to have sparked resentment tautened the planes of his face, and his voice was gravel as he said, ‘Ath’s own mercy,
The sorcerer sat his black stallion with the straight-backed formality of Daelion, Master of Fate. ‘I will answer when you ask out of care, Prince of Rathain.’
Arithon recoiled in a high flush of fury. ‘No need to answer at all, sorcerer. Everywhere I turn, it seems I get saddled with sand-kingdoms. Well, pity has torn out my heart far and long before this. I bear the ache already like a bad scar.’
Explosively murderous, he drove his heels into the mare. Her nerves frayed into a white-rimmed roll of eyes and she reared. Arithon gave rein, kicked her again and screamed what sounded like an obscenity ripped through by tears. His hands jabbed at the reins, and his mount clattered around in the roadway and shot blindly forward at a gallop.
Horse and rider thundered across the crumbling span that bridged the dry course of the Severnir at reckless speed and vanished into the ruin.
Dakar said something bitten under his breath and the paint mare stamped. Shaken by his half-brother’s savagery and pricked by cross-currents he lacked the background to grasp, Lysaer spun to confront the sorcerer. ‘Why did you push him?’
His mildness shaped by grief, Asandir said, ‘This city has weathered seven major tragedies and three ages of history. So much dust to you perhaps, but to those of us who have borne witness it means wisdom painfully gained, paid for by men who bled and died, and Paravians who weathered mortal failings time and again until the rifts in their world grew too wide to endure. Shall all that has been go wasted because Arithon dislikes responsibility? Athera’s civilizations struggle on the brink of imbalance with Desh-thiere’s coming defeat. A restoration of just rule must follow. The reinstated prince who subdues Etarra
‘You’ve made an enemy of him,’ Lysaer observed coldly.
‘Merciful maker, I would that were all I had done!’ Closer to giving way to anguish than any mortal man had ever seen him, Asandir shook out his reins. He pressed his black stallion ahead against the rain and did not speak or look back the whole way through an afternoon of ascent through the ruins.
They found Arithon standing beside his horse within the broken circle that marked the old foundation of the King’s Tower. His face was hard set, and his temper brittle as iced-over current.
By now recovered from the outburst upon the riverbank, Asandir addressed him, whip-lash curt. ‘We shall camp in a tower. They are sound, comfortable and dry. Which shall it be, my prince?’
‘Kieling,’ Arithon said, determinedly blithe and uncaring. ‘Compassion.’
The vast stone hall at the west outpost in Camris held only a solitary figure, but the fire had been built high in expectation of a momentous event. Wax candles burned in sconces and candelabra and still, deep shadow darkened the corners. Winter had settled in. Winds moaned across the mountainside without and drafts rippled the Cildom tapestries, even the largest ones by the hearth. Slim and straight in her chair of state on the dais and clad formally in Tysan’s gold-bordered tabard over her traditional black, Maenalle s’Gannley, Steward of Tysan, fingered the gilt- tipped pen handed down through twenty generations to sign kingdom documents. The ornamental plume, though replaced at measured intervals, showed the ravages of last season’s moths; yet the nib in its cloisonne barrel remained sharp and unworn. Since the fall of the last crowned sovereign official word passed between clan chiefs by spoken courier, or not at all, for parchment could fall into the hands of townsmen if the messenger chanced to be captured.
Maenalle smoothed the feather’s tattered fibres, her sharp-planed face taut with excitement. In the absence of written record she wondered whether tonight was the first time since the desecration of the royal seat at Avenor that all of Tysan’s clanlords would be gathered beneath one roof. She smiled fiercely, savouring the news she would deliver, that a true-born heir had returned through West Gate to claim the high king’s throne.
Elder Tashan was giddy as a boy with anticipation and young Maien was unable to contain nervous jitters for fear he might be clumsy and spill the wine; this after he had waited upon his prince without mishap. No scout from the west outpost had breathed a word of the royal arrival; Maenalle held cocky pride in them for that. Her announcement would completely surprise lords who had journeyed long, inconvenient distances through hostile country at her summons.
A sudden, preternatural stillness gripped the chamber; as if the insatiable mountain gales had forgotten to gust, or fire ceased for an instant to flicker.
Possessed of a scout’s reflexes, Maenalle stiffened a heartbeat ahead of the logic that warned of something amiss. A second later, and without the fanfare of breezes carried in from far places affected by Kharadmon, the discorporate sorcerer Luhaine flicked into existence. His image was robed austerely as a scholar and posed with round face furrowed in concern as he gazed up at Maenalle in the high seat. ‘Lady, I bring tidings.’
The Steward of Tysan felt her carefree mood evaporate. She regarded her visitor, aware never more than this moment that Fellowship sorcerers did not pay visits for trivial reasons. Luhaine by preference was a recluse: his last appearance in Camris had been in her grandfather’s time. ‘Tell me quickly,’ she said, afraid of the worst and anxious most of all to recover her shattered solitude.
Luhaine returned a shake of his head. His heavy robes were not stirred by the drafts and his eyes followed hers, aggrieved. ‘I cannot. Wards must be set first, in precaution.’
Maenalle shot to her feet. ‘Wards?
A palm downward gesture from the sorcerer negated the implied insult. ‘Necessary,
By then, the steward had guessed why arcane protections might be called for. ‘Koriani,’ she surmised, her annoyance a shade less acid. ‘But why fear the enchantresses? This outpost is between power lanes, and their
