in danger of permanent imbalance. Asandir urged, but never forced your beloved. Arithon chose his kingdom ahead of music, by his own free will.’
‘What?’ Elaira stared back in ice-hard fury and disbelief. ‘Why would he?’
Suddenly bleak as the clearest winter starfield, Traithe said, ‘Because he would not be the one man to stand in the path of the Paravians’ return to this continent.’
‘Well,’ said Elaira wretchedly. ‘For his sake, I hope the creatures prove worth it!’
‘That you must judge for yourself.’ A wistfulness haunted Traithe’s manner. ‘I can tell you as fact, that the Riathan Paravians are the only unsullied connection we have to Ath Creator and that their return is the cornerstone for the future harmony of this world. But words impart meaning without wisdom. To understand, you and Arithon must both survive to experience a unicorn’s living presence.’ A wave broke. Driven on by rising tide, salt spray showered down, mixed in coarser drops with the drizzle that never for an instant ceased to fall. ‘I must leave you now, brave lady. The fire is out, and the wards on this place will soon dissipate.’
Elaira blotted a dripping nose and tried through resentment to recover courtesy. ‘I owe you thanks.’
Seamed features lost beneath cloth that the raven sidled under to take shelter, Traithe shook his head. ‘Take instead my blessing. You need the consolation, I suspect. I was sent to you because an augury showed the Warden of Althain that, for good or ill you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.’
Elaira resisted an ugly, burning urge to stop her ears. ‘And if neither of us fails?’
Traithe soothed his bird with his fingers, that being the only comfort he could offer to any breathing creature at this juncture. ‘Ah, lady, we’ve been entrusted with this world and free will, which certainly cancels guarantees.’ He touched her hand in aggrieved farewell. ‘Never doubt. At the Ravens, your action was right and fitting.’
He turned and departed, while wind and thin rain reduced him to a fast-striding shadow against smothering fog and white sea. Elaira stayed on alone until the waves that surged with flood-tide encroached on the rocks and soaked her feet. Dragging wet skirts above her ankles, she felt ready to return to her colleagues. The depression that had weighed on her earlier had lifted, replaced by milder sadness shot through by the bold and heady challenge of exhilaration.
Morriel might command her to Koriani loyalty and obedience; but where Elaira chose to give her heart was a choice reclaimed for her own.
His hook-nosed profile hard-lined in shadows and torchlight, Gnudsog of the Etarran guard brings word from the war council held at the border of Strakewood Forest: ‘Diegan and Lysaer are reconciled,’ he informs his captains who wait in the meadow. ‘We take the sure route tomorrow, poison the river and the springs to kill the game, then methodically starve out each campsite. Pesquil’s plan is best. Children are the future of the clans, and without women the wretched breed will die…‘
Deep under the eaves of the forest, in a valley riddled with traps, clansmen under Steiven s’Valerient sharpen their swords and their knives, and for the last time wax their bowstrings; while on a lyranthe the last of its kind, Halliron Masterbard plays ballads and bright songs from better days, to inspire their hearts to a valour he grieves will be futile…
Returned to his post at Althain Tower, Sethvir bends his regard toward Rockfell Peak to check the wards which bind the Mistwraith. He finds no flaws, and a small ease of mind, for though Arithon could build on his training and possibly unravel those securities, having suffered to subdue such an evil, Rathain’s prince was least likely to meddle in foolishness…
XVII. MARCH UPON STRAKEWOOD FOREST
Dressed out in clean tunics edged in city colours of scarlet and gold, gleaming under polished helms and smart trappings; and bearing on their backs and in their scabbards the newly wrought arms and chain-mail purchased by the merchants’ treasury at cost of eight hundred thousand coin-weight, fine gold, the men of Etarra’s garrison formed up and marched just past dawn. Set like a sapphire in their midst, Lysaer sat his bridleless chestnut. Lord Commander Diegan and Captain Gnudsog were positioned at either flank, while the bannerbearers of the greater trade houses, and message riders on their lean-flanked mounts clustered in formation just behind. Four companies of standing army and reserves paraded after, in disciplined units twenty-four hundred strong.
Lysaer made no conversation. Groomed as befitted his past stature, every inch the princely image of restrained pride, he was disinclined to trivialize his first foray against the s’Ffalenn who had demolished a fleet on Dascen Elur. Fighting was ugly business. No pennons, no style and no fanfares could mask that these men in their brilliance and finery marched, some to die in blood and suffering. Still, a heart not made of stone must thrill to the muffled thunder of war destriers. Each tight square of troops boasted ninety mounted lancers, four hundred crossbowmen and archers, and a perimeter of pikemen numbering nearly two thousand. Deep within their protection rolled the supply wagons and support troops and rearwards the additional thousand light cavalry under the black kite standard of the northern league of headhunters.
Weather was also in their favour. The last spring rains had finally lifted; the rivers ran placid and shallow.
Sunlight pricked the horizon, edged to the east by the black trees that rimmed Strakewood Forest. For a time as the air warmed, the companies marched knee-deep through mists that swathed the meadows in blue-grey. These dispersed last from the hollows, to bare rolling hills and the dew-spangled grass of early summer, bespattered and dappled with patches of red brushbloom and weathered rock. A craggier landscape than Daon Ramon, the plain of Araithe wore the season like a cloak of rippling new silk, lush and sweet with flowers, overwhelming the senses in living green.
Lysaer gazed across the vista, untrampled yet by the advancing mass of his army. In his birthland of Amroth, such rich forage would have been grazed short by sheep. He promised himself that if barbarian predation were to blame for the lack of shepherds, his campaign against Arithon would amend this. Then, in belated reassessment, he realized that had these hills been used once as pastures they should be crisscrossed by the remains of stone fences and sheepfolds.
There were none, nor any foundations of ruined cottages.
These acres had possibly stayed untouched by man’s industry through the ages since Ath’s first creation. Why such obviously prime pastureland should go wasted puzzled Lysaer, until his thought was broken off by the hoofbeats of an outrider returning at a gallop.
The scout wheeled his mud-splashed mount and reined into step beside Gnudsog. ‘Lord,’ he saluted to Diegan, and then his commanding field officer, ‘Captain.’ But he looked at Lysaer as he delivered his report, which was startling enough to call a halt to the advance.
Six barbarian children had been spotted, practising javelin casts in a glen just upriver of the ford across the Tal
