From behind him, Asandir’s voice rose and fell in incantation. The words, Dakar noticed uneasily, were not in any language ever spoken upon the soil of Athera; and the halo of light that netted Desh-thiere’s flask was not solid, but seemed as he stared to be composed of flecked light that shuttled in convoluted, interlocking spirals that ached the eye’s attempt to follow.
Then a grip closed on his wrist and tugged him back. ‘Cover your face. At once,’ Asandir commanded. ‘Or the energy flare as Kharadmon sets the ward will leave you blind.’
Dakar began to comply, then paused. ‘Wait,’ he said on impulse. ‘Let me help.’
‘You can’t.’ Asandir’s curtness stemmed from weariness. He worked to soften his delivery as he added, ‘I can’t. The energies involved would vaporize flesh. The final binding must be sealed by Kharadmon alone.’
Eyes shielded, Dakar heard Asandir give his colleague word. A violent crack cut the air. Heat flashed across the pit, stinging exposed skin, and accompanied by spitting rains of sparks that left behind an acrid scent of brimstone.
‘It’s safe to look,’ Asandir said presently.
Dakar lowered his hands, to find the flask at the centre of the pit encircled by a cold blue halo. If the light was subliminally faint, its effects upon the mind were not: just standing within the ward’s proximity caused a bone-deep, aching discomfort. Whatever arcane unpleasantness the Fellowship sorcerers used to fashion their prisons, Dakar refused to know.
Asandir also seemed reluctant to endure the ward’s resonance since he started immediately up the ladder. Dakar hastened after, glad to be quit of Rockfell with its dread overtones of magic and the supremely dangerous entity left there in incarceration.
Morning sunlight washed through the opening to the outside by the time Dakar crawled off the ladder. Never so pleased to breathe in cold air in his life, he did not even mind the prickle against his skin as the icier draft that was Kharadmon flowed from the well on his heels.
‘Are you entirely clear?’ Asandir asked his discorporate colleague.
Kharadmon shot off a phrase in the old tongue that surprised Dakar to incredulity. Before the Mad Prophet could take stock and appreciate the discorporate mage’s use of expletives, Asandir said, ‘Help me drag the cover back over the well.’ He indicated the massive round slab that rested ajar across the opening.
Dakar glared at the offending rock. ‘Don’t be saying I need the exercise,’ he griped before Kharadmon could bait him further.
‘You know,’ Kharadmon observed in blithe enthusiasm, as Dakar grunted and heaved and the stone grated, and slowly gave way to brute force. ‘Be careful how you place that. I much doubt you can see round that beer gut of yours to tell if you’re going to crush your toes.’
Caught with every muscle straining and the veins in his neck about to burst, Dakar could do naught but grit his teeth. When at length the pit was covered over, he was too breathless to effect a rejoinder. His pique lasted all the way through the setting of the secondary wards. Hours passed. By the time the Fellowship mages finished raising spells and guard circles to assure permanence, the chamber floor showed no flaw to indicate the existence of any pit.
Outside, Dakar expected, fully exposed to the weather, the pair would repeat the exhaustive process until the cliff-face was impenetrable. ‘By Ath,’ he commented sourly. ‘You’ve taken precautions enough to repel Dharkaron himself. One would hope after this, that Rockfell pit would prove more secure than ever it has in the past.’
Asandir cast a jaundiced eye at his apprentice. ‘It might, you know, if we tried dark practice, and chained a slain spirit to stand as sentinel.’
‘Oh no.’ Dakar backed up a step and crashed heavily into spelled stone. ‘You’d hardly drag me up mountains for exercise if you’d wanted to make me a sacrifice.’ Nonethless, he moved his fat bulk with alacrity through the portal onto the outside ledge. While the Fellowship sorcerers resumed painstaking labour and set their final seal over the rock at the head of Davien’s stair, he remained inordinately quiet.
By noon, Rockfell Peak was secured. The trio of visitors departed, leaving behind them the Betrayer’s watching gargoyles and serried banks of clouds that drifted to the play of frigid winds. Confined the Mistwraith might be, but its toll of damages upon their world remained yet to be measured. For down in a lightless pit of rock, sealed behind fearful rings of wards, Desh-thiere’s wraiths brooded in confinement, awaiting the vengeance curse laid on two half-brothers to burgeon into bloodshed and war.
Unsettled through the days since the scrying in the dyeyard warehouse, Elaira walked the tideflats of Narms. Around her, twilight cast grey veiling over wind-ripped clouds and fine drizzle. Here the rush of incoming waves dampened the bayfront clamour of barking dogs and the hurried curses of wagoners who threaded low-slung fish- carts back from market. A stiff breeze off the water carried away the endless bickering of children and singsong cries of woodvendors and the boys who sold buckets of steamed crabs layered in straw to keep them hot. Ahead, a meandering shadow against gloom, a beggar scavenged the tidemark for cork floats or broken slats from fish crates that could be salvaged for firewood.
Elaira heard only the waves and the crying gulls who dipped and whirled, minutes away from night roosting. Troubled already in spirit, she was wearied from playing at pretence. She would not return to a meal with Morriel’s entourage at the hostel, to pick at food when she had no appetite. She refused to retire, to huddle frustrated under blankets touched dank by the salt-laden fogs that smothered Narms after dark. This one night she would resist the demands of sleep; would not close her eyes and dream again of fine-chiselled s’Ffalenn features that reproached her in aggrieved accusation.
What could not be forgiven, she had done. The repercussions could not be reversed. The Prime Circle had sealed their final decision; formal verdict would be sent out at midnight, when the lane tides ran least disturbed by static thrown off by the sun. The Prime’s decree concerning the latent danger Arithon presented to society allowed for no mitigating circumstance: his moves were to be exhaustively tracked. Wherever his intent could be hampered and dogged, Koriani would act to disadvantage him.
Elaira sidestepped a patch of seaweed thrown up in tangles on pale sand. Ahead, the beggar paused to rest on a rock, the rags that tied his hooded head flapping in the wind. She passed him by without greeting, which was unlike her, since his kind had replaced her family through early childhood.
She rounded a jumble of boulders, then picked her way over the breakwater that protected Narms harbour from the sea. Sheltered there, fishing smacks and trader galleys loomed at anchorage, or sat low on their marks, made
