary awkwardness escaped notice as Dania latched onto her errant son. ‘Jieret! What possessed you? It shames me to see a boy of twelve behaving with less care than a toddler!’
Recessed in the shadow beyond the entry, Arithon interrupted. ‘The boy was with me, and quite safe.’
Lady Dania shot him a scorching glance.
Awed by the briskness with which she abandoned her scolding and ordered him off to bed, Jieret saw that, prince or not, Arithon was going to suffer all of his mother’s thwarted temper. Wary of his fate should he linger, the boy beat an escape through the curtain that separated the nook he shared with his sisters.
Dania cracked back the tentflap, cross to her core from the licence of intemperate royalty. She bent a severe gaze upon the culprit, who escaped her by standing stone-still in the darkness. Reminded afresh that Arithon could be disquieting and difficult, and that Caolle had warned earlier he might have remedied his nerves since the oathtaking with drink or some other indulgence, Dania too said nothing, but busied herself lighting candles.
While new flame fired the delicately embroidered patterns that bordered her bodice and hemline and sparked a brighter warmth of colour in her hair, she barbed her subtlety in a smile of sweetened welcome.
‘Steiven will be back shortly,’ she offered. When Arithon’s reticence remained, she dared him to try sheer bad manners. ‘Come in. Sit. Be comfortable while we wait for him.’
Appreciative of her heroic effort not to nag, and piquantly aware she would rifle what deductions she could from his appearance, Arithon slipped through the doorflap. Her mind matched his measure far too often to make him comfortable. He half-smiled to see that her rearguard attack had defeated him; not a cushion in the lodge remained in dimness enough for concealment. He countered her candles by an absolute refusal to settle. While Dania ducked past the privacy flap to make sure of young Jieret and tuck him with canny firmness into bed, Arithon gave rein to restlessness and paced.
This lodge was not so fine as the one left in storage at the last camp. Bereft of tapestries, fine carpets and permanent furnishings, the dwelling still displayed evidence of civilized inhabitance. One corner was flaked with wood chips and bark, where Jieret had whittled toys for his sisters. An opened book rested on a woven reed-mat, a half-spent candle close by. The text in the surfeit of lighting flashed as he stepped, with bright colours and gilt illumination. The wall behind had been painted over with an elaborate scene of a stag hunt. In the corner, cushioned on a pallet stuffed with evergreen, Halliron’s lyranthe lay abandoned.
Silver strings strung reflections like beads, numerous and scintillant as the candleflames. Arithon set his teeth, but could not quite manage to turn aside. Topaz settings and small emeralds beckoned for his attention amid the carved and inlaid bands that laced from the scrolled base to the peghead with its rows of ebony tuners.
Before thought could stop him, he had seated himself. He extended a finger and tentatively, lightly brushed the strings.
The timbre that answered wrung his heart, so perfectly did it match the voice of the instrument left and lost in Etarra. The maker’s rune stamped in pearl inlay on the back of the soundboard was not visible; but tone was all the signature Arithon required to identify Elshian’s handiwork.
The temptation could be too much.
Framed against a painted backdrop of deer hounds frozen in full cry, he lifted the lyranthe, set his hand to silver frets, and began very softly to play.
The burns where Lysaer’s light bolt had seared his right palm and wrist had barely started to heal. Tripped up as the pull of the wound marred his timing, Arithon struck out a rough and moody line of notes. Lost to his irritation, half-unmoored by lightheadedness, he had space in him only for song. He flexed his stiff hand, cursed mildly as the scab cracked, and launched off in a run that seemed to banish hide walls and let in space like cloud-blown sky.
Notes trilled and spattered across quiet in a statement that through unsullied expression of beauty negated his uncertainty and pain.
Newly returned from Jieret’s bedside, Lady Dania was arrested by the sound. Unwitting party to something not meant to be shared, she poised stock-still with the fringed end of the privacy curtain forgotten between her clenched hands.
A soaring arpeggio introduced a change in key like an epiphany. Major chord to minor, the lyranthe rang through a boldly personal statement that flashed with a grace like edged swordplay. Stirred through the stuffy, airless heat trapped inside hide walls, Dania shivered in delight. This prince could bind spells with his playing. Entranced beyond fear of impropriety, she smiled her appreciation and advanced.
