Luhaine’s image blinked out and reappeared, seated with fingers laced on the tabletop across from Kharadmon. His assent followed, instantaneous and emphatic since elemental mastery of any sort was potentially limitless. Set at odds, Lysaer and Arithon between them could wreak havoc on a scale not seen since Davien the Betrayer roused the five kingdoms to rebellion.
Quiet as shadow, Traithe arose from his chair.
‘Cupboard underneath the Lanshire histories, third shelf,’ Sethvir murmured distractedly. He dissipated the spark of lane-force that burned in the brazier. Asandir removed the bronze tripod, while Kharadmon extinguished the other sconce. Unhindered by total darkness, Traithe found the place designated and retrieved a square of black velvet, which he shook out and spread across the table.
Luhaine’s brow creased as the cloth passed unimpeded through his elbow. ‘Has Dakar mastered the effects of tienelle yet?’
The Mad Prophet rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘I’d feel better after a draught of deadly nightshade.’ Then, on a plaintive note to Asandir, ‘Is seersweed truly necessary? Last night was awful enough. Today I don’t feel in the least like volunteering to ruin my health all over again.’
The rare, high-altitude herb he wished to avoid at all costs. Valued for its mind-expanding properties, tienelle’s narcotic was also a poison that caused cramps, headache and a sudden onset of dehydration that could end in coma and death. Spellbinders were schooled to transmute its toxicity, for need occasionally arose for them to perceive complexities beyond their training to encompass.
Asandir measured his apprentice with a calm that disallowed pity. ‘Had you not dropped a sword, once, to disrupt your native gift of prescience, you would not be required to attend this session.’
Dakar slammed his palms on the tabletop, his frustration damped to an unsatisfying thump by the heavy velvet covering. ‘Ath, you won’t forget a detail, not even once in a century.’
‘Under the north windowseat, in the coffer,’ Sethvir interjected in apparently idle afterthought.
The Mad Prophet was not fooled. If Asandir’s memory forgave nothing, Sethvir knew the precise location of every unwanted item in Ath’s creation. Since Traithe would not trouble to fetch and carry for an apprentice, and Kharadmon’s whetted interest promised mischief, Dakar heaved to his feet. Too lazy, or too obstinate to engage the self-discipline for mage-sight, he noisily smacked shins and knuckles in the dark and searched out the herb stores for himself. He clumped back to his chair clutching a stone pipe and a carved wooden canister, and busied himself with a martyred sigh. Most pointedly, he ignored the Fellowship sorcerers as they prepared for a ritual undertaken only at direst need.
Power gathered in the hands of Asandir. Above the dark velvet he spun a rod of energy, a glimmer like a line of veiled starlight. To this, he added a second, then a third, each for the triad of mysteries that embodied Prime Power and underlay all Athera’s teeming life. Next he added twoscore lesser lengths, to which Sethvir assigned Names in a Paravian ritual that summoned the essence of the ruler, place, or power and stamped its quickened current on the spell. The strands assumed identity and altered, each according to assigned nature. The governor’s council in Etarra manifested as hurtfully bright, a hedge of scintillant angles; the trio for the Paravian races interwove to the evocative beauty of lacework before fading to a near subliminal glimmer; the spark that captured the collective spirit of the clansfolk in their exile scribed an enduring sweep of arc. To cities, human consciousness and natural forces were added individuals; and after these, plants, animals and natural elements, until a geometric lattice glimmered above the velvet backdrop, an entire world’s interlinked complexity recorded in precise proportion and line.
The visionary mind of a Fellowship sorcerer could interpret such at a glance. Where other methods of precognizance might sound only broadscale highlights, the strands were superlatively sensitive. Each would react as its nature dictated, mapping even minute shifts of balance with pinpoint accuracy. The futures that might spring from alternate sets of events could be assessed instantaneously, even the least nuance made plain. To read the analogue set down into pattern without laborious mathematical analysis, Dakar packed his pipe with the notched, silver-grey leaves of tienelle. The scent of the herb permeated the room, sharp, bitter and edged as a winter wind.
The pattern over the tabletop reached completion, shedding radiance like summer moonlight over the faces of the surrounding sorcerers. Dakar accepted a spark off the finger of a sardonically smiling Kharadmon to ignite his pipe.
‘Commence,’ Sethvir said softly.
The Mad Prophet sucked hard on his pipe stem, filling his lungs with aromatic smoke. Vertigo spun his awareness, followed by a kick akin to adrenalin; his senses cartwheeled and slammed back into focus, enhanced to painful sensitivity. His ears recorded sound with unnatural nuance and his vision assumed a razor-edged clarity. The strands that reflected the power balance of the living world lost their random shapes, became a comprehensible whole. Configurations of lines and angles spread out like tapestry, the fates of kingdoms intertwined with the births and deaths of fieldmice.
Yet across the rhythms of this grand design, disharmonies stood out like botched tangles in string. Here lay a twist that told of a mayor’s prejudice, jealousy and greed; there, a warped line revealed a sapling stunted by the unending mists of Desh-thiere. Where the shining braid of Paravian presence had once enhanced the central axis of the prime vibration, Ath, a channel of emptiness remained, like notes lost from a bar of flawless counterpoint. Dakar wrestled to stem a flood of tears. Another pull from the pipe and the tienelle honed sorrow into a blade that harrowed his heart. His time sense blurred. Over the shining lines of Athera’s present, he sensed changes wrought over the ages, the strengthening of some aspects, and the splitting, weakening, or dissolution of others. He suffered knowledge of all pasts and possible futures in their thousands, until awareness of Asandir’s eyes upon him pierced through his strayed concentration. His mind might soar through a spiralling flight of enlightenment, but at a price. He must not neglect self-awareness. Even as the drug freed his thoughts, its poisons ravaged his body. Death could overtake him if he forgot to guard his physical health.
The moment when the sorcerers raised power came as an icy chill that flowed the length of Dakar’s spine. The strands became suffused with terrible light, as the Fellowship sought futureward and called forth the events that might occur as a result of the works of two princes from Dascen Elur.
Desh-thiere’s fall became manifest as an explosion of new lines of power. Forests, fields and all of the natural landscape brightened to an ascendence of recovered vigour. The politics of the trade-guilds whipped into kinks of recoil, and a new axis sheared through their sundered town councils:
The sorcerers’ unadulterated dismay disrupted the flow of probability. Dakar stole the moment to regroup, then scrambled to keep up as, vehemently fast, the strands unreeled to a new sequence. The Fellowship traced out the
