‘Mad,’ Grithen concluded under his breath. He traced the sword’s edge with a fingertip and flinched as the steel nicked flesh. Uneasy, but too rabidly committed for retreat, he whistled the call of the mountain hawk and alerted the band still in hiding to initiate the next stage of his ambush.
The dun mare shied back, snorting over the jingle of bit rings and gear as the riders approached the promontory where their companion had lately come to grief.
‘Whoa,’ Lysaer soothed gently. Astride his disgruntled chestnut and leading his half-brother’s mount by the bridle, he slacked rein as the mare jibbed backward. ‘Whoa now.’ The patience in his voice overlaid a worry that burned his thoughts to white rage. Obstinate the Master of Shadow might be, and most times maddeningly reticent; yet as Lysaer combed through wind-whipped snow for a man perhaps fallen and injured, he did not dwell on past crimes or piracy. However cross-grained, no matter how secretive or odd a childhood among mages had made him, Arithon’s motives before exile had likely not been founded in malice.
He was kin, and the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled that Lysaer had been born a prince.
The mare shied again, hauling the chestnut a half-pace sidewards. Fixed and diligent in his search, Lysaer kept his seat out of reflex. He swept the grey rocks and the trampled spread of drifts and finally sighted the cloak, crumpled in a shallow depression, and pinned by the black shaft of an arrow. His breath locked in his throat. The dun had not come by the gash on her shoulder through mishap: now he had proof.
Tautly controlled as a clock spring, Lysaer looped the dun’s lead through a ring on his saddle and addressed Asandir crisply. ‘Arithon suspected trouble in these mountains.
Before the sorcerer gave answer, shouts cut the misty pass. The abutments came alive with archers.
‘Halt!’ called a bearded ruffian from the cliff-top. ‘Dismount and throw down your arms!’
Lysaer spun in his stirrups, his bearing of command unthinking and wrath like torchflame in his eyes. ‘What have you done with my half-brother?’
‘Shot a hole in his cloak, as you see.’ Accustomed to arrogance from the mercenaries hired to guard caravans, the barbarian dared an insolent grin. ‘If you’re minded to protest, I can add to that.’
He rapped orders to someone in position over his head. There followed a flurry of activity and a bundle appeared, suspended over the cliff face by a swinging length of rope. As the wind lulled and the snow settled to clear the view, Lysaer recognized Arithon, bound hand and foot and suspended face-first over a drop that vanished straight down into mist. The brutes had gagged his mouth.
Lysaer forgot he no longer held royal authority. Very pale, but with unassailable dignity, he accosted the raiders on the ridge. ‘Lend me a blade. For the sake of the life you threaten, I’ll set honour above cowardly extortion and offer trial by single combat as settlement.’
‘How very touching!’ The barbarian ringleader raised up a dark-bladed weapon, unmistakably Arithon’s Alithiel, and set the sharpened edge against the hanging cord. One ply gave way, loud as a slap in the silence. ‘You mistake us for our ancestors, who perhaps once affected such scruples. But as long as mayors rule there are no fair fights in this pass. Who will hit ground first, you?’ The ruffian dismissed Lysaer and dipped the sword toward the hostage who dangled without struggle over the abyss. ‘Or this one, who provoked us by drawing first blood?’
‘Would that Arithon had done worse!’ Lysaer cried back in indignation. ‘Unprincipled mongrel pack of thieves! Had I an honour-guard with me, I’d see the last of you put to the sword!’
A hand restrained his arm, Asandir’s, restoring Lysaer to the shattering recollection that his inheritance was forever lost; in cold fact he owned nothing but a poignard to manage even token self-defence.
‘Dismount as they wish, and quickly.’ The sorcerer did so himself, while more barbarians armed with javelins closed in a ring from the cliffside.
Stiff with wounded pride, and galled enough to murder for the brutality which had befallen his half-brother, Lysaer watched in seething compliance as Asandir threw the reins of his black to his apprentice and confronted the cordon of weapon-points.
‘Who leads this party?’ the sorcerer demanded.
‘I’ll ask the questions, greybeard,’ said the red-bearded young spokesman who descended in a leap from the outcrop. Cocksure, even ruthless with contempt, he strode through the circle of his companions.
‘Ask then,’ Asandir invited in silken politeness. ‘But take care, young man. You might gain other than you bargain for.’
‘You overstep your value, I think,’ the barbarian said, while the wind parted the furs of his jerkin and cap and spun the fox-tail trappings on his belt. ‘The advice of old men is widespread as the mist and as easily ignored.’ He gestured a bloodied fist at the hostage strung over the mountainside. ‘For his life, and yours, some grandchild or relative had better come up with a ransom.’
‘It’s not gold you want.’ Asandir surveyed the barbarian from his red-splashed boots to the crown of his wolf- pelt cap. ‘For your sake, you should have heeded the wisdom of your elders! Vengefulness has lured you into folly.’
The raid leader drew a fast breath. He found no words. The sorcerer pinned him with a regard like deathless frost, then killed off refutation with a command. ‘Lysaer, come forward and remove your hood.’
The barbarian gave way to blind outrage. ‘The next man who speaks or moves will wind up butchered on my signal!’
‘Not so easily,’ rebutted the one who stepped forth, a figure muffled in ordinary wool, whose fingers bore neither ring nor ornament as he slipped off his gloves and raised his hands; but a man so unconsciously sure of his position that every clansman present paused to stare.
Dark cloth slipped back to reveal honey-gold hair, blue eyes still glacial with fury and features that reflected a bloodline not seen in Camris for centuries, but recognizable to every clan along the Valendale.
‘S’Ilessid!’ exclaimed the scar-faced woman at the fore. ‘By Ath, he’s royal, and who else could be his spokesman but the Kingmaker himself, Asandir?’
Jolted as if struck, Lysaer saw the sorcerer return the barest nod. ‘At least one among you recalls tradition. I bring you Prince Lysaer, Teir’s’Ilessid, scion of the high kings of Tysan, and by unbroken line of descent your liege lord.’
The snow seemed suddenly too white, the air too painfully thin and cold to breathe; stunned by the impact of
