Arithon at this moment preferred to forget the legacy left him by Davien’s enchanted fountain: he shrugged. ‘Quite a lot has not changed at all in the course of five centuries.’
At which point, directly confronted with the purpose of his visit, Asandir abandoned tolerance. ‘Did you believe me unaware of what happened in the loft of the Ravens’ stableyard? Or that, the other day in the pass of Orlan, you baited Grithen and his scouts with intent to force my hand and expose your half-brother’s inheritance?’
‘Lysaer has what he longs for: a crown and the cause of truth and justice.’ The dun blew softly through her nostrils, stepped back, and left Arithon’s hands empty. The cold made him wish he had his gloves.
Asandir seemed impervious to the wind’s cruel bite. ‘Let me tell you a thing, Teir’s’Ffalenn. You were left to your devices because the mindblock I set was never intended to bend your will.’
‘Was it not?’ Arithon retaliated fast and hard as a blow. ‘Then why bother setting any ward at all?’
The sorcerer did not rise to anger. Measured and wholly mild, he said, ‘Would you warm a man just tortured by fire before an open hearth? The memories of your failures in Karthan were all too hurtfully recent.’
Arithon flinched. The sorcerer pressed on, remorseless, though he never once sharpened his voice. ‘Maenalle was to receive the Prince of Tysan today. The Fellowship had already decided. She would have been informed of his lineage in private, that Lysaer not learn of his heritage until he had experienced the atrocity of the mayors firsthand. Except that your meddling with events caused your half-brother an unpardonable shock, and Grithen has been sent in shame to the camps in the low country. He may be denied his inheritance.’
Now Arithon went still as fire-hardened stone.
Asandir resumed, quietly precise as the tap a gemcutter might use to shear diamond. ‘Grithen is the last living heir to the late Earl of Erdane. Since his two siblings died on a headhunter’s spears, yesterday’s affray in the pass could disrupt a succession that has endured since the years before the uprising.’
Arithon did not leap to claim the implied responsibility. Inflectionless as the windborne scrape of loose ice, he said, ‘You’re telling me things that might all have been prevented.’
‘If the Fellowship were to use power to compromise a man’s destiny, yes.’ Asandir regarded the knuckles left at rest on the midnight cloth of his sleeves while Arithon absorbed implications: that his fate was neither absolute nor proscribed. That he might cross the corral, saddle the dun mare, ride out and not be pursued, except by townsmen who mistook him for a clanborn barbarian. Or he might take up the superlative lyranthe given him by Maenalle and study under her bards in the lowlands to the advanced senility of old age.
Arithon faced around and met the sorcerer’s eyes, which were clear as mirrors and as matchlessly serene. ‘You would let me go that simply?’
‘I would.’ The sorcerer added, ‘But let us be accurate. Would you let yourself?’
Struck on a nerve left raw since Dascen Elur, Arithon could no longer curb bitterness. ‘Dharkaron, Ath’s Avenger might show more mercy.’
‘Who will speak for the clansfolk of Rathain?’ Asandir said, a dark and terrible weight of sorrow behind his words. ‘For them, what mercy will there be when the sun returns, and the townsmen order killings caused by fear of a king who is not there?’
Arithon made a sound halfway between a sob and a curse. The biting sarcasm he used to deflect unwanted inquiries would not serve, but only drive through Asandir’s tranquillity like a spear cast through seawater: passion dispersed without trace by the infinite. The sorcerer watched his struggle with neither cruelty nor challenge, but only an understanding as steady and deathless as sunlight.
Through a throat racked by tears he refused to acknowledge, Arithon said, ‘You give me Karthan, all over again.’
‘
‘Oh, Ath,’ Arithon let go a twisted laugh. ‘The bitterest enemy is myself, then.’ For the open-handed freedom set before him was no choice at all: just the repeat of a fate poisoned through by an unasked for burden of human suffering.
‘I asked only that you travel with me to Althain Tower,’ Asandir said. ‘Wherever else will you find the guidance to reconcile your powers as a mage with the responsibilities of your birthright?’ The compassion in his tone was a terrible thing, a whip and a scourge upon a mind already mauled by the quandaries of duty. Arithon spun away, weeping regardless, and cursing the light hand of his tormentor. One threat, one compulsion, one word spoken with intent to bind would have given him opening to escape.
But Asandir closed the net with a pity that shattered and crucified. ‘If you finish the journey, your case will be brought before the Fellowship. I can make no promise. But if a compromise can be found to release you from kingship, I will plead in your favour.’
‘The last nail in the coffin,’ Arithon managed. ‘Of course, under protest, I accept.’ The air ached his lungs and his head hurt. His back to the sorcerer, his eyes on the shifting shadows of the horses, he clung to the fence, mostly to keep his hands from violence.
Asandir looked at him and did not miss the murderous undertones of conflict. ‘For Desh-thiere, the Mistwraith, the Fellowship has no other choice.’
‘Ath,’ Arithon said. He managed a savage jab at humour. ‘Dakar would be crushed if we wrecked his precious prophecy. But against the Mistwraith, I do recall giving my word.’
‘Of the two, your kingdom is equally important.’ The sorcerer might have departed then, his movements masked by a gust from the north.
Yet Arithon sensed his intent. Not yet ready for solitude, he whirled around, met the endlessly deep eyes and planted a barb of his own. ‘Then we understand each other all too perfectly well.’
Given clear warning that Arithon remained ambivalent concerning his inheritance, Asandir showed no annoyance. Rueful instead, he listened to the sigh of the wind across the compound as though it held answer to all suffering. ‘I’d like to know,’ he said at last to the prince who waited in jaggedly prideful silence, and who was far too wise to vent frustration through belief that the Fellowship sorcerers were his enemies. ‘If our roles were reversed, what would you do?’
Arithon hesitated barely an instant. ‘Find the Paravians.’
