FUGITIVE PRINCE.

S'Brydion clan record said Melhalla's twelfth high king had set seal to Alestron's original city charter. Like many another chosen family, the new overlords made their residence in an abandoned fortress. The old races had forsaken walled keeps after the binding of the drake spawn whose marauding had ended in defeat in the middle of the Second Age. Every duke since then swore himself to life service, and the peril as acting intermediary between his demesne and the conse- crated wilds inhabited by the free Paravians. They held vested authority, but only in trust. Forests were never to be cut down for fields, nor were fences and roadways ever built, except by grant of permission. Mankind had settled Athera on sufferance. Their works and their governance had been cautiously allowed, that the great mysteries maintained by Paravian wardship should remain in perpet- ual harmony.

Rule was not based upon power or privilege, but on the fraught perils of sacrifice. The pitfalls were documented. Lords and crowned high kings most often died young, heart torn between dedicated care for their own, and the terrible, exultant conflict of spirit as they treated with beings who formed the living bridge across the veil.

Mearn hugged his shivering body to the granite, groped a toe into the next crack, and shoved upward. The whispered scrape of his shirt over stone, and the moan of the wind through the gulf of starry dark- ness left him too much space to brood. A natural gambler, he mea- sured the odds and concluded that fate dealt the clans a bad throw.

His brother the duke had initially backed Arithon for matters of fam- ily honor. But as politics and greed built on the grand impetus of Lysaer's cry for armed justice, that chosen loyalty could well become an act of desperate survival.

Five centuries past, a misguided war cast off crown justice. Dis- senters had seized the protection of the towns to wrest Athera's unex- ploited wilds from the sway of the Fellowship's compact. Now Lysaer's bright new Alliance of Light lent a glove for the hands of those factions who still sought to raise mankind into dominance. The sinister purpose which first launched the headhunters' leagues regained its original impetus: to exterminate the link preserved in clan bloodlines and end the resurgence of Paravian mysteries.

Mearn reached the next windowsill winded, his knuckles and fin- gertips raw from the granite. The chamber inside was curtained and dark, its purpose impossible to fathom. If a living princess was held captive above, sleeping guards or attendants might be quartered here.

Mearn shut his eyes, listening. Small sounds drifted up from the street in diminished, wind-snatched fragments: a slap of hurried footsteps, 253.

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then the head falconer's surly phrasing in complaint of a dishonest scullion. Between oaths and blasphemies maligning the oaf's charac- ter, the reference to stolen pigeons surfaced in recurrent disgust.

"Daelion Fatemaster's almighty debts!" harangued the falconer. "If your duty as Avenor's royal steward won't see the miscreant pun- ished, who in creation's going to act? Should the Captain of Avenor's Royal Guard be yanked in to box the ears of a feckless boy? Well, kiss my dead granny's arse, if that's what you think! Bedamned if I'll show my face at his door to say why he has to roust out."

Mearn twitched narrow lips, his soft snort of laughter damped by his sleeve as the brangle destroyed the night quiet. Echoes bounced, multiplied, through the tower entry. The theft in the dovecote seemed the cause of Gace Steward's delay, a setback to nettle his weasely tem- perament into a snarling row. The falconer refused to give back any ground. Delighted to seize on the chance-met diversion, Meam s'Bry- dion nipped from his niche and embarked on the grueling last ascent of the upper battlements.

The watchtower's turret had a crenellated guard walk, inset with drains to gutter rainwater. These offered the climber a precarious left handhold while he unslung his grapple and line. He timed his throw between gusts, lest the wind spoil his aim. The carrying, metallic chink as the hooks slid and caught prickled his nape into gooseflesh.

He could not shake the unnerving conviction that an archer took aim between his shoulder blades. Imagination harried him on through the moments he was forced to trust his weight to the rope. Eyes shut, sweat branding the acrid taste of salt on his lips, he swung out over air and scaled the line hand over hand.

Gusts battered at his progress, fetched him against stone in repeated, bruising impacts that tore through his shirt and skinned a shoulder. Then he reached the crenellation. He dragged himself up and through, and crouched head down, sheltered at last from the buf- feting cold.

Had guards been stationed there on the wall walk, he should have died, betrayed by teeth that chattered from fraught nerves and chill.

Yet no man-at-arms came to skewer him. Gray stone and pale brick wore nothing beyond ice, except where the reaching scour of the ele- ments swept the battlement clean. Mearn thrived on escapades. He shrugged his scuffed clothing back to rights, licked a scraped knuckle, and raked his lovelock free of his collar.

The tower's turret chamber had windows secured with oak-plank shutters strapped in iron. No light shone through the gaps at the edges. With his ear pressed to the wood, Mearn sensed no activity. A 254.

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questing touch confirmed a barred fastening, likely fitted with a lock and hasp from inside. The hinges were mounted prison fashion, onto the outer wall. Meam unlaced the thong ties from his collar points, ripped off his shirt cuff to muffle stray noise, then looped the heads of the pins with the leather and worried until they slipped free.

Left the play in the hasp, and one side unanchored, the shutter gave just enough to allow him an opening to push through.

Meam deferred his first move. While the gusts slapped and pried through the rip in his shirt, he peered into the stillness, poised as the predator who tested the lair of unknown and dangerous prey. Faint warmth touched his skin, dense with the charcoal smoke of banked embers and a lighter fragrance of lavender. He detected no move- ment, could see little beyond the bronze-bossed handles of what might be a lady's clothes chest. Bulked comers of other furnishings lay limned in the starlight admitted by the breached shutter.

Meam raised his thigh, tautened his grip, and hoisted soundlessly onto the broad sill. A feathered brush of his jerkin across studded wood, a whisper of calfskin on stone, and he was through, flattened to the curve of the inside wall. He waited.

Nothing; just the breathy draw of coals in an unseen grate, and the fret of the wind outside. His wide, straining eyes discerned the frame of a curtained box bed, the harder gleam of a porcelain ewer on a stand, and the pale linen oblong of a towel. The chamber was appointed for basic comfort, but not in the grace of high luxury. An Etarran-bred princess accustomed to society and the gregarious con- volutions of city intrigue would be like to go mad from sheer bore- dom.

That moment, from nowhere, fierce fingers grasped his lovelock.

Meam whirled. His sudden, lithe reflex ripped off the hold. His wrist bone jarred metal. The shuttering cover of a hand lamp chinked back. Caught in the flaring, sudden haze of light, the woman he seized with a wrestler's strength was all molten gold hair and pearl skin. She was fire, gilt-and-white porcelain, and a vision to stun a male witless. Widened bronze eyes flashed up to meet his, black lashed and deep, with pupils to drown him in primordial night.

The sound that impacted his closed throat wrenched his larynx.

Meam lost all grip on his senses. Swept head to foot by a physical awareness to freeze thought and unstring his reason, the swift, build- ing pressure of desire in his loins ran him through like the shock of a sword thrust.

"Ath!" he gasped in a wrenched whisper. "Save us all, lady. You 255.

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are like the Avenger's own spear, too sharp to touch without bleed- ing." Cramped ingers could be forced to unlock; dumb flesh, be com- pelled to step back.

Her Grace, Princess Talith touched cool fingers to his lips. "Be wary. A handmaid sleeps in the chamber beneath, and her loyalty is not to me."

Mearn shuddered and broke her restraint as though burned. He had heard all the rumors, even glimpsed Lysaer's wife at state func- tions before her incarceration. At safe remove behind a retinue and attendants, she had been a sight to turn heads. Nothing alive could prepare any man for the impact of her at close quarters. Meam dis- covered himself helpless to tear his gaze from her face. The delicate, ivory line of her shoulder entrapped him, and the sheer fall of the nightrobe whose folds by tums offered and obscured a form of breathtaking loveliness.

Words came like bruised increments of noise, struck by a faltering tongue. "You're a prisoner, then?" Mearn forced a next sentence. "The party who sent me believed so."

A brute turn of will let him recall the danger posed by the lamp; he snatched back the presence to lean through the casement and close the skewed board of the shutter. Faced away, wit and speech gained a measure of reprieve. "Word at court insists you've gone into retreat.

Stress and overwrought nerves, Gace Steward says. The upset is attributed to barrenness."

"Lies," Talith said on a barb of stung spirit. "My bed has been bar- ren." Bitterness made her laugh, but in venomous, smothered quiet.

"No husband, no seed, hence, no child. It is Lysaer who fails to get us an heir." She dimmed the small lamp and restored it to a soot- streaked niche in the wall. "For hatred of his half brother, the prince thinks to put me aside."

"The abduction by Arithon caused this?" Mearn straightened and set his back against stone, acute in his private discomfort. The lady's tower quarters were too cramped to pace. If he stirred one step in any direction, his retreat would not bring him more than an arm's length from her. "But why? Eight hundred thousand coin weight in gold brought you home with your virtue intact."

Talith flung back a ripple of bright hair and regarded him. The con- tempt that fired her topaz eyes seemed to roil the very marrow in his bones. "You say. Yet what proof can I show for my loyalty?"

Mearn swore. A stride carried him to the box bed, impelled by a pity too fierce to keep still. "Prince Lysaer's a fool. I can't change that." He locked hands to the spare rope coiled across his sho~lders, 256.

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flamed to ridiculous, boyish embarrassment for his sweaty state of dishevelment. Tom shirt, ripped fingers, and wind-tangled hair, he felt rough as an unsanded plank. "But I can offer means to escape."

"To what?" Talith answered. This time, she spun away in swift vio- lence.

Not in time; Meam saw the lucent, gold rims of her eyes dim to a sudden flood of tears. He ached to take her into his arms, to circle her glass-and-gold-leaf fragility inside a bastion of comfort. Pride stopped him, then the first, warning prick of intuition. "You still love your husband."

Her rancor a core of iron in silk, the princess rebutted, "Should my heart lie with duty, in Avenor?"

But the statement struck cold to a gambler's ear. Hatred could breed twisted passions, Meam knew. He watched. The lady opened a drawer and fished out a striker and candles. Her hand stayed too steady as she lit the fresh wicks. Tears might still glitter through her ebony lashes, and vulnerability sharpen an allure like thin crystal, and yet, she had been born a pedigree Etarran. A clansman forgot at his peril: her breed fed on intrigue and betrayal since infancy.

Three years of solitary contemplation in this tower might foment a thousand deadly hopes of revenge. If Lady Talith of Avenor wished no escape, she would angle to gain something else.

"I need to conceive a child," she announced without prelude.

"What?" Meam exclaimed.

"You risked much to find me. I trust you like women?" She gave no more warning, but closed in and cornered him, one exquisite, warm shoulder exposed by an artful slip of her night rail. The curve of her breast underneath was too perfect to endure without touching. Meam felt the bang of raw physical sensation hammer the center of his chest.

Her soft scent filled his mind. Rife chaos struck through his labored, trapped logic. "You want," he began in emasculated anger.

She tipped back her head, cupped his jaw in fine hands, and did not smile at the violent flush to his skin. "Don't be a hypocrite. How- ever much you posture and prickle, you want me in bed well enough."

"That has little to do with good sense," Mearn gasped. His breath failed him. His next utterance came out strangled. "A child--"

Reason fled, words dissolved to a groan as she stretched up and laid her softened lips against the sped pulse in his neck. His arms closed around her through no sane volition. Touched off by explosive, violent need, he pressed her slim heat against him. The fingers still tom and stinging from his climb locked in her cascade of bright hair.

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Her seduction was no longer passionless or steady as she slipped her hands through his collar. Prolonged years of loneli- ness ripped away pretense. "You are very fine," she murmured beneath his chin. "Brave also. Sire us a prince to make the realm proud."

"Ath, this is madness!" Mearn t~isted free. "My get would be half- bred." lie caught her wrists, his birth accent snapping. "Lady, you have no idea what you're asking."

"Oh?" Talith laughed, deep and low in her throat. If his strength was too harsh, she did not pull away. Chin lifted, her taut, aroused nipple a hairsbreadth from his tormented flesh, she let her pose become her sweet challenge, well assured he could not resist. Mearn cursed.

Talith returned a slow smile. "Can a princess be faulted for taking a lover if she is cast off in neglect? Let the court in Avenor hear I'm not barren, the disgrace will become my f~esh victory. My child of course won't be Lysaer's. For that, his much vaunted manhood will be laughingstock."

"Things aren't that simple," Mearn wrenched out. She was too close, too desirable. Her appeal for just vindication was too potent to let him think. Nor had he the means to let her down with any proper kindness or subtlety. "I can't. Lady, your spirit is great, and your beauty unmatched. I could lie with you for sheer pleasure. But I can never, ever presume the right to make a new life between us."

She broke then, her tears a bright, roll'mg spill over her flawless cheekbones. "Ath's mercy, help me! Won't you see how I need this? A shamed wife could gain freedom, some measure of autonomy. Yes, the worst could befall. Lysaer may cast me off. At least ! could return to my cousins in Etarra."

"I can't," Mearn said, helpless before her unhappiness. "It's a mat- ter of honoring my family bloodline."

Her features stayed blank, confounding Mearn's pity. Etarra was a city founded too late to have any record of the uprising. Unlike the persistent guild minister from Erdane, Talith would not know of the facts behind clanborn descent.

Mearn shut his eyes, anguished. He dared not explain; not after the clandestine overture just presented to Lysaer's high counselors. Clan numbers in Rathain were dangerously dwindled from the impact of the Mistwraith's curse. The damaging truth in Etarran hands, that the old family bloodlines were not replaceable, might hasten their final destruction.

"Lady," he said through bleak anguish, "let me help you escape.

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Once free, you can flee to Etarra if you like, or even conceive your bastard at will on any other man that you choose." She did not answer Mearn sensed the stir, then the chill kiss of draft on his skin as she widened the distance between them. As he looked, and interpreted her proud determination, he felt as if his powers of cognition had suf- fered a dousing in ice water. "Lady," he said, more dangerous now, "what do you know? There's something to this you're not telling me."

Talith smiled. Her neat, narrow fingers adjusted her night rail and reclothed her inviting nakedness. "Tell all and give nothing? How like a man who has bloodline, but apparently no measure of heated blood in him. Why am I not surprised? I should be asking, instead, who has sent you."

Mearn grinned. "You sound like my grandmother Dawr. Sharp as vinegar and sand when her males won't do as she pleases. I have no intention of saying which party takes active interest in your predica- ment. Shall I end our sweet impasse and go?"

That shook her. "We are bargaining, bloodless man." The glass edge of solitude had eroded her strength. Both fear and contempt rang true as she spoke. "Did you plan to climb down as you came?

Then I'll have your rope and grapple to reel in once you set down on the council-hall roof. Deliver my note to my lover of choice and let him scale the wall for my favor"

Mearn inclined his head. "I'll bear your note. The rope I would leave you in any case, to escape or invite whom you will. The person who sent me shall hear of your plight without any need for persua- sion."

He shrugged off the hemp coils, nettled by more than fresh scrapes and the stinging of his grazed fingertips. His refusal of her sex lodged an ache of unassuaged need in his gut. Still, he felt her gaze track him, fierce as the heat thrown off magma.

"If you're dedicated as you seem to the cause of Lysaer's Alliance, this won't matter," Talith said in sudden, terse resolve. "But if you speak to other clansmen, or have sympathy for ones in Tysan at risk of enslavement, I offer this much. The Koriathain are in league with Prince Lysaer against Arithon. Their kind have sent word: my lord husband has left Etarra. He returns to Avenor with all speed, in secret, for he knows the Master of Shadow has suborned the shake- down crews at his shipyard."

Mearn blinked. Set upon dangerous ground since no suspicion of doubt must touch on s'Brydion loyalty, he tossed off an insouciant grin. "You lay claim to a knowledge of state secrets,from here?"

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Talith met him with the thinnest of smiles, spiked in thorns malice. "You didn't know?" She stepped sideward, flicked back a felt curtain, and seated herself in the box bed. "Beneath lies my jailer and handmaid, who also is mistress to Lysaer's appointed High Priest of the Light, Cerebeld. I married a man who now claims to be god sent."

She paused. Mearn said nothing, preferring to listen, while his thoughts spun on tangents of frightful speculation.

The focused intensity of his stillness must have reached her. "Oh yes, you suspect the very truth," Talith affirmed. "The meetings in this tower seek to seed a religion. Cerebeld and his mad-dog fanatic, Vorrice, have been consecrated to carry out a divine mission. Lysaer makes long-range plans to unleash a holy war against the Master of Shadow."

Touched by the fluttering play of the candle, Talith gave a small, resigned shrug. "The s'Ffalenn prince might be a pirate, might ply his sorcery and connive against innocents, but he does not spin fair lies to justify his killing. Remember that, if you stay to fight him." Her hands had laced themselves taut in her lap, white knuckled in response to sharp memory. "Arithon's criminal and clever, but he's truthful. If I can smear Lysaer's reputation just enough to tear down this false claim to godhood, the world might come to bleed a little less."

Again she looked up. This time, her striking beauty held no sub- terfuge, but an appeal stamped in hard desperation. "I might win back a husband who is human if his gifted power to win a following is besmirched."

"You love him, not his cause," Mearn confirmed. He could rely upon that to protect the s'Brydion good name. "If you plan to keep my rope and grapple after I've lowered myself down, what will you do about hinge pins?"

Talith looked blank for a second, then chuckled low in her throat.

"Pick the lock on the hasp, what else? The Etarran daughter who failed at that skill was judged unfit to be married." She arose, too wise to offer him mean'mgless thanks, and too worldly to press further claim on his personal loyalty. "If you'll wait, I'll pen my appeal for a bastard."

Mearn laughed, enchanted by her spirit. "Dear princess, if you are cast off and left lovelorn with cousins, allow me to visit and pay court. If you liked, I'd spirit you out of Etarra and invite you to tea with my grandmother The result would certainly repel boredom."

"With vinegar and sand?" Talith rose in wry grace, tore a leaf from a book on her nightstand, then dipped water from the ewer and 260.

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ground makeshift ink from a handful of ashes in the grate. "I'm not sanguine."

A thin quill drawn from the stuffing in her mattress, cut and split with Mearn's knife, made a pen.

"You've brought me precious hope," she admitted as she scribed her perilous invitation to lure a lover. "If you fall getting out of here and break your silly head, I'll entreat your grandmother's shade to come haunt you."

"No need," Mearn quipped. He shed his coil of rope. Volatile in movement as sparked flame, he took her folded missive and tucked it away in his belt, then kissed the warm fingers of her hand. "Dame Dawr has already sworn to do as much anyway, if she doesn't find a way to live forever." He blew out the candle. Removed to the win- dow, he tipped back the shutter to an unwelcome blast of night wind.

"Fate's blessing on you, princess. May you win back your joy outside the walls of this tower."

Much later, returned to the security of his bedchamber, he penned his own messages for Maenol's clansmen to bear warn'rag to his duke, and also the Master of Shadow. As he inked his dire findings in close- spaced, ciphered script, Mearn s'Brydion could not set aside his last sight of Avenor's royal lady, erect in a silvery outline of starlight, the silent tears falling and falling off the breathtaking, proud slant of her cheekbones.

261.

Early Spring 5653 First Upset No sound destroyed Lord Maenol s'Gannley's sleep faster than the inbound drumming of hooves.

Shot to alarm in the misted, predawn gloom, too nerve wound to snatch for his boots, the man who bore title as Tysan's caithdein rolled headlong from the cloak which also served him as blanket. While crossing barren scrublands and open territory, he slept clothed in jerkin and breeches. His main gauche and daggers stayed sheathed at his belt. Damp earth and tender spring grass chilled bare feet as he snatched up his longsword, ready on the instant to fight, hide or flee to keep his small company living.