One corner of Arithon’s mouth twitched. After a moment, the expression resolved to a smile. ‘If it takes sharing confidences to prove that you’re wrong, there was one young maid. I was never betrothed, as you were. Sithaer, I barely so much as kissed her. I think she was as frightened of my shadows as I was of telling her my feelings.’
‘Perhaps you’ll find your way back to her.’ The wind whined mournfully through the cracks in the shutters and a draft stole through the small room; touched by the chill, Lysaer shrugged. ‘At least, we could ask Asandir to return us to Dascen Elur once we’ve defeated the Mistwraith.’
‘No.’ Arithon rolled over, his face turned unreadably to the wall. ‘Depend on the fact that he won’t.’
‘You found out something in Erdane, didn’t you,’ Lysaer said. But his accusation dangled unanswered. Rebuffed and alone with his thoughts, and hating the fate that left him closeted at the whim of a sorcerer in the fusty lodgings of a second rate roadside tavern, he shook out his damp shirt and blew out the candle for the night.
Two days later the riders in Asandir’s party reached Standing Gate, a rock formation that spanned the road in a lopsided natural arch. Centaurs in past ages had carved the flanking columns into likenesses of the twins who founded their royal dynasty. Since before the memory of man the granite had resisted erosion: the Kings Halmein and Adon reared yet over the highway, their massive, majestic forelegs upraised in the mist and their beards and maned backs stained the verdigris of old bronze with blooms of lichen.
Mortal riders could not pass beneath their shadow without experiencing a chill of profound awe. Here the footfalls of the horses seemed to resound with the echoes of another age, when the earth was fresh with splendour and Paravians nurtured the mysteries. Standing Gate marked the upward ascent to the high valley pass of Orlan, sole access through the Thaldein mountains to Atainia and lands to the east.
But even under the frosts of coming winter, in the years since the fall of the high kings, travellers who fared through Standing Gate never passed unobserved.
Asandir’s party proved no exception, as Arithon discovered in a pause to water his mare on the bank of a fast- flowing creek. Muffled against the stiff breeze, he sat his saddle with both stirrups dropped and his reins slipped loosely through his fingers. Suddenly the dun flung her head up. Her rider did not see what had startled her; the woollen hood of his cloak masked his peripheral vision as she snapped sideways and wheeled. Stalled from bolting by an expert play on the reins, the mare crab-stepped, stopped and blew noisily. Her sable-edged ears pricked toward a stand of scrub pine that rattled and tossed in the gusts.
Nothing moved that did not appear to belong there.
Yet when Arithon urged the mare on she stamped and rigidly resisted. Warned by her keener senses, he recovered his stirrups and stroked her neck in pretence of coaxing her away; at the same time he centred his mind and cast an enchanter’s awareness over the thicket.
A man crouched there, motionless, clad in jerkin and leggings of sewn wolfskin. Weather had roughened his face beyond his years and his ruddy hair had tangled from the wind. The consciousness Arithon touched held a predator’s leashed aggression paired with tempered steel: a matched set of long knives and a javelin with a braided leather grip.
Although to face away from the thicket as if no armed man watched his back was a most unwelcome exercise, Arithon pressed his mare forward in earnest. The instant the rocky footing allowed a faster pace, he trotted his horse and caught up with the others.
Dakar regarded him slantwise as the dun overtook his paint. ‘How was the assignation? Or did you dawdle to swim?’
‘Neither.’ Arithon returned a grin of purest malice. ‘Remind me to recommend you as chaperone for some jealous pervert’s catamite.’
He ignored the Mad Prophet’s thunderous scowl and disturbed Asandir’s preoccupied silence. ‘We’re being watched.’
The sorcerer’s gaze stayed trained ahead, as if he saw beyond the misty road which wound upward between steepening rocky outcrops. ‘That’s not surprising.’
Wise to the subtleties of mages, Arithon withheld unwelcome questions; presently the sorcerer’s steely eyes turned from whatever inward landscape he had been contemplating. ‘This is the townsmen’s most dreaded stretch of highway. The clans that ruled Camris before the rebellion make their stand here. If we were a caravan bearing metals or clothgoods we would require an armed escort. Not being townborn, our party has little to fear.’
‘The Camris clans were subject to the high king of Tysan?’ Arithon asked.
Asandir returned an absent glance. ‘The old earls of Erdane swore fealty. Their descendants will not have forgotten.’
Unfooled by the sorcerer’s apparent inattention, Arithon reined in his mare. As she curvetted and recovered stride by the shoulder of Lysaer’s chestnut, the green eyes of her rider showed a glint of veiled speculation. Covered by the clang of hooves on cleared rock, he said, ‘We’re going to see action in the pass.’
Lysaer rubbed a nose nipped scarlet by the chill, his expression turned gravely merry. ‘Then someone better tell Dakar to tighten his saddle girth, or the first quick move his paint makes will tumble him over on the rocks.’
‘I heard that,’ interjected the Mad Prophet. He flapped his elbows, his reins and his heels, and contrived to overtake the half-brothers without mishap. To Lysaer he said, ‘Let’s be sporting and wager. I say my saddle stays put with no help from buckles, and you’ll kiss the dirt before I do.’ Brown eyes slid craftily to the Shadow Master. ‘And one thing further – there won’t be any trouble in the pass.’
‘Don’t answer,’ said Arithon to his half-brother. ‘Not unless you fancy pulling cockle burrs from your saddle fleeces.’
‘That’s unfair,’ Dakar retorted, injured. ‘I only cheat when the odds are hard against me.’
‘My point precisely.’ Arithon ducked the swing the Mad Prophet pitched in his direction, then sidled his mount safely clear as the paint’s saddle slid around her barrel and disgorged her fat rider in an ignominious heap on the trail.
By the time the commotion settled and Dakar had righted the paint’s maladjusted tack, flurries eddied around the rocks. The snowfall thickened rapidly. Within minutes all but the nearest landmarks became buried in whirlwinds of white. The storm that had threatened through the past day and a half closed over the mountains, whipped in by a dismal north wind.
The riders continued over ever-steepening terrain. Bothered by Arithon’s mention of trouble, Lysaer urged his
