‘He could be dying,’ Halliron said, his performer’s voice bladed to satire. ‘Did none of you notice the smell on him?’
‘Is something wrong?’ Steiven released the hand that cupped his wife’s waist as Dania moved to light candles.
Halliron made a sound of exasperation. When Caolle looked brazenly blank, and Steiven’s expression failed to clear, the Masterbard raised Arithon’s other wrist and hauled him into a half reclining posture that needed several pillows to support. As his fingers untied the prince’s shirtcuffs, he said, ‘Have you ever read anything on herb lore? In particular on the leaves of the mountain flower called tienelle?’
‘Seersweed?’ Shocked to quick action, Steiven yanked the flagon from Caolle’s grasp and crossed the tent. ‘Ath preserve us. Not the narcotic used by mages…’ He knelt, touched the prince’s clammy flesh, and bits of remembered trivia fell together with an alarming, unpleasant feel of truth. The prince had spoken of scrying. If tienelle had been part of his method, it would indeed induce visions; followed by illness from toxins that had no listed antidote. Enraged at the prince’s reticence, and then by his own slow perception, Steiven ripped out a word he had never used under his own roofpole, or in the presence of his wife.
‘He told us he was trained!’ Caolle protested.
‘And so he must be. I much doubt he would leave us by suicide.’ Steiven withheld his sympathy, while Caolle started to pace.
Halliron continued his ministrations, aggrieved to a depth that none but Lady Dania understood. Her hands trembled on the striker as for the second time that night she lit wick after wick in succession; while the Masterbard resumed condemnation. ‘How long did you delay him, badgering and questioning his manhood?’
‘Never mind that,’ cut in Steiven. ‘Just tell us what’s to be done.’
The Masterbard’s smile was whitelipped and merciless, and directed to stop Caolle between strides. ‘Wake him up and ask,’ he invited. ‘I’m no mage at all. My tunes and your prowess at war in this case are no foil for fatal poison.’
‘Well, his Grace volunteered for the sacrifice,’ Caolle snapped. ‘Don’t make me slap him back to consciousness. I’d be too much tempted to break his neck.’
Nobody answered that outburst. Dania stood with the striker wrung between her fingers. Halliron steadied the prince’s head, while Steiven raised the flask and began forcing wine down the flaccid royal throat.
Arithon roused, bent in half by a cough that immediately progressed to nausea. Between spasms, he gasped for water. A basin was proffered. He drank and was sick. He drank again, his hands locked one on another in a torment that left Dania silently, desperately weeping.
This time the liquid stayed down. When the Master of Shadow raised green eyes rinsed blank by the force of will he needed to command his reflexes, no one present could escape recognition of the mettle he had masked behind laziness.
Arithon knew as much. Even through pain, his manner suggested the chagrin of a joke undone as his gaze locked level with Caolle’s.
Caught on his knees by the sick-bed, the captain of Deshir’s defence said no word, but gripped the basin as if blunt metal might sprout legs and kick him in the stomach.
The deep s’Ffalenn eyes never flickered, but the mouth twitched in a pinched-off, flippant smile. ‘I’ll try you at foils on the morrow,’ Arithon challenged, prepared to take bruises for his falsehood.
Grudgingly forced to revise his assessment of the s’Ffalenn prince yet again, Caolle snarled, ‘Save your steel for the heartblood of Etarra’s city guard.’
Work on the defences continued without relenting as Arithon rested from his debilitating bout with the tienelle. He did not rise to cross foils with the clan captain, but on Steiven’s enforced orders kept to his bed. He heard in thin-lipped silence that the participation of boys in the battle was a matter beyond his royal right to question.
If his initial reaction was too quiet, his response came typically obstinate. He waited until Dania’s back was turned, called young Jieret to his bedside, and with the blade of a boy’s knife for carving, nicked his left wrist. There and then he swore a blood pact of friendship with his
Confronted minutes later by the father’s anger, Arithon gazed up from his pillows, peaceful with grieved affection. ‘That is the best I can do for you, whom I love as my brother. I can see your heir survives this war to continue your line and title.’
Struck speechless by emotion, Steiven whirled and left the prince’s presence. With his own death already a sealed fate, the Earl of the North could have asked no better parting from this life, save the chance to better know the spirit of the man who had graced him.
‘Ath lighten your burden, my prince,’ he murmured. And he stumbled on blindly across the lodge tent, into the arms of his wife.
Dania exclaimed in dismay at his kiss. She tasted salt tears on Steiven’s lips. Drowned in silent, close embrace, she pulled loose, caught his hand and guided him to slip the laces on her bodice.
Steiven accepted her invitation. In the sunwarmed air of their sleeping nook, he allowed her quiet touch and hot flesh to absorb his bitter brew of sorrow. But the pleasure of release was saddened by the knowledge that this moment was to be among the last.
Dakar the Mad Prophet stopped cold in his tracks, wiped at his streaming forehead, and glared askance down a sheer rockface toward a valley spread like quilting between a dizzying array of black peaks. Fresh sweat rolled off his temples. Left faint and sick from the effects of exertion and extreme altitude, he complained to a point of empty air, ‘You call this a trail? I say it’s a deathtrap. And I hope you have defence wards set. If a fiend chances by and possesses a loose stone, it’s sure to make mischief and trip me.’
Made the more mutinous as his outburst drew no response, Dakar plucked at the straps of his knapsack, which bulged from his back like the shell of some malformed turtle. ‘And anyway, I’d think you sorcerers wouldn’t chance my taking a fall, not lugging
A breeze flicked through a fan of alpine flowers near Dakar’s feet, perhaps provoked by Kharadmon’s invisible presence.
