His sustained, rooted patience was the unflinching remorse of a con- science chained still through long years and hard-fought experience.

Before such burdensome memories as his, no mere touch in kindness could comfort. Althain's Warden therefore yielded nothing, his face clamped to folds like burled cypress.

The adept firmed her grasp, insistent. "Lysaer shall receive his redemption from wrong."

"And is his choice wrong?" Sethvir asked. No kindness could spare him the lacerating vision imposed through the channels of the earth link. Stamped into his awareness, passed on through her contact, the adept shared the keening, hot surge of a crowd whipped on to devo- tion in the far-distant plaza at Avenor.

107.

JANN WURTS.

"What's left to weigh?" Unperturbed, she let Althain's share the upset Lysaer's will had once imposed upon the grove in her brotherhood's hostel near Shaddom. "This prince willful and flawed."

Outside, a blast of north wind hurled sand like gritted against the tower As if flesh were scoured by the sting of each Sethvir shook his head. "Lysaer is terrified beyond life to care for the innocent."

"Never mind they need none of his help!" The adept spilled a~ very, sharp laugh. "Athera's folk can find their salvation very They need no misfit savior playing on their fears to shore up reft of spirit." Still probing, she gave Althain's Warden her most ing pity. "Stay your grief in this hour, you waste anguish on wrong victim. While Ath's order becomes maligned by false and the masses are fired to worship your Prince of the Light, Arithon s'Ffalenn becomes the spirit in mortal danger of corruption."

"Then you see very well." Sethvir disengaged his arm. "Y~ know our Fellowship dreads that beyond anything." For the wells of his eyes seemed rinsed blank, both shield and mirra against her prying concern. "You name just one ugly crux out of many. Each of my doubts is well-founded." He covered her young, woman's fingers with a palm that had worn bloodstains before those of ink, and too much of both for lasting quietude. The strength which led her to the head of the stair was anything but an 01d man's.

She protested his courtesy as unnecessary.

"As you wish." Sethvir let her go. While the tormented flames i~ the sconces rinsed his face, Ath's adept read its mapwork of lines and snatched insight: Althain's Warden regretted a hope kept too fiercely.

Swift in riposte, his forthright, sad smile foiled her sympathy.

"Your Brotherhood can never serve as priests."

The lady gave way, then, no longer able to match that wise gaze.

Shaken, not cowed, she veiled her distress in the screening shadow of her hood. "For all good intent, if we tried, we would seed the very rift in Ath's continuity that Lysaer s'Ilessid shall create through selfish error."

Brotherhood adepts could not intervene in affairs of kingdoms or men. Nor did their high initiates leave their hostels to teach or draw in new acolytes. They dared not set forth to preach, even against Lysaer's threat of false faith, which could raise the sure power to scatter them. Theirs was not, and never could be, a guide to established religion. Seekers came to them to find insp~- 108.

FUGITIV PRINCE.

as they chose, they might stay and take the path to life's ~stery.

Ath's adepts held to no doctrine and no creed. They kept their ~ clear, their channel to truth unclouded by the arrogance of mor- fools, to misinterpret, or by the greedy who corrupted to The Paravians who had been their example were departed, with them went the world's pure connection to the miracle of prime source.

"We cannot let the knowledge we guard fall prey, first to dogma, then to power and politics. If your Fellowship would ask help," the ~ept admonished, "then search again for the lost. Should the old races return, Lysaer's claim of divinity cannot do other than fail."

"We have sent Arithon," Sethvir said. Nothing more.

Those words should have been arrows, to strike so quick to the heart. "I am humbled," the adept gasped. Tears broke her voice, and trembling reflections sparked over the thread patterns at her collar and cuffs. "Because of your sacrifice, Ath preserve, yet again, for the endurance of your Fellowship, the light of our grace may live on."

Sethvir's fingers, reclasped to hers, became reassurance and com- fort.

Whatever deep worry he hedged to keep hidden, her standing to pressure him was forfeit.

Serenity undone, the adept quit the landing. Her retreat down the stairwell raised pattering, small echoes, no tribute at all to the sor- rows enshrined in the granite walls of this sanctuary. The vast, shift- ing shadows offered no refuge. Nor did the Warden of Althain's piercing watch ever leave her. His thin, fragile shoulders in their for- mal maroon robes stayed unbowed, in full command of a desperate history. To one who might hazard the whole scope of that burden, naught was left but to ache. Words were no match for such courage and generosity, that in unequivocating competence assumed Lysaer's dark tangle in her Brotherhood's stead.

Again, the Fellowship chose to brave every fissure of torn continu- ity that human works brought to the world.

Worst of all, the decision to champion her Brotherhood's seclusion was not blind. Sethvir fully recognized the perilous potential posed by s'Ilessid folly. He knew too well how events might grow to jeopar- dize all that his Fellowship had become in their labor on Athera's behalf. Risk and sacrifice, the Sorcerer grasped every possible ramifi- cation. No warning could serve; stewardship of the compact might test yet again the peace of mind he and his colleagues had earned amidst the strife of two Ages.

109.

JANNY W URTS.

They would shoulder this coil, atop the dread quandaries ~ ceded to their care by the past flight of the Pararians. Tear~ ungrateful gift for such courage;pity fell short as a euJogz While the adept sought her peace in the comfort of Sethvir left his post on the third-floor landing. Circling him frayed as a scrap of old rag hammered and wrung b3 ,~ $ tide. His Fellowship no longer held the Brotherhood's view. th,~t the disappearance of the Pararians posed Athera's greatest setb,~ck belief had been violently undone a year past, when Khar,~,~n~c, n5 foray to the sealed worlds beyond South Gate had unma,k~,d the darker face of Desh-thiere.

Weighed down by the terrifying scope of those facts, Sethx ~r reen- tered the King's Chamber.

There, settled into a solitary vigil, Traithe sat unmoving, hi5 with their bands of old scar tissue knotted beneath his cleft daiwa.

cut gray hair brushed his collar like tarnish as he roused to t]~,, clank of the door latch. He tracked his colleague's passage through dark eyes, while ghost silent, Althain's Warden recrossed tht, and pinched beeswax candles one by one.

"You did not broach our problem with the wraiths still ~t upon Marak," he surmised.

"No." The acrid bite of singed string spindled through the ~nu.~k hot wax, and the room's ingrained fragrance of citrus-oiled wood.

each light extinguished, one shadow died also; like overlaid oii those remaining capered in pantomime about Sethvir's feet. ~ ~tt Brotherhood won't open their hostels to help thwart Lysaer's [,;'~ tizing in Athera, they would scarcely face damnation on tb~.

we've encountered for lost spirits eatrapped on a gate world."

"You don't fault them?" Traithe said, prodded out of the tism he brandished like armor against his own measure of des[~,~,'

Sethvir's fleeting smile masked inward distress, that any Fd:', colleague ever required to beg reassurance. Years might pass, b~t ongoing tragedy of Traithe's impairment never for a day cei~t sting. "The adepts aren't wrong in their stance." No more th.~ the Paravians had been to abandon man's conflict since the hour sunlight was vanquished. "I could ask, but not argue. Desh-thier~'s works have ever been ours to unravel."

Wings rustled. The raven swaggered the length of the mantel, ht,~ tipped askance and one sequin eye fixed on the Sorcerers.

"I hear, little brother," Sethvir murmured, his regard centered still upon Traithe. In the dimmed majesty of the King's Chamber, 110.

r/es already ; already 5nade an olitude, u hts/eft s form ~at the u That nod 'S J the '~en- gers His ank fee- 'pet ~ge of or s~ waited, the grip of his patience like the earth wisdom contained in old stone.

For a colleague left crippled since the hour of the Mistwraith's forced entry, courage came slowly to define an event too recent and raw to assimilate. "I can't doubt our stern judgment was needed,'*

Traithe broached at length. "But, Ath show us mercy, I need to ask.

How much of Lysaer's acts arise from Desh-thiere's accursed instiga- tion, and how much, out of wayward self-will?"

Sethvir moved. The last branch of lit candles spoked his step in wheeling shadows. "Do you wish me to show you the aura?" He stopped again, waited, while the casement panes rattled to the out- side barrage of north winds.

"Yes." Traithe shivered, straightened, laid his hands on the table.

The fingers would not flex fully straight; the elegant, long bones that onetime were clean as a dancer's lay twisted and ravaged by old bums. His formless apprehension poisoned the pause. Half the given talent to set shackles on the Mistwraith lay tied through today's condemned prince and his inborn power to shape light. "I would know what we face for the future."

The issue went beyond the corruption of an ancient royal line.

Desh-thiere's threat had increased. The step which cast Lysaer out- side of the compact opened yet another pitfall to bring the last plunge to disaster.

Althain's Warden extinguished the last bank of candles. He recrossed the carpet, soft footed, and rested his palms on Traithe's shoulders. His touch in the darkness came feathered and dry as the chance-met brush of a moth's wing. Instantaneous awareness crossed that slight contact and seized his mind like dull pain. He knew as his own the harrowing weariness wrung through the flesh beneath his hands. "Let me carry this," he murmured.

"Take my permission, and gladly at that." Traithe raised a crooked grin, the humor forced through his iron bravado an unvanquished bent for lightheartedness. "You always did like to run things, never mind your crafty knack for making everyone believe that somebody else was in charge."

Sethvir laughed. "I could wish this particular trouble sat else- where. Then we could chat over honey and scones, and brew up a nice pot of tea."

He started his work in one seamless second, his bodily senses dis- carded for the sharp, trained awareness of mage-sight. The chamber around him transformed to that altered plane of perceptionu Simple objects unveiled themselves in complexity, the weavings of Name 111.

JANNY WURTS.

and history revealed. The pile of the carpet showed its humble i ning as wool on the backs of jostling sheep; then shadowed lay, each dye in its coloring, brewed from plantstuffs and insects and urine; and underlying the weave like the tap of gh0stt gers, the thump of the looms dragging warp threads through the hands of chattering craftswomen. The pale shafts of bespoke honeyed summer days and the bustling industry of Mere flecks of dust adrift on the air gained the lordly, bright of stars. Metal for latches, and the bronze of wrought pered of dark beginnings in the earth, then shrilled to the of smelting.

At will, Sethvir tery could sort through its light-dance to the bundled spin of energy which held the imprint of events long past. The ebony tabletop would still house the echo of the commitment that Halduin s'Ilessid had accepted, in signature and seal and blood oath, when he swore to uphold Tysan's royal charter. The old stone kept vibrations of earlier times, when the flutes of the Athlien Paravians had led the joy spring larks, and the winds past the casements had thundered to the mating calls of great dragons. Years and change like layers stamped in sediment, through the centuries comprising three Ages, the struc- ture of Althain Tower itself speared its indelible imprint. Its stone crossed time's arc in fired loops. Its guard pattern bridged every facet of existence, then soared beyond, an unvanquished fist of white light: a lofty splendor of desperation and hope, shot through by the terrible defense wards wrought by the centaur mason who, for love 0f the land, had fitted each mortised joint in the walls, then spilled his own blood to bind the seals into permanency.

Even Sethvir could not encompass Althain's dire beauty without a half breath lost to awe. A disturbed scrape of claws issued from the mantel shelf, cut by a testy croak.

"I won't stay distracted," Sethvir assured the raven. He steadied himselL then narrowed his mage-sense into Slowl) delicately, he extended his tactile awareness into the aura of his colleague.

Sethvir's whole consciousness embraced that of Traithe. Prepared though he was, a sick rush of vertigo ripped his frame. He broke into a cold sweat; stifled his reflexive recoil though horror chased his skin like the clammy, sharp scrape of wet razors. Intent held him firm as his vision spun and drowned, sucked into the fearful, gapped chaos of a spirit whose vital energies had been sheared into permanent dis- array.

112.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

The effect was clean symmetry pulled tragically awry, a mistake frozen for posterity as a statue half-smelted in a bronze craftsman's crucible might be quenched in disfigured solidity.

By every lawful tenet of nature, the inviolate whole of Traithe's inner spirit should have gleamed through the damage to his body. A self-aware being transcended mere flesh. On the contrary, the vibra- tional essence of Name held the changeless template by which a sor- cerer's own powers could restore full health and fitness. But outside the scope of Fellowship wisdom, one long past, calamitous encounter with Desh-thiere had snarled Traithe's aura into discord. Unlike Kharadmon and Luhaine before him, he could not shape the crossing to earthplane existence as pure spirit. His awareness had been warped too far out of true, entrapped in its cage of crippled flesh.

Sethvir shared the scope of that damage firsthand. The resonant structure of Traithe's merry essence had been rucked to a madman's tangle. Its bright weave showed odd rifts, as if packs of starved predators had ripped through tinseled lace with claws and ravening teeth.

These, Sethvir must patch with his own resources. His colleague's continuity of function must be stabilized to restore complete access to his talents. Braced for disorientation and mindless, tearing pain, Althain's Warden dissolved his last veil of identity to shore up the wounded spirit that was Traithe.

His mage-sight became shattered. Perception dissolved into crazy- quilt fragments, welted in patternless blind spots. Althain's Warden cried out. Unmanned by the handicap Traithe endured through the ongoing course of each day, Sethvir fought down raw fear. Imagina- tion foundered. In grief, he felt humbled by his colleague's brave struggle to hold fast to humor and sanity.

The heart could but reel before the ultimate cruelty, that such suf- fering impairment might have no end and no cure. Against sheer despair, Sethvir raised a counterflux of power.

The labor he shouldered was painstaking and delicate. No individ- ualized pattern of his signature precisely matched those gaps riven wholesale through Traithe. The interface was clumsy, a rafted- together construct as unwieldy as trying to join hawsers with thread, or forcing mismatched fragments of porcelain to fuse into a water- fight vessel.

Sethvir closed the last channel. He waited, sustained in pity and patience, while Traithe groped to assimilate, and talents repressed throughout five hundred years flexed from their cramped state of dis- use. Lent a fleeting, murky access to the mage-sight once commanded 113.

JANNY WU.RTS.

in his own right, the lame Sorcerer made no demands, but waite~ while Sethvir engaged the next step.

Althain's Warden drew on memory. Without judgment, with0u~ prejudice, he shared the reflection of Lysaer's spirit aura on the moment that Fellowship verdict had withdrawn the protection of compact.

Like some eerie, actinic embroidery spindled against velvet gloom, the recalled vision shimmered into visible light. In cur~es and angles and blazing, arced spirals, the individual vibrations which comprised Lysaer s'Ilessid lay exposed, the whole of his being excised from the shadow of dense substance for mage-schooled eyes to interpret.

Sethvir held the facsimile static, while Traithe traced the steps of his colleagues' decision in unconditional review. Predictable anomalies were sorted aside: here, the seal of Davien the Betrayer's longevity, and there, in fixed imprint lent through maternal blood ties, the s'Ahe- las line's given gift of farsight. Traithe narrowed his study to enc0rn.

pass a transection of angles more jarring, that convoluted mesh of whorls and jags where the Mistwraith's curse to destroy a half brother entangled the true lines of s'Ilessid justice. The instilled royal virtue no longer ran straight, but bent with insidious and chilling persistence into self-blinding misalignment.

Mortal will could scarcely resist such a coil. Set to draw his inde- pendent opinion, Traithe could not overlook the surrounding lines carved by princely desire and intent.

Lysaer had been cursed to kill his half brother. The tenets of royal inheritance led him to endorse that violence with a just cause. But nestled inside his ardent need to protect society, an uneasy conscience spun new threads of gnawing uncertainty.

Delusion entered in: a magisterial spark of arrogance fueled by outraged duty. Lysaer clung to the vanity of his privileged royal upbringing. Where the coil of self-perception shaped the ideals of principle, obsession flowered, a hot, hazy spiral that corded throug}~ the aura like coils cast off a dropped spool.

Sethvir shared the resonance of dismay through the link, as resolved his conclusion. Lysaer used his flaws to deafen his ea~'~ harsh truth. A lordly, dark pride that brooked no humility before the misguided masses; a caring, honorable sovereign's undoing, that measure of shame and stark horror. No other descendant of Halduin had lived to lead an innocent people to slaughter. That burdensome guilt crushed thought and will, and gave rise to a desperate denial.

Lysaer refused outright to betray his s'Ilessid bloodline. He would not 114.

FUGITI~ I~RINCE.

beg mercy and assign himself blame for thirty-seven thousand use- less deaths.

A penchant for self-sacrifice fueled that chord of victimized fury and reforged an unswerving purpose. In assurance as cool as a strand of steel filigree, Lysaer chose his next course. For the sake of those who died carrying his banner, he would forbear his born generosity of spirit and embark on a more grandiose campaign. Arithon must become more than a criminal beyond pardon, but the instrument of evil incarnate. For honor, for the sake of past losses and grief, the man who styled himself Prince of the Light would not break down and cry weakness.

And so in that hour the composite of Lysaer's aura showed his tragic, committed dedication. For the enslavement of Tysan's clans- men and the salve of a glorified purpose, this scion of s'Ilessid shaped the course and direction of his fate. Desh-thiere's curse might drive him to fight Arithon. Its pernicious hold might inten- sify and strengthen the brutality of each encounter. But like an addiction to euphoric drugs, its pull could not enslave every facet of self-will; nor had it the power to enforce heart or spirit to give impassioned collaboration with its drive to seed bloodshed and war.

Hate was the province of the Mistwraith's geas, not conceit or vengeance for vanity.

Too aggrieved to stay silent, Sethvir said, 'Had Lysaer's human judg- ment or his gift of true justice stayed uncompromised, he might not have per- sisted in branding his half brother as evil.'

But outside of conjecture, choices still ended with fact. The damn- ing omission which condemned the s'Ilessid prince was his prideful design not to bend.

'Even so,' Traithe admitted in ringing regret. 'Our oath to uphold the compact leaves us no loophole to give Lysaer a reprieve.'

Sethvir dismissed the s'Ilessid construct. Prepared to drop contact with his colleague's faulted vision, he shivered, swept across by a vio- lent burst of d~jh vu. Trained reflex responded. Practiced from his centuries of tracking the unsorted flux of the earth link, Sethvir tagged the triggering fragment of event. Then he rummaged through memory in pursuit of the happenstance which linked the uncanny association.

The connection became manifest. Breath seized in his chest as the past took him back into the suffocating terror of attack. Once, for six hours he had been imprisoned in the sheer, slate walls of a warded flask. He had fled there in peril of his life, hunted down by a pack of nine free wraiths.

115.

These had been lured from the dead world of Marak through the effort to learn of Desh-thiere's origins. Threatened by possession, termove forced out of cornered desperation, Sethvir had fragmented and tered his consciousness to deflect the force of the assault. Voracious '

the wraiths had closed in. For a nightmarish second, Althain's Ward~ relived the torment, while malevolent spirits savaged his being like vivis~c.

tion done with hot knives.

In that darkest hour, while the wraiths had devoured those d'~ parate bits of his spirit, Sethvir had experienced the paralyzing horror of a consciousness wormholed with gaps. Shocked to revelation, he perceived the probable cause of Traithe's plight. In the hour o~ p~sl crisis, Traithe had engaged grand co~?a~ ~ ~aran~ke the spe~s ~hich enabled the South Gate as a portal to cut off Desh-thiere's invasi0n.

As battle was joined, the collective mind of the Mistwraith may ~'e~ have bid for possession.

Traithe had lost memory. Repeated scryings to rect~nstr~ct the event had exposed only surface images. But there had bee~ ~ spell unleashed that appeared to recoil in backlash upon its creator.

Through logic and theory, Sethvir knew Traithe's act had not bee~ any miscast conjury.