But in all fair conscience, can I stand aside and let Arithon of Rathain turn his sorceries on an unsuspecting society? What binds him to con- straint? You who claim wisdom know better than any. A mortal who commands unchecked power becomes ripe for corruption. Jaelot and Alestron have already suffered. Why beg for a large-scale disaster?"

The prince turned his head. Despite a transparent desire for pri- vacy, he pursued his point, dogged, to its finish. "If I sacrifice one value for another, if I choose to create a balance of power, who are you to cry me down? The debt incurred becomes my personal score on the slate of Daelion Fatemaster. I am the Shadow Master's oppo- site. My place is to check him. Ath have mercy on us both, for the fate brought upon us by the bride-gift of a sorcerer whose ancestor was trained by your Fellowship!"

Lysaer faced forward in blazing, brash courage and hurled his own charge in defense. "If your hand is revealed at the root of our conflict, tell me why have you not acted?"

99.

JANNY ~URT$.

Asandir arose, dark brows drawn down over eyes turned ~ ding, storm gray. "How dare you mistake us for the street I Avenor, to try and wring sympathy by crying lame causes ing the puppet martyred for the grand destiny." He leaned 0n!

table, the veins on his hands like vines gnarled into aged oak. "0r~ you hope you might finally convince yourself?" His glare flicks'

over the prince like crossed lightning. "We have not acted because l~ thiere's curse is inseparably tangled with your life aura. As Traithe s~: our Fellowship does not kill."

"You claim you would let two lives tear civilized socie~~ a~ Lysaer laughed, his widened eyes locked on the Sorc,.~',,;'~ "~i indeed, I have no hope." Honest rage tore through his gritt~ r~'ser: ment, for a second upsetting the ironclad duty dunned into i~t~ xxi~: royal birthright. "Ath, did you think I desired my exile to tt'~> ~x'0rl~ Or that I asked to become your sacrificial weapon against the ~i:'.

wraith?"

"The Fellowship has never been a force in Athera to take g~id~ charge of human destiny!" A creature of movement and Asandir thrust up from the table. He stalked to the fire, braced an~ on the mantel, while the flames at his feet snapped and Their light played a moving mapwork of lines over his hard, tered features.

Luhaine retrieved the lapsed dialogue. "Our purpose is stand guard for the land, and to this end, you're being asked harsh questions. Face yourself!" The entreaty was raised, a blade that offered no quarter. "You embark on a dangerous even beg the ruin of your race! How dare you mask over the that is the prime source! For arrogance, you put yourself 0n!

pedestal in attempt to whitewash a curse-bound directive to end'

half brother's life. True justice plays no part. You veil vendetta, for vengeance and base envy, because Arithon will seduced by the evil you seek to attach to his name."

Lysaer swayed. His glittering shoulders wavered, almost bent.

The adept swept to her feet, relentless. "Unstop your ears ten, scion of s'Ilessid. Persist on your present path, and you shall~ your desires." As Lysaer's blue eyes widened, she pressed him, yes. Your half brother shall walk in the shadow you create. But before you stand blackened enough to raise despair of a cient to break him. Every mortal enclave on this continent victim to your cause. Your memory shall be sealed in the violence, for nothing in creation can stand or flourish in the of love. Let us see, in the hour that Arithon's blood stains your

100.

master.'

That Untoinc The ligt bright t wrong. ~ Asan, txands. '~ hapskx'

leape~ Kh style, Ba/an FUGI?IVE PRINCE.

whether conviction for your fellowman or overweening pride is your illaster."

That bleak forecast raised consternation among the Sorcerers.

Unmindful of their stir, Lysaer sank to his knees. Tears wet his cheeks.

The light snagged and shivered in his diamond studs as he bent his bright head in defeat. "Have mercy," he pleaded. "I admit to mY wrong. Lend me your guidance to heal."

Asandir returned to the table and sat, his harsh gaze fixed on his hands. Silence fell, filled by the tormented sobs of the prince, who per- haps had been brought to realize the enormity of his acts. No Sorcerer leaped to mete out the last test of surety.

Kharadmon shouldered that burden at the end, his razored, brief style expressing the inflexible Law and just consequence of the Major Balance. "Abjure your call to arms. Publicly renounce your false tie to divine calling. Then you shall have at your side all the help our Fel- lowship can command."

Lysaer pressed his forehead against the patterned carpet. Hair like combed sunlight fronded the hands he held clenched at his crown. He would not look up. Shamed to abasement, he asked of the Sorcerers, "What do I say to ease the grief of the widows and the mothers whose loved ones were slaughtered in Vastmark?"

"Tell them the truth," Sethvir answered, implacable. "Your mistake should not be permitted to compound, nor be passed to their sons, to die for wrong cause and false sacrifice."

At that, Lysaer regained the will to stand straight. Through shock- darkened eyes, he perused the stilled faces of five Sorcerers, then the shadowy countenance masked by the hood of Ath's adept. In tear- stained magnificence, he looked like one of Ath's avatars, fallen, a sword forged in blood to stand firm against wrongful action. "Ath preserve, you ask me to break my personal, given trust. As I am cursed, so too is my half brother. I can't leave my people defenseless before him. Bind Arithon first. Then take my capitulation on any terms that you ask."

"Ath show you mercy," Sethvir replied. "I am sorry. We now must do more than warn."

A thin, feral smile seized Lysaer's lips. "I thought so!" He loosed a jarring peal of laughter. "Here is the truth. Power begets force, did I not say so? What will you do now, if not call me down by straight vio- lence?"

"You mistake us," snapped Traithe, no longer the listening confi- dant, but grim as the raven just flown from a field of raw carnage.

"Your life in our hands is sacrosanct, and your will, no one's other 101.

]ANN ~r U R T S than your own. But mankind's place in Athera has never been a right." This was straight fact. The ancestor of every human aliv~ first come as a refugee begging for sanctuary. "Settlement here, permitted under strict terms by the compact sworn between our ~ lowship and the Paravians."

"Did you think kingdom law was written at our whim?"

mon sat forward, his trickster's flamboyance razed away. "The nal charters were drawn by our hand, but to the old races'

Their strictures are not mere rules to be overturned for some mayor's convenience."

Not to be outdone, Luhaine plunged on to lecture, "For the you have initiated, for setting your seal to chained slavery, and seeking to supplant Ath's order and the Law of the Major you have defied the tenets mankind was charged never to violate."

"Now you know." Sethvir tucked folded hands beneath the~ fleece of his beard. Diminished by sorrow, he appeared to read next lines from the whorled grain of waxed maple. "Our keeps a trust with the Paravians. Each human child birthed here and dies on the sufferance of our intercession. We stand surety mankind, all their works, all their laws. Yes, even for their greed and their strivings that could mar every facet of this world. Understand this. We guard and nurture as we can, but our service is not to our race."

Althain's Warden paused. As if the air to drive spoken words bound him mute, he looked aside, the set to his shoulders gone bird- boned and frail. He seemed an old man without mystery, outwornb~ relentless attention to detail and a shackling burden of care. "There exists no compromise, no quarter Any man to defy the compact, who breaks the first order set down by the Paravians, must be cast outside our protection. You will leave Althain Tower None here would mis- use grand conjury to upset the fate you pursue. Nor shall we mourn, or answer your cries when the justice of the old races falls upon you and the followers you seduce into blindness."

"You will not break me by intimidation," Lysaer said. "I stand as the shield for my people."

Sethvir bowed his head.

No second chance followed, no gap for reprieve. The image fort~s of Kharadmon and Luhaine whisked out like gale-blown candles.

Lysaer felt their presence encircle his form in cold air, while the adept slipped her hood and bared features of frost-brittle clarity. "The ways of the Paravians are not those of men. They are not born of earth, but sprung from the prime source itself." Her upraised finger 102.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

accused him. "Woe to you, prince. The wrath of Athera's true guardians is no light fate to invoke."

An actinic burst sheared the chamber as a rune seal flamed above Lysaer's head. The cipher blazed yellow-white, then faded to violet.

Sensation followed, a sourceless wind of fine energies that hazed through all the five senses. Lysaer experienced no physical discom- fort. But the vibration rocked on through his mind. Something inside of him howled wild protest for the irrevocable step being taken. His awareness became pierced by untenable loss. No grief ever savaged the heart to such depths, as if for an instant he had gazed upon par- adise, then plunged for all time into darkness. He wept. Ugly, racking sobs closed his throat as something unnamed and brilliant slipped away and consigned him to friendless desolation.

The hurt sieved and tore him, needles through silk, until he felt nothing but numbness.

Then Asandir was beside him. Firm hands took his arm, drew his faltering step away from the King's Chamber and into the black chill of the stairwell. Lysaer reeled as though drunk. Plain air turned his head. The stairs felt absurdly hard beneath his feet, and the shadows pooled under the sconces held menace like teeth, lurking unseen to gnaw flesh.

Lysaer called on his gift to blast out the darkness, but no spark answered. His limbs seemed battened in felt. Again he stumbled. A Sorcerer steadied him. The touch was raw power and limitless strength clothed over in gentleness that plunged a dull ache to the bone.

"You are deceivers," the prince insisted. "Betrayers of your own principle to shield Arithon." His voice seemed a stranger's, and his commitment to honor no more than the soulless whine of spent wind.

Asandir pressed ahead, bundling his charge between the stilled ranks of statuary. Their mystery had gone strangely dull; now, the centaurs, unicorns, and sunchildren seemed nothing more than exquisitely beautiful carvings. Lysaer felt remorse, and then won- dered in leveled, pure logic why he should pause for regret. The tricks of the Fellowship were evasively subtle. The guiding hand on his flesh was creased by the bridle rein, ordinary, no more than a com- mon old man's. Still the contact was comfort and animal warmth; then even that simple solace was gone as Asandir released him by the trapdoor to the vault.

"Go down." Winter drafts bit deep where the Sorcerer pointed.

Lysaer locked his jaw, sliced again by a glass-edged sorrow. He spoke fast and bitter to fill the void. "The mayors who fear you, did 103.

J^~ W~11~$.

your Fellowship disown them the same way?" Steadier now, seized the giddy nerve to laugh. "I've read the musty old the uprising kept at Erdane. They speak of retribution and to be claimed for the blood of the murdered high kings. Yet dred years have passed. Nothing happened." The freezing, dry~ braced him back to banked rage.

"The Paravians are gone," Lysaer insisted. "They might return. Yet you still threaten and raise dread in their name. I humanity deserves better than empty rules and the coercive your sorceries. I shall spread truth, that your compact has no in present-day governance."

Asandir still said nothing. At the base of the stairwell he., unnervingly inscrutable. His hands hung still at his sides, empty large knuckled as a quarryman's. Lysaer looked away, unbeguiledt that traitorous semblance of humanity. Before him spread the Paravian focus, its patterns strung across in mazed chains of~ white quartz embedded in onyx. Then, touched to life by some of bound magecraft, the demon sconces blazed into flame. The'

cerer's taut face became etched in copper; then that warmth erased unyielding, struck iron as captured lane force flared the pattern active.

"Step forward," said Asandir. "Your people are waiting at Aven0r.'

Lysaer turned his back. He walked in unvanquished pride center point of the focus. "I will see mankind released from tyranny. Justice will follow war. The land will be given a peace free 0~ shadows, with no help from absent Paravians."

No word came back. Only Asandir's signal to Kharadmon and Luhaine, who poised, unseen, to engage gathered power for the transfer. Then chaos clapped down, and time came unhinged. All links to the senses dissolved through a fireburst of light. Spinning vertigo remained, slashed once by the twined cipher of a sorcerer's mark that spanned the whole axis of creation. Through the deluge of static and the keening explosion of channeled energy, Lysaer can~ aware of a far-off sibilance of speech...

"... say something fast to avert panic," his captain at arms call~.d out in shrill urgency. "Just name the event as a portent of Ath's fa~ ~r.

and hurry. If the mob's left to think our prince was abducted by '~r- cery, we're going to see mayhem and riot."

No brave line of pikemen could stand their ground if the became stormed by panic. Since the play of uncanny, shimmer~~~.~ light seemed the least of two evils, the chancellor had no choice 104.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

into the breech. His orator's shout rose above the crowd's "There will be alms!" Forced to a desperate semblance of calm, he improvised, "As you see, the Prince of the Light obeys higher forces!

He goes where he's needed upon instant notice. Are we children to pine for his continuous presence? The shadow-banes are blessed. Let them be disbursed by our own public servants, and leave his Grace free to shoulder the burden of our defense!"

Just as the mob subsided from its milling roar, the light of Lysaer's gift shimmered clean once again. Restored, riled and whole, to his ceremonial dais at Avenor, he was fully exposed to the public eye and the stupefied shock of his officers. The moment was his to recoup what advantage he could.

"I've come back with proof!" he announced, his snap of resolve reborn from quenched terror. "Since Merior, I've known the adepts of Ath's Brotherhood were in league with Master of Shadow. Now they and the Fellowship Sorcerers have joined in conspiracy against me."

Before the stark awe of his ranking retainers, he whirled face about.

The crowd in the plaza redoubled their chanting. Cheers pealed and woke to a howl of animal noise. "Prince of the Light! Prince of the Light!"

Lysaer drank in the adulation. Spurred to fierce exultation, coun- tersurge for a hatred he had long since ceased to resist, he bared. his teeth in a laugh. White clad, gold haired, fired by his gift, he raised his fists in defiance of the Sorcerers who had dared to intimidate and censure him.

"Behold!" he addressed the masses in a ringing, exuberant shout.

"You and your children shall be saved from shadow! I am called to serve Athera and oppose the Spinner of Darkness! No cause and no power will stop my pursuit until he lies dead, and the allies to his evil works are thwarted!"

105.

Winter Solstice 5649 Exchange The explosive surge of spell-turned forces just used to restore to Avenor subsided from the focus beneath Althain Tower.

prince's mortal senses had lately discerned but rough stone andi mood of pervasive sorrow, for lingering minutes while the lane subsided, the guarding wards left laced through the rock roused in all of their splendor. A mind attuned to Paravian could discern their imprint. The fine energies twined into like hazed water, everlastingly falling: a lightning-laced lattice of'

tern came sheathed in a beauty fit to draw spirit from flesh.

While the fitted block walls of the citadel ceased their vibration, the visiting adept of Ath's Brotherhood the door to the K'mg's Chamber. Her willowy build and white made her form appear cased in brightness against the grimed arch the stair vault.

Or perhaps the effect arose from the spirit aura ates of her discipline when they chose to walk in dim places. Few in Athera were empowered to keep pace with the mysteries of Ath's Brotherhood.

One such confronted her now, a Sorcerer who, over thousands of years, had been other things in his past.

He leaned on the massive, iron-strapped door in what seemed a deranged fit of woolgathering. His features were glazed in the glow of the candles. Less susceptible than stone to the fluxes of grand con- jury, wax-fed flame only danced to the drafts, as winter's cold swirled 106.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

and snatched at the shutters, and moaned through the chinks in old masonry.

The adept surveyed Althain's Warden with her tuned awareness.

Her shapely hands stayed clasped beneath her embroidered cuffs; threadwork of gold and silver which at times glinted back something more than commonplace reflection. The heavier sconces, flaming in iron brackets on the landing, scrawled moving shadow across her Fel- lowship subject, masked in his disarming vagaries.

Sethvir's eyes alone showed a mind like surgical steel swathed in misleading burlap. Beneath the spiked tufts of white brows, his gaze remained bleak and trackless as ice on the northern flank of a snowdrift.

The adept knew a sudden, deep stab of uneasiness, as if a wet leaf had brushed scraping tracks down her spine. "Never doubt," she urged, her dusky chin lifted under the shelf of her hood. "Your Fel- lowship chose right and fitting action with regard to Lysaer s'Ilessid."

Sethvir's seamed knuckles tightened on the doorframe. "Right or not, his expulsion was our forced duty."

Evasive words, to mask chains of happenstance that would come to shape Athera's future. Ath's adept matched his challenge, unwaver- ing in her regard. Drafts stirred the clogged fleece of the Sorcerer's beard and combed unseen over sinews and flesh he often forgot he possessed, so many years had his consciousness ridden the intricate tides of the earth link. Against flooding warmth and pale paneling, Althain's Warden seemed an emaciated tree, braced and shaped by relentless storms.

The adept laid slim, olive fingers on his sleeve. "Why are you trou- bled? Should we fear for one man's fate, do you think? The judgment of the Paravians is sourced in Ath's wisdom. They won't err in behalf of your prince."

By their nature, indeed, they could not. Sethvir knew best of any.