"On those terms? Bless you, I'd fund your retirement and come!" Unable to contain his disbelief and good fortune, the landlord beckoned to his comeliest serving girl. "Give the minstrel and his servants any damned thing they might ask."

While her painted, sloe eyes gauged the way the singer filled his clothes and warmed into frank invitation, the landlord moved off, chuckling.

192.

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"Any damned thing?" Arithon awarded her lush favors the com- pliment of his smile and snapped a sprightly run from his strings.

"Then keep my friend the tinker in beer. That's work enough for a brigade."

The Mad Prophet's indignant riposte became lost in braw noise as the tap's salty patrons clanked knives on the boards in demand of a repeat performance. Head tipped aslant, Arithon obliged them, song after song, until evening wore away and his listening crowd roared itself to exhaustion. While the standing survivors reeled their way homeward, the landlord gloated over empty casks and filled strong- boxes, his smile all but nailed in place.

The bard arose then, stretched, wrapped his lyranthe in no hurry.

Caolle knelt unbidden and raked up the abundance of silver tossed down by generous admirers.

"Do you offer the plate scrapings to the street orphans?" Arithon asked.

The landlord bobbed up from the gloom behind the bar, a polish- ing rag in his hand. "I give the ones willing to scrub pots all the leav- ings. Do you want to save the small coppers for them? You needn't.

That custom's lapsed since my grandsire's time."

Arithon shrugged. "I keep stubborn habits. Just make sure the girl who sweeps up knows how to count in fair portions." The instrument slung from his shoulder, he seemed impatient to depart.

Dakar showed no inclination to move, settled as he was in brosy content with the barmaid cuddled in his lap. "It's grown desperate late," he complained in a beery slur. "Can't you bear to forego the indulgence of sucking down brandy with Cattrick?"

"I daren't," said Afithon. "Caolle can watch my back." His step ghost light before his liegeman's solid tread, he picked a path through prone revelers to attend his match with the master of Riverton's shipyard.

"Dharkaron wept!" The Mad Prophet groaned in low misery as he peeled off the doxie and apologized. "Before you ask, yes. We're surely as moon mad as he."

Desperate not to care how severely he was weaving, he crossed the puddled taproom in Arithon's wake, to yelps and grunts from the inebriated bodies he disturbed on his course for the stairway.

193.

Autumn 5552 Payment and Bribe The Laughing Captain's best guest suite still wore its origins as a shoreside madam's boudoir, bed hangings and dagged curtains done in gaudy, flame scarlet, tied back with gold-shot cord. Despite a case- ment cracked open to catch the sea breeze, an ingrained cloy of patchouli clung to the air and the rugs. The clothes chests were pearl and black lacquer from Vhalzein, new enough that they still smelled of citrus oil. The washstand supported an ewer of gilded enamel flaked with chips at the edges, two rails of embroidered towels, and a pair of pitch-smeared boots just kicked off and crammed with the wads of shed stockings.

Their owner had made himself comfortable on the bed, his back to piled pillows, a cut-crystal decanter propped between the knees of his patched canvas trousers. The brandy inside pooled pale amber in the glow shed by beeswax candles on prickets. Not mellow at all in the haze of soft light, Cattrick tracked Arithon's entrance, slit eyed and primed for contention.

"Ye're a master with that," he opened as the bard tucked his lyran- the away in the wardrobe. "Heard all from here, and it damned well entertained me. Lysaer will be wild when he learns what's afoot."

When and not if; the inference bristled like hurled insult.

Arithon folded himself into the least-cushioned chair, the deep pleasure instilled by his music yet with him. "Since Avenor's a scant fifty leagues from this dive, shall we avoid the unpleasantness? If you're too cowed to pour, I want to be brought up-to-date/'

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

"Well, here's fine impatience." Cattrick's lip curled in sarcasm.

"Four years is damned long to wait for the asking."

When Arithon said nothing, he dug through the pillows and unearthed two enormous glazed tankards. The clink of Falgaire crys- tal and the trickle of neat spirits did little to soothe a stiff pause.

Cattrick recapped the decanter and poised the filled tankards on his thighs. "Since we've rebuilt and launched a replacement for every galley that burned in Minderl Bay, the crown's been hiring on riggers like ticks. Two-thirds, and the best, are all yours. The caulkers recruited from Havish were no good."

"Too little pay," Arithon supplied. "King Eldir's no fool. He funded his craft guilds to keep the well-trained ones at home."

"Then that's old news." Cattrick shrugged. "Your own crews from Merior have gradually replaced any second-rate labor. Petty infrac- tions did for the rest. The plankers and sawyers all have southshore accents. By Ath, we're so infested with talent a man wonders why none of it's local." He extended an arm in an effortless stretch, passed the most brimming vessel to Arithon, then finished, "Ye ken how I spit on pretty boy hair."

An undignified thump intervened from outside. Dakar clanged the latch and demanded admittance, and Caolle moved fast to let him in.

Against a strung stillness, the clansman snapped the door closed, the hands beneath his cloak clasped to the hilts of his weapons.

Too drunken for tact as he sized up the tension, Dakar blundered on, snatched the second tankard from Cattrick's preoccupied hand, and spouted his venomous opinion. "A friend might believe you wanted the thrill of seeing a sorcerer burned alive."

Cattrick's pelt of whiskers parted into a wolfish smile. "I prefer to speak to my associates firsthand." He uncorked the decanter, rolled a long swallow of brandy on his tongue, and switched his regard to frame Arithon. "You're not drinking, either. Does that mean we're too careful to risk any untoward confidence?"

"There isn't an abundance of confidence to share." Arithon sam- pled his drink, grimaced at the sting to a throat stressed from singing, then tipped his head back in the chair and shut his eyes. He let go a small binding. The shadows he used to disguise his appearance ran off like singed silk in the candlelight. When next he looked up, his eyes were bright green and his hair the sheened black of a raven's wing. His gift had done more than falsify coloring.

Now none in his presence could mistake his frank warning: the exasperation laid bare, or its unwanted corollary, written into the planes of bone pressed against hollowed, pale flesh. If such an 195.

JANNY WURTS.

unmasking had meant to restore confidence, the mistake escaped sal- vage as Cattrick leaned forward, eager to test how far he might sway ex?osed weakness.

Dakar felt a sudden grue ream his spine. Hazed by some thwarted fragment of prescience, or maybe just spurious hunch, he blurted, "Cattrick, are you in Koriani pay?"

"Don't answer that!" Arithon sheared in. "I don't believe it." He did not look settled or sanguine anymore. "Caolle, pass on what we brought from the tinsmith's, if you please."

The clansman slipped the sack from the thong at his belt. Never a man to forbear from sharp action, he hurled it full force toward the bed.

Cattrick fielded the catch without upsetting the brandy. Since its unwieldy bulk required both hands, he nipped off the thong binding and upended the contents in a caroling chime over the red velvet cov- erlet.

Dakar's eyebrows shot up. The tinsmith had delivered in pristine gold coinage, struck in Havish's fair city of Cheivalt.

Prepared when Cattrick's lips hardened to contempt, Arithon said, "That's no bribe. I thought we agreed. A man of your stature can be paid, but not bought."

Cattrick lost all his angst to disbelief. "No! Don't say we're due wages. The crown of Tysan rewards our work well enough."

"Lysaer's pay is spoils." Enthused beyond weariness, Arithon laughed at the shipwright's flummoxed startlement. "If you can unbend on that fine point, let's drink your nice brandy and celebrate.

After all, the miserable galley work's finished. You're laying new keels for my fleet, now."

"Ath!" Cattrick slapped his leg in a stymied explosion of temper "Fiends plague us all, man, you could've sent some sort of word back after our previous launching! The lads in the yard are the devil to keep quiet, and I take unkindly to guessing. Did our new brig shake down in safe passage to Corith?"

"That much and better," Arithon quipped. "The pay for your craftsmen was sent from the sale of the cider she carried as cargo.

Now could we back off and swill spirits in earnest? You can sell me out to my enemies later if my nasty reputation makes you squeamish.

But if we rise tomorrow undamaged by brandy, then all our brash claims to manly pursuit are going to lie forfeit by default."

Dakar woke up to hazed pain, as though moths with steel ham- mers set to with rivets and fastened the inside of his skull to his brain.

196.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

His bladder was full, and his tongue, like furred lead. Well versed with the miseries that came entrenched with cheap beer, he groaned and shoved upright. With his throbbing head plowed facedown into a pillow, he fumbled to grab the first container at hand to catch what his body ejected.

"You look fit to serve time as ship's ballast," said a quiet, etched voice across the room.

A moan escaped ttie pillow. Dakar unshuttered a bloodshot brown eye and measured his tormentor, who sat tidied and dressed in the flamboyant elegance expected of bards who garnered a taproom patronage. "You shouldn't be capable of speech. By Daelion's fell jus- tice, that brandy would have knocked anyone else down sick as a mule with a belly full of yew."

"You're right." Arithon stood, the slashed velvet sleeves of his dou- blet tacked with matched studs of black pearls. "I should have been, too, except that I had to render my gorge after Cattrick earned the good grace to fall senseless. He was packed off home in the slop taker's cart for the round sum of two silvers."

"That's thievery." Dakar found the chamber pot. Pillow clenched now to his heaving belly, he sat, torn by two needs and waiting to see which bodily orifice was going to demand service first. "Not to men- tion a waste of fine brandy." Then, disgusted to be caught just as black as the kettle, he folded in half and gave the selfsame libation to the vengeful god of brewed hops.

Erect once again, and vastly more comfortable, he rinsed his sour mouth and regarded the prince, who thoughtfully seemed to be sort- ing out yesterday's clothes for him. "We're going someplace?"

Unwontedly serious, Arithon passed over his shirt, then small- clothes and breeches in turn. "Yes. There's something I need you to see."

Outside, the daylight had lost its dawn blush. The wind blew brisk with a warning of rain as the spellbinder trailed in the Masterbard's footsteps through the quay alleys which led west through Riverton.

Gulls screamed and called in a pale citrine sky. Dakar made his way with hands clamped to his temples, cursing when his feet tripped him. The fog-dampened cobblestones gleamed like new lead under the deep gloom of the eaves. Even that minimal glare hurt his eyes.

"This excursion had damned well better be necessary," he groused at the crossroads where the wharfside buildings thinned out. The stone road gave way to a rutted, mud track, interspersed by board bridges which stitched an uneven course through the mudflats of the 197.

IANN ~VU n T S Ilswater delta. Low ground wore bearded stands of marsh grass, interspersed with the less savory industry drawn by a thriving sea commerce. The air clung with smells. Still sunk in the misery of a tender stomach, Dakar pressed his cloak hem over his nose to cut the reek of the tanneries and the dead animal stink of the stock- yards.

"Where in bleak Sithaer are you taking me?" he demanded as Arith0n moved ahead like a wraith through a streamer of late-rising fog.

"No place that's civil. I'm sorry." Reappeared in solid outline in his elegant gray silk, Arithon descended a weathered log stair His high boots wore a fresh coat of wax, no detriment as he picked his way down a meandering path churned boggy with cow slots and muck.

The ground oozed brackish water, and marsh wrens flitted off the fluffed heads of the reed stalks.

"Not the barge docks at the estuary." Dakar grimaced as the wet soaked through the scuffed leather shoes he persistently neglected to upkeep. "That's a nasty, rough place to wear pearl-studded clothing.

The meat packers there will knock a man flat just on principle, far less to snatch any wealth they think they can clean off of your person."

"We're not dealing with meat packers." Arithon turned sharply left off the path. Ahead, the land undulated, ochre on gray, the tufted sedges and marsh grass skirting the verge of the sinkpools dirtied with crusts of salt rime.

"Damn you!" snapped Dakar, sunk ankle deep in cold water that shot pain like iced nails through his headache. "Since reasonable peo- ple don't wear black pearls for a slogging jaunt through the marshes, you might have warned I'd get wet."

A.r~.thon stopped, turned, caught Dakar's moist wrist in hard fin- gers. "I wil! warn you now to stay silent. Where we're going, i~ we're seen, we'll find trouble far worse than a meat packer's mannerless fisticuffs."

The corollary stayed unspoken, that to chance-met observers with too much curiosity, a bard who wore clothing fit for rough country would have business other than minstrelsy. Dakar curbed his com- plaint. He sloshed at Arithon's heels for a miserable half league, while his headache settled to roost in his forehead, and his beard became snagged with shed seed heads. Ahead, the damp ground arose into a low bluff, combed at the crest with rustling tufts of pale dune grass. The chatter of male voices issued from the far side, cut through by the metallic plink of a smith's hammer. Someone's coarse laughter was met by a shout. As bard and prophet mounted the slope, they heard an intermittent squeal of wood pressed to wood, telltale 198.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

sign that a barge dragged at fixed bollards in the rip of the tide through the estuary.

"There's a landing here?" Dakar ventured in soft inquiry.

Arithon nodded, then crouched to avoid being caught in stark sil- houette against sky. Screened by the thickets of grass, he pressed for- ward, then beckoned for Dakar to share his vantage point.

The Mad Prophet knelt in his brine-sodden hose. "Smugglers?" he whispered.

"You'll see." Arithon's face stayed attentively trained forward.

"Listen." Stilled as a fox, he strained to glean what he could from the windblown rags of conversation.

"Fool dogs didn't scent them," one party blustered. He had rust- spotted chain mail and the stance of a braggart, meaty arms crossed on his chest. "The fiends had masked their back trail using green brush smeared with otter's musk."~ Through the ongoing throes of involved explanation, someone else cursed the smith for taking a fussy long time with his rivets.

The hammer strokes paused, while a curse was returned, and Dakar parted the grasses. The headland where he and Arithon shel- tered overhung an alluvial deposit, piled on the bend in one of the channels which drained the mouth of the Ilswater. The barge dock which hosted the current activity nestled beneath the steep curve of the bluffs. The planking was unweathered and new, but built to out- last winter storms. The bollards were well sunk and braced in roped triplets, with two vessels currently tied. One was a seagoing galley by the chipped strakes and dulled paint which bespoke the hard usage of a trader. The other was a river barge fitted out as a slaver. Half- naked clansmen stood or sat, chained to steel rings in her deck.

Dakar knew a white-hot explosion of rage, then an ache beyond words to express. These were the proud keepers of the old and irre- placeable bloodlines whose sworn bond of service began at the dawn of the Third Age. Now, one man's whim reduced their function to brute labor. By Lysaer's decree of revenge against Maenol, free men were reduced to the lives of kenneled dogs: a priceless heritage thrown to entropy and waste; a wild pride darkened to resentment and despair.

A hand touched Dakar's rigid wrist in restraint: Arithon's, in for- bearing compassion. "Those guardsmen can't realize the impacting scope of their action."

Dakar choked down his fury. No excuse salved his nerves; not when he had borne living witness to the past, when the clans had braved their place as the link between mortal men and the burning, 199.

dire grace o~ ~'ne~ParaV~a~s.~S~~ ~tn%~ injustice, reduced now to blind hatred and ignorance.

0thor crucltieo for their needlessness. The captives had n0ttv ing beyond the crump/o;/Og//~c0/~'0]7 t~e]?)t]{'~' Most we;e forward marred with old bloodsta~s, testament to the violence of the hunt that had brought them to capture. ~ey numbered a miserable ~0 ~//~/d~J clothed and ill fed, their hair wind tangled and their b0di~ ' ' /~ZK.

exposed to the chilly caprice of the wea ................ ,,~ ~ ~4g~g of royal authori~ oversaw the ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~xm~- k~x~- dom, they traded epithets and }okes as the prisoners were ol~-loaae~ 0,~8~ ~ O..fime_ j~om the b~rge. A small fire flickered on the verge.

~ere, a bandy-legged smith fitted eac8 convict with"bn ~rdn c~t- and cuffs. His burly apprentice then closed the steel link which fixed their chains to a bench on the deck of the trader's galley.

"Lookit that gimper. Never guess now, but he's the one who fought like a wildcat." The speaker with the sergeant's badge sliced a thick finger down his cheek. "Left our capta~ with a scar his wife won't forgive. Man beat the fool wretch half-senseless for that. He only stopped when six headhunters pulled him off. ~eir kind breathe and piss for their money, I swear. To Sithaer with all else, the bounty was half if the puking clan vermin upped and died."

Sickened now by worse than a hangover, Dakar saw t~ough the marks of old bruises, and recognized just whose wrists were being fit- ted with pe~anent fetters. ~e young man who stood, fighting tremors of pain, was none other than the scout from Caithwood who had provided the spare horse for Caolle.

The sight was one to brand the mind for cruel sorrow: the scout, chin raised, unwilling to show his graff captors one sign that degra- dation and suffering touched his spirit. He did not fl~ch as the ham- mer blows closed the steel rivets, nor when the soldier grasped his lank braid and hacked the hair short at his nape. His face wore the battering bruises of rough handling. ~e arm and shoulder showed the livid scabs left from untended wounds. He walked with a stum- bling limp as ~o guards prodded him up the ganglank to the gal- ley. ~ere, his forest-bred ne~e almost failed him. ~e soldiers had to bundle him up to the bench, force him down, and hold him, while the apprentice clubbed his jaw to make way for the tools that would leave him chained like an animal.

Dakar shut his eyes against pi~ and tears. ~e chance was too real, that the ships built at Riverton would become the last hope to save Tysan's dwindled clan bloodlines.

200.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

"You do see," whispered Arithon. "Maenol's people must be given the fair means to fight back."

Dakar swallowed. He had no argument for stark necessity. Nor could he summon the cold-hearted logic to decry that the dangers posed too grave a risk for a prince already under curse by the Mist- wraith. As a vicious, damp gust raked over the bluff and razed first warning of winter in a chill that bit to the bone, he took sharp note of the season. "It's late in the year. Too late for a galley to round Stormwell Cape. The ice will be moving already in Northstrait. That ship can't make passage to MiraIt."

"No," Arithon agreed. "There's another incentive as you'll see."

For the galley captain had poked his head out of his snug cabin.